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So how has this “post-war” Britain been working out for you?
There has been a lot of comment on General Sir Patrick Sanders’s recent speech urging preparations for a “citizen’s army” ready to confront Russia whenever the latter gets through Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine adventure.
But the most remarkable contention by the head of the British army was the one asserting that we have been dwelling in a “post-war world” but now need to man up for a “pre-war” one.
It might well suit an eminent general to wish to blank out the last generation since they have been inglorious, to say the least, in terms of British martial prowess.
But these are the facts of the real world we have actually been enduring. Over the last 25 years, Britain has fought in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Yemen.
It has further been a deeply involved proxy party to the continuing war in Ukraine, and in the Saudi/UAE aggression against Yemen prior to the present direct attacks. And our politicians are underwriting Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
So we have neither been in a “post-war” world, nor a “pre-war” one, but a world of war. We are living in a country almost permanently fighting somewhere with someone.
Many of these wars have been flagrantly illegal — the aggressions against Yugoslavia and Iraq and the intervention in Syria most blatantly. Others have been in a grey area from that point of view.
A legal war is not necessarily a just, prudent or sustainable one. But the point is worth stressing given the fondness of British politicians for wrapping themselves in legality and plumping their bottoms on what they hope is the moral high ground.
In fact, Britain is a rogue state. And a bipartisan rogue state at that. All the wars just listed have enjoyed full-throated support from the front benches of both Labour and Tories. It has not mattered one whit who is in government and who is the “official opposition.”
That consensus briefly broke down when Labour successfully opposed strikes on Syria in 2013. Then leader Ed Miliband was so overcome with embarrassment at this victory that he never alluded to it again.
And under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership Labour challenged the attacks in Iraq and Syria in 2015, although for reasons that remain utterly incomprehensible it permitted a free vote to the party’s entitled imperialist faction in the Commons.
But war is by and large an Establishment project that all politicians buy into. There is dissent on the US right over continuing to prolong the Ukraine conflict, but in the Conservative Party here not a peep.
A third observation is that several of these conflicts were Nato-badged and led — the bombardment of Yugoslavia, the occupation of Afghanistan and regime change in Libya. All aggressions, and all disasters — a point to remember when anyone extols Nato’s “purely defensive” character.
With the obvious exception of the US, no other country in the world engages so consistently in military aggression. France may perhaps run Britain close, but even Paris sat out the Iraq calamity.
And all this is without mentioning the Pacific, where Britain is flexing its military and diplomatic muscles through Aukus and aircraft carriers without as yet doing any actual fighting.
Sir Patrick was exercised about fighting Russia — perhaps a “citizens’ navy” to confront China too was an imaginative leap too far.
The point is that, despite all the complaints of the brasshats and their media epigones that the British armed forces are now too enfeebled to stand sentinel on our sovereignty, Britain fights wars almost continually and all over the place.
Indeed Richard Gott, once of The Guardian before that organ took up permanent residence on the dark side, set out to write a book showing that Britain had been fighting somewhere or other every year from the 18th century on.
His researches terminated, likely through exhaustion, several hundred pages in but only in the mid-19th century. There will be a second volume eventually, and probably a larger one. Gott is attempting the literary equivalent of painting the Forth rail bridge.
So the question is not — how do we fight Russia, but why do we fight so much? The answer is surprisingly terse — finance capital, in two words, or imperialism if you feel one is sufficient.
Britain’s centuries-long record of aggression, now continuing unabated, is the direct extension of the hegemony of the City of London in our capitalist system. First, it funded the plundering of much of the world through trading, while using government debt incurred in war-fighting to assume a dominant place in the state.
Then it became the vehicle for the massive export of capital which greased the establishment of a formal empire, an informal empire alongside it, and a central financial role in world monopoly capitalism as a whole. Not a project that could be undertaken without sustained violence.
And so on into the sterling area, the invention of the eurodollar market, the post-cold war globalisation and every phase in the metamorphosis of imperialism. If you are laundering surplus value from across the globe, you need an open world market for capital — and that requires a world police force.
Today, capital’s global cop is clearly the US. The imperative for bourgeois Britain is to stay close to Washington above all, to ensure that the world order accommodates the parasites of the Square Mile.
So today Britain’s wars are usually fought as junior partner to the US. Even when London takes the lead, as it did with Paris in attacking Libya, US military back-up is vital.
And when Britain’s contribution is mostly symbolic — the RAF can be doing nothing in the Red Sea that the Pentagon could not do for itself — it is still a down payment on a world order it profits from.
The point here is that support for finance capital, for the City of London, is support for war in the end. In a week when Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have fallen over themselves to appease big capital — on corporation tax, on bankers’ bonuses and likely on private equity taxation — that seems relevant.
I met Ed Balls a dozen years ago, when he was shadow chancellor. On being urged not to follow New Labour by letting the City dictate economic policy, he said that such a proposal was “not a break with the last Labour government, but with the policy of the last 200 years.”
He gets more marks for historical erudition than political courage. The worst of it is not bankers getting rich while industrial workers get laid off, bad as that self-evidently is. It is that British finance capital is always marching us to war.
There is no need to be too mechanistic. Clearly Gordon Brown could have carried on obliging the bankers and Tony Blair could still have declined to invade Iraq.
The tendency to war is ineluctable, but no particular conflict is inevitable. The masses get a vote if we press hard enough.
But the connection remains tight. We have never been “post-war” because we are not “post-capitalist.”
Now that would be an objective worth forming a citizen’s army for. Gen Sanders may however prefer to find a berth with the Royal Hedge Fund Fusiliers.
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Featured image: Secretary of State for Defence Grant Shapps, speaks to Chief of the General Staff General Patrick Sanders during a visit to a military training camp in East Anglia in the UK, November 29, 2023
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It’s going to be a very big push and will complement other protests taking place throughout Europe.
Poland has the largest number of family farms in Europe – over one million. These farms are a vital resource not just for national food production but also for the maintenance of Poland’s unique biodiversity.
Particular to this Polish farmer’s effort will be a central attack on ‘Green New Deal’ (see below) which is of course a critically important issue vis-a-vis ensuring the future of all farmers/farming.
Green New Deal links directly into the Agenda 2030 ‘Sustainability’ program whereby the WEF proposes to 100% disenfranchise farmers and substitute synthetic GMO laboratory foods for real food grown in real soil.
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A part of the announcement of the NSZZ of Individual Farmers “Solidarity” on the General Strike (from February 9 to March 10, 2024)
“…Our patience has been exhausted. The position of Brussels at the end of January 2024 is unacceptable to the entire agricultural community. In addition, the lack of response from the Polish authorities and declarations of cooperation with the European Commission, along with announcements to respect all decisions on the import of agricultural and food products from Ukraine, leave us no choice but to declare a general strike…We cannot accept the implementation of the “European Green Deal”, the European Union’s farm-to-table strategy and the proposed form of the Common Agricultural Policy.
The Polish government must present a clear plan for agricultural production, its profitability, the reconstruction of domestic processing and trade. We will fight for this until it happens. Polish farm families are the foundation of our country’s food security….
We ask compatriots to be understanding and aware of the situation in which we all find ourselves. We are fighting for our common good, which is to save Polish family-owned, often multi-generational farms from collapse and bankruptcy….”
Map of agricultural protests starting on February 9, 2024:
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In recent days, there has been a lot of speculation that Greece would deliver its Soviet/Russian-made air defenses, particularly the S-300 series SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems to the Kiev regime. Even some reputable Greek media such as the Kathimerini reported on this. The military transfer, according to reports, was to eventually include other Soviet-era military equipment, including the ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft guns, as well as the “Tor” and “Osa” short-range air defense systems.
Greece is by far the largest non-Warsaw Pact operator of Soviet/Russian-made weapons. It has acquired them both during and after the (First) Cold War. Athens was one of the few NATO members that sought to improve relations with Russia for decades, particularly in the aftermath of the illegal Turkish Neo-Ottoman invasion that resulted in the occupation of northern Cyprus in 1974.
As Moscow was among the first to condemn Ankara’s aggression, Athens maintained a balanced geopolitical position, even at the height of the (First) Cold War, despite its NATO membership. However, after Russia was forced to launch the special military operation (SMO), the new administration in Greece naively decided to reject this legacy of good relations and position itself firmly on the Kiev regime’s side. This can be somewhat understandable in purely practical terms and Moscow would’ve certainly had a great deal of understanding for the complex position of Athens. However, the latter made the mistake of agreeing to major weapons transfers, something that was wholly unnecessary and even self-defeating. Instead of such a major shift, Greece could’ve simply “condemned” the SMO in its official statements and be done with it.
This would’ve kept the relations with Russia largely intact, while there would’ve been ways to continue economic cooperation through various loopholes, just as many countries are already doing in order to circumvent sanctions. Unfortunately, the Greek government went a step too far, resulting in a completely unnecessary cooling of relations with the Kremlin. The damage is already done, but it’s important to at least prevent further deterioration in the millennium-old Greek-Russian ties. Luckily, this is precisely what Athens did, as it just denied reports about the supposed transfer of advanced air defense systems to the Neo-Nazi junta. Namely, on February 5, Athens categorically denied reports that it would send its Soviet/Russian-made S-300 SAM systems to the Kiev regime. Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis dispelled and rejected the reports as fake.
“There must be a limit to fake news, especially when it has to do with the interests of the country and its international image. There is no such thing and I categorically deny it. There was not even the intention for Greece to risk the country’s defense,” Marinakis stressed in a statement.
This is certainly great news, not only for Russia, but Greece as well. What’s more, it’s also great news for the Ukrainian people, as any additional arms transfers to the Kiev regime only prolong the conflict. In the last two years, there were similar controversies about the potential transfer of Greek air defense systems, including in December 2022, when the then Defense Minister Nikolaos Panagiotopoulos stated that Athens could deliver its Soviet/Russian-made S-300PMU-1 long-range SAM system to the Neo-Nazi junta. Panagiotopoulos also stated that this would not happen until after the United States deployed its MIM-104 “Patriot” SAM system on Crete. The S-300PMU-1 is a late 1980s/early 1990s modernization of the advanced S-300PMU and it was initially given a NATO reporting name SA-10D “Grumble” (only to later be redesignated as the SA-20 “Gargoyle”).
Greece acquired it in the aftermath of the 1997-1998 standoff between Turkey and Cyprus. At the time, Nicosia acquired the S-300PMU-1 from Russia to put a stop to decades of Turkish encroachment on its territorial integrity and sovereignty. Ankara responded by escalating the crisis to a potential conflict in which Greece pledged to support its fellow Cypriots. After a series of negotiations, the opposing sides came to an agreement that Cyprus would send the newly acquired Russian SAM system to Crete, while Turkey promised to remove its offensive capabilities from the direct vicinity of the island country. Thus, Greece inadvertently acquired the S-300PMU-1, one of the most advanced long-range SAM systems available at the time. Since then, it has maintained a regiment of four S-300PMU-1 systems with eight fire units and 32 launchers that also use the 200 km range 48N6 missiles.
According to relevant sources, the Greek military acquired 175 missiles from Russia and the SAM system’s importance for the country’s security cannot be overstated, particularly in the southern Aegean Sea. For approximately two and a half decades, the S-300PMU-1 has been serving as a deterrent to Turkish belligerence in the region, guarding Greek sovereign airspace with distinction. The Greek Air Force also operates at least 4 Tor-M1 systems with 16 missile launchers, while the Greek Army operates 21 systems with 84 launchers. The system’s maximum engagement range is 12 kilometers and its main purpose is to protect the much longer-ranged S-300PMU-1. Similarly, the Osa-AKM’s firing range is 15 kilometers and the SAM system has the same purpose as the Tor-M1. The Greek Army operates 39 Osa-AKM systems with at least 120 launchers.
The potential transfer of even a small part of this sizeable arsenal to the Neo-Nazi junta would severely undermine Greek security and encourage Turkish expansionism. This doesn’t even have anything to do with the previously mentioned shift in the country’s foreign policy. The Mitsotakis government’s pivot toward Washington DC and Brussels is extremely unpopular among the vast majority of Greeks (both in Greece and Cyprus), particularly after the decision to send weapons to the Kiev regime. Athens sent several types of weapons, including IFVs (infantry fighting vehicles) and ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles). Many were rightfully furious, especially after it was revealed that the indigenous Greeks living in Mariupol and the surrounding areas were subjected to brutal treatment by the Kiev regime, particularly its Neo-Nazi units like the infamous “Azov Battalion”.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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“The Iranians have a strategy, and we don’t”, a former senior U.S. Defence Department official told Al-Monitor: “We’re getting bogged down in tactical weeds – of whom to target and how – and nobody’s thinking strategically”.
The former Indian diplomat MK Bhadrakumar has coined the term ‘swarming’ to describe this process of non-state actors miring the U.S. in the tactical attrition – from the Levant to the Persian Gulf.
‘Swarming’ has been associated more recently with a radical evolution in modern warfare (most evident in Ukraine), where the use of autonomous swarming drones, continuously communicating with each other via AI, select and direct the attack to targets identified by the swarm.
In the Ukraine, Russia has pursued a patient, calibrated attrition to drive hard-Right ultranationalists from the field of battle (in central and eastern Ukraine), together with their western NATO facilitators.
NATO attempts at deterrence towards Russia (that recently have veered off into ‘terrorist’ attacks inside Russia – i.e. on Belgorod) notably have failed to produce results. Rather, Biden’s close embrace of Kiev has left him exposed politically, as U.S. and European zeal for the project implodes. The war has bogged down the U.S., without any electorally acceptable exit – and all can see it. Moscow drew-in Biden to an elaborate attritional web. He should ‘get out’ quick – but the 2024 campaign binds him.
So, Iran has been setting a very similar strategy throughout the Gulf, maybe taking its cue from the Ukraine conflict.
Less than a day after the attack on Tower 22, the military base ambiguously perched on the membrane between Jordan and the illegal U.S. al-Tanaf base in Syria, Biden promised that the U.S. would provide a quick and determined response to the attacks against it in Iraq and Syria (by what he calls ‘Iran-linked’ militia).
Simultaneously however, White House National Security spokesman John Kirby stated that the U.S. doesn’t want to expand military operations opposite Iran. Just as in Ukraine, where the White House has been loath to provoke Moscow into all-out war versus NATO, so too in the region, Biden is (rightly) wary of out-right war with Iran.
Biden’s political considerations in this election-year will be uppermost. And that, at least partly, will depend on the fine calibration by the Pentagon of just how exposed to missile and drone attacks U.S. forces are in Iraq and Syria.
The bases there are ‘sitting ducks’; a fact would be an embarrassing admission. But a hurried evacuation (with overtones of the last flights from Kabul) would be worse; it could be electorally disastrous.
The U.S. seemingly aims to find a way to hurt Iranian and Resistance forces just enough to show that Biden is ‘very angry’, yet without perhaps doing real damage – i.e. it is a form of ‘militarised psychotherapy’, rather than hard politics.
Risks remain: bomb too much, and the wider regional war will ignite to a new level. Bomb too little, and the swarm just rolls on, ‘swarming’ the U.S. on multiple fronts until it finally caves – and finally exits the Levant.
Biden thus finds himself in an exhausting, ongoing secondary war with groups and militias rather than states (whom the Axis seeks to shield). In spite of its militia character, however the war has been causing major damage to the economies of states in the region. They have fathomed that American deterrence has not been showing results (i.e., with Ansarallah in the Red Sea).
Some of those countries – including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – have initiated ‘private’ steps that were not coordinated with the U.S. They are not only speaking with these militia and movements, but also directly with Iran.
The strategy to ‘swarm’ the U.S. on multiple fronts was plainly stated at the recent ‘Astana Format’ meeting between Russia, Iran, and Turkey on 24-25 January. The latter triumvirate are busy preparing the endgame in Syria (and ultimately, in the Region as a whole).
The joint statement after the Astana Format meeting in Kazakhstan, MK Bhadrakumar has noted:
“is a remarkable document predicated almost entirely on an end to the U.S. occupation of Syria. It indirectly urges Washington to give up its support of terrorist groups and their affiliates “operating under different names in various parts of Syria” as part of attempts to create new realities on the ground, including illegitimate self-rule initiatives under the pretext of ‘combating terrorism.’ It demands an end to the U.S.’ illegal seizure and transfer of oil resources “that should belong to Syria””.
The statement thus spells out the objectives starkly. In sum, patience has run out over the U.S. weaponising the Kurds and attempting to revitalise ISIS in order to disrupt the tripartite plans for a Syria settlement. The trio want the U.S. out.
It is with these objectives – insisting that Washington give up its support of terrorist groups and their affiliates as part of attempts to create new realities on the ground, including illegitimate self-rule initiatives under the pretext of ‘combating terrorism’ – that the ‘Astana’ Russian and Iranian strategy for Syria finds common ground with that of the Resistance’s strategy.
The latter may reflect an Iranian strategy overall – but the Astana Statement shows the underlying principles to be Russia’s too.
In his first substantive statement after 7 October, Seyed Nasrallah (speaking for the Axis of Resistance as a whole) indicated a strategic Resistance pivot: Whereas the conflict triggered by events in Gaza was centrally connected with Israel, Seyed Nasrallah additionally underlined that the backdrop to Israel’s disruptive behaviour lay with America’s ‘forever wars’ of divide-and-rule in support of Israel.
In short, he tied the causality of America’s many regional wars to the interests of Israel.
So, here, we come to the third strand to the ‘swarming of Biden’.
Only it is not regional actors that are contriving to box-in Biden – it is America’s own protégé: Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Netanyahu and Israel are the principal target of the bigger regional ‘swarm’, but Biden has allowed himself to be enmeshed by it. It seems that he cannot say ‘no’. So here Biden is: boxed-in by Russia in Ukraine; boxed-in in Syria and Iraq, and boxed-in by Netanyahu and an Israel that fears the walls closing-in on their Zionist project.
There is likely no electoral ‘sweet-spot’ to be found here for Biden, between inserting America into an unpopular and electorally disastrous, all-out Middle East war, and between ‘green-lighting’ Israel’s huge gamble on victory over war against Hizbullah.
The confluence between the failed Ukrainian ploy to weaken Russia, and the risky ploy for Israel’s war on Hizbullah, is unlikely to be lost on Americans.
Netanyahu too is between a rock and a hard place. He knows that ‘a victory’ that boils down to just the release of the hostages, and confidence-building measures to establish a Palestinian state, would not restore Israeli deterrence – inside or outside the state. On the contrary, it would erode it. It would be ‘a defeat’ – and without a clear victory in the south (over Hamas), a victory in the north would be demanded by many Israelis, including key members of his own cabinet.
Recall the mood within Israel: The latest Peace Index survey shows that 94% percent of Israeli Jews think Israel used the right amount of firepower in Gaza – or not enough (43%). And three-quarters of Israelis think the number of Palestinians harmed since October is justified.
If Netanyahu is boxed in, so is Biden.
On Tuesday, Netanyahu said:
“We will not end this war with anything less than the achievement of all its objectives … We will not withdraw the IDF from the Gaza Strip and we won’t release thousands of terrorists. None of that is going to happen. What is going to happen? Total victory.”
“Is Netanyahu capable of veering strongly to the left… entering into an historic process that will end the war in Gaza and lead to a Palestinian state – coupled with an historic peace agreement with Saudi Arabia? Probably not. Netanyahu has kicked over many other similar buckets before they were filled”, opined veteran commentator, Ben Caspit, in Ma’ariv (in Hebrew).
Biden is making a huge bet. Best to wait on what Hamas and the Gaza Resistance answers to the hostage proposal. The omens, however, do not look positive for Biden —
Senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad officials responded yesterday to the latest proposal:
“The Paris proposal is no different from previous proposals submitted by Egypt … [The proposal] does not lead to a ceasefire. We want guarantees to end the genocidal war against our people. The resistance is not weak. No conditions will be imposed on it” (Ali Abu Shahin, member of Islamic Jihad’s political bureau).
“Our position is a ceasefire, the opening of the Rafah crossing, international and Arab guarantees for the restoration of the Gaza Strip, the withdrawal of the occupation forces from Gaza, finding a housing solution for the displaced and the release of prisoners according to the principle of all for all … I am confident that we are heading for victory. The patience of the American administration is running out because Netanyahu is not bringing achievements” (Senior Hamas official, Alli Baraka).
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February 7th, 2024 by Center For Biological Diversity
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In a sweeping victory for family farmers and dozens of endangered plants and animals, a federal court today revoked approval of the extremely volatile, weed-killing pesticide dicamba.
The drift-prone pesticide has damaged millions of acres of crops and wild plants every year since the Environmental Protection Agency first approved it in 2017 for spraying on cotton and soybean crops genetically engineered by Monsanto (now Bayer) to survive what would otherwise be a deadly dose.
Today’s ruling by the U.S. District Court of Arizona in Tucson overturns the EPA’s 2020 reapproval of the pesticide, which included additional application restrictions that have failed to prevent the ongoing drift damage.
“This is a vital victory for farmers and the environment,” said George Kimbrell, Center for Food Safety’s legal director and counsel in the case. “Time and time again, the evidence has shown that dicamba cannot be used without causing massive and unprecedented harm to farms as well as endangering plants and pollinators. The court today resoundingly reaffirmed what we have always maintained: the EPA’s and Monsanto’s claims of dicamba’s safety were irresponsible and unlawful.”
Since dicamba was approved for “over-the-top” spraying its use has increased twentyfold. The EPA estimates 65 million acres (two-thirds of soybeans and three-fourths of cotton) are dicamba-resistant, with roughly half that acreage sprayed with dicamba, an area nearly the size of Alabama. Much of the unsprayed crops are planted “defensively” by farmers to avoid dicamba drift damage.
In today’s decision, the court canceled dicamba’s over-the-top use, holding that the EPA violated the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act’s public input requirement before its approval. This violation is “very serious,” according to the court, especially because the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals previously ruled that the EPA failed to consider serious risks of over-the-top dicamba in issuing the prior registration.
“I hope the court’s emphatic rejection of the EPA’s reckless approval of dicamba will spur the agency to finally stop ignoring the far-reaching harm caused by this dangerous pesticide,” said Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Endangered butterflies and bee populations will keep tanking if the EPA keeps twisting itself into a pretzel to approve this product just to appease the pesticide industry.”
The court outlined the massive damage to stakeholders who were deprived of their opportunity to comment. That includes growers that do not use over-the-top dicamba and suffered significant financial losses. It also includes states that repeatedly reported landscape-level damage, but in the same 2020 decision lost the ability to impose restrictions greater than those imposed by the federal government without formal legislative or rulemaking processes. As a result, the court found “the EPA is unlikely to issue the same registrations” again after taking these stakeholders’ concerns into account.
The court also criticized the EPA’s assessment of the 2020 registrations’ widespread harms. Monsanto and the EPA claimed this over-the-top new use of dicamba would not cause harm because of new restrictions on its use. But the court found the EPA’s “circular approach to assessing risk, hinging on its high confidence that control measures will all but eliminate offsite movement, [led] to its corresponding failure to assess costs from offsite movement.” And instead, just as independent researchers had warned, the restrictions failed and dicamba continued to vaporize and drift.
“We are grateful that the court held the EPA and Monsanto accountable for the massive damage from dicamba to farmers, farmworkers and the environment, and halted its use,” said Lisa Griffith of the National Family Farm Coalition. “The pesticide system that Monsanto sells should not be sprayed as it cannot be sprayed safely.”
“Every summer since the approval of dicamba, our farm has suffered significant damage to a wide range of vegetable crops,” said Rob Faux, a farmer and communications manager at Pesticide Action Network. “Today’s decision provides much needed and overdue protection for farmers and the environment.”
Background
This is the second time a federal court has found that the EPA unlawfully approved dicamba. An earlier case resulted in an appeals court overturning the agency’s prior approval of the pesticide. The EPA reapproved the same uses of the pesticide in 2020, leading to the current lawsuit.
Today’s ruling outlaws dicamba products sprayed over emerged soybeans and cotton crops that are genetically engineered to withstand the spray. Since 2017 the pesticide has caused drift damage to millions of acres of non-genetically engineered soybeans as well as to orchards, gardens, trees and other plants on a scale unprecedented in the history of U.S. agriculture.
Dozens of imperiled species, including pollinators like monarch butterflies and rusty patched bumblebees, are also threatened by the pesticide.
The EPA admitted in a 2021 report that its application restrictions to limit dicamba’s harm had failed and the pesticide was continuing to cause massive drift damage to crops.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that up to 15 million acres of soybeans have been damaged by dicamba drift. Beekeepers in multiple states have reported sharp drops in honey production due to dicamba drift suppressing the flowering plants their bees need for sustenance.
The plaintiffs are National Family Farm Coalition, Pesticide Action Network, Center for Food Safety and the Center for Biological Diversity. They are represented by legal counsel from the Center for Food Safety and the Center for Biological Diversity.
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The US decision to re-designate the Houthis as “Specially Designated Global Terrorists” will block the payment of public sector workers living in Houthi-controlled Yemen, who have gone without pay for years.
The payment of civil workers has been a key demand of the Houthis and is part of the first phase of the peace deal. The Houthis had asked for the salaries to be paid for using oil revenue that goes to the Saudi-backed Yemeni government, whose leaders are mainly based in Saudi Arabia. It’s unclear if the Saudi side agreed to the Houthi demand or if they decided to pay the salaries using other means.
The first phase of the peace deal would also fully open Yemen’s airports and sea ports that have been under blockade since 2015, another aspect of the deal that will be complicated by the new US sanctions, which will go into effect later this month.
A US official told the Times that the US would only allow the payment of Yemeni civil salaries if the Houthis choose the path of “peace” and stop attacking shipping in the Red Sea. But the Houthis, who govern the most populated area of Yemen, have been clear the operations will only stop once the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza ends.
Instead of pressuring Israel to stop its onslaught, President Biden launched a new war against the Houthis, which has dramatically escalated the situation. The Houthis are now targeting American and British commercial shipping, and there’s no sign they will back down.
Since January 12, the US has launched at least 18 rounds of missile strikes on Houthi-controlled Yemen. President Biden has acknowledged the strikes are not “working” since they haven’t stopped Houthi attacks. But he vowed to continue bombing Yemen anyway.
The US supported a Saudi/UAE-led coalition in Yemen in a brutal war that killed at least 377,000 people between 2015 and 2022. More than half of those killed died of starvation and disease caused by the bombing campaign and blockade.
A truce between the Saudis and Houthis has been held since April 2022, but a formal peace deal hasn’t been signed. Despite the new US bombing campaign, the Saudis and Houthis appear determined not to restart the war. When President Biden launched his bombing campaign in Yemen, Saudi Arabia urged the US to “avoid escalation.”
This week, a Houthi official said the Yemeni group was ready to formally make peace with the Saudis. “Sanaa is prepared for peace with Riyadh despite the challenges posed by the US and its associated Yemeni groups,” said Hussein al-Ezzi, the Houthi deputy foreign minister.
Some members of the US and Saudi-backed Yemeni presidential council are calling for a ground campaign against the Houthis. But the council does not have much influence and is known in Yemen as the “government of hotels” since many of its members are in exile.
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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.
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In his newly published book, Nuclear High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse, Steven Starr shows that all it takes is one nuclear explosion to shut down the United States and throw the population back into the Dark Ages.The electric power grid would be destroyed along with the communications system, the cooling systems at nuclear power plants and all electronic devices.The reason is that civilian infrastructure is not protected from Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP). The military has taken steps to shield its weapon and communication systems, but nothing has been done to protect civilian infrastructure.Bills mandating EMP protection have been defeated in Congress.
Starr reports that only 4% of the US military budget is required to shield the power grid and civilian infrastructure.Instead, the Washington idiots waste trillions of dollars in pointless wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Serbia, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, and Ukraine.
American cities would suffer no effects from blast and fire, such as would be produced by ground level detonation, but the consequences would be just as dire.Starr describes them in a summary on his website.
Effects of a Single High-altitude Nuclear Detonation Over the Eastern U.S.
“105 miles above Ohio, a single nuclear warhead explodes. Because it is far above the atmosphere, there will be no blast or fire effects felt on Earth, however, this high-altitude nuclear detonation will create a gigantic electromagnetic pulse or EMP.
“In one billionth of a second, the initial EMP E1 wave will cause massive voltages and currents to form within power lines, telecommunication lines, cables, wires, antennas, and any other electrically conductive material found beneath the nuclear detonation in a circular area covering hundreds of thousands of square miles.
“Within this region, under ideal conditions, the E1 wave will produce 2 million volts and a current of 5,000 to 10,000 amps within medium distribution power lines. Any unshielded modern electronic devices that contain solid-state circuitry, which are plugged into the grid, will be disabled, damaged, or destroyed. This includes the electronic devices required to operate all critical national infrastructure.
“Unshielded electronic devices within ground, air, and sea transportation systems, water and sanitation systems, fuel and food distribution systems, water and sanitation systems, telecommunication systems, and banking systems would all be simultaneously knocked out of service – and all these systems would be disabled until the solid-state electronics required to operate them could be repaired or replaced.
“The E1 wave will also instantly destroy millions of glass insulators found on 15 kilovolt-class electric power distribution lines. 78% of all electricity in the US is delivered to end users (residential, agricultural, commercial) through these 15 kV power lines. The loss of a single insulator on a line can knock out power distribution on the entire line.
“At the same instant, the massive voltage and current induced by the E1 wave will damage and destroy the relays, sensors, and control panels at 1783 High Voltage Substations, knocking out the entire electric power grid in the eastern half of the United States.
“One to ten seconds after the nuclear detonation, the following EMP E3 wave would induce powerful current flows in power lines including lines that are both above and below ground. E3 would damage or destroy many – if not most – of the Large Power Transformers and Extra High Voltage Circuit Breakers required for the long-distance transmission of about 90% of electrical power in the United States.
“The loss of Large Power Transformers and Extra High Voltage Circuit Breakers would mean that entire regions within the United States would be left without electric power for up to a year or longer. This is because Large Power Transformers are not stockpiled and the current wait time for their manufacture is 18 to 24 months; they must be custom designed and manufactured and about 80% are made overseas. They each weigh between 200 and 400 tons and must be shipped by sea and moving them to their final destination is quite difficult even under normal circumstances.
“Because nuclear power plants are not designed to withstand the effects of EMP, the solid-state electronics within their backup electrical and cooling systems would also be damaged and disabled. The failure of their Emergency Power Systems and active Emergency Core Cooling Systems will make it impossible to cool their reactor cores after emergency shutdown; this will quickly lead to reactor core meltdowns at dozens of nuclear power plants.
“To summarize, a single nuclear high-altitude electromagnetic pulse can instantly take out most or all of the US power grid while simultaneously destroying the solid-state electronic devices required to operate US critical national infrastructure – including the safety systems at nuclear power plants. Following a nuclear EMP, the people of the US would suddenly find themselves living in the conditions of the Middle Ages for a period possibly as long as a year – most Americans would not be able to survive such circumstances.
“For less than 4% of the US national defense budget, the US power grid and critical infrastructure can be shielded from EMP. However, the political will to implement this protection has not yet been found, so Americans remain very much at risk.”
The book is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kindle. If you read it, you will be amazed and disgusted at the negligence and stupidity of the US government.Thanks to the fools who govern us, we have zero national security despite the massive expenditures year after year, decade after decade.
People do not realize that the convenience and entertainment provided by their cell phones comes at great cost when measured by risk. Nothing is secure in the digital age, not your identity, your privacy, your bank account, or your independence. The expansion of the digital revolution into money will mean that you can be denied access to your money for any reason including the exercise of free speech. All accumulated knowledge in digital form can be erased by one EMP. Try to imagine the consequences of such a loss. These are new risks never before experienced on Earth.
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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.
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Nicaragua has warned Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Canada that it will take the countries to the International Court of Justice over allegations that weapons they are providing Israel are being used in a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
In a bilingual Spanish and English statement, the Nicaraguan government said that the four countries had supplied arms to Israel “to facilitate or commit violations of the Genocide Convention” in the Gaza Strip.
Nicaragua’s leftist government said it had delivered a verbal warning to them of its “decision to hold them responsible under international law”.
“Nicaragua has urged the government of the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada to immediately halt the supply of arms, ammunitions, technology and/or components to Israel as it is plausible they might have been used to facilitate or commit violations of the genocide convention,” the statement said.
The central American country was one of several along with Turkey, Jordan, Venezuela, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Maldives, and Namibia to support South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in January.
The International Court of Justice has delivered an interim ruling calling on Israel to refrain from impeding the delivery of aid into Gaza and improve the humanitarian situation.
It also ordered Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent acts of genocide in the besieged enclave and to punish incitement to genocide.
However, it did not order Israel to halt its military operations in Gaza, one of South Africa’s key demands in the case it brought to The Hague.
In its statement, Nicaragua argued that “the risk” of a genocide occurring supported its appeal for a halt in arms shipments.
“The obligation to prevent genocide arises and begins when there is a risk of it occurring; in fact, when it is plausible that it is occurring or might occur. This plausibility is now beyond doubt and dispute.”
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, a former Marxist guerrilla, is close to US foes Russia and China. He secured a fourth term in office in 2021 after jailing his main opponents in an election the US slammed as a “pantomime” and a crackdown on street protests that saw hundreds killed.
Human Rights Watch has documented widespread cases of harassment and detention of Ortega’s political opponents, journalists, and human rights defenders.
He has most recently cracked down on the Catholic church, arresting clergy in what Human Rights Watch has said is “one of the worst human rights crises in Latin America.”
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There is growing concern among the German leadership that NATO will not survive if Republican front-runner Donald Trump is re-elected as US president and that Russia will set its eyes closer to Berlin after Ukraine, writes The New York Times. This alarmist fake news comes as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is using “fiscal policy trickery” to ensure that his government can continue supporting Ukraine despite budgetary restrictions and the rise of the Russia-friendly Alternative for Germany (AfD).
In a speech to his supporters in Las Vegas in January, Trump said:
“We’re spending – we’re paying for NATO, and we don’t get so much out of it,” adding that “if we ever needed their help, let’s say we were attacked, I don’t believe they’d be there [to help].”
The former US leader has repeatedly accused NATO allies of failing to meet budgetary requirements and even proclaimed in 2017 that the military bloc was “obsolete.”
Trump remains in the lead for the nomination as Republican presidential candidate in the November elections, especially after several candidates dropped out of the race. The article notes that senior German officials fear there are significant doubts about whether NATO could survive a second Trump term.
“Their immediate concern is growing pessimism about the United States continuing to fund Ukraine’s struggle,” writes the NYT, referring to a months-long impasse in the US Congress over the latest $60 billion package proposed for Kiev by President Joe Biden. Republicans made the approval of more military aid to Ukraine contingent on the administration’s agreement to tighten controls at the US-Mexico border to stem the flow of illegal immigrants.
More alarming from the article is the fake news peddled by German officials who say that it is impossible to return to previous relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and that they are afraid of the consequences of Russia’s win. Unnamed German officials stated to the newspaper that if American funding dries up and Russia prevails, its next target will be closer to Berlin, something which obviously will not occur as Moscow has repeatedly stated it has no interest in conflict with NATO.
The ruling German government has an all-time low approval rating, mostly related to economic issues, with many of these stemming from the reckless sanctions imposed on Russia. Nonetheless, Scholz said during a press conference on January 24 that he expects Kiev and Berlin to agree on security guarantees “soon.”
According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, sources in Berlin said the agreement between Ukraine and Germany “should be signed on February 16 during the Munich Security Conference.”
Since the launch of the Russian military operation, Germany has supported Ukraine with weapons and equipment deliveries and is the second largest donor of military aid after the US.
Berlin has thrown away billions of euros to Ukraine, creating much outrage and why it took the German parliament until February 2 to approve this year’s ruling coalition’s budget. The approval ended a spending crisis that shook Scholz’s government after Germany’s constitutional court ensured a €60 billion hole in the country’s finances in November, forcing the ruling coalition to cut spending. This triggered infighting among the ruling Social Democrats (SPD), Free Democrats (FDP) and Greens.
Notably, though, Germany’s 2024 budget includes a fallback clause that allows a potential debt brake suspension for 2024 — should the war escalate or the US reduce their support for Ukraine, something likely if Trump is elected in November, which could prompt Germany to increase its support.
“If the situation worsens as a result of Russia’s war against Ukraine, for example, because the situation on the front deteriorates or because other supporters reduce their aid to Ukraine or because the threat to Germany and Europe increases further, we will have to respond to this,” Scholz told reporters back in December.
Friedrich Merz, leader of the Christian Democrats, exposed Scholz’s reasoning in parliament for suspending the debt brake over Ukraine aid as “fiscal policy trickery,” pointing out that it would allow the government to use the war to justify more spending in other areas. “The trick is obvious.”
Germany’s economy contracted in the final quarter of 2023, narrowly avoiding a recession spurred on by low global demand, high inflation, and energy costs. Yet, under these difficult economic conditions, which are hurting everyday Germans, Scholz is using “trickery” and alarmist fake news to justify his unhinged anti-Russia policies and support for Ukraine.
Scholz has sent €27.8 billion to Ukraine thus far, and all at a time when Germans are struggling, explaining why the AfD is now the most popular political party in the country. Although NATO will likely survive a Trump presidency perfectly fine, the purpose of Scholz’s fake news agenda is to create an alarm to try and justify his reckless policies. However, as the rise of the AfD attests, the Germans see his trickery.
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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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“Big Brother is Watching You.”―George Orwell, 1984
2024 is the new 1984.
Forty years past the time that George Orwell envisioned the stomping boot of Big Brother, the police state is about to pass off the baton to the surveillance state.
Fueled by a melding of government and corporate power—the rise of the security industrial complex—this watershed moment sounds a death knell for our privacy rights.
An unofficial fourth branch of government, the Surveillance State came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum, and yet it possesses superpowers, above and beyond those of any other government agency save the military.
It operates beyond the reach of the president, Congress and the courts, and it marches in lockstep with the corporate elite who really call the shots in Washington, DC.
This is the new face of tyranny in America: all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful.
Tread cautiously.
Empowered by advances in surveillance technology and emboldened by rapidly expanding public-private partnerships between law enforcement, the Intelligence Community, and the private sector, the Surveillance State is making the fictional world of 1984, Orwell’s dystopian nightmare, our looming reality.
1984 portrays a global society of total control in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree with the corporate state. There is no personal freedom, and advanced technology has become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven society. Snitches and cameras are everywhere. People are subject to the Thought Police, who deal with anyone guilty of thought crimes. The government, or “Party,” is headed by Big Brother who appears on posters everywhere with the words: “Big Brother is watching you.”
Indeed, in our present age of ubiquitous surveillance, there are no private lives.
Everything is increasingly public.
What we are witnessing, in the so-called name of security and efficiency, is the creation of a new class system comprised of the watched (average Americans such as you and me) and the watchers (government bureaucrats, technicians and private corporations).
We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed and controlled by our technology, which answers not to us but to our government and corporate rulers.
This is the fact-is-stranger-than-fiction lesson that is being pounded into us on a daily basis.
There are roughly one billion surveillance cameras worldwide and that number continues to grow, thanks to their wholehearted adoption by governments (especially law enforcement and military agencies), businesses, and individual consumers.
Surveillance cameras mounted on utility poles, traffic lights, businesses, and homes. Ring doorbells. GPS devices. Dash cameras. Drones. Store security cameras. Geofencing and geotracking. FitBits. Alexa. Internet-connected devices.
Stingray devices, facial recognition technology, body cameras, automated license plate readers, gunshot detection, predictive policing software, AI-enhanced video analytics, real-time crime centers, fusion centers: all of these technologies and surveillance programs rely on public-private partnerships that together create a sticky spiderweb from which there is no escape.
With every new surveillance device we welcome into our lives, the government gains yet another toehold into our private worlds.
As the cost of these technologies becomes more affordable for the average consumer, an effort underwritten by the tech industry and encouraged by law enforcement agencies and local governing boards, which in turn benefit from access to surveillance they don’t need to include in their budgets, big cities, small towns, urban, suburban and rural communities alike are adding themselves to the surveillance state’s interconnected grid.
What this adds up to for government agencies (that is, FBI, NSA, DHS agents, etc., as well as local police) is a surveillance map that allows them to track someone’s movements over time and space, hopscotching from doorbell camera feeds and business security cameras to public cameras on utility poles, license plate readers, traffic cameras, drones, etc.
It has all but eliminated the notion of privacy enshrined in the Fourth Amendment and radically re-drawn the line of demarcation between our public and private selves.
The police state has become particularly adept at sidestepping the Fourth Amendment, empowered by advances in surveillance technology and emboldened by rapidly expanding public-private partnerships between law enforcement, the Intelligence Community, and the private sector.
Over the past 50-plus years, surveillance has brought about a series of revolutions in how governments govern and populations are policed to the detriment of us all. Cybersecurity expert Adam Scott Wandt has identified three such revolutions.
The first surveillance revolution came about as a result of government video cameras being installed in public areas. There were a reported 51 million surveillance cameras blanketing the United States in 2022. It’s estimated that Americans are caught on camera an average of 238 times every week (160 times per week while driving; 40 times per week at work; 24 times per week while out running errands and shopping; and 14 times per week through various other channels and activities). That doesn’t even touch on the coverage by surveillance drones, which remain a relatively covert part of police spying operations.
The second revolution occurred when law enforcement agencies started forging public-private partnerships with commercial establishments like banks and drug stores and parking lots in order to gain access to their live surveillance feeds. The use of automatic license plate readers (manufactured and distributed by the likes of Flock Safety), once deployed exclusively by police and now spreading to home owners associations and gated communities, extends the reach of the surveillance state that much further afield. It’s a win-win for police budgets and local legislatures when they can persuade businesses and residential communities to shoulder the costs of the equipment and share the footage, and they can conscript the citizenry to spy on each other through crowdsourced surveillance.
The third revolution was ushered in with the growing popularity of doorbell cameras such as Ring, Amazon’s video surveillance doorbell, and Google’s Nest Cam.
Amazon has been particularly aggressive in its pursuit of a relationship with police, enlisting them in its marketing efforts, and going so far as to hosting parties for police, providing free Ring doorbells and deep discounts, sharing “active camera” maps of Ring owners, allowing access to the Law Enforcement Neighborhood Portal, which enables police to directly contact owners for access to their footage, and coaching police on how to obtain footage without a warrant.
