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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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1948 was a year of tragic irony.

That year saw the adoption of both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, together promising a world in which human rights would be protected by the rule of law. That same year, South Africa adopted apartheid and Israeli forces carried out the Nakba, the violent mass dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Both systems relied on western colonial support.

In short, the modern international human rights movement was born into a world of racialized colonial contradictions. Seventy-five years later, the world is watching in horror as Israel has continued the Nakba through its months-long, systematic ethnic purge of Gaza — again with the complicity of powerful western governments led by the United States.

The horrors of the original Nakba were met with decades of absolute impunity for Israel, feeding further violence. But this time, three decades since the overthrow of apartheid in South Africa, the post-apartheid “Rainbow Nation” is taking the lead in challenging Israel’s genocidal assault.

On December 29, South Africa became the first country to file an application to the UN’s high judicial arm, the International Court of Justice, instituting genocide proceedings against Israel for “acts threatened, adopted, condoned, taken, and being taken by the Government and military of the State of Israel against the Palestinian people.”

In wrenching and horrifying detail, South Africa’s 84-page document describes a litany of Israeli actions as “genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent… to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial, and ethnical group.”

A Horrifying Civilian Toll in Gaza and the West Bank

2023 was the bloodiest year in the Palestinian territories since the destruction of historic Palestine and the founding of the state of Israel.

In the first half of the year, Israeli assaults on Palestinians in the West Bank had already reached a fever pitch, with successive waves of mass arrests, settler pogroms, and military attacks against Palestinian towns and refugee camps, including the ethnic cleansing of entire villages. At the same time, millions of civilians in Gaza were suffering unbearable hardship under a 17-year-long Israel-imposed siege.

On October 7, Gaza-based militants launched a devastating attack on Israeli military and civilian targets and seized more than 200 military personnel and civilian hostages. In an appalling act of mass collective punishment, Israel immediately cut off all food, water, medicine, fuel, and electricity to the 2.3 million Palestinian civilians trapped in Gaza. Then it began a relentless campaign of annihilation through massive bombing and missile strikes followed by a ground-level invasion that brought shocking reports of massacres, extrajudicial executions, torture, beatings, and mass civilian detentions.

More than 22,000 civilians and counting have since been killed in Gaza, the overwhelming majority children and women — along with record numbers of journalists and more UN aid workers than in any other conflict situation. Thousands more are still trapped under the rubble, dead or dying from untreated injuries, and now more are dying from rampant diseases caused by Israel’s denial of clean water and medical care, even as the Israeli military assault continues. Eighty-five percent of all Gazans have been forced from their homes. And now Israeli-imposed starvation is taking hold.

The Legal Standard for Genocide

Genocide analysts and human rights lawyers, activists, specialists around the globe — no strangers to human cruelty — have been shocked by both the savagery of Israel’s acts and by the brazen public declarations of genocidal intent by Israeli leaders. Hundreds of these experts have sounded the genocide alarm in Gaza, noting the point-by-point alignment between Israel’s actions and its officials’ stated intent on the one hand, and the prohibitions enumerated in UN Genocide Convention on the other.

The South African application “unequivocally condemns all violations of international law by all parties, including the direct targeting of Israeli civilians and other nationals and hostage-taking by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups.” But it reminds the Court: “No armed attack on a State’s territory, no matter how serious — even an attack involving atrocity crimes — can, however, provide any possible justification for, or defense to, breaches of the [Genocide Convention] whether as a matter of law or morality.”

Unlike many aspects of international law, the definition of genocide is quite straightforward. To qualify as genocide or attempted genocide, two things are required. First, the specific intent of the perpetrator to destroy all or part of an identified national, ethnical, racial, or religious group. Second, commission of at least one of five specified acts designed to make that happen.

South Africa’s petition to the ICJ is filled with clear and horrifically compelling examples, identifying Israeli actions that match at least three of the five acts that constitute genocide when linked to specific intent. Those include killing members of the group, causing serious physical or mental harm to members of the group, and, perhaps most indicative of genocidal purpose, creating “conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.” As South Africa documents, Israel has shown the world, at levels unprecedented in the 21^st century, what those conditions look like.

For specific intent, South Africa points to dozens of statements made by Israeli leaders, including the President, Prime Minister, and other cabinet officials, and as well as Knesset members, military commanders, and more.

Accustomed to decades of U.S.-backed impunity, Israeli officials have been emboldened, describing openly their intent to carry out “another Nakba,” to wipe out all of Gaza, to deny any distinction between civilians and combatants, to raze Gaza to the ground, to reduce it to rubble, and to bury Palestinians alive, among many other similar statements.

Their deliberately dehumanizing language includes descriptions of Palestinians as animals, sub-human, Nazis, a cancer, insects, vermin — all language designed to justify wiping out all or part of the group. Prime Minister Netanyahu went so far as to invoke a Biblical verse on the Amalek, commanding that the “entire population be wiped out, that none be spared, men, women, children, suckling babies, and livestock.”

The U.S. May Also be Complicit in Israel’s Genocide

The petition to the ICJ is sharply focused on Israel’s violations of the Genocide Convention. It does not deal with the complicity of other governments, most significantly of course the role of the United States in funding, arming, and shielding Israel as it carries out its genocidal acts.

But the active role of the United States in the Israeli onslaught, while hardly surprising, has been especially shocking. As a State Party to the Genocide Convention, the U.S. is obliged to act to prevent or stop genocide. Instead, we have seen the United States not only failing in its obligations of prevention, but instead actively providing economic, military, intelligence, and diplomatic support to Israel while it is engaged in its mass atrocities in Gaza.

As such, this is not merely a case of U.S. inaction in the face of genocide (itself a breach of its legal obligations) but also a case of direct complicity — which is a distinct crime under the Genocide Convention. The Center for Constitutional Rights, on behalf of Palestinian human rights organizations and individual Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans, has filed a suit in U.S. federal court in California focused on U.S. complicity in Israel’s acts of genocide.

South Africa’s Genocide Complaint Is a Rallying Cry for Civil Society

In a situation such as this, framed by shocking western complicity on one side and a massive failure of international institutions fed by U.S. pressure on the other, South Africa’s initiative at the ICJ may hold significance beyond the Court’s ultimate decision.

This case comes in the context of the extraordinary mobilization of protests, petitions, sit-ins, occupations, civil disobedience, boycotts, and so much more by human rights defenders, Jewish activists, faith-based organizations, labor unions, and broad-based movements across the United States and around the world.

As such, this move puts South Africa, and potentially the ICJ itself, on the side of the global mobilization for a ceasefire, for human rights, and for accountability. One of the most important values of this ICJ petition may therefore be in its use as an instrument for escalating global civil society mobilizations demanding their governments abide by the obligations imposed on all parties to the Genocide Convention.

Predictably, Israel has already rejected the legitimacy of the case before the Court. Confident that the U.S. and its allies will not allow Israel to be held accountable, the Israeli government is defiantly continuing its bloody assault on Gaza (as well as the West Bank). If Israel and its western collaborators are once again successful in blocking justice, the first victims will be the Palestinian people. Then the credibility of international law itself may be lost as collateral damage.

But South Africa’s ICJ action has opened a crack in a 75-year-old wall of impunity through which a light of hope has begun to shine. If global protests can seize the moment to turn that crack into a wider portal towards justice, we may just see the beginnings of real accountability for perpetrators, redress for victims, and attention to the long-neglected root causes of violence: settler-colonialism, occupation, inequality, and apartheid.

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Craig Mokhiber is an International human rights lawyer and former Director of the New York Office of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, who stepped down from his post in 2023 and penned a now-viral letter on unfolding genocide and the UN’s failures.

Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and serves as international adviser to Jewish Voice for Peace. 

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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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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The US and “Israel” have been recently carrying out political assassinations in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. ISIS carried out a massive bombing in Iran during the same period, and there is a connection between ISIS and the US.

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On December 25, 2023, Razi Mousavi, a senior officer in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was assassinated by an Israeli airstrike in the Syrian capital of Damascus. Mousavi was close to former IRGC Quds force commander, Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated in 2020 by US President Donald Trump in Baghdad. Israeli airstrikes in Syria earlier in December also killed two other Iranian generals.

On January 2, an Israeli drone strike assassinated Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut, Lebanon along with six others.

Al-Arouri was the deputy chief of the Hamas political bureau, and one of the founding members of Hamas’ armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades. On October 31, Israeli forces destroyed al-Arouri’s house in Aroura near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

On January 3, at least 93 people were killed in twin bombings in Kerman, Iran, with 284 wounded, including children. The crowd there was gathered to mark the fourth anniversary of the US assassination of Qassem Soleimani. 

On January 4, ISIS claimed responsibility for the two explosions in a statement posted on its affiliate Telegram channels, and said two ISIS members had detonated explosive belts in the crowd in Kerman.

Experts pointed to the Islamic State branch based in neighboring Afghanistan, known as ISIS-Khorasan, or ISIS-K. Tehran has alleged that ISIS-K has been behind many foiled plots in the last five years. Most of those arrested were Iranians, Central Asians, or Afghans from the Afghanistan-based affiliate’s network. 

On January 4, a US airstrike assassinated Mushtaq Talib al-Saidi in central Baghdad, Iraq. The Iraqi deputy commander was killed on Palestine Street, at the headquarters of an Iraqi military group, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, which has claimed several attacks on US forces.

Hezbollah al-Nujaba falls under the command of the Iraqi army, and had played a vital role in the defeat of ISIS in Iraq. The group immediately condemned the assassination of al-Saidi, and said the US-Iraqi military agreement had been violated.

Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, confirmed that US forces carried out an airstrike in Baghdad, killing a military commander, but excused the killing because al-Saidi was backed by Iran. 

Iraqis in the streets promised revenge against the US after the assassination. “No American soldier shall stay in Iraq!” one man yelled, firing his gun into the air.

Besides the 2,500 US troops in Iraq, which were invited to Iraq initially, there are 900 US troops in Syria illegally occupying the most productive oil wells in the northeast.

Now that the US-supported genocide on Gaza has killed well over 20,000 Palestinians, local groups in Iraq and Syria have been attacking US troops there in an effort to drive them out.

US officials have ordered about 120 attacks since October 17, usually using drones or rockets against groups in Iraq. The Pentagon acknowledged they had killed a number of “militants”.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani, had said last year he backed the need for US troops in Iraq, but condemned the US attack in Iraq, which killed an Iraqi service member and injured 18 other people, including civilians.

On December 28, 2023, Al-Sudani announced his government was working to end the US military presence in Iraq. The Iraqi groups have been frequently attacking US troops in Iraq and Syria with drones and missiles. Al Sudani has said the US strikes are an “infringement to Iraqi sovereignty”.

“With the presence of capable Iraqi forces, the Iraqi government is heading towards ending the presence of the international coalition forces,” said Al Sudani.

The Iraqi government had asked the US military to come to Iraq to help in the fight to defeat ISIS, which ended in 2017. Afterwards, the US remained in Iraq as trainers and advisors to the Iraqi military with several thousand troops remaining there. However, the agreement between the US and Iraq excludes military operations by the US troops.

Iraq’s military spokesperson, Yahya Rasool Abdullah, described the US strike as “no different from terrorist acts” and said that the Iraqi army held the US responsible for the attack on a Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, which is under the Iraqi Army’s command.

“We consider this targeting a dangerous escalation and an assault on Iraq, far from the spirit and text of the authorization and the work for which the international coalition exists in Iraq,” Abdullah said in a statement.

On January 3, 2020, US President Donald Trump ordered the assassination of Iran’s most powerful military commander, General Qasem Soleimani, who was killed at Baghdad airport, along with others.

Soleimani was widely seen as the second most powerful figure in Iran after Ayatollah Khamenei. He was instrumental in the attack on, and the defeat of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Despite the US propaganda, ISIS was defeated by Iraq, Iran, Syria, Russia, and the US-led coalition.

Who Is ISIS, and Who Created Them?

In an article published in 2015 in The Guardian, it was reported that the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, had been thrown out once the prosecution became aware that UK intelligence had been arming the same terrorists the defendant was charged with supporting.

The defense argued that there was extensive evidence that the UK government was supporting the very same terrorists, the so-called “armed opposition in Syria”. The evidence included UK support of the terrorists with body armor, military vehicles, training, logistical support, and the secret supply of “arms on a massive scale”. MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime, which was exposed in 2014 by investigative journalist, Seymour M. Hersh.

The UK ministers and their security officials were found to be supporting terrorists, and couldn’t very well ask the courts to imprison Gildo for doing the same. However, the UK was not alone, and they were only following the orders of US President Barack Obama, who was the architect of the US-NATO attack on Libya and Syria.

The Americans and their British allies used terrorists who were following the political ideology of Radical Islam as their boots on the ground. Obama called them the Free Syrian Army (FSA), and Senator John McCain became their biggest supporter in Congress.

The beginning of ISIS starts with the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Previously, there had been no Al Qaeda presence there, but they came pouring in in response to the invasion for regime change. Al Qaeda took hold in Iraq, and by 2011 they took notice of the FSA in Syria who were getting weaker by the day fighting the Syrian Arab Army. Once the FSA was on the brink of annihilation, they put out a call for their brothers in arms, Al Qaeda. 

Hillary Clinton admitted in an interview that the US had invented Al Qaeda in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Army.

In 2012, the Defense Intelligence Agency, at the Pentagon, wrote a report predicting a coming principality following Radical Islam in Syria and Iraq.  The report identifies Al Qaeda as the major force in the opposition fighting in Syria. By contrast, Obama and McCain, at the same time, were selling the American public on the story that it was “freedom fighters” of the FSA who were fighting the Damascus government.

The Pentagon report said that the supporters of the Syrian opposition (US, UK, France and NATO) wanted a principality governed by Radical Islam in order to isolate the Syrian government.  

In 2013 ISIS was formed in Iraq, and their leader Abu Bakr Baghdadi later asked his associate Mohammed al-Julani to go to Syria and open an ISIS branch there. Julani went to Syria and called his group Jabhat al-Nusra, and soon the FSA were gone. Julani is now the man who controls Idlib province in Syria, and his superior, Baghdadi was eventually assassinated in Idlib by Trump. 

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

Featured image is from MD

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

New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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Casualties 

• 23,084+ killed* and at least 58,926 wounded in the Gaza Strip.
• 381 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem
• Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,147.
• 510 Israeli soldiers killed since October 7, and at least 2,193 injured.

*This figure was confirmed by Gaza’s Ministry of Health on January 8. Due to breakdowns in communication networks within the Gaza Strip, the Ministry of Health in Gaza has been unable to regularly and accurately update its tolls since mid-November. Some rights groups put the death toll number at more than 30,000 when accounting for those presumed dead.

Key Developments 

• Israeli soldiers shoot dead 4-year-old girl at military checkpoint in occupied West Bank
• Israeli military says the war on Gaza could last more than nine months. 
• Save the Children: Over ten children lose limbs a day in Gaza. 
• The Israeli army forces Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital to evacuate and abandon sick patients. 
• Doctors Without Borders: Israel appears to have directly targeted deceased Al Jazeera journalist Hamza Dahdouh after “a single rocket” hit his car.  
• Palestinian Ministry of Health: 249 Palestinians killed and 510 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza over 24 hours.
• Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor: “Systematic torture and inhumane treatment” of Palestinians detained in Israeli army camps.
• US Senator blames Israel’s ‘political decisions’ for the inadequate amount of aid reaching Gaza.
• Israeli military announces it “dismantled” Hamas’s military framework in northern Gaza, however, reports show that Israeli forces still face resistance from Hamas fighters in northern parts of the Strip.

Gaza’s Children May Never Recover from Israel’s Relentless Attacks

Israel’s attacks on Gaza have surpassed three months, fostering the most dangerous place in the world to be a child as death and destruction fills every corner of the besieged enclave. 

According to Jason Lee, Save the Children’s director for the occupied Palestinian territory, children are much more vulnerable to explosives. They will also need much more time and effort to recover from the injuries they cause. 

“Small children caught up in explosions are particularly vulnerable to major, life-changing injuries. They have weaker necks and torsos, so less force is needed to cause a brain injury,” Lee said in a statement.

“Their skulls are still not fully formed, and their undeveloped muscles offer less protection, so a blast is more likely to tear apart organs in their abdomen, even when there is no visible damage.”

Lee added that over 1,000 children have had one or both legs amputated, citing UNICEF, averaging out to over ten children a day over the last three months. 

To make matters worse, many of the injured children had to endure the painful procedures without anesthetic due to the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip.

As the number of injuries compounds in the Gaza Strip amid the collapsed healthcare system, it is difficult for child amputees to receive the follow-up care they need. 

“When children lose limbs, it’s not the same as when adults lose limbs,” he said. “Crucially, their bones continue to grow, so the amount of operations and surgical interventions that children who have lost arms and legs will… stay with them for many, many years. And there’s a huge amount of pain management as well, which of course, Gaza’s healthcare system currently is not, James Deneslow, head of Save the Children’s Conflict Time, said as reported by Al Jazeera.

Israel Is Picking Off Hospitals in Gaza One by One 

Gaza’s healthcare system is barely functioning as it is, and yet the Israeli army is continuing to attack one hospital after the other. 

Most recently, the military has been targeting the only hospital in central Gaza, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which has already been over-capacity. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the hospital has received 99 new injured patients in the last 24 hours alone.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), said his staff “saw sickening scenes of people of all ages being treated on blood-streaked floors and in chaotic corridors,” on Saturday.

“An unidentified child laid dead, partially covered by a sheet, on a bed. Other injured were prostrate on the floor, being stepped over by the health staff and families. A man’s harrowing groans, either from pain or anguish, cut through the emergency ward’s commotion,” he continued. 

The next day, the hospital’s medical staff were forced to abandon their patients after the army issued them an evacuation notice. 

According to Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), they “dropped leaflets designating areas surrounding the hospital as a ‘red zone.’”

“Given the recent history of attacks on medical staff and facilities in Gaza, the team is unable to return. Many local health workers have also been unable to access the hospital to care for the hundreds of patients that remain due to the conflict,” MAP continued in a statement.

Similarly, Ghebreyesus said on x that he received “troubling” reports from the hospital’s director that “over 600 patients and most health workers” have been “forced to leave” the hospital.

.@WHO has received troubling reports of increasing hostilities and ongoing evacuation orders near the vital Al-Aqsa Hospital in the Middle Area of #Gaza, which according to the facility’s director forced over 600 patients and most health workers to leave. Their locations are not… pic.twitter.com/Vzd9UWThNm

— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) January 7, 2024

Ghebreyesus added that the current whereabouts of hundreds of patients and health workers from Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Hospital “are not currently known.”

The lack of information on the medical staff and patients’ marabouts is especially concerning due to the testimonies surfacing of severe human rights violations in Israeli camps. 

Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has reported “systematic torture and inhumane treatment” of Palestinians detained in Israeli army camps.

Those who spent days in Israeli custody reported to the rights group that the army and Shin Bet members treated them as “non-human animals,” regularly beating them, stripping them naked, subjecting them to electric-shock torture, burning them with cigarettes, and holding them in iron cages.

Meanwhile, in northern Gaza, the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS) is continuing to treat those injured by Israeli airstrikes despite fuel and electricity shortages. 

In a video posted on X, PRCS volunteers were shown treating an injured man by torchlight at a medical point in Jabalia, northern Gaza. 

Despite the power outage, our volunteers continue to work in the PRCS medical point in #Jabalia, northern #Gaza to save the lives of patients and the injured, amid a shortage of medical supplies and medications.
📷Filmed by PRCS volunteer: Yusuf Khader, 6/1/2024… pic.twitter.com/ipM5n6kv7F

— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) January 7, 2024

Israel’s ‘Political Decisions’ Are at Fault for the Lack of Aid

The Gaza Strip still needs life-saving humanitarian aid, including fuel, medical supplies, food, and water. However, Israel’s ongoing blockade has made it difficult for aid to enter the enclave. 

The United States Senator Chris Van Hollen has blamed Israel’s ‘political decisions’ for the inadequate amount of aid reaching Gaza.

On a visit to the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing, Hollen described the screening process as “unnecessarily cumbersome,” which is “the result of political decisions by the Netanyahu coalition” is delaying the delivery of assistance to Gaza.

Hollen told CBS News, “When one item on a truck is rejected, the entire truck is rejected.”

As an example, he said water filtration systems were turned back by Israeli inspectors at the border, with the crossing operating eight hours a day instead of 24-7 to meet the needs of Palestinians.

“According to all the international NGOs that we talked about – who have operated in conflict zones around the world – they’ve never seen a worse process for ensuring the safe delivery of humanitarian assistance,” Hollen added.

Meanwhile, in Israel, Al Jazeera’s Sara Khairat says Israeli media outlets, which are heavily relied on by Israelis for information, are not focusing on the human toll or ruthless destruction of the war.

“The only discussions you’ll see here on Israeli media are related to the war decisions, to the situation in terms of what they’ve managed to achieve, the number of deaths of Hamas fighters. And it’s very much a ‘you’re either with us or against us’ mentality.”

Four Year Old Shot Dead in Occupied West Bank

Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces shot dead three Palestinians, including a four-year-old girl, on Sunday evening at a military checkpoint northwest of occupied Jerusalem, according to Wafa News agency.

The Israeli military claimed that they shot the child during an alleged car-ramming incident. However, the child was not involved in the vehicle.

The other two Palestinians killed were a young couple.

Israeli forces also conducted overnight raids across the occupied territory, an almost daily occurrence since October 7. 

As Israel Makes Plans for the ‘Day After’ in Gaza, Resistance Continues

Israeli military leaders are hinting that their attacks on Gaza could last through 2024.

The army has claimed it “dismantled” Hamas’s military framework in northern Gaza, alleging that it has killed some 8,000 fighters and will now end major combat operations in that area. However, according to reports, Israeli forces are still facing resistance across the North. According to an Al Jazeera report, in the Gaza City neighborhood of al-Shujaiyya, an Israeli commander was speaking to the media about how the area had been cleared, when fighters launched an attack. 

Israel has not addressed the future of the troops still deployed in northern Gaza but has said during a press conference that the military will “continue to deepen the achievement” in the area.

At the start of Israel’s aggression on Gaza, Israel demanded the evacuation of all civilians from the north to the south, claiming it would be temporary. While it is unclear if Israel plans to allow Palestinians to return home as promised initially, the idea of expelling Gazans into Egypt continues to gain traction amongst Israeli politicians and the public. 

Israeli spokesperson Daniel Hagari says that Hamas fighters “without a framework and without commanders” are still present, and scattered fighting is still to be expected. However, he claims Hamas no longer operates in an organized manner. 

Hamas has yet to comment on the Israeli assertion. 

Hagari stressed that Israel still plans to continue their onslaught on the rest of Gaza, including the South, which Israel previously labeled as a safe area.

“We are now focused on dismantling Hamas in the center of and south of the strip,” Hagari continued, adding that it “will take time.”

Israeli military chief Herzi Halevi also said 2024 will be a “challenging year.”

 “We will be fighting in Gaza all year – that’s for sure,” Halevi said during a visit to the occupied West Bank, according to Al Jazeera. 

Omar Ashour, a professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, told Al Jazeera that it is clear that Israel’s ground forces in southern Gaza are meeting stiff resistance from Palestinian fighters.

“In Khan Younis, based on the statements from the Israeli military, nine brigades are deployed in just one governate of the Gaza Strip. These include paratrooper brigades, a special forces brigade, and armored brigades.

“When you have this number of elite forces in such a small area it tells me the fight has a very long way to go,” Ashour concluded. 

Esmat Mansour, a researcher on Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that according to Israeli estimates, the war will take at least nine months to a year to conclude, and that will only happen after the army “combs through the Gaza Strip and rids it of rockets and tunnels.”

“They will also aim to find the captives and reach the Hamas leadership. All of this makes 2024 a year of fighting and puts Israel in a continuous state of emergency,” Mansour continued.

“This means that the existing situation – the state of emergency, the emergency government, and all that those entail – will continue, and it is also possible that the captives may not return during this year,” he added.

US ‘Dissonance’ Over Israeli Crimes 

The Biden administration has continued to financially back Israel in the face of mounting war crimes, death and destruction in north Gaza and the occupied West Bank. 

Following Israel’s murder of Al Jazeera journalist Hamza Dahdouh, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he was “deeply sorry” about the “unimaginable loss” of Wael Dahdouh, whose son was killed in an Israeli attack.

In response, Middle East expert Khaled Elgindy wrote on x: “The total dissonance of being sorry about an outcome that you have actively enabled at every stage.”

The total dissonance of being sorry about an outcome that you have actively enabled at every stage. https://t.co/8KRJoYGpfu

— Khaled Elgindy (@elgindy_) January 7, 2024

Similarly, political analyst Hafsa Halawa told Al Jazeera,

“Nothing in the US’s policy actions – beyond certain doublespeak that we see or tweets that are written by the teams of everybody from the secretary of state to the president of the United States and other members of the government – seems to signal that there is any material pressure on Israel.”

“At the end of the day, nothing that we’ve seen since October 7 from anyone in this administration signals that the US is anything but supportive of this war.”

“And this is why Israel is pushing for a deal with Hamas without a halt to the fighting. Israel wants the fighting to continue because it is looking for a clear victory in the form of changing the entire situation in the Gaza Strip, and this requires a lot of time.”

During a press conference in Doha, Qatar, US Secretary of State Blinken said that the United Nations (UN) can play a crucial role in allowing Gaza’s displaced civilians to return home as Israel moves to a “lower-intensity phase” of its military campaign.

“Palestinian civilians must be able to return home as soon as conditions allow,” Blinken said. “They cannot – they must not – be pressed to leave Gaza.”

However, it is unclear if the US will put any material pressure on Israel to follow through with allowing Palestinians in Gaza to return to their homes

Blinken is set to visit Israel and the West Bank on Tuesday and Wednesday this week before wrapping up the trip in Egypt, in his fourth visit to the Middle East since October 2023. According to AP, Blinken’s priorities are “protecting civilians….getting more humanitarian aid into Gaza, ensuring Hamas cannot strike again and developing a framework for Palestinian-led governance in the territory and ‘a Palestinian state with security assurances or Israel’.”

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

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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Advanced human development in democratic institutions of industrialized societies is highly dependent on the total participation, empowerment and inclusion of women and ethnic minorities in parliaments and legislative assemblies to influence decision making and implementation processes through high impact policy frameworks and equal opportunities. Consequently, there is a dire need for greater political participation and empowerment of women and ethnic minorities to contribute to socio-cultural development by fomenting economic growth that is inclusive of diverse groups within specific demographic populations.

