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Category: United States

  • US Chooses Genocide Over Diplomacy in the Middle East


    Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in Rafah, the last refuge in southern Gaza. Photo credit: MENAFN

    On February 7, 2024, a U.S. drone strike assassinated an Iraqi militia leader, Abu Baqir al-Saadi, in the heart of Baghdad. This was a further U.S. escalation in a major new front in the U.S.-Israeli war on the Middle East, centered on the Israeli genocide in Gaza, but already also including ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Syria, and the U.S. and U.K.’s bombing of Yemen.

    This latest U.S. attack followed the U.S. bombing of seven targets on February 2, three in Iraq and four in Syria, with 125 bombs and missiles, killing at least 39 people, which Iran called “a strategic mistake” that would bring “disastrous consequences” for the Middle East.

    At the same time, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been touring the shrinking number of capitals in the region where leaders will still talk to him, playing the United States’ traditional role as a dishonest broker between Israel and its neighbors, in reality partnering with Israel to offer the Palestinians impossible, virtually suicidal terms for a ceasefire in Gaza.

    What Israel and the United States have proposed, but not made public, appears to be a second temporary ceasefire, during which prisoners or hostages would be exchanged, possibly leading to the release of all the Israeli security prisoners held in Gaza, but in no way leading to the final end of the genocide. If the Palestinians in fact freed all their Israeli hostages as part of a prisoner swap, it would remove the only obstacle to a catastrophic escalation of the genocide.

    When Hamas responded with a serious counter-proposal for a full ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, Biden dismissed it out of hand as “over the top,” and Netanyahu called it “bizarre” and “delusional.”

    The position of the United States and Israel today is that ending a massacre that has already killed more than 27,700 people is not a serious option, even after the International Court of Justice has ruled it a plausible case of genocide under the Genocide Convention. Raphael Lemkin, the Polish holocaust survivor who coined the term genocide and drafted the Genocide Convention from his adopted home in New York City, must be turning in his grave in Mount Hebron Cemetery.

    The United States’ support for Israel’s genocidal policies now goes way beyond Palestine, with the U.S. expansion of the war to Iraq, Syria and Yemen to punish other countries and forces in the region for intervening to defend or support the Palestinians. U.S. officials claimed the February 2 attacks were intended to stop Iraqi Resistance attacks on U.S. bases. But the leading Iraqi resistance force had already suspended attacks against U.S. targets on January 30th after they killed three U.S. troops, declaring a truce at the urging of the Iranian and Iraqi governments.< A senior Iraqi military officer told BBC Persian that at least one of the Iraqi military units the U.S. bombed on February 2nd had nothing to do with attacks on U.S. bases. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani negotiated an agreement a year ago to clearly differentiate between Popular Mobilization Force (PMF) units that were part of the “Axis of Resistance” fighting a low-grade war with U.S. occupation forces, and other PMF units that were not involved in attacks on U.S. bases.

    Tragically, because the U.S. failed to coordinate its attacks with the Iraqi government, al-Sudani’s agreement failed to prevent the U.S. from attacking the wrong Iraqi forces. It is no wonder that some analysts have dubbed al-Sudani’s valiant efforts to prevent all-out war between U.S. forces and the Islamic Resistance in his country as “mission impossible.”

    Following the elaborately staged but carelessly misdirected U.S. attacks, Resistance forces in Iraq began launching new strikes on U.S. bases, including a drone attack that killed six Kurdish troops at the largest U.S. base in Syria. So the predictable effect of the U.S. bombing was in fact to rebuff Iran and Iraq’s efforts to rein in resistance forces and to escalate a war that U.S. officials keep claiming they want to deter.

    From experienced journalists and analysts to Middle Eastern governments, voices of caution are warning the United States in increasingly stark language of the dangers of its escalating bombing campaigns. “While the war rages in Gaza,” the BBC’s Orla Guerin wrote on February 4, “one false move could set the region alight.”

    Three days later, Orla would be surrounded by protesters chanting “America is the greatest devil,” as she reported from the site of the U.S. drone assassination of Kataib Hezbollah leader Abu Baqir al-Saadi in Baghdad – which could prove to be exactly the false move she feared.

    But what Americans should be asking their government is this: Why are there still 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq? It is 21 years since the United States invaded Iraq and plunged the nation into seemingly endless violence, chaos and corruption; 12 years since Iraq forced U.S. occupation forces to withdraw from Iraq at the end of 2011; and 7 years since the defeat of ISIS, which served as justification for the United States to send forces back into Iraq in 2014, and then to obliterate most of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in 2017.

    Successive Iraqi governments and parliaments have asked the United States to withdraw its forces from Iraq, and previously scheduled talks are about to begin. But the Iraqis and Americans have issued contradictory statements about the goal of the negotiations. Prime Minister al-Sudani and most Iraqis hope they will bring about the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces, while U.S. officials insist that U.S. troops may remain for another two to five years, kicking this explosive can further down the road despite the obvious dangers it poses to the lives of U.S. troops and to peace in the region.

    Behind these contradictory statements, the real value of Iraqi bases to the U.S. military does not seem to be about ISIS at all but about Iran. Although the United States has more than 40,000 troops stationed in 14 countries across the Middle East, and another 20,000 on warships in the seas surrounding them, the bases it uses in Iraq are its closest bases and airfields to Tehran and much of Iran. If the Pentagon loses these forward operating bases in Iraq, the closest bases from which it can attack Tehran will be Camp Arifjan and five other bases in Kuwait, where 13,500 U.S. troops would be vulnerable to Iranian counter-attacks – unless, of course, the U.S. withdraws them, too.

    Toward the end of the Cold War, historian Gabriel Kolko observed in his book Confronting the Third World that the United States’ “endemic incapacity to avoid entangling, costly commitments in areas of the world that are of intrinsically secondary importance to [its] priorities has caused U.S. foreign policy and resources to whipsaw virtually arbitrarily from one problem and region to the other. The result has been the United States’ increasing loss of control over its political priorities, budget, military strategy and tactics, and, ultimately, its original economic goals.”

    After the end of the Cold War, instead of restoring realistic goals and priorities, the neocons who gained control of U.S. foreign policy fooled themselves into believing that U.S. military and economic power could finally triumph over the frustratingly diverse social and political evolution of hundreds of countries and cultures all over the world. In addition to wreaking pointless mass destruction on country after country, this has turned the United States into the global enemy of the principles of democracy and self-determination that most Americans believe in.

    The horror Americans feel at the plight of people in Gaza and the U.S. role in it is a shocking new low in this disconnect between the humanity of ordinary Americans and the insatiable ambitions of their undemocratic leaders.

    While working for an end to the U.S. government’s support for Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people, Americans should also be working for the long-overdue withdrawal of U.S. occupying forces from Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.

    The post US Chooses Genocide Over Diplomacy in the Middle East first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Dangers of Complicity: The US Courts, Gaza and Genocide

    Holding the foreign policy of a country accountable in court, notably when it comes to matters criminal, can be insuperably challenging.  Judges traditionally shun making decisions on policy, even though they unofficially do so all the time.  The Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based civil liberties group, was not to be discouraged, most notably regarding the Biden administration’s unflagging support for Israel and its war in Gaza.

    In a filing in the US District Court for the Northern District of California last November, the CCR, representing a number of Palestinian human rights organisations including Palestinians in Gaza and the United States, sought an order “requiring that the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Defense adhere to their duty to prevent, and not further, the unfolding genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza.”  Such a duty, arising in the UN Genocide Convention of 1948, “is judicially enforceable as a peremptory norm of customary international law.”

    The complaint alleged that the genocidal conditions in Gaza had “so far been made possible because of unconditional support given [to Israel] by the named official-capacity defendants in this case,” namely, President Joseph Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

    At the time proceedings were initiated, the Israeli campaign in Gaza, launched in response to the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas, had already claimed the lives of 11,000 Palestinian civilians, “more than 4,500 of them children, as well as entire families, numerous journalists and UN workers.”  The bombardment had crippled critical infrastructure, led to the displacement of 1.6 million persons, and had been “accompanied by a total siege of Gaza, depriving Palestinians in Gaza the conditions of life necessary for human survival: food, water, medicine, fuel, and electricity.”  (Currently, the displaced number exceeds 2 million; the number of dead towers at 26,000.)

    In reaching his decision to dismiss the case on jurisdictional grounds, Jeffrey S. White admitted it was the “most difficult” of his career.  He acknowledged South Africa’s action in the International Court of Justice against Israel, which argues that Israel’s conduct against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip satisfies the elements of genocide.

    The January 26 interim order of provisional measures granted by the ICJ explicitly put Israel on notice to comply with the Genocide Convention, punish those responsible for directly and publicly inciting genocide, permit basic humanitarian assistance and essential services to the Gaza Strip, preserve relevant evidence pertaining to potential genocidal acts and submit a report to the ICJ on its compliance within a month.  In international law, these interim measures are accepted as binding.

    The ICJ also showed some scepticism to arguments that Israel had taken adequate measures to minimise harm to Palestinian civilians and respond to instances where an incitement to genocide could be imputed.  None of the measures taken till that point had removed the risk of irreparable harm; to merely assert compliance was not sufficient evidence of it.

    In White’s words, “the undisputed evidence before this Court comports with the finding of the ICJ and indicates that the current treatment of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military may plausibly constitute a genocide in violation of international law.”  Lawyers representing the government also chose not to cross-examine witnesses, bar one Holocaust scholar who testified that Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip could be classed as genocidal.  Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, the claims advanced in this case, involving disputes over foreign policy, raised “fundamentally non-justiciable political questions.”  To compel the US government to cease military and financial assistance to Israel were matters “intimately related to foreign policy and national security”.

    The plaintiffs had encountered that great limitation articulated by Chief Justice Marshall in 1803: that ‘[q]uestions, in their nature political, or which are, by the constitution and laws, submitted to the executive, can never be made in this court”.  To do so would violate the separation of powers.  The judiciary was, according to White, “not equipped with the intelligence or the acumen necessary to make foreign policy decisions on behalf of the government.”

    Despite being bound by weighty precedent and rulings in previous cases, White concludes with a plea.  The ICJ had found it “plausible that Israel’s conduct amounts to genocide.”  The judge implored the “Defendants to examine the results of their unflagging support of the military siege against the Palestinians in Gaza.”  Not bad for one lacking intelligence or the acumen necessary to make foreign policy decisions.

    While disappointed in White’s ruling, Brad Parker, a senior advisor to one of the organisational plaintiffs, Defense for Children International Palestine, saw the thickest of silver linings.  Along with the ICJ decision, “and the increasing recognition that what Israel is carrying out is a genocide and the US is complicit in those genocidal acts, I think the strong language from a US federal court judge increasingly works to isolate Israel’s actions and also bring pressure on the Biden administration to change course.”

    To date, the slaughter in Gaza continues.  Israeli politicians and military officials persist in claiming that murderously innovative approaches to killing Palestinian civilians are not, by definition, genocidal.  But the walls of justifiable impunity, so proudly claimed by Israel in its righteous mission of self-defence, are proving increasingly porous.

    The post The Dangers of Complicity: The US Courts, Gaza and Genocide first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Zoom or You Won’t See Me!

    If you have a friend or loved one in the Volusia Cty Jail here in the Daytona Beach area of Florida, get ready to play the man’s game of Telephone. Until you have someone close to you incarcerated there you cannot believe how this current penal system works. Bottom line: They forbid any in person visits… period! You want to talk with an inmate then fork over your money to IC Solutions, another in the slew of for profit private companies that our government sold out to. It’s not so much the few dollars you must pay, but the whole concept that sucks! Here’s how this convoluted system works: First off, and most heinous of all, is trying to figure out how to sign onto IC Solutions with your computer. My wife, pretty computer savvy from her years of administrating our sales business, took almost four hours getting an appointment to see and speak to my son via Zoom. And that was after waiting on the phone for nearly 45 minutes for an IC Tech person to help her. The tech person was helpful and we got to have the zoom visit… which is of course monitored.

    They only allow such a visit from Tuesdays through Saturdays. One must secure a time slot for the 30 minute session. Having been at a first appearance at the jail, it is very sad to see how many of the recently arrested lack either an education or the social and verbal skills needed to understand what in the hell is going on! One wonders how many of those poor souls have a friend or family member to be able to navigate what IC Solutions requires for them to visit. This is absolutely ridiculous! Sorry, but when our loved ones wind up in the bottom of the barrel, if anyone deserves an in person visit it is them… and us their family and friends.

    This writer sent an email to ALL our County Council members this weekend as to this system. So far, one councilman answered me. I give him that for being so conscientious. This is what he sent me:

     To Whom This May Concern,

     First of all, I am sorry that you had a bad experience with the Inmate Video Visitation system. However, this system was implemented in May of 2001 and has proven over and over to be a much safer and cost effective way to conduct inmate visitation. It is now being used in almost every correctional environment in the United States. It reduces the amount of time and manpower needed to transport/escort inmates to supervised visits, which is a cost savings to every taxpayer in the county. It also reduces the amount of contraband being brought into the correctional setting, which in itself is the best benefit.

    The old system of contact visitation only allowed the inmate one to two visits per week. The current video visitation system allows family members/friends of the incarcerated individual to schedule one session per day Tuesday through Saturday.

    The old system had to have a minimum of 6 to 8 correctional officers to work it as the new system only requires 1 to 2. Another savings to taxpayers and much more efficient.

    Prior to my election to County Council, I worked for the Volusia County Division of Corrections for over 30 years. I was present when the new system was implemented and absolutely support this method of inmate visitation.

    Since you didn’t sign your email, it will make if difficult to ascertain if your problems were isolated to this specific inmate (whomever it may be) or a general problem. I have checked with our jail and there is no general problems with the system to report.

    Basically, what he was alluding to was really just about ‘Saving money’… period! The movers and shakers of our system obviously think that this is the best solution to deal with the dregs of our society. Perhaps if a  wife, husband, child or grandchild of our political leaders wind up in that jail they might see things more clearly. Perhaps if we taxed the large corporations, mega millionaires and billionaires like we did in the 1960s and 1970s there would be barrels of revenue to help our prison system.

    The post Zoom or You Won’t See Me! first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Deplorable: Plans to Expand US Drone Atrocities in West Africa

    The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) and the U.S. Out of Africa Network (USOAN) opposes in the strongest terms the U.S. plans, in collusion with West Africa’s comprador class, to further violate Africa’s sovereignty and right to self determination in the form of three new military drone bases in Ghana, Ivory Coast and Benin. Further, we condemn the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) for not publicly renouncing this proposal in particular, and the existence of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) in general. Their silence around this development confirms their complicity and betrayal of Pan-Africanism and the interests of the African masses struggling against the ravages of neo-colonialism.

    More U.S. drone bases in Africa spell more violence, vicious anonymity, and “collateral damage” from drone assassinations. It spells enhanced surveillance capabilities for imperialism to use against any threat to the neocolonial order. U.S. maneuvering to expand its already massive military drone operations is consistent with the U.S. incessant drive to wage war globally and its militarization of the planet. U.S. drone and air strikes in Africa have primarily been in Libya and Somalia with the numbers of confirmed civilian deaths from drones as high as 3,200 in these two countries, and studies have shown these conditions “have inadvertently aided the growth of terrorist groups in the region.” This is what the U.S. proposes now for West Africa.

    There are clear and disturbing geostrategic implications regarding the countries they have chosen for these U.S. drone bases. The bases will form a border along the three countries of the Alliance of Sahel States – Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger – countries which have been adopting an anti-imperialist disposition. In fact, Burkina Faso’s entire southern flank would be surrounded by these U.S. drone bases. The last two administrations as well as members of Congress have clearly stated in policy declarations and legislation that the U.S.’ primary objective in Africa is to counteract the presence and influence of China and Russia in order to maintain its full spectrum dominance of all regions of the world. This is also consistent with the Global Fragility Act that states the Biden administration’s first sites of focus would be Haiti, Libya, and “West African coastal states,” where the U.S. seeks to place the drone bases.

    The bases will not be there to end so-called terrorism of extremists in Africa; they will be there for the U.S. to terrorize the region. It is folly to believe that the settler criminals who rule the U.S. state, who can justify the genocidal assault on Gaza, and who systematically murder, sanction, and attack nations globally to maintain white supremacy and global capitalism, are spending hundreds of millions to “fight terrorism” in Africa.

    Rather than “an urgent effort to stop the spread of al Qaeda and Islamic State in the region,” according to American and African officials, the USOAN contends that this is more likely a contingency plan to preserve drone capabilities in the event of losing their $110 million U.S. drone base in Agadez, Niger. Niger has also recently temporarily suspended the granting of new mining licenses and ordered an audit of the sector, a move that would invariably raise the eyebrows of the U.S.-EU-NATO axis of domination, concerned over the future of exploitative access to the mineral resources there, such as uranium. Resource sovereignty runs counter to the true colonialist objectives of U.S. foreign policy.

    BAP and the USOAN call on all who support African sovereignty to denounce the U.S.’ latest imperialist moves in Western Africa as well as the neocolonial African governments and collaborators like the Ghanaian president Nana Akufo-Addo who, face-to-face with U.S. Secretary Antony Blinken, openly begged for the U.S. to violate the sovereignty of the countries in the Alliance of Sahel States.

    BAP and the USOAN will continue to expose the puppets of neocolonialism in Africa and the misleaders masquerading as Black representatives in the legislative branches of the U.S. setter state. We maintain that the U.S. and its Western Europe progenitors are the root cause and primary sustenance for the poverty, displacement, despair, and violence in Africa, born from decades of colonialist plunder.

    #ShutDownAFRICOM!

    #USOutofAfrica!

    The post Deplorable: Plans to Expand US Drone Atrocities in West Africa first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Deplorable: Plans to Expand US Drone Atrocities in West Africa

    The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) and the U.S. Out of Africa Network (USOAN) opposes in the strongest terms the U.S. plans, in collusion with West Africa’s comprador class, to further violate Africa’s sovereignty and right to self determination in the form of three new military drone bases in Ghana, Ivory Coast and Benin. Further, we condemn the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) for not publicly renouncing this proposal in particular, and the existence of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) in general. Their silence around this development confirms their complicity and betrayal of Pan-Africanism and the interests of the African masses struggling against the ravages of neo-colonialism.

    More U.S. drone bases in Africa spell more violence, vicious anonymity, and “collateral damage” from drone assassinations. It spells enhanced surveillance capabilities for imperialism to use against any threat to the neocolonial order. U.S. maneuvering to expand its already massive military drone operations is consistent with the U.S. incessant drive to wage war globally and its militarization of the planet. U.S. drone and air strikes in Africa have primarily been in Libya and Somalia with the numbers of confirmed civilian deaths from drones as high as 3,200 in these two countries, and studies have shown these conditions “have inadvertently aided the growth of terrorist groups in the region.” This is what the U.S. proposes now for West Africa.

    There are clear and disturbing geostrategic implications regarding the countries they have chosen for these U.S. drone bases. The bases will form a border along the three countries of the Alliance of Sahel States – Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger – countries which have been adopting an anti-imperialist disposition. In fact, Burkina Faso’s entire southern flank would be surrounded by these U.S. drone bases. The last two administrations as well as members of Congress have clearly stated in policy declarations and legislation that the U.S.’ primary objective in Africa is to counteract the presence and influence of China and Russia in order to maintain its full spectrum dominance of all regions of the world. This is also consistent with the Global Fragility Act that states the Biden administration’s first sites of focus would be Haiti, Libya, and “West African coastal states,” where the U.S. seeks to place the drone bases.

    The bases will not be there to end so-called terrorism of extremists in Africa; they will be there for the U.S. to terrorize the region. It is folly to believe that the settler criminals who rule the U.S. state, who can justify the genocidal assault on Gaza, and who systematically murder, sanction, and attack nations globally to maintain white supremacy and global capitalism, are spending hundreds of millions to “fight terrorism” in Africa.

    Rather than “an urgent effort to stop the spread of al Qaeda and Islamic State in the region,” according to American and African officials, the USOAN contends that this is more likely a contingency plan to preserve drone capabilities in the event of losing their $110 million U.S. drone base in Agadez, Niger. Niger has also recently temporarily suspended the granting of new mining licenses and ordered an audit of the sector, a move that would invariably raise the eyebrows of the U.S.-EU-NATO axis of domination, concerned over the future of exploitative access to the mineral resources there, such as uranium. Resource sovereignty runs counter to the true colonialist objectives of U.S. foreign policy.

    BAP and the USOAN call on all who support African sovereignty to denounce the U.S.’ latest imperialist moves in Western Africa as well as the neocolonial African governments and collaborators like the Ghanaian president Nana Akufo-Addo who, face-to-face with U.S. Secretary Antony Blinken, openly begged for the U.S. to violate the sovereignty of the countries in the Alliance of Sahel States.

    BAP and the USOAN will continue to expose the puppets of neocolonialism in Africa and the misleaders masquerading as Black representatives in the legislative branches of the U.S. setter state. We maintain that the U.S. and its Western Europe progenitors are the root cause and primary sustenance for the poverty, displacement, despair, and violence in Africa, born from decades of colonialist plunder.

    #ShutDownAFRICOM!

    #USOutofAfrica!

    The post Deplorable: Plans to Expand US Drone Atrocities in West Africa first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Defence scientists red team robotic vehicles in AUKUS trial

    Australian defence scientists have carried out a series of trial electronic attacks against robotic vehicles operated by the United States and the United Kingdom as part of the latest advanced technologies trial under AUKUS. The exercise, which took place in South Australia in late 2023, was designed to gauge the behaviour of autonomic vehicles when…

    The post Defence scientists red team robotic vehicles in AUKUS trial appeared first on InnovationAus.com.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.

  • “Victoria Nuland — she’s the real ruler of Ukraine”

    Alexander Mercouris has perhaps the best track-record of all prognosticators on the important international news-stories, and this very much includes on the important news stories regarding the Ukraine crisis, not only since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started on 24 February 2022, but going all the way back to 2016 when he first reported. And, more generally, for example, compare his 10 October 2016 “U.S. Intelligence meddles in U.S. Presidential election: backs Hillary Clinton, tries to stop Donald Trump” to what the rest of the press were saying at the same time about the then-emerging manufactured ‘Russiagate’ story, such as the Democratic Party Time magazine’s Joe Klein headlining on 13 October 2016, “Why the Russian Hacks of Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Should Reassure Us All”, which fell for the U.S. Government’s lie that Russia was ‘hacking’ the U.S. Democratic Party’s emails and maybe, just maybe, colluding with Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign in order to win the 2016 election for Trump — none of which turned out to have been true (but loads of Democratic Party voters believed it to be true, at least as recently as 2019). Mercouris instead exposed that fraud right away — and it was a fraud by the Obama Administration and the Hillary Clinton campaign instead of by the Trump campaign and Russia’s Government. (The closing Durham Report, which issued on 17 May 2023, blamed only Obama’s FBI, as-if it were independent of Obama and of his ‘Justice’ Department — and thus John Durham himself participated in the cover-up so as to leave the public still believing the Democratic Party’s lies that Russia had hacked the 2016 election — a lie that Lockheed Martin and other ‘Defense’ contractors greatly profit from being spread and sustained because it fools the public to support increasing the ‘defense’ budget while cutting everything else.) Mercouris has this ability — which only extremely few people have — to see to the heart of major news-events almost in real time, and to report immediately with a penetration and depth of insight into current events that exceeds even what normally passes for ‘history’ about those same events years if not decades later. His historical knowledge and ability to bring it all immediately to bear upon current events is at the very highest level if not at the very top.

    And here is an example of that in regards to the emergency now in Ukraine concerning the power-struggle between Ukraine’s current President Volodmyr Zelensky versus Ukraine’s immediately preceding President Petro Poroshenko and which has caused Biden to send Victoria Nuland to Kiev, the person who had run Obama’s 2014 coup in Ukraine that replaced the democratically elected and neutralist Government of Ukraine by the current rabidly anti-Russian and illegitimate government on Russia’s doorstep only 317 miles away from being able to hit The Kremlin with possibly a U.S. missile:

    He reports that Nuland has decided that Zelensky will fire Ukraine’s current general Valerii Zaluzhnyi (who is backed by Poroshenko) and replace him probably with either General Oleksandr Syrsky or else the head of Ukraine’s CIA or the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine, Kyrylo Budanov. If this is true, then it would probably indicate that Nuland wants Zelensky to stay as being Ukraine’s President.

    The post “Victoria Nuland — she’s the real ruler of Ukraine” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • How to Interpret Washington’s New Version of “Hacker Script”

    Bloated hype beyond all reason. Illustration: Liu Rui/GT
    Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

    The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Christopher Wray, made sensational remarks on Wednesday in Congress, elevating the “China threat theory” to a new level. He claimed that hackers associated with the Chinese government are “positioning on American infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities.” Targets include water treatment plants, electrical infrastructure and oil and natural gas pipelines, he said. In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin explicitly stated that China firmly opposes and cracks down on all forms of cyberattacks in accordance with law. Without valid evident, the US jumped to an unwarranted conclusion and made groundless accusations against China. It is extremely irresponsible and is a complete distortion of facts.

    On the same day, the US government added more than a dozen Chinese companies to a list created by the Defense Department to highlight firms it says are allegedly working with China’s military. US Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, exaggerated the potential national security risks posed by Chinese electric vehicles entering European market in talks with EU officials. From public opinion manipulation to actual actions, the US’ measures containing China were both intensive and frequent in recent days. The US once again unleashed a cold wind, at a time when communication and exchanges between high-level officials of China and the US have rapidly resumed since the beginning of 2024, and signs of stabilization in China-US relations have increased.

    This has become an increasingly common phenomenon in China-US relations, reflecting the high complexity and uncertainty of US policy toward China and the depth of distortions in the US understanding of China. However, we also notice that Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor to the US president, in his latest remarks on China-US relations on January 30, while emphasizing the need for the US to strengthen its “competitive position,” also highlighted the importance of building stability, managing differences, and stressed the significance of maintaining communication and intensive diplomacy.

    Taking a comprehensive view, US policy toward China is increasingly resembling a tightrope walk, with the key technique lying in maintaining balance. The US government is currently managing this with difficulty, and the challenge of maintaining balance is rapidly intensifying. The US clearly recognizes the serious consequences if balance cannot be upheld, but without timely adjustments, it is only a matter of time before it falls off the tightrope.

    This year is the US presidential election year, and negative topics concerning China will be further magnified and intensified. However, aside from the election factors, people can see at a glance that the two ends of the “balance pole” between the US and China are gradually shifting, with the rational end toward China becoming shorter and the irrational end toward China becoming longer. One major manifestation is the continuous innovation and upgrading of the “China threat theory,” which has contaminated the decision-making atmosphere and environment toward China, resulting in an increasingly imbalanced US policy toward China, even to the extent of losing control. This poses a significant risk for the US, the Asia-Pacific region, and the world.

    Why do American officials and politicians like Christopher Wray work so hard to create and spread the “China threat theory”? The reasons are multifaceted. For example, the most common occasions are often in the US Congress, both because Congress has become a gathering place for anti-China politicians and because Congress controls the purse strings. Using the “China threat” as a gimmick is the best way to secure funding. Additionally, some individuals project their inner world onto China. There are also those who have developed a delusion about China, where anything related to the word “China” becomes a “terrifying monster” that must be guarded against. This is a result of extreme lack of confidence, anxiety, and even delusion in the face of China’s rapid development.

    Also on January 31, the Senate Judiciary Committee hosted a hearing titled “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis.” The chief executives of five major social media giants, including TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew attended to testify. Although the meeting had a predetermined theme and many attendees, Chew once again became the focus. Many senators bypassed the main topic and questioned Chew about his relationship with China. Republican Senator Tom Cotton even aggressively questioned Chew’s citizenship with eight questions. It is well known that Chew is from Singapore. Even netizens on X platform couldn’t stand it and condemned Cotton for his “xenophobia” and “blatant racism.” Isn’t this a microcosm of Washington politicians?

    It is evident that the US authorities have the intention to use anti-China rhetoric and need a strategic imaginary enemy or scapegoat in Washington politics. However, this is feeding a monster with malice and hostility toward China. The monster is growing day by day, with an increasing appetite and becoming more cunning. In the past, stories about “Chinese hackers” could satisfy it for a while, but now the story has to be escalated to the level of threatening all Americans. When this monster breaks free, its first target will be the US itself.

