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Armistice Day is one of those disturbing occasions of the year when humanity’s folly is laid bare. It should be an occasion to remind said humanity about the stupid waste occasioned by war and its war-crazed planners who generally elude the dock; instead, it’s an occasion to extol its virtues and remind the reactionaries that war can be a mighty fine thing to pursue in the name of an ideology, cock-eyed belief or a sense of self-worth.  Unquestioning solemnity, medals and tears are the order of the day, the ritualistic plat du jour.

These occasions are never challenged, nor impugned. The origins of the war that gave name to the occasion are simplified, if they are ever mentioned. And never shall that injunction be violated. That is certainly the view of Suella Braverman, the UK Home Secretary who must be increasingly getting under the skin of the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak.

Being a cut and dried jingo, Braverman treats Armistice Day as the sort of occasion to be revered and kept in aspic. No politics should ever enter unless she politicises it, nor criticism about war and its viciousness be permitted. Peaceniks are especially reviled. Remember debts and lost lives; never ask why those debts were incurred in the first place.

There is then a supreme irony in terms of Braverman’s views on peace protests that take place on Armistice Day, one which, by definition, involved the laying down of arms and the cessation of conflict. But that is the lot of the war loving demagogue in search of votes: irony is rarely acknowledged.

In a throat grabbing exercise of some ferocity against the vast sea of protests against the Israel-Hamas War, Braverman took to The Times to attack marches running into the hundreds of thousands as an unquestioned “assertion of primacy by certain groups – particular Islamists”.  She was particularly beside herself that they should take place on, of all days, November 11.

For the Home Secretary, these were unquestionably “hate” marches that would be more commonly associated with the lusty sectarians of Northern Island. Even worse were those selective senior officers in the Metropolitan Police picking favourites when it came to protests. “Right-wing and nationalist protestors who engage in aggression are rightly met with a stern response yet pro-Palestinian mobs displaying almost identical behaviour are largely ignored, even when clearly breaking the law?” By the time Braverman had finished her bulldozing, she had insulted the whole constituency of Northern Ireland, mocked those favouring the Palestinian cause for freedom, and lacerated the operational independence of London’s own police forces.

The sense about Braverman making her own unilateral dash in all of this was confirmed by a spokesperson for Sunak. The article, we are told, was not “cleared” by Number 10 ahead of time. Editorial suggestions made by the PM’s office were roundly ignored. As for the Saturday protest, Sunak had met the Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley ahead of time to discuss security regarding the march. Neither thought it problematic that it should take place, given that the protests would avoid the Whitehall area and stay away from The Cenotaph, where the customary, holy delusions were to take place.

Her views have certainly struck a satisfactory note for some, suggesting that such feigned outrage might have some political weight among the spectral majority populists always love screeching about.

“In her comments about the pro-Palestinian Armistice Day protests and the actions of the police, Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, was bravely stating what the majority of the country thinks,” wrote one reader of The Daily Telegraph.

The Daily Mail agreed, expressing fury at the “soft policing of these protests” packed with “snarling bigots” contemptuous of Britain’s glorious history of war.  Tory deputy chair Lee Anderson affirmed the position, claiming the Home Secretary was merely “guilty of saying what most of us are thinking”.

These were certainly not the views shared by a number of Conservatives. Lord Soames, for one, opined that, whether in agreement or not with the pro-Palestinian protests, they should go ahead.

“It’s nowhere near the Cenotaph. It’s in the afternoon and most of these people, 90% of those people are not there to make trouble.”

Ex-cabinet minister Baroness Warsi firmly insisted that Braverman be sacked.

“She’d been briefed by the Met of what the route of the march was going to be, and the fact that they didn’t have concerns at this stage, she has now made this a live political issue because that’s the way she operates, right?”

As a result, patriots had turned into arsonists.

“They set this country alight, they pit community against community, they create these fires. And that is not the job of a government.”

Dominic Grieve, who served as attorney general between 2010 and 2014, had one line of advice for Sunak:

“The best thing the Prime Minister can do for us is to ensure that there is a new home secretary (before Sunday).” 

That she remains in office suggests not just Sunak’s absence of backbone, but Braverman’s imminent bid for his job. To now sack her would be something the newly minted martyr would be able to dine out on for months to come, all the time plotting for a Number 10 bid.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

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Yesterday I decided to break routine and take a trip along the coast northwards, outside the clutches of the bureaucratic matrix that is Wellington, once comedy central for the single source of truth, to listen to a little poetry and music.

The village I landed in is kinda nowhere, save for a beach that reveals the vastness of the Pacific, and the people who gathered in the converted church hall were content to do nothing but listen to the words and sounds. One of the poems and one of the piano compositions had emerged from the 2020 New Zealand lockdown, that insanely unjustifiable imprisonment of the healthy; but for the two hours of an afternoon, as the light slowly changed, and as the art came to an end, our small group of reverent listeners felt a little freedom from the fetters which, since 2020, seem merely to be lying in wait.

Notwithstanding the quiet joy of congregating and sharing, we could not help but be reminded, on this unusually sunny day, that just these kinds of events had, by government decree, been forbidden. Would the hammer come down again, and when, and would we all meekly accept another death-blow to our intrinsic rights?

Nobody voiced these concerns but everybody was, I’m sure, aware — the crowd had that look I’ve come to be familiar with among the denizens of the ‘freedom movement’ here: colors, glow, geniality, saying nothing much in the aftermath of the performance because what, after all, can be said as we absorbed its nourishing repercussions?

When I strolled along the beach and peered out at the Pacific, I was reminded of things maritime and of a visit I had made to a submarine moored in Philadelphia’s naval shipyard. As I descended into the bowels of the machine I was struck not only by the confined spaces, but by the realization of the reduction of the submarine’s inhabitants, whoever they may have been, to mere machines themselves serving the greater god of a strange mechanical beast. The purpose of every seaman, sleeping as they did in the narrowest of bunks, was geared to ensuring the efficient propulsion and mission of a metal monster. Once beneath the waves there was no way out, of course, and to think of trusting myself to such a contraption made me shudder. When I climbed out to land that day long ago, it was with a vastly more profound recognition of the insignificance of human life in relation to the compelling States that exploited it.

We are each of us born into a world whose roads, services, telecommunications, transport and comforts give the impression of a vast benign governing being, an organization of human accomplishment that might as well be God, for all we know or feel, holding our small souls in its embrace. We accept it, we trust implicitly and wordlessly in it — until something happens to jolt us out of our sleepy acquiescence.

Well, perhaps the only good arising from the devastating crisis that was — and is, the not-quite-finished covid psyops — has been the thunderous destruction of illusions. Those institutions we assumed were there to have our backs, the ones in place to safeguard our health, to protect the rule of law, to honor our inborn rights, to ensure the integrity of professional medical practice — they’ve all been exposed as criminally fraudulent.

For example, the few doctors here in New Zealand who took it upon themselves to practice in consonance with their professional principles are still hounded and persecuted by a corrupt Medical Council. These colleagues who dared to treat patients suffering from covid and/or the Jab, who dared to advocate for informed consent, and who dared to remain faithful to the Hippocratic Oath they swore when they received their medical degrees — they have lost licences to practice and are being hauled before kangaroo court tribunals as if they were criminals.

You see, in these past few years we have been slowly conditioned to accept the once unthinkable: that natural immunity counts for nothing, that genetically-altering inoculations which prevent neither transmission nor infection of the pathogen it was manufactured to protect against are wonderful, and that sudden deaths in the young and excess deaths overall are just ordinary features of life, nothing here to see!

There are many ways to kill: slow or quick, silently, insidiously and by imperceptible degrees — or cataclysmically loud, as in open battle. And we are seeing all of them play out across our stricken globe.

Since 2020 we’ve been living under a kind of martial law in this war being waged against the better parts of humanity. Censorship, coercion and murder become the norm, whether the war has been declared or not, whether the war is prosecuted by armies on the killing fields of Europe and the Middle East or, vastly more cleverly, by an invisible hand pushing a phony pandemic to exterminate our rights, followed by an injection that maims and eliminates our very selves.

I am not sanguine about the nature of human nature, seeing the addiction to destruction as a fundamental aspect of our species. The emergent properties that characterize our institutions tend mainly in the direction of control. The quest for knowledge is mostly a disguised quest for power.

But there is human good, as the small gathering in a seaside village can confirm from time to time when poetry and music are in the air.

As we prepare for the next onslaught I think our greatest challenge will be to make comrades of those who in their naivete or ignorance or carelessness or, perhaps, their opportunism, accepted the impositions of the Real Enemy, that coterie of people who, embalmed by their riches and lust to rule, succeeded in shutting down a world while convincing those shut down to praise them — and to carry on their work with smug virtuousness.

How brilliant, how shrewd! But how devoid of anything to aspire to.

As I drove back along the ocean road yesterday I thought that going nowhere and doing nothing couldn’t be better, and I knew that we would have to fight tooth and nail to preserve this right. So be it, it’s up to us, it’s always been up to us, and the fight never ceases.

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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: Image by fernando zhiminaicela from Pixabay

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Note: Daniele Ganser will be the featured speaker at the First Annual David Ray Griffin Lecture on Sunday, December 3, where he will discuss this book and related current topics. The lecture is hosted by the International Center for 9/11 Justice and UK Column. More information is available here.

If you regard the United States as perhaps flawed but overall a force for good in the world . . .

If you scoff at the notion that the US, a republic founded on principles of freedom and democracy, has morphed into a world empire, perpetrating assassinations, coups d’état, acts of terror and illegal warfare . . .

If you want to promote peace but haven’t yet explored deceptive events that precipitate US warmongering . . .

. . . here is a volume that will clear the air and paint an honest picture of the significant, not-so-rosy impact US foreign policy and actions have had in the world around us.

USA: The Ruthless Empire, by Swiss historian and peace researcher Daniele Ganser, is the newly published English language translation of his book Imperium USA, originally written in German and published in 2020. Here is a summary of key points — including some lesser-known ones — along with remedies for a more peaceful future, that are covered in the book.  

Ganser takes us on a tour of meticulously documented historical events that would be shocking to anyone committed to fairness and basic human decency. His intention is to strengthen the peace movement, which encompasses people all over the world — including in the US — who reject war as well as the lies and propaganda used to initiate and perpetuate wars. Throughout the book, he emphasizes three key pillars to the peace movement: the United Nations ban on any kind of violence or aggression, mindfulness (allowing one to recognize and see through war propaganda and lies), and viewing all people as members of the human family. 

Before delving into history, Ganser sets the stage in Chapter 1, “The USA Poses the Greatest Threat to World Peace.” He backs up this assertion with a dizzying array of figures about how many countries the US has bombed since 1945 (at least 23), how many military bases it has in foreign countries (more than 700), the US world record on military spending (now approaching $1 trillion annually), the number of US troops abroad (over 200,000), and the US status as the only country to have deployed nuclear weapons. He shares results of a Gallup poll of 67,000 people in 65 countries that asked, “Which country poses the greatest threat to world peace today?” to which 24% named the US, while between 5% and 9% named one of six other countries and less than 5% named one of twelve other countries.

Chapter 2, “The USA Is an Oligarchy,” spotlights an ominous manifestation of empire: the astronomical disparities in wealth and income (540 billionaires vs. over 100 million living in poverty, not to mention impacts around the world) resulting from an oligarchy of super-rich running the empire and manipulating information flows with little meaningful influence by voters.

Chapters 3 and 4 describe key precursors to empire both before and after the new US republic established its independence from Britain in the late 18^th century — namely, the mass murder and displacement of Native Americans and the importation and exploitation of slave labor from Africa in much of the new nation.

Chapter 5 covers the overt launch of imperial actions in the mid and late 19^th century, when the US initiated wars based on lies and often false flag incidents to annex half of Mexico and conquer former Spanish colonies either as outright possessions (Puerto Rico and Guam) or with nominal autonomy but under tight US control (Cuba and the Philippines). The Kingdom of Hawaii was captured and annexed under threat of violence.

Chapter 6, devoted to World War I, elaborates on how, even prior to the US entering combat in 1917, US-based war profiteers flourished. J.P. Morgan & Co. was financing England and France, and US corporations sold arms to Europe. Hence, vested US interests in intentionally prolonging the war cost millions of avoidable deaths. War propaganda thrived, with Germans — who had done nothing to the US — being severely vilified. Hamburgers became “Liberty Steak” and sauerkraut “Liberty Cabbage.” (Remember how in 2003, when France hesitated to join in the war on Iraq, the US Senate cafeteria sold “Freedom Fries”?) The Espionage Act was passed to prosecute pacifists (including Eugene Debs) and deny free speech — and is still being used today to persecute Julian Assange for exposing US war crimes in Iraq.

Chapter 7 scrutinizes the US role in World War II, unravelling its carefully cultivated image of fighting honorably on the side of righteousness, and exposes both belligerent proclivities and mixed loyalties. Ganser reminds us that US companies were allowed to sell oil to Nazi Germany both before and well into the war. Without that fuel supply, the Nazi threat may have dissipated prior to some of the worst atrocities being committed. Again, the war was unnecessarily prolonged.  

Though officially allies of the Soviet Union, the US and Great Britain were pleased to see Hitler taking action against communist Russia, and they avoided opening a western front until mid-1944, when it looked like the Soviet Union (which lost 27 million citizens in World War II) would be the sole victor over the Nazis. Ganser unearthed this remarkable June 1941 quote by then-US Senator and later President Harry Truman: “If we see that Germany is winning the war we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany. And that way let them kill as many as possible, although I certainly don’t want Hitler to win in the end.” Divide et impera — divide and conquer.

Truman, as US president, ordered the first and only deployment of nuclear weapons in history so far, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and terrorizing many more at a time when Japan was already prepared to surrender. Ganser documents how, in order to gain popular support for the US entering the war, it intentionally goaded the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor, providing the desired casus belli. The infamous December 7, 1941, attack was no surprise to President Franklin Roosevelt, who let it happen, sacrificing thousands of US servicemembers. As will become relevant to Chapter 12 on the September 11 attacks, Ganser notes that a Hollywood movie, “Pearl Harbor,” parroting the surprise attack myth, was released in May 2001, priming the public subliminally for what was to follow a few months later on September 11.

Chapter 8, “Covert Warfare,” tells us how the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Council were born in the post-war years. It includes a laundry list of how the US used them to perpetrate multiple coups d’état (Iran, Guatemala, Chile), assassinations (Lumumba in Congo, Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, Diem in Vietnam, Che Guevarra in Bolivia), assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, and the failed invasion of Cuba in 1961. President Kennedy ultimately became so outraged by these illegal operations that he fired CIA director Allan Dulles.  

Note that Ganser devoted an entire previous book, NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, to numerous additional covert operations involving the US, via NATO and the CIA, that are not covered in the present volume. These include false flag assassinations, bombing of civilians (blamed on communists), and fixing elections in much of Western Europe throughout the Cold War. 

Chapter 9 focuses on the Kennedy assassination, summarizing evidence exonerating Lee Harvey Oswald and implicating Allan Dulles in a conspiracy to commit this heinous murder. After District Attorney Jim Garrison of New Orleans brought much of the evidence to light in 1967, questioning the validity of the Warren Commission Report (authored by Dulles), the CIA created and widely publicized the notion of “conspiracy theorist” as a derogatory term for anyone who challenged the official narrative. Interestingly, Ganser notes that in 1979 the US House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations “saw a high probability that two men had shot Kennedy. . . . The Committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The Committee is unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy.” This report was conveniently obscured by the media, and few are aware of it today.

Chapter 10, on the Vietnam War — which rapidly escalated after Kennedy’s murder — is a painful reminder to those readers who lived through it of the needless suffering inflicted on millions of Vietnamese and on tens of thousands of US soldiers and the peripheral damage to neighboring countries of Laos and Cambodia. The latter two countries were bombed by the US without provocation, inciting the brutality of Khmer Rouge communists, whom the US could demonize to deflect from its own role in the bloodshed. Ganser reminds us of the false flag Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 that was used to provoke a dramatic escalation of the war in Vietnam. While we were repeatedly warned of the propagandistic “domino theory,” there was in fact no chain reaction of neighboring countries turning communist after Vietnam prevailed and defeated the US in 1975 — hence all that death and destruction was in vain, other than benefitting war profiteers.

In Chapter 11 on the Iran-Contra Affair, Ganser elucidates another example of the US pitting two of its adversaries against each other when it supported Saddam Hussein in Iraq’s war against Iran while simultaneously and covertly selling weapons to Iran and secretly using the proceeds to fund the Nicaraguan Contras, who supported the dictatorial Somoza regime. Ganser further shows how the CIA hypocritically engaged secretly in the cocaine trade to finance its covert operations.  How many people’s lives have been upended by those operations abroad and in drug-infested US cities?

In Chapters 12 and 13 on 9/11 and the War on Terror, respectively, the US empire ushers in the 21^st century with an overwhelming display of shock and awe. The first sub-heading is prescient: “A New Pearl Harbor” refers to a prophetic statement in the year 2000 by the neocon Project for a New American Century, noting that it would be difficult to get the US population to accept massive military spending and upgrades for fighting multiple wars simultaneously “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor.” 

Ganser offers three ways of evaluating the events of September 11, 2001: (1) Surprise attack catching everyone in the US, including top leadership and intelligence services, completely off guard; (2) LIHOP (let it happen on purpose), implying foreknowledge by key players of what was going to happen but intentionally failing to stop it; and (3) MIHOP (made it happen on purpose), involving direct complicity of certain players within the US military-intelligence apparatus and their agents. He disproves (1) and points to (2) and (3) as much more plausible, leaning toward (3).

Abundant research has been conducted debunking the official 9/11 story that 19 Muslim hijackers and a few men in a cave in Afghanistan were solely responsible for the death and destruction that day, and Ganser includes references to much of it in his footnotes. Bringing us to the present day, the author of this review refers readers to the International Center for 9/11 Justice for an up-to-date collection of relevant 9/11 research.   

In this volume, Ganser touches on a handful of key anomalies: obvious fallacies of the official 9/11 Commission report authored by Philip Zelikow, a Bush administration insider; the utter failure of the multi-billion dollar US defense system to prevent an attack, including on its own heavily fortified headquarters; the millions in profits made by unnamed individuals who invested heavily in put options in the days before September 11, 2001 (betting that United and American airlines stocks would soon plummet), indicating specific foreknowledge; the clear evidence that World Trade Center Building 7 was destroyed later that day by controlled demolition and the refusal of US authorities or media to even entertain that possibility; and the evidence for the use of explosives in the destruction of the Twin Towers.

With the fall of the Soviet Union ten years before, the US empire had been searching for a new major enemy, and the crimes of 9/11 offered an “ideal” replacement: the never-ending and amorphous “War on Terror,” which could be and has been used to justify numerous military incursions and the proliferation of US bases anywhere “terrorists” are deemed to be lurking.  Ganser details the US role in illegal wars in Afghanistan, Iraq (initiated by spreading lies about alleged weapons of mass destruction), and Syria, all of which left millions dead in their wake, not to mention the horrendous abuses of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers at Abu Ghraib.

On a note of optimism, Ganser points out how the blatant injustice of the wars in the Middle East — like the injustice of the Vietnam War before them — energized the peace movement in the US, prompting massive demonstrations and civil disobedience in opposition, indicating vast numbers who denounce war and empire and seek peaceful coexistence with all peoples. Beyond famous peace movement leaders like Jeannette Rankin, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi, he highlights the role of everyday citizens affirming their commitment to all people as members of the human family and rejecting attempts by the elites to divide and conquer. He also points out how the rise of alternative media has played a role in allowing for dissemination of information that counters the mainstream lies and war propaganda. The explosion of the internet and social media can be a two-edged sword, however, as Ganser points out in Chapter 14, “The Digital Empire,” with consolidation and monopolization of technology and information flows by such digital giants as Google, Facebook, and Wikipedia.  

The 15^th and final chapter, called “The Fight for Eurasia,” details the US role in the 2014 coup d’état in Ukraine — which was a catalyst for ensuing violence that has now escalated exponentially — as well as the relentless eastward expansion of NATO, contrary to US assurances in 1991 that this would not happen, which is another key causative factor in the havoc being wreaked there today. The original German edition was written two years prior to Russia’s 2022 “special military operation” in Ukraine. This new English edition does add a few paragraphs condemning Russia’s invasion as a violation of the UN Charter, while noting the provocations by NATO and Ukraine that fueled this proxy war between the US and Russia.

The book likewise does not include the up-to-the-minute status of the US relationship with China, but does note in the last chapter that China’s humiliation by the British Empire during the 19^th century Opium Wars has prompted caution in its current relations with the West. We learn about China’s 2013 announcement of the “New Silk Road” in the form of a massive transcontinental infrastructure project also known as the Belt and Road Initiative, now well underway, designed not as an imperial land and resource grab but rather to mutually benefit all participating nations, allowing them to respect each other’s sovereignty and reducing tensions among them.

In his conclusion, Ganser notes that “the peace movement must trust that a world without war is possible.” He is “convinced that a fundamental exit from the spiral of violence is possible. The decisive factor is whether we really want inner and outer peace. If this will is strong enough, we can orient ourselves according to the following three principles: the human family, the UN ban on violence, and mindfulness.” These three principles, he notes, can be applied to overcome polarization, profiteering, and propaganda. A key tool of empire is dividing people into those who are favored and those who are demonized, pitting them against each other while enabling elites to generate profits for the few from the fighting of the many. Mindfulness can help people “wake up and quicky realize that war and lies always go hand in hand.” Those who practice mindfulness can no longer be so easily deceived by psychological operations.

In the words of President John F. Kennedy, invoked by Ganser in the introduction to the book,

“Our problems are man-made. Therefore, they can be solved by men.”

 

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Marilyn Langlois is a volunteer community organizer and peace activist based in Richmond, California. She is a guest editorialist for TRANSCEND Media Service and a member of Daniele Ganser’s online peacemaker community. She serves on the board of the International Center for 9/11 Justice.  

Featured image is by Benjamin Zinevich

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

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Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Iranian-backed Houthi rebels claim to have targeted Israel with ballistic missiles over the Red Sea, causing Tel Aviv to respond last week by deploying missile boats. These recent developments may once again place the region under the spotlight. The issue of the Palestinian conflict in fact has long been a divisive matter in the wider African continent, and within the African Union (AU), as the South African condemnation of what it described as the Israeli “Apartheid” last year clearly showed. The dramatic situation that is unfolding in Palestine today is having massive repercussions globally, and the North of Africa, the so-called Horn of Africa, especially, can be particularly affected by it. To better understand this, one needs to go back in time about three years, though.

Since the 2020 US-brokered Abraham Accords, and the subsequent normalization agreements with Israel signed by states such as the United Arab Emirates (UEA),  tensions over the issue have arisen in the continent, and particularly in North Africa. The timing of the Abraham Accords is interesting: the Horn of Africa has been increasingly dominated by rising Gulf states, as Alex de Waal, a World Peace Foundation’s executive director, wrote in a 2019 paper. The 2020 Israel-UAE deal in particular, and notably their joint naval drill in November 2021, raised some eyebrows. Among other reasons for that, the UAE can be described as a rising military regional power, with a presence in Eritrea and Somalia, for instance, and also having, together with Tel Aviv, been occupying Yemen’s Socotra Island.

Far from being merely a matter of normalizing relations with the Jewish state, these agreements with Tel Aviv in fact have opened the door to security and military cooperation, thus increasing Israel’s presence in Africa – a presence which includes private companies with close ties with the state such as the NSO Group, but also the Shin Bet (Israel’s Security Agency), the Mossad and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) themselves. Such has been a key part of Netanyahu’s diplomacy – often described by critics as “buying friends by selling weapons” or sometimes as “spyware diplomacy” – for the last six years at least.

For one thing, one quarter of the Jewish states’s maritime trade goes through the port of Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba. Alex de Waal describes the Red Sea as “Israel’s back door”, the coastal countries there (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen Eritrea, and Djibouti) all being, in Tel Aviv’s perspective, “pieces in the jigsaw of its extended security frontier.” As Waal reminds us, about 10 percent of the global maritime trade is carried through the straits between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

Besides its concerns regarding the Red Sea’s security, Tel Aviv’s foreign policy has also focused on gaining African support pertaining to votes at international bodies, Palesting obviously being a hot topic.

Thus far, such a strategy had been gaining Israel new allies, for sure, but, at the same time, fueling domestic tensions within these very states – and, more critically, inter-state frictions, as well. Morocco, for instance, is another point of contention: in a kind of “quid pro quo” over Morocco’s own normalization deal with its Israeli ally, former US President Donald Trump recognized Moroccan claims over the disputed territory of Western Sahara, controlled by Algerian-backed rebels, thus increasing the heat in what already was a boiling pan. Already in December 2020, Algeria’s then Prime Minister Abdelaziz Djerad denounced the Israel-Morocco deal in strong language, describing the agreement as a “dirty alliance” through which the “Zionist entity” (in his word) tried to get closer to Algerian borders.

When it comes to state officials in the region, anti-Israel speech is fueled by security concerns, from the perspective of some of these states such as Algeria, but such feelings have frequently found an echo in popular opinion whenever Tel Aviv bombs civilians in Palestine, something which happens, with varying intensity, quite often. The next year, in May 2021, Israeli bombing of residential buildings in Gaza, for example, sparked a humanitarian crisis and pro-Palestine protests, further polarizing the Middle East – again with an impact in the Horn of Africa.

The ongoing Israeli military campaign which started in October, after the Hamas attacks, is, one could say, unprecedented in its scale – and its diplomatic and geopolitical consequences will probably be so as well. Washington has long treated its Israeli ally as a kind of exception to international law and this seems to be  backfiring. As I wrote, Turkish-Israeli ties in all likelihood are going back to the freezer – not to mention the rapprochement with Saudi Arabia.

All of this is very bad news for the Jewish state, considering all its strategic interests in the Red Sea and in the Horn of Africa, a region troubled by the complex situations unfolding in Sudan – not to mention a number of hydropolitical conflicts. As the aforementioned Alex de Waal reminds us, anti-Israeli feelings fueled by indignation over the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza plus Hama’s boldness will encourage Islamists groups such as Somalia’s al-Shabaab – not to mention the Houthi movement.

In addition, Israel and Turkey already compete for influence in North Africa, as the former seeks to connect the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea as part of its geostrategic oil and gas interests, and with both  countries’ relations severely damaged as of now (over Gaza), the area may increasingly become yet another point of contention.

Moreover, as I wrote in January, post-Nord Stream Europe has been in quest for energy alternatives to Russian gas, and both Algeria and Morocco have been competing for European markets, however it would be unrealistic to expect a robust energy supply from North Africa pipelines, considering the region’s ongoing tensions. This is particularly true now, as Middle Eastern stormy waves reach the Horn of Africa and beyond – thus the European continent’s industrial, economic and energy crises remain deadlocked – and so do emerging North African power aspirations towards becoming key energy providers, as the current Middle-Eastern conflict risks spilling across the Red Sea.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Below is the full text (Transcript) of President Bashar al-Assad at the Arab-Islamic Extraordinary Summit, hosted by Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,

 

Transcript 

Below is the full text of President al-Assad speech in front of the Arab-Islamic Extraordinary Summit:

Your Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,

Your Majesties and Highnesses,

Gaza has never been the issue; rather Palestine is the central cause and Gaza is an embodiment of its essence and a blatant expression of the suffering of its people.

Talking about Gaza individually misses the point, as it is part of a whole, and the recent aggression against it is just an event in a series of events dating back to seventy-five years of Zionist crime, with thirty-two years of a failed peace, the only absolute, irrefutable result of which is that the entity has increased its aggression, and the Palestinian situation has become more unjust, and miserable.

Neither the land nor the right has returned, neither in Palestine nor in the Golan. This situation has produced a political equation stating that more Arab meekness towards them equals more Zionist ferocity towards us, and that more hand extended by us equals more massacres against us. Zionist entity knows nothing about peace.

In light of this very clear equation, the aggression against Gaza cannot be investigated in isolation from the context of the Zionist massacres against the Palestinians committed previously, and the continuation of this – without a doubt – later.

In addition, we cannot isolate this ongoing crime by dealing “as Arab and Islamic countries” with the recurring events in a fragmented manner regarding the Palestinian cause. Our continued dealing with the aggression against Gaza today with the same methodology means paving the way by us for Israel to complete the massacres until the annihilation of the people and the death of the cause.

The emergency situation at our summit today is neither aggression nor killing, as both are ongoing and both are inherent and characteristic of the entity, but the emergency is Zionism outpacing itself in barbarism, which places us before unprecedented responsibilities, both humanly and politically, at a minimum, if we put aside the national security of our region.

From a humanitarian standpoint, there is no dispute about our duty to bear a large share of restoring the minimum requirements of life, whether through immediate aid or rebuilding the necessary infrastructure later, but do we continue to revolve in a vicious circle of killing and aid, then massacres, then aid, attacks, then statements?

The most important question is: What does the Palestinians need from us? Do they need humanitarian aid from us first, or do they need protection from us first from the upcoming genocide?

Here lies our role, and here lies our political work, but if we do not have real tools for pressure, then any step we take or speech we deliver has no meaning. The minimum that we have are the actual political tools, not the rhetorical ones, the most important of which is stopping any political track with the Zionist entity, with all what the political track includes, whether economic or other issues, so that its return is conditional on the entity’s commitment to an immediate and long-term cessation, not a temporary one, of crimes against all Palestinians in all of Palestine, while allowing bringing immediate aid into Gaza.

As for talking about the two states and launching the peace process and other details and rights, despite their importance, they are not the priority at this emergency moment, even though we know that talking about them will not bear fruit, because there is no partner, no sponsor, no reference, and no law, and because it is not possible to restore a right when the criminal became a judge, and the thief became a judge, and this is the state of the West today.

By our will only, my brothers, apart from our demands on Western countries, international institutions and others to assume their responsibilities, they bear only historical colonial responsibilities based on the oppression and plunder of peoples. By our will only, by the overwhelming popular public opinion in our countries, with the new reality imposed by the Palestinian resistance in our region, we possessed those tools. Let us use them, and let us take advantage of the global transformation that has opened for us political doors that have been closed for decades, so that we can enter through them and change the equations, and let the precious souls who rose in Palestine be a rewarding price for achieving what we were unable to do in the past and what we must accomplish in the present and in the future.

*

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.

Introduction by Peter Koenig 

This article by Chris Hedges is what best describes the Horror – indescribable Horror Israel is committing in Gaza and soon in the West Bank, where ethnic cleansing has already begun.

It is a Horror – that is beyond words.

A dentist living in a suburb of Gaza – that had not yet been bombed — received an early morning phone call from an Israeli IDF Secret Service agent,

“You have 2 hours to evacuate the three high-rise apartment buildings where you live. Afterwards we must bomb them.”

To prove that they meant business they sent a rocket into one of the buildings. The dentist became a forced  evacuator and an evacuee at once. He barely managed to get people out, some in pajamas, others in prayer robes, before the bombing started. Reported by Swiss Bluewin News in German. 

This was as humanitarian as it gets by some IDF or secret service people, who most likely are under pressure that even their damaged conscience could no longer tolerate. So, they saved maybe hundreds of lives – children, women, elderly — and normal people.

Where is the Human Rights Commission when it is needed?

What is the UN good for?

The entire system in which we believed for decades as the measuring stick for international law and for political justice is now revealed to be utterly corrupted and sold to the Big-Bucks, to the criminal Biden Administration and the five-fold Financial-Military-IT-Media and Pharma Complex pulling the strings out from darkness.

The Horror is beyond words and beyond imagination.

The Horror is of blood and shredded children.

The Horror is of thousands and thousands – tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands — dead bodies disintegrating in the rubbles of indiscriminately IDF-bombed hospitals, apartment buildings, mosques – you name it. 

The Horror is of universal bearing, especially since the world – HUMANITY, yes, humanity – just looks on.

That, in itself, is beyond words, beyond imagination, beyond the spirit of anything that calls itself human.

Read on Chris Hedges depicting reality. 

Peter Koenig, November 13, 2023

The Horror, The Horror

Israel’s genocidal attacks, which are killing hundreds of Palestinians a day, including some 160 children, have expanded to shelling the remaining hospitals in Gaza.

By Chris Hedges,

The Chris Hedges Report, November 12, 2023

DOHA, Qatar: I am in the studio of Al Jazeera’s Arabic service watching a live feed from Gaza City. The Al Jazeera reporter in northern Gaza, because of the intense Israeli shelling, was forced to evacuate to southern Gaza. He left his camera behind. He trained it on Al-Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest medical complex. It is night. Israeli tanks fire directly towards the hospital compound. Long horizontal red flashes. A deliberate attack on a hospital. A deliberate war crime. A deliberate massacre of the most helpless civilians, including the very sick and infants. Then the feed goes dead.

We sit in front of the monitors. We are silent. We know what this means. No power. No water. No internet. No medical supplies. Every infant in an incubator will die. Every dialysis patient will die. Everyone in the intensive care unit will die. Everyone who needs oxygen will die.  Everyone who needs emergency surgery will die. And what will happen to the 50,000 people who, driven from their homes by the relentless bombing, have taken refuge on the hospital grounds? We know the answer to that as well. Many of them, too, will die.

There are no words to express what we are witnessing. In the five weeks of horror this is one of the pinnacles of horror. The indifference of Europe is bad enough.  The active complicity by the United States is unfathomable. Nothing justifies this. Nothing. And Joe Biden will go down in history as an accomplice to genocide. May the ghosts of the thousands of children he has participated in murdering haunt him for the rest of his life. 

Israel and the United States are sending a chilling message to the rest of the world. International and humanitarian law, including the Geneva Convention, are meaningless pieces of paper. They did not apply in Iraq. They do not apply in Gaza. We will pulverize your neighborhoods and cities with bombs and missiles. We will wantonly murder your women, children, elderly and sick. We will set up blockades to engineer starvation and the spread of infectious diseases. You, the “lesser breeds” of the earth, do not matter. To us you are vermin to be extinguished. We have everything. If you try and take any of it away from us, we will kill you. And we will never be held accountable.

We are not hated for our values. We are hated because we have no values. We are hated because rules only apply to others. Not to us. We are hated because we have arrogated to ourselves the right to carry out indiscriminate slaughter. We are hated because we are heartless and cruel. We are hated because we are hypocrites, talking about protecting civilians, the rule of law and humanitarianism while extinguishing the lives of hundreds of people in Gaza a day, including 160 children.

Israel reacted with indignation and moral outrage when it was accused of bombing the al-Ahli Arab Christian hospital in Gaza, which left hundreds of dead. The bombing, Israel claimed, came from an errant rocket fired by Palestine Islamic Jihad. There is nothing in the arsenal of Hamas or Islamic Jihad that could have replicated the massive explosive power of the missile that struck the hospital. Those of us who have covered Gaza have heard this Israel trope so many times it is risible. They always blame Hamas and the Palestinians for their war crimes, now attempting to argue that hospitals are Hamas command centers and therefore legitimate targets. They never provide evidence. The Israeli military and government lie like they breathe.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), which has staff working in Al-Shifa, issued a statement saying patients, doctors and nurses are “trapped in hospitals under fire.” It called on the “Israeli government to cease this unrelenting assault on Gaza’s health system.”

“Over the past 24 hours, hospitals in Gaza have been under relentless bombardment. Al-Shifa hospital complex, the biggest health facility where MSF staff are still working, has been hit several times, including the maternity and outpatient departments, resulting in multiple deaths and injuries,” the statement read. “The hostilities around the hospital have not stopped. MSF teams and hundreds of patients are still inside Al-Shifa hospital. MSF urgently reiterates its calls to stop the attacks against hospitals, for an immediate ceasefire and for the protection of medical facilities, medical staff and patients.”

Three other hospitals in northern Gaza and Gaza City are encircled by Israeli forces and tanks, in what a doctor told Al Jazeera was a “day of war against hospitals.” The Indonesian Hospital has reportedly also lost power. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that 20 of 36 hospitals in Gaza no longer function.

Israel and Washington’s cynicism is breathtaking. There are no differences in intent. Washington only wants it done quickly. Humanitarian corridors?  Pauses in the shelling?  These are vehicles to facilitate the total depopulation of northern Gaza. The handful of aid trucks allowed through the border at Rafah with Egypt? A public relations gimmick. There is only one goal – kill, kill, kill. The faster the better. All Biden officials talk about is what comes next once Israel has finished its decimation of Gaza. They know Israel’s slaughter will not end until Gazans are living in the open without shelter in the southern part of the strip and dying because of a lack of food, water and medical care. 

Gaza before Israel’s ground incursion was one of the most densely populated spots on the planet. Imagine what will happen with 1.1 million Gazans from the north piled on top of over 1 million in the south. Imagine what will take place when infectious diseases such as cholera become an epidemic.  Imagine the ravages of starvation. The pressure will build to do something. And that something, Israel hopes, will be to push the Palestinians over the border into the Sinai in Egypt. Once there, they will never return. Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza will be complete.  Its ethnic cleansing of the West Bank will begin.

That is Israel’s demented dream. To achieve it, they will make Gaza uninhabitable.

Ask yourself, if you were a Palestinian in Gaza and had access to a weapon what would you do? If Israel killed your family, how would you react? Why would you care about international or humanitarian law when you know it only applies to the oppressed, not the oppressors? If terror is the only language Israel uses to communicate, the only language it apparently understands, wouldn’t you speak back with terror? 

Israel’s orgy of death will not crush Hamas. Hamas is an idea. This idea is fed on the blood of martyrs. Israel is giving Hamas an abundant supply.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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

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

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

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Einleitung

Ein Artikel in der linken deutschen Tageszeitung „Junge Welt“ vom 9. 11. 2023 über die Weltjugendkonferenz in Paris mit dem Titel: „Die Jugend muss eine Vorreiterrolle übernehmen“ (1) veranlasste mich als Vater, ehemaligen Lehrer und Psychologen, die Frage zu stellen, wie die Jugend in die Lage kommen kann, bei der Gestaltung der Zukunft eine Vorreiterrolle zu übernehmen.

Da sich die Charaktereigenschaften des Menschen bereits in der Kindheit entwickeln, müssen Erzieher ausgebildet werden, die in der Lage sind, eine Generation heranzubilden, die eine neue und menschliche Sozialordnung realisieren kann.

Da sich junge Menschen oft darüber beschweren, dass die Eltern sie nicht verstehen und sie ihnen deshalb grollen, ist es von großer Bedeutung, dass beide Generationen miteinander versöhnt werden. Das geschieht am erfolgreichsten in einer Psychotherapie.

In kleinen Schritten wird die Jugend dann ihre Kompetenzen entwickeln und in die Lage kommen, die Zukunft zusammen mit den Erwachsenen zu gestalten.

„Die Jugend muss eine Vorreiterrolle übernehmen“

Im Artikel der „Jungen Welt“, einem Gespräch mit dem Moderator der Weltjugendkonferenz Rafael Vergara heißt es, dass Delegierte aus über 60 Ländern auf der Weltjugendkonferenz in Paris aktuelle Krisen sowie Wege nach vorne diskutierten. 400 Jugendliche seien bis zum 5. November dem Aufruf des Netzwerks „Youth Writing History“ gefolgt und hätten Antworten auf die Krisen und Kriege unserer Zeit gesucht.

Auf die Frage „Wie geht es weiter?“ antwortete Moderator Vergara unter anderem:

„Langfristig wollen wir ein globales Netzwerk der internationalistischen Zusammenarbeit etablieren. (…).

Wir denken, dass die Jugend, als dynamische Kraft der Gesellschaft, dabei eine Vorreiterrolle übernehmen muss. Der Aufbau einer anderen Welt darf nicht auf morgen verschoben werden, sondern wir wollen im Hier und Jetzt am Aufbau eines freien Lebens arbeiten.“ (2)

Ein schönes Ziel, doch stellt sich die Frage, wie die Jugend in die Lage kommen kann, bei der Gestaltung der Zukunft eine Vorreiterrolle zu übernehmen. 

Da sich der Charakter der Menschen in der Kindheit entwickelt, ginge es darum, Erzieher auszubilden, die fähig sind, eine Generation mit dem Ziel der Verwirklichung einer neuen, menschlichen Sozialordnung heranzubilden. Das hat bisher gefehlt. 

Erzieher befähigen, eine Generation heranzubilden, die neue, menschliche Sozialordnung verwirklich kann 

Dass die Charakterstruktur des Menschen durch seine Erlebnisse und Eindrücke in der Kindheit vorherbestimmt wird, ist eine Entdeckung der Tiefenpsychologie. Es sind die Familienatmosphäre und die erzieherische Haltung der Eltern, die die Charakterbildung des Kindes weitgehend bestimmen. Sie formen den seelischen Horizont, der dem Kind frühzeitig eine bestimmte Haltung gegenüber sich selbst und den Mitmenschen nahelegt. Diese aus der Familiensituation entsprungenen Charakterzüge bleiben größtenteils unbewusst.