Women and ethnic minority representation in parliaments in respective societies will effectively and efficiently ensure that there are stronger, more responsive yet relevant policy and legislative frameworks that encompasses critical issues of national and international importance such as: child care, welfare and protection, gender equality in the workplace which actively advocates for and promotes equal income and promotion for women, gender based violence, civil rights and anti-discrimination laws. In addition, it also must be emphasized that the concept of the political participation of women and ethnic minorities goes beyond exercising political rights through ballots or grassroots activism, political participation accentuates the empowerment of women and ethnic minorities to vie for and win public offices to represent the perceived ‘voiceless’ and other marginalized groups in societies through rigorous debates and actions that can improve the well-being of the specific demographic populations. Women and ethnic minorities are also pivotal to the political landscape of their countries because they are astute in lobbying for and promoting greater accountability and transparency systems in government’s decision and actions to reduce perceived and actual corruption.

Despite the increasing roles of women and ethnic minorities in political participation and representation in industrialized societies, women and ethnic minorities are still underrepresented in parliaments and legislative assemblies due to political, socio-cultural, economic and psychological factors that can be explained by theories and other reliable, qualitative and quantitative evidence to substantiate the discussion of the thematic concern. Hence, before one can critically explore and discuss the crucial importance of the representation of women and ethnic monitories in parliaments as well as the measures used by industrialized counties to increase their representation in legislative assemblies, one has to first, carefully evaluate and analyse the contributing factors to the underrepresentation of these minority groups in parliaments as well as to properly define ethnic minorities in the context of demographic and political representation and participation.

Firstly, women are underrepresented in parliaments due to an institutionalized patriarchal system in political parties where gender is extremely critical to the selection process of candidates and women are less favourable in the selection process, due to their perceived traditional roles and responsibilities. This argument is reinforced in the commentary of Peter Northouse (2013) in his textbook, ‘Introduction to Leadership:  Theory and Practice’ where he posits: “although the phenomena of female leaders have significantly increased globally, there is still an invisible barrier that is present that prevent women from rising to elite leadership positions within the political arena and this is called the glass ceiling.. domestic and child rearing burdens further prevent women from achieving elite leadership positions” (p. 354-355).

To further exacerbate this ‘glass ceiling’ phenomena that prevents women from rising to elite leadership positions, which eventually leads to their underrepresentation in parliaments, can be attributed to the fact that the political party system has been dominated and controlled by men who are motivated by evident gender biases and negative stereotypes to execute candidate selection or display support for particular candidates running for public office. To validate the following statement, evidence can be cited from a Senior Honours Research Thesis entitled, ‘A Socio-cultural Analysis of Underrepresentation of Women in US State Legislatures’ in which Meena Visvanathan (2012) argues:

“political ambitions embody the ethos of masculinity where state legislatures have taken a long time to include women and the policies that they typically support. Political parties have not fully integrated women.. fundraising networks for campaigns and other political institutions are operated by men and continued by controlled by men. These political institutions facilitates men’s emergence into politics while suppressing women’s emergence” (p.6-7).

Therefore, women’s underrepresentation in parliaments can be attributed to institutional and socio-cultural factors in which women’s roles in society are still viewed from traditionalist perspectives in which they are expected to relegate themselves to supporting roles of caring, nurturing and carrying out other domestic duties as well as the fact that leadership is has been perpetuated as a man’s role because the political field demands fierce assertiveness and independence. As a result, parliamentary representation is still viewed as a man’s social place in society and due to the consistent negative stereotypes of women’s leadership styles, traditionalist perspectives and institutionalized patriarchy, women tend to a display a low level of political ambitions. Women’s low political ambitions are best explained by Peter and Simon (2001) where they postulate if the social and political conditions are not right, women will only display static ambitions whereby there will either not run for public office or remain in a state of complacency in a leadership position that is already held.

Moreover, the issue of underrepresentation of ethnic minorities should also be thoroughly explored and discussed by first, properly defining ethnic minorities in the context of demographics in industrialized countries. The United Nations Human Rights website (2015) defines:

“minorities as individuals with distinct national, ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic identity under the United Nations Declaration for Minorities, Article I. There is no internationally agreed definition of which groups constitute minorities. However, minorities can be described as a group of persons who are numerically inferior to the rest of a population in a state or it can be a group of persons in a numerical majority but have a non-dominant social position in a state and also minorities are marginalized social groups that are generally susceptible to limited access to opportunities that will enhance their well-being, discrimination and stigma. These include: people living with HIV/AIDS and other pandemic diseases, persons living with disabilities, persons from the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual community (LGBT), persons belonging to political groups and persons with a particular ethnicity that is not dominant.”

Although there is no internationally agreed standard on defining and describing minorities, the US Census Bureau (2010) defines and categorizes ethnic minorities as people who are Blacks/persons of African heritage, Hispanics, Asians, Hawaiian, American Indian, Alaska Natives and other Pacific Islanders.

Henceforth, based on the definition and description of ethnic minorities in the context of demographics in industrialized countries and international law, it is safe to propose the argument that ethnic minorities are underrepresented in parliaments because there is an inherent bias or discrimination against these social groups rooted in the fact they might be the numerical minority and or the numerical majority but not the dominant social group within their respective states. The inherent bias or discrimination towards ethnic minorities is most evident in the case of France which is considered to be an industrialized country and is ranked as one of the permanent five (5) countries that is most powerful in terms of decision making and actions in the United Nations. In ‘The Washington Journal of Law and Policy: Volume 46- Emerging Ideas in Law’, Leland Ware (2015) deftly looks at ‘Colour Blind Racism in France’ where he states,

“For the past decades, discriminatory practices treat ethnic immigrants especially young men as second class citizens and impinge on their human rights, freedoms of movement and privacy. Racial and ethnic categories are not officially recognized in France. The French census does not disaggregate data by race or ethnicity, because French laws prohibit officials from doing so.”

The academic journal’s report and findings illustrated the irony of an industrialized country that is expected to uphold and maintain the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights in relation to rights and freedoms of ethnic minorities. The mere fact that they are unofficially acknowledged in the census of the country means that their representation in parliament, which is a symbol of decision making, policy and governance, will eventually be undermined or seriously jeopardized based on the grounds that the legislative and executive branches of the government in France pass laws and effect policies that are not friendly and or open towards ethnic minorities. In addition, this serious undermining of their representation through discriminative laws and policies also infringes on their freedoms and rights especially the right to participate in public or civic life (voting, running for public office and increasing visibility through activism etc).

Since, there has been a meticulous evaluation of possible reasons for underrepresentation from women and ethnic minorities in parliaments, properly defining ethnic minorities and the many disadvantageous policies and laws meted out against them in the illustration of France, one can now clearly assess the crucial importance of having women and ethnic minorities being represented in parliaments. Women’s representation in parliaments are greatly needed in parliaments because they will work more assiduously in allowing their voices to be heard on matters that have been otherwise ‘pushed aside’ out of the governance and decision making processes of a country and these matters are important because they are affecting the majority of social groups residing in a population.

Feminist writer and web blogger, Soraya Chemaly (2012) argues in her Huffington Post Blog entitled ‘Women in Politics: Why We Need More Women in Office’ that promoting an increase in women’s political participation through running for public office will eventually lead to more women being actively involved in advocacy for gender-salient issues, women’s health, reproductive rights, child rights, welfare, the economy. In addition, Chemaly argues that women are more responsive to their constituents because they are more focussed on co-operation than hierarchy. Chemaly also urges that more women should vote because the best way to speak out is through voting to push for policies, laws, initiatives and programmes that will be more favourable to their well-being. Chemaly’s argument on the women’s political participation and its benefits are further reinforced in the Guardian’s article, ‘Gender and Unity in the Labour Movement’ (2015) where Deborah Orr comments:

“no modern day labour movement, political party or trade union cannot survive without women’s support and representation. Women are apart of the largest public service union in the England and work with Jeremy Corbyn and his team on issues facing public service workers. Heather Wakefield has campaigned in the trade union and women’s labour movement for over twenty-five (25) years for fair and equal pay, parental rights, women’s representation and for public service workers to be properly valued.”

Orr’s commentary on women’s activism in trade unions prove how important they would be to the political representation of their countries whereby policies would be responsive and relevant to the social groups that they are actively advocating for in parliaments.

Furthermore, women’s representation in parliaments would be crucially important because they would demand more accountable and transparent systems of government’s actions and decisions to reduce perceived and actual corruption that can hinder a country’s development. Justin Esarey (2015) debates in his research paper entitled, ‘Women’s Representation, Accountability and Corruption in Democracies’ that greater women’s representation in politics is linked to lower levels of perceived corruption in government, according to a study conducted by (Dollar, Fishman and Gatti, 2001). He also noted that findings from a 2001 World Bank Study suggested that the policy world is zealous about including more women in political offices and bureaucratic offices because they act as an anti-corruption measure. These arguments corroborated by reliable evidence validates that greater political participation by women in parliaments can effectively drive the development of a country socially where marginalized groups are included in the policy making, decision making and consultation processes, economically whereby policies are aimed at promoting equal income, promotion and employment for women and other disadvantaged social groups such as public service workers and politically whereby women do not only limit themselves to voting for candidates or relegate themselves to supporting roles of men but also they are empowered to run for public offices to create and effect various social changes and reforms to their respective countries.

On the other hand, it is also crucially important for ethnic minorities to be represented in parliaments because they will help to draft and effect efficient policy frameworks that will promote culturally diverse groups and other ethnic minorities’ participation in public and civic life as well as a greater access to resources and opportunities that will enhance their self-efficacies, sustainable livelihoods and productivity. This statement can be substantiated by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 2010 publication entitled, ‘Promoting Inclusive Parliaments: The Representation of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples in Parliament in which Dr. Oleh Protsyk states that minority representation in parliaments have helped to lobby for affirmative action towards indigenous peoples whereby more than twenty-seven per cent (27%) of countries being surveyed have introduced provisions that respect the customs and culture of indigenous peoples and minorities in respective countries such as New Zealand in which asides from English, the indigenous language Maori was given official recognition in the House of Representatives in 1985 and also, thirty-two per cent (32%) of countries involved minority groups and indigenous people in their consultations for decision making and policy implementation. The publication demonstrated that with the representation of ethnic minorities in parliaments issues such as affirmative action, cultural diversity, protection and upholding of human rights for minorities and integration of minorities in public and civic life. This will in turn help to empower the indigenous or ethnic minority population to achieve through advocacy for equal opportunities to be more productive individuals in their countries.

Lastly, although it has been agreed upon that women and ethnic minorities are underrepresented in parliaments, progress has also been made to include more women and ethnic minorities in legislative assemblies in industrialized countries through specific measures. Special measures for the inclusion of women in legislative assemblies include the use of gender quotas meanwhile special measures for the inclusion of ethnic minorities in legislative assemblies in industrialized countries include the use of reserved seats. Before one can look at the workability of gender quota to increase women’s political participation in a selected industrialized country, the term gender quota has to be clearly defined.

According to the website, ‘Quota Project: Global Database of Quotas for Women’ (2014),

“quotas are systems in which are designed for women to constitute a certain number or percentage of a candidate’s list, a parliamentary assembly, a committee or government. The core idea behind this system is that women are recruited into political positions and are not only the ‘token few’ in political life.” 

The gender quota system has had a significant impact on the political landscape of industrialized, European countries in which more women hold public offices in their legislative assemblies. To prove this argument, statistical evidence can be presented from the journal article, ‘Increasing Women’s Political Participation: New Trends in Gender Quotas in which Drude Dahlerup (2005) shows “women’s political participation have increased by thirty-five point three per cent (35.3%) in Belgium by the year 2003 and thirty-seven per cent (37%) in Denmark between the consecutive years 2001-2005”. He also notes some of the advantages of gender quotas in these industrialized countries whereby gender quotas corroborate with the internationally recognized conventions on gender equality which recognize women’s political representation and quotas also help to compensate women for the actual barriers that prevent them from having political seats. On the other hand, the disadvantages of gender quotas are that they are against gender equality, since women are given preference and women should not be elected by virtue of the fact of their gender but should be elected based on competence, skills and experiences.

However, special measures are also used to integrate ethnic minorities into legislative assemblies by industrialized countries. One of such special measures is reserved seats. Reserved seats have ethnic minorities to develop broad-based policies in legislative assemblies to reduce inter-cultural challenges and fuel the momentum of developmental potential of indigenous peoples and other ethnic minorities. In the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP’s) publication (2010) entitled, ‘Diversity in Legislative Assemblies: Listening to the Voices of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples’, Elizabeth Prowley discusses that mechanisms in parliaments and legislative assemblies such as reserved seats, special elections and appointments guarantee the “voices of minorities” or participation on critical policy issues such as the recognition of public affairs as universal rights, affirmative action and inter-cultural dialogue as a means of mediating conflict.

In addition, personal interviews with Member of Parliaments from ethnic minority backgrounds have also been conducted in the publication to show the enormous impact that they have made through politics, and the presence of reserved seats, on other persons who are from ethnic minority groups including indigenous peoples. Congress woman in the United States, Mazie Hirono expressed “being a woman who is from an ethnic minority background has allowed me to champion the rights of ethnic minorities in the United States and to give back to my community.” Meanwhile, Hone Harawira who is Member of Parliament in New Zealand who got his position through special measures for ethnic minorities also explained, “my identity as Maori and years of activism for Maori rights was a primary motivation for entering politics.”

In concluding, despite women’s and ethnic minorities’ underrepresentation in parliaments, significant efforts and improvements have been made by industrialized countries to introduce special measures to increase the political participation of both women and ethnic minorities in their legislative assemblies. Women and ethnic minorities have contributed immensely to governance, decision making, relevant policy and legislative frameworks and responsive social programs and reforms that have promoted the economic and cultural development of their societies.

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Tina Renier is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Sources

Chemaly, S. (2012). Women in Politics: Why We Need More Women in Office. Retrieved from http/www.huffingtonpost/womeninpolitics.

Dahlerup, D. (2005).  Increasing Women’s Political Participation: New Trends in Gender Quotas. International Feminist Journal of Politics. Vol, 7. No.1. pp.26-48.

Esarey, J. (2015). Women’s Representation, Accountability and Corruption in Democracies. Rice University.

Northouse, P. (2013). Introduction to Leadership: Theory and Practices. Sixth Edition. Sage Publications Inc. pp.354-355.

Orr, D. (2015). Gender and Unity in the Labour Movement. The Guardian. Retrieved from http/www.gender and unity/labourmovement/uk.

Protsyk, O. (2010). Promoting Inclusive: The Representation of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples in Parliaments. Global Overview. United Nations Development Programme. Bureau for Policy Development. New York, USA.

Prowley, E. (2010). Interviews with Parliamentarians. Diversity in Legislative Assemblies: Listening to the Voices of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples. United Nations Development Programme. Bureau for Policy Development. New York, USA.

Quota Project: Global Database for Quotas for Women. (2014). Retrieved from http/www.quotaproject/database/quotasforwomen.org

United Nations Human Rights. (2015). Rights for Minorities Under International Law. Retrieved from http/www.unhumanrights.org.

US Census Bureau (2010). Ethnic Minorities. Retrieved from http/www.uscensusbureau.org

Visvanathan, M. (2012). A Socio-cultural Analysis of Underrepresentation of Women in US State Legislatures. University of California, San Diego. pp. 6-7.

Ware, L. (2015). Colour Blind Racism in France. Washington University Journal of Law and Policy. Emerging Ideas of Law. 46 (11), pp. 2-6.

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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Israel is urging western states to rally to its side as the International Court of Justice prepares to hear this week South Africa’s case that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

The court is being asked by Pretoria to issue an immediate injunction ordering Israel to halt its military assault on the tiny enclave, to avoid further casualties.

Some 23,000 Palestinians are known to have been killed by Israel so far, a majority of them women and children, and many thousands more are believed to be lying under the rubble. Tens of thousands are seriously wounded. A majority of the population have lost their homes to the three-month bombing campaign.

Israel has intensively and repeatedly targeted the supposedly “safe zones” to which it has ordered Palestinian civilians to flee.

It has destroyed almost all of Gaza’s infrastructure and is blocking most aid from reaching the enclave. Famine and disease are likely to rapidly increase the death toll.

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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In a January 2023 preprint in The Lancet, the New Zealand government released a study showing a 70 percent increased rate of kidney injury following two doses of Pfizer mRNA vaccines. Even more telling of injury was the dose-dependent effect. That is, one dose of Pfizer showed a 60 percent increased rate of injury within three weeks post-injection, while two doses showed a 70 percent increased rate of injury three weeks post-injection. “Acute kidney injury” was not defined by the authors but is understood in a clinical setting to include measurable changes in lab results and/or serious signs and symptoms such as bleeding, pain with urination, kidney stones, nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, or other renal dysfunction.

The data were drawn from a national database of over 4 million people over the age of 5 who had received the Pfizer vaccines. This number represented 95 percent of New Zealand adults and teenagers.

Compared to historical background rates of kidney injury, the following changes in acute kidney injuries were found in the original article, as shown in this screenshot.

 

These alarming results of vastly increased kidney injury were published in the abstract of the original article, and here are two screenshots from the January 2023 version of the abstract of that article:  [1]

 

Now let’s zoom in on the last two sentences:

 

None of the above is now available online anymore, except through web archives.

The full paper does not seem to be available anymore anywhere, just the abstract, and the following is what appears when you click on the link that worked back in January:

The original full article seems to no longer be available on the internet, but I still have the above screenshots. Journalist Alex Berenson wrote a summary of the original article. [2]

Hiding the Data in New Zealand

Then a strange thing happened to the New Zealand data. Not only did the above paper disappear, but the numbers of reported acute kidney injuries were cut nearly in half. Here is what the same table now shows, from the same-titled paper, by the same authors, since August 2023, [3] at this link:

Suddenly, from January to August 2023, the observed acute kidney injury (AKI) events now are only 57 percent and 58 percent, respectively, of the originally reported AKI events. As a result, the data shown in August look like the Pfizer vaccine made no difference or even implied a slight benefit, whereas the data published seven months earlier had shown an alarming increase in acute kidney injuries postvaccine.

Also, in the August 2023 revision, the reported number of those who had received the first dose was reduced by about 100,000, and the number of those receiving the second dose was reduced by over 200,000.

During the time period of the study, Feb. 19, 2021, to Feb. 10, 2022, New Zealand had relatively low rates of COVID-19, as seen in the chart below. [4] The curve below took a vertical turn on Feb. 11, 2022, which was the day after the New Zealand government authors of the paper stopped collecting data. Until that dramatic turn, daily new confirmed COVID cases in New Zealand remained near zero.

 

The authors found that 22.5 percent of vaccinated patients experienced new-onset or relapse of glomerulonephritis or other renal events following COVID vaccination. Additionally, 10.8 percent had increased proteinuria, 12.6 percent had worsening hematuria, and 0.9 percent had creatinine values 150 times what is normal or worse.

No difference was found between the Pfizer-vaccinated and Moderna-vaccinated with respect to renal events.

The study found the following:

Graph: Y Ota, et al. Association between COVID-19 vaccination and relapse of glomerulonephritis. Source

That study did not discuss the time elapsed from vaccination to glomerulonephritis pathology. This smaller study of 13 patients found that the median time of onset was one week after the first dose and four weeks after the second dose. [7] The patients typically presented with acute kidney injury, edema, and visible blood in the urine.

Several reports of minimal change disease appear in the peer-reviewed literature. [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] Most of those cases occurred within several days of receiving a mRNA COVID vaccine, usually after the second dose, sometimes after the third dose. [15] It has also been seen following the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine. [16]

Minimal change disease is not one of the conditions noted in the Pfizer adverse events list. It is an insidious kidney disorder that is so named for the very subtle changes in the glomeruli filtration, which leaves gaps in filtration. Nephrotic syndrome results, in which proteins leak through the gaps from the blood into the urine, and then systemic effects of hypoproteinemia result.

Source

Future vaccines must be screened thoroughly for risk to kidneys and other organs before use in adults, and then only with fully detailed and uncoerced informed consent. Clearly, such toxic products as mRNA injections must never be used in children at all and must never be made a condition of work or study for anyone.

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Dr. Colleen Huber is an Author, The Defeat Of COVID, Manifesto for a Cancer Patient, and Choose Your Foods Like Your Life Depends On Them, all on Amazon. Naturopathic Medical Doctor (NMD) x 15 years.

Notes

[1] M Walton, V Pletzer, et al.  Adverse events following the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech) in Aotearoa New Zealand. Jan 20 2023.  The Lancet.  https://web.archive.org/web/20230124011347/https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4329970

[2] A Berenson.  URGENT:  A big New Zealand study reveals high rates of kidney injury after the Pfizer jab.  Jan 26 2023.  Unreported Truths.

[3] M Walton, V Pletzer, et al.  Adverse events following the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech) in Aotearoa New Zealand.  Aug 9 2023.  Drug Saf.  46 (9): 867-879.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10442303/

[4] University of Oxford.Daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases per million people: New Zealand.  Our World In Data.  https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?region=Oceania&facet=none&country=~NZL&Metric=Confirmed+cases&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Color+by+test+positivity=false

[5]  Pfizer Worldwide Safety.  5.3.6 Cumulative analysis of post-authorization adverse event reports of PF-07302048 (BNT162B2) received through 28 Feb 2021.  P 7.   https://phmpt.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/5.3.6-postmarketing-experience.pdf

[6] Y Ota, R Kuroki, et al. Association between COVID-19 vaccination and relapse of glomerulonephritis.  Nov 23 2022.  Clin Exp Nephrol.  27 (3).  236-242.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9686234/

[7] N Klomjit, M Alexander, et al.  COVID-19 vaccination and glomerulonephritis.  Dec 2021.  Kidney Int Rep.  6 (12).  2969-2978.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8493782/

[8] V D’Agati, S Kudose, et al.  Minimal change disease and acute kidney injury following the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Kidney Int. May 15 2021. 100 (2). 461–463. doi: 10.1016/j.kint.2021.04.035.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8123374/

[9] A Holzworth, P Couchot, et al.  Minimal change disease following the Moderna mRNA-1273 SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.  Aug 2021.  100 (2).  463-464.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8149162/

[10] H Tan, R Tan, et al.  Is COVID-19 vaccination unmasking glomerulonephritis?  Aug 2021.  Kidney Int.  100 (2).  469-471. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8141343/

[11] D Kervella, L Jacquemont, et al.  Minimal change disease relapse following SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine.  Aug 2021.  Kidney Int.  100 (2).  457-458.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8098029/

[12] L Lebedev, M Sapojnikov, et al.  Minimal change disease following the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.  Jul 2021.  Am J Kidney Dis.  78 (1).  142-145.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8028833/

[13] S Rahim, J Lin, et al.  A case of gross hematuria and IgA nephropathy flare-up following SARS-CoV-2 vaccination.  Jul 2021.  Kidney Int.  100 (1).  238.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8079938/

[14] H Komaba, T Wada, et al. Relapse of minimal change disease following the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.  Sep 2021.  Am J Kidney Dis.  78 (3).  469-470.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8137360/

[15] A Pirzadeh, S Emami, et al.  Exacerbation of minimal change disease following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination.  Nov 9 2023.  Am J Case Rep.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10643885/

[16] C Morlidge, S El-Kateb, et al.  Relapse of minimal change disease following the Astra Zeneca COVID-19 vaccine.  Aug 2021.  Kidney Int.  100 (2).  459.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8191285/

[17] L Negrea, B Rovin.  Gross hematuria following vaccination for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 in 2 patients with IgA nephropathy.  Jun 2021.  Kidney Int.  99 (6).  1487.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7987498/

[18] N Chavarot, M Padden, et al.  De novo posttransplant membranous nephropathy following BNT 162b2 COVID-19 vaccine in a kidney transplant recipient.  Dec 2022.  22 (12).  3188-3189.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9537991/

[19] N Morimoto, T Mori, et al.  Rapidly progressive IgA nephropathy with membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis-like lesions in an elderly man following the third dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine: a case report.  Apr 24 2023.  BMC Nephrol..  24 (1).  108.  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37095451/

[20] A Sekar, R Campbell, et al.  ANCA glomerulonephritis after the Moderna COVID-19 vaccination.  Aug 2021.  Kidney Int.  100 (2)  473-474.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8166044/

[21] M Shakoor, M Birkenbach, et al.  ANCA-Associated vasculitis following Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.  Oct 2021.  Am J Kidney Dis.  78 (4).  611-613.   https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34280507/

[22] C Hanna, L Herrera Hernandez, et al.  IgA nephropathy presenting as macroscopic hematuria in 2 pediatric patients after receiving the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.  Sep 2021.  Kidney Int.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8256683/

[23] C Huber.  Heart damage from the COVID vaccines: Is it avoidable?  Jul 14 2021.  PDMJ.  https://pdmj.org/papers/myocarditis_paper

[24] C. Huber.  Brain injuries after COVID vaccination.  Apr 10 2023.  The Defeat of COVID, Substack.  https://colleenhuber.substack.com/p/brain-injuries-after-covid-vaccination 

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‘Unimaginable Situation’ in Gaza as 600 Patients and Staff Expelled from Al-Aqsa Hospital

By Oliver Mizzi, January 10, 2024

The orders, which were reported by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, came amid an influx of injured people arriving at the medical centre. Al-Aqsa Hospital is the last remaining hospital in operation in Central Gaza, with recent evacuation notices by Israeli forces seeing an exodus of medical staff from.

BRICS: An “Informal Association” of Ten Countries? Now Under the Chairmanship of The Russian Federation

By Kester Kenn Klomegah, January 09, 2024

While the geopolitics intensifies, it has become necessary to explain whether BRICS be referred to as a formal or an informal association. Russia has already outlined a wide-range of dynamic steps of BRICS+ activities, culminating with October summit in Kazan, capital of the Republic of Tatarstan (within the Russian Federation).

Ukraine’s “Shooting Down Narrative”: Kiev Regime Claims ‘Proof’ It Can Shoot Down Russian Hypersonic Missiles

By Drago Bosnic, January 09, 2024

For nearly two years now, the Kiev regime has been making unsubstantiated claims about allegedly “shooting down” Russian hypersonic missiles. Obviously, it was never able to produce any credible evidence that it actually accomplished such a feat.

Holstering a Career: Wayne LaPierre Resigns from the National Rifle Association (NRA) of America Executive

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, January 09, 2024

Wayne LaPierre’s time had come to resemble a dictatorship in a hurry, pinching the silver and stomping on the dissenters on its way out. Allegations were already being made at the NRA’s annual meeting in Indianapolis in 2019, many barbed with the question as to where money from donors was actually going.

