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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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The State Department wants you to know that the Biden administration made a record value of major arms sales last year – $80.9 billion under the U.S. government-administered Foreign Military Sales program and related “security cooperation activities” with U.S. allies.

This is a 55% increase in this category of weapons transfers from the prior year, and, according to the State Department, “the highest annual total of sales and assistance provided to our allies and partners.”

There is some question as to whether major weapons transfers are actually at their highest levels ever. The Obama administration entered into $102 billion in Foreign Military Sales agreements in 2010, including $60 billion in deals with Saudi Arabia, many of them for weapons that were later used in Riyadh’s brutal war in Yemen.

But the fact that the State Department wants to brag about “record” sales is instructive. The rest of the fact sheet announcing the new figures makes it sound like recent U.S. arms sales will only have positive outcomes: no risks, no downsides. Boilerplate language on the benefits of runaway arms trading included the following:

“Each proposed transfer is carefully assessed on a case-by-case basis, in accordance with the Arms Export Control Act and related legislation . . . Major defense transfers are also subject to Congressional notification and review.” In other words, what could possibly go wrong?

Some transfers — like the tens of billions in arms supplied to Ukraine to defend itself from a Russian invasion — have a legitimate rationale, as long as they are not the only expression of U.S. policy, to the exclusion of exploring diplomatic approaches to ending the conflict on terms the Ukrainian government and people can agree to.

And a substantial portion of the rest of U.S. arms transfers in 2023 went to European allies concerned about possible future actions by Russia, which may be a distant prospect given Moscow’s mixed record in fighting a far less populous nation in Ukraine. It’s not clear that the Russian military is in any shape to take on the 31-member NATO alliance. Nonetheless, sales made with Russia in mind included over $30 billion in deals with Poland, $8 billion worth of military helicopters to Germany, and $5.6 billion in F-35 combat aircraft to the Czech Republic.

The legitimacy surrounding the provision of arms to Ukraine and European allies is decidedly not present with respect to recent arms aid to Israel, which has used U.S. weapons in an assault on Gaza in which the International Court of Justice has indicated that it is “plausible” that Israel is engaged in genocide. Leaving aside the dispute about whether Israel is committing genocide or “just” widespread war crimes, its military activities have killed over 26,000 Gazans, displaced 1.9 million people, and hindered the delivery of medical and food aid. This could not be, and is not, in line with U.S. law or the Biden administration’s stated policies.

Israel has been routinely exempted from U.S. human rights strictures with respect to its use of U.S.-supplied weapons. And to make matters worse, the Biden administration has made it harder for Congress and the public to know what weapons it is supplying to the Israeli military by circumventing Congressional notification requirements and providing weapons from stockpiles without reporting on what is being taken and transferred.

Needless to say, the State Department has been silent on this counterexample to its happy talk about how all U.S. arms sales are good U.S. arms sales. Nor did it emphasize the revival of U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia, to the tune of over $2 billion in 2023, with more likely to come this year. This is a far cry from the days when candidate Biden called Saudi Arabia a “pariah” and President Biden pledged to curb weapons transfers to that nation.

In short, instead of bragging about the enormous value of U.S. arms transfers and providing a sanitized view of their impacts, the Biden administration should take a hard, cold look at the risks of unrestrained arm exports on the reputation and security of the United States, as well as the human consequences of their use by U.S. allies. A good start would be to withhold further transfers to Israel as leverage to force a ceasefire in Gaza.

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William D. Hartung is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His work focuses on the arms industry and U.S. military budget.

Featured image: Golan Heights, Israel – An Israeli soldier prepares 155m shells for firing (Gal Rotem/Shutterstock)

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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Dressed in medical scrubs, Islamic thobes and hijabs, wearing face masks and pushing wheelchairs, a group of Israeli undercover agents descended upon Jenin‘s Ibn Sina Hospital on Tuesday.

The agents are known in Arabic as mustaribeen, which means to “dress and act like an Arab”, and in Hebrew as mistaarivim, a derivative of the Arabic word.

The operatives – disguised as Palestinian medics, patients and civilians – raided the facility in the occupied West Bank, killing three people. One of the Israeli officers reportedly spoke in Arabic during the operation. 

The raid took place at 5:30am, and took around 10 minutes, according to Israeli media.

The special forces involved were the latest in a long history of undercover Israeli agents pretending to be Palestinian.

Their existence goes as far back as the British Mandate of Palestine in the first half of the 20th century, during which British authorities worked with Zionist militias to infiltrate Arab populations in the region. 

“Mistaarivim started as an undercover unit in the Palmach division, which was part of the terrorist militia of Haganah, the core of the Israeli army,” Emad Moussa, a researcher specialising in political psychology in Israel and Palestine, told Middle East Eye. 

“They were made up of mainly Mizrahi Jews, coming from Arabic-speaking countries, and were tasked to infiltrate Palestinians (and other Arabs in neighbouring countries) to collect information for the Zionist movement and the British.”

That unit was eventually disbanded, particularly after tensions arose between British authorities and the Zionist militias they had once propped up. 

At the end of the Mandate and following the creation of Israel, the undercover unit was revived as a means of espionage, and to sow seeds of chaos and confusion in Palestinian communities. 

‘Agent Provocateurs’

One of the most well-known units, the Duvdevan, was formed in the 1980s by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak. The unit is still operational today, and one of several undercover Israeli units. 

“Their use during the first intifada was particularly prominent. They were often either Druze, or Arabic-speaking Jewish operatives of Shin Bet,” Laleh Khalili, an academic and researcher at the University of Exeter, told MEE.

“[They] collected intelligence, acted as agent provocateurs, or managed to push themselves into protests or gatherings in order to arrest or injure or assassinate Palestinians from inside.”

Today, the undercover agents are found in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem – but not in Gaza. 

“In Gaza, the mistaarivim units lost much of their operational capabilities after Hamas had taken control of the Strip in 2007,” said Moussa. 

“For mistaarivim to operate in Gaza is to risk being captured and then hidden away well beyond the reach of the Israeli army.”

In the West Bank, the units are most often seen infiltrating protests against Israeli occupation, attempting to create fear and paranoia among Palestinians.

They also get directly involved in carrying out arrests, including during mass protests in December 2017 when then-US president Donald Trump’s administration unilaterally decided to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. 

Violence and Brutality

The agents can be found in Israel too. Palestinian activists have reported being confronted by the mustaribeen in cities like Haifa, where they have earned a reputation of violence and brutality. 

In recent years, Palestinians have employed several tactics to identify and fight back against the mustaribeen.

That includes wearing light colours and tucking their tops into their trousers: the undercover officers tend to wear darker colours and looser clothing to hide weapons. 

Moussa said that protesters also organise themselves in smaller groups to avoid being captured by agents, and also share information on social media about suspicious individuals. 

“I was told, those undercover units are sometimes recognised because they try to look and act ‘too Palestinian’,” he said. 

Khalili added:

“More often than not, Palestinians can with a bit of attention spot them. But often they are intervening in incredibly heated moments of protest where Palestinians’ attention is elsewhere.”

West Bank Raids

The mustaribeen don’t just carry out arrests; they have been known to shoot and kill Palestinians, too. 

In May 2021, they shot and killed Ahmed Fahd, 24, a civilian who lived in al-Amari refugee camp in Ramallah. 

Israeli intelligence officials later called his family to apologise, stating they had meant to kill his brother and uncle accused of being involved in “terror activities”. 

Increasingly, Israeli military raids on West Bank towns and cities – which now almost occur on a daily basis – involve mustaribeen elements.

Earlier this month, the Israeli army carried out a two-day raid on the city of Tulkarm, killing eight Palestinians, which it said involved “forces from the army, border guards, mustaribeen, and the general security service”. 

These undercover units, backed by regular armed forces, operate differently to agents at protests. 

“What happened in Jenin today is an operation of a different calibre. It combines military superiority and infiltration. The thing is, even if those units are recognised, they’re heavily armed and supported by Israeli military units,” said Moussa.

“Therefore, most people don’t stand a chance of confronting them.”

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Featured image: Israeli forces are dressed as patients, medics and civilians in the Ibn Sina Hospital (Screengrab/X)

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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Mere hours after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found a plausible case that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, a historic hearing took place in a federal courtroom in Oakland, California. Several Palestinians who are suing President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for failure to prevent genocide and complicity in genocide testified before district court Judge Jeffrey White in a live-streamed session.

“I have lost everything in this war,” plaintiff Omar Al-Najjar testified from a hospital in Gaza. “I have nothing but my grief. This is what Israel and its supporters have done to us.” Al-Najjar reported that conditions are so bad there is “widespread childbirth in the street.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Northern California on November 13, 2023, on behalf of Palestinian human rights organizations Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P) and Al-Haq, three Palestinian individuals who live in Gaza and five Palestinian Americans who have family in Gaza. The complaint in Defense for Children International – Palestine v. Biden alleges violations of the Genocide Convention and customary international law which forbids genocide.

On November 16, plaintiffs filed a motion for preliminary injunction to immediately force Biden, Blinken and Austin to stop providing additional money, weapons, and military and diplomatic support to Israel for its genocide in Gaza.

The January 26, 2024, hearing featured testimony by Palestinian plaintiffs and a renowned expert on genocide and the Holocaust. Plaintiffs testified from Gaza, Ramallah and in the courtroom. They described the death, devastation and displacement their families have suffered since Israel began its military assault on Gaza after the October 7 Hamas attacks.

Attorneys representing the Department of Justice (DOJ) did not challenge the fact that Israel is committing genocide or contest plaintiffs’ allegations that U.S. support has furthered the genocide. They argued instead that the court doesn’t have jurisdiction to hear the case because it involves a “political question” regarding foreign policy that is reserved to Congress or the president.

Judge White appeared very sympathetic to the Palestinian plaintiffs. But he signaled that he may find that the issues in dispute raise a political question which would prevent his court from hearing the case.

It is rare that a federal judge allows a hearing to be broadcast. It attests to the public interest in charging the president and two cabinet members with complicity in genocide and failure to prevent genocide. The judge approved licenses for 1,000 people to watch the proceedings via Zoom and even that didn’t cover all of those who wanted to tune in.

“The Gaza That We Knew No Longer Exists”

The witnesses included Ahmed Abofoul, a Palestinian lawyer and legal researcher at Al-Haq, one of the organizational plaintiffs, who testified that more than 60 relatives on his father’s side had been killed, 15 of them in a single airstrike; many of their bodies remain buried under the rubble. For the first time in its 45-year history, Al-Haq is unable to document human rights violations throughout Gaza. “The Gaza that we knew no longer exists,” he said.

Plaintiff Laila El-Haddad, a Palestinian American writer, testified that her neighborhood in Gaza was reduced to “a large pile of sand.” Dozens of her relatives have been killed in Israel’s assaults and some were buried in mass graves. She described a “profound feeling of not just sorrow and sadness, but injustice and helplessness,” adding, “Biden could with one phone call put an end to this. He’s decided to aid and abet.”

Plaintiff Waeil Elbhassi is Palestinian American with extended family in Gaza. More than 100 of his relatives have been killed or injured since October 7. “Israel is making Gaza unlivable so there will be nothing for them to come back to. People don’t want to leave. If they stay, they might die. If they leave, they won’t be able to come back.”

Plaintiff Basim Elkarra, who is Palestinian American, testified that after the temporary humanitarian pause between Israel and Hamas in November, 65 members of his family were murdered by Israeli forces. Dozens are missing. “How can children or anyone deal with the relentless bombing that shakes you to the core?” he asked.

Khaled Quzmar, general director of Defense for Children International – Palestine, an organizational plaintiff, testified that DCI-P provides legal services and psychosocial support to children. It monitors and documents human rights violations against Palestinian children. Now, he said, DCI-P is “completely unable to work.”

DOJ attorneys objected to the testimony of Barry Trachtenberg, a professor of Jewish history and expert in genocide and the Holocaust, saying he was not qualified to opine on matters of law, but the judge allowed it. Trachtenberg said, “Israel’s assault on Gaza has been funded by the American people, fought with U.S.-supplied weapons, and encouraged by a complicit White House. Unlike past genocides, which were adjudicated long after they had concluded, we have an opportunity to halt this one in its tracks. Palestinians have suffered far too much and for far too long.”

The Lawsuit Charges Biden, Blinken and Austin with Arming Israel’s Genocide

The lawsuit alleges that Biden, Blinken and Austin transferred weapons and military equipment to Israel during its unfolding genocide. The defendants have asked Congress to appropriate $14.1 billion in military assistance to Israel — in addition to the $3.8 billion the U.S. already provides to Israel each year. Blinken authorized a $320 million transfer of military equipment to an Israeli manufacturer of precision bomb kits.

“As Israel’s closest ally and strongest supporter, being its biggest provider of military assistance by a large margin and with Israel being the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II, the United States has the means available to have a deterrent effect on Israeli officials now pursuing genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” the legal complaint states.

The Palestinian plaintiffs are asking the court to declare that defendants Biden, Blinken and Austin violated their duty under customary international law, as part of federal common law, to take all measures within their power to prevent Israel from committing genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

Plaintiffs also seek an injunction ordering the defendants to take all measures within their power to prevent Israel from committing genocidal acts against the Palestinians in Gaza. This includes ordering defendants to exert influence over Israel to: 1) end its bombing of the Palestinian people in Gaza which has caused mass killing and serious injury; 2) lift the siege on Gaza and allow all fuel, food, electricity, water and humanitarian aid into Gaza; and 3) prevent the “evacuation” or forcible transfer and expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and guarantee their freedom of movement.

Finally, plaintiffs are asking the court to issue an injunction to prohibit defendants from: 1) providing, coordinating or facilitating military assistance and money to Israel, including the sales, transfer and delivery of weapons to Israel, and the provision of military personnel and equipment that advance Israel’s commission of genocidal acts and 2) obstructing attempts by the international community, including the UN, to implement a ceasefire and lift the siege on Gaza.

Will the Judge Find the Case Raises a “Political Question” and Dismiss It?

Judge White began the hearing by noting the “brutal attacks by Hamas” and that Israel’s “defensive” campaign was “similarly brutal.” He noted that Israel had killed “tens of thousands of Palestinians, children” and the “destruction was widespread.” Israel, the judge said, “destroyed critical civilian infrastructure, schools, refugee camps and safe houses.” He described the U.S.’s “substantial military, financial and diplomatic support” and said it continues to “fund and proffer weapons” to Israel.

The judge then asked counsel for the plaintiffs and defendants whether the court — judicial branch — had jurisdiction to hear the case, or whether it involved foreign policy decisions that were “quintessential political questions” reserved to the executive and legislative (political) branches.

CCR attorney Katherine Gallagher, representing the plaintiffs, told Judge White this is not a political question; it is a legal question. “These are not questions of policy,” she said. “These are questions of law.” The courts serve as a check on the political branches, she said. The executive has “no discretion to violate the law” and the United States has a “clear, unambiguous duty to punish and prevent genocide.” The U.S., she added, is making policy determinations that are contrary to international law.

Attorney Jean Lin argued for the DOJ that it is “not the role of the courts to indict Israel for violation of international law.” She said the plaintiffs were “directly challenging U.S. policy.”

Judge White cited a 2017 case in which his own decision to dismiss was affirmed by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Marshall Islands had sued the U.S. to fulfill its legal obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and customary international law to negotiate in good faith to end the nuclear arms race at an early date and for total nuclear disarmament. Judge White said the case involved nonjusticiable political questions.

Gallagher distinguished that case from the present case. In the Marshall Islands case, the plaintiffs were seeking to compel negotiations, but here, she said, there is a legal question: whether the defendants failed to prevent genocide. “It’s fundamentally different than weighing into negotiations.” She cited the ICJ’s new decision that makes clear there is an obligation to prevent and punish genocide.

Judge White also asked plaintiffs’ counsel what an injunction would look like if he issued one. Gallagher responded: “There can’t be more military support to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.” She clarified that the plaintiffs aren’t seeking to end all military support. For example, Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system would not be implicated. She proposed a hearing with the U.S. government and discovery to examine which weapons Israel is using in Gaza.

Lin said the court has “no jurisdiction to enjoin the president in his official duties” as commander in chief.

The judge cited the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution that says treaties are the supreme law of the land. That includes the Genocide Convention.

Lin retorted that even if the Genocide Convention is the supreme law of the land, that doesn’t mean it may be enforced by U.S. courts.

Gallagher noted that genocide also violates customary international law — which arises from the general and consistent practice of states. Customary international law is part of federal common law and must be enforced in U.S. courts, whether or not its provisions are enshrined in a ratified treaty.

Judge White characterized the testimony as “truly horrific, gut wrenching, no words to describe it.” He noted that the government doesn’t dispute the uncontradicted evidence of a “genocide in progress.”

“The Palestinian people are living in fear and without food, medical care, clean water or sufficient humanitarian aid. Defendants — the president of the United States and his secretaries of state and defense — have provided substantial military, financial and diplomatic support to Israel,” Judge White said.

“However, the primary concern for this court is the limitation of its own jurisdictional reach.” He said this case was one of the “the most difficult” of his career. He told the plaintiffs, “You have been seen, you have been heard by this court. I’m going to take it extremely seriously.”

Judge White may decide to play both ends against the middle. His decision could begin with a detailed recitation of the horrific facts on the ground in Gaza, the weaponry that the U.S. provides to Israel to kill large numbers of Palestinians, and his sympathy for the suffering of the plaintiffs. He will say what a difficult decision this is for him.

But my hands are tied, he might say, because this case raises “nonjusticiable political questions” reserved only to the executive and legislative branches of government, so he must dismiss the case.

Or he may take the high road and allow these Palestinian plaintiffs redress for the unspeakable violence perpetrated against their families and organizations by Israel, and allow them a judicial remedy.

Gallagher reported that a massive crowd of supporters convened outside Judge White’s courtroom as a huge sign reading, “Stop the Genocide Biden” hung from the federal courthouse.

Activists around the country are also demonstrating in support of the genocide lawsuits against Israel. On January 26, the day of the hearing in the Oakland case and the issuance of the ICJ’s order on provisional measures, hundreds of Palestinians, Jews, and other local community members gathered in downtown Portland for a march and rally calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an end to U.S. military aid to Israel. The action was endorsed by several civil society groups, including Jewish Voice for Peace PDX and Healthcare Workers for Palestine Portland.

Cities throughout the United States have passed resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Regardless of how Judge White rules in the Palestinians’ case, it represents a milestone in the struggle to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza and will inspire people in the U.S. and around the world to demand an end to Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people.

UPDATE: On January 31, Judge White reluctantly dismissed the Palestinian plaintiffs’ lawsuit against Biden, Blinken and Austin. Relying on the political question doctrine, the judge found he had no jurisdiction to hear the case. He wrote that “the ongoing military siege in Gaza is intended to eradicate a whole people and therefore plausibly falls within the international prohibition against genocide.” But he concluded this case was a “rare” instance where “the preferred outcome is inaccessible to the court.” He also wrote that the “Court implores Defendants to examine the results of their unflagging support of the military siege against the Palestinians in Gaza.”

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Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of the national advisory boards of Assange Defense and Veterans For Peace, and the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. She is founding dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues. She is co-host of “Law and Disorder” Radio.

Featured image: I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream- by Mr. Fish

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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[Our thanks to Al Jazeera for this article.]

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has described the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) as “the backbone of all humanitarian response in Gaza” and appealed to all countries to “guarantee the continuity of UNRWA’s lifesaving work”.

Several countries including the United States, UNRWA’s biggest donor, paused funding after Israel accused some agency staff of taking part in the October 7 attack by Hamas.

Speaking to the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) on Wednesday, Guterres said he was “personally horrified” by the accusations waged against UNRWA staff but stressed the need to overcome the termination.

“Yesterday, I met with donors to listen to their concerns and to outline the steps we are taking to address them,” he said.

“I am extremely concerned by the inhumane conditions faced by Gaza’s 2.2 million people, as they struggle to survive without any of the basics.”

Describing conditions inside the besieged enclave, the UN chief said heavy rains were flooding makeshift tent camps, forcing children, parents and the elderly to sleep in the mud. Clean water has become almost completely inaccessible and preventable diseases are rife, while the health system has collapsed.

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday warned of a “massive catastrophe” unfolding in Gaza.

“This is a population that is starving to death, this is a population that is being pushed to the brink,” WHO’s emergencies director Michael Ryan told a news conference.

“The civilians of Gaza are not parties to this conflict and they should be protected, as should be their health facilities.

UN officials have warned that UNRWA will have to halt operations by the end of February if funding is not restored.

The heads of WHO, the World Food Program (WFP), UNICEF, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and other agencies and partners said the allegations were “horrifying.”

“However, we must not prevent an entire organisation from delivering on its mandate to serve people in desperate need,” they said in a joint statement. “No other entity has the capacity to deliver the scale and breadth of assistance that 2.2 million people in Gaza urgently need.”

‘Completely Dependent’ on UNRWA

At a meeting of the UN Security Council on Gaza on Wednesday, UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said that UNRWA plays a fundamental role in the humanitarian response in Gaza.

“To put it very simply and bluntly: Our humanitarian response for the occupied Palestinian territory is dependent, completely dependent, on UNRWA being adequately funded and operational,” Griffiths told the 15-member council.

“UNRWA’s lifesaving services … to over three-quarters of Gaza’s residents should not be jeopardised by the alleged actions of a few individuals. It is a matter of extraordinary disproportion,” he said.

Griffiths added that the ability of the humanitarian community to reach the people of Gaza with aid remained “grossly inadequate”.

“We continue to face the issue of the rejection for entry of much-needed items into Gaza by Israel for reasons which, at least for us, are unclear and inconsistent,” he said.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) last week ordered Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent its troops from committing genocide and take steps to improve the humanitarian situation of Palestinians in Gaza, in a case brought by South Africa.

In its highly anticipated interim ruling on Friday, the ICJ did not call for an immediate ceasefire but said Israel must promptly implement “immediate and effective” measures to guarantee the delivery of urgently required humanitarian aid and basic services to Gaza.

South Africa’s Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor on Wednesday said all states have an obligation to stop funding and facilitating Israel’s military actions in Gaza after the World Court made clear those actions have the potential to amount to genocide.

Israel must report to the court within a month on what it is doing to uphold the order to take all measures within its power to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza.

Accusations Against UNRWA

The accusations against UNRWA staff members became public on Friday, when the agency announced it had fired some staff after Israel provided information. Guterres said on Sunday that of 12 people implicated nine were fired, one is dead, and the identity of the remaining two was being clarified.

A six-page Israeli dossier said 12 UNRWA staff members took part in the October 7 attacks that killed 1,139 people. It also suggests Israel has wider evidence that UNRWA has employed 190 Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters.

Later on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said UNRWA had been “totally infiltrated” by Hamas and called for its termination.

“It’s time for the international community and the U.N. itself to understand that UNRWA’s mission must be terminated,” Netanyahu told visiting UN delegates, according to a statement from his office.

The Palestinians have claimed Israel falsified information to tarnish UNRWA.

Donors, including the European Union and several European nations, the United Kingdom, Japan and Canada, have suspended funding to the agency.

Riyad Mansour, the permanent observer to the UN for the Palestinian territories, told the UN Security Council on Wednesday there was no reason to “take measures that effectively amount to the collective punishment of 30,000 UNRWA staff and millions of refugees” who benefit from UNRWA’s services. 

US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the US is working to facilitate the delivery of more aid into Gaza, sidestepping reports that Israel has consistently blocked UN aid delivery efforts.

Thomas-Greenfield also said that the ICJ ruling was consistent with the US approach to Gaza, and that conditions for a ceasefire “do not exist”.

South Africa’s Pandor said Pretoria has done everything it can and now it is up to the global community to play its part by holding Israel accountable.

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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The United States has long called itself the “indispensable nation” to justify its claim to global leadership. Through its inane policies and destructive actions, the US has lost both international regard and support from world leaders who expected better of the world’s hyperpower. The latest outrage is the Biden administration’s decision to cut existential funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) because a dozen of its 13,000 employees in Gaza were allegedly involved in the December 7th Hamas surprise attack on Israel.

The Israel-blinded Biden administration does not comprehend that UNRWA is the “indispensable organisation” which provides food, shelter, health care, education and 30,000 jobs for the 5.7 million UNRWA-registered Palestinian refugees in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. UNRWA is and always was a quasi state-within-a-state serving a stateless people. What would happen to these survivors of Israel’s 1948 and 1967 wars and their descendants if there was no UNRWA?

The agency was created in 1949 to care for the 750,000 Palestinians driven from their homes in villages and towns during that war. If Israel had heeded and implemented UN General Assembly resolution 194, paragraph 11, and allowed the Palestinians to return home and paid them compensation for their losses, there would have been no UNRWA and no permanent stateless Palestinian refugee population living in limbo for 75 years until the world decides what to do with them. 

Israel’s main objection to UNRWA is its registration as refugees the descendants of Palestinans driven from their homes in 1948. This has perpetuated “refugeedom” in the Palestinian camps in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and in host countries. Many live in camps among fellow villagers and townspeople from Palestine. This fosters a sense of community and solidarity which Israel seeks to erase. 

In response to statelessness, young Palestinians have formed resistance groups which since the 1950s have mounted attacks on Israel and in the 1960s hijacked civilian aircraft. Resistance put Palestine back on the world map and reclaimed the stolen Palestinian identity.

The powers-that-be have promised a “two state solution” to the Palestinian predicament by founding a Palestinian state alongside Israel but have never made a serious effort to deliver on this promise which has been revived in recent months. It is too late. Israel says there can be no Palestinian state between the Mediterranean and Jordan River.

The two-state solution has become a mirage which has faded. Without serious US and international opposition and sanctions, Israel has illegally planted 750,000 colonists in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the areas which would make up 98-99 per cent of a Palestinian state while Gaza would contribute only one or two per cent. 

In the absence of a two-state solution, UNRWA has become all-the-more indispensable for stateless Palestinians. Paradoxically, Israel has always been critical of UNRWA and eager to see its relief and works infrastructure dismantled and its 30,000 employees out of jobs. I say, paradoxically, for without UNRWA, Israel would have to assume responsibility for the lives and welfare of Palestinian refugees in all the areas it occupied in 1967 although Israel, as occupying power, has refused to provide for Palestinians who dwell there but are not refugees. 

Over the decades, Israel has accused UNRWA of inciting young Palestinians through the textbooks in agency schools. This can be achieved only by leaving out the history of Palestine during the 20th and 21st centuries, which has been 123 years of colonisation, displacement and warfare. In East Jerusalem, Israel has tried and failed to impose Israeli approved textbooks and the Israeli curriculum.

While the European Union and various countries have joined Israel in mounting the textbook charge, UNRWA’s accusers do not investigate the incitement of Palestinian children by Israeli soldiers and settlers who harass them as the walk to school or play football in neighbourhood streets. The situation became so ugly in Khalil (Hebron) in the West Bank that the Temporary International Presence in Hebron was deployed to protect Palestinian children in that city between 1994 and 2019. No UNRWA detractors mention the actions of Israeli troops who in the West bank and East Jerusalem — as testified by Israeli soldiers in Breaking the Silence — crash into Palestinian homes at the middle of the night, beat and arrest males, or confine families in single rooms while taking over entire floors as observation posts.

UNRWA schools have also been accused by Israel of hiding weapons used to resist Israeli incursions into Gaza and, since it took control of Gaza, collaborating with Hamas. On the latter charge, UNRWA has had no choice but to have and maintain contacts with the Hamas-run administration in Gaza. 

Although Hamas is Israel’s current enemy, since the First Intifada (1987-1993), successive Israeli governments had fostered the growth of Hamas with the objective of undermining Fatah which led the resistance during the initial uprising and the Second Intifada (2000-2005). Israel relished the rift between Fatah and Hamas which drove Fatah’s security agents from Gaza in 2007 and assumed control of the narrow coastal strip. Israel switched to the Fateh-dominated Palestinian Authority in 1993 following the signing of the Oslo accords and discouraged Palestinian reunification, splitting Gaza from the West Bank. Today, Israel is reaping the harvest of its wrong-headed policies. Destroying UNRWA would be disastrous and destabilising for the entire region.

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Featured image: Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) holds press conference in Jerusalem on October 27, 2023 [Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency]

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

***

Delegates at an Israeli conference calling for the re-settlement of Israelis in Gaza were handed a board game that seemingly allowed players to map out where they would establish homes in the enclave after it was conquered.

The game, titled, “Come Build Your House in Gaza!” shows a layout of Gaza separated into different neighbourhoods with Hebrew names and explanations of the meaning behind each of them.

It was seen at the Victory Of Israel conference, an event hosted in Jerusalem on Sunday by right-wing Israeli politicians, campaigners and religious figures calling for the building of Israeli settlements in Gaza after the end of the war. 

The conference was attended by 11 cabinet ministers and 15 coalition members of parliament.

Players of the game are invited to place wooden house-shaped blocks, with their names written on stickers, on the neighbourhoods they want to settle in.

Among them is the “Heroes of Gaza Neighbourhood”, which it says will be established on top of the Shujaiya neighbourhood. An estimated 300 people were killed in a single Israeli strike on a residential block in Shujaiya in December of last year. 

“The translation to Hebrew is ‘Neighbourhood of the Brave,'” reads the caption, referring to its current name.

“The name comes from the Muslims who fought the Crusaders in the Gaza area. The name can also be attributed to the [Israeli army] fighters who fought in the city,” it says.

Another is listed as the “Gavish neighbourhood”, currently al-Nasser, which the game says is named after Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who fought with Israel repeatedly, including in the 1967 war that saw the capture of Gaza.

“Its name will be changed to honour chief commander of the Southern Command in the 6-day war, Yeshayahu Gavish,” reads the caption, using another name for the 1967 war.

Israel has occupied Gaza since 1967, and during that time built numerous settlements across the territory in which Israeli Jews settled.

In 2005, however, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the destruction and evacuation of the Gaza settlements, a move which many right-wing Israelis opposed and continue to regard as a mistake to be rectified.

‘Control Territory’

The conference came just days after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, for which it heard evidence earlier this month. 

The court gave Israel six orders regarding the siege and bombardment of Gaza. One of those was that Israel “must take measures within its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to the members of the Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip”.

The court also cited a series of statements made by Israeli leaders as evidence of incitement and dehumanising language against Palestinians, including comments made by Israeli President Isaac Herzog. 

During the conference, Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir called for Palestinians to be “voluntarily encouraged to leave” Gaza. 

In response to calls from the audience for Palestinians to be displaced from Gaza, Ben Gvir responded by saying: “You are right, voluntary encouragement, let them go from here.

“We must return to Gush Katif and northern Samaria… if you don’t want it to happen again for the seventh or tenth time, we must return home and control the territory, encouraging immigration, and the death penalty for terrorists,” he added. 

Gush Katif was a bloc of 17 Israeli settlements in southern Gaza. At the conference, Ben Gvir, along with other ministers, signed a petition for “victory and renewal of the settlement in Gaza” during the event. 

The document said that signatories pledged that they would “grow Jewish settlements full of life in Gaza”.

Afterwards, attendees were filmed celebrating the move by waving the Israeli flag and cheering. Following Ben Gvir’s speech, people could be heard chanting “death to Arabs”.

Some of the statements made at the conference have led to backlash, with some pointing out that they could violate the ICJ’s orders.

Itay Epshtain, an Israel-based special advisor for the Norwegian Refugee Council, shared a video in which Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich could be seen arm-in-arm, dancing together at the conference.

The human rights lawyer said that the image “would form part of the compelling evidence of noncompliance” with the ICJ’s recent order to take all measures within its power to prevent acts of genocide and to punish acts of incitement.

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Featured image: “Come Build Your House in Gaza!” on display at the Victory of Israel conference in Jerusalem, on 28 January 2024 (Oren Ziv/MEE)

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

***

Swiss philosopher Henri-Frédéric Amiel’s famous description of the spirit of what we call today the Collective West, “le culte de la chose bien faite,” sounds sadly hollow nowadays.

Once upon a time, Amiel’s words referred to a palpable, vibrant, reality. In countries associated with the civilisation of the West, and as noted by Weber in particular where the Protestant ethic prevailed, doing things right and efficiently used to be a fanatical cult, just as Amiel observed. The beneficial results, especially by comparison to the performance of civilisations and cultures rooted in different principles, were plainly visible and indisputable.

Amiel lived in the nineteenth century. There is a contemporary French philosopher, Emmanuel Todd, who has noted processes that are markedly different. He has the reputation of a prescient analyst and uncanny forecaster. His recently published book, “The Defeat of the West,” will unsettle many. Its tenor is in sharp contrast to Amiel’s self-confident and optimistic view that the West has got the winning combination with its defining characteristic of “doing things right.” According to Emmanuel Todd, the West no longer retains its perfectionist edge. Its fundamental task now is merely to avert the impending downfall, if it still can. As Todd cogently argues, the West has not only passed its “active stage,” which is reflected in Henri-Frédéric Amiel’s cited remark, but also the ensuing civilisation-on-auto-pilot “zombie stage”. It now finds itself in the terminal “stage zero,” the religious mainsprings whence its civilisation drew its vitality being completely sapped. In the West, there is no longer a cult of efficiency and perfection capable of nurturing and sustaining a corresponding cultural articulation.

The implications of such a view, if correct, are monumental.

As encapsulated in Curzio Malaparte’s deliberately chosen raw Germanic expression, that would mean that the once fabled West has gone kaputt.

Todd has an enviable track record. In the mid-1970s he published a remarkable and at the time incredible volume, “The Final Fall,” where he predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union. This writer’s reaction to Todd’s arguments when they were put forward 40 years ago was deeply sceptical; they were enticing, yet also seemed unrealistic. To most contemporaries, the Soviet Union appeared to be an unshakable, enduring reality. Todd’s meticulous analysis of Soviet demographic data in support of his thesis was impressive, but seemed unconvincing as a cause capable of producing an effect of such magnitude. Few could imagine then that barely a decade later processes would commence that eventually led to precisely the outcome that Todd had predicted.

It would be unforgivably simplistic to attribute the implosion of the Soviet Union mainly to unfavourable demographics. That was a complex operation in which a multitude of factors played a role. But the virtue of the diagnostic investigation conducted 40 years ago by Emmanuel Todd was that he demonstrated how seemingly minor yet tell-tale signs could point to undercurrents and important processes that unjustifiably may have been overlooked.

And indeed, it is in the West now that tell-tale indications of disarray are increasingly emerging, to the consternation of those who have eyes to see and historical perspective to make comparisons. These signs point to a variety of breakdowns, only some of which are purely mechanical. They appear mostly to be cultural in essence, and therein lies the danger. A few recent random examples will serve to make the point.

Exhibit A: Political corruption.

Arizona Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake, who many suspect was cheated out of victory in the race for governor in 2022, is again the subject of political controversy in her state. A few weeks ago, she published the tape recording of a disgraceful bribe offer made to her by the state chairman of her own party. After requesting a confidential tête à tête conversation, that individual visited Lake in her home to inform her that wealthy and powerful “people back East” (in America that is a universally understood metaphor for deep state power centres) were prepared to satisfy Ms. Lake’s financial requirements if she would withdraw from the Senate race, presumably to make way for a controllable Establishment candidate. She only had to name her figure. To her credit, she flatly refused.

Readers from “third world” countries will be nonplussed by these revelations. But the matter should be viewed in context. In America political corruption is not unknown, but the brazenness of this particular proposition made in Arizona is a quantum leap into moral turpitude by comparison to previously recorded outrages of a similar nature.

Exhibit B: Academic corruption.

Harvard University President Claudine Gay was compelled to resign because of multiple plagiarisms discovered in her thin scholarly opus. Harvard was the flagship of the dozen leading Ivy League academic institutions in America. Its reputation for integrity is unimpeachable and sacrosanct. The appointment of the scarcely qualified Ms. Gay, apparently selected for her politically correct external characteristics rather than serious scholarship, was sufficiently problematic. But now her fall from grace, triggered by the embarrassing charge of plagiarism, gravely compromises not just Harvard but inescapably the American academe as a whole.

And if that were not enough, also at Harvard another academic scandal is brewing. Credible allegations have been put forward, and are being investigated, that researchers at the Dana-Farber cancer institute affiliated with Harvard Medical School had manipulated images and research data. One of the papers under review was authored by Dana-Farber CEO Laurie Glimcher. Molecular biologist Sholto David suggested Adobe Photoshop was used to copy and paste images in some of the papers. If correct, it is quite an adolescent way of cobbling together an academic research study.

“We are committed to a culture of accountability and integrity. Therefore, every inquiry is examined fully to ensure the soundness of the scientific literature,” and so on and so forth without missing a single platitude, responded Dana-Farber’s research integrity officer Barrett Rollins in a statement issued after the embarrassing allegations were made public. But big words cannot hide the damage that had been inflicted nor suppress questions about the implications. Merely alleging such academically unbecoming trickery would have been unimaginable a very short time ago.

Exhibit C: Mechanical breakdown. 

Aviation does not seem to be fairing much better either. Boeing is an iconic American corporation. It is to industrial manufacturing roughly what Harvard is to higher education. That is a very important fact to remember when assessing the implications of several unprecedented Delta and Alaska Airlines incidents which occurred recently, involving Boeing commercial airplanes on which inadequately secured exit doors had been blown off in-flight. To make matters worse and disturbingly indicative of the quality of workmanship in the new normal, when these incidents occurred the airplanes (minus the critical plug bolts) were in mint condition, having come off the Boeing assembly lines just weeks before. Providentially, no one was sucked out into the surrounding stratosphere, but there is no guarantee that next time the passengers and crew will be as lucky.

The implications of these failures, that are only on the surface mechanical, may be colossal. They go to the core of Amiel’s observation about the cult of excellence that once upon a time reigned in the West. The question is: what has happened to it, what explains its disappearance?

Granted, in some parts of the world such examples of sloppiness and misconduct would be commonplace. Most likely they would not be noticed nor would portentous significance be attributed to them. The matter under consideration however is different in an essential respect, and cultural context is the key to understanding why. The trends we have surveyed are emerging in a society, a civilizational realm to be more precise, where within living memory the banner of professional integrity still stood exceptionally high and where laxity in the performance of duty until recently was neither common nor casually tolerated.

The suspicion that a sea change may be under way is therefore neither unwarranted nor is it at all extravagant.

It may be premature based on these random examples, to which many more could of course be added, to draw bold conclusions about an imminent chute finale. But a compelling prima facie case for decadence can certainly be made. The cultural matrix is severely damaged, whether or not irreversibly we shall soon see. Previously inconceivable departures from long established cultural canons, in this case of efficiency and professional integrity, are now becoming increasingly common. Their impact is felt from Ivy League academy to manufacturing plants, and presumably encompasses much that lies in between.

Emmanuel Todd said that his latest book would be his last. He should perhaps reconsider. It seems that there still are plenty of interesting topics to cover, and we are rightfully entitled to expect from him a worthy sequel.

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Stephen Karganovic is president of “Srebrenica Historical Project,” an NGO registered in the Netherlands to investigate the factual matrix and background of events that took place in Srebrenica in July of 1995. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.  

Featured image source


Rethinking Srebrenica eBook : Karganovic, Stephen, Simic, Ljubisa: Amazon.co.uk: BooksRethinking Srebrenica

By Stephen Karganovic

Rethinking Srebrenica examines the forensic evidence of the alleged Srebrenica “massacre” possessed by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. Even though the ICTY created more than 3,500 autopsy reports, many of these autopsy reports were based on bone fragments, which do not represent complete bodies. An examination of the matching femur bones found reveals that there were only about 1,900 complete bodies that were exhumed. Of these, some 1,500 autopsy reports indicated a cause of death consistent with battlefield casualties. Only about 400 autopsy reports indicated execution as a cause of death, as revealed by ligatures and blindfolds. This forensic evidence does not warrant the conclusion of a genocide having taken place.

Karganovic examines the events that took place in Srebrenica in July 1995 in a wholistic manner instead of restricting it to a three-day event. The ten chapters cover:

1) Srebrenica: A Critical Overview;

2) Demilitarization of the UN Safe Zone of Srebrenica;

3) Genocide or Blowback?;

4) General Presentation and Interpretation of Srebrenica Forensic Data (Pattern of Injury Breakdown);

5) An Analysis of the Srebrenica Forensic Reports Prepared by the ICTY Prosecution Experts;

6) An Analysis of Muslim Column Losses Attributable to Minefields, Combat Activity, and Other Causes;

7) The Genocide Issue: Was there a Demonstrable Intent to Exterminate All Muslims?;

8) ICTY Radio Intercept Evidence;

9) The Balance Sheet; and

10) Srebrenica: Uses of the Narrative.

  • ASIN:‎ B0992RRJRK
  • Publisher: ‎Unwritten History, Inc.; 2 edition (July 8 2021)
  • Language: ‎English

Click here to purchase

Towards a New International Monetary System

February 1st, 2024 by Peter Koenig

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

***

Background and Introduction

This relatively lengthy introduction is deemed necessary to understand how we got to where we are today; to grasp the long-term western (US) plan to dominate the world economy with their currency, the US dollar, to which some 23 years ago the US-dollar’s cousin, the Euro, was added, with the same “zero-backing” base.

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The current western (US) made International Monetary System (IMS) has been plagued by unfairness since the beginning, when it was created through the so-called Federal Reserve Act (FRA), signed by US President Woodrow Wilson on December 23, 1913.

Image is from the public domain

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The FRA supposedly provided the US Government with the means to control inflation, and most importantly, it brought about the internationalization of the US-dollar as a global currency. Meaning, the US dollar could be used internationally as a trading currency, which de facto, made it into an international reserve currency. As such, it was increasingly used by countries around the world as a major reserve currency, allowing, or “necessitating” Washington to increase their money supply.

In 1834, the United States fixed the price of gold at $20.67 per ounce, where it remained until 1933. Other major countries joined the gold standard in the 1870s. The period from 1880 to 1914 is known as the classical gold standard. During that time, most countries adhered (to varying degrees) to gold.

The law required the Federal Reserve to hold gold equal to 40 percent of the value of the currency it issued, i.e. the US dollar, and to convert those dollars into gold at a fixed price of $20.67 per ounce of pure gold.

The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 effectively created the Federal Reserve Bank called “The Fed”.

For purposes of (US) “financial stability” and adjustment to “varying international economic situations” the FRA also allowed The Fed to issue interest rates as guiding instruments for the US banking system, and de facto ever more for the international banking system, as The FED also internationalized the US dollar, especially for trade, so that gradually countries trading in US dollars were dollarized, to differing degrees. Trading in US dollars, no matter between what countries, became an unwritten rule.

This meant on average and over time, more than 90% of international reserves were held in gold and US dollars, thereby ever-more increasing their economies’ dependence on the US – or the US currency.

This also meant that the US could print dollars ever more indiscriminately – without backing – as the world depended ever-more on the US dollar for trade and national reserves.

When in July 1944 the Bretton Woods (BW) Conference not only created the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, but also a new Gold Standard, the US, organizer and effective “owner” of the BW Conference and its results, in a clever move, “convinced” the participating delegates of 44 nations to accept that the new Gold Standard – 1 troy ounce (about 31.1 grams) would be pegged to the US dollar.

Instead of fixing the value of gold according to the weighed average of the 5 or 6 key currencies emerging after WWII – applying the SDR principle – the gold rate was fixed at US$ 35 / per troy ounce (t-oz); the gold value used for backing the currencies of the BW-participating nations was expressed in US dollars.

This meant that de facto gold was replaceable by the US dollar.

The US also were and still are in full control of the IMF and the World Bank with a veto power. The US being the largest shareholder with a 16.5% share, effectively giving it veto power, since major decisions need 85% for approval.

This total control over the IMF and the World Bank is also the reason why China is vastly underrepresented in both the IMF and the World Bank. China is the second largest economy in absolute GDP terms, and the world’s largest economy in Purchasing Power Parity, or PPP-terms – see below.

The US administration needs congressional approval for any IMF quota reform. It took the government years to get Congress to put its stamp on the 2010 reform that increased China’s voting at the expense of European countries, but NOT at the expense of the US.

