Sacred Tree or Paradise Tree? The Christmas Tree and Nature

By Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin, December 22, 2023

It is believed that December 25 became the date for Christ’s birth “to coincide with existing pagan festivals honouring Saturn (the Roman god of agriculture) and Mithra (the Persian god of light). That way, it became easier to convince Rome’s pagan subjects to accept Christianity as the empire’s official religion.” 

Remember World War I, the 1914 Christmas Truce. “The Power of Peace in the Time of War.” In 2023, “Let It Happen Again” in Solidarity with Palestine. Abolish All Wars

By Dr. Jacques R. Pauwels and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, December 25, 2023

Today, we are “fraternizing” and acting in solidarity Worldwide with the People of Palestine against the hegemonic agenda of the U.S. and it allies  which are waging an all-out war against humanity. 

Ukraine Cannot Mobilise 500,000 Soldiers While Artillery Shortage Compounds Problems

By Ahmed Adel, December 26, 2023

Although martial law and a decree on general mobilisation have been in force in Ukraine since February 2022, and men between the ages of 18 and 60 are now banned from leaving the country, the Ukrainian military said they did not know how to mobilise an additional 500,000 soldiers, as volunteers had “exhausted.”

Bethlehem’s Bombed-out Nativity Sculpture Sends a Powerful Message

By Monjed Jadou, December 26, 2023

This year, Bethlehem is sombre and quiet. There is no Christmas tree and there are no holiday lights or tourists to see them. Instead, the city of Jesus’s birth – which is in the middle of a war zone – is marking Christmas with a powerful and poignant message: solidarity with Palestine.

The Unipolar World Has Ended and the Multipolar World Has Commenced

By Prof. Joseph H. Chung, December 25, 2023

The book explains that the origin of the deep state is the Ashkenazi Jewish financial power elites formed in England centuries ago and expanded into a global network, a Huge Financial Empire in the world managed by the American financial network such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brother and other institutions.

Hamas’ “Guests” — Table Manners in Israel vs. Arab Traditional Values: The History of Palestinian Solidarity with Jewish Immigrants

By Rima Najjar, December 24, 2023

The image of the pristine table arrangement in Tel Aviv graphically represents a western settler-colonial reality. The images of the frenetic scramble for food on top of humanitarian aid trucks by starving Palestinians only increased the grotesqueness of this image below and its associations in my mind.

Vichy-like Allies of 21st Century Zionism against the People of Palestine

By Irwin Jerome, December 23, 2023

One could argue that the horrors of what is happening in 2023 to indigenous Palestinians are once again faced with Zionist Israel’s unrelenting brutal aggression, and those Vichy elements that exist within governments throughout the world who also support the Zionist ideology within Israel and are willing to accept or contribute, in various different ways, to the massacres and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

Today ‘Peace on Earth’ Must be a Demand, Not Just a Seasonal Piety

By Morning Star, December 26, 2023

The urgency of getting food, water and fuel to more than a million displaced Palestinians has not deterred Washington from delaying a UN resolution repeatedly, insisting on the removal of calls for a ceasefire, watering down the demand that Israel open air, land and sea routes for humanitarian assistance and blocking a proposal for the UN rather than the Israeli military to approve deliveries.

2023 to Go Down as ‘One of the Most Difficult’ Years for Children Worldwide: UNICEF

By Anadolu Agency, December 26, 2023

As dozens of conflicts have ruthlessly robbed tens of thousands of children of their future, 2023 will be remembered as “one of the most difficult” years to be a child in, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Gaza Facing a Christmas Genocide

By Jennifer Welborn Williams, December 26, 2023

Palestine’s Christian community is – not surprisingly – the oldest in the world, dating back to the first century. In Gaza, the community is now tiny, with just some 800 to 1,000 Christians remaining. But Gaza’s churches are some of the oldest in existence anywhere on the planet.

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An aid worker has described the “unprecedented scale” of human devastation in 2023 as he warned of the “intense trauma” likely to impact victims in Gaza for decades to come.

The British Red Cross has launched four separate emergency appeals this year, as well as continuing its work to support those affected by the ongoing war in Ukraine.

The desperate situation brought about by conflict, earthquakes and floods across various parts of the globe can leave “deep trauma and psychological impacts on those affected”, especially children, Rory Moylan said.

Reflecting on the year’s events, the head of region for Europe and the Middle East at the British Red Cross told the PA news agency:

“2023 has seen human devastation on an unprecedented scale.

“As the conflict in Ukraine has continued, so has our Ukraine Crisis Appeal and this year we’ve launched our Turkey-Syria Earthquake Appeal, Morocco Earthquake Appeal, Libya Floods Appeal and Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territory Appeal.

“The fact we’ve had cause to launch four emergency appeals this year gives you an idea of the scale of the humanitarian support that is needed right now.” 

He described a “desperate situation” in Gaza, where colleagues in the International Committee of the Red Cross have told of children becoming sick as they face winter without proper clothing, having fled their homes to escape the bombing of the past two months.

Mr Moylan was part of a delegation of aid agencies who met the King at Buckingham Palace in October to brief him on the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

At the time the charity confirmed the King had made a “generous donation” to its fundraising appeal for the region.

Some 1.9 million Gaza residents – more than 80% of the population – have been driven from their homes since Israel began its retaliation for the deadly October 7 attack by Hamas.

As the Israeli military assault continues, the United Nations has warned that more than half a million people in Gaza are starving due to “woefully insufficient” quantities of food entering the territory.

Mr Moylan told the PA news agency:

“The conflict in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory has created a desperate situation with staggering humanitarian needs and intolerable suffering.

“The people of Gaza need huge amounts of humanitarian support just to meet their most basic needs. Winter will only make it harder to meet those needs.”

He said the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), which the British Red Cross works with, has so far supported more than 27,000 people as the population endures “a desperate situation and many mourn loved ones”.

Mr Moylan spoke of the lasting impact likely to be felt by those living there, saying:

“If the fighting stops tomorrow, the reconstruction and the recovery will take a decade or more.

“Mentally, people won’t ever recover in some cases.”

Calls for a ceasefire have been growing, with thousands of Palestinian lives lost in the past two months.

Mr Moylan said many donations to the Red Cross now are spent meeting people’s basic needs during a conflict such as food, water, medicine and blankets.

But he added:

“Donations also help us support people dealing with the trauma of losing loved ones and homes during disasters and conflict.

“This psychological support means we’re there for people in the worst moments of their lives and allows us to help people as they slowly try to recover from disasters and conflicts.”

He added:

“Conflicts and disasters will undoubtedly have ongoing, long-term psychological impact on people and especially children across the world. These impacts will be felt long after our attention in the UK has shifted to other crises.

“In Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the intense trauma will impact people for decades.”

He spoke of the trauma from Hamas’s brutal October 7 attack, which he said will be felt by communities in Israel “for years to come”, including the survivors and the grieving, as well as the trauma for the hostages and their families.

Mr Moylan said the charity is keenly aware of the financial pressure on the public, with multiple appeals in different countries, but said even small donations make a big difference to the organisation’s work helping people on the ground.

He said:

“I think often people can feel that when they look at the scale of a crisis, they think, ‘Oh, well then what I give doesn’t matter’.

“It does. Small amounts really, really do add up. We’ve received so much in that way and it’s all very flexible. So it allows us to give flexibility to partners to design the best response for people as they need it. So we are always really appreciative of that.”

Mr Moylan added:

“I want to thank everyone who has donated to any of these British Red Cross emergency appeals this year for your generosity.

“Across Ukraine, Turkey, Syria, Morocco, Libya, Israel, the Occupied Palestinian Territories and beyond, thanks to your help we’ve been able to help people caught up in these awful disasters and endure the most difficult circumstances imaginable.

“I have seen on the ground the difference these donations have made and continue to make.”

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No eventual US green light to allow aid into Gaza — where a quarter of the population are starving — can disguise its wrecking role throughout the UN process.

The urgency of getting food, water and fuel to more than a million displaced Palestinians has not deterred Washington from delaying a UN resolution repeatedly, insisting on the removal of calls for a ceasefire, watering down the demand that Israel open air, land and sea routes for humanitarian assistance and blocking a proposal for the UN rather than the Israeli military to approve deliveries.

As with the security council ceasefire vote a fortnight ago — which the US alone opposed, with Britain alone abstaining — the mask has slipped.

Everyone in the world can see who facilitates Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza even while crying crocodile tears about civilian victims.

We know that Joe Biden’s reproaches to Benjamin Netanyahu for bombing hospitals and unleashing a wave of settler terror in the West Bank are accompanied by a steady flow of munitions to ensure the Israeli Defence Forces can keep killing.

We know too that the copycat expressions of regret from British leaders are meaningless while we permit the US to resupply Israel from the RAF’s Akrotiri airfield on Cyprus, which we can assume it is doing since ministers won’t answer questions on the flurry of US flights to Israel from that base.

Britain and the US stand isolated and exposed. There will be geopolitical consequences.

The brazen hypocrisy of supporting Israeli war crimes while condemning Russian ones in Ukraine has not gone unnoticed, and will further undermine efforts to convince the global South to abide by US and EU sanctions against Moscow, as European diplomats admit.

Normalisation of Israel’s relations with Arab states, a priority aim of US diplomacy in recent years, lies in tatters. Following the China-brokered Saudi-Iranian rapprochement and the invitation to five Middle East and north African states to join the Brics bloc of developing countries in 2024, this war could be catastrophic for US power in the region, accelerating a shift to Beijing already under way.

We have little influence over such developments. Not so the domestic political fallout. The medics’ vigils for Gaza, the hundreds of local demonstrations and fundraisers, the gigantic national peace marches, have changed British politics.

The British and US governments are not just exposed in the eyes of the world, but before their own peoples. In Britain, the Palestine movement has thrown open doors our whole Establishment have spent the last four years nailing shut — it is again possible to question Britain’s role in the world, its uniquely close alliance with the United States and the sinister character of our military operations and armaments industry.

As we learned in 2017, when Jeremy Corbyn pointed to the links between British foreign policy and terrorism and found a majority agreed with him, there is mass scepticism about our rulers’ claims about the world and an openness to building a different kind of Britain, one that promotes peace and co-operation instead of war and plunder.

The ruling-class response to Corbyn’s popularity was ferocious. The response on Palestine will be no less so.

Human Rights Watch has already pointed to Facebook parent company Meta’s complicity in a global censorship operation targeting Palestine solidarity work.

In Britain, we have seen off one home secretary trying to ban peace marches, but should the movement falter or the numbers dwindle the government will be tempted to revisit this.

Our movement must go on the offensive, ensuring politicians who will not back a ceasefire fear for their seats, and demanding a reversal of all the attacks on Palestine activism of recent years, including the bids to ban the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

This Christmas the traditional call for peace on Earth must be turned from an abstract seasonal aspiration to a practical mobilising demand.

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Gaza Facing a Christmas Genocide

December 26th, 2023 by Jennifer Welborn Williams

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Palestine’s Christian community is – not surprisingly – the oldest in the world, dating back to the first century.

In Gaza, the community is now tiny, with just some 800 to 1,000 Christians remaining. But Gaza’s churches are some of the oldest in existence anywhere on the planet.

Now these churches are shelters for refugees, and Christians are targets of Israel’s genocidal violence.

On 19 October, the third oldest church in the world, the Church of Saint Porphyrius, was hit by an Israeli airstrike, killing 18 people.

Ibrahim Jahsan survived the strike and continues to shelter there with his family. He told Al Jazeera, “We were baptized here and we will die here.”

Two weeks later, the Israeli military bombed the Greek Orthodox Cultural Center in the southern Gaza City neighborhood of Tel al-Hawa.

Food, blankets, gas cylinders and other much needed supplies were destroyed in the blast. The destruction of cultural centers and religious sites features as part of the definition of genocide.

The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem released a statement condemning the attack.

“Such attacks on civilians, particularly children, and the deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure, cannot be justified on rational or humanitarian grounds and are fundamentally at odds with even the most basic moral values.”

The World Council of Churches joined in condemning the attacks, calling them a “clear violation of international law.”

Gaza’s only Christian hospital was also bombed. A blast rocked Gaza City’s al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in October. Hundreds died in the explosion, hundreds were injured. Israel denied responsibility for the carnage.

In Cold Blood

Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta described the scene to NBC News. He was in an operating room when the ceiling collapsed on him. He says he made his way to the exit where he witnessed “people carrying wounded and walking wounded with blood streaming down covered in dust.”

Both the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders condemned the attack.

On 16 December, Nahida Antoun and her daughter Samar Antoun were shot to death by Israeli snipers as they walked inside the grounds of the Holy Family Parish in Gaza. At least seven other members of Gaza’s only Catholic Church were wounded by sniper fire.

The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said: “One was killed as she tried to carry the other to safety.”

“They were shot in cold blood.”

The patriarchate posted photos of damage to the Church from missile attacks. The damage shows fires and extreme destruction to the convent. The tweet indicates that “deaths and injuries of a number of citizens in the Latin convent of Gaza” occurred and calls for an “end [to] this senseless conflict.”

Pope Francis condemned the attack: “Unarmed civilians are being bombed and shot at, and this has happened inside the Holy Family Parish complex, where there are no terrorists, but families, children, sick people with disabilities, nuns.”

The Pope continued, “Some say, ‘It’s terrorism, it’s war.’ Yes, it is war. It is terrorism.”

This is the second time the Pope has accused Israel of terrorism. On 22 November, the pontiff said Israel had gone beyond war: “This is not war. This is terrorism.”

Indeed, it is terrorism. It is terrorism against Palestinians, and some of the most vulnerable Palestinians are the minority Christian population now besieged in the few churches in Gaza.

Israel is targeting this small population of Christians and they’re doing it at Christmas.

The Israeli military is bombing churches, destroying Christian community centers, and sending snipers to shoot Christian women to death while the world watches, all part of the ninth stage of genocide: Extermination.

How many Christians will be left when Israel is done?

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Jennifer Welborn Williams has a postgraduate degree in history and is a freelance writer.

Featured image: People sheltering at the Saint Porphyrius Orthodox church which was hit by an Israeli airstrike on Thursday, killing 18 including several children [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

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***

Although martial law and a decree on general mobilisation have been in force in Ukraine since February 2022, and men between the ages of 18 and 60 are now banned from leaving the country, the Ukrainian military said they did not know how to mobilise an additional 500,000 soldiers, as volunteers had “exhausted.”

“We have run out of volunteers willing to voluntarily join the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine… To say exactly when [the mobilisation of more than 500,000 people] will be and how high quality it is, is difficult to say … there is no understanding of how to do this physically,” said Major General of the Ukrainian forces Dmitry Marchenko in an interview with Deutsche Welle.

According to Marchenko, for every 100 soldiers who died at the front, only 20 will be mobilised to replace them. At the same time, the major general reacted positively to the proposal to lower the mobilisation age limit from 27 to 25 and try to obtain the extradition of those who fled the country, adding that “it is not worth filling the holes at the front with women when the mass of men is hidden abroad.”

At a press conference on December 19, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky first presented figures for a new large-scale mobilisation. He said that the chief of staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces approached him with a request to mobilise an additional 450,000-500,000 people. According to Zelensky, such a mobilisation would cost Ukraine around $13.4 billion.

Later, Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council (NSDC), said that mobilising such a large number of people would take at least a year.

Military recruiting officers can serve subpoenas in public places, and videos of incidents on the streets, at gas stations and in cafes have been circulating on social media. The summons to the Ukrainian Armed Forces currently does not have to be presented by a representative of the Territorial Centre for Recruitment and Social Support — as military commissions have recently been called in Ukraine — but can also be served by directors of companies where recruits work, chiefs of Housing Committees and other officials.

At the same time, the Ukrainian Army is facing a serious shortage of ammunition, which is hampering its offensive operations, while Russia does not appear to have the same problem, The Washington Post reported on December 22, citing Ukrainian military personnel stationed on the frontline.

“Our gunners are given a limit of shells for each target,” said a member of the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade, which is fighting in the southeastern Zaporozhye region, adding that if the target there is smaller, for example a mortar position, they need five or seven projectiles in total.

“How long can we last? It’s hard to say, but it can’t be long. Everyone understands this,” he stressed.

Another Ukrainian soldier revealed that his unit now only fires 10 to 20 shells a day at Russian positions, whereas previously, it used to use an average of 50 shells and sometimes up to 90.

“What can you do with 10 shells per day? It is barely enough to respond to their advances — we are not even talking about attacking their positions,” he pointed out.

Meanwhile, Ivan Zadontsev, press officer of the 24th Separate Assault Battalion, reported that the unit had reduced fire by 90% compared to mid-year. The Ukrainian military official interviewed also acknowledged that they have not detected any indication that Russia is facing a similar shortage of artillery shells.

Given the hopelessness of the war against Russia, compounded by an insufficient number of soldiers and artillery, Ukraine also faces the problem of desertion. Although the Kiev regime can forcibly recruit soldiers, it has been observed that Ukrainians are deserting the war when given the opportunity.

Ten Ukrainian volunteers who received permission to leave Ukraine in search of humanitarian aid took advantage of the permission granted to flee, the Kiev regime appointed head of the Kherson administration, Oleksandr Prokudin, said on December 23.

On his social media networks, Prokudin stated that the volunteers were part of the United Ukraine and Adjalyk organisations.

“I issued orders to allow representatives of the United Ukraine and Adjalyk organisations to cross the border. They left and brought the promised humanitarian aid. But after that, they decided to leave for the second time and did not return to Ukraine,” Prokudin wrote.

He added that law enforcement authorities are investigating the case and intend to bring the offenders to justice. The Ukrainian official also said he no longer intends to issue travel authorisation to these two organisations.

The number of Ukrainian soldiers has declined so much that the average age of recruits has risen to 43, according to Time magazine. Recently, the possibility of mobilising women has also been discussed, which, according to Western media, also indicates huge losses in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Yet, despite the impossibility of pushing back the Russian military from captured territory or holding out against a major offensive, given the lack of manpower, equipment and morale, the Kiev regime chooses to continue destroying an entire generation of Ukrainians.

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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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***

This year, Bethlehem is sombre and quiet. There is no Christmas tree and there are no holiday lights or tourists to see them.

Instead, the city of Jesus’s birth – which is in the middle of a war zone – is marking Christmas with a powerful and poignant message: solidarity with Palestine.

The Holy Family Cave is a sculpture that depicts a harrowing tableau: a bombed-out version of the traditional nativity cave, which many Christians traditionally believe is where Jesus was born in Bethlehem. It is the site now of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

The new mural draws a comparison with the journey of Christ and his family, when they had to flee Bethlehem under an oppressive ruler to Egypt, before returning to Nazareth two millennia ago.

[Monjed Jadou/Al Jazeera]

The bombed-out nativity scene is surrounded by rubble and barbed wire [Monjed Jadou/Al Jazeera]

Surrounded by rubble and barbed wire, the Virgin Mary embraces the baby Jesus, while Joseph embraces her, offering solace. On one side of the family, the Magi holds out a white shroud. On the other side, the fourth shepherd carries a bag, a symbol of Palestinian displacement.

Angels, suspended around the rubble, represent the souls of children who have been victims of massacres on Palestinian land throughout history: the murder of children in Bethlehem by Herod at the birth of Jesus; various colonial attacks against the Palestinian people and their ancestors; and current massacres by Israel in Gaza.

Around the scene, multilingual panels call for a ceasefire and an end to the massacre against the Palestinian people.

Hana Hanania, the mayor of Bethlehem, said the sculpture aims to showcase Palestinian suffering everywhere. Churches, clergy and civilians in Gaza are being bombarded, and a blockade is enforced in the West Bank, particularly in Bethlehem.

[Monjed Jadou/Al Jazeera]

The fourth shepherd carries a bag, symbolising Palestinian displacement [Monjed Jadou/Al Jazeera]

The sculpture, with its political, religious, and national symbolism, draws a comparison between what happened more than 2,000 years ago and what is happening today, she said. Just as Christ was tortured and children were killed by King Herod then, today, children and women are being slaughtered in a clear act of genocide.

The cave’s roof is a geographical map of Gaza. Its shape, together with a depiction of an explosion, form a star, inspired by the Star of Bethlehem that led the Magi to Jesus’s birth. This conveys a message of hope.

The artist, Tarek Salsaa, explained that the scene cannot fully express the immense destruction and systematic genocide against the Palestinian people by the Israeli occupation. What Palestine is going through today is reminiscent of the years of colonialism, with all its allies throughout the ages and various historical epochs, he added.

“Christmas approaches this year, and we find ourselves living in the most challenging and difficult circumstances, a result of what our people in the besieged Gaza Strip and in all cities, villages, and camps of the West Bank and Jerusalem are enduring due to the Israeli continuous aggression against our people, said Rula Maayaa, the Palestinian Authority’s minister of tourism and antiquities.

“As we launch this symbolic initiative in Bethlehem … our people are confident that the message of Christmas, sent by the messenger of peace, will triumph over injustice and tyranny,” Maayaa said.

[Monjed Jadou/Al Jazeera]

People light candles near the installation [Monjed Jadou/Al Jazeera]

We are in a constant state of mourning, especially during the days of mourning for the martyrs, said Father Ibrahim Feltz, the deputy custodian of the Holy Lands. “We have not witnessed such a scene in the square, and we have not seen the city in this condition. Bethlehem has never been sad like this before.”

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Featured image: A bombed-out version of the traditional nativity cave in Gaza is a symbolic comparison to the first family of Christ [Monjed Jadou/Al Jazeera]

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As dozens of conflicts have ruthlessly robbed tens of thousands of children of their future, 2023 will be remembered as “one of the most difficult” years to be a child in, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Another factor that made the year “one of the most difficult” was insufficient funds for humanitarian actors, harming children in need of life-saving assistance, especially in ongoing conflict zones, as “you cannot do more with less,” said the UNICEF deputy executive director.

“I think 2023 has been one of the most difficult years for children worldwide. And I think the things that have struck me the most is, firstly, the horrendous, unprecedented violence that we’ve seen in Gaza,” Ted Chaiban told Anadolu in an interview.

In Gaza, the proportion of children killed as a percentage of the total death toll is “over 40%,” Chaiban said, adding that this is “twice what we’ve seen in over 40 conflicts where we have this aggregated data.

“It’s something that’s unprecedented we’ve seen, an indiscriminate level of violence in Gaza,” he said. “And that’s just absolutely horrendous.”

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7, killing at least 20,424 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring 54,036 others, according to health authorities in the enclave.​​​​​​​

This has caused an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe and immense damage to infrastructure, according to Palestinian and international sources.

Crises Before Gaza Are ‘Stain on Our Consciousness’

This is a world where conflict is profoundly affecting children, where climate is causing increased displacement, and where the humanitarian system is going to need to continue to be there to respond, Chaiban stressed.

He added that the magnitude of the ongoing hostilities in Gaza is overshadowing the other ongoing hostilities which needed to be remembered.

“It’s hard to think that the crises that were even before Gaza, you know, were a stain on our consciousness, and that’s what’s happened in Sudan,” he said, noting that he worked in the country 20 years ago when the Darfur crisis was at its height and what is occurring right now is a repeat of history.

“We’re seeing children and their families that are being pulled out of their villages, forced to go across the border in Chad, in what is community-based targeted violence, essentially,” he said.

Noting that this is not only happening throughout Darfur but the violence has spread to Kordofan and Khartoum, Chaiban said:

“The whole country is being dislocated. We’ve got the largest child displacement in the world occurring as we speak in Sudan.”

Then the world has an “almost forgotten” crisis in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where there is sexual and physical violence against children in a conflict that, frankly, has been going on since the 1990s, he said.

“How can something like that be forgotten?” he questioned.

2023 Appeal for Children ‘Roughly 50% Funded’

Although “every dollar counts,” Chaiban said, UNICEF’s 2023 appeal for children was “roughly 50% funded, leading to a reduction in 2024’s appeal by 16%.”

“Every one of those dollars made a difference,” he said. “And we’re going to do everything possible to raise the resources so that we can respond to children.”

In 2023, UNICEF appealed for $10.3 billion in emergency funding to reach more than 110 million children – including 54 million girls and 10 million children with disabilities – with humanitarian assistance across 155 countries and territories.

The appeal was focused on major crises including in Haiti, the Sahel, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Horn of Africa, Pakistan, Ukraine, Sudan, Uganda, Ethiopia, Afghanistan and Myanmar.

With the decreased appeal, Chaiban said UNICEF aims to be “more efficient” in the way it works with some of its sister agencies like the World Food Programme (WFP) next year.

“We focus together on the treatment of severe acute malnutrition and we’ve come up with a simplified protocol which focuses only on those that are most at risk,” he said, adding they will target their supplies to those that are most in need.

“So through those kinds of steps, we hope to be able to reach those that are most at risk,” he said but argued that “you cannot do more with less.”

“We continue to appeal to the world’s donors and not to turn their attention away from children.”

“We’re in a world where the generosity of governments, individuals or foundations makes a difference,” he said. “It gives hope in the midst of tragic events. So let’s keep giving hope.”

Getting Into 2024 with ‘Very Difficult Situations’

Stressing that another distressing year is approaching as not the only world is entering the year but also many ongoing conflicts, Chaiban expressed hope in the work that UNICEF does.

“I think it’s very clear that we’re going into 2024 with very difficult situations in Gaza, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Sahel,” he said.

“We need to make sure we don’t forget crises like the displacement that came out of Syria, the Rohingya in Bangladesh and the situation in Haiti, where we’ve got gang violence that has been an upheaval in society.”

“But I also want to speak about situations of hope,” he said, drawing attention to Somalia, where a famine was averted in 2022 because of the concerted work of humanitarian agencies.

Then there is “the situation in the Horn of Africa, where over the years, systems have been set up. You know, the health system has been decentralized, (and) the food safety net put in place in places like Ethiopia, so that when the shock does happen, the population can withstand that shock,” he added.

He noted that UNICEF’s work has a positive impact in the targeted countries.

“We also have hope in the work that we do and know that it makes a difference — not just with lifesaving activities, but for example, with the work that we do in education.”

What to Expect from UNICEF in 2024

In its 2024 appeal, UNICEF launched a $9.3 billion emergency funding appeal to reach at least 93.7 million children in 155 countries.

The top five appeals by funding requirements for 2024 are for Afghanistan with $1.44 billion, Syrian refugees and other vulnerable populations with $860 million, Sudan with $840 million, the Democratic Republic of Congo with $804 million and Ukraine and the refugee response with $580 million.

Its plans include reaching 17.3 million children for vaccination against measles and 7.6 million children for treating their severe acute malnutrition.

Also among UNICEF’s goals are making formal or non-formal education accessible for 19.3 million children and making community-based mental health and psychosocial support accessible to 26.7 children.

According to the new appeal, the critically underfunded emergencies include Sudan, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, Haiti, Ethiopia, Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan and Bangladesh.

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Featured image: Wounded Palestinian children, are taken to hospital after Israeli attacks in Khan Yunis, Gaza on December 23, 2023 [Belal Khaled/Anadolu Agency]

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First published on December 18, 2023

***

We’ve been told repeatedly that the goal of Israel’s operation in Gaza is to “defeat Hamas”. But is that true? We don’t think it is. We don’t think that any reasonable person would attempt to eradicate a militant organization by laying to waste vast swaths of the country while killing tens of thousands of innocent people. That is not how one garners support for one’s cause nor is it an effective strategy for defeating the enemy. Instead, it is a policy that is guaranteed to horrify allies and critics alike greatly undermining the operation’s chances of success. And that’s why we don’t believe that Israel’s attack on Gaza has anything to do with Hamas. We think it’s a smokescreen that’s being used to divert attention from the real objectives of the campaign.

And, what might those “real objectives” be?

The real objectives relate to an issue that is never discussed in the media, but is the primary factor driving events. Demographics.

As we all know, Israel’s long-term plan is to incorporate Gaza and the West Bank into Greater Israel. They want to control all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

The problem is, however, that if they annex the occupied territories without disposing of the people, then the Palestinian population will equal or exceed that of the Jews which would lead to the demise of the Jewish state. That is the basic problem in a nutshell. Check out this article that helps to explain what’s going on:

Demography is a matter of national security in Israel and a key indicator for Israeli-Palestinian relations and their outlook: demographic trends in Israel are rapidly shifting and this will impact prospects for violence and conflict resolution.

As of late 2022, over seven million Israelis lived in Israel and the West Bank, and seven million Palestinians lived in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Israel and East Jerusalem, a somehow integrated region referred to as “Greater Israel” by Jewish right-wing activists …

A demographic bomb is already ticking. Israeli Jews experience an existential fear to be outgrown by the Palestinian population,and this is further instrumentalized by right-wing nationalist political entrepreneurs. Demography lies at the core of the territorial dispute between Jews and Arabs, as the two nations are waging a major war on numbers, aimed at weaponizing fertility rates to turn them into a predictive assumption of victory.

As the current Israeli right-wing government is laying the ground for the de facto annexation of the West Bank’s Area C, demography has been one of the tools employed to reassure the Jewish public opinion that Judea and Samaria could still be integrated into Israel, while keeping a Jewish demographic majority. However, demography remains a struggle for survival and an uphill battle for Israel. This is especially true if Israel were to progress with the Palestinian Area C annexation. Israel: A Demographic Ticking Bomb in Today’s One-State Reality”, Aspenia

As an American, diversity might not seem like such a big deal. But to many Israelis, it’s pure strychnine. Zionists, in particular, see growth in the Arab population as a “demographic time-bomb” that threatens the future of the Jewish state. And that’s what the Gaza fracas is really all about; getting rid of the people but keeping the land. In fact, the last 75 years of conflict can be reduced to just 8 words, “They want the land, but not the people.” Here’s more from the Times of Israel:

Jewish people make up less than 47 percent of all those living west of the Jordan River, an Israeli demographer warned Tuesday, claiming that most of the Israeli population is unaware of the democratic peril the country is sliding into by possibly becoming a ruling minority in the area.

Arnon Soffer, a professor of geography at Haifa University, told Army Radio Tuesday that in addition to the Jewish and Arab populations, he reached his figures by taking into consideration the hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish people residing in Israel who are not citizens.

According to Soffer, there are 7.45 million Jews and others along with 7.53 million Arab Israelis and Palestinians living in what he termed the Land of Israel, meaning Israel plus the West Bank and Gaza Strip. When the number of non-Israeli nationals is taken into consideration, it leaves the Jewish proportion at between 46% and 47% of the total, he claimed.

According to Israel’s official Central Bureau of Statistics, at the end of 2021, 9.449 million people live in Israel (including Israelis in West Bank settlements). Of those, 6.982 million (74 percent) are Jewish, 1.99 million (21%) are Arab and 472,000 (5%) are neither…. The Palestinian Bureau of Statistics puts the West Bank Palestinian population at a little over 3 million, and the Gaza population at just over 2 million.

Soffer explained to Army Radio that although the birthrate has been higher among the Jewish population in recent years, so too is the death rate, meaning the Arab population, which is far younger on average than the Jewish population, is growing faster. Jews now a 47% minority in Israel and the territories, demographer says, The Times of Israel

Imagine, for a minute, that you posted a number of articles on your social media sites that said you thought there were too many blacks or Asians in America. How long do you think it would take before you were either shadow-banned, censored or buried under an avalanche of death threats? But when we look at the contents of the article above, we see that a major newspaper in Israel breezily publishes an article which states in stark terms that the country faces “democratic peril” because there are too many Arabs in the areas earmarked for future annexation. How is that not racism?

But this is how the issue is discussed in Israel. Demographics are considered a national security issue, an existential issue, and an issue that will decide the future of the Jewish State. Is it any wonder why the reaction has been so extreme? Is it any wonder why people refer to the fact that there is a large population of Palestinians in Palestine as the “Arab problem”? And, of course, once the indigenous population is regarded as a “problem”, then it is incumbent on the political leaders to conjure-up a solution.

So, what exactly is the solution to the Arab problem?

Why fewer Arabs, of course. Which is why the idea of expelling the Palestinians has a long pedigree in Zionist thinking dating back a full five decades before the establishment of the Jewish state. As it happens, the Arabs were always a problem even when the Jews represented less than 10 percent of the population. Go figure? Check out this comment by the ideological father of political Zionism himself, Theodor Herzl, who wrote the following:

“We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country… expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”

Shockingly, Herzl wrote those words in 1895, 50 years before Israel declared its statehood. And many of the Zionist leaders who followed him shared that same world view, like Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion who said:

“You are no doubt aware of the [Jewish National Fund’s] activity in this respect. Now a transfer of a completely different scope will have to be carried out. In many parts of the country new settlement will not be possible without transferring the Arab fellahin.” He concluded: “Jewish power [in Palestine], which grows steadily, will also increase our possibilities to carry out this transfer on a large scale.” (1948)

And here’s Ben-Gurion again in 1938: “I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it.”

See how far back this line of reasoning goes? The Zionists were tweaking their ethnic cleansing plans long before Israel had even become a state. And for good reason. They knew that the numbers did not support the prospects for an enduring Jewish State. The only way to square the circle was through compulsory resettlement, otherwise known as “transfer.” And while that policy might have been repugnant to a great many Jews, a far larger number undoubtedly believed it was a cruel necessity. The preservation of the Jewish State became the highest value permitting behavior that would otherwise be disparaged as unacceptable and immoral. Here’s how Ben Shapiro summed it up in an essay titled “Transfer is Not a Dirty Word”:

The time for half measures has passed…. Some have rightly suggested that Israel be allowed to decapitate the terrorist leadership of the Palestinian Authority. But this, too, is only a half measure. The ideology of the Palestinian population is indistinguishable from that of the terrorist leadership.

Here is the bottom line: If you believe that the Jewish state has a right to exist, then you must allow Israel to transfer the Palestinians and the Israeli-Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper. It’s an ugly solution, but it is the only solution. And it is far less ugly than the prospect of bloody conflict ad infinitum….

The Jews don’t realize that expelling a hostile population is a commonly used and generally effective way of preventing violent entanglements. There are no gas chambers here. It’s not genocide; it’s transfer….

It’s time to stop being squeamish. Jews are not Nazis. Transfer is not genocide. And anything else isn’t a solution. Transfer is Not a Dirty Word, Narkive

The importance of the Shapiro piece can’t be overstated. First, he explicitly links the future viability of the Jewish state to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Second, he acknowledges that transfer is “an ugly solution”, but supports the policy as a necessary evil. And, third, he justifies the implementation of the mass expulsion by putting the entire Palestinian population into the same category as the terrorists. (“The ideology of the Palestinian population is indistinguishable from that of the terrorist leadership.”) So, in essence, Shapiro is making our case for us. He is candidly admitting that the only policy that will preserve the Jewish state is ethnic cleansing. And judging by developments on the ground, we must assume the Netanyahu government arrived at the same conclusion. The people of Gaza are being bombed, starved and terrorized all with the explicit aim of herding them in the direction of the southern border where they will be forced at gunpoint to flee their historic homeland.

Bottom line: The strategic objectives of the Israeli operation in Gaza are entirely different than the stated goal of defeating Hamas.

All of the land west of the Jordan River is now being cleared of its native occupants so it can be incorporated into Greater Israel while maintaining a sizable Jewish majority.

The demonizing of the Palestinian people –which casts the victims of this onslaught as the perpetrators– is intended to conceal the underlying policy that is based on racial discrimination. There is no doubt that if the Arabs in Gaza were of Jewish descent, they would be spared the genocide they face today.

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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 Middle East Eye

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***

“When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart.”—Howard Thurman, theologian and civil rights activist

The Christmas story of a baby born in a manger is a familiar one.

The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the little town of Bethlehem so that they could be counted. There being no room for the couple at any of the inns, they stayed in a stable (a barn), where Mary gave birth to a baby boy, Jesus. Warned that the government planned to kill the baby, Jesus’ family fled with him to Egypt until it was safe to return to their native land.

Yet what if Jesus had been born 2,000 years later?

What if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, Jesus had been born at this moment in time? What kind of reception would Jesus and his family be given? Would we recognize the Christ child’s humanity, let alone his divinity? Would we treat him any differently than he was treated by the Roman Empire? If his family were forced to flee violence in their native country and sought refuge and asylum within our borders, what sanctuary would we offer them?

A singular number of churches across the country have asked those very questions in recent years, and their conclusions were depicted with unnerving accuracy by nativity scenes in which Jesus and his family are separated, segregated and caged in individual chain-link pens, topped by barbed wire fencing.

Those nativity scenes were a pointed attempt to remind the modern world that the narrative about the birth of Jesus is one that speaks on multiple fronts to a world that has allowed the life, teachings and crucifixion of Jesus to be drowned out by partisan politics, secularism, materialism and war, all driven by a manipulative shadow government called the Deep State.

The modern-day church has largely shied away from applying Jesus’ teachings to modern problems such as war, poverty, immigration, etc., but thankfully there have been individuals throughout history who ask themselves and the world: what would Jesus do?

What would Jesus—the baby born in Bethlehem who grew into an itinerant preacher and revolutionary activist, who not only died challenging the police state of his day (namely, the Roman Empire) but spent his adult life speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo of his day, and pushing back against the abuses of the Roman Empire—do about the injustices of our  modern age?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked himself what Jesus would have done about the horrors perpetrated by Hitler and his assassins. The answer: Bonhoeffer was executed by Hitler for attempting to undermine the tyranny at the heart of Nazi Germany.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn asked himself what Jesus would have done about the soul-destroying gulags and labor camps of the Soviet Union. The answer: Solzhenitsyn found his voice and used it to speak out about government oppression and brutality.

Martin Luther King Jr. asked himself what Jesus would have done about America’s warmongering. The answer: declaring “my conscience leaves me no other choice,” King risked widespread condemnation as well as his life when he publicly opposed the Vietnam War on moral and economic grounds.

Even now, despite the popularity of the phrase “What Would Jesus Do?” (WWJD) in Christian circles, there remains a disconnect in the modern church between the teachings of Christ and the suffering of what Jesus in Matthew 25 refers to as the “least of these.”

Yet this is not a theological gray area: Jesus was unequivocal about his views on many things, not the least of which was charity, compassion, war, tyranny and love.

After all, Jesus—the revered preacher, teacher, radical and prophet—was born into a police state not unlike the growing menace of the American police state. When he grew up, he had powerful, profound things to say, things that would change how we view people, alter government policies and change the world. “Blessed are the merciful,” “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and “Love your enemies” are just a few examples of his most profound and revolutionary teachings.

When confronted by those in authority, Jesus did not shy away from speaking truth to power. Indeed, his teachings undermined the political and religious establishment of his day. It cost him his life. He was eventually crucified as a warning to others not to challenge the powers-that-be.

Can you imagine what Jesus’ life would have been like if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, he had been born and raised in the American police state?

Consider the following if you will.

Had Jesus been born in the era of the America police state, rather than traveling to Bethlehem for a census, Jesus’ parents would have been mailed a 28-page American Community Survey, a mandatory government questionnaire documenting their habits, household inhabitants, work schedule, how many toilets are in your home, etc. The penalty for not responding to this invasive survey can go as high as $5,000.

Instead of being born in a manger, Jesus might have been born at home. Rather than wise men and shepherds bringing gifts, however, the baby’s parents might have been forced to ward off visits from state social workers intent on prosecuting them for the home birth. One couple in Washington had all three of their children removed after social services objected to the two youngest being birthed in an unassisted home delivery.

Had Jesus been born in a hospital, his blood and DNA would have been taken without his parents’ knowledge or consent and entered into a government biobank. While most states require newborn screening, a growing number are holding onto that genetic material long-term for research, analysis and purposes yet to be disclosed.

Then again, had Jesus’ parents been undocumented immigrants, they and the newborn baby might have been shuffled to a profit-driven, private prison for illegals where they first would have been separated from each other, the children detained in make-shift cages, and the parents eventually turned into cheap, forced laborers for corporations such as Starbucks, Microsoft, Walmart, and Victoria’s Secret. There’s quite a lot of money to be made from imprisoning immigrants, especially when taxpayers are footing the bill.

From the time he was old enough to attend school, Jesus would have been drilled in lessons of compliance and obedience to government authorities, while learning little about his own rights. Had he been daring enough to speak out against injustice while still in school, he might have found himself tasered or beaten by a school resource officer, or at the very least suspended under a school zero tolerance policy that punishes minor infractions as harshly as more serious offenses.

Had Jesus disappeared for a few hours let alone days as a 12-year-old, his parents would have been handcuffed, arrested and jailed for parental negligence. Parents across the country have been arrested for far less “offenses” such as allowing their children to walk to the park unaccompanied and play in their front yard alone.

Rather than disappearing from the history books from his early teenaged years to adulthood, Jesus’ movements and personal data—including his biometrics—would have been documented, tracked, monitored and filed by governmental agencies and corporations such as Google and Microsoft. Incredibly, 95 percent of school districts share their student records with outside companies that are contracted to manage data, which they then use to market products to us.

From the moment Jesus made contact with an “extremist” such as John the Baptist, he would have been flagged for surveillance because of his association with a prominent activist, peaceful or otherwise. Since 9/11, the FBI has actively carried out surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations on a broad range of activist groups, from animal rights groups to poverty relief, anti-war groups and other such “extremist” organizations.

Jesus’ anti-government views would certainly have resulted in him being labeled a domestic extremist. Law enforcement agencies are being trained to recognize signs of anti-government extremism during interactions with potential extremists who share a “belief in the approaching collapse of government and the economy.”

While traveling from community to community, Jesus might have been reported to government officials as “suspicious” under the Department of Homeland Security’s “See Something, Say Something” programs. Many states, including New York, are providing individuals with phone apps that allow them to take photos of suspicious activity and report them to their state Intelligence Center, where they are reviewed and forwarded to law-enforcement agencies.

Rather than being permitted to live as an itinerant preacher, Jesus might have found himself threatened with arrest for daring to live off the grid or sleeping outside. In fact, the number of cities that have resorted to criminalizing homelessness by enacting bans on camping, sleeping in vehicles, loitering and begging in public has doubled.

Viewed by the government as a dissident and a potential threat to its power, Jesus might have had government spies planted among his followers to monitor his activities, report on his movements, and entrap him into breaking the law. Such Judases today—called informants—often receive hefty paychecks from the government for their treachery.

Had Jesus used the internet to spread his radical message of peace and love, he might have found his blog posts infiltrated by government spies attempting to undermine his integrity, discredit him or plant incriminating information online about him. At the very least, he would have had his website hacked and his email monitored.

Had Jesus attempted to feed large crowds of people, he would have been threatened with arrest for violating various ordinances prohibiting the distribution of food without a permit. Florida officials arrested a 90-year-old man for feeding the homeless on a public beach.

Had Jesus spoken publicly about his 40 days in the desert and his conversations with the devil, he might have been labeled mentally ill and detained in a psych ward against his will for a mandatory involuntary psychiatric hold with no access to family or friends. One Virginia man was arrested, strip searched, handcuffed to a table, diagnosed as having “mental health issues,” and locked up for five days in a mental health facility against his will apparently because of his slurred speech and unsteady gait.

Without a doubt, had Jesus attempted to overturn tables in a Jewish temple and rage against the materialism of religious institutions, he would have been charged with a hate crime. More than 45 states and the federal government have hate crime laws on the books.

Had anyone reported Jesus to the police as being potentially dangerous, he might have found himself confronted—and killed—by police officers for whom any perceived act of non-compliance (a twitch, a question, a frown) can result in them shooting first and asking questions later.

Rather than having armed guards capture Jesus in a public place, government officials would have ordered that a SWAT team carry out a raid on Jesus and his followers, complete with flash-bang grenades and military equipment. There are upwards of 80,000 such SWAT team raids carried out every year, many on unsuspecting Americans who have no defense against such government invaders, even when such raids are done in error.

Instead of being detained by Roman guards, Jesus might have been made to “disappear” into a secret government detention center where he would have been interrogated, tortured and subjected to all manner of abuses. Chicago police have “disappeared” more than 7,000 people into a secret, off-the-books interrogation warehouse at Homan Square.

Charged with treason and labeled a domestic terrorist, Jesus might have been sentenced to a life-term in a private prison where he would have been forced to provide slave labor for corporations or put to death by way of the electric chair or a lethal mixture of drugs.

Indeed, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, given the nature of government then and now, it is painfully evident that whether Jesus had been born in our modern age or his own, he still would have died at the hands of a police state.

Thus, as we draw near to Christmas with its celebration of miracles and promise of salvation, we would do well to remember that what happened in that manger on that starry night in Bethlehem is only the beginning of the story. That baby born in a police state grew up to be a man who did not turn away from the evils of his age but rather spoke out against it.

We must do no less.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Featured image: Adoration of the Shepherds by Dutch painter Matthias Stomer, 1632 (Licensed under the Public Domain)

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***

Israel’s Gaza war and West Bank raids have stolen Bethlehem’s Christmas celebrations this year. The little hill town where Jesus was born in a stable 2,000 years ago has grown dark this season. The Bethlehem municipality and the Jordan Council of Churches announced the decision to mark the season solely with religious services.

There are no coloured lights decorating tall pine tree on the edge of Manger Square and few decorations in shops. There will be no marching Palestinian Boy Scout bands on Christmas eve ahead of the religious service in Saint Catherine’s Catholic church. In spite of the crisis in Palestine, the church can be expected to fill with devout pilgrims for the midnight mass. Boy scouts will walk silently across Bethlehem, in mourning for the nearly 20,000 Palestinians who have died from Israeli bombing, shelling, and shooting during its ground offensive. 

Visitors to the Evangelical Lutheran Church will find a nativity scene depicting the infant Jesus wrapped in a traditional Palestinian keffiyeh lying on a pile of rubble beneath an olive tree, the symbol of Palestinian determination to remain in their century-long occupied country.

The prelates of the Orthodox, Catholic, Armenian and Protestant churches in Jerusalem, which has joined Bethlehem in the boycott of celebrations, called upon their “congregations to, stand strong with those facing such affiliations by this year foregoing any unnecessary festiveactivities”.

The Gaza war is costing Palestinian tourism $2.5 million a day. This will amount to $200 million by the end of the year, according to the Palestinian Tourism Ministry. Seventy hotels in Bethlehem have closed duringthe normally heavily booked holiday season, leaving 6,000 employees without work.

Bethlehem Mayor Hana Haniyeh told the Associated Press,

“The economy is crashing. But if we compare it with what’s happening to our people and Gaza, it’s nothing.”

Bethlehem depends on tourists and pilgrimages for 70 per cent of income.

Haniyeh said,

“Bethlehem is an essential part of the Palestinian community. So at midnight mass this year, we will pray for peace, the message of peace that was founded in Bethlehem when Jesus Christ was born.”

Since Hamas fighters attacked southern Israel on October 7,  Israel has multiplied checkpoints prolonging journeys to Bethlehem and other West Bank cities, towns and villages.

At the end of November, a Bethlehem delegation of church elders flew to Washington to deliver a letter to US President Joe Biden demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and arguing that there can be no peace in this region without justice, equal rights and dignity for all. The letter was handed to his advisers as Biden did not meet the envoys.Instead, Biden met with relatives of Israelis captured by Israel, cast the sole veto against a ceasefire resolution in the UN Security Council and voted against a similar General Assembly resolution. As these resolutions were supported by the Arabs, Biden’s rejection amounted to an insult to the Arab region and its people.

As Israel ramped up its Gaza campaign, Biden compounded the damage his anti-ceasefire stance has done by using an emergency measure to avoid Congressional oversight in to provide to the Israeli military 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth more than $100 million. The Biden administration has also supplied white phosphorus incendiary shells which Israel has used to target urban areas in Gaza and Lebanon in violation of international law which specifies that that these munitions can only be used in open battlegrounds. White phosphorus causes severe burns deep into human skin tissue. Israel fired these shells into Gaza during the 2008-2009 war which then ruined Christmas for Palestinians.

After a three-year COVID-19 suspension of Christmas festivities, Bethlehem resumed celebrations in 2022. Lights on the towering Christmas tree were switched on early late in November. Bethlehem’s 5,000 hotels were fully booked. Some 120,000 local and foreign visitors returned. This figure nearly reached the 150,000 high in 2019, before COVID struck.Like Israel’s Gaza war, the pandemic wrecked the Bethlehem economy.COVID closed hotels, restaurants, workshops and souvenir shops. The latter alone suffered losses of $200 million.

Palestinian Christians are among world’s oldest Christian communities, although their number is shrinking. Decades ago Christians were 20 per cent of the population of Palestine, today they are 2 per cent of the total. As many Christians had formed connections with relatives who had emigrated, there have been many additions to the global Palestinian diaspora. Palestinian Christians live largely in Bethlehem, Ramallah, and Jerusalem.

Since Israel besieged and blockaded Gaza after Hamas took control in 2007, around 2,000 Christians left due to Israeli attacks in 2008-2009, 2012, 2014, 2021 and 2023. Gaza’s Christians now number between 800-1,000 and account for less than 1 per cent of the population of the bombed and starved coastal strip but have been targeted by Israeli bombs and drones while they have sheltered in their churches, including in Gaza’s oldest built in 1150, the church of St Porphyrius where 16 Christians died and many were wounded during a bombing in October.

Last Saturday, December 16, an Israeli sniper killed two Palestinian women, a mother and daughter, and wounded seven others sheltering in the Catholic church of the Holy Family. At the time of the shooting the women were in the courtyard of the church making their way from the convent attached to the church. There were no armed men or weapons in the church although it has been repeatedly targeted by snipers, shells, and white phosphorus. Responding to this incident Pope Francis said, “It is war. It is terrorism.”

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Featured image: A priest walks at the Church of the Nativity, traditionally believed to be the birthplace of Jesus Christ in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Saturday, Dec. 16, 2023. World-famous Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem have been put on hold due to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

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The 1914 Truce: “The Power of Peace in the Time of War”.

In 2023, “Let It Happen Again” in Solidarity with Palestine.

Abolish All Wars

 

By Michel Chossudovsky 

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This Christmas, I have Tears in my Eyes 

Let us have tears to our eyes in solidarity with the People of Palestine, in building a Christmas mass movement Worldwide, which confronts the ongoing mass slaughter before our very eyes. 

Let us recall The Christmas Truce of 1914, 109 years ago this Christmas Eve:

“Something happened in the early months of the “War to End All Wars” that put a tiny little blip of hope in the historical timeline of the organized mass slaughter that is war. The event was regarded by the professional military officer class to be so profound and so important (and so disturbing) that strategies were immediately put in place that would ensure that such an event could never happen again.” (Dr. Gary G. Kohls)

“The ordinary soldiers developed more and more antipathy and even hatred toward their own officers. Simultaneously, they started to empathize and even sympathize for the men facing them on the far side of the no man’s land.

The authorities condemned and prohibited all forms of fraternization and “live-and-let-live” in general. The officers sometimes put snipers to work when they suspected that fraternizations “threatened” to take place. 

The men learned in many ways that the official enemy was in fact not the real enemy, that the soldiers on the other side were human beings just like themselves.” (Dr. Jacques Pauwels, Excerpt from his book, See below)

Today, we are “fraternizing” and acting in solidarity Worldwide with the People of Palestine against the hegemonic agenda of the U.S. and it allies  which are waging an all-out war against humanity. 

Crimes against the Peace, War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity

Both Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu as well as President Joe Biden are responsible for “war crimes”, “crimes against peace” and “crimes against humanity” as defined under Principe VI of the Nuremberg Charter

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).

(b)  War crimes:

Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill- treatment or deportation to slave-labour or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.

(c)  Crimes against humanity:

Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are

Disobey Unlawful Orders, Abandon the Battlefield 

According to Principle IV of the Nuremberg Charter:

“The fact that a person [e.g. Israeli, U.S.soldiers, pilots]  acted pursuant to order of his [her] Government or of a superior does not relieve him [her] from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him [her].”

Let us make that  “moral choice” possible, to enlisted Israeli, American, and NATO servicemen and women.

Disobey unlawful orders! Abandon the battlefield! … Refuse to fight in a war which violates Nuremberg Principle 6, The U.N. Charter and The Geneva Convention.  

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

Let  the World War I “Power of Peace in the Time of War” “Happen again”.

Confront corrupt politicians. 

The Tears in Your Eyes

May the tears of humanity in your eyes in December 2023 be conducive to a Worldwide movement to abolish  and “criminalize all wars”.

Let us break the insidious narrative of a handful of Wall Street billionaires who finance America’s “humanitarian wars”, unseat  the West’s “Classe politique” and establish the foundations of  “Real Democracy by the People for the People”. 


Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, December 23, 2023

***

An excerpt from Dr. Jacques Pauwels’ book The Great Class War, 1914-1918

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The Great Class War (1914-1918)

Remember the 1914 Christmas Truce

by Jacques R. Pauwels

 

The situation in the fall 1914, after the “war of movement” has given way to the infamous stationary “trench warfare”:

The ordinary soldiers developed more and more antipathy and even hatred toward their own officers. Simultaneously, they started to empathize and even sympathize for the men facing them on the far side of the no man’s land. The official enemy – the Germans, Russians, French, whatever – were demonized by the authorities but the soldiers had little or nothing against them. In many cases, they hardly knew the people they were supposed to hate and kill. Furthermore, they soon found out that they had much in common with “the enemy,” first and above all a lower-class social background, and second, the same exposure to danger and misery.

The men learned in many ways that the official enemy was in fact not the real enemy, that the soldiers on the other side were human beings just like themselves. This lesson could be learned, for example, by reading letters and looking at pictures found on taken from prisoners. The contempt for the “other,” deliberately fabricated by the military and political superiors, thus soon gave way for mutual respect and the feeling “that we are all the same,” for a “reciprocal respect and even sympathy.” In January 1915, a French poilu commented as follows on letters he had found on a prisoner:

“The same as on our side. The misery, the desperation, the longing for peace, the monstrous stupidity of this whole thing. The Germans are just as unhappy as we are. They are just as miserable as us.”

This kind of lesson was also learned by physical meetings with the enemy. What is meant is obviously not hand-to-hand combat, which was actually far less frequent than we have tended to believe, but encounters with prisoners of war. About German captives a British officer reported that “they were pleasant chaps, who generally behaved like gentlemen.” And in 1916 a Scottish soldier, Joseph Lee, expressed his pity and sympathy for German prisoners as follows:

When first I saw you in the curious street,

Like some platoon of soldier ghosts in grey,

My mad impulse was all to smite and slay,

To spit upon you – tread you ’neath my feet.

But when I saw how each sad soul did greet

My gaze with no sign of defiant frown,

(…)

I knew that we had suffered each as other,

And could have grasped your hand and cried, ‘My brother!’

Sympathy for German prisoners was also reflected in the poem “Liedholz,” written by the British officer Herbert Read. He may have been an officer but he happened to be a convinced anarchist. Read captured a German named Liedholz, and already before they reach the British trenches, “werden de versperringen van formele vijandschap weggenomen,” to use the words of a literary commentator:

Before we reached our wire

He told me he had a wife and three children.

In the dug-out we gave him a whiskey.

(…)

In broken French we discussed

Beethoven, Nietzsche and the International.

In “Memoirs of an Infantry Officer,” published in 1930, Siegfried Sassoon was to write that, during the war, the Germans were generally hated by British citizens, but not, or certainly far less, by British soldiers. He himself, he added, “had nothing against them.” Countless French soldiers likewise failed to develop feelings of hatred with respect to their German “neighbours on the other side.” “We don’t hate the Germans,” wrote a poilu in a letter that was intercepted by the censors.

The French soldier Barthas soon felt sympathy for the German prisoners he escorted on a train travelling from the front to a camp somewhere in southern France, and who were verbally abused by civilians in railway stations. He and his comrades shared the wine and the grapes those same civilians had offered them with their prisoners in a gesture of camaraderie. “Those who has seen the dreadful realities of war,” observes Max Hastings, “recoiled from displays of chauvinism.” The soldiers loathed the civilians, journalists, and politicians who could or would not understand their miserable fate. Conversely, they found it impossible to hate a so-called enemy who shared their misery. “The soldiers of the rival armies felt a far stronger sense of community with each other than with their peoples at home,” writes Hastings.

The “no man’s land” that separated the armies revealed itself to be less wide than the gap that separated the soldiers from the officers of these armies. During the late summer and fall of 1914, two different wars had thus actually started to ravage Europe. First, a highly visible “vertical” war, a conflict between groups of countries, in which all uniformed men of the one side were enemies of all uniformed men on the other side. Second, below the surface, so to speak: a “horizontal” war, an explosion of class conflict, a conflict in which the officers of each army were the enemies of their own subordinates, while a high degree of solidarity united the ordinary soldiers of both sides. In the first war, a geographic (or topographic) frontline separated friend and foe. In the second war, a social gap separated the antagonists.

In the autumn of 1914, when on the western front the “war of movement” petered out and gave way to a “stationary war,” the soldiers discovered that their enemies were human beings just like themselves, with whom they happened to have a lot in common. They were overwhelmingly of a lower-class origin and they all experienced an urgent need to curb the mutual massacre as much as possible. Practices emerged that have been described as “live-and-let-live.” For example, the soldiers often deliberately refrained from firing their weapons, especially during mealtimes, hoping that the enemy would do the same, as usually turned out to be the case. When, during such a pause, a mortar did suddenly get fired, a German voice loudly offered excuses to the British “Tommies,” which prevented an escalation of the firing. When specific orders arrived from “above” to open fire, the men deliberately aimed too high, and the enemy did the same. The artillerists also often opened fire at the same time of the day, aiming at the same target, this in order to give the enemy a chance to withdraw to a safe area.

Quiet sectors thus originated along the front, areas where the casualty rate was noticeably lower than elsewhere. In the vicinity of Ypres the British and Germans thus agreed to let the men on both sides sit on the parapet of their muddy and frequently flooded trenches, in full view of each other, in order to stay dry. Yet another form of “live-and-let-live” consisted in the conclusion of inofficial ceasefires, unauthorized by the superiors, after heavy fighting, which allowed both sides to recuperate the wounded and bury the dead. Those opportunities were often used to start a conversation with the enemy and to exchange small presents such as tobacco and insignia, in other words, to “fraternize.” Occasionally this even involved visits to the trenches on the other side of no man’s land! A German soldier later remembered such a pause in the fighting in France toward the end of November 1914: “French and German soldiers walked around, fully visible in the bright daylight. Nobody fired their weapons. It was said that some brave men even visited the enemy trenches.” The same soldier related how even later, for example in February 1915, “it was silently agreed to leave each other in peace as much as possible.” And a French poilu, Gervais Morillon, described in a letter how on December 12, 1914.

Frenchmen and Germans shook hands after unarmed Germans came out of their trenches, waving a white flag…We reciprocated, and we visited each other’s trenches and exchanged cigars and cigarets, while a few hundred metres further they were shooting at each other.

In some sectors such fraternizations developed into an almost daily routine. In the area of the town of Pont-à-Mousson French as well as German soldiers started in November 1914 to fetch water daily at the Fountain of Father Hilarion (Fontaine du Père Hilarion), a spring situated in a ravine in the middle of no man’s land. Normally, they took turns to go there, and no shots were fired while water was being collected. But it frequently came to meetings and conversations. According to a report that appears to refer to that site, Frenchmen and Germans exchanged “bread, cheese, and wine,” ate together, showed each other pictures of wife and children, amused themselves together, sang songs, played the accordion. That sociability abruptly ended when, on December 7, heavy fighting erupted in the area.

The soldiers were supposed to hate each other, but something very different actually happened: on both sides many men, though admittedly not all, developed a considerable measure of empathy for, and solidarity with, their counterparts on the other side of the no man`s land. The outbreak of war had produced an explosion of nationalism and had dealt a heavy blow to the ideal of internationalist solidarity among proletarians, exactly as the elite had hoped. But it now appeared that the vagaries of war caused the uniformed proletarians to rediscover and re-appreciate internationalist solidarity. The military elite did not approve. Of the war it was indeed expected that it would bury internationalism once and for all instead of resurrecting it. According to Adam Hochschild, such an “outburst of spontaneous solidarity among ordinary, working-class soldiers…outraged higher-ups and militarists on both sides.”

` `The ordinary soldiers were keenly aware that their superiors had their reasons for execrating all forms of “live-and-let-live,” even though it sometimes proved possible to persuade or even force them to participate, as we will see later. It is therefore understandable that these activities often occurred when the officers were not present, which was often the case in the dangerous first lines. The fraternizations were immediately aborted whenever it was signaled that officers were on their way. Barthas describes such an occurrence that took place in rhe Champagne region in the summer of 1916. The French had to inform the German soldiers with whom they were socializing that their officers had become suspicious, so that they had to suspend the meetings. “The Germans were deeply moved and thanked us cordially. Before they disappeared behind their sandbags, oone of them lifted his hand and called out: ‘Frenchmen, Germans, soldiers, we are all comrades!’ Then he made a fist: ‘But the officers, NO.’ “ Barthas commented as follows:

God! That German was right. One should not generalize, but the majority of the officers were morally farther removed from us than those poor devils of German soldiers who are being dragged against their will to the same slaugherhouse.

The officers did indeed abominate any arrangements reflecting solidarity between their own subordinates and the “enemy.” Charles De Gaulle, for example, the progeny of a Catholic bourgeois family in Lille, a young officer during the First World War, condemned each form of “live-and-let-live” as “lamentable.” But there were also many ordinary soldiers who did not approve of such gatherings, since they had internalized the elite’s nationalist and militarist ethos and thus genuinely hated the enemy. Hitler was one of them.

