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Staff members of EU institutions have written to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen expressing fury over her stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict, in a letter that accumulated 842 signatures.

The letter, which has been seen by The Irish Times, accuses the commission of giving “a free hand to the acceleration and the legitimacy of a war crime in the Gaza Strip”.

It begins by condemning the Hamas attack on Israel before continuing:

“We equally strongly condemn the disproportionate reaction by the Israeli government against 2.3 million Palestinian civilians trapped in the Gaza Strip”.

“We hardly recognise the values of the EU in the seeming indifference demonstrated over the past few days by our Institution toward the ongoing massacre of civilians in the Gaza Strip,” it continues.

The letter warns that the EU is “losing all credibility and the position as a fair, equitable and humanist broker” and damaging its international relations as well as risking the safety of EU staff.

“We are saddened by the patent show of double-standards which considers the blockade (water and fuel) operated by Russia on the Ukrainian people as an act of terror whilst the identical act by Israel against the Gazan people is completely ignored,” the letter reads.

Click here to read the full article on The Irish Times.

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Naomi O’Leary is Europe Correspondent of The Irish Times.

Featured image: Israeli President Isaac Herzog (C) meets with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (R) and European Parliament President Roberta Metsola (L) in Tel Aviv, Israel on October 13, 2023. [IDF Spokesperson Unit – Anadolu Agency]

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Within the past two weeks, after war broke out between Israel and Palestinian armed groups based in Gaza, Israel’s military has been accused of a number of war crimes as it continues its relentless bombardment of Gaza’s 2.3 million-strong population.

Israel has denied it has committed war crimes, and the US, which provides substantial diplomatic, political and military support to Israel, has stressed that Israel must follow the rules of war.

So far in the conflict, Israel has killed over 4,000 Palestinians including more than 1,500 children, while at least 1,400 Israelis were killed following the attacks by Palestinian armed groups. 

Middle East Eye has previously provided an overview of the list of war crimes Israel has already been accused of in this war.

However, one accusation that has the potential to be forgotten about with the rapidly moving nature of the conflict, and after the devastating bombing of a hospital in Gaza City, is the allegation that Israel has used white phosphorus on the civilian population of Gaza.

Using white phosphorus in such conditions is a violation of international law, and two leading rights groups Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International have released reports on the matter.

MEE takes a closer look at these reports, and whether there are any possible US links to Israel’s alleged use of this incendiary substance in Gaza.

The Reports 

On 12 October, HRW released a report outlining that it has verified footage showing Israel used white phosphorus rounds in both the Gaza City port as well as rural parts of southern Lebanon.

In videos reviewed by the rights group, HRW identified the round of munitions used on the port in Gaza as 155mm phosphorus artillery shells. Israel has denied the report.

The next day, Amnesty International released its own report, in which it said it had “compelling evidence documenting the use of white phosphorus artillery shells by the Israeli army in densely populated civilian areas in Gaza”. The report added that many of these uses could be considered unlawful indiscriminate acts.

It also documented that the Israeli military had deployed white phosphorus artillery shells to the Israeli town of Sderot, located close to the border with Gaza. In a photo analysed by Amnesty, it found that the shells contained the label D528, the US military’s identification code for white phosphorus-based rounds.

Does this mean that the US supplied white phosphorus rounds to Israel’s military, which were then used in a densely populated area, a violation of international law?

Experts have told MEE that the evidence to link all of it together is not yet there.

“The fact that there’s a US Dodic – Department of Defense Identification Code – was evidence of what’s inside, not that the United States manufactured that particular round,” Brian Castner, a weapons expert and investigator with Amnesty International, told MEE.

The US military, Nato and Israel’s military are all very intertwined, so Israeli arms manufacturers sometimes use American nomenclatures and codes because it’s easier than creating their own codes.

In order to truly find out if the rounds in question were made by the US, it would require seeing the National Stock Number (NSN), part of which includes a two-digit code denoting the country of origin. The US codes are 00 and 01.

Castner said that these NSN codes are used for everything in the military, from hubcaps to two-tonne trucks.

“I would need the national stock number which may or may not be actually stamped, pounded into the metal of the round itself. That code would tell us something.”

However, it’s not a mystery that Israel has white phosphorus rounds made by the US.

“The US provides so many arms and in these particular rounds, the M825 and M825A1, the US has almost certainly provided in the past,” Castner said.

What Is White Phosphorus?

White phosphorus is a chemical substance used by militaries in artillery shells, bombs and rockets. The substance is ignited when it comes in contact with oxygen, and can then go on to burn intensely at temperatures north of 800C.

The substance was discovered more than 300 years ago by a German alchemist in Hamburg, and after using it in a number of cases, including for the ignition of matches, it began to be used for military purposes.

As a weapon, white phosphorus is easily ignited, difficult to put out, burns at high temperatures and can spread fire rapidly.

“White phosphorus is particularly horrific when used as a weapon. The human suffering that comes with it is especially upsetting,” John Chappell, advocacy and legal fellow at the Center for Civilians in Conflict (Civic), said.

“And then of course, there’s the fact that the Israeli military is using weapons in a very densely populated area, Gaza, and that medical treatment is so limited, that the medical infrastructure has been so damaged.”

For armed conflicts, militaries use white phosphorus as smokescreens, as the clouds of white smoke they generate provide cover for tank battalions or in general obscure the view of enemy troops. The substance is able to interfere with infrared technology and also weapons tracking systems, such as ground-to-air missiles.

The use of white phosphorus is not banned under international law, but the use of it in heavily populated areas is outlawed. Protocol 3 of the UN’s Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons “prohibits the use of weapons primarily designed to set fire to objects or cause burn injuries against civilians”.

If the substance comes into contact with people, it can cause chemical and thermal burns, even down to the bone, and can also enter the bloodstream to cause organ failure. Even after being treated, wounds could possibly reignite after being exposed to oxygen again.

Moral Culpability Versus Legal Liability

When it comes to international law applying to warfare, the details of an act are incredibly important, especially when it comes to the use of a substance like white phosphorus. 

While international law states that the weapon cannot be used in densely populated areas, Castner added that there needs to be a clear lack of distinction between the targeting of armed groups and civilians.

“Attacks that fail to discriminate between civilians on one hand, and valid military targets on the other – those are indiscriminate attacks. And that’s a violation of the law of war. And if civilians were injured or killed, that could be a war crime,” Castner said.

“It’s why white phosphorus shouldn’t be used. And it’s why it’s so dangerous to use the rounds in a densely populated area, because the potential to harm civilians and not being able to differentiate between civilians and military targets in a densely populated area is super easy.”

In terms of any US complicity in this, legal liability is hard to pin down, because of uncertainty over when the shells were given to Israel, and whether any of those white phosphorus shells the US provided were used by Israel in Gaza.

“So while there’s certainly moral culpability if the US transferred white phosphorus to Israel, liability under international law gets more complicated,” Chappell said.

“And because the US may have transferred white phosphorus shells significantly before the start of the current offensive, and since it’s unclear whether policymakers made a transfer with the knowledge that they would be used in this way, legal liability is less clear.”

The only way to concretely find out if any US-made shells were used is to go into Gaza and locate shell remnants there with US military codes and the NSN code for the US. With the access restraints, this does not seem plausible at the moment.

The International Criminal Court has an active investigation into “the situation in the State of Palestine” for alleged war crimes committed since 2014, and the ICC prosecutor says its mandate extends to the current conflict.

However, it is still clear that whatever Israel is doing in Gaza, it has the backing of the US. President Joe Biden travelled to Israel on Wednesday, where he went to Israel’s war room and was given an overview of Israel’s military plans in Gaza.

“The broader story is that everything that the Israeli military is doing right now is backed by the United States,” Chappell said.

Israel Has Safer Alternatives

Experts noted that while it can be difficult to pin down violations of international law, either by Israel or the US, Israel shouldn’t even be using white phosphorus to begin with.

Roughly a decade ago, Israel said it would stop using the substance.

“After criticism from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups during the 2008-2009 war in Gaza, the Israeli government said they would phase out the use of white phosphorus munitions in 2013, and they clearly did not do so,” Chappell said.

Israel has plenty of other weapons that could be used as smokescreens, which do the same stated purpose of white phosphorus while being less harmful. One of these is hexachloroethane (HC), a compound used in many smoke grenades in militaries around the world.

“Israel has other rounds that are smoke rounds that do the same thing. They’re M150 rounds and they use HC, rather than white phosphorus. They’re less harmful to civilians in the area. They have other things, but they appear to not be using it,” Castner said.

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Featured image: hite phosphorus is a chemical substance that is used by militaries in artillery shells, bombs and rockets (AFP/File photo)

Os recentes ataques massivos de Israel à Faixa de Gaza deixam claro que o estado sionista planeia destruir completamente o local. Porém, as reais intenções parecem ser ainda mais extremas, já que, segundo um jornalista americano, o objetivo é tornar a cidade algo próximo de Hiroshima da segunda guerra mundial, mas sem o uso de armas nucleares.

O renomado repórter Seymour Hersh, citando fontes internas da IDF, compartilhou esta informação em um artigo recente em sua coluna no portal Substack. Segundo ele, as IDF não se preocupam com a vida de centenas de milhares de civis, com real intenção de bombardear Gaza até alcançar um cenário semelhante ao de Hiroshima. Com isso, não haveria necessidade de uma grande invasão terrestre, com o foco dos soldados de infantaria sendo simplesmente aniquilar os soldados do Hamas escondidos nos bunkers quando tentavam sair em busca de comida e água.

“A cidade de Gaza está em processo de ser transformada em Hiroshima sem o uso de armas nucleares (…) As bombas de fabricação americana no arsenal israelense, incluindo aquelas conhecidas como ‘destruidoras de bunkers’, podem ser direcionadas aos sistemas de túneis subterrâneos onde o Hamas fabricou as armas e conduziu o planejamento dos horríveis ataques no sul de Israel em 7 de outubro (…) Segundo os planos israelenses, não haveria necessidade de uma invasão terrestre massiva (…) [No entanto, eles] seriam necessários para caçar clandestinamente os membros do Hamas que recusam se render (…) O oficial me disse que os soldados do Hamas que emergiam dos túneis desesperados por comida eram vistos pelos israelenses como ratos famintos que seriam recebidos com comida envenenada”, ele disse.

Hersh relata que Netanyahu acredita que, seguindo este plano estratégico, será capaz de derrotar as tropas do Hamas de forma mais eficiente, evitando desgastar as IDF numa guerra prolongada de desgaste. Os custos humanitários não são um problema para o governo israelita e não há preocupação de que estas táticas possam levar à morte de centenas de milhares de civis palestinos.

Outro ponto interessante no texto de Hersh é que ele relata um excesso de confiança por parte das IDF. O jornalista cita uma fonte que afirma ter desconsiderado o apoio e conselhos americanos, dizendo que as forças israelitas estão absolutamente confiantes na sua própria capacidade de combate para resolver sozinhas o conflito palestino.

“Bibi tem tudo sob controle e nenhum israelense vai se preocupar com o destino dos cidadãos de Gaza”, disse a fonte militar anônima de Hersh.

Na verdade, além de ser absolutamente anti-humanitário, o plano israelita parece bastante errado do ponto de vista estratégico. Bombardear Gaza até atingir um cenário semelhante ao nuclear será terrível para os civis, mas terá um impacto reduzido na estratégia de guerra do Hamas e não impedirá que a milícia palestiniana desgaste as IDF num conflito assimétrico prolongado. Acreditar que os soldados do Hamas simplesmente “emergirão dos túneis desesperados por comida” e depois serão eliminados pelos israelitas parece bastante ingênuo, uma vez que o Hamas certamente já se prepara antecipadamente para evitar este tipo de situação.

Na prática, as coisas podem acontecer de forma muito diferente do esperado pelas IDF. Israel teria de usar as suas bombas anti-bunker em muitos canais simultaneamente para neutralizar os arsenais subterrâneos de armas do Hamas. E seria necessário conduzir estas operações sob fogo pesado na superfície – não apenas das milícias palestinas, mas possivelmente também dos grupos proxy do Irã afiliados ao chamado “eixo da resistência”.

Além disso, é necessário sublinhar como mais uma vez o excesso de confiança parece ser um problema para Israel. Tel Aviv está confiante na sua capacidade de derrotar o inimigo contando apenas com a sua grande capacidade tecnológica militar, sem levar em conta fatores de guerra assimétrica, como a grande resistência dos grupos guerrilheiros, ações de sabotagem e ataques surpresa. A última vez que as IDF e a inteligência israelita agiram com arrogância e excesso de confiança, o resultado foi precisamente o ataque do Hamas de 7 de Outubro, pelo que um fracasso semelhante poderia ser repetido numa invasão mal planeada de Gaza.

Na verdade, embora as forças de Tel Aviv acreditem que podem alcançar uma “solução final” para Gaza através de bombardeamentos e ataques no terreno, os especialistas militares estão cada vez mais cépticos quanto à possibilidade de uma vitória israelita no caso de uma invasão. Por exemplo, o ex-inspetor da ONU e veterano de guerra Scott Ritter comentou o caso afirmando:

“Se os israelenses entrarem em Gaza, o que farão? Serei muito franco agora: eles morrerão. Morrerão em números que os israelitas nunca viram antes (…) O Hamas está à espera deles (…) O Hamas está a atrair os israelitas para uma armadilha mortal em Gaza. E é isto que acontecerá ao exército israelita quando entrar em Gaza: será destruído.”

Parece que neste plano Israel só alcançará um dos seus objetivos: destruir Gaza, matando civis. Quanto a derrotar rapidamente o Hamas, é muito improvável que isso aconteça. As autoridades israelitas deveriam considerar seriamente a opinião dos especialistas e evitar tomar decisões que apenas gerarão mortes desnecessárias e não trarão vitórias reais.

Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

 

Artigo em inglês : Israel wants “Hiroshima scenario” for Gaza, InfoBrics, 20 de Outubro de 2023.

Imagem : InfoBrics

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

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

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There has always been something impressive, if slightly idiosyncratic, about political ideas emanating from Pacific states.  In recent years, on the world’s largest body of water, the various island states seeing themselves as part of the Blue Pacific have tried to identify a set of principles by which to abide, forming an understanding of the environment that threatens to submerge them.  Some sixteen states and territories in the Pacific became the second grouping to establish a nuclear free zone in 1985 via the Treaty of Rarotonga, first proposed by New Zealand at the South Pacific Forum meeting in Tonga in July 1975.  Since then, climate change has taken centre stage.

Given that this vast aqueous area has again become an area of great power competition, it is time for the leaders, some cheeky, a number reckless, and all open to persuasion, to come to some arrangement to neutralise such competition even as they exploit it.  Sitiveni Rabuka, Fiji’s coup burnished Prime Minister, has put up his hand in this regard.  As he put it in his October 17 address to the Sydney-based Lowy Institute, “For us in the Blue Pacific, history may be calling, it might be our manifest destiny to carry banners for peace and speak out for harmony in our time and forever.”

This is daringly opportunistic, as it should be.  Doing so means that bulky, cloddish powers such as the United States and China may be discouraged from going to war, one that would be incalculably ruinous across the Indo- and Asia-Pacific.  After all, once the missiles start flying between Beijing and Washington, notions of a tranquil Blue Pacific can be filed in the cabinet of oblivion.

In the words of Rabuka, “Rivalry between the two most powerful nations, the US and China, looks to be intensifying.”  The PM could only wonder, for instance, what would happen in instances where Chinese and Filipino ships confronted each other in the South China Sea.  “Will this bring the US into an encounter with China?”

Concerns were also expressed about the deteriorating state of affairs regarding Taiwan.  “Tensions over Taiwan are escalating with the potential for an armed face-off, or worse.”  With this in mind, “Fiji’s position was clear.  We are friendly with China and the US and do not want to be caught in the struggle between the superpowers.”  The leaders in the Pacific, he warned, should not be made to choose sides.

With apostolic virtue, Rabuka suggested something of a different, middling formula: an “Ocean of Peace”.  Such an idea was first aired in his September address to the United Nations General Assembly, where he urged “nations to come together” in tackling a whole set of crises, from great power competition to climate change.

This contemplated “Zone”, involving the major powers and Pacific Island states, would refrain “from actions that may jeopardise regional order and stability” and maintain “respect for each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.  Such an arrangement might also have immediate, tangible benefits, such as the deployment of Fijian peacekeepers to Papua New Guinea to quell tribal conflict, or brokering peace talks between West Papua and Indonesia.  “There would be a continued emphasis on the Pacific way of dialogue, diplomacy and consensus,” he explained.  “Protection and conservation of the environment would be central – a positive element for more harmony and peace.”

Rabuka’s ideas on peace and order are bound to cause a snigger over the canteen meals in foreign affairs departments.  This was a man not averse to leading his own disruptive actions in undermining the very things he now redemptively extols.  The ABC’s eternally looking adolescent, Stephen Dziedzic, was mature enough to note the obvious fact that Rabuka, “once nicknamed ‘Rambo’ – illegally seized power in a 1987 military coup”.  A gentle exoneration follows, as Rambo “has since publicly apologised for his actions, and won a tight election 10 months ago to take Fiji’s top job once again.”

On that score, Fiji’s leader has much to apologise for.  His coup (technically two coups staged over a few months) ensured the overthrow of the elected government of Timoci Bavadra in May 1987.  He then daringly deposed Queen Elizabeth II as Queen of Fiji the following September, despite having been made an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1981 for showing“imagination and innovation” in confronting and restraining the activities of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in Lebanon.  (He had done so commanding the first battalion of the Fiji Infantry Regiment, which was serving with the UN Interim Force in Lebanon.)

With such a resume, Rabuka tried to be penitent to his audience.  He had “repented” and was “reborn.  My past cannot be removed, but I can compensate to some extent for what I did.”  Along the long road of political stuttering, he “became a convinced democrat … and now this democratic politician will do what he can to be an apostle of peace.”

Rabuka, like some of his Pacific nation colleagues, continues to be an irrepressible tease in dealings with Australia, China and the United States.  “We are more comfortable dealing with traditional friends that have similar systems of government, that our democracies are the same brand of democracy, coming out of the Westminster system of parliament, and also based on British law that we inherited.”

Having previously shown a glorious contempt for that system, he is perfectly placed to cash in on his continuing relationship with Canberra and, by extension, Washington, while dancing with the emissaries of Beijing.  And what better way to do that than through a solution that seeks preservation rather than suicidal annihilation?

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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] 

Featured image is licensed under the Public Domain

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“The awakening of the consciousness is the first step towards liberation from the subversive leadership that has reserved the high places in both the national and international institutions because opening one’s eyes and looking at reality is essential.

If you have to understand what is really happening, denounce the globalist coup d’etat and regain the national sovereignty and fundamental freedoms that have been taken away from you.

You have all witnessed in recent years a radical change in society; a change planned by people without any electoral mandate and imposed by sold-out rulers.

The United States of America, like many other nations hostage to the Agenda 2030, is facing a very serious crisis: inflation, an out-of-control self-induced migration crisis, human trafficking and child trafficking, rampant crime, and the weakening of law enforcement.”

Watch the video below for Archbishop Vigano’s full address.

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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The past two weeks have shown how easily the western world turns its back on Palestinians in times of crisis. 

What unfolded in southern Israel on 7 October was horrific. We are all against the killing of civilians. But while the West has shown solidarity with the Israeli victims, it has remained appallingly silent over – and even encouraged – the crimes being committed against Palestinians in Gaza.

Across historic Palestine, all Palestinians feel as though we are being held responsible and paying the price for Israel’s failure to maintain security along the Gaza fence. From 1948 communities to Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, we feel we are being targeted on the basis of our identity.

All we hear are western countries giving their full support to Israel, which is using this cover to commit crimes, arrest people and violate the human rights of Palestinians anywhere in the country.

I live in Jerusalem. Palestinians here do not feel safe anymore. Tensions hang heavy, even just in the way people look at each other.

When you walk the streets of Jerusalem, you don’t see people anymore. You see police and private security forces. 

Increasing numbers of civilians have been carrying guns in the streets, and even in shopping malls, where some Israelis were armed with M16s. This comes after National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir decided to hand out thousands of guns and to ease the conditions for purchasing weapons.

In one case, a group of armed Israelis stopped a Palestinian man, ripped a baby seat from his car and dropped it in the street, and then searched his vehicle. The Israeli state has given them implicit permission for this type of harassment. 

Trapped at Home

Many of my friends from occupied East Jerusalem no longer go to work. Some have been beaten. The army can stop you on a whim and check your mobile phone; if they find a song about Palestine or a post about Gaza, they can confiscate your device, beat you and arrest you.

It feels as though we’re living on a military base. In several locations, cement blocks have been placed at the exits of Palestinian neighbourhoods. 

The stress level is extremely high. I don’t leave the house anymore, unless I have to travel to report a story. Palestinians feel as though we’ve all been deemed guilty overnight. 

Armed groups of settlers and private militia forces will stop you on the streets if you look Palestinian. None of us want to leave our homes, not even to get groceries or see a doctor. 

We don’t even feel safe speaking our own language anymore. Palestinian friends in the streets will speak Hebrew or English; they don’t dare to speak Arabic in public. Many people have been fired or suspended from their jobs just for showing solidarity with Gaza.

There are two million Palestinian citizens of Israel. On Tuesday, Israel’s police chief, Kobi Shabtai, had this to say:

“Anyone who wants to identify with Gaza is welcome – I’ll put them on buses that will send them there.”

We are terrified that we could be physically attacked at any time. Extremist Israelis are urging others to kill their Arab neighbours, including women, children and babies. My friends have found their photos and other details posted on social media groups that have been established to target Palestinians. It is a collective call for revenge. We cannot feel secure in this environment.

Calls for Genocide

The speed at which this fascism has spread through the country is stunning. I have always believed there is a common space where Israelis and Palestinians can come together and work towards peace. But the transformation in recent days has been overwhelming. People who once described themselves as Israeli leftists are now calling to wipe out Gaza.

It feels as though the whole state is now baying for genocide. This is the type of language we are hearing from politicians, celebrities, academics and ordinary people. Many feel that Israel is working towards a second Nakba – and the world is doing nothing to stop it. Israelis are crossing red lines and using the current situation to promote apartheid, ethnic cleansing and a second Nakba.

Across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, at least 69 Palestinians have been killed in the past 13 days. Palestinians are being attacked by settlers; the police and army do nothing to protect them. Instead, Palestinians face mass arrests if they dare to show support for Gaza.

The situation is terrifying. We are entering a new era that feels even worse than military rule.

In Gaza, more than 4,000 people have been killed in Israel’s bombardment – including more than 1,500 children – while thousands more have been injured. Gaza City has been destroyed. People are struggling to meet their basic needs: water, electricity and medical care. Pregnant mothers are in crisis. Children are being left in hospitals with no one to pick them up, because their parents have been killed.

And still, the West supports and arms Israel. We are seeing western racism in all its cruelty, as Palestinian lives are deemed inherently less valuable. The worst horror is the silence and complicity of the West in Israel’s unspeakable massacres.

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Lubna Masarwa is a journalist and Middle East Eye’s Palestine and Israel bureau chief, based in Jerusalem.

Featured image is from Jonathan Cook Blog

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The Church of Saint Porphyrius was hit by an Israeli airstrike on Thursday, October 19.  The church was sheltering 500 Christians and Muslims who had lost their homes in previous airstrikes. Two people were confirmed dead and dozens injured, but the exact number of dead cannot be verified because those sheltering in the lower area of the church lay covered in rubble of the collapsed building. However, church sources on the scene, reported to their supporters in Manchester, Connecticut they are estimating 150-200 are dead.

The Jewish State of Israel has declared war on the 3 million Palestinian civilians of Gaza, who are mainly Muslim, while the Christian community numbers about 2,000 people. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are attacking homes, hospitals, schools and churches since they launched Operation Swords of Iron in response to a large Hamas attack on Israeli civilians and soldiers beginning on October 7.

The Christian faith originated in Palestine, in the streets of Bethlehem and Jerusalem in the Occupied West Bank, where the Christian community is larger than the Christian community in Gaza.  

In Gaza, there are three churches: Greek Orthodox Church, Baptist Church, and Roman Catholic Church.

The Church of Saint Porphyrius, Greek Orthodox, is the oldest active church in Gaza, located in Zeitoun, which is the same neighborhood as the Al Ahli Hospital, run by the Anglican Church (The Church of England) that was hit on October 17.

St. Porphyrius was the 5^th-century Bishop of Gaza, and he is entombed in the church. While Europeans were still worshiping fire and stones, the Christians of Palestine were worshiping the Creator inside churches.

The word Greek does not refer to the country known as Greece, but refers to the Greek language, as the Christian world was speaking Greek, and Aramaic in the earliest era. 

The Gaza Baptist Church sustained damage during Israeli airstrikes in 2008, and the church’s pastor, and many of the congregation, subsequently fled the Gaza Strip. The six-story building had been founded in 1954 and had about 200 members.

The Holy Family Church in Gaza was partially destroyed in the 2014 Gaza War, when the church school and pastor’s office were hit by an Israeli airstrike. In 2021, the school was damaged by an Israeli airstrike. The church, school and convents are now sheltering hundreds of people, and on October 9, Pope Francis called the church to offer his prayers and support. The Pope told Father Gabriel Romanelli that he was working to bring an end to the war.

The Catholic President of the United States, Joe Biden, came to Israel and gave the green-light to Prime Minister Netanyahu to continue his war against the Palestinian people of Gaza, the vast majority of which are unarmed civilians caught in the cross-fire.  It appears that President Biden is far removed from the Pope, and is oblivious to his own professed faith.

On October 11, Father Romanelli gave an interview in which he said the Christian residents of Rimal had been under violent bombardment by the Israeli airstrikes. The Catholic sisters of three orders were trying to help people in Gaza. The priest reported that Gaza had almost no electricity, no fuel for generators, and no water to drink, and they were unable to buy any supplies for the people.

On April 15, 2019 a fire destroyed parts of the Notre-Dame de Paris, a medieval Catholic cathedral in Paris, France. After the fire, there was a huge global outpouring of support, and a $135 million campaign was planned to rebuild the Notre-Dame de Paris.

Christians in the Middle East, the birthplace of the faith, are asking the international community for help to stop the occupation, end the blockade of Gaza, and to pledge their support to rebuild Gaza and the West Bank. However, instead, the international community have sent the US President Joe Biden, the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Tel Aviv were they pledged their political and financial support to Israel, only.

The Al Ahli Hospital suffered damages and deaths this week, and is administrated by the Church of England, which is the state religion of UK, and headed by King Charles, III.  

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” to ease the “epic human suffering.”

However, Biden, Sunak and Scholz have encouraged Netanyahu to ‘just go for it’.  All three nations have huge Christian and Muslim populations, and yet all their support is focused on the Jewish State of Israel.

At least 3,478 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza, while the figure stands at more than 1,400 people in Israel.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

Featured image is from MD

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***

United States President Joe Biden delivered a live television address on the evening of October 19 to demand that the Congress authorize another $106 billion to expand the wars in Ukraine and Palestine as well as providing funds to counter Chinese influence and enhance security at the southern border.

This speech came just one day after Biden travelled to Tel Aviv to proclaim yet again the White House’s unconditional support to the State of Israel.

While in Israel meeting with the “unified war cabinet” he blamed the Palestinians for the bombing of Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, saying the explosion was the result of the actions of the “other team.” Using such terminology suggests that the deadly war against Gaza is some type of sports competition.

This bombing had only taken place less than 24 hours before. The Israeli government through its Defense Forces changed its story on the Al-Ahli Hospital bombing after the number of casualties, approximately 500, would be difficult to justify even to an already compliant western media. Even if there were some questions in the minds of the U.S. government and press agencies as to the origins of the bombing, these questions could not be answered in a matter of hours. Moreover, there was no acknowledgement of the fact that numerous civilian targets have been bombed by the IDF since this latest round of intensified airstrikes since October 7.

Gazan child in a hospital after bombing

In fact, the same Al-Ahli Hospital was hit by IDF ordnance just two days before. The IDF has struck apartment buildings, homes, churches, mosques and businesses along with civilian convoys leaving the north of Gaza after being given evacuation orders from Tel Aviv.

Biden is being given a free pass in his dealing with the corporate and government-controlled media in the U.S. and other western states. In the U.S., the president routinely does not hold press conferences or take questions from reporters, even those assigned to the White House. This fact was written about by the Washington Post in an editorial published in May. See this.

The address broadcast on October 19 where Biden asserted that the allocation the $106 billion was essential to saving western civilization as we know it today, was not followed up by any critical questioning by the U.S. media. His address was treated as a lead story in the U.S. and in Britain, making it appear as if this was a major development in the foreign policy of Washington.

Nonetheless, there has already been more than $136 billion allocated to the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. The Ukrainian military has lost tens of thousands of its soldiers in the war while many others are suffering from serious wounds as amputees and other injuries.

The $106 billion also includes an allocation of more than $9 billion for “humanitarian assistance” to Israel, Gaza and Ukraine. However, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is being fueled by the U.S. and the IDF. Not once has the Biden administration called for a ceasefire or the opening of a humanitarian corridor to provide much needed assistance to the Palestinians in Gaza.

On October 20, the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres visited the North African state of Egypt ostensibly to encourage the opening of the Rafah Crossing where trucks have been lined up for days waiting to deliver food, water, fuel, medicines and other supplies to 2.2 million Palestinians under constant siege by the IDF. Prior to the present siege of Gaza, 450 trucks delivered supplies to Gaza daily. The imperialists are offering to allow 20 trucks to bring essential goods through the Rafah Crossing which is wholly insufficient. (See this)

IDF war planes are bombing Gaza, Khan Younis and the border areas with Egypt making it impossible for aid to be delivered. These facts are ignored by the western media and therefore they are objectively participating in the genocidal war against the Palestinians.

Forced Removal of Palestinians and the Threatened Land Invasion of Gaza by the IDF

The State of Israel was formed 75 years ago, and its founding was based upon the forced removal of millions of Palestinians from their historical homeland. In the present period, the U.S. has endorsed the evacuation orders issued by Tel Aviv which has displaced more than a million Palestinians.

In an article published by the Palestine Chronicle it emphasizes:

“The willingness of the U.S. media to partake in the Israeli disinformation Big Lie is unprecedented in Western democracies. ‘If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.’ This quote was attributed to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi chief propagandist. Today, Goebbels would envy the Israeli disinformation prowess of employing Western media to willingly market Israeli Big Lies. Claims of ‘decapitated Israeli children’ persistently echoed across CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and other Western media outlets, perpetuating the Big Lie that eventually became a believable story. The U.S. President even went as far as claiming to have seen (non-existing) images of decapitated Israeli children. Additionally, Western media propagated other Israeli falsehoods, including allegations of women being raped during the Hamas raid. Curiously, not a single woman came forward to support these claims. In reality, one woman who did speak on Israeli TV described respectful treatment by Hamas fighters. Her accounts, however, went unnoticed by Western media since it contradicted the Big Lie gambit.” 

After two weeks of aerial bombardments by the IDF, they have refrained from a full-scale ground invasion into Gaza. Undoubtedly, the fear of larger casualties among the IDF and the uncertain outcomes of placing IDF troops, many of whom are part-time conscripts, into direct ground battles with the military forces of Hamas and other resistance units, has given pause to the Israeli government and their backers in Washington.

In the meantime, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, over 4,100 Palestinians have been killed and thousands more injured by the IDF in their bombing campaign over the last two weeks. Homes, medical facilities, religious institutions, schools and infrastructure in Gaza have been destroyed in a systematic campaign of carpet bombing by the Israeli forces. These war crimes by Israel include the refusal to allow humanitarian assistance into Gaza in a clear effort to starve the population into submission to Tel Aviv and Washington.

An illustration of this effort was carried out on October 19 when the IDF bombed an Orthodox Christian Church in Gaza City. The attacks on Christian churches and hospitals refutes the attempt by the western media to frame the current phase of the struggle as one between Muslims and Jews, when in fact this is a liberation movement to free Palestine from the historic settler-colonialism imposed by Zionism and Imperialism. Although many Palestinians are Muslims, many others are Christians and they have lived side-by-side in peace for centuries.

The Palestine Chronicle reported that:

“A final death toll is yet to be announced, but many Palestinians have been reportedly killed and wounded in a devastating Israeli attack that destroyed an ancient Greek Orthodox church in Gaza late on Thursday night. The church of St. Porphyrius, the original structure of which believed to have been built around 425 CE, has been greatly damaged, and many casualties have been rushed to hospitals when Israeli bombs came raining down on Palestinian civilians sheltering inside. Eyewitnesses and survivors told Al-Mayadeen news channel that nearly 400 people were sheltering inside, mostly Christian civilians. The attack on the church came only days after Israel targeted Palestinian civilians sheltering inside Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, killing nearly 500 and wounding over 300 more, according to estimates by the Gaza Ministry of Health. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate said that the targeting of the church ‘constitutes a war crime’. It is unclear how Washington will respond to the attack on the church, considering that U.S. President Joe Biden had initially blamed the Resistance for the attack on Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital on Tuesday (Oct. 17).” 

Although the ruling class proclaims that the U.S. is a “Christian nation” there has been no condemnation by the Biden administration regarding the targeting of religious institutions in Gaza. The institutional denial of Palestinians to food, medicine, water, fuel and household security reveal clearly that this is a war of genocide aimed advancing the interests of imperialism in West Asia and North Africa.

The Western Media Cannot Whitewash the War Crimes and Economic Distress of the Biden Administration

Biden who is seeking re-election in the upcoming 2024 elections has forfeited any legitimacy to hold office. Although his administration has claimed that everything is fine in the U.S., the entire system of capitalism is slipping deeper into social crisis.

Hundreds of thousands of organized labor union members are engaging in industrial actions across various sectors of the economy. Real wages are falling for working people while enormous profits are increasing for multi-national corporations and the banks. These proclamations of societal prosperity by Washington and Wall Street cannot belie the burgeoning contradictions within the U.S.

The quagmire in the House of Representatives where the Republican-dominated legislative branch of government cannot select a speaker portends much for the Biden administration program to expand the capacity of imperialism to wage war in the Asia-Pacific, West Asia, North Africa and Eastern Europe. Workers and oppressed peoples in the U.S. must build an independent movement aimed at ending the exploitative system of capitalism. Imperialist war waged by the U.S. and its allies cannot win leaving the majority of people no alternative except to build a new society based upon their own social and economic interests.

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

All images in this article are from the author

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***

Israel’s Creation and Ethnic Cleansing: The 1948 Palestine War, which led to the creation of Israel left Palestinian society leaderless, disorganized, and scattered. More than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs –about half of prewar Palestine’s Arab population— fled from their homes or were expelled by Zionist militias during this war.

The exodus, known as Nakba, was the central component of the fracturing, dispossession, and displacement of Palestinian society. Around 400 to 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed. In a biological warfare programme, village wells were poisoned, and properties were looted to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning. About 80 percent of the Arab inhabitants of what became Israel left or were expelled from their homes. 

About 250,000-300,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled during the 1947-1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, before the declaration of independence by Israel in May 1948. Causes of Palestinian mass exodus are many such as destruction of Arab villages, Jewish military advances, psychological warfare, fears of yet another massacre by Zionist militias after the Deir Yassin massacre, direct expulsion orders by Israeli authorities, fear of losing everything by wealthier classes, typhoid epidemic in some areas caused by Israeli well-poisoning, total collapse in Palestinian leadership, Arab evacuation orders and unwillingness to live under Jewish control.

Later on, the Israeli government passed a series of land and property laws that prevented Arabs who had fled, from returning to their ancestral homes or claiming their properties. They and many of their descendants remain refugees still and are not allowed back into Palestine while since its founding, any Jewish person can come and settle in Israel. 

Israel has been a criminal state bent on destroying the very existence of Palestinian people. America and the western countries call Israel “a democracy”! It is a laughable lie. Israel is not a democracy. It is an apartheid nation. It treats its own Palestinian citizens as third-class citizens. Most of their rights as citizens are denied to them. 

