Category: United States

  • Israel hasn’t just crossed the Biden administration’s pretend “red lines” in Gaza. With its massacre at Nuseirat refugee camp at the weekend, Israel drove a bulldozer through them.

    On Saturday, an Israeli military operation to free four Israelis held captive by Hamas since its 7 October attack on Israel resulted in the killing of more than 270 Palestinians, many of them women and children.

    The true death toll may never be known. Untold numbers of men, women and children are still under rubble from the bombardment, crushed to death, or trapped and suffocating, or expiring slowly from dehydration if they cannot be dug out in time.

    Many hundreds more are suffering agonising injuries – should their wounds not kill them – in a situation where there are almost no medical facilities left after Israel’s destruction of hospitals and its mass kidnap of Palestinian medical personnel. Further, there are no drugs to treat the victims, given Israel’s months-long imposition of an aid blockade.

    Israelis and American Jewish organisations – so ready to judge Palestinians for cheering attacks on Israel – celebrated the carnage caused in freeing the Israeli captives, who could have returned home months ago had Israel been ready to agree on a ceasefire.

    Videos even show Israelis dancing in the street.

    According to reports, the bloody Israeli operation in central Gaza may have killed three other captives, one of them possibly an American citizen.

    In comments to the Haaretz newspaper published on Sunday, Louis Har, a hostage freed back in February, observed of his own captivity: “Our greatest fear was the IDF’s planes and the concern that they would bomb the building we were in.”

    He added: “We weren’t worried that they’d [referring to Hamas] do something to us all of a sudden. We didn’t object to anything. So I wasn’t afraid they’d kill me.”

    The Israeli media reported Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant describing Saturday’s operation as “one of the most heroic and extraordinary operations I have witnessed over the course of 47 years serving in Israel’s defence establishment”.

    The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is currently seeking an arrest warrant for Gallant, as well as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The charges include efforts to exterminate the people of Gaza through planned starvation.

    State terrorism

    Israel has been wrecking the established laws of war with abandon for more than eight months.

    At least 37,000 Palestinians are known to have been killed so far in Gaza, though Palestinian officials lost the ability to properly count the dead many weeks ago following Israel’s relentless destruction of the enclave’s institutions and infrastructure.

    Israel has additionally engineered a famine that, mostly out of view, is gradually starving Gaza’s population to death.

    The International Court of Justice put Israel on trial for genocide back in January. Last month, it ordered an immediate halt to Israel’s attack on Gaza’s southern city of Rafah. Israel has responded to both judgments by intensifying its killing spree.

    In a further indication of Israel’s sense of impunity, the rescue operation on Saturday involved yet another flagrant war crime.

    Israel used a humanitarian aid truck – supposedly bringing relief to Gaza’s desperate population – as cover for its military operation. In international law, that is known as the crime of perfidy.

    For months, Israel has been blocking aid to Gaza – part of its efforts to starve the population. It has also targeted aid workers, killing more than 250 of them since October.

    But more specifically, Israel is waging a war on Unrwa, claiming without evidence that the UN’s main aid agency in Gaza is implicated in Hamas “terror” operations. It wants the UN, the international community’s last lifeline in Gaza against Israel’s wanton savagery, permanently gone.

    By hiding its own soldiers in an aid truck, Israel made a mockery of its supposed “terrorism concerns” by doing exactly what it accuses Hamas of.

    But Israel’s military action also dragged the aid effort – the only way to end Gaza’s famine – into the centre of the battlefield. Now Hamas has every reason to fear that aid workers are not what they seem; that they are really instruments of Israeli state terrorism.

    Nefarious motive

    In the circumstances, one might have assumed the Biden administration would be quick to condemn Israel’s actions and distance itself from the massacre.

    Instead, Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, was keen to take credit for the mass carnage – or what he termed a “daring operation”.

    He admitted in an interview on Sunday that the US had offered assistance in the rescue operation, though he refused to clarify how. Other reports noted a supporting British role, too.

    “The United States has been providing support to Israel for several months in its efforts to help identify the locations of hostages in Gaza and to support efforts to try to secure their rescue or recovery,” Sullivan told CNN.

    Sullivan’s comments fuelled existing suspicions that such assistance extends far beyond providing intelligence and a steady supply of the bombs Israel has dropped on the tiny Gaza enclave over the past few months – more than the total that hit London, Dresden and Hamburg combined during the Second World War.

    A Biden official disclosed to the Axios website that US soldiers belonging to a so-called American hostages unit had participated in the rescue operation that massacred Palestinian civilians.

    Additionally, footage shows Washington’s floating pier as the backdrop for helicopters involved in the attack.

    The pier was ostensibly built off Gaza’s coast at huge cost – some $320m – and over two months to bypass Israel’s blocking of aid by land.

    Observers argued at the time that it was not only an extraordinarily impractical and inefficient way to deliver aid but that there were likely to be hidden, nefarious motives behind its construction.

    Its location, at the midpoint of Gaza’s coast, has bolstered Israel’s severing of the enclave into two, creating a land corridor that has effectively become a new border and from which Israel can launch raids into central Gaza like Saturday’s.

    Those critics appear to have been proven right. The pier has barely functioned as an aid route since the first deliveries arrived in mid-May.

    The pier soon broke apart, and its repair and return to operation was only announced on Friday.

    Now the fact that it appears to have been pressed into immediate use as a beachhead for an operation that killed at least 270 Palestinians drags Washington even deeper into complicity with what the World Court has called a “plausible genocide”.

    But like the use of the aid truck, it also means the Biden administration is joining Israel once again – after pulling its funding to Unrwa – in directly discrediting the aid operation in Gaza when it is needed most urgently.

    That was the context for understanding the World Food Programme’s announcement on Sunday that it was halting the use of the pier for aid deliveries, citing “safety” concerns.

    ‘Successful’ massacre

    As ever, for western media and politicians – who have stood firmly against a ceasefire that could have brought the suffering of the Israeli captives and their families to an end months ago – Palestinian lives are quite literally worthless.

    The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz thought it appropriate to describe the killing of 270-plus Palestinians in the freeing of the four Israelis as an “important sign of hope”, while the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak expressed his “huge relief”. The appalling death toll went unmentioned.

    Imagine describing in similarly positive terms an operation by Hamas that killed 270 Israelis to liberate a handful of the many hundreds of medical personnel kidnapped from Gaza by Israel in recent months and known to be held in a torture facility.

    The London Times, meanwhile, breezily erased Saturday’s massacre of Palestinians by characterising the operation as a “surgical strike”.

    Media outlets uniformly hailed the operation as a “success” and “daring”, as though the killing and maiming of around 1,000 Palestinians – and the serial war crimes Israel committed in the process – need not be factored in.

    BBC News’ main report on Saturday night breathlessly focused on the celebrations of the families of the freed captives, treating the massacre of Palestinians as an afterthought. The programme stressed that the death toll was “disputed” – though not mentioning that, as ever, it was Israel doing the disputing.

    The reality is that the savage “rescue” operation would have been entirely unnecessary had Netanyahu not been so determined to drag his feet on negotiating the captives’ release, and thereby avoid jail on corruption charges, and the US so fully indulgent of his procrastination.

    It will also be very difficult to repeat such an operation, as Haaretz’s military correspondent Amos Harel noted at the weekend. Hamas will learn lessons, guarding the remaining captives even more closely, most likely underground in its tunnels.

    The remaining captives’ return will “probably occur only as part of a deal that will require significant concessions”, he concluded.

    Leveraging murder

    Benny Gantz, the politician-general who helped oversee Israel’s eight-month slaughter in Gaza inside Netanyahu’s war cabinet and is widely described as a “moderate” in the West, resigned from the government on Sunday.

    Although ostensibly the dispute is over how Israel will extricate itself from Gaza over the coming months, the more likely explanation is that Gantz wishes both to distance himself from Netanyahu as the Israeli prime minister faces possible arrest for crimes against humanity and to prepare for elections to take his place.

    The Pentagon and the Biden administration see Gantz as their man. Having him out of the government may give them additional leverage over Netanyahu in the run-up to a US presidential election in November in which Donald Trump will be actively trying to cosy up to the Israeli prime minister.

    The focus on Israeli politicking – rather than US complicity in the Nuseirat massacre – will doubtless provide a welcome distraction, too, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken tours the region. He will once again wish to be seen rallying support for a ceasefire plan that is supposed to see the Israeli captives released – a plan Netanyahu will be determined, once again, to stymie.

    Blinken’s efforts are likely to be even more hopeless in the immediate wake of the Biden administration’s all-too-visible involvement in the killing of hundreds of Palestinians.

    Washington’s claim to be an “honest broker” looks to everyone – apart from the reliably obedient western political and media class – as even more derisory than usual.

    The real question is whether Blinken’s serial diplomatic failures in ending the slaughter in Gaza are a bug or a feature.

    The stark contradiction in Washington’s position towards Gaza was exposed last week during a press conference with State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.

    He suggested that the aim of Israel and the US was to persuade Hamas to dissolve itself – presumably by some form of surrender – in return for a ceasefire. The group had an incentive to do so, said Miller, “because they don’t want to see continued conflict, continued Palestinian people dying. They don’t want to see war in Gaza.”

    Even the usually compliant western press corps were taken aback by Miller’s implication that a crime against humanity – the mass killing of Palestinians, such as took place at Nuseirat camp on Saturday – was viewed in Washington as leverage to be exercised over Hamas.

    But more likely, the seeming contradiction was simply symptomatic of the logical entanglements resulting from Washington’s efforts to deflect from the real goal: buying Israel more time to do what it is so well advanced doing already.

    Israel needs to finish pulverising Gaza, making it permanently uninhabitable, so that the population will be faced with a stark dilemma: remain and die, or leave by any means possible.

    The same US “humanitarian pier” that was pressed into service for Saturday’s massacre may soon be the “humanitarian pier” that serves as the exit through which Gaza’s Palestinians are ethnically cleansed, shipped out of a death zone engineered by Israel.

    • First published in Middle East Eye

    The post The Day the West Defined “Success” as a Massacre of 270 Palestinians first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Damage in Nuseirat refugee camp following an Israeli attack on 8 June 2024 (Omar Ashtawy APA images)

    While Israelis celebrated the release of four captives secured by the military in Gaza on Saturday, Palestinians mourned hundreds of people killed during the daytime operation.

    Palestinian officials said that more than 210 Palestinians were killed and 400 injured in central Gaza on Saturday, including in the area where the Israeli military says it rescued the four captives from two separate apartments blocks in a residential area of Nuseirat refugee camp.

    The fresh horror in Nuseirat comes two days after Israel bombed a UN school in the refugee camp where thousands of displaced people were sheltering, killing at least 33.

    As of 5 June, the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza had recorded more than 36,500 fatalities and 83,000 injuries since 7 October.

    The actual fatality count is likely much higher, with thousands of people missing under the rubble. An unknown number of Palestinians in Gaza have died in a secondary wave of mortality as Israel has destroyed water and sanitation facilities in the territory, giving rise to diseases, all while engineering a famine and destroying the healthcare system.

    In Nuseirat refugee camp, “Gazan paramedics and residents said the assault killed scores of people and left mangled bodies of men, women and children strewn around a marketplace and a mosque,” Reuters reported on Saturday.

    Abu Obeida, the pseudonymous spokesperson for the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said that some captives were killed during the operation. Israel has not reported any fatalities among the captives during the raid.

    “By committing horrifying massacres the enemy was able to liberate a few of its prisoners but at the same time it killed some of them during the operation,” Abu Obeida said.

    “This operation will constitute a major danger to the enemy’s prisoners and will have a negative impact on their conditions and their lives,” he added.

    Perfidy

    Footage from the raid indicated that Israeli forces infiltrated Nuseirat refugee camp disguised in civilian trucks:

    A wounded eyewitness described walking in the street and seeing what he thought was a truck carrying humanitarian aid before armed forces emerged from the vehicle and shot him in the chest and arm:

    Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of hiding among civilians to justify its targeting and destruction of civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, in Gaza, while apparently using trucks disguised as humanitarian aid to carry out an operation that killed scores of civilians. Feigning civilian or non-combatant status, as Israeli forces appear to have done, and hardly for the first time, may constitute the war crime of perfidy under international humanitarian law.

    The plan for the US pier on the Gaza shoreline was revealed in a surprise announcement by President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address in early March and was framed as an effort to increase humanitarian aid into the besieged territory, despite its limited capacity in comparison to the already established land crossings.

    The pier took its first delivery on 17 May and only functioned at partial capacity, on and off, for a few days before a storm damaged the modular pier around a week later.

    The controversial pier is part of a corridor that the Israeli military has cut through the center of the Gaza Strip, south of Gaza City, effectively splitting northern and southern Gaza and allowing Israeli forces to more easily carry out raids in the center of the Gaza Strip.

    The US Department of Defense said on Friday that repairs to the pier had been completed with the assistance of the Israeli military, raising questions whether the Nuseirat operation was delayed until after the pier was rebuilt.

    American role

    Barak Ravid, the Axios writer who is frequently fed information by Israel’s military and intelligence apparatus, reported that Nuseirat operation “was supposed to happen a few weeks ago but was canceled for operational reasons,” citing unnamed Israeli officials.

    Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said that hundreds of soldiers were involved in the Nuseirat operation and a police officer was critically wounded during the raid; he was later reported to have died from his injuries.

    Axios revealed that “the US hostage cell in Israel supported the effort to rescue the four hostages,” citing an unnamed US official.

    The White House released a statement from national security advisor Jake Sullivan in which he said that Washington “is supporting all efforts to secure the release of hostages still held by Hamas, including American citizens.”

    “This includes through ongoing negotiations or other means,” Sullivan added.

    Sullivan’s statement on the “successful operation” commends “the work of the Israeli security services that conducted this daring operation” and makes no mention of the scores of Palestinians killed.

    The White House statement was only one of many from Western leaders celebrating the rescue of the four Israeli captives without any mention of the Palestinians killed in the process.

    Hamas condemned what it called a “horrific massacre against innocent civilians” in Nuseirat camp and other locations in central Gaza and the reported American involvement.

    In a statement published on its Telegram channel, Hamas said that it “proves once again the complicity of the US administration” the complicity of the US in war crimes in Gaza.

    “Doomsday” in central Gaza

    Palestinians residing in the areas of central Gaza attacked on Saturday described “doomsday” scenes like those from a horror film, with quadcopters shooting at civilians in Deir al-Balah while Israel drops bombs from the sky.

    Video recorded in Nuseirat refugee camp shows Israeli-fired missiles striking a residential area.

    One graphic video shows around a dozen dead and injured people lying on a street in Nuseirat refugee camp, and other videos show people arriving with severe injuries to overcrowded medical facilities.

    Yet another graphic video shows a man holding a young boy with a severe head wound standing among shrouded corpses outside a hospital. When the child suddenly moves, the surprised man runs with the boy in his arms towards the hospital entrance.

    Videos and photos show that another boy was killed with his last meal still in his mouth and a man was shot dead while cooking on a stove.

    Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, one of the few still functioning in Gaza, was overwhelmed with casualties from Nuseirat and was being run by a sole generator on Saturday while Israeli bombing further threatened its ability to provide urgently needed medical care.

    The Palestine Red Crescent Society said that it was transporting injured people from hospitals in central Gaza to a field hospital due to the threat of Israeli bombing:

    Freed captives “in good health”

    The four rescued captives – Noa Argamani, 25, Almog Meir Jan, 21, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 40 – were all captured at the Supernova music festival during Hamas’ raid on 7 October last year.

    During her captivity, Hamas released two videos showing signs of life from Argamani. The most recent video, published on 31 May, features Argamani’s voice imploring Israelis to put pressure on Netanyahu’s war cabinet, warning that “time is running out.”

    The four former captives “were taken to hospital for medical checks and were in good health,” Reuters reported, citing the Israeli military.

    This is in stark contrast to Palestinians from Gaza who have been arbitrarily detained by Israel in recent months and released with newly amputated limbs removed without anesthesia and their bodies bearing marks of torture.

    Around 250 people were captured in Israel on 7 October and brought to Gaza. More than 100 were released by Hamas as part of a prisoner exchange deal in November.

    Two Israeli-Argentinian men were rescued by Israeli forces in Rafah, southern Gaza, in February.

    Some 75 Palestinians were killed during that operation as Israel pounded Rafah, where people displaced from other areas of Gaza had sought shelter, in order to create a diversion from the military raid.

    A captured Israeli soldier was reportedly rescued by the military in late October.

    With the rescue of the four captives on Saturday, a total of seven Israelis and foreign nationals held in Gaza since 7 October have been freed by the Israeli military. Far more regained their freedom through an agreement negotiated with Hamas.

    Many families of the captives who remain in Gaza are urgently pressing the Israeli government to secure another exchange deal.

    Of the 116 captives who are believed to remain in Gaza, Israeli authorities have declared around a third of them dead, without acknowledging that the most likely cause of death is Israeli bombing.

    Analyst Tariq Kenney-Shawa said that the lives of the children killed in Nuseirat on Saturday could have been spared.

    “Israel could [have agreed] to a permanent ceasefire and hostage exchange at any time” during the past eight months, Kenney-Shawa stated, “but dead Palestinians are their main objective.”

    Some observers said that Saturday’s rescue operation would endanger the captives who remain in Gaza, since Netanyahu’s government has signaled that Israel will not engage in another prisoner exchange and will only secure the captives’ release by force.

    “For Hamas, this approach means the captives are becoming a net loss: they have to allocate great resources to keep them but with no potential upside,” according to the Israeli writer Alon Mizrahi.

    “They know by now, as [does] everybody else, that the purpose of Israel’s operation is to exterminate and ethnically cleanse the entirety of Gaza’s population” before doing the same to Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank.

    Biden’s “Israeli” proposal

    The US State Department announced on Friday that Antony Bliken, Washington’s top diplomat, would return to the region in the coming days to push Israel and Hamas to accept a three-phase ceasefire and prisoner exchange proposal put forward by President Joe Biden last week.

    The US has also circulated a draft resolution backing Biden’s proposal at the UN Security Council, where it has vetoed multiple resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

    Hamas has not agreed to the plan outlined by Biden, saying that it required clear guarantees that the deal would result in a complete end of the war in Gaza and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the territory.

    Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official, told Reuters that while the group welcomed “Biden’s ideas,” the draft resolution circulated at the Security Council “has no mention of ending the aggression or the withdrawal.”

    Reuters paraphrased Abu Zuhri as saying that “Hamas was committed to its 5 May proposal which was based on an end to the fighting and an Israeli withdrawal, a swap deal and a lifting of the blockade of the enclave” – demands consistently maintained by the group throughout the past several months.

    Meanwhile, Israeli opposition leader Benny Gantz postponed the anticipated announcement of his resignation from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet on Saturday.

    Gantz had given Netanyahu a deadline of 8 June to deliver a “day-after” strategy for Gaza, where Netanyahu vows to press on until it achieves “total victory” – a goal criticized as “unidentified” (he may have meant to say “undefined”) by Biden during the announcement of his proposal last week.

    In an interview published by Time magazine on Tuesday, Biden said there was “every reason for people” to draw the conclusion that Netanyahu was prolonging the war in Gaza for his own aims.

    •  Jon Elmer contributed background reporting on the US pier.

    • This article was first published in The Electronic Intifada

    The post Palestinians massacred in “rescue” operation lauded by US first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Western politicians and journalists have hurried to dismiss the murder and maiming of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in the Nuseirat refugee camp on Saturday in a savage joint Israeli-US military operation to free four Israeli captives.

    Not just that, they have suggested that the bloodshed was inevitable and justified given that the hostages were being held in a residential neighbourhood of Gaza.

    For example, Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor, observed of the massacre that was actively assisted by the US: “The Palestinian people are going through sheer hell in this conflict because Hamas is operating in a way that puts them in the crossfire, that holds hostages right in the heart of crowded civilian areas.”

    Apparently, Israel’s decades of belligerent military occupation of the Palestinian territories, its 17-year blockade of Gaza denying its population the essentials of life, its intermittent destruction of the enclave by “mowing the lawn”, and now its carrying out of what the International Court of Justice has called a “plausible genocide” have nothing to do with the “sheer hell” the people of Gaza are suffering.

    Those trying to win our consent to mass murder and the planned starvation of the people of Gaza by arguing that Hamas is using Palestinians in Gaza as human shields are engaged in the worst kind of bad-faith argument.

    Let’s put back the context they are so keen to obscure:

    1. Israel has been besieging the enclave of Gaza for decades. The tiny strip of land’s population comprises mostly Palestinian refugees who were long ago ethnically cleansed from their homes in what is now Israel and confined to Gaza. Their numbers have grown hugely since, to more than 2.3 million, within tightly-delimited “borders” policed – and blockaded – by Israel. Gaza is, in a true sense of the term, a giant concentration camp.

    2. Gaza doesn’t have woods, mountains, caves in which Hamas fighters can hide or in which they can conceal their captives. It is not Afghanistan or Russia.

    3. Gaza is almost entirely built-up – or it was until Israel destroyed most of its buildings over the past eight months. Small areas are open agricultural land or scrubland Israel will not allow Palestinians to develop – much of that has now been destroyed too. Watching over this tiny space 24/7 are armed Israeli drones. Move outside a building and you are being surveilled. You become a potential target for an assassination by Israel.

    4. Hamas has two non-suicidal options for hiding the captives it seized in Israel on October 7. Either in a building, or underground in its tunnels, which were built precisely so parts of Gaza would be out of view of a hostile Israeli military. They are the nearest Hamas has to military bases. (Let us note here another hypocrisy: Israel’s military bases are often embedded in civilian communities inside Israel. Its defence ministry’s headquarters, the Kirya, is in the middle of built-up Tel Aviv.)

    5. Hiding the captives above ground is the obviously more humanitarian option, as is clear from the images of those freed at the weekend. Given many months of captivity, they are reported to be in reasonable health.

    6. After Israel’s massacre of more than 270 Palestinians at the weekend in Nuseirat camp, Hamas will now take all the hostages underground. That will be far worse for them, and it will make no difference to Israel’s wanton destruction of the buildings above. The overwhelming majority of the 70% of Gaza’s housing stock destroyed by Israel did not contain Israeli captives or Hamas fighters. It was targeted nonetheless because Israel’s military rampage has never been about getting the hostages back, or even about defeating Hamas, an impossible goal. It is about eradicating Gaza.

    7. If Israel was really serious about bringing the captives home, it would be negotiating their release, not inducing a famine through an aid blockade that is starving everyone in Gaza: Hamas, Palestinian civilians and Israeli hostages alike. The real human shields are the Israeli captives, pawns being sacrificed by Israel as it pursues its bigger war aims.

    8. The truth is that Israel is waging a genocidal war on the Palestinian population to drive them out of Gaza. It needs to manufacture pretexts to avoid reaching a ceasefire deal that would bring the hostages home and bring the bloodshed to an end. The “rescue” of the Israeli captives by killing huge numbers of Palestinians provides ideal conditions for making negotiations impossible. That was the real success.

    9. The jubilation – of Israelis, and western politicians and media – at the carnage of Palestinians in place of a ceasefire to end the bloodshed is the real problem. By continuing to treat Palestinians as sub-human, all are enabling the genocide to continue.

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  • This is about the U.S. Government’s lie to the naive Gorbachev, which fooled him to accept the U.S. empire’s proposal that East Germany become a part of West Germany, and that the Soviet Union and its one-Party rule end, and that its Warsaw Pact military alliance end while America’s NATO military alliance wouldn’t. In other words: it’s about how the Cold War on America’s side continued secretly (and now again brings America and Russia to the very brink of WW3), after the Cold War on Russia’s side ended in 1991 — ended on the basis of America’s lie and Russia’s trust in that lie:

    On 10 September 2015, I documented this lie because so many U.S.-and-allied ‘historians’ were alleging it not to have happened but to be mere ‘Russian propaganda’ (and, after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, some have even alleged that “European security has in fact benefited significantly from NATO’s enlargement” — a lie on top of the basic one). I also quoted there ‘historians’ who denied this basic lie, so that a reader could see not only the truth but the regime’s agents’ lies denying that it (the West’s Big Lie) had actually happened or that it was important. But then, on 12 December 2017, the U.S. National Security Archives at George Washington University released even fuller documentation of the lie that had occurred by the U.S. Government, and here are highlights from their documentation of it, so that this continuing Big Lie will be recognized by every sane person as being what it is, the Big Lie that might end up producing World War Three:

    Memorandum of conversation between Mikhail Gorbachev and James Baker in Moscow.

