Photograph Source: Michael Fleischhacker – Public Domain
Good editing is rarely pain-free. To make a story flow – at least one of mine – copy must be jettisoned. And so it was with my recent story for FAIR, which examines the Washington Post’s racialized electioneering against DC Mayor Vince Gray in 2014.
In my early drafts I had a section on a forgotten part of the Post’s history, but I couldn’t find a way to tell that story without distracting from the larger one, so I cut it. But that excised story warrants telling.
‘White Man’s Business Organization’
My stomach tightens thinking back to Vince Gray’s press conferences, where Post reporters’ disdain for the mayor was palpable.
I couldn’t figure out why the Posties despised Gray. It wasn’t his politics, which were too middle-of-the-road for my taste, but in line with theirs: Gray wasn’t out to tax the rich, was pro-business, and continued pushing the Post’s cherished charter schools. So why the hostility?
Years later I got at least a partial answer when I stumbled across a forgotten history, one that reveals the deep roots of the Post’s dislike for Black Washingtonians and their preferred politicians.
In the 1950s, DC residents didn’t elect their own mayor or city council. (Congress only granted this right in 1973, and DC still doesn’t have full congressional representation or statehood.)
In the face of this glaring injustice, Post publisher Phil Graham hatched a plan: to fill this democratic void with his very own shadow government.
In 1954 – just as DC was on the verge of becoming the first major US city with a majority Black population – Graham brought business owners together to form the Federal City Council. “This was basically a white man’s business organization in a city that was very divided,” the group’s later-chair said at the group’s 50th anniversary.
Graham’s shadow government quickly got to work on its maiden project: reigniting a stalled federal plan to wipe out the mostly Black residents of Southwest DC, just blocks from the shining Capitol.
This effort – one of the earliest examples of so-called “urban renewal” – proved successful, as Southwest was “obliterated” and its 23,000 residents “dumped unceremoniously across the Anacostia river,” the Economist reported. When former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt toured the area in 1959 she asked, “What has happened to the people who once lived here?”
For many years Graham’s group maintained its power over majority-Black DC by quietly working behind the scenes with a mostly white (and not infrequently racist) Congress.
At the same time, Graham’s group opposed DC residents’ push for democratic governance. The group “had a vested interest in maintaining the political and governmental status quo in the District,” wrote Michael Fauntroy in Home Rule or House Rule?
Even after DC’s first modern election for mayor and council in 1974, the Federal City Council still “sometimes carried more clout on Capitol Hill than the District’s political leadership,” the Post reported.
The group used its clout to advance big-ticket items – stadiums, arenas, convention centers – that required vast sums of public dollars, but often lacked public support. (The group also advocated for creating the DC Metro system.) Along the way, some Federal City Council members – including major developers – benefitted financially from the projects they pushed. “It’s self-serving, of course,” a group member told the Post.
Meanwhile, the Post cheered the group at every turn. “The Post has provided consistent editorial support for the FCC’s projects, particularly its earlier ones,” the paper acknowledged in a parenthetical in 1994.
The synergy between Graham’s paper and his group was furthered by their overlapping composition. “[M]any Post executives had been or were members,” Katharine Graham, who succeeded her husband Phil as Post publisher, wrote in her 1997 memoir.
Fast-forward to today and the Federal City Council still exists, but it’s no longer the all-powerful white man’s group it once was. And the Grahams no longer own the Post (the family sold the paper to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2013 for $250 million).
We live in a world of dangerous, deadly extremes. Record-breaking heat waves, intense drought, stronger hurricanes, unprecedented flash flooding. No corner of the planet will be spared the wrath of human-caused climate change and the earth’s fresh water is already feeling the heat of this new reality. More than half of the world’s lakes and two-thirds of its rivers are drying up, threatening ecosystems, farmland, and drinking water supplies. Such diminishing resources are also likely to lead to conflict and even, potentially, all-out war.
“Competition over limited water resources is one of the main concerns for the coming decades,” warned a study published in Global Environmental Change in 2018. “Although water issues alone have not been the sole trigger for warfare in the past, tensions over freshwater management and use represent one of the main concerns in political relations between… states and may exacerbate existing tensions, increase regional instability and social unrest.”
The situation is beyond dire. In 2023, it was estimated that upwards of three billion people, or more than 37% of humanity, faced real water shortages, a crisis predicted to dramatically worsen in the decades to come. Consider it ironic then that, as water is disappearing, huge dams — more than 3,000 of them — that require significant river flow to operate are now being built at an unprecedented pace globally. Moreover, 500 dams are being constructed in legally protected areas like national parks and wildlife reserves. There was a justification for this, claimed the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) some years ago. Such projects, it believed, would help battle climate change by curbing carbon dioxide emissions while bringing electricity to those in the greatest of need.
“[Hydropower] remains the largest source of renewable energy in the electricity sector,” the IPCC wrote in 2018. “Evidence suggests that relatively high levels of deployment over the next 20 years are feasible, and hydropower should remain an attractive renewable energy source within the context of global [greenhouse gas] mitigation scenarios.”
The IPCC acknowledged that unceasing droughts impact stream flow and that climate change is unpredictably worsening matters. Yet its climate experts still contended that hydropower could be a crucial part of the world’s energy transition, arguing that an electric dam will produce seemingly endless energy. At the same time, other renewable sources like wind and solar power have their weather- and sunlight-bound limitations.
A Crack in the Dam Logic
Well-intentioned as it may have been, it’s now far clearer that there is a crack in the IPCC’s appraisal. For one thing, recent research suggests that hydro-powered dams can create an alarming amount of climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions. Rotting vegetation at the bottom of such reservoirs, especially in warmer climates (as in much of Africa), releases significant amounts of methane, a devastating greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.
“Most of this vegetation would have rotted anyway, of course. But, without reservoirs, the decomposition would occur mostly in the atmosphere or in well-oxygenated rivers or lakes,” explains Fred Pearce in the Independent. “The presence of oxygen would ensure the carbon in the plants formed carbon dioxide. But many reservoirs, particularly in the tropics, contain little oxygen. Under those anaerobic conditions, rotting vegetation generates methane instead.”
While CO2 also seriously harms the climate, methane emissions are far worse in the short term.
“We estimate that dams emit around 25% more methane by unit of surface than previously estimated,” says Bridget Deemer of the School of Environment at Washington State University in Vancouver, lead author of a highly-cited study on greenhouse gas emissions from reservoirs. “Methane stays in the atmosphere for only around a decade, while CO2 stays several centuries, but over the course of 20 years, methane contributes almost three times more to global warming than CO2.”
And that’s hardly the only problem dams face in the twenty-first century. At the moment, Chinese financing is the most significant global driver of new hydropower construction. China has invested in the creation of at least 330 dams in 74 countries. Each project poses its own set of environmental quandaries. But above all, the heating of the planet — last year was the warmest in human history and January 2024 the hottest January on record — is making many of those investments look increasingly dubious. On this ever-hotter globe of ours, for instance, a drought in Ecuador has all too typically impacted the functionality of the Amaluza Dam on the Paute River, which provides 60% of that country’s electricity. Paute was running at 40% capacity recently as its river flow dwindled. Similarly, in southern Africa, water levels at the Kariba Dam’s reservoir, located between Zambia and Zimbabwe, have fluctuated drastically, impairing its ability to produce consistent energy.
“In recent years, drought intensified by climate change has caused reservoirs on all five continents to drop below levels needed to maintain hydroelectric production,” writes Jacques Leslie in Yale E360, “and the problem is bound to worsen as climate change deepens.”
Even in the United States, the viability of hydropower is an increasing concern. The Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, for example, has been impacted by years of drought. Water levels at its reservoir, Lake Mead, continue to plummet, raising fears that its days are numbered. The same is true for the Glen Canyon Dam, which also holds back the Colorado, forming Lake Powell. As the Colorado dries up, Glen Canyon may also lose its ability to produce electricity.
Driven by dwindling water resources, the global hydropower crisis has become a flashpoint in the far reaches of Northern Africa, where the creation of a giant dam could very well lead to a regional war and worse.
A Crisis on the Nile
The lifeblood of northeastern Africa, the Nile River, flows through 11 countries before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea. Measured at 6,650 kilometers, the Nile may be the longest river on Earth. For millennia, its meandering waters, which run through lush jungles and dry deserts, have been irrigating farmlands and providing drinking water for millions of people. Nearly 95% of Egypt’s 109 million people live within a few kilometers of the Nile. Arguably the most important natural resource in Africa, it’s now at the epicenter of a geopolitical dispute between Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan that’s brought those countries to the brink of military conflict.
A major dam being built along the Blue Nile, the river’s main tributary, is upending the status quo in the region, where Egypt has long been the preeminent nation. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD for short) is to become one of the largest hydroelectric dams ever constructed, stretching more than 1,700 meters and standing 145 meters tall, a monument many will love and others despise.
There’s no question that Ethiopia needs the electricity GERD will produce. Nearly 45% of all Ethiopians lack regular power and GERD promises to produce upwards of 5.15 gigawatts of electricity. To put that in perspective, a single gigawatt would power 876,000 households annually in the United States. Construction on the dam, which began in 2011, was 90% complete by last August when it began producing power. In total, GERD’s cost is expected to eclipse $5 billion, making it the largest infrastructure project Ethiopia has ever undertaken and the largest dam on the African continent.
It will not only bring reliable power to that country but promises a culture shift welcomed by many. “Mothers who’ve given birth in the dark, girls who fetch wood for fire instead of going to school — we’ve waited so many years for this — centuries,” says Filsan Abdi of the Ethiopian Ministry of Women, Children, and Youth. “When we say that Ethiopia will be a beacon of prosperity, it starts here.”
While most Ethiopians may see the dam in a positive light, the downstream countries of Egypt and Sudan (itself embroiled in a devastating civil war) were never consulted, and their officials are indignant. The massive reservoir behind GERD’s gigantic cement wall will hold back 74 billion cubic meters of water. That means Ethiopia will have remarkable control over the flow of the Nile, giving its leaders power over how much access to water both Egyptians and Sudanese will have. The Blue Nile, after all, provides 59% of Egypt’s freshwater supply.
As it happens, fresh water in Egypt has long been growing scarcer and so the country’s leadership has taken the threat of GERD seriously for years. In 2012, for instance, Wikileaks obtained internal emails from the “global intelligence” firm Stratfor revealing that Egypt and Sudan were even then considering directing the Egyptian Special Forces to destroy the dam, still in the early stages of construction. “[We] are discussing military cooperation with Sudan,” a high-level Egyptian source was quoted as saying. While such a direct attack never transpired, Stratfor claimed that Egypt might once again lend support to “proxy militant groups against Ethiopia” (as it had in the 1970s and 1980s) if diplomacy were to hit a dead end.
Unfortunately, the most recent negotiations to calm the hostility around GERD have gone distinctly awry. Last April, the embittered Egyptians responded to the lack of any significant progress by conducting a three-day military drill with Sudan at a naval base in the Red Sea aimed at frightening Ethiopian officials. “All options are on the table,” warned Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry. “[All] alternatives remain available and Egypt has its capabilities.”
Seemingly unfazed by such military threats, Ethiopia plans to finish building the dam, claiming it will provide much-needed energy to impoverished Ethiopians and limit the country’s overall carbon footprint. “[GERD] represents a sustainable socio-economic project for Ethiopia: replacing fossil fuels and reducing CO2 emissions,” the Ethiopian embassy in Washington has asserted.
GERD, however, falls squarely into the category of being a major problem dam — and not just because it could lead to a bloody war in a region already in horrific turmoil. Once filled, its massive reservoir will cover a staggering 1,874 square kilometers, making it more than three-quarters the size of Utah’s Great Salt Lake (after it started to shrink).
Unfortunately, GERD never underwent a proper environmental impact assessment (EIA) despite being legally required to do so. No EIA was ever carried out because the notoriously corrupt Ethiopian government knew that the results wouldn’t be pleasing and was unwilling to let any roadblocks get in the way of the dam’s construction, something that became more obvious when upwards of 20,000 indigenous Gumuz and Berta natives began to be forced from their homes to make way for the monstrous dam.
Publicly coming out against the dam has proven a risky business. Employees of International Rivers, a nonprofit that advocates for people endangered by dams, have been harassed and received death threats in response to their opposition. Prominent Ethiopian journalist Reeyot Alemu, a critic of the dam and the government’s actions concerning it, was imprisoned for more than four years under draconian anti-terrorism laws.
Electric Water Wars
While GERD has created a dicey conflict, it also has international ramifications. China, which has played such a pivotal role in bankrolling hydropower projects globally in these years, has provided $1.2 billion to help the Ethiopians build transmission lines from the dam to nearby towns. Since it has also heavily invested in Egypt, it’s well-positioned, if any country is, to help navigate the GERD dispute.
Military analysts in the United States argue that China’s involvement with the dam is part of a policy meant to put the U.S. at a distinct disadvantage in the race to exploit Africa’s abundant rare earth minerals from the cobalt caverns of the Congo to the vast lithium deposits in Ethiopia’s hinterlands. China, the world’s “largest debt collector,” has indeed poured money into Africa. As of 2021, it was that continent’s largest creditor, holding 20% of its total debt. The growth of Chinese influence internationally and in Africa — it has large infrastructure projects in 35 African countries — is crucial to understanding the latest version of the globe’s imperial geopolitics.
Most of China’s African ventures are connected to Beijing’s “Belt and Road Initiative,” a program of this century to fund infrastructure deals across Eurasia and Africa. Its economic ties to Africa began, however, with Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s push in the 1950s and 1960s for an “Afro-Asian” alliance that would challenge Western imperialism.
So many decades later, the idea of such an alliance plays second fiddle to China’s global economic desires, which, like so many past imperial projects in Africa, have significant downsides for those on the receiving end. Developing countries desperately need capital, so they’re willing to accept rigid terms and conditions from China, even if they represent the latest version of the century’s old colonialism and neo-colonialism that focused on controlling the continent’s rich resources. This is certainly true in the case of China’s hydropower investments in places like Ghana’s Bui Dam and the Congo River Dam in the Republic of Congo, where multi-billion-dollar loans are backed by Congo’s crude oil and Ghana’s cocoa crops.
In 2020, the U.S. belatedly inserted itself into the GERD feud, threatening to cut $130 million in aid for Ethiopia’s anti-terrorism efforts. The Ethiopians believed it was related to the dam controversy, as they also did when, in June 2023, the Biden administration directed USAID to halt all food assistance to the country (upwards of $2 billion), claiming it wasn’t reaching Ethiopians, only to reverse course months later.
The dispute over Ethiopia’s enormous dam should be a warning of what the future holds on a hotter, drier planet, where the rivers that feed dams like GERD are drying up while the superpowers continue to jockey for position, hoping to control what remains of the world’s resources. Hydropower won’t help solve the climate crisis, but new dam projects may lead to war over one thing key to our survival — access to fresh, clean water.
Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain
When Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, it focused on embedding the civil rights of the formerly enslaved in the Constitution. But the framers of the amendment also included a clause meant to keep those who served the Confederacy from holding public office.
This “insurrection clause” of the U.S. constitution —Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment—disqualifies anyone from holding public office who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States. It’s this clause that the Colorado Supreme Court invoked to strike Donald Trump’s name from the Republican primary ballot. Not surprisingly, Trump has fought back, taking his case all the way to the federal Supreme Court.
In front of the Supreme Court, the legal team of Donald Trump has tried to argue that the specific language of the clause doesn’t apply to the former president. The clause, Trump’s lawyers argue, refers only to those who took oaths to support the Constitution “as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State.” Donald Trump was the president of the United States, they say, not an “officer.”
It’s really quite remarkable that the Supreme Court hasn’t laughed this argument out of the courtroom (as a lower court essentially did when Trump’s legal team claimed he had total, king-like immunity from prosecution). The drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment didn’t specify “president” because they couldn’t imagine that the head of the United States would foment a rebellion against those same United States. They were addressing the specific reality of the Civil War, in which President Lincoln was trying to hold together “a house divided.” To put “president” on the list of people barred from holding office would have seemed ridiculous: the president was logically the defender of the nation, not its saboteur.
How the framers of that amendment would have shuddered at the spectacle of January 6.
But plenty of countries in Latin America have faced precisely that scenario, of a leader or former leader who has used force to seize absolute power. And that’s why the Brazilian case is so important. While Americans are debating esoteric clauses of the Constitution in an effort to determine Trump’s place on or off the ballot, Brazil is taking far more effective steps to ensure that Jair Bolsonaro never leads the country again.
Anatomy of a Coup
It seemed at first as though Brazil’s would-be dictator Jair Bolsonaro, elected in 2018 to the presidency, was following Donald Trump’s playbook. During the run-up to the presidential election in 2022, when he faced off against former president Luiz Inazio Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro claimed that the contest was rigged against him, that the voting machines were compromised, that the election would be stolen. As in the United States, the final vote was indeed close. Like Trump, Bolsonaro refused to concede.
As soon as the election was called for Lula, Bolsonaro supporters massed in front of military installations, urging the Army to intervene. Brazil, unlike the United States, has a history of military coups. And Bolsonaro, it turns out, had prepared the ground in advance for just such a coup.
While Trump focused on recounts, “finding” additional votes in Georgia, gathering a separate slate of electors for the Electoral College, and ultimately pressuring the vice president to withhold certification of the Electoral College results, Bolsonaro went a different route. He appealed directly to the top echelon of the military to launch a coup. Only the head of the Navy warmed to the idea.
In the waning days of his presidency, Bolsonaro and his allies did what they could to persuade the head of the Army, Freire Gomes, to support a military coup. But he held firm, even in the face of a smear campaign that characterized him as a traitor to the nation.
Then on January 8, 2023—after Lula had already taken office—Bolsonaro supporters took matters into their own hands. Like their counterparts two years earlier in Washington, DC, they rioted in the center of the federal capital, occupying the buildings that represent the three branches of the Brazilian government. It took security forces five hours to evict the protestors and secure the buildings.
Aside from Bolsonaro’s appeal to the military, a much surer bet in Brazil than it would have been in the United States, the two leaders followed a similar trajectory: discredit the process beforehand, refuse to acknowledge the victory of the other candidate, look for ways to subvert the process, and mobilize supporters to generate the “street heat” necessary to force the authorities—the military in Brazil, the vice president in the United States—to do the (far) right thing.
Today, Trump is running for reelection in the United States with a better than average chance of success. Bolsonaro, meanwhile, has been banned from holding office in Brazil until 2030 and faces even more serious charges in connection to his coup plotting. How could such similar circumstances produce such divergent results?
The Brazilian Response
One of the first moves by the Brazilian government was to ban Bolsonaro from running for office for eight years, which immediately removed the greatest risk to the country’s democracy. This decision had nothing to do with any coup plots but rather the ex-president’s penchant, like Trump, for spreading “fake news.” In this case, Bolsonaro had met with foreign ambassadors in July 2022 and provided them with false information about the Brazilian electoral system. Effectively, Bolsonaro told them that the system was fraudulent, a common Trumpian refrain.
According to a report from one of the Brazilian judges on the case, “Bolsonaro also allegedly said that in 2018 voting machines had changed voters’ choices to benefit his opponent, and that the Brazilian voting machines are not auditable, while insinuating that electoral and judicial authorities were protecting ‘terrorists.’”
Although the authorities arrested quite a few people in connection to the January 8 riots—in the low thousands—the government ultimately released over 500 on humanitarian grounds. Instead, the focus of the investigations has been on the organizers, the funders, and the leading figures behind both the riots and the coup plot.
This month, federal authorities conducted raids on dozens of individuals, including a prominent Catholic priest and several military figures. These raids came on the heels of a probe into the activities of Bolsonaro’s son and his former spy chief for the alleged illegal monitoring of a slew of important Brazilians, from judges to Lula allies.
Bolsonaro and others have had their passports confiscated. That makes it impossible for the ex-politician to fly off to Florida, as he did immediately after his failed bid for reelection, to nurse his wounds in Trumpland.
Vengeance?
Perhaps you are thinking that the Brazilian scenario is precisely what Donald Trump is planning to do if/when he regains the Oval Office. He has promised “retribution” in the form of investigating “every Marxist prosecutor in America” and rooting out “the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” Of course, he also reserves most of his enmity for those within the Republican Party—are you listening, Nikki Haley?—who have not shown sufficient deference to his authority.
Are not the Brazilians waging a similar campaign of retribution against the opponents of the current president?
But such a conclusion is a category error. The Brazilian authorities are upholding the legal system by prosecuting challenges to that legal system. It is not partisan retribution—any more than this column is a partisan attempt to persuade you to vote a particular way in November. Those who threaten to overturn the legal order must be held responsible for their actions. That is what “rule of law” means.
Yes, that “rule of law” is often a thinly veiled system of oppression. The civil rights movement has challenged discriminatory laws; the pro-choice movement is challenging oppressive anti-abortion restrictions. These movements have engaged in civil disobedience, to be sure. But their purpose has been to create a more perfect democracy, not to overthrow democracy.
Perhaps because they have not enjoyed democracy for very long—Brazil was under a military dictatorship from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s—Brazilians do not take democracy for granted. They know how quickly it can be snatched away.
Trump attempted just such a smash-and-grab in 2020 by setting out to steal an allegedly stolen election. And he has made clear his intentions, win or lose, to whack away at the very ladder of democracy that he climbed to power. On Trump’s side is a lot of boiling-point anger, but what may prove decisive is something very different: a dangerous complacency about the value of democracy itself. If democracy is indeed the civil religion of the United States, then prepare for the surge of the apostates.
Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain
The news from Gaza is grim. Palestinians from northern Gaza have been removed by the IDF from their homes–first to Deir al-Balah and then to Khan Younis. More than half the Strip’s population is now sheltering in Rafah near the border with Egypt.
Meanwhile, the IDF has occupied the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, one of Gaza’s last functioning hospitals, forcing most of the hospital’s staff, patients, and refugees southward toward Rafah.
The conditions in Rafah are described as miserable. Families seek shelter in makeshift tents that are unable to withstand cold rains. People scramble to find clean water, food, and fuel. Some families resort to eating grass and drinking polluted water. Without proper sanitation and medicines, disease is rampant. Still, there is no refuge from continued bombings.
While U.N. agencies and most nations (except the U.S.) call for a ceasefire, release of the hostages, and a dramatic increase in humanitarian assistance, Netanyahu remains determined to continue his scorched earth attacks. He has broken off hostage negotiations and now threatens to launch an imminent ground invasion on Rafah. With nowhere to go, the Gazans are “terrified.”
As the Palestinian death toll reaches 29,000, worldwide protests against Netanyahu and Biden grow larger and louder. Yet Netanyahu’s position is firm: no ceasefire, no more hostage negotiations, no two-state solution, and no retreat from his Rafah invasion plan.
So, where does the U.S. President stand? In his speech of October 10, he expressed his outrage for Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel three days earlier and his sympathy to the victims’ families. He went on to recognize Israel’s right to defend itself. He said: “We stand with Israel. We stand with Israel. And we will make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of its citizens, defend itself, and respond to this attack.”
After Netanyahu declared war on Hamas, his defense minister vowed to wipe the militants “off the face of the earth.” President Biden reacted by moving U.S. military assets to the Eastern Mediterranean and bolstering the presence of U.S. fighter aircraft. Although professing not to want a wider war, his ongoing strikes on the Houthis in Yemen and on Iran proxies in Iraq and Syria have spoken otherwise. He has delivered more arms aid to Israel and wants another $14.5 billion for the IDF.
Refusing to heed worldwide appeals for a ceasefire, Biden and Blinken content themselves with sporadic requests that Netanyahu limit civilian casualties. Each time the Israelis rebuff or ignore such entreaties.
Biden recently termed Israeli military operations “over the top.” Like his frequent pleas that Israel obey international humanitarian law, the President’s characterization was too weak and too late. Moreover, his actions have spoken louder than his words. If he were serious about civilian casualties, why would he want to send Israel more billions for weapons to be used against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank? Why would he oppose a ceasefire?
Both Netanyahu and Biden have deplored the ICJ decision of January 26 that the State of Israel “cease forthwith” prohibited acts under the 1948 Genocide Convention. When asked if the U.S. stands by its allegation that South Africa’s genocide case against Israel is “meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis of fact whatsoever.”White House spokesperson John Kirby replied “Yes.” Biden has again refused to consider UN ceasefire resolutions, including the latest one proposed by Algeria.
Biden’s multiple calls for a two-state solution and his occasional expressions of concern for Gazan casualties collide with his oft-repeated “Israel has the right to defend itself.” Even to this day, Biden refuses to call for ceasefire or set any conditions on America’s arms aid. Nor has he taken issue with Israel’s siege policy, which uses starvation as a war tactic.
The UN Security Council on May 24, 2018, unanimously adopted Resolution 2417, which strongly condemned the starving of civilians and the restriction of humanitarian aid. A Human Rights Watch report last December 18 (“Israel: Starvation Used as a Weapon of War in Gaza,”) found as follows:
1) “The Israeli Government is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the Gaza Strip, which is a war crime.
2) Israeli officials have made public statements expressing their aim to deprive civilians of food, water, and fuel–statements reflected in Israeli forces’ military operations.
3) The Israeli government should not attack objects necessary for the survival of the civilian population, [should] lift its blockade of the Gaza Strip, and [should]restore electricity and water.
Biden’s words and actions have enabled and assisted Prime Minister Netanyahu in his genocidal war that now includes famine; they have increased the risk of a regional war; and they have diminished respect for international institutions and the rule of law. By focusing on hostage recovery and “day-after” governance, he has neglected the urgent question of where the desperate Gazans can go now to find water, food and safety from IDF attacks.
A feckless U.S. foreign policy is helping Israel put Gazans on the road to famine. It has made Biden and all of America complicit in Israel’s genocide.
Photograph Source: U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv – CC BY 2.0
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a dead man walking. He needs to continue the war in Gaza in order to maintain his position as prime minister. When the war ends, Netanyahu’s record-setting years of rule in Israel will also end.
Along with Netanyahu, the Israeli nation is in decline legally, morally, and economically. The actions of the International Court of Justice reflect the legal and moral decline. Foreign investment is down, and Moody’s Investors Service (Moody’s) has downgraded Israel’s foreign currency and local currency ratings. One outstanding question is whether Netanyahu’s fall and Israel’s decline will lead to the political defeat of President Joe Biden as well in November’s election.
Even before the large-scale Israeli ground invasion of Gaza on October 27th, Netanyahu had transformed from a risk-averse conservative to a right-wing reactionary. A decade ago, it was obvious that Israel’s image as a progressive and largely secular nation had become badly tarnished with Netanyahu at the helm. Last year, Netanyahu had to bring into the government the worst kind of right-wing reactionaries, led by Bazalel Smotrich (Finance Minister) and Itamar Ben-Gvir (Minister of National Security). The country was moving to the right, and Netanyahu moved to the right along with it.
In its first 75 years of existence, Israel had no fascists such as Smotrich or Ben-Gvir in its government. Both men were disciples of the late Meir Kahane, whose fascist party was banned in Israel in 1994. Kahane’s party, Kach, was banned by the Israeli cabinet under the 1948 anti-terrrorism laws following its statements of support for Baruch Goldstein who massacred 29 Palestinians at the Cave of the Patriarchs. Kahane himself was banned from Israeli politics in 1988, but in the last Israeli election six extremists of the Kahane variety won seats in the Israeli Knesset.
The transformation of Israel over the past ten-years means that Israeli leaders and their followers have become less interested in Israel as a democratic state and far more interested in Israel as a Jewish state. The government has no interest in protecting the civil rights of the two million Arab citizens within Israel’s borders, who make up around 20 percent of Israel’s population. Netanyahu also has no interest in respecting Israel’s Supreme Court and its essential role of judicial review. His campaign to neuter the Supreme Court led to the huge protest campaign that was interrupted by the Hamas attack on October 7th. As far back as 2016, a Pew public opinion survey determined that 80 percent of Jewish Israelis favored “preferential treatment” for Jews, indicating the acceptance of discrimination against Arabs.
It seems bizarre for U.S. leaders to continue to emphasize the importance of a two-state solution, when Netanyahu and his cohort have stressed that there will be no negotiations toward such a solution. For the past ten years, again before the Gaza War, Netanyahu has been moving to make permanent the occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The Trump administration supported these steps, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and supporting Israel’s policies of occupation. Trump and Netanyahu’s recklessness and moral perversity are quite similar. Now, the Israeli government is in the process of making Gaza totally uninhabitable. The Biden administration is complicit in the excesses and war crimes of the Israeli military campaign.