The authorities condemned and prohibited all forms of fraternization and “live-and-let-live” in general. The officers sometimes put snipers to work when they suspected that fraternizations “threatened” to take place. However, the spontaneous truces and fraternizations also reflected the need of all warriors to maintain and display a semblance of humanity even in the middle of an unprecedently bestial war. This explains why officers too sometimes chose to participate. The French soldier Gervais Morillon described how an officier walked at the head of a group of Germans who came out of their trenches. Sometimes superiors with a rank as high as that of colonel participated.

The fact that fraternizations were officially strictly prohibited, apparently made them even more fascinating and appealing to soldiers. It is probably thus that we can interpret a myth that enjoyed an inordinate amount of success among soldiers of both sides throughout the war. Countless soldiers were convinced that, somewhere in the no man’s land, in abandoned trenches and preferably deep under the ground, and thus beyond the reach of projectiles and of officers, beastlike deserters of all armies dwelled together in a kind of permanent state of fraternization. By night they would rob the dead and wounded, seek food, etc. They became such a threat to the troops that eventually the army brass ordered them to be exterminated with gas. This myth was a cocktail of many ingredients. It amounted to a modern version of the Medieval theme of the simultaneously feared and admired “wild man.” But is was also a commentary of the soldiers on their own beastly existence in the trenches and a fantasy about disobedience. Last but not least, it vaguely reflected the soldiers’ solidarity with the men on the other side of the no man’s land, combined with the ardent desire to wave adieu to their own superiors and the miserable war. “An anti-establishment smell was attched to this myth,” writes Tim Cook, it was “a form of disobedience.” Indeed, the generals could prohibit fraternizations in the real world, but they proved powerless in the face of such mythical fraternization – this clearly to the satisfaction of the soldiers who wished to believe in this myth.

In any event, the authorities were also unable to prevent the wave of fraternizations that took place on Christmas Day, 1914. In the vicinity of Ypres, the sector of the western front that was held from September-October of that year by the British and became known to them as “Flanders’ Fields,” it already started on Christmas eve. The Germans decorated trees near their trenches with burning candles and started to sing Christmas songs such as Stille Nacht, “Silent Night.” The British reacted by lighting bonfires and singing English Christmas carols. Then the soldiers on both sides started to loudly call out Christmas wishes. The Germans arranged to deliver a chocolate tart to the British, accompanied by an invitation to conclude a truce. Shortly thereafter soldiers crawled out of their trenches in order to fraternize in no man’s land and in each other’s trenches. That sort of thing continued on Christmas Dayitself, and in some sectors even on Boxing Day. Presents such as tobacco, whiskey, and cigars were exchanged, and the two sides helped each other to bury the dead. In the no man’s land a soccer game was also played, which the British claimed to have won. An English soldier wrote in a letter that this was “the most remarkable Christmas” he had ever experienced, and that he “had had the pleasure to shake hands with numerous Germans,…to smoke together and to enjoy a friendly chat.” A favourite conversation topic was the madness of ta war of which both sides had had more than enough.

Between the British and the Germans the unofficial Christmas truce affected virtually the entire front of approximately forty kilometers along which they faced each other. In some sectors of that front the truce dragged on until New Year’s Day. Some historians claim that the Anglo-German fraternizations of the end of December 1914 were nothing less than “massive.” But on Christmas Day similar truces and fraternizations also occurred between the Germans and the French. Barthas confided to his diary that, in their sector, the morning of Christmas witnessed “singing and shouting and the firing of flares” and that no shots were fired. And it is known that poilus met boches to sing and exchange tobacco, cognac, postcards, newspapers, and other presents in the vicinity of Soissons and in villages of Picardy such as Cappy and Foucaucourt. A poilu later remembered that

The boches signalled us and indicated that they wanted to talk to us. I approached to three or four meters from their trench in order to talk to three of them who had surfaced…They asked that we would refrain all day and night from shooting and said that they themselves would not fire one single shot. They had enough of the war, they said, they were married and had nothing against the French, only against the English. They gave me a box of cigars and a package of sigarets, and I gave them a copy of [the magazine] Le Petit Parisien in exchange for a German newspaper. Then I withdrew to the French trench, where many men were keen to try my German tobacco. Our neighbours on the other side kept their word, even better than we did. Not even one single rifle shot was fired.

There were many other sites along the front where groups of French soldiers visited the German trenches in order to enjoy a drink, or where Germans came to offer cigars to the Franzosen. Christmas carols were performed in both languages, for example Minuit chrétien and O Tannenbaum. Belgians and Germans, who faced each other in the lowlands of the Yser River estuary, allegedly also fraternized on Christmas 1914. The Germans agreed to mail letters from Belgian soldiers to family members in occupied Belgium. At the eastern front it also came to fraternizations. The Russians met their Austrian-Hungarian enemies in the no man’s land in Galicia and exchanged the usual tobacco, but also schnapps, bread, and meat.

The superiors were far from enchanged with the Christmas truces, but could not prevent them. On the British side an officer rushed to the scene with this intention, apparantly from the safety of the rear, but he arrived too late. His men had already started to socialize with Germans in the no man’s land. He could only resign himself to the fait accompli. He himself and a handful of other officers ended up joining their subordinates and went to greet the German officiers. One of the latter ordered beer to be fetched for everyone, and the officers courteously drank to each other’s health. A British officer reciprocated by treating those present with pieces of a traditional English plum pudding. It was finally agreed that the inofficial truce would last until midnight, so that everyoone would have to be back in their own trenches by midnight. The “damage” done by the fraternizations, at least from the viewpoint of the superiors, was thus limited somewhat, at least in that sector.

The higher the rank of the superiors, the less they liked this strange Christmas idyll. The British commander in chief, Generaal French, who on Christmas Day enjoyed a gourmet dinner, featuring turtle soup, with as digestif a brandy from 1820 offered by the Rotschilds, issued a specific order to nip in the bud any future attempts to fraternize. One year later, the artillery would be made to fire into no man’s land all day, starting on Christmas Eve, in order to prevent any meetings there. However, it proved impossible to prevent fraternizations to occur here and there and from time to time.

In the 1980s, the strange events of Christmas 1914 inspired the song Christmas in the Trenches, 1914, written and put to music by the American folksinger John McCutcheon. It features the following lines:

’T was Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung,

The frozen fields of France were still, no Christmas song was sung,

Our families back in England were toasting us that day,

Their brave and glorious lads so far away.

(…)

There’s someone coming towards us!’ the front line sentry cried

All sights were fixed on one lone figure coming from their side

His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shone on that plain so bright

As he bravely strode unarmed into the night.

Soon one by one on either side walked into No Man’s land

With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand

We shared some secret brandy and we wished each other well

And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave ’em hell.

We traded chocolates, cigarettes, and photographs from home

These sons and fathers far away from families of their own

Young Sanders played his squeeze box and they had a violin

This curious and unlikely band of men.

(…)

’T was Christmas in the trenches, where the frost so bitter hung

The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung

For the walls they’d kept between us to exact the work of war

Had been crumbled and were gone for evermore.

My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell

Each Christmas come since World War I I’ve learned its lessons well

That the ones who call the shots won’t be among the dead and lame

And on each end of the rifle we’re the same.

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First published on December 27, 2022

***

I was born into a Palestinian Muslim family where celebrating Christmas was always a natural practice for us.

From an early age, I was often told “Jesus is Palestinian, just like you” – a fact that would give me tremendous pride.

This ecumenical outlook was something my Palestinian refugee parents had instilled in me. Before the Nakba, they were living in Jerusalem and its surrounding towns.

According to the Christian tradition, that is also the place where the resurrection took place.

Not far from their home was the Church of Holy Sepulchre, Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. To this day, as a faithful Muslim, I have passed on what I learned from my family to my children.

It is impossible to understand Palestinian national identity without recognising its integral Christian component that exists side by side with the Muslim component.

Palestinians suffer equally

Palestinian Christians have not just been an integral part of our nation but also our liberation movement. Israel knows that well: under Israeli colonial-settlement policies, racist legislation and daily attacks, Palestinians of all faiths are subjected to the same human rights violations.

This goes for the land and the people. On one end, Israel continues its racist policy of preventing Palestinian family reunification while making it almost impossible for thousands of Palestinians and foreign passport holders to even visit Palestine, let alone invest, study, teach, or volunteer.

On the other, it has pushed for the expansion of its colonial-settlement projects including in East Jerusalem in an attempt to change its Palestinian identity.

Additionally, settlement projects such as the construction of “Giv’at Hamatos” around Mar Elias Monastery between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, the transformation of church property in Jaffa Gate into new colonial settlements, as well as the attempts at turning the Mount of Olives into an Israeli national park, among others.

Such acts of aggression are part of an ongoing process of annexation that, in light of the Jewish supremacist ideology of some of those leading Israel, will not stop until their “Greater Israel” is consolidated, with full annexation over the occupied West Bank.

Under this perspective, there will be continued attempts to change the status quo of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a move that is rejected by Palestinians, Arabs and the international community.

Such attempts have been understood by the Heads of Churches in Jerusalem as an attack against the concept of the status quo that has provided some of the most important Christian and Muslim religious sites in Palestine with clear regulations for centuries – way before the State of Israel was even established.

Despite violations committed against our people, we shall not surrender or give up on the message of hope delivered from a humble grotto in Bethlehem over 2,000 years ago. We also cannot be blind to the realities of the ongoing violations of Palestinians’ rights since the Nakba 75 years ago.

Keeping hope alive

Changing course is possible. However, it would need a significant change in how things have been dealt with up to this point.

The Israeli government must halt all unilateral actions and recognise and implement its obligations under signed agreements and international law.

The European countries, the US and others that believe in the importance of protecting the two-state solution must immediately recognise the State of Palestine on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital and accept its full membership in the United Nations.

It is worrying to see how certain parties that claim to care about Christianity worldwide have chosen to remain silent on the steps that Israel is taking on the ground; steps which are directly affecting the present and future of Christianity in Palestine, particularly in and around occupied Jerusalem.

Those same “friends of Israel” that celebrate their “pilgrimages” should think a bit about the millions of Palestinians, including hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Christians that are banned by the occupying power, Israel, from celebrating Christmas at their holy sites.

We will continue to celebrate Christmas in Palestine, the birthplace of Christianity. It is part of our identity and our responsibility to preserve our traditions that certainly include celebrating Christmas, which I love to consider a Palestinian gift to the world.

Part of our resilience is to keep our cultural heritage alive, to feel proud of our traditions, and to make sure, no matter the years of exile, oppression and occupation, that our people protect their right to live in freedom and independence, peace and prosperity, like all peoples worldwide.

*

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Ambassador Majdi Khaldi is a member of the Palestinian National Council and the Senior Diplomatic Advisor to the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Featured image is from PressTV

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First published on December 24, 2021

***

In December 2021, we were told by our governments to prepare for Christmas under Lockdown.

To protect you and your loved ones against the so-called deadly Covid Omicron Variant.

The announcement regarding Omicron was made on Black Friday November 2021, the day after Thanksgiving.

Anthony Fauci led the disinformation campaign, intimating that Omicron “is already in the United States but has yet to be detected”

The alleged spread of  Omicron during the 2021 Christmas holiday period was used as a pretext and a justification for implementing partial lockdowns, restrictions on travel as well as confinement and stay at home mandates during the Christmas holiday. 

 

Video: “Imagine All The People”: 2021 Christmas and New Year Under Lockdown

 

“The Spirit of Christmas” was also used as a means to speed up Big Pharma’s “killer vaccine”. 

The RT-PCR Test is Flawed and Invalid: the 2021 Covid Omicron Christmas and 2021-2022 New Year Mandates Were imposed. 

There was No Pandemic in December 2021

Will it Happen again? What’s at stake this Christmas 2023

Video: Fake Pandemic Triggers Worldwide Economic and Social Collapse

Michel Chossudovsky Interview with Caroline Mailloux, Lux Media

 

click lower right corner of screen to access Rumble and/or leave a comment

 

Video: “Imagine all The People”: 2021 Christmas and New Year Under Lockdown

Add a comment. Spread the Word. Link to Bitchute 

And now imagine, John Lennon’s song:

“Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky

Imagine all the people
Livin’ for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Imagine all the people
Livin’ life in peace

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

***

See Michel Chossudovsky‘s E Book entitled

The Worldwide Corona Crisis:  Global Coup d’État against Humanity

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, August 2022

**

The Omicron Fraud Used to Justify the “Christmas Covid Lockdown”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, December 19, 2021

 

Bombshell: CDC No Longer Recognizes the PCR Test As a Valid Method for Detecting “Confirmed Covid-19 Cases”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, December 22, 2021

 

On Pfizer’s “confidential” Report on the Killer Vaccine confirming crimes against humanity

Bombshell Document Dump on Pfizer Vaccine Data

By Global Research, December 23, 2021

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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***

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Global Research Introduction

I have tears in my eyes while reading Edward’s prose. 

Let us have tears to our eyes in solidarity with the People of Palestine, in building a Christmas mass movement Worldwide, which confronts the ongoing mass slaughter before our very eyes. 

Let us also recall The Christmas Truce of 1914, 109 years ago this Christmas Eve:

“Something happened in the early months of the “War to End All Wars” that put a tiny little blip of hope in the historical timeline of the organized mass slaughter that is war. The event was regarded by the professional military officer class to be so profound and so important (and so disturbing) that strategies were immediately put in place that would ensure that such an event could never happen again.” (Dr. Gary G. Kohls)

 

Let  “The Power of Peace in the Time of War” Happen again. Confront corrupt politicians. 

May the tears of humanity in your eyes in December 2023 be conducive to a Worldwide movement to abolish  and “criminalize all wars”, break the insidious narrative of a handful of Wall Street billionaires who finance America’s “humanitarian wars”, unseat  the West’s “Classe politique” and establish the foundations of  Real Democracy by the People for the People”. 


Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, December 20, 2023

***

Jesus was a Palestinian Jew born in Bethlehem. He grew up in Nazareth and was executed as a criminal in Jerusalem. It is because of him that we celebrate Christmas. But it is in spite of him that what we celebrate is the opposite of what he stood for.

The different stories of his birth, told by Mathew and Luke in the New Testament, which are the bases for Christmas, are not filled with sugar plum fairies and sleighs filled with useless, unnecessary consumer goods. There’s nothing about a Jolly Old St. Nicholas or baked ham or candy canes. No gifts to return in a frenzied rush that replicates their purchase. No credit card bills that come due in the new year. No “Jingle Bell Rock” with Brenda Lee or “White Christmas” with Bing Crosby.

Just a poor child’s birth to fulfill a prophecy that out of life would come death and out of death would come life. That hope was improbable but possible with faith.

These birth narratives, which tell of a nativity that concludes with the grown child’s suffering, public crucifixion, death, and Resurrection – a story that lives on with the suffering of so many innocents – are, as Gary Wills puts it in What the Gospels Meant, “. . . far from feel-good stories. They tell of a family outcast and exiled, hunted and rejected. They tell of children killed, of a sword to pierce the mother’s heart, of a judgment on the nations.”  They are stories of rejection, massacre, and a desperate flight from death at an early age.  They are not what most people now consider to be the essence of Christmas since a radical Palestinian Jew’s story has been almost totally erased by the glitz and greed of getting and spending to fuel an economy geared for war and killing.

Mathew and Luke’s birth narratives are replicated again and again throughout history, presently and most conspicuously in Gaza and the West Bank, as the massacre of the innocents continues under today’s King Herod, Benjamin Netanyahu, the client king of Washington, not Rome, while U.S. politicians, including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who claims to be a defender of children and opposed to U.S. war policies, support this genocide with rhetorical justifications that the Trappist monk Thomas Merton called the unspeakable:

It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and official declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss.  It is the void out of which Eichmann drew the punctilious exactitude of his obedience . . .

To the shock of so many of Kennedy’s early supporters, he claims, among other unspeakable assertions, that the Israelis have been the innocent victims of the Palestinians for 75 years, and they “could flatten Gaza” if they chose to, but instead have kindly used high-tech explosives “to avoid civilian casualties”; that they are not committing genocide intentionally. Indeed, his defense of the indefensible Israeli war crimes is widely shared by the compromised political leadership of both parties in Washinton, D.C., a place Kennedy is hoping to reach as the top of the heap, but he is contradicting all his talk about spiritual renewal and healing the divide, and it is especially galling and hypocritical as we try to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace.

While the genocide of Palestinians is being documented every ongoing day now, the Gospel stories are different in that they were written after the fact and were not based on eyewitness testimony but are narratives of deep symbolic faith significance, historically wrong in places, but told to signify religious truths of the early Christian faith community.

Once there was a mother and father with their child on the run to safety in Egypt; today there are millions of Palestinian refugees on a bombed-out unarmed road of flight to nowhere but a dead-end.

A few days ago my wife and I were caring for our son’s two dogs. Down the hill as night came on, the town set off fireworks – those bombs bursting in air (Oh how lovely is war!) – to celebrate and encourage people to buy holiday gifts, what can only fairly be described as acquisitive consumer madness that many realize yet have accepted as an essential part of the Christmas message. As the fireworks exploded loudly, the dogs started to quake uncontrollably and we had to hold them tight to comfort them.

Yes, they are animals, but sentient animals with deep feelings; and yes, they are not children in Gaza quivering in fear as the Israelis bomb them night and day in savage attacks. But as we held those frightened dogs, feeling their hearts beat fast as they gasped for breath, the visceral sense of what those Palestinians must be feeling, as they hold their trembling children who are butchered as useless objects, overwhelmed me. As they are “thinned out,” as Netanyahu is reported to have said, I felt sick at heart to be living safely in a country that finances and supports such slaughter. A country in which buying and selling is the real religion, people have become commodities, and Christmas has become the celebration of such grotesqueries.

I keep thinking of the difference between human beings and things; life and death; money and power; acquisitiveness and poverty; and, as Norman O. Brown puts it in Life Against Death, “an economy driven by a pure sense of guilt, unmitigated by any sense of redemption.”

In his classic study, Brown makes clear that it is erroneous to think that the secular and the sacred are exclusive opposites, as if the secular has replaced the “irrational” beliefs of religion with clean science and logical thinking; has banished irrational superstitions with abstract, objective, quantitative, and impersonal thinking. On the contrary, he argues that the whole modern secular money complex – the spirit of capitalism – is rooted in the psychology of guilt and the secular sacred. He writes:

The psychological realities here are best grasped in terms of theology, and were already grasped by Luther. Modern secularism, and its companion Protestantism, do not usher in an era in which human consciousness is liberated from supernatural manifestations; the essence of the Protestant (or capitalist) era is that the power over this world has passed from God to God’s negation, God’s ape, the Devil. And already Luther had seen in money the essence of the secular, and therefore of the demonic. The money complex is the demonic, and the demonic is God’s ape; the money complex is therefore the heir to and substitute for the religious complex, an attempt to find God in things.

Things, just like money, beyond a certain minimum necessary for a simple life of use, do not, as everyone knows, bring happiness. This is because they are dead – excrement – the Devil’s favorite toy.

Take all those useless and superfluous objects people exchange during the holiday season.  The disposable gifts that are purchased to ease the guilt of giving and receiving.  Or such “objects” as an autograph of a famous person, an art work such as Andy Warhol’s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn that sold at auction last year for $195 million, Babe Ruth’s bat, Princess Diana’s evening dress ($1,148 million at auction), antlers over a fireplace and trophies of all sorts – the examples are manifold – they serve to confer on their owners a sacred prestige (etymology = deception, illusion) that is pure magic.  Like vast piles of money, they are talismanic protectors against death. Their magical properties are irrational and rarely acknowledged, for to do so would reveal the absurdity of their acquisition and the pathetic nihilistic core of their owners. They are outward signs of inward barrenness, yet for those who possess these useless objects they are magic ordure.

The more expensive the objects the more social power they mystically confer, since the message is that the owner can always give it up for a pot of gold but doesn’t have to since they are sitting on a lot more gold, which is really a pot of shit. In other words, wealth, its possession and the avid desire for it, signifies power over people and that power includes using them in many ways, including their labor, and killing them if one chooses, quickly or slowly, overtly or deviously, directly or indirectly, for some people are useless objects, inferior people.

Such power is central to politics and warfare, as a quick glance at the wealth of war-promoting politicians will reveal.

It is central to the widespread thinking today that the world is filled with useless people who must be disposed of one way or the other.

It is a fundamental tenet of the World Economic Forum, the Gates-Rockefeller et al. crowd, and the racist eugenics promoters today and yesterday.

It is behind the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) biological weapons gain-of-function research, the Covid-19 propaganda, and the CIA’s and Defense Department’s distribution of the mRNA countermeasures (“vaccines”).

It is central to the hideously obscene profits of the medical military-industrial complex and the world-wide arms industry.

It is central to the genocide taking place in Gaza.  For the Israeli rulers, the problem is that the Palestinians exist, so they must be exterminated.

It’s still the same old story told differently down through the ages.

Hitler enacted it against the Jews.

Once long ago, it was a Palestinian Jewish boy born in a manger destined to make trouble for the rulers of the empire who had to be eliminated one way or another. Today that child of God is any Palestinian child, destined, we are told by the rulers of Israel, to grow into a terrorist animal.

Christmas is about a birth, the birth of a boy who would become a man who sided with the outcasts, the poor, the forsaken, the gentle, and the peacemakers. His birth and life was a rebuke to the powerful and the rich who lord it over the innocent, the killers, those who profit at the expense of others, who amass wealth and useless possessions to parade their power, a show of power which, unknown to their self-obsessed minds, is a sign of their spiritual nullity.

I have nothing against Santa. I once sat on his lap and he seemed nice to my four year-old mind. He was fat and jolly. He told me I would get what I wanted for Christmas. But he forgot to tell me what Christmas was really about.

That is what I want. To remember.

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This article was originally published on the author’s website, Behind the Curtain.

Edward Curtin is a prominent author, researcher and sociologist based in Western Massachusetts. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).  

Featured image: The Executioner’s Song – by Mr. Fish

Bethlehem: When Will the Peace of Christmas Come Home?

December 25th, 2023 by Hanna Hanania

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First published by Global Research on December 27, 2022

As mayor of the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, I have the privilege of lighting the Christmas tree in Manger Square and attending Midnight Mass at one of the world’s oldest churches, built in the fourth century by the Byzantine Empress Helena.

But my most important duty is to help give people faith and encouragement. When I lit the Christmas tree on December 3, I expressed my hope that the light would radiate to the world our desire for peace, and we prayed together that Christmas would fulfill its promise and bring people together.

Bringing people together has two meanings for Palestinians living under occupation. It can mean the togetherness of time shared with friends and relatives. But as the mayor of the city where it all began for Christians 2,000 years ago, I must think of the larger Palestinian family.

The fact that we have been living for decades under occupation means that we cannot enjoy the sense of togetherness that all people want during their great holidays, particularly the religious ones. Our people in Gaza cannot come freely to Bethlehem, and our brothers and sisters in Jordan and other countries cannot easily obtain visas from an occupying power that applies exaggerated entry restrictions. Citizens of other Middle East countries, like Lebanon and Syria, which have no peace agreement with Israel, have no chance at all.

The fact that a Palestinian Christian like me, or a Christian living in a nearby Arab country, cannot simply come to Bethlehem for Christmas should be unacceptable to everyone — as should the eight-metre-high wall that still encircles our city, despite being declared illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004. This wall is a constant reminder of separation rather than togetherness.

This year marks 150 years since the municipality of Bethlehem was established. Under Palestinian Authority law, a Christian Arab serves as mayor here and in similar Palestinian cities. But the challenge of keeping Christian Arabs in Palestine has become more difficult because of the occupation. While many Palestinians suffer under foreign military rule and wish that they could leave, Palestinian Christians are leaving in larger numbers simply because they have connections with the wider world through churches and the tourism business.

Bethlehem’s population has grown over the years, and so has the number of hotel rooms — something unavailable to Mary and Joseph 2,000 years ago. But the growth of our population and tourist accommodations has been restricted by the wall Israel built on our land, and by the occupiers’ refusal to allow us to pursue normal urban planning, partly because of Israeli settlement activity. These settlements, too, have long been considered illegal by the United Nations Security Council, yet Israel continues to build and confiscate land in violation of international law, which forbids occupiers from benefiting from their military conquests.

Christmas is celebrated three times in Bethlehem, reflecting the rites of the three main churches that have been here for centuries. Catholics and those following the Gregorian calendar hold midnight mass on December 25, while Orthodox Christians, who follow the eastern calendar, begin their Christmas celebrations on January 6. Armenians hold the ritual on January 18. As we do every year, we will observe all the formalities dictated by the Ottoman Status Quo. This centuries-old system of unwritten rules requires a very strict protocol governing where local leaders meet the head of the respective church and who is allowed to accompany the patriarchs and bishops at various entrance points.

Ten years ago, UNESCO declared Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity to be in danger. After extensive renovation by the Palestinian government, funded by private and official donors, the church’s mosaics and other elements, damaged by a fire centuries ago, were restored. But we Palestinian Christians, who have been living continuously in Bethlehem for 2,000 years, do not want our churches to become museums. We want Christian pilgrims from around the world, including Arab Christians, to come to Bethlehem to visit the living stones. For now, we are blessed that our people still hope and insist on a better tomorrow despite the absence of any serious peace talks.

When we lit the Christmas tree, we prayed that the light from Bethlehem — from the darkness of military occupation — would reach the entire world. Our faith is not in a change of heart by our occupiers, but in the justice of our cause. Two millennia ago, the skies of Bethlehem were lit as angels heralded the birth of Jesus by declaring, “Peace on Earth and goodwill to all.” This Christmas, all of us in his hometown continue to yearn for that true peace.

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Hanna Hanania is the mayor of Bethlehem.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

A Poem for Christmas: Christmas Revels (1838)

December 25th, 2023 by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin

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The Irish artist Daniel Maclise (1806–1870) was a well known artist of the nineteenth century and he painted many scenes featuring British and Irish history. His painting Merry Christmas in the Baron’s Hall (1838) was eventually purchased by the National Gallery of Ireland in 1872. This festive work contains many figures of various ranks and degrees and depicts aspects of the declining traditional Christmas festivities of his time.

Merry Christmas in the Baron’s Hall (1838) (Source: Gerald Leonard)

Maclise also wrote a long poem about this painting titled Christmas Revels: An Epic Rhapsody in Twelve Duans which he published under the pseudonym, Alfred Croquis, Esq. It was published in Fraser’s Magazine for May in 1838.

Maclise’s poetry was influenced by the British novelist, poet, playwright and historian, Sir Walter Scott’s poem Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field, published in 1808. Marmion is a historical romance in verse of 16th-century Britain, ending with the Battle of Flodden in 1513. Marmion has a section referring to Christmas festivities:

“The wassel round, in good brown bowls,
Garnish’d with ribbons, blithely trowls.
There the huge sirloin reek’d; hard by
Plum-porridge stood, and Christmas pie:
Nor fail’d old Scotland to produce,
At such high tide, her savoury goose.
Then came the merry maskers in,
And carols roar’d with blithesome din;
If unmelodious was the song,
It was a hearty note, and strong.
Who lists may in their mumming see
Traces of ancient mystery;
White shirts supplied the masquerade,
And smutted cheeks the visors made;
But, O! what maskers, richly dight,
Can boast of bosoms half so light!”

Maclise’s Merry Christmas in the Baron’s Hall shows around one hundred figures covering many different traditions of Christmas. In his poem, Maclise describes most of the activities taking place in his painting as these excerpts demonstrate:

“Before him, ivied, wand in hand,
Misrule’s mock lordling takes his stand;
[…]
Drummers and pipers next appear,
And carollers in motley gear;
Stewards, butlers, cooks, bring up the rear.
Some sit apart from all the rest,
And these for merry masque are drest;
But now they play another part,
Distinct from any mumming art.
[…]
First, Father Christmas, ivy-crown’d,
With false beard white, and true paunch round,
Rules o’er the mighty wassail-bowl,
And brews a flood to stir the soul:
That bowl’s the source of all their pleasures,
That bowl supplies their lesser measures”

The Lord of Misrule stands in the centre of the painting holding his staff and leading the procession of musicians and carolers coming down the stairs with a boar’s head on a platter. Father Christmas, ‘ivy crown’d’, sits in front of the wassail bowl and is surrounded by mummers (the Dragon and St George sit side by side) and local people. On the left side of the picture we see a group of people playing a parlour game called Hunt the Slipper. In the background on the dais (a part of the floor at the end of a medieval hall, raised a step above the rest of the room) the baron sits with members of the upper classes watching the proceedings.

While Charles Dickens famously drew attention to the idea of a family Christmas dinner (Christmas Revels was written in 1838, A Christmas Carol in 1843), Maclise seems to have been more interested in the former collective celebrations of Christmas.

Many earlier traditions of Christmas involved the whole community celebrating together, entertaining or being entertained: wassailing, mumming, carol singing, medieval plays, dancing, cards and games. The increasing urbanisation and industrialisation of society had distanced people from what was seen as countryside and peasant revels. Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol (1843) showed a ‘civilised’ Christmas based around the nuclear family, far from the collective celebration (and chaos) of countryside communities whose egalitarian traditions posed a symbolic threat to the individualistic status-quo of burgeoning bourgeois society.

Maclise had an ongoing interest in the ideology, history, and traditions of ordinary people as can be seen in the subject matter of some of his paintings, for example, Snap-Apple Night (1833) [Hallowe’en traditions], The Installation of Captain Rock (1834) [depiction of violent nationalist ‘Rockite’ movement], The Marriage of Strongbow and Aoife (1854) [depiction of the Norman conquest of Ireland and the death of Gaelic Ireland], and The Trial of William Wallace at Westminster (before 1870) [one of the leaders of the First War of Scottish Independence].

Many of the earlier Christmas communal/public traditions had their roots in pre-Christian nature-based pagan rituals. With the spread of Christianity, the church tried to incorporate pagan cults or feasts into the church, as Joseph F. Kelly writes, “at the end of the sixth century, Pope Gregory I urged the Roman missionaries to Anglo-Saxon England to preserve as much of the local culture as possible while cleansing it of its pagan associations.” [1]

Pre-Christian traditions

Wassail, for example, was made from hot mulled cider, ale, or wine and spices, and used in an ancient Yuletide door-to-door drinking ritual or to drink to the health of the apple trees and scare away evil spirits.

A Christmas Eve 1842 issue of the Illustrated London News, depicting Father Christmas in a wassail bowl.

Father Christmas is the traditional English name for the personification of Christmas. In pre-Victorian times “Father Christmas had been concerned essentially with adult feasting and games. He had no particular connection with children, nor with the giving of presents.”  Father Christmas had been around since at least the fifteenth century whereas the popular American Santa Claus arrived in England in the 1850s and soon “distinctions between Father Christmas and Santa Claus largely faded away in the early years of the 20th century.”

Mummers acted in folk plays such as St George and the Dragon, the theme of which, death and revival, relates back to earlier ideas of resurrection and the spirit of vegetation, a “magical ritual intended to promote the fertility of vegetation”, where the main narrative structure includes “a quarrel, a death, and a miraculous restoration to life.” [2]

The boar’s head was an ancient tradition introduced to Britain by the Vikings and the Romans. The boar was killed as a sacrifice to their god Frey/Freyr as swine was the sacred animal associated with him. [3]  Frey was “associated with kingship, fertility, peace, and weather”.

Saturnalia (1783) by  Antoine-François Callet, showing his interpretation of what the Saturnalia might have looked like

The Lord of Misrule, appointed to be in charge of Christmas partying at court, universities, and in the great houses of the nobility was similar to the mock king of the Roman feast of Saturnalia when social mores were turned upside down for the duration of the festivities (probably as a form of social catharsis). [4]

Holly and ivy are associated with the Roman Bacchhus cult whereby “holly was the female counterpart to the male ivy” and in wreaths were united as ‘mythical parents that guaranteed renewed life in springtime. [5] Similarly, the evergreen fir tree was the “symbolic embodiment of the mythological world tree and wonderous, ever-fertile nature.” [6]

Carols also had pre-Christian elements such as the Boar’s Head Carol along with other carols featuring holly and ivy as their subject. [7]

The 12-day festival of Yule and the Yule log was historically observed by the Germanic peoples and connected to the Wild Hunt [a chase led by a mythological figure escorted by a ghostly or supernatural group of hunters engaged in pursuit, the hunters are generally the souls of the dead or ghostly dogs], the god Odin, and the pagan Anglo-Saxon Mōdraniht (“Mothers’ Night”).

Mistletoe was also important. Pagan cultures “regarded the white berries as symbols of male fertility, with the seeds resembling semen. The Celts, particularly, saw mistletoe as the semen of Taranis, while the Ancient Greeks referred to mistletoe as “oak sperm”. […] The Romans associated mistletoe with peace, love and understanding and hung it over doorways to protect the household.”

The Great Hall in Barley Hall, York, restored to replicate its appearance in around 1483

The Great Hall

All these traditions were exhibited in the local great hall when the tenants and locals were invited for the Christmas festivities. During the Middle Ages the great hall was a focal point as the “administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were held the lord’s manorial courts, communal meals with manorial tenants and great banquets.”

The great hall had many functions:

“A typical great hall was a rectangular room between one and a half and three times as long as it was wide, and also higher than it was wide. It was entered through a screens passage at one end, and had windows on one of the long sides, often including a large bay window. There was often a minstrels’ gallery above the screens passage. At the other end of the hall was the dais where the high table was situated. Even royal and noble residences had few living rooms until late in the Middle Ages, and a great hall was a multifunctional room. It was used for receiving guests and it was the place where the household would dine together, including the lord of the house, his gentleman attendants and at least some of the servants. The halls of late 17th, 18th and 19th-century country houses and palaces usually functioned almost entirely as impressive entrance points to the house, and for large scale entertaining, as at Christmas, for dancing, or when a touring company of actors performed.”

The Abbot of Unreason (1837) by George CRUIKSHANK (1792-1878) – Collection

By the late 16th century the great hall began to lose its function as a local administrative centre and was used more for “large scale entertaining, as at Christmas, for dancing, or when a touring company of actors performed.”

The American writer, Washington Irving, like Maclise, seems to have also been influenced by English manorial customs:

“In his 1812 revisions to A History of New York, he inserted a dream sequence featuring St. Nicholas soaring over treetops in a flying wagon, an invention which others dressed up as Santa Claus. In his five Christmas stories in The Sketch Book, Irving portrayed an idealized celebration of old-fashioned Christmas customs at a quaint English manor which depicted English Christmas festivities that he experienced while staying in England, which had largely been abandoned. He used text from The Vindication of Christmas (London 1652) of old English Christmas traditions, and the book contributed to the revival and reinterpretation of the Christmas holiday in the United States.”

While such gatherings were a source of the Romanticist regard for the feudal hierarchies of medieval times, they also contained the origins of much earlier communal peasant agricultural gatherings rooted in the cycles of nature’s seasons and polytheistic worship of pagan deities and spirits. As the pantheistic traditions of the peasants went into decline, the stage was set for a new type of Christmas which was re-invented and emphasised family over community. As Paul Frodsham writes:

“Prior to the accession of Victoria in 1837, no-one in Britain had heard of Santa Claus, had sent or received a Christmas card, or had pulled a Christmas cracker; few ate Turkey for Christmas dinner, and hardly anyone outside the royal family had ever seen a Christmas tree. By the end of the Victorian era, in the early twentieth century, these were all accepted aspects of our ‘traditional’ Christmas, celebrated as a major festival throughout most of the western world.” [8]

Judith Flanders comments that:

“Dickens took the changes to industrial society – office and factory work, urban poverty and want, food that was bought in shops, not grown in kitchen-gardens, cooked in laundry-coppers and commercial cookshops, not by servants in great halls – he took this new consumerist society, and through Scrooge’s ‘conversion’, he turned it into a sacred duty. Following his lead – cooking the turkey, playing games, drinking toasts, or buying a toy for your child – became the quasi-religious observances of the new middle-class domesticity.” [9]

Despite the strong connections between Maclise and Dickens (Maclise illustrated several of Dickens’s Christmas books and other works), their artistic works show different emphases regarding Christmas and society, especially at a time when industrialisation was moving society away from largely agricultural cooperating communities to self-sufficient family groups. Today, the most similar events to the manorial gatherings of the past are wedding receptions in hotel dining rooms, with their large gatherings of people partaking in food, dance, entertainment and frolics.

St Albans Mummers production of St George and the Dragon, Boxing Day 2015-7

The collective gatherings depicted in Maclise’s painting were significant in that they show the life of the community and their respect for nature. Today we are surrounded by the cults and culture of death. Christmas is an important feast because it is about life and renewal. Unfortunately, our tendency is to exploit and destroy nature, and now we are gradually realising the serious repercussions of these acts. Maclise’s poem shows us a very different way of celebrating Christmas.

The full text of Maclise’s poem is republished below:

CHRISTMAS REVELS: AN EPIC RHAPSODY IN TWELVE DUANS.
BY ALFRED CROQUIS, ESQ. (Daniel Maclise)

After the painting: Merry Christmas in the Barons Hall by Daniel Maclise (Fraser’s Magazine, Vol. 16, May 1838, p635 to 644)

HURRAH ! Hurrah!

I.
‘Tis the Feast of Yule, and all are gay
For Christendom’s brave holiday.
Room for old Christmas, crowned with holly:
No other days are half so jolly!
Room, room for Christmas, ivy-crown’d:
No merry days like his are found!
We cast our cares and maxims trite,
And wise remarks away to-night!

II.
Up to the fretted roof is sent
The mingled roar of merriment!
With blithesome laugh and joyous shout
Of comely maid or handsome lout,
That oaken roof full oft has rung
To laughing lilt from lusty lung,-
To boisterous mirth and honest glee
Reflected from its canopy;
But never lent its sheltering aid
To blither groups than here portray’d;
And never will its arch spread o’er
Such merry-making Christmas more.
The Baron with a courteous grace
Then sits him down, in pride of place;
And ready vassals near him stand,
And watch his eye for a command;
Towards gentle dames turn valiant knights,
Fierce from the brunt of fifty fights;
The haught eye quenched, the voice hushed low,
Quailing beneath a fairer foe, –
That voice the war-cry erst above,
Sunk in soft accents to his love.
Oh! not alone in youth’s soft hour
Love can assert his mystic power,
But may in manhood’s hour of noon
To soft strains his stern heart attune;
The ills of man’s decline assuage,
And tinge the sunset of his age.
Circling the fire, a merry band
The slipper hunt from hand to hand;
A romping group of happy faces,
As bright with ribands as with graces.
That shriek of glee! that laugh — that shout —
Tell the hid slipper is found out,
But not yet gain’d; though yon page tries
To check its progress as it flies.
Ah, happy boyhood! merry page;
Of just the frolic-loving age,
Ere serious chase your life engage.
The oaken table’s mighty length
Will soon require its utmost strength,-
For, heap’d upon its ample board,
Good cheer in mountains will be stored;
A numerous clan, — but first, and chief,
In place and space, bold Baron Beef.
A merry king, in festive prank,
His virtues felt, and gave his rank;
Sir Loin, as renown’d a name
As heralds’ blazon’d parchments claim,
For virtues rare, and wide-spread ſame.
His vassal-meats are ranged around,
And pasties huge might there be found,
Where every dainty did abound;
The mighty chine, the savoury goose,
Capons, and turkeys crammed for use,
The lusty brawn, the venison haunch,
And all that wholesome was, and stanch:
Such famous sweetmeats, too, stood nigh, –
Plumb-porridge there, and eke mince-pie;
And now the boar’s head is brought in,
‘Mid song, and shout, and music’s din,
By lusty serving man, in pride,
With form erect, and scarf o’er side;
Between the tusks a pippin’s placed,
Rosemary wreaths around it traced,
Garlands of flowers the dish has graced;
With laurel his fierce head is crown’d,
And loud the applause that rings around.
Before him, ivied, wand in hand,
Misrule’s mock lordling takes his stand;
The baron’s spear lauds to the skies,
And eke the boar’s vast strength and size.
With vauntings huge he well can tell
The time, the place, and how he fell;
How such a famous hound he tore, –
Describe his eye, his crest, his roar;
And, ending, swear such chase, such boar,
He ne’er shall see, nor saw before.
On either side a gay page stands,
Mustard and spice-box ‘tween his hands;
And close behind might there be seen
The woodman in his garb of green;
Drummers and pipers next appear,
And carollers in motley gear;
Stewards, butlers, cooks, bring up the rear.
Some sit apart from all the rest,
And these for merry masque are drest;
But now they play another part,
Distinct from any mumming art.
Ah! we’re not able for the task,
To conjure up “The Christmas Masque;”
Or, if we were, what needs it, when
Preserv’d in pages of “rare Ben,”
It shines on us in all its glory,
From the bright regions of his story —
A Poet’s heaven; and now not fainter
Glows on the canvass of the Painter;
And, as our tints cannot be warmer,
We’ll merely name you each performer.

III.
First, Father Christmas, ivy-crown’d,
With false beard white, and true paunch round,
Rules o’er the mighty wassail-bowl,
And brews a flood to stir the soul:
That bowl’s the source of all their pleasures,
That bowl supplies their lesser measures;
And as he brews, loud rings the laughter, –
He tastes before, and likewise after;
For as he throws in each ingredient
To try th’ effect is but expedient.
And see them still fresh bottles bringing,
While loud the hall with mirth is ringing.
Once more the mixture, then, he tries, —
His lips approve, judge by his eyes.
Spices and wine are in the bowl,
And o’er the surface apples roll;
With rosemary sprig he stirs the whole.
At Christmas time, whate’er betide,
The hobby-horse was ne’er denied;
And dull that festal day had been
Where his gay prancing was not seen,
The maddest sport upon the green.
Where’er he bounds among the crowd,
There is the laugh and scream most loud,
Resounding as he goes along
Amid the gay and shifting throng.
All day the village through to roam,
At eve he makes the hall his home;
And, tired of being such a ranger,
Behold him now at rack and manger,
Replenishing his faded prime
To grace the sports of supper-time.
And so the hobby’s turned his tail,
And sits his half-man to regale
On mighty beef and humming-ale.
Enters the wonder of the night,
The Dragon, with St. George to fight;
Armed cap-à-pie, from head to tail,
Against St. George in scaly mail.
What face is from his jaws a peeper
But that of honest John the Reaper.
The village tailor only all knows,
But keeps the secret of his smallclothes.
John deems an extra cup no sin,
Well to sustain his man within,
And thus to fortify his heart
Up to the pitch of Dragon part;
A reason John thinks of besides,
He carries with him two insides.
But, oh beware, my worthy Reaper,
Wassail may turn you to a sleeper.
Wassail a Dragon’s eyes will close,
And lull e’en him into repose;
Lifting too oft a foaming flagon
Is not decorous in a Dragon.
But now he sets him at the table,
To eat and drink while he is able, –
Folds up his tail, thrusts forth his head,
And asks of Saint George to be fed;
For mark how Christmas old feuds ends,
The Dragon and Saint George are friends.
Enters Saint George in all his pride,
And takes his seat by Dragon’s side,
Completely armed in pasteboard bright,
A famous champion and a knight.
The maidens wond’ringly admire
The hero in his rich attire.
One ties a sash, one pins a shawl,
And one a scarf flings over all.
The merry rogue who acts the Saint,
With smutted beard and cheek of paint,
Repays these favours of the misses,
Beneath the misletoe, with kisses.
And well they know the laughing eyes
That peep beneath the helm’s disguise.
He now forgets both helm and mail,
And Dragon’s wings and scaly tail;
Both from the same full beaken quaff,
And shout and sing, and roar and laugh.
That Turk, by Christian knight to fall,
‘Mid laughter and applause of all,
The creed forgets which Turk denies;
Unchristianlike, the bowls supplies:
Yet he’s rehearsing but his part
Allotted of the drama’s art,
And lifts the brimming cup on high,
His nerve’s firm steadiness to try,
With practised hand and steady eye;
Judge by that cup, which sheds no drop
Till at his mouth the brimmer stop,
That the wide whirling of his sabre
Will be performed with little labour.
Others in tiring room are nigh —
Sir Loin, Saint Distaff, and Mince Pie,
Plum Porridge, Carol, Wassail, enter,
Straight to the board as their own centre;
Mumming and Misrule, Baby Cake,
Now altogether merry make;
And he who acted to his name
Did best perform his part of game:
They ate and drank, till they in fact did
Look quite the heroes they enacted.
Such are the persons of the masque;
And now proceed we with our task.
Rogues, gipsies, jugglers, have got in,
From simple souls their pence to win.
Mark, first they sit in lowly place,
Nor of their calling shew a trace;
But as the strong ale goes about,
And lulls suspicion, they come out;
Till, bolder grown, they may be found
Where jokes and laughter most abound,
Tricking and juggling all around.
See, one on table takes his stand,
And one beside on either hand —
Wonder on wonder quick succeeds;
And good folks, puzzled, praise the deeds.
The old, with ill-concealed shame,
Look on and wonder, while they blame;
The young devour with ardent gaze,
And looks half doubting — whole amaze —
And give youths’ ever ready praise.

IV.
The brave old Hall was then to be seen
Prank’d out in garb of bright evergreen.
Over the hearth, and over the door,
Adown the wainscot from roof to the floor,
Along the cornice, and over the arch,
The triumph of holly and ivy doth march.
Suits of grim armour look bright and look gay —
Garlands of berries, like scarfs, o’er them lay;
And corslet and helm, shield, battle-axe, and blade,
Together in green robe of peace were arrayed.
High on the places where ladies may go,
Roof, door, and mantel-shelf, hangs mistletoe:
The maiden who stays ‘neath this licensing bough,
To the gallant who claims it a kiss must allow.
Hail to the mistletoe’s magic, that spreads,
Like a glory, its circle above their young heads!
Hail to the bough that, like wizard’s wand, weaves
A spell such as this from its mystical leaves —
Rains its sweet dew as from heaven above,
And hovers protecting o’er those who may love!

V.
The license much they seem to prize,
For many a pair the charm still tries.
Judge by the kissing that is there,
The mistletoe hangs every where.
An honest mirth flows all around,
Rasing distinctions to the ground.
No stateliness is to be seen,
Nor chilling distance intervene —
Good humour flows, and fills between.
The baron, see, nods to the squire;
The serf unto his lord sits nigher:
And hooded coif, and cap of pride,
Were oft seen seated side by side.
The village damsel might be seen,
In scarlet vest and kirtle green,
Blushing acceptance to the heir,
Who seeks a tenant’s daughter fair,
Her dimpled hand as boon to crave,
In accents humble as a slave,
To join with him the festive dance,
And thus the day’s delights enhance.
For Rank stooped from his airy height,
In honour of this single night;
State kept his robe for other places,
Nor of his grandeur shewed the traces;
And Ceremony’s jewelled gear,
As deem’d too cumberous to wear,
Was changed for lightsome trappings gay,
Such as best serve a holiday.
Then, room for Christmas, crown’d with holly!
No other days are half so jolly.

VI.
1.
Room, room for Christmas, ivy crown’d!
No merry days like his are found.
All mirth, all games throughout the year,
At merry Christmas reappear.
To Christmas each a tribute pays,
Levies of merriment to raise.
More joyous each seems to have grown,
When Christmas takes them for her own.
Then, room for Christmas, crown’d with holly!
No other days are half so jolly.
2.
The proof of this truth is quite ample —
Take what succeeds for an example.
On New Year’s eve, a tinge of sorrow,
Reverting to the past, may borrow.
The future of an untried year
Less food for hope may give than fear.
The past, or friends or foes removed –
The next year’s fealty must be proved.
Then, room for Christmas, ivy crown’d
No merry days like his are found.
3.
A Twelfth Night’s jollity, at best,
Is but a little Christmas drest
In smiles and trappings of the old,
But less in mirth a hundred fold:
It is from borrowed lustre light,
But dimmer by a good twelfth night;
Yet let none from that lustre take,
Hid in the bushel of Twelfth Cake.
But, room for Christmas, crown’d with holly!
No other days are half so jolly.
4.
Shrove Tuesday’s grave guests but appear
To bid adieu to all good cheer;
And o’er that night a shade is cast,
That for a while its feast’s the last,
For morrow brings the sacred fast.
So, room for Christmas, ivy crown’d!
No merry days like his are found.
5.
Then through the Holy Passion week,
If joy there be, ’tis joy so meek,
When you reflect on Christmas gladness,
It seems to be allied to sadness.
Could o’er the soul such wish be stealing,
A kiss, in point of fact or feeling,
Could then be but committed kneeling.
But, room for Christmas, crown’d with holly
No other days are half so jolly.

VII.
May-day was gamesome eke of yore,
But all his pranks are wellnigh o’er;
Or else th’ observance’s so degraded,
‘Twere better far if all had faded.
Though earth is clad in vesture meet,
Fit to receive May’s dancing feet;
Though April sheds her rainbow showers,
To give to May her brightest flowers —
Lends to the hedge a sweet perfume,
And gifts it with a precious bloom;
Falls the laburnum’s showers of gold
To earth’s, like Danae’s lap of old,
When Jove omniscient took that form
Deem’d surest maiden’s heart to warm,
And shelter gained in Danae’s bower
By virtue of a golden shower;
Clusters the lilac’s flowery cone,
Luxuriant piled for May alone,
That takes the sky’s sweet violet hue,
And heaven so bathes with its own dew,
It seems as if in heaven it grew,
Without one taint of earthly soil
Its native purity to spoil.
Though still the fields expect their queen,
Bedecked in daisied garb of green;
And the glad streams have found a voice
To wake an anthem, and rejoice;
And the lark heavenward soars and sings,
O’er earth exulting as he wings;
And the wide landscape round looks gay,
In honour of her own sweet May:
Man seldom now his homage pays
In gaudy groups and gay arrays,
That cheer’d the May of other days.
No more the village Maypole high
Tapers into the clear blue sky;
By joyous youths ’twas reared erect,
By maids with flowers and ribands decked,
While both, uniting, gaily trace
The dance in circles round the base.
Wide as December is from May,
Or Christmas-night from young May-day,
The mirth with which each is supplied
— Though mirth ’tis still — is still as wide.
Christmas the hearth-stone clusters round;
May o’er the fields is to be found:
Yet something in our feelings tell,
If May we love, ’tis not so well —
They’re centered in that place of pride,
Our hearty, homely, warm fireside.
Lo, room for Christmas, crowned with holly!
No other days are half so jolly.

VIII.
When the blithe year is in its spring,
And ‘neath its influence the woods ring,
With notes of life, and joy, and love,
Springing from dell, and glade, and grove,
The earth wakes from its trance supine,
To honour sweet Saint Valentine;
And Nature, like a bride, rejoices
To greet her lover with glad voices,
Framing for him such roundelays
As she, in spring, can only raise.
Still, room for Christmas, ivy-crowned!
No merry days like his are found:
For there be other merry days,
Deserving well a separate praise.

IX.
And Michaelmas and Hallowe’en
Has each his merriment, I ween;
And many more than I can name
To joy and jollity lay claim,
Gladdening the heart as they appear,
Like stars to light us through the year;
Till breaks upon our view the light
That issues from the Christmas night.
The sky of life would be but dark,
If stars like these withheld their spark;
But, shining through this life-long night,
They give us glimpses of the light.
Blessings of peace and joy we call
On festive days, whene’er they fall;
But be more bounteously supplied,
Above the rest, to Christmas tide.
Then, room for Christmas, ivy-crowned!
No merry days like his are found:
Room, room for Christmas, crowned with holly!
No other days are half so jolly.

X.
But, well-a-day, those days are o’er!
Christmas may smile, but laughs no more
With all the lustiness of yore;
And faint the picture; vain to say,
The mirth that lighted up that day —
That light, which spread o’er home and heart,
Was of the Sun of Joy a part;
A gladsome beam, from heaven astray,
To cheer and bless us with its ray.
That light o’er lordly fane was spread,
And glistened through the cheerless shed —
Cheerless no more when hut and hall
Partakes the joy which pervades all.
For, like the sun, which lends his beam
To the vast sea and petty stream,
To objects bright new lustre brings,
And glorifies the meanest things.
Like that rare stone by sages told,
Which all it touched turned into gold,
So Christmas time made all hearts gay —
Made lord and slave alike that day;
And which the happiest — who can say?
Equality of joy to all,
In honour of high festival

XI.
Large were man’s thoughts, for notions vast
Possessed his soul in days long past.
Huge was the table; vast the hall;
And free the bounty that gave all.
This gave the Yule-log to the fire,
And made the blaze burn brighter, higher;
The board with plenteous cheer supplied,
Nor to the guest aught wished denied.
In all wise-dwarfed, small is our praise,
For there were giants in those days;
Unlike to these, where, glories yet,
The Sun of Christmas had not set.
If snow-wreathed gable, roof, and wall,
Flower-wreaths decked window, hearth, and all;
If casements shook to winter wild,
The hearth with glow more ruddy smiled;
And eke our hearts with warmth were stored,
Chill winter’s contrast to afford;
And treasured up those feelings gay
Which may illume the darkest day.
Young bright-winged Joy, with aspect fair,
His herald’s flag waved every where,
And held a truce with hostile care.
Oh! that was not the olden time,
When the glad world was in its prime;
Then was its youth, and then its bloom:
Now it seems fitted for the tomb:
Its lustiness and vigour fled —
Its graces gone — its joys lie dead.
We’re the true ancients. Habits fine
Serve but to glorify decline.
Our age is age, not youth imbued
With life, but eld’s decrepitude.
If those were barbarous ages then,
Let us be barbarous again.

XII.
Then, room for old Christmas, with his crown of bright holly!
May his days all be glad, and his nights be kept jolly!
Laurel, holly, and joy, entwine in his crown,
For no king that e’er reigned merits half his renown.
For he smiles in due season, when our hearts want a cheer,
When all nature and man are both chilly and drear,
And illumes the decline and the dawn of each year.
Thus he’s loved, as the nightingale’s loved for his song,
When the village he cheers through the summer-night long,
By a soft serenade to his sweet-blushing rose,
As she peeps from her lattice, but feigns to repose:
For one love-song’s more precious, while the moon shines so bright,
Than a hundred and one by the day’s garish light.
Thus he’s loved, as the robin is loved, when his lay
Is sung near the window the cold winter’s day;
When, trusting to us, and forgetting his fears,
As the winter approaches our shelter he nears —
(Such reliance we love!), his small claim to allow.
He has ever been sacred — we worship him now.
Thus he’s loved, as we love his own sweet evergreen,
Which rejoices our hearts when no flower is seen;
When bright holly, old ivy, themselves all alone,
Make of winter itself a spring-time of their own.
And the other gay festival days that appear,
Are the sunshiny summer-day things of the year.
But more grateful we feel for the sweet, precious light,
Which shines through our winter from bright Christmas night;
And winter is but the long night of the year,
Brightened up with the full light of good Christmas cheer.
And the full heart that speaks in the nightingale’s tone,
Is not half so joyous or full as our own;
Nor the summer’s long day of bright birds and gay flowers,
Half so gay or so bright as this night-time of ours:
For we turn from the bowers when the bird’s song is loudest,
And regard not the flowers when the parterre is proudest.
They rejoice not for us. In the sunlight they smile,
And when his eyelids droop, then they slumber awhile.
No, for us they shine not; but, when summer is o’er,
The bird, and the flower, and the sun are no more.
Then the bird of the moon; and the rose we love best,
That a sentinel seems to watch over our rest;
And the robin we love, as he sings his sweet lay,
Near the window, to cheer us the cold winter’s day;
And the flowers that love us, and to us are most dear,
Are the green things which help our old Christmas to cheer.

L’Envoy
Then, long life to King Christmas! his reign has been long
In our hearts and our homes, in our story and song.
Though his doubtful accession’s enigma’s not solved,
Obscure in the gloom of past ages involved,
Yet of one thing we’re sure — it is no little while
Since “King Arthur kept Christmas in merry Carlisle.”
Through the long list of kings do his triumphs appear,
And their pageants and battles are not half so dear;
With a king oft for guest, and a prince for his slave,
He his honours received, and in like manner gave.
He created his peers, too, so generous and grand,
To equal them none might be found in the land,
With power complete o’er the great feast of Yule;
A noble and churchman, of the true good old school,
Yclept Un-reason’s Abbot and Lord of Misrule.
Then, room for old Christmas, with his crown of bright holly!
May his days all be glad, and his nights be kept jolly!
Laurel, holly, and ivy, entwine in his crown,
For no king that e’er reigned merits half his renown!

*

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Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. Caoimhghin has just published his new book – Against Romanticism: From Enlightenment to Enfrightenment and the Culture of Slavery, which looks at philosophy, politics and the history of 10 different art forms arguing that Romanticism is dominating modern culture to the detriment of Enlightenment ideals. It is available on Amazon (amazon.co.uk) and the info page is here.

Notes

[1] The Origins of Christmas by Joseph F. Kelly (Liturgical Press, 2004) p60

[2] Christmas Customs and Traditions by Clement Miles (Dover Publications, 1976 [1912]) p300

[3] The Medieval Christmas by Sophie Jackson (Sutton Publishing, 2005) p25

[4] The Book of Christmas by Jane Struthers (Ebury Press, 2012) p26

[5] Pagan Christmas: The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals at the Origins of Yuletide by Christian Rätsch and Claudia Müller-Ebeling (Inner Traditions, 2003) p95

[6]  Pagan Christmas: The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals at the Origins of Yuletide by Christian Rätsch and Claudia Müller-Ebeling (Inner Traditions, 2003) p24

[7] The Medieval Christmas by Sophie Jackson (Sutton Publishing, 2005) p53

[8] From Stonehenge to Santa Claus: The Evolution of Christmas by Paul Frodsham (The History Press, 2008) p158

[9] Christmas: A Biography by Judith Flanders (Picador, 2017) p128

Featured image: Twelfth Night Revels in the Great Hall (1838) by Joseph Nash, Haddon Hall, Derbyshire, from ‘Architecture of the Middle Ages’.

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The Unipolar World Has Ended and the Multipolar World Has Commenced

December 25th, 2023 by Prof. Joseph H. Chung

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English translation of the book title (from Korean): 

“End of 500-year Domination of the West’s Unipolar World

and Creation of Anti-imperialist and Self-determined Multipolar world of the 21st Century”

by

Prof. Kiyul Chung

*

Introduction

To begin with, I congratulate the author of the Book, Professor Kiyul Chung for his dedication, his courage, his passion and his wisdom allowing him to produce such a great book (the Book) which is greatly needed in the present troubled world. And it is a great pleasure for me to review this book.

This is a great book of 555 pages, rich in contents, important for its messages and inspiring for peace-loving people in the world. It is written in Korean  and some parts are written in highly scholarly language. It is possible that in my review, I may not be able to reflect fully the intellectual and even emotional impact of the Book.

The Book tells us how the West ruled the Third World (the non-West world) for 500 years through the slave trade, destruction of civilizations, stealing of natural resources, genocide, unforgivable human rights violations and other crimes against humanity.

The Book tells us how the Deep State was formed and how it is organized and how it has been oppressing and exploiting people through the Neocon financial and military might of the U.S.

The Book tells us how the Third World begins to fight back to free itself from the West’s domination and construct a multipolar world where countries are co-existing through mutual respect, co-prosperity and co-security.

The Book focusses on the heroic global leadership of Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump for the creation of a multipolar world.

The Book has the following 8 chapters:

Chapter 1:  The falling of the unipolar force and the rising of the multipolar force

Chapter 2:  Ukraine I

Chapter 3:  Ukraine II

Chapter 4:  Afghanistan

Chapter 5:  Kazakhstan

Chapter 6:  Trump Reinterpretation or Reillumination

Chapter 7:  Koreans in Japan

Chapter 8:  Global Peace Forum on Korea (GPFK) in Korea and the U.S.

There are so many issues, stories, and events in the Book that I had to find an appropriate model for the review.

I have thought of two models.

One is the review of each chapter.

The other is to put all the contents in an analytical model in which the Book contents are reviewed in a logical sequence.

I have chosen the latter, because the same issues are repeated in many chapters in order to emphasize the issues.

The following is the model. In my comments, I added some data and events in order to supplement the Book author’s views.

  • Part One: the Deep State and the Global Threat of the Unipolar Force
  • Part Two: Rising Multipolar Force and the Ultimate Battle with the Unipolar Force

Part One: The Deep State and the Global Threat of the Unipolar Force

 

  • Origin of the Deep State
  • Objective of the Deep State
  • Governance of the Deep State
  • Operations of the Deep Sate
  • Consequences of the Deep State

Origin of the Deep State

The Book explains that the origin of the deep state is the Ashkenazi Jewish financial power elites formed in England centuries ago and expanded into a global network, a Huge Financial Empire in the world managed by the American financial network such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brother and other institutions.

Objectives of the Deep State

The objective of the deep state is to establish one single global government ruled by the selected few rich and powerful. Such an idea is promoted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) resulting in “The Reset” supported even by the UN.

Governance of the Deep State

The Global Governance of the Deep State comprises the primary decision-makers, partners, and collaborators.

According to the author, the primary decision-maker is the American military-industry complex (MIC). But it seems better to include other sectors of American society. I would suggest that the primary decision-makers of the Deep State is the American pro-war community (APWC) comprising the “defense industry”, the Pentagon, the U.S. Congress, pressure groups, think tanks, media and universities.

The senior partners are Britain and Israel, while the junior partner is EU.

The British financial elites are viewed the most important senior partner of the Deep State. Israel plays a key role in relation to intelligence operations.

The junior partner is EU the function of which is to carry out what the APWC decides upon. EU member states are Washington’s “vassal countries” to different degree, however. They depend heavily on Washington for security and economic affairs. Most of the EU member countries are part of NATO which is in fact designed to protect the interest of the APWC.

