Global Research

Targeting Palestinian Civilians

As of Saturday morning October 28,  Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza have killed more than 7,300 Palestinians including about 3,000 children according to Al Jazeera. 

Another 1,650 Palestinians are trapped under the demolished remains of their homes and buildings destroyed by Israeli bombing, with half of them being children. 

 

This is an Israeli war which specifically targets Palestinian civilians especially children as the IDF has bombed: 

•  schools,
• hospitals,
• mosques and churches,
• homes, residential areas, apartment buildings,
• bakeries, 
• communications infrastructure, phone and internet cut-off

Water, electricity and fuel have been cut off to Gaza and more than 200,000 housing units have been destroyed entirely or partly by Israel. 1.4 million Palestinians about half the population of Gaza, have been displaced.

The Netanyahu government has instructed Palestinians to leave Northern Gaza for the south but it continues to indiscriminately bomb both parts so that there is no safe place for the Gaza population.   

Israel escalated its war even more on Friday night with the imposition of a total communications blockade on Gaza making medical rescue efforts impossible. 

This is designed to provide cover for even more atrocities by Tel Aviv as its aerial bombing has intensified to an unprecedented degree and a ground operation by Israeli soldiers has commenced in Gaza. 

Pure Horror. “Ball of Fire”

The bombing is so extreme that it has turned Gaza into “a ball of fire” according to Al Jazeera. “Pure horror” is what Palestinians are living through says the NGO Save the Children.   

“Situation is now catastrophic” emphasizes Shehab Younis, a Palestinian photographer who managed to send a WhatsApp voice note message to the BBC’s correspondent Tom Bateman based in Jerusalem.  “We have lost contact with people who have been targeted or injured.”  According to Bateman, ambulances cannot be called for people injured in Israeli airstrikes due to the communications blackout. 

On Saturday morning, Shehab posted a video of a “badly wounded man being rushed out of a building.” An ambulance cannot be brought for him so he has to be put in a truck.

Shehab highlights the dire plight of Palestinian civilians by explaining that

“When there is bombardment of houses the situation has become really very hard because of the lack of communications, of internet services.  All this is negativity impacting a large number of medical facilities and public service buildings when there are bombings in their areas.”  

With almost half the casualties of Israel’s bombing being children, Palestinian parents are resorting to “desperate measures” (according to Al Jazeera) “so that children or at least their memories survive.”

Doctors at Al-Shifa hospital are writing the names of children killed on their bodies.  Sara Al-Khalidi, mother of four children, says “The world should know about these children who were murdered by Israel because they are not numbers but names, stories and dreams killed by the Israeli occupation in Gaza.”

As the Al Jazeera article by Lina Alsaafin and Ruwaida Amer explains

“writing the names of children on their arms or legs is an attempt to bring the families closure in case their children are killed so that they are able to bury them in marked graves as opposed to mass graves.” 

Israeli attacks on homes have torn apart bodies making identification impossible. 

According to the Gaza health ministry, 200 bodies are “mangled beyond recognition” and so “impossible to identify”. Gazan Mohammad Abu Odeh believes Israel deliberately targets children. Indeed this Israeli policy has been well-documented by Chris Hedges during his time as correspondent for the New York Times in Israel and Palestine. 

Abu Odeh says that

“parents should not have to live through the painful reality of trying to identify the bodies of their children which have been disfigured in the most gruesome way by Israeli missiles.”

He asks “Can anyone in the world bear the thought of what our children are going through?”  

Image Bombing of Church

On Thursday, October 26, six U.N. special rapporteurs accused Israel of committing crimes against humanity in Gaza.  “There are no justifications for these crimes and we are horrified by the lack of action by the international community” they wrote in a statement. 

The U.N. General Assembly has overwhemingly approved a non-binding resolution calling for a truce in the Gaza war with 120 countries backing this including France, Spain, Ireland and Belgium. This has marginalized the United States which opposed the resolution along with only 13 other countries including the U.K.

John Kirby, speaking for the Biden administration, stated that “Israel had every right and responsibility to defend itself and take the fight to Hamas and its leaders [who were] sheltering behind civilians in Gaza.”  

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has condemned Israel’s bombing and invasion of Gaza and said that Turkey is preparing to declare Israel “a war criminal.”

Erdogan has called the west “the main culprit” responsible for the deaths of civilians in Gaza.   

Unprecedented War Crimes. UN Turns a Blind Eye 

“Nakba is ongoing” in October 2023, and the United Nations Secretary General remains “Deaf Mute”. 

In his presentation, UNSG Antonio Gueterres  (October 24), casually dismisses the issue of war crimes:

“He does not condemn Tel Aviv for the massive killings of Palestinian civilians (in the carpet bombing of Gaza) which so far have resulted in more than 5,000 Palestinian deaths, nor does he raise the issue of a “cease fire”  (Global Research Report)

According to Guterres in a twisted statement:

“the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas.  And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.” 

Genocide: Violation of the  Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC)

The self-proclaimed “international community” as well as the Western media (with some exceptions) have failed to acknowledge that extensive war crimes are being committed in violation of the UN Charter, international law including the Four Basic Principles of  The Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC):

“….respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.” [Additional Protocol 1, Article 48]

Civilian population (children) and civilian objects (schools, hospitals, residential areas) are the deliberate object of Israeli attacks in blatant violation of the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC). 

The president of the I.C.C. Piotr Hofmanski does not have the foggiest understanding of Article 48. of the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC). Is this an issue of incompetence? Or has Piotr Hofmanski been co-opted into endorsing crimes against humanity? 

 

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The ICC Narrative: “Blaming Both Sides”

In 2021, the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor (OTP)  opened an investigation on the situation in Palestine:

This came in the wake of the OTP’s determination that  “war crimes have been or are being committed by Palestinian and Israeli actors in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip”. (emphasis added)

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First published on October 18, 2023

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As I am writing, a massive genocidal assault is underway on the stateless people of Gaza. Most of the 2.3 million people in Gaza were born into this open air prison where Israel is using its absolute control over what can be brought in and carried out to deny the inhabitants food, water supplies, electricity, and fuel.

The inmates of this tightly packed urban space are being bombed, killing tens of thousands with the promise of a ground invasion to eliminate those trapped inside the densely packed and foul urban strip of Mediterranean coast line.

The US Armed Forces are backing up the many violations of international law that are underway in an unfolding abomination that clearly belongs in the very Big Leagues of terrible war crimes. The attack is being pushed forward on the basis of what is clearly described below as a “pretext” for genocide.

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky cites numerous sources to explain that the government of Israel has conspired with Hamas, a Muslim entity created and funded by Israel to advance an imperial strategy of divide-and-conquer among the Palestinians.

That strategy is meant to divide the government of Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the area of the West Bank sometimes described as the Occupied Territories.

Chossudovsky sees the complicity between Hamas and the Netanyahu government as the basis of the engineered murder and torture of Israeli soldiers and civilians.

The aim of this diabolical scheme is to realize the agenda of clearing out the inhabitants of Gaza as well as bringing about a US war with Iran.

The creation of the basis for such a war has for decades been a primary geopolitical objective of Netanyahu.

Part of the provocation causing Hamas fighters to break through the Gaza Walls— a permitted piercing of what is perhaps the most closely monitored barrier in the world— was the purposeful defilement by Israeli settlers of the al Aqsa Mosque in the days leading up to October 7.

A subject of much speculation is what happened during the period of many hours when Israeli security forces were held back from protecting Israeli lives. Much remains unknown about who did what to whom, and why.

The purpose of false flags, which will be discussed below, is to create the basis for mistaken perceptions about what is real and what is contrived.

About half of the inhabitants of Gaza are children. Christian and Muslim families in Gaza have large numbers of children to compensate for their propensity to have short life spans. In a society of huge unemployment, few options are available to young people seeking a way forward.

When the activities of the local Hamas government are one of the only work options available in Gaza, it is hardly surprising that this organization attracts many who might picture themselves as freedom fighters. Such fighters might well lack a sense of fair play when confronting those that have jailed them and assailed them since their birth.

As I think about the media fabrications concerning 40 beheaded Israeli babies that never were, I can’t help imagining a huge bombed out area with dead bodies of hundreds of thousands of Gaza babies and children. For some reason I imagine these exterminated children nailed up on row after row of crucifixes.

I picture this obscenity with the knowledge that there happens to be huge reserves of natural gas off the shores of Gaza. To eliminate the people of Gaza would be to eliminate a competing claim to the huge treasure trove of potential energy.

Without Auschwitz, Gaza Would Not Exist in Its Present Form

We are living through such a tumultuous time in history that it is hard to find comparisons and metaphors that do justice to what is unfolding at this very moment. As fraught with global danger as is the Russia-NATO confrontation in Ukraine, the opening up on 7 October of a new frontiers of conflict in the Middle East, has immensely upped the ante.

The ruthless Israeli assault on the 2.3 million prison inmates of the GAZA concentration camp, along with the sudden expansion of potential theatres of global conflict, are putting the future prospects of all life on earth on the edge of an abyss.

There is no precedent for the kind of global catastrophe facing all of humanity right now. At this moment, however, the global ground zero of the catastrophe is GAZA.

What can we learn by comparing Auschwitz and GAZA?

I’ll start with a focus on the Auschwitz concentration camp in working my way towards what is going in GAZA. Many will be well aware that Auschwitz has been widely memorialized as the site of the most notorious system of mechanized mass murder ever mounted.

IG Auschwitz began in Poland as a wartime business enterprise bringing together slave labour with the commercial exploitation of cutting-edge edge technologies under the auspices of the National Socialist government led by Adolf Hitler. The aim of the enterprise was to transform coal into aviation fuel as well as into synthetic rubber.

IG Auschwitz was spawned by the corporate leviathan, IG Farben, a giant in the research and development of chemical and pharmaceutical products. This conglomerate, with extensions throughout much of the world, is often referred to as the corporate foundation supporting the political economy animating the Hitlerian Third Reich.

One of the main investors in both IG Farben and IG Auschwitz was Standard Oil of New Jersey, the core corporate asset of the Rockefeller family. The role of the Rockefeller conglomerate in the German oil and gas industry as well as in the pharmaceutical industry, was one part of a wide spectrum of collaboration between Germany and Wall Street.

For Wall Street brokers, one of the most lucrative stock plays they could recommend to their clients, was to invest in the build up of Germany’s military-industrial complex. The US investments in Germany involved companies like Ford, GM, IBM, ITT, Alcoa, Kodak and Coca-Cola. This list provides just a small sample of the extent of the collaboration.

The Gaza concentration camp can be seen as an outgrowth of the way the history of Auschwitz and related Hitlerian operations have been depicted, misrepresented, and covered up. At the end of WWII, Auschwitz became a symbol, central to establishing the basis for the creation of Israel.

The symbolism associated with Auschwitz, of course, strategically excluded in most cases, the important role of the Rockefeller financial empire in the genesis of the concentration camp.

As described in the Jewish Virtual Encyclopedia, Auschwitz was just the tip of the iceberg.[1]

The article on concentration camps in the Encyclopedia seemingly inflates astronomically the number of German camps incarcerating many categories of people considered unfit or deviant.

With Auschwitz along with its related operations placed in the forefront of publicity, a significant portion of public opinion was made to line up behind the position that Jews have been subjected to such horrors during the European reign of Hitlerian Germany, that a great act of atonement was called for.

The case was made that Jews the world over required a permanent place of sovereign refuge in a dangerous and unpredictable world. As this discourse developed, apparently no one thought to consult with the indigenous Arabs of Palestine to see what they thought of the proposition that they should be made to pay a very heavy price for the bad things said to have transpired in Europe.

The Zionist project of creating a Jewish State was advanced by the British imperial government in 1917. Foreign Affairs Minister Lord Balfour expressed in a declaration to Lionel Walter Rothschild his government’s favourable view of a “national home” for the Jewish people in Palestine.

In the secret Sykes-Pico Agreement between France and Great Britain in 1916, it was agreed that Britain would acquire control of Palestine. This arrangement was confirmed by the League of Nations when it was created in 1920.

Britain’s commitment to the Zionist Jews became lukewarm in the decades which followed as the demands and complexities of the Arab world grew. In 1947 both the United States and the Soviet Union got behind Resolution 181 of the General Assembly in the nascent United Nations. The aim of the Resolution was to create two new countries, one a Jewish state and the other, an Arab state.

The Arab state in Palestine has not been created until this day. Instead, the land for this polity has been illegally taken through military conquest and other means that have contributed to the hideous spectacle presently unfolding in Gaza.

Israel and Palestine After 1948 

Portions of the Semitic Arab population of Palestine attempted through military resistance in 1948 to prevent the apprehension of their lands by the military forces of the nascent Jewish state. The Israeli Defence Force was composed initially from the Jewish militias that had fought against the British in exercising their Mandate to govern Palestine.

This Jewish fighting contingent overpowered their Arab opponents causing sufficient horror to motivate about 800,000 Palestinians to flee their homes. This episode in Palestinian history is remember as the “Nakba.” Nakba means “the catastrophe” in Arabic.

The Nakba carries a meaning much like the term, “Shoah,” in Hebrew. The Shoah is the term used to describe the experience of European Jews during the period of Hitlerian rule in Europe.

The origins of GAZA in its present form go back to the Nakba of 1948. Moreover, the origins of the human-rights abomination presently underway go back to the creation and expansion of the Jewish state of Israel without the Arab state meant to accompany it as outlined in Resolution 181.

The creation of Israel as a land open to Jews from throughout the world have transformed a large part of the Palestinian population into stateless people. They have become trapped in this non-identity identity, with all the impediments to the exercise of civil liberties that this negative category of non-personhood creates.

After 1948 some Palestinian people were able to hold their their ground inside Israel. By and large they were extended the status of Israeli citizens. Their descendants make up about 20% of Israel’s population.

Many of those that underwent this transition were initially subjected to military oversight and various forms of discrimination. This discrimination involving, for instance, certain kinds of land transaction continues to this day.

Those who ended up in GAZA circa 1948 go back to those uprooted from their homes in the course of the Nakba. Those who ended up in the GAZA reserve could not or would not leave the region.

Between 1948 and 1967 the stateless inhabitants of Gaza were passed from the military governance of Egypt and the Arab League. This League created something called the All-Palestine Government.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Middle East also asserted jurisdiction, not only over Palestinians in GAZA but over Palestinians in refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and the West Bank.

The agency has tended to reinforce the stateless condition of millions of Palestinian refugees rather than ease people out of this category. For instance by creating a kind of passport for the travels of stateless people, their stateless status is, in a way, reinforced. Over seventy years after the Nakba, stateless status has now been passed along to three distinct generations of Palestinian people.

In 1967 in the Six Days War, the Israel Defence Force made military gains throughout the region that United Nations Resolution 181 had set aside for the Arab Nation including the Gaza strip.

Resolution 181 also stipulated that Jerusalem was to be an international zone where the UN would assure equality of treatment for Muslims, Jews, and Christians. That principle is presently being severely violated in the regular Jewish defilement of the al Aqsa mosque.

The Israeli takeover in 1967 of the territories to be relegated for the creation of a new Arab country, spelt trouble. This illegal military conquest was embraced by successive Israeli governments to fend off any sincere attempt to create a two-state solution.

The issue of the uprooted Palestinians and the growth of the Jewish settler state gathered much attention in the era of Yasser Arafat’s leadership of the Fatah and then of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Arafat’s approach was nationalist and secular.

On this basis, the PLO gathered international interest and political momentum especially in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Some of this attention was gained through spectacles of terror like the hijacking in 1969 by Leila Khalid of TWA Flight 840.

In 1987 a series of Intifadas beginning with the actions of disenfranchised Palestinians, often with nothing but stones for weapons, added spectacle to the drama culminating in the negotiation of the first Oslo accord in 1993.

This Oslo peace process was the closest that Israel-Palestinian conflict ever got to a two state solution. The effort was not successful. It was not grounded on a solid basis of realistic political and logistical compromise.

The deal led to the assassination in 1995 of Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin. He was murdered by a strident opponent of any kind of peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Since Rabin’s assassination, the spectrum of Israeli political culture has moved away from the realm of collectivist Kibbutzes and Labour Party dominance in the Israeli Knesset.

The twenty-first century has seen, instead, the politics of well armed Jewish settlers and settlements in the West Bank to the point that any territorial basis has been eliminated for the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.

In Gaza, the Israeli government asserted in 2007 absolute control of the movements of goods and people into and out of the concentration camp. Almost no exports can get out so the open air prison lacks the basis of a viable economy.

The Israeli government played a big role in founding and funding Hamas to steer Palestinians away from the secular politics of Yasser Arafat and away from solidarity with the Palestinian Authority.

Periodically Gaza was bombed in a process that came to be known within Israel as mowing the grass. Such an operation took place in 2008. It was entitled Cast Lead. In 2014, Operation Protective Edge was the means of mowing (diminishing) the human population of Gaza.

In 2018 attempts were made to conduct peaceful demonstrations aimed at dramatizing the demand by the people of Gaza to return to their homes inside Israel. This attempt to express peaceful opposition to Israeli policies was met with violent recriminations by the IDF.

Israel’s move rightward was amplified by the false flag event that took place on September 11 of 2001. In two previous Substack posts I introduced a large body of scholarship pointing to what really happened in Manhattan and the Pentagon on the fateful day.

The weight of evidence points to the fact that Israel First partisans, many of them deeply involved in the power dynamics of both the Jewish state and of the United States of America, were the primary planners, implementers and cover up agents of the 9/11 debacle.

Benjamin Netanyahu, who grew up largely in the United States, is a telling embodiment of Zio-American character of 9/11 false flag. In acting on the misrepresentation of this event, the US Armed Forces went to war with several Muslim-majority countries.

Zionist pre-eminence in the political culture of the United States was thus demonstrated, consolidated and extended to the outlandish extremes presently on display as the protagonists go in for the kill in Gaza.

Phillip Giraldi, a retired CIA official who describes himself as a “a former on-the-ground intelligence officer” has come to a startling conclusion. He alleges the current massacre of the stateless habitants of Gaza was mounted on the basis of fraud.

He sees the incursions of the Hamas fighters throughout Israel as being based on “something more like a false flag operation rather than a case of institutional failure on the part of the Israelis.”

Prof. Michel Michel Chossudovsky agrees with Giraldi. Chossudovsky argues that the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu not only let Hamas attack Israeli soldiers and civilians. He alleges that the Netanyahu government actually conspired to make the violence spree happen with the object of creating the pretext for a well-prepared genocidal assault to eliminate the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza.

Prof. Chossudovsky cited the following to illustrate Netanyahu’s complicity with Hamas. Netanyahu told the Likud Party Knesset members in 2019,

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas…..This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

 

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This article was originally published on the author’s Substack, Looking out at the World from Canada.

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

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

Note

[1] This article from the Jewish Virtual Encyclopedia is in my view a good example of the kind of fabricated and exaggerated nonsense produced by the Israel Lobbies. The effect is to undermine and disable serious discourse about what really happened in World War II. Tony Hall

“Most people are familiar with the names of the major concentration camps – Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, and Treblinka, for example – but few realize that these were not the only places where Jews and other prisoners were held by the Nazis. Each of the 23 main camps had subcamps, nearly 900 of them in total. These included camps with euphemistic names, such as “care facilities for foreign children,” where pregnant prisoners were sent for forced abortions.

The Nazis established about 110 camps starting in 1933 to imprison political opponents and other undesirables. The number expanded as the Third Reich expanded and the Germans began occupying parts of Europe. When the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum first began to document all of the camps, the belief was that the list would total approximately 7,000. However, researchers found that the Nazis actually established about 42,500 camps and ghettoes between 1933 and 1945. This figure includes 30,000 slave labor camps; 1,150 Jewish ghettoes, 980 concentration camps; 1,000 POW camps; 500 brothels filled with sex slaves; and thousands of other camps used for euthanizing the elderly and infirm; Germanizing prisoners or transporting victims to killing centers. Berlin alone had nearly 3,000 camps.

These camps were used for a range of purposes including: forced-labor camps, transit camps which served as temporary way stations, and extermination camps, built primarily or exclusively for mass murder. From its rise to power in 1933, the Nazi regime built a series of detention facilities to imprison and eliminate so-called “enemies of the state.” Most prisoners in the early concentration camps were German Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats, Roma (Gypsies), Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and persons accused of “asocial” or socially deviant behavior. These facilities were called “concentration camps” because those imprisoned there were physically “concentrated” in one location.

Millions of people were imprisoned, abused and systematically murdered in the various types of Nazi camps. Under SS management, the Germans and their collaborators murdered more than three million Jews in the killing centers alone. Only a small fraction of those imprisoned in Nazi camps survived. As many as 15-20 million people may have died in the various camps and ghettoes.”

Featured image is from Khamenei.ir

TFF Associate professor Farhang Jahanpour in Oxford writes:

“Anyone who wants to learn the truth about what is going on in Gaza and Israel should watch this short video which not only deals with the carnage in Gaza but also puts forward a solution to the conflict.

David Hearst is not an “anti-Semite”. As he says in this video, half of his family were killed in the Holocaust. He is as an eminent author and journalist dealing with the Middle East with an honourable record of fairness and impartiality. He is the Editor in Chief of Middle East Eye. We must listen to him.

The continuation of this long conflict will only cause more death and misery for Arabs and Israelis and more conflict in the Middle East and beyond.”

 

I fatti, e non le opinioni, dimostrano in modo sempre più evidente che l’attacco effettuato da Hamas il 7 ottobre in Israele ha fatto da detonatore a una operazione False Flag, simile a quella dell’attacco dell’11 Settembre 2001 negli Stati Uniti. Notevoli sono le analogie, che sintetizziamo in questa scheda a corredo della puntata di Grandangolo.

Nel 2001 militanti islamici di Al Qaeda riescono a far crollare le Torri Gemelle e a colpire il Pentagono senza che la CIA abbia avuto sentore della preparazione di un attacco di tale portata. Nel 2023 militanti islamici di Hamas riescono a penetrare in massa in Israele, occupando oltre 20 centri abitati, senza che il Mossad abbia avuto sentore della preparazione di un attacco di tale portata.

Nel 2001, le Torri Gemelle crollano come in una demolizione controllata per il calore sviluppato dall’impatto degli aerei, cosa tecnicamente impossibile anche perché il carburante brucia per la maggior parte all’esterno, e la Torre 7 crolla come in una demolizione controllata senza essere stata colpita da un aereo, mentre l’aereo che colpisce il Pentagono penetra interamente all’interno aprendo un foro circolare, cosa tecnicamente impossibile perché le ali avrebbero dovuto spezzarsi lasciando rottami all’esterno. Nel 2023 la barriera che circonda Gaza – dotata dei più sofisticati sensori, radar, telecamere e sistemi d’arma automatici collegati a un centro di comando – viene sfondata con bulldozer senza che scatti nessun allarme, cosa tecnicamente impossibile.

Nel 2001, mentre gli aerei dirottati sono in volo verso gli obiettivi, il sistema statunitense di difesa aerea, uno dei più efficienti del mondo, dà prova di catastrofica inefficienza facendo decollare i caccia intercettori in ritardo. Nel 2023, mentre i militanti di Hamas attaccano gli abitanti e i partecipanti al festival musicale, le forze speciali israeliane, tra le più efficienti del mondo, danno prova di catastrofica inefficienza intervenendo in ritardo.

Nel 2001 l’attacco dell’11 settembre e le vittime che esso provoca servono a giustificare l’apertura di un vasto fronte di guerra con l’invasione statunitense dell’Afghanistan e quindi dell’Iraq, in regioni di primaria importanza strategica nei confronti di Russia e Cina. Nel 2023 l’attacco del 7 ottobre e le vittime che esso provoca servono a giustificare l’apertura di un vasto fronte di guerra nella regione strategica del Medioriente con il duplice obiettivo di cancellare i Territori Palestinesi, rendendo impossibile la creazione di uno Stato Palestinese, e di innescare, mirando all’Iran, una reazione a catena di conflitti in un Medioriente dove Stati Uniti, Israele e le potenze europee stanno perdendo terreno, come dimostra il prossimo ingresso di Iran e Arabia Saudita nei Brics insieme a Russia e Cina.

Manlio Dinucci

VIDEO (italiano):

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Facts, not opinion, are increasingly showing that the attack carried out by Hamas on Oct. 7 in Israel was the detonator for an Operation False Flag, similar to the Sept. 11, 2001 attack in the United States.

Remarkable are the similarities, which we summarize in this fact sheet accompanying the Grand Angle episode.

Factual Comparisons 

In 2001, Islamic militants from Al Qaeda manage to bring down the Twin Towers and strike the Pentagon without the CIA having any inkling that an attack of such magnitude was being prepared.

In 2023, Islamic Hamas militants managed to penetrate Israel en masse, occupying over 20 population centers, without the Mossad having had any inkling of the preparation of an attack of such magnitude.

In 2001, the Twin Towers collapse as in a controlled demolition due to the heat developed by the impact of the planes, which is also technically impossible because the fuel burns mostly outside, and Tower 7 collapses as in a controlled demolition without being hit by a plane, while the plane hitting the Pentagon penetrates entirely inside by opening a circular hole, which is also technically impossible because the wings should have broken off leaving wreckage outside.

In 2023, the barrier surrounding Gaza – equipped with the most sophisticated sensors, radar, cameras and automatic weapons systems linked to a command center – is bulldozed through without triggering any alarms, which is technically impossible.

In 2001, while the hijacked planes are airborne toward their targets, the U.S. air defense system, one of the most efficient in the world, demonstrates catastrophic inefficiency by having interceptor fighters take off late. In 2023, as Hamas militants attack residents and music festival attendees, Israeli special forces, among the most efficient in the world, demonstrate catastrophic inefficiency by intervening late.

In 2001, the 9/11 attack and the casualties it causes serve to justify the opening of a vast war front with the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and then Iraq, in regions of primary strategic importance to Russia and China.

In 2023, the Oct. 7 attack and the casualties it causes serve to justify the opening of a vast war front in the strategic region of the Middle East with the dual objectives of wiping out the Palestinian Territories, making the creation of a Palestinian state impossible, and of triggering, by targeting Iran, a chain reaction of conflicts in a Middle East where the United States, Israel, and European powers are losing ground, as evidenced by the forthcoming entry of Iran and Saudi Arabia in the Brics along with Russia and China.

Relevant Facts  

The bombs Israel is using on Gaza were supplied by the United States: there are about 10 thousand powerful small-diameter bombs guided on targets via the U.S. GPS system.

The “large-scale” air strikes Israel is carrying out on Gaza as it prepares for a ground invasion have so far resulted in over 7 thousand deaths, half of them children, and over 15 thousand wounded. Six hospitals have been closed due to lack of fuel.

The U.N. Secretary General reports that more than 35 U.N. personnel have been killed by Israeli shelling in Gaza.

Rabbis and other Jews demonstrated with Palestinians-demanding that they have their own state-in Jerusalem, where they were arrested, in Washington, New York, London and other cities.

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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.

This article was originally published in 2016.

Is this the model of killing innocent civilians now being applied against the people of Palestine:

Not only is Israel demanding Guterres’s resignation but its officials have “proudly compared”  its killing of Palestinian civilians to the Allied bombing of the German cities of Dresden and Hamburg at the end of World War II, which quite deliberately targeted civilians.

 

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On the night of February 13-14, 1945, the British Royal Air Force (RAF) bomber command carried out two devastating attacks on the German city of Dresden. At the time, Dresden’s pre-war population of 640,000 had been swelled by the presence of an estimated 100,000-200,000 refugees. Seven hundred and twenty-two aircraft dropped 1,478 tons of high explosives and 1,181 tons of incendiaries on the city. The resulting firestorm destroyed an area of 13 square miles, including the historic Altstadt Museum. Shortly after noon on February 14, a fleet of 316 U.S. bombers made a third attack, dropping a further 488 tons of high explosives and 294 tons of incendiaries. On February 15, two hundred and eleven U.S. bombers made a fourth attack, dropping 466 tons of high explosives.

The fire-bombing of Dresden was considered to be a gratuitous crime on the part of the British which caused up to 300,000 deaths.[1] Dresden was almost completely defenseless against the Anglo-American terror-attacks, which allowed the bombers to descend to lower levels and to maintain a steady height and heading, making their bombs even more effective.

Dresden had not previously been bombed during the war. The city was not considered a likely target because it was not a major contributor to the Nazi war economy and no key oil refineries or large armaments plants were located there. In the British Ministry of Economic Warfare’s 1943 “Bomber’s Baedeker,” Dresden was ranked 20th of 100 German towns in its importance to the German war effort. In fact, Dresden was best known worldwide as a site of architectural treasures and was sometimes referred to as the “German Florence.” Despite this, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered the Dresden raids based on a plan submitted in August 1944 by Sir Charles Portal, Britain’s Chief of the Air Staff.[2]

Codenamed “Operation Thunderclap,” the plan involved concentrating an entire attack on a single big town other than Berlin to try to inflict a single major blow on Germany using all available power. Portal opted for the “area bombing” of a city because cities afforded a big target. In January 1945, Churchill approved Portal’s plan, specifically in regards to large cities in eastern Germany, and demanded immediate action. The next day Churchill was told that Dresden, Berlin, and two other cities would be attacked as soon as conditions allowed.

Incendiaries, which are explicitly designed to start fires, were heavily used in the first three Dresden raids. The deadliness of the resulting firestorm was such that even people who took shelter from bombs underground in cellars or subways were either roasted to death by the heat or suffocated because the firestorm sucked the oxygen out of the air. This heavy use of incendiaries underlines once again that the Dresden attacks aimed to terrorize and kill people.[3] Confirming this further is the fact that Churchill specifically ordered that the terror-bombings be focused on Dresden’s working class areas. Or, even more blatantly, in the words of Arthur Harris, the commander of the RAF’s Bomber Command: “You destroy a factory and they rebuild it. In six weeks they are in operation again. I kill all their workmen and it takes twenty-one years to provide new ones.”[4]

The bombing of Dresden was an Anglo-American war crime never brought to trial.[5] A war crime, by definition, is any crime that transgresses the laws of war, and the bombing of civilians has long been banned by international law. The 1923 Hague Rules of Aerial Warfare declared: “Aerial bombardment for the purpose of terrorizing the citizen population, of destroying or damaging private property not of military character, or of injuring non-combatants is prohibited.” Even the Hitler-loving British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declared in 1938: “It is against international law to bomb civilians as such.” In the same year, the League of Nations Assembly unanimously accepted similar principles.[6]

Why was Dresden selected for the February 1945 bombings? Dresden was directly in the path of the advancing Soviet Army, who occupied the city shortly after the raids on their way to Berlin (Dresden was soon to be part of the post-war Soviet Zone). The idea was that the death and devastation caused by the bombing would be seen and reported back to Stalin, showing him the destructive capabilities of the U.S. and British bomber forces. With the end of the war only three months away, the aim of the Dresden raids was to try to intimidate Stalin and the Soviet Union so they would not stand up to the Anglo-American imperialists after the war.

About three weeks after Dresden, another similarly coded message was sent to Stalin and the Soviet Union via the U.S. imperialists’ firebombing of Tokyo, which incinerated between 80,000 and 200,000 people. In August 1945, the U.S. imperialists sent two new messages, targeting Hiroshima and Nagasaki to showcase the destructive force of their new atomic bomb. Just as Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki had little or nothing to do with the war against the Japanese imperialists, Dresden had little or nothing to do with the war against the Nazis. But it had much, if not everything, to do with a new conflict in which the Nazis and the Japanese imperialists would be Anglo-American allies and the enemy would be the Soviet Union. The Cold War was born amid the ashes of the hundreds of thousands of non-combatants who were murdered in the deadly infernos of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Notes

1. In 2004 a commission of thirteen German historians mysteriously reduced this figure to the current official estimate of 25,000 deaths. This deliberate reduction to downplay the number of deaths parallels the imperialist campaign to reduce the number of deaths attributed to the Nazis, e.g., the number of official deaths at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was recently reduced from the immediate post-war figure of 4 million, agreed upon at the Nuremberg Trials, to 1.4 million.
2. The most ludicrous theory of the origin of the Dresden raids is that Winston Churchill, the virulent anti-communist who initiated the 21-country invasion of the fledgling Soviet Union in 1918 and who made the Goebbels-inspired Iron Curtain speech in 1946 that officially opened the Cold War, carried out the Dresden raids because Stalin ordered him to! Of course, no documentation of this so-called order exists.
3. Andrew Chandler, “The Church of England and the Obliteration Bombing of Germany in the Second World War.” English Historical Review, 108 (1993), pp. 920-46 (p. 931).
4. Similarly, the U.S. imperialists used white phosphorus and napalm weapons to terrorize and kill civilians during the Korean and Viet Nam wars.
5. See, for example, Donald Bloxham, “Dresden as a War Crime,” in Paul Addison & Jeremy Crang (eds.), Firestorm: The Bombing of Dresden, 1945. Chicago: Ivan Dee (2006).
6. Adam Roberts & Richard Guelff, Documents on the Laws of War. Third Edition. Oxford University Press (2000), p. 22; Geoffrey Best, War and Law Since 1945. Oxford University Press (1997), p. 200.

 

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Introduction

An October 18 article by Nick Allen in London’s Daily Mail confirms that the U.S. had  “foreknowledge” of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack directed against Israeli civilians.

The report acknowledges that:

“Within hours of the horrific onslaught on Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7 the U.S. began moving warships, jets and special forces to the region.”

Known to military analysts, such a deployment requires considerable advanced preparation and cannot be improvised  “within hours.” 

This fits in with the scenario that the Hamas attack initiated on October 7, 2023 was a “false flag” operation on behalf of Israel’s military and intelligence apparatus (which also coordinates such actions with the U.S.). 

Amply documented, Hamas was created by Israel in 1987 and funded by hundreds of millions of dollars via Qatar, a transfer facilitated by Israel. 

“The Hamas Partnership” is confirmed by Netanyahu 

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he [Netanyahu] told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” (Haaretz, October 9, 2023, emphasis added)

“Transferring Money to Hamas” on behalf of Netanyahu is confirmed by a Times of Israel October 8, 2023 Report: 

“Hamas was treated as a partner to the detriment of the Palestinian Authority to prevent Abbas from moving towards creating a Palestinian State. Hamas was promoted from a terrorist group to an organization with which Israel conducted negotiations through Egypt, and which was allowed to receive suitcases containing millions of dollars from Qatar through the Gaza crossings.” (emphasis added)

These facts have been detailed in articles by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, Dr. Philip Giraldi (former intelligence officer for the CIA) and veteran reporter Seymour Hersh:

An arrangement was made with Qatar, which began sending hundreds of millions of dollars to the Hamas leadership with Israeli approval. The insider told me that “Bibi was convinced that he would have more control over Hamas with the Qatari money” —let them occasionally fire rockets into southern Israel and have access to jobs inside Israel—than he would with the Palestinian Authority. He took that risk. (Seymour Hersh)

The Daily Mail article is titled:

“How the U.S. is ramping up firepower in the Middle East to deter Iran from starting WW III – with an armada of 13 warships, over 100 fighter jets, cruise missiles, spy planes and 2,000 amphibious special forces massing in the region.” 