Ring currently partners with upwards of 2,161 law enforcement agencies and 455 fire departments, and that number grows exponentially every year. As Vice reports, “Ring has also heavily pursued city discount programs and private alliances with neighborhood watch groups. When cities provide free or discounted Ring cameras, they sometimes create camera registries, and police sometimes order people to aim Ring cameras at their neighbors, or only give cameras to people surveilled by neighborhood watches.”
In November 2022, San Francisco police gained access to the live footage of privately owned internet cameras as opposed to merely being able to access recorded footage. No longer do police even have to request permission of homeowners for such access: increasingly, corporations have given police access to footage as part of their so-called criminal investigations with or without court orders.
The fourth revolutionary shift may well be the use of facial recognition software and artificial intelligence-powered programs that can track people by their biometrics, clothing, behavior and car, thereby synthesizing the many strands of surveillance video footage into one cohesive narrative, which privacy advocates refer to as 360 degree surveillance.
While the guarantee of safety afforded by these surveillance nerve centers remains dubious, at best, there is no disguising their contribution in effecting a sea change towards outright authoritarianism.
For instance, as an in-depth investigative report by the Associated Press concludes, the very same mass surveillance technologies that were supposedly so necessary to fight the spread of COVID-19 are now being used to stifle dissent, persecute activists, harass marginalized communities, and link people’s health information to other surveillance and law enforcement tools.
As the AP reports, federal officials have also been looking into how to add “‘identifiable patient data,’ such as mental health, substance use and behavioral health information from group homes, shelters, jails, detox facilities and schools,” to its surveillance toolkit.
These cameras—and the public-private eyes peering at us through them—are re-engineering a society structured around the aesthetic of fear and, in the process, empowering “people to not just watch their neighborhood, but to organize as watchers,” creating not just digital neighborhood watches but digital gated communities.
Finally, there is a repressive, suppressive effect to surveillance that not only acts as a potentially small deterrent on crime but serves to monitor and chill lawful First Amendment activity.
As Matthew Feeney warns in the New York Times, “In the past, Communists, civil rights leaders, feminists, Quakers, folk singers, war protesters and others have been on the receiving end of law enforcement surveillance. No one knows who the next target will be.”
No one knows, but it’s a pretty good bet that the surveillance state will be keeping a close watch on anyone seen as a threat to the government’s chokehold on power.
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Very few of us saw the COVID-19 pandemic back decades. Yet the underpinnings and timeline for the pandemic response go back many years and date stamped by the 2005 PREP Act which provided immunity to “countermeasures” which we later learned included masks, lockdowns, vaccines, etc.
Now with Disease X being openly planned as a next pandemic, likely emerging from a biolab where gain-of-function research is being done on organisms to make them more contagious and deadly to humans, the entire world is paying attention to a dangerous game of biological threats and counter-measures (therapeutics, vaccines) being played by high-stakes rollers within the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex. We are told Disease X is an unknown future organism, but it will have 20-times the mortality rate of SARS-CoV-2. How does Bill Gates, WHO, WEF, or anyone in the Complex know? I had a chance to sit down for this part of an interview with Dan Shumway of Kla.TV which is a global network to discuss these developments and the new calculus of public awareness developing for man-made biological threats. Shumway publishes an excellent Substack for you to check out.
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The Kiev regime never fails to remind the world that it’s a terrorist entity. We’ve all been accustomed to the mainstream propaganda machine’s attempts to either suppress information about this or outright ignore it. Killing journalists (including foreign ones) or any other prominent public figure they don’t like is completely “normal” behavior for the Neo-Nazi junta. This shouldn’t be surprising, as Zelensky’s deranged henchmen have publicly announced they’d keep doing what they call “sabotage operations” in Russia, a ridiculous euphemism for what can only be described as terrorist attacks. In the latest such case, the State Security Service of Georgia (SUS) arrested a group transporting a large cache of explosives from Ukraine to Russia. According to SUS officials, the group departed from Odessa.
There was no mention of the terrorists’ connection to the SBU, GUR or any other intelligence service, but their involvement is already implied. The SUS established that the terrorists hid the explosives in fake electric car batteries. During the search, Georgian agents discovered that the explosives, specifically C4, were disguised as batteries. According to the official statement by the SUS, given on February 5, the terrorist group was heading to Voronezh, a major city in western/southwestern Russia. The investigation led the SUS agents to the conclusion that the sender of the cache was Andrei Sharashidze, an MP (Member of Parliament) from Zelensky’s party. It’s highly unlikely that Sharashidze, a Kiev regime official of Georgian descent, tried to organize all this by himself, so SBU/GUR involvement is virtually guaranteed.
SUS officials stated that the explosive devices were transported in a minivan and arrived at the Georgian-Turkish border crossing on January 19, after going through Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. According to the Amsterdam-based Moscow Times, Georgian agents found six military-grade C4 plastic explosives weighing a total of 14 kg. The SUS claims that it deliberately replaced the explosive devices with replicas and returned them to their original location in order to locate and arrest the terrorist group. The organizers turned out to be seven Georgians, three Ukrainians and two Armenians. Sharashidze was the ringleader, while the level of involvement of others is yet to be determined, as it’s still unclear if they were knowingly involved or were simply never told what sort of cargo they were transporting.
Rather interestingly, the mainstream propaganda machine is accusing Georgia of rapprochement with Russia.
It appears that preventing terrorist attacks is now “not OK” if the target is determined by the Neo-Nazi junta. It should also be noted that the incident is very reminiscent of the terrorist attack that damaged the Crimean Bridge on October 8, 2022. At the time, the SBU sent a truck filled with explosives, while the perpetrators used virtually the same route, passing through Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia and southern Russia. The Neo-Nazi junta openly bragged about the terrorist attack, with Zelensky’s adviser Mykhailo Podolyak saying that Crimea was “only the beginning” and that “everything illegal must be destroyed, everything stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled”.
The Kiev regime’s Defense Ministry and Zelensky himself also joined the chorus, praising a terrorist act that killed at least five civilians. Some European Union members, specifically Estonia, also praised the terrorists. The only difference this time is that both the political West and the Kiev regime realize just how “inconvenient” it is to brag about such acts, so they mostly keep quiet or deny their involvement when the plot is uncovered. It should also be noted that the Neo-Nazi junta is increasingly targeting Russia’s undisputed territory. Voronezh is an important industrial center, home to several state and private enterprises producing aircraft and missile components, including engines. It’s also home to JSC (joint-stock company) known as the “Concern Sozvezdie”, a major manufacturer of military equipment.
JSC “Sozvezdie” is a leading Russian developer of electronic warfare (EW), radio communications and electronic countermeasures (ECM) systems. The Russian military’s world-class EW units are a major obstacle for the Kiev regime’s unmanned warfare, severely limiting its strike capabilities. Most of its drone attacks in the Russian rear are intercepted precisely by EW units. This further implies that the goal was to weaken Moscow’s defenses in order to make unmanned strikes easier. Such attacks are part of NATO’s wider total war against Russia, primarily in order to disrupt normal economic activity in the country, as the unprecedented sanctions and what can only be described as an economic siege turned out to be an utter failure, with the Russian economy doing far better than anyone in the political West anticipated.
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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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American journalist Tucker Carlson was spotted in Moscow in recent days, generating a series of controversies on social media. There are rumors that Carlson went to Russia to interview President Vladimir Putin. Although there is no confirmation yet about the case, expectations have been enough to encourage all kinds of negative reactions in the West, with public calls for Carlson to be expelled from the US for “treason”.
After leaving Fox News, Carlson launched a TV show on X (formerly Twitter) and has recently done a series of interviews with political leaders around the world, mainly presidents. Previously, he had already announced his personal interest in interviewing Putin, further stating that American authorities began spying on him and threatening him due to this intention. According to Carlson, the NSA hacked his computer and leaked his emails to the media, revealing his plan to go to Russia to interview Putin.
At first it was believed that the coercion from the American state was enough to stop Carlson’s plans, but recently the journalist finally traveled to Russia, sparking rumors about a possible interview with Putin. There is still no confirmation on the veracity of such allegations. The rumors were strengthened by images and videos circulating on social media showing what is believed to be Carlson team’s car leaving the Kremlin facilities.
However, the situation remains doubtful and unclear for now. Neither Russian authorities nor Tucker’s team confirmed or denied that an interview took place. What is known is that the journalist has actually spent a few days on Russian soil, visiting tourist attractions and having confirmedly attended a ballet performance at the Bolshoi Theatre. If there was any more important event on the journalist’s schedule, it will certainly be revealed soon.
However, it is interesting to analyze the reaction in the West to Carlson’s visit to Russia. Pro-war militants on the American political scenario are absolutely upset by this trip – and seem even angrier about the mere possibility of Tucker interviewing Putin. All sorts of hysterical reactions have arisen among American neoconservatives and liberals. Tucker has been called a “traitor” by several public figures. More than that, in a controversial statement, neoconservative writer Bill Kristol went to the extreme of calling for Tucker’s banishment from American soil, aimed at preventing him from returning to the US from Russia.
There are some special reasons for this reaction. Carlson is currently the most popular American journalist on social media. With more than 11 million followers on his X account and running a show whose audience is continually growing, Carlson represents a “threat” to Western Big Media. For example, Carlson’s recent interview with former American President Donald Trump reached an impressive 267 million views on X alone – having also been broadcast on other digital platforms. Carlson’s popularity is the reason why American elites are so afraid of him interviewing Putin.
The Deep State are in real trouble.
Tucker’s reach is the biggest on Earth. His interview with Trump did 267M views on X alone.
Whatever Tucker is doing in Russia, the Deep State are terrified of it. They know one of their darkest secrets is about to get massive exposure.… pic.twitter.com/JtxIt3FiEW
The Russian president certainly has a lot to say to Western public. Since 2022, censorship on Russian media has prevented Western citizens from hearing the Russian side in the ongoing conflict. Putin’s words, when they reach an English-speaking audience, come in a distorted and biased way, with ordinary people in Western countries not having the opportunity to really understand Russia’s concerns and reasons.
More than that, Russian denunciations of war crimes, human rights abuses, promotion of neo-Nazism and the production of ethnic biological weapons rarely reach Western public opinion. In a direct interview with the Russian president, this scenario would completely change. This is why, even without any confirmation that the interview happened, the mere possibility of such an event is already causing panic among American warmongers.
Furthermore, even if there is no interview, the visit of a popular American journalist to Russia in current times is also important. Tucker could show his audience the reality on the ground in Russia, showing that there is no effect of the illegal sanctions imposed by the West and that the Russian people are in fact living well, contrary to the scenario of social catastrophe described by the mainstream media. Also, being an election year in Russia, Carlson’s coverage could also show that, contrary to what the big outlets say, the Russian government is actually popular, being supported by the majority of the people – with Putin not being elected in “fraudulent elections“, as said in the West, but in real democratic procedures.
In practice, Tucker has a lot to say to his millions of followers about Russia. Whether or not there is an interview with Putin, it is certain that Carlson’s trip will have a strong impact on Western journalism. The case is serving to unmask the real nature of “American democracy”. More than ever, it seems clear that concepts such as freedom of speech and media no longer mean anything to the decadent political structure of the contemporary US.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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The conflict between the Commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Zaluzhny and President Zelensky is coming to a head with the latter showing extreme weakness after weeks of claims that Zaluzhny had been sacked but with Zaluzhny still in place. Zaluzhny has the support of political figures like the former president Poroshenko and the Kiev mayor Klitschko, the army itself and in particular Zelensky’s potentially most dangerous enemies, the openly Nazi militants like Azov, Right Sector, AIDAR etc. Zaluzhny’s Nazi sympathies are displayed here.
With losses of between 20,000 and 30,000 per month killed and wounded the Ukrainian front line is critically short of troops but the hot potato of recruiting 500,000 troops is being passed rapidly from Zaluzhny to Zelensky to parliament – and nothing happens. It would of course be the final straw for Zelensky’s many enemies in Ukraine.
As background to Kiev’s press ganged troops, massive losses and expanding graveyards across the country Zelensky’s own successful efforts to avoid military service are instructive! The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence has issued the following document from its archives:
The translation:
In connection with jourrnalists‘ many requests to provide an answer to an official inquiry about President Zelensky’s army record, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense reports about a research of the archives, conducted by the country’s General Staff, revealed the following about the army record of the citizen Zelensky V.A. (Vladimir Alexandrovich)
As a citizen of Ukraine, Zelensky was included in the registrar of the servicemen of the Security Service of Ukraine and a special note was left on 22.12.2008 in the center for army registration and social support in Dovgintsevsky local office of Territorial Recruitment Service, the city of Krivoy Rog. This is the only army record where Zelensky stays registered. Zelensky never served in the army.
Vladimit Zelensky did not undergo his military service, his rank is that of a private, no special skills. Zelensky is fit for military service. Requests to show up at the territorial centre and visits were made on 15.04.2014, 23.06.2014, 15.08.2014 and 10.05.2015.
During all of these visits Mr. Zelensky was absent from home.
Draft Avoidance by “Internal Exile”
The head of Ukraine’s Committee for Economic Development Dmitry Natalukha admits that at least 3.4 million men have been “lost”:
“They are not abroad, not in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, not disabled, not studying and not employed. We don’t know where all these people of military age are.”
Because both at home and as refugees abroad Ukrainians are being identified through their bank transactions, employment and medical records and any form of communication system Natalukha recognises that:
“In order to avoid being targeted by the TCC, (mobilisation offices) people will stop using state banks, withdrawing cash, using credit cards, and traveling between cities,” he added.
We know that even external exile – as refugees – is unlikely to save them from conscription and being hurled into the murderous conditions of the front lines.
While Germany and other countries have said they will not extradite Ukrainian refugees to be conscripted into the army the British government has not said that.
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This article was originally published on Freenations.
Rodney Atkinson is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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First published on November 22, 2023
***
The Dignity of Human Beings and Their Personality:
Neurotechnology and The Manipulation of The Human Nervous System.
“Saving Freedom and Democracy”
Open Letter to the European Union and Governments around the World
by Mojmir Babacek
Due to advances in physical science and neurotechnology, it is crucial to introduce in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union the following amendments, which should then be reflected in the legislations of the member states of the European Union.
It is unacceptable that any human being in the European Union could be deprived of his or her dignity by manipulation of his or her nervous system and personality by dual use neurotechnologies.
Nobody will be deprived of his or her right to life by the use of weapons based on the effects of physical fields on the human body or nervous system to cause the death of a person by remotely-produced heart attack (see this, pg. 250); suffocation (pg. 254); any form of cancer; diabetes; myocardial infarction; haemorrhage in the brain; thrombosis in the lungs, formation of blood clots (pg. 485) or any other deadly disease or malfunction of organs produced at a distance by electromagnetic or any other physical fields. Use of such fields to kill people will be considered, murder.
It is prohibited, under harsh sentences, to remotely access human brains with the use of technical means to decipher its activity and to control it for other than medical purposes (pg. 250, 251, 256).
Depriving a person of his or her free will with the use of dual use neurotechnologies imposing on him or her thoughts, emotions (pg. 250), hallucinations etc. or manipulating his or her subconscious and turning him or her, in this way, into a toy in the hands of manipulators(pg. 321, J.F. Schapitz) will be considered to be a torture, as well as imposing on him or her, in this way, sicknesses, illnesses, malfunction of organs or pain, control of limbs or producing pains or burns inside, or on, his or her body, by means of electromagnetic waves, directed energy weapons or other, as yet unpublished, physical means discovered by quantum physics research (for example non-local electron and photon connection (see this) or potential fields (see this and this).
Everyone has the right to liberty and security, including the protection of his or her body by the law from abuse of this right by electromagnetic waves, directed energy or other physical fields or methods discovered by quantum physics.
Everyone has the right to the protection of his or her own personal data, including the data contained in his or her brain. This data must not be collected from anyone for other than medical purposes and even for those purposes it must not be done without the informed consent of the person (see this).
Imposing remotely thoughts to human beings by means of dual-use neurotechnologies is strictly prohibited under harsh sentences (see this).
To make sure that the democracy in the European Union will be preserved for future decades, the use of neurotechnologies enabling remote control of the activity of human nervous systems, thoughts, emotions etc, by means of pulsing of the transmissions of mobile phone systems in brain frequencies (see this), or manipulating the ionosphere to produce extra-long electromagnetic waves in brain frequencies (see this, this and this), or producing such electromagnetic waves in the electric grids or any other systems for the purpose of transmitting energy into human brains and interfering with their activities will be prohibited tothe government officials of the European Union Member states or any other governments agencies, corporations or organizations, on, or above, the territory of the European Union, under heavy penalties.
To make sure that this prohibition is observed as well as the prohibition to access brain data of individual brains, the governments of the Member states will establish teams, which will be equipped by the means that will enable them to detect radiations and other technical inventions, capable of controlling the human brains activities.
Scientists, with the expertise in those fields, will be obliged by the law to advise those teams, whenever they ask for it.
The teams must be trained to use this equipment and among their members should be representatives of at least two renowned human rights organizations, who will be paid by those organizations. They will be obliged by the law not to disclose the technologies, enabling remote access, to the activity of the human brains, but as well they will be obliged to publish the prohibited use of those technologies and identities of the abusers, including governments and their officials.
The trespassers will be punished by long sentences in prison. By the same, sentences will be punished anyone, including government officials or government agencies officials, who will authorise insertions orinsert in the brains or other parts of the bodies of human beings, chips, graphene antennas (see this), or any other nanoparticles or viruses (see this) facilitating the control of the activity of the human nervous system for other than medical purposes. Even for medical purposes, it can be done only with the informed consent of the person. Inserting those materials into food, water, inoculation or aerosols or authorisation of those insertions by government officials will be punished by life in prison. Scientists, who will beaware of such actions, will be obliged, by law, under harsh penalties, to inform media of such actions and media will be obliged, by law, to publish such incriminating information.
Production, use or trade with all types of pulse generators pulsing electromagnetic or other energy from 0 Hz to 100 Hz will be prohibited by law under the penalty of a minimum of 15 years in prison with the exception of pulse generators produced and used for medical purposes. Those pulse generators will be registered at the production site and their presence in the medical establishments will be under permanent protection and control.
Transmissions of any type of energy in the frequencies from 0 to 100 Herz are prohibited by law under penalty of a minimum of 15 years in prison.
In order to fully meet the objective, to secure the freedom of thought of their citizens, the Member states of the European Union will publish the existence of technologies of remote control of the activity of the human nervous system, disclosing what kinds of radiation, or brain to brain connection, can be used for remote control of the activity of the human nervous system, without disclosing the actual procedures which are used to achieve such control. The scientists will be obliged, by law, under harsh penalties, to disclose the existence of such technologies to the general public in case governments, or other entities, try to hide them. The government officials, who will try to hide them, will be punished by a minimum of 15 years in prison.
To ensure the implementation of this strategy, to preserve human rights in the coming years and decades, the European Union will, in addition to the publication of the existence of those technologies, actively work for international treaties, banning the use of those technologies, by every state and country, on the planet. The control of the observation of this ban will be conferred by the United Nations Organization. As a part of this process the European Union will renounce its participation in the NATO program of non-lethal weapons, using “Directed Energy Weapons that can allegedly manipulate human behaviour in a variety of unusual ways… with systems which can directly interact with the human nervous systems” (quoted from the European Parliament document on Crowd Control Technologies” from the year 2000, (pg. 25 and 69).
All those actions are absolutely necessary to ensure that any person in the European Union Member States will be able to enjoy its freedom of thought when deciding for whom it will cast its vote in the election or what is his or her political opinion as well as what are his or her life options.
Your respectfully,
Mojimir Babacek
November 14, 2023
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Mojmir Babacek was born in 1947 in Prague, Czech Republic. Graduated in 1972 at Charles University in Prague in philosophy and political economy. In 1978 signed the document defending human rights in communist Czechoslovakia „Charter 77“. Since 1981 until 1988 lived in emigration in the USA. Since 1996 he has published articles on different subjects mostly in the Czech and international alternative media.
In 2010, he published a book on the 9/11 attacks in the Czech language. Since the 1990‘s he has been striving to help to achieve the international ban of remote control of the activity of the human nervous system and human minds with the use of neurotechnology.
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John Pilger passed away on December 30, 2023. His Legacy will Live.
This article was first published by Global Research almost 14 years ago.
With foresight John Pilger focusses on the Globalization of War.
***
Here is news of the Third World War.
The United States has invaded Africa. US troops have entered Somalia, extending their war front from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and now the Horn of Africa.
In preparation for an attack on Iran, American missiles have been placed in four Persian Gulf states, and “bunker-buster” bombs are said to be arriving at the US base on the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
In Gaza, the sick and abandoned population, mostly children, is being entombed behind underground American-supplied walls in order to reinforce a criminal siege.
In Latin America, the Obama administration has secured seven bases in Colombia, from which to wage a war of attrition against the popular democracies in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay.
Meanwhile, the secretary of “defence” Robert Gates complains that “the general [European] public and the political class” are so opposed to war they are an “impediment” to peace. Remember this is the month of the March Hare.
According to an American general, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is not so much a real war as a “war of perception”.
Thus, the recent “liberation of the city of Marja” from the Taliban’s “command and control structure” was pure Hollywood. Marja is not a city; there was no Taliban command and control. The heroic liberators killed the usual civilians, poorest of the poor. Otherwise, it was fake. A war of perception is meant to provide fake news for the folks back home, to make a failed colonial adventure seem worthwhile and patriotic, as if The Hurt Locker were real and parades of flag-wrapped coffins through the Wiltshire town of Wooten Basset were not a cynical propaganda exercise.
“War is fun”, the helmets in Vietnam used to say with bleakest irony, meaning that if a war is revealed as having no purpose other than to justify voracious power in the cause of lucrative fanaticisms such as the weapons industry, the danger of truth beckons. This danger can be illustrated by the liberal perception of Tony Blair in 1997 as one “who wants to create a world [where] ideology has surrendered entirely to values” (Hugo Young, the Guardian) compared with today’s public reckoning of a liar and war criminal.
Western war-states such as the US and Britain are not threatened by the Taliban or any other introverted tribesmen in faraway places, but by the antiwar instincts of their own citizens. Consider the draconian sentences handed down in London to scores of young people who protested Israel’s assault on Gaza in January last year. Following demonstrations in which paramilitary police “kettled” (corralled) thousands, first-offenders have received two and a half years in prison for minor offences that would not normally carry custodial sentences. On both sides of the Atlantic, serious dissent exposing illegal war has become a serious crime.
Silence in other high places allows this moral travesty. Across the arts, literature, journalism and the law, liberal elites, having hurried away from the debris of Blair and now Obama, continue to fudge their indifference to the barbarism and aims of western state crimes by promoting retrospectively the evils of their convenient demons, like Saddam Hussein. With Harold Pinter gone, try compiling a list of famous writers, artists and advocates whose principles are not consumed by the “market” or neutered by their celebrity. Who among them have spoken out about the holocaust in Iraq during almost 20 years of lethal blockade and assault? And all of it has been deliberate. On 22 January 1991, the US Defence Intelligence Agency predicted in impressive detail how a blockade would systematically destroy Iraq’s clean water system and lead to “increased incidences, if not epidemics of disease”. So the US set about eliminating clean water for the Iraqi population: one of the causes, noted Unicef, of the deaths of half a million Iraqi infants under the age of five. But this extremism apparently has no name.
Norman Mailer once said he believed the United States, in its endless pursuit of war and domination, had entered a “pre-fascist era”. Mailer seemed tentative, as if trying to warn about something even he could not quite define. “Fascism” is not right, for it invokes lazy historical precedents, conjuring yet again the iconography of German and Italian repression. On the other hand, American authoritarianism, as the cultural critic Henry Giroux pointed out recently, is “more nuance, less theatrical, more cunning, less concerned with repressive modes of control than with manipulative modes of consent.”
This is Americanism, the only predatory ideology to deny that it is an ideology. The rise of tentacular corporations that are dictatorships in their own right and of a military that is now a state with the state, set behind the façade of the best democracy 35,000 Washington lobbyists can buy, and a popular culture programmed to divert and stultify, is without precedent. More nuanced perhaps, but the results are both unambiguous and familiar. Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, the senior United Nations officials in Iraq during the American and British-led blockade, are in no doubt they witnessed genocide. They saw no gas chambers. Insidious, undeclared, even presented wittily as enlightenment on the march, the Third World War and its genocide proceeded, human being by human being.
In the coming election campaign in Britain, the candidates will refer to this war only to laud “our boys”. The candidates are almost identical political mummies shrouded in the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. As Blair demonstrated a mite too eagerly, the British elite loves America because America allows it to barrack and bomb the natives and call itself a “partner”. We should interrupt their fun.
Holding the foreign policy of a country accountable in court, notably when it comes to matters criminal, can be insuperably challenging. Judges traditionally shun making decisions on policy, even though they unofficially do so all the time. The Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based civil liberties group, was not to be discouraged, most notably regarding the Biden administration’s unflagging support for Israel and its war in Gaza.
The “Justified Vengeance” doctrine propounds in no uncertain terms that (despite its limited military capabilities) Palestine rather than Israel is “the Aggressor” and that Israel has the right to defend itself.
With the world’s eyes fixed on Gaza, Israeli forces have over the past four months unleashed a brutal wave of violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, carrying out unlawful killings, including by using lethal force without necessity or disproportionately during protests and arrest raids, and denying medical assistance to those injured, said Amnesty International.
Itochu Corporation’s aviation unit will end its cooperation with Israeli defense contractor company Elbit Systems Ltd by the end of February following the ICJ ruling, the company announced on Monday.
A UK judge on Monday ruled in a landmark decision that David Miller, a professor of political sociology, who was fired from the University of Bristol in 2021 for anti-Zionist views, was unfairly dismissed and subjected to discrimination.
From the beginning I’ve been extremely reluctant to characterize the Israeli attack on Gaza as being a “genocide” because use of that term has become so wildly inflated and distorted in recent years, converted by dishonest Western governments and their mainstream media lackeys into a propaganda-weapon used to vilify countries whose governments they seek to undermine.
Chicago was the scene for the 1893 Columbian Exposition (World Fair) where people from throughout the globe would visit the city to “celebrate” the 400th anniversary of the “discovery” of America by Christopher Columbus. The entire framework of the gathering was of course flawed since there were already peoples and nations in existence in the western hemisphere centuries prior to the arrival of Columbus in the Caribbean.
It’s hard to imagine this happening in modern times. Even an assault on a single grave is a criminal act in a civilized (sic) country. The very idea is reviled everywhere. So what about Israel’s ongoing assaults on Palestinian cemeteries across Gaza?
Times of Israel report on January 25 noted that more than 250 U.S. cargo planes and 20 ships have delivered more than 10,000 tons of munitions and military equipment to Israel since its onslaught on Gaza began in October.
Many cases of sudden death and severe disease are being reported since the rollout of the COVID-19 gene-based vaccines. Early on, several doctors and scientists warned that the COVID vaccines would lead to several complications including autoimmune disease, blood clots, strokes, and more.
Os agricultores europeus estão a sair às ruas em vários países para protestar por melhores condições de vida e de trabalho. França, Alemanha e Países Baixos estão entre os estados mais afetados pela crise, mas há manifestações em muitos outros países. Os agricultores protestam pelo fim da política de importação de cereais ucranianos e contra as novas normas ambientais que restringem a produção agrícola europeia.
Historicamente, o agronegócio europeu é uma atividade econômica com relações profundas com os governos. A Europa Ocidental é caracterizada por uma baixa capacidade produtiva, e os países locais não conseguem satisfazer todas as suas necessidades alimentares apenas com os produtores nacionais. Para equilibrar este cenário, os governos europeus sempre incentivaram a produção interna através de incentivos fiscais, compras estatais de commodities e outras medidas. Com isso, manteve-se um equilíbrio de interesses, preservando a atividade agrícola europeia, apesar da forte entrada de itens estrangeiros através de importações.
No entanto, a política pró-guerra da UE perturbou este equilíbrio de interesses entre governos e agricultores. Para “ajudar” a economia de Kiev, os países europeus decidiram permitir a entrada massiva de produtos agrícolas ucranianos nos seus territórios. Como é sabido, a Ucrânia é um grande exportador agrícola, tendo uma capacidade produtiva muito maior do que os países da Europa Ocidental. Como resultado, a importação descontrolada de cereais de baixo custo simplesmente causou o colapso da produção interna nos países europeus.
A política histórica de proteção dos trabalhadores rurais foi substituída por um abandono do agronegócio nacional, priorizando medidas que possam de alguma forma “ajudar” a Ucrânia. Por outras palavras, para implementar os esforços de guerra anti-Rússia do Ocidente, os membros da UE decidiram prejudicar os seus próprios trabalhadores rurais, o que gerou indignação. Alguns países, como a Hungria, a Polônia e a Romênia, já tomaram medidas preventivas para limitar a crise, proibindo parcialmente o comércio de cereais com Kiev, mas em estados fora da fronteira com a Ucrânia, a situação permanece fora de controle.
Comentando o caso, Josep-Maria Arauzo-Carod, presidente do Research Center on Economics and Sustainability (ECO-SOS), disse:
“O efeito não é exatamente das sanções econômicas anti-russas, mas sim das importações da Ucrânia (…) A estrutura do sector agrícola da Ucrânia é muito diferente da do resto da Europa porque na Ucrânia o campo de produção é muito maior o que significa mais capacidade de produção. Na Europa são mais pequenos e, além disso, os custos de produção na Ucrânia são muito mais baixos. Obviamente estão a competir com produtos europeus. E os produtores agrícolas têm-se queixado muito.”
Paralelamente à questão ucraniana, existem problemas relativos às políticas “verdes” europeias. Para cumprir a sua agenda ecológica, o bloco impôs diretrizes cada vez mais restritivas aos agricultores locais. Por exemplo, os subsídios estatais aos combustíveis – que são essenciais para os produtores rurais manterem as suas máquinas – sofreram cortes significativos, gerando enormes perdas econômicas para o sector agrícola.
Na verdade, os países membros da UE parecem interessados em pressionar os seus trabalhadores rurais a pagar todos os custos da agenda ecolôgica. Isto é especialmente problemático no caso europeu, uma vez que o sector agrícola local depende fortemente de incentivos estatais para continuar a funcionar. Na prática, para alcançar objectivos “ESG” a UE parece disposta a arruinar a sua própria produção rural.
“[Os agricultores] sentem que têm de pagar toda a fatura das alterações climáticas. E é verdade que o setor agrícola contribui muito para as emissões e que o sector agrícola tem de fazer um grande esforço para mudar a situação. Mas isso é algo que deve ser feito por todas as atividades econômicas. Portanto, preferiria uma distribuição mais equilibrada desta conta ESG entre todas as indústrias”, acrescentou Arauzo-Carod.
Esse cenário só tende a piorar. Infelizmente, a UE não está interessada em tomar medidas para aliviar os efeitos da crise. Pelo contrário, o bloco parece realmente disposto a continuar a concentrar-se em agendas externas, como a da Ucrânia, tendo em conta o que se viu na recente aprovação de um novo pacote de mil milhões de euros para o regime neonazista. Os tomadores de decisões da Europa Ocidental desistiram da soberania nacional e agora governam apenas para servir interesses estrangeiros, tais como os esforços de guerra da OTAN ou os planos “verdes” das elites e corporações ligadas ao FEM. Os interesses do povo europeu simplesmente já não parecem ter importância.
Com a queda constante dos padrões de vida europeus, é possível que haja uma escalada sem precedentes na mobilização popular. Os agricultores não são os únicos afetados – já estão a manifestar-se porque foram prejudicados mais diretamente, mas todos os sectores da sociedade sofrem de alguma forma os efeitos das políticas da UE. É possível que o sector industrial se junte às manifestações, uma vez que muitas fábricas europeias foram fechadas desde 2022 devido a sanções à energia russa. No mesmo sentido, as pessoas comuns nas cidades podem juntar-se a protestos para exigir melhorias nas condições de vida, gerando uma situação de crise generalizada.
Enquanto a UE não priorizar os interesses europeus, será impossível garantir qualquer tipo de estabilidade social.
O jornalista norte-americano Tucker Carlson foi flagrado em Moscou nos últimos dias, gerando uma série de polêmicas nas redes sociais. Há rumores de que Carlson foi à Rússia para entrevistar o presidente Vladimir Putin. Embora ainda não haja confirmação sobre o caso, as expectativas têm sido suficientes para encorajar todo tipo de reações negativas no Ocidente, com apelos públicos para que Carlson seja expulso dos EUA por “traição”.
Depois de deixar a Fox News, Carlson lançou um programa de TV no X (antigo Twitter) e recentemente fez uma série de entrevistas com líderes políticos de todo o mundo, principalmente presidentes. Anteriormente, ele já havia anunciado seu interesse pessoal em entrevistar Putin, afirmando ainda que as autoridades americanas começaram a espioná-lo e a ameaçá-lo devido a essa afirmação. Segundo Carlson, a NSA invadiu seu computador e vazou seus e-mails para a mídia, revelando seu plano de ir à Rússia entrevistar Putin.
A princípio acreditou-se que a coerção do Estado americano seria suficiente para impedir os planos de Carlson, mas recentemente o jornalista finalmente viajou para a Rússia, gerando rumores sobre uma possível entrevista com Putin. Ainda não há confirmação sobre a veracidade de tais alegações. Os rumores foram reforçados por imagens e vídeos que circularam nas redes sociais mostrando o que se acredita ser o carro da equipa Carlson a sair das instalações do Kremlin.
No entanto, a situação permanece duvidosa e pouco clara por enquanto. Nem as autoridades russas nem a equipe de Tucker confirmaram ou negaram a realização de uma entrevista. O que se sabe é que o jornalista já passou alguns dias em solo russo, visitando pontos turísticos e tendo assistido comprovadamente a uma apresentação de balé no Teatro Bolshoi. Se houve algum acontecimento mais importante na agenda do jornalista, certamente será revelado em breve.
Contudo, é interessante analisar a reação do Ocidente à visita de Carlson à Rússia. Militantes pró-guerra no cenário político americano estão absolutamente irritados com esta viagem – e parecem ainda mais irritados com a mera possibilidade de Tucker entrevistar Putin. Todos os tipos de reações histéricas surgiram entre os neoconservadores e liberais americanos. Tucker foi chamado de “traidor” por várias figuras públicas. Mais do que isso, numa declaração controversa, o escritor neoconservador Bill Kristol chegou ao extremo de pedir o banimento de Tucker do solo americano, com o objetivo de impedi-lo de regressar da Rússia aos EUA.
Existem algumas razões especiais para esta reação. Carlson é atualmente o jornalista americano mais popular nas redes sociais. Com mais de 11 milhões de seguidores em sua conta X e comandando um programa cuja audiência está crescendo continuamente, Carlson representa uma “ameaça” para a grande mídia ocidental. Por exemplo, a recente entrevista de Carlson com o ex-presidente americano Donald Trump alcançou impressionantes 267 milhões de visualizações apenas no X – tendo sido transmitida também em outras plataformas digitais. A popularidade de Carlson é a razão pela qual as elites americanas têm tanto medo que ele entreviste Putin.
O presidente russo tem certamente muito a dizer ao público ocidental. Desde 2022, a censura aos meios de comunicação russos têm impedido os cidadãos ocidentais de ouvirem o lado russo no conflito russo-ucraniano. As palavras de Putin, quando chegam a um público de língua inglesa, vêm de forma distorcida e tendenciosa, com as pessoas comuns nos países ocidentais não tendo a oportunidade de realmente compreender as preocupações e razões da Rússia.
Mais do que isso, as denúncias russas de crimes de guerra, violações dos direitos humanos, promoção do neonazismo e da produção de armas biológicas étnicas raramente chegam à opinião pública ocidental. Numa entrevista direta ao presidente russo, este cenário mudaria completamente. É por isso que, mesmo sem qualquer confirmação de que a entrevista aconteceu, a mera possibilidade de tal evento já causa pânico entre os pró-guerra americanos.
Além disso, mesmo que não haja entrevista, a visita de um jornalista americano popular à Rússia nos tempos atuais também é importante. Tucker poderia mostrar ao seu público a realidade no terreno na Rússia, mostrando que não há efeito das sanções ilegais impostas pelo Ocidente e que o povo russo está de fato a viver bem, ao contrário do cenário de catástrofe social descrito pela grande mídia . Além disso, sendo um ano eleitoral na Rússia, a cobertura de Carlson também poderia mostrar que, ao contrário do que dizem os grandes meios de comunicação, o governo russo é realmente popular, sendo apoiado pela maioria do povo – com Putin não sendo eleito em “eleições fraudulentas”. , como se diz no Ocidente, mas em procedimentos verdadeiramente democráticos.
Na prática, Tucker tem muito a dizer aos seus milhões de seguidores sobre a Rússia. Quer haja ou não uma entrevista com Putin, é certo que a viagem de Carlson terá um forte impacto no jornalismo ocidental. O caso serve para desmascarar a verdadeira natureza da “democracia americana”. Mais do que nunca, parece claro que conceitos como liberdade de expressão e de liberdade de imprensa já não significam nada para a estrutura política decadente dos EUA contemporâneos.
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With the world’s eyes fixed on Gaza, Israeli forces have over the past four months unleashed a brutal wave of violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, carrying out unlawful killings, including by using lethal force without necessity or disproportionately during protests and arrest raids, and denying medical assistance to those injured, said Amnesty International.
The organization investigated four emblematic cases where Israeli forces used unlawful lethal force– three incidents in October and one in November – which resulted in the unlawful killing of 20 Palestinians, including seven children. Researchers remotely interviewed 12 people, 10 of them eyewitnesses, including first responders, and local residents. The organization’s Crisis Evidence Lab verified 19 videos and four photos in examining these four incidents.
Amnesty International’s research also found that Israeli forces obstructed medical assistance to people with life-threatening wounds and attacked those attempting to assist injured Palestinians, including paramedics.
Over the past few months Israel has stepped up deadly raids across the West Bank and tensions have skyrocketed. In one recent incident Israeli forces carried out a raid masquerading as medical staff. At least 507 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank in 2023, including at least 81 children, making it the deadliest year for Palestinians since the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) began recording casualties in 2005.
“Under the cover of the relentless bombardment and atrocity crimes in Gaza, Israeli forces have unleashed unlawful lethal force against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, carrying out unlawful killings and displaying a chilling disregard for Palestinian lives. These unlawful killings are in blatant violation of international human rights law and are committed with impunity in the context of maintaining Israel’s institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination over Palestinians,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s Director of Global Research, Advocacy and Policy.
“These cases provide shocking evidence of the deadly consequences of Israel’s unlawful use of force against Palestinians in the West Bank. Israeli authorities, including the Israeli judicial system, have proven shamefully unwilling to ensure justice for Palestinian victims. In this climate of near total impunity, an international justice system worth its salt must step in. The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court must investigate these killings and injuries as possible war crimes of wilful killing and wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury. The situation in Palestine and Israel is a litmus test for the legitimacy and reputation of the court. It cannot afford to fail it.”
Since 7 October, across the West Bank, Israeli security forces’ use of unlawful force during law enforcement operations has been unrelenting, sowing fear and intimidation among entire communities; it has also been used to disperse rallies and protests held in solidarity with Gaza and demanding the release of Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
Between 7 October and 31 December 2023, 299 Palestinians were killed, marking a 50% increase compared to the first nine months of the year. At least 61 further Palestinians, including 13 children, have been killed so far in 2024 as of 29 January, according to OCHA.
Under the cover of the relentless bombardment and atrocity crimes in Gaza, Israeli forces have unleashed unlawful lethal force against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank…
Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International
Amnesty International sent requests for information on the four cases investigated to the Israeli military’s spokesperson unit and to the Jerusalem District Commander on 26 November. At the time of publication, no response had been received. Amnesty International is continuing to investigate other cases of excessive force during law enforcement operations, such as the repeated raids and attacks in Jenin and Tulkarem in the northern occupied West Bank.
Israel has a well-documented track record of using excessive and often lethal force to stifle dissent and enforce its system of apartheid against Palestinians leading to a historic pattern of unlawful killings committed with impunity.
“Three bullets were fired without any mercy”: The Nour Shams October Raid
Since 7 October, Israeli forces have stepped up raids, carrying them out almost daily across the occupied West Bank in what it describes as search and arrest operations.
Over 54% of the 4,382 Palestinians injured in the West Bank were injured during such operations, according to OCHA.
In one illustrative case investigated by Amnesty International, Israeli military and border police forces used excessive force during a 30-hour-long raid on Nour Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem beginning on 19 October.
During the operation Israeli forces killed 13 Palestinians, including six children, four of them under the age of 16, and arrested 15 people. Israeli military sources quoted in media reports said that one Israeli Border Police officer was killed and nine were injured after an improvised explosive device was thrown at them by Palestinians.
Residents told Amnesty International that, during the operation, Israeli soldiers stormed more than 40 residential homes, destroying personal belongings and drilling holes in the walls for sniper outposts. Water and electricity to the camp was cut off and soldiers used bulldozers to destroy public roads, electricity networks and water infrastructure.
Among those killed during the raid was 15-year-old Taha Mahamid, who Israeli forces shot dead in front of his house as he came out to check whether Israeli forces had left the area. Taha was unarmed and posed no threat to the soldiers at the time he was shot, based on witness testimony and videos reviewed by Amnesty International. A video filmed by one of his sisters and verified by Amnesty’s Crisis Evidence Lab shows Taha walking on the street, peeking to check for the presence of soldiers and then collapsing on the street outside his house, after the sound of three gunshots.
Fatima, Taha’s sister, told Amnesty International: “They did not give him a chance. In an instant, my brother was eliminated. Three bullets were fired without any mercy. The first bullet hit him in the leg. The second – in his stomach. Third, in his eye. There were no confrontations… there was no conflict.”
An eyewitness told Amnesty International that when Taha’s father, Ibrahim Mahamid, then attempted to carry his injured son to safety, Israeli forces shot him in the back. A verified video filmed by one of Taha’s sisters immediately after the shooting shows Taha’s father lying on the ground next to Taha before limping away. Fatima Mahamid added: “He [her father Ibrahim] raised his hands, showing them [the soldiers] that he had nothing in them. He just wanted to take his son. They shot him with one bullet, and my father fell next to Taha.”
Ibrahim Mahamid suffered serious damage to his internal organs and had to be taken to intensive care.
Neither Taha nor Ibrahim Mahamid posed a threat to security forces or anyone else when they were shot. This unnecessary use of lethal force should be investigated as possible war crimes of wilful killing and willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health.