The so-called collaborators are the Third World countries which are often less than vassal countries Their political leaders collaborate with the Deep State with a view to promoting America’s strategic to the detriment of the citizens of their own countries. These Third World political leaders are for the most part corrupt, they are bribed into submission. 

Operation of the Deep State

The purpose of Deep State operations is to make every country in the world Washington’s vassal country and promote Washington’s political, economic, and military interests.

The Deep State operations have essentially two dimensions:

The bilateral approach, and the multilateral approach.

The Bilateral Approach 

The bilateral approach consists in enforcing political submission (vassal states) to Washington. It involves the following process:

First: it begins with demonization of the targeted country portraying the country as a “non-democratic regime”, characterized by the derogation of  freedom and, above all, alleged human rights violation. This process of demonization is propagated and/or manufactured by the mainstream media, corporate think tanks and Pentagon-funded research institutes and universities.

Second: sustained demonization (propaganda) is intent upon in influencing Western public opinion, while at the same time creating hostility against the targeted country.

Third: the regime change affecting targeted countries takes on various procedures. It begins with diplomatic persuasion to become Washington’s vassal. If the latter procedure is not effective, an intelligence operation is launched involving the CIA, M-I6 (UK) as well as Israel’s Mossad. Covert operations are undertaken with a view implementing regime change through a coup d’état. 

This happened twice in South Korea: the coup by General Park Chung-hee in 1962 and the coup by General Chun Doo-hwan in 1980. 

It happened in so many countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and even in Europe. This happened in Afghanistan (Chapter 4) and in Kazakhstan (Chapter 5)

Fourth: economic sanctions have been successful in destroying the economy of the targeted country and causing death of children and bringing the misery to an entire population. Many countries have accepted to become Washington’s vassals to avoid economic sanctions. 

Fifth: if the above process fails, direct military interventions take place most of which are outright wars. War is Washington’s most favoured tool of global conquest. It is a feature of the American imperialism. 

The war-targeted countries have the following characteristics: 

  • Strategic geopolitical value [ex: DPRK aka, “North Korea” and Afghanistan];
  • Unacceptable religion or political-economic regime (Socialism, authoritarian regime) (Socialist countries, Islam countries);
  • Resource-rich countries (the Third World).

If you combine all the three characteristics, the entire Third World, namely the Global South is the target of America’s hegemonic military agenda. 

In fact, the U.S. is the most war-loving or war-craving country in the history of mankind. 

President Jimmy Carter said in 2018 that since its independence, the U.S. had 226 years of war leaving only 16 years of no war.

Outlined in Kiyul Chung’s book, since WWII, the world has experienced countless wars and military interventions, of which 80% were initiated by the U.S. 

The Multilateral Approach

The multilateral approach consists in manipulating international institutions and multinational relations to promote the interests of the Deep State.

The typical international institutions which serve the interests of the Deep State are the U.N., the WHO, the WEF, NATO, the EU, UNHRC, the IMF, the World Bank, and other institutions. A good part of the budget of these institutions is funded by Washington, which enables the U.S. to use the organizations  to promote the interests of the Deep State.

The Deep State has been leading the destiny of mankind through the American pro-war community (APWC) and creating an extensive and powerful  financial and military apparatus, which enables it appoint and/or fire political and economic leaders of many countries including South Korea, Japan and even European countries.

However, over the years, Washington has lost gradually its credibility and power. The following analysis explains how and why this occurred: 

The U.S. has Lost Most of its Wars

  • It did not win the Korean War.
  • It was defeated in the Vietnamese war by the Vietcong.
  • It failed to enforce regime change in Iraq and Libya.
  • It could not win the Syrian war.
  • It failed its coup d’état in Kazakhstan.
  • In Afghanistan, after 20 years of war against the Taliban, it has failed to implement a  “regime change”.

As far as war and military capabilities are concerned, Washington’s performance record is not too bright.

Then, why have so many wars been undertaken?

One of the primary reasons is the fact that all US-led wars are part of a “Big Money Operation” which is very lucrative for the Deep State.

Besides, the American economy is so much interlinked into wars that Washington-initiated wars will continue, which will further damage Washington’s credibility.

The Book goes on to explain why the third world is trying to be free itself from the domination of the unipolar force run by the Collective West which is controlled and led by Washington. There are several reasons for this: 

First, the target countries of America’s regime-change offensive are indignant against Washington.

Second, the regime of free trade agreements, the global value chain and the neoliberal economic system have resulted in the destruction of the potential economic development of developing countries on the one hand and, on the other, they have created a skewed global income and wealth distribution in favour of the West at the expense of the interests of the poor countries of the Third World. 

These phenomena have led the Third World countries of the Global South to focus on the initiation of a multipolar world, whereby all countries respect one another, peacefully coexist, avoid war and cooperate for common prosperity.

Third, Washington’s relations with the Third World are no longer “attractive” in comparison with China’s relations with the Third World.

Washington’s Third World policy of economic aid (IMF, WB, USAID) has strings attached: the string require the adoption of so-called “American style democracy”. In contrast, Chinese economic aid (trade, investments, ODA) has no strings attached. This has induced the Third World to be establish links with to China to the detriment of the U.S.

Fourth, Washington’s ambitious global value chain policy, offshore manufacturing strategy and excessive military spending (USD 1.0 trillion in 2023) have contributed to undermining America’s global economic hegemony. 

In fact, the American GDP which was 40% of the global GDP in 1990 has fallen to 16% in 2023. This has resulted in the curtailment of “economic aid’ to the Third World. On the other hand, many countries of the Third World have experienced a remarkable growth in GDP. This means that the The Third world has become more independent from Washington.

All these factors have made the unipolar world less attractive, and it has made favour the development of a multipolar world

Part Two:

Rising Multipolar Force and the Ultimate Battle with the Unipolar Force

The Book’s presentation of the rising multipolar world may be summarized as follows:

  • The rise of global leaders like Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump;
  • Successful resistance to Washington’s regime-change plot in Afghanistan;
  • Multilateral resistance to the West-initiated coup d’état in Kazakhstan;
  • First proxy-war between the Collective West led by Washington and Russia supported by the Global South as well as large sector of Ukrainian population;
  • Battle against the West’s propaganda.

The Leaders: Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Donald Trump

Kim Jong-un

If there is a global leader who is the most demonized in the world, it is surely “North Korea’s Kim dynasty,” especially Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un. It was 2002 when DPRK under Kim Jong-il’s leadership was put on the list of “evil”. But Kim Jong-un was even more demonized. 

Despite intentional demonization including U.S. nuclear threats, joint military exercises, and economic which have resulted in the deaths of North Korean children, the DPRK has never lost its national sovereignty, its self-reliant economic system as well as its effective policy of nuclear deterrence.

North Korea is perhaps the only country in the world which has never yielded anything and fought the U.S even suffering extreme hunger. 

DPRK’s Juche socialism was a major political weapon for African countries in their fight against the Western colonial powers in the 1970s and 1980s.

Moreover, Kim Jong-un won the nuclear battle against the Deep State. The test of an H-bomb in 2016 and the launching of ICBM, Hwasung-14 in 2017 was instrumental in terms of deterrence. 

In the words of  Dr. Jeffrey Lewis with regard to nuclear deterrence: “The Game is Over. North Korea Has Won” (Foreign Policy, August 9, 2017).

It was a remarkable achievement for Kim Jong-un. Is was his grandfather, Kim Il-sung who initiated the plan to develop a nuclear arsenal for deterrence  and then his father, Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un himself completed the nuclear deterrence project. 

DPRK has become a bona fide nuclear power. This is good news for the Third World, because North Korea can now help third countries in acts of deterrence along with China and Russia in response to U.S. Nuclear Blackmail.

Vladimir Putin

The President of Russia Vladimir Putin is an extraordinary leader. Since the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989, Russia found itself in a precarious reality. There was massive exodus of Russian people to physically survive. Its economy was ruined; wrong leaders came along, and the corruption culture was the order of the day; precious military equipments were sold on the black market. The history and heritage of Russian civilization was in danger of disappearing.

The West was happy to see the ruin of its major rival. The West thought that the game was over; it thought that Russia was no more. 

But in 2000, a former KGB official came along and started to rebuild Russia. Putin made a miracle. Russia’s nominal GDP rose from USD 278 billion to USD 1.8 trillion meaning an increase 6.5 times. The global ranking of Russia’s GDP (nominal) rose from 20th to 11th. 

Moreover, Russia became the largest holder of nuclear warheads. Russia intervened to save Syria and other developing countries from the West’s aggression. It is both Kim Jong-il and Putin who foresaw and were committed to the “Creation of the Multipolar world” as inscribed in the 1st Clause of the historic DPRK-Russia Federation Joint Declaration when both leaders met at their historic summit in Pyongyang in July 2000. 

Putin has strong influence in the Middle East and Africa. Russia is the first country which engaged in an actual or “real war” with the West in the proxy Ukraine war. I will come back to Putin later in this review article.

Xi Jinping

President of China, Xi Jinping is surely another key builder of the multipolar world. His contribution to the construction of the multipolar world may be grouped into two sets of his activities.

First, he is a key leader who has shown that “American democracy” is not necessarily the “best regime”, that American military strength is not invincible, that the American economy cannot dominate the world forever and that Washington’s capacity to effectively rule the world is weakening.

Second, he has exhibited an innovative approach to his relations with the Third World.

The BRICS and the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) promote connectivity of the Third World and the autonomous development of the Third World. This approach is different from the West’s neo-colonialism which is largely concerned the their own “colonial interests”.

The Putin-Xi-Kim Triangle 

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are key leaders of Multipolar organizations. The BRICS and the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) cannot operate without their leadership.

The membership of BRICS and SCO is increasing. BRICS has now 11 member countries and 40 more are waiting to join.

The SCO membership is also increasing. These organizations will become the center of gravity of the multipolar world.

DPRK is not presently active in the existing multipolar organizations. But, as mentioned above, its Juche philosophy can constitute a “spiritual guideline” in the struggle against the “unipolar force”. Moreover, the DPRK nuclear arsenal can serve as nuclear deterrent in support of the Third World.

Donald Trump

Now I come to Donald Trump.

The story of Trump presented is perhaps the among the important of highlights of the Book.

Although the author, Dr. Kiyul Chung did elaborate on this issue, I should mention that Trump is broadly in favour of a  multipolar world in which Russia, China and DPRK can live in peace along with U.S.

Here are the reasons.

In the first place, Trump does not want any more wars. He recalled back the U.S. troops in the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan, and other parts of the globe.

He asked South Korea to pay five times more for the service (security) rendered by the U.S. military in Korea. The hidden purpose was to withdraw American troops from Korea in case South Korea does not pay. Moreover, he decided to withdraw from TPP and other multilateral organizations designed to contain China.

Trump’s North Korea peace policy was one of the most audacious diplomatic strategies the world has ever witnessed. His claim for more contributions by  NATO member countries to the defence budget was part of his honest desire to dissolve NATO which had little to do with American security or welfare.

In short, what Trump wanted was the end of Washington’s expensive military empire which has little to do with America’s security and which was for the money and power of the deep state. In a way, Trump was undertaking dangerous war against the deep state. 

What he wanted with the “America First” policy was the reallocation of limited resources to the wellbeing of ordinary Americans in opposition to the misplaced ambitions of the Deep State.

In fact, Trump declared war against the Deep State. He so declared that several times. During the 2016 presidential primary, Trump said “It is time to drain the swamp in Washington, D.C.” The swamp was the Deep State.

But Trump’s war against the Deep State constituted an enormous political risk. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 by the Deep State for his Greenback money project. 

John F. Kennedy was assassinated by the Deep State in 1963 for his dream of a peaceful multipolar world. 

The war against the Deep State is a costly undertaking.

We remember that the entire Kennedy family members were killed by rifle, by airplane crush or by political assassination.

In 1964, Ted Kennedy survived a plane crush but as Senator, he was politically assassinated.

In 1968, Robert Kennedy was assassinated. In 1999, John F. Kennedy, Jr., son of President Kennedy was killed in a suspicious plane crush. 

Along with the assassinations or suspicious deaths, the entire Kennedy family had been targeted. The rare survival is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. son of Robert Kennedy. He is a presidential candidate as independent, though he is a democrat. He is supportive of a multipolar world.

The riskiest thing Trump did was the Hanoi summit with Kim Jong-un in February 27-28, 2019. The Singapore summit of June 12 of 2018 was a collection of words with no contents threatening the Deep State. 

But the Hanoi summit was different. Kim Jong-un traveled by train for six days, which might have alarmed the Deep State thinking that some important concessions were made to North Korea by Trump resulting in peace in the Korean peninsula. This was too much for the Deep State, because Peace could have led to the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Korea and less weapon sales to South Korea and Japan.

Trump was ready to sign the document confirming the agreement. But, as we all saw, just before the signing of the document, John Bolton, known as the most obedient servant of the Deep State showed Trump a piece of paper which was conducive to uneasiness and nervousness on the part of Trump  before he left the conference room. But, at the moment of departure, Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un behaved as if they would meet again. In fact, they met again along with Moon Jae-in, President of South Korea, on June 30 of 2019 in Panmunjom.

The author provides many interesting stories about Trump. One thing to which I attach importance is the fact that Trump is an anti-war politician and he is contributing to promoting the coming of the multipolar world. The significant point is that he is at the center of the unipolar world. 

Fortunately, there are other opinion makers within the unipolar camp who promote the multipolar world. The list is short, but it is extending.

Jeffrey Lewis said that the DPRK-US nuclear confrontation was over with DPRK’s “Game is Over. North Korea Has Won”

Douglas McGregor said that in late summer 2022, the Ukraine war already over with Russia’s victory.

Even Tony Blair, former prime minister of UK said the unipolar era was over.

Successful Resistance Against Washington’s Regime Change Plot in Afghanistan (Chapter 4)

This chapter offers the story of how the coalition of 14,000 troops was not able to change the Afghanistan regime after 20 years of fighting and confrontation (2001-2021) against the Taliban government under the pretext that the Taliban refused to send to the U.S. Osama bin Laden who was suspected to be behind the 9/11.

But there was no proof that Osama bin Laden was behind the 9/11 disaster. 

The US-NATO coalition fought against the Taliban. However, on August 15, 2021, the Taliban won the war and the pro-US puppet regime met its end. 

The author’s message in this chapter is the fact that, even with a costly regime change operation, the West led by Washington couldn’t ensure that the  puppet regime would prevail. This has happened in Afghanistan. That is, without American protection, no regime can survive. In fact, the pro-U.S. Afghanistan regime collapsed shortly after the departure of U.S. troops.

There are also the voices saying that South Korea will collapse as soon as Washington abandons it. The Book explains how South Korea is dependent on Washington for everything including the selection of presidential candidates and the nomination of party chiefs. 

The Book explains how Washington has intervened in Korea’s internal affairs ever since 1945 including the two military coups d’état and rigged elections.

So, one might think that Seoul will collapse without Washington. On the other hand, the Book explains how North Korea has fought to remain sovereign vis-à-vis Washington’s nonstop demonization, sanctions, and persistent nuclear threats.

Multilateral Resistance Against the West-initiated Coup d’état in Kazakhstan

In Chapter 5, the Book provides the story of how a coup d’état organized by foreign forces was avoided by a group of friendly neighboring countries. On January 1 of 2022, a large group of people went down the street to protest the high price of LPG (liquefied petroleum gas).

However, foreign forces intervened to make transform the price of gas protest movement into a civil war. It appears that a group of Americans and the Turks organized to civil war to topple the government which was not pro-West. The coup force paid USD 200 to those who would participate in the riot. In fact, the coup was an attempt to transform the uprising into a colour revolution.

The coup force had 20,000 armed people large enough to topple the government. The Book tells us also that there were numerous NGOs operating in Kazakhstan including American NGOs including National endowment for Democracy (NED), Freedom House, USAID (independent government agency) and others. These NGOs were there to topple the government and install a pro-West regime. 

The coup almost succeeded due to traitors inside the government. In particular, Masimov, head of the Kazakhstan Security force, was the key person involved in the coup. By the way he was close friend of Joe Biden.

The Book tells us that the coup was avoided due to a group of friendly neighboring countries. The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) composed of Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan sent a multinational military force to fight the foreign power-instigated coup. And the coup d’Etat was avoided. The coup was over within 10 days.

First Proxy War Between the Collective West Led by Washington and Russia Overwhelmingly Supported by the Global South or Global Majority in Ukraine (Chapter 2 and 3)

In Chapters 2 and 3, the Book takes a lot of pages to explain the real meaning of Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO). The Russian SMO shows the will of Putin to save Russia from the West’s heinous will to ultimately destroy Russia. 

As pointed above, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the West thought that Russia as country was finished. But in 2000, a former KGB officer, called Vladimir Putin took power. Since then, the West has been watching Putin with contempt and curiosity. But, after a 20-year rule, he transformed Russia into the 11th economic power, and he transformed Russia into one of the most powerful military powers Worldwide. 

The Book explains well how the West’s planned to destroy Russia.

The plan began with the Maidan colour revolution of 2014, which resulted in expelling the democratically elected pro-Russian government of Victor Yanukovych who fled to Russia. After the Maidan revolution, Kiev set up a pro-West regime supported by Washington and Ukraine’s neo-Nazi paramilitary forces.

The Maidan colour revolution was planned by the West and the composition of the new coup regime was dictated by Victoria Nuland who has involved on behalf of the U.S State Department in the process of  selected ministers and key government officials.

Victoria Nuland is married to Robert Kagan who was the co-founder of the notorious Project for New American Century (PNAC) in 1997.

The PNAC is neocon “political philosophy” in favour of regime destruction and regime change Worldwide as a means to reinforcing U.S. hegemony.

It may be noted that John Bolton, UN Ambassador, Dick Cheney, Vice President, and Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defence under President George W. Bush were cosignatories of the PNAC

Her relationship with the Kagan family gives an idea how hard Neo-con warmongering person Victoria Nuland is. The Book says that Nuland was involved in the Maidan uprising, arming Ukraine with NATO aid and even initiating the Donbas war.

NATO under the directives of Washington has trained and armed the neo-Nazi force to attack the two break-way Russian speaking republics, Donetsk, and Luhansk.

Since 2014, the neo-Nazi attacks against the two break-away republics have resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians and voluntary militia soldiers. There were two attempts to avoid the Donbas war in 2014 and 2015 through the Minsk 1 and 2 Agreements, both of which failed to reach a peace accord.

The breakaway republics asked Putin to save them from the attacks by the neo-Nazi forces and the Ukraine regular forces. At the request of the Donbas republics, on February 2024, Putin launched Special Military Operation (SMO).

The Book says that the SMO is tantamount to a war between the West and the Global South led by Russia. The underlying reasons are as follows: . 

First, only 30 countries of the West were supportive of sanctions against Russia. The remaining countries of the Global South  (Non-West) were against the anti-Russia sanctions or abstained, did not take sides. 

Second, the Global Majority is fed up with invasion, oppression and the exploitation by the West and they were supportive of Russia’s peace initiatives. 

Third, if Russia is defeated, the next target countries will be China, North Korea, Iran, and all other countries not friendly with or against the U.S. and the West. This has made the Global South or the Third World to rally around Russia.

Fourth, the Ukraine proxy war is indirectly looked upon by the Global South as the expression of a “racist war” between the White population of the West and the Coloured population of the Global South which constitutes a “Global Majority”.

In other words, the Ukraine proxy war is the war between the West-dominated unipolar world and the multipolar world where no single country rules the world but, where all countries mutually respect, peacefully coexist, and co-prosper. 

And the coming of the multipolar world is irreversible for Kim, Putin, Xi, and other global leaders.

The Book says that the outcome of the Ukraine proxy war has a significant impact on 87% of the global population which historically have been ruled by Western colonial powers which represent 13 % of the World’s population.

Battle Against the West’s Propaganda Offensive

One of the most dangerous weapons in the hands of the unipolar camp is media propaganda. Perhaps, the entire mainstream media of the West constantly manufacture lies, disinformation, misinformation and they report lies as truths.

The lies are made up not only by the mainstream medias but also by the government agencies such as the Pentagon, US State Department, government research centers, especially so-called “think tanks” and other organizations. 

Most of the national TVs in the U.S. including, CNN (like BBC in the UK), Fox News, NPR, New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, Hollywood, and many other media establishments are involved in media disinformation, the distortion of underlying realties with a view to demonizing their “enemies” while applauding America and the West.

The usual menu of demonization “enemies” includes lack of freedom, dictatorship and human rights violations. But, as soon as the enemy country becomes pro-US and becomes a vassal country of America, the demonization campaign stops or weakens in intensity.

The catastrophic damage of mainstream media propaganda consists in the brain-washing of Americans and the people of Washington’s vassal countries including Japan and South Korea.

The lies produced by these corporate media are conducive to abhorrent results. The Iraq war of 2003 was justified by the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq. It was painful to watch General Collin Powell, Secretary of State under G.W. Bush, telling the UN that Iraq had “Weapons of Mass Destruction”. Obama lied about the existence of chemical weapons in Syria as well.

The U.S. justifies so many lies that it is called “the Empire of Lies”. 

When Washington invades other countries, it blames the victim nations for their invasion. In the case of the Ukraine proxy war, the West initiated the Donbas war to force Russia to intervene militarily. Then, the West blamed Russia for the war despite the fact that it was the West which was responsible. Thus, as many have argued, the Ukraine war was a “false flag” war.

In Chapter 7, the Book presents how the Japanese government uses fabricated media data to hide devastating racial discrimination against “Koreans in Japan”. 

The Japanese people are not aware of the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Koreans kidnapped to force them to work under sub-human working conditions. But the Japanese press still repeats the “North Korea’s kidnapping of 13 Japanese individuals” which took place in the 1970s. Of course, the Japanese media never mention the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Koreans during the WWII.

In Japan, there are more than half a million Koreans who have lived there for more than a hundred years. Koreans are barred from public services, discriminated in education, prevented from decent jobs and, above all, there are “ultraright-wing hate groups” with the mission to humiliate and even threaten to kill Koreans.

The world is not aware of such harsh treatment of Koreans in Japan. Moreover, the world is not aware of the true image of the DPRK’s Juche socialism largely due to Western media propaganda. 

All these distorted images concerning Japan and the “demonized North Korea” are created by biased media reporting or “mass media deception.”

What the Book is saying is that only the concerted efforts of the people can provide the truth allowing the world to be more just, more equal, and safer.

For this, we need more people-to-people contacts at the global level.

The Book talks about the International Student Exchange Program (ISEP) undertaken by Korea University in Japan. The Korea University began the ISEP in 2021 under the co-leadership of Professors Derek Ford of DePauw University and Dr. Kiyul Chung, author of the Book. It was the student exchange program with DePauw University of the U.S.

Through direct contacts with faculty members and fellow students from Korea University, the American students could see how the real world was different from what the media is reporting.

They began to see the real Japan and the real DPRK (aka, “North Korea”) that are different from what they were taught at schools and what they learned from the media in the U.S. The ISEP continues every year since 2019. And other U.S. universities are expected to join the program in the near future.

The Book explains in Chapter 8, the last chapter, how global activities can promote global peace. Dr. Kiyul Chung organized the annual conference of the Global Peace Forum on Korea (GPFK). In 2019, the conference took place at Columbia University in New York. The participants include academics, peace experts, diplomats, policy makers, lawmakers, leaders of civic movements, the people of arts and other opinion makers. These conferences can be useful in finding truth about the wildly polarized war.

I think that the coming of the multipolar world is possible inasmuch as it supported by ordinary people at the grass-roots. The leaders of the multipolar world movement cannot succeed unless the people are behind them.

What the Book is pointing to is the solid backing by ordinary people Worldwide. It is the very key to the construction of the multipolar world.

However, to do so, we need de-brainwashing of the people who do have been mislead in their understanding and perception of the so-called unipolar world. 

For this, we require independent media such as Global Research (CRG) founded by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky and the 4th Media (21cir.com) founded by Prof. Kiyul Chung. We need much more independent media.

To close my comments, the Book signals the global march toward the multipolar world and it explains how to get there.

Once again, I salute Professor Kiyul Chung for his difficult and time-consuming work of producing such inspiring work even at the risk of hurting his hands and fingers.

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Dr. Joseph H. Chung is professor of economics at Quebec University in Montreal (UQAM). He is Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Christmas in Palestine: Then and Now

December 25th, 2023 by James J. Zogby

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First published on December 28, 2021

The Christmas story as it is told in the West contains timeless elements that have shaped our culture in significant ways. As we tell it, year in and year out, the story conveys to those who listen powerful themes evoking deep feelings.

It is, at its core, the tale of a helpless child born as an outcast whose role became transformative in human history.

Unrecognised at first, the importance of this birth was initially only understood by the lowly of the earth — “the shepherds of the field”. Later “kings from the East” came to pay homage bringing gifts. Their appearance raised the ire of local rulers forcing the baby’s parents to flee in order to save the life of their newborn child.

I want to take a moment to reflect on this story, seeing contemporary realities through its prism.

Two thousand years ago, Palestine was subject to a harsh occupation, much as it is today. In some ways, though, the conditions back then allowed the residents of occupied Palestine greater mobility than the current inhabitants of that land.

As we are told in the bible story, Joseph had to take his expectant wife from Nazareth, where they were living, to Bethlehem, their ancestral village, in order to fulfill a requirement imposed by the authorities to register as part of a nationwide census. Today, of course, all of that would be impossible.

In the first place, no Palestinian originally from Bethlehem could ever have moved to Nazareth. The occupation and closure of the West Bank makes that sort of movement impossible. Furthermore, Israeli law prohibits an Arab from Nazareth from marrying a Bethlehemite and bringing their spouse across the Green Line to live with them in Israel.

Additionally, while thousands of Palestinians in Bethlehem, both Muslim and Christian, can see Jerusalem from their homes, they cannot go to the Holy City to pray. And Arab Christians from Jerusalem, likewise, cannot easily go the Christmas services in Bethlehem to pray alongside their co-religionists at the seasonal event.

Bethlehem of old was overcrowded and under siege. Today, as well, the city itself is being strangled, hemmed in by settlements that have confiscated the town’s ancestral lands to make way for a 30-foot barrier wall and massive Jewish-only housing colonies that cut the Arab residents off from nearby Jerusalem. The constriction of growth and the lack of economic opportunity have forced Bethlehemites to flee in search of jobs and freedom, with tens of thousands of them and their descendants now living in the US and the Americas. They can return to visit Bethlehem with difficulty but are not permitted by the occupation authorities to take up permanent residency in the town of their origins.

While the kings of old, we are told, were able to travel from afar bearing gifts to honour the newborn child, one can only imagine the difficulties they would encounter today dealing with Israeli soldiers at the Allenby Bridge. Having personally endured their interrogations, I can hear the kings answering hours of questions, such as “Where are you from?” “Who are your parents, grandparents?” “Why are you here?” Who are you visiting?” “What are these gifts for?” The questioning is reminiscent of Herod’s interrogation of the biblical visitors. In today’s Israel/Palestine, it is doubtful whether those hapless “kings from the East” would have gained entry.

That Joseph, Mary and Jesus were able to flee to Egypt to escape Herod’s vengeful wrath was possible back then. Today, that option is unlikely. The barrier/wall that encapsulates the West Bank, the hundreds of checkpoints, and the closure of Gaza would make such a life-saving flight impossible.

Finally, as I reflect on the birth of Jesus, I cannot help but think of the almost 400 babies who will be born, this very day, to Palestinian parents in the West Bank and Gaza. I think as well of the number of those who will perish at birth because of inadequate medical services. (Some babies have been put at fatal risk at checkpoints, because Israeli soldiers would not permit their delivering mothers to pass.) And I think of Mary, 2000 years ago, and am grateful that, despite all she endured, there were no checkpoints blocking her way to Bethlehem.

Our traditions tell us that Mary’s joy at the birth of her son was tempered by foresight. She knew her child would grow and endure great suffering. Likewise, the joy that Palestinian parents experience when greeting new life these days must, no doubt, be accompanied by similar concerns. Not only must they question how they will provide for their new child, but they must face down their fears of bringing up a son or daughter under occupation, with its dangers and hardships. From the violence, pressures and humiliation encountered daily by Palestinians in the West Bank at the hands of the Israeli military and settlers, to the grinding poverty and despair facing those trapped in Gaza, life under hostile foreign rule can drain joy out of even the most blessed events.

There is a traditional Christmas carol that asks the question “What child is this?” — the answer, of course, being “Jesus, the son of Mary”. But given the universal message conveyed by the Christmas story we also understand that the child is for us, a reminder of our responsibility to care for the helpless and the unrecognised. And so, when we think of the vulnerable children born today not only in Palestine, but those born anywhere where life is at risk (including here at home), we are not to ask: “What child is this?” — because we know that they are ours — to acknowledge and protect, like the shepherds and kings, enabling all of these children to grow, receive health care, and be educated so that they can grow and help change our world. Because all these children are ours, we have a responsibility to protect and care for them.

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James J. Zogby is a president of Arab American Institute.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

Video: La Globalización de la Guerra. Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

December 24th, 2023 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

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Diciembre 2019

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Only a short time prior to listening to Abu Obaidah’s press statement of Dec 21, I had been watching a news report that included a view of the installation of the table set for 200 that was initially organized in Tel Aviv by Mosaic United, the World Zionist Organization and the European Jewish Congress as a symbol of the absent prisoners held by the Palestinian resistance in Gaza. The news report featured an Israeli activist saying, without irony, “because human lives matter.”

What struck me in Abu Obaidah’s statement wasn’t, as you might think, the hypocrisy of such a statement by the activist, a hypocrisy I have come to expect after more than two months of Israeli massacres of Palestinian children and civilians numbered in the thousands. Rather, what struck me was something Abu Obaidah said about a clash of civilizations: “The enemy continues to repeat its foolishness and historical mistakes because it is disconnected from the reality of our people and their civilization.”

The image of the pristine table arrangement in Tel Aviv graphically represents a western settler-colonial reality.

The images of the frenetic scramble for food on top of humanitarian aid trucks by starving Palestinians only increased the grotesqueness of this image below and its associations in my mind.

Installation featuring a table set for 200 in “a pristine Shabbat arrangement” extends across the entire plaza outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art

In the epic events unfolding horrifically before our eyes in Gaza in ways that often fail words, adherence to tradition and social norms are not confined to interactions with fine china, crystal glasses, and silverware. When the Palestinian resistance called their captives “guests,” anyone familiar with the Arab tradition of hospitality immediately understood what that meant and was not surprised at the testimony of released Israeli captives regarding their good treatment.

Historically, Arab hospitality emerged from the practice of welcoming and providing for desert travelers who passed through towns. The aim was to honor guests and break the ice, eliminating any awkwardness or fear associated with meeting strangers.

Despite hasbara efforts to obscure these facts, it is well documented that Palestinian communities under the British Mandate initially welcomed Jewish immigrants to Palestine, because they recognized their economic contributions and skills.

Palestinian families were hospitable, providing food and shelter to Jewish immigrants who arrived in Palestine with little or no resources, emphasizing a shared humanity. All of this changed when Zionist plans to displace Palestinians and take their land became apparent to a largely agrarian population.

It’s a pity that Zionist invaders in Palestine did not learn from the traditions and values of the land they occupied in 1948, but rather brought with them their own version of Nazi cruelty (the Irgun targeted Palestinian civilians then, just as the “IDF” is targeting them now with much more devastating weapons, even invoking nuclear weapons), thus adopting the colonial values and tactics of their western countries of origin and practicing the same harsh suppression measures introduced by the British in Palestine during the 1936–1939 Palestinian revolt.

Israeli activist: “Because human lives matter …”

The British administration during that time employed various tactics to suppress the Palestinian uprising of 1936–1939. These repressive measures, often conducted with the help of Jewish forces, were intended to intimidate the entire Palestinian population and undermine popular support for the revolt. If you are following Israel’s war on Gaza and its repression tactics these past decades since its establishment, you will recognize the methods I list below immediately:

Mass detentions of Palestinians (“caging a village”) took place with the aid of Zionist intelligence and helped build a network of informants: “Mass detention of male populations during searches — in on-site or semipermanent cages — became commonplace and was often combined with forced labor and other forms of punishment. The scale of detentions and the broad sweep of the population they affected are one of the most dramatic and underexamined aspects of the 1930s counterinsurgency.”

Another “dramatic” measure was that of extra-judicial executions: By summer 1938, “the British reoccupied villages in the Galilee and the central highlands, put the Special Night Squads — notorious units that placed irregular Jewish forces under British officers to carry out raids and extrajudicial executions — into action, and converted the Mandate judicial system into a hanging court for Arabs.”

There were also house demolitions used as a punitive tactic, heightened surveillance and control over Palestinian communities by British and Jewish policemen, house searches without warning or consent, administrative detentions (beatings and imprisonments without formal charges or trial), night raids disrupting lives and instilling fears, torture, deportation, and land confiscations with the confiscated land sometimes allocated for Jewish colonies or other purposes.

Today, Israel by all accounts is following in the footsteps of the imperial superpower of our time in Iraq. I am referring here to US “counterinsurgency” efforts in Iraq in 2003–2006, when the US struggled to mount an effective plan to protect the civilian population and lacked a coherent strategy, which led to intermittent and ineffective tactical approaches without achieving desired outcomes.

In western culture, knowing how to set a table correctly and understanding the proper use of knives and forks is considered a sign of cultural refinement. Think of Downton Abbey or of the many times in movies a character from a “lower-class” background agonizes over the use of knives and forks when thrown into a posh environment. And think also of the smug assumptions some western cinema goers make upon encountering the heartwarming Arab tradition of arranging the family table on the floor using pita bread or flatbread or the right hand to scoop up bites from a communal dish, where simplicity and communal sharing are given priority over elaborate table settings.

Arab culture is a culture that European Zionist Jews regard as inferior, in keeping with what Edward Said calls the “dispossessing movements of modern European colonialism.”

The notion that some cultures were advanced and civilized, others backward and uncivilized; these ideas, plus the lasting social meaning imparted to the fact of color (and hence of race) by philosophers like John Locke and David Hume, made it axiomatic by the middle of the nineteenth century that Europeans always ought to rule non-Europeans.

Imperial table manners are just a veneer. A great deal has been made of Queen Victoria’s “quick thinking and uncommon courtesy” during a diplomatic reception in 19th-century England when she drank from a finger bowl in imitation of the action of an African chieftain, who had no idea of its use. With this gesture, she is said to have “spared her guest from humiliation.” Why an African chieftain should feel humiliated for not being familiar with the table etiquette of a finger bowl is not a mystery. The assumption is that the table manners of the empire are naturally more “civilized” than those of the chieftain’s culture.

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Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.

She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Can Japanese ‘Patriot’ Missiles Help Kiev Regime?

December 24th, 2023 by Drago Bosnic

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For nearly two years, the political West has been spreading all sorts of propaganda nonsense about the Russian military running out of food, fuel, shells, missiles (essentially all types of munitions), etc. Moscow supposedly had to “beg” Iran, China and North Korea for weapons in order to keep its special military operation (SMO) running. And yet, not only has all this been debunked a long time ago, but it turns out the opposite is true. While Moscow is packed with everything it needs, the United States is forced to turn to its vassals and satellite states to keep supplying the Kiev regime with enough weapons. The situation is so bad that their field commanders are allowed to call in artillery support only against large Russian formations, as engaging smaller ones is considered a “waste of shells”.

In order to ameliorate its lack of production capacity (the result of decades of outsourcing manufacturing), the political West has to turn to countries such as Japan and South Korea. Tokyo has a sizeable stockpile of all sorts of American missiles, while Seoul is apparently producing more shells than the entire NATO. As Japanese laws severely restrict the possibility of arms sales, Tokyo is now working on setting up a new legal framework that would allow the transfer of air defense missiles to the Neo-Nazi junta. Officially, this policy shift should enable the export of “Patriot” missiles to the US, supposedly to help with Washington DC’s shortages. On December 20, local media reported that the Japanese government made the decision under US pressure. Hardly surprising, given the nature of their relations.

Namely, Tokyo has been an American vassal for nearly 80 years now. Given its advanced technological base, many American companies, particularly those from their infamous Military Industrial Complex, have allowed licensed domestic production of their weapons and munitions in Japan. The US is now looking to tap into such a resource in order to help the Kiev regime that was forced to go on the defense in the aftermath of its failed counteroffensive. Various American media claim that the move includes the export of PAC-2 and PAC-3 interceptors. The mainstream propaganda machine admits that this is a significant departure from Tokyo’s current laws that prohibit the export of weapons to countries in conflict. Such claims immediately indicate that the actual customer is the Neo-Nazi junta.

In other words, if we know that the US is currently not in conflict with any nation (officially, at least), Japan shouldn’t have a problem with exporting its missiles to the belligerent thalassocracy. Obviously, unless the customer is “someone else”. Given the losses of “Patriot” SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems in Ukraine, one could wonder why doesn’t Tokyo simply send the entire system instead of just interceptors. American sources claim that the existing legal framework allows only the transfer of separate components for equipment produced under a US license, as the export of whole systems is not allowed. However, a much more likely scenario is that Washington DC is simply trying to avoid the possible destruction of the entire Japanese-built “Patriots” in Ukraine.

The Russian military has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to target and destroy supplies of Western weapons with its long-range precision-guided munitions (PGMs). This is a particularly important issue, as the Kiev regime’s air defense capabilities have been degraded significantly. Its massive Soviet-era stockpile of SAMs has mostly been exhausted, while the salad of Western systems it got is inferior in both qualitative and quantitative sense. The escalating conflict in the Middle East has only exacerbated this issue, but the Neo-Nazi junta will need to make do with what its NATO overlords provide. However, will this be enough to protect strategically important military infrastructure? Obviously, the question is rhetorical, as several “Patriots” have already been destroyed.

Nonetheless, the mainstream propaganda machine keeps insisting these missiles will make a difference. The Kiev regime is also trying its best to contribute to these myths with regular reports of alleged shootdowns of advanced Russian weapons, including hypersonic missiles. However, the sheer magnitude of panic unleashed among the Neo-Nazi junta forces and their NATO overlords whenever a MiG-31K/I lifts off tells a completely different story. Russia has a plethora of possibilities to saturate an area with strike weapons, be it missiles, drones or decoys that invariably force the Kiev regime troops to expend their dwindling stockpile of air defense missiles. There are zero reasons to think that Japanese-built “Patriot” SAMs will perform better than the US-made ones that were previously destroyed.

After all, they’re based on the same flawed technology that has been failing everywhere for over three decades now, be it against Iraq during the (First) Gulf War or against Houthi missiles and drones targeting Saudi Arabia. The system is so bad that NATO member Turkey chose the Russian-built S-400 over the “Patriot”. It should be noted that the export version of this system is less capable than the one used by the Russian military. Ankara still opted for it, despite the threat of being expelled from the F-35 program, although this could be considered a blessing of sorts, given that this extremely overhyped US fighter jet is actually an even worse failure than the “Patriot”. Either way, the Kiev regime will most likely get these missiles, while the country and whatever’s left of its military is falling apart.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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“Chemtrails are nothing new. We’re just starting to notice them, that’s the shock for us,” a commercial airline pilot said during a recent interview. 

“They’ve been doing it for years. It was pioneered in the [United] States. It’s something the Rockefellers were involved with in sponsoring. A lot of it is being done out of the back of military aircraft, particularly military transport aircraft.”

The airline pilot said the above during an interview with Drake Michigan host Ant Critchley. To protect the pilot’s anonymity, for purposes of the interview he was given the name Mark.

Mark has been a pilot for 34 years and in that time has flown more than 26 different aircraft types. His experience ranges from flight testing to flying specialist cargo, and he has also flown aircraft for the military as well as commercial airlines.

“The two purposes for chemtrailing are very, very clear,” he told Critchley. It’s to poison us and block out the sun. Plants need sunlight for photosynthesis and our bodies, for example, need sunlight to produce vitamin D. So, blocking out the sun will have a detrimental impact on and threaten the survival of all life on Earth.

In the video above, Mark explained that many years ago, he had a first officer that spoke to him about chemtrails. At the time Mark completely dismissed it saying it was “utter nonsense, they would never do that.”  And he never gave it another thought until about three years ago.

About three years ago, he was meeting friends at a café out in the country when he saw a line in the sky running north-south, which he estimated was 10 miles long, with 13 shorter two or three-mile-long lines traversing it. “The curious thing is that they stayed there for 40 minutes,” Mark said.

He contacted a colleague at the local airport who had an Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (“ADS-B”). ADS-B is a surveillance or tracking software that relies on aircraft or airport vehicles broadcasting their identity, position and other information derived from an onboard system.

Mark asked his colleague if there was an aeroplane over the airport flying at around 12,000-13,000 feet “doing squiggly lines.” Mark’s colleague answered, ”No, but there is one at 10 [thousand feet.]” Mark then recalled the conversation with the first officer years before and realised that the lines he had seen were chemtrails.

What Are Contrails?

There’s a difference between a contrail, condensation trail, and a chemtrail, chemical trail.  To understand the difference, we need to understand how contrails are formed, Mark said.

“As we go higher, about every thousand feet the temperature drops about 2 degrees Celsius. And it goes down to about minus 63 degrees Celsius, sometimes 65. Those temperatures are found at around about 37,000/38,000 feet. Contrails can only physically start [forming] at 28,000 feet, which is around about minus 40 degrees Celsius. A contrail is water vapour. In fact, it’s trillions and trillions of ice crystals,” Mark explained.

The reason that we don’t consistently see the same number of contrails on various days, assuming the airlines’ flight schedules remain consistent, is that the humidity of the air the aircraft is flying in also plays a role. “As the temperature decreases, the parcel of air is less able to hold water vapour [or] water moisture,” Mark said. 

The dew point is the temperature the air needs to be cooled to (at constant pressure) in order to achieve a relative humidity (RH) of 100%. At this point, the air cannot hold more water in the gas form. If the air were to be cooled even more, water vapour would have to come out of the atmosphere in liquid form, usually as fog or precipitation.

At 30,000 odd feet and flying in a dry parcel of air,

“I can look in my rearview camera and I see absolutely nothing coming out of the back of my engines,” Mark said. “But then I can fly along … and get a little bit of turbulence, just for a split second, and I look at my temperature gauge and it was minus 63 and it’s now minus 64 … I now look back into my camera and I see that I’m contrailing.”

On the other hand, chemtrails are applied anywhere between 10,000 and 12,000 feet.

Why Are Aeroplanes Not Showing on Flight Radars?

All aircraft have transponders. “You cannot get airborne without one, it’s the law,” Mark said.

Transponder signals are picked up by air traffic flight radars so that any particular aircraft can be positively identified. Before an aeroplane takes off, the pilot is assigned a four-digit code. When the air traffic controller sees the code on his radar, he knows what aeroplane it is, whom the plane is registered to, the flight plan and also other information such as a reading of the captain’s altimeter.

“But what is perplexing people is that when they switch on their Flightradar24 or their ASD-B app on their phone or smart device, they can’t see these aeroplanes [that are chemtrailing] … that’s because there’s been a software fix [to the transponder] so that whenever there’s a bank of these transponder codes and they’re assigned, we cannot see them,” Mark explained. “That’s why we are having trouble physically tracing these aeroplanes.”

The CAA Knows What They’re Doing

On the day he saw the long north-south trail crossed by 13 others, Mark was able to obtain a registration for the aircraft from his colleague at the local airport. Using the registration, Mark’s research led to the British company 2Excel Aviation Broadsword.

2Excel was started by two former Royal Air Force pilots and its CEO is Andy Offer. Offer previously had a business partner who has “ducked out,” Mark said. Adding that the former business partner has since had his reputation completely destroyed with fallacious claims.

2Excel has two Boeing 727s brought over from the United States.

“They were already cargo aeroplanes so they lend themselves nicely to conversion,” Mark said. “These aeroplanes have seven lateral tanks across the aircraft from front to back … and there is a fixed boom at the back of the aircraft which goes underneath [ ] two [of the] engines,” Mark said.

According to 2Excel’s website, the company responds to oil spills, by spraying detergents on oil. But Mark couldn’t understand why the company needed two aeroplanes for oil spills. “How many oil spills have we had around the UK in the past 20 years? Why do they need two?” Mark thought to himself. It’s expensive to maintain and fly these planes but there was supposedly no income. “So, that got me immediately suspicious,” he said.

2Excel has two air operator’s certificates (“AOCs”) granted by the civil aviation authority (“CAA”). One is to fly low level over the sea, as it would be expected to enable them to spray detergents over oil spills.  But the other is to fly over forested areas. But they weren’t flying over forested areas, 2Excel was flying over London, Birmingham, Glasgow or Manchester. “So, that is in gross violation [of its AOC],” Mark said.

People have complained to the CAA that 2Excel is violating its AOCs but the response has been the usual “conspiracy theory” accusations.

“That … to me exposes the CAA … The good news is if we look at the upside, and there is an upside to this, it’s exposing all the people who we probably didn’t previously know were involved with the narrative,” he said. 

Mark then explained in more detail about the process at the CAA to obtain various licences and the CAA inspections that 2Excel would have to pass to be able to operate. For the sake of brevity, we have not described these processes here.

“2Excel Aviation is very well organised. They were at Doncaster, which was their main base for the 727s. And they have a fleet of other smaller aircraft which get involved with coast guard work – monitoring, surveillance. What are they looking at? We don’t know.”

2Excel also has an aircraft hangar at Lasham Airport, just west of London, which is a premier site for gliding. Other airports where there has been “some action from” is Newquay, Bournemouth and Prestwick. “These are ideal places from which to operate, almost by stealth, because you don’t get [aeroplane] spotters there,” Mark explained.

There is another company called RVL Aviation based at East Midlands Airport. It is a Danish-registered company that has twin-engine light aircraft. The company does surveillance, coastguard work, monitoring and air sampling. “These [aircraft] are not doing the spraying but these are the ones that you can occasionally see on flight radar that are doing these either race track patterns – all these patterns where they go up and down, up and down, up and down and they eventually cover a large area. What they’re looking at, what they’re surveying, I have no idea,” Mark said. Their activity has been on the increase, particularly in the last 18 months.

RVL is a smaller operation than 2 Excel.  RVL bought at least two Boeing 737s from cargo operator Western Atlantic. These 737s are part of a group of aeroplanes that are painted all white and so are referred to as “whitetails” and have been spotted spraying chemtrails over Cornwall. RVL’s aircraft operate out of Newquay, Southampton, Stansted, Teesside, Prestwick and Liverpool airports.

There are other companies – such as Delta Airlines registered in Atlanta, Georgia – but 2Excel and RVL are doing most of the chemtrailing in UK’s skies.

The Pilots Know What They’re Doing

Once you start asking one question, it opens the door to other questions. The aeroplane takes off from Teesside, where is it going? Who’s told the pilot where to go?

Mark has seen up to five aeroplanes at a time in the sky which are flying in parallel with each other, then “going in different directions, reforming and coming back.” So, someone is coordinating the flights.  The aeroplane’s flight plan will be in the onboard computer but it will be up to the pilots when the spraying of chemicals starts or stops.

“What they are doing is very contrived, it’s very wilful and people say: ‘Well, I can’t believe the pilots know they’re doing it’. Well, let me assure you – they do,”  Mark said.

The crew have to be licensed by the CAA to fly that particular aircraft. Virtually all of these pilots are ex-RAF, Mark said.

“This is key because the RAF guys are used to doing, shall we say, clandestine operations – unusual operations … and they also, crucially, signed the Official Secrets Act which means they don’t talk … Interestingly enough, almost exclusively, the engineers that maintain [2Excel’s] two 727s are also ex-RAF.”

If the pilots are taking any dangerous goods on board the aeroplane, whether it’s liquids or radioisotopes for X-ray machines, the captain has to have a document called a Notice to Captain (“NOTOC”). The NOTOC details all of the dangerous goods onboard the aircraft and where they are located. This is for safety in the event of an emergency landing. 

Mark said:

“Having spoken to the fire chiefs at several airports, the two aeroplanes that they’re very nervous about coming in with a Mayday are military aircraft – because they don’t know if the missiles under the wing are live or what they’ve got armed – [and] the other one is a cargo aircraft because they’ve got no idea what he’s got on board … So, the first thing a captain should do as he’s running out of the aircraft is grab his flight book and his NOTOC because then he can hand it to the fire chief … So, these captains will be issued with a [NOTOC], or should be.”

“Unfortunately, when I tell you the statistic about the amount of [non-chemtrail] pilots that are aware of current events [it’s low], I think a lot more of them are aware now.  But it’s also the same with the engineers.   I do know some very good engineers who are awake, but they’re in the minority.  And when they go to work, they go ‘Oh well, there’s that crank again’, you know, and they’re under attack.  And these are the engineers that fix the aeroplanes.  The [engineers] that are doing the cargo ones that are tuned to spray, they’ve obviously got non-disclosure agreements, they’re probably signed the Official Secrets Act, who knows.”

Why Are They Doing It?

It’s really difficult to understand the mentality of the people involved in chemtrailing. “It’s called normalisation of deviance,” Mark said.

The concept of normalisation of deviance was first identified within the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (“NASA”). American sociologist Diane Vaughan defines the “normalisation of deviance” as “the gradual process through which unacceptable practice or standards become acceptable. As the deviant behaviour is repeated without catastrophic results, it becomes the social norm for the organisation.”

Mark also explained that as far as the people who are involved in chemtrail programmes are concerned, there is “intellectual dishonesty.” Intellectual dishonesty is a term used to describe intentionally committed fallacies in debates and reasoning. It refers to the advocacy of a position known to be false, which is misused to advance an agenda or reinforce one’s deeply held beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence contrary.

Intellectual dishonesty is, for example, an MP writing back to you saying: “You’re a fool, you’re mistaken. Those chemtrails are not chemtrails, they’re contrails.”

Mark believes chemtrails were pioneered in the United States.

“[The UK’s] been messing about with it in different guises, not so much airborne, but we’ve been messing about with it for a long time … A lot of the experiments that the British government were doing, a long time ago, [were] just on the ground.  So typically, they’d be spraying chemicals onto a passing train that would be going into a tunnel  … So, sadly it’s nothing new,” he said.

The two main purposes for chemtrailing are clear, he said. “It’s to poison us and to block out the sun.”

In the United States, people have managed to obtain samples of chemtrails and used a mass spectrometer to determine the contents.

“If you look at the contents of the chemtrails … the three main ingredients tend to be barium, strontium and aluminium oxide – all of which are carcinogenic. And the aluminium causes autism and Alzheimer’s,” Mark said.

Mark doesn’t have financial figures for RVL, but last year 2Excel had a revenue of £41 million.

“£25 million of that was profit,” he said. “And the dividends, the shareholder profits, were £10.9 million.”  All that money comes out of the money British residents pay in taxes. “So, we’re paying for ourselves to be poisoned.”

2Excel’s Financial Director, Harant Singh, sets up shell companies every week. According to Mark, 2Excel has thousands of shell companies.

Some of them are closed down quite quickly. So, the government, by whichever agencies they’re paying, pay into the shell company [and then] the shell company gets shutdown. I can only assume RVL is doing something similar,” he said.

It is claimed that chemtrailing is done to block out the sun to keep global temperatures within the limits as dictated by the Paris Climate Agreement. If it was, then the payments would be above board and elaborate schemes wouldn’t be devised to hide payments to the companies who are engaged in chemtrailing.

Chemtrails and HAARP

Critchley mentioned that chemtrails can take on unusual appearances, such as lines cutting across or odd shapes. Everything has a frequency and depending on how many metal particulates are being sprayed and the activities of the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Programme (“HAARP”) at the time, these waves and lines will appear in the chemtrails, Mark explained. 

He said that there is a HAARP facility in the UK, it’s sited halfway down the Welsh coast. Documents for planning permission state that the facility’s purpose is for communications. 

“But we’ve been down there, we’ve got photographs of it … the aerials are in something called a phased array … and produces something called side lobes. So apart from the beam of energy going directly ahead and up, the side lobes come out of the side and will irradiate everything that’s there.”

He explained how HAARP works and then said:

“They can accurately change the weather. They’ve been doing that for a long time.” He used the earthquake in Japan a few years ago as an example of how HAARP is used as a weapon to make governments obey the demands of the global cabal – HAARP was used to make Japan “yield to the Rothschild banking system,” Mark said.

Many years ago, author Elana Freeland and former HAARP engineer Billy Hayes began discussing the frequency relationships between CERN, HAARP, Chemtrails, Fracking and even Wind Turbines. To begin your research, you can find some useful information about their research HERE, HERE or on Freeland’s website HERE.

What Can We Do?

These are crimes against humanity, we’ve got to fight back Mark said. “Everybody can do their bit.”

People watching Drake Michigan’s podcast will say: “Well, I’m not an aviation person so what can I do?” Sow seeds, he said. “Start talking to people, make them more aware, air your concerns,” he said.

“Find out if somebody lives near the airport or you’ve got a friend who lives near the airport and they see anything.  Spotters’ clubs, plane spotters, all these people, they will see things.”

“I would implore anybody who works at an airport or lives near an airport to just be more attentive,” Mark said. “Keep asking questions.”

At the moment everything is under attack, for example, food, cattle and fish. One of the psychological tricks that is being used is that they accelerate their agenda, we all feel it and then they back off and we breathe a sigh of relief. They then accelerate the agenda again, Mark said. So, when we have that moment of relief, don’t stop but keep pushing back.

On the Do Not Consent website is a template letter that people can download and send to their Member of Parliament (“MP”) and a second template letter that can be used to send a letter to the UK Prime Minister. At the moment the MPs are on summer recess so you’ll need to either hand deliver the letter or send it recorded mail. There is also a yellow sticker campaign that has been launched to use on social media profiles that states that we do not consent to be governed by a tyrannical regime.

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It was 15 years ago: Felicity Arbuthnot recalls the massacre of Palestinian children during the December 2008-January 2009 invasion of Gaza.

The killing of children by Israel has been persistent. 

Veteran War Correspondent Felicity Arbuthnot in solidarity with the Children of Palestine describes the underlying and evolving criminality as well as the Anglo-American complicity

 

  “Light the fire so I can see my tears, On the night of the massacre …” (Samih al-Qasim, b: 1939.)

It was that “pinpoint accuracy”, “surgical strike” stuff again, there were “unavoidable tragic errors”, “mistakes”, “scrupulous efforts made to avoid” etc., blah. And as Britain’s Colonel Richard Kemp declared of the fourteen hundred dead of the Christmas and New year onslaught on Gaza in 2008-2009: “Mistakes are not war crimes.” (i)

Colonel Kemp, with impeccable ties to British Intelligence Services, spoke to the BBC from Jerusalem in similar sanguine vein on 21st November(ii) of the then latest twenty four hour bombardment of the tiny, walled in Gaza Strip, where over half the population are children. But Colonel Kemp has seen a fair amount of carnage in his time, from Belfast to the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Seemingly after a while the dead and dismembered are just part of the day job.

The eight day blitz killed one hundred and sixty two Palestinians in what were merciless attacks on families with no where to hide. Nine hundred and ninety nine were injured. Eight hundred and sixty five houses are damaged or destroyed.

Six health centres are damaged, thirty schools, two universities, fifteen NGO offices, twenty seven mosques, fourteen media offices, eleven industrial plants, eighty one commercial stores and a UNRWA food distribution Centre.

In addition seven Ministry offices, fourteen  police or security stations, five banks, and two youth clubs. The sports complex where the Palestinians athletes and paralympians trained for the 2012 London Olympics is reduced to rubble, as is the beautiful and most necessary Gaza Interior Ministry.

On Universal Children’s Day, 20th November, an air strike destroyed the Oxfam-supported Al Bajan kindergarten school and damaged the Al Housna kindergarten. (iii) Oxfam’s Sara Almer commented that more than one hundred and fifty children attended these kindergartens. “The children are safe, but the places where they learned and played are now in ruins.” This in an area: “where they already suffer a high level of trauma …”

The Oxfam project was as a result of the devastation caused by “Operation Cast Lead” between 27th December 2008-17th January 2009, when they also repaired the now re-fractured water and sanitation facilities.

There is a shortage of two hundred and thirty schools in Gaza, the Agency points out – and a ban on importing construction materials, which means the further thirty two damaged, the two universities and all else may well stay that way.

Ironically, on the day of the nurseries’ destruction, the UN Secretary General announced, that marking Universal Children’s Day, the launch of a major UN initiative: “Education First.” The day commemorates the adoption of the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child of 1959 and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989. The 1989 Convention entered in to force on September 2nd 1990, under a month after the UN embargo on Iraq, with even baby milk formula importation denied.

“The child … needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection before as well as after birth” is included in the preamble to a fine document. (iv)

Four year old twins, Suhaib and Muhammed Hijazi will never learn of the “protection” they are entitled to by the United Nations. They were killed when their home was bombed as the dawn of Universal Children’s Day approached. Their parents, Fouad and Amna died in hospital.

Saraya, eighteen months, won’t grow to read the fine words either, she died of a heart attack, literally frightened to death by the bombardment.

As the lights went off in Gaza’s hospitals, and their generator fuel hovered  on empty, Gilad Sharon – youngest son of eighty four year old former Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, who has benefited from Israel’s fine health services and been on life support systems since 2006 – stated: “We need to flatten entire neighbourhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima – the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki too.”

Israel’s Interior Minister Eli Yishai stated that the goal of the attacks were to: “ … send Gaza back to the Middle Ages.”
Palestine has no army, navy, air force, no heavy weaponry. Israel is an undeclared nuclear power, regarded as having the fourth strongest military on earth.

Gaza was, of course being bombed by American supplied F-16s and a variety of American weaponry. But as Gaza grieved, America had parades across the land, ate turkey, prayed over their festive dinners on Thanksgiving Day, 22nd November.

Reality would have had them burning, city to city, The UN Declaration and Convention on the Rights of the Child, The UN Declaration on Human Rights, The Geneva Convention, The Nuremberg Principles and making a pyre of all the fine, meaningless words which do not end or mask international lawlessness and inhumanity. A bonfire which might light the  lie of the whole murderous hypocrisy of self proclaimed “democratic” nation states.

Notes

i.    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Kemp
ii.    http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9771000/9771507.stm
iii.    http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m92857&hd=&size=1&l=e
iv.    http://un.by/en/hr/doc/child/

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It was exactly 109 years ago this month when the Christmas Truce of 1914 occurred, when Christian soldiers on both sides of the infamous No Man’s Land of the Western Front, recognized their common humanity, dropped their guns and fraternized with the so-called enemies that they had been ordered to kill without mercy the day before. As mentioned in last week’s column, the truth of that remarkable event has since been effectively covered up by state and military authorities (and the embedded journalists at the time) because they were angered (and embarrassed) by the breakdown of military discipline.

In the annals of war, such “mutinies” are now unheard of. The generals and (as well as the saber-rattling, chest-thumping politicians and war profiteers back home) rapidly developed strategies to prevent such behavior from happening again.

Christmas Eve of 1914 was only 5 months into World War I, and the cold, weary, homesick soldiers found themselves not heroes, as expected, but rather miserable, frightened and disillusioned wretches living in rat- and louse-infested trenches. Most of them had dreamed heroic dreams when they had signed up to kill and die for King and Country a few months earlier, and hey had been fully expecting to be home for the holidays.

Lower echelon officers on both sides of No Man’s Land, who were suffering right along with the troops, allowed a lull in the war – just for Christmas Eve. Then they allowed the troops to sing Christmas hymns, and many of the not-yet hardened soldiers started to recognize the humanity of the demonized “other” that had been fingered as sub-humans deserving of death.

And so the merciful spirit of the season came upon them; and they disobeyed orders that forbade fraternizing with the enemy by laying down their weapons and mingling with them in the area between the trenches.

Unknown to the higher echelon commanding officers – who were enjoying good food and drink in their warm bunkers out of the range of the artillery barrages and machine gun bursts – the grunts on either side of the battle line suddenly sensed the stupidity of killing someone that was just like them and who had never done them any harm.

Many of the men that experienced the moment knew that something deeply profound had happened: a spiritual experience of mutual respect and love that epitomized their mutual Christian upbringing – and they refused to fight and kill when the war was ordered to re-start.

Some soldiers were punished for their disobedience and many of them had to be replaced with fresh troops that had been in the reserve trenches the day before (corporal Adolf Hitler was among the ones who did not experience the front line fraternization.)

The Christmas Truce of 1914 had come close to ending the futile and ultimately suicidal war that destroyed 4 empires and an entire generation of young men that had been bamboozled into joining up.

The truce had occurred at various places up and down the triple parallel lines of trenches that stretched through France for 600 miles from Belgium to Switzerland. The vast majority of the soldier that experienced the unauthorized truce did not survive the war. Many of them had just experienced a bloody battle that had killed tens of thousands of troops on either side, with essentially no territory being gained by either side, and they now knew that they were in for a long war of attrition. They would not be home for Christmas.

The Prelude to “The War to End All Wars”

World War I was referred to in the pre-WWII history books as “The Great War” or, naively and rather laughably, “The War to End all Wars”. In the centuries before, warfare as a means of settling disputes between nations was often regarded as a noble undertaking that only involved professional soldiers. Wars in those days were just larger examples of the common (and equally barbaric) practice of engaging in “honorable” duels (sometimes to the death) when a rival disrespected another with something as simple as an offhand insult.

European military officers came from the landed aristocracy. The careers of the officer class were so familial that they almost seemed hereditary. Part of the attraction of being a military officer in Europe was the unquestioning respect that military officers demanded, not to mention the impressive uniforms and the medals and ribbons that were worn on them.