Charaktereigenschaften sind nicht etwas Angeborenes und Unveränderliches, sondern lediglich das Ergebnis zahlloser Kindheitserlebnisse. Dabei haben die Persönlichkeit der Eltern und ihr erzieherisches Verhalten den allergrößten Einfluss. Es ginge also darum, Eltern und Unterrichtende aufzuklären und sie zu einer gewaltlosen und vernunftgemäßen Erziehung ihrer Kinder und Schüler zu führen.  

Aufgabe der Erzieher ist es, Menschen zu bilden, die fähig sind, unabhängige, mutige und gemeinschaftliche Persönlichkeiten zu werden. Es ist in erster Linie die Qualität dieser Beziehung, die den jungen Menschen befähigt, den pädagogischen Absichten des Erziehers zu folgen.

Neue, menschliche Sozialordnung

Eine neue und menschliche Sozialordnung muss auf den Prinzipien der Freiheit, der Gleichheit und der Brüderlichkeit aufgebaut werden.

„Freiheit“ bedeutet konsequente Anwendung des freiheitlichen Prinzips im menschlichen Zusammenleben. Jegliche Über- und Unterordnung widerspricht dem freiheitlichen Prinzip. Freiheit bedeutet Selbstbestimmung des Menschen. Das heißt, sein ganzes Tun und Trachten ist das Ergebnis seiner eigenen Wünsche. Er gestaltet sein Leben, seine Beziehungen zu den Mitmenschen und die gesellschaftliche Organisation selbst.

Herrscht das autoritäre Prinzip vor, dann wird das Verhalten des Menschen durch Befehle, Sanktionen und Strafen erzwungen. Im freiheitlichen Zusammenleben ist die Kommunikation das Mittel der Verständigung.

Die Freiheit ist ein Bedürfnis der menschlichen Natur. Üben Eltern und Lehrkräfte Druck und Zwang aus, kann das Kind in seiner Hilflosigkeit und Abhängigkeit keine gesunde Beziehung einüben: Misstrauen, Angst, Unter- und Überordnung sind dann die Resultate. 

Gleichheit und Brüderlichkeit sind ebenfalls grundlegende Bestandteile der neuen menschlichen Sozialordnung (3). 

Jugend braucht politische und psychologische Bildung

Die Menschen werden von allen Institutionen – angefangen von der Erziehung zuhause, von der Kinderstube bis hinauf zur Rekrutenschule und das „Feld der Ehre“ – so programmiert, dass sie dann alles machen, was die anderen, die Machthaber von ihm wollen. Das ist bewusstes Programm.

Deshalb ist es wichtig, dass der Jugend insbesondere in der Schule politische Bildung vermittelt wird; dass sie zum Beispiel erfährt, dass alle Kriege ein gutes Geschäft sind und in der Politik nichts zufällig passiert. Wenn es passiert, kann man darauf wetten, dass es so geplant war.

Hinzu kommt die psychologische Bildung. In Familie und Schule sollte dem jungen Menschen vermittelt werden, wie er seine Probleme lösen soll und kann. Wichtig ist sein Lebensgefühl, seine Meinung über sich selbst, über seine Kameradinnen und Kameraden sowie seine Meinung über die Gemeinde und den Staat. 

Jugend nicht für politische Propaganda einspannen

Junge Menschen, die als Schüler eigentlich lernen und sich bemühen sollen, dass sie in der Schule vorankommen, dürfen nicht für politische Propaganda eingespannt werden. Ganz egal, wozu sie aufgerufen werden: ob sie Flugblätter verteilen oder demonstrieren sollen. Kinder und junge Leute dürfen für politische Zwecke nicht missbraucht werden. 

Ursachen der Jugendverwahrlosung

In Berichten über verwahrloste Jugendliche taucht oftmals der Begriff „Psychopathie“ auf. Damit soll angedeutet werden, dass die jungen Menschen, die in irgendeiner Weise aus dem Rahmen fallen, an angeborenen Persönlichkeitsdeformationen leiden. Diese Auffassung ist jedoch als irrtümlich und oberflächlich erkannt worden. 

Die wichtigste Quelle der Jugendverwahrlosung ist die seelische Heimatlosigkeit im Kindesalter. Man weiß heute, welche ungeheure Bedeutung dem kindlichen Geborgenheitsgefühl für die Entwicklung des Menschen zukommt. Das Menschenkind ist mehr als alle anderen Lebewesen liebesbedürftig. Es braucht Schutz und freundliche Führung, um in die äußerst komplizierte Menschenwelt hineinwachsen zu können.

Wo es im Erwachsenen frühzeitig infolge seiner Lieblosigkeit oder Unzuverlässigkeit den „Gegenspieler“ erkennt, schließt es sich von seiner Umwelt ab und verfällt einer Isoliertheit, die von einer verständnislosen Umgebung in ihrer Tragweite kaum erkannt wird.

Versöhnung der Kinder mit den Eltern 

Bereits im Jahr 1927 schrieb der Individualpsychologe Alfred Adler im Buch „Menschenkenntnis“ über Klagen von Eltern und Kindern:

„Es ist eine oft hervorgehobene und empfindliche Tatsache, dass die Menschen aneinander vorübergehen und vorüberreden, den Zusammenschluss nicht finden können, weil sie sich fremd gegenüberstehen, nicht nur im weiteren Rahmen einer Gesellschaft, sondern sogar im engeren Kreis der Familie.

Nichts tritt uns öfter entgegen als Klagen von Eltern, die ihre Kinder nicht verstehen, und von Kindern, dass sie von den Eltern nicht verstanden würden. (…).

Die Menschen würden viel besser zusammenleben, wenn die Menschenkenntnis größer wäre, weil gewisse störende Formen des Zusammenlebens wegfielen, die heute nur deshalb möglich sind, weil wir einander nicht kennen und so der Gefahr ausgesetzt sind, uns durch Äusserlichkeiten täuschen zu lassen und auf Verstellungen anderer hineinfallen.“ (4) 

Die Lehre Adlers (1870-1937) ist zu einem Grundpfeiler der Tiefenpsychologie geworden und heute aus der psychologischen Forschung nicht mehr wegzudenken, auch wenn die Individualpsychologie nur teilweise die Anerkennung gefunden hat, die sie tatsächlich verdient und die sie auch für ihre bahnbrechenden Errungenschaften beanspruchen darf.

In dem Moment, wenn wir als Kinder den Eltern grollen, sind wir im Unrecht, dann wissen wir nicht Bescheid.

In der Regel ist es die erste Aufgabe, wenn ein Mensch in die Psychotherapie kommt, dass er mit seiner Situation – zum Beispiel mit seinen Eltern – versöhnt wird. Der junge Mensch  fühlt sich oft von ihnen beleidigt und grollt ihnen, weil sie ihm angeblich Unrecht getan haben. Sie haben ihn zum Beispiel geschlagen oder ihm einen Knäuel Dummheiten vermittelt.

Aufgabe der Psychotherapie ist es, das zu beheben und ihn mit den Eltern zu versöhnen. Er muss einsehen, dass man die Eltern nicht verantwortlich machen kann, weil sie ebenfalls im Stich gelassen und nicht informiert wurden. Sie haben nicht gewusst, wie sie ihr Kind unterrichten, informieren sollen. Die Menschen werden dann einsehen, dass die Eltern auch die „armen Teufel“ waren.

Mit Besonnenheit und Ausdauer kommt die Jugend in die Lage, in kleinen Schritten ihre Kompetenzen zu entwickeln.

In meinem Buch „Sich die Ergebnisse der psychologischen Forschung zu eigen machen! Erkenntnisse aus der Begegnung mit dem Psychologen Friedrich Liebling und seiner freiheitlichen Psychotherapie“ schrieb ich auf Seite 35f.:

„Meines Erachtens stehen junge Menschen im Laufe ihrer Entwicklung vor vielfältigen Anforderungen, die sie in der Regel gut bewältigen. Um die Lebensaufgaben mutig angehen zu können, sind Heranwachsende jedoch auf die Einbettung in eine haltgebende Umwelt als Lebenswelt und eine einbettende Kultur angewiesen.

Halt und Orientierung erfahren sie, wenn die Familie Wertvorstellungen und Tugenden vermittelt, die in den gesellschaftlichen Institutionen wie Kindergarten und Schule verstärkt und konsequent durchgesetzt werden. Zu nennen sind: Mitmenschlichkeit, Gerechtigkeit, Wahrheit, Friedensfähigkeit, Toleranz, Gemeinschaftssinn, Konfliktfähigkeit und Kompromissbereitschaft.

Damit sich diese sozialen Werthaltungen und Tugenden im Heranwachsenden festigen, ist praktische Teilnahme an sozialen Aktivitäten unerlässlich.

Ich glaube an die Jugend, an ihre Lernfähigkeit, ihre Kreativität, ihre Einfühlsamkeit, ihr Verantwortungsgefühl, ihre Einsichtsfähigkeit und ihre Bereitschaft zur Veränderung von Einstellungen und Verhaltensweisen.

Meistens fehlt jungen Menschen nur etwas Besonnenheit und Ausdauer, damit sie in kleinen Schritten ihre Kompetenzen entwickeln können.“ (5)

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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) http://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/462752.die-jugend-der-welt-in-paris-die-jugend-muss-eine-vorreiterrolle-übernehmen.html

(2) A. a. O.

(3) 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. Grafoprint d.o.o. Gornji Milanovac, Serbia

(4) Liebling, Friedrich (1992), Aufsätze. Verlag Menschenkenntnis. Zürich

(5) 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. Grafoprint d.o.o. Gornji Milanovac, Serbia, S. 35f.

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***

Introduction 

An article in the left-wing German daily newspaper “Junge Welt” on 9 November 2023 about the World Youth Conference in Paris entitled: “Young people must take on a pioneering role” (1) prompted me, as a father, former teacher and psychologist, to ask how young people can take on a pioneering role in shaping the future.

Since human character traits are developed in childhood, educators must be trained who are capable of raising a generation that can realise a new and humane social order.

Since young people often complain that their parents do not understand them and therefore resent them, it is of great importance that both generations are reconciled with each other. This is most successfully achieved through psychotherapy.

In small steps, young people will then develop their skills and be able to shape the future together with adults.

“Young people must take on a pioneering role”

The article in “Junge Welt”, an interview with the moderator of the World Youth Conference Rafael Vergara, states that delegates from over 60 countries discussed current crises and ways forward at the World Youth Conference in Paris. By 5 November, 400 young people had responded to the call of the “Youth Writing History” network and sought answers to the crises and wars of our time.

In response to the question “Where do we go from here?”, moderator Vergara replied, among other things:

“In the long term, we want to establish a global network of internationalist co-operation. (…).

We believe that young people, as a dynamic force in society, must play a pioneering role in this. The construction of a different world must not be postponed until tomorrow, but we want to work on building a free life in the here and now.” (2)

A fine goal, but the question arises as to how young people can take on a pioneering role in shaping the future. 

Since people’s character develops in childhood, it is important to train educators who are capable of raising a generation with the aim of realising a new, humane social order. This has been lacking until now.

Enabling Educators to Raise a Generation that Can Realise a New, Human Social Order 

The fact that a person’s character structure is predetermined by their experiences and impressions in childhood is a discovery of depth psychology. It is the family atmosphere and the educational attitude of the parents that largely determine the formation of the child’s character. They shape the mental horizon that suggests a certain attitude towards oneself and others to the child at an early age. These character traits, which arise from the family situation, remain largely unconscious.

Character traits are not something innate and unchangeable, but merely the result of countless childhood experiences. The personality of the parents and their educational behaviour have the greatest influence. It is therefore a matter of educating parents and teachers and guiding them towards a non-violent and rational upbringing of their children and pupils.  

The task of educators is to form people who are capable of becoming independent, courageous and communal personalities. It is first and foremost the quality of this relationship that enables the young person to follow the educator’s pedagogical intentions.

New, Humane Social Order

A new and humane social order must be built on the principles of freedom, equality and fraternity.

“Freedom” means the consistent application of the principle of freedom in human coexistence. Any subordination and subordination contradicts the principle of freedom. Freedom means human self-determination. This means that all his actions and endeavours are the result of his own wishes. He shapes his life, his relationships with his fellow human beings and the organisation of society himself.

If the authoritarian principle prevails, then people’s behaviour is enforced by orders, sanctions and punishments. In a free society, communication is the means of understanding.

Freedom is a need of human nature. If parents and teachers exert pressure and coercion, the child cannot develop a healthy relationship in its helplessness and dependence: Mistrust, fear, subordination and superordination are then the results. 

Equality and fraternity are also fundamental components of the new human social order (3).

Young People Need Political and Psychological Education

People are programmed by all institutions – starting with education at home, from nursery school right up to recruitment school and the “field of honour” – in such a way that they then do everything that the others, those in power, want them to do. This is a conscious programme.

That’s why it’s important that young people are taught political education, especially at school; that they learn, for example, that all wars are good business and that nothing happens by chance in politics. If it happens, you can bet that it was planned that way.

Then there is psychological education. In the family and at school, young people should be taught how they should and can solve their problems. What is important is their attitude to life, their opinion of themselves, their comrades and their opinion of the community and the state.

Do Not Use Young People for Political Propaganda

Young people who are supposed to be learning and endeavouring to make progress at school must not be used for political propaganda. No matter what they are called upon to do, whether it is to distribute leaflets or demonstrate. Children and young people must not be misused for political purposes. 

Causes of Youth Neglect

The term “psychopathy” is often used in reports about neglected young people. This is intended to imply that young people who fall out of line in some way suffer from congenital personality deformities. However, this view has been recognised as erroneous and superficial. 

The most important source of youth neglect is emotional homelessness in childhood. Today we know the enormous importance of the child’s sense of security for human development. The human child is more in need of love than any other living being. It needs protection and friendly guidance in order to grow into the extremely complicated human world.

Where it recognises the “antagonist” in the adult at an early stage as a result of his unkindness or unreliability, it closes itself off from its environment and falls into an isolation that is barely recognised in its extent by an uncomprehending environment.

Reconciliation of Children with Their Parents 

As early as 1927, the individual psychologist Alfred Adler wrote about the complaints of parents and children in his book “Knowledge of Man”:

“It is an often emphasised and sensitive fact that people pass each other by and talk past each other, cannot find union because they are strangers to each other, not only in the wider framework of a society, but even in the narrower circle of the family.

Nothing is more common than complaints from parents who do not understand their children, and from children that they are not understood by their parents. (…).

People would live together much better if there were greater knowledge of human nature, because certain disturbing forms of coexistence would no longer exist, which are only possible today because we do not know each other and are thus exposed to the danger of being deceived by outward appearances and falling for the pretences of others.” (4)

Adler’s teachings (1870-1937) have become a cornerstone of depth psychology and today it is impossible to imagine psychological research without them, even if individual psychology has only partially received the recognition it actually deserves and which it can claim for its ground-breaking achievements.

The moment we, as children, resent our parents, we are in the wrong, we are not in the know.

As a rule, the first task when a person comes into psychotherapy is to reconcile them with their situation – for example with their parents. The young person often feels insulted by them and resents them because they have allegedly done him wrong. For example, they have hit him or taught him a bunch of stupid things.

The task of psychotherapy is to remedy this and reconcile him with his parents. He must realise that the parents cannot be blamed because they were also let down and not informed. They did not know how to teach or inform their child. People will then realise that the parents were also the “poor devils”.

With prudence and perseverance, young people are able to develop their competences in small steps.

In my book “Sich die Ergebnisse der psychologischen Forschung zu eigen machen! Insights from my encounter with the psychologist Friedrich Liebling and his liberal psychotherapy”, I wrote on page 35f:

“In my opinion, young people face a variety of challenges in the course of their development, which they generally cope with well. However, in order to be able to tackle life’s tasks with courage, adolescents are dependent on being embedded in a supportive environment as a living world and an embedding culture.

They experience support and orientation when the family conveys values and virtues that are reinforced and consistently enforced in social institutions such as kindergarten and school. These include: Humanity, justice, truth, peaceableness, tolerance, a sense of community, the ability to deal with conflict and the willingness to compromise.

Practical participation in social activities is essential to consolidate these social values and virtues in adolescents.

I believe in young people, in their ability to learn, their creativity, their empathy, their sense of responsibility, their insightfulness and their willingness to change their attitudes and behaviour.

In most cases, all young people need is a little prudence and perseverance so that they can develop their skills in small steps.” (5)

*

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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) http://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/462752.die-jugend-der-welt-in-paris-die-jugend-muss-eine-vorreiterrolle-übernehmen.html

(2) A. a. O.

(3) Hänsel, Rudolf (2023). Making the results of psychological research your own! Insights from an encounter with the psychologist Friedrich Liebling and his liberal psychotherapy. Grafoprint d.o.o. Gornji Milanovac, Serbia

(4) Liebling, Friedrich (1992), Essays. Publisher Menschenkenntnis. Zurich

(5) Hänsel, Rudolf (2023). Making the results of psychological research your own! Insights from an encounter with the psychologist Friedrich Liebling and his liberal psychotherapy. Grafoprint d.o.o. Gornji Milanovac, Serbia, p. 35f.

Featured image is from Christopher Futcher

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***

There can’t be democracy and colonial war; one aspires to decency, the other to fascism. Meanwhile, once welcomed mavericks are heretics now in an underground of journalism amid a landscape of mendacious conformity.

Spartacus was a 1960 Hollywood film based on a book written secretly by the blacklisted novelist Howard Fast, and adapted by the screenplay writer Dalton Trumbo, one of the ‘Hollywood 10’ who were banned for their ‘un-American’ politics. It is a parable of resistance and heroism that speaks unreservedly to our own times. 

Both writers were Communists and victims of Senator Joseph McCarthy, chairman of the Government Operations Committee and its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate, which, during the Cold War, destroyed the careers and often the lives of those principled and courageous enough to stand up to a homegrown fascism in America.

‘This is a sharp time, now, a precise time …’ wrote Arthur Miller in The Crucible, ‘We live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world.’

There is one ‘precise’ provocateur now; it is clear to see for those who want to see it and foretell its actions. It is a gang of states led by the United States whose stated objective is ‘full spectrum dominance’. Russia is still the hated one, Red China the feared one.

From Washington and London, the virulence has no limit. Israel, the colonial anachronism and unleashed attack dog, is armed to the teeth and granted historical impunity so that ‘we’ the West ensure the blood and tears never dry in Palestine.

British MPs who dare call for a ceasefire in Gaza are banished, the iron door of two-party politics closed to them by a Labour leader who would withhold water and food from the children.

In McCarthy’s time, there were bolt holes of truth. Mavericks welcomed then are heretics now; an underground of journalism exists (such as this site) in a landscape of mendacious conformity. Dissenting journalists have been defenestrated from the “mainstream” (as the great editor David Bowman wrote); the media’s task is to invert the truth and support the illusions of democracy, including a “free press.”

Social Democracy has shrunk to the width of a cigarette paper that separates the principal policies of major parties. Their one subscription is to a capitalist cult, neoliberalism, and an imposed poverty described by a U.N. special rapporteur as “the immiseration of a significant part of the British population.”

War today is an unmoving shadow; “forever” imperial wars are designated normal. Iraq, the model, is destroyed at a cost of a million lives and three million dispossessed. The destroyer, Blair, is personally enriched and fawned over at his party’s conference as an electoral winner.

Blair and his moral counter, Julian Assange, live 14 miles apart, one in a Regency mansion, the other in a cell awaiting extradition to hell.

According to a Brown University study, since 9/11, almost six million men, women and children have been killed by America and its acolytes in the “Global War on Terror.” A monument is to be built in Washington in “celebration” of this mass murder; its committee is chaired by the former president, George W. Bush, Blair’s mentor. Afghanistan, where it started, was finally laid to waste when President Biden stole its national bank reserves.

There have been many Afghanistans. The forensic William Blum devoted himself to making sense of a state terrorism that seldom spoke its name and so requires repetition: In my lifetime, the United States has overthrown or attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, most democracies. It has interfered in democratic elections in 30 countries. It has dropped bombs on the people of 30 countries, most of them poor and defenceless. It has fought to suppress liberation movements in 20 countries. It has attempted to murder countless leaders.

Perhaps I hear some of you saying: that is enough. As the Final Solution of Gaza is broadcast live to millions, the small faces of its victims etched in bombed rubble, framed between TV commercials for cars and pizza, yes, that is surely enough. How profane is that word “enough”?

Afghanistan was where the West sent young men weighed down with the ritual of “warriors” to kill people and enjoy it. We know some of them enjoyed it from the evidence of Australian SAS sociopaths, including a photograph of them drinking from an Afghan man’s prosthetic.

Not one sociopath has been charged for this and crimes such as kicking a man over a cliff, gunning down children point-blank, slitting throats: none of it “in battle.” David McBride, a former Australian military lawyer who served twice in Afghanistan,  was a ‘true believer’ in the system as moral and honourable.  He also has an abiding belief in truth, and loyalty. He can define them as few can. This coming week he is in court in Canberra as an alleged criminal.

“An Australian whistleblower,” reports Kieran Pender, a senior lawyer at the Australian Human Rights Law Centre, “[will face] trial for blowing the whistle on horrendous wrongdoing. It is profoundly unjust that the first person on trial for war crimes in Afghanistan is the whistle blower and not an alleged war criminal.”

Image: David McBride (Sydney Criminal Lawyers)

McBride can receive a sentence of up to 100 years for revealing the cover-up of the great crime of Afghanistan. He tried to exercise his legal right as a whistleblower under the Public Interest Disclosure Act, which the current attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, says “delivers on our promise to strengthen protections for public sector whistleblowers.”

Yet it is Dreyfus, a Labor minister, who signed off on the McBride trial following a punitive wait of four years and eight months since his arrest at Sydney airport: a wait that shredded his health and family.

Those who know David and know of the hideous injustice done to him fill his street in Bondi near the beach in Sydney to wave their encouragement to this good and decent man. To them, and me, he is a hero.

McBride was affronted by what he found in the files he was ordered to inspect. Here was evidence of crimes and their cover-up. He passed hundreds of secret documents to the the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and The Sydney Morning Herald. Police raided the ABC’s offices in Sydney while reporters and producers watched, shocked, as their computers were confiscated by the Federal Police.

Attorney-General Dreyfus, self-declared liberal reformer and friend of whistleblowers, has the singular power to stop the McBride trial. A Freedom of Information search of his actions in this direction reveals little, at most, an indifference.

You can’t run a fully-fledged democracy and a colonial war; one aspires to decency, the other is a form of fascism, regardless of its pretensions. Mark the killing fields of Gaza, bombed to dust by apartheid Israel. It is no coincidence that in rich, yet impoverished Britain an “inquiry” is currently being held into the gunning down by British SAS soldiers of 80 Afghans, all civilians, including a couple in bed.

The grotesque injustice meted out to David McBride is minted from the injustice consuming his compatriot, Julian Assange. Both are friends of mine. Whenever I see them, I am optimistic. ‘You cheer me,’ I tell Julian as he raises a defiant fist at the end of our visiting period. ‘You make me feel proud,’ I tell David at our favourite coffee shop in Sydney.

Their bravery has allowed many of us, who might despair, to understand the real meaning of a resistance we all share if we want to prevent the conquest of us, our conscience, our self respect, if we prefer freedom and decency to compliance and collusion. In this, we are all Spartacus.

Spartacus was the rebellious leader of Rome’s slaves in 71-73 B.C. There is a thrilling moment in the Kirk Douglas movie Spartacus when the Romans call on Spartacus’s men to identify their leader and so be pardoned. Instead hundreds of his comrades stand and raise their fists in solidarity and shout, ‘I am Spartacus!’ The rebellion is under way.

Julian and David are Spartacus. The Palestinians are Spartacus. People who fill the streets with flags and principle and solidarity are Spartacus. We are all Spartacus if we want to be.

*

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John Pilger has twice won Britain’s highest award for journalism and has been International Reporter of the Year, News Reporter of the Year and Descriptive Writer of the Year. He has made 61 documentary films and has won an Emmy, a BAFTA and the Royal Television Society prize. His Cambodia Year Zero is named as one of the ten most important films of the 20th century. He is the winner of Consortium News’ 2023 Gary Webb Award. He can be contacted at www.johnpilger.com and on X @johnpilger.

CORRECTION: McCarthy was chairman of the Government Operations Committee and its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate.

Featured image: Sen. McCarthy, center, confers with Roy Cohn, chief counsel for House Un-American Activities Committee, Aug. 23, 1953. (Los Angeles Times/UCLA Library/Wikimedia Commons)

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***

In an interview with the US network ABC, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu responded to the question of whether he believes a ceasefire in Gaza is possible:

“A ceasefire would be a surrender to Hamas. It would be a victory for Hamas. A ceasefire after the Al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Centre would be no more possible than it would have been possible for you.”

When asked who should govern Gaza once the war is over, Netanyahu responds:

“Israel will have responsibility for security for an indefinite period, because when we have not that responsibility, what we have is the explosion of terror from Hamas.”

Netanyahu’s words are summarized as follows by the New York Times:

“Israel will govern Gaza”.

In other words, Netanyahu openly announced their plan: to take over Gaza by transforming it from Palestinian territory into Israeli territory.

This is confirmed by the fact that the Israeli armed forces are not only massacring the Palestinian population but are making Gaza no longer inhabitable by Palestinians: in the northern part of the Strip they have already destroyed over 30% of all buildings.

The plan envisages the subsequent opening of a “humanitarian corridor” to transfer the Palestinians from Gaza to the Egyptian desert of Sinai, then doing the same with the Palestinians of the West Bank.

In the game of roles, US Secretary of State Blinken went to Israel with the declared aim of obtaining a ceasefire in Gaza, which Netanyahu rejected. Behind this tragic play, there is reality. An example for everyone: the one-ton satellite-guided bombs that Israeli planes drop on Palestinian working-class neighbourhoods are supplied to Israel by the United States.

Regarding the “Hamas explosion of terror” which according to the Prime Minister makes it necessary for Israel to govern Gaza, Netanyahu forgets what he declared at a meeting of his party in March 2019:

“Anyone who wants to hinder the creation of a Palestinian State must support Hamas and transfer money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy: to isolate the Palestinians of Gaza from the Palestinians of the West Bank.”

These and many other facts (reported in the last 4 episodes of Grandangolo) demonstrate that the Israeli leaders and their secret services were not taken by surprise by the attack carried out on October 7 by Hamas, but they made it happen to implement their plan. We are therefore faced with something similar to what happened in the United States on September 11, 2001.

*

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

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***

The Biden administration is killing people, openly in Ukraine and Gaza and secretly around the world. It has continued to use the killing machinery crafted by President George W. Bush, expanded by President Barack Obama, and employed by President Donald Trump. These presidents have used drones and other unmanned projectiles to target persons in foreign countries with which the United States is not at war.

They have done this notwithstanding the prohibition against taking life, liberty or property from any person — not just any American, but any person — in the Constitution each has sworn to uphold, and they have done so pursuant to secret rules that they themselves have established for these killings.

Last year, 11 senators and 39 members of the House of Representatives sent a harshly worded letter to President Joe Biden asking him to stop the secret, but not the public, killings. As of this writing, he has not publicly replied.

Here is the backstory.

The purpose of the Bill of Rights — the first 10 amendments to the Constitution — is to protect personal liberty by restraining the government.

The Fifth Amendment prohibits killing persons, restraining liberty, and taking property without due process; that means a jury trial at which the government must prove criminal behavior or fault, depending upon its goal.

If the country is at war — lawfully and constitutionally declared by Congress — obviously the president can use the U.S. military to kill the military of the opposing country. And if an attack on the U.S. is imminent, the president can strike the first blow against the military of the entity whose attack is just about to occur.

There are no other constitutional circumstances under which a president may kill.

When President Harry Truman targeted Japanese civilians as the Japanese government was within days of surrendering in World War II, he murdered them. Notwithstanding his unprosecuted war crimes, and with the government’s version of Pearl Harbor still fresh in many Americans’ minds, Truman was regarded as heroic for using nuclear bombs to cause the profoundly immoral, militarily useless, and plainly criminal mass killings of the hated Japanese.

Fast-forward to the 9/11 era, and Bush had precedent to begin his own presidential killings of people the government wanted Americans to hate. While Congress did authorize him to use force against those who caused or aided the 9/11 attacks, we all know that his thirst for Middle Eastern blood knew no regard for the Constitution, evidence, proportionality, civilian lives, morality or human decency. Thus, $3 trillion spent and 1 million dead in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Julian Assange sits in a British dungeon awaiting decisions on his extradition to the U.S. because he courageously, lawfully and constitutionally published documents and videos demonstrating conclusively that Bush’s use of drones targeted and murdered Afghan and Iraqi civilians, and his administration covered it up.

Obama took this to another level when he targeted and killed Anwar al-Awlaki, who was born in the U.S. Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, advised Obama that the killing was lawful, as al-Awlaki had encouraged folks in the Middle East to fight against American soldiers there. Holder likened killing al-Awlaki to police shooting at a bank robber whom they are chasing while he is shooting at them.

Holder forgot that al-Awlaki was unarmed, was not charged or indicted for any crime, was never accused of violence, and was not even the subject of an arrest warrant when a drone evaporated him while sitting at an outdoor cafe in Yemen.

The exercise of power by the federal government is largely based on precedent and politics. Whenever a president wants to kill, he need only find an example of a predecessor having killed with impunity — without due process, without a declaration of war and without an imminent attack. And then he needs only to calculate what he thinks he can politically get away with.

Joe Biden — whose drones in 2021 destroyed a dam in Syria, killing thousands, and who targeted civilians in Afghanistan, killing dozens, and whose shipments of guns to Ukraine and Israel are killing tens of thousands of folks he wants us to hate — is using unlawful powers that his modern predecessors used and got away with to target and kill unsympathetic persons. But the U.S. has not declared war on Russia or Gaza.

The nature of political power is to expand so that it fills a perceived need, unless there are mechanisms in place to restrain its expansion.

The founding generation believed that British monarchs had no limits on their powers and that was a good enough reason for the 13 colonies to secede violently. They also believed that they had crafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to impose sufficient restraints on the federal government. And they believed that the states could peacefully leave a federal government they had voluntarily joined when it exceeded its constitutional powers.

The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Its language is clear that only Congress writes laws and declares war, and presidents can kill only troops in wartime or civilians consistent with due process.

Sadly, the Founders were wrong.

Every president takes an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution as it was written, not as he may wish it to be.

Yet, today, the president writes laws and rules that let him restrain personal liberty and kill with impunity, and Congress and the American people let him get away with it. Formally, we still have a Constitution. Functionally, it has utterly failed to restrain the government.

Ultimately, we have ourselves to blame for these killings and undeclared wars. Why do we repose the Constitution for safekeeping into the hands of those who subvert it? If a future president uses Bush’s lust and Obama’s logic and Biden’s hatreds to kill Americans in America, then no one’s life, liberty or property will be secure.

*

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Judge Andrew P. Napolitano is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Notre Dame Law School. He is the youngest life-tenured Superior Court judge in the history of the State of New Jersey. He sat on the bench from 1987 to 1995, when he presided over more than 150 jury trials and thousands of motions, sentencings, and hearings. Judge Napolitano taught constitutional law and jurisprudence at Delaware Law School for one and half years and at Seton Hall Law School for 11 years, and at Brooklyn Law School for four years. He was often chosen by the students as their most outstanding professor. As Fox News’ Senior Judicial Analyst from 1997 to 2021, Judge Napolitano gave 14,500 broadcasts nationwide on the Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network. He is nationally known for watching and reporting on the government as it takes liberty and property. His weekly newspaper column is seen by millions every week. The Judge is a nationally-recognized expert on the U.S. Constitution and a champion of personal freedom.

Featured image is from Judging Freedom

Remembrance Day: The New Framing of America’s Wars

By Michael Welch, Prof. Glenn Diesen, and Owen Schalk, November 11, 2023

In the past, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world breathed a collective sigh of relief. World War III was something that we thought the invention of the atomic bomb, combined with common sense had torn from the pages of human endeavour. Today, a Third World War is seen as a likely scenario.

Turbo Cancer: Ages 22 to 35 – COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Turbo Cancer Melanomas Are Resistant to All New Treatments

By Dr. William Makis, November 12, 2023

35 year old Chris Hardin was diagnosed with Stage 3 Melanoma in June 2023 that rapidly progressed to Stage 4, didn’t respond to radiation or immunotherapy and became Stage 4 with tumor “growing on his spine, pressing on the vertebrae and crushing it while also wrapping around nerves.”

The US Against Hamas in Gaza, But Supports Terrorists in Syria

By Steven Sahiounie, November 12, 2023

The US utilized the Muslim Brotherhood fighters in Syria, and partnered with the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to rig the election which brought Mohamed Mursi to power. This is why the US will never outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood in the US; because they are useful.

Gaza, Odessa, Donetsk: Genocide Continues. “Wars Mean Profit”

By Konrad Rękas, November 12, 2023

We are all shocked by the images of genocide suffered by the people of Gaza. Despite attempts to censor the truth about Israeli crimes, that truth breaks through to Western public opinion, arousing spontaneous opposition what we have seen in the last couple weeks on the street all over the world,  but I remember very similar crimes that I saw with my own eyes nine years ago.

An Epistle to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

By Edward Curtin, November 12, 2023

Religion has for a very long time been used as a cover for slaughtering people and seizing their land. This is true for the United States and Israel. It is built into their theological underpinnings. So it should not be at all surprising that the current Israeli massacre of Palestinians is fully supported by the U.S. government led by President Joseph Biden and by almost every presidential aspirant.

The Israel Exception to Free Speech. Israel’s Stranglehold on American Foreign Policy Must be Identified and Eliminated

By Philip Giraldi, November 11, 2023

In the area of foreign policy, as well as a spill-over into many domestic and constitutional issues, there is no more powerful lobby than that of the state of Israel, and its power was on full display on Tuesday afternoon when Representative Rashida Tlaib was censured for the crime of being of Palestinian ancestry and speaking up against the ongoing genocide of her people by the Jewish state.

EU ‘Carbon Tax’ on Chinese, Indian Imports – Environmentalism or Geopolitics?

By Drago Bosnic, November 11, 2023

One of the most common ideological tropes of the contemporary political West is its apparent obsession with environmentalism. The belligerent power pole simply adores to use it as a way to “prove” its supposed “civilizational superiority” over any other country that doesn’t share the same obsession.

Launching Danielle Smith’s Premiership of Alberta. “Compassionate Conservatism”

By Prof. Anthony J. Hall, November 10, 2023

The real purpose of the COVID jabs was to initiate a number of processes including global depopulation as well as those of the genetic modification of the survivors. As this attack was pushed forward, we began to observe that something fundamental had changed within our governments as reflected in the unreasonable constraints suddenly imposed on our most basic rights and freedoms.

Unions Worldwide Boycott Arms Supplies to Israel

By Marc Vandepitte, November 10, 2023

Shortly after the start of the war against Gaza, Palestinian trade unions appealed to their colleagues worldwide for a boycott of arms supplies to Israel. That appeal is being heeded in many countries. That list of countries is growing every day. 

“From the River to the Sea”: A Phrase that Elicits Dishonesty from Zionists, and Cowardly Mis-leadership from Anti-Zionist Leaders

By John Spritzler, November 12, 2023

Gay, in her infinite wisdom (President of Harvard, after all, right?) chose not to explain truthfully the “specific historical meaning” of the interpretation of the “From the River to the Sea” phrase as (supposedly!) advocating the “eradication of Jews from Israel” and “existential fears.”

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***

 

The Dishonesty 

Harvard University President Gay, completely ignoring the University’s motto, Veritas (Truth), said:

“Our community must understand that phrases such as ‘from the river to the sea’ bear specific historical meanings that to a great many people imply the eradication of Jews from Israel and engender both pain and existential fears within our Jewish community.”

Gay, in her infinite wisdom (President of Harvard, after all, right?) chose not to explain truthfully the “specific historical meaning” of the interpretation of the “From the River to the Sea” phrase as (supposedly!) advocating the “eradication of Jews from Israel” and “existential fears.”

Had Gay the slightest desire to speak the truth (Veritas, you know) then she would have explained that it was the first Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, who told the infamous lie about “eradication of Jews from Israel.” In 1961, David Ben Gurion lied to Israeli Jews by declaring with no evidence whatsoever that Arab armies intended to “push all the Jews into the sea, dead or alive.”

Had Gay the slightest desire to speak the truth, then she would have explained that the vast majority of Palestinians want what the Palestine Liberation Organization under Yasser Arafat officially aimed for, which is to make ALL of Palestine (“from the River to the Sea!”) a secular democratic state in which Jews and non-Jews would be equals under the law and live in peace with each other.

Had Gay the slightest desire to speak the truth, then she would have explained what this perfectly just and noble and GOOD “from the River to the Sea!” goal—the goal of making ALL of Palestine “from the River to the Sea” be a secular democratic state in which all citizens were equal under the law regardless of ethnicity or religion—would mean. ees

She would have explained that it would mean the eradication of Israel (Yes!) as the kind of state that it asserts that it is and must be, namely:

• a State of the Jewish People,
• a state ONLY of the Jewish people,
• a state in which ONLY its Jewish citizens and NOT the 20% of non-Jewish citizens are the official sovereign power,
• a state in which the non-Jewish citizens are by law second class citizens (this links to a plain English description of Israel’s blatant discrimination against non-Jews under the law; can Harvard President Gay read English? Just asking),
• a state in which the BASIC LAW (essentially its constitution) says it is illegal for anybody to stand for election to the legislature (Knesset) if they do not endorse the principle that Israel must do whatever it takes (and this has meant seven decades of violent ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and denying them their Right of Return in defiance of International Law) to ensure that the great majority (David Ben-Gurion said it had to be at least 80%) of the population was always Jewish.

Had Gay the slightest desire to speak the truth, then she would have explained that Israel is no more morally defensible right to exist than does a “State of the White People” (like the American Confederacy or the South African apartheid state) or a “State of the Master Race” like the Third Reich or a “State of the Muslim People” or a state of any specific ethnic/racial category to the exclusion of others who are also its citizens. This is an idea that LOTS of ordinary people without a Harvard diploma grasp very easily, and an idea that even a Harvard University president, although perhaps only with great effort, should be able to grasp, right?

Had Gay the slightest desire to speak the truth, then she could have explained that the just aim of abolishing the Jewish State, like the just aim of abolishing the Confederacy or the Third Reich or the South Africa Apartheid state does not mean killing all the people who live in it, obviously! Ordinary people understand this distinction. Is President Gay unable to do so?

Does President Gay think that the Union was aiming to kill all the people who lived south of the Mason-Dixon line, and the aim of anti-Nazis was to kill all the Germans, or the anti-apartheid people wanted to kill all the whites in South Africa? No? Then why does she act as if she thought there was some truth to the Zionist propaganda that says anti-Zionists want to “eradicate” all the Jews living in Israel? President Gay, if she had any desire to speak the truth, would have exposed how false is this Zionist propaganda.

But no! President Gay is going along with the Big $ pro-Israel alumni who demand

“the suspension of students involved in the HBS confrontation [that was an anti-Zionism ‘die in’ at the Harvard Business School—J.S.] and disciplinary actions taken towards students chanting ‘eliminationist’ statements, specifically referencing the phrase ‘from the river to the sea.’”

President Gay could, of course, have decided to explain that the Big $ pro-Israel individuals ARE ANTISEMITES because they support the Israeli government’s attack on ordinary Jews that Zionist leaders have been waging since the days of the Holocaust, as one can (and should!) read about here (for the days of the Holocaust) and here (for recent days.)

But no! President Gay (Veritas, remember), chose to remain silent about the truth and instead (with her “the eradication of Jews from Israel” reference) to promote the Zionist “push all the Jews into the sea, dead or alive” lie that David Ben-Gurion invented back in 1961 to terrify ordinary Jews into obedience to their upper class oppressive Zionist rulers.

The Cowardice

None the Zionist lies about “From the River to the Sea” would have any traction if it were not for the fact that anti-Zionist leaders totally accept, rather than refute, the Zionist lie that says the conflict is one between “the Palestinians versus the Jews.” The truth (explained and proven in great detail here) is that the conflict is between the have-nots (both Palestinian and Jewish) and the haves who oppress them (both the billionaire ruling class of Israel and the Palestinian upper class rulers in the Palestine Authority and Hamas.)