Approximately 12 hours after Taha Mahamid’s killing, Israeli military stormed his family’s home and locked his family members, including three young children, in a room under the supervision of a soldier for about 10 hours. They also drilled holes in the walls of two rooms to position snipers overlooking the neighbourhood. One witness said the soldiers searched the house, beating a member of the family, and one was seen urinating on the doorstep.
In videos verified by Amnesty International, Israeli military bulldozers are seen damaging the narrow streets of the Nour Shams refugee camp. Also, a video posted by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and verified by Amnesty’s Crisis Evidence Lab shows the extensive damage to a road inside the Nour Shams refugee camp, hampering the medical evacuation of the injured during the raid.
Excessive Force Used Against Palestinian Protesters
Protests in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza have been held frequently across the occupied West Bank since 7 October. These demonstrations have been mostly peaceful, but some protesters have been seen throwing stones in response to the presence or forceful intervention of the Israeli forces.
Israeli forces’ use of lethal force in response to youth throwing stones is at odds with the right to life under international human rights law and international standards regulating the use of force in policing. Lethal force in law enforcement can only be used when there is an imminent threat to life; its use is not a proportionate response to stone-throwing.
In one egregious case on 13 October in Tulkarem, two eyewitnesses described to Amnesty International how Israeli forces stationed at a military watch tower at one of the main entrances to the town and those on the roof of a nearby home opened fire on a crowd of at least 80 unarmed Palestinians peacefully demonstrating in solidarity with Gaza.
Two journalists who were at the scene separately told Amnesty International that they saw Israeli forces firing two tear gas canisters at the crowd and shortly afterwards opening live fire at them without warning shots. The two journalists saw four people being shot and injured as they tried to run away from the shooting. A few minutes later, Israeli forces also opened fire in the direction of the journalists even though both were wearing vests clearly marked as Press. They hid behind a wall along with three children and had to remain there for about two hours as the operation continued.
During this time, they witnessed a Palestinian man riding past them on a bike being shot and injured by an Israeli soldier. One of the journalists also saw another demonstrator being shot in the head. She described how the victim was suddenly shot and fell to the ground. He later succumbed to his wounds.
In a different incident, on 27 November, Israeli forces resorted to excessive force against a crowd of Palestinians in Beitunia, near Ramallah. The group had gathered to greet prisoners released from Ofer prison as part of the deal between Israel and Hamas during the temporary humanitarian pause in Gaza.
Witnesses described to Amnesty International how the Israeli military fired live ammunition and rubber coated bullets at the crowd and dropped tear gas canisters using drones. Witnesses also reported that Israeli forces deployed a military bulldozer and drove military jeeps into the Palestinians who had gathered.
One eyewitness saw resident Yassine Al-Asmar being shot in the chest while he was just standing in the crowd and watched how ambulances were unable to reach him due to the ongoing shooting by the Israeli forces. Instead, his friends managed to move him out and take him to a hospital in Ramallah, but he was declared dead shortly afterwards.
Videos verified by Amnesty International’s Crisis Evidence Lab show some protesters throwing stones and burning tires in the area, as well as at least one person throwing a Molotov cocktail at a bulldozer.
Under international law, throwing stones or burning tires do not justify a law enforcement response involving the use of firearms. International law prohibits the use of lethal force against people who are not posing an imminent threat of death or serious injury.
These shootings should be investigated as possible war crimes of wilful killing and wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury.
One of the witnesses said: “They seek to mar our celebration of released prisoners and assert their domination.”
“I saw …the ambulance getting shot at”: Obstruction of Medical Assistance
The obstruction of medical assistance by Israeli forces during operations across the OPT is a routine practice Amnesty International has documented for years and is part of Israel’s system of apartheid. Under international law, Israeli forces have an obligation to ensure anyone injured by their forces is able to access medical treatment.
Amnesty International has investigated five occasions where the Israeli forces hindered or prevented those seriously injured in demonstrations and raids from receiving critical medical assistance. They also shot at Palestinians trying to help, including medics tending to the wounded.
On 10 October, in Ein Al-Lozeh, a neighbourhood of Silwan in occupied East Jerusalem, an Israeli Border Police patrol unit unlawfully killed Ali Abbasi who was unarmed and attempting to pull to safety Abd Al-Rahman Faraj, who had just been shot by the same unit on patrol in the area.
Confrontations had erupted between Palestinians and Israeli Border Police in the neighbourhood. Palestinians used fireworks, and the Israeli forces used live ammunition. Amnesty’s Crisis Evidence Lab verified three videos shot from different angles, showing fireworks hitting the back and sides of a police car.
During these clashes, Abd Al-Rahman Faraj was shot. Shortly thereafter, Ali Abbasi tried to pull Faraj to safety. An eyewitness, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons, told Amnesty International that they saw Israeli forces shooting Ali Abbasi in the head as he tried to pull Faraj away.
The witness said Israeli forces then threatened to shoot people who tried to help the two men and obstructed an ambulance from reaching the victims, leaving them bleeding on the ground for over an hour. The victims were later collected by an Israeli military ambulance and their bodies have yet to be returned to their families.
Similarly, during the crackdown on the Tulkarem demonstration on 13 October, eyewitnesses to the shooting by Israeli forces of the Palestinian man who was riding a bike told Amnesty International that the paramedic who attempted to rescue the victim was also shot at by the Israeli soldiers as he approached the injured man. One of the two journalists who witnessed the incident told Amnesty International that she saw the man on the bike being shot in one of his legs before he fell down:
“He was screaming. And then one of the ambulance guys tried to move him and save his life but the Israeli sniper continued shooting. I saw with my own eyes the medical people and the ambulance getting shot at by Israeli snipers.”
In a third example, during the raid in Nour Shams on 19 October, three eyewitnesses, including a paramedic on the scene, said two ambulances were stopped at the entrance of the camp and prevented from reaching the injured. The witnesses said the residents were forced to transport the wounded to a hospital in private cars.
Family members who witnessed the 19 October shooting of Ibrahim Mahamid while he attempted to carry his injured son Taha to safety told Amnesty International that he was prevented from receiving medical assistance for over an hour. The organization also spoke to a paramedic on the scene who confirmed that he had spent over an hour trying to reach Ibrahim Mahamid but Israeli forces stopped the ambulance at the entrance of the camp and Ibrahim was left to bleed throughout that time.
During the raid which took place across Jenin on 9 November, the Israeli military attacked medical personnel attempting to treat someone with a gunshot wound inside Jenin refugee camp. As reported by OCHA, Israeli forces killed 13 Palestinians during this operation, which lasted 12 hours and involved both armed clashes and air strikes.
According to an eyewitness, Israeli forces shot Sabreen Obeidi, a PRCS paramedic, in her lower back while she was inside a parked PRCS ambulance in Jenin refugee camp.
PRCS paramedic Sabreen Obeidi was shot in the lower back while aboard this ambulance in Jenin refugee camp
During the same raid on 9 November, the Israeli forces also shot at two other PRCS ambulances that entered Jenin refugee camp to collect injured persons. Video footage from a camera installed inside a PRCS ambulance shared with Amnesty International and verified by the organization’s Crisis Evidence Lab shows a round striking the road approximately two metres in front of the ambulance. The incident depicted in the video was also recounted to Amnesty International by a paramedic inside the ambulance who said that he also saw two other paramedics shot at by a sniper positioned in a building across the street.
International law requires that the sick and wounded and medical personnel be respected and protected. Obstructing access to medical treatment violates the right to health, the right to security of the person, to freedom from torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and can lead to violations of the right to life.
“Amnesty International has long documented unlawful killings by Israeli forces and how they fit into the system of apartheid into which Palestinians are locked. It is time for the ICC Prosecutor to investigate these killings and the crime of apartheid in its investigation into the situation in Palestine,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas.
Background on International Legal Standards
In the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Israel is the occupying power and its actions are bound, in addition to the Fourth Geneva Convention and the law of occupation, by its obligations under international human rights law.
In policing demonstrations and carrying out other law enforcement functions in the West Bank, including so-called search and arrest operations, Israeli forces must respect human rights, including the rights to life and security of person and the rights to freedom of expression and to peaceful assembly, as well as international standards that elaborate how human rights must be upheld by law enforcement officials such as the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials.
These standards prohibit the use of force by law enforcement officials unless strictly necessary and to the extent required for the performance of their duty and require that firearms may only be used as a last resort – when strictly necessary for military personnel or police to protect themselves or others against the imminent threat of death or serious injury. The intentional lethal use of firearms is only permissible if strictly unavoidable in order to protect life. Wilful killings of protected persons and wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to protected persons are grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention and war crimes.
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Featured image: Taha Mahamid, 15, who was shot dead by Israeli forces in front of his house
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A UK judge on Monday ruled in a landmark decision that David Miller, a professor of political sociology, who was fired from the University of Bristol in 2021 for anti-Zionist views, was unfairly dismissed and subjected to discrimination.
Rahman Lowe Solicitors, Miller’s representatives, called the judgment a “significant triumph”, establishing that anti-Zionist beliefs are legally protected in the workplace.
“Prof. Miller successfully claimed discrimination based on his philosophical belief that Zionism is inherently racist, imperialist, and colonial, a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, alongside a finding of unfair dismissal,” a statement from the solicitors said.
“This judgment establishes for the first time ever that anti-Zionist beliefs are protected in the workplace,” they added.
The judgment found that Miller had experienced discrimination based on his philosophical belief and had been unfairly dismissed by Bristol University.
The decision was hailed by free speech advocates, with one commentator calling it a “key victory for free speech and academic freedom”.
The case has gathered widespread attention in recent years, particularly from academics and individuals advocating for justice, fairness and equality in Palestine.
Anti-Israel Criticism
David Miller was dismissed in 2021 after accusing Israel of wanting to “impose [its] will all over the world”.
Following his dismissal, he launched employment tribunal proceedings claiming unfair dismissal, breach of contract and discrimination or victimisation on grounds of religion or belief.
At his hearing he made clear that anti-Zionism was not the same as antisemitism, and was not a “racist set of ideas”.
He added that it was impossible for a Zionist state such as Israel to be non-racist, and described Gaza as an “open air prison”.
Rahman Lowe’s partner Zillur Rahman, who represented Miller, called it a “landmark case” which “marks a pivotal moment in the history of our country for those who believe in upholding the rights of Palestinians”.
“The timing of this judgment will be welcomed by many who at present are facing persecution in their workplaces for speaking out against the crimes of the Israeli state, and the genocide taking place in Gaza,” he added.
I am also very proud that we have managed to establish that anti-Zionist views qualify as a protected belief under the UK Equality Act,”
Miller responded to the decision saying that he hopes it would become a touchstone precedent in all future battles that people face with “the racist and genocidal ideology of Zionism and the movement to which it is attached”.
“I am extremely pleased that the Tribunal has concluded that I was unfairly and wrongfully dismissed by the University of Bristol. I am also very proud that we have managed to establish that anti-Zionist views qualify as a protected belief under the UK Equality Act,” he said.
“The University of Bristol maintained that I was sacked because Zionist students were offended by my various remarks, but it was plain from the evidence of its own witnesses that this was untrue, and it was the anti-Zionist nature of my comments which was the decisive factor,” he added.
‘Disappointed’ and ‘Dangerous’
The judgment was criticised by the Union of Jewish Students, a national body representing university Jewish societies and Jewish students. It noted that despite finding in favour of Miller, the tribunal found he had contributed to his own dismissal and was “culpable and blameworthy”.
“UJS believes this may set a dangerous precedent about what can be lawfully said on campus about Jewish students and the societies at the centre of their social life. This will ultimately make Jewish students less safe.”
In a statement, the University of Bristol said it was disappointed by the judgment and was reviewing the tribunal’s findings carefully.
It said: “After a full investigation and careful deliberation, the University concluded that Dr Miller did not meet the standards of behaviour we expect from our staff in relation to comments he made in February 2021 about students and student societies linked to the University. As a result and considering our responsibilities to our students and the wider University community, his employment was terminated.
“We recognise that these matters have caused deep concern for many, and that members of our community hold very different views from one another.
“We would, therefore, encourage everyone to respond in a responsible and sensitive way in the current climate.
“The University of Bristol remains committed to fostering a positive working and learning environment that enriches lives and where the essential principles of academic freedom are preserved.”
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Featured image: David Miller’s sacking was based on his opinion that Zionism is ‘inherently racist’ (Screengrab/YouTube)
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I’m old enough to remember hearing and seeing frequent references to something called “the rule of law.” Then in the post-9/11 era this vital phrase seemed to go the way of our dwindling freedoms, civil liberties and the tattered remnants of our democratic institutions. In the process of aborting the promise of decent human futures for most of the world’s people, the word, “law,” was pushed to the sidelines.
Where once we would have seen many references to the importance of making and enforcing good laws for the benefit of all people, that ideal has pretty much become mute and obsolete from the perspective of our puppeteered governors. When the concept of law is assertively put forward, it usually pertains to weaponized lawfare used in warlike attacks on the reputations, careers and economic viability of those that threaten the interests and authority of the rich and powerful.
The rules-based international order provides cover for the weaponization of law as a means for those with much power to maintain and augment their subordination of subjugated groups lacking access to power. The phrase, “rules-based international order” is repeated again and again in political communications, but especially in top-down communications during this era of rapid civilizational decline.
A rule is frequently much more flexible, fleeting, subjective and ephemeral than a law. All kinds of people, groups and organizations can make rules for a variety of purposes. Rules can be made almost anywhere, anytime. Rules can be made by anyone and rules may or may not be followed. Most of the time there are no serious consequences that flow from breaking a rule.
The requirements for making and enforcing laws are very different from the loose requirement involving rules. Only sovereign entities can make laws of the sort that police are duty-bound to enforce, sometimes to the point of pressing criminal charges when serious infractions occur. These days this kind of sovereign authority is mostly invested, theoretically at least, in countries.
Typically national constitutions situate the exercise of sovereignty in very explicit procedures involving many forms of interaction between people, elections, legislatures and courts. In some countries, where Muslim people predominate, the making, exercise and enforcement of laws draw on principles infused with religious understandings drawn from the Koran.
The United States also affords much room for the merger of politics and religion especially when it comes to the influential role of Christian Zionism in the formulation of public policy. The Christian Zionist role is most often to mobilize public support for US wars in support of the supposed interests of Israel.
Sovereignty and Law in Colonies, Empires and Nation States
Between 1945 and today, the number of countries belonging to the the United Nations went from 50 to almost 200. This near quadrupling of nation states in the world came about largely through the supposed decolonization of European colonies especially in Africa, the Indian subcontinent, Indochina and East Asia.
In the dominant system of international law, colonies were not considered sovereign nor were the inhabitants of colonies considered rights-bearing citizens. Rather the people in colonies were classified as disenfranchised wards subject to the sovereign jurisdiction of imperial authority over them. There were very large divides in the laws differentiating colonists from colonizers.
By 1945 Europe was exhausted from fighting two world wars in a period of less than half a century. As a result, European empires came unglued. In some instances decolonization was a relatively peaceful and amiable procedure. In other cases, as in Algeria, Vietnam, and Angola, the breakup was violent on both sides.
European colonies were processed through the new institutions of the United Nations to become the sites of nominally sovereign countries. This process of so-called decolonization, however, was hampered by the imposition of neocolonialist techniques. The continuity of entrenched patterns of subordination was maintained often through the imposition of new techniques especially through the agencies of debt enslavement. The global growth of debt enslavement is one of the main animating factors driving the operation of the rules-based international order.
The close association of various techniques of debt enslavement and the so-called rules-based international order is a big factor energizing countries that were once colonies of European empires to seek alternative banking arrangements. This movement involves the urge of many national governments to get out from underneath the military weight of the US Armed Forces combined with the financial weight of the US dollar and its attending institutions.
The monopolistic role of US dollar and the financial institutions it supports are generating the opposition of the BRICS and the Global South countries in their growing identification with the alliance between Russia, China and Iran. This emerging alternative to the rules-based international order emphasizes national sovereignty as a primary facilitator of national self-determination.
This quest to realize the potential of national sovereignty, however, is running up against those still pushing some of the deceptions integral to the rules-based international order. In recent times the pressure from this quarter to override national sovereignty continues to grow. The other side of the pre-emption of national sovereignty is the designation of topic-based centres of global sovereignty.
An obvious example is the current push by Big Pharma to make the UN’s World Health Organization the site of a claim to global sovereignty in health care and especially in the business of declaring pandemics. The huge scams and frauds associated with the manufactured COVID crisis point the way to more of the same from the hoaxers who operate in and around the WHO.
Quite clearly there is a powerful movement afoot to make the sketchy business of climate change the basis for some sort of topic-based sovereign centre in the style of the World Economic Forum.
The WEF is an unaccountable decision-making venue that, as is well known in Trudeau’s fiefdom of Canada, often pre-empts the sovereignty of national parliaments and legislatures. Canadians, for instance, find their election decisions count for naught when their Parliaments become useless because the big decisions are being made in Davos.
Power Grabs by Inter-Connected Networks of Self-Aggrandizing Swindlers
From what sources does the so-called rules-based order, both national or international, draw its principles, ideas and authorities?
Where do the rules come from?
From the United Nations? From courts of international law. From the World Bank? From treaties and conventions? From the Internet? From the Pentagon? From Labor Relations? From the EU? From law libraries? From stock markets? Black markets? Media cartels? From voting? From Rothschild intrigues? From academic conferences? From the work of fact checkers? From sacred scriptures? From research labs? From all of the above? From none of the above?
When it comes to the recent arrival of something labelled the rules-based international order, the origins lie more in power grabs by inter-connected networks of self-aggrandizing swindlers. As I view it, those who make claims to some kind of deep authority for a “rule-based order”are often seeking easy routes to obtain and augment influence for themselves and for their bosses.
References to rules-based order often comes from the lips of those who have never reckoned genuinely with the the requirements of scientific methodology or with the egalitarian principles integral to the realization of anything approaching democratic means of decision-making.
So let’s get real about what is really going on in the name of the rules-based international order. Let’s consider what this supposed order actually is, as well as what this grandiose phrase is meant to hide and conceal.
One of the keys to the so-called rules-based order is that the rules are decidedly different for different groups. This eclectic approach tends to announce the abandonment of principles emphasizing the application of universality, in other words, of equality before the law. Another key feature of the rules-based order is that there are whole classes of people who are basically exempted from having to adhere to any binding rules or laws at all.
These small groups who are put above the law, tend also to be the groups that by and large make the rules for everyone else. Average people are by and large denied any say whatsoever in deciding any aspect of the international rules-based order.
In the days when the rule of law was confidently placed in the forefront of some government operations, elections were the primary means for governors to obtain informed consent from the governed. These days, however, the role of the media is to deploy deception to produce uniformed consent in order to facilitate political agendas that often go against the basic rights and interests of most people.
Most elections these days are rigged. There are many well-established means of doing this cheating. One of the main techniques is through the exploitation of hackable systems of digital vote counting. Another common feature is the sabotage of elections by well-orchestrated networks of large media cartels.
These communications cartels grossly misrepresent crucial issues central to the formulation of sound public policies. As Julian Assange indicates below, most populations do not like to go to war. Wars happen, nevertheless, because media venues play a major roles in “tricking” the public by publicizing litanies of lies.
The nature of warfare is changing rapidly as multiple governments are made subject to manipulations from above. Increasing this manipulation from above is aimed at eliminating, starving, enfeebling and impoverishing the governments’ own constituents. This phenomenon is well illustrated by the hundreds of millions of deaths and injuries purposely caused worldwide by the coercive pushing on populations of military bioweapons disguised as medical treatments for a supposedly new coronavirus.
The depopulation agenda was advanced in the course of the manufactured COVID crisis.
This depopulation agenda continues to be promoted by the mass media’s 24/7 promotion of war, war and more war. Indeed, the business of mass communications has pretty much become intertwined with an array of mass murder rackets.
In the international rules-based order, there is plenty of room for special sets of rules for particular categories of criminal activity. These underground interactions include child trafficking, pedophilia rings intertwined with elaborate blackmail and espionage operations, the plundering and subsequent sales of human organs, black markets in armaments including weapons of mass destruction, the commerce of drug makers and drug pushers as exploiters of addictions, the smuggling of immigrants, and the killing, buying and selling of the last precious remnants of endangered wildlife.
Although these kinds of activities are outlawed, they are in fact made to form significant elements of the global economy.
Such profitable criminal activities are well integrated into the matrix of the so-called rules-based international order.
The funds generated easily find their way into large banking establishments that often have access to expertise in money laundering. The funds so generated often join other flows of ill-gotten capital into off-shore tax havens whose operations are inconsistent with the rule of law but completely consistent with the rules-based international order.
This so-called “order” exempts the rich from carrying the expense of governments while the much squeezed middle class wage earners are left to bear the cost of paying for government services and the interest payments on government debt paid mostly to the private central bankers in and around the Swiss-based Bank of International Settlements. To add insult to injury, the rich walk off with the privatized wealth from enterprises that often depend on substantial public investments along with sweetheart deals among political cronies.
This whole structure of legalized kleptocracy and fraud benefits the few at the expense of the the many. The sinister operation is defended, facilitated and augmented by large contingents of lawyers, prosecutors and judges who conduct their devious dealings behind the ornaments of law but not within the rule of law. The higher one goes up the scale from domestic law into international law, the more sordid, corrupt and deceptive the legal establishments become.
The groups and individuals that have effectively monopolized the largest share of wealth and power in the international rule-based order, mostly got where they are by slipping and sliding around both the laws and the rules. The ability to pull off such evasions often depends on working collaboratively with those charged to enforce the laws and the rules. Federal police operation like the FBI in the United States and Canada’s RCMP pretend to be law enforcement agencies but they are really very corrupt agencies of political theatre meant to advance the interests of their self-interested pay masters.
The ascendant class of serial law breakers tend to rule by transforming all regulatory and enforcement agencies into protection rackets to safeguard their own enterprises and interests. They are under no compunction to follow the rules they often make without accountability…. without obtaining anything resembling the informed consent of the governed.
The small number of people that dominate the governments and the media and the Internet and the courts and the professions and the unions and education and the cultural institutions are mostly servants of a system that concentrates massive political and proprietary control in the hands of a tiny minority. This minority operates above the law. These people are almost never held accountable for violating even the highest order of international criminal law.
The Savagery of Settler Colonies and Especially Israel
The expression of versions of sovereignty, gave legitimacy to “law” long before before the era when claims were made that some sort of rules-based order was the glue that would hold international society together. The concept of sovereignty became manifest in the evolutions of religiously-based ruling dynasties, some of which expanded into empires through conquest and diplomacy. The Aztec Empire of Mexico, or the Egyptian Empire of the Nile Valley, or the Persian Empire at Eurasia’s core, or the Macedonian Empire that briefly extended from Greece all the way to India, or the Chinese Empire, or the archetypal Roman Empire all had rich imperial histories long before the era of national states. The animating cultural force of the ancient empires often enlivens the heritage of the national governments that succeeded them.
Beginning in the 1500s and 1600s European polities, namely Portugal, Spain, France, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany created overseas colonies that became the basis of new forms of empire. Together these empires divided up almost the entirety of the Earth’s land mass. The lawyers of this era became very busy developing notions of sovereignty to concentrate law making authority in a few imperial capitals.
Darwinian social science in the Victorian era replaced Enlightenment era principles of universal human equality. Instead of affirming egalitarian ideals, the emerging social sciences ranked human beings on a vertical scale from savagery to barbarism to civilization. This paradigm was adopted by King Leopold of Belgium to justify his claim of the sovereign proprietorship over the Congo Free State in equatorial Africa.
King Leopold persuaded the United States and the European powers to accept his program submitted in 1885. He promised that he would govern the Congo to elevate through education the native savages into civilized people. Once he established his claim, Leopold used his status as absolute dictator to enslave his subjects in the work of rubber plantations.
In Canada it wasn’t until the 1960s that the Dominion government removed the category of savages and barbarians from the complex of laws and policies created specifically for the governance of registered Indians. Under Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, Indians could henceforth vote and run in national elections, enter into contracts by using their signatures, purchase alcohol, and borrow money in banks.
The maintenance of Darwinian paradigms of savagery and civilization facilitated the making of laws enabling European powers, their corporate extensions and their colonial emigrants to pretty much help themselves to whatever lands and natural resources they wanted on the expanding frontiers of empire. This kleptocratic system was made to be especially ruthless in its treatment of Indigenous peoples in those parts of empire where imperial expansion was accompanied by the migration of large contingents of non-native settlers that overwhelmed the Native peoples numerically, economically and culturally.
These regions where the the Indigenous peoples became small minorities compared to the immigrants and their descendants, have been identified as settler colonies. Many of the settler colonies in North America seceded from their British imperial parent to form the United States in America. The remaining settler colonies in the British Empire including Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Newfoundland, were sometimes referred to as White Dominions.
After 1911 many tried to construct the Union of South Africa as a White Dominion similar to, say, Canada. The governments of Canada and South Africa, who collaborated in their governance of Indian reserves and Bantustans, imposed policies that treated Indigenous peoples as uncivilized wards of the state. In the African polity, however, Black people were numerically dominant and eventually asserted against sometimes ruthless settler resistance, their constitutional status as equal individuals in the mix of citizenship with White people.
Israel turns out to have emerged as the most aggressive of all the settler colonies. I can think of no single genocidal event in the history in settler colonies more severe than what we have been witnessing in Gaza since early October. I cannot think of any Indian war or Maori war or Aborigines war or Kaffir war in South Africa to compare with the rapid fire, high-tech assault still underway in Gaza.
The colonization of the Israeli entity got off to a very bad start in 1947-48 after the General Assembly of the United Nations just barely squeezed out a majority vote on Resolution 181. The key features of Resolution 181 were the partition provisions dividing Palestine into to two sections, one for a new Jewish country and the other for a new Arab state. To this day the Arab state has yet to established. This outcome had the result of making many of the Palestinian survivors of Israel’s genocidal “War of Independence” in 1948, into stateless refugees.
From 1948 until today the genocidal assault on the native Palestinians has continued. The stateless refugees of the Gaza concentration camp were subjected to especially ruthless treatment culminating in the genocidal assault initiated in early October of 2023. It is readily apparent to those who have looked at the available evidence that considerable planning for this climactic genocide happened in the secret branches of the US and Israeli governments long before October 7.
The aim has been and remains to rid the Gaza strip of its 2+ million Palestinians inhabitants. The plan remains to exterminate as many Palestinians as possible by a lethal combination of technics, while while simultaneously destroying all housing, infrastructure and life support systems. The plan is to evict all survivors by forcing them to run for their lives away from a sterile death zone that the Jewish supremacists conducting the genocide want to transform into Jewish settlements.
When the Test of Legitimacy Is What You Can Get Away With
It seemed until recently that the US-Israel genocidal assault on Gaza was well within the purposely vague and ill-defined “rules-based international order.” This supposed rules-based order seems to thrive on operating outside the rule of law in the realm where might is right and the test of legitimacy is what you can get away with.
The settler colonialism of Israel was crafted into a defiant display demonstrating how many Israeli Jews have come to believe with some justification that they are not subject to any enforced limitations in their treatment of the Indigenous peoples. Many have come to embrace a self-perception that they are Chosen people considered to be above the law when it comes to the act of de-Palestinianizing Greater Israel.
For them ethnic cleansing was not to be considered a crime but rather a divine calling and a mission. The West Bank settlers with their laissez faire approach to murdering, torturing and jailing Palestinians seem to have become something of a caricature of the Cowboys and Indians culture of the American Wild West.
Then in the final days of 2023 the South African government submitted to the World Court a very solid indictment of Israel, accusing it of violating the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. Instituted in 1948, the Genocide Convention was a pioneering example of international criminal law very intertwined with the genesis of the UN’s International Court of Justice. (ICJ)
The ICJ agreed to accept the South African submission. The Court heard South Africa’s verbal arguments on January 11 and the next day it heard lawyers presenting a a defence on behalf of the government of Israel. Apparently Israel had never taken its place in the dock for the accused in any international proceeding.
Apparently up until 12 January, Israel basically ignored and boycotted any proceeding meant to hold them legally accountable for their treatment of the occupied people. The government and most of the people of Israel refused to acknowledge that Palestinians have a right of self-defence. They refused to picture themselves as Occupiers victimizing the Occupied People. Whatever happens, it seems, Jewish Israelis must always see themselves as victims.
Then on January 26 the ICJ came out with a historic ruling that acknowledged that a plausible instance of genocide was occurring in Gaza. The court did not order a cease fire. According to Michel Chossudovsky, the Court opted rather to call on the Netanyahu government to prevent and punish itself for possibly committing genocide.
Like many, I was initially very happy with the Court’s ruling. After years of seeing huge examples of obvious criminality taking place on many fronts at the the highest levels, apparently without legal consequences for the culprits, I wondered if the rule of law on the most important issues of our time had gone completely dormant.
The confidence of high officialdom in Israel that they could justify their obvious genocide by calling Palestinians animals and worse than animals, was hard to even fathom let alone absorb. Seeing hateful genocidal language put in the mouths of the Israeli children’s choir seemed to me like a whole new type of child abuse.
It also came as a shock that amidst all the factionalism among Jewish Israels, there seems to be no significant group focused on ending the genocidal assault because of the insanely lethal and injurious damage being done to Palestinian humans including droves of their children. It was daunting listening to that young Israeli soldier speaking openly about his wish to shoot Israeli children as if this lust to kill was the basis for some kind of wet dream.
Rethinking the ICJ Ruling in Light of the Observation That Netanyahu and His Cabinet Have Been Put in Charge of the Process of Investigating, Preventing and Punishing the Gaza Genocide
It has taken a while to sink in, but my appreciation of the ICJ ruling has dropped a few notches the more I contemplate the argument posed by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky in a running essay in Global Research.ca that he keeps revising since first publishing it on January 29. I currently have the Feb. 4 version in front of me. I’ll reproduce a large portion of the text below. The subtitle introduces the main thesis.
The ICJ “Appoints” Netanyahu to “Prevent” and “Punish” Those Responsible for “Genocidal Acts”
Court Order: “The State of Israel shall take all measures within its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip;…”
Analysis: What the ICJ judgment intimates is that the “Constitutionally Responsible Rulers (CRRs)” acting on behalf of the State of Israel, namely the members of Netanyahu’s Cabinet, are “Innocent”. They cannot “prevent and punish” themselves.
And that is where “Fake Justice” comes in
“Constitutionally Responsible Rulers (CRRs)” Netanyahu, Galant, Ben-Gvir, Katz, Smotrich, et al are the architects of the Genocide. Yet they have been assigned by the ICJ with a mandate “To Prevent and Punish the Direct and Public Incitement to Commit Genocide…”
The CRRs within Netanyahu’s Cabinet acting on behalf of the State of Israel-– who carefully planned prior to October 7, 2023 a genocidal attack against the People of Palestine, have been “appointed” by the ICJ to “take all measures within its power” to “prevent” and “punish”“public officials”, “private individuals”, andmembers of the Military who are carrying out acts of “direct and public incitement to commit genocide”.
Prevention and Punishment is not contemplated against Israel’s Netanyahu Clique of CRRs “who have blood on their hands.”
Under present circumstances, this “take all measures within its power” concept is tantamount to the criminalization of International Law: The CRRs “Criminals in High Office” (Netanayahu et al) are invited to take law enforcement in their own hands.
The option to entrust Netanyahu’s Cabinet with the “Prevent and Punish” assignment was a decision of the World Court. The 17 Judges could have demanded that the Israeli government cease all genocidal actions. They could also have recommended that the “prevent and punish” mandate be assigned to a United Nations body, including the UN Security Council.
The Netanyahu government has ordered the most hideous crimes against the People of Palestine.
And now the World Court has instructed a criminal government led by Netanyahu (who has a criminal record) to “take all measures within its power” to “prevent” and “punish” “public officials, “private individuals” (Article IV) as well as combatants within the Israeli military….
It’s an absurd proposition. It unfortunately disallows Netanyahu to “prevent and punish himself”.
As Prof. Chossudovsky sees it, the ICJ has framed its ruling in ways meant to cushion the executive branch of the Israeli government from prosecution for genocide. The scholar is very suspicious of the role of the Chairman of the World Court, Joan Donoghue, a former lawyer for Hillary Clinton when she was US Secretary of State. Prof. Chossudovsky believes Judge Donoghue is taking signals from the US government and that she should have recused herself from the proceedings for having a conflict of interest.
In setting up an obstacle to the prosecution of the executive branch of the Israeli government, Judge Donoghue is by implication also protecting the executive branch of the US government. The US government can be viewed as a full partner in the Gaza genocide in spite of the unconvincing play acting by some in the Biden administration.
“However, the court did not take the action most desired by South Africa and feared by Israel — that of ordering an immediate, unilateral ceasefire which would have stymied the war effort and indicated that the court believes genocide is actively taking place.”
In contemplating this comments after reading Professor Chossudovsky’s assessment, I pictured the ICJ ruling in a different light. While the ruling will clearly have serious consequences for Israel, some Israelis must have understood the judgment as one that that enabled them to evade what they most feared, namely the “ordering of an immediate, unilateral ceasefire which would have stymied the war effort and indicated that the court believes genocide is actively taking place.”
My thoughts turn to a Zoom discussion I recently watched where journalists in Tel Aviv at Haaretz commented on the ruling. One of the presenters indicated that Israel had just evaded a bullet he had feared would strike Israel with the issuing of the ICJ ruling. After viewing the Haaretz presenter’s comments, the new revelations from Prof. Chossudovsky helped me to I understand better why the journalist might have seen it the way he did.
I also revisited my former assessment of a celebration involving thousands of Israelis in a stadium in Jerusalem where great merriment and even exuberant dancing took place. The conference, which took place after the ICJ ruling, was to anticipate killing and evicting all the Gazan Palestinians as a prelude to the partiers’ goal of transforming Gaza into the site of many new Jewish settlements.
I covered this story of this Israeli real estate party in a recent Substack post. When I put the item together, it did not dawn on me that Itamar Ben-Givir and his colleagues may have well understood the brighter side of the ICJ’s ruling when it comes to the legal position of the Israeli PM and cabinet. Were they celebrating that part of the ruling?
I’ll close with a few thoughts on the instant Israeli demonization of the United Nations Refugee and Work Agency, UNRWA. This UN agency has been a life line for displaced Palestinians not only in Gaza and the West Bank but also in Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.
Eighteen governments including my government of Canada fell straight in line with withholding funding from UNRWA, the agency carrying the largest burden of the responsibility to provide humanitarian supplies into Gaza at this moment of grave need. To contribute to the holding back of humanitarian aid at this time and in this context may be interpreted as a flirtation with complicity in genocide.
Canada I think is already complicit in genocide because it supplies weapons to the government of Israel. There are also reports that Canada’s special forces unit, Joint Task Force-2, took part with the IDF in military operations in Gaza, As I see it, the complex of Israel Lobby organizations in Canada, but especially the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, CIJA, are also complicit in genocide because they counsel Canada’s people and its government to show contempt for the World Court and the UNRWA.
The CIJA’s actions indicate why the organization should have to register as a lobby for a foreign government and why it should not be treated as a charitable philanthropy capable of issuing receipts for tax exemptions.
All of this resistance to ending the genocide in Gaza causes me to be less optimistic about turning the corner away from the notorious rules-based international order. Many of its protagonists seem to have no problem with aligning themselves with the Israel-US genocide in Gaza as well as with the attackers on Yemen and Lebanon. As I am coming to understand it, however, the weight of worldwide public opinion that is no longer prepared to tolerate the obscenity of open genocide in our midst, is making headway towards a humanitarian approach embracing national sovereignty, multipolarity, and the security that comes from a more robust embrace of the rule of law.
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Dr. Anthony Hallis currently Professor of Globalization Studies at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada. He has been a teacher in the Canadian university system since 1982. Dr. Hall, has recently finished a big two-volume publishing project at McGill-Queen’s University Press entitled “The Bowl with One Spoon”.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
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Holding the foreign policy of a country accountable in court, notably when it comes to matters criminal, can be insuperably challenging. Judges traditionally shun making decisions on policy, even though they unofficially do so all the time. The Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based civil liberties group, was not to be discouraged, most notably regarding the Biden administration’s unflagging support for Israel and its war in Gaza.
In a filing in the US District Court for the Northern District of California last November, the CCR, representing a number of Palestinian human rights organisations including Palestinians in Gaza and the United States, sought an order “requiring that the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Defense adhere to their duty to prevent, and not further, the unfolding genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza.” Such a duty, arising in the UN Genocide Convention of 1948, “is judicially enforceable as a peremptory norm of customary international law.”
The complaint alleged that the genocidal conditions in Gaza had “so far been made possible because of unconditional support given [to Israel] by the named official-capacity defendants in this case,” namely, President Joseph Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
At the time proceedings were initiated, the Israeli campaign in Gaza, launched in response to the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas, had already claimed the lives of 11,000 Palestinian civilians, “more than 4,500 of them children, as well as entire families, numerous journalists and UN workers.” The bombardment had crippled critical infrastructure, led to the displacement of 1.6 million persons, and had been “accompanied by a total siege of Gaza, depriving Palestinians in Gaza the conditions of life necessary for human survival: food, water, medicine, fuel, and electricity.” (Currently, the displaced number exceeds 2 million; the number of dead towers at 26,000.)
In reaching his decision to dismiss the case on jurisdictional grounds, Jeffrey S. White admitted it was the “most difficult” of his career. He acknowledged South Africa’s action in the International Court of Justice against Israel, which argues that Israel’s conduct against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip satisfies the elements of genocide.
The January 26 interim order of provisional measures granted by the ICJ explicitly put Israel on notice to comply with the Genocide Convention, punish those responsible for directly and publicly inciting genocide, permit basic humanitarian assistance and essential services to the Gaza Strip, preserve relevant evidence pertaining to potential genocidal acts and submit a report to the ICJ on its compliance within a month. In international law, these interim measures are accepted as binding.
The ICJ also showed some scepticism to arguments that Israel had taken adequate measures to minimise harm to Palestinian civilians and respond to instances where an incitement to genocide could be imputed. None of the measures taken till that point had removed the risk of irreparable harm; to merely assert compliance was not sufficient evidence of it.
In White’s words, “the undisputed evidence before this Court comports with the finding of the ICJ and indicates that the current treatment of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military may plausibly constitute a genocide in violation of international law.” Lawyers representing the government also chose not to cross-examine witnesses, bar one Holocaust scholar who testified that Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip could be classed as genocidal. Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, the claims advanced in this case, involving disputes over foreign policy, raised “fundamentally non-justiciable political questions.” To compel the US government to cease military and financial assistance to Israel were matters “intimately related to foreign policy and national security”.
The plaintiffs had encountered that great limitation articulated by Chief Justice Marshall in 1803: that ‘[q]uestions, in their nature political, or which are, by the constitution and laws, submitted to the executive, can never be made in this court”. To do so would violate the separation of powers. The judiciary was, according to White, “not equipped with the intelligence or the acumen necessary to make foreign policy decisions on behalf of the government.”
Despite being bound by weighty precedent and rulings in previous cases, White concludes with a plea. The ICJ had found it “plausible that Israel’s conduct amounts to genocide.” The judge implored the “Defendants to examine the results of their unflagging support of the military siege against the Palestinians in Gaza.” Not bad for one lacking intelligence or the acumen necessary to make foreign policy decisions.
While disappointed in White’s ruling, Brad Parker, a senior advisor to one of the organisational plaintiffs, Defense for Children International Palestine, saw the thickest of silver linings. Along with the ICJ decision, “and the increasing recognition that what Israel is carrying out is a genocide and the US is complicit in those genocidal acts, I think the strong language from a US federal court judge increasingly works to isolate Israel’s actions and also bring pressure on the Biden administration to change course.”
To date, the slaughter in Gaza continues. Israeli politicians and military officials persist in claiming that murderously innovative approaches to killing Palestinian civilians are not, by definition, genocidal. But the walls of justifiable impunity, so proudly claimed by Israel in its righteous mission of self-defence, are proving increasingly porous.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: [email protected]
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
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Mike Whitney (MW): In your opinion, is the ICJ’s ‘genocide’ ruling convincing or overstated?
Ron Unz (RU): From the beginning I’ve been extremely reluctant to characterize the Israeli attack on Gaza as being a “genocide” because use of that term has become so wildly inflated and distorted in recent years, converted by dishonest Western governments and their mainstream media lackeys into a propaganda-weapon used to vilify countries whose governments they seek to undermine.
Most people understand “genocide” to mean killing a large fraction of a given population group as part of an effort aimed at total extermination. But in early 2021, the outgoing Trump Administration and incoming Biden officials both publicly declared that the Chinese government was committing a “genocide” against the Uighur people of Xinjiang Province despite failing to provide any evidence that any significant number of Uighurs had actually been killed, and the media heavily promoted those accusations. If the bipartisan political leaders of America and our complicit mainstream media can declare a “genocide” without any apparent killings, the word has become so totally corrupted that I’m loath to consider using it.
However, in a strictly technical sense this ridiculous situation is actually possible. The term “genocide” was originally invented around 1944 by a Jewish propagandist named Raphael Lemkin, who used it as a means of stigmatizing and vilifying Nazi Germany. The beginning of the lengthy Wikipedia article on Genocide explains how the definition soon officially adopted by the UN included situations involving few if any actual killings:
In 1948, the United NationsGenocide Convention defined genocide as any of five “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly.
Given the nebulous definition of causing “serious bodily or mental harm,” leftist academics over the decades have often denounced “cultural genocide,” in which a government uses its power to assimilate a minority group into the language and cultural practices of the majority. For example, a century ago Canada established a system of residential public schools to teach English and modern lifestyles to Amerindian children from deprived tribal backgrounds. At the time, the policy was considered a benign, enlightened effort to help integrate them into mainstream Canadian society, but in recent years, that educational project has been denounced as “cultural genocide.”
One obvious problem with this very expansive definition of “genocide” is that it includes far too many historical cases. Used in such a broad fashion, there may have been many dozens or even hundreds of different “genocides” around the world over the last decade or two, and if everything is a “genocide” then nothing is a “genocide,” with the powerful political term drained of any impact.
However, despite all those serious concerns, I do think that the Israeli military actions in Gaza have been so extreme, so indiscriminate, and so massive that they fall into an entirely different category. Nearly 70% of the Gazans killed have been women or children, a demographic profile very close to that of the general Gaza population. Since Hamas consists entirely of adult males, this indicates that nearly all the deaths have been those of unarmed civilians, which is almost unprecedented in military conflicts over the last few decades.