Military veterans in Europe were universally honored as heroes, whether dead or alive, no matter if they had participated in war crimes or acts of torture, rape, murder or pillage. Military shrines, statues, cemeteries and holidays for “the fallen” are regarded as normal all over the continent. The military service of European veterans seems to have been regarded as worthy of praise – no questions asked – even if the veteran himself felt unworthy.

What most prospective enlistees or conscripts knew about war was what their fathers and the uber-patriotic war literature had selectively told them and what they had learned from the censored, palatable version of war that they read about in their school history books.

Most of the enlistees were looking forward to escaping the boredom of their day-to-day existence and experiencing up close the exhilaration of playing real war games. These unaware, wet behind the ears young men hadn’t been told about the dehumanizing verbal and physical abuse that was to be meted out by their drill sergeants in basic training or the beatings they would suffer later for disobedience or disrespect.

Unbeknownst to the naive grunts on the front line, the ruling elites had ulterior motives. (The kings, queens, emperors, princes, nobles, kibitzers, veterans, the bankers that financed the wars, the weapons makers and assorted other captains of industry all felt that they would somehow profit from the war.) These war profiteers, too old or influential to go to war themselves, knew how much money could be made in wars, and, in addition, they had the assurance that they would be far from the killing fields.

French and British schoolchildren had been indoctrinated for generations in the belief that the German emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm, was evil incarnate and therefore, if war were to come, the German soldier who took orders from him was deserving of death. German schoolchildren were taught the same about the French and the English rulers and killing soldiers. And each of the leaders, sensing that their honor was at stake, seemed to be spoiling for a fight.

The Powder Keg: Alsace-Lorraine

Most of the civilians living in Europe had very few direct memories of war. The horrors of war had been erased from their memories but, to the professional warrior class, war was a game that could advance their careers and pay grade. Times were relatively good for many Europeans, but the military class was more than willing to get into a good war.

Peace in Europe had actually existed since Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo a century earlier, with the exception of the relatively short Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The 1871 Treaty of Frankfurt that ended that war (with France surrendering to the Germans) transferred the disputed territory of French-occupied Alsace-Lorraine back to Germany. Alsace-Lorraine was a rich industrial region located between France and Germany that had alternately been claimed over the centuries by either Germany or France – depending on which nation had lost the last war.

Before WWI erupted, Alsace-Lorraine was a powder keg ready to be ignited. The two historical enemies “knew” that Alsace-Lorraine was rightfully theirs, and they were willing to kill for it or die trying – not to mention earning the right to spell its largest city either Strassburg or Strasbourg.

Authoritarian, Militarized Europe

Most European governments were not democracies. They were authoritarian, paternalistic and anti-democratic, and there were enormous and often widening gaps between the haves (the 1%) and the have-nots of the lower 99%. Attempts at instituting socialism or representative democracy had been brutally put down by the conservative ruling elite’s obedient police and security forces.

Cruelty in child-rearing (and basic training) was the norm in Europe, which contributed heavily to the generational obedience to authority figures, whether parents, school teachers, clergypersons, drill sergeants, generals, corporations or political leaders. Most Europeans therefore accepted the rule of the hereditary kings, emperors, princes, nobles and military generals. And, as is also true of non-democratic institutions, everybody was expected to be obedient to those above them in the chain of command and to demand obedience from those below. Unconditional obedience to authority makes it easy to develop efficient killing soldiers for war departments and dictators.

The Divine Right of Kings

For centuries, most European leaders felt that it was their divine right to colonize other nations and enslave the inhabitants – by any means necessary – especially if those inhabitants were of another color or religion.. Any territory that had valuable natural resources to steal or workers to exploit, no matter where in the world it was, was considered a legitimate target especially if it was militarily weaker than the invader and as long as the citizens of their home nation were uninformed, self-satisfied, arrogant, uber-patriotic, distracted and/or apathetic.

The method of choice for the subjugation of a people targeted for colonization – a la Christopher Columbus – was always the use of overwhelming military force followed by years of brutal occupation and the afore-mentioned systematic looting of natural resources or labor. Killing, torturing, intimidating, imprisoning, silencing, exiling or otherwise “disappearing” the ethical opposition is the norm for empires. The intellectuals, altruists, prophets, poets, artists, singers, songwriters, investigative journalists and other truth-tellers or resistance movement activists had to be silenced.

In the century prior to 1914, all European empires had standing armies and military bases both at home and abroad. Nations often negotiate treaties with potential allies that promise that, if one nation was attacked by another treaty-signatory, each would come to the other’s aid. This reality resulted in a very complex web of treaties that was instrumental in starting World War I.

Living by the Sword/Dying by the Sword

The totally avoidable military madness of WWI resulted in the destruction of four empires and the deaths of upwards of 20 million people, most of whom were young naive patriotic men who had, in retrospect, stupidly welcomed the chance to prove their manhood by engaging in what they thought would be exciting war games. All sides had somehow trusted the ridiculous assertion that everybody would be home by Christmas – welcomed home as conquering heroes! That myth was propagated by the press and foolishly  believed by those of military age.

When Archduke Ferdinand, the heir-apparent to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire, was assassinated in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, the century of relative European peace rapidly unraveled in a series of errors of judgment, bureaucratic snafus, failures of communication and refusals to risk dishonor by “turning the other cheek” or even negotiating in good faith. Within days of the assassination, the saber-rattling heads of European states began mobilizing for war.

Within a month the dominos fell, with each nation honorably living up to their treaty obligations by declaring war on one another. And on August 4, 1914, World War I began in earnest when Austria tipped over the first domino by shelling innocent civilian populations in little Serbia, an action that prompted the declarations of war by Russia, Germany, Britain and France.

The chest-pounding of the deluded, arrogant, out-of-touch leadership on all sides resulted in a war fever that had unstoppable momentum. Their indoctrinated testosterone-laden rookie soldiers soon found themselves, as always, to be the elite’s dutiful trigger-pullers; and an entire generation of young men was wasted in the trenches of the Western Front, either killed or wounded.

Most of those that survived bodily were rendered insane, criminally psychopathic or otherwise psychologically and/or spiritually disabled for the rest of their lives. No one, especially the glory- and power-seeking militarists at the top, had foreseen the coming holocaust or the intolerable stalemates in a new kind of warfare that relied on shovels, machine guns, artillery and poison gas. Heroic cavalry charges with swords drawn were suddenly obsolete. Everyone, especially the out-of-touch generals and the clergymen who were supposed to be in charge of the nation’s souls, had been blinded by the propaganda lie that war was something other than satanic.

As tantalizing as is the story of the Christmas Truce, it is also a reminder of what could have happened if there had been less obedience to authority and more organized opposition to senseless war in the families, schools and churches.

If the well-meaning Christian boys from England, France, Germany, Russia, Austria, et al (who wound up helplessly suffering in that demonic war) had been, in their childhoods, thoroughly exposed to the ethical teachings of their Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, they might have had the capacity to refuse the invitation to kill their co-religionists on the other side of the battle lines. In fact, if they had really absorbed the message of their all-merciful God, they wouldn’t have been able to slaughter anybody at all.

That futile and suicidal war could have ended before it really got up a head of steam if the righteous mutiny had been more widespread, better organized and well-supported by the chaplains at the front and the heavily propagandized, flag-waving civilians back home.

Tragically, the anti-Christic  propaganda machine prevailed, thanks in part to the censorship of the obedient press (that still persists today) by refusing to do good investigative journalism by sanitizing the horrors of war.

What turned out to be a mutual mass slaughter of a degree never before seen in the history of warfare could have ended 100 years ago this Christmas if every soldier had experienced the peace that was present in the trenches and courageously laid down their weapons forever.

One of the lessons of the Christmas Truce story is summarized in the concluding verse of John McCutcheon’s famous song about the event, “Christmas in the Trenches”:

“My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell.

Each Christmas come since World War I – I’ve learned its lessons well:
That the ones who call the shots won’t be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we’re the same.”

Check out the video of McCutcheon singing his song at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJi41RWaTCs

and, for a good pictorial history of the reality of WWI’s  trench warfare, check out:

 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTXhZ4uR6rs

The official trailer of “Joyeux Noel” is available at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXcseNVZGRM

Dr Gary G. Kohls is a retired physician from Duluth, MN. He has been actively involved in peace, justice and nonviolence issues for much of his adult life and, since his retirement, has written a weekly column for the Duluth Reader. His columns mostly deal with the dangers of American fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism and other movements that threaten American democracy. His “Duty to Warn” columns have been re-published around the world for the last decade.

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

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May the Spirit of Christmas  prevail in criminalizing war and bringing the war criminals to justice. Our thoughts during the Christmas period are with the millions of victims of US-NATO led wars and those waged by Israel against the people of Palestine.  

Let us extend the ban to the birthplace of Jesus Christ to all war criminals. 

*

First published by GR in December 2006

War criminals George W. Bush and Tony Blair were banned for life in April 2003 from the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem, widely believed to be the birth-place of Jesus Christ. The ban was announced at the height of the illegal US-allied bombing and invasion of Iraq.

Below are the original 2003 press reports pertaining to that decision as well as a subsequent introductory note published by Global Research in December 2006.

“The Bethlehem sanctuary issued a ringing reprisal Sunday [April 2003] of the coalition attack, going as far as barring US President George W. Bush, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and UK Foreign Minister Jack Straw from entering church grounds, due to their “aggressive war on Iraq.”

“The priest in the Church of the Nativity has every right to ban Bush and his supporters since they have marred the teachings of Christ. Their entry into the church will tarnish it as [Bush’s] hands are covered in the blood of the innocent,” Karmash told The Jordan Times.

The local priest went on to say that he felt the punishment was not enough. “We need a tougher one to eradicate evil at its very root,” he exclaimed.

The Nativity Church’s parishioner, Father Panaritius, said during a rally organised Sunday by the Greek Orthodox community in Bethlehem that Bush, Rumsfeld, Blair and Straw are “war criminals and children killers that will be banned from entering the church forever!”

The Church Parishioner Father Panaritius made the decision public at a massive protest demonstration organized by Orthodox institutions in front of the Church of Nativity.”They are war criminals and murderers of children. Therefore the Church of Nativity decided to ban them access into the holy shrine for ever,” the parishioner said.”

There is no indication from The Church of  the Nativity that this ban on war criminals Bush, Blair et al. has been revoked. 

This ban should be extended to a number of other Western leaders including presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden who in the course of their mandate have waged illegal and criminal wars on the people of Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen.

In 2012, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal has found former United States president George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair guilty of “crimes against peace”.

“The five panel tribunal unanimously decided that Bush and Blair had committed genocide and crimes against peace and humanity when they invaded Iraq in 2003 in blatant violation of international law.”

The indictment was based on testimonies presented to the Tribunal as well the findings and report of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC)

May the Spirit of Christmas  prevail in criminalizing war and bringing the war criminals to justice. Our thoughts during the Christmas period are with the millions of victims of US-NATO led wars and those waged by Israel against the people of Palestine.  

Michel Chossudovsky,

Member of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission, 

Global Research, December 22, 2017 

*      *      *

“Their entry into the church will tarnish it as [Bush’s] hands are covered in the blood of the innocent…”

The Spirit of Christmas consists in spreading Peace and Justice.

The Spirit of Christmas is when War Criminals are banned from the Birthplace of Jesus Christ.

In April 2003 at the height of the military campaign directed against Iraq, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem decided to ban President Bush and Prime Minister Blair from the birthplace of Jesus Christ.

“They are war criminals and murderers of children. Therefore the Church of Nativity decided to ban them access into the holy shrine for ever,”

“Their entry into the church will tarnish it as [Bush’s] hands are covered in the blood of the innocent,”

The Church of the Nativity is under the authority of the Greek Orthodox church.

Of utmost significance, the US News media has not reported this story.

Spread the word to Church parishes in the US and around the World.

Unseat the War criminals.

Michel Chossudovsky,  Global Research, 24 December 2006 

BETHLEHEM, April 01, 2003 (Online): The Church of Nativity, widely believed to be the birth-place of Jesus Christ, decided to ban entry each of the US President George Bush, his Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Foreign Secretary Jack Straw the privilege of visiting this sacred place, which is one of the holiest Christian shrines.

The move came in protest of “the aggressive war these leaders have waged against Iraq,” top Clergy of the church said.

The Church Parishioner Father Panaritius made the decision public at a massive protest demonstration organized by Orthodox institutions in front of the Church of Nativity.”They are war criminals and murderers of children. Therefore the Church of Nativity decided to ban them access into the holy shrine for ever,” the parishioner said.

AMMAN — Jordan Times. Parish Priest of the Greek Orthodox community in Amman, Economos Constantine Karmash, said Tuesday he fully supports the Church of the Nativity decision to ban a number of top coalition leaders from entering the house of worship.

The Bethlehem sanctuary issued a ringing reprisal Sunday of the coalition attack, going as far as barring US President George W. Bush, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and UK Foreign Minister Jack Straw from entering church grounds, due to their “aggressive war on Iraq.”

“The priest in the Church of the Nativity has every right to ban Bush and his supporters since they have marred the teachings of Christ. Their entry into the church will tarnish it as [Bush’s] hands are covered in the blood of the innocent,” Karmash told The Jordan Times.

The local priest went on to say that he felt the punishment was not enough. “We need a tougher one to eradicate evil at its very root,” he exclaimed.

The Nativity Church’s parishioner, Father Panaritius, said during a rally organised Sunday by the Greek Orthodox community in Bethlehem that Bush, Rumsfeld, Blair and Straw are “war criminals and children killers that will be banned from entering the church forever!”

Karmash explained that the banning was different from an official church ban, or “excommunication,” which requires a supreme church power. If this is done, the excommunicated are no longer considered members of the church and will not be provided any church services such as a marriage or funeral.

Bush and his supporters are not members of the Greek Orthodox Church, said Karmash, hence they cannot be subjected to an official church ban.

“We hope that their respective churches, which condemn the current war, will strip Bush and his supporters from their church rights so that they become ostracised from their church as they have become ostracised by the humanitarian and international community,” pointed out the priest.

Wednesday, April 2, 2003

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***

It’s commonly said that criminals of all types, political assassins especially, often return to the scene of their crime to relive the emotional-physical pleasures and sensations they experienced while in the commission of their original crime or series of crimes. 

During WWII, the Free French coined the saying, “Les Assassins Revienment Toujours Sur Les Lieux de Leur Crime” to refer to the Vichy elements in Southern France who joined forces with the Nazi and helped to kill all those who were their mutual enemies.

One could argue that the horrors of what is happening in 2023 to indigenous Palestinians are once again faced with Zionist Israel’s unrelenting brutal aggression, and those Vichy elements that exist within governments throughout the world who also support the Zionist ideology within Israel and are willing to accept or contribute, in various different ways, to the massacres and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

Consequently, today’s Palestinians now are victims of the same horrors their grandparents faced in 1948 against tough-minded, cold-blooded Zionist Irgun and Stern Gang terrorists, who, themselves, had also once been expertly trained by England’s own elite, murderous counter-insurgency forces. 

Back then, the Zionists, and those ‘Vichy forces’ around the world who were willing to collaborate with their crimes against humanity. They remain prepared to serve as collaborators and accessories to whatever genocidal crimes have already been committed, or still will have to be, to accomplish the Zionists single-pointed geo-political-religious goals and fascist fantasies to create a white, racist, Jewish-only state. 

What the world continues to witness in living color, instantaneously-recorded and transmitted throughout the world via the latest I-Phone technology, is the reality that “birds of the feather always flock together; and the assassins always come back to the scene of their crimes.” The difference now is that the world can see all the evil things that Israeli and their American-Canadian allies are doing. 

Yet nothing has changed for the better over the past eight decades; only the ever-escalating numbers of murdered, displaced, refugeed Palestinians; pushed ever closer to the point of extermination or being forcibly removed to some out-of-sight-out-of-mind, subsistence existence somewhere on yet other ghettoized “reservations” or “reserves” like what happened to the Jews in Warsaw and North America’s First Nation peoples in earlier times when they also were physically removed by invading American and Canadian settler-colonists to make way for whatever their own selfish, human desires for yet more and more expansion and growth; the same ruthless, conquering, Zionist settler-colonial peoples in Ersatz Israel now also desiring ever more of the Palestinians ancient homelands solely for themselves for the same reasons. The more things change the more they remain the same.

The other sad reality underlying the historical reality in 2023 in occupied Palestine is that the collective nations of the world have barely lifted a finger to make any appreciable difference in the lives of Palestinian peoples; many of them still ideologically-opposed to any kind of BDS movement against Israel, because, one must assume, they’re all looking for some cut of the spoils of war for their own greedy selves. 

Only in recent days has the U.N. General Assembly even finally managed to bring itself to vote in favor of a paltry, too-little, with the temporary ceasefire, with, wonders of wonder, even the complicit ‘Vichy’ governments of Canada and Australia acquiescing, with the U.S., predictably, voting against a ceasefire; but with Canada’s added caveat that the Hamas Freedom Fighters (this writer’s description, not theirs), still are ridiculously-characterized by the Zionist State and all its Vichy allies as being “terrorists”; when, in truth of fact, they, themselves, are the real terrorists. 

Hamas asked, by Canada and other UN members, in return for their largesse to even grant a temporary ceasefire to the Palestinians for all the slaughter they’ve thus far sustained; to also, as a quid pro quo gesture be willing to: release all the hostages their holding; turn in all their weaponry, and; virtually lay down like dogs and totally surrender to their shameless aggressors.

Such an outrageous suggestion, though, shows absolutely no real understanding or compassion for the realities that exist on the ground in the ‘slaughter zone’ that yet remains in Gaza, the West Bank and all the rest of occupied Palestine. 

Clearly, once such a reality were to occur, and Hamas removed as the only protective military force between them and the Zionists, there would virtually absolutely be no one else left to protect and defend the innocent, unarmed, defenseless Palestinian men, women and children against Israel’s violent Zionist settler-colonist hordes that already have been empowered by the state to torment or kill them; destroy their homes, and commit whatever depraved acts against them until they finally will be forced to leave their homes in the occupied territories for good. If that ever did happen, then the real final ‘duck shoot’ will begin. Yet no one in the U.N. has the courage to label the Zionist state, and all who continue to empower them, like Biden, and good old U.SA’s House of Representatives , as the actual real, enabling “terrorists”.

In fact, the majority of so-called ‘normal’ Canadians and Americans over 30 or 40, already have basically demonstrated by their unwillingness to take any action on behalf of the plight of the Palestinian people that they’ve already drank the spiked Kool-aid poured down their throats by the corporate mainstream politicians and their heavily-propagandized corporate press; passively prepared to accept whatever has happened, or will yet happen, to the Palestinian people since October 7. 

They’ve also readily accepted, too, since the end of WWII, the Zionists non-stop theft, ever since, of the indigenous Palestinian’s homelands in Palestine; of which the United Nations, as the only body with any power to remotely do anything about it, has never so much as entertained the possibility of being prepared to grant these stolen lands back to their original indigenous Palestinian inhabitants.

Yet, in fact, in the annals of even their own sordid history, Canada and the United States, as ruthless settler-colonists in their own right, especially, as two of the biggest perpetrators during the New World’s previous two centuries of mass genocide against their own indigenous peoples, not surprisingly, have, since the beginning of the Zionist invasion of Palestine, become two of its  biggest ‘Vichy’ supporters – militarily, financially, morally and ideologically – of Israel’s Nakba Catastrophe in 1948, and ever since, up to and including now, the 2nd Nakba Catastrophe in 2023. 

One could point to the extreme popularity among U.S. and Canadian citizens to Zionist Israel’s ideological political beliefs as always having fitted like a-hand-in-a-glove with their Canadian and American allies own Christian beliefs; reaching far back into the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, that speak of their own megalomaniacal geo-political rights and desires, themselves, to create ever-expanding strategic bases in the New and Old Worlds, and particularly in the Middle East, in order to secure whatever their own hegemonic plans for power and conquest. 

This perhaps also explains why America’s current leader, President Joe Biden, for decades, has proudly declared himself to be a “Zionist”; while further declaring, “If there never ever had been an Israel, we Americans would have had to have created one for ourselves; adding, ”Were there no Israel, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the world who is safe today.” This says it all! Of course, this goes, as well, for Canada, because mostly everything America ever does, politically, Canada, eventually, always has followed suit; like “Tweedledum and Tweedledee”. 

Nazi, Fascist, Zionist Connections Go Way Back

Long before WWI to WWI, and even long before that during the previous century, United States and Canadian political, business and corporate interests unquestionably have always had strong, ultra-nationalist, economic and political leanings, historically, with ties to fascist powers in the Western World and other beyond, worldwide. 

This was vividly borne out recently, during a symbolic honoring ceremony that was held in Ottawa during the current war in Ukraine. Canada, with a strong presence in attendance of immigrant Western Ukrainians, with strong ‘Bandera’ ties going back to the WWII Nazi-era, yet who nevertheless were allowed to emigrate over time to Canada, gathered in Ottawa to honor one particular WWII Veteran, along with Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, his Asst. PM Chrystia Freeland and Canada’s entire assembled House of Commons present, as well. 

The only problem was, as the ceremony revealed after the fact, much to the chagrin and embarrassment of the entire Canadian government contingent and true-blue Canadians in attendance or watching on television, they actually, unknowingly, had mistakenly celebrated a WWII war veteran who, instead of having bravely fought for the Allies, had actually fought with the ‘Galicia’ Division of the Nazi SS against Russia; a key member of the Allied Forces back then who had played an instrumental part in ultimately winning the war for all the good guys in the West. It was one of those awkward faux pas moments that everyone always tries to forget but never will.

Canada’s One-time Chance to be World’s Leading Peace-keeping Nation

During the nearly past two years that this writer has been deeply committed to writing, first, about the fascist war in Ukraine, and now about the fascist war in Gaza, it has caused him to take yet another hard, deep look at why he first chose to leave his native homeland of the United States half-a-century before, and immigrate to Canada.

By then he was sick-and-tired of America’s embroilments in one endless war after another, many of which were of America’s own malevolent doing; endlessly assassinating, in the process, one progressive, democratic world leader after another, even its own beloved President J.F. Kennedy, while robbing the world of so many hopes and dreams.

When he finally learned of the many like-minded anti-war dissidents and draft dodgers who were then fleeing for safety to Canada’s Far North and the protection of its then outspoken and forthright Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the father of the current PM Justin Trudeau, who was granting so many frustrated American Patriots with harbors of safety; he, at once, knew the direction he had to take, as well.

A Canadian Peacekeeper Extraordinaire

Lester B. Pearson, the 14th Prime Minister of Canada, who preceded Pierre Trudeau as Prime Minister, already was well-known then as the “Father of UN Peacekeeping”, and the kind of patriot role-model the world so desperately needs as examples to look up to in today’s otherwise fascist-dominated world. 

Pearson had previously won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work in trying to quell the Suez Crisis; and still other crises in former Yugoslavia; Golan Heights, and; Cambodia; while providing cutting-edge training, as well, for Canadian military personnel as peacekeepers of part of a well-equipped military, powerful enough to act as skilled intervenors in serious world conflicts. 

The Lester B. Pearson United World College of the Pacific was just then being founded on British Columbia’s Vancouver Island, whose slogan was, “Making education a force to unite people, nations and culture for peace and a sustainable future. 

Lester Pearson’s leadership was a high-water mark for Canada’s stature in the world. His highly respected, highly-valued United Nation’s Blue Helmuts and Blue Beret Peacekeepers, once the envy of the world.

Canada’s Major General Romeo Dallaire Another Lester Pearson

From 1993 to 1995, Canada was a singular sterling world leader in United Nations peacekeeping missions around the world; specifically in the African nation of Rwanda, where the mission of some 1,200 of Canada’s highly-regarded U.N Blue Helmut/Blue Beret Peacekeepers, under the able command of Canada’s Major General Romeo Dallaire, tried to quell the impending civil war between the Tutu’s and Hutu’s, for which he and his UN Blue Helmuts received world-wide acclaim; even though, try as Dallaire and his brave UN Peacekeepers attempted to do, eventually proved to be beyond even their capacity to stop the ultimate slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans in their 1994 Civil War.

Quote from Lester Pearson on the monument

Quote from Lester Pearson on the monument (Copyrighted free use)

Yet, just as what happened in the wholesale slaughter that occurred in the war in Ukraine, and now in the war between the Zionists and Hamas, it always boils down, not to what is right or wrong, or the innocent lives of the victims involved, but to whatever the particular -interests are of the politicians and governments involved.

 In Rwanda, it was the despicable role played by U.S. President Bill Clinton who month, prior to when the massacre occurred, Clinton had produced a presidential directive stating that the United States will not engage in any humanitarian operation, unless its in its self-interest.” When Major General Dallaire himself had an opportunity to later meet with Clinton’s subordinates, he learned from them that the President had said to them, “Don’t tell me what the hell is going on, I don’t want to know.”

After Romeo Dallaire’s famous genocide fax, when Dallaire declared his intent to militarily intervene on behalf of the impending Rwanda victims, despite the fact that such actions fell outside his mandate of the U.N.’s Chapter 6, Dallaire was nevertheless planning to go after the arms cache’s of the extremist marauding militias, until Dallaire was given the direct order, “You will not intervene. You will not put your troops at risk.”

Even as the genocide between the Tutu’s and Hutu’s began, the U.N. Security Council continued to quibble and debate before the UN Secretary General, General Boutrous Boutrous Ghali had 2,000 ‘Blue Helmut’ Peacekeepers withdraw from the field, on the basis that, “the world can’t handle 450 peacekeepers killed.”

In the aftermath of the genocide, after over 40,000 Rwandans had perished in escalating cholera outbreaks, Dallaire asked to be relieved of his command. 

After returning to Canada, Dallaire attempting suicide four more times, before undergoing an especially gruelling therapy session, where he bought a bottle of scotch, sat on a park bench and drank the whole bottle, crying for hours while preparing to end his own life. Instead, Dallaire eventually turned instead to writing a best-selling book about the excruciating experiences he underwent during the Rwandan Massacre and its aftermath; that he aptly titled, “Shake Hands With The Devil”, that also became an award-winning major motion picture by the same name.

Major General Dallaire, indeed, did have the vision of another Lester Pearson when he took on the awesome, unenviable task of trying to avert the mass genocide of some 800,000 Tutsi and Huti indigenous peoples 

In these dark times, Canada, Israel, Palestine, indeed the world, desperately needs the likes of many more Prime Minister Lester Pearson, and humanists like Canada’s Major General Romeo Dallaire, to renew the role of UN Peacekeeper Blue Helmuts and the hope of truly creating a lasting peace in the world.

Right this moment, even as this writer jots down these last few words, the United Nations should be training and preparing UN Peacekeepers to immediately be deployed in Gaza, the West Bank, and the rest of occupied Palestine. But how many: 500; 5,000; 10,000, or more? Whether the Zionists or Israelis like it or not, this madness must somehow be stopped before it, too, turns into yet another 800,00 or more massacre nightmare, not only for the Palestinians but the entire human race. 

The current worldwide news blackout about the truth of what is or isn’t going on in occupied Palestine and Zionist Israel, and the ‘canned reality’ that has been created in its place, is frightening, and should be frightening to any and all who care about what this sombre presage suggests for the future of the world.

*

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The writer Jerome Irwin is a Canadian-American writer who originally was a Criminology student working in one of America’s local police departments. For decades, Irwin has sought to call world attention to problems of environmental degradation and unsustainability caused by a host of environmental-ecological-spiritual issues that exist between the conflicting world philosophies of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples.

Irwin is the author of the book, “The Wild Gentle Ones; A Turtle Island Odyssey” (www.turtle-island-odyssey.com), a spiritual odyssey among the native peoples of North America that has led to numerous articles pertaining to: Ireland’s Fenian Movement; native peoples Dakota Access Pipeline Resistance Movement; AIPAC, Israel & the U.S. Congress anti-BDS Movement; the historic Battle for Palestine & Siege of Gaza, as well as; the many violations constantly being waged by industrial-corporate-military-propaganda interests against the World’s Collective Soul. The author and his wife are long-time residents on the North Shore of British Columbia.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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“I am greatly saddened to hear of Stephen’s passing, an extremely generous and courageous man. His valid criticisms of the vicious USA empire were unrelenting. He also took the time to ferociously defend others who came under attack, including me, in Ottawa, Canada. It was a pleasure to be interviewed on his radio show and to chat with him on occasion. I don’t believe he was afraid of anything. HE would call them what they are, in the clearest possible language, to their faces. He had a remarkable ability to distill truth down to essential elements.”

Denis Rancourt [1]

“The only way to change the system, which I think is vital if humanity is going to survive, is we need to get rid of this predatory capitalist system!”

Stephen Lendman [2]

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

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After an incredible number of articles on national and world issues starting back in the summer of 2005, his output suddenly came to an abrupt halt on April 30, 2023.

A few days later, the figure behind the gigantic output came in touch with the one force that could actually shut him down. [3]

Stephen Lendman after enduring health illness for years finally passed away on the 9th of May, 2023. [4]

Stephen Lendman, the print and radio show host, informed the public of where he stood on all the key issues of our time and did so with a strong emotional bond to the people he was talking about, and the readers and listeners in his audience.

Stephen Lendman put out more articles on Global Research than practically anyone. 

Stephen Lendman, as a voice for independent public radio stood out on the airwaves. Even at a time when the internet is exploding with multiple practitioners getting involved in podcasts and radio, there is simply no host as distinct in voice, tone, and a sincere commitment to the issues at hand as this elderly individual who was already in his 70s when he started!

Stephen Lendman won honours and awards for his work and secured regular spots on multiple media networks, that is, those which typically highlight the exception to the mainstream media rule.

 

 

Stephen Lendman’s work encompasses dissident thinking on a number of subjects from 9/11 as an “inside job” to opposition to every major military act prosecuted by the U.S. in the last few decades, to challenging both sides of the Two Party paradigm within his own country, to lamenting the banking system and its ravaging of the economic system of America and the world to pillaging the Zionist principles annihilating the Palestinian people to benefit Israel, to directing venom toward American forces who overthrew the government in Ukraine and shifted the blame to Russia, to even questioning the narratives supporting the lockdowns around the COVID-19 “pandemic.”

Stephen Lendman was a pillar of support for Global Research. And he was also incidentally a fine guest whenever he appeared on the Global Research News Hour. He was also a good friend of this writer!

This week’s program is dedicated to his work and to everything he meant to us professionally and personally.

We will be playing him in multiple clips and hear testimonies from some of the people who knew him and worked closely with him. These voices include Ellen Brown, Peter Phillips, Rick Rozoff, Diana G. Collier, and  Michel Chossudovsky

Listeners should also consult the vast works of Stephen Lendman’s writings consisting of more than 3000 articles

Stephen Lendman lived in Chicago. He was a Harvard Graduate and received an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Following a devoted career as a market research analyst for his family owned business, he started writing on major national and international issues in 2005 and soon started hosting the first incarnation of the Global Research News Hour in 2007.

He later hosted The Progressive Radio News Hour, which aired three times a week on the Progressive Radio Network. He was the author of the SteveLendmanBlog, and produced several books including a new compilation of articles dedicated to the Ukraine crisis which he edited.

Lendman was a 2008 Project Censored winner and 2011 Mexican Journalists Club international journalism award recipient.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky is the founder and director of the Centre for Research on Globalization and its website globalresearch.ca. He is Professor (Emeritus) of Economics at the University of Ottawa and the award-winning author of 13 books including America’s War on Terrorism (2005), Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011) and The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity (2015.)

Ellen Brown is the founder of the Public Banking Institute and a former civil litigation attorney. She has authored hundreds of articles and a dozen books, including the 2007 best-seller Web Of Debt and its 2013 sequel  The Public Bank Solution, Ellen Brown lives in Los Angeles.

Prof. Peter Phillips is a Political Sociologist and Professor emeritus at Sonoma State University; author Giants: The Global Power Elite, (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2018); past director of Project Censored; co-author/editor of fourteen Censored yearbooks, 1997 to 2011; co-author of Impeach the President, (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007); and winner of the Dallas Smythe Award from the Union for Democratic Communications. Peter Phillips is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Rick Rozoff, renowned author and geopolitical analyst, actively involved in opposing war, militarism and interventionism for over fifty years. He manages the Anti-Bellum and For peace, against war website. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization

(Global Research News Hour episode 415)

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

Other stations airing the show:

CIXX 106.9 FM, broadcasting from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. It airs Sundays at 6am.

WZBC 90.3 FM in Newton Massachusetts is Boston College Radio and broadcasts to the greater Boston area. The Global Research News Hour airs during Truth and Justice Radio which starts Sunday at 6am.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 7pm.

CJMP 90.1 FM, Powell River Community Radio, airs the Global Research News Hour every Saturday at 8am. 

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday afternoon from 3-4pm.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 9am pacific time.

Notes:

  1. https://twitter.com/denisrancourt/status/1661048680667922432
  2. https://www.globalresearch.ca/world-in-crisis-most-perilous-time-in-world-history-conversation-with-stephen-lendman/5443747
  3. https://stephenlendman.org/about-me/
  4. https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/stephen-lendman-obituary?id=51930063

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sacred Tree or Paradise Tree? The Christmas Tree and Nature

December 22nd, 2023 by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin

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The ancient Egyptians, Chinese, and Hebrews used evergreen wreaths, garlands, and trees to symbolise their respect for nature and their belief in eternal life. The pagan Europeans worshipped trees and had the custom of decorating their houses and barns with evergreens, or erecting a Yule tree during midwinter holidays. However, the modern Christmas tree can be shown to have roots in Christian traditions too. 

The term ‘pagan’ originated in a contemptuous, disdainful, and disparaging attitude towards people who had a respect for nature, the source of their sustenance:

“Paganism (from classical Latin pāgānus “rural”, “rustic”, later “civilian”) is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism, or ethnic religions other than Judaism. Paganism has broadly connoted the “religion of the peasantry”.”

As people gradually converted to Christianity, December 25 became the date for celebrating Christmas.

Christianity’s “most significant holidays were Epiphany on January 6, which commemorated the arrival of the Magi after Jesus’ birth, and Easter, which celebrated Jesus’ resurrection.”

For the first three centuries of Christianity’s existence, “Jesus Christ’s birth wasn’t celebrated at all” and “the first official mention of December 25 as a holiday honouring Jesus’ birthday appears in an early Roman calendar from AD 336.”

It is also believed that December 25 became the date for Christ’s birth “to coincide with existing pagan festivals honouring Saturn (the Roman god of agriculture) and Mithra (the Persian god of light). That way, it became easier to convince Rome’s pagan subjects to accept Christianity as the empire’s official religion.” 

During the Middle Ages, the church used mystery plays to dramatize biblical stories for largely illiterate people to illustrate the stories of the bible “from creation to damnation to redemption”. [1] Thus, we find evidence of a connection between the Christmas tree and the Tree of Life in the Paradise plays as well as pagan sacred trees.

In western Germany, the story of Adam and Eve was acted out using a prop of a paradise tree, a fir tree decorated with apples to represent the Garden of Eden:

“The Germans set up a paradise tree in their homes on December 24, the religious feast day of Adam and Eve. They hung wafers on it (symbolizing the eucharistic host, the Christian sign of redemption); in a later tradition the wafers were replaced by cookies of various shapes. Candles, symbolic of Christ as the light of the world, were often added. In the same room was the “Christmas pyramid,” a triangular construction of wood that had shelves to hold Christmas figurines and was decorated with evergreens, candles, and a star. By the 16th century the Christmas pyramid and the paradise tree had merged, becoming the Christmas tree.”

Full-page miniature of Adam, Eve and the Serpent, [f. 7r] (1445) (The New York Public Library Digital Collections)

The story of Adam and Eve begins with their disobedience, but the play cycle ends with the promise of the coming Saviour.

Furthermore, the medieval Church “declared December 24 the feast day of Adam and Eve. Around the twelfth century this date became the traditional one for the performance of the paradise play.” 

Over time the tree of paradise began to transcend the religious context of the miracle plays and moved towards a role in the Christmas celebrations of the guilds. [2] 

For example:

“The first evidence of decorated trees associated with Christmas Day are trees in guildhalls decorated with sweets to be enjoyed by the apprentices and children. In Livonia (present-day Estonia and Latvia), in 1441, 1442, 1510, and 1514, the Brotherhood of Blackheads erected a tree for the holidays in their guild houses in Reval (now Tallinn) and Riga.”

“Possibly the earliest existing picture of a Christmas tree being paraded through the streets with a bishop figure to represent St Nicholas, 1521 (Germanisches National Museum)”. (The Medieval Christmas by Sophie Jackson (2005) p68)

Early records show

“that fir trees decorated with apples were first known in Strasbourg in 1605. The first use of candles on such trees is recorded by a Silesian duchess in 1611.” 

Furthermore, the earliest known dated representation of a Christmas tree is 1576, seen on a keystone sculpture of a private home in Turckheim, Alsace (then part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, today France).

Keystone sculpture at Turckheim, Alsace (MPK)

The paradise tree represented two important trees of the Garden of Eden: the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life.

It is likely that “because most other trees were barren and lifeless during December, the actors chose to hang the apples from an evergreen tree rather than from an apple tree.”

The Mystery Plays of Oberufer 

A good example of this old tradition is the mystery plays of Oberufer. The Austrian linguist and literary critic Karl Julius Schröer (1825-1900) “discovered a Medieval cycle of Danube Swabian mystery plays in Oberufer, a village since engulfed by the Bratislava’s borough of Főrév (German: Rosenheim, today’s Ružinov). Schröer collected manuscripts, made meticulous textual comparisons, and published his findings in the book Deutsche Weihnachtspiele aus Ungarn (“The German Nativity Plays of Hungary”) in 1857/1858.”

The plates giving an impression of costume designs, based on Rudolf Steiner’s (who studied under Karl Julius Schröer (1825-1900) directions, were painted by the Editor’s father, Eugen Witta, who saw the plays produced by Rudolf Steiner many times while working as a young architect on the first Goetheanum.

Before the actual performance the whole theatrical company went in procession through the village.

They were headed by the ‘Tree-singer’, who carried in his hand the small ‘Paradise Tree’—a kind of symbol of the Tree of Life. The story of the tree and its fruit is mentioned in the text of the play:

But see, but see a tree stands here

Which precious fruit doth bear,

That God has made his firm decree

It shall not eaten be.

Yea, rind and flesh and stone

They shall leave well alone.

This tree is very life,

Therefore God will not have

That man shall eat thereof.

Actors portraying Adam and Eve are expelled from paradise (Eve: Ye must delve and I shall spin – our bodily sustenance for to win.) Performed by the Players of St Peter in the Church of St Clement Eastcheap, London, England in 2004 November.

The Paradise Tree: Egyptian Origins?

Gary Greenberg has compared many stories of the bible with earlier Egyptian myths to try and understand where the ideas contained in the Old Testament originated. He explains:

“In the Garden of Eden God planted two trees, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and The Tree of Life.

Eating from the former gave one moral knowledge; eating from the latter conferred eternal life.

He also placed man in that garden to tend to the plants but told him he may not eat from the Tree of Knowledge (and therefore become morally knowledgeable). About eating from the Tree of Life, God said nothing: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen 2:17). […] Adam and Eve did not die when they ate from the tree. Indeed, God feared that they would next eat from The Tree of Life and gain immortality.” [3] 

Greenberg notes the similarity of these ideas with Egyptian texts and traditions, specifically the writings from Egyptian Coffin Text 80 concerning Shu and Tefnut: 

“The most significant portions of Egyptian Coffin Text 80 concern the children of Atum, the Heliopolitan Creator. Atum’s two children are Shu and Tefnut, and in this text Shu is identified as the principle of life and Tefnut is identified as the principle of moral order, a concept that the Egyptians refer to as Ma’at. These are the two principles associated with the two special trees in the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Not only does the Egyptian text identify these same two principles as offspring of the Creator deity, the text goes on to say that Atum (whom the biblical editors had confused with Adam) is instructed to eat of his daughter, who signifies the principle of moral order. “It is of your daughter Order that you shall eat. (Coffin Text 80, line 63). This presents us with a strange correlation. Both Egyptian myth and Genesis tell us that the chief deity created two fundamental principles, Life and Moral Order. In the Egyptian myth, Atum is told to eat of moral order but in Genesis, Adam is forbidden to eat of moral order.” [4] 

In another description we can see the similarities between the Egyptian and biblical stories:

“Atum-Ra looked upon the nothingness and recognized his aloneness, and so he mated with his own shadow to give birth to two children, Shu (god of air, whom Atum-Ra spat out) and Tefnut (goddess of moisture, whom Atum-Ra vomited out).

Shu gave to the early world the principles of life while Tefnut contributed the principles of order. Leaving their father on the ben-ben, they set out to establish the world. In time, Atum-Ra became concerned because his children were gone so long, and so he removed his eye and sent it in search of them. While his eye was gone, Atum-Ra sat alone on the hill in the midst of chaos and contemplated eternity. Shu and Tefnut returned with the eye of Atum-Ra (later associated with the Udjat eye, the Eye of Ra, or the All-Seeing Eye) and their father, grateful for their safe return, shed tears of joy. These tears, dropping onto the dark, fertile earth of the ben-ben, gave birth to men and women.”

However, Greenberg points out the differences between the two stories:

“Despite the close parallels between the two descriptions there is one glaring conflict. In the Egyptian text Nun (the personification of the Great Flood urged Atum (the Heliopolitan Creator) to eat of his daughter Tefnut, giving him access to knowledge of moral order. In Genesis, God forbade Adam to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, denying him access moral knowledge.” [5]

Why was Adam denied access to moral knowledge? Greenberg writes:

“God feared that he would obtain eternal life if he ate from the Tree of Life and it became necessary to expel him from the Garden. […]

The Egyptians believed that if you lived a life of moral order, the god Osiris, who ruled over the afterlife, would award you eternal life.

That was the philosophical link between these two fundamental principles of Life and Moral Order, and that is why Egyptians depicted them as the children of the Creator. In effect, knowledge of moral behaviour was a step towards immortality and godhead. That is precisely the issue framed in Genesis.

When Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, God declared that if Adam also ate from the Tree of Life he would become like God himself. But Hebrews were monotheists. The idea that humans could become god-like flew in the face of the basic theological concept of biblical religion, that there was and could be only one god. Humans can’t become god-like.” [6]

Adam and Eve and the Serpent—Expulsion from Paradise, ca. 1480-1500 (Anonymous)

Greenberg then describes the fundamental differences between Hebrew monotheism and Egyptian polytheism:

“The Hebrew story is actually a sophisticated attack on the Egyptian doctrine of moral order leading to eternal life. It begins by transforming Life and Moral Order from deities into trees, eliminating the cannibalistic imagery suggested by Atum eating of his daughter. Then, Adam was specifically forbidden to eat the fruit of Moral Order.

Next, Adam was told that not only wouldn’t he achieve eternal life if he ate of Moral Order but that he would actually die if he did eat it.

Finally, Adam was expelled from the Garden before he could eat from the Tree of Life and live for eternity. […] 

When God told Adam that he would surely die the very day he ate from the Tree of Knowledge, the threat should be understood to mean that humans should not try to become like a deity. God didn’t mean that Adam would literally drop dead the day he ate the forbidden fruit; he meant that today Adam violated the commandment he would lose access to eternal life. […] Once he violated the commandment, he lost access to the Tree of Life and could no longer eat the fruit that prevented death.” [7]

The difference between the lord/slave relationship of monotheism and the nature-based ideology of polytheistic paganism is that the subject is denied an eternal place with the master in the former but is welcomed as an equal in the latter. This is because the subject is an integral part of nature in paganism:

“In the shamanic world, not only every tree, but every being was and is holy – because they are all imbued with the wonderful power of life, the great mystery of universal Being. “Yes, we believe that, even below heaven, the forests of their gods also, the sylvan creatures and fauns and different kinds of goddesses” (Pliny the Elder II, 3). [8] 

It is also important to note “that the “serpent in the tree” motif associated with the Adam and Eve story comes directly from Egyptian art.

The Egyptians believed that Re, the sun God that circled the earth every day, had a nightly fight with the serpent Aphophis and each night defeated him. Several Egyptian paintings show a scene in which Re, appearing in the form of “Mau, the Great Cat of Heliopolis,” sits before a tree while the serpent Apophis coils about the tree, paralleling the image of rivalry between Adam and the serpent in the tree of the Garden of Eden.” [9]

The sun god Ra, in the form of Great Cat, slays the snake Apophis. (Image credit:  Eisnel – Public Domain)

Thus, we have moved from the biblical story of Adam and Eve back to the earlier paganism (the connection with Nature) of the Egyptians.

While there is much evidence that one of the sources of the origin of the Christmas tree is in the ancient pagan worship of trees and evergreen boughs, there is also a lot of evidence that another source of the Christmas tree is in the medieval mystery plays where the Paradise tree was a necessary prop for the biblical story of Adam and Eve.

If we look back even further to Egyptian mythology, we can see parallels between the biblical stories of creation and the Egyptian myths that also illustrate fundamental philosophical and spiritual differences between monotheist and polytheist ideology, i.e. the differences between the ‘enslaved’ (with their Lord/Master who can reward or punish) and the people who work with and respect the cycles of nature (persons outside the bounds of the Christian community, ethnic religions, Indigenous peoples, etc.).

Indeed, Tuck and Yang (2012:6) propose a criterion (for the term Indigenous) based on accounts of origin: “Indigenous peoples are those who have creation stories, not colonization stories, about how we/they came to be in a particular place – indeed how we/they came to be a place. Our/their relationships to land comprise our/their epistemologies, ontologies, and cosmologies”.

By the 1970s, the term Indigenous was used as a way of “linking the experiences, issues, and struggles of groups of colonized people across international borders”, thus politicising their resistance to the dominant colonising narratives that historically spread while using Christianity as a form of social control on a global scale.

Thus, whether the Christmas tree arises out of the pagan worship of trees or the nature-based polytheism of Egyptian lore about Life and Knowledge (as the Paradise Tree), the Christmas tree still plays an important and special part in our lives today, demonstrating that our relationship with nature goes back millennia. We can choose to be exiled from nature or become involved in the cycles of nature in ways that end our current destructive practices.

*

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Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. Caoimhghin has just published his new book – Against Romanticism: From Enlightenment to Enfrightenment and the Culture of Slavery, which looks at philosophy, politics and the history of 10 different art forms arguing that Romanticism is dominating modern culture to the detriment of Enlightenment ideals. It is available on Amazon (amazon.co.uk) and the info page is here

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

Notes

[1] (Inventing the Christmas Tree by Bernd Brunner (2012) p 15)

[2] (Inventing the Christmas Tree by Bernd Brunner (2012) p 16)

[3] (101 Myths of the Bible by Gary Greenberg (2000) p48)

[4] (101 Myths of the Bible by Gary Greenberg (2000) p49)

[5] (101 Myths of the Bible by Gary Greenberg (2000) p51)

[6] (101 Myths of the Bible by Gary Greenberg (2000) p51/52)

[7] (101 Myths of the Bible by Gary Greenberg (2000) p51/52)

[8] (Pagan Christmas: The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals at the Origins of Yuletide by Christian Ratsch and Claudia Muller- Ebeling (2003) p24)

[9] (101 Myths of the Bible by Gary Greenberg (2000) p49/50)

Featured image: A red bauble on a Christmas tree (a symbol of apples?)

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A minor but significant spark of direct action occurred in New York on 15 December. A group of people entered a Whole Foods store (owned by Amazon), took groceries without paying and exited wearing Jeff Bezos masks.  

Independent reporter Talia Jane posted the following on Twitter/X:  

“The action was in protest against corporate wealth alongside increased food insecurity & to call attention to Amazon’s contracts with Israel.” 

She also posted a video of the event with people throwing around flyers and shouting, “Feed the people, eat the rich!” Jane stated the food was later redistributed and given to food ‘distros’ and community care spaces feeding migrants and the unhoused. 

It’s Going Down — which describes itself as “a digital community center for anarchist, anti-fascist, autonomous anti-capitalist and anti-colonial movements across so-called North America” — has published on its website the texts of the flyers.  

Here is an abridged version of one of the texts: 

“We assert that corporations like Amazon and Whole Foods do a tremendous amount of harm: hoarding wealth and resources, stealing labor, and destroying the land we live on. When we purchase food from Whole Foods, only a small fraction of what we spend is going back to those doing the labor to produce the food — the vast majority of it is funneled into Jeff Bezos’s coffers, where it is in turn reinvested in weapon manufacturing, war, and big oil. 

“Furthermore, Amazon’s contract for Project Nimbus with the IOF [Israel Occupation Forces] means that Bezos profits directly from the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Boycott. Divest. Shoplift. Not another dime for genocide! 

“We believe direct action is a vital form of resistance against the capitalist institutions built to crush, starve, and bleed us to death. Solidarity with shoplifters everywhere! We hope you will be inspired to take similar action wherever you are. 

“Move like water. Take back what has always been yours. Become ungovernable.” 

Some of the unscrupulous practices and the adverse impacts of Bezos and his Amazon corporation are described in the online article ‘Amazon, ‘Economic Terrorism’ and the Destruction of Livelihoods’. Indeed, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in 2019 that Amazon had “destroyed the retail industry across the United States.” 

Project Nimbus, referred to in the flyer, is a $1.2bn contract to provide cloud services for the Israeli military and government and it will allow for further surveillance of and unlawful data collection on Palestinians while facilitating expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements on Palestinian land. 

Direct Action 

Of course, there will be those who condemn the direct action described above. And they will do so while remaining blissfully unaware of or silent on the direct action of the super-wealthy that has plunged hundreds of millions into hardship and poverty. 

The wholly unavoidable conflict in Ukraine (which profits corporate vultures), speculative food commodity trading, the impact of closing down the global economy via the COVID event and the inflationary impacts of pumping trillions of dollars into the financial system have driven people into poverty and denied them access to sufficient food.  

All such events did not result from an ‘act of God’. They were orchestrated and brought about by deliberate policy decisions. And the effects have been devastating. 

In 2022, it was estimated that a quarter of a billion people across the world would be pushed into absolute  poverty in that year alone.   

In the UK, poverty is increasing in two-thirds of communities, food banks are now a necessary part of life for millions of people and living standards are plummeting. The poorest families are enduring a ‘frightening’ collapse in living standards, resulting in life-changing and life-limiting poverty. Absolute poverty is set to be at 18.3 per cent by 2023-2024.   

In the US, around 30 million low-income people are on the edge of a “hunger cliff” as a portion of their federal food assistance is taken away. In 2021, it was estimated that one in eight children were going hungry in the US.   

Small businesses are filing for bankruptcy in the US at a record rate. Private bankruptcy filings in 2023 have exceeded the highest point recorded during the early stages of COVID by a considerable amount. The four-week moving average for private filings in late February 2023 was 73% higher than in June 2020. 

As hundreds of millions suffer, a relative handful of multi-billionaires have gained at their expense.     

February 2023 report by Greenpeace International showed that 20 food corporations delivered $53.5 billion to shareholders in the financial years 2020 and 2021. At the same time, the UN estimated that $51.5 billion would be enough to provide food, shelter and lifesaving support for the world’s 230 million most vulnerable people.   

These ‘hunger profiteers’ exploited crises to gain grotesque profits. They plunged millions into hunger while tightening their grip on the global food system.  

Meanwhile, nearly 100 of the biggest US publicly traded companies recorded 2021 profit margins that were at least 50 per cent higher than their 2019 levels.   

In a July 2021 report, Yahoo Finance noted that the richest 0.01% — around 18,000 US families — hold 10% of the country’s wealth today. In 1913, the top 0.01% held 9% of US wealth and just 2% in the late 1970s. 

The wealth of the world’s billionaires increased by $3.9tn between 18 March and 31 December 2020. Their total wealth then stood at $11.95tn, a 50% increase in just 9.5 months. Between April and July 2020, during the initial lockdowns, the wealth held by these billionaires grew from $8 trillion to more than $10 trillion.  

The world’s 10 richest billionaires collectively saw their wealth increase by $540bn over this period. In September 2020, Jeff Bezos could have paid all 876,000 Amazon employees a $105,000 bonus and still be as wealthy as he was before COVID. 

And do not forget the offshoring of plundered wealth by the super-rich of $50 trillion into hidden accounts. 

These are the ‘direct actions’ we should really be concerned about.  

A point rammed home via another flyer that was issued during the protest in New York: 

“The shelves in this store have been stocked with items that were harvested, prepared, and cooked via a long supply chain of exploitation and extraction from people and land. 

“This food was made by the People and it should fill the bellies of the People. 

“Don’t fall prey to the myth of scarcity! Look around you: there is enough for all of us. This food is being hoarded, and we are giving it back to our communities. The world belongs to us – everything is already ours. 

“We deserve to eat whether we can pay or not. Tear down the system that starves and kills people, one liberated apple at a time!” 

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Renowned author Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).


Read Colin Todhunter’s e-Book entitled

Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order

We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agri-food chain. The high-tech/big data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose their model of food and agriculture on the world.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also involved (documented in ‘Gates to a Global Empire‘ by Navdanya International), whether through buying up huge tracts of farmland, promoting a much-heralded (but failed) ‘green revolution’ for Africa, pushing biosynthetic food and genetic engineering technologies or more generally facilitating the aims of the mega agri-food corporations.

Click here to read.

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Anger at the Biden administration grew late Thursday after the United Arab Emirates circulated a draft U.N. Security Council resolution that omits an earlier version’s call for a suspension of hostilities in the Gaza Strip, a change that could render the text’s demand for an increase in humanitarian aid moot.

The U.S., Israel’s chief ally and arms supplier, has repeatedly delayed a vote on the resolution as it has worked to gut several elements of the text, including an effort to put the U.N. in charge of monitoring humanitarian aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip with the goal of expediting shipments as hundreds of thousands of people starve.

Israel urged the United States—which has veto power at the U.N. Security Council (UNSC)—to oppose the language.

The latest draft requests that the U.N. secretary-general appoint an official “with responsibility for coordinating, monitoring, and verifying” humanitarian relief shipments to Gaza while “consulting all relevant parties.”

The resolution that the Security Council is expected to consider on Friday—barring any last-minute objections—is a far cry from the initial draft, which demanded an “urgent and sustainable cessation of hostilities.” After U.S. objections earlier this week, the text was amended to call for a “suspension” of hostilities.

The latest draft merely backs “urgent steps” to “create the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”

“This is disgraceful,” Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote on social media. “Biden has turned the latest UNSC resolution increasingly meaningless. By striking the call for suspension of hostilities, the resolution will now ensure that Israel’s slaughter in Gaza continues.”

U.S. President Joe Biden “is effectively running war crimes management for Israel,” Parsi added.

Even with the text dramatically weakened, the U.S. would not commit to voting yes—though a veto seemed increasingly unlikely.

“I won’t share how I will vote, but it will be a resolution—if the resolution is put forward as is—that we can support,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., told reporters on Thursday after a closed-door Security Council meeting.

Asked whether the resolution would actually have much impact on the ground in Gaza after being so thoroughly watered down, Thomas-Greenfield said that the measure is “not watered down.”

“The draft resolution is a very strong resolution that is fully supported by the Arab group that provides them what they feel is needed to get humanitarian assistance on the ground,” she added.

But aid groups and other observers disputed that characterization and questioned how aid shipments can be increased while Israel continues to relentlessly bombard the Palestinian territory.

“Surging aid without stopping the bombing is a fairytale,” an unnamed official at a humanitarian organization told HuffPost‘s Akbar Shahid Ahmed. “It’s not clear whether this resolution will help achieve either.”

Mohamed ElBaradei, an Egyptian legal scholar and former director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the “garbled language” on the U.N. role in aid deliveries and omission of a call to suspend hostilities “makes the draft resolution a travesty and not worth the paper it is written on.”

The draft text emerged as the death toll in Gaza surpassed 20,000 and international horror over the territory’s humanitarian crisis grew following the release of a new analysis showing that the risk of famine is growing by the day.

“This is irrefutable proof that Israel’s attacks have decimated Gaza’s already fragile food system so catastrophically that most people are no longer able to feed themselves and their families,” Aleema Shivji, Oxfam’s acting chief executive, said in a statement Thursday. “People are being starved in Gaza. Unless there is an immediate cease-fire and a massive scale-up of humanitarian aid, Gaza risks being pushed into a famine.”

“Those within the international community who have refused to rein in Israel’s military machine and its collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza today stand shamed and complicit—this scandal is on your watch,” Shivji added.

[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.

The US War on Yemen: World Superpower Versus a Starving Nation

December 22nd, 2023 by Steven Sahiounie

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The Houthis are fighting in support of Gaza, by attacking Israeli owned and flagged ships that use the Red Sea to navigate toward the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean Sea, bringing ships directly alongside the Yemeni coast.

The Saudi-Yemeni war began in March 2016, and the US participated in support of Saudi Arabia, as one of the wealthiest countries on earth bombed and attacked one of the poorest countries on earth.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is refusing to participate in the US coalition to fight Yemen, because of the new foreign policy of the Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, and improved relations with Iran. The Crown Prince, known as MBS, has been involved in a long war with Yemen, and he does not want to invigorate a war he is in the process of closing down. MBS is focused on building Saudi Arabia into an international tourist destination and attracting investments which will diversify the Kingdom away from fossil fuels as the sole source of income.

Vision 2030 is the brainchild of MBS, and it depends on regional peace for development and prosperity. This formed the basis for the Chinese brokered deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia which saw the two neighbors normalize their relations.

All occupation attempts of Yemen have failed through history. Yemen is extremely mountainous, and their resistant fighters are known to be fearless and often fight almost barefooted in harsh conditions without backing down.

If the US continues with this coalition against Yemen, all the US interests, which are some of the largest US military bases, and the US shipping industry, will be threatened.

In my opinion, if this US coalition against Yemen heats up, the Iraqi resistance will interfere powerfully by targeting all US interests, including occupation forces in Syria and bases in Iraq. There have been numerous and ongoing attacks on the US occupation forces in the east of Syria, and the Ain al-Assad base in Iraq.

The Houthis are a fighting force who are well trained, ideologically motivated, and supported by Iran. The Houthis have an arsenal of weaponry which includes powerful and sophisticated missiles which are capable of long distances. They have used these missiles to target the south of Israel. They have used earth to sea missiles to attack ships, and have boarded and occupied a ship which they continue to hold.

Suicide drones have also been used by the Houthis to target Israel in response to the Israeli attack on the Palestinian people of Gaza, which has seen the death toll pass 20,000 people, the majority of which are women and children.

The Houthis are one group of numerous resistant fighters. Resistance groups are located in Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Yemen.

These groups are primarily fighting against the continued Israeli occupation of Palestine, Syria and Lebanon. Israel has been labeled an Apartheid state by the UN, and human rights organizations, including the UN, have accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza currently, since the October 7 attack by Hamas in which about 1,400 Israelis were killed, and almost 200 were taken as hostages to Gaza.

For the last 75 days, the Red Sea shipping lane near Yemen has seen disruption, as ships going to Israel are prevented from unimpeded navigation. The Israeli port of Eilat has become empty because of the Yemeni actions.

The US administration of President Joe Biden has been pressing Israel for a pause for humanitarian aid to Gaza, as well as negotiations on a hostage release. However, the Netanyahu led war cabinet has moved forward with an increasingly furious bombardment of Gaza driving the death, injuries and destruction upward daily. The Israelis see their main goal to destroy Hamas and its leadership as overarching any plan to secure the safe release of Israeli hostages.

Yemen is one of the poorest countries on earth, and during these long years of the Saudi war on Yemen, in which the US participated heavily, the civilians have suffered death, injuries, epidemics, and starvation. Even as their own situation is dire, the Yemeni people have stood firm in their commitment to the solidarity and support of the Palestinian people, in the face of the genocide unfolding in Gaza.

The international community, including the majority of nations at the UN, has called for a ceasefire in Gaza. However, the US continues to use their veto to stop the resolution from passage. This reluctance to stop the genocide is due to AIPAC, the powerful Israel lobby in the US. US officials, including the 2024 campaign of Biden for re-election, are held hostage to the demands of AIPAC.

Until there is a ceasefire in Gaza, the Red Sea shipping lane is in jeopardy, as well as the entire Middle East region, which could erupt into a regional war at any moment, depending on the actions of the US and their ally Israel.

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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.

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***

In a 2002 interview (video below) the former Israeli government minister Shulamit Aloni was asked by Amy Goodman:

“Often when there is dissent expressed in the United States against policies of the Israeli government, people here are called antisemitic. What is your response to that as an Israeli Jew?”

Shulamit Aloni replied

“Well, it’s a trick, we always use it. When from Europe somebody is criticizing Israel, then we bring up the Holocaust. When in this country [the US] people are criticizing Israel, then they are antisemitic.”

She added that there is an “Israel, my country right or wrong” attitude and “they’re not ready to hear criticism.”

Antisemitism, the Holocaust and “the suffering of the Jewish people” are exploited to “justify everything we do to the Palestinians.”

Currently Israel is involved in a conflict with Hamas in Gaza that it has described as a “war” though the disparity in force levels involving a country with a modern fully equipped army, navy and air force versus something more like a militia armed with small arms and home-made rockets suggest that a different label might be more appropriate. The fighting has been constant apart from a six day pause to exchange hostages and prisoners and promises to continue into the New Year, and possibly much longer, due to the difficulty in engaging in anything like conventional warfare in a bombed out and devastated urban environment that favors the defense.

Israeli extreme brutality has been on display for all the world to see. Last week, Israeli soldiers shot dead three Jewish hostages who had escaped from their Hamas captors under cover of an Israeli bombardment.