But the anti-Zionist leaders never express this truth, i.e., the CLASS nature of the conflict. As a result, they tell their anti-Zionist followers to do things that emphasize the false (Palestinians versus Jews) framework, a framework that makes any support for the Palestinian have-nots equate to hostility to the Jewish have-nots, and vice versa. Thus these anti-Zionist mis-leaders tell their followers to wave the Palestinian flag and chant “Palestine will be free from the River to the Sea” (with no explanation of what that means) and NEVER to express any support for the Israeli Jewish working class people who are severely economically oppressed by the Israeli billionaire class that gets away with it ONLY by using the Palestinian bogeyman enemy that it creates by treating the Palestinians like dirt. Read all about this here and here.

Here’s how the Zionists persuade people that ant-Zionists are antisemitic. The Zionists assert the lie that Zionist violence against Palestinians is for one single noble purpose: to make Israeli Jews safe. And therefore, when anti-Zionists oppose this Zionist violence they are opposing that which is done to make Jews safe, which is antisemitic in EFFECT if not intent.

The anti-Zionists could easily refute the Zionist lie by talking about CLASS, about how the Israeli ruling billionaire class oppresses ordinary Israeli Jews and funds Hamas for that purpose, and does not whatsoever make them safe. But anti-Zionist leaders never talk about class; instead they only about “The Palestinians versus the Jews” and they never talk about the anti-working-class PURPOSE of Zionist violence against Palestinians—to create the bogeyman enemy it uses to control and oppress the Israeli Jewish working class.

As a result, anti-Zionists are today a SITTING DUCK for the accusation that they are antisemitic. For some reason, anti-Zionist leaders are AFRAID to talk about class. This is a cowardice problem, and it is crippling the anti-Zionism movement.

If anti-Zionists on college campuses organized teach-ins (like the Vietnam war teach-ins of the 60s) to educate student about how Zionist leaders are the enemy of BOTH ordinary Palestinians AND ordinary Israeli Jews, then they would be building a truly massive anti-Zionism movement consisting of people who were formerly pro-Israel, including LOTS of Jews who were formerly passionately pro-Israel. It is the cowardice of our anti-Zionism leaders that is preventing this from happening. (Or maybe it’s something more sinister than cowardice, as I discuss here.)

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Nov. 10, 2023 – Coal City, IL – 35 year old Chris Hardin was diagnosed with Stage 3 Melanoma in June 2023 that rapidly progressed to Stage 4, didn’t respond to radiation or immunotherapy and became Stage 4 with tumor “growing on his spine, pressing on the vertebrae and crushing it while also wrapping around nerves.”

Nov. 1, 2023 – 33 year old Etai David Gamliel was diagnosed with Metastatic Melanoma in late June 2023. It did not respond to radiation or immunotherapy. Cancer spread to spinal cord, taking away his ability to walk, then further up his spine until it took away his ability to breathe.

Oct. 25, 2023 – Brazil, IN – 28 year old Wesley Miller was going to have some cysts removed from his arm and abdomen. Instead, he was diagnosed with Stage 4 Melanoma with lesions in the brain, lungs, liver and bones.

Oct. 8, 2023 – Long Beach, CA – 32 year old Randi Young was diagnosed with Stage 4 melanoma Sep.21, 2023. She died 2 weeks later on Oct. 8, 2023.

Oct. 3, 2023 – Holiday, FL – 34 year old Joshua Gonzalez was diagnosed with melanoma on his back in July 2022, however it returned in Oct.2023 and is now Stage 4.

Aug. 30, 2023 – San Clemente, CA – 22 year old Hailey Pressnell was finishing her Master’s Degree when she was diagnosed with Stage 3B melanoma. “cancer had already begun to spread”

Aug. 11, 2023 – Weedsport, NY – 23 year old Mya Maloof got Stage 4 Melanoma while studying at Nazareth University. When she finished her Masters in Speech Pathology in May, she found out her cancer had spread. She died on Aug. 11, 2023 at the age of 23. Her 43 year old mom also has Stage 4 Cancer.

Aug. 3, 2023 – Boonville, IN – 26 year old Joshua Schmett was diagnosed with Stage 3 Melanoma in Feb.2023. Despite treatment, it has spread to the lungs and is now Stage 4.

July 24, 2023 – Louisville, CO – 26 year old Caleb Chastain died after a battle with aggressive melanoma. He was a University athlete, sprinter, hurdler, track & field and was an avid skier, hunter, fisherman, mountain biker, trail runner, ultramarathoner, and mountain climber.

July 21, 2023 – Lakeland, FL – 35 year old Robbi Stokes is a US Marine who does manatee and scuba diving tours in Florida. He was diagnosed with Stage 4 melanoma with a tumor between his pancreas and liver, and a spot on his lung.

July 6, 2023 – Germany – 23 year old German handball world champion Liv Suchting was diagnosed with brain tumors which turned out to be Stage 4 Melanoma.

June 29, 2023 – Chilliwack, BC – 22 year old Kaylee Engle was diagnosed with lesions all over her body, in her lungs, liver, heart and brain. She was diagnosed with Stage 4 Melanoma

June 13, 2023 – Ham Lake, MN – 28 year old Kaylah Eliabeth Stadler-Foss had melanoma when she was 22 but was in remission. She completed nursing school in Spring 2022. Her melanoma returned in April 2023 and spread to the brain. After a “fierce 10 week battle” she died June 13, 2023.

May 28, 2023 – Ludowici, GA – 25 year old Savannah Dollins was diagnosed with Stage 4 Melanoma during pregnancy that had spread to her breast, lung, liver and other places.

May 4, 2023 – Blue Earth, MN – 32 year old Jon Trasamar is a professional golfer on the PGA Tour, who was diagnosed with Melanoma which quickly advanced to Stage 4.

April 24, 2023 – Edmonton, AB – 32 year old David Kos was diagnosed with Stage 4 Melanoma in Dec.2022 after experiencing back pain.

April 13, 2023 – Lithia Springs, GA – 28 year old Peyton Wooten was diagnosed with Stage 4 Melanoma on Mar. 2, 2023. He had one cycle of immunotherapy but cancer was rapidly moving from his lymph nodes to lungs, liver, kidneys, bones and soft tissues. He died 5 weeks after diagnosis on April 13, 2023

Mar. 16, 2023 – Atlanta, GA – 34 year old Lindsay Stacy fought a 3 year battle with melanoma. However, over the last year, she was diagnosed with Stage 4 while pregnant with her daughter. It sounds like an aggressive recurrence.

Jan. 5, 2023 – Suffern, NY – 24 year old Bryonna J Chapman was admitted to the hospital in July 2022 at 34 weeks pregnant because they found a 10cm mass collapsing one of her lungs. She was diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma, meaning it had metastasized all over her body, including to her placenta and possibly to the baby. She had a very dangerous C-section. She passed away Jan. 5, 2023.

Dec, 2022 – San Marcos, TX – 25 year old Jacob Ricks was diagnosed with Stage 4 Melanoma in his jaw (very rare tumor).

My Take…

Pfizer & Moderna COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines cause “Turbo Cancers”: extremely aggressive cancers that present at late Stage, grow rapidly, spread aggressively, are resistant to conventional treatments, and have a very poor prognosis with diagnosis to death typically 6 to 12 months or less.

First research papers are now starting to mention “Turbo Cancer” and are suggesting potential mechanisms. I will write a substack on this in the near future.

The 5 most common Turbo Cancers are: lymphoma, brain (glioblastoma), breast (usually triple negative), colon and lung.

Rounding out the top 10 would include: leukemias, melanomas, sarcomas, testicular and renal cell.

Special mention to hepatobiliary cancers, ovarian and cervical.

How do we know melanomas have skyrocketed since the vaccines rolled out?

UK government Disability Data shows 72% increase in disabilities due to skin cancer in 2022 (source):

The only category with a higher increase in this dataset, was “unknown primary”.

New advancements in immunotherapy have significantly improved the long term prognosis of metastatic melanoma (source 2020 Michielin et al):

However, Turbo Cancer melanomas don’t seem to respond at all to these Immunotherapy or Targeted Therapy treatments.

We need urgent research in this area as patients are not offered anything of value by their Oncologists.

End stage Melanoma patients should be offered:

• High Dose Ivermectin protocols
• High Dose Fenbendazole or Mebendazole protocols
• High Dose Melatonin protocols

Because Turbo Cancer mortality is rising!

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A Ucrânia continua a cometer graves crimes de guerra e a violar os limites do território não militarizado russo. De acordo com imagens recentemente partilhadas pelas autoridades russas, drones ucranianos invadiram a região de Kursk e lançaram bombas coletivas contra a população local. O caso mostra claramente o desespero dos militares ucranianos em realizar operações que não têm valor estratégico, que podem ser consideradas atos de mero terrorismo.

Roman Starovoyt, governador do oblast de Kursk, relatou em 9 de novembro a incursão de um veículo aéreo não tripulado (UAV) ucraniano na região russa. O drone disparou diversas bombas de fragmentação na cidade de Sudzha, numa zona civil e industrial, sem qualquer relevância militar. O ataque ocorreu perto de uma fábrica de manteiga e colocou em risco a vida de cidadãos comuns e trabalhadores, mas felizmente não houve vítimas. As autoridades russas afirmaram que pelo menos uma das bombas lançadas pelo drone não explodiu, razão pela qual existe agora uma investigação sobre onde o projétil poderá ter se aterrado.

Como é sabido, as bombas de fragmentação são proibidas pelo direito internacional porque têm um elevado impacto humanitário quando utilizadas no campo de batalha. Por se fragmentarem no ar, essas bombas dispersam centenas de pequenos projéteis, gerando um grande número de vítimas. O pior, porém, é que nem todas as “minibombas” explodem durante os ataques. Muitos projéteis caem no chão e ficam sem detonar por meses ou até anos, funcionando como verdadeiras minas – sendo acionados quando tocados involuntariamente por um civil.

Embora proibidas, estas armas já se tornaram comuns entre as tropas ucranianas. Os EUA e o Reino Unido estão a enviar este equipamento para Kiev, possibilitando vários crimes de guerra. Muitos civis russos já morreram em consequência de ataques com bombas de fragmentação. Por exemplo, o jornalista Rostislav Zhuravlev, correspondente de guerra da RIA Novosti, foi assassinado em Julho num ataque aéreo ucraniano com bombas de fragmentação fornecidas pelos EUA.

Além disso, a Ucrânia já utilizou essas armas em diversas outras ocasiões. O país tem sido inclusive investigado por ativistas de direitos humanos e organizações internacionais devido ao uso constante de armas proibidas, o que tem causado diversas vítimas civis, incluindo mulheres e idosos. Em março foi publicado pela ONU um relatório sobre o tema, onde é possível ler:

“A Comissão encontrou casos em que as forças armadas ucranianas provavelmente usaram munições cluster e minas terrestres antipessoal lançadas por foguetes para realizar ataques na cidade de Izium, região de Kharkiv, de março a setembro de 2022 (…) Os três exemplos a seguir ilustram o uso de armas que apresentam as características das munições cluster da cidade de Izium naquele período. Em 9 de maio de 2022, um ataque atingiu uma área residencial, matando três pessoas e ferindo seis. No dia 14 de julho de 2022, um ataque atingiu a área em torno do mercado central, ferindo duas mulheres idosas. No dia 16 de julho de 2022, várias submunições atingiram uma área residencial, incluindo um jardim de infância, onde cerca de 250 pessoas procuraram abrigo, matando dois idosos”.

Na mesma linha, em julho a Human Rights Watch publicou um texto chamado “Ukraine: Civilian Deaths from Cluster Munitions”, que diz:

“As forças ucranianas usaram munições cluster que causaram inúmeras mortes e ferimentos graves a civis, disse hoje a Human Rights Watch (…) Uma nova pesquisa da Human Rights Watch descobriu que ataques de foguetes com munições cluster ucranianas em áreas controladas pela Rússia dentro e ao redor da cidade de Izium, no leste da Ucrânia, durante 2022, causou muitas vítimas entre civis ucranianos”.

É também importante sublinhar que a área afetada pelo último ataque em Kursk está localizada a aproximadamente 10 km da fronteira com a Ucrânia. Não existem instalações militares russas próximas do local do ataque, razão pela qual não é possível afirmar que se tratou de um “erro” na rota do UAV. Houve de fato uma intenção ucraniana de realizar tal ataque e matar civis em Kursk. Na prática, isto mostra que Kiev está disposta a aumentar ainda mais os seus atos de terrorismo e violência contra civis.

Prevê-se que o terrorismo ucraniano se expanda ainda mais nos próximos meses. Com o fracasso da “contra-ofensiva” e a diminuição significativa da ajuda militar ocidental, Kiev não tem muitos recursos para continuar a utilizar no campo de batalha. O correto seria que o regime se rendesse e aceitasse os termos de paz russos, mas a OTAN não permite isso e obriga os ucranianos a continuarem a travar uma guerra invencível. Assim, as forças neonazistas recorrem ao terrorismo como forma de tentar “perturbar” os russos.

O problema é que esta “estratégia” pode ser uma armadilha para a própria Ucrânia. O uso de munições cluster em território indiscutível da Federação Russa é uma perigosa linha vermelha. Se Kiev continuar a usar essas armas fora da zona de conflito e conseguir matar civis russos em cidades desmilitarizadas, é provável que Moscou lance uma grande operação de retaliação. E, como é bem sabido, a Ucrânia não tem atualmente poder suficiente para enfrentar qualquer grande escalada, uma vez que as suas tropas estão perto do colapso absoluto.

Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

 

 

Artigo em inglês : Ukraine using cluster bombs in Russia’s undisputed territory, Info Brics, 10 de Novembro de 2023.

Imagem : InfoBrics

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Lucas Leiroz, jornalista, pesquisador do Center for Geostrategic Studies, consultor geopolítico.

Você pode seguir Lucas Leiroz em: https://t.me/lucasleiroz e https://twitter.com/leiroz_lucas

 

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Israel is a plan that has been brewing and preparing for more than hundred years. Some people would even go back to the Old Testament where the term “The Chosen People” was coined. The Plan Israel is an Anglo-American Colonial project. Netanyahu is just the latest “executioner” of the Plan.

Zionists feel they are “the Chosen People”. 

For this analysis and to avoid any confusion, the term Zionist also refers to Zionist Evangelical Christians as well as to some types of conservative and Orthodox Jews but foremost to Western politicians who – Jewish or not – support the Zionist concept of a “Greater Israel” and of annihilating all that may be in the way of achieving this idea.

In an Apartheid regime anybody not Jewish, not Zionist, must be ethnically cleansed, resembling much to the Holocaust concept of WWII.

Netanyahu and his entourage are perfect flag-carriers for this view. In practice, it means genocide and slaughtering of Palestinians, and by extension, wiping the entire Palestine off the map.

By day 33 of the genocide drive, November 9, 2023, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have killed way more than 10,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and possibly close to 5,000 children — a true massacre. Since Gaza is largely cordoned off, much of the casualty data comes from Israeli sources – and may be way underreported. Actual figures are likely much higher.

Most of us, of the real world, not covered by the mainstream are speechless as Western politicians, criminals and cowards, look on in full tolerance of mass murder. See this and this.

It gets even worse. Last Sunday, Israel’s Jerusalem and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said in a radio interview that dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip, is “an option.” Netanyahu distanced himself from the statement and suspended the minister. For more details, see this.

For how many bloodthirsty hate-mongering Zionists this statement speaks from their “guts” because hearts they don’t have?

And more of IDF atrocities – destroying hospitals’ last sources of energy, their solar panels. Can these murderers, Netanyahu and his ilk, and the Biden’s, Sunak’s, von der Leyen’s, Scholz’s, et al, of this world still be called humans?

Nuremberg 2.0 must come, maybe in an updated format à la 21st century with digital punishment. No questions, no answers, but judgment.

As long as these obscure political monsters cheer the killings, Netanyahu will not call off the IDF and accept a ceasefire. Peace negotiations are not part of the agenda for Greater Israel.

Be it noted though that there are many thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of Jews in Israel and around the world, who do not agree with this murderous onslaught demonstrated by their Israeli leadership against Gaza. Thousands of them protested over the past weekend in Jerusalem and capital cities around the world, against Netanyahu’s merciless war policies.

Jews demanding for ceasefire in The Capitol (Source: Democracy Now!)

Maybe Zionists are already ruling the world, especially the Western world, without most people realizing it. Next step – “planned” only – is taking over also the East and then call it a One World Order (OWO) of One World Government (OWG). And the Zionists pull the strings. Quietly, discretely, invisibly.

Looking closer, much of the world ruling is already in Zionist domain. The United States, still one of the world’s foremost military and economic powers, is totally beholden to the Zionist narrative. The European Union (EU), at least the head of and the European Commission, as well as key EU members like Germany, France, Italy and more, are mere doormats for the Zionists’ ever more grandiose ambitions.

No wonder: the Crown of Great Britain revels in admiration of the Zionist Plan – a plan crafted by the very UK with support of the US and the US-controlled United Nations.

The Western banking system, anchored in the Dragon-protected “City of London”, in other words, the Western monetary flow, and to the extent of remaining dollarization of the East, that of Asia and Eastern countries, is controlled by Zionist banking royals.

Zionist power extends to Hollywood, the worldwide communication and information system – the “official” media – higher, elite-education (Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and most Ivy League universities), the Information Technology (IT) complex, social-media networks; medical / health science, including the pharma industry; and even the arts are predominantly in the realm of Jews and Zionists and much more.

And, not to forget – psychology, mind control, social engineering — moving the masses in the direction wanted by the matrix, but against the interests of the people, in ways, the people stay oblivious to their manipulation and manipulators – are all controlled by the Zionist Movement.

The Federal Reserve (FED), also called the US Central Bank, is privately-owned by bankers who are almost exclusively Zionists. Of all the so-called hard currencies flooding the world, the US-Dollar dominates close to 60% of all liquidity. He who controls this liquidity – plus largely that of the Euro, an estimated 10% – controls the world.

Compare this with barely 5% of total circulating liquidity of the Chinese Yuan, the currency of the world’s second largest economy, or, depending on the criteria even the world’s largest economy.

Banking and money alone tell you who is in control of the Western money-enslaved world. Although de-dollarization is in full swing, counter-currents and resistance are strong – but not yet strong enough to halt the trend of breaking free.

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Albert Einstein’s Predictions

In his TV Show of 5 November, Jimmy Dore revealed a 1948 letter by Albert Einstein to Mr. Shepard Rifkin, Executive Director, American Friends of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, in New York.

On April 10, 1948, just a month before the official creation of Israel, 14 May 1948, by David Ben-Gurion, Einstein warned Rifkin – and the world – of a looming catastrophe in Palestine.

He said in his letter, if such a catastrophe should happen, the first responsible would be the Brits for proposing and sponsoring the establishment of Israel in Palestine, referring to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, and the second responsible would be the “terrorist organizations built up from our own ranks.” He was no doubt referring to the World Zionist Movement.

Einstein finished his letter by exclaiming, “I am not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people.”

Before the actual creation of Israel, Einstein’s foresight told him the criminal nature of the Zionists.

See full video clip (3-min) of the November 2, 2023 Jimmy Dore Show.

Did Einstein foresee, or sense, Palestine becoming Israel’s killing fields, from 1948 forward, to explode in a worldwide tolerated, even supported, and encouraged democide / genocide, just three-quarters of a century after the birth of Israel?

Does Netanyahu, his entourage – and the West – realize that the 75 years of Apartheid, of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and of wiping the Gaza Strip and eventually all the Palestinian land off the map is comparable to, or worse than the “Holocaust”?

In a letter on 4 December 1948 to the Editor of the New York Times (NYT), Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Sydney Hook, et al, wrote –

“Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the “Freedom Party” (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy, and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.”

“The current visit of Menachem Begin, leader of this party, to the United States is obviously calculated to give the impression of American support for his party in the coming Israeli elections, and to cement political ties with conservative Zionist elements in the United States.” See this for more.

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Einstein was well-aware of the establishment in 1897 of the World Zionist Movement in a Conference held in Switzerland. This Movement is what he most likely referred to in his letter to Shepard Rifkin when Einstein called the movement, those misled and criminal people.

For the Zionists, Palestine was the homeland of the Jews – from 3,000 years back, although even then, Palestine was only sparsely populated by people of the Jewish faith. They lived then peacefully together with the Arabs. Only some 1,500 years later, Islam was created (in 610 AD). And they still lived peacefully together for another 1,500 years.

The Jewish, alias Zionist, vs. Arab conflict started about 75 years ago, with the creation of Israel and the ensuing Nakba (Nakba, meaning “catastrophe” in Arabic, referring to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war).

From that date on, the Zionist Israelis made sure that the sponsors of their country and the sponsors extended fists and boots – and firepower – across the shining Atlantic would always be on their side. No matter what. They had the supremacy. They were given the power by the United Nations which acted with the powers of the British and the American Empires. 

And – not to forget – the Zionists controlled then and even more so today, most of the world’s monetary flow, and the financial and banking institutions emitting the money in circulation.

Some prominent politicians and historians dare to speak out and in defense of Palestine. One of them is Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, former Prime Minister of Malaysia, speaking at the Global Solidarity and Rally Free Palestine in London on 4 November 2023.

Dr. Mahatir reminded the world of what most Westerners, particularly Europeans, wish to forget – their 500-plus years of imperialism-colonialism. Israel is a mere product of this historic tyrannical western train of thinking. Listen to and watch Dr. Mahatir’s superb 8-min speech below.

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What is next?

We can only imagine where the west wants Israel to go – for the Western elite’s own sake. Zionists and the West live in a symbiotic relationship.

The West tends to supports Israel’s long war towards fulfillment of the dream of the Chosen People, a Greater Israel – one that would encompass at least half the Middle East, including Jordan, parts of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Egypt and more – see map (right).

These are the countries with the most hydrocarbon energy reserves, other than Russia, which the West and especially its elite covets to fulfill their wishful dream, a One World Order, alias a One World Government, run by a neo-capitalist scheme for profits of the wealthy.

These western so-called leaders know very well that for the foreseeable future hydrocarbon will be THE source of energy that fuels the world’s economy. No matter what they officially say and lie about the man-caused CO2 “climate change” – a farce — they need hydrocarbons for the world’s survival.

Today, about 85% of all energy used in the world stems from hydrocarbons, about the same as 30 years ago, when the farce was launched with the “Earth Summit” in Rio in 1992.

Their lies and mind manipulations are enhanced with the many different COPs (Conference of the Parties), so far 27 COPs were held since the “Earth Summit”, the last one in Egypt in November 2022. The next one, COP 28, is scheduled for December 12, 2023 in Dubai.

So, most common people, including many scientists, believe in this humongous deception. Especially those “scientists” who believe in the 24/7/52 hot media propaganda, instead of doing their own research.

The climate hoax officially started with the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), or ‘Earth Summit’. However, preparation for this enormous Climate Deception began already much earlier with the Club of Rome – reflected in the Club’s infamous Report “Limits to Growth” (1972) which seeks any means to reduce the world population by close to 90% according to their wishful thinking. “Climate Change” is an excellent tool for their objective. See this.

Protection from fake “climate change” allows for a myriad of genocidal atrocities, like targeted geoengineering of the climate, causing droughts, exceptionally strong and destructive hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, glacier- and Arctic and Antarctic ice-melting, resulting in famine, poverty, and death, as well as the make-believe birth of “deadly viruses” against which the world must be vaxxed with potions of deadly biochemical mixes, or bio-weapons.

Fake “climate change” is also at the roots of wanton destruction of Western economies, by condemning the use of hydrocarbons because of CO2 that is pretended to increase the earth’s temperature, forcing leading economies to decline – maybe collapse; see Germany.

Israel – in her extended format – fits exactly in the picture. A larger Israel encompassing the Middle East’s energy resources is precisely what the Western elite needs.

The dark planners, the cabal, the Financial-Military-IT-Media-Pharma complex, controlled mostly by Zionists, who are also running the Great Reset / Agenda 2030-executing institutions and NGOs – the United Nations, the World Economic Forum (WEF), World Health Organization (WHO), the Governments of the US, UK and the European Union (EU) – have crafted a perfect symbiotic interdependence between the Zionists’ dream of a Greater Israel and the Western elite’s need for the resources controlled by the planned Greater Israel.

Palestine, as Israel’s killing fields, is a mere step towards a larger diabolical plan of a tyrannical One World Government.

Only if we allow it.

We MUST resist.

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

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

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Israel used white phosphorus on UNRWA schools in the Beach refugee camp in Gaza City on Thursday. Thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltered at the UN site.

Although the use of white phosphorus is not completely banned, it is restricted under international humanitarian law.

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Video shows the moment a Palestinian woman and her husband were arrested in Israel on terrorism charges over her WhatsApp status.

She’s one of many Palestinian citizens of Israel who’ve been arrested, suspended or expelled from jobs and universities, since October 7.

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***

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been moving south from northern Gaza.

They are fleeing on foot carrying whatever they can.

But as Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher reports, many fear they will never be able to return to their homes.

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***

On October 7, Israel was attacked by Hamas, an armed Palestinian resistance group inside Gaza. The group killed 1,405 people, and kidnapped over 200 in Israel.

Hamas was a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, a global terrorist organization which is outlawed in many countries, but not in the US, UK or Germany. 

US President Donald Trump said that the Muslim Brotherhood should be designated a terrorist organization in the US, and Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, brought two bills to the Senate, but he did not have support because of the Democrats under pressure from President Joe Biden. Why would the US fight terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq, while supporting a global terrorist network?

The answer is, that the US uses terrorist groups when it is in their interest. Military experts explain that you need fighters for a war, and if you can’t get a Congressional order to send US troops to a battlefield, then you use what assets you have on the ground. 

The US utilized the Muslim Brotherhood fighters in Syria, and partnered with the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to rig the election which brought Mohamed Mursi to power. This is why the US will never outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood in the US; because they are useful.

However, in Gaza the Muslim Brotherhood are not useful to US-Israeli interests, so they must be eradicated.

Syria Regime Change

US President Barack Obama developed and engineered a plan for regime change in Syria. The plan was put into motion in March 2011 when armed men, masquerading as peaceful protesters, began a gun fight with the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in Deraa.  The Al Omari Mosque in Deraa was used as a weapons storehouse by militants who has smuggled arms from the US military base in Jordan.  The US military had excess weapons confiscated in the US-NATO attack on Libya, which had been allocated to the terrorists in Syria by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Obama was sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood and had ties to them, though he was not a member. The closest assistant to Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was Huma Abedin, who was from a family with high-ranking ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Obama knew that he couldn’t get backing for US troops to invade Syria to overthrow the Assad government, so he turned to his associates across the US, the Muslim Brotherhood, who organized the “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) from Muslim Brotherhood members and sympathizers in Syria and Turkey.  Once the force was formed with commanders who had defected from the SAA, then the Obama administration began their work supporting the FSA with weapons, cash for paychecks, supplies and training through the covert CIA program “Timber Sycamore”, which was finally shut down in 2017 by President Donald Trump.

Senator John McCain

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and former veteran of the Vietnam war, became the biggest supporter of the FSA, and lobbied Congress successfully for the armed group to receive additional weapons including anti-tank missiles, TOW.

McCain became so enamored of the FSA, he made an illegal trip into Idlib, Syria to meet with their general, Selim Idriss, and to sit with their commanders. McCain came under fire once his travel photos were posted by his office online, because one of the men he posed with was identified by kidnap victims as their captor in a highly publicized case when the FSA had kidnapped a large bus load of travelers on a religious pilgrimage. 

McCain’s illegal trip to Syria flew in the face of McCain’s anger at Mexican migrants illegally crossing the border into America. McCain entered Syria illegally, without any visa, exactly mirroring the Mexican migrants.

A Syrian Christian citizen of the US had been videoed confronting McCain publicly when she told him the FSA were slaughtering Christians in Syria, and they were not the ‘freedom fighters’ he proclaimed them to be.  In 2014, the FSA attacked and killed the Armenian Christians at Kessab, Syria on the Turkish border. The quaint village has never recovered, and was reduced to a near ghost town.

The Free Syrian Army

The US military advisors had warned that the weapons the US was sending to the FSA in Syria could potentially end up in the hands of Al Qaeda. That is exactly what happened.  The FSA proved to be a very weak, and ineffective fighting force against the SAA, which was a national army conscripted from every male over 18 in Syria who is not enrolled in a university. 

The FSA lost battle after battle, until they put out a call to their brothers-in-arms, Al Qaeda, who immediately came pouring in the country from Turkey, which was a transit point for international terrorists on their way to fight jihad in Syria.

Obama’s goal was to replace President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus with a malleable Muslim Brotherhood politician, like what Obama had accomplished successfully in Egypt with the US rigged election that put Mohamed Mursi in office, who was a Muslim Brotherhood card-carrying member.

Obama was faced with a dilemma once his FSA had morphed into Al Qaeda. How could he continue to support them through Congressional approval? He got around that predicament by continuing to call them FSA, even though that group no longer existed.

Idlib under the Muslim Brotherhood

The final ‘rebel’ held territory in Syria is Idlib, a small province sandwiched between Latakia and Aleppo, and whose only resource is olive trees and agriculture.  But, it sits strategically on the Turkish border, and Turkey continues to support and defend the terrorists in Idlib. Turkey is ruled by President Erdogan of the AKP party, and they are aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Idlib is controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, under the command of Mohamed al-Julani, who is a Syrian that fought against the US in Iraq with Al Qaeda, and an associate of ISIS leader Mustapha Baghdadi. The plan was for Julani to leave Iraq, go to Syria and set up an ISIS branch there, but instead Julani set up his own terrorist group in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra, which became the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria.  Their extreme brutal tactics in Syria against civilians got them listed as an outlawed terrorist group, and this created a dilemma for the US. How could they continue to fund and support a terrorist group? The Obama administration simply re-branded the group as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. A simple name change kept the funding, defense and support for the terrorists flowing from Washington, DC through their ally Turkey. 

Every humanitarian truck passing from Turkey to Idlib is unloaded, warehoused and distributed by the terrorists.  Julani built a large and modern shopping center, Al Hamra, in Idlib which sells the excess humanitarian aid from the UN and other international aid organizations which was withheld from civilians because they are not aligned with Julani and his terrorist group.  If you complain about the fact Julani and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham refuse to allow women and girls to participate in education programs offered by international aid groups, you will be off the list of receiving aid, and be forced to buy the basic items you need with US dollars.

Julani became a star when he took off his war clothes, and wore an Italian silk suit and tie. The occasion was a high-level American media interview, in which Washington was trying to sell the western audience on supporting Julani, while he held 3 million civilians in Idlib as human shields.

The world is watching Gaza, and the contrasts between Gaza and Idlib are striking. In Gaza the US has an aircraft carrier and war ships offshore to support the Israeli Defense Forces, and in Idlib the Biden Administration is supporting the terrorists who hold 3 million civilians hostage.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image is from American Free Press

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We are all shocked by the images of genocide suffered by the people of Gaza. Despite attempts to censor the truth about Israeli crimes, that truth breaks through to Western public opinion, arousing spontaneous opposition what we have seen in the last couple weeks on the street all over the world,  but I remember very similar crimes that I saw with my own eyes nine years ago.

How the War in Ukraine Has Started

In May 2014, as a Polish journalist, I observed the presidential elections in Ukraine. I also went to Donetsk to see the first manifestations of the Russian-speaking population of Donbas, which, immediately after the pro-Western coup, was deprived of the right to use the Russian language in offices, schools and all social life.  Just after the election day, I was at the railway station in Donetsk, observing the daily bustle. There were no protests that day, just crowds of people got off the trains to get to work. Then Ukrainian helicopters arrived. Without any warning, without any summons, Ukrainian soldiers started shooting at people in the streets, had fun flying low, chasing people away from the buildings they wanted to hide in. They fired rockets onto the rails, aiming at trains that were hastily trying to leave the station with panic crowds on boards.

With my own eyes, I saw the dead bodies of women, children, and workers who did not attend the schools, didn’t go to the factories that day, did not start their shift in the mines, and did not return home. Throughout the day there was chaos in Donetsk, with bodies lying everywhere, there was not enough space in hospitals, and Ukrainian troops and Nazi militias attacked Russian speakers throughout Donbas. In the evening, we listened to the speech of the newly elected President Petro Poroshenko, who announced the launch of the “Special Anti-Terrorist Operation”.

Nazi Ukrainian State

Image: Stepan Bandera (Source: Silent Crow News)

Sounds familiar, isn’t it?  Donetsk then looked like Gaza today.

The war in Ukraine, which many people in the West heard about only in 2022, has been going on since 2014. And that’s not all. And the genocide of the Russian-speaking minority has been ongoing since 2014 too. On 3rd May in Odessa the unforgettable smell of burnt human bodies hung over the city. The day before, Nazi militias burned alive 42 residents of this wonderful, open, multicultural city. Odessa is the pearl of the Black Sea. Its inhabitants speak their own unique version of the Russian language and are known for their own regional identity and independence. 

That was enough for the oligarchs to pay Nazis and hooligans to terrorise the internationalist capital of southern Ukraine. It is no coincidence that one of the first decisions of the new authorities, approved by the Western powers in Kiev after the coup in 2014, was the declining of the law on regional and minority languages…  This mainly affected the Russian-speaking population of southern and eastern Ukraine. It was in fact declaration of war, a war against own citizens. Its next stages included an attack on the Orthodox Church. Nazi militias supported by the police occupied the main eastern temples, including the legendary Kiev Pechersk Lavra, attacked and beat believers, forcing them to join a new religious organisation founded by the state administration and worshiping Nazi criminals, such as Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, as saints.

And it’s still not the end. In Zelensky’s Ukraine, the activity of independent trade unions is banned, workers’ rights are limited, employers, mainly oligarchs and Western capital, were given the right to lockout, and strikes are actually banned. Opposition political parties, socialist, communist and regional, are banned. Step by step, under the protection of the Anglo-Saxon powers, the Nazi state, the new Reich, is being built just next to the borders of the European Union!

75 Years of the Genocide in Palestine

And this is not a coincidence. Zelensky’s Ukraine is neither the first nor the only modern Nazi state. The Zionist, criminal experiment in Palestine has been going on for 75 years. 75 years of ethnic cleansing, 75 years of genocide, 75 years of permanent war.  The ideological basis of the state of Israel was fascism, groups such as the Shtern Gang or Jabotinsky’s party of Zionist-Revisionists referred directly to fascism. It is no wonder that modern Zionism is a racist doctrine, based on apartheid and intolerance. Intolerance not only towards Palestinians, Muslims and Christians, but also towards Jews, especially Orthodox Jews, who oppose Zionism. Anti-Zionism has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Anti-Zionism is real anti-fascism today. We are  anti-Zionists because we are anti-Nazism, because we are against the holocaust of the Palestinians.

Nazism and Zionism are two sides of the same coin. Ideologies of intolerance, which serve one goal: maximising the profits of global capital. This isn’t just killing for killing’s sake. The war in Ukraine, the war in Palestine, tomorrow maybe the war over Taiwan – these are the convulsions of global capitalism. On the one hand, they are opportunities to sell a huge number of weapons, and banks provide billions of subsidies to the regimes in Kiev and Tel Aviv, half of which probably immediately goes back to corrupt Anglo-Saxon politicians.

 The UK delivered £2.3bn in military aid to Ukraine in 2022 and the Prime Minister has pledged to do the same in 2023, with further support to be delivered in the coming weeks and months. Is this money for war victims? For Ukrainian widows and orphans? Of course not, that money creates the profits of arms industry and  increases fortunes of Ukrainian oligarchs. The British government says it is providing humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza. However, if Westminster had not supported the Zionist regime with its policy of ethnic cleansing, no aid would have been needed because Palestine would have been secure and sovereign, just as the United Nations promised the Palestinians in 1947.

Wars Mean Profit

Wars mean financial transfers, but war is also a great performance. This is a great opportunity for imperialists and capitalists to hide the symptoms of another great crisis. To evoke nationalistic emotions, to excite the masses with the smell of blood or to rename the perpetrators as the victims and find moral justification for further crimes.

110 years ago no one believed in the threat of world war, it seemed that the progress of humanity had completely eliminated this option, and conflicts could only occur in distant, wild countries in the colonies or in the Balkans. On the fields of Somme, and at Verdun our forefathers quickly saw how wrong they were.  Perhaps in a few years the war in Ukraine and the war in the Middle East will be remembered as our grandparents saw the Spanish Civil War and Japanese aggression against China, as the early stages of a world war. If we do not clearly say NO today to Nazism in Ukraine, to Zionism in Palestine and to global capitalism, which sponsors both,  another world war is only a matter of time.

During a world war no one thinks about the financial costs. Nobody cares about benefits. Nobody cares about the climate or the environment. Only capitalist accumulation matters. Rivers of blood are just flows of capitalists’ profits. While demanding peace in Ukraine and Palestine, we also support the peaceful transformation of the Nord/West, against the plutocracy and oligarchy that dominate this part of the globe.  We should want a peace for Ukrainian, Russian, Palestinian and Israeli children because we want a better future for everyone.

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Konrad Rękas is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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When humans embrace the dehumanization of others, we release our ugliest, most destructive selves. Dehumanization is a perverse force that propagates violence and justifies the lust for war and its atrocities.

On August 6, 1945, Sakue Shimohira was 10 years old when an atomic blast obliterated her home in Hiroshima, Japan, burning her mother into an unrecognizable block of ash. Afterward, the only feature that could identify her was a single gold tooth.

Sakue struggled to survive in Hiroshima’s post-apocalyptic, postwar landscape, while her older sister soon fell into despair and threw herself in front of a train. When the American soldiers of the occupying army arrived, Sakue remembered that they constructed an airstrip in front of the shack where she was living. “There were skeletons all over the area,” she said, “so when they built the airstrip, the bones were crushed into dust.”

The American soldiers handed out chewing gum and chocolate to orphans like her. Some of the Japanese children quickly learned how to say “hello” in English, but Sakue confronted the soldiers in her native Japanese. “Why?” she insisted. “Why did you kill my family? Why did they deserve to die?” She added, “Of course, they didn’t understand Japanese. They just smiled at me. ‘Give them back to me!’ I shouted.”

Recalling such memories so many decades later, Sakue’s face still reveals how that historically disastrous bombing blotted out her inner light. As she put it, “I carried this pain that I couldn’t talk about. Even today, I can’t say my sister’s name aloud. It hurts too much.”

Dehumanization and People Living Under the Mushroom Cloud

In recent years, I’ve traveled to Japan numerous times with university students to study the legacy of the first and only use of atomic weapons as World War II ended. In that way, my students and I became moral witnesses to the consequences of the terror for people under those mushroom clouds that shattered, incinerated, and flattened the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But in my own country, the United States, the continuing specter of nuclear catastrophe generally fails to pierce a commonplace apathy toward such weaponry. Instead, most Americans hold war’s ultimate horror at arm’s length, while rationalizing the way our country and so many others on this planet all too regularly lurch into such conflicts as the only right and just way to address human greed, tyranny, and fear.

Almost 80 years after those first atomic blasts, Americans have yet to seriously reckon with how easily we learned to rationalize such structural violence. Meanwhile, our country continues to pour endless money into the wasteful creation, stockpiling, maintenance, and now the “modernization” of those weapons of mass, even global, destruction. In his poignant diagnosis, psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton concluded that we developed a deep “psychic numbing,” while becoming detached and morally disengaged from the growing possibility that such weaponry could, in the end, create a “nuclear winter” and destroy humanity.     

In Japan, my students and I have had the distinct privilege of meeting atomic bomb survivors, or hibakusha as they are known there. One hibakusha, an elderly, somewhat stern man, told us that he was outside of the city of Nagasaki with his brother when the second bomb exploded. The two boys rushed into the city to search for their father and finally found his body near his workplace, burned (like Sakue’s mother) almost beyond recognition.

We listened as his testimony viscerally evoked that horror from so long ago as if it had only taken place days earlier. He remembered how, as a child, when he tried to prepare the body for burial, he touched his father’s head and the skull crumbled beneath his fingers, while parts of the brain oozed into his hands.

In those precious moments in Japan when my students and I heard the stories of hibakusha, we could also ask questions. “Do you hate Americans?” the students often asked. “What kind of assistance was there for you and other hibakusha in the terrible aftermath of months and years after the war?” And we would thank them for sharing their painful and invaluable stories with us, but it never felt like enough. So many of them have a single request: that we take their words back to the United States with us and share them with others here.

During our conversation with that elderly man in Nagasaki, one moment was particularly unforgettable. Despite the harsh struggle and war-time brutalization he endured as a child, the elder we now experienced was a soul of deep reflection and humane philosophical searching. During the question-and-answer period following his testimony, he told us about his life-long struggle to understand what had happened to him and why. He mentioned a book that helped him better grasp how the world arrived at such a place of inhumanity and violence, historian John Dower’s award-winning history, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War.

“I know that book!” I blurted out. He stared at me, and I stared back. Dower’s history had also deeply impacted my life and thought, so I felt a sudden powerful connection with that hibakusha and was simultaneously rendered speechless after my outburst, overwhelmed and amazed by the journey that man had taken in his life to meet me then and there.