    Memcon from 2/9/90 meeting w/USSR Prem. Gorbachev & FM Shevardnaze, Moscow, USSR

    Repeating what Bush said at the Malta summit in December 1989, Baker tells Gorbachev: “The President and I have made clear that we seek no unilateral advantage in this process” of inevitable German unification. Baker goes on to say, “We understand the need for assurances to the countries in the East. If we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east.” Later in the conversation, Baker poses the same position as a question, “would you prefer a united Germany outside of NATO that is independent and has no US forces or would you prefer a united Germany with ties to NATO and assurances that there would be no extension of NATO’s current jurisdiction eastward?” The declassifiers of this memcon actually redacted Gorbachev’s response that indeed such an expansion would be “unacceptable” – but Baker’s letter to Kohl the next day, published in 1998 by the Germans, gives the quote.

    Source: U.S. Department of State, FOIA 199504567 (National Security Archive Flashpoints Collection, Box 38).

    *****

    Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner

    Washington D.C., December 12, 2017 – U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (http://nsarchive.gwu.edu).

    The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels. …

    The conversations before Kohl’s assurance involved explicit discussion of NATO expansion, the Central and East European countries, and how to convince the Soviets to accept unification. For example, on February 6, 1990, when Genscher met with British Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd, the British record showed Genscher saying, “The Russians must have some assurance that if, for example, the Polish Government left the Warsaw Pact one day, they would not join NATO the next.” (See Document 2)

    *****

    In addition, there is this: On 11 August 2014, Mary Elise Sarotte headlined at the U.S. empire’s own Foreign Affairs journal, “A Broken Promise?” as-if there still had been any doubt that it was that, and so an honest title for her article would have been “A Broken Promise” or even “A Broken Promise!” Because there’s no question about it. She reported not only that it definitely was a lie, and one by the U.S. Government itself; and that U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush told America’s stooge leaders, starting on 24 February 1990, that it was going to be a broken promise because “‘TO HELL WITH THAT! [promise]’ HE [Bush] SAID. ‘WE PREVAILED, THEY DIDN’T.’” In other words: on the night of 24 February 1990, Bush started secretly ordering his vassals to continue forward with the intention for the U.S. alliance ultimately to swallow-up not only the rest of the USSR but all of the Warsaw Pact and finally Russia itself. And this has been precisely what the U.S. regime and its colonies have been doing, up until 24 February 2022, when Russia finally put its foot down, to stop NATO’s coming within around a mere 300 miles of The Kremlin.

    Consequently, even if NATO served a constructive purpose during 1945-1991, it has afterward only endangered the world — including especially Europe, making Europe be again the main battlefield if another World War occurs — and thus its continuance after 1991 can reasonably be considered a massive international crime by the U.S. Government.

    NATO is an extension of the will of the U.S. Government, and this is so blatant a fact so that Article 13, which is the only portion of NATO’s charter, the North Atlantic Treaty, that says anything about how a member-nation may either quit NATO or be expelled from NATO, places the U.S. Government in charge of processing a “denunciation” (voluntary withdrawal) — the Charter’s term for resigning from NATO. This term “denunciation” (instead of “withdrawal”) clearly means that if any member does quit, then that will be interpreted by NATO as constituting a hostile act, which will have consequences (the resigning member will be placed onto NATO’s unspoken list of enemies). NATO’s charter has no provision by which a member can be expelled. Moreover, it fails to include any provision by which the charter can be amended or changed in any manner. No charter or constitution that fails to include a provision by which it may be amended can reasonably be acceptable to a democracy: it is so rigid as to be 100% brittle, impossible to adapt to changing challenges. The NATO charter itself is a dictatorial never a democratic document. It takes up, for the U.S. regime after 1945, the function that the Nazi Party had held prior to that in and for Germany: after Hitler died, America took up and has held high his torch for global dictatorship. In fact, “the Government of the United States of America” is also stated in Article 10 as the entity to process applications to join NATO, and, in Article 11, as being the processor of “ratifications” of applications to join.

    This Treaty is an imperial document, of the U.S. empire, none other. And, after 1991, its continuation is based only on lies, including the one that now is coming to a head in Ukraine, which is not a NATO member, though Biden said it is — he said recently of Ukraine, that “they are part of NATO.” Tyrants imagine that what they want can simply be willed into existence, and they don’t care about the essential needs of others. Such individuals are driven by their own hatreds. That is what stands at the very top of NATO.

    And this is why we are now at the nuclear brink, because of an organization that ought to have ended in 1991.

    The post America’s Chief Deceit Against Russia That Has Led the World to the Brink of WW3 first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • For some time, President Joe Biden has claimed that there are limits to US support for Israel, that he cares about the loss of Palestinian life and that certain Israeli conduct (e.g., an invasion of Rafah, an Israeli-designated “safe zone”) would result in the loss of US backing.  The events of the past weeks have demonstrated that none of these claims are in fact true.

    The atrocities of Israel in Gaza continue to mount and to become more egregious by the day.  A month ago, on May 6, 2024, Hamas agreed to an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire agreement that looked a lot like the ceasefire agreement now being promoted by the Biden Administration.  Israel responded by rejecting this agreement and then immediately doing what Biden warned against doing – attacking Rafah where around 1.7 million Gazan refugees are now living in makeshift tents.  As part of this offensive, Israel closed off the Rafah crossing, the border area between Israel and Egypt, cutting off any aid or supplies from coming into famine-ravaged Gaza and preventing any people from leaving.  What has transpired is a horrifying series of massacres against civilians which the Biden Administration continues to try to downplay, excuse and explain away.

    One of the worst massacres took place on May 27, 2024, when Israeli forces carried out an air assault upon a neighborhood in Rafah in which, as explained by CNN, “[a]t least 45 people were killed and more than 200 others injured . . . most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and Palestinian medics. No hospital in Rafah had the capacity to take the number of casualties, the ministry said.”  Many were horrified by a video which went viral on social media showing a father holding his headless baby who had been decapitated in the assault.

    Not even this abominable act elicited a rebuke from the Biden Administration which said that it would leave Israel to investigate itself in regard to this incident, and that it had no plans of changing policy as a result.

    And now, Israel has just destroyed a school in Rafah which had been run by UNRWA and which had been sheltering 6,000 Gazan refugees at the time of its destruction.  In this assault, at least 40 civilians were killed, including 14 children and 9 women, bringing the total number of civilians killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, to 36,000, including 15,500 children.  As is usually the case given that the US is by far the largest arms supplier to Israel, it was determined that Israel had used US munitions in this attack on the school.  After this atrocity, the UN added Israel to its “list of shame” — a distinction reserved for countries that bring extraordinary harm to children.  In response to this massacre and this shameful UN designation, the best US spokespeople could muster was to urge Israel to be “transparent” about the assault.  No change in US policy toward Israel is forthcoming.

    If this were not enough, reports of more grisly crimes are emerging daily.  For example, accounts have emerged of the heinous treatment of Palestinian prisoners at the hands of Israeli correctional officers and investigators.

    As Mondoweiss explains in a June 7 article, “[b]ehind the bars of Israeli prisons, Israel has been waging war against Palestinian prisoners, creating conditions that make the continuation of human life impossible. The effects of this brutal campaign have reverberated among prisoners’ families outside of jail, who are watching their loved ones being systematically starved, beaten, tortured, and degraded.”  Mondoweiss cites a CNN exposé, based upon whistleblower testimony, which detailed “a number of medieval practices to which Palestinian prisoners have been subjected, including being strapped down to beds while blindfolded and made to wear diapers, having unqualified medical trainees conduct procedures on them without anesthesia, having dogs set on them by prison guards, being regularly beaten or put into stress positions for offenses as minor as peeking beneath their blindfolds, having zip-tie wounds fester to the point of requiring amputation, and a host of other horrific measures.”

    Mondoweiss also cites a New York Times article “based on interviews with former detainees and Israeli military officers, doctors, and soldiers who worked at the prison, bringing new horrors to light about the treatment of Gazan prisoners. Detainee testimonies repeated many of these same accounts but also included additional disturbing accounts of sexual violence, including testimonies of rape and forcing detainees to sit on metal sticks that caused anal bleeding and ‘unbearable pain.’”  And, of course, as Mondoweiss notes, the abominable treatment of Palestinian prisoners – which number in the thousands and includes women and children – has been going on long before October 7.

    All of this illustrates how Israel has no limits or restraints upon its treatment of the Palestinian people.  And this is so because its great patron, the United States, imposes no such restraints upon it.  For all of the crocodile tears shed by Biden, his Cabinet officials and his spokespeople, there truly is no “red line” which Israel could cross which would elicit a cessation of US support, including lethal support, for its war upon the Palestinian people.  And for this reason, the war Israel is waging upon Gaza proceeds without pause and continues to descend into greater acts of depravity and horror.  In truth, as protest planners organizing to surround the White House to show opposition to the war in Gaza, it is the American people who must therefore be the “red line” to stop this genocide.

    The post Biden’s “Red Line” Continues to Move to Allow More Israeli Atrocities in Gaza first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Myanmar’s civil war is in a critical phase where the ruling military government is losing significant territory to a broad coalition of insurgent armies. It is estimated that insurgents now control over half the area in the Southeast Asian country after nearly three years of conflict.

    Washington views the conflict as an “unmissable opportunity” to topple the military rulers and restore an elected government. The real objective of the United States is not to support democratic politics in Myanmar or peace and stability, but rather to exploit the turmoil in the country as a way to contain China and undermine Beijing’s strategic interests.

    In a set-piece interview with Time magazine published this week, President Joe Biden reiterated that Washington is pursuing a Cold War-style containment strategy against Russia and China. As the U.S.-led proxy war in Ukraine against Russia looks increasingly like a dead-end from the West’s perspective, one can expect Washington to up the ante by turning its focus more on hampering China as a geopolitical rival. In his Time interview, Biden provocatively talks about “defending Taiwan against a Chinese invasion”, and mobilization of other Asia-Pacific nations in a U.S.-led alliance to curb Beijing’s influence.

    Myanmar is one such locus for the U.S. to exercise involvement and policies to foment problems for China which shares a southern border with this strategically important nation of 57 million people.

    In a recent planning document, The Wilson Center, a U.S. government-owned think tank, urged a massive scaling up of Washington’s support for Myanmar’s insurgent paramilitaries under the remit of the newly enacted BURMA Act. The Wilson Center, whose most prominent public member is Secretary of State Antony Blinken, candidly endorses “increased support from the United States and like-minded allies and partners [that] could prove crucial in defeating the junta on a shorter timeline.”

    Defeating the military government, according to Washington planners, is essential to “counter undue Chinese influence in Myanmar”. Referring to the regional Association of South East Asian Nations, the U.S. also aims to “ensure a more stable ASEAN and Southeast Asia” and “assist in the establishment of a democratic government in a region facing rising authoritarianism.”

    In other words, Washington wants to contain China’s influence in Myanmar and forge the region for its geopolitical interests – albeit using virtue-signaling rhetoric about promoting “stability” and “democracy” over “authoritarianism”.

    Myanmar is a linchpin nation in China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative for transcontinental trade and development. Beijing has invested heavily in its southern neighbor to build energy and transport infrastructure linking China with the Indian Ocean and to create an alternative commercial shipping route to the Malacca Strait. Dependence on the Malacca sea route can be seen as a huge risk for China because it is a chokepoint for international trade.

    China has centuries of close cultural ties with Myanmar. In more recent times, Beijing was an important supporter of political independence from Britain in 1948 when the country was known as “British Burma”. It seems significant that the American positioning of itself as an ally is belied by invoking an antiquated colonial term for the Southeast Asian nation. The White House and Congress insist on referring to the colonial-era term “Burma” when the country officially changed its name to Myanmar in 1989, which the United Nations and most of the world recognize.

    Since independence, Myanmar has seen decades of unrest between myriad ethnic groups and a checkered history of alternating between military and civilian rule. A military coup in 2021 ousted an elected civilian government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. That crisis in turn escalated into a civil war between the military junta, the Tatmadaw, headed by General Min Aung Hlaing, and several insurgent armies.

    A determined offensive last October by the three main opposition groups – the Three Brotherhood Alliance (3BA) – has put the military rulers on the back foot from the loss of large swathes of territory beyond the capital, Naypyidaw.

    China has striven to maintain balanced links with all ethnic and civilian political parties as well as traditional ties with the country’s military. When Aung San Suu Kyi was in power in 2020 before the coup, China’s President Xi Jinping made a historic state visit during which the two leaders agreed on major trade partnerships.

    It is not in Beijing’s strategic interest to take a partisan approach to the conflict in Myanmar. Above all, China’s priority is to see political stability prevailing in its neighbor. That is not just about protecting mega investment and trade projects. Border insecurity has spawned a lot of trouble for China from crime and illegal trafficking. To that end, at the start of the year, Beijing organized peace talks aimed at bringing the various antagonists to a consensus for governance.

    However, the ceasefire deal brokered by China does not appear to be holding and there is ongoing violence in several regions.

    As the Wilson Center planning document makes clear, it is in the U.S. interest to increase military and political interference in Myanmar to “ensure victory” for the insurgents over the junta. With a budget of several hundred million dollars under the BURMA Act, the Washington planners are aiming to boost military support for the various insurgent groups. At this stage, the equipment is cautiously described as “non-lethal aid”. But as other foreign interventions by the United States demonstrate, such aid is more often merely a wedge opening for eventual lethal supplies.

    American covert involvement in Myanmar has a long history going back to the 1950s when the CIA exploited the country as a base for paramilitaries recruited from the Kuomintang, the nationalist faction defeated by the communists in China’s civil war in 1949. In 2007, during a previous episode of civil conflict in Myanmar, the CIA was accused of assassinating an ethnic Karen rebel leader who was negotiating a peace deal with the military government.

    In another recent planning study by the more hawkish Jamestown Foundation, which is believed to have close links with the CIA, it was stated: “The struggle to end authoritarian rule in Myanmar is far from resolved and remains rife with challenges, including the risk of escalating regional and international tensions. A sudden breakthrough toward the overthrow of Myanmar’s junta seems exceedingly improbable. The only possibility for this would be a massive and intricate offensive by a larger alliance of militias… in such a way as to directly disrupt Myanmar’s capital, severely destabilizing the governing junta.”

    This is a strident call for covert military intervention to escalate Myanmar’s civil war.

    Another aspect of U.S. policy is to polarize the conflict in Myanmar and to portray China as being the sponsor of the military rulers in violent opposition to “pro-democracy groups” that the United States is supporting. This is a tried and trusted ploy straight from the U.S. playbook for regime change as seen elsewhere such as in Syria’s civil war or Ukraine leading up to the CIA-backed coup in 2014.

    To that end, Western media aligned with Washington’s geopolitical agenda such as Radio Free Asia and the Murdoch-owned newspaper The Australian, are promoting the narrative that China is on the side of Myanmar’s dictators. Other Western media outlets disparage China as cynically “playing both sides”.

    The reality is that China is trying to broker a peaceful settlement in a country that has long been beset with internal political problems. Many of those problems stem from the British colonialist legacy of sectarian divisions in Myanmar.

    Ominously, the United States is threatening to crudely intervene in Myanmar’s civil war which could make the conflict more bloody and protracted. Because doing so is an “unmissable opportunity” for Washington to sabotage China’s policy of promoting good neighborliness and regional development.

    • First published in Strategic Culture Foundation

    The post Myanmar’s civil war: A golden opportunity for U.S. sabotage of China’s interests first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Since day one of their entrance, the Zionists seized opportunities to enhance their strength and further their agenda, extending a single settlement in Ottoman Palestine to complete control of Palestine. Ten pioneers from Russia acquired 835 acres of land southeast of present day Tel Aviv and established Rishon Le-Zion (“First in Zion”). Founded in 1882, the settlement has grown to a city of approximately 260,000.

    The “First in Zion” symbolizes the Zionist thrust — pretend innocence, harden hearts, brutalize innocent inhabitants, and turn oppression of others into security needs for yourself. After the Zionists gained overwhelming power, they used power for severe oppression, to steal more lands, manufacture huge bombs to overcome fists and rocks, and to terrorize a population. Those who contended the oppression were called terrorists. The smiles on Zionists’ faces come from convincing a complacent, unknowing, and confused world to accept ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide as daily happenings that only Zionists are permitted to perpetrate.

    The questions often asked and never answered are, “How did the Zionist Jews get away with this open air and available for all to see genocide, and why has there been no valid response to stop it? Millions of valiant people struggle each day to change the situation and bring peace and justice to the Middle East, and these efforts have not succeeded in halting the onslaught, not even reducing it by one Band-Aid.

    Shocking is the cowardice of prominent and respected persons, such as Barack Obama, who do not speak out forcibly about the genocide in Gaza. Puzzling is that the United States entered World War II to defeat a state claiming ethnic superiority, exhibiting ultra-nationalism, engaging in irredentism, practicing militarism, and perpetrating genocide. For decades the United States has supported another state that claims ethnic superiority, exhibits ultra-nationalism, engages in irredentism, practices militarism, and perpetrates genocide. The US has seen its World War II battle that defeated Nazi Germany give rise to an extremist Zionism, with innocent European Jews and now innocent Palestinians the victims of the battle. Defeat of a despised international opponent has resurrected a lookalike and despised international opponent.

    Building an effective strategy against an opponent requires understanding the opponent’s strategy. The Zionist Jews have major strategies — never compromise, continually pursue the agenda, pay no attention to those who cannot or will not militarily intercede (how many armed divisions does the Vatican have?), turn arguments against them into arguments against the accuser (using debts as collateral), and use to advantage the conditioning of minds that the Holocaust and false charges of anti-Semitism have provided. These strategies are apparent in the war on the Gazans and the reactions to the genocide.

    PM Netanyahu stated that Israel did not start this war and did not want this war. Although the genocide of the Palestinians started in 1948, when Zionist militias were already cleansing the land and telling the world they were being attacked, Netanyahu made it seem that a past did not exist and a new war had started. PM Netanyahu tells us that a relatively small contingent of lightly armed Hamas militias want to kill all Jews, conquer all Israel, and expel all Jewish inhabitants. This invisible army is prepared to overcome a heavily armed and formidable army that, without much resistance, does to the Palestinians what Netanyahu claims little Hamas wants to do to the Jews —  daily massacres,  seizing lands, ethnic cleansing, and constant oppression. Israel took advantage of the October 7 attack to hasten the genocide of the Palestinians and disguise the massacre as a legitimate defense.

    The Zionist strategy demonstrated its effectiveness when the international Zionist organization persuaded the US Congress to inform the world that the campus protests against US assistance to the genocide of the Palestinians were anti-Semitic conspiracies. Periodic television ads that attempt to validate the anti-Semitic conspiracy and plead not to make Jews victims of the protests followed the diabolical plot. The TV ads indirectly tell us not to give overwhelming importance to the genocide of the Palestinians; more important is that the protests make Jews feel uncomfortable because a few protestors accuse Jews, who support a state that calls itself the “Jewish state,” of complicity in genocide that a “Jewish state” they support is committing. The Zionist strategy works well in a dumbed American republic ─ converts action to stop the genocide into sympathy for those approving the genocide

    Focus on the genocide seems a sufficient exercise but lack of success in halting it indicates other severe problems must be addressed. Witnessing the genocide, which is as apparent as the sun rising every 24 hours, having leading and recognized authorities on human rights vigorously exclaim, “This is a genocide,” noting the number of nations voicing their horror and taking action to stop the genocide, regarding the worldwide protests against the genocide, and observing government officials leaving government in protest to the US government’s bizarre assistance in hastening the genocide, and then hearing President Joe Biden say, “What’s happening is not genocide, we reject that,” raises doubts of the sanity of US government officials and operation of a pluralistic democracy where the public’s loud voice is not heard. These genocide deniers can start learning by consulting the Law for Palestine Releases Database, especially the legislative database.

    Rhetoric has not clarified that the moral corruption in allowing Zionist Jews to commit genocide has turned religion, democracy, justice, truth, and human rights into meaningless words. Life has lost reality and values have no substance. The mainstream public remains unaware of the seriousness of the damaging relationship the US has with Israel and the genocide and that these affect all aspects of their lives —political, moral, social, cultural, and economic. A strategic objective is to let them know.

    Throw it at them.
    Huge protests in front of the embassies and media headquarters that support Israel.
    Huge protests that align the main roads and city streets and bring the protests into neighborhoods.
    Full-page ads in the New York Times and Washington Post calling out the genocide.
    Turning anti-Semitism into a vile expression so that its use is uncomfortable. Signs that say “The truth becomes a shit charge of anti-Semitism, and “If truth is anti-Semitism, we are we are all anti-Semites now.”

    Assist Jewish organizations that have joined the battle

    Jewish organizations, such as Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and If not Now (IFN) have courageously championed Palestinian rights. They deserve praise for their efforts and funding to expand their efforts. These efforts serve a dual purpose — liberate the Palestinians from Israeli oppression and liberate the Jewish people from Zionist oppression.

    The biblical “Exodus” story did not free the Jews. Just the opposite, it has been used to keep Jews in perpetual bondage to a spurious history and to promote constant victimhood, while distracting them from roles they may play in the injustices done to others. JVP and IFN are awakening other Jews to the destructive impulses generated from Israel that prevent worldwide Jewry from recognizing the roots of modern Judaism and revert them to atavistic and reactionary relics of an ancient Hebrew and fictitious past.

    Israel is not a true democracy, and evidence certifies it is a militarist, nationalist, racist, nation that practices apartheid, engages in severe human rights violations, and spies on its citizens. By blindly accepting Zionist behavior, the Jewish people lost the initiative to change Israel’s policies, misdirected the path to a peaceful solution to the Middle East crisis, exacerbated the crisis, and harmed the security of Jews throughout the world. The exemplary work by JVP and IFN members is the best rescue plan for a subdued Jewish community. The best Hanukah gift is a check to both these organizations.

    Lawsuits

    Pernicious lawsuits that had no legal value and demonstrated bias of US courts in favor of the Zionists have pulverized the Palestine Authority and organizations supporting Palestinian liberation. Time to have the lawsuits work the other way.

    Lawsuits against false charges of anti-Semitism by the ADL and other organizations can be made. The ADL has lost several cases against its illegal expressions.

    Lawsuits by Jewish groups against those who signify Israel as a Jewish state, a slander to Jewish people that unfairly binds them to the genocide of the Palestinian people..

    Lawsuit to finally have AIPAC declared a lobby for a foreign state. New evidence and a new approach will be needed.

    Lawsuits to close Holocaust Memorial museums as improper use of the deaths of the Holocaust victims. The US government and people are guilty of genocide of the Native Americans, enslaving Blacks from Africa, and extreme violence against peoples throughout the world — Latin America, the Caribbean, Vietnam, the Philippines, Iraq, Libya, and others. The Holocaust occurred in a foreign nation and neither the US government nor its people had responsibility for the tragedy. The Holocaust Memorial museums indicate otherwise, are unfair to the American people, have not halted other genocides, have been divisive, and have been accused of promoting hatred. These museums distract Americans from their responsibility for the violence they have committed against other cultures. The Native Americans and African Americans did not use the destruction of their peoples to create museums in which they play victim; they took a positive approach and used them to encourage respect for their cultures. Their inviting museums ridicule the lugubrious Holocaust museums and reveal the latter museums as an insult to the European Jews who died in the Holocaust. Included in the lawsuit can be those who suffered during the Holocaust or had close relatives who died during the Holocaust. Having had aunts, uncles, and cousins from Paris, France, and Warsaw, Poland, some who died in the Holocaust and others who struggled for survival during World War II, I identify with the latter. When writing my book on the struggles for survival of my European family during the 2nd World War, Not Until They Were Gone, I made sure it was not written as a Holocaust story and appeared as a book of heroism and survival.

    Illegal activities by Israelis residing in the United States

    A previous article detailed how Israel sends its citizens to other nations, has them integrate, and steer the country to favor Israel. Exposing, combatting, and bringing law to halt this maneuver and manipulation of American hospitality is a high priority.