    The post How to Interpret Washington’s New Version of “Hacker Script” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Flashpoint for War: The Drone Killings at Tower 22

    The BBC’s characteristically mild-mannered note said it all: What is Tower 22?  More to the point, what are US forces doing in Jordan?  (To be more precise, a dusty scratching on the Syria-Jordan border.)  These questions were posed in the aftermath of yet another drone attack against a US outpost in the Middle East, its location of dubious strategic relevance to Washington, yet seen as indispensable to its global footprint.  On this occasion, the attack proved successful, killing three troops and wounding dozens.

    The Times of Israel offered a workmanlike description of the site’s role: “Tower 22 is located close enough to US troops at Tanf that it could potentially help support them, while potentially countering Iran-backed militants in the area and allowing troops to keep an eye on remnants of Islamic State in the region.”  The paper does not go on to mention the other role: that US forces are also present in the region to protect Israeli interests, acting as a shield against Iran.

    While Tower 22 is located more towards Jordan, it is a dozen miles or so to the Syria-based al-Tanf garrison, which retains a US troop presence.  Initially, that presence was justified to cope with the formidable threat posed by Islamic State as part of Operation Inherent Resolve.  In due course, it became something of a watch post on Iran’s burgeoning military presence in Syria and Iraq, an inflation as much a consequence of Tehran’s successful efforts against the fundamentalist group as it was a product of Washington’s destabilising invasion of Iraq in 2003.

    A January 28 press release from US Central Command notes that the attack was inflicted by “a one-way attack UAS [Unmanned Aerial System] that impacted on a base in northeast Jordan, near the Syrian border.”  Its description of Tower 22 is suitably vague, described as a “logistics support base” forming the Jordanian Defense Network.  “There are approximately 350 US Army and Air Force personnel deployed to the base, conducting a number of key support functions, including support to the coalition for the lasting defeat of ISIS.”  No mention is made of Iran or Israel.

    Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh found it hard to conceal the extent that US bases in the region have come under attack.  Clumsily, she tried to be vague as to reasons why such assaults were taking place to begin with, though her department has, since October 17 last year, tracked 165 attacks, 66 on US troops in Iraq and 98 in Syria.  The singular feature in the assault on Tower 22, she stressed, was that it worked.  “To my knowledge, there was nothing different or new about this attack that we’ve seen in other facilities that house our service members,” she told reporters on January 29.  “Unfortunately, this attack was successful, but we can’t discount the fact that other attacks, whether Iraq or Syria, were not intended to kill our service members.”

    A senior official from the umbrella grouping known as Islamic Resistance in Iraq justified the attack as part of a broader campaign against the US for its unwavering support for Israel and its relentlessly murderous campaign in Gaza.  (Since October 17, the group is said to have staged 140 attacks on US sites in both Iraq and Syria.)  “As we have said before if the US keeps supporting Israel, there will [be] escalations.”  The official in question went on to state that, “All the US interests in the region are legitimate targets, and we don’t care about US threats to respond.”

    A generally accepted view among security boffins is that US troops have achieved what they sought to do: cope with the threat posed by Islamic State.  As with any such groups, dissipation and readjustment eventually follows.  Washington’s military officials delight in using the term “degrade”, but it would be far better to simply assume that the fighters of such outfits eventually take up with others, blend into the locale, or simply go home.

    With roughly 3,000 personnel stationed in Jordan, 2,500 in Iraq, and 900 in Syria, US troops have become ripe targets as Israel’s war in Gaza rages.  In effect, they have become bits of surplus pieces on the Middle Eastern chessboard and, to that end, incentives for a broader conflict.  The Financial Times, noting the view of an unnamed source purporting to be a “senior western diplomat” (aren’t they always?), fretted that the tinderbox was about to go off.  “We’re always worried about US and Iranian forces getting into direct confrontation there, whether by accident or on purpose.”

    President Joe Biden has promised some suitable retaliation but does not wish for “a wider war in the Middle East.  That’s not what I’m looking for.”  A typically mangled response came from National Security Council spokesman John Kirby: “It’s very possible what you’ll see is a tiered approach here, not just a single action, but potentially multiple actions over a period of time.”

    Rather than seeing these attacks as incentives to leave such outposts, the don’t cut and run mentality may prove all too powerful in its muscular stupidity.  Empires do not merely bring with them sorrows but incentives to be stubborn.  The beneficiaries will be the usual coterie of war mongers and peace killers.

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  • Redefining US-Latin American Relations: From Outdated Monroe Doctrine to a 21st Century Good Neighbor Policy

    The Trump administration dusted off the 19th century Monroe Doctrine that subjugates the nations of the region to U.S. interests. The Biden administration, instead of reversing course,  followed suite, with disastrous results for the region and a migration crisis that threatens Biden’s re-election.

    It has left most of Trump’s sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba intact and has tightened those against Nicaragua.

    U.S. policy towards Venezuela has been a fiasco. Try as it might, both Trump and Biden were unable to depose President Maduro and found themselves stuck with a self-proclaimed president, Juan Guaidó. U.S. support for Guaidó backfired as he was held responsibility for massive corruption involving Venezuelan assets abroad that were turned over to him. Now Washington is openly siding with presidential hopeful María Corina Machado, who has a long history of engagement in violent disruptions and has called on the U.S. to invade her country. The Venezuelan people have paid a heavy price for the debacle, which has included crippling economic sanctions and coup attempts. The U.S. has also paid a price in terms of its prestige internationally.

    This is only one example of a string of disastrous policies toward Latin America.

    Instead of continuing down this imperial path of endless confrontation, U.S. policymakers need to stop, recalibrate, and design an entirely new approach to inter-American relations. This is particularly urgent as the continent is in the throes of an economic recession that is compounded by low commodity prices, a belly-up tourist industry and the drying up of remittances from outside.

    A good reference point for a policy makeover is Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor Policy” in the 1930s, which represented an abrupt break with the interventionism of that time. FDR abandoned “gunboat diplomacy” in which Marines were sent throughout the region to impose U.S. will. Though his policies were criticized for not going far enough, he did bring back U.S. Marines from Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and scrapped the Platt Amendment that allowed the U.S. to intervene unilaterally in Cuban affairs.

    So what would a Good Neighbor Policy for the 21st Century look like? Here are some key planks:

    An end to military intervention. The illegal use of military force has been a hallmark of U.S. policy in the region, as we see from the deployment of Marines in the Dominican Republic in 1965, Grenada in 1983, Panama in 1989; involvement in military actions leading to the Guatemalan coup in 1954 and destabilization in Nicaragua in the 1980s; support for coups in Brazil in 1964, Chile in 1973 and elsewhere. A Good Neighbor Policy would not only renounce the use of military force, but even the threat of such force (as in “all options are on the table”), particularly because such threats are illegal under international law.

    U.S. military intimidation also comes in the form of U.S. bases that dot the continent from Cuba to Colombia to further south. These installations are often resisted by local communities, as was the case of the Manta Base in Ecuador that was shut down in 2008 and the ongoing opposition against the Guantanamo Base in Cuba. U.S. bases in Latin America are a violation of local sovereignty and should be closed, with the lands cleaned up and returned to their rightful owners.

    Another form of military intervention is the financing and training of local military and police forces. Most of the U.S. assistance sent to Latin America, particularly Central America, goes towards funding security forces, resulting in the militarization of police and borders, and leading to greater police brutality, extrajudicial killings and repression of migrants. The training school in Ft. Benning, Georgia, formerly called the “School of the Americas,” graduated some of the continent’s worst human rights abusers. Even today, U.S.-trained forces are involved in egregious abuses, including the assassination of activists like Berta Cáceres in Honduras. U.S. programs to confront drugs, from the Merida Initiative in Mexico to Plan Colombia, have not stopped the flow of drugs but have poured massive amounts of weapons into the region and led to more killings, torture and gang violence. Latin American governments need to clean up their own national police forces and link them to communities, a more effective way to combat drug trafficking than the militarization that Washington has promoted.  The greatest contribution the U.S. can make to putting an end to the narcotics scourge in Latin America is to control the U.S. market for those drugs through responsible reforms and to prevent the sale of U.S.-made weapons to drug cartels.

    No more political meddling. While the U.S. public has been shocked by charges of Russian interference in its elections, this kind of meddling is par for the course in Latin America. USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), created in 1983 as a neutral sounding alternative to the CIA, spend millions of tax-payer dollars to undermine progressive movements. Following the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998, for instance, NED ramped up its assistance to conservative groups in Venezuela (which became the foundation’s number one Latin American recipient) as a leadup to regime change attempts.

    An end to the use of economic blackmail. The U.S. government uses economic pressure to impose its will. The Trump administration threatened to halt remittances to Mexico to extract concessions from the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador on immigration issues. A similar threat persuaded many voters in El Salvador’s 2004 presidential elections to refrain from voting for the candidate of the left-leaning Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).

    The U.S. also uses economic coercion. For the past 60 years, U.S. administrations have sanctioned Cuba—a policy that has not successfully led to regime change but has made living conditions harder for the Cuban people. The same is true in Venezuela, where one study says that in just 2017-2018, over 40,000 Venezuelans died as a result of sanctions. With coronavirus, these sanctions have become even more deadly. A Good Neighbor Policy would lift the economic sanctions against Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua and help them recover economically.

    Support trade policies that lift people out of poverty and protect the environment. U.S. free trade agreements with Latin America have been good for the elites and U.S. corporations, but have increased economic inequality, eroded labor rights, destroyed the livelihoods of small farmers, furthered the privatization of public services, and compromised national sovereignty. When indebted nations seek loans from international financial institutions, the loans have been conditioned on the imposition of neoliberal policies that exacerbate all ofthese trends.

    In terms of the environment, too often the U.S. government has sided with global oil and mining interests when local communities in Latin America and the Caribbean have challenged resource-extracting projects that threaten their environment and endanger public health. We must launch a new era of energy and natural resource cooperation that prioritizes renewable sources of energy, green jobs, and good environmental stewardship.

    Massive protests against neoliberal policies erupted throughout Latin America shortly prior to the pandemic and will return with a vengeance unless countries are free to explore alternatives to neoliberal policies. A New Good Neighbor Policy would cease imposing economic conditions on Latin American governments and would call on the International Monetary Fund to do the same. An example of international cooperation is China’s “Belt and Road Initiative,” which, even with some downsides, has generated goodwill in the Global South by prioritizing investments in much-needed infrastructure projects without conditioning its funding on any aspect of government policy.

    Humane immigration policy. Throughout history, U.S. administrations have refused to take responsibility for the ways the U.S. has spurred mass migration north, including unfair trade agreements, support for dictators, climate change, drug consumption and the export of gangs. Instead, immigrants have been used and abused as a source of cheap labor, and vilified according to the political winds. President Obama was the deporter-in-chief; President Trump has been caging children, building walls, and shutting off avenues for people to seek asylum; President Biden is better than his predecessor when it comes to rhetoric, but not so much action-wise. A Good Neighbor policy would dismantle ICE and the cruel deportation centers; it would provide the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States a path to citizenship; and it would respect the international right of people to seek asylum.

    Recognition of Latin America’s cultural contributions. President Trump’s blatant disrespect towards Latin Americans and immigrants, including his call for building a wall “paid for by Mexico,” intensified racist attitudes among his base which has continued ever since. A new Latin America policy would not only counter racism but would uplift the region’s exceptional cultural richness. The controversy surrounding the extensive commercial promotion of the novel “American Dirt,” written by a U.S. author about the Mexican immigration experience, is an example of the underestimation of talent south of the border. The contributions of the continent’s indigenous population should also be appreciated and justly compensated, such as the centuries-old medicinal cures that are often exploited by U.S.-based pharmaceutical companies.

    An all-encompassing expression of goodwill in the form of a New Good Neighbor Policy will meet resistance from vested economic and military interests, as well as those persuaded by racist arguments. But the vast majority of people in the United States have nothing to lose by it and, in fact, have much to gain. Universal threats, such as coronavirus and the climate crisis, have taught us the limits of borders and should act as incentives to construct a Good Neighbor Policy for the 21st Century based on those principles of non-intervention and mutual respect.

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  • Aust-US data access deal comes into effect

    American and Australian law enforcement can now more easily access data stored in each other’s jurisdiction after a landmark bilateral agreement came into effect more than two years after it was signed. The Agreement on Access to Electronic Data for the Purpose of Countering Serious Crime allows authorities in Australia and the United States to…

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  • Gallup Poll Confirms America’s Soaring Corruption

    Whereas the national corruption ratings of the various countries by the corrupt Transparency International organization, which was a spin-off from the U.S.-controlled World Bank in 1993 created by it so that countries whose leaders resist the demands by the U.S. Government will receive from TI poor corruption-ratings that scare away international investors and thereby starve their country of international capital and force up the interest-rates that those countries have to pay on their foreign debt, the people inside a given country — its own citizens there — have a much more realistic rating of their own country’s corruptness than do the hired outside ‘experts’ that TI selects to evaluate that in accord with TI’s vague criteria. Thus, the suite of Gallup polls that Gallup published on January 30th concerning Americans’ perceptions of “Honesty and Ethics” in America provides a far more accurate indication of the amount of corruptness in this country than TI’s score on this country does. So: here, I shall present the core from that Gallup article, and then will discuss it:

    Line Chart: Ethics ratings for five professions in the U.S., 1976-2023.

    Trust in U.S. Senators, and in what Gallup calls “Members of Congress” (which means members of both Houses, but sometimes “Congress” is misused to refer to only members of the U.S. House of Representatives) has declined precipitously since the year 2000, when, starting on 9 December 2000, the far-right U.S. Supreme Court ‘Justice’ Antonin Scalia abruptly violated the U.S. Constitution and stopped the vote-count in the Florida U.S. Presidential contest and declared that (his fellow far-right Republican) George W. Bush had won that election (against the moderate Democrat Al Gore). This decision, by the 5-to-4 Republican majority on that Court, who butchered the Equal Protection Clause in the U.S. Consititution (in its 14th Amendment) in order to ‘justify’ their treasonous act, led to 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq on the basis of lies, and the takeover of the U.S. Government by the military-industrial complex even more than had been the case before, and thrust America into what is virtually martial law in this country (including massive censorship for the Government) ever since that time, so that America now spends more than half of the entire world’s military costs and the U.S. armamants-manufacturers get half of all that money, which causes soaring U.S. federal debt and declining new federal spending on the health, welfare, and environment, of the American people.

    In today’s news, there is another stark example of what this increasing U.S. corruptness has led to, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean: On January 28, the Financial Times headlined “Brussels threatens to hit Hungary’s economy if Viktor Orbán vetoes Ukraine aid: EU strategy aims to spook investors by cutting off funding to Budapest in stand-off over €50bn package”, and reported that the effort by Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orban, to halt the financial bleeding of the people of his country and even of the entire people of the EU, which is pouring unprecedentedly high sums into paying for weapons, the EU is now threatening to blacklist Hungary and drive it into an economic ailspin unless he will relent and do as they demand and approve an additional $50 billion+ in armaments and other support for Ukraine’s war with Russia. No mention is made there that the U.S. Government initiated and created the EU as part of its “Cold War” against first the Soviet Union and then (after 1991) continued it secretly against Russia. Similarly, the February 2, 2024, issue of the U.S. edition of the British The Week magazine aims to fool Americans to support further increasing the ‘defense’ budget, by posting on its front cover along with a cartoon showing an evil-looking face of Putin, the headline “Giving up on Ukraine: Will Johnson and House Republicans block desperately needed aid for Kyiv?” The story inside it says nothing about Ukraine’s having become a U.S. colony by means of Obama’s February 2014 coup there (hidden behind Kiev’s Maidan anti-corruption demonstrations) that overthrew a neutralist Government and installed a rabidly anti-Russian one that Putin finally responded to by his invasion of Ukraine on 22 February 2022. (Trust in “journalists” is shown by Gallup there as being at a record low of only 19%.)

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  • Judicial Murder in Alabama

    During the evening of January 25, Kenneth Eugene Smith, having failed to convince the US Supreme Court to delay his execution, became yet another victim of judicial, state-sanctioned murder.  A previous, failed effort, using lethal injection, had been made in 2022.  On this occasion, it was the state of Alabama which sought to bloody (or gas, in this instance) its copybook at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.  The method of execution: nitrogen hypoxia.

    Smith was convicted in 1989 for murdering Elizabeth Sennett, the wife of a preacher’s wife, in a murder-for-hire killing.  His life, taken in turn, succumbed to a tawdry experiment of penological vice.  When state authorities dabble with various methods of death, they can never be anything but cruel.  Sometimes, these methods might even be unusual.

    Defenders of capital punishment take refuge behind the words of the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution, which has often functioned as a form of subversive encouragement to murderous authorities. While the amendment famously states that no cruel or unusual punishments are to be inflicted, the onus is then on officialdom to come up with a form of punishment that is not cruel, nor unusual.  And how often has death by firing squad, lethal injection, or swift decapitation been defended on those very grounds?

    Nitrogen hypoxia has received much press, much of it ghoulish.  In December 2023, the US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) released its final report into the deaths of six poultry plant workers.  All had been victims of nitrogen asphyxiation.  Investigators found that the Foundation Food Group facility in Gainesville, Georgia was staffed by workers inadequately informed, trained or equipped to deal with deadly leaks.  Such concerns were also expressed about staff at the Atmore correctional facility.  To date, the US lacks a national standard on the managing, storing, use and handling of such cryogenic asphyxiants as liquid nitrogen.

    The degrading nature of the Smith execution was also highlighted by the fact that many US veterinarians would not even stoop to using nitrogen in euthanising animals.  In 2020, the American Veterinary Medical Association stated in its euthanasia guidelines that using nitrogen was problematic for mammal species.  Such gas would also have to be “supplied in a precisely regulated and purified form without contaminants or adulterants”.

    UN experts, including Morris Tidball-Binz, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and Alice Jill Edwards, Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, also warned that nitrogen asphyxiation was “an untested method of execution which may subject [Smith] to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or even torture.”

    None of these concerns has dissuaded lawmakers hunting for other methods of killing convicts.  Oklahoma (2015) was the first state to permit prison staff to use nitrogen gas.  Mississippi (2017) and Alabama (2018), followed.  Much of this is being propelled by crude market considerations.  The drugs used in lethal injections are becoming harder to obtain, be they because of shortages or restrictions placed on their use in executions by pharmaceutical companies.

    With Alabama being the first to apply the measure, a dark interest in the minutiae of killing was taken. The state’s protocol on how the gas would be employed came under withering scrutiny.  With nitrogen gas being administered through a mask, intruding oxygen might risk triggering a stroke, creating a permanent vegetative state, or cause excruciating suffocation.  Depriving a person of oxygen could also lead to vomiting, thereby choking the victim.

    With such complications in the offing, blissful, or wilful ignorance reigned among correction officials and lawmakers.  For those involved in a state’s killing machinery, be they robed judges, hungry prosecutors, or the executioners themselves, this remains a standard response.  Seedy justifications are offered: just retribution, deterrence, the confusion of novelty with humane policy.  Alabama Solicitor General Edmund LaCour was keen to emphasise the latter point with his absurd remark that his state had “adopted the most painless and humane method of execution known to man.”

    Alabama officials had submitted in a court filing that they expected Smith to lose consciousness within a matter of seconds and expire in a matter of minutes.  “What we saw,” stated Smith’s spiritual adviser, Reverend Jeff Hood, “was minutes of someone struggling for their life.”

    In witnessing such executions, those present commune and connive in the same scene.  They become vicarious participants, many the unintended apologists for a spectacle featuring murder.  On hand were journalists to feed on the macabre display of Smith’s demise.  “I’ve been to four previous executions,” the insatiable Alabama journalist Lee Hedgepeth told the BBC’s Newsday program, “and I’ve never seen a condemned inmate thrash in the way that Kenneth Smith reacted to the nitrogen gas.”  The session saw Smith gasping “for air repeatedly and the execution took about 25 minutes in total.”

    The stern face of officialdom was supplied by John Hamm, Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner.  For Hamm, all that was aberrant about the scene could be rationalised, reasoned, and explained.  Smith understandably held his breath as long as he could.  His movements had been involuntary; he showed expected symptoms from inhaling nitrogen gas.  He had lost consciousness quickly.  “He struggled against the restraints a little bit but it’s an involuntary movement and some agonal breathing.  So that was all expected.”

    A more candid, vengeful note was struck by the state’s Attorney General, Steve Marshall.  “Tonight, Kenneth Smith was put to death for the heinous act he committed over 35 years ago: the murder-for-hire slaying of Elizabeth Sennett, an innocent woman who was by all accounts a godly wife, a loving mother and grandmother, and a beloved pillar of her community.”  Smith’s calculated death, crudely experimental and economically determined, was no less heinous, a vulgar rationalisation of cold intent, the exemplar of state cruelty.

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  • Conventional Detergent: Political Science as an Ideological Laundromat

    An old friend with years in the purchasing department of a leading consumer products conglomerate once told me that the active ingredient in washing powder is actually a minuscule component in those huge boxes of famous brand soap powders from which US daytime television dramas derived their sobriquet. The rest, he said mockingly, is just to make suds (foam). His point was that the consumer pays for the suds.

    I retorted that although the deception did not surprise me, he underestimated the importance of foam. Although I am no chemist, unlike my friend I have been washing my own clothes for years. I explained that one had to understand some basic physics, too. Suds, I added, are needed for dispersion, i.e., to carry the chemical solution to the bundle of clothes in the machine. This was done by hand in the days of washboards.

    My first attempt at scholarly writing was at the age of 16. The US withdrawal of uniformed services from Vietnam was still fresh and the professionals in the field I thought I would study on the way to a career at the bar were already telling the ostensibly defeated men of the Ivy League why they had lost the war. Years later I would write a series of articles criticising that body of scholarship. At 16 I only had the fragments of the public record in the county library and my readings of Liddell-Hart, Clausewitz and Mao at my disposal. Then my conclusion was that the stated objectives of US war against the Vietnamese people were incompatible with the actions taken to wage the war. That seemed to me to be a simple and logical conclusion. The US did not distinguish between a hammer and a screwdriver.

    When I began to study that subject called political science I thought I was going to learn more about how such decisions or distinctions were made. I was soon disappointed. This led me to retain the major — because the required course load was so small — and spend the remaining two years studying every other subject (mainly arts and literatures) to grasp what it might mean to be educated in our society.

    Although I had abandoned the academic discipline — and was not called to the bar — I did not cease asking the questions I believed were the subject of study for that field. I can say, to cut the biographical at a decent interval, that I have been an active participant in a representative cross-section of organized activities that has permitted me to see how people in organizations of very different types articulate themselves and behave, both internally and externally. Very few of the theories or concepts to which I had been introduced in academia were in any way adequate to explain or predict (two functions of classical science) what I experienced and observed. In fact the only useful theories I found came from my study of arts and literatures. Furthermore it was these theories which offered some insight into what political scientists actually do in those places they are employed.

    In 2014, I submitted the argument that the West was preparing for some kind of world war. I based this on specific observations and the bald assertion that the Anglo-American Establishment (to use Quigley’s term) was a captive of the public school/preparatory school indoctrination of more than two hundred years of empire. In other words, world war a century later was an expression of what the Americans call “school spirit.” “Let’s celebrate Sarajevo with another bout of mass slaughter and destruction.”

    I am reasonably sure that the majority of readers dismissed this “unscientific” proposal. Surely no one in office would want to repeat the Great War or World War 2, much less for the sentimental reasons I mentioned. And yet the near universal praise for the deceased realist Heinz K offers an excellent support for my case as do the assessments of another “offensive” realist still with us and rather lionized by all masters and mistresses of insight into today‘s global bellicosity. Heinz K. consistently justified his intrigues based on his reading of Metternich, the continental cutout for British policy after the French Revolution and Napoleon were defeated. Balance of power (terror against the population) and deterrence are quintessential British concepts. With the merger of the British and American Empires through the Great War these doctrines became the central dogma of the piratical cult that Rhodes and Rothschild conceived in the Round Table. It is important to know that while for most people the Round Table is a cult of nobility and order (or something from Camelot or The Holy Grail films), Thomas Malory made quite clear that it was a system of vicious treachery dominated by a sinister and jealous monarch and his deceitful and ruthless champion Lancelot. It is the real Round Table that should concern investigators, not the fantasy.

    Far from being a paragon of virtue and loyalty, Lancelot is an adulterer and a cheat who stoops to any trick needed to win the tournaments Arthur has instituted to maintain control over the chivalry and, needless to say, the deplorables (the rest of the population). Anglo-American imperial policy is not similar to the Round Table as Rhodes, Rothschild, Milner et al. envisioned. It is identical with it. One need only look at how NATO and the COVID regime perform. It is a matter of record that the most draconian policies were applied throughout the Anglo-American Empire: the US, Britain and the white dominions. A realist, if that term means anything in the vernacular, would have to ask how such uniform tyranny could have been exercised in all those nominally independent countries? The answer is not hard to find.

    Political science as practiced in the academy and those tank manufacturer-funded institutions who collude in the articulation of public policy cannot call attention to the obvious. This is especially true of the so-called “realists.” What makes them so offensive is their obfuscation combined with moralizing verbosity. Yet the “realist” scholar or school is admired by all young and old (we have not yet heard of “trans-aged”).

    Consider the pre-mortem and in vivo critiques of the Ukraine and Palestine theaters. The steadfast refusal to analyse these as elements of one world war is generally tolerated because of the episodic objections raised to Anglo-American imperial warfare (my words, since for the realist the AAE and the one war world do not exist). Furthermore, the belligerence or in the case of Heinz K, duplicitous action toward China is never seriously criticised. It defies imagination to consider that the academic, “punditric” and weblog/podcasting spheres have never studied Manifest Destiny (a laudable exception is Bruce Cumings — no political scientist).

    “Political science” and its sister “international relations” literally concern the study of politics/policy and trans-border engagements. However what they do not concern is the exercise of real power. Neither the sources of power nor its composition are seriously observed or described. While classic geopolitical writing — often cited as boilerplate — like Mackinder or Mahon at least admits power for its own sake and attempts to describe its exercise, these books, even like the maligned Liddell-Hart are treated as superficially as dinner conversation at the club (whichever type one may imagine). That is no accident. Conversation is not supposed to offer offense to anyone, especially those whom it is dangerous to offend). In the jousting that goes by the name scholarship the best cheat wins.

    Like in the automatic washing machine, the power lies in the minuscule cult that rules the empire. Political science and her siblings produce the suds, the foam.

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  • Conventional Detergent: Political Science as an Ideological Laundromat

    An old friend with years in the purchasing department of a leading consumer products conglomerate once told me that the active ingredient in washing powder is actually a minuscule component in those huge boxes of famous brand soap powders from which US daytime television dramas derived their sobriquet. The rest, he said mockingly, is just to make suds (foam). His point was that the consumer pays for the suds.

    I retorted that although the deception did not surprise me, he underestimated the importance of foam. Although I am no chemist, unlike my friend I have been washing my own clothes for years. I explained that one had to understand some basic physics, too. Suds, I added, are needed for dispersion, i.e., to carry the chemical solution to the bundle of clothes in the machine. This was done by hand in the days of washboards.

    My first attempt at scholarly writing was at the age of 16. The US withdrawal of uniformed services from Vietnam was still fresh and the professionals in the field I thought I would study on the way to a career at the bar were already telling the ostensibly defeated men of the Ivy League why they had lost the war. Years later I would write a series of articles criticising that body of scholarship. At 16 I only had the fragments of the public record in the county library and my readings of Liddell-Hart, Clausewitz and Mao at my disposal. Then my conclusion was that the stated objectives of US war against the Vietnamese people were incompatible with the actions taken to wage the war. That seemed to me to be a simple and logical conclusion. The US did not distinguish between a hammer and a screwdriver.

    When I began to study that subject called political science I thought I was going to learn more about how such decisions or distinctions were made. I was soon disappointed. This led me to retain the major — because the required course load was so small — and spend the remaining two years studying every other subject (mainly arts and literatures) to grasp what it might mean to be educated in our society.

    Although I had abandoned the academic discipline — and was not called to the bar — I did not cease asking the questions I believed were the subject of study for that field. I can say, to cut the biographical at a decent interval, that I have been an active participant in a representative cross-section of organized activities that has permitted me to see how people in organizations of very different types articulate themselves and behave, both internally and externally. Very few of the theories or concepts to which I had been introduced in academia were in any way adequate to explain or predict (two functions of classical science) what I experienced and observed. In fact the only useful theories I found came from my study of arts and literatures. Furthermore it was these theories which offered some insight into what political scientists actually do in those places they are employed.