Similarly, only in October 2016, was the Chinese Yuan (RMB) accepted to join the IMF’s basket of Special Drawing Rights (SDR). In May 2022 was the currency weight in the SDR “adjusted” for the US-dollar to currently 43.38% from 41.73% and the yuan to 12.28% from 10.92%. The euro’s weighting declined to 29.31% from 30.93%, the yen’s fell to 7.59% from 8.33% and the British pound fell to 7.44% from 8.09%.

There is no doubt, comparing the Chinese economy with that of the US and Europe, that the Yuan is way undervalued. A more just valuation / weighing of the Yuan in the SDR currency basket (US$, Euro, Chinese Yuan, UK pound, Japanese yen) – is of high priority.

U.S. Abandons the Gold Standard

When in 1971 President Nixon abandoned the gold standard, via the US controlled IMF, meaning that the US would no longer adhere to backing her currency (US dollar) with gold, the price of gold skyrocketed and the US dollar took de facto over the role of gold.

This presented an unquestioned reason for the US to print indiscriminately US dollars, as the world needed them for their international trade and national reserve coffers.

The second blow came when in 1974, after the artificially created oil crisis of 1973-1974, the U.S. “negotiated” with Saudi Arabia, the head of OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) that hydrocarbons, predominantly oil and gas, would only be traded in US dollars, thus, prompting Petrodollars flooding the world.

In exchange, the U.S. would provide Saudi Arabia with military protection and assist with weapons deals and infrastructure investment.

As of this day, oil continues to be the most valuable asset on the planet. More than 85% of all energy used to fuel the world’s economy originates from hydrocarbons.

The OPEC-dollar transaction deal allowed the US again to print indiscriminately more US dollars, as every country in the world needed US dollars to buy its (hydrocarbon) energy, thereby strengthening the US’s currency dominance over the world.

Today, about 60% of the world’s most used currencies (formerly called “convertible currencies”) are US dollars. While the world is flooded with the totally non-backed US dollar, the Chinese Yuan, the currency of the second largest or arguably the largest economy (in PPP-terms), accounts only for about 5%.

This disequilibrium must be corrected.

Indications for de-dollarization are increasing. In the early 1990s more than 90% of all monetary reserves were held in US dollar-denominated securities. Equally, about 90% of all international trade took place in US dollars. Today these proportions have been reduced to about 50% and 65%, respectively.

It is worth mentioning that many of the OPEC countries have fully or partially abandoned the unwritten rule of trading hydrocarbons in US dollars, replacing the dollar by local currencies, or by Yuan.

But much more is needed.

Back to President Wilson, the signatory of the Federal Reserve Act.

Shortly before his death in February 1924, President Wilson apparently came to regret signing the bill (Federal Reserve Act), saying: 

“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”

If indeed this is a true quote by President Woodrow Wilson, his foresight had repercussion up to this date – the world is ruled by a small elite and an unequal system, today still largely dominated by a single currency, the US dollar, which is backed by nothing, not gold, not commodities, not even by the United States’s own economy.

If GDP and debt are any indication for the value of a currency, consider this: Today’s US GDP in absolute terms is about US$ 27 trillion (followed by China US$ equivalent of 19.4 trillion), compared to a current US debt of 33.2 trillion – about 123% of GDP (China’s current debt of US-dollar equivalent 12.6 trillion – about a 65% debt-GDP ratio).

However, the real US debt, also called “unfunded liabilities” is currently about US$ 290 trillion (almost 11 times the current US GDP). Approximately 40% of unfunded liabilities consist of accrued interest on debt never intended to be paid, and another 20% of unmet medical liabilities, mostly related to war veterans’ injuries and psychic traumas; and about 12% relate to unfunded social security liabilities.

A little used economic indicator is Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). It equalizes the value of a basket of goods a currency can purchase, by eliminating the differences in price levels between countries. The GDP-PPP factor in the US is US$ 23.6 trillion, compared to China’s of US$-equivalent 33.5 trillion (2023 est.).

Converted into per capita, per year (pc/yr.) PPP: US = US$ 69,500; and China = US$ equivalent 24,000. Meaning – in China you may purchase for US$ 24,000 /pc/yr, what in the US would costs US$ 69,500 pc/yr.

In real economic terms GDP-PPP is more meaningful than the unadjusted GDP.

Towards a New International Monetary System

Any monetary reform must be seen and carried out considering the current international order – which is heavily marked by ever increasing conflicts between West and East.

Western powers are seeking to preserve their status, by rivaling the autonomous and sovereign development of independent nations, or nations that strive to become and stay independent from the western fangs.

To enhance their control over global events – and de facto, attempting to establish a “Global One World Government” — western powers have set up so-called “rules-based orders” attempting to erase established international and national laws. As a result, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague has become inoperable, defunct.

China’s and Russia’s philosophy of life and cooperation with the world and particularly within Asia is promoting a space for stability and joint development.

The year 2023 has shown that Greater Eurasia and Asia have so far been resistant to the negative external influences that are having the most dramatic consequences in Europe and the Middle East.

In summary, Asia and Eurasia remain a space of cooperation, not competition. The leading regional powers are able to reach terms that are fair to their smaller partners.

The new geographically widely dispersed BRICS-11 (5+6) add a new dimension to international cooperation – and to a constructive detachment from the western (US) sanctions regime and US dollar-dominated world-dictate.

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A New or Revised International Monetary System: Might Consider.

General

  • Assign a greater role of PPP – in economic valuation as well as in the weighted average of IMF’s SDRs;
  • A massive reduction of US-dollars flooding the globe.

IMF / World Bank 

  • Chinese Yuan to be revalued in the SDR, according to China’s economic strength
  • Chinese contribution in both IMF and World Bank to be reassessed, according to the weighted average of member-countries’ economies
  • Veto-power within these organizations to be reassessed; either abandoned altogether, i.e. one participant – one vote, or assigned according to newly assessed voting powers.

Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB)

  • AIIB to become an ever-stronger player in international economic development, not as a competitor to the World Bank and IMF, but rather as a cooperator and leader or co-leader in specific sectors, where AIIB might have a comparative advantage.
  • AIIB might take a lead in multi-currency (economic development) investments, promoting local currencies, under the premises that local currencies are enhancing a nation’s sovereignty and economic strength.

Virtual / Trading Currencies

With the objective of de-dollarization – i.e., brining an equilibrium of currencies in world circulation – and effective banning / blocking of (economic) sanctioning, which has proven detrimental to smaller and weaker economies:

  • Promote trading in local currencies – SWAP agreements
  • Abandoning SWIFT transfer system – replacing it with not one, but different transfer systems, not linked to the US-dollar;
  • Developing SDR-type (weighted average of specific economic indicators) virtual trading currency or currencies;
    SDR-type – means an International Trading Currency (ITC) based on the principles applied to the IMF’s SDR;
  • AIIB could be at the forefront of developing an ITC
  • BRICS-plus could be an initial trial for a common SDR-type ITC;

Digital Currencies – including Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC)

  • To be used specifically for international trading;
  • If used for day-to-day people’s and commercial transactions, digital currencies, incl. CBDCs should not replace cash transactions, leaving people free to choose between cash and digital currencies 

Backing of Currencies 

  • A country’s own economy should be determining a country’s monetary flow, considering international reserves and internal economic growth- and contraction fluctuations
  • Instead of gold or other precious metals, currencies might be backed by a package or packages of, say 20 -25 internationally used commodities, of which approx. a third could be country-specific.
    Such commodity packages might also include gold and other precious metals, but foremost commonly used and essential food products and different types of raw materials, including hydrocarbons (notably petrol and gas) – and possibly other (maybe 10%-15%?), of less tangible social indicators; like public health; level of education; peaceful international cooperation; capacity of conflict resolution….

It is understood that these indicators, the commodity packages, and possibly social indicators, would have to be periodically reviewed and reassessed by an international body, designated by the Community of Nations.

The Community of Nations is not necessarily represented by the United Nations. The UN, as its stands and functions today, is no longer the UN established in October 1945 in San Francisco, to replace the League of Nations (set up after WWI), with the specific goal to help resolve international conflicts and to foster peace and harmony among nations, as today it is dominated by the US and a few US allies.

While a revision of the UN is necessary, it is beyond the task of designing a revised or new international monetary system.

Conclusion

The process of introducing a new system of “currency backing” might take time, and could start in Asia, under the lead of China and Russia, extending to the ASEAN and BRICS countries, and eventually and hopefully be adopted also in the west, meaning a successful revision and overhaul of the IMF and World Bank.

The AIIB and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), as well as China’s International Monetary Institute (IMI), might take a leading role in designing currency backing packages.

The above are a few ideas for consideration and discussion possibly during the seminar on a “New International Monetary System” on 23 January 2024 in Beijing.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020). 

Peter is a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing. He is also a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

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During his January 24 press conference, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov exposed the imperialistic attitudes that characterize the Western powers. The US is in gross violation of Article I of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which states:   

“Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly, and not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear-weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, or control over such weapons or explosive devices.” 

In shocking violation of Article I, the United States has nuclear weapons transferred to Kleine Brogel in Belgium, Buchel Air Base in Germany, Aviano and Ghedi Air Bases in Italy, Volkel Air Base in the Netherlands, and Incirlik in Turkey.

It was, therefore preposterous when Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov was accused of Russian misbehavior in transferring nuclear weapons to Belarus, at that country’s request.

The absurdity was increased when Minister Lavrov was asked whether Russia intended to use these weapons against Ukraine.  Minister Lavrov legitimately ridiculed the double standard by which the Western powers accept the United States’ gross violation of the Nuclear NPT, but attempt to prohibit Russia from likewise transferring nuclear weapons to its neighbor, Belarus.

As Foreign Minister Lavrov stated:  the attitude of the West is that they can do whatever they want, in violation of international law, but Russia is not permitted such freedom. “By what right does the West dictate to Russia what it may, or may not do?”

Obviously, since Britain has transferred depleted Uranium weapons to Ukraine, for use against Russia, the UK is also guilty of gross violation of the NPT. In fact, NATO used depleted uranium weapons in its genocidal attack against Yugoslavia, and the widespread cancers that have befallen Yugoslav civilians as a result demonstrates that the use of these weapons is a war crime. The same situation prevails in Iraq, where the “coalition” powers are guilty of causing widespread cancers, as a result of these weapons.

  • Depleted uranium is used for tank armor, armor-piercing bullets, and as weights to help balance aircrafts.
  • Depleted uranium is both a toxic chemical and radiation health hazard when inside the body.

As it is obvious that carcinogenic weapons are being given to Ukraine for use against Russia, it is a ludicrous question as to  whether Russia or Byelorussia intends to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine.

Neither country has ever used nuclear weapons against any country.

Both countries are the adults in the room, with irrevocable acknowledgement that use of nuclear weapons would lead to the extermination of humanity.  

However, the ugly process has already been started by the West, specifically the UK, and it is impossible to predict how far this odious beginning will go. However, only the paranoid would suggest the possibility that Russia would initiate use of their nukes against Ukraine or any other country.

The only country that has ever used the nuclear bomb is the United States. Minister Lavrov exposed the pathological narcissism that characterizes Western, and specifically Anglo-American attitudes: “Do as I say, not as I do!” The Western powers evidently consider it is their imperial right to act with impunity, but no one else may claim such license.

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Carla Stea is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and Global Research’s Correspondent at UN headquarters, New York. 

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Statement from Antonio Porto, Secretary-General of the Italian Police Union:

“Here we have young colleagues, 29, 34, 40 years old But people who were well. In the last month, from December 15th until today, I became aware of seven police officers who died suddenly. In the last year, we are almost at 50. If not more.”

Statement from Aldo Di Giacomo, Secretary-General of the Penitentiary Police Union:

“In the last 13 months, we had 41 penitentiary police officers who died of sudden deaths. With a 200% increase compared to previous years. But these data on these sudden deaths worry us, and not a little.”

As explained by Antonio Porto, to join the police, specific and rigorous medical exams must be passed. Therefore, the presence of sudden deaths among the police is even more alarming and requires investigations. To join the police, you must have robust health and physical constitution. It is a basic requirement to enter the police force. So, if someone joins, it means they are healthy and should not die after two years. We have our dear Rafaela De Luca, who entered and died after three years of service. So, what caused this death?

Click here to watch the video

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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

Reviews

This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon

In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia

In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig 

Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac

A reading of  Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late.  You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

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In a Security Council meeting discussing the sabotage of the Nordstream Pipeline, Professor Jeffrey Sachs delivered a brilliant speech, supporting the report by Journalist Seymour Hersh, and demanding that the crime be investigated by the United Nations.

Former CIA analyst Ray MacGovern attested to the impeccable journalist credentials of Seymour Hersh, and also demanded an investigation into the perpetrator of the crime. Needless to say, such an investigation has not, to date, been held, no doubt because revelation of the identity of the perpetrator would shatter its claim to virtue. Sweden coyly stated that it knew the identity of the perpetrator, but would not reveal it for “security reasons.” One must ask: Whose security?

On January 24 Ukraine euphorically celebrated its downing of the Russian IL-76 aircraft. When it was soon revealed that the Russian plane was carrying 65 Ukrainian Prisoners of War for a prisoner “swap,” and that the euphoric Ukrainians were celebrating the murder of their own citizens, as well as the deaths of the 6 Russians piloting the plane, the celebration ceased, and Ukraine swiftly attempted to backpedal, denying culpability for the murders, going so far as to suggest that it was a Russian “false flag operation.” At the opening of his 11AM press conference that day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced the tragedy, and demanded an emergency meeting be held that afternoon at 3PM. Needless to say, the French presidency of the Security Council refused to hold such an emergency meeting, though the event was horrific. No investigation has followed. Foreign Minister Lavrov enumerated a long list of crimes, for which Russia was blamed, with no evidence whatsoever. Lavrov mentioned the Bucha incident, which the mainstream media trumpeted, without evidence, blaming Russia, whose forces had left Bucha three days before corpses were “discovered.” The identities of the corpses had still not been established, and Russia’s insistence on learning the names of the victims “discovered” in Bucha, three days after the departure of the Russians, was ignored. No credible investigation into the truth of the perpetrators of that event has ever been undertaken.

Image: The Skripals (Source: RTE)

Foreign Minister Lavrov also mentioned the case of the Skripals, dead in London, and for which they were also, without evidence, held responsible. Russia had repeatedly demanded an impartial investigation into that case, and needless to say, such an investigation was not undertaken.

The promiscuity with which blame is attributed to one State, and impunity granted to others leaves no doubt that justice is violated, facts and history distorted, and the very credibility of the United Nations is shredded, as its weight is thrown in support of nations guilty of war crimes, the innocent are convicted, and the criminals are exonerated.

The case of Yugoslavia is one of the most egregious examples of this violation of truth.  Organ harvesting by the KLA is ignored, as Milosovic is convicted, and NATO’s use of depleted uranium in its bombing of Belgrade, which has led to widespread cancers among civilians, has the blessing of the Security Council. As the accusation was finally hurled at US Senator Joseph McCarthy many decades ago: “Have they no decency?” This betrayal of the hopes of the founder of the United Nations, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is unconscionable.

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Carla Stea is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and Global Research’s Correspondent at UN headquarters, New York.  

Featured image: Gas emanating from the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the Baltic Sea, September 28, 2022. / Swedish Coast Guard.

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Former Pakistani Prime Minister and chairman of the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, Imran Khan, and former Foreign Affairs Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi were sentenced to ten years in prison for allegedly violating the Official Secrets Act, Pakistani TV channel GEO reported on January 30.

Imprisoned since August 2023 after being convicted and sentenced to three years on corruption charges, 71-year-old Khan pleaded not guilty to charges of leaking state secrets that dealt a new blow to his chances of contesting Pakistan’s general elections in February.

According to Al Jazeera, the charges relate to a confidential cable called a cipher sent to Islamabad by Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington last year, which Khan is accused of making public. Khan’s defence disputed the accusation, stating that the former prime minister had already claimed that the cable’s contents appeared in the media from other sources. 

For Khan, the cable is proof of a conspiracy by the Pakistani military and the US government to overthrow his government in 2022 after he visited Moscow shortly before the start of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine. Washington and Pakistan’s military deny the accusations.

The verdict was announced by special court judge Abdul Hasnat Zulqarnain during the hearing at Adiala Jail in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, in the presence of leaders of both parties.

Syed Zulfiqar Bukhari, a spokesperson for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, told the media outside the courts that PTI will challenge the court’s decision.

“This was pretty much a writing on the wall,” he said, adding that the trial against Khan was held in an “unlawful manner.”

This is the second time that Khan has been indicted on the same charges, after a higher court quashed an earlier indictment on technical grounds, saying the correct procedure was not followed. A new trial, conducted in prison for security reasons, is expected to begin on February 1, in the presence of his lawyers, family and some selected journalists.

Khan has already had dozens of lawsuits filed against him, denounced by his defence as an attempt to banish him from politics. Although a higher court suspended the corruption sentence, he remains in prison on other cases, including a charge of instigating violence following one of his arrests.

Elections in Pakistan are to be held on February 8, and this decision against the PTI leader can prove to be decisive in the upcoming elections. However, a 10-year sentence is unlikely to be carried out and will likely be rejected – if not cleared – in Pakistan’s High Court or Supreme Court.

Pakistan’s pro-US establishment expects this, but the verdict was important to try to demoralise Khan and his supporters ahead of the highly contentious elections. It is telling that the court conducted the trial without allowing any media or public access and reportedly rejected the defence’s request to cross-examine the prosecution’s witnesses and experts, making it obvious that the proceedings were a sham.

Khan’s sister, Begum Khanum, told the media outside the courthouse that it was a “very painful day for Pakistan.”

“We only got five minutes for cross-examination in the court. This is such an important case and this is how it was handled? If they cannot give us justice, we will get justice ourselves,” she added.

Although Khan has remained jailed for many months, he remains highly popular and still managed to engage with his supporters through ingenious means, such as communicating via audio clips generated by artificial intelligence (AI).

It is recalled that a 4-minute video was posted on Khan’s X account on January 21, in which the AI-generated voice of the former prime minister speaks about civilian deaths in Gaza and the war in Ukraine, sending a warning to the international community that “the world is heading towards a grave international crisis.”

The AI video also mentioned how Pakistan is struggling with internal conflict, especially since “the entire state machinery” is violating laws to keep him and the PTI out of the electoral process. Little would he have predicted that just over a week after the AI video, he would be sentenced to a decade in prison.

AI is proving to be a useful political tool for the PTI as Khan remains imprisoned, a media ban on PTI is enforced, and its leaders are stopped from holding public rallies. As the PTI is finding ingenious methods to overcome the difficulties, the pro-US establishment of Pakistan has taken drastic measures to imprison him for ten years. However, as said, the sentence will unlikely be carried out as the deep and evident corruption will be one step too far for Pakistan’s High and Supreme courts.

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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image source

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

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

Image: The US government continues to view Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido (left) as the rightful leader of Venezuela, not Nicolas Maduro (right). (Alexandros Michailidis/StringerAl/Shutterstock)

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

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

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

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

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

An end to military intervention.

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

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

Another form of military intervention is the financing and training of local military and police forces. Most of the U.S. assistance sent to Latin America, particularly Central America, goes towards funding security forces, resulting in the militarization of police and borders, and leading to greater police brutality, extrajudicial killings and repression of migrants.

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

No more political meddling.

While the U.S. public has been shocked by charges of Russian interference in its elections, this kind of meddling is par for the course in Latin America. USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), created in 1983 as a neutral sounding alternative to the CIA, spend millions of tax-payer dollars to undermine progressive movements. Following the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998, for instance, NED ramped up its assistance to conservative groups in Venezuela (which became the foundation’s number one Latin American recipient) as a leadup to regime change attempts.

An end to the use of economic blackmail.

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

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

Support trade policies that lift people out of poverty and protect the environment.

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

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

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

Humane immigration policy.

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

Recognition of Latin America’s cultural contributions.

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

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

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Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace, is the author of the new book, Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Her previous books include: Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi ConnectionDrone Warfare: Killing by Remote ControlDon’t Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart, and (with Jodie Evans) Stop the Next War Now (Inner Ocean Action Guide). Follow her on Twitter: @medeabenjamin

Steve Ellner has taught economic history at the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela since 1977. His recent books include his edited Latin America’s Pink Tide: Breakthroughs and Shortcomings (2020) and his co-edited Latin American Social Movements and Progressive Governments (2022), both published by Rowman & Littlefield. Follow him on Twitter: @sellner74

Featured image: Brazilian President Getúlio Vargas (left) and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt (right) in 1936 (From the Public Domain)

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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The following text is Chapter XII of Michel Chossudovsky’s book.

 

 

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The Worldwide Corona Crisis,

Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

 

Global Debt and Neoliberal “Shock Treatment”

by

Michel Chossudovsky 

 

Introduction

The March 11, 2020 (simultaneous) closing down of the national economies of approximately 190 member states of the UN is diabolical and unprecedented. Millions of people have lost their jobs and their lifelong savings. In developing countries, poverty, famine and despair prevail. The closure of national economies has led to a spiraling global debt. Increasingly, national governments are controlled by the creditors, which are currently financing the social safety nets, corporate bailouts and handouts.

While this model of “global intervention” is unprecedented, it has certain features reminiscent of the country-level macro-economic reforms including the imposition of strong “economic medicine” by the IMF. To address this issue, let us examine the history of so-called “economic shock treatment” (a term first used in the 1970s).1 

Flashback to Chile, September 11, 1973

As a visiting professor at the Catholic University of Chile, I lived through the military coup directed against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. It was a CIA operation led by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger coupled with devastating macro-economic reforms.

In the month following the coup d’etat, the price of bread increased from 11 to 40 escudos overnight.2 This engineered collapse of both real wages and employment under the Pinochet dictatorship was conducive to a nationwide process of impoverishment.

Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet shaking hands with U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1976 (By Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Chile.Archivo General Histórico del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, licensed under CC BY 2.0 cl)

 

While food prices had skyrocketed, wages had been frozen to ensure “economic stability and stave off inflationary pressures.” From one day to the next, an entire country had been precipitated into abysmal poverty; in less than a year, the price of bread in Chile increased 36 times and 85 percent of the Chilean population had been driven below the poverty line. That was Chile’s 1973 “Reset”. 

Two and a half years later in 1976, I returned to Latin America as a visiting professor at the National University of Cordoba in the northern industrial heartland of Argentina. My stay coincided with another military coup d’état in March 1976.

Behind the massacres and human rights violations, “free market” macro-economic reforms had also been prescribed – this time under the supervision of Argentina’s New York creditors, including David Rockefeller who was a friend of the Junta’s Minister of Economy José Alfredo Martinez de Hoz.3

Chase Alumni Association

Image: David Rockefeller meets Dictator Jorge Videla (right) and Minister of Finance Martinez de Hoz, 1978? (Source: Plaza de Mayo)

Chile and Argentina were “dress rehearsals” for things to come. The imposition of the IMF-World Bank Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) was imposed on more than 100 countries starting in the early 1980s (see Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Global Research, 2003).4

A notorious example of the “free market”: Peru in August 1990 was punished for not conforming to IMF diktatsthe price of fuel was hiked up 31 times and the price of bread increased more than 12 times in a single day.5 These reforms – carried out in the name of “democracy” – were far more devastating than those applied in Chile and Argentina under the fist of military rule.

The March 2020 Lockdown. “Economic Warfare”

And now on March 11, 2020, we enter a new phase of macro-economic destabilization, which is more devastating and destructive than 40 years of “shock treatment” and austerity measures imposed by the IMF on behalf of dominant financial interests.

There is rupture, a historical break as well as continuity. It’s “neoliberalism to the nth degree”.

Closure of the Global Economy: Economic and Social Impacts at the Level of the Entire Planet

Compare what is happening to the global economy today with the country by country “negotiated” macro-economic measures imposed by creditors under the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). The March 11, 2020 “Global Adjustment” was not negotiated with national governments. It was imposed by a  “public-private partnership”, sustained by fake science, supported by media propaganda and accepted by co-opted and corrupt politicians.


Click here to download the full eBook.


 

“Engineered” Social Inequality and Impoverishment. The Globalization of Poverty 

Compare the March 11, 2020 “Global Adjustment” “guidelines” affecting the entire planet to Chile on September 11, 1973.

In a bitter irony, the same Big Money interests behind the 2020 “Global Adjustment” were actively involved in Chile (1973) and Argentina (1976). Remember “Operation Condor” and the “Dirty War” (Guerra Sucia).

There is continuity. The same powerful financial interests including the IMF and the World Bank bureaucracies in liaison with the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the World Economic Forum (WEF) are currently involved in preparing and managing the post-pandemic “new normal” debt operations (on behalf of the creditors) under the Great Reset.

Henry Kissinger was involved in coordinating Chile’s 9/11, 1973 “Reset”.

The following year (1974), he was in put charge of the drafting of the “National Strategic Security Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200) which identified depopulation as “the highest priority in US foreign policy towards the Third World”.6         

The Thrust of “Depopulation” Under the Great Reset? 

Illustration by Global Research/image of Henry Kissinger is from White House Photographic Office/PD-USGOV, licensed under the Public Domain

Today, Henry Kissinger is a firm supporter alongside the Gates Foundation (which is also firmly committed to depopulation) of the Great Reset under the auspices of the World Economic Forum (WEF) (see Chapter XIII). 

No need to negotiate with national  governments nor carry out “regime change”. The March 11, 2020 lockdown project constitutes a “Global Adjustment” which triggers bankruptcies, unemployment and privatization on a much larger scale affecting in one fell swoop the national economies of more than 150 countries.

And this whole process is presented to public opinion as a means to combating the “killer virus” which, according to the CDC and the WHO is similar to seasonal influenza (see Chapter III).

The Hegemonic Power Structure of Global Capitalism 

Big Money including the billionaire foundations are the driving force. It’s a complex alliance of Wall Street and the banking establishment, the Big Oil and Energy Conglomerates, the so-called “Defense Contractors”, Big Pharma, the Biotech Conglomerates, the Corporate Media, the Telecom, Communications and Digital Technology Giants, together with a network of think tanks, lobby groups, research labs, etc. The ownership of intellectual property also plays a central role.

This powerful digital-financial decision-making network also involves major creditor and banking institutions: the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank (ECB), the IMF, the World Bank, the regional development banks, and the Basel-based Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which plays a key strategic role.

By far the most powerful financial entities are the giant investment portfolio conglomerates including Black Rock, Vanguard, State Street and Fidelity. They control: 

“… a combined 20 trillion dollars in managed assets…. Conservatively counting, a four to five-fold leverage power (i.e. some US$ 80 to 100 trillion)”. These powerful financial conglomerates have a leverage in excess of the the world’s GDP which is of the order of about 82 trillion dollars.”7

In turn, the upper echelons of the US state apparatus (and Washington’s Western allies) are directly or indirectly involved, including the Pentagon, US Intelligence (and its research labs), the health authorities, Homeland Security and the US State Department (including US embassies in over 150 countries).

The “Real Economy” and “Big Money”

Why are these COVID lockdown policies spearheading bankruptcy, poverty and unemployment?

Global capitalism is not monolithic. There is indeed “a class conflict” “between the super rich and the vast majority of the world population”.

But there is also intense rivalry within the capitalist system; namely a conflict between “Big Money Capital” and what might be described as “Real Capitalism” which consists of corporations in different areas of productive activity at the national and regional levels. It also includes small and medium-sized enterprises.

What is ongoing is a process of concentration of wealth (and control of advanced technologies) unprecedented in world history, whereby the financial establishment (i.e. the multi-billion dollar creditors) are slated to appropriate the real assets of both bankrupt companies as well as state assets.

The “real economy” constitutes “the economic landscape” of  real economic activity: productive assets, agriculture, industry, services, economic and social infrastructure, investment, employment, etc. The real economy at the global and national levels is being targeted by the lockdown and closure of economic activity. The Global Money financial institutions are the “creditors” of the real economy.


Click here to download the full eBook.


Global Governance: Towards a Totalitarian State

The individuals and organizations involved in the October 18, 2019 201 Simulation are now involved in the actual management of the crisis once it went live on January 30, 2020 under the WHO’s Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), which in turn set the stage for the February 2020 financial crisis and the March lockdown (see Chapter I).

The lockdown and closure of national economies has triggered several waves of mass unemployment coupled with the engineered bankruptcy (applied worldwide) of small and medium-sized enterprises (see Chapter IV).

All of which is spearheaded by the installation of a global totalitarian state which is intent upon breaking all forms of protest and resistance.

The COVID vaccination program (including the embedded digital passport and the QR Code) is an integral part of a global totalitarian regime (see Chapter VIII and Chapter XIII).

What is the infamous ID2020? It is an alliance of public-private partners, including UN agencies and civil society. It’s an electronic ID program that uses generalized vaccination as a platform for digital identity. The program harnesses existing birth registration and vaccination operations to provide newborns with a portable and persistent biometrically-linked digital identity.red zones, face masks, social distancing, lockdown. (Peter Koenig, March 12, 2020)8

“The Great Reset”

The same powerful creditors which triggered the COVID global debt crisis are now establishing a “new normal” which essentially consists in imposing what the World Economic Forum describes as the “Great Reset”.

Using COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions to push through this transformation, the Great Reset is being rolled out under the guise of a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ in which older enterprises are to be driven to bankruptcy or absorbed into monopolies, effectively shutting down huge sections of the pre-COVID economy. Economies are being ‘restructured’ and many jobs will be carried out by AI-driven machines.

The jobless (and there will be many) would be placed on some kind of universal basic income and have their debts (indebtedness and bankruptcy on a massive scale is the deliberate result of lockdowns and restrictions) written off in return for handing their assets to the state or more precisely to the financial institutions helping to drive this Great Reset. The WEF says the public will ‘rent’ everything they require: stripping the right of ownership under the guise of ‘sustainable consumption’ and ‘saving the planet’. Of course, the tiny elite who rolled out this great reset will own everything. (Colin Todhunter,  Dystopian Great Reset, November 9, 2020)9

Push the Reset Button

The World Economic Forum’s Great Reset has been long in the making. “Push the reset button” with a view to saving the world economy was announced by WEF Chairman Klaus Schwab in January 2014, six years prior to the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“What we want to do in Davos this year [2014] is to Push the Reset Button, the world is too much caught in a crisis mode.”

Two years later in a 2016 interview with the Swiss French language TV network (RTS), Klaus Schwab talked about implanting microchips in human bodies, which in essence is the basis of the “experimental” COVID mRNA vaccine. 

“What we see is a kind of fusion of the physical, digital and biological world,” said Klaus Schwab.

Schwab explained that human beings will soon receive a chip which will be implanted in their bodies in order to merge with the digital world.

RTS: “When will that happen?

KS: “Certainly in the next ten years.

“We could imagine that we will implant them in our brain or in our skin.”

“And then we can imagine that there is direct communication between the brain and the digital World.”

Click here to watch the interview, Towards Digital Tyranny, with Peter Koenig. Click here for the Bitchute version.

Screenshot from the video / Copyright Global Research

June 2020. The WEF Officially Announces the Great Reset

“The pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world to create a healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous future.” -Klaus Schwab, WEF (June 2020) 

What is envisaged under “the Great Reset” is a scenario whereby the global creditors will have appropriated by 2030 the world’s wealth while impoverishing large sectors of the world population.

In 2030, “you’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy.” (Click here to watch the video) 

The United Nations: An Instrument of Global Governance on Behalf of an Unelected Public-Private Partnership

The UN system is also complicit. It has endorsed “Global Governance” and the Great Reset. And so has the Vatican. 

Image: Antonio Guterres (By U.S. Mission Photo by Eric Bridiers/Flickr, licensed under the Public Domain)

While UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres rightfully acknowledges that the pandemic is “more than a health crisis”, no meaningful analysis or debate under UN auspices as to the real causes of this crisis has been undertaken.

According to a September 2020 UN Report:

“Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost. The lives of billions of people have been disrupted. In addition to the health impacts, COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated deep inequalities … It has affected us as individuals, as families, communities and societies. It has had an impact on every generation, including on those not yet born. The crisis has highlighted fragilities within and among nations, as well as in our systems for mounting a coordinated global response to shared threats. (UN Report)10

The far-reaching decisions which triggered social and economic destruction worldwide are not mentioned. No debate in the UN Security Council. Consensus among all five permanent members of the UNSC.

V the Virus is casually held responsible for the process of economic destruction. 

The World Economic Forum’s “public-private partnership” project entitled “Reimagine and Reset Our World” has been endorsed by the United Nations. 

Image: George Kennan (By Harris & Ewing/Library of Congress, licensed under the Public Domain)

Flashback to George Kennan and the Truman Doctrine in the late 1940s. Kennan believed that the UN provided a useful way to “connect power with morality,” using morality as a means to rubber-stamp America’s “humanitarian wars”.

The COVID crisis, the lockdown measures and the mRNA vaccine are the culmination of a historical process.

The lockdown and closure of the global economy are “weapons of mass destruction” which in the real sense of the word“destroy people’s lives”. Amply documented, the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine is best described as a “killer vaccine”. 

What we are dealing with are extensive “crimes against humanity”.

President Joe Biden and the “Great Reset”

Joe Biden is a groomed politician, a trusted proxy, serving the interests of the financial establishment.

Let’s not forget that Joe Biden was a firm supporter of the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein “had weapons of mass destruction”. “The American people were deceived into this war”, said Senator Dick Durbin. Do not let yourself be deceived again by Joe Biden.11

Evolving acronyms: 9/11, GWOT, WMD and now COVID. Biden was rewarded for having supported the invasion of Iraq.

During the election campaign, Fox News described Biden as a “socialist” who threatens capitalism; “Joe Biden’s disturbing connection to the socialist ‘Great Reset’ movement”.

While this is absolute nonsense, many “progressives” and anti-war activists have endorsed Joe Biden without analyzing the broader consequences of the Biden presidency.

“The Great Reset” is socially divisive, it’s racist. It is a diabolical project of global capitalism. It constitutes a threat to the large majority of American workers as well as to small and medium-sized enterprises. It also undermines several important sectors of the capitalist economy.  

The Biden Presidency and the Lockdown

With regard to COVID, Biden is firmly committed to maintaining the partial closing down of both the US economy and the global economy as a means to “combating the killer virus”.  

President Biden is a firm supporter of the corona lockdown. He not only endorses the adoption of staunch COVID-19 lockdown policies, his administration is committed to the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” and the “vaccine passport” as an integral part of US foreign policy, to be implemented or more correctly “imposed” worldwide.

In turn, the Biden-Harris administration will attempt to override all forms of popular resistance to the coronavirus lockdown.

What is unfolding is a new and destructive phase of US imperialism. It’s a totalitarian project of economic and social engineering, which ultimately destroys people’s lives worldwide. This “novel” neoliberal agenda using the corona lockdown as an instrument of social oppression has been endorsed by President Biden and the leadership of the Democratic Party. 

The Biden White House is committed to the instatement of what David Rockefeller called “Global Governance”. 

The Protest Movement

It should be noted that the protest movement in the US against the lockdown is weak. In fact there is no coherent grassroots national protest movement. Why? Because “progressive forces” including leftist intellectuals, NGO leaders, trade union and labor leaders — most of whom are aligned with the Democratic Party — have from the outset been supportive of the lockdown. And they are also supportive of Joe Biden.  

In a bitter irony, anti-war activists as well as the critics of neoliberalism have endorsed Joe Biden.

Unless there is significant protest and organized resistance, nationally and internationally, the Great Reset will be embedded in both domestic and US foreign policy agendas of the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration.

It’s what you call imperialism with a “human face”.

Where Is the Protest Movement Against This Unelected Corona “Public-Private Partnership”?

The same philanthropic foundations (Rockefeller, Ford, Soros, et al.) which are the unspoken architects of the “Great Reset” and “Global Governance” are also involved in (generously) financing climate change activism, the Extinction Rebellion, the World Social Forum, Black Lives Matter, LGBT, et al. 

What this means is that the grassroots of these social movements are often misled and betrayed by their leaders who are routinely co-opted and generously rewarded by a handful of corporate foundations.

The World Social Forum (WSF), which is commemorating its 21st anniversary, brings together committed anti-globalization  activists from all over the world. But who controls the WSF? From the outset in January 2001, it was (initially) funded by the Ford Foundation. 

It’s what you call “manufactured dissent” (far more insidious than Herman-Chomsky’s “manufactured consent”).

The objective of the financial elites “has been to fragment the people’s movement into a vast “do it yourself” mosaic. Activism tends to be piecemeal. There is no integrated anti-globalization anti-war movement.” (Michel Chossudovsky, Manufacturing Dissent, Global Research, 2010)12

Image: Joe Biden with Henry Kissinger (By Kai Mörk www.securityconference.delicensed under CC BY 3.0 de)

In the words of McGeorge Bundy, President of the Ford Foundation (1966-1979):

“Everything the [Ford] Foundation did could be regarded as “making the world safe for capitalism”, reducing social tensions by helping to comfort the afflicted, provide safety valves for the angry, and improve the functioning of government.13

The protest movement against the Great Reset which constitutes a “global coup d’état” requires a process of worldwide mobilization:

There can be no meaningful mass movement when dissent is generously funded by those same corporate interests [WEF, Gates, Ford, et al.] which are the target of the protest movement”.14

*

Notes

1 Michel Chossudovsky, April-June 1975. Hacia El Nuevo Modelo Económico Chileno Inflación Y Redistribución Del Ingreso. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20856482?refreqid=excelsior%3A9228243fa26a81bb3c2b0c2d58094922&seq=1

2 Ibid.

3 Michel Chossudovsky, April 16, 1977. Legitimised Violence and Economic Policy in Argentina. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4365500?seq=1 

4 Prof Michel Chossudovsky, June 3, 2020. Understand the Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order. https://www.globalresearch.ca/understand-the-globalization-of-poverty-and-the-new-world-order/25371

5 Ibid. 

6 National Security Council, December 10, 1974. Implications of Worldwide Population Growth For U.S. Security and Overseas Interests (THE KISSINGER REPORT). https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PCAAB500.pdf

7 Peter Koenig, January 22, 2022. The COVID-Omicron Crisis: The Roadmap Towards a Worldwide Financial Crash, Inflation, Digitization. https://www.globalresearch.ca/covid-omicron-is-killing-christmas-and-beyond-financial-crash-inflation-digitization/5765170

8 Peter Keonig, March 12, 2020. The Coronavirus Vaccine: The Real Danger is “Agenda ID2020”. Vaccination as a Platform for “Digital Identity”. https://www.globalresearch.ca/coronavirus-causes-effects-real-danger-agenda-id2020/5706153

9 Colin Todhunter, November 9, 2020. Dystopian “Great Reset”: “Own Nothing and Be Happy”, Being Human in 2030. https://www.globalresearch.ca/own-nothing-happy-being-human-2030/5728960

10 UN, September 2020. United Nations Comprehensive Response to COVID-19. https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/un-comprehensive-response-to-covid-19.pdf

11 Mark Weisbrot, February 17, 2020. WORTH THE PRICE? Joe Biden and the Launch of the Iraq War (narrated by Danny Glover). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhcuei8_UJM

12 Prof Michel Chossudovsky, September 20, 2010. “Manufacturing Dissent”: The Anti-globalization Movement is Funded by the Corporate Elites. https://www.globalresearch.ca/manufacturing-dissent-the-anti-globalization-movement-is-funded-by-the-corporate-elites/21110

13 Ibid. 

14 Ibid.


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

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Slovakia Prime Minister Robert Fico Orders Investigation into COVID-19 Pandemic Management and Vaccines After 21,000 Excess Deaths Announced in Slovakia Since 2020

By Prime Minister Robert Fico and Dr. William Makis, January 31, 2024

A few weeks ago, newly elected Slovakia Prime Minister Robert Fico clearly outlined his governing party’s position on rejecting the WHO Pandemic Treaty. This time, Slovakia leads the way again and provides the “template” on how to approach the crimes and fraud committed during the COVID-19 pandemic by the politicians who were in power at the time.

US Marines Rush Wonky Amphibious Vehicles to the Pacific

By Gabriel Honrada, February 01, 2024

The US Marine Corps (USMC) is set to deploy its advanced Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV) to the Pacific despite questions about its readiness, maintenance and operation amid recent restrictions on surf-based use of the platform.

Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, CIJA, Is Trying to Persuade Canadians to Embrace Genocidal Israel and Condemn the ICJ and International Law

By Prof. Anthony J. Hall, January 31, 2024

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) is the advocacy agent of Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA, representing Jewish Federations across Canada. CIJA is a national, non-partisan, non-profit organization whose mission is to preserve and protect Jewish life in Canada through advocacy and to advance the public policy interests of Canada’s organized Jewish community.

War on Gaza: Here’s What Israeli Officials Say Should Happen to the Palestinian Enclave

By Middle East Eye, January 31, 2024

Thousands of Israeli ministers, rabbis, public figures and parliament members attended a conference on Sunday in Jerusalem, calling for the resettlement of Gaza and making statements widely deemed to be genocidal.

US to Deploy Nukes in the UK for the First Time in 15 Years

By Dave DeCamp, January 31, 2024

Pentagon procurement contracts show that the US is planning to station B61-12 nuclear warheads at RAF Lakenheath, a base in Suffolk, England. The US pulled its nuclear weapons out of the UK in 2008, and its decision to redeploy them demonstrates the low state of US-Russia relations.

Out of the Euro? Is Germany Heading for the Dexit? Recession, Social Fracture and Unemployment

By Germán Gorraiz López, January 31, 2024

After the consummation of the Brexit, the hypothetical exit of Germany from the Euro would provoke the liquidation of the Eurozone and the gestation of a new European economic cartography that will involve the return to the hermetic economic compartments.

US-Israel Implement Plan to Cut Food, Water and Medicine to Gaza

By Mike Whitney, January 31, 2024

Israel’s closest allies have cut funding and are now doing their level-best to prevent the relief agency from operating in Gaza. This is a very serious situation that could have dire consequences for Palestinians who currently have no access to food, medicine or clean water. As unbelievable as it sounds, Israel appears to be implementing a strategy aimed at deliberately starving millions of civilians to death.

U.S. Military School at West Point Supports Genocide

By Karsten Riise, January 31, 2024

The US military school at West Point participates in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. This is done by West Point lying away Israel’s genocide – and pretending to be “experts” claiming that Israel “protects” civilians. 

Another Fast and Furious Scandal? Mexico Demands Answers as Cartels Acquire US-Military Grade Weapons

By Zero Hedge, January 31, 2024

Mexico is furious and demands an investigation into how belt-fed machine guns, rocket launchers, and grenades are ending up in the hands of cartel members, the country’s top diplomat said. 

China Ignores US Entreaties of Mediation

By M. K. Bhadrakumar, January 31, 2024

Coming on top of reports of American soldiers going down like nine-pins on a drone strike against the super secret CIA station for intelligence and covert operations on the Syrian-Jordanian border, ’nyet’ is the word from Beijing to the Biden administration’s entreaties seeking intervention with Tehran to rein in the Houthis of Yemen, against the foreboding backdrop of the Axis of Resistance expanding its operations against American and Israeli interests. 

Digest of Inter-Korean Tensions at the Turn of 2024

February 1st, 2024 by Dr. Konstantin Asmolov

US Marines Rush Wonky Amphibious Vehicles to the Pacific

February 1st, 2024 by Gabriel Honrada

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Positive responses in Canada to the ICJ ruling indicating it is plausible that Israeli is directing genocidal actions at Palestinians in Gaza

This one-hour video is a lively and thoughtful discussion of many of the implications for Canada of the International Court of Justices’ ruling. All participants in the video generally accept the merits of the South African case. More importantly, a large portion of decent people throughout the planet also agree. The vote of the 17 ICJ Judges was almost unanimous on many points.

The participants are Host, Azeerah Kanji, KarenRodman, HcShaik, Farida Dief, Bianca, Mugyeny, and Michael Lynk. The HostingOrganizations are Just Peace Advocates and the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute.

Shimon Koffler Fogel 

Fogel hates everything about the ICJ Ruling. Shimon Koffler Fogel is one of the harshest Zionist critics in Canada of the ICJ Ruling. Fogel has great influence with the Liberal and Conservative parties of Canada. Fogel and the network of registered Jewish charities (lobbies) he represents support the continuation of the Israeli military assault on Gaza. Fogel condemn the provisional measures the ICJ has ordered in light of the plausible genocide underway in Gaza.