Two Truths About War and Dehumanization

Dower’s investigation helped me better understand two truths about violence. First, dehumanization always precedes and paves the way for the horrors of war. Human beings won’t kill other humans if they truly believe their lives are as worthy as their own. In his book, Dower vividly exposes the dehumanizing, racist imagery that enveloped both the United States and Japan in the early 1940s. The Japanese were portrayed here as “vermin” and “apes,” “inferior men and women,” “primitive and childish” creatures. They were “the Yellow Peril” or “the menacing Asian horde.” Versions of such tropes of dehumanization lubricated the eruption of violence that followed and have emerged repeatedly in human history. 

And it wasn’t just the Americans. Japanese cartoons from the era depicted Westerners as a kind of vermin like lice, caricatured President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a demon, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and FDR as “debauched ogres” looming over Mount Fuji, a sacred symbol of Japan. American cartoons typically drew Japanese bodies in bright yellow.

I remember my mother, who grew up in California during that war, remarking on a Japanese flag I brought home from one of my trips. “That was such a symbol of hatred when I was a child,” she told me. And such dehumanization paved the way for devastating violence as the only possible solution. Both sides plummeted into “victimage rhetoric” that portrayed the “enemy” as barbaric, irrational, and irredeemably violent, while “we” were moral, rational, and sensible. Tragically, this way of thinking justified the horrors to come. Given such an enemy, only through colossal destruction could we save the world, or so people came to think.

Dower’s book reveals a second truth about violence as well: dehumanization does more than just enable war. It also generates an annihilating energy all its own through which the atrocity-laden destruction of war multiplies exponentially. In the case of the Pacific front in World War II, violence begat ever greater violence and the hunger for it grew ever deeper and more insatiable until there was a veritable “frenzy of violence” on both sides in the final year of that war. More than half of all American deaths occurred in that single year and that was when the kamikaze, or suicide plane, became “the consummate symbol of the pure spirit of the Japanese” to “turn back the demonic onslaught.”

Meanwhile, the Americans abandoned precision bombing and initiated the full-scale firebombing of Japanese cities. The firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945 burned to death more than 100,000 civilians in a single night. More than 60 cities were similarly targeted, killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese in a final paroxysm of violence that preceded Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Today’s Escalation of the Drumbeats of Dehumanization

In these terrible recent days, we again can hear the drumbeats of dehumanization in Ukraine, Israel, and the Gaza Strip, as grief explodes in the face of unimaginable violence, loss, injury, and the sort of pain that rips at the very fabric of our world. Human beings are once again being described as “animals.” The other side is pure “evil.” The only remedy for such a conflict, people imagine, is to wipe the enemy out and achieve “full victory.” Indescribable destructive force against the other is rationalized as necessary because of the terrible violence wreaked on us.

But we won’t find our way out of such a morass of violence through more of the same, or through the further dehumanization of people we call our enemy. In the end, dehumanization destroys us, too, even if we don’t realize it. The perennial question facing the world is this: Is there a way for us to move toward a greater rehumanization?

In reality, we don’t have to accept psychic numbing or endless dehumanization and violence as the only possible responses to our broken world. We can glimpse a different way forward when we turn our attention to people whose experiences of horrific violence, amazingly enough, didn’t destroy them. Instead, their awareness was crystalized, leaving them with so much to share with the rest of us about the deep, irreplaceable importance of every human being and the immeasurable value of our fragile planet.

Along with the remarkable hibakusha I’ve been privileged to meet, I also have come to know U.S. veterans of war with the same astonishing kinds of awareness. I wrote a book about them and their struggles to remain human in a world all too saturated with violence titled And Then Your Soul is Gone: Moral Injury and U.S. War Culture.

Imagining a Different Veterans Day

As Veterans Day approaches, I’m thinking about those veterans I respect so dearly who have themselves come through such crucibles of horror. Many live with the deep despair that accompanies military moral injuries. Yet they refuse to give up on life, hope, and the belief that there could be a different way forward. They remind me of Sakue who, in the end, offered this reflection: “There are two kinds of courage.  One type of courage is the courage to die. I chose the courage to live.”

American veteran and former Iraq War medic Jenny Pacanowski witnessed that conflict’s calamitous effects on Iraqi children. She shared her agony with a military chaplain, asking him, “Why would God do this to the children of Iraq, to the soldiers, to the medics who only want to bring healing?” The chaplain responded, “God works in mysterious ways.”

Such a facile response made her deeply angry. It was as though her soul could no longer occupy her physical body and left her to float above it, connected by only the most fragile tether, as she screamed in anger and sorrow. That was close to 20 years ago. As she told me, “To truly reintegrate, and invite my soul back into my body, I needed to tell my story in a secure space.” Today, Jenny is like a comet blazing a trail to support the peace-building activities of women veterans.

Recently, I was introduced to the poetry of Vietnam War veteran Doug Rawlings. He was in his early twenties when he was drafted and sent to Vietnam. Returning to the United States, like so many others, he was “confused, angry, and lost.” But he’s been writing poetry for more than 50 years and, in his most recent collection, he explains, “Most of us do not want to be vulnerable, especially men, and, exponentially, veterans. However, the vulnerability in the poet invites vulnerability in the reader/listener.”

One of Rawlings’ poems speaks to me strongly in this painful moment on our planet. Near the U.S. Army base at Long Binh in what was then South Vietnam, there was “a beautiful if dilapidated French villa.” During the war, it was repurposed as an orphanage. A hand-painted sign in front of it read in English: “Please don’t shoot the orphans.” 

In response to that memory, Rawlings wrote:

“Imagine all the interstates in and out of our cities
Clogged with cars brought to a standstill by
‘Please don’t shoot the orphans’ plastered on placards

Their drivers stumbling out of their seats
Onto the median strips crisscrossing this land
Of the mobile and free to question

If not just for a minute
How their own busy lives can possibly be
Intertwined with the lives of orphans

Their hearts in their mouths when they realize

The hands on their steering wheels
The fingers dancing across their radio dials

Hold the answer to those questions”

The answer is directly in front of us if only we would pay attention. Please don’t kidnap, maim, starve, or deny water, electricity, or healthcare to children anywhere. Don’t separate them from their parents, drown, bomb, rape, burn, imprison, shoot, bury in rubble, use as human shields, or kill the children. Please, do not find ways to justify such horrors. Instead, look them squarely in the eye and decide that you will demand an alternative.

If we are to remain human on this planet in this devastating moment, there is — or at least, should be — no other way. 

*

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Kelly Denton-Borhaug, a TomDispatch regular, has long been investigating how religion and violence collide in American war-culture. She teaches in the global religions department at Moravian University. She is the author of two books, U.S. War-Culture, Sacrifice and Salvation and, more recently, And Then Your Soul is Gone: Moral Injury and U.S. War-Culture.

Featured image: Made in Israel – by Mr. Fish

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***

Dear Bobby,

As you know, I have supported your bid for the presidency even before you declared last spring.  I have admired and believed in you for years, and when you entered the race I felt hope for the first time in decades that your non-violent impulses, honed by your tragic family history and a deep revulsion for our country’s imperial wars and violent history, would triumph and usher in a new era of peace.  Despite the naysayers who dismissed you from the start, I said Yes, that you would shock those who ridiculed and maligned you and that you would be the man to carry out President Kennedy’s American University speech and fulfill his and your father’s legacy of “not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women” because “we all breathe the same air” and “we all cherish our children’s futures” and “we are all mortal.”

I suggested that you would heal the divide and not expand it. Seeing you stumble on your way by throwing your full support to the Zionist leaders of Israel has been a body blow to me. At first I thought it might be explained by your reaction to the false antisemitic accusations that were hurled your way once word emerged that you might enter the presidential race. But as time went on it dawned on me that I was wrong and that you were in sync with the powerful Israel Lobby.  So now, I feel as if we are in the tenth round of fight for your soul’s compassion. That you have not defended the children of Gaza and condemned their massacre by the thousands has shocked and sickened me.

As a scholar of religion and its intersection with politics, I have been meditating on current events.

Religion has for a very long time been used as a cover for slaughtering people and seizing their land. This is true for the United States and Israel. It is built into their theological underpinnings. So it should not be at all surprising that the current Israeli massacre of Palestinians is fully supported by the U.S. government led by President Joseph Biden and by almost every presidential aspirant. You, however, as a self-styled anti-war candidate are a great surprise to me, although I may be naïve and shouldn’t be since you gave your unequivocal support to the Israel government a month ago, following the October 7 Hamas-led incursion into Israel that killed innocent Israelis (many of whom were also probably killed by the IDF as Jonathan Cooke has reported). Despite that, I still expected your conscience would surely prompt you to condemn what can only be described as genocide, the slaughter of the innocents in Gaza that is ongoing.

You have undermined your claim to “end the forever wars” and to defend children. Why you have done (or not done) this is a question that so many of your supporters and former supporters are asking. Only you can say.  Perhaps we might only know if you unequivocally condemned Israel’s actions and faced whatever might come your way as a result. This is unlikely, I now realize, but one can still hope. I think it would take a spiritual miracle of moral courage, because of your claim that your historical analysis that you say is sincere and true that Israel now and always has been the just and innocent party and the Palestinians the evil ones. I find your analysis unbelievable and your silence as innocents are being slaughtered indefensible, even as I applaud so many of your other positions, as you know.  Everyone knows that running for the U.S. presidency creates strange bedfellows, but your touting of the Israeli propaganda in which you conflate the Palestinian people with Hamas to justify massacring civilians is beyond strange – it is immoral.

I know how much you respect Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and you no doubt have heard his words before.

“And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular – but one must take it simply because it is right.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

Conscience calls to you, Bobby.  Be true to that voice within. Politic as it may be, there is a heavy burden of guilt for abandoning the Palestinians to slaughter by silence.  King learned this when he saw those photos of the napalmed and dead Vietnamese children and was conscience-stricken to come to Riverside Church in New York to give his speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence.” You can do the same.  The pictures of dead Palestinian children, victims of U.S. support for Israeli bombs, are there to see. Martin quoted your uncle, John, that “those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” He said that we can no longer worship the God of hate and retribution.  He said, “Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted.”

Some of the wounded at al-Shifa hospital (Gaza Health Ministry)

You too, Bobby, can break your silence, step up high and let your conscience also leave you no other choice but to condemn the genocide in Gaza.  As Martin said, “A time comes when silence is betrayal.”

You say you are making “a moral case for Israel” as the justified party in its seventy-five year long war with the Palestinians.  In doing so you have reneged on your campaign promise to emulate President John Kennedy, who would be appalled by your silence. Your website, Kennedy 24, declares that “[you] Kennedy will revive a lost thread of American foreign policy thinking, the one championed by his uncle, John F. Kennedy who, over his 1000 days in office, had become a firm anti-imperialist.”  In genuflecting to the Israel genocide while touting your connection to JFK and your father, Senator Robert Kennedy, you have in fact taken a position toward Israel diametrically opposed to theirs.  One could sense this coming when under pressure this past summer, you withdrew your support for Roger Waters, a strong Palestinian supporter who was falsely accused of being anti-Jewish, and you then allowed your “friend” Rabbi Shmuley Boteach to say that Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian, killed your father in 1968 when you knew that was a lie and was part of a sophisticated intelligence conspiracy to blame the patsy who was said to hate Israel.  To allow Shmuley to audaciously and heartlessly repeat a CIA trope about your father’s assassination was a telltale sign of worse to come.

For both the U.S. and Israel, the Bible has been used to cover up the crimes of their foundings.  They have analogous histories rooted in religious myths.  In both cases, the indigenous peoples were considered less than human – savages, infidels – or in the description of Palestinians by the current Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, “human animals.”  Such racist, dehumanizing language has been repeated time and again throughout the American and Israeli narratives used to justify their crimes against those they killed and whose land they stole.  The gloss of civilized hypocrisy has been unmasked by such language, just as it was when Hitler repeatedly called Jews “vermin.”  Irony aside, the Nazi rhetoric of denigration and racial superiority to justify exterminating Jewish people has been repeatedly mirrored by American and Israeli leaders, whether it was against the Original Free Peoples of North America, Vietnamese, Koreans, Iraqis, etc. or the Palestinians.  It is the master/slave mentality deeply rooted in U.S. and Israel history.

Bobby, you have said that you hope to be the second independent candidate to become president, the first being George Washington.  Yet Washington was a racist and slave owner who supported the extermination of the Indian natives so the white settlers could take their land.  He himself did so, speculating in Native lands together with most of the other prominent politicians from the early days of the Republic, including Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, Andrew Jackson, et al.  For the governors and legislators of the thirteen states it was also open sesame on the seizure of Indian land which required their slaughter in turn.

One can learn this in Peter P. d’Errico’s important recent book, Federal Anti-Indian Law: The Legal Entrapment of Indigenous Peoples, where he makes clear how U.S. law was used to codify such “legal” theft and killing.  Such federal law was, as d’Errico writes, a claim of unlimited U.S. power and not really law at all but the suspension of law as it granted the U.S. government complete authority over Native peoples, their lives, and their land.  Legal theft, in other words.  Like the English justification for their claim to their colonies – the “right of discovery” proclaimed in Henry VII’s commission to John Cabot: “to subdue and take possession of any lands unoccupied by any Christian Power” – a series of three Supreme Court rulings in the 1830s by Chief Justice John Marshall were based on the claim of “Christian discovery,” which in turn was based on a papal grant from Pope Alexander the Sixth in 1493 that gave to Christopher Columbus’s sponsors, Ferdinand and Isabella, ownership of any land Columbus might discover.  This divine right required the killing and subjugation of non-Christian infidels and heathens who were considered brute animals, just as the Palestinians are today.

Similar justifications have been used by Zionists for the killing of Palestinians and the seizure of their land in the name of the Biblical Jewish God and his instructions to them.  This myth claims that God gave them the ancestral Palestinians’ land, therefore, like native peoples of North America who, according to the non-law U.S. Indian law, only had the right of occupancy, the Palestinians could be killed and dispossessed by the God-given rightful owners, which they were in 1948.  Netanyahu has made such claims many times, as have his predecessors.  He calls for a holy war of annihilation against the Palestinians, based on the Hebrew Bible.  This is widely known and has a long history in the Zionist propaganda narrative that has allowed for seventy-five years of killing and the systematic shrinking of Palestinian land to its pitiful size today.

It is interesting to note that the three primary countries that intersect in the use of religious justification for colonial and imperial policies are England, the U.S., and Israel – together with the Papacy and its May 4, 1493 bull Inter Caetera issued by Pope Alexander the Sixth to declare Christian discovery.  I mention this since I am an Irish-American Catholic, and it was the Irish uprising against the English colonial occupiers that has become a key inspiration for anti-colonial rebels throughout the twentieth century and beyond.  I have taken inspiration from my Irish ancestors.  This is your heritage also, Bobby, so it becomes even more surprising that you, even as you tout the American Revolutionary War rebel fighters against the English colonialists, would support the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians.  As a lawyer, you must be aware of Federal Indian Law and how it, like all law, is rooted in a metaphysics of being human; has presuppositions that are brought to the bar, and in the case of federal Indian law, a Christian nomos at odds with that of Native peoples’.

You surely know that the Israeli assault on Gaza is a massive war crime according to international law, and even within the moderate Catholic just war theory, is, by its distorted proportionality, evil and must be rejected as immoral and a terrible sin. 

You claim to want to end all wars but support the ongoing slaughter of thousands upon thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians, including so many children and women.  Nor have you said a word against Biden’s saber rattling with aircraft carriers, U.S. drones, and assistance for Israel’s bloodthirsty assault that raises the threat of a much wider war that could turn nuclear.

Yes, the question is why such silence, which you can break now.  I beg you to speak out.  You are a man of conscience.  MLK, Jr. speaks to us all still.

And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular – but one must take it simply because it is right.

Pax tibi,

Ed

*

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, 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).

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***

“I don’t think that [the war] is a stalemate,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky told NBC News’ Meet the Press on Sunday.

“They thought they would checkmate us, but,” he insisted, “this didn’t happen.” According to recent interviews, his military leadership disagrees. His political inner circle thinks his insistence is delusional.

Zelensky is facing pressure both from within Ukraine and from without. Growing pressure from within is coming from both the political and military leadership; growing pressure from without is coming from Ukraine’s key partners.

The battle is largely being played out in the Western media. Most intimately, Zelensky has faced criticism from his political inner circle. TIME magazine reports that some of the president’s advisors have become worried that his “belief in Ukraine’s ultimate victory over Russia . . . “verg[es] on the messianic.” One of Zelensky’s “closest aides” said that Zelensky “deludes himself.” The aide complained, “We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.”

Some Zelensky aides say his intransigence hampers Ukraine’s ability to adapt to the changed reality on the battlefield and worry that negotiating a settlement with Russia remains “taboo.”

Domestic criticism is also coming from the top levels of the military. Zelensky is reportedly in conflict with his generals over the conduct of the counteroffensive and over his demands to defend Bakhmut and Avdiivka at any cost, which the military leadership sees as a strategic mistake that is already hurting Ukraine dearly in soldiers and equipment.

A senior Ukrainian military officer said that orders from the president’s office are, at times, disconnected from the battlefield reality and defended some front-line commanders who have begun second-guessing and refusing “orders from the top.”

Zelensky’s struggle with his generals intensified on November 3 when Zelensky fired General Viktor Khorenko, the commander of Ukraine’s special operations forces. The commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, General Valery Zaluzhny, did not request his dismissal. The New York Times reports that “It was unclear whether General Zaluzhny, the overall commander of Ukraine’s forces, knew in advance of the planned dismissal” and that “[t]he firing appeared to undercut General Zaluzhny’s authority.”

The firing took U.S. military officers, who “described a close and effective working relationship with” Khorenko, by surprise. Khorenko’s special operations forces had had some success with long-range strikes and sabotage operations behind Russian lines. But the NYT reports that there had been tension over what the military had “perceived as politically guided decisions on strategy” that had been ineffective and costly.

Zelensky’s tensions with his generals reached a peak with Zaluzhny’s November 1 interview with The Economist. He asserted that the war had reached a “stalemate.” He conceded that “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”

What’s worse is that Zaluzhny implied that the stalemate would evolve into defeat for Ukraine. A stalemate entails a long war of attrition. In a companion essay published simultaneously by The Economist, he explained that a long war “as a rule, in most cases, is beneficial to one of the parties to the conflict. In our particular case, it is the russian [sic] federation, as it gives it the opportunity to reconstitute and build up its military power.”

Zaluzhny said that in a prolonged war, Ukraine will run out of the “required volume” of missiles and ammunition while Russia, despite sanctions, is increasing its production capabilities. And even if it didn’t run out of weapons, he added, it will run out of men: a war of attrition “leads to the lack of Ukraine’s ability to achieve superiority over the enemy in reserves by increasing their number.” A close Zelensky aide told TIME that, even if the United States gave Ukraine all the weapons it needed, Kyiv doesn’t “have the men to use them.”

Zelensky’s office censured Zaluzhny, saying it “eases the work” of Russia and stirs “panic” among Ukraine’s Western partners. The New York Times calls the censure “a striking public rebuke that signaled an emerging rift between the military and civilian leadership.”

In addition to the pressure coming from within Zelensky’s inner political and military circle, diplomatic pressure is also coming from Zelensky’s international partners.

A November 3 NBC News article reported that “U.S. and European officials have begun quietly talking to the Ukrainian government about what possible peace negotiations with Russia might entail to end the war.” The article went on to say, citing one current and one former senior U.S. official familiar with the discussions, that “the conversations have included very broad outlines of what Ukraine might need to give up to reach a deal.”

The quiet talks suggest agreement by the U.S. and its European allies with Zaluzhny that Ukraine may not achieve its goals on the battlefield, that the realization of their aspirations may continue to dim with prolonged battle, and that some concessions may need to be made.

There is a remarkable convergence in the language used by the U.S. and European officials and the language used by Zaluzhny and Zelensky’s aides. NBC reports that the conversations “began amid concerns among U.S. and European officials that the war has reached a stalemate.” NBC reports that, like Zaluzhny, “[s]ome U.S. military officials have privately begun using the term ‘stalemate’ to describe the current battle in Ukraine.”

Like Zaluzhny and Zelensky’s aides, “Biden administration officials also are worried that Ukraine is running out of forces.” According to “people familiar with the matter,” NBC reported, “President Joe Biden has been intensely focused on Ukraine’s depleting military forces.” “Manpower,” one of those sources is quoted as saying, “is at the top of the administration’s concerns right now.”

Echoing the “close Zelensky aide” quoted in TIME, the same source said, “The U.S. and its allies can provide Ukraine with weaponry, but if they don’t have competent forces to use them it doesn’t do a lot of good.”

These concerns, NBC reported, have led U.S. officials to concede privately that “Ukraine likely only has until the end of the year or shortly thereafter before more urgent discussions about peace negotiations should begin.”

That leaves only a couple of months. With the battlefield turning against Ukraine despite Zelensky’s intransigent “belief in Ukraine’s ultimate victory over Russia,” the pressure targeted at Zelensky seems to be building, from both within and without,, to turn to the diplomatic front and face the beginning of the end of the war.

*

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Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and other outlets.

Featured image: Ukrainian snipers attend shooting training near the front line amid Russia-Ukraine war in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on February 18, 2023. [Source: businessinsider.com]

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***

Last Tuesday there took place a disgraceful display of visceral malignancy in the United States House of Representatives Chamber in the south wing of the Capitol building. The House, long characterized by its aversion to truth, justice and what was once the American way, has been corrupted by special interests who have effectively bought an overwhelming majority of legislators, to include the leadership of the two major political parties. In the area of foreign policy, as well as a spill-over into many domestic and constitutional issues, there is no more powerful lobby than that of the state of Israel, and its power was on full display on Tuesday afternoon when Representative Rashida Tlaib was censured for the crime of being of Palestinian ancestry and speaking up against the ongoing genocide of her people by the Jewish state. Nearly all Republicans voted to condemn her together with a considerable number of her fellow Democrats.

On the following day, the White House added its own condemnation of Tlaib, referring specifically to the phrase “from the river to the sea” used by her, a slogan conveniently regarded by some like the fanatical Zionist Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as an Arab rallying cry for the eradication of Israel. ADL’s ghastly director Jonathan Greenblatt inevitably equates use of the phrase with “antisemitism” and ADL insists that “’From the River to the Sea’ is a Hamas call to annihilate Israel” while also “claiming [that] it is a rally of coexistence [which] gives cover to terror.” Tlaib, for her part, was resurrecting a memory of the Palestine that once was, and she has asserted that the slogan is “an aspirational call for freedom, human rights and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction or hate.” Pro-Palestinian protesters do also use the slogan as a plea for their long-delayed nationhood, but groups like ADL prefer to claim that the activity provides “material support for Hamas,” and, as Hamas is a US listed terrorist group, that equates to aiding terrorists. Tlaib had also particularly angered the White House through her recently posted online video that accused President Biden of supporting genocide in the Gaza Strip, a seemingly undisputable assertion.

One might argue that even Congressmen are protected by the First Amendment right to free speech, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that the Bill of Rights does not apply when Israel is concerned, either in the halls of Congress or on college campuses, where Palestinian groups are being harassed and banned. The Tlaib censure vote can be seen as part of the bipartisan effort to protect the state of Israel from any and all criticism. Rashida Tlaib broke no law, did not threaten anyone, nor did she call for the destruction of any nation, yet she was excoriated by a series of her comrade-speakers in the House for something akin to a crime against humanity due to her turning against what was repeatedly described as one of America’s closest allies, a best friend and the only democracy in the Middle East, all of which are lies. Israel is no ally, which would require a certain reciprocity, a word that apparently does not exist in Hebrew. And in the current crisis Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has demonstrated that he will not be moved by US interests to mitigate the slaughter no matter how much Blinken-Biden suck up to him to make him budge. And as for the claim of democracy, Israel only grants citizenship with full rights to Jews, hardly a democratic measure. Apparently, cutting off the massive amounts of US aid, including the current $14.5 billion to pay for exterminating the Palestinians, is not even on the table. Israel will always get its pound of flesh and will call all the shots in its relationship with Washington.

Tlaib’s comments are in the context of a White House that believes it it is free to send bombs to Israel to slaughter Palestinian children—without even revealing how many plane loads of weapons have been delivered or are on their way. And then there are members of Congress like Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina who are free to advocate a “total war” against what he calls “the most extremist population on Earth,” i.e. the Palestinians. But verbal criticism of what is clearly a genocide and a massive violation of international law that has the US government as an accessory in a war crime is impermissible and there are even concerns that the Tlaib censure could become the foundation for a criminalization of any criticism of Israel under the assumption that all critics are ipso facto antisemites and the comments themselves amount to a “hate crime.”

Consider for a moment the precedents to Tlaib’s disgrace who are still in office untouched by any procedural steps to define what are acceptable rights of legislators. Beyond Senator Lindsey Graham’s unchallenged invitation to a mass murder, there is Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey whose apparent tendency to accept bribes has been a particularly lurid tale in part because much of the loot consisted of $480,000 in cash stuffed into jacket pockets, closets and in a safe, along with 13 gold bars, two of them marked as 1 Kilogram in weight to the value of more than $100,000. Both men are still walking around free of censure!

Israel’s love of the United States is only skin deep, if it as much as that. Recall for a moment the comments by Israeli prime ministers on the nature of the relationship. Consider Ariel Sharon’s 2001 comment:

“Every time we do something you tell me Americans will do this and will do that. I want to tell you something very clear, don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it… I don’t care what the American people think, I own the congress!”

Or Netanyahu’s famous quip also in 2001:

“America is a thing you can move very easily!”

So that is what “America’s best friend’s” leadership actually thinks about the United States and its people! It is a cash cow to be milked and otherwise exploited for political cover before being disposed of when its usefulness is gone.

Sharon also famously said

“I vow that if I was just an Israeli civilian and I met a Palestinian, I would burn him and I would make him suffer before killing him.”

It squares the circle on why the Gazans erupted in rage on October 7^th. Palestine was one nation from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea when Israel was founded in 1948. Since that time, Israel has been ethnically cleansing the Palestinians for three quarters of a century, has stolen and plundered their land, has replaced or eradicated hundreds of villages, has besieged Gaza for nearly 2 decades, and has engaged in mass starvation and now in genocidal mass killing. In the fighting preceding Israel’s independence, three quarters of a million Palestinians were driven from their homes and sent into refugee camps by Israeli militias, together with tens of thousands who were killed outright. Now the refugee camps in Gaza are being bombed together with churches, hospitals, schools and apartment blocks and we have only just learned that some Israeli officials are considering using one of their nuclear bombs to completely wipe out Gaza. It is surprising that the Palestinians have shown as much restraint as they have.

Given the damage that a corrupting Israel has done to America’s political system, it is important to ask what good the relationship with Israel has done for the average American whose tax dollars support the Zionist enterprise together with its plan to remove the Palestinians.

The answer is that nothing good has come out of the so-called alliance, which has cost the US $260 billion in direct aid adjusted for inflation since 1946. Plus there is the large sum of $14.5 billion more recently approved and pending currently as some kind of war fund to enable Netanyahu to crush the Palestinians. Israel regularly gets $3.8 billion yearly in direct aid from the US Treasury, a gift from Barack Obama, that is more than what goes to all other countries combined. And there is also more-or-less “off the books” considerable additional money from special and joint military projects, dubious charities and state level development boards that bring the total up to roughly $10 billion per year, which does not include the billions in financial aid that are in reality bribes paid to Egypt and Jordan to maintain peace with the Jewish state. The handout from Uncle Sam helps make Israel a very wealthy country which can afford to give its Jewish citizens free health care and college education as well as subsidized housing.

And being joined at the hip to the Jewish state has a considerable downside, requiring the use of the US United Nations veto at regular intervals to protect the client state as well as involvement in unneeded wars in places like Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Libya with Iran coming up next. Nor has Israel hesitated to kill Americans when it felt that the US was not fully supportive of its interests and the White House is so constrained by its “alliance” that it has essentially covered up the crimes against its own citizens. Last year’s sniper killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, which produced only a whimper from the Jewish dominated State Department, plus acceptance of Israeli lies about the incident, is a prime example. And then there is the killing of 34 sailors and the injuring of 172 more on the USS Liberty in international waters on June 8^th 1967. The US Navy largely unarmed intelligence ship was monitoring the ongoing fighting with Egypt when it was attacked by Israeli planes and torpedo boats. Efforts to send US aircraft carrier warplanes to assist the ship were called back by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who also orchestrated a cover-up exonerating Israel from blame. One hopes he and his Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara are now burning in hell.

The US government is so averse to challenging Israel that many believe that there are other unrevealed influences at play, possibly to include the Jeffrey Epstein/Mossad pedophile sex trafficking caper. It has long been true that candidates for high office in the US are approached by agents of the Zionist lobby and coerced into signing a pledge to support Israel. In return, the candidates who accept receive substantial political contributions and positive media. If they say “no” they are frequently targeted fjor defeat and go the way of Cynthia McKinney, Charles Percy, William Fulbright, Pete McCloskey and Paul Findley.

Congressman James Traficant of Ohio was perhaps the most aggressive voice in Congress in the 1980s and 1990s in expressing a critique of Israel’s power. He was inevitably controversial and was eventually imprisoned for seven years on a corruption charge that many subsequently considered to be a government set up. He had argued, among other things, that

“Israel has a powerful stranglehold on the American government” explaining how Israel was “controlling much of our foreign policy” and “influencing much of our domestic policy.”

He claimed quite plausibly that former Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz, working for Israel, had “manipulated” President George W. Bush into the disastrous invasion of Iraq.

Traficant maintained in the 1990s that

“We’re conducting the expansionist policy of Israel and everybody’s afraid to say it. They control much of the media, they control much of the commerce of the country, and they control powerfully both bodies of the Congress. They own the Congress.”

If Traficant were still with us, he would be astonished to see how Jewish influence has actually increased, with 35 states having some rules or legislation punishing advocates of boycotts of Israel and bills currently before congress authorizing automatic war against Iran and even the expulsion of Palestinians from the US. The State Department has an ambassador who monitors so-called antisemitism and the White House has recently declared a war against what it describes as “surging antisemitism.”

Currently, everyone opposing the US engagement with Israel in its extermination of the Arab population in the area it controls is being labeled an anti-semite and speaking up for the Palestinians is becoming a good way to get kicked out of university and unemployed. Israel’s friends are busy compiling lists of students who support the Palestinians and are working on schemes to circulate their names to deny them jobs once they graduate. Rashida Tlaib is only the latest affront to the dignity and common sense of the US Constitution but she is certainly not going to be the last victim of the Jewish lobby, which must be labeled for what it is, made to register as the agent of the Israeli apartheid state, and excluded from unilaterally making the policies that all of us Americans have to pay the price for in the Middle East.

*

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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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***

One of the most common ideological tropes of the contemporary political West is its apparent obsession with environmentalism. The belligerent power pole simply adores to use it as a way to “prove” its supposed “civilizational superiority” over any other country that doesn’t share the same obsession. The much-touted “garden” has started dozens of neocolonialist wars against “jungles” around the world, but there’s no concern for the environment and pollution when it comes to the spreading of “freedom, democracy and human rights”. The “garden’s” bombs and cruise missiles are “obviously no threat” to the natural habitat of thousands of endangered species or an issue when it comes to their preservation.

And yet, the political West still insists on its “moral superiority”, so much so that it’s seeking to codify it in a way that affects its relations with the entire world. Namely, the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), or simply “carbon tax”, is an attempt to force the rest of the world to follow the “garden’s” guidelines on “environmental issues”. The law has been heavily criticized by India and China, both of which are massive production economies. The two Asian giants believe this is effectively an act of economic warfare and a new trade barrier that doesn’t take into account the vastly different stages of socioeconomic development. Neither of the two countries is willing to renounce growth and development.

For instance, China is making unprecedented improvements in the lives of its citizens. In order to continue this path, Beijing needs to give its economy the necessary freedom and resources. And exactly the same can be said about India. Both the China Iron And Steel Association (CISA) and the Indian Commerce Minister have openly spoken out against CBAM. Both countries are taking steps to ameliorate the negative impact of the latest EU tax, but are not hiding their contempt for it. They see it as a sinister way to at least slow down their economic development. On the other hand, Brussels keeps insisting that the new scheme is of critical importance to its plans to achieve zero carbon emissions across six earmarked industries.

According to OilPrice, the CBAM tax regime recently moved into what some legal experts dub the “transition phase”. Namely, since October 1, importers of various commodities (including steel) into the EU need to report the carbon emissions of their products. By 2026, the said importers will also be subject to legal fees. The EU aims to impose CBAM on non-Western countries with significant carbon emissions, but these countries see it as a way to undermine their economic development. And while the stated goal of the “carbon tax” is to force producers to reduce carbon emissions, what it will actually accomplish is an additional increase in the cost of steel, aluminum and other strategically important commodities.

For its part, China has been very vocal regarding CBAM. A few days ago, its steel association called it “a new trade barrier”. According to Reuters, CISA stated that it wants more talks with the EU on the matter. The Chinese organization also insists that “the new ‘carbon tax’ fails to take into account the different phases of development in different countries”, adding that “the levy goes against the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities”. And indeed, many experts predict that CBAM would be the main culprit behind the rising costs of commodities, with the exact numbers going anywhere from 4% to 6%, if not more. This is without even taking into account the effect on other industries.

Understandably, CISA is worried that this would be more than enough to render Chinese exports nonviable. India also shares the same concern and disapproves of the controversial new “carbon tax”, claiming that it would also effectively destroy the competitiveness of its EU-bound export products. Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal recently also criticized CBAM and predicted that the EU would soon realize its mistake, forcing it to stop its implementation. The effort to tackle the “carbon tax” issue isn’t limited to government bodies, as there are also meetings between trade associations and manufacturers that are working together to find the best solution to CBAM.

Just like Beijing, New Delhi also pointed out how the “carbon tax” doesn’t take into account the different stages of socioeconomic development in various countries. Minister Goyal also stated that the Indian government would find a solution, most likely a domestic tax tailored specifically not to negatively affect the country’s economy, while reducing carbon emissions. This would also render CBAM obsolete and, thus, unnecessary. On the other hand, Beijing is likely to respond with its own restrictions on EU exports to China, which could have severe consequences on the already troubled European companies. All this could lead us to an economic “Cold War” that would affect the whole world.

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

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Remembrance Day, or Veterans Day as it is better known in the United States, is the official annual occasion to reflect and memorialize the sacrifices of so many men and women in uniform committed to serving their country during major military conflicts…in particular, World War I, World War II and North Korea. [1 ]

It is said that when the red poppy was first adorned more than a century ago, it was meant to stress the message “Never Again” to exhaust valuable lives in a conflict as horrid as the Great War. But the message has evolved, you might say, into saluting the courage, bravery and derring-do of so many young lads and lasses fighting for their nations, freedoms, etc. [2]

In the past, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world breathed a collective sigh of relief. World War III was something that we thought the invention of the atomic bomb, combined with common sense had torn from the pages of human endeavour. Today, a Third World War is seen as a likely scenario. [3][4]

This massaging of our nation’s mentality toward war has been aided by a special re-framing of our news, our history, and even our education. In Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, corporate power by means of ownership and advertising, ends up compelling the minds of millions in a particular direction, in line with those directing modern methods of communication. Though today, in the age of the internet, we have beyond such archaic methods of control…haven’t we?

Actually, the propagandists of today employ old and new measures to bring the populace in line with the demands of peace through war. The military industrial complex, as coined by the former President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, is now referred to by former CIA analyst Ray McGovern as the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank Complex, or MICIMATT. We will explore a few of these avenues toward everlasting peace through unending wars financed by military industries and their various partners in this chapter of the Global Research News Hour. [5]

In our first half hour, Professor Glenn Diesen pays us a visit elaborating on the themes of his recent book: THE THINK TANK RACKET: Managing the Information War Against Russia. This is a book that points to Think Tanks, full of “experts” and paid for, in large part, by Weapons contractors, guiding politicians and media down the chute of military preparedness. HE also points to how Russia has been a particular victim of these groups.

In our second half hour, Global Research News Hour contributor Paul Graham embarks on a conversation with Canadian writer Owen Schalk, author of the recent book: Canada in Afghanistan: A Story of Military, Diplomatic, Political and Media Failure, 2003-2023. This talk reveals answers to the question of exactly what did Canadians do in the most costly encounter for Canadian soldiers since World War II, why, and what were the consequences now that the Taliban that they sought to overthrow is back in power!

Glenn Diesen is Professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway and an editor at the Russia in Global Affairs journal. HE is also the author of THE THINK TANK RACKET: Managing the Information War Against Russia,  Clarity Press. Follow him on Twitter @glenn_diesen.

Owen Schalk is an independent researcher and writer whose work focuses on domestic and foreign policy. His articles have been published by Alborada, Monthly Review and Protean magazine, and he contributes a weekly column to Canadian Dimension. he is the author of Canada in Afghanistan: A Story of Military, Diplomatic, Political and Media Failure, 2003-2023, James Lorimer & Co., 2023. He lives in Petersfield, Manitoba, Canada.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 408)

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Notes:

1. https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance
2. Sarah Young, Sama Javed (November 11, 2021),’Why do some people wear white poppies on Remembrance Day?’, The Independent;  https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/white-poppy-meaning-remembrance-day-colour-b1955754.html
3. https://thebulletin.org/files/1991%20Clock%20Statement.pdf
4. https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2023/states-invest-nuclear-arsenals-geopolitical-relations-deteriorate-new-sipri-yearbook-out-now
5. https://raymcgovern.com/2020/07/10/micimatt-keeping-us-stuck-in-afghanistan/

In una intervista al network statunitense ABC, il premier israeliano Netanyahu così risponde alla domanda se ritiene possibile un cessate-il-fuoco a Gaza: “Un cessate-il-fuoco sarebbe una resa ad Hamas. Sarebbe una vittoria per Hamas, Non sarebbe più possibile di quanto sarebbe stato possibile per voi un cessate-il-fuoco dopo gli attentati di Al Qaeda al World Trade Center”.

Alla domanda su chi dovrebbe governare Gaza a guerra finita, Netanyahu così risponde: “Israele per un periodo indefinito avrà la responsabilità della sicurezza, perché quando non abbiamo tale responsabilità, quello che abbiamo è l’esplosione del terrore di Hamas”. Le parole di Netanyahu vengono così sintetizzate dal New York Times: “Israele governerà Gaza”.

In altre parole Netanyahu annuncia apertamente il piano: impadronirsi di Gaza trasformandola da territorio palestinese in territorio israeliano. Ciò è confermato dal fatto che le forze armate israeliane non solo stanno massacrando la popolazione palestinese, ma stanno rendendo Gaza non più abitabile dai palestinesi: nella parte settentrionale della Striscia hanno già distrutto oltre il 30% di tutti gli edifici. Il piano prevede la successiva apertura di un “corridoio umanitario” per trasferire i palestinesi di Gaza nel deserto egiziano del Sinai, facendo poi lo stesso con i palestinesi della Cisgiordania.
Nel gioco delle parti, si è recato in Israele il Segretario di stato USA Blinken, con lo scopo dichiarato di ottenere un cessate-il-fuoco a Gaza, che Netanyahu ha rifiutato. Dietro questa tragica recita c’è la realtà. Un esempio per tutti: le bombe da una tonnellata a guida satellitare, che gli aerei israeliani sganciano sui quartieri popolari palestinesi, sono fornite a Israele dagli Stati Uniti.

Riguardo alla “esplosione del terrore di Hamas”, che secondo il premier rende necessario che sia Israele a governare Gaza, Netanyahu dimentica quanto da lui stesso dichiarato a una riunione del suo partito nel marzo 2019: “Chiunque voglia ostacolare la creazione di uno Stato palestinese deve sostenere Hamas e trasferire denaro ad Hamas. Questo fa parte della nostra strategia: isolare i palestinesi di Gaza dai palestinesi della Cisgiordania.”

Questi e molti altri fatti (riportati nelle ultime 4 puntate di Grandangolo) dimostrano che i vertici israeliani e i loro servizi segreti non sono stati colti di sorpresa dall’attacco effettuato il 7 Ottobre da Hamas, ma se lo sono fatti fare per attuare il loro piano. Siamo quindi di fronte a qualcosa di analogo a quanto avvenuto negli Stati Uniti l’11 settembre del 2001.

Manlio Dinucci

Video :

https://www.byoblu.com/2023/11/10/netanyahu-israele-governera-gaza/

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Hopium and dejection, fanaticism and pragmatism, reason and dementia are all in full conflict as human civilization wobbles precipitously on the edge of a global abyss. Currently the Middle East stands at the forefront of the devastation wrought by extremism unleashed. Even in the midst of this turmoil, however, there are, here and there, some promising signs of possible redemption. Key developments in these bright spots hold the potential of beginning the process of stopping and reversing humanity’s rapid fall into satanic devastation.