However, such carnage is hardly surprising given Israel’s enormously heavy bombardment of that very densely populated urban center with the largest unguided bombs in its arsenal. After less than one month, the Israelis had already dropped more explosives than the tonnage corresponding tothe nuclear weapons used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and they have accelerated their attacks since then, destroying 100,000 local buildings and rendering nearly two million Gazans homeless.
By early December, the Financial Times reported that the destruction inflicted upon defenseless northern Gaza after just seven weeks of Israeli attacks was similar to that suffered by the worst-hit German cities after years of Allied carpet-bombing during World War II, an astonishing comparison.
The catastrophic destruction of northern Gaza in less than seven weeks has approached that caused by the years-long carpet-bombing of German cities during the second world war https://t.co/Hm0YiTNOjrpic.twitter.com/vC3Nx3BP5X
The obvious Israeli intent has been to render Gaza totally uninhabitableand kill enough Gazans to drive them out into the Sinai desert, thereby allowing the Israelis to annex the land as many of their political leaders have proposed. The South African legal case filed before the ICJ included 90-odd pages quoting numerous top Israeli political and military leaders who publicly declared their explicitly genocidal plans towards the Palestinians of Gaza, and their attacks over the last four months have certainly amounted to the greatest televised slaughter of helpless civilians in the history of the world.
Under such a combination of facts, I think it was very reasonable for the near-unanimous ICJ ruling that there was strong evidence that the Gazans were at serious risk of suffering a potential genocide at the hands of the Israelis. The Israeli government itself appointed one of the ICJ judges hearing the case, selecting a former chief justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, but he voted along with the other justices that the Israeli government must take all measures to prevent and punish incitement to genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza.
MW: In your opinion, is there any defense for Israel’s behavior in Gaza? And, are you at all sympathetic to Israel’s stated position (that they need to defeat Hamas to defend their own national security.)
RU:Israel has absolutely no legitimate case whatsoever for its attacks on Gaza over the last four months, and as more and more facts have come out, the attempts at justification have become weaker and weaker.
Hamas came to power in 2007 following free elections organized and judged fair by the Americans, but after that surprising victory at the polls, Israel and the West orchestrated an unsuccessful attempt to overturn the vote by military force. As I explained in December, the failure of that coup led Israel to impose a very harsh blockade and siege on Gaza:
For over fifteen years, more than two million Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza have been rigidly confined to what Human Rights Watch and other leading international organizations have widely described as the world’s largest open air prison or concentration camp, with all their food, fuel, medicine, and outward movement tightly controlled by their Israeli captors.
When the Gazans began staging months of large, unarmed peaceful marches in 2018 to protest their terrible situation, they were massacred by Israeli troops, with many thousands killed or wounded. In 1960 Apartheid South Africa, a single, somewhat violent protest march against aspects of white minority rule led to 69 deaths and horrified the entire world, which proclaimed it “the Sharpesville Massacre.” But given the tight control over the global media by Jews and other pro-Israel forces, the vastly larger number of deaths inflicted upon the totally unarmed Gaza protesters was almost entirely ignored. This remarkable story was told in a widely-praised 2019 documentary on the subject by filmmaker Abby Martin, an American sympathetic to the Gazans, as well as in her more recent interview on the same subject.
The American government and American media endlessly glorify the 1950s Civil Rights protest marches led by Martin Luther King, Jr. and others and have fiercely denounced the brutal beatings those illegal protesters sometimes received at the hands of Southern police. But imagine the reaction if thousands of those black marchers had been shot down by American military snipers.
The key difference is that the uniformly pro-Israel Western global media has for decades concealed these facts, allowing the Israelis to literally get away with murder. Meanwhile, the Israeli government had spent hundreds of millions of dollars constructing massive fortified defenses around Gaza, which they believed had completely eliminated the possibility of any incursion by Hamas.
Therefore, when the very successful Hamas attack breached those defenses, the complacent and over-confident Israelis completely panicked, and their Apache helicopters were ordered to blast anything that moved with Hellfire missiles, killing very large numbers of Israeli civilians. The exact totals are uncertain, but based upon the evidence I think that a majority, probably a substantial majority of all the unarmed Israeli civilians killed on October 7th actually died at the hands of their own trigger-happy military forces, with perhaps as few as 100 to 200 killed by the Hamas fighters, in many cases inadvertently.
These likely facts are hardly surprising since the primary goal of the Hamas attack was to seize Israeli hostages who could then be exchanged for the thousands of Palestinian captives held without trial in Israeli prisons, sometimes for years and under brutal conditions. Meanwhile, it has been confirmed that the Israeli government implemented its notorious “Hannibal Directive,”ordering Israeli military forces to deliberately target and the kill Israelis who had been captured by Hamas in order to forestall any such later prisoner exchanges.
I discussed these issues in several articles (see this, this, and this), beginning in late October, also explaining that since the Hamas fighters had apparently killed so few civilians, Israel and its media allies had desperately resorted to promoting the most outrageous atrocity-hoaxes to buttress their moral case for the massive retaliatory bombardment of Gaza they were unleashing.
In early January, I summarized some of these conclusions:
The surprisingly successful Hamas attack on October 7th was deeply embarrassing to the Israelis, and pro-Israel propagandists soon began heavily emphasizing ridiculous hoaxes such as the claims of forty beheaded babies or a baby roasted in an oven. All of these frauds were provided by extremely disreputable characters, but eagerly accepted and promoted by leading Western political elites and media outlets.
The latest wave of very doubtful claims has focused upon second-hand stories of Hamas gang-rapes and sexual mutilations. These accounts only came to light two months after the events in question and lacked any supportive forensic evidence, with many of the claims coming from the same individuals behind the beheaded babies hoax, suggesting that they are equally desperate propaganda ploys. Journalists Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, and others have discussed the extreme credulity of the Times and other media outlets in promoting these blatantly fraudulent stories. Many of these points are summarized in a brief video discussion:
Inspired by my reporting at @TheGrayzoneNews, this brilliant takedown by @propandco provides the strongest and most accessible refutation of the bogus atrocity propaganda Israel concocted to justify its genocidal rampage in Gaza
Meanwhile, consider the very strong evidence from silence. According to news reports, small GoPro cameras were worn by the attacking Hamas militants, which recorded all their activities, and the Israelis recovered many of these from their bodies and began carefully examining hundreds of hours of this extensive video footage. They surely would have soon released a video compilation providing any incriminating evidence that they found, yet I’m not aware of a single public clip that shows any such brutal atrocities or mass killings, strongly suggesting that very little of that occurred. Indeed, the Gray Zone discovered that the main photograph provided of an allegedly raped and murdered Israeli woman actually turned out to be that of a female Kurdish fighter from years earlier that had been plucked off the Internet, demonstrating the apparent desperation and dishonesty of the pro-Israel propagandists promoting these stories.
But given that total national humiliation, the Israeli military reaction aimed at punishing the helpless civilians of Gaza has been enormously brutal, probably already killing well over 30,000 victims, overwhelmingly women and children. Nearly all of Gaza’s hospitals have been destroyed, along with the local universities, schools, mosques and churches, and administrative buildings. A few days ago, the New York Times published an article highlighting the widespread Israeli use of controlled demolitions to deliberately destroy all of this civilian infrastructure. The obvious intent is to render the entire area uninhabitable and permanently drive out Gaza’s Palestinians.
It’s useful to contrast this Israeli retaliatory campaign of massive destruction with how other countries reacted in the wake of comparable events. For example, in 1946 Zionist militants dressed as Arabs bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people in one of the worst terrorist attacks in history to that date, with an overwhelming majority of the victims being civilians. It would have been unthinkable for the British to have responded by launching a massive bombing campaign against the Jewish population centers of Palestine, killing thousands or tens of thousands of Jews, and they would have been universally condemned by the world as the worst sort of war-criminals if they had done so.
Similarly, beginning in the early 1970s, the IRA launched a huge wave of terrorism against British military and civilian targets, including bombing attacks in central London, and many hundreds died as a consequence. In 1984, the IRA planted a massive bomb in the Brighton hotel being used for a Conservative Party conference, killing or severely injuring many important British officials, with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and most of her government narrowly escaping death. The IRA had considerable popular support among the Catholics of both Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, yet the British would have been considered totally insane if they had responded with a massive strategic bombing campaign against those Irish civilian population centers.
When countries behave like mad dogs before the eyes of the entire world they have only themselves to blame for the ultimate consequences.
MW: Are there demographic reasons why Israel would want to expel the Palestinians in Gaza or is this really all about Hamas?
RU: The Zionist goal had always been to establish Israel as an ethnically-pure Jewish state, driving out all the native Palestinians. In 1948, the Zionist militias came close to achieving that objective, seizing nearly 80% of the territory and violently expelling almost a million Palestinians from their ancient homeland, killing many of them in that brutal process of ethnic cleansing. The main regret was that some Palestinians still remained when a truce ending the fighting, but the result was still the creation of an overwhelmingly Jewish state. Although the UN required Israel to allow the Palestinian refugees to return to the homes they had fled days or weeks earlier, the Israeli government always ignored that requirement, often shooting and killing any Palestinian civilians who attempted to do so. I discussed that history of Israel’s origins in a long December article.
However, in 1967 the Israelis suddenly launched a surprise attack against Egypt and its other Arab neighbors, seizing Gaza and the West Bank with their millions of Palestinians, many of whom were refugees who had previously been expelled from their homes in Israel two decades earlier. Annexing those new territories would have required Israel to grant citizenship to their non-Jewish residents, severely shifting the overall demographic balance, so despite endless peace negotiations, they have effectively remained under Israeli occupation for more than a half-century, even as their Palestinian populations have steadily increased.
A further political constraint upon Israeli governments has been the growing political power of the right-wing religious voting block, which regards those occupied territories as the sacred, divinely-ordained lands of their Greater Israel and is therefore absolutely opposed to relinquishing any part of it, especially in order to establish a Palestinian state. Moreover, during those long decades of occupation, Israeli governments have planted many Jewish settlements, with most of those settlers being religious zealots, determined to retain the land and drive out the existing Palestinians.
Over the last three generations, Palestinian numbers have grown more rapidly than Jewish ones, and they now constitute almost exactly half of the population of the intended Greater Israel, now containing 7.2 million Jews and 7.2 million Palestinians. So if the Palestinians were granted civil rights, Israel would immediately cease to be a Jewish state. Therefore, prior to October 7th, the Israeli strategy had been to maintain an Apartheid state on the West Bank, while confining the Palestinians of Gaza to what amounted to an open-air prison.
But the surprisingly successful Hamas raid destroyed those political illusions, inflicting very heavy casualties on Israel’s military forces and also leading to many civilian deaths. With Apartheid no long considered a viable, long-term option, the Israeli government seems to have now decided to use the Hamas raid as an excuse for solving its demographic problems by killing or expelling all the Palestinians once and for all, with surveys showing that the bulk of the Israeli public apparently supports that plan.
I had discussed some of these issues in an October podcast interview:
MW: Israeli leaders know that if they succeed in defunding UNRWA, tens of thousands of Palestinians will die from hunger. And, yet, among members of the Knesset, there is almost unanimous support for the policy. What are we to make of this? Does Israel really want to starve two million Palestinians or do they have some other goal in mind?
RU: For the last several months, the Israelis have been severely restricting the import of food, water, and medicine into Gaza so that there is already widespread hunger and thirst, with a high-ranking UN official describing the resulting famine as an “unprecedented” crisis. According to these reports, the Palestinians of Gaza now constitute roughly 80% of all the people in the world facing catastrophic hunger.
Moreover, numerous top Israeli leaders have been using explicitly genocidal language towards this Palestinian population. According to Max Blumenthal, Israeli public opinion surveys have shown that 98% of Israeli Jews support the massive destruction inflicted upon Gaza and indeed over 40% think that the Israeli government’s military attacks have been too restrained and should be stronger.
Combining these different pieces of evidence, I doubt that many members of the Knesset would be dismayed if large numbers of Gazans began to die of starvation, especially if such horrifying conditions finally succeeded in driving them into Egypt and forcing the Egyptian government to accept them, thereby emptying the enclave and allowing Israel to permanently occupy and annex it. At the very least, Israeli leaders may believe that such mass starvation of Gazan civilians would coerce Hamas into accepting defeat and agreeing to release their remaining prisoners.
So the plan behind the Western suspension of financial support for UNRWA may be based upon Israeli goals, which include some mixture of punishment and further pressure for Palestinian expulsion or Hamas surrender. Meanwhile, the Western media has used the heavy coverage of those unsubstantiated accusations against UNRWA to avoid reporting the dramatic vote against Israel by the IJC that had immediately proceeded it.
The actual reasons given by the United States and many of its allies for cutting off funding to UNRWA and beginning to starve the Palestinians seemed utterly unreasonable. According to media reports, UNRWA employs some 30,000 Gazan residents and the Israelis claimed that just 12 of these individuals had participated in the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel—12 out of 30,000 employees! This demonstrates the absurd subservience of Western political leaders to the wishes of the Israeli government.
With so much of Gaza destroyed and with so many Gazans now on the verge of starvation, there are videos showing groups of Israeli activists blocking the entry of trucks carrying food and water to that desperate population, and surely almost everyone around the world condemns that monstrous behavior. Yet the political leaders of America, Britain, Germany, and many other Western nations who endlessly boast of their humanitarian principles are now doing much the same thing, seeking to cut off food supplies to millions of starving civilians, utterly outrageous actions ignored by most of the American public, who have been successfully brainwashed by our mainstream media.
MW: Israel’s operation in Gaza is, to large extent, a war of narratives. On the one hand, we have the highly-politicized term “genocide,” and on the other we have the equally-politicized term “antisemitism.” I cannot remember any conflict in which language played a more important role or summarized the views of the warring parties. Do you agree that—beyond the actual hostilities and violence—there is a battle of narratives taking place in which the two main enemies are brandishing their own particular terminology to overpower the other? Who do you think is winning that war?
RU: I do think that the political activists condemning the Israeli military attack on Gaza quickly began using the incendiary charge of “genocide” to dramatize their case and also to counter the weighty accusations of “antisemitism” they faced from their pro-Israel opponents. But that approach has resulted in some serious setbacks.
For example, when student protesters at Harvard and other elite colleges held up signs denouncing “genocide” or shouted it out at their public demonstrations, their opponents dishonestly claimed that they were publicly calling for the genocide of Jews. This allowed pro-Israel forces to deploy their overwhelming political and media power to promote that ridiculous argument and use it to force the resignation of the presidents of Harvard and UPenn, resulting in an unprecedented ideological purge of the top leadership of Ivy League schools.
I also think introduction of that term may have helped pressure Elon Musk into banning anyone on Twitter who used the popular progressive slogan “From the River to the Sea,” claiming that it represented a call for “Jewish genocide” rather than merely the replacement of Israel with a secular democratic state with equal rights for both Jews and Palestinians.
On the other hand, now that a near-unanimous majority of the International Court of Justice has ruled that the Palestinians of Gaza are indeed potentially at risk of suffering such a genocide at Israel’s hands, those accusations have become much more substantial and legitimate, although the Western mainstream media has done its utmost to avoid reporting that important story, probably preventing most of the public from becoming aware of it.
There is also a very strong divide based upon age and sources of information. For generations, America’s mainstream print publications and broadcast media have presented an extremely one-sided, pro-Israel account of the Middle East conflict, and individuals drenched for decades in such powerful propaganda are unlikely to suddenly change their opinions, so polling shows that they are still very supportive of Israel.
However, younger Americans are less set in their beliefs and they also often get their knowledge of events from social media and video platforms, which are much less under the total control of pro-Israel propagandists.Therefore, surveys reveal that they are far more evenly divided in their views, or even actually lean more towards the Palestinian side.
Meanwhile, in the rest of the world outside the influence of the Western mainstream media, support for the Palestinian cause seems absolutely overwhelming, certainly among the two billion Arabs and Muslims, but elsewhere as well. For example, China and its media outlets have attempted to provide even-handed coverage of the current conflict, seeking to maintain good relations with both Israel and the Arab world. But when a leading influencer on Chinese social media polled his million Weibo followers soon after the October 7th Hamas attacks, 98% of them thought that the Palestinians were the ones with justice on their side.
I discussed some of these matters in several recent podcast interviews:
The problem they face is that all competent military experts agree that such a war would be utterly disastrous for the United States and our Western allies, as well as the entire world. Iran is a large, populous nation and its reasonable concerns about a possible American attack have caused it to build up a very formidable military force, including an enormous arsenal of highly-accurate cruise missiles which could easily overwhelm our defenses in the region. If we attacked, Iran’s retaliatory strikes could probably destroy all of our local bases in the region, killing enormous numbers of Americans, while sinking many of our ships at sea, perhaps even including the aircraft carriers that provide our global projection of power.
Over the last few weeks, the Houthi militias of Yemen, merely equipped with second- and third-tier weapons, have demonstrated that they can successfully bar the Red Sea to any vessels they wish, and our vaunted naval and air power has proved powerless to stop them. So in a war, the Iranians—who possess a vastly larger arsenal of first-class weapons, supposedly even including the hypersonic missiles that we ourselves have yet been unable to produce—could easily block the Straits of Hormuz to oil tankers, thereby collapsing much of the world economy at a stroke, especially including our NATO allies and Japan.
Given the endless American threats of attack, the Iranians have worked very hard over the last couple of decades to greatly improve their military capabilities, while despite our enormous defense budget, our own conventional arsenal has largely remained stagnant due to our overwhelming focus upon counter-insurgency efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. More than two decades ago, the Pentagon’s 2002 Millennium Challenge war games found that the Iranians could defeat America in a war, and Iran is vastly stronger today. Meanwhile, the Iranians have recently finalized a comprehensive 20-year deal with Russia that includes defense cooperation, and given our huge support for the Ukrainian forces over the last couple of years, Moscow would certainly be very willing to return the favor by backing and supplying Iran.
So I actually think the greatest danger we face is that a sufficiently ignorant or arrogant Biden Administration, under enormous internal and external pressure by pro-Israel political forces, might be drawn into a totally irrational war with Iran. And if the results were sufficiently disastrous, with enormous American human losses from Iranian missiles fired at our military bases and ships sunk at sea, perhaps including aircraft carriers, our government might find itself compelled to threaten or use nuclear weapons to salvage its position, thereby pushing the entire world to the brink of destruction.
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
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“Autopsy is not only a service to the doctors who were responsible for the patient, but it is a public service for our health system.” – Prof. Dr. Arne Burkhardt
Many cases of sudden death and severe disease are being reported since the rollout of the COVID-19 gene-based vaccines. Early on, several doctors and scientists warned that the COVID vaccines would lead to several complications including autoimmune disease, blood clots, strokes, and more. Additionally, The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, data showed a strong correlation between the vaccines and adverse events. But how does one determine in an individual case that the vaccine was the cause of death or the adverse event? It is through pathology.
An early pioneer of pathological investigations into vaccine adverse events was Prof. Arne Burkhardt — a senior, highly accomplished pathologist from Germany. Prof. Burkhardt came out of retirement in 2021 to examine the autopsy and biopsy materials of vaccinated patients. The work of Prof. Burkhardt not only provided strong evidence of vaccine causation, it substantiated the professional medical hypotheses of doctors and scientists around the world.
Journalist Taylor Hudak interviewed Prof. Burkhardt in his laboratory in Reutlingen, Germany, shortly before his death in May 2023. Prof. Burkhardt explains several of his findings in detail as well as which testing mechanisms he uses. Additionally, he shares his perspectives on the public health industry and academic and medical science as well as what motivates him to do this work.
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Featured image is from TLAV
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
Reviews
This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon
In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia
In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig
Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac
A reading of Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late. You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
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“The unfriendly whites first drove the native American from his much-loved home. Then they stole our fathers from their peaceful and quiet dwellings, and brought them hither, and made bondmen and bondwomen of them and their little ones. They have obliged our brethren to labor; kept them in utter ignorance; nourished them in vice and raised them in degradation; and now that we have enriched their soil, and filled their coffers, they say that we are not capable of becoming like white men, and that we never can rise to respectability in this country.” (Quote taken from a Maria W. Stewart address entitled African Rights and Liberty delivered at the African Masonic Hall in Boston, February 27, 1833)
These words uttered in a public address later published in the abolitionist Liberator newspaper edited by William Lloyd Garrison some three decades prior to the African intervention in the United States Civil War, typified the sentiment of Black people during the escalating struggle over the future of slavery. (See this)
Maria W. Stewart (1803-1879), born in the northeast state of Connecticut, is said to have been the first woman of any race to speak before audiences of all genders. A series of her speeches between 1831-33, which often utilized religious themes, also gave a materialist analysis of the social conditions of African Americans in the 19th century.
After the defeat of the Confederacy in April 1865, the post-Lincoln government led by President Andrew Johnson was faced with the policy question of how to deal with the 4.5 million people of African descent of which nearly 90 percent were enslaved. Since the national Colored Conventions held in the U.S. beginning in 1830, African American men and women were calling for full equality and land.
Nevertheless, the gallant legislative and organizational efforts of African Americans and their allies within the political superstructure in the House of Representative, Senate, along with state and local governing entities, could not reverse the failure to reconstruct the U.S. on bourgeois democratic principles. These historical developments would plunge the country into another century of racial turmoil. A series of judicial and legislative decisions set the African American people back to a period often described as the “Nadir”. Elected and appointed officials were driven from offices in Washington, state capitals and local governments. This level of institutional racism and repression was enforced by the Ku Klux Klan and other violent white supremacist organizations. Their policies of complete segregation were given legal cover by the state and federal courts which reversed the intent of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution along with the Civil Rights Acts passed during Reconstruction.
By the last decade of the 19th century, “lynch law” was prevalent throughout the South and other regions of the U.S. Thousands of African Americans were being driven from their farms, workplaces and communities. Others were subjected to highly exploitative conditions of employment and unlawful imprisonment which were just as horrendous if not worse than the antebellum period.
Interventions at the Columbian Exposition
Chicago was the scene for the 1893 Columbian Exposition (World Fair) where people from throughout the globe would visit the city to “celebrate” the 400th anniversary of the “discovery” of America by Christopher Columbus. The entire framework of the gathering was of course flawed since there were already peoples and nations in existence in the western hemisphere centuries prior to the arrival of Columbus in the Caribbean.
The fair immediately drew the ire of leading African Americans who decried the total neglect of the contributions of their people in the three decades since the legal end of enslavement. Fortunately, in response, the Haitian government appointed longtime public speaker, author and diplomat Frederick Douglass as co-commissioner of the exhibit for this independent African island-nation in the Caribbean.
After the protest by community organizations, the event administrators designated one day for African Americans. Anti-lynching campaigner and journalist, Ida B. Wells, a much-younger friend and collaborator of Douglass, urged him not to participate in this concession. Douglass argued that he would take advantage of any opportunity to advance the plight of African Americans.
At the Haitian exhibit, a document written by Douglass, Wells, I. Garland Penn and Ferdinand Barnett, the future husband of Wells, entitled “The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition”, was broadly circulated in the thousands. The pamphlet, which extended over 80 pages, was a damning indictment against the U.S. political, economic and social system.
Wells in chapter IV of The Reason Why explained the purported origins of lynch law in the U.S. Citing the Virginia Lancet related to horse theft, Col. Wm. Lynch drafted the law in 1780, and it has been referred to since as the infliction of punishment by private and unauthorized persons.
“This law continues in force today in some of the oldest states of the Union where the courts of justice have long been established, whose laws are executed by white Americans. It flourishes most largely in the states which foster the convict lease system and is brought to bear mainly against the Negro. The first fifteen years of freedom he was murdered by masked mobs for trying to vote. Public opinion having made lynching for that cause unpopular a new reason is given to justify the murders of the past 15 years. The Negro was first charged with attempting to rule white people and hundreds were murdered on that pretended supposition. He is now charged with assaulting or attempting to assault white women. This charge, as false as it is foul, robs us of the sympathy of the world and is blasting the race’s good name.”
This intervention in 1893 coincided with the Chicago Congress on Africa and the Congress of Representative Women, both of which were addressed by African American women. The Congress on Africa occurred between August 14-21. The event was spread out across various churches within the African American community. Several press accounts praised the Congress on Africa as the most interesting and significant aspect of the Columbian Exposition.
“From August 14, 1893, to August 21, 1893 probably the largest number of African American participants in a world’s fair event assembled as part of the Congress on Africa, or as it was sometimes referred to, the Congress on African Ethnology, or the Congress on the Negro. Its eight-day length included a citywide Sunday session that entered the sanctuaries and pulpits of scores of churches, so thousands of interested church congregants listened to information on the status of the global African population. Identified fully for what it was, the Congress on Africa combined the intellectual with the ideological, religious, philosophical and scientific to formulate an agenda facilitating, in effect, a dualistic American African public policy on the status of continental and diasporan Africans. Frederick Douglass, Alexander Crummell, John Mercer Langston, T. Thomas Fortune and Bishop Henry McNeal Turner discussed the future of Africa with a smattering of continental Africans in attendance. For the American nation, this congress brought about a re-creation of the liberal arrangement between the races that originated in the abolitionist era. And, in its aftermath it represented a first dialogue in substantive interracial cooperation. Accordingly, well-educated blacks as well as the elite and middle-class whites presented invited papers. Africans from the continent and from the Diaspora filled the black ranks, many being the most notable persons in their fields of endeavor – intellectually-endowed, well-known and respected by members of both races. So, with enthusiasm, Caucasians from Europe, Africa and America collaborated in problem-solving based on African strengths rather than hand wringing over African deficiencies.”
Pan-African Awakenings 1897-1900
During the time period in which the Columbian Exposition was held, colonialism was expanding exponentially on the African continent. The Berlin West Africa Conference of 1884-85 convened by the leading European powers divided the continent among the imperialist states. See this.
By 1897 in Britain, the African Association had been formed by activists such as South African Alice Kinloch and Trinidadian-born Barrister Henry Sylvester Williams. By 1900 the so-called First Pan-African Conference was convened in London which attracted delegations largely from African descendants in the European, U.S. and Caribbean Diaspora.
Pan-African Conference 1900 in London
The event held between July 23-25 enjoyed the active participation of Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, Bishop Alexander Walters, Ms. Anna Julia Cooper, among others. The African Association was merged into the Pan-African Association which, according to the conference report, was supposed to hold another gathering within two years in the U.S. (See this)
Nonetheless, such a gathering was not held until after the conclusion of World War I in 1919 in Paris to coincide with the discussions by the imperialist powers over the geopolitical dynamics stemming from the post-war situation. Nonetheless, the objective limitations of the organizers of the Pan-African Conference of 1900 in London did not halt the resistance to colonialism on the African continent and throughout the world.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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Times of Israel report on January 25 noted that more than 250 U.S. cargo planes and 20 ships have delivered more than 10,000 tons of munitions and military equipment to Israel since its onslaught on Gaza began in October.
The same article stated that Israeli Defense Ministry Director General Eyal Zamir visited Washington in late January to finalize the purchase of 25 F-35 stealth fighter jets, 25 F-15 fighter jets and 12 Apache helicopters from the U.S.
In late December, The Times of Israelreported that the Israeli Defense Ministry had made almost $2.8 billion in additional purchases from the U.S. since the war started—in addition to the $3.8 billion in military aid that the U.S. provides to Israel annually.[1]
On January 26, a 17-judge panel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague issued a ruling that South Africa had solid foundation to bring its case of genocide before the world’s highest court.
As of this writing, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have killed more than 26,000 civilians in Gaza and injured 65,000 more while reducing much of Gaza to rubble following the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.
The ICJ case may very well implicate the U.S., which has provided most of the weapons used to kill Palestinian civilians in violation of the laws of war.
Palestinian journalist Ramzy Baroud wrote that “the fingerprints of U.S. weapons are on the body of every Palestinian killed in Gaza, from the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, to UN schools, to every house and every street.”
According to Baroud,
“never before in the history of the U.S.’s relationship with the Middle East has Washington been so directly involved in an Israeli war. The closest was the 1973 war, and even then, the U.S. involvement arrived a week later, and was hardly as direct.”[2]
In December, Amnesty International carried out an investigation, which determined that Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) manufactured by Boeing at a factory in St. Louis, Missouri, were used by the Israeli military in two unlawful air strikes on homes full of civilians in the Gaza Strip on October 10 and 13, with the fragments from the bombs found in the rubble.
A Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) kit fixed to a bomb on display at the Navy League’s 2003 Sea-Air-Space Exposition. [Source: wsws.org]
The strikes on the al-Najjar family home in Deir al-Balah and Abu Mu’eileq family home in the same city killed a total of 43 civilians, including 19 children, and 14 women. In both cases, survivors told Amnesty International there had been no warning of an imminent strike.
A fragment of the JDAM that struck the Abu Mu’eileq family home. [Source: amnesty.org]
Members of the al-Najjar family who were killed in the strike. [Source: amnesty.org]
Members of the Abu Mu’eileq family who were killed in the strike. [Source: amnesty.org]
Amnesty has also raised alarm at the use of white phosphorus bombs in Gaza in violation of international law that it believed “may have been exported” from the U.S. In the 2008-2009 Operation Cast Lead, Israel used white phosphorus bombs that had been produced in Louisiana and Arkansas.
A target of anti-war activism during the Vietnam era, white phosphorus bombs are designed to burn people’s flesh to the bone.
Another weapons used widely by Israel are BLU-109 2,000 pound bunker buster bombs made in the U.S., which according to AP News have killed thousands of people after being dropped in densely populated neighborhoods on the Gaza strip.
According to a report on the World Socialist Website (WSWS), Israeli air strikes in Gaza have been carried out from a fleet of American made warplanes consisting of:
40 F-35 advanced Lockheed Martin stealth warplanes
196 F-16 multi-purpose planes made by General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin
83 F-15 fighters designed and produced by McDonnell Douglas (which is now part of Boeing)
These warplanes are equipped with bombs, missiles and guidance kits largely manufactured in the United States.
The bombs include MK-80 bombs made by General Dynamics in Garland, Texas, and retrofitted in McAlester, Oklahoma, at the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant, which produces a wide variety of bombs, including the infamous Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bombs dropped on Afghanistan, whose yield is comparable to a tactical nuclear weapon.[3]
A worker at the General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems, Inc., plant in Garland, Texas, works on the MK-80 series of bombs. [Source: wsws.org]
McAlester Army Ammunition Plant where they are proud of their deadly creation. [Source: armymilitary.net]
According to the WSWS, the MK-80 is a “primary bomb being used by the IDF as it destroys Gaza.” The IDF has also likely been using GBU-12 (Paveway) laser-guided bombs manufactured by Lockheed at its plant in Archbald, Pennsylvania, that are dropped from Lockheed F-35 fighter jets manufactured at a Lockheed plant in Fort Worth, Texas.
Lockheed’s Archbald plant, where smart bombs used by the IDF to kill Gazan civilians are manufactured. [Source: wsws.org]
Government contracts show that, at its main production headquarters in Tucson, Arizona, Raytheon makes its own variant of the Paveway laser-guided bomb kit and a variety of other missiles for the IDF, including the TOW, the AGM-65 Maverick, the Sidewinder, and the AIM-120 AMRAAM missile.
The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) explains that Raytheon “provides weapon systems, components, and maintenance services to the Israeli Air Force’s fleet of F-15, F-16, and F-35 fighter jets. For example, the company and its subsidiary Pratt & Whitney have provided F100 engines—the ‘engine of choice’ for F-15 and F-16 aircraft—and APG-82(V)1 radars.”
Raytheon also makes a variety of smaller electronic components as well for the IDF, regularly working with Elbit Systems, a leading Israeli weapons manufacturer.
Of the protests in the U.S. over the Israel-Gaza War, a number have targeted the weapons pipeline coming out of the United States. For example, as the WSWSreports:
On Thursday, November 2, 60 protesters blocked the entrance to Raytheon in Tucson, demanding the company end its extensive sales to the IDF.
On Friday, November 3, hundreds of protesters and several rank-and-file members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) stalled the military vessel Cape Orlando in Oakland, California, as it headed to Israel with military supplies.
On Monday, November 6, hundreds more protesters tried to blockCape Orlando in Tacoma, Washington. At least three dock workers refused to handle the cargo.
On the same day, 75 young protesters blocked entrances to the Boeing plant outside of St. Louis, Missouri, the one which builds JDAMS, delaying the start of the shift by four hours, according to St. Louis Public Radio.
Several protests have occurred at Elbit Systems, one of the largest Israeli defense companies. This includes a protest by more than 200 people at Elbit’s U.S. headquarters in Boston.
The Merchants of Death war crimes tribunal, headed by former Lancaster prosecutor Brad Wolf, has sought to hold leading weapons contractors accountable for their war profiteering.
Besides enriching the coffers of leading arms manufacturers, the Biden administration’s support for Israel is contingent on Israel’s function as what Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has called a virtual aircraft carrier for the U.S. in the oil-rich Middle East.
Israel performs vital services for the U.S. by attacking nationalistic regimes hostile to U.S. interests like, that led by Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt in the 1967 Six-Day War and Bashar al-Assad of Syria today, and has allowed the U.S. to establish a secret military base in the Negev Desert that can be used as a launching pad for wider U.S. military operations in the Middle East.
It is no surprise then that the Biden administration is unfazed by the recent ICJ court ruling, and will continue to arm Israel as it commits genocide against the Palestinian people who count for little in the U.S.’s larger geopolitical designs.
Iranian Hawks Beat Drums of War as Biden Plans Military Strike
The war drums are starting to beat louder and louder for Iran following a drone attack on the Syria-Jordan border in the Al-Tanf area that killed three U.S. servicemen and wounded 34.
The Biden administration blamed the attack on Iran without offering any proof, with Iran denying any involvement.
Biden said on January 30 that “I do hold them [Iran] responsible in that they’re supplying the weapons to the people who did it.”
Biden also said that the U.S. response to the drone attack would be carried out “over the course of several days,” striking “multiple targets,” a U.S. official told ABC News. “These are going to be very deliberate targets—deliberate strikes on facilities that enabled these attacks,” on U.S. forces, the official said.
Though Biden claimed he does not want a wider Middle East war, U.S. action is threatening exactly that—something neoconservatives have long wanted.
In a characteristic segment on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News on January 26, Florida Congressman Mike Waltz (R-FL) claimed that Iran had carried out 165 attacks on U.S. troops since October 7 plus an additional 78 since Biden took office, leaving out that these troops were illegally occupying Middle-Eastern countries.
Waltz said in response to the attacks that the U.S. should develop a multi-pronged strategy in which it “hit Iranian operatives, dried up Iranian cash revenues, and supported Iranian efforts to overthrow their government, like in the Green revolution and Masha Ahmini protests,” which Obama and Biden had done little in his view to effectively support.
Sean Hannity chimed in with the false claim that Iran was now “only months away from obtaining nuclear weapons capability” and said that Americans should be “deadly afraid of the marriage of radical ideology and nuclear weapons.”
The third guest, Fox News contributor Pete Hegseth said that the “bad guys” [Iran] should know that if they attack Americans, they will be killed.”
Hegseth said that this wasn’t happening under the Biden administration, which was constraining the operations of U.S. troops holding the line against ISIS. The Biden administration was bombing warehouses to make it look like it was doing something and could have used some of the troops guarding the Jordan-Syrian border on the U.S.-Mexican border.
In Hegspeth’s view, Biden and his supporters naively believed that “a ceasefire in Gaza would cause Iran and its proxies–the Houthis, Hizbollah, Hamas and the anti-American militias that had targeted U.S. troops to stand back, which was a pipe dream.”
The choice was clear in the 2024 election between Biden and Trump, who according to Waltz, had “defeated ISIS, killed Baghdadi, made Iran broke and without nuclear weapons, and signed the Abraham Accords [drawing Israel closer to various Gulf Arab countries in an anti-Iran alliance].”
The above Republican talking points sadly resonate among certain segments of the U.S. electorate who have been conditioned to hate Iran and Muslims more broadly and to support imperialistic foreign policies. They embody the lie that Trump is an antiwar candidate and that U.S. foreign policy would be less aggressive or recklessly militaristic under his leadership than under Biden’s.
On Tuesday January 30, Hannity had on his show Iran-Contra felon and CIA agent Oliver North who reminisced about how he had a cyanide poison pill with him on one of his missions to Iran in the 1980s in case he had to commit suicide. (North was in Iran to procure illegal weapons sales in order to finance Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries mobilized by the CIA to overthrow the socialist Sandinistas).
North echoed Hannity in calling Biden the “appeaser-in-chief” for ignoring the alleged 160+ attacks on U.S. troops since Biden took office, leaving out like Waltz that those troops were illegally occupying Muslim countries. (Iran also was never proven to have been directly responsible for any of the attacks).
Calling the Iranian regime a suicidal one that embraced a death cult, North advanced a five point program for Iran that he said would deter Iranian aggression and prevent World War III.
The plan called for a) accelerating harsh sanctions on Iran, b) warning the Ayatollah that the U.S. would cut off Iran’s oil supplies if U.S. ships were struck again; c) indictment of the leaders of Iranian proxies that attacked U.S. troops; d) an end to any secret meetings supposedly being held in an attempt to revitalize the Iran nuclear agreement that Trump pulled out of, and e) acceleration of the sale of liquified natural gas to U.S. allies to shore up their strength.
Hannity responded to North by proposing bombing Iran’s oil refineries, which North seemed to agree with, as did two other guests on Hannity’s show, historian Victor Davis Hanson, and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.
Twenty years ago, Hannity was leading the way in championing the U.S. invasion of Iraq, bringing on similar kinds of guests making similar kinds of arguments.
One would think that the outcome of that war would have had a humbling effect and would limit calls for yet more military intervention in the Middle East.
One should remember, however, that Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch has deep CIA ties and that Fox is a mouthpiece for a Republican Party that is financed by big oil companies who made a killing in Iran prior to the 1979 Islamic revolution when the Shah gave them what they wanted.
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Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of five books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019), The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018), and Warmonger. How Clinton’s Malign Foreign Policy Launched the U.S. Trajectory From Bush II to Biden (Clarity Press, 2023). He can be reached at: [email protected].
Notes
After the war broke out in mid-October, President Biden requested a $14 billion aid package to Israel and Biden also removed restrictions on Israel’s ability to access a weapons stockpile that the Pentagon has kept in Israel since the 1980s. The State Department further invoked emergency provisions that allowed it to send tens of thousands of artillery shells and other munitions to Israel without review of Congress.
Baroud continued: “Every statement made by top U.S. officials, starting with Biden, to Blinken to Sullivan, to all others, indicate that the U.S. is a party in the war, not an outsider, a benefactor, and certainly not a mediator. They even sat in on meetings to discuss Israeli war plans on Gaza. They cannot claim ignorance.”
The bomb was nicknamed the “mother of all bombs.”
Featured image: U.S.-supplied military equipment arriving in Israel, December 2023. [Source: timesofisrael.com]
People ruled over by mask mandates, lock-downs, and other restrictions in life, followed now by the threat of losing your job without paid leave if you didn’t consent to a vaccine you didn’t trust can all be major impositions on some individuals. The Freedom Convoy directed all the built-up pressure cooking in a closed and sealed pot for almost two years and then released it in a peaceful protest movement in the city of Ottawa.
Numerous revolts among the enslaved African population occurred throughout the Western Hemisphere from Brazil, St. Vincent, Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, the United States, among others. In the U.S., the plans for rebellion in Richmond led by Gabriel in 1800; the German Coast revolt in Louisiana in 1811; the Charleston incident under the direction of Denmark Vessey in 1822; a widespread revolt in 1831 led by Nat Turner in Southhampton County, Virginia shook the ideological foundations of the slavocracy.
What fundamentally underlies the motivation of Zionist Israel’s conquest and colonization of Palestine and the Palestinian people is what has fundamentally driven the human world’s conquest and colonization of vulnerable, less-stronger indigenous peoples, their lands and natural resources since humankind’s earliest evolution from the primordial muck of creation.
The release of the Vault 7 files in the spring of 2017 in a series of 26 disclosures, detailing the hacking tools of the US Central Intelligence Agency, was one of the more impressive achievements of the WikiLeaks publishing organisation. As WikiLeaks stated at the time, the hacking component of the agency’s operations had become so sizeable it began to dwarf the operations of the National Security Agency.
Debanking is the weaponization of finance for the purpose of social control, which simply doesn’t happen in a free society. By debanking me, my CEO, CFO, their spouses and children, Chase Bank is giving people a foretaste of how central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) will be used to control the masses.
It’s barely been a month into 2024, and here’s Washington DC, already bombing half a dozen countries and threatening at least that many more. This includes Syria, Iraq and Yemen, while nobody’s even reporting on drone strikes all across Africa and the Middle East (including occasional attacks on Afghanistan). They’re also threatening Iran, Venezuela and several other countries in Latin America, including Mexico.
Hybrid Bt cotton, the only commercialised GM crop in India, has failed conclusively. Based on this failure and the evidence on GM crops to date, the Union of India’s proposal to commercialise herbicide-tolerant (HT) mustard will destroy not just Indian mustard agriculture but citizens’ health.
As the phenomenon of “died suddenly” among the COVID-19 mRNA Vaccinated continues to accelerate, I have noticed that some of those who have recently died, fully bought the fraudulent “horse dewormer” propaganda and were brainwashed into mRNA vaccination.
Welcome to the modern definition of “freedom of speech”, where the MSM are directly and explicitly permitted to “knowingly publish false information with intent to cause non-trivial harm”, and you can be sent to jail for a year for calling out their lies.
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“Crime was down significantly. The streets had never been cleaner. The homeless have never been better fed – well fed. And the support and love of fellow Canadians and anyone that came, regardless of religion, background, culture, beliefs…we were all there under the umbrella of freedom and that’s all that mattered. I’ve never felt more community and connection in my life!” – Kristen Nagle, Frontline National nurse, participant in the Freedom Convoy. Action against Attorney General of Canada (See Below)
Two years ago this week, the Truckers Freedom Convoy descended on the nation of Canada’s capital city. [1]
People ruled over by mask mandates, lock-downs, and other restrictions in life, followed now by the threat of losing your job without paid leave if you didn’t consent to a vaccine you didn’t trust can all be major impositions on some individuals.
The Freedom Convoy directed all the built-up pressure cooking in a closed and sealed pot for almost two years and then released it in a peaceful protest movement in the city of Ottawa. [2]
This was not not a collection of “far-right white supremacist and hate groups” as depicted in media and in government statements. [3] a
a
Nevertheless, on February 14, 2022, Prime Minister Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time in history.