As one can readily see with the poster below, that Fogel wants all Canadians to denounce ICJ.

The CIJA makes it look like Mélanie Joly and Justin Trudeau just got married? Why portray them as a couple?

 

Shimon Koffler Fogel figures prominently in the Facebook hoax and the Israel Lobby’s infiltration of the University of Lethbridge I describe in this essay.

Source

In response, the leaders of the J7, the Large Jewish Communities’ Task Force Against Antisemitism, issued the following joint statement: 

“We take note of the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) appropriate rejection of South Africa’s extreme demand for an Israeli ceasefire, which tacitly recognizes Israel’s right to self-defense against Hamas and others in Gaza, as well as the ICJ’s call for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages. We are, however, deeply disappointed by today’s decision by the ICJ to issue a series of provisional measures against Israel as they give weight to South Africa’s preposterous claims.

“Opponents of Israel are shamelessly politicizing the Genocide Convention, making a mockery of actual genocides, past, present, and future. It is part of a broader, morally obscene anti-Israel campaign, led by South Africa, with the backing of the Iranian regime and other governments hostile to the Jewish state. Their goal is to weaken Israel’s international standing, while bolstering the image of Hamas and other terrorist organizations committed to Israel’s violent destruction. It is unfortunate the ICJ, which is meant to serve as the ultimate standard-bearer for the international rule of law, has fallen victim, even if partially, to South Africa’s sinister ploy.

“It is important to note that the court’s provisional ruling – as repeatedly stated – is not a judgment on the merits of whether Israel’s actions amount to genocide, but rather aimed at “preserving” the state of affairs in preparation for a final ruling from the court, which could take months or years. We are confident that the evidence will show that Israel is indeed fully compliant with the Genocide Convention and that the charges brought by South Africa will be deemed baseless by the court.

“The Court’s provisional measures will now likely be misconstrued by some who will argue falsely that Israel is in fact committing acts of genocide in Gaza. This would be a lie. The legal definition, as laid out in the 1948 Genocide Convention, states that genocide constitutes “… acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group…” The fact remains there is no objective evidence that Israel is targeting the Palestinian people as a whole – in Gaza or elsewhere. As Israel has repeatedly stated, its conflict is with Hamas terrorists – who, on October 7, launched an unprovoked attack on Israel, torturing, raping, mutilating, and butchering 1,200 people, and kidnapping 240 others. It is not with the millions of Palestinian civilians living in Gaza.

“Indeed, during its military operations, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have gone to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties. These include giving advance warnings for civilians to evacuate targeted areas, creating humanitarian corridors for civilian safe passage, facilitating the delivery of truckloads of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and working with the United States and others to develop best practices for avoiding civilian casualties.

“Rather than recognizing Israeli efforts to minimize civilian casualties – as per its obligations under international humanitarian law, by which it fully abides – the ICJ has sent a confusing and convoluted message that grants legitimacy to Hamas, an actual genocidal group, whose founding charter calls for anti-Jewish violence and other forms of antisemitism and extremism. More urgently, the ruling will be used by anti-Israel activists to further malign Israel and its supporters and by antisemitic actors as “justification” for assaulting those advocating for the safety of the Jewish state and its citizens.

“We are grateful to Israel’s allies, including the US, Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Guatemala, Austria, and others, who have stood against South Africa’s false accusations and clearly rejected the genocide claim against Israel. We hope those governments and other like-minded states will similarly reject the ICJ’s interim ruling and continue to stand with Israel in defending itself against terrorism.”

About the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs 

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) is the advocacy agent of Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA, representing Jewish Federations across Canada. CIJA is a national, non-partisan, non-profit organization whose mission is to preserve and protect Jewish life in Canada through advocacy and to advance the public policy interests of Canada’s organized Jewish community.

About the J7, The Large Communities’ Task Force Against Antisemitism 

The J7, The Large Communities’ Task Force Against Antisemitism was formed by major Jewish organizations representing the world’s largest diaspora communities – the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Argentina, and Australia – in July 2023 in response to increasing rates of antisemitism around the world.

Modeled after similarly structured informal groupings to discuss coordinated responses to global crises, the J7 global task force aligns efforts to combat antisemitism and protect the quality of Jewish life around the world.

J7 founding members are: Canada, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA); Argentina, Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas (DAIA); Australia, Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ); France, Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France (CRIF); Germany, Zentralrat de Juden in Deutschland (Central Council of Jews in Germany); United Kingdom, Board of Deputies of British Jews; United States, Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations

Israel Seeks Desperately to Change the Issue Away from the Fact That World’s Top Court Has Imposed Strict Provisional Measures to Stop the Plausible Genocide Underway

Along with Australia, USA, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Finland, Canada immediately stopped funding the United Nations Refugee and Works, Agency. UNRWA. All these governments adhered to Israel’s directive to block funding to UNRWA because 12 of 13,000 UNRWA workers in Gaza are said to have had some role in the events of October 7. The 12 individuals were immediately fired by the UN.

October 7, 10/7, is a mirky event like 9/11. Like 9/11, war was declared immediately before any formal investigation took place. Benjamin Netanyahu is one of the main suspects who may have done much to create the conditions conducive to this war time ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. For many years Netanyahu has had a very close working relationship with Hamas. This topic is the subject of many stories in Haaretz. It is perfectly possible that this close relationship between Netanyahu and Hamas was integral to what transpired on 10/7.

The Netanyahu government of Israel wants to see UNRWA destroyed altogether, perhaps because for many decades UNRWA has been a primary life line for the Palestinians of Gaza that the IDF are presently trying to starve, dehydrate, bomb and depopulate. UNRWA is disliked in Israel because in competes with the singular jurisdiction of Israel who keep more than two million Palestinian locked up in the small urban enclave of Gaza. Another mark against the UN agency is that much of the data provided in the South African accusations against Israel, came from reports by UNRWA.

Part of Israel’s genocidal strategy has been to kill Palestinians by bombing hospitals and killing medical workers. There has also been an onerous plan to kill humanitarian aid workers and to target many dozens of journalist to veil the full story of what the IDF has been up to in Gaza.

The diversion of putting a spotlight on UNRWA was a very transparent and provocative attempt to steal attention from the very serious immediate and long term implications of the ICJ ruling on genocide and Israel. George Galloway has pointed out that Canada is among the countries that is involved in making the genocide in Gaza worse by starving UNRWA of finances just at the peak of a humanitarian crisis that stems 100% the results of Israel’s intention to mass murder Palestinians.

So Canada, Britain, Germany and many other countries are digging themselves deeper into trouble by assisting and aiding Israel in a plausible genocide the ICJ has now identified and is monitoring. All the evidence is that the people and government of Canada are puzzled by what to make of the World Court’s decision of plausible Israeli genocide in Gaza.

The Liberal Party seems completely confused and noncommittal as some of its members, including the Prime Minister, think they can somehow split the difference and come down on both sides of the issue. Once again the gamer, Justin Trudeau, is totally out of his depth like he was when his government was giving standing ovations in Parliament to a Waffen SS soldier who joined in the Hitlerian assault on Russia and on its allies including Canada in WWII.

Some lawyers in Canada who represent clients in Gaza are pushing for an investigation of the alleged role of Joint Task Force-2 in assisting the IDF to commit plausible genocide.

All kinds of issues are arising, like whether it is appropriate for Canada to remain in the free trade agreement with Israel. Israel is a country that is now charged in the ICJ with violating the Genocide Convention and has already become the subject of provisional measures to correct the deaths and injuries inflicted from plausible genocide. In order to avoid the charge of “complicity in genocide” many countries will have to make significant alterations of their relations with Israel.

The leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, Pierre Poilievre, has shown himself to be a servile stooge to the Israel Lobby and its Christian Zionist offshoots by trying to win the favour of the CIJA and the likes of Shimon Koffler Fogel. Poilievre tried to outdo Trudeau government in serving CIJA’s agenda of criminalizing UNRWA at the very moment when that organization is in the best position to lessen the famine as well as other aspects of the overwhelming humanitarian disaster underway now. So Poilievre is joining the group augmenting the ongoing genocide.

 

Canada’s formal position on Gaza, Israel and the position of the World Court is mushy minded. This mushiness is demonstrated below in the evasive position put forward by Global Affairs Minister, Melanie Joly. Canada is continuing Pro-Israel biases by continuing to view the world from the perspective of a fellow settler colony.

 

 

Trudeau’s Crisis concerning the ruling of the ICJ is merging into the fact that he is facing one of the most serious charges from a court ever pointed against a sitting Canadian Prime Minister. Federal Court Justice Richard Mosely decided in a ruling that the Emergency Act lacked legal justification, force and credibility. In spite of all the Trudeau-appointed judges, the Charter of Rights has always been protecting us except when Canadian judges illegally declare it to be “moot.”

Emotions are running high as truckers and their allies remember the police violence they were subjected to after the Emergency Act. Now Trudeau seems to be moving towards the position where he is complicit in genocide even as he has become in the eyes of the many Canadians, an Emergency Act convict.

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Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.This article was originally published on the author’s Substack, Looking out at the World from Canada.

Dr. Anthony Hall is currently Professor of Globalization Studies at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada. He has been a teacher in the Canadian university system since 1982. Dr. Hall, has recently finished a big two-volume publishing project at McGill-Queen’s University Press entitled “The Bowl with One Spoon”.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). 

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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Remember, a commentator at the WEF Davos24 some ten days ago, asked something to the extent, “How to avoid an undesired person being elected President?”

No names were named, but it was obvious, the undesired person for the globalist crowd was the non-globalist, nationalist, “Make America Great Again” (MAGA), former President Donald Trump. 

Everybody knows, he is the anti-globalist elephant in a room of a globalist cabal. Perhaps the answer to the question was prepared in a closed-door session – and is unfolding rather fast, as we follow the happenings at the Texas-Mexican border.

Is there a false flag in the making?

If we believe the mainstream media, “Republican” Governor Greg Abbott from Texas sent the State National Guard to defend the Texan 2,000 km (1,200 miles) border with Mexico. Did he really?

Unlikely. He sent his National Guard only to defend the official border entry at Eagle Pass and maybe one or two others along the 2,000 km long border.

The influx of illegal Mexicans into Texas is not new. Abbott could have started with border protection already in 2021 – a record year of illegal Central American immigrants (not just Mexicans) into the US via Texas. That record was exceeded in 2023 with as many as 2.5 million illegal immigrants (official stats) into Texas. See this.

Unofficial figures are quoted as high as 6 million.

In January 2024, “Democrat” President Biden contradicts “Republican” Governor Abbott and requests border control agents to access a river front park, near Eagle Pass, a crucial border crossing point, now supposedly being guarded by razor wires built by Texas National Guards, and by the Texan guards themselves. Biden wants this “crucial border crossing park” being controlled by federal Border Control Agents. Biden is known to be lax with immigration.

“Illegal immigrants” love President Biden, as can be seen in the “shadow crossing” 40-min. video below.

Is this a real clash between Texas and the US National Government? Or a fake clash? 

Ms. Linda, from WGON TV News, says there are “strange things” going on at the Texan border. She asked, “Are we being played about the Texas border?”

To make her point, she shows a brief video clip, depicting just about half a mile (800 m) of fenced border (called the Trump-fence), showing three unprotected border-crossings. The entire 2000 km Texas-Mexico border has 28 official (protected) crossings – and what it looks like maybe up to hundred gateless openings in the wall. See video below.

Another video by two investigative journalists following the migration route all the way to Colombia, where mafias are organizing mass-migration from South and Central America being funded apparently by the UN system, to Mexico and through the Texan border, where the news cameras are focusing only on the official border crossings, but not on the unprotected open doors in the wall. See this 40-min video.

The video commentator at about 00:37:00 says that

“The United States is in a state of undeclared war. The United Nations and associated organizations are actively working to dissolve the American Republic by an industrial scale weaponized migration program”…. “Cartels control the southern border. And every day thousands of military age young men enter the Southern border.”

The video portrays a picture of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) with the symbol of UN Agenda 2030. You may recall that the WEF’s Great Reset and UN Agenda 2030 go hand in hand, and that in 2019, Klaus Schwab, WEF Chairman and CEO signed an illegal contract with Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General, on a Cooperation Agreement.

The video is accompanied by a text box giving more details on UN and associated organizations that provided help for the flood of destabilizing immigration to the US.

Does Governor Abbott not know about what is going on at the Texan border?

Mr. Abbott is a WEFer. He is closely linked to Klaus Schwab and the WEF. It is, therefore, likely that rather than being in a clash, Abbott and Biden work together to destabilize the US, bringing about a crisis that could well incite a civil war. 

This would be reason enough for the Biden Administration to declare Martial Law – and under Martial Law, the US Constitution allows suspension of Presidential elections.

It is also telling that this happens just a few days after closing of WEF Davos24, where such matters were likely discussed behind closed-doors.

Suspension of elections – wouldn’t that be the perfect answer to the question asked during one of the more than 100 WEF meetings, “What can we do to avoid that the wrong person is elected President?”

While the border clash, the migration crisis is real for the American people, the apparent confrontation between Governor Abbott and President Biden smells more like a “false flag”.

The Texas Government under agreements with other governors is quietly transporting illegals to other US States.

The WEF and its globalist elite cohorts cannot allow a nationalist President to take over, as would be Donald Trump, interrupting Agenda 2030 and the Great Reset. They need a Globalist government – à la Biden, or maybe a come-back Barack Obama, or even Michelle Obama – to carry the diabolical globalist agenda through. And that much faster than 2030.

The Reset’s / UN Agenda 2030 principal goal, population reduction, is going on – through the experimental” covid vaxxes, slowly over years, sudden deaths, turbo cancers, reducing auto-immune systems, drastically lowering fertility and more.

But what still needs to be put in place for total control of the survivors – the transhumans, cyborgs and robots – is the perfect slave-yard through full digitization, AI, programmable Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC); in brief, the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

A civil war in the US would have devastating consequences not only for the people of the United States, but it would also have disruptive and destructive consequences throughout the western world.

And as if the ruling elite would know about the plot that could result in civil war, the US insurance companies have changed their terms as of 1 January 2024, no longer covering damages caused by “War, Riot, or Insurrection, declared or non-declared”. See video below.

This may well be the plan behind the WEF’s theme “Rebuilding Trust”.

It may also be the WEF’s last effort to rebuild trust, since before such planned unrest occurs, people in the United States may wake up to “being played about the Texas border”, as so adroitly expressed by Linda, the commentator of WGON TV News. And it may also be the end of the WEF – and 8 billion people around the world would be cheering.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).

Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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Thousands of Israeli ministers, rabbis, public figures and parliament members attended a conference on Sunday in Jerusalem, calling for the resettlement of Gaza and making statements widely deemed to be genocidal.

The event, entitled “Conference for the Victory of Israel – Settlement Brings Security: Returning to the Gaza Strip and Northern Samaria,” was centred around rebuilding Israeli settlements in Gaza, and calling for Palestinians to be expelled from the besieged enclave. 

Participants presented details of proposed future settlements, maps, stages of preparation, and called for decision-makers to back resettlement plans. 

The conference came just days after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, for which it heard evidence earlier this month. 

The court gave Israel six orders regarding the siege and bombardment of Gaza. One of those was that Israel “must take measures within its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to the members of the Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip”.

The court also cited a series of statements made by Israeli leaders as evidence of incitement and dehumanising language against Palestinians, including comments made by Israeli President Isaac Herzog. 

The “victory of Israel” event was attended by 11 cabinet ministers and 15 coalition members of parliament. Below are some of the statements made at the conference, which could violate the ICJ’s orders. 

‘Encourage’ Palestinians to Leave, Says Ben Gvir

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir called for Palestinians to be “voluntarily encouraged to leave” the Gaza Strip. 

In response to calls from the audience for Palestinians to be transferred from Gaza, Ben Gvir responded by saying:

“You are right, voluntary encouragement, let them go from here.

“We must return to Gush Katif and northern Samaria… if you don’t want it to happen again for the seventh or tenth time, we must return home and control the territory, encouraging immigration, and the death penalty for terrorists,” he added. 

Gush Katif was a bloc of 17 Israeli settlements in southern Gaza. At the conference, Ben Gvir, along with other ministers, signed a petition for “victory and renewal of the settlement in Gaza” during the event. 

The document said that signatories pledged that they would “grow Jewish settlements full of life in Gaza”.

Afterwards, attendees were filmed celebrating the move by waving the Israeli flag and cheering. Following Ben Gvir’s speech, people could be heard chanting “death to Arabs”.

Some of the statements made at the conference have led to a backlash, with some pointing out that they could violate the ICJ’s orders.

Itay Epshtain, an Israel-based special advisor for the Norwegian Refugee Council, shared a video in which Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich could be seen arm-in-arm, dancing together at the conference.

The human rights lawyer said that the image “would form part of the compelling evidence of noncompliance” with the ICJ’s recent order to take all measures within its power to prevent acts of genocide and to punish acts of incitement.

Smotrich Calls for Return of Settlers

Smotrich echoed Ben Gvir’s statements, calling for Israeli settlers to go to Gaza. 

“Many of our children who were evicted from Gaza must return as fighters, we need to make sure we return as settlers,” he said. 

Israeli politician and tourism minister, Haim Katz, made similar statements at the conference. 

“Today, after 18 years, we have the opportunity to stand up and build and expand the land of Israel,” he said. 

Support from Housing Minister

Yitzhak Goldknopf, the minister of housing and construction, called the return of Jewish settlements in Gaza a “correction of historical injustice”. 

“I will support this as minister of housing if the government decides,” he said. “The land of Israel belongs entirely to the people of Israel. Giving up the land of the State of Israel not only does not bring security, but leads to the bloodshed of Jews.” 

‘Don’t Give Them Food’

Daniella Weiss, the far-right former mayor of the settlement Kedumim in the occupied West Bank, also called for Palestinians to be starved in order to force them into leaving Gaza.

“The Arabs will move… we don’t give them food, we don’t give the Arabs anything, they will have to leave. The world will accept them,” she told a reporter at the conference. 

Ben Gvir Says ‘We Will Initiate Conflict’

During the conference, Ben Gvir called for a dual approach when it comes to Gaza, which includes promoting the departure of the current inhabitants, as well as simultaneously facilitating and encouraging the influx of Israeli settlers into the area.

“We will initiate conflict to prevent further uncertainty and aimlessness,” he said. 

“It is essential to reclaim and assert control over the territory in the south. We must also devise a solution for the populace that is moral, rationally coherent and advantageous,” he added.

He ended by saying that “encouraging emigration from Gaza is a necessity”.

Israel’s communications minister, Shlomo Karai, reiterated Ben Gvir’s comments saying that Israelis have an “obligation to act for our own sake…even if this war turns voluntary migration into a situation where it is forced, we must settle Gaza with security forces and settlers.”

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

***

I’ve been traveling in America, that poor beleaguered superpower, for the last week or so. This is a postcard for you from the war.

I left Brooklyn, New York, a week ago. On January 10, 2024, James Madison High School, up the road from where we are staying, had been commandeered by New York City’s Mayor Eric Adams. The kids who were supposed to have been learning math and English and science, were forced to stay home — once again — for “remote learning”, as their classrooms were occupied by people who had come into our nation unlawfully. The school, the kids were told the day before it happened, was to be used as a “temporary overnight respite center.”

‘“To ensure a smooth transition for families temporarily sheltering overnight in the building, our school building will be closed on Wednesday, January 10 and school will be in session remotely for all students,” Principal Jodie Cohen said in a statement to families.” ‘

Irate parents held a rally at the school. A mom called the closure and takeover “unacceptable.” The woman, who did not use — feared to use? — her real name, said that she was “very angry.” She made the case that the city “put our children last” and were instead “prioritizing the migrants.” State Assemblyman Michael Novakhov, whose district this is, told NBC that the decision to move kids out, and illegal migrants in, was “just really wrong. The school is not a right place for migrants, for anyone except the kids.”

New York City has taken in 170,000 illegal immigrants — or what NBC inaccurately calls “asylum-seekers” — in the last two years. 70,000 are still in the care of the city, and New York expects to spend $4.7 billion to provide shelter, food and services to “asylum-seekers” in fiscal year 2024. (The reason “asylum-seekers” is an inaccurate term for the migrant influx is that there are narrow legal grounds for seeking asylum or refugee status — you must prove that you are fleeing torture or will be imprisoned for political reasons if you return to your home country, for instance. Requesting asylum status is a legal process that takes years. The people who are here now, overwhelmingly, having walked across the border and been shipped via bus and plane to US cities, are here without the legal recognition of seeking asylum.)

Who are the families whose kids have been displaced, and who are dealing with the disorienting and unsafe-feeling realization that their home rooms, their science labs, their bathrooms and playgrounds, were inhabited by thousands of strange adults, displacing the students and deprioritizing their education? The ‘asylum-seekers’ have not replaced the teens at Dalton, the famous private school on the Upper East Side. No, the American kids whose education was disrupted, because of people who chose to break the law to enter our country, are exactly the kids whose education receives so much lip service: brown and black kids, from one of the poorer neighborhoods in Brooklyn.

I see some of these children in the morning when I walk Loki to the corner, and step into the nearest bodega to buy my coffee. They are quiet. They stand patiently in line, wearing their heavy backpacks, waiting to pay for inexpensive drinks and processed snacks.

I worry about them. I worry that for some, perhaps, the food they will get at school for lunch won’t be nutritious enough to sustain them throughout the school day. For many low-income kids, the hot meal at school is the main nutrition they receive daily. Those kids who depend on daily hot lunch at school, are the kids who likely went hungry when unlawful migrants’ needs commandeered their educations.

These are the American kids who are trying to get an education — at the mercy of psychologizing and diagnosing and prescribing third parties trying to medicate them, at the mercy of grooming NGO’s putting unbelievably pornographic materials in their health classes, at the mercy of erasures of history and civics altogether, and in the face of the dumbing-down of English literature classes, and the fragmenting of math and science, confronting the stripping away of art and theatre and music education; these innocent American children, who are doing, with their families, their best.

These are the American kids who got kicked out of their school and were given the message by their own city, that as scholars they were interruptible, their working moms and dads’ time and energy were equally disposable, and that as citizens (the parents) and as future leaders (the kids), they were all — equally — less than unimportant.

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In Florida — West Palm Beach — I stayed in a chic, renovated airbnb, lush with tropical landscaping, in an historic district, built up of bungalows from the 1910s and 1920s. To my right, a major new luxury shopping, office and apartments development was rising quickly; Starbuck’s and LA Fitness; and Pura Vida — chic expensive green drinks, taken in white-paneled interiors, with cascading plants and raw wood shelving everywhere.

To my left, though, not half a mile away from the elegant shopping, a food pantry was open, in what looked like an industrial building in a field. Hundreds of immigrants stood in line to receive food.

The houses in the bungalow district, that had once been working people’s cottages, now sold for a million dollars each, or more.

When I took Ubers, the drivers told me about the collapses of their home countries — the ruination of the rule of law, the rise of crime, with criminals facing impunity from judges and from the incarceration system; the corruption of elites via bribes. They described the established power now of gangs and cartels, and the strip-mining of natural resources by multinational conglomerates. They said that the employment rate in their home countries was now only ten per cent, that no one can open a small business, that everyone who could get out and come to the US, was doing so. “Who can blame them?” said my driver. From his perspective, he had a point.

I realized sadly that our open borders so close by to so many troubled countries, created conditions that were ruining those countries along with our own, as there was now no incentive to make conditions there better; and a resources drain was underway, leaving shells of nations in its wake, even as our own nation was being destabilized. I also realized that the conditions of lawlessness and the easy rise of gangs and cartels, in the vacuum of policing and criminal justice systems, in the Caribbean and Latin America, foreshadowed what was happening to our own nation. “Defund the Police!” The craziest slogan ever, unless you want exactly this: chaos and crisis, which is also a rich condition for subverting and hollowing out a nation, as other countries have learned so well to their sorrow.

Ten years ago when I travelled in America, we had problems, of course. But I saw a middle class and a working class, having productive lives, replete with pride and even prosperity at times; lives beyond suffering and mere survival. I saw kids being educated in public schools.

Now I could not see any of that any more. I saw in America, a nation so much more like the banana republics I had visited, in which working and poor people scarcely survive, and their kids have no hope of upward mobility; and the rich hide in gated communities. And the gangs rule all.

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I arrived yesterday in Charlottesville, Virginia, disoriented from a long flight. At once, I felt hopeful, as the Blue Mountains, visible from the plane in all their brooding, dreamy splendor, sheltered us, and the city itself, built on small hills, harboring its Georgian architecture, with the fanlights and brick, and white pillars, reminded me of the beauty of our history; of our Founders’ best hopes. This is the city where Thomas Jefferson created a great university in what was a near-pristine wilderness. His own home, with its memorialization of the best of the Enlightenment, is close by.

I was taken to an inn downtown, with gracious 12 foot ceilings, and four-poster beds, and cozy fires in original fireplaces. Beautiful American domestic architecture; unruined history.

But I was also told about the erasure of history here, and in Richmond. Incredibly, “woke” forces, many newly arrived in the area, had insisted on dismantling a statue of Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea, a beautiful work of art, depicting an indigenous teenager who had accomplished one of the greatest tasks in our nation’s history. The reason for the removal, per the critics? Sacagawea was depicted as kneeling. (She could have been pointing the way ahead and tracking, but critics saw her as “cowering”and subservient.) The City Council devoted a million dollars to the removal of that statue, along with two confederate generals’ statues: Robert E Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson. These were not rehoused in a museum somewhere, with full explanation to schoolchildren of the future, of the bitter and divisive history that they represented. No, they were simply melted down.

So children will never learn about Sacagawea, and Lewis and Clark, and General Robert E Lee, from asking questions about monuments, or visiting museums. And history is easier to erase entirely and revise, when it is only digital.

On the downtown pedestrian mall, I saw a statue that depicted a workman, in silhouette, carrying high above him a head — a statue bust? — a beheading? that looked as if it belonged to Thomas Jefferson.

How are Charlottesville’s public schools doing?

They are cutting costs due to financial setbacks.

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I was due to speak at a fundraising event for RFK Jr, in a private home.

My hosts drove me up a hill outside the city, to a magnificent private home from the 1930s. The event was hosted by Barbara Sieg, Libby Whitley and Gray Delany, my publisher at All Seasons Press. In the elegant, welcoming interior, a range of people from the city had convened to hear the candidate. Among the attendees was a local doctor who had refused to go along with unlawful mandates; he couldn’t visit his patients at UVA hospital because he was unvaccinated; his grateful patients had arranged for him and his wife to be at the event. There were teachers and nurses and Navy veterans. There was a famous organic farmer from the Shenandoah Valley, Joel Salatin, who has been heroic in educating the public on the dangerous concentration of power in the food supply chain. There was a nutritionist, and a dentist. And there were traditional MAGA loyalists. In sum, there were people from all walks of life — I could not place or stereotype anyone politically. They were Americans, concerned about America.

RFK Jr spoke. It is difficult to summarize his replies to questions put to him, as they were so wide-ranging. But the essence of his argument was a return to the American values that are the philosophical core of our freedoms and equality of opportunity. For instance, when asked about DEI — “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion”, he talked about how the current program of promotions and demotions on the basis of race, would have been very disappointing to Dr Martin Luther King. He spoke about the urgent importance of our remaining a meritocracy. For program solutions to racial disparities, he spoke about model public schools and about bringing investment capital to banks in communities of color, so mortgage seekers and business owners could get access to capital. When asked by Delany about the fact that people of his (younger) generation had trouble affording housing, let alone having the quality of life of their parents, Kennedy described a program to block BlackRock and Vanguard from scooping up homes, so that young Americans could buy in an even playing field; and about offering 3 per cent mortgages. He described decentralizing the Fed and ending the policy of quantitative easing.

RFK Jr spoke about reforming agencies, including the CIA.

He spoke, shockingly, about the fact that the Biden White House had refused him Secret Service protection, though his security team had submitted to the Secret Service 200 plus pages of credible threats, including dangerous home intrusions. The Secret Service, highly concerned, had assured him that assistance was on the way; but then there was silence from the White House. So now, half of his fundraising dollars have to go to the flotilla of security experts that surround him, in this dangerous environment. He was the only candidate, historically, refused protection at that point in the campaign.

I thought of how strange and sad it was that in every event, people ask him about the violent history suffered by his own family – a history that includes the murder of his own father when he was 14 — and that the candidate calmly engages with the question about his own mortality, his own risk, as if observing it from a distance. That is beyond courage — but knowing the stresses and terrors of a normal campaign, in which any candidate is surrounded by lunatics, I felt deeply the double burden on this particular candidate, and no doubt on his family, of his having to deal with his unique security risk profile, even as his own President leaves him to fend for himself in a vulnerable security situation.

When RFK Jr was done speaking, receiving enthusiastic applause, I stepped forward and said what I had to say about our historical moment, and about what I saw as his possible role in it. Again, I am not endorsing anyone — I can’t. DailyClout is nonpartisan, and I feel that I myself can be most useful to the country in a nonpartisan role, worrying only about the Constitution.

But I left the event feeling hopeful for our country. Something is changing; something is in the air. As I said in my remarks, people are waking up to the fact that the battle is not between left and right, but between those of us who remember and care about America — and the handful of oligarchs and globalist monsters, who wish to do away with our nation and our values — and our population — altogether.

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This brings me to a wish.

I am in touch with, and respect, very senior people on both “sides.”

I’ve said before that the only hope for this country right now, is for the independent movement led by RFK Jr — many of them disaffected former liberals — and the MAGA grassroots — and even the MAGA candidates and leaders and influencers — to align and work together.

There is a battle raging at our Southern border. Twenty-five governors have added their affirmation — and some are sending National Guardsmen — in support of Texas’ Governor Abbot, who is defying as a matter of states’ rights, the Federal direction to open the border as millions, including hundreds of terrorists, flood our nation. JJ Carrell, a former border agent and my husband Brian O’Shea’s cohost for their podcast “Unrestricted Invasion,” has been sounding the alarm about thousands of “special interest aliens” — terrorists or men aligned with terrorists — who are not being arrested and deported, but who are rather, unprecedentedly, being sent on into the heart of our nation. Recently the role of the UN and the WEF has been revealed, in organizing the mass invasion at our southern border.

Indeed, the UN devoted hundreds of millions to funding and organizing this inflow across our border:

“In a nutshell, the UN and its advocacy partners are planning to spread $372 million in “Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA)”, and “Multipurpose Cash Assistance (MCA)” to some 624,000 immigrants in-transit to the United States during 2024. That money is most often handed out, other UN documents show, as pre-paid, rechargeable debit cards, but also hard “cash in envelopes”, bank transfers, and mobile transfers the U.S. border-bound travelers can use for whatever they want.”

Europe too is in a populist uprising that could turn dangerous, with farmers from at least seven nations, blocking motorways, lined up on beaches, spraying manure on government buildings, and engaged in other dramatic actions, to protest EU policy around “green” restrictions on farming. The EU flag is going up in flames, in some of these protests. Paris has, reportedly, three days left of food.

Radio host (and DailyClout commentator) Shannon Joy asked, on Twitter, in relation to the faceoff of states and the Federal government at the Southern border, something like: “Is this a war or a trap?” My answer: “Could be both.”

Click here to watch the video

The point is, we are a nation upon whom war is being waged. The instability at our Southern border could be the pretext for violence, then conflict, then escalated conflict, then it could provide the excuse for the Federal crackdown of emergency law (again). This is the case too in terms of the uprising of farmers in Europe. It could all be an organic shift in the Zeitgeist — a populist resistance to globalist tyranny and UN plans for our serfdom and loss of sovereignty. AND it could all provide a pretext for the UN’s and the WEF’s dissolution of America, breakup of Europe, and imposition of the surveillance dystopia and overall loss of rights that they have so eloquently presented as their endgame.

My point is, we need in my view to stop thinking that this will be a normal election.

My worry is that if President Biden and President Trump are facing off as “usual” — (or if it is Michelle Obama against President Trump, as recently reported may be the case) — the margin of victory for President Trump may be too narrow to beat the certain cheating and electoral violations, to come. And the elections may be held in “emergency” conditions, such as are now narratively escalating, in which we are all forced to stay home and send in absentee ballots — a recipe for corruption.

Point is, we need to understand that President Biden is a traitor and that treasonous forces have hold of our nation. We need to think outside the box.

The only force that can defeat the globalist plans, is a combination in some shape, of the followers of RFK Jr — who takes more votes from President Biden than from President Trump — and the followers of the MAGA movement. The only force that can preserve our Republic is what will emerge (and I don’t claim to have the solution as to what this might look like, though I have some ideas) — when RFK’s and President Trump’s movements align and mutually reinforce one another.

This means taking a deep breath, on the disaffected-liberal side. The objections that RFK Jr voters (and friends and maybe even family members) may have to President Trump, are merely stylistic and cosmetic compared to the cost of losing the nation. And it means creating tolerance for differences, on the MAGA side. Even ‘red-hot’ issues such as abortion or green energy, important in peacetime, are trivial differences in times of war; compared to an eternity of servitude for oneself and one’s children.

More than our sense of self politically, is the importance of reflecting on how we can be of service to our country. The same is true for these candidates as well. They both have something to offer this country; so let us utilize them both. And I hope they both look within themselves as well, to remove any sense of a personal ideal that may stand in the way of a unique opportunity to serve all Americans; I hope that the ‘perfect’ won’t stand in the way of ‘the good’ of actually saving our nation.

If Americans — Americans — from both perspectives and both walks of life, realize that if they do not find a way to align, there will be no America left — and that in very short order —

And then if they unite accordingly, creating an unstoppable force –

Then it can really be 1774. And we can really prevail.

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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Nov. 15, 2023 – Actress Margot Muraszkiewicz died after a one year battle with a rapidly progressive form of ALS.

 

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Oct. 2022 – She had been diagnosed in October 2022 and was given a prognosis of 2-3 years but died only 1 year later.

 

 

Other recent cases:

Dec. 9, 2023 – Andover, CT – 64 year old Margaret Faasen died after a battle with ALS. She was COVID-19 Vaccinated.

 

 

Nov. 6, 2023 – NY – Kevin Grimmer, SUNY Basketball Coach, died after recent diagnosis of ALS (credit: Resilient333 on X).

 

 

Nov. 6, 2023 – 72 year old Carl Torbuch, college football coach, died a week after diagnosed with ALS.

 

 

Oct. 25, 2023 – 47 year old Abdel Kharrazi, Moroccan professional soccer player, died from ALS on Oct. 25, 2023.

 

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Oct. 7, 2023 – Cincinnati, OH – 59 year old teacher Tracy Ann Glick died suddenly after a “short battle with ALS.”

 

Oct. 6, 2023 – Atlanta, GA – 57 year old Jim Poole, former MLB Baseball Pitcher died on October 6, 2023 from “complications of ALS” diagnosed 2 years earlier.

 

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Sep. 30, 2023 -Calgary, AB – 42 year old Calgary Flames Vice President of Data & analytics suffered a “catastrophic” brain injury after going into cardiac arrest and died suddenly on Sep. 30, 2023. He was battling ALS since 2019.

Click here to read the full article.

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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

Reviews

This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon

In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia

In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig 

Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac

A reading of  Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late.  You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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On December 9, 2023, the European Parliament published a press release, where it stated that it reached a political deal with the Council of the European Union “on a bill to ensure AI in Europe is safe, respects fundamental rights and democracy“. The future bill is supposed to ban “AI systems that manipulate human behaviour to circumvent their free will“.

According to the press release the deputies also “agreed“ on “clear obligations“ with respect to “AI systems used to influence the outcome of elections and voter behavior“ (see this). No one and no place elaborated on those issues. In a reply to the petition of several representatives and members of the world human rights organizations, the chair of the Committee on Petitions of the European Parliament, Dolors Montserrat, quoted the preparatory document of the EP, which stated:

“The placing on the market, putting into service or use of certain AI systems with the objective to or the effect of materially distorting human behavior, whereby  physical or psychological harms are likely to occur, should be forbidden. This limitation should be understood to include neuro-technologies assisted by AI systems that are used to monitor, use or influence neural data gathered through brain-computer interfaces insofar as they are materially distorting the behavior of a natural person in a manner that causes or is likely to cause that person or another person significant harm.“ 

Those statements both address and hide the  feasibility of mass manipulation of the human nervous system (thoughts, emotions, perceptions, functioning of internal organs or even causing death of people) at a distance. It is evident that only when masses of people’s brains are controlled at distance, the AI systems can be “used  to influence the outcome of elections and voter behavior“  by forming political opinions of voters and imposing their decision to vote for certain parties or persons.

For that matter, 11 human rights organizations replied to Dolors Montserrat:

“We are deeply concerned with your reply to the petition number 0716/2023.

After studying the information on the agreement between European Parliament and member states of the EU on artificial intelligence legislation (see this and this), we do not see their sincere intention to prevent the manipulation of human thinking emotions etc. by governments agencies with the use of  pulsed microwaves, extra long electromagnetic waves or other as yet unpublished energies. This means that so far there are no measures taken to prevent the development of the European union member states into the totalitarian regimes where thinking of citizens will be controlled by the governments using those radiations and artificial intelligence. To prevent such situation, the governments would have to declassify the technologies of remote control of the human nervous systems and create agencies objectively capable and legally obliged to disclose the abuse of human rights and democracy by AI technologies. When the governments keep them classified, they keep for themselves open the option to manipulate the minds of their citizens, whenever they see fit. Possession of those tools will relieve them of responsibility in the face of their citizens in cases where catastrophes may happen due to the fact that they neglected dangers, connected with further development of civilization.

The scientific evidence proving that at least pulsed microwaves (including transmissions of cell phone systems) and extra long electromagnetic waves can be used to control human thoughts, emotions, perceptions, cause pains etc. at distance can be found here.

The proposal of legislation, which would satisfy requirements on the political system respecting human rights and freedoms of  citizens in the electronic era, can be found here.

In summary, we believe the EU AI Act should include legislation that explicitly prohibits EU governments, including law enforcement, intelligence agencies and the military, from using artificial intelligence to manipulate at distance human thoughts, emotions, etc. using published or other as-yet unpublished energies. The legislation should also include the obligation of EU governments to protect their citizens from such manipulation by non-EU governments or other entities.

It is worth very serious consideration, whether in the not distant future, where majority of state’s citizens could be unemployed  or underemployed due to the use of artificial intelligence, they will be allowed to have a freedom to vote according to their opinions or whether the state power will decide that they are not responsible  enough to make the right choice in the elections and will produce their decisions in their minds instead.

In this way they would not even have the right to vote against  the use of artificial intelligence, which deprived them of their jobs and dignity. According to the analysis of the International Monetary Fund, the introduction of the Artificial Intelligence “is set to affect nearly 40% of all jobs“ worldwide and about 60% in advanced economies and in this way “AI will likely, worsen overall inequality“ (see this).

Commander Cornelis van der Klaauw from Royal Netherlands Navy and Expert from Strategic Communications and Information Operations NATO Joint Warfare Centre wrote in an article in 2023:

“The reason why cognitive attacks go unnoticed by their targets is that cognitive activities bypass the conscious mind and directly target the subconscious of a person… most of our decisions are made by our subconscious… Cognitive attacks are aimed at exploiting emotions rooted in our subconscious, bypassing our rational conscious mind“.

You can sign the petition to the European Parliament demanding the deputies to produce the legislation which will secure the democracy and respect for human rights in the European union in the transparent and unequivocal way by clicking here. The text of the Petition is in the Appendix Below. 


ANNEX

Text of the Petition

BAN REMOTE CONTROL OF THE HUMAN NERVOUS SYSTEM

An initiative of Mojmír Babáček
 

We, the undersigned, ask the European Parliament to include in the legislation on Artificial Intelligence the following:

1. Prohibit the use of  Artificial Intelligence to remotely control and/or decode the activity of the human nervous system with electromagnetic waves, directed energies, potential waves, non-local photon or electron connections or any other energies, without explicit consent.

 2. Prohibit all EU government organizations, including law enforcement, intelligence agencies, military, and their contractors, to use Artificial Intelligence to remotely control and/or decode the activity of the human nervous system of civilians using the above-mentioned means. The legislation should also include the obligation of EU governments to protect their citizens from such manipulation by non-EU governments or other entities.

3. Provide for the establishment of EU agencies that are objectively capable and legally obliged to investigate and disclose the abuse of human rights and democracy by Artificial Intelligence used to remotely control and/or decode the activity of the human nervous system using the above-mentioned means. Mentioned EU agencies should operate independently of EU member states and the EU should set itself the goal to engage the United Nations Organization as the last arbiter in deciding the cases where people from around the world will complain against abuse of their human rights by those neurotechnologies and artificial intelligence.

 We remind you that Gabriela Ramos, UNESCO’s assistant director-general for social and human sciences stated on July 13, 2023: “We are on a path to a world in which algorithms will enable us to decode people’s mental processes and directly manipulate the brain mechanisms underlying their intentions, emotions and decisions”

As well commander Cornelis van der Klaauw from Royal Netherlands Navy and Expert from Strategic Communications and Information Operations NATO Joint Warfare Centre wrote in an article in 2023:

“The reason why cognitive attacks go unnoticed by their targets is that cognitive activities bypass the conscious mind and directly target the subconscious of a person… most of our decisions are made by our subconscious… cognitive attacks are not science fiction anymore.

They are taking place already now… neural nanotechnology can be used to bring nano-sized robots close to a neuron via the bloodstream and make it possible to link the human brain directly (i.e. not intercepted by our senses) to a computer, making use of artificial intelligence in the process… Warfare is no longer a purely military concept; it has become much broader and more complex. In the future, there will only be one rule in warfare:

There are no rules. While other domains can provide tactical and operational victories, the human domain is the only domain in which we can secure a full victory.

It is our hope that  you will not vote in favour of  a future, whereby great powers will fight to control the brains of the world population. 

For detailed argumentation see the following articles. 

The Effects of Pulsed Microwaves And Extra Low Frequency Electromagnetic Waves on Human Brains? Governments Routinely “Classify Information” Pertaining to the Manipulation of the Human Nervous System

The Dignity of Human Beings and Their Personality: Neurotechnology and The Manipulation of The Human Nervous System. “Saving Freedom and Democracy”. Open Letter to the European Union and Governments around the World

 

ORGANIZATIONS

Spolek za zákaz manipulace lidské nervové soustavy radiofrekvenčním zářením

https://www.svobodamysleni.cz/

 (Czech Republic)

Schutzschild E.v.

https://schutzschild-ev.de

(Germany)

Targeted Justice

https://targetedjustice.com

(USA)

STOPEG Foundation (STOP Electronic weapons and Gangstalking)

https://www.stopeg.com/

(Netherlands) 

International Coalition Against Electronic Torture and Robotization of Living Beings (ICATOR) 
Avenue Paul Hymans 120/47, B – 1200 Brussels 
https://icator.be

(Belgium)

ACOFOINMENEF (Association against all forms of mental and neurophysiological interference and control) 

https://associazionevittimearmielettroniche-mentali.org/

(Italy) 

MOVIMENTO AMPIO CONTRO LA TORTURA TECNOLOGICA PSICOLOGICA E MENTALE 

https://movimentoampio.blogspot.com

(Italy) 

Föreningen för hjärnans integritet i Sverige (Society for brain integrity in Sweden) 

https://www.bolagsfakta.se/8024512561-FORENINGEN_FOR_HJARNANS_INTEGRITET_I_SVERIGE

(Sweden) 

Stowarzyszenie STOP Zorganizowanym Elektronicznym Torturom

https://stopzet.pl/

(Poland)

ADVHER (Association de Defense des Victimes de Harcélement Electromagnétique et en Réseau) 

https://www.net1901.org/association/ASSOCIATION-DE-DEFENSE-DES-VICTIMES-DE-HARCELEMENT-ELECTROMAGNETIQUE-ET-EN-RESEAU-ADVHER,1181155.html#gsc.tab=0

(France) 

Targeted UK 

https://www.targetedsurvivors.com

(The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland)

The Allen Institute for Human Rights (The United States of America)

 PO BOX 193, NORTH PEMBROKE, MA. 

https://aihr.foundation/

(USA)

Targeted Justice

https://targetedjustice.com

(USA)

Organization of Victims of Psychotronic (Mind Control) Weapons

https://organizationofmindcontrolvictims.com/

(Canada)

PMP for Society of safe Bharath against covert torture and energy weapons 

www.CovertEnergyTorture.org

(India )

 

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Mojmir Babacek was born in 1947 in Prague, Czech Republic. Graduated in 1972 at Charles University in Prague in philosophy and political economy. In 1978 signed the document defending human rights in  communist Czechoslovakia „Charter 77“. Since 1981 until 1988 lived in emigration in the USA. Since 1996 he has published articles on different subjects mostly in the Czech and international alternative media.