America’s Economy in 2024: Soft Landing or Hard Crash? Ron Paul

By Rep. Ron Paul, January 09, 2024

Even though the federal government will soon spend more on interest on the federal debt than on the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex, few in DC are serious about cutting spending. Federal debt increased by one trillion dollars from mid-September to the beginning of the new year.

F-16 Transfer to Ukraine Delayed Another Six Months. Battlefield Against Russia Postponed. Multi-Billion Bonanza for the Military Industrial Complex.

By Kyle Anzalone, January 09, 2024

The Western plan to transfer advanced American-made fighter jets to Ukraine has hit another delay and is now expected to reach the battlefield during the second quarter of this year. Washington has said it does not expect the warplanes to alter the course of the war. However, Russia views the F-16s as a national security threat as the aircraft are capable of carrying nuclear weapons. 

Balls of Steel: Today’s Most Despised Knesset Member

By Mike Whitney, January 09, 2024

There are 120 members in the Israeli Knesset, but one man towers above them all. His name is Ofer Cassif, and he is, perhaps, the most despised man in Israel. His crime—if you can call it that—is that he put his moral convictions into practice by signing a petition in support of “the upcoming hearing at the International Court of Justice in The Hague”… “accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.”

Pathologist Arne Burkhardt Revealing the Grave Dangers of MRNA Vaccines

By Dr. Arne Burkhardt and Taylor Hudak, January 09, 2024

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.

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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken just referred to the US-sponsored assassination of yet another journalist in Gaza as a “terrible tragedy”, as though the reporter was struck by lightning or died in a car crash or something.

Speaking at a press conference in Qatar on Sunday, Blinken was asked to comment on the murder of Al Jazeera journalist Hamza Dahdouh, who was killed in Gaza by an Israeli airstrike on a car has was traveling in with two other journalists, one of whom also died. Hamza Dahdouh was the eldest son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, whose wife, son, daughter and baby grandson were murdered in another Israeli airstrike in late October.

In response to an Al Jazeera reporter’s question about whether the United States condemns the murder of innocent journalists, Blinken replied as follows:

“I am deeply, deeply sorry for the almost unimaginable loss suffered by your colleague Wael al-Dahdouh. I am a parent myself. I can’t begin to imagine the horror that he’s experienced, not once, but now twice. This is an unimaginable tragedy, and that’s also been the case for, as I said, far too many innocent Palestinian men, women, and children — civilians, also journalists, Palestinian and other.”

Crocodile tears from Blinken the butcher.

Blinken just called the killing of the son of Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief an "unimaginable tragedy."

No, it's a crime: one that Blinken perpetrated. When asked directly, Blinken didn't condemn Israel's targeted murder of journalists. pic.twitter.com/yJAzePImCr

— Andre Damon (WSWS) (@Andre__Damon) January 7, 2024

Blinken went on to acknowledge the scores of journalists who have been killed in Gaza, saying that this shows the need to get humanitarian aid into the enclave and achieve a lasting peace. What Blinken did not do is issue anything resembling a condemnation of Israel and the clear and demonstrable fact that it has been highly focused on the task of murdering journalists in Gaza. He just offered his deepest condolences for Dahdouh’s death, framed it as a passive “tragedy” instead of an active assassination using highly sophisticated military technology under the sponsorship and support of the United States, and moved on.

It’s hard to say who’s worse, the far-right Israelis who openly revel in the butchery they are inflicting in Gaza, or the liberal Americans who directly sponsor that butchery and then look you dead in the eye and tell you how deeply, sincerely sorry they are to hear that another person in Gaza has died in a tragic accident.

Blinken is always doing sociopathic stuff like this. Late last month he tweeted,

“This has been an extraordinarily dangerous year for press around the world. Many killed, many more wounded, hundreds detained, attacked, threatened, injured — simply for doing their jobs. I am profoundly grateful to the press for getting accurate, timely information to people.”

This has been an extraordinarily dangerous year for press around the world. Many killed, many more wounded, hundreds detained, attacked, threatened, injured – simply for doing their jobs. I am profoundly grateful to the press for getting accurate, timely information to people.

— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) December 28, 2023

I mean, can you believe the gall of this freak? As though his own administration wasn’t responsible for most of those killings. As though Israel has not spent the last three months directing wildly disproportionate firepower at the places it knows journalists are hiding. 

He’s standing there on top of a pile of corpses while mournfully shaking his head about their tragic unfortunate deaths.

https://t.co/cKcI9Mji74 pic.twitter.com/QVr4dxRbWd

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) December 28, 2023

There’s something about the job of US secretary of state that appears to require a significant level of sociopathy. From war criminal Henry Kissinger to Madeleine “We think the price was worth it” Albright to Mike “We lied, we cheated, we stole” Pompeo, the absolute worst person in any given presidential administration is very often the head of the State Department. A severe personality disorder is practically in the job description.

This is because while the secretary of state is officially the head of US diplomacy, “diplomacy” for the US empire looks a whole lot different from what it looks like for normal countries. US “diplomacy”, in practice, typically looks like going from country to country negotiating for international alignment behind wars, starvation sanctions, proxy conflicts and western-backed uprisings. In theory the State Department should be the department of peace, but in practice it’s just a subtler, sneakier military department.

Nothing epitomizes the depraved manipulations of the US empire better than Antony Blinken. There is no better representation of that empire than Tony standing there on his mountain of corpses, covered in blood, telling you how sorry he is to learn of the unfortunate accidental deaths of the people he just murdered, staring at you with his cold dead eyes, playing remarkably soulless blues guitar under the light of a bright red moon.

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Israeli officials will tell Secretary of State Tony Blinken on Tuesday that Israel won’t allow Palestinians to return to northern Gaza if Hamas doesn’t agree to release more hostages, according to two senior Israeli officials.

The big picture: Making progress toward the return of Palestinians to their homes and ensuring they are not forcibly displaced from Gaza is one of the goals of Blinken’s talks in Israel this week.

• The Biden administration has expressed concerns over recent statements from some radical right-wing Israeli ministers who have called for Palestinians to be driven out of the Strip.

What they’re saying: “Palestinian civilians must be able to return home as soon as conditions allow,” Blinken said on Sunday in a press conference with the Qatari prime minister in Doha.

• “They cannot and they must not be pressed to leave Gaza,” he stressed.

Behind the scenes: The Israeli sources told Axios that while Israel doesn’t in principle oppose allowing Palestinians to return to northern Gaza, officials will tell Blinken such a move needs to be part of a new hostage deal.

• “We are not going to allow Palestinians to go back to their homes in northern Gaza if there is no progress with the release of hostages,” one senior Israeli official said.
• Israeli negotiators who are working on the issue believe the return of Palestinians to northern Gaza is significant leverage that Israel doesn’t want to give up as it tries to secure a new hostage deal, a second Israeli official said.
• “There are Israeli and American hostages that are still held in Gaza. We think we will know within a few weeks whether a new deal to release them is possible or not,” the second official said.
• The Israeli Ministry of Defense declined to comment.

Driving the news: IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said on Monday that the Israeli military is in the process of transitioning from high-intensity operations in most of the Gaza Strip to low-intensity operations. This means there will be fewer ground forces inside the enclave and fewer air strikes, especially in Gaza City and in the northern Gaza Strip.

• High-intensity fighting is expected to continue in the southern city of Khan Younes where the IDF is still searching for Hamas leaders who Israel believes are hiding in the tunnels.

Zoom out: Blinken said on Sunday that the IDF’s transition to a lower-intensity phase of its military operation will allow the UN to evaluate what needs to be done to allow displaced Palestinians to return to the north.

• A senior Israeli official said both Israel and the U.S. understand that a return to the north will not happen in the short term because fighting continues in some areas and due to the conditions.
• But Israeli officials are expected to tell Blinken they are ready to start the planning process with the U.S. and the UN for a future return of Palestinians to their homes, if possible, or to shelters established by international organizations, the official said.

Zoom in: Up to 1.9 Palestinians — 85% of the population — in the tiny enclave have been displaced by the Israeli military campaign that began after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, according to the UN Palestinian refugee agency, which stresses that many have been forced to move multiple times.

• Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled northern Gaza after repeated evacuation orders by Israel and the start of the military’s ground offensive. Many will have no physical homes to return to, as destruction from Israel’s bombardment is widespread.
• Between 70% and 80% of buildings in northern Gaza have been destroyed in the war, according to an analysis of satellite data conducted by Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University and Corey Scher of CUNY Graduate Center. Much of northern Gaza’s water, sanitation electricity infrastructure has also been destroyed.

State of play: Blinken met with Emirati President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday, before traveling to Saudi Arabia to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

• Blinken’s talks with regional leaders are aimed at preventing the spread of the Gaza war to Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East, the State Department said.
• But on Monday, the situation along the Israel-Lebanon border escalated further with the killing of senior Hezbollah field commander Wissam al-Tawil, who helped lead the group’s elite Radwan force. Israel didn’t claim responsibility for the strike but Israeli officials said they are preparing for a significant retaliation by Hezbollah.

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Featured image: Hamas hostage release (Source)

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Far-right lawmaker Tzvi Succot had only 30 seconds to speak at the Caucus to Strengthen the Awareness of Israeli Victory at the Knesset last week. If you’re a hard-liner, he didn’t disappoint.

“This event must end in a way that resounds everywhere in the Arab world,” he said, adding that in the West Bank, “among the Arabs of Israel, in Syria, in Lebanon, everyone must see what has happened to Gaza and understand that this is the last thing he wants to happen in his life.”

Succot added:

“At least in the northern Gaza Strip we first have to conquer, annex, destroy all the houses, build neighborhoods – large and expansive neighborhoods, large settlements in that place that will be named after our heroes, after the nation’s heroes who fought there. We will distribute free plots there to the soldiers who fought, to the wounded who fought.

“This image, and this is the most important thing, of the destroyed Gaza, of Palestine Square that will become Israeli Heroism Square, this image will echo in every home around the world so that everyone will see what happens to those who mess with the people of Israel.”

The caucus, which was established even before Israel’s most right-wing Knesset took over in November 2022, debated the topic “How Israel’s Victory Will Look at the End of the War.” Among the few women around the table were legendary settler leader Daniella Weiss and right-wing commentator Nave Dromi.

While the members of the narrow war cabinet seem to weigh every word – both about the war and the 129 hostages still being held by Hamas – at the caucus meeting Israel’s hard right let loose.

Every time someone mentioned the resettlement of Gaza, loud applause erupted in the audience. Moderates were at a premium. 

Zvi Hauser, a former center-right lawmaker, said that if Hamas’ military leaders remain in Gaza they must be expelled as the heads of the Palestine Liberation Organization were expelled from Lebanon in 1982.

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Featured image: The Caucus to Strengthen the Awareness of Israeli Victory at the Knesset, last week. Credit: Noam Revkin Fenton

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Six hundred patients and medical staff have been forced to leave the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Gaza’s Deir al-Balah, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and UN, following an Israeli evacuation order.

The orders, which were reported by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, came amid an influx of injured people arriving at the medical centre.

Al-Aqsa Hospital is the last remaining hospital in operation in Central Gaza, with recent evacuation notices by Israeli forces seeing an exodus of medical staff from.

According to WHO official Sean Casey who had visited the hospital on Sunday, the hospital was operating with “30 percent of the staff that it had just a few days ago”.

Casey added that the hospital was receiving “hundreds of casualties every day in a small emergency department”.

International NGOs operating in the hospital, including Doctors Without Borders (MSF), the International Rescue Committee (IRC), and Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) have also been forced to leave.

Nick Maynard, MAP’s emergency team’s clinical lead who worked at Al-Aqsa Hospital, told The New Arab that the Israeli military informed him that “there will be increased attacks around the hospital are and it is not safe for us to go there”.

“Looking at the direction of the hospital we can see huge smoke clouds above the area… we can hear the incessant bombing,” Maynard said.

“We fear greatly for the safety and the lives of our friends and colleagues, the national staff, who are still in Al-Aqsa Hospital.”

.@WHO has received troubling reports of increasing hostilities and ongoing evacuation orders near the vital Al-Aqsa Hospital in the Middle Area of #Gaza, which according to the facility’s director forced over 600 patients and most health workers to leave. Their locations are not… pic.twitter.com/Vzd9UWThNm

— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) January 7, 2024

In the days before the eviction, the hospital was already struggling to cope with an influx of injured people and at a reduced capacity due to staff shortages.

“Patients are clearly dying in the emergency department who could be saved if there were enough staff to run the operating theatres to full capacity,” Maynard said.

Enrico Vallaperta, MSF Project Medical Referent in Gaza, who also had been working at the Al-Aqsa hospital told The New Arab that “the situation in Gaza is unimaginable”.

“Primary health care has collapsed, people are dying of diarrhea, people are dying of simple bronchitis,” Vallaperta said, adding that the overcrowding of displaced people in Gaza means “we don’t know where we can set up a clinic”.

Elsewhere, the WHO said on Sunday it was forced to cancel a planned aid mission to the Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza after Israel did not give offer safety assurances.

“Heavy bombardment, movement restriction, and interrupted communications are making it nearly impossible to deliver medical supplies regularly and safely across Gaza, particularly in the north,” a post from the account said.

Northern Gaza has been cut off from the south since the beginning of November, following an Israeli military operation that focused on Gaza City and its surrounding areas.

Before that, the Israeli military forcibly expelled around 1 million Palestinians to southern and central Gaza, areas that are now the focus of Israeli operations.

Israel has killed 23,084 Palestinians since the start of its renewed war on Gaza, according to data released from Gaza’s health ministry. At least 58,926 have also been injured. 

Israel’s conduct has led to accusations of genocide, resulting in a case filed to the International Court of Juistice (ICJ) by South Africa.

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Featured image source

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From January 2024, Russia took over the baton of BRICS chairmanship dealing first with the appropriate description of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), whether as an association, a group or an organization. While the geopolitics intensifies, it has become necessary to explain whether BRICS be referred to as a formal or an informal association. Russia has already outlined a wide-range of dynamic steps of BRICS+ activities, culminating with October summit in Kazan, capital of the Republic of Tatarstan (within the Russian Federation).

As a matter of fact, in linguistics the words – an association, a group and an organization – simply are nouns meaning the act of identifying with, and working together for a particular common purpose in socio-cultural, economic or business relationships.

These three: association, group and organization, however, have some detailed meanings and implications and interpretations. Reading through media reports, to delve further into the complexity of the meanings and usages, popularly indicated that BRICS is an intergovernmental organization comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Most Chinese used an alliance, while western media prefers to use a group and organization.

As stipulated, January 2024 marks another new stage in BRICS development, Russia’s chairmanship has to deal with the letters in the acronym and possibly the structure, the degree of euphoria relating to various interpretations that BRICS portraying itself as an association of the global majority with primary goals of counteracting rules-based order and western hegemony. Ultimately, this constitutes Russia’s challenge, to engage in an innovative facelifting process under its chairmanship.

Now the Kremlin administration, the Foreign Ministry, Russian politicians, academic researchers and analysts say the most acceptable descriptive word/term should be an informal “association” rather than a group and an organization. In the article text posted to Kremlin website, President Vladimir Putin referred to BRICS as “an informal association” and further underscored 2024 expectations, itemized BRICS partnership in three key areas: politics and security, economy and finance, and cultural and humanitarian contacts.

Putin, earlier in an October 2023 interview, categorically emphasized that BRICS expansion aligns with the global multipolarity principle, providing a platform for countries to interact as equals, avoiding dependency on any single sovereign power. Under Russia’s chairmanship this 2024, integrating more new members into BRICS would be an explicit testament to the association’s remarkable growing attraction and its commitment to reshaping the global economic landscape. And further to that, BRICS brings diverse strengths and perspectives to the association, each dimensions augmenting its capability to influence global trade, economics and politics.

“Of course, we will consider the degree to which many other countries, about 30 of them, are prepared to join the BRICS multidimensional agenda in one form or another. To this end, we will start working on the modalities of a new category of BRICS partner country,” according the text.

In the realm of BRICS 2024, Russia fixes its motto as “Strengthening Multilateralism for Equitable Global Development and Security” which precisely points to the current challenges facing the world today. The association now includes 10 countries. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates joined BRICS as new full members which is a strong indication of the growing authority of the association and its role in international affairs. It portrays its strength in the evolutionary multipolar processes of the century.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has also outlined comprehensive future vision for BRICS, emphasizing that “it should remain an association rather than evolving into a full-fledged organization with a secretariat.” Lavrov stated in an interview with the Russian channel NTV that BRICS is not an organization but an association, describing it as a “future umbrella” symbolizing the aspirations and considerations of the world’s majority of developing countries.

Lavrov expressed extraordinary skepticism about transforming BRICS into a formal organization at this stage, emphasizing that it may not be necessary for a relatively long time. He underscored the importance of BRICS as a platform where countries collaborate based on mutual interests and equality, contrasting it with Western organizations lacking fair rules and genuine consensus.

The association, consisting of Russia, Brazil, India, China, and South Africa, and now welcomed new members, including Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia from January 2024. That however, Argentina has decided not to join as planned, citing concerns about economic ties with China and Brazil, opting instead to pursue economic rapprochement with the United States and Israel under President Javier Milei, who for over 20 years, has been a professor of macroeconomics, economics of growth, microeconomics, and mathematics for economists in Argentine universities and abroad. Milei took office as the new president on 10 December 2023.

With more than 40 countries are still expressing high interest in joining BRICS, the association aims to expand its circle of friends, particularly focusing on Latin American countries. Some experts say the expansion will raise significantly its status and could further amplify association’s declared ambition to become a champion of the Global South. According to historical records, the first meeting of the association began in St. Petersburg in 2005. It was called RIC, which stood for Russia, India and China. Then, Brazil and subsequently South Africa joined later, which is why it is referred to as BRICS.

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Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS), Weekly Blitz and InDepthNews, is now a regular contributor to Global Research. He researches Eurasia, Russia, Africa and BRICS. His focused interest areas include geopolitical changes, foreign relations and economic development questions relating to Africa. As a versatile researcher, he believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality and trustworthy media reports.

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For nearly two years now, the Kiev regime has been making unsubstantiated claims about allegedly “shooting down” Russian hypersonic missiles. Obviously, it was never able to produce any credible evidence that it actually accomplished such a feat.

And yet, here we are. As Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu once said, the Neo-Nazi junta usually “shoots down” three times more missiles than the Russian military actually fires.

And indeed, when one reads the press releases of the Kiev regime’s air defense forces, not a single Russian missile or drone is able to penetrate their airspace. On the other hand, the mainstream media and the Neo-Nazi junta keep complaining about “evil Russians destroying Ukrainian civilian infrastructure“. The question is, who’s not telling the truth in this case?

Speaking of not telling the truth, it should be noted that the Kiev regime and the mainstream propaganda machine already tried pushing the narrative about the failed US-made “Patriot” SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems supposedly “shooting down” the Russian 9-A-7660 “Kinzhal” air-launched hypersonic missile. Namely, on May 4, 2023, air defense units deployed in and around Kiev “shot down” one of the “Kinzhals” allegedly fired by Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS). Various local sources published images supposedly “proving” the incident took place. Initially, the news went largely unreported by non-Ukrainian sources, but on May 6, CNN, the infamous neoliberal mouthpiece and the flagship of the mainstream propaganda machine among news networks, broke the story in the political West.

However, no military analyst worth his salt has ever taken these claims even remotely seriously.

The images presented by the Neo-Nazi junta showed an object that doesn’t remotely resemble the “Kinzhal” missile. While it remains uncertain what sort of weapon the Kiev regime forces shot down, images show what looks like a KAB-1500L or perhaps a BetAB-500 ShP, both of which are laser-guided bombs. It’s also unclear which of “Patriot’s” several versions were used. The Kiev regime is known to have received one of the PAC-2 variants (MiM-104C, D and F), all of which have proven unable to shoot down even the old Iraqi “Scud” ballistic missiles during the First Gulf War in 1991. What’s more, even the newer PAC-3 variant has had an atrocious track record against much less high-tech opponents.

On the other hand, even basic knowledge of how physics works makes the Western and Kiev regime’s claims ridiculous. The images show that the Russian weapon was allegedly struck by the “Patriot’s” kinetic kill vehicle, which in the PAC-2 variant flies at approximately 4000 km per hour. The 9-A-7660 “Kinzhal’s” speed ranges from over 12,000 km per hour to almost 16,000 km per hour. If we were to imagine an interceptor missile flying at 4000 km per hour hitting another missile flying three or four times faster than that, can anyone really believe there would be anything more than a bunch of sparks, let alone a wreckage of any kind? Worse yet, the alleged “Russian ‘Kinzhal’ hypersonic missile” fell to the ground in a relatively good condition and was then even photographed and presented as supposed “evidence”.

Even some Kiev regime media, such as The Kyiv Independent, almost immediately refuted the claims. Only a day after the incident, this outlet published that the Kiev regime forces denied the reports because there were neither MiG-31K/I strike fighters nor 9-A-7660 “Kinzhals” in the air that night. However, this didn’t stop mainstream propaganda outlets from parroting the story. Although it has been debunked repeatedly since then, as previously mentioned, this sort of narrative continues unabated. On January 8, Business Insider published footage once again showing the alleged “hypersonic missile” that was “shot down” by the Neo-Nazi junta forces. This time, they were a bit more careful, claiming that they only found the missile’s warhead, not the entire missile, as they did the last time.

The “Kinzhal” was supposedly “shot down” on January 2, when the VKS launched a massive all-out strike that included hundreds of drones of various types, as well as ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles. To make matters even more laughable, the Kiev regime forces claim to have “shot down” all ten “Kinzhals” that night. I’ve already explained the sheer illogic of these claims. However, in order to further reinforce the debunking of this ludicrous narrative, we can use the previous admissions of the Neo-Nazi junta itself. Namely, according to their own account, even older weapons, such as the P-800 “Oniks” and the Soviet-era Kh-22, both supersonic anti-ship missiles, are impossible to shoot down. This is so obvious that not even the mainstream propaganda machine is bothering to deny it.

It’s important to note that both of these missiles are much less capable than the “Kinzhal”. The Kh-22, although nearly hypersonic at Mach 4.6, is still some 2.5 to 3 times slower. At Mach 2.6, the P-800 is over 5 times slower than the “Kinzhal”. What’s more, both of these missiles are also less maneuverable than the “Kinzhal”. The obvious question arises, if such undeniably capable weapons are impossible to shoot down, how is it possible for the Kiev regime to “shoot down” the orders of magnitude more dangerous “Kinzhal”, much less ten? Considering the fact that the political West and its Neo-Nazi puppets are primarily fighting an infowar, precisely this is the only viable explanation as to why they keep insisting that Russian hypersonic missiles can be “shot down” on a regular basis.

The “Patriot” SAM system has had an atrocious track record against all sorts of targets, be it the Iraqi “Scuds” over 30 years ago or Houthi/Iranian drones nowadays. On the other hand, the political West is decades behind Russia in hypersonic weapons development, meaning that this propaganda narrative accomplishes at least two objectives – promotes US-made air defenses after decades of humiliating failures and “tarnishes” the reputation of Russian hypersonic missiles. The previous is also aimed to help the sales of US systems, just like the hype over the alleged successes of the HIMARS and other US/NATO weapons that have been showered with praise in the last nearly two years. It can only be expected these laughable claims will be recycled from time to time.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. 

The now departed chief executive of the National Rifle Association of America (NRA) should know. Wayne LaPierre’s time had come to resemble a dictatorship in a hurry, pinching the silver and stomping on the dissenters on its way out. Allegations were already being made at the NRA’s annual meeting in Indianapolis in 2019, many barbed with the question as to where money from donors was actually going.

There were, for instance, LaPierre’s said suit purchases from the Zegna store in Beverly Hills between 2004 and 2017 amounting to a head shaking $274,695.03, for which Ackerman McQueen, the NRA’s former PR firm, was billed for. The NRA also reimbursed LaPierre for gifts sent to the organisation’s vendors, donors and special recipients, far exceeding federal tax limits.

The NRA’s 2019 tax filing disclosed that the body’s executives (former and current) had received somewhere up to $1.4 million in violation of non-profit regulations. The 2020 tax filing revealed a continuing trend. That year, LaPierre received 1.7 million in compensation, including a $455,000 bonus.

Things have been messy at the world’s most famous gun lobby charity for some time. The New York Attorney General Letitia James has busied herself with pursuing LaPierre and various top-placed individuals in the organisation on grounds of corruption. A lawsuit stretching back to August 2020 seeking the NRA’s dissolution asserts that millions of dollars funded a whole slew of personal benefits, including private jet travel, exorbitantly priced meals and family trips to the Bahamas. In doing so, it alleged that the NRA’s funds were mismanaged, a number of state and federal laws breached, including the body’s own bylaws and policies, and some $64 million lost over the course of three years.

With mulish determination, the NRA fought back, attempting, without success, to dismiss the complaint or change the court venue from Manhattan to more convivial surroundings in Albany. Daringly, it even tried to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in a federal bankruptcy court in Texas, hoping to reconstitute the body in that state. In May 2021, the court dismissed the claims, finding “that the NRA did not file the bankruptcy petition in good faith.”

In March 2022, LaPierre and the NRA Corporate Secretary and General Counsel John Frazer, ran the second act in trying to dismiss the lawsuit. Inventively, arguments about constitutionality and jurisdiction were advanced. Justice Joel Cohen of the New York County State Supreme Court was unimpressed, though accepted the NRA’s arguments against its dissolution by the Office of the Attorney General (OAG). But in June 2022, Justice Cohen rejected claims by the organisation that “the Attorney General’s investigation was unconstitutionally retaliatory or selective.” The AG’s investigation had been instigated following “reports of serious misconduct and it uncovered additional evidence that, at a bare minimum, undermines any suggestion that was a mere pretext to penalize the NRA for its constitutionally protected activities.”

Two further assaults on the AG’s case were mounted, one in September 2022, which found that James could appoint an independent monitor to oversee the NRA’s accounts as part of the lawsuit, and a last ditch effort in January this year, which was swatted by the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department. The trial date of January 8 was secure.

A few days before the trial’s opening, a $100,000 settlement between the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) and Joshua Powell, the body’s former Executive Director of Operations and Chief of Staff, left James crowing. “Joshua Powell’s admission of wrongdoing and Wayne LaPierre’s resignation confirm what we have alleged for years: the NRA and its senior leaders are financially corrupt.”

In the opening stages of the civil trial, Monica Connell, New York’s Assistant Attorney-General, explained to a six-member jury that, “The NRA allowed Wayne LaPierre and his group of insiders … to operate the NRA as ‘Wayne’s World’ for decades.” (Connell could have surely done better than refer to the Mike Myers-Dana Carvey comedy dating from 1992.)