The Canadian province of Alberta where I live is the site of one such possible turnaround. It is becoming a very active laboratory for the testing of all sorts of experiments, interactions and innovations. As the realization continues to sink in of the fuller implications of the biowarfare aimed at all of humankind since the release of the mRNA injections in 2021, Alberta is one of a handful of jurisdictions where there is some potential for citizens to get together to bring a measure of ameliorative rehabilitation to our core institutions.

Rookie Alberta Premier, Danielle Smith, is near the centre of much of the hubbub. Last May Premier Smith’s United Conservative Party (UCP) won a renewed mandate to govern Canada’s most rebellious province. Smith’s still-growing popularity was recently confirmed by her hosting one of the largest annual general meetings of a political party in Canadian history.

Danielle Smith is a sprightly and attractive politician who is emerging as a more intelligent, erudite and abstemious version of populist Alberta Premier, Ralph Klein. I met Premier Klein in person shortly after moving from Ontario to Alberta in the early 1990s to take up my new job as a Native American Studies Prof here on the Eastern Slopes of the Rocky Mountains. In a tee-pee encampment at the nearby Blood Reserve, I had a chance to observe that the late Ralph Klein was a pretty good Blackfoot speaker. Legendary for his carousing bouts of partying with average folks, Klein had a gift for relating in a very convivial fashion with all kinds of people and constituencies.

Image: Ralph Klein and Danielle Smith

Like Klein, Premier Smith did a stint as a broadcaster on her way to the province’s top job. While Klein had much help from the media in his ascendance to power, the same was not true of Smith.

At every stage of her campaign to become premier with a majority of seats in the Alberta Legislature, Smith has had to face strong headwinds of hostility from the press. No doubt those who stage manage the rigged theatrics disguised as democracy are loosing sleep because of Premier Smith’s ability to gain public trust in spite of the full force of a well-coordinated media smear campaign aimed against her.

During the recent election campaign, the legacy media lined up strongly to push the agenda and image of Rachel Notley. Between 2015 and 2019, Notley was Premier of Alberta. When she was defeated by the newly-created United Conservative Party, Notley became Leader of the Official Opposition Party in Alberta’s Legislature. As the manufactured COVID crisis touched down in Alberta as well as the rest of the world, Notley’s priority was to join in the unions’ push for more masking, more lockdowns, more mandates, more jabs, and more school tyranny. In fact the word “tyranny” well describes our relationship with our well-bribed and well-coddled governors who refused to protect us from the bioweapon attacks pointed our way.

In making her way into the premier’s job, Smith also had to contend with the divisions that developed in and around the United Conservative Party. The splits occurred when a sizeable portion of UCP members mounted a campaign to remove from office Alberta’s previous premier, Jason Kenney. Kenney had dismayed many Albertans when he went along with the globalists’ Covid policies pushed ahead with particular zeal by the now-notorious Justin Trudeau.

Partly because of these twists and turns, Alberta has come to epitomize some of the larger global trends currently underway. This phenomenon has its roots in the gradual realization among the independent-minded minority that has been paying attention to the coercive contortions executed in the name of a supposed medical fight to vanquish COVID-19.

We the attentive were early to come to the conclusion that the push to inject all the world’s people with the mRNA jabs was not what it was made to seem. The unprecedented procedure was not meant as a remedy for illness. Rather the attempt to universalize the jabs formed the basis of a damaging and deadly attack aimed at the global population.

The real purpose of the COVID jabs was to initiate a number of processes including global depopulation as well as those of the genetic modification of the survivors. As this attack was pushed forward, we began to observe that something fundamental had changed within our governments as reflected in the unreasonable constraints suddenly imposed on our most basic rights and freedoms.

We began to notice the courts in many countries almost uniformly ignored the many codified constitutional protections for our harshly violated rights and freedoms. Again and again judges sided with the unreasonable and unjustified constraints imposed by governments. With their COVID mandates and restrictions, these governments and judges that backed them were not acting in conformity with the principles of credible science.

We began to notice the consistency and the extremity of the media’s blinkered and censorious coverage of the manufactured COVID crisis. This coverage almost uniformly highlighted the interpretations of government officials while banishing from the big media venues highly-credentialed medical experts and practitioners. We began to notice that many of these top experts in their fields were subject to ruthless ad hominem attacks. We began to notice the so many of the genuine experts were subject to interventions by their professional associations whose intent was to damage and deplatform some of their most accomplished members. Ultimately the aim was to Shut the Experts Up.

These realizations were accompanied by a growing awareness that the deaths and serious injuries unleashed by the mRNA injections were far in excess of the problems created by the supposedly new coronavirus. In spite of the barrage of media lies and deceptions, we began to notice all that flowed from the World Health Organization’s empowerment of a worldwide network of Covidian commissars. These commissars basically took on the role of wolves charged to protect citizen chicken coops in one country after the next.

Premier Daniel Smith started her roll to the Premier’s Office by joining our informed minority of Covidian skeptics. In that capacity she assisted in the emergence of a distinctly Albertan version of the worldwide resistance movement that continues to coalesce. By now it is becoming increasingly clear that the originating process was hatched a time when we have a tremendous need for well-organized resistance against the predator class seeking depopulation along with the further enslavement of the survivors of the mRNA/lipid nanoparticle injections.

Defending the “Unvaxxed” from Discriminatory Oppression

Premier Smith’s inaugural UCP AGM in early November of 2023 can be seen as avant garde event giving an early signal of where some of the increasingly well-organized and energized activists in the the struggle against the COVID restrictions and mandates may be headed. We have seen through the lies and deceptions and are well aware that out governments and media have been participants in an ongoing scheme that already has killed and injured many in the global community including in Alberta.

We are aware, moreover, that the push to sterilize, depopulate and conduct unregulated medical experiments on human subjects is far from over and may continue under under a variety of banners including the fake fight to stop the climate from changing. Of course the weird alchemy attending the climate change controversy is becoming integral to the balance of power in Canada’s system of federal-provincial relations, but especially Ottawa-Edmonton relations.

The new premier of Alberta forthrightly condemned the discrimination entailed in the coercive tactics deployed worldwide to universalize the COVID jab. Premier Smith did so during an interval in 2022 after she had replaced Kenney as premier but before she received a popular mandate from the Alberta electorate. She indicated that the apartheid-like restrictions enforced to punish the so-called “unvaxxed” for their medical choices, formed the basis of the most discriminatory process she had ever witnessed in her lifetime.

Many in Canada and throughout the world agreed wholeheartedly with this bold statement, one that will go down in provincial and world history. Nothing quite like Smith’s comment has been uttered so far by any other top official at the head of a government with major economic and political clout. Not surprisingly, the statement proved to be polarizing. The comment sent Rachel Notley and her cheer leaders in the legacy media into spasms of indignant condemnation.

In completely denying the severe discrimination that Notley had herself advocated, the NDP Leader set a classic example of the internal contradictions within the perceptual cosmos of Woke extremism. Notley pushed aside Smith’s observation by falling back on stereotypical examples of racism to rationalize her blindness to the medical apartheid she champions.

Notley refused to address, for starters, her own advocacy of the loss of jobs, income, and access to education in order to severely punish those that refused to bend to the pressure to take the untested experimental injections. These clot shots ended up being just as lethal and injurious as many experts had predicted.

The murderous and injurious outcomes of this concerted attack on the health of the world’s population is becoming increasingly clear in spite of the ongoing cover up of the extent of the enormous crimes against humanity that have taken place and are continuing to take place. So far there has been no honest reckoning in governments and criminal courts with the implications of the huge surges of deaths from 2021 to the present.

These deaths point back to the high rates of injection that lead inexorably to high rates of death by blood clots, heart ailments, supercharged turbocancers, and many other so-called “adverse events.” The plague of death and illnesses from the jabs extend to children and formerly healthy young people. Nevertheless the denial and well-organized cover up and continues. Will Alberta be a place where new ground is broken in terms in terms of holding accountable those responsible for the crimes against humanity that permeate many facets of the manufactured COVID crisis. See this.

Compassionate Conservatism? 

Premier Smith has yet to make good on her promise that the medical apartheid created by the coercive push to universalize the mandated injections will be made subject to the protections of Alberta’s Human Right Act. The need for such protections are especially pertinent now that it has been well documented by Sasha Latapova and others that the jabs are really Pentagon-developed bioweapons disguised as medical cures for a supposedly “novel” coronavirus. See this.

Premier Smith has not yet effectively delivered on her promise to assert the much needed disciplinary control over the free-wheeling medical empire of Alberta Health Services. (AHS). As it now stands, this seemingly unaccountable leviathan effectively forms an unaccountable government within a provincial government. The AHS spends almost half of Alberta’s $70 billion budget.

Like many similar publicly and privately-financed health care organizations throughout the world, the AHS is run by a handful of highly-placed operatives who are well integrated into global networks of related agencies. These agencies include the corporate infrastructure of Big Pharma and the UN’s World Health Organization. The Bill Gates group of “philanthropies” like Gavi are well integrate into the WHO which itself is largely funded by Gates. It is no accident that these supposed “health” organizations as well as the World Economic Forum are headquartered amidst the crime-ridden Swiss-based banking regime.

This regime includes the Bank of International Settlements, the central bank for central bankers still dominated by the circle of families revolving around the Rothschild clan. As was clearly illustrated for the attentive in the course of the COVID Hoax, this transnational network, within which the upper echelons of the AHS reside, can be conceived of collectively as a ruthless mafioso serving some of the most sinister lobbies on Earth.

In her speech at the annual general meeting of the United Conservative Party, Premier Smith promised that she would finally take on the AHS Behemoth that to this day is still promoting toxic fluoride in communal drinking water along with the discredited COVID-19 booster shots. “Decentralization” was the code word Smith used in announcing her plan to fix up or replace the AHS. Without some major rejigging, the AHS will remain unaccountable to the government of Alberta and to the tax payers that fund it.

Premier Smith’s speech was upbeat, tight and effectively delivered. Several times she referred to her core approach to governing Alberta as “compassionate conservatism.” I shall have more to say on Smith’s commitment to compassionate conservatism in light of the obscenities currently unfolding in the Middle East.

To me Smith’s commitment to compassionate conservatism conjures up memories of what used to be called Red Toryism. The Red Tory ideal was embraced, for instance, by Joe Clark. Clark is another Conservative Albertan who was briefly Prime Minister of Canada in 1979-80.

As a compassionate conservative, Premier Smith stands to claim a lot of political turf essentially abandoned by the Liberal and NDP parties. There have moved away from bread and butter issues as well as from the realm of rights and freedoms and civil liberties and even social welfare for average Canadians not engaged in the mysteries of exploring gender pluralism. Whatever their rhetoric, the resort of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his NDP backers to Woke authoritarianism is highlighting the common sense approach of Conservatives at both the national and provincial levels.

As Smith well explained in her AGM speech, a key to financing “compassionate conservatism” in Alberta lies in the conscientious development and wise exploitation of the treasure trove of oil and gas resources in Canada’s most immense and lucrative Oil Patch. The practical side of developing this major natural resource has been infamously attacked by the Trudeau government and especially by its primary green energy crusader, Steven Guilbeault.

In contrast to the Smith government, the Trudeau- Guilbeault duo do not have a solid political base beneath them to support the implementation of their Quixotic and science-bereft plans for a radical transformation of Canada’s political economy.

It seems fitting that Trudeau’s career is plunging in the midst of his attempt to force Albertans to put aside their careful development of one of the greatest energy sources in the world. This development has for some time employed hard-working Canadians from coast to coast to coast, spreading the wealth in ways that have elevated our country’s standard of living in many important ways.

At the heart of the current controversy is the federal government’s attempt to force on Albertans an electrical grid based largely on the highly problematic exploitation of wind and solar power. By investing so much political capital in this thoroughly retarded scheme, Justin Trudeau is being exposed as the rank amateur he is on anything other than plunging Canada into massive debt in order to distribute payola among his political cronies.

The borrowed money is for showering riches on likes of Drag Queen educators as well as contributing at least $10 billion to help along NATO’s sacrifice of Ukrainian soldiers, many of them Nazis, in a war they could never win. Little by little Trudeau escapades are catching up with him in spite of the bribed Canadian media’s efforts to protect him at every turn.

How much longer can Trudeau get away with travesties like honouring Nazi war veterans in Parliament or facing drug busts while supposedly attending to controversial diplomatic business in India? How much longer can Trudeau turn a blind eye to the military training of Khalistani separatists in British Columbia, or continuing to cover up of the lies and crimes of SNC-Lavalin? How much longer can Trudeau evade some reckoning with the overwhelming evidence he enabled the activities of Chinese spies in order to boost the Liberal Party’s otherwise flimsy electoral prospects?

Of course Premier Smith and several UCP cabinet ministers who made public presentations were able to score easy points by pointing much-deserved verbal barbs at Trudeau, an official that might as well be wearing a target on his back.

I was pleased to see the Alberta’s Energy Minister, Brian Jean, become defensive when referring to the wonky concept of “net zero” presently being put front and centre in the oil and gas industry’s environmental negotiations with government. The current point of contention between Ottawa and Edmonton is whether the goal for reaching “net zero” should be 2035 or 2050.

But what exactly is net zero anyway? Is the concept as empty as it seems promising some sort of nirvana to cure all that ails us? What proof is there to support the dubious contention that carbon, life’s main chemical component, is the ultimate enemy? CO2 is plant food that gives us vital oxygen in return. Why mess with such a synergistic exchange?

Jean seemed to apologize to the audience for adopting the empty terminology of “net zero.” He indicated that the Alberta government’s corporate partners in the oil and gas industry insist on using the term. What kind of explanation is that? Why not call the bluff of those engaged in the net zero hoax, part of the climate change chicanery? If the government of Alberta won’t do it, who will?

If the oil and gas industry is going to lead Albertans into a swamp of nonsensical game playing pretending to be science, maybe its time for Albertans to consider exercising our own sovereign proprietorship over our own provincial resource. Perhaps its time to follow Norway’s example of developing oil and gas resources ourselves.

Who is going to make the necessary case that there is no viable Plan B other than adopting much lower standards of living if cheap and muscular oil and gas is to be abandoned in the name going green.

Gaining a Sense of Exhilaration from Voting to Condemn Violations of Our Rights of Self-Determinations

For me, the highlight of the UCP’s AGM took place in the interval following Premier Danielle Smith’s presentation. The exercise was devoted to bringing forward policy proposals authored by several of the UCP’s 87 constituency associations. These policies covered a broad array of subjects.

The underlying design seemed to be to give the grass roots of the UCP membership the opportunity to assert the pre-eminence of the rights and freedoms denied to us so severely throughout the manufactured COVID crisis. Without our ongoing vigilance and willingness to resist, the COVID crimes will be made to merge with other pretexts for globalist agents to diminish us in the name of fighting more overhyped threats to, for instance, our health, our wellness, or our economic viability. In my view, the depopulation agenda is still proceeding.

The following policy proposal, which was passed by about 3000 UCP members in attendance. It gives a good idea of the kind of explanatory justifications presented for consideration to the delegates at the UCP AGM.

Policy Proposal 2 Policy Reference: P-0170

Sponsor: Bonnyville-Cold Lake-St. Paul

Article: 403 RIGHTS .1 INFRINGEMENT PROTECTION

The United Conservative Party believes the Government of Alberta should… c) Protect an individual’s right to free expression.

Rationale

Recent events saw Albertans being censored for their scientific, personal, and or religious beliefs regarding government policies because there was a perceived societal benefit to do so. Our Prime Minister, Chief Medical Officers, health care authorities, the media, employers, unions, police, military, border security, schools, universities, businesses, and many other people in positions of authority took it upon themselves to censor, isolate, vilify, placed on leave of absence without pay, and or outright fire people that did not ascribe to their and or the government’s policy of the day. Many professionals, highly educated individuals, and or concerned critical thinking citizens were censored, ridiculed and or otherwise ignored for simply speaking out against and or not accepting the proffered government position on a subject and that may or may not have been correct, and such action on their part is reprehensible. Albertans were singled out and made to suffer hardships for no other reason than their beliefs were different from the authority/authorities in question.

Another policy proposal demands remediation for the travesties that took place in the medical profession. It asserted

Policy Proposal 3 Policy Reference: P-0203

Sponsor: Calgary-Lougheed

Article: 206 HEALTH .7 HEALTH CARE WORKERS RIGHTS

The United Conservative Party believes that the Government of Alberta should… b) Protect a medical practitioner’s right to research, speak, and write; and protect Medical Doctors and all healthcare professionals from having their licenses to practice threatened for publicly expressing professional medical opinions in any public setting.

Rationale

During the Covid-19 crisis doctors had their physician licenses suspended and others lost their positions as university professors for speaking out about things like the importance of getting informed consent. Others were threatened for expressing their concerns about how quickly vaccines were being pushed upon the public without facing the test of time, or for expressing their concerns about serious negative side effects that they had witnessed after their patients had received a Covid-19 vaccine. The ‘scientific method’ requires skepticism and ongoing debate to ensure that medical practices and treatment are safe and effective. To ensure that we have the best medicines, vaccines, and medical practices possible we must always protect freedom of opinion and expression by medical professionals and scientists regardless of whether they are working in society, privately, or at universities, especially during times of crisis.

See this.

The range of topics is impressive. They pertained, for instance, to family farms, race and admission criteria to colleges, the privacy of health care information, the need to protect agricultural soil from the pollution of solar panel complexes, the need to embrace paper ballots and to reject the computerization of voting, the repressive intent of 15 minute cities, parental rights and schooling, the unreasonable prohibition of fertilizer production, pornography in children’s school books, and the need to protect female inmates from rape by other inmates who are male cross dressers pretending to be women.

It would be hard to describe the sense of exhilaration I derived from taking part in this exercise of voting in public in real time, along with thousands of other mostly like-minded people. Many of the subjects on which we voted, involved three hard years on the receiving end of literally thousands of arbitrary dictates whose effect was to overturn many of the most personal aspects of our lives.

Throughout these three years there were no openings at all for us to take part in, nor even respond to, the often ruinous, ridiculous or downright dangerous and damaging impositions that authorities, sometimes with guns, attempted to force on us. If we chose not to comply, the top official in the land deemed us to be nothing less than hate-filled bigots, racists, misogynists or worse.

Finally after all this time, simply holding up a sign along with others saying “yes” to the proposition of never again facing such outrageous dictates from above, seemed comforting. It felt like coming out of a desert lacking the revitalizing waters of self-determination. I can only imagine how distant is the the prospect of voting as we did on matters of such substance among out fellow Covidian skeptics in, say, Ontario or BC.

What will happen to our votes and resolutions? It remains to be seen if Premier Danielle Smith’s custodianship of the Office of Alberta’s Premier will fulfill the promise of the surprising turns of events that began with the manufactured COVID crisis.

Hardly a Peep of Protest to the Savage Massacre Underway in Gaza 

As the official meeting wound down, many conference goers gathered in a hospitality suite where a group called Take Back Alberta gathered to engage in various forms of schmoozing and debriefing. One of the advertised events publicized at the gathering was the upcoming speech in Calgary to be delivered by Ben Shapiro. Indeed, earlier in the day I was approached by a young UCP organizer with an enthusiast suggestion that I should attend the Shapiro event on 16 November.

Some readers will be aware that Ben Shapiro is the principle public figure in the Clear Wire network of “Conservative” bloggers. Shapiro managed to attract Canadian Jordan Peterson into his operation. The relationship was formalized at a meeting in Jerusalem where Shapiro and Peterson sat down in for a meal with Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Since that meeting it has become clear that Peterson is very comfortable promoting Zionist positions in his official position as a prominent member of Shapiro’s Clear Wire Team. Peterson’s orientation was well expressed when he famously texted Benjamin Netanyahu to encourage him to give the Palestinians of the Gaza prison camp “hell.” In the current context this message amounted to an encouragement to kill more Palestinians more quickly.

I took note of the fact that throughout the entire UCP AGM, I did not hear one official or informal mention of the genocidal horror unfolding in Gaza. The silence on such a pertinent subject bothered me, especially in light of Premier Danielle Smith’s frequent references to “compassionate conservatism.”

Indeed even when one puts aside the humanitarian aspects of the Israel-Palestinian confrontation, it seems to me that the Albertan government overseeing one of the largest oil and gas reserves in the world, would want to convey some sense of the implications for the oil and gas sector in North America of what is going on in the Middle East. After all, under the auspices of John D. Rockefeller the oil and gas business was one of first truly globalized modern industries on the planet.

That transnational aspect of the primary energy sources for twentieth and twenty-first century industrialization, is surely a factor that demands some attention and analysis from the government of Alberta. For instance, what are the implications for Alberta of the new alliance of Saudi Arabia and Iran negotiated under the guidance of the Chinese government. Both Saudi Arabia and Iran are famous oil and gas giants?

What are the implications for Alberta of the BRICS coalition that has become more and more cohesive in the course of the war between Russia and the NATO’s proxy army in Ukraine? The silence on such matters from UCP officials makes me think of the Smith government as rather parochial when it comes to Alberta’s part in the worldwide network of major players in the global operations of the oil and gas industry.

These reflections bring me back to Ben Shapiro and his prominent role in interpreting for Israel the conflagration underway in Gaza. This conflagration may go nuclear. It may spark an Arab and Iranian boycott of oil exports, with all that such a development would mean for Alberta.

I felt the impact of the Israel-Gaza crisis when I went to my familiar Albertan news sites on October 8. Our cozy coalition at Western Standard, True North, and Rebel Newswent up in flames when all these venues featured editorials waving the Israel flag and condemning as reprehensible any perspectives that did not conform with those of the Zionist Team.

For the purposes of this essay we can envisage the alliance between Peterson, Shapiro and Netanyahu as representative of the Zionist Team. In Alberta this Team is closely connected to the prominence of the brand of Christian Zionism that predominates in most of the big churches across the province. I am beginning in my writing to try to explore and explain what Christian Zionism is. See for example The Growing Menace of Zionism and Christian Zionism.

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A Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) spokesperson says it “did not censor or ask social media platforms to remove any social media content regarding coronavirus vaccine side effects.”

This denial came in response to Twitter Files published by Matt Taibbi in March, which revealed that SIO’s so-called “Virality Project” had pushed platforms to treat user concerns about vaccine mandates and passports as “disinformation” and to consider “stories of true vaccine side effects” to be actionable content on social media.

The Virality Project was an initiative undertaken jointly by Big Tech, universities, and NGOs to combat “anti-vaccine misinformation.” SIO responded to Taibbi’s Twitter Files by claiming that his findings were “inaccurate and based on distortions of email exchanges in the Twitter Files.” 

But new evidence shows that Stanford lied about the scope of the Virality Project and that its censorship efforts were undertaken on behalf of the US government. 

As Public reported on Tuesday, new documents shared by the House Judiciary Committee revealed that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), created the Virality Project’s predecessor, the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), to censor protected speech. Explains the committee, “EIP reconstituted as the Virality Project” and continued working with the federal government. The Twitter Files also found that the Project partnered “with several government agencies,” including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Office of the Surgeon General, and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). 

Still, Stanford and the mainstream media insist that “disinformation” experts were merely conducting research, and not involved in actual censorship. 

Now, an investigation by Public has uncovered clear evidence that the Project was directly and deliberately involved in successful censorship efforts. Public analyzed a trove of newly released Jira system tickets, the Virality Project’s tipline to social media companies. These tickets overwhelmingly contradict Stanford’s assertion that it did not try to get content censored. 

The Virality Project, acting as a cut-out for DHS and CISA, worked directly with employees at Facebook, Google, YouTube, TikTok, and more, who were all signed up to their Jira system. Those companies regularly assured the Project that they were addressing the content it flagged. Companies responded with comments like, “Thanks for flagging this. We have actioned the content,” or “Thanks for escalating to us — our team is looking into this now.” The Virality Project kept track of actions on the content it flagged, and was frequently successful in getting content labeled or removed by platforms, and in getting users suspended. 

The Virality Project appears to have played a major role in one particularly infamous case of Covid-related censorship. On March 15, 2021, Harvard professor of medicine Martin Kulldorff tweeted,

“Thinking that everyone must be vaccinated is as scientifically flawed as thinking that nobody should. COVID vaccines are important for older high-risk people, and their care-takers. Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children.” 

No. Thinking that everyone must be vaccinated is as scientifically flawed as thinking that nobody should. COVID vaccines are important for older high-risk people, and their care-takers. Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children. https://t.co/qXtpM3QRY3

— Martin Kulldorff (@MartinKulldorff) March 16, 2021

“Dear Twitter Team,” a representative of the Virality Project wrote in response to Kulldorff’s post, “This Tweet directly contradicts CDC’s advice.” 

“Thanks team — we’re looking into this,” a senior Twitter Trust & Safety policy specialist wrote back. 

Kulldorff’s tweet was then labeled as misleading and he was temporarily suspended from the platform. Internally, the Virality Project identified Kulldorff, a renowned biostatistician, as a “repeat offender.”

This process was indeed a deliberate, state-sponsored act of censorship. In many egregious instances, the Virality Project — again, a government cut-out — intentionally and knowingly worked to silence and deplatform social media users. Jira records vindicate the Twitter Files and are evidence of First Amendment violations. 

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Shortly after the start of the war against Gaza, Palestinian trade unions appealed to their colleagues worldwide for a boycott of arms supplies to Israel. That appeal is being heeded in many countries. That list of countries is growing every day. 

When Israel unleashed its ruthless war of revenge against the people of Gaza, Palestinian trade unions appealed to their colleagues worldwide for a boycott of arms deliveries to Israel:

 “As Israel escalates its military campaign, Palestinian trade unions call on our counterparts internationally and all people of conscience to end all forms of complicity with Israel’s crimes – most urgently halting the arms trade with Israel, as well as all funding and military research. The time for action is now – Palestinian lives hang in the balance.”

The Belgian trade unions were the first to set a good example. In a joint press release they called for a stop to arms shipments destined for Israel. They refuse to contribute to the murder of innocent victims and call for an immediate ceasefire.

“We, the various trade unions active in the ground handling sector, call on our members to no longer handle flights shipping military material to Palestine/Israel, as there were clear agreements and rules at the beginning of the conflict with Russia and Ukraine.”

 The Belgian example is being followed in many countries. The list grows every day.

In the United States, part of the United Auto Workers (UAW), which is currently waging a fierce battle for wage increases, is calling for a boycott of Israel.

“We watch with horror as the US sends American troops to assist in an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza. We mourn the loss of civilian life. We categorically reject US support of the murderous Israeli regime in its ongoing genocide of Palestinians, which has killed over 7,000 people and injured 16,000 more in airstrikes since October 7, and has cut off water, food, and power to the population of Gaza.

We call on the UAW to endorse and implement boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS).” 

The United Tech & Allied Workers of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland (UTAW-CWU) join calls from Palestinian trade unions for the international labour movement to end all complicity and take concrete action against arms supplies to Israel.

Source: PoliticsJoe_UK / X 

The Central Trade Union Council of India (AICCTU), which represents more than 600,000 workers, is appealing to unions for a  boycott of arms shipments to Israel.

“We extend our full support to the call by Palestinian trade unions to all workers of the world and their unions to unite and boycott manufacturing or loading of weapons and military equipment destined to Israël and its brutal war.” 

In Brazil, CUT, the largest trade union federation representing more than 7.4 million workers, passed a resolution pledging unwavering support for the Palestinians.

Source: Sumaya Awad / X

The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), the country’s largest union with 75,000 members, adopted a resolution in solidarity with the Palestinian people, including a call for the government to “end its sale of arms to Israel.”

In Japan, the National Railway Motive Power Union of the town of Chiba (1 million inhabitants) responds to the call of the Palestinian unions. The Japanese government plans to supply weapons and financial aid to Israel, among other things. The railway association wants to prevent this: We wholeheartedly support the fierce struggle of the Palestinian people, and we will fight with all our might to overthrow the Kishida administration, a member of international imperialism: the cause of oppression of the people and the cause of war.”

In Colombia, the miners’ union wants a suspension of the supply of all minerals and fuels to Israel.

“As noted by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, these events ‘do not come in a vacuum’. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation; they have seen their land constantly swallowed up by settlements and plagued by violence.

Their economy was stifled, their people displaced and their homes destroyed. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight are fading.

The Israeli government’s response has been described by President Gustavo Petro as a situation similar to what was experienced in the Nazi concentration camps. It’s a genocide. In light of this barbarity, our President yesterday recalled the Colombian ambassador to Israel for consultations.

We fully support these decisions and encourage the government to suspend shipments of Colombian coal and all metals and minerals to Israel as leverage for an immediate ceasefire, as demanded by civil society, human rights organizations, churches and we join as a trade union organization.

Cease fire now!”

In Barcelona, port workers have decided not to allow materials to be sent to the conflict in the Gaza Strip. They do this for the “sole purpose of protecting the civilian population, regardless of territory. No reason justifies the sacrifice of civilians.”

The dockworkers consider it a collective “obligation” to defend the Universal Declaration of Human Rights “tooth and nail”. They criticize the fact that many countries seem to have forgotten that they signed the Declaration. They point out that these human rights are “currently being violated in Ukraine, Israel and the Palestinian territories”.

The dockers call for an immediate ceasefire and peaceful solutions to the various conflicts.

In Poland, the largest umbrella confederation of trade unions (OPZZ) is calling for an end to military cooperation with Israel.

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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.

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We are witnessing a tsunami of cardiac arrests since the advent of the worldwide mass genetic vaccination program. In virtually every case, the COVID-19 vaccination status is not disclosed to the public.

Additionally, the general autopsy can be “normal.” I am commonly asked what should a modern COVID-19 vaccine era cardiac autopsy look like:

1. Gross inspection, heart aorta, great vessels, lungs, pulmonary arteries
2. Heart weight <250 g for women, < 350 g for men
3. Coronary slices for atherosclerosis and thrombus
4. Myocardial slices for evidence of scar, congenital abnormalities, valvular disease.
5. Myocardial immunohistochemical staining for SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein and Nucleocapsid, inflammatory cells, amyloid protein
6. Buccal swab for Arrythmia and Cardiomyopathy Panel (In Vitae or equivalent)
7. Research assays

Anatomic coronary artery disease is highly prevalent in adults and it may be a bystander and not the direct cause of the arrhythmic cardiac arrest. Di Michele et al reported that small micro RNA fragments that are known to regulate genes, and in this circumstance, genes that control cardiac ion channels, do vary up or down in blood and cardiac tissue and help distinguish between a coronary event and a primary arrhythmic event.

Bernini Di Michele A, Onofri V, Pesaresi M, Turchi C. The Role of miRNA Expression Profile in Sudden Cardiac Death Cases. Genes (Basel). 2023 Oct 17;14(10):1954. doi: 10.3390/genes14101954. PMID: 37895303; PMCID: PMC10606010.

At this time it is possible that mRNA and adenoviral DNA vaccines could influence key miRNA’s in the causal pathway to a primary arrhythmic cardiac death in the absence of clinical myocarditis. So if you are involved in a circumstance with a family member or friend with an unexpected cardiac arrest, please push for the fullest autopsy possible. You will only have one shot.

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United States President Joe Biden recently stated that his country is not only “the most powerful in the world”, but also supposedly “in the history of mankind”. And while that assertion is highly debatable to anyone remotely familiar with the actual history of our planet, it’s true that very few countries (if any) can (or could’ve) match the US in terms of military (over)deployment.

Namely, while the exact number is not easy to pinpoint, Washington DC currently operates at least a thousand military bases, logistics hubs and centers, etc. around the globe. The belligerent thalassocracy insists that this is “necessary” to supposedly “maintain global security”. However, the vast majority of the people on our planet are perfectly aware that this is anything but true and that the US and its vassals and satellite states are by far the greatest security threat to anyone in the world.

And yet, in its endless hypocrisy and double standards, Washington DC keeps “expressing concern” when other countries establish a military presence on foreign soil, no matter how minuscule it is in comparison to the US. According to various reports, for the first time in its history, China is planning to establish a permanent military base in the Middle East.  Washington DC is virtually bound to see this “as a significant challenge”, particularly as the planned permanent base is to be in the highly strategic (and volatile) Persian Gulf region. The US itself also has a major military presence, such as the Navy Central Command military infrastructure in Qatar and Bahrain. On November 7, citing “people familiar with the matter”, Bloomberg reported that “President Joe Biden has been briefed on what his advisers see as a Chinese plan to build a military facility in Oman”.

“This comes amid a broader effort by Beijing to deepen defense and diplomatic ties with the Middle East,” the report continues, further adding: “Biden was told that Chinese military officials discussed the matter last month with Omani counterparts, who were said to be amenable to such a deal, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations. They said the two sides agreed to more talks in the coming weeks.”

The exact location of the future Chinese military infrastructure in Oman is still unknown. Back in August, Beijing and Muscat celebrated the 45th anniversary of the establishment of their formal diplomatic relations. In recent decades, the two countries have significantly improved their economic and military relationship, including joint exercises and other activities related to security and national interests. In addition, the port of Muscat is known for regularly hosting the ships of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). Back in mid-October, the Royal Navy of Oman (RNO) and PLAN held joint naval drills and also promised “to expand their naval defense and military cooperation”. It should also be noted that China maintains very close relations with other countries in the region, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which could also be a possible candidate for future Chinese military presence.

At present, the only significant military base that Beijing operates anywhere near the region is its military base in Djibouti, a small country in East Africa. It should be noted that China is prone to establishing a military presence only in areas that its leadership thinks are important for the security of its massive infrastructure projects such as the unprecedented One Belt One Road.

This Chinese-led multinational effort spans almost the entirety of Asia and large parts of Europe. It includes both land and naval facilities and infrastructure with a particular focus on trade and transportation. An important part of the project also includes Beijing’s plans to deepen ties with various major energy producers, a mutually beneficial effort that will further stabilize the otherwise volatile region. Bloomberg also suggested this is a major reason behind strengthened military ties between China and Oman.

And while the US doesn’t have a direct and permanent military presence in Oman (besides naval visits to its ports), it does have an official agreement with Muscat to use the country’s military bases whenever it needs them for operations in the region. This includes the Thumrait airbase of the RAFO (Royal Air Force of Oman), located near the homonymous city in the south of the country. The airbase is often used by the USAF. In addition, the US Navy also has a strong presence in waters off the coast of Oman. Its primary mission in the area is essentially “legalized piracy” that includes hunting for Iranian ships supposedly loaded with oil, weapons or anything else the US considers “illegal”. Needless to say, such activities by the US forces in the region only contribute to unnecessary tensions and destabilization. This stands in stark contrast to China’s plans, as Beijing maintains a strong partnership with everyone in the region.

In the last several years, the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) began warning that China is supposedly “not content with its Djibouti base on the continent’s east coast, but is looking to establish a military presence on the Atlantic”. Washington DC sees this as a major threat to its much-touted “rules-based world order”. However, it’s obvious that Beijing’s military ambitions are nowhere near those of Washington DC and that the Eurasian giant simply wants to ensure the safety of its global infrastructure projects. It’s highly unlikely that the US will be able to force China’s partners in any of the areas where these projects are being conducted to stop them, let alone break growing ties with Beijing. For these countries, the choice is rather simple – it’s crucial to maintain close ties with the world’s most powerful production economy and a country that actually makes long-term investments in socioeconomic development.

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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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Multiple voting machines in Northampton County in the swing state of Pennsylvania have been shut down due to reports of voting errors, including “votes getting flipped.”

The election issue surfaced in the early hours of Tuesday, which impacted the contest for the Pennsylvania Superior Court between Judge Jack Panella and Judge Victor Stabile.

The Northampton County Elections Office reports that the malfunction seems to manifest itself when a voter chooses between “Yes” and “No” in regard to a candidate vying for a seat on the Superior Court of Appeals.

The selection for the opposing candidate was inaccurately recorded on both the paper ballot and the voting machine.

The error appears to have been confined to the re-election of Superior Court judges and solely manifested itself during the tallying of ballots for those who voted “Yes” for one candidate but “No” for another.

“I’m livid at the election folks and ES&S,” said Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure.

The county has acknowledged the issue in a statement and provided reassurance to the public that efforts are being made to expedite the resolution of the malfunction.

The election officials acknowledged the error in a press release:

Northampton County Elections Office reports an issue with the recording of votes only for the races for retention to the Pennsylvania Superior Court, affecting Judge Jack Panella and Judge Victor P. Stabile.

It appears that when a voter selects a “Yes” or a “No” for one of the candidates for retention to the Pennsylvania Superior Court, the selection is recorded on the paper ballot and on the machine for the other candidate.

The issue is limited to the retention of Superior Court Judges, and is only an issue when recording the votes for when a voter selected a “Yes” for one candidate and a “No” for another candidate.

The Elections Division of the County of Northampton notified all poll workers by text message that they are to instruct voters before the voter enters the voting booth that there is an issue with the recording of their vote for the candidates for retention to the Pennsylvania Superior Court, that the paper receipt will record their selection for retention to the Pennsylvania Superior Court one candidate to the other candidate.

According to Lehigh Valley News, immediately following the opening of polling precincts, when errors with the voting machines were discovered, poll workers across the county discontinued using the machines and resorted to provisional ballots.

As stated in the county’s news release, county officials dispatched text messages to all polling locations in the aftermath of the initial incidents in order to maintain communication and keep poll workers informed of the situation. The occurrence has resulted in significant disturbances to the voting procedure, prompting numerous officials and voters to voice their discontent and apprehensions.

Merissa Hansen, an investigative journalist in Harris County, Texas, reported that there were voting machine issues at multiple locations, leading to shut downs.

I’m hearing from voters across District G about voting machines not working at various locations. Machines down at @FrostwoodElem. A few machines down at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church. Voters being turned away b/c ballot scanners aren’t scanning at River Oaks Elementary and at…

— Merissa Hansen (@merissahansen17) November 7, 2023

“I’m hearing from voters across District G about voting machines not working at various locations. Machines down at @FrostwoodElem. A few machines down at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church. Voters being turned away b/c ballot scanners aren’t scanning at River Oaks Elementary and at River Oaks Park. If you’re having problems please report it here: http://defendmyballot.org.”

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In the video below, Dr Mahathir is speaking at the Global Solidarity and Rally Free Palestine organised by Forces of Renewal for Southeast Asia (FORSEA). Transcript is right after the video.

Transcript

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The October 1962 missile crisis that kept humanity in suspense ended with the signing by Kennedy and Khrushchev of the Nuclear Test Suspension Agreement (1962) which included the withdrawal of Russian missiles into Cuban territory in exchange for the withdrawal of US missiles stationed in Turkey, appearing in its small print the sine qua non condition of “no US invasion of the island.”

This agreement has protected Cuba for 60 years from a US invasion, establishing as a counterpart the figure of the “blockade” that has remained in force to date.

The cessation of the United States blockade against Cuba, demanded for the thirty-first time in the General Assembly of the United Nations and approved overwhelmingly by 187 votes to 2 (US and Israel) and Ukraine’s abstention reaffirm freedom of trade and navigation in the face of an anachronistic blockade imposed by Kennedy in 1962. In addition, the automatic renewal by the US for another year of the trade embargo on the island would threaten the current international financial and political system and could mean losses for Cuba estimated at about $7 billion.

Utopia would be the normalization of relations between Cuba and the US, final destination of a route marked by the necessary (termination of the energy block) and the possible (suspension of the anachronistic blockade) to what seemed impossible (normalization of relations between Cuba and the United States). The road ahead was marked by the challenges of ending the energy blockade of the island,

• Cuba’s withdrawal from the list of “States Sponsoring Terrorism”,
• the repeal of the Helms-Burton Act and finally,
• the suspension of the anachronistic blockade in force since 1962 that would give way to the exchange of ambassadors and the desired normalization of relations between Cuba and the United States.

Ukraine has already received the status of a candidate country for the European Union and in the event that it is admitted as a full member and continues the dispute with Russia, Article 42 of the Treaty on European Union would oblige EU countries to enter into direct conflict with Russia.

Accordingly, the maintenance of the embargo against Cuba could generate a vacuum of unpredictable results in the middle of Cold War 2.0 between the US and Russia that could end up drawing a new geopolitical cartography in the Caribbean.

Thus, Russia would be forced to move its pieces and place them strategically in the so-called US “backyard” with the unequivocal aim of expanding the Russian military radio, as reported to the Russian news agency Sputnik by the Head of the Defense Committee of the Upper House of the Russian Parliament, Victor Borndarev,

“the establishment of a Russian military base in Cuba in a context of increasing US aggression, would respond to National Security interests”, and the Kennedy-Khrushchev Missile Crisis could be revived (October 1962) and the subsequent signature with Khrushchev of the Nuclear Test Suspension Agreement (1962).