In 2010, he published a book on the 9/11 attacks in the Czech language. Since the 1990s he has been striving to help to achieve the international ban of remote control of the activity of the human nervous system and human minds with the use of neurotechnology.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research

Featured image source

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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The US will deploy nuclear weapons to the UK for the first time in 15 years in a move Russia will view as a provocation, The Telegraph reported, citing Pentagon documents.

Pentagon procurement contracts show that the US is planning to station B61-12 nuclear warheads at RAF Lakenheath, a base in Suffolk, England. The US pulled its nuclear weapons out of the UK in 2008, and its decision to redeploy them demonstrates the low state of US-Russia relations.

According to The Telegraph, Russia said a US deployment of nukes to the UK would be an “escalation” that would require “compensating counter-measures.”

The US already has nukes stationed in Germany, Belgium, Italy, Turkey, and the Netherlands as part of NATO’s nuclear sharing program. Last year, Russia announced it was deploying nuclear weapons to Belarus amid tensions over the proxy war in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed to NATO’s nuclear sharing program to justify his decision.

The B61 is the US’s primary nuclear gravity bomb, and the B61-12 is its newest iteration. It’s considered a tactical nuclear weapon, which have a lower yield than strategic warheads. But the B61-12 has a maximum yield of 50 kilotons, more than three times as powerful as the bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

The UK has a nuclear arsenal of its own and announced in 2021 that it was expanding, raising questions about Britain’s commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The UK said it was raising the ceiling of its nuclear warhead stockpile from 180 to 240 and that it would no longer publish information about the number of warheads it maintains in an operational status.

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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave. 

Featured image is from ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons)

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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Twenty-four Israeli soldiers were killed in two separate incidents in Gaza on 22 January. Mainstream media outlets around the world reacted in unison: that this was the “deadliest day” for Israel since 7 October.

This exact phrase was used in headlines on 23 January carried by news agencies such as Reuters and AFP, and major broadcasters including the BBC, CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC and ITV News. 

The exact same phrase was also used by leading news titles including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time magazine, Daily Telegraph, the Sun, Jerusalem Post, Guardian, London’s Evening Standard, Financial Times, Independent and Yahoo News.

On the same day, Israeli forces killed almost 200 Palestinians in Gaza including at least 65 people in Khan Younis alone. 

These deaths received no headlines in the above outlets. Where they were reported, they were listed as part of the regular daily round-up of events in an unfolding genocide that has now seen more than 26,000 people killed in Gaza.

How is it possible that the world’s media could embrace exactly the same phrase in relation to Israeli victims but largely ignore the identities of the much higher number of Palestinians killed? 

Why would 22 January be described as “deadly” for one group of people but not for another?

Unequal Value

You might expect that editors took the “deadliest day” phrase from press statements from the Israeli government or military. 

Yet Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Daniel Hagari did not use this phrase in his statement and neither did the IDF Chief of the General Staff, Herzi Halevi, who instead simply called it a “difficult day”.

Prime minister Benjamin Netanhayu also described it as “one of the most difficult days” while Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, spoke of “an unbearably difficult morning”. 

He used the same language as both Knesset speaker Amir Ohana and minister Benny Gantz, both of whom referred to a “painful morning”.

Of course, it is possible the phrase was used in private and informal briefings to the press on the morning of 23 January. It is, however, equally conceivable that this was a trope that came “naturally” from a deep-rooted idea in the western media that the lives of Israelis and Palestinians are not of equal value. 

And, therefore, that measuring the “deadliness” of a particular day should only be done for Israelis (where every life matters) and not for Palestinians (whose individual lives clearly appear to count for less).

‘Deadliest Day’

Indeed, a search of the Nexis database of UK national and local news (including BBC broadcast bulletins) reveals that there were 856 uses of the phrase “deadliest day” from 7 October 2023 until 25 January 2024, none of which directly referred to evidence of Palestinian deaths in Gaza

The only exception to this were some BBC bulletins on 25 October which mentioned “Palestinians reporting the deadliest day in Gaza” (emphasis added). 

Otherwise, there was not a single reference during this period across the British media to “the deadliest day for Palestinians” or “for the people of Gaza”.

The other approximately 850 references directly related only to Israeli casualties. Some 28 per cent of them focused on the killing of IDF soldiers on 22 January. 

The vast majority referred to the events of 7 October, described either as “the deadliest day for Jews” or “the deadliest day for the Jewish people” which accounted for some 25% of all references.

Many of these stories were focused on the words of US president Joe Biden who, in a much publicised speech to Jewish leaders at the White House, described the Hamas attack on 7 October as the “deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust”. 

Biden’s words alone make up 20% of all references to the “deadliest day” trope.

Perhaps Biden’s words were on the minds of editors across the world as they listened to Israeli spokespeople on the morning of 23 January and that the deaths of 24 IDF soldiers merited such a phrase when talking about Israeli lives.

Framing the War

But why has the phrase not been used in relation to Palestinians and, indeed, why is there so little preoccupation with days when particularly large number of Gazans are killed?

Precisely because the war is not framed in a way which recognises the equal worth of all those affected – in other words, a situation where every instance of significant Palestinian casualties would deserve a headline – it’s hard to be certain of which have been the very deadliest days for the residents of Gaza.

However, it’s clear that the period immediately after the temporary ceasefire in the last week of November saw particularly intense airstrikes and there were, according to Al Jazeera, at least 700 Palestinians killed on 2 December alone.

Yet there was no mention in the UK media about this being the “deadliest day” for Palestinians. Instead, the Guardian simply ran with a headline of “‘Israel says its ground forces are operating across ‘all of Gaza’” while the Sunday Times wrote that “Fears for hostages as Gazans say bombardment is worse than ever”. 

According to the Mail Online, “Israel says it is expanding its ground operations against Hamas’ strongholds across the whole of the Gaza Strip as IDF continues to bomb territory after terrorists broke fragile truce”. 

The BBC’s TV news bulletins on 3 December carried distressing footage of casualties but also featured a quote from an adviser to Netanyahu saying that “Israel was making the ‘maximum effort’ to avoid killing civilians” without carrying an immediate rebuttal of this outrageous claim.

In other words, despite the fact that 30 times more Palestinians were killed on 2 December than when the 24 IDF soldiers were killed, there was no recognition of the “deadliness” of that day. 

Instead, the framing was all about the strategic plans of the Israeli military rather than the mass slaughter of Palestinians.

‘Intensive Strike’

On 26 December, a further 241 people were killed by Israeli bombs. Britain’s “newspaper of record”, The Times, responded with the headline: “Israel-Gaza war: Palestinians hit by ‘most savage bombing’” with a sub heading that “Israel launches most intensive strike since Hamas attack on October 7”. 

You could be forgiven for thinking that there was nothing deadly about this episode because, after all, Palestinians were only being “struck” as opposed to brutally killed.

But this was hardly an exceptional day given that Oxfam reported earlier this year that Israel’s military was killing Palestinians at an average rate of 250 people a day, a figure it said exceeded the daily death toll of any other major conflict of recent years.

There is clearly a brutal politics to counting the dead. The New York Times ran an article on 22 January headlined “The Decline of Deaths in Gaza” arguing that average daily deaths across a 30-day period have now fallen below 150. 

For the NYT, it is “plausible that a lower percentage of deaths are among civilians now that Israel’s attacks have become more targeted and the [average] daily toll has declined”.

Not only, however, is there little evidence that the IDF is in any way opposed to killing civilians but the idea that casualties are declining at a time when we are soon likely to see a total of 30,000 Palestinian deaths is profoundly shocking. 

Any slowdown in the rate of killing is hardly a consolation to the millions who still live in fear of IDF raids and rockets.

Media Consensus

The media consensus that only Israelis are the victims of the “deadliest days” in the region and not Palestinians, despite the latter accounting for 95% of deaths since 7 October, is one of the many illustrations of the unequal and profoundly distorted coverage of this war.

Until the South African government submitted its partially successful claim to the International Court of Justice, news organisations were unwilling even to investigate the genocidal language of Israeli political and military leaders. 

The media also routinely uses dehumanising and differential language where Israelis are “massacred” while Palestinians simply “die”. This illustrates the awful role of the mainstream media in paving the way for the ethnic cleansing we are currently seeing.

The real reason you don’t see or hear the media talk about a “deadly day” for Palestinians is that every day is deadly when you live in Gaza.

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Des Freedman is a Professor of Media & Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London and a founding member of the Media Reform Coalition.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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Dozens of Palestinians were found dead at a school in the northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday in black body bags tied with plastic cables bearing Hebrew writing.

Al Jazeera Arabic and local media reported that the bodies of the 30 Palestinians were discovered at the grounds of the Khalifa bin Zayed elementary school in Beit Lahia after Israeli forces withdrew from the area.

The bodies were reportedly discovered under a mound of rubble with videos showing several of the body bags tied with white plastic zip ties, normally used for tying cables together.

It was unclear when the Palestinians were killed but the school had served as a shelter for thousands of displaced Palestinians before it was bombed and besieged by Israeli forces in early December. The school had been supported by United Nations Relief and Works Agency, also known as Unrwa, since 2010.

Middle East Eye reached out the Israeli army for comment but did not receive a response by time of publication.

The grizzly discovery comes a day after more than 100 Palestinian bodies that were exhumed and taken by Israeli forces from various areas in the Gaza Strip were returned for a mass burial in the southern city of Rafah. 

Some of the bodies were unidentified when they were reburied while others had heavily decomposed, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. 

Later on Tuesday, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, said his group was studying a proposal that would offer Palestinians in Gaza six weeks of respite from fighting in exchange for the release of Israelis held captive in Gaza as well as the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

Haniyeh, who is based in Qatar, said Hamas was open to any “serious” initiatives provided they led to a “comprehensive cessation” of hostilities and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

His comments came after officials from Qatar, Egypt and the US met Israeli intelligence chiefs in Paris this weekend to discuss the release of some 136 Israelis held captive in Gaza.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that Hamas would release elderly captives, along with women and children, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners during an initial period of six weeks.

If that was successful, there could be another two phases of swaps, with male Israeli soldiers eventually included.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday that he could not confirm the details of the proposal, but referred to it as “a strong one and a compelling one”.

Ben Gvir Lashes Out at Proposal

The Israeli prime minister’s office called the talks “constructive”, but noted that there were “significant gaps which the parties will continue to discuss”.

For weeks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right government have vowed to remain in Gaza until Hamas is eliminated.

Speaking from an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank on Friday, Netanyahu said:

“We will not compromise on anything less than total victory.

“That means eliminating Hamas, returning all of our hostages and ensuring that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel,” he added.

However, Hamas political bureau member Mohammad Nazzal told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that an agreement to release the Israeli captives could only be possible with a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

“We told the mediators a permanent ceasefire is our goal, but we can do it in the second or third stages of an agreement. Without an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, we can’t accept this new proposal,” Nazzal said.

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir threatened on Tuesday to bring down the government if a “reckless” deal was reached with Hamas.

“A reckless deal = the dismantlement of the government,” the far-right minister said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Israel’s relentless military offensive on the besieged Gaza Strip, which was launched after the 7 October attacks, has killed at least 26,637 Palestinians, most of them women and children.

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Featured image: The bodies of 30 Palestinians were were discovered under a mound of rubble at the grounds of the Khalifa bin Zayed elementary school in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on 31 January 2024 (Supplied to MEE) 

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On Friday, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in favour of provisional measures in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel.

Finding the risk of genocide plausible, the court ordered Israel to refrain from genocidal activities, prevent their commission, and punish those inciting genocide.

Crucially, the court also ordered Israel to take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Just two days later, while everyone was still grappling with the implications of this ruling, nine major donor countries of Unrwa, the UN agency mandated to provide assistance and essential services to Palestinian refugees, announced the suspension of their funding to the organisation.

The countries include the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, Australia, and Canada.

While there has been some confusion regarding the provisional measures, especially since the court did not order an immediate suspension of military operations by Israel in Gaza, the clearest measure by the court – ensuring access to adequate humanitarian assistance – has been rendered ineffective by the decision of these countries, based on the claims that 12 out of the 13,000 Unrwa staff were involved in the 7 October attacks against Israel.

While the world expected western governments to reconsider their carte blanche support for Israel after the ICJ ruling, it seems that they decided to take their stance against Palestinian people under the risk of genocide to another level.

This blatant decision, putting hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza at risk, is particularly shocking after the ICJ’s order to ameliorate the humanitarian situation on the ground.

Risk of Famine

Unrwa is the lifeline for Gaza, a tiny strip densely populated by refugees and their descendants. Out of the total population of 2.3 million, 1.7 million people are refugees or internally displaced. These people heavily depend on Unrwa assistance and services.

Almost all people of Gaza are now at risk of famine and plague as the food and healthcare system has been extensively destroyed by Israel.

The Israeli response to the 7 October attacks had already caused a large-scale forced displacement in Gaza, further overwhelming the operation of Unrwa. Moreover, at least 152 Unrwa personnel have been killed by Israel, not to mention those wounded.

In December, in a letter to the president of the UN General Assembly, Unrwa’s commissioner-general, Philippe Lazzarini warned that the agency is on the edge of collapsing.

He stated:

“In my 35 years of work in complex emergencies, I would never have expected to write such a letter, predicting the killing of my staff and the collapse of the mandate I am expected to fulfil.”

The 1948 Genocide Convention not only prohibits genocide but also obligates all state parties to prevent genocide to their capacity.

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, warned this weekend:

“The day after the ICJ concluded that Israel is plausibly committing genocide in Gaza, some states decided to defund UNRWA, collectively punishing millions of Palestinians at the most critical time, and most likely violating their obligations under the Genocide Convention.”

Defunding the most crucial organisation in the strip, where the ICJ found a plausible risk of genocide not only through Israel’s military operations but also due to the severe humanitarian situation it has created, only exacerbates the deterioration of living conditions of the Palestinian people. This, along with continuous support for Israel, including military assistance, potentially enables genocide in Gaza, and does nothing to prevent it. 

Destructive Conditions

On the other hand, these western governments must be reminded that genocide, as defined by the convention, involves not only killing members of a particular group or causing them serious bodily or mental harm, but also deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, either in whole or in part.

Israel’s actions are likely already creating these destructive conditions. 

Knowingly contributing to the genocidal conditions in Gaza runs the risk of these states being complicit in genocide. These governments are now on the path to obtaining accomplice status.

There is a plausible risk of genocide for two million people on one side, a fact established by the World Court, vis-a-vis an “alleged” involvement of 12 out of 13,000 staff members in the 7 October attacks.

Despite Unrwa taking immediate and serious measures to investigate these allegations, these governments did not hesitate to put the lives of two million people at risk, while what needs to be done is precisely the opposite: to increase cooperation with Unrwa.

Such actions may be subject to scrutiny before national and international tribunals in the days to come.

The Refugees Problem

Israel has persistently targeted Unrwa, asserting the unfounded argument that the agency is the UN arm of Hamas. Unrwa is crucial not only for providing humanitarian assistance but also for supporting the claims of Palestinian refugees to the right of return to their homeland, a right Israel has obstructed for decades.

Since refugee status is passed through generations due to registration with Unrwa, Israel is never relieved of the burden of the refugee problem.

These western governments are seemingly unaware of the fact that defunding Unrwa and letting it collapse ironically brings the Palestinian refugee problem closer to home. Article 1d of the Refugee Convention states:

“This Convention shall not apply to persons who are at present receiving from organs or agencies of the United Nations other than the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees protection or assistance. When such protection or assistance has ceased for any reason, without the position of such persons being definitively settled in accordance with the relevant resolutions adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, these persons shall ipso facto be entitled to the benefits of this Convention”.

This article was specifically crafted for Palestinian refugees. If Unrwa becomes unable to fulfill its mandate, Palestinian refugees may automatically claim recognition of their refugee status in third states, including those defunding the agency.

But apparently, this would be applicable only if they survive Israel’s war on Gaza.

ICJ’s provisional orders to prevent genocide in Gaza will only take effect when the letter and spirit of the ruling are respected not only by the parties to the proceedings, but also by the larger international community. Forcing Unrwa to cease its operations at this crucial time serves no purpose but to contribute to the further devastation of the Palestinian people in this context.

Western governments must immediately cease their genocidal support to Israel.

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Featured image is from UNRWA

Biden Gives Green Light for Retaliation Against Iran

January 31st, 2024 by Peter Symonds

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In the wake of the drone attack in northern Jordan that killed three American soldiers and wounded dozens more, President Biden affirmed to reporters yesterday that he had decided on the US retaliatory action. Having blamed “radical Iran-backed militant groups” for the deaths, the retaliation could include strikes on such militias anywhere in the Middle East and targets within Iran itself.

Asked by reporters if he blamed Iran for the deaths of the US soldiers, Biden declared that he held Tehran responsible “in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons to the people who did it.” Pressed to say if Iran was directly responsible, he refused to respond, simply declaring “we’ll have that discussion.” Iran has denied any responsibility for the attack.

Well aware that the US-backed Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza has transformed the Middle East into a powder keg, Biden played down the potential for regional conflict.

“I don’t think we need a wider war in the Middle East. That’s not what I’m looking for,” he said.

Yet that is exactly what the Biden administration is doing, not only through its political, economic and military support for Israel but its expanding war against Houthi militia in Yemen and strikes in Iraq and Syria. US imperialism is rapidly and recklessly plunging the Middle East into a region-wide war that together with the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine threatens to engulf the world.

While Biden gave no indication of the nature of US retaliation, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters aboard Air Force One that the US intended to strike the militia groups and degrade their capacity to attack US troops while sending a “strong signal to their backers” in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Ominously, he declared that Biden’s order would be a “tiered approach” encompassing “potentially multiple actions.”

Current and former US officials told the Financial Times that the Biden administration would target militia leaders, Iranian personnel in Syria or Iraq and assets outside of Iran.

“This won’t be a single attack, so there will probably be several rounds. I think it has to be a very robust attack action,” a former senior US military commander in the Middle East said.

Right-wing Republicans, including leading presidential contender Trump, are braying for blood, denouncing Biden’s “weakness” and calling for strikes against Iran, knowing full well that such action would dramatically escalate the simmering war across the Middle East.

The Biden administration has not ruled out a direct attack on Iran or on senior Iranian officials in the Middle East. Indeed, the White House undoubtedly gave the go-ahead for the highly provocative Israeli air raid in December outside Damascus that killed Iranian Brigadier General Sayyed Razi Mousavi—the top adviser inside Syria of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). That was followed by a further Israeli air attack on Damascus earlier this month that killed the IRGC intelligence chief for Syria and his deputy as well as two other IRGC officials.

Israel, again unquestionably with the full support of Washington, is also preparing to expand its war from Gaza and the West Bank into southern Lebanon. Speaking to Israeli reservists on the border with Gaza on Monday, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said that Israeli troops will “very soon go into action” on the country’s northern border with Lebanon. The forces close to you, he said, “are leaving the field and moving towards the north, and preparing for what comes next.”

Gallant’s comments are a warning that Israel is planning a dramatic escalation of a conflict with Hezbollah militia in Lebanon that has been underway since its war on Gaza began. Northern Israel already has tens of thousands of regular troops and some 60,000 reservists, an Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) official told ABC News last week.

Israeli air raids and artillery barrage attacks inside Lebanon and Hezbollah attacks on Israeli forces in northern Israel have taken place virtually on a daily basis. An estimated 100,000 Israelis have evacuated the country’s northern towns while around 76,000 Lebanese living near the border have fled. Hezbollah has reported that 171 of its members have been killed since October 8, while Israel has said that nine soldiers and six civilians have been killed.

Even as the Biden administration uses the deaths of three American soldiers as the pretext for new military aggression in the Middle East, the death toll in Gaza continues to climb in the barbaric Israeli war waged on the Palestinians with the full backing of Washington. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza yesterday, the number of dead since October 7 rose to 26,751 with another 65,636 others wounded. The Israeli army killed 114 and wounded 249 others in the previous 24 hours.

The ministry’s spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qedra reported that Israel was increasing its siege on the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip for the second week, placing “150 medical personnel, 450 wounded, and 3,000 displaced people under targeting.” With only enough fuel to keep the hospital’s generators running for two days, Al-Qedra warned that the situation would become even more dire.

Based on reports from the Palestinian news agency Wafa, Al Jazeera yesterday detailed Israeli operations inside the West Bank over the previous 24 hours. These included the killing of three Palestinians inside the Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin by Israeli special forces; the bombing of the Al-Farouq Mosque in Khan Younis refugee camp; ongoing raids inside the Nur Shams and Tulkarem refugee camps, where Israeli forces bulldozed roads, water, telecommunication and electricity lines.

The horrors of the Israeli war inside Gaza and the West Bank are a harbinger of the barbarity that Israel, the US and its allies are preparing to inflict on a far wider scale throughout the Middle East. The US targeting of Iran is not the response to the deaths of three American soldiers but is flows from long-held ambitions for American domination of the energy-rich region and the failure of its previous criminal wars in the Middle East to achieve that end.

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After the consummation of the Brexit, the hypothetical exit of Germany from the Euro would provoke the liquidation of the Eurozone and the gestation of a new European economic cartography that will involve the return to the hermetic economic compartments.

Doctrine of the “Debt Brake”

As Joel Kotkin points out in Forbes magazine, for decades “the countries of the North (Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Finland and the United Kingdom) have compensated for very low fertility rates and declining domestic demand with the arrival of immigrants and the creation of highly productive export-oriented economies”. Thus, following the doctrine of the Schuldenbremse (debt brake) that Germany introduced in its Constitution in 2009 with the inescapable objective that “every generation pays its expenses and does not consume the taxes that their children will pay in the form of debt”.

Germany would have achieved successive economic surpluses in the last five years because the zero or negative interest rates implemented by the ECB required less money to pay public debt and allowed it to accumulate reserves to deal with the social crisis COVID-19 with a massive investment boost estimated at €20 billion to kick-start the economy.  

The Traffic Jam of the German Locomotive

However, according to an analysis by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), at present Germany would be burdened by the war in Ukraine and the total cut in Russian gas supply that would have already caused a contraction of about €100 billion (2.5% of GDP). This contraction will have as collateral effects the entry of the economy into recession and the increase in the unemployment rate combined with a runaway inflation and the settlement of trade surpluses.

Thus, according to euronews.com, the German locomotive would have fallen in the fourth quarter of 2023 (negative growth of 0.3% of GDP) due to the increase in energy prices, the reduction in industrial production due to weak European demand, the stagnation of domestic consumption and the loss of competitiveness vis-à-vis the rest of the world, which has resulted in a severe decline of 1.2% of exports in 2023.

On the other hand, the rise in ECB interest rates to 4.5% combined with the rampant inflation of 5.9% in 2023, have caused real wages to stagnate in Germany, fiscal adjustments and cuts in agricultural subsidies that would have put the German countryside and the other trade unions on the warpath. 

Charles Dumas (Lombard Street Research London), argues that “Returning to a cherished German mark would squeeze profits, increase productivity and raise consumers’ real incomes, because instead of lending savings surpluses to peripheral countries, Germans could enjoy better living standards in their country”.

Increase in Social Fracture

According to a recent EU report, 7.5 million Germans would work in the low-income employment sector (minijobs) and according to the NGO Paritätischer Gesamtverband, the proportion of people at risk of poverty in Germany would be 14% (16.6% of the population).

This, together with the high rate of immigrants in Germany (almost 20%), will lead to the sharpening of xenophobic feelings in German society (especially among East Germans), due to the reduction in the labour supply , consequent fierce competition for jobs and the conversion of many outlying neighbourhoods into genuine ghettos of immigrants, so it is foreseeable a spectacular rise of ultra-right groups in the next elections 2025.

To the Dexit?

According to a survey conducted by TNS-Emnid for the weekly magazine Focus, 26% of Germans would consider supporting a party that wants to take Germany out of the euro, so the rising star of the German political firmament, “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) which was initially formed by academics and businessmen but which would have been radicalised and adopted clearly xenophobic postulates, such as the possible expulsion of millions of foreign citizens, would be considering proposing a referendum on Germany’s exit from the Euro (Dexit).

The hypothetical exit of Germany from the Euro would mean the beginning of the termination of the Eurozone and the gestation of a new European economic cartography that will mean the return to the stagnant economic compartments and the triumph of the US in achieving the balkanization of Europe.

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German Gorraiz Lopez is a political analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

China Ignores US Entreaties of Mediation

January 31st, 2024 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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There is an old proverb that when misfortunes come, they come in battalions. Coming on top of reports of American soldiers going down like nine-pins on a drone strike against the super secret CIA station for intelligence and covert operations on the Syrian-Jordanian border, ’nyet’ is the word from Beijing to the Biden administration’s entreaties seeking intervention with Tehran to rein in the Houthis of Yemen, against the foreboding backdrop of the Axis of Resistance expanding its operations against American and Israeli interests. 

President Biden deputed his National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to handle this highly delicate mission with Beijing, instead of the US’s top diplomat Antony Blinken. Sullivan is uniquely placed to switch roles between the US’ domestic and foreign policies. He is a trusted hatchet man of the president and is actively involved in Biden’s re-election campaign. 

Sullivan stayed overnight in Thailand On Friday/Saturday to launch his charm offensive vis-a-vis Foreign Minister Wang Yi. But he came away with no sign that China is willing to use its influence with Tehran. 

Later, an unattributable media briefing by a senior NSC official via teleconference was hastily arranged by the White House to cover Sullivan’s back side. It brought home that reading the Chinese tea leaves is an art in itself. As the NSC official put it,

“Beijing says they are raising this with the Iranians … but we’re certainly going to wait before we comment further on how effectively we think they’re actually raising it.” 

Sullivan seems to have hit a brick wall. This is curious because the Biden Administration should have learnt from previous experience with Beijing in trying to prod China to convince close ally North Korea to scale back its nuclear weapons programme or roll back its “no limits” friendship with Russia over Ukraine. 

Actually, South Korea’s military said on Sunday that North Korea fired several cruise missiles, extending a streak in weapons tests that are worsening tensions with the US and reflecting Pyongyang’s efforts to expand its arsenal of weapons designed to overwhelm remote US targets in the Pacific, including Guam!   

Evidently, the Biden administration failed to comprehend that Beijing was under no obligation to use its influence on Pyongyang for serving American interests. It is sheer naïveté to expect Beijing to fall for selective engagement on issues that aim to buy time for the president to give his best shot in the upcoming November elections. 

What does China get in return? The question doesn’t occur to the Biden Administration. The assumption in DC is that China is on an ego trip and begging for selective engagement with the No 1 military and economic power on the planet. On the contrary, China too has some legitimate demands to make — such as, for instance, the US not inciting Taiwan surreptitiously to travel on the path of independence, or allowing China a level playing field for setting new technology standards at the global level as an innovative country.

Interestingly, compared to the taciturn readout by the White House on the Sullivan-Wang Yi meeting in Thailand, the Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a candid full-bodied statement on Saturday to set the record straight and pre-empt the spin doctors in the Biden White House from scripting some false narrative. The relevant excerpts from the Chinese statement titled  Wang Yi held a meeting with Sullivan, assistant to the President of the United States for National Security Affairs are reproduced below: 

(Unofficial translation)

“The two sides conducted frank, substantive and fruitful strategic communications around the implementation of the consensus of the San Francisco meeting between the heads of state of the two countries and the proper handling of important and sensitive issues in Sino-US relations.

“Wang Yi said that this year marks the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States.The two sides should take this as an opportunity to summarise their experiences and learn lessons, treat each other equally rather than condescendingly, seek common ground while preserving differences rather than highlighting differences, effectively respect rather than harm each other’s core interests, and work together to mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation to build a correct way for China and the United States to get along.

“Wang Yi emphasised that the Taiwan issue is China’s internal affairs, and Taiwan’s regional elections cannot change the basic fact that Taiwan is a part of China.The biggest risk to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait is “Taiwan independence”, and the biggest challenge to Sino-US relations is also “Taiwan independence”.The United States must abide by the one-China principle and the three joint communiqués between China and the United States, implement the commitment not to support “Taiwan independence” into actions, and support China’s peaceful reunification.

“ Wang Yi pointed out that all countries have national security concerns, but they must be justified and reasonable. They cannot engage in pan-politicisation and pan-security, let alone curb and suppress the development of other countries.The two sides agreed to further discuss the boundary between national security and economic activities…

“The two sides also discussed international and regional issues such as the Middle East, Ukraine, the Korean Peninsula, and the South China Sea.” 

The Chinese readout did not even make any specific mention of the Houthis or Tehran! Instead, it underscored the perceived threat of Taiwan independence as “the biggest challenge to China—US relations.” And, furthermore, it reiterated Beijing’s concerns that the US is using export restrictions “to contain and suppress the development of other countries” and said that the two countries will discuss “the boundary between national security and economic activities” in future meetings.

What do we make out of this? Simply put, China’s reluctance to use its diplomatic and economic heft to support US moves to address the Red Sea disruptions by reining in the Axis of Resistance (or restrain North Korea’s behaviour) underscores the limitations of the Biden administration’s diplomatic outreach efforts or charm offensive to win over Beijing and get it committed to a selective engagement over Washington’s priorities on flash points that might otherwise become raging controversies in electoral politics till November. 

By the way, the Chinese readout also acknowledged that there are areas where Beijing is indeed interested in an engagement with the US at this transformative point in time — viz., the joint implementation of the so-called “San Francisco Vision,” which translates as: 

  • regular contacts between the two presidents so as to “give strategic guidance to bilateral relations”; 
  • promotion of bilateral exchanges; 
  • making good use of the current strategic communication channels and a series of dialogue and consultation mechanisms” in various fields ranging from diplomacy, mil-to-mil ties, economy, finance, commerce, climate change, etc.; 
  • continuing the discussion over the “guiding principles” of Sino-US relations; 
  • cooperation in drug control; 
  • Artificial intelligence intergovernmental dialogue mechanism; and,
  • cultural exchanges.

How come the US and its western allies get it all horribly wrong? For an answer, the final word must go to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov who said in New York while on a brief visit to the UN hqs last weekend:

“They believe that for 500 years they have ruled the world as they wish, living at the expense of others, and they think this should continue. This logic completely ignores the objective reality, in particular the fact that the vast majority of former colonies have gained independence, become aware of their national interests, want to strengthen their national, cultural and religious identity and are growing so fast that they have left the West behind – at least the BRICS members are.”

The bottom line is, Beijing will not fall for US attempts to create misperceptions in China’s relations with Iran or North Korea. China has no intentions to help the US to pull its chestnuts out of the fire in West Asia or the Far East. The international environment is rather fraught and Beijing has set its compass to be on the right side of history.

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Featured image: Wang Yi, Member of Politbureau of Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and director of Central Foreign Affairs Office (3rd from left) met with Jake Sullivan, assistant to US President for National Security (3rd from Right), Bangkok, Jan. 26-27, 2024

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Mexico is furious and demands an investigation into how belt-fed machine guns, rocket launchers, and grenades are ending up in the hands of cartel members, the country’s top diplomat said. 

“The (Mexican) Defense Department has warned the United States about weapons entering Mexico that are for the exclusive use of the US army,” Foreign Relations Secretary Alicia Bárcena said, who was quoted by AP News

Bárcena said, “It is very urgent that an investigation into this be carried out.”

In June, the Mexican Army announced it had seized a dozen rocket launchers, 56 grenade launchers, and 221 fully automatic machine guns since 2018. 

The influx of military-grade US weaponry entering Mexico comes as the Biden administration fails to secure the southern border as millions of illegals flood into the US. But what’s rarely discussed, in what seems like an Obama-era Operation Fast and Furious scandal, are weapons flooding Mexico from the US. 

Last week, at the SHOT Show in Las Vegas, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) agent from a field office in southern Texas revealed to us that the agency is very concerned about a flood of 50 cal rifles and belt-fed machine guns that are illegally entering Mexico from the US. 

The cross-border firearms trafficking of military-grade US weaponry on the southern border is very concerning. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill should investigate this worrisome development to ensure the Biden administration does not repeat the Obama-era Fast and Furious program. 

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All images in this article are from the author

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Five peace activists were arrested today as CODEPINK and other organizations disrupted the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing titled “UNRWA Exposed: Examining the Agency’s Mission and Failures.” The protest aimed to draw attention to the urgent need for humanitarian aid in Gaza.

The disruption comes in the wake of the International Court of Justice’s recent ruling, which found South Africa’s charge of genocide against Israel to be credible. The court issued provisional measures demanding that Israel cease the killing of Palestinians and restore the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Despite these urgent calls, Israel has retaliated by accusing UNRWA members of aiding and abetting Hamas’s attack on October 7th. In response, the United States made the drastic decision to completely cut off funding to UNRWA, jeopardizing vital aid to the people of Gaza who are facing dire circumstances.

“UNRWA is the lifeline for people who are starving; cutting its funding is just inhumane,” stated Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK.

United States citizens are voicing their outrage at their country’s complicity in what they see as the intentional ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Many believe that decision-makers are influenced by lobbying efforts from groups like AIPAC, which is perceived as a de facto lobbying firm for the State of Israel.

Jay Waxse from 7 Circles Alliance expressed concern, stating,

“To so casually take away humanitarian aid from an entire people based on one criterion that is not withheld within our military or police in this country is severely troubling.”

Retired Colonel and former State Department member Ann Wright emphasized the critical importance of UNRWA funding for the health and security of the people of Gaza, calling the suspension of funding by the US “criminal” and “outrageous.”

CODEPINK and its supporters demand the immediate reinstatement of funding to UNRWA to ensure the well-being of the people of Gaza.

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Featured image is from CODEPINK

U.S. Military School at West Point Supports Genocide

January 31st, 2024 by Karsten Riise

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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The US military school at West Point participates in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

This is done by West Point lying away Israel’s genocide – and pretending to be “experts” claiming that Israel “protects” civilians. 

Israel has done more to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza than any other army in the world, chair of urban warfare studies at West Point, John Spencer said in an extensive thread posted on x (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday. See this.

One of the “measures” which West Point claims Israel has taken, is Israel’s false alerts to warn Palestinians to go to “safe” places – places, which Israel then deliberately bombs once the Palestinian civilians have fled to those locations. The West Point is of course fully aware that their leader of urban combat education is lying on behalf of Israel – he knows that what Israel really does, is the exact opposite of protecting civilians – it is criminal deceit for targeting civilians, incl. children.

Also, the West Point military school in the US knows that Israel creates famine and hinders life-saving aid from going into Gaza.

The US, its government, and US military institutions like West Point are complicit in Israel’s genocide.

The lies from West Point about the nature of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians is especially criminal, as it will undoubtedly be used as “evidence” to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Israel is “innocent” of genocide.

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Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.    

Featured image is from globalchallenges.ch

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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[Translation by Dr. William Makis]

“Ladies and gentlemen of Progressive Slovakia and the Opposition parties, have you seen the statistics on how our deaths have risen from various cardiovascular events due to vaccination?

But you reject it, of course you reject it, while you claim that (COVID-19) Vaccination was the best thing in the world.

What do you know about how many vaccines we have left over that expired and how much money was thrown away into the air? What do you know about purchases of medical equipment and tests? You know that we demonstrated very clearly the connection of one company from Trnava (Slovakia) to the chairman of one of the opposition political parties.

Hundreds of thousands, millions worth of purchases, completely useless. What do you know about management? What do you know about what was going on in terms of taking various measures which, in our view,significantly increased the morbidity than was perhaps the case in other countries?

And you all laughed at the other states, other countries. You laughed at Russia, where they stood on the principle of individual visits of patients by doctors, and they managed it significantly better than we managed it here in Slovakia.

We have 21,000 deaths, which we connect with the fact that the governments that were here since 2020 were not capable of managing (the pandemic) and cared only about economic gains and of course made sure they were bowing to pharmaceutical companies from which they bought huge quantities of useless medical equipment and often also vaccines.

I don’t even want to talk about the European level, you know that I have been very open and I said it to Madam President of the European Commission (Ursula von der Leyen) openly that the suspicions that are connected with her and to the purchase, the largest purchase in the history of the European Commission, of vaccines, when she literally exchanged secret SMS text messages with CEO of Pfizer (Albert Bourla), and when, to the ridicule of Members of the European Parliament a report was issued that was completely blacked out, we will simply never be able to find out the truth of what role pharmaceutical companies played and who actually organized this whole circus around COVID-19.

Under these conditions, ladies and gentlemen, the government of Slovak Republic has decided that it will include into the Government’s Program Statement, a commitment that it will settle this issue. The Slovak public simply needs an answer, needs an answer in regards to vaccination, what it actually was. Why were people vaccinated with various experimental Vaccines without any trials? Why were all sorts of drugs forced into people? Why was there state wide testing? Who was buying? Why were they buying? What quantities were being bought? How much money did it cost?

And we’ll end up at billions, at billions, you can grin all you want because you don’t even know anything other than showing disrespect for another opinion. You know democracy is about sometimes respecting another opinion. When you are here discussing for the third week talking about the Criminal Code, nobody is swearing at you, we are listening to you, you are talking, so please be kind enough if we have a different opinion, then please respect it even if you disagree with it.

Under these conditions, we have decided that we will create an Office of the Government Plenipotentiary which will be dealing with these questions. Today, we have not only appointed the Director of Plenipotentiary, but we’ve also empowered him when it comes to obtaining information from various Institutions, in particular we will be obtaining information from the Chief Hygienist, we will be asking questions at the National Health Information Center. We still want to know, based on what we currently have available to us, what actually happened.

I think that Dr.Kotlar, Member of the National Assembly, is sufficiently equipped in terms of information. I see that he is also prepared in terms of assembling a team. I have requested from him that before we make any public statements, that we have first gone through everything at the government, and I am absolutely convinced that his work will lead to results that we will make public and we will tell the Slovak public what in God’s name happened during COVID.

We know today one thing for sure: previous governments completely failed to manage COVID properly and have around their necks 21,000 dead people and apparently they made a huge amount of money on the unnecessary purchases of various medical equipment and vaccines.

Thank you very much.”

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My Take… 

A few weeks ago, newly elected Slovakia Prime Minister Robert Fico clearly outlined his governing party’s position on rejecting the WHO Pandemic Treaty. I translated his speech here.

This time, Slovakia leads the way again and provides the “template” on how to approach the crimes and fraud committed during the COVID-19 pandemic by the politicians who were in power at the time.

  1. Publicly address current excess deaths
  2. Publicly expose the cardiovascular (and other) deaths caused by COVID-19 Vaccination
  3. Call out the corruption involving the contracts that were awarded for masks and other personal protective equipment (and the politicians involved)
  4. Call out the corruption in the procurement of COVID-19 Vaccines
  5. Call out the experimental nature of COVID-19 Vaccines and the inappropriate use of various drugs that were forced on people during the pandemic
  6. Launch a government investigation into the handling of the entire COVID-19 pandemic, including the rollout of COVID-19 Vaccines and the purchases of various medical equipment and vaccines (and who benefited financially).
  7. Make a commitment to the public, to make all the findings of such a government investigation public.

Notice that even though he is a politician, he is not dancing around the issue or sugar coating it. He is simply telling it like it is.

This is a great template to follow, by other politicians who want to do the right thing at this time.

For example, in Canada, Alberta’s Premier Danielle Smith could launch such an investigation into corruption and crimes committed during the COVID-19 pandemic (especially by Alberta Health Services and the Colleges of Physicians, Nurses, Pharmacists, Dentists, etc) and if she did, she would have overwhelming support from the public.

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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.

Featured image source


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

Reviews

This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon

In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia

In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig 

Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac

A reading of  Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late.  You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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“In a normal world, it is Israel that should be punished for killing so many members of a humanitarian organization. (150 UNRWA staffers killed so far) But nope, it’s the humanitarian organization that’s getting punished, alongside the very vulnerable population it’s committed to helping.”Arnaud Bertrand

Israeli leaders have settled on a plan that will increase the number of Palestinian deaths while diverting attention from the ICJ’s claims of genocide.

On Friday, western news agencies reported that the UN’s humanitarian agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency or UNRWA, may have employed militants who were involved in the October 7 attacks on Israel. The claims—which remain sketchy and unverified—were made on the same day that the International Court of Justice delivered its historic genocide ruling against the Jewish state. While it is possible that Israeli investigators uncovered new intelligence on Hamas’ attack, it’s more likely that the announcement was perfectly-timed to divert attention from the ICJ’s ruling.

Not surprisingly, the United States and its allies—including Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Finland and the Netherlands—have all accepted Israel’s dubious allegations and announced that they will temporarily suspend funding for the UN agency. The speed at which these countries joined Israel in condemning the UNRWA, strongly suggests that they were tipped-off (and told what to do) prior to the announcement. All of this suggests that Israel is trying to minimize the reputational damage from the genocide indictment by creating a smokescreen that will leave the public confused and unable to assign blame. According to the Times of Israel:

A senior Israeli official told the Axios news site that the Shin Bet and the IDF provided information that pointed to the active participation of UNRWA staffers along with the use of the agency’s vehicles and facilities in the October 7 terror onslaught.

“This was strong and corroborated intelligence,” the official told Axios. “A lot of the intelligence is a result of interrogations of militants who were arrested during the October 7 attack.” UNRWA sacks staffers who allegedly participated in Oct. 7 attack; US halts funding, Times of Israel

Whenever the media bases its coverage on information from an unidentified intelligence source, you must assume they ‘have nothing’, which supports our basic belief that the Hamas fable is largely a diversion. Surprisingly, an article at CNN helps to reinforce our thesis. Take a look:

Details remain scant. Neither Israel nor UNRWA have specified the nature of the alleged involvement of UNRWA employees in the events of October 7.

An Israeli official told CNN on Friday that Israel shared information about 12 staffers allegedly involved in the October 7 attacks both with UNRWA and the US…

In addition to the staffers’ alleged October 7 involvement, the Israel Defense Forces on Saturday also alleged that UNRWA facilities were used for “terrorist purposes”, in a statement to CNN on Saturday.

Asked about the claim about UNRWA facilities, the agency told CNN, “We don’t have more information on this at this stage.” (CNN)

Okay, let’s review:

  1. “Details remain scant.” (They have nothing.)
  2. “Neither Israel nor UNRWA have specified the nature of the alleged involvement of UNRWA employees in the events of October 7.” (They have nothing.)
  3. An Israeli official … shared information about 12 staffers allegedly involved in the October 7 attacks both with UNRWA and the US.” (“allegedly”. They have nothing.)
  4. The IDF “also alleged that UNRWA facilities were used for “terrorist purposes”. (“alleged”. Again, no evidence.)
  5. “The agency told CNN, “We don’t have more information on this at this stage.” (Finally, an clear admission that they have nothing.)

None of Israel’s claims have been corroborated, verified or proven. It’s all speculative pronouncements packaged as credible intelligence. (It’s embarrassing that they even publish this nonsense.)