The hostages took most of their clothes off so it could be clearly seen that they were unarmed and they were carrying a white flag with their hands in the air, but the soldiers reacted by shooting two of them immediately.

The third took cover in a building while calling for help in Hebrew, but he too was pursued and killed.

In another incident two Catholic women, mother and daughter, taking shelter in Gaza’s only Catholic church were targeted and shot by Israeli snipers.

This produced a rebuke from the Pope.

However it turns out, the conflict in Gaza will be Israel’s longest “war” by far since the creation of the country in 1948.

Israel’s intention is to force the Gazans to leave whether by forced resettlement in neighboring countries, in Europe or in the United States, or by killing them all. The deputy mayor of Jerusalem has recently labeled the Palestinians “subhumans” and has recommended rounding them up and burying them alive. He is not alone in that viewpoint and, at a minimum, many government ministers believe that the best outcome of the Palestinian problem is to get rid of the Palestinians in Gaza and also on the West Bank completely, whatever that takes, to establish once and for all “Eretz” or Greater Israel from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River and possibly even expanding into southern Lebanon and Egypt’s Sinai.

Israeli willingness to use bombs, starvation and even disease against the Palestinians in what is now being frequently referred to as a genocide has meant that the Jewish state’s list of friends around the world has shrunk dramatically and is limited to several European states and the US under self-declared Zionist President Joe Biden.

A UN Security Council motion calling for a ceasefire was blocked by a US veto even though the ten other council members voted for it with one abstention by the UK. A subsequent call for a ceasefire, ignored by Israel, obtained 153 “Yes” votes in the UN General Assembly against 10 “Nos” two of which were Israel and the United States plus US “freely associated” micro-states Micronesia and Palau which always align with Washington.

And even in those mostly European countries nominally supporting Israel’s attacks in Gaza, there have been large demonstrations supporting the Palestinians. As the death toll among civilians approaches and almost certainly has already exceeded 20,000, many governments have begun to hedge their bets and wobble in their assertions that “Israel has a right to defend itself.” Defense does not apparently include targeting hospitals, schools, churches and apartment buildings full of fearful civilians seeking shelter from the explosions. Even Joe Biden is calling for restraint in the “indiscriminate” bombing though he is also expediting providing the Israelis with more bombs to do the killing.

As the crisis in Gaza worsened, the UN responded with yet another Security Council resolution, which was introduced by the United Arab Emirates on December 18th. The vote was subsequently delayed three times until the 21st primarily to allow time for debate over the exact wording so as to make it acceptable to the United States in order to avoid another veto by Washington. Cynics have been quick to observe quite plausibly that the Biden Administration is seeking to vote in favor of or abstain on a document that is completely toothless, allowing Israel to do whatever it wants, as is usually the case. The vote on “urgent humanitarian pauses” was expected on Thursday December 21st, but the US again forced a delay for further discussion after aligning its position with that of Israel and claiming, falsely, that UN involvement in the monitoring of assistance would actually slow down relief efforts.

Israel had previously insisted, with US support, that UN direct involvement in monitoring and coordinating the massive humanitarian effort needed to help the Gazans should not be permitted. Israel demanded that only it should be responsible for inspecting incoming goods for “threats,” which, as the Jewish state is a party to the conflict, will itself inevitably and intentionally slow down assistance dramatically and will result in many unnecessary deaths. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also objected to the possibility that some wording in the resolution might suggest transformation of the “pause” into a lengthy ceasefire rather than a temporary “suspension” of hostilities with fighting resuming after a short period. Netanyahu has vowed that the military action will continue until all Hamas leaders and followers have surrendered or are dead. He is also demanding the immediate release of all Israeli hostages as a sine qua non for further deliberations on what might come next.

More important to Americans than dishonest parliamentary maneuvers at the UN should be the fact that defending Israel has meant that there is underway a wholesale assault on the First and Fourth Amendments of the Bill of Rights relating to freedom of speech and association.

The attacks are being conducted by the Israeli Lobby and its assets and allies in both of the major political parties, the mainstream news media, Zionist-dominated American social media, and the American National Security apparatus.

This has distorted what has happened in Gaza and why by turning the narrative of the conflict into a totally false bit of propaganda claiming alleged Arab terrorism and irredentism directed against the poor Jewish Israelis, who are once again serving as the featured victims. In America, universities are being described as hotbeds of surging antisemitism because students are protesting against Israel’s ethnic cleansing in Gaza while the heavily Jewish-influenced media and Jewish billionaires are working overtime to do whatever it takes to block any and all such criticism. Interestingly, the drive to ban or shut down protests and gatherings has had some major success directed against Arab or Muslim groups in a number of states with no Jewish groups on campus or in the community being interfered with in spite of their often robust support of Israel’s killing spree in Gaza.

The interference of Israel in both American domestic and foreign politics will only get worse in the upcoming year due to national elections. A number of Jewish groups are currently raising money and organizing to go after critics of Israel more aggressively, most particularly the few progressives in the Democratic Party who have spoken up about the genocide of the Palestinians that is taking place.

Since the Israel Lobby already controls the White House, its aim is to make the Congress a 100% loyal cheerleader and protector of Israel and all its works, to include the continuing flow of billions of taxpayer dollars annually. Some major American Jewish organizations have, for example, just launched “The 10/7 Project” which will feature centralized communications to promote bipartisan support of Israel. “The 10/7 Project” will be sponsored and managed by the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Federations of North America, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish committee explained “The 10/7 Project’s” purpose, saying that

“Since October 7, there has been a concerted and consistent effort from Israel’s enemies to draw a false and dangerous equivalence between Hamas’ deadly rampage to destroy the Jewish state and Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorists. ‘The 10/7 Project’ will be a trusted and timely source of accurate information to set the record straight and combat false narratives perpetuated by Hamas terrorists and their anti-Israel allies… At this critical juncture, it is imperative that we separate fact from fiction regarding America’s most important Middle East ally and remind people that the vast majority of Americans understand that Hamas is our common enemy.”

What Deutch is really saying between the lies and misinformation is that there will be a well-funded and staffed effort to stifle criticism of Israel’s slaughter of the Palestinians using a narrative that portrays the Israelis as victims of Arab terror, an assertion which might well be described as Zionist propaganda and fact twisting.

The attacks on free speech at universities will definitely be on the agenda, in a campaign that started several months ago, when students at a number of public and private universities began protesting over Israel’s deliberate targeting of civilians, leading to a death toll that is almost certainly currently approaching or exceeding 20,000 when all the corpses are dug up from the rubble of bombed buildings.

As the anti-Palestinian narrative took shape in political, media and Zionist circles, it adopted a familiar line, which goes something like this though with slight adjustments to reach target audiences: Israel is the Jewish state. If you criticize the Jewish state and/or Zionism you are therefore by the definition accepted by the US government State Department Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism an antisemite. Antisemitism is a “hate crime” since it is by the same logic based on hatred of Jews.

If you advocate or argue for any Palestinian group like Hamas, which the US government has conveniently labeled “terrorist” even though it has never threatened Americans, you are providing “material assistance to terrorism” which is a crime for which you can be fined or imprisoned.

The end result is that Israel, which is immune from the consequences of its own actions internationally, also increasingly cannot be criticized at all without serious consequences for the critic, which have included posting the names of protesting students on lists of alleged antisemites so they will be unable to find work after they graduate. In other words, freedom of speech in the United States and also in some European countries including France and Germany only exists, insofar as it does, if you are not disparaging Israel or even its friends due to their easily demonstrable “war criminal” behavior.

Some of those consequences of not rolling over for the Israel Lobby were experienced recently by three presidents of prominent American universities, responding to a congressional December 7th grilling that was set up to address concerns over allegations that colleges are hotbeds of antisemitism and are responsible for major increases in incidents targeting Jews. The presidents of the University of Pennsylvania Liz Magill, Harvard Claudine Gay and MIT Sally Kornbluth were grilled by Congress but were afterwards trashed because they were unwilling to agree with the congressional interrogators that Jews were being terrorized on campus, observing that words must have a physically threatening or harassing “context” if they are to be banned or blocked.

The responses of the three women suggesting that speech should remain free on campus were found to be unacceptable by Congress and the largely Zionist media. Magill has since resigned, joined by the chairman of the university board of trustees Scott Bok, who was immediately replaced by Julie Beren Platt, head of the Jewish Federations of North America, who has been named interim board chair.

But politicians joined by prominent commentators and philanthropists still continue to call for the others to resign as well, though Harvard’s Gay has received a vote of confidence from her board and also from faculty and students. Many major Jewish donors have coupled those “calls” with threats that their multi-million dollar gifts would be withdrawn if the presidents stay on. In one example, Penn lost a $100 million donation from Ross Stevens, who pulled it after the hearing. Those seeking to punish appear to be undeterred by the fact that their actions have already sparked discussions about unacceptable levels of Jewish power, often including the observation how promise of money or denying it is used as an instrument to obtain what Israel and its Lobby want.

There is a certain irony in the allegations since Jews in America are the wealthiest, best educated, most politically powerful, most prestigiously employed and most protected by Homeland Security of all ethno-religious demographics. And there is not much real evidence that Jews are in any way increasingly “victims” in the United States or in Europe. The antisemitic incidents that are “surging” are frequently based on criticisms of what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians and often consist of a Jewish college student being offended or annoyed by a poster or a speaker criticizing Israeli behavior. Instances of actual physical confrontation are few and far between and are immediately reported in the accommodating mainstream media to heighten the sense that Jews in America and even worldwide are threatened. Certain groups like the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) are heavily into the promotion of the narrative of Jew hatred as it is in their bottom line to do so given their donor base which likes to hear exactly that.

In other words, what one reads and hears about “surging antisemitism” is largely a contrivance to obtain political and economic benefits as well as a free pass on bad behavior both by Israel and domestically that might not otherwise be forthcoming. And it should be noted in passing that the Israel Lobby groups have somehow avoided registering with the Department of Justice, as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938, which would require them to maintain transparency over their funding and political activity. The last American president who tried to register what became the Israel Lobby and also sought to stop Israel’s illegal secret nuclear weapons program was John F. Kennedy. Some suspect that Israeli interests might have played a part in his assassination as a result.

Some congressmen have been particularly incensed by student pro-Palestinian demonstrators chanting “Intifada” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” interpreting both expressions being calls for the destruction of Israel, which they are not. Intifada is “shaking off” in Arabic and is a call for liberating the Palestinian people and their land from the Israeli tyranny. The “river to sea” is somewhat similar, a call for a Palestinian state with actual sovereignty and neither is an explicit call for killing Israelis or Jews. They might be considered generic cries for freedom.

But the real mystery in this is why is it happening at all?

Jews are supposed to be smart but is it smart to reveal how much power you have, particularly when you are prepared to wield it ruthlessly to suppress people who just might begin to wonder if there is something going on that is being deliberately contrived to benefit a tiny percentage of the US population and a foreign government?

And if that kind of thinking catches on, which I believe it already has, there might be serious discussions of ways to counter the efforts to limit free speech and association for citizens who are not comfortable with the way Israel behaves and the way the US Israel Lobby silences critics. Instead of trying to criminalize what people are thinking, wouldn’t it be smarter and even more ethical for American Jews to call on Israel to stop the killing and work out some formula that allows the Palestinians at least a modicum of self-government and freedom?

That would seem to make sense and many Jews in the US are actually making that argument. The problem is to also convince the hard core and well financed Jewish groups that support Israel no matter who it has to kill that learning to live together with equal rights is the way to go. And then we must convince the know nothings in the Biden Administration and idiots in Congress like Senator Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio…

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Einführung

Die nachfolgenden Ausführungen kurz vor dem christlichen Weihnachtsfest und zum Jahreswechsel 2023 / 2024 sind mein unerschütterlicher Glaube an das Gute im Menschen.

Trotz der täglichen Horror-Meldungen ist der Mensch kein Roboter, der wahllos tötet. Das entspricht nicht seiner sozialen Natur. Dies könnte nur mithilfe künstlicher Intelligenz geschehen, weil eine Maschine, die aufgrund ihres Lernens Entscheidungen fällen kann, nicht daran gebunden ist, Entscheidungen zu treffen, wie wir sie getroffen hätten oder wie sie für uns annehmbar wären. Auch einflussreiche IT-Führungskräfte wie Elon Musk befürworten die Einschränkung künstlicher Intelligenz, weil sie „eine der größten Bedrohungen für die Menschheit“ sei (1).

Die Not der Menschen rührt an jedes Herz, auch wenn jemand durch persönliche oder kollektive Vorurteile verblendet oder irritiert ist und dringend aufgeklärt werden muss.

Leider ist es so, dass wir bereits bei Vater und Mutter und in der Schule das Gehorchen gelernt haben und das Problem des Gehorsams bis ins Erwachsenenalter mitschleppen. Das Verhalten der Deutschen während der Hitler-Jahre ist ein beredtes Beispiel.

Sind wir nicht auch Mörder und Verbrecher, wenn wir in einer Welt leben, in der Krieg und Verbrechen an der Tagesordnung sind? Die Welt ist doch so, wie wir sie eingerichtet oder – in Bezug auf bestehende Verhältnisse – geduldet haben. Keiner kann sich der Verantwortung entziehen. Wir sind immer mitschuldig, selbst dann, wenn wir Opfer sind.

Seit den Forschungsergebnissen der modernen Psychologie wissen wir, dass der Charakter des Menschen das schöpferische Produkt des Kindes ist, das in der Auseinandersetzung mit den frühkindlichen Lebensumständen – insbesondere den Erziehungseinflüssen von Eltern und Lehrkräften – entstanden ist. Doch dies ist uns nicht bewusst.

Da eine friedliche Welt nicht von selbst entsteht, sondern einzig und allein durch menschliche Entschlüsse, müssen wir den Mut aufbringen, uns des eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen (Kant), denn nach den Erkenntnissen der Humanwissenschaften besitzt der Mensch von Natur aus einen gesunden Verstand und ein natürliches Urteilsvermögen.    

Not der Menschheit rührt an unser aller Herz

Niemand kann mir als erfahrenem Psychologen und ehemaligen Psychotherapeuten allen Ernstes erzählen, dass die nicht enden wollenden Kriege in der Ukraine und im Mittleren Osten mit den Tausenden von unschuldigen toten und verwundeten Kindern und Frauen nicht an das Herz eines jeden Menschen rühren würden. Das wäre nur dann der Fall, wenn dieser Mensch durch persönliche oder kollektive Vorurteile vollkommen verblendet ist. Seine Aufklärung wäre deshalb von immenser Bedeutung.

Viele Zeitgenossen berichten, dass sie seit langer Zeit keine Nachrichten sehen oder hören, weil sie die unbeschreibliche Not der Menschen nicht mehr ertragen könnten. 

Auch das ist ein Beispiel dafür, dass die Natur des Menschen sozial ist und dass der Mensch sehr wohl ohne Kriege leben könne.

Bereits als Kinder lernten wir zu gehorchen

Die tägliche Berichterstattung über den Zustand der Welt, die aus den Fugen geraten ist, bringt mir immer stärker zu Bewusstsein, welches fatale Problem wir auch noch als Erwachsene mit uns schleppen.

Bereits von frühester Kindheit an lernten wir in Familie und Schule zu gehorchen. Ob es sich um den strengen Vater oder Lehrer oder die verwöhnende Mutter handelte, wir hatten als Kinder keine andere Wahl als zu gehorchen. 

Waren es in der Kindheit die Erziehungspersonen, denen wir zu gehorchen hatten, sind es im späteren Leben die sogenannten Autoritäten wie Staatsmänner und ihre Politiker, denen wir meinen gehorchen zu müssen. Wenn sie rufen, lassen Männer ihre Frauen und Kinder im Stich und ziehen in den Krieg. Was für ein folgenschwerer Irrtum!

Die deutsche Bevölkerung unter dem „Führer“ Adolf Hitler sollte ein warnendes Beispiel sein.

Das „Volk der Dichter und Denker“ – alle ohne Ausnahme – jubelte ihm zu. Die Arbeiter, die Gelehrten, die Philosophen, die Psychologen – alle sind mit Hitler mitgegangen und haben sich in den Tod führen lassen. Und der Pfarrer und die Kirche segneten die Waffen des Krieges, die die Anderen jenseits der Grenze, ebenfalls Christen, töten. Erster Weltkrieg, Zweiter Weltkrieg und Dutzende weitere Kriege: immer wieder Mord und Totschlag für nichts und wieder nichts.

Menschenkenntnis erwerben

Wenn wir die Menschen kennenlernen – uns selbst und die Anderen –, lernen wir uns und die Anderen richtig zu sehen; lernen wir, unsere Gesinnung und Meinung und die der Anderen richtig einzuschätzen.

Wir wissen dann, ob es nur die Anderen sind, die Kriege anzetteln und führen – oder ob auch wir selbst Täter sind.

Leider ist uns dieses Problem nicht bewusst, weil wir aus dem Unterbewusstsein heraus handeln – eine zentrale Entdeckung von Sigmund Freud.

Bringt den Mut auf, euch des eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen!

Nach den Erkenntnissen der Humanwissenschaften Anthropologie, Soziologie und Psychologie besitzt der Mensch von Natur aus einen gesunden Verstand beziehungsweise ein natürliches Urteilsvermögen. Dieser gesunde Menschverstand arbeitet empirisch, das heißt, er fällt konkrete Urteile auf der Basis alltäglicher Lebenserfahrung und Beobachtung. Mündige Bürger teilen diese Urteile. Zudem ist er mehr auf praktische Anwendung ausgerichtet als auf abstrakte Theorie. Auch nimmt der gesunde Menschenverstand auf die Urteile aller anderen Menschen Rücksicht und ist damit gemeinschaftsfördernd.

Der Aufklärer Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) stufte den gesunden Menschenverstand im Alltag als nützlicher ein als wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse. Für den erfolgreichen Gebrauch des gesunden Menschenverstands stellt er drei Maximen auf:

  1. „Selbstdenken“
  2. „An der Stelle jedes andern denken“
  3. „Jederzeit mit sich selbst einstimmig denken“ (2).

*

Hinweis an die Leser: Bitte klicken Sie auf die obigen Schaltflächen zum Teilen. Folgen Sie uns auf Instagram und Twitter und abonnieren Sie unseren Telegram-Kanal. Fühlen Sie sich frei, Artikel von Global Research erneut zu veröffentlichen und zu teilen.

Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel ist Schul-Rektor, Erziehungswissenschaftler und Diplom-Psychologe. Nach seinen Universitätsstudien wurde er wissenschaftlicher Lehrer in der Erwachsenenbildung. Als Pensionär arbeitete er als Psychotherapeut in eigener Praxis. In seinen Büchern und Fachartikeln fordert er eine bewusste ethisch-moralische Werteerziehung sowie eine Erziehung zu Gemeinsinn und Frieden. Er schreibt regelmäßig für Global Research. 

Noten

  1. https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/kuenstliche-intelligenz/19286238.html
  2. Hänsel, Rudolf (2023). Sich die Ergebnisse der psychologischen Forschung zu eigen machen: Erkenntnisse aus der Begegnung mit dem Psychologen Friedrich Liebling und seiner freiheitlichen Psychotherapie. Gornji Milanovac, S. 54

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Read Part I, II and III:

The War on Gaza: Might vs. Right, and the Insanity of Western Power

By Amir Nour, December 01, 2023

The War on Gaza: How the West Is Losing. Accelerating the Transition to a Multipolar Global Order?

By Amir Nour, December 04, 2023

The War on Gaza: Debunking the Pro-Zionist Propaganda Machine

By Amir Nour, December 11, 2023


“In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous.” — Samuel Phillips Huntington[1]

The True Facts of the Palestinian People Genocide

Palestine’s story at the United Nations began on 29 November 1947, with the UN General Assembly’s (UNGA) adoption of resolution 181. The so-called “Partition Resolution”[2] proposed, for the first time in history, to divide a homeland into two states. Seven decades later, full membership of Palestine in the universal organization has yet to be approved, although in 2012 it achieved an upgrading of its status in the organisation through UNGA resolution 67/19, which granted Palestine “non-member state” status, as a state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. This resolution passed with a vast majority (138 votes in favor and only 9 against)[3]. The Palestinian people, whether in exile or under occupation, has continued to suffer the consequences of the lack of international action in order to fulfill their inalienable rights – including resolution 2334 of the UN Security Council[4] – thereby enduring one of the greatest injustices seen within an iniquitous international system.

Conversely, Israel became a member of the UN on 11 May 1949 through UNGA Resolution 273. It is important to mention that its membership, as established in the resolution, was conditioned[5]. To this day, Israel continues to violate the conditions it accepted in order to become a full member of the UN, as it has failed to honour, inter alia, UNGA resolutions 181 (on two states) and 194 (on the right of return of Palestinian refugees).  

In 2021 and 2022, three major human rights organisations, namely Amnesty International[6], Human Rights Watch[7], and B’TSelem[8] published their respective reports on the human rights situation of the Palestinians both in Israel and in the occupied territories. All three of them determined that if being an apartheid state means committing inhumane acts, systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another, then Israel is surely guilty of the crime of apartheid.

Introducing the findings of her own organisation’s report – which necessitated four years of work – at a press conference in Jerusalem on 1 February 2022, Amnesty’s Secretary General, Agnès Callamard, said:

“Our report reveals the true extent of Israel’s apartheid regime. Whether they live in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, or Israel itself, Palestinians are treated as an inferior racial group and systematically deprived of their rights. We found that Israel’s cruel policies of segregation, dispossession and exclusion across all territories under its control clearly amount to apartheid. The international community has an obligation to act.”[9]

She, therefore, called on the USA, the European Union and its member states and the UK, but also those states that are in the process of strengthening their ties with Israel – such as some Arab and African states – to recognise that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid and other international crimes.

On 8 December 2023, UN Security Council gathered for an emergency meeting to discuss the catastrophic situation in Gaza. The meeting was convened after the UN chief António Guterres invoked article 99 of the UN charter[10] – an exceptionally important power conferred upon the UN Secretary-General and exercised for the first time in decades – to warn the Security Council of an impending “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza, and to urge members to demand an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. Speaking at the meeting, he said he had invoked article 99 because

“we are at breaking point. There is a high risk of the total collapse of the humanitarian support system in Gaza, which would have devastating consequences. We anticipate that it would result in a complete breakdown of public order and increased pressure for mass displacement into Egypt. I fear the consequences could be devastating for the security of the entire region. We have already seen the spillover in the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. There is clearly, in my view, a serious risk of aggravating existing threats to the maintenance of international peace and security.”

He added:

“All this takes place amid a spiralling humanitarian nightmare.

First, there is no effective protection of civilians. More than 17,000 Palestinians have reportedly been killed since the start of Israel’s military operations. This includes more than 4,000 women and 7,000 children. Tens of thousands are reported to have been injured, and many are missing, presumably under the rubble.  All these numbers are increasing by the day. Attacks from air, land and sea are intense, continuous and widespread. So far, they have reportedly hit 339 education facilities, 26 hospitals, 56 health-care facilities, 88 mosques and three churches. Over 60 per cent of Gaza’s housing has reportedly been destroyed or damaged – some 300,000 houses and apartments. Some 85 per cent of the population have been forced from their homes. The people of Gaza are being told to move like human pinballs – ricocheting between ever-smaller slivers of the south, without any of the basics for survival. But nowhere in Gaza is safe (…)

Second, Gazans are running out of food. According to the World Food Programme (WFP), there is a serious risk of starvation and famine (…)

Third, Gaza’s health system is collapsing while needs are escalating.” He concluded his statement by saying:

“Everything I have just described represents an unprecedented situation that led to my unprecedented decision to invoke Article 99, urging the members of the Security Council to press to avert a humanitarian catastrophe, and appealing for a humanitarian ceasefire to be declared (…) International humanitarian law cannot be applied selectively.  It is binding on all parties equally at all times, and the obligation to observe it does not depend on reciprocity (…) The people of Gaza are looking into the abyss (…) The international community must do everything possible to end their ordeal (…) I urge the Council to spare no effort to push for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, for the protection of civilians, and for the urgent delivery of life-saving aid. The eyes of the world – and the eyes of history – are watching. It’s time to act.”

On 12 December, after a long and thorough examination, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) – the elected body of legal experts and human rights defenders from all over the world – adopted a resolution[11] recognising that Israel’s actions against the Palestinian people constitute an unfolding genocide; that states and individuals who provide assistance to Israel are hereby rendering themselves complicit; that an immediate ceasefire is imperative to save civilian lives and bring ongoing crimes to an end; and calling the International Criminal Court to immediately issue arrest warrants for Israeli officials who are responsible for international crimes against Palestinians. FIDH President, Alice Mogwe, declared that

“Palestinians have to endure thousands upon thousands of unimaginable tragedies, all intentional. This level of orchestrated violence by an occupying force is genocide[12] (…) To say it is unfolding is also to say that it can, and indeed must be stopped. To political leaders and high officials, we must stress that support and assistance to Israel is complicity in this unfolding genocide. You have been warned.”

The same day, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution demanding an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire”, the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages as well as “ensuring humanitarian access”. It passed with a large majority of 153 votes in favour, 23 abstentions and 10 votes against including the United States, which vetoed a similar resolution put forward by the UAE at the Security Council only four days before, with 13 members voting in favour and the UK abstaining. The resolution which failed to pass took note of the Secretary-General’s invocation of Article 99, expressed grave concern over the “catastrophic situation” in Gaza, and emphasized that both Palestinian and Israeli civilians must be protected. It demanded an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and the immediate and unconditional release of hostages as well as humanitarian access.

The following day, the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, an independent organisation with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe, called for allowing the entry of investigation committees and specialised technical committees into Gaza in order to document and determine the extent of the horrific Israeli crimes in shelter schools, including field executions, torture, starvation, and the Israeli military’s use of civilians as human shields. Israel, Euro-Med Monitor stated, “is determined to escalate its genocidal war against Palestinian civilians in order to push for their forced displacement, which is in violation of international law. This amounts to a war crime”. The same rights group had said in a press release on 2 November that “Israel has dropped more than 25,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip since the start of its large-scale war on 7 October, equivalent to two nuclear bombs”, noting that the area of the Japanese city of Hiroshima is 900 square kilometres, while the area of Gaza does not exceed 360 square kilometres.[13]

Also, as reported by The New York Times, experts say that even a conservative reading of the casualty figures shows that the pace of death during Israel’s campaign has few precedents in this century. They say that people are being killed in Gaza more quickly than in even the deadliest moments of US-led attacks in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, which were themselves widely criticised by human rights groups. Marc Garlasco, a military advisor for the Dutch organization PAX and a former senior intelligence analyst at the Pentagon, told the newspaper “It’s beyond anything that I’ve seen in my career”. He said that to find a historical comparison for so many large bombs being used on such a small area, we may “have to go back to Vietnam, or the Second World War.”[14]

Western Bias and Double Standard: An Incurable Cognitive Dissonance? 

Despite propaganda to the contrary, sold by legions of Zionist zealots and paid agents through a mighty disinformation machine depicting it as the “only democracy” in the region, Israel is today one of the world’s worst pariah states. Occupation and annexation of others’ territories by force are legalised and legitimised; political, social, economic and religious discrimination is institutionalised; repressive and brutal policies and practices towards the Palestinians in the occupied territories and in the Gaza Strip continue unabated; and almost every major international law convention, treaty and UN resolution, including but not limited to, the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, the Oslo accords are willfully violated by Israel, immune as it is to any significant international pressure, accountability or sanctions.

And yet, most Western governments continue to side with Israel. They do not condemn its criminal behaviour. They are not seeing the ongoing genocide in Gaza for what it is in the eyes of the United Nations, the human rights non-governmental organisations, and the overwhelming majority of the peoples of the world. They are not even exerting the necessary pressure on Israel to accept an immediate ceasefire. Quite the contrary,  some of those governments, like the US, continue to send money, arms and soldiers to Israel, hence perpetuating the relentless massacre of the innocent and defenceless Palestinian population.

Such an attitude in the West is perplexing to any rational, humane, and fair-minded person anywhere else in the world. Before trying to assess the whys and wherefores of this unfathomable Western stance, let’s review the sequence of events. 

Straight after the October 7 attack, US Secretary of Defence Lloyd J. Austin III announced that he had

“directed the movement of the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to the Eastern Mediterranean. This includes the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Normandy (CG 60), as well as the Arleigh-Burke-class guided missile destroyers USS Thomas Hudner (DDG 116), USS Ramage (DDG 61), USS Carney (DDG 64), and USS Roosevelt (DDG 80). We have also taken steps to augment U.S. Air Force F-35, F-15, F-16, and A-10 fighter aircraft squadrons in the region. The U.S. maintains ready forces globally to further reinforce this deterrence posture if required”.[15]

USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78)

The first-in-class aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) steams in the Atlantic Ocean, Nov. 7, 2022. Exercise Silent Wolverine is a U.S.-led, combined training exercise that tests Ford-class aircraft carrier capabilities through integrated high-end naval warfare scenarios alongside participating allies in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean. The Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group is conducting their first deployment in the U.S. Naval Forces Europe area of operations. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jackson Adkins)

The very next day, the “Quint” Group – an informal decision-making group consisting of the US, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom – released a joint statement expressing “steadfast and united support” for the state of Israel and “unequivocal condemnation” of Hamas. The five leaders said

“Our countries will support Israel in its efforts to defend itself and its people” emphasizing that “this is not a moment for any party hostile to Israel to exploit these attacks to seek advantage”.

And while making some concession to what they vaguely called the “legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people”, they hastened to add

“But make no mistake: Hamas does not represent those aspirations, and it offers nothing for the Palestinian people other than more terror and bloodshed”.[16]

The same discourse was then heard at the UN. In effect, on the one hand, pleading the cause of his people before the Security Council, the Palestinian ambassador Riyad Mansour, said Israeli strikes on Gaza had “placed very possible impediment on humanitarian aid and access”. He said the aim of Israel’s war was not security, but to prevent for ever any prospect of Palestinian impudence and peace. “These intentions are clear in the Gaza Strip as well as in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem”. He also noted the universality of international law, adding that

“Israeli exceptionalism has to end, and it has to end now. The Palestinian people will not die in vain, the Palestinian people deserve respect, we have earned it, we have paid the heaviest price to end it, show us respect, not in words but in deeds, show us respect for our lives and our rights”.

Image: UN Envoy Gilad Erdan and his mission wearing a yellow Star of David at the UNSC, October 30, 2023. (Source: Twitter)

On the other side of the spectrum, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, firmly rejected calls for a ceasefire. Erdan said regional stability in the Middle East could “only be achieved once Hamas is eliminated”. Calling for a ceasefire would not achieve that end, he stated. He said Hamas’s main weapon was terror and was seeking to “maximise civilian casualties” to put more and more pressure on Israel to relent. He added that calling for a ceasefire would ensure that the suffering and the fighting in Gaza would continue and that if Hamas was not destroyed, then atrocities would be carried out by the group “again and again”. Israel, he concluded, would continue with its mission while supporting “every humanitarian initiative”, but the destruction of Hamas was the only option.

Echoing the Israeli discourse, the US ambassador, Robert Wood, said his country does not support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Wood said the Security Council’s failure to condemn the Hamas 7 October attacks on Israel was a serious moral failure. Hamas continues to pose a threat to Israel, he said, before concluding

“For that reason, while the US strongly supports a durable peace in which both Israel and Palestine can live in peace and security, we do not support calls for an immediate ceasefire. This would only plant the seeds for the next war, because Hamas has no desire to see a durable peace, to see a two-state solution”.

The ambassador later vetoed a draft resolution calling for a temporary ceasefire and a pause of the genocide.

Likewise, the UK’s ambassador, Barbara Woodward, said Israel must be “targeted and precise” in achieving its goal “to defend itself against Hamas terrorism”. She said the sheer scale of civilians killed in Gaza was “shocking”, and civilians must be protected. She added that the world needed to “work to avoid escalation” in violence in the occupied West Bank, noting that Israel’s announcements approving new settlements there was alarming and that it would only raise tensions. She emphasised:

“Let us be clear, settlements are illegal under international law. They present an obstacle to peace, and they threaten the physical viability and delivery of a two-state solution.”

Having said that, she later abstained when voting on the US-vetoed resolution!

More recently, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the UK “doesn’t agree” with Israeli ambassador to the UK Ms. Hotovely’s comments that there is “absolutely no” prospect of a Palestinian state. Our longstanding position, he declared,

“remains the two-state solution. What is going on is incredibly concerning. I’ve said consistently, far too many innocent people have lost their lives. No-one wants this conflict to go on for a moment longer than is necessary”.[17]

What exactly he meant by “longer than necessary” is far from clear.

As for France – whose famous national moto “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” did not prevent the genocide of millions of Algerians from happening throughout the French colonial rule between 1830 and 1962 – a recent investigation by “Europe 1”[18] revealed that more than 4,000 soldiers of French or dual French-Israeli citizenship are currently enlisted in the Israeli army to fight against a subjugated and defenceless population caged in a tiny territory. Left-wing opposition La France Insoumise MP Thomas Portes published a statement demanding that these soldiers be tried in France for war crimes. This is “the largest contingent after the United States. France is dishonoured”, he wrote.

And what can be said about Germany, the country which bears a historical responsibility in the current plight of the Palestinians as a direct consequence of the Holocaust Nazi Germany committed against the Jews not so long ago?

Well, it seems that the German leaders have failed to learn from their own history. They still think that some lives are more valuable than others. As recounted by Josephine Valeske,[19] amid the unfolding genocide in Gaza, they convened on November 9 in a Berlin synagogue to mark the 85th anniversary of the “Kristallnacht” – the 1938 November pogrom that formed part of the genocide perpetrated by Germany against Jews in Europe. In his memorial speech for the victims, Chancellor Olaf Scholz affirmed that “Germany’s place is on Israel’s side” and referring to pro-Palestine solidarity protests, he said: “Any form of antisemitism poisons our society, just like Islamist demonstrations and rallies” before going on to threaten them with deportation if they exhibited antisemitic behaviour.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier stands with cultural leaders looking at a memorial

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier spent three days in Tanzania in an attempt to strengthen ties (Image: Bernd von Jutrczenka/dpa/picture alliance)

Only a week before, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeir apologized publicly for colonial-era atrocities committed by German forces in Tanzania.[20] During a visit to this country, he said

“I bow before the victims of German colonial rule. And, as Germany’s Federal President, I want to ask for forgiveness for what Germans did to your forefathers”.

Tanzania is not the only victim of German colonial-era atrocities in Africa. In 2021, the German government announced $1.3 billion support to descendants of the victims of the genocide committed against the Herero and Nama ethnic groups in Namibia[21] between 1904 and 1908. Also, during his visit to Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv on 7 November, German Air Force Chief Commander General Ingo Gerhartz said:

“I have done so much with the Israeli Air Force, and especially the people living here in the last years. Now as you fight a war with Hamas, it is an honor for me to be here and show solidarity with your country and people and donate blood in case you need it”.

It seems that history keeps repeating itself more often in Germany. So, when is the next visit of a German leader to Palestine to seek forgiveness for supporting the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza?

With respect to the European Union’s position, the least one can say is that it has been all but clear, strong and efficient. As with several other international issues, its 27 members have long been divided in their approach to Israel and the Palestinians. Furthermore, some statements made in the early days of the war by the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borell, supposedly on behalf the EU, were deemed ill-considered and outrageously biased toward Israel.[22] This EU position could not be better summed up as Ireland’s Prime minister Leo Varadkar did when he said

“Lately, I think the European Union has lost credibility because of our inability to take a stronger and more united position on Israel and Palestine (…) We’ve lost credibility at the global South, which actually is most of the world, because what is perceived to be double standards. And there’s some truth in that, quite frankly.”

Finally, addressing supporters during a private campaign fundraiser at a Washington D.C. reception, President Joe Biden said[23]

“I believe, without Israel as a freestanding state, not a Jew in the world is safe — not a Jew in the world is safe. It’s up to what happens at the moment (…) One of the things that Bibi understands, I think, now – but I’m not sure Ben-Gvir and his War Cabinet do, who I’ve spoken to several times – is that Israel’s security can rest on the United States, but right now it has more than the United States. It has the European Union, it has Europe, it has most of the world supporting it. But they’re starting to lose that support by the indiscriminate bombing that takes place”.

Speaking about Hamas, he said

“They’re animals. They’re animals. They exceeded anything that any other terrorist group has done of late”.

He also revealed – what has hardly been reported, let alone commented by the mainstream media –

“It was pointed out to me – I’m being very blunt with you all – it was pointed out to me that – by Bibi – that “Well, you carpet-bombed Germany. You dropped the atom bomb. A lot of civilians died. I said, Yeah, that’s why all these institutions were set up after World War Two to see to it that it didn’t happen again – it didn’t happen again”. 

Why Does the “Free World” Condone Israel’s Occupation, Apartheid, and Genocide?

Assuredly, occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing are among the worst violations of international law. They are not acceptable anywhere in the world. So why do “civilised liberal democracies of the free world” condone them in the case of the Palestinians? Do they not contradict the very core values of life, freedom, pursuit of happiness, prosperity, equality, brotherhood, fairness, enshrined in the US Declaration of Independence, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?[24]

It is certainly true that most of the West has always colluded with Israel since the time of the infamous 1917 Balfour declaration. Indeed, most of the European countries, and more so the US, not only massively and unconditionally supported Israel, but actively aided and abetted Israeli settler-colonialism as well. The “Holocaust awareness” alone does not explain everything. As the Israeli writer Boas Evron observes, it is “actually an official, propagandistic indoctrination, a churning out of slogans and a false view of the world, the real aim of which is not at all an understanding of the past, but a manipulation of the present”. For his part, UK historian David Irving claims that the Jewish Holocaust Industry “silences its critics by a combination of terrorism and moral blackmail.”[25]

Also, as pointed out by Avigail Abarbanel in an illuminating article[26], the Holocaust “is not an excuse for Jewish Zionist settler-colonialism. The Zionist movement began to consider fully populated Palestine as a future ‘national home’ for the Jewish people in the late 19th Century. Back then, it was not regarded a crime by the international community. There was nothing unusual in yet another group of white people coveting the territory and resources of non-white others. Everyone was doing it. 

Large number of people standing beside a railway siding with the camp gate in the background

“Selection” of Hungarian Jews on the ramp at Auschwitz II-Birkenau in German-occupied Poland, around May 1944. Jews were sent either to work or to the gas chamber. The photograph is part of the collection known as the Auschwitz Album. (Licensed under the Public Domain)

It is also a fact that the Israeli-marketed narrative based on the biblical tale of David [Israel] and Goliath [the Arabs] prevailed in the West up until the June 1967 war. In much of the world Israel was seen as a “living example of historical reparation. A people who managed to rise from the ashes of Auschwitz and build their own state in adverse and hostile circumstances. A weak but resilient people.”[27] But from then on, this narrative has collapsed. Present-day belligerents living on the same holy land have turned the timeless parable upside down. Yesteryear’s underdog and his powerful philistine adversary have today seen their roles reversed. Thus, in the eyes of many people around the world the strong and assertive Israeli democracy has mutated into an oppressor state serving the imperialist designs and interests of the West in general and the American empire more particularly; an empire to which Israel is joined at the hip. 

But how about today? Mercifully, the sinister Western crimes of colonisation, genocide, enslavement, racism, oppression of indigenous peoples and theft of their lands and resources – under the ill-named pretext of the “White Man’s civilizing mission” – are a distant and fading memory for most of the modern human species. And the same presumably holds true for the six-day-war of 1967, were it not for the Arab and Palestinian peoples. 

Isn’t it sensible then to suppose that such Western mindset is bygone forever, and that those Western countries would quite logically stand for the values and principles of the so-called “rules-based international order” they themselves conceived, set up and sold to the rest of the world in the aftermath of their two civil wars – also known as World War I and II? Or, should we rather come to terms with the evidence that when it comes to the Palestinian people, we would still be stuck in the dark ages of the law of the jungle  – in which case the short and brutal lesson would be that human rights are not universal and international law is arbitrarily applied?

The latter contention is seemingly more in line with the current Western stance, and Avigail Abarbanel is right to conjecture: “Does Israel seriously suggest that the Palestinians should just wait to be led like ‘sheep to the slaughter’? The answer, of course, is ‘yes’! This is precisely what Israel wants, and what its media reflect. They want the Palestinians to die, to disappear quietly into the night, until everyone has forgotten about them, and Israel can live happily ever after in its exclusively Jewish home.”[28]

I would personally argue that the answer is also ‘yes’ for the US, the UK and many other European countries. By siding blindly with Israel and condoning its collective punishment of the Gazans, they are, in the words of the International Federation of Human Rights, rendering themselves complicit in a crime of genocide. 

In truth, the United States and the former European colonialist countries have not tired of their unrepentant commitment to defending “Israel’s right to defend itself”, which in reality boils down to the insane logic whereby the occupying Israeli power has the “right” to defend its regime of apartheid and Jewish supremacy against the indigenous people of Palestine. As columnist Nesrine Malik put it[29], “It seems, for the first time that I can think of, Western powers are unable to credibly pretend that there is some global system of rules that they uphold. They seem to simply say: there are exceptions, and that’s just the way it is”. She was right to add: One thing I can say with more certainty is that people have seen too much that will stay with them for a long time. Whatever happens with the fragile truce that has released a thin ray of light, a darkness has also been released into the world. Its final form is yet to take shape, but take shape it will”.

As a reliable report[30] reveals, Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign assistance since World War II despite constituting only 0.01% (9 million) of the world population and being classified as a high income country. Successive administrations, working with Congress, have provided Israel with “assistance reflective of robust domestic U.S. support for Israel and its security; shared strategic goals in the Middle East; a mutual avowed commitment to democratic values; and historical ties dating from U.S. support for the creation of Israel in 1948. To date, the United States has provided Israel $158 billion (current, or non-inflation-adjusted, dollars) in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding. At present, almost all U.S. bilateral aid to Israel is in the form of military assistance; from 1971 to 2007, Israel also received significant economic assistance. In 2016, the U.S. and Israeli governments signed their third 10-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on military aid, covering FY2019 to FY2028. Under the terms of the MOU, the United States pledged to provide—subject to congressional appropriation—$38 billion in military aid ($33 billion in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) grants plus $5 billion in missile defense appropriations) to Israel”.

According to a more recent analysis[31], the United States has given Israel more than $260 billion (representing about 30% of all US foreign aid) in combined military and economic aid since World War II, plus about $10 billion more in contributions for missile defense systems like the Iron Dome.[32]

It is generally acknowledged that the main reasons for the longstanding and unwavering Western backing of successive Israeli governments and policies are based on obvious geostrategic and economic considerations, Israel having always been viewed as an indispensable Western beachhead in the heart of the politically volatile and energy-rich Middle East. In the particular case of the US policy where the extremely close US-Israeli relationship has played an outsized role for over five decades, this justification is supported by a cohort of influential neoconservative establishment, an all-powerful Jewish lobby mainly represented by AIPAC, and an immense financial and media apparatus. All of this is often further rationalised on moral – although dubious – grounds. 

As Stephen Zunes explains in a well-thought and well-written analysis[33], “the growing U.S. support for the Israeli government, like U.S. support for allies elsewhere in the world, is not motivated primarily by objective security needs or a strong moral commitment to the country. Rather, as elsewhere, U.S. foreign policy is motivated primarily to advance its own perceived strategic interests”. Therefore, there is a broad bipartisan consensus among policymakers that Israel is a key partner in the quest to serve and promote U.S. interests in the Middle East and beyond. According to Zunes, those interests can be summed up in: preventing victories by radical nationalist movements in Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine; providing battlefield testing for American arms, often against Soviet (Russian) weapons; serving as a conduit for U.S. arms to regimes and movements too unpopular in the United States; assisting the U.S. in intelligence gathering and covert operations; cooperating with the U.S. military-industrial complex in the field of research and development for new jet fighters and anti-missile defense systems.

Nevertheless, in my opinion, there are three more essential reasons to consider seriously, as they might better explain not only the quasi-reflexive West’s support for Israel, but also its contemptuous disregard for the Palestinian people and casual callous disdain for international law and obligations. And as always, history is the best and wisest of guides. Those reasons are to be found in the much alive – albeit socially and psychologically repressed – white supremacy and racial prejudice toward non-white others[34]; the deep-seated antisemitism in the societal mindset and behavior of a non negligeable portion of the European peoples; and the powerful influence of the Christian-Zionists (the Christian Right) in the United States. Those three elements are all the more pivotal as they were clearly or implicitly alluded to in the short paragraph I purposefully singled out from President Biden’s aforementioned speech during the Washington D.C. private campaign fundraiser.

In fact, with regard to the first two intertwined elements, in an article published by the Jewish publication “Forward”, Yousef Munayyer said that “Though he may be most known for aiding the Zionist cause in 1917, it’s crucial to remember that Arthur Balfour was a white supremacist. He made that much clear in his own words. In 1906, the British House of Commons was engaged in a debate about the native blacks in South Africa (…) “We have to face the facts,” Lord Balfour said “Men are not born equal, the white and black races are not born with equal capacities: they are born with different capacities which education cannot and will not change.”

Munayyar added that Balfour saw in Zionism not just a blessing for Jews, but for the West as well. As he wrote in 1919 in his Introduction to Nahum Sokolow’s History of Zionism, the Zionist movement would “mitigate the age-long miseries created for Western civilization by the presence in its midst of a Body which it too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or to absorb.” So, rather than solving the problem of how to handle a minority living in a white majority country, the Balfour Declaration just shifted the same problem to a different geography. Munayyar also recounted that Balfour was unabashedly aware of the hypocrisy of his stance. “The weak point of our position of course is that in the case of Palestine we deliberately and rightly decline to accept the principle of self-determination,” he wrote in a letter to the British prime minister in 1919. “We do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country…the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.” Munayyer concluded his article by saying: “Therein lies the fundamental problem that continues through this day, 100 years later. Palestinians are denied the right to have rights because from the outset, their views, their human rights and by extension their very humanity, were consistently seen as inferior to those of others (…) Rather than resolving this tension, Balfour’s support for Zionism merely exported it to Palestine”.

More recently, Chris Bambery argued[35] it’s time to come to terms with the role of Scottish imperialist Arthur Balfour. He writes that “Understanding his racism, and the British state’s role in the region, is part of resisting the assault on Gaza today”. He, too, confirmed that “Balfour was an imperialist, true and blue. Like so many of his co-thinkers, he had a racialised view of the world, that justified European colonialism. He developed a theory of natural racial inferiority regarding the Arabs and other Muslim people. In his book “On Decadence” 1908, Balfour wrote of the races: “They have been different and unequal since history began; different and unequal they are destined to remain.” Bambery further informed that “From Czarist Russia, to France, Germany and elsewhere, antisemitism flourished in the first decades of the 20th century, as class and imperial tensions grew and bred paranoia among European elites. Britain was far from immune, and many leading imperialists like Balfour and Winston Churchill, readily took up the view of Jewish people as essentially ‘alien’ non-Europeans”. Bambery concludes his article by saying: “Today, Israeli Defence Forces bombard Palestinian universities, hospitals, mosques, schools and homes. It is surely time to reckon with the history, which laid the basis for the policy our politicians still adhere to – unconditional support for Israel, regardless to the crimes committed”.[36]

With respect to the third element related to the American influence of the Christian Zionists – of whom Christians United for Israel’s Pastor John Hagee[37] is one of the most prominent figures – Sahid King Bolsen recently said[38]:

“So, because you and your people are so self-admittedly antisemitic, that you can’t be trusted to not commit another Holocaust, so the Jews need to be somewhere else for their own safety; and somehow this is regarded as the pro-Jewish, non-hateful position. And the Christian Zionists are even worse. We know that the only reason that they want the Jews to be gathered in Palestine is so that they can be wiped out in some apocalyptic Holocaust according to their twisted understanding of the Bible and they think that this is going to bring back Nabi Issa [Prophet Jesus, peace be upon him] who as far as I know never advocated genocide against the Jews. But these Christians expect for Nabi Issa to be happy with them when he comes and they’re going to explain to him apparently that they supported a genocide against the Palestinians in order to keep the Jews in Palestine so that they could all also be wiped out. So they supported death and destruction of two peoples in order to bring back the prince of peace and this all makes sense to them somehow”.

As far as I am concerned, I explained in an article[39] I wrote in 2017, that: 

Stephen Green affirms[40] that since 9-11, a small group of neo-conservatives – many of whom are senior officials in the Defence Department, National Security Council and Office of the Vice President – have effectively gutted – they would say reformed – traditional American foreign and security policy. After reviewing the internal security backgrounds of some of the best known among them, he concluded that they had dual agendas, while professing to work for the internal security of the United States against its terrorist enemies.

Bill Christison[41] and Kathleen Christison reach the same conclusion.[42] They say that since the long-forgotten days when the State Department’s Middle East policy was run by a group of so-called Arabists, US policy on Israel and the Arab world “has increasingly become the purview of officials well known for tilting toward Israel”. These people, “who can fairly be called Israeli loyalists, are now at all levels of government, from desk officers at the Defense Department to the deputy Secretary level at both State and Defense, as well as on the National Security Council staff and in the vice president’s office”.

According to the Christisons, Elliott Abrams is “another unabashed supporter of the Israeli right, now bringing his links with Israel into the service of the U.S”, after his appointment as Middle East director on the NSC staff.

Interestingly, the Christisons were of the view that the dual loyalists in the Bush administration “have given added impetus to the growth of a messianic strain of Christian fundamentalism that has allied itself with Israel in preparation for the so-called End of Days”. These crazed fundamentalists, they say, see Israel’s domination over all of Palestine as a “necessary step toward fulfillment of the biblical Millennium, consider any Israeli relinquishment of territory in Palestine as a sacrilege, and view warfare between Jews and Arabs as a divinely ordained prelude to Armageddon”, which raises the horrifying albeit real prospect of an apocalyptic “Christian-Islamic war”.

And in another article[43] I wrote in 2017, and whose conclusion I reiterate forcefully today – with all due respect to Ayaan Hirsi Ali[44] – I said:

We would like to invite the public to ponder the wisdom of a thinker who once said that in the past, weapons were manufactured to wage wars, but today wars are manufactured to sell weapons.

Yet unfortunately, it has to be recognized that the rhetoric on the “clash of civilizations”, constantly and tirelessly repeated by some since the end of the Cold War and the subsequent disappearance of the “indispensable enemy”, seems to have achieved the objective assigned to it, chiefly by those who benefit from and pull the strings of the perpetuation of conflicts all over the world. This rhetoric has thus produced a dangerous “clash of fundamentalisms’, which is updating the notions of “revenge of God”, “Crusades” and “Jihad”, and adding new ones such as “Islamofascism”. The consequence of this dramatic turn of events is illustrated, on the sought and obtained ground of confrontation, by a “clash of barbarities”.  In today’s increasing international turmoil, nobody should be blind to the fact that the biggest danger associated with this change is that since the end of the World War II, the world has entered the age of the “supreme weapon” – the atomic bomb –and other weapons of mass destruction, and that extremists on all sides are promising and fervently promoting a “Cosmic War”[45] for “the triumph of Good over Evil”. For some of them, it is a religious war, the ultimate war prior to the Apocalypse or the end times, whose theatre of operations one party sets in “Armageddon” and the other in “Dabiq”, both places situated in the Levant, comprising Syria which is being today put to fire and sword.

Isn’t it insane to believe that our civilized world is unable to find a path other than the one leading toward Mutually Agreed Destruction (MAD)?

*

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Amir Nour is an Algerian researcher in international relations, author of the books “L’Orient et l’Occident à l’heure d’un nouveau Sykes-Picot” (The Orient and the Occident in Time of a New Sykes-Picot) Editions Alem El Afkar, Algiers, 2014 and “L’Islam et l’ordre du monde” (Islam and the Order of the World),  Editions Alem El Afkar, Algiers, 2021. 

Notes

[1] Samuel Phillips Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order”, Simon & Schuster, 1 January 1998.

[2] To read the full text (In English and French versions): https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/038/88/PDF/NR003888.pdf?OpenElement

For more on that, see “United Nations Special Committee on Palestine: Report to the General Assembly”, 1947: https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/NL4/716/71/PDF/NL471671.pdf?OpenElement

[3] Countries voting against: Canada, Czech Republic, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Panama and the US.

[4] United Nations, “Five years after UNSC Resolution 2334, international accountability to end the Israeli occupation is more important than ever”, 23 December 2021.

[5] Resolution 273 clearly stated that “Noting furthermore the declaration by the State of Israel that it “unreservedly accepts the obligations of the United Nations Charter and undertakes to honor them from the day when it becomes a Member of the United Nations”, Recalling its resolutions of 29 November 1947 [Resolution 181] and 11 December 1948 [Resolution 194] and taking note of the declarations and explanations made by the representative of the Government of Israel before the ad hoc Political Committee in respect of the implementation of the said resolutions, The General Assembly … Decides to admit Israel to membership in the United Nations.”

[6] Amnesty International, “Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel system of domination and crime against humanity”, 1 February 2022. To download the full report: https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/5141/2022/en/

[7] Human Rights watch, “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution”, 27 April 2021. To download the full report: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/media_2021/04/israel_palestine0421_web_0.pdf

[8] B’Tselem, “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid”, 12 January 2021. To download the position paper: https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/publications/202101_this_is_apartheid_eng.pdf

[9] Voice of America, “Amnesty International Report Accuses Israel of Apartheid”, 1 February 2022.

[10] Text of article 99: “The Secretary-General may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security”. The nature of the powers conferred upon the Secretary-General under Article 99 has been described by the Preparatory Commission in its report to the General Assembly in the following terms: “Under Article 99 of the Charter, moreover, he has been given a quite special right which goes beyond any power previously accorded to the head of an international organization, viz: to bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter (not merely any dispute or situation /57) which, in his opinion, may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security. It is impossible to foresee how this Article will be applied; but the responsibility it confers upon the Secretary-General will require the exercise of the highest qualities of political judgment, tact and integrity”. Under the terms of rule 3 of the Security Council’s provisional rules of procedure, the President of the Security Council is under the obligation to call a meeting if the Secretary-General brings to its attention any matter under Article 99. Historically, the provision has been rarely invoked. It was first used by Trygve Lie, the first Secretary-General of the United Nations (1946–52), who resigned largely because of the Soviet Union’s resentment of his support of UN military intervention in the Korean War. In addressing the General Assembly in 1950, he said: “I refer … to my statement to the Security Council on 25 June last concerning the Korean conflict, when for the first time I invoked Article 99 of the Charter.” Past examples include the upheaval in the Republic of the Congo in 1960 following the end of Belgium’s colonial rule and a complaint by Tunisia in 1961 against France’s naval and air forces attack. The last time it was formally invoked was during fighting in 1971 that led to the creation of Bangladesh and its separation from Pakistan.

[11] The International Federation for Human Rights, “The unfolding genocide against the Palestinians must stop immediately”, 12 December 2023. To read the full resolution titled “Resolution on Israel’s unfolding crime of genocide and other crimes in Gaza and against the Palestinian People”: https://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/fidh_resolution_on_israel_s_unfolding_crime_of_genocide_and_other_crimes_in_gaza_and_against_the_palestinian_people.pdf

[12] The genocide convention of 1948 defines genocide as “acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”, in particular by “killing members of the group”, and “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. For the crime to be qualified as such, it must meet two constitutive conditions: an action characterising the crime and the intention to carry such crime.

[13] Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, “Israel hits Gaza Strip with the equivalent of two nuclear bombs”, 2 November 2023.

[14] Lauren Leatherby, “Gaza Civilians, Under Israeli Barrage, Are Being Killed at Historic Pace”, The New York Times, 25 November 2023.

[15] US Department of Defense, “Statement from Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on U.S. Force Posture Changes in the Middle East”, 8 October 2023.

[16] The White House, “Joint Statement on Israel”, 9 October 2023.

[17] Greg Heffer and James Tapsfield, “David Cameron ramps up the pressure on Israel with travel ban on ‘extremist settlers’ who are ‘targeting and killing Palestinians’”, Mail Online, 14 December 2023.

[18] Sébastien Le Belzic (Special Envoy to Israel, “ ‘Quelque chose d’irréel’ : le témoignage d’un Français engagé avec l’armée israélienne ” (Something unreal: the testimony of a Frenchman enlisted in the Israeli army), Europe 1, 30 October 2023.

[19] Josephine Valeske, “In supporting Israel’s genocide, Germany has learnt nothing from history”, Middle East Eye, 17 November 2023.

[20] Historians estimate that as many as 300,000 people were killed by German colonial troops during the Maji-Maji rebellion between 1905 and 1907.

[21] Read Hamilton Wende, “Our Auschwitz, Our Dachau: Reckoning with Germany’s genocide in Namibia”, 6 November 2022 and Farouk Chothia, “Namibia pulls down German colonial officer’s statue in Windhoek”, BBC, 23 November 2022.

[22] Raf Casert, “European Union reverses earlier announcement that it was suspending development aid to Palestinians”, AP, 9 October 2023; and Liyana Kayali, “By condoning Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza, Western powers are plunging Palestinians further into hopelessness”, ABC News, 16 October 2023.

[23] The White House, “Remarks by President Biden at a Campaign Reception”, 12 December 2023. 

[24] Tomas Pueyo, “What Does the Free World Stand For?”, 6 December 2023

[25]  Norman Finkelstein, “The Holocaust Industry”, Sage Publications, 6 December 2012.

[26] Avigail Abarbanel, “You Reap What You Sow”, Substack, 8 October 2023.

[27] Gustavo Surazski, “David and Goliath: A letter from Ashkelon”, 14 July 2014.

[28] Avigail Abarbanel, op cit.

[29] Nesrine Malik, “The war in Gaza has been an intense lesson in western hypocrisy. It won’t be forgotten”, The Guardian, 27 November 2023.

[30] Jeremy M. Sharp, “U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel”, Congressional Research Service, 1 March 2023. To download the full report: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL33222

[31] https://www.foreignassistance.gov/aid-trends

[32] Christopher Wolf, “How Much Aid Does the U.S. Give to Israel?”, 10 Octobre 2023. See also: Louis Jacobson, “U.S. aid to Israel: What to know”, Politifact, 18 October 2023.

[33] Stephen Zunes, “Why the U.S. Supports Israel”, Foreign Policy in Focus, 1 May 2002.

[34] See Yousef Munayyer’s eye-opening article: “It is time to admit that Arthur Balfour was a white supremacist – And anti-Semite, too”, Forward, 1 November 2017. Munayyer is a political analyst and writer and  Executive Director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights.

[35] Chris Bambery, “Arthur Balfour: The Scot who Authored the Palestinian Tragedy”, Conter, 4 December 2023. Chris Bambery is a Scottish writer, broadcaster, journalist and author of A People’s History of Scotland, The Second World War; A Marxist History and co-author of Catalonia Reborn.

[36] As a matter of fact, both Munayyar and Bambery drew Lord Balfour’s quotes from Gudrun Krämer’s book “A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the of the State of Israel”, 2002.

[37] John Hagee is the founder and senior pastor of Cornerstone Church, a charismatic megachurch in San Antonio, Texas, a non-denominational evangelical church with more than 20,000 active members. He is also the CEO of his non-profit corporation, Global Evangelism Television (GETV). He is the President and CEO of John Hagee Ministries, which telecasts his national radio and television ministry carried in the United States on ten television networks, including 62 high-power stations aired to more than 150 million households. He is shown on networks around the globe, including The Inspiration Network (INSP), Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), and Inspiration Now TV. John Hagee Ministries is in Canada on the Miracle Channel and CTS and can be seen in places including Africa, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Hagee is the founder and National Chairman of the Christian-Zionist organization, Christians United for Israel, incorporated on February 7, 2006. On 14 November, Hagee addressed a pro-Israel rally in Washington D.C. during which he affirmed the need for Israel to decide the contours of the war on Gaza and to not cave in to international pressure. “You, the leaders of Israel, and you alone, should determine how this war is going to be conducted and concluded, “Hagee says. “You decide — no one else.”

[38] Shahid King Bolsen, “Unraveling the Paradox: U.S. Foreign Policy, Zionism, and the Call for Global Accountability”, Middle Nation Podcasts, 18 December 2023.

[39] Amir Nour, “The Neoconservatives and the ‘Coming World’: A Response to the Questions of a Virtual Friend”, The Saker Blog, 31 July 2017: https://thesaker.is/the-neoconservatives-and-the-coming-world-a-response-to-the-questions-of-a-virtual-friend/

[40] Stephen Green, «Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Administration”, Counterpunch, February 28, 2004.

[41] Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. He served as a National Intelligence Officer and as Director of the CIA’s Office of Regional and Political Analysis.

[42] Bill Christison and Kathleen Christison, “The Bush Neocons and Israel”, Counterpunch, September 6, 2004.

[43] Amir Nour, “The Western roots of ‘Middle-Eastern’ terrorism”, The Saker Blog, 14 February 2017: https://thesaker.is/the-western-roots-of-middle-eastern-terrorism/

[44] In a recent article, Ayaan Hirsi Ali explained why she moved from being a native Muslim to embracing atheism, to (finally?) settling for Christianity. Part of the explanation, she wrote, is because: “Western civilisation is under threat from three different but related forces: the resurgence of great-power authoritarianism and expansionism in the forms of the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin’s Russia; the rise of global Islamism, which threatens to mobilise a vast population against the West; and the viral spread of woke ideology, which is eating into the moral fibre of the next generation”. To read her article: “Why I am now a Christian: Atheism can’t equip us for civilisational war”, UnHerd, 11 November 2023.