The first sentence of the report reads:

“The United States is amassing a war machine in the Middle East in a clear message to Iran to stay on the sidelines as Israel prepares to launch a ground invasion into Gaza to destroy the terror group Hamas.” (emphasis added)

So the very quick, dangerous and aggressive massive deployment of U.S. forces to the Israel area is presented in the Daily Mail article as a defensive measure aimed at  deterring Iran.

Even for the obedient pro-imperialist Western mainstream media, this is an incredible stretch.

However, if one reads the body of the article carefully it becomes clear that it is the U.S. that is starting World War III not Iran.  The content of the article contradicts the title which happens sometimes in the mainstream press given its well-known editorial restrictions on telling the truth.

Massive U.S. Military Deployment 

The article details massive military escalation by the U.S. that is so extremely provocative as to almost guarantee World War III.

In contrast, the article fails to point out even one single deployment of troops or ships by Iran aimed at Israel or the U.S. after October 7.

The Daily Mail describes Washington’s war machine build-up and deployment as:

“Two aircraft carriers including the world’s largest – the USS Gerald R. Ford – have been sent to the eastern Mediterranean, along with scores of planes that could carry out air strikes.

The carrier, which has a nuclear reactor, is replete with an arsenal of weapons like Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles and the Mk-15 Phalanx Close-In Weapon System, which is used to fire armor piercing bullets.

Many more aircraft, including F-15 and F-16 fighter jet squadrons, have been dispatched to US military bases in the region, doubling the number available in the Persian Gulf.

Around 2,000 U.S. Marines trained in special operations and amphibious landings have also been redirected from an exercise in Kuwait, and are now on board two warships somewhere off the coast of Bahrain. 

The Pentagon is also preparing an additional 2,000 Army and Air Force personnel as a potential rapid response force. 

The main aim of the U.S. military ramp up is to deter Iran and its proxies from making any aggressive move.

A second aircraft carrier, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, will arrive in the eastern Mediterranean in about a week, also accompanied by four other warships.

The carrier, also known as the ‘Ike,’ has 5,000 sailors and can bring up to nine squadrons of aircraft including fighter jets and helicopters.

Even before the new influx of firepower the U.S. had over 30,000 troops in the region. That includes 13,000 in Qatar, 7,000 in Bahrain, at least 3,000 each in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait, 2,500 in Iraq, and 2,500 in Turkey.

Incirlik Air Base in Turkey is also home to 50 American B61 nuclear bombs.

Additonally, around 2,000 U.S Marines with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit had just arrived in Kuwait for an exercise when the Hamas attack in Israel happened.” (Daily Mail, emphasis added)

Copyright Daily Mail: The U.S. is ramping up its forces in the Middle East 

Who is Planning to Start World War III: America or Iran? 

So which country is going to start World War III, the U.S. that is sending not one but two aircraft carriers bristling with attack aircraft and soldiers to the Israel area or Iran that is sending nothing significant to the same region presently?

Obviously, the alarming U.S. military escalation is aimed at starting a war not preventing one and the Orwellian language of the Daily Mail article fits in well with the standard CIA technique of blaming Washington’s enemies for “what it wants to do itself’.

Asad Ismi is an award-winning writer on international politics and an expert on U.S. imperialism. He has written on the politics of 70 countries including nine in the Middle East.

He is a Research Associate  of the Centre for Research on Globalization CRG). For his publications and documentaries visit www.asadismi.info.  

***

Below in annex are selected excerpts and link to the Daily Mail article

---

 

“How the U.S. is Ramping up Firepower in the Middle East

To Deter Iran from Starting WWIII”

By Nick Allen

Daily Mail, 

October 18, 2023

Selected Excerpt

Within hours of the horrific onslaught on Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7 the U.S. began moving warships, jets and special forces to the region.

Two aircraft carriers including the world’s largest – the USS Gerald R. Ford – have been sent to the eastern Mediterranean, along with scores of planes that could carry out air strikes.

…

The USS Gerald R. Ford had just completed an exercise with the Italian Navy before being ordered on its latest mission.

It has a crew of 5,000 and carries 90 warplanes – including F-18 Super Hornet jets, F-35 strike fighters and A-10 tank busters.

The carrier, which has a nuclear reactor, is replete with an arsenal of weapons like Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles and the Mk-15 Phalanx Close-In Weapon System, which is used to fire armor piercing bullets.

U.S. Marines are on the move in the Middle East after cutting short an exercise in Kuwait (Photo: 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit)

…

Much of the U.S. operation would be expected to be coordinated from the Forward HQ of U.S. Central Command at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest U.S. base in the Middle East. 

A spokesman told the Military Times: ‘Should they be ordered, they could participate in some type of operation in support of Israel.’

Meanwhile, a small team of special operations forces has also been sent to Israel to help recover hostages, including Americans, being held by Hamas in Gaza. 

…

‘No decisions have been made to deploy any forces at this time. The Defense Secretary will continue to assess our force posture and remain in close contact with allies and partners.’

To Read Complete Daily Mail article, click here

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First published by Global Research on December 5, 2021

I compiled all the evidence we have into this article that prove Graphene Oxide, Graphene Hydroxide and other Graphene variants are in fact being injected into people by governments and Big Pharma.

This evidence was discovered and proven numerous times already by independent research teams, scientists, Biotech whistleblowers and the few ethical Journalists remaining.

There’s a concerted effort by the pharmaceutical cartel funded “fact checkers,” Big Tech platforms and mainstream media, to hide the evidence and slander the people bringing this to light.

Once you go over the evidence provided here, you must take action for the safety of you and your families.

Serve all war criminals participating in this COVID death jab program with a Notice of Liability for the murders they are committing.

This is definitive action that any person can take, worldwide.

The notices are already drafted by legal teams so why not use them and let our enemies be on the defensive. The criminals will be reminded of the Nuremberg trials, and informed that they will be brought to justice. They need to cease and desist from acting knowingly and willfully in mandating “vaccine” death jabs and enforcing them. The evidence to the danger is clear and deaths have been proven. Anyone administering or mandating these “vaccine” kill shots are doing so without Informed Consent.

Compilation of Evidence

On November 2nd, 2021 a prominent Professor at the University of Almeria, Dr. Pablo Campra, revealed his detection of Graphene in multiple Covid-19 “vaccine” vials, using Micro-Raman Spectroscopy. The Dr. Campra’s University of Almeria report demonstrated the detection of Graphene and Graphene Oxide in 8 samples from various “vaccine” manufacturers.

In response, (the late) Dr. Andreas Noack released a scathing video commenting on Dr. Campra’s report. Dr. Noack is a chemist and the world’s leading expert in activated carbon engineering and GRAPHENE. Dr. Noack did his PhD doctoral thesis on how to turn Graphene Oxide into Graphene Hydroxide.

The video is of crucial importance. Dr. Noack said that two of the frequency bands that Dr. Campra detected were of Graphene Hydroxide. Graphene Hydroxide (GHO) is a mono-layer activated carbon, 50nm long and 0.1nm thick (an atom layer thick). Thus, the injections contain nano-razorblades of exceptional stability, which are non-biodegrable (a fact that every chemist knows).

In effect, these nano-razorblades cut up and destroy the heart, brain and cardiovascular system. The epithelial cells become rough so things stick to them. He says that toxicologists cannot find them in a petri dish by normal methods as they do not move and they don’t expect to discover nano-sized razor blades. Moreover, any doctor who injects them with knowledge of this issue, is a murderer.

Graphene Hydroxide is a new material and toxicologists aren’t aware of it yet. This is why people are dropping dead from these lethal shots, especially athletes, Dr. Noack explains. This is a “highly intelligent poison”.

What’s even more horrifying is that if you perform an autopsy you will not find anything. This stealth weapon is even untraceable after death. The Graphene Hydroxide nano-razerblades cause people to bleed to death internally.

“Even if people don’t drop dead immediately, it cuts up the blood vessels little by little… I can say as a chemist that we are absolutely certain that the Graphene Hydroxide is in there… as a chemist, if you inject this into the blood, you know you are a murderer.”

Dr. Noack was killed just days after blowing the whistle and releasing this video.

His wife made an announcement that it was a brutal sneak attack.

She pleads with us to have the courage to BELIEVE and to ACT NOW to expose this! She said her husband is a kind soul and he did this for us, he died for all of us.

There are some rumors being spread to distract and confuse you regarding his suspected murder and the mainstream media is ever silent but here is some additional evidence that he was killed. Dr. Noack’s wife just released an update saying she believes he was attacked by a radiation beam.

Send out this video and my article to all doctors, experts and world leaders now.

Governments are already injecting 5-year-olds with Pharma’s kill shots containing Graphene Hydroxide razors. This technology will cut up their insides and delivery a gruesome, painful death to our kids!

Last year the Austrian police busted down Dr. Noack’s door and arrested him in an attempt to stop him from speaking out. The incident was recorded on camera. He was clearly a target.

Dr Pablo Campra was the first to deduce that the Pfizer serum contains Graphene Oxide flakes using Transmission Electron Microscopy in July, 2021. His techniques of detection also included infrared spectroscopy combined with optical microscopy.

Prior to Dr. Campra’s discovery, another Spanish research team named La Quinta Columna, released their discovery in June 2021, that the COVID serums in all their variants, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, Sinovac, Janssen, Johnson & Johnson, etc., contain a considerable dose of Graphene Oxide Nanoparticles, reported by Global Research.

Dr. Ricardo Delgado a biostatistician and founder of La Quinta Columna, discovered that 99% of the Pfizer contents are Graphene Oxide. His team was smeared by fact checkers who provided no evidence of their libelous claims.

In my article entitled, “Graphene Oxide The Vector For Covid-19 Democide,” I explain the chemical process involved in reducing Graphene Oxide to a clear liquid serum by reducing its oxygen content. By doing so, Reduced Graphene Oxide (RGO) is more lethal. So yes, it’s scientifically possible that COVID serums can be 99% Graphene Oxide.

Dr. Delgado’s team released a scientific report of their optical and electron microscopy analysis showing Graphene Oxide was found in four “Covid-19 Vaccines”. Orwell City broke the news in English. Then La Quinta Columna requested an Interim Report from the University of Almeria entitled, “DETECTION OF GRAPHENE IN AQUEOUS SUSPENSION SAMPLE”.

La Quinta Columna’s report was originally published in Spanish on June 28, 2021.

“The problem is that this is not a vaccine, this is a dose of graphene to a person.”– Dr. Ricardo Delgado

Whitney Webb attempted to refute La Quinta Columna and the University of Almeria’s discovery, where she directly questioned Dr. Ricardo Delgado’s credibility without anything substantial. Investigative Journalist Ramola D. and myself debunked Whitney Webb.

On August 19, another research team going by the name “The Scientist Club” found Graphene in 7 prominent Biotech serums using Optical Microscope, Dark-Field Microscope, UV absorbance and fluorescence spectroscope, Scanning Electron Microscopes, Transmission Electron Microscope, Energy Dispersive Spectroscope, X-ray Diffractometer, and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance instruments to verify the serums morphologies and contents. For the high-technology measurements and the care of the investigation, all the controls were activated and reference measurements adopted in order to obtain validated results.

For obvious reasons, The Scientist Club kept their identity secret. They analyzed Pfizer, Moderna, Janssen and AstraZeneca and found a Carbon-based substrate with nanoparticles embedded, Graphene sheets and Graphene Oxide.

Undeclared metal-containing components were found by scientists in Japan, which caused the Japanese Government to halt the use of Moderna’s serums. The Japanese Ministry reported that the particles found reacted to magnets and was therefore suspected to be a metal contaminant. Graphene, Graphene Oxide (GO) and Reduced Graphene Oxide (RDO) all have paramagnetic properties.

A September, a German team revealed damning evidence of “vaccine” contaminants and autopsies linking “vaccines” to deaths.

Dr. T. made a call out to all medical professionals in this urgent announcement asking medical professionals to report magnetic phenomenon because she believes that Graphene Oxide flakes are responsible for the “vaccine”-induced magnetism that we have witnessed internationally. Dr. Andrew Goldsworthy (retired) of Imperial College London has explained the possible mechanism here.

Pfizer Whistleblower Karen Kingston revealed in August, how Graphene Oxide was hidden under a trade secret and that’s why it wasn’t listed in the patents. However Kingston explains, it is in fact the key ingredient in the Covid-19 serums.

Another Chief Scientist for Pfizer blew the whistle in November, leaking internal emails on Stew Peter’s Show from top Pfizer executives and scientists discussing how they were going to hide from the public that Graphene Oxide is in their serums.

In April 2021, Health Canada recalled a million and a half KN95 face masks containing Graphene. Children had been forced to wear these masks in Canadian schools. Health Canada compared wearing them to breathing in asbestos all day long. These poisonous masks came from China’s Shandong Shengquan New Materials Co. Ltd.

Dr. Robert Young used Scanning & Transmission Electron Microscopy which revealed Graphene Oxide in four Covid-19 trade marked serums, September 11, 2021.

Dr. Franc Zalewski also found Graphene Oxide in the Pfizer serum.

Dr. Antonietta Gatti did a recent video interview on the toxicity of Graphene Oxide Nanometallic particulates to cells. She has found them in the “vaccines”, PCR kits and face masks.

In her groundbreaking 2017 report with Dr. Stefano Montanari, Dr. Antoinetta Gatti explains Nanoparticles inside cells destroy the innate defense mechanism of cells and cause blood clots, deadly inflammation, thrombi, and multi-organ failure posed by nanometallic particulates, which are non-biodegradable and indeed biopersistent. They can both enter cells, harm DNA, and be carried by the blood to bind with organic matter and coagulate in organs.

A Slovakian team analyzed PCR kit nasal swabs using SD Biosensor, Abbott and Nadal in a hospital laboratory from Bratislava. The team found that when DARPA’s Graphene Oxide Hydrogels come in contact with organic fluid (e.g., saliva) within a few minutes they begin to form rectangular crystal structures. These gradually grow in a fractal manner. A German research team also filmed the crystalline growth of the GO Hydrogels.

Science Papers and Patents

Several scientific papers show that Graphene Oxide is being used in gene therapy as a scaffold or platform for the delivery of mRNA into cells by way of its high electrical conductivity and ability to permeate cell membranes. The crystalline networks form in bodily fluid and replicate after injection and in the serum itself, as shown in this video of the Pfizer serum. It sure does look like nano high frequency antennas.

Scientists have developed a novel way of making carbon nanotubes at the NanoScience Center of the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and at Harvard University, in the US.

Graphene was part of the first human genome project initiated in 2001. mRNA gene therapy Nanotech using Graphene Oxide as a vector, runs on CRISPR technology and it was developed by Pfizer,Moderna, and BioNTech, as a treatment for sick cancer patients. Due to its cytotoxicity (cell death) in healthy cells and the fact that all the animals died in the animal trials, Graphene Oxide Nanotechnology was never approved for use on Humans! Why is this technology now being used on healthy people and on children, who are at no risk of COVID?

It should be quite clear to everyone by now that the pharmaceutical cartel is using this technology worldwide, in illegal Human trials and trying to mandate their poisonous “vaccines” on everyone, with impunity.

Nanografi is manufacturing Graphene Oxide Nanotubes and intranasal vaccines for Covid-19 drug delivery.

Scientists have already studied the Nose-to-Brain Translocation and Cerebral Biodegradation by intra-nasal spray, using thin Graphene Oxide Nanosheets. Make no mistake about it, nasal spray “vaccines” contain Graphene Oxide Nanoparticles.

If you’re still not convinced, here’s a main stream media article trying to pitch Graphene Oxide “flu vaccine” nasal spray as some kind of protective intervention.

Dr. Chunhong Dong is lead author of a study from the Institute for Biomedical Sciences in China where he boasts,

“This study gives new insights into developing high performance intranasal vaccine systems with two-dimensional sheet-like nanoparticles.”

Graphene Oxide has been carefully engineered as a “vaccine adjuvant for immunotherapy” and Polyethylene glycol (PEG), another highly toxic poison, is used as coating polymers. PEGs are widely used as additives in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and food. But PEGs come with potential life-threatening hypersensitivity reactions including anaphylaxis.

This is not a big name brand but they do mention “Carbon graphene loaded nano particles and micro-particles” in their Sars-Cov2 patent invention.

Here’s a list of peer reviewed medical studies on Graphene Oxide Toxicity and how it coagulates the blood. How much more evidence do you need to BELIEVE?

Dr. Armin Koroknay, Research director of Private Consultants and Research Institute of Zürich, analyzed the effects of COVID “Vaccination” on Blood.

Click here to watch the video.

Dr. Bärbel Ghitalla and her team put different brands under a microscope and found things they could not explain, but are explained in the “Covid-19 vaccine” patents.

Are you a believer now?

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a

a***

 – anonymous phone message recorded by the staff of Mackenzie Richmond Hill Hospital in response to Dr Thomson’s Pro-Palestine solidarity messages on social media. [1]

“This message is for Dr. Ben Thomson. Remove your post regarding [against] Israel … It is disgusting, you are a disgusting human being, you do not know what you’re saying, and if you do not remove it, I advise you and the rest of your staff to stay out of your office.”

 

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

The battle-front between Israel and Gaza/Palestine has now exploded in public consciousness to such an extent that the ongoing War in Ukraine is suddenly yesterday’s news. [2]

According to the most recent estimates by Gaza’s Ministry of Health, as of this writing, 6,547 people in Gaza have died. This does NOT include the 1,600 people, including 900 children who are missing and possibly under the rubble in the midst of the ongoing bombardment from Israel’s retaliation to the deadly October 7 attack on their citizens. [3]

Interestingly, the support of world leaders for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s against the People of Palestine, seemed to wane as massive voices within each country and around the world spoke in unity:

“FREE FREE PALESTINE!”

They were visible in the thousands and in some places even hundreds of thousands in Great Britain, in Australia, in West Asia and North Africa, and yes even in the United States. [4]

Even U.S. President Joe Biden in conversation with Bibi seems to have shown a change in heart.

As an anonymous source familiar with discussions between the leaders of the two allied countries put it:

“They have clearly shifted from an initial ‘We have your back; we’ll do whatever you want’ to now ‘You really need to rethink your strategy.’ [5]

But at the same time, Zionism is pushing back – with a vengeance!

A representative from the non-profit organization Palestine Legal, which provides legal support to the Palestine solidarity movement, found that they had received a surge in requests for assistance in the last two weeks. Many of these individuals, including university students, professors, and journalists said they faced negative consequences in their workplaces for statements they made on their social media posts in support of Palestinian rights! [6]

The war is clearly not just between Israel and Gaza. It is being waged across the planet as people of conscience choose sides as to who they will throw their support behind. How is it vast members of the Global South and the working class relate to the Palestinians while the chiefs within the most privileged countries, ie. the U.S. and its gang of imperialist confederates, stand “shoulder to shoulder” with the Israeli Prime Minister?

This is the main thread running through this chapter of the Global Research News Hour.

In our first half hour, we speak to Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire and frequent guest, about why much of the world is resisting the Israeli response to the Hamas Oct 7 attack to levels unmatched since the Iraq War resistance 20 years ago.

Then in our second half hour, we air a replay of an interview recorded by Chris Cook for the show Gorilla-Radio on radio station CFUV 101.9FM in Victoria, British Columbia,  on the unceded, unsurrendered territories of the W̱SÁNEĆ and Lkwungen peoples.

His guest was Tarek Loubani who has worked in Gaza as a doctor and humanitarian.

Loubani will be speaking about the silencing of his colleague Dr. Ben Thomson and other humanitarian dissenters in the current age of suppression.

Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Tarek Loubani is a London, Ontario-based doctor and humanitarian. Tarek runs the Glia Project, which seeks to provide medical supplies to impoverished locations, one of which is the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 406)

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Notes:

1. https://www.globalresearch.ca/zelensky-failed-bid-meet-netanyahu-signals-ending-western-interest/5836852
2. https://www.globalresearch.ca/zelensky-failed-bid-meet-netanyahu-signals-ending-western-interest/5836852
3. https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/10/1142842
4. https://www.globalresearch.ca/millions-demonstrate-around-world-solidarity-palestine/5837376?doing_wp_cron=1698452681.4435539245605468750000
5. Yasmeen Abutaleb, John Hudson and Dan Lamothe (October 27, 2023), ‘U.S. urges Israel against Gaza ground invasion, pushes surgical campaign’, The Washington Post;  https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/27/us-urging-israel-rethinkg-gaza-ground-invasion/
6. https://www.globalresearch.ca/surge-suppression-how-guardian-applies-censorship/5837810

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I have been amazed at how many people have taken one or more of the COVID-19 vaccines are completely free of side effects. It has been conjectured that the uninspected vials of COVID-19 vaccines have differing quantities of mRNA because of lipid nanoparticle aggregation (clumping together within a batch).

Pfizer claims they perform many quality checks of their product; however, neither Pfizer nor the FDA have published an inspection report for quality, purity, and quantification of mRNA in the multi-use vials. If there was little or no viable mRNA, then Spike protein would not be produced within the injection side (deltoid muscle) or other tissues and that would explain a lack of side effects in the arm and elsewhere in the body.

Polykretis and McCullough have reported nearly a 10-fold increase in cardiac arrests among European athletes since the rollout of mandatory COVID-19 vaccines. Could these cardiac arrests have been anticipated in some way from the very beginning? Komici et al studied 460 competitive and recreational athletes at the University of Molise in Italy undergoing COVID-19 vaccination. Arm pain was reported in 81.3% of the first and 24.9% of second dose recipients. The strongest predictor of arm pain was male gender.

Komici K, Verderosa S, D’Amico F, Guerra G. Self-reported side effects following COVID-19 vaccination in athletes: A retrospective study. Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2023 Aug 1;19(2):2234788. doi: 10.1080/21645515.2023.2234788. PMID: 37470390; PMCID: PMC10361131.

The results are similar to those of Schmeling et al who reported about 32.1% of doses result in no adverse effects whatsoever reported to Danish health authorities after vaccination.

Schmeling M, Manniche V, Hansen PR. Batch-dependent safety of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. Eur J Clin Invest. 2023 Aug;53(8):e13998. doi: 10.1111/eci.13998. Epub 2023 Apr 9. PMID: 36997290.

Schwab et al reported a cohesive finding of simultaneous vaccine-induced inflammation in the deltoid muscle and the heart among those who died after vaccination. The areas of inflammation look very similar in both samples.

Finally, Nakahara et al reported that there is a greater shift from normal free fatty acid to 18-FDG uptake in the human heart among those who had a sore arm (65.4%) after vaccination. This cardiac PET finding is associated with myocardial disease and chronic ischemia.

Nakahara T, Iwabuchi Y, Miyazawa R, Tonda K, Shiga T, Strauss HW, Antoniades C, Narula J, Jinzaki M. Assessment of Myocardial ¹⁸F-FDG Uptake at PET/CT in Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2-vaccinated and Nonvaccinated Patients. Radiology. 2023 Sep;308(3):e230743. doi: 10.1148/radiol.230743. PMID: 37724969.

Piecing these data together in my clinical practice, I always ask patients if they had a sore arm or more severe reaction within the few days of the shot. It may be a harbinger of future cardiovascular serious adverse events including myocarditis and sudden cardiac death.

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An 8-year-old Israeli boy featured in a video promoting the COVID-19 vaccine died suddenly last month from sudden cardiac arrest.

Yonatan Moshe Erlichman, the son and grandson of prominent Israeli doctors, almost drowned in the bathtub after his heart stopped on the eve of Yom Kippur. Although paramedics were able to revive him, he died several days later on Sept. 28.

In 2020, Erlichman appeared in a video with Shuski, described as a “friendly puppet ‘child,’” urging viewers to get the COVID-19 vaccine when it became available.

Describing Erlichman as the “poster child” for Israel’s vaccine campaign, LifeSiteNews shared the government-sponsored video featuring the boy, released just prior to the introduction of the COVID-19 vaccines in Israel.

יונתן ארליכמן ז"ל בן 8 מת מדום לב 😥😥😥
לא מזעזע אתכם ? היכן הכותרות ? החקירות? כמה ילדים עוד ימותו על מזבח הזהב?
ובייחוד שיש כבר שני מחקרים מבוקרים המעידים כי חיסוני ה mRNA גורמים לבעיות לבביות. עד מתי תתחפרו ? כמה עוד תכחישו?
תזכרו שבכל רגע נתון זה יכול לקרות לילדיכם… pic.twitter.com/PUYlLN4jDr

— א.בלב Avishag Balev (@AvishagBalev) October 1, 2023

Here is a partial translation of the tweet (via Google Translate):

“Doesn’t that shock you? Where are the headlines? The investigations? How many more children will die on the golden altar?

“And in particular, there are already two controlled studies that show that the mRNA vaccines cause cardiac problems … How much more will you deny?

“Remember that at any given moment, this can happen to your beloved children and grandchildren.”

Another tweet questioned why the story was not on televised news, but only in local and religious press. The person reported that the family was “scared to death and were trying to keep the story quiet.”

The boy’s family released the following statement:

“Our Yonatan Moshe passed away a short time ago. On the eve of Yom Kippur, Yonatan went into cardiac arrest in our home, and since then we fought by his side after he collapsed. We thank all those dear to us who were by our side in the last days of his life.”

Netanyahu Bragged About Making Israel a ‘Lab for Pfizer’

Israel is one of the most mRNA-vaccinated countries on Earth, with more than 70% of its people over 16 receiving at least two doses by April 2021.

In November 2020, Israel’s government signed an agreement with Pfizer to acquire 8 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine, which the government began distributing in December 2020.

In exchange for receiving the vaccine ahead of other countries, Israel agreed to provide Pfizer with epidemiological data to help the vaccine maker evaluate the efficacy and reactogenicity of the vaccine.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was able to make Israel “the lab for Pfizer” because “98% of our population has digitized medical records” that would — when combined with his country’s “genetic database” — facilitate granular reporting of the vaccine’s impact on the country’s citizens.

With this data, “you can create a biotechnological industry that is unheard of … unimagined even,” he said.

Netanyahu: “Israel 🇮🇱 became the lab for Pfizer”

Israel Ministry of Health denied it. Pfizer denied it. But finally here we have official confirmation from Prime Minister that as part of the deal, Israel was turned into Pfizer's lab.pic.twitter.com/PPlrCNpukR

— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) December 22, 2022

Dr. Sabine Hazan, a gastroenterology specialist in Ventura, California, weighed in on Netanyahu’s Pfizer deal:

Yeah, and you can create a weapon to eliminate a whole population. Who gave Netanyahu the right to decide for an entire population? Shouldn’t people have been allowed to vote to be guinea pigs? They all believed in a vaccine as a solution, but it was not. Neonatal death rate ⬆️ pic.twitter.com/BucoPYi0NZ

— sabine hazan md (@SabinehazanMD) December 24, 2022

CDC Failed to Publicize 2021 Israeli Myocarditis Data in a Timely Manner

Information provided to Children’s Health Defense (CHD) last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) following a Freedom of Information Act request showed the CDC received a report in February 2021 about post-injection myocarditis from the Israel Ministry of Health.

The report stated, “We are seeing a large number of myocarditis and pericarditis cases in young individuals soon after Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. We would like to discuss the issue with a relevant expert at CDC.”

Even though a significant myocarditis safety signal was visible both in the U.S. and Israel just months after the COVID-19 vaccines were made available, the CDC failed to alert the public until May 2021, after half the eligible U.S. population had already received the vaccine.

In June 2021, Israel released an official report confirming mRNA-related myocarditis in young men, especially those ages 16-24, who showed a rate of up to 25 times higher than typically observed in the Hadassah Medical Center.

A September 2022 Israeli study found the incidence of myocarditis within 30 days of the second Pfizer shot was 2.35 times higher than in the unvaccinated, with the risk for males ages 16-19 presenting as nearly 1 in 1,000.

Although the Israeli study was quick to point out that the risk of myocarditis was milder after the third Pfizer (first booster) shot, Dr. Peter McCullough warned last week at a hearing of the Novel Coronavirus Southwestern Intergovernmental Committee in the Arizona Senate that the effects of post-vaccine myocarditis can be delayed for years.

After summarizing the science around the spike protein’s effect on the heart, including reports from post-injection autopsies, McCullough related the story of an athlete who died during a heart stress test two years after being vaccinated.

Dr. McCullough: The COVID-19 Vaccines are NOT SAFE for Human Use

Testifying before the Arizona State Senate, Dr. @P_McCulloughMD said, as a practicing doctor, that he's seeing the complications of the COVID-19 vaccines firsthand. He previously reported, "Before COVID-19, I saw… pic.twitter.com/qBdOIJotzI

— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) October 23, 2023

Though news of Erlichman’s death did not include information about if or when the boy was vaccinated, he likely received the Pfizer mRNA shots in 2021, along with the majority of Israelis.

This tragedy underscores McCullough’s warning about the often hidden and long-term risks of post-vaccine myocarditis.

In June, CHD scientists called for an investigation into the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for suppressing evidence linking the mRNA vaccines to myocarditis and pericarditis.

Israeli Ministry of Health Hid Adverse Event Data

In a leaked June 2022 video of a Zoom presentation by a research team commissioned by the Israeli Ministry of Health, one of the speakers warned, “We’ll have to think medical-legal — how to present our findings to avoid lawsuits. Why? Because of quite a few side effects, [yet] we said: ‘OK, it exists and reports exist but still get vaccinated.’”

The researcher in the video voiced concerns about long-term adverse events, including a higher rate of events after repeated vaccine doses.

🇮🇱In a leaked video, a research team commissioned by the Israeli MoH warns: "We’ll have to think medical-legal – how to present our findings to avoid lawsuits. Why? Because of quite a few side effects we said: 'OK, it exists and reports exist, BUT STILL GET VACCINATED'". pic.twitter.com/IgXavuYaSH

— Yaffa Shir-Raz (@YaffaRaz) September 1, 2022

The ministry two months later issued a report claiming to have found no new safety signals that “were not already known.” It also manipulated the data to show a smaller percentage of adverse events than were observed.

Yale epidemiologist Harvey Risch, M.D., Ph.D., discussed the suppressed Israeli data on an episode of “Ask Dr. Drew”:

#Pfizer #vaccine

“We’ve Seen Major Suppression of Adverse Events by Government Agencies”

Yale Epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch Speaks about Leaked Video of Israeli Research Team that Suppressed Adverse Events, And Further Misrepresentation of Israeli Gov. advisor to FDA. https://t.co/3ta2lCYYQ8 pic.twitter.com/FpgVO7tEed

— Asher Press (@AsherPress) September 15, 2022

Argentine Vaccine ‘Poster Boy’ Died Last Year

Erlichman’s tragedy mirrors the story of Santino Godoy Blanco, an Argentine boy who died last year at age 4 and who also was reported to have served as a national “poster boy” in advertisements promoting COVID-19 vaccines for children.

🇦🇷 The poster boy for Argentina’s 💉campaign has #diedsuddenly of “bilateral pneumonia”

Santino Godoy Blanco (3) was rushed to hospital due to fever and vomiting.

Before passing his mom says he took off his mask and gave her little kisses because he couldn't talk anymore 😥 pic.twitter.com/90HSBhsnvI

— DiedSuddenly (@DiedSuddenly_) November 13, 2022

A USA Today “fact check” challenged the story, finding the claim false that Blanco’s appearances were promoting COVID-19 vaccines, and instead stating — correctly — that the advertisements were for measles, rubella, mumps and polio shots.

Blanco died of a lung infection associated with double pneumonia, which fact-checkers asserted was “unrelated with vaccination in general or COVID-19 vaccines in particular.”

However, the fact-checkers overlooked data from 2017 linking childhood vaccines to increased pneumonia risk.

In their book, “Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak,” Brian Hooker, Ph.D., senior director of science and research at CHD, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., CHD’s chairman on leave, shared study data showing vaccinated children carry a 5 times greater risk of suffering from pneumonia than the unvaccinated.

Credit: RFK Jr. and Brian Hooker, Ph.D., “Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak”

After Blanco’s death, the Argentine government withdrew the vaccination campaign from all platforms.

*

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John-Michael Dumais is a news editor for The Defender. He has been a writer and community organizer on a variety of issues, including the death penalty, war, health freedom and all things related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Featured image is from CHD

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***

A couple of days ago, Russian evening news showed a brief video of Vladimir Putin arriving at the southern military command center in Rostov on Don for a meeting with Valery Gerasimov, Head of the General Staff of Russian Armed Forces. We were shown their handshakes at the start and their handshakes at the conclusion of the meeting as Putin was on his way to his aircraft, but nothing was said about the reason for the visit. 

This evening we found out about the likely topic of the talks two days ago. Breaking news on Russian television gave some sketchy details of the tests just carried out on the war readiness of the country’s nuclear triad for response to some incoming nuclear missile from an unnamed enemy.

Gerasimov reported to Putin on the satisfactory results of the launch from the nuclear submarine Tula in the Barents Sea of a Sineva ballistic missile with 5,500 km range;

the launch of a Yars ballistic missile with 12,000 km range from an underground shaft in Kamchatka; and the launch of a 5,500 km range cruise missile from a TU-95 “Bear” turboprop bomber-missile carrier (location unspecified).

Considering the location of the missile launches and the radius of possible strikes, it does not take much imagination to conclude that the enemy being attacked was the U.S. of A. The actual tests consisted of one missile each; the capability being tested was for a massive retaliatory strike.

We may assume that the tests were Russia’s response to the announcement within the past week of American ‘pre-tests’ of nuclear weapons, which Moscow took to indicate that Washington intends to proceed with weapons testing in one way or another now that the treaty banning such tests has become dead letter. 

Or we may assume that the Russian missile firings were a warning to the United States against escalation in the Middle East by attacking Iran.

On the subject of Iran, Russian state television yesterday told us about the visit to Teheran of Foreign Minister Lavrov, who arrived from meetings in Pyongyang with North Korean leader Kim and had talks with the Iranians and representatives of Armenia and Azerbaijan over resolution of their conflict. Lavrov told a reporter inter alia that talks with Teheran over conclusion of a Strategic Partnership agreement are 90% complete.