This law authorized the temporary suspension of the rights of individuals as defined under the Canadian Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, allegedly to ensure safety and security during a national emergency. The Canadian government authorized law enforcement to remove the trucks, arrest key individuals, and freeze the bank funds of several more.[4][5]
While it was a peaceful protest, according to a poll, at the time, two third of Canadians supported Trudeau’s use of the Act “to help authorities clear out Freedom Convoy blockades.”[6]
This all led to the decision on the 14th of February to invoke a measure known as the Emergencies Act – a law passed in 1988 which authorized the temporary suspension of the rights of individuals as defined under the Canadian Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, all so as to ensure safety and security during a national emergency. The Canadian government authorized law enforcement to remove the trucks, arrest key individuals, and freeze the bank funds of several more. [4][5]
Two years later, a Federal Court judge just ruled that the Trudeau government’s invocation of the Act was an unreasonable move and was not justified by any national emergency.
The truckers and their supporters saw the ruling as a victory for them.
For many Ottawa dwellers, the torment of the “Trucker-Fest 2022” still haunts them to this very day. [6][7]
According to media reports, there was no significant protest movement by Ottawa dwellers (see Global and Mail Report):
On this episode of the Global Research News Hour, we devote most of our time to hearing representatives from two sides of the dispute over whether the truckers implanting themselves in the streets for weeks over-reached the patience and the tolerance of good folks of Ottawa.
This is followed by the presentations of a few other people who played roles in dealing with complaints, and a short commentary about the possible role of media in the affair.
Brenda Knight is a Board member of the Centretown Community Centre in the heart of downtown. She is also a resident living in a condo opposite the Convoy, and is co-Chair of the Ottawa People’s Commission on the Convoy Occupation. The final reports can be found at https://www.opc-cpo.ca/#reports Kristen Nagle was a nurse who led the group Canada Frontline Nurses and lives in London, Ontario. She participated in the Convoy gatherings pretty much from the beginning and was a named plaintiff in the Federal Court ruling on the Emergencies Act.
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After the United States Congress outlawed participation in the Atlantic Slave Trade in 1808, the kidnapping and importation of Africans into North America continued. (See this)
From the geographical regions on the continent where the trade in human capital thrived, there was resistance from Africans to their bondage which was designed for the purpose of gross exploitation enforced through national oppression.
Numerous revolts among the enslaved African population occurred throughout the Western Hemisphere from Brazil, St. Vincent, Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, the United States, among others. In the U.S., the plans for rebellion in Richmond led by Gabriel in 1800; the German Coast revolt in Louisiana in 1811; the Charleston incident under the direction of Denmark Vessey in 1822; a widespread revolt in 1831 led by Nat Turner in Southhampton County, Virginia shook the ideological foundations of the slavocracy.
These acts of resistance were the most well known since under the system of African enslavement there was resistance which took many forms on a daily basis. In addition to direct violent confrontation with the slave owners and their functionaries, many people fled the plantations seeking freedom from the tyranny of enforced labor exploitation.
Those Africans who escaped bondage either through legal means after the conclusion of the Revolutionary War in the northeast or migration to areas outside the U.S., played a critical role in the establishment of the Underground Railroad. This term was attributed to an organized cadre of anti-slavery activists who facilitated the departure of Africans from their slave masters.
In areas within the northeast of the U.S. there were newspapers founded in cities such as New York, Philadelphia and Boston which advocated the emancipation of African people. In Philadelphia there was the formation of anti-slavery societies for both men and women. Philadelphia was the scene of the initiation of the Free African Society and later the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) which contributed to the political education and agitation for the dissolution of legalized slavery. (See this)
Mary Ann Shadd and the Debates Surrounding Emigration and Full Equality
One of the key routes of the Underground Railroad was pathed through 19th century Detroit where a community of African Americans by the 1830s-1840s began to build independent institutions in this strategically located municipality bordering what became known as Ontario, Canada. One of the first urban rebellions in the U.S. took place in Detroit in 1833 when a couple which fled from enslavement in Kentucky were jailed in efforts to send them back into bondage.
The plight of Thornton and Lucie Blackburn prompted the African American community in Detroit at the time to forcefully liberate the couple and arrange transport to Canada. After 1833, the British-controlled territories were declared free from slavery. The Blackburns later took up residence in Toronto where they became a self-sufficient couple operating their own transportation business in the city.
In later years, Mary Ann Shadd Cary represented a prime example of the role of African people in Ontario during the period of the mid-to-late 19th century. Shadd became a journalist, publishing the Provincial Freeman which advocated the abolition of slavery as well as African emigration from areas where they were endangered of being placed in bondage.
One source on the political organizing work being done during this period points out:
“In 1823, Mary Ann Shadd was born in Delaware to a free couple. Shadd is recognized today as the first Black female editor in the United States and, after emigrating as an adult, one of the first female journalists in Canada. After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Shadd and one of her brothers left the U.S. to move to Canada. Encouraged by Henry and Mary Bibb—two active attendants at the 1854 Emigration Convention—Shadd later became a teacher. After doing so, she successfully established a school for Black children and, in 1852, published several pro-emigration booklets. One of her most well-known pieces is titled A Plea for Emigration: or Notes of Canada West, which encouraged her Black readers to emigrate to Canada. The year before, Shadd has been the only woman present at the first Convention of Colored Freemen.”
These developments were by no means isolated. Others advocated a return to the African continent such as Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912) who eventually moved to Liberia and Sierra Leone while working for many years as a journalist, educator, diplomat and politician. The Republic of Liberia was established formally in 1847. Nonetheless, the American Colonization Society (ACS) remained controversial among Africans in the U.S. during the antebellum period. (Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912) (blackpast.org))
Due to the prevalence of institutional racism, many whites believed that African Americans legally manumitted from enslavement could not live a productive existence in the U.S. Earlier Sierra Leone, also in West Africa, was established after the conclusion of the Revolutionary War for those who fought alongside the British who had promised freedom in the aftermath of the conflict.
However, the experiences of Shadd Cary embodied the contradictions and rigorous debate among the African American people. This same above-mentioned document emphasized:
“Much like her father, who edited the Liberator alongside William Lloyd Garrison, Shadd was inspired to create her own newspaper in order to pursue her pro-emigration and abolitionist goals. She did just that, publishing the first issue of Provincial Freeman on March 25, 1854. Shadd did not place her name under the masthead of the paper, ‘thus concealing the paper’s editorship.’ In addition to including her own articles (without crediting herself) in the paper, Shadd incorporated the work of other influential abolitionists and pro-emigrationists such as Martin Delany. Although Mary Ann Shadd was not in attendance at the 1854 Emigration Convention, it can be said that her pro-emigration pieces in the Provincial Freeman were incredibly influential as associated textual pieces engaging the convention event. The following year, Shadd maneuvered her way into the 1855 Colored Convention. Although her emigration ideas clashed with some delegates, Shadd presented a speech at the convention. It proved convincing to the delegates so much so that they granted permission to extend her speaking time.”
Nevertheless, when the Civil War erupted in the U.S. in 1861, Shadd and her husband, Thomas F. Cary, returned to the U.S. Shadd worked as a recruiting officer for the Union army encouraging African Americans to enlist to fight for the end of slavery. After the war, Shadd studied law and became one of the first women lawyers to practice in the U.S.
African Labor and the Civil War
At the beginning of the Civil War in April 1861, there were nearly 4.5 million Africans living in the U.S., 90 percent of whom were enslaved. The profits accrued from the theft of Indigenous land, the importation of enslaved African labor and its super-exploitation economically benefited the slavocracy and the burgeoning industrial capitalists largely based in the northern states.
The contradictions between the systems of slavery and industrial capitalism underlined the outbreak of the Civil War. The valuable enslaved labor of African people served as the basis for the prosperity and social status of the planters.
Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois during the Great Depression in 1935 published his seminal work entitled “Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880.” In the first chapter of this book, The Black Worker, Du Bois puts forward his thesis which emphasizes that the African agricultural proletariat played a central role in the defeat of the Confederacy.
“It was thus the black worker, as founding stone of a new economic system in the nineteenth century and for the modern world, who brought civil war in America. He was its underlying cause, in spite of every effort to base the strife upon union and national power.”
After the Civil War and the failure of Federal Reconstruction by 1877, African Americans were thrust back into a social situation reminiscent of the antebellum period. It would take nearly another century to regain those rights granted through the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution as well as the Civil Rights Acts passed between 1866-1875.
Today in the third decade of the 21st century the right to the universal franchise, access to public accommodations and education remain contested in the U.S. Consequently, the issues which drove the country into a civil war could resurface threatening the very existence of the bourgeois democratic system which has developed since the latter decades of the previous century.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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Ron Halber, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, told the Washington gathering that the demonstrations were meant “to thank the Qataris and at the same time to press them to push Hamas. Those two things are not in conflict: You’ve done a good job, you really need to do more of a good job.”
Earlier, Israeli protesters rallied at Qatar’s Washington embassy, striking a far more strident tone. Their message was “Qatar is Hamas.”
The Israeli nationals held the Gulf state responsible for Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel in which more than 1,100 people, mostly civilians, were killed and some 240 were taken hostage.
“We are here today to call out Qatar for what it really is: a terror supporting state seeking to destabilize the Middle East region. We will not allow Qatar to wash its hands (of) its responsibility (for) what happened on October 7,” said Nimrode Pantz, a lawyer and protest organiser.
Norman Goldstein, uncle of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, whom Hamas is holding hostage in Gaza, addresses about 50 people in front of the Qatari embassy in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 2, 2024. Photo: Andrew Bernard
Another speaker vowed that the protesters would “hunt (Qatari diplomats) in every place you will be until we see (the hostages) back.”
In November, Qatar negotiated a week-long truce during which Hamas exchanged more than 100 hostages, kidnapped during the October 7 attack.
Hamas still holds 136 hostages and bodies of captives killed in the fighting in Gaza.
Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Abdulrahman al-Thani, together with the intelligence chiefs of the United States, Israel, and Egypt have drafted a plan based on proposals by Hamas and Israel, involving a pro-longed ceasefire and swap of all hostages and bodies for an unspecified number of Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
The main obstacle to an agreement is that Hamas insists on a permanent ceasefire that would end the war while Israel maintains that ending the war is non-negotiable.
The parties also have yet to agree on the staggered ratio of Palestinians to be released for each Hamas-held hostage and the identity of the Palestinians to be freed.
Considering Hamas’ main bargaining chip is its hostages, the group might insist on keeping a few hostages to make sure Israel abides by an agreement – a demand Israel is certain to reject.
It’s going to take fancy language to bridge the gap.
The trick will be a formula that allows both parties to claim they have achieved their irreconcilable goals.
One formula may be a lengthy ceasefire, potentially described as transitional rather than permanent. This would allow Israel to maintain that the war will continue while Hamas could claim the contrary.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has not made things easier by adopting a hardline in recent days. He has not only rejected ending the war, but also the release of “thousands of terrorists” and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza any time soon.
Mr. Netanyahu may sing a different tone this weekend in talks with US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, on his sixth visit to Israel since the war began, but any hostage swap agreement will likely entail provisions that could prompt his far-right coalition partners to withdraw from the government.
Mr. Netanyahu may hope that Hamas will rescue him by rejecting anything less than an end to the war and the release of thousands of Palestinians in Israeli prison in exchange for the hostages.
The State Department and British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, in an apparent attempt to pressure Mr. Netanyahu to soften his rejection of the creation of an independent Palestinian state and approach to the hostage negotiations, are exploring possibilities of recognising Palestine as a state.
So far, the US and Britain have recognised President Mahmoud Abbas’ West Bank-based Palestine Authority as the entity governing the West Bank and official Palestinian interlocutor under the 1993 Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
Even though small in number, the demonstrations in the US and Canada echo Mr. Netanyahu’s recent criticism of Qatar.
“You don’t hear me thanking Qatar… It is essentially no different from the UN or Red Cross, and in a certain sense is even more problematic – I have no illusions about them… They have leverage over (Hamas). Why do they have leverage? Because they finance them,” Mr. Netanyahu told hostage families earlier this month, ignoring that Qatari funding of Hamas in Gaza was at his behest.
“Qatar hosts the heads of Hamas; it also funds Hamas; it has leverage on Hamas…They placed themselves as mediators – so start proving it and bring back our hostages,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a subsequent news conference.
This week, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), founded by Yigal Carmon, a former advisor to Israel’s West Bank and Gaza occupation authority and Prime Ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin, sought to bolster Mr. Netanyahu’s argument. MEMRI reported that Qatar regularly trained Hamas’ police force.
Echoing Mr. Netanyahu’s criticism and American Jewish leaders’ frustration, Democrats and Republicans in the US Congress have asked the Biden administration to pressure Qatar. The lawmakers also called for Hamas’ expulsion from Qatar.
Officials of both countries left open whether the review would lead to the expulsion of Hamas representatives or to restrictions on their ability to operate from the Gulf state.
What the review will entail is likely to depend on whether and in what state Hamas survives the Gaza war. A Hamas survival could mean that the United States, and for that matter Israel, will have a continued need for a backchannel.
Nevertheless, the criticism threatens to put a dent in Qatari relations with the American Jewish community, a pillar of its largely successful soft power strategy in the United States.
Qatar and the administration have pushed back at the criticism.
“I’ve been hearing this a lot about the leverage and the pressure. Qatar needs to be understood clearly in this context. Our role as a mediator is to try to bring the parties to bridge the gaps between them,” Mr. Al Thani said in an on-stage interview at the Atlantic Council, a Washington thinktank.
“Beyond this leverage, we don’t see that Qatar is a superpower that can impose something on this party or another party to bring them to that place. Basically, were using our good offices to connect, to bridge gaps, to put solutions and come up with some alternatives,” he added.
Roger Carstens, US President Joe Biden’s top hostage envoy, told the Hostages’ Families Forum and the American Jewish Committee that Qatar is “doing everything we’re asking.”
Members of the Forum met last week with Mr. Al-Thani to thank him for his efforts.
Even so, Emily Moatti, a member of the Forum’s diplomatic team and a former Israeli parliament member, suggested the families were holding their nose while working with Qatar.
The Forum “thinks that the only way hostages will be released is through negotiations, and as unfortunate as it may be – we would prefer Egypt – Qatar is totally a partner in this,” Ms. Moatti said.
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Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.
Featured image: Airport workers unload crates with aid delivered from Qatar destined for Gaza at El Arish International Airport (Qatar Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
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What fundamentally underlies the motivation of Zionist Israel’s conquest and colonization of Palestine and the Palestinian people is what has fundamentally driven the human world’s conquest and colonization of vulnerable, less-stronger indigenous peoples, their lands and natural resources since humankind’s earliest evolution from the primordial muck of creation. Greed, Power, Control, Domination over all lesser lifeforms that get in the way of their ruthless juggernaut evolutionary journey through time and space is what is still humankind’s key, operative, motivating force. The latest wars in Ukraine and Gaza nothing more than a repeat of ancient “Might Makes Right” philosophy, ad infinitum.
If the so-called ‘Civilized” world is ever to accomplish anything significantly and meaningfully different than it so far has in past centuries, since the beginning, it now is being challenged by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza to decide what exactly that significant and meaningful difference may yet be.
Otherwise, the only other conclusion to arrive at is that it is simply a matter of time until the final tipping point is reached, or biggest most world-destructive bomb or weapon is invented and used to its deadliest effectiveness, by yet the next most crazed Hitler, Netanyahu, Bush or Zelensky to come along.
The Truth About the International Court of Justice Ruling of Genocide
Some contend The International Court of Justice (ICJ) tepid ruling of so-called potential genocidethat could lead to genocide against Zionist Israel is at least a small win for the formal rule of law between the civilized nations of the world.
But it doesn’t do a damn thing to stop the indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinians, stop the war, or prevent it from already turning into a regional war that could quickly turn into a world war; as the recent close-call firing of a Houthi cruise missile at an American war ship suggests.
While the likes of the United States and government of President ‘Genocide Joe’ Biden, in spite of so much damning evidence presented by South Africa’s legal team to the ICJ, contemptuously termed the ICJ’s ruling of genocide against Israel to be “Meritless”.
Biden’s outrageous comment is a flagrant insult, mockery and affront to the rule of international law in light of the backdrop of the past 75 years of genocide, since 1945, perpetrated against the Palestinians; with the United States a clear co-conspirator and enabler, complicit in Israel’s genocidal crimes; having provided during all those years with monies stolen from its taxpayers, military weaponry, and the ultimate ‘slam dunk’ weapon of its veto power within the UN’s Security Council, that it exercised 36 times to block and cover up Israel’s on-going genocide and denial of Palestinian Statehood. Biden and the US, obviously, has never heard of the movement NOT IN MY NAME!
The same charge of genocidal complicity could and should be leveled at the US, as well, as every other nation that likewise served as co-conspirators with Israel and the United States during those three-quarters of a century; which would no doubt be everyone.
Zionist Israel, the US, UK and other co-conspirators in Western governments also will continue to arrogantly ignore or malevolently skirt, as craftily, maliciously and devilishly as they can, the ICJ’s decision; with the sum total end result that the Palestinians will remain landless, stateless and no closer to a final One-State Solution, with a clear partition between themselves and Zionist Israel; which Zionist Israel has absolutely no intention of ever giving back so much as a zot of its stolen occupied territories to the Palestinians.
Its intent remains, as always, to totally divest and remove the Palestinians from the last remaining scraps of their former homelands. The lands so far totally flattened by Israel’s blitzkrieg air and land forces already even arrogantly being advertised to potential future settler-colonists, investors and speculators by international real estate investment syndicates for soon-to-be available purchase and occupancy.
Unless the international community of nations immediately undertakes to impose: an immediate worldwide arms embargo and ironclad ceasefire, followed by an equally-ironclad Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) Movement against Zionist Israel, to counteract the United States co-conspiratorial role, with its always ultimate veto power vote ready in its back pocket, any action beyond the ICJ’s weak-kneed, lily-livered ‘potential genocide’ ruling will end up for naught, with yet more ofthe same old, “Yaddah, Yaddah. Yaddah”, business-as-usual smugness.
The Zionist Project, since Israel’s inception as a fascist, lawless political state in 1948, has always been to create the Zionist’s dream of a pure Jewish apartheid state, devoid of all Palestinians and other Arabs.
Oct 7 simply the convenient trigger of many deadly triggers opportunistically seized upon by the Zionists at every turn; since long before even the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and invasion of Palestine in 1948 to accomplish the Final Solution of their steadfast megalomaniacal master plan to create an exclusive nationalistic homeland of the Jewish religion. Oct 7 simply the ultimate trigger needed, with the blessings of the world’s complicit fascist governments and regimes within the Western and Arab worlds, to realize and legitimize their own fascist political dreams-come-true.
Meir Kahane, the radical, American Zionist leader, who was assassinated in the 1950’s once famously declared, which hard-nosed Zionists continue to believe to this day, that “The Arab is a cancer in our midst, and you don’t co-exist with a cancer. You either cut it out or you die.” Kahanism is pure, unadulterated, Zionism in the raw.
While Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro, one of the world’s leading anti-Zionist scholars, contends “Zionism is no good for anybody. Not for the Jewish people, not for the Gentile people. Not for anyone. Zionist propaganda hides what Zionism really is, because Zionists don’t want people to really understand what Zionism is”.
While, writer and philosopher Noam Chomsky. In “Israel: A Land Without a People For a People Without a Land” has also stated, for the record, that “The very existence of Israel, in its essence, is anti-semitism.”
Chomsky’s point will be elaborated upon a bit later here by Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro.
Historically, Zionism is to Israeli Nationalism what Nazism was to fascist German nationalism. To the extent that the general public doesn’t yet already totally understand that, suggests how successful the propagandists have been in their massive brainwashing of the world’s masses; that has successfully convinced them to believe that what is happening in the war in Gaza today is simply an extension of the so-called ‘World War Against Terrorism’; first begun against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and his bogus Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD’s), rather than it being a worldwide civil war OF TERROR, perpetrated by international Deep State fascists, that has followed, ever since.
Zionist Israel’s movement in Israel, as one of many extensions of that same war now in Gaza, in anticipation of yet its further expansion in its occupied West Bank territories, is now considering militarizing its settler colonists with additional anti-tank missiles and even more sophisticated high-powered small arms weaponry; not unlike what Germany. Italy and Spain’s Neo-Nazis did in the 1930’s, when they also began arming their own rabid, brainwashed civilian supporters prior to their planned invasion that began the onset of WWII’s on-slaughter.
So What Then Is a Jew, a Zionist, Zionist Propaganda, Israelism, Truth
Within the context of evolution of Zionist Jewry, their Zionist Colonization Project, as first conceived, then acted upon in 1948, finally is culminating in 2024 with either the genocide of the entire nation of Palestinian Arabs or their utter deportation and hostile exile to disparate parts yet unknown, and/or another world war to try to stop it.
Within the context of the war in Gaza, to compare a real orthodox Jew to a Zionist Jew, or real orthodox Christian to a Zionist Christian, is akin to trying to compare apples to oranges. They’re two entirely different entities, or whatever other descriptive term one might care to use as a comparison.
The one follows the precepts of the original teachings of their Jewish or Christian faiths, as constituted since their earliest origins with the some 600+ teachings of the Torah or Ten Commandments of the Bible, that remain inviolate to this day, The adherents of these faiths incapable of participating in: senseless, murderous, ruthless, vengeful, blood-thirsty, unholy retribution; such is now being waged against the Palestinians in Occupied Palestine.
Their opposite counterparts those who only know how to commit such acts of retribution, forever remain comfortable and satisfied with such actions.
The genocidal policies and actions being committed by the Zionist Israeli’s, and their complicit Zionist evangelical Christian allies throughout the Old World’s Western-Eastern Europe, Middle Eastern, and New World nations, historically, have had layer-upon-layer of political-ideological-evangelical adaptations grafted onto them; whose primitive principles remain, as they always have been, forever amoral, without conscience or any inherent sense of guilt for violating whatever once sacrosanct precepts. In short, the difference between a genuine religious Jew or Christian and their Zionist counterparts is no different than comparing a true democrat to a fascist.
The renowned American-Jewish Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro is one who spells out in great detail what some of the fundamental contradictions are Zionist Israel as a democratic political-religious ideal as opposed to the racist, fascist entity it has become.
For over 30 years he has attained an enviable place in the arena of anti-Zionist intellectuals on the ideology of on the ideology of Zionism and its relationship to Judaism. His field of research includes: religious philosophy; analytic theology; Talmud, Halachah and Biblical exegesis. His most recent published best-seller work is “The Empty Wagon; Zionism’s Journey from Identity Crisis to Identity Theft”; one of the most controversial books on the subject of Judaism and Zionism, is considered by many to be the most definitive work written on the subject; while Zionists who have read it absolutely hate it. Rabbi Shapiro’s 7-Minute video on President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the political capital of Israel has been viewed well over two million times.
Rabbi Shapiro Raises Interesting Points About Zionist Israel
In a You Tube discussion of “Jewish Nationality is an Absurdity; It Doesn’t Make Any Sense”, Rabbi Shapiro, an internationally-renowned scholar on Zionism, raises further critical talking points about what is Jewish Nationality and what is not Jewish Nationality, that clarifies many of the commonly misunderstood principles that underlie the founding and evolution of the modern Zionist Israel State.
Among the points he underscores, includes: the definition of Zionism, in a nutshell, means the term ‘Jewish State’, that refers primarily to issues of nationality. In a nutshell, Zionism means the ‘Jewish State’. Meaning only Jews, not Palestinians or non-Jews, have the same self-determination rights by law in Israel. In Zionist Israel there is no one common language, Hebrew or otherwise, nor does there exist a common nationality or political requirement to swear allegiance to Zionism. Ben Gurion, Israel’s first President, even refused, when asked, to put the word ‘God’ in Zionist Israel’s Declaration of Independence.
To further clarify what that means, Rabbi Shapiro states the analogy,
“Israel is to the Jewish people, what France is to the French people, what Ireland is the Irish people, What America is to the Americans, and so on.”
In a nutshell, Zionist Israel means ‘the Jewish State’, that has nothing to do with the Jewish religion.
“In and of itself”, says Rabbi Shapiro, “The Jewish State isn’t, inherently, a settler-colonist movement, either. Shapiro says it doesn’t even have anything to do with the Palestinians. It’s nothing personal. They have simply gotten caught in the crossfire with Zionism’s radical ideological desire to create a 100% pure State of Jewish people of the Jewish faith.”
Therefore, Zionism is an ideological movement to rebrand and re-engineer the former lands of Palestine into the new state of Israel, solely as the political nation-state of the Jews.
Because even though non-Jews can live and work in Israel, even if they are not of the Jewish faith, they cannot have the same rights as a person who is a Jew by birth or by conversion. Which means they do not have the same inherent, innate rights as a citizen who is a Jew by birth or by conversion. It’s a form of religion, in and of itself. Therefore, Zionist Israel, by definition, isn’t naturally compatible with being a democratic state or a real democracy.
Also, though no Islamic or Arab State claims to represent all Moslems, Zionism claims Israel is the ‘Nation of the Jews’ and, as such, Benjamin Netanyahu himself has claimed many times in public that he represents all the world’s Jews.
Benjamin Netanyahu, in his book A Place of Nations, asserts that “Anti -Zionism is the same as anti-semitism.” Yet Rabbi Shapiro says that is the equivalency of saying, “I’m not anti-American or anti-Zionist. I just think the U.S. or Israel shouldn’t exist.” Or as Noam Chomsky earlier pointed out in the text here, “The very existence of Israel, in its essence, is anti-semitism.”
Al-Jazeera’s English-speaking program recently presented for release on You Tube.com the views of one very simple Orthodox Jewish religious person who gave his unabashed, heart-felt views to the world about his and Orthodox Judaism’s widely-held perspectives on: the war in Gaza; Jewish relationships with Palestinians, and; the basic differences that exist between Judaism and Zionism; that everyone who is concerned about the continuing genocide being committed in Gaza, the West Bank and Gaza Strip will find invaluable.
Entire Western World Complicit in Genocide Against Palestinians
By now, the growing numbers of coup’s, attempted coups and veritable world war somewhere still in the offing, orchestrated by the United States and waged by the fascists in Ukraine, and now the extension of that world war being waged by the Zionists in Gaza, are all part of the same single bolt of cloth plot to totally destroy any semblance of existing international rules of law, order and democracy, which don’t work for Zionist Israel’ fascist rule in Occupied Palestine any more than they do for the fascists anywhere else in the world. Since the 1980’s, the Deep State and its fascist governments have been steadily gaining power and control of the electorate everywhere in Europe, Asia, South and North America.
Led by America’s President Joe Biden and, no doubt, soon-to-be-re-elected President Trump, along with a lackey host of hundreds of others that include: Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau; the UK’s PM Rishi Sunak; France’s Emmanual Macron and Marine Le Pen; Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz and its Green Party; Italy’s PM Giorgia Melani and Silvio Berlusconi, and; Sweden’s Sweden Democrats; to name but a few among a host of hundreds more.
The neo-fascist movement never did go away with the defeat of Germany’s Nazi Party: Benito Mussolini’s Italian Social Movement (MSI) slowly morphed into the ‘Brothers of Italy (FDI) in an alliance with the fascists of the National Alliance (AN), Northern League (LN) and Matteo Salvani’’s radical Lega Party; former PM Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia Party (FI) with that of Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni;
Canada’s former PM Stephan Harper’s right-wing Conservative Party has since morphed into its new leadership under Pierre Poilievre, who now threatens to become Canada’s new Prime Minister;
France’s Union and French Fraternity Party (UFF) disappeared momentarily until it re-emerged into the mainstream under the banner of the National Rally; along with the emergence, in the European Parliament, with: the Austrian Freedom Party (FPO); not to forget the Netherlands, so-called Center Party (CP);
Poland’s radical League of Polish Families, and: the Fidesz Party in Hungary, under former PM Viktor Obanz, and its Budapest Model plan to build high-tech border fences to keep out Muslims and Brown people.
All of these nationalistic parties are commonly opposed to matters pertaining to immigrants, immigration, and share a core xenophobic ideology of nativism, authoritarianism, anti LGBTQ rights and populism.
Though they all may support a new perverted form or offer some lip-serving semblance of democracy, per se, they remain opposed to key government institutions and values, such as: an independent judiciary, a free and open media; minority rights; pluralism and the separation of powers.
So, it’s easy to see how the world’s fascists hands-off attitude to interfere with the Zionist Israel master plan continue to closely observe Zionist Israel’s methodical eradication of the Palestinians, one way or the other, and whatever degree of military or legal resistance it elicits, represents an all-important lynch pin, one critical strand, in the single bolt of cloth to eventually remove all semblances of formerly-existing democratic ways of life. Biden, Trump, Netanyahu & Company the leaders of the pack intent upon paving the way forward.
Alexander Garland, former co-chair of Germany’s Alternative for Germany Party (AFP), has said, in regard to current geo-political world events, “Hitler and the Nazis are just bird shit in more than 1,000 years of successful Germany history.”
Palestinians Are 21st Century Irish in the Way of Manifest Destiny
The whole matter of the plight of the Palestinians reminds this writer of the plight of his own Irish ancestors in Ireland, who once also had the same things happening to them, with the Irish Penal Laws of 1695 & The Property Act of 1703; when the writer Jonathan Swift wrote his infamous satire A Modest Proposal, in which Swift, to illuminate the horrendous predicament of we Irish through satire, suggested the Irish begin breeding its children for the catastrophe that was upon them, rather than see them needlessly starve to death, die and be idly buried; but instead breed them for consumption and leather products; thereby decreasing their population in need of non-existent food while, at the same time, create for themselves a self-supporting native-grown economy, through the marketing of the flesh and skin of our children.
Our people murdered, willy-nilly by Oliver Cromwell and British Army under the orders of the English aristocracy, the Zionists of their day; forced to starve to death, with only the common grasses underfoot left to eat, which back in the day our people referred to their fate as The Green Death; because of the green smears left on the lips of the corpses of our dead; while those of us lucky enough to have survived, were labelled as vagrants who finally were forced to flee to the New World in search of whatever safety and freedom we could find.
It’s a reminder, too, of the Sioux Indians this writer once lived among who told similar horrid stories of horrible death and destruction of their people at the hands of the ‘White Man’; who, themselves, even tanned the skin of the dead Sioux dead to make lamp shades, book covers, and other souvenir trinkets and the like; similar to the way the body parts of dead Palestinians are being used now in the midst of the war, by the Zionist invaders for their own commercial profit and personal use.
The writer W.B. Yeats, writing about the Irish peoples defiant Easter Uprising of 1916, that occurred about the same time English Lord Balford and his Zionist plotters were drafting their Balfour Declaration that was to seal the fate of the Palestinian people, declared in one of his stanza’s, “Now and in time to be, wherever the green is worn, are changed, changed utterly, a terrible beauty is born.”
Yeats could foresee the future of the Irish, rising above that of the British fascist when he juxtaposed the words “terrible” and “beauty” to contrast the angelic image of the Irish against the angry, vengeful English. Were some Palestinian Yeats around today what choice words would he or she now use to contrast the angelic image of the Palestinians against the angry, vengeful Zionists in their midst in Israel and America?
Survival of Indigenous Peoples Is a Never Ending Saga
Zionist Israel itself represents a new European invention of a massive, world-wide Zionist version of a 21stCentury ‘Manifest Destiny’ Settler-Colonization Project, in the making for over at least century or more, intent upon destroying not only the Palestinian people but any and all existing democratic governments left on the planet.
The genocidal attack against the Palestinians in Gaza by the Western powers, under the leadership of the United State and a host of its lackey Western governments, continues to be resolutely supported by those today who, like the Lord Balfour’s and Oliver Cromwell’s of their day, arrogantly flaunt, with contempt the International Court of Justice (ICG) window-dressing ruling of so-called “potential” genocide; but without ever simultaneously calling for resolute, meaningful political actions that include: a permanent ceasefire; immediate arms embargo; International Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement against Zionist Israel, as well as; absolutely insist, no demand, the United Nation’s immediately implement, on behalf of the Palestinians, a One State Solution, with adequate partitions between Palestine and Israel to ensure whatever so-called potential genocide at once ceases and never ever again threatens.
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This article was originally published on The Intel Drop.
Jerome Irwin is a Canadian-American writer who, in previous lives, has been involved in a wide range of diverse and varied worlds, including the Criminology profession with an American police department, and later for a brief-time in the capacity of clandestine communications with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. For decades, in various professional capacities as an educator, researcher, geo-political analyst, and writer. Irwin has sought to call attention to a broad spectrum of world problems pertaining to the degradation and unsustainability caused by a host of environmental-ecological-spiritual-ideological 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 over the decades has produced 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. To examine a portion of the eclectic body of his work goggle: “Jerome Irwin, writer” The author and his wife are long-time residents on the North Shore of British Columbia.
Featured image: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds up a map showing the occupied West Bank and Gaza as part of Israel during his speech at the UN General Assembly, 22 September 2023 (Reuters)
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The release of the Vault 7 files in the spring of 2017 in a series of 26 disclosures, detailing the hacking tools of the US Central Intelligence Agency, was one of the more impressive achievements of the WikiLeaks publishing organisation. As WikiLeaks stated at the time, the hacking component of the agency’s operations had become so sizeable it began to dwarf the operations of the National Security Agency.
“The CIA had created, in effect, its ‘own NSA’ with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capabilities of a rival agency could be justified.”
The publication ruffled feathers, enraged officials, and stirred the blood of those working in the intelligence community bothered by this “digital Pearl Harbor”. The exercise involved the pilfering of 180 gigabytes of information and constituted, according to the agency, “the largest data loss in CIA history”.
The CIA’s WikiLeaks Task Force was charged with investigating the incident and submitted its findings to the director in October 2017. Pompeo should have been grudgingly grateful – WikiLeaks had given the organisation a good excuse for cleaning the cobwebs and removing the creases.
The report, for instance, found that the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI) had placed greater emphasis on the building of “cyber weapons at the expense of securing their own systems. Day-to-day security practices had become woefully lax.” The cyber weapons were also “not compartmented”, passwords at various administrator levels were shared “and historical data was available to users indefinitely.”In what reads like a vote for the dull and the tedious, the report took issue with “a culture that evolved over years that too often prioritized creativity and collaboration at the expense of security.”
The individual responsible for taking the loot to WikiLeaks was the fractious Joshua Schulte, who worked at the CCI as a software developer and had himself created a number of hacking tools. On February 1, he was sentenced in the New York federal court to 40 years in prison. His list of previous convictions was encyclopaedically colourful: espionage, computer hacking, contempt of court, making false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and child pornography.
At the sentencing hearing, Judge Jesse M. Furman, in that time honoured tradition of judicial vagueness, remarked that, “We will likely never know the full extent of the damage, but I have no doubt it was massive.” This was a silly claim, given that the leaks were, as Axios reported, “largely inconsequential, with most being instruction manuals for old hacking tools”.
The prosecution was similarly imprecise (and disingenuous), as they tend to be when measuring the extent national security is supposedly impaired by information disclosures. “He caused untold damage to our national security in his quest for revenge against the CIA for its response to Schulte’s security breaches while employed there,” stated the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams. Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsenfurther added that Schulte had “directly risked the lives of CIA personnel, persisting in his efforts even after his arrest.”
In comments made to the court prior to the sentencing, Schulte touched on the wonderful penal conditions that mark the US penitentiary system. He had, for instance, been denied hot water. He had been extensively exposed to artificial light and constant noise.
He also had – and here, British judges should take note regarding Assange’s own arguments against extradition to the US – been deceived by the prosecutors in a plea deal offer that would have seen him sentenced to 10 years in prison. Instead, he got an additional three decades.
“This is not justice the government seeks,” Schulte accurately observed, “but vengeance.”
Schulte proved an important figure in the roistering annals of WikiLeaks. It was his disclosures that signalled the cold and vicious turn in US policy in targeting Assange.
The release of the Vault 7 files sent the then director, Mike Pompeo, into a rage. The 2021 Yahoo! report, which famously noted various opinions within the intelligence community on what could be done about the Australian publisher, reports that change of approach. According to one former Trump national security official, the director and CIA officials “were completely detached from reality because they were so detached about Vault 7.”
Soon, Pompeo was publicly tarring WikiLeaks while privately pondering options to kidnap or assassinate Assange.
In April 2017, in a speech given to the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington, the director hoisted the black flag. “WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service and has encouraged its followers to find jobs at the CIA in order to obtain intelligence.”
Nonsensically, Pompeo imbues the publishing organisation with dictatorial and mesmeric qualities. “It directed Chelsea Manning in her theft of specific secret information.” (No, it did not.) “And it overwhelmingly focuses on the United States while seeking support from anti-democratic countries and organizations.” Given the concentration of unstable power at the heart of Washington, and its imperial pretences, Pompeo can hardly be surprised.
The speech is worthy of close analysis. It declares, inevitably, that the CIA is a noble organisation incapable of abuse, a saintly enterprise of patriots who should be treated as such. It takes issue with those who give the game away. And, more fundamentally, it refuses to have any truck with a publisher who aids that cause.
Pompeo, for instance, dismissed Assange’s own justifications for publishing national security material as “sophistry”. He could hardly be compared to Thomas Jefferson or “the Pulitzer Prize-winning work of legitimate news organizations such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.”
Dangerously, the strategy behind the bluster becomes clear, and would find itself gorily displayed in the indictment against Assange. It picks and chooses between publishers as sacred and profane, the ennobled and the condemned. It ignores the pointed fact that national security information is almost always pilfered and leaked, sometimes patriotically, sometimes selfishly. Punish Assange, and you are opening the door to punishing any news outlet of any stripe operating anywhere. And that, fundamentally, is the point.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: [email protected]
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Please enjoy this rapid fire interview as I react to several developing stories including Director-General of the World Health Organization Tedros frustration with the lack of world enthusiasm for his attempted power grab through the 2024 Pandemic Preparedness Treaty Alliance and new International Health Regulations. Here is a quick explanation from Canadian MP Leslyn Lewis:
What is the status of the Pandemic Treaty?
The Pandemic Treaty is nearing the end of the negotiation and drafting phase, ultimately due to be signed by May 2024. The WHO established the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) in December 2021 to spearhead the negotiations, drafting and input into the proposed treaty. Since then, the INB has held several meetings to gather input and discuss proposals for the treaty.
The INB has gone over several iterations of proposals and considered member-state submissions. They are currently finalizing the text for a proposed accord to be presented at the 2024 WHA meeting.
Notably, the change in referring to the pandemic instrument as an accord and not a treaty might signal that there may be a lower threshold of national scrutiny required than that which a formal treaty process would require. A treaty would require that each member state ratify the treaty, should it be legally binding in international law. The precise obligations and compliance measures to be adopted are yet to be determined.
What would the treaty do?
The WHO has stated that the treaty could “ensure better preparedness and equitable response for future pandemics, and to advance the principles of equity, solidarity and health for all.”
It “could take the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and use them to build back better. Equity is one of the key principles being discussed as part of the work on the new accord.
“A new accord could promote political commitment at the highest level, through ensuring an all-of-government and whole-of-society approach within countries, and sustained and sufficient political and financial investment within and among countries.”[1]
As proposed, a legally binding treaty would see power given to the WHO to direct the global health management of pandemics. The treaty will define and classify what is to be considered a pandemic. Once a pandemic is declared, the WHO would require countries to adopt specific response measures. The working draft of the treaty also proposes a reporting requirement to the WHO and advises that there should be a “global peer review mechanism to assess national, regional and global preparedness capacities and gaps.”
Listen to what Tedros says in the clip. Do you trust him or the WHO?
We also cover the former top White House coronavirus adviser under President Donald Trump, Dr. Deborah Birx with former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo on long-COVID analogies to HIV disease.
Birx is towing the narrative line that all of our ills are attributed to long-COVID with no mention of the vaccine.
Finally, Alison Steinberg asked about a previously unknown type of replicating agent, far smaller and simpler than a virus called an “obelisk” which is a loop of self-replicating RNA that infects commensal bacteria such as streptococcussanguinis. They discuss how improved understanding of the oral-pharyngeal-gut microbiome raise the possibility of improving our immune defenses.
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Debanking is the weaponization of finance for the purpose of social control, which simply doesn’t happen in a free society
By debanking me, my CEO, CFO, their spouses and children, Chase Bank is giving people a foretaste of how central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) will be used to control the masses
In the U.S., 81.37% of all desktop searches are done on Google. Worldwide, its market share for search is 85.53%. Its monopoly on searches gives Google enormous influence over what people can see and learn about, which is incredibly dangerous. Google, all by itself, can easily mislead and “de-educate” the global population for generations to come
AI systems are also being programmed with pro-pharma propaganda, and that will become the dominant knowledge base for humanity from here on
To preserve life-saving health information that is being actively censored to erase it from human memory, I am creating a master video course that will encapsulate my life’s work. Once completed, the course will be available to Substack subscribers, who can download the videos and share them with others
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August 18, 2023, I joined Mike Adams, aka, “The Health Ranger,” on his free-speech platform, Brighteon, to discuss our debanking by JP Morgan Chase Bank.
As previously reported, in mid-July, I, along with my CEO and CFO — both of whom have been with me for nearly 20 years — received identical letters informing us that Chase Bank was closing our accounts, as well as the accounts of their spouses and children.
Irrational Excuses
In the original letters, the only reason we were given was that there was “unexpected activity” on an unspecified account. Later, a representative told reporters that account closures are typically only done for anti-money laundering purposes.1,2
However, no money laundering charges have ever leveled against me, and in a real money laundering case, they seize your accounts outright. They don’t give you a month to take your business elsewhere.
Then, in response to a letter by Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, in which he questioned the bank’s decision to close our accounts, a Chase spokesman replied that the accounts were closed because:3
“… the customer has been the subject of regulatory scrutiny by the Federal government on multiple occasions for engaging in illegal activity relating to the marketing and sale of consumer products and we have a legal obligation to prevent funds derived from these activities from flowing through our bank.”
The last “federal scrutiny” of our business was 2.5 years ago in 2021,4 when the Food and Drug Administration sent us a warning letter accusing us of selling vitamins C, D, quercetin and Pterostilbene Advanced to “mitigate, prevent, treat, diagnose or cure COVID-19 in people,” in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.
However, a warning letter is not proof of illegal activity. It’s an accusation. We responded to the FDA’s letter, letting them know their accusations were baseless, and that was the end of that. We had not violated the law.