All the same, Israel’s closest allies have cut funding and are now doing their level-best to prevent the relief agency from operating in Gaza. This is a very serious situation that could have dire consequences for Palestinians who currently have no access to food, medicine or clean water. As unbelievable as it sounds, Israel appears to be implementing a strategy aimed at deliberately starving millions of civilians to death. If someone has a better explanation for Israel’s behavior, I would be very interested in hearing it. This is from an editorial at the Global Times:

Since the start of this conflict, 1.7 million people have sought refuge or received services in over 150 UNRWA shelters and distribution sites. Food, water, education, and healthcare in Gaza largely depend on UNRWA. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is the last lifeline for 2.2 million people. The funding of this agency is almost entirely provided by donors, and it has been in a financially tight or even crisis state for many years. The countries that have currently announced the suspension of funding are important donor countries, with their donations accounting for a significant proportion of the organization’s funds. …

Israel has previously stated that the Israeli government will implement a policy to prevent UNRWA from operating in the Gaza Strip after the current round of Israel-Palestine conflict ends. Considering UNRWA’s pivotal position in local organizations within the UN, this will restrain the UN’s role in Gaza and the Middle East, and deal a major blow to the increasingly dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip….

there is currently no alternative to UNRWA, and it remains the only hope for Palestinian refugees. The international community has broad consensus that “collective punishment” against the Gaza population for condemning and combating terrorism is unacceptable and humanitarian needs should be guaranteed…

In the slow progress of the “two-state solution,” UNRWA has played an indispensable role in providing much-needed assistance to Palestinian refugees. It is a shared responsibility of all parties to continue supporting and maintaining the authority and status of the UN. Global Times

The article underscores what we said earlier, that currently there is no substitute for the UNRWA. If they are prevented from assisting Gaza’s nearly 2 million internal refugees, they will starve; it’s that simple. So, as you can see, Israel’s attack on the agency is not merely designed to obfuscate the genocide ruling, but to increase the probability of mass starvation. This type of barbarous behavior, is hard to process.

Check out this excerpt from the official statement from Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner General:

“Nine countries have as of today temporarily suspended their funding to UNRWA. These decisions threaten our ongoing humanitarian work across the region including and especially in the Gaza Strip.

“It is shocking to see a suspension of funds to the Agency in reaction to allegations against a small group of staff, especially given the immediate action that UNRWA took by terminating their contracts and asking for a transparent independent investigation….

“UNRWA is the primary humanitarian agency in Gaza, with over 2 million people depending on it for their sheer survival. Many are hungry as the clock is ticking towards a looming famine. The Agency runs shelters for over 1 million people and provides food and primary healthcare even at the height of the hostilities.

“In its ruling yesterday, the International Court of Justice ordered that “Israel must take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip”. These measures are aimed at preventing irreparable damage to the rights of Palestinians.

“It would be immensely irresponsible to sanction an Agency and an entire community it serves because of allegations of criminal acts against some individuals, especially at a time of war, displacement and political crises in the region…

“I urge countries who have suspended their funding to re-consider their decisions before UNRWA is forced to suspend its humanitarian response. The lives of people in Gaza depend on this support and so does regional stability”. UNRWA’s lifesaving aid may end due to funding suspension, unrwa.org

Is it fair to describe Israel’s effort to block basic humanitarian aid to the Palestinians as “diabolical” or is too critical?

The best summary of this issue was written by Arnaud Bertrand and posted on his Twitter account on Sunday. I hope you will take the time and read it:

Whatever your position is, just take a moment to reflect on just how dark this is.

Just hours after the ICJ concluded that Israel was plausibly committing genocide and ordered it to dramatically step up humanitarian efforts, 7 Western countries sanctioned… not Israel but the Palestinians and the UN (!!!).

They cut funding for UNRWA, which is THE UN agency tasked with humanitarian assistance to Palestinians (and therefore their main lifeline).

Even if you were the world’s worst cynic, you’d still have a hard time expecting such sheer level of cruelty and depravation. This is absolutely unfathomable.

They did so with the cheapest possible excuse, effectively using Israel’s narrative that “UNWRA is Hamas” and allegations by Israel that some UNWRA staff were involved in the 7th Oct attack but 1) Israel has been making these accusations for months (so the timing of cutting funding right after the ICJ ruling is obviously not a coincidence) and 2) UNWRA has announced it’s terminated the contracts of the staff members accused (12 people out of its 30,000 strong workforce) and launched an investigation, so it obviously doesn’t condone this. Even if the allegations were to be proven correct, how can an organization of 30,000 staff be held collectively accountable for the individual actions of 0.04% of its workforce? Especially in the current context when its work is a life or death matter for millions of people.

To add to the cynicism here, UNWRA staff are actually a major victim of the war with at least 152 UNRWA staffers killed by Israel in Gaza to date. In a normal world, it is Israel that should be punished for killing so many members of a humanitarian organization. But nope, it’s the humanitarian organization that’s getting punished, alongside with the very vulnerable population it’s committed to helping.”

Arnaud Bertrand

That says it all.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). 

Featured image is from MintPress News

US-NATO Largest War Exercise Against Russia. “It Will Also be Nuclear”. Italy on the Front Line. Manlio Dinucci

By Manlio Dinucci, January 30, 2024

US Army General Christopher Cavoli, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, announced that the largest NATO exercise in decades, Steadfast Defender 2024, will occur in Europe from the end of January to the end of May. 90,000 soldiers from the 31 NATO countries will participate and are about to join NATO Sweden.

Biden’s New Strategy for Ukraine: “De-emphazises” The Retaking “Lost Territories”

By Ahmed Adel, January 30, 2024

US media reported that Washington is creating a new strategy for Ukraine that will deemphasise retaking territory it lost to Russian forces, a silent acknowledgment that the Ukrainian military does not have the capabilities to launch attacks, let alone reach Crimea, as Kiev regime figures boasted before the failure of last year’s counteroffensive.

Mahatma Gandhi’s Message of Peace with Justice and Inter-Faith Harmony Is Most Needed Now

By Bharat Dogra, January 30, 2024

In a world so deeply distressed by alarming incidence of gender violence, domestic violence, workplace violence, street violence, etc., better understanding and appreciation of the importance of  non-violence implies a reduction not just in actual acts of violence but also conscious efforts to reduce anger, jealousy, greed, aggressive competitiveness and other tendencies which are associated with violence in daily life.

Conventional Detergent: Political Science as an Ideological Laundromat

By Dr. T. P. Wilkinson, January 30, 2024

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

Scientists Call for Global Moratorium on COVID mRNA Vaccines, Immediate Removal from Childhood Schedule

By Dr. Brenda Baletti, January 30, 2024

Governments should endorse a global moratorium on mRNA vaccines until all questions about their safety have been thoroughly investigated, according to the authors of a new, peer-reviewed article on the COVID-19 vaccine trials and the global vaccination campaign published last week in Cureus, Journal of Medical Science.

UNRWA Funding Cuts Threaten Palestinian Lives in Gaza and Region, Say NGOs

By Norwegian Refugee Council, January 30, 2024

The suspension of funding by donor states will impact life-saving assistance for over two million civilians, over half of whom are children, who rely on UNRWA aid in Gaza. The population faces starvation, looming famine and an outbreak of disease under Israel’s continued indiscriminate bombardment and deliberate deprivation of aid in Gaza.

Nuremberg for Israel: Criminals in Charge of the State of Israel

By Karsten Riise, January 30, 2024

It is already abundantly clear that Israel is adamant to ignore the demands of the ICJ and carry through with its genocide until its horrific end. Instead of reversing course, key forces in Israel celebrate their drive for genocide against the Palestinians and their objective of an Israeli colonization of Gaza.

Tigray Was Literally Destroyed by the U.S., Says Former Ethiopian Diplomat

By Jeremy Kuzmarov, January 30, 2024

Mohamed Hassan is a former Ethiopian diplomat who was involved in protests in the early 1990s with future Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi to secure greater rights for Ethiopia’s Muslim population. Hassan told an international tribunal on U.S. imperialism that the U.S. government is responsible for the destruction of Tigray, an Ethiopian province, after the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) launched an insurgency in November 2020 against the Ethiopian government.

Sick to Death: Unhealthy Food and Failed Technologies

By Colin Todhunter, January 29, 2024

The world is experiencing a micronutrient food and health crisis. Micronutrient deficiency now affects billions of people. Micronutrients are key vitamins and minerals and deficiencies can cause severe health conditions. They are important for various functions, including blood clotting, brain development, the immune system, energy production and bone health, and play a critical role in disease prevention.  

Freezing Aid to Gaza: Israel’s International War Against the UNRWA

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, January 29, 2024

Within hours, nine states had added their names to the list suspending allocated aid. Australia, along with the United States and Canada, rushed to the podium to condemn UNRWA and freeze funding. The United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Finland followed.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

***

Amnesty International on Monday joined the growing global chorus denouncing Israel’s allies for suspending aid to the United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency even as they continue to support the Israeli military’s war on the Gaza Strip, risking complicity in genocide.

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary-general and the former U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, said that while Israel’s claim that a dozen staffers at the refugee agency played a role Hamas’ October 7 attack is “serious and must be independently investigated,” the “alleged actions of a few individuals must not be used as a pretext for cutting off lifesaving assistance in what could amount to collective punishment.”

“Some of the very governments that announced they will cut off funds to UNRWA over these allegations have, in the meantime, continued to arm Israeli forces despite overwhelming evidence that these arms are used to commit war crimes and serious human rights violations,” said Callamard. “Rushing to freeze funds for humanitarian aid, based on allegations that are still being investigated, while refusing to even consider suspending support for the Israeli military is a stark example of double standards.”

“Instead of suspending vital funding to those in need,” Callamard added, “states should be working to halt arms transfers to Israel and Palestinian armed groups and pushing for an immediate and sustained cease-fire and full humanitarian access to help alleviate devastating suffering.”

The United States announced last week that it would temporarily cut off UNRWA funding as it reviews Israel’s allegations against the low-level agency employees—a decision that came just hours after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel must ensure the provision of humanitarian aid to Gazans, tens of thousands of whom have been killed or wounded by Israeli bombs and shells in less than four months.

Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, said that “defunding UNRWA at this critical time overtly defies” the ICJ’s ruling.

Médecins Sans Frontières, also known as Doctors Without Borders, similarly warned Monday that “the consequences these cuts in funding will have on the ground contradict the provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice.”

“The humanitarian crisis has reached catastrophic levels,” the group added, “and any additional limitations on aid will result in more deaths and suffering.”

Just over a week before the Biden administration decided to suspend its UNRWA contributions, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department described the agency’s work as “invaluable” and “lifesaving.”

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged that the UNRWA “has played and continues to play an absolutely indispensable role in trying to make sure that men, women, and children who so desperately need assistance in Gaza actually get it.”

“And no one else can play the role that UNRWA’s been playing, certainly not in the near term,” he added. “So that only underscores the importance of UNRWA tackling this as quickly, as effectively, and as thoroughly as possible, and that’s what we’re looking for.”

At least a dozen countries—including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands—have joined the U.S. in suspending aid to the UNRWA, the most critical humanitarian aid organization in the famine-stricken Gaza Strip.

The moves have put the UNRWA’s operations in jeopardy, with the U.N. chief warning that the agency’s current funding levels won’t be enough to meet all of its requirements in February. The agency has no strategic financial reserves.

Amnesty said the countries that have suspended aid to the UNRWA thus far provided more than half of the agency’s budget in 2022.

Several major nations, including Norway and Spain, have refused to join the U.S.-led freeze of aid to the UNRWA, which the Israeli government has been targeting for years and is hoping to push out of Gaza entirely. The UNRWA quickly fired nine of the 12 workers that Israel accused of taking part in the October 7 attack and has launched an investigation.

On Monday, Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said his country will not suspend UNRWA funding, which he said helps “alleviate the terrible humanitarian situation in Gaza.”

Albares also pledged to continue pushing for an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza, the release of hostages, and a lasting diplomatic solution.

“We will not resign ourselves to watching more innocent women, men, and children killed in Gaza and more suffering of Palestinian families,” he said. “We will not resign ourselves to keep watching the suffering of the families of hostages. The violence must stop.”

[From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.]

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Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

Featured image: Families have been forced to moved repeatedly in Gaza. UN United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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***

Of relevance to the crimes currently committed by the Netanyahu government against the People of Palestine, we bring to the attention of our readers the 2013 Judgement of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, an initiative of former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, who headed the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC).

On a personal note, I was a signatory of the Kuala Lumpur Declaration to Criminalize War (2005). I was subsequently invited to become a member of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC) which was created in 2007.

I should mention that the indictment directed again the State of Israel was the object of sabotage.

One of the appointed foreign judges was a Zionist who was in “conflict of interest” with links to the State of Israel. Members of the KLWCC brought this issue to the attention of  Prof. Francis Boyle who had acted as prosecutor on behalf of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission chaired by Tun Mahathir Mohamad. The numerous witnesses from Palestine refused to provide testimony. 

The Tribunal hearings were postponed and reconvened on November 13, 2013 following the act of recusal and the appointment of a new judge.

The Kuala Lumpur Judgment is all the more significant in view of the current procedure of the International Criminal Court’s instigated by the Republic of South Africa against the State of Israel, on charges of genocide directed against the People of Palestine.

Read it carefully, particularly the testimonies. Forward this text far and wide.

In solidarity with the People of Palestine. 

Michel Chossudovsky,  January 18, 2023


Video. Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad

Global Solidarity in Support of Palestine

November 4, 2023


The 2005 Kuala Lumpur Declaration to Criminalize War

under the helm of Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad

 

Signatories of the 2005 Kuala Lumpur Declaration. From Left to Right: 

Francis A.Boyle, Helen Caldicott,  Denis J. Halliday, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, Hans-Christof Von Sponeck, Michel Chossudovsky, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf


.

Important Excerpt from the  2013 Judgment

What Amounts To Genocide? 

Simply put, genocide means any designated acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such. The definition of genocide as given in Article 2 of the Tribunal’s Statute is taken verbatim from Articles 2 & 3 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide which states that the following acts may by themselves or cumulatively constitute the international crime of genocide:

  1. Killing members of the group

  2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

  3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

  4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

  5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

 

***

The State of Israel was charged on 20 November 2013

with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

 

 

The procedure was initiated by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission under the helm of the former Prime Minister of Malaysia Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad.

It was part of an initative launched in December 2005 to Criminalize War.

It involved detailed testimonies and evidence.

The Members of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC) are:

Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, chairman, 

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, 

Mr. Denis Halliday, 

Mr. Musa Ismail, 

Dr. Zulaiha Ismail, 

Dr. Yaacob Merican, 

Dr.  Hans von Sponeck

This indictment is supported by extensive evidence and testimony. Read the following recommendations:

As a tribunal of conscience, the Tribunal is fully aware that its verdict is merely declaratory in nature. We have no power of enforcement. What we can do, under Article 34 of Chapter VIII of Part 2 of the Charter is to recommend to the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission, WHICH WE HEREBY DO, to submit this finding of conviction by the Tribunal, together with a record of these proceedings, to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, as well as the United Nations and the Security Council.

 The Tribunal recommends to the War Crimes Commission to give the widest international publicity to this conviction and grant of reparations, as these are universal crimes for which there is a responsibility upon nations to institute prosecutions.

The Tribunal deplores the failure of international institutions to punish the State of Israel for its crimes and its total lack of respect of International Law and the institutions of the United Nations. It urges the Commission to use all means to publicise this judgement and in particular with respect to the Parliaments and Legislative Assemblies of the major powers such as members of the G8 and to urge these countries to intervene and put an end to the colonialist and racist policies of the State of Israel and its supporters.

Below is the full text of the procedure as well as the formal indictment against Amos Yaron and the State of Israel.

For a summary version click here

Read Complete Judgment (pdf)

On behalf of the members of The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission, under the helm of Dr. Tun Mahathir Mohamad.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, July 18, 2020, November 8, 2023

***

THE KUALA LUMPUR WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL
20 – 25 NOVEMBER 2013
Case No. 3 – CHG – 2013

The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission
Against
Amos Yaron
Case No. 4 – CHG – 2013

The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission
Against
The State of Israel

Coram

Judge Tan Sri Dato’ Haji Lamin bin Haji Mohd Yunus
Judge Tunku Sofiah Jewa
Judge Shad Saleem Faruqi
Judge Mohd Saari Yusuf
Judge Salleh Buang
Judge John Philpot
Judge Tunku Intan Mainura

Prosecution Team

Prof. Gurdial Singh Nijar
Tan Sri Aziz Rahman
Mr. Avtaran Singh
Ms. Gan Pei Fern
Mr. Nizamuddin Hamid
Dr. Sharizal M Zin
Ms. Rafika Shari’ah
Ms. Mazlina Mahali
Ms. Diyana Sulaiman

Amicus Curiae-Defence Team

Mr. Jason Kay Kit Leon
Ms. Larissa Jane Cadd
Dr. Abbas Hardani
Prof. Dr. Rohimi Shapiee
Dr. Rohaida Nordin
Dr. Matthew Witbrodt

The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal (Tribunal) reconvened on 20 November 2013 to hear two charges against Amos Yaron (first Defendant) and the State of Israel (second Defendant). The first Defendant was charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, whilst the second Defendant was charged with the crime of genocide and war crimes.

The charge against the first Defendant is as follows –

“The Defendant Amos Yaron perpetrated War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, and Genocide in his capacity as the Commanding Israeli General in military control of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Israeli occupied Lebanon in September of 1982 when he knowingly facilitated and permitted the large-scale Massacre of the Residents of those two camps in violation of the Hague Regulations on Land Warfare of 1907; the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949; the 1948 Genocide Convention; the Nuremberg Charter (1945), the Nuremberg Judgment (1946), and the Nuremberg Principles (1950); customary international law, jus cogens, the Laws of War, and International Humanitarian Law” 

The charge against the second Defendant is as follows –

“From 1948 and continuing to date the State of Israel (hereafter ‘the Defendant’) carried out against the Palestinian people a series of acts namely killing, causing serious bodily harm and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction. 

The conduct of the Defendant was carried out with the intention of destroying in whole or in part the Palestinian people.

These acts were carried out as part of a manifest pattern of similar conduct against the Palestinian people.

These acts were carried out by the Defendant through the instrumentality of its representatives and agents including those listed in Appendices 1 and 2.

Such conduct constitutes the Crime of Genocide under international law including the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide 1948 (‘the Genocide Convention’) in particular Article II and punishable under Article III of the said Convention. It also constitutes the crime of genocide as stipulated in Article 10 of the Charter of the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War.

Such conduct by the Defendant as an occupying power also violates customary international law as embodied in the Hague Convention of 1907 Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.

Such conduct also constitutes War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity under international law.”

The charges (together with the particulars of the charges) had been duly served on the Defendants, and were read in open court by the Registrar as these proceedings commenced.

Neither Defendant was present in these proceedings, but both were represented by the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team.

  1. Preliminary objections and applications by Amicus Curiae-Defence Team

The Amicus Curiae-Defence Team filed two preliminary objections to these proceedings – the first contending that there are defects in the Charges preferred against the first Defendant, and the second contending that the State of Israel cannot be impleaded in these proceedings on the grounds of State Immunity.

In respect of its first preliminary objection the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team contends that the trend in modern international criminal tribunals is either to have jurisdiction for acts that have been committed after these tribunals have been constituted such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), or alternatively its jurisdiction is for a limited duration of time such as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) or the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).

The Amicus Curiae-Defence Team submits that this Tribunal came into existence on 6 June 2008, whilst the various acts allegedly committed by the Defendant in charge no. 3 occurred in the month of September 1982, while the acts allegedly committed by the Defendant in charge no. 4 occurred since 1948 and continued up to the present day.

In respect of its second preliminary objection the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team submits that there is no authority conferred by the Charter on this Tribunal to hear any action against the government of a country, for example, the government of Israel. The Amicus Curiae-Defence Team also argued that international law does not allow the “State of Israel” to be impleaded as an accused. The State of Israel is a nation state, recognised by the United Nations, and as a nation state, it has rights under international law.

The Amicus Curiae-Defence Team further submits that the State of Israel has not entered appearance in these proceedings and has therefore not submitted to the jurisdiction of this Tribunal. The Amicus Curiae-Defence Team submits that the State of Israel enjoys immunity for the crimes of genocide and war crimes and therefore Charge 4 should be dismissed.

On behalf of the Prosecution Team, it was argued that with regard to the first preliminary objection, the jurisdiction issue must be established by reference to the founding Charter or statute that sets up the Tribunal. The Charter of the KL Foundation to Criminalise War states that the jurisdiction of the Tribunal shall be governed by the provisions of this Charter: Part 1, Article 1. There isno temporal limit. In particular, Article 7 sets no time limit. In this sense the Charter is identical to the ‘open ended’ temporal jurisdiction of the Military Tribunal at Nuremberg or the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.

The Prosecution Team also submitted that the Tribunal had convicted Bush and Blair of war crimes committed in 2003 – which also predates its setting up: KL War Crimes Commission v George W. Bush and Anthony L. Blair, KLWCT Reports 2011, p. 1. The verdict by the KLWCT against Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld et alwent back to torture committed from 2001.

With regard to the second preliminary objection, the Prosecution Team submits, inter alia, that these two Charges are international criminal war crimes being adjudicated by an international tribunal. States have no immunity for such crimes before such tribunals.

Before these proceedings began, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team had also submitted two (2) applications to quash the charge against the two Defendants. The grounds of applications were as follows:

  1. The charge is defective for duplicity, and / or latent duplicity.
  2. The charge is defective for uncertainty.
  3. The charge is an abuse of process and / or oppressive.

On behalf of the two Defendants, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team sought for the Tribunal to make the following orders:

  1. That the charge against the two Defendants be quashed.
  2. That the Prosecution against the two Defendants be permanently stayed.
  3. In the alternative, that the Charges be redrafted according to the principles of criminal law.

The Amicus Curiae-Defence Team contends that there were multiple offences within one charge and multiple forms of alleged instances of criminal conduct within one charge.The Amicus Curiae-Defence Team submits that the Rules against Duplicity must be strictly adhered to in a criminal proceeding.

In rebuttal, the Prosecution Team submits that this Tribunal is governed by its own Rules and these Rules are silent on the application of the Rule against Duplicity in drafting charges. This rule against duplicity, as it exists in national legal systems, does not, and cannot, apply in the same way in proceedings before international criminal courts. More importantly, the Tribunal should take into account the heinous nature of these crimes and the scale they were alleged to be perpetrated.

On the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team’s submission that the charge is defective due to uncertainty, the Prosecution Team submits that it is premature for anyone to say so without appreciating the particulars contained in the charge. The particulars in the charge are facts that the Prosecution seeks to prove in the course of the proceedings.

Having considered the Preliminary Objections raised by the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team and the Two Applications filed by the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team and the submissions by both the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team and the Prosecution Team in the several documents already filed with this Tribunal, and having considered further oral submissions by both parties, the Tribunal unanimously ruled that the Preliminary Objections and Two Applications have little merit and were accordingly dismissed.

A written ruling of the Tribunal was read out by Judge Tunku Sofiah Jewa on 20 November 2013.

  1. Prosecution’s Case

The Prosecution’s case against the first Defendant is that the first Defendant had committed War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, and Genocide in his capacity as the Commanding Israeli General in military control of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Israeli-occupied Lebanon in September of 1982 when he knowingly facilitated and permitted the large-scale Massacre of the Residents of those two camps. These crimes were in violation of, inter alia, the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, the 1948 Genocide Convention, jus cogens, International Humanitarian Law; and Articles 9, 10, and 11 of the Charter of the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War.

The Prosecution’s case against the second Defendant is that from 1948 and continuing to date the State of Israel had systematically carried out against the Palestinian people a series of acts namely killing, causing serious bodily harm and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction – with the intention of destroying in whole or in part the Palestinian people.

These acts constitute the Crime of Genocide under international law including the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide 1948 (‘the Genocide Convention’) in particular Article II and punishable under Article III of the said Convention. It also constitutes the crime of genocide as stipulated in Article 10 of the Charter of the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War.

In his opening statement, the Chief Prosecutor Prof Gurdial Singh said that the Prosecution will adduce evidence to prove the counts in the indictment through oral and written testimonies of victims, witnesses, historical records, narrative in books and authoritative commentaries, resolutions of the United Nations and reports of international bodies.

  1. Testimony of Witnesses

The Prosecution Team called 11 witnesses to testify on its behalf.

The Prosecution’s first witness (PW1) was Chahira Abouardini, a 54 year old resident of Camp Shatila, Beirut, Lebanon.

She testified that when the Israelis invaded Lebanon in May 1982, they attacked the area near Camp Shatila, which was then the base of the Palestinian resistance. She also testified that her father and sister were shot and killed by the Lebanese Phalangist militia.

She also said that there were a lot of dead bodies everywhere, strewn all over – bodies of men, women, children and even animals. Armed militiamen had started the killing from the houses near the sports complex where the Israeli forces were based. They entered homes and killed people. Anyone who moved was killed.

PW1 also testifed that at one location on the way to the stadium, she saw her cousin’s daughter’s body. The killers had opened her body and taken out her baby and then placed the baby on her dead body. PWI testified that the victim was actually deaf and dumb and was living in a home for the disabled.

PW1 testified that there were bodies piled up everywhere because the militiamen had collected the people together and then shot them all at one time. As a result it was difficult to identify the dead victims, and families had to dig between dead bodies to find their relatives.

PW1 said that in the 36 hours of the attack, some 3,500 people from Shatila and Sabra had been massacred. She said that the Phalangist militia who committed these atrocities worked together with the Israelis. They were puppets of the Israeli forces.

When PW1 was offered by the Prosecution to the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team for cross-examination, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team declined to cross-examine the witness.

The second Prosecution witness (PW2) called by the Prosecution Team was Bayan Nuwayhed al-Hout. She gave her testimony as an expert witness through Skype. She was not physically present before the Tribunal.

The Prosecution tendered (as an exhibit) excerpt of a book titled “SABRA AND SHATILA – SEPTEMBER 1982” written by PW2 where she said “For 40 continuous hours between sunset on Thursday 16 September and midday on Saturday 18 September 1982, the massacre of Sabra and Shatila took place, one of the most barbaric of the twentieth century”.

When asked by the Prosecutor to give her comments on the published figure of 3,500 being the number of people killed, PW2 said that according to her research she estimated the figure to be around 1,350. She said that she had approaced various international organisations to collect the list of victims, but she never received them.

When PW2 was offered to the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team for cross-examination, the latter also said that they have no desire to cross-examine the witness.

The Prosecution’s third witness (PW3) was Mahmoud Al Samouni, a 15 year old resident of Sammouna Street, Gaza Zaitun, Gaza City. He gave his testimony through Skype.

PW3 testified that the Israeli forces attacked his place on January 3, 2009 with bombs and missiles. He said that he saw parachutists coming down and landing on the highest buildings.

He testified that more than 50 soldiers came to his house, all with weapons. They shot at the inner walls of the house and all over his home. They demanded the owner of the house to come out and when PW3’s father came out, the soldiers shot him, killing him on the spot. The soldiers continued shooting into the house for 15 minutes, injuring his brother Ahmad and 5 other members of his family, including his sister Amal – who sustained serious injuries, including a shrapnel in her head. His brother Ahmad subsequently died.

PW3 was not cross-examined by the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team.

The Prosecution’s fourth witness (PW4) was Salah Al Sammouni, a 34 year old resident of al-Zaytour neighbourhood in Gaza City. He gave his testimony through Skype.

He said that on January 3, 2009, he received information from his father’s cousin that Israeli military tanks had entered Gaza City and surrounded the al-Zaytoun neighbourhood and the surrounding areas.

He further testified that 21 members of his family were killed by the Israelis on January 5, 2009. He tendered as an exhibit a list of the names of these dead family members.

When this witness was offered to the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team for cross-examination, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team declined to cross-examine him.

The Prosecution’s fifth witness (PW5) was Paola Manduca, currently residing in Genova, Italy. She gave her testimony as an expert witness through Skype.

She told the Tribunal that she had conducted and co-ordinated in 2011 two research projects relating to the impact of weapons on reproductive health arising from the Israeli attacks on Gaza. The outcome of her research reveals the degradation of the reproductive health and increase in major structural birth defects.

She also testified that 66% of Gaza parents with a birth defect child had been exposed to bombing or white phosphorus shelling during Operation Cast Lead in 2008/2009.

Her research led her to the conclusion that there is a long term effect on reproductive health associated to metal contamination by exposure to weaponry during the war and by war remnants.

When PW5 was offered to the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team for cross-examination, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team declined to cross-examine her.

The Prosecution’s sixth witness (PW6) was Dr Ang Swee Chai, a consultant orthopaedic and trauma surgeon, currently residing in London, England. She was physically present during the proceedings and was orally examined by the Chief Prosecutor and subsequently cross-examined by the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team.

She testified that she arrived in Beirut in August 1982 as part of a British medical team, volunteering her services as an orthopaedic surgeon. She started work as an orthopaedic surgeon in Gaza Hospital on August 22. The Hospital was an 11 storey building in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps, officially opened on August 23, 1982.

PW6 gave a detailed account of the events that took place from 15-22 September 1982.

On 15 September, Israeli planes flew from the sea towards the direction of the camps, and then the shelling began in all directions, clearly seen from the Gaza Hospital. On 16 September, casualties poured into the hospital, whilst shootings and shelling continued outside. Shootings continued into the night.

On 17 September, the witness said that she operated on an eleven year old boy, shot with 27 members of his family. All 27 died, but the boy survived.

On 19 September PW6 said members of the hospital medical team were able to return to Sabra and Shatila camps, where they saw dead bodies everywhere, whole families obviously shot together. She said that according to the International Red Cross, the total number of dead people was 1,500.

The witness testified that from the Israeli headquarters in the Kuwait Embassy most of the area of the massacre in the two camps could be easily seen. She was told by Palestinian survivors that they could not escape during the massacre because the Israelis had sealed off the camps. When the Norwegian Ambassador came in to try to evacuate the Norwegian medics, he told the witness that he had to get the Israeli authorities to agree.

The witness also said that from recently declassified materials from the British National Archives, she discovered that the death toll in the two camps was 3,500 people. When the Israelis surrounded and invaded the Akka Hospital on 15 September, they killed patients, nurses and doctors.

PW6 was cross-examined by the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team, but her testimony remained intact and unshaken.

The Prosecution’s seventh witness (PW7) was Nabil Alissawi, a resident of Karkfa Street, Bethlehem.

The witness said that whilst he was a student of Ahliya University in 2008, he took part in a peaceful street demonstration near the Azah Refugee Camp and Paradise Hotel. At about 12.30pm whilst the demonstrators were thus engaged, he was shot by a sniper. He passed out and was taken to a hospital.

He later discovered that a dum dum bullet had pierced his stomach and then broke into 3 pieces, going into 3 different directions – 2 exiting his body but the third remained stuck in his bladder. He was hospitalised for 2 1/2 months where he underwent 3 operations. He subsequently received treatment for another 2 1/2 months where he underwent more surgical operations to repair his intestines.

As a result of his injuries, his life had been totally altered. He carried an abdominal scar, he cannot sit upright, nor can he swim competitively. He is prohibited from entering Israel, and is always in a state of fear and anxiety. He is a victim with no freedom in his own country.

The Prosecution’s 8thwitness (PW8) was Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian and social activist. He gave his oral testimony via Skype. Author of 15 books, including “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” (2006), “Gaza in Crisis” (co-authored with Noam Chomsky, 2010) he is one of Israel’s New Historians who have been rewriting the history of Israel’s creation in 1948 and the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians in the same year. He has written that the expulsion was not decided on an ad hoc basis as other historians had argued, but constituted the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in accordance with Plan Dalet, which was drawn up in 1947 by Israel’s future leaders.

The witness testified that the people behind Plan Dalet was small group of people (about 30) comprised of generals in the Jewish military outfit, experts on Arab affairs, with the Chairman who would be the first Prime Minister of Israel. They turned this plan into a Master Plan with a blueprint for the systematic expulsion of the Palestinians from their country.

When asked by the Chief Prosecutor what happened to those Palestinians who refused to move, the witness said that in certain places, elder villagers were executed to intimidate the rest. And in some places, all male members were massacred. Palestine had some 800 villages. 530 villagers had their residents expelled.

The witness also testified that the villages that were occupied were wiped out physically and on the ruins they built settlements or recreational places. In the cities, the Palestinian neighbourhoods were repopulated by Jewish immigrants from Europe or from other countries.

Asked about Gaza, the witness said that Gaza is a huge prison, incarcerating 2 million people.

Cross-examined by the Defence – Amicus Team whether he would agree that the body of his work and his views “could be to assuage the guilt of being alive because of Zionism”, the witness replied that he does not feel that way. He said that because his parents were victims of genocidal policies of the Nazi, he does not want be part of the new genocide.

Responding to another question from the Defence – Amicus Team, the witness said that the Jews who escaped from Germany and Europe in the 1930s were indeed refugees looking for safe haven, but the Jews who came in 1982 and in subsequent years came as colonisers.

The Prosecution’s 9thwitness (PW9) was Taghreeb Khalil Nimat, a resident of Nablus, West Bank. She lives with her parents and 9 siblings.

The witness testified that in 1979 or early 1980, her father was arrested by the Israeli forces and detained in prison for 18 days for singing a song about Palestinian freedom. A year later, he was again arrested and detained in prison for 21 days for the same offence.

In 1987 the witness applied for employment at the government office but her application was rejected. It was commonly understood that if any family member has a history of being detained by the Israeli government, it would be difficult to seek employment at the government office.

The witness testified that on 15 April 2004, whilst travelling from Nablus to Bethlehem (a distance of 80 km) she was stopped by an Israeli military car and then detained for 29 hours without food or water. During detention, the witness was put under interrogation and insulted verbally. Following the incident, the witness was stigmatised by her community, including her friends and colleagues.

The Prosecution’s tenth witness (PW10) was Dr. Walid Elkhatib, a resident of Beit Jalla City, Bethlehem District, West Bank. He is a qualified medical doctor, specialising in public health.

The witness testified that as a general practitioner, he worked at an emergency clinic during the first intifada, where he saw many patients with different kinds of injuries as a result of Israeli violence – gun shot wounds, exposed to tear gas and physically abused by Israeli soldiers. Over the last 17 years he had been in charge of child health and protection, social health and Palestinian child law and rights.

He also testified that the invasion of Palestinian cities by Israeli forces (including the shelling and bombing, usage of tear gas, the building of walls to separate Jerusalem and the West Bank, check points which restrict the movement of the Palestinian people) have affected Palestinian health and education, especially that of children.

The witness said that the first intifada (1987-1993) was not military in nature. It involved demonstrations against the Israeli occupation. There were then no roadblocks, no wall, no shelling and no airplane bombings.

The second intifada (2000-2009) began when Ariel Sharon went to the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Palestinians protested against this visit. On that day, Israeli soldiers killed 20 people outside a mosque.

During the second intifada, the witness said that 77.8% of Palestinian families suffered mental problems. From 2001-2011, there were 2282 cases of disability – mostly due to injuries sustained by those involved in the intifada, caused by live ammunition, shrapnel, rubber bullets and explosions. Disabilities means that many of these people have less opportunities for work and they end up in poverty.

The witness testified that poverty is rife in the West Bank and Gaza, increasing from an average of 20% (prior to intifada) to 51% (during the intifada). Anemia became prevalent amongst the children (42%) as a result of imbalanced diet and amongst pregnant women (21%).

On the subject of checkpoints, the witness testified that there were about 730 checkpoints between cities, towns and villages in the West Bank. There had been many cases of pregnant women (forced to stop and wait at these places) delivering their babies at these checkpoints. There had also been many emergency cases who had been stopped at these checkpoints and prevented from going through to hospitals. In such cases, people had died at these checkpoints.

The witness also testified that before the second intifada, he believed that Israel was looking for peace with Palestinians. After the second intifada, he no longer had that belief.

The Prosecution’s eleventh witness (PW11) was Jawad Musleh, a resident of Beit Sahour, Bethlehem District. He is a program co-ordinator in a travel agency.

The witness, a Christian, testified that he was arrested in August 1985 by the Israeli authorities and released 20 months later, in March 1987. He was first detained at a prison in West Jerusalem, and later transferred to another prison in Haifa and finally to another prison in the West Bank. He was then only 15 years old, a student of a Catholic School at Beit Sahour.

The witness testified that he was tortured in the first prison in West Jerusalem, during interrogation. The Israelis used mental and psychological torture to make him confess to crimes he did not commit – that he was a member of the Palestine Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). He refused to confess but he continued to be beaten, and if not beaten, put in confinement with his hands tied behind his back and a hood over his head.

He finally confessed, after which he was detained for 20 months. He continued to be tortured when he was incarcerated. He said that there are now more than 5,000 prisoners in Israeli prisons.

The witness also testified that more Israeli colonies are being built on lands in the West Bank and Jerusalem. There are now 700,000 Jewish settlers living in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The West Bank is now divided into 3 Areas – A, B and C. Area A are lands under the Palestinian authority and cover main cities and towns like Bethlehem, Hebron, Nablus, Ramallah, Jenin and others. Area B are small villages surrounding the main cities, where Israel is in control of security whilst civil services like health and education are the responsibility of the Palestinian authority. Area C, which is the rest of the West Bank, is under the complete control of the Israeli authorities. Checkpoints and roadblocks are set up throughout Areas A, B and C. These checkpoints are often closed arbitrarily and without prior notice, for long hours.

The witness further testified that Area C is the richest source of water supply. Water supply is therefore under the complete control of the Israeli authorities. Water is supplied to the Israeli settlers at a cheaper price, and 5 times more in volume, compared to water supplied to the Palestinians – which is often inadequate for their daily use, causing great hardship and suffering.

  1. Prosecution’s closing submission

In his closing submission, the Chief Prosecutor said that he had called 11 witnesses (some of whom had testified through Skype), tendered 15 exhibits and furnished several documents and reports to the Tribunal during the course of the proceedings.

He urged the Tribunal to bear in mind that this is a Tribunal of Conscience and the case before it is an extraordinary case, which Winston Churchill used to call as a “crime without a name”.

He said that the Prosecution had provided evidence of facts which, examined as a whole, will show that the perpetrators had committed acts against the Palestinians, with intent to kill, cause serious bodily or mental harms and deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the Palestinians as a whole or in part.

From the testimony of Prof Pappe (PW8) the Prosecution had shown that before 1948, before UN Resolution 47, there was already a plan in place to take over the Palestinian territory, and this plan would be activated the moment the British relinquished its mandate over the territory.

At that point in time, the Palestinians were on 94% of the land, with the Jewish population settling over a mere 6% of the land. Under the UN partition plan, more than 50% of the land was to be given to the Jews.

Plan Dalet might not legally be genocidal in form at its inception, but as it took shape the ethnic cleansing metamorphised into killing, massacre and creating impossible conditions for life for the Palestinians – either they leave or they die. The Prosecution submits this is genocide within the meaning of Article 2 of the Genocide Convention.

On Sabra and Shatila, prosecution witnesses (PW1 and PW6) had testified that the Palestinian refugees in those camps had been killed by the Phalangists, aided and abetted by the Israelis who were in complete control of the two camps.

According to the Kahan Report, all of Beirut was under Israeli control, and there was clear symbiotic relationship between Israel and the Christian forces (the Lebanese Maronite Christian militia or the Phalangists or Keta’ib).

On Operation Cast Lead in 2008, the Chief Prosecutor said that the Israeli Defence Force had used all kinds of weapons, including white phosphorus – which is an incendiary weapon. The use of incendiary weapons is prohibited under Protocal III on the Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons.

As a result of the Israeli occupation of Gaza, nowhere in Gaza is safe for civilians. 1.5 million Palestinians are now trapped in despair, their fragile economy ruined. Under the Dahiya Doctrine (October 2008), the complete destruction of Gaza is the ultimate objective, the whole place must be flattened.

The Prosecution submits that the cumulative effect of the actions taken by the Israeli government, as shown by the Prosecution witnesses and the several documents tendered to the Tribunal, have shown beyond reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of the crime of genocide under the Genocide Convention and the Charter of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (The Charter).

Co-Prosecutor Tan Sri Abdul Aziz, submitting on the first charge against Amos Yaron, said that Amos Yaron was the commanding officer in charge of the Israeli Defence Force, in charge of the area of Beirut, and camps Sabra and Shatila. He said there were two issues which he has to deal with – first, whether or not there was a large scale massacre of the residents of the two camps, and second, whether or not Amos Yaron facilitated and permitted such massacre, in violation of international law and Articles 9, 10 and 11 of the Charter?

On the first issue, he submitted there was a large scale massacre, as testified by PW1. She was there, and she saw the massacre with her own eyes. There was corrobating testimony by PW6, and further acknowledged in the Kahan Report.

On the second issue, Amos Yaron was in charge, to ensure that there would be peace and law and order. The Kahan Report itself concluded that anybody who knew about Lebanon would know that by releasing the Phalangists into Beirut, there would be massacre. Surely, Amos Yaron, the General in charge, must have known that by allowing the Phalangists to go into the two camps, the massacre would take place. But he decided to do nothing.

He received the reports of the killing of women and children, but he did not check the report. He did not pass the report to his superiors. The co-prosecutor submits that by ignoring all this despite knowing the circumstances, he himself had the intention of causing the death of the people in the two camps.

  1. Whether the Prosecution has established a prima facie case

After the Prosecution Team had submitted its closing submission, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team submitted there is no case to answer – as provided in Article 26 of Chapter V (Mode of Proceedings) of Part 2 of the Charter.

The Tribunal then had a short recess to enable the Judges to deliberate and consider the totality of the evidence adduced by the Prosecution.

When the Tribunal reconvened a short while later, the President of the Tribunal ruled that the Tribunal had unanimously agreed that a prima facie case had been established in both charges and the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team is therefore invited to present the defence case.

  1. The Defence case

Mr. Jason Kay Kit Leon of the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team submitted that in the charges against the two Defendants, the Prosecution had listed war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace. Apparently the Prosecution had abandoned these charges, concentrating only on genocide.

He said that the offence of genocide is defined in Article 2 of the Genocide Convention 1948, whilst the OED defines it simply as “the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular nation or ethnic group”.

He submitted that the charge of genocide is unique; it means that you don’t like a group, you kill them; you kill them in a grand manner. Genocide means that at the end of the act, you have a lesser number of victims than before the genocide started.

He further submitted that when one talks of “massive killing”, it is many hundreds of thousands to millions of people. To suggest that an isolated event, the unfortunate murder of 3,000 people (Sabra and Shatila) is the same as massive killing is almost disrespectful of the true horror of massive killing (as in Rwanda, where 800,000 people were killed in 100 days).

With regard to the Kahan Report, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team said that it also identified other people as being responsible, with two other names other than Yaron still alive. The question is why only Yaron was charged? Why was Defence Minister Ariel Sharon spared?

He also submitted that the PLO had repeatedly violated the July 1981 cease-fire agreement. By June 1982, when the IDF went into Lebanon, the PLO had made life in northern Israel intolerable through its repeated shelling of Israeli towns.

On Cast Lead, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team submitted that the IDF had come out with two reports. The point is if you are going to kill people nilly willy, you do not report it.

On the issue of the wall, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team submitted that the primary consideration is one of security of the Israeli settlers. The State of Israel has a duty to defend their lives, safety and well-being.

On the issue of checkpoints, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team said countries have a right to immigration laws.

With regard to Plan Dalet, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team said that it is subject to divergent opinions, with historians on one side asserting that it was entirely defensive, while other historians assert that the plan aimed at an ethnic cleansing.

  1. Finding by the Tribunal of the Charge against Amos Yaron

Sabra and Shatila Massacres

Under Charge 3, theDefendantAmosYaronis charged with WarCrimes,CrimesagainstHumanity,andGenocide. As the Commanding Israeli General in military control of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Israeli occupied Lebanon in September of 1982, he knowingly facilitated and permitted the large-scale Massacre of the Residents of those two camps in violation of the Hague Regulations on Land Warfare of 1907; the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949; the 1948 Genocide Convention; the Nuremberg Charter (1945), the Nuremberg Judgment (1946), and the Nuremberg Principles (1950); customary international law, jus cogens, the Laws of War, and International Humanitarian Law; and their related provisions set forth in articles 9, 10, and 11 of the Charter of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission.

Israel invaded Lebanon beginning June6,1982.

The Israeli siege and bombardment of West Beirut continued throughout the summer of 1982. In spite of the devastation caused to Lebanon and the civilian population, Israel did not succeed in its goal of defeating or dislodging the Syrian and P.L.O. forces.

An agreement was brokered onAugust19, 1982 between Lebanon, the United States, France, Italy, Israel, and the P.L.O. for the evacuation of the P.L.O. and Syrian forces under the auspices and protection of a multi‑national force. The agreement further provided that the Israeli Defense Forces would not attempt to enter or occupy West Beirut following the evacuation of the P.L.O. and Syrian forces.