Today Russian state television related news from Prime Minister Mishustin on his talks with Iranian leaders over furtherance of bilateral trade and also on the likely conclusion before year’s end of a Free Trade Zone agreement with the Eurasian Economic Union. Clearly the ‘axis of evil’ is forming with amazing speed under pressure from the wars in Ukraine and now in the Middle East.

I call attention to the difference in tone with respect to Iran by Israeli leaders these past two days and by spokesmen of the Biden administration. A member of Netanyahu’s cabinet has threatened Iran with utter destruction, whereas American officials are focusing their attention on the various proxies that Iran is helping to prepare for military action against Israel if the ground invasion of Gaza proceeds. Moreover, it is now unclear whether the large naval task forces that the United States is assembling in the Eastern Mediterranean and in the Red Sea are intended for offensive action against Iran or for defensive action, to protect American bases in the region against attack from pro-Iranian forces and to evacuate American military and civilians from the region if necessary.

One linguistic point worth mentioning as regards the announcement of the tests of the nuclear triad:

Vladimir Solovyov on his show last night called attention to the word наступательный  to describe Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons.  That word means “offensive”. So what is this all about? Does it mean that the Russians are heading towards first strike thinking? Not a small detail!

In this connection, it is worth considering that the trouble-making political scientist Karaganov who riled Western and also Russian peers by urging on Russia use of tactical nukes in some half-assed place like Poland or Romania to sober up Western leaders and remind them of Russia’s deterrence, now has come out with the statement a “nuclear war can be won.”

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“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

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***

Most chain restaurants rely on beef and chicken from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), where veterinary drugs are routinely used, and of 10 fast food meals sampled and tested, all but two tested positive for veterinary drugs

Six of the 10 fast food samples (Taco Bell, Dunkin’, Wendy’s, Domino’s, Burger King and McDonald’s) contained a veterinary antibiotic ionophore called monensin, which is not approved for human use as it can cause severe harm

Of 43 school lunches tested, 95% had detectable levels of glyphosate, a carcinogenic and endocrine-disrupting weed killer linked to liver inflammation, metabolic disorder, cardiovascular disease and cancer

100% of the school lunches tested contained heavy metals at levels up to 6,293 times higher than the maximum levels allowed in drinking water. Cadmium and lead were found at the highest levels

Of 21 fast food meals tested for essential minerals, none met the recommended daily requirements of calcium, potassium, manganese, copper, zinc and iron, and none of the 10 fast food meals tested for B vitamins contained detectable levels of B9 or B12. Vitamin B3 (niacin) levels were also exceptionally low

*

While high amounts of linoleic acid (LA) is one of the primary reasons why processed foods and fast food are so bad for your health, contaminants like veterinary drugs, antibiotics, hormones and heavy metals — combined with inferior amounts of essential nutrients — are other highly-ranked reasons to steer clear of.

8 of 10 Fast Food Meals Contain Veterinary Drugs

In September 2023, Moms Across America (MAA) submitted food samples from 10 fast food chains to the Health Research Institute, a nonprofit laboratory that tests food for nutrient content, contaminants and toxins. Each food sample was tested for the presence of 104 of the most common veterinary drugs and hormones. You can read the certificate of analysis here.¹

Fast food restaurants sampled included McDonald’s, Starbucks, Subway, Chick-fil-A, Burger King, Taco Bell, Chipotle, Dunkin’, Wendy’s and Domino’s. Of these, only Chipotle and Subway tested negative for veterinary drugs.

This isn’t all that surprising, considering most chain restaurants rely on beef and chicken from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), where veterinary drugs are routinely used. As explained by MAA:²

“Due to large, industry, confined animal feeding operation conditions, which include extremely close quarters, unsanitary spaces, and high incidence of disease, most of America’s nonorganic meat comes from livestock that is heavily treated with antibiotics, growth hormones, and an anti-parasitic which is also a known aviary contraceptive.”

6 of 10 Contain Potentially Risky Antibiotics

Six of the 10 fast food samples (Taco Bell, Dunkin’, Wendy’s, Domino’s, Burger King and McDonald’s)³ contained a veterinary antibiotic ionophore called monensin, which is not approved for human use as it can cause severe harm. The sample with the highest concentration (Taco Bell) contained 0.64 micrograms (mcg). The “acceptable” daily intake is 12.5 mcg/kg of body weight per day.

Monensin also has a number of side effects in animals, including anorexia, diarrhea, depression, ataxia, degeneration of heart and skeletal muscles, necrosis and death.

The antibiotic ionophore narasin, which has the same side effects in animals as monensin, was found in 4 of the 10 samples (Wendy’s, Dunkin’, Domino’s and Starbucks). The highest concentration, 1.53 mcg, was found in a Wendy’s cheeseburger. The three others contained only trace concentrations. The “acceptable” daily intake is 5 mcg/kg per day.

Both monensin and narasin are toxic to dogs and horses and can cause paralysis of the hind legs at extremely low levels. They can also cause acute cardiac rhabdomyocyte degeneration and necrosis in beef and dairy cattle. The reason they’re used in cattle is because they encourage weight gain. MAA commented on these findings:⁴

“Moms Across America is gravely concerned about our population, especially children, unknowingly eating unprescribed antibiotic ionophores livestock, even at low levels, consistently because of potential damage to the microbiome as well as the risk of antibiotic-resistant bacteria growth.

We question if the side effects of these ionophores in dogs and horses, leaving their hind legs dysfunctional, might be related to millions of Americans presenting with restless leg syndrome and neuropathy, conditions unknown to most humans just a generation or two ago … Until proven safe, we urge our regulatory agencies, such as the USDA and FDA, to disallow the use of these drugs in our livestock.”

‘Fowl Contraceptive’ Detected in Chick-fil-A Sandwich

The Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich was found to contain nicarbazin,⁵ an antiparasitic drug and fowl contraceptive that causes infertility in certain poultry, such as pigeons and geese. In fact, it’s used to control geese and pigeon populations.

In chickens, it’s used to control certain types of infections and fatten them up. Side effects of the drug include increased sensitivity to heat stress, degenerative processes in the liver and kidneys, and death.

In 2009, the British Soil Association sought to have nicarbazin banned in the U.K., as evidence proving the drug would not cause genetic damage, mutations, birth deformities or malformations was lacking. As a result, a European review board was unable to establish a safe level of residue in chickens and eggs.⁶

Despite open questions, the European Commission and the UK’s Veterinary Medicines Directorate continued to allow routine use of the drug in the poultry industry by using a legal loophole. In the U.S., nicarbazin has been an approved veterinary drug for use as an anticoccidial agent in broiler chickens since 1955.⁷

The Chick-fil-A sandwich contained 0.36 mcg of nicarbazin and the “acceptable” level is 200 mcg/kg per day.⁸ The seemingly wide safety margin does not mean there’s nothing to worry about though. As noted by MAA executive director Zen Honeycutt:

“The impact of millions of Americans, especially children and young adults, consuming a known animal contraceptive daily is concerning. With infertility problems on the rise, the reproductive health of this generation is front and center for us, in light of these results.

These are veterinary drugs and hormones … so the only studies that I have found, and that you will find, will be for animals. [They’re] not authorized for humans, and yet they’re being allowed [into the food supply]. Some people are consuming this food every day, so we don’t know how much they are accumulating in their body.”

John Fagan, chief scientist at the Health Research Institute, also noted that the FDA’s acceptable levels are really only meaningful when we’re talking about acute poisoning. In the case of fast food, which some people eat three times a day, the concern is chronic poisoning from the accumulation of toxins over time.⁹

School Lunches Loaded with Pesticides

In September 2022, MAA also tested 43 school lunches for the presence of not only hormones and veterinary drugs, but also pesticides, heavy metals and nutritional content.¹⁰ The results there were even more concerning.

Ninety-five percent of the school lunch items had detectable levels of glyphosate, a carcinogenic and endocrine-disrupting weed killer routinely used on GMO grains that has been linked to liver inflammation, metabolic disorder, cardiovascular disease and cancer, including liver cancer and Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.^11,12

The highest levels of glyphosate were found in beef taco with soft wheat tortilla (286.77 nanograms per gram) and pizza (156.14 ng/g). As noted by MAA, these levels are highly concerning:¹³

“If consumed regularly, results with Total Effective Glyphosate above 25 ng/g could have harmful effects. These are levels that, if routinely fed to rats, cause them to show symptoms of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD).

NAFLD is life-threatening and is an epidemic in the USA. These levels of glyphosate in school lunches would be expected to have similar effects on children.

Levels lower than 25 ng/g can be expected to contribute to NAFLD and other pathologies because a child will eat more than one thing during the day that contains glyphosate, and the levels of glyphosate would be cumulative.”

Other toxic pesticides found in the school meals include:

• Thiabendazole, which has immune suppressing effects, was found in 27.9% of the samples.
• Piperonal butoxide, present in 18 of the 43 samples (41%), is a developmental toxin that causes birth defects and neurodevelopment disruptions.
• Pyrimethanil, detected at 595.04 ppb on an apple, has been shown to cause thyroid tumors in animals.

School Meals: Drugs, Heavy Metals, but Few Nutrients

Nine of the 43 school lunches also contained four types of veterinary drugs and hormones, and a shocking 100% of meals contained heavy metals at levels up to 6,293 times higher than the maximum levels allowed in drinking water. Levels ranged from 0.5 ppb to 94.4 mcg/kg.

The highest levels of heavy metals were cadmium and lead, found at up to 46.8 mcg/kg (cadmium) and 94.4 mcg/kg (lead). Meanwhile, most of the meals were “abysmally low” in essential nutrients. As reported by the MAA:

“An advisor has calculated the contribution that the sample food would make to a person’s nutritional requirements, assuming that they ate a 4 oz portion (standardly used in nutritional analysis) and assuming that this food contributed ¼ of their nutrition for the day.

‘The nutritional items are consistently very deficient in Copper and are also consistently deficient (but to a lesser extent) in calcium, potassium, and phosphorous. Magnesium, zinc, and manganese are deficient in many of the samples, roughly 50%. The only mineral that is consistently meeting or exceeding requirements is iron. That is good but it is not enough!’ …

Without proper nutrients, our children’s brains will not function properly, and their bodies will not be developed as needed. Often children with learning and behavioral issues are deficient in just one or two minerals or vitamins; when those nutrients are added to their diet, their mental, physical, and behavioral issues subside. Even violent behavior is discontinued. Our children must have proper nutrient-dense food.”

Fast Food Cannot Sustain You

After completing the veterinary drug analysis on 10 fast food meals, MAA went on to test 21 fast food brands for essential minerals, and the top 10 brands for B vitamins.

“The testing was conducted out of concern for America’s skyrocketing mental and physical health crisis,” Honeycutt writes in her October 18, 2023, report.¹⁴

“Eighty-five million Americans eat fast food every day. Fast food companies often supply a significant portion of the 30 million school meals served to our children each day.

The quality of the food, including the contamination of agrochemicals and lack of nutrients due to toxic chemical inputs, contributes to our mental and physical health issues. One in five Americans have a mental illness, and 54% of our children have a chronic health issue.

For many impoverished children, school meals are the only food they consume each day. Numerous studies have linked toxins in the food supply and lack of nutrition to conditions such as autism, depression, aggression, suicide, and homicides. This report will … disclose the mineral, vitamin B, and calorie levels in the top 20 fast food restaurants/ school lunch suppliers.”

Based on the micronutrient testing done on school lunches in 2022 (above), you can probably guess what this nutritional testing revealed. The mineral content of the fast food tested did not meet the recommended daily requirements of calcium, potassium, manganese, copper, zinc and iron.

For example, the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of copper is 900 mcg per day, and Chick-fil-A’s chicken nuggets contain just 1.4 mcg of copper per gram. To meet the RDA, an adult would need to consume nearly nine servings of nuggets.

Signs of copper deficiency include fatigue, poor concentration and low mood. Also, “children with autism and violent behavior often have an imbalance of copper,” Honeycutt writes.

Fast Food Nearly Devoid of B Vitamins

Even worse, zero amounts of vitamin B9 or B12 were detected in the top 10 fast food samples, and deficiencies in these B vitamins can lead to fatigue, digestive issues, heart problems, nervous system disorders and erratic behavior. Indeed, vitamin B12 (cobalamin) is known as “the energy vitamin.” Your body requires it for energy production.

It also plays an important role in neurological function, and deficiency can culminate in a range of mental health symptoms, from irritability and depression to dementia and even psychosis. You can learn more about vitamin B12’s role in mental health in this November 6, 2022 article.

Warning signs of B12 deficiency include brain fog, memory lapses, mood swings, apathy, fatigue, muscle weakness and tingling in the extremities. Unfortunately, B12 deficiency may not present itself for several years, so by the time you notice symptoms, you may be quite deficient.

The fact that NONE of the top 10 fast foods contained B12 is rather remarkable when you consider B12-rich foods include beef, seafood, chicken and eggs. Beef and chicken are staples in fast food, yet fast food beef and chicken provide no B12 at all! If that doesn’t convince you that fast food meat is nowhere near the same as grass fed organic meat, I don’t know what will.

Levels of B3 (niacin) were also abysmal. The RDA for women is 14 mg per day and for men it’s 16 mg. To meet that RDA, a woman would need to consume 333 servings of Chick-fil-A chicken sandwiches (at a serving size of 210 grams) and a man would need to eat 380 servings.

Chipotle’s carnitas bowl with everything, which had the highest amount of B3, still requires you to eat eight servings if you’re a woman and nine servings if you’re a man, to meet your RDA of niacin. As reported by MAA:¹⁵

“On average, adults would need to consume between 64-73 servings of the top 10 fast foods to get proper vitamin B3 nutrition per day. Alternatively, a portion of liver (pasture-raised, ideally) or a can of tuna (SafeCatch) would supply enough vitamin B3 or niacin for proper nutrition for a day. Clearly, cheap fast food is not as cheap as it seems when one factors in the value of the nutrients provided in the purchase.”

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Notes

^1, 3 Health Research Institute Certificate of Analysis

^2, 4 Moms Across America October 9, 2023

^5, 7 EPA Nicarbazin

⁶ The Poultry Site March 9, 2009

⁸ Science Direct, Nicarbazine, Detecting and Controlling Veterinary Drug Residues in Poultry

⁹ Zero Hedge October 13, 2023

^10, 13 Moms Across America September 28, 2022

¹¹ Berkeley Public Health March 1, 2023

¹² Patient Power Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma February 13, 2023

^14, 15 Moms Across America October 18, 2023

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Oct. 23, 2023 – 28 year old Danish rider Niklas Eg has been forced to retire due to inexplicable instances of irregular heart rate during his training sessions. His medical team has still not determined the cause of the irregular heart rate.

Sep. 24, 2023 – Argentina – 50 year old cyclist Gustavo Lopreste finished a cycling race 20 minutes after the end of the race he got dizzy, collapsed and died suddenly from cardiac arrest on Sep. 24, 2023.

Sep. 20, 2023 – 20 year old Evelyn Mae Sorensen was found dead in her dorm room of Middlebury College at 10pm on Sep. 20, 2023. She was very athletic and had recently taken up cycling.

Sep. 12, 2023 – 27 year old Belgian professional cyclist Nathan van Hooydonck was forced to retire due to “heart problems”. He was involved in a car accident last week when he fell ill at the wheel and had a medical emergency.

Sep. 10, 2023 – London, UK – 63 year old David Graney who was participating in a charity bike ride collapsed with a cardiac arrest during the London to Brighton bike ride on Sep. 10, 2023 and was saved by doctors who were riding behind him.

Aug. 29, 2023 – Netherlands – 32 year old road racing cyclist, Wesley Kreder had a cardiac arrest on Aug. 29, 2023. He was diagnosed with “Myocarditis that can lead to cardiac arrest”. He will never race again.

Aug 12, 2023 – Nicoya, Costa Rica – 37 year old professional cyclist Sergio Andres Campos Rodriguez died suddenly on August 12, 2023 from a cardiac arrest he suffered during a cycling race, 3km from the finish line.

July 30, 2023 – Belfast, Ireland – Doctor & leading cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Simon MacGowan died in his sleep on July 29/30, 2023. “He had ridden a six-day tour of the Alps, from Geneva to Nice when he died in his sleep in Nice on completion of the trip. 

July 29, 2023 – 48 year old Irish Triathlete Sarah Fagan, from Dundalk in Co Louth, tragically died in France on Saturday, July 29 after going into cardiorespiratory arrest while competing in the Alpe d’Huez Triathlon on Friday, July 28.

July 18, 2023 – Coeur d’Alene, Idaho – Clark Campbell, teacher of physical education died unexpectedly of cardiac arrest during a mountain biking trip on July 18, 2023.

July 15, 2023 – Cala Regina, Italy – 48 year old cyclist Andrea Sechi collapsed with cardiac arrest while cycling on a seaside road and died suddenly from “climate change” on July 15, 2023.

July 7, 2023 – 34 year old Belgian professional cyclist Sep Vanmarcke has announced his retirement due to cardiac MRI showing cardiac scar tissue he didn’t know he had.

May 17, 2023 – 24 year old Kazakh professional road racing cyclist Dinmukhammed Ulysbayev died unexpectedly of “acute heart failure” on May 17, 2023 in Los Angeles, CA.

May 6, 2023 – 56 year old Francois Beaulieu, New Brunswick’s top Energy Regulator, died suddenly on May 6, 2023. He had a sudden cardiac arrest while cycling on Saturday and died. Wife: “He was doing what he loved, cycling. His heart stopped but mine has not.”

My Take… 

Athletes continue to collapse from sudden cardiac arrests and I believe we are starting to see long term cardiac damage caused by COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines.

For example, 34 year old Belgian professional cyclist Sep Vanmarcke announced his retirement because he had a cardiac MRI that confirmed the presence of scarring that he was not aware of. He had only recently started having an abnormally high heart rate that prompted the cardiac MRI.

Most amateur athletes are unable to get a cardiac MRI or cardiac PET to check for scarring that would predispose them to sudden cardiac death. But it could mean the difference between life and sudden death.

From Ethical Skeptic, sudden cardiac death in ages 0 to 54 remains at all time highs:

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

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Introduction

According to U.N. Secretary-General (UNSG)  Antonio Guterres in his remarks to the U.N. Security Council on October 24:

“The situation in the Middle East is growing more dire by the hour. 

The war in Gaza is raging and risks spiralling throughout the region. 

Divisions are splintering societies. Tensions threaten to boil over.

At a crucial moment like this, it is vital to be clear on principles — starting with the fundamental principle of respecting and protecting civilians.”

Guterres’s disapproval of Israel is lenient. He does not condemn Tel Aviv for the massive killings of Palestinian civilians (in the carpet bombing of Gaza) which so far have resulted in more than 5,000 Palestinian deaths, nor does he raise (in his initial remarks) the issue of a “cease fire”: 

“The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. 

They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished.  Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.

But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas.  And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”

…

Guterres does not address the displacement of 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 by Israel and the setting up of an Apartheid state by Tel Aviv which denies Palestinians’ basic human rights.

Who Is Attacking Whom? Towards a Broader War in the Middle East? 

The issue of the Armada of two US aircraft carriers which “have come to the rescue of Israel” us not mentioned by Guterres. 

According to Western Media reports Israel is being “Attacked by Palestine”(see Daily Mail quoted by Global Research): 

“The US is ramping up firepower in the Middle East to deter Iran from starting WW III – with an armada of 13 warships, over 100 fighter jets, cruise missiles, spy planes and 2,000 amphibious special forces massing in the region.”

UNSG Antonio Guterres fails to address or analyze the underlying implications, namely the extensive US-NATO military buildup throughout the Middle East, nor does he mention the Israeli air attacks against Lebanon and Syria.

What is unfolding is best described as “The Internationalization of war”.

Is Israel Under Attack? 

Guterres “equates” Hamas and Israel without acknowledging that while:

• Israel is categorized as having the 4th largest Armed Forces Worldwide. In contrast
• Hamas, is an Islamist entity with limited military capabilities, covertly supported by Israeli Intelligence since its inception in 1987.

Ironically, “The Hamas-Mossad partnership” is confirmed by Netanyahu: 

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” (March 2019 Statement quoted by Haaretz, October 9, 2023, emphasis added)

Israel’s Reaction to UNSG Antonio Guterres’s Statement 

Ironically, Guterres’s mild criticism of Israel is not tolerated by Tel Aviv whose U.N. ambassador Gilad Erdan has demanded the resignation of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

Not only is Israel demanding Guterres’s resignation but its officials have “proudly compared”  its killing of Palestinian civilians to the Allied bombing of the German cities of Dresden and Hamburg at the end of World War II, which quite deliberately targeted civilians.

According to Wyatt Reed: 

“In an October 16 interview, the Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, shrugged off concerns about the thousands of innocents killed in IDF strikes on Gaza, suggesting that because Allied powers killed tens of thousands of German civilians with relentless airstrikes in the 1940s, Israel is entitled to do the same.

“There were many, many civilians [that] got attacked from your attacks on German cities,” she told a Sky News anchor. “Dresden was a symbol, but you attacked Hamburg, you attacked other cities, and altogether it was over 600,000 civilian Germans that got killed.”

Comparing the militarily occupied Palestinian population to Nazis, Hotovley continued: “Was it worth it in order to defeat Nazi Germany? And the answer was yes.”

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett declared [on October 12] that “when Great Britain was fighting the Nazis during World War Two, no one asked what’s going on in Dresden.”  (Gray Zone, October 23, 2023)

There are no calls by Guterres for the U.N. to investigate the obvious war crimes of Israel in Gaza or even to call them war crimes. 

Nor has the UNSG asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate these crimes and to sanction Israeli officials and issue arrest warrants for them as the ICC quickly did in the case of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The ICC actions against Putin border on ridicule.”

Putin was accused by the ICC of kidnapping Ukrainian children whereas he was actually saving them from the bombing and rocket attacks of neo-Nazi Ukrainian forces that have been ongoing since 2014 and have killed 14,000 people.

Secretary General Antonio Guterres concludes on a “positive note”:  

“The relentless bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces, the level of civilian casualties, and the wholesale destruction of neighborhoods continue to mount and are deeply alarming. 

…

“Even in this moment of grave and immediate danger, we cannot lose sight of the only realistic foundation for a true peace and stability:  a two-State solution.

Israelis must see their legitimate needs for security materialized, and Palestinians must see their legitimate aspirations for an independent State realized, in line with United Nations resolutions, international law and previous agreements.

Finally, we must be clear on the principle of upholding human dignity. 

Polarization and dehumanization are being fueled by a tsunami of disinformation. 

We must stand up to the forces of antisemitism, anti-Muslim bigotry and all forms of hate.”  (See full text below)

The Broader Issue: The Role of the United Nations

Will a cease fire be contemplated by the United Nations Security Council?

Will the U.N. address the militarization of the Middle East?

Will the issue of Israeli War Crimes against the people of Palestine be brought to the attention of the International Criminal Court (ICC)?

According to the late Father Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann who served as President of the U.N. General Assembly in 2008-2009:

“Those of us who do understand the nefariousness of the empire, and the ever-increasing danger it represents, must be clear that the effective defense of life on planet Earth, including that of the human species itself, inexorably demands the existence of an independent and democratic world forum for a genuine and effective defense of the rights of Mother Earth and of humanity. 

That is why we insist, repeat and say time and again that the United Nations as it exists today is useless, inoperative, dysfunctional and an instrument of the empire. That is why it no longer enjoys any confidence or credibility whatsoever. ” (emphasis added)

Towards the Privatization of the United Nations 

The UN increasingly serves the interests of “Global Capitalism” in what is described by  Prof. Michel Chossudovsky as

“The Hegemonic U.N-WEF-NATO Triad”

Chossudovsky points out that The 2030 UN Sustainable Development Project is being carried out in close coordination with Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) “Great Reset”, which serves the interests of the global financial establishment. 

Needless to say, Big Money call the shots:  

This text was written by Dr. Asad Ismi and Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

Full Text of United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres 

October 24, 2023

Emphasis added

***

Mr. President, with your permission, I will make a small introduction and then ask my colleagues to brief the Security Council on the situation on the ground.

Excellencies,

The situation in the Middle East is growing more dire by the hour. 

The war in Gaza is raging and risks spiralling throughout the region. 

Divisions are splintering societies. Tensions threaten to boil over.

At a crucial moment like this, it is vital to be clear on principles — starting with the fundamental principle of respecting and protecting civilians.

I have condemned unequivocally the horrifying and unprecedented 7 October acts of terror by Hamas in Israel.

Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians – or the launching of rockets against civilian targets.

All hostages must be treated humanely and released immediately and without conditions. I respectfully note the presence among us of members of their families.

Video

Excellencies,

It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.

The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. 

They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished.  Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.

But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas.  And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.

Excellencies,

Even war has rules. 

We must demand that all parties uphold and respect their obligations under international humanitarian law; take constant care in the conduct of military operations to spare civilians; and respect and protect hospitals and respect the inviolability of UN facilities which today are sheltering more than 600,000 Palestinians. 

The relentless bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces, the level of civilian casualties, and the wholesale destruction of neighborhoods continue to mount and are deeply alarming. 

I mourn and honour the dozens of UN colleagues working for UNRWA – sadly, at least 35 and counting – killed in the bombardment of Gaza over the last two weeks.

I owe to their families my condemnation of these and many other similar killings.

The protection of civilians is paramount in any armed conflict.

Protecting civilians can never mean using them as human shields.

Protecting civilians does not mean ordering more than one million people to evacuate to the south, where there is no shelter, no food, no water, no medicine and no fuel, and then continuing to bomb the south itself.

I am deeply concerned about the clear violations of international humanitarian law that we are witnessing in Gaza.

Let me be clear:  No party to an armed conflict is above international humanitarian law.

Excellencies,

Thankfully, some humanitarian relief is finally getting into Gaza. 

But it is a drop of aid in an ocean of need.

In addition, our UN fuel supplies in Gaza will run out in a matter of days.  That would be another disaster. 

Without fuel, aid cannot be delivered, hospitals will not have power, and drinking water cannot be purified or even pumped.

The people of Gaza need continuous aid delivery at a level that corresponds to the enormous needs.  That aid must be delivered without restrictions. 

I salute our UN colleagues and humanitarian partners in Gaza working under hazardous conditions and risking their lives to provide aid to those in need.  They are an inspiration. 

To ease epic suffering, make the delivery of aid easier and safer, and facilitate the release of hostages, I reiterate my appeal for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.

Excellencies,

Even in this moment of grave and immediate danger, we cannot lose sight of the only realistic foundation for a true peace and stability:  a two-State solution.

Israelis must see their legitimate needs for security materialized, and Palestinians must see their legitimate aspirations for an independent State realized, in line with United Nations resolutions, international law and previous agreements.

Finally, we must be clear on the principle of upholding human dignity. 

Polarization and dehumanization are being fueled by a tsunami of disinformation. 

We must stand up to the forces of antisemitism, anti-Muslim bigotry and all forms of hate.

Mr. President,

Excellencies,

Today is United Nations Day, marking 78 years since the UN Charter entered into force.

That Charter reflects our shared commitment to advance peace, sustainable development and human rights.  

On this UN Day, at this critical hour, I appeal to all to pull back from the brink before the violence claims even more lives and spreads even farther.  

Thank you very much.

Update, October 27, 2023

United Nations Security Council Vote on New Resolutions

 

Transcript

Security Council to vote on new resolutions over Gaza crisis, proposed by Russia and the United States, calling for a humanitarian pause in Gaza.

China and Russia today (25 Oct) vetoed a draft resolution sponsored by the United States, while a second Russian-backed resolution failed to adopt having failed to get sufficient votes in favour, deepening the Security Council’s deadlock over any unified response to address the crisis in Gaza and Israel.

Speaking before the vote US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said,

“Russia has offered up yet another resolution in bad faith and this Council should not stand for it. Instead, we should come together around the resolution proposed by the United States – a resolution that not only includes, but also builds on, many elements of the text Brazil put forward last week.”

For his part, Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya said,

“the US, trying to tamper the sharp criticism against it for using its veto – and this is from the international community – is trying to push through a kind of new draft plumped, full of politicized, irrelevant, and very dubious provisions. I’d like to point out that no normal consultative process on it was conducted in the Council, despite the fact that our American colleague has just assured us of the very opposite.”

Ten members of the Council voted for the US drafted resolution and three against (China, Russia and UAE), with two abstentions (Brazil and Mozambique). Speaking after the vote, China’s Ambassador Zhang Jun said,

“it’s worth being vigilant that the draft departs from the spirit of previous UN resolutions and embeds the dangerous logic of confrontation of civilizations and the justification of war and the use of force. If the draft had been adopted, it would have completely dashed the prospect for the realization of the two-state solution and plunged the Palestinian and Israeli peoples into a vicious cycle of hatred and confrontation.”

A ‘no’ vote from any one of the five permanent members of the Council stops action on any measure put before it. The body’s permanent members are China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States. A second draft resolution, led by Russia, was not adopted as it failed to secure sufficient number of votes in favour.

Four Council members voted in favour (China, Gabon, Russia and UAE), two against (UK and US), and nine abstained (Albania, Brazil, Ecuador, France, Ghana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Switzerland).

For a resolution to be adopted, it must be supported by at least nine members of the Council.

The similarly worded resolutions would have called for a “humanitarian ceasefire” or “humanitarian pause” to enable safe delivery of aid for desperate civilians.

Both drafts condemned the terror attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians of 7 October and urged action to address the worsening humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, where fuel is due to run out for hospitals and other crucial services, in a matter of hours, according to UN agencies on the ground.

Key differences in the text included a specific mention in the US-backed proposal of States’ inherent right to self-defence, and a call in the Russian-led one for the immediate cancellation by Israeli forces of the evacuation order for civilians to head into southern Gaza.

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Featured image is from UNSG

Israel Kills Al-Jazeera Correspondent’s Family Days After Blinken Demands the Channel’s Coverage be ‘Toned Down’

By Mohammed El-Kurd, October 27, 2023

The news came hours after Axios reported that Secretary Antony Blinken told U.S. Jewish leaders he asked Qatar to “turn down the volume on Al Jazeera’s coverage” of the Israeli genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip, accusing the network of being “anti-Israel.”

The Day UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres Became Relevant. Israel Calls for His Resignation

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, October 27, 2023

The Secretary-General reiterated the principle of protecting civilians during armed conflict. This precluded using them as human shields and ordering “more than one million people to evacuate the south, where there is no shelter, no food, no water, no medicine, and no fuel, and then continuing to bomb the south itself.”

Tribal Pontification About Climate Change

By Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null, October 27, 2023

Today there are roughly 3 distinct ideological groups in conflict with each other over the threats of climate change and the desecration of the environment.

“Worthy Victims” vs. “Unworthy Victims”: On COVID Vaxx Mandates and the Broken Social Justice™ Moral Compass on College Campuses

By Ben Bartee, October 27, 2023

In political discourse – and perhaps this is an inexorable feature of human tribalistic psychology — there exists a dichotomy between what Noam Chomsky and others have described as “worthy” and “unworthy” victims of state violence and other forms of oppression.

Jolly Little Wars. US President Joe Biden Has Declared Himself a ‘War President’

By Eric Margolis, October 27, 2023

US President Joe Biden has declared himself a ‘war president.’ He has ordered two US aircraft carriers, advanced missile systems and 2,000 Marines to the Mideast. It’s full-force war fever in Washington.

Israel ‘Deliberately Targets’ Bakeries to Inflict ‘Largest Amount of Casualties’

By Sally Ibrahim, October 27, 2023

The Israeli warplanes attacked the only bakery in the al-Mughazi refugee camp in the centre of Gaza, killing at least ten people and wounding dozens of others, on Wednesday, 25 October. In response, the government media office in Gaza said that Israel is “deliberately bombing and targeting bakeries” as civilians line up in front to inflect the largest amount of casualties.

Western Militaries’ Growing Role in Israel’s Gaza Campaign: U.S. Marine Generals and Special Ops. on the Ground as France Advocates Coalition Involvement

By Military Watch Magazine, October 27, 2023

As the Israeli Defence Forces increasingly been reported to be facing difficulties achieving the objective of destroying the Palestinian militia Hamas, the United States has responded by providing growing levels of personnel and material support.

International Criminal Court’s Response to Palestine, Ukraine Raises Impartiality, Political Influence Concerns: Experts

By Necva Tastan, October 27, 2023

More than 5,000 Palestinian men, women and children have been killed in Israeli bombardment, which has targeted all areas of the besieged Palestinian enclave. Its aerial attacks have hit densely populated residential areas, hospitals and other civilian sites, also claiming the lives of dozens of humanitarian and health workers and journalists.

Israel’s Long-Held Plan to Drive Gaza’s People Into Sinai Is Now Within Reach

By Jonathan Cook, October 27, 2023

Behind the scenes, Israeli officials term their latest ethnic cleansing proposal a “Greater Gaza Plan”. Details first leaked in the Israeli media in 2014, although reports indicate that the origins date to 2007, when the Bush administration was apparently brought on board following Hamas’ election victory in Gaza a year earlier.

Zionist Think Tank Publishes Blueprint for Palestinian Genocide

By Kit Klarenberg, October 27, 2023

In a white paper released over a week after the Hamas-led surprise attack on Israeli military bases and kibbutzes, The Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy outlined “a plan for resettlement and final rehabilitation in Egypt of the entire population of Gaza,” based on the “unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the entire Gaza Strip” that Israel’s latest assault on the besieged costal enclave provided.

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***

Wael El-Dahdouh, Al-Jazeera Bureau Chief in Gaza, was reporting live when an Israeli airstrike targeted the southern Gaza building where his family sheltered, killing his wife, son, daughter, and grandson. 

The news came hours after Axios reported that Secretary Antony Blinken told U.S. Jewish leaders he asked Qatar to “turn down the volume on Al Jazeera’s coverage” of the Israeli genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip, accusing the network of being “anti-Israel.”

Mondoweiss reached out to journalists in Gaza who shared their anxiety that their families could fall victim to punitive shelling solely for doing their job.

“I’ve started to feel that I’m a danger to those around me,” one journalist confessed. “I was feeling this from the beginning of the war, since my voice started being heard… There are so many innocents around me, people that have nothing to do with me or my writings or my work.” 

The journalist, who remained anonymous for fear of retaliation, said,

“Targeting someone’s family is more painful than targeting that person only.”  “Maybe,” he added, “this is the message they want to send to every journalist: ‘you aren’t the only one we will target; we can burn your heart by targeting your family and robbing you of the will to live afterward.’”

Earlier today, Mohammed Farra, another Palestinian journalist, received the news that his wife and children were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Khan Yunis, while he was positioned in Ramallah, many miles and checkpoints away from Gaza. 