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Germán Gorraiz Lopez is a political analyst and frequent contributor to Global Research

Featured image: A US Navy P-2H Neptune of VP-18 flying over a Soviet cargo ship with crated Il-28s on deck during the Cuban Crisis. © Wikipedia

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The announcement late Sunday night by the US Central Command [CENTCOM] headquartered in Doha about the arrival of a Ohio-class American nuclear submarine in its “area of responsibility” presages a significant escalation of the situation around the Palestine-Israel conflict.

It is very rare that the use of these submarines is publicised. The CENTCOM provided no additional details but it posted an image that apparently showed an Ohio-class submarine in Egypt’s Suez Canal Bridge. Interestingly, CENTCOM also separately shared an image of a nuclear-capable B-1 bomber operating in the Middle East. 

Taken together, these US deployments, coming on top of the formidable  presence of two aircraft carriers and warships hundreds of advanced jet fighters in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Red Sea respectively, are with an eye on “the other side of the equation,” as Secretary of State Antony Blinken quaintly described Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran during his latest visit to Tel Aviv on Friday.

In a related development, perhaps, the CIA director, William Burns arrived in Israel on Sunday for urgent consultations. The New York Times reported that the US is “looking to expand its intelligence sharing with Israel.” 

Arguably, the most charitable explanation for the deployment of a US nuclear submarine, which forms part of the Pentagon’s “nuclear triad” –Ohio-class boats are the largest submarines ever built for the US Navy — near the war zone is that the Biden Administration is preparing for an escalation of the war into Lebanon to draw out Hezbollah, which may in turn trigger an Iranian reaction. 

In his speech on Friday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah seemed to anticipate precisely such a turn of events when he explicitly warned the US of consequences that couldn’t be any different from the catastrophic American involvement in Lebanon’s civil war in the early 1980s. Ironically, this is also the 40th anniversary year of the suicide bombing of the barracks housing US forces in Beirut International Airport in October 1983 in which 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers were killed forcing a US withdrawal from Lebanon. (See me blog  Hezbollah takes to the high ground.)

Clearly, the locus of the US strategy in the present Middle situation may be shifting from diplomacy, which has anyway lost traction. Blinken’s desperate attempts to address the mounting international criticism of Israel’s horrific war crimes by diverting attention to a “humanitarian pause” in the fighting, et al, has been unceremoniously shot down by Netanyahu. 

The point is, after pounding Gaza and its people with artillery and bombs, the Israeli army moved in on Friday. So far, it has reportedly advanced to the outskirts of Gaza City but not entered the Hamas stronghold. Fierce urban fighting is expected when it does. 

Equally, the Biden administration’s hurried attempt to promote a vague outline for a post-war Gaza that might include a combination of a revitalised Palestinian Authority, a peacekeeping force, etc.  has been met with a distinct lack of enthusiasm at Blinken’s meeting in the weekend in Amman with the Arab foreign ministers -– from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates –- who instead demanded an immediate ceasefire, while Blinken said Washington wouldn’t push for one. 

Blinken travelled to Ramallah from Amman where the head of the Palestine Authority Mahmoud Abbas also gave him short shrift saying that the PA would only be ready to shoulder full responsibility for the Gaza Strip in the framework of a “comprehensive political solution” that would include the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza — and, furthermore, that security and peace can only be achieved by ending the occupation of the territories of the “State of Palestine,” and by recognising East Jerusalem as its capital. The meeting lasted for less than an hour and ended without public statements. 

Meanwhile, China and the UAE have since called for a closed-door meeting of the UN Security Council in another attempt to seek an immediate ceasefire, which the Biden Administration will certainly oppose. Suffice to say, the Biden Administration feels boxed in and the only way out is by something giving way through exercise of coercive means.

The US is watching with frustration as new regional equations are appearing among Muslim nations. The foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia held another phone conversation today. The OIC later announced that an extraordinary summit will be held in Riyadh on November 12 at the request of the current chairman, Saudi Arabia, to discuss Israel’s attacks on the Palestinian people. 

Certainly, the Iran-Saudi rapprochement, mediated by Beijing, has profoundly transformed the regional security environment with regional states distinctly preferring to find solutions to their problems without outside interference, and the old schisms and xenophobia promoted by the US to perpetuate its dominance having no takers anymore.

As the death toll in Gaza crosses 10,000, feelings are indeed running high in the Muslim world. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said today that “all the evidence and indications show the direct involvement of the Americans in running the war” in Gaza. Khamenei added that as the war goes on, the reasons behind the US’s direct role would become more explicit.

The Fars News Agency, which is close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, also disclosed that Khamenei held a “recent meeting in Tehran” with the Head of Hamas political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh where he told the latter that Tehran’s support for the resistance groups is its “permanent policy.”   

Evidently, Tehran no longer sees a problem in acknowledging its fraternal links with the resistance groups. This is a paradigm shift indicative of the shift in the power dynamic, which the US and Israel are compelled to counter through use of force, Washington’s diplomacy having failed to make headway to isolate Iran. 

The Chief of the Israeli General Staff, Herzi Halevi, said on Sunday during a meeting in the Northern Command,

“We are ready to strike in the north at any moment. We understand that it can happen… We have a clear goal of restoring a significantly better security situation at the borders, not only in the Gaza Strip.” 

No power on earth can stop Israel on its tracks now. Its stability and defence is inextricably linked to this war, which will also ensure abiding US commitment to its security as a key template of American global strategies for the foreseeable future. Therefore, Israel’s best chance of survival lies in expanding the scope of the war in Gaza into Lebanon — and possibly even into Syria — shoulder to shoulder with the Americans. 

There is no question that the location of the US nuclear submarine to the east of Suez is an attempt to intimidate Iran from intervening, while  Israel, with US backing, proceeds to open a second front in Lebanon. The Israeli authorities have announced evacuation of people from settlements located in a zone up to five kms from the border with Lebanon. 

A war of indeterminate timeline is set to begin in the Middle East. As the call of the jihad begins, inevitably, there is no knowing how the 80-year old American president will respond. 

No, this won’t turn into a world war. It will be fought in the Middle East only, but its outcome will significantly impact the making of a new multipolar world order. The past one month has shown the precipitous decline of US influence and the highly volatile global environment since the war began in Ukraine in February last year.

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Featured image: A joint meeting of the US and five Arab foreign ministers took place in Amman on November 4, 2023 to discuss the Palestine question (Source: IP)

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Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) welcomes Canada’s renewed support for a United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution on Palestinian refugees, but warns that this lone vote is insufficient in the face of the catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza. On November 9, Canada voted in the UNGA’s Fourth Committee for a draft resolution in support of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, after abstaining since 2011. However, in the same meeting, Canada voted against four other resolutions, including two supporting Palestine refugees and one condemning Israeli settlements. CJPME warns that Canada’s less-than-half-hearted approach indicates that it is not serious about addressing the human catastrophe that Israel is creating in Gaza.

“Today’s vote is a necessary correction. It was always absurd for Canada to abstain on UNRWA while giving millions in donations to the agency every year,” said Thomas Woodley, President of CJPME. “However, this is hardly a step forward. Any positive message that Canada intends to send with this vote is vastly outweighed by its continued opposition to every other motion on UNRWA and Palestine refugees,” added Woodley.

CJPME notes that although Canada is a financial supporter of UNRWA, it has failed to directly condemn Israel for its attacks on UNRWA schools, which have killed over 90 UNRWA staff. More than 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza have been forcibly displaced since October 7, and many thousands are sheltering in UNRWA facilities, which have been repeatedly bombed.

The resolutions which Canada voted against during today’s session include:

1. A resolution which recognizes UNRWA and urges the international community to support its work. It passed 160-4.

2. A resolution which reaffirms that Palestinian refugees are entitled to their property, and asks the UN to protect Arab assets and property rights in Israel. It passed 156-6.

3. A resolution to condemn Israel’s illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian territory. It passed 145-7.

“It is shocking that Canada would vote in support of Israeli settlements in a year of unprecedented settlement expansion, and as attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers have forcibly displaced at least 15 herding communities in the West Bank. Israel’s ongoing colonization of Palestinian land is directly creating new refugees, with Canada’s support,” said Woodley.

There are 10-16 standing resolutions on Palestinian human rights which are considered by the UNGA each year. Although in the early 2000s Canada voted in support of nearly all of them, this approach radically changed under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who in 2011 began voting against nearly every one of these resolutions as a package. In 2019, Trudeau made a small shift by resuming Canada’s vote in favour of a single resolution on Palestinian self-determination. Last year, CJPME published a report titled “Voting Against Its Own Interests,” which revealed that career foreign affairs officials have warned the government behind the scenes that its staunchly pro-Israel voting record at the United Nations contradicts its own values and interests and harms its international reputation. CJPME’s UN Dashboard is an interactive resource which shows how Canada’s votes on these motions have changed from 2000 to the present.

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

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***

 

 

 

An expansion of the scope of the war in Gaza is “inevitable” due to Israel’s heightened aggression, according to Iran’s foreign minister.

Hossein Amirabdollahian made the statement in a phone conversation with Qatari counterpart Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, Iran’s Press TV reported on Friday.

“Due to the expansion of the intensity of the war against Gaza’s civilian residents, expansion of the scope of the war has become inevitable,” Amirabdollahian said.

It is unclear what he meant by an “inevitable expansion” of the conflict.

Separately, Amirabdollahian said on his X account on Thursday:

“Time is fast running out for Tel Aviv’s crimes to continue.”

زمان برای تداوم جنایات تل‌آویو بسرعت رو به پایان است. تنها فايده نتانياهو اين بود كه پایه‌های رژیم جعلی اسراییل را متزلزل‌تر ساخت و چهره جنایتکار، خشن و متجاوز رژیم صهیونیستی را در قتل‌عام زنان و کودکان در غزه به روشنی و بدون روتوش به نمایش گذاشت. بی تردید آینده از آن فلسطین است.

— H.Amirabdollahian امیرعبداللهیان (@Amirabdolahian) November 9, 2023

“The only benefit of Netanyahu was that he made the foundations of the fake Israeli regime more shaky and showed the criminal, violent, and aggressive face of the Zionist regime in the massacre of women and children in Gaza,” he added.

“Undoubtedly, the future belongs to Palestine,” Amirabdollahian wrote.

Regional tension and cross-border clashes have intensified since Hamas, the Iran-backed group that runs Gaza, attacked Israel on October 7, triggering Israel’s war on the enclave.

Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah armed group, which is allied to Hamas, have swapped attacks. More than 60 Hezbollah fighters and 10 civilians have been killed, Lebanese security officials say. The violence has also killed at least seven Israeli soldiers and one civilian.

United States and coalition troops have been attacked at least 40 times in Iraq and Syria by Iran-backed forces as tensions soar over Israel’s bombardment. Forty-five US troops have been injured.

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement has also launched repeated missile and drone attacks on Israel since October 7, all of which were either shot down or fell short.

In a move viewed as a show of force to regional rivals, and especially Iran, the US announced last week that it has deployed a nuclear-capable submarine in the Middle East.

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Featured image: Hossein Amirabdollahian (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)

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The AI Nuke Dilemma

The major nuclear powers of the world now entrust decision-making to the digital bowels of artificial intelligence (immune to radioactive fallout, by the way), which (at best) harbors a moral indifference to humanity’s continued existence and, more likely, views it as a nuisance.

Via Nikkei Asia:

“The Biden administration plans to encourage China to work with the U.S. on international norms for artificial intelligence in weapons systems, a potential new area of cooperation amid tensions between the two powers.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has warned against relying on AI to make decisions involving the use of nuclear weapons and argues that humans should be involved in all critical decisions.

“We’ve seen through history numerous examples of where decision-making could be challenged by not having a human understanding the context of the technology, understanding the background of its use, and really not being able to make the most informed decision,” said Stewart, who suggested that maintaining human involvement in nuclear operations would be in China’s best interest.

The issue of AI use with nuclear weapons would also require discussion with Russia, which continues with its war in Ukraine. Russia has suspended its participation in the last remaining bilateral nuclear arms control arrangement known as New START amid heightened tensions with the West.”

Let’s be honest: the U.S. government is the epicenter of the AI takeover. Anything it accuses China of doing in this domain, including endowing AI with the decision-making capacity to drop nukes, it likely has already or is in the process of doing itself.

The entire point of mutually assured destruction (MAD) doctrine — the sole reason that Earth is still (somewhat) inhabitable in 2023 — is that the human members of human nations would not fire nukes against other nuclear powers because they would understand that it would result in a global catastrophe that they would not likely survive, either as a state or as individuals.

And it’s not just nukes that AI can be used to develop and deploy.

Via Foreign Affairs:

“When drug researchers used AI to develop 40,000 potential biochemical weapons in less than six hours last year, they demonstrated how relatively simple AI systems can be easily adjusted to devastating effect. Sophisticated AI-powered cyberattacks could likewise go haywire, indiscriminately derailing critical systems that societies depend on, not unlike the infamous NotPetya attack, which Russia launched against Ukraine in 2017 but eventually infected computers across the globe. Despite these warning signs, AI technology continues to advance at breakneck speed, causing the safety risks to multiply faster than solutions can be created.”

The regulatory attempts by governments to constrain AI — such as they are — is a giant game of Whac-a-Mole. There is no putting this genie back in the bottle, and it’s certainly not going to happen under the leadership of the Brandon entity, no matter how full of amphetamine they pump him, or future President Karamel-uh, whose only expertise is in whose dick she has to suck to get her next promotion.

Big Pharma Concocts ‘Vaccine’ to Treat Cocaine Addiction 

This is the pharmaceutical- über-alles ideology at work.

To these people, there exists no problem that can’t be solved at the tip of a needle.

Via Japan Today:

“Scientists in Brazil, the world’s second-biggest consumer of cocaine, have announced the development of an innovative new treatment for addiction to the drug and its powerful derivative crack: a vaccine.

Dubbed “Calixcoca,” the test vaccine, which has shown promising results in trials on animals, triggers an immune response that blocks cocaine and crack from reaching the brain, which researchers hope will help users break the cycle of addiction.

Put simply, addicts would no longer get high from the drug.

If the treatment gets regulatory approval, it would be the first time cocaine addiction is treated using a vaccine, said psychiatrist Frederico Garcia, coordinator of the team that developed the treatment at the Federal University of Minas Gerais.

The project won top prize last week – 500,000 euros ($530,000) – at the Euro Health Innovation awards for Latin American medicine, sponsored by pharmaceutical firm Eurofarma.”

Moving forward, literally every social, psychological, cultural, and obviously physical ailment will come with an FDA-approved “vaccine” to treat it.

AI-Controlled Cars Run Down Women, Small Children 

Look, bigot, you’re just going to have to come to terms with the new reality that, on occasion, cars driven by AI are simply going to mow down grandmothers and children in their way.

This is the price of Progress™.

Anyway, it’s their human fault for being small and feeble. If God wanted them to survive the Brave New World, he would’ve fashioned their bones out of titanium instead of calcium — or even better, rendered their consciousness ethereal and non-corporal in his own image like he did with our new AI overlords.

Via The Intercept:

“AV companies hope these driverless vehicles will replace not just Uber, but also human driving as we know it. The underlying technology, however, is still half-baked and error-prone, giving rise to widespread criticisms that companies like Cruise are essentially running beta tests on public streets.

Despite the popular skepticism, Cruise insists its robots are profoundly safer than what they’re aiming to replace: cars driven by people. In an interview last month, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt downplayed safety concerns: “Anything that we do differently than humans is being sensationalized.”

The concerns over Cruise cars came to a head this month. On October 17, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced it was investigating Cruise’s nearly 600-vehicle fleet because of risks posed to other cars and pedestrians. A week later, in San Francisco, where driverless Cruise cars have shuttled passengers since 2021, the California Department of Motor Vehicles announced it was suspending the company’s driverless operations. Following a string of highly public malfunctions and accidents, the immediate cause of the order, the DMV said, was that Cruise withheld footage from a recent incident in which one of its vehicles hit a pedestrian, dragging her 20 feet down the road.

Even before its public relations crisis of recent weeks, though, previously unreported internal materials such as chat logs show Cruise has known internally about two pressing safety issues: Driverless Cruise cars struggled to detect large holes in the road and have so much trouble recognizing children in certain scenarios that they risked hitting them. Yet, until it came under fire this month, Cruise kept its fleet of driverless taxis active, maintaining its regular reassurances of superhuman safety.

“[Cruise’s] internal materials attribute the robot cars’ inability to reliably recognize children under certain conditions to inadequate software and testing. “We have low exposure to small VRUs” — Vulnerable Road Users, a reference to children — “so very few events to estimate risk from,” the materials say. Another section concedes Cruise vehicles’ “lack of a high-precision Small VRU classifier,” or machine learning software that would automatically detect child-shaped objects around the car and maneuver accordingly. The materials say Cruise, in an attempt to compensate for machine learning shortcomings, was relying on human workers behind the scenes to manually identify children encountered by AVs where its software couldn’t do so automatically.”

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This article was originally published on the author’s Substack, Armageddon Prose.

Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is licensed under Wikimedia Commons

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***

Italy is set to become the first country in the world to ban synthetic food, with a bill to prohibit the production, import, and marketing of laboratory-produced food products being debated in the country’s lower house of parliament. Announced by Italian Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida during a recent event in Kilkenny, Ireland, the move is based on the precautionary principle and aims to ensure high quality food for all, rather than just an elite few. While laboratory-grown meat is promoted as environmentally friendly, recent research suggests its carbon footprint is likely to be orders of magnitude higher than that of conventional meat.

Stating that the Italian government wants to create an example on how to regulate synthetic food products, Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida insists everyone should be able to eat well and that high quality food cannot only be produced for the rich elites. Describing laboratory-grown meat as “suicide” for somewhere like Italy, he says the Italian government is campaigning to get its country’s food added to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List.

Lollobrigida believes that approving laboratory-produced food products could ultimately result in the disappearance of fields and farms and that this would create an environmental disaster. The production of foods in bioreactors would not only have a negative environmental impact, he argues, but it could also pose a risk to human health.

A Higher Carbon Footprint Than Regular Beef

While synthetic meat is promoted as being environmentally friendly, on the assumption that its production would involve less land, water, and greenhouse gases than raising cattle, recent research suggests its carbon footprint is likely to be orders of magnitude higher than that of conventional beef. In a study conducted at the University of California, Davis, researchers found that, based on current and near-term production methods, scaling up the manufacture of laboratory-grown meat would be highly energy intensive and have a global warming potential up to 25 times greater than the average for retail beef.

Given this finding it is perhaps ironic that Bill Gates is one of the biggest backers of laboratory-grown meat. Frequently to be heard endorsing warnings on the dangers of climate change, Gates has argued that rich countries should shift entirely to synthetic beef. Cynics might consider his backing of such products to be less about averting global warming and more about securing patents and profits. Viewed in this light, Gates’ new status as America’s biggest private owner of farmland raises all manner of questions.

Thus far only the United States and Singapore have approved any laboratory-grown meat for human consumption. As observers have noted, however, if clearance is gained in the European Union, the bloc’s laws on free movement of goods and services could essentially prevent Italy from enforcing any national ban on these products.

Inspired by the Mediterranean Diet

Several Italian government ministers have cited their country’s famous Mediterranean diet as the inspiration for the new bill. Arguably the most studied diet of the past seventy years, the key components on which it has historically been based include fruit and vegetables in large quantities, whole grains, legumes and nuts, olive oil, yogurt, moderate amounts of cheese, a maximum of around four eggs per week, with small amounts of meat, fish, and wine. Numerous studies have linked the Mediterranean diet to improved health and greater longevity, as well as the prevention of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and other chronic diseases.

In a keynote speech given in October 2014 in the historic town of Barletta in Southern Italy, Dr. Matthias Rath laid out the cornerstones of a new, preventive approach to healthcare. Describing how micronutrient deficiency is the primary cause of chronic disease, he pointed out that the great majority of the substances we require from our daily diets are contained in the fruits, vegetables, and plants that grow in our gardens and farms. This understanding, he explained, paves the way towards the natural control of today’s most common diseases.

Scientific research is increasingly confirming the health benefits of naturally produced organic food. At the same time, the life-shortening effects of ultra-processed foods are rapidly becoming clear. Laboratory-grown meat and other ultra-processed foods are primarily designed to benefit their multibillionaire backers. With it becoming ever more apparent that the modern-day multinational food industry should be seen as part of the ‘business with disease,’ humanity consumes these dangerous new synthetic food products at its peril.

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This article was originally published on Dr. Rath Health Foundation.

Executive Director of the Dr. Rath Health Foundation and one of the coauthors of our explosive book, “The Nazi Roots of the ‘Brussels EU’”, Paul is also our expert on the Codex Alimentarius Commission and has had eye-witness experience, as an official observer delegate, at its meetings. You can find Paul on Twitter at @paulanthtaylor

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from DRHF

***

At the time of writing (November 3, 2023) Israel’s genocidal bombing of Palestinians in Gaza has resulted in 9,227 deaths.

The destruction and devastation are beyond description. The IDF has been instructed to target civilians. Schools, hospitals, churches and mosques are demolished. Victims include 3,826 children and 2,405 women. 

In the words of Canadian journalist Andrew Mitrovica,

“This is not an onslaught. It is not an invasion. It is not even a war. It is a genocide.” …The monstrous plan is as plain as Netanyahu’s wretched character: Be done with Gaza by erasing Gaza.”

“is recommending the forcible and permanent transfer of the Gaza Strip’s 2.2 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula”, namely to a refugee camp in Egyptian territory.

Only a fraction of Gaza’s 2.2 million will be transferred to the Sinai. The vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza will be the object of the IDF bombing campaign. 

“Secret” bilateral negotiations are on record between Israel-Egypt (initiated in 2021-22) as well as routine consultations with the Pentagon. The “Wiping Gaza of the Map” is actively supported by the US-NATO Military and Intelligence Apparatus. 

 

Video Interview: Michel Chossudovsky with Caroline Mailloux

 

 

To access the Rumble page and/or comment click here or click lower right hand corner of the screen 

***

The 10-page secret document referred to above, dated Oct. 13, 2023, of Israel’s Intelligence Ministry recommends

“a full population transfer as its preferred course of action”.

The document, the authenticity of which was confirmed by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence, has been translated into English in full here on +972.

See below, click here or below to access complete document (10 pages)

Video: “Wiping Gaza Off The Map”: Big Money Agenda. Confiscating Palestine’s Maritime Natural Gas Reserves

Felicity Arbuthnot, November 4, 2023

The Horrifying Secret Agenda of the UN and WHO: Total Enslavement of Humanity Through a “Global Health Dictatorship”

Peter Koenig, November 2, 2023

Video: Dangerous Crossroads. False Flag Leading to More False Flags? Towards an Extended Middle East War? Netanyahu is An Anti-Semite.

Prof Michel Chossudovsky, November 6, 2023

Summer of Died Suddenly: Women Ages 20-29 Sudden Deaths from June to September 2023

Dr. William Makis, November 7, 2023

Official “Secret” Israeli Document Revealed: Expel All Palestinians from Gaza, Israeli Intelligence Ministry

Yuval Abraham, November 4, 2023

Video: The Worldwide Corona Pandemic. The Most Devastating Crisis in Human History. Michel Chossudovsky

Prof Michel Chossudovsky, November 7, 2023

Historical Analysis (1897-Present): Crimes Committed against the People of Palestine. “Israel, State Sponsor of Terrorism”

Richard Dunn, November 4, 2023

Israel’s 9/11: “The Greater Israel”, Maritime Natural Gas, and the Prospect of a Middle East Multi-Front War

Michael Welch, November 5, 2023

COVID Propaganda Roundup: Unreal Poll Results on Jab Death Toll, the Science™ Concedes the Shots Cause Strokes

Ben Bartee, November 7, 2023

17 Questions to Challenge the Climate Change Crisis

Paul A. Philips, November 4, 2023

11 Children Ages 9-19 Had a Cardiac Arrest at US Schools in the Past Month. Some Schools Are Now Starting to Conduct “Sudden Cardiac Arrest Screening”

Dr. William Makis, November 8, 2023

Israel Declares Most of Humanity Illegitimate and Irrelevant

Ann Garrison, November 6, 2023

The Gaza Genocide Continues. Philip Giraldi

Philip Giraldi, November 6, 2023

Is the Gaza-Israel Fighting “A False Flag”? They Let it Happen? Their Objective Is “to Wipe Gaza Off the Map”?

Philip Giraldi, November 4, 2023

Volodymyr Zelensky Is in a Sea of Troubles

Ted Snider, November 6, 2023

Why Do People Inflict Such Unspeakable Suffering on Their Fellow Human Beings?

Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, November 7, 2023

Gaza Strikes Back. It’s Another 9/11 or Pearl Harbor but Who Actually Did What to Whom? “This Was More Likely a False Flag Operation”

Philip Giraldi, November 5, 2023

Britain’s Special SAS Forces in Gaza. The ICC Must Investigate British Politicians for Gaza War Crimes.

Matt Kennard, November 7, 2023

Preparing the Chessboard for the “Clash of Civilizations”: Divide, Conquer and Rule the “New Middle East”

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, November 5, 2023

What the BBC Fails to Tell You About October 7

Jonathan Cook, November 4, 2023

Why Are Ukrainian POWs Joining the Russian Military?

By Drago Bosnic, November 09, 2023

In late October, the first volunteer battalion consisting entirely of former Ukrainian servicemen was formed after the POWs (prisoners of war) decided to fight in the Russian military. This volunteer battalion, aptly named “Bogdan Khmelnitsky”, is named after one of the most prominent characters in Russian and Ukrainian history.

Censorship Imperils Us When We Are Forbidden to Speak. Free Thinking Dies and People Die. Propaganda Buries the Truth

By Christine E. Black, November 09, 2023

Censorship imperils our cultures and our civilization. When we are prohibited from speaking or writing without threats, shaming, or epithets meant to shut down discussion, free thinking dies. People also die. A censorship industrial complex grew around Covid hysteria, which began as a war on a virus.

Biden-Blinken Failed Diplomacy Results in Genocide in Gaza

By Steven Sahiounie, November 09, 2023

Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote a note to the US State Department staff on October 19. He was aware of growing discontent among his workforce; hurt and disappointed by the unabashed abandonment of diplomatic norms, as the US defended war crimes committed by Israel.

Do You Know What’s in a Vaccine? Chemical Ingredients

By Health Freedom Defense Fund, November 09, 2023

Over the last few decades, the number of chemicals added to foods and other products has skyrocketed. Chemicals are added to “enhance flavor”, make fruits and vegetables look fresh, extend the shelf life of packaged foods and for other invented reasons. A cornucopia of chemicals are also found in lotions and beauty products with the ostensible reason that these chemicals make beauty products feel, look, and smell nice.

White House Orders Pentagon Airstrikes on Eastern Syria

By Abayomi Azikiwe, November 09, 2023

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin says the aerial attacks on a purported weapons storage facility follows previous actions on October 27 in response to the escalation of attacks on United States bases by resistance forces in solidarity with the people of Gaza.

An Alternative to the Suez Canal Is Central to Israel’s Genocide of the Palestinians?

By Yvonne Ridley, November 09, 2023

Gaza is currently being bombed to oblivion by the deranged Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu who wants to deliver The Ben Gurion Canal Project. Yes, Tel Aviv already has a name for the canal which was first proposed back in the Sixties. It would connect the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and would even be named after the first prime minister of Israel.

U.S. Weapons Transfers to Israel Shrouded in Secrecy — But Not Ukraine

By Ken Klippenstein, November 09, 2023

One month since Hamas’s surprise attack, little is known about the weapons the U.S. has provided to Israel. Whereas the Biden administration released a three-page itemized list of weapons provided to Ukraine, down to the exact number of rounds, the information released about weapons sent to Israel could fit in a single sentence.

Israel’s Final Solution for the Palestinians. Chris Hedges

By Chris Hedges, November 09, 2023

I covered the birth of Jewish fascism in Israel. I reported on the extremist Meir Kahane, who was barred from running for office and whose Kach Party was outlawed in 1994 and declared a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States. I attended political rallies held by Benjamin Netanyahu, who received lavish funding from rightwing Americans, when he ran against Yitzhak Rabin, who was negotiating a peace settlement with the Palestinians.

Will Bill Gates’s “Digital ID” Become Mandatory to Participate in Society?

By Patricia Harrity, November 09, 2023

The United Nations, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and partners of the Rockefeller Foundation are launching a campaign to accelerate digital ID, digital payments, and data-sharing rollouts in 50 countries under the umbrella of digital public infrastructure (DPI) by 2028. (Source).

Arab-Iran Amity Is a Geopolitical Reality

By M. K. Bhadrakumar, November 09, 2023

The forthcoming first visit by Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi to Saudi Arabia on November 13 marks a milestone in the rapprochement between the two countries mediated by China in March. The relationship is fast acquiring a qualitatively new level of solidarity in the context of the Palestine-Israel conflict. 

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***

I hate conspiracy theories and fake news. They degrade my profession as a journalist and incite fear, hate and tribulation with the deliberate intention of causing a public backlash. Naturally, there have been all sorts of speculation and rumour around the war in Gaza and the 7 October surprise Hamas attack on the occupation state.

It has been said that the attack was two years in the planning in Gaza, a tiny patch of land riddled with Zionist infiltrators and spies who cajole, bribe and threaten ordinary Palestinians to betray their comrades.

So the question many are asking, with some justification, is why there was such a catastrophic intelligence failure which meant that the attack caught the Israeli military sleeping on the job. In terms of access to eavesdropping technology and defence there is probably no better-equipped military in the world other than in the US, and the Americans maintain secret supply bases in the Zionist state. Israel’s Mossad has earned itself a reputation of being among the finest intelligence gatherers and infiltrators in the world. And yet 7 October saw Hamas fighters breach security fences, invade a music festival and local kibbutzim, and fly in on paragliders without a single challenge. How did this happen?

Some of Israel’s most brutal attacks on innocent Palestinians are made citing “national security” and Israel’s alleged right to defend itself. If it was being attacked by another nation state, fair enough. But an attack by people living under Israel’s brutal military occupation provides no such legal defence. It doesn’t exist.

A good contact and friend of mine who watches the region’s events closely told me simply: “Follow the money.” And that is how, after being nudged and pointed in a variety of directions with annoyingly vague clues, I found myself pouring over a network of paper trails that led to the National Archives, where British secrets lie unseen for at least 30 years and in some cases much, much longer.

By the time they surface, it’s usually far too late to do anything as the guilty have taken their secrets to the grave, but some disclosures do explain the terrible behaviour of governments and rogue politicians. Many of my colleagues are waiting with bated breath for the March 2030 deadline to pass to find out how the Iraq war came about, and if our suspicions about former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s role are as bad as we believe.

This particular paper chase, though, took me to the origins of the Suez Canal, which opened with a grand ceremony on 17 November 1869, 154 years ago this month. Today, 10 per cent of the world’s cargo ships sail through this strategic route between the Eastern Mediterranean and the Red Sea, heading to and from the Indian Ocean and connecting Europe and Asia.

Egypt owns, controls and operates the canal now, but it was once owned by French investors who held half of the canal company’s stock with Egypt’s ruler Sa’id Pasha holding most of the balance. In 1875, a cash crisis forced Sa’id’s successor, Isma’il Pasha, to sell the country’s shares to Britain. The Suez Company operated the canal until Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser tore up the concession in 1956 and transferred the canal’s operation to the state-owned Suez Canal Authority. There then followed the Suez Crisis, also known as the second Arab-Israeli war.

On the same day that the canal was nationalised Nasser also closed the Straits of Tiran to all Israeli ships. The crisis saw the UK, France, and Israel invade Egypt. According to pre-agreed plans prepared by Britain and France, Israel invaded Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on 29 October 1956, forcing the Egyptians to engage its troops. This gave the excuse for the Anglo-French alliance to declare the fighting to be a threat to stability in the Middle East and enter the war, officially to separate the two forces but, in reality, to regain control of the Suez Canal and bring down the Nasser government.

What does it have to do with 7 October 2023? Well, it just so happens that Gaza is slap bang in the middle of the proposed path of a major second canal in the region.

see Map below. 

Gaza is currently being bombed to oblivion by the deranged Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu who wants to deliver The Ben Gurion Canal Project. Yes, Tel Aviv already has a name for the canal which was first proposed back in the Sixties. It would connect the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and would even be named after the first prime minister of Israel.

The canal would rival Egypt’s Suez Canal, causing a major financial threat to the country and this major trade artery. Remember the global trade disaster caused the huge container ship Ever Given got stuck in the famous canal in 2021? The Straits of Tiran and Suez Canal remained formally closed to Israeli vessels from the creation of Israel in 1948 and the Nakba until the Suez Crisis in 1956. When all land trade routes were blocked by Arab states, Israel’s ability to trade with East Africa and Asia, mainly to import oil from the Persian Gulf, was severely hampered. There have been other obstructions involving Israel forcing its closure in 1956-7 and 1967-75.

If it goes ahead, this new canal will be almost one-third longer than the 193.3 km Suez Canal, at around 292.9 km and an estimated cost of between $16 and $55 billion. Whoever controls the canal will have enormous influence over the global supply routes for oil, grain and shipping. With Gaza razed to the ground, it would enable the canal planners to literally cut corners and reduce costs by diverting the canal straight through the middle of the territory.

Around 12 per cent of the world’s trade passes through Suez on 18,000 ships a year, so you can imagine that a lot of countries will be lining up for a share of the deal. The Suez Canal is worth a staggering $9.4 billion to Egypt, which has enjoyed record-breaking revenues this year.

The only thing stopping the newly-revised project from being revived and rubber-stamped is the presence of the Palestinians in Gaza. As far as Netanyahu is concerned they are standing in the way of the project; a project which may earn him forgiveness in Tel Aviv for the intelligence and military shortcomings on 7 October. However, his treacherous sleight of hand will never by forgiven or forgotten by the people of Palestine given the horrors which have descended upon Gaza in the past few weeks.

If this is all being done in the name of potential business deals then it compounds the political and diplomatic disgrace of the shameless Western governments who are complicit in the Palestinian genocide.

The biggest shame, though, belongs to Egypt. Already on the verge of bankruptcy due to President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s profligacy, the emergence of a new canal would have a devastating impact on the Egyptian economy and its people. Heartless dictator Al-Sisi may come to regret putting his trust in Tel Aviv and Western governments above the interests and welfare of two million Palestinians in Gaza.

None of the Middle East leaders, Netanyahu, Biden and Sunak et al in the West emerge from the carnage in Gaza with any degree of integrity intact. Together, they are guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, or at the very least are complicit in such awful crimes leading to genocide.

This didn’t all begin on 7 October; the bombing of Gaza is simply the latest stage of Israel’s slow genocide of the people of Palestine, which has now got up to speed again with the full backing of the Western sponsors of the apartheid state. If they think that killing innocent children and women will bring peace, they are deluded.

Unbridled neoliberal capitalism has destroyed many countries and killed millions of people, and peace and security have rarely been the result. I hope that the evil people responsible will burn in Hell for what they have done to the children of Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and numerous other countries around the world. The survivors need freedom and justice now.

*

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***

An authentic democracy cannot be psychopathic because most people are not psychopaths.

Most people would not vote to kill, wound and displace hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians for power, profit or territorial gain. Most people do not accept the great lie of ‘pragmatism’: that ‘the anarchical society’ of international relations mandates psychopathic violence: If ‘we’ don’t behave as psychopaths, somebody else will.

Most people don’t believe the world can be divided between Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ‘children of light’ and ‘children of darkness’.

You don’t need to be a mystic to know that love, kindness, compassion – ‘light’ – arise naturally in all human beings allowed to live in freedom and peace.

So, the Children of Light have now killed 10,022 of the Children of Darkness … including 4,104 literal Children of Darkness, and 2,641 Women of Darkness.

* Persons of Darkness still buried under the rubble not included.https://t.co/RbRbazxKUw pic.twitter.com/dbAv984mfp

— CJ Hopkins (@CJHopkins_Z23) November 6, 2023

We know from our own experience that we are wonderfully happy when overflowing with love and desperately miserable when overflowing with hate.

We know, therefore, that love is suited to human nature and well-being in a way that hatred is certainly not. We know that when hate arises in large numbers of people it is born of suffering, not of some ‘evil’ disposition. We know that the real answer to hate is not violence but justice that alleviates suffering and hate.

Because we are not psychopathic, it is deeply important for us to believe that we are not living in a psychopathic society. When this human need clashes with political reality, examples of cognitive dissonance abound – psychopathic circles have to be squared, 2 + 2 must make 5. This is the task of the propaganda system comprised of the ‘respectable’ political, media and religious institutions of our society.

In an interview with Channel 4 News, the Most Reverend and Right Honourable Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, supplied a particularly stark example. Welby began by affecting a transcendent spiritual impartiality, as one might expect:

‘I’m not pointing fingers’, he said.

The Archbishop of Canterbury tells @mattfrei he is "pointing fingers at Hamas" but says "let's not run to judgement" when asked about those pointing fingers at the Israeli government. pic.twitter.com/TzOm6PwK1D

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) October 22, 2023

Alas, Welby came back to earth with a bump:

‘I do point fingers at Hamas and say this is terrorism at its most extreme and most evil.’

Okay, but then was he also pointing fingers at the Israeli government raining hellfire on Gaza? Welby fell silent, hesitated:

‘It’s not… You can do the… You can say something which in different circumstances might be useful at a time that just makes everything worse… Let’s not run to judgement and blame straight away.’

The archbishop’s power-friendly ethical dissonance becomes even clearer when we recall that, last December, Welby told the BBC that ‘justice demands that there is defeat’ of ‘an evil invasion’ in Ukraine. It was right, he said, for the West to send billions of dollars of weaponry to support a ‘victim nation’ that is ‘being overrun by aggression’. After all, the international community had a ‘duty of care’ to protect weaker nations.

Welby’s failure to condemn any ‘evil’ committed by Israel came long after it had become clear that Israel had been criminally targeting Gaza’s civilian population with collective punishment cutting off water, food and electricity. And of course, by razing whole apartment blocks, indeed whole residential areas, to the ground.

From satellite imagery, The Economist estimated (30 October) that ‘over a tenth of Gaza’s housing stock has been destroyed, leaving more than 280,000 people without homes to which they can return’. The magazine noted:

‘Even Russia, during its siege of Mariupol in Ukraine between February and May 2022, negotiated humanitarian pauses in which some civilians were permitted to leave. Israel has thus far rejected calls, by the European Union and others, for such pauses.’

More recently, the health ministry of the Palestinian Authority has estimated that more than 50% of Gaza’s housing units have been destroyed, nearly 70% of its population has been displaced, 16 out of 35 hospitals that can take in-patients have stopped functioning, 42 UN Relief Agency buildings have been damaged, along with at least seven churches and 55 mosques. According to the World Health Organisation, there have been more than 100 strikes on health facilities. Since 7 October, more than 200 schools have been damaged in Gaza – around 40% of the total number – about forty of them very seriously, according to UNICEF data.

By any standards, this is an awesome level of destruction. In its first 563 days, Russia’s war on Ukraine killed 9,614 Ukrainian civilians, 554 of them children. In its first 25 days, Israel’s war on Gaza killed 8,796 Palestinian civilians, 3,648 of them children. Since the 7 October attacks by Hamas, at least 1,400 Israelis have been killed, including 1,033 civilians and 31 children.

The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres puts the immensity of Israel’s violence in perspective:

‘Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children. Hundreds of girls and boys are reportedly being killed or injured every day. More journalists are reportedly being killed over a four-week period than in any conflict in at least three decades. More United Nations aid workers have been killed than in any comparable period in the history of our organisation.’

On 28 October, Craig Mokhiber, one of the world’s leading international lawyers, director of the UN’s New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, resigned to protest the organisation’s handling of what he called a ‘textbook case of genocide.’ In his resignation letter, Mokhiber wrote:

‘As a human rights lawyer with more than three decades of experience in the field, I know well that the concept of genocide has often been subject to political abuse. But the current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs, and coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or debate. In Gaza, civilian homes, schools, churches, mosques, and medical institutions are wantonly attacked as thousands of civilians are massacred. In the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, homes are seized and reassigned based entirely on race, and violent settler pogroms are accompanied by Israeli military units.

‘Across the land, Apartheid rules.

‘This is a text-book case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine. What’s more, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault. Not only are these governments refusing to meet their treaty obligations “to ensure respect” for the Geneva Conventions, but they are in fact actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel’s atrocities.’

In an interview with Al Jazeera English, Mokhiber made a further key point:

‘Usually, the most difficult part in proving genocide is intent, because there has to be an intention to destroy, in whole or in part, a particular group. In this case, the intent by Israel’s leaders has been so explicitly stated, and publicly stated, by the prime minister, by the president, by senior cabinet ministers, by military leaders, that that is an easy case to make. It’s on the public record.’