    Defeating pro-Israel legislators

    Highest priority is to do in reverse what AIPAC does. Defeating two or three congress politicos who have had marginal victories is possible. If pro-Israelis suffer more defeats, other politicians will rapidly question their allegiances. An organization for accomplishing this vital task requires the highest skill —  demographers who know voting patterns, public relations who understand the constituency and how to approach it, statisticians who can translate voting patterns into probability of victory, fundraisers who can target donors, psychologists who interpret behavior, sociologists who recognize social patterns, political consultants who recognize strengths and faults of candidates, and luck.

    Defeat media co-opting

    This includes responding to social media. Failure to change media co-opting by the Zionists makes other tasks more difficult. Establishing an alternative media has been tried and never permanently succeeded. Why? One insulting obvious reason is that the American public prefers simplicity, excitement, and trash, regardless of the truth. Insulting, but true. It is difficult for moral, dedicated, and honest people to operate at the low level of the Fox network and use the Zionist duplicity that infiltrates and inserts fallacies into conventional media networks. Even if the Fox News types are defeated, their audience will find another Fox News type. Intense brainstorming by smart people who do smart things and understand the devious mind can devise a strategy that limits Zionist influence. Subtlety, invisible conditioning, and making people feel cheated by subscribing to cheaters are my recommendations to the brainstorming operation.

    Getting Things Straight

    It’s troublesome to hear those who struggle to prevent the genocide exhibit lapses in knowledge that affect the solution. As an example, I have heard many people refer to UN Proclamation 188, the Partition Plan, as the UN awarding the Jews a state. Two corrections: (1) The UN General Assembly cannot award. It can only recommend; it is not an enforcing agency. The Palestinians had every right to refuse the plan. (2) I have written several times that the partition plan did not create two states; it divided one Palestinian state into two states ─ a Palestinian state composed of almost 100 percent Palestinians, and a Palestinian state called Jewish for differentiation. In the document that recognized the ‘new state,’ President Truman crossed out the words ‘Jewish state’ and inserted the words ‘state of Israel.’ This state was composed of about 67 percent Palestinians who were native to the area (400,000 Palestinians), a smaller contingent of 200,000 foreign Jews that had been born or came as Zionists to live permanently in Palestine, and another larger contingent of 400,000 foreign Jews who arrived for expediency and not with original intentions of remaining in the British Mandate. They should not have been counted in the census. From that perspective, David Ben-Gurion and a small clique of opportunists took advantage of an ill-advised UN, an ill-led and ill-equipped Palestinian community, and a confused world to declare their state, and, with seasoned militia forces — Haganah, Irgun, Lehi, and Palmach — cleanse the area of Palestinians and establish Israel. Disconcerting that significant information is not properly distributed, which leads to the recommendation that an organization be formed to provide accurate material, answer questions, and correct inaccuracies.

    Conclusion

    Requests for obtaining viable recommendations that will prevent the genocide of the Palestinians have not been forthcoming. Demonstrations have highlighted the massacres and brought those who recognize the genocide to work together, but have not succeeded in changing government policy. Gathering signatures for petitions to congressional representatives has slightly moved some Democratic politicos to change their pro-Israel position but has not prevented committees from assisting Israel and has not prevented legislation that favors Israel.

    Masses of dedicated and well-meaning people are involved in the push to prevent genocide; unfortunately, the present efforts do not appear they will achieve the wanted results. Much more is needed and the lack of inquiries, recommendations, discussions, and feedback to suggestions indicate that the urgent message has fallen on deaf ears.

    When the hurricane swirled and spread its deluge of dark evil
    onto the good green land ‘they’ gloated.
    The western skies
    reverberated with joyous accounts:
    “The Tree has fallen !
    The great trunk is smashed! The hurricane leaves no life in the Tree!”
    Had the Tree really fallen?
    Never! Not with our red streams flowing forever, not while the wine of our thorn limbs fed the thirsty roots,
    Arab roots alive, tunneling deep, deep, into the land!
    When the Tree rises up, the branches
    shall flourish green and fresh in the sun
    the laughter of the Tree shall leaf
    beneath the sun
    and birds shall return
    Undoubtedly, the birds shall return.
    The birds shall return.

    Fadwa Touqan, “The Deluge and the Tree”

    The post Understanding the Fate of the Palestinians first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Democratic-Republicans at prayer

    Those who may recall, if only vaguely, the early chapters of their secondary school history books, may recognize- if not remember- that the original name of the “party of Jefferson” was the Democratic-Republicans. In the first years of the American Empire, the government was in the hands of the Federalist Party, led by the Boston Adams dynasty and the New York mercantile-adventurers for whom Alexander Hamilton had become spokesman. The Federalists became extinct in the term of Thomas Jefferson, the Democratic-Republican POTUS from Virginia. The party base was essentially the Southern landowning oligarchy which opposed its creditors in New York and Boston. The westward extermination of the indigenous and expansion of the empire gave rise to the Whig party. Imperial politics and finance was fought until 1860 by the mercantile – colonizers of what was then the Northwest Territories (a region now considered part of the “mid-West”, basically extending from the River Ohio to the Mississippi and the Great Lakes).

    The determination of the mercantile oligarchy from Boston to Chicago to extract from the Southern oligarchy the costs of the 1857 economic crash intensified the divisions within the settler republic. Those textbooks to which reference is made above also erroneously simplify the conflicts that led to the only serious war ever fought on US territory– the civil war from 1860 to 1865. School pupils are taught that this fraternal war was fought for the liberation of African slaves or for the preservation of constitutionally enshrined “states’ rights”– depending on which side of the Mason-Dixon line one went to school. I recall terms like “the war of Northern Aggression” and “the war between the States” prevailing in the American South while Northern schools taught the “Civil War” and the fight to abolish slavery. The past decade of attacks on memorials to the Confederate States of America and thus the distractive erasure of a complex period in US history by the congenitally ignorant (aka the awakened “Woke”) has been aggravated by other systemic language perversion. It is beyond the scope of such modest essays as this to remedy the institutionalized dementia which passes for social justice activism in the US. However just like sewage treatment is an ongoing process, responsible users of public language ought to regularly skim at least the upper layers of mendacious slime from the reservoirs that supply potable thought.

    In this sense it might be helpful to restore some clarity of definition to the political topography.

    What I have called elsewhere the Fourth Awakening (“Awakenings” are the Protestant equivalent of the Latin Crusades– both of which are directed toward the extermination of dissidents and “brown people”) has become the moral equivalent of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth). The Establishment, constituted in the Democratic Party (with its Republican component- hence Democratic-Republicans), has created, since the early 1980s, a domestic armed propaganda movement, drawing conceptually on elements of the NSDAP Sturmabteilung (SA) and the counter-insurgency organization created by the CIA in what would be called the Phoenix Program. Since ideological consistency is not essential in a society controlled entirely by daily marketing and advertising campaigns, the combination of anti-racist and egalitarian rhetoric with support of the most violently imperialist and anti-humanist government policies should not surprise. An accurate understanding of the German NSDAP would include the fact that “national socialism” absorbed strong anti-capitalist and petty bourgeois democratic tendencies in the service of cartel capitalism (and surreptitiously the Anglo-American Empire). The original fascist party, was created by the faux socialist Benito Mussolini while on the payroll of British secret intelligence services. Just like it was never necessary for everyone in the Manhattan Project or the NASA Space Program to know what the real objectives of their work was, there is no need to impugn the motives of thousands of young people who have been recruited directly or indirectly into today’s “Children’s Crusade”.

    While it is helpful to examine and understand the underlying ideology, that is insufficient. All ideologies are inherently incoherent by themselves. It is really impossible to enforce, short of death, uniform responses to ideological instructions even among those who consider themselves true and loyal believers. Hence it is essential, while giving weight to ideological analysis, to examine the organizational mechanisms by which ideology is transformed into action and action is absorbed within ideology. Although the claims by the wokie-dokies to be latent or active social justice warriors cannot be taken at face value, the behavioral consequences of such explanations must be taken seriously. In fact it is possible to believe in racial equality and act in ways that exacerbate inequality. Does one judge the attribute of belief or the results of the act? Hypocrisy is a natural condition of language in part because it is impossible to act in a way which is utterly and absolutely consistent with any verbal explanation of the act in question. There is always a statement which can be uttered that qua statement is consistent with other statements of the same type and yet inconsistent with the nonverbal actions attributed to it. We judge statements to be appropriate or not as statements (verbal acts) and as instructions for how to respond to other statements or non-verbal acts. Philosophy and ethics are largely concerned with the generation of statements that ought to be used as explanations for assessing other statements or nonverbal behavior.

    The question can be restated. Based on assumptions and values as to what behavior is appropriate for maintaining social relations governed by “democracy”, “equality”, or even the DIE criteria or “diversity, inclusion and equity”, is it the language or the results that count? The answer to that question requires that one include language as action and results of actions at the empirical frontier as distinct categories. Moreover language in its passive sense, contemplation and scholarship, ought to be considered in relation to the actions generated rather that as some quasi-mathematical equation on the blackboard.

    So let us return to the party terminology with which we began. The Democratic Party is the lineal descendant of the Democratic-Republican Party. It was historically the party of the North American slavocracy and landed oligarchy. After the “war of Northern Aggression” it became the party of resistance to the Republican Party (aka GOP or the party of Lincoln) which replaced the Whigs and for strategic reasons absorbed the third awakening (abolitionism) in an alliance with Northern creditor interests. Whatever one may have thought of chattel slavery in the 19th century, the Republican Party was not the anti-slavery party but the party of the slave merchants and usurers whose abolition of the slave system and much of the agricultural asset base of the latifundistas would render the South the poorest part of the United States to this day. African-Americans– Negroes in the 19th century– were admitted to political power during the so-called Reconstruction period as Republicans, not as Democrats. These Reconstruction governments created the first wide-ranging free public primary and secondary education for the poor agricultural workforce, whites as well as freed slaves. In other words Black Reconstruction was an attempt to remedy the class inequalities inherited from the Anglo-American antebellum regime. It was ultimately torpedoed by the reconciliation of creditor and debtor, whereby the Southern elite agreed to industrialize in the textile industry for example in return for power-sharing again. This reconstitution of the Anglo-American elite in 1865 also gave birth to the industrial and financial trusts associated with the so-called Robber Barons (Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan, et al.) and the prison-industrial complex, whereby freed slaves and poor whites were sent to prison to perform “involuntary servitude” pursuant to the loophole in the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution. Unlike Britain that used Australia and other colonies for labor discipline, the Americans had space to incarcerate bonded labor at home.

    The Fourth Awakening/ Crusade is identified by its opponents as a Democratic Party project. Per corollary the Democratic Party is condemned for its “leftist” or “socialist” policies based on the largely unchallenged assumptions that the ideology and the actions are consistent and that both have some vague root in “socialism” or even “communism”. Absurdly the more reasonable assessment is that they are a product of covert Zionist psychological warfare strategy, one which is only being admitted as police bludgeon students on elite universities for protesting the mass murder perpetrated by the settler-colonial state occupying Palestine. The absurdity is that adherents to a traditional oligarchy identified as “white” and “nativist” attack or defend themselves from crusaders they claim to be foreign in every sense of the word. However the Democratic Party has always been tightly controlled by an anti-communist/ anti-socialist elite. Even its “immigrant” party machines were ultimately “nativist”. However the Democratic Party in the North managed the immigrant labor just like its brethren in the South managed the former slaves and sharecroppers. The paragon of “left” Democratic politics, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, would have been unelectable without the Southern vote. The moral degenerate who dropped the first atomic bombs, Harry S. Truman, and his 1993 Arkansas successor, were products of Southern Democratic machine politics.

    The bipolarity produced by American politics leads opponents of the Democratic Party machine, actually the result of a merger between the Bush Republicans and the Clinton Democrats, brokered by the principals of the national security state, to huddle behind the mast and sails of the Goodship Ronald Wilson Reagan, slinging insults like broadsides of grapeshot– whereby the shot is only made of grapes rather than something more deadly. Thus the wholly transitional hordes of Wokism and the Democratic faithful are incited to ever escalating violations of what formal democratic practices and procedures survived the hundred-year corporatist onslaught– marketed as “public-private partnerships”. The most recent travesty are the quasi-autistic orgasms and Vitus dances performed by solipsistic Trump haters after his bureaucratic lynching before a New York Superior Court. (What would Joseph E. Davies have said about that, one can only imagine?) Clearly it is impossible for those engaged in the destruction of the United States of America, as an inhabited nation rather than a special purpose entity of its finance capitalist oligarchy, to articulate themselves in terms both empirically verifiable and linguistically/ ideologically coherent. The party of Lincoln, the party of Kennedy, the party of peace, the party of the New Deal, the anti-slavery party, the party of civil rights (was there ever such a party?), the party of Reagan, the party of Clintons, chose your epigraph. Since 2020 it is even impossible to say that these are the parties of electoral representative democracy. For better or worse, if a woman’s beauty pageant can be won by a man dressed in woman’s clothes, then why not an election decided in favor of someone who is not even alive? Voting dead has a long tradition in US electoral politics.

    Were these all merely anecdotes from Tierra del Fuego or Fiji, it would be comic. However these are the conditions prevailing in the most belligerent and homicidal state on the planet. A minority consensus is emerging in the United States and among its vassals that the West is managed by the insane. Intuitively the vast majority of ordinary people throughout the world have known this for decades. That majority of ordinary humans, who have been kept in senseless poverty since the US helped crush the revolution in Haiti with financial warfare in 1803, understand that the only way to escape the US was under its shadow by immigrating there. The American Dream was to escape the Anglo-American nightmare. Yet the armed propaganda units of the Fourth Awakening (the latest corporatist crusade) are simply too ignorant to grasp these details. That is also what makes them unwitting instruments of Democratic Party– in reality Democratic-Republican– terror. After the real socialists and revolutionaries were exiled or killed (by the end of the 1970s) and replaced by academic androids, who produced a similarly chimeric ideology– combining e.g. postmodernism, transgenderism and CRT, there were no alternatives for the justifiably dissatisfied. This has been an established strategy for recruiting terrorists, whether in Vietnam to neutralize the NLF or in Iraq– destroy real opposition and then recruit the unwitting into synthetics run by opportunists.

    The language of US American politics is powerful. It has been crafted by the best psychological warfare (propaganda) experts corporate money can buy. Edward Bernays was merely the most self-important of the lot. There are also squadrons of academics like the late Dr Heinz Kissinger and his Democratic counterpart, Zbigniew Brezinski. Then there is the Hollywood regiment of congenital propagandists who expand their operations beyond the silver screen to share the stage of misanthro-capitalism e.g. by promoting covert operations throughout Africa for “humanitarian” reasons. Underlying it all is the religion of Business by which the population is constantly told that some clown in the Executive Mansion makes decisions– while all his bills are paid by his corporate donors, a euphemism for masters. Because Business is the measure of all virtue, anything the State does which benefits Business is good. Moreover Business virtue is enhanced by the degree to which government serves it. Since corporations (and offshore trusts in secrecy jurisdictions) are “persons” in terms of the law and upper class persons too, they deserve the full protection and promotion of the State. Therefore neither a Republican partisan nor a Democrat– especially a bought-and-paid-for wokie dokie— will dispute the right and dignity of oligarchs who buy state, national and intergovernmental legislatures and executives for their “personal” benefit. They will all agree that if the business plan, like they learned to produce at Wharton, Harvard or LSE, is realistic and the income projections are plausible, then killing a billion or two with genetic engineering or atomic weapons, is just an unavoidable expense on the liabilities side of the balance sheet.

    While those who are doing their best to find solutions to this insanity and evil try to sort the language and the behavior, there are confronting even greater forces whose conviction is beyond rational argument. These legions are armed not only by the State with its democidal mission. These legions are also irradiated with the toxins of nearly 80 years. They believe that the atomic bomb was created for liberation. They are the crusaders for death as freedom. When in they go marching, with their saints, then the number to which we are to belong is nil. When the Democratic-Republican saints go marching in, oh when those saints go marching in– it will be over the billions of corpses without number– oh when those saints go marching in.

The post Unbecoming American: The Nihilists at Prayer first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The world’s two highest courts have made an implacable enemy of Israel in trying to uphold international law and end Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

    Separate announcements last week by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) should have forced Israel on to the back foot in Gaza.

    A panel of judges at the ICJ – sometimes known as the World Court – demanded last Friday that Israel immediately stop its current offensive on Rafah, in southern Gaza.

    Instead, Israel responded by intensifying its atrocities.

    On Sunday, it bombed a supposedly “safe zone” crowded with refugee families forced to flee from the rest of Gaza, which has been devastated by Israel’s rampage for the past eight months.

    The air strike set fire to an area crammed with tents, killing dozens of Palestinians, many of whom burnt alive. A video shows a man holding aloft a baby beheaded by the Israeli blast.

    Hundreds more, many of them women and children, suffered serious injuries, including horrifying burns.

    Israel has destroyed almost all of the medical facilities that could treat Rafah’s wounded, as well as denying entry to basic medical supplies such as painkillers that could ease their torment.

    This was precisely the outcome US President Joe Biden warned of months ago when he suggested that an Israeli attack on Rafah would constitute a “red line”.

    But the US red line evaporated the moment Israel crossed it. The best Biden’s officials could manage was a mealy-mouthed statement calling the images from Rafah “heart-breaking”.

    Such images were soon to be repeated, however. Israel attacked the same area again on Tuesday, killing at least 21 Palestinians, mostly women and children, as its tanks entered the centre of Rafah.

    ‘A mechanism with teeth’

    The World Court’s demand that Israel halt its attack on Rafah came in the wake of its decision in January to put Israel effectively on trial for genocide, a judicial process that could take years to complete.

    In the meantime, the ICJ insisted, Israel had to refrain from any actions that risked a genocide of Palestinians. In last week’s ruling, the court strongly implied that the current attack on Rafah might advance just such an agenda.

    Israel presumably dared to defy the court only because it was sure it had the Biden administration’s backing.

    UN officials, admitting that they had run out of negatives to describe the ever-worsening catastrophe in Gaza, called it “hell on earth”.

    Days before the ICJ’s ruling, the wheels of its sister court, the ICC, finally began to turn.

    Karim Khan, its chief prosecutor, announced last week that he would be seeking arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, along with three Hamas leaders.

    Both Israeli leaders are accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including attempts to exterminate the population of Gaza through planned starvation.

    Israel has been blocking aid deliveries for many months, creating famine, a situation only exacerbated by its recent seizure of a crossing between Egypt and Rafah through which aid was being delivered.

    The ICC is a potentially more dangerous judicial mechanism for Israel than the ICJ.

    The World Court is likely to take years to reach a judgment on whether Israel has definitively committed a genocide in Gaza – possibly too late to save much of its population.

    The ICC, on the other hand, could potentially issue arrest warrants within days or weeks.

    And while the World Court has no real enforcement mechanisms, given that the US is certain to veto any UN Security Council resolution seeking to hold Israel to account, an ICC ruling would place an obligation on more than 120 states that have ratified its founding document, the Rome Statute, to arrest Netanyahu and Gallant should either step on their soil.

    That would make Europe and much of the world – though not the US – off-limits to both.

    And there is no reason for Israeli officials to assume that the ICC’s investigations will finish with Netanyahu and Gallant. Over time, it could issue warrants for many more Israelis.

    As one Israeli official has noted: “The ICC is a mechanism with teeth”.

    ‘Antisemitic’ court

    For that reason, Israel responded by going on the warpath, accusing the court of being “antisemitic” and threatening to harm its officials.

    Washington appeared ready to add its muscle too.

    Asked at a Senate committee hearing whether he would support a Republican proposal to impose sanctions on the ICC, Antony Blinken, Biden’s secretary of state, replied: “We want to work with you on a bipartisan basis to find an appropriate response.”

    Administration officials, speaking to the Financial Times, suggested the measures under consideration “would target prosecutor Karim Khan and others involved in the investigation”.

    US reprisals, according to the paper, would most likely be modelled on the sanctions imposed in 2020 by Donald Trump, Joe Biden’s predecessor, after the ICC threatened to investigate both Israel and the US over war crimes, in the occupied Palestinian territories and Afghanistan respectively.

    Then, the Trump administration accused the ICC of “financial corruption and malfeasance at the highest levels” – allegations it never substantiated.

    Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor at the time, was denied entry to the US, and Trump officials threatened to confiscate her and the ICC judges’ assets and put them on trial. The administration also vowed to use force to liberate any Americans or Israelis who were arrested.

    Mike Pompeo, the then US secretary of state, averred that Washington was “determined to prevent having Americans and our friends and allies in Israel and elsewhere hauled in by this corrupt ICC”.

    Covert war on ICC

    In fact, a joint investigation by the Israeli website 972 and the British Guardian newspaper revealed this week that Israel – apparently with US support – has been running a covert war against the ICC for the best part of a decade.

    Its offensive began after Palestine became a contracting party to the ICC in 2015, and intensified after Bensouda, Khan’s predecessor, started a preliminary investigation into Israeli war crimes – both Israel’s repeated attacks on Gaza and its building of illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their lands.

    Bensouda found herself and her family threatened, and her husband blackmailed. The head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, Yossi Cohen, became personally involved in the campaign of intimidation. An official briefed on Cohen’s behaviour likened it to “stalking”. The Mossad chief ambushed Bensouda on at least one occasion in an attempt to recruit her to Israel’s side.

    Cohen, who is known to be close to Netanyahu, reportedly told her: “You should help us and let us take care of you. You don’t want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family.”

    Israel has also been running a sophisticated spying operation on the court, hacking its database to read emails and documents. It has tried to recruit ICC staff to spy on the court from within. There are suspicions at the ICC that Israel has been successful.

    Because Israel oversees access to the occupied territories, it has been able to ban ICC officials from investigating its war crimes directly. That has meant, given its control of the telecommunications systems in the territories, that it has been able to monitor all conversations between the ICC and Palestinians reporting atrocities.

    As a result, Israel has sought to close down Palestinian legal and human rights groups by designating them as “terrorist organisations”.

    The surveillance of the ICC has continued during Khan’s tenure – and it is the reason Israel knew the arrest warrants were coming. According to sources that spoke to the Guardian and 972 website, the court came under “tremendous pressure from the United States” not to proceed with the warrants.

    Khan has pointed out that interference in the court’s activities is a criminal offence. More publicly, a group of senior US Republican senators sent a threatening letter to Khan: “Target Israel and we will target you.”

    Khan himself has noted that he has faced a campaign of intimidation and has warned that, if the interference continues, “my office will not hesitate to act”.

    The question is how much of this is bravado, and how much is it affecting Khan and the ICC’s judges, making them wary of pursuing their investigation, expediting it or expanding it to more Israeli war crimes suspects.

    Legal noose

    Despite the intimidation, the legal noose is quickly tightening around Israel’s neck. It has become impossible for the world’s highest judicial authorities to ignore Israel’s eight-month slaughter in Gaza and near-complete destruction of its infrastructure, from schools and hospitals to aid compounds and bakeries.

    Many tens of thousands of Palestinian children have been killed, maimed and orphaned in the rampage, and hundreds of thousands more are being gradually starved to death by Israel’s aid blockade.

    The role of the World Court and the War Crimes Court are precisely to halt atrocities and genocides before it is too late.

    There is an obligation on the world’s most powerful states – especially the world’s superpower-in-chief, the United States, which so often claims the status of “global policeman” – to help enforce such rulings.

    Should Israel continue to ignore the ICJ’s demand that it end its attack on Rafah, as seems certain, the UN Security Council would be expected to pass a resolution to enforce the decision.

    That could range from, at a minimum, an arms embargo and economic sanctions on Israel to imposing no-fly zones over Gaza or even sending in a UN peacekeeping force.

    Washington has shown it can act when it wishes to. Even though the US is one of a minority of states not a party to the Rome Statute, it has vigorously supported the arrest warrant issued by the ICC against Russian leader Vladimir Putin in 2023.

    The US and its allies have imposed economic sanctions on Moscow, and supplied Ukraine with endless weapons to fight off the Russian invasion. There is evidence, too, that the US has been waging covert military operations targeting Russia, most likely including blowing up the Nordstream pipelines supplying Russian gas to Europe.

    The Biden administration has orchestrated the seizing of Russian state assets, as well as those of wealthy Russians, and it has encouraged a cultural and sporting boycott.

    It is proposing to do none of that in the case of Israel.

    Divisions in Europe

    It is not just that the US is missing in action as Israel advances its genocidal goals in Gaza. Washington is actively aiding and abetting the genocide, by supplying Israel with bombs, by cutting funding to UN aid agencies that are the main lifeline for Gaza’s population, by sharing intelligence with Israel and by refusing to use its plentiful leverage over Israel to stop the slaughter.