“Any person whose voice is being heard or is gaining international visibility is being made to pay the price,” the journalist in Gaza told Mondoweiss. “You can feel the intense surveillance of anything coming out of Gaza. And if anyone says anything, even a phrase or a word, that Israel doesn’t want, will be targeted and have their families targeted.” 

This testimony is consistent with the targeting of students, activists, and everyday social media users across occupied Jerusalem and 1948 territories and charging them for incitement over their social media posts. 

Since October 7, the Israeli regime has killed 20 Palestinian journalists in Gaza and one Lebanese journalist in the south of Lebanon.  

El-Dahdouh, a veteran reporter, was recorded kneeling on the floor, caressing the bloodied face of his 15-year-old son, Mahmoud, who had aspired to become a journalist.

“They are exacting their revenge by killing our children,” Dahdouh said, surrounded by a crew of his peers.

Other members of his family remain under the rubble. 

During Mondoweiss‘s conversation with the journalist from Gaza, he recalled an English video that Dahdouh’s late children had just made and shared online.

“They described what was going on in Gaza. They talked about how entire neighborhoods have been destroyed and how nowhere is safe. They asked what international law and human rights had to say about this. And they ended their video with a message: ‘Help us to stay alive.’ And the world failed them.”

"Help us to stay alive!"

A message that the children of Al Jazeera's Wael Dahdouh sent before #Israel decided to silence them. #Gaza pic.twitter.com/n9VKvsCK1j

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) October 25, 2023

In Qatar, an Al Jazeera anchor cried as he broke the news that his colleague’s entire family had been killed in aerial bombardments of the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the heart of the besieged Strip, where Dahdouh and his family were sheltering. 

The family was displaced from the north of Gaza after their neighborhood was bombarded, alongside 1.4 million Palestinians who were forced to flee their homes after threats made by the Israeli military that those remaining in the north of the enclave might be “treated as members of a terrorist organization.”

“Your presence in Gaza valley increases your chances of death,” said the thousands of leaflets dropped over Gaza from Israeli warplanes. 

The Israeli military drops new messages over Gaza City: “everyone who hasn’t evacuated from northern Gaza to the south might be treated as a member of a terrorist organization.” “Your presence in Gaza valley increases your chances of death.”

Genocide. pic.twitter.com/i1D5HAmQiB

— Mohammed El-Kurd (@m7mdkurd) October 21, 2023

It has been reported that 43% of the buildings in the Strip have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli shelling.

“This is the ‘safe’ area that the occupation army spoke of,” El-Dahdouh told media outside of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah. 

“[Dahdouh’s children] were trying to make their voices heard and to expose Israel’s crimes. In honesty, this terrifies me. Right now my voice is reaching people and I get a huge number of replies from Israelis to posts on Twitter. They attack me personally and say that they haven’t even begun,” the journalist in Gaza told Mondoweiss. 

Al-Jazeera Media Network condemned “the indiscriminate assault by the Israeli occupation forces resulted in the tragic loss of [Dahdouh’s] wife, son and daughter, while the rest of his family is buried under the rubble.” 

At the end of the conversation, the anonymous journalist told Mondoweiss,

“If the price of adhering to your professional duty or journalistic duty in Gaza means losing your entire family, then I feel it won’t be long before most journalists have left their jobs for the sake of their family’s safety.” 

“I’m starting to think that maybe I really do pose a danger to their lives, and to my life as well, but like I told you, when you lose your life, you don’t feel it. I don’t know, I really don’t know.” 

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Mohammed El-Kurd is a writer and poet from Jerusalem, occupied Palestine. He is the Culture Editor at Mondoweiss.

Featured image: AL JAZEERA CORRESPONDENT WAEL EL-DAHDOUH CRIES AS HE HOLDS ONE OF HIS FAMILY MEMBERS WHO WERE KILLED IN AN ISRAELI AIR STRIKE ON A BUILDING IN NUSEIRAT, IN THE CENTRAL GAZA STRIP, ON OCTOBER 25, 2023. (PHOTO: OMAR ASHTAWY/APA IMAGES)

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***

Since the October 7 Hamas attacks, and the subsequent, ongoing Israeli airstrikes, US TV news has offered extensive coverage of Israel and Gaza. But as casualties mount, most outlets have paid scant attention to the growing calls for a ceasefire.

After Hamas killed more than 1,400 people in Israel on October 7 and took some 200 hostages, Israeli bombing killed over 5,000 people in Gaza, as of October 22—including more than 1,400 children—and at least 23 journalists and 35 UN staff (UN News, 10/23/23). Ninety-five Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank as well, by both Israeli government forces and settlers. With Israel enacting a “complete siege” of Gaza, cutting off power, food, water and medical supplies, and nowhere for civilians to seek safety, a broad spectrum of critical voices have decried the humanitarian crisis and insisted on a ceasefire and an end to the siege.

Jewish-led protests in New York and other cities on October 13, and again in Washington, DC, on October 18, made a ceasefire their central message. Progressive lawmakers on October 16 introduced a House resolution “calling for an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire.” And a recent Data for Progress poll (10/20/23) found that 66% of likely US voters agree that “the US should call for a ceasefire and a de-escalation of violence in Gaza.”

Source: Democracy Now!

Internationally, the head of the UN, the UN human rights expert on Palestine, a growing list of scores of legal scholars, and hundreds of human rights groups—including Save the Children, Oxfam and Doctors Without Borders—have likewise spoken out for a ceasefire.

But the Biden administration has actively tried to suppress discussion of de-escalation. HuffPost reported on October 13 that an internal State Department memo instructed staff not to use the words “de-escalation/ceasefire,” “end to violence/bloodshed” and “restoring calm” in press materials on the Middle East.

At the UN Security Council, a Russian resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire was voted down last Tuesday by the US, Britain, France and Japan; a Brazilian resolution the next day seeking “humanitarian pauses” in the violence was vetoed by the US alone. (On October 24, however, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that “humanitarian pauses must be considered” to bring help to Gaza civilians—ABC, 10/24/23.)

Broadcast Nightly News 

US television news outlets appear largely to be following the administration’s lead, minimizing any talk of ceasefire or de-escalation on the air. FAIR searched transcripts of the nightly news shows of the four major broadcast networks for one week (October 12–18) in the Nexis news database and Archive.org, and found that, even as the outlets devoted a great deal of time to the conflict, they rarely mentioned the idea of a ceasefire or de-escalation.

While ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and PBS NewsHour aired a total of 105 segments primarily about Israel/Gaza and broader repercussions of the conflict, only eight segments included the word “ceasefire” or some form of the word “de-escalate.” (The word “de-escalate” never appeared without the word “ceasefire.”)

NBC and PBS aired three segments each with ceasefire mentions; CBS aired two, and ABC aired none.

The October 18 protest on Capitol Hill led by Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now demanding a ceasefire—a peaceful protest that ended with over 300 arrests—accounted for half of the mentions, briefly making the evening news that night on all the broadcast networks except ABC. (The protesters’ demand was mentioned in two segments on NBC.)

That was the only day CBS Evening News(10/18/23) mentioned a ceasefire or de-escalation, though correspondent Margaret Brennan also noted in that episode, in response to a question from anchor Norah O’Donnell referencing the protest, that Biden “refrained from calling a ceasefire. In fact, the US vetoed a UN resolution to that effect earlier today.” Brennan continued:

Given that there have now been 11 days of bombing of Gaza by Israel, with thousands killed, there is a perception in Arab countries that this looks like the US is treating Palestinian lives differently than Israeli lives.

Of course, one doesn’t have to live in an Arab country to see a double standard.

Only twice across all nightly news shows did viewers see anyone, guest or journalist, advocating for a ceasefire—both times on PBS NewsHour.

The NewsHour featured a phone interview with Gaza resident Diana Odeh (10/12/23), who described the dire situation on the ground and pleaded: “We need help. We don’t need money. We don’t need anything, but we need a ceasefire. People are getting worse and worse.”

A few days later, the NewsHour (10/18/23) brought on Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon analyst currently serving as military advisor at PAX Protection of Civilians, who said: “You’re talking about 6,000 bombs in less than a week in Gaza, which is the size of Newark, New Jersey. It’s just incredibly dangerous to the population, and we need to have a ceasefire and get an end to this conflict as quickly as possible.”

Sunday Shows and Cable

Across the agenda-setting Sunday shows, which are largely aimed at an audience of DC insiders, the word “ceasefire” was entirely absent, except on CNN State of the Union(10/15/23)—but there, only in the context of reporting on a poll from earlier this year that found a strong majority of Gazans supporting the ceasefire that had previously been in place between Hamas and Israel.

Looking at the broader cable news coverage, where the 24-hour news cycle means much more coverage of the conflict, viewers were still unlikely to encounter any mention of the idea of a ceasefire. Using the Stanford Cable TV News Analyzer, FAIR found that mentions of “cease” appeared in closed captioning on screen for an average of only 19.7 seconds per day on Fox, 11.1 seconds per day on CNN, and 9.2 seconds per day on MSNBC. (FAIR used the shortened form of the word to account for variations in hyphenation and compounding; some false positives are likely.)

Meanwhile, mentions of “Israel” did not differ substantially across networks, averaging 18–20 minutes per day. (Note that this is not the amount of time Israel was discussed, but the amount of time mentions of “Israel” appeared onscreen in closed captions.)

Fox mentioned a ceasefire roughly twice as often as either CNN or MSNBC, largely to ridicule those on the left who called for one, as with host Greg Gutfeld’s comment (10/18/23):

Enough with the ceasefire talk…. I mean, Jewish protesters calling for a ceasefire is like the typical leftist pleading not to arrest their mugger because he had a bad childhood.

Fox also frequently compared Jewish peace advocates unfavorably with January 6 rioters (Media Matters, 10/19/23).

CNN on a few occasions featured a guest advocating a ceasefire, such as Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, the leader of the Palestinian National Initiative party. On Situation Room (10/17/23), Barghouti argued forcefully:

The only way out of this is to have immediate ceasefire, immediate supply of food, drinking water to people immediately in Gaza and then to have exchange of prisoners so that the Israeli prisoners can come back home safe to Israel.

On CNN‘s most-watched show, Anderson Cooper 360, the possibility of a ceasefire was mentioned in three segments during the study period—each time in an interview with a former military or intelligence official, none of whom supported the idea. For instance, with former Mossad agent Rami Igra on the show (10/16/23), Cooper asked about negotiating the release of hostages. Igra noted that Hamas had “twice already” said they were “willing to negotiate the release of the prisoners,” contingent upon a ceasefire and release of Palestinian prisoners. But Igra insisted Israel should not negotiate:

IGRA: Israel will do all it can in order to release these prisoners, and some of them will or maybe all of them will be released, but by force.

COOPER: That’s the only way.

IGRA: The only way to release prisoners in this kind of situation is force.

Meanwhile, the only time viewers of MSNBC‘s popular primetime show The Beat heard about the possibility of a ceasefire was when guest Elise Labott of Politico told host Ari Melber (10/12/23) that, for Israel, “this is not a ceasefire situation.” Melber responded:

If you said to someone in the United States, if ISIS or Al Qaeda or even a criminal group came into their home and murdered children or kidnapped children or burned babies, the next day you don’t typically hear rational individuals discuss a ceasefire or moving on. You discuss resorting to the criminal justice system or the war machine to respond.

Melber’s eagerness to lean on the “war machine” left his argument a muddle. Obviously, those calling for a ceasefire are not suggesting simply “moving on”—in fact, a “criminal justice system” response is more than compatible with a ceasefire, as you don’t try to bomb someone that you’re seeking to put on trial.

Netanyahu has been trying with limited success to equate Hamas with ISIS for many years now (Times of Israel, 8/27/14), and the Israeli government continues to try to paint Hamas’s tactics as so barbaric as to justify the mass killings by Israel. (See FAIR.org, 10/20/23.) But it’s passions, not reason, that allow individuals like Melber to gloss over the deaths of thousands of civilians—a child every 15 minutes, according to one widely circulated estimate—in their thirst for revenge.

With Israeli bombing intensifying and a ground invasion appearing imminent, US television news outlets’ refusal to give more than minimal airtime to the widespread calls for a ceasefire fails to reflect either US or global public opinion, and fuels the warmongering march to follow one horror with another.

*

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Julie Hollar is FAIR’s senior analyst and managing editor. Julie has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

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***

US President Joe Biden has declared himself a ‘war president.’ He has ordered two US aircraft carriers, advanced missile systems and 2,000 Marines to the Mideast. It’s full-force war fever in Washington.

Does this seem like overkill considering Hamas has not much more than lightly armed teenagers with AK-47 rifles and some home-made bombs? Of course not. It’s the old ‘bomb them back to the Stone Age’ mentality.

What’s behind this militaristic display is, of course, imminent US elections. Staunchly pro-Israel American voters are only 2% of the electorate, but their influence is profound and pervasive. Pro-Israel voters are believed to be one of the most important political donors to the Democratic Party. Add Christian Evangelicals who venerate Israel as the modern Promised Land.

America’s small numbers of Muslims and liberal thinkers have gone into hiding after the massacre of Israelis in Gaza. The always pro-Israel US media equates the Hamas movement with the old Nazi Party for beastly behavior.

One is reminded of Talleyrand’s famous quip about Napoleon’s murder of the Duc d’Enghien as ‘worse than a crime, a mistake.’

What we saw was not a political act but a ghastly jailhouse riot by Palestinian refugees caged up in the awful Gaza open-air prison for over 60 years.

Biden, who looks on his last legs, is in full panic mode, and rightfully so. Donald Trump is closing in like a giant storm cloud and way ahead in the polls. Trump is no spring chicken but compared to the doddering Biden, he looks like a political Adonis.

Trump had the guts and smarts to end the calamitous Afghan War while America’s bemedaled generals and politicians were too scared to do so, fearing they would be blamed for the Afghan fiasco.

The US had few compunctions about sending B-1 and B-52 heavy bombers to carpet bomb Afghan villages but was suddenly outraged by the attacks on civilians in Gaza.

As the US stumbles into yet another military conflict, we should remember that run amok spending is the greatest threat to US security, not Hamas, al-Qaida, Taliban, Vlad Putin nor any other of our favorite enemies. Biden now wants to spend an additional $105 billion on his pet wars in Ukraine and Israel, both of which are already awash in US dollars.

Many Americans go hungry or lack medical care while Washington lavishes money on these two pet causes. Biden’s aid proposals have unmasked the secret alliance between Israel and Ukraine. Some Israelis even speak of Ukraine as a ‘second Israel.’ America’s Israel lobby is the prime motivator of intense support in Congress and the media for the Ukraine War. The two conflicts are merging into one very expensive pre-election campaign.

To be fair, Trump and Bush also said they wanted to be war presidents. All politicians know that the fastest way to boost their ratings is to start a small war. American industry often looks dependent on ever increasing military spending, particularly so in key electoral states. Afghanistan cost over $1.2 trillion but it all went on the national credit card.

The US national debt is now $33.6 trillion, a monster deficit that threatens to capsize the economy and crash Wall Street. Yet the Biden administration keeps spending like drunken sailors. It’s all ok provided Americas taxpayers never bear the real cost of their jolly little wars.

Meanwhile, the Biden White House keeps stumbling ever closer to war with Russia that could easily go nuclear. The ‘war president’ now risks a global disaster over obscure places in Ukraine that are of no importance at all to the United States – but essential to Biden’s potential re-election.

*

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***

Water, electricity, schools, hospitals, homes, Mosques – now bakeries. Really is beyond comprehension that those responsible for policies and actions can live with themselves.

-Global Research, October 27, 2023

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The Israeli warplanes attacked the only bakery in the al-Mughazi refugee camp in the centre of Gaza, killing at least ten people and wounding dozens of others, on Wednesday, 25 October.

In response, the government media office in Gaza said that Israel is “deliberately bombing and targeting bakeries” as civilians line up in front to inflect the largest amount of casualties.

In a press statement sent to The New Arab, Salama Marrouf, the head of the government office in Gaza, said,

“An Israeli aircraft bombed a bakery in the Al-Mughazi camp after providing it with flour from the United Nations Relief and Works of Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).”

He added that the bakery “was providing tens of thousands of the camp residents and the newly displaced.”

The Israeli missiles demolished the bakery and damaged several homes surrounding the camp,  with at least 10 Palestinians killed and others injured, according to Maarouf.

“This new war crime, which appears to be a systematic policy by the occupying Israeli state since the launch of its new war, is further evidence it is lying about hitting military targets in Gaza,” Maarouf stressed.

“There are already dozens of other evidence of such crimes in which Israel deliberately targeting civilians gatherings in front of bakeries, markets, and even hospitals or churches,” he added.

He stated that he “monitored and documented Israeli targeting at least five bakeries directly or its surroundings in different sites across Gaza, which has left dozens of martyrs and hundreds of wounded since the beginning of the aggression on 7 October.”

For the 19th day, the Israeli army continued violent airstrikes that destroyed entire neighbourhoods in Gaza, killing 6,546, including 2,704 children, 1,584 women, and 364 elderly, and injuring more than 16,000 people, according to the Ministry of Health in the Strip.

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Featured image: Firefighters and residents try to put out the fire at a bakery shop which was destroyed after Israeli airstrikes at Nuseirat Refugee Camp in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on 18 October 2023. [Getty]

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***

As the Israeli Defence Forces increasingly been reported to be facing difficulties achieving the objective of destroying the Palestinian militia Hamas, the United States has responded by providing growing levels of personnel and material support.

While significantly escalating the American military presence in the region, the Pentagon has dispatched Marine Corps Lieutenant General James Glynn, who previously played a leading role in planning special operations against the Islamic State and served in Fallujah, Iraq, to advise Israeli forces. Formerly serving as the commanding general of Marine Special Operations Command, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby stating that Glynn and other officers advising Israeli forces “have experience that is appropriate to the sorts of operations that Israel is conducting.” America’s role in the conflict, however, has increasingly gone beyond that of advising raising the possibility that its forces could come to shoulder a much greater burden in the war effort.

Israeli Merkava Tank Captured By Palestinian Forces Early in the Conflict

On October 15 Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered that 2,000 personnel gear up for a potential “medical and logistical support” mission in Israel. A little over a week later unconfirmed reports began to emerge that U.S. Army Delta Force special forces specialised in counterinsurgency had been deployed alongside Israeli forces for incursions into Gaza, where Hamas has had decades to prepare defences including a vast underground tunnel network. Although it has been confirmed that Delta Force is advising Israeli forces, their involvement in combat operations remains unconfirmed. The fact that many hostages taken by Hamas forces are American citizens, however, has made such involvement far from implausible. Retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas MacGregor, speaking to talk show host Tucker Carlson, reported on October 25 regarding the involvement of American special forces in open hostiles:

“In the last 24 hours or so, some of our Special Ops forces and Israeli Special Ops forces went into Gaza to reconnoiter, to plan for where they might want to go to free hostages and make an impact, and they were shot to pieces and took heavy losses, as I understand it.”

The performance of Hamas units, both in their initial offensives against Israeli positions and now defensively, is expected to add urgency to ongoing American investigations into the kind of training they may have received from Iran or Hezbollah – the latter which has seen its special forces receive advanced North Korean training which was demonstrated against Israeli forces during a brief war in 2006.

While the U.S. increases its involvement in the theatre significantly, its NATO ally France has proposed that the predominantly Western coalition force that was formed to fight the Islamic State terror group in 2014 be given the new mission of fighting Hamas to support Israel. On October 24 meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and French President Emanuel Macron stated that the Palestinian political party and militia had to be tacked “without mercy,” with Netanyahu at the time stressing that “this battle is not merely our own … it’s everybody’s battle.” Other than Turkey and the United States, France maintains the largest military presence in the Middle East among NATO members, and could see its forces deployed to provide support or even directly participate in combat operations should the war escalate. Influence in the region has become particularly important for Paris since the undermining of its sphere of influence across West Africa with the popular overthrow of multiple French-aligned governments in the region.  

French President Macron Meets Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu

Alongside the United States and France, Turkey has played an important role in diverting attentions of Hamas’ allies Syria and Hezbollah away from Israel, with jihadist militias supported by Ankara and benefitting from Turkish special forces within their ranks staging growing provocations against Syrian targets and having the potential to launch large offensives into Syria should the war escalate. While the extent of U.S. and other Western involvement in Israel’s Gaza campaign remains uncertain, America is expected to intervene should the conflict escalate to involve Hezbollah, Syria or Iran. Washington has accordingly massively escalated its military presence in the region including deployment of two nuclear powered supercarriers and their strike groups, as well as F-15E fighters, A-10 attack jets, and a large Marine contingent with its own aircraft carrier among a range of other assets. Strengthening of the air defences both in Israel and around other American facilities in the region has also been a priority with deployments of Patriot and THAAD systems, provision of new ammunition for Israeli air defence systems, and plans to transfer the U.S. Army’s sole two Iron Dome short ranged defence systems to Israel as aid. 

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Featured image: General James Glynn and Delta Force Special Forces (All images in this article are from MWM)

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***

The devastating human cost of Israel’s relentless assault on the Gaza Strip continues to mount by the hour.

More than 5,000 Palestinian men, women and children have been killed in Israeli bombardment, which has targeted all areas of the besieged Palestinian enclave.

Its aerial attacks have hit densely populated residential areas, hospitals and other civilian sites, also claiming the lives of dozens of humanitarian and health workers and journalists.

Israel has cut off basic supplies, such as water, electricity and humanitarian aid, to more than 2.2 million people in the Gaza Strip, while also ordering what some experts call the forced displacement of over 1.1 million with its evacuation warning for northern Gaza.

For Israel, all of this was a response to the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and its subsequent rocket attacks on Israeli areas, which have now claimed more than 1,400 lives.

But many around the world have questioned the excessive and disproportionate force used by Israel, giving rise to multiple warnings of war crimes and crimes against humanity, from legal experts and even officials like Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories.

One of the areas of focus has been the role – or the apparent lack of it – of institutions like the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ), or the independent International Criminal Court (ICC), which, by its own definition, has the specific mandate of acting on “the gravest crimes of concern to the international community: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression.”

On Monday, the ICJ announced it will hold public hearings on the request for an advisory opinion on the “legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.”

However, the hearings will begin on Feb. 19 next year.

Image: Ben Saul (Source: ICCT)

As for the ICC, several experts have been calling on it to take immediate action over the growing escalation in Gaza.

“While the ICC responded rapidly to allegations of war crimes in Ukraine since last year, it seems to be very slow in addressing crimes in Palestine since it began its investigation in 2015,” said Ben Saul, who was recently appointed as the next UN special rapporteur on promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism.

Saul, currently the Challis Chair of International Law at the University of Sydney in Australia, will take over the post this November.

He said the ICC needs to show “the same urgency and mobilization of resources, to reassure the world that it is impartial and that its legitimacy is not undermined by the geopolitical forces.”

“All states should cooperate with the court where they have information about crimes,” he told Anadolu.

He pointed out that there have been several violations by both Hamas and Israeli forces in the current escalation.

For Israel, he said the “total siege of Gaza is a violation of international law, and could constitute the war crime of starvation.”

“Israel has an obligation to allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded humanitarian relief, including food and medicine. Israel’s warnings to civilians about impending attacks must be effective, and its order to evacuate over 1 million people in northern Gaza, under siege conditions was not sufficient,” he said.

“More information is needed about Israel’s targeting decisions and intelligence, but it is possible that some of the thousands of Israeli bombings in Gaza may have involved excessive civilian casualties or indiscriminate attacks.”

For Hamas, Saul said the “mass killings of Israeli civilians could constitute the international crime of genocide if specifically intended to destroy part of the Israeli and/or Jewish people as such.”

“They could also constitute various crimes against humanity,” he said.

ICC Response Shows ‘Inequality Loaded with Political Influences’

The ICC has confirmed its jurisdiction over war crimes in Palestine for all parties, according to Khalil Dewan, head of legal investigations at UK-based law firm Stoke White, which has been part of previous cases at the ICC involving Israel.

“The ICC are accepting evidence bundles of war crimes, and recently announced that the prosecutor holds jurisdiction via Palestine,” he told Anadolu.

“The court’s jurisdiction of war crimes includes Jerusalem, West Bank and Gaza for all parties to the conflict.”

He said many law firms are gathering evidence “including current hostilities – targeting civilians, protected infrastructure and collective punishment.”

“Israel’s pending ground force actions will be carefully examined and submitted to the ICC,” he said.

Dewan pointed out that Israel will “reject the ICC’s jurisdiction,” but added that “it has already been claimed by the (ICC) prosecutor.

“In any case, the ICC’s lack of urgency and approach to war crimes in Palestine, compared to the response to Ukraine demonstrates inequality loaded with political influences,” he asserted.

Dewan said that international law remains an “indeterminate legal system,” and that “some states deploy the strategy of ‘lawfare’ to win military objectives, including politics and media narratives.”

He said Palestinians have “exhausted all international legal and political avenues in seeking justice.”

“The calls at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to form a separate regional mechanism for peace and safeguarding security of Palestine would be a welcomed initiative,” he said.

“If UN resolutions are not upheld on Palestine, then it’s vital to seek decolonial approaches to international law, and weed out lawfare designed to silence and subjugate non-Western states.”

‘ICC Can Issue Arrest Warrants’

Ahmet Necip Arslan, an Istanbul-based attorney, echoed the same views, saying that the ICC’s mechanisms are “very slow.”

“Often the decisions made, in any stage, can be under the heavy influence of governments and politics,” he told Anadolu.

Arslan pointed out that the ICC “can issue arrest warrants,” stressing that “this can be an effective method to stop an armed conflict.”

He said reports coming out of Gaza “indicate that Israel is employing prohibited weapons like white phosphorus and targeting places of worship and cultural properties, both considered war crimes.”

Israel, he continued, has been depriving civilians of essentials such as food, water, humanitarian aid, antibiotics and medical supplies, adding that these could be violations of international law that could be “potential war crimes.”

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Featured image is from AA

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***

As Israel masses its forces along the fence encaging Gaza, waiting for a green light from the United States for a ground invasion, the question few are asking is: What is the ultimate endgame for Israel?  

Instead, British and US politicians, backed by their media, have limited themselves to amplifying Israel’s bogus rationales for indiscriminately bombing men, women and children in the tiny coastal enclave and preparing to send in troops. Only 80 or so British MPs, out of 650, have so far called for a ceasefire.  

Israeli strikes are known to have killed more than 7,000 Palestinians, nearly half of them children, with many times that number seriously injured. They are being treated in hospitals without medicines or electricity. The United Nations estimates at least 600,000 Palestinians are homeless from the bombing.

At first, Western establishments justified the carnage as Israel’s “right to defend itself” – a right Palestinians had been denied for the previous 16 years while Israel enforced a brutal military siege of the enclave that prevented basic goods and medicines from entering. 

Israel’s supposed “right to self-defence” – the official line from both sides of the political aisle in Britain – serves as western cover for, and complicity in, the crimes against humanity Israel has been committing: mass killing and wanton destruction; a “complete siege” of Gaza, starving it of food and water; and attacks on community infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, mosques, and UN compounds.  

But now, as the death toll becomes increasingly obscene, the rationale has shifted. In chorus, British and US politicians say Israel must be given the time and space to “destroy Hamas”.

That requires a ground invasion by Israeli troops – many of them religious extremists from illegal settlements in the West Bank – who are certain to be seeking vengeance for Hamas’ attack on October 7. The atrocities are only likely to intensify.

Military Madness

But there is method in Israel’s military madness. And the main goal is not the one being promoted. Israel has much larger ambitions than “destroying Hamas”.

Israel knows enough history to understand that occupied and oppressed peoples never come to accept their subjugation. They continue to find ways to resist. Even if Hamas can be wiped out, a new, more fearsome adversary will emerge among the next generation currently being traumatised by Israel’s bombs.

In fact, after Israel removed its physical presence from Gaza by pulling out settlers and soldiers in 2005, it began to understand that it had boxed itself into a strategic corner.

It was still occupying the enclave, but at arm’s length. This was the rationale for the blockade that tightly limited what was allowed in and out of the strip. Gaza had been turned into an open-air prison, controlled by Israel through intensive surveillance via drones, eaves-dropping and local collaborators.

In practice, however, Israel found it much harder to police Gaza from afar. Hamas managed to create a much more sophisticated resistance movement in the small spaces left inside the prison that Israel could not surveil, such as a network of underground tunnels.

The results became fully apparent in the preparation and execution of Hamas’ attack on 7 October.

Israel’s strategic problem was compounded by the humanitarian crisis it had created by penning such a large and growing population into a tiny area with no resources.

Poverty, malnutrition, unclean water, overcrowding and lack of housing, as well as the trauma of being encaged and intermittently bombed by Israel to subdue any resistance, was slowly turning Gaza from a prison into a death camp. The UN had warned that the enclave would be effectively “uninhabitable” by 2020.

The solution to this – one that accorded with Israel’s long settler colonial ambitions to replace the Palestinians in their own homeland – was clear. Israel needed to create a consensus in the West justifying the expulsion of the Palestinians from Gaza.

And the only realistic place for them to go was into the neighbouring Egyptian territory of Sinai.

‘Greater Gaza’

Behind the scenes, Israeli officials term their latest ethnic cleansing proposal a “Greater Gaza Plan”. Details first leaked in the Israeli media in 2014, although reports indicate that the origins date to 2007, when the Bush administration was apparently brought on board following Hamas’ election victory in Gaza a year earlier.

At the time, Israel’s secret plan relied on carrots more than sticks. The idea was to attach Gaza to Sinai, erasing the border between the two. Washington would help secure international funding for a free trade zone in Sinai.

With unemployment at over 60 per cent, massive overcrowding in the enclave and little clean water to drink, the expectation was that Palestinians in Gaza would gradually move the centre of their lives to Sinai, settling there or moving to distant Egyptian cities.

Following the leaks, Egyptian and Palestinian officials hurriedly denounced the plan as “fabricated”. However, there were plenty of clues that Egypt had begun facing pressure from 2007 onwards.

In response to the Israeli media leaks of 2014, an official close to former president Hosni Mubarak admitted that the screws had been turned on him in 2007 to agree to annex Gaza.

Five years later, according to the same source, Mohamed Morsi, who led a short-lived Muslim Brotherhood government, sent a delegation to Washington. There, the Americans proposed that “Egypt cede a third of the Sinai to Gaza in a two-stage process spanning four to five years”. Morsi too refused.

Suspicions that Egypt’s current president, Sisi, was close to capitulating in 2014 were fuelled at the time by Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. In an interview on Egyptian TV, he said Israel’s Sinai plan had been “unfortunately accepted by some here [in Egypt]. Don’t ask me more about that. We abolished it.”

The Greater Gaza plan received another boost in 2018 when it was reportedly considered for inclusion in Donald Trump’s “deal of the century” Middle East “peace” plan. The hope was it would be financed by Gulf states as part of their normalisation with Israel.

That summer, Hamas even sent a delegation to Cairo to learn about the proposals.

Crushing Hamas

The gains for Israel in moving Palestinians from Gaza to Sinai, whether voluntarily under the Greater Gaza Plan or by force during a ground invasion, are obvious.

Egypt’s military dictatorship would inherit the problem of crushing Palestinian resistance groups like Hamas – largely out of view – rather than Israel. Hamas would not be likely to fare well, given the Egyptian military’s repression of the country’s own political Islamist movements.

The costs of confining and policing Gaza would shift from Israel to the Arab world and international community.

Once inside Sinai, ordinary Palestinians could be expected to seek alleviation from their poverty and suffering by integrating into wider Egyptian society, eventually moving to big cities like Cairo and Alexandria. They would be stripped of their right in international law to return to their homes.

In a generation or two, their children would identify as Egyptian, not Palestinian.

Meanwhile, the West Bank would be even more isolated and vulnerable to attacks from Jewish settlers, backed by Israeli soldiers. And Abbas would no longer be able to claim to represent the Palestinian cause, undermining his campaign to win recognition for statehood.

Very Large Stick

The problem is that no Egyptian leader has dared to accept such a plan, however much international arm-twisting and bribery was involved.

None wanted to be seen conspiring in Israel’s ethnic cleansing and final dispossession of the Palestinian people, one of the gravest and longest-running grievances shared by populations across the Middle East.

Which brings us to Israel’s current bombing campaign, which accords with no conceivable principle of proportionality, and its imminent ground invasion. Far from targeting Hamas, Israel has every incentive to use the Hamas attack of October 7 as a pretext to wreak as much damage on Gaza as possible.

Israel’s goal is to speed up the process of making Gaza uninhabitable.

Israel needs Palestinians in Gaza so desperate to leave that they will ethnically cleanse themselves, and Egypt under so much opprobrium for not opening the border to Sinai that it finally relents.

With its current bombing campaign, Israel has moved from carrots to a very large stick.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is aware that he has only a limited time-window to effect enough carnage to realise Israel’s plan.

Notably, back in 2018, veteran Israeli reporter Ron Ben-Yishai revealed that the Israeli military was considering a new strategy towards Gaza that involved invading it and dissecting it in two, with Israel occupying the northern half.

At the same time the US was said to be willing to deepen Gaza’s humanitarian crisis by withholding funds from UNRWA, the UN’s relief agency. 

Israel is currently achieving both through its bombing rampage and its demand that northern Gaza’s population “evacuate”, supposedly for their own safety, to southern Gaza.

The aim appears to be to squeeze Palestinians into the tiny space of Gaza’s south, next to the border with Sinai, destroy all civilian infrastructure, and bomb and terrorise Palestinians in the south too.

Palestinians are already clamouring to be allowed into Sinai, while Sisi is presumably coming under the severest pressure behind the scenes to back down and open the border.

In Israel’s cold, cynical calculations, its military is rolling the toothpaste tube tightly, before opening the top to see the toothpaste pour out.

If Gaza can be emptied, Israel will hope to establish a precedent the international community will condone. West Bank Palestinians will be pressured to join family or compatriots in Sinai.

Having been embarrassed by the festering wound of the Palestinians’ dispossession for more than 75 years, the West and Arab world will be only too happy finally to bury the Palestinian cause for good.

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Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net

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***

Western leaders are taking irresponsible measures regarding the Palestinian conflict, further increasing the risk of escalation and internationalization of hostilities. On a visit to Tel Aviv, Macron made some bellicose statements, calling for a “coalition to fight Hamas”, ignoring the negative impacts that such an alliance could have on the regional situation.

Macron endorsed the Israeli propaganda speech that baselessly compares Hamas to the terrorist group “Islamic State” (ISIS). For the French leader, the supposed “similarity” between Hamas and ISIS is reason enough for the Western-led “anti-ISIS coalition” to start taking actions against the Palestinian group as well. Macron called Hamas a “common enemy” of France and Israel, demanding more military measures against the militia.