If Chase insists it has a “legal obligation” to debank me, my employees and their families, over an old FDA warning letter — which had no legal basis and never led to criminal charges — then Chase Bank would also be legally obligated to debank its own executives and employees who intentionally benefited from sex trafficking5,6,7 and defrauded investors with illegal investment schemes.8 Why haven’t they?
Hidden Social Credit System in Action
While many have been debanked over the past couple of years, what’s particularly egregious about this action is that it was not only directed at me, but my employees and their families as well.
This is one of the primary characteristics of the Chinese social credit system, where people are punished for their associations. It’s the weaponization of finance for the purpose of social control, which simply doesn’t happen in a free society.
In that respect, the actions by Chase Bank indicate we’re in a whole new phase of the globalists’ social engineering project. It’s also a foretaste of how the central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) will be used to control the masses.
Chase Bank Is Part of Government Censorship Committee
Interestingly, we recently discovered that Chase Bank is the only bank represented on the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Cybersecurity Advisory Committee,9which may explain why Chase targeted my business. This advisory committee provides “strategic and actionable recommendations” to the CISA director on “cybersecurity issues.”
A Chase representative was present during a March 1, 2022, Cybersecurity Advisory Committee Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Misinformation & Disinformation Subcommittee meeting,10,11in which Laura Dehmlow, section chief for the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), warned that “subversive information” on social media could undermine public support for the U.S. government, and that “media infrastructure” needed to be held accountable.
The committee members went on to discuss what the government’s strategic approach related to misinformation and disinformation ought to be, how best to organize information sharing between the public and private sector, and how to collaborate across channels.
We now know that a formalized process was implemented that allowed government officials to log into a special portal where they could flag social media content for removal.12
Ask yourself, why was a major bank included in a meeting in which they were trying to tease out the best way for government to censor Americans? With everything we now know about CISA’s domestic censorship activities, it seems reasonable to suspect that the weaponization of finance — debanking “domestic threat actors” — was part of the original strategy.
So, did CISA have a hand in the bank’s decision to close my business accounts, and those of key employees and their families? We have no evidence of this yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Florida Attorney General Is on the Case
In May 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation that specifically prohibits financial institutions from denying or canceling services based on political or religious beliefs,13 so, we may end up being the test case for this new legislation. We’re currently working with the Florida state attorney general.
Unfortunately, I misspoke during the interview, saying the attorney general’s office is filing a suit against Chase. However, we’re not quite there yet. I’ve been told it’s still too early to tell whether charges will be filed.
The Second Burning of the Library of Alexandria
I launched my website in 1997. Google didn’t even exist yet. And for years, all the way up to about 2015 or so, the internet remained uncensored. You could find information about anything you could think of.
What’s happening to the internet now is reminiscent of the burning of the library of Alexandria, the storehouse of the world’s most important and precious information. For background, the library of ancient Alexandria in Egypt, was once known as the “greatest accumulation of human knowledge in history.”14 Historical sources report there may have been as many as 400,000 papyrus scrolls recording ancient works and knowledge, including 200,000 that Marc Antony gave to Cleopatra.
Inexplicably, like their 21st century cousins, the world citizens of yesterday apparently didn’t appreciate this wide body of knowledge and, over the centuries they burned the library numerous times until, today, practically none of the library still exists, after a purging reportedly done to erase anything that disagreed with The Koran occurred.
Now, the modern world’s library, Google, has essentially burned itself down by programming its search algorithms such that you cannot find anything but officially sanctioned information, unless you know the URL of what you’re looking for. If you rely on any search engines your search results will typically be limited to less than 100 links you can click on even though there may be tens or hundreds of millions of results.
In the U.S., 81.37% of all desktop searches are done on Google.15 Worldwide, its market share for search is 85.53%.16 Its monopoly on searches gives Google enormous influence over what people can see and learn about, which is incredibly dangerous. Google, all by itself, can easily mislead and “de-educate” the global population for generations to come.
However, since nearly every search engine uses Google data, the indirect control they have is likely closer to 95%.
Eventually, I suspect artificial intelligence will take over online searches, at which point there will only be one answer for any given question. Needless to say, that will be even more dangerous. We can already see that AI systems are being fed a steady diet of pro-pharma propaganda and nothing else, and that will become the dominant knowledge base for humanity from here on.
So, we’re at a point now where we must work to preserve life-saving information, and figure out a way to distribute it in a way that cannot be censored. Fortunately, decentralized alternatives are coming online, such as Qortal,17Bastyon18 and Nostr.19 Adams is also working on turning Brighteon into a completely decentralized, peer-to-peer platform that will be impossible to censor or shut down.
Coming Soon: A Master Health Course
I’m currently working on a video course on health and nutrition that people will be able to download to their personal hard drives, so that this information doesn’t get extinguished. If need be, they can then put it on a thumb drive and hand it out to friends and family, so they have the information they need to thrive as well.
There are many inexpensive, basic strategies that can radically improve your health, quality of life and longevity, and these are the very things the globalists, technocrats and transhumanists are now trying to erase from the database of knowledge accumulated on the internet.
I mean, they’re literally in the process of erasing basic health advances that have been well-recognized and understood for decades (if not hundreds or even thousands of years), such as the fact that you have an immune system, and that certain nutrients are necessary for, and will improve, your immune function.
I hope to end up with about 50 modules, each module being a one- to two-hour video. In its totality, the course will be a compilation of my life’s work. I want to give people a library of health strategies that they can go back to again and again, even after I’m gone, and even if the internet is taken down.
The course will be released on Substack to subscribers, who will have the opportunity to ask questions, and if needed, I’ll release follow-up videos. The great thing about releasing this information in the form of video modules rather than a book is that, if new information becomes available, I can simply record an update. You can’t go back and change what you put in a book.
The Substack subscription is $5 a month, or $50 a year, so it’s very affordable. Substack proceeds are used to support a nonprofit dedicated to improving crisis resilience. I do not have a title for this course yet, but I’ll share more information about it as it gets closer to completion.
Prepare for the Inevitable
I’m convinced COVID-19 was just a test run. Something far worse than COVID is being planned for us, so we must prepare, to the best of our ability. Addressing any health problems you may have and maintaining good health is part of that preparation. Being healthy will make you more resilient in the face of just about any difficulty, and there’s no telling what the globalist cabal will cook up next.
It could be another bioweapon, electrical grid failures, food shortages, a financial collapse, a cyberattack on critical infrastructure or a fabricated alien invasion.
Critical data collection on messaging and public responses took place during the COVID pandemic, so now they have the technological capability to identify the triggers that will maximize fear and give them the greatest degree of control. I suspect the next crisis will be far worse for that fact alone.
Whatever crisis gets rolled out, we now know that it will be used to push tyranny, because global slavery is the ultimate goal. They want complete control over every human being on earth, from cradle to grave — what you eat, what you do and think, what you buy, how and where you live, and for how long.
Another crucial preparation strategy is to build a community where you can share knowledge. Everyone has different skill sets, and we need to learn to work together locally and help each other.
Lone wolves are not likely to survive the multitude of crises headed our way. City dwellers will also face much greater difficulty, as there are so few natural resources there. So, if you can, get out of the cities.
George Orwell’s Final Warning
In closing, we’d do well to heed George Orwell’s sober advice. Before his death in 1950, at the age of 47, he told a reporter that “something like ‘1984’ could happen,” because “this is the direction the world is going in at the present time.”
Indeed, we’re still heading in that same direction today, 73 years later. Orwell went on to read an excerpt from his book, “1984,” followed by a final warning to future generations:
“’In our world, there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph and self-abasement. The sex instinct will be eradicated. We shall abolish the orgasm. There will be no loyalty except loyalty to the party.
But always, there will be the intoxication of power. Always, in every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever.’
The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one: Don’t let it happen. It depends on you.”
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It’s barely been a month into 2024, and here’s Washington DC, already bombing half a dozen countries and threatening at least that many more. This includes Syria, Iraq and Yemen, while nobody’s even reporting on drone strikes all across Africa and the Middle East (including occasional attacks on Afghanistan). They’re also threatening Iran, Venezuela and several other countries in Latin America, including Mexico.
On February 4, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivanrefused to rule out the possibility of strikes inside Iran. Attacks on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its allied militias in Iraq and Syria are already underway. On February 3, the United Kingdom also joined this aggression. To put it simply, there was an attack on American soldiers in Jordan, so Washington DC is bombing Syria and Iraq (for God knows which time). Make it make sense. Former US president Donald Trump, who’s anything but innocent when it comes to America’s disastrous foreign policy, has repeatedly condemned Washington DC’s presence in the Middle East. He completely deconstructed the mainstream propaganda machine’s laughable narrative that the unfortunate region is supposedly “more stable” thanks to the political West’s aggression by simply pointing out that it’s “a mess”.
And indeed, who in their mind would think that having terrorists and various shady groups running entire regions and even countries in the Middle East is better than having Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi or Bashar al-Assad in power?
Well, the US and its puppets certainly think so and precisely thanks to that, countries such as Libya, Syria and Iraq have been ravaged by decades of war. This is without even taking into account other countries such as Yemen where millions have been brought to the point of extinction, mostly through hunger and sheer brutality. Despite all that, including its humiliating defeat in Afghanistan nearly two and a half years ago, Washington DC wants to convince everyone that invading Iran would actually make anything better. There are close to 90 million people in that country, which also has a very robust domestic military industry, as well as a sizeable stockpile of ballistic missiles and drones.
It should be noted that the US itself is also a far cry from 2003 when it could muster hundreds of thousands of soldiers, as well as those of its vassals and satellite states. In other words, Washington DC simply doesn’t have the conventional forces to pull off such an invasion. The American people are simply not interested in serving in the military as they were just 20 years ago. So, what does that leave it with? Weapons of mass destruction or WMDs. And indeed, the Pentagon has an undisclosed number of W76-2 warheads that have a very small yield of 2-7 kt (kilotons of TNT). This is upwards of only 10% of the destructive power of the “Fat Man” atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Basic military logic implies that such weapons are pointless against a country like Russia that has multi-megaton monstrosities such as the unrivaled RS-28 “Sarmat” and whose retaliation would devastate the entire NATO.
The only viable explanation is that the US wants to use such warheads in a conflict with a non-nuclear power. Faced with dwindling conventional capabilities, America is left with only one way to try to blackmail the rest of the world into accepting its vaunted “rules-based world order” – nuclear war. This is also completely in line with the overall US military strategy – attack only those who can’t shoot back. For the time being, Iran is the only major rival without thermonuclear weapons, making it the “perfect target”. However, that’s certainly not enough for the perpetually warmongering political elite in America. Namely, they’ve just sent three nuclear-powered supercarriers and B-52 strategic bombers to the Asia-Pacific as a “show of force” to China and North Korea. USAF’s other strategic bombers are already being put to “good use”, as the B-1Bs are once again devastating the Middle East.
Anyone with a single functioning brain cell knows who the bad guys are. Except for the bad guys themselves. On the contrary, they’re unequivocally convinced they’re the “good guys”. It’s not entirely clear if this is a coping mechanism, self-delusion or perhaps simply a case of one lying to everyone (including themselves). Either way, the answer to that question is completely inconsequential and doesn’t make any difference to the dozens (if not hundreds) of millions of people (mostly civilians) whose lives they’ve destroyed and keep destroying. For decades, the US has been trying to portray the Soviet Union as the “Evil Empire”, with some of its presidents even directly calling it that.
However, things have worsened considerably in the last 10-15 years, as the current generation of neoliberal and neocon warmongers have openly likened Russia and President Vladimir Putin to Nazi Germany and Hitler, respectively. It takes a special kind of hypocrisy to do that while attacking well over half the planet and even calling it the “War on Terror” or “struggle for freedom and democracy”. The US-led political West has (ab)used the latter so much that terms such as freedom, democracy and human rights will at some point need to be replaced with something that would encompass their true meaning, but sound different, as the originals have been tarnished beyond repair.
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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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When Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Matthew G. Olsen, the Assistant Attorney General for National Security, and James Smith, the Assistant Director of the New York office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced on February 1 that Joshua Schulte would spend 40 years in prison, longer than many murderers, they made it clear to the world that the most grave crime an American can commit is exposing the barbaric actions of the government against its own citizens.
The Statue of Liberty weeps; The spiritual leader of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine, who wrote, “He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression” rolls over in his grave.
The United States, like so many empires of old, has tossed off all pretenses of communal good, of republicanism, of accountability and transparency, of the rule of law and justice for all, and instead has crudely marked out a path for suppression of any attempt to make public its internal decay.
Let us not kid ourselves; we all know where that road leads.
Perhaps you did not know about the trial of Joshua Schulte for releasing evidence of criminal wrongdoing within the government. The case has been largely been ignored by the mainstream media, and of course all the candidates for office have been as silent as the tomb about this grotesque miscarriage of justice.
Reports that he possessed child pornography were added to the charges later to make it seem a little less insane—but although such material was most likely planted—it did nothing to relieve the grim prospect.
His crime was the release to the public through the Wikileaks website of examples of criminal wrongdoing by the United States, especially by the CIA. Most likely it was not even him who released those damning materials.
Insiders in defense and intelligence all know full well that Schulte and associates selected relatively tame criminality by intelligence and the military and did not even touch on the major state crimes. Yet even that action had to be punished as brutally as possible.
This sentencing, in which a computer programmer with a conscience was turned into a terrorist for a show trial, forms nothing less than a declaration of war against truth tellers, whistleblowers, and, along with the slaughter of journalists in Gaza, against writers and intellectuals in the United States and around the world. A republic infected with the virus of empire will take everyone down with her as her titanic form sinks lower and lower into the swamp.
We know that there are people at every level in the Federal Government, right now, who are reaching the breaking point, who feel that they must speak out against the unspeakable evil that flows beneath the surface of just about everything these days.
We feel your pain, men and women of conscience, and even if the politicians and public figures run away in fear, while they act bravely on TV, we will stand with you.
We know that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is the intended next victim of such a show trial.
We also know that there are hundreds, thousands, of you who have been punished without anyone even finding out what happened to you. We stand with all of you too, all you unspoken heroes. As Bobby Kennedy said,
“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, that, crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
After all, the jury in 2020 could not agree to convict Schulte for violating the Espionage Act, despite immense political pressure.
There is much doubt that the materials released to WikiLeaks were even related to Schulte in the first place. But what is certain is that those responsible for the crimes described in those documents will not be subject to persecution because a secret fortress of classified directives protects them, making them like gods in a rotten empire.
The information released on WikiLeaks, and attributed to Schulte, describes broad criminal operations including development of malware to attack anyone without a trace, spying programs aimed at illegally gathering information on citizens that can be sold to the highest bidder, and techniques for blaming other countries and individuals for crimes of which they were innocent.
Needless to say, in a democratic and transparent nation, Schulte and others would be held up as heroes. But today they are the enemies of the dark forces that have lodged deep inside Washington.
The point of the release of these materials was to start a debate on what America is doing and what it is becoming. But the CIA Director at the time Mike Pompeo, denounced these truth tellers as “demons” and “enemies” declaring that the basic rights of any citizens involve would be forfeited because they had become a “non-state hostile intelligence agency.”
It is important to note that Schulte has served five years under terrible conditions according to the barbaric “special administrative measures” program that subjects him to white noise in solitary confinement in a dark room, all actions intended to do psychological damage. Not given a fork, he must eat with his hands. Often, he does not have access to a toilet.
Palestinians protesting the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza would not find Schulte’s situation unfamiliar. After all such psychological warfare techniques were developed in Israel. Nor would immigrants from South America who have been caught on the border, and subject to confinement in inhuman camps run for profit by contractors have any trouble understanding either. After all, the militarized border contains security systems operated by the same firms, like Elbit Systems, that work in the occupied territories, and use the same surveillance technology, and interrogation and isolation methods, developed over there. That obscene marriage of Israeli and American security, private prisons, and opaque misuse of law is described in detail in Todd Miller’s book Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the U.S. Border Around the World.
Those borders, those walls to block out people, to lock up truthtellers, or to hide ugly secrets at the CIA or the Department of Defense, must be defended at all costs by the powerful.
We must stand up against this brutalization of the government in the United States and resist rule by the multinational corporations, and the wealthy behind them, who are pushing this policy of punishment for anyone who dares to speak the truth.
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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.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).
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Hybrid Bt cotton, the only commercialised GM crop in India, has failed conclusively. Based on this failure and the evidence on GM crops to date, the Union of India’s proposal to commercialise herbicide-tolerant (HT) mustard will destroy not just Indian mustard agriculture but citizens’ health.
There have been five days of intense hearings on this matter in the Supreme Court (SC) — the GMO Public Interest Writ filed almost 20 years ago in 2005 by the author, which ended on 18 January 2024.
In these last 20 years, piecemeal hearings have dealt with submissions relating to individual crops like hybrid Bt cotton, the attempted commercialisation of hybrid Bt brinjal (2010) and now the attempt to commercialise hybrid HT mustard.
The evidence provided here is a distillation of the critical inputs of those 60+ submissions based on the affidavits and studies of leading, independent scientists and experts of international renown.
However, there is a serious and proven conflict of interest among our regulators, the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Agriculture along with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), which promote GMOs in Indian agriculture. This evidence reflects the findings of the TEC Report (Technical Expert Committee) appointed by the Supreme Court (SC) in 2012 and two Parliamentary Standing Committees of 2012 and 2017.
‘Modern biotechnology’ or genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are products where the genomes of organisms are transformed through laboratory techniques, including genetically engineered DNA (recombinant) and its direct introduction into cells. These are techniques not used in traditional breeding and selection.
GMOs create organisms in ways that have never existed in 3.8 billion years of evolution and produce ‘unintended effects’ that are not immediately apparent. This is why rigorous, independent protocols for risk and hazard identification are the sine qua non of correct regulation in the public interest. The Indian ‘Rules of 1989’ describe GMOs as “hazardous”.
Contamination by GMOs of the natural environment is of outstanding concern, recognised by the CBD (Convention on Biodiversity), of which India is a signatory. India is one of 17 listed international hot spots of diversity, which includes mustard, brinjal and rice. India is the centre of the world’s biological diversity in brinjal with over 2500 varieties grown in the country and as many as 29 wild species.
India is a secondary centre of origin of rape-seed mustard with over 9000 accessions in our gene bank (National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources). With a commercialised GM crop, contamination is certain. The precautionary principle must apply, is read into the Constitution and is a legal precedent in India.
Hybrid Bt cotton was introduced in 2002 and remains the only approved commercialised crop in India. It has been an abject failure.
Failure of Bt Cotton
India is the only country in the world to have introduced the Bt gene into hybrid Bt Cotton. It was introduced in hybrids as a ‘value-capture mechanism’, according to Dr Kranthi, ex director of the Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR). The hybrid technology disallows seed saving by millions of small farmers. Conservative estimates indicate that Indian farmers may have paid an additional amount of Rs 14,000 crores for Bt cotton seeds during the period 2002-18, of which trait fees amounted to Rs 7337.37 crores, (Dr Kranthi). There was also a phenomenal three-fold increase in labour costs in hybrid cotton cultivation.
Prof. Andrew Gutierrez (University of California, Berkeley) is among the world’s leading entomologists and cotton scientists and provided the ecological explanation of why hybrid Bt cotton is every bit a disaster that it is in India. Most hybrid cottons are long season (180-200-day duration). This increases the opportunities for pest resurgence and outbreaks because it links into the lifecycle of the pest. The low-density planting also increases the cost of hybrid seeds substantially.
Hybrids require stable water too (therefore, irrigation, as opposed to rain-fed) and more fertiliser. Some 90% of current Bt cotton hybrids appear susceptible to sap-sucking insects, leaf-curl virus and leaf reddening, adding to input costs and loss of yield. Most telling is that India produces only 3.3 million tonnes from its irrigated area of 4.9 million hectares compared to 6.96 million tonnes from an equivalent area in China.
Hybrid Bt cotton in India has resulted in a yield plateau, high production costs and low productivity that reduce farmer revenues, correlated with increased farmer distress and suicides. It has stymied the development of economically viable high-density short-season (HD-SS) Non-Bt high-yielding straight-line varieties. The failure of hybrid Bt cotton is an abject lesson for GMO implementation in other crops.
Yet, the regulators attempted to repeat history in the form of hybrid Bt brinjal and Hybrid HT Mustard.
Field trial solutions (CICR data) of high-density short-season (HD-SS) NON-GMO pure-line (non-hybrid), rainfed cotton varieties have been developed in India that could more than double yield and nearly triple net income.
The Central Government admitted in its affidavit in the Delhi High Court (22 Jan 2016), adding, (on 23 January 2017), that Bt “cotton seeds are now unaffordable to farmers due to high royalties charged by MMBL (Mahyco Monsanto Biotech Ltd) which has a near monopoly on Bt cotton seeds and that this has led to a market failure”.
Moreover, there is no trait for yield enhancement in the Bt technology. Any intrinsic yield increase is properly attributable to its hybridisation in both Bt cotton and Bt brinjal. Lower insecticide use is the reason for introducing the Bt technology worldwide.
The pink bollworm has developed high levels of resistance against Bollgard-II Bt cotton, leading to increased insecticide usage in India, increases in new induced secondary pests and crop failures. The annual report 2015-16 of the ICAT-CICR confirms that Bt cotton is no longer effective for bollworm control
Insecticide usage on cotton in 2002 was 0.88 kg per hectare, which increased to 0.97 kg per hectare in 2013 (Srivastav and Kolady 2016).
Matters were deliberately muddied in India, leading to any hybrid vigour being attributed to the Bt technology! Yields have stagnated despite the deployment of all available latest technologies, including the introduction of new potent GM technologies, a two-fold increase in the use of fertilisers and increased insecticide use and irrigation. And yet, India’s global rank is 30-32nd in terms of yield.
In 13 years, the cost of cultivation increased 302%. In 15 years, there was 450% increase in labour costs. The costs of hybrid seed, insecticide and fertiliser increased more than 250 to 300%.
Net profit for farmers was Rs. 5971/ha in 2003 (pre-Bt) but plummeted to net losses of Rs. 6286 in 2015 (Dr Kranthi): see this.
Regulatory Failure: Bt Brinjal
Regulators tried to commercialise Bt brinjal and in hybrids in 2009. The Bt gene is proven to be undeniably toxic (Profs. Schubert of the Salk Institute; Pusztai, Seralini and others have confirmed this).
In August 2008, the regulators were forced to publish the Developers’ (Monsanto-Mahyco) self-assessed bio-safety dossier on their website, 16 months after the order of the SC to make the safety dossier data public (15 Feb 2007).
Bt brinjal was the first vegetable food crop in the world to be approved for commercialisation, by the collective regulatory body and their expert committees, virtually without oversight. When the international scientific community examined the raw data, their collective comments were scathing. Prof Jack Heinemann stated that Mahyco has failed at the first, elementary step of the safety study: “I have never seen less professionalism in the presentation and quality assurance of molecular data than in this study”.
He criticised Mahyco for using outdated studies, testing to below acceptable standards and inappropriate and invalid test methods.
Prof David Andow, in his comprehensive critique of Monsanto’s Dossier, ‘Bt brinjal Event EE1’, listed 37 studies of which perhaps one had been conducted and reported to a satisfactory level by Monsanto. He concluded: “The GEAC set too narrow a scope for environmental risk assessment (ERA) of hybrid Bt brinjal, and it is because of this overly narrow scope that the EC-II is not an adequate ERA… most of the possible environmental risks of Bt brinjal have not been adequately evaluated; this includes risks to local varieties of brinjal and wild relatives, risks to biological diversity, and risk of resistance evolution in BFSB.”
The Central Government itself declared an unconditional and indefinite moratorium on Bt brinjal in Feb 2009 based on the collective responses of the scientific community.
Disaster in the Making: GM Hybrid HT Mustard
Like Bt, HT is a pesticidal crop (to kill weeds). These two GMO technologies represent about 98% of crops planted worldwide, with HT crops accounting for more than 80%. Neither has a trait for yield. In its 2002 Report, the United States Department for Agriculture stated: “currently available GM crops do not increase the yield potential… In fact, yield may even decrease if the varieties used to carry the herbicide tolerant or insect-resistant genes are not the highest yielding cultivars… Perhaps the biggest issue raised by these results is how to explain the rapid adoption of GE crops when farm financial impacts appear to be mixed or even negative.”
The developer’s (Centre for Genetic Manipulation of Crop Plants University of Delhi) bio-safety dossier, in contempt of the SC orders, has never made its data public. A Right to Information (RTI) request was filed in 2016 with the Directorate of Rape-Seed Mustard Research, which conducts protocols of non-GMO mustard trials for crop improvement programmes for our farmers, for varietal stability and performance. The RTI was an eye opener. Virtually all the directorate’s norms were flouted in the field trials, making them invalid. Hybrid mustard HT DMH 11 was out yielded by more than the 10% norm by non-GMO varieties and hybrids, which forced the developers to admit this fact in their formal reply affidavit in the SC.
Hybrid HT mustard DMH 11 employs three transgenes: the male sterility gene, barnase, the female restorer gene, barstar, and the bar gene that confers tolerance to Bayer’s herbicide glufosinate ammonium or BASTA. Each of the parent lines has the bar gene that makes them both HT crops along with their resulting hybrid DMH 11. The reason for employing barnase and barstar is because mustard is a closed pollinating crop (even though it out crosses pretty well, 18%+) and this technology (a male sterility technology) makes it easier to produce mustard hybrids. It is not a hybrid technology. Its counterpart in non-GMO male sterility technology is the CMS system (cytoplasmic male sterility). Employing male sterility in mustard allows it to be used more easily in already existing hybridisation technology.
It is curious the extent to which the regulators have tried to obfuscate the facts and muddy the waters. Their first response was that the acronym HT in mustard DMH 11 means ‘hybrid technology’. When this didn’t work, the next ‘try’ was that DMH 11 isn’t an HT crop!
This too was easily proved wrong because of the presence of the bar gene. Now, this fact has been admitted.
Furthermore, the regulators have failed either intentionally, or because they are simply unable to stop, illegal HT cotton being grown on a commercial scale for the last 15 years or so. This is the state of GMO regulation in India.
Bayer’s own data sheet states that glufosinate causes birth defects and is damaging to most plants that it comes into contact with. Like its counterpart, glyphosate, it is a systemic, broad spectrum, non-selective herbicide (it kills indiscriminately soil organisms, beneficial insects etc) and is damaging to most plants and aquatic life. The US Environmental Protection Agency classifies glufosinate ammonium as “persistent” and “mobile” and is “expected to adversely affect non-target terrestrial plant species”.
Glufosinate is not permitted in crop plants in India, under the Insecticide Act. Since it is very persistent in the environment, it will certainly contaminate water supplies in addition to food. Surfactants are used to get the active ingredients into the plant, which is engineered to withstand the herbicide, so it doesn’t die when sprayed. The herbicide and surfactant are sprayed directly on the crops and significant quantities are then taken up into the plant. The weeds die — or used to!
The US Geological survey noted that while 20 million pounds/year of glyphosate was used prior to GE crops (1992), 280 million pounds/year was used in 2012, largely as a result of glyphosate-resistant crops. In the U.S. alone, glyphosate-resistant weeds were estimated to occupy an area of over 24 million hectares as of 2012. This is a failed and unsustainable technology anywhere, and for India it will be disastrous.
The stated objective by the regulators themselves for HT mustard is that the two HT parent lines (barnase and barstar each with the bar gene), will be similarly employed in India’s best (non-GMO) varieties to create new crosses resulting in any number of HT hybrid mustard DMH crops. Thus, Indian mustard varieties (non-GMO) in a very short time will be contaminated and Indian mustard agriculture (which is non-GMO) destroyed.
The regulators claim that GMO HT hybrid DMH 11 will create a significant dent in India’s oilseeds imports. Given that GMO mustard has no gene for yield enhancement, is significantly out yielded by non-GMO mustard hybrids and varieties, this is indeed a magic bean produced from thin air by the regulators, defying all logic and commonsense. Mustard Oil imports are virtually zero (ie rapeseed mustard as distinct from canola rape oil which is also illegal GMO).
The story of the current steep decline in oilseeds production in Indian farming must be laid at the door of a wrong policy decision that comprehensively ignored national and farmers’ interest to severely slash import duties on oilseeds of around 300% to virtually zero. In 1993-94, India imported just 3% of our oil-seed demand; we were self- sufficient. Then we happily bowed to WTO pressure and now import almost 70% of our demand in edible oils! (Devinder Sharma). This is the real reason for our heavy import bill.
The TEC recommend a double bar on GM Mustard — for being an HT crop and also in a centre of mustard diversification and/or origin. It is hoped that our government will recognise the dangers of GMOs, bar HT crops, including GM mustard, and impose a moratorium on all Bt crops.
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Aruna Rodrigues is the Lead Petitioner in the GMO PIL filed in 2005 for a moratorium on GM crops.
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In this article I provide extracts from my book No Worries No Virus. The book details:
comprehensive evidence of the Covid-19 hoax;
evidence the pandemic situation was planned with a purpose;
analysis indicating the Covid-19 death numbers are fraudulent;
flawed modelling and false case numbers used to justify world lockdown;
the fraudulent Covid-19 PCR test used to create false case numbers;
technical analysis and evidence showing that a Covid-19 virus causing disease simply does not exist (no evidence of being isolated, ever);
the work of Dr Stefan Lanka and other experts demonstrating that pathogenic viruses causing disease simply do not exist – virology took a wrong turn
the truth about relevant world events in banking, politics, and war between 1913 to 2019 that help one gain a deeper realisation of the agenda behind the Covid-19 world lockdown;
analysis of the World Economic Forum technocratic reset agenda.
In March 2020, as the most of world grinded to a halt in the face of the Covid-19 scare, populations were simultaneously preached to by establishment media and corrupted politicians about the threat of impending death. A threat that was propagandised by the corporate-owned and government media with incomplete, pseudo-science, pressuring everyone to get the jab. The fact that most of the people of the world were simultaneously forced to ‘stop’, signalled that a major change in the world was being attempted.
In our own life time we have lived under a corporate-communist political hierarchy, which, though purporting to be made of individual and autonomous nation states, is actually a one world government controlled by the world private banking cartel and its mega-corporations and its unelected institutional framework, including the United Nations, the World Health Organisation, the World Economic Forum, et al. This also includes the mega-corporate media who, at the launch of the pandemic, employed nothing less than trauma-based mind control to convince the world’s population that they were all likely to die from Covid-19 unless they did exactly what the world government ordered and take an experimental vaccine. They then enact and encourage laws that allow society to become degraded, weak, easily controllable, and unable to perceive the nature of their material and spiritual captivity.
Covid-19 was a fulcrum event, it created a mental split. There are those that fully accepted the government narrative, restrictions, and wore the masks proudly; and there are those more aware people that could see for themselves what was really happening. Millions of people worldwide have seen through the deception.
However, for the most part, those people that could see the truth couldn’t convince most other people of that truth no matter how hard they tried, and those believing the government narrative couldn’t convince the ‘truthers’ of their truth no matter hard they tried.
A friend sent me this video titled ‘Mask Wearer versus Non-Mask Wearer’. The video exemplifies in a comedic way the very noticeable split in families and in wider society that was induced by the Covid ‘situation’.
It seemed like an invisible mental barrier manifested itself. Why could the relative few people see through the Covid-19 fake pandemic so clearly amidst the mass insanity around them? and why could most of the people not see the lies?
Rather than submitting to lies and technocratic slavery, perhaps it is how we face and deal with lies that counts. Was the fake pandemic the last chance for those who refused to wake up after the lies of 911 and those who refused to wake up from corporate media fakery.
Note the following video of 911 in which building 7 is seen ‘still standing’ in the New York skyline even after the BBC news team had announced it had collapsed. The BBC news got their timing wrong and building 7 collapsed later from an obvious controlled demolition.
During the terrible events we see an instance where the media-matrix of pre-scripted news got their timing wrong. No tall building had ever collapsed like a deck of cards primarily due to fire but this is what the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have claimed.
The fact that there is even a debate on whether this was a controlled demolition or not is mind boggling reality breakdown. When you mention building 7 nobody knows a single thing about it.
We can unlock ourselves from the mental prison of corporate media propaganda. Our mental reality creates our physical reality. That is why it is so important to see the truth. By seeing through the deceptions and manipulations our mental reality is cleansed, we are set free from delusion, and the doors and possibilities for a better future can be opened.
Thus, deceptions, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the lies of 911, or ‘manmade climate change due to CO2’, could be perceived as a challenge for us all. We can choose to either be a slave to the lie, or alternatively, to create and co-create a better reality based on truth.
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Mark Gerard Keenan, is a former scientist at the UK Government Dept. of Energy and Climate Change, and at the United Nations Environment Division. He is author of the following books:
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American Amara Majeed was accused of terrorism by the Sri Lankan police in 2019. Robert Williams was arrested outside his house in Detroit and detained in jail for 18 hours for allegedly stealing watches in 2020. Randal Reid spent six days in jail in 2022 for supposedly using stolen credit cards in a state he’d never even visited.
In all three cases, the authorities had the wrong people. In all three, it was face recognition technology that told them they were right. Law enforcement officers in many U.S. states are not required to reveal that they used face recognition technology to identify suspects.
Face recognition technology is the latest and most sophisticated version of biometric surveillance: using unique physical characteristics to identify individual people. It stands in a long line of technologies – from the fingerprint to the passport photo to iris scans – designed to monitor people and determine who has the right to move freely within and across borders and boundaries.
In my book, “Do I Know You? From Face Blindness to Super Recognition,” I explore how the story of face surveillance lies not just in the history of computing but in the history of medicine, of race, of psychology and neuroscience, and in the health humanities and politics.
Viewed as a part of the long history of people-tracking, face recognition techology’s incursions into privacy and limitations on free movement are carrying out exactly what biometric surveillance was always meant to do.
The system works by converting captured faces – either static from photographs or moving from video – into a series of unique data points, which it then compares against the data points drawn from images of faces already in the system. As face recognition technology improves in accuracy and speed, its effectiveness as a means of surveillance becomes ever more pronounced.
Accuracy Improves, But Biases Persist
Surveillance is predicated on the idea that people need to be tracked and their movements limited and controlled in a trade-off between privacy and security. The assumption that less privacy leads to more security is built in.
That may be the case for some, but not for the people disproportionately targeted by face recognition technology. Surveillance has always been designed to identify the people whom those in power wish to most closely track.
When the database against which captured images were compared had only a limited number of mostly white faces upon which to draw, face recognition technology would offer matches based on the closest alignment available, leading to a pattern of highly racialized – and racist – false positives.
With the expansion of images in the database and increased sophistication of the software, the number of false positives – incorrect matches between specific individuals and images of wanted people on file – has declined dramatically. Improvements in pixelation and mapping static images into moving ones, along with increased social media tagging and ever more sophisticated scraping tools like those developed by Clearview AI, have helped decrease the error rates.
The biases, however, remain deeply embedded into the systems and their purpose, explicitly or implicitly targeting already targeted communities. The technology is not neutral, nor is the surveillance it is used to carry out.
Latest Technique in a Long History
Face recognition software is only the most recent manifestation of global systems of tracking and sorting. Precursors are rooted in the now-debunked belief that bodily features offer a unique index to character and identity. This pseudoscience was formalized in the late 18th century under the rubric of the ancient practice of physiognomy.
Early systemic applications included anthropometry (body measurement), fingerprinting and iris or retinal scans. They all offered unique identifiers. None of these could be done without the participation – willing or otherwise – of the person being tracked.
The framework of bodily identification was adopted in the 19th century for use in criminal justice detection, prosecution and record-keeping to allow governmental control of its populace. The intimate relationship between face recognition and border patrol was galvanized by the introduction of photos into passports in some countries including Great Britain and the United States in 1914, a practice that became widespread by 1920.
Face recognition technology provided a way to go stealth on human biometric surveillance. Much early research into face recognition software was funded by the CIA for the purposes of border surveillance.
It tried to develop a standardized framework for face segmentation: mapping the distance between a person’s facial features, including eyes, nose, mouth and hairline. Inputting that data into computers let a user search stored photographs for a match. These early scans and maps were limited, and the attempts to match them were not successful.
Face recognition technology works not only to unlock your phone or help you board your plane more quickly, but also in promotional store kiosks and, essentially, in any photo taken and shared by anyone, with anyone, anywhere around the world. These photos are stored in a database, creating ever more comprehensive systems of surveillance and tracking.
And while that means that today it is unlikely that Amara Majeed, Robert Williams, Randal Reid and Black members of Congress would be ensnared by a false positive, face recognition technology has invaded everyone’s privacy. It – and the governmental and private systems that design, run, use and capitalize upon it – is watching, and paying particular attention to those whom society and its structural biases deem to be the greatest risk.
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Sharrona Pearl is an Associate Professor of Bioethics and History, Drexel University.
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Although Ukraine is doing everything possible to increase its domestic production of artillery shells, the limited support from its Western allies has meant that soldiers on the front lines are running out of this type of ammunition. Nonetheless, the Kiev regime is receiving just enough sporadic military support from the EU at this moment in time so that the Ukrainian military can survive, and the new financial aid package still indirectly supports Ukraine’s war effort, even if Brussels denies it.
“We’ve never had enough shells of 122 mm calibre… we’re getting them right from the factory,” a Ukrainian soldier fighting on the Avdeyevka front told POLITICO.
“On average, we fire 15 shots per day. But there were days when we made more than 100 shots, or haven’t made any at all. Now hostilities intensified in our direction, but we have as few shells as we used to have,” the soldier acknowledged.
News about the shortage of certain ammunition among Ukrainian troops is not new. Even Ukraine’s defence minister, Rustem Umerov, accepted in early January that there was “shell hunger” in his armed forces.
Although Ukraine is increasing the domestic production of shells to try and deal with this “hunger,” refusing to reveal the numbers it is manufacturing, the country is still almost entirely reliant on foreign supplies, which is proving disastrous since the European Union is failing to provide what it promised while American support for Ukraine has been gridlocked in Congress for months now.
“The stoppage is having a real impact on the troops dug into trenches in southern and eastern Ukraine,” notes the American news portal.
The report indicates that the Ukrainian military continues to receive little ammunition from abroad, which complicates the situation even though the country is trying to increase its local production of projectiles.
Umerov himself admitted that Russia “vastly outnumbers” Ukraine in daily artillery strikes. According to him, the Russians fire 5-10 times more artillery shells than the Ukrainians.
“Today we have a war of such a scale that the entire capacity of the free world is not enough to support our consumption. We definitely cannot do this without help,” Ukraine’s Strategic Industries Minister Oleksandr Kamyshin told POLITICO.
According to the outlet, this shortage situation is one of the key reasons why the Ukrainian military has gone on the defensive along the entire front “in the wake of this summer’s disappointing counteroffensive.”
Despite American funding for Ukraine hitting an impasse in Congress, the European Union on February 1 agreed on an astronomical €50 billion of macro-financial aid. Although the aid package — about two-thirds loans and one-third grants — is supposedly not intended to fight Russia and is to support the economy and pay for rebuilding, the EU still has a separate plan for funding arms and ammunition, and at the same time, by paying for its economic needs, it allows Ukraine to concentrate more of its real economy towards the war effort.
It is for this reason that Brussels is receiving a lot of criticism. Europeans suffer from high inflation and energy prices, and the eyewatering €50 billion could have been utilised to serve citizens better instead of highly corrupt Ukraine. By Brussels recklessly throwing away tens of billions of euros to Ukraine, the Kiev regime can use money from elsewhere to fuel its fight against Russia, such as producing the shells it is “hungry” for, instead of rebuilding the country, and in this way, the EU is indirectly supporting Ukraine’s war effort.
For this reason, the European aid package has been condemned across the continent.
The head of the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party in the European Parliament, Harald Vilimsky, called the decision “bad news for Europe’s taxpayers.”
“The EU has no strategy to end the war in Ukraine and does not appear interested in finding peaceful solutions. At the same time, Brussels is focused on permanently feeding Ukraine billions, even though this money could be used much better in the EU itself and the Member States,” he said. “Ukraine has long since turned into a bottomless financial pit.”
Vilimsky also pointed out that although some funds are provided as loans, no one believes that Ukraine will repay them.
Joining the concerns of the MEP was French MP Thierry Mariani, who lamented that the aid package would cost French taxpayers €8 billion, adding that this is money “that our farmers would dream of.”
In recent weeks, European farmers have been protesting by blocking roads and dumping manure and waste in front of government buildings across the continent. Farmers demand recognition of the importance of their profession and denounce government agricultural policies that, according to them, make them uncompetitive in the market.
Yet, European technocrats are sidelining their concerns to support Ukraine’s war effort instead, one that is evidently futile since even with the massive amount of Western support, the country has run out of manpower and weapons. Vilimsky described Ukraine as a “bottomless financial pit;” rather, the country is a black hole for all financial, military, and other aid.
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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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Aug. 21, 2021 – US FDA posted a tweet fraudulently misrepresenting Ivermectin as a “animal & veterinary drug”. This post would result in countless deaths.
This interesting article describes the propaganda around fraudulently labeling Ivermectin as “horse dewormer”
Jan. 2, 2024 – 49 year old Champion bodybuilder and former paramedic Chad Russell McCrary died unexpectedly. In Aug.2021 he mocked Ivermectin as a “horse wormer” and got COVID-19 Vaccinated.
He was paralyzed in 2005 after motocross accident but continued to compete
Aug. 21, 2021: FDA Issued their false propaganda tweet about Ivermectin
Aug. 30, 2021, McCrary: “People would rather take horse wormer apparently. Well, I didn’t murder anyone and I damn sure not a horse”
Aug. 30, 2021: “Trying to convince people to take equine medicine is the craziest shit I’ve ever heard of…As a paramedic, I wonder what the ER doctor would say if I rolled up in there and tell them I gave my patients horse wormer…for the love of God”
Sep. 26, 2021: “One of the main reasons I went ahead and got my covid vacine is because I go to hospitals and nursing home to visit people and hopefully lift their spirits”.
Oct. 29, 2023 – IL – Deborah Zari died suddenly on Oct. 29, 2023.
“Are people really dumb enough to believe a *horse dewormer* is safer than the vaccines?”
Deborah Zari was found unresponsive in the morning of Oct. 29, 2023.
Oct. 18, 2023 – Dwight Allan Twilley was driving alone when he suffered a massive stroke, lost control of his car and crashed into a tree, dying of brain hemorrhage on Oct. 18, 2023.