Connell went on to describe tyrant overlords turned kleptomaniacs. “This case is about corruption in a charity. It’s about breaches of trust, it’s about power. People taking their hard-earned money and donate it to charities they believe in. It doesn’t matter what the cause is. They should be able to trust that the hard-earned money they donate is going to advance the mission of that charity.”

Where, when, for the NRA?  For decades, it has fetishised, moralised, and upheld the purest virtues of carrying heavy weaponry in civilian life. To be sovereign is to be armed; any laws regulating the use of weapons best reserved for the military is an affront to the Second Amendment’s constitutional decency and the rugged principles of Frontier Man and Woman. Massacres at nightclubs, schools and universities were simply the product of ill minds, not the ease with which one could get a weapon. Better still, give everyone a weapon. Even now, the departing LaPierre declares that “the NRA’s mission, programming, and fight for freedom have never been more secure.”

That said, financial probity and a good nose for accounts matter. To that end, there is something richly fitting, if ironic, that economics and a concern about the use of finances should be the telling factor in the fall of numbers in the NRA. Gun-control lobbies and regulators may scream themselves hoarse about stalled reforms, but they could have hardly hoped for better news than that reported by Stephen Gutowski in February last year.

At the time, LaPierre told attendees of the NRA’s most recent board meeting that the organisation had shrunk to 4.3 million numbers. Such a membership still seems impressive, till you realise that the fall in numbers approximates to about one million subscribers since the tide of corruption began battering the organisation. Between 2021 and 2022, revenue fell by almost $24 million, or 11 percent.  But expenses ballooned by 5.5 percent, or $11.5 million.

The carefully chosen, if typically anodyne words in a presentation prepared for the group’s finance committee in January 2023 noted that “Membership/Contribution performance has continued to experience softness through 2022.” James, through her office, is ensuring the experience is also going to be a hard one.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: [email protected]

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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Apart from the obvious, also sending to demonstrate again that even for the most unlikely, this massacre is proving a desert too far.

That Reuters and US News should be openly critical of the shimmering “democracy” is surely quite something.

—Felicity Arbuthnot, Global Research, January 9, 2024

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Eleven-year-old Noor’s left leg was almost entirely torn off when her home in Jabalia, Gaza was hit by an explosion in October. Now her right leg, fitted with a heavy metal bar and four screws drilled into the bone, may have to be amputated.

“It hurts me a lot … I’m afraid that they’ll have to cut off my other leg,” she said from her hospital bed, staring at her clunky fixation device.

“I used to run and play, I was so happy with my life, but now when I lost my leg, my life became ugly and I got sad. I hope I can get an artificial limb.”

In bombed-out Gaza, a generation of child amputees is emerging as Israel’s retaliatory blitz after Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attacks has led to blast and crush injuries as explosive weapons tear through densely-packed high-rise housing blocks.

Israeli authorities have previously said they work to minimise harm to civilians. Israel’s military spokesperson’s unit pointed to what it called Hamas’ strategy of the “exploitation of civilian structures for terror purposes” but provided no specific comment on child amputees.

Doctors and aid workers say Gaza’s collapsed medical system is ill-placed to give children the intricate follow-up care they need to salvage their still-growing, truncated bones. Only 30% of pre-conflict medics are working due to killings, detentions and displacements, according to the World Health Organization.

More than 1,000 children had undergone leg amputations, sometimes more than once or on both legs, by end-November, according to U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, in a conflict where Gaza health authorities say nearly a quarter of injuries are among children.

Click here to read the full article.

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Featured image: Palestinian girl Eman Al-Kholi, whose limb was amputated after being wounded in an Israeli strike that killed her parents, looks on as she sits in a wheelchair at the European Hospital, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, December 28, 2023. REUTERS/Arafat Barbakh

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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A clip from the 1990 movie Home Alone where the lead character purchases groceries, household goods, and toys recently went viral because he paid a total of $19.83 whereas today the same purchase would cost over three times as much. Ironically, while this evidence of the Federal Reserve’s failure to maintain the dollar’s value was going viral, stocks rose because investors believed the Fed had successfully engineered a “soft landing” by bringing down price inflation without causing a recession and would soon begin reducing interest rates.

Then, stocks fell at the beginning of the year when the release of the notes of the Federal Reserve Board’s last meeting suggested the Fed would not hurry rate cuts. The likelihood of a delay in cutting rates was further increased by a “positive” December Jobs report.

The jobs report did show unemployment remaining low and wages slightly increasing, but the news was not all positive. One of the report’s most troubling items is that a top source of increased wages is government. An increase in the salaries of government employees also increases government debt, which will have to be paid for by taxes. Since tax increases are unpopular, the government relies on the Federal Reserve to do the dirty work by purchasing federal debt instruments and thus creating more inflation. This inflation tax is the worst of all taxes because it is regressive and hidden.

If the Fed allowed interest rates to increase to anywhere near what they would likely be in a free market, interest rate payments on the federal debt would rise to a level causing a financial crisis.

Even though the federal government will soon spend more on interest on the federal debt than on the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex, few in DC are serious about cutting spending. Federal debt increased by one trillion dollars from mid-September to the beginning of the new year. It is expected to increase by around another trillion dollars by the end of March! To put this in perspective, consider that the federal debt did not reach a trillion dollars until 1981 — almost two hundred years after the Constitution was ratified.

Continuing increases in federal debt and Federal Reserve created inflation will lead to economic crisis caused by a rejection of the dollar’s world reserve currency status. There is already resentment over the US government’s use of the dollar’s reserve status to support US sanctions This is why Russia and Iran recently signed a deal to trade in their own currencies rather than in dollars and Russia is no longer accepting dollars for its oil.

President Biden has kept his promise to refrain from criticizing the Fed’s conduct of monetary policy. In contrast, his predecessor regularly took to Twitter to lambaste the central bank. This means the Fed will likely try to help President Biden by trying to keep interest rates low enough to not increase unemployment yet high enough to not increase price inflation.

While Donald Trump is more likely than Joe Biden to challenge the deep state and neoconservative foreign policy, the truth is neither Biden nor Trump will seek to reduce spending. Unless a critical mass of Americans demand an end to the welfare-warfare state and the fiat money system, the soft landing sought by the Fed and the politicians will turn into a hard crash.

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Chinese state-supported shipping giant COSCO Shipping has stopped visiting Israeli ports, “Globes” has learned. The company, the fourth largest container shipping line in the world, with about 11% of world trade, decided on this step even though it is not much threatened in the Red Sea, because of the very fact that it is Chinese, and because of China’s ties with Iran, the patron of the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Besides the effect on trade between the Far East and Israel, COSCO’s decision is significant because it cooperates with Israeli shipping line ZIM, which will have to operate more ships on the Far East routes, which is liable to will lead to higher shipping costs, since XIM will be short of ships.

The second direct effect will be on the Haifa Bayport, which is operated by another state-owned Chinese company, SIPG. The port is dependent on the many COSCO ships that visit it.

The Houthis are threatening to attack vessels of any company that sails to Israel, but China is the customer for 90% of the oil exported by Iran. The chances of the Houthis firing on ships of a state-owned Chinese company are therefore very low, raising questions about the reasons for COSCO’s decision, of which international shippers have yet to be notified.

A pointer to COSCO’s step was the recent announcement by its Hong Kong-based subsidiary OOCL that it was ceasing to sail to Israel because of “operational problems”. That announcement, intended to enable it to sail in the Red Sea without interference by the Houthis, led to wide criticism. In the end, the company caved in, like Singapore-based shipping line ONE (Ocean Network Express).

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Featured image: COSCO ship credit: Shutterstock

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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Introductory Note

The unspoken objective is “crystal clear”.

The Battlefield Against Russia is postponed. It’s an ongoing multi-billion dollar bonanza for the Military-Industrial-Complex.

The Pentagon (on behalf of NATO) is sustaining the multibillion dollar revenues of America’s “defense contractors”, while announcing once more the postponement of “Ukraine’s Counter-Offensive”. The training program for the pilots will stretch into 2025.

Ukraine has lost the war. That battlefield is highly unlikely.

Will those F-16 fighters be deployed?

“Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov explained Moscow’s objection is based on the American-made warplane’s ability to carry nuclear weapons. Meanwhile resulting from multibillion dollar military expenses”

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s external debt has gone fly high. Western creditors are there to pick up the pieces.

The entire Ukrainian economy will be handed over to “Big Money” including BlackRock. It has all the features of a “Neo-Colonial Project”.

 

Photo of Zelensky meeting with Fink (Image courtesy of the President of Ukraine’s Official Website)

 

—Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, January 9, 2024

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The Western plan to transfer advanced American-made fighter jets to Ukraine has hit another delay and is now expected to reach the battlefield during the second quarter of this year. Washington has said it does not expect the warplanes to alter the course of the war. However, Russia views the F-16s as a national security threat as the aircraft are capable of carrying nuclear weapons. 

Danish newspaper Berlingske reported that the six F-16s Denmark was scheduled to transfer at the start of 2024 are being delayed by at least six months. The report was confirmed to Newsweek by the Danish Defense Ministry. The F-16 transfer is “now expected to happen during the second quarter of 2024,” while noting that “the timeline of the donation is subject to change,” the statement said. 

Colonel Yurii Ihnat, Spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force, recently explained that some of the pilots training on the F-16 are expected to complete the course this year, but it is possible for that instruction to stretch into 2025.

“As far as Denmark is concerned, this is an advanced group. Both fighters and pilots will be the fastest from there. When will they be the fastest? Well, we are still counting on the spring.”

He explained that some pilots training in the US are expected to be prepared for the battlefield by late 2024. A third group of Ukrainians drilling on F-16s in the UK are not expected to complete the training until next year. 

After President Joe Biden gave approval for a NATO plan to train Ukrainian pilots on F-16s and then transfer the advanced aircraft to Ukraine in the Spring of 2023, officials in Kiev hoped the warplanes would arrive by the end of the year. The timeline has been pushed back several times. 

Last Summer, Spokesperson for the National Security Council, John Kirby, told Fox News that the F-16s will not alter the course of the war.

“But it’s not our assessment that the F-16s alone would be enough to turn the tide here.” He continues, Kiev needs “the four As: artillery, ammunition, air defense and armor – tanks.”

Still, the Kremlin views the NATO plan to transfer F-16s to Ukraine as highly provocative. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov explained Moscow’s objection is based on the American-made warplane’s ability to carry nuclear weapons. 

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Kyle Anzalone is news editor of the Libertarian Institute, opinion editor of Antiwar.com and co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Will Porter and Connor Freeman.

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” ― Nelson Mandela

There are 120 members in the Israeli Knesset, but one man towers above them all. His name is Ofer Cassif, and he is, perhaps, the most despised man in Israel. His crime—if you can call it that—is that he put his moral convictions into practice by signing a petition in support of “the upcoming hearing at the International Court of Justice in The Hague”… “accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.” (Times of Israel) Here’s what he said:

“My constitutional duty is to Israeli society and all its residents, not to a government whose members and its coalition are calling for ethnic cleansing and even actual genocide.”

Naturally, Cassif’s comments have been universally condemned in Israel where some surveys show more than 80 percent of Israelis support the current military operation in Gaza. Also, a number of Cassif’s most strident critics have called for the ethics committee to remove him from the Knesset after he announced his intentions. (According to Israeli media: 70 members of the Knesset have already voted to remove Ofer as soon as Monday morning.) Even so, the beleaguered lawmaker has courageously withstood the blistering attacks and forged ahead with his righteous crusade.

The Jerusalem Post provided an example of the attacks on Ofer’s character by other members of the Knesset. Here’s what MK Oded Forer said:

“The treasonous words of MK Kasif can no longer be heard while the blood of our soldiers and citizens is crying out from the ground. MK Kasif, who was previously disqualified from running for the Knesset following a petition I submitted to the election committee, has chosen during the war to join one of the most destructive initiatives for the security of the State of Israel, and thus he supports the struggle of Hamas against Israel. He must soon find himself beyond the borders of the Knesset and preferably beyond the borders of the State of Israel.Israeli far-left lawmaker joins Gaza genocide lawsuit at ICJ” The Jerusalem Post

While MK Oded Forer’s opinion is not uncommon in Israel, it is widely disputed in the rest of the world where the vast majority of humanity feel that the IDF’s vicious rampage in Gaza is not just a ghastly and unjustifiable massacre of innocent civilians, but also stain on Israel’s reputation that will never be wiped clean. Add to that, the fact that the prosecution has compiled voluminous evidence that Israel’s actions in Gaza are “genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent… to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group.” The facts speak for themselves.

The truth is, it takes a real patriot to stand up to a raging mob and tell them ‘they’re wrong.’ And that is what Cassif has done. He has defended the defenseless and openly defied the fanatics and pychos who control the levers of state power. He even admitted as much when he said the following:

“Those who hurt the country and the people are the ones who led South Africa to turn to The Hague, not me and my friends.”

Bravo, Ofer. You are an inspiration to us all. Take a minute and watch this short clip of Cassif at a Palestinian protest delivering a powerful statement on human rights while the shots ring-out and tear gas can be seen wafting behind him. Tell me this guy doesn’t have balls of steel.

Israeli politician, Ofer Cassif, says he will provide evidence in support of South Africa/Palestine at the ICJ.

Every time I’ve seen Cassif demonstrate for Palestinians he’s almost always beaten up by Israeli police (Sheikh Jarrah May ‘21). Shin Bet may go after him this time. https://t.co/wZFLosX5Cb pic.twitter.com/ji4f4WvAno

— Naks Bilal (@NaksBilal) January 7, 2024

Cassif: “All the world should know what is going on here. Do not support this neo-Nazi government.”

Here’s more from an article at The Times Of Israel:

Cassif is one of some 200 Israelis who are signing onto a petition of support for South Africa’s case, Ynet reports. In the petition, they say they wish to “add our voice as citizens of Israel to the claims…that South Africa submitted to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, in the hope that our voice will help reach a decision that will bring an immediate end to the war.” Israeli lawmaker signs petition supporting Hague genocide hearings on Gaza War, Times of Israel

It’s hard to image the threats, harassment and even physical violence Cassif and his allies are currently experiencing, and with no end in sight. After all, nations, like people, can go bonkers for long periods of time before ‘the ship rights itself’ and sanity is restored. Times like these require clear-eyed men whose views rest on a rock-solid moral foundation. Cassif appears to fill the bill to a “T”. Here he is again:

“When the government acts against society, the state, and its citizens, especially when it sacrifices them and commits crimes in their name on the altar of maintaining its existence, it is my right and even my duty to warn about this and do everything I can within the law to stop it.”

After which, he adds…

“I will not give up the fight for our existence as a moral society. This is true patriotism…”

Indeed, it is.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.

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

Featured image is from TUR

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

***

The Gaza War has had multiple effects on both parties involved in the conflict. Despite its inequality, injustice and violation of international law and human values, this war has left catastrophic effects on the Palestinians, surpassing the highest estimates of human casualties.

It has also negatively impacted Israel across political, security, social and economic domains.

Politically and from security perspective, the war has led to a deterioration of Israel’s relations with most international entities, resulting in negative perceptions of Israel as a repressive force that disregards humanitarian law and perpetrates genocide against the Palestinian people.

Widespread criticism has been directed at Israel for destroying vital facilities such as hospitals, schools, residences, and places of worship, not to mention the significant human losses among women, children, and civilians.

These criticisms have led to international isolation for Israel, affecting its trade and diplomatic relations with the world and undermining its normalisation efforts with neighbouring countries.

Internally, the war has intensified internal tensions in Israel, noticeably impacting its political and security stability.

Socially, the war has left significant marks on Israeli society, turning it into a troubled and insecure community suffering from serious internal divisions. More than 500,000 citizens have been forced to leave Israel since the beginning of the operations, and over 400,000 have been displaced from their residences to perceived safer areas, creating a demographic shift that poses a danger to their society. The remaining Israelis live in constant threat of Palestinians attacks and rockets, affecting their psychological well-being, daily lives, and overall quality of life. Israeli society has witnessed collapses due to the psychological and health impacts on its members. Furthermore, the number of suicide cases has increased dramatically.

Economically, it seems that the economic prosperity Israel enjoyed in recent years, supported by technology exports, gas exports and rising living standards, has ended due to the effects of this war. The Israeli economy has been further destabilised.

The consequences of October 7 will stay in the coming years on the state’s financial performance, given the financial costs of the military operation, defence expenses, reconstruction, compensations for the affected, and daily economic losses. Israeli economic losses exceeded $3 billion monthly, according to Israeli data, in addition to the absence of more than 1.3 million people from their work during that period. The Israeli economy has also been negatively impacted by a decrease in economic activity, declining investments and significant negative effects on various sectors such as tourism, trade, investment, banks and the stock market directly due to military operations and the lack of security and safety, which are considered larger than any capital in economic terms.

Regarding the military costs of the war, its total cost so far has reached more than $40 billion as a direct cost, covering the funding of the armed forces, purchase of weapons and military equipment, soldier training, logistic support and settling the costs of over 28,000 of mercenary forces, who are costing the treasury approximately 13,000 euros per month per individual, which will exert pressure on the state’s general budget. This will lead to a significant financial deficit in the budget due to this massive military expenditure.

The government will be forced to finance this deficit either through costly borrowing or by imposing new taxes on society, which will impact the economy’s performance and growth rates in general. Recently, there has been significant pressure on the local currency (the Shekel), which has lost about 6 per cent of its value, reaching its lowest level in 8 years. The central bank had to intervene by injecting about $45 billion from its financial reserves to support the local currency and prevent its collapse. The foreign currency reserves of Israel were about $198.5 billion at the end of September 2023.

Additionally, the Israeli ministry of energy suspended the production of gas from the Tamar and Leviathan fields in the Mediterranean since the beginning of the operation.

This poses a significant obstacle to the state’s financial resources. Consequently, the insurance cost of Israeli sovereign debts has increased due to concerns about non-repayment, signaling negative expectations for future economic prospects.

The impact of the war on the overall economic activity was evident and tangible.

Israeli markets are currently experiencing a significant decline in their activities, creating new economic patterns and contributing to the destruction of some working sectors and job losses. Companies have been greatly affected, supply chains and trade disrupted, and investments have declined by over 63 per cent. Many economic and strategic projects have been postponed, leading to an expected economic growth decline of 1.8 per cent, compared to 5.6 per cent last year, according to Israeli Statistical Bureau data. Consumption patterns of Israelis have been affected due to new conditions, with shortages of certain supplies such as vegetables and fruits, previously supplied by agricultural areas in the Gaza Strip, exceeding 75 per cent. There is also a severe shortage of other daily products, forcing the government to import them from other sources at high costs to address the deficit.

The tourism sector in Israel, being one of the most sensitive sectors, has been greatly affected during the war. General tourism in the region and specifically in Israel has declined significantly due to security tensions and travel warnings. Central bank figures suggest that tourism was expected to contribute about $6.5 billion to the GDP by the end of the year, but until the end of the third quarter, only $3.1 billion was achieved.

Transportation and aviation sectors have suffered severely due to travel restrictions and a decrease in demand for air travel to Israel.

The Israeli aviation sector has seen a contraction or cancellation of flights, leading to Ben Gurion Airport’s operational decline. Many international airlines have canceled their flights until March 30, 2024.

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Haider Al Majali is an economic and investment expert.

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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Each year 25,000 Australians experience a cardiac arrest.

“90% of those 25,000 WILL NOT SURVIVE”. (Dr.Elizabeth Paratz – Baker Heart & Diabetes Institute”)

“If you’re young it’s more likely that NO ANSWERS WILL BE FOUND.”

Australian Heart Foundation Media Release Dec. 22, 2023:

Australian scientists will build the world’s largest-ever registry of sudden cardiac arrest deaths in a major bid to solve one of the most elusive and frightening mysteries of cardiovascular disease.

Starting with Victoria, the work, supported by the Heart Foundation and led by Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute’s Dr Elizabeth Paratz, will combine and examine cardiac arrest data from two large and existing databases.

The new super-registry, named CODEX-SD which links ambulance and forensic data, will for the first time give researchers their closest look yet at what causes sudden cardiac arrests and what might be done to stop them.

The database will provide a single place to record the nation’s data on cardiac arrests to also help researchers to examine rare conditions, identify trends and better understand the cardiac experiences of under-represented populations.

Dr Paratz said CODEX-SD will help researchers pinpoint what further work needs to be done to unlock the genetic mysteries that have made sudden cardiac arrest a leading cause of death for people aged 50 and under in Australia.

A cardiac arrest occurs when a person’s heart suddenly stops pumping blood effectively around the body and can strike anywhere, anytime, and is often fatal without immediate and appropriate intervention from bystanders.

Each year in Australia, 25,000 people experience out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, and in about 30 to 40 per cent of cases, doctors cannot explain what caused it.

“There’s very few other conditions like that, where at the end of extensive investigations we go back to the family and say there’s no clear reason why this tragic event has happened,” Dr Paratz said.

“This lack of closure makes it incredibly difficult for families, but also with a lack of knowing who else might be at risk in the family adds another layer of distress.

“90 percent of people who suffer a sudden cardiac arrest die, so if we can make inroads on that statistic – and we need to do so – one benefit, and the most important one, is that we have a better chance of keeping families together,” she said.

Bryan Maris; Super Fit, Super Healthy and an A-grade Cyclist

The registry has the full support of Jessica Maris, who tragically lost her husband Bryan at age 31 to sudden cardiac arrest.

Bryan was super fit, super healthy and was an A-grade cyclist.

Early one January morning, Jessica was feeding their three-month old daughter Avie Rose when she heard a noise in the bedroom.

“It sounded like a cough from Bryan, I called out to Bryan but there was no answer, so when I finished feeding Avie, Iwent into our bedroom and Bryan was in bed; with his arms up beside his head, at a strangle angle,” Mrs Maris said.

“I nudged Bryan, but he didn’t respond. He wasn’t moving and his lips were slightly blue, so I called an ambulance.”

Unfortunately Bryan was unable to be revived.

The Maris family has since been told it was likely that Bryan had Brugada syndrome; a condition that can cause fast, irregular heartbeats which can lead to fainting or, in serious cases, a cardiac arrest.

Bryan Maris died in his sleep on Jan.4, 2015.

My Take… 

This is a very well funded and extensive effort to normalize COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Cardiac Injuries and Sudden Cardiac deaths.

Once they have their excuses ready – they will have the mainstream medical establishment structure (the World’s largest database, cardiac experts) sell the lies to the victims’ families.

Who is going to question the World’s largest sudden cardiac death database and its experts?

Notice that in the above video as well as media release, they don’t use a recent sudden cardiac death case.

Instead, they use the case of Bryan Maris (a professional cyclist) from 2015.

Why are they avoiding using a recent case? Because everyone would ask if that person was COVID-19 Vaccinated.

Since this project is part of a pre-meditated attempt to cover up COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Induced Sudden Cardiac Deaths, which itself is a crime, everyone involved with this project should face criminal charges and a very lengthy prison time.

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

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The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page.

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MK Ofer Cassif said that ‘While those who have explicitly called for the destruction of Gaza by fire or atomic bomb are sitting at the cabinet table, I face expulsion on unproven charges of  ‘supporting armed struggle against Israel’

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Seventy Knesset members signed a motion on Monday to support the expulsion of lawmaker Ofer Cassif, of the left-wing Jewish and Arab Hadash-Ta’al party, from the Knesset over his support of South Africa’s petition against Israel at the International Court of Justice. 

Cassif signed a petition on Monday supporting South Africa’s petition to the ICJ in The Hague, alleging that Israel is committing war crimes, the hearing on which will be held on Thursday and Friday.

The motion was led by MK Oded Forer of the secularist, conservative Yisrael Beitenu party. Forer’s motion will likely face legal hurdles, because the law only permits lawmakers to be expelled for racist incitement or for supporting armed struggle against Israel, and it is not clear whether Cassif’s actions meet these two conditions.

Lawmakers from every Knesset faction, except Labor, Ra’am, and Hadash-Ta’al, signed the motion. The law that allows a lawmaker to be removed by the Knesset proscribes that a minimum of 70 lawmakers – at least ten of whom are not members of the coalition – must sign the motion in order for it to be advanced.

The Knesset House Committee must then hold a discussion in which legal opinions on the case are presented, and a three-quarter majority of the committee members must approve the motion to expel.

The Knesset must finally approve the motion by a majority of at least 90 votes. A lawmaker who is expelled may appeal the resolution in the High Court.

Expulsion proceedings have been initiated against lawmakers in the past, but they never reached the final stage.

In 2017, proceedings were initiated against former MK Basel Ghattas of Arab party Balad after he was documented smuggling mobile phones to security prisoners, but his resignation rendered the process redundant.

Click here to read the full article.

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Featured image: Joint List Lawmaker Ofer Cassif, at the Knesset in February.Credit: Noam Rivkin Fenton

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Experts from the United Nations have called on the United States to halt what would be the nation’s first execution by nitrogen gas, warning that it could cause severe suffering and possibly be considered torture. The state of Alabama plans to put Kenneth Eugene Smith to death on January 25 using nitrogen hypoxia, or asphyxiation, by depriving the condemned prisoner of oxygen by having him breathe pure nitrogen gas.

In a joint statement issued January 3 in Geneva, Switzerland, four independent UN monitors accuse Alabama of a rush to utilize the experimental execution technique that could inflict grave suffering on Smith in violation of the International Convention against Torture, which the US ratified in 1994, and the Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1988 without a vote.

“We are concerned that nitrogen hypoxia would result in a painful and humiliating death,” the experts write. They note that the execution method has never to date been used in an execution.

Smith, 58, was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1996 murder of Elizabeth Sennett, after being offered $1,000 to kill her by the victim’s husband, a pastor, who was seeking to receive an insurance payout. Despite an 11 to 1 vote by the trial jury to sentence Smith to life in prison, the judge overruled the jury and sentenced him to death. Alabama abolished judicial sentencing override in 2017, but the state has not applied this retroactively to those sentenced prior to this date.

If Alabama attempts to execute Smith it will be his second trip to the state’s execution chamber. He spent four hours on November 17, 2022, strapped to a gurney while the execution team repeatedly failed in its attempts to insert the intravenous line to inject lethal chemicals into his body.

According to an account published by the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), an individual of “unknown medical credentials” repeatedly stabbed Smith in the collarbone area with a large needle while attempting to place a central IV line. Smith described experiencing sharp and intense pain. The effort was abandoned when it became clear that the team would not be able to kill Smith before the death warrant expired at midnight.