    In 2014, I submitted the argument that the West was preparing for some kind of world war. I based this on specific observations and the bald assertion that the Anglo-American Establishment (to use Quigley’s term) was a captive of the public school/preparatory school indoctrination of more than two hundred years of empire. In other words, world war a century later was an expression of what the Americans call “school spirit.” “Let’s celebrate Sarajevo with another bout of mass slaughter and destruction.”

    I am reasonably sure that the majority of readers dismissed this “unscientific” proposal. Surely no one in office would want to repeat the Great War or World War 2, much less for the sentimental reasons I mentioned. And yet the near universal praise for the deceased realist Heinz K offers an excellent support for my case as do the assessments of another “offensive” realist still with us and rather lionized by all masters and mistresses of insight into today‘s global bellicosity. Heinz K. consistently justified his intrigues based on his reading of Metternich, the continental cutout for British policy after the French Revolution and Napoleon were defeated. Balance of power (terror against the population) and deterrence are quintessential British concepts. With the merger of the British and American Empires through the Great War these doctrines became the central dogma of the piratical cult that Rhodes and Rothschild conceived in the Round Table. It is important to know that while for most people the Round Table is a cult of nobility and order (or something from Camelot or The Holy Grail films), Thomas Malory made quite clear that it was a system of vicious treachery dominated by a sinister and jealous monarch and his deceitful and ruthless champion Lancelot. It is the real Round Table that should concern investigators, not the fantasy.

    Far from being a paragon of virtue and loyalty, Lancelot is an adulterer and a cheat who stoops to any trick needed to win the tournaments Arthur has instituted to maintain control over the chivalry and, needless to say, the deplorables (the rest of the population). Anglo-American imperial policy is not similar to the Round Table as Rhodes, Rothschild, Milner et al. envisioned. It is identical with it. One need only look at how NATO and the COVID regime perform. It is a matter of record that the most draconian policies were applied throughout the Anglo-American Empire: the US, Britain and the white dominions. A realist, if that term means anything in the vernacular, would have to ask how such uniform tyranny could have been exercised in all those nominally independent countries? The answer is not hard to find.

    Political science as practiced in the academy and those tank manufacturer-funded institutions who collude in the articulation of public policy cannot call attention to the obvious. This is especially true of the so-called “realists.” What makes them so offensive is their obfuscation combined with moralizing verbosity. Yet the “realist” scholar or school is admired by all young and old (we have not yet heard of “trans-aged”).

    Consider the pre-mortem and in vivo critiques of the Ukraine and Palestine theaters. The steadfast refusal to analyse these as elements of one world war is generally tolerated because of the episodic objections raised to Anglo-American imperial warfare (my words, since for the realist the AAE and the one war world do not exist). Furthermore, the belligerence or in the case of Heinz K, duplicitous action toward China is never seriously criticised. It defies imagination to consider that the academic, “punditric” and weblog/podcasting spheres have never studied Manifest Destiny (a laudable exception is Bruce Cumings — no political scientist).

    “Political science” and its sister “international relations” literally concern the study of politics/policy and trans-border engagements. However what they do not concern is the exercise of real power. Neither the sources of power nor its composition are seriously observed or described. While classic geopolitical writing — often cited as boilerplate — like Mackinder or Mahon at least admits power for its own sake and attempts to describe its exercise, these books, even like the maligned Liddell-Hart are treated as superficially as dinner conversation at the club (whichever type one may imagine). That is no accident. Conversation is not supposed to offer offense to anyone, especially those whom it is dangerous to offend). In the jousting that goes by the name scholarship the best cheat wins.

    Like in the automatic washing machine, the power lies in the minuscule cult that rules the empire. Political science and her siblings produce the suds, the foam.

    The post Conventional Detergent: Political Science as an Ideological Laundromat first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • We Know a Different World Will Be Born Out of This Mess

    Luis Felipe Noé (Argentina), La naturaleza y los mitos II (‘Nature and Myths II’), 1975.
    Luis Felipe Noé (Argentina), La naturaleza y los mitos II (‘Nature and Myths II’), 1975.

    ‘The West is in danger’, warned Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei at this year’s World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland. In his dangerously appealing style, Milei blamed ‘collectivism’ – that is, social welfare, taxes, and the state – as the ‘root cause’ of the world’s problems, leading to widespread impoverishment. The only way forward, Milei declared, is through ‘free enterprise, capitalism, and economic freedom’. Milei’s speech marked a return to the orthodoxy of Milton Friedman and the Chicago Boys, who pushed forward an ideology of social cannibalism as the basis for their neoliberal agenda. Since the 1970s, this scorched earth policy has devasted much of the Global South through the structural adjustment programmes of the International Monetary Fund, but also created factory deserts in the West (what Donald Trump, in his inauguration address in 2017, called the ‘American carnage’). Therein lies the confounding logic of the far right: on the one side, calling for the billionaire class to dominate society in their interest (which produces the social carnage) and then, on the other side, inflaming the victims of said carnage to fight against policies that would benefit them.

    Milei is right in his overall judgment: the West is in danger, but not because of social democratic policies; it is in danger because of its inability to come to terms with its slow demise as the dominating bloc in the world.

    From Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and Global South Insights (GSI) come two important texts on the changing global landscape: a landmark study, Hyper-Imperialism: A Dangerous, Decadent New Stage, and our seventy-second dossier, The Churning of the World Order (the dossier is an ‘executive summary’ of the study, so I will be referring to them as if they were one text). We believe that this is the most significant theoretical statement that our institute has made in its eight-year history.

    In both Hyper-Imperialism and The Churning of the World Order we make four important points:

    First, through a deep analysis of the concepts of the Global North and the Global South, we show that the former acts as a bloc, while the latter is merely a loose grouping. The Global North is led by the United States, which has created several instruments to extend its authority over the other countries in the bloc (many of which are historic colonial powers and settler-colonial societies). These platforms include the Five Eyes intelligence alliance (initially set up in 1941 between the US and UK, the network has now expanded to Fourteen Eyes), the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO, set up in 1949), and the Group of Seven (G7, set up in 1974). Through these and other formations, the United States and its political allies within the Global North are able to exercise authority over their own countries and the countries of the Global South.

    In contrast, the countries of the Global South have historically been much more disorganised, with some, looser alliances and linkages around regional and political affiliations. The Global South has neither a political centre nor an ideologically driven project.

    The analysis in the texts is detailed, relying upon public databases and databases built by GSI. The bottom line is that there is one world system that is managed dangerously by an imperialist bloc. There are no multiple imperialisms, no inter-imperialist conflict.


    Mahmud al-Obaidi (Iraq), Untitled, 2008.

    Second, the platforms of the Global North exercise power over the world system through a number of vectors (military, financial, economic, social, cultural) and through a range of instruments (NATO, the International Monetary Fund, information systems). With the gradual decline of the Global North’s control over the international financial system, raw materials, technology, and science, this bloc mainly exercises its power through military force and through the management of information. In these texts, we do not go over the question of information, although we have previously written about it and will take it up again in a study on digital sovereignty. The focus of these texts is largely on military spending, where we show that the US-led bloc accounts for 74.3% of world military spending and that the US spends 12.6 times more than the world average on a per capita basis (Israel, second to the US, spends 7.2 times above the per capita world average). To put this into perspective, China accounts for 10% of world military spending and its per capita military spending is 22 times less than that of the United States.

    Such enormous spending on the military is not innocent. Not only does it come at the cost of social spending, the Global North’s military power is used to threaten and intimidate countries, and – if they are disobedient – to punish them with hellfire and brimstone. In 2022 alone, these imperialist nations made 317 deployments of their military forces to countries in the Global South. The highest number of these deployments (31) were made to Mali, a nation strongly seeking sovereignty, and which was the first of the Sahel states to stage popular-backed coups (2020 and 2021) and eject the French military from its territory (2022).

    Between 1776 and 2019, the United States carried out at least 392 interventions worldwide, half of them between 1950 and 2019. This includes the terrible, illegal war against Iraq in 2003 (at this year’s WEF meeting, Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani asked for Global North troops to leave Iraq). This vast military spending by the Global North, led by the United States, reflects the militarisation of its foreign policy. One of the little remarked aspects of this militarisation is the development of a theory in both the United States and United Kingdom of ‘defence diplomacy’ (as it was noted in the UK Ministry of Defence’s Strategic Defence Review of 1998). In the United States, strategic thinkers use the acronym DIME to reflect on the sources of national power (diplomacy, informational, military, and economic).

    Last year, the European Union and NATO – the institutions at the heart of the Global North – jointly pledged to ‘mobilise the combined set of instruments at our disposal, be they political, economic, or military, to pursue our common objectives to the benefit of our one billion citizens’. In case you did not catch it, that power – mostly military power and military diplomacy – is not to serve humanity, but to serve only their ‘citizens’.

    António Ole (Angola), The Maculusso Mural, 2014.
    António Ole (Angola), The Maculusso Mural, 2014.

    Third, Part IV of our Hyper-Imperialism study is called ‘The West in Decline’, and looks at the evidence for this trend from a perspective that rejects Milei’s ‘the West is in danger’ fearmongering. The facts show that since the start of the Third Great Depression, the Global North has struggled to maintain its control over the world economy; its instruments – monopolies over technology and raw materials, as well as dominion over foreign direct investment – have fundamentally eroded. When China surpassed the United States’ share of global industrial output in 2004, the United States lost hegemony in production (by 2022, the former held a 25.7% share versus the 9.7% held by the latter). Given that the United States is now dependent on large scale net capital imports, which reached $1 trillion in 2022, the US has little internal capability to provide economic advantages to its Global North or Global South allies. Owners of capital in the United States have siphoned off their profits from the country’s exchequer creating the economic conditions for the social carnage that afflicts the country. The old political coalitions rooted around the two parties in the United States are in flux, with no space within US political system to develop a political project to exercise hegemony over the world economy through legitimacy and consent. That is why the US-led Global North resorts to force and intimidation, building its massive military apparatus by increasing its own public debt (since there is little domestic consensus to use that borrowing to build the infrastructure and productive base of the country).

    The root of the New Cold War imposed by the United States on China is that China has outpaced the United States in net fixed capital formation, whilst the US has seen a gradual decline. Every year since 1992, China has been a net exporter of capital, this surplus of capital creation has made it possible to finance international projects such as the Belt and Road Initiative, now ten years old.


    El Meya (Algeria), Les Moudjahidates, 2021.

    Fourth, we analyse the emergence of new organisations rooted in the Global South, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (2001), the BRICS10 (2009), and the Group of Friends in Defence of the UN Charter (2021). These interregional platforms are in an embryonic stage, but they provide evidence for the growth of a new regionalism and multilateralism. Although these formations do not seek to operate as a bloc to counter the Global North’s bloc, they reflect what we have previously called a ‘new mood’ in the Global South. The new mood is neither anti-imperialist nor anti-capitalist, but is shaped by four main vectors:

    • Multilateralism and regionalism centred on the creation of Global South-anchored platforms for cooperation.
    • New modernisation centred on constructing regional and continental economies that use local currencies in place of the dollar for trade and reserves.
    • Sovereignty, which would create barriers to Western intervention. This includes military entanglements and digital colonialism, both of which facilitate US intelligence interventions.
    • Reparations, which would entail collective bargaining to compensate for the West’s century-old debt traps and abuse of the excess carbon budget as well as its much longer-reaching legacy of colonialism.

    The analysis in these texts goes deep beneath the surface, providing a historical materialist assessment of our present crises. Documents produced by the institutions of the Global North, such as the WEF’s Global Risks report for 2024, provide a list of the dangers that we face (climate catastrophe, social polarisation, economic downturns) but cannot explain them. Our approach, we believe, provides a theory to understand these perils as the outcome of the world system managed by the hyper-imperialist bloc.

    In thinking about these texts, my mind wandered to the work of the Iraqi poet Buland al-Haydari (1926–1996). When all seemed futile, al-Haydari wrote that ‘the sun will not rise’ and that ‘at the bottom of the house, already dead, are the steps of my children, reduced to silence’. But even then, when we ‘were without power’, there remains hope. His civilisation drowns, but then ‘you arrived with the paddle’, he sings. ‘Such is the history of our yesterday, and its taste is bitterness’, he concludes, ‘such is our slow walk, the procession of our dignity: our only good until the hour when will rise, finally, a free paddle’.

    That anticipation defines a classic by the Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad (1934–1967), ‘Someone Who Is Not Like Anyone’ (1966):

    I’ve had a dream that someone is coming.
    I’ve dreamt of a red star,
    and my eyes lids keep twitching
    and my shoes keep snapping to attention
    and may I go blind
    if I’m lying.
    I’ve dreamt of that red star
    when I wasn’t asleep.
    Someone is coming,
    someone is coming
    someone better.

    The post We Know a Different World Will Be Born Out of This Mess first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Toward the Abyss

    One word characterizes United States foreign policy – counterproductive.

    Major U.S. foreign policy decisions after World War II — Vietnam War, Lebanon intrusion, Somalia incursion, Afghan/Soviet War, Afghan occupation, Iraq War, support for Shah of Iran, and Libyan Wars — have been counterproductive, not resolving situations and eventually harming the American people. The one-sided relationship the United States has with Israel is another counterproductive policy that is harmful to the American public

    Persistent attention to Israel and its dubious position in the world may seem overkill, except this attention is one of the most important, mortally affecting the U.S. public. Until a complete report of fatal relations with Israel is placed on the desks of U.S. congresspersons and they act positively upon the contents, attention to the issue is incomplete and peril continues. Surveying U.S. policies that favored Israel collects a horrendous list of American fatalities, economic havoc, international terrorism, political misalignment, hatred, and aggression against fortress America.

    Two questions. How have the expensive arrangements, Velcro attachments, and highly supportive measures for Israel benefitted the United States? What has Israel done for Americans, not for American politicians, but for those who vote them into office? A convenient means for obtaining the answer is to have a leading “think tank” in the United States supply the information. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which “seeks to advance a balanced and realistic understanding of American interests in the Middle East and to promote the policies that secure them” has a 2012 article on the topic, “Friends with Benefits: Why the U.S.-Israeli Alliance Is Good for America,” by Michael Eisenstadt and David Pollock, Nov 7, 2012, and is a likely source. Some of its major recommendations:

    U.S.-Israeli security cooperation dates back to heights of the Cold War, when the Jewish state came to be seen in Washington as a bulwark against Soviet influence in the Middle East and a counter to Arab nationalism….Israel remains a counterweight against radical forces in the Middle East, including political Islam and violent extremism. It has prevented the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the region by thwarting Iraq and Syria’s nuclear programs.

    (1) The reason the Soviet Union acquired influence in the Middle East was Washington’s refusal to sell arms to the Arab nations, while “indirectly supplying weapons to Israel via West Germany, under the terms of a 1960 secret agreement to supply Israel with $80 million worth of armaments.“ Less secret deliveries of MIM-23 Hawk anti-aircraft missiles in 1962 and M48 Patton tanks in 1965 told the Arab nations they could not collaborate with a government that armed their principal adversary and they should seek military assistance elsewhere.
    (2) Arab nationalism has developed, and developed, and developed; so, how did Israel counter Arab nationalism? Did Israel stimulate Arab nationalism?
    (3) What has Israel done to protect others as a “counterweight against radical forces in the Middle East, including political Islam and violent extremism?” The answer is nothing. Radical forces, political Islam, and violent extremism emerged immediately after Israel’s formation and grew, and grew, as Israel grew.
    (4) Iraq and Syria sought nuclear weapons to counter Israel’s nuclear weapons developments, which the U.S. could have and should have prevented. No nukes in Israel; no nukes in Syria or Iraq. Why did the U.S., dedicated to preventing nuclear proliferation, allow Israel to obtain the atomic bomb?

    Dozens of leading U.S. companies have set up technology incubators in Israel to take advantage of the country’s penchant for new ideas. In 2011, Israel was the destination of 25 percent of all U.S. exports to the region, having recently eclipsed Saudi Arabia as the top market there for American products.

    (1) U.S. companies have subsidiaries worldwide and hire talent in all nations. What’s significant about Israel?
    (2) “In 2011, Israel was the destination of 25 percent of all U.S. exports to the region…” Was that good? In 2022, U.S. exports to Israel were $20.0 billion and imports were $30.6 billion, adding $10.7 billion to Washington’s trade deficit, not a good economic statistic. Without Israel’s trade, the U.S. exported $83 billion in goods and services to Middle East nations and had a trade surplus of $5.3 billion, a better statistic.

    U.S. companies’ substantial cooperation with Israel on information technology has been crucial to Silicon Valley’s success. At Intel’s research and development centers in Israel, engineers have designed many of the company’s most successful microprocessors, accounting for some 40 percent of the firm’s revenues last year. If you’ve made a secure financial transaction on the Internet, sent an instant message, or bought something using PayPal, you can thank Israeli  researchers.

    These bites of public relations win the all-time Pinocchio award. Is The Washington Institute a legitimate “think tank” or a covert lobby?

    (1)    “Israel has been crucial to Silicon Valley’s success.” Next, we’ll hear that Moses received the Ten Commandments on Mt. Whitney.
    (2)    “At Intel’s research and development centers in Israel, engineers have designed many of the company’s most successful microprocessors, accounting for some 40 percent of the firm’s revenues last year.” Intel has 131,000 employees in 65 countries — 11,000 in Israel, 12,000 in China, and approximately 7,500 employees at its 360-acre Leixlip campus in Ireland. The company develops the processors, not the country or specific engineers; it can develop the same processors anywhere in the world and has capably developed its major microprocessors for 45 years in the good old United States of America.
    (3)    “If you’ve made a secure financial transaction on the Internet, sent an instant message, or bought something using PayPal, you can thank Israeli researchers.” Another Pinocchio award. Let’s be more accurate: “If you’ve been scammed in a financial transaction, had your messages hacked, or had someone purchase an item with your PayPal account, thank Israeli researchers.”

    In its one-sided presentation, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy does not show the U.S.-Israeli alliance is good for America. The Institute has not considered the other side, the harm that Israel has visited upon its most essential partner. Reality shows the U.S. government and its people have dealt with Israel in a suicidal manner and in a zero-sum game, where the U.S. is the “zero,” or actually minus, and Israel receives the sum of all the benefits.

    Recognition of Israel

    From its inception, Israel betrayed the United States and the U.S. betrayed its commitment to a just and peaceful post-WWII world. President Harry S. Truman’s recognition of the new state, only 11 minutes after its declaration, did not consider its composition, signified a pardon of the excesses committed by Irgun and Haganah militias against civilian populations, and certified the exclusion of a Palestinian voice in the new government. Truman never asked who represented the 400,000 indigenous Palestinians in the declared Israeli state that was almost equal in population to the 600,000 Jews, most of whom were recent immigrants and not decidedly permanent.

    Suez Canal War

    Several years later Israel again betrayed its principal benefactor. While President Eisenhower attempted to broker a peace agreement between Egypt and France and Great Britain that would resolve the crisis emerging from Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal, Israel held secret consultations with the British and French. Considering Nasser a threat to its security, desirous of incorporating the Sinai into its small nation, and with a plan to extend Israel to the Litani River in Lebanon, Israel devised a strategy with the two European powers that permitted its forces to invade Egypt and advance to within 10 miles of the Suez Canal. Pretending to protect the vital artery, Britain and France parachuted troops close to the canal. An enraged Eisenhower threatened all three nations with economic sanctions, which succeeded in having all three militaries withdraw their forces and relinquish control of the canal to Egypt.

    Six-Day War

    The six-day war brought the first American blood in the U.S. commitment to Israel. On June 8, 1967, Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats attacked the USS Liberty, an intelligence-gathering vessel patrolling in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, 17 nautical miles off the northern Sinai coast. The crew suffered thirty-four (34) killed and one hundred seventy-three (173) wounded. A declassified Top Secret report details the CIA version of the attack and exonerates Israel by claiming mistaken identity. This has not satisfied USS Liberty survivors, who felt Israeli pilots had many opportunities for proper identification and performed the attacks to prevent the ship from obtaining important intelligence information.

    1973 Yom Kippur War

    Next came the 1973 Yom Kippur War and an economic catastrophe for the American people. The U.S. maintained it needed Israel to offset Soviet influence in the Arab world. The combined Egyptian and Syrian attempt to retake lands lost in the 1967 war prompted the Nixon administration to use taxpayer money and supply massive shipments of weapons to the beleaguered Israel state. An excuse for providing the armaments shipments ─ Israel might use the Samson option and nuke its adversaries ─ is regarded as a manipulation to pacify opponents of the arms deliveries. The controversy is reported in Wikipedia.

    Dayan raised the nuclear topic in a cabinet meeting, warning that the country was approaching a point of “last resort.” That night, Meir authorized the assembly of thirteen 20-kiloton-of-TNT(84 TJ) tactical nuclear weapons for Jericho missiles at Sdot Micha Airbase and F-4 Phantom II aircraft at Tel Nof Airbase. They would be used if absolutely necessary to prevent total defeat, but the preparation was done in an easily detectable way, likely as a signal to the United States. Kissinger learned of the nuclear alert on the morning of 9 October. That day, President Nixon ordered the commencement of Operation Nickel Grass, an American airlift to replace all of Israel’s material losses.

    The U.S. contribution in enabling Israel to achieve a decisive victory resulted in an oil embargo that drove up oil prices, set Americans into a frantic rampage in trying to keep their cars on the road, a stagnant economy, and huge inflation, which the Federal Reserve stopped by raising interest rates to record highs and led to the 1982 recession.

    Lebanon War

    Despite a truce with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and wanting to rid Lebanon of the PLO and Syrian dominance in Lebanon affairs, Israel used a failed assassination of Shlomo Argov, Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, as an excuse to invade Lebanon on June 6, 1982. Where Israel went, U.S. diplomacy was sure to follow, and the U.S. joined a multinational peacekeeping force.

    U.S. presence in Lebanon had detractors. On April 18, 1983, a car bomb destroyed the U.S. embassy in West Beirut, killing dozens of American foreign service workers and Lebanese civilians. On October 23, 1983,  after U.S. gunships in the Mediterranean shelled Syrian-backed Druze militias in support of the Christian government, a truck crashed through the front gates of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut and exploded. Beirut barracks were destroyed and 241 marines and sailors were killed in the explosion. Soon after, President Reagan withdrew all U.S. forces from Lebanon.

    International Terrorism

    For several decades, al-Qaeda, the most prominent international terrorist organization, posed the most serious threat to America’s peace and stability. On August 7, 1998, al-Qaeda associates bombed the American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in Africa. Twelve Americans were among the two hundred and twenty-four people who died in the terrorist actions. Three years later, the September 11 attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. caused 2,750 deaths in New York and 184 at the Pentagon. Forty more Americans died when one of the hijacked planes crashed into the ground in Pennsylvania. In addition, 400 police officers and firefighters perished in attempts to rescue people and extinguish the fires at the New York Trade Center.

    Where did it all start? Why, and how did master terrorist Osama bin Laden develop his plans? There is no one factor, but, in several documents, bin Landen mentions Zionist control of Middle East lands and its oppression of an Arab population as significant factors. America’s support for Israel was one of bin Laden‘s principal arguments with the United States. The al-Qaeda leader revealed his attitude in the last sentences of a “Letter to America.”

    Justice is the strongest army, and security is the best way of life, but it slipped out of your grasp the day you made the Jews victorious in occupying our land and killing our brothers in Palestine. The path to security is for you to lift your oppression from us.

    During the 1990s, two other documents,“Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places” and the “Declaration of the World Islamic Front,” retrieved from Osama bin Laden, jihad, and the sources of international terrorism, J. M. B. Porter, Indiana International & Comparative Law Review, provide additional information on bin-Laden’s attachment of his terrorist responses to Zionist activities.

    [T]he people of Islam have suffered from aggression, iniquity, and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist/Crusader alliance … Their blood was spilled in Palestine and Iraq. The horrifying pictures of the massacre of Qana, in Lebanon, are still fresh in our memory.

    So now they come to annihilate … this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors. … if the Americans’ aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews’ petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel’s survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.

    Afghanistan

    The hunt for Osama bin Laden and efforts to annihilate the al-Qaeda organization led to the invasion of Afghanistan and a twenty-year clash between the U.S. and the Taliban. Result: 2,402 United States military deaths, 20,713 American service members wounded, and Taliban regaining control.

    Iraq

    It’s difficult and punishing to agree with Osama bin Laden, but he may be correct or have a perspective that needs more examination. Did Bush order the invasion of Iraq to destroy Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, which any child could ascertain he could not possibly have, or did the Neocons, Israel’s voice in the administration, convince him to use Americans, their resources, and their money to rid the Middle East of Israel’s most formidable enemy? Was George W. Bush’s uncalled-for war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq another example of sacrificing U.S. lives to advance Israel’s interests? Other international terrorist operations emerged during the Iraq war and brought U.S. military personnel into more battles. Finally, in 2019, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the best-equipped and largest of all the terrorist factions, which caused havoc in Syria and Iraq, was defeated, and international terrorism moved out of the Middle East and into parts of Africa.

    Iran

    It is taken for granted that Iran and the United States are natural enemies, except the hostility may be manufactured and the factory might be in Tel Aviv. Iran has a government and internal problems that disturb the U.S., but so do many other nations, especially Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. maintains relations with these nations. Confrontations have occurred and are escalating and that demands toning down rather than ratcheting up, and more diplomatic confrontations to prevent the physical confrontations. Sanctions that harm Iran’s economy and people, assistance to Israel in assassinating Iranian scientists, and use of the powerful computer worm, Stuxnet, to cause mayhem in Iran’s nuclear program are counterproductive provocations. The U.S. has no specific problem with Iran that cannot be ameliorated. Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians and incursions into the Haram al-Sharif are problems that Iran has with Israel, and they cannot be ameliorated until the oppression stops. Cunningly, Israel has tied its problems with the Islamic State to U.S. problems with Iran and uses the U.S. to challenge Iran.

    Other

    ·         In defiance of U.S. restrictions and the U.S. supplying Israel with advanced military equipment, Israeli companies sold weapons to China without a permit.

    ·         The U.S. gives Israel the sum of $3.1 B every year to purchase advanced weapons, from which Israel became a major exporter of military equipment and has been able to compete effectively with its patron.

    ·          Israeli governments have scoffed at all U.S. entreaties to halt settlement expansion, even insulting then Vice-President Joe Biden by authorizing settlement expansion one day before Biden arrived for talks.

    ·         Two Navy SEALs are missing and assumed dead after a maritime operation to intercept weapons from Iran heading to Houthi fighters. This episode is a result of the U.S. participating in Israel’s war against Gaza.

    ·         The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has been attacking air bases housing U.S. and Iraqi troops in western Iraq “as a part of a broad resistance to the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq, as well as a response to Israel’s operations in Gaza.”

    Toward the Abyss

    The verdict is clear; the United States derives no benefit from its close relationship with Israel. Maybe, during the confusing Cold War, desk strategists determined the Soviets had an influence with Middle Eastern nations and thought it wise to have a place where the Pentagon would be welcome. Soviet influence disappeared after the 1979 Camp David Accords; Egypt and Israel signed a peace agreement and Soviet diplomats and military vanished from the desert sands.

    From September 11, 2001, to October 7, 2023, the U.S. continually suffered fatalities, economic havoc, international terrorism, political misalignment, hatred, and aggression against Fortress America. Why did U.S. administrations pursue a “special relationship” with Israel and find themselves victims of the “war on terror” and involved in numerous wars? The current U.S. administration, which did not use its clout to prevent the October 7, 2023 attack in Israel, has permitted Israel’s self-inflicted problems to bring the U.S. people into supporting the genocide of the Palestinian people, promoting the U.S. as the leading killer of indigenous peoples.

    It took a long time to turn the murmurs of genocide in Palestine into a forceful expression that others would accept and fearlessly repeat. Murmurs of sabotage and treason by elected government officials are being heard, but they are legal terms for crimes, and, legally, U.S. legislators’ activities may not be considered in those categories. Treachery is a better word, gaining federal office by treacherous means — pandering to those that represent the interests of a foreign power to obtain campaign funds and press coverage — and using that office to satisfy the wants of the foreign power, despite the damage done to American constituencies. Past and present U.S. executives and legislators are guilty of treachery and that word should be shouted in the halls of Congress. Sound the alarm, get them out before it is too late, and elect into office those who represent the American people and not a foreign government. MAGA – MAKE AMERICA GOOD AGAIN.