Our ProQuest media database search for ‘Craig Mokhiber’ and ‘Gaza’ delivered four mentions, all in the Guardian. One of these was a smear, another was a single-sentence mention in passing buried in a news piece, a third substantial piece of 667 words, and an additional mention yesterday buried in the penultimate paragraph of an opinion piece. There were no mentions found in any other newspaper and there are none on the BBC website.

On Channel 4 News, Matt Frei asked Welby:

‘What do you say to those demonstrators on the streets of London who are saying this is Israeli genocide against the Palestinians?’

Welby’s sage reply:

‘I say you’ve no understanding of what you’re saying.’

When asked if Israel was acting within international law, Labour’s chivalrous knight, Sir Keir Starmer, said:

‘As to whether each and every act is in accordance with the law, well that will have to be adjudicated in due course. Um, I think it’s unwise for politicians to stand on stages like this, or to sit in television studios, and pronounce day by day which acts may or may not be in accordance with international law.

‘I think it’s not the role of politicians. I don’t think it’s wise to do it. I come with the benefit of a lawyer of having litigated about issues like this in the past. And in my experience, it’d often take weeks or months to assimilate the evidence and to then work out whether there may or may not have been a breach of international law.

‘So, I think the call for politicians to look at half a picture on the screen without the full information and form an instant judgement as to whether it’s this side of the line or the other side of the line is extremely unwise. I’m not going to get involved with that kind of exercise.’

If this sounds like an in-depth, heartfelt response, last year, Starmer was asked:

‘Is Vladimir Putin a war criminal?’

Today Starmer explained he can't say whether a country has committed war crimes because thats not the role of politicians, ok? pic.twitter.com/Dke117LW6E

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) October 31, 2023

Starmer’s reply:

‘Yes.’

On 8 February, Starmer told the House of Commons:

‘Before I entered this House, I had responsibility for fighting for justice in the Hague for victims of Serbian aggression. Does the Prime Minister agree with me that when the war in Ukraine is over, Putin and all his cronies must stand at the Hague and face justice?’

Again, completely contradicting everything he is now saying, Starmer said on 7 March:

‘Vladimir Putin and his criminal cronies must be held to account for their illegal invasion of Ukraine. The UK government must do all it can to ensure the creation of a special tribunal to investigate the crime of aggression.

‘The Ukrainian people deserve justice as well as our continued military, economic, diplomatic, and humanitarian assistance.’

Notice, Starmer was not calling for a ‘no-fly zone’ or a ceasefire – completely unthinkable in relation to Gaza – he was endorsing continued intervention in the form of massive military support for the Ukrainian war effort.

On 17 March, Starmer said:

‘I welcome the International Criminal Court’s decision to open war crime cases against Vladimir Putin and other senior Russian figures for their barbaric actions in Ukraine.’

I welcome the International Criminal Court’s decision to open war crime cases against Vladimir Putin and other senior Russian figures for their barbaric actions in Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/gm6owNZ98h

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) March 17, 2023

There is nothing random, or naïve, about Labour’s hypocrisy and servility to power. Declassified UK reports:

‘Some 13 of the 31 members of Labour’s shadow cabinet have received donations from a prominent pro-Israel lobby group or individual funder, it can be revealed.

‘The list of recipients includes party leader Keir Starmer, his deputy Angela Rayner, shadow foreign secretary David Lammy, and even the former vice-chair of Labour Friends of Palestine, Lisa Nandy, who is now shadow international development minister.’

Britain’s veteran warmongers have been queuing up to persuade the public of the rightness of Starmer’s complicity in genocide. Arch-Blairite former Labour MP Peter Mandelson said:

‘As for Keir Starmer, I would just say this – I think what he’s doing is demonstrating to the British people the sort of toughness and mettle that he would display, if he were to become prime minister of this country. He has been very tough, very realistic…’

In a separate interview, as if reading from the same script, former Tory MP and Thatcherite Michael Portillo opined:

‘I’m amongst those who think that Keir Starmer has done exactly the right thing and has shown a great deal of mettle, which I think will be quite widely admired. And that’s important, I think, for a domestic audience that wonders whether he’s up to being prime minister.’

Dissidents are viewed and treated quite differently. Responding to home secretary Suella Braverman’s suggestion on X (formerly Twitter) that, ‘It is entirely unacceptable to desecrate Armistice Day with a hate march through London’, BBC sports commentator Gary Lineker posted:

‘Marching and calling for a ceasefire and peace so that more innocent children don’t get killed is not really the definition of a hate march.’

Marching and calling for a ceasefire and peace so that more innocent children don’t get killed is not really the definition of a hate march. https://t.co/qLyIqZKhwt

— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) November 3, 2023

Nile Gardiner, a foreign policy analyst, former aide to Margaret Thatcher and contributor to the Telegraph, responded:

‘Gary Lineker’s knowledge of foreign and national security policy is practically zero. His vast narcissism and ego as a BBC football pundit is matched only by his sheer ignorance.’

In reality, of course, narcissism would mean Lineker keeping his head down, banking his huge salary, avoiding the inevitable torrent of abuse, and thus keeping his reputation safe and sound, like so many people do. 

The West’s Vanishing ‘Responsibility to Protect’

It is quite astonishing to reflect that, in 2011, NATO deployed 260 aircraft and 21 ships, launching 26,500 sorties destroying ‘over 5,900 military targets including over 400 artillery or rocket launchers and over 600 tanks or armored vehicles’ in response, not to the mass murder of civilians, but to a merely alleged threat of mass murder posed by Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi.

Not that there had been a call for a humanitarian ‘pause’, or a ceasefire, or the introduction of UN peacekeepers – the widespread demand was for massive military intervention. In reality, the NATO ‘no-fly zone’ that instantly became a bombing campaign obliterating Gaddafi’s army was based on a lie. A 9 September 2016 report into the war from the foreign affairs committee of the House of Commons commented:

‘Despite his rhetoric, the proposition that Muammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence… Muammar Gaddafi’s 40-year record of appalling human rights abuses did not include large-scale attacks on Libyan civilians.’

In February 2011, The Times insisted that ‘there is incontrovertible evidence’ that demonstrators in Benghazi ‘are being blown apart by mortar fire’. Even if accurate, this would have been a pin prick compared to Israeli actions now. This was the response to the Libyan government proposed by The Times:

‘British officials and private citizens must do all they can to cajole, pressure and exhort it out of power.’ (Leading article, ‘In bombing its own civilians, Libya stands exposed as an outlaw regime,’ The Times, 23 February 2011)

By contrast, on 25 October, The Times praised Starmer’s ‘initially assured response to the outbreak of violence that followed Hamas’s terror attacks on Israel on October 7’, which ‘correctly emphasised his party’s unconditional support for the Jewish state’s right to self-defence’.

This was a reference to Starmer’s appalling declaration that Israel ‘does have that right’ to inflict collective punishment on Palestinian civilians by cutting off water, food and electricity.

On 22 March 2011, with NATO bombing of Libya underway, the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland published a piece titled, ‘Though the risks are very real, the case for intervention remains strong’. He meant military intervention, of course – war – insisting that ‘in a global, interdependent world we have a “responsibility to protect” each other’. Freedland now warns against such ‘binary thinking’, as he baulks even at the idea of a ceasefire:

‘It seems such a simple, obvious remedy. Until you stop to wonder how exactly, if it is not defeated, Hamas is to be prevented from regrouping and preparing for yet another attack on the teenagers, festivalgoers and kibbutz families of southern Israel.’ 

Freedland’s article was titled: ‘The tragedy of the Israel-Palestine conflict is this: underneath all the horror is a clash of two just causes’. In ‘Manufacturing Consent’, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky commented on their analysis of media treatment of victims deemed ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ by the West:

‘While the coverage of the worthy victim was generous with gory details and quoted expressions of outrage and demands for justice, the coverage of the unworthy victims was low-keyed, designed to keep the lid on emotions and evoking regretful and philosophical generalities on the omnipresence of violence and the inherent tragedy of human life.’ (Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, ‘Manufacturing Consent’, Pantheon Books, 1988, p.39)

The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee also rejected calls for a ceasefire, obfuscating with a tangled web of Welby-style verbiage:

‘That word “ceasefire” has become a symbol and a semantic roadblock, as events rush on and words get left behind. “Ceasefire” has become an ideology rather than a practicality.’

When it comes to Gaza in November 2023, the famous ‘responsibility to protect’ has vanished from thinkable thought. Today, even the responsibility to protest is under legal threat. As for the British government’s response, Peter Oborne describes the shocking truth:

‘Meanwhile, not one government minister, as far as I can see, has condemned the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians in Gaza, or uttered a word of condemnation of the wave of settler attacks including displacement of Palestinian communities – war crimes – across the West Bank. Nor the genocidal language used by too many Israeli leaders.’

In describing the conflict, the BBC is content to use the pro-Israel propaganda construct ‘Israel-Hamas War’.

Israel’s murderous bombardment of Gaza was described by the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen as Israel ‘still pushing forward’. Bowen noted: ‘Palestinians call this genocide’.

It is not just the Palestinians though, as Bowen well knows.

*

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One month since Hamas’s surprise attack, little is known about the weapons the U.S. has provided to Israel. Whereas the Biden administration released a three-page itemized list of weapons provided to Ukraine, down to the exact number of rounds, the information released about weapons sent to Israel could fit in a single sentence.

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby acknowledged the secrecy in an October 23 press briefing, saying that while U.S. security assistance “on a near-daily basis,” he continued,

“We’re being careful not to quantify or get into too much detail about what they’re getting — for their own operational security purposes, of course.”

The argument that transparency would imperil Israel’s operational security — somehow not a concern with Ukraine — is misleading, experts told The Intercept.

“The notion that it would in any way harm the Israeli military’s operational security to provide more information is a cover story for efforts to reduce information on the types of weapons being supplied to Israel and how they are being used,” William Hartung, a fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and expert on weapons sales, told The Intercept. “I think the purposeful lack of transparency over what weapons the U.S. is supplying to Israel ‘on a daily basis’ is tied to the larger administration policy of downplaying the extent to which Israel will use those weapons to commit war crimes and kill civilians in Gaza.”

A retired Marine general who worked in the region, who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized by his former employer to speak publicly, attributed the secrecy to the political sensitivity of the conflict. In particular, the retired officer said, weapons used in door-to-door urban warfare, which are likely to result in civilian casualties, are not going to be something the administration wants to publicize. (The National Security Council did not respond to a request for comment.)

In recent years, flare-ups of violence between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip have often entailed Israeli air wars with limited numbers of Israeli troops entering the besieged coastal enclave. The last time there was a large-scale ground incursion by the Israel Defense Forces into Gaza was during the Israelis’ 2014 Operation Protective Edge.

While the 2014 invasion saw Israeli troops in Gaza for less than a month, Israel’s defense minister recently told reporters the war would take at least several months. The goal of removing Hamas completely from power is widely expected to take a significant commitment to a long-term ground presence and heavy urban fighting. According to the New Yorker, Israeli officials told their American counterparts that the war could last 10 years. The Biden administration is reportedly worried that Israel’s military objectives are not achievable.

On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told ABC News, “Israel will, for an indefinite period, will have the overall security responsibility because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have it.”

“Delicate Matter Politically”

Hamas’s attack on Israel, which took place on October 7, resulted in a cascade of arms assistance from the U.S. Though the Biden administration at first declined to identify any specific weapons systems, as details trickled out in the press, it has gradually acknowledged some. These include “precision guided munitions, small diameter bombs, artillery, ammunition, Iron Dome interceptors and other critical equipment,” as Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder has said.

What “other critical equipment” entails remains a mystery, as do specifics about the quantity of arms being supplied, which the administration has refused to disclose. When a reporter asked for a “ballpark” figure for the security assistance during a background press briefing on October 12, the Pentagon demurred. “I’m not going to do that today and would defer you to the government of Israel,” a senior defense official told the reporter.

“To date, U.S. government reporting on arms transfers to Israel has been sporadic and without any meaningful detail,” Stimson Center research analyst Elias Yousif recently concluded. “Updates should be compiled on a single factsheet page, as is the case for Ukraine, and include details on the authorities invoked for the provision of assistance as well as the type and quantity of arms provided with enough specificity to enable public research and assessments.”

Hartung, the Quincy fellow, noted the contrast with the administration’s openness on military aid to Ukraine.

“Transparency on arms transfers to Ukraine came in large part due to the administration’s feeling that they were engaged in a noble venture,” Hartung said. “Although Israel certainly has the right to defend itself against the kind of horrific attack carried out by Hamas, its response — bombing and blockading a whole territory of 2 million people, killing thousands of innocent people in the process — has been described by independent experts as committing war crimes.”

“So even as the Biden administration backs Israel with weapons and rhetoric,” Hartung said, “it is a delicate matter politically to give all the details on U.S. weapons supplied to the Israeli military, some of which will certainly be used in illegal attacks on civilians if the war continues to grind on.”

Beyond just the quantities, there are specific weapons the Pentagon is providing Israel which have not been publicly disclosed, the Marine general told The Intercept.

As the arms continue to flow, dozens of C-17 military transport planes likely carrying munitions have criss-crossed the Atlantic traveling between the United States and Israel, open-source flight tracking data show, with most landing at Nevatim Air Base, an IDF base in Israel’s southern Negev desert. President Joe Biden has requested $14.3 billion in aid for Israel in addition to the over $3 billion in military assistance it already provides. Most recently, the Biden administration is planning to send $320 million in precision Spice bombs to Israel, as multiple outlets informed by Congress reported on Monday.

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Featured image: U.S. Air Force personnel unload a KC-135 Stratotanker at an undisclosed location, designated by the military as within the U.S. Central Command “area of responsibility,” on Oct. 23, 2023. Photo: U.S. Air Force

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­Censorship imperils our cultures and our civilization. When we are prohibited from speaking or writing without threats, shaming, or epithets meant to shut down discussion, free thinking dies. People also die.

A censorship industrial complex grew around Covid hysteria, which began as a war on a virus.

New full-blown wars, with guns, bombs, tanks, and planes, and thousands dead now explode around us as free speech is lost in wars’ rubble, and propaganda buries truths.

With their money, power, and massive influence, private for-profit industries like pharmaceutical companies, influence and capture U.S. agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control, that taxpayers task with regulating products for public safety.

Because of this capture, agencies often fail to protect public while bolstering industry profits. Similarly, with the capture of politicians and policymakers, corporations and contractors profit from wars, as Marine Corp Brigadier General Smedley Butler notes in his book, War is a Racket and as Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against in his 1961 Farewell Address. Corporate and government elites get rich from wars based on lies, such as wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – and they sit rich now in retirement.

What truths might we uncover as we sift through wars’ rubble?

Children and young people didn’t need Covid shots as they were at little risk from serious illness from Covid, and some countries stopped recommending them; the shots may even harm them.

Yet, vaccines are a main source of revenue for pediatricians. A “pandemic of the unvaccinated” never happened though entertainers, highly paid media figures, and politicians viciously maligned those who waited or declined a Covid shot.

Most people contracted Covid anyway, whether they got multiple shots or not. Shots did not prevent transmission. Most dying from the disease now also had multiple shots.

Thousands of Covid vaccine-injured people have been bullied into silence and rendered invisible.

These are all statements we have been forbidden from making in the last few years; those who dare to utter them have faced rancor or ridicule or worse.

• Don’t talk about Covid shots, school and business closings, or the many beloved businesses and churches that closed for good because of bureaucratic mandates.
• Don’t talk about vaccine injuries or deaths or children’s learning losses or epidemics of addictions; don’t talk about child and teen suicides.
• Don’t talk about Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s astute observations that Haiti and Nigeria had the some of the least restrictive Covid policies on earth, had about a one percent Covid vaccine rate, and have had some of the lowest Covid death rates in the world, observations noted in his book, Letter to Liberals.
• Don’t talk about how Covid shots may cause Covid, or how Pfizer’s own product literature states that Covid is one of the side effects of the shot.

When we talk about these topics, listeners often stiffen and bristle, their eyes may go blank as they dismiss us with pity or contempt before we even complete a spoken paragraph.

Now, new disasters and traumas affect the world, and many insist we not talk about them to avoid snarling and insults or worse.

Violence and war have exploded in the Middle East

More unutterable statements come to mind. For instance, criticizing the policies of the Israeli government does not equal anti-Semitism.

Israel is an apartheid state with separations and denials of rights based on race, as Jimmy Carter noted in his 2007 book, Peace Not Apartheid.

Great Britain, the same colonial power that colonized and divided the African continent and other countries like poker chips among winners, made The Balfour Declaration in 1917 that declared a “home for the Jews” in Palestine, where Palestinians already lived.

This was presumptuous and elitist for the British to declare. It was not their place to make such a declaration.

A single, open, and democratic state in Israel with equal rights for all may be the best solution to the conflicts and violence, as Israeli American writer and activist Miko Peled has stated. Peled is the son of an Israeli general and grandson of one of the signers of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. His father was an Israeli war hero turned peace maker. He changed his thinking on Israel; so did Miko Peled. Peled writes his story in his book, The General’s Son and shares his views in talks and interviews, such as this one on the Katie Halper program.

In spite of how propaganda bombards us, we may note as Miko Peled does, that Palestinians are not simply evil barbarians, beheading babies and raping, but rather young men, desperate after years of violence and humiliation, after perhaps losing parents, crushed under the rubble of their apartment building, destroyed by an Israeli bomb, many paid for by U.S. taxpayers, or they may have siblings whose legs had to be amputated after damage from Israeli sniper fire. In what many call an open-air prison, Gazans endure lack of food, water, and electricity.

Islam is not a religion of fanatics and terrorists, in Palestine, or anywhere else, as the media often portrays it. It is one of the world’s major religions. The word Islam means “submission to the will of God.”  The Arabic word “salaam,” which means peace, is part of the common greeting among Muslims all over the world. Spreading peace is a requirement of the faith. Similarly, sharing God’s peace is expected among Christians and Jews.

Christians have been criticized for their views on Israel. An older and much more well-read peace activist friend shared with me that some evangelical Christians who support Israel, stand with Israel, do so because they believe Israel is the final launching pad for the Rapture when Christians will be zapped up to Heaven, and Jewish people will be too if they convert to Christianity. Jewish people who do not will perish. What do Jewish people think of this scenario? What if they do not want to “accept Jesus,” but simply wish to remain Jewish? It is confusing. Plenty of the world’s worst violence has been committed and continues in the name of or under the cover of religion.

Statements we are not supposed to make call us to make them now. Statements I make above could be wrong. Many may disagree with them. However, censorship kills with its shaming epithets meant to shut down discussion and thought, like the labels “anti-Semitic” or “conspiracy theorist,” “science denier” or “anti-Vaxxer.” Censorship imperils us when we are forbidden to speak without threats and insults, such as when we were told, “You don’t care if others die of Covid” if we decided not to wear a mask or to move about freely in 2020 and 2021. Similarly, we were told, “You deserve to be excluded from society if you decline a vaccine” even when some of us had natural immunity or didn’t think we needed it.  Even worse, some of us were told, “You deserve to die – or lose your job or friends or education — if you don’t comply.” Many said such horrible things in the last few years.

In many contexts, we are not permitted to say plainly and openly that Covid shots don’t work; that lockdowns didn’t work; that bureaucrats and politicians should never have closed schools and other community gatherings in 2020 and 2021; and that keeping children out of school was a grave injustice, as writers of The Great Barrington Declaration stated.

Slogans and advertising language often replace free speech and obliterate open thought, as they did during the Covid period, as they do during all wars. Should we be wary of sloganeering and pre-packaged language like “wiped off the map,” “Israel’s 9-11,” “rid the world of evil,” “mushroom cloud,” “weapons of mass destruction,” “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” – sloganeering that stops empathy and reflection, closes debate, and whips populations into war frenzies? Should we question slogans and manipulative phrases? Are lies and machinations operating behind our unreliable mainstream media reports, as they were during Covid hysteria and during the run-up to the Iraq War — as well as past wars? Retired U.S. CIA Officer Dr. Phillip Giraldi notes possible lies about the war in Israel in a recent Global Research article. Did violence begin with attacks from Gaza in early October? How might we question and what might we learn, seeking varied sources like American Friends Service Committee, an organization that has been present in Israel and Palestine for many years? What questions might we ask about slogans like Israel’s “right to exist”? What does that mean? After a suicide bomber killed his niece in Israel years ago, Miko Peled asked questions. He joined dialogue groups of Israelis and Palestinians and changed his thinking.

U.S. military veteran suicides have been at epidemic levels after soldiers returned from multiple deployments in disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ignited by sloganeering after 9-11 and the launch of the so-called “war on terror,” which was to “rid the world of evil.” How might those veterans react now, hearing this same kind of language about “Israel’s 9-11”? This past week, I learned of another veteran who committed suicide.

Can we keep our minds opened, our hearts softened to alternative perspectives?

During Covid lockdowns, rigid thinking and censorship caused the U.S. to harm its own children relentlessly as their suicides, addictions, developmental delays, learning losses, and despair increased. Children around the world starved, were abused, exploited, and enslaved because of lockdown policies we were forbidden to question. Has an entire generation of young people been harmed?

Free societies do not ban statements and opinions. Free societies permit questions and debate. Statements above may be phrased as questions as well.[2] For instance, do Covid shots work? Have they worked to stop transmission and illness and death? Are Covid vaccine-injured people silenced? Where may we find their stories? Should western cultures have shut down in 2020 in an attempt to avoid a single pathogen? By what authority did bureaucrats suspend the U.S. Constitution in 2020 and forbid assembly, speech, protest, group worship, and community gatherings? What were the harms? Who benefitted from lockdowns and Covid shots and how? How much money changed hands? Who wrote the checks and who got paid?

Why are Palestinian young men fighting now? How do we end the violence and build peace? What has life been like in Gaza and the West Bank of Palestine for the last few decades? Could lockdowns have made life there worse? Israel has been criticized as one of the most repressive countries in the world for Covid restrictions and Covid shot mandates. Even protesting Covid policies is a privilege Palestinians in Gaza would not have had. They have lacked basic medicines, clean water, and schools free of bombings for years.

Was the Balfour Declaration a good idea? Conservative Jewish Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, speaking at a Let the Quran Speak conference, supports Palestinians and criticizes leaders of the state of Israel on religious grounds.

Documentary films like Occupation 101 and Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land provoked my thinking. I helped organize public showings of them when working with peace groups. We led discussions of these films along with War Made Easy, a film based on Norman Solomon’s book by the same name, and The Ground Truth, a film about the horrific effects on the eight-ten percent of the population sent on multiple deployments to fights those wars. In the last few years, the same U.S. government that sent military members to fight and die in catastrophic wars forced Covid shots on them until refusers struck down the unlawful mandates.

Over years, I learn from others’ stories, especially from outsiders and whistleblowers, who were former insiders in the military, in industry, in governments. For example, soldiers sent to fight in wars that most now agree were mistakes speak out against those wars now.

They may have lost limbs or memory or cognitive function from IEDs. They learned and changed and spoke – what we were not allowed to say. Describing this latest violence as “Israel’s 9-11” is especially dangerous as we recall the unfathomable destruction and carnage that such language unleashed on the world more than twenty years ago [3] with the launch of the so-called “war on terror”. What did we learn?  Outsiders and independent thinkers — who have said what was forbidden — have often changed history. From the so-called “war on terror,” the war on a virus, the current war in Israel and Palestine, perhaps they will now.

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Christine E. Black’s poetry has been published in Antietam Review, 13^th Moon, American Journal of Poetry, New Millennium Writings, Nimrod International, Red Rock Review, The Virginia Journal of Education, Friends Journal, The Veteran, Sojourners Magazine, Iris Magazine, English Journal, Amethyst Review, St. Katherine Review, and other publications.

A aproximação entre a Armênia e os EUA parece estar a progredir rapidamente. Um importante oficial militar armênio está na Alemanha em conversações com representantes americanos para assinar um tratado de cooperação entre Yerevan e a OTAN. Esperam-se num futuro próximo medidas para facilitar a ocupação militar ocidental do Cáucaso.

O vice-ministro da defesa e chefe do estado-maior armênio, tenente-general Edvard Asryan, encontra-se na Baviera, onde tem mantido conversações nos últimos dias com o tenente-general da força aérea dos EUA, Steven Basham. O responsável americano é também vice-comandante do US European Command (EUCOM) – a Alemanha é o país anfitrião do EUCOM, razão pela qual a reunião se realiza lá.

Em entrevista à mídia local, Basham afirmou que o encontro é um “marco” na história das relações bilaterais. Ele enfatizou que ambos os países procuram “desenvolver deliberada e incrementalmente as relações de defesa”, razão pela qual se espera que um acordo de cooperação seja assinado em breve. Segundo Asryan, a Armênia quer “tornar os seus militares mais profissionais e capazes” e espera receber dos EUA assistência para alcançar este objetivo.

Ambos os oficiais concordaram que os principais pontos da cooperação bilateral serão nos temas “profissionalização das forças armadas; fortalecimento dos suboficiais profissionais; modernização do sistema de gestão; pacificação; medicina militar; educação militar e treinamento de combate”. Mais detalhes sobre a cooperação deverão ser revelados em breve.

Aparentemente, o governo da Armênia não aprendeu nada com os seus erros recentes. Há alguns meses, a região de Artsakh, de maioria armênia, chamada Nagorno Karabakh pelos azerbaijanos, foi alvo de um processo de humilhação militar e de limpeza étnica, com praticamente toda a população a ser evacuada para território armênio sem que Erevan pudesse fazer algo para proteger seu próprio povo.

Anteriormente, a Armênia tinha assinado um acordo reconhecendo Artsakh como território do Azerbaijão, o que na prática legitimou os movimentos de Baku. Historicamente, a Armênia e a Rússia são aliados próximos e Moscou poderia certamente ter tomado medidas dissuasoras para impedir o expansionismo azerbaijano apoiado pela Turquia. Mas face à capitulação armênia, os russos nada puderam fazer.

Esta situação foi um resultado direto das políticas de afastamento da Rússia e de aproximação ao Ocidente que foram implementadas em Yerevan desde 2018, quando ocorreu uma revolução colorida no país, fazendo com que Nikol Pashinyan, um político por procuração ocidental, se tornasse primeiro-ministro. Desde então, a Armênia minou deliberadamente as suas alianças históricas e procurou o alinhamento automático com o Ocidente, apostando na “amizade” com as potências ocidentais como forma de garantir a estabilidade no Cáucaso face à ameaça representada pelo expansionismo turco.

Obviamente, este caminho escolhido pelos armênios revelou-se um grave erro estratégico. Ao contrário dos russos, o Ocidente não quer estabilidade no Cáucaso, pois os EUA e os seus parceiros estão interessados ​​em causar caos e insegurança nas fronteiras da Rússia. Nisto, americanos, europeus e turcos convergem nos seus interesses – todos querem que o espaço pós-soviético, incluindo o Cáucaso, seja instável e em constante conflito.

Após a derrota militar em 2020 e a crise de Artsakh em 2023, que gerou um grande fluxo migratório e uma crise social na Armênia, Yerevan deveria ter entendido que a sua política anti-Rússia está a levar o país à catástrofe. Mas em vez disso, a Armênia procura ainda mais satisfazer os interesses americanos, negociando “acordos de cooperação militar” que certamente servirão apenas para aumentar ainda mais a dependência da Armênia em relação ao Ocidente, sem qualquer melhoria real na situação do país.

O objetivo americano com a sua cooperação com a Armênia é mantê-lo militarmente enfraquecido e vulnerável às ações do Azerbaijão, para que o governo armênio seja forçado a tomar a mesma atitude que tomou na última crise: solicitar intervenção militar e “missão de manutenção da paz” da OTAN para “proteger os armênios”. Num tal cenário, os turcos também interviriam a favor do Azerbaijão e então o cenário seria inteiramente favorável à OTAN, com tropas americanas, europeias e turcas no ambiente estratégico russo.

A única forma de a Armênia resolver verdadeiramente os seus problemas é através da retoma da parceria estratégica com os russos, uma vez que Moscou é o ator mais interessado na paz no Cáucaso. Infelizmente, desde a mudança de regime de 2018, quase todas as alas da política armênia têm sido controladas por sectores pró-Ocidente e a população tem sofrido um processo de lavagem cerebral anti-russa semelhante ao que aconteceu na Ucrânia em 2014. No entanto, em algum momento os armênios terão de compreender a gravidade da situação e a inviabilidade de uma política de inimizade com a Rússia, caso contrário surgirão novos conflitos na região.

Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

 

Artigo em inglês :

Armenia obstinately strengthens its alignment with US, InfoBrics, le 8 novembre 2023

Imagem : InfoBrics

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Lucas Leiroz, jornalista, pesquisador do Center for Geostrategic Studies, consultor geopolítico.

Você pode seguir Lucas Leiroz em: https://t.me/lucasleiroz e https://twitter.com/leiroz_lucas

 

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A profound division exists between Zionist advocates of Israel on the one hand, and both secular and religious Jews, on the other, who reject Zionism and thus the very idea of a separate state for the Jews. Most Jews must be somewhere in between. For years, they have cringed at Israel’s actions without, however, questioning the ethnocratic nature of the Israeli state.  For them, “Israel’s right to exist” is sacred because they fear that the only alternative is a physical destruction of Israeli Jews. Even though most of them live in liberal democracies, it is hard for them to fathom that Israel may change its nature, like South Africa did a few decades ago, and become a liberal state with equal rights for everyone on the entire territory under Israeli control between the Mediterranean and the river Jordan.

Israel’s assault on Gaza has made many Jews worldwide, particularly the young, to recoil from any association with the state of Israel. But at least just as many refused to remain “Jews of silence” and came to denounce Israel’s vengeful response to Hamas’ attack on its territory on October 7, 2023.

Especially in the United States, Jews have prominently cried out against the violence in Gaza. Hundreds of protesters closed down New York’s Central Station asking for an immediate ceasefire.

A week earlier, Jews wrapped in prayer shawls staged a sit-in at the U.S. Congress in Washington. After demanding an end to the violence, they opened prayer books and began reciting the ancient words that have steadied Jews for generations. Just a few days ago, Jews unfurled banners reading “Palestinians should be free” at the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York.

Anti-Zionist Ultra-Orthodox Jews have burned Israeli flags at their protests around the world. They believe that the Zionist state is not simply an ‘appropriation’ of their Jewish symbols and identity, but the root cause of a bloody conflict in which innocent Jews and Palestinians suffer.

Indeed, Israel is a Zionist state. Calling it Jewish only creates a confusion because it is hard to define it. Israel embodies European ethnic nationalism shaped in late 19^th century, rather than Judaism that has developed for millennia. From the start, Zionists despised Jews and Judaism as they aimed at breeding a new species: the intrepid Hebrew warrior farmer. They have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Israel has built a mobilized society and a formidable high-tech war machine. As Israeli society has moved steadily to the right, it has consolidated the support of right-wing extremists and racists, including antisemites, around the world, such as white supremacists in the United States.

Source: Democracy Now!

Israel is the most recent settler colony. Rhodesia and Algeria are now a distant memory. South Africa has freed itself from the official apartheid. While settlers in the Americas and Oceania perpetrated genocide against the aboriginals in the 19^th century, Israel initiated massive ethnic cleansing rather late, only in 1947. Some, like the Israeli historian Benny Morris, who documented it, regretted that the Zionists did not complete the job like the white Americans, Argentines or Australians, who wiped out most of the local populations. Indeed, Israel now has under its control approximately equal numbers of Palestinians and Jews, but most Palestinians don’t have political rights.

Many Jews, both in Israel and elsewhere, have been trying to come to terms with the contradictions between the Judaism they profess to adhere to and the Zionist ideology that has taken hold of them. A new variety of Judaism has taken root in Israel: National Judaism, dati-leumi in Hebrew. For some Jews, this new faith assuages these contradictions.

Among its most fervent followers one finds the assassin of prime minister Itzhak Rabin who had attempted to find an accommodation with the Palestinians, and prominent members of today’s Israeli government. National Judaism is also the ideology of many vigilante settlers who, since the onset of the war on Gaza, have intensified the harassment, dispossession, and murder of Palestinians on the West Bank. The vigilantes armed with rifles are proud to complement what the Israeli army is doing with tanks, bombs, and rockets in Gaza.

Quite a few Jews now wonder if this separate state for the Jews chronically generating violence is “good for the Jews.” The tardiness of this questioning reflects the success of Israel’s masquerading as “the Jewish and democratic state”, a theoretical and ideological oxymoron. The bombing of Gaza has punctured that propaganda balloon and exposed Israel’s character as a bellicose settler colony, victim of its own practice of exclusion and oppression.

Many Jews deplore this practice because it contradicts all that Judaism teaches, particularly the core values of humility, compassion, and kindness. They realize that those Jews – in truth, the vast majority of them – who rejected Zionism over a century ago, may have been right. Other Jews also find themselves in an emotional bind. Deeply saddened by Hamas’ attack on Israel and likewise devasted by Israel’s implacable response, they are also worried about the surge in anti-Jewish sentiment all around them.

The deadly Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 shows how Israel’s displacement and oppression of the Palestinians breeds their hatred.  Consequently, it physically endangers Jews in Israel. The subsequent killing of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza imperils Jews both in Israel and elsewhere. (Muslims do become targets too, as the tragic killing of a six-year-old American Palestinian shows.)

When Israel claims to be the state of all the Jews it turns them into hostages of its policies and actions. When Jewish community organizations declare “We stand with Israel!” they act as proxies for Israel rather than representatives of Jews. To be more precise, they represent those Jews whose identity has become mainly political: believers in Israel, right or wrong.

Israel and Zionism have long polarized the Jews. While Jews worldwide are largely split between these “Israel-firsters” and those who denounce Israel, neither camp influences Israel’s actions. They are akin to fans, rooting for one or the other side, watching from the outside as the situation unfolds. Blaming and attacking Jews for Israel’s actions is wrong and antisemitic. It also strengthens the core Zionist claim that Jews can be safe only in Israel.

It remains to be seen whether the fracture between those who hold fast to Jewish moral tradition and the converts to ethnic nationalism may one day be repaired. However fateful for Jews and Judaism, this fracture is less important for Israel, which nowadays counts many more evangelical Christians than Jews among its unconditional supporters.

Massive world-wide protests have so far affected neither Israelis’ vengeful violence in Gaza nor the supply of American weapons to support it. There is reason to despair. But Judaic tradition encourages Jews to continue, even in seemingly hopeless circumstances: “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to desist from it…” (Pirke Avot 2:16) This is why many Jews remain at the forefront of the struggle against Israel’s wanton violence. But when the violence ends, many will realize that their protests have emancipated them from Israel’s emotional stranglehold.

This emancipation from the Zionist state has been observed in very different Jewish communities, Ashkenazi and Sephardi, strictly observant and more liberal. Thus, an ultra-Orthodox critic of Israel, usually antagonistic to Reform Judaism, commends a Reform rabbi for saying that “when Israel’s Jewish supporters abroad don’t speak out against disastrous policies that neither guarantee safety for her citizens nor produce the right climate in which to try and reach a just peace with the Palestinians … they are betraying millennial Jewish values.”

The nuclear armed Israel endangers not only the Palestinians and the Jews. It threatens an Armageddon for the region and the Samson option for the world. These apocalyptic scenarios may be triggered if an Israeli government decides that the country cannot cope with an existential threat. This may mean not only the threat of physical destruction but also the looming end of the institutionalized dominance of Israeli Jews over the Palestinians, the end of ethnocracy.

There is hope. England oppressed Ireland for centuries. France and Germany bitterly fought many wars. What will it take for Israelis and Palestinians to live peacefully side by side? Many Jews and many more Palestinians believe that the apartheid-like structure of the Zionist state, which explains why it has lived by the sword since its inception, must change. They know that only when all the inhabitants of the Holy Land enjoy equal rights and have a stake in whatever political arrangement is reached (one state, two states or something else) will the cycle of death stop.

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This article was originally published on Pressenza.

Yakov M. Rabkin, author of “A Threat from Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism” and “What is Modern Israel?” is professor emeritus of history and associate of the Centre for International Studies at the University of Montreal (CERIUM). His e-mail is [email protected]

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I covered the birth of Jewish fascism in Israel. I reported on the extremist Meir Kahane, who was barred from running for office and whose Kach Party was outlawed in 1994 and declared a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States. I attended political rallies held by Benjamin Netanyahu, who received lavish funding from rightwing Americans, when he ran against Yitzhak Rabin, who was negotiating a peace settlement with the Palestinians. Netanyahu’s supporters chanted “Death to Rabin.” They burned an effigy of Rabin dressed in a Nazi uniform. Netanyahu marched in front of a mock funeral for Rabin. 

Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995 by a Jewish fanatic. Rabin’s widow, Lehea, blamed Netanyahu and his supporters for her husband’s murder.

Netanyahu, who first became prime minister in 1996, has spent his political career nurturing Jewish extremists, including Avigdor Lieberman, Gideon Sa’ar, Naftali Bennett, and Ayelet Shaked. His father, Benzion — who worked as an assistant to the Zionist pioneer Vladimir Jabotinsky, who Benito Mussolini referred to as “a good fascist” — was a leader in the Herut Party that called on the Jewish state to seize all the land of historic Palestine. Many of those who formed the Herut Party carried out terrorist attacks during the 1948 war that established the state of Israel.

Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Sidney Hook and other Jewish intellectuals, described the Herut Party in a statement published in The New York Times as a “political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to Nazi and Fascist parties.”

There has always been a strain of Jewish fascism within the Zionist project. Now it has taken control of the Israeli state.

“The left is no longer capable of overcoming the toxic ultra-nationalism that has evolved here,” Zeev Sternhell, a Holocaust survivor and Israel’s foremost authority on fascism, warned in 2018, “the kind whose European strain almost wiped out a majority of the Jewish people.” Sternhell added, “[W]e see not just a growing Israeli fascism but racism akin to Nazism in its early stages.” 

The decision to obliterate Gaza has long been the dream of Israel’s crypto-fascists, heirs of Kahane’s movement. These Jewish extremists, which make up the ruling coaltion government, are orchestrating the genocide in Gaza, where hundreds of Palestinians are dying daily.

They champion the iconography and language of their homegrown fascism. Jewish identity and Jewish nationalism are the Zionist versions of blood and soil. Jewish supremacy is sanctified by God, as is the slaughter of the Palestinians, who Netanyahu compared to the Biblical Ammonites, massacred by the Israelites. Enemies — usually Muslims — slated for extinction are subhuman who embody evil. Violence and the threat of violence are the only forms of communication those outside the magical circle of Jewish nationalism understand. Millions of Muslims and Christians, including those with Israeli citizenship, are to be purged. 

A leaked 10-page document from the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence dated Oct. 13, 2023 recommends the forcible and permanent transfer of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. 

It is a grave mistake not to take the blood curdling calls for the wholesale eradication and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians seriously. This rhetoric is not hyperbolic. It is a literal prescription. Netanyahu in a tweet, later removed, described the battle with Hamas as a “struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.” 

These Jewish fanatics have begun their version of the final solution to the Palestinian problem. They dropped 12,000 tons of explosives on Gaza in the first two weeks of assault to obliterate at least 45 percent of Gaza’s housing units, according to the U.N.’s humanitarian office. They have no intention of being detoured, even by Washington.

“It became evident to U.S. officials that Israeli leaders believed mass civilian casualties were an acceptable price in the military campaign,” The New York Times reported.

“In private conversations with American counterparts, Israeli officials referred to how the United States and other allied powers resorted to devastating bombings in Germany and Japan during World War II — including the dropping of the two atomic warheads in Hiroshima and Nagasaki — to try to defeat those countries,” the paper continued.

The goal is a “pure” Israel, cleansed of Palestinian contaminants. Gaza is to become a wasteland. The Palestinians in Gaza will be killed or forced into refugee camps over the border in Egypt. Messianic redemption will take place once the Palestinians are expelled. Jewish extremists call for the Al-Aqsa mosque – the third holiest shrine for Muslims, built on the ruins of the Jewish Second Temple, which was destroyed in 70 CE by the Roman army – to be demolished. The mosque is to be replaced by a “Third” Jewish temple, a move that would set the Muslim world alight. The West Bank, which the zealots call “Judea and Samaria,” will be formally annexed by Israel. Israel, governed by the religious laws imposed by the ultra-orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties, will be a Jewish version of Iran.

It is a short step to total Israeli control over Palestinian land. Israel’s illegal Jewish settlements, restricted military zones, closed highways and army compounds have seized over 60 percent of the West Bank, turning Palestinian towns and villages into ringed ghettos. There are over 65 laws which discriminate directly or indirectly against Palestinian citizens of Israel and those living in the occupied territories. The campaign of indiscriminate killing of Palestinians in the West Bank, many by rogue Jewish militias, along with house and school demolitions and the seizure of remaining Palestinian land will explode. Over 133 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by the Israeli army and Jewish settlers since the Oct. 7 incursion by Hamas and thousands of Palestinians have been rounded up by the Israeli military, beaten, humiliated and imprisoned.