Sep. 5, 2021: “How’s that Ivermectin workin’ for you? Possible side effects”
Aug. 23, 2021: “Time to quit whining and get vaccinated”
May 26, 2023 – West Chester, PA – 52 yo animal activist Chris Takacs died in his sleep on May 26, 2023.
Sep. 7, 2021: “Please get vaccinated. Please don’t take sheep medication.”
April 30, 2021: “I got my second shot of the Moderna vaccine today”
Joe Rogan Talks About Ivermectin “Horse Paste” Propaganda
The propaganda in US and Canada around “horse dewormer” was relentless and hundreds of media outlets and medical associations participated in it.
For example, the British Columbia Medical Association Journal in Canada wrote an article titled “From the horse’s mouth: Calls to the Drug and Poison Information Centre about Ivermectin Exposures”
It’s crucial to remember that they were ALL in on it.
MSNBC – Example of Mainstream Media Propaganda on “Horse Dewormer”
“any doctor that prescribes this medicine (Ivermectin) for a patient should have their credential re-evaluated”.
“This is the drug that fringe doctors and right-wing social media celebrities swore would prevent and/or cure Covid-19, a lie that led to it being in short supply last year.”
“There is black and white evidence that ivermectin not only does not help Covid patients, but also that when the product intended for animals is taken by humans, it can cause harm, including a dramatic increase in calls to poison control centers nationwide.” (the harm isn’t any actual poisoning, but an “increase in phone calls”)
“The real threat is not limited to ivermectin, of course. It extends to misinformation around other unproven Covid treatments such as hydroxychloroquine and targeted at actual effective strategies such as vaccines, masks and more.”
“The energy exerted by the radical right filters into the mainstream by disguising itself with the label of “doctor” or “patient” or “right to try.””
My Take…
This article is not about the hundreds of thousands of lives in the US and Canada that could have been saved with Ivermectin or other early treatments.
Beyond what RFK Jr talked about with Rogan (blocking Ivermectin so the $200+ billion failed mRNA tech could be rolled out), I believe there was another, more specific purpose to the “horse dewormer” operation.
As the phenomenon of “died suddenly” among the COVID-19 mRNA Vaccinated continues to accelerate, I have noticed that some of those who have recently died, fully bought the fraudulent “horse dewormer” propaganda and were brainwashed into mRNA vaccination.
This particular piece of propaganda was rolled out in August 2021 and it was so effective that many are still parroting the false talking points to this day.
But why August 2021?
This was the final non-coercive tool to try and increase mRNA Vaccine uptake and compliance which had stalled around 60%.
The propaganda technique employed was: shaming and ridiculing the unvaccinated (you’re not a horse, you’re not a cow). That’s why the FDA post was so unprofessional and childish – it had to be that way to achieve the goal of “persuading” the remaining 30-40% who were holding out on vaccination.
What came immediately after this?
Illegal COVID-19 Vaccine mandates – get the mRNA vaccine or lose your job, career, University/College program, government benefits, etc.
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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
Reviews
This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon
In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia
In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig
Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac
A reading of Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late. You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
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The genocide the Israeli army is perpetrating today in Gaza is not a slip-up but the logical offshoot of an imperialist and colonial project established at the end of the 19th century: Zionism. To properly understand what is happening today, it is necessary to understand the origins and stakes of this ideology and movement.
The Jewish Question
Since time immemorial, Jewish people have lived scattered throughout the world. Even centuries before the fall of Jerusalem to the Roman Empire (A.D. 70), 3.5 million Jews lived in diaspora while only half a million resided in Palestine.
The situation of the various Jewish communities in the diaspora was very diverse. Some were prosperous and free. In those regions, Jewish notables even held positions of authority. In others, Jews lived at the bottom of society, were oppressed and were easily the target of antisemitism.
At the end of the 19th century, capitalism was in a serious crisis. Large sections of the population were impoverished. To promote national unity and divert attention from the crisis, the establishment needed a scapegoat, and at that time it was the Jews. There were outbreaks of antisemitism in both Eastern and Western Europe. Tsarist Russia was rocked by brutal [anti-Jewish] pogroms in 1881, and in France there was the Dreyfus affair at the end of the 19th century.
Two answers were formulated during that period regarding this antisemitic wave. For progressive Jews like Karl Marx and Moses Mendelsohn, the battle had to be waged on the ground against everything that was reactionary. Others, such as Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, chose to flee. According to them, the problems of Jews could only be solved in a Jewish state of their own. That was right away the core of Zionism.
Poor Support Within the Jewish Population
Various locations were initially considered for such a Jewish state, including Uganda, Kenya, Argentina and Palestine. Ultimately the choice fell on Palestine. That country had the advantage that the myths of the Torah could be used to mobilize Jews worldwide. Moreover — as we will see further — this plan had the full support of British imperialism.
Zionism was created by a handful of Jewish intellectuals. It had very little support in its early stages. Fierce opposition to this new ideology came from various Jewish circles. The Reform movement, the Orthodox Jews and the socialist movement which opposed the idea of a Jewish state.
In the 19th century, the Jewish bourgeoisie was for the most part well-integrated into bourgeois society and the capitalist economy. Therefore, they were focused on assimilation rather than segregation. They found the idea of a Jewish state of their own nonsensical; it was not at all in line with their interests. Under the influence of the Communist International, the Jewish workers had little enthusiasm for Zionism.
It was mainly among the petty bourgeoisie and more specifically among intellectuals that Zionism emerged and found a following. The crisis of capitalism hit the middle class hard and within this system there was little perspective for solving their problems.
In summary, in the early years, Zionism was mainly supported by petty-bourgeois intellectuals and represented only a small minority movement within Judaism. Before WWI, the Zionist movement failed to become a major player within Judaism.
The migration to Palestine advocated by the Zionists was equally small. Between 1881 and 1925, nearly four million Jews emigrated from Europe. But only 1% of them sought refuge in Palestine at the time.
Imperialist and Nazi Support
If Zionists received little support from Jewish quarters, they could count on Britain. At the end of the 19th century, imperialism was in full swing and a Jewish state in Palestine suited the British imperialists. There are several reasons for this.
The British wanted control over the Near East. A Jewish state in that region, under British influence, could be very useful in this regard. Palestine is strategically very important because of its proximity to the Suez Canal (opened since 1869), which provides access to the shortest route to Asia. From 1935 onwards, oil played an equally important factor: The oil supply from Iraq to the Mediterranean Sea also passed through Palestine.
At the end of the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire was running on its last legs, and in this vacuum there was a real possibility of forming a large and strong Arab state. At the beginning of the 19th century, Egypt’s [Ottoman Pasha] Muhammad Ali already attempted to build a strong Arab empire that, in addition to Egypt, also included Syria and parts of Sudan. With the creation of a Jewish state, the British wanted to prevent this.
Finally, with the creation of a Jewish state, the British wanted to prevent France, a major imperialist rival, from seizing this strategic region. Under Napoleon (Bonaparte), France had previously attempted to annex Egypt and Syria.
In 1838, the British opened their first consulate in Jerusalem. The mission included informally encouraging Jews to come to Palestine, promising to protect them. Nearly 60 years before the Jewish Zionists held their congresses, the British not only liked the idea of settling Jewish people here, but had already begun to implement it.
Balfour Declaration expressed British imperialism’s plan to divide and conquer in the Palestine region by promoting Zionism.
In 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour wrote to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a member of a prominent Jewish Rothschild banking family in Great Britain. [It was] a letter to the Zionist movement, which would go down in history as the Balfour Declaration. In it he stated that the British government was positive about the establishment of a “National Home for the Jewish People in Palestine” and that it will do its utmost to facilitate this project.
The aspirations of the petty-bourgeois Zionists coincided with the geopolitical interests of British imperialism. To a large extent, Zionism is a product of British big business. In any case, without Britain the Zionist project could never have developed or achieved its goals in Palestine.
But it was not just from British imperialism that the Zionists were looking for support. For example, German Zionists concluded various cooperation agreements with the Nazis. Wealthy German Jews could emigrate to Palestine together with [some of] their capital. With that Jewish-German capital, the Zionists in Palestine were able to develop the economic infrastructure to receive Jews from Germany. In return, the German Zionists broke the boycott that most Jewish organizations in Europe and the U.S. had declared against trade in German goods.
In Palestine, the Jewish Agency set up a commission to investigate the problems of the Jews in Germany. David Ben-Gurion, [who became] Israel’s first prime minister, wrote about this at the time: “It is not the task of the committee to advocate for the rights of the Jews in Germany. The committee should only be interested in the problem of German Jews insofar as they can emigrate to Palestine.”
It was thanks to those agreements that German Jews “constituted the super-top class in Israel” at that time.
After WWII, the role of patron and facilitator would mainly be taken up by the United States with Europe as a junior partner.
Colonial Project
The Jews may have been people without a country, but Palestine was certainly not a country without people. At the end of the 19th century, almost half a million Palestinians lived between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. To turn the area into a “Jewish” state, it was necessary to remove the Indigenous population.
In other words, the project advocated settler colonialism, similar to what Europeans had previously done in South and North America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
All projects of settler colonialism are driven by the so-called “logic of elimination,” which is the logic of making the native population disappear as much as possible. The history of the above shows that this logic inevitably leads to dehumanization, disenfranchisement, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
From the beginning, the Zionists’ objectives were clear, although they did not openly state them at first. In 1895, Theodor Herzl wrote in his diary:
“We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country. (…) Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”
And it was not just words. The Zionists bought up as many pieces of land as possible, built their own parallel state structure and set up militias.
Gradually, the Zionist leadership showed less diffidence and came out openly in favor of an exclusive Jewish state. In 1940, Josef Weitz, head of the Colonization Department of the World Zionist Organization no longer beat about the bush: “It must be clear that there is no room in the country for both [Arab and Jewish] peoples. (…) If the [Palestinian] Arabs leave it, the country will become wide and spacious for us. (… ) There is no room here for compromises.
“There is no way but to transfer the [Palestinian] Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, to transfer all of them, save perhaps for [the Palestinian Arabs of] Bethlehem, Nazareth, and the old Jerusalem. Not one village must be left, not one [Bedouin] tribe.”
The charter of the Likud, Netanyahu’s party, also leaves little to the imagination. It states: “The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable” and “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”
We are dealing here with unadulterated settler colonialism, which incidentally fitted in perfectly with the spirit of the epoch, which was characterized by the colonization drive of European countries. At the end of the 19th century, almost all uncolonized areas in Asia and Africa were overrun and colonized.
For example, in 1870 only 10% of Africa was owned by European powers; this rose to 90% in the period before the First World War. At the Berlin Conference (1885), Africa was simply divided among the European colonizers.
Zionism fits into that picture and can, in other words, be regarded as the last European colonial project.
Two-state Solution?
The aggressive colonial character immediately became clear with the proclamation and formation of the Jewish state in 1948. This was accompanied by the Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic): a mass slaughter of the Palestinian population, the destruction of 500 villages and the deportation of approximately half of the Palestinian population. A United Nations resolution provided for the return of all expelled Palestinians, but this was never complied with.
From then on it was a matter of striving for the smallest possible number of Palestinians in the largest possible annexed area. The 1967 Six-Day War quadrupled Israel’s territory. It occupied the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula (returned to Egypt in 1979), the West Bank (including eastern Jerusalem) and the Golan Heights (taken from Syria).
The Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995 were a further consolidation of the colonial project. These agreements were intended to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They provided for so-called Palestinian self-government and would pave the way for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
But that self-government was a joke. In fact, this “two-state solution” was nothing more than a diversionary tactic that allowed Israel to continue dispossessing Palestinians. Peace was just a pretext for Israel to buy time and continue building Jewish settlements.
And that happened. Half a million settlers now live in the occupied West Bank and that number is constantly increasing. The lives of the Palestinians are made as difficult as possible: they are humiliated, harassed and robbed. Thousands of them, including children, have been kidnapped and spend years in prisons in Israel.
But that is nothing compared to the Gaza Strip. There, [2.2 million] residents have been subjected to a complete blockade since 2007 and the strip was reduced to a concentration camp.
Today, only a tiny part of the original Palestine remains.
Completion or End of Zionist/Imperialist Project?
The surprise attack from Gaza and the subsequent siege of the Gaza Strip are a turning point in the Zionist project. A return to the previous state of affairs is impossible.
The Israeli army is indulging in primitive and barbaric violence based on the most modern technology, including artificial intelligence. Officially, the goal is to eliminate Hamas. But the severity and ruthlessness of the operation reveal that this is an excuse to make the area uninhabitable and to deport the population completely.
According to the anti-Zionist philosopher Moshé Machover, who is himself Jewish, living in Israel, that plan has been in existence for a long time. In 2014 he said: “[The Israeli regime is] actually waiting for a time when they can be permanently expelled to neighboring countries. That will only be possible during a full-scale war and I fear that Israel is prepared to provoke it.”
Several plans have already been leaked to deport the entire population of Gaza abroad. Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter openly speaks of “a new ‘Nakba.’”
There is no doubt, the current war is fully in line with the old Zionist dream of ruling over the region from “the sea to the Jordan.”
The imperialist backing of that dream was also made abundantly clear when, shortly after October 7, U.S. and European leaders rushed to Tel Aviv to support the Israeli government. The U.S. also immediately sent two warships, loads of ammunition and provided $14.5 billion in aid.
Why Israel is so important to the U.S. is clearly stated by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the politically inconsistent nephew of President John F. Kennedy: “Israel is critical to the U.S. The reason it’s critical is because it’s a bulwark for us in the Middle East. It’s almost like having an aircraft carrier in the Middle East. It’s our oldest ally, for 75 years.”
But, for so much savagery, the Zionists pay a price. As Lebanese anthropologist Leila Ghanem puts it, Israel is gradually becoming “the most hated country in the world.”
Since the start of the war, millions of people worldwide have taken to the streets against the genocide in Gaza, trade unions have stopped arms deliveries, and Israeli officials and soldiers have been charged in international and national courts. The improved relations that Tel Aviv had with countries in the region are at risk.
For people of the Global South, the Zionist project is an anachronism of our times and has no future. The “Israeli exception” must end. The oppressed Palestinian people, subject to terror but resisting this “last colonial project,” have acquired great symbolic value [for people who confront imperialism].
As a result of what is happening in Gaza, [former U.S. President Barack] Obama warns of a new wave of antisemitism. It is the irony of history: Zionism, which wanted to be a solution to antisemitism, is now itself the cause of antisemitism.
Imperialism is also in bad shape. The de facto support for the horror in Gaza unmasks the rhetoric about human rights and democracy. The contrast with which the West dealt with Russia after the invasion of Ukraine versus its support for Israel today could not be greater.
The war against Gaza is accelerating the tilting North-South relations. The West is becoming increasingly isolated and has definitively lost its credibility among the countries of the global South.
I would like to end with the words of Leila Ghanem: “The battle for Gaza is the battle of all of us. … The words of Miguel Urbano still resonate in my ears: ‘Where imperialism concentrates its military, political, economic and media forces, those who confront it do so in the name of all humanity.’ The fall of Gaza will be the fall of all of us in the face of capitalist barbarism. The merit of this solidarity is to have pointed the finger at our class enemy.” (workers.org)
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This article was originally published on Workers World.
Marc Vandepitte is a Belgian anti-imperialist, contributor to Investig’action, rebellion, Solidaire and other magazines. He contributed this article to the Jan. 21 Lenin Centennial meeting in New York City. Register here for the centennial.
Featured image: Statue of the founder of Zionism Theodor Herzl, unveiled in 2012 at the Mikveh Israel synagogue in Tel Aviv. It is called “Herzl meets Emperor Wilhelm II”
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Welcome to the UK where it’s now official government policy that you CAN’T publish “misinformation”, but The Guardian, the BBC, Disney and Netflix CAN.
Yes, it’s true – the recently signed “Online Safety Act” brands the publication of “false information” a criminal offense punishable by up to a year in prison…
…unless you’re an MSM outlet, when it’s totally fine.
Think even the corrupt & bloated criminal class that rules over us would never dare be that blatant?
Take a look at section 179 making it illegal to publish false information with intent to cause harm:
…and then look at section 180, which exempts all MSM outlets from this new law:
…and that’s without even getting into OfCom’s “select committee”, or how they choose to define “misinformation” (s. 152)
Welcome to the modern definition of “freedom of speech”, where the MSM are directly and explicitly permitted to “knowingly publish false information with intent to cause non-trivial harm”, and you can be sent to jail for a year for calling out their lies.
Oh, and it looks like our friends across the pond might not be far behind. The Big Tech Senate hearings started yesterday, and social media executives are already throwing their support behind the new “Kids Online Safety Act”.
With the EU’s own Digital Services Act coming into force later this month, and all the focus on “misinformation and disinformation” at Davos two weeks ago, we can see the real crackdown on internet free speech is about to kick into gear.
Good times.
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ARMS trade campaigners have produced a map showing locations across Britain where components are made for F-35 warplanes being used by Israel to attack Gaza.
Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) says the map is intended to identify the sites as targets for protests.
The group says 15 per cent of the components used to build F-35s are made in Britain in deals worth hundreds of millions of pounds for arms manufacturers.
CAAT said:
“The map will enable campaigners across the country to find out where the components are produced and to protest [against] the companies who are profiting from the genocide Israel is committing in Gaza on their doorsteps.
“Foreign Secretary David Cameron recommended continuing arms sales to Israel on December 12 2023, despite previous Foreign Office assessments stating there were ‘serious concerns’ about breaches of international humanitarian law (IHL) and Israel’s commitment and ability to comply with IHL.
“Cameron further accepted that Israel has a different interpretation of its IHL obligations.”
On January 26 the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that there was a “plausible” case that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Since then calls for Britain to end arms sales to Israel have mounted.
CAAT media co-ordinator Emily Apple said:
“This is a great resource for campaigners across the country.
“People do not want genocide profiteers on their doorstep and this map will enable communities to take action against the companies that are complicit in war crimes in their local area.
“However, this isn’t something we should have to do. The legal position is clear. Israel is committing war crimes, including bombing hospitals and refugee camps and deliberately targeting medical workers.
“This government should immediately suspend arms exports to Israel.
“Instead it is prioritising the profits of arms dealers over Palestinian lives, and it is down to ordinary people to hold these companies to account for their murderous deals.”
CAAT said British Aerospace is the main British supplier of components for F-35s.
The company’s British HQ is at Warwick House, PO BOX 87, Farnborough Aerospace Centre, Farnborough, Hants, GU14 6YU.
The map identifies 141 locations of UK arms manufacturers.
The rear fuselage of every F-35 fighter is made by BAE Systems at Samlesbury Aerodrome, Lancashire.
The “active interceptor system” is made by BAE Systems in Rochester, Kent. There is a steady stream of components for F35s and Israel’s F16s from this site.
“Durability testing” for the F35 is undertaken at the BAE structural testing facility in East Yorkshire.
Martin-Baker makes the ejector seat in Britain; its headquarters is in Higher Denham, Buckinghamshire.
Cobham Mission Systems made the refuelling probe for the F35; Cobham Mission Systems was sold to Eaton in 2021 and is hosted at Mission Systems Wimborne Ltd.
Leonardo makes the laser targeting system for the F35 in Edinburgh.
Dunlop Aircraft Tyres makes the aircraft tyres in Birmingham.
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Featured image: An F-35 takes off from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, June 24, 2019 (Source: Morning Star)
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On Sunday the Pentagon said its forces again struck an anti-ship cruise missile launch position in Yemen. A US Central Command (CENTCOM) statement said the operation was conducted in “self defense” against a Houthi cruise missile “prepared to launch against ships in the Red Sea” at 4 a.m. local time on Sunday.
This follows on the heels of a much bigger wave of strikes Saturday, which involved the US coalition attacking over 30 targets across 13 locations from air and ships, including using F/A-18 fighter jets.
A statement released from Operation Prosperity Guardian Saturday said, “Today’s strike specifically targeted sites associated with the Houthis’ deeply buried weapons storage facilities, missile systems and launchers, air defense systems, and radars.”
The statement was issued by the US, UK, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands and New Zealand, which make up the Western coalition trying to protect international commercial transit in the Red Sea.
The Associated Press has put the number of Saturday strikes alone at 36, meaning by Sunday the coalition has reached nearly 40 strikes in Yemen:
The United States and Britain struck 36 Houthi targets in Yemen on Saturday in a second wave of assaults meant to further disable Iran-backed groups that have relentlessly attacked American and international interests in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war. But Washington once more did not directly target Iran as it tries to find a balance between a forceful response and intensifying the conflict.
The stepped-up Western campaign appears to have done little to deter the Houthi attacks, given launches are still being attempted. A fresh Houthi statement has warned, “We will meet escalation with escalation.”
UK Defense Secretary Grant Shapps said Saturday that the anti-Houthi strikes are about protecting innocent lives:
“The Houthis’ attacks on commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea are illegal and unacceptable and it is our duty to protect innocent lives and preserve freedom of navigation,” Shapps said.
Who Are The Houthis, what are they fighting for? [2009 US Embassy Report] #Yemen#RedSea
Meanwhile, Al Jazeera has compiled a list of various companies and industries which have seen their shipping and supply chains significantly impacted by the Houthi raids in the Red Sea, as follows below…
Autos
Geely: China’s second-largest automaker by sales said on December 22 that its electric vehicle (EV) sales would likely be impacted by a delay in deliveries.
Michelin: Four factories in Spain owned by the French tyre maker halted output on January 20-21 due to raw materials delivery delays.
Suzuki: The company’s Hungary production plant restarted manufacturing on January 22 as planned following a halt the previous week due to delays in the arrival of Japanese-made engines. It said shipping routes were changed to pass around Africa, which could affect pricing.
Tesla: The US-based electric vehicle maker will suspend most car production at its factory near Berlin from January 29 to February 11 due to a lack of components caused by shifts in transport routes.
Volvo: The Swedish automaker said on January 12 that it would halt production at its Belgian plant for three days due to delays.
Energy
BP: The oil major on December 18 said it had temporarily paused all transits through the Red Sea.
Equinor: The company said on December 18 that it had rerouted vessels that had been heading towards the Red Sea.
Edison: The energy group’s CEO said on January 25 that it was starting to experience a slowdown in liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies from Qatar.
Qatar Energy: The world’s second-largest exporter of LNG has stopped sending tankers via the Red Sea although production continues, a senior source with direct knowledge of the matter told the Reuters news agency on January 15.
Shell: The British oil major suspended all shipments through the Red Sea indefinitely, the Wall Street Journal reported on January 16.
Valero Energy: The US refiner said on January 25 that the Red Sea attacks have led to a rise in freight rates for crude oil.
Logistics
DHL: The German logistics company, which does not operate ships but uses them to transport containers, on January 8 advised customers to take a close look at how they manage inventories.
FedEx: The US parcel delivery giant said on January 14 that it hadn’t seen much of a shift to air freight due to disruptions in the Red Sea.
Retailers
Adidas: CEO Bjorn Gulden said on February 1 that shipping disruptions in the Red Sea were negative for gross margins, adding that “exploding” freight rates were driving up costs and shipping delays were causing some delivery issues.
Danone: The French food group said in December that most of its shipments had been diverted, increasing transit times. Should the situation last beyond 2-3 months, Danone will activate mitigation plans, including using alternate routes, its spokesperson said.
Ikea: The furniture retailer is sticking to planned price cuts despite increased costs, and has sufficient stocks to absorb any supply chain shocks, it said on January 15.
Marks & Spencer: The British retailer’s CEO said on January 11 that the company is expecting some slight delay in clothing and home deliveries due to the disruption to shipping.
Next: The British clothing retailer’s CEO on January 4 said sales growth would likely be moderated if disruptions continued through 2024.
Pepco: The Poundland owner warned on January 18 that its supply could be impacted in the coming months if the disruptions continue.
Primark: Associated British Foods’ finance director said on January 23 that Primark is coping with disruptions by adjusting timings and stock flow.
Sainsbury’s: “We’re making sure that we plan the sequencing of product from Asia Pacific so that we get products in the right order,” the company’s CEO said, adding that long-term contracts with shippers “mitigate any cost impact as far as possible”.
Target: The US retailer is experiencing some disruptions of shipments from India and Pakistan, a source familiar with the matter said on January 12, calling the effect “minor” overall.
Tractor Supply: Deliveries for the US retailer have been delayed anywhere from two to 20-plus days, the company’s chief supply chain operator said on January 12.
Williams-Sonoma: The Pottery Barn owner is rerouting shipments and has been working on contingency plans, its CEO told CNBC on January 24.
Others
BHP Group: The Australian mining giant on January 25 said the disruptions were forcing some of its freight service providers to take alternative routes, such as Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.
Electrolux: The Swedish home appliance maker has set up a task force to find alternative routes or identify priority deliveries to try to avoid disruptions. On February 2, its CEO said that costs related to the developments in the Red Sea were manageable. “If the situation is prolonged, I am more worried about higher costs than about risk of having to pause production,” he added.
Essity: The maker of brands such as Libresse and TENA said it was staying in contact with impacted suppliers to ensure the continued flow of goods. On January 25, its CEO said that it saw a negative impact on its freight costs, but he could not specify what that impact would amount to.
Evonik: The speciality chemicals maker said it was being hit by “short notice routing changes and delays”, and was trying to mitigate the impact by ordering earlier and switching to air freight where possible.
Gechem GmbH & Co KG: The German chemicals maker said it had lowered production of dishwasher and toilet tablets as a result of the delays.
Kone: The Finnish elevator maker said the situation may in some cases delay shipments, but most of its customer deliveries should stay on schedule. Kone said it had prepared for the disruptions by seeking alternative delivery methods and routes.
Levi Strauss & Co: The denim maker is experiencing delays of 10 to 14 days in transit times as a result of continued disruptions to Red Sea shipping. It has shifted some US shipments to the West Coast, avoiding the Red Sea and Suez Canal.
Logitech: The computer peripheral maker’s CEO on January 23 said profit margins will be hit by higher transport costs due to the Red Sea crisis.
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The International Criminal Court has done nothing so far to prosecute Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Is it influenced by the UK’s funding of the ICC, Khan being the UK’s government’s placeman or by US threats to prosecute its officials?
Now the International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel is “plausibly” promoting genocide in Gaza, the International Criminal Court might be expected to expedite its prosecution of the individuals responsible.
Israel’s war crimes and incitements to genocide in Gaza are being documented by independent legal groups.
The ICC itself, which is based in The Hague, has stated that, amid sustained attacks by Israel on Gaza, its investigation into the State of Palestine Situation is “ongoing”.
ICC prosecutor Karim Khan added that this “extends to the escalation of hostilities and violence since the attacks that took place on 7 October 2023” – when Hamas attacked Israel.
But nearly four months after this statement last November, no arrest warrants have been issued or, apparently, other actions taken by the ICC.
It was perhaps no surprise, therefore, that in December a number of Palestinian human rights groups refused to meet with Khan, who was on a visit to the region. They accused him of bias in favour of Israel.
Nominated by UK
Khan, a British barrister, was the UK’s nominee for ICC prosecutor, though he was not initially shortlisted. His appointment, in February 2021, was mired by controversies over how the election was organised.
When news broke that he was to be the next ICC prosecutor, the Economist commented that the Conservative government was “cock-a-hoop” over his appointment. Khan’s election “was surely a sign that Britain still had diplomatic heft”, it wrote.
The Foreign Office noted that the appointment of Khan was one of its “key achievements” in 2020/21.
Khan had extensive international legal experience before joining the ICC, including serving as a special adviser at the UN investigating the crimes of Islamic State in Iraq.
As a lawyer in London during 2000-10 Khan prosecuted criminal cases at the Bar, and was included on the “Old Bailey list” to prosecute the most serious offences at the Central Criminal Court.
He acted for the home secretary and for other applicants in numerous immigration and refugee law cases.
With Khan as prosecutor, the ICC has demonstrated it can act quickly when it needs to. In February 2022, for example, as Russia invaded Ukraine, Khan announced the ICC had opened an investigation into alleged Russian war crimes.
In September 2022 Khan met then foreign secretary James Cleverly and Ukrainian prosecutor general Andriy Kostin in regard to the situation in Ukraine.
A month later Cleverly met Khan again to discuss further how “the UK led 42 other countries in expediting an investigation into the situation in Ukraine.”
Five months later, in March 2023 the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Funding
Could Khan’s apparent slowness in taking forward cases against Israel be explained by not wanting to bite the hand that feeds his office?
The UK government has been one of the largest financial contributors to the court. It has provided the organisation with £10.5m to its latest annual budget and a further £2m since the commencement of Russia’s attacks on Ukraine.
The ICC’s overall budget for this year is around £160m.
Khan has a family connection to the UK Conservative Party via his brother Imran Ahmad Khan, an MP who in 2022 was found guilty of sexually assaulting a 15 year old boy. He was subsequently expelled from the party and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment.
ICC Changes
A few months after his appointment, in November 2021, Khan announced to the United Nations Security Council that he intended to limit the ICC’s investigations to those referred to his office by that Council, whose permanent members include the UK and US.
Investigations that were not referred in this way would be placed under review. These included those into Afghanistan and Palestine that were conducted by his predecessor, Fatou Bensouda.
Why did Khan initiate these major changes to how the ICC works? The answer may lie with the UK and the United States.
A few years earlier, in December 2017 Bensouda announced that:
“The [prosecutor’s] office has reached the conclusion that there is a reasonable basis to believe that members of the UK armed forces committed war crimes within the jurisdiction of the court against persons in their custody.”
The accusation referred to the conduct of the UK military in Iraq and would undoubtedly have displeased UK authorities.
US War Crimes
Although the US (and Israel) is not a member of the ICC, Afghanistan ratified the Rome Statute that underpins the Court. So in 2016 the ICC commenced an investigation into alleged war crimes by the US military in Afghanistan.
“War crimes of torture and related ill-treatment, by US military forces deployed to Afghanistan and in secret detention facilities operated by the Central Intelligence Agency, principally in the 2003-2004 period, although allegedly continuing in some cases until 2014”.
That would have displeased US authorities.
Subsequently, in 2018 Washington issued a threat to arrest ICC judges should they attempt to charge US army personnel for war crimes.
Moreover, National Security advisor John Boltonwarned that the US would ban “its [ICC] judges and prosecutors from entering the United States. We will sanction their funds in the US financial system, and we will prosecute them in the US criminal system.”
Undaunted, in December 2019 Bensouda announced she was satisfied that “war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip”.
No doubt the US was concerned that Bensouda’s investigations could see its ally Israel facing prosecutions.
So it was that in September 2020 the US applied sanctions against Bensouda and her colleagues. The US also revoked her visas and visas for other senior ICC individuals.
But in January 2021, with Bensouda’s imminent departure from the post, US president Joe Bidenannounced that Washington would review its earlier decision to impose sanctions on the Court’s officials.
The following month Khan was appointed ICC prosecutor, and took up the role in June 2021 when Bensouda left.
Genocide Playing Out
If the ICC acts on its remit, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior figures in Israel would be at risk of arrest. Arguably the same goes for Biden and UK prime minister Rishi Sunak – both of whom allow Netanyahu to conduct his genocidal mission with impunity.
In the wake of the Hamas attack on Israelis on 7 October and the response by Israel against the people of Gaza, Sunak made his bias crystal clear. In those early days in the conflict, and ever since, he stated, without caveats, that Israel had his full support.
The UK is providing military and intelligence support to Israel.
Sunak and colleagues were warned by Tory veteran Crispin Blunt MP that they could face prosecution for their collusion in Netanyahu’s war crimes. Indeed, the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) has issueda notice of intent to prosecute UK government officials who have aided the commission of war crimes in Gaza.
Had the ICC been allowed to continue with its investigations into Palestine in 2019, it’s possible the genocide we are now witnessing in Gaza may not have taken place.
Khan speaks eloquently about the tragic events taking place there, though to say he is short on delivery is an understatement.
Just how many more men, women and children must die in Gaza before the ICC takes substantial action against those responsible?
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To paraphrase Roberts’s analysis, the Israeli-Gaza conflict is merely the beginning of a widening conflict in the Middle East, spreading toward the neocon’s main target, Iran.
The Palestinian victims of genocide in Gaza are vastly underreported. The figure commonly used will soon top 30,000. But these are only the verified and named victims killed directly by Israeli weaponry.
Justin Trudeau Senior advisor Supriya Dwivedi pushed vaccine mandates (then her 41 year old husband died of Turbo Lung Cancer). Supriya Dwivedi is one of Justin Trudeau’s newest senior advisors. She aggressively pushed COVID-19 vaccine mandates and viciously attacked the unvaccinated.
International leaders who lined up to pledge their support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following the largest open-air prison break on October 7, 2023 had paved the way for the ensued Israeli war of genocide.
“Israel’s controlled demolitions are razing Gaza neighbourhoods,” headlined the New York Times. Israeli ground forces undermine and blow up schools, mosques, and residential neighbourhoods, in a systematic demolition of buildings and infrastructure.
The strangest sight at the “Conference for Israel’s Victory,” which took place on Sunday evening at Jerusalem’s International Convention Center, wasn’t the map depicting dozens of new settlements that Israeli settlers hope to establish throughout the Gaza Strip after the war is over.
It was a struggle to see how a child’s welfare was relevant in the latest, shrill debates about technology taking place on The Hill. The Senate Judiciary Committee and the leaders of social media companies were on show to thrash out matters on technology and their threats on January 31 in a hearing titled “Big Tech and the Online Child Exploitation Crisis.”
This year represents the 98th anniversary of the launching of “Negro History Week” in 1926, later named Black History Month in 1976, after the federal government issued a proclamation in recognition of the contributions of African American people under the administration of President Gerald R. Ford.
Today, February 2, 2024, the US Labor Department released its monthly jobs report for January. One of the Department’s two surveys showed +353,000 jobs created in January. But a second report shows a drop in total employment in January of -1,070,000 full time and part time jobs (and an additional -400,000 jobs if one includes unincorporated independent contractors jobs).
For more than 1000 Years, 800 -1948, the Muslim Arab was the primary demographic of Palestine from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, with only a minority Jewish presence. It was essentially a Muslim country in the centre of the Muslim Middle East. These are well documented facts that are not in dispute.
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2022 (video here) – mRNA Injury series – Justin Trudeau Senior advisor Supriya Dwivedi pushed vaccine mandates (then her 41 year old husband died of Turbo Lung Cancer).
Supriya Dwivedi is one of Justin Trudeau’s newest senior advisors. She aggressively pushed COVID-19 vaccine mandates and viciously attacked the unvaccinated.
July 21, 2023 – Oakville, ON – Supriya Dwivedi’s husband, 40 year old Anoop Singh died on July 21, 2023 after a short 7 month battle with Stage 4 Lung Cancer.
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US President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 advisor, Dr.Celine Gounder is a big proponent of COVID-19 Vaccines:
Dec. 9, 2022 – Dr. Celine Gounder’s husband, 49 year old soccer journalist Grant Wahl, collapsed during a World Cup match in Quatar and died suddenly from a “ruptured aortic aneurysm”.
Jan. 9, 2023 – This CBS interview of Dr. Gounder one month after her husband’s death is fascinating from the perspective of PROPAGANDA:
Australia – 26 yo Caillin Atchison, daughter of Australian Medical Association President Dr.Michelle Atchison, died suddenly in her sleep on May 11, 2022. (Click here)
Just in case there are any questions about how big of an mRNA vaccine pusher her Australian physician mother Dr. Michelle Atchison was:
My Take…
Most people think that the prominent COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine pushers all took saline injections and got fake COVID-19 Vaccine passports.
But let me impart a lesson from Communism.
The most “believable” Communist propagandists were those who truly believed that it was the ideal system. They were also the most fervent proponents of Communist ideology.
It is my impression that those who are in the public spotlight, pushing the COVID-19 Vaccines on behalf of the government and big pharma, are most likely true believers who took the shots and got their family members to take the shots as well.
Supriya Dwivedi and her husband Anoop Singh were almost certainly mRNA jabbed. Her 41 year old husband developed Stage 4 Lung Cancer and died 7 month after diagnosis, a clinical picture that’s virtually unheard of. I strongly suspect mRNA Induced Turbo Cancer (Lung Cancer is in the top 5 Turbo Cancers).
Dr.Celine Gounder’s 49 year old soccer journalist husband Grant Wahl was also almost certainly vaccinated, and he was reporting on the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. While it’s possible for a 49 year old to have a ruptured aortic aneurysm, it would also be a relatively rare occurrence and even rarer to die from it suddenly without warning. However, COVID-19 Vaccines damage blood vessels and cause aneurysms.
Dr.Michelle Atchison is a former President of the Australian Medical Association. Australia was extremely aggressive in pushing COVID-19 Vaccines on the population. Her daughter died suddenly in her sleep at age 26. This would also be extremely rare, but a very common cause of death in the COVID-19 Vaccinated.
I believe we will see many more such cases going forward.
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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
Reviews
This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon
In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia
In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig
Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac
A reading of Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late. You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
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International leaders who lined up to pledge their support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following the largest open-air prison break on October 7, 2023 had paved the way for the ensued Israeli war of genocide. Now, the suspension of funding to the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) for the Palestinian refugees, complements Netanyahu’s physical genocide by exacerbating the looming Israeli-made famine and the hardship for the 2.3 million civilians.
UNRWA was created by the UN General Assembly in 1950 to provide Palestinian refugees with humanitarian services including schools, health clinics and other social services. The hasty freezing of financial aid by the US and other donor countries without first conducting independent investigations into the veracity of Israeli claims against UNRWA employees is cabalistic, adds to the Israeli blockade and deepens the suffering of the Gaza civilians.
Sky News, who have reviewed the Israeli dossier on the alleged “evidence” against UNRWA’s staff, has stated that it “has not seen proof of and many of the claims, even if true, do not directly implicate UNRWA.” Nevertheless, the Agency’s Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini summarily terminated the accused, without due process, possibly hoping to avert the very hyperbole reaction from the donor countries.
Meanwhile, the imprudent decision to halt funding for the largest and oldest UN agency serving Palestinians would likely lead to the malnourishment of young children. This decision will also impede UNRWA’s ability to deliver crucial humanitarian assistance to the 2 million displaced civilians, including 17,000 children who are unaccompanied or have been separated from their parents as a result of the Israeli pogrom in Gaza.
After all the damage is done, it may very well be that the Israeli claims against the UNRWA employees are either exaggerated or unfounded. It wouldn’t be different than the debunked Israeli disinformation regarding decapitated children, rape, sexual violence, and mutilation of women reported by the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz on the October 7 events.
Having said that, even if Israeli allegations against a handful of low-level individuals held some validity, why should UNRWA be responsible for a conduct carried out by employees outside their working hours, and not associated with their work duties? In fact, in the more than 100 days of the Israel orgy of slaughter, UNRWA has lost 152 employees, a staggering 1300 percent more than the number of the accused staff. Keeping this in mind, one must question whether donor nations and UNRWA’s Commissioner considered the possibility that these allegations could be an Israeli gambit to deflect from its responsibility for murdering 152 UNRWA employees.
Now, let’s examine how donor nations responded to a sister UN organization, the Peacekeeping force, when staff faced accusations of misconduct. In 2021, the UN Secretary-General concluded that it was credible that 450 members of the Peacekeeping force in Gabon were guilty of child rape and sexual exploitation.Unlike UNRWA, however, the US and other donors did not suspend funding to the UN agency when reports of sexual abuse emerged, more importantly, they continued the funding even after the allegations were verified. Canada, for example, did not freeze its aid even after its own investigation accused the UN of “‘glaring’ accountability gaps” in handling sexually abusing people they’ve been sent to protect.”
Yet, immediately after Israel raised, yet to be verified, allegations against a very few of UNRWA staff, Canada and other donors preempted any investigation and froze funding to an organization that currently provides vital humanitarian assistance to a population enduring siege and relentless bombing.
As in the Western hypocrisy case on the war of genocide in Gaza, the incongruence response to the two UN Agencies reveals that Western virtue is gaged by the identity of the victim and victimizer. In response to the more than 2000 allegations of sexual abuse, the accusers were from Africa and Haiti. In the second case, the unverified allegations against the 12 individuals came from Israel. The disparity in the two UN cases is a stark illustration of the evident Western bias, and how it’s driven by the victims/victimizers’ racial characteristics rather than a commitment to genuine fairness.
By immediately pausing UNRWA funding, Western donors indulge Israeli arrogance and its absurd obsession to discredit UNRWA’s vital role in preventing starvation for the “less than equal” 2.3 million human beings. To the point where Israeli Minister of War Yoav Gallant equates UNRWA’s humanitarian lifeline in Gaza to a war against Israel telling a delegation of UN ambassadors that UNRWA was “Hamas with a facelift”. Evoking his rhetoric on Israel’s military objectives in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister told the same delegation “UNRWA’s mission has to end.”
It’s crucial to recognize that Israeli efforts to undermine UNRWA are not a recent development and are not necessarily linked to the current war on Gaza. For years, Israel has actively lobbied different US administrations to defund the UN agency. In 2017, after a meeting with the American UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, Netanyahu told reporters, “It is time UNRWA be dismantled…”
Israeli fixation to “end” UNRWA because the Agency has become a live registry of the Palestinian refugees who continue to challenge the 75-year-old Israeli diabolical prophecy. Following the Palestinian Nakba of 1948, an Israeli foreign ministry study had predicted that
“The most adaptable [Palestinians] and best survivors would ‘manage’ by a process of natural selection and others will waste away. Some will die but most will turn into human debris and social outcasts and probably join the poorest classes in the Arab countries.”
In 2018, Israel succeeded when Trump heeded Netanyahu’s demand and cut US aid to UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority (PA) after the PA rejected Trump/Kushner’s steal of the century proposal. The defunding was rescinded by the Joe Biden Administration, however, bankrupting UNRWA remains Israel’s last hope to turn the Palestinian refugees, “into … social outcasts.”
Undeniably UNRWA has provided Palestinian refugees with the basic humanitarian assistance to help them endure life in the miserable refugee camps. When I write on this subject, it’s not merely an abstract academic analysis but it comes from my own personal experience, having grown up in one of those Palestinian refugee camps. For instance, the donor aid for UNRWA provided me, along with tens of thousands of children since 1950, the chance to attend school.
As someone who was raised in a refugee camp, I want to emphasize the significant impact defunding UNRWA would have on children growing up under similar conditions. The camps are among the most densely populated areas on our planet. In my camp, with a population exceeding 30,000 living in less than 0.2 sq miles, the absence of UNRWA funding would mean that children wouldn’t receive vaccinations against communicable diseases such as cholera, hepatitis, tuberculosis, polio, and many others.