    Aiding the genocide has put the U.S. in severe moral decline; escalating internal divisions are leading to social and political decline; and an economy that can no longer compete in the international markets, together with increasing resistance to use of the dollar, is leading to economic decline. The signs of civil strife have yet to appear and when they do they will push the U.S. off the edge of the cliff and into the abyss.

    The post Toward the Abyss first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Does the U.S. Really Need Mideast Oil—or the Mideast—Anymore?

    When my husband and I were flying to Beirut, Lebanon to co-edit the English-language Daily Star, we noticed our tickets were paid by ARAMCO (since 1988, “Saudi Aramco,” then one of the world’s largest American oil companies. That was a factor the publisher somehow neglected to explain, along with the pro-West bias of this influential and major Arabic newspaper chain. Not long after, we took a bomb in the lobby that shook the building, but no one was killed.

    Having then just departed from two years in Tulsa—he on the World, me, as a journalism professor—we were well aware of oil’s power and domination over Oklahoma, let alone the world. Because neither industries nor the military could last without oil—even before WWII—Allies and Axis nations then fought to seize and/or control the flow from Iran (650 billion barrels ) and pander for the rest from oil-rich Arab countries.

    Today’s Department of Defense (DOD) requires at least an estimated annual 4.6 billion gallons of fuel  to cover its global military reach. Small wonder decades of Administrations and lawmakers have been unwilling, or downright frightened, to end the U.S. military’s dependence on the availability and prices of Mideast oil.

    So from 2001 to at least 2019, wars in the Mideast and Asia have cost American taxpayers an estimated $6.4 trillion , not to mention millions of dead and wounded, environmental destruction, and millions from the Mideast seeking refuge in Europe. Not to count millions spent by the ferocious joint response of American oil producers and military contractors and their legendary use of election donations to influence both Congress and presidents. Add advertising “buys” to the mainstream-media—all vested interests as usual defending American (business) interests abroad.

    Wars to Seize, Control Oil Supplies

    The Pentagon’s insatiable fuel demands explain why the Bush Administration almost too quickly used 9/11 as an excuse to invade and occupy Iraq. The real motive was more to “secure” its oil fields and production than to overthrow Saddam Hussain and destroy his nonexistent weapons-of-mass-destruction. It also explains why Iran—with its vast oil reserves—has been sanctioned as a U.S. enemy and is constantly under presidential and Pentagon threats ultimately to seize them as well.

    As for Syria, the Pentagon has supported the Kurds’ separation of northern Syria to “help” protect its oil fields supposedly against possible reappearance of ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). That rationale has meant taxpayers unknowingly have spent millions to support 10 U.S. bases  (900 troops in Syria, 2,500 in Iraq ). They’ve only become aware of that factor because of recent rocket and drone attacks: 32 times in Iraq, 34 in Syria (70 casualties ) from anti-US militants allegedly supported by Iran.

    The response seemingly has been a shocked “Why are our kids still there?”—and sitting ducks for local target practice. The official reason for U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria was the “enduring defeat” of ISIS . But that occurred five years ago. Those recent attacks resulted in three U.S. retaliatory air strikes  killing eight Iraqis, and an outraged Iraqi government (“…a clear violation of the coalition’s mission to combat [ISIS] on Iraqi soil”).

    The bigger question now being raised, however, is whether the Administration and Pentagon even have a need for Mideast oil. This despite President Biden’s recent decision to permit $582 millions in weapon sales  to ingratiate this country once again to Saudi Arabia despite unneeded oil.

    Or teaming earlier this month with Britain to use a blunderbuss against the Houthi “mosquito” guerillas attacking Red Sea shipping: Two massive retaliatory bombings by air and submarine of more than 28 mostly “militant” targets  along Yemen’s mountainous coast —and warnings of more to come  if the Houthis don’t stop. Never did the Biden Administration consider demanding shippers equip vessels with weapons and hiring “shot-gun” crews for protection. Nor are taxpayers likely to learn the raids’ cost from the Pentagon.

    In today’s global uproar for a Gaza cease-fire, at least it’s now unlikely the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs or Biden will put American boots on the ground for Israel. They appear to be keeping their powder dry for the “pivot” to Asia, particularly China which will require massive shifts of personnel and war materiel from the Mideast. But quick exits from Vietnam and Afghanistan have demonstrated the Pentagon’s prowess in rapid-transfer logistics on short notice.

    U.S. Is Now Top Global Producer of Oil and Natural Gas

    The point is that the U.S. really is no longer dependent on Mideast oil. New drilling techniques such as fracking have made it possible to produce enough oil and gas domestically, as well as importing it abroad.

    Millions of Americans probably are unaware that since 2014 the U.S. has become the world’s “top oil and natural gas liquids” producer  (2022: 19.1 million barrels per day).  It even leads Saudi Arabia and Russia.

    To arrive at this point took Biden’s betrayal of millions of environmentally conscious voters of his March 2020 campaign promise  (“No more drilling on federal lands. No more drilling, including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period, ends.”). What followed has been his steady approval of 6,430 new permits  for oil/gas drilling on public lands. He also revealed that 9,000 permits  previously issued to companies have yet to be used.

    Four key signals have been afoot for months that U.S. decision-makers are planning a Mideast exit after Israel has “cleared” Gaza of Palestinians. The Yemen bombings may be the last hurrah of U.S. meddling in the Mideast. Such an historic, earthshaking shift of policy and subsequent monumental move could be immediately ahead—possibly before the presidential election.

    Another telling exit signal is new resistance by American taxpayers to the Armed Services budget (FY24: $841.1 billion ) and endless wars, just demonstrated by Congressional Republicans  opposed to Ukraine spending in FY2024 and/or the Pentagon’s never-ending budgetary increases. Or hiding expenses by its sixth audit failure . Among the expenses revealed by the Pentagon’s inspector-general’s report to Congress was failure to track more than $1 billion  of “highly sensitive and sophisticated equipment and weaponry” to Ukraine.

    Too, the Yemen attack without the Constitutional requirement of notifying Congress first brought dozens of lawmakers to the Capitol steps to object, echoing Rep. Cori Bush’s online protest of: “The people do not want more of our taxpayer dollars going to endless wars and the killing of civilians. Stop the bombing and do better by us.”

    The Pentagon seems impervious even to possible budget cuts from Congress, illustrated by its latest cliffhanging decision over its allocation and future supplemental appropriations. And with good reason. The House did pass the initial FY 2024 bill by a whisker (218-210 ), then, a reassured temporary resolution (395-95 ). The Senate soon followed (87-11 ). Even in the Yemen attack, Pentagon officials’ influence over Biden  is such that his knowing the nation’s overwhelming mood opposes any more Mideast wars, he failed to go immediately on TV to explain this massive action.

    A third signal of a U.S. departure is Saudi Arabia’s replacement effort  by seeking new oil customers in Africa and Asia. No fools about the loss of a major customer, its visionary decision makers have been have been working on an Oil Demand Sustainability Program  to:

    “…promote oil-based power generation, deploy petrol and diesel vehicles… work with a global auto manufacturer to make a cheap car, lobby against government subsidies for electric vehicles, and fast-track commercial supersonic air travel.”

    Influential Media Calls for a Mideast Departure

    A fourth indication of a U.S. pullout is that increasing recommendation by influential publications seemingly based on clues perceived from the Biden Administration and Pentagon.

    For example, a November op-ed in Foreign Affairs  strongly suggests the Administration needs a course correction in the Mideast, a rapid withdrawal of the Armed Forces to let the locals handle their affairs.

    Jason Brownlee , in the Quincy Institute’s Responsible Statecraft newsletter, claims the Administration’s “prolonged… deployment” in the Mideast has been “driven by policy inertia more than strategic necessity.” The White House: “should scrap, not reinforce, America’s outdated and unnecessarily provocative troop presence in Syria and Iraq.” His firsthand observations of Taliban rule since the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, he wrote, showed the country finally had “internal stability” because political violence “plummeted by 80%” in the first year.

    Military expert William D. Hartung  added that fears of other great powers filling a withdrawal vacuum were “overblown.” That:

     A more restrained strategy would provide better defense per dollar spent while reducing the risk of being drawn into devastating and unnecessary wars. The outlines of such an approach should include taking a more realistic view of the military challenges posed by Russia and China; relying on allies to do more in defense of their own regions; [and]… paring back the U.S. overseas military presence, starting with a reduction in basing and troop levels in the Middle East.

    In the face-off against the monumental challenge of an uninhabitable planet, TIME magazine’s Alejandro de la Garza  noted even two years ago that:

     …the military cannot maintain its globe spanning presence and become carbon neutral at the same time. A sustainable military will have to be smaller, with fewer bases, fewer troops to feed and clothe, and fewer ships and airplanes ferrying supplies to personnel from Guam to Germany.

    Leaving the Mideast carries the benefit of loosening the rigid thinking Pentagon leaders fixed on plotting wars to secure Arab and Iranian oil. Shifting plans for the Pacific Rim—North Korea and China—just might transform the Armed Forces into being smaller, fewer, and better. Especially removing our troops as moving targets in Iraq and Syria when we no longer need its oil, nor Iran’s. Trading and diplomatic policies could then lead the way instead of expending any more blood and taxpayers’ treasure on that region of the world.

    The post Does the U.S. Really Need Mideast Oil—or the Mideast—Anymore? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Is Geopolitics Deterministic?


    In an online video interview, libertarian judge Andrew Napolitano asked University of Chicago political scientist and international relations professor John Mearsheimer to “translate” president Xi’s remarks in his New Year speech.

    The professor answered, “There is no question that the Chinese want Taiwan back. They want to make Taiwan part of China…. There is also no question that the Taiwanese don’t want to be part of China. They want to be a sovereign state. These are two irreconcilable goals.”

    First, it must be stated that much of what Mearsheimer says about geopolitical issues (particularly, with respect to the United States’ agenda in the world) comes across as arrived at by honest, factual, realistic appraisal.

    It is axiomatic that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) would like the Republic of China (ROC/Taiwan) fully back in the fold. As far as the PRC is concerned, Taiwan is de jure a part of China, and the United Nations and 181 countries concur that there is only one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. This includes the United States. Mearsheimer’s words elide this reality. His words also appear in contradiction since he admits that Taiwan is not sovereign. Taiwan is not a country. Mearsheimer’s wording aligns with the oleaginous US position toward the PRC and Taiwan.

    In US diplomacy, words too often do not match facts or deeds. The US signed on to the One China policy. However, because of the increasing alarm that the economic, technological, military advancement of the PRC is eclipsing the US’s arrogant claim to full spectrum dominance, the US has precipitated, what looks on its face to be, an abject desperation to maintain its place in at the top of the world order, as it defines this order.

    As for Mearsheimer’s evidence-free claim of there being “no question that the Taiwanese don’t want to be part of China.” That is disputable. Legacy media will point to the recent presidential victory of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)’s Lai Ching-te to buttress this claim of Taiwan’s desire for sovereignty.

    While Lai led with 40.05% of the vote, the opposition Guomindang (KMT) presidential candidate Hou Yu-ih received 33.49% of the votes, and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) candidate Ko Wen-je received 26.45%. So roughly 60% of the electorate’s votes did not go to the DPP. Earlier Ko had proposed a failed KMT-TPP alliance, which suggests something other than a sovereignist agenda for 60% of Taiwanese voters.

    Looking at the voting results might, therefore, lead one to refute the “no question” Taiwan wants to be separate from the PRC claim to be itself questionable.

    Mearsheimer continued, “The interesting question, at this point in time, is whether or not the Chinese are going to try to conquer Taiwan by military force.”

    To most of the world Taiwan is a part of One China. It is obvious that the PRC is not bent on militarily conquering Taiwan. It need not unless Taiwan crosses its red lines. Approaching these red lines is usually done in collusion with the US. This points to a historical fact that the reason Taiwan is in a sovereignty limbo to this day is because the US used its naval might to back the KMT and Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) at the time of a militarily exhausted China. One ought to consider that Taiwan has been a part of China much, much longer (since 230 CE) than the geopolitical entity called the United States of America has existed based on its dispossession and genocide of the Original Peoples. Therefore, American proclamations about the PRC and Taiwan must be skeptically scrutinized since they are based in hypocrisy and desperation, with crucial facts confined to the memory hole, to anchor in place the US conception of a world order. Mearsheimer does not dwell on the relevancy of this reality when discussing the PRC and Taiwan.

    Mearsheimer reveals his patriotic realism: “We [the US] are not only concerned about maintaining Taiwan as an independent state because it is a democracy and we have long had good relations with it, but we also think keeping Taiwan on our side of the ledger is very important for strategic reasons…”

    Mearsheimer needs to define democracy and support his contention that the US is supportive of democracy, let alone whether the US is a legitimate democracy. Genuine democracy represents the will of the people.

    Taiwan was for decades a KMT military dictatorship which resorted to mass murder to consolidate its power. Finally, in 1996, the electoral vote came to Taiwan. Yet, does a vote every few years mean a country is a democracy? Is that all it takes?

    Does Mearsheimer really believe that the US supports democracy? Is supporting so-called color revolutions indicative of an adherence to democracy? Did the US backing of the Maidan coup to overthrow the elected president Viktor Yanukovych indicate a support of democracy? The examples are myriad.

    Is blocking a presidential contender from receiving votes in certain states (from Ralph Nader to Donald Trump) indicative of a fidelity to democracy? Or when a government ignores the will of a majority to follow a policy rejected by the masses, such as the US government’s vindictive agenda against publisher Julian Assange? So what does Mearsheimer mean when he posits an American support for Taiwan predicated on it being a democracy?

    Does the PRC not have a claim to being a democracy? Does China not pursue policies for the good of the masses of Chinese? In his compellingly argued book, Democracy: What the West Can Learn from China, Wei Ling Chua makes the case for China as a democracy based on its devotion to the well-being of all its citizens. Harvard University’s Ash Center found in its last survey in 2016 that 95.5% of those surveyed reported being either “relatively satisfied” or “highly satisfied” with the Communist Party of China government.

    Even if China attempted to take Taiwan back now, Mearsheimer opined, “I think Xi Jinping has lots of domestic problems that are more important to deal with at this juncture, and furthermore, I don’t think the Taiwanese [he meant Chinese] have the military capability to take Taiwan back at the this point in time.” (Read “How Does Technology Factor in for US Militarism Toward China?”)

    Mearsheimer is opining through most of the interview. This is adduced by framing many opinions with “I think.” Even non-nuclear war simulations that predict a US victory point out that it would come at a staggering price. Would the US citizenry be willing to pay the price?

    Mearsheimer is convinced that regardless of the cost of a military confrontation between China and the US that “… the United States is definitely committed to containing China and keeping Taiwan out of China’s hands, then the United States would axiomatically fight war with China over Taiwan.”

    He predicates this commitment on the comments of, with all due respect, a brain addled president.

    Napolitano asks, “Is China a threat to the United States of America?”

    Mearsheimer sidesteps the “threat” and states “the Chinese are a serious competitor.”

    “Furthermore, the Chinese are interested not only in taking back Taiwan, they are interested in dominating the South China Sea and the East China Sea; and the South China Sea is of immense importance to the United States and to the world economy. And the United States does not want China to take the South China Sea back or take control of it, or take control of the East China Sea. We’re opposed to that. More generally, we do not want China to be the dominant power in Asia.”

    “Taking back,” says Mearsheimer. In so stating, Mearsheimer is acknowledging Taiwan was removed from China. It was removed by Japanese imperialism. And that removal was enforced after World War II by the US against its WWII ally, China.

    And what does the professor mean by “dominate”? How is China dominating these waters? Is that not what the US attempts by sending war ships into the Mediterranean, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, South China Sea, and the East China Sea? (Read “Who has Sovereignty in the South China Sea?”) Does China prevent innocent passage of shipping through these waters?
    Does China prevent innocent passage of shipping through these waters? Noteworthy is a legal position that holds that military transit requires China’s approval.

    Mearsheimer: “But China naturally wants to be the dominant power in Asia just like we want to be the dominant power in our backyard…”

    Naturally, as if this is ineluctable. And again, this word dominate? The US dominates by having other countries adhere to its coercive demands, especially commercial demands, (read John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by for elaboration), by situating its preferred people in charge in targeted countries (e.g., splitting Korea and transplanting the dictator Syngman Rhee from the US to South Korea, supporting Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam before later abandoning him, and the installment of the unpopular Ayad Allawi as prime minister in Iraq).

    The US is ensconced on ethnically cleansed Indigenous territory. It supported a corporate coup against the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 and apologized for this in 1993, but still the US continues to occupy Hawai’i. There are also the cases of Puerto Rico, Guam, Saipan, Palau, the Chagos archipelago, the Marshall Islands, and others.

    According to the reasoning proffered by Mearsheimer, the US was predetermined to pursue building an empire. And in his reasoning the US is unexceptional in this regard because China’s eventual imperialist path is also likewise predetermined.

    Mearsheimer acknowledges that “China is ambitious for good reasons on their part, and the United States is committed to limiting China’s ambitions for good strategic reasons on its part.”

    Usually to be ambitious is considered in a positive vein: learn all you can, develop, become independent, become a leader. However, in Mearsheimer’s wording one assumes ambition to be negative, as in dominating others and halting the ambitions of others, as the US wants to do to China. Limiting China’s ambitions — so much for win-win, as China is committed to. And why is limiting China good strategic reasoning by the US? Doesn’t the US trumpet so-called free markets?

    Napolitano picks up on this and asks: “What are the reasons for limiting China’s ambitions if the ambitions are commercial in nature?”

    Mearsheimer points to determinism,

    And you know how the United States behaves. The United States is a highly aggressive state that runs around the world using its power quite liberally. Why do you think that if China had a powerful military that it wouldn’t do the same thing? The United States just doesn’t want any other power on the planet to be more powerful than it is. I think that any other country on the planet, if it had its druthers, would want to be the most powerful state in the system. And the reason is that the international system [Which system is Mearsheimer referring to: that overseen by the United Nations or the so-called rules based order? — KP] is a really dangerous place. It is in many ways a brutal jungle. All you have to do is look at what is happening to the Palestinians. If you were the Palestinians, wouldn’t you want your own state, and wouldn’t you want that your state to be really powerful, so that nobody, in effect, could mess around with you? I think the Chinese are driven by this mentality? [italics added]

    Mearsheimer rejects that China’s reasons are just commercial. He posits instead a geopolitical determinism. Freedom for a country to choose its direction in the world apparently does not exist. Nation states are bound to follow a determined trajectory.

    Mearsheimer assumes China will follow the US trajectory. He asks, “Why do you think that if China had a powerful military that it wouldn’t do the same thing?” [italics added]

    Why did the Soviet Union dissolve? A commonly heard answer is that the military power that the Soviet Union once was was brought to its economic knees due to military overspending. Why is the US’s economic preeminence challenged by a serious competitor now? Does China have 700 to 900 foreign military bases (numbers vary according to source, but a lot)? This must cause a serious outpouring of money. Maybe that is why China wouldn’t pursue the same folly as the US? Moreover, China is steadfastly promoting peaceful win-win relations between and among countries. China’s economic success is based on these win-win relationships. By engaging in win-win relations, China wins and the other country wins. There is no need to dominate. China is able to receive the commodities, materials, and services that it desires (except when a competitor decides to limit “free trade”), and it continues to prosper as does its partner country.

    Of course the Chinese don’t want to suffer another century of humiliation (but does that mean the Chinese want to oppress others as the West have been doing?) Besides, wasn’t Vietnam syndrome humiliating? Wasn’t the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan humiliating?

    Relationships of domination and humiliation are not win-win. One side will be aggrieved in such a relationship and will seek another relationship, and more likely elsewhere with a trustworthy partner. It seems that China is aware of this dynamic.

    Mearsheimer posits how the US should deal with China:

    “I think the United States should go to great lengths to contain China.” Contain, meaning “to prevent China from dominating the South China Sea, to prevent China from taking Taiwan, and to prevent China from dominating the East China Sea,” and to make good relations with China’s neighbors in furtherance of this US objective; and avoid provoking a war with China.

    Said the professor, “We should try to roll back Chinese military power; the United States should manage China-US relations to avoid war.” In other words, the US should dominate China, as is natural, according to the professor.

    Given the multitude of wars carried out by the US abroad, it is surely self-evident that if a nation state wants to avoid wars and does not have a powerful ally, then a certain level of a defensive capability is a sine qua non. For the aggressive US, by far the highest spending military-industrial complex on the planet, to call out the strengthening of another country’s military, especially a country frequently excoriated and threatened by US government officials, must be viewed as blatant hypocrisy.

    Hence, it is quite a conundrum Mearsheimer lays out: avoiding war by rolling back another country’s military power by virtue of it having greater military power. Supposedly, in this scenario, China will accede to the US curtailment (“rolling back”) of Chinese military might and not be provoked to war; it will give up its national aspiration to bring Taiwan fully back into the Chinese nation; it will allow itself to be humiliated once again by a foreign nation. Paradoxically, this scenario also calls on China to reject geopolitical determinism? It sounds a lot like Mearsheimer has constructed a pretzel of contradictions. How sensible, how probable is what the professor proffers?

    Mearsheimer asserts that China seeks power that is self-serving – that is, power that is not shared as in a win-win scenario: “… We have a vested interest in not letting China shift the balance of power in its favor, and, therefore against us, in a major way.”

    This raises many questions and requires elucidation. Who is the “we” here? One assumes Mearsheimer means the US. Is it in the “vested interest” of the masses in the US? It must be because to be vested otherwise would be undemocratic. While in the US millions sleep in their cars or under bridges each night, scrape through garbage receptacles for sustenance during the day, and beg for handouts, China has eliminated such extreme poverty. Shouldn’t that be a signal for the impoverished strata in other societies?

    China is not the enemy. China is not perfect, and it doesn’t profess to be. It does not profess to be an indispensable nation. It does not proclaim to be a beacon on the hill. It does not list as a goal full spectrum dominance. Mearsheimer apparently thinks that the evolution of the capitalist US must also apply to socialist China. Nonetheless, it would seem more accurate to portray China, which in the earliest stage of socialism, as an alternative model to US capitalism, militarism, imperialism, and dominance.

    Other nations state should seriously consider how socialism matched with their country’s characteristics might function for them.

    The post Is Geopolitics Deterministic? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Is Geopolitics Deterministic?


    In an online video interview, libertarian judge Andrew Napolitano asked University of Chicago political scientist and international relations professor John Mearsheimer to “translate” president Xi’s remarks in his New Year speech.

    The professor answered, “There is no question that the Chinese want Taiwan back. They want to make Taiwan part of China…. There is also no question that the Taiwanese don’t want to be part of China. They want to be a sovereign state. These are two irreconcilable goals.”

    First, it must be stated that much of what Mearsheimer says about geopolitical issues (particularly, with respect to the United States’ agenda in the world) comes across as arrived at by honest, factual, realistic appraisal.

    It is axiomatic that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) would like the Republic of China (ROC/Taiwan) fully back in the fold. As far as the PRC is concerned, Taiwan is de jure a part of China, and the United Nations and 181 countries concur that there is only one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. This includes the United States. Mearsheimer’s words elide this reality. His words also appear in contradiction since he admits that Taiwan is not sovereign. Taiwan is not a country. Mearsheimer’s wording aligns with the oleaginous US position toward the PRC and Taiwan.

    In US diplomacy, words too often do not match facts or deeds. The US signed on to the One China policy. However, because of the increasing alarm that the economic, technological, military advancement of the PRC is eclipsing the US’s arrogant claim to full spectrum dominance, the US has precipitated, what looks on its face to be, an abject desperation to maintain its place in at the top of the world order, as it defines this order.

    As for Mearsheimer’s evidence-free claim of there being “no question that the Taiwanese don’t want to be part of China.” That is disputable. Legacy media will point to the recent presidential victory of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)’s Lai Ching-te to buttress this claim of Taiwan’s desire for sovereignty.

    While Lai led with 40.05% of the vote, the opposition Guomindang (KMT) presidential candidate Hou Yu-ih received 33.49% of the votes, and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) candidate Ko Wen-je received 26.45%. So roughly 60% of the electorate’s votes did not go to the DPP. Earlier Ko had proposed a failed KMT-TPP alliance, which suggests something other than a sovereignist agenda for 60% of Taiwanese voters.

    Looking at the voting results might, therefore, lead one to refute the “no question” Taiwan wants to be separate from the PRC claim to be itself questionable.

    Mearsheimer continued, “The interesting question, at this point in time, is whether or not the Chinese are going to try to conquer Taiwan by military force.”

    To most of the world Taiwan is a part of One China. It is obvious that the PRC is not bent on militarily conquering Taiwan. It need not unless Taiwan crosses its red lines. Approaching these red lines is usually done in collusion with the US. This points to a historical fact that the reason Taiwan is in a sovereignty limbo to this day is because the US used its naval might to back the KMT and Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) at the time of a militarily exhausted China. One ought to consider that Taiwan has been a part of China much, much longer (since 230 CE) than the geopolitical entity called the United States of America has existed based on its dispossession and genocide of the Original Peoples. Therefore, American proclamations about the PRC and Taiwan must be skeptically scrutinized since they are based in hypocrisy and desperation, with crucial facts confined to the memory hole, to anchor in place the US conception of a world order. Mearsheimer does not dwell on the relevancy of this reality when discussing the PRC and Taiwan.

    Mearsheimer reveals his patriotic realism: “We [the US] are not only concerned about maintaining Taiwan as an independent state because it is a democracy and we have long had good relations with it, but we also think keeping Taiwan on our side of the ledger is very important for strategic reasons…”

    Mearsheimer needs to define democracy and support his contention that the US is supportive of democracy, let alone whether the US is a legitimate democracy. Genuine democracy represents the will of the people.

    Taiwan was for decades a KMT military dictatorship which resorted to mass murder to consolidate its power. Finally, in 1996, the electoral vote came to Taiwan. Yet, does a vote every few years mean a country is a democracy? Is that all it takes?

    Does Mearsheimer really believe that the US supports democracy? Is supporting so-called color revolutions indicative of an adherence to democracy? Did the US backing of the Maidan coup to overthrow the elected president Viktor Yanukovych indicate a support of democracy? The examples are myriad.

    Is blocking a presidential contender from receiving votes in certain states (from Ralph Nader to Donald Trump) indicative of a fidelity to democracy? Or when a government ignores the will of a majority to follow a policy rejected by the masses, such as the US government’s vindictive agenda against publisher Julian Assange? So what does Mearsheimer mean when he posits an American support for Taiwan predicated on it being a democracy?

    Does the PRC not have a claim to being a democracy? Does China not pursue policies for the good of the masses of Chinese? In his compellingly argued book, Democracy: What the West Can Learn from China, Wei Ling Chua makes the case for China as a democracy based on its devotion to the well-being of all its citizens. Harvard University’s Ash Center found in its last survey in 2016 that 95.5% of those surveyed reported being either “relatively satisfied” or “highly satisfied” with the Communist Party of China government.

    Even if China attempted to take Taiwan back now, Mearsheimer opined, “I think Xi Jinping has lots of domestic problems that are more important to deal with at this juncture, and furthermore, I don’t think the Taiwanese [he meant Chinese] have the military capability to take Taiwan back at the this point in time.” (Read “How Does Technology Factor in for US Militarism Toward China?”)

    Mearsheimer is opining through most of the interview. This is adduced by framing many opinions with “I think.” Even non-nuclear war simulations that predict a US victory point out that it would come at a staggering price. Would the US citizenry be willing to pay the price?

    Mearsheimer is convinced that regardless of the cost of a military confrontation between China and the US that “… the United States is definitely committed to containing China and keeping Taiwan out of China’s hands, then the United States would axiomatically fight war with China over Taiwan.”

    He predicates this commitment on the comments of, with all due respect, a brain addled president.

    Napolitano asks, “Is China a threat to the United States of America?”

    Mearsheimer sidesteps the “threat” and states “the Chinese are a serious competitor.”

    “Furthermore, the Chinese are interested not only in taking back Taiwan, they are interested in dominating the South China Sea and the East China Sea; and the South China Sea is of immense importance to the United States and to the world economy. And the United States does not want China to take the South China Sea back or take control of it, or take control of the East China Sea. We’re opposed to that. More generally, we do not want China to be the dominant power in Asia.”