“When guards came to remove him from the execution chamber, Smith was trembling, sweating, hyperventilating, dizzy, and could not lift his own arms to be handcuffed or walk unassisted,” DPIC writes. Smith thus became one of a growing number of death row inmates who have lived after a failed execution attempt, discrediting any claims that lethal injection is a painless method of state killing.

Having already failed once at putting Smith to death, Alabama authorities are now planning to use a totally untested method for his upcoming execution. Although their plans have been shrouded in secrecy, according to the Associated Press, the execution will be carried out by placing a mask over the inmate’s nose and mouth, forcing him to breathe only nitrogen, depriving him of the oxygen needed for bodily functions and causing death.

There is no scientific evidence that proves this method will be painless. Despite this, Republican Trip Pittman, the owner of the Pittman Tractor Company, who sponsored the bill authorizing nitrogen gas executions as a state senator, claimed in an interview,

“I know in a pure nitrogen environment you pass out. It is instantaneous. You basically black out. There is no time for pain or anything else.”

Contradicting these unfounded claims, Dr. Joel Zivot, an anesthesiologist at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, told the Alabama Reflector,

“This is death by asphyxiation. This is choking someone to death with gas. Why anyone would think that would be something pleasant or painless is really beyond my understanding.”

The Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution, adopted in 1791 as part of the US Bill of Rights, reads, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” The US Supreme Court has ruled that executions of the mentally impaired and those convicted for crimes committed as juveniles are unconstitutional but has consistently upheld the constitutionality of capital punishment itself.

Capital punishment has been outlawed in Western Europe and Canada. The US and Japan are the only two Group of Seven (G7) nations that have retained the death penalty. Japan did not carry out any executions in 2023, leaving the US as the only G7 member to carry out executions last year.

Lethal injection remains the most-used method of execution among the 27 US states that retain the death penalty, along with the US government and the US military. Electrocution, lethal gas, hanging and the firing squad remain on the books in some of these states, often as an alternative method if lethal injection is unavailable. States have scrambled to procure drugs to use in lethal injections after companies in Europe and domestically have refused to provide them for executions.

Large-scale gas chambers designed for mass killing were used by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust, killing millions of Jews, the disabled, socialists and other opponents of the fascist regime. Gas inhalation for executions has only ever been used in the US and Lithuania. The first gas chamber execution in the US was in 1924, when Chinese national Gee Jon, 29, was put death in Nevada.

Since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 after a brief hiatus, 11 of 1,582 executions have been carried out with hydrogen cyanide gas: Mississippi, 4; California, North Carolina and Arizona, 2 each; and Nevada, 1.

Walter LaGrand, 37, a German national, was the last person executed by gas in the US, on March 3, 1999, in Arizona. His brother Karl LaGrand, 35, was put to death by lethal injection in the state a week earlier. The two had been convicted and sentenced to death for a murder committed during a bank robbery.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder objected to the executions in a meeting with President Bill Clinton, expressing concern that neither brother had received consular assistance at the time of his arrest. Karl LaGrand had already been executed when Berlin filed suit in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to stop the older brother’s execution.

The White House argued it was a matter for the State of Arizona. The Arizona Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended a 60-day reprieve to await the decision of the ICJ, but Arizona Governor Jan D. Hull ignored it and the execution proceeded. 

A German political scientist wrote in a post on executedtoday.com in 2008:

Given a choice in their method of execution, both brothers tactically opted for the gas chamber to give the legal challenges to lethal gas a chance to save them. With those challenges foundering, both were offered a late switch to lethal injection in exchange for dropping [their] suit.

Karl took the deal. Walter, as the New York Times put it, “opted for the gas, with its resonance of the Holocaust for Germans.”

Before the executioner switched the lever to initiate a chemical reaction between cyanide pellets (KCN) and sulfuric acid (H2SO4) the inmate was given his last words. Walter LaGrand said:

To all my loved ones, I hope they find peace. To all of you here today, I forgive you and hope I can be forgiven in my next life.

This date’s gassing with hydrogen cyanide (HCN) took 18 minutes until the heart of Walter LaGrand stopped beating. While the execution took place witnesses left the room nauseated.

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Featured image: Kenneth Eugene Smith [Photo: Alabama Department of Corrections]

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An Israeli cabinet meeting devolved into a bitter argument Friday in the wake of the IDF chief announcing plans to launch an inquiry into the military’s failure to respond to the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.

Several ministers lambasted IDF Chief-of-Staff Herzl Halevi during a discussion on “the day after” the Gaza War over plans for the IDF to form an investigatory team to probe the security lapses surrounding Hamas’ deadly incursion into Israel.

From The Jerusalem Post:

At issue was opposition to an IDF plan for an internal investigatory committee that would include former Defense Minister and former IDF Chief-of-Staff Shaul Mofaz, IDF intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeevi Farkash and former IDF southern command chief Sami Turgeman.

The committee would be tasked with investigating the military failures that contributed to the Hamas-led October 7 attack, in which over 1.200 people were killed and another 250 were taken hostage.

The results of the committee were intended for internal use, to immediately improve flaws in IDF operations moving forward, and were not expected to constitute a formal investigatory committee.

“This is our professional review – not about policy, but how the IDF acted,” Halevi said.

“Something happened here that the army should learn from. Tomorrow if an incident happens in another sector we want to understand what caused the failure in the chain of command. This is an operational investigation that has implications for the fighting in the north.”

Critics of the IDF investigation plans included allies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, such as Transport Minister Miri Regev, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

The dispute reportedly turned into a shouting match between them and defenders of the IDF chief such as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Education Minister Yifat Shasha Biton.

“I didn’t know about the investigation, but I give the Chief of Staff my full backing. It is his job to check and investigate. If the chief of staff decided to establish an investigation team – I support him,” Gallant said, telling the ministers,

“if they do investigations – it’s none of your business.”

Ben-Gvir reportedly defended his right to question the chief of staff, saying “not all criticism is blasphemy, we are the ministers and this is our job.”

Netanyahu himself ended the meeting at midnight.

Unlike other members of his cabinet, Netanyahu has avoided taking responsibility for the security failures on Oct. 7 amid calls for investigations into him and his government over what led to Hamas’ successful terrorist invasion that killed over 1,400 people.

“Everyone will have to give answers on the debacle — including myself — but all that will happen only after the war,” he said in an address to the nation. “As prime minister, I am responsible for securing the future of the state. And right now, my job is to lead the state of Israel and the people to a crushing victory over our enemies.”

Israel’s stunning security failure raised questions about whether an operational stand down had been ordered as false flag to justify a full-scale assault on Gaza.

According to Jewish Pro-Life Foundation leader Cecily Routman, government sources claimed Netanyahu ordered a 7-hour military stand down to allow Hamas to launch its attack to justify Israeli retaliation against Gaza meant to ultimately wipe the Palestinian enclave off the map.

“Israel as the most sophisticated intelligence in the world. There is no way the government didn’t know that that was going to happen,” Routman said.

Reports later surfaced showing the Israeli government was aware Hamas was planning a large-scale attack a year prior but allegedly didn’t take intelligence reports about it seriously.

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Featured image: Palestinian members of the Ezz al-din Al Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas burn military armored vehicle belonging to Israeli forces near Gaza Strip, Gaza on October 07, 2023. Photo by STR APAimages

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The US and Israel have isolated themselves as the two most evil governments on earth. By complying with Washington’s foreign policy, the European puppet governments find themselves despised by their citizens.

Eleven months ago Russia’s president Vladimir Putin described the West to the Russian Federal Assembly:

“They behaved just as shamelessly and duplicitously when destroying Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. They will never be able to wash off this shame. The concepts of honor, trust, and decency are not for them. Over the long centuries of colonialism, diktat and hegemony, they got used to being allowed everything. They grew accustomed to spitting on the whole world.

“It turned out that they treat people living in their own countries with the same disdain, like a master. They cynically deceived them too, tricked them with tall stories about the search for peace, about adherence to the UN Security Council resolutions on Donbass. The Western elites have become a symbol of total, unprincipled lies.”

It took Russian politicians and journalists a long time to recover from their delusion that with the demise of communism the world was a community governed by agreed-upon rules. Many Russian intellectuals and journalists had an idealized picture of the United States which kept the Russian government off balance in understanding Washington’s intentions toward Russia. How else to explain Russia’s lack of preparedness when Washington overthrew the elected government of Ukraine and when Georgia invaded South Ossetia?

As Putin now understands, the consequences of the Russian government’s mistaken expectation of fair and honorable relations with the West have been severe. Unless the West’s degradation results in collapse, war is inevitable. American and European peoples have no impact on their governments who serve the agendas of the financially powerful. Now that the West has demonstrated for all to see that the West suffers no shame from participation in genocide, even the most westernized Russians are likely to keep a safe distance from Washington’s snares.

Now that the West has completely shattered the trust built during the Soviet era, the threat of nuclear Armageddon again holds sway over the Earth. In the face of this threat, all other threats recede into nothingness.

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

Featured image: The world’s first nuclear explosion – the U.S. ‘Trinity’ atomic test in New Mexico, July 16, 1945. If a nuclear war breaks out today, the devastation caused by modern nuclear weapons would make Trinity’s power look small by comparison. Most life on Earth would likely be wiped out. | U.S. Department of Energy

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January 15, 2024 marks the 95th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), a federally recognized holiday in the United States since 1986.

Dr. King was the most well-known and respected leader within the mass Civil Rights Movement which arose during the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56. 

Is Uncle Sam Being Duped Into Fighting Israel’s War? Mike Whitney

By Mike Whitney, January 08, 2024

This week’s drone strike on senior Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri in southern Beirut provides compelling evidence that Israel wants to expand the conflict beyond its borders. In the last few weeks, Israel has assassinated a deputy political leader in Hamas (al-Arouri), a senior adviser in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, (Sayyed Razi Mousavi) and “nearly a dozen senior Iranian military officials” (Fox News) at an airport in Damascus.

Human Rights Lawyer Accuses a French Company for Providing Funds and Material to ISIS in Syria, but Ignores the Crimes of the US and UK

By Steven Sahiounie, January 08, 2024

The crime committed by Lafarge is serious, but it is just one small incidence of western entities supporting terrorists in Syria following Radical Islam. Clooney is singling out a French company, and France is allied with both the U.S. and UK. While the crime affected hundreds of Yazidis, the same crime carried out by the U.S., UK and EU has affected millions of Syrian citizens.

J’Accuse … ! The Line Is Clear, COVID-19 Was a Concerted Effort by the “Global Cabal” to Control the Population

By Dr. Emanuel Garcia, January 08, 2024

We are now approximately four years removed from the unleashing of the covid so-called pandemic and the consequential measures adopted and enforced world-wide that created terror in the global populace, imposed unprecedented strictures, subverted foundational principles of medicine and foisted an unnecessary and dangerous inoculation upon a mostly unwitting public.

Unmatched Surge in Illegal Settlement Activity Against Palestinians in the West Bank Since the Onset of the Gaza War

By Peace Now, January 08, 2024

In the aftermath of three months of war in Gaza, we are witnessing an unprecedented surge in settlement activities, including the construction of outposts, roads, fences, and roadblocks initiated by settlers. Settlers persist in seizing control of Area C in the West Bank, further marginalizing the Palestinian presence.

Understanding Power Dynamics and Moving Beyond Divisions: COVID–19 Through to Ukraine and Israel/Palestine

By Vanessa Beeley and Professor Piers Robinson, January 08, 2024

The last four years has been a significant shakeup for some people. Many of those previously identifying as ‘of the left’ have started to wonder what that actually means. At the same time, we have seen a willingness by those usually associated with ‘the right’ becoming more open to engaging with ‘left wing’ voices. 

Was the Iraq War the Biggest Con of the 21st Century?

By James Bovard, January 08, 2024

The Iraq War was spawned by a deadly combination of political depravity and media complicity. Unfortunately, on the twentieth anniversary of the war, both elements of that conspiracy are being whitewashed. Instead, politicians and their pundit accomplices are prattling as if the Iraq war was a well-intentioned mistake, not a crime against humanity.

UN Relief Chief: “Death and Despair”. The War in Gaza Must End

By Martin Griffiths, January 08, 2024

Tens of thousands of people, mostly women and children, have been killed or injured. Families are sleeping in the open as temperatures plummet. Areas where civilians were told to relocate for their safety have come under bombardment. Medical facilities are under relentless attack.

South Africa’s ICJ Application for Israel’s Genocide in Gaza

By International Court of Justice, January 08, 2024

This Application concerns acts threatened, adopted, condoned, taken and being taken by the Government and military of the State of Israel against the Palestinian people, a distinct national, racial and ethnical group, in the wake of the attacks in Israel on 7 October 2023.

100+ Global Rights Groups Urge Support for South Africa’s Genocide Case Against Israel at ICJ

By Julia Conley, January 08, 2024

More than 100 international groups signed onto a letter released Wednesday by a newly formed Palestinian rights coalition, urging governments across the globe to formally support South Africa’s International Court of Justice case against Israel, accusing the government of genocidal violence in Gaza.

Rapid Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) or Prion Disease in the COVID-19 mRNA Vaccinated

By Dr. William Makis, January 08, 2024

63 year old Diane Wagner was diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) on Jan. 3, 2024, which “will soon take Diane’s life”. “Just a few weeks ago, she was healthy & living an everyday normal life.”

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The argument over the Israeli accusation that Hamas used Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital as a shield for its military effort against the Israel Defense Forces has continued, even as the headlines have shifted to the Israel-Hamas prisoner swap. 

On Nov. 23, well-known author and online journalist Fred Kaplan weighed in forcefully in favor of the Israeli charge.

In a post on “X,” Kaplan, who writes a weekly column on defense and foreign affairs for Slatemagazine, posted a comment supporting the conclusion of an article in the Israeli daily Haaretz unequivocally supporting the IDF’s position.  

Kaplan’s post declared, “Clear evidence in Ha’aretz (which is often critical of Israel govt), that Hamas used tunnels under Al-Shifa hospital as a command center.”   

Clear evidence, in Ha’aretz (which is often critical of Israel govt), that Hamas used tunnels under Al-Shifa hospital as a command center. https://t.co/TYneI0JLXy

— Fred Kaplan (@fmkaplan) November 24, 2023

With that, Kaplan defended the IDF’s justification for closing down Gaza’s largest hospital while carrying out a war designed to destroy vast areas of the world’s most densely populated urban enclave. That hard-line view does not stand up to closer scrutiny.  

The Haaretz article in question fails to provide a convincing case for the Israeli government’s claim that Hamas was using the tunnel under al-Shifa Hospital as command center, and therefore that the hospital was being used as a ‘human shield.” Instead it merely shows that the article’s author, Janiv Kubovich, military correspondent for Haaretz, reflects the IDF view of the conflict on the Haaretz staff. 

Kubovich does not cite a single piece of evidence for Hamas’ culpability in using the hospital for military purposes that did not come directly from the military spokesman.

The reporter recommended by Kaplan with such high confidence relied completely on the most self-interested sources imaginable on the issue — the IDF’s leading propagandist. It is a source lacking in any independent judgment. 

The IDF’s position on Gaza’s hospitals, as articulated by its chief spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, has been extremely rigid and unyielding, in line with the Israeli policy aim of imposing maximum human costs not only on Hamas but on the entire civilian population of Gaza.

That policy requires that all the hospitals must be shut down, and the society be systematically deprived of food and fuel and put under military pressure. 

First Rantisi Hospital, Then al-Shifa 

When hospitals are used for military purposes, they can lose their protected status under international laws of war.  

A common denominator in IDF operations regarding hospitals in Gaza is to repeatedly release videos showing weapons either inside or next to a medical facility to justify shutting it down.

Before the IDF spokesman and his staff had even moved to al-Shifa, the IDF ordered Rantisi Hospital for Children closed after Hagari showed footage of an alleged Hamas weapons cache in the basement.  

After Rantisi Hospital it was al-Shifa’s turn. On Nov. 11, the IDF began a drumbeat of propaganda ahead of its takeover, calling al-Shifa “the main hub of Hamas activity.”  

The Pentagon, which has extremely close ties to the IDF, gave its wholehearted support to the accusation. 

To its credit, Haaretz picked up an AP report saying that Israel, “without providing evidence, has accused Hamas of concealing a command post inside and under the compound, allegations denied by Hamas and hospital staff.”

We now know, however, that this well-organized propaganda campaign against al-Shifa could not have been based on actual intelligence on what lay in the tunnel under the hospital.  No outsider could have possibly been inside the tunnel to report on what was to be found there, because the entrance to the tunnel had been sealed for an unknown period of time. 

Also, the IDF was recently found exaggerating evidence of a Hamas command center under the hospital. As Consortium News reported last week, the IDF on Oct. 27 provided a visual depiction of a vast Hamas presence in no fewer than five buildings of al-Shifa’s enormous campus, as well as what it called a “Hamas underground complex” below the main building.  Spokesman Hagari also claimed that there was an entrance to that underground floor from within the hospital building, further incriminating the management of al-Shifa. 

But that entire Israeli-U.S. propaganda line was discredited by the subsequent discovery by the IDF — never widely covered by the Western press — that a tunnel below the above-ground office of Hamas held what the IDF believed was the actual high command headquarters of Hamas, as reported by The Jerusalem Post on Nov. 14.  

IDF Knew Real Hamas HQ While Lying About al-Shifa  https://t.co/HP6mxRYFk7

While telling the world that Hamas HQ was under al-Shifa Hospital, the IDF had already found the actual command center 8.5km away, reports Gareth Porter.

— Consortium News (@Consortiumnews) November 23, 2023

The IDF spokesman then explained that the map he had previously presented to the media was meant only to be “conceptual” and, according to a Nov. 23 AP report, not to be taken “literally.” 

Evacuation Strategy 

By Nov. 12, the IDF strategy for emptying al-Shifa Hospital was already well underway. Haaretz reported on that date that the IDF had phoned the office of the hospital to demand it be completely evacuated. 

🚨Al Shifa Hospital.

Complete destruction in the vicinity of Al-Shifa Hospital, the occupation left behind during its siege and aggression to the hospital. pic.twitter.com/32GuenrzF2

— Palestine Now (@PalestineNW) November 30, 2023

That was well before the IDF spokesman arrived at al-Shifa with his staff early in the morning of Nov. 15 (a day after The Jerusalem Post report) to prepare a video displaying Hamas weapons, uniforms and a computer said to have been discovered in the hospital’s MRI rooms just hours earlier that morning.

Haaretz’s Kubovich declares firmly, “There is no way the hospital administrators didn’t know what was happening.” This assertion is based entirely on the fact that the tunnel had siphoned off electricity from the hospital’s above-ground generator.  

That certainty depends on the assumption that the hospital’s management had evidence of an extraordinary addition to the normal load.  And that would have depended on a relatively long-term use of the facility by Hamas before and during the war that began in May.

The IDF’s Hagari clearly did not know how long Hamas had maintained a presence in the tunnel, which was devoid of any sign of recent use when Israeli forces opened it up.  

In his own video Hagari speculated that Hamas had left the tunnel when it knew that the IDF was going to enter al-Shifa. However, Associated Press correspondent Josef Federman, who was also taken on a tour of the tunnel facility, observed that rooms were “bare, small and rusted,” suggesting a long period of disuse. 

Which War Was It?

But despite Kubovich’s flat statement that “there is no doubt they were used by Hamas company, brigade and battalion commanders,” it turns out that he was not at all sure the tunnel was used in the current war. Kubovich goes on to say that “fighting was directed from there in recent rounds, if not in the current war [emphasis added].”  

In other words, the last time it had been used might have been the previous Israel-Hamas war in 2014. It cannot be taken for granted, therefore, that the al-Shifa Hospital management was aware of the Hamas use of the facility, as Kubovich had asserted.

BREAKING

Director of the Al-Shifa hospital Mohammed Abu Salmiya, along with a number of other doctors have been arrested by Israeli forces. pic.twitter.com/kiz4XIgeIL

— Rami Jarrah (@RamiJarrah) November 23, 2023

The current director of the hospital, Mohammed Abu Salmiya, who was arrested this week for questioning about the alleged Hamas use of the hospital, only assumed his duties in 2019, and in all probability was unaware of any Hamas military use of a tunnel underneath the hospital.

But the IDF’s concern is not with truth. Its concern is for the extreme right-wing Likud government’s intention (based on numerous statements of genocidal intent) to not only destroy Hamas, but impose the greatest number of deaths on the Palestinian population. That required an elaborate effort to indict hospitals as active participants in the war on Hamas’ behalf and dismantling all the hospitals in Gaza, and especially of al-Shifa. 

The article touted by Kaplan offers no “clear evidence” of Hamas’ use of al-Shifa Hospital as “command center” in the current war. 

Kaplan’s apparent belief that the IDF narrative about al-Shifa Hospital was somehow accurate or truthful fails to take seriously the powerful genocidal threat this extremist Israeli government poses.

*

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Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and historian writing on U.S. national security policy. His latest book, Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, was published in February of 2014. Follow him on Twitter: @GarethPorter.

Featured image: Major General Herzi Halevi, at left, with other members of the Israeli military at the Egypt–Israel border in June. (IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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South Korea’s government is engaged in a form of diplomatic and security suicide that defies understanding.

Whereas previous presidents of the left and right understood that it would be fatal to alienate China and Russia, promote war with North Korea, or blindly follow all orders from an increasingly chaotic Washington, President Yoon Suk Yeol is unlike any president in post-war Korea, and perhaps like any politician in Korean history. Whether he is drawing South Korea into preparations for war with China that are destroying the economy, planning for integrated responses to North Korea via missile defense that end South Korea’s sovereignty, or persecuting his opponents of the left and right at home to a degree unseen in the last thirty years, he is truly unique. 

The problem is that Yoon is not a diplomat or a politician, but rather a criminal operator who made his way to the top through tricks and deceptions and now the mask has fallen off to reveal an imposter. 

The results were clear at the 30th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in San Francisco, President Yoon, for all his toady statements, was unable to secure a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping or US President Joe Biden. In light of how President Park Geun-hye, also a pro-American conservative, great deference from President Xi, the decay of Korean diplomacy is clear. [1]

Compared to other pro-US conservative leaders such as Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, Yoon has emphasized South Korea, the US, and Japan’s trilateral alliance to an unusually high degree. He has gone as far as to verbally attack China and Russia, regressing Northeast Asia back to the Cold War era framework of ROK-US-Japan Vs North Korea-China-Russia.

In an interview with Reuters on April 19, 2022, Yoon provocatively brought up the “Cross-Strait issue” and told the reporter:

“We are absolutely opposed to changing the status quo by force, along with the international community… (The cross-strait issue) is not simply a matter between China and Taiwan, but a global issue that goes beyond the region, like the issue between North and South Korea. [2]

For China, turning the cross-strait conflict into a global issue like the one between the two Koreas is unacceptable. Therefore, China’s Vice Foreign Minister Qin Gang fiercely responded to Yoon two days later on the 21st. “Those Who Play with Fire over Taiwan Will Burn to Death,” he said. [3]

President Yoon Seok-yul has begun to express strong “anti-Chinese” messages on the cross-strait conflict, something he had never expressed before taking office. To understand the background and history of his anti-China and anti-Russian stance, it is necessary to have a certain understanding of South Korea’s internal affairs and Yoon’s rise to power. The photo is from MBC, a major South Korean broadcaster.

However, Yoon’s bold statement favoring Taiwan over the “Cross-Strait conflict” does not mean the incumbent administration is working closely with the island. Rather, the Taiwanese will feel uneasy with a third party – South Korea in this case – provoking China by bringing up the issue without any prior planning and consultation. Yoon is merely utilizing the “Cross-Strait issue” to embolden the trilateral alliance between the US and Japan to pump up conservative support back home. 

Yoon’s actions are souring relations with Russia, a country that has historically been more friendly to South Korea than China. For instance, in the name of supporting Ukraine, Yoon suddenly offered to send arms to the country. In the end, Russia became impatient and invited the solitary North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, to de facto retaliate against South Korea through diplomatic and security means. But Yoon characterized this act as another “direct provocation,” and has since repeatedly stated that he is willing to engage in armed conflict, raising tensions in Northeast Asia. [4] [5]

Of course, the ROK-US-Japan alliance is a fundamental principle of South Korean conservatives. However, the trilateral alliance does not require South Korea to unnecessarily disengage itself from China and Russia, especially when Seoul needs to seek cooperation from Beijing and Moscow to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis. Nevertheless, Yoon’s diplomacy is effectively bringing China, Russia, and North Korea closer, and thus destabilizing the region.

Yoon’s Deadly Criminal Past Could Shake Up Northeast Asia’s Diplomatic and Security Order 

So why is Yoon Seok-yul putting the regional diplomatic and security order at risk? For starters, he is not a conservative by nature. 

A former career prosecutor, Yoon first came to prominence in South Korean politics in 2013 while investigating the National Intelligence Service’s(NIS) presidential election meddling scandal in the early days of the Park Geun-hye administration.

The allegation was that the NIS used internet posts to help Park win the 2012 presidential election. At the time, prosecutor Yoon attacked the legitimacy of Park Geun-hye’s administration by pushing for excessive investigations into the NIH. This caught the eye of South Korea’s progressive Democratic Party.

After bouncing around from job to job, Yoon became the head of the special prosecutor team investigating Park’s impeachment in 2016 when Park administration’s power waned. The investigation eventually led to Park’s imprisonment for bribery charges and a 22-year prison sentence, making Yoon one of the most important figures in the downfall of the conservative forces. 

Yoon quickly rose to the top of the prosecutors’ ranks in the Moon Jae-in administration, becoming the chief prosecutor of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office. He began gaining the trust of then-President Moon, a liberal, by arresting more than 200 key conservatives, including Park’s predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, and former Supreme Court Chief Justice Yang Seung-tae. He then rose to the crest of the prosecutors’ organization, the Prosecutor General. [6]

However, as soon as Yoon became prosecutor general, he began to run afoul of the Democratic Party’s supporters by investigating the then justice minister, Cho Kuk, who was considered the next presidential candidate. Over the next year or two, Yoon gradually shifted right, eventually winning the support of the conservatives in becoming the president.

In other words, he initially stood on the liberal side imprisoning conservatives, but suddenly joined the conservative side ahead of the 2022 presidential election, causing an identity crisis.  For nearly two years since Yoon took office, Yoon’s prosecutors have been probing Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party, on bribery charges. This is quite ironic considering that Yoon himself led the prosecutors and jailed a slew of conservatives as recently as 2018. [7]

More fundamentally, however, Yoon has been embroiled in serious fabrication controversy early in the Park’s impeachment investigation.