[45] Read the excellent book of Reza Aslan’s book “How to Win a Cosmic War”

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Read Part I:

On Speaking Plain ‘Putin’: Any Retrospective on the Russian-Ukraine Conflict Begins with a Modicum of Interest in How Moscow Defines the Conflict. Scott Ritter

By Scott Ritter, December 21, 2023


Russians who lived through the 1990s remember the decade quite differently from Michael McFaul, the former U.S.  ambassador/Stanford University professor. One such person is Marat Khairullin, a Russian journalist who has reported on Russia since the end of the Soviet Union.

In a remarkable essay published on his Substack account (I urge anyone interested in the reality of modern Russia and the war between Russia and Ukraine to subscribe), Khairullin lays out the connection between the war that McFaul and his fellow critics call Putin’s own, and the Russian people. 

Entitled “Russia I am trying to forget,” Khairullin describes a time — the 1990s— where humanity was put on hold because of the corruption and depravations of the Yeltsin government, and reminds his readers that this is the Russia to which McFaul and the other erstwhile Western Russian “experts” want to return, something which Vladimir Putin has sworn to never allow to happen. 

The goal of the collective West in promoting and sustaining the Russian-Ukraine conflict is to remove Putin from power and install a Yeltsin-like clone in his stead. Arat’s article serves as a stark warning about the consequences of such an outcome for the Russian people. 

For Their Miserable Apartments

Khairullin recalls one assignment, in the early 1990s, where he traveled to “a small Ural town” to investigate an allegation of particular cruelty. “Lonely old people who remembered the Great Patriotic War (WWII) were evicted from their apartments throughout all the Russia,” Khairullin recalled. 

“This happened everywhere — Moscow, Balashikha, St. Petersburg, Ufa, Kazan, Vladivostok…but in big cities, old people were spared, forced to assign these damned apartments to new owners and then evicted to live in some abandoned villages. In small towns, old people were simply mowed down.”

Khairullin’s investigation uncovered collusion between the town’s bureaucracy, the local police and the local mafia.

“In a very short period of time (just a couple of years) that has passed since Yeltsin’s sovereignty was established in this classic Stalinist industrial town, 136 lonely pensioners had gone missing, and their apartments had changed ownership.” 

The local police had a list of pensioners and their apartments. This list was turned over to the mafia, who simply took the pensioner out to the edge of town and murdered him or her.

“The person disappears,” Khairullin noted, “after that they immediately clean the apartment up, and the next day they move in, the body of the person has not yet cooled down, but they are already in charge.”

Khairullin had to flee the Ural town in the trunk of a car to avoid being killed himself by the local mafia, who took umbrage at his investigation after being tipped off by the local police. 

Khairullin condemns Yeltsin “for the death of these hundreds of thousands of old people abandoned to the mercy of fate,” and believes that the current Russian-Ukraine conflict is being fought in part “simply to make sure that our lonely old people would no longer be killed in the thousands for the sake of their miserable apartments.”

Dec. 9, 1993: Yeltsin, second from right, in Brussels to visit NATO Secretary General Manfred, on right. (NATO)

Khairullin tells of other experiences gained traveling “around the once great country where Democracy and Yeltsin had won.” One in particular hits hard. “I was a very callous person then,” Khairullin writes. “I almost never cried.”

And then he met Kuzmich, Aksa, and Sima.

Kuzmich was the local senior police officer of “some kind of God forgotten town, an eternal ‘polustanok’ [waypoint] on one of the endless outskirts of Russia.” He took Khairullin on a tour of the local train yard. 

“And suddenly,” Khairullin writes, “Kuzmich rushed somewhere to the side, between the carriages, we caught up with him only when he was already dragging a kicking lump out of some hole. ‘Don’t you scratch, little devil, you know I won’t do anything…’ Kuzmich groaned, bringing out a grimy kid at most 8-10 years old into the light of the moon.”

This was Aksa. 

Kuzmich took Aksa and Khairullin to the basement of the police building, where he sat the boy down at a table and fed him a sandwich. 

“’Wait, that’s not all…’, Kuzmich said. “The door suddenly opened slightly and a girl of about six slipped through the crack and sat down next to Aska and took his hand. ‘Here, meet Sima,’ Kuzmich grinned: ‘I have about thirty of them running around the station here, but these ones are in love … Real love, they hold on to each other — she works in the carriages with shift workers, and this one guards her…Yes Seraphim? How much did you do today? Come on eat…’. Sima just bowed her head and began to smile at the floor quietly…Even then I noted what a nice, childlike smile she had.”

Khairullin and Kuzmich smoked cigarettes while Aksa and Sima ate and drank tea, before falling asleep in their chairs. 

“That’s how it is here, correspondent,” Kuzmich said. “The nearest orphanage is half a thousand miles away … Yes, they escape from there…Where to place them…No one cares about them.” Khairullin writes:

“As far as I remember, starting from year 1997, the U.N. annually issued a special report on torture in the police (‘militia’ at the time) — this, of course, was an unfriendly move by the United States, nevertheless, it spoke about the state of the law enforcement system in the country. At the same time more than a thousand people annually died from the bullets of murderers on the streets of the capital city of my tortured country.

And in the very year when Putin became prime minister [1999], another terrible study was released which stated that every third girl in Russia under the age of 18 had the experience of ‘commercial sex.’ This is how Western researchers found a tolerant term to label prostitution in our country.

And there also used to be a slave market in Russia (about 15 thousand Russians were sold annually without their consent) and a special market for sexual slavery — according to various estimates, up to half a million of our girls were held ‘against their will’ in foreign brothels…”

Nineties Mortality Rates

1992 flea market in Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia. (Brian Kelley, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)

According to Western researchers, “an extra 2.5-3 million Russian adults died in middle age in the period 1992-2001 than would have been expected based on 1991 mortality.” 

This figure does not include infant mortality rates, the fate of missing children like Aksa and Sima, or the murdered pensioners. Altogether,  it is believed at least 5 million Russians died as a direct result of the chaos that gripped Russia in the 1990’s — a chaos that Michael McFaul derides as “mythology.”

The 1990s is a reality that Khairullin Khairullin and the people of Russia will never forget, regardless of how people like McFaul, Applebaum, Kendall-Taylor and  Hill try to rewrite history. 

Moreover, the linkage between the 1990s and the present in the minds of the Russian people is visceral — they support Russia’s conflict with Ukraine and the collective West not because they have been misled by Putin, but rather because they know their own history — much better than western pundits such as McFaul and company. 

1998: Russians protest the economic depression caused by market reforms with banner saying: “Jail the redhead!” referring to Anatoly Chubais, the Russian economist who oversaw Yeltsin-era  privatizations. (Pereslavl Week, Yu. N. Chastov, Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

These pundits, whom I have classified as “Putin whisperers,” have had a hugely detrimental impact on fact-based discourse about Russia today. 

“Rather than dealing with the reality of a Russian nation seeking its rightful place at the table of a multi-polar world,” I’ve previously noted, “the ‘Putin whisperers’ created a domestic market for their personification of all things Russian into the form of a single man” — Vladimir Putin. 

“Russia stopped being a national security problem to be managed through effective diplomacy, but rather a domestic political issue which American politicians from both sides of the aisle used to scare the American people into supporting their respective visions of the world.” 

What Putin Told David Frost

Gennady Zyuganov in February 2019, during Putin’s presidential address to the Federal Assembly. (Duma.gov.ru, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

On March 5, 2000, shortly before Putin was inaugurated following his victory over Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Russian Communist Party, in the first presidential election following Boris Yeltsin’s resignation, the famous (and now departed) BBC journalist David Frost sat down for an interview with the Russian president-elect. The transcript of this interview is essential reading for anyone who seeks to “speak Putin.”

“My position,” Putin told Frost, 

“is that our country should be a strong, powerful state, a capable and effective state, in which both its citizens and all those who want to cooperate with Russia could feel comfortable and protected, could always feel in their own shoes — if you allow the expression — psychologically and morally, and well off. 

But this has nothing to do with aggression. If we again and again go back to the terminology of the Cold War we are never going to discard attitudes and problems that humanity had to grapple with a mere 15–20 years ago. 

We in Russia have to a large extent rid ourselves of what is related to the Cold War. Regrettably, it appears that our partners in the West are all too often still in the grip of old notions and tend to picture Russia as a potential aggressor. That is a completely wrong conception of our country. It gets in the way of developing normal relations in Europe and in the world.”

Compare and contrast the tone and construct of Putin’s response to Frost with comments made recently in an interview with the Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin, who asked the Russian leader if he would “have been called a naive person in the 2000s?”

Putin answered:

“I had a naive idea that the whole world — and above all, the so-called ‘civilized’ one understands what happened to Russia [after the collapse of the Soviet Union], that it has become a completely different country, that there is no longer any ideological confrontation, which means there is no basis for confrontation.” 

“If,” Putin continued,

“something negative happens in the policies of Western countries towards Russia — in particular, support for separatism and terrorism on Russian territory was obvious, I, as director of the FSB, saw this, but in my naivety, I believed that this was simply the inertia of thinking and action. This was a naive view of reality.”

In his discussion with Frost, when the BBC interviewer asked if he viewed NATO as an enemy, Putin answered:

“Russia is part of the European culture. And I cannot imagine my own country in isolation from Europe and what we often call the civilized world. So it is hard for me to visualize NATO as an enemy. I think even posing the question this way will not do any good to Russia or the world. The very question is capable of causing damage. Russia strives for equitable and candid relations with its partners.”

The BBC’s David Frost interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on March 5, 2000. (Kremlin.ru, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

‘Now We’ll Ruin Russia Too’

In his answer to Zarubin, one can detect the disappointment in Putin’s words once the depth of betrayal by his erstwhile “partners” in the West had become clear.

“But the reality is,” Putin said, that “later I became absolutely one hundred percent convinced” that his Western “partners,” following the collapse of the Soviet Union, “thought that we [NATO] needed to be patient a little, ‘now we’ll ruin Russia too.’”  Putin said:

“Such a large country by European standards, with the largest territory in the world and a fairly large population compared to other European countries, is generally not needed. It is better — as the famous U.S.  politician Brzezinski proposed — to divide it into five parts, and these parts are separately subordinated to oneself and use resources, but based on the fact that everything separately will not have independent weight, independent voice, and will not have the opportunity to defend their national interests the way a united Russian state does. Only later did this realization come to me. And the initial approach was quite naive.” 

Putin said Russia’s 

“main concern is our own country, its place in the world today and tomorrow. When we are confronted with attempts to exclude us from the process of decision-making, this naturally causes concern and irritation on our part. But that does not mean we are going to shut ourselves off from the rest of the world. Isolationism is not an option. Victory is only possible when every citizen of this country feels that the values we promote yield positive changes in their day-to-day lives. That they’re beginning to live better, eat better, feel safer and so on. 

But in this sense one can say we are still very far from our goal. I think we are still at the start of that road. But I have no doubt that the road we have chosen is the right one. And our goal is to follow this road, and to make sure our policies are absolutely open and clear for the majority of the Russian people.” 

The fact that the layperson would be unable, in isolation, to readily identify Putin’s statement as part of his answer to Frost or Zarubin underscores the consistency of Putin’s position vis-à-vis Russia’s relations with the West over the course of the past 23-plus years. 

It also upends the narrative that Putin has somehow transitioned from one type of leader when he first entered office, to another, more autocratic and isolated leader today. The above quote was from the Frost interview, but it could have been made today, or at any time during Putin’s more than two decades at the helm of the Russian Federation.

Words have meaning. Take, for instance, Putin’s use of the term “Special Military Operation.” It signifies something other than an invasion. Military operations do not rise to the level of full-scale war. 

Putin has always sought negotiations with Ukraine — the proof of the pudding, they say, is in the eating: Up until the end of 2021, Putin promoted the Minsk Accords as the preferred mechanism for conflict resolution regarding Ukraine. 

Once it became clear that neither Ukraine, France nor Germany (the three signatories to the Minsk Accords) was serious about their implementation, Russia next sought to negotiate directly with the United States and NATO, promulgating two draft treaties which were turned over to Russia’s Western partners for their evaluation and consideration in December 2021. 

Dec. 7, 2021: U.S. President Joe Biden, on screen during video call with Putin. (Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Both the U.S. and NATO gave short shrift to Russia’s proposals, leading to the decision to initiate the “Special Military Operation” on Feb. 24, 2023. Here is where the importance of words comes into play — rather than seeking the strategic defeat and destruction of Ukraine, which one would normally expect from a military operation of the scope and scale of the one undertaken on Feb. 24. 

Whisperers’ Malign Influence 

Russia — according to Davyd Arakhamiia, leader of the Servant of the People faction (Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s party), who led the Ukrainian delegation during peace talks with the Russians in Belarus and Turkey in March 2022, was willing to exchange peace with Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine refusing to join NATO. Ultimately Ukraine, under pressure from then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, rejected the Russian offer.

The collective West, not fully comprehending the limitations built into the term “Special Military Operation,”perceived weakness from Russia’s willingness to negotiate. The main reason for this lack of comprehension was the influence that the “Putin Whisperer’s” had on those who wrote the lexicon used to define and decipher Russia’s goals and objectives regarding NATO and Ukraine.

Had they “spoken Putin” (as any genuine expert could, and would), there is a good chance the collective West could have avoided the military embarrassment, economic consequences and geopolitical isolation that has taken place in the months since Ukraine walked away from the peace table.

Because of their grossly inaccurate assessments of Putin and Russia, Hill, Kendall-Taylor, Applebaum, McFaul, and a host of other “Putin Whisperer’s” have the blood of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians on their collective hands. 

Their crime was not just that they did not know how to “speak Putin,” but rather that they deliberately refused to try, instead choosing a path of deliberate obfuscation and deceit when it came to defining Russia and its leader for the western audience.

When advising on issues of national security involving Russia, the failure to “speak Putin” on the part of anyone charged with influencing and/or making Russia policy, borders on the point of criminal negligence.

And if your job is to provide assessments on Russia of a more commercial nature, the failure to “speak Putin” means not only that you’re not very good at your job, but also that perhaps it is time to begin considering finding another career. 

*

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Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press.

Featured image: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday at a meeting of the Defence Ministry Board. (Artem Geodakyan, TASS)

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***

A crucial document from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, undermines a major plank in the high-profile prosecution of the country’s former prime minister, Imran Khan.

Khan remains behind bars while he faces trial for allegedly mishandling a secret document, known as a cypher, which the prosecution claims compromised the integrity of the encrypted communication system used by the state’s security apparatus. But according to an ISI analysis leaked to The Intercept, that claim is entirely false. Internally, the agency concluded that the leak of the text of a cypher could in no way compromise the integrity of the system, an assessment contrary to public claims made repeatedly by prosecutors.

The main charge against Khan relates to his handling of a diplomatic cable describing a key meeting in March 2022 between U.S. and Pakistani officials in Washington. Khan, while prime minister, had repeatedly alluded to the existence of a cypher that outlined U.S. pressure on Pakistan to remove him from power in a vote of no confidence. Though he never disclosed its full contents, at times, in public speeches, he quoted statements recorded in it from U.S. officials promising to reward Pakistan for his ouster. At one rally, Khan even waved what he said was the printed text of the document, without revealing its exact contents.

Prosecutors assert that Khan damaged Pakistani national security by exposing the text of this encrypted document, contents they say could potentially be used by rival intelligence agencies to crack the code of a wide range of other secret Pakistani communications. A criminal complaint against Khan alleges that he “compromised the entire cypher security system of the state and secret communication method of Pakistani missions abroad,” through his alleged mishandling of the cypher. The former prime minister faces up to 10 years in prison if found guilty under Pakistan’s Official Secrets Act and could face the death penalty if charged with treason in the case.

On August 9, 2023, The Intercept published the text of the cypher outlining U.S. pressure against Pakistan to remove Khan. Shortly afterward, Pakistan’s own intelligence agency issued an assessment addressing the very question of how damaging publishing such a text would be.

The internal conclusion of the ISI was crystal clear: No threat to Pakistan’s encryption existed.

Pakistan did not respond to a request for comment.

On August 11, two days after The Intercept story was published, an internal request for information was sent to the ISI by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The question at hand: Does the revelation of the plain text of such a cypher compromise the integrity of the system’s encryption? The response, filed by the Inter-Services Intelligence Secretariat under the heading ISI-Policy Matters, and titled “Breach of Crypto Security,” determined that contrary to the present charges against Khan, revealing the text of a cypher poses no risk to the government’s encrypted communications network.

“If plain text of an encrypted message (cryptogram) … is leaked it has no effect on security of encryptor,” the analysis, which was filed on August 23, concludes. “Leakage of a plain text message does not compromise the algorithm.”

Concern about the security of an encryption system is not entirely unfounded. Some encryption systems can theoretically be compromised by what is known as a “plaintext attack,” in which an attacker has access to a copy of both the plain and encrypted versions of a document’s text and can use the two versions to determine the encryption system.

But the spy agency’s conclusion in the days following The Intercept’s publication of the secret cypher was that the disclosure of the short piece of text alone — without the encryption key — did not pose a risk.

“If plain text of an encrypted message (cryptogram) using DTE is leaked, it has no effect on security of the encryptor due to following,” the analysis reads, referring to “an offline encryption device.”

“The encryption algorithm,” it goes on to explain, “is designed with an assumption that the plain/cipher text pairs and algorithms are known to the adversary, the security lies in the secrecy of the key. Therefore leakage of a plain text message does not compromise the algorithm.”

According to the agency’s own analysis, to launch a plaintext attack an adversary would need a minimum of 2256 bits of “plain/cipher text data encrypted with the same key” to figure it out. That would be an amount of text that exceeds not just the length of Khan’s diplomatic cable, but also the total amount of digital storage space available worldwide. In other words, there was never any risk whatsoever that publishing the contents of the cypher could allow an adversary to crack the state’s encryption system.

“Not Compromised”

The cypher published by The Intercept deals with a March 7, 2022, meeting between a senior State Department official, Donald Lu, and Pakistan’s then-ambassador to the U.S. The document describes a tense meeting in which State Department officials expressed their concerns about Khan’s stance on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and threatened that Pakistan could face isolation from the U.S. and European allies. According to the cable, Lu tells the Pakistani ambassador that “all will be forgiven” if Khan were removed from power by a vote of no confidence.

The day after the meeting described in the cypher, on March 8, 2022, Khan’s opponents in Parliament moved forward with a key procedural step toward a no-confidence vote against him — a vote largely seen as having been orchestrated by Pakistan’s powerful military establishment. A month later, Khan was ousted from power, time during which he tried to blow the whistle on U.S. involvement in his removal.

Khan had said that the meeting detailed in the cypher showed proof of a U.S.-led conspiracy against his government. The text of the document published in August 2023 by The Intercept broadly validated his account of that meeting, with portions of it matching word for word what little Khan had quoted from it. (The cypher was leaked to The Intercept by a source within Pakistan’s military, not by Khan.)

Khan, according to prosecutors, did not declassify the cypher document while in office, even as it had become a major part of his battle for political survival. At several points while he was in power, representatives of other branches of the government expressed opposition to declassifying the document, including at a critical March 30 cabinet meeting, arguing that revealing the text of the document would compromise Pakistan’s national security.

Khan’s former foreign secretary echoed these claims, saying that Khan’s government discussed revealing the full text to quiet critics who said he was fabricating the U.S. pressure, but had been informed that doing so might endanger Pakistan’s encrypted communication systems. A probe by Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency this November into Khan’s handling of the document also cited a former aide to the prime minister, Azam Khan, who reportedly told investigators that he warned that the “cipher was a decoded secret document and its contents could neither be disclosed nor be discussed in public.”

The allegation that Khan undermined the cryptographic security now forms a major part of state security charges against the former prime minister, who remains Pakistan’s most popular politician. A conviction on the charges would likely prevent Khan from being able to contest future elections, including those expected early next year.

“Regime Change” Cypher

The scandal over the cypher and Khan’s claim that it described a “regime change” conspiracy has gripped Pakistan since his removal from power in 2022. In public statements, Khan had claimed that attempts had been made by foreign powers “to influence our foreign policy from abroad.” After his removal the U.S. subsequently assisted Pakistan in obtaining a generous IMF loan, while Pakistan began producing ammunition for the war in Ukraine. Khan had sought to keep Pakistan neutral in the conflict, a stance the State Department had angrily objected to in the meeting described in the cypher.

Following Khan’s removal, Pakistan has been gripped by a series of political, economic, and security crises. The country has experienced record-breaking inflation, social unrest, and a wave of terrorist attacks by the Pakistani Taliban. Pakistan’s current army chief, Gen. Asim Munir, visited the U.S. last week to build ties with U.S. policymakers, even as the country continues to be nominally led by a civilian caretaker government.

Khan was arrested on August 5, 2023, after being sentenced to three years in prison over a politically dubious corruption case. That conviction was suspended by the High Court later that month, yet he has remained behind bars ever since thanks to subsequent charges made against him over his handling of the cypher.

Khan’s lawyers have criticized his jailing as illegal and unconstitutional. Legal proceedings against him have been mired in secrecy, legal irregularities, and accusations of abuse, including violations of his privacy while imprisoned. Khan’s trial has been under strict controls that have impeded media coverage. During his imprisonment, supporters of his party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, continue to hold large rallies in the country despite attempts at government suppression.

After a long delay, Pakistan is expected to hold elections early next year, though Khan, who polls show would likely win a free vote, is unlikely to participate thanks to his compounding legal challenges. Prominent among these is the charge that Khan’s alleged mishandling of the cypher document risked compromising Pakistan’s encryption systems — notwithstanding the ISI’s own internal conclusion that no such risk existed.

While his state secrets trial continues, there is no public indication that the ISI has turned this exculpatory evidence over to Khan’s defense team.

*

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Featured image: Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan gives a speech from his home on March 15, with tear gas cannisters that had been fired at protesters by the police trying to arrest him (Source: Geopolitical Economy Report)

Day X Marks the Calendar: Julian Assange’s ‘Final’ Appeal

December 22nd, 2023 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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***

Julian Assange’s wife, Stella, is rarely one to be cryptic. “Day X is here,” she posted on the platform formerly known as Twitter.  For those who have followed her remarks, her speeches, and her activism, it was sharply clear what this meant. “It may be the final chance for the UK to stop Julian’s extradition. Gather outside the court at 8.30am on both days. It’s now or never.”

Between February 20 and 21 next year, the High Court will hear what WikiLeaks claims may be “the final chance for Julian Assange to prevent his extradition to the United States.” (This is qualified by the prospect of an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.) Were that to take place, the organisation’s founder faces 18 charges, 17 of which are stealthily cobbled from the aged and oppressive US Espionage Act of 1917. Estimates of any subsequent sentence vary, the worst being 175 years.

The WikiLeaks founder remains jailed at His Majesty’s pleasure at Belmarsh prison, only reserved for the most hardened of criminals. It’s a true statement of both British and US justice that Assange has yet to face trial, incarcerated, without bail, for four-and-a-half years. That trial, were it to ever be allowed to take place, would employ a scandalous legal theory that will spell doom to all those who dive and dabble in the world of publishing national security information.

Fundamentally, and irrefutably, the case against Assange remains political in its muscularity, with a gangster’s legality papered over it. As Stella herself makes clear,

“With the myriad of evidence that has come to light since the original hearing in 2018, such as the violation of legal privilege and reports that senior US officials are involved in formulating assassination plots against my husband, there is no denying that a fair trial, let alone Julian’s safety on US soil, is an impossibility were he to be extradited.”

In mid-2022, Assange’s legal team attempted a two-pronged attempt to overturn the decision of Home Office Secretary Priti Patel to approve Assange’s extradition while also broadening the appeal against grounds made in the original January 4, 2021 reasons of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser.

The former, among other matters, took issue with the acceptance by the Home Office that the extradition was not for a political offence and therefore prohibited by Article 4 of the UK-US Extradition Treaty. The defence team stressed the importance of due process, enshrined in British law since the Magna Carta of 2015, and also took issue with Patel’s acceptance of “special arrangements” with the US government regarding the introduction of charges for the facts alleged which might carry the death penalty, criminal contempt proceedings, and such specialty arrangements that might protect Assange “against being dealt with for conduct outside the extradition request”. History shows that such “special arrangements” can be easily, and arbitrarily abrogated.

On June 30, 2022 came the appeal against Baraitser’s original reasons. While Baraitser blocked the extradition to the US, she only did so on grounds of oppression occasioned by mental health grounds and the risk posed to Assange were he to find himself in the US prison system.  The US government got around this impediment by making breezy promises to the effect that Assange would not be subject to oppressive, suicide-inducing conditions, or face the death penalty.  A feeble, meaningless undertaking was also made suggesting that he might serve the balance of his term in Australia – subject to approval, naturally.

What this left Assange’s legal team was a decision otherwise hostile to publishing, free speech and the activities that had been undertaken by WikiLeaks.  The appeal accordingly sought to address this, claiming, among other things, that Baraitser had erred in assuming that the extradition was not “unjust and oppressive by reason of the lapse of time”; that it would not be in breach of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (inhuman and degrading treatment)”; that it did not breach Article 10 of ECHR, namely the right to freedom of expression; and that it did not breach Article 7 of the ECHR (novel and unforeseeable extension of the law).

Other glaring defects in Baraitser’s judgment are also worth noting, namely her failure to acknowledge the misrepresentation of facts advanced by the US government and the “ulterior political motives” streaking the prosecution.  The onerous and much thicker second superseding indictment was also thrown at Assange at short notice before the extradition hearing of September 2020, suggesting that those grounds be excised “for reasons of procedural fairness.”

An agonising wait of some twelve months followed, only to yield an outrageously brief decision on June 6 from High Court justice Jonathan Swift (satirists, reach for your pens and laptops). Swift, much favoured by the Defence and Home Secretaries when a practising barrister, told Counsel Magazine in a 2018 interview that his “favourite clients were the security and intelligence agencies”. Why? “They take preparation and evidence-gathering seriously: a real commitment to getting things right.” Good grief.

In such a cosmically unattached world, Swift only took three pages to reject the appeal’s arguments in a fit of premature adjudication. “An appeal under the Extradition Act 2003,” he wrote with icy finality, “is not an opportunity for general rehearsal of all matters canvassed at an extradition hearing.” The appeal’s length – some 100 pages – was “extraordinary” and came “to no more than an attempt to re-run the extensive arguments made and rejected by the District Judge.”

Thankfully, Swift’s finality proved stillborn. Some doubts existed whether the High Court appellate bench would even grant the hearing. They did, though requesting that Assange’s defence team trim the appeal to 20 pages.

How much of this is procedural theatre and circus judge antics remains to be seen. Anglo-American justice has done wonders in soiling itself in its treatment of Britain’s most notable political prisoner. Keeping Assange in the UK in hideous conditions of confinement without bail serves the goals of Washington, albeit vicariously. For Assange, time is the enemy, and each legal brief, appeal and hearing simply weighs the ledger further against his ailing existence.

*

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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 at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: [email protected] 

Featured image is from Lawyers for Assange

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Haley Freeman is a young mother and a dedicated Pediatric Nurse and Pediatric Nurse Practitioner. Her husband Billy Freeman is a Firefighter and Paramedic. Both were mandated COVID-19 mRNA Vaccination to keep their jobs. Haley is 4 months pregnant with her second child and developed a large mass in her neck and chest – she was diagnosed with Stage 2 Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Most certainly Turbo Cancer.

No Ukrainian Forces Available for “Counteroffensive”: Kiev Regime’s Most Hawkish Official Changes Tune to “Low-key Defeatism”

By Drago Bosnic, December 21, 2023

One of the pillars of American foreign policy is to “back the crazies”, as the reputable American economist Michael Hudson once said. Whether it’s a radicalized Islamist, Nazi or any other extremist ideology, the US-led political West will fully embrace it and (ab)use it for geopolitical purposes.

Yemen’s Houthis in Defense of Gaza

By Huseyin Vodinali, December 21, 2023

The genocide committed by Israel in Palestine continues to break our hearts every day. Zionazis massacre children, women, babies, elderly journalists and doctors without showing the slightest sign of humanity. 70 days have passed since the war started on October 7.

The Plight of Humanity Touches All Our Hearts. I Believe in the Good in People

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, December 21, 2023

Despite the daily horror stories, man is not a robot that kills indiscriminately. That does not correspond to their social nature. This could only happen with the help of artificial intelligence, because a machine that can make decisions based on its learning is not bound to make decisions as we would have made them or as would be acceptable to us.

In the Wake of COVID and Its Depredations: The Unsung Digital Annihilation of the Human Soul

By Dr. Emanuel Garcia, December 21, 2023

Although I have been dimly aware of the practice of pitch-correction in the modern-day music industry — a process by which a singer’s voice or an instrumentalist’s notes are brought precisely in tune — I had had no idea of the extent of its adoption and use and dissemination. It is a process which, thanks to progress in digitization and computing technology, is even applied to live performances!

On Speaking Plain ‘Putin’: Any Retrospective on the Russian-Ukraine Conflict Begins with a Modicum of Interest in How Moscow Defines the Conflict. Scott Ritter

By Scott Ritter, December 21, 2023

Back in March, I had the opportunity to participate in an on-line forum where a well-known Russian expert provided a briefing on the “ground truth” as he saw it from Moscow. Following the briefing, the floor was opened for questions. I had noted that the briefer, the moderator, and indeed the audience made repetitive use of the term “invasion” to describe what Russia has called a “Special Military Operation.” 

Major Shift About Whole Milk — Now a Health Food?

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, December 21, 2023

For decades, Americans have been told to avoid whole milk due to its saturated fat content, which has been falsely accused of clogging arteries and causing heart disease. This guidance goes back to the first edition of the dietary guidelines, issued in 1980, and most studies performed since then have exonerated full-fat whole milk.

Colorado Supreme Court Disqualifies Trump from 2024 Ballot, Setting Up Supreme Court Challenge

By Zero Hedge, December 21, 2023

The Colorado Supreme Court has disqualified Donald Trump from Colorado’s 2024 presidential election ballot, and in a 4-3 ruling has effectively blocked Trump from seeking the presidency because of his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, citing the post-Civil War-era 14th Amendment to the US Constitution that bans insurrectionists from holding public office. The Colorado case was the first constitutional challenge to Trump’s 2024 run to go through a full trial.

The Evil Israel Does Is the Evil Israel Gets. Chris Hedges

By Chris Hedges, December 21, 2023

Israel’s settler colonial project perpetuates the cycle of violence against the indigenous inhabitants of historic Palestine. Palestinians have been forced to speak back in the language Israel speaks.

Xi Warned Biden During Summit That Beijing Will Reunify Taiwan with China

By Countercurrents.org, December 21, 2023

Chinese President Xi Jinping bluntly told President Joe Biden during their recent summit in San Francisco that Beijing will reunify Taiwan with mainland China but that the timing has not yet been decided, according to three current and former U.S. officials.

O Reino Unido está prestes a aumentar as tensões navais no Mar Negro.

December 21st, 2023 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

O Reino Unido parece estar perto de lançar uma nova e perigosa política naval anti-russa. Segundo relatos, a marinha britânica enviará novos navios de combate e armas pesadas para o Mar Negro, a fim de ajudar a Ucrânia a fortalecer a sua presença regional naquele local. Parece que num futuro próximo será assinado um acordo formal entre ambos os países, estabelecendo os termos da cooperação naval, o que obviamente resultará no aumento das tensões com a Rússia.

Os dados foram publicados pelo The Telegraph. Fontes do veículo de informação afirmam que o acordo entre o Reino Unido e a Ucrânia será assinado nas próximas semanas, gerando uma maior participação britânica nas atividades da marinha ucraniana. O Mar Negro, que é atualmente uma zona de conflito entre as forças russas e ucranianas, deverá receber um grande número de navios militares britânicos que apoiarão Kiev nas hostilidades.

A notícia chega pouco depois de o ministério da defesa britânico anunciar o envio de pelo menos dois navios de remoção de minas para a Ucrânia. A medida foi tomada no âmbito de uma coligação de apoio naval a Kiev que envolve também a Noruega. Como o Reino Unido é um dos patrocinadores mais ativos do regime ucraniano, enviando constantemente pacotes de armas e equipamentos para Kiev, a entrega não foi vista como algo “surpreendente” na altura, mas, aparentemente, Londres ainda planeja aprofundar ainda mais o seu intervencionismo, passando a participar em ainda mais ações no Mar Negro.

Segundo fontes anônimas citadas pelo jornal, o novo acordo permitiria também o envio de armas pesadas terrestres e aéreas, com o objetivo de tornar as unidades ucranianas próximas do Mar Negro mais “interoperáveis” com a OTAN. Espera-se também que versões mais modernas e letais dos mísseis Brimstone operados em navios britânicos abasteçam a marinha ucraniana, dando-lhe mais capacidade para os combates de alta intensidade que estão atualmente a ocorrer na região.

Além disso, está previsto avançar no treinamento de tropas de comando voltadas para operações de assalto anfíbio e desminagem. O Reino Unido tem treinado muitas tropas ucranianas desde o início da intervenção militar russa. Estima-se que mais de 30 mil soldados ucranianos foram treinados pelos britânicos no ano passado como parte da chamada “Operação Interfax”. Agora, acredita-se que, pelo novo acordo, os programas de treinamento das forças especiais da marinha serão ampliados.

Rumores não confirmados indicam também que o novo pacto de segurança entre o Reino Unido e Kiev terá como um dos seus objectivos fornecer garantias à Ucrânia relativamente à ajuda britânica pós-conflito. Perante a evidente derrota militar da Ucrânia, crescem as preocupações sobre possíveis pacotes de ajuda para reconstruir a Ucrânia num cenário pós-guerra, razão pela qual se espera que as autoridades de Kiev pressionem os seus parceiros para incluir garantias neste sentido nos novos acordos assinados com os países ocidentais.

Na verdade, todas estas medidas parecem irresponsáveis ​​e anti-estratégicas de um ponto de vista realista. É mais do que claro que nenhuma ajuda ocidental será capaz de fazer com que a Ucrânia reverta o cenário militar do conflito, que é absolutamente controlado pela Federação Russa. As derrotas no campo de batalha, as perdas territoriais e o fracasso humilhante da sua tentativa de “contra-ofensiva” provaram que as forças de Kiev não têm qualquer hipótese de derrotar os seus adversários e que é inútil continuar a apoiar o regime neonazista com armas, dinheiro e equipamento.

A situação é particularmente delicada para a Ucrânia no Mar Negro, onde a Rússia está concentrada na destruição de todos os alvos inimigos, incluindo navios comerciais e infra-estruturas críticas. Kiev tem utilizado os portos da região para armazenar armas, bem como para transportar equipamento militar e tropas através de navios disfarçados de navios comerciais. Depois de sofrer vários ataques contra o seu território devido ao uso militar ucraniano de infra-estruturas navais civis, Moscou decidiu considerar todos os navios e portos inimigos como alvos legítimos, tendo aumentado fortemente a intensidade dos seus ataques nos últimos meses.

Neste sentido, o Reino Unido pode estar a cometer um erro grave ao planejar expandir a sua participação nas hostilidades do Mar Negro. Os navios britânicos enviados para a marinha ucraniana serão vistos pelos russos como um alvo prioritário e é muito provável que a maioria dos navios sejam neutralizados antes mesmo de começarem a ser operados pelas forças de Kiev. Moscou não está disposto a tolerar qualquer intervencionismo estrangeiro na região e está focado em evitar novos ataques a civis russos a partir de unidades ucranianas no Mar Negro, pelo que certamente haverá esforços para destruir todo o equipamento enviado por Londres.

Em vez de criar novos acordos militares e pacotes de ajuda, o Ocidente deveria simplesmente encorajar Kiev a negociar a paz nos termos russos, encerrando as hostilidades sem maiores danos.

Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

Artigo em português : UK about to escalate naval tensions in Black Sea, InfoBrics,  20 de Dezembro de 2023.

 

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Many of the UN SD goals ‘sound like’ worthy ideals’, for example, who could argue against the goal of eliminating poverty from the world?  In this article I attempt to decode the true meaning behind the deceptive marketing language of the UN Sustainable Development goals (SDGs).

The UN SDGs can be a bit tricky to decode, certainly with all the weaponized buzz words they use. Many of these goals maybe unattainable, but for the global elite, the point isn’t to improve the world, the point is to control it, and control you.  Of course, the cost of this deceptive ‘planetary utopia’ is handing over control of all planetary resources to the unelected dictators at the UN, for alleged ‘conservation’.

Real Environmentalism Was Hijacked by Deceptive UN Political Schemes

In a previous article initially published in February 2023 titled ‘1500 scientists say ‘Climate Change Not Due to Co2’ – The real environment movement was hijacked’ I provided evidences and testimonies from renowned international climate scientists that contradict the UN assertion that climate change is caused by CO2 emissions.

I also referred to the conclusion of 1500 climate scientists and climate professionals at the Climate Intelligence Foundation (CLINTEL) that the climate changes naturally and slowly in its own cycle, and that solar activity is the dominant factor in climate; and that CO2 emissions or methane from livestock, such as cows, are not the dominant factors in climate change. This is comprehensively detailed in the books Transcending the Climate Change Deception Toward Real Sustainability and in the book Climate CO2 Hoax. Furthermore, the number of signatories of the CLINTEL declaration has now increased to 1860.

The UN climate change, sustainable development and green economy policies over the past 30 years are little more than worldwide marketing tricks that have tragically brainwashed two generations of people who do not understand what the UN actually is, and who is it is really designed to serve. 

The word “sustainable” was hijacked decades ago, and it is now deceptively used to advance the agendas of globalist mega-corporate interests who couldn’t care less about the environment.

The aim is to catapult humanity into the arms of UN Agenda 2030 and other deceptive marketing plans entirely aligned with the objectives of the so-called financial elites of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Davos group. UN Agenda 2030 is not about real environmentalism it is all to scare people into accepting totalitarian authority and limitations to their freedom and personal wellbeing.

What the UN really means by ‘sustainable development’ is population control, central planning, global governance, and education to indoctrinate your children into a new set of beliefs in preparation for the new fake “sustainable” world order. 

The ‘real sustainability’ movement was hijacked by the deceptive UN political schemes of sustainable development and the ideology of man-made climate change as evidenced in this article including video testimony by whistleblower George Hunt.

Note also that UN-defined sustainable development actually endorses the unjust debt-money banking and flawed globalisation / hypergrowth economic system; and that over the past 30 years of UN-defined sustainable development has not solved the real environmental and human wellbeing problems that do exist worldwide. UN-defined sustainable development is, and always has been, a false narrative operating under cover of continued environmentally destructive globalisation. Sustainable development is not real sustainability at all – it is a political and economic scheme that has detracted from what real environmentalism is. 

Part of the problem is globalisation does not distinguish between what could be termed ‘good growth’ and ‘bad environmentally and socially destructive growth’.

Any type of growth will do for the international money-masters for without GDP growth their entire system of monetary trickery collapses. Thus, globalisation has been the vehicle that enabled decades of interest payments in which trillions continuously flowed to the privately-owned mega-banks of the world, regardless of whether the ‘economy’ was expanding or contracting. The mega-banks pulling the strings of the economy are always the winners in the numerous boom-bust-bailout scenarios that have beset the governments of the world. 

For decades, there have been serious detrimental environmental and societal consequences from the debt-money banking and globalisation / hypergrowth economic paradigm. The financial winner in that paradigm has been the financial orthodoxy of private-bankers.

Everyone else has been left on a treadmill of debt, compelled to join the ‘rat race’ or the ‘hamster wheel’ to pay interest on debt-money that private bankers created from nothing. There is never enough money in the system to pay the interest on the ever-increasing debt, thus the entire system is a scam. It has been akin to a sadistic game of musical chairs in which everyone is scrambling for a seat, whilst private bankers sit on the throne of the world’s money-creation process. From their unelected office of money-creation, the worldwide private banking system has for decades been bleeding an estimated 35% of the entire profit of the nations of the world via the mechanisms of debt-money, interest, and government taxation (much of which goes to pay interest on national debts). 

The private-banking sector creates vast amounts of debt-money out of thin air and lends it worldwide at interest. Control of this mechanism enabled the private banking sector to expand or contract the economy at will and create boom-bust-bailout cycles in which the bankers were always the winners, at the expense of the environment and the general population. These orchestrated cycles are explained in my book Demonic Economics. Hypergrowth resulted in real environmental destruction and pollution. No UN policy ever mentions this or attempts to reform the privately-owned debt-money system, which is at the root of the world’s real environmental and human wellbeing problems.

The UN did not challenge globalisation, in fact, it represented globalisation and for decades has been part of the machinery of globalisation; and the political schemes and ideologies of the mega-corporate WEF Davos group.

UN politically-defined ‘sustainable development’ has been an illusory ‘greenwashing’ of the current flawed system, thereby temporarily perpetuating a system that will ultimately fail due to its unsustainable, “eco-cidal”, and human welfare diminishing effects. 

UN Agenda 2030 involves a plan to get all people off the land and into so-called smart towns and smart cities, where they will be monitored, tracked and traced; forced to comply with new rules to access digital social credits; and be unable to grow much food. This is also detailed in the World Economic Forum ‘Great Reset’ document.

Free creative people are not meant to be pent up or corralled in cities like cattle in a pen, or controlled by an unelected UN and government-corporate partnerships, but that is what UN Agenda 2030 attempts to do.

Real sustainability would involve developing self-sufficiency in the localities and regions, and an entire reworking of the education system to re-establish truth, as well as material, health, and spiritual knowledge for thriving networks and human wellbeing.

This is in contrast to the systems of the so-called globalised economy or the corporation-serving, technocratic futures the WEF, UN, and government bureaucrats have planned for us. Real sustainability would be unhindered by debt-money banking and never-ending taxation, in which much of the taxes goes directly to the international mega-banks and financial institutions that have the unearned privilege of creating money. 

“The slogan of the UN Agenda 21, to protect the rights of future generations and all species against the potential crimes of the present, is both a smokescreen and a declaration of entitlement. By standing on this high-sounding platform the rights of the individual are called selfish and those who would fight for them slurred as immoral.” – Rosa Koire, Author

Environmentalists and green politicians that enthusiastically endorse UN Agenda 2030 policies have yet to navigate their way out of UN marketing propaganda and the bogus science of manmade climate change. If they realised what the UN actually is, and the ‘real’ agenda, they would surely not support Agenda 2030.  

“UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development is the action plan implemented worldwide to inventory and control all land, all water, all minerals, all plants, all animals, all construction, all means of production, all energy, all education, all information, and all human beings in the world… Moreover, people should be rounded up off the land and packed into human settlements, or islands of human habitation, close to employment centers and transportation (where they can be surveilled and controlled)… 

UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development is a global plan that is implemented locally. Over 600 cities in the U.S. are members… The costs are paid by taxpayers…..  Although counties say that they support agricultural uses, eating locally produced food, farmer’s markets, etc, in fact there are so many regulations restricting water and land use (there are scenic corridors, inland rural corridors, baylands corridors, area plans, specific plans, redevelopment plans, huge fees, fines) that farmers are losing their lands altogether…

The push is for people to get off of the land, become more dependent, come into the cities…

The plan is to restrict your choices, limit your funds, narrow your freedoms, and take away your voice… ” – Rosa Koire, Author, see Endnote . 

Decoding the Real Objectives Behind the UN 17 ‘New Sustainable Development Goals’

“The 2030 agenda is comparable to chasing imaginary giraffes, and epitomizes the collective movement as it calls upon individuals to set aside their ambitions, to forfeit their natural rights, and to subjugate themselves to the state – presumably in the interest of 17 lofty goals, that incidentally position the goal creators to anoint themselves as your caretaker and keeper…

The 2030 agenda poses a real threat to life as you know it, as the United Nations’ purported attempts to secure the peace and provide for domestic tranquility and equality for all is intoxicating because it plays on Maslows instinctive human need for security above all other desires… when faced with threats… free people will willingly cast off their freedoms and embrace tyranny, if only their new keepers can assure them safety. That is what the United Nations, in my opinion, is attempting to accomplish in its 2030 Agenda…. To the ill-informed… the (17) goals are a beacon of hope. But to the critical thinkers and freedom lovers… they are the all-embracing and tyrannical arms of the nanny state – guided by a coven of elites who will never live by the restricted standards and forfeited rights they impose on its willing subjects” – Ron Taylor, Author

Let us take a closer look at the SDGs:

Goal 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere 

Translation: 

Keep the developing world in vast debt under the pretext of economic development, globalisation and ‘technology transfer programs’ that are marketed with the illusory goal of ending poverty.

The disastrous effect of such policies has actually been to increase debt and poverty in the so-called developing world, this is described in my book Transcending the Climate Change Deception Toward Real Sustainability.

Centralized banking, IMF, World Bank, Federal Reserve to continue to control all world finances. The so-called financial powers that be (PTB) will only cancel world debt (on money they created from nothing) when they can introduce their digital one world currency, social credit system and cashless society, ensuring people must conform to their rules.

Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture 

2.5 By 2020, maintain the genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and their related wild species, including through soundly managed and diversified seed and plant banks at the national, regional and international levels, and promote access to and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising for the utilisation of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, as internationally agreed.

Translation: Rampant expansion of GMO, and no local control of seed banks. “as internationally agreed” means mega-corporate control of genetic resources.

In contrast to centuries past when people had shared use of the commons, in modern times virtually everything has been privatised and nothing is available to, or owned by, the people.  Shared use of the commons is no longer the case for the land and water of the world, nature, seeds, and the sky (the airwaves). Even life itself is being privatised, via the advent of patenting and bio-piracy of genes, foods, plants, animals, biodiversity and resources of nature, and life-forms – including pathogens, genetic markers, and viruses. In almost all cases, you will find it owned by corporations. Whereas, all these natural resources used to be called the commons and were shared and used by everyone.

Major pesticide and GMO mega-corporations include BASF, Bayer Dupont, Dow Chemical, Monsanto, and Syngenta.

They own a vast number of seed, pesticide and biotech companies. Monsanto was responsible for the introduction of GM crops and toxic chemicals, such as aspartame, DDT, Agent Orange, petroleum-based fertilisers, rGBH, glyphosate, and more. In addition, the godless corporate practice of patenting nature itself is carried out by such companies.

It has displaced thousands of years of traditional agriculture and farmers’ rights. The World Trade Organisation’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) has facilitated the granting of patents to all genetic material, including seeds, plants, and animals.

“By May 2002, there were 1,457 biotechnology companies in the US with a total value of $224 billion…. consolidation is acute, 70% of patents on staple food crops are held by six multinational corporations who can set the market price for them and block competition for 20 years, thereby monopolizing the market… The developing world, where 75% of people’s livelihoods depend on agriculture, is the source of 90% of all biological resources. Yet transnational companies based in the developed countries hold 97% of global patents….  patenting of life goes against the sharing of knowledge and the preservation of biodiversity and culture” – Dr Sahadeva das, Author

Consequently, farmers in developing countries are now not permitted to store seeds without paying corporations for the privilege. Who gave corporations this privilege? This issue is known as ‘bio-piracy’. In India, millions of farmers borrowed money to purchase corporate-produced GM seeds that were around 1,000 times more expensive than traditional seeds, but when the crops failed these farmers were left with huge debts. The situation was compounded by the fact that the GM seeds contain terminator technology, so that famers had to buy new seeds each year. This crisis is said to have resulted in over 250,000 farmers committing suicide in India between 1995 and 2009, see Endnote .

Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages 

3.7 By 2030, ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services, including for family planning, information and education, and the integration of reproductive health into national strategies and programmes. 

3.8 By 2030, universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all. 

3.b Support the research and development of vaccines and medicines for the communicable and non-communicable diseases that primarily affect development countries.

Translation: Mass vaccination, mass abortion and population control. For evidence of the devasting effects and deaths due to the Covid-19 vaccinations see the book No Worries No Virus

Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all 

4.7 By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity…

Translation: UN propaganda and brainwashing through compulsory education from “cradle to grave”. All learners must be indoctrinated into  sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles. What is a sustainable lifestyle? In part it is one that complies with the bogus UN doctrine that CO2 emissions or methane from cows causes climate change. The word ‘ensure’ is also a blatant admission of forced indoctrination. How do they intend to enforce this?

Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

5.5. Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life. 

5. C Adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls at all levels.”

Translation: I, and surely everyone, fully agrees, of course, that women, and all people, should be paid equal pay for equal work. However, there is a deeper story here that should be noted and that story involves the tax system. When you understand the tax system you may begin to realise that the UN goal of ‘gender equality’ is not the noble endeavour it may appear to be.

It is actually about imposing tax trickery upon both genders, ‘equally’, and adding another 2 billion odd people to the tax base. The “powers that be”, not only want billions of men working as tax slaves, they also want billions of women working as tax slaves. These are emotionally sensitive issues, and, for many people, it is not easy to accept that we have been misled about the true motivations of the UN and what lies behind government policy in relation to gender equality.

Note here the video testimony of Aaron Russo who was, at one time, a family friend to the Rockefeller banking family.

He stated that the Rockefeller banking dynasty planned and funded the modern feminist movement and the political roots of gender equality specifically for reasons including: Social engineering to destroy the traditional family unit in which the parents were the main influence on the child, i.e., so that all control of society and children would be under the auspices of the state, and so that children could be indoctrinated with state values from a young age; population control to be achieved through forced ‘Family Planning’; to turn women into tax payers; and to stop women producing children.

If I said to you:

“Men and women will only be allowed to work in this world, to generate money for themselves and their families, if they pay around 80% of their earnings to wealthy international privately-owned mega-banks, and to national government bureaucracies that are fully aligned with, and subservient to, the dictates and policies of those mega-banks.”

Would you think that is fair? Would you think that is something to campaign in favour of? Yet, that is a close approximation of what is actually occurring in the current world-wide government and tax system via direct and hidden taxes. 

Tragically, the entire process, which was funded by mega-banks, has also resulted in a sort of political schism, or mental tension, between some men and women. It appears to me that, all men and all women, would be better served by working with each other to eliminate the fraudulent systems of taxations and banking usury. Then, both women and men, and all working families, would have much more money in their pockets, because the trillions of dollars that are being paid to international mega-banks each year, as interest on the national debts, would no longer need to be collected from the people in the form of taxes.

Note here that over the past centuries men have been conditioned to accept the fraud and trickery of increasingly higher levels of tax upon earnings. Few people realise that the government typically takes around 80% of your entire income. This 80% is taken via various tax mechanisms that act upon your personal income, and upon the money you spend on products. All consumer products have a large amount of hidden tax embedded in their retail price. This hidden embedded tax has accumulated at each of the multiple stages of the product supply chain. 

Furthermore, for decades, around one quarter, and up to one half, of the 80% tax take goes directly from the government to international privately-owned mega-banks and financial institutions, to pay the interest on national debt-money loans. This debt-money is created from nothing by these banks, and, the national debt, is therefore a hoax and a scam. 

The essential point here that governments, or the UN, do not tell you, is that this means that, for around nine and a half months of every year, you are working for nothing as a slave for the government, i.e., you only get to keep around two and a half-months of your annual income for yourself. 

When you realise the truth about the tax system, you may begin to realise that the UN gender equality goal is not primarily about ensuring women have equal pay rights, it is primarily about conditioning women to be a willing and enthusiastic part of the current deceptive worldwide tax system, so that around 80% of women’s earnings will go directly to government. Surely, neither men nor women would consent to this. Both men and women that are aware of this would surely not consent to have around 80% of their earnings taken from them via direct and hidden taxes.

UN gender equality is not so much about gender equality, it is primarily about promoting and ensuring tax slavery for all, equally. For thousands of years, women and men have always worked, albeit, often in differing ways and roles. The government taxation system has been stealthily inflicted upon the populace, in particular, in recent centuries. The UN do not want women (or men) working for themselves outside the punitive tax system. Of course, women and men should work if they so wish, and for equal pay for equal work, but why pay 80% tax? Do you see the trickery? Do you see why the UN want to control the entire narrative? A narrative that is promoted and implemented by governments who will take around 80% of your earnings one way or another.

Recall that around half of the monies the government takes in taxes goes directly from the government to international privately-owned mega-banks and financial institutions, to pay the interest on national debt-money loans. This debt-money is created from nothing by these banks. Recall that the international private-banking cartel of banking families is pre-dominantly Jewish. Is it just a co-incidence that all the major promoters of the banker-funded feminist movement, and the most prominent feminists ever, were dozens of Jewish women? These women include Gloria Steinem, Andrea Dworkin, Betty Friedan, Eve Ensler, Rosa Luxemburg, Blu Greenberg, Judy Cohen, Gertrude Stein, Helen Cohen, Jean Rothernberg, Lisa Goldberg, Madelaine Stern, Ruth Ginsburg, Ruth Morgenthau, etc. For example, if you look at the Jewish Womens Archive website it will show you a list of key Jewish feminists, containing 1,193 profiles.

Goal 6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all 

Translation: Privatize all water sources, don’t forget to add fluoride (hydro fluorosilicate, which is an industrial by-product and toxin) and aluminum (which is extremely toxic to humans).

Goal 7: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all 

Translation: Smart grid control of your access to energy. Smart meters that emit electro-magnetic field radiation compulsorily inserted into your home to access your data, and introduce peak pricing, etc. They never tell you about the vast energy and environmental expenditure to build a smart grid, hundreds of millions of ‘smart meters’, billions of smart devices, such as TVs, fridges, smartphones, smart cars, etc.

Goal 8: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all 

8.1. Sustain per capita economic growth in accordance with national circumstances and, in particular, at least 7 per cent gross domestic product per annum in the least developed countries.

8.3. Promote development oriented policies… including through access to financial services

8.4. … Endeavour to de-couple economic growth from environmental degradation

Translation: A continuation of the usury economy in which wealth always flows upwards to the private banking system. “At least 7% GDP growth in least developed countries” means the globalists want these economies growing under the whip of globalisation, so these countries can pay vast sums of interest to international mega-banks on fraudulent debt-money loans created from nothing.  GDP growth is always needed so that vast sums of interest collected via taxes will continue to flow from governments to the private international banking cartel. Free trade zones, as espoused by the UN, would favour mega-corporate interests, globalisation, and endless polluting forms of GDP growth. 

Is ‘free trade’ really free or is it just a deceptive buzzword for corporate globalisation? The UK government sustainable development strategy states “internationally, we need to promote the mutual supportiveness of trade liberalisation…”, see Endnote , yet traditionally, environmentalists have taken a strong line against free trade, see Endnote . The concept of trade liberalisation has always been a contentious issue environmentally due to needless shipping of goods worldwide that could be produced locally. It also involves the exportation of manufacturing jobs to sweat shops across the so-called developing world, resulting in the suppression of opportunity and income in the importing country to achieve so-called economic equality, which is actually illusory. 

“Endeavour to de-couple economic growth from environmental degradation” means even though it has already been comprehensively demonstrated that 30 years of attempting to de-couple economic growth from environmental impacts has completely failed and is a policy that will never work, we are going to keep repeating this de-coupling nonsense to pretend that we are trying to stop ‘real’ pollution.

Goal 10: Reduce inequality within and among countries

10.b. Encourage official development assistance and financial flows, including foreign direct investment, to…  in particular developing countries 

10.c. By 2030, reduce to less than 3 per cent the transaction costs of migrant remittances and eliminate remittance corridors with costs higher than 5 per cent

Translation: “Development assistance” means get developing countries hooked on debt-money loans (created from nothing) and have them put up national assets as collateral. Then later, pull the plug, with a boom-bust-bailout scenario, just as has been done in many other countries, and leave the country in perpetual debt slavery. Virtually every government worldwide is in vast debt to the privately-owned debt-money banking system, see the book Demonic Economics.

We the globalists want the whole world under our thumb of globalisation. We do not want people to develop ‘real local sustainability’ in their own country or have any knowledge of how to do that. Rather, we want large amounts of people to be displaced, subject to migration from orchestrated wars, and living in our ‘smart’ cities as slaves to the globalised economy, which is owned by our mega-banks and mega-corporations.

Goal 11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Translation: Have a ‘Big Brother’ big data surveillance state and a behaviour-based digital social credit system to keep you under our control. This is already in operation in China, where over 200 million surveillance cameras had been installed by 2018, with plans for over 600 million.

UN Agenda 2030 and WEF-promoted smart cities are smart for the so-called powers that be, but not smart for you. Furthermore, sustainable development, as defined in Agenda 2030 involves the mass rollout and utilisation of so-called smart technology. This includes wireless technology, such as WIFI, smartphones, 5G, smart meters, and the so called ‘Internet of Things’, etc. However, it has clearly been demonstrated by thousands of studies, see Endnote , that the above microwave-based wireless technologies utilise electromagnetic frequencies (EMFs) that can harm human health, and in particular, the brain development of children. In these studies, EMFs are linked with chronic fatigue, headaches, tinnitus, depression, cancer and chronic degenerative disorders.

Smart cities will utilise social credit-scoring, which is already in use in China, and requires large data collection on every citizen. In China, for example, financial transactions, organisation affiliations, social interactions, friendships, and data-mining of a citizen’s history on social media are collected.

The surveillance network is an integral part of the data collection process. A person’s social credit score depends on, for example, whether they criticise the government or comply with the government – therefore, each person is compelled to comply with government to maintain their social credit scoring and receive benefits. It is a sort of digital dictatorship. It has been reported that the Chinese authorities even run ‘pre-crime’ algorithms against the data collected.

In these UN-planned smart cities, the right to privacy is entirely subverted, as people are expected to consent to their data being collected, and their activities being monitored constantly, under the pretext of preventing crime. The smart city requires wireless connectivity to function, and this is the real reason that 5G is being rolled out worldwide at rapid pace. Even whilst the so-called pandemic was in full swing, and everyone else was locked down, communications companies’ employees installing 5G infrastructure were working full-time. So, 5G enables ‘smart-city’ super-computers to analyse the activities of a whole city of people in real-time, and to utilise Geospatial Intelligence to monitor and manage large crowds of people, supposedly for reasons, such as improving the flow of shoppers. The expenditure of trillions of dollars on technology and surveillance infrastructure to improve the flow of shoppers – am I the only one that doesn’t buy that?

Goal 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns 

*Acknowledging that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is the primary international, intergovernmental forum for negotiating the global response to climate change.

Translation: Forced austerity, reduced access to resources, and more taxation for the people under the pretext of combatting manmade climate change and other SCP policies – meanwhile our mega-corporations continue to plunder and pollute the natural world, for example to produce many millions of batteries for electric cars. Oh, and by the way don’t forget, the UN framework is the only place where you are allowed to discuss the climate change issue – we do not want scientists to convene outside of our bogus UN climate change framework. Books such as Transcending the Climate Change Deception Toward Real Sustainability and Climate CO2 Hoax describe that thousands of scientists dispute the unproven UN-promoted man-made climate-change theory, but we the UN don’t tell the public about that. The above books also describe additional deceptive aspects of our UN policies that are not open for discussion, such as:

  • the failure of resource-efficiency, resource substitution or eco-efficiency strategies;
  • the UN trick of blaming population growth rather than addressing the root causes of environmental destruction and human poverty worldwide, i.e., the privately owned worldwide debt-money banking system that was instrumental in creating the unelected UN and the system of environmentally destructive corporate globalisation in the first place’
  • the UN Brundtland definition of sustainable development actually enabled ‘polluting’ forms of globalisation/GDP growth to rampantly continue.

Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts 

13.2. Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning

13.3. Improve education, awareness-raising and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning.

Translation: This is simply promotion of globalist policies e.g., Cap and Trade, carbon taxes/credits, and footprint taxes. We the globalists are trying to change your society to suit our own agenda and you will have no say in how your society will function. We are trying to indoctrinate your children and all of society to believe our man-made climate-change lie, so that we can achieve complete control of society, as well as manipulate society and population behaviour the way we want to without any resistance.

Goal 16: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

16.1 Significantly reduce all forms of violence and related deaths rates everywhere

16.3 Promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all

16.4 By 2030, significantly reduce illicit financial and arms flows… and combat all forms of organised crime

16.8 Broaden and strengthen the participation of developing countries in the institutions of global governance

16.9 By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration. 

Translation: 

16.1. “Significantly reduce all forms of violence and related deaths rates everywhere” means except when we the globalists do it – i.e. implement violence and population reduction via intentionally orchestrated wars, the mass sale of toxic vaccines, the proliferation of drug culture, human trafficking networks, and the promotion of mass abortion. In these horrific punch-and-judy show wars (the economics of destruction) both sides are assured funding, our military-industrial corporations make countless billions from sales of weapons, military technology and equipment; and our mega-corporations secure huge post-war contracts for rebuilding infrastructure.

16.3 means we want you to obey our laws, even though you did not write them.

16.4 “significantly reduce illicit financial and arms flows” means except for our corporate ‘legitimate’ military industrial complex that supplies arms to our member governments, especially the US, Israel, Russia, China, U.K., France, Germany, and the G20, which we own and control. 

16.8 means we the globalists want all developing countries (that is poorer countries whose people are particularly burdened by debt and whose resources are exploited by corporate globalisation) to be subject to and ruled by our institutions of global governance i.e., the unelected UN, the WHO, the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, etc. 

16.9 means we the globalists want everyone registered so we know where you are and can tax you. This is all a rationale for digital IDs. Note that in a UN Conference in 2016, Bill Gates was able to introduce into the 16th SDG sub-targets his rationale to introduce digital IDs, according to some sources, most likely injected via vaccines, with trials conducted in the third world, see Endnote . Remember that we “the globalists” think we own you, and that you “the common people” are no more than government collateral on loans your government received from our international private banking cartel – money that we never had in the first place – that we created out of thin air via our debt-money system. 