Pursuant to that agreement, the multinational American, French, and Italian force oversaw the evacuation of the P.L.O. and Syrian forces until completed on September l, 1982. The multinational force left Lebanon from September l0-12, 1982, after the completion of the evacuation.

On September 14, 1982, Lebanese President Bashir Gemayel, a Phalangist, was assassinated in Beirut.

Israeli Prime Minister Begin, Prime Minister of Defense Sharon, and Chief of Staff Eitan decided that the IsraeliDefense Forces (IDF) would immediately enter and occupy West Beirut.

Pursuant to the decision, on September 15, 1982, the IDF entered West Beirut under the command of Defendant Brigadier General Amos Yaron, the Defendant in this case. The IDF established a forward command post on the roof of a seven-story building southwest of the Shatila camp, and Defendant Brigadier General Yaron commanded IDF forces from that post. The area surrounding the two camps, Sabra and Shatila, was thereafter under the command and control of the IDF, and all forces in the area, including the Phalangists, were considered to be operating under the authority of the IDF and acting according to its instructions.

The Tribunal heard detailed testimony about the events occurring between September 16 and September 18, 1982. A horrible systematic massacre of defenceless Palestinian refugees occurred with the deaths of up to 3,500, largely women and young children in the two camps.

Brigadier General Amos Yaron was commander of the operation in Beirut. He was asked by Major General Drori to coordinate the entry of Phalangist force at the forward command post.[1]

After these massacres, the Israeli government was under immense pressure set up a commission of enquiry under the chairmanship of Yitzuk Kahan (‘the Kahan Commission’), to enquire into the massacre. This commission held 60 sessions hearing 58 witnesses.[2]

The Kahan Commission made the following observations:

  • Defence Minister, Ariel Sharon and Chief of Staff, Eitan declared on Sept 16 1982 before the massacres began that all of Beirut was under Israeli control and the camps were closed and surrounded.[3]
  • There was a clear symbiotic relationship between Israel and the Christian forces (the Lebanese Maronite Christian militia) known as the Phalangists or Keta’ib assisted by the Israeli Mossad. Even the uniforms of the South Lebanese Army (SLA) and the Phalangists were the same as those of IDF – and provided by Israel.[4]
  • The Israelis exercised some degree of control of the SLA.[5]
  • The Phalangists’ plan to use force to remove Palestinians was discussed at several meetings with Israel[6].
  • Three key officials of the Israel cabinet decided that the IDF under the command of Brigadier General Amos Yaron would enter West Beirut: the PM Begin, Defence Minister Sharon and Chief of Staff Eitan. The IDF would not enter the camps but rather would delegate the entry in to the camps to the Phalangists. Eitan said that he and Sharon agreed on the entry of the Phalangists into the Sabra and Shatila camps: the operational order provided: “…Searching and mopping up of the camps will be done by the Phalangists-Lebanese army”. [7]Also a summary of the Defence Minister’s instructions: “Only one element, and that is the IDF, shall command the forces in the area. For the operation in the camps the Phalangists should be sent in”.[8]
  • The use of terms such as:

“purifying and purging” (NY Times, Sept 20 1982 at A6, col 5; Washington Post Sept 21 at A14, col 6);

“moppingup”(NY Times, Sept 23, 1982 at A8, col 4); and

“cleaning up” (NY Times, Sept 23 1982 at A8, col 6; Sept 26 1982, A11, col 2) the camps

shows the actual intent of the Israeli officials’ and its commanders[9]

  • The camps were surrounded and under the complete control of the Israelis, preceding the killings[10]:
  • The Chief of Staff Eitan, after acknowledging that the Phalangists ‘had gone too far” gave the thumbs up to continue the “mopping up’

An International Commission was set up to enquire into the reported violations of international law byIsrael during its invasion of Lebanon.

It produced a Report in 1983: Israel in Lebanon: Report of the International Commission to Enquire into Reported Violations of International Law byIsrael during its Invasion of Lebanon 196 (1983)[11]:

(a)  The Commission was chaired by Sean MacBride, former Irish Foreign Minister, and former United Nations Commissioner for Namibia and Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1974.

(b)  Four of the Commission’s six members concluded that Israel embarked on “deliberate destruction of the national and cultural rights and identity of the Palestinian people amounting to genocide”.

(c)  It concluded that:

The massacres that took place at Sabra and Shatila in September 1982 can be described as genocidal massacres, and the term “complicity in genocide” is wide enough to establish the responsibility of Israel for these acts.”

(d)   The Report placed the massacre in context:

“[Sabra and Shatila] massacres were low-technology sequels to earlier high-technology saturation bombardment by Israel from land, sea and air of every major Palestinian camp situated anywhere near the combat zone throughout southern Lebanon. The underlying Israeli objective seems clearly directed at making the Palestinian camps uninhabitable in a physical sense as well as terrorizing the inhabitants and thereby breaking the will of the Palestinian national movement, not only in the war zone of the Lebanon, but possibly even more centrally, in the occupied West Bank and Gaza”: p. 121[12],

(e)  That this represents a comprehensive policy to destroy an entire ethnic group is again illustrated by Ammon Kapeliouk, Sabra and Shatila (p. 45-6):

“Since the beginning of the war in June 1982, the Israelis have repeatedly used bulldozers to destroy homes and force the residents to flee. The refugee camps of south Lebanon were bombarded and then destroyed with explosives and bulldozers. In Israel, this operation was known as “the destruction of the terrorist infrastructure.” The objective was to prevent the Palestinians from forming a national community in Lebanon. Therefore, it was necessary to destroy not only homes, but also Palestinian institutions such as schools, hospitals, and social service centers. In addition, the Israelis sought to deprive the Palestinian population of all males by arresting thousands of men and forcing thousands more to flee.”[13]

The Defendant Amos Yaron

The Commander, Brigadier General Yaron, and the Phalangists agreed that a Phalangist Liaison Officer with communications equipment would be present at all times in the IDF command post with a Mossad Liaison officer at the Phalangist headquarters.[14]

Yaron knew about Phalangist combat ethics. He was pleased with his decision and was quite content to have the Phalangists participate and not leave the operation up to the IDF.

Yaron could not explain his lack of action or intervention by the Israeli army to protect civilians when he learnt on the first night, September 16, after the intervention of the Phalangists that massacres were occurring.[15]

Even when Israeli military authorities were well aware of the exactions by the Phalangists on Friday 17 September, they did not intervene to protect the Palestinian civilians but rather allowed them to bring in tractors to do what they wanted.[16]

The following testimony confirms that from the command posts, the Israelis, including of course Brigadier Commander Amos Yaron, could see into the camps and observe the massacres:

(a)     From the command post, it was possible to see into the camps, even into the narrow alleys. One could see the mass grave 300 meters away dug by the Phalangists and the bulldozer used to bury the hundreds of victims.[17]

(b)     Similarly, the testimony of Dr Ang Swee Chai

(c)     Reports of Senior Journalists.[18]

Washington Post, senior foreign correspondent, Jonathan Randal: noted this as an ‘obviously wrongheaded factual error’;

Israeli journalist, Ammon Kapeliouk;

Israeli newspaper Yedi’at Aharanot ridicules finding;

A New York Times article Sept 26 1982 at A9, col 2.

Loren Jenkins, Washington Post Beirut correspondent, Sept 20 1982: Israel aided and abetted.

(d)     Doctors and nurses testified they heard constant shooting and shelling from Shatila and knew later that a massacre might be taking place: NY Times Sept 20 1982 at A6, cols 3-4 [19]

(e)     Leila Shahid quotes an Israeli officer saying that watching from the roofs of one of the buildings occupied by the Israelis was like watching ‘from the front row of a theatre’. [20]

(f)      Israeli soldiers prevented Palestinian refugees from fleeing and returned them to the camps. Soldiers reported to their superiors that massacres were taking place.[21]

The United Nations condemned the Sabra Shatila killings… Security Council Resolution S/RES/521(1982): 19 September 1982 condemned the “criminal massacre. The General assembly went much farther than the Security Council. In the General Assembly Resolution 37/123: on 16 December 1982, it held:

Section D.1: Condemned in the strongest terms the large scale massacre of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps (Vote: 123 -0; 23 abstentions)

Section D.2: Resolves that the massacre was an act of genocide (vote: 98-19; 23 abstentions)

Legal Issues

Burden of proof

The burden of proof in this tribunal is beyond all reasonable doubt.[22] All elements of an infraction must be proven beyond all reasonable doubt. This applies to War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity and the Crime of Genocide.

A person is guilty of genocide if he acts with an intention as described in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) at Article 2.[23]

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a)     Killing members of the group;

(b)     Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c)     Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d)     Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e)     Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

This intention is known as the mens rea of specific intention in criminal law as opposed to the concept of general intention. The expression dolus specialis has been adopted by the Ad Hoc Tribunals to describe this requirement with respect to the criminal state of mind. To convict, an accused must have the intention to destroy, in whole or in part the group described in the Convention.

Proof of genocidal intent can be done by inference in the light of all the facts and does not require a specific plan.[24] This intent must be proven beyond all reasonable doubt. If there is any alternative interpretation of the state of mind of the Defendant, the Prosecution will fail. The inference must be the only reasonable inference available on the evidence.[25]

State liability is incurred if an organ of the State or a person or group whose acts are legally attributable to the state commits any of the acts described in Article III of the Convention.[26]

Evidentiary Conclusions

The findings below are only made if the Tribunal is convinced beyond all reasonable doubt of the finding.

The Status of the Israel Defence Force in Lebanon from 15 September 1982

The evidence described above shows that Israel had invaded Lebanon illegally and had become an occupying force for part of Lebanon. Defendant Yaron was in charge of the occupation. As discussed below, this amounts to a Crime against Peace incurring the criminal responsibility of the State of Israel and the Defendant Yaron.

The relationship between Lebanese militia and the Defendant

The evidence described above shows without doubt that the Defendant and the IDF collaborated with the Phalangist militias and used the militias to carry out Israeli policy of destroying the Palestinian people. The Defendant Yaron worked with the militias personally.

Victims

The evidence shows that a large number of men woman and children were killed. Most were Palestinian. There was little or no resistance to the invaders. This is a part of the Palestinian nation and as such satisfied the requirements of the Genocide Convention.

Knowledge by the Defendant and his acts and omissions

There is no room for doubt that the Defendant Yaron had a thorough knowledge of the exactions being committed by the associated militias. The Defendant actively sent these militias into the Sabra and Shatila camps knowing what they would do. As reports emerged of their killings of unarmed civilians: men, woman and children, he failed in his duty as commander of an occupying and invading force to protect civilian population.

Intention of Israeli State, Intention of Defendant Amos Yaron

This evidence shows beyond all reasonable doubt that the Defendant Yaron consciously refused to protect the Palestinian population in the Sabra Shatila camps. His responsibility however goes much farther. He and the Israeli army used the Militias to destroy the Palestinian population in the camps. There was almost no resistance. The massacres were fully observed by the Israeli army from its vantage points. No persons could escape from the area cordoned off by the Israeli army. He was informed throughout about the progress of the massacre. The only inference reasonably possible is that Amos Yaron intended mass murder and that the Palestinian population be destroyed.

The Defence argued that Yaron did nothing to commit the crimes in Sabra and Shatila and cited exculpatory findings of the Kahan commission to attempt to clear Yaron for the charges.

This Tribunal is not bound by the Kahan Commission but its factual observations are useful in the search for truth. The Kahan Commission findings were made in Israel whereas the Tribunal is an international tribunal of opinion independent of Israel and the major powers. The Tribunal does not accept Defence arguments concerning the acts and omissions of the Defendant Yaron.

The Defence argued that the Prosecutor erred in not accusing Ariel Sharon. As for the failure to accuse Ariel Sharon, it is up to the Prosecutor to decide whom to charge, and barring abuse or oblique motive by the Prosecutor, the Tribunal cannot intervene in Prosecutorial Discretion.

The Defence objected to the use of General Assembly resolutions to prove genocide. The finding of intent (to commit genocide) by the General Assembly is soft law but is useful in the context to help to evaluate the intention of Israel and Amos Yaron.

The Tribunal considers the actions of Amos Yaron as engaging his personal criminal liability.

Command responsibility

Given the finding that Amos Yaron is personally responsible for the crimes committed, it declines to consider his liability for command responsibility.

Legal consequences

The Tribunal will examine the facts proven in the light of the crimes provided for in the Charter, namely Crimes against Peace, Crimes against Humanity, Genocide and War Crimes, provided for in articles 8, 9, 10, and 11 of the Charter.

Cumulative convictions

The Tribunal recalls the law with respect to cumulative convictions. The Appeals Chamber of the International Tribunal for former Yugoslavia held at paragraph 168[27]:

  1. The Appeals Chamber accepts the approach articulated in the Čelebići Appeal Judgement, an approach heavily indebted to the Blockburger decision of the Supreme Court of the United States.[28] The Appeals Chamber held that:[29]

“fairness to the Defendant and the consideration that only distinct crimes justify multiple convictions, lead to the conclusion that multiple criminal convictions entered under different statutory provisions but based on the same conduct are permissible only if each statutory provision involved has a materially distinct element not contained in the other. An element is materially distinct from another if it requires proof of a fact not required by the other.

Where this test is not met, the Chamber must decide on the basis of the principle that the conviction under the more specific provision should be upheld”.

The Tribunal will follow this principle.

Crimes Against Peace

Lebanon is a sovereign state which was invaded by Israel on 15 September 1982. Amos Yaron participated in this aggression of Lebanon and became Brigadier General of this occupation force. The Tribunal recalls the Nuremberg Principles I and VI

Principle I states, “Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment”.

Principle VI states,

“The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

(a)     Crimes against peace:

(i)      Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;

(ii)     Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

We recall the terms of the Nuremberg judgement under the pen of Mr Justice Birkett states:

“The charges in the Indictment that the Defendants planned and waged aggressive wars are the charges of the utmost gravity. War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world.

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from the other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole”.

The State of Israel has committed the mother of all international crimes by invading Lebanon and this has led Yaron to commit crimes against humanity and genocide.

Crimes against humanity

The Tribunal repeats the relevant parts of Article 9 of the Charter.

Crimes against humanity

For the purpose of this Charter,“crime against humanity” means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:

(a)         Murder;

(b)        Extermination…;

The crime of extermination is the act of killing on a large scale.[30] The expression “on a large scale” does not, however, suggest a numerical minimum.[31] In addition to the threshold mens rea requirements for all crimes against humanity, the mens rea of extermination requires that the Defendant intend to kill persons on a massive scale or to subject a large number of people to conditions of living that would lead to their deaths in a widespread or systematic manner.[32]

The Tribunal has found above that Amos Yaron (and the Israeli State) participated directly with the Lebanese Militias in the mass murder and destruction of the Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila camps.

For this reason, the Tribunal finds Amos Yaron guilty of a crime against humanity as charged.

Genocide charge

As found above, the Defendant Yaron intended the mass murder and the destruction of the Palestinian population at Sabra and Shatila. This population constituted a national group as envisaged by the Genocide conventions. Not only did Amos Yaron intend the mass murder of these Palestinian refugees and their destruction as a group, he succeeded in killing of up to 3,500 Palestinians.

Amos Yaron intended the destruction of this part of the Palestinian people and therefor had the specific intent as required by Article 10 of the Charter.

The Tribunal notes that as Brigadier General of the Israeli Army occupying force, he engages the Criminal responsibility of the Israeli State implying the guilt of the Israeli State as was found in the Chapter of this judgement on Charge 4.

The Tribunal finds Amos Yaron guilty as charged of genocide.

War crimes

This tribunal will decline to consider war crimes since the crimes against humanity are more specific. A war crimes conviction would be a cumulative conviction. 

  1. Finding of the Tribunal of the Charge against the State of Israel 

In relation to the charges against the State of Israel for genocide and war crimes, the Tribunal is conscious of the novelty of the issues raised. It wishes to confront these issues head-on with a view to furthering the ideals of international law and to interpret existing precedents in such a way as to make them as good as can be from the point of view of justice and morality.

We take note that the Prosecution did not pursue the charge of war crimes vigorously and instead concentrated on the charge of genocide. The Tribunal too will, therefore, confine itself to the issue of genocide.

The main legal points raised before us were the following:

Preliminary Objection About Retrospectivity Of Laws 

Learned counsel for the Defence argued that the general moral rule against retrospective laws prevents the Tribunal from hearing cases that occurred prior to its establishment on 6th June 2008. The charges against Israel relate to facts that occurred well before 2008.

This issue was raised by the Defence as a preliminary objection and was unanimously rejected by the Tribunal for the following reason: the offences of genocide and war crimes for which the State of Israel is being charged were not created by the Charter. These offences have existed since the middle of the last century. The Charter sets up a machinery to investigate and prosecute these charges and to create a war crimes tribunal to adjudicate on them. The Charter does not specify any dates or time frames as was the case for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC) and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL).

Defence counsel was magnanimous to concede that open ended temporal jurisdiction did indeed exist for the Nuremberg Tribunal, the Tokyo Tribunal and under the US Military Commission Act 2006 for the Guantanamo detainees.

The Tribunal holds that as our Charter does not confine the Tribunal to any time frame, it is not prevented from adjudicating on events that occurred decades ago. The Tribunal notes that almost all international tribunals that deal with genocide are created to exercise jurisdiction over crimes committed well before the creation of the tribunal. The Tribunal holds that the jurisdiction of the Tribunal is open-ended and not confined to any time period. The Tribunal has full jurisdiction to try this case.

Preliminary Objection That Only Natural Persons Can Be Charged 

Learned Defence counsel argued that there cannot be a charge against the State of Israel because under Article 2(1)(iii) of the Charter plus the Rules of Procedure and Evidence in Articles 2, 3, 4, 5, 11 & 12, the Charter envisages jurisdiction only over natural persons and not against nation states. However, Defence counsel conceded that the Charter in Article 2(1)(ii) permits jurisdiction over a “government”. The Tribunal is of the view that being a tribunal of conscience, and created to investigate serious crimes, it must reject such technical and esoteric distinctions as between a “state” and a “government”. States operate through their governments. The Tribunal will not refuse jurisdiction simply on this technical ground.

Further, it rules that Chapter III Article 6(b) of its Charter explicitly lays down that “if the charge involves a sovereign statea current head of state/government or a former head of state/government, service of a copy thereof to any relevant embassy or High Commission shall suffice…” This is conclusive proof that under its Charter, the Tribunal is empowered to try States as well as individuals.

Preliminary Objection That Israel Has Sovereign Immunity

Defence counsel submitted that international law does not allow the State of Israel to be impleaded as an accused. It was submitted that no matter what the facts may be and how serious the alleged crime may be, the State of Israel enjoys absolute immunity in international law from being impleaded in a domestic court or tribunal unless it voluntary subjects itself to such jurisdiction.

To our mind, the impugned preliminary objection of the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team raises the need for an appraisal of the dichotomy between the concept of State Immunity on the one hand and the doctrine of jus cogens on the other.

The concept of State immunity stipulates that a State is immune from jurisdiction in a foreign court unless it consents.

On the other hand, the doctrine of jus cogens refers to that body of peremptory principles or norms recognised by the international community as a whole as being fundamental to the maintenance of an international legal order and from which no derogation is permitted.

As corollary to a study of these two doctrines, the following three questions need to be considered, namely:

(a)        What principles of law, relevant to the issue at hand, constitute jus cogens?

(b)       Can the doctrine of State Immunity be considered as having acquired the status of jus cogens?

(c)        If there is a conflict between two principles of law, one being a jus cogensbut not the other, which should prevail?

Well into the middle of the twentieth century, nations had accepted the proposition that a sovereign State could not be sued before its own municipal Courts. When that dogma ceased to exist, e.g. in the UK with the passage of the Crown Proceedings Act 1947, it was replaced by the equally unhelpful doctrine that a sovereign State was exempt from the jurisdiction of a foreign municipal court. The Latin maxim upon which the proposition is based was par inparem imperium non habet, i.e. an equal has no power over an equal.

This practice which provided carte blanche immunity to foreign States became known as the “Absolute State Immunity principle”.

Support for the Absolute State Immunity principle can be found in most, if not all, of the cases, appearing in Bundle 3 of the authorities submitted by learned Amicus Curiae-Defence Team in support of their preliminary objection application. These cases include The Schooner Exchange[33]; Mighell v. Sultan of Johore[34]The Porto Alexandre Case[35]Duff Development Co. v. Kelantan Government[36]; The Cristina Case[37]Commonwealth of Australia v Midford (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd & Anor [38] and Jurisdictional Immunities of the State (Germany v Italy)[39].

Jurisdictional Immunities of the State (Germany v. Italy: Greece Intervening) was a 2012 International Court of Justice case where the Court, inter alia,found by a 14 to one majority, that the Italian Republic had violated its obligation to respect the immunity which the Federal Republic of Germany enjoyed under international law by allowing civil claims to be brought against it based on violations of international humanitarian law committed by the German Reich between 1943 and 1945.

At page 10 paragraph 31 of their notes on Preliminary Objection, Amicus Curiae-Defence Team, quoted a passage from the second edition of Judge Tunku Sofiah’s work, Public International Law – a Malaysian Perspective, as follows:

“Judgments of the International Court of Justice “are always considered as pronouncements of what the most authoritative international judicial body holds to be in international law on a given point, having regard to the given set of circumstances.”

The learned judge Tunku Sofiah, however, agrees with us that the outdated concept of absolute state immunity must be read along with other compelling considerations relevant to our times and especially to the situation before us.

Laws, unless they concern that of the Almighty, can neither be immutable nor static. And when justice so demands, through the passage of time, shifts and changes to laws that are unjust invariably take place.

In some countries, like China, for example, the State jealously guards the “absolute” concept of State Immunity and denies any attempt by anyone to implead a State unless that State consents.

Other States prefer a “restrictive” interpretation of the concept and allow immunity to States only in respect of the States’ “public” acts as opposed to their “private” ones.

As evidence of state practice, one can point to the example of the United States. It is to the credit of the United States Government, that through a proposal made in a letter by the U.S. State Department’s Acting Legal Adviser, Jack B. Tate, to the Acting Attorney-Generaldated 19 May 1952, there was a shift in policy of the U.S. Government fromsupport for the absolute theory of State immunity to support for the restrictive theory.

Let us now briefly turn to the subject of jus cogens. What principles of law, relevant to the issue at hand, constitute jus cogens?

If one were to look into the jurisprudence of the ICJ as well as that of national courts, there are numerous instances where the prohibition on genocide as a jus cogens norm of international law has been recognised. See, for example:

  • the ICJ judgment in the Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Rwanda(2006) at para 64;
  • Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Yugoslavia), 26 Feb. 2007 (ICJ Judgment) at paragraphs 161, 162, 173 &174. A historical account of the Convention reveals many currents and cross-currents. But what is clear is that obligations relating to the prevention and punishment of genocide are part of customary international law (para 161). The undertaking is unqualified (para 162). There is dual responsibilityon the part of individuals as well as the State. “Genocide is an international crime entailing national and international responsibility on the part of individuals and States” (A/RES/180(II)) (paras 161 &163). “Contracting parties are bound by the obligations under the Convention not to commit, through their organs or persons or groups whose conduct is attributable to them, genocide and the other acts enumerated in Article III. Thus if an organ of the State, or a person or group whose acts are legally attributable to the State, commits any of the acts proscribed by Article III of the Convention, the international responsibility of that State is incurred” (para 179).
  • “Duality of responsibility continues to be a constant feature of international law. This feature is reflected in Article 25, paragraph 4, of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, now accepted by 104 States: “No provision in this Statute relating to individual criminal responsibility shall affect the responsibility of States under international law”.
  • “Where crimes against international law are committed by State officials, it will often be the case that the State itself is responsible for the acts in question or for failure to prevent or punish them. In certain cases, in particular aggression, the State will by definition be involved. Even so, the question of individual responsibility is in principle distinct from the question of State responsibility. The State is not exempted from its own responsibility for international wrongful conduct by the Prosecution and punishment of the State officials who carried it out” (ILC Commentary on the Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, ILC Report A/56/10,2001 Commentary on Article 58, para 3).
  • Requests for Provisional Measures,13 Sept. 1993 (ICJ Rep.325) Separate Opinion of Judge Lauterpacht at para. 100.

Eminent scholars of international law, such as M. Bassiouni[40], too, have confirmed the prohibition on genocide as a jus cogens norm of international law.

So has the influential Restatement on Foreign Relations of the United States.

We can find no legal authority which states that the doctrine of State Immunity has acquired the status of jus cogens, that Latin tag which, in English, simply means “compelling law”.

On the other hand legal authorities abound that as a source of law, jus cogensis hierarchically higher.

It is also trite law that where there is a conflict between two principles of law, the one hierarchically higher in importance should prevail.

To our mind the international law doctrine against impleading a foreign state, being hierarchicallylower in importance than that of the prohibition against genocide, resulted in the Charge against the State of Israel to be maintained for full trial.

Decline Of State Sovereignty: The Distinction Between Sovereign & Commercial Acts 

By the so-called “Tate Letter”, the United States confers immunity on foreign States only for their public and governmental acts, but not their commercial activities. It is worth observing that the commission of a war crime or genocide or crime against humanity can never be a sovereign or governmental act.

This preference for restrictive State immunity was given statutory effect in the United States by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976.

The United Kingdomcame later in 1976 in adopting the restrictive immunity approach. That occurred in the case of The Philippine Admiral [41] where the Privy Council held that in cases where a State-owned merchant ship involved in ordinary trade was the object of a writ, it would not be entitled to sovereign immunity and the litigation would proceed.

In 1978 the State Immunity Act of 1978, adopting a restrictive approach, was enacted by the

United Kingdom. Since then, these two legislations have been served as a model for the national legislations of other countries including Australia, Canada, Pakistan, Singapore, South Africa and Malaysia.

The Tribunal find it rather mind-boggling when some courts can consider commercial disputes as a reason for not allowing a State to be shielded by the State Immunity principle and yet strenuously protect such a State in cases of genocide or other war crimes. Human lives cannot be less important than financial gain!

Other Inroads Into The Concept Of State Sovereignty 

There have been other inroads into the domain of the State Immunity principle including the following:

  • In 1972, the European Convention on State Immunity 1972was executed. That became the first attempt to establish an international legal regime for State immunity on the basis of the restrictive doctrine. It is already in force amongst the signatory States.
  • In 2004, the United Nations Convention on Jurisdictional Immunities of States and Their Propertywas adopted by the General Assembly but this has yet to come into force[42].
  • And not too long ago, both the United States and Canada enacted legislation to permit their respective citizens or permanent residents to institute proceedings against States which harbour terrorists.
  • In the law of the European Union, member States, can be subjected to hefty fines for violations of EU law. The consent or non-consent of the State is irrelevant. It is the State and not individual state actors who are defendants in EU courts. The subjection of the State to the jurisdiction of the EU courts flows automatically from membership of the EU.
  • In a jurisprudential, Hohfeldian analysis, the concepts of legal right and legal duty are co-relatives of each other. If a state has legal duties under international law, then someone must have a corresponding legal right against the State. Defence counsel confirmed for us that the State of Israel is a signatory to the Genocide Convention. It has never repudiated the Convention. In fact it has its own law on Genocide that it enacted to conduct genocide trials in Israel like the one in the Eichmann We hold that Israel’s voluntary subjection to the Genocide Convention imposes on it enforceable duties that it cannot repudiate by simply refusing to give consent to a proceeding against it on a charge of genocide.
  • Like all other areas of law, international law is not static and is evolving to meet the felt necessities of the times. The Tribunal is conscious that the concept of state sovereignty is in decline. In the human rights era in which we are living, state sovereignty is a shield against foreign aggression. It cannot be used as a sword against one’s own nationals or the nationals of another territory. If a sitting head of a sovereign State like the President of Sudan (who personifies the State of Sudan) can be indicted for certain heinous crimes against international law, then it does not make sense to submit that a sovereign state can never be held accountable in international courts without its consent. This will not be in line with modern developments in international law. Witness for example the opinion in the Bosniacase which the Tribunal referred to earlier.
  • It was submitted to us that the rationale for excluding the State from prosecution and instead directing the Prosecution at natural persons is that if a State is visited with a verdict of ‘guilty’ that verdict would be onerous to the entire, innocent population of the State. Touching though this argument is, it is not consistent with a large body of international law e.g. the Charter of the United Nations where measures are prescribed which would amount to collective punishment of the entire population. Under Article 41 the Security Council may authorise complete or partial interruption of economic relations. Embargoes that may devastate innocent lives may be imposed. Under Articles 42 and 44, war measures including the use of force may be employed against a nation. Under Article 5, membership of a nation to the General Assembly can be suspended. Under Article 6, a member can be expelled.

A system of law must have coherence. Its different parts must, in the words of the great jurist Ronald Dworkin, have a “fit”. The idea of absolute State immunity from prosecution for grave crimes like genocide appears inconsistent with other wholesome developments in international law. Absolute state immunity is an antiquated doctrine and given the choice between precedents, this Tribunal is inclined to break free of the icy grip of this past dogma.

All these go to show that concerted efforts are taking place on the international scene to move towards a less restrictive State Immunity doctrine. In the words of Lord Denning:

The doctrine of sovereign immunity is based on international law. It is one of the rules of international law that a sovereign state should not be impleaded in the Courts of another sovereign state against its will. Like all rules of international law, this rule is said to arise out of the consensus of the civilised nations of the world. All nations agree upon it. So it is part of the law of nations.

To my mind [so Denning continued], this notion of a consensus is a fiction. The nations are not in the least agreed upon the doctrine of sovereign immunity. The Courts of every country differ in their application of it. Some grant absolute immunity. Others grant limited immunity, with each defining the limits differently. There is no consensus whatever. Yet this does not mean that there is no rule of international law upon the subject.

It only means that we differ as to what that rule is. Each country delimits for itself the bounds of sovereign immunity. Each creates for itself the exceptions from it. It is, I think, for the Courts of this country to define the rule as best they can, seeking guidance from the decisions of the Courts of other countries, from the jurists who have studied the problem, from treaties and conventions and, above all, defining the rule in terms which are consonant with justice rather than adverse to it[43].

Inequitable Enforcement of International Law

Another reason why the Tribunal wishes to reject the doctrine of absolute state immunity from prosecution in matters of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity is that the existing international law on war and peace and humanitarianism is being enforced in a grossly inequitable manner. Small, weak nations, mostly in Africa and Asia, are periodically subjected to devastating sanctions, military interventions and regime changes. At the same time, unbearable atrocities and brutalities that are inflicted on the militarily weak nations of Latin America, Africa and Asia by powerful nations in the North Atlantic and their allies go unscrutinised and unpunished.

We take note that the Israeli perpetrators of Sabra and Shatila were never punished and instead rewarded. We took note of the Jerusalem Poststory of Nov. 22, 2013. On January 4, 2009, 100 members of the al-Samouni family huddled inside a house. In the morning mist, an Israeli airstrike killed 21 people inside. Yet last week the Military Advocate General of the IDF informed B’Tselem (human rights group in Israel) that he had decided to close the investigation into this incident without taking any measures.

In the light of this reality that horrendous wrongs go unpunished and instead the victim is demonised and brutalised, we feel that it is time for the legal world to bring some juristic balance to our exposition of state immunity and international rights and wrongs and to expose the truth. This is what the Charter requires us to do.

What Amounts To Genocide? 

Simply put, genocide means any designated acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such. The definition of genocide as given in Article 2 of the Tribunal’s Statute is taken verbatim from Articles 2 & 3 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide which states that the following acts may by themselves or cumulatively constitute the international crime of genocide:

  1. Killing members of the group
  2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
  3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
  4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
  5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

No significant evidence was introduced by the Prosecution Team in relation to acts (d) & (e) above, but we heard 11 witnesses and examined thousands of pages of documents relating to acts (a)-(c). The Prosecution repeatedly used the words “ethnic cleansing” and the tribunal regards ethnic cleansing as part of acts (a) to (c) above.

Actus Reus

The central issue before us was whether genocidal acts took place contrary to Article 2 of the Convention (Part 1, Article 10 of the Charter).

The Tribunal heard 11 witnesses and examined documentary evidence that clearly indicated a long catalogue of incredible crimes conceived as long ago as 1945 and continuing till the present. What is significant is that these are not isolated acts in the heat of the moment but repeated pattern of atrocities committed against the inhabitants of Palestine.

  • Forcible expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes.
  • Massacres of those who refused to abandon the land of their birth.
  • Repeated, periodic and massive killings through air and naval strikes using the most sophisticated weaponry over the last 65 years.
  • Brutal assaults on many refugee camps as for example in Sabra and Shatila. Israel’s military action in Sabra and Shatila was condemned by no other than the 1983 Israeli Kahan Report. The report found Brigadier General Yaron to be complicit in the atrocities and massacres committed by the Lebanese Phalangists. As Brigadier General Yaron was a commanding officer of the Israeli Armed Force, his culpability has to be attributed to the State of Israel. The IDF sealed the camps and prevented any Palestinians from leaving. It allowed the Phalangist militias to enter the camp and to commit mass murders. The Kahan Report notes (Prosecution document volume 3, page 291) that Brigadier General Yaron had no reservations about admitting the Phalangists into the camps; he testified that he was happy with his decision and explained his position in that “We have been fighting here for four months already, and there is a place where they can take part in the fighting, the fighting serves their purposes as well, so let them participate and not let the IDF do everything”. Credible witnesses testified to us that women and children were shot in their homes; pregnant mothers were killed and their babies extruded from the womb. Among the witnesses the Tribunal heard was the internationally respected medical doctor, Dr. Ang Swee Chai who testified to the magnitude of the atrocities and the fatalities that she witnessed first hand.
  • Periodic seizure of Palestinian lands and farms and conversion of them into Israeli settlements.
  • Building of a 190km long wall/fence which has been condemned by the ICJ (but whose construction has been rationalised by 2 Israeli Supreme Court decisions).
  • Apartheid like conditions of affluence in the illegal settlements and extreme depravation in the Palestinian ghettos. Some roads are for the Jewish population only.
  • Use of white phosphorus which tears out the insides of human bodies on the civilian population.
  • Detention without trial and ill treatment of prisoners.
  • Torture.
  • Denial of adequate food, stealing of water resources, supply of inadequate quantum of water, and building materials.
  • Land and sea blockades of Palestinian areas, especially in Gaza.
  • Use of excessive force on Palestinian combatants armed with crude weapons and in some cases against children throwing stones.
  • Siege and imprisonment of an entire nation.
  • Daily humiliations at hundreds of checkpoints on Palestinian territory and impossible conditions of life.

The Tribunal heard moving testimony from credible witnesses that what has happened to them has happened to thousands of their brethren.

The Tribunal also took note that many of the above atrocities committed by Israel over the last 67 years were, now and then, condemned by the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly and other international organisations.

Chief Counsel for the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team presented to us an ingenious argument that there is no genocide in Palestine because the population of the Palestinians is continuing to grow. Unless there is a significant decrease in population, there can be no genocide he asserted. The Tribunal finds this submission totally insensitive and inhuman. It is internationally documented that nearly 700,000 Palestinians were driven from their home to lead nomadic and deprived lives in neighbouring lands where they are not generally welcomed. The fact that the remaining population of Palestine after the ethnic cleansing in the mid 1940s continues to show modest growth has not disproved the existence of periodic killings, humiliation, and dehumanisation.

In determining whether genocide has been committed, one cannot play a game of numbers. Even if one person is killed on account of his race, ethnicity or religion with intention to kill others for the same reason, that is genocide.

It is impossible for the members of the Tribunal to disregard clear cut evidence of brutalisation, demonisation and dehumanisation of an entire population. It is incredible that in an age of human rights, such atrocities can continue to rage for more than 6 decades and that there are people in nations who trivialise such inhumanity. The Tribunal unanimously holds that the acts committed against the Palestinians amount to genocide over the last 67 years.

The Tribunal must however clarify that it takes note of the violations of international humanitarian law by some members of the Palestinian community. Their prosecution and guilt is a separate matter.

Was There Mens Rea?

As the Tribunal has stated earlier, the Tribunal heard 11 witnesses and examined documentary evidence that clearly indicated a long catalogue of incredible crimes conceived as long ago as 1945 and continuing till the present. What is significant is that these are not isolated acts in the heat of the moment but repeated pattern of atrocities committed against the dispossessed inhabitants of Palestine.

What is also significant is that the above culpable acts are systematically directed against the same group and by the same offender over the last 67 years. The scale of atrocities committed and their general nature indicate a clear genocidal intention.

Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia stated that the specific intent of the crime of genocide “… may be inferred from a number of facts such as the general political doctrine which gave rise to the acts possibly covered by the definition in Article IV or the repetition of destructive and discriminatory acts”. The Tribunal accepts evidence from various internationally respected social scientists among them Prof Ilan Pappe and John Pilger and Prof Noam Chomsky that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine is a world historic tragedy that is the result of deliberate State policies of succeeding governments of Israel since 1948.

The Tribunal wishes to state that the test that it employed in determining guilt was the test of “beyond reasonable doubt”.

Was it a case of Self-Defence?

The Tribunal heard significant evidence from the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team that Israeli actions of bombing, killing, maiming, other military interventions, curfews, checkpoints and “apartheid walls” were in response to continuous Palestinian terrorism.

The Tribunal agrees that there is cogent evidence of Palestinian resistance to Israeli presence, incidences of suicide bombing, and firing of crude rockets into Israeli territory by Palestinian fighters. However it is our finding that much of the Palestinian generated violence is not on Israel’s own territory, but from and on Israeli occupied Palestinian land. Much of the violence perpetrated by Palestinians is a reaction to the brutalities of the vicious racism, brutalities and genocide that is a tragic feature of Palestinian life.

Much as we condemn violence and pray for peace, it must be stated that no power on earth can douse the flame of freedom from the human spirit. As long as there is suppression, there will always be people prepared to die on their feet than to live on their knees.

We also hold that the force employed by IDF is excessive, totally disproportionate and a violation of international humanitarian law. The methods used are unspeakably inhumane and amount to war crimes.

We unanimously find the State of Israel guilty as charged.

  1. Verdict

After considering the evidence adduced by the Prosecution and submissions by both the Prosecution and the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team on behalf of the two Defendants, the Tribunal is satisfied, beyond reasonable doubt, that the First Defendant, Amos Yaron, is guilty of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide and the Second Defendant, the State of Israel is guilty of Genocide.

  1. Orders

10.1   The Tribunal orders that reparations commensurate with the irreparable harm and injury, pain and suffering undergone by the Complainant War Crime Victims be paid to them. While it is constantly mindful of its stature as merely a tribunal of conscience with no real power of enforcement, this Tribunal finds that the witnesses in this case are entitled ex justitiato the payment of reparations by the two convicted parties. It is the Tribunal’s hope that armed with the Findings of this Tribunal, the witnesses (victims in this case) will, in the near future, find a state or an international judicial entity able and willing to exercise jurisdiction and to enforce the verdict of this Tribunal against the two convicted parties. The Tribunal’s award of reparations shall be submitted to the War Crimes Commission to facilitate the determination and collection of reparations by the Complainant War Crime Victims.

10.2   International Criminal Court and the United Nations, Security Council– As a tribunal of conscience, the Tribunal is fully aware that its verdict is merely declaratory in nature. We have no power of enforcement. What we can do, under Article 34 of Chapter VIII of Part 2 of the Charter is to recommend to the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission, WHICH WE HEREBY DO, to submit this finding of conviction by the Tribunal, together with a record of these proceedings, to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, as well as the United Nations and the Security Council.

10.3   Commission’s Register of War Criminals – Further, under Article 35 of the same Chapter, this Tribunal recommends to the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission that the names of the two convicted parties herein be entered and included in the Commission’s Register of War Criminals and be publicised accordingly.

10.4   The Tribunal recommends to the War Crimes Commission to give the widest international publicity to this conviction and grant of reparations, as these are universal crimes for which there is a responsibility upon nations to institute prosecutions.

10.5   The Tribunal deplores the failure of international institutions to punish the State of Israel for its crimes and its total lack of respect of International Law and the institutions of the United Nations. It urges the Commission to use all means to publicise this judgement and in particular with respect to the Parliaments and Legislative Assemblies of the major powers such as members of the G8 and to urge these countries to intervene and put an end to the colonialist and racist policies of the State of Israel and its supporters.

  1. Conclusion

Having delivered its verdict and consequential orders, this Tribunal wishes to place on record its deep appreciation to both the Prosecution and the Amicus Curiae-Defence Teams for their efforts in ensuring that this resumed Hearing was able to be conducted in the best tradition of any Bar.

The Tribunal commends Co-Prosecutors Prof Gurdial Singh Nijar and Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Abdul Rahman and the other members of their team for their thorough preparation of their case.

The Tribunal also commends every single member of the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team for accepting their difficult assignment as friends of the court and for giving their all beyond their call of duty in the name of justice and fair play for their absent Defendants. Mr Jason Kay, Ms. Larissa Jane Cadd and Dr. Matthew Witbrodt, all of whom had addressed the Tribunal during the Hearing, meticulously presented the case for the Defendants with extraordinary fidelity even though none of them had met or had been instructed by the Defendants.

Finally, the Tribunal extends its thanks to members of the Malaysian public and other benefactors who had generously contributed to the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War in financing the holding of this adjourned Hearing.

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Notes

[1] The Kahan Report, Ariel Charon and the Sabra and Shatila Massacres in Lebanon : Responsablity Under International Criminal Law for Massacres of Civilian Populations, Linda A Malone, Utah Law Review, 373, herein after Malone

[2] Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut, herein after the Kahan Report. February 8, 1983, p.2

[3] Kahan Report. p. 16, Malone p. 402.

[4] Malone p. 381, Kahan Report p. 7.

[5] Malone p. 372, Kahan Report. P. 7

[6] Malone p. 382-383, Kahan Report p. 8

[7] Malone p. 383, Kahan Report. P. 12

[8] Malone p. 386

[9] Malone p. 432

[10] Malone pp. 387-388

[11] The Sabra and Shatila Massacre : Eye-Witness Reports, Leila Shahid, Journal of Palestinian studies.Vol 32.     No. 1. p. 36 at p. 43

[12] cited in Shahid at p. 43

[13] Shahid. P. 44

[14] Malone p. 388

[15] Kahan Commission p. 81.

[16] Malone p. 392

[17] Malone page 384-385

[18] Malone page 384-385

[19] Malone pa. 385, fn 52

[20] Shahid, p. 44

[21] Shahid, pp. 40-41

[22] KLWCT Charter article 2, subsection (i)

[23] As adopted in Article 10 of the KLWCT Charter.

[24] Akayesu Trial Judgement, ICTR, para 560

[25] Krstic, ICTY, Appellate Judgment, 19 April 2004, para. 41

[26] Case Concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. I.C. J. Decision of 26 February 2007 para. 179

[27] Prosecutor V. Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovač and Zoran Vuković, Case No. It-96-23& It-96-23/1-A, Judgement, 12 June 2002

[28] Blockburger vUnited States, 284 U.S. 299, 304 (1931) (“The applicable rule is that, where the same act or transaction constitutes a violation of two distinct statutory provisions, the test to be applied to determine whether there are two offenses or only one is whether each provision requires proof of an additional fact which the other does not.”).

[29] ^elebi}iAppeal Judgement, paras 412-13. Hereinafter referred to as the ^elebići test.

[30] Bagosora and Nsengiyumva ICTR, Appeal Judgement, para. 394; Rukundo Appeal Judgement, para. 185, citing Ntakirutimana Appeal Judgement, para. 516.

[31] Bagosora and Nsengiyumva ICTR Appeal Judgement, para. 394; Rukundo Appeal Judgement, para. 185, citingNtakirutimana Appeal Judgement, para. 516.

[32] Brđanin Appeal Judgement, ICTY para. 476; StakićAppeal Judgement, paras. 259-260; GacumbitsiAppeal Judgement, para. 86; NtakirutimanaAppeal Judgement, para. 522.