U.S. Aid: United States has given Israel some $317.9 billion as combined military and economic aid since World War-II plus around $10 billion additionally in contributions for missile defense systems like the Iron Dome, as per usafacts.org and U.S. News analysis. This means Israel is the highest recipient of U.S. aid. United States gave $3.8 billion in 2020, $3.31 billion in 2021 and $4.8 billion in 2022 to Israel. Briefly, U.S. has doled out $3 billion to $4 billion a year in military aid during the past decade and a half. Israel is the highest recipient of America’s total foreign aid programme. In per capita terms, the United States gives each Israeli a direct subsidy worth about $500 per year, every year. Mind you, Israel is not a poor country.

Adjusted for inflation in 2022 dollars. Data for 2020–2022 is partially completed. Source: US Agency for International Development

As per Forbes Magazine, Israel is among the top 20 global economies in GDP per capita. In other words, Israel’s economy is similar to those of Europe. While America doles out 3 to 4 billion dollars to Israel year after year, around 11.4% of Americans are below poverty line. According to usafacts.org, 33.98 million Americans were in poverty in 2019, 16.1 percent of children under the age of 6 were in poverty in 2021, 10.5 percent of households were food-insecure and 582,462 people including 106,364 children were homeless in 2022. Thus, for our ruling class, Israelis are more important than millions of poor Americans and their children. What a shame!

Balfour Declaration: The idea of the creation of Israel came after the famous Balfour Declaration of 1917.

The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British government in 1917 during the First World War. It announced its support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, then an Ottoman region where only a small minority of Jews lived.

Britain’s foreign secretary Arthus Balfour sent a letter dated 2^nd November 1917 to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. In the letter he proposed the creation of an independent state of Israel in the Palestine.

The idea was to enlist Jewish support in their war against the Ottoman Empire in Palestine. Thus, this was the beginning of the creation of Israel in Palestine.  As in other areas of the Middle East, Africa and the partition of India, the British have been the culprit, using “The divide and rule” strategy everywhere. The rest is history.

Gaza Strip: Some 2.2 million people live in the Gaza Strip. It is hardly 140 square miles, more than 2 times the size of Washington D.C. It is one of the most densely populated regions of the world. Israel controls everything in and of Gaza. Israel has maintained it as the open-air concentration camp. It controls its food, water, and electricity supply. During the current war between Hamas and Israel, Israel has cut off Gaza’s food, water, and electricity supply, punishing all its citizens for the attack carried out by Hamas. 

Hamas and Hezbollah: Of course, Hamas’s recent attack was a terrorist attack on Israeli civilians and should be condemned. It doesn’t help the cause of the Palestinian people.  But Israel is punishing the whole population of  Gaza as a revenge.

In the first 13 days of relentless bombings of Gaza, Israel flattened many buildings, hospital, etc. and killed more than 3,300 innocent civilians. No people of any nation should suffer such horrible conditions as the Palestinians of Gaza are suffering at present. As of now, more children have been killed in 13 days by Israeli bombing in Gaza than those killed in Ukraine in one year. The fact remains that Israel has killed many times more Palestinians than Hamas or Hezbollah have killed the Israelis. Thus, Israel is committing crimes against humanity. Yes, violence by Hamas and by Hezbollah against Israeli citizens is terrorism and deplorable. It should be stopped. Also, the destruction of Israel as their main goal is foolish and unacceptable. At the same time, Israel’s extreme violence against the Palestinian people is unacceptable too. 

America’s Failed Middle East Policy: America is not a peacemaker in this matter. America is Israel’s big brother. For so many decades, United States has failed to bring peace in this region, no wonder. It is quite likely that United States doesn’t want peace in the Middle East. Then who would they sell billions of dollars’ worth of arms to?

It should be noted that Israel is constantly committing crimes against humanity since its creation torturing and killing Palestinians in Gaza as well as in the West Bank. Since its birth in 1948, Israel has expanded its territory in 1967 war, annexing the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria. It is constantly expanding its illegal settlements in Jerusalem. 

Partners in Crime: This is only possible because of the unwavering military, financial and diplomatic support of the United States for last many decades. In other words, United States is equally responsible for the crimes committed by Israel. Both countries are partners in crime. Without America’s total support, Israel could not commit these crimes. 

No wonder, during every debate regarding Israel and Palestine issue at the United Nations, usually, United States and Israel are on one side while the rest of the world is on the opposite side.

Two State Solution: If Israel wants to live in peace, it must seek a two-state solution. Otherwise, it will never be able to live in peace. Foolishly, the right-wing government of Netanyahu doesn’t want that. So, occasional attacks by Hamas and Hasbullah against Israel and out of proportion bombings of Gaza by Israel will continue too.

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Chaitanya Davé is a Chemist and a Chemical Engineer. He has authored three books: CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: A Shocking Record of US Crimes since 1776-2007, COLLAPSE: Civilization on the Brink-2010, CAPITALISM’S MARCH OF DESTRUCTION: Replacing it with People and Nature-Friendly Economy. Author of many articles on politics, history, and the environment. Founder/President of a non-profit charity foundation helping the poor villagers of India, Nepal, Haiti, USA-homeless and other poor countries. He can be contacted at [email protected].  

He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image: ETHNIC CLEANSING: Palestinian refugees in 1948 Photo: Public Domain

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[This article was updated on October 22, 2023.]

***

Preface

Oh, the savagery and immorality of it all! Still more innocent babies, new arrivals from distant worlds in the cosmos, barely here on earth; more pregnant women burgeoning with new expectant life; still even more young boys and young girls, young men and young women in their prime, still radiant with new hopes and dreams for the future; so many more old men and old women, in the sunset of their lives, meant to savor and reflect upon the meaning of it all. All Gone Now, Forever!

It’s an Old Tired Story but Here We Go Again

What is transpiring in the Hamas-Israel War reminds this writer of the early heart-breaking days in the New World when immoral marauding Europeans from the Old World, would-be Canadian and American settler-colonist occupiers of the New World as it were, justified their killing and removal of its indigenous First Nation peoples, especially the babies and young ones, who they basically considered were all obstacles – impediments – in their way; referring to them as nothing more than “Nits who Grow Lice”, simply to be disposed of for the good of all!”

What followed was over two centuries of nightmarish genocide against not only First Nation peoples themselves, as an entire race of humans, but also against the New World’s non-human, one-of-a-kind species of life, many of whom are now either gone or in the process of fast disappearing.

The continual indifference to the massacre of the Earth’s natural human and non-human life forms is shameful beyond what any words can ever attempt to convey.

How Far Will the Madness Go

A similar immoral history could be told of the sudden, unannounced arrival of the marauding, occupying Zionist Jewish settler-colonists of Palestine, over the past 75 years since the end of WWII in 1948, and ever since while many United Nations of the world, in many cases, have had to continue to hold their noses and look the other way as the Zionists have acted like Bears in a China Shop as they’ve perpetually allowed ever since a flood of emigrant Jewry into the lands of Palestine from every corner of the earth and given them virtual carte blanche to do whatever they would, even blatant murder, at the constant expense of he Palestinians.

Roy Sharon, a noted radio and TV commentator on Israeli’s main broadcasting corporation airwaves, recently declared his desire, over a comment he made in response to the recent scandalous Al Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital atrocity in Gaza. Sharon felt comfortable and protected enough to openly expressed his desire to see “a million dead bodies in Gaza.”

While extremist anti-Palestinian politicians, like Israel’s Finance Minister Bezatel Smotrich, publicly has declared, “We need to be cruel, and not to think of the Hamas captives.” Smotrich has gone on the record, when asked the question “Is there a Palestinian history and culture?” Smotrich answered, “No! There is no Palestinian people or culture.”

In the West, where countries need to take a more definitive moral-political-ideological stand on their beliefs about the plight of Palestinian peoples, those like Canada’s conservative Senate Speaker, George Forey, has joined with the country’s Conservative Senate to invite Israel’s right wing politician, Amir Obana, Speaker of Israel’s Parliament, to speak before Canada’s government and its people. Even though Amir Obana has gone on the record to proclaim that “Muslims are prone to cultural murderousness.” While Obana, as the former public safety minister, was also responsible for modifying Israel’s COVID 19 vaccination priority list to exclude prisoners who were Palestinians. Apparently, this is what it means in the West to take a stand.

It’s Such an Old, Tired, Tragic Tale to Tell

From the first beginnings of European contact with the peoples of the New World, the American and Canadian counterparts to the Israeli Zionists referred to the First Nation people they encountered, as “Animals, Vermin and Savages” who had to be eradicated”, so deeply embedded are the beliefs of the Zionist Jews of Israel towards the Palestinian peoples.

Yet, once again, what the American, Canadian and Western Corporate mainstream media (MSM) allies constantly do is to repeatedly support this fascist, ideological world view that always downplays, or holds at fault, the indigenous side of this age-old story, while the average citizenry, Like Pavlovian dogs, dutifully respond to all the corporate society’s cues.

Israeli Racism Is So Rampant But How Much Does the World Care

On the streets of Tel Aviv, New York, Paris, Brussels, everywhere, one can find placards and bumper stickers that demand, “Exterminate Gaza”, “Don’t Destroy Gaza, Flatten It!”

While in the case of so many contentious reasons and lies for the unfolding current war between Hamas and Israel, one constantly hears the Corporate MSM declaring that it is Hamas, not Israel, who recently bombed the Al Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza. But it’s the same Who Blew up the Nordstream Pipeline lies and hate propaganda that has been used ad infinitum by the West, most recently with nauseating results  in its other recent War in Ukraine.

Yet the Conscience of the World is now being called upon, like perhaps never before, to express its deeply troubled pathos over the increasingly-grim angst on the ground of Gaza, Palestine, Israel and everywhere else in the world where humans are still willing to support such inhumane savagery.

Like somnambulists, or brain-dead zombies, the Human Race, in Israel as well as everywhere else continues to blindly enter, willy-nilly, into the unchartered, unknown waters of severe human degradation. But what somnambulant world leader is ever, finally, go prepared to speak truth to power, like they’ve never spoken before?

Yet Here We Go Again

A human disaster of gargantuan proportions continues in the Middle East. In this regard, the Jewish Revolt in the Warsaw Ghetto against the Nazi in 1943, and the Palestinian Revolt in the Gaza Ghetto in 2023 against the Zionists, are virtually two sides of the same coin, the proverbial shoe-on-the-other-foot, that represents the basis and prelude of a very long, slow-burning old fuse, that has only just begun to explode in more calamitous ways than the world has yet to witness or remotely even understand..

The sick biases of the Zionist’s long-standing propaganda of irrational hate towards the Palestinian’s eight decades-long cause and plight to regain something of their peoples lost human freedoms and sovereignty, continues to be in question, as it has been for decades by the world’s supporting corporate mass media and fascist governments still providing the same underpinnings of the same gross biases, indifference and denial of the Palestinian’s never-ending frustrated struggle for freedom and dignity that is the inherent right of every human being.

So incessant has the Zionist zeitgeist become to virtually eradicate the Palestinian presence in Israel, that its world-wide hate propaganda, supported everywhere by the corporate mainstream media, now represents the common bias of much of the world’s general populace who have bought into the Zionist propaganda, hook, line and sinker; so much so that this Zionist spin could be called the world’s conventional wisdom as to the cause and ultimate solution of the “Palestinian Problem”.

Warsaw Ghetto Revolt and Gaza Ghetto Revolt Are Teaching Lessons

To answer that question, one must first understand something more about the existing realities behind the related historical human tragedies between the Jewish Revolt in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 & the Palestinian Revolt in the Gaza Ghetto in 2023.

Both these human tragedies contain universal truths that the world has yet to squarely address, and probably never will, caught as it is in the midst of yet the next, and then the endless next, rolling, out-of-control train wreck of a human catastrophe that now is the current genocidal slaughter of Hamas and Palestinians by Israel. The Israeli government’s state criminality every bit as viscous as anything Hamas has ever done since its October 7^th surprise attack against Israel that has led to humanitarian outrages and condemnations on both sides since the onset of the current war.

Jewish Warsaw Ghetto Freedom Fighters Marched Out for Execution (Licensed under the Public Domain)

Yet without attaching any blame to either side for its genocidal practises against the other it’s essential that ever human wake up to the serious nature of the Genocide that, more and more, is occurring everywhere

Do Not be Silent About Genocide

On October 15^th, an Open Letter was sent from Birzeit University on the West Bank, in the State of Palestine, to International Academic Institutions, worldwide. It declared:

We at Birzeit University call upon international academic institutions to take concrete action to stop the genocidal war on the Palestinian people and to end Israeli settler colonialism. Over the past 8 days, Israel’s brutal and vicious bombardment of the Gaza Strip—which has been besieged by Israel for the past 17 years—has resulted in the killing of over 2,400Palestinians, one third of whom are children, the injuring of over 10,000 Palestinians, the deliberate displacement of more than half a million Palestinians and the call for the removal of another million from the north of the Gaza Strip, the destruction of 60,000 residential units, in addition to targeted attacks on hospitals, schools and universities.

Recent statements by Israeli government officials calling Palestinians “human animals” that are to be starved and further made hostage through a complete blockade of food, water, electricity, and fuel amplifies Israel’s founding racist ideology that operates with pervasive international impunity and complicity. This war of elimination begun in 1948 continues to escalate, devoid of humane rules or ethical constraints, exacerbating an already insufferable living situation for Palestinians.

Birzeit University calls upon the international academic community, unions, and students to fulfill their intellectual and academic duty of seeking truth, maintaining a critical distance from state sponsored propaganda, and to hold the perpetrators of genocide and those complicit with them accountable.

We also hold Israeli universities responsible as they have been indispensable to the regime of settler colonial oppression and apartheid, complicit in grave violations of human rights, including developing weaponry, military doctrines, and legal justification for the indiscriminate, mass targeting of Palestinians. These academic institutions must be shunned by the international academic community.

Birzeit University urges the international community to immediately intervene to stop this barbaric aggression and to protect Palestinians from the dramatic escalation of Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing throughout all of Palestine.

The ongoing impunity granted by the international community to the Israeli occupying forces must end today.

Common Roots of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and Gaza Ghetto Uprising

The roots of the catastrophe, caused by the Nazi’s brutal walled-in imprisonment of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto of 1943 during WWII, that finally led to their revolt and massacre at the hands of the Nazi, are the same roots of the catastrophe, caused by the: original massacres of the Zionist Nakba Catastrophe of the Palestinians in 1948; followed by the Zionist imprisonment of the Palestinians, 75 years later, under similar horrendously-punitive conditions in the Gaza Ghetto. The Palestinian’s revolt in 2023 turning into yet an even more horrific Gaza Catastrophe between Hamas and Israel; that has yet to become even more unimaginably-horrific, not only for the Palestinian peoples and Israeli Jews but for the world, as a whole.

No blame should ever be held against those Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto for killing so many Nazi in the process of their desperate revolt. Nor should the same blame ever be waged against the Palestinians for their related revolt in the Gaza Ghetto. Its what desperate people do when all hope is disappearing for something better to happen to them; leading them to consider preparing to sacrifice the most precious thing every human has the right to give for a moral principle, which is their very life. Of course, the other side of this moral tale is that all those who finally arrive at such a moment of destiny sometimes also take the attitude, “Well, the bastards may be forcing me to martyr my life but I’ll be damned if I don’t take as many of them with me as I can.”

Over time immemorial, his is what has dictated the actions of many brave, honorable, highly-moral men and women who have taken upon themselves such roles as: suicide bombers, kamikaze pilots, soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save his mates, etcetera.

Siege of Masada Mentality Happens When Humans Are Put Against a Wall

Enough is enough! After three quarters of a century, one human being’s normal lifetime, the world and human race have once more reached another monstrous milestone of immorality in their long, sad, tragic evolution together. No turning back now to the way life once upon a time once was between Israel, Palestine, Gaza and the world. Only more endless, senseless mass martyrdom and ethnic cleansing everywhere one looks. The Human world still the same old, nasty, violent dirty little place in the universe it always has been.

It’s a Very Long Tragic Story

During the Roman siege of Masada, in the first Jewish-Roman War in 72-73 MCE, when nearly 1,000 trapped Jewish rebels were faced with a similar hopeless situation, as to what is going on in Gaza, they chose to kill themselves by leaping to their deaths from their Masada Stronghold, rather than continue to be slaughtered or fall captive and become enslaved by their enemies.

Now, in the midst of all the unbelievable carnage of the Hamas-Israel War, a haunting whisper repeats incessantly to this writer’s ear and conscience: “Never forget the horrors of the Nakba and Zionist terrorists who committed all the horrors as they continue to do again on the once sacred grounds of the Jewish and Christian Faiths.”

If life for the Palestinians continues to deteriorate it’s not unconceivable that a similar situation of suicide bombings against the Zionists could also manifest in the current war.

75 Years Ago Many Predicted How the Nakba in Palestine One Day Could End

The Palestinian people, like so many other unfortunate humans before them, are now at that same point in their existence where there’s absolutely nothing more to lose, besides their lives and those of their loved ones; except but try to regain something of the last remaining vestiges of their basic human dignity.

So, not surprisingly, Palestinians have now risen up and continue to resist, at whatever the costs, Israel’s outrageously-heinous blowback and the equally despicable actions of their U.S. and Western alli theires, like President Biden, Prime Minister Trudeau and tdheir governments who continue to offer the Zionists everything from monies to weapons to AI logistics, while, in the mean time, what continues to unfold amounts to yet another historic Nazi Holocaust moment in the making in another Warsaw Ghetto. This time, though, it isn’t against the Nazi’s in occupied Poland. It’s against the Zionist’s in occupied Palestine and Gaza.

But Will Wise Minds Ultimately Prevail to Right So Many Wrongs?

This writer oft finds himself returning in his writings about anything to do with the tragedy that has long since befallen the plight of the Palestinian peoples; turning for answers to the writings of Professor Ilan Pappe, a professor of Palestinian Studies at Exeter University in the UK, who possesses many keen insights, wisdoms and measured, balanced understandings of the dynamics involved in this unbroken 75 year long resistance movement..

In one of Professor Pappe’s most recent interviews on You Tube, Professor Pappe gives his take on the current status of the war in Gaza and what might unfold in the coming days, weeks and months that are still to follow. His insights are profound:

It’s a Cry for the World to be a Different Place Than It Is

But this age-old struggle isn’t just for the Palestinians. It’s for all of us, because it represents the same basic, defiant, last gasps of human hope for help that continues to be everywhere heard on earth by those oppressed ones who find their own necks hopelessly jammed beneath the same genocidal, Nazi-like jackboots of whatever fascist oppressor.

When Nazi Germany’s blitzkrieg invaded Poland, kicking off the onslaught of WWII, it culminated in the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto and massacre of brave, defiant Jewish Freedom Fighters of all ages in Warsaw and millions more like them throughout the world. There were no other answers for any of them in Warsaw in 1943, just as there are no other answers for the Palestinians and all the rest of us in Gaza in 2023; but to throw all caution to the wind and strike out, strike back, as futile, bloody and messy as it may be, and resist, at all costs, the new Catastrophe being perpetrated against us all in the name of Gaza, Palestine or wherever else.

Coming on the heels of the equally heinous abominations of the war in Ukraine, it seems highly likely now that the geo-political-military human crises happening everywhere in the world can only but lead, at some point in time, to yet a WWIII with even more disastrous consequences for the human race; endlessly brought on, like so many other world wars that have come and gone before, without ever providing any real final resolution.

God, Allah, Heaven, Help Us! Because We Humans Are Incapable of Doing It Ourselves!

Epilogue

One Man’s Truth Speaks Out Against All the Madness

A Jewish friend and associate recently expressed to this writer in a private conversation some of his thoughts about the crisis in Gaza:

From the beginning of the massacre in the south I came out against the heinous crime, but despite this I continue to receive threats and insults and accusations as if I was responsible for it and not the government of atrocities. Why?

Because I refuse to go with the mobs of instigators who seek revenge and not a solution, bloodshed and not security, humiliation and not peace. These bloodthirsty people are driven mad by my pain for all those who were or are being killed, whoever they were or might still be, and not only for the Jewish ones. It is my insistence on a political solution of ending the occupation, reaching a peace that will end the violence, which drives them crazy.

I will not give up! I will continue to raise my voice and fight for the liberation of the Palestinian people from their enslavement, an enslavement which is not only a terrible injustice but is also killing us all.

One more thing. My dear friend who was recently murdered was a proud leftist, a supporter of my Hadash Party. I knew many of those who already have been massacred and murdered, they were my companions and fellow activists.

I often get nasty and threatening messages for protesting such violence. “May you and your fellows be killed by your Arab friends!”, they say. “So, you got your wish,”, I say back, “You vile hypocrites!”

I continue in the face of so much violence to say, “Yes, to Palestinian independence! No to War! Yes, to a Just Peace! No to Violence! Yes to Equality! No to indiscriminate Inequality!

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The writer Jerome Irwin is a Canadian-American writer who originally was a Criminology student working in one of America’s local police departments. For decades, Irwin has sought to call world attention to problems of environmental degradation and unsustainability caused by a host of environmental-ecological-spiritual issues that exist between the conflicting world philosophies of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples.

Irwin is the author of the book, “The Wild Gentle Ones; A Turtle Island Odyssey” (www.turtle-island-odyssey.com), a spiritual odyssey among the native peoples of North America that has led to numerous articles pertaining to: Ireland’s Fenian Movement; native peoples Dakota Access Pipeline Resistance Movement; AIPAC, Israel & the U.S. Congress anti-BDS Movement; the historic Battle for Palestine & Siege of Gaza, as well as; the many violations constantly being waged by industrial-corporate-military-propaganda interests against the World’s Collective Soul. The author and his wife are long-time residents on the North Shore of British Columbia.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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First published on October 3, 2023

*** 

The “air vaccine” is here and it’s able to deliver mRNA technology into the human body without a needle injection. The mRNA can be delivered right into the lungs and has been used to “vaccinate” mice intranasally.

A team from Yale University has developed a new airborne method for delivering mRNA right to your lungs. The method has also been used to vaccinate mice intranasally, “opening the door for human testing in the near future.”

While scientists may celebrate this invention as a convenient method to vaccinate large populations, skeptics have started to raise obvious concerns about the potential misuse of an airborne vaccine, including the possibility of covert bioenhancements a concept that has previously been suggested in academic literature.

Roman Balmakov of Facts Matter discusses the study in the video below:

In the research, the scientists used polymer nanoparticles to encapsulate mRNA, transforming it into an inhalable form for delivery to the lungs. Courtney Malo, who serves as an editor at Science Translational Medicine, the publication that featured the study, explained, “The ability to efficiently deliver mRNA to the lung would have applications for vaccine development, gene therapy, and more. Here, Suberi et al. showed that such mRNA delivery can be accomplished by encapsulating mRNAs of interest within optimized poly(amine-co-ester) polyplexes [nanoparticles].

Polyplex-delivered mRNAs were efficiently translated into protein in the lungs of mice with limited evidence of toxicity. This platform was successfully applied as an intranasal SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, eliciting robust immune responses that conferred protection against subsequent viral challenges.

These results highlight the potential of this delivery system for vaccine applications and beyond.“

The team, which was led by cellular and molecular physiologist Mark Saltzman, claims that the inhalable mRNA vaccine “successfully protected against “SARS-CoV-2“, and that it “opens the door to delivering other messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics for gene replacement therapy and other treatments in the lungs.”(source) -The Daily Exposé

By creating an airborne vaccine, the ruling class doesn’t have to convince people to spend their time getting injected individually. This can take time and be arduous, especially if people continue to reject “vaccines.” It’s much easier to get the mRNA technology into the bodies of humans if the rulers can just release it in the air. But if they can do this with vaccines, what’s stopping them from creating a bioweapon that everyone inhales?

An airborne vaccine, much like a bioweapon, can be released into the air without consent or even the public’s knowledge.

A similar strategy is being used with mRNA in shrimp, which are too small and numerous to be injected individually. Instead, an oral “nanovaccine” was created to stop the spread of a virus. Shai Ufaz, chief executive officer of ViAqua, which developed the technology, stated:

“Oral delivery is the holy grail of aquaculture health development due to both the impossibility of vaccinating individual shrimp and its ability to substantially bring down the operational costs of disease management while improving outcomes …” -The Daily Exposé

COVID-19 has always been about the “vaccine” and getting it into as many human beings as possible.  That’s still part of the endgame. The rulers need to get as many people as possible exposed to mRNA technology with the least amount of cost and effort. The airborne vaccine is a solution to the “problem” the ruling class has with “vaccine hesitancy.”

Pro-Vaccine Virologist Says “We Are Going To PAY A Huge Price For COVID Mass Vaccination”

If you ever think the ruling class won’t experiment on the human cattle it claims it own, think again:

DARPA Creepiest Programs For Human Control: “How Dark Will Our Future Be?”

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First published on October 11, 2023

*** 

In my last article I wrote about the history and aim of the Club of Rome. I mentioned that they now are one of the leading advocates for declaring a “Planetary Emergency”. This will most likely be the trigger for the setup of a scientific dictatorship.

The idea of declaring an emergency was first proposed to Club of Rome by British consultant and psychotherapist David Wasdell in 2005.

Wasdell, with training from Tavistock Institute, had written a paper called Global Warning that was circulated during the G8 summit in Gleneagles in 2005, with the mission of getting the climate issue higher up on the political agenda.

We have a narrow remaining window to engage global strategic planning and mobilisation, followed by a maximum of fifty years to achieve the transition, to scale down resource usage, to terminate inequitable capital accumulation, and to stabilise and begin the long term reduction of global population.

Wasdell was then invited by the Club of Rome president Prince El Hassan bin Talal to make a speech at their annual conference in Norfolk, Virginia.

In order to achieve the desired impact, Wasdell advised them to:

• Recognise that there now exist a state of global emergency
• Declare excess CO2 to be an eco-toxin [!] with potentially catastrophic impact on the global biosphere
• Develop and operationalize an emergency strategy to move our global society towards a zero or negative carbon economy within the shortest possible timescale
• Develop and operationalize the most effective institutional instruments to manage the transition.

Wasdell, who became an adviser to Al Gore, was also working closely with the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research (PIK) and its director and Club of Rome-member Hans Joachim Schellnhuber to develop the concept of Tipping Points in the climate system.[1]

This concept was incorporated into the Planetary Boundaries framework, which was developed under the leadership of Johan Rockström at the Stockholm Resilience Centre and introduced in the article “A safe operating space for humanity” in 2009. This was done in cooperation with Schellnhuber and PIK.[2]

Planetary Boundaries is a framework to “describe limits to the impacts of human activities on the Earth system”. If left unchecked, it is said to trigger cascading tipping points leading to “large-scale abrupt or irreversible environmental changes”. To prevent this potential scenario, a top-down population control is considered necessary.

Rockström, a Swedish agronomist, had in 2004 been headhunted by the first IPCC chairman Bert Bolin to serve as director of Stockholm Environment Institute and became the first director of Stockholm Resilience Centre in 2007.

The latter institute, located at Stockholm University, had been set up by the Swedish foundation for strategic environmental research (MISTRA) with the task of developing strategies for sustainable governance and stewardship of ecological and social systems. Rockström later succeeded Hans Joachim Schellnhuber as joint director of PIK in 2018.

The Planetary Boundaries framework was presented by Rockström at Club of Rome’s Global Assembly in Amsterdam in October 2009, with attendance from their royal patron Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and honorary member Mikhail Gorbachev. Sponsors were Philips, Royal Dutch Shell and KLM.[3]

The framework was included in the Club of Rome-report Bankrupting Nature, authored by Johan Rockström and former Club of Rome-president Anders Wijkman, and became a part of Club of Rome’s and PIK’s The Planetary Emergency Plan in 2019. One year later their Planetary Emergency Partnership was launched with over 300 partners all over the world.

These plans have now come into fruition. A few weeks ago, a statement was made by The Climate Governance Commission at the UN General Assembly High-Level Week & Climate Week.[4]

The commission, which includes the current president of the Club of Rome, Sandrine Dixson-Declève, and Johan Rockström, paints a bleak picture of the future – unless we take decisive action.

The world faces a deepening planetary emergency – and is on a reckless path toward catastrophic climate change – having already over-stepped six of nine scientifically-identified planetary boundaries. A continued failure to address the underlying causes of this emergency – such as fossil fuel-based economies, resource waste/overconsumption and the destruction of nature – will have further devastating effects for all of humanity, triggering potentially irreversible tipping points, with dangerous consequences for planetary stability, both social and ecological. A system-wide approach to solving the climate crisis is required now, ensuring reliable climate and planetary boundary governance for the Earth as a whole.

Due to these alleged crises, the commission recommends “bold and concrete steps to catalyze a shift in global governance” in their forthcoming report Governing Our Planetary Emergency, which will be released in conjunction with the climate summit in Dubai (COP28) in November 2023.

The Climate Governance Commission was founded by the Swedish Global Challenges Foundation at the UN75 Global Governance Forum, September 16 & 17 2020, and is led by former Irish President Mary Robinson from The Elders and Club of Madrid with Johan Rockström and the former President of the UN General Assembly María Fernanda Espinosa as co-chairs. Supporters include Club of Madrid, Stimson Center and The Rockefeller Foundation.

The former president of Club of Rome that intervened trying to prevent my dissertation from being approved is a “contributing expert”.

They CGC state that the “global governance system is ill-equipped to deal with our planetary emergency, which now encompasses the “polycrisis” including, for example, international conflict, financial instability, global inequality, and pandemic risk and recovery.” The new term “polycrisis” was frequently used in discussions at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2023.[5]

To handle this “polycrisis”, CGC calls for “competent” crisis leadership.

Empowered with new authorities, current and new international governance institutions must exert competent crisis leadership, developing and deploying emergency plans and a new generation of effective policies while pursuing a more equitable allocation of resources. Further, scientific boundaries are not negotiable, but must drive and fundamentally inform our collective action and management systems.

To set these “new authorities and capabilities” in motion the commission proposes that the UN General Assembly declares a planetary emergency at the Summit of the Future in September 22-23 next year.

The UN General Assembly should declare a global planetary emergency at the 2024 Summit of the Future, reinforced in similar statements by UN Agencies, regional bodies, and national and local governments.

The commission then suggests to elaborate on the UN Secretary-General’s proposed Emergency Platform “to design and convene an inter-agency, intergovernmental Planetary Emergency Platform to bring together fragmented international institutional structures, and to develop a Planetary Emergency Plan for urgent, coordinated action, with linked national emergency plans.”

I describe the Emergency Platform here.

This Platform, consisting of intergovernmental, State and non-State actors, would “plan for and cooperate on urgent action at all levels of governance, including a global decarbonizing package”.

The commission point out that over-stepping the planetary boundaries has to come with consequences.

Global security norms should be broadened to reflect the grave implications of over-stepping climate/planetary boundaries, including UN Security Council practices to better reflect the climate policy challenges and priorities of the Global South and of all peoples.

They are because of this calling for “courageous “top down” leadership within all levels of government, combined with generalized “bottom up” citizen pressure and engagement, to catalyze fundamental transformations.”

Some of the other suggestions in the statement includes:

• A Global Environment Agency
• An International Court for the Environment
• Institutional Reform of the Global Financial System

Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Global Commons Alliance

In the background, another closely related initiative has been developed to execute the prescribed transformation. In 2019 the Global Commons Alliance was launched in Singapore by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors with the mission “to mobilize citizens, companies, cities and countries to accelerate systems change, and become better guardians of the global commons”.[6]

Their strategic priorities are to change minds, actions and systems in order to safeguard the global commons and “regaining planetary stability”. They are ready to act swiftly when an emergency is declared.

By 2025, the true magnitude of the multifaceted transformations we need to safeguard the global commons will be well understood. Key actors will know what they need to do, where things are most urgent, and be taking action that sparks and sustains transformational change in order to protect the global commons.

Their philosophy is all based on Rockström’s Planetary Boundaries Framework.

The 70+ partners include Club of Rome, PIK, WEF, and WRI, with support from an “Investor Collaborative” consisting of among others Swiss MAVA Foundation, Dutch foundation Porticus and United Nations Global Environment Facility.

Rockström is a member of the steering committee of the Global Commons Alliance and leads the “Alliance Component” The Earth Commission with the mission to define “safe and just boundaries for people and the planet”.

This is a graph from my book The Digital World Brain (under translation to English), illustrating their formula for “systems transformation”.

It is a recipe for a Scientific Dictatorship. To quote the “tenth commandment” on the now demolished Georgia Guidestones:

Be not a cancer on the Earth – Leave room for nature – Leave room for nature.

It also reminds me of a document from the Secretariat of World Order that George Hunt uncovered during a “UNA Environment and Development Conference to provide broad public debate and support for United Nations Earth Summit” in Des Moines, September 22 1991.[7]

The security council of the UN, led by the Anglo-Saxon Major Nation Powers, will decree that henceforth, the Security Council will inform all nations that its suffrance on population has ended, that all nations have quotas for REDUCTION on a yearly basis, which will be enforced by the Security Council’ by selective or total embargo of credit, items of trade including food and medicine, or by military force, when required.

This has now been rebranded as carbon footprint reduction.

I will delve more into the Global Commons Alliance in a coming article. I also mention their influence in my presentation “Shaping the Future Agenda – The Digital World Brain” from Stavanger.

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Notes

[1] www.apollo-gaia.org/A-GProjectDevelopment.pdf

[2] Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K. et al. A safe operating space for humanity. Nature 461, 472–475 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/461472a

[3] www.slideshare.net/Eurotopia/assembly-programme

[4] globalgovernanceforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Governing-our-Planetary-Emergency-CGC-Statement-UNGA-v2.pdf

[5] www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/01/polycrisis-global-risks-report-cost-of-living/

[6] globalcommonsalliance.org/about/

[7] archive.org/details/GeorgeHuntUncedEarthSummit1992cobdenClubsPapersaldousHuxleythe_125/2-1-unUncedEarthSummit1992ByGeorgeHunt..mp4

Featured image is from SHTFplan.com

Amnesty International e Human Rights Watch hanno raccolto le prove, anche video, che Israele usa contro la popolazione di Gaza, oltre alle bombe sganciate dagli aerei,  proiettili di artiglieria  al fosforo bianco, una vera e propria arma di sterminio. 

Il fosforo bianco provoca gravi ustioni, spesso fino alle ossa, che sono lente a guarire e possono sviluppare infezioni. Se non vengono rimossi tutti i frammenti di fosforo bianco, questi possono aggravare le ferite e riaccendersi se esposti all’ossigeno. Le ustioni da fosforo bianco su appena il 10% del corpo umano sono spesso letali. Chi sopravvive alle ferite spesso soffre per tutta la vita. 

I morti a Gaza sono finora circa 3.500, i feriti circa 15.000. Data la mancanza di medicinali e attrezzature mediche a causa dell’embargo israeliano, la maggior parte dei feriti è destinata a morire. Si aggiungono a questi oltre 1.300 dispersi rimasti sepolti sotto le macerie, tra cui 600 bambini. Mentre proseguono i bombardamenti, che hanno colpito anche un ospedale provocando centinata di vittime, il comando israeliano ha ordinato a un milione di palestinesi, la metà della popolazione di Gaza,  di evacuare la parte settentrionale per ammassarsi a sud. Intanto l’esercito israeliano invia altri carrarmati ai confini di Gaza in vista di un’invasione su larga scala.

Il presidente Biden ha visitato Israele per dimostrare all’Alleato “la solidarietà statunitense di fronte al brutale attacco terroristico di Hamas”. Ritornato a Washington, Biden ha fatto sapere che  chiederà al Congresso altri 14 miliardi di dollari in aiuti militari a Israele “per la sua guerra contro Hamas” e altri 60 miliardi di dollari all’Ucraina “per combattere la Russia”. 

Ciò costituisce una ulteriore conferma di quanto documentato nella puntata 113 di Grandangolo: l’attacco di Hamas alla popolazione israeliana nelle aree limitrofe alla barriera di Gaza, che ha provocato un migliaio di vittime, fa parte di una operazione organizzata dai servizi segreti (Mossad, Cia e altri) analoga all’attacco terroristico dell’11 settembre 2001, che fece da innesco alla “guerra globale al terrorismo” scatenata dagli Stati Uniti  con l’invasione dell’Afghanistan e dell’Iraq. 