Goal 17: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development 

17.1 Strengthen domestic resource mobilization, including through international support to developing countries, to improve domestic capacity for tax and other revenue collection.

17.4 Assist developing countries in attaining long-term debt sustainability through coordinated policies aimed at fostering debt financing, debt relief and debt restructuring, as appropriate, and address the external debt of highly indebted poor countries to reduce debt distress.

17.7 Promote the development, transfer, dissemination and diffusion of environmentally sound technologies to developing countries on favourable terms, including on concessional and preferential terms, as mutually agreed.

17.9 Enhance international support for implementing effective and targeted capacity-building in developing countries to support national plans to implement all the Sustainable Development Goals…

17.10 Promote a universal, rules-based, open, non-discriminatory and equitable multilateral trading systems under the World Trade Organisation…

17.17 Encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships.

17.18 By 2020, enhance capacity-building support to developing countries…  to increase significantly the availability of high-quality, timely and reliable data disaggregated by income, gender, age, race, ethnicity, migratory status, disability, geographic location…

Translation: Remove the ability of people worldwide to decide how to live their own lives, and promote global authority, mega-corporate influence, and bloated unelected bureaucracy of international institutions, including the UN, the World Economic Forum, and public-private (corporate) partnerships.

17.1. means we the globalists want to collect more tax from everyone.

17.4 means as long as the world is in vast debt we don’t really care – even if the debt is restructured it doesn’t matter. We don’t care just as long as developing countries remain in debt to the mega-banks and financial institutions of our private banking cartel and continue to flail on our hook. The one thing we will never do is cancel debt – if we ever do so it will be to introduce conditionalities of control. If we introduce a one world digital currency and cancel your national debt you will have to give up ownership of assets, just as is stated in our marketing document on our World Economic Forum website…

“Welcome to 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better”.

17.7 means we the globalists want developing countries hooked on contracts and debts to pay for our corporate technologies that will leave them dependent on the globalised corporate system that we control. Never let countries, regions or communities develop real local self-sufficiency, locally suitable technologies, or mid-level intermediate technologies that are suited to their local needs and can be sustained long term from their local resources, local manpower, local skills and local knowledge.

17.9 means let us put international pressure on these poorer countries so that they will accept and implement our deceptive plans.

17.10 means the WTO rules world trade.  We the globalists run the WTO and we make up the trading rules. We say its equitable, but you have to obey our trading rules, which are economic tricks based on the monetary system that we own and control.

17.17 means we the globalists must ensure corporate (private) influence in politics is effective so that we can control the levers of the political system. Civil society has little money in comparison to the mega-corporations of the world, thus the corporate and financial institutions will have the most influence.

17.18 means in our system of globalisation we want to know everything about everyone so that we can utilise or manipulate the masses, as we see fit – just as a farmer keeps registration charts for each cow on his farm, we have a chart on you too. 

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Mark Gerard Keenan, is a former scientist at the UK Government Dept. of Energy and Climate Change, and at the United Nations Environment Division. He is author of the following books:

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Major Shift About Whole Milk — Now a Health Food?

December 21st, 2023 by Dr. Joseph Mercola

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For decades, Americans have been told to avoid whole milk due to its saturated fat content, which has been falsely accused of clogging arteries and causing heart disease. This guidance goes back to the first edition of the dietary guidelines, issued in 1980, and most studies performed since then have exonerated full-fat whole milk

Most studies have found that dairy products are associated with lower risks of high blood pressure, heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, regardless of fat content. And even though full-fat dairy products have higher calorie content, they don’t appear to contribute to weight gain either

A 2018 Lancet study found that, compared to those who did not consume dairy (milk, yogurt and cheese), those who consumed two or more servings per day were 17% less likely to die from any cause, 23% less likely to die from cardiovascular disease, and 34% less likely to die from a stroke

Another large-scale trial found those with the highest levels of milk fats in their diet had a 29% lower incidence of Type 2 diabetes

The most ideal choices are products made from raw, unpasteurized milk, as the pasteurization process destroys many valuable nutrients. Pasteurization also destroys lactase, the enzyme responsible for the breakdown of lactose. Many people with lactose intolerance have no problem drinking raw milk, because it has lactase in it

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For decades, Americans have been told to avoid whole milk due to its saturated fat content, which has been falsely accused of clogging arteries and causing heart disease. To this day, the U.S. dietary guidelines and health authorities like the American Heart Association and the World Health Organization recommend drinking low-fat or skim milk for this reason.

However, as Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at Tufts University, recently told New York Times reporter Alice Callahan,1 this guidance goes back to the first edition of the dietary guidelines, issued in 1980, and most studies performed since then have exonerated full-fat whole milk.

In fact, most studies have found that dairy products are associated with lower risks of high blood pressure, heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, regardless of fat content. What’s more, even though full-fat dairy products have higher calorie content, they don’t appear to contribute to weight gain, either.

Dairy Protects Heart Health

For example, a 2018 Lancet study,2 which followed 136,384 adults across five continents for nine years, found that, compared to those who did not consume dairy (milk, yogurt and cheese), those who consumed two or more servings per day were:

  • 17% less likely to die from any cause
  • 22% less likely to die from cardiovascular disease
  • 34% less likely to die from a stroke

Milk and yogurt, in particular, were associated with a lower risk of mortality and/or major cardiovascular events, and there was no discernible difference between low-fat and high-fat products. Cheese and butter intake were not significantly associated with these outcomes. Serving sizes were as follows:

  • Milk and yogurt — 1 cup or 244 grams
  • Cheese — one slice or 15 grams
  • Butter — 1 teaspoon or 5 grams

There’s More to Milk Than Milk Fat

As noted in the Lancet paper:3

“… dietary guidelines recommend minimizing consumption of whole-fat dairy products for cardiovascular disease prevention …

However, dairy products and dairy fat also contain potentially beneficial compounds — including specific amino acids, medium-chain and odd-chain saturated fats, milk fat globule phospholipids, unsaturated and branched-chain fats … vitamin K1 and K2, and calcium — and can contain probiotics, many of which also affect health outcomes.

Therefore, the net effect of dairy intake on health outcomes might not be reliably informed solely from its effect on a single risk marker (i.e., LDL cholesterol) or fatty acids.”

The authors also review the results from previous meta-analyses,4 none of which were able to discern a significant problem with dairy. For example, one meta-analysis of cohort studies found higher milk intake lowered the risk of high blood pressure while having “a neutral effect on cardiovascular disease.”

The DASH trial also found a link between milk consumption and reduced blood pressure. Other meta-analyses have punctured the LDL argument as well. One such analysis, which included 20 randomized trials, found a “non-significant” increase in LDL cholesterol among those who consumed either low-fat or high-fat dairy products. Ditto for cheese.

One potential reason for this is because milk fat is packaged in globule phospholipids, which help bind cholesterol in your digestive tract.5,6

Another large-scale trial,7 also published in 2018, which pooled results from 16 cohorts from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Taiwan, involving 63,682 individuals with a follow-up of nine years, found those with the highest levels of milk fats (odd-chain fatty acids 15:0 and 17:0, and trans-palmitoleic acid specifically) had a 29% lower incidence of Type 2 diabetes.

No Need to Avoid Full-Fat Dairy

According to The New York Times,8 an independent panel of nutrition experts is currently reviewing the evidence9 on how saturated fat consumption affects your cardiovascular disease risk. Their findings may eventually result in updated dietary guidelines, with regard to dairy.

In the meantime, Penny Kris-Etherton, Professor Emeritus of nutritional sciences at Pennsylvania State University, recommends three servings of dairy per day as part of a balanced diet, and “Based on the most recent dairy fat data … it’s probably OK if one or two of those servings are whole-fat milk, yogurt or cheese.”10

Curiously, Kris-Etherton still recommends plant-based oils like canola oil, soybean oil and margarine instead of butter, which is flat-out horrible advice, as these oils are loaded with mitochondrial-destroying linoleic acid (LA), which appears to be one of the primary drivers of chronic disease. To learn more about this, see my previous report, “Linoleic Acid — The Most Destructive Ingredient in Your Diet.”

Raw Milk Is Your Best Option

When it comes to dairy products, whether we’re talking about milk, yogurt, cheese or butter, the most ideal choices are products made from raw, unpasteurized milk, as the pasteurization process destroys many valuable nutrients. Even organic grass fed dairy is not identical to raw dairy.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to this day claims that “All raw milk is risky,”11 simply because it hasn’t been pasteurized. According to the CDC:12

“The use of good hygiene practices on the farm can reduce but cannot eliminate the chance of milk getting contaminated. Healthy animals can carry germs that make people sick. Also, testing isn’t a guarantee that raw milk is free from harmful germs. Even if testing one batch of a farm’s raw milk does not find harmful germs, the next batch can contain them.

Plus, tests do not always detect low levels of contamination. Germs that go undetected in raw milk can multiply between the time the milk is tested and people drinking it.”

While it’s true that raw milk CAN be contaminated, the reality is that it rarely ever is. As explained in the video above, raw milk contains components that protect against disease-causing pathogens.

Research13 by Dr. Ted Beals shows you are actually 35,000 times more likely to get sick from other foods than you are from raw dairy. This includes pasteurized dairy, which has been linked to 73 deaths, whereas raw milk has not been linked to a single death so far.14

The key to healthy raw milk is making sure it’s from organically raised grass-fed cows. Never ever drink raw milk obtained from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

Doing so could indeed be life threatening, as CAFOs are hotbeds for pathogens of all kinds. In fact, the propensity for pathogens to thrive in CAFOs is one of the reasons the milk must be pasteurized in the first place. It’s simply not safe to drink otherwise. Of course, pasteurization also extends shelf life, which is a convenience, but it comes at a cost to health.

Iowa Has Legalized Raw Milk Sales

The video above is from 2014 and, sadly, not much has changed since then, at least not on the federal level. Some states, however, have gotten wiser about raw milk. Iowa, for example, signed Senate File 315 into law earlier in 2023, which allows farmers to sell raw milk directly to consumers in the state. The law came into effect July 1, 2023.

This, despite heavy lobbying AGAINST the bill by the Iowa State Dairy Association, the Iowa Dairy Foods Association and the Iowa Public Health Association.

The reason they’re so against legalizing the sale of raw milk is because by preventing farmers from selling directly to consumers, processors can (and do) price fix the market. As a result, they can push small, family dairy farms out of business, leaving industrialized, CAFO dairy farms to dominate.

Raw Milk Can Bring Farmers Out of Poverty

In its Campaign for Real Milk, the Weston A. Price Foundation describes the stark difference in income for farmers selling conventional, pasteurized milk compared to those selling raw milk, and once you understand the economics of the situation, it’s easy to see why Big Dairy wants to keep raw milk under wraps.

A conventional dairy farmer may receive about $16 per hundredweight (100 pounds), which keeps him and his family in near-poverty:15

“In order to maximize his return, he has modern Holstein cows and he feeds them lots of grain. So, he may get 190 hundredweight per year from each cow, which works out to a total yearly income of about $90,000 in round numbers, most of which is eaten up with feed and vet bills.

His wife has to work to bring in some cash and obtain health insurance, and they live just above the poverty line. If they have gone into debt and the prices drop even a little bit, or their cows produce less than expected, they lose their farm.”

In contrast, a farmer selling raw, grass-fed dairy directly to consumers will have a very different outcome — one that allows him to thrive while selling a superior, healthier product to his customers:16

“He would use Guernseys, Jerseys or some other old-fashioned breed because these cows do better on grass. He would only get about 100 hundredweight per cow per year, about half as much, but if he sells the milk at $6 per gallon, he would get at least three times as much for the milk.

Actually, some farmers are getting $10 or even $15 per gallon for their raw milk, but let’s be conservative and stick to the figure of $6 per gallon. If he sells it at $6 per gallon, he makes about $73 per hundredweight.

At $73 per hundredweight, he grosses $7,300 per cow per year. With 30 cows his gross income on the milk products alone is $219,000. If he makes cheese, yogurt, kefir or butter, his gross income will be more.

But there’s more. If Mike makes butter, cream and cheese, he will have whey and skim milk as by-products, which is free food for pigs and chickens. So, in addition to milk and milk products, he can sell eggs, chicken, turkeys, pork, bacon and lard as by-products.”

As they make more money, raw milk farmers can also provide a major boost to rural economies. If 100 farms in Wisconsin could provide raw milk to 50 local families, it would lead to more than $10 million in “increased wealth and well-being” for Wisconsin residents, according to the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund.17

Raw Milk Is the Healthiest Choice

Raw milk is also far healthier for you in terms of nutrition. Beneficial components destroyed by pasteurization include:18

  • Lactoferrin, which binds to iron
  • Lactoperoxidase, which has antimicrobial properties
  • Enzymes, needed for healthy digestion
  • Prebiotics that support gut health

Raw milk also contains highly bioavailable calcium to support thyroid and adrenal health, along with higher amounts of potassium, B vitamins, choline and zinc. (Pasteurized milk actually contains about 70% less zinc than raw.) The saturated fats in raw milk also aid in the production of important hormones, including testosterone, pregnenolone, DHEA and progesterone.

Pasteurization also destroys lactase, the enzyme responsible for the breakdown of lactose into glucose and galactose (the two sugars that makes milk taste sweet). Once broken down into its two constituent parts, each sugar can then be absorbed by your bowel.19

Lactase deficiency is one of the primary reasons for lactose intolerance, as your bowel cannot absorb the undigested lactose. On a side note, lactose intolerance could be indicative of low thyroid function, as your thyroid aids in the production of lactase in your intestines.20 Many people with lactose intolerance have no problem drinking raw milk, because it has lactase in it.

How to Assess the Quality of Raw Milk

When choosing raw milk, remember that quality matters. Raw milk produced by CAFOs, which is intended for pasteurization, is typically not safe for consumption as the cows live in filthy conditions and are typically in poor health. CAFO raw milk often tests positive for pathogens and must be pasteurized to kill the pathogenic bacteria before it’s safe to drink.

Raw milk produced by small, grass fed dairies, which is intended to be consumed in its fresh state, is another animal entirely. Even so, the Raw Milk Institute has created standards to look for when choosing raw milk to ensure its quality and safety. The common standards for raw milk farmers include:21

To locate a farmer selling raw milk near you, check out the Campaign for Real Milk’s raw milk finder page.

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Notes

1, 6, 8, 10 New York Times December 8, 2023 (Archived)

2, 3 The Lancet November 24, 2018; 392(10161): 2288-2297, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31812-9 (Archived)

4 The Lancet November 24, 2018; 392(10161): 2288-2297, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31812-9, Page 2

5 Gut March 2020; 69(3): 487-501

7 PLOS Medicine October 10, 2018, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1002670

9 Dietary Guidelines Work Under Way

11, 12 CDC Raw Milk

13 Real Milk March 16, 2021

14 Real Milk, See Raw Milk Is Safe illustration

15, 16 A Campaign for Real Milk, The Economics of Raw Milk

17 FarmtoConsumer.org Economic Impact on Wisconsin From the Sales of Raw Milk

18, 20 Twitter George Ferman June 3, 2023 Twitter thread

19 NIH Causes and Diagnoses of Lactose Intolerance

21 Raw Milk Institute, Common Standards

Featured image is from Mercola

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One of the pillars of American foreign policy is to “back the crazies”, as the reputable American economist Michael Hudson once said. Whether it’s a radicalized Islamist, Nazi or any other extremist ideology, the US-led political West will fully embrace it and (ab)use it for geopolitical purposes.

The latest such project is certainly the Neo-Nazi junta that highjacked the unfortunate nation of Ukraine nearly a decade ago. The radicalized institutions that the United States and the European Union created there have no shortage of “crazies” that Michael Hudson described. Starting from the Kiev regime frontman Volodymyr Zelensky to his many lieutenants, advisers, lackeys, etc, the vast majority of them are not the people you would entrust with running an ice cream van, let alone an entire country. And yet here we are.

It’s precisely these people that have escalated the situation to the point where Russia was forced to intervene nearly two years ago. Since then, these already radical people have pushed their extremism to even crazier (no pun intended) levels. And that wouldn’t be such a big problem if they weren’t in power and making decisions about sending hundreds of thousands of regular Ukrainians to certain death or life-altering injuries.

One of such individuals is the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov. One of Zelensky’s closest associates, Danilov has been extremely hawkish since day one and has openly insisted on launching as many sabotage and terrorist attacks as possible, regardless of whether it was against the Russian military or civilians, including in former Ukrainian territories that joined Russia.

Danilov’s unfounded triumphalism continued for well over a year and started dying down only after the initial results of the much-touted counteroffensive.

As we all know now, the situation only worsened for the Neo-Nazi junta, so people like Danilov soon completely changed their tune. There were no more threats of escalating attacks within Russia. Now, there’s a never-ending blame game in a futile attempt to find adequate scapegoats. It was very easy for everyone in the Kiev regime to appropriate tactical military successes, even though they had very little to do with them. But when the tables turn, nobody wants to take any responsibility and they even try to shift blame in an attempt to turn attention away from themselves. This is precisely what Danilov did in a recent interview with the UK’s state-run BBC, published on December 11.

Obviously, by admitting that the Kiev regime forces failed, Danilov only stated the obvious, as experts InfoBRICS interviewed predicted days before the pompously announced counteroffensive started. Back in May, he sounded much more confident, calling the counteroffensive a “historic opportunity”. Reflecting on those words now, he said:

“In May, every citizen in our country wanted the war to end quickly. There were hopes, but they didn’t come true.”

Danilov was forced to acknowledge that the Neo-Nazi junta was over-optimistic, saying that “people sometimes make mistakes” and that “you cannot be an A-grader all your life”. Obviously, it’s very easy for him to say something like that, as he wasn’t the one sent to certain death, but hundreds of thousands of regular Ukrainians.

Worse yet, Danilov made sure his own son was safe abroad well before the counteroffensive. On the other hand, he had no qualms about sending other people’s sons (and daughters, including pregnant ones) to die a pointless death in a conflict they had no chance of winning. Danilov’s personal responsibility for the escalation of the Ukrainian conflict cannot be overstated, and yet, his response after everything is that “people sometimes make mistakes”. Tony Blair’s “expression of sorrow” for Iraq immediately comes to mind.

Interestingly, while he was full of praise for NATO equipment and tactics before, this time, Danilov said that “old textbooks for war – including NATO ones – should be sent back to the archives” and also admitted that “the current situation on the frontline is very difficult”. This isn’t the first time that the Kiev regime and its NATO overlords are making such admissions. Danilov then refused to say when could a new counteroffensive be launched, tacitly admitting that there are simply no forces for such an operation. He also said that “he was extremely confident that US defense aid would be approved, even if he wouldn’t put a figure on what Ukraine might hope to get” and added that “if it happens so that we receive a gift before Christmas, we will be happy with that”. Danilov insisted that “if it will happen a bit later, then it shouldn’t be made into a tragedy”.

However, when asked whether the Neo-Nazi junta would lose the war if US “aid” stopped, he refused to entertain the possibility, claiming that the “truth is on our side” and then proceeding to state every myth and trope used by the mainstream propaganda machine. Danilov also claimed that reports of hostility between Zelensky and top general Valeriy Zaluzhny were “false”, despite the fact that both have openly blamed each other for the failures of their military.

Interestingly, despite attempts to keep whatever’s left of the Kiev regime’s morale by reiterating all sorts of debunked propaganda nonsense, Danilov low-key blamed the political West for the current situation. Obviously, this was an attempt to rile up his NATO overlords to engage more. However, with the escalating political crisis in the US, this is highly unlikely, which explains Danilov’s lack of triumphant and threatening tone.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

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The Colorado Supreme Court has disqualified Donald Trump from Colorado’s 2024 presidential election ballot, and in a 4-3 ruling has effectively blocked Trump from seeking the presidency because of his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, citing the post-Civil War-era 14th Amendment to the US Constitution that bans insurrectionists from holding public office. The Colorado case was the first constitutional challenge to Trump’s 2024 run to go through a full trial.

Voters, represented by the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, had argued he should be barred from the ballot for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

Colorado’s highest court – whose seven-member bench was entirely appointed by Democratic governors – overturned a ruling from a district court judge who found that Trump incited an insurrection for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but said he could not be barred from the ballot because it was unclear that the provision was intended to cover the presidency.

In its ruling, the Democrat-controlled court found that Trump engaged in insurrection by inflaming his supporters with false claims of election fraud and directing them to the Capitol. The state justices determined that the office of the president is covered under the insurrection clause, which specifically lists those who previously took oaths to support the Constitution as “a member of Congress,” “officer of the United States,” “member of any State legislature” or an “executive or judicial officer of any State.” The district court had previously ruled that the office of the president was not covered under the clause. 

The majority opinion was unsigned but joined by four of the seven justices.

Those who voted for fascism are the following four Democrat-appointed judges:

Justice Monica M. Márquez

Justice William W. Hood, III

Justice Richard L. Gabriel

Justice Melissa Hart

Three justices dissented from Tuesday’s decision: Chief Justice Brian Boatright, Carlos Samour and Justice Maria Berkenkotter. Each wrote separate dissents taking issue with how the plaintiffs brought their 14th Amendment lawsuit using a provision of Colorado election law.

Berkenkotter wrote that “the majority construes the court’s authority too broadly.”

“The questions presented here simply reach a magnitude of complexity not contemplated by the Colorado General Assembly for its election code enforcement statute,” wrote Boatright. “The proceedings below ran counter to the letter and spirit of the statutory timeframe because the Electors’ claim overwhelmed the process.”

Samour similarly wrote that Colorado’s election law provides no “engine” for such a lawsuit, also noting that no federal legislation existed to enforce the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause.

“Even if we are convinced that a candidate committed horrible acts in the past—dare I say, engaged in insurrection—there must be procedural due process before we can declare that individual disqualified from holding public office. Procedural due process is one of the aspects of America’s democracy that sets this country apart,” Samour wrote.

Ironically, all this ruling will do is further cement Trump’s status as leading presidential candidate as it not only affirms his status as target #1 of the Biden Department of Justice and liberal court system, but will test the Conservative-dominated Supreme Court appeal over its interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which according to many including a Colorado District court,  does not apply to the Presidency.

Indeed, as Vivek Ramaswami observed, the 14th Amendment was part of the “Reconstruction Amendments” that were ratified following the Civil War. “It was passed to prohibit former Confederate military and political leaders from holding high federal or state office. These men had clearly taken part in a rebellion against the United States: the Civil War. That makes it all the more absurd that a left-wing group in Colorado is asking a federal court to disqualify the 45th President on the same grounds, equating his speech to rebellion against the United States.”

And there’s another legal problem: Trump is not a former “officer of the United States,” as that term is used in the Constitution, meaning Section 3 does not apply. As the Supreme Court explained in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (2010), an “officer of the United States” is someone appointed by the President to aid him in his duties under Article II, Section 2. The term does not apply to elected officials, and certainly not to the President himself.

The Framers of the 14th Amendment would be appalled to see this narrow provision—intended to bar former U.S. officials who switched to the Confederacy from seeking public office—being weaponized by a sitting President and his political allies to prevent a former President from seeking reelection. Our country is becoming unrecognizable to our Founding Fathers.

The court put its ruling on hold until Jan. 4, so Trump can first seek review from the Supreme Court, which he will. Until then, Trump’s name automatically remains on the ballot until the justices resolve the appeal.

“We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” wrote the court’s majority. “We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”

Naturally, Trump’s campaign immediately denounced the ruling.

“Unsurprisingly, the all-Democrat appointed Colorado Supreme Court has ruled against President Trump, supporting a Soros-funded, left-wing group’s scheme to interfere in an election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden by removing President Trump’s name from the ballot and eliminating the rights of Colorado voters to vote for the candidate of their choice,” a campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, said.

“We have full confidence that the U.S. Supreme Court will quickly rule in our favor and finally put an end to these un-American lawsuits.”

Constitutional law scholar Jonathan Turley, who previously said the case has no solid legal basis, also responded to the decision:

“My first impression remains that same. The court is dead wrong in my view… …It is striking that the court relies on Schenck v. U.S., where the Court upheld the denial of core free speech rights of a socialist opposing a war. The opinion of the Colorado Supreme Court is so sweeping that it would allow for tit-for-tat removals of candidates from ballots.”

Others was just as harsh in their assessment, with many agreeing that this witch hunt will only boost Trump. Some, such as presidential candidate Vivek Ramswami, pledged to withdraw from the Colorado primary unless Trump is reapproved, and urged all other Republican candidates to do the same.

Finally, here is Matt Taibbi’s kneejerk reaction:

By now most readers will have heard that Donald Trump was disqualified from the ballot in the state of Colorado, by the Colorado State Supreme Court, for what amounts to a criminal offense neither proven nor charged. Fifth Amendment, Schmifth Amendment, apparently.

This is a major escalation of the lawfare phenomenon that’s zoomed from simmer to boil in the seven short years since Trump was first elected in 2016. The glee of #Resistance dolts like Robert Reich and Dean Obeidallah at this decision shows that this was a move dreamed up at the very center of the bubble-within-a-bubble-within-a-bubble that is the blob of the modern Democratic Party. Racket readers, I had a piece planned for later on a quasi-related subject, but I’ll try to get it out in the day or so now.

What a crazy effing country this is…

Here is the Colorado Supreme Court Decision in its entirety.

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Featured image: Donald Trump on the campaign trail in March 2016. Credit:Windover Way Photography

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Dec. 14, 2023 – Collierville, TN – Haley Freeman is a young mother and a dedicated Pediatric Nurse and Pediatric Nurse Practitioner. Her husband Billy Freeman is a Firefighter and Paramedic. Both were mandated COVID-19 mRNA Vaccination to keep their jobs. Haley is 4 months pregnant with her second child and developed a large mass in her neck and chest – she was diagnosed with Stage 2 Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Most certainly Turbo Cancer.

Tragically, many young women were forced to take COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines which cause Turbo Cancer and Lymphoma is the most common.

Dec. 1, 2023 – Lucy Richmond was 12 weeks pregnant when she was diagnosed with AML Leukemia. She had a medical termination of pregnancy at 13 weeks.

Nov. 12, 2023 – Appleton, WI – Kendra Lake was diagnosed with Stage 2 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in Oct. 2022 right after having her daughter in July.

Sep. 18, 2023 – Mission, TX – Josephine Ponce de Leon was diagnosed with Leukemia while 33 weeks pregnant.

Aug. 23, 2023 – West Des Moines, IA – Lindsay McDonald had severe itching during pregnancy. Just after giving birth to her daughter she was diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma.

Aug. 1, 2023 – Crystal Lake, IL – 31 year old Sarah Johnson is 35 weeks pregnant. At 33 weeks of pregnancy she was diagnosed with Stage 3 Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma.

July 30, 2023 – Airdrie, AB – Brooke Blackwell-Trautvetter (Kajdy) was admitted to hospital while 20 weeks pregnant where she was diagnosed with Stage 4 B-cell Lymphoma. She is only 22 years old.

July 21, 2023 – Spearville, KS – Destiny Barnett, a teacher was diagnosed with Stage 3 Lymphoma that spread to the spleen 3 months after giving birth.

Image

May 31, 2023 – Lutz, FL – Kristen Merryman was diagnosed with B-Cell Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma while pregnant in Jan. 2023.

May 6, 2023 – Elm Creek, NE – Lauren Schnacker was first diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma in 2021 when she was 8 months pregnant with her 1st daughter. By March 2022 she was cancer free. She was pregnant again in Oct. 2022 and her Lymphoma returned again during that pregnancy in Jan. 2023.

May 2, 2023 – Montevallo, AL – 22 year old Mallory Davis was diagnosed with Stage 4 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma while 8 months pregnant and she was induced at 37 weeks on May 2, 2023.

March 27, 2023 – Author Mary Ann Bowes (who has 2 mystery novels on Amazon) – her 35 year old niece, Dani, was just diagnosed with Lymphoma while pregnant.

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.

Featured image is from COVID Intel


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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***

Israel’s settler colonial project perpetuates the cycle of violence against the indigenous inhabitants of historic Palestine. Palestinians have been forced to speak back in the language Israel speaks.

The evil Israel does is the evil Israel gets, read by Eunice Wong. Click here to listen to the podcast.

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I knew Dr. Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, the co-founder of Hamas, along with Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Yassin. Al-Rantisi’s family were expelled to the Gaza Strip by Zionist militias from historic Palestine during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He did not fit the demonized image of a Hamas leader. He was a soft spoken, articulate and highly educated pediatrician who had graduated first in his class at Egypt’s Alexandria University. 

As a nine-year-old boy, he witnessed executions in Khan Younis of 275 Palestinian men and boys, including his uncle, when Israel briefly occupied the Gaza Strip in 1956, the subject of Joe Sacco’s magisterial book Footnotes in Gaza. Scores of Palestinians were also executed by Israeli soldiers in the neighboring town of Rafah, where tens of thousands Palestinians are currently being forced to flee now that Khan Younis has come under attack.

“I still remember the wailing and the tears of my father over his brother,” al-Rantisi told Sacco and me when we visited him at his home. “I couldn’t sleep for many months after that…It left a wound in my heart that can never heal. I’m telling you a story and I’m almost crying. This sort of action can never be forgotten…[T]hey planted hatred in our hearts.”

He knew he could never trust the Israelis. He knew that the goal of the Zionist state was the occupation of all of historic Palestine – Israel seized Gaza and the West Bank in 1967 along with Syria’s Golan Heights and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula – and the eternal subjugation or extermination of the Palestinian people. He knew he would avenge the killings.

Al-Rantisi and Yassin were assassinated in 2004 by Israel. Al-Rantisi’s widow, Jamila Abdallah Taha al-Shanti, had a doctorate in English and taught at the Islamic University in Gaza. The couple had six children, one of whom was killed along with his father. The family’s home was bombed and destroyed during the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza known as Operation Protective Edge. Jamila was killed by Israel on Oct. 19 of this year.

Israel’s genocide in Gaza is rearing a new generation of enraged, traumatized and dispossessed Palestinians who have lost family members, friends, homes, communities and any hope of living ordinary lives. They, too, will seek retribution. Their small acts of terrorism will counter Israel’s ongoing state terror. They will hate as they have been hated. This lust for vengeance is universal. After World War Two, a clandestine unit of Jews who served in the Jewish Brigade of the British Army, called “Gmul,” – Hebrew for “Recompense” – hunted down former Nazis and executed them.

“I and the public know/What all schoolchildren learn,” W.H. Auden wrote. “Those to whom evil is done/Do evil in return.”

Chaim Engel, who took part in the uprising at the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp in Poland, described how, armed with a knife, he attacked a guard in the camp.

“It’s not a decision,” Engel said.

“You just react, instinctively you react to that, and I figured, ‘Let us to do, and go and do it.’ And I went. I went with the man in the office, and we killed this German. With every jab, I said, ‘That is for my father, for my mother, for all these people, all the Jews you killed.’”

What Engel did to the Nazi guard was no less savage than what Hamas fighters did to Israelis on Oct. 7, after escaping their own prison. Taken out of context, it is inexplicable. But set against the backdrop of the extermination camp, or the 17 years trapped in Gaza’s concentration camp, it makes sense. This is not to excuse it. To understand is not to condone. But we must understand if this cycle of violence is to be stopped. No one is immune to the thirst for vengeance. Israel and the U.S. are foolishly orchestrating yet another chapter in this nightmare.

J. Glenn Gray, a combat officer in World War Two, wrote about the peculiar nature of vengeance in “The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle:”

When the soldier has lost a comrade to this enemy or possibly had his family destroyed by them through bombings or through political atrocities, so frequently the case in World War II, his anger and resentment deepen into hatred. Then the war for him takes on the character of a vendetta. Until he has himself destroyed as many of the enemy as possible, his lust for vengeance can hardly be appeased. I have known soldiers who were avid to exterminate every last one of the enemy, so fierce was their hatred. Such soldiers took great delight in hearing or reading of mass destruction through bombings. Anyone who has known or been a soldier of this kind is aware of how hatred penetrates every fiber of his being. His reason for living is to seek revenge; not an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but a tenfold retaliation.

To the brutalized, numb with trauma, convulsed by rage, those who relentlessly attack and humiliate them are not human beings. They are representations of evil. The lust for vengeance, for tenfold retaliation, spawns rivers of blood. 

The Palestinian attacks of Oct. 7, which left some 1,200 Israelis dead, feeds this lust within Israel, just as Israel’s obliteration of Gaza feeds this lust among Palestinians. Israel’s blue and white national flag with the Star of David adorns homes and cars. Crowds gather to support familieswhose members are among the hostages in Gaza. Israelis hand out food at road junctions to soldiers headed to fight in Gaza. Banners with slogans such as “Israel at war” and “Together we will win” punctuate television broadcasts and media sites. There is little discussion in Israeli media of the slaughter in Gaza or the suffering of Palestinians – 1.7 million of whom have been driven from their homes – but a constant repetition of the stories of suffering, death and heroism that took place on the Oct. 7 attack. Only our victims matter. 

“Few of us ever know how far fear and violence can transform us into creatures at bay, ready with tooth and claw,” Gray wrote. “If the war taught me anything at all, it convinced me that people are not what they seem or even think themselves to be.”

Marguerite Duras in her book “The War: A Memoir” writes of how she and other members of the French Resistance tortured a 50-year-old Frenchman accused of collaborating with the Nazis. Two men who were tortured in Montluc prison in Lyon strip the alleged informer. They beat him as the group shouts: “Bastard. Traitor. Scum.” Blood and mucus soon run from his nose. His eye is damaged. He moans, “Ow, ow, oh, oh. …” He crumples in a heap on the floor.

Duras writes that he had “become someone without anything in common with other men. And with every minute the difference grows bigger and more established.” She watches the beating passively. “The more they hit and the more he bleeds, the more it’s clear that hitting is necessary, right, just.” She goes on: “You have to strike. There will never be any justice in the world unless you – yourself are justice now. Judges, paneled courtrooms play-acting, not justice.” She notes,“Every blow rings out in the silent room. They’re hitting at all the traitors, at the women who left, at all those who didn’t like what they saw from behind the shutters.” 

Israel has abused, humiliated, impoverished and wantonly killed Palestinians, provoking inevitable counter violence. It is the engine behind a century of bloodshed. The genocide in Gaza outdoes even the worst excesses of the Nakba, or catastrophe, which saw 750,000 Palestinians driven from their land in 1948 and 8,000 to 15,000 murdered in massacres by Zionist terrorist militias such as Irgun and Lehi. 

The Palestinian resistance has little more than small arms and rocket-propelled grenades to battle against one of the best equipped and most technologically advanced militaries on the planet, the world’s 4th strongest military, after the U.S., Russia and China.

Palestinian fighters, facing these overwhelming odds, have become demigods with huge popular followings not only among Palestinians, but throughout the Muslim world. Israel may be able to hunt down and kill Hamas’s second-in-command leader Yahya Sinwar, but if they do, he will become the Middle East’s version of Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Resistance movements are built on the blood of martyrs. Israel ensures a continual supply.

The decision by the U.S.to defend, fund and participate in Israel’s carpet bombing, slaughter and ethnic cleansing in Gaza is unconscionable. Its backing for the genocide has destroyed what remained of its credibility in the Middle East, already in tatters from two decades of wars, as well as most of the rest of the world. It has forfeited its right to act as a mediator; that role will be taken by China or Russia. Its refusal to condemn Israeli aggression and war crimes exposes its hypocrisy about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It flirts with the possibility of a regional conflagration. The peace process, a sham for decades, is irrecoverable. The only language left is the language of death. It is how Israel speaks to the Palestinians. It is how the Palestinians are forced to speak back.

The Biden administration has little to gain from the leveling and depopulation of Gaza, indeed it is alienating huge segments of the Democratic Party, especially as it attacks protestors calling for a ceasefire as “pro-terrorist.” Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer led chants of “We stand with Israel” and “No ceasefire” at a pro-Israel rally on Nov. 4 in Washington D.C., despite a Reuters/Ipsos survey indicating 68 percent of respondents believed that Israel should implement a ceasefire and negotiate an end to the war. That number rises to 77 percent among Democrats. Biden has a dismal approval rating of 37 percent

On Friday, the United Nations Security Council voted 13-1 for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and unconditional release of all hostages. The U.S. voted against the resolution. The U.K. abstained. The draft resolution was not adopted due to the U.S. veto. 

Biden’s real base is not disenchanted voters but the billionaire class, corporations, such as the weapons industry, which is making huge profits from the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, and groups such as the Israel lobby. They determine policy, even if it means Biden’s defeat in the next presidential election. If Biden loses, the oligarchs get Donald Trump, who serves their interests as doggedly as Biden. 

The wars do not end. The suffering continues. The Palestinians die in the tens of thousands. This is by design.

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Featured image: Universal Misery – by Mr. Fish via The Chris Hedges Report

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Chinese President Xi Jinping bluntly told President Joe Biden during their recent summit in San Francisco that Beijing will reunify Taiwan with mainland China but that the timing has not yet been decided, according to three current and former U.S. officials.

An NBC News report said:

Xi told Biden in a group meeting attended by a dozen American and Chinese officials that China’s preference is to take Taiwan peacefully, not by force, the officials said.

The Chinese leader also referenced public predictions by U.S. military leaders who say that Xi plans to take Taiwan in 2025 or 2027, telling Biden that they were wrong because he has not set a time frame, according to the two current and one former official briefed on the meeting.

Chinese officials also asked in advance of the summit that Biden make a public statement after the meeting saying that the U.S. supports China’s goal of peaceful unification with Taiwan and does not support Taiwanese independence, they said. The White House rejected the Chinese request.

A spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council declined to comment.

The revelations provide previously unreported details about a critical meeting between the two leaders that was intended to reduce tensions between their countries.

The NBC News report said:

Xi’s private warning to Biden, while not markedly different from his past public comments on reunifying Taiwan, got the attention of U.S. officials because it was delivered at a time when China’s behavior toward Taiwan is seen as increasingly aggressive and ahead of a potentially pivotal presidential election in the self-governing democratic island next month.

After the initial publication of this story, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., issued a statement calling for Republicans and Democrats to work together to deter China.

“This story as reported is beyond unnerving,” Graham said. “I will be working with Democratic and Republican Senators to do two things quickly. First, create a robust defense supplemental for Taiwan and second, draft pre-invasion sanctions from hell to impose on China if they take action to seize Taiwan.”

Officials familiar with the conversation between Biden and Xi described the Chinese leader as blunt and candid, but not confrontational.

“His language was no different than what he has always said. He is always tough on Taiwan. He has always had a tough line,” said a U.S. official with knowledge of the conversation.

Xi’s saber-rattling on Taiwan has been a top concern for Biden administration officials, who are aggressively trying to avoid a military conflict with China.

At last year’s Chinese Communist Party Congress, Xi stated publicly that China would attack Taiwan militarily if it declares independence with foreign support. The Chinese leader said the threat of force “is directed solely at interference by outside forces and the few separatists seeking” Taiwanese independence.

Xi, who has set a goal of doubling the size of the Chinese economy by 2035, also said that “we must continue to pursue economic development as our central task.” Some experts believe it is doubtful that China would attack Taiwan if it does not declare independence because a military conflict would likely prevent Beijing from reaching its economic goals.

During the summit in San Francisco, Xi expressed concerns about the candidates running for president of Taiwan in next month’s election, according to U.S. officials. Xi also noted the influence that the U.S. has on Taiwan, they said.

When Biden asked that China respect Taiwan’s electoral process, Xi responded by saying that peace is “all well and good” but that China needs to eventually move toward a resolution, one U.S. official said.

Biden’s meeting with Xi, their first in a year, took American officials months to secure after relations between Washington and Beijing reached a low point in February after the U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon. The White House hoped the meeting would ease tensions, and afterward Biden stressed the need to avoid conflict.

“We are in a competitive relationship, China and the United States, but my responsibility is to make this rational and manageable, so it does not result in conflict,” Biden said. “That is what I am all about. That is what this is about.”

CIA Director William Burns said earlier this year that U.S. intelligence shows that Xi has directed his military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.

“Now, that does not mean that he has decided to conduct an invasion in 2027, or any other year, but it is a reminder of the seriousness of his focus and his ambition,” Burns said.

Biden has said in the past that the U.S. military would defend Taiwan if China invaded, but the White House has walked back his comments.

Under its longtime “One China” policy, the U.S. recognizes Beijing as China’s sole legal government but maintains unofficial relations with Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its territory. Most of the island’s 24 million people favor maintaining the status quo, neither unifying with China nor formally declaring independence.

After the summit, Biden reiterated long-standing U.S. policy.

“We maintain an agreement that there is a ‘One China’ policy,” he said, adding, “I am not going to change that. That is not going to change.”

One Chinese official who attended the meeting, Hua Chunying, posted afterward on X that Xi had told Biden and other U.S. officials that the

“Taiwan question remains the most important and most sensitive issue in China-U.S. relations.” Hua added that the U.S. should “support China’s peaceful reunification” and that “China will realize reunification, and this is unstoppable.”

Taiwan’s Ability to Defend Against China Invasion Thrown Into Question

A Bloomberg report said:

When former U.S. National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien visited Taipei earlier this year, he suggested that one million AK47-wielding Taiwanese “around every corner” and “in every apartment block” would be an effective deterrent to any Chinese invasion plans.

It did not go down well.

“Arming citizens is not the answer,” ran the headline in the Taipei Times, over an op-ed responding to his proposal to make the assault rifle widely available in a territory with one of the world’s lowest crime rates. “Ludicrous and unimaginable” was former President Ma Ying-jeou’s verdict, condemning what he called the island’s “weaponization” and a “tendency to turn Taiwan into a second Ukraine.”

The outcry over a remark by a straight-talking former U.S. official points to the challenge of preparing Taiwanese society for the worst-case scenario with China. For all the support given by Washington, the reality is that when it comes to both civil and military defense, the democratically governed island still has a lot to do.

“Taiwan is far from ready,” former Chief of the General Staff Lee Hsi-min said in an interview, citing “lots of improvements” that are needed in areas from weapons acquisition to civilian training. Deterrence is key, and equipment can of course help, he said, “but the most important thing is whether you have the will to defend yourself.”

Conversations with US-based security analysts and former administration officials, as well as with members of the government in Taipei, cast doubt on Taiwan’s ability to deter, let alone resist China — with some even questioning the will to do so.

The U.S. sees important progress being made by the government in Taipei, “but the administration is also concerned that the threat facing Taiwan is significant and growing, and as a result more is needed to ensure Taiwan is keeping pace with that threat,” said Jennifer Welch, chief geo-economics analyst with Bloomberg Economics, who served as director for China and Taiwan on the U.S. National Security Council until this year.

Those concerns have been fanned by the war in Ukraine, and are all the more acute going into January Presidential elections that are likely to determine the degree of strains with China across the Strait of Taiwan. Polls show a lead for Vice President Lai Ching-te, who wants to strengthen ties with Washington, suggesting no easing of tensions in sight.

The wars in Ukraine and in Gaza show that preparations need to go beyond the military field to areas including critical infrastructure security, civil resilience, cybersecurity, and continuity of operations and government, said Welch. “This is a massive undertaking that naturally requires significant time and resources,” she said.

Among the issues officials and analysts cite are the size of Taiwan’s military, which has shrunk in recent years, with the number of voluntary recruits dropping to a four-year low. A 12.5% increase in defense spending this year on last has only amplified questions over the suitability of the kit being purchased. And the state of unreadiness is compounded by a backlog in U.S. arms sales to Taiwan including F-16 fighter jets and Abrams M-1 tanks that the Cato Institute estimates at more than $19 billion.

“I do not think Taiwan is in very good shape,” said Kevin McCauley, former senior China analyst for the U.S. Army National Ground Intelligence Center. “They are not making the right modernization decisions,” from buying heavy M-1 tanks and large ships “that would not survive” to poor training. “They are talking about how they will improve these things,” he said. “But I do not see it.”

Oriana Skylar Mastro, a Center Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, said that if it came to war with China, “Taiwan 200% will fall.”

“It is an island. They run out of food and gas in 40 days,” she said. “A blockade is risky because it gives Taiwan time for the U.S. to arrive. So the question is: can Taiwan hold off long enough to allow the U.S. to arrive?” The assessment of the U.S. government, she said, “is that they cannot hold out long.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping said during his November visit to San Francisco that China was not preparing to “fight a cold war or a hot war with anyone.” But that is done little to calm speculation over Beijing’s intentions, since it openly claims Taiwan as Chinese territory. For his part, President Joe Biden has repeatedly said that the U.S. would come to the self-governing island’s assistance if it was attacked.

U.S. Department of Defense spokesman Martin Meiners said the U.S. is focused on preventing military conflict over Taiwan “with both deterrence and diplomacy,” adding that “our entire policy is geared toward that goal.”

There is no current information to suggest a war in the Taiwan Strait is imminent, the director general of the Taiwan’s National Security Bureau, Tsai Ming-yen, said in October. But he noted that the Chinese Communist Party “has not given up its intention to invade.”

Beijing and the People’s Liberation Army have used that grey zone of uncertainty to conduct a campaign of intimidation spanning the gamut from military harassment, economic coercion and diplomatic oppression to spreading fake news, according to officials in Taipei. Most visibly, it carries out frequent incursions across the median line of the Taiwan Strait, a tacit boundary that has separated the rivals for decades, and the government has warned it expects more intimidation heading into the elections.

Maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait “will require heightened urgency, attention, and resources in the critical years ahead,” U.S. Assistant Defense Secretary Ely Ratner said in September.

Taiwan is actively discussing and exploring all possibilities with the U.S. to strengthen its defenses, whether civil, military, or infrastructure, said a senior government official in Taipei, asking not to be named discussing private contacts. Some adjustments are ongoing, the official said, citing work with Taiwan’s tech sector to produce thousands of drones by 2024.

With China’s intimidation, Taiwan’s government concludes that it cannot discount any possibility — including that an unexpected accident triggers an escalation, said the official. So the emphasis is on preparing for the worst, something Taiwan has actively been doing since 1949 and its split from Communist China.

There is discussion over whether China would attempt a full-scale invasion or rely on a blockade to choke off Taiwan economically. Both carry risks for the aggressor, but analysts say that China does not have the ships required to pull off an invasion – yet.

Taiwan meanwhile needs anti-ship missiles, air-defense systems, air and sea drones, and smart mines “to make such invasion a virtual impossibility,” says Dmitri Alperovitch, executive chairman of the Silverado Policy Accelerator think tank.

Still, the island’s mountainous terrain, rivers, and shallow waters in the Taiwan Strait make it “one of the most defendable places in the world,” said Alperovitch, author of a forthcoming book, “World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century.”

Limited stretches of coastline where invaders could establish a beachhead, the location of fish farms behind those beaches, plus the fact that few highways lead to the capital would all further impede the progress of any invading force.

The Bloomberg report said:

Walk through central Taipei of an evening and the malls are full, designer shops crowded, and teenagers with boom boxes perform K-pop dance routines in the street. There is little outward sign that this is an island at the nexus of global tensions.

Taiwan has attracted over $70 billion from returning Taiwanese businesses since 2019, while foreign investment in 2022 was the highest in almost 15 years, outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen said at an opening ceremony for a Micron Technology Inc. plant on Nov. 6. The U.S. memory chip company’s presence endorses Taiwan as a safe place to invest, she said.

Equally, the island’s relative affluence may help inure its citizens to the threat of conflict.

Polls suggest that a little more than half of respondents are willing to defend Taiwan if China attacks, meaning that “some 40% of Taiwanese people are likely to choose capitulation or rapprochement,” said Puma Shen, associate professor at National Taipei University and the co-founder of Kuma Academy, a private organization dedicated to building civil defense. For Shen, the most important step for Taiwan “is to enhance the public’s awareness of friend and foe,” he said. “Without it, all other preparations are meaningless.”

That ambiguity is reflected in Taiwan’s political landscape, with some presidential candidates more willing to engage with China than others, potentially influencing the response to any future collision with Beijing.

Eric Heginbotham, a principal research scientist at MIT’s Center for International Studies and a specialist in Asian security issues, said that he “would not be shocked if Taiwan threw up its hands in the first days of a conflict,” especially if the U.S. was not “visibly committed.” At the same time, he acknowledged that many similarly expected an early surrender in Ukraine that failed to materialize. Even leaving that aside, he said, the Taiwanese are “not well prepared psychologically or materially, and their training is not sufficiently realistic.”

It is not just Taiwan. The pace of U.S. preparation is “still inadequate to the scale of the challenge,” according to Bruce Jones, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. Deficiencies include stockpiling relevant munitions as well as readying the U.S. public for “a deep crisis in the western Pacific” that could mean the significant loss of American lives.

Taiwan’s 2023 Defense Report says the threat is building. China is “expanding military capabilities at scale,” including constructing airfields along its eastern and southern coastline and stationing new fighters and drones there permanently to “seize air superiority in the event of war across the Taiwan Strait.” It is just 8 minutes flying time from the closest airfield to Taipei, according to some estimates.

If those threats turned into action, Taiwan’s strategy is to pre-emptively strike the mobilizing invasion forces, then use its geographical advantage to attack its enemy during the most vulnerable phase of crossing the strait, according to the Defense Report.

Capabilities are another matter, though.

Wellington Koo, the head of Taiwan’s National Security Council, points to a reform of defense policy that means from 2024 the draft will be extended to a year, helping to provide “realistic training to enhance combat power.” Yet further steps are needed on overhauling the reserve system, on joint forces training by the army, navy and air force, and on strengthening “whole society resilience,” he said at a Nov. 13 briefing.

Building that resilience is the aim of annual exercises — this year’s scenario was a magnitude 6.9 earthquake striking the island’s main chipmaking hub in the northern city of Hsinchu — as well as simulated cyberattacks on key infrastructure such as the state water or oil company.

The goal is “to establish a mechanism and resilience that we can deal with no matter what kind of disaster, whether it is war or natural disaster — we all need to deal with it,” Interior Minister Lin Yu-chang said in an interview.

That is what Enoch Wu is working to advance. Wu founded Forward Alliance in 2020, a non-profit that provides emergency training with the ethos that citizens’ responses determine whether a society can come through crises. He sees Taiwan as “in a race against time” given Beijing’s clear sense of urgency. “We need to respond accordingly,” said Wu. “Given we are on the front line, we need to do more.”

Forward Alliance instructors — serving firefighters and medical personnel — were at work on a recent November afternoon at a police department in New Taipei City, giving training on tactical emergency casualty care to officers. Taught how to use a tourniquet to stop bleeding and treating chest wounds, it seemed more suited to a war zone than an island where strict laws on ownership mean gun crime is rare.

For Lin, the interior minister, preparations are necessary for all eventualities. “Peace is important — no one wants to go to war,” he said. “But Taiwan is a society facing lots of risks.”

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Featured image: President Joe Biden greets President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping, Wednesday, November 15, 2023, at the Filoli Estate in Woodside, California.(Official White House Photo by Carlos Fyfe)

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***

On Wednesday, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) published a report alleging that Israeli forces carried out a mass execution of civilians in northern Gaza Tuesday, separating 11 men from their families and summarily shooting them.

This report and a similar allegation by the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor imply that Israel has moved from murdering civilians through bombing to mass executions.

In its report, the OHCHR in the Occupied Palestinian Territories reports that it “has received disturbing information alleging that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) summarily killed at least 11 unarmed Palestinian men in front of their family members in Al Remal neighbourhood, Gaza City, which raises alarm about the possible commission of a war crime.”

The UN wrote,

“On 19 December 2023, between 2000 and 2300 hours, IDF reportedly surrounded and raided Al Awda building, also known as the ‘Annan building’, in Al Remal neighborhood, Gaza City, where three related families were sheltering in addition to Annan family.”

The UN added,

“While in control of the building and the civilians sheltering there, the IDF allegedly separated the men from the women and children, and then shot and killed at least 11 of the men, mostly aged in their late 20’s and early 30’s, in front of their family members.”

The UN continued,

“The IDF then allegedly ordered the women and children into a room, and either shot at them or threw a grenade into the room, reportedly seriously injuring some of them, including an infant and a child. OHCHR has confirmed the killings at Al Awda building.”

The UN statement corresponds to a report published earlier by Euro-Med, which states,

“Israeli army forces have carried out field executions against civilians during raids on Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip, according to shocking testimonies received by the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.”

It continued,

“According to preliminary information received by Euro-Med Monitor, 13 members of the Annan family and their displaced in-laws, the Al-Ashi and Al-Sharafa families, were killed by Israeli gunfire, while other members of the families were seriously wounded and are currently in critical condition.”

A witness told the Euro-Med monitor,

“Thirteen persons were shot dead and several more were critically injured. The Israeli soldiers later threw shells at the women, who were being held in one of the rooms.”

Euro-Med Monitor also recorded a rise in field executions following reports of attacks on Israeli military vehicles by Palestinian factions. This suggests that the crimes being reported are part of Israel’s unlawful retaliatory policy against Palestinian civilians, which is in violation of international humanitarian law.

The reports of mass summary executions come amid increasingly open demands for the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the population of Gaza by Israeli officials and US politicians. In a radio interview Sunday, David Azoulai, head of Israel’s regional Metula Council, called for displacing the population to Lebanon and said that Gaza should be made to look like “Auschwitz.” He said,

“Tell everyone in Gaza to go to the beaches. Navy ships should load the terrorists onto the shores of Lebanon. The entire Gaza Strip should be emptied and levelled flat, just like in Auschwitz.”

In a TV interview republished by Middle East Monitor, Miri Golan, Israel’s Women’s Advancement Minister, said

“I don’t care about Gaza … for all I care, they can go out and swim in the sea.” She added, “I want to see dead bodies of terrorists around Gaza.”

In another widely shared video, Daniella Weiss, the former mayor of an Israeli settlement in the West Bank and a leader of the Israeli settler movement, said in a TV interview that Israel’s goal is to make “Gaza free of Arabs” to prepare “the establishment of Jewish settlements in all of the Gaza Strip.”

This genocidal language is now being embraced in the United States. Speaking at the “Amerifest” fascist conference in the US, Michelle Bachmann, the dean of the Christian fundamentalist Regent University, declared,

“It’s time that Gaza ends.” She concluded, “The 2 million people who live there, they are clever assassins. They need to be removed from that land, that land needs to be turned into a national park.”

As of December 19, according to the Ministry of Health, 19,667 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, some 70 percent of whom are women and children. Approximately 7,000 more are still missing, most buried under rubble, bringing the death toll to over 25,000. On Wednesday, Israel ordered residents in areas throughout southern Gaza to evacuate, in a move that will only lead to a surge of the number of people trapped in the southern city of Rafah.

On Wednesday, Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda recorded footage of airstrikes near the Kuwaiti hospital in Rafah where she is sheltering.

“You are telling us to go to the south, you tell us to evacuate Khan Yunis,” she said.

Now the people concentrated in the southernmost tip of Gaza are being relentlessly bombed.

According to United Nations figures, 1.9 million people in Gaza, or 85 percent of the population, are estimated to be internally displaced. According to Gaza’s Government Media office, Israel has attacked over more than 200 health facilities and over 102 ambulances. And 126 government offices and 90 schools and universities were completely destroyed, with 283 more being further damaged.

Amid these relentless atrocities, the United States continues to fund, arm and logistically support the genocide.

In an extraordinary exchange on Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked to comment on “much of the world blaming the US and Israel and seeing it as America’s war.” To this, Blinken complained,

“I hear virtually no one saying, demanding of Hamas, that it stop hiding behind civilians, that it lay down its arms, that it surrender.” He concluded, “How can it be that there are no demands made of the aggressor, and only demands made of the victim?”

The answer to this question is that the vast majority of the world’s population correctly sees the United States and Israel as the aggressors, and the population of Gaza, which is being bombed, starved and massacred, as the victims of imperialist violence.

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Yemen’s Houthis in Defense of Gaza

December 21st, 2023 by Huseyin Vodinali

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***

The genocide committed by Israel in Palestine continues to break our hearts every day.

Zionazis massacre children, women, babies, elderly journalists and doctors without showing the slightest sign of humanity.
70 days have passed since the war started on October 7.

At least 25 thousand people were killed by the Israeli army, at least 22 thousand of them were civilians and most of the civilians were children and babies.

Not only Muslims, but the whole world is standing up, Christians, Atheists, Buddhists and even Jews are in outrage against this Zionazi genocide.

So, if you ask what Arabs are doing, the answer will be nothing.

Jordan, which said at the beginning of the movie, “If you sweep Gaza, we will fall apart,” is now capturing and destroying the weapons going to the resistance axis on behalf of Israel.

There is no feeling from Egypt either.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are concerned about opening a new trade corridor to Israel.

You ask why?

Because of the Bab El Mandeb strait closed by the Yemenis, who understand the suffering of the Palestinian people best.

We are talking about the Yemeni Houthis, who have been fighting for years with Saudi Arabia, supported by the USA, Israel and the UK, and which caused at least 150 thousand children to die from hunger and disease during the embargoes imposed.

These men, fighting with slippers on their feet, hit Saudi refineries and shot down F-16s, Eurofighters and Reapers.

A ceasefire was reached after China intervened by reconciling Tehran and Riyadh and Saudi Arabia made a geopolitical move.

Those Yemenis are now dealing a blow to Israel that no one else has dealt.

They stop and confiscate merchant ships going to Israel, and shoot down those that do not stop with missiles (they even have their own missiles called Burkan).

That’s why the 4 major logistics companies, which provide 53 percent of the world maritime trade, changed their routes and turned to Africa towards the Cape of Good Hope.

This means a delay of at least 3 weeks and a 120 percent increase in freight prices.

That’s why the port of Eilat, which is key in Israel’s supply chain, was disabled.

When Israel started to cry, the USA had to use its navy, which it deployed in the region after October 7, against Yemen this time. US Defense Secretary Austin Lloyd rushed to Israel and then to Bahrain.

In Manama, Bahrain-based American Naval Task Force CTF 153 announced the multinational “Prosperity Guardian” operation to prevent Yemeni attacks on Israel-bound ships in the Bab El Mandeb Strait and the Red Sea.

He also shamelessly said:

“If Iran does not stop the Houthis, world peace will be disrupted.”

Shameless man, you should first stop the genocide of your child Israel!

We have been watching images of babies being dismembered on live broadcast for 70 days, and we see Zionists rejoicing about this.

We read about Zionazis on social media saying ‘Let’s turn Gaza into Aushwitz’ and shouting ‘Palestinians are not human beings’.

All of the USA’s democracy and human rights literature went to the wastebasket of history with Israel.

USA is now not only for people like me! It is a fascist state that wears Hitler’s boots in the eyes of the whole world.

Meanwhile, there were also important developments.

As you know, Vladimir Putin’s last visit to the UAE and Saudi Arabia was very spectacular.

In both countries, Putin was welcomed with grand and magnificent ceremonies.

The Russian leader has also been in intense telephone traffic not only with the Iranian Leadership but also with Egyptian President Sisi since the beginning of the crisis.

I think these attempts bore fruit, and Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE refused to participate in the US “Guardian of Prosperity” operation. (Although Yemenis’ threat to destroy oil and gas fields if the Saudis and the UAE get involved may also have been effective.)

Although oil continues to flow from Ceyhan, Turkey has not participated in the American operation (for now).

The countries participating in the US operation are listed as follows: England, Israel, France, Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles, Canada, Italy and Bahrain.

If we look at the countries other than Bahrain, we can say that a Crusader Navy has been established.

Europe has already shown that it is a vassal of the USA and its neo-Nazis from the beginning of the Ukraine war. Now he serves the Zionazis.

Bahrain is a British colonial country and 60 percent of its population is Shia, like the Houthis in Yemen.

There had already been some uprising attempts before.

Following these developments, the Houthi leadership also called on Shiites and Sunnis in Bahrain to revolt.

Ret. Admiral Cem Gürdeniz, one of Turkiye’s rare geopolitical experts, commented on these developments and warned that they could turn into a war that would engulf the world.

He said:

“This crisis, which emerged as a reaction to Israel’s massacre in Gaza, is a result of activities on land rather than at sea. Therefore, it is impossible to solve it without intervening on land, that is, on the coasts of Yemen under Houthi control. A US-led air or land attack on Yemen would suddenly escalate the Israeli-Palestinian war into the Iran-USA crisis. In a conjuncture where major maritime trade and giant oil companies such as BP have given up on Suez and Bab El Mandeb, the world economy cannot handle such a crisis that will cause the Strait of Hormuz to be closed.”

This time, there are no poor gangs with rifles against USA, there is a strong and organized army.

The resistance axis led by Iran; It consists of the Islamic Jihad in Gaza, various resistance groups in Syria and Iraq (such as Hashd al-Shaabi), the Lebanese Hezbollah, and the Yemeni Houthis.

The militia will reportedly consist of 55,000 volunteer forces with 33,000 ships and will carry 107 mm rockets.

Russia and China also provide serious political, economic and military support to Iran.

The fact that the USA is (once again) stuck in the Middle East quagmire gives Russia’s hand in Ukraine and China’s hand in Taiwan.

These are the geopolitical consequences of the event.

But from a humanitarian perspective, the “Che Guevaras in Slippers” in Yemen became the heroes who saved the crumbling honor of the Arab and Muslim world.

Three days ago, the Ansarullah (Houthi) movement managed to hit an MSC ship traveling at a speed of 25 knots with an anti-ship ballistic missile with a range of 300 km and a speed of Mach 8.

The Houthis told all ships,

“If you are not going to Israel, there is no problem, but we will continue our attacks against those going to Israel until Israel establishes a ceasefire and allows medicine and food to enter Gaza.”