In late 2016, JTBC, a major South Korean broadcaster, reported on a tablet device as evidence that Choi Soon-sil (her legal name is Choi Seo-won), a civilian and mere friend of Park, had received various classified state information. The network promptly submitted the device to prosecutors after breaking the news, and the prosecution accepted JTBC’s report as a “fact”. The public perceived this as the president arbitrarily handing over power to a civilian, and Park’s qualifications as president were called into question. In fact, within a month of the tablet’s appearance, Park was facing impeachment charges and was forced to step down from the presidency four months after the launch of the impeachment inquiry. [8]

President Yoon Seok-yul and Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon, then-chief prosecutor and then-third-in-command of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office, respectively, testified during a 2017 (during Moon Jae-In regime) National Assembly oversight hearing that the “Choi Soon-sil tablet” was Ms. Choi’s based on their investigation. The photo is from a report by South Korea’s main broadcaster, JTBC.

However, having already questioned the veracity of JTBC’s reporting and the prosecution’s investigation, I continued investigating the case despite serving a year in prison and undergoing years of trial due to the JTBC lawsuit. Eventually, I obtained conclusive evidence that JTBC and the prosecution had acquired a tablet PC belonging to a Blue House official and fabricated the news report and investigation to attribute the device to Choi Soon-sil. JTBC obtained a real PC that would normally contain confidential Blue House documents and then, in collaboration with the prosecutor’s office, they created a “pseudo-event” making it seem as if a civilian had taken various secrets from the president. That was no easy task, requiring them to fabricate documents regarding various reports and investigations. [9]

To be absolutely clear, Yoon Seok-yeol, the current South Korean president, was a key player in the “tablet manipulation investigation,” a state crime in all senses of the word, from late 2016 to early 2017, and that led to the successful impeachment of President Park. 

I have worked together with Choi Soon-sil to launch 20 civil and criminal lawsuits regarding this miscarriage of justice and abuse of power over the past few years. In a recent civil lawsuit, Choi finally forced the court to admit that many of the reports and sensitive materials found on the PC were in fact fabricated. 

By supporting Choi’s lawsuits legally and financially, and launching separate lawsuits, I gained access to undisputable evidence of the fabrication of evidence. I filed a complaint against Yoon and his co-conspirator, current Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon, to the Corruption Investigation Office For High-ranking Officials (CIOHO), South Korea’s chief prosecution agency for the investigation of powerful individuals. They launched their investigation this November. 

As I was unjustly imprisoned as a result of Yoon and Han’s tablet manipulation investigation, I also filed a civil lawsuit for damages against the two, and that trial is currently underway. [10] [11] [12]

At last Yoon’s crimes of evidence fabrication will be officially exposed. Yoon’s predictable political response is to revert to hardline conservatism to solidify his only base of support. The extremity of his policies, in blatant opposition to Korea’s national interests, means that the diplomatic and security order in Northeast Asia may collapse under the weight of his criminality as policy. 

President Yoon’s natural inclination is not to engage in the hard work of policy preparation, working level meetings, or even informal discussions over coffee or tea about where Korea needs to go but rather to come up with some trick to fool everyone and buy off, or frighten off, his opponents. 

This criminal politician show could easily deteriorate into a serious Northeast Asian crisis, going even further than current tensions because Yoon would see that as an opportunity to prop up his authority. Granted he has no long-term strategy, Korea’s future would not be all that important for him and his loyal followers. 

Sending Journalists to Jail Like the Good Old Days of Military Government of South Korea

President Yoon has gone to great lengths to crack down on the media in South Korea out of fear that they will report on his criminal past. Since the beginning of his administration, Yoon has attempted to replace the management of South Korea’s two public media organizations, KBS and MBC, and has succeeded in doing so at KBS. He has also repeatedly attempted to detain and raid the offices of liberal media outlets such as New Tamsa, News Tapa, and Kyunghyang Newspaper, both of which were foolish enough to report about his giving inconvenient facts. [13] [14]

As a result of ongoing repression, the South Korean media has been unable to cover Yoon’s crimes, let alone the fabricated tablet incident that launched his career. Fortunately, this summer and fall, Japan’s conservative media, Japan Forward and Hanada Monthly, Shukan Post (Weekly Post), and Hong Kong’s leading media, The Yazhou Zhoukan (Asia Weekly), have given significant coverage to this story. Unfortunately, the cowardly South Korean media failed to address Yoon’s most damning past crimes, even in the form of quoting these foreign reports. The media has forgone reporting on this issue even when the Yoon administration failed to adequately respond to foreign media reports.

[A] Hong Kong’s leading weekly newspaper ‘Yazhou Zhoukan(Asia Weekly)’ (10/9-10/15/2023) published an interview with Byun Hee-jae regarding the tablet fabrication investigation as its cover story. 

[B] On September 11, ‘Japan Forward’, a leading English-language newspaper in Japan, published an interview with Byun Hee-jae on the tablet fabrication investigation. It became the number one most-viewed article in September.

[C] ‘Monthly Hanada’, a leading Japanese monthly magazine, published an article by Byun Hee-jae on the tablet fabrication investigation on November 2 in its online edition.

[D] The December 22, 2023 issue of Shukan Post (Weekly Post), a leading Japanese current affairs magazine with a weekly circulation of 300,000, published a scoop on Yoon’s tablet manipulation investigation.

Although it is natural for South Korea to build on its close relationship with the United States as a central ally, President Yoon has chosen to escalate intentionally hostility towards China, Russia, and North Korea, to cover up his criminal past. Ultimately his gangster diplomacy will be damaging to not only Korea but to the United States and the entire region.  

Byun Hee-jae ( 변희재) is a South Korean conservative political commentator

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Notes

[1] Lack of Yoon-Xi summit in San Francisco highlights Seoul’s troubled ties with Beijing

https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/1117077.html

[2] Exclusive: South Korea’s Yoon opens door for possible military aid to Ukraine

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-koreas-yoon-opens-door-possible-military-aid-ukraine-2023-04-19/

[3] China, Korea back and forth goes another round over Taiwan

https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2023/04/21/national/diplomacy/korea-china-taiwan/20230421142239982.html

[4] Putin and North Korea’s Kim discuss military matters, Ukraine war and satellites

https://www.reuters.com/world/nkoreas-kim-meets-putin-missiles-launched-pyongyang-2023-09-13/

[5] South Korea’s Yoon tells UN that Russia helping North Korea would be ‘direct provocation’

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-koreas-yoon-highlight-illicit-nkorea-russia-military-ties-un-2023-09-20/

[6] Yoon Suk-yeol’s rise from rebel prosecutor to president

https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2022/04/23/yoon-seok-yeols-rise-from-rebel-prosecutor-to-president/

[7] Can Yoon Suk-yeol Break South Korea’s Decades-Old Political Curse? 

https://thediplomat.com/2023/10/can-yoon-suk-yeol-break-south-koreas-decades-old-political-curse/

[8] The Fall of the Rule of Law in South Korea: The Impeachment of Park Geun-Hye, Part I: The Media, the Tablet, Public Sentiment, Gookjeong Nongdan, and the National Assembly

https://eastasiaresearch.org/2019/07/12/the-fall-of-the-rule-of-law-in-south-korea-the-impeachment-of-park-geun-hye-part-i-the-media-the-tablet-public-sentiment-gookjeong-nongdan-and-the-national-assembly/

[9] Suppression of Freedom of the Press in South Korea: What’s So Special About a Tablet PC that a Journalist is in Jail?

https://eastasiaresearch.org/2018/11/25/suppression-of-freedom-of-the-press-in-south-korea-whats-so-special-about-a-tablet-pc-that-a-journalist-is-in-jail/

[10] Guest Post: Journalist preemptively jailed for libel in South Korea, a prosperous OECD country

https://freekorea.us/2018/05/guest-post-journalist-preemptively-jailed-for-libel-in-south-korea-the-only-oecd-country-to-do-so/

[11] Suppression of Fundamental Freedoms, and Oppression of Human Rights Activists and North Korean Defectors

https://www.nkfreedom.org/2020/08/04/suppression-of-fundamental-freedoms-and-oppression-of-human-rights-activists-and-north-korean-defectors/

[12] INTERVIEW | Why Sue Yoon Suk-Yeol? Veteran Journalist Explains His Case

https://japan-forward.com/interview-why-sue-yoon-suk-yeol-veteran-journalist-explains-his-case/

[13] The Worrying Democratic Erosions in South Korea

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-worrying-democratic-erosions-in-south-korea

[14] Korean President’s Battle Against ‘Fake News’ Alarms Critics

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/world/asia/south-korea-fake-news-disinformation.html

Featured image: Yoon takes the presidential oath of office outside the National Assembly, 10 May 2022 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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Amal Clooney, the international human rights lawyer, is representing victims of mass atrocities, including genocide and sexual violence, from the Iraqi Yazidi community who are seeking accountability for crimes perpetrated by ISIS.

The case alleges French conglomerate Lafarge SA conspired to provide material and funds to support ISIS terrorist campaigns against the Yazidis.

“Lafarge has admitted to a conspiracy that aided ISIS by providing millions of dollars in cash to ISIS, and is alleged to have provided ISIS with cement to construct underground tunnels and bunkers used to shelter ISIS members and hold hostages, including captured Yazidis,” a news release stated.

Clooney has focused on the French cement company which supported ISIS in Syria in order to remain in business during the war.

The crime committed by Lafarge is serious, but it is just one small incidence of western entities supporting terrorists in Syria following Radical Islam. Clooney is singling out a French company, and France is allied with both the U.S. and UK. While the crime affected hundreds of Yazidis, the same crime carried out by the U.S., UK and EU has affected millions of Syrian citizens.

The Free Syrian Army (FSA) forces were caught selling arms to the ISIS.

Weapons sent to terrorists in Syria from the U.S. directly allowed ISIS to obtain substantial amounts of sophisticated supplies which they used against civilians.

A study by Conflict Armament Research found that anti-tank weapons given to the ‘rebels’ in Syria by the U.S. ended up in the possession of the ISIS within two months of leaving the factory.

The U.S. provided extensive lethal and non-lethal aid to many terrorist groups fighting against the Syrian government. The CIA ran a covert program Timber Sycamore to arm, fund and train terrorists in Syria. U.S. President Trump shut the program down in 2017.

ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Jabhat al-Nusra and the FSA fighting in Syria all shared the same political platform: to remove the Syrian government in Damascus, and replace it with a Islamic governing system.

In March 2011, the U.S. and NATO began a war in Syria for the purpose of regime change. It was not successful, and the same government in Damascus has remained. However, the U.S.-NATO war was very successful in destroying the country, ruining the economy, killing thousands and sending the largest Syrian migrant wave to Europe in history.

U.S. President Barak Obama praised the FSA as ‘moderate’ rebels fighting for freedom and democracy. But, early on the FSA demonstrated that they were fighting to kill Christians and non-Sunni Muslim minorities, and had no interest in lofty ideals of freedom and democracy. They wanted to over throw the Damascus government with the support of the Obama administration, and realize the dream of a Sunni Muslim governing system which was based on Islamic Law, not civil codes.

In April 2014, investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh exposed the Obama-Clinton “Rat Line”, which was a CIA weapons highway into Syria, serving the terrorists fighting for Obama’s regime change goal. Weapons and ammunition was sent from Libya to Syria via southern Turkey, and the terrorists on the receiving end were affiliated with Al Qaeda, and later aligned with ISIS.

Hersh revealed a 2012 agreement by Obama, and supported by the UK spy agency, MI6, which was responsible for getting weapons from Libya into Syria.

In 2013, Clooney was appointed to a number of United Nations commissions, including as adviser to Special Envoy Kofi Annan on Syria. The U.S. and UK involvement in supporting the terrorists who would later fight alongside ISIS was not any secret.

In 2016, Obama signed into law a defense policy bill which led to U.S. weapons provided to ‘rebels’ ending up in the hands of terrorists following Radical Islam, who became brothers in arms on the Syrian battlefields.

The Yazidis have suffered greatly and should receive justice. Clooney has focused on this one small incidence of ISIS benefiting from a French business. Clooney has ignored that the U.S., UK and their western democratic allies supported, funded, trained and weaponized terrorists in Syria which directly benefitted ISIS.

Where is the international court case to serve justice for the hundreds of thousands of Syrians dead, maimed, raped, kidnapped and made homeless by the FSA and their allies Al Qaeda and ISIS?

Clooney chose an easy win with the case against Lafarge. Clooney said she hopes to get a financial award for the Yazidis from her case so they can rebuild their lives.

The U.S. has prevented the Syrian people from rebuilding any hospital, school or home because of the U.S. imposed sanctions which prevent importing any products for reconstruction. The U.S. sanctions against Syria prevent any wealthy Arab country, or investor, from developing any reconstruction project to benefit the Syrian civilians, such as the repair of the water infrastructure in Aleppo. Last summer, Aleppo suffered cholera because the water plant is in need of repair.

The Syrians have no court case pending, and have no hope of any recovery from their suffering caused by the U.S.-NATO attack on the Syrian people for regime change.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

Featured image is from MD

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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We are now approximately four years removed from the unleashing of the covid so-called pandemic and the consequential measures adopted and enforced world-wide that created terror in the global populace, imposed unprecedented strictures, subverted foundational principles of medicine and foisted an unnecessary and dangerous inoculation upon a mostly unwitting public.

Some of us, at the very outset, upon hearing the mainstream messages of bat-inspired trans-species migration of a respiratory virus, suspected that things were amiss. The frenzied media, however, with their ‘case’ counts, death counts and fraudulent reporting about the actual lethality of the pathogen, were unstoppable and relentless, and I can forgive the many who began to shudder at this unexpected turn of events and who lined up for the dubious polymerase chain reaction ‘test’ and who, ultimately, placed every hope upon an emergency so-called vaccine, convinced as they were that our world was engulfed by an incomparable threat.

I have a harder time forgiving doctors who threw their senses and duties out the window, were unperturbed by the omission and suppression of attempts to treat and prevent the pathogen before hospitalization was required, abandoned informed consent, pushed the covid jab and regarded those who preferred to keep their minds and bodies and general health intact by not receiving the jab as a dangerous entity.

I frankly cannot forgive those physicians who, wielding considerable influence in establishment media, used this influence to sway their followers to accept something that has now been shown demonstrably and repetitively to be a health disaster.

Perhaps, however, under the unnerving full-court press of a rabid and unchecked propaganda campaign waged by once highly-regarded journalistic authorities, everyone can be forgiven for having, essentially, lost their wits. Perhaps.

But now, four years hence, as the general picture has clarified itself, anyone with a sentient eye or ear not wedded to mainstream pulp can conclude that there never was a genuine pandemic, there never was a need to lock and shut down the entire world, and there never was or will be a need to inject billions with a gene-altering concoction that has hurt and killed too many to pass muster as a real and viable vaccine.

We can further conclude that the preposterously tremendous control over people exhibited by the roll-out of the covid campaign, and the submission of people to the evisceration of their unalienable rights — these were not organically evolved developments, but consequences of a highly orchestrated deployment of power.

In short, all things covid was a strategically planned operation — a war-crime — the likes of which are unprecedented, and the consequence of which is to move the world towards some kind of autocratic fiefdom wherein we ‘little people’ surviving the first waves of the onslaught will be subjugated to the whims and directives of The Few.

I don’t care how many X followers one may have, or how many Sierpinski triangles one may conjure, how many high-profile interviews one has done, how many conferences one has attended, how many grants one has received, or how many plaudits one has obtained from our freedom-loving community: unless one can see the line and step across it, I regard you as an Enemy.

What line? The line that separates those who understand the concerted efforts of a Global Cabal to inflict the covid mess upon us for purposes of control, versus those who assert that this mess was essentially the result of unfortunate circumstances complicated by greed, incompetence, opportunism, corruption, human error and the like. To espouse the latter is untruthful and enervating: it takes the life out of our tenuously cobbled opposition and plays into our opposition’s hands.

Pick a side. To deny that the genocide visited upon us has been deliberately perpetrated, regardless of what you may invoke in the way of prudence, reason and thoughtful consideration, is to join the ranks of its perpetrators.

Pick a side, the line is clear, and time is short.

*

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Dr. Garcia is a Philadelphia-born psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand in 2006. He has authored articles ranging from explorations of psychoanalytic technique, the psychology of creativity in music (Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Delius), and politics. He is also a poet, novelist and theatrical director. He retired from psychiatric practice in 2021 after working in the public sector in New Zealand. Visit his substack at https://newzealanddoc.substack.com/ where this article was first published.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Alt-Market.us

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In the aftermath of three months of war in Gaza, we are witnessing an unprecedented surge in settlement activities, including the construction of outposts, roads, fences, and roadblocks initiated by settlers. Settlers persist in seizing control of Area C in the West Bank, further marginalizing the Palestinian presence. Alongside the ongoing settler violence, reports in November highlighted the establishment of outposts and the paving of roads, contributing to a widespread phenomenon of roadblocks. These obstacles prevent Palestinians from accessing main roads in the West Bank, and barriers are erected along these roads to impede Palestinian movement and presence in various buffer zones.

Report Highlights:

• A record number of 9 new outposts in a span of about three months.
• A record number of 18 illegal roads paved or authorized by settlers.
• The settlers returned to Amona. An outpost that was evacuated in 2017 following a court order. Settlers evacuated it in exchange for financial compensation, and the settlement of Amihai was established.
• The Huwara Bypass Road has been nearly deserted since the efforts to open it.
• A new phenomenon of settlers closing Palestinian traffic routes against military orders.
• Building fences instead of new settlements.
• A significant portion of the outposts and roads are located on private Palestinian land.

Peace Now: 

“The three months of war in Gaza are being exploited by settlers to establish facts on the ground and effectively take control of extensive areas in Area C. Settlers decide where to build roads and outposts continuously, disregarding the legal status of the land. They persist in constructing outposts on private Palestinian lands, defining open areas, and restricting Palestinian movement in the West Bank. The permissive military and political environment allow the reckless construction and land seizure almost unchecked, with minimal adherence to the law. The result is not only physical harm to Palestinians and their lands but also a significant political shift in the West Bank. The unchecked rampage of the settlers must be stopped now.”

Map of new outposts, roads, and land taken over by the Settlers since October 7

Establishment of Outposts Since the Beginning of the War in Gaza

Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, settlers have established or re-established at least ten outposts, some of which were evacuated in the past and then reconstructed. Certain outposts that were established were later dismantled by the Civil Administration. For instance, two outposts were set up near the Asa’el outpost in the southern Hebron Hills region, and the outpost in Amona was rebuilt after its demolition in the wake of the war.

According to Peace Now’s Settlement Watch team’s examination, nine outposts have been established or re-established on the ground:

1. An outpost north of Asael, on a hill facing the outpost.

2. An outpost west of Amihai in the Shiloh bloc and east of the Palestinian village of Turmus Aya.

3. In the last two years, settlers have attempted multiple times to establish the Givat Haktora outpost between the Ali and Shiloh settlements on land belonging to the Palestinian village of Karyut. It was evacuated by the Civil Administration for a certain period, and after the war began, the outpost was expanded and gained access from the Shiloh settlement.

4. The reconstructed Sde Yonatan outpost, south of the Palestinian village of Dir Dibwan, on private Palestinian land.

5. The Or Meir outpost, located south of the Ofra settlement on private Palestinian land.

6. An outpost adjacent to the Tuba community in the southern Hebron Hill region.

7. The Yachish Zion outpost, near the Psagot settlement, was reconstructed on a private land after being evicted several times.

8. The outpost in Amona was rebuilt despite being demolished during the war by the Civil Administration.

9. An outpost situated to the west of the Palestinian village of Battir, located in an area designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Read more about this outpost, here.

As of the writing of these lines, there are at least nine outposts that have been established or reestablished and are standing on the ground.

A new outpost north of the Asael outpost in the south Hebron Hill region.

The Or Meir outpost, located south of Ofra.

The Sde Yonatan outpost, south of the village of Dir Dibwan.

The reconstructed Yachish Zion outpost near the Psagot settlement.

The Givat Haktora outpost between the Ali and Shiloh settlements.

Roads

The settlers’ road construction work continues at full pace, and so far, we are not aware of cases where the Civil Administration prevented or canceled paved roads. Also, to our knowledge, no heavy equipment used for road paving has been confiscated, in contrast to the widespread phenomenon of confiscating heavy equipment when Palestinians build without a permit.

So far, at least 18 new roads have been documented as breached by settlers. We estimate the actual number to be higher. The paving of these roads allows for the seizure of extensive new areas along the road’s path, marking territory inaccessible to Palestinians due to settlers’ presence and their convenient access to the area.

These are the roads and paths built since the beginning of the war:    

1. Sneh Yaakov/Givaat Ronen Outpost near the village of Burin – Unauthorized road on the lands of the village of Burin.

2. Nahal (Wadi) Kana Nature Reserve – New road breach from the Alonei Shilo outpost towards the Immanuel settlement. The entire road passes through the territory of the Nahal Kana Nature Reserve. The road was initially breached in 2018, and Peace Now has filed a complaint with the police regarding the ongoing work.

3. Escape route from the Immanuel settlement.

4. Southern road to the Peduel settlement.

5. Road breaches in the Shiloh bloc.

6. Road to the Machach farm outpost in Wadi a-Siq.

7. Road to the Sde Yonatan outpost.

8. Road to the new outpost near the Negohot settlement.

9. Southern road to the Yair Farm settlement, towards the Palestinian village of Qarawat Bani Hasan on private Palestinian land.

10. Western road to the Revava settlement in an area that is partially private land.

11. Another southern road to the Palestinian village of Beit Awwa, north of the Negohot settlement.

12. Eastern road breach to the Sham’a settlement in the south Hebron Hills region.

13. Eastern road breach to the Itamar settlement and northeastern road to the Itamar farm.

14. A road breach near Ein Rashash to the Alon road. The road is near the Melech Hashalom outpost and the place where the Bedouin community was expelled at the beginning of the war.

15. A breach of a road north to the Kida East outpost in the east.

16. A breach of a southern road to the Susya settlement in the southern Hebron Hills.

17. Breach of a road near the Abigail outpost towards the east.

18. Breach of a road northwestern to the settlement of Ateret.

In total, since the beginning of the war, settlers have breached or paved at least 18 new roads.

Southern road to the Ya’ir Farm settlement.

Works near the Revava settlement.

Breach of a road from the Kida East outpost towards the north.

Eastern breach to the settlement of Shama in the south Hebron Hills region.

Works near the Itamar settlement.

A breach road near Ein Rashash to the Alon Road.

A breach of a road near Avigail outpost.

The end of a new road southern to Susiya Settlement in south Hebron Hills.

Fencing

Another means of asserting control over extensive open areas involves the construction of fences stretching for hundreds of meters and even kilometers. For example, in the second half of November, settlers began erecting fencing along the Alon Road (Route 578) in the north of the Jordan Valley. The fencing runs parallel to the Maskiot settlement southward, passing through the outpost of the Eretz Shemesh Farm and continuing another 2 kilometers south. The fencing is intended to prevent Palestinian shepherds from grazing in the area.

Additional fencing was set up near the Asa’el outpost in the south Hebron Hills region, stretching for hundreds of meters. The fencing was built along Route 317 up to the Shani Junction. Until the beginning of the war, two Palestinian Bedouin communities resided on the hill south of the road. Both communities were forcibly displaced by the settlers in October. Following this, a new outpost was established on the hill but later evicted by the Civil Administration. Instead of re-establishing the outpost (at that stage), the settlers erected fencing along the road, preventing the return of Palestinians or even their herds to the area, as they had done dozens of times in the past years.

Fence along the Alon Road (Route 578) in the north of the Jordan Valley.

Territorial enclosure by settlers near the Asael outpost.

Road Closures and Blockades

During the current war in the Gaza Strip, we witness an increase in settler involvement in security and civilian decisions related to the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank. One emerging trend since the end of October is the prevention of opening roads for Palestinian vehicle use and the closure of entrances to Palestinian villages.

Since October 7th, the military has closed hundreds of entry and exit points to Palestinian towns and villages along the main transportation axes in the West Bank. Towards the end of October, the IDF began to lift some blockades, allowing slightly more freedom of movement for Palestinian vehicles on the main roads in the West Bank. Since that decision, protests and road closures have occurred, initiated by settlers who claim that the army “jeopardizes their security” by allowing Palestinians to leave their villages. In many cases, settlers, including families, women, and children, along with youth, close traffic routes. In most instances, the army secures the protests and complies with the settlers’ demand to keep the traffic routes closed.

Most protests and road closures take place near settlements located between Ramallah and Nablus. For example, throughout October, settlers from Shavei Shomron, led by settler women, protested every evening, demanding the continued closure of the Tul Karem Road (Route 57) to Palestinian traffic. Ariel residents have also prevented the opening of the road several times from the slip road to the route leading to Highway no 5.

Partial List of Closed Roads Under Settler Pressure in the West Bank

Huwara Bypass Road

One of the ongoing infrastructure projects since the beginning of the war is the Huwara Bypass Road. Under the initiative of the Minister of Transportation, Miri Regev, it was decided to advance its opening. The road was opened on 11/11/23 for the benefit of four settlements in the area of Nablus, with an investment of 350 million shekels. Since the road’s opening, settlers continue to travel through the village of Huwara, also making a political statement by claiming that “the Huwara Road belongs to Jews, and that there should be no concession on it.” As of the publication date, it appears that the bypass road is used very sparingly, with minimal daily traffic.

In the face of this ongoing genocide, the Biden Administration and Congress refuse to call for a ceasefire.

They continue to provide Israel with the military weapons utilized in these war crimes.

Israel’s strategy to which the Biden Administration and Congress remain complicit will only lead to more death, destruction, and insecurity for the people between the River and the Sea. It risks greater regional war. (CT Mirror)

Video. The World’s Most Documented Genocide in History

The Criminal Balance-Sheet

“Between Oct. 9 and Nov. 13, Israel dropped more than 20,000 tons of explosives on Gaza, an area twice the size of Washington D.C. Following the seven-day pause which began Nov. 24 and ended Dec. 1, Israel resumed its genocidal assault on Gaza. The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reports that Dec. 2 marked the bloodiest day since Oct. 7, resulting in over 1,000 people killed, wounded, or reported missing.

Israel’s assault on the Gazan population, nearly half of whom are children under the age of 18, continues unabated. As of Dec. 27, The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reports 29,124 Palestinians killed, of which 11,422 and 5,822 are children and women.

These numbers include those presumed dead under the rubble of homes, hospitals, and schools destroyed by Israel. Nearly 87 percent of Gaza’s 2.2 million population have been displaced, many living without shelter or in tents, and without access to medical care, sufficient food, and water, facing disease, starvation, and death.” (CT Mirror)

Video: Middle East War, Genocide in Palestine. Michel Chossudovsky

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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The last four years has been a significant shakeup for some people. Many of those previously identifying as ‘of the left’ have started to wonder what that actually means. At the same time, we have seen a willingness by those usually associated with ‘the right’ becoming more open to engaging with ‘left wing’ voices. 