L’obiettivo de “L’11 Settembre del Medioriente” è non solo quello di spazzare via i territori palestinesi, ma di aprire un fronte di guerra, in particolare contro l’Iran, in un Medioriente in cui gli Stati Uniti e le potenze europee stanno perdendo terreno, in particolare con la prossima entrata di Iran e Arabia Saudita nei Brics insieme a Cina e Russia.

Manlio Dinucci

 

 

Al termine Pangea Grandangolo INCONTRI sulla iniziativa del 14 ottobre a Badia a Settimo per l’uscita dell’Italia dal sistema di guerra.

VIDEO :

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have collected evidence, including video, that Israel uses white phosphorus artillery shells, a veritable weapon of extermination, against the people of Gaza, in addition to bombs dropped from planes.

White phosphorus causes severe burns, often down to the bone, which are slow to heal and can develop infections.

If all white phosphorus fragments are not removed, they can aggravate wounds and flare up again when exposed to oxygen. White phosphorus burns on as little as 10 percent of the human body are often fatal.

Those who survive the wounds often suffer for life.

The death toll in Gaza so far is about 3,500, the wounded about 15,000. Given the lack of medicines and medical equipment due to the Israeli embargo, most of the wounded are likely to die.

Added to this are more than 1,300 missing people buried under the rubble, including 600 children.

As the shelling, which also hit a hospital causing hundreds of casualties, continues, the Israeli command has ordered one million Palestinians, half the population of Gaza, to evacuate the northern part to mass in the south.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army sends more tanks to Gaza’s borders in preparation for a full-scale invasion.

President Biden visited Israel to show the Ally “U.S. solidarity in the face of the brutal Hamas terrorist attack.”

Back in Washington, Biden let it be known that he will ask Congress for another $14 billion in military aid to Israel “for its war against Hamas” and another $60 billion to Ukraine “to fight Russia.”

This constitutes further confirmation of what was documented in episode 113 of Grandangle:

The Hamas attack on the Israeli population in the areas surrounding the Gaza barrier, which claimed a thousand lives, was part of an operation organized by the intelligence services (Mossad, CIA and others) similar to the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001, which was the trigger for the “global war on terror” unleashed by the United States with the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.

The goal of “The 9/11 of the Middle East” is not only to wipe out the Palestinian territories, but to open a war front, particularly against Iran, in a Middle East in which the United States and European powers are losing ground, particularly with Iran and Saudi Arabia’s upcoming entry into the Brics along with China & Russia. 

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First published on September 25, 2023

***

Dennis Francis, president of the UN General Assembly (UNGA), has ignored the objections of 11 countries and approved the UN declaration on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response without submitting it to a full assembly vote.

This declaration aims to form a global pandemic authority that has a range of disturbing powers, such as the ability to enforce lockdowns, push for universal vaccination and censor what it deems “misinformation.”

Some of the points it calls for include:

Increased surveillance and digital health documents: The declaration supports the use of digital health technologies for “implementing and supporting health measures and bolstering national response efforts” in the event of a health emergency or pandemic. Vaccine passports would fall under the category of digital health technologies.

Universal vaccination: Another alarming component of the declaration is the “deep concern” it expresses about dropping vaccination rates around the world. It vows to support the research and development of vaccines, calling routine vaccination a cost-effective and efficient public health intervention. The declaration calls for improving “routine immunization, vaccination and outreach capacities, including by providing evidence-based information on promoting confidence, uptake, demand,” in addition to “expanding vaccine coverage to prevent outbreaks as well as the spread and re-emergence of communicable diseases.”

Making COVID-19-related temporary powers permanent: The declaration also emphasizes the need to build on the practices and lessons that were learned from the pandemic and turn temporary powers into permanent ones sustainably.

Establishing a pandemic fund: The declaration seeks to launch a pandemic fund of $30 billion per year for “critical investments” related to preparing for and responding to pandemics.

Censoring vaccine critics: The new declaration also voices “concern that health-related misinformation and disinformation negatively impacted routine immunization services globally” and calls for measures to be implemented to address what it considers to be misinformation, particularly on social media platforms. It also wants to take steps to counteract vaccine hesitancy and create more trust in public health authorities.

Supporters of the declaration believe it will aid worldwide collaboration in preventing pandemics and improving public health. The World Health Organization claims it will apply some of the lessons that were learned during the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, the move is causing a lot of concern among those who understand its implications, like Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney, who calls it “unprecedented.”

He said: “There’s no getting around the fact that it’s going to come at the expense of the sovereignty of the various nations that will subsequently be told that they have an emergency and told what they have to do about it.”

Bioweapons expert and international law professor for the University of Illinois, Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph. D., said: “This is a full-court press to have the entirety of the United Nations Organization, its specialized agencies and its affiliated organizations, back up and support their proposed globalist WHO worldwide totalitarian medical and scientific police state.”

Critics are also concerned that the declaration’s support of COVID-19-style restrictions will close schools and essentially force women out of their jobs and potentially into poverty.

Nearly a Dozen Nations Were Against the Declaration

The representatives of 11 countries wrote a letter to the president of the UNGA expressing reservations about the declaration. The letter stated: “Our delegations are convinced that this is no way to handle multilateral and intergovernmental negotiations on issues of great relevance for the international community, particularly for developing countries.”

Boyle is accusing the UNGA of misrepresenting the declaration by having the UNGA president approve it because they knew that it would not pass the UNGA as a consensus resolution given the 11 objections.

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First published on October 3, 2023

*** 

A limitless propaganda to perpetuate the war on humanity is ongoing, while at the same time, increasingly more scientists come to the fore and speak out – speak truth to power.

The 2023 Nobel Prize for medicine is awarded to two scientists for inventing the mRNA vax containing spike protein – affecting and in many cases annihilating the human immune system.

It’s almost like Obama getting the Nobel Prize in 2009 for the Peace he would foster as US President (so the saying went), even before he could act as a “Peacemaker” as President (January 2009 to January 2017). Officially the Nobel Committee attributed the Peace Prize to Obama for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

Obama later became involved in six wars, some of which he began.

For the Medicine Nobel Prize 2023, the winners are Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman.

They were cited by the Nobel clan for contributing “to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health.” This is endlessly rehashed by western mainstream media.

They go even further. According to some news outlets, thanks to their discovery of the mRNA method, millions of lives could be saved from the deadly covid-19 virus. “The mRNA, or messenger ribonucleic acid, is a single-stranded molecule that corresponds to the genetic sequence of a gene and is read by a ribosome in the process of synthesizing a [spike] protein “(Wikipedia).

AP News reports from Stockholm that the discovery and subsequent creation of mRNA vaccines against Covid-19 was critical in slowing the pandemic. The mRNA technology is also being studied for treatment of cancer and other diseases.

The Nobel panel went on – “the pair’s groundbreaking findings … fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system.”

If this is not propaganda for a fake “vaccine”, what is it?

In fact, the administering of billions of doses of the mRNA vax has already caused an estimated 20 million deaths – and the count goes on.

In reality, the vaccine which comes in different compositions, some deadlier than others, could also be called a eugenist agent – helping to drastically reduce world population – one of the key targets of the WEF’s Great Reset, alias the illegally WEF-allied UN and its Agenda 2030 with the noble, but utterly fake, 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

According to Mike Yeadon, former VP Pfizer and Chief Research at Pfizer, the real death toll from “vaccination” will occur some three to ten years after vaxxing, when most people cannot or do not want to associate the death of a loved one to the vaxx. See this and this.

The mainstream, the blue-pilled Matrix dwellers, understand quite well what is going on, but they do not dare pursuing it, much less, standing up and shouting the truth out there for everyone to hear – and to stop once and for all the killing propaganda which has in parts already been announced in parts of the western world and Australia, as in new lockdowns, mask wearing and, foremost, compulsory vaccination in schools, and probably soon again in the workplace.

Who knows whether humanity is sufficiently awake to take to the streets, to stop working, go on limitless strike – helping bringing the truth home to the people.

*

Juxtaposed to the narrative behind the medicine Nobel Prize is Dr. Peter McCullough’s presentation and exposure to the European Parliament of the covid vaccination fraud, of the death already caused and expected to be caused in the future.

Dr. McCullough is an American cardiologist. He was Vice Chief of internal medicine at Baylor University Medical Center and a professor at Texas A&M University.

In his address to the European Parliament, Dr. McCullough speaks about the countless cases – injuries and sudden deaths – of myocarditis which can clearly be traced to the covid vax. He outlines the planned agenda by the WEF / WHO and the UN system – a mass genocide that maybe just at the beginning.

He also refers to the WEF / WHO / UN partnership in implementing the globe spanning health tyranny in the form of the drastically revised International Health Regulation (IHR), including what used to be called the “Pandemic Treaty”, except, it is no longer a treaty as it will not be voted on at the May 2024 World Health Assembly (WHA), but it will simply be adopted, hence becoming a Health / Pandemic Convention. That is the plan.

It may not come through.

At the conclusion of his speech, he urges all 27 EU nations to exit WHO and retake their national sovereign states, being masters of their own responsibility over issues of health and disease.

See below the full 17-minute presentation at the EU Parliament on 13 September 2023.

Another internationally renowned speaker at the European Parliament, Dr. David E Martin, tells his audience on 15 September 2023, albeit a small audience, what WHO really is, how and by whom it is funded, and what the real agenda of WHO was from the very beginning. WHO’s creation in 1948 was inspired and paid for by the Rockefeller Foundation, to decide over life and death of humanity.

Dr. David Martin is the Founder and Chairman of M-CAM International, RASA Energy, and is a Batten Fellow of the University of Virginia. M∙CAM is the international leader in intellectual property-based financial risk management.

Dr. Martin’s experience includes founding the first medical device clinical trials center at UVA (University of Virginia), while on the medical school faculty in radiology and orthopedic surgery.

His work with global investigation of biological and chemical weapons was done through his company Mosaic Technologies in which he led numerous defenses to civilian technology transfer programs with the world’s largest companies and countries.

As David notices the many empty seats in the EU Parliament, he wonders, for lack of interest, or interest in protecting their lush jobs by not association with the speech of a revealer of truth?

He then proceeds talking about the planned genocide behind the Covid farce, a false pandemic, planned for decades, followed by a worldwide – no escape — vax campaign, where different so-called vax substances were tested on people without their knowledge, to find out about the level of the different vaxes deadly reactions.

In no uncertain terms, Dr. Martin calls WHO what it is – a criminal racketeering organization, in no ways deserving immunity from criminal persecution; funded up to 88% by private interests mostly pharma; and to a large extent by the Gates Foundation. The Gates and the Rockefellers are some of the world’s most notorious eugenists.

Indeed, WHO’s actions are not just backed, but commanded by the World Economic Forum (WEF), the United Nations [which signed an illegal pact with the WEF – a grave conflict of interest], the current White House – and all the macro-financial interests behind this murderous undertaking (annotation by author).

Ending his speech, Dr. Martin calls upon the European Union and the people and civil organizations of the world to not just limit the powers of the WHO, but to destroy the WHO.

Watch Dr. David Martin’s impressive 25-minute video presentation on 15 September 2023 at the European Parliament in Strasbourg below.

Dr. David E. Martin, American Biological Threat Consultant spoke at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. At the hearing to discuss the World Health Organization.

"The same criminal racketeers planned, manufactured and did all agency capture to make sure that you were… pic.twitter.com/Be29oyNirM

— Jo Bond❤️ (@Jo_Bond) September 15, 2023

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

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

Featured image: Karikó (right) with Drew Weissman in 2022 (Licensed under CC BY 3.0)

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On October 9, 2023, I posted this. 

What follows purports to be a description of the impenetrable Israeli security barrier around Gaza written by a former commander of a section of the fence. Whether it is or not, the description of the security barrier provided can be checked. It seems impossible that Hamas could have succeeded in a surprise attack:

Here’s what commander of the Kerem Shalom Battalion, who knows the area in detail, wrote…:

“Something here doesn’t add up to me!!! This is a mystery that I can’t find an answer to.

I happen to know how things work in Gaza and on the border. I was the commander of the Kerem Shalom sector (Rafih), I was in charge of the Kissuf sector, I know the perimeter fence very well, I know how the army works there. I was in the Shatti refugee camp in Gaza, I was in charge of the Jibaliya refugee camp, I would make ambushes on the fence and deep in the area. I met Gazans, ate and breathed Gaza.

The obstacle is built so that even a fox cannot pass it:

Set alerts according to 3 levels of pressure. She must alert when she is cut. There are 24/7 forces that are responsible for arriving within a few minutes, if not seconds, to the point where there is an alert in the fence. Every day do at least one penetration practice. Each subdivision has a standby squad whose role is to increase the force in an emergency situation. Observations scattered along the border cover every inch of it. The female observers are champions in identification. They don’t miss. They detect movement even before it even approaches the obstacle – day and night. 

At problematic points (dead areas) they place a tank with observation and detection capabilities, and a terrifying firepower. In some cases snipers are deployed in the field.

Every day before dawn there is a “dawn alert” procedure. At this hour all the forces are awake (in this case also the hour when hundreds of terrorists entered Israel). The night shift alternates with the day shift. The commander of each force inspects the axis to make sure there were no infiltrations during the night. Trackers that move on the axis know how to recognize traces. They know who crossed the fence, how much and even when.

Each scenario has a clear procedure. For example, a procedure for infiltrating terrorists, a procedure for taking hostages. Everything is written in blood and has been proving itself for years.

There are several other layers of security that this is not the place to talk about. In short, we are talking about an obstacle that proves itself for years and years.

So how the hell does a Palestinian tractor move towards the fence without anyone reacting to it?

How did the tractor manage to sabotage the fence for a long hour and open access to Israel without anyone reacting to it?

How did hundreds of terrorists and civilians cross the barrier without anyone on our side lifting a finger?

How did terrorists arrive on foot and in vehicles, armed from head to toe, to dozens of Israeli settlements, without any reaction from our side?

How did hundreds of terrorists stay in Israeli territory for long hours, shoot hundreds of Israelis, loot property, without there being even a single reaction on our side?

How did it happen that hundreds of terrorists kidnapped dozens of Israelis, surprised soldiers, officers when they were not ready, and kidnapped them to Gaza, without anyone stopping them?

How is it that one bullet was not fired?

How did all this happen under our noses?

Where did an entire division go?

Where did 3 brigades go?

Who swallowed 9 battalions?

What happened to 36 companies?

Where did an entire regular infantry brigade go that usually outnumbers the elite?

Where were all the reserve battalions that augment the regular army?

Where did thousands of soldiers go???

Someone here needs to provide explanations!!”

In view of this description of the security barrier, this statement by the Israeli General Halevi admitting the failure of the Israeli Defense Force to protect Israel from Hamas is obviously intended as a coverup for the fact that the attack was allowed in order to close the book on Palestine.

Since 1947 the world has done nothing to stop Israel’s absorption of Palestine, so naturally Israel expects no opposition this time. It looks like this is a miscalculation by Israel. See this.

General Herzl Halevi, October 2023

“The Cat is Out of the Bag”. Hamas is a Partner

Of utmost relevance to the analysis of Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, 

And in response to General Halevi’s (Above) Questions.

At Least “Part of the Answer” (from the Horse’s Mouth= Netanyahu) regarding the relationship between Hamas and Mossad: 

In March 2019, Prime Minister Netanyahu confirmed his alliance with Hamas in a recorded statement  to Likud Party Knesset members:  

“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.” (quoted in Haaretz, October 9, 2023) 

Consult Annex which describes the features of the fence.

Everything Points to Massive Fraud and Criminality by Netanhayu and his IDF-Mossad apparatus.

It is a criminal “False Flag” operation against Israeli civilians engineered by the Netanyahu government, which controls Hamas. 

It is “A False Flag” which has resulted in the deaths of countless Israeli civilians, which in turn has provided a justification “on fake humanitarian grounds” to Netanhayu’s criminal IDF military “revenge” against 2.3 million Gaza civilians.

It is a War against Palestinians and Israelis. 

And the international community applauds. 

Michel Chossudovsky,  Global Research, October 13, 2023 

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Annex

The Features of the Gaza Fence (2021)

Defence ministry says the barrier spans 65km and that 140,000 tonnes of iron and steel were used in its construction  

Israel’s defence ministry said the barrier, which includes hundreds of cameras, radars and other sensors, spans 65km and that 140,000 tonnes of iron and steel were used in its construction,

“The barrier, which is an innovative and technologically advanced project, deprives Hamas of one of the capabilities it tried to develop,” Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz said, according to a defence ministry statement.

The ministry said the project’s “smart fence” is more than six metres high and its maritime barrier includes means to detect infiltration by sea and a remote-controlled weapons system.

Barrier against tunnels along the Israel-Gaza Strip border 2019 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

The ministry did not disclose the depth of the underground wall.

Israel has maintained a crippling blockade of the Gaza Strip since 2007, which critics say amounts to a collective punishment of the impoverished enclave’s two million residents.

Israel prevents the importing of materials and equipment into Gaza and has imposed strict restrictions on exports, leading to a state of “paralysis” in several sectors of Gaza’s economy.

Egypt also upholds the siege, restricting movement in and out of Gaza on its border.

***

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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article was originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: General Halevi (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

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“I served in the IDF 25 years ago, in the intelligence forces. There’s no way Israel did not know of what’s coming. A cat moving alongside the fence is triggering all forces. So this?? 

What happened to the “strongest army in the world”?

How come border crossings were wide open?? Something is VERY WRONG HERE, something is very strange, this chain of events is very unusual and not typical for the Israeli defense system.

To me this surprise attack seems like a planned operation. On all fronts.”

– (Statement by Efrat Fenigson, former IDF intelligence,  October 7, 2023, emphasis added) [1]

“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.”

-( Benjamin Netanyahu, meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019.  (Haaretz, October 9, 2023, emphasis added)

“These are the basic lines of the national government headed by me [Netanyahu]: The Jewish people have an exclusive and unquestionable right to all areas of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel — in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan, Judea and Samaria.”

– (Benjamin Netanyahu, January 2023. emphasis added) [2]

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

The massive October 7 attack by the “Palestinian resistance group” Hamas on Jewish communities in Israel close to the border with Gaza served the purpose of being the very trigger Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needed to finally secure his dream of all parts of the Land of Israel. Including Gaza.

In the name of the war that Hamas triggered, Netanyahu, together with all his opposition colleagues announced his determination to completely devastate the menace the attackers represented and has urged all citizens of the world’s single biggest open-air concentration camp to move south before they commence with their cleansing procedure.

Airstrikes have already struck several buildings in Gaza, including schools and hospitals, and  the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) says:

“Thousands of people have been killed, including children and women. Gaza is now even running out of body bags. Entire families are being ripped apart.

“At least 1 million people were forced to flee their homes in one week alone. A river of people continues to flow south. No place is safe in Gaza.

“At least 400,000 displaced (persons) are now in UNRWA schools and buildings, and most are not equipped as emergency shelters….

“The UNRWA operations is the largest United Nations footprint in the Gaza Strip, and we are on the verge of collapse.

“This is absolutely unprecedented.”[3]

What we are witnessing folks is the genocide of Palestinians.

And yet Western leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden, are passionate about standing alongside Israel referring to it as “self-defence.” [4]

Russia clearly does not have the same latitude. [5][6]

The description is typically referred to as Israel’s 9/11. And just as U.S. President George W Bush “earned” the sympathies of the world, and certainly NATO, in his cry to strike back against the September 11th terrorists, Netanyahu twenty-two years later is similarly benefiting from a lack of criticism given the crisis on his step. [7]

Will 2.3 million Palestinians be moved from their homes or killed in the name of “being with Israel or being with the terrorists?” The Global Research News Hour looks into this matter and the many questions arising from it in a jam-packed sixty minute show.

In our first half hour, two veteran anti-war activists in Canada, Yves Engler and Ken Stone, talk about public actions protesting the Canadian Liberal government and the left-oriented New Democratic Party for appearing to stand “should to shoulder” with Netanyahu and his gang regardless of the clear illegal stance in the present and in the days ahead. In our second half hour, journalist Robert Inlakesh talks about the fake news and dis-information coming from the Israeli side to contaminate the West’s appraisal of the conflict. And finally, Philip Giraldi, a former counter-terrorist expert living in the U.S., spelled out how this attack by Hamas which sparked a brand new war on terrorism was also a false flag incident.

Yves Engler has been dubbed “one of the most important voices on the Canadian Left today” (Briarpatch), “in the mould of I.F. Stone” (Globe and Mail), and “part of that rare but growing group of social critics unafraid to confront Canada’s self-satisfied myths” (Quill & Quire). He has published nine books.

Ken Stone is a long time antiwar, anti-racism, environmental and labour activist, and resident in Hamilton. He is also Treasurer of the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War. He currently coordinates the Canada-Wide Peace and Justice Network.

Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. He is a former counter-terrorism specialist and military analyst for the CIA, and also a founding member of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 405) 

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

1. https://efrat.substack.com/p/israel-hamas-war-an-update

2. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230103-jewish-supremacy-is-state-policy-says-netanyahu/

3. https://www.globalresearch.ca/unrwa-warns-unprecedented-humanitarian-catastrophe-gaza/5836837

4.  SOLCYRE BURGA (October 8, 2023), ‘Here’s How World Leaders Have Reacted to the Israel-Hamas War’, Time Magazine; https://time.com/6321800/world-leaders-react-hamas-attack-israel/

5. https://www.globalresearch.ca/international-criminal-court-silence-israel-gaza-attacks-utterly-unacceptable/5836827

6. https://www.globalresearch.ca/i-c-c-arrest-warrant-for-vladimir-putin-for-kidnapping-ukrainian-children-borders-on-ridicule/5812752

7. SOLCYRE BURGA op cit

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“I do not condemn Hamas because the resistance of the Palestinian people is a reflex response to their slow genocide…. The people I do condemn are the political class internationally who [support] “Israel’s right to self-defence”. A right they grant to the oppressor but deny to the oppressed. Those are the people who need to be condemned.” —Former UK ambassador Craig Murray “Now that I have your attention.”

“There’s no way Israel did not know of what’s coming… How come border crossings were wide open?” —Efrat Fenigson, former IDF intelligence Oct. 7, 2023

***

Israel has been a scofflaw state since its founding, and there are virtually no United Nations resolutions or articles of international law that it does not continually breach. The state was founded on the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians, and its knee has never been lifted from Palestinian necks. Israel has maintained a military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip since 1967 and a humanitarian siege of Gaza, compared by many to the 2-year Warsaw Ghetto, since 2006. Israel has never stopped its ethnic cleansing or theft of Palestinian resources; its apartheid is enabled by viciously racist textbooks and the total erasure of Palestinians from its history.

It is no secret that many in Israel’s ultra right-wing government have been salivating for an opportunity to ethnically cleanse or otherwise eliminate Palestinians who refuse to be driven from their homeland, particularly those in occupied Gaza. There is evidence that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pretended to be blindsided by what was, in effect, a Hamas prison breakout of October 7th to turn it into an opportunity for genocide.

Hamas announced that the purpose of its incursion into Israel was to obtain hostages in order to exchange them for an estimated 1000 Palestinian prisoners[1]: political prisoners who are routinely tortured and leaders who have never been charged with any crime. The Hamas plan to kidnap Israeli civilians for a prisoner exchange was, in its intent, within its rights. Killing civilians would have been counterproductive, a war crime, and against its interests. But it could have been in Israel’s.

The world community, which annually ignores its contractual legal obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention to protect Palestinian human rights, has responded now with outrage at Israel’s claim of victimhood. While the world community has quietly allowed Israel total impunity for its ongoing crimes against Palestinians, it now responds to Israel’s self-serving outrage by condemning the Palestinian’s only legitimate leadership.

Hamas, elected by all Palestinians under occupation in 2006, has been regarded as incorruptible and dedicated to Palestinian rights. It has called for international law as the basis for peace, which Israel, hoping to illegally annex Palestinian territory, rejects.

Israel’s Efforts to Incite Hatred Against Hamas

Israel’s reaction to the incursion was to immediately attempt to incite hatred against Hamas by falsely claiming that it had “beheaded 40 infants and toddlers”: a lie that was traced to the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu told this to U.S. President  Biden, who announced it publicly; the lie was then “confirmed” twice by CNN’s Sarah Sidner. It has been confirmed to be a fabrication.

It is acknowledged that Israel was explicitly informed about the incursion at least three days before it occurred. With the world’s most sophisticated surveillance system, many believe that Israel had to have known about it far earlier, since the planning had reportedly been in the works for a couple of years. According to Max Blumenthal, Hamas had even created the model of a kibbutz for resistance fighters to practice in. [2]

Israel’s outrageous lie about Hamas “beheading babies” demonstrated its intent to incite hatred of Hamas; its foreknowledge of the incursion gave it an opportunity to ensure there would be enough “innocent civilian deaths” to “justify” a Palestinian genocide.

Israel’s Hannibal Directive allows the IDF to use heavy force when its soldiers are at risk of being taken as hostages, even at the risk of killing the soldiers. It is not difficult to imagine Israel extending this principle when the point of the Hamas incursion was to get hostages for prisoner exchanges.

Possible Evidence that Israel Ensured the Success of the Hamas Incursion

According to former IDF intelligence officer Efrat Fenigson, “The border crossings were wide open.” [3]

Israel had reduced the number of battalions guarding the Gaza border from three to one before the incursion. [4]

The site of the Supernova music festival was chosen two days before the incursion to be at Re’im, about 3 miles from the Gaza border. [5]

Questions About the Music Festival Deaths: Did Israeli Facilitate the Toll? 

Israel claims that Hamas fighters killed hundreds of innocent civilians: claims that have largely not been explained. Assuming that the accusations are legitimate, who were these people and how closely were they connected to the IDF bases and associated kibbuzim that ring Gaza’s border to facilitate their imprisonment? Israeli and Hamas definitions of “innocent civilian” might differ.

The most publicized Israeli claim is that Hamas killed 260 attendees at a music festival held near Gaza’s border. There is quite a bit of footage accessible on the Internet that was apparently taken at that event. The footage that I saw, however, shows no one being shot: it shows people running, cars burned out, drones overhead, and one guy shooting a gun in the air. It is apparent that there is a problem, but no proof of who was causing all “six hours” of it. The Mossad is known to have operatives who appear to be Palestinian, so someone who looks Palestinian may not be part of Palestinian resistance.

It is evident that Hamas did take hostages at the event, and that there was shooting. But given Israel’s eagerness to accuse Hamas of a crime it did not commit, its inflammatory accusation that Hamas killed hundreds of civilians needs to be verified:

Videos of attackers should have included voices; why were they muted?

Canadian/Israeli Shir Georgy died after messaging her father on Saturday morning that she was safe “in a room with a police officer”[6]; how did she die?

The attack on the music site lasted for 6 hours; [7] why were IDF not driven or flown in?

It took Israel 10 hours to get help to the music site; [8] what was Israel waiting for?

There were many burned out cars visible in videos; did Hamas fighters have the ability to destroy cars? Wouldn’t Hamas have wanted to make use of them?

Israeli police and security told escaping music attendees that the major roads were blocked so they had to drive eastward over open, cleared fields [9]; why were major roads out blocked to Israelis at that time? 

Attackers threw grenades into the four underground bunkers where many were hiding; the Hamas men might have discovered the bunkers by following people, but it was not in their interest to kill those who were inaccessible or hiding. 

A Hamas leader apologized for the civilian deaths that Israel claimed their operation had caused, noting that these were not supposed to have happened. [10] But could he have known whether they were responsible for the so-callled “innocent civilians” that Israel claimed? An Israeli witness reported that IDF killed both hostages as well as their captors. [11] Given Israel’s attempts to malign Hamas, there should be independent proof that Hamas fighters were responsible for the “innocent civilian” deaths they were accused of.

Implications for the Future

Israel has made use of the anger it whipped up to wipe out entire neighborhoods of Gaza with massive bombing, and 400,000 Israeli soldiers are reportedly massed at Gaza’s border. It warned Gazans to flee, but there are no exits, and it bombed the “safe” route that it told Palestinans to take. [12]

According to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Israel’s two objectives in going into Gaza are to kill or capture Hamas government leaders, and to identify any Iranian weaponry, which, he claims, could cause Israel to attack Iran. [13] But Israel’s carpet bombing is genocidal rather than targeted. And would Israel allow any identification of Iranian arms to be independently verified? And would such a confirmation constitute legal grounds for an Israeli attack? 

Will the world community continue to tolerate US-backed global chaos?

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Karin Brothers is a freelance writer. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

1. Blumenthal, Max. Interview with Stephen Gardner. Oct. 13, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX3Sqs3gSMs

2: Blumenthal, Max, Mate, Aaron. “Zero hour in Gaza “. The Grayzone live. October 13, 2023.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-p2bjA2b4U

3 Giraldi, Philip and Chossudovsky, Michel. Is the Gaza-Israel Fighting “A False Flag”? They Let it Happen? Their Objective Is “to Wipe Gaza Off the Map”? Global Research. October 15, 2023. https://www.globalresearch.ca/is-the-gaza-israel-fighting-a-false-flag-they-let-it-happen-their-objective-is-to-wipe-gaza-off-the-map/5835310

4 : Blumenthal, Max, Mate, Aaron. “Zero hour in Gaza “. The Grayzone live. October 13, 2023.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-p2bjA2b4U

5, Ibid.

6. Chown, Marco. Israel-Hamas war: Canadian-Israeli Shir Georgy confirmed dead, family says. The Toronto Star. October 14, 2023.  https://www.thestar.com/news/world/israel-hamas-war-canadian-israeli-shir-georgy-confirmed-dead-family-says/article_03c1999d-2349-53bc-9deb-4498f74a2429.html

7. Polglase, Katie. How Hamas trapped civilians at music festival. CNN. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sScDHHNaHjI

8. Ibid.

9, Ibid.

10. Mercouris, Alexander. The Duran. October 14, 2023. Theduran.locals.com

11. Abunimah, Ali and Sheen, David. “Israeli Forces Shot Their Own Civilians, Kibbutz Survivor Says”. Global Research. October 17, 2023. Https://www.globalresearch.ca/israeli-forces-shot-their-own-civilians-kibbutz-survivor-says/5836630

12. Blumenthal, Max, Mate, Aaron. “Zero hour in Gaza “. The Grayzone live. October 13, 2023.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-p2bjA2b4U

13. Polglase, Katie. How Hamas trapped civilians at music festival. CNN. Undated. Accessed Oct. 11.2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sScDHHNaHjI

Featured image is from UNRWA

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A lot has been said about the much-touted fighter jet deliveries to the Kiev regime forces and how this would supposedly “tip the balance of power” in its favor. However, the process has been mired in controversy and difficulties since the very beginning.

It includes everything from problems finding the countries willing to provide the jets to giving Ukrainian pilots enough training to make a difference while also accelerating the process as much as possible. The first obstacle was the language barrier. Of the 32 pilots sent to be trained on how to fly F-16s, only eight spoke English proficiently enough to be able to attend lessons and even they had to be given advanced courses on the usage of complex military nomenclature. Even if it took the pilots less than six months to attain the desired proficiency, that was only enough for them to start basic training on how to fly the jet.

However, being able to fly an aircraft is a far cry from being able to master its usage in combat, particularly against an opponent that not only has massive numerical advantage, but is also decades ahead technologically. Ukrainian pilots themselves admitted that their Soviet-era Su-27s are superior to F-16s.

The Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) operate significantly more advanced jets than the Su-27. In fact, even the modernized Russian Su-27SM3 is much more capable than its Ukrainian counterpart. There are also the newer Su-30SM and Su-30M2, to say nothing of the high-end fighter jets such as the MIG-31BM interceptor, Su-35S or the latest Su-57. The last three are by far the most dangerous fighters of our age, as they’ve proven far more capable than expected by Western military analysts and observers, with even the British military forced to admit it.

And yet, this string of catch-22s is not nearly the end of issues for the Neo-Nazi junta.

Namely, this time, another major problem with fighter jet deliveries from NATO members is not even directly connected to the aircraft themselves, but ground-based air defenses. In essence, what this issue boils down to is the chronic lack of SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems.

Despite losing a large chunk of the territory under its immediate control, the Kiev regime still has one of the largest land areas in Europe and defending it all is simply impossible.

Thus, the Neo-Nazi junta is forced to improvise and prioritize, placing air defenses in the most important cities and oblasts (regions). This results in SAM units being spread thin and with extremely limited logistics, as the stockpile of Soviet-made missiles has effectively run out and the political West has nothing to replace them with.

However, this still doesn’t tackle the more pressing issues that NATO wants resolved before any sort of fighter jet deliveries and that’s the question of air defenses for the airbases where the aircraft would be stationed.

The Kiev regime started preparations to accommodate Western-made jets months ago, including the effective militarization of existing civilian airports and infrastructure. In order to provide adequate security for these ad hoc airbases, additional air defense systems and units will need to be raised, set up and deployed. And yet, the Neo-Nazi junta has neither the human nor industrial resources to accomplish such a laborious task, to say nothing of the financial dependence on its Western puppet masters. SAM systems operators have among the highest casualty rates in the conflict, meaning that the soldiers aren’t exactly racing to join such units.

Thus, the Kiev regime will simply have to sacrifice the protection of important administrative buildings, as well as military and energy infrastructure in order to provide air defense coverage for the new ad hoc airbases housing the Western-made jets. However, even this can’t be done very efficiently. Namely, the Soviet-era SAM systems cannot be readily replaced with US/NATO counterparts for the simple reason that the latter are too expensive, not to mention they have demonstrated no superior capabilities in comparison to Soviet systems. On the contrary, most are even inferior, despite costing significantly more. The primary reason for this is that the Western (in reality mostly American) military doctrine focuses mainly on air superiority, which gives air defenses a secondary role. In essence, it’s sort of like an auxiliary force aiming to simply augment military aircraft.

This is in stark contrast to the Soviet/Russian doctrine that puts a lot of emphasis on ground-based air defenses that are designed to operate independently and even in situations where friendly fighter jets are able to provide little or no air cover whatsoever.

Still, this isn’t where the problems for the Neo-Nazi junta end. In addition to regular long-range missiles and other precision-guided munitions (PGMs), the Russian military is increasingly using extended-range loitering munitions/kamikaze drones, such as the now legendary ZALA “Lancet”. These drones have recently destroyed at least two aircraft parked on runways approximately 100 km away from the frontlines. This was considered effectively impossible, as the Kiev regime forces and their NATO overlords previously believed that the aforementioned drones were only limited to tactical combat situations.

Worse yet, the Neo-Nazi junta mostly lacks adequate defenses against such weapons. And just as the Soviet-era Su-25 attack jet and MiG-29 fighter were destroyed while parked, the same could (or rather would) happen to US-made F-16s. Precisely this might be the reason why Volodymyr Zelensky recently asked NATO to “lease” SAM systems. There’s simply no other way to protect the new militarized airfields without sacrificing something else. And this is without even getting into the aforementioned viability of old F-16s being used against modern Russian jets. What’s more, Sweden has also offered its “Gripen” jets, which I argued would happen well over a year ago. On paper, these fighters are somewhat more capable than F-16s, but Sweden has a very unusual policy of refusing to help a country that bought the jets from it if the said country is engaged in hostilities.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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Belugas to Butterflies Plagued by Harmful Chemicals

Click here for the interactive map

Important notes:

• Only a subset of animals in a few regions have been studied for specific flame retardants.
• This map shows a selection of peer-reviewed studies; many more exist. 
• Flame retardants are used to meet flammability standards which often do not provide meaningful fire-safety benefitsand can be influenced by flame retardant manufacturers.
• Wildlife & humans are exposed to flame retardants from air, water, & food; see observed health harms below.
• This exposure can continue decades after a specific flame retardant is phased out due to its persistent, mobile, bioaccumulative, & toxic properties.
• Flame retardants should be used only after their lack of health harm and value in preventing fires have been demonstrated.