A number of pupils in my own school had suffered from polio, at least two in my grade. I remember them clenching on forearm clutches lugging their flailing limbs to go from class to class, or sitting on the sidelines while we ran in the schoolyard. And those were still considered the fortunate ones, as many others had quietly faded away, losing their lives to other preventable diseases.
Without UNRWA, thousands of Palestinian refugee children, myself included, wouldn’t have had the opportunity to attend school. I, for one, wouldn’t have been able to eventually become a professional engineer, post graduate, an author, and most importantly, I wouldn’t have had the chance to write about my own experiences as a Palestinian refugee. UNRWA’s humanitarian role has been instrumental in shaping the futures of countless individuals in otherwise very challenging circumstances.
Perhaps, that’s precisely why Israeli leaders want “UNRWA’s mission … to end.” Over the past 73 years, UNRWA schools have played a crucial role in educating tens of thousands of Palestinian children, contributing to the emergence of one of the most educated groups in the Middle East. UNRWA’s help made it possible for the refugee camps to extricate a highly educated progeny out of the fissures of catastrophe, thereby thwarting Israel’s wish to relegate Palestinians into a “human debris.”
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Jamal Kanj is the author of “Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America, and other books. He writes frequently on Arab world issues for various national and international commentaries, A version of article is published on Al Mayadeen TV
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The Palestinian victims of genocide in Gaza are vastly underreported. The figure commonly used will soon top 30,000. But these are only the verified and named victims killed directly by Israeli weaponry. The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is perhaps the only authoritative source that reports more than 35,000, by adding a (conservative) estimate of those missing and presumed dead, most of them under the rubble of the roughly 300,000 destroyed buildings. But even the Euro-Med estimate does not include many of the delayed deaths among the more than 67,000 wounded, or the deaths from starvation, disease and exposure due the weaponization of food, medicine, sanitation, potable water, shelter, fuel, and all other conditions necessary to life.
Part of the result of bombing the hospitals and destroying the communication networks is to eliminate the means of even tabulating the deaths. Untabulated deaths necessarily go unreported in the totals, and yet their numbers are obviously growing, as rainstorms and floods spread sewage into the makeshift tents of up to 2 million refugees without toilets or sewage infrastructure. How many have died in such circumstances, uncounted and buried in common graves on the roadside, dug by starving volunteers in an attempt to preserve some dignity and sanitation among the filth and the stink? Does it equal or exceed the numbers killed directly by bombs or bullets?
If not now, it soon will. The fact is that we will never know the true number killed by Israel in Gaza. Perhaps the closest we will come is by counting the survivors and comparing the population total prior to October 7th. I suspect it will be a sobering figure, gleaned far too late to be of use to anyone but historians and criminal prosecutors.
The already sobering reality is that at least sixteen countries are helping Israel to commit the crime of genocide. This is the number that have withdrawn their financial support of UNRWA, the UN agency that has been the lifeline for millions of Palestinian refugees since the 1948 expulsion and genocide of Palestinians, which the current reprise seems certain to exceed in impact, as intended.
Will a ceasefire prevent the worst?
Some think it’s just around the bend. I can’t imagine it.
Hamas and its allies will never accept anything less than freedom, and Israel will not accept anything less than total control.
Furthermore, if one of the sides is losing, it’s not Hamas. Israel is a patient receiving a continuous transfusion from the US, all the while bleeding bleeding out from the rest of its body. Nobody knows the real statistics of Israeli casualties except that nearly all of them are soldiers, apart from the civilians killed on October 7th (mostly by Israeli soldiers executing the “Hannibal Directive”, as Israeli reports now admit). On the other hand, the Israeli military casualties are not necessarily Israeli. It is estimated that 5000 to 6000 are foreign mercenaries, one-third American, supported by US and other foreign money, which also sustains the economy and the military. (Putting foreign mercenaries on the front line helps to reduce the number of Israelis killed.)
Not all of Israel’s casualties are military, either, but also not civilian, except in an abstract sense. At least half a million have left the country, and 300,000 are refugees from the north and south. The economy is in tatters, despite the pocket money provided by the US to keep it going. Humpty Dumpty has had a great fall, and while the pieces are all there, no one will be able to put Humpty together again.
Gaza, of course, is also bleeding profusely, vastly more among its civilians than its combatants. In fact, Israel’s war is not so much against Hamas as it is against the civilian population, at least 70% women and children. The resistance effort is actually showing no sign of diminishing or becoming less effective. The effect of this is to prolong the genocide, but this does little to dim the popularity of the fighters, who are widely regarded as heroes, even among the population making the great sacrifices. None want to return to the oppressive status quo ante.
The sacrifices are, of course, horrific, and progressively moreso, dating from October 8th. The resources are more scarce with every passing day, by genocidal design. But so are the statistics. Many more Palestinians will die and be buried in anonymity, partly because the reporting network is being sabotaged and degraded, but also because many victims will not seek medical help, when the hospitals have no food to provide, nor blankets, nor tents, nor potable water, and because the hospitals mostly don’t exist anymore, also by design. The ratio of child deaths will rise, then possibly fall due to attrition, depending on the length of the holocaust. Perhaps a day of remembrance for the unknown casualties will be set aside, especially when it becomes clear that they vastly outnumber the known casualties, even if we can’t count them.
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Paul Larudee is a retired academic and current administrator of a nonprofit human rights and humanitarian aid organization. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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“Israel’s controlled demolitions are razing Gaza neighbourhoods,” headlined the New York Times. Israeli ground forces undermine and blow up schools, mosques, and residential neighbourhoods, in a systematic demolition of buildings and infrastructure. This confirms that the war aims to make Gaza uninhabitable, making the “relocation”, i.e. deportation, of the Palestinian population inevitable, with the consequent cancellation of the Palestinian Territory of Gaza and at the same time that of the West Bank, definitively burying the possibility that the Palestinians have their sovereign state, as decided by the United Nations 77 years ago.
An official United Nations report, sent from Gaza thus described the situation:
“Thousands continue to arrive in Rafah, in desperate situations, from different parts of Gaza. They build makeshift shelters with whatever materials they can get their hands on. I saw men and children digging for bricks to hold up tents made from plastic bags. This is a huge humanitarian disaster. The communication blackout continued for the sixth day, increasing confusion and fear.
Some released Palestinians described being beaten, humiliated, subjected to ill-treatment and what equated to torture. They reported being blindfolded for long periods. Some men have been released – but only in their underwear, with nothing else on to protect them from the cold. What they say confirms reports our Office has gathered on the large-scale detention of Palestinians. The families of the detainees – believed to number in the thousands – are given no information on the fate or whereabouts of their loved ones.”
Israel’s war in Gaza has so far caused the deaths of over 25,000 people, 70% women and children. Thousands more remained buried under the rubble. Over 60,000 were injured: Most are dying as Israeli forces destroy hospitals or leave them without electricity or medicine. Added to these is an unquantified, but certainly very high, number of deaths caused by hunger and cold in refugee camps.
In this situation, in which Israel is accused of genocide at the UN International Court of Justice, Italy, in the wake of the United States, has suspended funding to the United Nations Agency for the Relief of Palestinians in Gaza, accused without any evidence from the Israeli secret services of complicity in the Hamas attack on 7 October.
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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.
Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
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The strangest sight at the “Conference for Israel’s Victory,” which took place on Sunday evening at Jerusalem’s International Convention Center, wasn’t the map depicting dozens of new settlements that Israeli settlers hope to establish throughout the Gaza Strip after the war is over. It was the moment when thousands of people danced around the hall singing celebratory songs — a rare spectacle in post-October 7 Israel, with most of the nation still mourning the victims of the Hamas-led attacks and fearing for the safety of the hostages in Gaza.
Yet for the conference’s participants — among them 11 cabinet ministers and 15 members of the coalition, who gleefully joined in the dancing — there is indeed something to celebrate. For them, October 7 and the subsequent war have presented an unprecedented opportunity to reconquer Gaza, and, if possible, to engineer the situation such that there will be no Palestinians left when the new settlers arrive.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich began his speech with some reservation toward the joy that predominated:
“I must say that I have mixed emotions when it comes to the atmosphere in this hall,” he said, before adding immediately: “But there is something natural and healthy about what’s here, in the strength, in the joy, in the devotion to the Land of Israel, which has the potential to grant enormous strength.”
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir talked of “voluntary migration,” apparently understanding the need to moderate his language somewhat in light of the ongoing legal proceedings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Despite the impressive turnout of ministers and Knesset members from Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit, Smotrich’s Religious Zionist Party, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, and the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism — four of the parties that make up the current coalition — the true stars of the conference were the head of the Samaria Council, Yossi Dagan, and the chairwoman of the major settler organization Nahala, Daniella Weiss. Before October 7, they had been busy in the West Bank, in Eviatar and Homesh, where they received the government’s backing to re-establish previously dismantled outposts. Since the start of the war, however, a new market has opened up for these eager entrepreneurs — and they don’t plan on letting the opportunity go to waste.
As for the question of what will happen to the 2.3 million Palestinians who currently call Gaza home — a question posed by many of the foreign journalists who came to cover the conference — Weiss had an answer she repeated over and over again: “The Arabs will move.” She explained that, just as Israel “doesn’t give them food” in order to pressure Hamas to release the hostages, so too should Israel “not give them anything, so they will have to move. The world will accept this.”
Experienced in the complex dynamics between the settlement movement and the Israeli government, Weiss smiled when she was asked about how Netanyahu will respond to last week’s ruling by the ICJ that Israel must act to prevent genocide in Gaza. “The government will accede to pressure from the public,” she replied.
“October 7 changed history,” Weiss declared from the stage. “Gaza, the southern gate to Israel, will be wide open. Gazans will leave [the Strip] for all parts of the world, and the Jewish people will make the land of our forefathers flourish. Each and every clod of the Land of Israel that our soldiers have within their grasp gives us the necessary strength to fight against a cruel and eternal enemy. It is not to a foreign land that we are returning, but rather to the golden sands of our Gaza. There is no ‘day after’ — the day after is today, it’s every day in which the Jewish people is victorious and returns to settle in Gaza.”
To that effect, a giant map of Gaza on the wall of the conference hall was marked with the locations of hypothetical new settlements — spanning all the way from Rafah in the south to Beit Hanoun in the north. There was a booth corresponding to each settlement where you could register as an interested settler, and the booth for where Gaza City stands today even suggested new names for all of the city’s neighborhoods: “Zeitoun” will become “Shivat Zion”; Shuja’iya will become “Gibor Oz.”
‘The Oslo Accords Are Dead — Am Yisrael Chai’
The organizers of the conference, it seemed, weren’t especially bothered by the fact that their stance on expulsion and settlement completely contradicts the state’s official line, as presented at The Hague. One of the videos exhibited at the conference was the now-infamous clip of soldiers waiting to join Israel’s ground invasion of the Strip chanting “there are no innocents in Gaza,” which South Africa had brought before the ICJ as evidence of genocidal intent. The idea of “transferring” Gaza’s Palestinian population was mentioned in nearly every speech.
When Ben Gvir stood up to speak, a few young audience members held up a banner that read,
“Only transfer will bring peace.” Ben Gvir responded to them: “Yes, and also [there must be] a moral, logical, biblical, and Halakhic [Jewish religious law] solution, encouraging migration and implementing the death penalty for terrorists … to encourage them to leave.”
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir speaks at the “Conference for Israel’s Victory” in Jerusalem, January 28, 2024. (Oren Ziv)
Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi was more direct:
“There will never be a Palestinian state between the river and the sea … We have an obligation to act, for our sake, and for the sake of the supposedly uninvolved [civilians in Gaza], for voluntary migration. Even if the war that was forced upon us turns the issue of voluntary migration into coercion to the point that they say: ‘I want to [leave].’”
In contrast to the politicians, who were at least somewhat cautious in their choice of words, other speakers were much more blunt. Rabbi Uzi Sharbaf is one of the leaders of the movement to resettle Gaza. Head of the settler group Harchivi Makom Aholech, which works to take over Palestinian property in Hebron, he was sentenced to life in prison for terror attacks with the Jewish Underground in the 1980s before being released after seven years.
At the start of the conference, he declared:
“We need to reflect on how so many Jews could be brutally killed in just a few hours on [October 7]. Is there just a security problem here? Many say, justifiably, that the worldview must change after the massacre. But it is not just the approach that needs to change; we need to go up a level, a floor, as a nation, as a state. Let’s stop talking about parts of the Land of Israel. What is [Areas] A, B, and C? What is the north of the [Gaza] Strip? The entire Strip, the whole land, is part of the Land of Israel.”
The head of the Samaria Regional Council, Yossi Dagan, was one of several speakers who drew a connection between the “disengagement” of 2005 — in which Israel dismantled all of its settlements in the Gaza Strip along with a handful of small settlements in the northern West Bank — and the massacre carried out by Hamas.
Israelis dance and wave flags at the “Conference for Israel’s Victory” in Jerusalem, January 28, 2024. (Oren Ziv)
“After October 7, it’s clear to everyone that where there are settlements there is security, and where there are no settlements there is terror,” Dagan said. “The Jewish people … is in a rare [state of] unity in this war for its life, for the existence of the State of Israel. We must say this loud and clear. Oslo, and the expulsion of the disengagement, brought this Holocaust upon us. I say, and repeat after me: ‘The Oslo Accords are dead — Am Yisrael Chai [the people of Israel live].’”
The audience roared his words back in response.
The head of the Kiryat Arba Council, Eliyahu Liebman, whose son Elyakim was kidnapped to Gaza while he was guarding the Nova music festival, declared that the hostages had been taken in order to enable the return to Gaza:
“This evening, we remember … all the heroes who have fallen, been wounded, been kidnapped, so that we, God willing, will return quickly to settle Gush Katif and northern Shomron.”
Liebman, apparently unaware of the details of the proceedings at The Hague, invoked the biblical mandate to eradicate the enemies of the Israelites.
“The parashah [portion of the Torah] we read this Shabbat ends with: ‘I will wipe out the memory of Amalek from the earth.’ We, in this generation, are fighting Amalek.”
After the deliberations at the ICJ, Israel will have a hard time claiming that the ideas expressed at the conference don’t represent official policy. In the pamphlet that was distributed to the audience, the message was even clearer than in the speeches. On the question of how Israel should treat the Palestinian population in Gaza, the lawyer Aviad Visoli — a prominent Temple movement activist — wrote: “Nakba 2, meaning the mass expulsion of the Arabs of Gaza, is also justified by the laws of war.”
The plan to resettle Gaza may seem far-fetched, and it’s true that Netanyahu and the security establishment may present an obstacle — especially amid increased international scrutiny. But it’s important to remember that in the meantime, the expulsion of Palestinians and the settlement of Jews in their place is moving forward at lightning speed in the West Bank, where at least 16 Palestinian communities have been expelled by settlers — with the full backing of the army — since October 7.
Outside the conference, near the Central Bus Station, someone had spray painted the slogan of the movement: “Returning to Gaza.” The joy of the conference was rooted in the conviction that this return will ensure the security of the Jewish people and of the State of Israel. But someone else had seen the graffiti and inserted their own, less optimistic message: ”Returning to die in Gaza.”
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Oren Ziv is a photojournalist, reporter for Local Call, and a founding member of the Activestills photography collective.
Featured image: Israelis look at a giant map of the Gaza Strip depicting future Israeli settlements at the “Conference for Israel’s Victory” in Jerusalem, January 28, 2024. (Oren Ziv)
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When is the acquisitive nature of open frontier capitalism too much? When Elon Musk is told that US$56 billion as a pay package is unfair. This, at least, was the finding by Delaware Court of Chancery by Judge Kathaleen McCormick regarding the spellbinding 2018 compensation package for the planet’s wealthiest human being.
McCormick and Musk already have inked some judicial history. The same judge presided over the Twitter suit against Musk that eventually resulted in him parting with US$44 billion to acquire the company that is now sliding into merry decay as the platform X.
In her sharp ruling, daring to “boldly go where no man has gone before”, let alone a Delaware court, McCormick observed that Tesla, a company of Musk’s own creation, “bore the burden of proving that the compensation plan was fair, and they failed to meet their burden.” The question of fairness first arose in 2019, when Tesla shareholder Richard Tornetta filed a suit challenging the validity of the 2018 performance-based equity compensation plan, the largest of its type in the history of public markets.
Tornetta’s primary contention was that Musk was hardly showing much devotion to the carmaker, his duties and interests spread, as it were, across a number of other corporate entities: SpaceX, OpenAI, Neuralink and the Boring Company.
Tornetta’s legal team argued that the 2018 package did nothing to focus the billionaire’s interest on Tesla and, it followed, the interests of its shareholders. The agreement, for instance, made no mention of any such requirements as time allocation. “Indeed,” reads the lawsuit, “Musk testified that since the Grant’s approval, he has spent a little more than half his time on Tesla matters and has dedicated substantial time and attention to various other endeavours.”
The judgment acknowledges that any decision by the board of directors on what to pay a company CEO “is the quintessential business determination subject to great judicial deference.” Delaware law, however, recognised “unique risks inherent in a corporation’s transactions with its controlling stockholder.” When it came to dealing with “conflicted-controller transactions,” the “presumptive standard review … is entire fairness.”
Here, the defendants proved “unable to prove that the stockholder vote was fully informed because the proxy statement inaccurately described key directors as independent and misleadingly omitted details about the process.” Even by the judge’s own reasoning, the task left to the defendants was an “unenviable” one, and “too tall an order.”
For the court, there were critical problems with the process leading to the approval of the compensation plan. The judgment paints a picture of Musk essentially negotiating with himself through devotees, flunkeys and friends. The adversarial atmosphere was never present; the “controlled mindset” all powerful.
The theme of the entrepreneurial God King holding his courtiers in thrall streaks McCormick’s observations. Musk, for instance, maintained “extensive ties with the persons tasked with negotiating on Tesla’s behalf.” The chair of the compensation committee, Ira Ehrenpreis, had known Musk well for 15 years. Another member of the same committee, Antonio Gracias, had an enduring two-decade business relationship with Musk “as well as the sort of personal relationship that had him vacationing with Musk’s family on a regular basis.”
The entanglements do not stop there. There is General Counsel Todd Maron, the main negotiating link between the committee and Musk. Maron had acted as divorce attorney for Musk and admired him so much he was “moved … to tears during his deposition.”
With a flawed process, things did not get much better with the negotiated price. Again, the defendants argued that, for Tesla to continue to grow, Musk’s continued leadership was indispensable. Keeping Musk as the main helmsman meant a rise in stockholder value. In one estimate, offering Musk a chance to increase his ownership of Tesla from 21.9% to 28.3% would mean “6% for (US)$600 billion of growth in stockholder value.”
Such arguments did not convince McCormick. Musk already owned 21.9% of the company when the plan was approved. He had every incentive to push the company “to levels of transformative growth” seeing what he stood to gain from it: “(US)$10 billion for every (US)$50 billion in market capitalization increase.” The arrangements also came with no conditions on how much time Musk would devote to Tesla. “Swept up by the rhetoric of ‘all upside,’ or perhaps starry eyed by Musk’s superstar appeal, the board never asked the (US)$55.8 billion question: Was the plan even necessary to retain Musk and achieve its goals?” The answer: plainly not.
Such observations would have stung and made good the judge’s promise to go where no previous Delaware court had dared tread. Here was a punchy assessment about the comfortable, clique-ridden tribalism of corporate non-governance. Musk, riled and ruffled, took to the platform X (formerly Twitter) to vent. “Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware,” were his words of advice.
By no means does this end matter. Musk is hardly going to be out of pocket, nor is he going to leave the company from which he continues to handsomely profit from via stocks he owns. Fairness operates in otherworldly dimensions here. A new compensation package, according to the judge, will have to be worked out with Tornetta. An appeal is also possible. “The judge’s ruling should be a wakeup call (for Tesla shareholders) that things have gotten out of hand,” remarks Andrew Poreda, who also invests in Tesla through exchange-traded funds. In this overgrown corporate jungle, it is questionable whether things were ever really in hand.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: [email protected]
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Nuclear weapon abolitionists sounded alarm Friday in response to fresh evidence that the United States is planning to station nukes in the United Kingdom for the first time in more than 15 years, a move that opponents said would only heighten the risk of an atomic war.
The U.S. removed more than 100 nuclear bombs from Royal Air Force Lakenheath, a base in Suffolk, in 2008 following sustained protests from the U.K.-based Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and other nonproliferation advocates.
CND warned in a statement Friday that the redeployment of nukes to Lakenheath would “make Britain a guaranteed target in the event of any war between NATO and Russia.”
“We encourage both the media and the public to increase pressure on the British government to be honest about this deployment,” said Kate Hudson, CND’s general secretary.
The Telegraph reported last week that “procurement contracts for a new facility at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk confirm that the U.S. intends to place nuclear warheads three times the strength of the Hiroshima bomb at the air base.”
“The return of American weapons to the U.K. is part of a NATO-wide program to develop and upgrade nuclear sites in response to heightened tensions with the Kremlin in the wake of the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine,” the U.K. newspaper continued. “Russia has stated that the placement of U.S. weapons in Britain would be viewed by Moscow as an ‘escalation’ and would be met with ‘compensating counter-measures.'”
CND said Friday it has “strongly suspected” that the Lakenheath base was being prepped for the return of U.S. nukes for nearly two years. Last August, Matt Korda and Hans Kristensen of the Nuclear Information Project highlighted U.S. Air Force budget documents for fiscal year 2024 that “strongly imply” the Biden administration is moving toward reestablishing American nuclear presence in the U.K.
As the pair explained:
The Air Force’s FY 2024 budgetary justification package, dated March 2023, notes the planned construction of a “surety dormitory” at RAF Lakenheath, approximately 100 kilometers northeast of London. The “surety dormitory” was also briefly mentioned in the Department of Defense’s testimony to Congress in March 2023, but with no accompanying explanation. “Surety” is a term commonly used within the Department of Defense and Department of Energy to refer to the capability to keep nuclear weapons safe, secure, and under positive control…
Construction of the facility is scheduled to begin in June 2024 and end in February 2026.
CND said it has questioned the U.K.’s Defense Ministry and local officials about the “lawfulness of the planning rights used to allow the building of the surety dormitory.”
“The Lakenheath upgrades form part of a wider effort to upgrade U.S./NATO nuclear infrastructure across Europe, which has preceded—and likely provoked—Russia’s deployment of its own nuclear weapons to Belarus,” the group said. “Despite this, neither the U.S. nor U.K. government have given information to the public about this deployment.”
Hudson argued that “far from making us safer, this deployment has escalated the dangers, brought Russian nukes to Europe, and made us a nuclear target.”
“It’s shameful that our government continues to take us for fools on this serious matter,” said Hudson. “They are refusing to give us crucial information about our security.”
[From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.]
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Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.
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It was a struggle to see how a child’s welfare was relevant in the latest, shrill debates about technology taking place on The Hill. The Senate Judiciary Committee and the leaders of social media companies were on show to thrash out matters on technology and their threats on January 31 in a hearing titled “Big Tech and the Online Child Exploitation Crisis.” The companies present: X Corp, represented by Linda Yaccarino; TikTok Inc, fronted by Shou Chew; Snap Inc, by Evan Spiegel; Meta and Mark Zuckerberg; and Jason Citron of Discord Inc.
Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) got the ghoulish proceedings underway with a video featuring victims and survivors. “I was sexually exploited on Facebook,” declares one. “I was sexually exploited on Instagram,” comes another. “I was sexually exploited on X.” And so forth.
Exploitation leads to distress and worse.
“The child that … gets exploited is never the same again,” says a parent.
One lost their son to suicide after being exploited on Facebook. Then, the failings of indifferent Big Tech operatives are carted out. “How many more kids will suffer and die because of social media?” goes the tune. “We need Congress to do something for our children and protect them.”
This supplied Durbin the ideal, moralistic (and moralising) springboard. And nothing excites those in Congress more than a moral crisis from which much mischief can be made. There was, he solemnly declared, a “sexual exploitation is a crisis in America.” In the decade from 2013 to 2023, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) had received and increase from 1,380 cyber tips per day to 100,000 daily reports. The modern smartphone has become a hellish conduit of exploitation. “Discord has been used to groom, abduct and abuse children. Meta’s Instagram helped connect and promote a network of paedophiles. Snapchat’s disappearing messages have been co-opted by criminals who financially extort young victims. TikTok has become a ‘platform of choice’ for predators to access, engage, and groom children for abuse”.
From the Republican side, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham saw social media companies in their current design and operation as
“dangerous products. They’re destroying lives, threatening democracy itself. These companies must be reined in or the worst is yet to come.”
The senators were ploughing familiar ground: the corrosion of mental health including instances of self-harm and suicide, the role of social media in perpetrating a number of crimes (drug dealing, sextortion) and the blissful digital heavens such companies have created for any number of unsavoury cults, ideologies and inclinations.
What, then, of it? For one thing, Zuckerberg, who was making his eighth appearance at such a hearing, was hardly going to offer anything constructive – at least in a binding sense. In the month just passed, internal Meta documents revealed a number of concerns from employees that the company’s messaging apps had featured in various instances of child exploitation. Little was done about it, which was precisely to be expected.
As a useful whipping boy of Congressional outrage, Meta’s CEO provided the perfect platform for senatorial outrage. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) could spice the airwaves (and the global social media universe) with his righteous display:
“There’s families of victims here today. Have you apologised to the victims? Would you like to do so now?”
Zuckerberg, reminded that he was on national television, did the performing seal act, turning around and facing the audience. A number of photos of deceased children were helpfully offered to torment the guilty soul. “I’m sorry,” Zuckerberg responded. “Everything that you all have gone through, it’s terrible. No one should have to go through the things that your families have suffered and this is why we invest so much and are going to continue doing industry leading efforts to make sure that no one has to go through the types of things your families have had to suffer.”
It was a fantastically bloodless response, filled with the usual Big Tech baubles: industry standards would be met, innovations would be made, investments would follow, and new products of sterling safety engineered. As Zuckerberg went on to explain to Hawley,
“I view my job and the job of our company is building the best tools that we can keep our community safe.”
But the model as to how such companies extract, use, and monetise information – surveillance capitalism – is left untouched. Hawley’s cosmetic suggestion is to create a compensation fund for victims; the social media business model can continue to operate untrammelled because no member of Congress wants to be tarnished with the anti-corporation brush. Money always comes first.
Another great threat was also being teased out in the combative questions posed to the social media CEOs. Their companies have produced hideous, wounding and in some cases lethal products, all of which continue being used by billions, including haranguing, morally indignant politicians and unsuspecting children. But Congress also showed why it is also a problem to the very people it claims to be protecting.
The form this takes is the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a co-sponsored initiative from Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). KOSA ostensibly deals with child safety, intended to empower the attorney general of every state, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to file lawsuits against apps or websites for failing to “prevent or mitigate” the various harms that supposedly affect children. Its effect, far from protecting children, will be something quite different, elevating the “duty of care” principle to scrub content that might cause “anxiety”, “depression” and any other number of undesirable behaviours.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation describes KOSA as a censorship bill. And it is easy to see why, with any item of information or news shared susceptible to being banned or modified for causing distress to children. “Ultimately,” writes the EFF’s Jason Kelley, “no amendment will change the basic fact that KOSA’s duty of care turns what is meant to be a bill about child safety into a censorship bill that will harm the rights of both adult and minor uses.”
Fight for the Future Director Evan Greer was also deeply unimpressed, tellingTechCrunch that, “Dozens of human rights, civil liberties, LGBTQ+ and racial justice groups oppose the reckless legislation being proposed at today’s hearing.”
In an attempt to stream roll the CEOs into supporting the bill, Senator Blumenthal asked where they stood on its merits. Spiegel and Yaccarino expressed support for KOSA. Those from TikTok, Meta and Discord dithered and expressed reservations. Citron was diplomatic. “We very much think that a national privacy standard would be great.” Chew noted that “some groups have raised some concerns”. Zuckerberg blandly stated that, “These are nuanced things.”
The hearing of January 31 ended with an open conspiracy against genuine change in the social media ecosystem. Instead of focusing on privacy and surveillance capitalism, the senators were more interested in the regulation of outrage over undesirable content. Instead of considering genuine reform, the CEOs made non-binding promises about cosmetic adjustments and fictional industry standards. Along the way, the children were well and truly forgotten.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: [email protected]
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This year represents the 98th anniversary of the launching of “Negro History Week” in 1926, later named Black History Month in 1976, after the federal government issued a proclamation in recognition of the contributions of African American people under the administration of President Gerald R. Ford.
The commemoration was founded by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, a pioneering scholar and public intellectual who founded the Journal of Negro History in 1915 and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History the following year, 1916.
Woodson’s origins within the African American working class is a demonstration of the determination to seek formal education in the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction in the South and other regions of the United States. Although Woodson came from humble beginnings and worked as a coal miner in West Virginia, he was able to put himself through High school, college and was eventually awarded a doctoral degree in history from Harvard University.
After teaching high school and college in Washington, D.C., Woodson became an independent scholar establishing the aforementioned journal, historical association and week of activities related to the achievements of African Americans and people of African descent. He established a headquarters in the nation’s capital while traveling extensively to deliver lectures in churches, community centers, schools and colleges.
Although the historical studies of African enslavement, rebellions, the Civil War, Reconstruction and the Jim Crow eras were dominated by Southern segregationists and their sympathizers, an entirely different approach to these periods in history were soon advanced by African American and African Caribbean researchers and writers. Woodson was representative of a cadre of scholars which focused on the necessity of reversing institutional racism and national oppression in the U.S. and other geopolitical regions of the world.
The Haitian Revolution and Its Significance: Contributions of T.G. Steward
Between 1791-1804, the African population of Haiti rose up in a revolutionary war to end enslavement and declare themselves as an independent republic. These developments on this Caribbean island-nation known as Hispaniola struck fear in the slavocracy within other areas throughout the Antilles along with South and North America.
Image: T.G. Steward
In the first volume and issue of the Journal of Negro History founded by Woodson, there was a book review of a study published by Theophilus Gould Steward (1843-1924) in 1914 entitled “The Haitian Revolution, 1791 to 1804”. The review was written by Jessie Redmond Fauset, African American woman editor and literary figure, who says that:
“Although most of the book is naturally concerned with the revolutionary period, the author brings his account up to date by giving a very brief resume of the history of Haiti from 1804 to the present time (1915). This history is marked by the frequent occurrence of assassinations and revolutions, but the reader will not allow himself to be affected by disgust or prejudiced at these facts particularly when he is reminded, as Mr. Steward says, ‘that the political history of Haiti does not differ greatly from that of the majority of South American republics, nor does it differ widely even from that of France.’”
Steward was born in Bridgeton, New Jersey in 1843. He was educated and later entered the ministry in 1864 and traveled to South Carolina in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War where under the direction of African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) Bishop Daniel Payne, he worked to establish AME churches in South Carolina and Georgia. During the period from 1882-1891 Steward conducted missionary work in Haiti.
By 1891 he had entered the U.S. military as one of the few African Americans in the officer corps. He would serve in the 25th Infantry Regiment working as a military chaplain and educator. Steward also held several posts in the Western U.S. and the Philippines.
He retired in 1907 at the age of 64. After touring Europe with his second wife, Dr. Susan McKinney, a pioneering African American physician, author and professor. Later Steward and McKinney-Steward would settle in Ohio where they worked at Wilberforce University.
The work of the Stewards was instrumental in providing education and medical care to African Americans only one and two generations removed from enslavement. Their interests in the developments of Haiti were a clear reflection of the international and Pan-African outlooks of many during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Anna Julia Cooper on the Haitian Revolution and Pan-Africanism
Born during 1858 in Raleigh, North Carolina, Anna Julia Cooper, became an advocate for the education of African American women, equal rights for women and the unity of African people around the world. She was a participant in the 1893 Chicago Congress of Representative Women as well as the 1900 Pan-African Conference held in London.
Despite widespread institutional racism and sexism, Cooper was able to earn her bachelor’s degree (St. Augustine College), masters (Oberlin College) and a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne in Paris. Her dissertation defended in 1925 in France was later translated, published and entitled “Slavery and the French Revolutionists”.
One source on the significance of Cooper’s writing on the Haitian Revolution noted that:
“In her 1925 doctoral dissertation at the University of Paris, African American scholar Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964) examined the relations between the 18th century revolutionists in Paris and the representatives and inhabitants of the richest French colony, San Domingue. She argued that the legalized slave trade became a critical issue in the struggle over the rights of man during the French Revolution and that when the revolutionists of Paris deflected the question of slavery in San Domingue, the people of France lost the opportunity to escalate their liberty and their equality. Cooper insisted that to understand the French Revolution and its repercussions, it is necessary to add the dimension of race. Historian Frances R. Keller has made this unique work available in English. Through her interpretive essays, Keller places Cooper’s dissertation in the context of her life and scholarship. Keller also provides an essential historical look at the international events that led up to the bloody revolutions in France and Haiti.”
Cooper’s scholarly and political work has gained greater recognition over the last decade. She lived to be 105 years-old, making her transition in 1964, after serving many years as an adult educator in Washington, D.C. committed to the literacy and professional training of the African American people. Her book entitled “A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South”, published in 1892, has been hailed in recent years as a major contribution to African American Feminist Thought. (See this)
CLR James with Stokely Carmichael and Walter Rodney
Cyril Lionel Robert James was born in 1901 in the Caribbean island-nation of Trinidad and Tobago. During his upbringing he developed a keen interest in literature, political theory and historical studies.
James migrated to Britain during the early 1930s where he became involved in the socialist movement. Later he joined Leon Trotsky in efforts to build an alternative to the post-1924 events in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) under the leadership of Joseph Stalin.
After the October 1935 invasion of Abyssinia by the Italian fascist government of Benito Mussolini, James worked with his childhood friend from Trinidad, Malcolm Nurse, then known as George Padmore, where they built political opposition to the occupation of this Horn of Africa state. By 1935, Padmore had broken with the Communist International over ideological differences. However, along with James, they remained committed socialists.
In 1937-38 while in London, James published three books: “A History of Negro Revolt”, “World Revolution from 1917-1936” and “Black Jacobins”, a study on the Haitian Revolution. Perhaps his best-known work, Black Jacobins, prefigured the national liberation movements which emerged full-blown after the conclusion of World War II. (See this)
James remained active after traveling and living in the U.S. between 1938-1953. After his deportation in the early 1950s, his influence grew during the 1960s and 1970s. He would later return and teach at several universities in the U.S. advancing his theories on Pan-Africanism and World Revolution.
Although James distanced himself from Trotskyism during the late 1940s and early 1950s, he maintained that the political parties and popular movements which led the independence efforts in Africa, Asia and Latin America from the 1940s to the 1970s confirmed his ideas on the central role of mass struggles in the transformation of international affairs. James eventually returned to Britain in the 1980s where he died in London in 1989 at the age of 88.
The work of these African American and African Caribbean scholar-activists involving Haiti illustrates the central role of resistance within the historical trajectory of the world. Their independent research and reinterpretation of the periods of enslavement and colonialism provide a working alternative to the ideas advanced by imperialism which justifies its existence as an exploitative and oppressive system.
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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; featured image: Jessie Redmond Fauset
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Today, February 2, 2024, the US Labor Department released its monthly jobs report for January. One of the Department’s two surveys showed +353,000 jobs created in January. But a second report shows a drop in total employment in January of -1,070,000 full time and part time jobs (and an additional -400,000 jobs if one includes unincorporated independent contractors jobs). So, like the Bible, one can find whatever one wants in the government job stats.
So why the discrepancies between the two surveys in the monthly jobs report?
Jobs
One reason is that the two surveys have big differences in their methodologies (and underlying assumptions).
The Current Establishment Survey (which is not really a survey), or CES, is a compilation of reports provided by around 400,000 large businesses to the labor department. Even so, apparently those large corporations have been reducing their participation in the reporting. So maybe half that send in their reports on their hiring, layoffs, etc. to the government.
The second survey, the Current Population Survey, or CPS, is a true survey conducted by the labor department monthly. It actually surveys but mostly smaller businesses. It has a different methodology than the CES and different assumptions.
If one uses the CES it appears (and the Biden administration claims) 3.1m jobs were ‘created’ in all of 2023. But the CPS survey shows only 820,000 (again, counting full time, part time, and unincorporated independent contract workers).
Part of the problem may be that the CES doesn’t count NET job creation, just new jobs while the CPS looks at the total level of employment from period (Jan) to period (Jan). The latter makes more sense. Doesn’t one want to determine what the net gain in jobs was over the year? Jobs gained minus jobs lost? And isn’t a survey that considers the millions of smaller companies perhaps more accurate than a partial census with declining participation by bigger corporations? There’s a bifurcated US economy out there. Big businesses may be doing ok; but smaller businesses generally aren’t.
Then there’s the matter of the unemployment rate monthly reporting. Here we keep getting a monthly unemployment rate of 3.7% (for the last three months). But that 3.7% is what is called the U-3 unemployment rate. That rate, unfortunately, is for full time workers only! The US civilian labor force is about 167 million. Maybe 40-50m of that total labor force is part time workers, temps, gig workers (grossly underestimate btw), independent contractors (who are actually workers not small businesses), etc.
And if one looks at the CPS survey again, there’s a statistic called the U-6 unemployment rate. That’s at 8%, not 3.7%, in the January jobs report.
The U-3 concludes only 6m workers are unemployed; the U-6 estimates almost 14m are unemployed.
The mainstream US media likes to hype and report the 353,000 January and 3.1m 2023 jobs, and the 3.7% unemployment rate and 6.1m jobless. You’ll see that published virtually everywhere. But elsewhere in the same government stats there’s the -1,070,000 January and 820,000 2023 jobs and the 8% unemployment rate and the 14m jobless.
It all comes down to what population you’re dealing with, what kind of survey you’re using (or not) and what are the scores of underlying assumptions (typically not noted in the reports) that are being employed in the methodologies chosen.
For example, when estimating U-3 jobs the government takes the raw data on jobs in monthly big business report (CES) then adds a separate set of raw jobs data from what it considers net new businesses created. These two datasets are merged (with certain assumptions about how many jobs on average are associated with a new business when it is created). It combines the two datasets, does a number of operations & manipulations on the raw data, including (but not limited to) seasonality adjustments, and comes up with the 353,000 reported, for example. But that 353,000 is a statistic, a manipulation and transformation of the actual raw data on jobs. Statistics are estimations of the actual data, not the actual number of jobs created in January. But this approach integrating new business formation job creation with the monthly large businesses reporting on jobs has certain real problems:
First of all, it is impossible to estimate net new business development. Why? There’s data on when a new business has formed. It must report formation to its respective state. But businesses rarely report anything when they go out of business. They simply go away. So the government plugs in a number based on historical trends for the number of businesses failing each month, subtracts that from the number newly started, and that’s the new business formation jobs total it then adds to the big businesses reports to the labor department. In other word, the ‘net’ is half made up, a plugged in number! Worse still, the ‘net’ supposedly jobs number is lagged at least six months from the current big business raw jobs number reported. So one’s estimating jobs ‘created’ six months ago and mixing it with current jobs reported.
Not only is this mixing apples and oranges but oranges and potatoes since the latter is not really a fruit.
Wages and Salaries
There are similar issues when the government says wages have risen 4.5% over the past year: that 4.5% is for full time workers only. Moreover, it includes ‘wages’ (salaries) of the highly paid occupations, including managers and even CEOs salaries. The fact is these occupations at the top end of the ‘wage structure’ get wage raises much higher than 4.5%. So the 4.5% average is skewed to the top end. And that means workers at the median are likely getting less than 4.5%. Those below median even lower, unless they were at minimum wage and living in one of the States that raised minimum wages recently. If not, and living in the two dozen or so stuck with the federal minimum wage of $7.25 for nine+ years now, they got 0% raise.
In other words, reporting 4.5% is an average and that distorts reality.
There’s also the problem of what is the real take home pay wage and salary. The 4.5% is reported as adjusted for inflation. But what if the adjustment is, once again, only for full time workers, which is the case for the oft-reported 4.5%. Even more important, what if the inflation adjustment is ‘low-balled’? The CPI price index latest results showed inflation of 4% for ‘all items’. That would suggest an average real wage gain of 0.5% last year. But has it been 4%. (Or the even lower 3.4% for the other price index, the PCE)? There are a whole set of other issues associated with the under-estimation of inflation–and thus overestimation of the 4.5% wage gain. That would require a separate article to fully consider and explain. To make it brief, this writer believes the corrected CPI is at least 6%, not 4%. If so, the real wage gain of 4.5% is actually a real wage decline of at least -2% last year.
When one looks at the overall growth of the economy year to year, or quarter to quarter, as measured by the Gross Domestic Product, GDP, another entire set of issues also arise. The official preliminary first GDP report released a week ago indicated GDP in 2023 rose by 2.5%.
GDP vs. GDI
Without considering all the issues why GDP is also over estimated even at 2.5% (another article perhaps), here’s just one: GDP measures the total market value of all the goods and services produced and sold in a given year (or quarter). That total production results in a corresponding total income generated.
After all, if a product or service is sold (the definition), then it produces a revenue which gets distributed among various sources of income: profits, wages, etc. The gross income created from the gross production should be more or less equivalent. But the gross income for 2023 (called Gross Domestic Income, or GDI) was only 1.5% while the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, was 2.5%! So where did the other 1% go? Either GDI is underestimated or GDP is overestimated, or both. Whatever, the media likes only to report GDP but it seems what ends up in people’s pockets (GDI) is more important.
The preceding is just an overview of some of the real issues behind US statistics on jobs, unemployment, wages or even the economy’s growth in general that get glossed over or even ignored by the media and especially politicians. There’s a lot of ‘cherry picking’ of the statistics going on.
Perhaps that’s why in part the media, pundits and politicians keep scratching their heads recently, lamenting on why the American public doesn’t get it that ‘the economy’s doing really good’.
Maybe, just maybe, John Q. Public is experiencing a different set of statistics (and raw data facts) about the condition of the US economy.
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Dr. Rasmus is author of the books, ‘Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes’, Clarity Press, 2017 and ‘Alexander Hamilton and the Origins of the Fed’, Lexington Books, 2020. Follow his commentary on the emerging banking crisis on his blog, https://jackrasmus.com; on twitter daily @drjackrasmus; and his weekly radio show, Alternative Visions on the Progressive Radio Network every Friday at 2pm eastern and at https://alternativevisions.podbean.com.