    “Taking back,” says Mearsheimer. In so stating, Mearsheimer is acknowledging Taiwan was removed from China. It was removed by Japanese imperialism. And that removal was enforced after World War II by the US against its WWII ally, China.

    And what does the professor mean by “dominate”? How is China dominating these waters? Is that not what the US attempts by sending war ships into the Mediterranean, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, South China Sea, and the East China Sea? (Read “Who has Sovereignty in the South China Sea?”) Does China prevent innocent passage of shipping through these waters?
    Does China prevent innocent passage of shipping through these waters? Noteworthy is a legal position that holds that military transit requires China’s approval.

    Mearsheimer: “But China naturally wants to be the dominant power in Asia just like we want to be the dominant power in our backyard…”

    Naturally, as if this is ineluctable. And again, this word dominate? The US dominates by having other countries adhere to its coercive demands, especially commercial demands, (read John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by for elaboration), by situating its preferred people in charge in targeted countries (e.g., splitting Korea and transplanting the dictator Syngman Rhee from the US to South Korea, supporting Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam before later abandoning him, and the installment of the unpopular Ayad Allawi as prime minister in Iraq).

    The US is ensconced on ethnically cleansed Indigenous territory. It supported a corporate coup against the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 and apologized for this in 1993, but still the US continues to occupy Hawai’i. There are also the cases of Puerto Rico, Guam, Saipan, Palau, the Chagos archipelago, the Marshall Islands, and others.

    According to the reasoning proffered by Mearsheimer, the US was predetermined to pursue building an empire. And in his reasoning the US is unexceptional in this regard because China’s eventual imperialist path is also likewise predetermined.

    Mearsheimer acknowledges that “China is ambitious for good reasons on their part, and the United States is committed to limiting China’s ambitions for good strategic reasons on its part.”

    Usually to be ambitious is considered in a positive vein: learn all you can, develop, become independent, become a leader. However, in Mearsheimer’s wording one assumes ambition to be negative, as in dominating others and halting the ambitions of others, as the US wants to do to China. Limiting China’s ambitions — so much for win-win, as China is committed to. And why is limiting China good strategic reasoning by the US? Doesn’t the US trumpet so-called free markets?

    Napolitano picks up on this and asks: “What are the reasons for limiting China’s ambitions if the ambitions are commercial in nature?”

    Mearsheimer points to determinism,

    And you know how the United States behaves. The United States is a highly aggressive state that runs around the world using its power quite liberally. Why do you think that if China had a powerful military that it wouldn’t do the same thing? The United States just doesn’t want any other power on the planet to be more powerful than it is. I think that any other country on the planet, if it had its druthers, would want to be the most powerful state in the system. And the reason is that the international system [Which system is Mearsheimer referring to: that overseen by the United Nations or the so-called rules based order? — KP] is a really dangerous place. It is in many ways a brutal jungle. All you have to do is look at what is happening to the Palestinians. If you were the Palestinians, wouldn’t you want your own state, and wouldn’t you want that your state to be really powerful, so that nobody, in effect, could mess around with you? I think the Chinese are driven by this mentality? [italics added]

    Mearsheimer rejects that China’s reasons are just commercial. He posits instead a geopolitical determinism. Freedom for a country to choose its direction in the world apparently does not exist. Nation states are bound to follow a determined trajectory.

    Mearsheimer assumes China will follow the US trajectory. He asks, “Why do you think that if China had a powerful military that it wouldn’t do the same thing?” [italics added]

    Why did the Soviet Union dissolve? A commonly heard answer is that the military power that the Soviet Union once was was brought to its economic knees due to military overspending. Why is the US’s economic preeminence challenged by a serious competitor now? Does China have 700 to 900 foreign military bases (numbers vary according to source, but a lot)? This must cause a serious outpouring of money. Maybe that is why China wouldn’t pursue the same folly as the US? Moreover, China is steadfastly promoting peaceful win-win relations between and among countries. China’s economic success is based on these win-win relationships. By engaging in win-win relations, China wins and the other country wins. There is no need to dominate. China is able to receive the commodities, materials, and services that it desires (except when a competitor decides to limit “free trade”), and it continues to prosper as does its partner country.

    Of course the Chinese don’t want to suffer another century of humiliation (but does that mean the Chinese want to oppress others as the West have been doing?) Besides, wasn’t Vietnam syndrome humiliating? Wasn’t the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan humiliating?

    Relationships of domination and humiliation are not win-win. One side will be aggrieved in such a relationship and will seek another relationship, and more likely elsewhere with a trustworthy partner. It seems that China is aware of this dynamic.

    Mearsheimer posits how the US should deal with China:

    “I think the United States should go to great lengths to contain China.” Contain, meaning “to prevent China from dominating the South China Sea, to prevent China from taking Taiwan, and to prevent China from dominating the East China Sea,” and to make good relations with China’s neighbors in furtherance of this US objective; and avoid provoking a war with China.

    Said the professor, “We should try to roll back Chinese military power; the United States should manage China-US relations to avoid war.” In other words, the US should dominate China, as is natural, according to the professor.

    Given the multitude of wars carried out by the US abroad, it is surely self-evident that if a nation state wants to avoid wars and does not have a powerful ally, then a certain level of a defensive capability is a sine qua non. For the aggressive US, by far the highest spending military-industrial complex on the planet, to call out the strengthening of another country’s military, especially a country frequently excoriated and threatened by US government officials, must be viewed as blatant hypocrisy.

    Hence, it is quite a conundrum Mearsheimer lays out: avoiding war by rolling back another country’s military power by virtue of it having greater military power. Supposedly, in this scenario, China will accede to the US curtailment (“rolling back”) of Chinese military might and not be provoked to war; it will give up its national aspiration to bring Taiwan fully back into the Chinese nation; it will allow itself to be humiliated once again by a foreign nation. Paradoxically, this scenario also calls on China to reject geopolitical determinism? It sounds a lot like Mearsheimer has constructed a pretzel of contradictions. How sensible, how probable is what the professor proffers?

    Mearsheimer asserts that China seeks power that is self-serving – that is, power that is not shared as in a win-win scenario: “… We have a vested interest in not letting China shift the balance of power in its favor, and, therefore against us, in a major way.”

    This raises many questions and requires elucidation. Who is the “we” here? One assumes Mearsheimer means the US. Is it in the “vested interest” of the masses in the US? It must be because to be vested otherwise would be undemocratic. While in the US millions sleep in their cars or under bridges each night, scrape through garbage receptacles for sustenance during the day, and beg for handouts, China has eliminated such extreme poverty. Shouldn’t that be a signal for the impoverished strata in other societies?

    China is not the enemy. China is not perfect, and it doesn’t profess to be. It does not profess to be an indispensable nation. It does not proclaim to be a beacon on the hill. It does not list as a goal full spectrum dominance. Mearsheimer apparently thinks that the evolution of the capitalist US must also apply to socialist China. Nonetheless, it would seem more accurate to portray China, which in the earliest stage of socialism, as an alternative model to US capitalism, militarism, imperialism, and dominance.

    Other nations state should seriously consider how socialism matched with their country’s characteristics might function for them.

    The post Is Geopolitics Deterministic? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Why the Guardian’s “Hamas Mass Rape” Story doesn’t Pass the Sniff Test

    The Guardian has just published the latest in the western media’s endless cycle of stories claiming Hamas committed “systematic, mass rape” on October 7. Its article is headlined: “Evidence points to systematic use of rape and sexual violence by Hamas in 7 October attacks”.

    The biggest problem with these stories isn’t just the continuing absence of any meaningful evidence for “systematic” rape; or Israel’s long track record of lying to justify state terrorism; or Israel’s refusal to cooperate with independent investigators; or the racist, anti-Arab tropes that pass for sophisticated analysis in western circles.

    It is simply the outrageous improbability of so many of the evidence-poor rape stories being advanced.

    The Guardian recycles a supposed eyewitness account of a group of Hamas fighters taking turns to rape a woman at the Nova festival on October 7, then cutting off her breast to play a football-like game with it at the side of the road.

    We are supposed to believe this happened when we also know – from facts provided by the Israeli media – that Hamas stumbled on to the Nova festival totally unprepared and on their way to what they assumed would be a major confrontation with the Israeli military at a nearby army base; that its fighters were quickly confronted by paramilitary Israeli police who engaged them in gun battles; and that Israeli Apache helicopters, with little intelligence to work on, were firing Hellfire missiles at anything that moved, based on the “Hannibal directive” to prevent hostage-taking at all costs.

    Does any of that add up? Did Hamas’ most disciplined elite fighters – training for years and knowing that this might be their their only, brief moment to take on the Israeli army in a near-fair fight or drag hostages back to Gaza for a prisoner swap before the Israeli military used its air power to overwhelm them – really take time out to indulge in a sick game involving a woman’s breast?

    How is it that no one – the Guardian reporter, her section editors, the paper’s editors – stopped for a moment and thought “Is this really plausible?” and “Am I being played to advance a nefarious agenda?” – in this case, genocide. Or did they simply recite in their minds – as Israel knew they would – “Believe women!”, especially if they are confirming a racist assumption that Arab men are blood-thirsty, sex-obsessed primitives.

    In fact, the Zaka volunteers who are being heavily relied on in this Guardian “report” are Jewish religious extremist men, also with a proven record of lying: they came up with the complete fabrication of “40 beheaded babies”, when no babies were beheaded. Two infants are recorded dying that day.

    The woman leading the “Hamas mass rape” campaign – now an academic – is a former spokesperson for the Israeli military. Their job, as any honest reporter will tell you, is to lie to journalists to excuse Israel’s incessant war crimes.

    What we now know – from multiple credible Israeli sources – is that Israel killed lots of its own civilians on October 7. Ynet, Israel’s biggest media outlet, has just published an investigation in Hebrew showing that Hamas successfully took out Israel’s all-seeing drone “eyes” over Gaza that day, leaving the Israeli military blind about what was happening. Panicked, Israeli commanders invoked the Hannibal directive, allowing those in the field to order tanks and helicopters to fire at anything that moved.

    It was Israel that incinerated the hundreds of cars trying to flee the Nova festival, killing potentially hundreds of the 1,140 Israelis that died that day, as well as Hamas fighters. It was an Israeli tank that incinerated 13 Israeli civilians, and 40 Hamas fighters, holed up in a house in Kibbutz Be’eri by blasting a shell through its front wall.

    Israel, of course, wants no one, least of all the western media, talking about any of that. What it needs instead is anything that will help to distract from its crimes against its citizens and justify its committing of genocide against the people of Gaza. So it has every reason to serve up the “Hamas mass rape” story, feeding what it rightly assumes are the Islamophobic prejudices of most Israeli Jews and western reporters.

    Journalists at the Guardian, the BBC and the rest of the establishment media are paid to play their role in regurgitating these lies to advance western foreign policy goals. You are not. So please hold on to your humanity – and refuse to play along with Israel and the media’s racist disinformation campaign.

    I have written previously about the media’s peddling of deceptions about October 7. You can find those articles at these links:

    The post Why the Guardian’s “Hamas Mass Rape” Story doesn’t Pass the Sniff Test first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Imperialism and Anti-imperialism Collide in Ukraine (Part 2 of 16)

    It was not surprising that the U.S.’s earsplitting anti-Russian uproar has recently slowed down considerably. Israel’s Zionist genocidal war on the Palestinian people entrapped in Gaza (occupied first in 1967, and then totally blockaded since 2005) stole the limelight. The momentary slowdown gave Russia some breathing time, and the U.S. a possible way out of the mess it had engineered. Irrespective of Russian voices claiming the conflict has “Entered its endgame”, or American declarations talking about a “Negotiated settlement”, the conflict continues unabated.

    Let us assume that Russia would accept withdrawing from Donbass in exchange for Ukraine meeting all or some of its conditions. Would that change U.S. behavior toward Russia? No. Extensive political and military indicators (aid, weapons, statements, effective policy, etc.) enacted by the United States and its allies preclude such possibility—U.S. objectives in Ukraine go beyond Donbass and Crimea. Clues: Several U.S. political quarters and think tanks are now calling for a policy of containment toward Russia.

    It is elementary that spoiling relations among states is easier than repairing them. In the case of the United States, the idea of repairing ties with Russia has been consistently anathema to U.S. imperialists —even before Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. By force of consolidated ideological patterns, U.S. ruling circles systematically seek submission not agreement. Accordingly, their view of conflict resolution is conditioned by (a) the scope of U.S. intervention in Ukrainian politics vis-à-vis Russia’s objectives, (b) historical precedents whereby hegemonic ambitions takes precedence over other matters, and (c) intense enmity toward a Russia that has been proving its resilience to subjugation.

    As a primer to understand deep-seated U.S. political personality disorder, consider the following. In the American imperialistic mentality of coercion, changing foreign policy conduct means retreat, and retreat means loosing. It is known though that changing course for the sake of settlement is not losing. What is happening here is easy to explain: U.S. ideologues of war abhor giving up any of the geopolitical advantages they have obtained so far at the expense of Russia. Reading between the lines: those same ideologues appear to be thinking in terms of opportunity—if they do not succeed at incapacitating Russia now, they never will.

    Still, could Russia impose its conditions whereby Ukraine declares neutrality, forgoes joining NATO, and accepts post-intervention realties? Would the United States accept relinquishing its heavy encroachment in Ukraine thus leading it to (a) erase its established military footprints and political control, and (b) reprise its normal relations with Russia?

    Russia has all means to inflict irreparable military defeat on Ukraine. But after almost two years of war without a decisive solution, such prospect seems out of favor with Russia for reasons it did not disclose. This leaves a diplomatic solution open. But this seems out of Russia’s hand because in the pursuit of maintaining its grip on Ukraine, the U.S. would not allow it. The collective answer to the questions above would be as follows: because U.S. calculations are global in nature, the immovable tenets of U.S. super-militarized capitalism and aggressive hegemonic world outlook will be the determinant factors in deciding future directions. Said otherwise, the ideological superstructure of the U.S. Empire– coupled with the prospect of material profits—is the engine driving its decision-making.

    Consequently, the chance that the United States could reach a compromise with Russia soon is dim. The U.S. ruling establishment would keep the tension going with the expectation that something beneficial to the American imperium could still happen. In retrospect, a compromise could have happened had Russia crushed Ukraine militarily from the very beginning, and had U.S. rulers abstained from putting all their weight to defeat Russia through a protracted multi-actor proxy war. To recap, today, the prospect that Russia could impose its conditions on Ukraine is next to nil for no other reason than the United States is materially in full charge of Ukraine and its policymaking.

    America’s decision for a protracted proxy war comes in varied ways. A mouthpiece of U.S. imperialism, former NATO secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen, conveyed U.S. thinking about Ukraine joining NATO in the following words:

    The time has come to take the next step and extend an invitation for Ukraine to join Nato. We need a new European security architecture in which Ukraine is in the heart of Nato. . . The absolute credibility of article 5 guarantees would deter Russia from mounting attacks inside the Ukrainian territory inside Nato and so free up Ukrainian forces to go to the frontline. [sic], [Italics added].

    “Free up Ukrainian forces to go to the frontline” are the keywords. Meaning: U.S. war by delegation would continue. But the core meaning is unequivocal:  according to Rasmussen’s formula, the U.S. would continue pursuing its war efforts notwithstanding Russia’s objections. Reminder: one reason why Russia intervened in Ukraine was to stop it from joining NATO. Rasmussen’s intent, therefor, was all too evident: he [actually, the United States] wants to poke Russia right in the eye by admitting Ukraine to NATO. Logically, his call can be interpreted as a blatant provocation to spur Russia into an expanded reaction. Once done, NATO would invoke article 5. Clear purpose: create a pretext for direct war with Russia.

    Another mouthpiece is retired U.S. Navy Admiral James Stavridis. Stavridis thinks of Ukraine in terms of financial opportunities for U.S. economic imperialism and future Ukrainian dependency. He cites, with twisted ideologism, the South Korean example and gives his far-reaching views as follows:

    In terms of advantages for the alliance, Ukraine would have the most battle-tested, innovative and motivated forces in Europe. The Ukrainians have earned a spot on the team, and as I look back on my time as NATO’s military commander, I would have been happy to welcome them into alliance…. If such a deal is reached, here is my prediction: Despite being far smaller in terms of population and land, Ukraine will overtake Russia in a few decades in terms of gross domestic product, overall agrarian output, and certainly in the sense of being a vital, democratic society in which people want to live. I see nothing in the twisted policies of Czar Putin that will change that depressing outcome for Moscow. Let’s hope a Korean-style miracle of reconstruction is on the horizon for Ukraine. [Italics added]

    Discussion

    U.S. imperialism assumes diverse denominations according to circumstances. The following are a few examples. Diplomatic Imperialism: is when the U.S. coerces foreign governments to go along its foreign and domestic policies. Financial Imperialism: through financial institutions (World Bank, SWIFT system, International Monetary Fund, Central banks of targeted countries, currency conversion rates, etc.), the United States exercises its hegemony by denying and/or regulating access by designated adversaries. Management Imperialism: is when American citizens connected to the high echelons of power directly manage the economic assets and political decision-making of foreign nations.

    With regard to Management Imperialism as applied to Ukraine, Mike Pompeo has already started the process proposed by Stavridis. Just like Hunter Biden before him sitting on the Board of Directors of Burisma, Pompeo will be sitting on the Board of Directors of the Ukrainian branch of Veon. Beyond that, Stavridis wants a future Ukraine to continue exercising its proxy military role vs. Russia, which is, per se, what the United States wants: a lasting war with Russia.

    Rasmussen and Stavridis’ opinions follow a coordinated script with two postulations: (1) The United States would not give up its newly found protectorate Ukraine, and (2) it would continue to wage war against Russia regardless of potential global conflagration—with the hopeful gamble that the “endgame” would not come to that.

    As stated, the United States seems not ready to concede its footprints in Ukraine unless by some sort of a war with Russia. Or, a better scenario: the U.S. concludes there is no way out except by compromise.  Overall, abandoning the coveted conquest of Ukraine would mean halting U.S. imperialistic expansions. Explanation: having footprints in Ukraine means that the United States would re-apply its old methods of domination—a process begins with a pretext, followed by intervention, and ends up with entrenched encroachment that political exorcism is incapable of dislodging. Consider the following limited examples:

    Germany: after occupying half of Germany (West) at the end of WWII; after the U.S., Britain, and the USSR slapped it with the Potsdam Agreement; after it and Britain took the lion shares of war reparations; and in spite of Germany’s formal status as an independent country within NATO structures, the U.S. is still occupying it on permanent basis. Today there are 35,221 U.S. troops stationed in Germany. British and French troops still exists in different form. Pay attention.  While the Potsdam Agreement imposed the dismantling of the German military industry, the United States reversed it by absorbing West Germany into NATO in 1955. This means the re-armament of Germany—NATO countries must have a standing military force with budget and with contribution from their Gross National products to the efforts of future wars—with the USSR being the target. The point: once the United States intervened in a country, it remains there until events change the status of occupation.

    Italy: after occupying Italy at the end of WWII, etc., the U.S. is still occupying it through 7 military bases and 12,493 troops. Pay attention: After the defeat of Italy, the U.S. first shackled it with the Paris Conference, and then absorbed it in NATO structures in 1949,      

    [Note: on the case of Germany (before reunification in 1990-1) and Italy, the conversion from vanquished enemies to NATO allies was a planned U.S. strategy to absorb them as occupied countries by other means.]

    Japan: after occupying Japan at the end of WWII, etc., and after shackling it with myriad treaties and the writing of a new constitution serving its interests, the U.S. is still occupying Japan through 5 military bases and 50,000 troops,

    Kuwait: after ending Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait in 1991, the U.S. is now occupying Kuwait through 7 military bases and 13,500 troops

    Philippines: After it conquered the Philippines from Spain consequent to Spain-U.S. war, the U.S. granted independence to that nation in 1946. Pay attention: the United States shackled the Philippines with the Mutual Defense Treaty. U.S. military encroachment or occupation continues today with enhanced treaties and four military bases,

    Saudi Arabia: from so-called Desert shield 1990 forward, the U.S. has been occupying Saudi Arabia through 3 military bases and 2,700 troops,

    Iraq: Iraq is a yardstick to judge the U.S. plan for Ukraine. The United States invaded that country in 2003 and immediately partitioned it in two federated entities—Arab and Kurdish—without having any authority to do so. As per military dot com (connected to the Pentagon) the United States has 12 military bases in Iraq, and as per PBS (connected to U.S. Zionism and the wider imperialist system) the U.S. has 2,500 troops on the ground.  [Note: Iraqi reports speak of 16,000 U.S. troops across the country. Comment: the notion of 2,500 troops is both risible and fake. If divided by 12, each base would have 208 service members. Observation: no military base could function with such a low number of service members].

    Pay attention: before removing the bulk of its invasion force from Iraq, and after building several military bases around the country, U.S. imperialists shackled it with a treaty and called it “U.S.–Iraq Status of Forces Agreement”. With this ruse, the United States has been occupying Iraq for 21 consecutive years. For the record, on May 1, 2020, so-called Iraqi parliament passed a resolution calling for the American forces to leave Iraq. Over three a half years later, U.S. forces are still entrenched on Iraqi soil like a rock stuck inside deep mud.

    What happened before and after the U.S.‑created Iraqi parliament issued that resolution?

    On January 10, 2020, the Washington Post stated, “The Trump administration refused again Friday to recognize Iraq’s call to withdraw all U.S. troops, saying that any discussion with Baghdad would center on whatever force size the United States determines is sufficient to achieve its goals there”. Well. Finally, we know that so-called “Operation Iraqi Freedom” was about “whatever force size the United States determines is sufficient to achieve its goals there”. [Italics added]. (Also, read the statement by Mike Pompeo). “Goals”, they say. What goals are these if not the perpetual occupation of Iraq by any means?

    On January 10, 2024, Iraqi Prime Minister al-Sudani—the U.S. greenlighted his appointment—asked the United States to initiate dialogues for the exit of U.S. forces from Iraq. [Reuter’s: Exclusive: Iraq seeks quick exit of US forces but no deadline set, PM says]. Knowing about his request in advance, the Pentagon stated, “It was not currently planning to withdraw its roughly 2,500 troops from Iraq, despite Baghdad’s announcement last week it would begin the process of removing the U.S.-led military coalition from the country.”  [Italics added]. [January 8, 2024, Reuter’s: Pentagon says not planning a US withdrawal from Iraq].

    Now take a guess: who is ruling over so-called sovereign Iraq today, and who would be ruling over so-called sovereign Ukraine once the conflict is over?

    Kosovo: the United States bombed Serbia, severed Kosovo (a genuine Serbian territory despite its large Albanian ethnicity), and proclaimed it an “independent” State. Remark: soon after it bombed Serbia and after declaring Kosovo’s independence, the United States transformed this historically Serbian province into a U.S.-occupied territory with its Camp Bondsteel. How is this so? Forget that NATO troops are in the camp and disregard its small size (955 acres). But, Bondsteel is a Regional Command under the control of the U.S. Army. As such, it is a plain symbol of U.S. imperialist encroachment, i.e., occupation by other means.

    Taiwan: the U.S. may not object to re-unification; but its intent is apparent. It wants its protégé: the small island of anti-Communist Taiwan (23 million) to rule over great and independent China (1.4 billion)—not the other way around.

    South Korea: After partitioning Korea (with the Soviet Union that successively withdrew) in North and South, the U.S. is still occupying South Korea through 12 military bases and 23,468 troops. (For more info: U.S. military around the world by Aljazeera).

    To close, even if the conflict would resolve with compromise, Ukraine would end up being occupied by the United States in multiple ways—whether Russia likes it or not. Similarly, the prospect of the United States would occupy Ukraine somehow and shackle it with bases and treaties—with or without NATO—is potentially possible.

    Generally, U.S. conduct in Ukraine follows an established ideological attitude that has been applied without pause since the end of WWII. Briefly, it rests on the self-serving idea that U.S. status as a military hyperpower (with 12 combatant commands spread in all continents) grants it extraordinary license to supervise, manage, and direct world assets and relations according to its exclusive views and objectives. One such view is the baseless pretension that whatever happens around the world is a matter of U.S. “national security”—recently, the Biden Administration declared, “Security assistance for Ukraine is a smart investment in our national security.” Senator Jack Reed goes beyond exaggerating the investment deception. He stated, “U.S. Aid to Ukraine is Vital to America’s Security &amp; Economic Interests”.

    These are bombastic words. (a) Biden’s White House is lying big—who are benefiting from that investment are weapons manufactures not ordinary Americans, and (b) the argument of the national security stuff is preposterous. To settle this issue without dissertation, suffice it to say there are no functional, structural, or any another artificially implied correlations between the events in Ukraine and so-called national security of super fortress America.

    Statement: U.S. practice of calling anything that does not meet its criteria of acceptance a “threat to its national security” is fraudulent and deceptive. Discussion: the notion of “national security” paradigm of any nation is valid only when its physical existence and conditions for normal living of its people are threatened by external forces. Consider the following limited examples:

    • Egypt continues to oppose Ethiopia “Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam” not for any reason except that the huge reduction of water entering into Egypt is effectively dooming its agricultural lands. When Ethiopia persists in ignoring Egypt’s legitimate concerns on water sharing (governed by stipulated treaties), then it is materially threatening Egypt’s national security and survival.
    • When the CIA overthrew Mohammad Mossadegh’s government to control Iranian oil, it certainly damaged Iran’s national security.
    • Venezuela never threatened the United States in anyway. But when Donald Trump threatened Venezuela with military intervention, his threat was a clear attack against Venezuela’s national security.
    • When Britain and the United States declared war (Opium War) on China to open its ports for trade with the U.S. and the West—that was a flagrant infringement on China’s national security and sovereignty.
    • Britain declared war on China because this prohibited the opium trade—a product Britain needed for its drug industry. But Britain and United States attacked and went to war with China for more reasons. They wanted China to open its ports for trade with the U.S. and the West. I need not debate that these acts were a flagrant infringement on China’s
      national security and sovereignty. [ Read: “How were the Opium Wars an example of imperialism in China?”; “U.S. Department of State: Opium War“).

    Conclusion: whereas themes and theories are invented to support the political concept of “national security”, countless other factors restrict its definition, scope, and applicability. But for the United States to enforce its so-called right to security by deeming any fathomable action taken by foreign nations in defense of their societal development as a threat to its “national security” is a barefaced blackmail on a domestic level, as well as a twisted pretext for confrontation on a foreign level.

    Now, can anyone name one single incident whereby a country—excluding Russia (re: Cuban missile crisis)—has ever posed any threat to the United States? (For the record, the USSR tried to install nuclear missiles in Cuba in response to the US installing similar missiles in Turkey pointing to Soviet territory. Kennedy and Khrushchev resolved the impasse by dismantling the disputed missile systems.)

    Conclusion: U.S. pretension that its security is uniquely important but not that of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Madagascar, Algeria, Columbia, Togo, India, etc. is a ploy to establish a world order under its tight command. Accusing others of premeditated malfeasance or intention to harm the United States is the easiest way to initiate planned hostilities.

    With regard to Ukraine, the meaning of the preceding could not be terser: U.S. imperialists are manifestly scheming. They pretend to see Ukraine “free” from the “Russian invaders”, while at the same time they are roaming the globe to pacify it with death, destruction, sanctions, and economic strangulation, and while treating Ukraine as an “investment” to deter hypothetical connections to frivolous “security anxieties”. Deduction: U.S. fury over Russia’s intervention in Ukraine is quite readable. Russia interrupted U.S. march for world control.

    Claiming, therefore, that Donbass or the whole of Ukraine is important to European and NATO security is a trite farce. If Donbass were so important, the U.S. should not have staged the Maidan coup, and should have worked to implement the Minsk Agreements. Commenting on how the United States turns things around in the attempt to muddy things à la Donald Trump, Maria Zakharova (Russian Foreign Ministry) responded eloquently to Antony Blinken’s call to revise the Agreements. She said, “It is strange how the US is trying to find a sequence in a document where the entire sequence of steps is spelled out for all parties”.