    And the widespread assumption is that the US will veto any Security Council resolution against Israel.

    According to two former ICC officials who spoke to the Guardian and 972 website, senior Israeli officials have expressly stated that Israel and the US are working together to stymie the court’s work.

    Washington’s contempt for the world’s highest judicial authorities is so flagrant that it is even starting to fray relations with Europe.

    The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has thrown his weight behind the ICC and called for any ruling against Netanyahu and Gallant to be respected.

    Meanwhile, on Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron expressed his outrage over Israel’s attacks on Rafah and called for them to stop immediately.

    Three European states – Spain, Ireland and Norway – announced last week that they were joining more than 140 other countries, including eight from the 27-member European Union, in recognising Palestine as a state.

    The coordination between Spain, Ireland and Norway was presumably designed to attenuate the inevitable backlash provoked by defying Washington’s wishes.

    Among the falsehoods promoted by the US and Israel is the claim that the ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel’s military actions in Gaza because neither of them have recognised Palestine as a state.

    But Palestine became a state party to the ICC way back in 2015. And, as Spain, Ireland and Norway have highlighted, it is now recognised even by western states usually submissive to the US-imposed “rules-based order”.

    Another deception promoted by Israel and the US – a more revealing one – is the claim that the ICC lacks jurisdiction because Israel, like the US, has not ratified the Rome Statute.

    Neither believes international law – the legal foundation constructed in the aftermath of the Second World War to stop future Holocausts – applies to them. Which is yet more reason to discount their assurances that there is no genocide in Gaza.

    But in any case, the argument is entirely hollow: Palestine is a party to the ICC, and the Rome Statute is there to protect its signatories from attack. It is only violent bullies like the US and Israel who have no need for the ICC.

    Might makes right

    Both the ICJ and the ICC are fully aware of the dangers of taking on Israel – which is why, despite the dissembling complaints from the US and Israel, each court is treading so slowly and cautiously in dealing with Israeli atrocities.

    Pick at the Israeli thread of war crimes in Gaza, and the entire cloth of atrocities around the world committed and promoted by the US and its closest allies starts to unravel.

    The unspoken truth is that the “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign and years of brutal occupation of Iraq by US and British troops, and the even lengthier and equally bloody occupation of Afghanistan, eviscerated the legal constraints that would have made it harder for Putin to invade Ukraine and for Israel to put into practice the erasure of the Palestinian people it has dreamed of for so long.

    It is Washington that tore up the rulebook of international law and elevated above it a self-serving “rules-based order” in which the only meaningful rule is might makes right.

    Faced with that stark axiom, Moscow had good reason both to take advantage of Washington’s acts of vandalism against international law to advance its own strategic regional aims and to suspect that the relentless military expansion of a US-led Nato towards its borders did not have Russia’s best interests at heart.

    Now, as Netanyahu and Gallant risk being put in the dock at The Hague, Washington is finally finding its resolve to act. Not to stop genocide. But to offer Israel protection to carry on.

    War crimes overlooked

    For that reason, Khan did everything he could last week to insulate himself from criticism as he announced that he wants Netanyahu and Gallant arrested.

    First, he made sure to weigh the accusations more heavily against Hamas than Israel. He is seeking three Hamas leaders against two Israelis.

    In his indictment, he implicated both the Hamas political and military wings in war crimes and crimes against humanity over their one-day attack on Israel on 7 October and their hostage-taking.

    By contrast, Khan completely ignored the Israeli military’s role over the past eight months, even though it has been carrying out Netanyahu and Gallant’s wishes to the letter.

    Notably too, Khan charged the head of Hamas’ political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, who is based in Qatar, not Gaza. All the evidence, however, is that he had no foreknowledge of the attack on 7 October and certainly no operational involvement.

    Further presenting Hamas in a worse light, Khan levelled more indictments against its leaders than Israel’s.

    That included a charge rooted in a prominent western establishment narrative: that Israeli hostages held in Gaza have faced systematic sexual assault and torture. There appears to be little persuasive evidence for this allegation at this stage, unless Khan has access to facts no one else appears to know about.

    By contrast, there is plenty of objective evidence of Palestinians being kidnapped off the streets of Gaza and the occupied West Bank and subjected to sexual assault and torture in Israeli prisons.

    That, however, is not on the charge sheet against Netanyahu or Gallant.

    Khan also ignored plenty of other Israeli war crimes that would be easy to prove, such as the destruction of hospitals and United Nations facilities, the targeted killing of large numbers of aid workers and journalists, and the fact that 70 percent of Gaza’s housing stock has been made uninhabitable by Israel’s US-supplied bombs.

    Taking on Goliath

    In making the case against Israel, Khan clearly knew he was taking on a Goliath, given Israel’s stalwart backing from the US. He had even recruited a panel of legal experts to give its blessing, in the hope that might offer some protection from reprisal.

    The panel, which unanimously endorsed the indictments against Israel and Hamas, included legal experts like Amal Clooney, the nearest the human rights community has to a legal superstar. But it also included Theodor Meron, a former legal authority in the Israeli government’s foreign ministry.

    In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, explaining his reasoning, Khan seemed keen to preempt the coming attacks. He noted that an unnamed senior US politician had already tried to deter him from indicting Israeli leaders. The prosecutor suggested that other threats were being made behind the scenes.

    The ICC, he was told, was “built for Africa and thugs like Putin” – a criticism of the court that echoed complaints long levelled against it by the Global South.

    In Washington, the ICC is expected to serve as nothing more than another institutional tool of US imperialism. It is not there to uphold international law dispassionately. It is there to enforce a US “rules-based order” in which the US and its allies can do no wrong, even when they are committing atrocities or a genocide.

    The predictably skewed framing of the interview by Amanpour – that Khan needed to explain and justify at length each of the charges he laid against Netanyahu and Gallant but that the charges against the Hamas leaders were self-evident – was one clue as to what the court is up against.

    The ICC prosecutor made clear that he understands all too well what is at stake if the ICC and ICJ turn a blind eye to the Gaza genocide, as Israel and the US want. He told Amanpour: “If we don’t apply the law equally, we’re going to disintegrate as a species.”

    The uncomfortable truth is that such disintegration, in a nuclear age, may be further advanced than any of us cares to acknowledge.

    The US and its favourite client state give no sign of being willing to submit to international law. Like Samson, they would prefer to bring the house down than respect the long-established rules of war.

    The initial victims are the people of Gaza. But in a world without laws, where might alone makes right, all of us will ultimately be the losers.

    • First published in Middle East Eye

    The post To continue the Gaza genocide, Israel and the US must destroy the laws of war first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • I know we don’t expect good faith commitments from Israel, but believe or not, we have other options. The Biden administration charged CIA Director Bill Burns with negotiating a ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. Wonder of wonders, he succeeded. In cooperation with the Qatari and Egyptian mediation teams, and in communication with the Israeli and Hamas negotiating teams he finally concluded a detailed settlement that was submitted to both sides.

    Now before I go any further, do you think that Director Burns, representing Israel’s staunchest ally, would create a ceasefire agreement that is unacceptable to the Israeli negotiating team? But it was Hamas that responded first, with complete approval. Take a look at what Burns and the other teams – including the Israeli team – created, and which Hamas approved. Does it look unreasonable to you?

    https://www.workers.org/2024/06/79033/

    And what was Israel’s response? It invaded Rafah within hours of the Hamas acceptance, seized and closed the only remaining crossing for humanitarian relief supplies, and rejected the agreement that had been negotiated on their behalf. What is the definition of perfidious?

    Israel has made its choice. No ceasefire. Level Gaza to the ground. Slaughter the civilian population and deny them food, water, medical care and everything needed to sustain life until they are gone, one way or another.

    That’s Israel’s criminal choice, as ruled by the International Court of Justice, with whose injunction to cease and desist Israel has not made the slightest attempt to comply. As long as Israel has the US on its side, enabling, aiding and abetting its genocide with massive arms and economic aid as well as direct participation through military and intelligence advice and expertise, Israel feels no need to comply. It’s a choice that the post-WWII Nuremberg trials were supposed to prevent and deter forever.

    But what about the US choice? If we want a ceasefire, do we not have the power to make it happen?  Why can’t we just shove it down Israel’s throats by cutting off every penny of every type of aid that we are giving them? It worked for Eisenhower in 1956.

    You know as well as I do why not. It’s because Eisenhower was a strong, widely respected leader who made decisions that could be enforced. Biden is a ridiculous figure that is at best a thug, relying on other other thugs like the Israel Lobby, the military-industrial complex (about which Eisenhower warned) and the oil industry to prop him up. These thugs have our politicians (not to say our entire country) by the bowls. They rule for their own pleasure. Biden and the Democrats can’t budge without their permission, and neither can Trump and the Republicans.

    Absolute monarch Louis XIV of France is reported to have said, “l’état, c’est moi” (the state, that’s me”). Apparently, today, the state is the Israel Lobby. No one dares to defy it. Ask those who lost their political careers trying to do so. Ask Cynthia McKinney. Ask Earl Hilliard. Ask Paul Findley. Ask Dennis Kucinich.

    Is that our destiny? To be under the thumb of fanatics willing to commit genocide against millions of people who have only been trying to have their own sovereign country on their own land for the last hundred years? Are we destined to be governed by a foreign power rather than our own will? If so, perhaps it’s time for the American people to pick up their torches and pitchforks and head for their own Bastille (which may be in Tel Aviv), and get themselves free.

    The post Sabotaging the Ceasefire in Tel Aviv first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Ana Segovia (Mexico), Huapango Torero (‘Huapango Bullfighter’), 2019.

    The skin is the largest organ of the human body. It covers our entire surface, at some points only as thin as a piece of paper and at other points about half as thick as a credit card. The skin, which protects us from all manner of germs and other harmful elements, is fragile and unable to defend humans from the dangerous weapons we have made over time. The ancient blunt axe will break the skin with a heavy blow, while a 2000-pound MK-84 ‘dumb bomb’ made by General Dynamics will not only obliterate the skin, but the entire human body.

    Despite a 24 May order from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Israeli military continues to bomb the southern part of Gaza, particularly the city of Rafah. In blatant disregard of the ICJ’s order, on 27 May Israel struck a tent city in Rafah and murdered forty-five civilians. US President Joe Biden said on 9 March that an Israeli attack on Rafah would be his ‘red line’, but – even after this tent massacre – the Biden administration has insisted that no such line has been violated.

    At a press conference on 28 May, communications advisor to the US National Security Agency John Kirby was asked how the US would respond if a strike by the US armed forces killed forty-five civilians and injured two hundred others. Kirby responded: ‘We have conducted airstrikes in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where tragically we caused civilian casualties. We did the same thing’. To defend Israel’s latest massacre, Washington has chosen to make a startling admission. Given that the ICJ has ruled that it is ‘plausible’ that Israel is conducting a genocide in Gaza, could it be said that the US is guilty of the same in Iraq and Afghanistan?

    Ficre Ghebreyesus (Eritrea), Map/Quilt, 1999.

    In 2006, the International Criminal Court (ICC) began to assess the possibility of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then, in 2014 and 2017, respectively, opened formal investigations into crimes committed in both countries. However, neither Israel nor the United States are signatories to the 2002 Rome Statute, which established the ICC. Rather than sign the statute, the US Congress passed the American Service-Members’ Protection Act – known informally as the ‘Hague Invasion Act’ – which legally authorises the US government to ‘use all means necessary’ to protect its troops from ICC prosecutors. Since Article 98 of the Rome Statute does not require states to turn over wanted personnel to a third party if they have signed an immunity agreement with that party, the US government has encouraged states to sign ‘Article 98 agreements’ to give its troops immunity from prosecution. Still, this did not deter ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda (who held the post from 2012–2021) from studying evidence and issuing a preliminary report in 2016 on war crimes in Afghanistan.

    Afghanistan joined the ICC in 2003, giving the ICC and Bensouda jurisdiction to conduct their investigation. Even though it signed an Article 98 agreement with Afghanistan in 2002, the US government fervently attacked the ICC’s investigation and warned Bensouda and her family that they would face personal repercussions if she continued with the investigation. In April 2019, the US revoked Bensouda’s entry visa. Days later, a panel of ICC judges ruled against Bensouda’s request to proceed with a war crimes investigation in Afghanistan, stating that such an investigation would ‘not serve the interests of justice’.

    Staff at the ICC were dismayed by the court’s decision and eager to challenge it but could not get support from the justices. In June 2019, Bensouda filed a request to appeal the ICC’s decision not to pursue the investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan. Bensouda’s appeal was joined by various groups from Afghanistan, including the Afghan Victims’ Families Association and the Afghanistan Forensic Science Organisation. In September 2019, the Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC ruled that the appeal could go forward.

    Dawn Okoro (Nigeria), Doing It, 2017.

    The US government was enraged. On 11 June 2020, US President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 13928, which authorised his government to freeze ICC officials’ assets and ban them and their families from entering the United States. In September 2020, the US imposed sanctions on Bensouda, a national of Gambia, and senior ICC diplomat Phakiso Mochochoko, a national of Lesotho. The American Bar Association condemned these sanctions, but they were not revoked.

    The US government eventually repealed the sanctions in April 2021, after Bensouda left her post and was replaced by the British lawyer Karim Khan in February 2021. In September 2021, ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan said that while his office would continue to investigate war crimes by the Taliban and the Islamic State in Afghanistan, it would ‘deprioritise other aspects of this investigation’. This awkward phrasing simply meant that the ICC would no longer investigate war crimes committed by the United States and its allies from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The ICC had been sufficiently brought to heel.

    Alexander Nikolaev, also known as Usto Mumin (Soviet Union), Friendship, Love, Eternity, 1928.

    Prosecutor Khan again demonstrated his partial application of justice and fealty to the Global North ruling elites when he rushed into the conflict in Ukraine and began an investigation into war crimes by Russia just four days after its invasion in February 2022. Within a year, Khan would apply for warrants for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova, which were issued in March 2023. Specifically, they were charged with colluding to abduct children from Ukrainian orphanages and children’s care homes and take them to Russia, where – it was alleged – these children were ‘given for adoption’. Ukraine, Khan said, ‘is a crime scene’.

    Khan would use no such words when it came to Israel’s murderous assault on Palestinians in Gaza. Even after more than 15,000 Palestinian children had been killed (rather than ‘adopted’ from a war zone), Khan failed to pursue warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his military subordinates. When Khan visited Israel in November–December 2023, he warned about ‘excesses’ but suggested that since ‘Israel has trained lawyers who advise commanders’, they could prevent any horrendous violations of international humanitarian law.

    Ayoub Emdadian (Iran), The Sapling of Liberty, 1973.

    By May 2024, the sheer scale of Israel’s brutality in Gaza finally forced the ICC to take up the issue. The orders from the ICJ, the outrage expressed by numerous governments of the Global South, and the cascading protests in country after country together motivated the ICC to act. On 20 May, Khan held a press conference where he said that he filed applications for the arrest of Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, and Ismail Haniyeh and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his head of military, Yoav Gallant. Israel’s Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said that the ICC accusations against Netanyahu and Gallant are ‘baseless’ and that Israel will not comply with any ICC warrant. For decades now, Israel – like the United States – has rejected any attempt to apply international humanitarian law to its actions. The ‘rules-based international order’ has always provided immunity for the United States and its close allies, an immunity whose hypocrisy has increasingly been revealed. It is this double-standard that has provoked the collapse of the US-driven world order.

    Buried within Khan’s press statement is an interesting fragment: ‘I insist that all attempts to impede, intimidate, or improperly influence the officials of this Court must cease immediately’. Eight days later, on 20 May, The Guardian – in collaboration with other periodicals – published an investigation that revealed Israel’s use of ‘intelligence agencies to surveil, hack, pressure, smear, and allegedly threaten senior ICC staff in an effort to derail the court’s inquiries’. Yossi Cohen, the former head of Israel’s spy agency, Mossad, personally harassed and threatened Bensouda (Khan’s predecessor), warning her, ‘You don’t want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family’. Furthermore, The Guardian noted that ‘Between 2019 and 2020, the Mossad had been actively seeking compromising information on the prosecutor and took an interest in her family members’. ‘Took an interest’ is a euphemistic way of saying gathered information on her family – including through a sting operation against her husband Philip Bensouda – to blackmail and frighten her. These are clichéd mafia tactics.


    Hamed Abdalla (Egypt), Conscience du sol (‘The Consciousness of the Earth’), 1956.

    As I followed these stories of the blood and law, I read the poems of Chechnya-born Jazra Khaleed, writing in Greek in Athens. His poem ‘Black Lips’ stopped me in my tracks, the last stanzas powerful and bleak:

    Come let me make you human,
    you, Your Honor, who wipe guilt from your beard
    you, esteemed journalist, who tout death
    you, philanthropic lady, who pat children’s heads without bending down
    and you who read this poem, licking your finger—
    To all of you I offer my body for genuflection
    Believe me
    one day you will adore me like Christ

    But I’m sorry for you sir—
    I do not negotiate with chartered accountants of words
    with art critics who eat from my hand
    You may, if you desire, wash my feet
    Don’t take it personally

    Why do I need bullets if there are so many words
    prepared to die for me?

    Which words are slowly dying? Justice, perhaps, or even humanitarianism? So many words are thrown about to assuage the guilty and to confuse the innocent. But these words cannot muffle other words, words that describe horrors and that demand redress.

    Words are important. So are people, such as Gustavo Cortiñas, who was arrested by the Argentinian military dictatorship on 15 April 1977, never to be seen again. He became one of the 30,000 people whom the military killed between 1976 and 1983. On April 30, two weeks after Gustavo was arrested, his mother, Nora Cortiñas (or Norita, as she was lovingly known), joined other mothers of the disappeared to protest in front of the government house Casa Rosada, at the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, the first in what became a regular feature.

    Norita was a co-founder of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, which courageously shattered the wall of misleading words that tumbled out of the mouths of the military Junta. Though her son was never found, Norita found her voice looking for him – a voice that was heard at every protest for justice and spoke with great feeling about the pain in the world until the weeks leading up to her death on 31 May. ‘We say no to the annexation of Palestine’, she said in a video message in 2020. ‘We oppose any measure that tends to erase the identity and existence of the Palestinian people’.

    Norita leaves us with her precious words:

    Many years from now, I would like to be remembered as a woman who gave her all so that we could have a more dignified life… I would like to be remembered with that cry that I always say and that means everything I feel inside me, that means the hope that someday that other possible world will exist. A world for everyone. So, I would like to be remembered with a smile and for shouting loudly: venceremos, venceremos, venceremos! We will win, we will win, we will win!

  • See also “What is the Rules-Based Order?
  • The post Their Rules-Based International Order Is the Rule of the Mafia first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • I did not know Israel was capturing or recording my face. [But Israel has] been watching us for years from the sky with their drones. They have been watching us gardening and going to schools and kissing our wives. I feel like I have been watched for so long.
    — Mosab Abu Toha, Palestinian poet

    If you want a glimpse of the next stage of America’s transformation into a police state, look no further than how Israel—a long-time recipient of hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid from the U.S.—uses its high-tech military tactics, surveillance and weaponry to advance its authoritarian agenda.

    Military checkpoints. Wall-to-wall mass surveillance. Predictive policing. Aerial surveillance that tracks your movements wherever you go and whatever you do. AI-powered facial recognition and biometric programs carried out with the knowledge or consent of those targeted by it. Cyber-intelligence. Detention centers. Brutal interrogation tactics. Weaponized drones. Combat robots.

    We’ve already seen many of these military tactics and technologies deployed on American soil and used against the populace, especially along the border regions, a testament to the heavy influence Israel’s military-industrial complex has had on U.S. policing.

    Indeed, Israel has become one of the largest developers and exporters of military weapons and technologies of oppression worldwide.

    Journalist Antony Loewenstein has warned that Pegasus, one of Israel’s most invasive pieces of spyware, which allows any government or military intelligence or police department to spy on someone’s phone and get all the information from that phone, has become a favorite tool of oppressive regimes around the world. The FBI and NYPD have also been recipients of the surveillance technology which promises to turn any “target’s smartphone into an intelligence gold mine.”

    Yet it’s not just military weapons that Israel is exporting. They’re also helping to transform local police agencies into extensions of the military.

    According to The Intercept, thousands of American law enforcement officers frequently travel for training to Israel, “one of the few countries where policing and militarism are even more deeply intertwined than they are here,” as part of an ongoing exchange program that largely flies under the radar of public scrutiny.

    A 2018 investigative report concluded that imported military techniques by way of these exchange programs that allow police to study in Israel have changed American policing for the worse. “Upon their return, U.S. law enforcement delegates implement practices learned from Israel’s use of invasive surveillance, blatant racial profiling, and repressive force against dissent,” the report states. “Rather than promoting security for all, these programs facilitate an exchange of methods in state violence and control that endanger us all.”

    “At the very least,” notes journalist Matthew Petti, “visits to Israel have helped American police justify more snooping on citizens and stricter secrecy. Critics also assert that Israeli training encourages excessive force.”

    Petti documents how the NYPD set up a permanent liaison office in Israel in the wake of 9/11, eventually implementing “one of the first post-9/11 counterterrorism programs that explicitly followed the Israeli model. In 2002, the NYPD tasked a secret ‘Demographics Unit’ with spying on Muslim-American communities. Dedicated ‘mosque crawlers’ infiltrated local Muslim congregations and attempted to bait worshippers with talk of violent revolution.”

    That was merely the start of American police forces being trained in martial law by foreign nations under the guise of national security theater. It has all been downhill from there.

    As Alex Vitale, a sociology professor who has studied the rise of global policing, explains, “The focus of this training is on riot suppression, counterinsurgency, and counterterrorism—all of which are essentially irrelevant or should be irrelevant to the vast majority of police departments. They shouldn’t be suppressing protest, they shouldn’t be engaging in counterinsurgency, and almost none of them face any real threat from terrorism.”

    This ongoing transformation of the American homeland into a techno-battlefield tracks unnervingly with the dystopian cinematic visions of Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report and Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium, both of which are set 30 years from now, in the year 2054.

    In Minority Report, police agencies harvest intelligence from widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, precognitive technology, and neighborhood and family snitch programs in order to capture would-be criminals before they can do any damage.

    While Blomkamp’s Elysium acts as a vehicle to raise concerns about immigration, access to healthcare, worker’s rights, and socioeconomic stratification, what was most striking was its eerie depiction of how the government will employ technologies such as drones, tasers and biometric scanners to track, target and control the populace, especially dissidents.

    With Israel in the driver’s seat and Minority Report and Elysium on the horizon, it’s not so far-fetched to imagine how the American police state will use these emerging technologies to lock down the populace, root out dissidents, and ostensibly establish an “open-air prison” with disconcerting similarities to Israel’s technological occupation of present-day Palestine.

    For those who insist that such things are celluloid fantasies with no connection to the present, we offer the following as a warning of the totalitarian future at our doorsteps.

    Facial Recognition

    Fiction: One of the most jarring scenes in Elysium occurs towards the beginning of the film, when the protagonist Max Da Costa waits to board a bus on his way to work. While standing in line, Max is approached by two large robotic police officers, who quickly scan Max’s biometrics, cross-check his data against government files, and identify him as a former convict in need of close inspection. They demand to search his bag, a request which Max resists, insisting that there is nothing for them to see. The robotic cops respond by manhandling Max, throwing him to the ground, and breaking his arm with a police baton. After determining that Max poses no threat, they leave him on the ground and continue their patrol. Likewise, in Minority Report, police use holographic data screens, city-wide surveillance cameras, dimensional maps and database feeds to monitor the movements of its citizens and preemptively target suspects for interrogation and containment.

    Fact: We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed, corralled and controlled by technologies that answer to government and corporate rulers. This is exactly how Palestinian poet and New Yorker contributor Mosab Abu Toha found himself, within minutes of passing through an Israeli military checkpoint in Gaza with his wife and children in tow, asked to step out line, only to be blindfolded, handcuffed, interrogated, then imprisoned in an Israeli detention center for two days, beaten and further interrogated. Toha was finally released in what Israeli soldiers chalked up to a “mistake,” yet there was no mistaking the AI-powered facial recognition technology that was used to pull him out of line, identify him, and label him (erroneously) as a person of interest.