There is no justification or explanation for the horrors that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have brought to Gaza, which include the deaths of as many as 12,000 Palestinian children. The fact that Israeli Jews, who have been united around “never again” in the wake of the Holocaust, are responsible for this tragedy is particularly ironic. I grew up in a Jewish ghetto in Baltimore as a Zionist who believed that the IDF was a progressive force playing a major role in transforming Jewish immigrants from the world into a national force. I traveled to Israel for the first time as a teenager, and met Jews from America and Europe who had volunteered to work in Kibbutzim where they joined with the warrior-pioneers who had made their way to Israel in the wake of the Holocaust.
There is no indication that the Israeli assault against the Palestinians will diminish in intensity, let alone pause, and the weaker security environment will ultimately create greater security risks for Israel itself. The potential of renewed war on the northern border with Lebanon is certainly possible, particularly in view of the terrible strategic decisions Israel made in 1982 and 2006 regarding Lebanon. A weaker security environment will create greater social and political risks as Netanyahu becomes even more beholden to the right-wing zealots in his coalition. At the same time, Israelis may become more aggressive in order to keep Netanyahu in power.
It is ironic that President Biden has put his reelection chances at risk on behalf of Netanyahu who has no respect for the president or the United States. Unlike other Israeli prime ministers, Netanyahu has displayed no interest in trying to satisfy or even address U.S. demands or requests, and Israel in general appears to believe that it can go it alone without any international support. President Barack Obama gifted Israel with the greatest military aid package in U.S. history in 2016, but he was regularly vilified by the Israeli press and received a lower favorability rating in Israel than almost anywhere else in the world.
Biden has shown deep concern about the fate of the hostages, particularly the American hostages, but very little concern about the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza. Netanyahu has never been concerned with the five million Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza, and rarely demonstrates concern with the hostages. His goal is to make Gaza uninhabitable. The Biden administration doesn’t seem to understand that, which explains the feckless missions of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and CIA director William Burns, and the more feckless conversations Biden keeps having with Netanyahu.
I know what Israel gains from the United States in terms of billions of dollars worth of lethal weaponry and political cover. I wonder what the United States gains from Israel.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Youtube screen grab.
In the first phase of the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza, it was clear that the Palestinian Authority was caught off guard. Its leadership neither anticipated that the Gaza Resistance would carry out such an operation nor did they expect that the Israeli war would quickly reach the point of genocide in a matter of days.
This resulted in a dichotomy. While, early on, some PA officials strongly criticized Israel, others did so, but guardedly. The likes of Mahmoud al-Habbash, a close adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, actually blamed Hamas for the October 7 operation, bizarrely speaking about the PA’s intention of holding the Resistance accountable, of course to the delight of Israeli media.
These indecisive positions, however, became stronger over time, though certainly not to the extent where the PA outright supported the Resistance. But the events on the ground, the sheer number of Palestinians killed and wounded and the catastrophic destruction resulting from the war, gave the PA some political space to maneuver, and to present itself as the official and trusted Palestinian spokesman to the world.
The PA sprang into action, not to meet any kind of historical responsibility in defense of Gaza, but to fight back against Benjamin Netanyahu’s direct insinuation that the PA is no longer relevant.
The Israeli prime minister and others within his government have insisted that the PA and its dominant Fatah party will have no future role in Gaza.
‘Israel Needs the PA’
“Gaza will be neither Hamastan nor Fatahstan,” Netanyahu said last December, resorting to his old style of orientalist, and condescending language.
“After the great sacrifice of our civilians and our soldiers, I will not allow the entry into Gaza of those who educate for terrorism, support terrorism and finance terrorism,” Netanyahu added.
But if the Fatah movement, essentially the PA, is ‘terrorist’ based on Netanyahu’s definition, why would he then allow it to operate freely in the West Bank?
Of course, Netanyahu is lying. Just a few months earlier, in June 2023, the Times of Israel reported that Netanyahu had told lawmakers that Israel “needs the Palestinian Authority”.
Israel “has an interest in seeing that the PA continues to function” and is “prepared to assist it economically,” the Times of Israel conveyed Netanyahu’s comments, citing the original report of the Kan public broadcaster.
“Where it’s successfully operating, it does our job for us,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying. Doing “our job for us” was a reference to the PA’s cracking down on Palestinian Resistance throughout the West Bank.
Thus, it makes little sense for the PA, from an Israeli viewpoint, of course, to be trusted in fighting Palestinian Resistance in the West Bank while “supporting terrorism”, meaning Resistance, in Gaza.
But Netanyahu had other reasons to reach such a conclusion.
What to Do with the PA?
First, Israel knows that if the entire Israeli army has failed to defeat, let alone ‘crush’ the Resistance in the Strip, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas and his band of poorly trained officers will be routed out in a matter of days, if not hours.
In fact, the Fatah-Hamas clash in the summer of 2007 was a perfect case in point. A much weaker Hamas defeated a large number of PA security branches in the Strip faster than the latter’s ability to flee the area, some of them eventually seeking refuge at the Israeli Eretz military checkpoint.
Second, Netanyahu is unable to determine his ‘next step’ in Gaza, and those who will supposedly run it, because he holds no cards. His military campaign has not only caused genocide but was a total military and strategic failure.
The Israeli leader is heavily criticized by many for failing to talk about the day-after-the-war scenario. But he ought not to be, because the question of “what do we do with Gaza?” is not a question he, or any other Israeli leader, is able to answer.
The question assumes that the Palestinians have no agency of their own. If October 7 was of any value, it at least proved that Palestinians are active participants in shaping the events that will determine their future – in fact, the future of Israel as well.
A more appropriate question should be ‘what to do with the Israeli occupation?’ Another, ‘what to do with the Palestinian Authority, which is helping Israel manage its occupation?’
No Authority
In truth, the PA is relevant insofar as carrying out whatever task is allocated to it by Washington and permitted by Israel.
This role, however, is likely to be even more marginal in the future, since the Palestinian Resistance remains strong, and since a new resistance campaign is taking shape in the West Bank.
In the case of Israeli withdrawal from Gaza without achieving Netanyahu’s lofty goal of destroying or even dismantling the Resistance, Hamas and all others will emerge stronger, both in terms of their military weight and their political influence.
Recent public opinion polls have shown that Hamas’ support among Palestinians in the West Bank has significantly grown, suggesting that the new Resistance model, starting in Jenin and Nablus, will most likely spread to the rest of the region in the coming months.
The Israeli occupation operates in the West Bank without the least degree of respect for the ‘authority’ of the so-called Palestinian ‘Authority’. Even Palestinians in many parts of the West Bank are living and resisting with complete disregard of the PA.
It is difficult to imagine a workable scenario in which the PA can be fixed or reformed to fit the expectations of the Palestinian people.
Unfixable
PA reforms are not possible because the very political premise that established it was molded by Washington and its western allies. After the Second Palestinian Uprising (2000-2005), the PA was ‘reformed’ by Washington’s military generals to fully accommodate Israel’s ‘security’.
Since then, the PA fulfilled its part of the deal and, per the admission of Netanyahu himself, the PA is working for Israel, not against it. This is why it continues to function.
Another reason why the PA cannot be expected to serve the role of a truly representative Palestinian political institution is that, throughout its history, it has fought every attempt at enacting any degree of democratic process.
Abbas has thwarted the results of the democratic elections of 2006, prevented any return to democratic process ever since and championed a truly repressive political system. He rules with a long-expired mandate. He imprisons, tortures, kills whenever it serves his personal interest. His legacy is that of subservience to Israel, financial corruption and violence against Palestinians who resist Israel or question his behavior.
For 30 years, the PA has learned to co-exist with the Israeli occupation and apartheid. But it has also proven to be incapable of co-existing in a pluralistic and democratic Palestinian political space.
The PA must be as worried about the outcome of the war as Israel is, though for different reasons.
For Israel an end to the war without crushing the Resistance, is the dawn of a new era of the empowered and resisting Palestinian.
For the PA, a victory for Hamas and the Resistance is an end of an era as well. How the new era will be defined depends on the PA’s willingness to accept the new reality, and to simply let Palestinians manage their own lives, mold their own leadership and wage their own struggle.
Otherwise, a clash is inevitable. And that would be a tragedy.
If outgoing Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has accomplished anything during his five-year-plus term, it could be said that he’s laid down the third rail of Mexican politics.
Focusing on AMLO’s Maya Train, the new tourism megaproject cutting through the country’s southeastern jungles, or the President’s plan to revive the national passenger train service dismantled with the onset of the old North American Free Trade Agreement, foreign media train talk of Mexico has tended to overlook what could well prove to be AMLO’s most enduring legacy: expanded pensions and other social programs benefiting the working class that are emerging as not only a national consensus but as an institutional reality.
In a major speech delivered on February 5, the Mexican Constitution Day holiday, AMLO rolled out a list of 20 constitutional and legal reforms for Congress to consider, including reaffirming the right of all Mexicans 65 or older to a pension with annual increases; providing pensions that pay 100 percent of the last salary of retirees who are enrolled in the federal government’s IMSS and ISSTE systems;assuring economic support for disabled persons and scholarships for low-income students; guaranteeing that the increase in the minimum wage is never below the annual rate of inflation; and providing free health care to all Mexicans.
“The reforms I proposed seek to establish constitutional rights and strengthen ideas and principles related to humanism, justice, honesty, (government) austerity, and the democracy that we have postulated and brought into practice since the origins of the contemporary movement of national transformation,” AMLO said.
In addition to giving constitutional protection to an array of existing social programs launched during the López Obrador years, the reform package proposes trimming the number of Congressional representatives and senators, instituting guaranteed prices for farmers, prohibiting GMO corn for human consumption, banning fracking, slashing Supreme Court terms from 15 to 12 years, selecting judges by popular vote, and outlawing animal abuse, among other measures.
As the Mexican leader recently reiterated, he’s spearheading a peaceful revolution, a “revolution of consciences” that proposes to rescue the progressive spirit of the 1917 Mexican Constitution, which was born from the blood of the 1910 Revolution but eroded in recent decades by neo-liberal reforms propagated by administrations led by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and National Action Party (PAN).
For AMLO and his supporters, the 20 reforms are at the heart of what they term the Fourth Transformation of Mexico, or the 4T.
With elections coming up on June 2, AMLO’s opponents criticized the reform proposals as an example of improper presidential interference on behalf of the President’s Morena Party and its presidential candidate, former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, who vows to not only continue the 4T but take it to a higher level.
Unfazed, AMLO readily acknowledged the election connection, arguing that the people of Mexico have a right to decide their future national project at the ballot box. Yet opposition politicians and pundits are hard-pressed to oppose the reforms in their entirety since many enjoy broad popular support, especially the adult pensions and social programs. Cherry picking is underway.
Banded together with the minuscule Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in an electoral coalition running Xochitl Galvez for president, the PRI, PAN and PRD nonetheless face political disaster if they openly oppose the social programs.
Indeed, the PRI even attempted a left pivot in the wake of February 5, declaring that it will do even better on the social front than AMLO’s proposals, proposing for example, that 60 instead of 65 should be the the eligible age for an adult pension.
The governor of the key industrial state of Nuevo Leon, 36-year-old Samuel García of the opposition Citizen Movement party, was asked on national television about the reforms. He told the interviewer he supported at least 15 of the proposed changes, but had concerns over the legal and security components. The coordinators of García’s party in the Chamber of Deputies and Senate were quoted in the Mexican press in mid-February as saying they would likely support 11 of the 20 proposals.
In short, any Mexican politician in 2024 who’s not willing to take at least a few main stops on the emerging third rail of politics does so at his or her own peril.
Silvestre Pacheco, an author, activist and political columnist in Guerrero state, detects a big dilemma facing opposition forces like the conservative PAN. “If the opposition is against (AMLO’s constitutional reforms), people will vote against them,” he said in an interview. “If they vote for (reforms), their social base will get rid of them for betraying conservative principles.”
Boosting AMLO’s popularity and the 4T’s program are social programs, labor rights, economic policies, and public works implemented during the current administration, according to Pacheco.
The longtime analyst pointed to adult pensions, educational scholarships, minimum wage increases and much more.
“López Obrador promoted the minimum wage in an important way that surpassed all the ones of the neo-liberal era and nothing (disastrous) happened, even the businessmen agreed,” Pacheco said.López Obrador punctured the myth of the conservatives’ argument that a minimum wage increase is the origin of inflation.”
In the countryside, meanwhile, Sembrando la Vida, the federal program that pays growers to plant trees has likewise netted positive benefits for rural sectors of the population, he continued. Overall, Pacheco maintained, the political balance tilts strongly in favor of continuing the current political-economic course with its possible new constitutional guarantees.
“The electorate wil have a big impact on this process. I think there will be big participation, and people will vote for Morena,” Pacheco predicted. “Morena will emerge as the great party of the left.”
For Pacheco, however, Mexico is “barely at the beginning of a national transformation,” and one that in the long term will require bolder policies like a capital tax to support programs like adult pensions on a firm financial basis.
“The 4-T is touching everyone. It’s a total phenomenon, a live organism,” said Alejandro Rozado, a Mexican sociologist and psychotherapist based in Guadalajara. “Can anyone stop it? Its like trying to stop a hurricane with an umbrella,” Rozado asserted in a presentation at this year’s Puerto Vallarta’s annual book fair.
The author of a recent book that delves into the 4-T and AMLO’s role as the leading agent of change, Rozado places López Obrador in the tradition of Mexico’s “non-socialist left,” a political tendency encompassing diverse historical figures including José María Morelos y Pavón, Emiliano Zapata, Francisco Villa, and Lázaro Cárdenas.
For Rozado, the 4-T reforms represent “irreversible” and profound changes that put Mexico on the path of modernization. Rather than by force of arms or popular insurrection, Rozado contended that a transformation is underway in Mexico, first delivered via the massive vote of 2018 that elevated AMLO and Morena to office, and in his view will do so again in 2024 for Claudia Sheinbaum. Poised to become Mexico’s first woman president, Sheinbaum enjoys a comfortable lead in the polls at this time.
“The problem with the right is that it wants to go backwards. This is its big error,” Rozado said. “We have the government but not the power,” he cautioned. “Courts, bosses, media, and banks have it.”
Not unlike in the U.S.,Morena’s opposition is hard at work probing and poking the weak points of AMLO’s presidency, with unresolved crime and insecurity matters high on its campaign agenda.
Arguably, the biggest potential brake on the 4T train is not made in Mexico. As Manuel Pérez Rocha of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies recently wrote in the Mexican daily La Jornada, Mexico is immersed in numerous foreign investor-state disputes arising from government actions to protect the environment, safeguard public health and ensure the supremacy of the Mexican state in the exploitation of and economic rewards from natural resources.
Pérez Rocha contended that the proposed constitutional reforms banning new open pit minining concessions, outlawing fracking, recuperating the railroads from foreign control, and restoring the Federal Electricity Commission to the driver’s seat of energy production and distribution, likely risk a new round legal challenges from foreign investors due to Mexico’s adherence to multiple free trade agreements. He predicted such an outcome would propel Mexico from the fourth most-sued nation to the most sued in the global investor-state dispute realm.
In the case of GMO corn, the Biden Administration is defending U.S. agribusiness in its complaint filed under NAFTA’s successor, the US- Mexico-Canada Agreement, against Mexico City’s efforts to halt any use of GMO corn in food products.
“There are no solitary national solutions in leaving behind neoliberalism, Pérez Rocha asserted, urging collective international action in favor of public interests. “The frameworks of treaties with other countries that grant transnational businesses the most powerful tools to overwhelm us and limit our sovereignty must be confronted.”
Meanwhile, AMLO’s proposed constitutional reforms will be considered-and likely modified- by various Congressional commissons before undergoing full votes expected sometime this year. Organized by the legislative branch, a series of public forums precedingcongressional action will be held across the nation between February and April.
Morena possesses simple majorities in both houses of Congress, but AMLO’s party and its allies in the PT and PVEM parties will need some opposition votes for the constitutional proposals to fly.
As the clock ticks away on his presidency, López Obrador has just released his long-promised book, Gracias!, which is a mixture of memoir, political philosophy, life coaching, and a treatise of the 4T. For the President, the June 2 elections represent a popular plebiscite that poses a fundamental question for Mexico’s future: “Do you want the transformation to continue or do you want to return to the (politicians) from before, the corrupt ones?”
But missing isn’t the right word. Hind is missed. So are the people who tried to save her.
So much depends on using the right words now. On being precise.
Hind didn’t go missing. Her rescuers didn’t go missing.
Hind was trying to escape. Her rescuers were trying to save her.
But you can’t escape from a tank in a small black Kia. Not a tank filled with soldiers who’d fire on a small black Kia, driving away from them. Not a tank armed with the latest explosive shells provided on an emergency order by the US government. Not a tank that would shoot at a frightened young girl.
Six-year-old girls who like to dress up as princesses in pink gowns don’t simply go missing in Gaza City these days. They don’t just disappear. They are disappeared.
Hind Rajab was in her own city when the invaders in tanks came. What was left of it. By late January, 60 percent of the homes in Gaza City had already been destroyed by Israeli missiles and bombs. Hind’s own kindergarten, which she’d recently graduated from had been blown up, as had so many other schools, places of learning, places of shelter and places of safety in Gaza City. (78% of school buildings in Gaza have been directly hit or damaged amid Israel’s incessant bombing, according to a new report by Relief.net. The 162 school buildings directly hit served more than 175,000 kids.)
But to be a child in Gaza City now is to be a target. There are no safe streets, no sanctuaries. The places where you once felt most at home are now the most likely to be bombed. There are no escape routes. Every corner you turn might put you face-to-face with a tank or in the laser-sights of a sniper or under a Hermes drone.
Hind was missed, but she wasn’t missing. Hind was hiding. Hiding in a car shredded by shrapnel and bullets. Hiding in a car with dead and dying relatives: her aunt, her uncle, three of her cousins. Hiding in a car bleeding from wounds to her back, her hands and her foot. Hiding with her 15-year-old cousin Layan Hamadeh, who was also hurt, bleeding and terrified.
Layan had grabbed her dead father’s phone and called the Red Crescent Society. She begged them to come rescue her and Hind. “They are shooting at us,” Layan pleaded. “The tank is right next to me. We’re in the car, the tank is right next to us.” Then there was the sound of gunfire and the line went silent. The dispatcher asked, “Hello? Hello?” There was no answer. The connection had cut out.
The Red Crescent operator called back. Hind answered. She told them Layan had been shot. She told them everyone else in the car was now dead. She stayed on the line for three hours. The dispatcher read her lines from the Koran to calm her.
“I’m so scared,” Hind said. “Please come, come take me. You will come and take me?”
Can you imagine?
Can you imagine your daughter picking up the phone from the dead hands of her cousin, who’d been shot to death only seconds before right in front of her?
The dispatchers told Hind to keep hiding in the car. They told her that an ambulance was coming. They told her that she would soon be safe. Hind had been able to tell Rana Al-Faqueh, the PRCS’s response coordinator, where she was: near the Fares petrol station in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood. Her own neighborhood. She told them the entire neighborhood seemed to be under siege by the Israelis.
It was approaching 6 in the evening. The street was now in shadows. It had been three hours since she and her family had been shot. Three hours in the car with the bodies of her dead relatives. Three hours under fire with darkness closing in.
“I’m afraid of the dark,” Hind told Rana.
“Is there gunfire around you?” Rana asked.
“Yes,” Hind said. “Come get me.”
Then the line went dead again. This time for good.
An ambulance had been sent, but it never arrived. Her rescuers came for her, selflessly entered the zone of fire, but never reached her. Hind’s mother, Wissam Hamada, had gone to the hospital anxiously expecting her daughter any minute, but she never showed up.
Before the ambulance was dispatched, the Red Crescent Society told the Gaza Health Ministry and the IDF about Hind’s call. They told them she was a frightened, wounded six-year-old girl in a black Kia that had been mangled by tank fire. They told them where she was and that an ambulance was coming. They asked that the ambulance be given safe passage to Hind.
After they’d coordinated a plan for her rescue, the RCS dispatched an ambulance crewed by two paramedics: Ahmed al-Madhoon and Youssef Zeino. As Ahmed and Youssef approached the Tel al-Hawa area, they reported to the Red Crescent dispatchers that the IDF was targeting them, that snipers had pointed lasers at the ambulance. Then there was the sound of gunfire and an explosion. The line went silent.
A frantic search began for Hind, Ahmed and Youseff. But no one could enter the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood. No Palestinians, at least. Not even to find a little girl. Not even after the tapes of the harrowing calls for help by Layan and Hind had been made public. The IDF had sealed it off.
When CNN reporters, whose deferential posture toward the Israeli regime has recently been detailed by the Guardian, contacted the IDF about Hind and the two paramedics, giving them the coordinates of the car, the Israelis said they were “unfamiliar with the incident described.” Four days later, CNN inquired again about the fate of Hind, Ahmed and Youseff and the IDF replied they were “still looking into it.” The Israelis didn’t look too deeply into “the incident.” The evidence was right before them, done by their own hands, likely captured on footage from their own soldiers, tracked by their own drones.
It would be 12 days before the Israelis withdrew from Tel al-Hawa; 12 days before anyone reached Hind, whose body had been left by the Israelis to decompose in the black Kia next to Layan and Layan’s father and mother and her three siblings (also children); 12 days before anyone discovered what happened to the ambulance sent to rescue her; 12 days before anyone found Ahmed and Youssef, left where they had been shot.
The headlines in the corporate press said Hind’s body had been “found.” But found isn’t the right word. Hind wasn’t missing. Her rescuers knew where she was and were killed because they almost reached her. The Israelis knew where she was, right where they’d killed her and her family. The media made the double massacre sound like a mystery. But there was nothing mysterious about it. By late January, the killing of Hind and her family and the Israeli attack on a Palestinian ambulance had become routine. Since October, at least 146 ambulances have been targeted by the IDF and more than 309 medical workers killed.
Who will rescue the rescuers?
The massacre on that street in Tel al-Hawa took place three days after Israel had been put on notice by the International Court of Justice that it needed to stop committing acts of genocide, stop killing civilians, stop killing children and health care workers–a ruling that Israel has not just ignored but openly defied. Instead, Israel blames the victims of its atrocities. Tel al-Hawa was a closed military zone, the IDF says. Any Palestinians moving on the streets were legitimate targets, the IDF says. The rules of engagement were those of the US troops at My Lai: shoot anything that moves. Even young girls and the paramedics who rushed to treat their wounds.
The black Kia, its windows blown out, the body of the car gashed by shrapnel and riven with bullet holes, was found by Hind’s relatives exactly where Layan and Hind had said it was: right next to the gas station. It was found where it had come under fire from an Israeli tank. It was found near the PRC ambulance that had been sent to rescue Hind, itself shredded by Israeli tank shells and gunfire.
Was Hind alive to see the ambulance approach? Did she think she was finally going to be brought to safety? Did she watch her rescuers come under fire? Did she witness Ahmed and Youssef be killed by the IDF? Was she still alive, alone, as the sky drew dark, left in the chill of the night, knowing now no one was coming to save her?
It’s an excruciating scenario to contemplate, but think about it we must because the pleas of Layan and Hind have given voice to an awful abstraction: 13,000 murdered children in Gaza.
We don’t know most of their names. We don’t know how most of them were killed. We didn’t hear their screams for help in the enveloping darkness.
But Layan and Hind have spoken. We have heard their last words, piercing through the gunshots around them, words that still resonate across the weeks, as Israel prepares its assault on Rafah, the last refuge of 600,000 displaced Palestinian children, many sleeping in tents after fleeing their bombed homes, most of them surely feeling just like Hind: “I’m so scared. Please come, come get me…”
“You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent! No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.”
– Donald Trump, February 10, 2024, responding allegedly to a “leader of a big state” who asked “If we don’t pay” enough to NATO “and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?”
Donald Trump, widely known for stiffing his creditors, drew an enthusiastic response from a campaign audience when he made his troubling statements on behalf of “America First” and American isolationism. These statements were reminders of his 16-minute inauguration speech in 2017, when Trump berated the Washington elites for ignoring the American people and allowing inner cities to fester in “crime and gangs and drugs.” “The American carnage stops right here, right now,” he said. “From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first. America first.”
Since the mainstream media is unable to let go of the issue of President Joe Biden’s age, perhaps it is time to remember just who the 77-year-old Donald Trump really is. Trump poses a serious threat; he garnered more than 63 million votes in 2016, and despite a failed first term presidency, added 11 million more votes in 2020. His control of the Republican Party is greater now than that of any other Republican in history. Given the international trend toward authoritarian leaders in Europe and elsewhere as well as our own cynical populace, it is essential to review the personality and psyche of Donald Trump.
The fact that nuclear arsenals are in the hands of such unpredictable actors as Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong-un is hardly reassuring. Adding Donald Trump to that list would create greater concerns. Presumably if Trump was seeking to become Airman Trump, he would not be certified as fit to handle nuclear weapons. As someone who held high-level security clearances in 42 years of government service, I’m confident that Trump could not receive a security clearance at any level, particularly the Q level for nuclear weapons. His own handling of sensitive intelligence materials at Mar-a-Lago and elsewhere is particularly dispositive in this regard.
Just recall that former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s reference to Trump as a “fucking moron” was in response to the then president’s case for expanding the U.S. nuclear arsenal as well as for justifying the use of nuclear weapons, including the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states. Since the president of the United States has unlimited authority to launch nuclear weapons at a time of his/her choosing, considerable thought should be given to the trustworthiness of the commander-in-chief. The Congress can decide the appropriate number of military bands; it has no role in the initiation of a nuclear holocaust. As the late Bruce Blair, a former Air Force nuclear missile launch officer, warned, “The presidency has evolved into something akin to a nuclear monarchy.”
We know all we need to know about Trump’s decision-making capabilities from his handling of the pandemic crisis in 2020. Instead of authorizing the Federal Executive Management Agency (FEMA) to manage the crisis, Trump named his son-in-law to create a coronavirus response team that concentrated on the private sector. Trump withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization and emphasized political messaging rather than professional information to inform the American public. He told governors that the states were on their own for testing and producing masks. At a press conference in April 2020, Trump recommended an “injection” of disinfectant into a person to prevent a Covid infection. Is it any wonder that U.S. rates of infections and deaths were among the worst in the world?
Mental health professionals spoke out in the first year of Trump’s presidency, but there have been no authoritative warnings recently. In 2017, Bandy Lee’s “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President” was a New York Times best seller, which is highly unusual for an edited academic book. The book was part of the Duty to Warn movement, which ignored the so-called Goldwater Rule that dissuaded psychiatrists from diagnosing a public figure they hadn’t personally interviewed. Trump’s aberrant behavior, which has predictably worsened over the years, was too profound to ignore. Trump’s appointments of two uber-hawks—John Bolton and Mike Pompeo—added to the anxiety of the time. Trump tried and failed to appoint new leaders at the Department of Justice and the Central Intelligence Agency to enhance his authoritarian control of the bureaucracy.
Trump’s obvious instability has worsened over the past year as the legal and political challenges that he faces become more severe. His behavior points to megalomania as well as a malevolent narcissistic personality. Trump’s tantrums were on display in his first 24 hours as president, when he never tired of inflating the size of his inaugural crowd. I criticized Trump’s appointment of so many retired and active duty general officers to key national security positions, but the troika of generals (Mattis, McMaster, and Kelly) actually became the “adults in the room.” Even more telling, they were among the first to leave the Trump administration because of his erratic and reckless behavior. Trump put us at risk from 2017-2021; we would be at greater risk if he returned to the White House from 2025-2029.
Trump’s return to the White House would mark a renewal of his war on U.S. governance and democracy from 2017 to 2021. Two of his targets were the oldest institutions in the country—the Post Office and the Census. The Post Office was in Trump’s cross hairs because he was told (falsely) that he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton due to widespread mail-in balloting fraud. He also targeted the Census Bureau, which conducts the census that is key to our representative government, including our state representation in the House of Representatives and the distribution of $1.5 trillion for various public programs. His politicization of the government had overwhelming support from the congressional Republican government.