    Incidentally, I read nowhere that Russia threatened Germany, Finland, or any other European country. But when trained propagandists at the State Department say, “Ukraine is a key regional strategic partner that has undertaken significant efforts to modernize its military and increase its interoperability with NATO,” they imply that this newly-found “strategic partner” is important to the United States because any arrangement with it increases the prospect of added security to NATO and the United States. The propaganda message is transparent: “Russia is threatening Europe”. American Progress dot org goes further. Johan Hassel and Kate Donald explain, “Why the United States Must Stay the Course on Ukraine”, and elaborate by saying, “Because it is essential to America’s national security interests and democratic values. A Ukraine defeat would create a more dangerous and unstable world.” [Italics added]. “Democratic values” they write. Could they intelligently—not stupidly to be precise—explain what values are these, and in which way they interact with the Ukrainian situation?

    Now, imagine how the United States would react to hearing Russia claiming that the Sonora province or Mexico is “essential to Russian security and democratic values”.

    To stay with the events, Russian intervention in Ukraine has led to the formation of two opposing camps. On one camp, stand U.S. super-militarized imperialism and arrays of vassal European States—most of them coerced to follow Washington’s direct orders. On the other, stands Russia alone but with only Belarus openly at its side.

    At this tense stage of world history, there should be no illusion that Ukraine has become a peculiar arena. Russia’s limited intervention has swiftly gone beyond its initial purpose to protect ethnic Russians in Donbass, and beyond U.S. posturing that Russia breached international norms. No need to state that at no time in modern history did the United States ever care to abide by such norms—unless enacted to serve its purpose or to hold others accountable.

    Russia’s Camp: From the time in which Bill Clinton and Zionist neocons (Madelaine Albright [State], Willian Cohen [Defense], Samuel Berger [National Security Advisor] took control of U.S. foreign policy until its intervention in Ukraine, Russia—despite its conversion to capitalism—has gradually but convincingly reached the ineluctable conclusion that its own existence is constantly threatened. With its decision to take action in Donbass, Russia has crossed the Rubicon without looking back. It launched a daring challenge against the fascist-tyrannical world order imposed by the United States.

    With that challenge, Russia transformed itself from protector of ethnic Russians in Donbass to a powerful forerunner in the resistance against U.S. stranglehold on the world. Yet, judging from the myriad statements that Putin, Medvedev, and Lavrov have been making since after the intervention, said transformation appears to be evolutionary rather than planned. That is, although Russia has been criticizing U.S. bent on absolutist domination long before its entry in Ukraine, that entry was not enacted with the slogan to terminate U.S. unipolarism in Ukraine and the world. The successive bold statements denouncing and prospecting the end of U.S. world order came about gradually as Russia realized that the entire Western system of nations was aligned behind the U.S. hegemon.

    To close, Russia of Putin is not an anti-imperialist state. From my readings, Russian political lexicon of the past 34 years never spoke of or referred to imperialism as an issue for Russia’s foreign policy. As a concept and term, it seems that the new Russia treated imperialism as a thing belonging to Leninist Soviet Russia, not new capitalistic Russia. Wrong. U.S. and European imperialisms never disappeared—they are well, alive, and super-fortified with rage and racism. The irony of it: after Russia’s intervention, U.S. mastodontic propaganda started depicting Russia as an imperialist state.

    Now then, considering that all sanctions and threats against Russia have, so far, failed to achieve their objectives, then Russia’s ultimate purpose—focused on terminating U.S. hallucinations for permanent hegemony over the international system of nations—appears highly possible. The fact that many nations are now breaking free from using the dollar in their bilateral exchanges proves the unthinkable: capitalistic Russia is on the right path to rebuild the international order on equitable foundations.

    America’s Camp: The United States has always been a static superpower that thrives on the status quo. When confronted with resolute countries that it cannot bomb, it remedies by repeating tricks that no longer work. In the case of Russia, it tried to replay the card it played on the Iraq of Saddam Hussein—with the complicity of failed Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and traitorous Arab rulers. Sanctions, seizing of assets, name-calling, lies, instigation, congressional resolutions, mobilizing NATO, use of the UN, ruses of all sorts, and threats of war are just a few outmoded means of pressure that worked against Iraq, but cannot work against today’s Russia. In short, the shrewd American illusionist has run out of tricks.

    The show of anti-Russian reactions is not confined to the imperialist camp. Surprisingly, some peace and antiwar activists in the West has joined in the violent bashing of Russia. But if Russia, China, and other counties are for an equitable international system that a) respects all nations and their right for self-determination, and b) is applicable to all equally, then how do we explain all those anti-Russian attacks coming from self-designating peace and antiwar activists?

    Agreed, Russian forces crossed onto the Donbass province of Ukraine. Now, if Washington’s hypocrites consider Russia’s act criminal and contrary to their “rule-based international order”, then we have the right to ask if their repeated crossings into countless countries are innocent and abiding by that order. On this issue, can those who oppose Russia’s intervention explain by whose authority did the United States cross into Syria from U.S.-occupied Iraq? According to what article of the “international law” did the hyperpower settle its occupation force around Syria’s oil fields? Lastly, can they explain why is the United States working frenetically to partition Syria as it did Iraq? (Later in this series, I shall discuss the issue of war and antiwar)

    What we need to do next is to establish a context for the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the reaction to it.

    Next Part 3 of 16

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  • “Not Wanting” A Wider Middle East War, the U.S. Has Started One

    You have to hand it to the U.S. and its henchmen for brazenness.  In order to protect their client state Israel and its genocide in Gaza, the U.S., together with the UK, have in one week launched air and sea attacks on the Houthis in Yemen five times, referring to it as “self-defense” in their Orwellian lingo.  The ostensible reason being Yemen’s refusal to allow ships bound for Israel, which is committing genocide in Gaza, to enter the Red Sea, while permitting other ships to pass freely.

    To any impartial observer, the Houthis should be lauded.  Yet, while the International Court of Justice considers the South African charge of genocide against Israel that is supported by overwhelming evidence, the U.S. and its allies have instigated a wider war throughout the Middle East while claiming they do not want such a war.  These settler colonial states want genocide and a much wider war because they have been set back on their heels by those they have mocked, provoked, and attacked – notably the Palestinians, Syrians, and Russians, among others.

    While the criminalization of international law does not bode well for the ICJ’s upcoming ruling or its ability to stop Israeli’s genocide in Gaza, Michel Chossudovsky, of Global Research, as is his wont, has offered a superb analysis and suggestion for those who oppose such crimes: that Principle IV of the Nuremberg Charter – “The fact that a person [e.g. Israeli, U.S. soldiers, pilots] acted pursuant to order of his [her] Government or of a superior does not relieve him [her] from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.” – should be used to supplement the South African charges and appeal directly to the moral consciences of those asked to carry out acts of genocide. He writes:

    Let us call upon Israeli and American soldiers and pilots “to abandon the battlefield”, as an act of refusal to participate in a criminal undertaking against the People of Gaza.  

    South Africa’s legal procedure at the ICJ should be endorsed Worldwide. While it cannot be relied upon to put a rapid end to the genocide, it provides support and legitimacy to the “Disobey Unlawful Orders, Abandon the Battlefield”  campaign under Nuremberg Charter Principle IV.

    While such an approach will not stop the continuing slaughter, it would remind the world that each person who participates in and supports it bears a heavy burden of guilt for their actions; that they are morally and legally culpable.  This appeal to the human heart and conscience, no matter what its practical effect, will at least add to the condemnation of a genocide happening in real time and full view of the world, even though no one will ever be prosecuted for such crimes since any real just use of international law has long disappeared.  Yet there is a edifying history of such conscientious objection to immoral war making, and though each person makes the decision in solitary witness, individual choices can inspire others and the solitary become solidary, as Albert Camus reminded us at the end of his short story, “The Artist at Work.”

    With each passing day, it becomes more and more evident that Israel/U.S.A. and their allies do want a wider war.  Iran is their special focus, with Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen targets on the way.  Anyone who supports the genocide in Gaza, explicitly or through silence, bears responsibility for the conflagration to come.  There are no excuses.

    And the facts show that it is axiomatic that waging war has been the modus operandi of the U.S./Israeli alliance for a long time.  Just as in early 2003 when the Bush administration said they were looking for a peaceful solution to their fake charges against Sadam Hussein with his alleged “weapons of mass destruction,” the Biden administration is lying, as the Bush administration lied about September 11, 2001 to launch its ongoing war on terror, starting in Afghanistan.  Without an expanded war, President Biden – aka the Democrats, since he will most probably not be the candidate – and his psychopathic partner Benjamin Netanyahu, will not survive.  It is bi-partisan war-mongering, of course, internationally and intramurally, since both U.S. political parties are controlled by the Israel Lobby and billionaire class that owns Congress and the “defense” industry that thrives on never-ending war to such an extent that even the notable independent candidate for the presidency, Robert Kennedy, Jr., who is running as an anti-war candidate, fully supports Israel which is tantamount to supporting Biden’s expanding war policy.

    Biden and Netanyahu, who are always claiming after the fact that they were surprised by events or were fed bad advice by their underlings, are dumb scorpions. They are stupid but deadly.  And many people in the West, while perhaps decent people in their personal lives, are living in a fantasy world of “sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity,” in MLK, Jr.’s words, as the growing threat of a world war increases and insouciance reigns.

    Neither the Israeli nor American government can allow themselves to be humiliated, U.S./NATO by the Russians in Ukraine and the Israelis by the Palestinians.  Like cornered criminals with lethal weapons, they will kill as many as they can on their way down, taking their revenge on the weakest first.

    Their “mistakes” are always well intentioned.  They stumble into wars through faulty intelligence.  They drop the ball because of bureaucratic mix-ups. They miscalculate the perfidy of the moneyed elites whom allegedly they oppose while pocketing their cash and ushering them into the national coffers out of necessity since they are too big to fail.  They never see the storm coming, even as they create it.  Their incompetence or the perfidy of their enemies is the retort to all those “nut cases” who conjure up conspiracy theories or plain facts to explain their actions or lack thereof.  They are innocent.  Always innocent.  And they can’t understand why those they have long abused reach a point when they will no longer impetrate for mercy but will fight fiercely for their freedom.

    All signs point to a major war on the horizon.  Both the U.S.A. and Israel have been shown to be rogue states with no desire to negotiate a peaceful world.  Believing in high-tech weapons and massive firepower, neither has learned the hard lesson that anti-colonial wars have historically been won by those with far less weapons but with a passionate desire to throw off the chains of their oppressors.  Vietnam is the text-book case, and there are many others.  Failure to learn is the name of their game.

    The Zionist project for a Greater Israel is doomed to fail, but as it does, desperate men like Biden and Netanyahu are intent on launching desperate acts of war.  Exactly when and how this expanded war will blaze across the headlines is the question.  It has started, but I think it prudent to expect a black swan event sometime this year when all hell will break loose.  The genocide in Gaza is the first step, and the U.S./Israel, “not wanting” a wider war, have already started one.

    (For an excellent history lesson on the Zionist oppression of Palestinians and the current genocide, listen to Max Blumenthal’s and Miko Peled’s impassioned talk – “Where is the War in Gaza Going? – delivered from the heart of darkness, Washington D.C.  Two Jewish men who know the difference between Zionism and Judaism and whose consciences are aflame with justice for the oppressed Palestinians.)

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  • The Global South Takes Israel to Court

    Tarek al-Ghoussein (Palestine), Untitled 9 from the series Self Portrait, 2002.

    On 11 January, Adila Hassim, an advocate of the High Court of South Africa, stood before the judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and said: “Genocides are never declared in advance. But this court has the benefit of the past 13 weeks of evidence that shows incontrovertibly a pattern of conduct and related intention that justifies a plausible claim of genocidal acts”. This statement anchored Hassim’s presentation of South Africa’s 84-page complaint against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Both Israel and South Africa are parties to the 1948 Genocide Convention.

    The filing by the South African government documents many of the atrocities perpetrated by Israel as well as, crucially, the declarations of intent to conduct genocide made by senior Israeli officials. Nine pages of this text (pp. 59 to 67) list ‘expressions of genocidal intent’ made primarily by Israeli state officials, such as calls for a ‘Second Nakba’ and a ‘Gaza Nakba’ (Nakba, which means catastrophe in Arabic, refers to the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians from their homes that led to the creation of the state of Israel). These chilling declarations of intent have appeared repeatedly in the Israeli government’s speeches and statements since 7 October alongside racist language about ‘monsters’, ‘animals’, and the ‘jungle’ to refer to Palestinians. In one of many such instances, Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on 9 October 2023 that his forces are ‘imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly’.

    Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, another advocate from South Africa, described these words as a ‘language of systematic dehumanisation’. This language, alongside the character of Israel’s assault – which has thus far claimed over 24,000 Palestinian lives, displaced nearly the entire population of Gaza, and plunged 90% of the population into acute food security – should provide a sufficient basis for the accusation of genocide.

    It is fitting that Adila Hassim’s first name means righteousness or justice in Arabic and Tembeka Ngcukaitobi’s first name means trustworthy in Xhosa.

    John Halaka (Palestine), Memories of Memories, 2023.

    At the ICJ hearing, Israel was unable to respond credibly to South Africa’s complaint. Tal Becker, a legal advisor to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, spent his entire presentation trying to indict Hamas, which is not a party to the dispute. It was Hamas, Becker said, that created the ‘nightmarish environment’ in Gaza – not Israel.

    After Israel made its case, the fifteen ICJ judges began their deliberations. The presentations on 11–12 January were merely the prima facie hearing to ascertain whether there is sufficient evidence to proceed to a trial, which – if it happens – would likely take years. However, South Africa asked the court to apply ‘provisional measures’, namely an emergency order from the ICJ judges calling on Israel to stop its genocidal attack on Palestinians. This would be a significant blow to Israel’s already diminished legitimacy as well as the legitimacy of its major backer, the United States of America. There is considerable precedence for this measure. In 2019, Gambia was able to get the court to order provisional measures against the government of Myanmar for its attacks on the Rohingya people. The world awaits the court’s verdict.

    Ibrahim Khatab (Egypt), Do What You Want Under the Trees, 2021.

    The day before the hearings began, the US released a statement saying ‘allegations that Israel is committing genocide are unfounded’. Once more, the US government fully backed Israel, intervening on its behalf not only in words but by providing arms and logistical support for the genocide. That is why South Africa is now preparing a filing against the United States and the United Kingdom to be submitted to the ICJ.

    In November 2023, when the genocidal character of the war was already widely accepted across the globe, US Congress passed a $14.5 billion package in military aid to Israel. While the ICJ held its hearing, US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told the press that the US will ‘continue to supply [Israel] with the tools and capabilities they need’, which it did – again – as recently as 9 and 29 December, when it transferred additional arms to Israel. When asked about loss of life concerns within Congress, Kirby said that ‘we still see no indication that [Israel is] violating the laws of armed conflict’. Kirby, a former admiral, acknowledged that ‘there are too many civilian casualties’. However, rather than calling to end attacks on civilians, he said that Israel must ‘take steps to reduce that’. In other words, the US has given Israel the green light and carte blanche support, and arms, to do whatever it would like to Palestinians.

    When the people of Yemen, led by Ansar Allah, decided to block the movement of ships to Israel through the Red Sea, the US formed a ‘coalition’ to attack Yemen. On the day of South Africa’s presentation at the ICJ, the US bombed Yemen. The message was clear: not only will the US provide unconditional support for the genocide; it will also attack countries that try to put a stop to it.

    Shaima al-Tamimi (Yemen), So Close Yet So Far Away, 2018.

    The atrocities perpetrated by Israel, as well as the resistance of the Palestinian people, have moved millions across the world to take to the streets, many of them for the first time in their lives. Social media, in almost all the world’s languages, is saturated with content decrying Israel’s terrible actions. The focus of attention does not seem to be diminishing, with 400,000 people marching on the US capitol last weekend in larger numbers than ever in the country’s history. The increasing fervour and scale of these demonstrations have provoked concerns in the Democratic Party that US President Joe Biden will lose not only the Arab American vote in such key states as Michigan, but that liberal-left activists will not support his re-election campaign.

    Chie Fueki (Japan), Nikko, 2018

    Over the course of the past two years, from the start of the Ukraine War until now, there has been a rapid decline in the West’s credibility. This drop in legitimacy did not begin with the Ukraine War or genocide in Palestine, though both events have certainly accelerated the decline in the authority of the NATO countries. Ansar Allah spokesperson Mohammed al-Bukhaiti posted a video of a pro-Palestine march in New York that is perhaps indicative of the mood in most of the world and wrote: ‘We are not hostile to the American people, but rather to the American foreign policy that has caused the death of tens of millions of people, threatens the security and safety of the world, and also exposes the lives of Americans to danger. Let us struggle together to establish justice among people’.

    Since the start of the Third Great Depression in 2007, the Global North has slowly lost its control over the world economy, technology and science, and raw materials. Billionaires in the Global North deepened their ‘tax strike’, siphoning a large share of social wealth into tax havens and unproductive financial investments. This left the Global North with few instruments to maintain economic power, including the ability it once held to make investments in the Global South. Later this month, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research will release a new dossier, The Churning of the Global Order, and a study, Hyper-Imperialism: A Dangerous Decadent New Stage, which detail the maladies of the present and the new mood created by the rise of the Global South. The ICJ complaint filed by South Africa and backed by several Global South states is an indication of this mood.

    Athier Mousawi (Iraq-Britain), A Point to A Potential Somewhere, 2014.

    It is clear to most people in the world that the Global North has failed to address planetary crises, whether the climate crisis or the consequences of the Third Great Depression. It has tried to substitute reality with euphemisms such as ‘democracy promotion’, ‘sustainable development’, ‘humanitarian pause’, and, from UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron and Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, the ridiculous formulation of a ‘sustainable ceasefire’. Empty words are no substitute for real actions. To speak of a ‘sustainable ceasefire’ while arming Israel or to speak of ‘democracy promotion’ while backing anti-democratic governments now defines the hypocrisy of the Global North’s political class.

    On 12 January, the German government released a statement saying that it ‘firmly and explicitly rejects the accusation of genocide that has now been made against Israel’. In line with the new mood in the Global South, the government of Namibia reminded the Germans that they had ‘committed the first genocide of the 20th century in 1904–1908, in which tens of thousands of innocent Namibians died in the most inhumane and brutal conditions’. This is known as the Herero and Namaqua genocide. Germany, said the government of Namibia, ‘is yet to fully atone for the genocide it committed on Namibian soil’. Therefore, Namibia ‘expresses deep concern with the shocking decision’ of the German government to reject the indictment of Israel.

    Israel, meanwhile, says that it will continue this genocide for ‘as long as it takes’, though its already tenuous justifications continue to deteriorate with increasing rapidity. Behind this violence is the waning legitimacy of the NATO project, whose sanctimonies sound like nails being dragged across a bloodied chalkboard.

    PS: Please do not miss the panel discussion based on our recent dossier, Culture as a Weapon of Struggle: The Medu Art Ensemble and Southern African Liberation, which widens the focus from South Africa to Palestine, featuring Wally Serote (poet laureate of South Africa and the founding chairperson of the Medu Art Ensemble), Judy Seidman (cultural worker and member of the Medu Art Ensemble), Clarissa Bitar (award-winning Palestinian oud musician and composer), and Niki Franco (cultural worker). The event will be hosted by our very own Tings Chak as well as Hannah Priscilla Craig of Artists Against Apartheid and livestreamed on 21 January via The People’s Forum YouTube page at 20:00 (Johannesburg), 18:00 (London), 15:00 (São Paulo), and 13:00 (New York). Register here.

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  • Gaza: A Brutal Demonstration Of “Western Values”

    I find Westerners in general, and Europeans in particular, extremely indoctrinated and obsessed with perceptions of their own uniqueness. Many see themselves as chosen people, after going through a one-sided education and after relying on their media outlets, without studying alternative sources.

    — André Vltchek, Soviet-born US political writer, 1963-2020.

    On 20 March 2006, on the third anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq, BBC diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall declared on the Six O’Clock News:

    ‘There’s still bitter disagreement over invading Iraq. Was it justified or a disastrous miscalculation?’

    The supposed ‘justification’ claimed by Prime Minister Tony Blair was the ‘serious and current threat’ posed by Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. The BBC’s false notion of ‘balance’ was to present ‘disastrous miscalculation’ as the counterargument. In fact, as we detailed at the time in media alerts and in our books, the invasion was considered by many legal experts to be a ‘war of aggression’, the ‘supreme international crime’ as judged by the standards of the post-WW2 Nuremberg trials.

    But such a view is deemed too extreme for respectable BBC discourse. Even today, the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg glibly notes:

    Labour nerves still jangle over what went so terribly wrong in Iraq, even after all these years.

    The implication, endlessly channelled by the BBC, is that a ‘disastrous miscalculation’ occurred, rather than an international war crime leading to the deaths of over one million Iraqis; a crime for which no western leader, or their media cheerleaders, has ever been tried in court. That outcome, in any serious responsible society, would have been more fitting than mere ‘jangling nerves’ among politicians.

    But such narrative control is an endemic feature of state-corporate media, wrongly labelled ‘mainstream’. It is a fundamental requirement of political journalists and editors that they magically transform the crimes of ‘our’ governments into ‘miscalculations’, ‘mistakes’ or ‘misguided’ attempts to do good. This transformation is a power-serving alchemy turning the base metal of brutal realpolitik into the gold of benign intention, all for public consumption.

    Noam Chomsky succinctly explained the ideological underpinning of ‘mainstream’ news coverage:

    In discussion of international relations, the fundamental principle is that “we are good” – “we” being the government, on the totalitarian principle that state and people are one. “We” are benevolent, seeking peace and justice, though there may be errors in practice. “We” are foiled by villains who can’t rise to our exalted level.

    — Chomsky, Interventions, Penguin Books, London, 2007, p. 101.

    It does not matter how frequently, or how horrifically, this benevolent claim is violated by Western countries, journalists can be relied upon to perform the necessary whitewashing: the Gulf War in 1990-91, Nato’s bombing of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Iraq sanctions from 1990-2003, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, the destruction of Libya in 2011, the US-sponsored toppling of the Ukrainian government in 2014, US-Nato air strikes against Syria, participation in the Saudi-led bombing of Yemen, and now the attacks on ‘Iran-backed’ Houthi rebels. (Of course, convention decrees that the Houthi are always described as ‘Iran-backed’, whereas Israeli forces are not routinely labelled ‘US-backed’.)

    The list goes on and on. You might well ask: at what point do supposedly astute, well-informed, senior editors and political correspondents simply stop regurgitating government propaganda; even start challenging it? How much blood has to be spilled, how many lives lost, how much vital infrastructure – homes, hospitals, power plants – destroyed by ‘our’ weaponry, with ‘our’ diplomatic, political and economic support?

    But, of course, serious media challenge of elite power is highly unlikely. ‘Successful’ media professionals are fed through an industrial filter system that rewards steady adherence to state-approved narratives. As Chomsky once so memorably told a discombobulated Andrew Marr:

    I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.’

    Misleading The Public Is State Policy

    In several powerful books, based on careful research of formerly secret UK government documents, historian Mark Curtis, co-founder of Declassified UK, has laid bare the motivations and reality of British foreign policy. Ethical concerns and morality are notable in these internal state records by their absence. Curtis observed:

    a basic principle is that humanitarian concerns do not figure at all in the rationale behind British foreign policy. In the thousands of government files I have looked through for this and other books, I have barely seen any reference to human rights at all. Where such concerns are evoked, they are only for public-relations purposes.

    — Curtis, Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses, Vintage, London, 2004, p. 3.

    He added:

    in every case I have ever researched on past British foreign policy, the files show that ministers and officials have systematically misled the public. The culture of lying to and misleading the electorate is deeply embedded in British policy-making.

    — Ibid., p. 3.

    This is especially true when it comes to Western terrorism. But what exactly is terrorism? The definition from a US army manual is:

    The calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature. This is done through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear.

    — Chomsky, ‘The new war against terror’, talk given at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on 18 October 2001.

    By this definition, the major source of international terrorism is the West, notably the United States, supported by its ‘special relationship’ ally, the UK. Curtis wrote:

    The idea that Britain is a supporter of terrorism is an oxymoron in the mainstream political culture, as ridiculous as suggesting that Tony Blair should be indicted for war crimes. Yet state-sponsored terrorism is by far the most serious category of terrorism in the world today, responsible for far more deaths in many more countries than the “private” terrorism of groups like Al Qaida. Many of the worst offenders are key British allies. Indeed, by any rational consideration, Britain is one of the leading supporters of terrorism in the world today. But this simple fact is never mentioned in the mainstream political culture.

    — Curtis, Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World, Vintage, London, 2003, p. 94.

    The US-UK-supported genocidal attacks by Israel on the people of Gaza, now extending to over 100 days, have made it ever more difficult for politicians and managers of public perception to maintain the myth of western benevolence and a ‘global rules-based order’.

    The Financial Times reported last October:

    Western support for Israel’s assault on Gaza has poisoned efforts to build consensus with significant developing countries on condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine, officials and diplomats have warned.

    The FT article continued:

    “We have definitely lost the battle in the Global South,” said one senior G7 diplomat. “All the work we have done with the Global South [over Ukraine] has been lost…Forget about rules, forget about world order. They won’t ever listen to us again.”

    The senior G7 diplomat added:

    What we said about Ukraine has to apply to Gaza. Otherwise we lose all our credibility. The Brazilians, the South Africans, the Indonesians: why should they ever believe what we say about human rights?

    Why indeed.

    Naledi Pandor, South Africa’s foreign minister, observed recently that:

    I think this notion of international rules is very comfortable for some people to use when it suits them but they don’t believe in international rules when it doesn’t suit them. Because they don’t apply international rules or law equally in all circumstances.

    She added:

    You can’t say because Ukraine has been invaded, suddenly sovereignty is important, but it was never important for Palestine.

    To put it bluntly, the notion of the West upholding a rules-based international system is a blood-drenched myth.

    Gaza – A War ‘To Save Western Civilisation’

    Last week, South Africa presented a detailed 84-page submission to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – essentially the UN’s global law court – arguing that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The case was brought under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

    The South African legal team showed ample evidence of Israeli genocidal acts in Gaza, as well as the stated intention to commit genocide, indicated in public statements by numerous senior Israeli political and military leaders. On 28 October last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech in which he compared the Palestinians to the Biblical people of Amalek. In the first Book of Samuel, God commanded King Saul to kill every person in Amalek, a rival nation to ancient Israel:

    Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.

    We could find no reference to Netanyahu’s genocidal comparison of the Palestinians to the Amalekites on the BBC News website.

    Around 24,000 people have been killed in Gaza since 7 October last year, including over 10,300 children and 7,100 women. There may be another 7,000 buried under the rubble. In other words, over 70 per cent of those killed are women and children. Around four per cent of Gaza’s population has either been killed, wounded or is missing under rubble.

    According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, by the end of 2023, 1.9 million people – nearly 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza – had been internally displaced under Israel’s attacks. These include many families who have been displaced multiple times, forcibly and repeatedly moved to try to flee Israel’s bombardment. But, as the UN has warned, there is no safe place in Gaza. Oxfam reported that Israel’s military is killing Palestinians at an average rate of 250 people a day, exceeding the daily death toll of any other major 21st century conflict. Many more lives are at risk from hunger, disease and cold, warned Oxfam.

    As of 30 December, about 65,000 residential units in Gaza had been destroyed or made uninhabitable and over 290,000 housing units had been damaged, meaning that over half a million people will have no home to return to. Thirty out of Gaza’s thirty-six hospitals are not functioning, and the remaining six are only partially functioning.

    Jonathan Cook noted that the West is now standing in the dock alongside Israel at the ICJ:

    Israel expects support from western capitals because they have nearly as much to fear from a verdict against Israel as Israel itself. They have staunchly backed the killing spree, with the US and UK, in particular, sending weapons that are being used against the people of Gaza, making both potentially complicit.

    Cook pointed out that it is significant that South Africa has brought the case of genocide against Israel. Both countries ‘bear the trauma of Europe’s long history of racial supremacism, but each has drawn precisely opposite lessons.’ As Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first post-apartheid president, said:

    We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.

    Israel’s most brutal assault in Gaza’s history is a continuation of its long war of oppression against the Palestinians. Israeli president Isaac Herzog described the genocidal attacks on Gaza as a war ‘to save Western civilization, to save the values of Western civilisation.’ As the political writer Caitlin Johnstone pointed out, Herzog was right; but not in the way he intended. She explained:

    The demolition of Gaza is indeed being perpetrated in defense of western values, and is itself a perfect embodiment of western values. Not the western values they teach you about in school, but the hidden ones they don’t want you to look at.