    Drones

    Fiction: In another Elysium scene, Max is hunted by four drones while attempting to elude the authorities. The drones, equipped with x-ray cameras, biometric readers, scanners and weapons, are able to scan whole neighborhoods, identify individuals from a distance—even through buildings, report their findings back to police handlers, pursue a suspect, and target them with tasers and an array of lethal weapons.

    Fact: Drones, some deceptively small and yet powerful enough to capture the facial expressions of people hundreds of feet below them, have ushered in a new age of surveillance. Not even those indoors, in the privacy of their homes, will be safe from these aerial spies, which can be equipped with technology capable of peering through walls. In addition to their surveillance capabilities, drones can also be equipped with automatic weapons, grenade launchers, tear gas, and tasers.

    Biometric scanners and national IDs

    Fiction: Throughout Elysium, citizens are identified, sorted and dealt with by way of various scanning devices that read their biometrics—irises, DNA, etc.—as well as their national ID numbers, imprinted by a laser into their skin. In this way, citizens are tracked, counted, and classified. Likewise, in Minority Report, tiny sensory-guided spider robots converge on a suspected would-be criminal, scan his biometric data and feed it into a central government database. The end result is that there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide to escape the government’s all-seeing eyes.

    Fact: Given the vast troves of data that various world governments, including Israel and the U.S., is collecting on its citizens and non-citizens alike, we are not far from a future where there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. In fact, between the facial recognition technology being handed out to law enforcement, license plate readers being installed on police cruisers, local police creating DNA databases by extracting DNA from non-criminals, including the victims of crimes, and police collecting more and more biometric data such as iris scans, we are approaching the end of anonymity. It won’t be long before police officers will be able to pull up a full biography on any given person instantaneously, including their family and medical history, bank accounts, and personal peccadilloes. It’s already moving in that direction in more authoritarian regimes.

    Predictive Policing

    Fiction: In Minority Report, John Anderton, Chief of the Department of Pre-Crime, finds himself identified as the next would-be criminal and targeted for preemptive measures by the very technology that he relies on for his predictive policing. Consequently, Anderton finds himself not only attempting to prove his innocence but forced to take drastic measures in order to avoid capture in a surveillance state that uses biometric data and sophisticated computer networks to track its citizens.

    Fact: Precrime, which aims to prevent crimes before they happen, has justified the use of widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, precognitive technology, and snitch programs. As political science professor Anwar Mhajne documents, Israel has used all of these tools in its military engagements with Palestine: deploying AI surveillance and predictive policing systems in Palestinian territories; utilizing facial recognition technology to monitor and regulate the movement of Palestinians; subjecting Palestinians to facial recognition scans at checkpoints, with a color-coded mechanism to dictate who should be allowed to proceed, subjected to further questioning, or detained.

    Making the Leap from Fiction to Reality

    When Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931, he was convinced that there was “still plenty of time” before his dystopian vision became a nightmare reality. It wasn’t long, however, before he realized that his prophecies were coming true far sooner than he had imagined.

    Israel’s military influence on the United States, its advances in technological weaponry, and its rigid demand for compliance are pushing us towards a world in chains.

    Through its oppressive use of surveillance technology, Israel has erected the world’s first open-air prison, and in the process, has made itself a model for the United States.

    What we cannot afford to overlook, however, is the extent to which the American Police State is taking its cues from Israel.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we may not be an occupied territory, but that does not make the electronic concentration camp being erected around us any less of a prison.

    The post What’s Next for Battlefield America? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • I did not know Israel was capturing or recording my face. [But Israel has] been watching us for years from the sky with their drones. They have been watching us gardening and going to schools and kissing our wives. I feel like I have been watched for so long.

    — Mosab Abu Toha, Palestinian poet

    If you want a glimpse of the next stage of America’s transformation into a police state, look no further than how Israel—a long-time recipient of hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid from the U.S.—uses its high-tech military tactics, surveillance and weaponry to advance its authoritarian agenda.

    Military checkpoints. Wall-to-wall mass surveillance. Predictive policing. Aerial surveillance that tracks your movements wherever you go and whatever you do. AI-powered facial recognition and biometric programs carried out with the knowledge or consent of those targeted by it. Cyber-intelligence. Detention centers. Brutal interrogation tactics. Weaponized drones. Combat robots.

    We’ve already seen many of these military tactics and technologies deployed on American soil and used against the populace, especially along the border regions, a testament to the heavy influence Israel’s military-industrial complex has had on U.S. policing.

    Indeed, Israel has become one of the largest developers and exporters of military weapons and technologies of oppression worldwide.

    Journalist Antony Loewenstein has warned that Pegasus, one of Israel’s most invasive pieces of spyware, which allows any government or military intelligence or police department to spy on someone’s phone and get all the information from that phone, has become a favorite tool of oppressive regimes around the world. The FBI and NYPD have also been recipients of the surveillance technology which promises to turn any “target’s smartphone into an intelligence gold mine.”

    Yet it’s not just military weapons that Israel is exporting. They’re also helping to transform local police agencies into extensions of the military.

    According to The Intercept, thousands of American law enforcement officers frequently travel for training to Israel, “one of the few countries where policing and militarism are even more deeply intertwined than they are here,” as part of an ongoing exchange program that largely flies under the radar of public scrutiny.

    A 2018 investigative report concluded that imported military techniques by way of these exchange programs that allow police to study in Israel have changed American policing for the worse. “Upon their return, U.S. law enforcement delegates implement practices learned from Israel’s use of invasive surveillance, blatant racial profiling, and repressive force against dissent,” the report states. “Rather than promoting security for all, these programs facilitate an exchange of methods in state violence and control that endanger us all.”

    “At the very least,” notes journalist Matthew Petti, “visits to Israel have helped American police justify more snooping on citizens and stricter secrecy. Critics also assert that Israeli training encourages excessive force.”

    Petti documents how the NYPD set up a permanent liaison office in Israel in the wake of 9/11, eventually implementing “one of the first post-9/11 counterterrorism programs that explicitly followed the Israeli model. In 2002, the NYPD tasked a secret ‘Demographics Unit’ with spying on Muslim-American communities. Dedicated ‘mosque crawlers’ infiltrated local Muslim congregations and attempted to bait worshippers with talk of violent revolution.”

    That was merely the start of American police forces being trained in martial law by foreign nations under the guise of national security theater. It has all been downhill from there.

    As Alex Vitale, a sociology professor who has studied the rise of global policing, explains, “The focus of this training is on riot suppression, counterinsurgency, and counterterrorism—all of which are essentially irrelevant or should be irrelevant to the vast majority of police departments. They shouldn’t be suppressing protest, they shouldn’t be engaging in counterinsurgency, and almost none of them face any real threat from terrorism.”

    This ongoing transformation of the American homeland into a techno-battlefield tracks unnervingly with the dystopian cinematic visions of Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report and Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium, both of which are set 30 years from now, in the year 2054.

    In Minority Report, police agencies harvest intelligence from widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, precognitive technology, and neighborhood and family snitch programs in order to capture would-be criminals before they can do any damage.

    While Blomkamp’s Elysium acts as a vehicle to raise concerns about immigration, access to healthcare, worker’s rights, and socioeconomic stratification, what was most striking was its eerie depiction of how the government will employ technologies such as drones, tasers and biometric scanners to track, target and control the populace, especially dissidents.

    With Israel in the driver’s seat and Minority Report and Elysium on the horizon, it’s not so far-fetched to imagine how the American police state will use these emerging technologies to lock down the populace, root out dissidents, and ostensibly establish an “open-air prison” with disconcerting similarities to Israel’s technological occupation of present-day Palestine.

    For those who insist that such things are celluloid fantasies with no connection to the present, we offer the following as a warning of the totalitarian future at our doorsteps.

    When Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931, he was convinced that there was “still plenty of time” before his dystopian vision became a nightmare reality. It wasn’t long, however, before he realized that his prophecies were coming true far sooner than he had imagined.

    Israel’s military influence on the United States, its advances in technological weaponry, and its rigid demand for compliance are pushing us towards a world in chains.

    Through its oppressive use of surveillance technology, Israel has erected the world’s first open-air prison, and in the process, has made itself a model for the United States.

    What we cannot afford to overlook, however, is the extent to which the American Police State is taking its cues from Israel.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we may not be an occupied territory, but that does not make the electronic concentration camp being erected around us any less of a prison.

    The post What’s Next for Battlefield America? Israel’s High-Tech Military Tactics Point the Way first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • For the Chinese, the trauma of the Century of Humiliation continues as a blunt reminder of their past defeat and neo-colonial servitude, as well as a reminder of the West’s self-righteous hypocrisy and arrogance.

    In 1500, India and China were the world’s most advanced civilizations. Then came the Europeans. They eventually looted and wreaked havoc on both, just as they were to on the Americas and Africa. For India and China, Britain was the chief culprit, relying on state-sponsored drug-running backed by industrialized military power. The British Empire was the world’s largest producer and exporter of opium—the main product of global trade after the gradual decline of the slave trade from Africa. Their “civilization” brought the Century of Humiliation to China, which only ended with the popular revolution led by Mao Zedong. This historic trauma and the struggle to overcome it and re-establish their country is etched in the minds of the Chinese today.

    Before the British brought their “culture,” 25% of the world trade originated in India. By the time they left it was less than 1%. British India’s opium dealing was for the large part of the 19th Century the second-most important source of revenue for colonial India. Their “opium industry was one of the largest enterprises on the subcontinent, producing a few thousand tons of the drug every year – a similar output to Afghanistan’s notorious opium industry [during the US occupation], which supplies the global market for heroin.” Opium accounted for about 17-20% of British India revenues.

    In the early 1700s, China produced 35% of the world GDP. Until 1800 half the books in the world were printed in Chinese. The country considered itself self-sufficient, not seeking any products from other countries. Foreign countries bought Chinese tea, silk, and porcelain, having to pay in gold and silver. Consequently, the balance of trade was unfavorable to the British for almost two centuries, like the situation the US and Europe face with China today.

    This trade slowly depleted Western reserves. Eventually, 30,865 tons of silver flowed into China, mostly from Britain. Britain turned to state sponsored drug smuggling as a solution, and by 1826 the smuggling from India had reversed the flow of silver. Thus began one of the longest and continuous international crimes of modern times, second to the African slave trade, under the supervision of the British crown.

    (The just formed United States was already smuggling opium into China by 1784. The US first multi-millionaire John Jacob Astor grew rich dealing opium to China, as did FDR’s grandfather, Warren Delano, Jr.)

    The British East India Company was key to this opium smuggling. Soon after Britain conquered Bengal in 1757, George III granted the East India Company a monopoly on producing and exporting Indian opium. Eventually its Opium Agency employed some 2500 clerks working in 100 offices around India.

    Britain taxed away 50% of the value of Indian peasants’ food crops to push them out of agriculture into growing opium. This soon led to the Bengal famine of 1770, when ten million, a third of the Bengali population, starved to death. Britain took no action to aid them, as they did almost a century later with their orchestrated famine in Ireland. Another famine hit India in 1783, and again Britain did nothing as 11 million starved. Between 1760-1943, “As per British sources, more than 85 million Indians died in these famines which were in reality genocides done by the British Raj.”

    At its peak in the mid-19th century, the British state-sponsored export of opium accounted for roughly 15% of total colonial revenue in India and 31% of India’s exports. The massive revenues from this drug money solidified India as a substantial financial base for England’s later world conquests.

    In 1729, the Chinese emperor declared the import of opium illegal. At the time it amounted to 200 chests a year, each 135 pounds, a total of 14 tons. The emperor in 1799 reissued the prohibition in harsher terms, given imports had leaped to 4,500 chests (320 tons). Yet by 1830 it rose to 1100 tons, and by 1838, just before the British provoked the First Opium War (1839-1842), it climbed to 40,000 chests (2800 tons).

    A chest of opium cost only £2 to produce in India but it sold for £10 [over $1,000 in today’s prices] in China, nearly an £8 profit per chest.

    About 40,000 chests supplied 2.1 million addicts in a Chinese population of 350 million. China was losing over 4000 tons of silver annually. Addicts were mostly men, twenty to fifty-five years old, which should have been their most productive years. Smoking opium gradually spread to different groups of people: government officials, merchants, intelligentsia, women, servants, soldiers, and monks.

    Just before the First Opium War the Chinese “drug czar,” Lin Zexu, wrote to Queen Victoria, “Where is your conscience? I have heard that the smoking of opium is very strictly forbidden by your country; this is because the harm caused by opium is clearly understood. Since it is not permitted to do harm to your own country, then even less should you let it be passed on to the harm of other countries.” In standard imperialist arrogance, Britain ignored the letter and challenged the very legality of China’s sovereign decision to prohibit opium imports.

    Britain provoked this First Opium War in retaliation for China seizing and destroying 1300 tons of opium held by British drug dealers off Canton (now Guangzhou). This had a value equal to one-sixth of the British empire’s military budget. British Foreign Secretary Palmerston demanded an apology, compensation for the opium, a treaty to prevent Chinese action against British drug-running, and opening additional ports to “foreign trade,” their euphemism for drug dealing.

    The British India Gazette reported on the sack of one Chinese city during the war:

    A more complete pillage could not be conceived than took place. Every house was broken open, every drawer and box ransacked, the streets strewn with fragments of furniture, pictures, tables, chairs, grain of all sorts — the whole set off by the dead or the living bodies of those who had been unable to leave the city from the wounds received from our merciless guns… The plunder ceased only when there was nothing to take or destroy.

    Once Britain defeated China, the Treaty of Nanking gave Hong Kong to the British, which quickly became the center of opium drug-dealing, soon providing the colony most of its revenue. The treaty also allowed the British to export unlimited amounts of opium.

    In 1844, France and the US forced China to sign similar unequal and unjust treaties, with the same unrestricted trading rights.

    In the wake of the First Opium War, a devastating famine hit southern China, causing mass starvation among millions of poor Chinese peasants. Soon the Taiping Rebellion against Chinese imperial rule broke out, claiming 20 million Chinese lives between 1850 and 1864. As with many later civil wars, as in Syria a decade ago, the European states financed the rebels to undermine the national government.

    Karl Marx detailed how Britain provoked the Second Opium War (1856-1860). France joined in the looting. The Times of London, propagandists for their state-sponsored drug mafia, declared, “England, with France . . . shall teach such a lesson to these perfidious hordes that the name of Europe will hereafter be a passport of fear, if it cannot be of love, throughout their land.”

    In October 1860 the British and French military attacked Beijing. Despite French protests, British commander Lord Elgin destroyed Yuanming Yuan, the emperor’s summer palace, in a show of contempt for the Chinese.

    The Summer Palace was the quintessential treasure house of China. No such collection of wealth and beauty had ever existed anywhere on earth. Nor would it ever again.…in some 200 fabulously decorated buildings, thirty of them imperial residences, lay riches beyond all dreams of avarice. Jewels, jade, ceremonial robes, the court treasures, bales of silk, and countless priceless artifacts represented the years of accumulated tribute placed before the Chinese emperors. There were splendid galleries of paintings and irreplaceable libraries…For three days British and French troops rampaged through the palace’s marble corridors and glittering apartments, smashing with clubs and rifle butts what they were unable to carry away.

    When the robbery and destruction was finished, they burned Yuanming Yuan to the ground. An estimated 1.5 million Chinese relics were taken away, many still filling museums and the homes of the wealthy in the West today.

    Britain and France forced China to legalize the import of opium, which reached 5000 tons by 1858, an amount surpassing global opium production in 1995. China had to agree that no Westerner could be tried in Chinese courts for crimes committed in the country, and, ironically, to legalize Christian missionary work.

    The 1881 pamphlet, Opium: England’s Coercive Policy and Its Disastrous Results in China and India, stated:

    As a specimen of how both wars were carried on, we quote the following from an English writer on the bombardment of Canton: ‘Field pieces loaded with grape were planted at the end of long, narrow streets crowded with innocent men, women and children, to mow them down like grass till the gutters flowed with their blood.’ In one scene of carnage, the Times correspondent recorded that half an army of 10,000 men were in ten minutes destroyed by the sword, or forced into the broad river. The Morning Herald asserted that ‘a more horrible or revolting crime than this bombardment of Canton has never been committed in the worst ages of barbaric darkness.’

    By the mid-1860s, Britain was in control of seven eighths of the vastly expanded opium trade into China. Opium imports from India skyrocketed to 150,000 chests (10,700 tons) in 1880. British opium earnings amounted to $2 billion a year in today’s money and accounted for nearly 15% of the British Exchequer’s tax revenue. The London Times (October 22, 1880) outrageously claimed that “the Chinese government admitted opium as a legal article of import, not under constraint, but of their own free will.” Lord Curzon, later Under Secretary for India, “denied that England had ever forced opium upon China; no historian of any repute, and no diplomatist who knew anything of the matter, would support the proposition that England coerced China in this respect.”

    China began domestic production to curtail losing more silver to imported opium. After 1858, large tracts of land were given over to opium production, and provinces turned from growing food and other necessities to opium. Eventually the Chinese were producing 35,000 tons, about 85% of the world’s supply, with 15 million addicts consuming 43,000 tons annually.

    China, now greatly weakened by the British narco state, surrendered territory to Russia equal to the combined size of France, Germany, and Spain. In 1885 France seized Chinese Southeast Asia. In 1895, Japan seized Taiwan and Chinese-controlled Korea.

    The Eight-Nation Alliance (Japan, Russia, Britain, France, the United States, Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary) invaded again in 1900 to crush the nationalist Boxer Rebellion. An indemnity of 20,000 tons of silver was extracted, and China reduced to a neo-colony.

    By 1906, besides British India, opium dealing also provided 16% of taxes for French Indochina, 16% for the Netherlands Indies, 20% for Siam, and 53% for British Malaya.

    That year, the British, still exporting 3500 tons to China, finally agreed to end the dirty business within ten years. The British crown had the distinction of being the biggest opium smuggler in history – a central factor in their wrecking Chinese and Indian civilizations.

    World opium production by 1995 was down to 4,200 metric tons (4,630 tons), mostly from Burma and Afghanistan. The Taliban banned it in 2000, and production fell from 3400 to only 204 tons. The 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan reversed this, and by 2008, US occupied Afghanistan was producing 90% of the world’s opium, reaching 10,000 tons in 2017. After the US was driven out in 2021, the Taliban quickly stopped opium production. The United States Institute of Peace, possibly revealing US support for narco-trafficking, pronounced, “the Taliban’s successful opium ban is bad for Afghans and the world” and “will have negative economic and humanitarian consequences.”

    The blight of opium on China was not resolved until the revolutionary victory in 1949 – though it continued in British Hong Kong. Mao proclaimed “China has stood up,” ending its Century of Humiliation during which at least 100 million Chinese were killed in wars and famines, with up to 35 million during the Japanese invasion from 1931-1945.

    By 1949, China had been reduced to one of the world’s poorest countries. Just 75 years ago four out of five Chinese could not read or write. But since 1981, China has lifted 853 million of its people out of poverty, has become an upper middle income country according to the World Bank, and regained its stature in the world. The West now views China as a renewed threat, again seeking to economically disable it and chop it into pieces. However, this time, the Chinese people are much better prepared to combat imperialist designs to impose a new era of humiliation on them.

    The post Britain’s Century Long Opium Trafficking and China’s Century of Humiliation (1839-1949) first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Ireland’s recognition of the state of Palestine has been enthusiastically welcomed at home and (mostly) abroad as a positive contribution to the future of Palestine. Needless to say, this development did not take place in a vacuum though, for the most part, it is being presented as if it did.

    The scale and endurance of the pro-Palestinian campaigns in Ireland both historically, and specifically in response to the Israeli/US barbarism in Gaza, is probably not given the recognition it deserves. However, the result was dramatic: the Irish government was forced to take a position – a position that successive Irish governments had resolutely refused to entertain.

    That is one side of the story. The problem for pro-Palestinian campaigners and supporters is that Ireland is a perfect example of a term not often used these days – Ireland is a banana republic. So much so, that the Irish government does not get out of bed in the morning without first checking with its major ‘partner’ – the United States of America.

    This is where internal political considerations clashed with Ireland’s unswerving allegiance to the US. There now was a problem and it had to be solved. So, for our brave leaders in the Irish government, it then became a matter of how to manage this particular problem.

    Enter the US State Department. From then on, Ireland stayed firmly within the boundaries allowed – as it always does. And that is what it came down to: what would Ireland be allowed to say or do. The statement provided by the Irish government, here  if read carefully, clearly shows what those boundaries are.

    It did not stop there: on 28 May, the day the Palestinian flag flew outside Leinster House (Irish Parliament) the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Simon Harris stated “And Europe could be doing a hell of a lot more, Europe needs to do a lot more in relation to this.” Europe but not the United States of America! Know your boundaries and stick to them – or else.

    As reported by Politico:

    Dublin was determined to take this step without damaging its typically strong relations with U.S. politicians — particularly Biden’s White House.

    Consequently, Irish Department of Foreign Affairs diplomats ensured that their U.S. counterparts in the State Department were speedily briefed on every conversation the Irish had with like-minded European governments — Belgium, Malta, Norway, Slovenia and above all Spain — as they pursued a joint plan to recognize Palestinian statehood, the official said.

    This included face-to-face discussions with senior National Security Council officials at the White House in March as part of St. Patrick’s Day-related diplomacy; multiple phone calls between Irish Foreign Minister Micheál Martin, who led the Irish initiative, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken; and final calls to Washington following the Irish Cabinet’s formal signoff on its decision Tuesday night.

    “We couldn’t have been clearer in spelling out our intentions weeks, months in advance to make sure there were no surprises or needless suspicions raised in Washington,” said the Irish official, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

    Apparently, the US side was quite chuffed with the outcome: “They tried to make enough of a group so that it would make a splash, but in our view, it’s more like a ripple.”

    In the end, the Irish statement announcing its intentions quite clearly shows that the Irish position soon emerged as an Irish government/US State Department position or, in short, a US State Department position.

    Let’s start with the “hostages”:

    It is long past time for a ceasefire, for the unconditional release of hostages and for unhindered access for humanitarian aid.
    and,

    Let me be clear that Ireland condemns the barbaric massacre carried out by Hamas on October 7th last. Civilians attacked and murdered. Hostages taken in the most brutal and terrifying of circumstances, including a young Israeli-Irish child.

    We call again for all hostages to be immediately returned to the arms of their loved ones.”

    Harris is referring here to more than one hundred Israeli hostages held by Hamas. Nowhere in his statement does he even refer to the 5,200 Palestinians hostages, including at least 170 children held up to October 6, 2023, nor to the 7,350 more hostages taken by Israel since that date.

    Move on to “children”:

    Children are innocent. The children of Israel. The children of Palestine. They deserve peace.”

    Look at the order. Yet, the killings are in a different order – 10,651 Palestinians were slaughtered by Israel in the 23 years up to 7 October 2023, including 2,270 children and 656 women (Israel’s B’Tselem figures). That’s 460 a year. In that period Israel was exterminating Palestinians at the rate of 8:1 and children at the rate of 16:1.

    The figures since 7 October are so horrific that they cannot even be accurately counted – on the Palestinian side. That is before we even start to think about starvation and denial of medical and other essential requirements, the destruction of medical facilities, injuries and the unrelenting terror.

    Now we get to the “two state solution”:

    “It is a statement of unequivocal support for a two-State solution – the only credible path to peace and security for Israel, for Palestine and for their peoples.” (note the order again)

    “A two-state solution is the only way out of the generational cycles of violence, retaliation and resentment, where so many wrongs can never make a right.”

    It is not for me to determine what is best for the Palestinian people but when the chief enablers of the barbarism against the Palestinian people tell you that there is only one solution – a two state solution – it is legitimate to constructively analyse that position. However, when the Irish government – in unison with the chief enablers of the barbarism – insists that this is the only solution, it becomes an imperative.

    The fact is that large numbers of Palestinians have always, and still, oppose the Oslo Accords and the concept of a two state solution. Indeed, a large part of the reason for the successful election of Hamas in Gaza was its opposition to those concepts. Yet, the Irish government and the US government insist this is the ONLY way forward.

    However, Ulster says NO! Ooops, I have strayed into that other unresolved statehood issue – the little matter of the British-occupied six counties in the province of Ulster in the north of Ireland.

    Sorry, Israel says NO! NEVER! to a two state solution with Netanyahu boasting that “everyone knows that I am the one who for decades blocked the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger our existence.”