[33] The Schooner Exchange v. McFaddon, 11 U.S. 116, 136 (1812);

[34] Mighell v. Sultan of Johore(1894), 1Q149;

[35] The Porto Alexandre Case(1920);

[36] Duff Development Co. v. Kelantan Government924] A. C. 797

[37] The Cristina Case(1938) AC 485

[38] Commonwealth Of Australia V Midford (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd & Anor [1990] 1 MLJ 475

[39] http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/143/16883.pdf

[40] M. Bassiouni, ‘International Crimes: Jus Cogens and Obligatio Erga Omnes’(1996) Law and Contemporary Problems 58(4), p.68

[41] [1976] 2 WLR 214

[42] The Convention was open for signature by all States until 17 January 2007 and would have entered into force on the thirtieth day following the date of deposit of the thirtieth instrument of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession. As of 7 May 2013, there are 28 signatories to the Convention and 13 instruments of ratification have been deposited. (According to its Article 30, the Convention requires 30 state parties in order to come into force.)

[43] Trendtex Trading Corporation Ltd v. Central Bank of Nigeria,(at p. 888)

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US media reported that Washington is creating a new strategy for Ukraine that will deemphasise retaking territory it lost to Russian forces, a silent acknowledgment that the Ukrainian military does not have the capabilities to launch attacks, let alone reach Crimea, as Kiev regime figures boasted before the failure of last year’s counteroffensive. At the same time, Berlin is also realising that Ukraine cannot win the war.

The Biden administration’s new strategy in 2024 will “de-emphasise” the recapture of “lost territories” and will instead focus on supporting the Kiev regime to survive amid Russia’s special military operation, The Washington Post reported, citing anonymous sources.

The sources claimed that the Biden administration is “still smarting” from Kiev’s failed counteroffensive and is “putting together the new strategy,” which includes helping Ukraine strengthen its military and economy in the face of the state’s financing impasse in the US Congress.

“Still smarting from last year’s failed counteroffensive in Ukraine, the Biden administration is putting together a new strategy that will de-emphasise winning back territory and focus instead on helping Ukraine fend off new Russian advances while moving toward a long-term goal of strengthening its fighting force and economy,” the newspaper wrote.

According to the Washington Post,

“the emerging plan is a sharp change from last year, when the US and allied militaries rushed training and sophisticated equipment to Kiev in hopes that it could quickly push back Russian forces.”

“It’s pretty clear that it will be difficult for them to try to mount the same kind of major push on all fronts that they tried to do last year,” a senior administration official told the newspaper, adding that “The idea now is to position Ukraine to hold its position on the battlefield for now,” and “put them on a different trajectory to be much stronger by the end of 2024 … and get them on a more sustainable path.”

It is noteworthy that in early January, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said that Russia would achieve the objectives of the special military operation, adding that in 2023, the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ losses exceeded 215,000 personnel and 28,000 pieces of weaponry. This catastrophic number demonstrates how Zelensky is throwing Ukrainians into the Russian meatgrinder with little regard.

Shoigu’s announcement comes as Ukrainian politicians are asking Zelensky to reveal the number of soldiers killed. According to the leader of the Ukrainian Servant of the People party, Davyd Arakhamia, Zelensky must reassure the public with data, but the Ukrainian Armed Forces argue that publishing this would help Russia.

“When you go out and ask people about the losses, I’ve never heard of less than 100,000,” Arakhamia said during a panel discussion. “[But] our losses are much smaller.”

He said he had suggested that the Ukrainian president declassify the number to reassure the public, but the latter had not yet decided.

“The disclosure of Ukraine’s real losses in the war will show that they are not as great as they themselves imagine,” Arakhamia predicted, who is either in denial about the true number or is peddling misinformation.

Rather, it is more telling that the Ukrainian military claim that revealing the true number of fatalities in the conflict would allow Russia to “draw many conclusions from this data and use this information for analysis and planning,” meaning it would reveal the catastrophic losses.

Although the Washington Post reveals that the US, as the largest donor and most important ally of Ukraine, silently acknowledges that lost territories cannot be captured from Russia, the Kiev regime remains insistent on continuing the futile war effort. Alarmingly for Kiev, Berlin, the most important European ally, is arriving at the same conclusion as their American counterparts.

The leftist German party Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, led by Sahra Wagenknecht, asked Olaf Scholz’s government to stop supplying weapons to Ukraine because it considered that this strategy does not benefit any party, not even Zelensky’s own troops, and to restore relations with Moscow.

“We are delivering weapons to Ukraine for a victory that, unfortunately, even the Ukrainian generals no longer believe in. This war must be put to an end, and very quickly, through negotiations,” the politician said during her party’s first congress in Berlin.

Although Wagenknecht’s party is only a few weeks old, she is one of Germany’s most recognised and popular politicians, and her voice holds weight. Given the fact that the right-wing AfD share Wagenknecht’s opinion and is now Germany’s most popular party, pressure is mounting against Scholz’s reckless policies towards Ukraine and Russia, especially since, as she highlighted, not even the Ukrainian military leaders believe in victory anymore.

Although there are strong opposition voices to end support for Ukraine in the US and Germany, the leaders of both countries want the war to continue, but with a begrudging acknowledgement that territory cannot be recaptured. Rather, they hope they can support Ukraine enough to create a stalemate situation, but this scenario is unlikely, especially once Russia launches its offensive.

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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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What is common to the great struggles associated with such great leaders as Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Badshah Khan in places so distant from each other? What is common to such famous environmental movements as Chipko/Appiko (for saving forests) and Narmada Bachao Andolan ( for saving rivers)? 

While these struggles had their own highly original and great contributions, one aspect common to them is that all these struggles acknowledged the work, social experiments and ideas of Mahatma Gandhi as a big source of inspiration. 

On 30 January the world observes the death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. 76 years after he left us, victim of an assassin’s bullets, many people grappling with the most serious problems of our increasingly troubled and endangered world are increasingly realizing the great value of several essential messages Mahatma Gandhi left behind after a very eventful, thoughtful and inspiring life.

One of these relates to understanding and appreciating the great importance of non-violence in everyday life. In a world so deeply distressed by alarming incidence of gender violence, domestic violence, workplace violence, street violence, etc., better understanding and appreciation of the importance of  non-violence implies a reduction not just in actual acts of violence but also conscious efforts to reduce anger, jealousy, greed, aggressive competitiveness and other tendencies which are associated with violence in daily life.

A photograph of Mahatma Gandhi during the Salt March, which gave a critical impetus to the Indian independence movement.
(From the Public Domain)

While this by itself leads to reduction of distress in daily life, this also serves as a training ground for the wider task of resisting injustice in non-violent ways. Non-violence devoid of its links of resisting injustice is a very limited concept.

The wider significance of non-violence comes from its important link of resisting injustice of various kinds. In fact injustice has very close linkages with violence, violent thinking, dominance and urge for dominance. Hence to think of violence as a means of resisting injustice is not very natural and rational, as violent thinking is itself a part of the web of injustice. On the other hand, it is much more natural for non-violence to be a means of resisting injustice. By leaving the path of violence and opting for the path of non-violence for resisting injustice, we may be able to find more durable and sustainable ways of creating a justice-based society which has a wider acceptability. 

If in two neighboring countries there are many more people practicing non-violence in daily life and also using non-violence to resist injustice in numerous small ways at local levels, the chances become very high that these countries will never fight a war, will not engage in an arms race and will find peaceful, justice-based ways of resolving differences. This is how a strong local base is created for peace and how this can be linked to global issues. If there is strong commitment at world level, within a decade very strong support for a future without wars and without the most terrible weapons can be created.

As a part of his overall efforts for peace, Gandhi made a very strong plea for inter-faith harmony. His message to people of all religions was to pursue their religious beliefs in such a way that there is no hostility with other religions, so that away from any aggressive inclinations, religion is restored to its essential role of providing strength for spiritual progress, and this in turn provides conducive conditions for the most important tasks of peace, justice and protecting environment.

Most destructive weapons on the one hand and ecological ruin on the other hand are the two most serious problems of our world today. These are usually treated separately but one basic cause is common to both—greed and the urge for snatching the share of others based on this, and acceptance of this as a predominant social value. 

Gandhi JayantiMahatma Gandhi rejected this and instead pleaded for voluntary acceptance of frugality and simplicity—a life of limited needs—as the desirable norm of life. The essence of this message is that if we all learn to be happy in a simple life based on voluntary acceptance of limited requirements, then the web of never-ending greed, unlimited acquisition and the urge of dominance linked to this which traps humanity can be broken, leading to contentment in daily life and ability to meet needs of all without causing ecological crisis, providing enough space for meeting needs of other life-forms and creating a strong foundation for durable world peace.

With his strong emphasis on frugality, Gandhi continued experimenting in various ways in important areas of food, health, education, etc. His experiments lead towards maintaining good health in natural, simple ways, with emphasis on hygiene, living close to nature without relying too much on expensive medication. There is a complete rejection of alcohol, tobacco and all intoxicants. Education should never lead to alienation but instead should involve getting closer to community needs, combining creativity in intellectual as well as manual work of crafts, farming, etc. Ethical issues are most important, whether in education, livelihoods or overall economy. 

Another important message from Gandhi is for more self-reliant and resilient communities which are capable of meeting many of their needs at local level in very creative, decentralized ways, combining very satisfactory livelihoods close to home with access to high quality, healthy  food, and many other basic goods and services. For meeting other requirements and securing additional opportunities, integration with national and global economy of course continues to exist. This is community life based on close relationships and protection of livelihoods and basic needs regardless of fluctuations of global economy. Such community life, with precepts and practice of equality and justice, provides a good base for creating a world based on peace, justice and environment protection. Gandhi placed more emphasis on rural community life without rejecting urban life.

As many activists and people try to engage with some of these most essential and creative tasks, the work and ideas of Mahatma Gandhi continue to be an increasingly important source of help and inspiration for them. The relevance of his ideas for checking some of the most important problems of present day world is increasing.

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Bharat Dogra is a journalist and author. His recent books include Man over Machine (Gandhi’s Ideas for our times), Protecting Earth for Children, Earth without Borders and Planet in Peril. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am reasonably sure that the majority of readers dismissed this “unscientific” proposal. Surely no one in office would want to repeat the Great War or World War 2, much less for the sentimental reasons I mentioned. And yet the near universal praise for the deceased realist Heinz K offers an excellent support for my case as do the assessments of another “offensive” realist still with us and rather lionized by all masters and mistresses of insight into today‘s global bellicosity. Heinz K. consistently justified his intrigues based on his reading of Metternich, the continental cutout for British policy after the French Revolution and Napoleon were defeated.

Balance of power (terror against the population) and deterrence are quintessential British concepts. With the merger of the British and American Empires through the Great War these doctrines became the central dogma of the piratical cult that Rhodes and Rothschild conceived in the Round Table. It is important to know that while for most people the Round Table is a cult of nobility and order (or something from Camelot or The Holy Grail films), Thomas Malory made quite clear that it was a system of vicious treachery dominated by a sinister and jealous monarch and his deceitful and ruthless champion Lancelot. It is the real Round Table that should concern investigators, not the fantasy.

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

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

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

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

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

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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Mohamed Hassan Tells Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism That the U.S. Encouraged the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) to Launch an Insurgency Against the Ethiopian Government in November 2020 and Gave Diplomatic and Media Cover for Their Aggression

The Motive Was to Use the TPLF to Control the Horn of Africa Region

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Mohamed Hassan is a former Ethiopian diplomat who was involved in protests in the early 1990s with future Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi to secure greater rights for Ethiopia’s Muslim population.

Hassan told an international tribunal on U.S. imperialism that the U.S. government is responsible for the destruction of Tigray, an Ethiopian province, after the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) launched an insurgency in November 2020 against the Ethiopian government.

Hassan blames the U.S. because they encouraged the TPLF uprising, imposed sanctions on Ethiopia to weaken it, and gave the TPLF diplomatic and media cover for their terrorist operations that fueled brutal counter-reprisals by the Ethiopian government.

A map of ethiopia with different colored areas Description automatically generated

Source: rsonderriis.substack.com

Some 600,000 people are estimated to have been killed during the two years of the war, which ended in November 2022.

The U.S.’s main motive for encouraging the rebellion was to restore the TPLF to power in Ethiopia, which they ruled from 1991 to 2018, and to use the TPLF to control the strategically important Horn of Africa region.[1]

Explainer: Why is there renewed fighting in northern Ethiopia?

Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) soldiers. [Source: twitter.com]

Hassan Ali recounted a visit that he had in the early 1990s with then-National Security Adviser Anthony Lake who told him that the U.S. strategy for maximizing its influence in Africa in the post-Cold War era was by dividing the continent into four sub-regions dominated by key anchor states over which it would gain leverage.

These states were: a) Egypt under Hosni Mubarak; b) South Africa under Thabo Mbeki; c) Nigeria under General Sani Abacha; and 4) Ethiopia under TPLF rule (its leader, Meles Zenawi, was Ethiopia’s president from 1991 to 1995 and Prime Minister from 1995 until his death in 2018).

When they first came to power in Ethiopia in 1991, the TPLF had popular legitimacy because they helped overthrow the Derg, a Marxist dictatorship led by Mengistu Haile Mariam.

The U.S. hated Mengistu because he closed U.S. military bases in Ethiopia, including the Kagnew communications base in Eritrea.

According to Dr. Simon Tesfamariam, an Eritrean doctor and activist living in New York, the TPLF was a minority regime in that it preferentially represented the interests of the Tigrayan people, which make up only 6% of the Ethiopian population.

Tesfamariam told journalist Ann Garrison that, over the last three decades, “the U.S. showered the tribalist, bourgeois TPLF minority regime with roughly a billion dollars a year in aid under the guise of humanitarian assistance. In exchange, TPLF served as Washington’s policeman in the Horn of Africa and used its influence in the African Union, which is based in Addis Ababa, to protect Washington’s interests on the African continent.”

Hassan Ali said that, in order to sustain his kleptocratic rule, Zenawi provoked ethnic divisions and committed large-scale war crimes when Ethiopia invaded Somalia in 2006/2007 and provoked a war with Eritrea in 1998 where the TPLF carried out a large-scale ethnic-cleansing operation against Eritreans living in Ethiopia.

Dr. Saleh Mohammed Idriss, a professor at the Asmara College of Education, recounted before the International People’s Tribunal a conversation between Meles Zenawi and CIA agent Paul Henze where Zenawi said to “look at the conflict from the point of view of Tigray. It needs access to the Red Sea and the only way is through Eritrea [which gained its independence from Ethiopia in 1991].”

In 2018, the TPLF was overthrown in a popular uprising that resulted in the rise to power of Abiy Ahmed, a former member of the Oromo Democratic Party who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for his role in helping to broker a durable peace agreement with Eritrea, and for releasing political prisoners and establishing a free press after years of TPLF authoritarian rule.

According to Hassan Ali, the peace deal with Eritrea worried U.S. imperial planners who preferred a conflict-ridden Horn region over which they could assert their hegemony through divide-and-rule tactics.

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Abiy Ahmed with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki in March 2019. [Source: wikipedia.org]

To make matters worse, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki was considered a Castro-type figure and Eritrea an African equivalent to Cuba. Along with Zimbabwe, it is the only country in Africa to resist the presence of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM).

After gaining its independence in 1991 following a long liberation struggle necessitated by the decision of U.S. Defense Secretary John Foster Dulles in the 1950s to support Ethiopia’s occupation of Eritrea, Eritrea rejected loans from the World Bank and IMF and promoted economic self-reliance under a socialist governing model.

To punish it for its defiance, the U.S. began imposing crippling sanctions in the mid-2000s under the false pretext that Eritrea supported the Somalian terrorist group Al-Shabab.

After the TPLF tried to overthrow the Ethiopian government, Eritrea was accused of dressing its soldiers in Ethiopian army uniforms and committing atrocities against Tigrayans.[2]

Ethiopia and Eritrea anti-sanctions demonstration in New York City. [Source: mronline.org]

The sanctions as such were expanded upon—to the detriment of the Eritrean people who were deprived of vital medicines and goods and prevented from carrying out financial transactions using the SWIFT system.

Failing to acknowledge the negative impact of the sanctions, an article in The Atlantic by the former chief of mission at the U.S. embassy, Steve Walker, characteristically referred to Eritrea as a “human rights house of horror” and “totalitarian state,” which was “poor” and had “no realistic hopes of development” thanks to “revolutionary economic policies.”

Margaret Kimberley wrote in Black Agenda Report that such negative and prejudiced views obscured the fact that Eritrea is a functioning and proudly sovereign state, which overcomes the hardships created by U.S. sanctions to care for its people.

It was Eritrean military intervention, furthermore, at the request of the Abiy regime, in November-December 2020 that wiped out the backbone of the TPLF army in Tigray.

Checking All the Propaganda Boxes

Grégoire Lalieu is an investigative journalist from Belgium who testified at the People’s Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism that the Tigray War checked all the boxes of Western war propaganda the way it was presented in Western media.

Western economic interests and geopolitical scheming in the African Horn region was obscured and the history of U.S. imperial intervention in the region was ignored along with the history of TPLF atrocities.

Piggybacking off the official statements of the U.S. State Department, the media made it seem as if Abiy Ahmed had started the war because he had become arrogant after winning the Nobel Peace Prize when the TPLF was reported to have initiated hostilities by attacking the Ethiopian army’s northern command on November 4, 2020.

The Ethiopian government was accused of committing legions of atrocities amounting to genocide and trying to induce famine and starve the Tigrayan population when atrocities were committed on all sides of the war and no famine actually resulted.[3]

A screenshot of a social media post Description automatically generated

Queen of humanitarian intervention raises false alarm of a famine. [Source: rsonderriis.substack.com]

A parade of articles echoed the inflammatory narrative, including from the putatively left-wing Nation Magazine.

Democracy Now produced a series of similarly slanted reports alleging genocide, ethnic cleansing, and the use of rape as a weapon in Tigray, relying heavily on CNN reporter Nima Elbagir.

The Sudanese-born Elbagir, who is reportedly married to the current British ambassador to Iraq, Mark Bryson-Richardson. relentlessly pushed the narrative of genocide perpetrated by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces, and in September 2022 won an Emmy Award for her documentary “Ethiopia: Hallmarks of a Genocide.” 

Unreported in this documentary is the fact that the first massacre of the war was committed by TPLF militias at Mai Kadra on the Sudan border on November 9, 2020. The TPLF also fired rockets at civilians targets extending into Eritrea, forced the conscription of child soldiers, misused humanitarian relief supplies, committed gang rapes and fabricated evidence of Ethiopian army war crimes.[4]

Western media generally left the impression that the Ethiopian army would carry out a genocide if the U.S. did not intervene to protect the Tigrayan people.

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Funeral services at Abu Aregawi Church for victims of mass killing carried out by TPLF-allied militias that occurred in Mai Kadra on November 9, 2020. [Source: wikipedia.org]

Lalieu pointed out that the demonization of the Ethiopian military and Abiy Ahmed was comparable to the demonization of Muammar Qaddafi, Slobodan Milosevic, Vladimir Putin and other foreign leaders that the U.S. was intent on overthrowing by force.

Many U.S.-based journalists and academics relied for their assessment on TPLF representatives, allowing the U.S. and TPLF to monopolize the debate. The consequence was to help build public support for the U.S. sanctions and for military intervention, which the usual cohort of liberal proponents of humanitarian intervention were eager to support.

Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong

Danish journalist Rasmus Sonderriis published an online book entitled Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong, which concluded that Western media, academia and humanitarian aid organizations “demonized a friendly people and fueled a big war with dire mispredictions and shocking lies.”

Central to these lies was the use of the g-word (genocide), which the Holocaust Museum warned about in October 2022.

Sonderriis wrote that “the media-borne narrative that Ethiopia’s motivation was to commit genocide was concocted to confer legitimacy on the violent pursuit of power [by the TPLF].”

A key media influencer promoting the genocide narrative and demanding Western military intervention was World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a go-to media source who hid his own background as part of the TPLF ruling elite in Ethiopia.

Source: rsonderriis.substack.com

Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation and professor at the Tufts University’s Fletcher School near Boston was another prominent media fixture misrepresenting the conflict, according to Sonderriis, who urged the Biden administration to take a tougher line in The Guardian and other left-of-center publication for which he writes.

De Waal ironically penned an article in The Boston Review in 2016 in which he wrote that “the West likes morality plays with clear heroes and villains, in which we play the role of savior.”

That is exactly what Sonderriis accuses him of doing for Ethiopia.

A founder of the Save Darfur movement, which historian Mahmood Mamdani called a “humanitarian arm of the War on Terror,”[5] de Waal previously cast the story of “genocide” in Sudan as an “Arab-African affair devoid of Western interests,” according to journalist Keith Harmon Snow.

Further, de Waal depicted the Hutu as the bad guys and Tutsis as the good guys in Rwanda despite the fact that Tutsi leader Paul Kagame triggered the April 1994 Rwandan genocide by invading Rwanda illegally and shooting down the airplane of Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana.[6]

Sonderriis writes that de Waal and other Western journalists falsely reported on the defeat of Ethiopian forces and often advanced the stereotype of “dark continent savagery” that lent support for U.S. foreign policy intervention.

One of the main critics of Western media narratives, ironically, was conservative Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, a notorious war hawk who characterized the TPLF as a terrorist group and called for a rollback of U.S. sanctions targeting the Ethiopian government.

A person in a suit and tie Description automatically generated

Source: rsonderriis.substack.com

Edward Hunt, a Ph.D. in American Studies from the College of William & Mary, wrote an article in The Progressive depicting the TPLF as leftist in favoring more of a statist model of development and presenting the overthrow of Abiy Ahmed’s government—which purged Tigrayan officials and allegedly favored the Amhara—as something positive. He said that it would reverse the neo-liberal and pro-American political agenda of Abiy Ahmed who Hunt blamed for starting the war, though Sonderriis says that most Ethiopians saw things differently.[7]

One Ethiopian commenting on Hunt’s story tellingly wrote that “TPLF is a tiny, regional, ethnic party drunk with regionalism, wounded by inferiority complex, a left over Commie mess from the 60s. The West put them in power in 1991, the other 95% kicking & screaming. They butchered, tortured, & looted 27 yrs. Abiy was elected by 40m votes, only the Ethiopian people can remove him. It’s easier for the apartheid regime to return to power in South Africa than sadist TPLF in Ethiopia.”

Another reader wrote that “[t]he war was not started by the Ethiopian gov. The TPLF thugs went at night and surprise attacked & killed the soldiers in North Ethiopia army base. They attacked the army base that was protecting the Tigrayans for 20 years. They went at night and slaughtered the soldiers & stole weapons. That is why the Ethiopian gov. went North and retrieved the weapons & war resumed. So, the 20 year liar TPLF is the one that started the war.”

One reason the U.S. may have opposed Abiy Ahmed and imposed sanctions on his government was because Ahmed forged closer cooperative relations with China, which supported Ethiopia in the Tigray War, and favored regional integration which could undercut U.S. influence in the Horn.

A sign that a covert operation was afoot was the creation of a Twitter hashtag, “Tigray Genocide,” that appears to have originated from the State Department, CIA or another U.S. government agency.

A screenshot of a social media post Description automatically generated

Source: rsonderriis.substack.com

Another hashtag promoted justice for Tigray women and girls allegedly subjected to mass rape though the scale of these rapes was grossly inflated, according to Sonderriis, and many rapes were committed by the TPLF along with other atrocities that went unreported in the Western media.

A poster of a protest Description automatically generated with medium confidence

Source: rsonderriis.substack.com

The Twitter campaigns seemed reminiscent of the 2014 campaign supported by Michelle Obama to save Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram, and “Kony 2012 campaign” in which the atrocities of Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony were played up in order to justify a covert U.S. military operation in support of the Museveni government to hunt down Kony and protect U.S. military bases.

Yoweri Museveni was, like the TPLF, a loyal U.S. ally who, for years, had been used as a key anchor to help the U.S. access Central Africa’s vast mineral riches. Thus, history appears to be repeating itself, with the Western intelligentsia playing a key role once again in the perpetuation of Western colonialism.

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Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of five books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019), The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018), and Warmonger. How Clinton’s Malign Foreign Policy Launched the U.S. Trajectory From Bush II to Biden (Clarity Press, 2023). He can be reached at: [email protected].

Notes

  1. General Norman Schwarzkopf noted that “the Red Sea, with the Suez Canal in the north and the Bab-el-Mandeb in the south, is one of the most vital sea lines of communication and a critical shipping link between our Pacific and European allies,” hence the U.S. interest in securing a strategic foothold in the Horn of Africa region, cited in David N. Gibbs, “Realpolitik and Humanitarian Intervention: The Case of Somalia,” International Politics, March 2000. 

  2. For the role of Amnesty International and other human rights groups in playing up the Eritrean atrocities, see Ann Garrison, “Amnesty International pushes regime change in Eritrea with dubious, unverifiable report,” The Grayzone Project, September 21, 2023, https://thegrayzone.com/2023/09/21/amnesty-international-regime-change-eritrea/ 
  3. See Mawi Asgedom, “Why the U.S. should call the famine and violence in Tigray a genocide,” The Washington Post, October 6, 2021. On the pattern of biased Western reporting on Africa, see Milton Allimadi, Manufacturing Hate: How Africa Was Demonized in Western Media (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall Hunt Publishing, 2021).
  4. According to Ann Garrison, when the TPLF invaded Ethiopia’s Amhara and Afar Regions, the Western press generally looked the other way, giving Amhara and Afari victims only occasional mention. From April to June 2022, Garrison said that she traveled through Ethiopia’s Amhara and Afar Regions and saw immense suffering in many overcrowded IDP camps, where deeply traumatized Amharas and Afaris told her that the TPLF had murdered their family members and taken all they had until they fled. 
  5. See Mahmood Mamdani, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror(New York: Crown, 2010). 
  6. De Waal’s view conveniently was exactly how the U.S. State Department/Pentagon and CIA wanted the Rwandan conflict to be presented since they were supporting the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) while France was supporting the Hutu. De Waal was a contemporary of John Prendergast, a State Department employee who worked closely with current USAID Administrator Samantha Power at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights and was similarly a strong proponent of “humanitarian intervention” in Africa. According to Keith Harmon Snow, Prendergast worked with Susan Rice to create the Pentagon’s prized African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI)—a euphemistically named entity created to project U.S. power in Africa run by U.S. Army Special Forces Command (SOCOM). 
  7. Hunt emphasized that Abiy pushed through major economic reforms that began the process of dismantling the country’s state-controlled economic system, opening the country’s markets to foreign investors, which earned him the favor of the U.S. ruling elite. The Nation magazine published a story by Daniel Volodzko characteristically titled “There’s Genocide in Tigray, but Nobody’s Talking About It.” https://www.thenation.com/article/world/genocide-in-tigray/ 

Featured image is from prio.org

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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Recently, a Ukrainian official stated that his country would be “happy” to receive retired British ships, which are practically no longer of military use. The case shows how the neo-Nazi regime is weakened and in urgent need of new equipment to continue fighting the proxy war with Russia.

The statement was made by Ukrainian Vice Admiral Aleksey Neizhpapa during an interview with Sky News. Previously, the British media had already published news that two Navy warships, HMS Westminster and HMS Argyll, would be retired and dismantled due to their exhaustion and current uselessness. Both ships are demanding a large technical cost with repairs as well as specialized labor for their operability, which is why it seems more advantageous to demolish them and reuse some parts than to keep them in activity uselessly.

Both ships are Type 23 frigates – a really old naval class that is already being replaced by newer and more efficient models. HMS Westminster was launched in 1992, while HMS Argyll was launched even earlier, in 1987. Despite having already served the British Navy in several strategic operations, there currently does not appear to be any benefit in continuing to operate such frigates, which is why the British military chose to retire them.

“It is always emotive when ships that have a long history of service come to the end of their working life. They and the sailors who crewed them have done the country proud. But decommissioning them is the right decision. The new Type 26 frigates will be in service before those ships can be refitted”, an article about the matter on British media reads.

However, there is apparently a plan in the UK so that, instead of destroying the ships, they are handed over to Ukraine. Neizhpapa stated that his country is interested in the proposal and that he would be “happy” if London donated the frigates to the Ukrainian forces.

“Of course, the Navy needs warships, because we understand that there is no navy without ships. This is why, if such a decision is taken, concerning the possibility of handing over two frigates to the [Ukrainian] Navy, we will be very happy”, he said.

The possibility of donating such ships has been commented on by some experts and journalists in recent days. In fact, the delivery of these retired frigates seems convenient for the UK since the country failed in its previous attempt to establish jointly with Norway a new naval coalition to support Kiev. The plan announced in December included the sending of new mine-clearing ships to Ukraine, but the transfer was halted due to Turkish objection, as Ankara did not allow the ships to cross the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits.

In practice, London is “in debt” to Ukraine as it promised the arrival of new ships but was unable to deliver them. In parallel, the two Type 23 frigates are now useless and generating storage and maintenance problems. So, a viable “solution” to both problems would be to send such ships to Kiev and thus fulfill the promise of new naval aid.

The problem in this situation is that the “help” that the UK apparently has to offer Kiev is simply useless. The country is about to send old and almost inoperable ships to Ukraine, whose efficiency in the intense frictions of the Black Sea would be null. In practice, the UK is getting rid of naval debris and Kiev is making sure it would be “happy” to receive such a “gift”.

The case shows once again that Ukraine is in a desperate situation. Seeing Western military aid decline, Kiev is literally accepting “anything” from its sponsors – even retired ships. The neo-Nazi regime is not able to negotiate peace terms with Russia as it is serving as a proxy in the war, so it needs to continue receiving all types of help just to continue fighting – only postponing the inevitable end result of the conflict, which will be a Russian victory.

With Israel more and more becoming a priority for Western powers – including the UK, which is deeply involved in US-led operations in the Red Sea, Kiev will be “happy” from now on with low-quality, outdated weapons. Less and less aid will be sent to the proxy regime, which shows that the West never had any real concern about Ukraine, having only used it to attack Russia.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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US Army General Christopher Cavoli, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, announced that the largest NATO exercise in decades, Steadfast Defender 2024, will occur in Europe from the end of January to the end of May. 90,000 soldiers from the 31 NATO countries will participate and are about to join NATO Sweden. Over 80 combat aircraft along with helicopters and drones, 50 warships including aircraft carriers, 1,100 tanks, and other combat vehicles will be used in the exercise. The exercise — the largest since the end of the Cold War — will test and refine the war strategy against Russia.

European countries of the Alliance in NATO declared that, with the Steadfast Defender 2024

“the Alliance will demonstrate its ability to strengthen the Euro-Atlantic area through the transatlantic movement of forces from North America. This reinforcement will occur during a simulated emergent conflict scenario against a near-peer adversary.”

The reference to Russia is clear.

The Supreme Allied Commander in Europe also announced that Italy had been chosen as the headquarters of the Allied Reaction Force. The US general underlined that it is “a fundamental component of our new force model and that it is capable of carrying out the entire spectrum of missions and serves as a rapidly deployable strategic reserve”. 

During the exercise, the Italian headquarters of the Allied Reaction Force will carry out a deployment of the Rapid Reaction Force in Poland on the eastern flank of the Alliance, clearly directed against Russia.

The Supreme Allied Commander in Europe did not say that the war exercise, taking place for four months in Europe, would also be nuclear. The aircraft, ships, and missile systems deployed in the Steadfast Defender 2024 have dual conventional and nuclear capabilities. The USA will thus be able to test in a realistic simulation the new nuclear weapons that they are deploying in Europe increasingly close to Russia.

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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It is already abundantly clear that Israel is adamant to ignore the demands of the ICJ and carry through with its genocide until its horrific end. Instead of reversing course, key forces in Israel celebrate their drive for genocide against the Palestinians and their objective of an Israeli colonization of Gaza. See this.

Consequently, Israel will not put to justice anyone involved in its genocide.

We must remember, that the genocide is carried out by the criminal orders and/or criminal incitement by top Israeli leaders like president Herzog, the prime minister Netanyahu, the defense minister Galant, the security minister Ben-Gvir, foreign minister Katz, and finance minister Smotrich. Benny Gantz is probably also guilty as part of this gang.

Guilty is the Israeli military top and lots and lots of people all the way down to soldiers committing the acts. We also have Israeli media, religious persons, analysts, legal experts, and diplomats involved. 

Like Germany 1945, we confront a state and society infested with genocidal ideology, its meticulous planning, and its bloody execution. And the trials afterwards proved no remorse among the perpetrators. 

Haaretz today 29 January 2024, lists nearly all the above-named persons as involved in genocide or incitement to genocide. Haaretz further writes that the ICJ ruling should by adhered to by Israel as a “yellow card” for Israel, including its leaders. But Haaretz is deluded in believing any Israeli institution will take action against the genocide continuing, or any action against any individuals leading or inciting it.

Somebody else must bring justice.

Like Germany 1945, there is no chance that the country itself will stop and carry out justice once its bloody genocide fails in an abyss of self-destruction. Like the trial in Nüremberg in Germany 1945, the outside World will have to organize and carry through the trial for the genocide carried out by Israel in coordination with the USA. An international trial, in which US President Biden, Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and Lloyd Austin will stand accused as well. And like the World saw at Nüremberg in 1945, there is no chance that the defendants will show any remorse, not even in the minute when their sentence was carried out.

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Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.   

Featured image: Ahmad Shabat and his uncle Ibrahim at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip [Atia Darwish/Al Jazeera]

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The Pentagon on Monday said Iran “bears responsibility” for the drone attack in northeastern Jordan that killed three US troops but admitted it has no evidence that Iran was directly involved.

Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said the responsibility fell on Iran due to its support for Iraqi Shia militias the US believes carried out the attack.

“In terms of attribution for the attack, we know this is an [Iran]-backed militia. It has the footprints of Kataib Hezbollah, but [we’re] not making a final assessment,” Singh said at a press conference. “Iran continues to arm and equip these groups to launch these attacks, and we will certainly hold them responsible.”

When asked if the US knew Iran and Iranian leaders were “actually behind this attack, as in planned, coordinated, or directed it,” Singh admitted the US had nothing to show that.

“We know that Iran certainly plays a role with these groups, they arm and equip and fund these groups. I don’t have more to share on — terms of an intelligence assessment on if leaders in Iran were directing this attack,” she said.

Singh was again asked about the claim that Iran was behind the attack and said the US just knows that “Iran funds these groups” and had nothing more to add. Later in the press conference, she said Iran “bears responsibility” for the killing of three American soldiers.

Also on Monday, The New York Times reported that US intelligence officials have no evidence Iran had advanced knowledge of the attack.

“American intelligence officials say that while Iran provides weapons, funding and sometimes intelligence to its proxy groups, there is no evidence that it calls the shots — meaning it may not have known in advance about the attack in Jordan,” the report reads.

Iran has strongly denied it was behind the attack and said the resistance factions were targeting the US forces in the region due to its support for the Israeli slaughter in Gaza. Since mid-October, US bases in Iraq and Syria have come under attack about 160 times, and the US has never produced evidence to show Iran was directing the operations.

The comments from Singh came as President Biden is mulling what his response will be to the killing of the three American troops. He is under pressure from hawks in Congress to bomb Iran directly, and a previous report from the Times said that’s something the administration would consider in response to the death of US troops despite the risk of a full-blown war with Iran.

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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

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From Eastern Europe to East Asia to across the Middle East, the United States is currently positioned on multiple tripwires that could pull our country into a new war the American people do not want.

In 2024, it’ll be more important than ever that Washington adheres to sound American principles, the most fundamental of which is the consent of the governed.

The United States Constitution is clear and concise: “The Congress shall have Power…To declare War.” That authority does not belong to the president (no matter their party), or the generals, or some unelected committee of unknown, faceless bureaucrats. Only the people’s elected representatives assembled in the U.S. Congress can decide whether to bring our nation from a state of peace into a state of war.

And yet, since World War II, their duty has been usurped by the executive branch in the form of the intelligence “community,” the military-industrial complex, and the White House.

According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University, since Joe Biden’s inauguration, American soldiers have been in combat and under enemy fire in eight countries: Afghanistan (prior to Biden’s delayed withdrawal), Iraq, Syria, Mali, Kenya, Somalia, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates.

The Global War on Terror has proven that without the support of the citizenry, expressed through their elected representatives, our country cannot continue these endless wars across the globe.

Like most Americans, my constituents in New Hampshire’s Hillsborough District 1 are tired of forever war and permanent overseas occupation. They have no further tolerance for the expenditure of their money, their blood, or their honor in places like Iraq, where I deployed twice as a Marine Corps rifleman.

With a motivation to restore the Founding Fathers’ intended separation of powers, I cosponsored H.B. 229, the Defend the Guard Act, in the state legislature. This bill would prohibit the deployment of the New Hampshire National Guard into combat overseas unless Congress has first voted to declare war. Last week, with bipartisan support from both conservatives and progressives, H.B. 229 passed the New Hampshire House of Representatives in an 187-182 vote.

This bill, which is only an added enforcement mechanism to Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, drew active opposition. In other states where this legislation has been introduced, lawmakers have been made to feel intimidated by men in uniform, mainly senior officials from the Department of Defense who lobbied aggressively against it. The threats are always the same; don’t rock the boat, or else.

But our soldiers deserve better than complacency. Defend the Guard will not prevent our National Guard units from participating in overseas training in places like El Salvador — with which New Hampshire has a State Partnership Program — or from fulfilling their domestic tasks like disaster relief in other states. It will only ensure that New Hampshire’s National Guardsmen are only sent to fight wars that their representatives have voted for. Isn’t that how our republic is meant to work?

For all the opposition’s big talk, they were drowned out by the immense grassroots backing for the Defend the Guard Act. I know that many of my colleagues’ phones blew up with calls from constituents informing them that they should support this common sense fix to our broken foreign policy.

I’m incredibly proud of the gratitude I’ve received from Granite Staters for championing this legislation, and for the help of fellow co-sponsors John Potucek, Michael Granger, and Matthew Santonastaso — all of us veterans.

H.B. 229 will now move to the state Senate. Furthermore, more than half the states in the union will have Defend the Guard legislation introduced in their legislative bodies in 2024. In March 2023 the Arizona Senate became the first legislative body to pass this bill.

This measure could potentially keep our National Guardsmen out of an unconstitutional war. Their lives are worth that effort, and our Constitution is worth saving.

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Tom Mannion is a two-time Iraq War veteran, deploying with 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines in 2005 and 2007 as an infantry rifleman. He was elected as a New Hampshire State Representative in 2022 and currently serves on the State-Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs committee.

Featured image: Pennsylvania National Guard Soldiers bound for Africa mission, Dec. 2023. (photo by Pennsylvania National Guard )

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Governments should endorse a global moratorium on mRNA vaccines until all questions about their safety have been thoroughly investigated, according to the authors of a new, peer-reviewed article on the COVID-19 vaccine trials and the global vaccination campaign published last week in Cureus, Journal of Medical Science.

Cureus is a web-based peer-reviewed open-access general medical journal using prepublication peer review.

The authors surveyed published research on the pharmaceutical companies’ vaccine trials and related adverse events. They also called for the COVID-19 vaccines to be removed immediately from the childhood immunization schedule.

After the first reports from vaccine trials claimed they were 95% effective in preventing COVID-19, serious problems with method, execution and reporting in the trials became public, which the paper reviewed in detail.

Evidence also shows the products never underwent adequate safety and toxicological testing, and since the vaccine rollout, researchers have identified a significant number of adverse events (AEs) and serious adverse events (SAEs).

Authors M. Nathaniel Mead, Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., Russ Wolfinger, Ph.D., Jessica Rose, Ph.D., Kris Denhaerynck, Ph.D., Steve Kirsch and Dr. Peter McCullough detailed the vaccines’ potential serious harms to humans, vaccine control and processing issues, the mechanisms behind AEs, the immunological reasons for vaccine inefficacy and the mortality data from the registrational trials.

They concluded, “Federal agency approval of the COVID-19 mRNA injectable products on a blanket-coverage population-wide basis had no support from an honest assessment of all relevant registrational data and commensurate consideration of risks versus benefits.”

They also called for the vaccines to be immediately removed from the childhood immunization schedule and for the suspension of the boosters.

“It is unethical and unconscionable to administer an experimental vaccine to a child who has a near-zero risk of dying from COVID-19 (IFR, 0.0003%) but a well-established 2.2% risk of permanent heart damage based on the best prospective data available,” they wrote.

Finally, the authors called for a full investigation into misconduct by the pharmaceutical companies and the regulatory agencies.

It is the first peer-reviewed study to call for a moratorium on the COVID-19 mRNA products, Rose told The Defender.

“Once a proper assessment of the safety and efficacy claims was made herein — upon which the emergency use authorization (EUA)’s and ultimate final authorizations were granted — it was found that the COVID-19 injectable products were neither safe nor effective,” she added.

According to McCollough, “mRNA should never have been authorized for human use.”

Lead author Mead told The Defender, “Our view is that any risk-benefit analysis must consider how much the presumed benefit in terms of reduced COVID-19 related mortality is offset by the potential increase in vaccine-induced mortality.”

Here are six takeaways from the review:

1. The COVID-19 ‘vaccines’ are reclassified gene therapies that were rushed through the regulatory process in a historically unprecedented manner

Before the seven-month authorization process for the mRNA vaccines, no vaccine had ever gone to market without undergoing testing of at least four years, with typical timelines averaging 10 years.

To speed the process, the companies skipped preclinical studies of potential toxicity from multiple doses and cut the typical 6-12 month observation period for identifying longer-term adverse effects and the established 10-15-year period for monitoring for long-term effects such as cancer and autoimmune disorders, the authors wrote.

The trials prioritized documenting effective symptom reduction over SAE and mortality. This was particularly concerning, the authors argued, because mRNA products are gene therapy products reclassified as vaccines and then given EUA for the first time ever for use against a viral disease.

However, the gene therapies’ components have not been thoroughly evaluated for safety for use as vaccines.

There is an uninvestigated and major concern that the mRNA could transform body cells into viral protein factories — with no off-switch — that produce the spike protein for a prolonged period causing chronic systemic inflammation and immune dysfunction.

The spike protein in the vaccine, the authors said, is associated with more severeimmunopathology and other AEs than the spike protein in the virus itself.

The authors suggested that massive government investment in mRNA technology, including hundreds of millions before the pandemic and tens of billions once it began, meant, “U.S. federal agencies were strongly biased toward successful outcomes for the registrational trials.”

The financial incentives along with political pressures to deliver a rapid solution likely influenced a series of flawed decisions that compromised the integrity of the trials and downplayed serious scientific concerns about risks with the technology, they added.

2. Steps were taken in trials to overestimate vaccine efficacy 

Because the trials were designed to assess whether the mRNA vaccine reduced symptoms, they did not measure whether the vaccines prevented severe disease and death. Yet the vaccine makers repeatedly claimed that they do.

“No large randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trials have ever demonstrated reductions in SARS-CoV-2 transmission, hospitalization, or death,” the authors wrote.

Additionally, the number of people who contracted clinical COVID-19 in both the placebo and intervention groups was “too small to draw meaningful, pragmatic, or broad-sweeping conclusions with regard to COVID-19 morbidity and mortality.”

Pfizer’s 95 % efficacy claims were based on 162 of 22,000 placebo recipients contracting PCR-confirmed COVID-19 compared to eight of 22,000 in the vaccine group. None of the placebo recipients died from COVID-19. In the Moderna trials, only one placebo death was attributed to COVID-19.

There was also a much larger percentage of “suspected COVID-19 cases” in both groups, with participants showing COVID-19 symptoms but a negative PCR test. When factoring in those cases, measures of vaccine efficacy drop to about 19%.

The trial subject pool was comprised of largely young and healthy individuals, excluding key groups — children, pregnant women, elderly and immunocompromised people — which can also obscure the vaccine’s actual efficacy and safety.

Findings from reanalyses of data from the Pfizer trials can be interpreted as showing the vaccines made “no significant difference” in reducing all-cause mortality in the vaccinated versus unvaccinated groups at 20 weeks into the trial, the authors wrote.

Even the six-month post-marketing data Pfizer presented to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) showed no reduction in all-cause mortality from the vaccine.

The authors reanalyzed that data, adjusting the analysis of deaths to better account for the fact that when Pfizer unblinded the study people from the placebo group took the vaccine, and found the vaccine group had a higher mortality rate (0.105%) than the unvaccinated group (0.0799%), which they said was a conservative estimate.