    Johnstone continued:

    For centuries western civilization has depended heavily on war, genocide, theft, colonialism and imperialism, which it has justified using narratives premised on religion, racism and ethnic supremacy — all of which we are seeing play out in the incineration of Gaza today.

    She added:

    What we are seeing in Gaza is a much better representation of what western civilization is really about than all the gibberish about freedom and democracy we learned about in school.

    A BBC News report on the ICJ proceedings was titled, with fake balance, ‘South Africa’s genocide case against Israel: Both sides play heavy on emotion in ICJ hearing’. This was a distortion of the truth: the South African case was presented with dignity, clarity and forensic detail. As the BBC conceded deep in its report, it was Israel who made a strong appeal to emotions, displaying the images of 132 missing Israelis – most of them still being held hostage in Gaza. But, as Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, noted of Israel’s legal case:

    Its repeated invocation of Hamas’s horrible 7 October attack and alleged genocidal aspirations are irrelevant because atrocities by one side do not justify genocide by another. Its argument of self-defence is beside the point because a legitimate defence does not allow genocide.

    BBC News marked one hundred days of the current phase of the Israel-Palestine crisis with a classic example of propaganda bias. The BBC website headlined a major 3,000-word piece on the October 7 attacks. Underneath, there was a tiny link to a one-minute video of footage from Gaza that clearly underplayed the level of destruction. This is called BBC ‘impartiality’.

    True to form, Washington is doing its utmost to protect Israel. During a press briefing, US national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters:

    South Africa’s lawsuit against Israel is “meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever”.

    Interviewed by Andrew Napolitano, a former judge and law professor, Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University responded to Kirby’s dismissive remark:

    I just wish there were grown-ups in power. Grown-ups who are responsible, who are honest, who are decent, who would read an 84-page detailed complaint and give a serious answer, rather than a one-sentence smack-off like that.

    He added:

    I wish, at the same time, that the White House press corps would follow up more seriously. Actually, if I remember correctly, that question started with a few words, “Just a quick one”. And then the question was asked and Kirby responded in this utterly disgusting way when the most important issue on the planet is in front of him, and couldn’t do more than one dismissive, phony and false statement. But then there’s no follow-up [by the journalists at the press briefing]. Then they move on to the next topic. And the next topic.

    Sachs continued:

    Why don’t the journalists do their job, rather than feeding us the propaganda from the White House? They should be questioning the propaganda. That’s why I was grateful for today’s [ICJ] court proceedings because there were hours to put forward the evidence. There is a detailed legal complaint. There are dozens of countries that have supported this. But the US government is all spin, all propaganda, and all attempt at narrative control.

    This is, of course, standard behaviour for the world’s major perpetrator of terrorism.

    The Language Of Genocide

    Media academics have analysed Israel-Palestine coverage and found that Palestinian perspectives are given ‘far less time and legitimacy’ than Israeli views in the British media. Last month, Greg Philo and Mike Berry of the highly-respected Glasgow Media Group examined four weeks (7 October – 4 November, 2023) of BBC One daytime coverage of Gaza to identify which terms were used by journalists themselves – i.e. not in direct or reported statements – to describe Israeli and Palestinian deaths.

    They found that ‘murder’, ‘murderous’, ‘mass murder’, ‘brutal murder’ and ‘merciless murder’ were used a total of 52 times by journalists to refer to Israelis’ deaths but never in relation to Palestinian deaths. Philo and Berry noted that:

    The same pattern could be seen in relation to “massacre”, “brutal massacre” and “horrific massacre” (35 times for Israeli deaths, not once for Palestinian deaths); “atrocity”, “horrific atrocity” and “appalling atrocity” (22 times for Israeli deaths, once for Palestinian deaths); and “slaughter” (five times for Israeli deaths, not once for Palestinian deaths).

    But more importantly:

    The Palestinian perspective is effectively absent from the coverage, in how they understand the reasons for the conflict and the nature of the occupation under which they are living.

    Tim Llewellyn, a former BBC Middle East correspondent, once observed that what is routinely missing from BBC coverage is that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land:

    demeans and degrades people: not just the killing and the destruction, but the humiliation, the attempt to crush the human spirit and remove the identity; not just the bullet in the brain and the tank through the door, but the faeces Israel’s soldiers rub on the plundered ministry walls, the trashed kindergarten; the barriers to a people’s work, prayers and hopes.

    Emre Azizlerli, a former senior BBC producer, said recently via X (formerly Twitter):

    I worked there for over 20 years. Internal boards determine who gets promoted by a panel of the applicant’s superiors. The political likes and dislikes of those at the very top easily trickle down in this chain mechanism all the way down to how producers behave, since everyone wants to please their boss to move ahead.

    No wonder that a Morning Star tribute to the late John Pilger, who reported on Palestine over many years, noted that his death ‘leaves a void’, adding:

    There are few investigative journalists of his courage or integrity. And designedly so. From the censorship of “hostile” voices across the internet to the outrageous incarceration of Julian Assange, every effort is being made to stamp out independent journalism.

    Throughout his career, Pilger drew attention to the role of the media as ‘an appendage of established power’. Addressing a conference last March, organised by the Morning Star, he called for:

    urgent debate and activism around the issue of the media… the media was rarely a friend of working people, but there were spaces for independent journalists in the mainstream.

    He continued:

    My own career is testament to that. Until a few years ago I worked in mainstream newspapers — in later years the Guardian mainly — but the Guardian like the others is now closed to independent thinking and honest journalism… we need to understand that the media is now fully integrated into an extremist state, and that working people must look elsewhere — to the Morning Star, yes, and to oases on the internet where good journalism flourishes.

    Pilger often cast a sceptical eye on those whom we are supposed to regard as the best journalists working in the major news media. They are nevertheless performing a propaganda role by demarcating the permissible limits of reporting. For example:

    BBC reporter, Jeremy Bowen, who talks about a war between Israel and Hamas. Bowen knows that’s wrong. It’s an attack on an occupied people by the occupier, Israel, backed by great powers.

    State-corporate journalism – BBC News is a prime example – is far removed from the mythical notion of reporting the truth to the public. As the playwright John McGrath once wrote:

    The gentlemen at the head of the powerful opinion-forming corporations do not wish to have their articulate mediation of reality disturbed by a group of people going around with a different story, seeing events from a different perspective, even selecting different information. Still less do they wish to have the population at large emerging from their mental retreat – the inner exile of the powerless and alienated – and demanding a share of power, of control, of freedom.’

    — McGrath, A Good Night Out: Popular Theatre: Audience, Class and Form, Nick Hern Books, 1981, pp. 89-90.

    We should all reject the output of ‘the powerful opinion-forming corporations’ and look elsewhere, to those internet oases of real journalism, in order to understand the world and to radically change it for the better.

    The post Gaza: A Brutal Demonstration Of “Western Values” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Last Flurry: The US Congress and Australian Parliamentarians seek Assange’s Release

    On February 20, Julian Assange, the daredevil publisher of WikiLeaks, will be going into battle, yet again, with the British justice system – or what counts for it.  The UK High Court will hear arguments from his team that his extradition to the United States from Britain to face 18 charges under the Espionage Act of 1917 would violate various precepts of justice.  The proceedings hope to reverse the curt, impoverished decision by the remarkably misnamed Justice Jonathan Swift of the same court on June 6, 2023.

    At this point, the number of claims the defence team can make are potentially many.  Economy, however, has been called for: the two judges hearing the case have asked for a substantially shortened argument, showing, yet again, that the quality of British mercy tends to be sourly short.  The grounds Assange can resort to are troublingly vast: CIA-sponsored surveillance, his contemplated assassination, his contemplated abduction, violation of attorney-client privilege, his poor health, the violation of free-speech, a naked, politicised attempt by an imperium to capture one of its greatest and most trenchant critics, and bad faith by the US government.

    Campaigners for the cause have been frenzied.  But as the solution to Assange’s plight is likely to be political, the burden falls on politicians to stomp and drum from within their various chambers to convince their executive counterparts.  In the US Congress, House Resolution 934, introduced on December 13 by Rep. Paul A. Gosar, an Arizona Republican, expresses “the sense of the House of Representatives that regular journalistic activities are protected under the First Amendment, and that the United States ought to drop all charges against and attempts to extradite Julian Assange.”

    The resolution sees a dramatic shift from the punishing, haute view taken by such figures as the late Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, who was one of the first political figures to suggest that Assange be crucified on the unsteady timber of the Espionage Act for disclosing US cables and classified information in 2010.  The resolution acknowledges, for instance, that the disclosures by WikiLeaks “promoted public transparency through the exposure of the hiring of child prostitutes by Defense Department contractors, friendly fire incidents, human rights abuses, civilian killings, and United States use of psychological warfare.”  The list could be sordidly longer but let’s not quibble.

    Impressively, drafters of the resolution finally acknowledge that charging Assange under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) for alleged conspiracy to help US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning access Defense Department computers was a fabled nonsense.  For one, it was “impossible” – Manning “already had access to the mentioned computer”.  Furthermore, “there was no proof Mr Assange had any contact with said intelligence analyst”.

    Ire is also directed at the espionage counts, with the resolution noting that “no other publisher has ever been prosecuted under the Espionage Act prior to these 17 charges.”  A successful prosecution of the publisher “would set a precedent allowing the United States to prosecute and imprison journalists for First Amendment protected activities, including the obtainment and publication of information, something that occurs on a regular basis”.

    Acknowledgment is duly made of the importance of press freedoms to promote transparency and protect the Republic, the support for Assange, “sincere and steadfast”, no less, shown by “numerous human rights, press freedom, and privacy rights advocates and organizations”, and the desire by “at least 70 Senators and Members of Parliament from Australia, a critical United States ally and Mr Assange’s native country” for his return.

    Members of Australia’s parliament, adding to the efforts last September to convince members of Congress that the prosecution be dropped, have also written to the UK Home Secretary, James Cleverly, requesting that he “undertake an urgent, thorough and independent assessment of the risks to Mr Assange’s health and welfare in the event that he is extradited to the United States.”

    The members of the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group draw Cleverly’s attention to the recent UK Supreme Court case of AAA v Secretary of State for the Home Department which found “that courts in the United Kingdom cannot just rely on third party assurances by foreign governments but rather are required to make independent assessments of the risk of persecution to individuals before any order is made removing them from the UK.”

    It follows that the approach taken by Lord Justices Burnett and Holroyde in USA v Assange [2021] EWHC 3133 was, to put it politely, a touch too confident in accepting assurances given by the US government regarding Assange’s treatment, were he to be extradited.  “These assurances were not tested, nor was there any evidence of independent assessment as to the basis on which they could be given and relied upon.”

    The conveners of the group point to Assange’s detention in Belmarsh prison since April 2019, his “significant health issues, exacerbated to a dangerous degree by his prolonged incarceration, that are of very real concern to us as his elected representatives.”  They also point out the rather unusual consensus between the current Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, and his opposition number, Peter Dutton, that the “case has gone on for too long.”  Continued legal proceedings, both in the UK, and then in the US were extradition to take place “would add yet more years to Mr Assange’s detention and further imperil his health.”

    In terms of posterity’s calling, there are surely fewer better things at this point for a US president nearing mental oblivion to do, or a Tory government peering at electoral termination to facilitate, than the release of Assange.  At the very least, it would show a grudging acknowledgment that the fourth estate, watchful of government’s egregious abuses, is no corpse, but a vital, thriving necessity.

    The post The Last Flurry: The US Congress and Australian Parliamentarians seek Assange’s Release first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Washington’s Unconditional Support for Israel Mirrors its Unconditional Support for Sectarianism

    Poor Ophelia divided from herself and her fair judgment
    Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts….

    — Hamlet (IV.v.)

    As was the case with the British and Roman empires that preceded it, Washington has long had a fondness for the divide and conquer paradigm and has ruthlessly fomented sectarianism in the post-Cold War era. This frenetic push towards sectarianization has ushered in a new dark age of socio-economic chaos and failed states, an amenable environment for rapacious corporate entities to ravage and plunder. Furthermore, in neoliberal ideology US-backed extremists are invariably hailed as the guardians of tolerance and reason locked in an apocalyptic struggle with the forces of ignorance and bigotry which foments the pathologization, and if we are not vigilant, ultimately the criminalization of dissent.

    The unflagging support for extremism and concurrent vilification of those who attempt to resist its infernal grasp saturates every aspect of Washington’s contemporary policy-making. Domestically, neoliberal indoctrination that encourages Americans of color and immigrant youth to embrace black nationalism, Latino nationalism, and anti-white jihad has cataclysmically destabilized American society by cultivating illiteratization and through relentlessly pitting Americans against one another.

    While the neoliberal racism of today couches itself in the language of revolution and “anti-racism” minorities end up being no less dehumanized. Instead of being told point-blank that they are racially inferior, these students are taught to have contempt for everything Western and American. Once inculcated with this anti-literacy vaccine they become pawns in the hands of the oligarchs and used to destroy working class unity.

    Those who attempt to provide some context regarding the Maidan “revolution of dignity” which saw the cult of Bandera illegally seize power in a violent putsch in February of 2014 are called “Putin stooges,” “Putin apologists,” and equated with Westerners that were sympathetic to the Nazi party. This upends reality, as those who extol Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, and the 14th Waffen-SS Division are portrayed as sensible defenders of the rule of law.

    During the lockdowns “anti-vaxxers” and Branch Covidians were pitted against one another, and the struggle between those who believe in informed consent and those who seek its annihilation persists with regards to the Church of Vaccinology, the Cult of Psychiatry, and the trans cult, along with other ethically dubious medical practices. Supporters of anti-white Manifest Destiny are pitted against Americans who resent the growing fragmentation, atomization, and dissolution of their society. As the concerns of marginalized natives are ignored and they are dismissed as bigots their frustration and anger grow, which can in fact fuel traditional far-right attitudes, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    In Zionism there is no such thing as a Palestinian – there are only “terrorists.” In multiculturalism there is no such thing as an American – there are only “racists.” The extent to which the latter has unleashed a war of all against all, handmaiden of unbridled corporate pillage, cannot be overstated.

    The fracturing of American Judaism is likewise emblematic of the unraveling of American society, with the ultra-Orthodox shunning Jews that aren’t ultra-Orthodox, and with the Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews filled with acrimony towards one another. When holding up a sign saying “Jews Say Ceasefire Now” at a rally in Washington DC in November, Medea Benjamin was confronted by a female Zionist who said she should be raped. In the ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionist community of Mea She’arim in Jerusalem the police frequently harass and behave violently towards the locals (who are essentially Jewish Palestinians).

    The Pentagon destroyed Iraqi society by inciting Kurdish nationalism, Sunni fundamentalism, and by placing a Shiite fundamentalist government in power, knowing full well that this would cause the country to become a failed state. Attempts by Tel Aviv and Washington to maintain and capitalize on Sunni-Shia tensions by stoking fear and animosity between Riyadh and Tehran played a critical role in their strategy of attempting to dominate the region. Now that China has successfully facilitated a rapprochement between the two countries, this weakens the position of the US and Israel in the Middle East, as it fosters greater unity within the ummah allowing the Muslim populations to turn their attention to the terrible crimes being committed against the Palestinians.

    Another example where the rational have been denounced as extremists and vice versa was during Syria’s “civil war,” where the most fanatical and bloodthirsty jihadists (many of whom were not Syrian) were romanticized ad nauseam by Western presstitutes and incessantly portrayed as heroic freedom fighters.

    By opting to act militarily to defend the Donbass from ethnic cleansing, Moscow has decided to obliterate the Banderite military, and if possible, remove the Banderite junta altogether by replacing it with a Russophile government in conjunction with an anti-Maidan coup. After waiting for the greater part of a decade for Kiev to implement the Minsk Accords, the Kremlin arrived at the conclusion that if they were to continue to sit on their hands, the nationalists would eventually reach a level of military capability at which point they could no longer be removed or significantly weakened in any meaningful way. In actuality, Moscow is doing what the Zionist entity’s neighbors failed to do during the brief window of Zionist vulnerability prior to the IDF’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.

    One of the problems with sectarianism is how easy it is for the elites to indoctrinate impressionable children. I grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey, in the ‘80s and early ‘90s where many of my friends were indoctrinated into the cult of Zionism, and by junior high school they were already zealots. These children are taught from the earliest possible age that Jews are always the oppressed, that they can never be the oppressor, and that Zionism and Judaism are synonymous with one another.

    (In a heated exchange that recently took place on the streets of the settler colonial entity, an Israeli woman sarcastically asked a Golani Brigade soldier, “How many innocent people have you killed in this war?” To which he replied, not without irony, “Your parents failed in raising you.”)

    Jews that descend into the valley of Zionism commit the greatest possible sacrilege: they participate in the violent oppression of another people. Indeed, this is analogous to doctors betraying the informed consent ethic and the oath to do no harm. In both scenarios a primordial Rubicon is irrevocably violated. While Nazism slew Jewish bodies, Zionism slays Jewish souls.

    Education in Teaneck today is in many ways a microcosm of the multicultural society. In a town of around 40,000 there are four radically different education systems: an Islamic school system, a system of modern Orthodox yeshivas (the ultra-Orthodox have a completely different set of yeshivas); and the Teaneck public school system, which has long segregated black students, often resulting in their receiving an inferior education. Black nationalism exacerbates the education crisis facing African American youth, as these children are frequently inculcated with the idea that doing well in school would make them an “Oreo” (black on the outside, white on the inside) and an “Uncle Tom.” Just as Feminism and The Handmaid’s Tale are two sides to the same reactionary coin, so too are anti-white jihad and white supremacy.

    Without a return to a strong public school system anchored in a traditional American canon our society will continue to disintegrate, as there will be no cultural glue to hold it together. The ease with which a child can be indoctrinated into being a Banderite, a Zionist, an anti-white jihadi, or radical feminist poses many challenges, and is difficult to combat once an education system has fallen into the hands of sociopaths. As the Chinese like to say, “Children are white paper.”

    One of the most extraordinary instances of Washington cultivating extremism is its long-standing relationship with the Zionist entity, with the former never failing to provide its favorite attack dog with virtually unlimited political, military, and economic aid, and like the entity itself, labeling all criticism of Israel as “anti-Semitism.” Following a recent Jewish Voice for Peace rally that was held in New York’s Grand Central Station, New York governor Kathy Hochul issued a statement decrying what she described as an unconscionable “anti-Semitic” incident. And so a rally where hundreds of Jews protesting the barbarities of a Jewish supremacist and ethnosupremacist crusader state became transformed into an incident whereby an imaginary gang of neo-Nazis viciously attacked an imaginary group of defenseless Jews. Naturally, Hochul, who is also a fan of biofascism, proceeded to call for more internet censorship to combat “extremism” and “anti-Semitism.” (In addition to Jewish Voice for Peace, anti-Zionist Jewish organizations such as IfNotNow, B’Tselem, Shoresh and Neturei Karta continue to play a critically important role in countering the lie that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are one and the same).

    Biden’s preposterous attempts to equate Putin and Hamas (“They both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy”) further exemplifies the neoliberal penchant for romanticizing extremism. Aside from the most rabid Russophobes and Islamophobes, it is principally the Western elites that regard the Banderite entity and the Zionist entity as “model democracies.”

    Always eager to march to the tune of Washington’s drum, these sentiments have been echoed by the European elites, with British MP Suella Braverman calling the Free Palestine marches “hate marches,” describing them as “sickening,” and claiming that the phrase “from the river to the sea” was “a call to arms used by terrorists.” Clearly, this language seeks to criminalize any criticism of the Zionist entity. (Braverman might consider moving to Germany where the authorities have violently suppressed anti-Zionist rallies).

    When not dropping bombs on cats, dogs, journalists, bakeries, ambulances, universities (see here and here), hotels, houses of worship and heritage sites, demolishing Palestinian homes, destroying cemeteries, uprooting olive trees, torturing Palestinians, stealing corpses of Palestinian martyrs, carrying out summary executions, depriving Gazans of food and water, butchering and traumatizing children, torturing West Bank residents and holding them in “administrative detention,” using pogromists to force West Bank residents from their land, invoking the Hannibal Directive and murdering their own citizens, using the Star of David as a fascist symbol, collapsing Gaza’s health care system and turning much of the strip into a lifeless wasteland, Zionists can say some pretty revealing things, particularly following “Israel’s 9/11.”

    Following the Hamas raids on October 7th the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, addressed the Palestinians in Gaza:

    Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water [in Gaza], there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.

    Writing in Yedioth Ahronoth, retired major general and former head of the Israeli National Security Council Giora Eiland, wrote that “Israel needs to create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, compelling tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands to seek refuge in Egypt or the Gulf.” Elaborating, he went on to say that “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist….” Appearing on Israeli television, journalist Shimon Riklin hailed the destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure, saying “I am unable to sleep without watching homes in Gaza being destroyed.”

    On October 11th Energy Minister Israel Katz posted on social media:

    For years, we have given Gaza electricity, water, and fuel. Instead of a thank you, they sent thousands of human animals to butcher, murder, rape and kidnap babies, women and elderly people. This is why we have decided to cut off the supply of water, electricity and fuel, and now, the local power plant has collapsed, and there is no electricity in Gaza. We will keep holding a tight siege until the Hamas threat is lifted from Israel and the world. What has been will be no more.

    Never one to shy away from violent rhetoric, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of the Otzma Yehudit party, tweeted on the 17th of October that “So long as Hamas does not release the hostages – the only thing that should enter Gaza is hundreds of tons of air force explosives – not an ounce of humanitarian aid.”

    Two days after the Hamas raids, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a press conference:

    We are imposing a complete siege on [Gaza]. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel – everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we must act accordingly.

    Tzipi Navon, office manager of Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, furiously condemned the Hamas raids, calling for those responsible to be brutally tortured. Knesset member for Likud Galit Distel-Atbaryan said that Israeli society should unite so that it could focus its energies on “erasing all of Gaza from the face of the earth.” Israeli lawmaker Revital Gotliv and Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu both called for the IDF to use nuclear weapons, while Knesset member Merav Ben-Ari said that the children of Gaza brought their suffering upon themselves.

    IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari has openly acknowledged that “while balancing accuracy with the scope of damage, right now we’re focused on what causes maximum damage.” Shortly after “the second Holocaust” Israeli president Isaac Herzog said of the Palestinians that “it is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” further encouraging the Zionist army to engage in illegal acts of collective punishment.

    Minister of Agriculture and former Shin Bet director Avi Dichter said nonchalantly on television that yes, the IDF was carrying out a second Nakba in Gaza. Addressing the nation, Netanyahu’s appeal that “you must remember what Amalek has done to you” was an open messianic call to genocide.

    (Netanyahu has referred to Iran as a country ruled by “fanatics,” denouncing Tehran’s “terror tentacles” and “murderous nature.” Does the Iranian military routinely bomb their neighbors? Does Tehran persecute Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian Iranians? Do they destroy non-Shia houses of worship? Do they, like ISIS, refuse to formally declare their borders?)

    Ayelet Shaked (of fascism perfume fame) has reiterated this call for ethnic cleansing, saying that Khan Younis should be turned into a soccer field. When asked about the Netanyahu government’s response to the events of October 7th, Likud MK and Minister for the Advancement of the Status of Women May Golan, replied:

    I don’t care about Gaza. I literally don’t care. For all I care they can go out and just swim in the sea. I want to see dead bodies of terrorists around Gaza.

    Moshe Feiglin, founder of the Zehut party, demanded “complete incineration” and for Gaza to be annihilated as Dresden was during the Second World War, while Metula Mayor David Azoulai called for Gaza to be razed and turned into an open-air memorial like the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.

    Eliyahu Yossian, veteran of the Military Intelligence Directorate Unit 8200, has echoed this drumbeat of Hitlerian bloodlust demanding that a war of extermination be unleashed on the people of Gaza:

    Because the woman is an enemy, the baby is an enemy, the first grader is an enemy, the Hamas militant is an enemy, and the pregnant woman is an enemy.

    American Zionists spew no less venomous rhetoric, with RFK Jr. saying that “The Palestinian people are arguably the most pampered people by international aid organizations in the history of the world,” and former State Department official Stuart Seldowitz saying to a Manhattan halal food cart vendor in November that “If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasn’t enough.”

    Genocidal words, if left unchecked, inevitably spawn genocidal deeds.

    All of this satanic language has trickled down to the Israeli rank and file leading to a number of extremely violent ultra-nationalist songs (see here, here, and here). In Ness and Stilla’s hit “Harbu Darbu,” an appalling display of Zionist death music, and which is currently one of the most popular songs within the settler colonial entity (the YouTube video has more views than the population of Israel), the barbarian hip hop artists refer to Hamas militants as “rats getting out of the tunnel” and Palestinians as “sons of Amalek.”

    The song, which one might categorize as “genocide drill,” and which is oozing with a glorification of the Zionist army and a total disregard for Palestinian lives, concludes with “All IDF units are coming to do Harbu Darbu on their head.” (“Harbu Darbu” comes from Arabic, translates as “swords and strikes,” and is used as slang in modern Israeli Hebrew to mean “hellfire” or “raining hell on one’s enemy.”)

    Cogitate upon this for a moment, gentle reader: do these people seem even remotely sane, let alone capable of “fighting extremism?”

    There have also been an array of despicable videos and social media posts where Zionists mock the suffering of Palestinians (see here, here, and here), further demonstrating the fascistic nature of Israeli society, how malleable people can be, and how easily the masses can be ideologically molded by their teachers, leaders, and the mass media. An eight-year-old is an innocent victim (who Ness and Stilla were not that long ago), but the elementary school student becomes a junior high school student, the junior high school student becomes a high school student, who then graduates and is not a child any more. All too often, the dogma that is instilled by ideologues who prey on the innocent and vulnerable leaves an indelible mark. As Yeats once penned in “The Second Coming:”

    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned

    Israelis often join the military at eighteen where they can be even more brainwashed. For most Americans, they go to college and have their minds warped by any number of depraved cult ideologies: Zionism, anti-white jihad, humanitarian interventionism and American exceptionalism, radical feminism (an anti-love cult contemptuous of due process), unfettered capitalism and biofascism.

    (In a feminism meets Zionism moment, Mia Schem, who was taken hostage by Hamas on October 7th and later returned to the entity in a prisoner exchange, said that a Hamas man guarding her raped her “with his eyes.” Do Israeli fighter pilots drop imaginary bombs from imaginary planes?)

    In the end, those who are promised Elysium and the coming of the Messiah meet their doom. Zionism destroys its acolytes as ethical human beings and has made Jews less safe, initially in the Muslim world, and more recently in Europe. (Israeli intelligence applauds these developments, as it fuels aliyah, or Jewish colonization of Palestine). Anti-white jihad has made millions of Americans of color and immigrant youth illiterate while rendering them ghettoized and unassimilable. Humanitarian interventionism has eviscerated the United States morally and economically while jeopardizing the rule of law. The cult of Bandera has obliterated Ukraine culturally, morally, and economically and has taught Ukrainians to feel the deepest hatred for those they once regarded as their brothers: Russian speaking Ukrainians and Ukrainians of ethnic Russian origin. Biofascism destroys the souls of doctors, nurses, and biomedical researchers; while radical feminism debases girls and young women by encouraging them to “cast off the shackles of the patriarchy” through either embracing promiscuity or shunning men altogether, and by severing the connection between sex and love. Just as the Zionist is the greatest anti-Semite, the Feminisis mujahid is the greatest misogynist.

    Unlike the gullible Western masses, the Global South is not buying NATO propaganda with regards to the Russo-Ukrainian War, and in the “third world” there is considerable awareness that Washington’s attempts to turn Ukraine into a Banderite battering ram with which to destabilize Russia is at the root of the conflict.

    Nevertheless, the outpouring of anger felt by millions in the West regarding the savagery being unleashed by the Zionist entity is emblematic of the fact that Westerners are not inherently evil, per se, and that when they are educated on an important issue a significant percentage will embrace light over darkness. With Ukraine this has not happened due to the fact that only a minuscule percentage of Westerners – especially in the United States – have any understanding of the basic chronological sequence of events that led to this terrible war in the first place. Moreover, in contrast with “the Middle East’s only democracy,” Ukrainian nationalists are kept as far as possible from the mass media, although they say similarly deranged things to their domestic audience.