A Selection of Health Effects of Flame Retardants in Wildlife

Flame Retardant	Animal	Health Impact
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)	Killer Whales	Estimated to threaten long-term viability of >50% global killer whale population
	River Otters	Associated with changes in thyroid & sex hormone levels
	Polar Bears	Associated with changes in thyroid hormone levels
	Beluga Whales	Altered vitamin A and E profiles
	Ringed Seals	Impacted health-related gene transcription
	Killer Whales	Altered gene transcription
PBDEs	American Kestrels	Lowered reproductive success, less copulation & pair bonding
	Sea Lions	Associated with urogenital cancer
	Chinook Salmon	Increased infectious disease susceptibility
	Mice	Decreased thyroid hormone concentrations
	Polar Bears	Associated with changes in thyroid hormone levels
Chlorinated paraffins	Rainbow Trout	Diminished startle response, loss of equilibrium, liver lesions (SCCPs, MCPPs)
	Zebrafish	Altered thyroid hormone levels (SCCPs)
	American Kestrels	Reduced thyroid hormones (SCCPs)
Other halogenated FRs	American Kestrels	Likely obesogenic (DBE-DBCH)
		Reduced vocalization, courtship, egg mass, & male parental behavior (HBCD)
		Thyroid disruption, oxidative stress, altered heart & brain mass (EHTBB, TBPH)
Organophosphate FRs	Rats and Mice	Increased liver and kidney tumors (TCPP)
	Japanese Quail	Thyroidal effects, suppressed growth, reduced metabolic rate (TPhP)
	Zebrafish	Altered motility & anxiety-related behavior (IPP, BPDP, EHDP)
	Mice	Oxidative stress & endocrine disruption, e.g. decreased testosterone (TCEP, TPP)
	Zebrafish	Altered hormone levels, decreased egg production, & malformation (TDCPP)

 

The above health impacts are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to health harms experienced by wildlife due to the use of flame retardant chemicals in products before safety and efficacy are demonstrated. 

Flame retardants also cause health harm in humans, including:

• Endocrine disruption
• Neurodevelopmental effects
• Decreased fertility
• Some cancers

Learn more about flame retardants at SixClasses.org and reducing exposure here.

If you’d like to suggest a new study that could be added to our selection of points, email it to [email protected].

Map designed and produced by Maddie Dolan.

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The Hamas Partnership is confirmed by Netanyahu

“The Cat is Out of the Bag”

“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)

Does this statement not suggest that Netanyahu and his military-intelligence apparatus are responsible for the killings of innocent Israeli civilians? 

“Support” and “Money” for Hamas. 

“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)

The Dangers of Military Escalation

Let us be under no illusions, this “false flag” operation is a complex military-intelligence undertaking, carefully planned over several years, in liaison and  coordination with US intelligence, the Pentagon and NATO. 

In turn, this action against Palestine is already conducive to a process of military escalation which potentially could engulf a large part of Middle East.

Michel Chossudovsky: Interview with Caroline Mailloux

Video

 

 

To leave a comment or access the Lux Media Rumble page, click the lower right hand corner of the Screen 

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For more details, analysis and history on The Hamas Partnership with Netanyahu, see:

Is the Gaza-Israel Fighting “A False Flag”? They Let it Happen? Their Objective Is “to Wipe Gaza Off the Map”?

By Philip Giraldi and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 15, 2023

 

 

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Amazon has introduced two new robots to speed up deliveries, raising concerns among fulfillment center workers that the e-commerce giant might eventually reduce its workforce.

In a blog post on Wednesday, Amazon said its robotics team will begin testing a bipedal robot named “Digit” at a site just south of Seattle. 

“Digit can move, grasp, and handle items in spaces and corners of warehouses in novel ways. Its size and shape are well suited for buildings that are designed for humans, and we believe that there is a big opportunity to scale a mobile manipulator solution, such as Digit, which can work collaboratively with employees,” Amazon said. 

Amazon explained Digit will “help employees with tote recycling, a highly repetitive process of picking up and moving empty totes once inventory has been completely picked out of them.” 

In addition to Digit, Amazon revealed Sequoia, a new robotic system to help fulfill customer orders faster, already operational at a Texas fulfillment center. 

“Sequoia will help us delight customers with greater speed and increased accuracy for delivery estimates, while also improving employee safety at our facilities,” Amazon said, adding it will “identify and store inventory we receive at our fulfillment centers up to 75% faster than we can today.” 

It also “reduces the time it takes to process an order through a fulfillment center by up to 25%, which improves our shipping predictability and increases the number of goods we can offer for Same-Day or Next-Day shipping,” the e-commerce giant added. 

Amazon said it has more than “750,000 robots working collaboratively with our employees, taking on highly repetitive tasks and freeing employees up to better deliver for our customers.”

At some point, Amazon will realize its robot workforce can do a better job fulfilling orders than humans because robots don’t get sick, take breaks, complain, strike, or waste time watching TikTok videos on their smartphones. 

We’ve penned plenty of notes over the years, informing readers about the coming massive layoff wave corporations will have to unleash due to AI. Godman’s Jan Hatzius suggested in a note earlier this year, “Using data on occupational tasks in both the US and Europe, we find that roughly two-thirds of current jobs are exposed to some degree of AI automation, and that generative AI could substitute up to one-fourth of current work. Extrapolating our estimates globally suggests that generative AI could expose the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs to automation” as up to “two thirds of occupations could be partially automated by AI.”

… and more recently, younger folk in the labor market are beginning to realize their days are numbered as AI takes their jobs. 

For more insight into the rapidly evolving job landscape, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu and Sabrina Lam – using data from MSCI – have ranked the industries where AI-driven automation will displace the most workers. 

Now’s the time to evaluate your job and see how automation will impact your industry. 

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All images in this article are from ZH

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To my surprise, the Kim-Putin Summit of September (13-17) 2023 was scarcely analysed by the Western media. This may be due to the poverty of revealed contents of the summit or the fear of mentioning those agreements which were too unfavourable to the West.

What you find, in the major mainstream Western media was only transactional agreement by virtue of which North Korea agrees to send weapons to Ukraine in exchange with military as well as non-military aid to North Korea. But, the summit was far more meaningful and important than what the Western media report. 

As far as I am concerned, the Kim-Putin summit was a milestone event which may lead to new world where the unipolar world led by Washington will end and where the multipoplar world will appear so that several polar countries exist in peace and cooperate for the global prosperity security and stability.

This paper puts focus on the following issues:

• Summit Objectives
• Summit Agreements
• Summit Impact on North Korean Security and Economy 
• Summit Impact on the Global Hegemony Fight

Summit Objectives

This question of summit objectives has two sub-questions. Why did North Korea want the summit? What has motivated Russia to join the summit? 

Why Did North Korea Join the Summit?

The DPRK has the following reasons for joining the summit. 

The first reason is North Korea’s victory over the U.S. in the nuclear dispute allowing Pyongyang to have confidence in its capacity to defend itself from American nuclear attack and its ability to negotiate at the summit as equal. At this point, it seems relevant to see the evolution of the North Korean “nuclear crisis.”

Late President Kim Il-Sung planned the nuclear development to face the American nuclear threat during 39 years from 1953 to 1992. 

Late Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Il provided five occasions to Washington to let North Korea to give up nuclear development but the U.S. blew them all. This has allowed the North Korea to develop nuclear bombs and ICBM. This took 24 years from 1992 to 2016. 

Chairman Kim Jong-Un came along in 2012 and made four nuclear bomb tests and numerous missiles tests.

North Korea tested in 2017 a H-bomb test and in 2018, it launched ICBM, Hwasung-14 in 2017 and, in 2923, Hwasung-18 with a range of 15,000 KM reaching the whole of the U.S. territory. 

The U.S. nuclear game with North Korea is over. North Korea is now a bona fide nuclear state.

The second reason is the de facto Japan-ROK-US military alliance. 

North Korea fears the possible attack by the Japan-ROK-US (JAROKUS) military alliance. Each one of the alliance countries may want to attack North Korea. 

Japan wants it because North Korea is a military threat. 

The U.S. wants it because North Korea has become real nuclear power. 

The PJCSK under Yoon wants it because if Koreas are reunited, Yoon and the PJCSK will be alienated and even punished.

Under such situation, North Korea has to prepare for the possible attack by the combined armed forces of Japan, ROK and the U.S. This is one of the reasons for North Korea to join the summit. Russia-DPRK military cooperation would decrease the danger of a (Japan-ROK-US) JAROKUS attack.

The third reason is the need for North Korea’s participation in Russia’s Far East Development. 

Soon, the Ukraine proxy war will be over with Russia’s victory. Russia’s post-Ukraine proxy war priority is the development of its immense Siberia region. At this moment, only 35% of Siberia is developed. Vladivostok has population of only 600,000. It has unlimited natural resources including gas, oil and variety of minerals.

Moreover, the Arctic region offers various natural resources: 80% of Russian gas, 20% of its oil, 15% of its GDP and 2.5% of its population (Pepe Escobar, 21cir. com. September 16, 2023)

The future of the North Korean economy depends on its integration into the Eurasian economic bloc led by Russia and China.

Why Did Russia Join the Summit?

First, Vladimir Putin intends to make Russian Far East Russia’s growth pole.

Russia needs hard-working North Korean labour force. It needs year-round unfrozen ports of Razin Sonbong located in North Korean’s North East right below the Russian border.

Besides, Russia needs the rich market of the Korean peninsula ready to consume Russian natural resources; the Korean peninsula offers the opportunity of connecting Korea with the Trans-Siberia Railroad which will surely speed up the development of the Fareast Russia.

Second, there is also the worsening global security situation which has led Russia to join the summit. 

The Russia’s military operation in Ukraine has made it sure that the dialogue and the peace between the West and Russia have become impossible. Russia needed a reliable security partner.

North Korea has become a vital partner not only for economic reason but also for security necessity.

Third, during the government of Moon Jae-in representing the liberal nationalist South Korea (LNSK), the ROK-Russia relations had been dynamic and showed great potentials. This was the reason why Russia kept distance from North Korea

But, now, the idiotic pro-Japan conservative Yoon Suk-yeol has become president and joined the Washington war camp and, to make the matter worse, Yoon sent munitions and weapons to Ukraine. This has allowed Russia to upgrade its relations with North Korea and to join the summit. 

Summit Agreements

The summit did not produce any joint statement making it difficult to know concrete agreements. Only thing we can do is to examine strategic places visited by Kim Jong-un and statements made by two leaders and their advisors.

In the light of places visited by Kim Jong-un and the two leaders’ statements, we may be able to identify three areas of agreements: comprehensive cooperation agreement opening door to various types of cooperation, military cooperation agreement and agreement for the promotion of multipolar world order.

Comprehensive cooperation: The agreements seem to be very comprehensive and this is reflected in the statements of the two leaders.

The following statements made by the two leaders and the Kremlin spokesperson seem to indicate wide range of cooperation in years to come.

“Well, there are certain restrictions (sanctions) and Russia complies with all these restrictions. But there are things that we can of course talk about, discuss, think about it.” (Vladimir Putin)

“North Korea is our close neighbour. And, despite any comments from the outside, we will build our relations with our neighbour in a way that is beneficial to us and our neighbour.”(Kremlin spokes person, Dimitry Pescov)

“We have always supported all the decisions by President Putin and those by the Russians people.” (Kim Jung-un)

“In conclusion, I would like to express my confidence that our delegation’s current visit will serve an important moment in the future development and transformation of traditional friendly Russian-DPRK ties into unbreakable relations of strategic cooperation.” (Kim Jung-un)

The military cooperation: The military cooperation was revealed by numerous Kim’s visit to key military facilities and the composition of North Korean delegation, North Korean participation for the Ukraine war and leaders’ statements.

Image: Russian Air Force, RF-81719, Sukhoi Su-35S (Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

Kim’s visits included the site of the production of fighter jets including Su-35 and Su-57, the satellite launch pad of Soyuz-2 space craft at the Vostochuny Cosmodrom, the visit of bombers: TU-16-, TU95M5 and TU22M3 bombers and nuclear submarines.

Kim was accompanied by key people in North Korean national defence including Jo Chun-byong, ruling party member in charge of munitions production policy, Pak Tae-song, Chairman of the space and technology committee and Admiral Kim Byung-sik involved in the production of spy satellite and nuclear capable sub-marine.

It is reported that North Korea was sending to Ukraine munitions and weapons in exchange for Russian military aid.

There are some meaningful statements made by the two leaders.

“We are proud of the development of our space industry, and this ability is now for us. I hope that you and your colleagues are interested.” (Vladimir Putin)

When asked by the media if Russia would help North Korea for the development of satellite technology, Putin answered:

“That is why we are here.”

According to South Korean North Korea experts, in addition to the cooperation for satellite technology and nuclear submarine technology, North Korea will become a part of Russia-DPRK supply chain for military equipment and parts.

Summit Impact on North Korean Security and Economy

The impacts of the summit on North Korea include the liberation from American sanctions, increased protection from the JAROKUS attack, possibility to realize its potential economic growth and North Korea’s role for the creation off the multipolar world

Liberation from American sanctions: After 70 years of fight against American nuclear threat and sanctions, North Korea can finally liberate from American oppression and sanctions owing to the summit which will allow North Korea to integrate its economy with the Eurasian economic bloc led by Russia and China. 

Protection from the JAROKUS attack: the summit has given the warning to ROK, Japan and US  not to think of attacking North Korea, because if they do, it will be door open to WWIII.

Potential economic growth: North Korea has resources for great potential growth. It has well educated and well trained hardworking labour force. It has strategic geopolitical characteristics favouring foreign investments; it has untouched natural resources; it has efficient infrastructure for technological development.

The integration of North Koreans economy into the Eurasian economic bloc provides the opportunity to transform its potential growth into actual growth.

North Korea’s role in the creation of multipolar world: what follows is the elaboration of such role.

Summit Impact on the Global Hegemony Fight

Both Russia and North Korea are known for their criticism of the unipolar world and their conviction for the inevitability of the coming of the multipolar world. 

It appears that, in the summit, the Russia-DPRK cooperation for the creation of multipolar world order was, perhaps, the most important issue discussed. The world knows that Putin has been arguing for the need for multipolar world for decades.

There are some statements referring to the multipolar world:

“The Russian army and people will certainly win a great victory in the strategic struggle for the punishment of a great evil that claim hegemony and feed passionate expansionist illusion.” (Kim Jong-un)

“North Korea not only provides Russia with munitions, but also supports the Kremlin’s efforts to push back against what Mr. Putin describes as Western hegemony.” (Alexander Gabuev in New York Times September 3, 2023)

“The DPRK and the Russian Federation are creating a multi-polar world and building a new, fair and rational international order based on the principle of equality, mutual respect and friendly cooperation.” (Prof. Chung Kiyul, editor- in-chief of the 4th Media, interview with Sputnic, 21cir.com September 14, 2023)

“The Kim-Putin summit first and foremost apparently intends to nullify, pacify, or ruin whatever the U.S. led suicidal nuclear game, especially in Korean peninsula and Ukraine.” (Prof. Chung Kiyul, editor-in chief of the 4th Media, ibid)

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Pyongyang: Then and Now 

THEN: Total Destroyed as a Result of US Bombings (1950-53)

NOW: The Reconstruction of Pyongyang

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In this paper, I will first discus the present state of the global hegemony war on the one hand and on the other, the role of North Korea.

The present state of the hegemony war: It is analysed in terms of falling mono-polar camp force and rising multipolar camp force.

Falling unipolar Camp Force. The following shows the trend of falling power of the unipolar camp.

First, when UN member countries voted for the sanctions against Russia’s military intervention into Ukraine, only 45 countries voted for as against 140 countries against. This means that only 76% of the countries were against the sanctions. 

Second, the NATO countries found themselves in a situation where they have not only exhausted their weapons to aid the Ukraine proxy war, but also their industries were ruined due to their decoupling from Russian economy. What is more terrible is EU’s obligation to import American oil and gas at exorbitant price in comparison with the price of Russian oil and gas.

Third, democracy is falling. The number of countries where democracy has improved fell from 83 to 28, in the period, 2005-2020. The number of countries where democracy deteriorated rose from 52 to 73, in the same period. The number of countries dissatisfied with democracy rose from 48% to 58% in the period, 1995-2020.

Fourth, the US economy is no longer dominant: In 1960, the US GDP was 40% of the global GDP. But in 2019, it represented mere 24% to fall further to 16% in 2023. The use of economic aid as tool of hegemonic domination has been losing its importance.

Fifth, the US-led free-trade agreement, globalization and the global value chain have resulted in the destruction of the potential economic development of developing countries leading to the anti-US movements. 

Moreover, neo-liberalism has contributed to exacerbating the international income distribution in favour of the rich countries at the expense of poor countries’ interests on the one hand, and on the other, increase unequal income distribution within the country in favour of the rich and the powerful.

Sixth, the free trade regime, neoliberal competition, the debt-trap policy of IMF, the corruption of the pro-West leaders of developing countries, multinational corporations’ grave human rights violations and their theft of target countries’ natural resources, forced child labour and destruction of eco-system of the developing world have been the means of exploiting the poor countries. 

Seventh, the endless and limitless sanctions against non-pro-U.S. countries have produced intolerable human misery throughout the world. 

• Nobody knows to what extent the normal development of target countries’ economy has adversely been affected. 
• Nobody knows how many children died due to the sanctions against the imports of medicines. 
• Nobody knows how these sanctions put in danger the safety of the people and the security of the country. 
• Nobody knows by what extent these sanctions have destroyed the potential growth of the target countries. 

Eighth, Washington’s regime-change policy is surely one of the most brutal and merciless destruction of the target countries. Dozens of countries have been targets of Washington’s regime change. The objective of regime change is to force the target country to become Washington’s vassal state and serve the Washington’s interests at the expense of the country’s own interests. In fact, the regime-change  policy is regime-destruction policy.

Ninth, the unchanging Washington’ foreign policy is the strengthening of its military power. Despite its economic weakening, its military expenditure has been increasing leading to less money needed for American citizens’ well being. 

The American share of military expenditures in the world increased from 37% in 1990 to 40% in 2023, while its share in global GDP fell from 24% in 1960 to 16% in 2023. 

This shows to what extent the U.S. attaches importance to its military might. Washington has 750 military bases in more than 85 countries and numerous Special Forces are deployed along with CIA troops. 

The US military is used to intimidate, threaten and even attack countries which do not serve the American interests.

All these elements of the US foreign policy reflect the falling power of the mono-polar world managed by Washington. And this has resulted in the increasing number of countries which seek multi-polar world in which each country can live in peace cooperating with other countries. 

Rising Multi-Polar Camp

The state of rising multi-polar camp may be presented in terms of the following factors: the number of countries in the multipolar camp, various means to fight the mono-polar camp’s offensive and increasing uprisings against pro-West corrupted governments in Africa and elsewhere.

First, the number of countries of the multipolar camp has been increasing. The number of the BRICS has increased from 5 to 11. The new member countries are Argentine, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. In addition, 40 countries would like to join.

It is interesting to note that Iran, leader of the Shia Islam and Saudi Arabia, leader of Sunni Islam are now member of the BRICS. This could imply possible improvement in assuring greater peace in the Middle East and strengthen the multipolar camp.

There is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) which has the following member countries: China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India, Pakistan and Iran. In addition, the number of observer countries has been increasing.

BRICS already represent 40% of world population and 25% of the global GPD as against 16% for the U.S. and 30% for G-7 countries. With six new members, its importance in population and GDP will further increase.

Second, there are some economic and financial institutions which will facilitate the creation of the multipolar world. There is the BRICS’s New Development Bank (NDB), the Asia Infrastructure Investments Bank (AIIB), The Belt-Road Initiative (BRI).  

There are also numerous regional multilateral economic organizations designed to assure more independence from the domination of the unipolar camp.

Third, the Global South begins to fight for the freedom from the pro-West political leaders. The best example is the violent military uprisings in French Africa.

In French Africa, the surge of military coups is designed to take away power from the corrupted pro-West government and establish government which would promote the interests of the people. 

The following shows the countries where military coup took place in Africa: Chad (April, 2121), Mali (May, 2021) Guinea (October, 2021), Sudan (October, 2021), Burkina Faso (January, 2022), Niger (July, 2023), Gabon (August, 2023) (Mathew Ehret 21 cir. com September 19, 2023) 

These countries are rich in natural resources including diamond, manganese, uranium, iron, natural gas, oil, fresh water and other natural resources. The exploitation of these resources is monopolized by French companies such as Eramet, and Total SA. 

But, the people live with USD 1.0 a day and the poverty rate is between 30% and 70%. How can this happen in such natural resource-rich countries?

What we see now is the closing of the era of mono-polar camp and the beginning of the multipolar camp.

But, whether we like or not, the unipolar camp remains powerful being capable of threatening the emerging multipolar camp. US dollars still dominates; countless international organization including UN, WTO, WHO, WB, IMF and so many other institutions have been strengthened over decades and serve mainly the interests of the mono-polar camp. 

What is called rule-based laws are conceived and applied in order to protect mainly the interests of the unipolar camp.

Indeed, it is a long way before we see the world in which the U.S. coexist with multipolar countries and cooperate in peace respecting sovereignty of countries for global security and prosperity. 

We can have hope for the leadership of the BRICS and other organizations, but it is long way before it can lead us to the multipolar world. To do so, the people of the multi-polar countries should wake up and fight for the better world.

2023 BRICS Summit (Source: InfoBrics)

Peter Koenig has something to say about it:

So what we expect from BRICS?

“Again we the people, let us wake up and take life in our own hand and minds. Let us not be fooled, confused and divided by deceptive strategies of the self-nominated rulers.” (Peter Koenig, Globalresearch.ca September 19, 2023)

Roles of North Korea: The message of Koenig seems clear. The establishment of a multipolar world can be done only by the people, not by the political leaders. The ordinary people should be the reliable driving force of the noble task of constructing the new world where all countries can live in peace without the fear of being cheated, oppressed and exploited.

In order that the people can lead the march to the multi-polar world, the people should become the master of the country. 

This requires proper doctrines allowing a new way of thinking and doing.

Juche (主體)

Such doctrine includes the North Korean idea of Juche (主體), Juche philosophy (主體思想), Juce behaviour (主體行爲) and Juche system (主體制度).

The sum of these four ways of thinking and doing constitutes Juche doctrine (主體主義).

Juche: Juche means “organiser”, “initiator”, “planner” or “decision maker”. If I organize a seminar, I am the Juche of the seminar. If you decide to sell your house, you are the Juche of house sale. 

In North Korean, Juche must make decisions in autonomous way without interference of outsider. The Jucche may consider other people’s advice, but Juche’s decision should be autonomous and independent 

Juche Philosophy: Now, the Juche philosophy is a little more complex. It refers to the relation of individual with God, with the national leader and with the nation. Each individual determines these relations. That is, each individual in North Korea is the master of everything. 

The core of the Juche philosophy is the relation between individual on the one hand and, on the other, the national leader and the country. 

Here, brace yourself!

You will see a sort of metaphysics of individual’s relation with the national leader and the nation.

According to the Juche metaphysics, individual is “infused” with the leader and the nation so that the three elements of North Korea become “one” and the “same.”

What the individual thinks is what the leader thinks; what the leader thinks is what the nation thinks. 

The suffering of individuals is the suffering of the leader and the nation. The joy and the pains of the leader is the joy and pains of the individuals and the nation.

The core of the Juche philosophy is fact that the Juche of collective life is the individual. That is, the individual is the master. What the leader thinks and does is what individual thinks and does

Long time ago, a North Korean group of beautiful lady cheer leaders came to Pusan city of South Korea for the Asian Game. One day, it was raining and the portrait of Kim Jong-il was wet. Undoubtedly, the cheer leasers might have thought that they were wet, too, because they were Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-il was the cheer leaders.

The cheer leaders were crying seeing their leader’s portrait was wet. I thought that they were acting, but they were sincere.

Juche Behaviour: The Juche philosophy has immense impacts on North Koreans’ behaviours. Let us see the Juche behaviours of the leaders followed by those of the people

Juche Behaviours of leaders: It is a duty for the national leaders to live with the people by visiting farms, factories, schools, hospitals and local communities, because the leaders are the people. 

• Kim Il-sung spent four say a week by visiting and talking to the people to know what the people want. 
• We see often Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un visiting places where the people live and work
• According to a man who knows North Korea very well, in North Korea, there is no military academy. All officers are former simple soldiers. The 4-star general who used to be a simple soldier spends many hours and lives the life of simple soldier every month 

Juche Behaviour of North Korean people: the following summarizes North Korean people’s Juche behaviour.

• North Korean people survived the long march of hunger and suffering in the 1990s.
• North Koreans endured the never ceasing threatening joint military exercises by ROK-US armed forces.
• North Koreans survived the merciless sanctions
• North Koreans do not protest against the leader not because of fear of the authorities but due to their love for the leaders and the country. Remember, the leaders are the people.
• Every North Korean is a soldier and worker making North Korea a powerful military power
• Every North Korean is an intelligence agent preventing spies.

Juche System: Juche behaviour leads to the Juche system of politics, national defence and national economy. The Juche system has produced the following results.

• North Korea has never become vassal state of any country. This is North Korea’s political independence
• North Korea has become a nuclear state capable of defending itself from American nuclear threat. This is North Korea’s autonomous national defence
• North Korean economy has survived the economic sanctions. This is North Korean’s road to self-sufficient national economy.

Coming back to the role of North Korea in the fight for the creation of the multipolar world, I think that the Juche doctrine can contribute to the selection of national leaders who identify themselves with the people. One should avoid leaders who are corrupted by receiving bribes given by foreign forces. Unfortunately, there are too many of them.

The multipolar camp need strong, well motivated, devoted and highly trained people to confront the mighty unipolar camp and construct sustainable multipolar world. 

For this, the multi-polar camp needs Juche force which will be ready to meet head on the offensive of the unipolar camp. 

North Korea is ready to train such force. We remember that the Juche doctrine has played strategic role in the fight against neo-colonialism in developing countries

In fact, by the end of the 1970s, there were 1,000 Juche study centers in the world. In the period, 1972-1989, as many as 33 African countries had Juche Study centers. Even now, a good number of African countries operate such centers including Benin, Congo, Egypt, Guinea, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia and Uganda.

No doubt, North Korea can play various roles for the establishment of the multi-polar world as it becomes more powerful and its economy becomes more developed. 

But, what is needed now is the formation of well trained fighting force that can resist the onslaught of the mono-polar forces and create solid bases for the sustained development of the multi-polar world. North Korea can offer such training.

*

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Dr. Joseph H. Chung is professor of economics at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM), member of Study Center on Integration and Globalization (CEIM -UQAM). 

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

Featured image: Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin meeting at Vostochny Cosmodrome in Amur Oblast, Russia (13 September 2023) (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)

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*** 

It used to be a truth universally acknowledged by citizens of democratic nations that freedom of speech was the basis not just of democracy, but of all human rights.

When a person or group can censor the speech of others, there is – by definition – an imbalance of power. Those exercising the power can decide what information and which opinions are allowed, and which should be suppressed. In order to maintain their power, they will naturally suppress information and views that challenge their position. 

Free speech is the only peaceful way to hold those in power accountable, challenge potentially harmful policies, and expose corruption. Those of us privileged to live in democracies instinctively understand this nearly sacred value of free speech in maintaining our free and open societies.

Or do we?

Alarmingly, it seems like many people in what we call democratic nations are losing that understanding. And they seem willing to cede their freedom of speech to governments, organizations, and Big Tech companies who, supposedly, need to control the flow of information to keep everyone “safe.”

The locus for the disturbing shift away from free speech is the 21st-century’s global public square: the Internet. And the proclaimed reasons for allowing those in power to diminish our free speech on the Internet are: “disinformation” and “hate speech.”

In this article, I will review the three-step process by which anti-disinformation laws are introduced. Then, I will review some of the laws being rolled out in multiple countries almost simultaneously, and what such laws entail in terms of vastly increasing the potential for censorship of the global flow of information.

How to Pass Censorship Laws

Step 1: Declare an existential threat to democracy and human rights 

Step 2: Assert that the solution will protect democracy and human rights

Step 3: Enact anti-democratic, anti-human rights censorship fast and in unison

Lies, propaganda, “deep fakes,” and all manner of misleading information have always been present on the Internet. The vast global information hub that is the World Wide Web inevitably provides opportunities for criminals and other nefarious actors, including child sex traffickers and evil dictators. 

At the same time, the Internet has become the central locus of open discourse for the world’s population, democratizing access to information and the ability to publish one’s views to a global audience.

The good and bad on the Internet reflect the good and bad in the real world. And when we regulate the flow of information on the Internet, the same careful balance between blocking truly dangerous actors, while retaining maximum freedom and democracy, must apply.

Distressingly, the recent slew of laws governing Internet information are significantly skewed in the direction of limiting free speech and increasing censorship. The reason, the regulators claim, is that fake news, disinformation, and hate speech are existential threats to democracy and human rights.

Here are examples of dire warnings, issued by leading international organizations, about catastrophic threats to our very existence purportedly posed by disinformation:

Propaganda, misinformation and fake news have the potential to polarise public opinion, to promote violent extremism and hate speech and, ultimately, to undermine democracies and reduce trust in the democratic processes. –Council of Europe

The world must address the grave global harm caused by the proliferation of hate and lies in the digital space.-United Nations

Online hate speech and disinformation have long incited violence, and sometimes mass atrocities.  –World Economic Forum (WEF)/The New Humanitarian

Considering the existential peril of disinformation and hate speech, these same groups assert that any solution will obviously promote the opposite:

Given such a global threat, we clearly need a global solution. And, of course, such a solution will increase democracy, protect the rights of vulnerable populations, and respect human rights. –WEF

Moreover, beyond a mere assertion that increasing democracy and respecting human rights are built into combating disinformation, international law must be invoked. 

In its Common Agenda Policy Brief from June 2023, Information Integrity on Digital Platforms, the UN details the international legal framework for efforts to counter hate speech and disinformation. 

Image is a screenshot from the UN Report

First, it reminds us that freedom of expression and information are fundamental human rights:

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 19 (2) of the Covenant protect the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, and through any media. 

Linked to freedom of expression, freedom of information is itself a right. The General Assembly has stated: “Freedom of information is a fundamental human right and is the touchstone of all the freedoms to which the United Nations is consecrated.” (p. 9)

Then, the UN brief explains that disinformation and hate speech are such colossal, all-encompassing evils that their very existence is antithetical to the enjoyment of any human rights:

Hate speech has been a precursor to atrocity crimes, including genocide. The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide prohibits “direct and public incitement to commit genocide”. 

In its resolution 76/227, adopted in 2021, the General Assembly emphasized that all forms of disinformation can negatively impact the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms, as well as the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals. Similarly, in its resolution 49/21, adopted in 2022, the Human Rights Council affirmed that disinformation can negatively affect the enjoyment and realization of all human rights.

This convoluted maze of legalese leads to an absurd, self-contradictory sequence of illogic:

• Everything the UN is supposed to protect is founded on the freedom of information, which along with free speech is a fundamental human right.

• The UN believes hate speech and disinformation destroy all human rights.

• THEREFORE, anything we do to combat hate speech and disinformation protects all human rights, even if it abrogates the fundamental human rights of free speech and information, on which all other rights depend. 

• Because: genocide!

In practice, what this means is that, although the UN at one point in its history considered the freedom of speech and information fundamental to all other rights, it now believes the dangers of hate speech and disinformation eclipse the importance of protecting those rights.

The same warping of democratic values, as delineated by our international governing body, is now occurring in democracies the world over. 

Censorship Laws and Actions All Happening Now

If hate speech and disinformation are the precursors of inevitable genocidal horrors, the only way to protect the world is through a coordinated international effort. Who should lead this campaign?

According to the WEF, “Governments can provide some of the most significant solutions to the crisis by enacting far-reaching regulations.”

Which is exactly what they’re doing.

United States

In the US, freedom of speech is enshrined in the Constitution, so it’s hard to pass laws that might violate it.

Instead, the government can work with academic and nongovernmental organizations to strong-arm social media companies into censoring disfavored content. The result is the Censorship-Industrial Complex, a vast network of government-adjacent academic and nonprofit “anti-disinformation” outfits, all ostensibly mobilized to control online speech in order to protect us from whatever they consider to be the next civilization-annihilating calamity.

The Twitter Files and recent court cases reveal how the US government uses these groups to pressure online platforms to censor content it doesn’t like:

• Twitter Files on Covid
• Discovery in Missouri v Biden Covid censorship lawsuit
• Potential discovery in Berenson v Biden lawsuit

1. THREAD:

THE TWITTER FILES: HOW TWITTER RIGGED THE COVID DEBATE

– By censoring info that was true but inconvenient to U.S. govt. policy
– By discrediting doctors and other experts who disagreed
– By suppressing ordinary users, including some sharing the CDC’s *own data*

— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022

Google

In some cases, companies may even take it upon themselves to control the narrative according to their own politics and professed values, with no need for government intervention. For example: Google, the most powerful information company in the world, has been reported to fix its algorithms to promote, demote, and disappear content according to undisclosed internal “fairness” guidelines.

This was revealed by a whistleblower named Zach Vorhies in his almost completely ignored book, Google Leaks, and by Project Veritas, in a sting operation against Jen Gennai, Google’s Head of Responsible Innovation. 

In their benevolent desire to protect us from hate speech and disinformation, Google/YouTube immediately removed the original Project Veritas video from the Internet.

European Union

The Digital Services Act came into force November 16, 2022. The European Commission rejoiced that “The responsibilities of users, platforms, and public authorities are rebalanced according to European values.” Who decides what the responsibilities and what the “European values” are? 

• very large platforms and very large online search engines [are obligated] to prevent the misuse of their systems by taking risk-based action and by independent audits of their risk management systems

• EU countries will have the primary [oversight] role, supported by a new European Board for Digital Services

Brownstone contributor David Thunder explains how the act provides an essentially unlimited potential for censorship:

This piece of legislation holds freedom of speech hostage to the ideological proclivities of unelected European officials and their armies of “trusted flaggers.” 

The European Commission is also giving itself the power to declare a Europe-wide emergency that would allow it to demand extra interventions by digital platforms to counter a public threat. 

UK

The Online Safety Bill was passed September 19, 2023. The UK government says “It will make social media companies more responsible for their users’ safety on their platforms.”

According to Internet watchdog Reclaim the Net, this bill constitutes one of the widest sweeping attacks on privacy and free speech in a Western democracy:

The bill imbues the government with tremendous power; the capability to demand that online services employ government-approved software to scan through user content, including photos, files, and messages, to identify illegal content. 

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to defending civil liberties in the digital world, warns: “the law would create a blueprint for repression around the world.”

Australia

The Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023 was released in draft form June 25, 2023 and is expected to pass by the end of 2023. the Australian government says:

The new powers will enable the ACMA [Australian Communications and Media Authority] to monitor efforts and require digital platforms to do more, placing Australia at the forefront in tackling harmful online misinformation and disinformation, while balancing freedom of speech.

Reclaim the Net explains:

This legislation hands over a wide range of new powers to ACMA, which includes the enforcement of an industry-wide “standard” that will obligate digital platforms to remove what they determine as misinformation or disinformation. 

Brownstone contributor Rebekah Barnett elaborates:

Controversially, the government will be exempt from the proposed laws, as will professional news outlets, meaning that ACMA will not compel platforms to police misinformation and disinformation disseminated by official government or news sources. 

The legislation will enable the proliferation of official narratives, whether true, false or misleading, while quashing the opportunity for dissenting narratives to compete. 

Canada

The Online Streaming Act (Bill C-10) became law April 27, 2023. Here’s how the Canadian government describes it, as it relates to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC):

The legislation clarifies that online streaming services fall under the Broadcasting Act and ensures that the CRTC has the proper tools to put in place a modern and flexible regulatory framework for broadcasting. These tools include the ability to make rules, gather information, and assign penalties for non-compliance.

According to Open Media, a community-driven digital rights organization,

Bill C-11 gives the CRTC unprecedented regulatory authority to monitor all online audiovisual content. This power extends to penalizing content creators and platforms and through them, content creators that fail to comply. 

World Health Organization

In its proposed new Pandemic Treaty and in the amendments to its International Health Regulations, all of which it hopes to pass in 2024, the WHO seeks to enlist member governments to

Counter and address the negative impacts of health-related misinformation, disinformation, hate speech and stigmatization, especially on social media platforms, on people’s physical and mental health, in order to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, and foster trust in public health systems and authorities.

Brownstone contributor David Bell writes that essentially this will give the WHO, an unelected international body,

power to designate opinions or information as ‘mis-information or disinformation, and require country governments to intervene and stop such expression and dissemination. This … is, of course, incompatible with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but these seem no longer to be guiding principles for the WHO.