Benjamin Franklin acknowledged to an inquiring citizen in Philadelphia in 1776 that the Founding Fathers had created a republic, but it would be up to the American citizenry to maintain it. Too many authoritarians have been elected, gradually seizing power in an incremental and even legal fashion. Donald Trump should not be allowed to join the list of authoritarians, such as Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Rodrigo Duterte, Viktor Orban, and Javier Milei, who initially gained power legitimately. And at the risk of putting too fine a point on it, there are the examples of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler.
The proposed Ben Gurion Canal would create an alternative to the Suez Canal. Its proximity to Gaza has raised questions about whether it is one of the motivations for the Israeli invasion. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
In the past several years, interest has revived in the Ben Gurion Canal, a proposed alternative to the Suez Canal named after Israel’s founding father running through Israel close to Gaza. Creating an incentive for removal of Palestinians from Gaza, particularly the north end, it has raised suspicions that Israel had foreknowledge of Hamas’ October 7 attacks and let them happen.
It has now been documented that Israel received multiple warnings something was about to occur. The New York Times reported that Israeli officials obtained detailed knowledge of attack plans a year before. (Link not paywalled.) Egyptian intelligence made repeated warnings as October 7 approached that a major event was about to take place.
Whether or not these facts offer definitive proof that elements of Israel’s government knew something was on the way, the new interest in creating an alternative to one of the world’s most important east-west transit points has raised questions. As the accompanying map shows, the Mediterranean end of the canal would run close to the northern boundary of Gaza. Obviously, a situation where shipping was subject to rocket attacks would make that untenable, as Houthi attacks at the southern entrance of the Red Sea have proved.
To obtain the investment capital necessary to build the canal, a secure situation would have to be established. The only options for that would be a peace settlement with the Palestinians, or their removal. An Israeli government dead set against the first option would have to exercise the second.
The concept of building a transoceanic canal through Israel dates to 1963, when the U.S. Lawrence Livermore Laboratory developed a scenario that would have used nuclear explosions to dig the canal. The classified document was not made public until 1993. That was part of a particular insanity of the time when both the U.S. and Soviet Union considered using nukes in massive excavation projects. The U.S. version was Operation Plowshare.
The idea for a new canal had been spurred by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956, taking it over from British and French interests. That resulted in a war involving both those countries and Israel against Egypt. Intervention by U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower forced them to concede, but the canal was blocked to Israeli traffic for a year.
The Ben Gurion Canal concept went into abeyance for decades due to concern about radioactive releases and Arab opposition. But new prospects for cooperation between Arab nations and Israel emerged with the Abraham Accords under the Trump Administration, which saw the normalization of relations between Israel and Arab countries including the United Arab Emirates. Almost immediately after normalization in 2020, a deal was made to ship UAE oil via a pipeline from Eliat on an arm of the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, but it was later blocked by Israeli environmental authorities based on concerns about oil spills.
At the September 2023 G20 meeting shortly before the Hamas attack, the India-Middle East Corridor was announced. It would create a transportation link from India to Europe across the Arabian Peninsula via Dubai in the UAE to the Israeli port of Haifa. In December 2023, even after Israel launched its invasion of Gaza, UAE and Israeli interests made a deal to create a land bridge between Dubai and Haifa.
Suez blockage leads to announcement
With the Abraham Accords in the background, an event in 2021 brought new attention to the Ben Gurion Canal, this time excavated by more conventional means. In March of that year, a massive container ship suffered a steering malfunction and grounded in the Suez Canal, shutting off traffic. The Ever Given blockage raised concerns about how this vital artery of global shipping could become a choke point. (See: Suez Crisis Highlights Fragility of Globalization.)
In April Israel announced it would begin construction of a dual-channel canal that could handle 2-way traffic in June. At 50 meters deep, 10 more than the Suez, and 200 wide, it would be capable of accommodating the world’s biggest ships, an advantage over the more limited Suez Canal. Unlike Suez with its sandy shores, rock walls would reduce maintenance requirements to a minimum. Its 181 miles in length would exceed Suez by about one-third. Around 300,000 workers would be needed to complete the project, with a wide range of estimated costs from $16 billion to $55 billion. Israel would expect to earn around $6 billion annually in transit fees, deeply cutting in Egypt’s revenues, which reached a record $9.4 billion in fiscal year 2022-23.
Despite the announcement, construction did not start. “Many analysts interpret the current Israeli re-occupation of the Gaza Strip as something that many Israeli politicians have been waiting for in order to revive an old project,” the Eurasia Review reports. “Although it was not the original idea, according to the wishes of some Israeli politicians, the last port of the canal could be in Gaza. If Gaza were to be razed to the ground and the Palestinians displaced, a scenario that is happening this fall, it would help planners cut costs and shorten the route of the canal by diverting it into the Gaza Strip.”
The new focus on the Ben Gurion Canal coincides with a revival of interest in another Gaza-related project, the exploitation of gas reserves off the Gaza Coast. This was detailed in a recent post. The Gaza Marine field was first discovered in 1999, but proposals to tap it were blocked for many years by Israel. Then in March 2021 the Palestinian Investment Fund, a branch of the Palestinian Authority (PA), and the Egyptian government signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at developing the field. But Hamas representatives raised objections.
On June 18 2023, a little under 4 months before the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans to move forward on development in conjunction with the PA and Egypt. It had been reported that secret talks on development took place between Israel and the PA the prior month.
The PA is widely seen as complicit in Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and is a political rival to Hamas. Striking a deal to exploit Gaza Marine would further buy off the PA and strengthen it vis-à-vis Hamas. As with the revival of the canal proposal, this has also stirred suspicions that Israeli authorities deliberately ignored warnings about the October 7 Hamas attack. For development would entail getting Hamas out of the way in Gaza. Hamas would not agree to drilling unless it received a share of the earnings, something unacceptable to Israel.
Providing Israel with global shipping leverage
The Ben Gurion Canal would provide Israel with leverage over one of the world’s most important shipping points. Around 22,000 ships transited the Suez Canal in 2022, representing 12% of world trade. It is a crucial artery for shipments of manufactured goods, grain and fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency reports, “About 5% of the world’s crude oil, 10% of oil products and 8% of LNG seaborne flows transit the canal.” Though the flow from east to west is still important, increasingly fossil products move from the Atlantic basin to feed Asia’s growing economies.
Suez was closed to Israel from 1948-50 during and immediately after the first Arab-Israeli War and then again in 1956-57 as an outcome of the second conflict. After the 1967 war, when Israel occupied the Sinai Peninsula up to the canal, it was closed to all traffic until a 1975 settlement when Israel pulled back. Since the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, traffic has remained unrestricted.
But the 2021 closure raised concerns by the U.S. military, for which Suez remains a vital transit point. As well, the increasing alignment of Egypt with Russia and China through its new membership in BRICS and participation in China’s Belt and Road Initiative gives pause to the U.S. national security establishment. All this would provide motivation to Israel’s closest ally to see an alternative waterway created.
Did revived interest in the Ben Gurion Canal cause Israeli authorities to look the other way when they had clear warnings of a Hamas attack? When analyzing the forensics of a case, one looks at means, motive and opportunity. Between the new focus on the canal as well as offshore gas reserves that both date to around 2021, Israel clearly had motives to clear Gaza, or a large part of it, of its Palestinian population, even beyond the drive-by rightist elements to create an exclusive Jewish state throughout historic Palestine. With its military power, it had the means. The Hamas attacks of October 7 gave it the opportunity.
The actions since fortify the case. With the vast destruction of Gaza beyond any rational necessity to fight Hamas, making the strip virtually uninhabitable, it is hard to argue the goal isn’t expulsion of the population. Taken in the context of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ordering a plan to “thin” Gaza’s population “to a minimum,” as reported in Israeli media, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s calls to depopulate Gaza, the intent seems clear. Underscoring the point was Netanyahu’s display of a map of “the new Middle East” that erased Palestine and showed an Israel “from the river to the sea” when he addressed the U.N. two weeks before October 7.
It is unlikely we will ever know for sure. But the prospect of occupying a key point in global shipping, with all the leverage and money that comes with that, provides at least reasonable grounds for suspicion that Israeli officials indeed had foreknowledge of October 7 and allowed the attacks to happen. It would only be one factor playing into a general desire for an ethnically cleansed region “from the river to the sea,” but a powerful factor nonetheless.
Donate to UNRWA
The United States and other countries have opted to defund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) on the grounds that 12 named and one unnamed employee of its 13,000 participated in the October 7 attacks. The 12 were immediately fired. But, as Responsible Statecraft reported, “ . . . while the Israelis make a number of claims and accusations that they say are based on intelligence and other source data, the document itself contains no direct evidence that these 12 identified UNRWA employees participated in or assisted the Oct. 7 attack.”
The Israeli report came immediately after another U.N. arm, the International Court of Justice, ruled there is a case that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and ordered it to take measures to prevent it. The report and subsequent funding are widely seen as a way to divert attention from the ruling and discredit the U.N. in general.
Defunding the UNRWA undermines the prime agency bringing humanitarian aid into Gaza and intensifies the now widespread starvation of the population. But just because the U.S. and other nations have cut off funding doesn’t mean you have to. You can make a direct donation to UNRWA here. Please do.
“Am I doing the right thing?” parents ask. They make millions of decisions raising children with little official guidance. But a recent court decision in Michigan gave a resounding answer to Jennifer Crumbley. The court found that she was partially responsible for her 15-year-old son Ethan’s murderous rampage, determining she was guilty of four counts of involuntary manslaughter.
The court judged the mother accountable although she did not pull the trigger on the 9mm semi-automatic pistol the son used to murder four students and wound seven other people at a local high school. As the Gazan death toll approaches 30,000, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to bomb Rafah, we question whether those countries continuing to supply weapons to Israel are like the mother on a larger scale.
What had Mrs. Crumbley done or not done? The parents had bought the weapon for him. They had taken the 15-year-old boy to a firing range. The day of the school shooting the parents had been called to the school after a teacher had found a violent drawing and message on Ethan’s desk. The parents ignored strong signals that their son was potentially dangerous. The involuntary manslaughter charges were based on the mother’s failure to secure the gun Ethan used.
The notion of responsibility is never simple. The International Law Commission (ILC) considered Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts between 1955 and 2001. No binding conventions or treaties resulted from the proposed articles. The Commission was unable to establish obligatory arbitration between states, to agree on penalties for international crimes, or to establish any formal legal structure with which to oversee legal state responsibility.
What makes the Michigan case so intriguing is the relationship between the final act by the son and the parents’ actions prior to the shootings. The German jurist Hans Kelsen examined the relationship between the consequences of an act and what preceded the act by imputation. Kelsen’s argument was that imputation is beyond simple cause and effect. We know the boy caused four deaths and seven injured persons. Imputation seeks to determine the responsibility for how the actor came to commit the act. In this case, the mother did not commit the murders, but she was determined to be partially responsible.
Can we use the idea of indirect parental responsibility for the action of a son to states’ indirect responsibility for providing weapons to Israel’s committing what the International Court of Justice (ICJ) officially ruled was “plausible” genocide? Can we impute responsibility for the 28,000 Gazan deaths to those countries which have supplied military material to Israel? If Mrs. Crumbley was guilty of not securing the gun, what about those countries which have not controlled the use of the weapons they sold to Israel?
Article III of the Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide states that: “The following acts shall be punishable: (a) Genocide; (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide; (d) Attempt to commit genocide; (e) Complicity in genocide.” The Convention entered into force in 1951. As of January 2024, 153 countries have ratified the Convention, including Israel.
What does complicity mean for the United States? Although the United States signed the Convention in 1948, it was only forty years later, in 1988, that the Senate finally ratified the Convention. In addition to the Senate ratification, it also passed the Proxmire Act. The Act fully committed the U.S. to implementing the Convention.
Three Canadian scholars wrote in The Conversation the implications for Canada of the recent ICJ decision and Article III section (e) of the Convention:
“In 2022, Canada sent more than $21 million worth of military exports to Israel. The Export and Import Permits Act forbids arms permits to be issued if there’s a “substantial risk” that the goods could be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights law. Because the ICJ found a serious risk of genocide in Gaza, continuing to export arms to Israel would be illegal. It would also be flagrantly inconsistent with Canada’s obligation to prevent genocide and could expose Canada and Canadian officials to liability for participation in genocide.”
Does the Canadian experience relate to the United States? How has the U.S. implemented the Convention? “The United States has briefed Israel on a new U.S. national security memorandum that reminds countries receiving U.S. weapons to stick to international law, the White House said,” Steve Holland reported for Reuters on February 10. Briefed? Reminded? Washington gives $3.8 billion in annual military assistance to Israel. By continuing to give military aid with full knowledge of Israel’s behavior, isn’t the United States complicit in a “plausible” genocide? The United States certainly cannot plead ignorance as Ethan’s mother did. Israel’s blatant attacks have gone on for four months.
As political science Professor Zachary Karazsia wrote in 2019; “it is clear that the international community has overwhelmingly failed to uphold the Genocide Convention’s prevention mandate” as opposed to “punishing perpetrators posthaste (e.g., the 1940s Nuremburg and Tokyo trials; the 1990s tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda; and the International Criminal Court).”
If Jennifer Crumbley was guilty of involuntary manslaughter, can the actions of states be considered involuntary genocide? Is not the mother’s not securing the gun like the obligation of Signatories to the Genocide Convention have to not only not commit genocide, but also to not be complicit in genocide?
It is unusual for a mother to be judged legally responsible for the actions of her child. It is even rarer for a state to be judged responsible for not preventing genocide. Since the court found Mrs. Crumbley guilty of not securing the gun her son used, is there hope for the military suppliers to Israel to face consequences for not securing the use of their significant delivery of weapons?
There is some hope. “Nicaragua has warned Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Canada that it will take the countries to the International Court of Justice over allegations that weapons they are providing Israel are being used in a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” Middle East Eye reported. Also, a Dutch appeal court recently ruled that the government must halt all sales of F-35 jet parts to Israel. “It is undeniable that there is a clear risk that the exported F-35 parts are used in serious violations of international humanitarian law,” Judge Bas Boele said of the decision.
States, like people, should be held responsible. Preventing genocide is just as important as punishing genocide. Just ask the 28,000 Gazans and counting.
Picture of Hind Rajab. Photograph Source: Maktoob Media – Fair Use
On February 9, 2024, I took my family’s dog out for a walk around the park. It was an activity that I had resolved to begin doing for my mental and physical health. On our journey, the sun had begun to set, and we were surrounded by other people. Together, or alone, or with their dogs. Playing music, sitting at the lake, skateboarding, talking. Living. Seeing all these different people, looking into the small window of each of their lives that this one beautiful winter sunset had provided, I was overcome with a rush of emotion that I had not felt in months, perhaps even years. It was the feeling of finally being able to sense, unobscured by a spike in mental illness or stress from personal events, just how beautiful life was. That maybe I had finally reached the point of everything being okay. Perhaps it was just endorphins from taking that long walk, but such emotions had been building for some time since the new year began. I had a fresh start with the classes of my new semester at college, I was involving myself in more opportunities outside of my daily academic routine, and I was even losing weight. Everything seemed to be improving for the first time in a long, long while.
But as I grappled with this rush, I soon remembered the unimaginable gap between this improvement in my personal life and the horrors occurring in Palestine. How for every fifteen minutes I spent admiring the darkening sky and getting my daily steps in, a child in Gaza was dying from sickness, hunger, cold, infection, or being murdered by Israeli bombs and snipers. This moment of somber remembrance and realization of the continuing genocide is one I’m sure countless people have felt countless times in the past few months. The positivity was soon overcome with a complicated mess of emotions and questions as I tried to grapple with the situation that had endured even into this newer chapter of my life.
Even the sight of my dog wearing her little jacket struck a painful chord with me, knowing that such a piece of clothing was being denied to human beings freezing in their tents. Did I have the right to feel this carefree? Did I even deserve to, more than the Palestinians still under siege and suffering beyond comprehension? Where must the line between my mental health and the collective trauma of me and my allies across America be drawn? I didn’t want to dwell and come crashing down in this rare moment of tranquility. So, I took the easy way out and pocketed it all away for later. Maybe I would write it out in my journal when I got home or save it to speak with my therapist.
On February 10, 2024, I woke up and turned on my phone to see the news that Hind Rajab, the six-year-old girl trapped in a car with six of her dead family members surrounded by Israeli snipers and tanks for almost two weeks, was finally found. Dead. Murdered. Along with the charred remains of the ambulance and its occupants sent to rescue her.
This is our reality. An infinite cycle of starting to subconsciously calm down and grow accustomed to the state of things before news of the latest atrocity at the hands of the IDF reminds us that this is still happening. After 129 days, the bombs are still dropping. Humanitarian aid is still being blocked from entering Gaza. Israeli forces are still hardly trying to rescue the hostages held by Hamas. Pictures of the mothers and infant among these hostages, supposedly in immediate danger by the people holding them despite no reports of foul play emerging, were plastered across the city, and will hardly be replaced by the pictures of the Gazan child trapped and murdered among the corpses of her family members.
Another indescribable massacre has arrived, as Netanyahu launches a ‘military operation’ in Rafah, where over 80% of Gaza’s population has fled. And yet, the world wants us to forget. Social media conglomerates like Meta restrict and remove posts about Gaza, the media shifts their focus back to celebrity news, and Joe Biden himself assumes the performance of an unfortunate witness to Israel’s practices of collective punishment rather than a direct financial, legal, and moral contributor to it. Tax season approaches, and we must work and calculate just how much we owe to the government that we hadn’t already paid through our undervalued labor, knowing full well the dollars we send them will pay the wages of the monsters who celebrate the deaths of children. The Super Bowl has come and gone, drawing millions of eyes away from the bombs raining down on Rafah. Business in America moves on as usual, no matter how loudly we scream for a halt, for a chance to grieve the losses of humanity that pile up by the hour. Valentine’s Day sales, Oscars, Golden Globes, Taylor Swift, Apple products, all more of the same.
For the citizens of nations led by explicitly Zionist officials like America and the United Kingdom, the news of Hind’s body has once again crushed us with impossible despair and questions we hardly have the power to answer. How did we let this happen to this little girl? How did we fail the 13,000 children before her? How have we let the carnage go on for this long? How dare we live our lives for even a moment without awareness?
What are we even doing?
As hard as we fight for accountability and action – in the media, the courts, even the streets, we are ruled by a gaggle of decrepit, senile warmongers who have shown time and time again that they have no concern for the sanctity of a single human life that does not align with their best interests. And they are desperate to make us numb, as they have with all the domestic crises their citizens are living through day after day. But I refuse. And I will continue to refuse, along with the brothers and sisters and everyone in between in this movement. We will refuse to be numb, refuse to call this normal, and refuse to adhere to the morals and criteria of the oppressor who has committed the unthinkable for more than 75 years.
It is the burden of the survivors to live with all that they have gone through, and the burden of the witnesses to carry even just a fraction of the pain of those survivors to every part of the world that will hear them, and never let it settle. And now, in this age of instant transmission of videos and messages, we have all become witnesses. We cannot look at children without remembering the images we saw of the remains of infants even younger than them, not at animals without reflecting on the Gazan civilians giving the last of their water and food to the emaciated strays, not at the horizon without reminding ourselves of those who are forced to see a wall instead. We will never look at these things the same way. Endless lists of brands, taxes, schools, hospitals, militaries, world courts, banks, college campuses, ambulances, missiles, casualties, bulldozers, graves, corpses.
And we never should.
I do believe that one day the bombing will halt. But whether it is after actual global intervention or of Netanyahu’s own volition after destroying every inch of Gaza has yet to be seen. But what I have come to fear is that we are struggling so much just to make it through each passing moment, to grapple with what we’ve seen and heard, that when the massacre is finally put on pause, the relief of silence and the chance to grieve will overpower us even more than the censorship and demonization of our cause. Genocide Joe will continue to try to convince the world of how appalled he is at Netanyahu, his partner in crime, for using the money he gave and the power over the media he secured and the fearmongering of Zionist Americans he encouraged to commit genocide, just in time for the 2024 election. And we may be too exhausted, and too broken, to raise our voices any louder. But we cannot let a ceasefire be our stopping point. There has been too much lost for any semblance of forgiveness to be given to the spineless celebrities who will one day sheepishly apologize for their support of the IDF, to the brands who will put out a statement of ‘inclusiveness’, to the student government presidents who will claim to have cared for all their students as the genocide happened. I know the ability to forgive is a virtue, both for religious purposes and in the name of mental health. But there simply is no possibility of it anymore.
We, the witnesses, cannot let go of the pain and trauma we’ve seen. heard and endured these hellish four months. Not after a ‘peace’ treaty, not after the blockades are removed, never. Nothing will ever be the same, and we must make sure everyone knows it, no matter how much they tell us how much they tell us to focus on something else. They want to make us a trend. Our boycotts, our protests, our reporting, our social media posts. But Starbucks, McDonald’s, Burger King, Lays, Sephora, Zara, Dove…they must never see our money again, and the Zionists and the moderates must never have our votes again. I have already contended with the fact that I may not see my father and his family’s land liberated in my lifetime, but I cannot bear the thought of what we are witnessing being known as just another entry in the list of massacres of the Palestinian people. My father’s people. My people.
I am aware that this piece is much more pessimistic than my other writing. Perhaps it is morally wrong to beg the people around me to hold on tightly to the pain we feel right at this moment and never let go. But this is simply the point we are at now. The point where the bombing of Rafah began as I was writing this, the point where the giant Israeli flag hanging in the store window I pass every day going to class feels like a mocking declaration of immunity to justice. And the point where all our financial and legal systems have failed us to where the most impactful thing we seem to be able to do is to remember all we’ve witnessed. It is human nature to wish for emotional wounds to heal and disappear, but by now, we all hope they never will, because we know the blood of those lost in Palestine will never dry, and the horrors will never be comprehendible. Bodies piled into an ice cream truck. Thousands of people starving, running out of animal feed to make bread from. A child hanging from a wall, their legs blown off. A baby covered in ash; their lower half gone. The screams of Hind.
We’ve seen it. We’ve heard it. We won’t forget. We won’t forgive.
Former US climate envoy, John Kerry, and former US Energy Secretary, Ernest Moniz, are wealthy white men making the wrong decisions for our energy future. Photo: US Department of State.
Remember all those doomsayers from the pro-nuclear mythology unit who cast Germany’s Energiewende — or green energy revolution — as a catastrophic failure? They claimed, totally erroneously or deliberately misleadingly, that the country’s choice to close all its nuclear power plants guaranteed an increase in fossil fuel use and especially coal.
Germany vehemently denied those false predictions since they clearly knew that the country’s renewables were more than able to replace nuclear and fossil fuels. And so it has come to pass.
Germany’s use of lignite, or brown coal, dropped to its lowest level in 60 years in 2023. Even more dramatically, its hard coal use is at the lowest level since 1955. All of this happened at the same time as Germany was closing its last three reactors.
“The country sourced nearly 60 percent (59.7%) of its net power production from renewables, which generated a total of 260 terawatt hours (TWh), an increase of 7.2 percent compared to 2022,” the report said.
The 2022 uptick of coal production in Germany was entirely driven by high gas prices and a shortfall of French nuclear power production. The French nuclear sector was so unreliable that 50% of its reactors were out of action in April 2022, and again in November 2022, just as winter electricity usage began to rise.
Consequently, France had to import electricity to keep the lights on and the heat running.
Far from eating crow, the pro-nuclear boosters like Ted Nordhaus, who co-founded the Breakthrough Institute (BTI), are still crowing about the benefits of nuclear power. Nordhaus couldn’t wait to take ownership of his latest scheme, apparently long in the plotting, to dismantle the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in order to eliminate the industry’s most burdensome (i.e. costly) hassle of having to worry about inconvenient things like reactor safety. Efforts to do just that are now underway in Congress.
“Through years of rigorous research and engagement with the NRC, BTI has pinpointed crucial opportunities to modernize the regulatory framework that will lay the foundation for streamlined and efficient nuclear reactor licensing,” boasts the company’s website.
Meanwhile, we learn that the struggling Vogtle 3 and 4 new reactor project in Georgia, already 20 billion dollars over budget and years late, is set once again to further gouge ratepayers for the mistakes and failures of Georgia Power. And across the pond that the UK twin EPR project will likely top $59 billion with a completion date originally set for 2017 now pushed back to “after 2029”.
None of these realities deter the pro-nuclear lobby, now led most shamefully by the International Atomic Energy Agency itself. Even as its chief, Rafael Grossi, wrings his hands over the immense dangers posed by Ukraine’s 15 reactors embroiled in a war, he and his agency are planning what it boasts is the “first-ever” Nuclear Energy Summit, to be held in late March in Brussels in partnership with the Belgian government.
The IAEA has now become possibly the world’s most aggressive marketer of nuclear power and is still crowing about what it sees as a triumph at COP28, a veritable nuclear coup d’etat. In reality, this encompassed a miserable 24 countries signing onto an absurd fantasy propaganda statement that the world can and must triple global nuclear capacity by 2025.
Is there any point to the COP anymore? (Was there ever?) It has become one big carbon footprint junket, taken over by the oil companies, and hijacked by the nuclear industry and the IAEA, while making pledges rarely kept. The next one, in Azerbaijan, is chaired by yet another oil executive and has precisely zero women on its 28-member organizing committee.
The COP28 triple nuclear declaration was followed by an outrageously presumptuous assertion, by former U.S. energy secretary, Ernest Moniz (with Armond Cohen) in a Boston Globe oped, that, quote, “The world wants to triple nuclear energy.” (The Globe published our reply on January 17.)
Are we tired yet of absurdly rich, mostly White men pronouncing what they have decided the world wants from the comfort of their ivory towers? We are one such elitist down now with the retirement of 80-year old multi-millionaire John Kerry as US climate envoy. As of January 2024, Kerry’s net worth was $250 million, but that’s after divesting himself from his shares in fossil fuel, nuclear power and nuclear weapons companies.
Kerry has been replaced by, yes, drumroll, another old, rich, White man in the person of perennial White House advisor, John Podesta, founder of the Center for American Progress. Podesta, a stripling at 75, is a mere pauper compared to Kerry with a net worth of just $10 million-$13 million depending on sources, none of which are fully reliable.
Where Podesta might stand on nuclear power is a little murky, although one assumes he will tow the Biden/Kerry line and evangelize accordingly. He is on the record as considering nuclear power as a producer of hydrogen, telling Cipher in a September 2023 interview: “I think the questions around how to utilize existing nuclear and the production of hydrogen are definitely on the table.”
And then there’s Rishi Sunak, prime minister of the UK, who, together with his even richer wife, has a net worth of $670 million. Despite all the evidence of extreme costs, rising sea-levels and agonizingly slow timelines, on January 11, Sunak’s government announced its plan for the country’s “biggest expansion of nuclear power for 70 years to create jobs, reduce bills and strengthen Britain’s energy security.”
Nuclear power of course can achieve none of these. The electricity even of the current new nuclear reactors nearing completion at Hinkley Point will be almost triple the price Britons are currently paying. Promised new jobs will evaporate along with the new reactor plans, as we have already seen elsewhere — the V.C Summer and NuScale projects being prime examples.
To achieve so-called energy security and get off its reliance on imported Russian reactor fuel, Sunak’s government also announced it would invest $381 million to produce the fuel domestically.
This is all a colossal betrayal of working people and their needs, with money squandered on illusory, expensive and irrelevant nuclear projects whose only purpose is to sustain the UK’s nuclear arsenal, one that could destroy the world many times over.
What Moniz, Kerry, Grossi, Sunak and other nuclear-promoting leaders need to understand is what the world actually wants, alongside peace, is fast, affordable and safer renewable energy, not another Chornobyl.
U.S. government economic statistics that can be used to compare the conditions of the Black population with the white population provide a picture of the continuing deep seated structural racism in the United States. The statistics covering wealth and income distribution, poverty, and unemployment show how the functioning of capitalism and the operation of its institutions have continued to keep much of the Black population in an inferior economic position relative to the white population despite reforms that supposedly have increased opportunities and that have led to many Blacks occupying positions of power.
Wealth Inequality
One’s wealth is the value of what one currently possess minus one’s debts. Wealth inequality between whites and Blacks, especially if growing, is of great importance in bringing out the presence of structural racism.