    In all likelihood Washington will continue to support extremist ideologies and fuel sectarian hatreds. Indeed, as imperialism and anti-white jihad foment racism, and multiculturalism and radical feminism fan the flames of sexism, tribalism, and atomization Zionism fans the flames of anti-Semitism. This is by design.

    Support for the Banderite junta has isolated Washington and tarnished its already dubious credibility, while the unmitigated support shown for the Zionist entity’s genocidal onslaught has eradicated what little moral authority the American ruling establishment had left, especially in the Middle East. Domestically, the decision to scrap their national identity in favor of a Neronian Tower of Babel devoid of trust, tradition, a common value system, and solidarity bolsters their power in the short term, but threatens their long-term viability, underscoring the fact that at home and abroad sectarianism remains Washington’s deadliest, yet most self-destructive, weapon.

    The post Washington’s Unconditional Support for Israel Mirrors its Unconditional Support for Sectarianism first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Western Racism laid the Foundations for Israel’s Genocide in Gaza

    It should surprise no one that the prize-match fight for the rule of international law has pitted Israel and South Africa against each other at the International Court of Justice at The Hague.

    The world is split between those who have crafted a self-serving global and regional order that guarantees them impunity whatever their crimes, and those who pay the price for that arrangement.

    Now the long-time victims are fighting back at the so-called World Court.

    Last week, each side presented its arguments for and against whether Israel has implemented a genocidal policy in Gaza over the past three months.

    South Africa’s case should be open and shut. So far Israel has killed or seriously wounded close to 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza, almost one in every 20 inhabitants. It has damaged or destroyed more than 60 percent of the population’s homes. It has bombed the tiny “safe zones” to which it has ordered some two million Palestinians to flee. It has exposed them to starvation and lethal disease by cutting off aid and water.

    Meanwhile, senior Israeli political and military officials have openly and repeatedly expressed genocidal intent, as South Africa’s submission so carefully documents.

    Back in September, before Hamas’ break-out from the Gaza prison on 7 October, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had shown the United Nations a map of his aspiration for what he termed “the New Middle East”. The Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank were gone, replaced by Israel.

    Despite the mass of evidence against Israel, it could take years for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to reach a definitive verdict – by which time, if things carry on as they are, there may be no meaningful Palestinian population left to protect.

    South Africa has therefore also urgently requested an interim order effectively requiring Israel to stop its attack.

    Opposing corners

    The peoples of Israel and South Africa still carry the wounds of the crimes of systematic European racism: in Israel’s case, the Holocaust in which the Nazis and their collaborators exterminated six million Jews; and in South Africa’s, the white apartheid regime that was imposed on the black population for decades by a colonising white minority.

    They are in opposite corners because each drew a different lesson from their respective traumatic historical legacies.

    Israel raised its citizens to believe that Jews must join the racist, oppressor nations, adopting a “might makes right” approach to neighbouring states. A self-declared Jewish state sees the region as a zero-sum battleground in which domination and brutality win the day.

    It was inevitable that Israel would eventually spawn, in Hamas and groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon, armed opponents who view their conflict with Israel in a similar light.

    South Africa, by contrast, has aspired to carry the mantel of “moral beacon” nation, that western states so readily ascribe to their top-dog, nuclear-armed Middle Eastern client state, Israel.

    South Africa’s first post-apartheid president, Nelson Mandela, famously observed in 1997: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

    Israel and apartheid South Africa were close diplomatic and military allies until apartheid’s fall 30 years ago. Mandela understood that the ideological foundations of Zionism and apartheid were built on a similar racial supremacist logic.

    He was once cast as a terrorist villain for opposing South Africa’s apartheid rulers, much as Palestinian leaders are by Israel today.

    Jackboot of colonialism

    It should also not surprise us that lined up in Israel’s corner is most of the West – led by Washington and Germany, the country that instigated the Holocaust. Berlin asked last Friday to be considered a third party in Israel’s defence at The Hague.

    Meanwhile, South Africa’s case is backed by much of what is called the “developing world”, which has long felt the jackboot of western colonialism – and racism – on its face.

    Notably, Namibia was incensed by Germany’s support for Israel at the court, given that at the outset of the 20th century, the colonial German regime in south-west Africa herded many tens of thousands of Namibians into death camps, developing the blueprint for the genocide of Jews and Roma it would later refine in the Holocaust.

    The Namibian president, Hage Geingob, stated: “Germany cannot morally express commitment to the United Nations Convention against genocide, including atonement for the genocide in Namibia, whilst supporting the equivalent of a holocaust and genocide in Gaza.”

    The panel of judges – 17 of them in total – do not exist in some rarified bubble of legal abstraction. Intense political pressures in this polarised fight will bear down on them.

    As former UK ambassador Craig Murray, who attended the two days of hearings, observed: most of the judges looked as if they “really did not want to be in the court”.

    ‘Nobody will stop us’

    The reality is that, whichever way the majority in the court swings in its decision, the crushing power of the West to get its way will shape what happens next.

    If most of the judges find it plausible that there is a risk Israel is committing genocide and insist on some sort of interim ceasefire until it can make a definitive ruling, Washington will block enforcement through its veto at the UN Security Council.

    Expect the US, as well as Europe, to work harder than ever to undermine international law and its supporting institutions. Imputations of antisemitism on the part of the judges who back South Africa’s case – and the states to which they belong – will be liberally spread around.

    Already Israel has accused South Africa of a “blood libel”, suggesting its motives at the ICJ are driven by antisemitism. In his address to the court, Tal Becker of the Israeli foreign ministry argued that South Africa was acting as a legal surrogate for Hamas.

    The US has implied much the same by calling South Africa’s meticulous amassing of evidence “meritless”.

    On Saturday, in a speech littered with deceptions, Netanyahu vowed to ignore the court’s ruling if it was not to Israel’s liking. “Nobody will stop us – not The Hague, not the axis of evil, and not anybody else,” he said.

    On the other hand, if the ICJ rules at this stage anything less than that there is a plausible case for genocide, Israel and the Biden administration will seize on the verdict to mischaracterise Israel’s assault on Gaza as receiving a clean bill of health from the World Court.

    That will be a lie. The judges are being asked only to rule on the matter of genocide, the gravest of the crimes against humanity, where the evidential bar is set very high indeed.

    In an international legal system in which nation-states are accorded far more rights than ordinary people, the priority is giving states the freedom to wage wars in which civilians are likely to pay the heaviest price. The gargantuan profits of the West’s military-industrial complex depend on this intentional lacuna in the so-called “rules of war”.

    If the court finds – whether for political or legal reasons – that South Africa has failed to make a plausible case, it will not absolve Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Indisputably, it is carrying out both.

    Foot dragging

    Nonetheless, any reticence on the part of the ICJ will be duly noted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), its heavily compromised sister court. Its job is not to adjudicate between states like the World Court but to gather evidence for the prosecution of individuals who order or carry out war crimes.

    It is currently gathering evidence to decide whether to investigate Israeli and Hamas officials over the events of the past three months.

    But for years, the same court has been dragging its feet on prosecuting Israeli officials over war crimes that long predate the current assault on Gaza, such as Israel’s decades of building illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, and Israel’s 17-year siege of Gaza – the rarely mentioned context for Hamas’ break-out on 7 October.

    The ICC similarly baulked at prosecuting US and British officials over the war crimes their states carried out in invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq.

    That followed an intimidation campaign from Washington, which imposed sanctions on the court’s two most senior officials, including freezing their US assets, blocking their international financial transactions and denying them and their families entry to the US.

    Terror campaign

    Israel’s central argument against genocide last week was that it is defending itself after it was attacked on 7 October, and that the real genocide is being carried out by Hamas against Israel.

    Such a claim should be roundly dismissed by the World Court. Israel has no right to defend its decades-long occupation and siege of Gaza, the background to the events of 7 October. And it cannot claim it is targeting a few thousand Hamas fighters when it is bombing, displacing and starving Gaza’s entire civilian population.

    Even if Israel’s military campaign is not intended to wipe out the Palestinians of Gaza, as all statements by the Israeli cabinet and military officials indicate, it is nonetheless still directed primarily at civilians.

    On the most charitable reading, given the facts, Palestinian civilians are being bombed and killed en masse to cause terror. They are being ethnically cleansed to depopulate Gaza. And they are being subjected to a horrifying form of collective punishment in Israel’s “complete siege” that denies them food, water and power – leading to starvation and exposure to lethal disease – to weaken their will to resist their occupation and seek liberation from absolute Israeli control.

    If all of this is the only way Israel can “eradicate Hamas” – its stated goal – then it reveals something Israel and its western patrons would rather we all ignore: that Hamas is so deeply embedded in Gaza precisely because its implacable resistance looks like the only reasonable response to a Palestinian population ever more suffocated by the tightening chokehold of oppression Israel has inflicted on Gaza for decades.

    Israel’s weeks of carpet bombing have left Gaza uninhabitable for the vast majority of the population, who have no homes to return to and little in the way of functioning infrastructure. Without massive and constant aid, which Israel is blocking, they will gradually die of dehydration, famine, cold and disease.

    In these circumstances, Israel’s actual defence against genocide is an entirely conditional one: it is not committing genocide only if it has correctly estimated that sufficient pressure will mount on Egypt that it feels compelled – or bullied – into opening its border with Gaza and allowing the population to escape.

    If Cairo refuses, and Israel does not change course, the people of Gaza are doomed. In a rightly ordered world, a claim of reckless indifference as to whether the Palestinians of Gaza die from conditions Israel has created should be no defence against genocide.

    War business as usual

    The difficulty for the World Court is that it is on trial as much as Israel – and will lose whichever way it rules. Legal facts and the court’s credibility are in direct conflict with western strategic priorities and war industry profits.

    The risk is the judges may feel the safest course is to “split the difference”.

    They may exonerate Israel of genocide based on a technicality, while insisting it do more of what it isn’t doing at all: protecting the “humanitarian needs” of Gaza’s people.

    Israel dangled just such a technicality before the judges last week like a juicy carrot. Its lawyers argued that, because Israel had not responded to the genocide case made by South Africa at the time of its filing, there was no dispute between the two states. The World Court, Israel suggested, therefore lacked jurisdiction because its role is to settle such disputes.

    If accepted, it would mean, as former ambassador Murray noted, that, absurdly, states could be exonerated of genocide simply by refusing to engage with their accusers.

    Aeyal Gross, a professor of international law at Tel Aviv University, told the Haaretz newspaper he expected the court to reject any limitations on Israel’s military operations. It would focus instead on humanitarian measures to ease the plight of Gaza’s population.

    He also noted that Israel would insist it was already complying – and carry on as before.

    The one sticking point, Gross suggested, would be a demand from the World Court that Israel allow international investigators access to the enclave to assess whether war crimes had been committed.

    It is precisely this kind of “war business as usual” that will discredit the court – and the international humanitarian law it is supposed to uphold.

    Vacuum of leadership

    As ever, it is not the West that the world can look to for meaningful leadership on the gravest crises it faces or for efforts to de-escalate conflict.

    The only actors showing any inclination to put into practice the moral obligation that should fall to states to intervene to stop genocide are the “terrorists”.

    Hezbollah in Lebanon is putting pressure on Israel by incrementally building a second front in the north, while the Houthis in Yemen are improvising their own form of economic sanctions on international shipping passing through the Red Sea.

    The US and Britain responded at the weekend with air strikes on Yemen, turning up the heat even higher and threatening to tip the region into a wider war.

    With its own investments in the Suez Canal threatened, China, unlike the West, seems desperate to cool things down. Beijing proposed this week an Israel-Palestine peace conference involving a much wider circle of states.

    The goal is to loosen Washington’s malevolent stranglehold on pretend “peace-making” and bind all the parties to a commitment to create a Palestinian state.

    The West’s narrative is that anyone outside its club – from South Africa and China to Hezbollah and the Houthis – is the enemy, threatening Washington’s “rules-based order”.

    But it is that very order that looks increasingly self-serving and discredited – and the foundation for a genocide being inflicted on the Palestinians of Gaza in broad daylight.

    • First published in Middle East Eye

    The post Western Racism laid the Foundations for Israel’s Genocide in Gaza first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Futile and Dangerous: Bombing Yemen in the Name of Shipping

    What a show!  As US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was promoting a message of calm restraint and firm control in limiting the toxic fallout of Israel’s horrific campaign in Gaza, a decision was made by his government, the United Kingdom and a few other reticent collaborators to strike targets in Yemen, including the capital Sana’a.  These were done, purportedly, as retribution for attacks on international commercial shipping in the Red Sea by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

    The wording in a White House media release mentions the operation’s purpose and the relevant participants.  “In response to continued illegal, dangerous, and destabilizing Houthi attacks against vessels, including commercial shipping, transiting the Red Sea, the armed forces of the United States and the United Kingdom, with support from the Netherlands, Canada, Bahrain, and Australia, conducted joint strikes in accordance with the inherent right of individual and collective self-defense”.

    US Air Forces Central Command further revealed that the “multinational action targeted radar systems, defense systems, and storage and launch sites for one way attack unmanned aerial systems, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles.”

    The rationale by the Houthis is that they are targeting shipping with a direct or ancillary Israeli connection, hoping to niggle them over the barbarities taking place in Gaza.  As the Israeli Defence Forces are getting away with, quite literally, bloody murder, the task has fallen to other forces to draw attention to that fact.  Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdusalam’s post was adamant that “there was no threat to international navigation in the Red and Arabian Seas, and the targeting was and will continue to affect Israeli ships or those heading to the ports of occupied Palestine.”

    But that narrative has been less attractive to the supposedly law-minded types in Washington and London, always mindful that commerce trumps all.  Preference has been given to such shibboleths as freedom of navigation, the interests of international shipping, all code for the protection of large shipping interests.  No mention is made of the justification advanced by the Houthi rebels and the Palestinian plight, a topic currently featuring before the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

    Another feature of the strikes is the absence of a Security Council resolution from the United Nations, technically the sole body in the international system able to authorise the use of force under the UN Charter.  A White House statement on January 11 attributes authority to the strikes much the same way the administration of George W. Bush did in justifying the warrantless, and illegal invasion of Iraq in March 2003.  (Ditto those on his same, limited bandwidth, Tony Blair of the UK and John Howard of Australia.)  On that occasion, the disappointment and frustrations of weapons inspectors and rebukes from the UN about the conduct of Saddam Hussein, became vulnerable to hideous manipulation by the warring parties.

    On this occasion, a “broad consensus as expressed by 44 countries around the world on December 19, 2023” and “the statement by the UN Security Council on December 1, 2023, condemning Houthi attacks against merchant and commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea” is meant to add ballast.  Lip service is paid to the self-defence provisions of the UN Charter.

    In a separate statement, Biden justified the attack on Houthi positions as necessary punishment for “unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea – including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history.”  He also made much of the US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian, “a coalition of more than 20 nations committed to defending international shipping and deterring Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.”  No mention of the Israeli dimension here, at all.

    In addition to the pregnant questions on the legality of such strikes in international law, the attacks, at least as far as US execution was concerned, was far from satisfactory to some members of Congress.  Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashita Tlaib was irked that US lawmakers had not been consulted.  “The American people are tired of endless war.”  Californian Rep. Barbara Lee warned that, “Violence only begets more violence.  We need a ceasefire now to prevent deadly, costly, catastrophic escalation of violence in the region.”

    A number of Republicans also registered their approval of the stance taken by another Californian Democrat, Rep. Ro Khanna, who expressed with certitude the view that Biden had “to come to Congress before launching a strike against the Houthis in Yemen and involving us in another middle eastern conflict.”  Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah was in full agreement, as was West Virginia Republican Rep. Thomas Massie.  “Only Congress has the power to declare war,” Massie affirmed.

    Unfortunately for these devotees of Article I of the US Constitution, which vests Congress approval powers for making war, the War Powers Act, passed by Congress in November 1973, merely requires the president to inform Congress within 48 hours of military action, and the termination of such action within 60 days of commencement in the absence of a formal declaration of war by Congress or authorisation of military conflict.  These days, clipping the wings of the executive when it comes to engaging in conflict is nigh impossible.

    There was even less of a debate about the legality or wisdom of the Yemen strikes in Australia.  Scandalously, and with a good deal of cowardice, the government preferred a deafening silence for hours in the aftermath of the operation.  The only source confirming that personnel of the Australian Defence Forces were involved came from Biden, the commander-in-chief of another country.  There had been no airing of the possibility of such involvement.  Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had, in not sending a warship from the Royal Australian Navy to join Operation Prosperity Guardian, previously insisted that diplomacy might be a better course of action.  Evidently, that man is up for turning at a moment’s notice.

    In a brief statement made at 4.38 pm on of January 12 (there was no press conference in sight, no opportunity to inquire), Albanese declared with poor conviction that, “Australia alongside other countries has supported the United States and the United Kingdom to conduct strikes to deal with this threat to global rules and commercial shipping.”  He had waited for the best part of a day to confirm it to the citizenry of his country.  He had done so without consulting Parliament.

    Striking the Houthis would seem, on virtually all counts, to be a signal failure.  Benjamin H. Friedman of Defense Priorities sees error piled upon error: “The strikes on the Houthis will not work.  They are very unlikely to stop Houthi attacks on shipping.  The strikes’ probable failure will invite escalation to more violent means that may also fail.”  The result: policymakers will be left “looking feckless and thus tempted to up the ante to more pointless war to solve a problem better left to diplomatic means.”  Best forget any assuring notions of taking the sting out of the expanding hostilities.  All roads to a widening war continue to lead to Israel.

    The post Futile and Dangerous: Bombing Yemen in the Name of Shipping first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The West will Stand in the Dock Alongside Israel at the Genocide Court

    Israel is urging western states to rally to its side as the International Court of Justice prepares to hear this week South Africa’s case that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

    The court is being asked by Pretoria to issue an immediate injunction ordering Israel to halt its military assault on the tiny enclave, to avoid further casualties.

    Some 23,000 Palestinians are known to have been killed by Israel so far, a majority of them women and children, and many thousands more are believed to be lying under the rubble. Tens of thousands are seriously wounded. A majority of the population have lost their homes to the three-month bombing campaign.

    Israel has intensively and repeatedly targeted the supposedly “safe zones” to which it has ordered Palestinian civilians to flee.

    It has destroyed almost all of Gaza’s infrastructure and is blocking most aid from reaching the enclave. Famine and disease are likely to rapidly increase the death toll.

    South Africa’s 84-page brief argues that Israel’s bombing campaign and siege breaches the 1948 Genocide Convention, which defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

    Israel expects support from western capitals because they have nearly as much to fear from a verdict against Israel as Israel itself. They have staunchly backed the killing spree, with the US and UK, in particular, sending weapons that are being used against the people of Gaza, making both potentially complicit.

    According to a cable from the Israeli foreign ministry, leaked to the Axios website, Israel hopes that, given the difficulties of making a legal case in defence of its actions, diplomatic and political pressure on the court’s justices will win the day instead.

    The Biden administration led the way late last week in dismissing South Africa’s detailed legal brief as “meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever”.

    That would sound patently ridiculous to western audiences had they been provided with serious coverage of Gaza. But Israel has been heavily restricting access to the enclave, while killing Palestinian journalists there at an unprecedented rate to stop their reporting.

    In addition, western media are willingly – and secretly – submitting to an onerous Israeli censorship regime.

    Incitement to genocide

    Israel’s “strategic goal” at the court, according to the leaked cable, is to dissuade the judges from making a determination that it is committing genocide. But more pressing is Israel’s need to prevent the Hague court from ordering an interim halt to the attack.

    Israeli officials will argue, Axios reports, that its sustained assault on Gaza fails to reach the threshold of genocide, which requires “creating conditions that don’t allow the survival of the population, together with the intent to annihilate it”.

    Israel will try to convince the judges that it has been seeking to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza and minimise the toll on civilians.

    Its argument flies in the face of the evidence South Africa has amassed.

    Its brief contains nine pages of declarations by Israeli leaders showing clear genocidal intent, including statements from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, senior figures in the cabinet, President Isaac Herzog and many serving and former Israeli military commanders.

    Giora Eiland, an adviser to war council minister, Benny Gantz, has called Israel’s goal the creation of “conditions where life in Gaza becomes unsustainable”. An Israeli military spokesman stated from the outset that the aim was to inflict “maximum damage” on Gaza.

    Herzog suggests the entire civilian population is a legitimate military target, while Netanyahu refers to the Palestinians as “Amalek”, a biblical enemy. In the Old Testament, God commands the Israelites to annihilate the Amalekites, putting “to death men and women, children and infants”.

    One of the provisions of the Genocide Convention is an absolute prohibition on incitement to genocide. Israel’s most senior politicians and military commanders have indisputably breached that section of the convention.

    A letter to Israel’s attorney general last week from a group of Israeli academics, lawyers, human rights activists and journalists underscored that point. They warned that incitement to genocide had become “an everyday matter in Israel”.

    The letter added: “Normalised discourse which calls for annihilation, erasure, devastation and the like is liable to impact the manner by which soldiers [in Gaza] conduct themselves.”

    Taking the gloves off

    But dehumanisation – the precursor to genocide – is not the only problem.

    Israel’s prosecution of what it terms a “war to eradicate Hamas” has fully met its own definition of genocide. “Conditions that don’t allow the survival of the population” were already being created long before the onslaught Israel unleashed immediately after Hamas broke out from Gaza on 7 October. Some 1,140 Israelis and other nationals were killed in the ensuing carnage.

    Mostly forgotten in the back and forth about what is unfolding in the enclave is the context: United Nations officials warned nearly a decade ago that Israel’s siege of Gaza – now 17 years in duration – was designed to make the enclave “uninhabitable”.

    In other words, Israel was precisely “creating conditions that don’t allow the survival of the population”.

    Even before its current, extended assault, Israel had placed severe restrictions on access to water for the enclave’s 2.3 million inhabitants. As a direct result, overstretched aquifers under Gaza were allowing in seawater, making the enclave’s drinking water unfit for human consumption.

    Food was similarly in short supply. Back in 2012, Israeli human rights groups managed to make public a secret document showing that the army had been tightly controlling food going into Gaza from 2008 onwards. As a result, two-thirds of the population was food insecure, and every 10th child was stunted by malnutrition. The aim was to induce long-term food poverty, effectively putting the population on a starvation diet.

    Israel’s repeated attacks on Gaza over the past 15 years – what Israel calls “mowing the grass” – destroyed many of its homes and much of the infrastructure, creating ever greater overcrowding and unsanitary conditions.

    Israel’s repeated bombing of Gaza’s only power station, and its chokehold on supplying additional energy, limited electricity to a few hours a day.

    The Israeli siege blocked medicines and medical equipment from entering the enclave, often making serious health conditions difficult or impossible to treat. And given the Israeli-imposed restrictions of goods in and out of Gaza, the economy was already in ruins, with nearly half the population unemployed.

    Long ago, back in 2016, the head of Israeli military intelligence, Herzi Halevi, warned that the catastrophe Israel was engineering in Gaza could blow up in its face – as indeed it did on 7 October.

    Israel’s three-month rampage has simply accelerated and intensified all the genocidal policies that had long been established. Hamas’s break-out simply gave Israel licence to take the gloves off.

    Gaza ‘uninhabitable’

    This is why the UN’s head of humanitarian affairs, Martin Griffiths, declared last week that Gaza had reached the point where it was indeed “uninhabitable”.

    He added: “People are facing the highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded. Famine is around the corner.”

    With the vast majority of the population homeless and most hospitals no longer functioning, infectious disease was spreading.

    Israel’s “complete siege” policy meant aid could not get in. According to Griffiths, Israel had destroyed roads, blocked communication systems, and was shooting at UN trucks and killing aid workers.

    Returning from a visit to the border crossing with Egypt, two US senators observed at the weekend that Israel had imposed unreasonable conditions creating endless delays that prevented aid from reaching the people of Gaza.

    In other words, Israel has now successfully “created conditions that don’t allow the survival of the population”.

    The aim of the 1948 Genocide Convention, drafted in the immediate wake of the Second World War and the Nazi Holocaust, was not simply to punish those who carry out genocides.

    It was designed to help identify a genocide in its early stages, and create a mechanism – through the rulings of the International Court of Justice – by which it could be halted.

    In other words, the purpose of South Africa’s case is not to arbitrate what happens once Israel has annihilated the Palestinians of Gaza, as far too many observers appear to imagine. It is to stop Israel from annihilating the people of Gaza before it is too late.

    Based on strange logic, Israel’s supporters imply that the genocide charge is unwarranted because the real aim is not to exterminate the Palestinians of Gaza but to induce them to flee.

    Israeli leaders have encouraged this assumption. In an interview on Sunday, the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, noted of Gaza’s population that – after being bombed, made homeless, starved and left vulnerable to disease – “hundreds of thousands will leave now”. Duplicitiously, he termed this a “voluntary” mass emigration.

    But such an outcome – itself a crime against humanity – entirely depends on Egypt opening its borders to allow Palestinians to flee the killing fields. If Cairo refuses to submit to Israel’s violent blackmail, it will be Israel’s bombs, the famine it inflicted, and the lethal diseases it unleashed that decimate Gaza’s population.

    The International Court of Justice must not adopt a wait-and-see approach, pondering whether Israel’s bombing campaign and siege lead to extermination or “only” ethnic cleansing. That would strip international humanitarian law of all relevance.

    Line in the sand

    If Israel and its western allies fail to bludgeon the court into submission, and South Africa’s case is accepted, it will not only be Israel in legal difficulties.

    A genocide ruling from the court will impose obligations on other states: both to refuse to assist in Israel’s genocide, such as by providing arms and diplomatic cover, and to sanction Israel should it fail to comply.

    An interim order halting Israel’s attack will serve as a line in the sand. Once made, any state that fails to act on the injunction risks becoming complicit in genocide.

    That will put the West in a serious legal bind. After all, it has not just been turning a blind eye to the genocide in Gaza; it has been actively cheering it on and colluding in it.

    Leaders in the UK such as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and opposition leader Keir Starmer have steadfastly opposed a ceasefire and thrown their weight behind a central pillar of Israel’s genocidal policy: the “complete siege” of Gaza that has left the population starving and facing lethal epidemics.

    The British and US governments have rejected all calls to stop the flow of arms. The Biden administration has even bypassed Congress to speed up the supply of weapons to Israel, including indiscriminate “dumb” bombs that are laying waste to civilian areas.

    Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, has regularly been featured by British media making genocidal statements. Just last week, when an interviewer noted that she appeared to be calling for the destruction of the whole of Gaza – every school, mosque and home – she answered: “Do you have another solution?”

    British and US media have given airtime to Israeli officials who openly incite genocide.

    All that would have to stop immediately after a ruling. The police in western nations would be expected to investigate and the courts prosecute those inciting genocide or providing a platform for incitement.

    States would be expected to deny Israel weapons and impose economic sanctions on Israel – as well as on any states that collude in the genocide.

    Israeli officials would risk arrest for travelling to western countries.

    Double standards

    In practice, of course, none of that is likely to happen. Israel is far too important to the West – as a projection of its power into the oil-rich Middle East – to be sacrificed.

    Any effort to enforce a genocide ruling through the UN Security Council will be blocked by the Biden administration.

    Meanwhile, the UK, along with Canada, Germany, Denmark, France and the Netherlands, have already demonstrated how unabashed they are about their own double standards.

    Weeks ago they submitted formal arguments to the International Court of Justice that Myanmar was committing genocide against the Rohingya ethnic group. Their central argument was that the Rohingya were being subjected “to a subsistence diet, systematic expulsion from homes, and the induction of essential medical services below minimum requirement”.

    But none of these western states is backing South Africa’s genocide submission to the same court – even though conditions in Gaza engineered by Israel are even worse.

    The truth is that a genocide ruling by the court will open up a can of worms for the West, and its readiness to accept that the provisions of international law apply to it too.

    Israel has been at the forefront of efforts to unravel international law in Gaza for more than a decade. Now it is ostentatiously flaunting its perpetration of the crime of genocide, as if daring the world to stop it.

    Perversely, it is reversing the very international safeguards put in place to stop a repeat of the Nazi Holocaust.

    Will the West defy Israel or the court? The post-war consensus that serves as the foundation for international law – already shaken by the failure to address the West’s war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan – is on the verge of complete collapse.

    And no one will be happier with that outcome than the state of Israel.

    • First published in Middle East Eye

    The post The West will Stand in the Dock Alongside Israel at the Genocide Court first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.