Israel, at the same time, is turning on “Jewish traitors” who refuse to embrace the demented vision of the ruling Jewish fascists and who denounce the horrific violence of the state. The familiar enemies of fascism — journalists, human rights advocates, intellectuals, artists, feminists, liberals, the left, homosexuals and pacifists — are already being targeted. The judiciary, according to plans put forward by Netanyahu, will be neutered. Public debate will wither. Civil society and the rule of law will cease to exist. Those branded as “disloyal” will be deported.

Fascists do not respect the sanctity of life. Human beings, even from their own tribe, are expendable to build their deranged utopia. The zealots in power in Israel could have exchanged the hostages held by Hamas for the thousands of Palestinian hostages held in Israeli prisons, which is why the Israeli hostages were seized. And there is evidence that in the chaotic fighting that took place once Hamas militants entered Israel, the Israeli military decided to target not only Hamas fighters, but the Israeli captives with them. 

“Several new testimonies by Israeli witnesses to the October 7 Hamas surprise attack on southern Israel adds to growing evidence that the Israeli military killed its own citizens as they fought to neutralize Palestinian gunmen,” Max Blumenthal writes in The Grayzone.

Tuval Escapa, a member of the security team for Kibbutz Be’eri, Blumenthal notes, set up a hotline to coordinate between kibbutz residents and the Israeli army. 

Escapa told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that as desperation began to set in, “the commanders in the field made difficult decisions – including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.”

The newspaper reported that Israeli commanders were “compelled to request an aerial strike” against its own facility inside the Erez Crossing to Gaza “in order to repulse the terrorists” who had seized control. That base housed Israeli Civil Administration officers and soldiers.

Israel, in 1986, instituted a military policy called the Hannibal Directive, apparently named for the Carthaginian general who poisoned himself rather than be captured by the Romans, following the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. The directive is designed to prevent Israeli troops from falling into enemy hands through the maximum use of force, even at the cost of killing the captured soldiers and civilians. 

The directive was executed during the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza known as Operation Protective Edge. Hamas fighters on Aug. 1, 2014 captured an Israeli officer, Lt. Hadar Goldin. In response, Israel dropped more than 2,000 bombs, missiles and shells on the area where he was being held. Goldin was killed along with over 100 Palestinian civilians. The directive was supposedly rescinded in 2016.

Gaza is the start. The West Bank is next.  

Israelis who cheer on the Palestinian nightmare will soon endure a nightmare of their own.

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Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.

Featured image: Bad Moon Rising – by Mr. Fish

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The political West has been trying to create a perpetual divide between East Slavs for centuries. Various European invaders were perfectly aware that Russia is too big of a bite at its full might, so splitting it up was always the first goal. This was the case from the times of Ancient Russia and the Medieval Kievan Rus’ to the modern-day USSR and Russian Federation. According to various Russian historians, Otto von Bismarck, the mastermind behind the unification of Germany in 1871 and its first chancellor, stated:

“Russia’s strength can only be undermined by the secession of Ukraine. It is necessary to not only cut off Ukraine from Russia, but also to push them into confrontation, to turn two parts of one people against each other and then watch how brothers kill each other.”

Western sources are adamant that Bismarck never said this and that the words were misattributed to him, possibly even misinterpreted and/or taken out of context. However, regardless of whether Bismarck said so or not, the description suits Western (geo)politics toward Russia and Ukraine perfectly. For instance, both the mainstream propaganda machine and various Western institutions are working tirelessly to convince everyone that Russia and Ukraine are supposedly “completely different”.

Obviously, nothing could be further from the truth, primarily for the simple reason that the two countries are inextricably bonded regardless of the current situation. In addition, despite all the mindless propaganda that Russia is supposedly trying to “destroy” Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, the way Moscow has been conducting the special military operation (SMO) tells us a completely different story. After all, if anything, the latest Israel-Gaza escalation has shown the world just how devastating wars can be and just how “held back” Russia has been.

Taking all this into account, many Ukrainians seem to have realized what sort of a tragic mistake has been to buy into the idea that “all Russians are evil” and that fighting against them is the “only way to gain freedom”. Namely, in late October, the first volunteer battalion consisting entirely of former Ukrainian servicemen was formed after the POWs (prisoners of war) decided to fight in the Russian military. This volunteer battalion, aptly named “Bogdan Khmelnitsky”, is named after one of the most prominent characters in Russian and Ukrainian history.

According to military sources, the volunteer battalion joined the “Cascade” tactical formation and it included approximately 70 servicemen. The vast majority of them voluntarily laid down their arms and surrendered to the Russian military. Ukrainian volunteers even signed contracts with the Russian Armed Forces on the same terms any other Russian would. In fact, members of the new “Bogdan Khmelnitsky” battalion confirmed that they joined the unit voluntarily and have also received Russian citizenship. According to South Front, this is what some of them had to say:

“Now we have entered the service in the military unit of the operational combat tactical formation ‘Cascade’ where we will carry out our further service. We will also give an oath at the end of our training. All our guys will take an oath. We came here to the training center about three weeks ago. The mood of all the guys is combative, all of us are full of energy, everyone is eager for knowledge, everyone tries to show his best. Everyone is always ready to tell something, to explain. We are trying to get all the knowledge that instructors give us. The instructors have a wide combat experience. Our guys are eager to train and in their turn, they try to prove to their ‘teachers’ that they can do the same. We were provided with weapons and uniforms as soon as we arrived here, the next day. Each of us received his own assault rifle and served it completely. Then we had training at the training ground, where we sighted our weapons. The instructors also worked with us and helped us a lot.”

The logical question is, why would any captured Ukrainians join the fight on the Russian side given how “evil the Moskaliv” are?

The answer is rather simple. The surrendering Ukrainian POWs had more than enough time to see how the Russian people and military still see the Ukrainian people, despite everything that has been going on in the last nearly a decade. In addition, it’s clear that the majority of Ukrainians don’t support the Neo-Nazi junta in Kiev. In fact, Zelensky owes his victory in the 2019 election to the fact that he ran as a “peace candidate” and essentially lied his way to the top.

What’s more, thousands of Ukrainians routinely refuse to follow the suicidal orders of the superiors whose only goal is to use them as cannon fodder. Many of these soldiers hail from eastern, southern and central regions of Ukraine, as well as from the western parts of Donbass which are still under the control of the Kiev regime forces. Many Ukrainians are now aware of the disastrous consequences of Western (neo)colonialism in Ukraine and just how dangerous this is for the survival of their people and country. Thus, many see the Russian military as the only way to liberate Ukraine from the claws of the political West.

To further illustrate just how tragic it is to see Russians and Ukrainians fight each other, the “Bogdan Khmelnitsky” battalion commander stated that it’s common for Russian soldiers to find their Ukrainian relatives in captivity, which is also one of the reasons to join the Russian military. In addition, many of the forcibly conscripted Ukrainians are perfectly aware of what the Neo-Nazi junta is doing to the people of Ukraine, including to underage kids who are being sold not only into the life of sex slavery, but also to serve as involuntary “organ donors” to rich clients from around the world. Millions of Ukrainians are hostages of the regime the political West installed nearly a decade ago and their only chance for freedom comes from the supposed “enemy” that happens to be their closest kin.

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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 President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has stated “this is not a war; this is genocide” when referring to the Israeli attack on Gaza.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote a note to the US State Department staff on October 19. He was aware of growing discontent among his workforce; hurt and disappointed by the unabashed abandonment of diplomatic norms, as the US defended war crimes committed by Israel.

Career State Department employees were shaken professionally and personally, and they were not only Muslims, or Arabs.  

“I know that, for many of you, this time has not only been challenging professionally, but personally,” wrote Blinken.

“President [Joe] Biden has made clear from the beginning of the crisis — as I underscored across the region — that while we fully support Israel’s right to defend itself, how it does so matters. That means acting in a way that respects the rule of law and international humanitarian standards, and taking every possible precaution to protect civilian life,” he added, but his words were untrue. When professionals are lied to, they lose respect for their superiors.

The Biden administration’s reaction to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel was to offer unqualified support to the Israelis, insisting they had the right to defend themselves against the militant group.

State Department employees are professionals who are not working for one single Secretary of State, or any one US President. They work for the United States, for the people, and defending the freedom and democracy which makes America great.

When they saw Biden and Blinken supporting the Israeli siege on Gaza, which prevented all water, food, medicine and fuel from entering, they realized they are working for a regime which is complicit in war crimes and in contravention of international law.  It became clear that Blinken was working for the Israelis, and not for American values or a rules-based international order.

Diplomacy Rules

Like any learned skill, there are accepted and time honored characteristics taught to become a diplomat.

The fourth rule of diplomacy, is objectivity and integrity. A diplomat must always be fair and honest, while never allowing personal political or cultural ideas to influence their actions.

On October 9, Blinken gave an emotional speech alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  He stated he was there “not only as the United States Secretary of State but also as a Jew”.

Blinken failed to adhere to the rules of diplomacy by stepping away from representing the US government, and inserting himself into the situation.  Blinken is paid by the American people, which is a secular society, to represent the interests of the whole country, and not Jewish Zionists.

Blinken claimed he represented the US as well as Jews, which is untrue. There are thousands of Jews in Israel, the US and globally who object to the brutality of the Israeli government. 

State Department Employee Resigned

Josh Paul resigned from the State Department on October 18, after having spent more than 11 years in political-military affairs, which handles weapons deals.

“I have had my fair share of debates and discussions and efforts to shift policy on controversial arms sales,” said Paul, who resigned in protest of US arms transfers to Israel.

 “We cannot be both against occupation, and for it. We cannot be both for freedom, and against it. And we cannot be for a better world, while contributing to one that is materially worse,” wrote Josh Paul in his letter of resignation.

“I am leaving today because I believe that in our current course with regards to the continued—indeed, expanded and expedited—provision of lethal arms to Israel—I have reached the end of that bargain.”

Paul sees the rush to send more weapons to a conflict where 10,000 civilians have died, and about one-half include children, is not in the best interest of the US. He wrote about his value judgement to officials, asking for a discussion of other ways to help without adding fuel to the fire, and while some agreed with him privately, none were willing to voice any objection officially to the immediate transfer of US weapons to Israel.

Israel receives about 3.3 billion a year in foreign military financing from the US State Department, which represent about half of the total arms the US supplies globally. The Department of Defense gives to Israel $500 million for missile defense programs.

In an interview with Josh Paul, he explained that Israel is the only country on earth allowed to spend their US arms monies on developing their own weapons, which puts the US in the position of funding a competitor.

Paul further explained the Biden administration’s arms transfer policy includes prior vetting to prevent human rights abuses committed with US weapons. But, in the case of Israel, no process is followed, and in the current war on Gaza, it is clear that the weapons sent to Israel will indeed be used for human rights violations and result in massive civilian casualties.

It was Biden’s double-standard which made Paul resign.  The whole world is held to account for human rights violations and war crimes, but Israel is never criticized by the White House or the Congress.

UN Human Rights Director Resigned

Craig Mokhiber, director of the New York office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, resigned in a letter on October 28.  Mokhiber explained that he was stepping down in protest over the “genocide unfolding before our eyes” in Gaza.

“The current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging […], coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or debate,” wrote Mokhiber, a US human rights lawyer who joined the UN in 1992 and has served in several conflict zones, including the Palestinian Territories, Afghanistan and Sudan.

“Not only are these governments refusing to meet their treaty obligations ‘to ensure respect’ for the Geneva Conventions, but they are in fact actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel’s atrocities,” he said while accusing the West of complicity in Israel’s war on Gaza.

Protesters have been demonstrating across the Arab world, as well as in London, New York, Washington, Paris and Berlin, in support of the people of Gaza.

Blinken in Baghdad

On November 5, Michael Birnbaum from The Washington Post, asked Blinken in a press conference in Baghdad to comment on the future of Gaza.

“But if you project forward into the future, what we all agree is that in defining that future and shaping that future for Gaza, for the West Bank, and ultimately for a Palestinian state, Palestinian voices have to be at the center of that.  The Palestinian Authority is the representative of those voices, so it’s important that it play a leading role,“ said Blinken. 

Blinken has repeatedly referred to the creation of a Palestinian State, which is in line with the US official position of the Two-State solution based on the UN resolution agreed upon decades ago.  Neither Biden, nor Blinken have set forth a process or timeline to achieve the only lasting solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  The White House pays lip-service to the solution, while working directly against any solution, and instead supporting crimes against humanity, and genocide in Gaza.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: © UNICEF/Mohammad Ajjour A five-year-old boy holds up his cat amidst the wreckage of his home in Gaza.

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***

On November 8th 2023, a virtual launch event took place for what was termed the “50-in-5” agenda.

The United Nations, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and partners of the Rockefeller Foundation are launching a campaign to accelerate digital ID, digital payments, and data-sharing rollouts in 50 countries under the umbrella of digital public infrastructure (DPI) by 2028. (Source).

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has announced plans to roll out “digital IDs” worldwide by the year 2030, and they will be mandatory for people who wish to participate in society, say Reclaim the Net, who advocate for free speech and individual liberty online,

Social Credit System

The push for DigitalPublic Infrastructure (DPI) which includes. “Digital IDs,” vaccine passports, and central bank digital currencies (CBDC) – is being championed by the globalist WEF and unsurprisingly is backed by Bill Gates along with the UN, and the European Union (EU).

The Sociable editor Tim Hinchliffe says “Advocates are adamant that DPI is essential for participation in markets and society — just like we saw with vaccine passports — only on a much broader scope and “If successful, DPI will give governments and corporations the power to implement systems of social credit that can determine where and how you can travel, what you are allowed to consume, and how you will be able to transact with your programmable money.

“Think individual carbon footprint trackers, Ultra Low Emission Zones (ULEZ), and CBDC programmed to restrict “less desirable” purchases — all of which are being pushed by proponents of the great reset.” (Source)

The “50 in 5” Campaign

The “50 in 5” bills itself as “a country-led advocacy campaign. By 2028, the 50-in-5 campaign will have helped 50 countries design, launch, and scale components of their digital public infrastructure,” according to the official announcement. The 50 countries are designated as global testbeds, (guinea pigs) and the DPI’s will first in Africa (sub-Saharan, particularly) and India but the plan is to roll digital IDs globally by 2030 to include all citizens of UN member-states, according to Planet Today

“50 in 5” campaign is also unsurprisingly a collaboration between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Nations Development Program, the Digital Public Goods Alliance, and Co-Develop. Co-Develop was founded by The Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Nilekani Philanthropies, and the Omidyar Network. The Digital Public Goods Alliance lists both the Gates and Rockefeller foundations in its roadmap showcasing “activities that advance digital public goods,” along with other organisations and several governments. (Source)

Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) is essential for countries to improve their economies & the well-being of people.

Join us for the launch of the #50in5 initiative to discuss how building inclusive DPI can foster strong economies & equitable societies: https://t.co/SB2QDNJp2I pic.twitter.com/S01Rpxq1VP

— UNDP Digital (@UNDPDigital) October 25, 2023

DPIs are being sold as a mechanism for financial inclusion, convenience, improved healthcare, and green progress. but is is an “all-inclusive phrase applied to a looming technocratic governance system powered by three foundational components: digital ID, digital payments like Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), and massive data sharing.”

The World Economic Forum

WEF published a series of articles in September essentially pushing for DPI enforcement and of course, WEF is out there “thinking about the children” like the best of them, “Children’s rights around the world can be boosted by investing in digital public infrastructures,” said one caption in an article published on September the 18th, 2023, entitled

‘Two-thirds of child-related SDGs are off-pace to meet targets’: Here’s why we must invest in digital public infrastructure now.”

“2023 marks the halfway point for achieving the United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs)“, the WEF reminds us, this halfway mark “is an opportunity to “assess and recalibrate” efforts to realise the rights of every child, everywhere and with only seven years to go, to the 2030 target, two-thirds of child-related indicators are off-pace to meet their targets, according to a new UNICEF report, For Every Child a Sustainable Future.

• 1.9 Billion Children Left Behind – If recent progress continues, only 60 countries, home to just 25% of the child population, will have met their targets by 2030, leaving around 1.9 billion children in 140 countries behind.
• The world today looks unlikely to achieve the ambitious goals we set for children in 2015.
• Hunger – The world, is back at hunger levels not seen since 2005, and food prices remain higher in more countries than in the period from 2015 to 2019.
• Children are Lacking Foundational Skills – While in education, data shows that 600 million children and adolescents are not acquiring foundational reading and math skills and 11 million additional ten-year-olds lacking foundational skills.

The “Solution” to the “Problem”? The “problem” the WEF says, has been the pandemic, of course, which “worsened the situation,” and the digital public infrastructure is the “solution.” as it has been identified as a “key transition required for accelerating SDG action and results for children by 2030.”

Protecting the “rights or safety of children” has been a tactic used before by the unelected globalists, while promoting a technocratic system that will actually take away the rights of all individuals, including children.

Reclaim the Net, says that essentially, “DPI is a buzzword used in somewhat interesting/alarming concord by organizations such as the UN, but also the European Union (EU), the Gates Foundation, and of course, the World Economic Forum (WEF) is never quite out of any such picture.

“What DPIs are supposed to do, in the best case scenario, is aid development in a number of ways. Those looking deeper into platitudes and “corporatespeak” coming from these organizations, however, are dismissing the term and the policy as a ruse to speed up the introduction of digital IDs and payments, with a deadline of 2030.”

They conclude, “If you’re a citizen of a UN member-state, and your government (i.e., taxpayers) are contributing to various UN efforts and, you feel either uneasy or just insufficiently informed about all this, well, too bad. They’re going ahead anyway.” (Source).

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Executive Summary

To  access the Full document of the Committee of the Judiciary and Select Subcommittee click image above

The First Amendment to the Constitution rightly limits the government’s role in monitoring and censoring Americans’ speech, but these disinformation researchers (often funded, at least in part, by taxpayer dollars) were not strictly bound by these constitutional guardrails. What the federal government could not do directly, it effectively outsourced to the newly emerging censorship-industrial complex.

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Over the last few decades, the number of chemicals added to foods and other products has skyrocketed. Chemicals are added to “enhance flavor”, make fruits and vegetables look fresh, extend the shelf life of packaged foods and for other invented reasons. A cornucopia of chemicals are also found in lotions and beauty products with the ostensible reason that these chemicals make beauty products feel, look, and smell nice. 

Along with this increase in heavily processed foods has come increased skepticism about the necessity of inserting chemical additives into everything we touch and taste. A significant and growing segment of the US population are beginning to examine the health consequences of ingesting and absorbing these chemical-laden products. 

This growing awareness about the adverse effects of ingesting and absorbing synthetic ingredients and the public’s understanding of the attendant health benefits of consuming products free from synthetic chemicals has prompted consumers to seek out organic ingredient-based items in their foods and skin lotions. 

More people are showing interest in knowing about the ingredients in their food and striving to ‘eat clean.’ This increased awareness is evidenced in the steady growth of the organic food industry and trends in the natural and organic cosmetic industry where demand is higher than ever.

This same level of concern has begun to seep into the public conscience regarding a certain medical product that has mostly avoided scrutiny – the vaccine.

Having been trained to accept that this product is a customary aspect of everyday life, most people haven’t given much thought to what’s inside the vaccine vials. Rarely will the vaccine ritual in the doctor’s office include a discussion about the ingredients which are about to be injected into the patient’s body. It’s highly likely the physicians and nurses themselves don’t know the ingredients of each vaccine.

So what’s in that vial? What’s coming through that needle?

A Partial List of Ingredients

Aluminum: Aluminum salts are used in some vaccine formulations as an adjuvant. An adjuvant is a substance added to vaccines to ostensibly enhance the immune response. Examples of aluminum salts in some vaccines are aluminum hydroxide, aluminum phosphate, alum (potassium aluminum sulfate) or mixed aluminum salts.

In a 2011 study Canadian scientists Professor Christopher Shaw and Dr. Lucija Tomljenovic stated the following:

“Aluminum is an experimentally demonstrated neurotoxin and the most commonly used vaccine adjuvant. In particular, aluminum in adjuvant form carries a risk for autoimmunity, long-term brain inflammation and associated neurological complications and may thus have profound and widespread adverse health consequences.”

Multiple studies have shown that the intramuscularly injected aluminum vaccine adjuvant is absorbed into the systemic circulation and travels to different sites in the body, such as the brain, joints, and the spleen, where it accumulates and is retained for years post-vaccination.

Mercury (thimerosal): Thimerosal is an ethyl mercury-based preservative used in vials that contain more than one dose of a vaccine (multi-dose vials) to prevent germs, bacteria and/or fungi from contaminating the vaccine. While in decline some flu vaccines and childhood vaccines in multi-dose vials still utilize thimerosal.

Mercury is known to be a genotoxic agent, even in minute concentrations, which can damage the genetic information within a cell causing mutations, which may lead to cancer.

A meta-analysis epidemiological study suggested thimerosal containing vaccines significantly increased the risk of neurodevelopmental disorders.

A 2011 study suggested there may be higher rates of blood and brain mercury levels in monkeys exposed to vaccines containing thimerosal.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the U.S. Public Health Service (1999) published a joint statement that urged “all government agencies to work rapidly toward reducing children’s exposure to mercury from all sources.”

Gelatin: Gelatin is used as a stabilizer in some vaccines licensed in the U.S. Stabilizers are added to vaccines to protect the active ingredients from degrading during manufacture, transport and storage. 

Gelatin is a protein obtained from cows or pigs and produced by the partial hydrolysis of collagen extracted by boiling animal parts such as cartilage, tendons, skin, bones and ligaments in water. Some people might have a severe allergic reaction to it.

Certain vaccine viruses are grown on gelatin derived from the ligaments of pigs fed heavy doses of glyphosate in their feed. Gelatin comes from collagen which has lots of glycine. 

Gelatin is one of the most commonly identified causes of allergic reactions to vaccines. 

A 1999 Japanese study showed most anaphylactic reactions and some urticarial reactions to gelatin-containing measles, mumps, and rubella monovalent vaccines were associated with gelatin allergy. Based on these findings Japan removed gelatin from vaccines in 2000.

Formaldehyde: Formaldehyde is used during the manufacture of some vaccines to inactivate viruses (like polio and hepatitis A viruses) or bacterial toxins (like diphtheria and tetanus toxins).

Formaldehyde is a human carcinogen based on evidence from cancer studies in humans and is listed as aknown to be human carcinogen in the National Toxicology Program’s (NTP) Twelfth Report on Carcinogens(2011).

Phenol/Phenoxyethanol: Phenoxyethanol is used in vaccines and biologics as a preservative to prevent microbial growth. 

A 2010 study, The relative toxicity of compounds used as preservatives in vaccines and biologics, assessed the relative cytotoxicity of the levels of the compounds commonly used as preservative in US licensed vaccines and found that for phenoxyethanol it was 4.6-fold, for phenol 12.2-fold and for Thimerosal >330-fold.

They concluded, “None of the compounds commonly used as preservatives in US licensed vaccine/biological preparations can be considered an ideal preservative, and their ability to fully comply with the requirements of the US Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) for preservatives is in doubt.”

Case reports (here, here and here) have suggested a link between phenoxyethanol and urticaria (hives), eczema and anaphylaxis.

Triton X-100: Triton X –100 or octylphenol ethoxylate (OPE) is a surfactant (reducing the surface tension of liquids) and stabilizer present in some influenza vaccines.

OPEs are endocrine disruptors and break down relatively easily into Octylphenols (OPs), which are more harmful. Endocrine disruptors can alter reproductive function, increase incidences of breast cancer, affect growth patterns and neurodevelopment in children and change immune function.

Squalene: Squalene is a naturally-occurring substance derived primarily from shark liver oil. When combined with other ingredients it becomes an adjuvant, which, like aluminum, is added to vaccines to elicit a stronger immune response from the body.

A 2000 study demonstrated that one intradermal injection of squalene adjuvant produced arthritis in rats.

Some believe that Gulf War Syndrome was linked to the presence of squalene in certain lots of the anthrax vaccine.

Beta-propiolactone: Beta-propiolactone (BPL) is a commonly used reagent for the inactivation of viruses for use in vaccine preparations. It has recently been used in the development of an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine preparation. 

Beta-propiolactone is a known carcinogen. Local sarcomas have been produced by subcutaneous injection of beta-propiolactone in rats. In the laboratory sarcomas and squamous papillomas in mice were produced  by a single subcutaneous injection of a minute amount of beta-propiolactone.

Polysorbate 80: Polysorbate 80 is present in some vaccines to stop the vaccine from separating into its component parts. In a PubMed study Polysorbate 80 was described as, “a ubiquitously used solubilizing agent that can cause severe nonimmunologic anaphylactoid reactions.”

In a pharmacological study on mice and rats Polysorbate 80 produced, “mild to moderate depression of the central nervous system with a marked reduction in locomotor activity and rectal temperature, exhibited ataxia and paralytic activity and potentiated the pentobarbital sleeping time.”

The results of that study concluded, “The results of the present study indicate that polysorbate 80 can neither be used as a solvent for isolated tissue experiments nor when considered for intravenous administration.”

Another study from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) suggested the dietary emulsifier polysorbate 80 may induce low-grade inflammation which may contribute to metabolic diseases and increase the potential for development in colon cancer.

Genetically modified yeast:  S. cerevisiae, a species of yeast, is used in vaccines in a variety of ways. It is used as an adjuvant and now through genetic manipulation it is being used to create artificial antibodies

Studies have suggested that genetically engineered yeast used in vaccines may be a contributing factor to autoimmune disorders.

Monosodium Glutamate (MSG): Monosodium Glutamate is used in small amounts in some vaccines to keep them stable and protect them from losing potency even when exposed to heat and light. 

In a study that looked at rat fertility and MSG consumption the authors found there was a negative impact on the rats’ fertility. 

In another study it was noted that chronic MSG intake caused kidney dysfunction and renal oxidative stress in the animal model.

Cells From Aborted Fetus: Fetal cell lines are used to grow viruses which are then collected from the cell cultures and processed further to produce the vaccine itself. 

The cell lines are propagated from lung tissue of mature aborted and used in the current manufacture of a number of routine vaccines, including measles, mumps and rubella (MMRV), diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis and polio, (DTaP-IPV), Hepatitis A and chickenpox.

Aborted fetal cells are listed on vaccine package inserts as “Human Fetal Diploid Cells.” Two aborted fetal cell lines, WI-38 and MRC-5, have been grown under laboratory conditions since the 1960s. Diploid cells (WI-38, MRC-5) vaccines have their origin in induced abortions.

The use of such cell lines can be profoundly objectionable to segments of the population who hold certain religious and/or philosophical beliefs.

The Italian vaccine research and advocacy organization Corvelva released a study in 2019 regarding the use of aborted fetal cell lines in vaccines.

In their summary they highlighted the following:

• The human genomic DNA contained in this vaccine is clearly, undoubtedly abnormal, presenting important inconsistencies with a typical human genome, that is, with that of a healthy individual. 
• 560 genes known to be associated with forms of cancer were tested and all underwent major modifications. 
• There are variations whose consequences are not even known, not yet appearing in the literature, but which still affect genes involved in the induction of human cancer.
• What is also clearly abnormal is the genome excess showing changes in the number of copies and structural variants.

Serum From Aborted Calf Fetus Blood: The purpose for the fetal bovine serum is to provide a nutrient broth for viruses to grow in cells.

Humane Research Australia describes the process of how the blood is collected, “The blood is collected after the slaughter of a mature female cow, the mother’s uterus containing the calf fetus is removed during the evisceration process and transferred to the blood collection room. A needle is then inserted between the fetus’s ribs directly into its heart and the blood is vacuumed into a sterile collection bag. 

Only fetuses over the age of three months are used otherwise the heart is considered too small to puncture. Once collected, the blood is allowed to clot at room temperature and the serum separated through a process known as refrigerated centrifugation.”

Beyond certain ethical considerations scientists have found that different bovine tissues contain different amounts of the BSE agent. 

Antibiotics: Antibiotics are used during the manufacturing process of some vaccines to stop bacteria growing and contaminating the vaccine. 

Antibiotics found in some vaccines include neomycin, streptomycin, polymyxin b, gentamicin and kanamycin. 

Polymyxin B comes with a warning that, “This medicine has not been fully studied in pregnant women. This medicine may cause kidney problems. This medicine may cause nerve problems”, as well as a laundry list of side effects.

Similar warnings are found with streptomycin, neomycin, gentamicin, and kanamycin. 

A study out of Finland raised concerns about excessive antibiotic use in early childhood which may lead to weight gain and altered gut bacteria.

What Else Could be in That Needle?

The list above is not a complete account of all the ingredients found in various vaccine cocktails. A comprehensive manufacturers’ catalog of ingredients can be found here, here and here.

The reality is that even a complete list issued by the producer doesn’t tell the entire story of what is found in vaccines.

Using an Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope equipped with an X-ray microprobe a group of Italian scientists examined 44 samples of 30 different vaccines and found dangerous contaminants, including metal toxicants in 43 of the 44 samples tested.

In the study, published in the International Journal of Vaccines and Vaccination, the researchers detected lead, chromium, nickel and other metals in every adjuvant sample tested.

Additional metal contaminants identified in 25 of the human vaccines included platinum, silver, bismuth, iron, and chromium. Foreign impurities such as zirconium, hafnium, strontium, tungsten, antimony, bismuth, cerium and were also detected in many of the vaccines tested.

The researchers commenting on their unexpected findings reported:

The quantity of foreign bodies detected and, in some cases, their unusual chemical compositions baffled us. In most circumstances, the combinations detected are very odd as they have no technical use, cannot be found in any material handbook and look like the result of the random formation occurring….In any case, whatever their origin, they should not be present in any injectable medicament, let alone in vaccines, more in particular those meant for infants. [Emphasis added]

When interviewed lead scientist Dr. Antonietta Gatti, of the National Council of Research of Italy and Scientific Director of Nanodiagnostics, explained that the discovery of vaccine impurities shocked the researchers:

Those particles should not have been there. We had never questioned the purity of vaccines before. In fact, for us the problem did not even exist. All injectable solutions had to be perfectly pure and that was an act of faith on which it seemed impossible to have doubts. For that reason, we repeated our analyses several times to be certain. In the end, we accepted the evidence.

Speculating on the potential consequences of these foreign impurities Dr. Gatti stated:

The particles, be they isolated, aggregated or clustered, are not supposed to be there… Our tissues perceive these foreign bodies as potential enemies…Unfortunately, though, the particles we found in vaccines, are not biodegradable. So, all the macrophages’ efforts will be useless, and depending on the exact chemicals involved, the particles may be especially toxic. Cytokines and pro-inflammatory substances in general are released and granulated tissue forms, enveloping the particles. This provokes inflammation which, in the long run, if locally persistent, is known to be a precursor to cancer.

Along with unlisted metal contaminants another unlisted contaminant was noted in some vaccines when a preliminary screening result from Microbe Inotech Laboratories Inc. detected glyphosate in the childhood vaccines they tested.

Merck’s MMR II vaccine had 2.671 parts per billion (ppb) of glyphosate, Sanofi Pasteur’s DTap Adacel vaccine had 0.123 ppb, Novartis’ Influenza Fluvirin had 0.331 ppb, Glaxo Smith Kline’s HepB Energix-B vaccine had 0.325 ppb, Merck’s Pneumococcal Vax Polyvalent Pneumovax 23  had 0.107 ppb of glyphosate.

These findings prompted Moms Across America to send a letter to the FDA, CDC, EPA,NIH and California Department of Health requesting that they test vaccines for glyphosate and recall contaminated vaccines.

MIT scientist Dr. Stephanie Seneff remarked on the route by which glyphosate could get into vaccines:

Collagen is a protein found in large amounts in the ligaments of cows, and these ligaments are often used in the production of gelatin. The MMR vaccine and flu vaccine viruses are grown as live cultures on gelatin sourced from cows fed high concentrations of glyphosate in their GMO Roundup­Ready feed.

What to Do?

Given the complex nature of the composition of vaccines and the paucity of information volunteered to the public on the manufacturing processes and ingredients that go into these products, how does one go about navigating this subject?

Conventional wisdom might suggest, “Ask your doctor.” But how independent are these doctors?

Where do you turn when you discover physicians and pediatricians, who have a legal duty to fully inform patients about vaccine risks and side effects, have ideological and material incentives to avoid presenting specific information that might cause a parent to question a vaccine?

What about educational materials and advice from the agencies tasked with protecting public health? Can we trust the FDA and the CDC to provide detailed and unbiased information when it is known that they get substantial amounts of money from vaccine manufacturers?

Informed consent is a principle in medical ethics and medical law that a patient must have sufficient information and understanding before making decisions about their medical care.This includes being given a thorough account of the risks and benefits of treatments, alternative treatments, the patient’s role in treatment, and their right to refuse treatment. 

Informed and individualized health care decisions about any product one puts into their or their children’s body starts with being fully informed with what is in that product.

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Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin says the aerial attacks on a purported weapons storage facility follows previous actions on October 27 in response to the escalation of attacks on United States bases by resistance forces in solidarity with the people of Gaza

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As the White House continues to suggest the United States government does not want to see the current war against the people of Palestine expand to a regional conflagration, for the second time in the last two weeks Pentagon fighter jets have struck areas which they claim are utilized by resistance forces in Syria.

More than ten thousand people have died at the hands of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) since the launching of Operation Al-Aqsa on October 7.

Resistance organizations and governments from the Islamic Republic of Iran and Yemen to Syria, Iraq and Lebanon have warned that they will respond to the ongoing genocidal siege of the Gaza Strip where 2.3 million people are experiencing daily bombardments. Although the administration of President Joe Biden now claims that it would like to see a “humanitarian pause” in the IDF bombing of Gaza, they have not relented from airlifting even more deadly weapons which are being used against the civilian population in Palestine.

Scenes emanating from Gaza and the West Bank where the Israeli security forces and settler militias are engaging in deadly attacks on Palestinians, have infuriated people throughout the region and the international community. From mass demonstrations to the withdrawal of diplomatic personnel as well as missile attacks on Israeli and U.S. bases have highlighted the increasing hostility towards the State of Israel and its backers in Washington. Despite the calls by millions throughout the world for an immediate ceasefire and the resumption of much-needed humanitarian assistance to the people in Gaza, the Biden administration and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have refused to agree to a cessation of the bombings and ground incursions.

In a report published by the Associated Press on November 8, it says of the current situation:

“The U.S. carried out an airstrike on a weapons warehouse in eastern Syria used by Iranian-backed militias, in retaliation for what has been a growing number of attacks on bases housing U.S. troops in the region for the past several weeks, the Pentagon said. In Wednesday’s strike, two U.S. F-15 fighter jets dropped multiple bombs on a weapons storage facility near Maysulun in Deir el-Zour that was known to be used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, U.S. officials said.”

By framing the response of people throughout the region to the siege on Gaza and increasingly the West Bank as being influenced by the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Washington and Tel Aviv are seeking to build a case among their constituencies for a direct military confrontation with Tehran. However, the Iranian government has repeatedly stated that the decision to launch Operation Al-Aqsa Storm was solely that of Hamas and other resistance movements in Gaza.

Statements of support have of course been forthcoming from Iran. Nonetheless, the U.S. and Israel, by falsely blaming Tehran for funding and coordinating the resistance efforts is a blatant attempt to deflect attention away from the roles of imperialism and Zionism in fomenting dissent among the people throughout the West Asia and North Africa region.

The U.S. utilizes the State of Israel as a bulwark against the liberation movements in Palestine and revolutionary forces in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and other states. For decades, Washington and Wall Street have funded and armed Tel Aviv, empowering the settler-colonial state to engage in the forced removal and repression of the Palestinian people while at the same time attempting to place a stranglehold on the development and sovereignty of states throughout the region.

Character of the Resistance Against Imperialism and Zionism

Since the advent of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Tehran has become a major regional force against the influence of the U.S. and the continued colonization of Palestine. Iran has built alliances with progressive forces in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

On a broader international level, the Iranian government has emerged as an important player in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and other multilateral organizations based in the Global South. A recent visit to the country by the South African Foreign Minister Dr. Naledi Pandor illustrates the growing partnership between Tehran and the African Union member-states.

Iran maintains good relations with the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, the major strategic adversaries to the U.S. and its hegemonic disposition. Over the last few years, Tehran has re-established diplomatic ties with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia depriving Washington of an avenue to destabilize West Asia through the pitting of various Muslim nations against each other.

In Yemen, a state ranked as the least developed in the region, the Ansur Allah movement has gained strength after emerging from years of a war against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) which was instigated by the U.S. Yemen beginning in 2015, was bombed by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and its allies on a daily basis resulting at one point in the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

An article published in Al Mayadeen on the outlook of Yemen said that:

“The spokesperson for the Ansar Allah movement, Mohammad Abdul Salam, stressed on Wednesday that the Yemeni armed forces will continue their operations to support Palestinians in Gaza until the Israeli aggression stops, confirming that a hostile U.S. spy plane was downed in the airspace of Yemeni territorial waters. Abdul Salam said on X that this operation reaffirms that the Yemeni Armed Forces are ready to confront any hostile actions violating the country’s national sovereignty. Moreover, the reports were confirmed by U.S. officials as cited by Fox News. ‘We can confirm that a U.S. military MQ-9 remotely piloted aircraft was shot down while in international airspace over international waters off the coast of Yemen,’ a Fox News correspondent reported, citing a senior U.S. defense official.”

Lebanon, which shares an extensive border with Occupied Palestine, has witnessed the birth and growth of the Hezbollah resistance movement. Hezbollah fought two wars with Tel Aviv in 2000 and 2006 in which the IDF was halted from making further advances into their territory.

Lebanon Hezbollah elite forces (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

Hezbollah has an estimated military force of 50,000 fighters with the potential of recruiting another 100,000 more. The movement has built up an arsenal of medium range missiles and drones capable of striking deep inside the Israeli occupied territories.

The Al Mayadeen news agency wrote recently about the organization saying:

“The Lebanese Resistance, Hezbollah, has proved its means to deliver on Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s capabilities to confront U.S. warships and any grave risks that could lead to any regional war, sources familiar with the group’s arsenal supply said. Last week, Sayyed Nasrallah warned Washington that his party has the necessary preparations to confront the U.S. vessels deployed in the region since the beginning of the Israeli aggression on Gaza.  Sources familiar with the party’s arsenal clarified that he was referring to Hezbollah’s anti-ship missile capabilities. Washington has stated that its deployment of naval forces in the Mediterranean, including two aircraft carriers and their support ships, is aimed at deterring ‘Iran to prevent the spread of conflicts involving groups it supports, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’. But Hezbollah perceives the presence of U.S. warships as a direct threat. During his speech, Sayyed Nasrallah said that the U.S. warships in the Mediterranean ‘do not scare us, and will not scare us,’ adding ‘We have prepared for the fleets with which you threaten us.’”

With specific reference to the growth of the resistance forces in Gaza over the last decade, the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, has developed its own cadre of fighters which employ anti-tank weapons and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) now being utilized to inflict damage on the IDF in its ground incursion. Other resistance groupings such as Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and its military wing, al-Quds Brigades, are also engaging the IDF in the liberation struggle to free their territory.

In another report from Al Mayadeen, the news agency emphasizes in relations to the ongoing resistance to the IDF:

“The spokesperson for Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades, Abu Obeida, announced that the Resistance has completely or partially destroyed 136 Israeli military vehicles in Gaza since the start of the ground invasion. In a televised statement on Wednesday, Abu Obeida confirmed that the occupation forces have suffered significant casualties during confrontations with the Resistance fighters across Gaza axes…. Meanwhile, the Resistance is inflicting heavy losses on the Israeli army despite having ‘no tanks, no aircraft, no armored vehicles, not even a mountain, hill, or difficult terrain’ to fight within. Right after Abu Obeida’s speech, al-Qassam released footage documenting losses incurred by the Israeli army in Gaza in a number of operations carried out by the Resistance fighters.”

Therefore, the Pentagon and IOF airstrikes in Syria are a response to the growing defiance against imperialism and Zionism in West Asia.  These organizations and movements are committed to the liberation of Palestine through the consolidation of an Axis of Resistance. The build up of naval warships and the potential of redeploying U.S. military forces in Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Yemen and possibly Iran will only result in the mounting of casualties and the further deterioration of the image and status of imperialism on a global scale.

The antiwar and peace movements in the western states must recognize the significance of the emerging political trends extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf states. Solidarity with the Palestinian struggle will require a deeper analysis of the political trajectory of the U.S. and its allies in order to build an alternative to the imperatives of imperialism.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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