Under capitalism, over time, wealth inequality usually grows. That has been especially true in the current neoliberal era. Federal Reserve Board figures show the increasing wealth inequality in the United States over the last three decades.[1] From the start of their survey in the third quarter of 1989 until the second quarter of 2023, the share of the nation’s wealth held by the wealthiest 1% of households increased from 22.5% to 31.4%. During the same period, the share of the poorest 90% declined from 40.1% to 31.1% while the poorest 50% saw their share of the nation’s wealth decline from 3.8% to 2.5%. The 2.5% represents a recovery from the great recession in 2008 when it fell below 1%.[2]
Recent Federal Reserve Board figures on mean, or average wealth, and median wealth, (the point at which half of the particular group has more and half has less), generally show the ongoing and increasing wealth inequality between white and Black families.[3]
Most striking are the changes in mean wealth. From 1989 until 2022, based on 2022-dollar values, the mean wealth of white families went up 261% from $524,410 to $1,367,170. For Blacks, mean wealth went from $95,530 to $211,450 for a 221% increase, widening the difference between Black and white family average wealth from $428,880 in 1989 to $1,155,720 in 2022.
From 1992 until 2022, the median wealth of white families, also based on 2022-dollar values, increased from $144,420 to $285,010 while that for Blacks went from $20,510 to $44,890. The rate of increase for Blacks was greater. However, the gap between white and Black median wealth widened from $123,910 to $240,120.
Below are tables using Federal Reserve Board figures on mean and median wealth that have been put together every three years starting in 1989. What is especially noteworthy with regard to mean wealth is both the general trend in the increasing size of wealth held by whites compared to the smaller amount held by Blacks, and the growth in how many times greater is white wealth compared to Black wealth even when the average wealth of Black and white households have both increased.
The Fed figures show that the Black population endured a greater percentage loss in average wealth during the great recession and took longer to recover. Not until 2022 did they exceed their 2007 average wealth while whites reached that level in 2016.
In terms of median wealth, following the great recession, both Blacks and whites took until 2022 to surpass their 2007 amounts, an indication of how the recession and growing inequality was presumably harshest on the working class and those with fewer resources. With the recovery, the difference in median wealth between whites and Blacks increased from $215,000 in 2007 to $240,000 in 2022.
The increases in average wealth give the appearance of many people being better off. That may be an illusion given the recent gains that have benefited the wealthiest the most. The gains in average wealth may not represent improvements for the less well-off but, instead, reflect the furthering of the class divide within both the Black and white populations.
What the tables don’t show is the quantitative and qualitative difference between the share of the country’s total wealth held by Blacks compared to what is held by whites.
As of the second quarter of 2023, the white share of the nation’s wealth (from drop down tables) came to 82% ($119.76 trillion) while the total Black share came to 4.5% ($6.53 trillion) which is significantly lower than their 13.6% of the nation’s population.[4] Since 1989, the share of the nation’s wealth held by Blacks has never reached half of their percent of the U.S. population, ranging from its highest point of 4.7% in 1992 to a low of 3.3% in 1999.[5]
The wealth holdings of Blacks and whites are different. As of the middle of 2023, the white share of the country’s corporate equities and mutual funds stood at 88.9% ($33.8 trillion) while the Black share was 1.1% ($.42 trillion). These assets are generally liquid meaning, unlike many other assets such as real estate, they can more easily and quickly be converted into cash.
The difference between Black and white holdings of real estate are not as great as the differences in the holdings of corporate equites and mutual funds. The white share of the nation’s real estate is 74.3% ($33.06 trillion) to the Black share of 6.2% ($2.75 trillion). However, Black real estate holdings are more encumbered by greater home mortgage debt ($.9 trillion which is 32.7% of the value of their real estate) compared to real estate held by whites ($9.18 trillion home mortgage debt, 27.8% of the value of their real estate). Factoring in mortgage debt, real estate represents a larger share of Black wealth, 28.3%, compared to that for whites, 19.9%.
There are other forms of real estate inequality. As of 2022, the rate of homeownership by whites is 73.15% compared to the Black rate of 46.34%. The net home value at figure 6 for a typical family owned home in 2022 for whites stood at $205,370 compared to $123,000 for Blacks.[6]
Wealth Inequality Among Black and White Billionaires!
Between Black and white billionaires, there is great billionaire inequality!! In 2023, of the 735 billionaires in the United States, only nine are Black.[7] Their wealth together came to $25.4 billion. Compare that to the wealth of a single white individual, Elon Musk, whose wealth is currently over $200 billion, about eight times the total wealth of the nine Black billionaires. Their combined wealth is dwarfed by the wealth of each of the nine wealthiest U.S. billionaires, each of whom is worth more than $100 billion.[8] Additionally, the total wealth of the nine wealthiest is close to one-fifth of all Black wealth of $6.53 trillion (as of the end of the second quarter of 2023).
Income refers to the amount of money brought in during a given period of time (usually a year). For most people, the primary source of their income comes from payment for work or from a pension earned from working. For rich people, the bulk of their income is more likely to come from investments in the forms of interest, dividends, capital gains, and rent.
Over the years, the dollar difference in white income compared to Black income has generally been growing. According to Federal Reserve report at figure 7, from 2019-2022, the wages and salaries of white families increased 6.16% while for Blacks, they were stagnant, declining by .03%.[10] Growth of all income during this period was 6.9% for Blacks and 16.05% for whites furthering inequality between whites and Blacks.
Census Bureau tables on household income cover the mean and median amounts. The figures show how income inequality between Blacks and whites has tended to be increasing before dipping in 2022. Here are the table A-2 amounts from a few selected years in 2022 dollars.[11]
Is the difference in income between whites and Blacks a result of whites tending to be better educated which results in higher incomes? In recent years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has been providing figures that show the variation in median weekly income by race when people have a similar education level. Over many years, the median income level for whites at all education levels is higher than that of Blacks. In the years randomly selected, in most categories, the difference in median weekly pay for whites compared to Blacks, over time, has gone up. The exceptions are small amounts.
Below is a table based on BLS table 17 or 16 over the cited years showing the differences for whites and Blacks.[12]
As with all statistics, there are limitations to what they show. The above table is not completely definitive. For those who went to college, the table does not show the college people attended nor the fields they studied which can impact one’s level of pay. For example, not shown is if whites attended more prestigious colleges and/or went into fields that pay better. However, the unequal results are persistent and are consistent with many other unequal results.
Poverty
Presumably, ever since such statistics were being gathered, more whites than Blacks living in the United States are deemed to be poor. That is because whites constitute a much larger share of the country’s population. However, and of critical importance, the rate of poverty for Blacks has always been much greater than the rate for whites.
2022 is no different. The government official figures at Table A-3 placed the number of impoverished Blacks at 7.6 million compared to 26 million whites and 16.7 million whites who are not Hispanic.[13] The Black rate of poverty was 17.1% compared to the white, not Hispanic rate of 8.6% and rate of 10.5% for all whites.
Below is from the table at A-3 that covers selective years. It shows a decline in the Black poverty rate, but it has remained significantly higher than the rate for whites.
Additionally, in 2022, this same census bureau report at table B-6 shows another form of inequality. That year, the poverty income threshold was $15,225 for a single person under 65 years old and $29,678 for two adults with two children. 8.4% of the Black population had incomes below one-half that income threshold compared to 4.9% of whites, and 4.2% for whites who are not Hispanic.
Another measure provided in table B-6 shows how many have an income level that is four times or higher than the poverty income threshold. Here, Blacks compared to whites are worse off. In 2022, 29.1% of Blacks exceeded the threshold while the white figure is 44.6%, and the white not Hispanic figure is 49.9%.
Unemployment
The Black unemployment rate has usually been close to or more than twice the rate for whites. For example, before Covid, in 2019, the rate of Black unemployment was 6.1% to 3.3% for whites. Job prospects have improved for Blacks. Nevertheless, compared to whites, a higher percent of Blacks remain unemployed.
Below are unemployment figures by race derived from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics table 12 figures that show the ongoing higher rate of unemployment for the Black population compared to whites.[14]
Conclusion
Much attention is rightfully devoted to the racism behind voter suppression, unequal health coverage and its negative consequences, the workings of the criminal justice and prison system, and police murders such as that of George Floyd. Behind these issues is the continuation of a system of significant racial economic inequality as brought out in official government figures.
Those with power, by their actions or lack of actions, have repeatedly accepted the conditions that give rise to significant economic inequality, showing their support for the continuation of structural racism.
[2] My focus is on the Black and white economic divide. Of critical importance are class divisions not being addressed. The poorest 50% are predominantly members of the working class as is most of the poorest 90%. The working class can be defined as being separated from the means of production such that they lack an independent means to support themselves and are forced to sell their ability to work for a wage or salary to pay for the needs that sustain their lives. Additionally, members of the working class labor in positions in which they do not supervise others. A larger percentage of the Black population than the white population is presumed to be in the working class.
[3] Tables and all figures used in this section found by clicking accessible version
[9] Generally, more attention is paid to income rather than wealth. For example, in many college level American Government textbooks, the way income is distributed might be briefly discussed. With few exceptions, the topic of wealth and how it is distributed is not covered. This troubling omission suggests that wealth inequality has no impact on the exercise of power in the United States political system!
On February 9, 2024, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his army would advance into Rafah, the last remaining city in Gaza not occupied by the Israelis. Most of the 2.3 million Palestinians who live in Gaza had fled to its southern border with Egypt after being told by the Israelis on October 13, 2023, that the north had to be abandoned and that the south would be a “safe zone.” As the Palestinians from the north, particularly from Gaza City, began their march south—often on foot—they were attacked by Israeli forces, who gave them no safe passage. The Israelis said that anything south of Wadi Gaza, which divides the narrow strip, would be safe, but then as the Palestinians moved into Deir-al-Balah, Khan Younis, and Rafah, they found the Israeli jets following them and the Israeli troops coming after them. Now, Netanyahu has said that his forces will enter Rafah to combat Hamas. On February 11, Netanyahu told NBC news that Israeli would provide “safe passage for the civilian population” and that there would be no “catastrophe.”
Catastrophe
The use of the word “catastrophe” is significant. This is the accepted English translation of the word “nakba,” used since 1948 to describe the forced removal that year of half of the Palestinian population from their homes. Netanyahu’s use of the term comes after high officials of the Israeli government have already spoken of a “Gaza Nakba” or a “Second Nakba.” These phrases formed part of South Africa’s application to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on December 29, 2023, alleging that they are part of the “expressions of genocidal intent against the Palestinian people by Israeli state officials.” A month later, the ICJ said that there was “plausible” evidence of genocide being conducted in Gaza, highlighting the words of the Israelis officials. One official, the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said, “I have released all restraints” (quoted both by the South African complaint and in the ICJ’s order).
Netanyahu saying that there would be no “catastrophe” after over 28,000 Palestinians have been killed and after two million of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced is puzzling. Since the ICJ’s order, the Israeli army has killed nearly 2,000 Palestinians. The Israeli army has already begun to assault Rafah, a city with a population density now at 22,000 people per square kilometer. In response to the Israeli announcement that it would enter Rafah city, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)—one of the few groups operating in the southern part of Gaza—said that such an invasion “could collapse the humanitarian response.” The NRC assessed nine of the shelters in Rafah, which are housing 27,400 civilians and found that the residents have no drinking water. Because the shelters are operating at 150 percent capacity, hundreds of the Palestinians are living on the street. In each of the areas that the NRC studied, they found the Palestinian refugees in the grip of hepatitis A, gastroenteritis, diarrhea, smallpox, lice, and influenza. Because of the collapse of this humanitarian response from the NRC, and from the United Nations—whose agency UNRWA has lost its funding and is under attack by the Israelis—the situation will deteriorate further.
Safe Passage
Netanyahu says that his government will provide “safe passage” to the Palestinians. These words have been heard by the Palestinians since mid-October when they were told to keep going south to prevent being killed by the Israeli bombing. Nobody believes anything that Netanyahu says. A Palestinian health worker, Saleem, told me that he cannot imagine any place of safety within Gaza. He came to Rafah’s al-Zohour neighborhood from Khan Younis, walking with his family, desperate to get out of the range of the Israeli guns. “Where do we go now?” he asks me. “We cannot enter Egypt. The border is closed. So, we cannot go south. We cannot go into Israel, because that is impossible. Are we to go north, back to Khan Younis and Gaza City?”
Saleem remembers that when he arrived in al-Zohour, the Israelis targeted the home of Dr. Omar Mohammed Harb, killing 22 Palestinians (among them five children). The house was flattened. The name of Dr. Omar Mohammed Harb stayed with me because I recalled that two years ago his daughter Abeer was to be married to Ismail Abdel-Hameed Dweik. An Israeli air strike on the Shouhada refugee camp killed Ismail. Abeer was killed in the strike on her father’s house, which had been a refuge for those fleeing from the north. Saleem moved into that area of Rafah. Now he is unsettled. “Where to go?” he asks.
Domicide
On January 29, 2024, the UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Dr. Balakrishnan Rajagopal wrote a strong essay in the New York Times called “Domicide: the Mass Destruction of Homes Should be a Crime Against Humanity.” Accompanying his article was a photo essay by Yaqeen Baker, whose house was destroyed in Jabalia (northern Gaza) by Israeli bombardment. “The destruction of homes in Gaza,” Baker wrote, “has become commonplace, and so has the sentiment, ‘The important thing is that you’re safe—everything else can be replaced.’” That is an assessment shared across Gaza amongst those who are still alive. But, as Dr. Rajagopal says, the scale of the destruction of housing in Gaza should not be taken for granted. It is a form of “domicide,” a crime against humanity.
The Israeli attack on Gaza, Dr. Rajagopal writes, is “far worse than what we saw in Dresden and Rotterdam during World War II, where about 25,000 homes were destroyed in each city.” In Gaza, he says, more than 70,000 housing units have been totally destroyed, and 290,000 partially damaged. In these three months of Israeli fire, he notes, “a shocking 60 to 70 percent of structures in Gaza, and up to 84 percent of structures in northern Gaza, have been damaged or destroyed.” Due to this domicide, there is no place for the Palestinians in Rafah to go if they go north. Their homes have been destroyed. “This crushing of Gaza as a place,” reflects Dr. Rajagopal, “erases the past, present, and future of many Palestinians.” This statement by Dr. Rajagopal is a recognition of the unfolding genocide in Gaza.
As I speak with Saleem the sound of the Israeli advance can be heard in the distance. “I don’t know when we can speak next,” he says. “I don’t know where I will be.”
Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution marks its 25th anniversary this month, despite continuous US-led hybrid warfare to overthrow the socialist project. The Venezuelan government of President Nicolás Maduro has successfully forced the US to de facto engage with it, although Washington still maintains the fiction that the defunct 2015 National Assembly is the “last remaining democratic institution” there.
The US has been relegated to vetting candidates for the upcoming Venezuelan presidential election. While still egregiously interventionist, the imperial power has failed to achieve outright regime change. The appearance of Venezuelan opposition politician Maria Corina Machado before a US congressional committee is the latest in the empire’s quest for a trustworthy confederate. Hopes are high among Republicans that she is the right collaborator. The Democrats may have another but complementary game plan.
The opposition to the ruling Venezuelan socialist government is composed of many small and fractious sects, usually associated with a dominant personality, such as Machado’s Vente Venezuela party. The US spends millions each year meddling in the internal affairs of Venezuela in what it euphemistically calls “democracy promotion.” USAID alone pledged $50M to “push” the presidential elections, scheduled for later this year.
Washington’s efforts to force a unified opposition have been so far unsuccessful in Venezuela. But that has not deterred the Yankees from imperiously vetting the candidate they think ought be Venezuela’s leader.
Farewell to Venezuelan “interim president” Juan Guaidó
The last contender for the role of the empire’s factotum was the now disgraced Juan Guaidó. Despite his popularity abroad as the “interim president” of Venezuela, the hapless security asset was not as well received at home and was dismissed by his own opposition bloc in 2022.
The US and its allies gave illegally seized Venezuelan assets such the Monómeros agrochemical complex in Colombia and the Citgo oil franchise in the US to Guaidó and his cronies. They used the enterprises to grossly enrich themselves while running them into the ground. According to the Venezuelan attorney general, an estimated $19B was embezzled by Guaidó’s “fictious government.”
With his deer-in-the-headlights visage and stilted oratory, Guaidó appeared every bit like a puppet. In the case of Mr. Guaidó, appearances did not deceive. In contrast, the new contestant is photogenic and with a quick wit. Besides, Machado speaks fluent English.
Machado auditions before the “bipartisan roundtable”
The February 7th House Foreign Affairs Committee “bipartisan roundtable” was entitled “The Fight for Freedom in Venezuela.” Streamed live, committee chair Maria Salazar (R-FL) gushed in support of featured guest María Corina Machado as the sole opposition presidential candidate. Salazar asserted that no other opposition candidate will be tolerated: “There is no plan B!”
In what amounted to an audition, Machado painted a dire picture of today’s Venezuela as the “largest torture center in Latin America.” She accused the Maduro government of “intentionally destroying the quality of life.”
When asked how she would solve Venezuela’s problems, Machado said she would “open markets.” Not mentioned was that the very US economic sanctions, which she had championed, had closed the markets and imposed an asphyxiating blockade immiserating Venezuela’s less fortunate citizens. Machado comes from one the richest families.
Alluding to current president Nicolás Maduro and National Assembly leader Diosdado Cabello, Machado said she would not be for “a system of impunity” when she’s president.
Although no one else had brought Nicaragua up, she pledged to work for a “transition” there too. Statements like this prompted the Perú Libre party, reflecting leftist sentiment throughout Latin America, to warn that Machado “constitutes a threat to continental peace.”
Machado’s political baggage
Machado comes with considerable political baggage. In 2002, she signed the infamous Carmona Decree, establishing the short-lived coup government that temporarily deposed Hugo Chávez. Machado received amnesty for supporting that coup, but has continued to be associated in coup attempts. She was active in promoting the violent guarimbas in 2014 and 2017 to overthrow the elected government and has called for a US military invasion.
In 2014, she was barred from running for public office, in accordance with the Venezuelan constitution, when she served as a diplomat for Panama in order to testify against Venezuela before the Organization of American States. She had initially refused to contest her barring before the supreme court (TSJ), which she regarded as illegitimate. But when Washington wanted to use her electoral disqualification as an excuse for reimposing some sanctions, she obediently complied. She lost her case and still remains barred.
Other congressional initiatives
Last December, Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) introduced House Resolution 911 designating Machado as the “official presidential opposition candidate.” This blatant interference in the internal affairs of another country is tone deaf to the opposition in Venezuela, which does not recognize Machado as the sole legitimate candidate.
On January 30, after Machado lost her appeal to have her electoral eligibility reinstated, Republican Senators Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, and Bill Cassidy sent Biden a letter urging him to immediately reimpose sanctions on Venezuela in order to maintain US “credibility.” That same day, the Biden State Department issued a statement revoking sanctions relief on Venezuelan gold sales and threatened to do the same on gas and oil.
Four days before, the Congressional Research Service reported that US sanctions on Venezuela have “failed” to achieve regime change but have caused profound human suffering. This is the same “humanitarian crisis” that Machado claims was deliberately precipitated by the Venezuelan government.
How popular is Machado off of Capitol Hill?
Most knowledgeable analysts identify Machado as the opposition politician in Venezuela with the greatest name recognition and the single most popular one. But she does not command the unanimity of support in Venezuela that she is receiving inside the beltway.
Venezuelan sociologist Maria Paez Victor, now residing in Canada, reports that Machado is deeply resented by most in the opposition. “She is a hated figure among the people because of her enthusiastic support and plea for more sanctions that have caused such suffering.”
To begin with, Machado’s much vaunted opposition primary was problematic. Machado swept a crowded field of contestants with a suspicious 92%. The October contest excluded some opposition parties, while others chose not to contend and still others participated but subsequently claimed fraud.
The primary was not conducted by the national election authority (CNE) as they usually are, but was a private affair run by Machado’s own non-governmental organization Súmate, which has received NED funding. Some of the polling places were in private homes rather than public venues such as schools. And after the ballots were counted manually, they were destroyed so that there was no way to verify the validity of the count.
Reflecting the primary’s questionable nature, the US press usually refers to it as “an” opposition primary rather than “the” opposition primary, although a close and critical reading is needed to detect the weasel-word usage. Due to the irregularities, the Venezuelan supreme court subsequently suspended the primary results.
Machado’s prospects
Although Maduro has yet to announce his candidacy, it is widely believed that the incumbent president will be his party’s choice. For her part, Machado declared, “there can be no elections without me.” The European Union agreed, saying they will not recognize the election unless Machado runs.
The Orinoco Tribunereported that the White House does not especially care who the opposition candidate is in Venezuela. According to Biden official Juan González, “the process and not the candidate” is most important.
This may translate to the White House anticipating a Maduro victory and, accordingly, planning to not recognize the election. In the last Venezuelan presidential election, the US took no chances when it declared the contest fraudulent a half a year in advance and even threatened opposition candidate Henri Falcón with sanctions for running.
The manufactured drama around Machado’s electoral eligibility has a purpose that has little to do with the far-right opposition politician. Washington knew with near certainty that she would not be allowed to run for political office due to manifest past transgressions. That is precisely why she was not named in the Barbados Agreement’s electoral roadmap negotiated between the US and Venezuela. Rather, the charade is being played out to cast doubt and calumny on the upcoming election. If Maduro wins, the US will likely pronounce the contest illegitimate.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (known as UNRWA) was established in 1949 to provide support and safety to refugees of Palestine initially banished from the 1948 war. The UNRWA’s work mainly involves Gaza, West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.
The agency provides basic social services, medical care, education, healthcare, and aid for displaced Palestinians. The UNRWA’s main role is to ensure relief for the millions of people impacted by the occupation. What sets the agency apart from take say, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), designed to help refugees around the world in general, is the UNRWA’s specialized work and role in focusing on the uniqueness of Palestine’s complex and ongoing politicide.
The UNRWA has its detractors and is seen as an obstacle to peace. Some argue that the agency is not neutral. They claim that the group is politicized and conflates the status of the refugees to maintain organizational strength at the expense of addressing problems faced by Palestinians. As with most robust institution’s, it also faces accusations of corruption, waste, and financial incompetence. Further, it receives criticism for lacking safety to protect its members.
But what are the latest accusations and detractions against the UNRWA?
According to The New York Times, “it’s not entirely clear.”
U.N. and American officials referred to claims that some UNRWA employees may have been “involved in” the Oct. 7 attacks but did not elaborate on that involvement or say whether it included any of the worst atrocities committed that day.
The State Department referred to 12 employees being accused and fired — UNRWA did not offer a number — but it is unclear what kind of work they did or how senior they were. It also remains to be seen whether investigations will yield more such allegations.
For years, international relief workers and the Israeli military have reported weapons caches occasionally found in schools operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the organization that for decades has provided schooling, healthcare and other assistance to Palestinian refugees in Gaza.
They learned of underground tunnels beneath UNRWA facilities and the theft by Hamas of agency-provided fuel and aid. Some had run-ins with teachers over textbooks promoting the hatred of Jews and Israel.
Jonathan S. Tobin wrote in The Jewish Press, America’s Largest Independent Jewish Weekly, that “UNRWA Exists To Help Fight The War To Eradicate Israel.” Tobin seems to think that any politician, activist, journalist or academic that attempts to provide context for UNRWA, in terms of politics, scope and scale, is driven by an effort to express and promote hatred or antisemitism.
If UNRWA was not involved in what basically functioned as a third intifada, then what is likely going on with the agency and what are the politics of the motivation in branding the group “terrorists?” President of the International Law Institute, Stuart Kerr, recently stated that:
UNRWA-USA is a US based charity – independent of UNRWA – that exists so that Americans can make tax-deductible donations that go to UNRWA. I don’t think the “freeze” was an INSTITUTIONAL “aid & comfort to terrorism” accusation, but that a small number (of the thousands!) of local UNRWA employees MAY have participated in the attack. We’ll see. Could be politics – the accusation being leveled on the day of an unfavorable holding by the World Court in The Hague (from Israel’s perspective). In a gutless move, the law firm that has long represented UNRWA-USA (on a pro bono basis) quit their representation when the USG announced their freeze on UNRWA funding. I’ve provided some suggestions to friends of UNRWA-USA on their search for new legal representation.
International relations scholar Stephen Zunes explained to me that:
Last I checked, UNRWA has suspended several employees (some on the list aren’t with UNRWA) pending an investigation. The main point is that even very serious misconduct by less than ten people out of 30,000 UNRWA employees doesn’t mean there’s a problem with the organization. [This] reminds me of the [nonsense] about the White Helmets. Yes, some of their volunteers really were with Al Nusra, but that doesn’t delegitimize the organization.
I think it is another red herring, like the sex crimes accusation against Hamas. As far as I can tell, it is based on “confessions” gotten from Hamas prisoners under torture. The Western response, taken in an embarrassing choreographed fashion, is as outrageous! There is no definitive proof, only 12 out of thousands of UNRWA employees have been accused, yet Biden and most of the European leaders are ready to become complicit in mass starvation. The only truth here is that they are the real criminals. Biden is the most pathetic president this country has had since Andrew Jackson attempted genocide against the Cherokee.
Further, former UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Richard Falk indicated that:
There was some basis for the claim of involvement on the part of a few of its thousands of staff employees. It is not surprising that Gazans subjected to decades of oppressive Israeli state terror would be drawn to support resistance initiatives, especially at this time of Zionist extremist leadership in Tel Aviv well before Oct. 7. The fact of dismissing a dozen or more UNRWA employees tends to substantiate the allegation.
Falk’s reasoning for the possibility also included the peculiarity of the timing of the accusation:
Considering the timing of the Israeli complaint, the day after the ICJ ruling, and the heroic relief and sheltering role costing UNRWA more than a hundred staff deaths, the defunding response, especially given the humanitarian consequences of denying relief to surviving Gazans, is a further enablement of genocide.
Falk’s account of Israel and their manufacturing of allegations against UNRWA and their effectiveness as a form of punishment is not unfounded. Democracy Now! has just reported that Israel has targeted the Belgian office agency that continued to fund UNRWA in defiance of the Holy State.
In the face of increasing threats to defund the agency and discredit its efforts in providing humanitarian aid, donors have rallied to restore confidence in the group. While it is unclear if the allegations are true, the motivations to tie UNRWA to Hamas without much evidence at all are quite clear. First, it undermines an agency of 30,000 strong that poses the threat of a good example — a large entity with the capability of advancing constructive forms of aid as politics and resistance. Second, the allegations, if true, can disqualify the group, thus disqualifying crucial aid while presenting the U.S. and Israel as the model democracies, trying to bring about peace in the face of 9 or so malcontents in a 30,000-member organization.
Hamas is a political movement with a military wing. It has cultural, religious, and ideological elements to it, some of which are impossible to extirpate. You can say that there’s a military wing and Israel might try to destroy that military wing entirely, but you can’t destroy or eliminate Hamas per se.
It was a movement that won an election in 2006. We’re talking about a plurality rather than a majority, but a lot of people voted for it. It has a huge network of social services, political branches, and so forth.
It also represents an idea of resistance and an idea of some kind of Islamic society. You can’t extirpate that without killing hundreds of thousands of people. Could Israel defeat the military wing of Hamas? Possibly. Could they completely eliminate Hamas from the Gaza Strip? No.
Along these same lines as Khalidi, a sharp NYC political insider Michael Kinnucan commented that “the reporting on [the] UNRWA story is just astonishing,” referring to the January 28thNew York Timesheadline. He argues that it was not news at all, and that Israel’s discovery of Gaza’s largest political party (Hamas) working for one of its largest employers, is analogous to discovering that Likud members work in the Israeli school system. Kinnucan stated, “no one in any government in the world is surprised by this.” Aside from the complexity and moving parts of the war, one thing is certain as more facts come out relevant to the matter; the world needs to stand by UNRWA namely because, as foreign minister of Norway, Espen Barth Eide points out:
UNRWA is a lot more than a humanitarian organization. It represents a commitment by the international community to Palestinian refugees. Its operations are also critical for the presence of other humanitarian organizations in Gaza.
As French Foreign Minister Catherine Colanna and an independent panel investigates and observes the actions of UNRWA, beyond this murky issue remains concerns over the fate of the Palestinians.
“Not to want to say, not to know what you want to say, not to be able to say what you think you want to say, and never to stop saying, or hardly ever, that is the thing to keep in mind, even in the heat of composition.”