Conclusion

We are at a pivotal moment in the history of Western democracies. Governments, organizations and companies have more power than ever to decide what information and views are expressed on the Internet, the global public square of information and ideas.

It is natural that those in power should want to limit expression of ideas and dissemination of information that might challenge their position. They may believe they are using censorship to protect us from grave harms of disinformation and hate speech, or they may be using those reasons cynically to consolidate their control over the flow of information. 

Either way, censorship inevitably entails the suppression of free speech and information, without which democracy cannot exist.

Why are the citizens of democratic nations acquiescing to the usurpation of their fundamental human rights? One reason may be the relatively abstract nature of rights and freedoms in the digital realm.

In the past, when censors burned books or jailed dissidents, citizens could easily recognize these harms and imagine how awful it would be if such negative actions were turned against them. They could also weigh the very personal and imminent negative impact of widespread censorship against much less prevalent dangers, such as child sex trafficking or genocide. Not that those dangers would be ignored or downplayed, but it would be clear that measures to combat such dangers should not include widespread book burning or jailing of regime opponents.

In the virtual world, if it’s not your post that is removed, or your video that is banned, it can be difficult to fathom the wide-ranging harm of massive online information control and censorship. It is also much easier online than in the real world to exaggerate the dangers of relatively rare threats, like pandemics or foreign interference in democratic processes. The same powerful people, governments, and companies that can censor online information can also flood the online space with propaganda, terrifying citizens in the virtual space into giving up their real-world rights.

The conundrum for free and open societies has always been the same: How to protect human rights and democracy from hate speech and disinformation without destroying human rights and democracy in the process.

The answer embodied in the recent coordinated enactment of global censorship laws is not encouraging for the future of free and open societies.

*

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Debbie Lerman, 2023 Brownstone Fellow, has a degree in English from Harvard. She is a retired science writer and a practicing artist in Philadelphia, PA.

Featured image is from Shutterstock

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***

The world is at war, with active or simmering conflicts in Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Nagorno-Karabakh, destabilizing coups in Niger, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Chad, and Mali, and other nations on the verge of civil or interstate conflicts. The last thing we need in this volatile security environment is an accelerated superpower nuclear arms race.

But don’t tell that to the members of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, which has spent the past year looking at the current challenges facing the United States and coming up with a solution that would make the militarized competition of the Cold War era look quaint.

The commission’s report brings to mind Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 classic, “Dr. Strangelove: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb.” The film underscored the absurdity of the nuclear doctrines of the time, and the insanity of the mindset that had captured political and military leaders of that moment, in an at times humorous take on a subject with a deadly serious potential impact. The new congressional commission report implies that the current strategic environment is more dangerous than at the height of the Cold War, and it adopts an equally dangerous mindset in addressing that alleged situation. Whatever one thinks of the commission’s assessment, its recommendations would increase the risks of war among the superpowers, not reduce them.

The commission’s analysis and recommendations are grounded in an alarmist view of the current geopolitical landscape that departs significantly from reality. Early in the report, the commission makes the following assessment of the challenges facing the United States:

“The new global environment is fundamentally different than anything experienced in the past, even in the darkest days of the Cold War. Today the United States is on the cusp of having not one, but two nuclear peer adversaries, each with ambitions to change the international status quo, by force, if necessary: a situation which the United States did not anticipate and for which it is not prepared.”

First and foremost, it is not clear that either Russia or China seeks or could achieve global domination based on the use of force. Whatever Vladimir Putin’s aspirations may be, the war in Ukraine has exposed deep flaws in Russia’s military capabilities that make it clear that it is in no position to threaten any of the 31 members of the NATO alliance, much less operate on a global basis. It is essential to continue to provide Ukraine with the assistance it needs to defend itself, but assertions that Russia is poised to reshape the entire international system “by force” in light of that conflict are overblown.

As for China, its main challenges to the United States are political and economic, not military. Its increasing military power is primarily focused on its own region, including on the possibility of taking Taiwan by force at some unspecified future date. But the best way to prevent a U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan is to re-establish a common understanding on its status, along the lines of the “One China” policy that has kept the peace in the Taiwan strait for five decades. Doing so would mean that the United States would not support political independence for Taiwan and China would forswear seeking unification with the island by force. Better crisis communications and a “common good” approach to resolving areas of difference – as proposed in a recent issue brief by my Quincy Institute colleague Jake Werner – should supplement the return to a common view on Taiwan. And cooperation on addressing potential existential threats like climate change and preventing future pandemics should take precedence over aggressive posturing and bellicose rhetoric. Sabre rattling and military buildups will make a war over Taiwan more likely, with disastrous consequences for all concerned.

Last but not least, the active U.S. nuclear stockpile of 4,500 long-range nuclear weapons, with over 1,600 deployed, is more than enough to dissuade Russia or China from attacking the United States, for fear of having their societies devastated in return. But a large deployed arsenal does pose a risk of a nuclear confrontation by accident or miscalculation, and an arms racing environment of the kind recommended by the congressional commission would only make matters worse.

Unfortunately, once the commission adopted its overly pessimistic view of Russian and Chinese capabilities and intentions, its recommendations for a more combative U.S. posture followed closely behind. The Pentagon is already in the middle of a $2 trillion, three decades-long initiative to build new nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines, with new warheads to go with them. Astoundingly, the commission argues that these investments are not enough, and that the U.S. should consider building and deploying more nuclear weapons, even as it endorses dangerous and destabilizing steps like returning to the days of multi-warhead land-based missiles while placing nuclear-armed missiles in East Asia. These steps would only introduce more uncertainty into the calculations of China and Russia, making a nuclear confrontation more likely.

In addition to increasing nuclear risks at what is certain to be an exorbitant price – an issue the report mentions but refuses to address in detail – the document argues for the United States to expand its nuclear arsenal first, and worry about forging significant arms control agreements later. This approach is precisely backwards, and could spark a three-way arms race that will take arms control off the agenda for years to come.

Sometimes congressional commissions come and go without leaving any substantial imprint on government policy. Let’s hope the recommendations of the strategic posture commission fall into that category. But the more likely outcome will be that nuclear hawks – and even moderates who should know better – will brandish the report in their efforts to promote a nuclear buildup that is both enormously risky and immensely expensive. Pushback from advocates of nuclear reductions needs to be heard loud and clear by members of Congress, the administration, and the broader public. We survived the Cold War nuclear arms race in part by sheer luck – we shouldn’t take that risk again.

*

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

Featured image is from The Unz Review

---

“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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*** 

Israel is using UK arms exports in a genocide against the Palestinian people. The UK government is complicit in these crimes not just by supplying these weapons for decades, but by repeatedly inciting Israel to commit war crimes against Palestinian civilians with impunity, in retaliation for Hamas’ horrific killings and abductions of Israelis including civilians. 

The UK has consistently sold arms to Israel, in spite of its illegal occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem since 1967. Since Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip in 2007 there have been five major military assaults on Gaza in 2008-09, 2012, 2014, and 2021 which killed almost 4,000 Palestinians. In the past 11 days alone at least 2,850 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli bombardments supported by UK arms exports, including 100 children. 

UK industry provides 15% of the components in the F35 stealth combat aircraft that are currently being used  in the bombardment of Gaza. The contract for the components is estimated by Campaign Against Arms Trade to be worth £336m since 2016.

Source: Friends of Al Aqsa

Between 2018 and 2022, the UK exported £146m in arms sales via Single Issue Export Licences. However, a large proportion of military equipment exported is via Open General Export Licences. These open licences, which include the F35 components, lack transparency and allow for unlimited quantities and value of exports of the specified equipment without further monitoring.

According to the SIPRI Arms Transfer Database, Israel has ordered a total of 50 F-35s from the US, of which 36 have so far been delivered, up to the end of 2022. According to the detailed delivery database,114 a total of 6 were delivered in 2022. While the value of UK companies’ F-35 contracts with the prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, are not known, based on the 15% workshare and the estimated $80m a plane unit cost of the F-35, this would suggest that each aircraft involves around $12 million to UK industry. This would imply a value of $72 million (£58m) for total UK deliveries of F-35s to Israel in 2022, far higher than the value of Single Issue Export Licences, and around $432 million (approx. £336m.) since deliveries began in 2016.

Initial statements from the Israeli government committed to perpetrating war crimes. On 7th October in a televised address Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised ‘vengeance’ and ‘revenge’.

“We will turn Gaza into a deserted island.”

On October 8th, the Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Galant declared

“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed”. “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” Galant said. In another video he said “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything.” 

On 13th October the Israeli Government ordered 1.1 million people living in the north of Gaza within 24 hours to leave ahead of an imminent ground offensive. The United Nations said that it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences and appealed for the order to be rescinded.

Building on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s “unequivocal” support for Israel, Labour leader Keir Starmer refused to condemn the cutting off of water and electricity to an entire population of over 2 million people saying

“I think that Israel does have that right.”

Grant Shapps, secretary of State for Defence, then gave every indication that he supported this obscene order to displace a million people in 24 hours in the midst of active bombardments. 

Despite Israel’s advance notice of intent to violate international law, UK leaders from both parties gave unqualified support for UK arms exports and components to be used in attacks against Palestinian civilians. The reaction from the international community has undoubtedly emboldened the Israeli authorities to commit these crimes with impunity. The United Nations human rights office said on Tuesday that Israel’s siege of Gaza and its evacuation order could amount to the international crime of the forcible transfer of civilians. 

We call on the government to immediately revoke all licences for arms exports to Israel. It is not credible that the UK government or the Leader of the Opposition believe that the siege, bombardments and forcible transfer of civilians of Gaza are compliant with international law. That it includes a significant percentage of components for jets now dropping bombs on Palestinian civilians is unconscionable. To fail to take any meaningful action to mitigate harm to civilians when it was promised by the Israeli government, to support these crimes, is all the more shameful given that the UK has exported millions worth of arms to Israel. 

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“If we don’t get back to our shared humanity, I don’t think we will ever come back from this,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib told protesters. “And to our President: I want him to know, as a Palestinian-American and someone of Muslim faith, I’m not going to forget this. And I think a lot of people are not going to forget this.”

Five hundred people, including two dozen Rabbis, were arrested in Washington, DC on Wednesday as Jewish activists led a protest inside and outside The Capitol. The protesters were demanding lawmakers back a ceasefire in Gaza.

Hundreds of protesters made their way into the rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building where they sang, chanted, and held signs calling for an immediate ceasefire. The activists wore shirts that said “Not in our name” on the front and “Jews say cease fire now.”

The Capitol Police announced they were shutting down roads around the Capitol to ensure the safety of protestors outside.

Hundreds of Jewish activists demand Gaza ceasefire in Capitol (ifnotnow Twitter)

Earlier in the day, more than 5,000 Jewish Americans and their allies gathered on the National Mall. The crowd was addressed by Representatives Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Cori Bush (D-MO).

“We thank our Jewish community for being out here saying ‘Never Again’,” said Bush.

On October 16, Tlaib, Bush, and a number of other progressive House members introduced a resolution calling on the Biden administration to push for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

The legislative effort is backed by dozens of human rights groups, including the Adalah Justice Project, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), and the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR).

“If we don’t get back to our shared humanity, I don’t think we will ever come back from this,” said Tlaib. “And to our President: I want him to know, as a Palestinian-American and someone of Muslim faith, I’m not going to forget this. And I think a lot of people are not going to forget this.”

Thousands of Jewish activists gather in DC to demand Gaza ceasefire (Jewish Voice for Peace Twitter)

Jewish Voice for Peace highlighted the action in a Twitter thread:

Today, 500 Jews were arrested and 10k took to the streets to support and to demand a ceasefire and an end to Palestinian genocide. We shut down congress to draw mass attention to the U.S. complicity in Israel’s ongoing oppression of Palestinians. But our work isn’t done

We can and will stop genocide in Gaza. But this horrific situation was only possible because of the groundwork laid by the Israeli state over 75 years ago. Since 1948, the Israeli government built a system of apartheid and illegal occupation.

Just as we demand an end to genocide in Gaza, we must put the same effort into dismantling the systems of Zionism, apartheid, and colonialism that brought us to this moment.

The only way to peace and safety — for everyone — is through ensuring justice and equality for everyone. That means standing in solidarity with Palestinians. It means building a world beyond Zionism. It means creating systems of safety through solidarity. Will you join us?

Jewish activists arrested in Capitol building (Jewish Voice for Peace Twitter)

Wednesday’s protest came just two days after Jewish activists blocked every entrance to The White House, calling on Biden to back a ceasefire.

“Since we were children, so many of us have told ourselves that we would not stand by if we were ever witnesses to genocidal violence. We told ourselves that we would raise our voices. We told ourselves we would put our bodies on the line. We pledged that such horrors would never again happen on our watch,” said author and activist Naomi Klein, who also addressed the protestors. “The ‘never again’ of our lifetimes is underway in Gaza right now. And we refuse to stand by and watch.”

Protesters gather in Washington, DC (Jewish Voice for Peace Twitter)

The DC chapter of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) smeared the protesters in a statement and asserted that anti-Zionists are antisemitic. ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt compared the activists to white supremacists in a tweet.

“The ADL is scared because they, like other Jewish establishment organizations, feel like they’re losing the narrative for who gets to speak for American Jews,” wrote Ben Lorber, a member of IfNotNow and JVP. “Frankly, they should be scared. Their bankrupt centrism is the past and groups like [IfNotNow] and JVP are the present and future.”

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Michael Arria is the U.S. correspondent for Mondoweiss. Follow him on Twitter at @michaelarria.

Featured image: Jewish activists call for Gaza ceasefire in DC. October 18, 2023 (JVP Twitter)

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***

From racist tweets to rising hate crimes, the media’s anti-China propaganda has created a climate of aggression.

Two weeks ago, a man drove a car into the Chinese consulate in San Francisco, yelling “Where’s the CCP?” Arab Americans have been targeted during the Persian Gulf War, the War on Terror, and U.S.-backed atrocities in Palestine.

It’s no surprise that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are in the crosshairs of white supremacy as the U.S. targets China. Back in April, a Columbia University survey found that three in four Chinese Americans said they’d suffered racial discrimination in the past 12 months.

When the Trump administration launched the China Initiative to prosecute spies, the Department of Justice racially profiled Chinese Americans and Chinese nationals. Between 2018 and 2022, the number of Chinese researchers who dropped their affiliation with U.S. institutions jumped 23 percent.

The Biden administration has ended the initiative, but the Department of Justice and the congressional anti-China committee are still targeting political leaders in the Chinese community.

As Biden continues the crackdowns of his predecessor, his administration is also escalating in the Asia-Pacific region. From expanding military bases in the Philippines – including one potential base in the works intended to join contingencies in Taiwan – to building a fleet of AI drones to target China, militarists are creating conditions for a hot war in the Pacific.

As the U.S. prepares for war, Forbes published an article on September 25 about an aircraft carrier “kill chain” and its potential use in a war with China. In February, CNN journalists accompanied a U.S. Navy jet approaching Chinese airspace. As a Chinese pilot warned the U.S. to keep a safe distance, an American soldier remarked: “It’s another Friday afternoon in the South China Sea.”

Not only are we normalizing U.S. aggression. We’re also relying on the military-industrial complex as an unbiased source. Pro-war propaganda is derailing China-U.S. ties, increasing anti-Asian hate, and hiding the realities of public opinion across the Pacific.

After launching the AUKUS military pact between Britain and Australia in 2021, as well as stiff export controls designed to limit China’s economy last year, the U.S. began 2023 with what appeared to be an olive branch. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was scheduled to visit China in February. Then came the “spy balloon.”

A Chinese balloon was blown off course and eventually shot down by the U.S. military. The Wall Street Journal and NBC uncritically printed and broadcasted statements from US Air Force Brigadier General Pat Ryder about the balloon’s surveillance capabilities.

On February 8, citing three unnamed officials, The New York Times said “American intelligence agencies have assessed that China’s spy balloon program is part of global surveillance.”

The same story mentions the U.S. State Department’s briefings to foreign officials that were “designed to show that the balloons are equipped for intelligence gathering and that the Chinese military has been carrying out this collection for years, targeting, among other sites, the territories of Japan, Taiwan, India, and the Philippines.”

On April 3, the BBC and CNN published conflicting stories on the balloon that cited anonymous officials but contained inconsistencies about its ability to take pictures. It wasn’t until June 29 that Ryder admitted no data had been transmitted.

In September, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley told CBS the balloon wasn’t even spying. This matched China’s statements about the balloon, as well as that of American meteorologists. But the damage was done. Blinken had postponed his trip to China. He eventually went in June, after a trip to Papua New Guinea, where its student protesters rejected his plans to militarize their country under a security pact.

On May 26, Blinken made a speech, referring to China as a “long-term challenge.” Politico went further, publishing a piece on May 26, called “Blinken calls China ‘most serious long-term’ threat to world order” with a same-day USA Today article also taking the liberty of using challenge and threat interchangeably.

A Princeton University study found Americans who perceive China as a threat were more likely to stereotype Chinese people as untrustworthy and immoral. Intelligence leaks about a China threat combined with the age-old Yellow Peril syndrome have allowed for incessant Sinophobia to dominate our politics.

Misinformation, the Other Pandemic

In May 2020, Trump told a scared country with 1 million recorded COVID-19 cases and almost 100,000 dead that the pandemic was China’s fault. Again, our leaders cited undisclosed intelligence.

For its part, CNN showed images of wet markets after The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Walter Russell Mead called “China Is The Real Sick Man of Asia.” A year later, Politico eventually acknowledged Trump cherry-picked intelligence to support his claims but the Biden administration ended up also seeking to investigate the lab leak theory. And the media went along with it.

For The Wall Street Journal, pro-Iraq War propagandist Michael Gordon co-authored an article claiming that “three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care.”

An anonymous source said, “The information that we had coming from the various sources was of exquisite quality.” But the source admits it’s not known why researchers were sick.

The article relies on the conservative Hudson Institute’s Senior Fellow David Asher’s testimony and the fact that China has not shared the medical records of citizens without potential COVID-19 symptoms. It is even admitted that several other unnamed U.S. officials find the Trump-era intelligence to be exactly what it is – circumstantial.

A year earlier, during the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries moderated by CNN, Dana Bash asked Bernie Sanders: “What consequences should China face for its role in its global crisis?” She asked the question referencing how Wuhan’s authorities silenced Dr. Wenliang but failed to mention China’s People’s Supreme Court condemned the city’s police for doing so.

She also didn’t acknowledge how Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Shi Zhengli revealed in July 2020 that all of the staff and students in her lab tested negative for COVID-19. Shi even shared her research with American scientists. Georgetown University COVID-19 origin specialist Daniel Lucey welcomed Shi’s transparency: “There are a lot of new facts I wasn’t aware of. It’s very exciting to hear this directly from her.”

But from the Page Act of 1875, which stereotyped Chinese as disease carriers, to job discrimination during the pandemic, it is Asian Americans who ultimately pay the price for the media’s irresponsibility and participation in medical racism. They are already among the casualties of the new cold war. But that war not only threatens residents of the U.S. but the entire planet too.

Profit, Not Principle

This summer, the U.S. armed Taiwan under the Foreign Military Transfer program, reserved for sovereign states only. This violates the one-China policy which holds that both sides of the Taiwan Strait acknowledge that there is one China. Biden is also trying to include Taiwan weapons funding in a supplemental request to Congress.

Weapons sales to Taiwan go back to the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, as well as Reagan administration’s assurances that the U.S. will keep sending weapons but not play any mediation role between Taipei and Beijing. In 1996, a military standoff between the U.S. and China erupted in the Taiwan Strait, followed by an increasing flow of lethal weaponry up to the present.

The New York Times published a story on September 18, mentioning Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, which it says was “a show of support for the island.”

Never mind that the majority of Taiwan residents surveyed by the Brookings Institute felt her visit was detrimental to their security. The media also often ignores voices from Taiwan who don’t want war, favor reunification, or reject attempts to delete Chinese history in their textbooks.

Still, Fox News continues to give a platform to lawmakers like Representative Young Kim who wrote a piece on September 20 advocating for more military patrols in the South China Sea.

On October 17, The Washington Post published a story about the Pentagon releasing footage of Chinese aircraft intercepting U.S. warplanes over the last two years.

The story does not share the context of U.S. expansionism or how multiple secretaries of defense have threatened Beijing over its disputed maritime borders. Microsoft is even getting in on the action, with articles from CNN and Reuters last month uncritically sharing the software company’s claims that China is using AI to interfere in our elections, despite no evidence shared with the voting public.

It demonstrates how war profiteers are edging us closer to a conflict. From sending the Patriot weapons system to Taiwan to practicing attacks with F-22 Raptors in the occupied Northern Marianas Islands, Lockheed Martin is raking in lucrative contracts while residents of the region fear an outbreak of war.

RTX supplies Israel’s Iron Dome and is now designing engineering systems for gunboats in the Pacific. When arms dealers make money, victims of imperialism die. With strong links to the military, it’s hard to imagine that Microsoft, News Corp, and Warner Bros. Discovery would care as long as their stocks go up too.

Intelligence spooks and media moguls don’t know what’s best for people or the planet. And it’s time for a balanced and nuanced understanding of China. That begins with disarming the discourse and keeping the Pacific peaceful.

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Cale Holmes is an international relations analyst, writer, and environmentalist who has lived in Beijing. He serves as CODEPINK’s China Is Not Our Enemy Campaign Coordinator.

Lawson Adams is a 24-year-old college student in Los Angeles California. Two of his four years in the Navy were spent working at the NSA in Oahu, Hawaii as a Chinese language analyst.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

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Yes, – using “dead Jews” in Israel as Breitbart bitterly calls it, as an emotional pressure to blackmail Republican members of Congress for billions more in Ukraine aid and to secure the continued over-spending by Biden’s own government for months to come.

This is against the will of the majority of House Republicans, who adamantly want to reduce spending and who already once cut out Ukraine spending in the temporary funding until 17 November 2023.

This explosively negative reaction to Biden’s move from the activist Republican wing as presented by Breitbart above was expected.

Yesterday, 19 October 2023, activist-Republicans blocked the move by so-called “moderate” members of Congress (a.k.a. the “uniparty”) to get a more conformist House Speaker elected through the backdoor by empowering the Speaker-pro-tempore, who so far has only got formal duties.

That didn’t work. The activist Republican Rep. Jim Jordan is back on the agenda in the fight for a new House Speaker – and that fight may now take weeks if not months, in which period Congress cannot pass either funding or bills.

The crisis in Ukraine and in US spending and governance is about to get a lot worse – and longer. Meanwhile, as Biden is losing the political funding-game in Washington, and the US is losing the war in Ukraine, things are about to get a lot worse for US troops in the Middle East as well.

In the past 48 hours, US troops in Iraq and Syria have been attacked no less than 7 times. So far, these attacks seems to be only warnings to the US about what is about to happen, once the US uses its two aircraft carriers and 2,000 marines off the coast of Lebanon to attack.

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Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

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While many people are deeply saddened by the escalation of violence in the Arab-Israeli conflict, what’s commonly under-reported is the origin and funding of Hamas.

The Hamas attack on Israeli non-combatant civilians was not at all a blow to Israel’s ruling elite, but, on the contrary, an attack that strengthens their rule that came at a very convenient time for them.

Hamas, for Zionist leaders, is controlled opposition. It’s not controlled like a puppet, but funded and kept in power by Israel because its aims, like those of the corrupt Palestine Authority, are to dominate and control ordinary Palestinians in the name of supposedly standing up against Israel while not doing anything that can actually defeat Israel.

The latter would require waging the class war against the billionaire ruling class of Israel. Hamas and Israel’s leaders need each other; each helps the other keep a grip on its own people, providing the other a perfect enemy with which to frighten its “own people” into obedience.

The Israeli right wing’s seven-decades long strategy has been to use violent ethnic cleansing against Palestinians (read the details here). The aim is to make Palestinians so angry at Israel that they can present them as an existential threat—a bogeyman enemy. Israel’s billionaire ruling class (yes, it has one just like the United States does) pretends to be protecting Israeli Jews from this bogeyman enemy.

This while it uses it to frighten into submission the Israeli working class, who are oppressed economically. The U.S. media censors this because the U.S. billionaire ruling class also has a huge motive for supporting Israel’s ethnic cleansing project.

Failure to understand this means a failure to understand what is going on today in Israel/Palestine.

Source: youtube.com

The Evidence: Israel’s Government Funds Hamas and Works to Keep It in Power

Here I will first present the evidence that the Israeli government funds HAMAS big time and has done so for a long time. Then I will present the evidence that the Israeli government has worked to keep HAMAS in power in Gaza. After this I will explain briefly WHY the Israeli government does this and provide a link to my article that explains in great detail with solid proof why the Israeli government does this.

Here’s Evidence that Israel Funds Hamas

—please follow the hyperlinks and read for yourself the evidence:

a. Here’s evidence that Israel funded Hamas right from its beginning.

b. “Money trail to Hamas begins with Israeli banks” and continues through September 27, 2007

c. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: Israel continued as of June 30, 2008 to fund Hamas

d. Forbes on January 16, 2009 reports:

“Incredibly, Israel also supplies Hamas with cash. It began transferring truckloads of cash to Gaza after Hamas’ violent takeover of the territory in June 2007.

“The first transfer of more than $51 million (delivered in Israeli shekels) was purportedly to strengthen the influence of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the Gaza Strip and pay the salaries of 35,000 Palestinian Authority employees then allegedly loyal to him. Among those employees, however, were Ismail Haniya, the Hamas-appointed prime minister in Gaza, and Mahmoud Zahar, Hamas’ foreign minister.

“Zahar prides himself on many successful terrorist attacks against Israel, and his position regarding Israel is clear. “All of Palestine, every inch of Palestine belongs to the Muslims,” he has said. If the goal was to strengthen Abbas’ position, the cash should have been delivered to him in the West Bank city of Ramallah. From there, he could have transferred the money to Gaza, as he has done in the past, and claim credit for it.”

e. “Netanyahu: Money to Hamas part of strategy to keep Palestinians divided” reported March 12, 2019 in the Jerusalem Post. 

Of course Netanyahu is just hiding the REAL purpose. Money is fungible, which means that any money Israel gives to Hamas for one purpose just frees up other money for Hamas to use for another purpose. Israeli leaders need Hamas to commit terrorism against ordinary Israeli Jews in order to make the bogeyman enemy maximally frightening (see the many details here).

f. “Beginning in 2018, Qatar’s envoy traveled with millions of dollars packed neatly in Louis Vuitton suitcases from Doha to the Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv and was escorted to the Gaza Strip by Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. Yossi Cohen, former Mossad chief, even visited Qatar to iron out the details of the arrangement and encouraged the Qataris to keep the dollars coming.

The cash purchased fuel for the besieged strip’s only power plant, funded infrastructure projects, and provided a monthly stipend of $100 to thousands of impoverished Palestinian families. 

“Israeli intelligence officials, however, say they knew that Hamas—the Palestinian group that runs a defacto government in Gaza but is treated by Israel and the United States as a terrorist group—siphoned off the funds. The thinking was that Qatari cash would keep Hamas quiet—that it would essentially buy them off from firing rockets at Israel’s southern cities. 

“But the policy seems to have backfired, several former Israeli officials told Foreign Policy. “Did the Qatari procedure work for us? We don’t think so,” said Colonel Eran Lerman, former deputy national security adviser of the country. 

“In the recent war with Hamas, Israelis were caught off guard by the group’s ability to hit deep inside Israeli cities, with not just Tel Aviv but Jerusalem within their reach. The group fired 4,360 rockets over a period of 11 days, four times more than it did in the 50-day war in 2014.” [June 15, 2021]

g. “For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces: The premier’s policy of treating the terror group as a partner, at the expense of Abbas and Palestinian statehood, has resulted in wounds that will take Israel years to heal from.

“For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group.” [October 8, 2023, 3:58 pm]

h. ‘Can Netanyahu survive Hamas’s attack on Israel?

Israelis are increasingly aware of government failures that enabled Hamas’s attack, but that may not be enough to bring the Israeli prime minister down…Netanyahu’s strategy has always been to allow Hamas room for maneuver in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and Palestinian society more generally.

“Those who want to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state should support the strengthening of Hamas and the transfer of money to Hamas,” he stated at a Likud party meeting in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy, to differentiate between the Palestinians in Gaza and the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria.”’ [October 11, 2023]

Here’s Evidence that Israel Certainly Knows that Its Attacks on Gaza Strengthen Hamas

The Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians in Gaza strengthen the Hamas leaders’ grip on power in Gaza. There is plenty of evidence for this mutually beneficial relationship between the Israeli and Hamas leaders:

UPI Terrorism Correspondent, Richard Sale, wrote an article in 2002 titled, “Hamas History Tied to Israel” in which he states:

“Israel and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly combat, but, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years.

“Israel aided Hamas directly—the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization),” said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies.

Israel’s support for Hamas “was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative,” said a former senior CIA official.

Hostage Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit on Hamas poster, reads: “Our heroes prisoners may we have a new Gilad each year” and down :”They (Palestinian prisoners) are not alone” [Source: upload.wikimedia.org]

In 2009, Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University, wrote an article in which he said:

“Resistance movements such as Hezbollah and Hamas, by contrast, can plausibly claim that they forced Israel to withdraw from occupied Arab land while scoring impressive gains at the ballot box; they have also been reasonably free of corruption. As if determined to increase the influence of these radical movements, Israel has undermined Abbas and the PA at every turn…

“But Hamas will not be so easily defeated, even if Israel’s merciless assault and Hamas’s own obduracy have brought untold suffering on the people of Gaza and much of the Strip lies in ruins: like Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006, all it has to do in order to proclaim victory is remain standing.

“The movement continued to fire rockets into Israel under devastating bombardment, and it looks likely to emerge politically stronger when the war is over…”

Hamas leaders at a rally in Gaza. [Source: britannica.com]

John J. Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, wrote an article (originally for The American Conservative) in 2009 in which he stated:

“More importantly, there is little reason to think that the Israelis can beat Hamas into submission and get the Palestinians to live quietly in a handful of Bantustans inside Greater Israel. Israel has been humiliating, torturing, and killing Palestinians in the Occupied Territories since 1967 and has not come close to cowing them.

“Indeed, Hamas’s reaction to Israel’s brutality seems to lend credence to [Friedrich] Nietzsche’s remark that what does not kill you makes you stronger.” [emphasis added]

Anthony H. Cordesman, who held the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and who was also a national security analyst for ABC News, wrote an article in 2009 in which he stated in regard to the fighting in Gaza:

“At least to date, the reporting from within Gaza indicates that each new Israeli air strike or advance on the ground has increased popular support for Hamas and anger against Israel in Gaza. The same is true in the West Bank and the Islamic world. Iran and Hezbollah are capitalizing on the conflict…

What is the strategic purpose behind the present fighting?…Will Israel end in empowering an enemy in political terms that it defeated in tactical terms?…To [be] blunt, the answer so far seems to be yes.” [emphasis added]

Khalid Amayreh, in his blog in 2009, wrote about the Israeli attack on Gaza in an article titled, “Hamas gaining sympathy as onslaught continue.”

“With the massive Israeli onslaught against the Gaza Strip continuing unabated, and with Israeli political and military leaders threatening to “decimate” Hamas, Palestinian intellectuals as well as ordinary people expect Hamas’s popularity to rise dramatically when the present Israeli campaign is over…”

“Qassem predicted that the current Israeli campaign would actually lead to the boosting of Hamas’s popularity…

“Another Palestinian intellectual, Abdul Bari Atwan, predicts that public support for Hamas will increase as a result of the present Israeli campaign in the Gaza Strip.”

Al Jazeera English made a video report in 2009 titled “War on GAZA: Popular Support” in which they wrote:

“Since beginning its offensive in the Gaza Strip, Israel has repeatedly declared it will maintain attacks to smash what it calls the Hamas terrorist machine. However, as Israel’s bombardment continues, the appeal of Hamas in the Arab world appears to be growing. Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra reports on how the war has left Hamas gaining popular support.” [emphasis added]

Some of these reports are by people who think Israeli leaders don’t realize that their massacres of Palestinians in Gaza strengthen the Hamas leaders’ power there. But there is evidence that the Israeli leaders understand this full well.

There is a video of a talk given by Professor Juan Cole, an expert on the Middle East. The host who introduces Cole name-drops that he recently had lunch with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and then (starting at the 26:56 minute point of the video) reports having heard a startling eyewitness account of the following:  

that during the recent Israeli slaughter of people in Gaza, supposedly to wipe out Hamas, this eyewitness was on the phone directly with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and told him he knew where the Hamas leadership was hiding, and Barack replied, “We know where Hamas’s leadership is hiding, but we’re not going to go further, we are trying to send a message.” 

The video is titled, “Making a National Priority of Engaging the Muslim World and was published March 24, 2009 (Recorded @ uStream.Tv).”

Why Does the Israeli Government Fund and Keep Hamas in Power?

To read the answer to this question, with enormous amounts of proof based on establishment media sources, including Israeli sources, read my article, “The Israeli Government Attacks Ordinary Jews As Well As Palestinians.”

Very briefly, the answer is this. Like the United States, the Israeli government is controlled by a very wealthy Israeli upper class that severely oppresses Israeli Jewish working class people. The Israeli upper class controls the Israeli Jewish working class by pretending to be its protector against its “real enemy—Palestinians.”

To make the Palestinians be an effective bogeyman enemy, the Israeli upper class needs HAMAS to be as frightening to Jews as possible, for HAMAS to declare that it wants Islam to be sovereign in all of Palestine including the part now called Israel, and for HAMAS to deliberately direct lethal violence (suicide bombers in the past and rockets more recently) against noncombatant Israeli Jewish civilians (i.e., to commit terrorism) to make it seem that the Palestinians want to kill all the Jews in Israel and drive them into the sea. 

HAMAS plays the role of Palestinian antisemitic terrorist perfectly; it is exactly what the Israeli ruling class needs to stay in power.

Let’s Put the Purpose of the 2023 Hamas Terrorist Attack on Non-combatant Israeli Civilians in Its Larger Perspective

The purpose of a false flag attack orchestrated by a ruling class is to make one’s own population believe that they are under attack by a foreign (or “other” in some sense) enemy. The purpose is to create fear of a bogeyman enemy so that, by pretending to be protecting one’s population from that enemy, one can thereby make them submit to your authority in the name of patriotism.

This is EXACTLY what the seven decades of Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians (see details about it at here)  has accomplished for the billionaire ruling class of Israel ( as discussed in great detail here.) The purpose of this violent ethnic cleansing has always been to make the Palestinians be a frightening bogeyman enemy.

For the ruling class of Israel, peace with the Palestinians is thus absolutely the LAST thing they want: it would lead to the overthrow of the billionaire class, as my linked article above demonstrates.

So, in this larger perspective, it is virtually OBVIOUS that the Israeli ruling class WANTED Hamas to carry out its suicide bombings in the past and then later its rocket attacks on Israeli non-combatant civilians.

And it is obvious that Israel’s funding of Hamas has, despite the bogus excuses of Israel’s leaders, been for the purpose of making the bogeyman enemy maximally frightening.

And this certainly includes the most recent 2023 Hamas terrorism against Israeli non-combatant civilians. As Israel’s leaders surely know, Israeli massacres of people in Gaza STRENGTHEN, not weaken, Hamas’s control of the Palestinians there. Hamas leaders and Israeli leaders thus have a tacit alliance to keep both of them in power over their own people.

Hamas Is the Enemy of Ordinary Palestinians

The ordinary people who live in Mandate Palestine are in a carefully laid trap. The only way to escape the trap is to first understand that it exists and then to deliberately escape from it, by rejecting the entire “religious war” framework that the trap depends upon.​

When Palestinians engage in actions that are attempts to return to the region of Palestine, now called Israel, that Zionists drove them out of, and when they fight back against the Israeli military who block their path, they strengthen the anti-Zionist movement: they make it clear to the world—and to Israeli Jews—that their aim is not to “drive the Jews into the sea” or “kill all the Jews” but to be allowed to exercise their Right of Return.