The high profile ‘lefty’ British comedian Russell Brand interacting with ‘right wing’ Tucker Carlson, and finding common ground, symbolises these ideological shifts. The Covid–19 event has played a major role here. The draconian response to a purported health emergency involved propaganda operations aimed at maximising fear levels amongst the population and extreme measures including lockdowns and the mandating of experimental gene therapy injections. 

As these biosecurity regimes were being trialled across countries, major harm was being done. The resulting ‘collateral damage’ (a euphemism originating during Gulf War 1 designed to obfuscate the fact that civilians were being killed by US bombs) includes significant economic damage to middle- and low-income people and associated small businesses, severe damage to populations in poorer countries, disruption of normal health care routines resulting in missed diagnoses and worsening general physical and mental health, an increase in depression and related suicides, and sharp increases in excess mortality across multiple countries. 

Broadly, those identifying as ‘of the left’ have supported official narratives regarding Covid–19. In particular, a perception emerged early on that right wing governments (e.g. the Trump administration in the US and the Johnson Conservative government in the UK) were failing to protect their populations from the alleged Covid–19 threat. As a result, criticism from left-wing politicians frequently demanded even harsher and quicker measures and presented this as a moral imperative based upon concern for community and solidarity. 

Image source

Relatively few left-wing critics were insightful enough to challenge the devastating impact policies such as lockdown were having on the poorer strata of society and the Global South in countries that adopted these policies. Opposition, what we in this article recognise as the ‘Covid resistance’, more often emerged from the right of the political spectrum and was frequently couched in terms of the protection of individual rights and bodily ‘autonomy’. Within this group there was a good deal of analysis challenging the ‘The Science’.

The escalation in 2022 of the conflict in Ukraine, and now the Israeli military action against Palestinians, introduce new dynamics. In recognition that conflict in Ukraine, Israel/Palestine and West Asia (alias the Middle East) is being driven by Western geo-political ambitions, not least of which concerns attempts to maintain US-led dominance of the global system, dissent from left-wing anti-imperialists has been prominent. 

Conversely, at least some of the existing right-dominated Covid resistance has adopted either an ambiguous or otherwise outrightly supportive position toward Western policy regarding Ukraine and Israel/Palestine. Within these cleavages, a key subdivision concerns diverging perspectives within the Covid resistance between those who emphasise the continuing drive toward technocratic global governance and those who focus upon the weakening/declining Western Empire and the rise of a multipolar global system. 

Looking across the last four years and the ‘rolling thunder’ of events, as Professor Mark Crispin Miller has described them, from Covid–19 through Ukraine to Israel/Palestine, there are at least two processes in play and which can be linked to two distinct power axes. 

The first process concerns the concentration of power enabled by the Covid–19 ‘structural deep event’ (Scott) and which has involved global-level actors variously helping to realise, or otherwise promote, a deceptive impression that an entirely novel and particularly dangerous pathogen started circulating the globe in late 2019 and early 2020. 

As well as multiple governments being involved in the construction of this ‘pandemic’—in particular, the US, China, UK and Germany/EU—international organisations such as the UN and WHO, plus influential think tanks like the WEF as well as powerful banking and financial actors, all played central roles. 

As such, the power axis involved with the Covid–19 event has a distinctly international, or global, dimension to it. In addition to the draconian responses to the constructed health crisis, we are now witnessing an attempt to consolidate the biosecurity regimes trialled during the early phases of the Covid–19 event. 

As many analysts are pointing out, the Pandemic Preparedness Agenda (PPA) and International Health Regulations (IHR) are being used to enable organisations, principally the World Health Organisation (WHO), to exert influence over decisions to control populations during declared health emergencies. 

This emerging biosecurity architecture is complemented by a parallel drive toward more organised and enforceable censorship regimes. Here, Taibbi et al. have documented the so-called Censorship Industrial Complex whilst there are multiple drives to pass through bills that will create a legal backing for control of alleged ‘disinformation’; see for example, the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) and the UK Online Safety legislation. 

The combined effect of these health and information control architectures will be the coercion of populations into accepting ‘health measures’ and the stifling of public debate and dissent. All of this represents highly organised propaganda aimed at shaping material and informational realms in order to ‘organise conduct’ and mould beliefs. For a significant number of those in the right-dominated Covid resistance, this process reflects the globalist technocratic agenda and one that is propelling us into a globalised technocratic order.

The second process in play is the continued projection of power by the US and its allies; witness the current wars in Ukraine and West Asia (Middle East). Compared to the Covid–19 event, this process is more easily located within the power axis of the Western Empire, in particular the so-called military-industrial complex (MIC). 

Western imperialism obviously pre-dates the Covid–19 event, and the belligerence accompanying it arguably spans centuries. In terms of recent history, the 9/11 structural deep event represents the start of the most recent phase of the West’s attempt to exert influence through military means.

The evidence in support of 9/11 itself being a self-inflicted wound, a manufactured war trigger primarily designed to enable the conditions for a series of regime-change wars under cover of a Western-led global ‘war on terror’, is now overwhelming. Its utilisation as a propaganda narrative designed to underpin multiple regime change wars is also well established. 

The initial wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, followed by ‘regime-change’ drives in Libya and Syria, have segued into the Ukraine proxy war against Russia and the current support for Israel as it carries out a publicly declared genocidal military operation in Gaza whilst simultaneously targeting Syrian, Iraqi, Lebanese and Iranian Resistance factions. 

For many analysts, this extraordinary level of belligerence demonstrates the increasing isolation of the Western Empire and, indeed, its declining hegemony. In both military and economic terms, the West has been unable to prevail in the Ukraine and is now facing strategic failure. 

Jordan demonstration in support of Gaza

In terms of ideational power, levels of global support for the Palestinians, as Western-backed and the British incubated Zionist project conducts a military campaign which meets the criteria of genocide, suggest that whatever credibility the West possessed in the past is now being further, perhaps catastrophically, eroded. 

Certainly, at this stage in the history of the Western US-led empire, it is very difficult to imagine there being sufficient military, economic or ideational capacity necessary to ‘win’ in the Ukraine or the Middle East, let alone engage any other major powers. 

Five points follow from this description of what is going on. 

First, both processes are real meaning that, quite simply, both Western global military adventurism and drives toward the creation of global governance structures are empirically demonstrable. We can observe them in the proxy military engagements seen in the Ukraine and Gaza, the dystopian experience during Covid–19, and the formulation of legislative frameworks surrounding pandemic preparedness and control of ‘disinformation’. In addition, these processes are occurring simultaneously. 

Second, we cannot be sure, at present, of the relationship between the two processes and the two power axes. One possibility is that both processes have a shared global-level origin and that the power axes are more or less aligned. In this scenario the same elite power networks—broadly a network of global technocratic elite groups—are responsible for fuelling both the wars and the biosecurity regimes. 

Another possibility is that whilst there are shared interests across elite power blocks with respect to the development and implementation of biosecurity regimes, there are also divergent material and security interests. In this scenario, we see major powers such as the US, China and Russia pushing forward with the development of global biosecurity regimes whilst resource and security driven conflicts roll on. 

Also possible is that, rather than emanating primarily from transnational-level elite power networks, both the wars and the biosecurity regimes are largely a function of Western-centric elite power networks with support from factions within opposing nations that have infiltrated governance and public institutions including media. From this perspective, both processes might be explicable as part of Western Imperialism. Detailed and global level power network analysis is essential in order to further assess the relative cogency of these possibilities as well as other plausible hypotheses.

Third, we can, however, be sure that both processes represent clear and present threats to the lives and well-being of people. The responses to the Covid–19 event—including lockdowns and coerced injections—have had a catastrophic impact on populations across the globe. There are grounds now to argue that many deaths attributed to Covid–19 were, in fact, iatrogenic (induced by the treatments and actions of medical professionals), whilst the impact of lockdowns and other societal-level disruptions have caused immense ‘collateral damage’. 

According to some scientists, there is now overwhelming evidence that the injectable products marketed as a ‘cure’ to Covid are killing and maiming significant numbers of people and, indeed, excess mortality has remained very high throughout 2023. 

The emerging biosecurity architecture described earlier—the Pandemic Preparedness Agenda and the Censorship Industrial Complex—threaten to enable yet further blows to the health of global populations. Western power projection through military means is also catastrophic. For example, the Watson Institute ‘Cost of War’ project recently estimated indirect deaths in post-9/11 war zones—Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen—at 3.6 to 3.8 million people. Israeli military action in Gaza, since 7 October 2023, has killed over 20,000 people, at least 50% of them children. 

Fourth, in order to try to protect people, both processes and power axes need to be resisted and, in doing so, we must avoid falling into the trap of dismissing resistance to Western Imperialism in places such as Gaza or Ukraine as distractions or otherwise unimportant. For Western-based writers and researchers, it is perhaps easier to engage with threats posed to their own lives and well-being and those of fellow Westerners. 

This might create a propensity to prioritise critique of the Covid–19 event. But this should not be done at the expense of support for those at the receiving end of the Western Empire’s firepower in places such as Gaza and Syria. To state a simple but important example, in their current predicament the Palestinian people have priorities that need addressing that are more urgent than any emerging global-level political and economic structures. They are fighting for their existence in Palestine.

Indeed, one could argue there is a level of subliminal white supremacism in the argumentation that conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine or the wider West Asia region are little more than distractions that will facilitate the Western-centric dystopian governance regime. 

There is a lack of cultural and historical context or understanding and a projection of Western values (or lack of them), which leads to what appears to be a narrow, myopic focus on the problems that will affect the collective West and nominally ‘civilised’ countries while excluding developing countries or those battling Western neocolonialist projects from the analysis. Is their war against oppression and tyranny of less value than the modern war that is being waged against the predator class vision of our future as humanity?

As Jean-Paul Sartre said, “You pretend to forget that you have colonies where massacres are committed in your name.” Those who perceive Ukraine and Gaza as orchestrated distractions from the threat of a biosecurity state in the West live in the countries that have subjugated the Global South for centuries without respite unless those countries comply with US/UK-led demands and agendas. Resistance leads to Western-dominated plundering of resources and the decimation of culture, civilisation and infrastructure to ensure a developing country is reduced to a dark-age failed state.

There also appears to be little analysis of how people in so-called Global South nations actually feel about the global future or how they instinctively pivot towards the East, having suffered untold horrors at the hands of the West’s military-industrial complex for most of their existence. 

Thus, the global cohesion to face a global enemy that threatens all our existence is lacking because of the tendency to literally balkanise discussion into sectors which find it almost impossible to identify areas where overlap is viable. 

In other words, until we start to take full responsibility for the misery inflicted by historic strategies still supported today Western regimes, we will never address key root causes of world subjugation. While we address what we consider to be a universal dystopian future, we must also simultaneously address the liberation of the nations we have enabled our governments to prey upon, destroy, rape and plunder. We can’t fight dystopia while dismissing, marginalising or ignoring those already living in it. 

Fifth, recognising that we are up against multiple processes and power axes provides an opportunity for those who perceive themselves to be as ‘of the left’ or ‘of the right’ to rally around a common principle that is to prioritise protecting people against corrupt elites power networks. 

Primarily this requires some of the right-orientated Covid resistance to become more fully conversant with the realities of Western imperialism and, at the same time, some of the left-orientated anti-imperialists to wake up to the threats posed by the emerging biosecurity regimes.

At present, the most bitter pill needing to be swallowed by some of the Covid resistance is acceptance of the fact that, whatever the causes and responsibilities surrounding 7 October, the reality is that Israel has played a central role in terms of Western power projection in the Middle East and, as part of this, a terrible injustice has been committed against Palestinians.

A prime example of the schism between the Covid resistance and endorsement of Israel and US neocolonialist designs on the Middle East can be identified in statements from vaccine-opposed Robert Kennedy Jr. and his pivot to “unconditional” support for what is effectively a US military garrison in the Middle East: 

Israel is critical and the reason it’s critical is because it is a bulwark for us in the Middle East. It is almost like having an aircraft carrier in the Middle East. It is our oldest ally, it’s been our ally for 75 years. It has been an incredible ally for us in terms of the technology exchange and building the Iron Dome which we have paid a lot for—has taught us enormously about how to defend ourselves against missile attack. That military expenditure—75% goes to US companies under the agreement, under the MoU. 

If you look at what’s happening in the Middle East now, the closest allies to Iran are Russia and China. Iran also controls all of Venezuela’s oil, Hezbollah is in Venezuela, they have propped up the Maduro regime and so they control that oil supply. BRICS, Saudi Arabia is now joining BRICS so those countries will control 90% of the oil in our world. If Israel disappears, the vacuum in the Middle East, Israel is our Ambassador, our beachhead in the ME, it gives us ears and eyes in the ME, it gives us intelligence, the capacity to influence affairs in the ME. If Israel disappeared Russia and China would be controlling the ME and would control 90% of the world’s oil supply and that would be cataclysmic for US national security.

The war, whether Western-centric or transnational, is against the vulnerable and the disenfranchised of this world—it is impossible to fight a successful campaign against the threat that confronts humanity without collaboration with all oppressed peoples of the world. For the Global South to be liberated from the chains of Western oppression must be a priority to achieve a world united against an oligarchical tyranny, wherever it emanates from.

Moving Beyond Left-Right and the Partitioning of Analysis Sectors

All that is required here is a willingness to acknowledge and engage with the overwhelming evidence we now have that both Western imperial belligerence and nefarious biosecurity regimes are bad for health, autonomy and freedom. Both need to be resisted, and resisted in a way that does not eclipse one or the other. 

Common ground can be found through recognition of the power axes in play and the ways in which they exploit, suppress and harm people albeit in different ways and places. Recognition that the problem common to both is the existence of demonstrably corrupt and unrepresentative power elites should be enough to alert people who perceive themselves as ‘left’ or ‘right’ that we all share a common enemy.

It is also probably time for people to abandon the left-right paradigm. As suggested in this article, the divisions and blind spots which the left-right paradigm, respectively, enables and reveals mean that it has probably outlived its usefulness. This evolution will require further concerted thinking with respect to new ways of comprehending and analysing our political universe. 

Image: Dr Julie Ponesse

This article is just a start. For now it is enough to recognise that, given the nefarious power axes with which we are having to do battle, our existing political structures are profoundly broken. As noted by Dr Julie Ponesse, fired for refusing the Covid injection: 

…our institutions are broken beyond repair. It’s time to build anew: a new economy, a new way of governing, and a new health care system. 

Another way of putting this is that if we had anything approaching a functioning democracy or system that genuinely represented the popular consensus, we would not have to endure a state of perpetual war undeniably facilitated by state-managed lies and deception on an epic scale. We would not be on the abyss of a biosecurity world coup that threatens us all with a future of colonisation under the control of forces that effectively occupy our governments. 

If anyone doubts the crossover between the genocide that Israel is inflicting upon the seventy-five-year-occupied and persecuted Palestinian people and the incoming biosecurity/surveillance agenda, please take a look at the 2030 Roadmap for UK-Israel Bilateral Relations. 

This document lays out the involvement that Israel will have in the future of British healthcare, defence and security, climate issues, trade and investment, cyber, culture, education and higher education, science, innovation and technology. In other words, what originated as a British settler-colonialist project in Palestine after the Balfour Treaty of 1917 will now apparently occupy and influence the essential decision-making processes of British society. From the document: 

The vision for our 2 nations also includes health cooperation. We will explore the development of a dialogue between the UK and Israel to address the challenges faced by our healthcare systems, and building on the launch of the pan-Northern UK-Israel health-tech gateway earlier this year. We will also collaborate in order to materialise a pilot program in the north-east of England, which will focus on digital health, telemedicine and expanding health cooperation focus on those areas and other tailor made Israeli technological solutions. Our ambition for closer, mutually beneficial ties is limitless.

In the final analysis, it is important to recognise the scale of the struggle we face. We are living through unusually dangerous and tumultuous times. For some, this means being on the receiving end of hard military power. The threat of regional escalation in the Middle East is very real as we enter 2024. 

For many others, lives and livelihoods are being destroyed by the predator classes as populations reel from the deleterious consequences of lockdowns, experimental gene therapy ‘vaccines’ and being terrorised by a pathogen, one that borders on being mythical. Solidarity is of utmost importance in this struggle and we need it now more than ever.

As the (sadly) late legendary journalist John Pilger so aptly said: 

Rapacious great power is ruthless and vindictive; many of us can’t imagine because we’re not like that in our lives.

In order to face that great power and to dismantle the projects with which it intends to destroy the world as we know it, we must form a cohesive and united Resistance front, one which is inclusive of East and West and everything in between. We must move beyond the left-right paradigms and understand that the rapacious predator class has no such limits or partitioning restrictions on its strategy. Neither should we. 

*

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

Vanessa Beeley is an independent journalist, peace activist and photographer. Vanessa was a finalist for one of the most prestigious journalism awards – the 2017 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism – whose winners have included the likes of Robert Parry in 2017, Patrick Cockburn, Robert Fisk, Nick Davies and the Bureau for Investigative Journalism team.

Dr Piers Robinson is co-Director of the Organisation for Propaganda Studies, convenor of the Working Group on Syria, Media and Propaganda and associated researcher with the Working Group on Propaganda and the 9/11 ‘Global War on Terror, member of Panda and BerlinGroup21. He researches and writes on propaganda, conflict and media and was Chair/Professor in Politics, Society ad Political Journalism, University of Sheffield, 2016-2019, Senior Lecturer in International Politics (University of Manchester 2010-2016) and Lecturer in Political Communication (University of Liverpool, 1999-2005).

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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This article was originally published in March 2023.

The Iraq War was spawned by a deadly combination of political depravity and media complicity. Unfortunately, on the twentieth anniversary of the war, both elements of that conspiracy are being whitewashed. Instead, politicians and their pundit accomplices are prattling as if the Iraq war was a well-intentioned mistake, not a crime against humanity.

In the days after 9/11, when pollsters asked Americans who they thought had carried out the 9/11 attacks, only 3 percent of respondents suggested Iraq or Saddam Hussein as culprits.

But President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney worked ceaselessly to convince Americans that Saddam was the 9/11 culprit.

Official propaganda trumpeting the Saddam/al-Qaeda link was the linchpin for exploiting 9/11 to justify war. A February 2003 poll found that 72 percent of Americans believed that Saddam was “personally involved in the September 11 attacks.” Shortly before the March 2003 invasion, almost half of all Americans believed that “most” or “some” of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi citizens. Only 17 percent of respondents knew that none of the hijackers was Iraqi.

In his official notification of invasion sent to Congress (in lieu of a declaration of war) on March 18, 2003, Bush declared that he was attacking Iraq “to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” Bush tied Saddam to 9/11 even though confidential briefings he received informed him that no evidence of any link had been found. Three years after the war started, Bush publicly admitted that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11.

On March 17, 2003, Bush also justified invading Iraq by invoking UN resolutions purportedly authorizing the U.S. “to use force in ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.” In a speech giving Saddam 48 hours to abdicate power, Bush declared, “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” In the weeks and months after the fall of Baghdad, Bush repeatedly asserted that U.S. forces had discovered WMDs or that Saddam had weapons programs. “We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories,” Bush declared to journalists on May 29, 2003. Five weeks later, he again claimed vindication because “we found a biological lab” in a truck trailer. However, CIA investigators concluded that the trailer had nothing to do with an Iraqi WMD program. False claims by the Bush administration on Saddam seeking uranium in Niger sparked an uproar and leaks seeking to destroy the former ambassador who exposed the sham.

In June 2003, Bush repeatedly denounced “revisionist historians” who kept asking about the missing WMDs. In a November 12, 2003 interview with the BBC’s David Frost, Bush declared that he had sent a team to Iraq “to find the weapons or the intent of weapons.” Bush did not reveal how he defined “the intent of weapons.” The following month, Bush told ABC News that the war was justified because there was “the possibility that [Saddam] could acquire weapons.” In January 2004, David Kay—the man Bush chose to head the search for WMDs in Iraq—testified to Congress that “we were almost all wrong,” as far as Iraq possessing WMDs. Kay’s testimony demolished one of the prime pretexts for the war.

Bush responded by portraying the lack of evidence as proof of his courage. On February 8, 2004, Bush justified invading Iraq because Saddam “had the ability to make weapons at the very minimum.” This is like justifying a violent no-knock raid on someone’s house because they could have purchased gunpowder and tin cans.

In a March 2, 2004 speech to Homeland Security Department employees, Bush offered a new justification for invading Iraq: “America will not allow terrorists and outlaw regimes to threaten our Nation and the world with the world’s most dangerous technologies.” The mere suspicion that a nation might have “dangerous technologies” justified devastating their land.

But what did George W. Bush really think? That mystery was solved a few weeks later at the annual Washington dinner for the Radio and Television Correspondents Association. Bush performed a skit featuring slides showing him crawling around the Oval Office peeking behind curtains. Bush quipped to the poohbah attendees: “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere…Nope, no weapons over there…Maybe under here?” The crowd loved it and The Washington Post headlined its report on the evening: “George Bush, Entertainer in Chief.” Greg Mitchell, the editor of Editor & Publisher, labeled the performance and the press’s reaction that night as “one of the most shameful episodes in the recent history of the American media and presidency.” By the time of Bush’s performance, hundreds of American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians had already been killed.

Most of the media had embedded themselves for the Iraq war long before that dinner. The Washington Post buried pre-war articles questioning the Bush team’s shams on Iraq; their award-winning Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks complained, “There was an attitude among editors: ‘Look, we’re going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?’” Instead, before the war started, the Post ran 27 editorials in favor of invasion and 140 front-page articles supporting the Bush administration’s case for attacking Saddam. PBS’s Bill Moyers noted that “of the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on NBC, ABC and CBS nightly news, from September 2002 until February 2003, almost all the stories could be traced back to sources from the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department.” Jim Lehrer, the host of government-subsidized PBS Newshour, explained his timidity in 2004: “It would have been difficult to have had debates [about invading Iraq]…you’d have had to have gone against the grain.” Lehrer’s admission did not disgrace him since groveling to officialdom is the job description for Washington journalists.

In his 1971 opinion on the Pentagon Papers case, Justice Hugo Black declared that a free press has “the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.” But during the Iraq War, most of the media preferred to trumpet official lies instead of exposing them.

A 2005 American University survey of hundreds of journalists who covered Iraq concluded: “Many media outlets have self-censored their reporting on the conflict in Iraq because of concern about public reaction to graphic images and details about the war.” Individual journalists commented:

“In general, coverage downplayed civilian casualties and promoted a pro-U.S. viewpoint. No U.S. media show abuses by U.S. military carried out on regular basis.”

“Friendly fire incidents were to show only injured Americans, and no reference made to possible mistakes involving civilians.”

“The real damage of the war on the civilian population was uniformly omitted.”

The media sugarcoated the war and almost always refused to publish photos incriminating the U.S. military. The Washington Post received a leak of thousands of pages of confidential records on the 2005 massacre at Haditha, including stunning photos taken immediately after Marines killed 24 civilians (mostly women and children). Though the Post headlined its exclusive story, “Marines’ Photos Provide Graphic Evidence in Haditha Probe,” the article noted that “Post editors decided that most of the images are too graphic to publish.” The Post suppressed the evidence at the same time it continued deferentially reporting official denials that U.S. troops committed atrocities.

In 2007, two Apache helicopters targeted a group of men in Baghdad with 30 mm. cannons and killed kill up to 18 people. Video from the helicopter revealed one helicopter crew “laughing at some of the casualties, all of whom were civilians, including two Reuters journalists.” “Light ’em all up. Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards,” one guy on the recording declared. Army Corporal Chelsea Manning leaked the video to Wikileaks, which disclosed it in 2010. Wikileaks declared on Twitter: “Washington Post had Collateral Murder video for over a year but DID NOT RELEASE IT to the public.” Wikileaks also disclosed thousands of official documents exposing U.S. war crimes and abuses, tacitly damning American media outlets that chose to ignore or shroud atrocities.

In 2007, Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly declared that at the beginning of the war in Iraq, “everybody in the country [was] behind it, except the kooks.” The “kooks” included UN weapons inspectors, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and many foreign governments. The “kook” label was also attached to Antiwar.com, The American Conservative, Counterpunch, the Future of Freedom Foundation, and an array of individual journalists who often found closed doors to their submissions. Likewise, the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of protestors who took to the streets of American cities to oppose the war were redefined into a laughingstock.

In his rush to war, President Bush showed boundless bad faith—followed by boundless righteousness after his lies were exposed. By the summer of 2008, only 22 percent of Americans approved of Bush and 41 percent said he was the “worst president ever.” But the same media outlets that championed the Iraq War helped resurrect Bush’s public image a decade later. Bush was exalted like the second coming of George Washington for his slams against the Trump administration. By early 2018,  a poll showed that 61 percent of Americans approved of Bush, and his support among Democrats quintupled, from 11 percent in early 2009 to 54 percent now. The key to Bush’s rehabilitation was burying his Iraq War record in the Memory Hole.

The media played the same trick to expunge its own tawdry Iraq record. Four years ago, The Washington Post spent a king’s ransom to produce and run a Super Bowl ad on its “Democracy Dies in the Darkness” motto. At that time, the Post was whipping up RussiaGate hysteria and reaping torrents of new subscribers. The Super Bowl ad, a paean to reporters, declared, “When we go off to war…knowing keeps us free.”

But kowtowing leaves people dead. Twenty years after the start of the Iraq War, President Biden is dragging America deeper into a foreign conflict that could spiral into World War III. Most of the mainstream media is again parroting whatever the U.S. government or its foreign lackeys say about the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Lies are political weapons of mass destruction, obliterating all limits on government power. The Iraq War should have taught Americans not to trust presidents or pundits who seek to unleash mass carnage. But don’t trust the Washington elite to ever learn or admit that lesson.

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Jim Bovard is a Senior Fellow for the Libertarian Institute and author of the newly published, Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty (2023). His other books include Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and seven others. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors and has also written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Playboy, The Washington Post, among others. His articles have been publicly denounced by the chief of the FBI, the Postmaster General, the Secretary of HUD, and the heads of the DEA, FEMA, and EEOC and numerous federal agencies.

Featured image: Jim Bovard @ 2007

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Three months since the horrific 7 October attacks, Gaza has become a place of death and despair.