    Despite the clearly stated and unequivocal refusal of Israel to even consider a two state solution, the Irish and US governments insist that it is the ONLY option. So, Ireland has now recognised the state of Palestine but retains the right to tell them what to do in step with the US government telling them what to do: the-two-state-no-other-option option is the only option.

    The real irony is that in fighting so hard for Palestinian statehood and sovereignty, the Irish government – as usual – entirely sacrificed its own statehood and sovereignty as it crawled on its belly to the US State Department begging for some understanding for the little pickle it found itself in. The fact is that the Irish government would not dare step one inch outside the well-established boundaries that have been set for it by the US authorities.

    Yet, the Irish government is successfully strutting its stuff – virtually unchallenged – about how brave it is, what a wonderful defender of the oppressed it is, what a promoter of peace it is as it crawls back from its ‘consultations’ with the worst offender of all those concepts the world has ever known.

    Now that Palestine is sorted, perhaps we could look to seeking statehood and sovereignty for Ireland? The farcical position of the Irish government leading a charge on Palestinian statehood while simultaneously begging forgiveness and understanding from the despots who rule the US (and who think they rule the world) and with an on-going British occupation of part of our country, has not entirely gone unnoticed. One thing is certain, the Irish government will not lead that charge.

    The post When will Ireland recognise Ireland as a state? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • A 5/31/2024 article in CounterPunch returns to the question of the death toll of the genocide in Gaza, and the gross undercount of deaths by almost every agency imaginable, even the ones in Gaza itself. I suggest further elaboration.

    200,000 was the number dead that Ralph Nader estimated at the beginning of March. It has to be double that now. How many thousands of pregnant women and their fetuses and newborn have died? How many diabetics or others needing medication or special diets or treatment? But even those without special conditions are dying because they can’t give up food and water.

    We have reached the stage where the number of starving or dehydrated persons is so high that they have no defense against common diseases or mild injuries. Why are they not reported? Because there is no one to record them, of course. The hospitals and clinics are largely a memory. Potable water is a luxury. I’m banned from X and FB, but I imagine you’ve seen the living and dying skeletons that I predicted months ago. I see them mainly on Telegram. The international agencies report that nearly all the population is food insecure, and a majority are malnourished. It’s a matter of time.

    Israel would like to move faster. I’m not sure why they don’t. Perhaps they’re afraid that world reaction will graduate to more forceful measures, but I see no indication that this is the case. With the exception of Yemen and some non-state actors, no one seems willing to resort to physical force. Members of the US Congress and figures in the Biden administration have even encouraged Israel to “finish the job”. Certainly, they have no moral qualms.

    Are they worried that they will run out of Jews? Part of the purpose of killing off the Palestinians was to assure that Jews will be significantly more numerous in “greater Israel” (AKA Palestine). That clearly is not working. It is far more likely that more Jews have fled Israel than Palestinians have been reduced by genocide. In fact, even the effective Jewish inhabited area has been reduced in both the north and the south.

    Worse still, Israel grossly underestimated the capability of the Palestinian resistance and its partners, and overestimated its own. Hamas and its allies clearly understood and planned for Israel’s reaction, while Israel had little appreciation for their adversary. So much for the strategy of disproportionate force. Israel is unaccustomed to taking so many casualties, which are in any case unknown. No one believes the official count and resorting to foreign mercenaries.

    Israel is also dissolving from within. Who’s buying Israeli anymore, except the dwindling community of true believers? What economy is left consists largely of shoveling American money into Israeli furnaces. Meanwhile, Israelis are fighting among themselves for desperate solutions to their intractable problems. The powerful international network of faithful sayanim will remain in place (who likes to give up power?) and will continue to manage the controls. But other Jews will object to being associated with such persons, weakening the support for, and the effectiveness of, the Zionist dreamightmare.

    Israel is clearly losing, but the rate of its demise will depend on factors that are difficult to predict, and even harder to control. Nevertheless, if Israel survives this miscalculation in the short term, it will only do so as a smaller, more fanatical remnant of its former self.

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  • It was much like witnessing a boy killing flies, with a slight afterthought of apology.  The spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, did little to acquit himself, or the cause, as to why more Palestinian civilians had been indulgently killed in yet another Israeli air strike. “Despite our efforts to minimize civilian casualties during the strike, the fire that broke out was unexpected and unintended … Our investigation seeks to determine what may have caused such a large fire to ignite.”

    The release commences with the usual garnish.  The strike, despite resulting in deaths in a camp of displaced Palestinians in Tal al-Sultan, was soberly designated and professionally targeted.  It was successful.  Two Hamas terrorists had been procedurally “eliminated” (in the social media release, the IDF proudly places the word upon the heads of Yassin Rabia and Khaled Nagar).  “The strike was based on precise intelligence,” Hagari tells us.  Those killed had, in turn, killed Israelis.  They were having a meeting.  “Their deaths saved lives.”

    Away from the glove handling reflections of Hagari, the returns of the May 26 strike showed that Palestinian civilians were also seen as miscellaneous detritus, fundamentally dispensable.  The butchery is now a matter of record: 46 dead civilians, including 23 women, children and the elderly.  All on a sliver of territory fast becoming the most famous real estate of death on the planet.  It’s a particularly bloody ratio for killing two alleged terrorists.

    In a statement on May 29 from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, various rapporteurs, including such figures as Francesca Albanese, responsible for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, to Ben Saul, charged with the task of promoting human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, expressed their dismay.  “Harrowing images of destruction, displacement and death have emerged from Rafah, including infants torn apart and people burnt alive.”  Such reports indicated “that the strikes were indiscriminate and disproportionate, with people trapped inside burning plastic tents, leading to a horrific casualty toll.”

    The Israelis have been told by a number of international bodies, entities, and sympathisers, with repeated urgency, that its current murderous efforts are simply not worth it.  The Rafah front presents further calamitous risks.  The toll, notably in striking camps of civilians displaced by prior bombings and military engagements, would be too great.  The reputational toll, likewise.  The slaughter that pads out and packs morgues; the bodies of women and children that seem to multiply with pestilential cruelty; the incidents of pure callousness dressed in a décor of euphemism: We target, and we target well; the rest is accidental or unavoidable.

    The International Court of Justice, in yet another ruling on Israel’s campaign in Gaza, recently concluded that the military offensive in Rafah, along with “any other action in the Rafah governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” be “immediately” halted.  It also ordered Israel to open the Rafah crossing and permit UN officials to enter Gaza and report back to the court within a month to verify compliance.

    The ICJ also noted the concerns of UN officials about the risks arising from any military assault on Rafah, one that would put “hundreds of thousands of people … at imminent risk of death”.  Such risks had already “started to materialize and will intensify even further if the operation continues”.

    Israel’s politicians and military personnel – at least those lacking candour – always hit upon the same formula in such instances.  It is one noted by such unflagging scribes as the late Robert Fisk: the justification of violence with seemingly sound process, decency with the stuffing of crime.  A trained pupil in such efforts is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  “Despite our utmost efforts not to harm innocent civilians, last night, there was a tragic mistake.”  When compared with his previous statements equating all Palestinians to actors behind a terrorist cause, one that would, in turn, give birth to a terrorist state, the element of mistake is less relevant than the desire to conclude the task at hand.

    The next instalment of the performance involves the mandatory investigation that yields no culprits, no charges, and no prosecutions.  “The details of the incident are still under investigation, which we are committed to conducting to the fullest extent,” gabbled Major-General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi at a news conference, noting that the IDF “regrets any harm to non-combatants during the war.”

    Such a method is also approved by Israel’s staunchest ally.  “You cannot reach a conclusion about the results of these investigations in the middle of a conflict,” reasoned White House spokesman John Kirby.  Why, it should be asked, bother?

    The Israeli response to attacks on its citizens on October 7 last year, increasingly enfeebled by reality, long ago moved into the realm of farce.  But farce and advertising tend to be part of the same show, and the advertising about the ongoing campaign in Gaza by the Israeli forces continues to rattle the swill bucket.

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  • I suppose my title could have been couched in the singular form, as Hermann Hesse, the Nobel Prize winning German/Swiss author, did with his collection of anti-war essays about World War I (the war to end all wars that didn’t), If The War Goes On . . .  

    Or more appropriately, I might have eliminated that conditional “If” since it seems Pollyannish.

    It’s a long hard road, this anti-war business.  During the first Cold War and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis in the early sixties when Kennedy and Krushchev narrowly avoided blowing the world to smithereens, Bob Dylan put it right in his fierce song, Masters of War:

    (Verse 1)

    Come, you masters of war
    You that build the big guns
    You that build the death planes
    You that build all the bombs
    You that hide behind walls
    You that hide behind desks
    I just want you to know
    I can see through your masks

    (Verse 3)

    Like Judas of old
    You lie and deceive
    A world war can be won
    You want me to believe
    But I see through your eyes
    And I see through your brain
    Like I see through the water
    That runs down my drain

    Indeed there is a system of war that guarantees that the various wars go on and on ad infinitum, and they are linked.  It is why the warfare state has killed our anti-war leaders, first and foremost JFK for turning against war in the last year of his presidency.  Then in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy in quick succession.  It is why if you dare to look around the world today, you will see that there is a series of wars happening, not only in the obvious places like Ukraine and Gaza, but in places that you may never have heard of, and if you peek a bit further into their causes, you will discover that a familiar culprit with 750 plus military bases around the world has its hand in most of them – the United States of America.

    These wars have their cold and hot phases.  There are days when the corporate media let them sleep and other times when the same media wake them a bit, but never enough to wake their readers up to the reality of the deadly game.  That is the media’s job as stenographers for the warfare state.  Wars being essentially the health of the state, as Randolph Bourne wrote long ago, they provide vast profits for the military-industrial complex/Wall St., whether they are in preparation or in operation, awake or asleep, hot or cold.  Ray McGovern, the former CIA analyst with a moral conscience, has aptly named this vast interlocking propaganda apparatus the military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think-tank complex, MICIMATT.  It is a complex that blatantly serves the interests of the masters of war who “ain’t worth the blood/that runs in [their] your veins,” in Dylan’s words.

    The preparation for war is war.  What is prepared must be used up, so other weapons can be prepared to be used up, so other weapons can be prepared to be used up, and on and on until one day no one is left to use anything, for the world will be used up in a nuclear conflagration.  These weapons are produced in nice clean factories that pay good wages to people who take their pay and go their way, giving their souls to the killers.  For the U.S. economy is built on the waging of wars so continuous that it is nearly impossible to find a break between its hot and cold phases, or what seems like decent employment and the diabolic.  They are so intertwined.  It is a system of capitalistic finance, a revolutionary system that builds to destroy.

    The U.S spends nearly $900  billion dollars annually on “defense” spending; this is more than China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, the U.K., Germany, France, South Korea, and Japan combined.  The U.S.A. is a warfare state; it’s as simple as that.  And whether they choose to be aware of it or not, the vast majority of Americans support this killing machine by their insouciance and silence.  That their country is spending up to 2 trillion dollars on modernizing its nuclear weapons disturbs them  not.  It is a death cult.  Some – as I myself have done mistakenly – talk about the “deep state” or some other deceptive phrase that conceals the truth that the official state is the “deep state.”  It stares us in the face, but many refuse to stare it back down.  It is too obvious, standing, as it does, in the way of a life of illusions.

    And what is equally apparent today – or should be if one is not asleep – is that because of the war policies of the U.S., the chances of another world war and the use of nuclear weapons is rising by the day.  Despite all its denials to the contrary, the US/NATO is pushing for open warfare with Russia that will involve the use of nuclear weapons.

    Our masters of war are pushing us toward a nuclear abyss.

    In a recent perceptive article, “Russia and China Have Had Enough,” Pepe Escobar writes truths many prefer not to hear.  That there is no split between Russia and China but the opposite – a rock solid Russia-China strategic partnership and a determination to oppose and defeat the U.S./UK/NATO hybrid war tactics across Eurasia and the Middle East.  That the more these U.S.-led forces attempt to destroy Russia, the more the expanding alliances involved in the Shanghai Cooperative Agreement (SCO) and the expanding BRICS partnerships of emerging economies (originally just Brazil, Russia, India, and then South Africa; now also Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, United Arab Emirates, with many more countries waiting to join) will gain in power.  In Escobar’s words, “. . . the Global Majority is on the move: Russia is closely cooperating, increasingly, with scores of nations in West Asia, wider Asia, Africa and Latin America.”

    Despite this fact, the United States and its allies blithely continue as if their control of the world order is secure.  That they can butcher and badger the world into submission.  The insane are usually deluded, but when they control nuclear weapons, the people of the world need to awaken.

    Ray McGovern, a Russia expert, (see raymcgovern.com) has echoed Escobar on the absurdity of the Russian China split; has emphasized how Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians has made it an isolated but desperate pariah state; and how the U.S. war against Russia in Ukraine is leading to the increased use of  U.S. tactical nuclear weapons that could lead to full-scale nuclear war.  He is not alone in this warning.

    There are many signs that we are moving toward a nuclear war with calls for U.S./NATO to support more strikes inside Russia, crossing a very dangerous Russian red line.  Russia has made it very clear they will respond.  As politicians of various stripes – French President Macron, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, et al. have ecstatically been urging the Biden administration, who needs no urging, to escalate the war in Ukraine by attacking Russia proper (“The time has come for allies to consider whether they should lift some of the restrictions they have put on the use of weapons they have donated to Ukraine,” Stoltenberg told The Economist.), Mike Whitney has written about a recent such attack that should send chills down everyone’s spines –  “Washington Attacks Key Elements of Russia’s Nuclear Umbrella Threatening Entire Global Security Architecture.” – but  since the corporate media ignore it, most will dream away and get their barbecues ready for Fourth of July celebrations.  They and the flag-dressed Dolly Parton can sing all they want about when Johnny comes marching home again, but Dolly and no one will be jolly if there are no homes to march to, no Johnnies marching anywhere but to death, no anything.  Just a wasteland.

    Michel Chossudovsky, Ray McGovern, Eva Bartlett, Craig Murray, Patrick Lawrence, Vanessa Beeley, Pepe Escobar, Oliver Stone, Andrew Napolitano, Craig Paul Roberts, Chris Hedges, Alastair Crooke, Caitlin Johnstone, Peter Koenig, Finian Cunningham, Diana Johnstone, Lew Rockwell, and so many other sane but marginalized writers whose names I am omitting as I write quickly, are warning us of our closeness to nuclear annihilation.  Cassandras all, I fear.  Marginalized prophets such as writer and antinuclear activist James W. Douglass (Lightning East to West, JFK and the Unspeakable, etc.) have been issuing such warnings for decades.  It is understandable that so many turn away from such warnings, for the thought of a nuclear war induces deep anxiety hard to control.  But unless the vast majority can break through such reticence and see through the official propaganda, the world will be destroyed by madmen sooner or later.  The signs today all point to sooner, for we are on the edge of the abyss.

    Former British diplomat Alistair Crooke, in a recent article – The brink of dissolution: Neurosis in the West as the levee breaks – writes about how the Biden administration’s policy toward Russia-China, not to say Israel-Palestine, being nothing more than more of the same, is stupid, self-defeating, and very dangerous.  Rather than accepting that its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is a disaster, the U.S. is escalating the conflict to a terrifying level.  Rather than accepting the obvious deep alliance between China and Russian exemplified in the recent hug between Putin and Xi and their joint 8,000 word joint statement, Biden has said, “Russia is in a very, very difficult spot right now. They are being squeezed by China.” 

    It doesn’t get any stupider.  But when more of the same doesn’t work and you can’t accept the reality of a changing world order, you do more of the same.  Crooke writes:

    The paradox is that Team Biden – wholly inadvertently – is midwifing the birth of a ‘new world’. It is doing so by dint of its crude opposition to parturition. The more the western élites push against the birthing – through ‘saving Zionism’; ‘saving European Ukraine’ and by crushing dissent – perversely they accelerate the foundering of Leviathan.

    President Xi’s double farewell hug for President Putin following their 16-17 May summit nonetheless sealed the birth – even the New York Times, with customary self-absorption, termed the warm embrace by Xi as ‘defiance of the West’.

    The root of the coming dissolution stems precisely from the shortcoming that the NY Times headline encapsulates in its disdainful labelling of the seismic shift as base anti-westernism.

    More of the same, yes, that is Biden’s approach, inflamed regularly by the anti-Russian hatred spewed by The New York Times and its ilk.  It is an obsession bordering on full-fledged madness, yet it is integral to the belief that the U.S. is an empire and will remain one while the rest of the world can go to hell.  Such a mindset is behind the U.S.’s abrogating all the nuclear weapons treaties that provided a semblance of security that nuclear weapons would not be used.

    Crooke ends his piece with these sobering words:

    Put plainly, with the U.S. unable to exit or to moderate its determination to preserve its hegemony, Lavrov [Sergey Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister] sees the prospect for increased western weapons provision for Ukraine. The discourse of military escalation is in fashion in Europe (of that there is no doubt); but both in the Middle East and Ukraine, western policy is in deep trouble. There must be doubts whether the West has either the political will, or the internal unity, to pursue this aggressive course. Dragging wars are not traditionally thought to be ‘voter friendly’ when campaigning reaches its peak.

    Let me repeat that last understated sentence: “Dragging wars are not traditionally thought to be ‘voter friendly’ when campaigning reaches its peak.”  And so?  More of the same?

    Ray McGovern suggest what is more likely:

    Israel [is] becoming a dangerous pariah; Ukraine/US/NATO a dangerous loser. As Israel defies the UN, and as the “exceptional” geniuses around Biden ignore Kremlin warnings regarding provocations re Ukraine, the likelihood increases for US use of tactical nukes.

    Desperadoes do desperate things.  In Biden and Netanyahu we have two blood-thirsty nihilists at the end of their ropes.  These masters of war make me think that a better title for this piece would have been:

    If the World Goes On.

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  • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant at a press conference in Tel Aviv on October 28, 2023. POOL / VIA REUTER

    Senator Lindsay Graham was bursting with contempt for the International Criminal Court (ICC) when he grilled Secretary of State Blinken at a May 21 Congressional hearing. Wagging his finger, he warned that, if the ICC gets away with issuing arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, “we are next.”

    The audience at the hearing, stacked with CODEPINK pro-Palestine supporters, burst out in applause at the notion of the US being hauled before the world’s highest court. “You can clap all you want,” an angry Graham retorted, “but they tried to come after our soldiers in Afghanistan.” Graham was thankful that in the Afghan case “reason prevailed” when the case was dropped, adding that the US must level sanctions against the ICC “not only to protect our friends in Israel but to protect ourselves.”

    Graham was referring to the 2019 efforts of former ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to hold both the Taliban and the US accountable for war crimes in Afghanistan. When Graham said that “reason prevailed,” he really meant that US thuggery prevailed because the Trump administration brazenly imposed sanctions against ICC officials, denying them visas to the US and freezing their assets in US banks. President Biden lifted the sanctions but did so with the tacit understanding that the court would not resume the probe of US crimes in Afghanistan. The message from both Democratic and Republican presidents was clear: Do not dare hold the US to the same standards you use for others.

    The International Criminal Court was founded in 1998 as the result of a lifetime’s work by an American (and Jewish) international lawyer, Benjamin Ferencz, rooted in his experience as an investigator and chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg tribunals after the Second World War. Ben passed away in 2023 at the age of 103, but the universal jurisdiction that the court is exercising in this case is the fruition of his life’s work to hold war criminals accountable under international law, no matter what country they are from or who their victims are.

    Enter Israel. The ICC has been building a case against Israel for nearly a decade. A recent blockbuster investigation by the Guardian and two Israeli-based news outlets revealed a shocking almost decade-long secret campaign against the court by Israeli intelligence agencies, who surveilled, hacked, pressured, smeared and threatened ICC officials in an effort to derail the court’s inquiries.

    Despite the pressure, on May 20, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan made his request for Israeli and Hamas arrest warrants. Among the charges against the Israeli officials are extermination, using starvation as a method of warfare, willfully causing great suffering, and intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population.

    Prosecutor Karim Khan’s request has now gone to a panel of three judges who will determine in the coming weeks whether the request is granted. But pro-Israel forces in the US are trying their best to throw sand in the wheels of justice with threats of new sanctions.

    One ultimatum already came from Senator Tom Cotton and 11 other Republican senators in a toxic April 24 letter. “Target Israel and we will target you,” the senators signaled to the ICC. “If you move forward with the measures indicated in the report, we will move to end all American support for the ICC, sanction your employees and associates, and bar you and your families from the United States.” The letter concluded with a hair-raising: “You have been warned.”

    The Biden administration has responded to the ICC by flip flopping like a fish on dry land. On May 20, the White House put out a statement calling the ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders “outrageous”, adding “Whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas.  We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.” Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called the request “shameful.” At a hearing on May 22, he told Senator Graham that he welcomed working with him on efforts to sanction the ICC.

    But on May 28, National Security Council Communications Advisor John Kirby said at a White House press briefing, “We don’t believe that sanctions against the ICC is the right approach here.” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who spoke after Kirby, reiterated that message. She said that legislation against the ICC “is not something the administration is going to support” and that “sanctions on the ICC are not an effective or appropriate tool to address U.S. concerns.”

    This new position from the White House will make it easier for more Democrats to say no to the bills that will be introduced as soon as Congress returns from recess on June 3. Already, dueling statements are coming out from Congressional members. While Senate Majority Leader Schumer called the ICC appeal “reprehensible” and Democrat Joe Manchin joined with Republicans to call for visa bans for ICC officials and sanctions on the international body, Senator Bernie Sanders defended the court, saying, “The ICC is doing its job. It’s doing what it is supposed to do. We cannot only apply international law when it is convenient.”

    On the House side, progressives voiced support for the ICC.  Rep. Cori Bush said, “Seeking arrest warrants for human rights abuses is an important step towards accountability. It’s shameful for U.S. officials to threaten the ICC while continuing to send weapons that enable war crimes.” Rep. Mark Pocan gave a gutsy response, saying, “If Netanyahu comes to address Congress, I would be more than glad to show the ICC the way to the House floor to issue that warrant.”

    While most Republicans and pro-Israel hawks in the Democratic Party will likely join hands to hammer the international court, President Biden may ultimately feel pressured to adopt the position best articulated by Senator Van Hollen. “It is fine to express opposition to a possible judicial action, but it is absolutely wrong to interfere in a judicial matter by threatening judicial officers, their family members and their employees with retribution. This thuggery is something befitting the mafia, not U.S. senators.” It is also not befitting the White House, especially one that has been such a willing partner to Israel’s war crimes.

    The post The ICC Takes on Israel and the US Congressional Mafia first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Professor Jeffrey Sachs is the President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He is the author of many best selling books, including The End of Poverty and The Ages of Globalization. Here he is with probably the smartest and most accurate assessment of the Ukraine war, and American foreign policy more broadly, ever caught on tape.

    The post The Untold History of the Cold War, CIA Coups Around the World, and COVID’s Origin first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • World heat is worse than ever. The entire planet is sweating.

    Every summer is hot but never like this. In America, it’s a national election year in the face of global record heat. What are candidates’ positions on CO2-infused heat?

    Graph by Brian Brettschneider, PhD, Climatologist

    It’s extremely significant that global heat is just as bad in the world’s oceans, which have absorbed 85-90% of planetary heat, serving as a heat reservoir for decades. But now, the oceans are starting to strut their hot stuff. According to Copernicus, April was the 13th month in a row that global sea surface temperatures between 60 degrees latitude south and 60 degrees latitude north have been the warmest on record for the month. Astoundingly, nearly 30% of the world’s oceans were above 28C (82.4°F) too hot for a bath, in April 2024, setting a record. Both the Mediterranean and Black Seas also had sharp upward trends for the month. Has civilization lost its ocean heat cushion?

    Consequently, heat deaths are on the rise and look to escalate, by a lot, and soon. This is a worldwide crisis like none other. It requires world leadership to do something, soon, like the day before yesterday. But, how soon and will it be enough and who’s willing?

    According to World Weather Attribution d/d May 14, 2024: Consistent sweltering temperatures well above 40C (104F) are creating havoc from Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria in the West to Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines in the East, and even though  heat-related death tolls are typically underreported, hundreds of heat-related deaths have been reported, schools have been closed, and citizens warned to stay indoors.