But Hamas’s aim is the contrary one, to weaken the anti-Zionist movement by doing things such as firing rockets at Israeli civilians that tell the world it does indeed view ordinary non-combatant Israeli Jews as the enemy.

Look at what Hamas does when ordinary Palestinians try to exercise their Right of Return. In 2011, Palestinians in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank marched to the Israeli border and tried to enter Israel. Israeli military forces fired on them; no surprise. But Hamas also tried to block the Palestinians. As The Columbus Dispatch (and others) reported:​

“In Gaza, the Hamas police stopped buses carrying protesters near the main crossing into Israel, but dozens of demonstrators continued on foot, arriving at a point closer to the Israeli border than they had reached in years and drawing Israeli fire.”

In 2018, Palestinians in Gaza began the wonderful Great March of Return: wonderful because it told the world that the true aim of Palestinians is to be allowed to enjoy their Right of Return, not to “kill all the Jews.” The only violence by Palestinians was in clear self-defense against the Israeli military that was using violence to deny them their Right of Return.

The initiative for this mass action of Palestinians, however, did not come from Hamas but from other Palestinians. Hamas could not prevent it from happening because it was such a popular action, but Hamas tried to end it when it could. As Wikipedia states,

“The first demonstrations were organized by independent activists, but the initiative was soon endorsed by Hamas,[19] the de facto rulers of the Gaza Strip, as well as other major factions in Gaza. The activists who planned the Great March of Return intended it to last only from 30 March 2018 (Land Day) to 15 May (Nakba Day) but the demonstrations continued for almost 18 months until Hamas on 27 December 2019 announced that they would be postponed.[1]” [emphasis added]

The Issue Is Not Violence Versus Non-Violence, but Race/Ethnic War Versus Class War

The Palestinians, like all oppressed people, have a perfect right to use violence in self-defense against those who oppress them violently. This has nothing in common with violence deliberately directed against non-combatant civilians.

Years ago, I wrote about this in an article titled “What Would it Look Like if Hamas and Hezbollah Fought a Class War?”

Please read here the eloquent explanation by a great Palestinian (now a fugitive from Israel), Azmi Bishara, why terrorism (violence against non-combatant civilians) is not resistance and resistance is not terrorism. This article also discusses how the great majority of Muslims worldwide oppose terrorism violence against noncombatant civilians.

The purpose of HAMAS is to enable Zionist leaders to falsely persuade the world that Palestinian resistance to Zionist ethnic cleansing is terrorism. Don’t let the Zionist leaders get away with this. Terrorism is not resistance; and resistance is not terrorism.

What Do Most Palestinians Think About Hamas’ Terrorism?

What ordinary Palestinians and Israelis, as opposed to their respective “leaders,” want can be inferred from an event that I read about back in 2001.

On August 30, 2001 in the West Bank Palestinian village of Ni’elin, Amos Tagouri, a 60-year-old Israeli Jewish cab driver, was having breakfast in a little restaurant just opened by his Palestinian friend, Mursi Amira, when a masked gunman walked up to his table and fatally shot him.

Tagouri was an Israeli Jew in a village of Palestinians who were largely unemployed because Israel wouldn’t let them travel to their former jobs in Israel. But he was highly regarded by the people of Ni’elin.

According to the Boston Globe report of the incident (September 1, 2001), Amira said:

 “Amos was one of us. He knew our culture. If he prayed with us he would have been one of us completely. . . . This is a bigger loss for us than for the Jews…he helped people here a lot. He was not rich, but he drove the farmers to sell their cactus fruit and figs in Israel, and if they didn’t have enough money to pay until after the market, he accepted that…The whole village is angry. The people of this village spit on this. It is an act of cowardice.”

Mustafa Amira, a vegetable stand owner, said, “He helped us. He respected us, we respected him. Hamas, Fatah – I don’t know” who killed him. “I know they are a gang.” Amira’s mother condemned the killers. “They think if they kill him, the Israelis crack down, and the village will be radicalized. I hope it will not happen.”

“The extremists do not want peace,” said Sakhi Hayun, 34, owner of the Sandwich Bar in Modi’in and former employer of Amira and his brother. “That’s why they kill Arab and Israeli civilians in the road. Ninety percent of the people, both Israelis and Arabs, do not support this.”

The Boston Globe reported this as a freak event, calling the village the “rarest of places in the bitter struggle that has convulsed Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories for 11 months—a place where one side cried over a death on the other.” But what happened in Ni’elin is what Arab and Jewish elites are afraid will happen everywhere unless they can prevent it by spreading fear and mistrust with terrorism and government-sponsored discrimination.

This is why, for example, the Israeli government was afraid of the solidarity between Jews and Arabs that was developing in the struggle against the construction of a super highway. On October 15, 2001, Arab residents of Baka al Gharabiya and Jatt demonstrated against the Israeli government’s plan to confiscate 2,800 dunams of their land for the Trans-Israel Highway.

While Arabs in Israel own only 3% of the privately held land, 85% of the land confiscated for the highway (travel on which is restricted for non-Jews) had been taken from Palestinian Israelis, destroying agricultural land they needed to survive.

Jews in Israel rallied to support the Arab protest, arguing that “The highway will effectively deepen cleavages between Jews and Arabs, rich and poor, taking jobs from poor peasants and farmers, to make transportation more convenient for the rich.”

Jewish residents of nearby Kibbutz Magal and Ma’anit told the Israeli government that, if the road must be built, the land confiscation should not discriminate against non-Jews, and for that reason they proposed an alternative plan that entailed giving over some of their land to their Palestinian neighbors in a logical compromise.

But the Israel Lands Authority and Ariel Sharon’s government insisted that the plans move forward without changes. The incident is but one example of why Palestinians are fighting the Israeli government.

Incidents like these show that most people in Palestine and the part of it called Israel want peace and security in a society based on equality, concern for one another and mutual aid. Their leaders want society to be unequal, with them at the top ruling over and dominating everybody else.

The truth is that if the Israeli ruling class stopped treating Palestinians like dirt, then most Palestinians would view Hamas’s violent terrorism against ordinary noncombatant Jews–and any advocacy whatsoever of violence against people just because they are Jews–as criminally immoral behavior.

Why Did Palestinians Vote for Hamas in Gaza?

There are two reasons many Palestinians voted for Hamas in Gaza’s elections.

First, Hamas has two branches, a social work branch and a military branch. The social work branch operates various social services for Palestinians, “from the supply of housing, food and water for the needy to more general functions like financial aid, medical assistance, educational development and religious instruction.” Many Palestinians voted for Hamas to keep these social services going.

Second, the only election competitor to Hamas is the Fatah Party affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is widely known to be notoriously corrupt and in cahoots with the Israeli government as the party in charge of the Palestine Authority, as discussed here. Many Palestinians voted for Hamas because the alternative was far more corrupt and far more obviously in cahoots with the Israeli government.

Most Muslims in the World, Like Most Jews, Oppose Violence Against Noncombatant Civilians.

Read the linked articles below about this.

Extremism Widely Rejected [from Pew Research]

“Muslims around the world strongly reject violence in the name of Islam. Asked specifically about suicide bombing, clear majorities in most countries say such acts are rarely or never justified as a means of defending Islam from its enemies.

“In most countries where the question was asked, roughly three-quarters or more Muslims reject suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilians. And in most countries, the prevailing view is that such acts are never justified as a means of defending Islam from its enemies.

“Yet there are some countries in which substantial minorities think violence against civilians is at least sometimes justified. This view is particularly widespread among Muslims in the Palestinian territories (40%), Afghanistan (39%), Egypt (29%) and Bangladesh (26%).”

“Almost all radical movements in today’s Islam, anywhere in the world, are tied to Wahhabism, an ultra-conservative, reactionary sect of Islam, which is in control of the political life of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other staunch allies of the West in the Gulf.

“To quote Dr. Abdullah Mohammad Sindi:

“It is very clear from the historical record that without British help neither Wahhabism nor the House of Saud would be in existence today. Wahhabism is a British-inspired fundamentalist movement in Islam.

“Through its defense of the House of Saud, the US also supports Wahhabism directly and indirectly regardless of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Wahhabism is violent, right wing, ultra-conservative, rigid, extremist, reactionary, sexist, and intolerant…””

“Killing of innocent people has no place in Islam…Or the Hadith that states “Whoever kills a mu’ahid [non-combatant, innocent non-Muslims] will not smell the scent of paradise …” (Bukhari). A contextual reading of the Koran or Hadith leads to one conclusion only: there is no justification for the killing of innocent people, whether in Baghdad or Boston. Full stop! The ends do not justify the means in Islamic ethics!

Therefore, associating murder or the killing of innocent people and bystanders to “Islam” is not only abhorrent, but goes against the clear text of Islam.

Also see “Should We Blame Islam for Terrorism?” by David Shariatmadari.

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John Spritzler is a retired Senior Research Scientist at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. He is the editor of PDRBoston.org, the father of three boys and a long-time resident of Boston, MA. John can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image: Members of the Hamas al-Qassam Brigade at an event marking the anniversary of Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza (EPA-EFE/Mohammed Saber via Euractiv)

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As the Israel-Gaza conflict escalates, with the expected involvement of various regional powers, the inclusion of global ones after the United States sent a massive naval force to the Eastern Mediterranean was guaranteed. And indeed, this now includes Russia which decided to send its superfast, high-flying MiG-31 jets to patrol the Black Sea. Namely, on October 18, Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly announced that Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) will deploy MiG-31K/I (interceptors modified into strike fighters) armed with 9-A-7660 “Kinzhal” air-launched hypersonic missiles (usually given the unconfirmed Kh-47M2 designation) in response to large-scale US naval deployments. Although this doesn’t immediately indicate that the jets are on combat duty to tackle the possible involvement of US forces, the “Kinzhal’s” range and speed are more than enough to jeopardize American assets.

With the USS “Dwight D. Eisenhower” Nimitz-class supercarrier (CVN-69) joining the USS “Gerald R. Ford” (CVN-78), the US Navy now operates two carrier strike groups (CSGs) in the Eastern Mediterranean. Combined, both vessels can carry up to 180 aircraft, in addition to other ships escorting them as part of the CSGs. This massive force is a threat to Russian allies in the region, particularly Syria, and by extension, Moscow’s forces deployed in the Middle Eastern country.

The MiG-31s armed with “Kinzhals” and flying over the Black Sea cover the entirety of the Eastern Mediterranean without going anywhere near American CSGs. Namely, although estimates vary significantly, the “Kinzhal’s” range is up to 2000 km, meaning that the MiG-31K/I strike fighters are capable of launching the hypersonic missiles well beyond the range of any US ship-based air defenses, interceptors or similar assets.

It should be noted that the US Navy also sent the USS “Bataan” (LHD-5) Wasp-class amphibious assault ship with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (SOC – Special Operations Capable) and additional naval forces.

The USS “Bataan” can also carry up to 20 aircraft, further reinforcing the already massive US presence in the area. In addition, the 26th MEU has at least 1600 marines, although its full combat strength is up to 2400. Apart from these, the Pentagon deployed other assets such as the A-10 “Thunderbolt II” attack jets, F-15E “Strike Eagle” strike fighters, as well as the B-1B “Lancer” long-range bombers. The latter were sent from their home base in Texas on October 12 and forward deployed to RAF (Royal Air Force) Fairford airbase in the United Kingdom. From there, “Lancers” could launch strikes against targets across the Middle East and elsewhere, jeopardizing at least half a dozen countries in the region.

As previously mentioned, all of the aforementioned assets are a threat to Russian forces deployed in the area, as well as to Moscow’s allies, particularly Syria. It should be noted that the forces Washington DC sent so far are absolutely unnecessary against Hamas. In fact, US President Joe Biden himself stated that Israel has “one of the finest fighting forces” and that it’s more than capable of dealing with Hamas. This leaves Russia, Iran and other countries in the Middle East with only one logical conclusion – the newly arrived US forces are there for other reasons. Apart from that, the deployment also coincides with the increase in activities of NATO-backed terrorist groups in Syria. This is particularly true for Turkish-supported jihadists that are now escalating their illegal activities in Syria, particularly in the terrorist-occupied northwestern part of the country, where they could launch offensive operations.

Washington DC could very well use the Israel-Gaza conflict as an opportunity to attack Syria or at the very least Iranian and pro-Iranian forces in the region, which could deeply destabilize Damascus. Moscow is committed to the preservation of Syria, not only because of its strategically important military facilities there, but also because NATO would inevitably turn the unfortunate country into yet another global hotbed of terrorism if President Bashar al-Assad is ever overthrown. It should be noted that Turkey is also deeply involved in this, despite its recent rhetoric condemning Israeli actions in Gaza. And while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan keeps fuming at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, behind the scenes, the two countries are still maintaining close ties. If Ankara had the interests of Palestinians in mind, it wouldn’t coordinate the terrorist groups it supports to escalate in Syria.

As for the Russian military, its deployment of MiG-31s armed with the “Kinzhal” air-launched hypersonic missiles is a prime example of how a very small-scale force can provide a massive asymmetric advantage over much larger US forces. The missile’s blistering speed of up to Mach 12 (or possibly even higher) is a virtually insurmountable obstacle for any air or missile defense system. In fact, despite repeated claims by the mainstream propaganda machine that the Kiev regime forces shot down at least half a dozen “Kinzhals”, the evidence for this is either non-existent or simply laughable. However, the Russian hypersonic missile did destroy at least one battery of the much-touted American “Patriot” SAM (surface-to-air missile) system back in mid-May. More recently, “Kinzhal” was made even more readily available to the VKS, as its Su-34 supersonic, multirole fighter-bombers can also use them now.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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Sydney, Australia – 24 year old Bianca was a broker who was mandated first two COVID-19 Vaccines (AstraZeneca) by her employer. She then had an opportunity to work in Singapore and took 2 more boosters (Pfizer) to please her employer. She was then peer pressured to take another booster, 5th dose (Moderna) in 1st week of Jan. 2023. A week later on Jan. 16 she collapsed in the gym with seizures and died unexpectedly from a ruptured brain aneurysm on Jan. 17, 2023.

Her Full Story

Government Recommendations on Mixing COVID-19 Vaccines

Canada (June 2021)

USA (October 2021)

Europe (November 2021)

Captured Medical Magazines

WHO (2022)

My Take… 

I have done many substack articles on Pfizer & Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines causing aneurysms, and young people dying suddenly of ruptured brain aneurysms (and occasionally other aneurysms).

One of the most unethical and unscientific things you can do in medicine, is to advise a patient to take and mix experimental pharmaceutical products with no long term safety studies.

Do you see it? Look how they all aggressively promoted mixing and matching”, to the point of fraudulently claiming it provided “superior immunity”. 

Bianca was almost certainly killed by a COVID-19 vaccine, but WHICH ONE?

And there-in lies the real reason for “mixing and matching”.

To make it impossible to trace the vaccine damage to a specific product.

I suspect, this is where all of this leads to:

We are entering an era of mRNA vaccine mixing.

“Triple Vaccine for the Tripledemic”

May the vaccine “mix and match” odds ever be in your favor.

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

Featured image is from COVID Intel

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China’s President Xi Jinping, in his Opening Statement to the 3^rd Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, said that “China is doing well only when the world is doing well, and if China is doing well, the world is doing even better.”

He projected a humankind of community with a shared future.

Continuing with his opening remarks, Xi said,

“One of its [BRI’s] most significant facets, is its emphasis on green infrastructure projects, and renewable energy development. Promoting the ancient Silk Road’s spirit of peace and cooperation, mutual learning and mutual benefits, openness, and win-win, is the most important source of strength for the Belt and Road cooperation.”

The Forum took place from 17-18 October 2023 in Beijing, marking the 10^th Anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which President Xi launched in September 2013 during a state visit to Kazakhstan.  

As a preamble to describing the 3^rd Forum’s forward-looking perspective on the world, The China Daily (19 October 2023) introduced the BRI Forum with its historic past: 

“Over two millennia ago, inspired by a sincere wish for friendship, our ancestors travelled across grasslands and deserts to create a land Silk Road connecting Asia, Europe and Africa, leading the world into an era of extensive cultural exchanges. More than 1,000 years ago, our ancestors set sail and braved the waves to open a maritime Silk Road linking the East and the West, beginning a new phase of closer communication among peoples.”

“Spanning thousands of miles and years, the ancient silk routes were not only routes for trade but also roads for cultural exchanges. They made a great contribution to human progress. In the 1980s, the United Nations and some countries began to envisage the Eurasian Land Bridge, the Silk Road Initiative, and other plans, reflecting a common wish to engage in communication and cooperation.”

“In March 2013, President Xi Jinping proposed the vision of a global community of shared future. In September and October that year, he raised the initiatives of joining with others to build a Silk Road Economic Belt and a 21st Century Maritime Silk Road (Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI).”

The forum was attended by 130 countries, of which 24 were represented by their leaders. In glaring absence were dignitaries from the US and Europe, except for Hungary’s Viktor Orban. Other heads of state present were Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Indonesia’s Joko Widodo, as well as many from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Even the Taliban, the quasi-representatives of Afghanistan’s government, sent a delegation. 

Significantly, among the attendees of the 3^rd Belt and Road Forum was UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. 

By contrast, the 2019 forum was attended by 37 world leaders including 5 from Europe, Italy, Greece, Austria, Portugal, and the Czech Republic.

Italy, an important EU member and the only G7 member, is currently part of the Belt and Road. However, Italy did not attend the forum.

Only a year ago, Italy’s PM Giorgia Meloni praised the BRI cooperation between her country and China. In the meantime, under strong pressure from Washington and the EU, she is considering exiting the Belt and Road when the current pact expires in March 2024. It is not done yet as Ms. Meloni is most likely asking for a parliamentary vote on the BRI membership.

See this, Italy: US Pressure to Exit the Chinese “Belt and Road”. To Stay or Not to Stay in the BRI? (25 July 2023).

The following video clip of a CNN interview with PM Meloni and with Ms. Zoe Liu, a Chinese Studies Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, is quite revealing about the slanted interview style and opinion-making – of western media.

Click here to view the video

The absence of European and other world leaders, plus the strongly pronounced alliance between Presidents Xi and Putin, demonstrating throughout close solidarity, underscored the growing division between East and West, or between the Global South and the Global North.

In other words, a deepening chasm between the world’s two power poles, East and West, is visible at any major world event, when issues of global significance are discussed.

For example, Xi and Putin were leading a small group of country delegations which did not condemn Hamas for attacking Israel, knowing well that for the last seven-plus decades, Israel has increasingly and randomly murdered Palestinians, evermore oppressed Palestine, and in 2007 made Gaza into the world’s largest open-air prison of 2.3 million people.

China has been for many years a strong supporter for Palestine freedom, for a two-state solution. But Israel, with the support of Washington, has no interest in what looks like the only way out, into peace and hopefully over time a harmonious cohabitation of two neighboring sovereign countries.

Most likely, China and Russia know that Israel herself was behind the attack by Hamas. Israel is the presumed creator and funder of Hamas. Making the Hamas October 7 assault a “false flag” – leading to thousands of deaths on both sides, but mostly Palestinians. And the conflict is far from over.

Instead of launching accusations, Russia and China called for a cease-fire and peace negotiations.

It is not to be excluded that as part of a peace proposal, China and Russia may advance the idea of rebuilding Gaza and the West Bank under the Belt and Road Initiative. This might be a plan finding the Global South’s approval.

Just in case, it would be interesting to see the West’s reaction to such a positive and constructive suggestion – much more than has come forward from the west in the last 75 years during which Israel has systematically attempted to annihilate Palestine. 

Xi’s show of solidarity with Putin at the Belt and Road Forum also underscored the deepening division between the world’s major powers. It shows the world that cooperation with the West – a world in harmony — is not part of the Globalists’ agenda.

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Just as a reflection – does anybody really believe that the western so-called leaders, who openly cheer for Israel’s generations-old aggression and now genocide, do not know the truth?

That they do not know who is the real aggressor in this age-old conflict?

At night, before they go to sleep, some of them may even secretly pray for Palestine. 

But they do not dare openly standing up for justice and peace. Why not?

They are only power-thirsty puppets for a huge Financial -Military -IT-Media -Pharma Monster which pulls the strings on all the visible leaders, corporate CEOs, World Economic Forum (WEF), WHO – and yes, also Washington. 

When the majority of these puppets do have the courage to stand up and step out of the Matrix, then war may convert to real peace.

In the meantime, the best we have is the Belt and Road, set out to unite humanity for a shared future of prosperity. 

Since its launch in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative has poured hundreds of billions of dollars equivalent into BRI economic development, mostly infrastructure projects such as the construction of bridges, ports, highways, power plants and telecoms, across Asia, Latin America, Africa, and parts of Europe.

This does not even account for cultural, educational, and scientific interchange between countries, promoted by the BRI. Every interaction between countries and societies is a step towards better understanding, towards peaceful cohabitation.

China’s Foreign Minister, Mr. Wang Yi, in a press conference for Chinese and foreign media, summarized China’s outlook for Belt and Road cooperation as a new stage of high-quality development.

Mr. Yi pointed to four new areas of development and cooperation – which were also covered by President Xi’s opening address.

First, promoting multidimensional connectivity of the Eurasian continent. China proposed to support the building of a multidimensional connectivity network of the Eurasian continent from five aspects, including strengthening railway connectivity based on the China-Europe Railway Express, building a new logistics corridor across the Eurasian continent linked by direct road transportation, building the trans-Caspian international transportation corridor, advancing the “Silk Road Maritime” and the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor, and building the Air Silk Road between China and Europe.

Second, BRI’s new stage will be led by the Green Silk Road. China will deepen cooperation with all parties in areas such as green infrastructure, green energy, green finance, and green transportation, step up support for the BRI International Green Development Coalition, implement the Green Investment Principles for the Belt and Road, and make green development a great banner of the Belt and Road.

Third, the new stage will be empowered by the Digital Silk Road. China will work with all parties to foster an open, fair, and non-discriminatory environment for the development of the digital economy, promote the deep integration of digital technology and the real economy, and narrow the digital divide. China has also put forward the Global Initiative for Artificial Intelligence Governance, which is of great significance for improving and strengthening the global digital governance system; and

Fourth, this new stage for China means joining hands with other countries in realizing global modernization. Through Belt and Road cooperation, China will deepen the integration of China’s economy and the world economy. China is firmly committed to building an open world economy, jointly realizing modernization featuring peaceful development, mutually beneficial cooperation, and prosperity for all, implementing the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative proposed by President Xi Jinping, and building a human community with a shared future.

To conclude, Minister Wang Yi stressed that Belt and Road cooperation represents the advancing of the times, and it is the right path forward. He joins President Xi Jinping pointing to the Belt and Road as a vital instrument working towards a community with a shared future for mankind, and with shared prosperity.

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

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

Featured image is from CGTN

A escalada na Palestina parece inevitável. Pressionadas pelos setores pró-guerra dos seus países, as delegações ocidentais no Conselho de Segurança das Nações Unidas (CSNU) rejeitaram uma importante resolução proposta pela Federação Russa, que poderia ter garantido um cessar-fogo parcial no conflito. Como resultado da desaprovação, a guerra agravou-se rapidamente e, no dia seguinte à decisão do CSNU, um hospital foi bombardeado em Gaza, gerando uma grave crise humanitária.

O texto russo estabeleceu termos mínimos para pôr fim ao conflito e alcançar uma solução humanitária. A violência contra civis foi absolutamente condenada, com críticas de ambos os lados. Além disso, foi solicitado um cessar-fogo humanitário para permitir medidas de apoio aos civis afetados pelo conflito. A China, os Emirados Árabes Unidos e Moçambique apoiaram a proposta de Moscou.

Contudo, os países ocidentais não parecem interessados ​​em procurar a paz, mas sim em punir coletivamente o povo de Gaza. A resolução foi veementemente contestada pelos EUA, Reino Unido, França e Japão. Somando esses votos às seis abstenções, o resultado foi o fracasso na aprovação da medida.

Nas suas justificações, os países ocidentais afirmaram que o documento russo não poderia ser aceito porque não condenava especificamente o Hamas. Este tipo de retórica parece absolutamente injustificada, uma vez que a condenação de todos os tipos de violência ilegal contra civis foi feita pela Rússia, e não há necessidade de citar os nomes, o que apenas aumentaria ainda mais as tensões.

“Explicando” o seu voto contra a paz, a embaixadora Linda Thomas-Greenfield, representante dos EUA na ONU, disse:

“Infelizmente, a resolução da Rússia apresentada hoje não cumpre todas estas responsabilidades. A resolução da Rússia, apresentada sem quaisquer consultas, não faz qualquer menção ao Hamas – nenhuma. Ao não condenar o Hamas, a Rússia está a dar cobertura a um grupo terrorista que brutaliza civis inocentes. … É ultrajante, é hipócrita e é indefensável. Colegas, os Estados Unidos não poderiam apoiar a resolução da Rússia – que, ao ignorar o terrorismo do Hamas, desonra as vítimas. Concordamos que este Conselho deve tomar medidas e trabalharemos intensamente com todos os membros do Conselho para fazê-lo (…) E não podemos permitir que este Conselho transfira injustamente a culpa para Israel e desculpe o Hamas pelas suas décadas de crueldade.”

Como podemos ver, há uma tentativa desesperada por parte dos EUA de associar a Rússia ao Hamas e torná-la parte no conflito. Mas tudo isto é mentira, uma vez que Moscou tem uma postura neutra face a conflitos duradouros, com uma opinião crítica sobre a atitude de ambos os lados. A Rússia defende uma solução de dois estados, com a Palestina tendo Jerusalém Oriental como capital, o que é uma atitude imparcial na guerra atual. Mas o Ocidente parece disposto a apoiar a política de expansionismo ilimitado de Israel, o que apenas conduzirá a mais conflitos e hostilidade.

Para piorar a situação, a postura belicosa do Ocidente teve rapidamente efeitos diretos na guerra. Em 17 de Outubro, foi lançado um ataque massivo contra o Al Ahli Arab, um hospital cristão em Gaza, matando centenas de civis, incluindo crianças, mulheres e idosos. Israel acusou os palestinos de terem realizado o ataque, mas as evidências sugerem que a culpa é de Tel Aviv. Há até relatos de que o míssil utilizado no crime foi um JDAM fornecido pelos EUA.

Independentemente de quem realizou o ataque, porém, o ponto principal é que isto teria sido evitado se no dia anterior os países ocidentais não tivessem boicotado a proposta russa de um cessar-fogo humanitário. Para endossar o seu apoio irrestrito a Israel, as potências ocidentais aceitaram a possibilidade de escalada e estão agora a ver as consequências das suas ações irresponsáveis.

Em todo o mundo, especialistas já acusam o Ocidente de ser co-responsável pelo massacre do hospital. Por exemplo, o analista político dos Emirados Árabes Unidos, baseado na China, Ebrahim Hashem, disse nas suas redes sociais:

“Quando o bloco ocidental, representado pelos EUA, Reino Unido, França e Japão, votou contra a recente resolução do Conselho de Segurança que apelava ao cessar-fogo humanitário em Gaza, basicamente deram luz verde aos sionistas para cometerem o crime. Estes 4 governos são cúmplices.”

Como resultado, os protestos aumentaram em todo o mundo árabe e islâmico. Os manifestantes apelam à intervenção militar a favor da Palestina e ao fim das relações diplomáticas com o Ocidente e Israel. Além disso, os grupos armados do eixo de resistência liderado pelo Irã parecem estar perto de uma intervenção e há vários sinais de que a guerra na Palestina atingirá a sua dimensão máxima nos próximos dias.

Tudo isto poderia ser evitado se os diplomatas americanos, franceses, ingleses e japoneses priorizassem a paz em detrimento da militância pró-Israel. Mais do que isso, o caso mostra o fracasso da ONU na prevenção de conflitos de grande escala, com a organização a aproximar-se cada vez mais do mesmo fim que a Liga das Nações tinha. Como afirmou a delegação russa, o Conselho de Segurança da ONU tornou-se refém dos interesses do Ocidente.

Neste cenário, ou são realizadas reformas institucionais ou teremos em breve uma situação aberta de conflito global.

Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

 

Imagem : InfoBrics

Artigo em inglês : If approved by West, Russian resolution could have prevented attack on Gaza hospital, InfoBrics, 18 de Outubro de 2023.

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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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***

President Biden rushed to Israel to give his blessings, and the blessings of the United States, and of anyone else so foolish to join the parade, to whatever Israel and the United States may do after the more than ambiguous attacks of Hamas.

President Biden declared, unambiguously stated, that Hamas had “unleashed pure unadulterated evil on the world.” He was repeating a script that someone on his staff had handed him, and he did so without any feelings or insights, just playing the role assigned to him by the rich and powerful as a pathetically broken man in a hopelessly broken system.

One must ask whether President Biden would know what evil is if it was wrapped around his neck, if it was hugging him like a brother, or if it looked him in the eyes from the other side of the mirror. 

The cynicism with which Biden’s handlers throw around that word “evil” should not blind us to the blight wrought by something horrible that we see all around us; whether it is mothers caring for their sons gone blind from vaccines in Atlanta, or fathers carrying their crumpled daughter’s bodies wrapped in cardboard in Gaza. 

President Biden’s speech was a fraud, but “evil” is no fraud.

Although my focus must fall, perforce, on policy, and I should leave debates on evil to learned professors of philosophy or men and women of the faith, nevertheless I feel compelled to speak out today about evil because our failure to understand the nature of evil will be our undoing. If we fail to grasp evil in its true nature, we may well roll blindly into a world war over the next month that will leave hundreds of millions dead. There is not much time and there is no time for self-deception, for self-indulgence.

Click here to view the video

Evil is real and it is not limited to the teachings of religious scriptures.

Evil is rarely an ugly monster that terrifies children with sharp claws and jagged fangs like Godzilla tearing through Tokyo.

No, evil is often seductive, attractive, and even enticing, leading us to accept it as a friend, an ally, because it flatters us and makes us feel more important than others, because it whispers in our ears that it is okay to do terrible things as long as no one else knows what we have done. 

Evil is invisible; it morphs into one form, and then into another, taking on the attributes that we most desire and then vanishing suddenly, mysteriously, leaving us wondering why we have so much blood on our hands.

Although Hollywood movies suggest that evil is perpetrated by some brilliant genius behind the curtains, more often than not the origins of evil are banal and ordinary, something mentioned in passing at a backyard barbeque. Original acts of evil do not draw attention to themselves at all and therefore are easily passed over without comment.

That is the threat of a banal and undetectable evil that Hannah Arendt described thus:

“Evil is never ‘radical;’ it is only extreme. It possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension. It can overgrow and lay waste the whole world precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the surface. Evil defies thought because when thought tries to go to the roots of evil, it is frustrated, finding nothing there. That is the ‘banality’ of evil.”

I am struggling to uncover the nature of evil because it threatens us Americans from within.

I am forced to recognize that I do not have to go to Gaza to find evil. No, I do not even need to go beyond the beltway—in fact, I do not even need to leave my comfortable living room and LED TV.

As I watched President Biden there speaking in Israel, I felt as if he was animated by some power beyond himself, and beyond his staff, beyond even his political party. Something was sloughing to Jerusalem to be born in the backrooms of private intelligence firms and weapons contractors hidden behind the Stars and Stripes and the Star of David that adorned the stage.

When President Biden stated,

“I come to Israel with a single message: You are not alone. … As long as the United States stands … we’re going to stand by your side.”

He was suggesting that some horrific war has already been decided by those hidden powers and now it is time for Arabs, and Jews as well, and Americans, to die in large numbers. If it means the end of Israel and the United States, he hints, so be it. “As long at the United States stands” means “until the United States is destroyed.”

When President Biden stated that,

“If Israel didn’t exist, we would have to invent it.”

The investment banks who have made a fortune by using Israel and its security forces, and security IT, to intimidate others and to increase their profits, they most certainly knew what he meant. For, without doubt, the banks will have to invent a new Israel to do their bidding if this one is destroyed by this apocalypse they have planned out.

But perhaps the most disturbing part of the speech came after Biden said that this was not just “Israel’s 9.11,” it was “fifteen 9.11s.” Most people already know, even if they cannot come out and admit it, that 9.11 was the global military-intelligence-finance complex declaring war on the citizens of the Earth.

To think that this is now going to be 15 times the millions killed in blind wars for profit is truly frightening.

Yes, one can almost sense that evil is lurking somewhere there in the corners of Biden’s forced smile. 

And then President Biden described the Israeli response to this “9.11 of their own,” saying,

“I am sure those horrors have tapped into some kind of primal feeling, shock, pain, rage, an all-consuming rage—justice must be done.”

That is to say that an “all-consuming rage” that banishes reason, and stops dead the search for truth, must be the only response possible to this still ambiguous event. That “all-consuming rage” that the commercial media keeps harping on is precisely the door through which the darkest evil can pass unnoticed.

It could be a catastrophic war with Iran　is coming, as Biden implied when he mentioned the movement of military assets such as the USS Ford carrier strike group to the Eastern Mediterranean, to be joined by the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower.

Most certainly these massive clusters of weapons are not meant to attack the impoverished people huddled in Gaza. They are meant to start bombing Iran at any moment.

The more I thought about this terrible turn of events, the more I was drawn back to the elegant speech that Reverend Martin Luther King delivered on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before he was assassinated, one of the most powerful speeches delivered in American history.

When Dr. King delivered the speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” at Riverside Church in New York City, he revealed to all the true form of a thoughtful and committed man of God who had wrestled with evil, tried to make a deal with lesser evils, and then was forced to come to the painful conclusion that it was his moral duty to break his studied silence about that project of death because it had infected every corner of American society.

Dr. King used the expression “Beyond Vietnam” because he knew that the illness was a spiritual one and it went far beyond the specifics of Vietnam. He did not want to get lost in the details. He spoke to the point,

“The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing “clergy- and laymen-concerned committees” for the next generation.

“The words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, ‘Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.’

“Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken — the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.

“We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

“A true revolution of values will look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: ‘This is not just.’”

I had the arrogance and the self-conceit, the confidence and the craftiness to imagine myself as a president. And yet, heeding Dr. King’s words, I must say as that as I witnessed President Biden invoking a new world war like a vengeful god, I felt that must also say, and say loudly and clearly, that this, my brothers and sisters, this is not just.

We are opening the doors for untold evil to spill out over the world, and the cynical backroom boys are betting that we will convince ourselves that because we were not directly involved in this first step of the war, therefore somehow we think that we are not responsible.

Sadly, history will judge us quite differently. 

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This article was originally published on Fear No Evil.

Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: President Joe Biden participates in a restricted bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Hotel Kempinski in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, October 18, 2023. (Official White House Photo by Cameron Smith)

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***

Stunning new video evidence reveals that Israel is likely the culprit behind the al-Ahli hospital bombing which killed more than 500 Palestinians as they slept on the hospital courtyard grounds (right next to the parking lot that was bombed).

Most conservative media publishers in America are missing key, critical evidence that overwhelmingly points to an Israeli-launched air burst bomb being used, specifically to blame Hamas and justify further atrocities in Gaza.

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***

Are you Christian, Muslim, Hindu or Jew? Then why did you remain silent when the IDF illegally annexed land and killed Palestinian children?

Why did you not speak out at such atrocities?

Are Palestinian children not human, do they not bleed? Do their parents not bleed?

Do they not need food as you need food?

Do they not need water to live, as you need water to live? Do they not need electricity?

How would you live without these essentials for human existence?

How would you like to be treated like a caged animal for 16 long years?

Is your life and that of your children of value?

The lives of those who live under the yoke and oppression of the hated IDF are devalued to that of subjugated Untermenschen existing under an illegal regime that has for years been condemned by the United Nations and the Security Council.

Yet the world stands silent until the volcano erupts with a violence that frightens all of us on Earth.

That is the inevitable consequence of remaining mute in the face of prolonged injustice. Because then our children inevitably become Palestinian children.

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Hans Stehling (a pen name) is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: A view of destroyed buildings at the Gaza Strip after Israeli airstrikes that continue on the seventh day in Gaza City, Gaza on October 13, 2023 [Abed Rahim Khatib – Anadolu Agency]

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*** 

 

 

The Zionist issue is not complicated when seen through a wider lens. Israel is a settler-colonial entity. It is an apartheid state in complete violation of international laws and standards.(1) 

Since 1948, the Zionists have been ethnically cleansing, walling-in, and terrorizing the indigenous Palestinians.