– Samuel Beckett, Molloy
+ The Democrats now have the perfect excuse for Biden betraying nearly every promise he made during his 2020 campaign, unfortunately for them it will prove fatal to his reelction: he doesn’t remember making them. According to the Special Counsel’s report on Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, Biden is “an elderly man with a poor memory.” And the “significant” problems with his memory got “worse” over the course of the investigation to the point where Biden “did not remember when he was vice president” or “even within several years, when his son Beau died.”
+ The reasons set forth by the Special Counsel’s report for declining to prosecute Biden for illegally retaining classified documents on Afghanistan (ie., “diminished faculties”) are far more devastating to him–and the Democrats who continue to support him–than an indictment would have been. (Still, it’s worth noting that few other people are granted this kind of leniency when they have been caught with stolen material and over the course of his own political career, much of it spent writing punitive crime laws, Biden himself has rarely shown any.)
+ Even in his “diminished” condition, Biden still may have more political (if not mental) “faculties” than Harris, who spreads confusion wherever she goes, which may be why they haven’t tried to invoke the 25th Amendment…
+ Biden is learning that it’s never a good thing politically when people begin to speak of you in the past tense while you’re still alive. But fortunately for him he’ll have forgotten this morbid lesson by tomorrow morning.
+ Ginsburg, Feinstein, Pelosi, Clyburn, Biden…the most selfish generation in American politics? They clung to power longer than the segregationist Democrats Biden so admired.
+ Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States…
You are only coming through in waves Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re saying
+ This is not a speech impediment, as many Biden defenders allege. It’s an impediment of the brain, what’s left of it.
+ One is willing to empathize with Biden’s rapidly deteriorating mental capacity. But there can be no tolerance for his grave moral failings.
+ Here’s the entirely rational proposal from Hamas (ie, “the Opposition) that prompted Biden’s latest bout of aphasia…
Hamas has proposed three 45-day ceasefires aimed at ending the war.
The first phase would involve a hostage exchange of Israeli women,children, and the sick and elderly for Palestinian women and children. Reconstruction of hospitals and refugee camps would begin.
Phase 2 would involve the exchange of the rest of the living hostages, the release of Palestinian prisoners and the removal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
Then phase 3 would exchange bodily remains and iron out an end to the war.
+ A couple of days earlier, Biden was in Las Vegas stumbling through a campaign speech, where he recounted a 2020 meeting with Francois Mitterand, the former President of France, who died in …1996. “I sat down and I said, ‘America’s back’ and Mitterrand from Germany – I mean from France – looked at me and said…” Biden pauses awkwardly, as if his batteries had run down, before muttering, “Well, how long are you back for?”
+ In August 2022, he also claimed he spoke to Helmut Schmidt at the G7. Schmidt died in 2015. Is no one in the administration even contemplating invoking the 25th Amendment?
+ Hillary Clinton communed with the spirits of Eleanor Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi, but, unlike Biden, she seemed to know they were incorporeal and used the services of the “sacred psychologist” Dr. Jean Houston as a medium for the “conversations.” HRC apparently drew the line at attempting to summon Jesus for a chat.
+ Biden on Trump’s calls for a debate: “If I were him, I would want to debate me, too.” True, but a very strange thing to admit.
+ Who is running Biden’s campaign and why in the world are they letting him make so many unscripted public statements? Each appearance generates a new gaffe. Trump spews nonstop nonsense as well, of course, but his howlers excite his base, while Biden’s embarrass and alienate his. It almost qualifies as elder abuse. Biden is being sent out every day to make statements so politically antiquated, it’s as if he didn’t want to say something that might spoil his lunch date in the Senate cafeteria with Strom Thurmond.
+++
+ Imagine a Democratic Party leadership that fought as hard for single-payer health care as it has for funding wars in Ukraine and Gaza. No, I can’t either.
+ Biden: “The toughest reforms to secure the border ever likely won’t even move forward to the Senate floor. Why? Donald Trump. He’d rather weaponize this issue than actually solve it. So he’s threatening Republicans and they are caving to him.”
+ Biden is weaponizing border enforcement, too…against poor and desperate asylum seekers.
+ The new border legislation the White House said it “strongly supports” would have given the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to summarily deport undocumented immigrants at his “sole and unreviewable discretion” during border emergencies. It also included $25 million for Customs and Border Protection to conduct familial DNA testing and $204 million for the FBI for purposes including “the analysis of DNA samples, including those samples collected from migrants detained by the United States Border Patrol.”
+ The Biden-backed Border (closure) bill continued $7.6 billion for ICE, nearly $6 billion of that is for deportations and detention, and contained a provision that will block all future funding for UNRWA.
+ It took Nixon to go to China and Biden to wreck the UN.
+ Remember when (some) Democrats wanted to Defund ICE? Now they’re giving ICE a blank check ($7.6 billion, $6 billion of which is for enforcement ops) and defunding UNWRA…
+ Tony Blinken: “The US has provided more aid to the Palestinian people than any other country.” Of course, the aid came wrapped in the modern equivalent of smallpox blankets, a time-honored American tradition.
+ Biden seems to be trying hard to lose the Muslim, Hispanic and youth vote. If so, it’s working. Biden is getting absolutely crushed in every swing state. He’s only close in Pennsylvania. What’s next, leaking plans to privatize Social Security?
+ Even in Massachusetts, Biden’s numbers are in free fall, down more than 20 points from 2020.
+++
+ During an interview with Mika Brzezinski on MSDNC, Chuck Schumer warned that if Congress doesn’t pass a new $118 billion bill to fund Israel and Ukraine, US troops will soon be fighting in the Middle East and against Russia. Has everyone lost their friggin’ minds?
+ We’re not far removed from this kind of collective sadistic madness here. I can easily imagine our own politicians stirring up similar mobs to deny relief efforts to caged children and mothers in migrant concentration camps on the southern border.
JUST NOW: mobs of Israelis attack aid trucks at Karm Abu Salem border crossing and block them from entry into Gaza. According to WFP 4/5 catastrophically hungry people in the world right now are in Gaza
+ The NYPD later confirmed that the man assaulted by these beret-wearing vigilantes was not, as Curtis Sliwa claimed, a “migrant.” Can someone send him Roberta Kaplan’s number?
+ Sliwa told the Associated Press that he believed the man his thugs assaulted was a migrant because “he was speaking Spanish” and because some of his gang had seen the victim with other Spanish-speaking people on previous “patrols.”
+ Civil rights and defense lawyer Scott Hechinger: “For this action caught on camera, NY prosecutors ordinarily would charge gang assault (or attempted gang assault) as a hate crime. Class B or C violent felony under NY law. Mandatory minimum 3.5-5 years prison. Max: 15-25. Wonder what will happen.”
+ Sen. Chris Murphy on the failed Border/Ukraine/Israel deal: “They are a disaster right now. How can you trust any Republicans right now? They told us what to do. We followed their instructions to the letter. And then they pulled the rug out from under us in 24 hrs.”
+ New Democratic Party Motto: “The Republicans told us what to do. We followed their instructions to the letter.”
+ Moshik Temkin: “One of the genius features of the American political system is that each Presidential election cycle offers a choice that is even grimmer than the one before, each time to the chorus of elites yelling at young people that they need to stop complaining and vote blue no matter who.”
+ It’s instructive that MAGA has threatened to “destroy” James Lankford, the rightwing Senator from Oklahoma who wrote a border closure bill that gave them 99% of what they wanted and Democrats are lining up behind Biden for endorsing a bill that betrayed everything he’d ever promised on immigration.
+ Greg Grandin: “The problem with simply blaming the choreographed crisis on the border on extremist ideology, is that it ignores the history of the militarization of the border inaugurated by Clinton, as an adjunct policy to both Nafta and Plan Colombia.”
+++
+ A study from across Europe found that when social democratic parties adopted authoritarian, right-wing policies on issues like immigration and crime, they alienated their own voters and didn’t attract rightwing or even centrists votes. Don’t expect the Democrats (Starmer’s Labour Party) to learn anything from these results. “Voters tend to prefer the original to the copy,” said Tarik Abou-Chadi, an associate professor of European politics at Oxford.
+ AIPAC’s PAC has decided to intervene in the California House race to succeed Katie Porter. Both Democrats (David Min and Joanna Weiss) support Israel. but Min opposes new settlements in the West Bank and has dared (like more than half of all Israelis) to criticize Netanyahu. To take Min down for these impertinences, AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project, has launched $600,000 in attack ads, focused not on the Middle East, but Min’s DUI arrest last May.
+ The 46 Democrats who voted in favor of the Republican-led standalone bill to send $17.6 billion in military aid to Israel (a bill even Biden said he would’ve vetoed):
+ Rep. Jamie Raskin on the House GOP’s failed impeachment of DHS Secretary Mayorkas: “Headed up by the distinguished gentlelady from Georgia, [the House] has been given the opportunity to bring a slapstick impeachment drive against a cabinet member of unimpeachable integrity who has committed nothing indictable or even in-dict-able.”
+ Since 2022, Kristin Sinema’s committees have paid $1.2 million in security consulting fees to an LLC registered in the name of Tulsi Gabbard’s sister, Vrindavan Bellord, who seems to have no other clients, according to a report in The Daily Beast.
+ Sinema has spent over $200,000 in taxpayer funds on private chartered jet travel since 2020. Sinema’s Arizona colleague, Mark Kelly, has spent $0 on private flights.
+++
+ In a new poll commissioned by Defense Priorities only 30% of Americans were aware that the US has troops in Syria…
+ According to the Pentagon, there have been 146 US military casualties in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan since October 18. Of those 146 casualties, three were killed in action, two sustained very serious injuries, nine had serious injuries, and 132 had non-serious injuries.
+ Q: “How many bases where US troops are in the Middle East do not have air defense systems that can shoot down these drones?”
Pentagon spokesperson: “I’m not gonna detail from here, from the podium, our air defenses, where they’re located and how many bases have what. I think that just wouldn’t be good for our own operational security and our force protection…I can commit to you that when CENTCOM is done doing its review, we will share the results of that and read out what we can from that assessment, barring the fact that there is classified information.”
+ After Biden’s “de-escalatory” airstrikes on Iraq and Syria, 6 US-allied Kurds were killed in a drone attack on a U.S. base in Syria. The US has been using the Kurds as human shields for four decades now.
+ A US drone attack on Wednesday struck a vehicle in a civilian Baghdad neighborhood supposedly containing a commander from the Kataib Hezbollah, the militia group in Iraq that the Pentagon has blamed for attacking its troops. The Iraqi military angrily denounced the assassination and said that it signaled the “termination of the US mission in the country.” Finally, Mission Accomplished!
+ Not surprisingly, a new poll of 16 Arab nations shows that 94% of Arabs oppose Biden’s Gaza policy and more than half said the US now constitutes “the biggest threat to the peace and stability of the region.”
+ Ukraine continues to lose more ground to the Russian invasion, especially in the eastern city of Avdiivka, which has been besieged for several months. The battle has been so intense that Ukrainian troops haven’t been able to be rotated out at the recommended rates of every three days, and have instead been forced to stay on the front for as much as 10 straight days. One report says that Russia has dropped more than 600 aerial bombs on Avdiivka over the past four weeks alone. A report in the Wall Street Journal last Sunday predicted that Avdivka may soon fall under the bombardment, “Russian advances in Avdiivka, which increasingly looks likely to become the first Ukrainian city to fall since the capture of Bakhmut last May, are the direct result of acute ammunition shortage”
+ AMLO’s conditions for Mexican cooperation with Biden’s harsh new immigration plan: suspending the blockade of Cuba, ending all sanctions on Venezuela, issuing work permits and protection from deportation for at least 10 million Hispanic people currently living in the US.
+ The Lakota on Pine Ridge have banned South Dakota governor Kristi Noem from their reservation after Noem said Saturday she wanted to send razor wire and security goons to Texas to help deter migrants at the border and also claimed cartels are infiltrating the state’s reservations.
+ Texas has spent $124 million busing migrants to sanctuary cities since Gov. Greg Abbott began the initiative in 2022. The state has raised about $460,000 from private sources to finance the expulsions.
+ Blackwater’s Erik Prince argues that it’s time for the US, which maintains 850-plus military bases around the world, to put its “imperialist hat back on.” (Has the US been going bareheaded lately? I haven’t noticed.)
Erik Prince: It’s time for us to put the imperialist hat back on and say we’re going to govern countries if you’re incapable of governing yourselves. We’re done being invaded… You can say that about pretty much all of Africa. They are incapable of governing themselves and benefitting their citizens because the governments there are all about looting and pillaging and lining their pockets and going shopping in Paris instead of making the lives of their people better.
Interviewer: What a minute. People are going to say that Erik Prince is talking about us being a colonialist, again…
Prince: Absolutely. Yes.
+ Even though he barely squeezed out a victory against Jair Bolsonaro, Lula’s approval rating is holding steady at 52%.
+ Au Revoir, Jair
Sont les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble
Tres bien ensemble
+ At the Senate’s Big Tech hearing:
Tom Cotton: “Have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party?”
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew: “Senator, I’m Singaporean. No!”
Cotton: “Have you ever been associated or affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party?”
Chew: “No, Senator. Again, I’m Singaporean!”
+ Ghost of Senator Joe McCarthy: “Have you no shame, Senator? You’re tarnishing my reputation!”
+++
+ Bidenomics: 44% of Americans don’t have the savings to pay a $1,000 unexpected expense.
+ Larry Summers told Bloomberg News that “interest rates may be well over 3% for the rest of the decade.” Of course, Larry Kudlow on coke had more credibility than Summers on one of his better days….
+ The NLRB ruled that Dartmouth men’s basketball players are employees of Dartmouth University and are allowed to go forward with an election to create a union.
+ Mississippi’s state auditor, Shad White, is demanding Brett Favre repay nearly $730,000 that was supposed to help some of the poorest people in the state. White: “It boggles the mind that Mr. Favre could imagine he is entitled to the equivalent of an interest-free loan of $1.1 million… .”
+ As the UAW under Shawn Fain continues to rack up wins, a non-profit group calling itself the Center for Union Facts, funded by secretive anti-union donors, has launched an anti-UAW campaign in Austin, Texas, in advance of an anticipated union drive at the nearby Tesla plant.
+ UAW’s Shawn Fain on Trump: “Donald Trump is a scab. Donald Trump is a billionaire and that’s who he represents. Nowhere in history has Donald Trump ever stood for the American worker. He stands against pretty much everything we stand for as a union.”
+ Trump on Fain: “Shawn Fain is a Weapon of Mass Destruction on Auto Workers and the Automobile Manufacturing Industry in the United States! Is he under contract to China, because they will be getting almost all of our ‘Car making’ Business within a very short period of time. All Autoworkers should VOTE FOR TRUMP. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
+ New campaign finance reports reveal Trump paid $20,000 to stage a rally of fake striking union auto workers last September, with non-union people holding up ‘Union Members for Trump’ signs.
+ In 1,000 fact checks of Donald Trump, PolitiFact rated 76% of his statements as Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire.
+ On July 1, 2019, a 15-year-old boy fell 50 feet to his death while working for a roofing contractor in Alabama. It was his first day on the job. The company was hit with a $117,175 fine by the Labor Department for allowing a child under the age of 18 to work on a high-risk job site.
+ The Eugene V. Debs Museum in Terre Haute Tweeted: “The $7.25/hr minimum wage is now 15 years old, which is also old enough to work 40-hour weeks in Indiana.”
+ Maxxed Out: Former Boeing senior manager, Ed Pierson: “I would absolutely not fly a Max airplane. I’ve worked in the factory where they were built and I saw the pressure employees were under to rush the planes out the door. I tried to get them shut down before the first crash.” His warning was reiterated by Joe Jacobson, a former Boeing engineer and FAA employee: “I would tell my family to avoid the Max. I would everyone, really.”
+++
+ As the Supreme Court contemplates ruling on Trump’s absurd claim of “presidential immunity” (shot down unanimously by the DC Circuit Court this week), it’s worth remembering that one of the primary motivations for Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon out of Cisalpine Gaul and turning his Legions toward Romein 49 BC was his fear of being prosecuted on corruption charges for alleged crimes committed while he was consul a decade earlier. Cato and Marcellus were already drawing up the indictment, in anticipation of Caesar losing the immunity he had enjoyed as Imperator in Gaul. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the Roman Republic fell after a battle over executive immunity, ushering in an imperial dictatorship that lasted for the next 450 years.
+ Speaking of Gaius Julius, in a time before ghostwriters, Caesar wrote a book on the rhetorical uses of analogy (De Analogia) while crossing the Alps to suppress the Germanic tribes streaming into Gaul. In the words of Marcus Aurelius’ tutor Fronto, “Think of C. Caesar in that appalling Gallic War writing about noun declensions as weapons flew past.”I can’t imagine any of our current crop of political leaders even being able to define the word.
+ Tucker Carlson’s 83-year-old father Richard Carlson, the former head of Voice of America, is a lobbyist for Policy Impact, a DC-influence peddling firm whose clients include Victor Orban’s rightwing government in Hungary.
+ Eric Adams’ close friend, Dwayne Montgomery, a former NYPD inspector, pleaded guilty on Monday to charges that he masterminded a scheme to route illegal donations into the mayor’s 2021 campaign war chest.
+++
+ In a meeting that lasted about five minutes, the Wall Street Journal’s DC bureau finally told last week that there will be a major “restructuring” (ie., layoffs). When asked for more clarity on the changes, Managing Editor Liz Harris refused to answer. Someone in the room said, “Hope you had a good time in Davos.”
+ Across the US, two newspapers are closing each week. More than 500 journalism jobs have been lost last month alone.
+ A former staffer at FoxNews told Jane Mayer of the New Yorker, that the primary reason for pickinga story to cover is whether or not it will inflame the audience: “The single phrase they said over and over was ‘This is going to outrage the viewers!’ You inflame the viewers so that no one will turn away.”
+ What it’s come to: Two black students who made a parody newspaper satirizing Northwestern University’s stance on Israel’s war in Gaza are now facing criminal charges under a little-known law first enacted to use against the KKK.
+ The Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued a 219-page opinion (Allegheny Reproductive Health v. Pennsylvania Department of Human Services) declaring that (1) abortion is a fundamental right under the state constitution’s right to privacy; and (2) abortion bans discriminate based on sex under the state constitution’s equal rights amendment. The opinion demolished the specious legal reasoning in Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in Dobbs.
+ Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern on the continuing fallout from the Dobbs decision: “Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion rested largely on the views of dead white men who condoned the rape, beating, and murder of women to maintain female subjugation in every realm of life.”
+ Teen births are up in Texas after the end of Roe v. Wade, according to a recent report from the University of Houston. This result is not only predictable, but exactly what many evangelicals want. And it will almost certainly get worse.
+ The Florida Supreme Court, now fully stocked with anti-abortion judges appointed by Ron DeSantis, seems poised to use “fetal personhood” as a rationale to block citizens from a chance to vote on a constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights.
+ Here’s Biden speaking at a fundraiser in NYC on Wednesday night: “I’m a practicing Catholic. I don’t want abortion on demand but I thought Roe v Wade was right.” Under Roe, “abortion on demand” (is there any other kind?) was a constitutionally protected right. In fact, Biden’s done more than oppose “abortion on demand. “For almost his entire political career he opposed abortions for poor women, through his co-sponsorship of the Hyde Amendment, which banned any federal funding for abortion. “Abortion on demand” is the language of the anti-abortion movement. How did this guy ever get the support of groups like NARAL? Another case of “activist malpractice,” as Michael Colby called it.
+ In the last year, more than 16 million people have been thrown off their health insurance.
+ Last month Cuba approved a new interferon-based nasal spray as a preventative measure against COVID. The spray was developed by the country’s Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, despite the crippling sanctions imposed on it by the US, where a nasal spray for Covid has yet to read the market.
+++
+ On a summer day in 2020, four young black girls were going out to a nail salon with their mother, Brittney Gilliam, when they were pulled over by police in Aurora, Colorado, who mistakenly believed the car Gilliam was driving had been stolen. As Gilliam was led away in handcuffs, the four girls, one of whom was 6 years old and wearing a pink tiara, were forced to the pavement in parking at gunpoint. Two of the girls had their wrists handcuffed, and one of them cried out“Mommy.” The cops held their guns drawn for about three-and-a-half minutes, and only removed the girls’ handcuffs after eight-and-a-half minutes, once they realized the car Gilliam was driving wasn’t stolen. Gilliam sued and this week the troubled Aurora Police Department settled for $1.9 million. Two of the officers who terrorized the young girls remain on the police force.
+ The NYPD makes 40 times more arrests for fare evasion at the Atlantic Av. L station in Brownsville/East New York than at an average stop in the City.
+ A Louisiana law allows judges to profit from their own decisions in criminal cases, taking money from the poorest people in our society and using it for luxury benefits. An in-depth piece by Type Investigations shows that judges across the state have “used these Judicial Expense Funds (JEFs) to pay for expenses ranging from the staff salaries and law library subscriptions to luxury cars and rooms at the Ritz Carlton.” The practice continues even though these court-funding mechanisms that originated in the Jim Crow era were ruled unconstitutional by two federal court decisions in 2019.
+ From 2019 to 2021, the number of children killed by gun violence has increased by about 50 percent to a new high of 4,733.
+ Hawai’i’s Supreme Court ruled this week that its state constitution does not protect an individual right to bear arms. In his majority opinion, Justice Todd Eddins takes direct aim at the deeply flawed reasoning of the US Supreme Court in its recent gun cases. Eddins writes:
History is prone to misuse. In the Second Amendment cases, the Court distorts and cherry-picks historical evidence. It shrinks, alters, and discards historical facts that don’t fit…Bruen unravels durable law. No longer are there the levels of scrutiny and public safety balancing tests long used by our nation’s courts to evaluate firearms laws. Instead, the Court ad-libs a “history-only” standard.
+ On Saturday, LAPD officers shot and killed a man in Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles. The man was allegedly waving a plastic fork.Here’s how LAPD spokesperson Lt. Letisia Ruiz defended the shooting to KTLA: “Any object can cause harm, depending on how it’s used.”
+ RIPCraig Watkins, the first black DA in Texas history, who created the first nationally recognized Conviction Integrity Unit, presided over more than 35 exonerations, and designed a roadmap for addressing legitimate post-conviction claims of actual innocence.
+ San Francisco Mayor London Breed is backing a March 5 ballot measure that would require single adults on welfare to be screened and treated for illegal drug addiction or else lose cash assistance. This is squarely within the New Democrat tradition. Drug testing of impoverished single mothers was one of the punitive features of Bill Clinton’s welfare “reform,” which was pushed through the Senate by Joe Biden.
+ Justin Davis, a Pennsylvania pastor who was fired by his Church after he appeared in a video welcoming LGTB parishioners to the congregation, decided to run for office in Harrisburg to denounce the deadly conditions in the Dauphin County jail. Although he ran a shoestring campaign, Davis won a surprise victory and flipped the balance of the county government. Now Davis aims to improve the conditions inside one of the most notorious jails in the country, where at least eighteen prisoners have died since 2019.
+ Rep. Jason Shoaf, a Republican from Port St. Joe, Florida, wants the state to adopt a “stand your ground”-like law targeting what he describes as bears “that are on crack” kicking people’s doors down in the middle of the night.
+ A video taken by a high school student shows an Indiana lawmaker flashing a gun to students who were visiting the statehouse to talk to legislators about gun control.
+ Alabama Democrat Rep. Juandalynn Givan has put forth a bill that calls for convicted rapists to be either castrated or given a vasectomy, Newsweek reported.
+ Lawsuits against prison guards are costing the state millions a year. Ten years ago, a state fund paid out $177,567 related to lawsuits against Alabama Department of Corrections employees and leaders. In 2023, it paid $3.5 million. And, according to the Alabama Daily News, in the first three months of fiscal 2024, it has already shelled out $1.3 million. The prisons being hit with the most claims, and most expensive lawsuits, are St. Clair Correctional Facility ($4.47 million) and Donaldson ($2.48 million).
+ A panel recommended ex-LA Sheriff Alex Villanueva be ineligible for rehire after finding he violated county policies by discriminating against & harassing the Inspector General.
+ In Mississippi, incarcerated women were sent to work at Popeye’s for less than minimum wage and even “hired” out to individuals to do housework, yardwork, etc.
+ Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey just nominated her former romantic partner, Gabrielle Wolohojian, a corporate lawyer known for defending businesses against consumer class action suits, for a seat on the state’s supreme court.
+ Justin Mohn, a MAGA man from Levittown, Pennsylvania, beheaded his father, whom he denounced as a “20-year federal employee,” then posted a video of the decapitated head in a bloody plastic on YouTube, while calling for a “revolution” against the “woke mobs” and the “Biden regime” and to fight an “army of illegal immigrants.” Meanwhile, down in Palm Beach a 44-year-old MAGA man named Brian McGann, Jr. became so enraged when he learned that his father had been vaccinated against COVID that he drove his pickup truck to Brian McGann, Sr.’s house and beat him to death. We’re going to have to revise Oedipus for the MAGA era.
+++
+ During the deluge that submerged much of California this week, a weather station on the UCLA campus recorded nearly 12 inches of rain in 24 hours, a one-in-1000-year rainfall event for Westwood. (Probably happen five more times in the next ten years.)
+ Down in Long Beach, where the LA River meets the Pacific…
+ January 2024 was the warmest January on record according to the recently released ERA5 reanalysis. This is the 8th consecutive monthly record.
+ Global sea surface temperatures hit another record high on Tuesday, reaching 21.13°C for the first time in recorded history.
+ Of the world’s three largest tropical rainforest regions, the Amazon, Southeast Asia, and the Congo, only Congo has enough standing forest to remain a strong net carbon sink.
+ Describing the current classification system as inadequate, a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences calls for adding a Category 6 to the hurricane scale, as climate change intensifies the destructive power of hurricanes.
+ Poland has adopted new measures to protect ecosystems. including a ban on logging across more than 1.4 million hectares; restrictions on unprocessed log exports; and giving Polish citizens new rights to oversee forests and restore wetlands and peatlands.
+ More than 110 people were killed in wildfires on the urban/rural interface near Valparaiso, Chile. Hundreds are still missing, making these the deadliest wildfires in South American history. Many of the fires burned in monocultural plantations.
+ In the past 10 years, 183 counties in the US saw their first wind project come online. However, according to an analysis by USA Today, over the same period, nearly 375 counties passed measures blocking new wind developments.
+ The Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimates that large-scale cryptocurrency operations are now consuming more than 2 percent of the US’s electricity.”
+ In Florida, the loss of only 3 percent of the state’s wetland area resulted in $480 million in property damage during just one hurricane.
+ This poor orca must’ve been trapped in one of the few ice patches left in the North Pacific…
JUST IN: At least 13 killer whales are trapped in ice in northern Japan. Officials are unable to launch a rescue operation – NHK pic.twitter.com/xpGuq3eoN1
+ The Scottish government appointed the former head of North Sea exploration at Shell to the board of its main environmental watchdog.
+ After the toxic derailment in East Palestine, Northfolk Southern increased its lobbying outlays by 30%. The rail company’s lobbying expenditures are now 5 times what the company has pledged to spend to protect drinking water around East Palestine. And the spending seems to have worked, as a bipartisan rail safety bill has stalled.
+ Areas in southern Europe could experience a 10-fold increase in the probability of catastrophic fires under a moderate climate change scenario.” In addition, “The entire European continent will experience a lengthening of the fire season.”
+ Shark bites are increasing, even as shark populations are falling: Ya think there might be a connection?
+ According to the EPA, tightening air pollution standards from 12 micrograms per square meter to 9 will yield “up to $46 billion in net health benefits in 2032. For every $1 spent from this action, there could be as much as $77 in human health benefits in 2032.”
+ The Biden administration announced this week that the northern Rocky Mountain population of gray wolves that spans several states will stay off the ESA list of protected species, exposing wolves to ongoing slaughter in Montana and Idaho, where vigilantes are offering $1,000 bounties for each wolf killed.
+ In the last three months of 2023, at least nine Mexican gray wolves are known to have died, making a total of 30 for the year: 13 in Arizona and 17 in New Mexico. Most of the wolf deaths last year were due to illegal killing and vehicle strikes, which, along with declining genetic diversity, remain the greatest threats to the long-term survival of lobos.
+ Meanwhile, a former state conservation officer is under investigation for killing a wolf in Wisconsin.