    Moreover, two studies by World Weather Attribution (WWA) “found that human-induced climate change influenced the events, making them around 30 times more likely and much hotter.”

    Heat knows no borders. According to WLRN South Florida d/d May 23, 2024: “Heat Dome Leads to Sweltering Temperatures in Mexico, Central America, and US South”: “This extreme heat is occurring in a world that is quickly warming due to greenhouse gases, which come from the burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal.” For example, Miami International Airport is running 10°F hotter than normal at 96°F.

    Mexico City is nearly a war zone scenario with record high temperatures which, combined with pollution, leads to multiple city-wide protests, including by police: “A group of police agents blocked six lanes of traffic Wednesday on a main Mexico City avenue, saying their barracks lacked water for a week and the bathrooms were unusable. ” (Ibid.) Water has been trucked for hospitals and to firefighting teams. Numerous birds and animals in the wild of Mexico have dropped dead on the spot.

    All Central America is exposed to the same horrendous moist heat. And people wonder why they migrate North.

    Yale Climate Connections d/d April 29, 2024 listed some global warming samplers (1) corals are bleaching in every corner of the ocean, threatening its web of life (2) extreme drought in southern Africa leaves millions hungry (3) West African heat wave: high humidity made 40°C feel like 50°C, which is a killer (4) discomfort may increase: Asia’s heat wave scorches hundreds of millions (5) record heat in Europe, Asia closes another extremely warm month for the planet (6) Europe unprepared for rapidly growing climate risks, report finds (7) China breaks heat records as sweltering weather baked cities from north to south.

    “The era of global boiling has arrived,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned. “Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning.” (Source: Climate Action, World Economic Forum, August 4, 2023.)

    António Guterres “nailed it” nine months ago. Meanwhile, at some point in time soon, the major nations of the world will hit panic buttons and go all-in supplanting fossil fuels with renewables as quickly as possible. They’ll be forced to do this. After all, when police protest in the streets, as in Mexico City, who’s left to patrol?

    It’s a national election year in America, and climate change should be a major political issue as the heat is on for the whole world to see like never before, and it will get worse, as stated by the UN secretary-general. What’s the political landscape in America? According to the mainstream publication Yahoo! Finance d/d Feb. 15, 2024: “MAGA Republicans Have a 920-Page Plan to Make Climate Change Worse.” Isn’t that just great!

    Here’s the opening paragraph of Yahoo! Finance’s write-up: “When former President Donald Trump exited the Oval Office in January 2021, he left behind a record of environmental rollbacks unrivaled in US history. Over his 1,461 days as commander-in-chief, Trump replaced, eliminated, or otherwise dismantled more than 100 environmental rules – at least — from repealing the Clean Air Act to allowing coal plants to dump toxic wastewater into lakes and rivers to declaring open season on endangered gray wolves.” Several of the hatcheted rules were from Richard Nixon’s administration.

    Subsequently, the Biden administration rolled back a lot of Trump’s hatchet job.

    “Had all Trump’s policies gone into effect, the nonpartisan Rhodium Group estimated at the end of 2020, they would have added an additional 1.8 gigatons of CO2-equivalent to the atmosphere by 2035 – more than the annual energy emissions of Germany, Britain, and Canada combined. But even though we never felt the full brunt of them, the medical journal The Lancet estimated that the policies undertaken during his presidency were responsible for 22,000 deaths in 2019 alone due to sharp increases in things like asthma, heart disease, and lung cancer.” (Ibid.)

    Project 2025 is the Heritage Foundation’s roadmap for MAGA Republicans going forward: “The plan’s proposals include eviscerating existing climate programs and increasing reliance on fossil fuels. It emphatically repudiates efforts to decarbonize the economy and is a wholesale reversal of the progress made on climate policy over recent years.” (Source: “Project 2025 Tells us What a Second Trump Term Could Mean for Climate Policy. It Isn’t Pretty“, WBUR nonprofit news org, March 27, 2024.)

    Well, that’s great to know, but here’s the real issue: “Much of the voting public is disturbingly unaware of both Biden’s climate record and the assault that Project 2025 would marshal against it.” (Ibid.)

    Make America Great Again. Really?

    The post Deadly Heat in a Political Jungle first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Robert Hunziker.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.


  • Iri and Toshi Maruki, XV Nagasaki, 1982, from The Hiroshima Panels.

    For Prabir, who is now out of jail.

    On the evening of 14 May, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken climbed onstage at Barman Dictat in Kyiv, Ukraine, to pick up an electric guitar and join the Ukrainian punk band 19.99. Ukrainians, he said, are ‘fighting not just for a free Ukraine, but for a free world’. Blinken and 19.99 then played the chorus of Neil Young’s ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’, entirely ignoring the implications of its lyrics – much like Donald Trump, who, to Young’s irritation, used the chorus in his 2015–2016 presidential campaign.

    In February 1989, the day after Young received the news that his band’s tour in the USSR fell through, he penned the song’s lyrics, resting on his criticisms of the Reagan years and the first month of George H. W. Bush’s presidency. While it sounds patriotic on the surface, that song – like Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’ (1984) – is deeply critical of the hierarchies and humiliations of capitalist society.

    The three verses of ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’ paint a picture of despair (‘people shufflin’ their feet/ people sleepin’ in their shoes’) defined by the drug epidemic plaguing the poor (a woman ‘puts the kid away/ and she’s gone to get a hit’), the collapse of educational opportunities (‘there’s one more kid/ that will never go to school’), and a growing population that lives on the street (‘we got a thousand points of light/ for the homeless man’). Springsteen’s song, written in the shadow of the US war on Vietnam (‘so they put a rifle in my hand/ sent me off to a foreign land/ to go and kill the yellow man’), also captured the strangulation of the working class in the US, many of whom were unable to get a job after returning from a war they did not want (‘down in the shadow of the penitentiary/ out by the gas fires of the refinery/ I’m ten years burning down the road/ nowhere to run ain’t got nowhere to go’).

    These are songs of anguish, not anthems of war. To chant ‘born in the USA’ or ‘keep on rockin’ in the free world’ does not evoke a sense of pride in the Global North but a fierce criticism of its ruthless wars. ‘Keep on rockin’ in the free world’ is pickled in irony. Blinken did not get it, nor did Trump. They want the allure of rock and roll, but not the acidity of its lyrics. They do not understand that Neil Young’s 1989 song is the soundtrack of the resistance to the US wars that followed against Panama (1989–1999), Iraq (1990–1991), Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2001–2021), Iraq (2003–2011), and many more.


    Iri and Toshi Maruki, XIII Death of the American Prisoners of War, 1971, from The Hiroshima Panels.

    Blinken went to Kiev to celebrate the passing of three bills in the US House of Representatives that appropriate $95.3 billion for the militaries of Israel, Taiwan, Ukraine, and the United States. This is in addition to the more than $1.5 trillion that the US spends on its military every year. It is obscene that the US continues to supply Israel with deadly munitions for its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, including the $26.4 billion it promised to Israel in the new bills while feigning concern for the starvation and slaughter of Palestinians. It is ghastly that the US continues to prevent peace talks between Ukraine and Russia while funding the former’s demoralised military (including $60.8 billion for weapons in the new bills alone) as the US seeks to use the conflict to ‘see Russia weakened’.

    At the other end of Eurasia, the US has, similarly, used the issue of Taiwan in its efforts to see China ‘weakened’. That is why this supplemental appropriation allots $8.1 billion for ‘Indo-Pacific security’, including $3.9 billion in armaments for Taiwan and $3.3 billion for submarine construction in the US. Taiwan is not alone as a potential frontline state in this pressure campaign against China: the newly formed Squad, made up of Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and the US, uses solvable conflicts between the Philippines and China as opportunities to weaponise dangerous manoeuvres with the hope of provoking a reaction from China that would give the US an excuse to attack it.


    Iri and Toshi Maruki, XIV Crows, 1972, from The Hiroshima Panels.

    Our new dossier, The New Cold War is Sending Tremors Through Northeast Asia, published in collaboration with the International Strategy Centre (Seoul, South Korea) and No Cold War, argues that ‘the US-led New Cold War against China is destabilising Northeast Asia along the region’s historic fault lines as part of a broader militarisation campaign that extends from Japan and South Korea, through the Taiwan Strait and the Philippines, all the way to Australia and the Pacific Islands’. The bogeyman for this build-up in what the US calls the ‘Indo-Pacific’ (a term developed to draw India into the alliance to encircle China) is North Korea, whose nuclear and missile programmes are used to justify asymmetrical mobilisation along the Pacific edge of Asia. That South Korea’s military budget in 2023 ($47.9 billion) was more than twice North Korea’s GDP ($20.6 billion) in the same year is just one example that highlights this imbalance. This use of North Korea, the dossier argues, ‘has always been a fig leaf for US containment strategies – first against the Soviet Union and today against China’. (You can read the dossier in Korean here).


    Iri and Toshi Maruki, XII Floating Lanterns, 1968, from The Hiroshima Panels.

    In the early years of the US development of the ‘Indo-Pacific strategy’, Chinese scholars such as Hu Bo, Chen Jimin, and Feng Zhennan argued that the term was merely conceptual, limited by the contradictions between the countries involved in the development of the Chinese containment strategy. Over the past few years, however, a new view has developed that these shifts in the Pacific pose a serious threat to China and that the Chinese must respond with bluntness to prevent any provocation. It is this situation, characterised by the US’s creation of alliances that are designed to threaten China (the Quad, AUKUS, JAKUS, and the Squad) alongside China’s refusal to bend before the hyper-imperialism of the Global North, that creates a serious threat in Asia.

    The last section of the dossier, ‘A Path to Peace in Northeast Asia’, offers a window into the hopes of the people’s movements in Okinawa (Japan), the Korean peninsula, and China to find a pathway to peace. Five simple principles anchor this path: end the dangerous alliances, US-led war games in the region, and US intervention into the region, and support unity across struggles in the region as well as frontline struggles to end militarisation in Asia. The latter point is being fought on several fronts by those living near Okinawa’s Kadena Air Base and Henoko Bay as well as South Korea’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defence installation and Jeju Naval Base, to name a few.


    Iri and Toshi Maruki, X Petition, 1955, from The Hiroshima Panels.

    Several years ago, I visited the Maruki Gallery outside Higashi-Matsuyama city in Saitama, where I saw the remarkable murals made by Ira Maruki (1901–1995) and Toshi Maruki (1912–2000) to remember the terrible violence of the nuclear bombs that the US government dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These murals, in the traditional Japanese ink wash style sumi-e, depict the immense human toll of the ugliness of modern warfare. Thanks to the chief curator Yukinori Okamura and the international coordinator Yumi Iwasaki, we were able to include some of these murals in our dossier and in this newsletter.

    In 1980, the South Korean military dictatorship arrested Kim Nam-ju (1945–1994) and thirty-five other leftists on the grounds that they were involved in the National Liberation Front Preparation Committee. Kim was a poet and a translator who brought Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks and Ho Chi Minh’s writings into Korean. While in Gwangju Prison for eight years, Kim wrote a range of powerful poetry, which he was able to smuggle out for publication. One of those poems, ‘Things Have Really Changed’, is about the suffocation of the ambitions of the Korean people over their own peninsula.

    Under Japanese imperialism, if Joseon people
    shouted ‘Long Live Independence!’,
    Japanese policemen came and took them away,
    Japanese prosecutors interrogated them,
    Japanese judges put them on trial.

    Japan withdrew and the US stepped in.
    Now if Koreans
    say ‘Yankee Go Home’,
    Korean police come and take them away,
    Korean prosecutors interrogate them,
    Korean judges put them on trial.

    Things have really changed after liberation.
    Because I shouted ‘Drive out the foreign invaders!’,
    people from my own country
    arrested me, interrogated me, and put me on trial.

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  • Throwing caution to the wind, grasping the nettle, and every little smidgen of opportunity, Australia’s opposition leader, Peter Dutton, was thrilled to make a point in the gurgling tumult of the Israel-Hamas war.  Israel’s leaders, he surmised, had been hard done by the International Criminal Court’s meddlesome ways.  Best for Australia, he suggested, to cut ties to the body to show its solidarity for Israel.

    Dutton had taken strong issue with the announcement on May 20 by ICC prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan that requests for five arrest warrants had been sought in the context of the Israel-Hamas War. They included Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, the commander-in-chief of the Al-Qassam Brigades Mohammed Al-Masri, Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas Political Bureau, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant.

    The measure was roundly condemned by Israel’s closest ally, the United States.  US President Joe Biden’s statement called the inclusion of Israeli leaders “outrageous”.  There was “no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas.”  US lawmakers are debating steps to sanction ICC officials, while the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has promised to cooperate with the measure.

    The United Kingdom also struck the same note,  “There is no moral equivalence between a democratically elected government exercising its lawful right to self-defence and the actions of a terrorist group,” declared UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during a Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQ) session in the House of Commons.  When asked if he would, in the event of the warrants being issued, comply with the ICC and arrest the named individuals, a cold reply followed.  “When it comes to the ICC, this is a deeply unhelpful development … which of course is still subject to final decision.”

    Australia, despite being a close ally of Israel, has adopted a somewhat confused official response, one more of tepid caution rather than profound conviction.  Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese thought it unwise to even take a formal stance.  “I don’t comment on court processes in Australia, let alone court processes globally, that which Australia is not a party,” he told journalists.

    In light of what seemed like a fudge, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade thought it appropriate to issue a clarifying statement that “there is no equivalence between Israel and Hamas.”  Treasurer Jim Chalmers followed suit.  “There is no equivalence between Hamas the terrorist organisation and Israel, we have it really clear in condemning the actions of Hamas on October 7, we have made it clear we want to see hostages released, and we want to see the Israeli response comply completely with international humanitarian law.”

    Albanese’s opposite number preferred a punchier formula, coming out firmly on the side of Israel and donning gloves against the ICC and its “anti-Semitic stance”.  The PM had “squibbed it”, while his response had tarnished and damaged Australia’s “international relationships with like-minded nations”.  “The ICC,” Dutton insisted on May 23, “should reverse their decision and the prime minister should come out today to call for that instead of continuing to remain in hiding or continuing to dig a deeper hole for himself.”

    Opposition Liberal MP and former Australian ambassador to Israel, Dave Sharma, is also of the view that Australia examine “our options and our future co-operation with the court” if the arrest warrants were issued.  Swallowing whole the conventional argument that Israel was waging a principled war, he told Sky News that everything he had seen “indicates to me Israel is doing its utmost to comply with the principles of international humanitarian law”.

    The ears of Israeli officials duly pricked up.  Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister and Observer of its War Cabinet, Ron Dermer, was delighted to hear about Dutton’s views.  “I didn’t know the head of your opposition had said that,” Dermer told 7.30, “I applaud him for doing it.”

    In a sense, Dutton and his conservative colleague are expressing, with an unintended, brute honesty, Australia’s at times troubled relationship with international law and human rights.  Despite being an enthusiastic signatory and ratifier of conventions, Canberra has tended to blot its copybook over the years in various key respects.  Take for instance, the brazen contempt shown for protections guaranteed by the UN Refugee Convention, one evidenced by its savage “Turn Back the Boats” policy, the creation of concentration camps of violence and torture in sweltering Pacific outposts and breaching the principle of non-refoulement.

    On the subject of genocide, Australian governments had no appetite to domestically criminalise it till 2002, despite ratifying the UN Genocide Convention in 1949.  And as for the ICC itself, wariness was expressed by the Howard government about what the body would actually mean for Australian sovereignty.  Despite eventually ratifying the Rome Statute establishing the court, the sceptics proved a querulous bunch.  As then Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd noted, “John Howard is neither Arthur nor Martha on ratification of the International Criminal Court.”

    While serving as Home Affairs minister, Dutton preferred to treat his department as an annex of selective law and order indifferent to the rights and liberties of the human subject. For him, bodies like the ICC exist like a troublesome reminder that human rights do exist and should be the subject of protection, even at the international level.

    The post Australia’s Anti-ICC Lobby first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The legal world was abuzz.  The diplomatic channels of various countries raged and fizzed.  It had been rumoured that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with his cabinet colleagues, had been bracing themselves for a stinging intervention from the International Criminal Court, a body they give no credence or respect to.

    Then came the words from the Prosecutor of the ICC, Karim A.A. Khan on May 20, announcing that arrest warrants were being sought in the context of the Israel-Hamas War, benignly described as the “Situation in Palestine”, under the Rome Statute.  “On the basis of evidence collected and examined by my Office, I have reasonable grounds to believe that Benjamin NETANYAHU, the Prime Minister of Israel, and Yoav GALLANT, the Minister of Defence of Israel, bear criminal responsibility for […] war crimes and crimes against humanity on the territory of the State of Palestine (in the Gaza strip) from at least 8 October 2023”.

    Hamas figures responsible for the attacks of October 7 against Israel also feature.  They include the essential triumvirate: Hamas chief, Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Al-Masri, the commander-in-chief of Al-Qassam Brigades, and Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas Political Bureau.  All “bear responsibility for […] war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of Israel and the State of Palestine (on the Gaza Strip) from at least 7 October 2023”.

    On Israel’s part, Khan’s office points the accusing finger at such alleged war crimes as starvation, the wilful causing of “great suffering, or serious injury to body or health”, including cruel treatment, wilful killing or murder, the intentional direction of attacks against a civilian population, extermination, persecution and other inhumane acts falling within the Rome Statute “as crimes against humanity”.

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

    Khan acknowledges Israel’s innate right and marrow to self-defence.  He does not consider it estranged from the objects of international humanitarian law.  To divorce them would merely enliven barbarism.  The means Israel chose to achieve its military aims in Gaza, “namely, intentionally causing death, starvation, great suffering, and serious body or health of the civilian population – are criminal.”

    On the part of Hamas, the prosecutor cites extermination, murder, the taking of hostages, the use of rape and sexual violence, the resort to torture, cruel treatment and “[o]utrages upon personal dignity” as crimes worthy of investigation.  Khan finds that the accused individuals “planned and instigated the commission of crimes” on October 7 and had “through their own actions, including visits to hostages shortly after their kidnapping, acknowledged their responsibility for their crimes.”

    When law intrudes into the violence of war and conflict, the participants and instigators are rarely satisfied.  The matter becomes even more testy when international tribunals feature.  Concerns about power, bias, and an inappropriate coupling (or decoupling) of potential culprits abound.

    No doubt anticipating the fulminating response, Khan convened a panel of experts in international law to advise him whether his applications for arrest warrants met the threshold requirements of Article 58 of the Rome Statute.  It would be hard to dismiss the weighty credentials of a group made up of such figures as Lord Justice Fulford, Judge Theodor Meron and Baroness Helena Kennedy.

    None of this mattered in the catatonic rage arising from pairing the warring parties in the same effort.  The response reads like a decrypting key to hate and exceptionalism.  All wage war justly; all wage war righteously.  According to Netanyahu, Israel had suffered a “hit job”, with Khan “creating a false symmetry between the democratically elected leaders of Israel and the terrorist chieftains”.  The subtext is clear: democracies, at least those declaring themselves as such, are beyond reproach when fighting designated savages.

    On the side of the Middle East’s only nuclear power (officially undeclared) came the erroneous argument that lumping Hamas officials with Israeli cabinet members was tantamount to equivalence.  “The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous,” declared US President Joe Biden.  “And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas.”  Ditto the Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who thought the pairing “non-comprehensible”.

    The prosecutor implied no such thing, focusing on the profile of each of the individuals.  The allegations regarding Netanyahu and Gallant, for instance, keenly focus on starvation as a means of waging war, including broader applications of collective punishment against Gaza’s civilian population.  For the leaders of Hamas, the interest is on allegations of murder, sexual violence, extermination, torture, hostage taking and incidents of captivity.

    The trope of faultless democracy at war against terrorism is a common one.  The George W. Bush administration made incessant use of it in justifying illegal renditions and torture during the scandalously named Global War on Terror.  Memoranda from the White House and the US Justice Department gave nodding approval to such measures, arguing that “illegal combatants” deserved no human rights protections, notably under the Geneva Conventions.

    Unfortunately, many a just cause sprouts from crime, and the protagonists can always claim to be on the right side of history when the world takes notice of a plight.  Only at the conclusion of the peace accords can stock be taken, the egregiousness of it all accounted for.  Along the way, the law looks increasingly shabby, suffering in sulky silence.  These applications for arrest warrants are merely a modest measure to, pardon the pun, arrest that tendency.  It is now up to the pre-trial chamber of the ICC to take the next step.

    The post The Rages of Equivalence: The ICC Prosecutor, Israel and Hamas first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • There is one thing we should all be able to agree with Benjamin Netanyahu on: Any comparison between Israel’s war crimes and those of Hamas is, as the Israeli prime minister put it, “absurd and false” and a “distortion of reality”.Here’s why:

    * Israeli war crimes have been ongoing for more than seven decades, long predating Hamas’ creation.

    * Israel has kept the Palestinians of Gaza caged into a concentration camp for the past 17 years, denying them connection to the outside world and the essentials of life. Hamas managed to besiege a small part of Israel for one day, on October 7.

    * For every Israeli killed by Hamas on October 7, Israel has slaughtered at least 35 times that number of Palestinians. Similar kill-ratios grossly skewed in Israel’s favour have been true for decades.

    * Israel has killed more than 15,000 Palestinian children since October – and many tens of thousands more Palestinian children are missing under rubble, maimed or orphaned. By early April, Israel had killed a further 114 children in the West Bank and injured 725 more. Hamas killed a total of 33 Israeli children on October 7.

    * Israel has laid waste to Gaza’s entire health sector. It has bombed its hospitals, and killed, beaten and kidnapped many hundreds of medical personnel. Hamas has not attacked one Israeli hospital.

    * Israel has killed more than 100 journalists in Gaza and more than 250 aid workers. It has also kidnapped a further 40 journalists. Most are presumed to have been taken to a secret detention facility where torture is rife. Hamas is reported to have killed one Israeli journalist on October 7, and no known aid workers.

    * Israel is actively starving Gaza’s population by denying it food, water and aid. That is a power – a genocidal one – Hamas could only ever dream of.

    * Israel has been forcibly removing Palestinians from their lands for more than 76 years to build illegal Jewish settlements in their place. Hamas has not been able to ethnically cleanse a single Israeli, nor build a single Palestinian settlement on Israeli land.

    * Some 750,000 Palestinians are reported to have been taken hostage and jailed by Israel since 1967 – an unwelcome rite of passage for Palestinian men and boys and one in which torture is routine and military trials ensure a near-100% conviction rate. Until October 7, Hamas had only ever managed to take hostage a handful of the Israeli soldiers whose job is to oppress Palestinians.

    * And, while Hamas is designated a terrorist organisation by western states, those same western states laud Israel, fund and arm it, and provide it with diplomatic cover, even as the World Court rules that a plausible case has been made it is committing a genocide in Gaza.

    Yes, Netanyahu is right. There is no comparison at all.

    The post Indeed, there is no comparison: Israel’s crimes are far worse than Hamas’ first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • It was faint, but there was more than just a flicker of hope.  In the tormented (and tormenting) journey the WikiLeaks founder and publisher, Julian Assange, has endured, May 20, 2024 provided another pitstop.  As with many such stops over the years, it involved lawyers.  Many of them.

    The occasion was whether the UK High Court of Justice would grant Assange leave to appeal his extradition to the United States to face 18 charges, 17 hewn from the monstrous quarry that is the Espionage Act of 1917.  He is wanted for receiving and publishing classified US government materials comprising diplomatic cables, the files of those detained in Guantanamo Bay, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Any computed sentence, glacially calculated at 175 years, would effectively spell his end.

    News on the legal front has often been discomforting for Assange and his supporters.  The US has been favoured, repeatedly, in various appeals, chalking up the lion’s share of victories since successfully overturning the decision by Judge Vanessa Baraitser to bar extradition in January 2021 on mental health grounds.  But Justice Johnson and Dame Victoria Sharp of the High Court of Justice in London promised to keep matters interesting.

    A key sticking point in the proceedings has been whether the First Amendment would protect Assange’s publishing activity in the course of any trial in the US.  The attitude from the central US prosecutor in the extradition proceedings, Gordon Kromberg, and former Secretary of State and ex-CIA director Mike Pompeo, has been one of hearty disapproval that it should.