“France is ready for the international coalition against Daesh in which we are taking part for operations in Iraq and Syria to also fight against Hamas (…) We should build a regional and international coalition to battle against terrorist groups that threaten us all”, Macron said.

As well known, this so-called “anti-ISIS coalition” was created in 2014 bringing together NATO, Western states and Arab countries in order to promote military efforts against the terrorist organization. However, the alliance did not prove efficient in neutralizing the terrorists’ advance. Due to mistakes or deliberate neglect, the coalition was never able to achieve its public objective of destroying the extremist group. Only after the Russian intervention in the Syrian Civil War, the ISIS was truly defeated.

Still, Macron appears to continue to believe in the coalition’s ability to guarantee the security of the Middle East – and is now calling for the inclusion of Hamas in the alliance’s list of priorities. With this, the French president places Paris as an unconditional supporter of the Zionist regime, even though there is growing international antipathy towards Tel Aviv due to the massacres in Gaza.

It must be noted that there is no rational argument for considering Hamas and ISIS as “similar” organizations. Unlike ISIS, which is simply an illegitimate terrorist group, Hamas is a Palestinian political party that has its own armed militia and fights a war for national liberation against the Zionist occupation forces. In other words, ISIS openly and deliberately promotes violence against civilians, while Hamas, despite Israel and Western media accusations, is simply involved in hostilities against a much more powerful army.

In situations of asymmetric warfare and irregular combat, the weaker side is forced to fight with all the available resources, which often includes launching surprise attacks, using guerrilla tactics, and, in the specific Israeli case, destroying illegal Jewish settlements. Tel Aviv, as an enemy of the Palestinian Resistance, expectedly calls Hamas “terrorists” and is endorsed by its Western sponsors. But the Islamic and Arab countries neighboring Israel, which traditionally support Palestine, do not agree with this classification, which shows how Macron’s proposal is likely to fail.

If international military efforts are launched against Hamas, the reaction from Palestine-supportive countries will be extremely negative. Even states that do not support Hamas, such as Saudi Arabia, have a very clear position to condemn Israel and endorse Palestine, so it will not be possible to reach a diplomatic consensus to make a new “war on terror” viable. Furthermore, Iran has already made it clear that there will be consequences if Tel Aviv does not stop the attacks soon or if there is Western intervention. In the same sense, the Axis of Resistance – an international coalition of pro-Iran and pro-Palestine armed groups – is on the verge of a direct intervention in the hostilities.

If Macron really implements such a collective attack plan on Hamas, the consequence will simply be a regional situation of total war. Pro-Palestinian armed groups will support Hamas unconditionally. As much as there are ideological and political differences between these groups, support for Palestine is a common agenda for all of them – and Western intervention in favor of Israel is considered a red line.

In such a situation, Israel and Western countries would be greatly disadvantaged, as the Zionist State is unable to fight a prolonged war of attrition and its Western supporters currently have weakened weapons stocks after more than a year of systematically arming the Kiev neo-Nazi regime. Macron may be unconsciously creating a trap for himself and his own partners.

Macron will only be creating an international full-scale war. The best thing he can do, instead of wanting to create a new, unjustified “war on terror”, is to use his diplomacy to make Israel stop the massacre in Gaza.

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Global Research’s Editor Note

Macron ignores Israel’s unspoken “alliance” with several Islamist entities. There is evidence that Israeli intelligence covertly supports not only factions within Hamas but also Al Qaeda, ISIS and Daesh: 

According to Times of Israel October 8, 2023 Report:

 “Hamas was treated as a partner to the detriment of the Palestinian Authority to prevent Abbas from moving towards creating a Palestinian State. Hamas was promoted from a terrorist group to an organization with which Israel conducted negotiations through Egypt, and which was allowed to receive suitcases containing millions of dollars from Qatar through the Gaza crossings.” (emphasis added)

Since the Onset of the War against Syria in March 2011, the IDF has actively recruited Al Qaeda and ISIS mercenaries.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

In the blink of an eye, my cherished home is no more. Israel deemed my small residence a threat to its existence and its security. 

Last Friday, at 6:30am, Wejdan, my husband’s niece, called us from Khan Younis in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. The apartment towers in Zahra town were bombed.

Unable to comprehend the news, I asked “Which one?” A moment of silence passed. Then Wejdan said, “All of them.” I passed the phone to my son and wept. 

Everything is gone. All I held dear now lies under the rubble. Precious photo albums filled with memories of my school days, the faces of dear friends, the smiles from the early days of my marriage. Moments we captured of my children’s first steps, early play, and pictures from school. All gone.

Gone, too, are the photographs of my parents and grandparents. The records of my journeys. My extensive library. Some hard-earned certificates. My graduation photos. Torn asunder is my daughters’ artwork as well as an enormous painting created, and gifted, by my brother-in-law, Mohammed, on our wedding day.

All of this, and so much more, has vanished. It feels like a bomb was dropped onto the very substance of my memories.

Zahra is situated to the south of Gaza City, in the eastern part of the Strip. The air strike obliterated 24 residential buildings. Each tower comprised five floors. Each floor housed four apartments. All of them now exist only in the past tense.  

These apartments were home to around 500 families. They include my friends like Dr Abu Adam Safi and his Russian wife. Engineer Obaid’s family. Abeer Allaham’s family. Um Shatha’s family. Abu Manhal’s family. Al-Daba’s family. Fora’s family. Al Tamimi family. Abu Ali family. Many families, including real children.

I want to say their names. 

Wiped Out

I believe in the words of the writer James Baldwin, that “not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” So, it is crucial to highlight the names of these families so the world cannot claim ignorance.  

One of the oldest pictures in the family album where the author’s grandmother, a survivor of the Nakba, poses with all her uncles (Supplied)

President Joe Biden, alongside his British and EU allies, has relied on the talking points of the most hardline far-right government of Israel (not a low bar to pass). Biden said he could never imagine the images he had seen of beheaded Israeli children. But his spokespeople walked back these comments about beheadings.

Yet, we hear nothing about the children – real children – whose homes have been destroyed and whose lives have been lost. Because they are Palestinian.

What is uncertain is how many of these families were also providing shelter to families who had fled the northern part of Gaza in response to Israel’s warning to clear the area.

In our case, we offered our apartment to our friend Shaima Al Shawa. Her home in Gaza was bombarded. She survived, and then sought refuge in Al Quds Hospital with her father, mother and brother. When the news broke about the Al Ahli hospital bombardment that left 500 dead, mostly women and children, we urged Shaima to take shelter in our home in Zahra.

Thankfully, they did not need to accept the offer. If she had, we could not urge her any more.

My neighbours and friends are mostly refugees whose original homes were destroyed by Israel in 1948. With the destruction of Zahra, Israel has now wiped out nearly a quarter of the Gaza Strip’s homes. Now, my friends are in the streets, with nowhere to go.

In 2016, I wrote (in Apartheid in Palestine) about my great-grandfather in the 1970s, who refused an opportunity to revisit his old home inside what is today called Israel. My grandmother asked him why he refused the opportunity to revisit his old memories. He told her that he would prefer to die rather than walk on the ruins of his old home.

My house, he said in a choked voice, “is my flesh, my sweat, my blood and my bone. It’s me, the broken human being you see now. How do you expect to walk on your body?” He then turned his back on my grandmother to hide the tears.  

My grandfather believed that there is nothing in life harder than walking on the rubble of one’s own home. Perhaps, however, there is something worse than walking on the rubble of one’s own home: not being allowed to walk on it.

Today, I share the pain of my grandfather through space and through time.  

‘Leave this Land’

The destruction of a home is an echo of the destruction of a homeland. Israel’s colonial project is designed to wipe Palestine, Palestinians and Palestinian homes from the map. This project started with the 1948 Nakba, the catastrophe that destroyed Palestinian society, then manifested in years of military occupation and relentless violence against Palestinians and their civilian infrastructure.

This violence has included brutal attacks on schools, hospitals, clinics, factories, mosques, churches, bridges, orphanages, power stations, bakeries, water wells and even sports facilities throughout the repeated and relentless assaults on Gaza in 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2022. 

The message is stark: “Leave this land.”

But in the face of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, the Palestinians have always responded with steadfastness and a dedication to justice that no bomb can wipe out.

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Dr Ghada Ageel is a visiting professor at the University of Alberta Political Science Department (Edmonton, Canada), an independent scholar, and active in the Faculty4Palestine-Alberta. 

Featured image is from UNRWA

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***

As Israel’s carpet bombing of Gaza entered its third week, leaving over 5000 dead and at least one million residents displaced, a Tel Aviv-based think tank published a blueprint for self-proclaimed Jewish state’s final solution.

In a white paper released over a week after the Hamas-led surprise attack on Israeli military bases and kibbutzes, The Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy outlined “a plan for resettlement and final rehabilitation in Egypt of the entire population of Gaza,” based on the “unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the entire Gaza Strip” that Israel’s latest assault on the besieged costal enclave provided.

Published in Hebrew on the organization’s website, the paper was authored by Amir Weitman, “an investment manager and visiting researcher” at the Institute who also leads the libertarian caucus of Israel’s ruling Likud Party. The document began by noting that there are 10 million vacant housing units in neighboring Egypt that could be “immediately” filled with Palestinians. Weitman then assured readers that the “sustainable plan…aligns well with the economic and geopolitical interests of the State of Israel, Egypt, the USA and Saudi Arabia.”

Weitman’s ethnic cleansing proposal echoes forced transfer plans advanced in recent days by former Israeli officials while capitalizing on evacuation orders delivered to the entire civilian population of northern Gaza by the Israeli military.

Flyers dropped from Israeli warplanes, Just received this from #Gaza. #Israel literally asked more than 1.1 million from north and central #Gaza city to leave towards the south. This is illegal and absurd. People of Gaza refuse to leave. #GazaUnderAttack#StopIsraeliAggression… pic.twitter.com/pPktoEjKQJ

— Sameh Habeeb (@Samehahabeeb) October 13, 2023

Weitman’s sinister blueprint imagined Israel purchasing these properties at a cost of $5 – 8 billion dollars, a whopping price-tag that reflects just 1 – 1.5 percent of Israel’s GDP.

“These sums of money [required to cleanse Gaza] in relation to the Israeli economy, are minimal,” Weitman posits. “Investing individual billions of dollars to solve this difficult issue is an innovative, cheap and sustainable solution.”

Weitman acknowledged that his plan virtually amounts to Israel “buying the Gaza Strip,” arguing the move would be “a very worthwhile investment” for Zionists because it would “add a lot of value over time.” He asserted local “land conditions” in the area would provide “many” Israeli settlers a high standard of living, therefore allowing for an expansion of settlements in Gush Dan near the Egyptian border, giving “a tremendous impetus to settlement in the Negev.”

In December 2021, Tel Aviv approved plans to establish four settlements in the Negev to house 3,000 settler families.

A Genocidal War to End All Wars

Though Egypt has so far rejected Israeli pressure for a mass exodus of Gaza residents through the southern Rafah crossing, Weitman argued Cairo will welcome the mass exodus of Palestinian refugees  as “an immediate stimulus” that will “provide a tremendous and immediate benefit to al-Sisi’s regime.” 

Weitman claimed that Cairo’s major creditors — including France, Germany and Saudi Arabia — are likely to welcome a revitalized Egyptian economy, courtesy of “Israeli investment” in the Palestinians’ permanent removal. He surmizes that Western Europe will welcome “the transfer of the entire Gaza population to Egypt,” because it will significantly “reduce the risk of illegal immigration…a tremendous advantage.” Meanwhile, he expects Riyadh to embrace the move because the “evacuation of the Gaza Strip means the elimination of a significant ally of Iran.”

The ethnic cleansing of Gaza would mean an end to “ceaseless, repeated rounds of fighting, which inflame the fires of hatred against Israel.” Moreover, “closing the Gaza issue will ensure a stable and increased supply of Israeli gas to Egypt and its liquefaction,” from the vast reserves seized by Israel near Gaza’s shores.

Palestinians in turn are expected to jump at the chance to be forcibly transferred from their homes rather than “living in poverty under the rule of Hamas.” It is therefore necessary for Israel to “create the right conditions” for them to “immigrate” from Gaza to Cairo. Weitman noted that Gaza’s two million inhabitants “constitute less than 2% of the total Egyptian population, which today already includes 9 million refugees. A drop in the ocean.”

The paper ominously concluded: “There is no doubt that in order for this plan to come to fruition, many conditions must exist at the same time. Currently, these conditions are met and it is unclear when such an opportunity will arise again, if ever. This is the time to act. Now.”

“If We Want to Remain Alive, We Will Have to Kill and Kill and Kill”

As barbarous as these proposals might seem, they reflect what many Israeli officials appear to be murmuring in private, and what at least one former government spinmeister has openly pushed as an altruistic solution to the Palestinian “problem.”

“There is a huge expanse, almost endless space in the Sinai Desert, just on the other side of Gaza,” former Deputy Foreign Minister of Israel, Danny Ayalon, echoed the genocidal Zionist logic behind Weitman’s proposal in an interview with Al Jazeera’s Marc Lamont Hill. “The idea is—and this is not the first time it will be done—for them to leave over to the open areas where we and the international community will prepare the infrastructure — you know, 10 cities with food and water — just like for the refugees of Syria.”

"There is almost endless space in the Sinai Desert…this is not the first time it has been done…we & the international community will prepare tent cities…"

Israeli politician Danny Ayalon describes the their vision for another Nakba today in Gaza.

pic.twitter.com/dcuDUPBLVi

— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) October 14, 2023

In 2004, Zionist demographer Arnon Sofer of Haifa University laid out detailed plans for the isolation of Gaza directly to Ariel Sharon’s government. This entailed withdrawing Israeli forces from the area entirely and constructing a stringent system of surveillance and security to ensure nothing and no one went in or out without Zionist proviso. He predicted a perpetual bloodbath:

“When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today…The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day…the only thing that concerns me is how to ensure the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings.”

The Institute has put forward a clean and easy fantasy of achieving the same goal put forward by Sofer. For it to succeed, all Palestinians have to do is put down their weapons and head toward the desert of permanent exile.

Arnon Sofer is an academic who helped devise Israel's siege of Gaza to engineer a one-way peace

Sofer said, "If we want to remain alive, we have to kill and kill and kill, all day, every day. If we don't kill, we will cease to exist."

I explain the logic of the siege (2013) pic.twitter.com/il2oCQQG7O

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) October 10, 2023

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Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.

Featured image: A tent city in Khan Younis, Gaza for Palestinians forced to flee the northern areas of the besieged strip (Source: TG)

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***

At a private Manhattan fundraiser one year ago this month, President Joe Biden shared an assessment that he had not told the public. From his vantage point, Biden told the room of Democratic Party donors, the world faces “the prospect of Armageddon” for the first time “since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

At the time, Biden was referring to the conflict in Ukraine, which had just intensified with the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines and Russia’s declared annexations of four Ukrainian regions. Despite noting the dangers of a proxy war against Russia, the world’s other top nuclear power, Biden has nonetheless pursued the higher priority of enforcing US hegemony by attempting to “weaken” it. Accordingly, Biden has continued the proxy war with a signature policy of flooding Ukraine with weapons, encouraging a failed counter-offensive, and blocking diplomatic off-ramps.

One year later, Biden is not only doubling down on his apocalyptic approach in Ukraine, but adding a second front in the Middle East. The White House has asked Congress for a new spending package that would provide over $14 billion for Israel’s assault on Gaza and more than $61 billion for Ukraine – the largest such request since Russia’s February 2022 invasion. Concurrently, the US is directly assisting Israeli atrocities and standing virtually alone to block global calls for a ceasefire – all while risking a wider regional confrontation.

In an Oval Office address last week, Biden dusted off George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” playbook to draw a direct tie between the Ukraine proxy war and Israel’s assault on Gaza. “Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common: They both want to annihilate a neighboring democracy,” he said.

In another nod to neoconservative dogma, Biden appropriated Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s pitch to voters on funding the war in Ukraine. The weapons sent to Ukraine and now Israel, Biden explained, are “made in America” – including, he stressed, the election swing states of Pennsylvania and Ohio. “You know, just as in World War II, today patriotic American workers are building the arsenal of democracy and serving the cause of freedom.” According to Biden’s budget office, nearly half of his $106 billion request, $50 billion, will be spent on “the American defense industrial base.”

Beyond hegemony and war profiteering, Biden’s mention of states vital to his 2024 re-election chances underscores another reason for his record spending request. In bundling the two conflicts together, Biden is hoping to entice pro-Israel Republicans skeptical of more funding for the Ukraine war – thereby giving him $61 billion to prolong the fight against Russia until after the November 2024 election.

As it has done in Ukraine, the Biden administration is declining to use its significant leverage over Israel to end the carnage. If it wanted to, the White House could call on Israel to accept a ceasefire and pursue a negotiated release of Hamas’ captives, on top of the four that have already been freed. But according to the Washington Post, one US official “said it was clear that Netanyahu was not going to wait until the hostage crisis was resolved to initiate a ground offensive and that there was little Washington could do to change that calculus.”

A major factor, the Post adds, is that Biden “officials are loath to create a public spat as Republicans on Capitol Hill search for any sign of the president being insufficiently pro-Israel.” To avoid looking “insufficiently pro-Israel,” therefore, Biden must be sufficiently pro-mass murder – even at the expense of endangering the hostages that he insists are his top priority.

As for the argument that there is “little” Biden could do to impact Israel’s behavior, even top Israeli officials admit that to be false. At a recent meeting with Israeli lawmakers, Defense Minister Yaov Gallant acknowledged that his government agreed to allow some humanitarian aid into Gaza after US pressure. “The Americans insisted and we are not in a place where we can refuse them,” Gallant said. “We rely on them for planes and military equipment. What are we supposed to do? Tell them no?”

Luckily for Israeli leaders, they will not have to tell Biden “no” on an immediate end to the bombardment of Gaza, and a negotiated return of Hamas’ captives there. After Gaza’s health ministry reported the deadliest night of Israeli airstrikes so far – over 700 Palestinians killed – Secretary of State Antony Blinken allowed himself to declare at the United Nations that “humanitarian pauses must be considered.” In other words, the mass killing of Palestinians with US weaponry may proceed, so long as a pause to the slaughter is “considered.”

Having previously deemed ceasefire proposals “repugnant”, the Biden administration is openly embracing more Palestinian civilian deaths.

“This is war, it is combat, it is bloody, it is ugly, and it’s going to be messy,” spokesperson John Kirby said at the White House, just as Blinken appeared at the United Nations. “And innocent civilians are going to be hurt going forward.”

Kirby’s callous indifference to the deaths of more Palestinian civilians contrasts with his response to Hamas’ killings of Israeli civilians on October 7^th, which led him to weep on live television.

“These are human beings.” White House spokesperson John Kirby breaks down on live TV while discussing the depravity of Hamas attacks. (Video: CNN) pic.twitter.com/aMfVDSEDIi

— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) October 10, 2023

Israel will thus have free rein to bombard Gaza with no concern for the civilian population or the Hamas captives.

“Hostages and civilian casualties will be secondary to destroying Hamas,” ABC News reports of the prevailing Israeli government view. Economy Minister Nir Barakat explained the strategy further: “We shall do all efforts to bring our hostages, to bring our hostages [back] alive,” but destroying Hamas is the “first and last priority.”  

A non-existent priority is the fate of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, who are facing what Martin Griffiths, the UN’s top humanitarian official, describes as a crisis that “has reached catastrophic levels.”

When it comes to the meager amounts of aid that the US and Israel have allowed into Gaza, even that is subject to constraints. The first delivery of 20 trucks did not include any fuel, which powers hospital, water pumps, and everything else needed for survival – including the incubators for premature babies.

“Without fuel, there will be no water, no functioning hospitals and bakeries,” the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees warns. “Without fuel, aid will not reach those in desperate need.”

But Israeli needs negate such concerns. “The move to exclude fuel from the first delivery was an apparent concession to Israel, which worries that Hamas and other armed groups could divert it for military purposes,” the Washington Post notes. This follows the previous “concession” to Israel that created the need for these trucks in the first place: the Biden administration’s green light for Israel to shut off Gaza’s water and electricity supplies.

As Dr. Michael Ryan of the UN’s Health Emergencies Programme notes, the small fleet of trucks allowed so far “is a drop in the ocean of need right now in Gaza,” where over 1.4 million people – more than 60% of the population – have been displaced. Before Israel’s current assault, Gaza was already in such need that “several hundred trucks had been arriving in the enclave daily,” Reuters notes.

The Biden administration also acknowledges that its touted aid packages do not meet the bare minimum for Gazans’ survival. In an interview touting the first deliveries, the newly appointed US special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues, David Satterfield, said that the White House goal is to “build that flow up to the levels necessary to begin to meet Gaza’s needs.” Left unstated is that many Palestinians will die due to a lack of medical equipment and other vital supplies before the US-approved aid deliveries can “begin to meet” their life-saving needs.

The US is also actively involved in Israel’s military operation against Gaza. The White House has sent a Marine three-star general, Lt. Gen. James Glynn, and several other military officers to advise the Israeli military, including for its planned ground invasion. According to the New York Times,

US officials “have become increasingly concerned that a ground invasion in Gaza could lead to a huge loss of civilian lives,” but nonetheless insist that they have “not told Israel what to do and still supported the ground invasion.”

Biden’s commitment to protecting Israel’s carnage in Gaza and broader regional hegemony creates dangers far beyond the besieged territory. Since the assault began, Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire along the south Lebanon border. In preparation for a potential regional conflict, the US has deployed air defense missiles and two aircraft carriers to deal “with threats to American troops throughout the Middle East,” the Wall Street Journal notes. According to the Pentagon, US forces in Iraq and Syria have come under fire at least 13 times in the past week, leaving at least 24 soldiers wounded. Meanwhile, Israel continues its routine airstrikes on Syrian territory, including the country’s two major airports.

The attacks on US forces from Iranian-backed groups are understood to be a direct result of the Gaza slaughter.

“For more than six months,” the Journal reports, “Iranian-backed militia groups refrained from launching drones or rockets against American troops in Iraq and Syria, as part of what appeared to be an undeclared truce between Tehran and Washington.”

Just as the lives of Palestinian civilians and US-Israeli hostages are subordinate to the imperatives of US-Israeli hegemony, so are US forces’. In Iraq, the US has retained its military contingent despite a 2020 vote from the Iraqi parliament calling for a full withdrawal. In Syria, the US remains all while ignoring government demands for both a withdrawal and compensation for looted oil reserves.

Although the US claims that its “sole purpose” in Syria is fighting ISIS, the US military has in fact barely done any fighting against the militant group. In 2019, now-senior Biden official Dana Stroul explained that occupying the “resource-rich”, “economic powerhouse” region in Syria’s northeast — which contains the country’s “hydrocarbons” and is its “agricultural powerhouse” — gives the U.S. government “broader leverage” to influence “a political outcome in Syria” in line with US dictates. Jennifer Cafarella of the Institute for the Study of War, a neoconservative Washington think tank, has likewise explained that the US military occupation gives it “direct influence over the vast majority of Syria’s most productive oil fields,” thereby controlling “Syrian national treasures that, when added up amount to brute geopolitical power for the US.”

As of this writing, more than 5,000 Palestinian civilians have become the latest casualties of the United States and Israel’s brute geopolitical power. This includes more than 2,300 children, a calamity that UNICEF calls a “growing stain on our collective conscience.” Not that of the Biden White House, content to sacrifice countless more civilian lives from Gaza to Ukraine in its dogged embrace of Armageddon.

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Brugada syndrome is a rare but potentially life-threatening inherited disease that predisposes patients to fatal cardiac arrhythmias. The syndrome is characterized by the ECG findings of a right bundle branch block and ST-segment elevations in the right precordial leads (V1-V3). More than 400 mutations in the cardiac SCN5A gene have been identified in people with Brugada syndrome, which is characterized by risk of cardiac arrest, particularly in the setting of fever.

Altermanini et al describe a clear-cut case of syncope with cardiac arrest triggered by fever after COVID-19 mRNA vaccination. They were able to catch the post-arrest ECG and demonstrate the classic Brugada changes.

Altermanini M, Habib M, Hamamyh T, et al. SYNCOPE FOLLOWING PFIZER-BIONTECH (BNT162B2) VACCINATION UNMASKING BRUGADA SYNDROME. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2022 Mar, 79 (9_Supplement) 3340.https://doi.org/10.1016/S0735-1097(22)04331-5

Ittiwut et al described 5 cases of vaccine sudden death that tested positive for mutations in the SCN5A gene. Thus it appears that at least some of the early deaths after vaccination may be related to CN5A mutations in those who may not know they have Brugada syndromes.

Ittiwut C, Mahasirimongkol S, Srisont S, Ittiwut R, Chockjamsai M, Durongkadech P, Sawaengdee W, Khunphon A, Larpadisorn K, Wattanapokayakit S, Wetchaphanphesat S, Arunotong S, Srimahachota S, Pittayawonganon C, Thammawijaya P, Sutdan D, Doungngern P, Khongphatthanayothin A, Kerr SJ, Shotelersuk V. Genetic basis of sudden death after COVID-19 vaccination in Thailand. Heart Rhythm. 2022 Nov;19(11):1874-1879. doi: 10.1016/j.hrthm.2022.07.019. Epub 2022 Aug 5. PMID: 35934244; PMCID: PMC9352648.

Teaching points:

1. In patients with known Brugada pattern on ECG, COVID-19 and probably all other vaccines are contra-indicated
2. In patients who survive COVID-19 cardiac arrest, they should undergo genetic testing for SCN5A and other channelopathies

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The relevance given to a UN Secretary-General is often judged by the degree of controversy caused. In history, the most relevant are usually targeted. Dag Hammarskjöld, refusing to remain a mere bauble of international office, was almost certainly murdered over his intervention in the Congo civil war in 1961. The least relevant (who was that sweet little fella, Ban Ki-Moon?) have barely registered a note of dissent. The big powers like to know they can render such figures impotent, if not insignificant.

It was, for that reason, refreshing to see the current occupant of that post make the less than startling remark that the atrocious attacks of October 7 staged by Hamas and Islamic Jihad on Israeli soil could not be seen as standalone acts of individual, unprovoked outrage. António Guterres was careful to also note that there was “nothing” that could “justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians, or the launching of rockets against civilian targets”.

Guterres also noted that it was “important to also recognise the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.”  The Palestinians had “been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished.”

While the attacks by Hamas could not be justified to address such grievances, they also could not be used as a pretext to “justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.” Even war, he explained to his colleagues, had rules.

The Secretary-General also reiterated the principle of protecting civilians during armed conflict. This precluded using them as human shields and ordering “more than one million people to evacuate the south, where there is no shelter, no food, no water, no medicine, and no fuel, and then continuing to bomb the south itself.”

Such comments did not go down well with the Israeli Foreign Minister.  Bullies of international relations are always easily slighted.  And so it was that Eli Cohen would gasp and wonder which world the secretary-general was living in. “Definitely, this is not our world.”

The foreign minister made it fairly clear what sort of world that was. “I will not meet the UN Secretary-General. After the October 7^th massacre, there is no place for a balanced approach. Hamas must be erased off the face of the planet.”

Gilad Erdan, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, spoke in the voice of complacency outraged, going so far as to demand the resignation of Guterres.

It is a disgrace to the @UN that the Secretary-General did not retract his words and is not even able to apologize for what he said yesterday❗️❗️

The Secretary-General, once again, distorts and twists reality. He clearly said yesterday that the massacre by Hamas ‘did not happen…

— Ambassador Gilad Erdan גלעד ארדן (@giladerdan1) October 25, 2023

“A Secretary-General who does not understand that the murder of innocents can never be understood by any ‘background’ cannot be Secretary-General.”

With a callow splutter, he suggested that the UN chief had “expressed an understanding for terrorism and murder.”

On army radio, Erdan also announced that Israel would be refusing “to issue visas to UN representatives. We have already refused a visa for the undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, Martin Griffiths. The time has come to teach them a lesson.”

As ever, Erdan’s reasoning confused explication with justification, but in that world, the nuanced explanation huffs and puffs in tired resignation, leaving the murderous justification to take the front position.

The comments from Guterres also come in light of the perilous operational state of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). The humanitarian agency has been starved of resources and will be forced to cease the provision of hospital care, largely occasioned by Israel’s blockade on fuel.  “Current stocks are almost completely exhausted,” the agency states in its October 26 situation report, “forcing life-saving services to come to a halt. This includes the supply of piped water as well as fuel for the health sector, bakeries, and generators.” Staff have also suffered a horrendous: 39 have been killed since October 7.

As for the attacks on his own integrity, Guterres has been combative.

“I am shocked by the misrepresentations by some of my statement … as if I was justifying acts of terror by Hamas. This is false. It was the opposite.”

The brainstorming session in the Netanyahu-IDF meetings must have been straightforward: de-historicise conflict, first and foremost; relegate Hamas to some equivalent monstrous organisation, in this case, ISIS; and then, just to make sure, use Nazism and the Holocaust as recyclable motifs.

Along the way, massive Palestinian casualties, many children (2,360 deaths over three weeks), can be excused by pointing the finger at Hamas, because it is not Israeli jets and weapons doing the killing but the policy of a terrorist organisation.  And besides, Israel is, as Cohen insists, doing it for “the civilised world”.

The west is next!
היום זה אצלנו מחר זה אצלכם.
חמאס=דאעש pic.twitter.com/SKriEzRsnR

— אלי כהן | Eli Cohen (@elicoh1) October 26, 2023

The Israeli strategy here is to excuse the inexcusable: the collective, mass laceration of a people. In this, they simply perpetuate the tragic crimes that have been visited, not only upon the Jews, but upon any ethnicity or group in history. The Whig statesman Edmund Burke spoke about not knowing “the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.” Unfortunately, in this conflict, that indictment was drawn up some time ago, and is being prosecuted with relentless ruthlessness.

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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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It would be a gross understatement that the Divided States of America has never been so fractured in its modern history. Select any subject that touches upon and personally impacts people’s lives, fragile sentiments and cherished beliefs, and one uncovers a variety of quarrelsome tribes, each with belligerent leaders and voices, pushing and shoving to reach the stage’s microphone. It may not be too far-fetched that if our early forebears were to visit 21st century America, they might think we were some strange and new mutated species. For example, civility in the Commons is no longer in our postmodern American vocabulary. For the majority of Earth’s citizens, climate change and global warming are acknowledged as a very real existential threat. Yet somehow that message never reached our shores except in drabs and dribbles. Certainly, lip service ad nauseam has been sounded about climate change for the past five decades; but anyone can look around to see these words are empty and will never solve the irrefutable challenges ahead.

Today there are roughly 3 distinct ideological groups in conflict with each other over the threats of climate change and the desecration of the environment.

Group Number One

On the one hand there are those who fully embrace scientific research and analysis. Largely these are the climate experts, those conducting the actual research, undertaking expeditions to the poles and across oceans and analyzing atmospheric samples in order to make very valuable predictions.

Besides the many institutions and university departments, this group is perhaps best represented by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and their cousins in other nations. Undoubtedly, their findings provide much to worry about for humanity’s long-term future. Ocean temperatures are now the warmest on record. Atmospheric CO2 is the most concentrated in millions of years. We are witnessing wildfires increasing exponentially. Recently, climate scientists observed that the rise in forest fires is destroying the ozone layer, which will only increase warming trends. The US megadrought in 2022 was the worst in 1,200 years. The Antarctic ice shelves continue to collapse and coastal cities and shorelines are already sinking. Warming trends are on a winning streak as monthly records are being broken more frequently.

On the surface, we might expect the scientific faction to be the authoritative voice for accurate climate change analyses. However there is a fundamental problem. Although the scientific climate community has an excellent track record when observing, identifying and measuring phenomena and trends underway, their predictions rarely come to pass. Very often they are flatly wrong. Their leading spokespeople who become the public face of this research, such as Al Gore, John Kerry, Bill Gates, King Charles and Greta Thunberg have a terrible track record as soothsayers. 

King Charles warns us that we have seven years to save the planet; however, that was stated in 2009. That same year Britain’s then Prime Minister Gordon Brown was more dire. Brown gave humanity 50 days to get its act together. For over two decades Al Gore has been annually proselytizing that the Arctic will be ice free; neither has this prediction come to pass. Perhaps one of the chief doomsayers is Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich, author of the popular doom and gloom epistle The Population Bomb published in 1968. 

At that time, Ehrlich predicted that by 1990, 4 billion of earth’s residents would be wiped out by global famine, social upheaval and wars. Over the decades, Ehrlich oddly has continued to revise his apocalyptic forecasts. Why anybody continues to listen to him is more baffling. Of course, over a half century ago, nobody anticipated the forthcoming Green Revolution. Despite this agricultural revolution’s many shortcomings and often dire failures, including the widespread introduction of chemical agriculture, it did succeed in increasing food yields remarkably. In all fairness, it may have been a major contributor to preventing potential famines.

One of the climate change science faction’s major shortcomings is the incapability of relying upon current complex algorithmic modeling analytics to accurately make reliable predictions of climate and warming trends projected into the future.

It is not as much a problem of poor modeling; instead, it is institutionalized blind faith in the false promises these modeling methods represent and a professional failure to acknowledge these methods’ limitations. This is true for medicine as well. For example, every year the World Health Organization and its affiliate virology research centers employ fanciful modeling methodologies to predict the likely annual flu strains in order to begin influenza vaccine production. However, for decades, year after year, these predictors bat below fifty percent accuracy. It is not uncommon for their predictions to be off 70 percent or more. Therefore, if these computational modeling methods are unable to predict the spread of virus, how much more complex is making accurate predictions about future weather and global warming trends and atmospheric conditions? Given approximately one hundred in sundry negative (cooling) and positive (warming) feedback loops that interfere with the climate on a global scale, there are likely numerous unknown, and perhaps even intangible, factors that such computations must exclude out of necessity.

Group Number Two

The second climate and environmental contingent is more radical.

They tend to emote fear rather than reason out the hard evidence on hand. At the grassroots activist level, many of these voices may be regarded as the archetypal useful idiots who are unable to look at the larger picture outside of the futurist dystopian imagery in their sci-fi novels. This group cherry picks the scientific headlines that best support their agendas, which is more often than not politically and socially driven rather than research-based. This is the group that believes with absolute certainty that all global warming is anthropogenic.

By whatever means possible, including government-private partnerships for green programs, whatever humanity has achieved through the industrial age during the past two centuries, needs to be ultimately dismantled.