+ And the wolf slaughter is just the beginning. Here’s Doug Peacock’s preview of what the coming war on grizzly bears is likely to look like.
+ In the largest settlement of its kind in Colorado, Suncor was fined more than $10 million for repeated air pollution violations, that many residents and activists have blamed for the high cancer near the plant. “It’s pocket change again. It’s just another slap on the hand, at least for us. I mean none of that funding is going to the community,” said Lucy Molina, who has been organizing against Suncor’s air pollution for more than a decade. “They’re not our good friends, they’re not our good neighbor. They need to get out of here is what they need to do.”
+ Cynophobe Chloe Savigny on what’s ruining NCY: “The athleisure and the dogs are taking over, and that’s really unfortunate. Everybody’s in Lululemon and has a fucking dog and it’s driving me crazy. I’m sorry, dog lovers. There are too many of you.”
+ There were around 2.2 billion bike trips in the US in 2022. A little more than half of them are for recreation or social visits. Twenty percent involved travel to school or church and thirteen percent were trips from home to work and back.
+++
+ RIP Wayne Kramer…
+ “What an artist can only do is gain the courage to be really honest about what he feels, and have the technique to back it up in the face of a world that couldn’t care less.” — Wayne Kramer
+ David Sedaris: “Austin, Texas, April 10, 2006. At last night’s book signing I met a woman whose father had eaten her placenta. “He was a hippie, and he ate my sister’s too,” she told me. “When we each got our first haircut, he ate a few strands of our hair.” “Goodness,” I said. “I hope he wasn’t around when you got your first period.” (A Carnival of Snackery)
+ Garrett Morris at his Walk of Fame ceremony: “Today, ladies and gentlemen, is my 87th birthday. They say only the good die young. I must be an evil muthafucka.”
+ Mel Brooks on Blazing Saddles: “I just wanted to exorcise both my angels and demons. I said to all the writers, Look, fellas, don’t worry, this movie will never get released. Never. Warner Bros will see it and they’ll say, ‘Let’s bury it.’ So let’s go nuts.”
+ John Cale, who told film-maker Todd Haynes that he made experimental music because he didn’t want to be “part of the economy,” described his early “sound” compositions with Tony Conrad from 1963: “The most stable thing we could tune to was the sixty-cycle hum of the refrigerator. Because to us, the sixty-cycle hum was the drone of Western civilization.”
+ Steven Monacelli: “I cannot name one Toby Keith song and that’s the way God intended it.”
“A real groupie is someone who loves the music and wants to do it with the guys who make it and someone who goes after what they want, so a groupie is a feminist thing. A woman who goes after what she wants is a feminist. So I’ve never been anything but a feminist. I took the birth control pill on the Strip in front of everybody and that was my statement. I control my body, I can do whatever the fuck I want.”
“The United States does not want to see the conflict escalated and will not escalate the conflict.”
– Senior State Department official in the wake of four days of U.S. bombing in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, February 5, 2024.
“We do not see it as an escalation.”
– Senior State Department official discussing the bombing, February 5, 2024.
“I absolutely don’t agree with your description of the larger conflict.”
– National Security Council spokesman John Kirby denying any connection between Israel’s war in Gaza and U.S. bombing in the Middle East, January 29, 2024.
U.S. officials may not acknowledge the connection between the Gaza War and the U.S. bombing campaign, but there is no question that Israeli militarism is relevant to the increased attacks from the Houthis against commercial shipping in the Red Sea as well as the increased attacks from Iranian-backed militia against U.S. facilities in Jordan, Syria, and Iraq.
As a result of these developments, the United States has taken a stronger stand against Iran, and suggested the possibility of an expanded security alliance with Saudi Arabia in return for Saudi diplomatic recognition of Israel. These steps would require a deeper U.S. commitment in the Middle East with greater instability and uncertainty at a time when we should be looking for a way to reduce our presence.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s fifth trip to the Middle East and the Persian Gulf since the start of the Gaza war on October 7, 2023 has been no more successful that the first four. These trips have failed to get Israel to reduce its heavy bombardment of civilian areas in Gaza and permit humanitarian aid to get through; forge an agreement for a unified, Palestinian-led governing body for the West Bank and Gaza; create a path to a Palestinian state; or normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. President Biden, meanwhile, conceded in a discussion about the U.S. military strikes against the Houthis last month: “Are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes.”
The United States has stretched itself too thin politically and diplomatically by probing for comprehensive reform in the Middle East. All of our attention should be focused on a cease-fire in Gaza and the release of the more than 100 Israeli hostages. [At least 32 of the remaining 136 hostages captured by Hamas have died, according to Israeli intelligence.] Instead, the Biden administration is engaged in discussions that are going nowhere, such as transferring power in the Palestinian Authority to a new, younger prime minister, and arranging for an Arab peacekeeping force in Gaza to support a new Palestinian administration there.
Israel will do everything within its power to block these measures, and as long as we have to deal with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an anti-American obscurantist, there is little likelihood of success. Biden has not been willing to put pressure on Israel, which means there is little opportunity for advancing a peace process in the Middle East. Netanyahu has gone out of his way to embarrass U.S. presidents in the past, and his promises to the Biden administration to limit the high-intensity bombardment in Gaza by the end of January have already been broken.
The history of U.S. policy in the Middle East has largely been one of failure, which is particularly unfortunate at this juncture when we have no vital security interests at stake. President Eisenhower began the series of failures in 1953, when he sanctioned the overthrow of a legitimate Iranian government. President Reagan endorsed a U.S. presence in Lebanon in 1982 in the wake of an ill-fated Israeli invasion, which exposed U.S. Marines to a terrorist attack. President Bush concocted a duplicitous invasion of Iraq in 2003, which opened the door to Iran’s influence in Baghdad and began the cycle of instability that now dominates the region. Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel; closed the American consulate in East Jerusalem; stopped aid to the Palestinians; recognized the Golan Heights as part of Israel; and endorsed Israel’s permanent grip on the West Bank. His abrogation of the Iran nuclear accord abruptly ended an opportunity for serious political negotiations with Tehran.
Since the revolution in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the United States has relied overwhelmingly on military power to assert influence in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. In the wings, there are U.S. politicians and pundits who favor regime change in Iran as well as the use of military force against Iran. Too many American leaders have never forgotten our own hostage situation in Iran in 1979, and have wanted to strike back ever since. As retired Marine general Anthony Zinni once remarked, “If you liked Iraq, then you’ll love Iran.”
Two steps are essential to protect U.S. security interests. First, the United States must press Israel for a cease-fire. The only way to pressure Israel would be to place genuine conditions on U.S. arms transfers or to withhold the lethal systems that only Washington provides. The United States has no non-military tools of influence regarding Israel, so military assistance is our only source of leverage.
Second, it is time for a renewed diplomatic effort with Iran. CIA director William Burns has experience in dealing with Iran’s leaders, and is clearly the most effective diplomat in the Biden administration. The efforts to alienate Iran must stop.
Current U.S. diplomatic activity relies on discussions with key Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates, which are going nowhere. Moreover, these talks involve the possibility of a defense treaty with Saudi Arabia, which would introduce an additional tail to wag the American dog in the Middle East. These developments could even lead to renewed discussion for the formation of an “Arab NATO,” which was broached by Trump and his aggressive national security adviser, John Bolton. The Biden administration presumably understands the limits of military force in the region, but the confrontation with Iran and the continued support for Netanyahu could only lead to the deployment of additional U.S. forces. The end result will be to keep the United States in the Middle East—our very own briar patch.
Photograph Source: Al Jazeera English – CC BY-SA 2.0
In genocide, the end game is often resettlement. Take for example, the Namibian genocide of 1904-1908. After defeating the Herero and later the Nama people in bloody battles, the Germans drove them into nearby deserts, where most of them died of dehydration and starvation. The more recent genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar in 2016-2017 involved a different type of resettlement: the mass escape to Bangladesh from military atrocities (the burning of villages, extrajudicial killings, and other human rights abuses).
In Gaza, the IDF has applied successive waves of forced resettlement to push the civilian population from north to south. Beginning in October 2023, the IDF ordered the more than one million residents of North Gaza to move south, ostensibly to flee Israel’s relentless bombing of residences, businesses, hospitals, and schools in Gaza City and its suburbs. However, those fleeing southward discovered that even travel on the designated routes failed to offer safety. Many travelers were shot or detained for interrogation as they walked or rode as directed. Further evacuation orders over the next months pushed Gazans from population centers in central and southern Gaza, including Deir al-Balah and Khan Yunis, toward the Rafah border with Egypt.
After four months of IDF bombardment, the uprooted Palestinians now inhabit makeshift tents near the Rafah border. At the same time, the Israeli military has begun to bomb Rafah refugee camps and hospitals, raising a death toll that has already reached more than 27,000 mostly women and children (not including the thousands lying dead under the rubble of bombed-out buildings).
Palestinians who relocated to Rafah from the north and mid-Gaza Strip at the direction of the IDF are now asking, “Where do we go from here?”
Israel’s continuing siege that began in mid-October has largely blocked access to food, clean water, fuel, and medical supplies. Even internet connections are spotty, often down for days at a time. The grossly inadequate commodities supplied by aid trucks are sometimes targets of Israeli missiles or raided by desperately hungry people. As winter rain and cold torment families huddling in water-soaked tents, starvation and disease threaten everyone, especially young children.
Israel stands accused of using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza. “It is not possible to create a famine by accident,” says Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University and author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine.After months of ignored international calls to open up aid channels, de Waal says famine in Gaza is now “inevitable.”
In the words of the Genocide Convention of 1948, acts of genocide against “a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” include “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” As principal enabler and arms supplier to Israel, the Biden administration has made American taxpayers complicit in Israel’s starvation policy and other acts of genocide. Yet even now the U.S. President seeks to supply Israel with more billion’s worth of lethal arms.
So, what are the options for Gazans trying to survive bombs, starvation, illness, and injury in the midst of Israel’s new targeting of Rafah? Three obvious choices are:
(1) Return to Gaza City or Khan Yunis;
(2) Accept resettlement offers from other countries; or
(3) Attempt mass escape into Egypt.
The first option is untenable because almost everything for life in the north has been destroyed. The Gazans would not likely accept resettlement in another country except the U.S. (which is not holding out a welcome mat. That leaves only one realistic possibility: a mass escape into Egypt. While there are major physical barriers at the border, they might not withstand the combined force of a million plus people. Even if Israel should decide to accept a Hamas ceasefire proposal that would exchange hostages for the release of Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank, those steps could not save Gazans in Rafah; nor could they deter the upcoming famine.
What is most surprising is that both administration voices and the media, for all their talk of a two-state solution and PLO governance in the long term, have not addressed the more urgent question of “What’s next for the Gazans?” Meanwhile, thousands more of them will likely die of bombs, hunger, and disease.
Anonymous artist (Chartres), The True Image of the Wandering Jew, n.d (circa 1790).
Homeless in spirit
I’ve been feeling lately, like the Wandering Jew of legend, homeless and ostracized by virtue of my religion and my sin. It doesn’t matter that I am guiltless. In fact, I despise and renounce Israel’s scourging of Palestine and U.S. support for genocide, but the majority of Jews in Israel and the diaspora do not, so I bear the burden of their iniquity. The Israeli government, in its arrogance, claims to act on behalf of all Jews, forgetting that every Jew who acts or speaks out against genocide is צדיק בין העמים (righteous among nations) regardless of the nationality of the victims or perpetrators. I curse Netanyahu, his allies, and facilitators. And yet still I wear this stain.
From Matthew Paris to Mel Brooks
The “Wandering Jew” is the original, antisemitic trope. According to medieval chroniclers, a Jew watched as Christ labored to carry the cross on his way to crucifixion. Pausing to rest, Jesus asked the man for a cup of water. Instead of obliging, the Jew refused and told him not to tarry, but hurry faster to his death. In response, Jesus played a trick on him. He granted the Jew immortality, but also cursed him to wander the earth, poor, homeless, and debased until the Second Coming, when he would be judged like all others.
Matthew Paris, “The Wandering Jew,” Chronica Majora, Corpus Christi College Cambridge 16, fol. 74v.
But the Wandering Jew is not without his uses. Wherever he appears, he serves as a valued relic, or a witness to the passion of Christ. According to Matthew Paris (c. 1200- 1259), author and artist of the Chronica Majora, the Wandering Jew, whom he named Cartaphilis (“dearly loved”) is “one of the wonders of the world and a great proof of the Christian faith.” In his manuscript illumination, the figure is old and stooped and drags a heavy mattock along the ground, sign of the burden he must eternally bear. He is the anti-type or inversion of Christ, who carries the upright cross.
Nevertheless, despite its plangency – or perhaps because of it — the story of the Wandering Jew was always considered apocryphal by church authorities. It gave Jews too much prominence or power in an age when they were supposed to accept the new dispensation and simply disappear. That didn’t prevent the story, however, becoming a staple of art, literature, and social practice for a thousand years. Wikipedia does a good job of summarizing its many, national iterations. I’ll just mention in chronological order four that the online encyclopedia overlooks.
The first is obvious: Charles Dicken’s, A Christmas Carol (1843), whose central character, Ebenezer Scrooge, must be based on the legendary Jew. Scrooge is miserly and works with money, like Jews were supposed to do according to Dickens (see the character of Fagin in Oliver Twist). He is told by the un-named ghost near the beginning of the story that unless he mends his ways and honors Christ’s birth, he will be doomed, like his deceased partner Jacob Marley, to perpetually wander the earth, dragging with him heavy chains and moneyboxes – a version of the mattock in Matthew Paris’s illustration. After three more ghostly visitations, Scrooge of course does repent his sins, and lives a generous and fulfilled, Christian life ever after: “God bless us, everyone!”
The second example comes from the domain of French art. In 1854, the Realist Gustave Courbet painted The Meeting. It depicts the famous artist, meeting his patron, Alfred Bruyas and servant Calas on the road to Montpellier. Artist and patron come together as equals; if anything, Courbet’s upturned chin, endowed with royal, Assyrian beard, suggests a degree of condescension. It’s not surprising: This is the same artist who three years before, notoriously overturned convention by exhibiting a trio of heroically sized paintings of proletarians breaking stones, peasants returning from a market, and bourgeois, peasants and proletarians attending a funeral. Those pictures challenged bourgeois notions of class stability during a period of national (and European-wide) social revolution.
With The Meeting, Courbet was declaring himself the equal of any man – regardless of class — by ironic reference to the Wandering Jew. Notice the composition’s origins in the three-figure group visible at the bottom right of the woodcut illustrated at the top of this column.
Gustave Courbet, The Meeting, 1854, Musee Fabre, Montpellier.
Courbet proposes that bohemians and aesthetes like himself — shunned and abused like the Wandering Jew — are the real elite; they are part of a far-seeing avant-garde (a new concept at the time) that maps the best way forward in art, politics, and society. Courbet was no philo-semite; evidence suggests the opposite. But he embraced the idea that like the Wandering Jew, the modern artist was at home nowhere in the world but was nevertheless an essential seer.
The third telling is much more disturbing. The German rendering of the Wandering Jew is called Der Ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew). Well-known from 19th C. German literature and folklore, with versions by August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Heinrich Heine, and Richard Wagner, the legend became for the Nazis an instrument of state propaganda. The 1940 film, Der Ewige Jude, directed by Fritz Hippler, depicted Jews as a threat to the health and safety of Aryan Germans. Fiction disguised as documentary, it included clips shot in the Jewish ghettos of Warsaw, Lodz, Lublin, and Krakow, suggesting that the terrible living conditions there were the preferred way of life of a debased race, instead of being the result of Nazi displacement, concentration and confiscation. Der Ewige Jude was a major initiative of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, and veritably announced to the world the planned “final solution” to “the Jewish question.” The film concluded with a clip of Hitler’s now infamous speech to the Reichstag, delivered on January, 30, 1939:
“If international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, the result will not be Bolshevization of the earth and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!”
Nazis of the Third Reich first sought to cast Jews into the wilderness – to make them all wanderers. By the time of Der Ewige Jude, they were determined to eliminate them.
The last example is comic. The routine called “The 2,000-Year-Old Man,” created by Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks in the mid 1950s, is also a version of the story of the Wandering Jew. It started out as an improvised party gag, with Reiner playing the straight man and Brooks the clown. Years later, they re-enacted their first schtick:
Reiner: “Ladies and gentlemen, here is a man who was on the scene of the crucifixion, 2,000 years ago! Isn’t that true sir…”
Brooks [with Yiddish accent]: “Uh boy….it was terrible.”
Reiner: “So you knew Jesus?!”
Brooks: “He came in the store! He had with 12 guys him. They all wore sandals — never bought anything. They asked for water, so I gave ‘em water. Nice boys.”
Mel Brooks was the Wandering Jew, witness to Christ’s passion, and a living relic. Only this time, the Jew offered succor.
Nevertheless, Brooks’ 2,000-year-old man was homeless. He wandered the earth:
Reiner: “You met Genghis Khan?!”
Brooks: “Yes, but when I knew him, he was Genghis Cohen – changed his name. Business reasons”
Reiner: “I understand that you were a polygamist way back when. What was the most wives you had, and what was it like?”
Brooks: “I had seven, and it was terrible!”
Reiner: “Terrible? What was so bad?”
Brooks: “I’d come home for dinner,” and hear: ‘You’re late, late, late, late, late, late, late!’ ‘And you never called, called, called, called, called, called, called.’”
For the Jewish writer, director, and comedian, the 2,000-year-old man/Wandering Jew was a thorn in the side of oppressors from Genghis Khan to Hitler. Brooks even created in 1967 his own comic alternative to Der Ewige Jude, the movie The Producers about the effort of two hapless Jewish producers, played by Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, to mount a sure-fire Broadway flop in order to pocket their investors’ money. The play was called “Springtime for Hitler” and included the eponymous song with a lyric that mocked Nazi claims of racial superiority:
Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Deutschland is happy and gay
We’re marching to a faster pace
Look out, here comes the master race
The Wandering Jew in The Producers was a scoundrel, but he mocked and outwitted his oppressors.
At home with Rembrandt
A few weeks ago, I was determined to cease wandering and feel more at home. I wanted to experience something “Jew-positive”, but without Zionism or chauvinism. So, I resolved to make a pilgrimage to Amsterdam to look at Rembrandt. The Dutch artist is famous in part, for depicting subjects from the Hebrew bible, painting and drawing renowned Jews like the great rabbi and publisher, Menasseh Ben Israel, using Jewish models, and even living in the Jewish quarter of the city. Probably his best painting – among the greatest oil paintings ever made – is The Jewish Bride, aka The Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca (1663). At once formally complex and emotionally compelling, it’s a work so convincing is its evocation of vulnerability, tenderness, and love, that almost nobody who sees fails to be moved. The former director of the Amsterdam Historical Museum, Bob Haak once told me that museum staff had to “learn not to look at it” if they wanted to avoid being caught in its spell.
Rembrandt van Rijn, The Jewish Bride, aka Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca, c. 1666, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
I’ve seen the picture many times, but never in the company of my wife Harriet. To ensure we had the best possible experience, I decided to reach out an old acquaintance, the great Rembrandt scholar, Gary Schwartz who lives in Utrecht. Though we only met once or twice, decades ago, I keep up with his excellent blog; plus, he’s a landsman and former New Yorker like me, so I was hopeful he’d agree to meet in Amsterdam. He kindly accepted the invitation, and we all got together – me, Harriet, Garry, and his clever and attractive wife of 55 years, Loekie Hendriks — on a Sunday afternoon in January at the Café Krom on the Utrechtstraat. I was determined to expound upon Rembrandt, and test my theories about the artist’s intellectual and artistic independence, his unusual-for-the-time, sympathy for the Jews, and the subject matter (or iconography) of The Jewish Bride. Here’s the conclusion of my peroration:
“It seems to me Rembrandt opposed any stylistic ideal that projected the identity of artistic genius and authoritarian power. That enabled him to identify with and portray the Jews. In addition, classical form for him lacked the immediacy and authenticity needed to convey his subjective, individualist and psychologically charged subjects. His claim to greatness as an artist therefore rests on the rejection of facile doctrine, open questioning of authority, and toleration.”
As I spoke, I noticed Gary becoming increasingly uneasy. After I finished, a few pregnant moments passed before Gary began his reply.
“To begin with…” (always a fraught start):
“the idea that Rembrandt’s depictions of Jews and subjects from the Old Testament are expressions of sympathy simply does not stand up to scrutiny. None of the documents pertaining to Rembrandt’s life or the reception of his art indicate a friendlier attitude toward the Jewish religion or its practitioners than that of his contemporaries. Indeed, had Rembrandt been unusually sympathetic to Jews and Judaism, he would have been a conspicuous exception to the rule in the Christian Europe of his age, even in the famously tolerant Dutch Republic. His depictions of these subjects in fact conform to Calvinist doctrine that Jews were the original recipients of divine grace, but, because the Jews persisted in rejecting Christ, this translated not into approval but into deep antipathy toward their religion. Oh, and the identification of the figure in the celebrated etching as Menasseh Ben Israel is now known to be mistaken.
As Mel Brooks might have said, “Uh boy.”
I was down but not yet defeated.
Stephen: “But what about The Jewish Bride?” Surely that reveals great sympathy toward the couple?”
Gary: “Yes, certainly. There is a marvelous concern for their with interiority and mutuality. But there’s no evidence they are a Jewish couple! That was simply a 19th C. invention. And even the recent suggestion that the picture represents the biblical figures of Isaac and Rebecca is conjectural, based upon the existence of a similar, small sketch of the subject by Rembrandt. But even if that is the iconography, the picture tells us nothing about actual Jews, only biblical ones. Sorry.”
A few minutes later, Gary mercifully changed the subject, and we discussed other matters: travel, gardens, mutual friends, children, grandchildren (his and Loeki’s) and the lack thereof (mine and Harriet’s). We said our goodbyes with warmth. I hope we’ll see them again soon.
Romeyne de Hooghe, The bima in the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam, ca. 1695.
I wobbled out of the café, as if I had been drinking cups of Bols instead of coffee. It was a lovely, sunny day and we wandered the lovely streets without paying much attention to where we were going. After about 20 minutes, we found ourselves in front of the famous Portuguese Synagogue, which we naturally entered. Opened in 1675, the Esnoga is almost perfectly intact from that time, as is apparent by comparisons with contemporary images, such as the etching by Romeyne de Hooghe. The wooden columns, benches, bima, ark, and brass chandeliers are all oversized, but rather than making visitors feel puny, they make them feel like colossi. After taking the audio tour, we left and continued to walk back toward our hotel. As we strolled along Twede Jan van der Heijdenstraat, I happened to look down and saw some shiny cobbles. These were brass Stoplersteine, “stumbling stones,” like I had seen some years ago in Berlin, embedded in pavements to mark the homes of Jews and others killed in the Holocaust. There are about 8,500 such markers in the Netherlands, the majority in Amsterdam. The stones we
Saw belonged to the Sluijter family, Hijman and his wife Sippora, born in 1901, and their two girls Hanna and Rebecca. The parents were both 41 y.o, and their children 14 and 7 when they were arrested and transported to Westerbork, where they were processed before being sent off to Auschwitz to be murdered.
We don’t know much about the Sluijters, except that Sippora (nee Nunes Nabarro) was of Portuguese (Sephardic) decent. Did the family attend Shabbat services at the Portuguese Synagogue? Did Hijman or Sippora notice like me, at the scale of the temple and the miracle of its survival? Did the children marvel at the lights produced by the flicker of a thousand candles in brass chandeliers during sunset services?
As I walked away, that feeling of homelessness again came over me, though Harriet and I would soon be in our snug hotel room, planning where to have our supper. Will there be Stoplersteine for the 30,000 (and counting) Palestinians killed in the Israeli invasion of Gaza? What will visitors to the place have to say about the Israelis who bombed, shot, and displaced thousands of Palestinian families? What will they think about the Americans who supplied the weapons?
Commedia dell’arte Troupe on a Wagon in a Town Square by Jan Miel (1640)
About half of the U.S. is offended and repulsed by the existence of Donald J. Trump while the remaining half welcome him as a Messiah. Passions and opinions rule here to a farcical degree that I find best represented by the Commedia dell’ Arte. We have our stock characters, including foolish old men and the devious who serve them.
It has not been possible to lay any glove of our Constitutional Republic on former President Donald J. Trump, a savior to millions, a yahoo to millions. Facing 91 criminal indictments, he is presently using the courts to campaign for another presidential term. We are at the stage of our comic drama in which every character speaks the truth and knows the facts–all differently. “All 91 of those charges are baseless, churned up by a Deep State that weaponizes the law against Trump,” a MAGA tells me.
If we didn’t face existentially threatening consequences, we could all sit back and enjoy the performances. But are we so seriously threatened? Or could it be that in our palsied cultural attentiveness threats and joy go up and down like the Dow Jones?
On a different stage are tragic performances, dramatic revisions of what liberty is, boldly deleting J.S. Mills’ admonition regarding how far we pursue our own notion of freedom, that is “so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.” At some point in our turning our social order into La Commedia the need to constrain and restrain passions and opinions became a feverish pursuit. Treating La Commedia’s jettisoning of free and open inquiry with a “cancel” therapy feeds our conspiracy appetites, especially regarding a nefarious Deep State, and obscures connections here between our opinions and our choices and our sense of personal freedom as a creation of both.
We’ve escaped into opinions that are sanctified as our very own personal choices. This means that in the age of illusions of personal autonomy and choice, our opinions cannot be questioned, especially by those who oppose them. Hoping to make minorities feel better or safer by policing language does nothing to cancel the illusions of personal autonomy grounded in a “free to choose” fiction. The way to detach our loyalty and privileging of our own opinions is to extend our notion of choice to the surround of constraints within which we and our choices must respond. Canceling language and confining it within the boundaries of what is politically correct, especially on our La Commedia stage where the question of which politics are worthy and which are not, is a comic script.
This is stunning, not the Swiftian ferocious Big-Little Endian warfare but this devolution of discourse that has led us here. The feeble hold we now have of achieving a common understanding of what’s real and what is true and what is transparently false befits the dead and dying, not surely any vibrant social, cultural, civil and democratic electoral order. We are a nation suffering the blindness and confusion of the old and dying.
Appropriately, as if we look to the dead to bury the dead, neither of our two aged presidential candidates seem likely to live through a four-year term. And why would the young not be groomed for office, not offered to us as 2024 Presidential candidates, if not because the future promised to the young is feared, for different reasons, by both political parties? The dying see death on the horizon, speak and act as comatose. For Republicans, thoughts of the future, of life after Trump, cannot be thought; for Democrats, the path from identity politics to socialism creates fear that freezes them. A living politics cannot be produced by the dead. It fits La Commedia, however.
What is falling apart is both thought and imagination. The senescent lose memory so that thought has no roots, the sentence begun loses sight of its ending. Attentions are waylaid by a ceaseless hailing on two dimensions, digital and real. Like the aging, we see the country, falling apart, under attack. our imaginations riveted on the angry and divisive. Passions, both elevating and despicable, take center stage.
We face a presidential election in which only one candidate faces loss while the other will not. He will not accept loss and is supported by those who will ensure he will not have to. We have fearful expectations. A January 6th repeat but with greater militant efficiency most likely scattered throughout the western red states? A U.S. military command fully prepared for flash points of insurgency?
Whether Federal forces trouncing rebels against the Deep State of Federal rule leads to another New Morning in America or even greater anxiety, fear and hate now brewing is an opinion and passion matter. We are far beyond applying a dialectic of reason. Trump is better prepared for victory, telling us that he will move very swiftly to place any silos of opposition under his direct command or put in place elsewhere those who pledge themselves to him, of which there seem to be a growing number. If this were to happen, surely all of the gentrified, meritocratic, socialist-leaning, DE&I, and “Woke” factions would suffer a sickness unto death, while the MAGAs would exult as the minions of Julius Caesar did when he replaced the Roman Republic with himself.
But why would we expect that the collapse of any means to find common understanding and the disorder that collapse engenders would disappear? Why would a country that has lost its way of knowing itself in any prideful hopeful manner suddenly retrieve all that under the rule of an autocrat, one who lives only for himself, and is thus callous about others, society, country and the planet itself? Neither Julius Caesar nor the Roman Republic survived the Dark Woods of Rome itself.