The men do not step back an inch.

Ansarullah Defense Minister said the following about the US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian:

“The Red Sea will be your graveyard. We have weapons that will sink your aircraft carriers and destroyers.”

As we enter 2024, we will be watching a crisis in which the USA plays the leading role turn into a regional war.

By the way, the Houthis’ Slipper Resistance against the genocide will go down in history, after the mother’s slipper, which is the most effective punishment tool!

*

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***

Introduction

The following statements shortly before the Christian Christmas and at the turn of the year 2023 / 2024 are my unshakeable belief in the good in people.

Despite the daily horror stories, man is not a robot that kills indiscriminately. That does not correspond to their social nature. This could only happen with the help of artificial intelligence, because a machine that can make decisions based on its learning is not bound to make decisions as we would have made them or as would be acceptable to us. Influential IT executives such as Elon Musk are also in favour of limiting artificial intelligence because it is “one of the greatest threats to humanity” (1).

The plight of people touches every heart, even if someone is blinded or irritated by personal or collective prejudices and urgently needs to be enlightened.

Unfortunately, we have already learnt to obey from our fathers and mothers and at school and carry the problem of obedience with us into adulthood. The behaviour of the Germans during the Hitler years is an eloquent example.

Are we not also murderers and criminals if we live in a world in which war and crime are the order of the day? After all, the world is the way we have set it up or – in relation to existing conditions – tolerated it. No one can escape responsibility. We are always complicit, even when we are victims.

Since the research results of modern psychology, we have known that the character of a person is the creative product of the child, which has developed in the confrontation with the circumstances of early childhood – in particular the educational influences of parents and teachers. But we do not realise this.

Since a peaceful world does not come about by itself, but solely through human decisions, we must summon up the courage to use our own reason (Kant), because according to the findings of the human sciences, humans naturally possess a sound mind and natural judgement.

The Plight of Humanity Touches All Our Hearts

As an experienced psychologist and former psychotherapist, no one can seriously tell me that the never-ending wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, with their thousands of innocent dead and wounded children and women, do not touch the heart of every human being. This would only be the case if these people were completely blinded by personal or collective prejudices. Its enlightenment would therefore be of immense importance.

Many contemporaries report that they have not watched or listened to the news for a long time because they could no longer bear the indescribable misery of the people. 

This is another example of the fact that human nature is social and that people can live without wars.

We Learnt to Obey as Children

The daily reports on the state of the world, which has gone off the rails, make me increasingly aware of the fatal problem we are still carrying around with us as adults.

From an early age, we learnt to obey in our families and at school. Whether it was the strict father or teacher or the spoiling mother, as children we had no choice but to obey. 

Whereas in childhood we had to obey those who raised us, in later life it is the so-called authorities, such as statesmen and their politicians, whom we feel we have to obey. When they call, men abandon their wives and children and go to war. What a momentous mistake!

The German population under the “Führer” Adolf Hitler should be a warning example.

The “people of poets and thinkers” – all without exception – cheered him on. The workers, the scholars, the philosophers, the psychologists – all went along with Hitler and allowed themselves to be led to their deaths. And the pastor and the church blessed the weapons of war that killed the others on the other side of the border, also Christians. World War I, World War II and dozens of other wars: murder and manslaughter over and over again for nothing.

Acquiring Knowledge of Human Nature

When we get to know people – ourselves and others – we learn to see ourselves and others correctly; we learn to correctly assess our attitudes and opinions and those of others.

We then know whether it is only the others who instigate and wage wars – or whether we ourselves are also perpetrators.

Unfortunately, we are not aware of this problem because we act from our subconscious – a key discovery by Sigmund Freud.

Have the Courage to Use Your Own Judgment!

According to the human sciences of anthropology, sociology and psychology, humans naturally possess a sound mind and a natural capacity for judgement. This common sense works empirically, i.e. it makes concrete judgements on the basis of everyday life experience and observation. Mature citizens share these judgements. It is also more orientated towards practical application than abstract theory. Common sense also takes into account the judgements of all other people and is therefore beneficial to the community.

The Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) categorised common sense as more useful in everyday life than scientific knowledge. He set out three maxims for the successful use of common sense:

1. “Think for yourself”

2. “Think in the place of everyone else”

3. “Think in unison with yourself at all times” (2).

*

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Dr Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a school rector, educationalist and qualified psychologist. After his university studies, he became an academic teacher in adult education. As a pensioner, he worked as a psychotherapist in his own practice. In his books and specialist articles, he calls for a conscious ethical and moral education of values as well as an education for public spirit and peace.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

(1) https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/kuenstliche-intelligenz/19286238.html

(2) Hänsel, Rudolf (2023). Making the results of psychological research your own: Insights from an encounter with the psychologist Friedrich Liebling and his liberal psychotherapy. Gornji Milanovac, p. 54

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***

When a new recording of Verdi’s Il Trovatore was released in 1976, whose cast included the rising meteoric tenor Luciano Pavarotti, I listened with enthusiasm. I had heard the tenor several years earlier in concert at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, where he sang to a half-filled house. It was an exquisite recital by a singer who would soon thereafter become a dominant star.

However I noted something a little ‘off’ in the aria ‘Di Quella Pira’, so I played it over and over until I had figured out that the high C had been spliced. (I may be wrong about this particular recording but I’ve learned since that keeping a bank of notes for a singer is now commonplace, to draw upon for insertion when needed.) At the time Pavarotti had been known as ‘King of the High Cs” and I was tremendously disappointed. Fortunately, in the live performance of opera no splicing or alteration of anything is possible, and my affections returned to the great man after I had seen him in a wondrous performance of Puccini’s La Boheme, also in Philadelphia, during which his bright high C rang out as the culmination of the famous aria ‘Che Gelida Manina’.

Certainly we all knew that songs — particularly those that featured in the popular charts of the day — were mostly studio confections, and we accepted the tracks and inserts and modifications that made for the polished public production without a thought. But the incident in Il Trovatore had disturbed, had unsettled, had soured me, as if a rancid aftertaste persisted after a posh dining experience in one of the best and most expensive restaurants of the city.

Two decades later I purchased an orthophonic victrola — the last and best of the old-style playback machines manufactured by RCA Victor — principally because I loved Caruso and I wished to hear as near as possible what his great voice really sounded like. At the time he recorded the process was analog and mechanical, and the machine I had used to play his heavy 78 rpm discs on was hand-wound. The voice that emerged from the large horn was immense, and although the clarity of electronic recording could not be achieved, one felt the power and strength of the core of the magnificent voice, even though that voice was veiled as if by a layer of cheese-cloth that had interposed itself between it and its full sparkling brilliance. When Caruso recorded it was impossible to interpolate anything into the ‘take’, so a ‘take’ was what we got, for good or ill, with every glory and imperfection. A ‘take’ was an honest and genuine reproduction of an undoctored moment of time.

Although I have been dimly aware of the practice of pitch-correction in the modern-day music industry — a process by which a singer’s voice or an instrumentalist’s notes are brought precisely in tune — I had had no idea of the extent of its adoption and use and dissemination. It is a process which, thanks to progress in digitization and computing technology, is even applied to live performances!

I chanced in my YouTube meanderings upon the following video:

And if what I felt was distress after my experience with the Pavarotti Trovatore of 1976, what I feel now is a deepening sense of how the world around us — our world, the world, whatever — has become a duplicitous confection that is now shaping our minds, secretly and relentlessly.

To think that the human voice — the soul made sensible, the breath of our lives, the resonant expression of our plaints and our joys, our miseries and our delights, and infinite palette of our very essence — is being subjected to an artificial standard that fills our ears wherever we go.

In the wake of covid and its depredations and the logarithmic ascension of digital technology’s sway over everything from banking and shopping to surveillance, this really should come as no surprise. But it did and it does. And this quest for pitch perfect perfection is anathema to genuine human expression. Musically speaking, the subtle play above and below a note, the minute changes in pitch that are inevitable from the human hand or throat, shed light and color and nuance and magnificence.

Compare for example the popular artist featured above, with her voice snapped artificially into line with a mechanic’s notion of tune, with a singer who antedated our digital era with a voice that possessed an infinitude of expressive capabilities:

I grew up in the city where Lanza was born, and in fact my mother went to high school with this wondrous singer and told me a few tales about his powerful and beautiful vocal instrument. They both hailed from a neighborhood bursting with the energetic vitality of second generation Italian-Americans looking to make good in a new country of opportunity. Their parents weathered the Great Depression by working themselves to the bone so that their children might enjoy a less onerous life.

The South Philly of my growing up was a little easier but no less vital. Authority — and particularly the government, local or national — was an entity that everyone viewed with suspicion. Imagine yet another disappointment when, in correspondence with family members there during the covid incursion, I discovered that the army of rebels and individualists who populated my youth had fallen in line like lemmings for the mask, and for the jab, and for every other insanely ridiculously oppressive covid measure meant to ‘safeguard’ their health. Mostly, but not entirely … at least one of my cousins has had the great good sense to resist, which means that the embers of hope still glow.

And as for this subtly sneaky attempt to annihilate our voice(s) by mechanizing them and creating an aural firmament that surrounds and infects us with its concocted and sterile idea of music, I say I’ll bring my own earplugs.

Yes, I know about the more glaringly terrible things going on, the murders, the wars, the forced slow-march to ill-health via a manufactured pathogen and its harmful manufactured ‘antidote’ … but it’s all of a piece, and the more aware we are the better.

Maybe what we need to do is sing, in real time, live, together, in or out of tune, and have some fun for the holidays and show these overlordlings just how empty their digital spaces really are.

*

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Dr. Garcia is a Philadelphia-born psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand in 2006. He has authored articles ranging from explorations of psychoanalytic technique, the psychology of creativity in music (Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Delius), and politics. He is also a poet, novelist and theatrical director. He retired from psychiatric practice in 2021 after working in the public sector in New Zealand. Visit his substack at https://newzealanddoc.substack.com/ where this article was first published.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the Public Domain

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***

One man’s death is another man’s bread. Real estate company Harey Zahav, known for building homes for settlers in the West Bank, has announced a new project that will make a profit from the genocide in Gaza.

In the past, plans had already been leaked to expel all Gaza residents. Far-right forces in Israel show less and less restrain and openly declare their intention to carry out large-scale ethnic cleansing.

For example, David Azoulai, council head of Metula, a city in the north of Israel. According to him, the entire Gaza Strip must be “emptied and leveled flat, just like Auschwitz.”

Now real estate company Harey Zahav is planning to build houses on the Gaza coastal strip. The ads feature slogans such as “Wake up, a beach house is not a dream.”

Sketches have already been made of where these homes will be located and there is speculation as to how the reconstruction will proceed. Pre-sale prices are even mentioned.

Another illustration also shows the names of future settlements: Maale Atzmona, Oren and Neve Katif. These names refer to those of pre-existing settlements in the Gaza Strip.

The advertisement reads:

“We, Harey Zahav, are working to prepare the ground for the return to Gush Katif. Our employees are working on the rehabilitation of the region, cleaning up waste, and deporting the occupiers (Palestinians). We hope that in the near future, the kidnapped and our soldiers will somehow return to their homes, and we can start construction in the entire Gush Katif area in the Gaza Strip.”

Gush Katif was a block of Israeli settlements established in the Gaza Strip in the early 1970s, but whose residents were forced to withdraw in 2005 as a result of the withdrawal plan from the Gaza Strip.

Implicitly, the real estate company suggests that it is working with Israeli soldiers in Gaza.

Building settlements on the ruins of destroyed Palestinian homes brings back painful memories of the Nakba, when more than 500 Palestinian towns and villages were razed to the ground by Zionist militias and 750,000 Palestinians were deported.

*

This is no longer about a war against Hamas. It is a war against the Palestinians. October 7 is the excuse to realize the ancient messianic dream of Greater Israel, from the sea to the river.

While the genocide is taking place before our eyes, Western countries are taking no action and allowing weapons to be delivered from our ports to be used in this genocide. Yes, there are some tentative condemnations, but that’s it. There are no diplomatic sanctions, let alone economic sanctions.

That makes the West complicit. Wir haben es gewusst. (We did know.)

*

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Marc Vandepitte is a Belgian economist and philosopher. He writes on North-South relations, Latin America, Cuba, and China. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Sources

Israeli company announce controversial housing project in devastated Gaza

As genocide unfolds, Israel settlers plan ‘dream’ beach house in Gaza

Un promoteur israélien suscite l’indignation en diffusant des projets de constructions à Gaza

Gaza death toll is accurate, scientists say, as Israel massacres civilians

All images in this article are from the author

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***

Back in March, I had the opportunity to participate in an on-line forum where a well-known Russian expert provided a briefing on the “ground truth” as he saw it from Moscow.

Following the briefing, the floor was opened for questions. I had noted that the briefer, the moderator, and indeed the audience made repetitive use of the term “invasion” to describe what Russia has called a “Special Military Operation.” 

I brought up the limited objectives of the Russian military effort at the time of its initiation, namely the goal of compelling Ukraine to agree to a negotiated settlement and asked if the term “Special Military Operation” was not a more accurate description of reality.

The expert understood my question and agreed that the term “Special Military Operation” carried with it a specific connotation which distinguished it from a classic military invasion. However, in the group chat, where participants were able to comment on the proceedings, one individual offered the following observation: “‘Special Military Operation?’ What’s that? I don’t speak Putin.”

This forum was intended as a way to better inform the participants about one of the most pressing issues of the day — the conflict between Russia and Ukraine — and to better prepare them for assessing the consequences of this conflict globally.

Given the failure of the collective West to impose its will on Russia through what is widely considered a proxy conflict, one would think that some form of retrospective analysis would be in order. However, to engage in such an activity constructively, an agreed-upon lexicon would be needed to communicate effectively.

Since Russia is prevailing in the conflict, one would also think that a modicum of interest should be given to how Russia defines the conflict. In short, anyone who is interested in learning the lessons of the collective West’s failure in Ukraine should learn “to speak Putin.”

Worn-Out Cold War Thinking

Berlin Wall in 1961. (Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

The problem is, those in the West who should be preparing a proper lexicon from which the Russian-Ukraine conflict could be more accurately assessed are instead operating from an outdated lexicon rooted in the language and mindset of a time that no longer exists, born of a Cold War mentality that prevents any deep-seated and relevant analysis of the true situation between Russia and the West.

Both the United States and NATO have described the Russia-Ukraine conflict as possessing existential consequences for Europe and the world, with the secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, going so far as to declare in October 2022 that

“Russia’s victory in the war against Ukraine will be a defeat of NATO,” adding ominously, “This cannot be allowed.”

Bad news, Mr. Stoltenberg — Russia has won. While the “Special Military Operation” has yet to be concluded, Russia has seized the strategic initiative across the board when it comes to conflict with Ukraine, forcing the Ukrainian military to terminate a counteroffensive, which the government of Ukraine and its NATO allies had invested tens of billions of dollars in military resources, and tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives in hopes of achieving a decisive victory over the Russian military on the battlefield.

Stoltenberg laying a wreath at the Wall of Remembrance of the Fallen for Ukraine on  Sept. 28. (NATO, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Today, Ukraine finds its military decimated by the fighting and unable to sustain itself as a cohesive combat force on the field of battle. The U.S. and NATO likewise find themselves unable and/or unwilling to continue supplying Ukraine with the money and material needed to continue to maintain a viable military presence on the battlefield.

Russia is in the process of transitioning away from a posture of flexible defense, and instead initiating offensive operations along the length of the line of contact designed to exploit opportunities presented by an increasingly depleted, and defeated, Ukrainian army.

U.S. President Joe Biden has likewise argued that a Russian victory was unacceptable.

“We can’t let Putin win,” Biden said earlier this month to put pressure on a U.S. Congress that has allowed the Ukrainian conflict to become wrapped up in domestic American politics, with key Republicans in both the Senate and House refusing to support a funding bill that lumps some $60 billion in Ukraine assistance together with money for Israel and immigration reform.

“Any disruption in our ability to supply Ukraine clearly strengthens Putin’s position,” Biden concluded.

Biden’s articulation of the quandary faced by his administration underscores the extent to which the U.S. and its European allies have personalized the Russian-Ukraine conflict. In their eyes, this is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war.

Indeed, Russia itself has been reduced to being a mere appendage of the Russian president. In this, Biden is not alone. An entire class of erstwhile Russian “experts” — including the likes of former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul; the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum; and a host of so-called national security experts, including former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Russia Andrea Kendall-Taylor and the former Russia Director for the National Security Council Fiona Hill — have all made the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia all about Putin.

In a recent interview with Politico, Hill, the co-author of Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, published in 2015, mirrored the statements by Stoltenberg and Biden that defined the Russia-Ukraine conflict as an existential crisis.

March 2018: Fiona Hill, at far end of left side of table, at a meeting between U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton — beside Hill — and Putin in Moscow. (Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Kendall-Taylor, who in 2022 co-authored an article in Foreign Affairs titled “The Beginning of the End for Putin?” likewise views the conflict as an extension of Putin’s needs as an individual, more than Russia’s needs as a nation.

“Putin,” Kendall-Taylor told NPR in January 2022, before the start of the Special Military Operation, 

“really is looking to keep Ukraine in Russia’s orbit. After 20 years of him being in power, he’s thinking about his legacy, and he wants to be the leader who returned Russia to greatness. And to do that, he has to restore Russian influence in Ukraine.

And for him, I think it’s really personal. Putin, over his 20 years — 22 years now in power, has tried and failed repeatedly to bring Ukraine back into the fold. And I think he senses that now is this — his time to take care of this unfinished business.”

Such an outcome, of course, is unacceptable, according to Kendall-Taylor.

“I don’t think it’s overstating it to highlight how important the U.S. assistance is,” she recently told The New York Times. “If the assistance doesn’t continue, then this war takes on a radically different nature moving forward.”

Applebaum in November penned an article in The Atlantic titled “The Russian Empire Must Die,” wherein she argued that “a better future requires Putin’s defeat — and the end to imperial aspirations.” She recently gave her opinion of Putin’s legacy in the aftermath of the Ukraine conflict.

“I don’t think there’s any question that Putin will be remembered as the man who really set out to destroy his own country,” Applebaum told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in an interview last August. Putin, Applebaum declared, 

“is somebody who has worsened the living standards, and freedom, and culture of Russia itself. He doesn’t seem to care about the well-being or prosperity of ordinary Russians. They’re just cannon fodder to him. He’s not interested in, you know, Russian achievements in infrastructure or art or in literature and in anything else. He has impoverished Russians. And he’s also brought back a form of dictatorship that I think most Russians had thought they’d left behind.”

What the Russian president is doing, Applebaum said, “is really destroying modern Russia. And I think that’s what he’ll be remembered for overall.”

‘Russia Is the Problem Because It Empowers Putin’

Touring Red Square in Moscow in May 2013: McFaul, when he was U.S. ambassador to Russia, is third from right. From left: Russian Chief of Protocol Yuriy Filatov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry  (State Department, Public domain)

McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, wrote a memoir, From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador to Putin’s Russia. In a recent interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, McFaul stated that, “I changed my views as a result of this horrific, barbaric war in Ukraine, because Putin made the decision to invade Ukraine.” Russia, McFaul now claims, is the problem because Russia has empowered Putin.

McFaul backs up his assessment with a bit of revisionist history. 

Calling Putin “a completely accidental leader of Russia,” McFaul labeled Putin “a creature of the existing regime” appointed by Boris Yeltsin, the first president of Russia, and lacking in any meaningful political constituency. 

Putin, McFaul claims, “wants to create this myth that ‘there was the chaos of the ‘90s, and I came in as the hero.’ That’s complete and utter nonsense,” McFaul asserts. “That’s not the history the way it was in real time.”

Given Putin’s lack of political pedigree, McFaul says,

“we don’t necessarily know if Russians support him. How do you know when there’s not real free and fair elections, when there’s no real media? You can’t know if he’s popular or not in those conditions.”

McFaul says that “I changed my views” about the culpability of the Russian people for Putin

“as a result of this horrific, barbaric war in Ukraine, because Putin made the decision to invade Ukraine. There was no vote; there’s no referendum. We don’t know what Russians actually thought about that decision. There is public-opinion polling before it to suggest that they didn’t want that fight, including by independent organizations, even Western organizations.

But once he went in, there was support — as there usually is when countries go to war — and now there are Russians that are raping Ukrainian women and children; there are Russians that are committing massive atrocities inside Ukraine. So Putin can’t do those things without the support of Russians. And therefore, this excuse that Russians are not guilty and they shouldn’t be treated badly, and they shouldn’t be sanctioned because of autocracy, I disagree with that.”

Putin’s war, McFaul concludes, is now Russia’s war.

McFaul’s unsubstantiated allegations of Russian atrocities provide a clear picture of the fact-free foundation used by the former ambassador to shape his narrative of Putin’s Russia.

McFaul’s assertion of rape is particularly egregious, considering that, at the time of his interview — July 2023 — these allegations had been quashed by Ukraine itself following the revelations that Lyudmila Denisova, the Ukrainian Parliament’s commissioner for human rights, had issued official statements using unverified information.

In a letter to the Parliament, Ukrainian journalists said Denisova’s reports were harmful to Ukraine, noting that the information put out by Denisova’s office was regarded as factual by the media, and was “then used in articles and in speeches by public figures.”

Denisova was fired in May 2022 — more than a year before McFaul echoed her discredited allegations in a living manifestation of the caution set forth by the Ukrainian journalists.

McFaul premised much of his altered view regarding the co-responsibility of the Russian people for the conflict with Ukraine on his understanding of the events of the 1990’s, and how these events shaped the rise to political prominence of Vladimir Putin. 

Curiously, McFaul asserts that any notion of the decade of the 1990s as being one of “chaos” for Russia is a myth. What makes this assertion particularly curious is that McFaul himself was personally involved with the Russia of the 1990s, and should know better.

McFaul arrived in Moscow in 1990 as a visiting scholar at Moscow State University. He later took a position as a consultant with the National Democratic Institute (NDI), self-described as “a nonprofit, nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization that has supported democratic institutions and practices in every region of the world,” blurring the line between academic and activist.

The NDI was founded in 1983 to promote “public diplomacy” operations in furtherance of U.S. national security interests. As the NDI’s representative in Moscow, McFaul actively supported “Democratic Russia,” a coalition of Russian politicians led by Yeltsin, whom McFaul later dubbed the “catalyst for the Cold War’s end.”

In his 2001 book, Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin, McFaul openly espoused the concept of “democracy” as it was manifested in the form of Yeltsin, even though McFaul knew only too well that Yeltsin was little more than the hand-picked puppet of the United States.

McFaul took umbrage at Putin’s rise to prominence and power, proffering instead an alternative reality which had Yeltsin, who resigned from the Russian presidency on New Years Eve 1999, appointing Boris Nemtsov (whom McFaul describes as the “heir apparent”) instead of Putin as his replacement.

McFaul never forgave Russia the sin of Putin’s appointment — in Russia’s Unfinished Revolution, he declared that the former KGB officer had “inflicted considerable damage to democratic institutions” in Russia, a remarkable example of personal prejudice, given that Putin took power in 2000, and McFaul’s book was published in 2001.

Moreover, McFaul engaged in a good deal of historical revisionism, given that there were no “democratic institutions” in Russia under Yeltsin — Russian tanks firing on the Russian Parliament in October 1993 on the orders of Yeltsin, combined with the open rigging of the 1996 election with the support of the United States, guaranteed that.

McFaul was more than familiar with this history — he helped shape the conditions that produced it — making his present-day amnesia suspect.

*

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Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press.

Featured image: Russian President Vladimir Putin in June, during the St Petersburg International Economic Forum. (Ramil Sitdikov, RIA Novosti Host Photo Agency, Kremlin)

‘Sacrificial Lamb’: US Troops in Syria and Iraq. Colonial-Style Occupation Ready to Sacrifice Their Lives for Israel in a Future Middle East Conflict

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, December 20, 2023

The Yemen News Agency (SABA) reported that “A U.S. military official has revealed that U.S. and coalition forces have been subjected to at least 97 attacks in Iraq and Syria since Oct. 17 until Wednesday.” 

A Merry AUKUS Surprise, Western Australia!

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, December 21, 2023

The secretive Australian government just cannot help itself. Clamouring and hectoring of other countries and their secret arrangements (who can forget the criticism of the Solomon Islands over its security pact with China for that reason?) the Albanese government is a bit too keen on keeping a lid on things regarding the withering away of Australian independence before a powerful and spoiling friend.

Gaza Genocide: Hezbollah Confronting and “Inflicting Serious Damage” on Israel. “Expect Escalation…”

By Karsten Riise and Hindustan Times, December 20, 2023

Hezbollah is not sitting passively watching Israel completing its genocide on Gaza. The real and vast scale on which Hezbollah is causing damage on Israel is hidden by the US media, but the Hindustan Times reports on it. With over 500 attacks so far, Hezbollah is inflicting serious damage on Israel – all the time.

Latest China-EU Summit Exposes Brussels’ Complete Lack of Sovereignty. EU Foreign Policy Controlled by Washington

By Drago Bosnic, December 20, 2023

Earlier this month, China and the European Union concluded a bilateral summit, the first one since 2019. One usually wouldn’t expect that four years could change much, but that was precisely the case during the recent meeting. While the previous summit was largely focused on questions of economic cooperation and calls for the improvement of overall relations, this one was much more (geo)political, with the EU reiterating a near-carbon copy of American talking points.

Military Deaths After Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 mRNA Vaccination

By Dr. William Makis, December 20, 2023

US Army Lt. Col. Jered Little, commander of Public Health Activity (Hawaii) died suddenly on Nov. 24, 2023. Got his 1st Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine on Dec. 23, 2020 & was the poster boy for illegal COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine mandates in the US Military.

Ukraine Weapons Fund Will Run Out on December 30, Pentagon Claims. What Next? Ukraine Is Totally Bankrupt According to the IMF

By Ahmed Adel, December 20, 2023

For the first time, the Pentagon announced an exact date for the exhaustion of resources intended to support Kiev, according to Bloomberg. The remaining amount, estimated at $1.07 billion, will include several weapons and equipment acquisitions.

“Victory Over Russia Is Impossible”: Zelensky Can’t Eschew Responsibility for Rising Public Anger at Ukraine’s Conscription Crisis

By Andrew Korybko, December 20, 2023

Zaluzhny knows better than anyone else in Ukraine that his side’s envisaged maximum victory over Russia is impossible, but it’s still being sought in spite of that because it’s ultimately Zelensky’s decision whether or not to continue the conflict. His order to fortify the entire front instead of resuming peace talks with Russia per reported Western pressure and unilaterally complying with its requested security concessions in defiance of his patrons is why more conscription is needed.

Born in a Police State: The Deep State’s Persecution of Its Most Vulnerable Citizens. “What if Jesus had been born 2,000 years later?”

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, December 20, 2023

What if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, Jesus had been born at this moment in time? What kind of reception would Jesus and his family be given? Would we recognize the Christ child’s humanity, let alone his divinity? Would we treat him any differently than he was treated by the Roman Empire?

“Facing the Beast: Courage, Faith, and Resistance in a New Dark Age.” New Book by Naomi Wolf

By Dr. Naomi Wolf, December 20, 2023

“Before” the years 2020 to 2022, when a set of policies based on abject lies posed an existential threat to our democracy and our way of life. “Before” this likely AI-deployed set of lies, dispensed globally, targeted our West with its core traditions of free speech—and in the US, with its First Amendment—with arrant censorship.

Propaganda Roundup: Hillary Claims Climate Change™ Targets Pregnant Women

By Ben Bartee, December 20, 2023

At any rate, transhumanist technocrats should love Climate Change™, in such a case that it targets pregnant women, because they hate legacy fronthole women getting pregnant anyway. Human reproduction the old-fashioned way — as in, not in a lab — viscerally repulses them.

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***

Abstract

A comprehensive examination of the evidence available, contained in U.S. government statements, English-language media accounts, and hacked Telegram chats among Brazilian prosecutors, indicates that the United States was closely involved in the “long coup” that removed the left from power in Brazil in 2016 and secured the election of the far-right in 2018. Just as after Brazil’s U.S.-backed 1964 coup, this evidence has largely been ignored by U.S. scholars. Latin Americanists would do well to return to the anti-imperialist tradition that established our field as a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy.

U.S. Imperialism and Its Denialists in Historical Context: The 1964 Brazilian Coup

It should come as no surprise that U.S. media and many scholars have ignored (or applauded) U.S. involvement in the long coup. For over half a century, intervening against democratically elected governments has been only half the story; the second half involves justifying, minimizing, or denying U.S. involvement. Cold War justifications for U.S. intervention privileged anticommunism as the United States destabilized progressive governments, installed friendly dictators, funded brutal military regimes, and provided expert training in repression of leftist dissidents (Livingstone, 2011: 2). As with recent interventions, such actions have generally only been belatedly, if ever, acknowledged by important sectors of U.S. journalism and academia.

In 1961, President Jânio Quadros resigned, leaving vice president João Goulart as his successor. The U.S. government disliked Goulart for his Cold War neutrality, land reform initiatives, 1962 profit remittance law, and promotion of industrial nationalization. By 1962, John F. Kennedy and Ambassador Lincoln Gordon had decided that Goulart should be removed (Green, 2010: 29). Key fronts in the crusade against Goulart included the Alliance for Progress (Green, 2010: 6–27) and the American Institute for Free Labor Development, which worked to steer unions toward anticommunism (Corrêa, 2021). Meanwhile, CIA-produced propaganda portrayed an imminent communist takeover (Black, 1977: 131). As Phyllis Parker (1979) revealed, the United States organized Operation Brother Sam, which positioned U.S. ships off Brazil’s coast, ready to help the plotters if needed. The conspiracy involving the Kennedy administration, business interests, and right-wing Brazilian politicians and military officers came to fruition in 1964. During the two decades of military rule that followed, the United States remained allied with the Brazilian generals.

U.S. opposition to Goulart had little to do with communism; the financial and geopolitical interests that motivated the coup were apparent early on. Corporations had much to lose from Goulart’s reforms. For example, in 1963 the Hanna Mining Company objected to Goulart’s expropriation decree. Hanna board member, John J. McCloy, led Gordon to the office of Brazil’s first military president, Humberto Castelo Branco, to explain that restoring Hanna’s concession “might be a condition for receiving U.S. economic assistance” (Black, 1977: 88). Financial motivations are further suggested by corporate responses to Senator Frank Church’s hearings on U.S. support for torture in Brazil. Worried about exposure, U.S. corporations requested that congressional hearings be “closed and discreet” (Green, 2010: 238–241).

All along, the U.S. government denied involvement, repeating the mantra that the coup had been a “revolution” preventing a fall to communism (Green, 2010: 43). The U.S. media uncritically parroted this. Before the coup, the New York Times’s Rio correspondent, Tad Szulc, warned against “rising Leftist influence” and supposed Marxist organization of peasants (Green, 2010: 25). Meanwhile, the headline in Life’s April 17, 1964, issue stated, “Arrested: A Big Yaw to the Left.” The 23-page Reader’s Digest screed by the noted anticommunist Clarence W. Hall, rife with undocumented claims, was made into a pamphlet with instructions for mailing abroad (Hall, 1964). James Green (2010: 39) calls it “almost a caricature of bad, early 1960s Cold War propaganda.” Michael Weis (1997) concluded that “the U.S. government was able to manage the news to hide U.S. involvement in the coup and to present a skewed version of reality” that would soon justify coups across Latin America.

Despite overwhelming evidence uncovered by Brazilian and U.S. scholars, the record has barely been corrected. At the level of political and popular discourse, false narratives about the coup and military regime continue to mislead a public conditioned to interpret U.S. foreign policy positively. Furthermore, writers connected to the institutions crucial to narrative management—the U.S. military, intelligence agencies, the media, and Wall Street—are often responsible for what becomes “common knowledge” about Latin America (Swart, 2022: 224–226). For example, entries about the coup in the 2008 edition of the Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture read like Cold War propaganda. In the entry “Revolution of 1964,” Marshall C. Eakin (2008) limits U.S. involvement to mere “support,” repeating the pretext of U.S. concerns about “a leftist revolution.” Lewis A. Tambs’s entry on the regime’s first dictator, Castelo Branco, limits U.S. relations with Brazil to “financial aid and investment.” He states that the regime’s series of repressive institutional acts “insured internal order” and “purified the government” (2008: 14). Notably, Tambs cites John W. F. Dulles, son of John Foster Dulles and nephew of former CIA director Allen Dulles. Dulles’s own entry on Luís Carlos Prestes faults “violence-minded leftists” and the Brazilian Communist Party for the coup. Dulles (2008: 362–363) sneers at the existence of U.S. “imperialism” by putting it in scare quotes.

Recent textbooks have not done much better. Both Latin America and the Caribbean and Latin America since Independence: A History with Primary Sources reproduce tropes about communism and omit U.S. intervention. The former lauds dictator Ernesto Geisel (1974–1979) as a champion of democracy and calls the coup a “revolution” (Goodwin, 2013: 93). The latter draws parallels between Castro’s Cuban Revolution and the region’s right-wing dictatorships (Dawson, 2014: 202). Neither text mentions the United States’ role in Brazil’s dictatorship. It is thus not surprising that recent U.S. collaboration with anticorruption investigators has been ignored in most U.S. reference sources. Two unsigned articles, for instance, mislead readers into believing that Dilma Rousseff was impeached for corruption.1 An entry in ABC-CLIO’s World Geography: Understanding a Changing World incorrectly connects Rousseff’s impeachment to the Petrobras corruption scandal that Lava Jato uncovered (World Geography, n.d.).2

Although we are not claiming that the United States was directly involved in Rousseff’s impeachment, these examples illustrate how segments of the U.S. intelligentsia were complicit with Lava Jato’s crusade to weaken the PT. Significantly, they primarily cite mainstream Anglophone media outlets, showing the shape of the echo chamber inhabited by U.S. corporate media and the authors of popularly oriented academic accounts. In effect, Kevin Young (2013) notes that “even the nation’s leading liberal media almost never acknowledge U.S. support for [repressive] regimes.” His analysis of five years of reporting by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and NPR on three dictatorships reveals that the U.S. role is mentioned only 6 percent of the time. When discussing the abuses committed by U.S. allies, U.S. support is rarely mentioned or is glossed over as “a force for democracy and human rights” (Young, 2013). Yet despite denials or justifications for U.S. meddling from government and media sources, evidence invariably surfaces in official documents, legal proceedings, lapses in the standard media narratives, and leaks.

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Featured image: A war tank (M41 Walker Bulldog) and other vehicles of the Brazilian Army near the National Congress of Brazil, during the Coup d’état of 1964 (Golpe de 64) (Licensed under the Public Domain)

A Merry AUKUS Surprise, Western Australia!

December 21st, 2023 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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Israel is declaring genocidal intent to make Gaza look like Auschwitz and kill and drive out all Palestinians from Gaza.

Under international law, the crime of genocide is defined by “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” as noted in the December 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Hezbollah is not sitting passively watching Israel completing its genocide on Gaza.

The real and vast scale on which Hezbollah is causing damage on Israel is hidden by the US media, but the Hindustan Times reports on it.

With over 500 attacks so far, Hezbollah is inflicting serious damage on Israel – all the time.

 

The Hezbollah attacks on Northern Israel are many times every day. See list of how much Hezbollah hits in just one day:

The video links above prove that Hezbollah is a strong force inflicting serious devastation on Israel with destruction of military buildings and Israeli soldiers every day.

Since October 2023, Israel has had to evacuate whole towns near the border with Lebanon.

Israel cannot sustain this. Israel cannot sustain its hurt pride of being hit daily by Hezbollah.

Israel also cannot sustain the long-term social and economic costs of having a mobilized force of more than 100 thousand soldiers permanently tied up in northern Israel.

And Israel’s citizens cannot bear that their military cannot keep them secure anymore, and never will be able to do so.

Benny Gantz, the First Alternate Prime Minister of Israel, has promised to “do something” about Hezbollah and Lebanon. Israeli Defense Minister Galant is equally foreseeing starting an Israeli war into Lebanon.  

Israel’s Netanyahu and his generals have threatened mass-murder in Lebanon by turning Beirut into one more “Gaza”.

Hezbollah knows this and has therefore so far been holding back the scale of its attacks on Israel in order to protect civilians in Beirut from Israeli mass-killings.

But Hezbollah has also received Russian made Pantsir air defense systems. We may speculate, that Hezbollah with more Russian and Iranian supplies of air defense to protect Beirut is making itself ready for a big conflict with Israel, just as Israel on its side is preparing to attack into Lebanon.

This will expand to a very – very – big war.

And not only in the Middle East.

Russia’s president Putin has just made clear, that after dealing with Ukraine, Russia will also do something against Finland for joining NATO and thus breaking with Finland’s treaty-obligation to end the war post-1945 with an obligation that Finland must stay neutral forever. Meanwhile, in Asia, the US is stoking the Philippines to provoke their much-bigger neighbor China in the South China Sea. – and the US continues to build up for a war with China with arms deliveries to Taiwan.

Look forward to global war.

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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.  

Os houthis conseguiram fazer o que Israel e Estados Unidos tentaram evitar a todo o custo até agora: transformar o genocídio em Gaza numa crise mundial. Atingiram o calcanhar de Aquiles do inimigo: a economia, ao bloquear o trânsito pelo Mar Vermelho de qualquer embarcação israelense ou com destino a Israel.

Pelo lado de Israel, os prejuízos à sua economia já contam bilhões de dólares. O jornalista libanês Khalil Harb destacou, em artigo no The Cradle, que Israel importa e exporta “quase 99% das mercadorias por via fluvial e marítima” e que mais de ⅓ do seu PIB depende do comércio de mercadorias, segundo o Banco Mundial. Esse é um duro golpe e compromete diretamente a continuidade da matança desenvolvida pelas forças sionistas em Gaza, que já custaram a vida de 20 mil pessoas.

Mas a ação houthi não é espetacular somente porque atinge a coluna vertebral da máquina genocida de Israel, e sim, sobretudo, porque está paralisando a economia mundial – isto é, o próprio funcionamento do regime capitalista, que está na raiz do problema da guerra de agressão no Oriente Médio. E quem admite isso é nada menos que o principal órgão de imprensa dos banqueiros internacionais, The Economist: “uma nova crise de Suez ameaça a economia mundial.” Um artigo em tom preocupante do veículo destaca que o bloqueio naval imposto pelos houthis tem o potencial tanto de escalar a guerra e expandi-la para o restante da região como também prejudicar radicalmente o comércio global. A principal alternativa para Israel e EUA seria atacar militarmente o território do Iêmen que é governado pelos houthis, mas estes poderiam retaliar não apenas com ataques a Israel, como também aos aliados árabes dos EUA, como Arábia Saudita, Emirados Árabes Unidos (EAU) e Jordânia, principalmente contra seus campos petrolíferos, o que elevaria brutalmente a crise econômica com uma crise do petróleo (que já se iniciou). Por isso mesmo, enquanto os EAU querem uma ação contundente contra os houthis, os sauditas estão receosos. Mas isso não impede que Riad participe, junto com o Egito, de ações marítimas lideradas por Washington para tentar conter os ataques houthis, contra quem a Casa de Saud tem guerreado há quase dez anos, devastando o Iêmen e tornando o país, que já era o mais pobre do Oriente Médio, numa terra onde ocorre a maior catástrofe humanitária dos últimos cem anos, segundo os próprios organismos das Nações Unidas.

Para se ter uma ideia do estrago que os houthis estão fazendo, basta observar alguns dados. Cerca de 12% do comércio mundial anual depende da rota que passa pelo Canal de Suez e o Estreito de Bab al-Mandab. É por ali que chegam à Europa e à América as embarcações que vêm da Ásia, e vice-versa. A rota Cingapura-Roterdã tem duas alternativas: a passagem pelo Canal do Panamá ou pelo Cabo da Boa Esperança, na África do Sul. Mas elas são 40% mais longas (pelo menos 10 dias a mais de viagem), o que eleva dramaticamente os custos das viagens, acarretando o aumento das tarifas e dos preços dos materiais transportados, que são transferidos para os consumidores do mundo todo. Além disso, o Canal do Panamá está secando, o que obrigou a reduzir quase pela metade o número de navios que passam por ali a cada dia. Assim, os preços de todas as mercadorias que passariam pelo Mar Vermelho e agora deverão passar pelo Cabo da Boa Esperança aumentarão significativamente, atingindo todos os países do mundo. Existe uma terceira alternativa: o Mar do Norte, cuja rota entre Ásia e Europa é mais curta que pelo Suez. A grande ironia é que o país com maior controle sobre essa rota é a… Rússia. Os neocons devem infartar!

Pelo Mar Arábico (entre a Índia e a Península Arábica) passa ⅓ do suprimento de petróleo marítimo e o bloqueio do Mar Vermelho, mesmo que os houthis tenham garantido que só vale para navios relacionados com Israel, na verdade faz com que todas as empresas temam ser atingidas, causando o aumento do preço do petróleo devido ao desvio de rota – a British Petroleum já anunciou que não passa mais por ali. Mais de 60% das linhas de navegação internacionais já suspenderam o transporte para Israel pelo Mar Vermelho e as empresas que decidiram mudar de caminho (como Maersk, MSC, CMA CGM e Hapag-Lloyd) representam mais da metade do transporte global de contêineres.

A hora da verdade para os regimes árabes

A ação houthi representa um divisor de águas não apenas para a guerra de agressão israelense contra os palestinos, mas também para a correlação de forças no Oriente Médio. Mohammed Abdul-Salam, porta-voz do movimento Ansar Allah (o nome oficial da organização houthi), indicou qual é o caráter da operação: “a causa palestina não está aberta para negociação e nós não podemos aceitar o que está acontecendo com o povo de Gaza.” Trata-se de uma ação inteiramente solidária e internacionalista, motivada pelos mais nobres sentimentos de irmandade com os palestinos. Os houthis, neste momento, são a expressão máxima do sentimento de todos os muçulmanos do mundo inteiro – e de milhões de não muçulmanos humanistas, progressistas, democráticos e socialistas. Sendo assim, têm um respaldo moral inabalável e inatingível.

Todas as palavras que os demais países de maioria muçulmana têm emitido demagogicamente nos últimos dois meses estão sendo confrontadas pela ação concreta e extremamente corajosa dos houthis, que sequer controlam todo o território do pequeno e miserável Iêmen. E, embora os houthis tenham a vantagem de não dever justificativas a nenhum outro governo, exatamente pelo seu caráter excepcional de ser um governo paralelo que já está em guerra, portanto não têm nenhum rabo preso, isso não significa que não haja consequências para suas ações. A primeira delas já está valendo e passou despercebida: no início do mês, o Programa Mundial de Alimentos das Nações Unidas anunciou a suspensão do fornecimento de ajuda alimentar para as zonas controladas pelos houthis, o que significa uma sentença de morte pela fome para mais de 13 milhões de iemenitas que dependem dessa ajuda. Foi uma clara retaliação dos EUA e de Israel ao bloqueio naval no Mar Vermelho, com a marca do imperialismo, ou seja, a vingança contra os civis e os mais vulneráveis.

Agora os Estados Unidos vão patrulhar o Mar Vermelho para tentar impedir as confiscações de navios e os ataques vindos dos houthis. O secretário da Defesa americano, Lloyd Austin, anunciou, após chegar a Tel Aviv, que a operação “Guardião da Prosperidade” vai contar com a participação do Reino Unido, França, Canadá, Itália, Holanda, Espanha, Noruega, Bahrein e Seychelles. O porta-aviões nuclear Dwight D. Eisenhower já está no Golfo de Áden.

Muhamed al-Bajiti, membro do Conselho Político Supremo do governo houthi, chamou a coalizão de a “aliança mais suja da história”, que será combatida na “batalha mais honrosa da história”. A Jihad Islâmica Palestina, por sua vez, declarou: “as declarações de Austin são uma descarada bênção estadunidense para o inimigo sionista, permitindo a continuidade de seus crimes bárbaros e nazistas contra nosso povo palestino. A incitação de Austin contra o irmão Iêmen é uma tradução descarada da arrogância estadunidense. É uma vergonha para os regimes árabes e os povos de nossa nação que não tomem medidas para responder à agressão estadunidense e sua inclinação a continuar a guerra de extermínio.”

A participação do Bahrein revela que os regimes subservientes ao imperialismo no Mundo Árabe não apenas não tomam medidas contra EUA e Israel, mas que são seus cúmplices ativos no genocídio do povo palestino e na opressão contra todos os povos árabes. Bahrein, Jordânia, Emirados Árabes Unidos e Egito (o quinto maior fornecedor de petróleo para Israel) são grandes parceiros comerciais do regime de Tel Aviv. Diante do bloqueio do Mar Vermelho, Arábia Saudita, EAU, Bahrein e Jordânia já começaram a operar conjuntamente para transportar as mercadorias por caminhão, do Mar Arábico para Israel, através de seu território. Eles participam, na prática, da coalizão imperialista anti-houthis, mas pela via terrestre. Afinal de contas, a demagogia pró-Palestina desses regimes é só perfumaria para encobrir o fétido apoio ao massacre, um apoio obrigatório, porque, não sendo assim, esses regimes desaparecerão, pois quase absolutamente sustentados pelos EUA e seus aliados europeus. O fechamento do Canal de Suez vai acabar com a já combalida economia egípcia e Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, para se manter na posição de poder que lhe foi entregue pelo imperialismo, tem de se mexer para romper o bloqueio, unindo-se abertamente a Israel, que já controla o regime egípcio há 50 anos. O mesmo vale para os estados artificiais do Golfo Pérsico.

Muhamed al-Bajiti levantou o grande X da questão para os países árabes: “como serão vistos os países que correram para formar uma coalizão internacional contra o Iêmen para proteger os perpetradores do genocídio israelense? E como será visto o Iêmen, que atuou com vontade oficial e popular para deter o genocídio israelense contra o povo palestino?”

Os houthis já tinham uma grande popularidade no Iêmen, sendo apoiados pela maior parte de seu povo, o que foi o fator determinante para manterem uma guerra de resistência à agressão saudita (com todo o imperialismo mundial por trás) durante dez anos. Seu posicionamento firme, como representante de um dos povos que mais têm realizado manifestações multitudinárias em defesa da Palestina, os coloca definitivamente no Eixo da Resistência ao imperialismo no Oriente Médio com um destaque monstruoso. Assim como o heroico Hamas, demonstra aos milhões de árabes e ao bilhão e meio de muçulmanos (mais de 20% da população mundial) que somente um posicionamento radical e o levantamento armado das massas podem fazer frente à esmagadora opressão que sofrem das potências imperialistas. O governo fantoche que controla a outra parte do Iêmen, apoiado pelos sauditas e americanos, se recusou publicamente a tomar parte da coalizão marítima contra os houthis, com medo de precipitar a sua queda pela rebelião popular no território onde ainda governa.

De fato, muitos iemenitas têm se voluntariado para combater ao lado da Resistência Palestina em Gaza. Se Israel e os EUA temiam que a guerra se expandisse, isso parece ser inevitável. Confrontos com o Hezbollah são diários na frente norte, enquanto as bases militares ilegais dos EUA na Síria e no Iraque já sofreram dezenas de ataques nos últimos dois meses. Além da já mencionada possibilidade de ataque dos houthis contra a Arábia Saudita, a Jordânia e os EAU. Já o Irã, que tem atuado como um enxadrista na atual situação, indiretamente apoiando o Hamas, o Hezbollah e o Ansar Allah, também pode ser compelido a se envolver diretamente no conflito: um agente do Mossad foi preso e executado por se infiltrar no país e, na semana passada, Teerã sofreu ataques hackers a partir de Israel. A “guerra fria” entre a nação persa e o estado judeu artificial pode se transformar em uma guerra aberta com a coalizão imperialista ameaçando a segurança nacional do Irã e escalando a guerra Israel-Gaza/Oriente Médio/comercial.

A abertura de uma crise revolucionária

“As Forças Armadas do Iêmen vão tornar o Mar Vermelho um cemitério para a coalizão dos EUA se a aliança decidir tomar qualquer ação contra o Iêmen”, disse o ministro da Defesa do Ansar Allah, major general Mohammad al-Atifi. Segundo a revista Newsweek, os houthis detêm grande estoque de mísseis antiblindagem e podem atacar mais barcos do que a Armada dos EUA pode defender. Se as forças imperialistas fracassarem em liberar o Mar Vermelho, isso será uma derrota monumental e evidenciará a sua fragilidade, fortalecendo ainda mais o Eixo da Resistência e elevando o nível da crise não apenas no Oriente Médio, mas mundial.

A situação econômica da Europa se tornou extremamente difícil após o início da Operação Militar Especial da Rússia na Ucrânia, com as grandes massas europeias sofrendo a inflação, o desabastecimento, o encarecimento das tarifas de energia e saindo às ruas em enormes manifestações nas principais capitais. Ninguém mais aguenta a guerra fomentada pelos EUA e a União Europeia contra a Rússia e esse sentimento, que no fundo é um sentimento anti-imperialista, se aprofundou diante das imagens de crianças sendo mortas como baratas pelas tropas israelenses em Gaza. As manifestações foram retomadas, em solidariedade aos palestinos e contra o apoio dos governos europeus ao genocídio. Agora as reivindicações econômicas serão amplificadas, devido à crise do comércio global derivada do bloqueio ao Mar Vermelho.

Não é mais segredo para toda essa massa populacional que a culpa pela crise no Oriente Médio, que se tornou uma crise mundial, é de Israel e, sobretudo, de seu patrão americano.  De acordo com uma análise realizada pela empresa Mig AI, 83% das publicações na Internet sobre a situação na Palestina são contrárias a Israel, sendo também negativos para o regime sionista 28% dos mais de 370 mil artigos publicados em sites com mais de um milhão de visitas mensais. Ainda que os grandes conglomerados monopolísticos da imprensa internacional mantenham uma linha editorial pró-Israel, a realidade se impôs às manipulações. A pressão da opinião pública é um dos dois fatores (o outro é a crise com o bloqueio do Mar Vermelho) que obrigaram os governos imperialistas a buscar uma solução para a carnificina executada por Israel, criticando Tel Aviv após lhe ajudar no massacre.

A França entrou em um conflito diplomático com Israel após um funcionário de seu Ministério das Relações Exteriores ter sido morto por um ataque israelense em Rafah e a Itália e o Vaticano também entraram em contradição com Tel Aviv por um ataque mortal a uma igreja católica em Gaza. O Reino Unido e os EUA manifestaram preocupação com o morticínio desenfreado de civis e outros países europeus vão sancionar colonos israelitas. A China possivelmente será obrigada a tomar uma posição mais ativa na busca pelo fim do genocídio, porque é um dos países mais afetados pelo bloqueio naval. Enquanto que dentro de Israel a execução de três reféns do Hamas pelas mãos das próprias “Forças de Defesa de Israel” gerou um clima insustentável para Benjamin Netanyahu. Soma-se a isso a resistência imposta pelo Hamas e as demais forças em Gaza, que tornou a Faixa em um atoleiro para os soldados israelenses.

Israel havia sinalizado que não haveria mais um cessar-fogo com o Hamas. Agora, declarações oficiais já indicam que essa posição mudou e Israel possivelmente vai implorar um cessar-fogo ao Hamas. Essa seria mais uma vitória monumental e estratégica da Resistência. Mais do que tudo, no entanto, seria uma afirmação de que os imperialistas e sionistas foram jogados para as cordas. Ou aceitam a derrota em sua investida contra Gaza, com um cessar-fogo que pode resultar no fim da incursão atual, para liberar o Mar Vermelho, ou mantêm o genocídio arcando com as catastróficas consequências econômicas. De qualquer forma, sairia perdendo e essa demonstração de fraqueza pode ser vista como a oportunidade da vida de todo o Eixo da Resistência para pôr um fim em mais de 70 anos de ocupação israelense da Palestina. Não pode ser descartado um ataque coordenado em todas as frentes contra Israel.

As contradições políticas afetarão sobretudo os países do Oriente Médio, onde os governos terão de romper ao menos parcialmente com seus amos imperialistas para garantir sua manutenção ou cairão pela indignação das massas contra a traição à causa palestina. Já na Europa e nos Estados Unidos, o principal fator de desestabilização são as contradições econômicas, com a acentuação da queda brutal na qualidade de vida da maioria da população pelas consequências da insistência de seus governos em manter as guerras de agressão imperialistas.

Com um simples bloqueio marítimo, uma organização de rebeldes esfarrapados e esfomeados conseguiu sacudir os pilares de todo o sistema capitalista mundial, expondo claramente a sua extrema fragilidade. O grande barril de pólvora mundial – o Oriente Médio – está começando a explodir e a demolir todo o sistema em sua volta.

Eduardo Vasco

 

 

Eduardo Vasco é jornalista especializado em política internacional, correspondente de guerra e autor dos livros-reportagem “O povo esquecido: uma história de genocídio e resistência no Donbass” e “Bloqueio: a guerra silenciosa contra Cuba”

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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Earlier this month, China and the European Union concluded a bilateral summit, the first one since 2019. One usually wouldn’t expect that four years could change much, but that was precisely the case during the recent meeting. While the previous summit was largely focused on questions of economic cooperation and calls for the improvement of overall relations, this one was much more (geo)political, with the EU reiterating a near-carbon copy of American talking points. Although Brussels’ sovereignty and independence were always highly questionable, its subservience during this year’s meeting was more obvious than ever before. Beijing was faced with an implicitly hostile attitude that made it virtually impossible to accomplish any breakthroughs. Expectedly, China wasn’t the one making unreasonable demands.

As previously mentioned, the 2019 summit dealt with closer economic cooperation that also included technological cooperation (particularly in terms of 5G development), while the (geo)political side of things was limited to largely ceremonial calls for the ease of tensions in the South and East China Seas, as well as “continued support for the Minsk Accords”. However, as we all know now, the EU’s commitment to both has been patently false. Worse yet, the troubled bloc is now openly engaged in America’s so-called “China containment” strategy, while its much-touted “commitment” to the Minsk Accords is laughable at best, given that top European leaders openly admitted that this was just a ruse to give the Kiev regime enough time to prepare for war against Russia.

And yet, Chinese President Xi Jinping still tried to keep the atmosphere as friendly as possible and even stated that the EU was a “key partner”, reiterating the importance of trade and technological cooperation between Beijing and Brussels. He also said that China and the EU had no reason to consider each other “rivals”. However, Xi Jinping’s peaceful overtures were not only ignored, but openly rejected, echoing the identical behavior of the United States in recent years. Instead of dealing with its mounting problems, the troubled bloc insisted that the Asian giant should prevent the mythical “Uyghur genocide”. This was also followed by threats of tariffs for Chinese electric vehicles, while Germany, the EU’s top member, effectively banned Huawei from the development of its 5G network.

In addition, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen complained that Brussels’ trade deficit with Beijing doubled, amounting to $390 billion in 2022. Von der Leyen accused China of economic protectionism and excess production that supposedly undercuts European manufacturers. Somewhat ironically, the EU’s complaints and blame games were almost identical to those of former president Donald Trump, when his administration kept accusing Beijing of the same practices. It should be noted that the troubled bloc heavily criticized Trump precisely for these statements (among many other things), but was now repeating exactly the same talking points. Obviously, the political West is simply ignoring the history of the development of China’s economic system.

Namely, while Beijing always had a strong production economy (more precisely, the strongest in the world since at least 2014), the likes of the US and EU have shifted their economic base to tertiary industrial sectors, severely undercutting their ability to compete with China. The Asian giant has an extremely robust economy that includes a fine balance between primary and secondary industries, while the tertiary sector is growing at an astonishing rate. Realizing that it won’t be able to compete with China fairly, the political West is now trying to find excuses to prevent or at the very least slow down Beijing’s unprecedented development. However, it should be noted that the Asian giant never had any ambitions of global domination, much unlike its Western rivals and their vassals and satellite states.

China is now faced with the prospect of having to contend with not only the US’s “containment” strategy (QUAD, AUKUS), but also with the EU’s meddling in its backyard, as well as calls for the globalization of NATO and the formation of its Asia-Pacific variant. Instead of focusing on the economic aspects of its relations with Beijing, Brussels kept insisting on (geo)political matters, including those that are outside of China’s control. Namely, von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel urged Xi Jinping and Chinese Premier Li Qiang to put pressure on Russia and President Vladimir Putin. As evidenced by Xi Jinping’s recent statements, this request was completely ignored, demonstrating China’s continued commitment to keeping close Russia ties.

The EU insisted that the “diplomatic solution” to the Ukrainian conflict was necessary and threatened China with “consequences” if it ever decided to sell weapons to Russia or “assist” Moscow with circumventing sanctions. Needless to say, none of these requests apply to the troubled bloc itself, as the EU is “allowed” to send weapons to the Neo-Nazi junta, as well as to steal Russian foreign exchange (forex) assets. However, this unrivaled hypocrisy (the sheer magnitude of which can hardly be described with words) didn’t stop there, as European “leaders” once again brought up the aforementioned myth of the “Uyghur genocide” and accused China of alleged “human rights abuses” in its northwestern province of Xinjiang. They also threatened consequences if Beijing intervened in Taiwan.

Xi Jinping’s and Li Qiang’s attempts to nudge the talks more toward economic topics were ignored by von der Leyen and Michel. What China even suggested was the cooperation between its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the EU’s Global Gateway, a project that the troubled bloc envisioned as a rival undertaking. To call the summit a failure would be a gross understatement. Virtually every Chinese offer of cooperation was not only rejected, but was also met with completely unreasonable demands that had nothing to do with economic relations. Political considerations were the only thing the EU was interested in. All this only demonstrated and confirmed that Russia’s concerns about the political West’s crawling aggression are not unfounded and that China should be worried about the same.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Dec. 16, 2023 – Ft Jackson, SC – US Army Staff Sgt. Zachary L.Melton, age 30, was found deceased in his car on Saturday Dec. 16, 2023.

Dec. 8, 2023 – Ft Jackson, SC – US Army Staff Sgt. Allen Burtram, age 34, didn’t report for work, was later found dead by med services. No foul play suspected.

Dec. 2, 2023 – US Air Force Veteran – 42 year old Michael Snyder, father of 6, died unexpectedly of a massive heart attack while rocking his baby to sleep.

Nov. 24, 2023 – US Army Lt. Col. Jered Little, commander of Public Health Activity (Hawaii) died suddenly on Nov. 24, 2023. Got his 1st Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine on Dec. 23, 2020 & was the poster boy for illegal COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine mandates in the US Military.

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Nov. 24, 2023 – 58 year old John Leon Gerard Legere – served in the Royal Canadian Navy, Subsee Engineering, Volunteer Firefighter, died after battling Craniopharyngioma, a ‘rare’ type of Brain Tumor.

Nov. 18, 2023 – US Air Force Veteran Clairesa Robinson died suddenly on Nov. 18, 2023.

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Nov. 16, 2023 – Montrose, MI – 36 year old US Army Veteran and Medic Melissa Portillo died suddenly. She was an Iraq War Veteran.

Nov. 13, 2023 – Bryan Herzog, US Army Soldier, Operations Officer was found collapsed on a running path near Sherman Army Airfield, while training & died in hospital on Nov. 13, 2023.

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Nov. 9, 2023 – Fredericksburg, VA Dr.Jayson Tappan, 53 year old emergency doctor and US Navy Veteran died suddenly on Nov. 9, 2023.

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Nov. 4, 2023 – Davie, FL – 14 year old Knox MacEwen is a Western High School Air Force Junior ROTC (Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps) student. On Nov. 4 he was running at a Army Junior ROTC exercise when he suffered a cardiac arrest during a 5K run and died in the hospital. His mother is recovering from a hard fought battle with cancer this past year.

Oct. 30, 2023 – Australia – 60 yo Mario Collavino, teacher who served in Australian Army and police officer died suddenly on Oct. 30, 2023.

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Oct. 25, 2023 – Brockton, MA – US Navy Veteran Richard Ledoux died unexpectedly on Oct. 25, 2023. His wife is a nurse who rushed to get COVID-19 mRNA Vaccinated.

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Oct. 23, 2023 – US ARMY NURSE DEAD – Liberty Hill, TX – 42 year old Krista Labbe, Lieutenant Colonel US Army Nurse Corps died suddenly on Oct. 23, 2023.

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Oct. 10, 2023 – CANADIAN ARMY MAJOR DEAD – Ottawa, ON – 37 year old Nicholas Fysh hated “Freedom Convoy”, loved COVID-19 Vaccines, mandates & passports “so important for encouraging holdouts to get vaccinated” Died Oct. 10, 2023 from “unexplained medical event.”

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Oct. 4, 2023 – 36 year old Captain Patrick John Cassidy, Westhill School Board Member, NY Army National Guard. Passed away at home after a 9-month battle with Lung Cancer.

Oct. 2, 2023 – 39 year old US Air Force Veteran, Brandon Daniel Calderon, died suddenly.

Sep. 26, 2023 – Brazil – 35 year old Wilsonsander da Silva Dias, Sergeant of Navy and Marine died suddenly Sep. 26, 2023 after getting sick during special training.

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Sep. 15, 2023 – AK – 57 yo Scott Frederick was a lawyer & US Navy Vet. Had stroke on Aug. 23 & was found to have Glioblastoma. He died Sep. 15, 2023, 3 weeks after diagnosis.

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Sep. 10, 2023 – 51 year old Dax Bakken was a Desert Storm Iraq Veteran and dad of 3 kids. He collapsed during Ironman Wisconsin bike portion of the race and died suddenly on Sep. 10, 2023. 

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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