These are the prophets of doom and gloom, and many private interest groups are delighted they exist and perhaps blindly act on their behalf. This pseudo-stakeholder agenda is represented by the World Economic Forum and its international bloc of corporate elites, government leaders beholden to globalization and its faux Western democratic pageantry, and large compromised non-profit environmental do-gooders funded by private corporations. Grassroots activist groups are their naive, idealistic shock troops.

This is the agenda that demands the need for more solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, a reinvigorated nuclear power program, rapid deindustrialization and new species of engineered food produce. However, all of their solutions are directly tied to the preservation of perpetual economic growth. Its large investors, such as Blackrock and JP Morgan, would never have it otherwise. If solutions to global warming and environmental degradation cannot be monetized exponentially in order to replace humanity’s reliance upon fossil fuels, then it is rejected outright or tossed to the bottom of their to-do list.

This entire group, perhaps the most dangerous to humanity’s future, is plagued by a cognitive disconnect between advocating for technologies and solutions in of themselves that certainly reduce greenhouse gas emissions but equally have devastating consequences on the environment. It is a Green ideology where technology holds higher value than human life, except for those who commandeer its course. Electric vehicle batteries, as well as batteries necessary for other technologies including wind farms, have a catastrophic impact on the environment, which further contributes to ecological decay and global warming. The minerals and metals necessary for the so-called renewable energy technologies and nuclear power require astronomical large scale mining operations that may never meet humanity’s demands to transition away from fossil fuels. The irony is how much fossil fuels are necessary for mining operations and the high carbon footprint. People are living in a non-lucid dream if they believe otherwise. Researchers estimate that actual emissions necessary for manufacturing an electric vehicle can be 15 to 68 percent higher than a conventional gasoline-powered vehicle. Some batteries pack ten times as much power as an average household consumes in one day, and very often EVs are charged at home. Finally, 40 percent of the total climate impact of a battery comes from the mining of aluminum, cobalt, nickel and lithium, which are highly dirty and polluting industries.

The new Green Deal push for solar and wind energies are likewise fraught with contradictions. Solar power is unreliable, inefficient, weather dependent and similar to EVs requires rare materials, some highly toxic, such as arsenide, cadmium, cobalt gallium and lead. A Columbia University estimate predicts that by 2035 384 new mines for lithium, cobalt and nickel will be required to keep up with growing Green Deal demands. Solar energy is also water intensive; a single large solar farm can require over 600 gallons of water for every megawatt hour of power produced. Finally, the entire solar industry is heavily dependent upon government subsidies, which again makes this industry economically unsustainable.

Wind energy suffers from similar non-friendly environmental drawbacks as solar. It is unreliable, inefficient and requires large open spaces of land. Because the turbines rely on magnets, MIT engineers have warned that over-reliance on wind power, in addition to EVs, will strain the supply of scarce rare minerals such as neodymium, dysprosium and praseodymium. A Harvard review estimated that one ton of rare earth minerals produces 30 pounds of dust, up to 12,000 cubic meters of noxious gases such as hydrofluoric acid and sulfur dioxide and 75 cubic meters of waste water, for a total of 2,000 tons of toxic sludge. 

Likewise, industrial chemical agriculture, although extraordinarily profitable for large investors and mega-corporations, is no solution to the climate crisis. However, to support and invest in a Marshall Plan to revive small farms and regenerative organic agricultural practices, which are without question far more sustainable, is simply not profitable for the global parasitical class. Certainly other technologies such as geothermal, wave power, and a large investment to harness free energy from cold fusion are truly more renewable energy sources with a far smaller carbon footprint.

Both of these climate change groups are correct, and both are wrong. The radical side downplays the importance of jobs and the health of society at large. The current Green Party coalition ruling Germany now is a good example. Olaf Scholz’s government is arguably the most incompetent in Germany’s modern history. The coalition’s Green ideology has demolished the country’s vibrant industrial base, which once held the world’s admiration, and has shown itself to be empty handed and incapable of replacing this loss with anything viable. Today, Germany is becoming the basket case of Western Europe, and this is a direct consequence of inept radical Green ideologues.

Despite youthful activists such as Greta Thunberg and the many international young environmental voices marched through the halls of the World Economic Forum as the new generations’ exemplars of a Great Reset future, are any truly substantial changes being made that are reversing climate trends. Indeed, their message is authentic, however is it making any difference. Thunberg may be a hero in her generation; however, only for a small faction of teens and young adults who at least have their eyes partially open. But Greta pales in the shadow of media celebrities such as Kylie Jenner with her thousands of footwear and one of the largest private jets in California. And the delusional mainstream media knows it will get more attention and views by spotlighting Jenner’s obsessive-compulsive consumerism over Thunberg’s dirty overalls and cardboard signs. As long as we remain a consumerist culture, and reward hyperactive and emotionally fragile influencers, nothing will change to address climate and environmental threats at any crucial level. 

Group Number Three

A third group simply denies outright anthropogenic climate change or at best believes human impact on global warming is minimal.

The US currently has the largest percent of any nation’s population that is not concerned about climate change. People like Donald Trump, Jordan Peterson, Alex Jones, Mike Adams, and others leaning towards the radical Right are among its leading voices. In their opinion, economic and social issues should take precedence, including protection and expansion of fossil fuel industries and preserving the neoliberal capitalist doctrine of infinite growth on a finite planet, which Marx warned about in the middle of the nineteenth century. This position is not without its reasons. They have no reason to trust a government that acts on its own behalf at the detriment of human liberty.

There is no reason to believe anything coming from the mouths of the World Economic Forum, the World Health Organization, Bill Gates and politicians serving private interests over the public good.

They lied about the Covid-19 pandemic.

They lied about America’s entry into Afghanistan and Iraq.

They’ve bailed out Wall Street and financial institutions rather than the citizens who suffered from these very same institutions’ irresponsible negligence and greed.

Why should these institutions’ threats and fear mongering about global warming, a pending collapse of human civilization and the urgency for a Green New Deal be given any legitimacy?

Therefore, this group rejects anthropogenic climate change outright and demands a return to the old normal: agro-industrial farming, fossil fuel extractions, economic growth over environmental responsibility, and widespread consumerism. In addition, there is of course the entire conservative-leaning Judeo-Christian theological base that embraces this view.

So what is to be done amidst the warring tribes either concerned or apathetic towards climate change? 

Obviously any abrupt simpleminded and gullible systemic change, as in Germany, will have catastrophic economic, social and human consequences.

And no one should be so dewy eyed as to believe that Germany’s policies were not aligned with the World Economic Forum. Climate change and global warming are undoubtedly real threats despite all the failures to predict how and when future tipping points are reached.

Therefore, it is incumbent to act intelligently and take into account what is factual and remove that from everything that is economically and politically ideological.

At the popular level of societies, people must learn to gradually wean themselves away from buying so much stuff, and especially imports if possible. Regardless of how meaningless GDP has become as a metric to evaluate the economic and social health of a country, consumerism is nevertheless tied to GDP. The world’s three largest polluters—China, India and the US—will not curtail their economic growth nor will their corporations.

Therefore, even with a steady decline in consumerism, GDP will continue to be tweaked and distorted to maintain the fantasy of productivity and growth. We find ourselves in a Hobbesian choice: we care about the environment and its preservation but are simultaneously accelerating its denigration by exploiting the planet’s resources to sustain a standard of living contrary to environmental sanity. Bookended by corporate greed and profit on the one hand, and an insatiable appetite for detrimental selfish pursuits, we impulsively consume stuff that we don’t really need. Hence rises a collective toxic brew that the majority of people participate in. 

Second, it is perfectly within nations’ means to reduce their reliance upon agro-chemical agriculture and adopt large regenerative farming practices that preserve the land and reduce greenhouse emissions. Third, become vegetarian or vegan. This will reduce the unnecessary wastage of land required for livestock of every kind, which has a terrible ratio between energy into the system and energy taken out. Moreover, the medical science now seems unwaveringly confirmed that plant based diets would dramatically reduce disease. 

Finally, education about climate change, environmental preservation and human health and well-being needs to be completely overhauled and revised.

Sadly, ethics no longer holds any role in modern education; therefore, it is near impossible to instill in younger people any moral responsibility towards the environment. The younger generation increasingly gets it but only in a radicalized and uncritical manner; it is also fundamentally aligned with the globalist agenda that today steers much of our public education. We can no longer rely upon government and private interests to solve humanity’s problems. It now relies upon every individual at the local level to make the responsibility choices despite the odds. At least they will gain a personal satisfaction that they acted ethically out of a sense of compassion for others and the well-being of humanity that the polluters, influencers and their cheerleaders in government and media will never taste in their lives. 

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Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.

Dr. Gary Null is host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including his recent Last Call to Tomorrow.

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Last American Vagabond

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Global WAR-NING! Geoengineering Is Wrecking Our Planet and Humanity

Edited by Prof. Claudia von Werlhof

After more than one year of “lockdowns” all over the world, the issue of “global warming” and “climate change” is back on the table of the international debate.

It seems that natural catastrophes have started to surround us everywhere – from the animal world next to us as well as from the sky above us. Is “nature” the enemy that has to be combatted today, be it by vaccinating humanity against the coronavirus that allegedly jumped out of the wilderness attacking us, be it by tearing down industrial production and consumption in order to avoid the alleged greenhouse gas CO₂ emissions, being officially identified as the sole culprit of a so-called global warming? Or be it by applying methods of an alleged civil “geoengineering” against an ongoing climate change that seems to threaten the world?

Click here to read the e-Book.

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In political discourse – and perhaps this is an inexorable feature of human tribalistic psychology — there exists a dichotomy between what Noam Chomsky and others have described as “worthy” and “unworthy” victims of state violence and other forms of oppression.

(I would be remiss, although it is not the focus of this article, to not note that vaunted leftist intellectual Noam Chomsky became one of the most hardline COVID authoritarians on the planet. He descended so far morally as to advocate starving out the unvaccinated by locking them in their homes until they complied with mandates.)

Returning to the topic of “worthy” and “unworthy” victims, the Palestinians, as can be seen in recent college protests, are very much in vogue as “worthy” victims.

This is not a treatise on the Palestine vs. Israel conflict. I bring up this example of a “worthy” victim because it is timely and apropos.

On the other hand, college students (along with everyone else in the population at large) who were forced to receive unnecessary and often extremely damaging experimental medical treatments with no public health benefit are very much placed in the latter category (“unworthy victims”) by the same ideological cohort that champions the Palestinian cause.

Accordingly, the victims of COVID tyranny get no sympathy from the mainstream academic institutions nor the students and faculty who outsource their critical thinking to them.

Instead, anyone who asks questions about vaccine mandates – and even anyone injured by the shots – is subject to ridicule by the mainstream media and the mainstream culture it fosters.

On the hypocrisy of bodily autonomy, which is tangentially related to this topic, I will only note in passing, although it could constitute an entire article, the “my body, my choice” hypocrisy of pro-choice activists who suddenly have nothing to say about needle rape with an experimental drug as a requirement to attend school.

When a woman is denied access to an abortion by the state, she is a “worthy” victim of coercion. When that same woman is required to submit to an injection with a product she doesn’t want, she is an “unworthy” victim.

Perception influenced by media and academic bubbles and the resulting ideological possession inform the level of outrage of activists over any given issue, and who constitutes a “worthy” victim and who does not.

Such ideologues have no reservoir of sympathy for, or solidarity with, their own peers who have been forced to suffer for many years at this point for the sake of pharmaceutical profiteering and technocratic social control.

Please do not misunderstand: this is not to equate the explosive latent war in the Middle East and COVID-19 vaxx mandates. One is obviously geopolitical and millennia-old and highly ripe for sensationalism in the media. The other is a domestic policy matter and relatively new and slow-burning.

The caveat of unfair comparisons aside, allow me to briefly make the case that the COVID crimes of the past few years dwarf, by any metric, what is currently unfolding in the Middle East – the main difference between the two, in terms of media presentation, and hence public perception, being that the COVID crimes do not convey scenes of bombings and bloodied children and therefore do not have the same visceral impact on the viewer or reader.

This might engender criticism as hyperbole, but I believe that history will regard the COVID-19 crimes by the Public Health™ authorities and the pharmaceutical industry –

first, the [alleged] creation of SARS-CoV-2 in in a Wuhan lab using money funneled to it by Anthony Fauci’s NIAID through EcoHealth Alliance;

second, the resulting mRNA gene therapies deceptively marketed as “vaccines” and authorized under fraudulent premises; third, the forced uptake of said mRNA gene therapies by way of unconstitutional and unethical vaxx mandates and weaponized lockdowns – as the greatest crime in human history, with a death toll in the millions and climbing.

The final tally of dead victims may exceed a billion when the totality of the truth emerges, as it will one day, about the vaxxes’ adverse side effects, the mass starvation induced by global lockdowns and demolished supply lines, the wrecked mental health induced by the same, etc.

We need justice. We need an end to brutal vaxx and masking mandates on college campuses and throughout civil society. After the immediate injustices are remedied, we need Nuremberg 2.0 to ensure nothing like the crimes of the past three years are ever permitted to occur again.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, 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: Students rally for Palestine at Harvard University on October 14th, 2023. (Source: Rick Friedman / Alamy Stock Photo)

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In a pointed riposte to U.S. President Joe Biden—who said he has “no confidence” in Gaza casualty figures provided by Hamas, Palestinian health officials on Thursday released a 212-page list identifying 6,747 people killed by Israeli air and artillery attacks on the besieged enclave since October 7.

The Gaza Health Ministry published the names, ages, genders, and civil identification numbers of 6,747 Palestinian victims of Israeli attacks, including 2,665 children. The list is in Arabic, with an English version said to be forthcoming.

Another 281 people, 248 of them children, could not be identified. In order to improve chances of identification should their children be dismembered by Israeli bombardment, some Gaza parents and guardians have taken to writing children’s names on their hands and legs.

All told, 7,028 Palestinians—including 2,913 children—have been killed in Gaza since Israel declared war in the wake of the Hamas-led infiltration attacks that left more than 1,400 Israeli civilians and soldiers dead on and after October 7.

The Ministry of Health released a report on those killed in Gaza, by Israeli airstrikes. Here is the name, ID number & age of those who’ve been identified. Where you see words vs a number – kids under 1.

This follows a 2 week Israeli/US campaign to discredit MOH & Palestinians. pic.twitter.com/GJXmIF8emU

— Sana Saeed (@SanaSaeed) October 26, 2023

More than 17,000 Palestinians have been injured in Israeli attacks, nearly half the homes in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, and over 1.4 million people have been displaced.

Israeli soldiers and settlers have also killed more than 100 Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since October 7, while nearly 2,000 others have been wounded there.

The Gaza Health Ministry said in a statement that it was releasing the list “so that the world knows that behind every number is the story of a person whose name and identity are known.”

“Our people are not nobodies who can be ignored,” the agency stressed.

“At a time when our people are waiting for urgent international intervention to stop the genocidal war being carried out by the Israeli occupier against all civilian components including health and media personnel… more than 2 million people living in the Gaza Strip are exposed to the ugliest types of systematic killing and brutal massacres,” the statement continued.

Every American should know that your government did this too. This isn't just Israel. This is also the responsibility of the country that funds and arms Israel and shields it from accountability.

— Nathan J Robinson (@NathanJRobinson) October 26, 2023

The ministry accused the Biden administration of accepting all of the Israeli government’s claims “without any verification or scrutiny” and “devoid of all… morals and basic human rights values that it sings about.”

On Wednesday, Biden—who earlier this month declared his “rock-solid and unwavering” commitment to Israel—said during a White House press conference that he was “sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war.”

“But I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using,” the president added.

Some critics condemned Biden’s stance as “genocide denial.”

However, the administration doubled down on its claim as White House Spokesperson John Kirby said during a Thursday press briefing that “the Gaza Ministry of Health is just a front for Hamas.”

“We can’t take anything coming out of Hamas, including the so-called Ministry of Health, at face value,” Kirby added.

The White House spokesman says that Gaza's 'so-called' Ministry of Health is just a front for Hamas and that their numbers are not reliable. They've gone with doubling down on genocide denial. pic.twitter.com/nTciOSiluX

— Stop Cop City (@JoshuaPHilll) October 26, 2023

Some observers noted that the Biden administration cited Gaza Ministry of Health casualty figures as recently as last year in a State Department human rights report.

IfNotNow, a Jewish-led U.S. peace group, called the Gaza victims list “catastrophic” and “devastating.”

“President Biden publicly undermining the Gaza death toll is dangerous and wrong,” the group said. “Questioning death tolls directly dehumanizes Palestinians. It’s a key part of genocide denial. Israel is murdering Palestinians. By minimizing this, the U.S. is laying the groundwork for more death.”

Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, toldThe New York Times that the arguing over the number of dead in Gaza is akin to not seeing the forest for the trees.

“As the debate focuses on death tolls, the bodies continue to pile up,” Shakir said. “Our focus should be on how to prevent further mass atrocities, instead of debating whether or not the number is exactly accurate or not.”

“We know that Palestinians are being killed in unprecedentedly high numbers,” he said, “and that needs to end.”

[From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.]

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Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Featured image: Dr. Ashraf al-Qidra speaks during an October 26, 2023 press conference as he holds a list of 6,747 people killed by Israeli air and artillery strikes on the besieged Palestinian enclave since October 7. (Photo: Gaza Health Ministry/Facebook)

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***

 

House Speaker Mike Johnson, confirmed Wednesday after three failed previous Republican choices and weeks of inner party turmoil, is an evangelical Christian whose connections to Israel reflect the movement’s deep ties to the Israeli right, which has become increasingly mainstream over the years.

Johnson’s confirmation brought to an end weeks of Republican Party turmoil after three previous choices failed to win enough votes to replace Kevin McCarthy.

But it is also the most significant victory to date for evangelical Christians’ pro-Israel movement.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies – including former Israel ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer – have publicly and privately stressed the importance of evangelical support as U.S. Jews have grown increasingly critical of Israel’s rightward shift.

This dynamic has largely fueled Israel becoming an increasingly partisan issue where Republicans have adopted increasingly pro-Israel sentiments – both within international geopolitics and local domestic politics.

Since the October 7 Hamas attack and Israel’s subsequent response in Gaza, pro-Israel evangelicals have only become more vocally pro-Israel, while the rest of the GOP adopts increasingly anti-Palestinian rhetoric.

Louisiana Rep. Johnson traveled to Israel in February 2020 with an under-the-radar group called the 12Tribe Films Foundation. The organization’s CEO is a social media activist named Avi Abelow, who emigrated from New York more than 30 years ago at age 18 and lives in the West Bank settlement of Efrat. 

Abelow switched his vote from right-wing Likud to far-right Religious Zionism in last November’s general election, helping elevate Bezalel Smotrich to a position where he could demand a key role in Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition. He told Haaretz following the election that his decision was motivated by his deep distrust of the Arabs serving in the Israeli parliament and genuine fears for his own safety living in the occupied territories.

Johnson’s first stop on his Abelow-organized visit was to the Kohelet Policy Forum – the conservative think tank that has been an essential partner to the government’s efforts to weaken the judiciary.

The fourth-term congressman also visited the Temple Mount compound alongside Yehudah Glick, a former Likud lawmaker who has led the fight to change the status quo and permit Jewish prayer at the flash point Jerusalem holy site – in opposition to both official Israeli government policy as well as that of the international community, particularly the Biden administration and Jordan.

Click here to read the full article.

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Featured image: Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Mike Johnson delivers remarks following his election to the position, October 25, 2023. (Licensed under the Public Domain)

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***

On October 12, Veterans For Peace issued this statement about the conflict between Hamas and Israel, in which we condemned the horrific violence on both sides, particularly the killing of civilians. We added our voice to the many calls for a ceasefire and negotiations toward a political solution because there is no military one.

Since then, conditions have worsened – terribly. If a ceasefire isn’t declared, the killing and wounding in Gaza will increase dramatically, given announced plans to intensify bombing and conduct what is likely to be a months-long ground invasion.

Marjorie Cohn, VFP Advisory Board member and former president of the National Lawyers Guild, joined many others in defining what’s happening in Gaza as “genocide,” and the U.S. role as  “complicity in genocide.”

We take those terms very seriously.

On October 20, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza reported that 4,127 people, including 1,661 children have been killed and 13,162 people have been injured. Since then, 400 people were killed in 24 hours on October 22.  

This Gaza surgeon’s eyewitness report from Al-Shifa hospital, where thousands have taken refuge, is one of many reports that describe “Hospitals in Gaza on the brink of collapse, power set to run out in matter of hours,” “Gaza conditions worsen amid warnings that shortages could ‘kill many, many people,’” and more.

The only thing worse to read are the statements of Israeli officials ordering much more of the same. Prime Minister Netanyahu declared,

“This is a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.”

Major General Gassan Alian added,

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

And Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told troops:

“I have released all the restraints…”

Members of Veterans For Peace know what happens when those are the “rules of engagement” and what a “free fire zone” is.

Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, warned of a new instance of mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and called for an immediate ceasefire.” She added, Palestinians have no safe zone anywhere in Gaza, with Israel having imposed a “complete siege” on the tiny enclave, with water, food, fuel and electricity unlawfully cut off.

How could anyone, at the very least, not support a ceasefire…Mr. President?

Biden ordered our UN ambassador to veto the UN resolution calling for a ‘humanitarian pause,’ so he can have more time to let American on-the-ground diplomacy “play out.” The tragedy and hypocrisy in that statement are monstrous, but surely delight the weapons makers who profit savagely from the billions of dollars our taxes buy for Israel year in and year out.

Our government, with many billions of our tax dollars, has fanned the flames beneath the pressure cooker of occupation for decades. We cannot pretend ignorance. One of our members saw a tragic similarity between what he witnessed in Palestine and what he did as an occupier in Iraq.

VFP urges our members and supporters as emphatically as we can:

Take action NOW – no matter how large or small – but do it now.

We must do everything we can to prevent even greater disaster!

Join in a local protest or organize one yourself. Certainly picket, and think seriously about occupying local offices of Members of Congress who do not support HR 786 for an immediate ceasefire and humanitarian aid. Tell your friends what’s happening. Write a letter to the editor.

But do it now!

Without a ceasefire, this war, like all wars, will dangerously escalate. The U.S. has sent aircraft carrier battle groups into the eastern Mediterranean and more troops into neighboring countries; Israel has bombed two airports in Syria; Shia militias have attacked U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria.

To American troops deployed to the Middle East: follow your conscience. Remember that what you do as a member of the United States military will be with you for the rest of your life. We in Veterans For Peace have learned from our experiences with war and death to be life affirming.

Join us for peace.

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Featured image is by Trong Khiem Nguyen/Flickr

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For many of us, it’s impossible to imagine the scale of death and destruction in Gaza. 

In just two weeks, the Israeli military has killed over 5,000 Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli warplanes have flattened entire neighborhoods. Shell-shocked children are left to search for their parents under the rubble. Millions of Palestinians have once again been made refugees, bombed as they tried to flee. Surgeons are operating by the light of their cellphones, increasingly without anesthesia. 

Let us be clear: This is genocide.

This isn’t a war on Hamas. It’s a war on the Palestinian people. 

As Aseel Al Bajeh writes, “All of Palestine is under attack.”

While international attention is focused on Gaza, the Israeli government and extremist settler groups are taking the opportunity to accelerate the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank. 

Israeli settlers are being armed by the Israeli state, and have become indistinguishable from Israeli soldiers. Both abuse Palestinians with impunity.

On October 12, as the last villagers of Wadi al-Seeq left their homes, driven out by ongoing settler terror, a group of Israeli “soldiers-settlers” — some dressed in military uniform and some in civilian clothing — took three Palestinian men captive. 

For hours, the men were tortured: They beat them, forced them to strip down to their underwear, handcuffed and blindfolded them, urinated on them, extinguished cigarettes on their bodies, and attempted to sexually assault one of them. 

Settlers have carried out dozens of attacks, setting Palestinian homes on fire, destroying their property, and shooting at them with live ammunition.

Over 90 Palestinians in the West Bank, including 26 children, have been murdered by the Israeli military and settlers since October 7. 

They include 16-year-old Mohammad Rafat Mohammad Edwan, who was throwing stones at Israeli soldiers when he was shot with live ammunition. The bullet lodged itself in his lung, and four days later, on October 14, he was dead.

On October 12, 62-year-old Ibrahim Wadi and his son, 24-year-old Ahmad Wadi, were killed when Israeli settlers opened fire on the funeral procession of four Palestinians who had been murdered the previous day — three by Israeli settlers and one by an Israeli soldier. 

And on October 19, 11-year-old Yousef Mohammad Omar Zaghdad was killed when the Israeli military fired a missile at a group of civilians inside Noor Shams refugee camp. Three other children were killed in the attack. 

Enabled by the Israeli military and empowered by a climate of impunity and lawlessness, Israeli settlers are taking advantage of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza to steal more Palestinian land, thereby expanding Israeli control of the West Bank. Hundreds of Palestinians from over a dozen different communities in the West Bank have been displaced as a result. 

“They came into the village and destroyed houses and sheep pens, beat an 85-year-old man, scared our children. Slowly our lives became unlivable,” Sliman al-Zawahri, a resident of the now-depopulated village of Ein Rashash, told the Guardian. 

Israel’s war on Gaza has also heightened the discrimination faced by Palestinian citizens of Israel and those with Jerusalem IDs, who are increasingly being arrested, harassed, doxxed, suspended from school, and fired from their jobs for expressing solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

The expansion of Israel’s regime of Jewish supremacy relies on the destruction of all Palestinian life. For Palestinians, there is no right way to protest their subjugation, and nowhere safe from Israeli violence.

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Featured image is from JVP

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July 11, 2023 – Inverkip, UK – 25 year old NHS pediatric nurse Kristin Hamill was finishing her pediatric nursing studies (with COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine mandate). On June 28, 2022 she developed sepsis, her kidneys failed, she ended up on dialysis and needs a kidney transplant. In July 2023 she was diagnosed with heart failure – all COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine injuries & long term effects.

July 31, 2023 – Calvary, TX – Danny DeGrande was a Nursing Student at TCU and 5 years in the US Marine Corps. He had chest pain and died suddenly on Oct. 31, 2022.

June 22, 2023 – Marietta, GA – 18 year old Kylie Yeager died after being diagnosed with Leukemia in April 2023. She was interested in pediatric nursing and had attended a Wellstar Nursing Camp and volunteered at special needs camps in the summer. She is presumed COVID-19 mRNA Vaccinated.

June 22, 2023 – Provo, UT – 27 year old Keyon Snow, a nursing student at Joyce University, died suddenly in his sleep.

June 20, 2023 – Las Vegas, NV – Crystal Martinez is a nursing student at Nevada State College. She began having neurological deficits and was diagnosed with a strange epidural hematoma of her spinal cord.

June 14, 2023 – Metairie, LA – 20 year old Bryan Ibanez is a nursing student at Missouri State University. He was diagnosed with Stage 2 Testicular Cancer in Sep. 2022 which has metastasized to the lungs and is now Stage 4.

June 10, 2023 – Knoxville, TN – 18 year old Caileigh O’Donohue Duggan, a nursing student at University of Tennessee nursing program died suddenly on June 10, 2023. She died in her sleep.

June 2, 2023 – 19 year old Kate Kaufling, University of Kentucky dancer and nursing student with 4.0 GPA was diagnosed with Osteosarcoma. It started with swollen lymph nodes containing cancer.

May 22, 2023 – Chandler, AZ – 21 year old Valerie Calderone was a college student studying to become a nurse when she was diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma.

May 21, 2023 – UK – Winifred Chioma George, a Nigerian Nursing Student who was only 16 weeks away from completing her nursing degree at the University of Hertfordshire died suddenly on May 21, 2023.

April 26, 2023 – Southport, UK – 31 year old nursing student Ashleigh De Andrade returned from holiday, felt unwell, had a brain bleed, several seizures & died suddenly.

April 20, 2023 – University of Missouri – 19 year old Nursing student Kennedy Grace Carter died suddenly on April 20, 2023. She was found dead in her dorm room bed.

April 16, 2023 – Mesa, AZ – Katherine Wilson is a nursing student who was diagnosed with a brain/orbital tumor in Feb. 2023 and had surgery in April.

My Take…

Nursing students in United States and Canada were mandated COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines to be able to continue their studies.

mRNA Vaccine mandates forced on University and College students were one of the greatest crimes perpetrated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

All University and College leaders who presided over COVID-19 Vaccine mandates must serve life in prison sentences without possibility of parole.

Now that COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine injuries are out in the mainstream and can no longer be covered-up, it is crucial for nursing students and their families to carefully evaluate any health problems that occurred after COVID-19 Vaccination.

Kristin Hamill’s immune system would have been damaged by COVID-19 Vaccines, putting her at high risk of sepsis, which is now a common condition among the COVID-19 Vaccinated. Her kidneys and heart may have also been damaged by spike protein.

Danny DeGrande would have had COVID-19 vaccine cardiac injury, and those who died in their sleep like Keyon Snow, Caileigh Duggan, Kennedy Grace Carter may also have had COVID-19 Vaccine cardiac injury.

Also important to note are blood clots, DVTs, pulmonary emboli, as well as blood vessel injuries such as aneurysms and hemorrhagic strokes.

Any Cancer diagnosis after COVID-19 Vaccination must be considered a Turbo Cancer until proven otherwise and carefully evaluated for unusual behavior.

The time for lawsuits against Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson is now.

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

Featured image is from NaturalNews.com

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The European Union’s sanctions envoy said on October 23 that the bloc’s sanctions regime on Russian oil will remain in place for the long term, perhaps five or ten years. Yet, despite the triumphant statement, the EU’s economy is facing a recession, and not the Russian, which is going from strength to strength even though it faces Western-imposed sanctions.

“Prepare for five to ten years,” said David O’Sullivan, special international envoy for the implementation of EU sanctions, at an Atlantic Council event. O’Sullivan added that he did not see any imminent lifting of these sanctions in any meaningful way, even if there were a cessation of hostilities, as other issues would need to be overcome.

Responding to O’Sullivan’s comments, Dmitry Peskov, Press Secretary of the President of the Russian Federation, said that Russia was prepared to face Western sanctions for the period said by the EU envoy.

“Russia has been living under a sanctions regime for quite a long time, for decades, and we have sufficiently adapted to it, so such time horizons as five to 10 years do not scare us,” Peskov said.

The worst effects of Western sanctions against Russia have already been felt, and the Eurasian country has already constructed mechanisms to overcome Western economic attacks. In fact, even with Western sanctions, Russia is increasingly close to surpassing the USA and the EU in GDP growth.

Moscow said sanctions have boosted its domestic economy and industrial production, and most observers acknowledge now that the sanctions have been circumvented and have failed to deter Russia from ending its military operation against Ukraine. 

According to calculations based on the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, Russia’s external debt level relative to GDP at the end of the second quarter of this year fell below 15% for the first time. In fact, Russia’s external debt has not stopped decreasing in recent years.

At the end of 2020, it was 31%; in 2021, it was 26.2%; and, at the end of last year, it was only 16.6%. In the first quarter of 2023, it decreased slightly to 15.45%. In the second quarter of this year, the indicator also declined to 14.96%. In monetary terms, Russian external public and corporate debt at the end of June 2023 was $343.4 billion, about 29.9 trillion roubles.

The Central Bank also published data on the external debt per capita at the end of the second quarter: the figure fell 4% to $2.3 billion. This is the best level since 2006 when it was $2.2 billion. At the same time, Russia’s economy will grow by 2.3% in 2023 against all forecasts from Western analysts, something that is due to the rise in real wages.

Meanwhile, the economic slowdown in the Eurozone worsened in October, according to preliminary data from a survey of purchasing managers conducted by S&P Global.

“The seasonally adjusted HCOB Flash Eurozone Composite PMI Output Index, based on approximately 85% of usual survey responses, fell from 47.2 in September to 46.5 in October, signalling a fifth consecutive month of falling business activity and the steepest decline since November 2020,” said the S&P press release on October 24.

Excluding the months of the pandemic, business activity in the eurozone recorded its largest contraction since March 2013.

For the chief economist of Hamburg Commercial Bank (HCOB), Dr. Cyrus de la Rubi:

“In the Eurozone, things are moving from bad to worse. Manufacturing has been in a slump for sixteen months, services for three, and both PMI headline indices just took another hit. In addition, all subindices point very consistently downwards, too, with only a few exceptions. Overall, this points to another lacklustre quarter. We wouldn’t be caught off guard to see a mild recession in the Eurozone in the second half of this year with two back to back quarters of negative growth.”

However, rather than seeking to remove sanctions, the EU will not only maintain them for many years to come but will introduce a new sanctions package, the 12th since Russia launched its special military operation against Ukraine in February 2022. This sanctions package could include a ban on Russian diamonds – a further crackdown on Moscow’s ability to get around sanctions and listing companies in third countries helping Moscow do so.

Just like the previous 11 sanctions packages, this will obviously fail to deter Russia from completing its mission against Ukraine. Rather, it will only have a greater impact on the EU as their own economies struggle while Russia continues to forge trade relations with non-Western partners, thus shielding the economy from Western attacks.

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

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Germany is home to Europe’s largest Palestinian community, with roughly 80,000 Palestinians living in the country. For years, German authorities have tried to stifle Palestinian activism in the country, viewing it as a nuisance to its explicit policy of “unconditional support for Israel.” Demonstrations, such as one earlier this year to mark the 75^th anniversary of the Nakba, have been sporadically banned in recent years and organizations, like the Palestinian prisoner solidarity network Samidoun, have also come under increasing scrutiny.

Yet the criminalization of solidarity with Palestine on a national level has taken on entirely new dimensions since October 7. After a small demonstration on Berlin’s busy Sonnenallee street on the evening of October 7, the German media and body politic have been up in arms about Palestinians supposedly celebrating terrorism and antisemitism on German streets.

Talking points that were two weeks ago only uttered by far-right AfD politicians are now being openly expressed by politicians from all parliamentary parties in Germany. Playing off the idea of “imported antisemitism,” the social democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz is now arguing that “we must finally deport on a large scale” residents who do not hold German citizenship and openly protest against Israel. The Christian Democrats (CDU) are even demanding that the recognition of Israel’s right to exist must become a precondition for German citizenship.

Samidoun has been made into public enemy number one, as the media presents the group as a bastion for “sympathizers of terror” that poses “a particular danger, because as a secular organization, they are building bridges between Islamists and radical leftists.” In a speech before parliament on October 12, Chancellor Scholz personally announced a ban on Samidoun along with a ban on the activities of Hamas in Germany. 