Right now, by way of deception, by pretending they are the victims, (the Hamas attack was orchestrated by Zionist intelligence entities)(2)  Zionists are wiping out, slaughtering, and mass-murdering innocent civilian Palestinians trapped in the world’s largest open air concentration camp, Gaza.

Netanyahu has admitted to supporting Hamas with a view to balkanizing Palestinian unity and to preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state. In a March 2019 meeting of his Likud Party’s Knesset members he stated publicly that,

“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.” (3) 

All western media stories about this on-going catastrophe will be lies and deceptions. This is the unstated policy of Western media. It is colonial/imperialist war propaganda.(4)

The current genocide is also part of a bigger story. Lest we forget, Israel also supports al Qaeda and ISIS and criminal terror bombings against Syria and Syrians, all beneath a smokescreen of mainstream war propaganda.(5)

Western governments are a disgrace and an abomination for supporting this genocide, as they do, through their silence, their war propaganda, their political, financial, and military support.

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. He writes on his website where this article was originally published.

Notes

1) Mark Taliano, ” Israel Tries to brand Itself as a peaceful, Democratic Oasis.  Don’t Fall for It.” Global Research. 09 October, 2023. (Israel Tries to Brand Itself as a Peaceful, Democratic Oasis. Don’t Fall for It – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization) Accessed 19 October, 2023.

2) Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Caroline Mailloux, ” Video: Is It A False Flag? “Wiping Gaza Off the Map”. The Dangers of Military Escalation.” Lux Media and Global Research, 17 October, 2023. (Video: Is It A False Flag? “Wiping Gaza Off the Map”. The Dangers of Military Escalation – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization) Accessed 19 October, 2023.

see also:

Video: Israel-Hamas War: Netanyahu’s “Planned Operation on All Fronts”

3) Prof Michel Chossudovsky, “Criminality Beyond Description: Netanyahu Supports both Hamas as well as Al Qaeda Terrorists.” Global Research, 18 October, 2023. (Criminality Beyond Description: Netanyahu Supports both Hamas as well as Al Qaeda Terrorists – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization) Accessed 19 October, 2023.

4) Mark Taliano, “Crimes Against Syria” Global Research, (Video: Crimes Against Syria – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization) Accessed 19 October, 2023.

5) Prof Michel Chossudovsky, “Criminality Beyond Description: Netanyahu Supports both Hamas as well as Al Qaeda Terrorists.” Global Research, 18 October, 2023. (Criminality Beyond Description: Netanyahu Supports both Hamas as well as Al Qaeda Terrorists – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization) Accessed 19 October, 2023.

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*** 

Bayer, which profits from various environmentally harmful and disease-causing chemicals like glyphosate, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) “to develop resource-efficient, climate-resilient solutions for crops, varieties, crop protection, weed and mechanization”.

The ICAR, an apex public sector institution, is responsible for co-ordinating agricultural education and research in India. Predatory corporations like Bayer attempt to co-opt government agencies that can provide access to extensive networks in order to wield influence and market products. It’s a key business strategy.

And this is not lost on the Peoples’ Commission on Public Sector and Services (PCPSS), which includes eminent academics, jurists, erstwhile administrators, trade unionists and social activists. In a recently released statement, it expressed concern that Bayer will exploit the ICAR’s vast infrastructure to pursue its own commercial plans within India.

And those commercial plans are clear: to boost sales of toxic proprietary products by opening up new markets in India as sales stagnate or plummet elsewhere.

Image is from the Public Domain

For example, it was reported in July that German-based Bayer expects to take a €2.5bn ($2.8bn) hit due to slower demand for its glyphosate-based products. Penetrating the huge Indian market represents a massive cash cow for foreign corporations, especially if their genetically engineered (GE), herbicide-tolerant food crops get the go ahead. Proprietary GE seeds are designed to be used with agrochemicals like the herbicide glyphosate.

An analysis of a database of 2018’s top-selling ‘crop protection products’ revealed that the world’s leading agrochemical companies made more than 35% of their sales from pesticides classed as highly hazardous to people, animals or ecosystems. The investigation identified billions of dollars of income for agrochemical giants Bayer, BASF, Corteva, FMC and Syngenta from chemicals found by regulatory authorities to pose health hazards like cancer or reproductive failure.

This investigation was based on an analysis of a huge dataset of pesticide sales from the agribusiness intelligence company Phillips McDougall.

Inadequate state funding is driving the ICAR to enter into agreements with companies like Bayer. However, the PCPSS says that such MoUs make a mockery of the stated government aim to boost self-reliance in India’s agricultural sector.

It argues that considering corporations like Bayer promote the use of toxic chemicals in agriculture, a partnership between the ICAR and Bayer of this kind is irreconcilable with the nationwide mission recently launched by Prime Minister Modi to propagate natural farming as a more sustainable alternative. In this respect, the ICAR’s MoU with Bayer is clearly counter-productive and out of place with the stated priority of the government.

The PCPSS notes that there are several ICAR-sponsored research institutions and state-level agricultural universities which are engaged in outstanding research relevant to Indian agriculture. A number of states have launched their own natural farming missions to free debt trapped farmers from the use of costly chemicals and other unsustainable practices. The PCPSS says it is therefore not clear as to why the ICAR should choose to promote Bayer in multiple areas of agricultural research.

Instead of Institutions promoting agrichemical products marketed by Bayer, the PCPSS asserts that the ICAR should shift its focus to agroecological approaches, biological inputs and integrated farming systems, which will help Indian agriculture in the long run.

Although the government revoked the three farm laws passed in 2021 that would have sounded a neoliberal death knell for Indian agriculture, it now seems to be accelerating the marketisation and corporatisation of the sector through other means. The year-long farmers’ agitation led to the government to revoke the farm laws, but these types of MoUs are one way of achieving what the farm laws failed to do.

The PCPSS wants the government to assure farmers a minimum support price for their produce on the lines recommended by the Swaminathan Committee so that farming may become a remunerative activity. It also urges the government to review the ICAR-Bayer MoU and similar agreements entered into by other official agencies with large corporates, not only in agriculture but also in other fields.

One such MoU was entered into by the Indian government in April 2021 with Microsoft, allowing its local partner, CropData, to leverage a master database of farmers. The MoU seems to be part of the AgriStack policy initiative, which involves the roll out of ‘disruptive’ technologies and digital databases in the agricultural sector.

Microsoft is supposed to help farmers with post-harvest management solutions by building a collaborative platform and capturing agriculture datasets such as crop yields, weather data, market demand and prices (data is the financially lucrative ‘new oil’ for those who own it). In turn, this would create a farmer interface for ‘smart’ agriculture, including post-harvest management and distribution.

CropData is to be granted access to a government database of 50 million farmers and their land records. As the database is developed, it will include farmers’ personal details, profiles of land held, production information and financial details. Microsoft will know more about farmers than farmers know about themselves.

The stated aim is to use digital technology to improve financing, inputs, cultivation and supply and distribution. The unstated aims are to impose a certain model of farming, promote profitable corporate technologies and products, encourage market (corporate) dependency among farmers and create a land market by establishing a system of ‘conclusive titling’ of all land in the country so that ownership can be identified and land can then be bought or taken away.

The plan is that, as farmers lose access to land or can be identified as legal owners, predatory institutional investors and large agribusinesses will buy up and amalgamate holdings, facilitating the further roll out of high-input, corporate-dependent industrial agriculture (and the massive health and environmental costs that it entails).

Indian agriculture has witnessed gross underinvestment over the years, whereby it is now wrongly depicted as a basket case and underperforming and ripe for a sell off to those very interests who had a stake in its underinvestment.

The PCPSS says it is not clear as to why the ICAR should choose to promote Bayer in multiple areas of agricultural research, especially given the government’s stated commitment to natural farming.

However, India has submitted itself to the regime of foreign finance, awaiting signals on how much it can spend, giving up any pretence of economic sovereignty and leaving the space open for private capital to move in and capture markets.

That much has been made clear by the Research Unit for Political Economy in the article ‘Modi’s Farm Produce Act Was Authored Thirty Years Ago, in Washington DC’. The piece states that current agricultural ‘reforms’ are part of a broader process of imperialism’s increasing capture of the Indian economy.

A 1991 World Bank memorandum set out the programme for India. At the time, India was still in its foreign exchange crisis of 1990-91 and had just been subjected to an IMF-monitored ‘structural adjustment’ programme that involved shifting 400 million people from rural India to the cities and corporatising agriculture.

The current administration is attempting to dramatically accelerate the implementation of the above programme. The aim is to drastically dilute the role of the public sector in agriculture, reducing it to a facilitator of private (foreign) capital.

There has been an ongoing strategy to make farming financially non-viable for many of India’s farmers. The number of cultivators in India declined from 166 million to 146 million between 2004 and 2011. Some 6,700 left farming each day. Between 2015 and 2022, the number of cultivators was likely to decrease to around 127 million.

We have seen the running down of the sector for decades, spiralling input costs, withdrawal of government assistance and the impacts of cheap, subsidised imports which depress farmers’ incomes.

The PCPSS is not the first to express concern about the deepening penetration of large, profit-hungry corporations. In late November 2018, a charter was released by the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (an umbrella group of around 250 farmers’ organisations) expressing similar sentiments.

The charter also expressed alarm about the economic, ecological, social and existential crisis of Indian agriculture as well as the persistent state neglect of the sector and discrimination against farming communities.

The repeal of the three farm laws in late 2021 was little more than a tactical manoeuvre. The powerful global interests behind these laws did not simply disappear. As big tech giants team up with traditional agribusiness companies like Bayer, the goal to capture and radically restructure the sector remains and is gaining momentum. The farmers’ struggle in India is far from over.

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Renowned author Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image is from Reclaim the Republic

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Read Colin Todhunter’s e-Book entitled

Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order

We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agri-food chain. The high-tech/big data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose their model of food and agriculture on the world.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also involved (documented in ‘Gates to a Global Empire‘ by Navdanya International), whether through buying up huge tracts of farmland, promoting a much-heralded (but failed) ‘green revolution’ for Africa, pushing biosynthetic food and genetic engineering technologies or more generally facilitating the aims of the mega agri-food corporations.

Click here to read.

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Gaza Strikes Back. It’s Another 9/11 or Pearl Harbor but Who Actually Did What to Whom? “This Was More Likely a False Flag Operation”

Philip Giraldi, October 16, 2023

The Israel-Palestine Conflict: Netanyahu’s “False Flag”, Connecting the Dots – and More

Peter Koenig, October 11, 2023

September 11 in the Middle East: Israel’s Intelligence and Military “Caught by Surprise” by Hamas Attack? Was It a “False Flag”? Manlio Dinucci

Manlio Dinucci, October 15, 2023

Video: Why Did Hamas Attack Israeli Civilians, Was it a False Flag? Judge Napolitano Interviews Former CIA Officer Dr. Philip Giraldi.

Philip Giraldi, October 13, 2023

The Covid “Killer Vaccine”. People Are Dying All Over the World. It’s A Criminal Undertaking

Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 11, 2023

Seventeen Covid Pandemic Lies We’ve Been Told

Richard Gale, October 17, 2023

Russia: “Everyone Get Out of Israel” — US Sends 101st Airborne Division to Jordan. Sees Battles on 5 Fronts for IDF

WarNews24/7, October 13, 2023

Is Putin in Cahoots with the Globalists?

Riley Waggaman, October 13, 2023

Video: Dark Secrets of Globalists, How They “Manipulate and Enslave Humanity”. Dean Henderson

By Dean Henderson and Mike Adams, October 19, 2023

Who runs the world and what are their goals? The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is setup by Reagan in 1981 to counterbalance the nationalist Arabs in the region like Gaddafi, the Iranians, Iraqis, Algerians, etc, and to tip the oil scales in favor of the Western bankers instead of the Arab people who sit on the oil and own the oil.

Zelensky Is Desperate: Can Biden Admin Trick GOP-dominated Congress to “Merge Military Aid for Israel and Kiev”?

By Drago Bosnic, October 19, 2023

It’s hardly a secret that the embattled Kiev regime is terrified of the looming prospect of losing access to hundreds of billions of dollars in American military “aid”. Even before the outbreak of hostilities in Gaza, the United States was going through a political crisis after the GOP warhawk Kevin McCarthy was removed as House speaker.

Burkina Faso’s Nuclear Power Deal with Russia. Is Moscow Displacing Paris and Washington?

By Peter Koenig, October 19, 2023

Does the US have a military base in Burkina Faso? According to several international analysts, the United States’s military involvement in Burkina Faso is opaque. However, the Pentagon has a military contingent of about 100 “soldiers” in Burkina. Their role is mainly training Burkinabe’s military, says Major Andrew Caulk, public affairs director for Special Operations Command Africa (SOCAFRICA).

U.S. Prepping to Deploy American Troops to Middle East, Israel Demands $10 Billion More in Subsidy

By Ben Bartee, October 19, 2023

What a hell of an ally we have in the Middle East there in Israel. Truly indispensable. Its warmonger leadership flirts recklessly with World War III – while relying on the geopolitical power of the United States, mind you, to back up its feigned bravado — while it sucks the American treasury dry to the tune of billions of dollars per year and enlists the government to mobilize troops whenever it snaps its fingers.

“Peace, War, and 9/11”: A Cinematic Portrait of Graeme MacQueen, A Warrior for Peace

By Edward Curtin, October 19, 2023

While there are powerful documentaries that focus exclusively on facts and are narrated by omniscient and objective narrators, Peace, War, and 9/11, while also based on proven facts, is doubly powerful because it is told by a man whose personal story is a moving example of one who, from a young age, was inspired by a reverence for life and the embrace of non-violence, and whose vocation long preceded his scholarly and anti-war pursuits.

Video: “Operation Gladio, NATO’s Secret Armies”, Daniele Ganser Exposes: “USA, The Ruthless Empire”

By Dr. Daniele Ganser and James Corbett, October 19, 2023

Joining me today to discuss war, peace and the future of humanity is Daniele Ganser, an historian, author, energy and peace researcher and head of the Swiss Institute for Peace and Energy Research (SIPER). He is the author of the groundbreaking book on Operation Gladio, NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, and joins us to today to discuss his latest book, USA: The Ruthless Empire.

We Humans Continue to Indifferently Massacre the Earth and One Another

By Irwin Jerome, October 18, 2023

The Jewish Revolt in the Warsaw Ghetto against the Nazi in 1943, and the Palestinian Revolt in the Gaza Ghetto in 2023 against the Zionists, are virtually two sides of the same coin, the proverbial shoe-on-the-other-foot, that represents the basis and prelude of a very long, slow-burning old fuse, that has only just begun to explode in more calamitous ways than the world has yet to witness. 

Can Washington Simultaneously Handle Two War Theaters? Zelensky’s Failed Bid to Meet Netanyahu Signals Ending of Western Interest?

By Ahmed Adel, October 18, 2023

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky wanted to visit Israel on October 16 to express his support for the country, but Israeli authorities made it clear to him that “the time is not right,” reported Israeli outlet Ynet. This was a humiliating rejection for Zelensky, a Jew, considering other world leaders are expected to visit the Jewish State in the coming days.

Netanyahu and the Banality of Evil

By Germán Gorraiz López, October 18, 2023

It is impossible to germinate in the twenty-first century given the absence on both sides of valid interlocutors to negotiate a lasting peace that implies the mutual recognition of the States of Israel and Palestine. Thus, former President Jimmy Carter, who went down in history when he achieved the historic Camp David agreement between Israel and Egypt in 1979 in his book ‘Palestine, Peace not Apartheid’, denounces the “system of apartheid that Israel applies to the Palestinians.”

Central Nervous System (CNS) Vasculitis: Blood Vessel Inflammation in the Brain Caused by COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines

By Dr. William Makis, October 19, 2023

This is evidence of INFLAMMATION IN THE BRAIN, caused by COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines. And the Morz paper showed spike protein in the blood vessel walls causing CNS vasculitis. Please note how difficult it is to get this diagnosis (2 of the 4 cases I present were made by Neurology specialists at the Mayo Clinic).

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***

It’s hardly a secret that the embattled Kiev regime is terrified of the looming prospect of losing access to hundreds of billions of dollars in American military “aid”.

Even before the outbreak of hostilities in Gaza, the United States was going through a political crisis after the GOP warhawk Kevin McCarthy was removed as House speaker.

With him out of the picture, the increasingly less “cooperative” wing of the Republican Party became more dominant in the US Congress and decided to reshuffle the so-called “aid” priorities by refocusing on other hotspots on the geopolitical chessboard. Although they promised to start tackling the ever-growing mountain of domestic issues, they too (over)focused on other countries. And while their initial target was China, the Republicans have now found themselves in a situation where they have to pour additional resources into the Middle East.

The Israel-Hamas conflict became the centerpiece of the mainstream propaganda machine, clearly implying that the Ukrainian crisis lost its importance to the vast majority of regular people in the political West. Terrified of this prospect, Zelensky desperately tried to bring the spotlight back to Ukraine and himself, but failed miserably after he was told that “the time isn’t right”. However, the warhawks don’t want to renounce their favorite cash cow. The Israel-Gaza conflict is highly unlikely to provide as steady of a profit as the Ukrainian one does. What’s more, leaving the Neo-Nazi junta to fend for itself would invariably mean defeat. The political West doesn’t only provide weapons, munitions, logistics, ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance), etc, but also supports the Kiev regime’s economy.

In fact, its entire state apparatus is directly dependent on the US and, to a lesser extent, the European Union. This “life support” on a governmental level has been the source of crawling frustration among the populace in the political West for well over a year and a half at this point.

And while the increasingly impoverished and indebted citizens of Western countries don’t want any “aid” to be sent to anyone until the numerous problems at home are dealt with first, they are somewhat more likely to tolerate it when it’s given to Israel. This is a major issue for the US, as financing two allies/client states simultaneously is very difficult, despite boastful reassurances from the troubled Biden administration. Having to deal with an effectively hostile US Congress, the current government is actively looking for ways to circumvent or at least trick it.

The State Department wants to ease the existing political tensions by (ab)using the ongoing Israel-Gaza crisis.

Namely, the Biden administration is mulling the unification of its “aid” packages for Israel and the Kiev regime. This would accomplish at least two things. First, the government would get on the good side of the US Congress, which is virtually unequivocal in its support for Israel. And second, the US Congress is much less likely to reject the “aid” package if the proposal also includes Israel. In doing so, the Zelensky cash cow stays “in business”, along with all the congressmen who made significant investments in the perpetually avaricious US Military Industrial Complex (MIC). The Pentagon already stated that military aid within the scope of existing agreements has been underway for days and that Israel is receiving “everything it needs”.

According to various reports, this includes air defense and fighter jet munitions. Israel has also requested additional PGMs (precision-guided munitions), SDBs (small-diameter bombs), interceptor missiles for its “Iron Dome” SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems, etc. Officially, Israel receives nearly $4 billion in US military aid each year, although some sources claim that the actual sum is orders of magnitude greater, measuring in tens of billions. Considering how much money the Neo-Nazi junta got so far, the sustainability of this is highly questionable, particularly as Washington DC has been creating enemies left and right. And while Biden keeps parroting about “the most powerful country in human history” and how all this is “a mere speck” for the “omnipotent America“, facts are not exactly in line with such narratives.

At present, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are mostly focused on airstrikes, meaning that they’re using munitions that the Kiev regime forces don’t need yet. However, when Israel launches its ground operations in Gaza, it will require significant amounts of artillery munitions, rockets and missiles to support its tanks and armored vehicles. This is when things could get complicated for the Neo-Nazi junta, as its forces are using enormous amounts of precisely such weapons and munitions. It’s extremely unlikely that the US Congress would prioritize the Kiev regime over Israel, meaning that the former would find itself in an impossible situation, as its needs for munitions have never been met so far, despite hundreds of billions in military “aid”. Having access to even fewer US/NATO weapons would exponentially exacerbate this problem.

However, most Republicans aren’t exactly thrilled with the idea. Many have suggested that “only one” can be financed at the moment, clearly implying it wouldn’t be the Kiev regime, while the so-called uber-hawks proposed even more radical measures, such as the inclusion of Taiwan in the lumped “aid” package. This specific proposal came from House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican infamous for urging Americans to show readiness to die for Taiwanese semiconductors. Expectedly, almost nobody in the US political establishment is talking about the record-breaking debt spiral that is threatening to bankrupt the belligerent thalassocracy.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

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***

Sometimes a fragment reveals more than a tome. Karma Nabulsi, a politics professor at Oxford University, introduced me to one such fragment. Did I know, she asked, that Winston Churchill sent “the Black and Tans” to Palestine?

That conversation helped me grasp why Irish people tend to feel a sense of affinity with the Palestinians. Our historical experiences are not identical but they do have striking parallels, which I became eager to explore.

This year marks the centenary of the Balfour Declaration. The November 1917 letter to the Zionist movement committed Britain to support the establishment of a “Jewish national home” in Palestine. Through that document, the world’s pre-eminent power gave its backing to a project aimed at colonising with Europeans a land where most of the population was Arab.

Arthur James Balfour, then Britain’s foreign secretary and the declaration’s signatory, had previously served as chief secretary of Ireland. He was best known for ordering police to open fire on an 1887 land reform protest in Mitchelstown, Co Cork. Resulting in three deaths, the incident earned him the sobriquet Bloody Balfour.

Balfour was among many British political figures to leave a deep impression on both Ireland and Palestine. As home secretary in 1916, Herbert Samuel oversaw the internment of almost 2,000 people allegedly involved in the Easter Rising; he also approved Roger Casement’s hanging. Samuel became the first high commissioner of Palestine as Britain took charge of its administration between the two world wars.

Faced with unrest in 1921, Samuel ordered air strikes against Palestinian rioters and declared a state of emergency. At that juncture, Churchill, then colonial secretary, advocated that a “picked force of white gendarmerie” be established for Palestine, according to official records. Churchill’s idea was that the gendarmerie should be comprised of men who had served with crown forces during Ireland’s War of Independence.

Henry Hugh Tudor, commander of the Auxiliaries in Ireland, had advised Churchill that up to 800 “absolutely reliable men” could be made available from those forces. The Auxiliaries had worked alongside the Black and Tans and the two policing divisions were often regarded as synonymous. The gendarmerie founded at Churchill’s initiative contained members of both.

In effect, then, the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries were assigned to Palestine once their presence in Ireland was no longer deemed necessary. The parallel fascinated me. One of those forces’ most notorious escapades occurred in my hometown – Balbriggan, Co Dublin. As revenge for the killing of a police officer by republicans in September 1920, the forces torched a hosiery factory that was a major local employer, as well as destroying and damaging numerous pubs and houses. The “sack” of Balbriggan, as the incident became known, prompted a Westminster debate about whether the crown forces lacked discipline.

Britain’s imperial archives show that some diplomats asked if the “Black and Tan tradition” was being followed in Palestine. One briefing document apparently written for the British Army pointed to how many members of the Churchill-initiated gendarmerie had formerly been based in Ireland.

“This original composition gave the force a military efficiency, combined with a certain ruthlessness,” the paper added.

Douglas Duff had been stationed with the Black and Tans in Galway before moving to Palestine. His memoirs make clear that he brought a great deal of bigotry with him. Referring to the Palestinians of Haifa, he wrote: “Most of us were so infected by the sense of our own superiority over these ‘lesser breeds’ that we scarcely regarded these people as human.”

Officers who had served in Ireland played a prominent role in quelling protests by Palestinians against the expropriation of land where they lived and farmed. Raymond Cafferata, for example, had been part of the Auxiliaries during the Irish War of Independence. In 1933, he headed a contingent of foot police at a Jaffa demonstration which had been banned. A baton charge that he ordered was commended by British administration in Jerusalem for being “magnificently executed” despite how numerous Palestinians were shot dead during the protest.

Later in the 1930s, a full-scale Palestinian revolt erupted. Grattan Bushe, a legal adviser to the Colonial Office, warned that “repression by force is repeating the mistake which was made in Ireland”. His warning was ignored; military commanders were assured that they could take “whatever measures are necessary”. The measures were to include demolishing much of Jaffa’s old city, imposing collective punishment on villages with rebels in their midst and mass detention in labour camps.

Some of the men behind projects that are still reviled today were originally from Ireland. About £2 million – a huge sum for the 1930s – was spent on erecting a rampart along Palestine’s northern frontier. It was the brainchild of Charles Tegart, a Derry-born police chief. Tegart was something of an innovator. He recommended that the most sophisticated surveillance technology of that era should be installed in “Tegart’s fence”, as the project was dubbed.

The Balfour Declaration’s purpose was to form a “little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism”, according to Ronald Storrs, “the first military governor of Palestine since Pontius Pilate” (his words). Not everything went to plan: the Zionist movement fell out with and, in the case of two groups, waged a campaign of guerilla warfare against Britain in the 1940s. Storrs’ comment nonetheless encapsulates how the British elite viewed their nearest colony and the Middle East through the same lens.

Image: Lieutenant-General Sir Alan Cunningham, pictured at Lydda Airport in November 1945 on arriving to replace Field Marshal Lord Gort as High Commissioner of Palestine. (Licensed under the Public Domain)

On May 14th, 1948, British rule in Palestine came to an end; Israel declared itself a state that same day. The transition was marked in a low-key ceremony at which Alan Cunningham, the last British high commissioner in Jerusalem, inspected a colour party.

Cunningham had been in charge during the mass expulsion of Palestinians by Zionist forces, an episode called the Nakba or catastrophe. The British authorities chose not to intervene.

The Palestinian flag is being flown over Dublin’s City Hall this month in solidarity with the Nakba’s victims. That is grimly appropriate. Alan Cunningham was born in Dublin.

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Author David Cronin is from Balbriggan, the Co Dublin town sacked by the Black and Tans.

David Cronin’s book Balfour’s Shadow: A Century of British Support for Zionism and Israel is published by Pluto Press. plutobooks.com 

Featured image is a NATIONAL POST STAFF PHOTO

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***

Coordinated airstrikes hit two US occupation bases in southern and northeast Syria in the morning of 19 October, in the latest escalation against US troops in West Asia since the start of the Gaza-Israel war.

According to informed sources who spoke with Al-Mayadeen, three drones were able to fly above the Al-Tanf base at the Syrian-Iraqi-Jordanian border and launch several successful airstrikes.

“The attack led to a major alert within [Al-Tanf], with continuous flights of military aircraft and helicopters in the area,” Al-Mayadeen reported.

Sources within the US-led coalition that spoke with Iraq’s Shafaq News on Wednesday claimed that the occupation forces “successfully intercepted and downed two of the drones, but the third managed to target the base.”

The US occupation base at Conoco oil field in Deir Ezzor governorate was also hit by multiple rockets.

No group has taken responsibility for the attacks and no casualties have been reported.

Hours before Thursday’s airstrikes on US troops, the Israeli air force attacked the Syrian army in the southwestern Quneitra governorate, causing material damage. Explosions were also reported in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

US troops stationed in Iraq’s Ain al-Asad airbase were also targeted by airstrikes on Wednesday, which were claimed by the Kataib Hezbollah resistance faction. Although the Pentagon initially claimed its forces repelled the attack, the official story changed to include reports of wounded soldiers as the hours went on.

“The resistance in Iraq has entered the battle of ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ and directed its strikes at US bases,” the military spokesman for Kataib Hezbollah declared on Thursday.

Since the start of the historic Operation Al-Aqsa Flood in the Gaza envelope, factions within the Resistance Axis in West Asia have warned they are ready to join the battle against Israel in support of the Palestinian cause and that US occupation troops and bases would become “legitimate military targets” if Washington also decides to enter the fray.

As tensions escalate, the Pentagon has deployed multiple warships and thousands of troops to the Israeli coast. The UK, Germany, and the Netherlands have mobilized troops to support Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign against Palestinians.

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***

Oct. 2023 – Byron, GA – Hannah Bennett graduated from Middle Georgia State University and started struggling with a “viral infection” in Aug.2022. In Jan. 2023 she was diagnosed with CNS Vasculitis and Oct. 2023 MRI showed progressing atrophy in areas of her brain.

Canadian Health Officials knew about this particular Pfizer side effect:

Nov. 2021 – Oshawa, Ontario, Canada – 31 year old Kayla Jones is a Real Estate Law Clerk and she had 2 Pfizer mRNA vaccine doses (2nd dose June 25, 2021). Her story is fascinating. She crashed her car Sep. 20, 2021 and started having seizures and strokes and was eventually diagnosed with CNS Vasculitis.

But here is a crucial piece of the puzzle. Ontario government officials advised her “No further COVID-19 vaccine until client seen at CNS Vasculitis clinic.”

March 2023 – Andover, MN – Scott Mathison was diagnosed with CNS Vasculitis in Mayo Clinic, after months of ER visits and hospitalizations.

March 2023 – Cocoa, FL – Adam Schmalenberger started having strokes in Oct. 2021 and he was diagnosed with CNS Vasculitis in June 2022 in Mayo Clinic.

Literature

2023 Sep. 29 – Ariyoshi et al – Childhood primary angiitis of the central nervous system following COVID-19 vaccination (BNT162b2/Pfizer-BioNtech): A case report

• 9 year old Japanese boy, previously healthy, had 2 doses of Pfizer mRNA
• 1 day after 2nd Pfizer dose he developed fever and a left-sided headache.
• 6 days after onset of fever, brain MRI showed stenosis at beginning of left middle cerebral artery.
• Testing determined CNS Vasculitis and he was treated with steroids

2021 Nov. 16 – Takeyama et al – Intracerebral hemorrhage due to vasculitis following COVID-19 vaccination: a case report

• 48F Japanese woman had 1st dose of Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine
• two days after Pfizer she noticed a gradually progressing left hemiparesis.
• Head CT showed intracranial hemorrhage up to 5.6cm and she had a craniotomy
• Pathology showed a neutrophilic vasculitis at the level of capillary to postcapillary venules
• Theory: “pathogenesis of vasculitis following vaccination remains unclear, although an autoimmune mechanism mediated by vaccine proteins has been proposed. Therefore, similar to influenza vaccination, the COVID-19 vaccination may result in vasculitis in several organs”

2022 Sep – Morz et al – A Case Report: Multifocal Necrotizing Encephalitis and Myocarditis after BNT162b2 mRNA Vaccination against COVID-19

• 76M man received three COVID-19 vaccines: AstraZeneca, followed by two Pfizer vaccines in July and December 2021.
• he died 3 weeks after 2nd Pfizer dose.
• Pathology: unexpected acute vasculitis, necrotizing encephalitis, myocarditis
• staining for mRNA Vaccine spike protein revealed presence of spike protein in blood vessel walls

My Take…

This is evidence of INFLAMMATION IN THE BRAIN, caused by COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines.

And the Morz paper showed spike protein in the blood vessel walls causing CNS vasculitis.

Please note how difficult it is to get this diagnosis (2 of the 4 cases I present were made by Neurology specialists at the Mayo Clinic)

This mRNA vaccine injury manifests by strokes or seizures (or both).

Now think of the thousands of young people who are having unexplained strokes (or seizures).

How many of them have post mRNA Vaccine inflammation in the brain and cannot get a proper diagnosis?

Also consider that I provided proof, in this article, of one of the very few COVID-19 Vaccine exemptions ever issued by a Canadian provincial government.

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

Featured image is from COVID Intel

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***

Outside of the Middle East and Ukraine, life continues – in some parts of the world, on a positive note.

The West African country, Burkina Faso, had two military coups within 8 months in 2022. The first in January 2022, bringing interim-President Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba to power. Allegedly, due to his incapacity to deal with Islamist insurgency, a second military coup on 22 September 2022 removed him. The new coup leader, Captain Ibrahim Traoré took over as interim leader.

Does the US have a military base in Burkina Faso? According to several international analysts, the United States’s military involvement in Burkina Faso is opaque. However, the Pentagon has a military contingent of about 100 “soldiers” in Burkina. Their role is mainly training Burkinabe’s military, says Major Andrew Caulk, public affairs director for Special Operations Command Africa (SOCAFRICA).

See this.

One might assume that both coups were “engaged” by the US military for a specific purpose: perhaps to get rid of the French influence, and, especially, the enslaving CFA franc currency which is still closely tied to the Banque de France, the French Central Bank and gradually replacing the CFS franc by the US dollar, i.e., an attempt to dollarize the country.

This would tend to make you think that the US wants to take over the role of the “influencer” in this poor West African country, replacing the French; and perhaps with the same stroke move a step closer to dollarizing West- and Central African economies.

Burkina Faso is rich in mineral resources and produces gold, silver, zinc, copper, manganese, phosphate, and limestone in substantial quantities. It also has reserves of diamonds, bauxite, nickel, and vanadium. However, these remain largely unexploited.

In addition, Burkina is a land-locked country, right in the center of West Africa, bordering on Mali to the north and west, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, and Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo to the south. Might these be enough reasons of interest for Washington?

Now comes the hammer.

Burkina Faso has just signed a nuclear power deal with Russia.

Burkina Faso and Russia last Friday, 13 October, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the construction of a nuclear power plant in Burkina Faso.

The agreement is a culmination of talks the Burkinabe military ruler Capt. Ibrahim Traore had with President Putin on July 29, 2023 in Moscow, during the Russia-Africa Summit in Moscow. A similar agreement was signed with Mali on the same occasion.

“Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom has signed a memorandum of understanding with Burkina Faso and another with Mali on cooperation in the field of the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. The agreements were signed on 13 October in Moscow on the sidelines of the 6th Russian Energy Week Forum.” See this.

Burkina Faso is one of the least electrified countries globally, with only about 20% of the population having access to electricity, according to the International Energy Atomic Agency. National electrification for Mali is slightly higher with about 30% to 35%.

Russia’s inroads in West Africa are a welcome sign that Africa too will be benefitting from multipolarity in the coming years.

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

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

Featured image: Ousmane Bougouma and Vyacheslav Volodin at the “Russia-Africa” parliamentary conference in Moscow on 19 March 2023 (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)

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***

As the deadly Gaza hospital blast has surged into the headlines, the Israeli military and the Hamas terror group have traded accusations, but mounting evidence points to a misfired rocket by the terrorist organization Islamic Jihad—and that the story is being spun into a false anti-Israel narrative.

The hospital is located in the central Gaza Strip, where Israel has been carrying out what it says are precision strikes targeting the Hamas terror group after Hamas operatives raided Israeli communities on Oct. 7, killing hundreds of civilians.

Gruesome scenes from the hospital blast were broadcast widely, with video footage emerging showing a large fireball at or near the building, and photographs of the hospital grounds strewn with bodies of the dead, including children.

Hamas blamed Israeli air strike for the blast and the “horrific massacre,” while Palestinian officials have said the explosion killed as many as 500 people.

The Israeli military said the incident was caused by a rocket fired by terrorists, aimed at Israel, that failed in mid-flight and crashed into the hospital grounds. Israeli officials said that the relatively large explosion at the hospital grounds was caused by a combination of warhead and unspent fuel in the projectile.

Since the initial denials by Israeli forces, numerous pieces of evidence have emerged, including images of the blast site consistent with the types of projectiles fired by Hamas and other terror groups, along with intercepted communications purportedly between Hamas operatives discussing the incident, that lend credence to the Israeli version of events.

A number of news outlets quickly picked up the narrative pushed by Hamas, which was that Israeli air strikes had caused the blast—and the human carnage.

Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill piled on as well, with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), a member of the left-wing “Squad,” posting on X that Israel “just bombed” the hospital, “killing 500 Palestinians (doctors, children, patients) just like that.”

Israel just bombed the Baptist Hospital killing 500 Palestinians (doctors, children, patients) just like that. @POTUS this is what happens when you refuse to facilitate a ceasefire & help de-escalate.

Your war and destruction only approach has opened my eyes and many… https://t.co/mZYoifT7bj

— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) October 17, 2023

However, a number of independent experts—along with U.S. intelligence—have cast serious doubt on the Palestinian claim that Israel was responsible.

What exactly happened is about more than being able to point the finger at a guilty party, as it has implications for regional stability.