We most likely won’t grow young again in a democratic spirit under an autocratic Trump. Nor will any number of insurrections level out the madness of social media or the power of tech and finance to shape our lives without our consent. We won’t all become gentrifying Woke vegans adapting syntax to 72 genders and requiring Critical Race Theory in every classroom. We’ll still parade viciousness on social media and totter in a pit of confusion as passions fire up and opinions wander further and further down the corridors of conspiracies and the zany mad confusion of La Commedia.
It may be that we’re at the fire on Fort Sumter stage when a State militia fired upon a Federal garrison. Or, from another view, Lincoln orchestrated that to place the onus of starting the war on the South. Southerners were seething with conviction that the presidency and Washington government were trampling on their personal and State sovereignty. The Senate investigation of the January 6th attack was countered with the view that the Feds orchestrated the January 6th insurrection. Perhaps Biden and his liberal, progressive, socialist supporters stand now where Lincoln and the entire Federal government and bureaucracy stood in 186l. April 12th.
But perhaps not, given that the threat of insurgent governmental overthrow rests in one man, Donald J. Trump, a bombastic, corrupt man The “mass party organization, dependent on widespread social violence carried out by organized paramilitary groups,” which describes a fascist threat, is a degree of organization and implementation foreign to a geriatric megalomaniac. (James Butler, “A Circular Motion,” London Review of Books, 8 February 2024) In short, there is no there when it comes to a Trump-triggered revolution. The dangers we face are not in a future that neither party has a plan for, but in a present in the control of the moribund demonstrating an array of rigid inanities.
For instance, we face an “alternative facts” psychosis in the face of knowing that any fact that has an alternative existence can’t be called a fact, at least not on the non-quantum level. We face contesting narratives that at once deflate their authority and credentials by identifying arguments and dialectic discourse itself as “narratives.” No one argues or makes a case. Everyone tells his or her story, narrating their personal take. This madness finds its way out on social media, an exemplum of La Commedia.
Perhaps for some, it is amusing when any case brought forth, no matter how bulletproof, can be dismissed, at your whim, as Deep State “weaponized”? Everyone can, at their own personal discretion, “round up the usual suspects.” Indictments against you are most likely woven conspiratorially, not discovered. Conspiracies, not truths, are exposed. The truth of anything is not mystically hidden but spun within the devious web of the Deep State, a cabal intent on enriching themselves, Woking” Americans (a brainwash?), and destroying “personal freedom.”
On this La Commedia stage, it may be easier to impeach Biden than Trump. Who the patriots are and who the villains are, who to lock up and who to elect cannot be measured. We’ve lost the ruler, or each has its own. Whether it’s Biden who is the Gironte, the old man so old he’s laughable, or it’s Trump, dyed pompadour and orange-tanned face, remains in the eye of the beholder.
One of the many stages of La Commedia is set here where we can stock our narratives with as many alternative facts as we can fictionalize. Trump, Capitano, performs on this stage, attended by his faithful Zanni, or clowns, a Giuliani upstaged by a George Santos, and all the Coviello, or boastful idiots that our world of La Commedia produces.
While the QAnon script, namely, that a cabal of Satanic, cannibalisticchild molesters are operating a global child sex trafficking ring that conspired against Donald Trump, is undoubtedly total La Commedia and on the level of “alternative facts,” and Trump as a Savior, there’s almost equal absurdity in the ways Democrats are “reaching out” to “Everyday Americans.” How that’s done is by pointing out, not that there was human trafficking in a pizza joint tied to Hillary, but, far more insidiously there’s a systemic racism an “Everyday American” may or may not be aware of. Lurking unknown to some may also be misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism, a white supremacist neo-Nazism, a people of different color bigotry and a viral xenophobia that deplores diversity.
Perhaps the quickest path to splitting any social order is to split your opponent’s deeds from their own awareness. A subliminal psychopathy writes your ticket. You are not in charge of your opinions or choices. The passions that rule all our phobias are culturally systemic and out of an individual’s reach. By virtue of the La Commedia tactic the way to realize that Black Lives Matter, trans gendering is a right, and that the LGBTQ+ community has the same rights as Lake Wobegon is a decathexis of your psyche or your country’s.
The way passions are handled in the private sector where the passion for ever higher returns on investment rules is, on our La Commedia stage, tempered by a DEI mandate. The tactic here is to insert diversity, equity and inclusion into the “bottom line,” return on investment and profits to shareholders. All of this gets to a foundational issue of the transference of really knotty problems to TV journalism, cyberspace’s social media, and a politics that bends to lobbyists and the majority vote.
Diversity is what we find in Nature, right down to the quantum level but societal orders are built on a core of common values and acknowledged paths to truth. There’s a need to have congruence beyond incongruence, consensual validation beyond gridlock. When in Commedia dell’arte diversity is isolated as a good in itself without any proposition of how a functioning order can emerge, a unity that is tolerable to more Americans than not, it’s a branding meme without depth. Equity is included in this DEI mandate, signifying a return to the sequence of economic equity moving toward an equality of money and thus power. A ludic demand made to corporations that do not shape themselves as democratic or socialist. The demand for Inclusion is similarly tone deaf as it simply steamrolls over the competitive path to inclusion as the only path on the corporate ladder.
There is little mass appeal in any of this — if the masses here are massed in some places in the country. On one stage of spin and spectacle Democrats are pictured as dispossessing “Everyday Americans”, giving away their rights and their heritage, legislating against them in the name of minority rights. The liberality of Liberals is seen as limited to those who have failed to succeed within the American way of life, a nurturing of failure and not success, all done at taxpayer expense. More crucially upsetting to “Everyday Americans” is the socialist swerve in the Democratic Party, from the popularity of two Bernie Sanders campaigns to the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America to the “Eat the Rich” militancy of the new UAW.
The caveat here is on who bears the mantle of “Everyday American”? Hillary’s “Deplorables”? Trump’s MAGAs? It’s a Populist Politics decision and Trump wins here. Like Humpty Dumpty, he does the naming. He names the politics of Liberals as those of the “Coastal Elite.” The Everyday American is a MAGA. In the game of Populist Politics, Democrats, both as socialist leaning, moral libertines, and language police, are anti-Populist enough to make Donald J. Trump look like the savior of “Everyday Americans.” He’s a dead man walking show who has nevertheless bound to him a Republican party dead at its neo-liberal roots. But on our La Commedia stage, Biden wins the dead man walking contest, though as Dean Baker has clearly summarized Biden has done more for “Everyday Americans” than any Democrat since FDR. (“How Does a Person’s Lived Experience Tell them the Local Economy Is Good, but the National Economy is in the Tank?” Counterpunch Dec 5, 2023) However, on a La Commedia stage nothing is clear, nothing “is what it is” but only what some charismatic figure says it is. That figure is not Biden, the Anti-Charismatic, but Trump, our Zanni.
So it goes in farce. On the stage of our La Commedia where madness may be what social media does to us or what we, in the waning stages of knowing and imagining who we are, do to it, what we can expect with some certainty is that we will lose interest in the present performance. Passion, and hopefully the reasoning and imagining of the young, will take us elsewhere.
Photograph Source: United States Department of State – Public Domain
There is a consensus on the right and the left that the only way to deal with Iran is with military force. The conservative Chicken Hawks in the Senate and the House of Representatives believe targeting Iran—and not merely Iranian proxies—is essential. Senator Lindsay Graham (R/SC) wants to “hit them hard.” The conservative newsmagazine, The Economist, believes that the United States could form a political alliance with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States to isolate Iran.
Authoritative pundits such as Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, and David Ignatius of the Washington Post favor deterring Iran militarily as well as a “robust” military retaliation against Iran’s proxies. Both fully support the U.S. military attacks now taking place in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Ignatius even credits the Biden administration’s recent sanctioning of four violent Israeli settlers on the West Bank as a “strong step” that will enhance U.S. credibility as a peace broker for a Palestinian state. This so-called “strong step” has been ridiculed throughout the Arab world.
The U.S. attack on Iran’s military and affiliated militias in Iraq and Syria as well as the attacks against the Houthis in Yemen raise serious questions. We are told that U.S. forces are in Iraq and Syria to combat the forces of ISIS, which happen to be a leading enemy of Iran. Last month, the U.S. even warned Tehran about an ISIS attack in Iran that killed nearly 100 Iranians. This fact suggests that the United States and Iran have something in common in the region, at least regarding the ISIS threat, and that they should be engaged in bilateral or back-channel discussions. U.S. non-recognition of Iran continues to be an obstacle to talks and should be reconsidered.
We must also reconsider our troop deployments in the Middle East that are vulnerable to attacks by Iranian-backed militia groups. At the very least, we should remove our small force deployments from both Iraq and Syria. The United States cannot deter attacks on these facilities, and our troops there are primarily occupied with force protection.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken was ill-advised to ignore his diplomatic hat in order to doff a military cap, promising U.S. military attacks that would be “multileveled, come in stages, and be sustained over time.” This language should not be coming from the nation’s leading diplomat; this is Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s bailiwick. The Department of State should be grappling with the diplomatic possibilities that exist in the region. The first priority should be a cease fire, particularly in view of the fact that Israeli Defense Forces have killed more than 11,500 children in Gaza. Not even the warnings from the International Court of Justice have altered the IDF’s brutal tactics.
While the United States maintains the vilification of Iran that reached new levels in the Trump administration, the Gulf states have been pursuing rapprochement with Iran that has the United States on the outside looking in. In addition to China’s brokering of the Saudi-Iranian accord in 2023 that led to restoration of diplomatic relations, there have been a series of actions by Gulf states to improve relations with Iran. In 2022, Abu Dhabi restored ties with Iran. If these erstwhile adversaries of Iran can begin a dialogue, then perhaps the United States should be able to do so as well.
Continued Israeli bombardment in Gaza and U.S. attacks in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen threaten the signs of political stability that have taken place in the region over the past several years. Beginning in 2020, which happened to be the year of the Abraham Accords between Israel and the Gulf states of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, there have been signs of greater political accord in the region. In 2021, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain ended their economic blockade of Qatar. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad returned to the Arab League. Saudi Arabia and the UAE reconciled with Turkey, ending the freeze that began in 2018 when the Saudis conducted the brutal killing of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Despite the brutal Israeli campaign in Gaza in the wake of the horrific October 7th events, the Gulf states, somewhat surprisingly, have not weakened relations with Israel.
The Gaza War and the current U.S. military attacks, however, will create greater political instability in the region. The United States will come under increased criticism for supplying military weaponry to Israel; providing diplomatic cover for Israel at the United Nations; and showing insufficient regard for the fate of 2.2 million Gazans. The Arab states in the region do not favor the U.S. escalation of force in the region, and certainly do not want a wider war with Iran.
The mainstream media seem particularly oblivious to the strategic trap that the United States has created for itself in the Middle East with its support for Israeli militarism. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times believes the Biden administration is on the verge of proclaiming a Biden Doctrine for the region that would find a “strategic realignment” that would “coalesce around the U.S. stance on Iran, a Palestinian state, and Saudi Arabia.” Secretary of State Blinken’s five unsuccessful trips to the Middle East suggest that there is no Biden doctrine and that Arabs aren’t even listening to the signals that we are sending.
Friedman argues that Palestinian statehood should be “consistent with Israeli security,” which would not meet the demands of the Saudis and all other Arabs. In any event, the Israeli government is opposed to a two-state solution under any circumstances. Friedman also believes that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar could be persuaded to leave Gaza for Qatar, just as Yasir Arafat left Lebanon in 1982 to go to Tunisia. Very wishful thinking.
Continued Israeli and U.S. use of force will create greater instability in the entire region; contribute to the diplomatic and political influence of Russia and China; and create a wider zone of conflict and crisis. We fail to understand that the disastrous and deceitful invasion of Iraq two decades ago by the Bush administration opened the door to Iran’s influence in Iraq and led to weaker states in the region that also invited support from Iran.
The modest U.S. deployments in Iraq (2,500) and Syria (900) are too small to challenge or deter Iran, but large enough to serve as sitting ducks for attacks by Iranian proxies. These deployments must be ended before more Americans are killed, which would lead to more U.S. bombardment. The United States already has more than sufficient military power in the region at the huge U.S. bases in Bahrain and Qatar that should be able to handle any local military challenge. The fact that the United States flew strategic bombers on a 12,000-mile round trip from bases in Texas to target Yemen, one of the world’s basket cases, seemed particularly incongruent unless we were trying to frighten Iran.
Instead of trying to build an Arab alliance against Iran, the United States should be looking for ways to engage Iran both politically and diplomatically. The Iranian nuclear accord, the Joint Comprehensive Action, provided a diplomatic opening that led to conciliatory gestures on Iran’s side. The cease fire that allowed the exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners also witnessed a cease fire from Iran’s proxies in the region. It is long past time to reduce the U.S. military presence in the region, which the Obama administration promised in 2011, and to play the diplomatic card.
The fact that the court in the Ukraine v. Russia case ordered an immediate cease-fire yet did not impose one in the Gaza conflict in the South Africa v. Israel case presents a quandary. The reality on the ground has not altered in either case, with the average person bearing the burden of armed war and the people of Gaza and Ukraine experiencing genocide, the worst kind of atrocity that is classified as a crime against humanity.
It is an uncomfortable truth that the ICJ’s orders cannot improve the lives of those affected by armed conflict. Disregarding international humanitarian law and human rights legislation has become the norm, and it is often claimed that everything is fair in love and war, whereas the UNO secretary general emphasized that even “WAR HAS RULES”.
“The Court may employ this power only if it is satisfied that the rights asserted by the party requesting such remedies are at least plausible,” according to the plausibility test. It lessens the effect of laws against genocide, but the term “fundamental” needs to be applied when any state or non-state actor is suspected of committing genocide. Trindade clarified his stance:
“There is great need of serious reflection on this superficial use of “plausible”, which is devoid of a meaning. I do not intend to reiterate here all the criticisms I have been making on resort to “plausible”, whatever that means. May I just recall that, in the course of last year (2018), on more than one occasion I dwelt upon this matter. Thus, in my separate opinion in the case of Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Qatar v. United Arab Emirates), I pondered that “The test of so-called ‘plausibility’ of rights is, in my perception, an unfortunate invention — a recent one — of the majority of the ICJ. It appears that each one feels free to interpret so-called ‘plausibility’ of rights in the way one feels like; this may be due to the fact that the Court’s majority itself has not elaborated on what such ‘plausibility’ means. To invoke ‘plausibility’ as a new ‘precondition’, creating undue difficulties for the granting of provisional measures of protection in relation to a continuing situation, is misleading, it renders a disservice to the realization of justice.”
It is worthwhile to read this opinion, as it can provide the ICJ with guidance on how best to use the judicialization of armed conflict so that it is not just empty rhetoric but also has some real-world impact.
Furthermore, he emphasizes that it is not always possible to analyze both international and non-international armed conflicts from a state-centered perspective due to the emergence of modern human rights law, which, unlike the colonial understanding of international law, also views the individual as the subject of the state. The ICJ should consider the matter beyond the narrow concept of state, as shown below, as it is also an imperial construct of international law:
“The present case once again shows that the determination and ordering of provisional measures of protection under the Convention against Genocide, and under human rights conventions, can only be properly undertaken from a humanist perspective, necessarily avoiding the pitfalls of an outdated and impertinent State voluntarist outlook.”
In a multipolar world where the post-World War II international order is having trouble coordinating and harmonizing, as well as implementing international human rights, humanitarian law, and genocide rules, things are becoming worse. It is impossible to disregard Judge Trindade’s opinion, which has the authority to give the ICJ’s interim order and the judicialization of armed conflict importance and intent.
Even the US business magazine Forbes expressed surprise at the reimposition of US sanctions on Venezuela’s gold sales and its threat to do the same with oil. The oil sanctions especially, if reinstated, would precipitate higher gas prices and further debilitate the Venezuelan economy, forcing more people to leave the country out of economic necessity.
The Venezuelan government, for its part, has not been contrite. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez protested “the wrong step of intensifying economic aggression against Venezuela.” She warned that if Washington takes the threatened measures, Venezuela will cancel repatriation flights returning Venezuelan immigrants back from the US.
Is Biden shooting himself in the foot in an election year with major vulnerabilities from inflation and unpopular immigration? The New Timesdescribes these weaknesses as a “major crisis” for the incumbent US president. Adding to the Democrats’ woes, many Venezuelans in the US – driven here by sanctions –support Republicans.
Barbados agreement temporarily eases sanctions
The State Department accused the Venezuelan government of actions that are “inconsistent” with the Barbados agreement, negotiated last October. This accord arranged a prisoner exchange with the US and the issuance of licenses allowing Venezuela to sell some of its own oil and gold. The agreement promised temporary and partial sanctions relief for Venezuela, although major coercive economic provisions were still left in place.
Even with limited sanctions relief, Venezuela anticipated a 27% increase in revenues for its state-run oil company. Experts predicted a “moderate economic expansion” after having experienced the greatest economic contraction in peacetime of any country in the modern era. Venezuela was on the road to recovery.
Then on January 30, the US rescinded the license for gold sales and threatened to allow the oil license to expire on April 18, which could cost $1.6B in lost revenue. The ostensible reason for the flip in US policy was the failure of the Venezuelan supreme court to overturn previous prohibitions on Maria Corina Machado and some other opposition politicians from running for public office.
The Barbados agreement was predicated on “electoral guarantees.” But there was no mention of specific individualswho had been legally barred from running for office due to past offenses. In fact, these cases were well known. Venezuelan officials had repeatedly insisted that those disqualified would continue to be ineligible. According to Héctor Rodríguez, a member of the Venezuelan government’s delegation to Barbados, forgiveness for crimes was never on the negotiating agenda.
The case of opposition politician Maria Corina Machado
Machado’s treatment by the Venezuelan government has arguably erred more on the side of leniency than severity. In most other countries, a person with her rap sheet would be behind bars. In the US, for example, 467 individuals involved in the 2021 Capitol riot have been sentenced to incarceration for offenses far less egregious than Machado’s.
Back in 2002, Machado signed the Carmona Decree, establishing a coup government. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez had been deposed in a military coup backed by the US. The constitution was suspended, the legislature dismissed, and the supreme court shuttered.
Fortunately for democracy in Venezuela, the coup lasted less than three days. The people spontaneously took to the streets and restored their elected government. Machado, who now incredulously claims she signed the coup government’s founding decree mistakenly, was afforded amnesty.
Machado was subsequently banned from running from public office after she served as the diplomatic representative for Panama in order to testify against her own country. She was also implicated in tax evasion and fraud along with coup attempts. In addition, the hard-rightist had called for a military intervention by the US and for harsh economic coercive measures.
Machado had adamantly refused to contest her electoral ineligibility before the Venezuelan supreme court. But when Washington instructed her to go before the tribunal, she obediently complied. That Machado’s appeal would be denied was “obvious” even to Luis Vicente León, president of the pro-opposition Venezuelan polling company Datanalisis. He explained: “If we are honest, the US government knew full well this was going to happen.”
The New York Timesdescribed the supreme court’s decision to uphold her ban as “a crippling blow to prospects for credible elections…in exchange for the lifting of crippling US economic sanctions.” In other words, the Venezuelans did not bow to blackmail and allow a criminal to run for public office.
Venezuelan opposition
Under-reported is how Machado became the unofficially designated opposition candidate according to the corporate press. Normally in Venezuela opposition presidential primaries are run by the national election authorities, as they are in the US. Machado, however, engineered the primary election to be run privately.
The primaries were riddled with irregularities, and other opposition leaders are livid with Machado. Not only did her political alliance (Plataforma Unitaria) omit some opposition parties from the primaries, but voting records were destroyed after the election. This prevented any accounting when some members of her own coalition claimed fraud. Further, the administration of the opposition primary involved Súmate. Machado was the founder and first president of this private non-governmental organization, a recipient of NED funds.
The opposition has lost credibility with even conservative political commentators in the US such as Ariel Cohen, associated with the Atlantic Council and the Heritage Foundation. He describes the US seizure of the Venezuelan-owned oil subsidiary Citgo as part of its “asphyxiation tactics.” Handed over to the opposition, they ran Citgo to the ground and used their country’s assets for personal gain.
Sanctions “don’t work”
Washington has a problem. Geoff Ramsey with the Atlantic Council revealingly laments: “How do you threaten a regime that’s endured years of crippling sanctions, multiple coup attempts and a failed mercenary invasion?” The unfortunate Yankee solution is more of what Forbescalls “Washington DC’s heavy-handed response” knowingly causing “enormous” human suffering.
As a recent US Congressional Research Service report admitted, the US sanctions “failed” in their implicit goal of regime change but have exacerbated an economic crisis that “has prompted 7.7 million Venezuelans to flee.” The Hillran an opinion piece stating that “sanctions are still hurting everyday Venezuelans – and fueling migration.”
Some Congressional Democrats have called for ending US sanctions. Domestic corporations, such as Chevron, have been clamoring to reopen the Venezuelan market. The UN has roundly condemned sanctions, which they call “unilateral coercive economic measures.” Mexico insists that Biden address the root causes of migration. Other governments in Latin America and beyond are pressuring the US to lift sanctions. Meanwhile, experts in international human rights law censure Washington for illegal collective punishment.
Arguably, the US economy would benefit more by promoting commerce with some 40 sanctioned countries than from restricting trade. And the surest remedy for the immigration crisis on the country’s southern border is to end the sanctions, which are producing conditions that have compelled so many to leave their homes. Even US mainstreammedia has nearly universally concluded that sanctions “don’t work.”
The underlying purpose of sanctions on Venezuela
If sanctions “don’t work,” if they are economically counterproductive, and if they cause so much suffering and ill will, why impose them? The regrettable answer is that sanctions do “work” for the purposes of the US empire.
In 2015 President Obama declared a “national emergency.” Venezuela, he claimed, posed an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the national security of the US. That was not fake news. The imperial hegemon recognizes the “threat of a good example” posed by a country such as Venezuela. As Ricardo Vaz of Venezuelanalysisobserved, Venezuela is “a beacon of hope for the Global South, and Latin America in particular, an affront to US hegemony in its own ‘backyard.’”
Washington’s self-proclaimed “rules-based order” is threatened, especially with the emergence of China as a major world economic power. In the imperial worldview, it is better to have failed states like Libya and Afghanistan than the anathema of a sovereign and socialist Venezuela.
In short, sanctions are a tool to prevent states striving for socialism from succeeding. The US-imposed misery on Venezuela is used by Washington as a cautionary warning of the consequences for a sovereign socialist project in defiance of Yankee domination.
On January 31, Thomas Friedman, ambassador-at-large of American imperial power, delivered a new pitch from his perch at the New York Times, bravely acknowledging “the seriousness and complexity of this dangerous moment” for American hegemony.
What is this ‘dangerous moment?’
Is it the discovery by CIA of a Chinese plan to lay siege to Taiwan, Russian forces advancing on the capital of Ukraine, or thousands of Iranian attack boats blockading the Straits of Hormuz? It’s none of these.
Instead, this ‘dangerous moment’ is the result of actions emanating from a tiny sliver of land no larger than the smaller cities in the United States, whose impoverished population of 2.3 million Palestinians has lived in an open-air prison since 2007, and regularly subjected to carpet bombing by Israel, America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Middle East. It is Gaza that has Thomas Friedman (TF) running scared.
What is it about the human spirit (note to self: Palestinians are human, not ‘human animals’) that compels a weak, ethnically cleansed, terrorized people to resist the might and power of the world’s most ‘civilized’ and powerful nation?
Yes, TF admits obliquely that it is an act of resistance by Gazans that now disturbs the USA, Israel and their Western accomplices.
Until the morning of October 7, 2023, the USA, Israel, and their Arab protectorates were blithely convinced that the ‘juggernaut’ of the so-called Abraham Accords would bury the Palestinians forever.
Yet, after nearly four months of the most destructive bombing in recent history, the esteemed NYT columnist is forced to acknowledge that Gaza “is forcing a fundamental rethinking about the Middle East within the Biden administration.” Is the human spirit still capable of such miracles?
A “rethinking” is underway in the highest councils of the American establishment, TF somberly warns the Iranians. An awareness is growing “that we can no longerallow Iran to try to drive us out of the region, Israel into extinction and our Arab allies into intimidation by acting through proxies…” The added italics are perhaps unnecessary.
Why has the USA ‘allowed’ Iran to challenge its power?
The inestimable Thomas L. Friedman uncharacteristically makes a dangerous confession. Once again, he writes, there is an awareness “that the U.S. will never have the global legitimacy, the NATO allies and the Arab and Muslim allies it needs to take on Iran in a more aggressive manner unless we stop letting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold our policy hostage…”
Did NYT really allow these words to slip onto its op-ed pages? Did the Friedman just acknowledge that the United States allows an Israeli Prime Minister to “hold our policy hostage.” Isn’t this a libel against the Jews? Isn’t this pure antisemitism, pure evil? Send Thomas to Guantanamo!
However, cleverly as always, TF is blaming only one bad Israeli apple, only one Israeli Prime Minister for holding US policy hostage. He is exonerating Israel per se. In reality, Israel has been holding America’s Middle East policy hostage ever since the war of June 1967. This is what all Israeli governments have done over many decades.
If the USA has been letting Israel subvert its policies for decades, what has changed since October 7 that will allow it now to stand up to Israel’s bullying? Far from standing up to Israel, Joe Biden and Tony Blinken have been spending even more time genuflecting before Israeli leaders.
Why then did TF take the trouble to outline what he claims is the new Biden Doctrine purportedly taking shape in Washington?
Arguably, that is because TF likes his job as ambassador-at-large of American imperial power, and he is clever with words, too clever by half. With help from an Iranian native informant – Nader Mousavizadeh, a former executive at the World Economic Forum – therefore, he concocts a Biden Doctrine that he thinks will save American hegemony for a thousand years.
What does Tom’s Biden Doctrine require Joe to do?
Joe must mount a “robust military retaliation against Iran’s proxies.” He must come up with “some form [yes, some form] of US recognition of a demilitarized Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.” This will happen only after Palestinians convince Israel that their state “would never threaten Israel.” Thirdly, Joe must give Saudi Arabia the security guarantees it is demanding as quid pro quo for normalizing its relations with Israel.
If this reads like a sophomoric fantasy, that is because it is.
TF assumes that October 7 never happened; that today’s Middle East hasn’t changed since June 1967; the two-state solution is not dead, despite 720,000 Jewish colons and 256 settler-colonies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem; and the politics that drove America’s Middle East policy for five decades will magically disappear as soon as the USA announces the Biden Doctrine.
These are not the only fantasies that underlie the Biden Doctrine.
It assumes that America’s “robust military retaliation” will destroy Hezbollah, the Houthis and multiple resistance groups in Syria and Iraq; that Israel will destroy Hamas and pacify the West Bank; that the vigorous actions of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza will return the Middle East to where it was after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Israel could bully the United States on nearly all fronts, but there is red line the latter has refused to cross. The US has persistently resisted Israeli pressures to start a war against Iran or join it in attacking Iran’s nuclear assets.
Over more than three decades the US military has vetoed American neocons demanding war against Iran. US bombs did not descend on Iran after the Ayatullah removed the Shah, or after fall of the Soviet Union. After 911, under pressure from the neoconservatives, the USA attacked Iraq not Iran.
Will the US attack Iran now when it has grown its economy, technology, military and proxies to become the leading power in the Middle East, barring the United States. Will the US military risk savaging its reputation again after its disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? Can the USA simultaneously wage a war in the Middle East and the South China Sea?
Is it asking too much to expect TF to get real and do a dozen interviews to understand what October 7 actually says about all the ways in which the Middle East has changed since Operation Shock and Awe?
Let TF ask what is it that has enabled Gazans and the Houthis to make the world turn on a time; what is it that is exposing Israel’s narrative of victimhood for the farce that it is; and why have peoples across the world been mounting daily protests against Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians.
Let him also ask why the United States is so openly, brazenly funding and arming the perpetrator of a genocidal war when it should be working very hard to play down its history of war-mongering against the Global South. Can an America that bombs compete with a China that builds?
What is the lunacy that leads Western leaders, at a single cue from Israel, to collectively defund UNRWA and, thereby, worsen the famine-like conditions forced upon the Gazans by Israel’s genocidal war?
Are Europe’s leaders trying to kill off the Gazans before they begin showing up on Europe’s shores, once Israel drives them out of Gaza?
Are Western elites slipping into a hysteria as the Global South is finally beginning to break free from the grip of Western hegemony?