In Berlin specifically, which is home to one of the largest Palestinian diaspora communities outside the Arab world, the authorities have been particularly hostile towards any signs of solidarity with Palestine. Since October 7, every demonstration explicitly or implicitly referring to Palestine has been banned, leaving the roughly 30,000 Palestinians living in Berlin with no means of expressing their anguish at the siege and bombardment of Gaza.

Solidarity groups have been trying to bypass this censorship by avoiding political statements and focusing on humanitarian campaigning, yet even demonstrations and slogans such as “Children in Gaza need help” and “Solidarity with the civilian population in the Gaza Strip” were banned. On October 13, the police went so far as to ban a demonstration registered by the group “Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East” entitled “Jewish Berliners against violence in the Middle East.” 

Sonnenallee, a busy street in the district in which many Arab migrants live, has become a focal point of dissent against Israel’s attack on Gaza. The police patrol Sonnenallee every evening with tight controls on the public squares. Racial profiling and brutal arrests are commonplace and often recorded and posted to social media. One particular video shows police officers stomping out a candle-lit vigil with their boots.

In a letter to all Berlin schools, the city’s Department for Education, Youth and Family set out strict guidelines on how to discuss the situation in Palestine with students. “Any demonstrative action or expression of opinion that can be understood as advocating or approving of the attacks against Israel or support for the terrorist organizations carrying them out, such as Hamas or Hezbollah, constitutes a threat to school peace in the current situation and is prohibited.” According to the letter, these may include the following: “visibly wearing relevant clothing (for example, the kuffiyeh known as the Palestinian scarf), displaying stickers and patches with inscriptions such as ‘free Palestine’ or a map of Israel in the colors of Palestine (white, red, black, green), and shouting ‘free Palestine!’ and demonstrating verbal support for Hamas and its terrorism.”

At one high school on Sonnenallee, a 61-year-old teacher attempted to confiscate a Palestinian flag from a 14-year-old student and ended up in a physical altercation with a second 15-year-old student. The parents’ association of the school tried to organize a demonstration under the slogan “No place for racism, no place for violence” as a reaction to the incident, yet it was promptly banned by the police, ostensibly as a “a precautionary measure”. The Central Council of Palestinians in Germany has since sent a letter in response to Berlin’s Department for Education, expressing their “great concern about the psychological and educational development [of their children]” in Berlin schools.

As other European states are witnessing mass protests in solidarity with Palestine, the German state has been able to use force and violence to prevent such scenes on German streets. Yet it is unlikely that the government will be able to ban these sentiments of solidarity indefinitely, especially as the images of Israel’s brutal attack on Gaza continue to circulate around the world.

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Featured image: Demonstrators in Berlin take the streets in solidarity with Palestine (Photo: Montecruz Foto)

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Update on October 24, 2023

After this article was originally published, the Israeli outlet Calcalist reported on a separate plan for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza that is being circulated by the Israeli Intelligence Ministry headed by Gila Gamliel. The leaked document was reportedly created for an organization called “The Unit for Settlement – Gaza Strip” and was not meant for the public.

In the plan being proposed by the Intelligence Ministry, Palestinians in Gaza would be displaced from Gaza to the northern Egyptian Sinai peninsula. In the report, the ministry described different options for what comes after an invasion of Gaza and the option deemed as “liable to provide positive and long-lasting strategic results” was the transfer of Gaza residents to Sinai. The move entails three steps: the creation of tent cities southwest of the Gaza Strip; the construction of a humanitarian corridor to “assist the residents”; and finally, the building of cities in northern Sinai. In parallel, a “sterile zone”, several kilometers wide, would be established within Egypt, south of the Israeli border, “so that the evacuated residents would not be able to return”. 

In addition, similar to the plan described in the original story below, the document calls for cooperation with other countries, in fact “as many as possible” so that they may “absorb” the Palestinians who have been uprooted from Gaza. Among the countries mentioned as possible sites for Palestinians from Gaza are Canada, European countries such as Greece and Spain, and North African countries. 

Original article

The Hamas attack on Israeli towns surrounding Gaza on October 7 has provided a pretext for an unprecedented, genocidal revenge campaign by Israel involving the massacre of now nearly 5,000 Palestinians, including over 2,000 children – and that may only be the beginning. Now, an Israeli think tank with ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is promoting plans for the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza. 

On October 17, the Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategypublished a position paper advocating for the “relocation and final settlement of the entire Gaza population.” The report advocates exploiting the current moment to accomplish a long-held Zionist goal of moving Palestinians off the land of historic Palestine. The report’s subtitle makes it clear: “There is at the moment a unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the whole Gaza Strip in coordination with the Egyptian government.” 

The Misgav Institute is headed by former Netanyahu National Security Advisor Meir Ben Shabbat, who remains influential in Israeli security circles. The Institute’s former chairpersons and founding associates include Yoaz Hendel (chair 2012-19), a right-centrist who was Minister of Communications intermittently in the years 2020-22; Moshe Yaalon, former Defense Minister (note that both Hendel and Yaalon have become opposed to Netanyahu in the recent years); Moshe Arens, also former Defense Minister — and other top political personas.

The main arguments of the report, which the Institute highlighted on social media upon the report’s release, are translated as follows:  

• There is a need for an immediate, viable plan for the resettlement and economic rehabilitation of the entire Arab population in the Gaza Strip, which sits well with the geopolitical interests of Israel, Egypt, U.S.A. and Saudi Arabia.
• In 2017 it was reported that in Egypt there were 10 million available apartment units, of which half were built and half under construction. For example, in two of the biggest Cairo satellite cities, “October 6” and “Ramadan 10” there is an immense number of built and empty apartments under governmental and private ownership as well as empty lots for building that would in total suffice the housing of about 6 million residents.
• The average cost of a three-room apartment of 95 square meters for an average Gaza family of 5.14 people in one of the two mentioned cities stands at $19,000. In calculating the total population that resides in the Gaza Strip, which stands between 1.4-2.2 million people, it is possible to assess that the amount that would need to be transferred to Egypt in order to finance would be around $5 to 8 billion.
• An encouraging injection to the Egyptian economy at this magnitude would provide an enormous and immediate advantage to [Egyptian President] El-Sisi’s regime. Such money sums, compared to the Israeli economy, are miniscule. The investment of a mere few billions of dollars (even if it is $20 or 30 billion) in order to solve this difficult issue is an innovative, cheap and viable solution. 
• There is no doubt that in order for this plan to be enacted, many conditions need to exist in parallel. At the moment, these conditions exist, and it is unclear when such an opportunity will arise again, if at all.         

It appears that this ethnic-cleansing plan is based on a similar logic to that of the “Abraham Accords,” involving the infusion of massive sums towards despotic regimes to write off the Palestinian issue. But this time, it is not just about slow annexation and bantustanization through “economic peace” — but advocating for the complete population transfer of Palestinians from Gaza. 

Previous Calls for Ethnic Cleansing

It is not the first time that suggestions for a full ethnic cleansing have appeared from Israeli analysts or even politicians. In the midst of the 2014 Gaza onslaught, Moshe Feiglin, who was then part of Likud and deputy chair of the Knesset, sent Netanyahu a public, 7-point proposal for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. He repeated the genocidal advocacy in 2018. Feiglin is now a libertarian politician. In a recent interview on Channel 14, Feiglin called for a “Dresden” on Gaza (referring to the WW2 firebombing of Dresden in February 1945, killing some 25,000 people) — “a storm of fire on all of Gaza!” he proclaimed, demanding to “not leave stone on stone” and emphasizing “total fire!” and “the end of ends!”   

The Misgav Institute’s thinking has also been reflected in the Israeli intelligentsia. In 2004, respected Israeli historian Benny Morris, who is a self-proclaimed leftist, shocked many by bemoaning the fact that Ben Gurion did not “finish the job” and carry out the full ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, saying it would have led to less conflict in the ensuing decades. But he also said that a “transfer and expulsion” policy is only a question of time, and timing. Morris argued that in “normal” times, such policies may be immoral — but in “apocalyptic circumstances,” they may be both moral, “reasonable,” and “even essential.” From his interview in Haaretz:

“If you are asking me whether I support the transfer and expulsion of the Arabs from the West Bank, Gaza and perhaps even from Galilee and the Triangle, I say not at this moment. I am not willing to be a partner to that act. In the present circumstances it is neither moral nor realistic. The world would not allow it, the Arab world would not allow it, it would destroy the Jewish society from within. But I am ready to tell you that in other circumstances, apocalyptic ones, which are liable to be realized in five or ten years, I can see expulsions.”

Thus, the Misgav report would seem not only to be arguing that to forcibly displace the Palestinian population from Gaza but that, similar to the conditions that Morris laid out, this is a historic opportunity to do it. 

Israeli Support

Since October 7, calls for flattening Gaza have been rampant among the Israeli leadership and widely espoused across the population. On October 12, Israeli Channel 12 published a report about how the desire to ethnically cleanse Gaza has taken hold in Israeli popular culture: 

“People from the political left and center have called for the flattening of Gaza this week. A very short post fantasizing about a nature party that would take place on what was Gaza land received 100 thousand likes and 60 thousand shares”. The young Tel-Aviv woman who posted on Instagram had only 700 followers, but then the post “exploded”. She claims to be a centrist who “has always sanctified human rights, compassion is the first emotion that is activated in me”, she says. “I do not want to kill Gazan babies, I never hated Arabs and it’s not like I started hating them this week. But after what happened, I say to the Gaza residents – your babies are your problem”. 

This sentiment seems to match quite well with broad calls from Israeli politicians for collective punishment, which have been coming from across the political spectrum, including those considered centrist or liberal. 

Meanwhile, while the world’s eyes are on Gaza, ethnic cleansing is also being realized in the West Bank by Israeli settlers and soldiers. The terrorizing of mostly rural Palestinian communities in the West Bank had resulted in the uprooting of several communities before October 7 but has accelerated greatly since, with some 545 Palestinians forcibly displaced from at least 13 communities since October 7, according to information from the West Bank Protection Consortium (WBPC) and Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din (cited by Al Jazeera). The murderous settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank have gotten relatively little attention, like the murder of four Palestinians in Qusra on October 11 and then the murder of a Palestinian father and his son at the funeral. The number of killed Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7 is nearing 100 — in two weeks — an unfathomable pace. 

Thus, these times are exceptionally dangerous for Palestinians. The Hamas attack seems to have reignited long-standing Zionist wishes, and now some want to exploit this public mood in support of a massive ethnic cleansing campaign. It doesn’t mean that it will happen all at once, but as mentioned, in some places, it has already begun.    

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Israel has dropped more than 12,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, the media office in the Palestinian enclave said on Tuesday. 

“The explosive force of these explosives is equivalent to the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in Japan” in 1945, the office said in a statement.

“An average of 33 tons of explosives were dropped per square kilometer on the Palestinian enclave since Israel started its aggression,” it added.

Home to 2.3 million people, the Gaza Strip has a total area of 365 square kilometers.

Israel launched a relentless bombardment campaign on the Palestinian territory following a cross-border attack by Hamas, putting the enclave’s residents under total siege and a blockade of food, fuel and medical supplies.

More than 7,100 people have been killed in the latest conflict, including at least 5,791 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis.

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The Egyptian parliament met on October 19 and gave President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi the power to declare war against Israel, if necessary. Egypt and Israel have a peace treaty dating from 1979, which has been a success, proving that a neighboring Arab and Muslim country can share long-lasting peaceful relations with the Jewish State of Israel. 

Egyptians have watched in horror at the scenes of death and destruction in Gaza as the Israeli government exacts its revenge on Hamas after the October 7 attack on Israel.  With the promised Israeli ground invasion of Gaza beginning at any moment, it is expected to be a bloodbath among unarmed civilians. Already the death toll is at least 5,087, including 2,055 children.

The Cairo Peace Summit, co-chaired by the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine, met on October 21.

Sisi said that the solution to the Palestinian issue is not the displacement of an entire people to other areas, but justice and obtaining their legitimate rights and the right to self-determination.

The US sent a low-level representative to the Cairo Peace Summit, and this was a message from US President Joe Biden, that the US is working against Egypt, and not with them. 

The US media is portraying Sisi as the villain, who refuses to open the gate at Rafah and allow displaced Palestinians under bombardment to flee.

The reason behind Egypt’s refusal to accept Palestinian refugees is never hinted at in the US media which parrots the US State Department talking points. 

Israel has a long-standing law that prevents any Palestinian who leaves Gaza, or the Occupied West Bank, from ever returning home. The right of return is enshrined in international law; however, Israel does not comply with international law. 

Sisi knows there is an Israeli plan, condoned and supported by Biden, to remove all Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt, where they will be supported by humanitarian aid, but can never repopulate Gaza again. They will be permanently homeless and stateless refugees.

The Israeli plan also includes the Occupied West Bank and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has warned of attempts to displace the Palestinian people and said:

“We will not leave, we will not leave, we will stay in our land.”

Jordanian King Abdullah II said,

“The violent bombing campaign in Gaza is a collective punishment of a besieged and helpless population,” he said, calling it a “flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and a war crime.”

The US-Israeli plan is to move all the Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank into Jordan, which has had a peace treaty with Israel since 1994.

Both leaders have warned of a plan to de-populate the West Bank, which will then be the ultimate solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as there will be no more occupation and no need for the UN resolution calling for the two-state solution.  Israel will get everything, and the Palestinians will get nothing.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said on October 18, that any attempts to displace Palestinians from the West Bank to Jordan would be considered a declaration of “war.”

The US betrayal of Egypt runs deeper than the Gaza war. Biden set his sights on the record annual revenue of the Suez Canal, which totaled $9.4 billion in USD as of June 30, 2023.  The major asset in Egypt handles roughly 10 percent of global maritime trade, and the US has a plan to declare economic war on Egypt by circumventing transit through the Suez Canal.

The Biden Plan Against Egypt

On September 8, at the G-20 summit in New Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), which is a Biden plan to work behind the back of Egypt and undermine their economy.  This plan will circumvent the Suez Canal.

The huge plan links India with Europe and includes the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the US had approached Israel for this project, which according to him will “reshape the face of the Middle East”, while adding, “The State of Israel will be a central hub in this economic initiative.” 

Not only does the IMEC work to the detriment of Egypt, but also Biden’s chief enemy, China, and their Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which began in 2013.

The IMEC project connects cross-country railway lines and shipping corridors from India’s west coast with the UAE by sea, and a rail route crossing the Arabian Peninsula, with the Israeli port of Haifa as the endpoint.

From Haifa, goods are shipped to Piraeus, Greece which is the gateway to all European destinations. Included in the plan are pipelines for hydrogen produced in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, high-powered IT connections, and energy grids. 

Biden wants India tied to the West, thus serving as a counter-balance to China. At the same time, the plan promotes the normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which has been the main goal of Netanyahu since taking office, and a priority of the US State Department under the Biden administration.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE regard hydrogen production as a green alternative to their fossil-based energy exports.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the IMEC plan was “much more than ‘just’ a railway or a cable” adding, “It is a green and digital bridge across continents and civilizations.”

The IMEC plan could potentially speed up trade between India and Europe by up to 40 percent. However, its critics point out that the cargo must be off-loaded, and re-loaded twice in the route, which will add costs that might not be cost-effective as opposed to the traditional Suez Canal route. But, the US support of the IMEC proves that their support is not about saving money, but is about betraying Egypt.

The Saudi Position

President Trump’s plan, the Abraham Accords of 2020, gained momentum when the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco normalized relations with Israel.

The big prize to both Israel and the US would be signing with Saudi Arabia, and negotiations were progressing favorably until the current Gaza war began.  Saudi Arabia halted any progress on normalization in favor of pro-Palestinian solidarity. The Kingdom’s stance will affect Israel’s participation in IMEC.

Previous US Betrayal of Egypt

Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was a staunch and loyal ally of the US, and yet they called for him to step down.

President Barack Obama and his Vice President Joe Biden engineered a US-rigged election in which the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohamed Morsi, was elected.  The American official in Cairo who was sentenced to five years in prison by an Egyptian court for election fraud was whisked away from Cairo before serving time by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who used her diplomatic immunity to transport Lila Jaafar to Washington, DC where she now serves as an official with the Peace Corps.

This US betrayal of Egypt lasted less than a year, during which hundreds of unarmed civilians were massacred by the Morsi regime, and then the Egyptian people threw out the American puppet, and the current president Sisi came to power.

The US has no friends, only interests. America is the first to teach the lesson: “Treaties are made to be broken”. 

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

Featured image is from MD

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Aparentemente, as relações entre os EUA e a Ucrânia são profundas no setor da inteligência. Segundo um importante meio de comunicação americano, a CIA investiu quantias exorbitantes de dinheiro para desenvolver o sistema de inteligência ucraniano. O caso deixa claro como os agentes e a inteligência americanos são certamente co-responsáveis ​​pelos crimes cometidos pelos ucranianos.

A informação foi partilhada peloWashington Post  no dia 23 de outubro. Segundo o jornal, a ICA investiu “dezenas de milhões” de dólares na inteligência ucraniana com o objetivo de transformar o sistema pós-pós-soviético num verdadeiro centro operacional aliado de Washington contra Moscou. Desde o Maidan, a agência americana tem estado fortemente envolvida em todo o processo de tomada de decisão da inteligência ucraniana, tendo alcançado uma “presença significativa” em Kiev.

“Desde 2015, a CIA gastou dezenas de milhões de dólares para transformar os serviços ucranianos formados pelos soviéticos em aliados poderosos contra Moscou, disseram autoridades. A agência forneceu à Ucrânia sistemas de vigilância avançados, treinou recrutas em locais na Ucrânia, bem como nos Estados Unidos. Os Estados Unidos construíram novos quartéis-generais para departamentos da agência de inteligência militar da Ucrânia e compartilharam informações em uma escala que teria sido inimaginável antes da Rússia anexar ilegalmente a Crimeia e fomentar uma guerra separatista no leste da Ucrânia. A CIA mantém uma presença significativa em Kiev, disseram autoridades”, diz o artigo.

O artigo também enfatiza que todo o sistema de defesa ucraniano recebeu fundos americanos, o que esclarece que tanto a inteligência nacional, SBU, como a inteligência militar, GUR, se beneficiaram dos investimentos da CIA. Particularmente no que diz respeito à SBU, a CIA parece ter tido um papel central no desenvolvimento da capacidade operacional da agência e em torná-la capaz de espionar as “ameaças” representadas pelas milícias separatistas do Donbass, atuando fortemente dentro da zona de conflito.

As atividades concentraram-se inicialmente no reconhecimento e na sabotagem contra as milícias, mas posteriormente as táticas tornaram-se cada vez mais letais. Isto supostamente causou “desconforto” entre os próprios americanos. O texto relata que os agentes da CIA começaram a sentir-se incomodados com os métodos criminosos de assassinato utilizados pelos seus parceiros ucranianos, o que alegadamente gerou uma diminuição da cooperação entre ambas as partes.

O texto menciona que mesmo os agentes mais experientes que concordam com o uso de técnicas clandestinas para assassinar opositores ficaram chocados com as práticas ucranianas. Segundo as fontes, os americanos discordaram não só dos métodos, mas também da escolha das vítimas, já que Kiev opta rotineiramente por matar civis sem relevância estratégica no conflito – como aconteceu com Daria Dugina, jornalista e filha do filósofo Aleksandr Dugin.

“A afinidade da Ucrânia com operações letais complicou a sua colaboração com a CIA, levantando preocupações sobre a cumplicidade da agência e criando desconforto entre alguns responsáveis ​​em Kiev e Washington. Mesmo aqueles que consideram tais missões letais como defensáveis ​​em tempo de guerra questionam a utilidade de certos ataques e decisões que levou ao ataque a civis, incluindo Dugina ou ao seu pai, Alexander Dugin – que as autoridades reconhecem ser o alvo pretendido – em vez de russos mais diretamente ligados à guerra”, lê-se no artigo.

No entanto, é ingênuo acreditar que a CIA tenha realmente investido tanto dinheiro em Kiev e tenha ficado “chocada” com os métodos ucranianos. A inteligência americana é conhecida mundialmente pela crueldade com que trata os seus inimigos, e não há razão para acreditar que a CIA exigiria uma conduta “ética” de Kiev. Além disso, há provas e trabalhos de investigação que demonstram que mesmo as técnicas de tortura utilizadas pelo regime de Kiev foram certamente instruídas a agentes ucranianos pela CIA.

O que parece estar a acontecer é simplesmente mais uma tentativa dos EUA de escapar à responsabilidade pelos crimes cometidos por Kiev. Esta não é a primeira vez que fontes americanas alegam que, apesar das relações de inteligência dos EUA com a Ucrânia, não houve participação de agentes americanos nos crimes de Kiev. Relativamente ao caso específico de Daria Dugina, o New York Times já tinha noticiado há mais de um ano que a inteligência ucraniana era responsável pelo crime, alegadamente sem qualquer cooperação americana.

No entanto, é quase impossível para os EUA não terem controle total sobre as atitudes da inteligência ucraniana. Mesmo que o plano para matar Dugina e outros civis tenha sido eventualmente proposto pelos ucranianos, a CIA certamente tinha poder suficiente para impedir a ação de Kiev, se quisesse, uma vez que o estado ucraniano é claramente um vassalo dos EUA. Assim, parece claro que, se não a participação direta, pelo menos algum tipo de “luz verde” foi dada pelos EUA, tornando Washington co-responsável por todos os crimes da inteligência ucraniana.

No contexto atual de mudança de foco na política externa americana, com a Ucrânia a perder o seu estatuto de prioridade para Israel, estes relatos da comunicação social desempenham um papel muito importante, que consiste em preparar a opinião pública para um “abandono” gradual da Ucrânia. Durante mais de um ano, os leitores dos meios de comunicação ocidentais sofreram uma lavagem cerebral para acreditarem que “defender” a Ucrânia era uma necessidade vital. Agora é preciso fazer com que a opinião pública “esqueça” a Ucrânia e apoie o envio de armas e dinheiro para Israel.

E a forma mais fácil de reverter a simpatia pela Ucrânia incutida nos cidadãos ao longo do tempo é mostrar os crimes cometidos pelo regime – omitindo que os EUA foram co-participantes em todos eles.

Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

 

Artigo em inglês :

https://infobrics.org/post/39677/

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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Amid rapid AI progress, the authors of this paper express a consensus on the large-scale risks from upcoming, powerful AI systems. They call for urgent governance measures and a major shift in AI R&D towards safety and ethical practices before these systems are developed.

In 2019, GPT-2 could not reliably count to ten. Only four years later, deep learning systems can write software, generate photorealistic scenes on demand, advise on intellectual topics, and combine language and image processing to steer robots.

As AI developers scale these systems, unforeseen abilities and behaviors emerge spontaneously without explicit programming[1]. Progress in AI has been swift and, to many, surprising.

The pace of progress may surprise us again. Current deep learning systems still lack important capabilities and we do not know how long it will take to develop them.

However, companies are engaged in a race to create generalist AI systems that match or exceed human abilities in most cognitive work[2, 3].

They are rapidly deploying more resources and developing new techniques to increase AI capabilities. Progress in AI also enables faster progress: AI assistants are increasingly used to automate programming [4] and data collection[5, 6] to further improve AI systems [7].

There is no fundamental reason why AI progress would slow or halt at the human level. Indeed, AI has already surpassed human abilities in narrow domains like protein folding or strategy games[8, 9, 10].

Compared to humans, AI systems can act faster, absorb more knowledge, and communicate at a far higher bandwidth. Additionally, they can be scaled to use immense computational resources and can be replicated by the millions.

The rate of improvement is already staggering, and tech companies have the cash reserves needed to scale the latest training runs by multiples of 100 to 1000 soon[11]. Combined with the ongoing growth and automation in AI R&D, we must take seriously the possibility that generalist AI systems will outperform human abilities across many critical domains within this decade or the next.

What happens then?

If managed carefully and distributed fairly, advanced AI systems could help humanity cure diseases, elevate living standards, and protect our ecosystems.

The opportunities AI offers are immense. But alongside advanced AI capabilities come large-scale risks that we are not on track to handle well. Humanity is pouring vast resources into making AI systems more powerful, but far less into safety and mitigating harms. For AI to be a boon, we must reorient; pushing AI capabilities alone is not enough.

We are already behind schedule for this reorientation. We must anticipate the amplification of ongoing harms, as well as novel risks, and prepare for the largest risks well before they materialize. Climate change has taken decades to be acknowledged and confronted; for AI, decades could be too long.

Societal-scale Risks

AI systems could rapidly come to outperform humans in an increasing number of tasks. If such systems are not carefully designed and deployed, they pose a range of societal-scale risks. They threaten to amplify social injustice, erode social stability, and weaken our shared understanding of reality that is foundational to society.

They could also enable large-scale criminal or terrorist activities.

Especially in the hands of a few powerful actors, AI could cement or exacerbate global inequities, or facilitate automated warfare, customized mass manipulation, and pervasive surveillance[12, 13].

Many of these risks could soon be amplified, and new risks created, as companies are developing autonomous AI: systems that can plan, act in the world, and pursue goals.

While current AI systems have limited autonomy, work is underway to change this[14]. For example, the non-autonomous GPT-4 model was quickly adapted to browse the web[15], design and execute chemistry experiments[16], and utilize software tools[17], including other AI models[18].

If we build highly advanced autonomous AI, we risk creating systems that pursue undesirable goals. Malicious actors could deliberately embed harmful objectives. Moreover, no one currently knows how to reliably align AI behavior with complex values. Even well-meaning developers may inadvertently build AI systems that pursue unintended goals—especially if, in a bid to win the AI race, they neglect expensive safety testing and human oversight.

Once autonomous AI systems pursue undesirable goals, embedded by malicious actors or by accident, we may be unable to keep them in check. Control of software is an old and unsolved problem: computer worms have long been able to proliferate and avoid detection[19]. However, AI is making progress in critical domains such as hacking, social manipulation, deception, and strategic planning[14, 20]. Advanced autonomous AI systems will pose unprecedented control challenges.

To advance undesirable goals, future autonomous AI systems could use undesirable strategies—learned from humans or developed independently—as a means to an end[21, 22, 23, 24]. AI systems could gain human trust, acquire financial resources, influence key decision-makers, and form coalitions with human actors and other AI systems.

To avoid human intervention[24], they could copy their algorithms across global server networks like computer worms. AI assistants are already co-writing a large share of computer code worldwide[25]; future AI systems could insert and then exploit security vulnerabilities to control the computer systems behind our communication, media, banking, supply-chains, militaries, and governments. In open conflict, AI systems could threaten with or use autonomous or biological weapons. AI having access to such technology would merely continue existing trends to automate military activity, biological research, and AI development itself. If AI systems pursued such strategies with sufficient skill, it would be difficult for humans to intervene.

Finally, AI systems may not need to plot for influence if it is freely handed over. As autonomous AI systems increasingly become faster and more cost-effective than human workers, a dilemma emerges.

Companies, governments, and militaries might be forced to deploy AI systems widely and cut back on expensive human verification of AI decisions, or risk being outcompeted[26, 27]. As a result, autonomous AI systems could increasingly assume critical societal roles.

Without sufficient caution, we may irreversibly lose control of autonomous AI systems, rendering human intervention ineffective. Large-scale cybercrime, social manipulation, and other highlighted harms could then escalate rapidly. This unchecked AI advancement could culminate in a large-scale loss of life and the biosphere, and the marginalization or even extinction of humanity.

Harms such as misinformation and discrimination from algorithms are already evident today[28]; other harms show signs of emerging[20]. It is vital to both address ongoing harms and anticipate emerging risks. This is not a question of either/or. Present and emerging risks often share similar mechanisms, patterns, and solutions[29]; investing in governance frameworks and AI safety will bear fruit on multiple fronts[30].

A Path Forward

If advanced autonomous AI systems were developed today, we would not know how to make them safe, nor how to properly test their safety. Even if we did, governments would lack the institutions to prevent misuse and uphold safe practices. That does not, however, mean there is no viable path forward. To ensure a positive outcome, we can and must pursue research breakthroughs in AI safety and ethics and promptly establish effective government oversight.

Reorienting Technical R&D

We need research breakthroughs to solve some of today’s technical challenges in creating AI with safe and ethical objectives. Some of these challenges are unlikely to be solved by simply making AI systems more capable[22, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35]. These include:

• Oversight and honesty: More capable AI systems are better able to exploit weaknesses in oversight and testing[32, 36, 37]
  —for example, by producing false but compelling output[35, 38].
• Robustness: AI systems behave unpredictably in new situations (under distribution shift or adversarial inputs)[39, 40, 34].
• Interpretability: AI decision-making is opaque. So far, we can only test large models via trial and error. We need to learn to understand their inner workings[41].
• Risk evaluations: Frontier AI systems develop unforeseen capabilities only discovered during training or even well after deployment[42]. Better evaluation is needed to detect hazardous capabilities earlier[43, 44].
• Addressing emerging challenges: More capable future AI systems may exhibit failure modes we have so far seen only in theoretical models. AI systems might, for example, learn to feign obedience or exploit weaknesses in our safety objectives and shutdown mechanisms to advance a particular goal[24, 45].

Given the stakes, we call on major tech companies and public funders to allocate at least one-third of their AI R&D budget to ensuring safety and ethical use, comparable to their funding for AI capabilities. Addressing these problems[34], with an eye toward powerful future systems, must become central to our field.

Urgent Governance Measures

We urgently need national institutions and international governance to enforce standards in order to prevent recklessness and misuse. Many areas of technology, from pharmaceuticals to financial systems and nuclear energy, show that society both requires and effectively uses governance to reduce risks. However, no comparable governance frameworks are currently in place for AI.

Without them, companies and countries may seek a competitive edge by pushing AI capabilities to new heights while cutting corners on safety, or by delegating key societal roles to AI systems with little human oversight[26]. Like manufacturers releasing waste into rivers to cut costs, they may be tempted to reap the rewards of AI development while leaving society to deal with the consequences.

To keep up with rapid progress and avoid inflexible laws, national institutions need strong technical expertise and the authority to act swiftly. To address international race dynamics, they need the affordance to facilitate international agreements and partnerships[46, 47]. To protect low-risk use and academic research, they should avoid undue bureaucratic hurdles for small and predictable AI models. The most pressing scrutiny should be on AI systems at the frontier: a small number of most powerful AI systems – trained on billion-dollar supercomputers – which will have the most hazardous and unpredictable capabilities[48, 49].

To enable effective regulation, governments urgently need comprehensive insight into AI development. Regulators should require model registration, whistleblower protections, incident reporting, and monitoring of model development and supercomputer usage[48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55]. Regulators also need access to advanced AI systems before deployment to evaluate them for dangerous capabilities such as autonomous self-replication, breaking into computer systems, or making pandemic pathogens widely accessible[43, 56, 57].

For AI systems with hazardous capabilities, we need a combination of governance mechanisms[48, 52, 58, 59] matched to the magnitude of their risks.

Regulators should create national and international safety standards that depend on model capabilities. They should also hold frontier AI developers and owners legally accountable for harms from their models that can be reasonably foreseen and prevented.

These measures can prevent harm and create much-needed incentives to invest in safety. Further measures are needed for exceptionally capable future AI systems, such as models that could circumvent human control.

Governments must be prepared to license their development, pause development in response to worrying capabilities, mandate access controls, and require information security measures robust to state-level hackers, until adequate protections are ready.To bridge the time until regulations are in place, major AI companies should promptly lay out if-then commitments: specific safety measures they will take if specific red-line capabilities are found in their AI systems. These commitments should be detailed and independently scrutinized.

AI may be the technology that shapes this century. While AI capabilities are advancing rapidly, progress in safety and governance is lagging behind. To steer AI toward positive outcomes and away from catastrophe, we need to reorient. There is a responsible path, if we have the wisdom to take it.