One of the most glaring issues with the registrational trials, they noted, was that they exclusively focused on measuring risk reduction — the ratio of COVID-19 symptom rates in the vaccine group versus the placebo group — rather than measuring absolute risk reduction, which is the likelihood someone will show COVID-19 symptoms relative to people in the population at large.

According to FDA guidelines, accounting for both approaches is crucial to avoid the misguided use of pharmaceutical products — but the data were omitted, leading to an overestimation of an intervention’s clinical utility.

While both vaccines touted an approximately 95% risk reduction figure as their efficacy figure, the absolute risk reductions for Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines were 0.7% and 1.1% respectively.

“A substantial number of individuals would need to be injected in order to prevent a single mild-to-moderate case of COVID-19,” the authors wrote.

As an example, using a conservative estimate that 119 people would need to be vaccinated to prevent infection, and assuming that COVID-19 had a 0.23% infection fatality rate, they wrote that approximately 52,000 vaccinations would be necessary to prevent a single COVID-19-related death.

However, “Given trial misconduct and data integrity problems … the true benefit is likely to be much lower,” they wrote.

And, they added, one would need to assess that benefit along with harms, which they estimate to be 27 deaths per 100,000 doses of Pfizer. That means, using the most conservative estimates, “for every life saved, there were 14 times more deaths caused by the modified mRNA injections.”

They also noted that post-rollout evidence confirmed the efficacy claims were overstated. For example, two large cohort Cleveland clinic studies showed the vaccine could not confer protectionagainst COVID-19 — instead, in those trials, more vaccinated people were more likely to contract COVID-19.

One study showed the risk of “breakthrough” infection was significantly higher among people who were boosted and that more vaccinations resulted in a greater risk of COVID-19.

A second study showed adults who were not “up-to-date” with their shots had a 23% lower incidence of COVID-19 than their “up-to-date” colleagues.

3. The trials underestimated the adverse events, including death, despite evidence in the data. 

Harms were also underreported and underestimated for a number of reasons, according to the authors, a practice that tends to be common in randomized industry-sponsored vaccine trials in general and “exceptionally evident” here.

First, because Pfizer unblinded the trial within just a few weeks of the emergency use authorization and allowed people in the placebo group to take the vaccine, there was not sufficient time to identify late-occurring harms because there was no longer a control group.

“Was this necessary, given that none of the deaths in the Pfizer trial were attributed to COVID-19 as the primary cause, and given the very low IFR [infection fatality rate] for a relatively healthy population?” they asked.

Also, trial coordinators were “haphazard” in their approach to monitoring AEs. They prioritized documenting events thought to be related to COVID-19 rather than to the vaccines for the first seven days and only recorded “unsolicited” AEs for 30-60 days. After that period, even very SAEs, like death, were not recorded. Even for the AEs recorded in the first seven days, they only solicited data from 20% of the population.

None of the trial data was independently verified. “Such secrecy may have enabled the industry to more easily present an inflated and distorted estimate of the genetic injections’ benefits, along with a gross underestimation of potential harms,” they wrote.

Subsequent analysis by Michels et al. revealed that deaths and other SAEs — like life-threatening conditions, inpatient hospitalization or extension of hospitalization, persistent or significant disability/incapacity, a congenital anomaly, or a medically significant event — did occur after the cutoff period and before the FDA advisory meeting where emergency authorization was recommended.

During the first 33 weeks of the Pfizer trials, 38 subjects died, according to Pfizer’s own data, although independent research by Michels et al. estimated that that number is only approximately 17% of the actual projected number due to missing data.

And after that, the rate of deaths continued to increase. Michaels et al. found Pfizer failed to report a substantial increase in the number of deaths due to cardiovascular events. They also found a consistent pattern of reporting delays on the date of the death on subjects’ case reports.

Overall, the review authors reported that there were “twice as many cardiac deaths proportionately among vaccinated compared to unvaccinated subjects in the Pfizer trials.”

In their discussion, the authors wrote “Based on the extended Pfizer trial findings, our person-years estimate yielded a 31% increase in overall mortality among vaccine recipients, a clear trend in the wrong direction.”

This raises serious red flags about how the registrational trials were conducted, Mead said. “Assessments of the safety profile of the COVID-19 modified mRNA injections warrant an objective precautionary perspective, any substantial upward trend in all cause mortality within the intervention arm of the trial population reflects badly on the intervention.”

4. Numbers of SAEs in the trials and post-rollout reporting are well-documented, despite claims to the contrary.

Both Pfizer and Moderna found about 125 SAEs per 100,000 vaccine recipients, or one SAE for every 800 vaccines. However, because the trials excluded more vulnerable people, the authors note, even higher proportions of SAEs would be expected in the general population.

The Fraiman et al. reanalysis of the Pfizer trial data found a significant 36% higher risk of SAEs, which included deaths and many life-threatening conditions in the vaccinated participants.

Official SAEs for other vaccines average around only 1-2 per million. Fraiman et alestimated 1,250 SEAs per million vaccines, exceeding that benchmark by “at least 600-fold.”

After the vaccine rollout, analyses of two large drug safety reporting systems in the U.S. and Europe identified signals for myocardial infarction, pulmonary embolism, cardio-respiratory arrest, cerebral infarction, and cerebral hemorrhage associated with both mRNA vaccines, along with ischemic stroke.

And millions of AEs have been reported to those systems.

Another study by Skidmore et al. estimated the total number of fatalities from the vaccines in 2021 alone was 289,789. Autopsy studies have also provided additional evidence of serious harms, including evidence that most COVID-19 mRNA vaccine-related deaths resulted from injury to the cardiovascular system.

In multiple autopsy studies, German pathologist Aren Burkhardt documented the presence of vaccine-mRNA-produced spike proteins in blood vessel walls and brain tissues. This research helps to explain documented vaccine-induced toxicities affecting the nervous, immune, reproductive and other systems.

The Pfizer data also showed an overwhelming number of adverse effects. According to a confidential document released in August 2022, Pfizer had documented approximately 1.6 million AEs affecting nearly every organ system, and one-third of them were classified as serious.

In Pfizer’s trial, Michels and colleagues found a nearly 4-fold increase (OR 3.7, 95%CI 1.02-13.2, p = 0.03) in serious cardiac events (e.g., heart attack, acute coronary syndrome) in the vaccine group. Neither the original trial report nor Pfizer’s Summary Clinical Safety report acknowledged or commented on this safety signal.

“The serious adverse events are all well documented,” Mead said. “Yet it’s surprising to see so many in the medical field continue to ignore or dismiss outright the latter half of the equation when considering all cause mortality trends.”

5. The failure to appropriately test for safety and toxicity poses serious problems. 

Researchers have raised concerns that the mRNA technology is inherently unstable and difficult to store, which leads to batch variability and contamination linked to different rates of AEs.

Recent findings by McKernan et al. that found Pfizers’ mRNA vaccines are contaminated withplasmid DNA that shouldn’t be present — and wasn’t present in the vaccines used in the trials – raising serious safety issues.

That’s because “Process 1,” used in the trials to generate the vaccines involved in vitro transcription of synthetic DNA — essentially a “clean” process. However, that process isn’t viable for mass production, so the manufacturers used “Process 2,” which involves using E. coli bacteria to replicate the plasmids.

Removing plasmids E coli. can result in residual plasmids in the vaccines and the effects of their presence is unknown.

McKernan’s work also revealed the presence of DNA from simian virus 40 (SV40), an oncogenic DNA virus originally isolated in 1960 from contaminated polio vaccines, induces lymphomas, brain tumors, and other malignancies in laboratory animals, raising other safety concerns.

Researchers from Cambridge published a paper in Nature in December 2023, where they found an inherent defect in the modified RNA instructions for the spike protein in COVID-19 immunizations that causes the machinery that translates the gene to the spike protein to “slip” about 10% of the time

This process creates “frameshifts” that cause cells to produce “off-target” proteins in addition to the spike. These proteins, which developers either failed to look for or did not report to regulators, cause undesirable immune responses whose long-term effects are unknown.

6. There are many different possible biological mechanisms that cause AEs and vaccine ineffectiveness.

The review points readers to a series of papyrus that explain a number of different theories to explain the high number of AEs from the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.

“The mechanisms of molecular mimicry, antigen cross-reactivity, pathogenic priming, viral reactivation, immune exhaustion, and other factors related to immune dysfunction all reinforce the biological plausibility for vaccine-induced pathogenesis of malignant and autoimmune diseases,” they wrote. And these mechanisms of immune activation are distinct from the body’s response to a viral infection.

They also note the toxic effects of the primary adjuvant, PEG, and of the spike protein itself.

They close their analysis of the vaccines with a complex explanation for the different immunological basis for protection provided by the vaccines versus natural immunity through infection. They explain the mechanisms for vaccine failure and problems generated by the ability for the mRNA vaccines to perpetuate the emergence of new variants.

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Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.

Featured image is from CHD


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

Reviews

This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon

In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia

In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig 

Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac

A reading of  Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late.  You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

UNRWA Funding Cuts Threaten Palestinian Lives in Gaza and Region, Say NGOs

January 30th, 2024 by Norwegian Refugee Council

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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As aid organisations, we are deeply concerned and outraged that some of the largest donors have united to suspend funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the main aid provider for millions of Palestinians in Gaza and the region. This comes amid a rapidly worsening humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

The suspension of funding by donor states will impact life-saving assistance for over two million civilians, over half of whom are children, who rely on UNRWA aid in Gaza. The population faces starvation, looming famine and an outbreak of disease under Israel’s continued indiscriminate bombardment and deliberate deprivation of aid in Gaza.

We welcome UNRWA’s swift investigation into the alleged involvement of a small number of UN staff members in the October 7th  attacks. We are shocked by the reckless decision to cut a lifeline for an entire population by some of the very countries that had called for aid in Gaza to be stepped up and for humanitarians to be protected while doing their job. This decision comes as the International Court of Justice ordered immediate and effective action to ensure the provision of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza.

152 UNRWA staff have already been killed and 145 UNRWA facilities damaged by bombardment. UNRWA is the largest humanitarian agency in Gaza and their delivery of humanitarian assistance cannot be replaced by other agencies working in Gaza. If the funding suspensions are not reversed we may see a complete collapse of the already restricted humanitarian response in Gaza.

With approximately over one million displaced Palestinians taking shelter in or around 154 UNRWA shelters, the agency and aid organisations have continued to work in near impossible circumstances to provide food, vaccinations, and freshwater. The countries suspending funds risk further depriving Palestinians in the region of essential food, water, medical assistance and supplies, education and protection.

We urge donor states to reaffirm support for the vital work that UNRWA and its partners do to help Palestinians survive one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of our times. Countries must reverse these funding suspensions, uphold their duties towards the Palestinian people and scale up humanitarian assistance for civilians in dire need in Gaza and the region.

Signed

ActionAid
American Friends Service Committee
The Association of International Development Agencies – Aida
Caritas Internationalis
CCFD-Terre Solidaire
DanChurchAid
Danish Refugee Council
Diakonia
Humanity & Inclusion/ Handicap International (HI)
International Council for Voluntary Agencies
INTERSOS
Johanniter International Assistance
Médecins du Monde France, Spain, Switzerland, Canada, Germany
Norwegian Church Aid
Norwegian People’s Aid
Norwegian Refugee Council
Oxfam
Plateforme des ONG françaises pour la Palestine
Première Urgence Internationale
Save the Children
War Child Alliance

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Featured image: A view of a United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Khan Yunis, Gaza on October 22, 2023 [Abed Zagout/Anadolu Agency]

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Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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There has been a lot of debate about the impacts of the highly ambitious development interventions and projects of China in other developing countries. In this context a recent analysis by GRAIN, a highly respected Europe-based organization whose studies on food and farming systems in particular have been widely appreciated, deserves serious attention, as various reports of GRAIN have been recognized for their concerns and commitments regarding equality, justice and environment protection, particularly in the context of small farmer communities.

This report of GRAIN, titled ‘Expanding Markets, Undermining Food Sovereignty—10 Years of Belt and Road’, released towards the end of January 2024, is important also in the context of the debate on China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

This study tells us that China’s food trade with BRI partners surged by 162 per cent in the last decade, reaching USD 76.10 billion. Since 2018, China has been the leading country providing investments internationally to agriculture, averaging USD 1.71 billion annually. While China has made significant strides in securing control over its overseas food supply through BRI investments, its dependence on food imports has grown has also grown.

In addition, this study states there is the expanding involvement of Chinese corporations through BRI across the global food chain, from seeds to processed foods. In Africa, the BRI approach, referred to as “agriculture for profit”, has operated through massive private or state-owned companies and has coupled the financing of transportation infrastructure projects (like rail and ports) with projects to industrialise African agriculture through hybrid seeds, machinery, logistics, food storage and processing facilities provided by Chinese companies.

The GRAIN report informs us that through its massive communication network, the BRI is promoting agriculture capitalisation in Africa as a means to eradicate poverty. China’s agricultural intentions in Africa are mainly concerned with its soaring domestic meat consumption and support of its factory farming of poultry and pigs, which has created a huge demand for imported soybeans and maize for animal feed. 

Despite earlier failed attempts, at the China-Africa Leaders’ Roundtable Dialogue in Johannesburg in August 2023, President Xi Jinping emphasised that China would continue to try and develop large-scale crop farming on the continent. He also stressed that importance would be given to build up seed production capacity and seed markets for its corporations.

China’s largest seed company, Yuan Longping High-Tech Agriculture, a subsidiary of the state-owned conglomerate CITIC, has been tasked with leading this effort in Africa. In Tanzania, the company is pursuing a major effort to develop soybean production for export. 

In 2022, the GRAIN report tells us the Tanzanian government provided it with 53,000 hectares for a large-scale farming operation in the Chunya District of the Mbeya Region and in 2023 it fast-tracked the approval of the company’s seed varieties. This company has also expanded in South America in a big way emerging as one of the biggest seed companies internationally. What is more its GM (genetically modified) maize varieties have been approved for use within China. Longping High-Tech and COFCO are also actively developing exports of soybeans in the West African country of Benin, which along with Tanzania and Ethiopia, was recently singled out by China for the development of soybean exports. China and Benin signed a protocol on the export of soybeans in September 2019 and, by 2022, Benin’s annual exports to China exceeded 210,000 tonnes.

Benin is also a target for maize exports. While maize is a staple food in Benin and is grown widely across the country, it is almost entirely consumed locally. Longping High-tech is trying to change this and develop a surplus for export through a programme supported by China’s Ministry of Commerce, that is training farmers in growing its high-yield hybrid maize varieties. Other crops for export to China, beyond maize and soybeans, are also being supported in Africa through the BRI.  

Coming to the fisheries sector, the GRAIN report informs us that China’s rapidly expanding fleet of deep-sea trawlers as a techno-fix to deal with the decline in global fish stocks is actually playing a major role in accelerating the depletion.

“Having badly overfished their own coastal waters, Chinese companies are sending their giant trawlers further and further overseas, bringing them into increasing conflict with coastal communities who depend on these same waters for their livelihoods and food needs.”

Under current BRI projects, the GRAIN report says Chinese fishing companies are encouraged to leverage BRI investments in harbour infrastructure to gain more fishing access in foreign countries, for instance Somalia, at the expense of local fishing communities and the sustainability of local marine resources. 

Somalia has the longest coastline of any African nation. But the local small-scale fishing communities that live along the coast are already suffering from overfishing by foreign vessels, including many Chinese-owned vessels. Chinese fishing companies started moving into Somali waters in a big way after December 2018, when the Somali government issued renewable annual fishing licenses to 31 vessels that are part of the China Overseas Fisheries Association. Although the licenses only allowed Chinese vessels to operate 24 nautical miles away from Somalia’s coast, the local fishing communities say that their government is not able to stop vessels from encroaching this boundary. A new deal with Chaoliang Group under the BRI framework will only worsen the situation.

In Pakistan, the GRAIN report says, a major project of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which is part of the BRI, is the development of a massive deep-sea port in the fishing village of Gwadar in Balochistan that will connect by rail and road to China’s Xinjiang region. The project, which gives control of the port to Chinese companies, has also brought an influx of Chinese fishing trawlers to the area. One of the Chinese companies now fishing the waters off of the Gwadar coast is Fujian Hengli Fishery, which is known for its illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing in West Africa, with evidence of various infringements including illegal nets, shark finning and fishing without licences. 

According to this GRAIN report,

“The presence of Fujian Hengli and other Chinese fishing companies is already having major impacts on local fishing communities, who say the giant vessels are wiping out their fish stocks, out-competing their local fishing boats and destroying their livelihoods.”

In December 2022, the Haq Do Tehreek (Gwadar Rights Movement) led a two-month protest to demand an end to deep-sea fish trawling by Chinese vessels and, together with thousands of people from local small fishing communities, staged a blockade of the port. Despite the strong community resistance, the Chinese companies are eager to fish in Pakistan’s waters as they can sell the catch back home duty-free.

At the 2023 BRI Forum, Beijing indicated that it was looking to e-commerce as the vehicle that bring food from BRI nations to the bowls of Chinese consumers. In the context of a recent agreement with Cambodia, the GRAIN study notes that so far the visible beneficiaries are major Chinese companies and powerful Cambodian businessmen with large agricultural holdings.

The GRAIN report concludes,

“As evidenced by China’s plans in agriculture, fisheries and e-commerce in Africa and Asia, it is hard to find anything “green” or small-scale about the BRI. On the contrary, it is only leading to further grabbing of limited natural resources for the profit of China’s corporations, while millions of peasants, fisher-folks and others are left under the thumb of its agribusiness and digital giants.

“Agriculture for profit” is not only an economic gamble, but also a social and environmental one – for China and its BRI partners.”

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Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Planet in Peril, Protecting Earth for Children, Man over Machine and India’s Quest for Sustainable Farming and Healthy Food. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Global Times

Ukraine Sells Its Soul to the WEF’ers: Launches Program to Fully Digitize Citizenry in Partnership with Globalist World Economic Forum

By Leo Hohmann, January 29, 2024

The World Economic Forum and Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation have announced their mutual interest in establishing a Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) in Ukraine, with a focus on government and corporate technologies.

Judicial Murder in Alabama. Death Penalty by Nitrogen Hypoxia

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, January 30, 2024

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

International Court of Justice Rules South African Claims of Genocide Against Palestinians by Israel Are Plausible

By Abayomi Azikiwe, January 29, 2024

In a landmark ruling handed down by the United Nations High Court on January 26 rejected the State of Israel’s attempt to dismiss the case brought by the Republic of South Africa demanding an end to genocide against the Palestinians.

Gaza Versus The Hague: The ICJ Failed Again – A Case of “Political Correctness”?

By Peter Koenig, January 29, 2024

The 17-judge panel of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) today (26 January 2024) found South Africa’s assertion that Israel is committing genocide “plausible.” This would indicate that South Africa won the case. Unfortunately, a closer look is much less optimistic. It shows again a hesitant judgment the ICJ, despite all indications for massive and brutal genocide. The judgment is weak and close to meaningless, when it comes to safe future Palestinian lives.

“Israel wants all of Palestine, and denies the existence of the Palestinian people,” Interview with Kari Jaquesson

By Kari Jaquesson and Steven Sahiounie, January 29, 2024

EU foreign affairs council held a Peace Summit in Brussels on January 22, chaired by EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell. The EU presented a proposal, which some have called bizarre, to create a framework for a Peace Plan, with the ultimate goal of a two-state solution by 2025. It ignores the genocide being committed in Gaza today, and fails to call for a ceasefire.

Destroy a Nation: Israel Is Deliberately Bombing Palestine’s Educational Institutions

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, January 29, 2024

If the Palestinians don’t have educational institutions to train doctors, engineers, lawyers, historians, mathematicians, religious scholars, lawyers, and every other profession that is essential for a nation to survive and thrive, then what kind of society would they have?

The Decision of the International Tribunal of the Hague Is a Triumph for Netanyahu?

By Germán Gorraiz López, January 29, 2024

The newspaper Haaretz in an editorial of October 8 directly accused Netanyahu of being “responsible for this war between Israel and Gaza” and also, Israeli public opinion would already be holding Netanyahu responsible for the resounding failure of Israeli security by disparaging Egyptian information.

Israeli Ministers Attend ‘Return to Gaza Conference’, Speak in Support of Resettlement

By Middle East Eye, January 29, 2024

Thousands of Israelis, including ministers from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party, gathered in Jerusalem on Sunday for a conference calling to resettle the Gaza Strip. At least 12 Israeli ministers participated in the conference about rebuilding Israeli settlements in Gaza and encouraging the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, Israeli journalist Barak Ravid reported.

Forget Elections, Border Crisis Already Disintegrates America

By Drago Bosnic, January 29, 2024

The complete lack of basic etiquette when talking about Joe Biden’s next move shows just how little authority the incumbent has over half of the country. The situation in Texas is just one symptom of this.

‘Largest Ever’ NATO Exercise to Rehearse Russian Attack on Europe

By Zero Hedge, January 29, 2024

A massive NATO military exercises slated to run all the way through the end of May has kicked off. Exercise Steadfast Defender 24 is being hailed as the largest NATO exercises since the Cold War. Some 90,000 troops from all 31 members states will take part.

Judicial Murder in Alabama. Death Penalty by Nitrogen Hypoxia

January 30th, 2024 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: [email protected] 

Featured image is licensed under Fair Use

Rotational Seizures in COVID-19 Vaccinated

January 30th, 2024 by Dr. William Makis

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Jan. 6, 2024 – Scary scene in Qatar, as Umm Salal’s Andy Delort collapsed to the ground 10 minutes after he scored a goal – French player was treated on the pitch and watched the second half of the Qatar Cup final on the bench.

Click here to view.

 

May 22, 2023 – Man collapses in the store.

Click here to view.

Dec. 18, 2022 – Supermarket collapse.

Click here to view.

 

Dec. 9, 2022 – Asian man on scooter.

Click here to view.

 

Click here to read the full article.

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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

Reviews

This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon

In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia

In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig 

Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac

A reading of  Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late.  You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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Ukraine may be at war but that isn’t stopping it from playing a leading role in the digitization of the global economy.

The World Economic Forum and Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation have announced their mutual interest in establishing a Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) in Ukraine, with a focus on government and corporate technologies.

As reported by Smart Cities World, the letter of intent to establish the GovTech center in Kiev was signed by Børge Brende, president of the World Economic Forum and Mykhailo Fedorov, deputy prime minister for innovation, development of education, science and technology, and minister of digital transformation, Ukraine.

The so-called “GovTech” program is the WEF’s plan for world government under a digital reset and it’s already been launched in many countries. They admit this on their own website in an article titled: “World Economic Forum Launches Global Government Technology Centre in Berlin.”

There are GovTech countries, cities and even digital GovTech counties.

The announcement of Ukraine’s participation in “GovTech” was made at the World Economic Forum’s 2024 summit earlier this month in Davos, Switzerland, under the theme of “Rebuilding Trust.”

Rule number one of any sane person who values individual freedom: Never trust a globalist. And a WEF’er globalist is the worst kind of globalist. Is it making more sense now why the WEF Western puppet leaders in Washington, London, Ottawa, Paris, Geneva and Berlin are so dead set on defending Ukraine against Russian “aggression?” The cumulative West led by Washington and London has invested in provoking this aggression since the early 2000’s when George W. Bush began wooing Ukraine into the Western orbit of NATO.

The New World Order runs through Ukraine. It is one of the main nerve centers of globalism, sex trafficking, U.S.-controlled biolabs and money laundering for the rich and powerful. They can’t lose it and they will send millions of their own people into the meat grinder to die defending it. As soon as they run what’s left of the Ukrainians through that meat grinder, you will see them sending Americans, Brits, Germans and Frenchmen. Bank on it.

According to the Smart Cities World article cited above, in recent years,

“according to the WEF, Ukraine has evolved into a global GovTech powerhouse, becoming the first country with a digital ID system that can be used across the nation and the fourth in Europe to launch a biometric digital driving license.”

Ukraine reports that in line with its goal to make 100 percent of public services available online, almost 20 million Ukrainians are already using the Diia application, which allows them to access key documents and government services.

The reason for establishing such a center in Kiev, the article says, would be “to provide a platform to develop government technologies by uniting scientists, businesses, technology companies, the public sector and the global communities of the forum. Its thematic focus will be the digital transformation of government, the development of e-government and widespread digital literacy.”

Jeremy Jurgens, managing director of the World Economic Forum, said:

“We commend the inspirational work of the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine as [it] implements a strong digitalisation agenda under the most challenging circumstances. This does not only prove the resilience of Ukraine’s government and citizens but also the digital infrastructure of the country. The creation of a new center in Ukraine would undoubtedly help Ukraine develop new partnerships and strengthen its GovTech agenda.”

Make no mistake: the “GovTech” agenda is the same as the “Luciferian agenda” to create a high-tech oligarchy on a global scale.

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Leo Hohmann is a totally independent reporter of news and analysis not beholden to any government or corporate money. If you appreciate my work and would like to support it, you may send a donation of any size c/o Leo Hohmann, P.O. Box 291, Newnan, GA 30264, or via credit card through GiveSendGo, a Christian crowd-funding site.  

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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In a landmark ruling handed down by the United Nations High Court on January 26 rejected the State of Israel’s attempt to dismiss the case brought by the Republic of South Africa demanding an end to genocide against the Palestinians.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a series of orders in a 29-page ruling directed at Tel Aviv mandating that it halts indiscriminate persecution, killing and displacement of the 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip. (See this)

Both parties to the case, Pretoria and Tel Aviv, must reappear before the ICJ within one month to present oral arguments on the lawsuit which accuses the settler-colonial state of being in breach of the Genocide Convention. South Africa and other states around the world viewed the decision as a preliminary victory which allows the case to go forward.

Since October 7 the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has engaged in targeted assassinations against Palestinian resistance forces, their leadership, along with the systematic attacks upon neighborhoods, healthcare services, schools, religious institutions and infrastructure. Despite the denials of genocide by Tel Aviv and its backers in the United States, Britain and other imperialist states, the ICJ took note within its decision that more than 26,000 people have been killed since the latest military assault by the occupying forces.

The war waged by the Zionist regime, which is facilitated through arms shipments from its allies, the deployment of imperialist military forces in the region, financial resources and diplomatic cover from the U.S. and other NATO countries, has undoubtedly done irreparable harm to the Palestinians through mass injuries, deaths, the destruction of civil society and the denial of food, water, freedom of worship, education and household security. Repeated statements backed up by violent actions from Israeli officials provide ample evidence of intent to eliminate the Palestinian people in whole or in part.

Contents of the ICJ Decision

In a summary of the ICJ preliminary ruling on the issues brought before it by the South African government, Lawfare, a legal journal, says

“The ICJ found that it had prima facie jurisdiction under Article IX of the Genocide Convention to entertain the case and agreed that South Africa has standing to bring the case under the common interests of upholding the Convention—a matter that Israel did not challenge.” (See this)

This same article goes on to point out:

“On Jan. 26, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued provisional measures in a case brought by South Africa against Israel for its alleged breaches of the Genocide Convention in its actions in Gaza. The ICJ found that it had prima facie jurisdiction under Article IX of the Genocide Convention to entertain the case and agreed that South Africa has standing to bring the case under the common interests of upholding the Convention—a matter that Israel did not challenge.

The ICJ ordered the following provisional measures under Article 41:

Israel must take all measures possible to prevent the commission of all acts under Article II of the Genocide Convention in relation to Palestinians in Gaza. This includes ‘(a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.’ The ICJ specified that Israel must ensure ‘with immediate effect’ that its military does not commit any of the aforementioned acts.

Israel must prevent and punish ‘the direct and public incitement to commit genocide’ against Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel must allow humanitarian assistance into the Gaza Strip.

Israel must ensure the preservation of, and prevent the destruction of, evidence related to acts under the scope of Article II and Article III of the Genocide Convention against Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel must submit a report to the ICJ on all measures taken to uphold the provisional measures ordered by the ICJ within one month.

The ICJ did not call on Israel to suspend its military operations in Gaza, which was one of the provisional measures South Africa had called for.”

Even though the ICJ did not issue a provisional order to Tel Aviv for a ceasefire which has become the rallying cry for billions of people around the world, South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Dr. Naledi Pandor, suggested that if the orders are to be carried out by Israel it would require a cessation of hostilities by the IDF. The South African government hailed the decision along with many other entities internationally.

Responses to the ICJ Decision

President Cyril Ramaphosa of the Republic of South Africa in a televised address said of the ICJ ruling that:

“We welcome the measures that the court ordered by majority decision, ruling that Israel military should not commit acts of genocide against Palestinians. Israel should take all measures to prevent and punish incitement to genocide. Furthermore, take immediate and effective measures to allow basic services and humanitarian assistance to Gaza and it should preserve evidence of what is happening in Gaza, including submitting a report within a month on all measures taken to give effect to the ICJ order within one month. This Order is binding on Israel and must be respected by all states that are party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.” 

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, a close ally of the South African government and staunch supporter of the Palestinian struggle for national liberation and sovereignty, the president of the country was reported as recognizing that:

“Iranian President Ebrahim Raeisi says South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has drawn the admiration of all freedom seekers worldwide, hours before the court announces its interim ruling. During a telephone conversation with his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday night, Raeisi lauded the ‘courageous’ initiative, stressing that the move was taken by a country that has experienced the menace of racism and genocide for years. ‘The measure is praised not only by the Muslim world but also by all freedom seekers across the globe,’ the Iranian president said, according to his press service.” 

Within the Israeli regime itself, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reported to have ordered his “unified war cabinet” members to refrain from commenting on the ICJ decision at this point. Nonetheless, some of the more right-wing cabinet members condemned the UN Court ruling labeling it as a continuation of the persecution of Jewish people. See this.

The U.S.-based Jewish newspaper, Forward, wrote an editorial where it attempted to take solace that the ICJ did not order what they described as a “one-side” ceasefire. This same publication also noted that the Court did not order the IDF to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. (See this)

In an editorial written by Anthony Dworkin on the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) website, the author recognizes differing positions held by members of the European Union (EU) on the Israel-Gaza war. However, Dworkin calls upon member-states to abide by the decision while requiring compliance from the State of Israel as a condition of its relations with the settler-colonial state. This position is that of the writer and is by no means a reflection of the views of Europeans.

Biden Administration Facing Federal Lawsuit for Complicity in Genocide Against Palestinians

Meanwhile the federal lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) against President Joe Biden and other leading appointees within his administration is moving forward as well. Just hours after the ICJ issued its ruling on the case filed by South Africa, a hearing was held in Oakland, California where the several Palestinian human rights groups and individuals are claiming that the actions of the U.S. are facilitating genocide in Palestine. (See this)

The investigative news website, The Intercept, wrote on the hearing saying:

“Lawyers involved with the lawsuit playing out in federal court said that the ICJ ruling bolsters their case. Their lawsuit argues that Biden, Blinken, and Austin are liable under U.S. law for failing to uphold their obligation to prevent genocide in Gaza. In Oakland, dozens of people lined up outside the courthouse hours before the hearing on Friday, according to organizers on the ground, while the Zoom stream reached its capacity of 1,000 people tuning in.” (See this)

This case filed in the U.S. federal court and the ICJ lawsuit at The Hague are representative of the burgeoning Palestinian solidarity movement which is rapidly spreading throughout the world. These legal challenges to Israeli and U.S. impunity are contributing to the struggle to end the siege on Gaza and all occupied territories as well as winning the total freedom and emancipation of the oppressed people of Palestine.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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The 17-judge panel of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) today (26 January 2024) found South Africa’s assertion that Israel is committing genocide “plausible.” This would indicate that South Africa won the case.

Unfortunately, a closer look is much less optimistic. It shows again a hesitant judgment the ICJ, despite all indications for massive and brutal genocide. The judgment is weak and close to meaningless, when it comes to safe future Palestinian lives.

First, the ICJ accepted that South Africa had jurisdiction in this case, because “some things that South Africa has alleged are certainly taking place and fall within the definition of the UN Genocide Convention of 1948.” See this.

Al Jazeera summarized the ICJ’s ruling as follows:

  • The court says it has jurisdiction to rule in the case.
  • The court orders Israel to take measures to prevent acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip, must report back in one month.
  • The court says Israel must prevent and punish incitement to genocide.
  • The court says Israel must allow humanitarian aid into the Strip.
  • The court obliges Israel to take more measures to protect Palestinians but does not order it to end military operations in the Strip.

The Court evidently did not go far enough. What good does it do to “allow humanitarian aid and prevent the deaths of innocent citizens”, if Israel is permitted to continue killing hundreds if not thousands of innocent and defenseless Palestinians.

The Court did not rule an immediate ceasefire or a ceasefire at all – nor did it issue a request for Peace negotiations.

Of course, Israel would not have obeyed such a ruling, nor would the staunch supporters of Israel have stopped encouraging Israels “self-defense” killing, but it would have sent a message to the world, namely that ICJ is not afraid to fall “politically unpopular” judgments, and that Israel and genocide would be enshrined in Israels short 75-year history.

PM Netanyahu’s and Co’s argument of “self-defense”, justified by “We are genocide victims” are the arguments of psychopaths. The extent of the Israeli atrocious and merciless killing of Palestinians, shows the truth to the world.  

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Ahead of the judgment the South African Foreign Minister, Naledi Pandor, had this to say:

“The three letters ‘ICJ’ were not known to many people in South Africa until the case was filed”. And “Our aim was and is to highlight the plight of the innocent in Palestine” and “draw attention to the lack of justice and freedom.” 

She added that regardless of success or failure, “the real analysis and judgment is going to be on the court itself.” See this from RT 26 January 2024.

The Israeli government does not accept the ICJ ruling, ordering preventing the genocide of the Palestinian people. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the very claim that Israeli is committing genocide is “not only false, it’s outrageous.”

Where does this judgment leave the war?

Unless the western support will falter rapidly, both morally and by monetary and weapon deliveries – perhaps because of some ethics that the Court’s decision may have awoken – Israel’s brutal genocide is likely going to continue.

PM Netanyahu, practically from day one, anticipated that this would be a long war, intimidating that it was not just a war of retaliation for an [Israeli / Western planned] Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, but it was a war to conquer over the coming years much of the Middles East and its riches, by gradually establishing “The Greater Israel”, which would include 100% of Palestine, 100% Jordan, 100% of Lebanon, 70% of Syria, 50% of Iraq, 33% of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Nile. Netanyahu would, of course, not say tis, but it was implicit.

To top it off, since about 1984, Israel has a ten Agorot coin, said to depict on its backside a map of  Greater Israel.

The sign on the coin could also resemble the ancient kingdom of Babylon in 539 BCE.

The 10 Agorot coin is one of the New Israeli Sheqel (NIS) coin series, also known as simply the Israeli shekel (sign: ₪, code: ILS). Israeli agorot and shekel are the currency of Israel.

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The depiction on the coin is full of controversy. Some Israeli say that the picture of this new coins was taken over form the original sheqel – and that, indeed, it represented Israel’s aspiration of expansion towards a Greater Israel. Israelis are proud of carrying “Greater Israel” in their pockets. See this.

Without speaking much about it, most Israelis support the war against Gaza / Palestine, as it is supposed to pave the way towards Greater Israel. No time horizon is given to achieve this goal.

However, a Greater Israel would be one of the resources richest nations in the world, especially in terms of hydrocarbons. It would also include the trillion-plus cubic feet of gas discovered in the 1990s off shore of Gaza, belonging today to Palestine.

Back to the 26th of January 2024 weak ICJ judgment. It leaves room for Israel to pursue her course towards the Greater Israel, which is no doubt in the interest of the west. Having an almost endless supply of oil and gas from a secure source, Israel, would allow the west breaking any ties with Russia and the Arab world for energy supply.

It also shows clearly the symbiotic relationship between Israel – an artificial western (UK) Zionist invented country, an interdependence that serves primarily those who created Israel in the first place and, on the other hand, gives Zionist Israel the grandeur of the Chosen People, plainly anchored in their bible, the Torah.    

To get there, much bloodshed would be the course of the conquest. This MUST be avoided by sensible people, and here is where an International Court of Justice – one that is neutral, not responding to any commands from globalist leaders, might and would have significant influence, by appealing to the conscience of those supporting the genocide.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).

Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

Featured image: Judge Joan Donoghue of the U.S., president of the ICJ, reading the Court’s ruling on Friday. (U.N. TV Screenshot)

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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Dark Purple Clots in COVID-19 Vaccinated:

 

Click here to read the full article.

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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

Reviews

This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon

In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia

In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig 

Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac

A reading of  Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late.  You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

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“There was no such thing as Palestinians,” said Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, in an interview with The Sunday Times on June 15, 1969.

In March 2023, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, denied the existence of a Palestinian people or nationhood just weeks after calling for a Palestinian town to be “erased.”

137 countries worldwide (70%) have recognized Palestine. In 2014 the EU voted to ‘Recognize Palestine in principle’. Within Europe as a whole, only the Czech Republic, Iceland, Malta, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Sweden, and Ukraine have recognized Palestine.

We know that the US supports the genocide in Gaza, but what do the Europeans think? In an effort to answer that question, Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse interviewed the Norwegian expert on the Middle East, Kari Jaquesson.

Steven Sahiounie (SS):  EU foreign affairs council held a Peace Summit in Brussels on January 22, chaired by EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell. The EU presented a proposal, which some have called bizarre, to create a framework for a Peace Plan, with the ultimate goal of a two-state solution by 2025. It ignores the genocide being committed in Gaza today, and fails to call for a ceasefire.

How is this proposal being viewed in Europe?

Kari Jaquesson (KJ):  Before we start, I just want to let your readers know who I am, Steven, and also that we know each other from when I first visited Syria in 2017 as an independent journalist and I did an interview with you on my stop-over in Beirut. It is a great pleasure to follow your work.

So, I am a Norwegian national, and Norway is not a member of EU, though much of our legislation is being dictated by EU-mandates. Much of our political cast is very pro-EU, even though Norwegians have twice voted not to become members.

I am a private citizen, do not belong to any political party, and participate in public discourse representing only myself. As more or less a household name in Norway, both because of a 20+ year-long TV -career as a fitness and health expert, later as a presenter in different TV-shows, and a debater and op-ed author of so-called controversial issues, I have been able to lift non-mainstream perspectives into the public eye. My profession is still in fitness and health, and in addition I work as a researcher, translator and occasional writer for steigan.no, the only truly independent major Norwegian non mainstream news portal, so I process daily a lot of news, discussion and commentaries from European, American, African and Arabic sources, as well as historical files. I just want to make it clear that I only speak for myself, I do not represent any organization or company.

The distance between the non-elected officials in the EU-administration and the peoples of Europe could hardly be greater. This has been ongoing for years, and the heads of state in West European countries have hardly any popular support at all. The people in Western Europe, and let me include Norway are in great numbers demoralized and struggling to make ends meet.

The NATO proxy war against Russia is draining the state coffers, and even in a should-be wealthy country like Norway, we have long lines in the food banks, energy costs have gone through the roof, and the general cost of living is not sustainable for an increasing part of the population. The state is extremely wealthy, but people’s wallets are getting slimmer by the day. Most people have little or no time or interest in politics, and most people get their so-called news from the state-subsidized media, which includes not only the big newspapers and TV-channels, but also former so-called independent outlets.

So, quite frankly, most people do not know about nor care about, nor have the energy or will to reach out to more in depth coverage of such events as the announcement of EU’s proposal. But, on the other hand, there is an impressing engagement against both the genocide going on as we speak, and the occupation of Palestine as such.

“From now on I will not talk about the peace process, but I want a two-state-solution process,” Borell said to journalists ahead of a EU foreign ministers’ meeting.

This concept of two states has been dangled in front of the Palestinian people for decades, but I can’t see how anyone who has followed the history of the occupation for one minute can take such a stand seriously. The Zionist entity has made it perfectly clear, not only now, but through their actions since 1948 that they want all of Palestine, and more. Furthermore, the occupiers deny the mere existence of Palestine, and even of a Palestinian people.

The EU do not use the correct terminology, which is a sure give-away on the partiality. They keep saying conflict, but avoid at all cost the true description. The true description is occupation. 

SS:  The Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz, showed EU foreign ministers a video about creating an artificial island next to Gaza to house Palestinians. Various Israeli plans to deport Gazans to the Sinai desert in Egypt, and the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank to Jordan, have been openly discussed.

How do Europeans view the ethnic-cleansing of Gaza?

KJIn all European cities there have been, and are still huge demonstrations against the ongoing genocide. I am not sure all are aware of all the indecent remarks and proposals for “final solution” the occupiers are announcing. The news coverage is biased, and a notable part of the public are easy targets for the type of shock and awe reporting that dominated the news right after the October 7th incident. Their mind is still fixed on what has long since been debunked as flat out lies.

But even so, an engagement not seen since the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) in France is keeping its momentum, and some admissions are being made by some Western-European leaders.

According to a poll in Norway’s biggest newspaper earlier this month, almost every second Norwegian thinks it would be right to boycott Israel, but the government has no such plans. 

Minister of foreign affairs Espen Barth Eide has previously called Gaza “hell on earth”, but has been adamant that Norway cannot implement its own national sanctions. We have no tradition in Norway of unilateral sanctions, he said, adding that Norway would do it if the Security Council agrees. Norway has since 2011 been practicing the same sanctions against Syria as the EU, although we are not a member. 

SS:  The EU is planning to impose visa bans on 12 or so of the most violent Israeli settlers soon, according to French foreign minister Stéphane Séjourné. However, many of the 700,000 illegal settlers in the West Bank are US citizens, so the ban would likely be meaningless.

Why would the EU propose something so insignificant, instead of calling for the end of occupation in the West Bank?

KJ:  First of all, what difference would this make? What is the purpose? And what is this other than a pathetic symbolic suggestion? As you point out, they have dual citizenship, and though the numbers vary, it is reason to believe that hundreds of thousands of dual citizenship-holders have returned to their country of origin. Which is a harsh contrast to the situation of the Palestinians who have no citizenship at all, and who know that if they leave, they will never be able to return.

After this week’s ruling there is a legal ground to accuse Europeans who have been fighting with the IDF to be prosecuted and punished for having participated in a genocide. And there are many who are doing this.

SS:  The US Biden administration refuses to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.  They are prevented in doing so, even though the majority of Americans are in favor of a ceasefire, because of the Israel lobby, AIPAC, which exerts overwhelming pressure on the politics in the US.

Does Europe have a similar Israel lobby which prevents EU leaders from demanding a ceasefire in Gaza?

KJ:  It is almost impossible to understand to what extent France and Britain is controlled by Jewish Zionist groups, but you may get an impression if you try to make count of who is allowed on the TV-debates and the biased perspective from the TV-presenters and who they invite for interviews and for commenting. However, this is a complete taboo and you will not find any serious discussion about this in any major news outlet. No mainstream politician will touch the issue, well knowing it would be political suicide.

Years ago, the former Israeli Minister Shulamit Aloni was a guest on the American channel Democracy Now, and she explained the inability for the Zionists to accept criticism without resorting to false accusations of antisemitism and the second world war. She called it “a trick that we always use”.

Most of the Western European countries, including Norway may be described as ‘vallas’, in other words, satellite states of the United States of America. We have no independent foreign policy.

SS:  The German government has been supporting the revenge killing of 25,000 Palestinians in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli government.  They keep reiterating the mantra, “Israel has the right to defend itself.”  Many experts have characterized Germany as a country held hostage to the holocaust, as they have refused to call for a ceasefire.

Isn’t it time that Germany divorce itself from the crimes of Adolf Hitler, and be allowed to treat Israel like any other country?

KJFirst of all, Israel is not a country, let me make that clear. It is an occupation. Secondly, the occupation is expanding with an insatiable appetite for more land, therefore this supposed country has no borders. Also, it has no constitution.

Is it really the alleged guilt from the second world war that is making Germany so docile vis-a-vis the genocidal Zionist? Maybe there is another reason, less noble. Unfortunately, this is verboten territory.

Germany and many other countries have made research and revisions of that period illegal, even for historians, and even if the number of alleged victims have been significantly reduced, yes, officially, it is forbidden to say so. Even the plaque at the most infamous concentration camp has been drastically revised, something few are aware of.

If the German leadership truly believed in their country’s history and crimes, wouldn’t they be the first to recognize and oppose new genocides? Yes, but they don’t. 

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from MD