Since Thomas Loren Friedman has now dared to stand up to Israel, let him also summon the moral courage of Aimé Césaire, a Martinican poet and revolutionary, to remind Western leaders that “A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization.”
But that would be asking a leopard to change its spots.
Is there a chance that this might happen? We have witnessed a few miracles lately. Will Thomas surprise with us another minor miracle?
Photograph Source: Cheongwadae / Blue House – KGOL Type 1
In recent days, U.S. media have been proclaiming that North Korea plans to initiate military action against its neighbor to the south. An article by Robert L. Carlin and Siegfried S. Hecker, neither previously prone to making wild assertions, created quite a splash and set off a chain reaction of media fear-mongering. In Carlin’s and Hecker’s assessment, “[W]e believe that, like his grandfather in 1950, Kim Jong Un has made a strategic decision to go to war.” They add that if North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is convinced that engagement with the United States is not possible, then “his recent words and actions point toward the prospects of a military solution using [his nuclear] arsenal.” [1]
U.S. officials have stated that while they do not see “an imminent risk of a full-scale war on the Korean Peninsula,” King Jong Un “could take some form of lethal military action against South Korea in the coming months after having shifted to a policy of open hostility.” [2] How do these sensationalist claims stack up against the evidence?
It is no secret that lately, the stance of the United States and South Korea has hardened against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK – the formal name for North Korea). Since the centerpiece for suggesting that war may be on the horizon is Kim’s speech at the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly, its content is worth examining in some detail. [3] What strikes one when reading the text is that mainstream media have taken quotes out of context and ignored much of the content of Kim’s speech, creating an impression of unprovoked belligerence.
Also generally absent from media reporting is the speech’s relationship to the backdrop of events since the far-right Yoon Suk Yeol became president of South Korea in May 2022. Yoon came into office determined to smash every vestige of the improved inter-Korean environment established during his predecessor’s term. Instead, Yoon prioritized making South Korea a subordinate partner in the Biden administration’s hyper-militarized Indo-Pacific Strategy.
To fully understand Kim Jong Un’s speech, one must also consider the nature of the Biden administration’s rapid military escalation in the Asia-Pacific. The United States conducts a virtually nonstop series of military exercises at North Korea’s doorstep, practicing the bombing and invasion of that nation. One South Korean analyst has counted 42 joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises conducted in 2023 alone, along with ten more involving Japan. [4] Those totals do not include exercises that the U.S. and South Korea engaged in outside of Northeast Asia, such as Exercise Talisman Sabre in Australia and Exercise Cobra Gold in Thailand. Moreover, U.S. actions on the Korean Peninsula must also be situated within the broader geopolitical framework of its hostility towards China.
Last year, in an act of overt intimidation, the United States conducted seven exercises with nuclear-capable bombers over the Korean Peninsula. [5] Additional flights involved the B-1 bomber, which the U.S. Air Force says “can rapidly deliver massive quantities of precision and non-precision weapons.” [6] Through its actions, the United States sends far more provocative messages than anything that could be honestly construed in Kim’s speech. But then, we are led to see nothing amiss in such aggressive behavior from the United States. Nevertheless, the threat is real and unmistakable from the targeted nation’s perspective.
It also has not gone unnoticed in Pyongyang that U.S. and South Korean military forces regularly conduct training exercises to practice assassinating Kim Jong Un and other North Korean officials. [7] Just this month, U.S. Green Berets and soldiers from South Korea’s Special Warfare Command completed training focused on the targeted killing of North Korean individuals. [8] The Biden administration avers that it harbors no hostile intent toward the DPRK, but its actions say otherwise, loud and clear.
North Korea, with a GDP that the United Nations ranks just behind that of Congo and Laos, is considered such a danger that the U.S. must confront it with substantial military might. An inconvenient question that is never asked is why the DPRK is singled out for punishment and threats when the other nuclear non-members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty – each armed with ballistic missiles — are not. What distinguishes North Korea from India, Pakistan, and Israel? How is it that North Korea is regarded as a threat to peace but not Israel, notwithstanding mounting evidence to the contrary? The essential distinction is that North Korea is the only one of the four that is not a U.S. ally; moreover, one which the U.S. wishes to retain the ability to bomb, whether or not it ever exercises the option to do so.
It is a tribute to the persuasiveness of propaganda that the United States, with its record of multiple wars, bombings, and drone assassinations in recent decades, can convince so many that the DPRK, which has done none of these things during the same period, is a danger to international peace and stability. Yet, such towering hypocrisy goes largely unnoticed. It would appear that there is no principle involved in targeting only North Korea and not the other nuclear-armed non-members of the NPT — unless outrage over a small nation following an independent path being able to defend itself can be regarded as a principle.
Predictably, Washington think tank analysts and media commentators are throwing more heat than light on the subject of Kim’s pronouncements, and they are always ready with a cliché at hand. Some, like Bruce W. Bennett of RAND Corporation, let their imagination run wild, conjuring bizarre absurdities. Bennett suggests that armed with more nuclear weapons in the years ahead, North Korea “could threaten one or more U.S. cities with nuclear attack if the United States does not repeal its sanctions against North Korea.” Or perhaps, he suggests, the DPRK could threaten the U.S. with a limited nuclear attack “unless it abandons its alliance with [South Korea]” or “disengage from Ukraine.” As for South Korea, Bennett warns that Kim might insist that it “pay him $100 billion per year and permanently discontinue producing K-pop…” [9] This is what passes as expert analysis in Washington.
The military section of Kim’s speech was at root defensive, pointing out that North Korea’s “security environment has been steadily deteriorated” and that if it wants to take “the road of independent development,” it must be fully prepared to defend itself. Kim quotes specific threats made by U.S. and South Korean leaders to emphasize his awareness that his nation is in the crosshairs.
At one point in his speech, Kim suggested that the constitution could specify “the issue of completely occupying, subjugating and reclaiming the ROK [Republic of Korea, the formal name for South Korea] and annex it…in case war breaks out…” He added, “There is no reason to opt for war, and therefore, there is no intention of unilaterally going to war, but once a war becomes a reality facing us, we will never try to avoid it.” Such a war, he warned, “will terribly destroy the entity called the Republic of Korea and put an end to its existence” and “inflict an unimaginably crushing calamity and defeat upon the U.S.” Kim continues, “If the enemies ignite a war, our Republic will resolutely punish the enemies by mobilizing all its military forces including nuclear weapons.” Harsh language, indeed, intended to remind the war hawks in Washington and Seoul not to imagine that their nations are invulnerable if they attack the DPRK. Note also the conditional phrasing, which tends to get downplayed in Western media.
Even less attention is paid to more direct clarifying language, such as Kim’s statement that the DPRK’s military is for “legitimate self-defense” and “not a means of preemptive attack for realizing unilateral reunification by force of arms.” And: “Explicitly speaking, we will never unilaterally unleash a war if the enemies do not provoke us.”
It was entirely predictable that Western media would put the worst spin on Kim’s blunt language that mirrored earlier South Korean pronouncements. The month before Kim’s speech, South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik warned, “North Korea has only two choices – peace or destruction. If North Korea makes reckless actions that harm peace, only a hell of destruction awaits them.” [10] A few days later, Yoon ordered his military to launch an “immediate and overwhelming response” to any provocation by the DPRK. [11] Yoon and South Korean military officials use the term ‘provocation’ so loosely as to encompass almost any action the DPRK takes that they do not like, including what is normal behavior for other nations – or for South Korea itself, for that matter. South Korean and North Korean rhetoric identifying each other as enemies and destruction in the event of war differ in that the former preceded the latter. By ignoring the fact that North Korea is reacting to prior South Korean statements, mainstream media can portray Kim’s language as unprovoked.
Last December, Yoon heightened the risk of conflict when he visited an infantry division near the border and gave them an order: “In case of provocations, I ask you to immediately retaliate in response and report it later.” [12] Vague in defining neither “provocation” nor the appropriate response level and delegating to lower-level commanders to decide those questions, this formula potentially can transform a minor clash of arms into a conflict of wider impact.
Kim’s statements are presented in Western media as tantamount to a plan to start a war. Earlier statements of a similar nature by the Yoon administration that created an acrimonious atmosphere are rendered invisible or uncontroversial. It is fair to say that given North Korea’s longstanding practice of responding in kind, Kim may have adopted more restrained phrasing without South Korean officials setting the tone.
Western media have raised concerns over Kim’s labeling of South Korea as a “principal enemy.” We are not reminded that nearly one year before, South Korea had re-designated the DPRK as “our enemy” in its Defense White Paper. [13]Under Yoon’s predecessor, Moon Jae-in, the defense paper dropped the reference to North Korea as an enemy. [14]The general pattern has been for liberal presidents to shun that tag in the interests of inter-Korean relations and for conservative presidents to embrace it as one element in their project to undo progress. Yoon himself frequently refers to North Korea as the enemy, and his administration’s National Security Strategy document describes the Kill Chain system, which is designed to launch preemptive strikes on North Korea. [15] In omitting such details, cause and effect are inverted, reinforcing the media-constructed Orientalist image of an irrational leader at the helm of the DPRK, prone to unpredictable statements and rash acts.
Patience has run thin in Pyongyang, as Biden’s trilateral alliance with South Korea and Japan, “buoyed with war fever,” as Kim put it, sharply escalates military tensions in the region. In a sharp reversal, North Korea has abandoned its longstanding policy of seeking improved inter-Korean relations and working toward peaceful reunification. Any headway achieved in the past has quickly been undone in South Korea whenever the conservative party came to power. Still, Yoon has taken matters further than the norm, not only willfully dynamiting inter-Korean relations but also deliberately raising the risk of military conflict. Inter-Korean relations have reached such a nadir under Yoon that the DPRK sees no hope of progress in the current circumstances. The North Koreans are not wrong in that perception.
Sadly, in a clear signal of its exasperation with Yoon, North Korea demolished the Arch of Reunification in Pyongyang, and all governmental bodies responsible for reunification planning and projects were shut down. The latter steps are not inherently irreversible, however. But as long as Yoon remains in power, there is no conceivable possibility of progress on reunification. Yoon has slammed the door shut on inter-Korean relations.
One would never know it from Western reports, but more than two-thirds of Kim’s speech focused on economic development. “The supreme task,” Kim announced, “is to stabilize and improve the people’s living as early as possible.” Peace is an essential prerequisite for the realization of that goal. North Koreans are well aware of American and South Korean military capabilities, and a war would not only wipe out new economic projects but most of the existing infrastructure as well.
Immense damage has been done to the DPRK’s economy by sanctions designed to target the entire population and inflict as much suffering as possible. [16] The period when North Korea closed its border with China in response to the COVID-19 pandemic added to economic challenges. Reversing direction is imperative. In his speech, Kim called for “a radical turn in the economic construction and improvement of the people’s living standard” and said that progress is being made “despite unprecedented trials.” Kim enumerated industrial, power, housing, and other ongoing projects.
Kim admitted there have been internal challenges in economic development. “It is a reality that the Party and the government yet fail to meet even the simple demand of the people in life…” In particular, regional and urban-rural economic imbalances have plagued the North Korean economy for decades. “At present,” Kim continued, “there is a great disparity of living standards between the capital city and provinces and between towns and the countryside.” Kim acknowledged that these issues have not been adequately addressed in the past, but it “is an immediate task” to do so now.
Kim took the occasion to officially unveil the launch of the Regional Development 20×10 Policy. This ambitious plan calls for substantially raising material and cultural standards in twenty counties over the next ten years, including constructing regional industrial factories and establishing advanced educational institutions. In particular, emphasis is to be given to scientific and technological development. The aim is to even out regional imbalances and to accelerate overall development.
None of this can be achieved if the U.S. and South Korea are showering the DPRK with high explosives, and the Regional 20×10 Policy makes nonsense of Western scaremongering that Kim has decided to go to war. As usual, though, when it comes to reporting on North Korea, assertion substitutes for evidence, and we can expect Washington think tanks, U.S. media, military contractors, and the Biden administration to capitalize on the manufactured image of a war-mad Kim Jong Un to accelerate the military buildup in the Asia-Pacific, aimed against the DPRK and the People’s Republic of China. For his part, Yoon can be expected to amplify military tensions on the Korean Peninsula and sharpen his war on South Korean progressives. What is not in the cards is militarism abating in the foreseeable future.
Notes.
[1] Robert L. Carlin and Siegfried S. Hecker, “Is Kim Jong Un Preparing for War,” 38 North, January 11, 2024.
[2] Edward Wong and Julian E. Barnes, “U.S. is Watching North Korea for Signs of Lethal Military Action,” New York Times, January 25, 2024.
[3] “Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un Makes Policy Speech at 10th Session of the 14th SPA,” KCNA, January 16, 2024.
Despite the horrific war in Gaza and the unprecedented number of casualties, millions of Palestinians in the Middle East and around the world took a brief respite from their collective pain to watch their national football team make history in Doha.
The Palestinian team, also known as Fada’ii – the freedom fighter – scored a decisive win against Hong Kong on January 23. Even though the ‘Lions of Canaan’ finished in third place, following Iran and the UAE, they still managed to make it to the round of 16 of the AFC Asian Cup for the first time in history.
Like the FIFA World Cup, also held in Doha in November 2022, Palestine was present in all AFC games, where Palestinian flags were waved by thousands of Arab fans.
Palestinian players came to Doha from Palestine itself, and also from throughout the Middle East – in fact, the world. They include the Chilean Palestinian player, Camilo Saldaña, and the likes of Oday Dabbagh, a Jerusalemite who is currently playing professionally in Belgium.
Sports, for Palestinians, is a symbol of unity but also persistence. Very few sports teams in the world have been through what these youth have experienced, whether in the form of direct harm to them and their families, or through their association with the Palestinian collective.
Yet, the fact that they can, against all odds, attend games, participate in tournaments, equalize against such prestigious teams as the UAE, and even win, is a sign that the Palestinian nation will never be erased, not 75 years after the Nakba, or a thousand years from now.
A very long distance away, another Palestine-linked team, the Chilean Deportivo Palestino, continues to express its historic connection to Palestine, despite the distance, different geopolitical spaces, culture and language.
Before FIFA admitted Palestine as a member in 1996, Deportivo Palestino served, at a more symbolic level, as the Palestinian national team in exile. Its players donned football jerseys adorned with Palestinian cultural symbols and other historical references to Palestine – a map, the colors of the flag and so on.
Quite often, the players would enter the Primera Division stadiums wearing the iconic Palestinian black and white keffiyeh.
Palestino is over 100 years old, and the history of the Palestinian community in Chile is older than this. It was Palestinian Christians, not Muslims, who established the community there, which refutes the claim that the so-called Palestinian-Israeli conflict is one over religion.
While faith and spirituality are critical signifiers in the Palestinian national identity, Palestinians are driven by the kind of values which allow them to find their common ground, whether they are in Gaza, Jerusalem, Santiago or Doha.
While Palestinians, like the vast majority of people around the world, are football fanatics, for them sports is not just about sports.
Imagine a football field brimming with Palestinians from different religious, geographic, political, cultural and ideological backgrounds. They come, whether as fans or players, motivated by a single objective, celebrating their culture while emphasizing their national continuity, as an immovable reality despite the ongoing attempts aimed at its erasure.
Here, other symbols become relevant: The flag, as a banner that unifies all Palestinians despite political factionalism; the keffiyeh, the ancient peasant symbol, used to fight colonialism over the course of many decades; the map, presented without lines, walls, fences or zones, to remind them that they belong to a single historical narrative, and so on.
In fact, there is more to symbolism. Arab and Muslim masses, all rallying around Palestinians in their quest for freedom and justice, also send a strong and unmistakable message: Palestinians are not alone; they are, in fact, part and parcel of cultural, geographic, historical and spiritual continuity that spans many generations, national flags and even borders.
While millions of people are currently feeling the pain of Gaza, expressing unprecedented solidarity with the suffering civilian population, Arab masses feel that pain at a whole different level. It feels as if the Arab and Muslim peoples have internalized the pain of Gaza as if it were their own. In many ways, it is.
Yet, despite the indescribable pain and suffering of millions of innocent civilians, there is always that historic certainty that Palestine will, as it has always done, ultimately prevail over its torment and tormentor.
Here, no other symbolism can serve the role of the powerful metaphor as that of the olive tree. It is as old as history, as rooted as hope and, despite everything that this tree continues to endure in the land of Palestine, it will continue to produce some of the world’s best olive oil.
Palestinian farmers do not simply see their olive orchards as a source of income but as a source of strength and love. The late Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, wrote in his seminal poem, “The Second Olive Tree”: “If the Olive Trees knew the hands that planted them, Their Oil would become Tears”.
One day, Palestine will become a reality, free of pain, suffering and tears. But even then, Palestine will continue to be a generator of meaning that will keep future generations as conscious of their past as they are eager for the future.
“But what then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.”
– Albert Camus, “Reflections on the Guillotine”
Kenneth Smith was executed by the state of Alabama for a contract killing. He was paid by a pastor to murder his wife. The state of Alabama paid an execution squad to strap Kenneth Smith to a death gurney, clamp a mask over his face, and suffocate him to death with nitrogen gas. Smith thrashed and convulsed for at least four minutes as the nitrogen squeezed the oxygen out of his lungs. What is the message here?
Nitrogen hypoxia was touted as an efficient and humane method of killing humans. Compared to what? The lynchings of 340 people that took place in Alabama between 1877 and 1943? The electric chair? Hanging? Firing squad? Lethal injection, which the state previously used to try to kill Smith and failed? It took Kenneth Smith at least 22 minutes to die, gasping for breath, his stomach heaving, vomiting into his gas mask. Is this the new definition of humane? Is 22 minutes to death a new measure of efficiency?
According to Alabama’s State Attorney General, Steve Marshall, it was a “textbook” case of execution. Who wrote the textbook, Dr. Mengele? Marshall bragged about the execution as if Alabama had been the first state to land a man on Mars: “As of last night, nitrogen epoxy as a means of execution is no longer an untested method; it is a proven one.” Marshall sounded like a pitchman for an execution franchise.
Even though they managed, barely it seems, to kill Kenneth Smith, the state still can’t find any doctors willing to supervise its lethal gassings and lend the killings medical legitimacy. They can’t even find a willing veterinarian. Will Alabama state colleges and universities replace their sociology degrees with a BS in Death Penalty Administration? Will community colleges offer certificates in the proper application of Execution Technologies?
But did the execution of Kenneth Smith really go as smoothly as Marshall claimed? We were told that Smith would slip into unconsciousness almost immediately after the valves were opened and the nitrogen began to flow into his lungs. He didn’t. We were told that the execution would be painless. It wasn’t. We were told it would all be over in minutes. It wasn’t.
It’s impossible to know the full details of what really happened to Kenneth Smith. How much agony he experienced, how long he struggled for breath, how long it took him to die. Why? Because the state of Alabama closed the curtain on the death chamber before Smith was pronounced dead. The handful of witnesses allowed in the execution viewing room weren’t able to witness his death, only the preamble of his killing. What is the state hiding behind its fatal curtain? An affinity for torture?
How long did it take Kenneth Smith to die? We don’t know for sure. At least 22 minutes. But perhaps as long as 28 minutes. A long time. But perhaps that’s the kind of death Alabama wants. Given the blood-thirsty statements of Governor Kay Ivey and AG Marshall, you’d be forgiven for thinking so.
None of the witnesses were allowed cellphones, cameras, tape recorders, notebooks, pens or pencils in the theater of death. The witnesses had to memorialize the killings in their minds. Here’s what Matt Roney of the Montgomery Advertiser saw: “Smith writhed and convulsed on the gurney. He appeared to be fully conscious when the gas began to flow. He took deep breaths, his body shaking violently with his eyes rolling in the back of his head…Smith clenched his fists, his legs shook under the tightly tucked-in white sheet that covered him from his neck down. He seemed to be gasping for air.”
Smith’s spiritual adviser Jeff Hood stood next to Smith during the execution. Here’s how Hood described the state killing to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now: “What we saw was minutes of someone struggling for their life. We saw minutes of someone heaving back and forth. We saw spit. We saw all sorts of stuff from his mouth develop on the mask. We saw this mask tied to the gurney and him ripping his head forward over and over and over again. And we also saw correction officials in the room who were visibly surprised at how bad this thing went.”
The US Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. But Kenneth Smith’s execution proves these words have lost all meaning. By a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court allowed Alabama to kill Smith. But the cowardly court couldn’t even be bothered to put their reasoning in writing as to why an experimental method of execution didn’t qualify as “unusual” and how a second attempt to kill a man wasn’t considered “cruel.” You can see why these usually garrulous jurists remained mute. Their logic would have been as tortured as the execution itself.
Kenneth Smith was put to death for a murder for hire that took place in 1988. What was gained by his execution? Was he a threat to kill again? By all accounts, he’d been a model prisoner for 35 years.
Kenneth Smith was put to death even though the person who subcontracted him to do the killing, Billy Gray Williams, was sentenced to life without parole.
Kenneth Smith was put to death, even though a jury recommended by an 11-1 vote he receive a life sentence. This recommendation was overruled by the judge in the case, who unilaterally imposed a sentence of death.
Kenneth Smith was put to death, even though the State of Alabama has since banned judicial overrides of jury recommendations in death penalty cases.
Kenneth Smith was put to death, even though the State of Alabama had previously tried to kill him by injecting him with a lethal cocktail of drugs but botched the execution.
Kenneth Smith was put to death, even though the method used to kill him was experimental and had been banned by veterinarians for use on mammals.
Kenneth Smith was put to death, even though the family of his victim pleaded for his life.
Does Kenneth Smith’s execution make anyone feel safer? Thirty-five years after the crime does it make anyone feel like “justice” was done, that a “message” had been sent? If so, what kind of message?
Does killing Kenneth Smith act as a deterrent to potential murderers? Since the moratorium on the death penalty was lifted by the US Supreme Court in 1976, Alabama has executed 76 people, the seventh most of any state in the Union. Yet Alabama’s homicide rate is the fourth highest in the US. Alabama and Oregon have roughly the same population. There were 721 homicides in Alabama last year and only 204 in Oregon. Oregon placed a moratorium on executions in 2011 and has only executed 2 people since 1976. One might argue that the death penalty actually increases homicide rates. Killing begets killing.
So why was Kenneth Smith executed?
The family of Elizabeth Sennett can’t tell you.
Constitutional scholars can’t tell you.
The Catholic Church can’t tell you.
The people who witnessed his death can’t tell you.
His spiritual advisor can’t tell you.
The Supreme Court won’t tell you.
But the State of Alabama will.
Kenneth Smith was executed to advertise that the State of Alabama could kill. It’s as simple and gruesome as that. Not kill efficiently or humanely (as if executions could ever qualify as such). But kill. If its bumbling death squad couldn’t find a vein to poison before, they could locate his lungs this time around. If they couldn’t find a doctor to administer lethal drugs before, they now found people willing to strap a mask around his face, turn on the gas and watch him die, gasping and writhing, for as long as it took without any moral hesitation. The state had found a new way to kill humans and the humans willing to do the job–for a price.
Who benefits? Not the people of Alabama. Not the state’s already strapped budget, which expended millions to put him to death. Only the state’s pitiless politicians, a group so monstrous they are willing to use human sacrifice as a campaign theme.
The State of Alabama has become the very thing it claimed to be punishing: a contract killer.
“Kim Jong-un has made a strategic decision to go to war. The danger is already far beyond the routine warnings in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo about Pyongyang’s ‘provocations’.”
– Robert Carlin (former State Department analyst) and Siegfried S. Hecker (nuclear scientist and former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory), Stimson Center website 38 North, Discussion of North Korea attack against South Korea, January 11, 2024.
“It’s reached a very, very high level of tension. War could essentially happen anytime.”
– Lyle Goldstein, Director of Asia engagement at Defense Priorities, Discussion of Chinese attack against Taiwan.
“The implications of Putin’s victory in Ukraine…will only encourage more threats and more war, first in Europe and then in Asia.”
– Michael McFaul, professor at Stanford University and former ambassador to Russia, Substack, January 26, 2024.
“The world war potential is really, really significant.”
– Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen, New York Times, January 30. 2024.
Nicholas Kristof, opinion columnist for the New York Times, asked last week if American anxiety about war can become self-fulfilling. I don’t believe so, but I do believe that the various experts, cited above, are irresponsibly anticipating an outbreak of war without any evidence to support such assertions. It must be emphasized that there is no hard evidence available for any of these lines of dangerous speculation that is available to those outside the intelligence community. Furthermore, they neglect the larger geopolitical picture that suggests various deterrents to the wars they are anticipating.
These “expert” opinions receive enormous attention in the mainstream media, however, particularly in the New York Times and the Washington Post. This certainly contributes to the anxiety of the American people. The irresponsible debate that is currently taking place regarding going to war against Iran adds to that anxiety, and puts a great deal of pressure on the Biden administration, already facing uncertain reelection prospects.
McFaul’s expectation of an expanded war with Russia is particularly unworthy. McFaul, an academic who was an ambassador to Russia for the Obama administration, confessed that he believed that Russian President Vladimir Putin “surely will be satiated if, God forbid, he succeeds in annexing more of Ukrainian territory.” But after a trip to Lithuania last week and meetings with government officials and regional experts, he shares their fears that “Putin is only getting started.” McFaul believes that Putin has “transformed Russia into a wartime economy,” and that there is a possibility of a “direct, conventional war between NATO and Russia.”
McFaul’s arguments would make some sense if it were not for the fact that Russia has done so poorly against the inadequately trained and supplied Ukrainian forces on its border. Putin’s military has failed in key conventional situations and, as a result, has been forced to withdraw from attacks on Kyiv, Kharkov, and Kherson. The long-term prospects for Russia’s economy are very weak, and Russia has gone hat in hand with Third World states such as Iran and North Korea for military weaponry.
Moscow’s western border is studded with NATO members as well as a NATO organization that has significantly increased its military prowess. Over the past year, NATO has increased its military spending by nearly $200 billion, which nearly equals Russia’s annual defense budget. This argues strongly against Russia undertaking military action in the West against any of the 31 members of NATO.
The argument from Carlin and Hecker is particularly irresponsible because they have no way of knowing if North Korea’s Kim Jong-un has reached a drop-dead decision to go to war, which would be suicidal in any event. Since Kim came to power in 2011, he has used his nuclear weapons program to attract attention from the West in order to engage in diplomatic negotiations. There is no reason to believe that the current test of his strategic inventory is any different at this stage. It is unlikely that Kim would make a decision to go to war without the approval of China, just as his grandfather sought the approval of Stalin and Mao before invading the South in 1950. The last thing that China’s Xi Jinping would want right now would be a regional war between North and South Korea that would bring the United States and Japan into the war.
Germany’s former ambassador to North Korea, Thomas Schafer, makes far more sense in arguing that Kim is resorting to a buildup of tensions in order to drive a hard bargain should Donald Trump return to the White House. This would, of course, be consistent with Pyongyang’s past efforts to begin negotiations, which have involved cycles of threat and engagement. The United States has contributed to the tension by maintaining a policy of non-recognition of North Korea, which leaves little room for diplomacy and far too much room for reliance on military maneuvering. Many of North Korea’s weapons tests have followed military exercises between the United States and South Korea.
Goldstein’s anticipation of an imminent Chinese attack against Taiwan is also puzzling in view of the improved relations between President Joe Biden and Xi Jinping as well as the overall improvement of relations between Washington and Beijing. Ian Bremmer, founder of Eurasia Group, believes that the “biggest upside surprise of recent months has got to be the stabilization of U.S.-China relations.” Military-to-military talks have resumed, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has held private talks with China’s top diplomat.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media is predictably advocating the use of greater military force by the United States. In recent days, for example, the Washington Post has run lead editorials that were titled “North Korea goes from bad to much, much worse” and “The U.S. needs to strike Iran, and make it smart.” The New York Times ran a long article (“A Worried NATO Prepares for a Russian Invasion”) that gives credibility to the idea that Putin “could invade a NATO nation over the coming decade” and that NATO “might have to face his forces without U.S. support.”
Have we forgotten so soon that it was the Bush administration’s misuse of military power against Iraq in 2003 that led to the chaos that now dominates the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. If ever there were a time for official Washington to take a deep breath and to consider the diplomatic options for dealing with Iran and North Korea as well as Russia and China, this is it.
(@broseph_stalin) 