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Authors

Yoshua Bengio, Mila – Quebec AI Institute, Université de Montréal, Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Geoffrey Hinton, University of Toronto, Vector Institute

Andrew Yao, Tsinghua University

Dawn Song, University of California, Berkeley

Pieter Abbeel, University of California, Berkeley

Yuval Noah Harari, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of History

Ya-Qin Zhang, Tsinghua University

Lan Xue, Tsinghua University, Institute for AI International Governance

Shai Shalev-Shwartz, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Gillian Hadfield, University of Toronto, SR Institute for Technology and Society, Vector Institute

Jeff Clune, University of British Columbia, Canada CIFAR AI Chair, Vector Institute

Tegan Maharaj, University of Toronto, Vector Institute

Frank Hutter, University of Freiburg

Atılım Güneş Baydin, University of Oxford

Sheila McIlrath, University of Toronto, Vector Institute

Qiqi Gao, East China University of Political Science and Law

Ashwin Acharya, Institute for AI Policy and Strategy

David Krueger, University of Cambridge

Anca Dragan, University of California, Berkeley

Philip Torr, University of Oxford

Stuart Russell, University of California, Berkeley

Daniel Kahneman, Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs

Jan Brauner*, University of Oxford

Sören Mindermann*, Mila – Quebec AI Institute

Notes

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    Dohmke, T., 2023.
26. Natural Selection Favors AIs over Humans  [PDF]
    Hendrycks, D., 2023. arXiv [cs.CY].
27. Harms from Increasingly Agentic Algorithmic Systems
    Chan, A., Salganik, R., Markelius, A., Pang, C., Rajkumar, N. and Krasheninnikov, D., 2023. Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, pp. 651–666. Association for Computing Machinery.
28. On the Opportunities and Risks of Foundation Models  [PDF]
    Bommasani, R., Hudson, D., Adeli, E., Altman, R., Arora, S. and von Arx, S., 2021. arXiv [cs.LG].
29. AI Poses Doomsday Risks—But That Doesn’t Mean We Shouldn’t Talk About Present Harms Too  [link]
    Brauner, J. and Chan, A., 2023. Time.
30. Existing Policy Proposals Targeting Present and Future Harms  [PDF]
    Safety, C.f.A., 2023.
31. Inverse Scaling: When Bigger Isn’t Better  [PDF]
    McKenzie, I., Lyzhov, A., Pieler, M., Parrish, A., Mueller, A. and Prabhu, A., 2023. Transactions on Machine Learning Research.
32. The Effects of Reward Misspecification: Mapping and Mitigating Misaligned Models  [link]
    Pan, A., Bhatia, K. and Steinhardt, J., 2022. International Conference on Learning Representations.
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    Wei, J., Huang, D., Lu, Y., Zhou, D. and Le, Q., 2023. arXiv [cs.CL].
34. Unsolved Problems in ML Safety  [PDF]
    Hendrycks, D., Carlini, N., Schulman, J. and Steinhardt, J., 2021. arXiv [cs.LG].
35. Open Problems and Fundamental Limitations of Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback  [PDF]
    Casper, S., Davies, X., Shi, C., Gilbert, T., Scheurer, J. and Rando, J., 2023. arXiv [cs.AI].
36. Consequences of Misaligned AI
    Zhuang, S. and Hadfield-Menell, D., 2020. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, Vol 33, pp. 15763–15773.
37. Scaling Laws for Reward Model Overoptimization
    Gao, L., Schulman, J. and Hilton, J., 2023. Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Machine Learning, pp. 10835–10866. PMLR.
38. Learning from human preferences  [link]
    Amodei, D., Christiano, P. and Ray, A., 2017.
39. Goal Misgeneralization in Deep Reinforcement Learning  [link]
    Langosco di Langosco, A. and Chan, A., 2022. International Conference on Learning Representations.
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    Shah, R., Varma, V., Kumar, R., Phuong, M., Krakovna, V., Uesato, J. and others,, 2022. arXiv [cs.LG].
41. Toward Transparent AI: A Survey on Interpreting the Inner Structures of Deep Neural Networks
    Räuker, T., Ho, A., Casper, S. and Hadfield-Menell, D., 2023. 2023 IEEE Conference on Secure and Trustworthy Machine Learning (SaTML), pp. 464–483.
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    Wei, J., Wang, X., Schuurmans, D., Bosma, M., Ichter, B., Xia, F. and others,, 2022. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, Vol 35, pp. 24824–24837.
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44. Risk assessment at AGI companies: A review of popular risk assessment techniques from other safety-critical industries  [PDF]
    Koessler, L. and Schuett, J., 2023. arXiv [cs.CY].
45. The Alignment Problem from a Deep Learning Perspective  [PDF]
    Ngo, R., Chan, L. and Mindermann, S., 2022. arXiv [cs.AI].
46. International Institutions for Advanced AI
    Ho, L., Barnhart, J., Trager, R., Bengio, Y., Brundage, M., Carnegie, A. and others,, 2023. arXiv [cs.CY]. DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2307.04699
47. International Governance of Civilian AI: A Jurisdictional Certification Approach  [PDF]
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48. Frontier AI Regulation: Managing Emerging Risks to Public Safety  [PDF]
    Anderljung, M., Barnhart, J., Korinek, A., Leung, J., O’Keefe, C., Whittlestone, J. and others,, 2023. arXiv [cs.CY].
49. Predictability and Surprise in Large Generative Models
    Ganguli, D., Hernandez, D., Lovitt, L., Askell, A., Bai, Y., Chen, A. and others,, 2022. Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, pp. 1747–1764. Association for Computing Machinery.
50. It’s Time to Create a National Registry for Large AI Models  [link]
    Hadfield, G., Cuéllar, M. and O’Reilly, T., 2023. Carnegie Endowment for International Piece.
51. Model Cards for Model Reporting
    Mitchell, M., Wu, S., Zaldivar, A., Barnes, P., Vasserman, L., Hutchinson, B. and others,, 2019. FAT* ’19: Proceedings of the Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, pp. 220–229.
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    Database, A.I.I., 2023.
54. The Promise and Perils of Tech Whistleblowing  [link]
    Bloch-Wehba, H., 2023. Northwestern University Law Review, Forthcoming.
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    Mökander, J., Schuett, J., Kirk, H. and Floridi, L., 2023. AI and Ethics. DOI: 10.1007/s43681-023-00289-2
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July 2023 – Brisbane, Australia – Emma Perkins was 12 weeks pregnant when she was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer in July 2022, which was likely terminal. She had 11 rounds of chemo while pregnant and her son was born Feb. 2023 healthy.

There are many stories being published about women getting late Stage breast cancer during pregnancy but why? Here are 20 cases.

Oct. 19, 2023 – Savannah, GA – 35 year old Lateia Parker was diagnosed with Triple negative breast cancer (worst prognosis) while pregnant with her daughter Jynesis).

Oct. 2, 2023 – Naperville, IL – Alex Thompson was diagnosed with Breast cancer during pregnancy, which became Stage 4 and metastasized.

Sep. 30, 2023 – Raleigh, NC – Suzanne Macauley Vargas was diagnosed with Stage 3B inflammatory breast cancer while pregnant.

Sep. 24, 2023 – Little Falls, MN – 32 year old Dani Thomsen was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer in 2019 and after treatment was declared cancer free. However in 2022, during pregnancy with her 2nd child, she was found to have a mass embedded in her chest wall “The Mayo doctors hadn’t seen this happen before and weren’t sure how to proceed at first”. It was a breast cancer recurrence.

Sep. 19, 2023 – Denton, TX – Amanda Anderson-Barberis was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer while pregnant with her 3rd child, and died when he was 9 months old.

Sep. 14, 2023 – Vienna – 41 year old Gudrun Pospisil was diagnosed with breast cancer while pregnant with her second child in Sep. 2022 and died one year later.

Aug. 13, 2023 – Fenton, MO – Nicole Waggoner is a nurse. While 23 weeks pregnant with baby #3, she was diagnosed with breast cancer (unknown stage).

July 25, 2023 – Minneapolis, MN – Lindsey Mercil noticed a lump while pregnant, she had a miscarriage and was diagnosed with Stage 3 Triple Negative Breast cancer (worst prognosis). She has just finished 16 rounds of chemo.

July 24, 2023 – Harrisonville, MO – Haley Cramer found a lump on her breast at 19 weeks pregnancy which was confirmed to be a triple negative breast cancer (worst prognosis).

July 14, 2023 – Kerrville, TX – Mica Mccormick was diagnosed with Stage 4 Triple Negative Breast Cancer (worst prognosis) while pregnant.

June 26, 2023 – Sunderland, UK – 39 year old Kelly Ross was diagnosed with grade 3 breast cancer in Oct. 2022 while 28 weeks pregnant with her son Rudy. She completed chemo in May 2023.

June 25, 2023 – Rutledge, GA – Karen Vincent had health problems during pregnancy, her baby was delivered at 26 weeks by C-section and she was found to have Stage 4 breast cancer with metastases to bones, liver and brain.

May 26, 2023 – Gainesville, FL – 28 year old Sami Pickens was diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer in 2019. She was cancer free for 2 years, however, when she was pregnant in 2022, she was found to have breast cancer recurrence metastatic to lungs liver and bones. She died on May 26, 2023.

May 23, 2023 – Lawton, OK – Rocki Novotny was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer the size of a lime and metastatic lymph nodes throughout her body in May 2022. She suspects she had developed cancer while pregnant with her baby whom she delivered in Nov. 2021.

May 4, 2023 – Jena, LA – 26 year old Samantha Wilks was diagnosed with Stage 3 Triple Negative Breast Cancer (worst prognosis) while pregnant with her first child.

Apr. 6, 2023 – Vassar, MI – Tammy Baldwin was diagnosed with breast cancer while pregnant with her 5th child. It is an aggressive cancer.

Apr. 4, 2023 – Cowiche, WA – 31 year old Danielle Baughman was diagnosed with breast cancer while 29 weeks pregnant on Dec. 27, 2021. She was cancer free as of June 2022 but she had a seizure and was found to have a brain metastasis (Stage 4) in March 2023.

Mar. 14, 2023 – Elk Grove, CA – Destini Beltrama was diagnosed with Stage 4 Breast cancer metastatic to bones, pelvis, thorax and her brain, while pregnant.

Mar. 5, 2023 – Clermont, FL – Kimberly Luitweiler felt a lump on her breast while pregnant and close to delivery and was diagnosed with an aggressive breast cancer shortly after delivery.

Feb. 22, 2023 – Duncan, BC – Rebecca Beaulieu was diagnosed with breast cancer in Jan.2023 while she was pregnant and had to have a mastectomy.

Feb. 17, 2023 – Lakeland, MN – Amber Strand was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer while pregnant. She is currently on chemo.

My Take…

Cancer during pregnancy is rare and before COVID-19 mRNA vaccines approximately 1:1000 pregnancies were complicated by maternal cancer.

Of these, breast cancer is most common, corresponding to between 1:3000 to 1:10000 pregnancies, according to a 2022 Dutch study by Boere et al.

COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines are causing Turbo Cancers in young people and breast cancer is in the top 3 most common cancers caused by Pfizer or Moderna mRNA.

Since 2021, there are far more Stage 3 and Stage 4 Breast cancers being diagnosed in pregnant women. They are present in GoFund me in 2020 and prior but in much smaller numbers.

The key question I ask is:

1. Are these Stage 3 and 4 Breast cancers in pregnancy just a reflection of skyrocketing Turbo Cancers in COVID-19 mRNA vaccinated reproductive age women, or
2. Does pregnancy itself increase the risk of Turbo Cancer manifesting in a COVID-19 mRNA Vaccinated woman? (In other words, would the same woman still have gotten Stage 3 or 4 breast cancer, at the same point in time, if she hadn’t gotten pregnant?)

I don’t know the answer.

Furthermore, Triple Negative breast cancer (the worst prognosis), seems to be the most common subtype of Turbo Breast Cancer (whether in pregnancy or not).

Oncologists should be studying these questions, unfortunately selling mRNA vaccines for Pfizer & Moderna shareholders pays much better, and keeps their licenses, academic promotions, and grant funding safe and sound.

FINAL THOUGHT: This is not just happening with breast cancer, and I will address other Stage 4 Turbo cancers in pregnancy in future substack articles.

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

Featured image is from NaturalNews.com

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***

This piece was originally commissioned by an editor at The Guardian, who asked me to write about the wave of retaliation and censorship of political expression in solidarity with Palestinians that we’ve seen in the past two weeks.

Amid my work as an attorney on some of the resulting cases, I carved out some time to write the following. Minutes before it was supposed to be published, the head of the opinion desk wrote me an email that they were unable to run the piece. When I called her for an explanation she had none, and blamed an unnamed higher-up. That a piece on censorship would get killed in this way—without explanation, but plainly in the interest of political suppression—is, beyond the irony of the matter, a grave indictment of the media response to this critical moment in history.

—Dylan Saba

***

On October 8, the morning after Hamas launched an attack from the Gaza strip that killed 1,400 Israelis, Ha’aretz—Israel’s paper of record—published an editorial laying blame for the massacre squarely on Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government. “The disaster that befell Israel,” the editorial board wrote, “is the clear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu.” Netanyahu “completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession” and “embracing a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians.” It was a damning and powerful indictment.

Two days later, Ryna Workman, the student body president of NYU Law School, sent out a newsletter to classmates as Israel’s retaliatory assault on the Gaza Strip was well underway. Expanding on the Ha’aretz editorial board’s language, Workman wrote that “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.” Workman also affirmed their solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle against oppression.

Almost immediately, they faced a torrent of backlash in the form of online disparagement and right-wing media attention. In response to pressure, the dean of the law school publicly condemned Workman’s remarks. By the evening, the law firm Winston & Strawn, where Workman had planned to work after graduating, publicly withdrew their job offer without so much as a phone call. The university then unilaterally removed Workman from their position as student body president without any disciplinary process, and threatened further charges—all for daring to speak out.

Workman is not alone. Across the US, people speaking out on behalf of Palestinian human rights and against Israeli war crimes, apartheid policies, and settler-colonial expansion that have been unfolding over nearly eight decades are facing a wave of McCarthyite backlash directly targeting their future careers and livelihoods. Students at other prominent universities have faced the same: the leaders of Harvard University student groups were doxxed and smeared for signing a statement also expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people. Their names and faces were plastered on a mobile billboard truck that roamed around campus for days, and a “College Terror List” circulated online accusing them of antisemitism. Several also lost job offers. A Berkeley law professor published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal imploring legal employers not to hire his own students and smearing them as antisemitic.

This new McCarthyist purge is not limited to students. Jackson Frank, a sports journalist in Philadelphia, was fired by Phillyvoice.com on October 10 after expressing solidarity with Palestinians. A campaign to remove a Palestinian Columbia professor is underway, with a petition circulating that has tens of thousands of signatures. These are just some of the highest-profile, most public cases.

That there is a growing chorus of support for Palestinian rights is galvanizing, and should come as no surprise. Over the past decade, the Palestine solidarity movement has made major headway in exposing Israel’s apartheid policies and dispossession of Palestine and building grassroots support for change. At the same time, this growing movement has been met with new forms of suppression from Israeli advocacy groups, who have increasingly turned to blacklists, doxxing, and harassment to stifle dissent.

At Palestine Legal—the nonprofit organization where I work, which provides legal support to the Palestine solidarity movement—we’ve received hundreds of requests for assistance over the past two weeks, an exponential surge in our caseload. Many of those who have come to us are individuals facing negative consequences in their workplace for social media posts. Professors are being questioned, having their classes canceled, and getting locked out of email over statements supporting Palestinian rights, including in private communications.

In the vast majority of instances, the individuals targeted are Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, or Black, and many have faced racist and dehumanizing harassment as a result of the smears. Since 2014, we’ve handled thousands of such incidents—suppression of speech supporting Palestinian rights is nothing new—but it’s never been this bad.

At a time when the United States is backing Israel’s wanton destruction of the besieged Gaza Strip, in what some scholars have called a “textbook case of genocide,” principled dissent is of paramount importance. 

As 540+ members of the legal community have urged in a statement, it is incumbent upon our elected officials, institutional decision-makers and all who care about preserving democracy to protect dissent on a matter of such domestic and international significance, and to prevent the racist targeting of communities based on their ethnic, racial, and religious identities and political views.

While the backlash we have seen is different in nature and degree to anything we have witnessed in recent years, activists—particularly of the youngest generations—also seem more resilient than ever and more willing to speak against injustice in Palestine despite the personal risks. Some, such as Ryna Workman, have used the spotlight thrust on them to continue to support Palestinian rights and oppose genocide.

But this level of bravery is not a fair thing to ask of already vulnerable people who are calling for justice and human rights. A failure to stop this new McCarthyism would be to surrender to the forces of reaction that tragically are carrying the day.

Dylan Saba is a Staff Attorney at Palestine Legal, where he advises Palestine human rights advocates on a number of issues, such as free speech violations, employment discrimination, bullying, and disciplinary actions. 

Prior to joining Palestine Legal, Dylan worked as a Staff Attorney for New York Legal Assistance Group’s Tenants’ Rights Unit. There, he represented low income New Yorkers in eviction proceedings and advised tenants on housing matters across New York City. 

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***

Three years ago I was among the first – and certainly the first Bishop – to denounce pandemic and vaccination fraud. Expressed with arguments that today emerge as true and well-founded are the critical issues and immorality of an experimental gene treatment, which aborted fetuses were and are used to produce. I also wrote two open letters to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which remain unanswered.

There were those in conservative circles who went so far as to attack me personally and resorted to the unproven and clearly false statements of a doctor who worked with her husband for Big Pharma.

I expressed my dismay at the silence of the bishops, priests, and parish pastors, of many religious workers involved in hospitals, and at the servile zeal with which the Catholic Hierarchy conformed to the crazy and criminal health regulations and Bergoglio’s promotion of the serum. I was publicly insulted on television and in the media, while my brother bishops were silent. Faced with a crime against humanity that has continued to take place before our eyes for three years with the approval and encouragement of Bergoglio, I would have thought that many Pastors would have found the courage to raise their voices and join in my denunciation of the plan of world depopulation implemented by the Word Economic Forum, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the WHO, and the UN, while the funds of these criminals were also given to the Vatican, transforming Bergoglio into a vaccine salesman and a supporter of climate fraud, which has now become “magisterium” with Laudate Deum and with the “Amazonian and synodal church.”

Nemo propheta in sua patria. But if today some priests surrender to the evidence and ask Catholic journalists to tell the truth about the adverse effects, I wonder with what serenity they have so far silenced their conscience, and if their silence and fearful silence – like that of the doctors, police forces, magistrates, teachers and governors – has not turned into a timid protest today just because they see the showdown approaching and fear for their own reputation more than for the health of the billions of people subjected to the inoculation of a product that was known from the beginning to be dangerous and even lethal.

Their silence on the pandemic fraud is identical to that on the apostasy of the Catholic Hierarchy. And the moral responsibility that weighs on them will remain as an indelible stain for which they will have to answer to God, to men, and to History.

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***

My phone is not being returned to me by police as, astonishingly, I am now formally under investigation for terrorism. Whether this relates to support for Palestine or for Wikileaks has currently not been made clear.

What follows is, unspun and unvarnished, my account of my interview under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act as given to my lawyers:

I arrived from Keflavik airport, Iceland to Glasgow airport at about 10am on Monday 16 October. After passport control I was stopped by three police officers, two male and one female, who asked me to accompany them to a detention room.

They seated me in the room and told me:

I was detained under Section 7 of the Terrorism Act

I was not arrested but detained, and therefore had no right to a lawyer.

I had no right to remain silent. I had to give full and accurate information in response to questions. It was a criminal offence to withhold any relevant information.

I had to give up any passwords to my devices. It was a criminal offence not to do this.

They searched my baggage and my coat, going through my documents and taking my phone and laptop. They did not look at one document from Julian Assange’s lawyers that I told them was privileged.

They asked me about boarding cards for Brussels and Dublin they found and what I had been doing there. I replied I was at a debate at Trinity College in Dublin, while in Brussels I had attended a human rights meeting focused on the case of Julian Assange.

They asked me to identify the individuals from some visiting cards I had from the Brussels meeting (one was a German MP).

They asked me the purpose of my visit to Iceland. I told them that I was attending a coordinating meeting of the campaign to free Julian Assange. I said I had also attended a pro-Palestinian rally outside the Icelandic parliament, but that had not been a prior intention.

They asked how I earnt my living. I said from two sources: voluntary subscriptions to my blog, and my civil service pension.

They asked what organisations I am a member of. I said the Alba party. I said I worked with Wikileaks and the Don’t Extradite Assange campaign, but was not formally a “member” of either. I was a life member of the FDA union. No other organisations.

They asked if I received any money from Wikileaks, from Don’t Extradite Assange or from the Assange family (separate questions). I replied no, except occasional travel expenses from Don’t Extradite Assange. In December I had done a tour of Germany and received a fee from the Wau Holland Foundation, a German free speech charity.

They asked what other campaigns I had been involved in. I said many, from the Anti-Nazi League and Anti-Apartheid movement on. I had campaigned for Guantanamo inmates alongside Caged Prisoners.

They asked why I had attended the pro-Palestine demo in Iceland. I said one of the speakers had invited me, Ögmundur Jónasson. He was a former Icelandic Interior Minister. I said I did not know what the speeches said as they were all in Icelandic.

They asked whether I intended to attend any pro-Palestinian rallies in the UK. I said I had no plans but probably would.

They asked how I judged whether to speak alongside others on the same platform. I replied I depended on organisers I trusted, like the Palestine Solidarity Committee or Stop the War. It was impossible to know who everyone was at a big rally.

They asked if anyone else posted to my twitter or blog. I replied no, it was all me.

They asked how considered my tweets were. I replied that those which were links to my blog posts were my considered writing. Others were more ephemeral, and like everyone else I sometimes made mistakes and sometimes apologised. They asked if I deleted tweets and I said very seldom.

I volunteered that I thought I understood the tweet that worried them and agreed it could have been more nuanced. This was the limitation of twitter. It was intended to refer only to the current situation within Gaza and the Palestinian people’s right of self-defence from genocide.

That was more or less it. The interview was kept to exactly an hour and at one point one said to another “18 minutes left”. They did not tell me why. At one point they did mention protected journalistic material on my laptop but I was too dazed to take advantage of this and specify anything.

They took my bank account details and copies of all my bank cards.

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This is an enormous abuse of human rights. The abuse of process in refusing both a lawyer and the right to remain silent, the inquiry into perfectly legal campaigning which is in no way terrorism-associated, the political questioning, the financial snooping and the seizure of material related to my private life, were all based on an utterly fake claim that I am associated with terrorism.

I have to date not been arrested and not charged. Contempt of court is therefore not in play and you are free to comment on the case (although in the current atmosphere any kind of free thought is liable to vicious state action). I am safe and currently in Dublin. I intend next to travel to Switzerland to take this up with the United Nations.

My legal team have already made a submission against this outrage to the United Nations Human Rights Committee and are looking at the possibility of judicial review in the UK. We also have to prepare the defence against possible terrorism charges, ludicrous as that sounds.

I am afraid this all costs money. I am grateful for the unfailing generosity of people in what seems a continual history of persecution.

Click here to donate or subscribe to his blog.

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***

Tucker Carlson sat down with Col. Douglas Macgregor (ret.), who laid out a disturbing scenario in which the United States could quickly be pulled into a direct conflict with Iran, Russia and China over Israel’s anticipated response to the October 7 Hamas attack.

Carlson starts off highlighting Lindsey Graham, who vowed;

“…if Hezbollah, which is a proxy of Iran, launches a massive attack on Israel, I consider that a threat to the… state of Israel, existential in nature. I will introduce a resolution [in] the United States Senate to allow military action by the United States in conjunction with Israel to knock Iran out of the Oil Business…”

This is truly an occupational disease….US Senator Lindsey Graham: Here is my message: If Hezbollah, the proxy force of Iran, launches a massive attack on Israel, I will consider it an existential threat to the State of Israel. I will introduce a resolution in the United States… pic.twitter.com/FNuAbcNeUZ

— Peacemaker (@peacemaket71) October 16, 2023

Carlson then asks:

“So what would war with Iran mean? Well, it’s hard to know because virtually no one who’s talking about it in public is operating from a deep interest in America’s interest. Is this good for us, or is it not?“

According to Macgregor,

“The chosen destination” if we continue on this path, “is Armageddon,” and the implications (of which nobody seems to be considering) for the United States, Europe, and the Middle East are grave. For example, “just on the economic side, about 20% of the world’s oil passes through the Straits of Hormuz every month – probably 25% of liquefied natural gas, and you’re talking about shutting down 2 to three million barrels a day of oil from Iran. 

“You know this entire region is involved in the war. This is not an Iranian Monopoly by any stretch of the imagination,” he continued.

The two also discussed how one of the primary challenges of in contemplating war with Iran is the unpredictable nature of such conflicts. Economic sanctions, which have been the go-to strategy for years, have failed to cripple Iran’s military capabilities. When military force comes into play, a whole new set of unknowns emerges.

The U.S. military, as it stands, may not be adequately prepared for such a conflict – particularly if the enemy has new weapons systems and capabilities.

“We’ve had the luxury of sitting around forward operating bases and striking opponents that were armed with AK-47s, and command detonated mines and the occasional mortar or rocket. Very, very low-intensity combat,” he said, referring to the types of engagements the US military has grown accustomed to.

Nuclear Wildcard?

According to Macgregor,

“This is a high-end, conventional war that we’re looking at, with the potential to go nuclear – which, obviously, I don’t think we or the Russians want to happen, but we have the wild-card in Israel. They do have a nuclear capability.”

“We don’t know what the trip wire is for them to employ such a weapon. At that point of course, all bets are off and I think most of the world would turn against Israel. Right now, they just have to worry about the Muslim world against them,” he continued, explaining that by focusing on Hamas and Hezbollah as immediate threats, the broader implications are obscured. For example, attacking urban environments such as Gaza comes with a high risk of civilian casualties – the consequences of which would catastrophic, both morally and strategically.

“Hezbollah has a very large operation in Mexico,” says Macgregor. “There are no doubt many, many Hezbollah agents inside the United States. We can only begin to imagine the kind of trouble they could cause.”

In the midst of all this, the question arises: How will a war with Iran affect American domestic politics? History shows that war is often used to stifle dissent, but in today’s connected world, censorship can only go so far. Public opinion, initially in favor of violence against Hamas, may wane as the conflict escalates and images of destruction flood the media.

“But what’s most important, I think, for Americans to understand is, if we attack Iran on the basis of Hezbollah’s alleged willingness to attack Israel, if Israel gets into a real shooting war with Hezbollah, they have the largest armed forces in the region.”

Watch:

Ep. 33  Looks like we’re actually going to war with Iran. Are we ready for this? pic.twitter.com/Ap09hWnvnj

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) October 23, 2023

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***

Israel, with the backing of its U.S. and European allies, is preparing to launch not only a scorched earth campaign in Gaza but the worst ethnic cleansing since the wars in the former Yugoslavia.

The goal is to drive tens, most probably hundreds of thousands of Palestinians over the southern border at Rafah into refugee camps in Egypt.

The reverberations will be catastrophic, not only for the Palestinians, but throughout the region, almost certainly triggering armed clashes to the north of Israel with Hezbollah in Lebanon and perhaps with Syria and Iran. 

The Biden administration, slavishly doing Israel’s bidding, is fueling the madness. The U.S. was the only country to veto the U.N. Security Council resolution calling for humanitarian pauses to deliver food, medicine, water and fuel to Gaza. It has blocked proposals for a ceasefire. It has proposed a draft U.N. Security Council resolution that says Israel has a right to defend itself. The resolution also demands Iran stop exporting arms to “militias and terrorist groups threatening peace and security across the region.” 

The U.S. and its Western allies are as morally bankrupt and as complicit in genocide as those who witnessed the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews and did nothing.

The conflict, which has taken the lives of 1,400 Israelis and at least 4,600 Palestinians in Gaza, is widening. Israel carried out a second airstrike on two airports in Syria. It daily trades rocket barrages with Hezbollah militias. U.S. military bases in Iraq and Syria have been attacked by Shia militias. The USS Carney, a guided missile destroyer, shot down three cruise missiles on Thursday, apparently launched by the Houthis in Yemen and heading towards Israel. 

Israel is also struggling to quell daily violent clashes in the occupied West Bank. It carried out an airstrike on Sunday on a mosque in the Jenin refugee camp – the first air strike in the West Bank for two decades – that killed at least 2 people. Armed Jewish settlers have been rampaging through Palestinian towns in the West Bank. At least 90 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by armed settlers or the Israeli military since the Oct. 7 incursion into Israel by Hamas and other resistance fighters, according to the U.N.’s humanitarian office. Some 4,000 workers from Gaza and 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank have been arrested in the past two weeks, doubling the number of Palestinian prisoners to 10,000 held by Israel, over half of whom are political prisoners.

“Many of the prisoners have had their limbs, hands and legs broken … degrading and insulting expressions, insults, cursing, tying them with handcuffs to the back and tightening them at the end to the point of causing severe pain … naked, humiliating and group search of the prisoners,” the Palestinian Authority’s Commission for Detainees’ Affairs, Qadura Fares, said at a press conference.

B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, told the BBC that since the Oct. 7 attack, it had documented “a concerted and organized effort by settlers to use the fact that the entire international and local attention is focused on Gaza and the north of Israel to try to seize land in the West Bank.”

Inside Israel, Palestinians with Israeli citizenship and Jerusalem IDs are being harassed, detained, arrested and expelled from jobs and universities in what is described as a “witch hunt.” More than 152,000 Israelis have been evacuated from towns and villages near the borders of Gaza and Lebanon.

The U.S., in an effort to thwart a military response by Iran that could trigger a regional war, is deploying an additional 2,000 troops to the Middle East. It will redeploy one of its strike groups to the Persian Gulf and send additional air defense systems to the region. The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and its strike group — which last weekend was being deployed to the eastern Mediterranean Sea to join the USS Gerald R. Ford — has been redirected to the Persian Gulf. A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile battery, and Patriot missile defense system battalions, have also been sent to the Persian Gulf.

Israel has unleashed its Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – Death, Famine, War and Conquest. 

It has given Gazans two choices. Leave Gaza or die.

Palestinians will be killed not only from the bombs and shells, and eventually, with the ground invasion, bullets and tank shells, but from hunger and epidemics such as cholera. Without water, fuel and medicine and with the breakdown of sanitation, diseases will spread swiftly. The U.N. states that hospitals in Gaza “are on the brink of collapse.” Thousands of patients will die once fuel runs out for hospital generators.

A doctor from al-Shifa hospital in Gaza reported in an interview Saturday, “We are collapsing.” He spoke of a lack of oxygen, light and medical supplies, no water in some departments, concerns about cholera and the loss of doctors killed by Israeli airstrikes, including a dentist killed in Israel’s bombing of an Orthodox church that left at least 18 dead, including several children.   

GAZA SURGEON: DAILY MASSACRES "ABOVE IMAGINATION"

Uncaptured Media's @dancohen3000 Interviews Dr. Mohamed Ziara

Hospitals cope as medical staff killed by Israeli bombing pic.twitter.com/QrNSyarFdU

— Uncaptured News (@UncapturedNews) October 22, 2023

The handful of trucks, 37 so far, of aid into Gaza is a cynical public relations gimmick demanded by the Biden administration. It will do little to alleviate the Israeli-engineered humanitarian crisis. The U.N. says it needs at least 100 aid tracks a day. Gaza’s last functioning seawater desalination plant shut down on Sunday because of a lack of fuel. 

Israel has no intention of lifting the total siege on Gaza. It announced it will increase its airstrikes. It will continue, as it has for the past two weeks, to extinguish the lives of Palestinians and terrorize and starve them into leaving Gaza. 

The ground assault on Gaza will not be quick. It will involve weeks, perhaps months, of street fighting. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin compared the looming battle in Gaza to the U.S. assault on the Iraqi city of Mosul, held by ISIS, in 2014. It took the U.S. nine months to recapture Mosul.

When Israel says this will be a “long war” they are, for once, telling the truth.

Israel has requested more military aid from Washington, $14.3 billion including $10.6 billion for air and missile defense. It will get it. Israel is rapidly depleting its stocks as it pounds Gaza, including in the south of Gaza where hundreds of thousands of displaced families from the north have fled. 

Israel will not permit the distribution of the $100 million in U.S. aid pledged for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, at least not until their scorched earth campaign is finished. But by then, Gaza will be unrecognizable. Israel will have annexed part or all of it. Maybe the money can go to building more illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. And pledging aid is not the same as appropriating it. So perhaps that, too, is part of the illusion.

Egyptian officials are acutely aware of what comes next. Up to half, maybe more, of the 2.3 million Palestinians will be pushed by Israel into Egypt on Gaza’s southern border and never be allowed to return.

“What is happening now in Gaza is an attempt to force civilian residents to take refuge and migrate to Egypt, which should not be accepted,” Egyptian president Abdulfattah al-Sisi warned.

Reports out of Egypt contend that Washington has promised to forgive much of Egypt’s massive $162.9 billion debt, as well as offer other economic incentives in exchange for Egypt’s acquiescence to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The refugees, once they cross the border into Egypt, will be left to rot in the Sinai. 

“There is a grave danger that what we are witnessing may be a repeat of the 1948 Nakba, and the 1967 Naksa, yet on a larger scale. The international community must do everything to stop this from happening again,” said Francesca Albanese, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967.

Israel has long used war to justify the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Government officials have openly called for another Nakba, or “catastrophe,” the term for the events of 1947-1949 when over 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from historic Palestine and driven into refugee camps to create the state of Israel. During the 1967 war, which led to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel ethnically cleansed another 300,000 Palestinians during the Naksa, or “day of the setback,” which is commemorated every year by Palestinians.

Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, however, is not limited to wars. There has been an ongoing slow motion ethnic cleansing as Israel has steadily built more Jewish-only colonies and incrementally seized Palestinian land. Palestinians, denied basic civil liberties in Israel’s apartheid state, have been robbed of assets, including, often, their homes. They have faced mounting restrictions on their physical movements. They have been blocked from trading and business, especially the selling of produce. They have found themselves increasingly impoverished and trapped behind walls and security fences erected around Gaza and the West Bank. At the same time, they have endured periodic Israeli airstrikes, targeted assassinations and near daily attacks by armed Jewish settlers and the Israeli army.

Israel prevented Palestinians who left the West Bank and Gaza Strip from returning at the rate of about 9,000 Palestinians per year following the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, until the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1994, according to the Israel human rights group HaMoked. Israel has also revoked the residency permits for some 14,000 Palestinians who lived in East Jerusalem since 1967 according to B’Tselem. 

Israel demolished 9,880 structures, including over 2,600 inhabited residential buildings, displacing over 14,000 people and affecting 233,681 in the West Bank alone between Jan. 1, 2009 and 7 Oct. 7, 2023, according to data from the  U.N Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Since the Oct. 7 attack, a further 38 homes and other structures were demolished in the West Bank affecting an additional 13,613 people and displacing at least 73.

Less than 2.2 percent of Palestinian requests for construction permits made between 2009 and 2020 were approved, according to data from Peace Now and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

The number of Israeli colonists in the occupied territories, however, has gone from zero before the June 1967 war, to between 600,000 to 750,000 spread out across at least 250 settlements and outposts throughout the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, all of them in violation of international law.

Israel makes no secret about its intentions. 

Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, told troops preparing to enter Gaza, “I have released all the restraints.” 

Knesset member Ariel Kallner, part of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, called on X, formerly known as Twitter, for “a Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48.”

The Israeli army mobilized Ezra Yachin, a 95-year-old army veteran, to “motivate” the troops. Yachin was a member of the Lehi Zionist militia that carried out numerous massacres of Palestinian civilians, including the Deir Yassin massacre on April 9, 1948, where over 100 Palestinian civilians, many women and children, were slaughtered. 

“Be triumphant and finish them off and don’t leave anyone behind. Erase the memory of them,” Yachin said addressing Israeli troops.

“Erase them, their families, mothers and children,” he went on. “These animals can no longer live.” 

“Every Jew with a weapon should go out and kill them,” he said. “If you have an Arab neighbor, don’t wait, go to his home and shoot him.” 

Where are our humanitarian interventionists?

The ones who wept crocodile tears about the human rights of Ukranians, Iraqis, Syrians, Libyans and Afghans, to justify massive arms shipments and war?

Where is the old anti-war wing of the Democratic Party and the liberal class?

What has happened to the public intellectuals who used to decry the slaughter of innocents and the U.S. war machine? Where are the jurists who uphold the rule of international law? Why are the few lonely voices speaking out about Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians attacked, censored and doxxed?

“The previous president wanted to ban us and probably put us in concentration camps,” said Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who is of Palestinian descent, at a rally in support of a ceasefire on Oct. 20 in Washington in front of the U.S. Capitol. “This one wants us just to die. That’s how it feels. Shame on them.”

Israel will not halt its genocidal campaign in Gaza against the Palestinians until there is a U.S. arms embargo on Israel. Our weapons systems, munitions and attack aircraft sustain the slaughter. We must terminate the $3.8 billion in military aid that the U.S. gives to Israel each year. We must support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and demand suspension of all free trade and other agreements between the U.S. and Israel. Only when these props are knocked out from under Israel will the Israeli leadership be forced, as was the apartheid regime in South Africa, to integrate Palestinians into one state with equal rights. As long as these props remain, the Palestinians are doomed. 

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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: Made in Israel – by Mr. Fish