    Pompeo’s remarks in an infamous April 2017 address as CIA director to the Center for Strategic and International Studies openly branded WikiLeaks “a hostile intelligence service” that proselytised in the cause of transparency and aided such powers as Russia.  Assange “and his kind” were “not in the slightest bit interested in improving civil liberties or enhancing personal freedom.  They have pretended that America’s First Amendment freedom shield them from justice.”  They were “wrong” to have thought so.

    On January 17, 2020, Kromberg submitted an affidavit to the UK district court that was eye opening on the subject.  The following remains salient: “Concerning any First Amendment challenge, the United States could argue that foreign nationals are not entitled to protections under the First Amendment, at least as it concerns national defense information, and even were they so entitled, that Assange’s conduct is unprotected because of his complicity in illegal acts and in publishing the names of innocent sources to their grave and imminent risk of harm.”

    In March 2024, the High Court curtly dismissed six of the nine arguments submitted by Assange in part of his effort to seek a review of the entire case.  The judges, anchoring themselves in the initial reasoning of the district court judge, refused to accept that he was being charged with a political offence, something barred by the US-UK Extradition Treaty, or that the CIA had breached lawyer-client privilege in having spied on him in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, not to mention the serious thought given to abduction and assassination.

    The judges gave the prosecution a heavy olive branch, implying that the case for extradition would be stronger if a number of assurances could be made by the US prosecution.  These were, in turn, that Assange be offered First Amendment protections, despite him not being deemed a journalist; that he not be prejudiced, both during the trial and in sentence, on account of his nationality, and that he not be subject to the death penalty. The insistence on such undertakings had a slightly unreal, woolly-headed air to them.

    On April 16, the US State Department filed the fangless assurances in a diplomatic note to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).  “Assange will not be prejudiced by reason of nationality with respect to which defenses he may seek to raise at trial and at sentencing.”  If extradited, he could still “raise and seek to rely upon at trial (which includes any sentencing hearing) the rights and protections given under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.  A decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is exclusively within the purview of the US Courts.”

    The US authorities further undertook to avoid seeking or imposing the death sentence. “The United States is able to provide such assurance as Assange is not charged with a death-penalty eligible offense, and the United States assures that he will not be tried for a death-eligible offense.”  This can only be taken as conjecture, given the latitude the prosecution has in laying further charges that carry the death penalty should Assange find himself in US captivity.

    In court, Edward Fitzgerald KC, representing Assange, explained with cold sobriety that such an assurance made no guarantee that Assange could rely on the First Amendment at trial. “It does not commit the prosecution to take the point, which gave rise to this court’s concerns, i.e. the point that as a foreign citizen he is not entitled to rely on the First Amendment, at least in relation to a national security matter.”  In any case, US courts were hardly bound by it, a point emphasised in the statement given by defence witness and former US district judge, Professor Paul Grimm.  It followed that the assurance was “blatantly inadequate” and “would cause the applicant prejudice on the basis of his nationality.”

    Written submissions to the court from Assange’s legal team also argued that discrimination “on grounds that a person is a foreigner, whether on the basis that they are a foreign national or a foreign citizen, is plainly within the scope of the prohibition [against extradition under the UK Extradition Act 2003].  ‘Prejudice at trial’ must include exclusion on grounds of citizenship from fundamental substantive rights that can be asserted at trial.  On the US argument, trial procedures could discriminate on grounds of citizenship.”

    In response, the US submitted arguments of a headshaking quality.  Through James Lewis KC, it was submitted that the High Court had erred in its March judgment in equating “prejudice on grounds of foreign nationality with discrimination on grounds of foreign citizenship”.  The UK Extradition Act mentions “nationality” in preference to “citizenship”.  These terms were not “synonymous”.

    According to Lewis, Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) protecting journalists and whistleblowers was qualified by conduct “within the tenets of reasonable and responsible journalism”. One factor in this context “whether it is reasonable and responsible is where the publication took place – inside a member state’s territory or outside a member state’s territory.”

    The prosecution’s written submissions summarise the points.  The First Amendment’s applicability to Assange’s case depended on “the components of (1) conduct on foreign (outside the United States of America) soil; (2) non-US citizenship; and (3) national defense information”. Assange, Lewis elaborated, “will be able to rely on it but that does not mean the scope will cover the conduct he is accused of.”

    The prosecution suggested that former US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, a vital source for WikiLeaks, had been unable to rely on the First Amendment, limiting the possibility that its protections could extend to covering Assange.

    Mark Summers KC, also representing Assange, was bemused. “The fact that Chelsea Manning was found in the end to have no substantial First Amendment claims tells you nothing at all.  She was a government employee, not a publisher.”

    He also made the point that “You can be a national without being a citizen [but] you cannot be a citizen without nationality.”  It followed that discrimination arising out of citizenship would result in discrimination based on nationality, and nothing adduced by the prosecution in terms of case law suggested otherwise.

    Unconvinced by the prosecution’s contorted reasoning, Dame Victoria Sharp agreed to grant leave to Assange to appeal on the grounds he is at risk of discrimination by virtue of his nationality, in so far as it affects his right to assert protections afforded by Article 10 of the ECHR and the First Amendment.

    It remains to be seen whether this legal victory for the ailing Australian will yield a sweet harvest rather than the bitter fruit it has.  He remains Britain’s most prominent political prisoner, held in unpardonable conditions, refused bail and subject to jailing conditions vicariously approved by those in Washington.  In the meantime, the public campaign to drop the indictment and seek his liberation continues to ripen.

    The post The Assange Case: A Flicker of Hope in the UK High Court first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Propaganda by omission is a dominant feature of the ‘mainstream’ news media. Indeed, it is a requirement. Rather than serving the public interest by fully exposing the brutal machinations of power, state-corporate media shield Western governments and their allies from scrutiny and focus the public’s attention on the crimes of Official Enemies.

    Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza is but the latest example. Consider the dearth of media coverage given to the compelling and shocking testimony provided by leading British surgeon, Professor Nick Maynard, who works as a consultant gastrointestinal surgeon at Oxford University Hospital.

    Maynard left Gaza just before Israel took control of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt on 7 May. He had been operating on Palestinian patients for two weeks and he gave a very disturbing account of what he had observed.

    The first topic he highlighted was ‘the direct targeting of healthcare workers’ by the Israeli military, describing how ‘hundreds have been killed’ and ‘hundreds have been abducted’. Maynard had personally worked with one young doctor and one young nurse who had been abducted and held in captivity for 45 days and 60 days, respectively. They both gave him ‘very graphic and stark descriptions of their daily torture at the hands of the Israeli defence force’. He described the experience of hearing their stories as ‘extremely harrowing’.

    Maynard had also been to Gaza over Christmas and New Year where he worked at Al-Aqsa hospital. He “spent the whole two weeks operating all the time on major explosive injuries to the abdomen and to the chest. And it was really nonstop.”

    His visit was unexpectedly cut short in early January when the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) ordered the medical staff, along with the hospital’s 600 patients, to evacuate the hospital. A few British newspaper reports that included accounts by Maynard and colleagues were published at the time on the “nightmare” of working in “one of ‘Gaza’s last functioning hospitals” (Daily Mirror, 18 January, 2024), “The single worst thing I’ve seen” (Daily Telegraph, 12 January, 2024), and “British surgeon haunted by Gaza horrors pledges to go back” (The Times, 4 February, 2024).

    In March, the Guardian reported that a delegation of American and British doctors had arrived in Washington DC to tell the Biden administration that the Israeli military was systematically destroying Gaza’s health infrastructure in order to drive Palestinians out of their homes. Maynard was quoted, accusing the IDF of committing “appalling atrocities”, although the article did not address these in depth.

    He said:

    “The IDF are systematically targeting healthcare facilities, healthcare personnel and really dismantling the whole healthcare system.”

    He continued:

    “It’s not just about targeting the buildings, it’s about systematically destroying the infrastructure of the hospitals. Destroying the oxygen tanks at the al-Shifa hospital, deliberately destroying the CT scanners and making it much more difficult to rebuild that infrastructure. If it was just targeting Hamas militants, why are they deliberately destroying the infrastructure of these institutions?”

    According to Maynard, Israel’s strategy of targeting hospitals and healthcare facilities is intended to drive the Palestinians from their homes:

    “It persuades the local population to leave. If a hospital has been dismantled, if the locals see there is no medical care available and see the disrupted infrastructure, it’s yet another factor that drives them south.” [At that time, Israel had designated the south of Gaza a “safe zone” for Palestinians to seek refuge.]

    In an interview with Nick Ferrari of London-based LBC radio on 2 April, Maynard made further shocking revelations. The timing of the interview was linked to the IDF having just destroyed another hospital, Al-Shifa, where Maynard had also previously worked. Around 400 Palestinians had reportedly been killed in a brutal two-week attack by Israeli forces.

    Maynard told Ferrari:

    “Every single part of the hospital has been destroyed. The whole infrastructure of the hospital has been destroyed. When I spoke to Marwan [a Palestinian colleague] yesterday, he told me there were 107 patients, 60 medical staff. God only knows what has happened to them. I think we’ve seen some of the pictures. Surgeons I know have been executed in the last 48 hours there. Bodies have been discovered in the last 12-24 hours who had been handcuffed, with their hands behind their back. [Our added emphasis].”

    He added:

    “And so, there is no doubt at all, that multiple healthcare workers have been executed there in the last few days.”

    Ferrari then asked:

    “You believe executed by whom, doctor?”

    Maynard:

    “By the Israeli Defence Force.

    Ferrari:

    “Why would they seek to execute surgeons and medical professionals?”

    Maynard:

    “Well, they’ve been doing it since October the 7th. Over 450 healthcare workers have been killed. Friends of mine that I’ve worked with over the years. Many have been abducted as well, and nothing has been heard of them since. So, there is no doubt in my mind that – I can bear witness to this from my time at Al-Aqsa hospital and from talking to people that there has been direct targeting of the healthcare system in Gaza, direct targeting of hospitals and multiple killings of healthcare workers.”

    Maynard also made clear that neither he, nor any of his colleagues, ever saw evidence of Hamas using hospitals or healthcare facilities as bases for their operations, despite numerous Israeli claims to the contrary.

    BBC Silence

    “Mainstream” media showed minimal interest in this highly credible testimony from a British surgeon on Israel’s deliberate targeting of healthcare workers, including actual execution of surgeons. As far as we can see, there is nothing about Maynard’s testimony exposing these executions on the BBC News website.

    An article on the Guardian website on 7 April did cover Maynard’s testimony about targeting of healthcare workers and infrastructure, but made no mention of his statement that Palestinian surgeons had been executed by Israeli soldiers. Nor was it mentioned anywhere else in the entirety of the British national press.

    The Telegraph carried an interview with Maynard on 12 January in which he said:

    “here can be certainly no doubt in my mind from what I’ve recently witnessed that [Israel] are directly targeting healthcare structures with a view to completely disabling the healthcare system in Gaza.”

    The Telegraph appears not to have reported Maynard’s subsequent claim that he personally knew surgeons who have since been executed by Israeli soldiers.

    On 13 May, International Nurses Day, the Gaza Health Ministry announced that at least 500 medical personnel had been killed by Israel since 7 October. Dr Omar Abdel-Mannan, a paediatric neurologist and co-founder of Healthcare Workers for Palestine, said that the only way Israel could ‘justify’ these killings would be if they see these healthcare workers not as humans, but as “human animals”. As readers may recall, Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant infamously described his Palestinian enemies as “human animals”.

    Of his most recent trip, Maynard said that:

    “the very strong narrative of the patients I was treating over the last two weeks were those with terrible infective complications as a direct result of malnutrition, and this was very stark indeed.”

    He gave a graphic insight into the hellish conditions:

    “And I operated on many patients in the last two weeks who had awful complications from their abdominal surgery related to inadequate nutrition, and particularly those with [the] abdominal wall breaking down. So, literally their intestines end up hanging outside. And the intestinal repairs that have been carried out to deal with the damage to the bowels leaking, so their bowel contents leaking out from different parts of the abdomen, covering their bodies, covering their beds.”

    He drew particular attention to:

    “The lack of resources to deal with these inadequate numbers of colostomy bags, wound management devices and nutritional support.”

    Maynard explained the consequences for patients:

    “They get this vicious cycle of malnutrition, infection, wounds breaking down, more infection, more malnutrition. So, it’s devastating and we will see far more of that over the coming months.”

    He gave examples of two young female patients he had treated: Tala who was 16 and Lama who was 18, both of whom had survivable injuries. Tragically, they both died “as a direct result of malnutrition”.

    This was yet more shocking and credible testimony from an experienced British consultant surgeon. It should have been headline news across the British press and broadcasting outlets. But searches of the Lexis-Nexis database of newspapers, together with Google searches, reveal minimal “mainstream” coverage: one article in the Independent.

    If this had been evidence against “Putin’s Russia” or “Assad’s Syria”, it would have generated huge headlines, in-depth reporting and anguished commentary across all major news media. Once again, we see the insidiously corrupt phenomenon of propaganda by omission.

    It is noteworthy that, last November, the BBC News website did feature Maynard, “who’s been travelling to the Gaza Strip and West Bank for more than a decade.” Six months ago, he was once again on “standby to go and work in operating theatres with the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians”. With remarkable courage, he told the BBC:

    “I think there is fear, apprehension, not knowing what one would find, but I think the other motives for doing so… are so powerful that they outweigh everything else. I consider it a huge privilege to be in a position to help these people who need help more than most of us can possibly understand.”

    Now that Maynard has returned from Gaza with horrific accounts, not least of the murder of healthcare workers by the Israeli military, the BBC appears not in the least interested. When we pointed this out via X (formerly Twitter), directly challenging John Neal, editor of BBC News at One, Six and Ten, and Paul Royall, executive editor of the BBC News Channel, the public response was huge. Our social media outreach is routinely suppressed by the deliberately obscure algorithms of Facebook and X. But this particular tweet spread widely by our standards, being shared 740 times at the time of writing. Shamefully, there has been no response from the BBC.

    When Genocide Is Merely “War”

    In the meantime, BBC News persists in labelling the Gaza genocide as the ‘Israel-Gaza war’. The day after it was reported that almost half a million Palestinians had fled Rafah in the south of Gaza, despite having previously been designated a “safe zone” by Israel, as discussed above, the BBC failed to follow up on the story.

    One was presumably supposed to imagine that this huge number of people was no longer in danger: at risk of being bombed or dying under Israeli-imposed hunger, malnutrition and disease.

    That same week, the BBC News website had as many as four ‘Live’ feeds running simultaneously. Not one of them focused on the Israeli-inflicted horrors in Gaza. This is truly remarkable. Has there been a BBC directive from senior management not to give too much attention to Israel’s genocide of Palestinians? Where are the BBC whistleblowers who can let the public know what’s going on inside the corporation?

    A vanishingly rare exception appeared on 24 October 2023, when BBC correspondent Rami Ruhayem – a former journalist for the Associated Press, who has worked as a journalist and producer for BBC Arabic and the BBC World Service since 2005 – sent a letter to the BBC’s Director-General, Tim Davie:

    “Dear Tim,

    I am writing to raise the gravest possible concerns about the coverage of the BBC, especially on English outlets, of the current fighting between Israel and Palestinian factions.

    “It appears to me that information that is highly significant and relevant is either entirely missing or not being given due prominence in coverage.”

    The emphasis now is emphatically on “missing”. It seems the global student and other protests have prompted the BBC to attempt to limit public dissent.

    By contrast, BBC journalists can be quick to respond when they feel they have been subjected to unjust criticism. On 13 May, we retweeted a clip from Saul Staniforth, a media activist with a large following on X, about Israel banning Al Jazeera. Staniforth had included a quote from Sebastian Usher, a BBC News Middle East analyst:

    “Al Jazeera – I think many people, if they DO watch it, WOULD see it as some kind of propaganda.”

    We asked:

    “And how do you think many people see BBC News?”

    Clearly piqued, Usher contacted us the following day to say that his quote had been taken out of context. He said it was a direct response during a live interview to a question on the likely reaction by Israelis to the closing of Al Jazeera. He considered Staniforth’s tweet and our follow-up seriously misleading and the exact opposite of the tenor of his reporting on the issue.

    We asked him which words he had used to express solidarity with Al Jazeera, or to speak out for press freedom and free speech. He declined to provide such a statement, saying that as a BBC journalist he was unable to do so in a public forum. Usher added that in his reporting he stressed that Al Jazeera sees its mission as righting what it believes is imbalance on Gaza reporting in international media by giving more space to Palestinian voices and voices on the ground.

    We were happy to include the points he had made, which we did via Facebook and X. Usher responded to our very reasonable response with a grudging “Ok”.

    It is worth noting that Usher strongly objected to being “quoted out of context” while working for a media organisation clearly trying to suppress public outrage at an ongoing genocide by reducing coverage.

    Moreover, the essential observation we made stands: many people at home and abroad regard BBC News as an outlet of western propaganda. Its abject performance during the Gaza genocide – “the Israel-Gaza war”, as the state-mandated broadcaster puts it – is ample proof.

    The post “Extremely Harrowing”: British Surgeon’s Gaza Testimony Buried By The “MSM” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • For all the hullabaloo about “free and fair elections” in Venezuela by the US government, its sycophantic corporate press deliberately ignores the elephant in the room – namely, the so-called sanctions designed to make life so miserable that the people will acquiesce to Washington’s plan for regime change.

    As Foreign Policy puts it, “Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro values his political survival above his country’s economic well-being.” Translated from Washington-speak, the US government is blackmailing the Venezuelan electorate with, in the words of Foreign Policy, “the looming threat,” of continuing unilateral coercive measures unless they vote against the incumbent in the presidential election on July 28.

    The New York Times reports that a Maduro win will “intensify poverty,” conveniently omitting the cause will be tightening of US sanctions. Typical of such coverage, the article blames Maduro for the “dire” economic situation, but not until the 25th paragraph is there even a passing reference to US sanctions.

    Such outside electoral meddling by the use of sanctions is orders of magnitude greater than the supposed “Russiagate” interference in the 2016 US presidential contest. Washington brazenly leaves no ambiguity about its intent to punish the Venezuelan people for choosing a government not to its liking. With no sense of shame or irony, the State Department imperiously calls this bullying “democracy promotion.”

    US hybrid war on Venezuela

    As documented by Venezuelanalysis, US sanctions against Venezuela are “a war without bombs.” These actions, more correctly called coercive economic measures by the United Nations, are killing Venezuelans. Never mentioned in the corporate press is that these unilateral measures are a form of collective punishment, considered illegal under international law.

    The over 930 US sanctions are designed to crash the Venezuelan economy and, above all, to prevent any recovery. Initially they succeeded in the former objective and, equally importantly, failed in the latter.

    The bipartisan offensive was initiated in 2015 by President Obama, who incredulously declared “a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security” posed by Venezuela. (Note, none of the corporate press subjected this extraordinary claim to any kind of scrutiny.) Coercive measures were intensified by President Trump, targeting the vital Venezuelan oil industry. Seamlessly, President Biden continued the “maximum pressure” campaign with minor adjustments, mainly designed to benefit US and select foreign business interests.

    As a result, Venezuela experienced the largest peacetime economic contraction in recent world history. The free-falling economy suffered triple-digit inflation, again, the highest in the world. Some seven million economic refugees fled the country.

    The US continued other “hybrid warfare” measures including recognizing Juan Guaidó as the self-proclaimed “interim president” of Venezuela in 2019. The then 35-year-old far-right US security asset had never run for national office and was at the time unknown to over 80% of the population. Nevertheless, some fifty US allies initially recognized his government.

    Further, US-backed coups have continued since the 2002 one that lasted only 47 hours. Recent capers included the “bay of piglets” operation in 2020. Biden recently repatriated two of the US mercenaries, who had been captured in that failed coup, in a prisoner exchange that resulted in freeing Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab.

    Coup attempts are ongoing according to the Venezuelan government. US official policy on such extra-legal measures is “plausible deniability.”

    Venezuela successfully resists

    Contrary to all odds and most predictions, President Maduro has turned the Venezuelan ship of state around against such unfavorable winds. By the end of 2023, Venezuela had recorded 11 quarters of consecutive growth after years of economic contraction. GDP growth during the first four months of 2024 exceeded forecasts of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and are projected to be 4% for the year, compared to IMF figures for the US at 2.7% and China at 4.6%.

    Today, on the diplomatic front, only the US, Israel, and a handful of other Washington vassals still fail to recognize the democratically elected government of Venezuela. Even the US-backed opposition has itself renounced the Guaidó presidency.

    Until recently, Colombia (then a hostile US client state) served as a launching pad for paramilitary incursions onto Venezuela’s western border. In 2022, President Gustavo Petro, the first leftist in the entire history of Colombia, replaced the right-wing Iván Duque. The next year, the friendly Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva replaced the hostile government of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil on Venezuela’s southern border.

    Meanwhile, progressive regional governments such as Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Mexico have continued to support Venezuela. Most significantly and indicative of a shifting world order toward multipolarity, Venezuela has strengthened ties with China, Russia, and Iran. This, in turn, has only intensified hostility by the US.

    Lessons from the 1990 electoral defeat of the Sandinista’s in Nicaragua

    Conditions in Venezuela today, in the run-up to the July presidential election, bear some parallels to a similar situation in Nicaragua in 1990. In 1979, the Sandinistas overthrew the US-backed Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua. By the 1990 presidential election, polls looked favorable for the reelection of their FSLN party’s Daniel Ortega.

    Everyone, including the US president, who was bent on overthrowing the Nicaraguan Revolution, anticipated a Sandinista victory, according to Dan Kovalik’s book on Nicaragua. But the vote was unfavorable, issuing in seventeen years of neoliberal regression.

    Both the State Department and the US ambassador to Managua had made it abundantly clear that the Nicaraguans had best vote the “right way” or the US-sponsored contra war would continue. The contras were mercenaries recruited largely from Somoza’s former army who were waging an armed terror campaign against the population.

    In addition, the country was under US economic sanctions and suffering from hyperinflation. Brian Willson, who lost his legs in civil disobedience protesting the US contra war in Nicaragua, reported that the US funded opposition parties and NGOs in the 1990 election. The CIA alone poured in $28-30 million. Willson concluded that the US “purchased the 1990 Nicaragua elections.”

    Prospects for the Venezuelan presidential election

    While Venezuela is not under siege by US-paid mercenaries as was Nicaragua, it is nonetheless subject to Washington’s hybrid war of coercive economic measures, funding of opposition forces, international diplomatic belligerence, and covert actions.

    An assessment in February by the US intelligence community found Maduro “is unlikely to lose the 2024 presidential election.” A May 3 Encuesta Nacional Ideadatos opinion poll reported a 52.7% preference for Maduro. Other polls give the lead to opposition candidate Edmundo González with the Unitary Platform who allegedly worked with the CIA.

    Within the Chavista core – those who support the Bolivarian Revolution of Hugo Chávez and its current standard bearer Nicolás Maduro – it is only to be expected that there is a certain level of weariness. Venezuelan political commentator Clodovaldo Hernández cites ongoing issues of inadequate healthcare delivery, salaries and pensions that have not kept pace with inflation, erratic electric power, incompletely addressed corruption, and dysfunctional police and judicial services, all of which disproportionately impact the Chavista base of poor and working people. How this will translate come July 28 is uncertain.

    The propaganda campaign by the US state and its stenographers in the press to delegitimize the Venezuela election process is ramping up. For example, the US “newspaper of record” reports that “the last competitive election was held in 2013.” Not “fit to print” is the news that the presidential term is six years, or that the US literally ordered the opposition not to run in 2018. The leading opposition candidate at the time, Henri Falcón, was threatened with sanctions when he chose to ignore Washington’s demand.

    The very fact that any of the US-backed opposition is contesting in the upcoming election rather than boycotting indicates that they are no longer relying on an extra-parliamentary overthrow of the government. This itself represents a significant victory for the Chavistas.

    The post The Biggest Obstacle to Free and Fair Elections in Venezuela is the US first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • A Filipino civilian convoy called “Atin Ito” claims to have breached China’s blockade around the Huangyan Dao, also known as Scarborough Shoal, in the South China Sea. The convoy reportedly aimed to resupply Filipino fishermen but stopped 50 nautical miles from the shoal. The Philippine Coast Guard and Navy monitored the mission. What are the real goals behind it? Are the fishermen being exploited, and are there other forces at play? Join us as we uncover the real story behind this high-stakes maritime drama.

    The post South China Sea Drama Unfolds first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.