Following the blast, protesters hurled stones at Palestinian security forces in the West Bank and at riot police in neighboring Jordan, venting their fury.

Elsewhere in Lebanon, demonstrators tried to remove barbed wire that blocked access to the U.S. embassy in Beirut.

A summit planned in Jordan between President Joe Biden, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was canceled after Mr. Abbas withdrew in protest at the hospital blast.

“This war, which has entered a dangerous phase, will plunge the region into an unspeakable disaster,” warned King Abdullah.

Buildings with blown-out windows surrounded the parking lot, some video showed, along with a relatively small crater several feet in diameter on the ground.

much better image showing crater and possible scatter direction of impact debris from direction of impact. https://t.co/ZGikNHKv99
This is a stitched together image of frames from above video to give rough wider angle view and buildings referenced for location match of angle.. pic.twitter.com/TIOmnTGMQX

— Nathan J Hunt (@ISNJH) October 18, 2023

Surrounding the apparent blast site were marks of incendiary damage to trees and buildings, which were standing erect rather than reduced to rubble, which some suggest would have been the case if the blast had been caused by a high-caliber Israeli impact weapon.

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***

What a hell of an ally we have in the Middle East there in Israel. Truly indispensable.

Its warmonger leadership flirts recklessly with World War III – while relying on the geopolitical power of the United States, mind you, to back up its feigned bravado — while it sucks the American treasury dry to the tune of billions of dollars per year and enlists the government to mobilize troops whenever it snaps its fingers.

The Israeli authorities would almost certainly tread more lightly were they not the beneficiaries of a blank moral and literal check from the United States. The stick it carries is way too big for its britches.

Via Times of Israel:

“Israel has asked the United States for $10 billion in emergency military aid…

The aid package is currently being put together by Congress in coordination with the White House…

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said during a visit to Tel Aviv on Sunday that US lawmakers have discussed providing Israel with replacement ammunition for the Iron Dome missile defense system, precision-guided bombs, JDAM kits to turn standard bombs into precision munitions and 155-millimeter ammunition.”

Hold the horses, there.

I’ve been told that Israel, via relentless corporate state media propaganda, is a technological powerhouse with an advanced economy and one of the finest fighting forces on Earth capable of mopping up America’s geopolitical rivals on our behalf. That’s why, the story goes, Israel is such an important and valuable regional ally.

So what does it need ten billion MORE dollars in American money – in addition to the $4 billion it already receives every year as the world’s largest welfare queen — and weapons for?

And why must 2,000 U.S. troops march off to fight on Israel’s behalf?

Via NBC News:

“About 2,000 U.S. troops have been put on prepare-to-deploy orders for possible support to Israel, according to a defense official.

The troops are not being sent anywhere yet, nor would they necessarily go to Israel or Gaza. If they were deployed, they would go to a nearby country to be prepared to support Israel in the war against Hamas, the official said.

These who received the orders were already on 96-hour prepare-to-deploy status, which has now been shortened to 24 hours.”

But for the benevolence of the American citizenry, Israel would have ceased to exist decades ago. In fact, the entire project of the state would never have gotten off the ground in the first place without not just American support but what can only be described as full subsidy.

In return for literally owing its existence to American sponsorship, one might expect unending gratitude and deference by the Israeli state. Perhaps some groveling when it comes begging for backup and more charity.  

Instead, the tail wags the dog.

Entitled neocon “Israel First” millionaire chickenhawks like Ben Shapiro threaten nuclear war from his comfy studio unless John Q. Public taxpayer shuts his antisemitic mouth and hands Israel more money and weapons with a curtsy tossed in for good measure.

When Israel says “jump,” American taxpayers ask “how high”?

That’s called Freedom™. That’s called Democracy™.

Meanwhile, AIPAC and other groups funnel tens of millions of dollars every election cycle into congressional lobbying to subvert the democratic process by bribing American politicians to do Israel’s bidding – and that’s just one of the many shadowy lobbying groups working in the same capacity on Israel’s behalf.

AIPAC and similar groups, like Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), also pour millions of dollars into their pet political candidate to ensure the loyalty of the American Congress and presidency forever.

Through the multinational corporate state’s proxies like the ADL, Israel smears and censors any American who points out the imbalances in the parasitic U.S.-Israeli relationship as “Nazis” or “domestic terrorists” or whatever.

In some American states, the government forces employees, in clear violation of First Amendment free speech protections, to sign absurd “loyalty oaths” to the Israeli state in which they pledge not to ever support a boycott of Israel.

… And the abuses go on and on – abuses that would outrage and sicken any decent American if it were any other interests committing them aside from Israel, which for labyrinthine reasons enjoys privileges to subvert and distort the American democratic process with impunity.

If Israel wants so desperately war with Iran – which is obviously does — it should be free to do so and reap the geopolitical consequences.

But it won’t get any support – moral or material (except in the form of taxpayer money it extorts through legal theft) – from a Kansas boy like myself. My nationality is American. I am loyal to America – not to the illegitimate government that rules it, but to the ideals upon which this nation was founded, which predate by centuries the creation of the Middle Eastern political entity known as “Israel.”

*Note: As you might have noticed if you follow the news closely, you’re not likely to get this kind of perspectives on the Israel-Gaza conflict from the corporate state media or even, unfortunately, from much of the independent media, a large portion of which for whatever reason sees fit to simp for Israeli geopolitical interests.

*

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This article was originally published on the author’s Substack, Armageddon Prose.

Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Oct. 12, 2023. – Secretary Antony Blinken on X

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***

A B-52H Stratofortress will land in South Korea for the first time in three decades sometime this week. The US claims the bomber’s mission is to promote peace on the Korean Peninsula. However, North Korea has warned that American military activity in the region has pushed the situation to the brink of a nuclear conflict. 

On Monday, Maj. Rachel Buitrago, spokeswoman for the 7th Air Force at Osan Air Base south of Seoul, said,

“These flyovers, air demonstrations and static displays, including the landing for the B-52 on the peninsula, is part of our continued pledge to promote peace, stability and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula.” 

Since taking office, President Joe Biden has ramped up military activity in East Asia with the goal of intimidating North Korea and China. Washington has inked agreements with Seoul to deploy more arms platforms to South Korea that are capable of launching nuclear weapons. 

Just before the Pentagon announced that the B-52 – which is capable of dropping nuclear bombs – will land at an unnamed South Korean airfield, Washington sent the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier to a South Korean port. 

At an address to the UN General Assembly last month, Kim Song, Pyongyang’s representative at the body, blasted Washington for pushing the situation to the brink of nuclear war.

“Owing to the reckless and continued hysteria of nuclear showdown on the part of the US and its following forces, the year 2023 has been recorded as an extremely dangerous year that the military security situation in and around the Korean peninsula was driven closer to the brink of a nuclear war,” he said. “Due to [Seoul’s] sycophantic and humiliating policy of depending on outside forces, the Korean peninsula is in a hair-trigger situation with imminent danger of nuclear war.” 

*

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Kyle Anzalone is news editor of the Libertarian Institute, opinion editor of Antiwar.com and co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Will Porter and Connor Freeman.

Featured image: South Korean F-15K Slam Eagles fly alongside U.S. F-16 Fighting Falcons and a B-52H Stratofortress bomber during an air drill near South Korea, July 13, 2023. (South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense)

---

“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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***

Who runs the world and what are their goals?

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is setup by Reagan in 1981 to counterbalance the nationalist Arabs in the region like Gaddafi, the Iranians, Iraqis, Algerians, etc, and to tip the oil scales in favor of the Western bankers instead of the Arab people who sit on the oil and own the oil.

What’s going on in Israel today is the latest colonial project for these people.

Watch the entire interview below.

Click here to view Dean Henderson’s archive on Global Research.

*

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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***

Mass opposition to the Israeli government’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza continues to mount across the United States and internationally. Despite the combined pressures of relentless propaganda and anti-democratic attacks against expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian people, millions of workers and youth throughout the world continue to pour into the streets to protest Israel’s war crimes.

In the United States, where the Biden administration has fully backed the Israeli government, university campuses have emerged as a major battleground in the fight to defend democratic rights and expose the lies used to justify Israel’s policies. As the scale of Israel’s war becomes increasingly clear—including through the mass bombing campaign and the deliberate deprivation of food, water and fuel to the 2.2 million inhabitants of Gaza, half of whom are children—the class lines are being clearly drawn.

On the one side are tens of thousands of students who are fighting to stop Israel’s historic crimes against Gaza; on the other hand are the billionaire CEOs, members of the capitalist ruling class who populate university board rooms and whose checkbooks secure the allegiance of the university administrations.

The recent statements by these figures highlights the right-wing, anti-democratic character of this social layer which exercises vast influence over academia.

At Harvard University, the CEO campaign to blacklist pro-Palestinian students has continued to mount following the events last week, when students were publicly doxxed and threatened with retaliation for signing a statement correctly blaming Israel’s decades-long oppression of the Palestinians for the current conflict.

After public denunciations of the students by Larry Summers, former Harvard president and former US Treasury Secretary, along with calls by Bill Ackman, Harvard alumnus and billionaire hedge fund manager, for the university to release the names of students associated with the statement, a van rode around campus plastered with the pictures and names of protesting students.

Since then, more billionaire donors, aligned with both the Democrats and Republicans, have come forward to slander the students as “antisemitic” and demand that they be “held accountable” for their opposition to Israel’s crimes.

After denouncing the student letter, Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of the hedge fund Citadel, demanded that the university take a harder stance in defense of Israel. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Griffin is the world’s 33rd wealthiest person with an estimated wealth of $36 billion. He has donated more than half a billion dollars to Harvard, including $300 million this year alone.

The New York Times reported a private call between Griffin and Penny Pritzker, billionaire senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation and sister to Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, after which the university issued a second, more forceful statement on the conflict, condemning “the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas.”

Griffin has also joined Ackman’s call for students to be blacklisted, declaring that students associated with the letter would never be hired by Citadel for their “unforgivable” digression.

Students across the US are facing intense retribution for voicing their opposition to the war. At New York University, Ryna Workman, president of the Student Bar Association (SBA), came under vicious attack by the university administration after issuing a principled statement defending Palestinians against Israeli oppression. They were publicly denounced by university administrators; their job offer from the corporate law firm Winston & Strawn was immediately revoked; and the SBA announced that it would remove Workman from their elected position.

At the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), President Liz Magill was forced to issue a second statement on the Israel war, in which she denounced Hamas’s “terrorist assault.” She also capitulated to demands that the administration denounce a Palestinian literature festival held at the university in September, slandering speakers for their opposition to Zionism and the state of Israel, stating they had “a public history of speaking out viciously against the Jewish people.” Among the panelists was Pink Floyd founder Roger Waters, who was banned from campus by the university and had to participate remotely.

Magill’s latest statements followed a concerted campaign by the university’s wealthiest donors and state figures to demand the school align itself with the state of Israel.

Billionaire Jon Huntsman Jr., former governor of Utah who served in the administrations of every president from Ronald Reagan through Donald Trump, announced that his family foundation would “close its checkbook” to Penn for its supposed “moral relativism” in response to what he called the “reprehensible and historic Hamas evil.”

Vahan Gureghian, CEO of CSMI, a for-profit charter school operator, resigned from the Penn Board of Trustees last Friday, describing the Palestine literature festival as an “embrace of antisemitism.”

Another billionaire donor, Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo Global Management and chair of the Wharton School, Penn’s business school, called for both Magill and the university’s Board of Trustees Chair Scott Bok to be fired and for donors to discontinue funding to the university.

While Griffin, Ackman, Rowan and others have been public in their statements, the Times reported that in its interviews with donors, “the most intense demands have come behind the scenes” from Wall Street financiers who feel they “had a right… to weigh in” but who do “not want to speak publicly on a rapidly evolving issue that has elicited death threats on both sides.”

While students are publicly doxxed, removed from elected academic positions and physically threatened, the financial elite have self-declared their right to dictate university policy and suppress academic freedom in backroom dealings without the threat of public scrutiny.

In addition to blacklisting by major corporations and the American state, students are also confronted with similar attacks against their democratic rights by right-wing professors.

At the University of California, Berkeley, Zionist law Professor Steven Davidoff Soloman published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday titled, “Don’t Hire My Anti-Semitic Law Students,” in which he equated criticism of Zionism with “anti-Semitism and dehumanizing Jews.”

He menacingly stated that it was “time for the adults to take over” and that students need to “face consequences,” such as being blacklisted by law firms, in order to “straighten up.” In the context of violent police repression against pro-Palestinian protesters internationally, such statements have sinister implications.

Solomon chairs the Board of Directors of the Israel Institute, a Zionist organization which promotes the state of Israel on university campuses and has high level connections to both the US and Israeli governments. It was founded in 2012 by Itamar Rabinovich, former Israeli ambassador to the US, and its funding comes from the Schusterman Family Foundation, which declares on its website that its work “is rooted in a proud embrace of the vision of Zionism embedded in Israel’s founding Declaration of Independence.”

The intensity of the campaign to discredit political opposition to the policies of Israel and its imperialist backers is indicative of a deep-seated fear within these ruling layers that their slanderous propaganda and warmongering is being rejected by millions of people worldwide.

Indeed, despite significant personal victimization, Ryna Workman has issued a second statement, redoubling their demands for an immediate end to Israel’s genocidal war. At Harvard, hundreds of students held a demonstration on Sunday in support of the Palestinians. Internationally, protesters are courageously defying bans against Palestine solidarity protests in the so-called “democratic” countries.

As the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) in the US explained in its recent statement condemning the censorship of anti-war opposition on campuses, the ferocious attacks against students are part of a broader effort by the ruling class to suppress all democratic rights and preempt the growing radicalization of the working class amid the development of the largest strike movement in decades.

Mass opposition to the unfolding genocide against Gaza must be connected to this growing movement of the working class against inequality. The struggle to stop war, to defend democratic rights and to end social inequality are all bound up with the fight to abolish capitalism. The IYSSE calls for the building of a unified movement of the working class and youth in Israel, Palestine, the US, Europe and internationally as the basis for waging such a struggle. We encourage all those who agree with this call to get involved today.

*

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Featured image: Harvard University Widener Library [Photo by Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 4.0]

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***

In today’s tense Israel, it seems no issue is protected from political polarisation – not even the near-sacrosanct concern of Israelis whose relatives are being held captive in the Gaza Strip.

Several families of captives are camped outside governmental offices in central Tel Aviv’s Kirya, hoping their presence will maintain pressure on authorities to secure their loved ones.

Israel says 199 people were taken to Gaza on 7 October, during the surprise Palestinian attack that killed around 1,400 Israelis.

Since the attack, Israel has bombed Gaza relentlessly, killing at least 3,000 Palestinians. Hamas, who led the 7 October attack, claims some Israeli captives have also been killed in the bombing.

The group of families in Kirya is tight-knit and supportive. But on Monday, a man they did not recognise appeared in their midst, accusing them of being left-wingers trying to harm the government.

He said they were part of the protest movement, which before the outbreak of war had staged weekly demonstrations against the government’s judicial reforms in that exact spot.

The presence of Yishai Hadas, a prominent anti-government protester, may have contributed to this framing. However, according to the parents of one captive, Hadas sat with them of his own accord, simply to show solidarity.

Police stationed nearby quickly overpowered the troublemaker and detained him for further questioning. Yet it wasn’t the first time that the families’ united front had been challenged.

A day earlier, another unfamiliar man had appeared among them just before a meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and representatives of the families.

It was Zvika Mor, the father of a young man taken to Gaza, who claimed that captives should not be returned at the expense of Israel’s war effort against Hamas.

The overriding message coming from the captives’ families has been that Israel should put the well-being of the Israelis being held in Gaza above all else.

Mor, meanwhile, insisted that the Israeli assault on Gaza should take priority, adding that he is willing to sacrifice his son for this purpose.

Michal, one of the group of relatives in Kirya, told Middle East Eye:

“We don’t know who he is and he has the right to think that way, of course. But no one knows him, and we have a bad feeling that he was planted by someone from the government. It’s a very unpleasant feeling.”

Demanding Attention

Avihai Brodetz, whose wife and children are captives of Hamas, was the first person to stage this sit-in outside Tel Aviv’s governmental offices. On Saturday, his was joined by more than 1,000 others – captives’ families and friends, as well as supportive strangers – in a protest.

The wall of the Kirya offices is plastered with photos of Israelis believed to be held in Gaza, or people who are simply still missing.

Relatives and friends of the captives are here to try and tell anyone they can about the people being held in Gaza, hoping attention will encourage the government and the world to work harder for their release.

One of those captives is Abigail, a three-year-old girl, whose parents were killed in a kibbutz near the boundary with Gaza.

“Little Abigail was playing outside when Hamas entered the settlement and started shooting everywhere,” says Michal, a relative holding up the girl’s photograph.

“Her parents were killed immediately, so the neighbours took her to their home, but later Hamas came to them too and they were all taken to Gaza.”

Relatives like Michal express dismay at the lack of action and communication from the government.

“Do they want the world to exert a lot of pressure? Is there a deal brewing that we don’t know about?” Michal asks.

“But for now, they are there. Children, women, old people – it’s crazy, really crazy. I wonder if anyone [in the government] understands that this is really happening, really happening here and now, that they are all there in Gaza.”

Nathan, whose friend is being held in Gaza with her children, says:

“Now everyone is busy with the war, and no one up there has a free ear for our pain.”

Also at the gathering is a 22-year-old woman named Shir. Her friend Romi, whom she met in the army, is among the captives.

Romi was one of around 4,000 young Israelis attending a rave outside the Reim kibbutz when it was attacked by Palestinian fighters. The bodies of 260 Israelis were recovered from the site of the party.

“The feeling is hard, there is no one to talk to, we lost our sense of personal security,” Shir says.

“Hamas came here, entered our villages and communities and our homes, murdered and took prisoners – who could have imagined that such a thing would happen to us? Even in the script of an action series, this was unthinkable.”

Some in Israel believe the government is focused only on the military campaign. Others think it is hoping international pressure will help free the captives, many of whom are citizens of foreign countries.

When asked about her position, Shir hesitates.

“Personally, I feel that we have not had a government for a very long time. There is no one to talk to, no one listens to us. The prime minister has not even taken responsibility in all the speeches he has given since Saturday,” she says, adding that the captives do not seem to be the government’s first priority.

Shir is due to study medicine in Poland soon. She’s not sure she’ll ever come back.

“It is not safe here, it is impossible to raise children here. There is no future and I know that the situation of the Jews in the world is also not safe – there is no way out.”

Prisoner Swap

Shira, the mother of Liry, an 18-year-old soldier taken to Gaza, says she’s camped out in Kirya so the government cannot ignore them.

“Hamas has thousands of prisoners in Israel, including minors and women and adults, let them have them,” she says.

Shira’s daughter had just started her military service in Nahal Oz, a kibbutz near Gaza.

“I know for sure she was kidnapped,” says Shira, who has seen footage of Liry in Gaza.

“We identified her and the army confirmed that it was her. She came in handcuffed, in pajamas but healthy and unharmed,” Shira adds.

“I think the government needs to understand that Hamas took our hostages in order to reach a deal to release their captives. It is quite clear. So go ahead, set them free.”

Shira believes Israeli public opinion is behind them.

“It crosses political positions, religious and secular people – everyone is with us.”

But just a few metres away is another encampment of captives’ families where the message is quite different.

In this place are four families, mostly settlers, including Mor. They are calling for the war not to be obstructed by attempts to free captives like their relatives.

Separating the two camps are two armed police officers. One tells MEE:

“There are a lot of emotions here, so we are providing security.”

*

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Featured image: Relatives of captive Israelis comfort each other in Tel Aviv, on 14 October (Reuters)

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***

On 15 October 2023, over 800 scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies and genocide studies signed a public statement warning of the possibility of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Signatories include prominent Holocaust and genocide studies scholars, as well as many international law and TWAIL scholars. The text of the statement and list of signatures is below, and a pdf version can be accessed here.

Public Statement: Scholars Warn of Potential Genocide in Gaza

15 October 2023

As scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies and genocide studies, we are compelled to sound the alarm about the possibility of the crime of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. We do not do so lightly, recognising the weight of this crime, but the gravity of the current situation demands it. 

The pre-existing conditions in the Gaza Strip had already prompted discussions of genocide prior to the current escalation – such as by the National Lawyers Guild in 2014, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine in 2014, and the Center for Constitutional Rights in 2016. Scholars have warned over the years that the siege of Gaza may amount to a “prelude to genocide” or a “slow-motion genocide”. The prevalence of racist and dehumanising language and hate speech in social media was also noted in a warning issued in July 2014 by the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect, in response to Israel’s conduct against the protected Palestinian population. The Special Advisers noted that individual Israelis had disseminated messages that could be dehumanising to the Palestinians and that had called for the killing of members of this group, and reiterated that incitement to commit atrocity crimes is prohibited under international law. 

Israel’s current military offensive on the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023, however, is unprecedented in scale and severity, and consequently in its ramifications for the population of Gaza. Following the incursion by Palestinian armed groups on 7 October 2023, including criminal attacks against Israeli civilians, the Gaza Strip has been subjected to incessant and indiscriminate bombardment by Israeli forces. Between 7 October and 9:00 a.m. on 15 October, there have been 2,329 Palestinians killed and 9,042 Palestinians injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza, including over 724 children, huge swathes of neighbourhoods and entire families across Gaza have been obliterated. Israel’s Defence Minister ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip prohibiting the supply of fuel, electricity, water and other essential necessities. This terminology itself indicates an intensification of an already illegal, potentially genocidal siege to an outright destructive assault. 

Late on 12 October, the Israeli authorities issued an order for more than 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip to leave their homes and flee to the south of Gaza within 24 hours, knowing that this would be practically impossible for many. Palestinians who did start to evacuate south reported that civilians and ambulances were targeted and hit by Israeli airstrikes on the designated “safe route”, killing at least 70 Palestinians who were fleeing to seek refuge. The ICRC stated that “the evacuation orders, coupled with the complete siege” are incompatible with international humanitarian law. Almost half a million Palestinians have already been displaced, and Israeli forces have bombed the only possible exit route that Israel does not control, the Rafah crossing to Egypt multiple times. The World Health Organisation published a warning that “[f]orcing more than 2000 patients to relocate to southern Gaza, where health facilities are already running at maximum capacity and unable to absorb a dramatic rise in the number patients, could be tantamount to a death sentence”.

The horrific attacks in Israel cannot justify the limitless destruction of Gaza. The evacuation orders, coupled with the complete siege, are not compatible with IHL.

We are committed to providing aid to Gaza and we reiterate our readiness to visit the hostages there.

Read…

— ICRC (@ICRC) October 13, 2023

There has also been an escalation of violence, arrests, expulsions, and destruction of whole Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem. Since 7 October, Israeli settlers, with the backing of the army and police, have attacked and shot Palestinian civilians at point blank range (as documented in the villages of a-Tuwani and Qusra), have invaded their homes and assaulted residents. A number of Palestinian communities have already been forced to abandon their homes, after which settlers arrived and destroyed their property. Between 7 – 15 October, Al-Haq documented the killing by Israeli military and settlers of 55 Palestinians in the West Bank, and more the injury of 1,200 Palestinians there.

Statements of Israeli officials since 7 October 2023 suggest that beyond the killings and restriction of basic conditions for life perpetrated against Palestinians in Gaza, there are also indications that the ongoing and imminent Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip are being conducted with potentially genocidal intent. Language used by Israeli political and military figures appears to reproduce rhetoric and tropes associated with genocide and incitement to genocide. Dehumanising descriptions of Palestinians have been prevalent. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared on 9 October that “we are fighting human animals and we act accordingly”. He subsequently announced that Israel was moving to “a full-scale response” and that he had “removed every restriction” on Israeli forces, as well as stating: “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything.” On 10 October, the head of the Israeli army’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, addressed a message directly to Gaza residents: “Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell”. The same day, Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari acknowledged the wanton and intentionally destructive nature of Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza: “The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.” 

Since 2007, Israel has defined the Gaza Strip as a whole as an “enemy entity”. On 7 October, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Gazans would pay an “immense price” for the actions of Hamas fighters. He asserted that Israel will wage a prolonged offensive and will turn parts of Gaza’s densely populated urban centres “into rubble”. Israel’s President emphasised that the Israeli authorities view the entire Palestinian population of Gaza as responsible for the actions of militant groups, and subject accordingly to collective punishment and unrestricted use of force: “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true”. Israeli Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Israel Katz added: “All the civilian population in Gaza is ordered to leave immediately. We will win. They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world.”

Evidence of incitement to genocide has also been present in Israeli public discourse. This ranges from statements by elected officials – such as Knesset member Ariel Kallner’s call on 7 October for “one goal: Nakba! [catastrophe for Palestinians] A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 1948” – to public banners displayed in Israeli cities calling for a “victory” signified by “zero population in Gaza” and the “annihilation of Gaza”. On national television, security correspondent Alon Ben David relayed the Israeli military’s plan to destroy Gaza City, Jabaliyya, Beit Lahiya, and Beit Hanun. Such statements are not new and resonate with a wider Israeli discourse showcasing the intent for elimination and genocide against the Palestinian people. Earlier in the year, for example, Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich called Palestinians “repugnant”, “disgusting” and called for “wiping out” the entire Palestinian village of Huwwara in the West Bank. 

Those banners appeared in several Israeli roads and seem to represent what is taking place in Gaza: One says that “victory” means “0 residents in Gaza”, and the second says “mass destruction of Gaza”.

Netanyahu in his latest speech mentioned the Holocaust. In the current… pic.twitter.com/RmB7sbmPmM

— Sami Abou Shahadeh (@ShahadehAbou) October 13, 2023

Military sources to Israeli TV: "Gaza will become a city of tents. There will be no buildings…"

Genocidal intentions https://t.co/HvFKIMZqOl

— Nimer Sultany (@NimerSultany) October 10, 2023

On 12 October 2023, a group of UN Special Rapporteurs’ condemned “Israel’s indiscriminate military attacks against the already exhausted Palestinian people of Gaza, comprising over 2.3 million people, nearly half of whom are children. They have lived under unlawful blockade for 16 years, and already gone through five major brutal wars, which remain unaccounted for”. The UN experts warned against “the withholding of essential supplies such as food, water, electricity and medicines. Such actions will precipitate a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where its population is now at inescapable risk of starvation. Intentional starvation is a crime against humanity”. On 14 October 2023, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory warned against “a repeat of the 1948 Nakba, and the 1967 Naksa, yet on a larger scale” as Israel carries out “mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians under the fog of war”. 

The Palestinian people constitute a national group for the purposes of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention). The Palestinians of the Gaza Strip constitute a substantial proportion of the Palestinian nation, and are being targeted by Israel because they are Palestinian. The Palestinian population of Gaza appears to be presently subjected by the Israeli forces and authorities to widespread killing, bodily and mental harm, and unviable conditions of life – against a backdrop of Israeli statements which evidence signs of intent to physically destroy the population. 

Article II of the Genocide Convention provides that “genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

• (a) Killing members of the group;
• (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
• (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
• (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
• (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

All states are bound as a matter of law by the principle that genocide is a crime prohibited under international law. The International Court of Justice has affirmed that the prohibition of genocide is a peremptory norm of international law from which no derogation is allowed. The Convention provides that individuals who attempt genocide or who incite to genocide “shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals”.

Article I of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide provides that:

“The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish”.

The International Court of Justice has clarified that

“a State’s obligation to prevent, and the corresponding duty to act, arise at the instant that the State learns of, or should normally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed. From that moment onwards, if the State has available to it means likely to have a deterrent effect on those suspected of preparing genocide, or reasonably suspected of harbouring specific intent (dolus specialis), it is under a duty to make such use of these means as the circumstances permit”.

Palestinian human rights organisations, Jewish civil society groups, Holocaust and genocide studies scholars and others have by now warned of an imminent genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza. We emphasise the existence of a serious risk of genocide being committed in the Gaza Strip. 

The undersigned urgently appeal to states to take concrete and meaningful steps to individually and collectively prevent genocidal acts, in line with their legal duty to prevent the crime of genocide. They must protect the Palestinian population, and ensure that Israel refrains from any further incitement to genocide and from the perpetration of conduct prohibited by Article II of the Genocide Convention.

All states should immediately act under Article VIII, and should call upon the competent organs of the United Nations, particularly the UN General Assembly, to take urgent action under the Charter of the United Nations appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide. We note specifically the role of the General Assembly here, given that the Security Council is compromised by the United States and the United Kingdom (both permanent veto-holding members) sending military forces to the eastern Mediterranean in support of Israel. 

We recall that in 1982, the General Assembly condemned the massacre of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps as “an act of genocide”. We note also that the state of Palestine is entitled to initiate, in accordance with Article IX of the Genocide Convention, proceedings before the International Court of Justice in order to prevent the perpetration of genocidal acts.

Finally, we call on all relevant UN bodies, including the Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, as well as the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to immediately intervene, to carry out the necessary investigations and invoke the necessary warning procedures to protect the Palestinian population from genocide.

Click here for the list of signatories.

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It is one thing to read a review of this important and compelling film – a tour de force – and another to watch it. The former fades into insignificance when one takes an hour-and-a-half to immerse oneself in its tragic yet revelatory story. For in it we see and hear a dying man speak eloquently of how he accepted the role that life brought him – a 9/11 truthteller and peace apostle – and now, as he departs the stage, hopes this last effort will ease his exit and help fulfill his mission as a man of peace.

Because Graeme MacQueen was my close friend for the last ten years of his life, I found it very hard to watch this film since his death on April 25^th is still raw and painful. For more than three years he suffered greatly and yet found the strength to cooperate with his colleague Ted Walter in the making of this important film. Walter’s direction admirably portrays MacQueen’s nobility by having Graeme narrate his life’s work interspersed with documentary footage that illuminates the truth about many issues, most notably the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent anthrax attacks. The result is a very powerful and important lesson in personal courage and historical truth.

From the opening scenes we see Graeme tell it bluntly and hopefully: that the official story of 9/11 is a fraud, and that because his life’s work has been to oppose war, he hopes he has fulfilled his “mission.” Humble as he was, it is inspiring to hear him speak of his mission, which is another word for vocation or calling, a mystery beyond analysis.

“Peace, War, and 9/11” can be viewed here and here. Or you can watch it below.

A long-time professor of religious studies at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada where he was the Founding Director of the Center for Peace Studies and a Buddhist scholar, he was also a peace activist, who traveled to El Salvador and worked with peace groups to learn for himself the truth about other conflicts and help resolve them. His writing and research were meticulously logical and evidence based to a fault, and it would be impossible to accuse him of ever reaching rash conclusions based on speculation.

While there are powerful documentaries that focus exclusively on facts and are narrated by omniscient and objective narrators, Peace, War, and 9/11, while also based on proven facts, is doubly powerful because it is told by a man whose personal story is a moving example of one who, from a young age, was inspired by a reverence for life and the embrace of non-violence, and whose vocation long preceded his scholarly and anti-war pursuits.

The documentary footage begins with a clip from President John Kennedy’s indispensable American University speech of June 10, 1963 where he appeals for an end to the Cold War, the abolishment of nuclear weapons, the end of a Pax Americana, and the establishment of a genuine peace:

“. . . the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living – the kind that enables men and women to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children – not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women – not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.” 

This clip sets the stage for all that follows, for it is implied that this speech, among his other anti-war actions, led to JFK’s assassination by the CIA. The film makes similar points about the assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. The point is clear: Peacemaking is a dangerous activity, but it is necessary if we are to reverence life and live by conscience.

To listen to MacQueen give his analysis of war as a system, at times cold and others hot, not one event but a series of events – a tumor on human society as he describes it (echoing the tumors that are killing him) – is to receive a concise lesson on war and peace. The film illustrates his words with powerful footage from Vietnam, the Tonkin Gulf, Pearl Harbor, the words of the warmaking class, etc. all leading to the attacks of September 11, 2001.

He explains how his suspicions about those events gradually grew until in 2005 he read an article by David Ray Griffin that startled him. It was about the testimony of New York City firefighters who heard explosions in the Twin Towers. This prompted him to pursue what his scholarship had prepared him for: the careful pursuit of textual analysis in pursuit of evidence, and so he read the 12,000 pages of the World Trade Center task force report only to discover that 118 NY firefighters talked about explosions throughout the towers and 10 did not. The more he studied, the more he found additional eyewitness, such as police officers, to bring the number to 156. Such eye witness testimony, reinforced by the first reports from television announcers kept adding up, as thermite was found in the dust of the towers. The evidence for controlled demolition of the buildings kept increasing; he concludes that “the evidence is overwhelming.” His words are supported by confirmatory video from many of the people he mentions. This video testimony makes this film so powerful.

From there he dissects the same day emergence of the official narrative which blamed Osama bin Laden for 9/11 without any evidence to support it. It became the propaganda narrative of good versus evil. Evidence for the alleged 19 hijackers was not produced, then or ever. War was simply declared against the bad guys, who were declared guilty by fiat.

Finally, Graeme analyzes the anthrax letters that were sent in the weeks following September 11. Only five people died but the effects were profound. He leads the viewer through his important research as presented in The 2001 Anthrax Deception. His book shows conclusively that the anthrax attacks were an inside job coming from a U.S. government lab, not an Al-Qaeda operation. Nevertheless, this led to the Patriot Act, the invasion of Afghanistan, and in 2003 the invasion of Iraq, although all were based on lies. And significantly, if the anthrax attacks were an inside job which he conclusively proves, so too were those of September 11^th, as some of the alleged hijackers, particularly the leader Mohamed Atta, were involved in the anthrax deceptions.

He concludes by saying many people don’t get the deep state because they can’t imagine treachery of this kind and scope. He accuses many traditional leftists of falling down on the job of showing how 9/11 was a propaganda coup based on “mendacity and deception.” Many such leftists who have often been critics of U.S. domestic and foreign policy – and we are shown pictures of Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, Amy Goodman, Glen Greenwald, et al. – have also refused to even discuss the matter. This Graeme says “is probably from fears of looking ridiculous and admitting you were wrong for years and years on a really important topic.” Here I must disagree with my dear friend, for this seems to me false, for these same people could have examined the evidence as Graeme did when he jumped into his research starting in 2005. They adamantly refused then and now and so have given cover for the justification of the endless U.S. wars on terror that are ongoing. I do not believe this was because of “looking ridiculous.” It is more insidious than that.

We see an interview with General Wesley Clarke who says he was shown a paper in the Pentagon in late September 2001 where he was informed that the U.S. was not going to just invade Afghanistan but Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finally Iran. Graeme makes clear that any country that dares to resist the U.S. “and our Israeli companions” will be attacked and destroyed. This is the war system at work.  It is, as he says, all about collective punishment; the warfare states will attack you and kill you in large numbers even if you individually have had nothing to do with any of this. Systemic killing is at the heart of this state terrorism, as the Israeli massacres of Palestinians has long shown, even as I write.

To cap off his analysis, we are shown video of the collapse of Building 7 at the World Trade Center. It was not hit by a plane and came down in free-fall speed at 5:20 P.M. It was clearly taken down by controlled demolition and its fall was predicted by 60 firefighters in advance. It was the final crime committed that day, one that it has taken many people years to discover, if they have.

“We haven’t tried very hard to abolish war,” Graeme says at the end. It is “this mutually reinforcing tumor on societies” that many don’t understand because of its systemic nature and because they don’t take the time to read and study closely all the official narratives that explain it as unavoidable. These are lies. Yet just as 19^th century crusaders for justice finally abolished slavery and started a gradual process to try to stop wars – to no avail – the fight goes on.  As JFK said at American University, “We all cherish our children’s future.  And we are all mortal.”

This deeply moving film will elucidate and edify those who care for the world’s children. While one man’s story, it is universal. Graeme MacQueen has departed this earth, but he has fulfilled his mission as a man of peace. “You do your best,” he tells us. What more can we ask of him, and ourselves as well.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.”

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

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

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

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Joining me today to discuss war, peace and the future of humanity is Daniele Ganser, an historian, author, energy and peace researcher and head of the Swiss Institute for Peace and Energy Research (SIPER).

He is the author of the groundbreaking book on Operation Gladio, NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, and joins us to today to discuss his latest book, USA: The Ruthless Empire.

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video