Tens of thousands of people, mostly women and children, have been killed or injured. Families are sleeping in the open as temperatures plummet. Areas where civilians were told to relocate for their safety have come under bombardment. Medical facilities are under relentless attack. The few hospitals that are partially functional are overwhelmed with trauma cases, critically short of all supplies, and inundated by desperate people seeking safety.

A public health disaster is unfolding. Infectious diseases are spreading in overcrowded shelters as sewers spill over. Some 180 Palestinian women are giving birth daily amidst this chaos. People are facing the highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded. Famine is around the corner.

For children in particular, the past 12 weeks have been traumatic: No food. No water. No school. Nothing but the terrifying sounds of war, day in and day out.  

Gaza has simply become uninhabitable. Its people are witnessing daily threats to their very existence – while the world watches on.

The humanitarian community has been left with the impossible mission of supporting more than 2 million people, even as its own staff are being killed and displaced, as communication blackouts continue, as roads are damaged and convoys are shot at, and as commercial supplies vital to survival are almost non-existent.

Meanwhile, rocket attacks on Israel continue, more than 120 people are still held hostage in Gaza, tensions in the West Bank are boiling, and the specter of further regional spillover of the war is looming dangerously close.  

Hope has never been more elusive.

Gaza has shown us the worst of humanity, as well as moments of great heroism.

We have seen how violence cannot resolve differences, but only inflame passions and build new generations of danger and insecurity.

We continue to demand an immediate end to the war, not just for the people of Gaza and its threatened neighbors, but for the generations to come who will never forget these 90 days of hell and of assaults on the most basic precepts of humanity.  

It is time for the parties to meet all their obligations under international law, including to protect civilians and meet their essential needs, and to release all hostages immediately.

It is time for the international community to use all its influence to make this happen.

This war should never have started. But it’s long past time for it to end.

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Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator

Featured image: Families have been forced to moved repeatedly in Gaza. UN United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

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Dec. 24, 2023 – Fifth Singapore Airlines Pilot Dies at the World’s First Fully Vaccinated Airline

Captain Lee Meng Chye Martin died suddenly on Dec. 24, 2023.

Pilot Deaths on Duty in 2023

Sep. 23, 2023 – Alaska Airlines Pilot Death – 37 year old Captain Eric McRae died suddenly in his hotel room during layover, was to fly that morning

Aug. 17, 2023 – IndiGo Flight (NAG-PNQ) Nagpur to Pune, India, 40 year old Pilot Manoj Subramanium died after collapsing at the boarding gate, about to board.

Aug. 16, 2023 – Qatar Airways Flight QR579 (DEL-DOH) Delhi to Doha, Qatar, 51 year old pilot collapsed as a passenger inflight and died, plane diverted to Dubai.

Aug. 14, 2023 – LATAM Flight LA505 (MIA-SCL) Miami to Santiago, Chile – 2 hours into 8hr flight, 56 year old Captain Ivan Andaur collapsed and died in the lavatory – plane diverted to Panama City!

July 16, 2023 – Small plane – 2006 Piper Meridian, flying from Westchester NY, crashed at Martha’s Vineyard Airport after pilot had medical emergency upon final approach and passenger took control of the plane and attempted a landing. Pilot, 79 year old Randolph Bonnist, died later in hospital.

June 4, 2023 – Small plane – Cessna Citation N611VG flying Tennessee to Long Island, fighter jets spotted pilot slumped over in cockpit unconscious, plane crashed and all onboard died

May 3, 2023 – Air Transat and Air Canada Pilot Eddy Vorperian, age 48, died suddenly during layover in Croatia

March 11, 2023 – British Airways (CAI-LHR) pilot died of heart attack in crew hotel in Cairo before a Cairo to London flight (name & age not released)

Military Pilot Incapacitations and Deaths

July 19, 2023 – 37 year old US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Andrew James Lingenfelter, of Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, died on July 19, 2023 after battle with Pancreatic Turbo Cancer

May 9, 2023 – United Airlines and US Air Force Pilot Lt. Col. Michael Fugett, age 46, died unexpectedly at his home

Pilot Deaths (Not on Duty) 

Dec. 5, 2023 – Volaris (El Salvador) Pilot – 30s year old Jose Espinal – El Salvador Pilot for Volaris (El Salvador), Air Jazeera Airways (Kuwait) and former VECA & TACA Airlines, died suddenly on Dec.5, 2023.

Nov. 16, 2023 – Air India Pilot – 37 year old Air India Pilot Captain Himanil Kumar had cardiac arrest at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport during training

Oct. 18, 2023 – Austrian Airlines Pilot – 43 year old Christian Zimmerebner, AUA Austrian Airlines Pilot and member of Dorfgastein mountain rescue, died suddenly on Oct.18, 2023 due to “serious illness”

May 2023 – 4 Singapore Airlines pilots died suddenly in May 2023

May 26, 2023 – Singapore Airlines Pilot – Capt Sebestian Tan Aik Chuang: died May 26, 2023 (cancer)

May 25, 2023 – Singapore Airlines Pilot – Capt Tan Joo Huat Colin: died May 25, 2023 (sudden)

May 24, 2023 – Singapore Airlines Pilot – Capt Fernando Cid: died May 24, 2023 (cancer)

May 11, 2023 – Singapore Airlines Pilot – Capt Wee Loong: died May 11, 2023 (sudden death)

April 13, 2023 – Phil Thomas, graduate of Flight Training Pilot academy in Cadiz, Spain (FTEJerez) died suddenly.

March 17, 2023 – Westjet Pilot – 39 year old Benjamin Paul Vige died suddenly in Calgary

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

Featured image source

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The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

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Video: South Africa’s Genocide Case Against Israel

 

 

Video: The Middle East War. Genocide in Palestine. Michel Chossudovsky

***

To the Registrar of the International Court of Justice, the undersigned, being duly authorised by the Government of the Republic of South Africa, state as follows:

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This week’s drone strike on senior Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri in southern Beirut provides compelling evidence that Israel wants to expand the conflict beyond its borders. In the last few weeks, Israel has assassinated a deputy political leader in Hamas (al-Arouri), a senior adviser in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, (Sayyed Razi Mousavi) and “nearly a dozen senior Iranian military officials” (Fox News) at an airport in Damascus. At the same time, Israel has launched multiple unprovoked airstrikes on Lebanon and Syria. All of these incitements suggest that Israel is exploring ways to expand the hostilities beyond Gaza in order to plunge the entire region into war.

C’mon @nytimes. Subheader suggesting a regional war “could draw in the US” like it’s being led versus leading. The @DeptofDefense is very much creating this moment. Don’t position it as responsive. It’s very proactive. pic.twitter.com/qmYrmjcfn6

— Dr. Michael Shank (@Michael_Shank) January 4, 2024

Israeli provocations across the Middle East are an attempt to draw the United States deeper into a region-wide conflict. Israeli leaders know that their country will not become the dominant regional power unless its enemies –mainly Hezbollah and Iran– are severely weakened. But Israel also realizes that its enemies will not be weakened without US assistance. Thus, the US must be put in a situation where it feels compelled to engage Iran and Hezbollah militarily in order to rescue its closest ally in the Middle East. If Israel opens up a two-front or three-front war with its enemies –as it is currently trying to do– then the United States will be forced to intervene on Israel’s behalf increasing the probability that Israel will emerge as the regional hegemon. That is the underlying goal of the current operation.

None of this, of course, has anything to do with “defeating Hamas” which was the pretext Israel used to obliterate Gaza and push its population towards the Egyptian border. The real objective is to change the basic power-dynamics in the Middle East in a way that best suits Israel’s interests. Here’s an excerpt from an article at the BBC that was filed on Wednesday:

At least 103 people have been killed by two bomb explosions near the tomb of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani on the fourth anniversary of his assassination by the US, Iran’s state media report. State broadcaster Irib said dozens more people were wounded when the blasts hit a procession near the Saheb al-Zaman mosque in the southern city of Kerman…. Videos showed bodies on a road and ambulances rushing to the scene….

Wednesday’s incident comes amid heightened tensions in the region after the deputy leader of the Iran-backed Palestinian group, Hamas, was killed in an apparent Israeli drone strike in Lebanon. At least 103 dead in bomb blasts near Iran general Qasem Soleimani’s tomb – state TV, BBC

#StopTheEthnicGenocide pic.twitter.com/dm8QM2UVV8

— Emelia 🇸🇪 (@Bernadotte22) January 2, 2024

Is Israel responsible for the terrorist attack in Iran?

The evidence is not conclusive, but it certainly fits with the pattern of recent assassinations and drone attacks in neighboring countries. The bombing incident has also infuriated the Iranian people who have flooded the streets in droves demanding retaliation. Again, the public reaction fits perfectly with Israel’s goal of provoking an emotional over-reaction that draws Iran into a direct confrontation with Israel. Keep in mind, the Biden administration has two carrier groups deployed to the region that are prepared to come to Israel’s aid at a moment’s notice. So, if Iran does respond (with missile attacks or airstrikes) the US is perfectly positioned to join the fray. This might explain why Netanyahu continues to bomb his neighbors with impunity. He knows that Uncle Sam “has his back.”

❗️Multiple casualties reported in Baghdad following US airstrikes on the PMU headquarters at the Iraqi Interior Ministry complex, among them a high ranking resistance leader.https://t.co/VGOJDS5iKu pic.twitter.com/TYJyGhCLyK

— Daniella Modos – Cutter -SEN (@DmodosCutter) January 4, 2024

Here’s more from Aljazeera:

Israel has launched attacks on positions in Syria and Lebanon, as part of its ongoing campaign against opposing militaries and armed forces in the Middle East.

“The [Israeli army] struck military infrastructure belonging to the Syrian Army,” the Israeli military said in a post on the social media platform X on Tuesday.

“[Israeli military] fighter jets also struck Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure in Lebanon,” it added, promising it would “continue to operate against any threat to Israel’s sovereignty”.

The latest attacks, which occurred between Monday and Tuesday, marked a spike in tensions between Israel and neighbors it has said have links to its enemy, Iran. Israeli army launches attacks on targets in Syria and Lebanon, Aljazeera

Why is Israel doing this? Why are they provoking their neighbors even while they are conducting a major operation against the Palestinians in Gaza? Don’t all these incitements suggest that Israel wants to widen the war? Here’s more from Aljazeera:

A drone strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs of Dahiyeh, a Hezbollah stronghold, killed senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri on Tuesday. The drone hit a Hamas office, leaving six people dead, Lebanon’s state news agency reported.

Hamas confirmed the death of al-Arouri and called it a “cowardly assassination” by Israel, adding that attacks on Palestinians “inside and outside Palestine will not succeed in breaking the will and steadfastness of our people, or undermining the continuation of their valiant resistance”. Who was Saleh al-Arouri, the Hamas leader killed in Beirut?, Aljazeera

#StopTheEthnicGenocide pic.twitter.com/MaiJOpzDRH

— Emelia 🇸🇪 (@Bernadotte22) January 3, 2024

The assassination of al-Arouri was no more ‘a spontaneous act of revenge’ than the attacks on Syria, Lebanon, or Gaza. They’re all part of a Grand Plan to redraw the map of the Middle East by provoking Israel’s enemies and then drawing Washington into the hostilities. That is the basic strategy in a nutshell. Here’s how political analyst Arnaud Bertrand summed it up on Twitter:

Israel is doing its very best to trigger a regional war by bombing Lebanon and Iran left and right, presumably to get the US more involved in the fighting as some sort of Hail Mary, but neither Lebanon nor Iran nor the US are taking the bait. Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand

Bertrand is right; Israel is trying to drag the US into a war of its own making. He’s also right in saying that Iran and Hezbollah have shown great restraint (so far) and have resisted the temptation to retaliate. But how long will that last? After all, they can’t allow Israel to pummel them forever without responding in kind. And they can’t simply roll-over and play dead either. And, that’s not what they’re doing. What they’re doing is following events as they unfold so they have a better idea of Israel’s broader strategy. They are biding their time while Israel moves its troops out of Gaza and up to the northern front where they are likely to clash with Hezbollah militants sometime in the next two weeks. That appears to be what is going on.

Meanwhile, the western media is trying to prepare the public for another conflict in the Middle East by reiterating the claim that a “regional war” may now be inevitable. Check out these recent headlines and see if you can detect a recurrent theme:

• U.S. strike in Baghdad raises specter of wider regional war, Washington Post
• Attacks Heighten Fears of a Wider War for the Middle East and U.S., New York Times
• ‘I’m afraid that we are really approaching a regional war,’ says Lebanese Foreign Minister, CNN
• Escalation in the Middle East: the danger of a regional war is growing, Guardian
• Blinken Set For Israel Visit As Regional War Fears Mount, Barrons
• Blinken Heads to Middle East As Risk of Broader Conflict Grows, VOA
• Blinken heads to the Mideast again as fears of regional conflict surge, AOL

Get it? The media is preparing the public for a wider regional war in the Middle East. Articles like these are being used to persuade the masses that conflict is unavoidable and resistance is pointless.

But, in whose interests are these articles being written? Whose geopolitical agenda is being promoted? Which country stands to benefit from a misinformed American public walking sheeplike into another deranged conflagration in which millions die and nothing is gained?

Why, Israel, of course.

From the looks of things, Uncle Sam is going to be asked to provide the military muscle for a lunatic operation that will pit US firepower against Hezbollah and Iran, neither of who pose any threat to American lives or US national security. The objective of this misguided war will be to eliminate Israel’s enemies so that Israel can “secure the realm” and assume the role of regional hegemon, the undisputed ruler of the Middle East.

It’s a pipe dream.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.

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

Featured image source

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***

“Every soldier is a coward at heart.” —Major Bluntschli in ‘Arms and the Man’, George Bernard Shaw

In juxtaposition to the cowardice of Israeli soldiers, every revolutionary aiming for Palestinian freedom bravely faces the Zionist Israeli army which is slaughtering civilians/ non-combatants in Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem in full glare of public view globally.

The Israeli Generals should revisit the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) Code of Ethics which states inter alia:

“Purity of Arms

The IDF serviceman will use force of arms only for the purpose of subduing the enemy to the necessary extent and will limit his use of force so as to prevent unnecessary harm to human life and limb, dignity and property.

The IDF servicemen’s purity of arms is their self-control in use of armed force. They will use their arms only for the purpose of achieving their mission, without inflicting unnecessary injury to human life or limb; dignity or property, of both soldiers and civilians, with special consideration for the defenseless, whether in wartime, or during routine security operations, or in the absence of combat, or times of peace.”

The IDF needs to relook at the plight of Nazi Army Generals and political leaders at Nuremberg trials. Just a few of these citations will make them look at the reality:

1. Nuremberg Executions (Wikipedia)
2. Final moments of Nazis executed at Nuremberg (The Guardian, 11/09/2009)
3. Nazi war criminals sentenced at Nuremberg (History Channel)
4. ‘Death by hanging’: the Nuremberg Trials (The National Archives, 20/11/ 2015)
5. ‘I knew my father would be hanged’: Remembering Nuremberg(Al Jazeera, 20/11/2020)
6. The Execution of Nazi War Criminals (Famous Trials)
7. Eight Nazi S.S. Officers Sentenced to Death for 1944 massacre At Ascq (You Tube)

The 2.3 million Palestinians have exposed the fascist character of the self-styled western liberal democracies. Any teenager without exposure to socialism/ communism can appreciate this and hence forth Karl Marx’s work would be more sought after than ever before. This is a positive fall out of Israel’s war on Palestinians.

During the peak of Nazi era the megalomaniac Hitler may not have ever remotely imagined the fall of his empire and top Nazi leaders being brought to justice.

Zionist Israel with its mentors/ allies will go down in history likewise.

True that only a miniscule number of Nazi political leaders/ army generals, soldiers were convicted; but it is equally true that an international trial took place over several years and a few were indeed convicted.

No power on earth can stop the aspirations of freedom loving Palestinians. It is the working class with a broad unity of all forces/ sections of society which have the interest of masses at heart that will overthrow the present ruling classes in Israel, USA, UK, France and Germany.

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P.S. Sahni is a qualified orthopaedic surgeon. He has worked extensively at India-Bangladesh border during the Bangladesh Liberation War resulting in 1971 Bangladesh Genocide of Hindus; the victims of Sikh Genocide in 1984; and amongst victims of 1992 anti-Muslim violence.

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More than 100 international groups signed onto a letter released Wednesday by a newly formed Palestinian rights coalition, urging governments across the globe to formally support South Africa’s International Court of Justice case against Israel, accusing the government of genocidal violence in Gaza.

The International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Palestine is circulating the letter, which asks governments to file Declarations of Intervention before or after the ICJ’s hearing on South Africa’s claim. The case is scheduled to be heard on January 11-12.

“Declarations of Intervention in support of South Africa’s invocation of the Genocide Convention against Israel will increase the likelihood that a positive finding of the crime of genocide will be enforced by the United Nations,” said the coalition.

Groups that have joined the call include Progressive International, World Beyond War, the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation (PAL, PEN International-Palestine, and the National Lawyers Guild.

“South Africa is correct in charging that under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Israel’s actions ‘are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent… to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial, and ethnic group,” the letter reads.

The letter was released days after South Africa filed its claim, asking the ICJ to declare that Israel has breached its obligations under the Genocide Convention, to which it is a party.

The death toll in Gaza has reached at least 22,313, with at least 57,296 people wounded and thousands feared dead under rubble. Since Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on October 7, with support from the U.S., Israel has bombed hospitals, refugee camps, and residential buildings, all while claiming it is taking steps to protect civilian lives and targeting Hamas.

High-level Israeli government officials have also made numerous statements explicitly calling to wipe out Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, either through warfare or by forcibly displacing them.

South Africa detailed several of the statements in its 84-page complaint, including President Isaac Herzog’s claim that the entire population of Gaza, including roughly 1 million children, are “responsible” for Hamas’ attack and are therefore legitimate military targets; Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant’s statement that he had “released all restraints” on the military to fight Gaza’s “human animals”; Energy Minister Israel Katz’s demand that “all the civilian population in Gaza is ordered to leave immediately”; and Deputy Speaker of the Knesset Nissim Vaturi saying, “Now we all have one common goal—erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the Earth.”

“Finding evidence to establish intent is normally the obstacle to classifying genocide,” said Guardian columnist Owen Jones of South Africa’s documentation on Tuesday. “You read through the endless statements and are left with no doubts on intent.”

I've read South Africa's case alleging genocide against Israel.

It is one of the most shocking things I've ever read.

It feels like you're reading a gruesome historical document about how a genocide was allowed to happen, then you realise this is now.https://t.co/wg2jwJcCNc

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) January 2, 2024

Suzanne Adely, president of the National Lawyers Guild, said that

“the increasing global isolation of Israel and the U.S. and their European allies is an indicator that this is a key moment for popular movements to move their governments in the direction of taking these steps and being on the right side of history.”

The U.S. alone vetoed a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza at the United Nations Security Council last month, and was joined by just nine other countries in voting against a cease-fire at the U.N. General Assembly, while 153 countries supported the resolution.

“It’s imperative that more states follow South Africa’s historic leadership demanding Israel is held accountable under international law,” said Adely. “One clear and immediate way to do that is to file Declarations of Intervention supporting South Africa’s filing.”

The letter was released days after Haaretz reported that Israeli officials have been warned by legal advisers that a ruling in favor of an injunction against Israel is possible at the ICJ.

On Democracy Now! on Tuesday, international law expert Francis Boyle, who has successfully argued cases before the ICJ, said South Africa has a strong chance of winning its case.

“Based on my careful review of all the documents so far submitted by the Republic of South Africa, I believe South Africa will win an order against Israel to cease and desist from committing all acts of genocide against the Palestinians,” said Boyle. “And under Article I of the Genocide Convention, all contracting parties, 153 states, will then be obliged, quote, ‘to prevent,’ unquote, the genocide by Israel against the Palestinians.”

South Africa has filed a case at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. International law expert Francis Boyle, who has argued successfully at the ICJ, says he believes "South Africa will win an order against Israel." pic.twitter.com/4Ebz02vxVc

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) January 2, 2024

Boyle noted that former U.S. State Department official Joan Donoghue is the president of the ICJ, and will likely use her authority “to shape the proceedings in favor of Israel.”

“However, I have also been advised that the Republic of South Africa is, as of now, nominating a judge ad hoc,” Boyle said. “That is their right under the statute of the International Court of Justice. I don’t have a name yet, but I would hope the South African judge ad hoc will do his or her best to try to keep Donoghue straight.”

Collective pressure from other countries, said Palestinian attorney Lamis Deek, could be “a sharp turning point for Palestine” at the ICJ.

“Through the ICJ, South Africa is poised to strike a decisive blow against this brutal genocide and torture campaign led by Israel in coordination with the United States,” said Deek, whose firm convened PAL’s Commission on War Crimes, Justice, Reparations, and Return. “We need more states to file supporting interventions—and we need the court to feel the watchful eye of the masses so as to withstand what will be extreme U.S. political pressure on the court.”

“International humanitarian laws and institutions are meant to be, and must be seen as, tools for the people, not distant abstractions,” he added. “People can—and should—play a strategic and powerful role by integrating this advocacy into their solidarity work, not only until their governments file supporting interventions but until the ICJ delivers justice.”

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

***

The world suffered a great loss when the Australian journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger died December 30 at the age of 84. One fact stands out foremost in his decades-long career as a writer and intellectual: He opposed war and fascism. He thought that the United States and Britain all too often supported war and fascism, and he often had occasion to criticize other intellectuals as lackeys of the state, in a way that will remind readers of LRC of Murray Rothbard’s similar attacks on “court historians.”

To be against fascism, we have to be able to identify the fascists properly. Pilger argues that in the war between Russia and the Ukraine, those who condemn Putin as a “fascist” have matters backwards. It is the Ukrainian leadership who are the real fascists:

“The rise of fascism in Europe is uncontroversial. Or ‘neo-Nazism’ or ‘extreme nationalism’, as you prefer. Ukraine as modern Europe’s fascist beehive has seen the re-emergence of the cult of Stepan Bandera, the passionate anti-Semite and mass murderer who lauded Hitler’s ‘Jewish policy’, which left 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews slaughtered. ‘We will lay your heads at Hitler’s feet,’ a Banderist pamphlet proclaimed to Ukrainian Jews.

Today, Bandera is hero-worshipped in western Ukraine and scores of statues of him and his fellow-fascists have been paid for by the EU and the US, replacing those of Russian cultural giants and others who liberated Ukraine from the original Nazis.

In 2014, neo-Nazis played a key role in an American bankrolled coup against the elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, who was accused of being ‘pro-Moscow’. The coup regime included prominent ‘extreme nationalists’ — Nazis in all but name.

At first, this was reported at length by the BBC and the European and American media. In 2019, Time magazine featured the ‘white supremacist militias’ active in Ukraine. NBC News reported, ‘Ukraine’s Nazi problem is real.’ The immolation of trade unionists in Odessa was filmed and documented.

Spearheaded by the Azov regiment, whose insignia, the ‘Wolfsangel’, was made infamous by the German SS, Ukraine’s military invaded the eastern, Russian-speaking Donbas region. According to the United Nations, 14,000 in the east were killed. Seven years later, with the Minsk peace conferences sabotaged by the West, as Angela Merkel confessed, the Red Army invaded.

This version of events was not reported in the West. To even utter it is to bring down abuse about being a ‘Putin apologist’, regardless whether the writer (such as myself) has condemned the Russian invasion. Understanding the extreme provocation that a NATO-armed borderland, Ukraine, the same borderland through which Hitler invaded, presented to Moscow, is anathema.

Journalists who travelled to the Donbas were silenced or even hounded in their own country. German journalist Patrik Baab lost his job and a young German freelance reporter, Alina Lipp, had her bank account sequestered.” See here.

We need to ask ourselves a question about war. Why is it bad? The answer is obvious. It causes an enormous amount of death, injury, and suffering. We see this happening in the war between Israel and Hamas. Millions of Palestinians have been displaced while Gaza has been bombed to smithereens, and the death toll continues to mount. John Pilger strongly supported Palestinian rights, which earned him the obloquy of pro-Israel lobby:

“In 1977, the award-winning journalist and film-maker, John Pilger, made a documentary called Palestine Is Still The Issue (1977). He told how almost a million Palestinians had been forced off their land in 1948, and again in 1967. In this in-depth documentary, he has returned to the West Bank of the Jordan and Gaza, and to Israel, to ask why the Palestinians, whose right of return was affirmed by the United Nations more than half a century ago, are still caught in a terrible limbo — refugees in their own land, controlled by Israel in the longest military occupation in modern times.

“The fate and struggle of the Palestinians,” says Pilger, “are not just critical to the overdue recognition of their basic human rights, but are also central to whether the region, and the wider world, are plunged into war. Israel is now one of the biggest military powers in the world. While nothing changes, the dangers become greater. This is a film about a nation of people, traumatized, humiliated and yet resilient. In trying to liberate less than a quarter of historic Palestine, they have had no army, no air force, and no powerful friends — and have fought back with slingshots and now with the terrorism of the suicide bombers.”

One of the best features of Pilger’s work was that he was able to set current events within a larger picture that made sense of them. In an article written in 2016, he warned that the US was building up a nuclear arsenal that threatened the total disaster of war with both Russia and China.

“How many people are aware that a world war has begun? At present, it is a war of propaganda, of lies and distraction, but this can change instantaneously with the first mistaken order, the first missile.

In 2009, President Obama stood before an adoring crowd in the centre of Prague, in the heart of Europe. He pledged himself to make “the world free from nuclear weapons”. People cheered and some cried. A torrent of platitudes flowed from the media. Obama was subsequently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

It was all fake. He was lying.

The Obama administration has built more nuclear weapons, more nuclear warheads, more nuclear delivery systems, more nuclear factories.  Nuclear warhead spending alone rose higher under Obama than under any American president. The cost over thirty years is more than $1 trillion.

A mini nuclear bomb is planned. It is known as the B61 Model 12. There has never been anything like it. General James Cartwright, a former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said, “Going smaller [makes using this nuclear] weapon more thinkable.”

In the last eighteen months, the greatest build-up of military forces since World War Two — led by the United States — is taking place along Russia’s western frontier.  Not since Hitler invaded the Soviet Union have foreign troops presented such a demonstrable threat to Russia.

Ukraine – once part of the Soviet Union –  has become a CIA theme park. Having orchestrated a coup in Kiev, Washington effectively controls a regime that is next door and hostile to Russia: a regime rotten with Nazis, literally. Prominent parliamentary figures in Ukraine are the political descendants of the notorious OUN and UPA fascists. They openly praise Hitler and call for the persecution and expulsion of the Russian-speaking minority.

This is seldom news in the West, or it is inverted to suppress the truth.

In Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia — next door to Russia – the US military is deploying combat troops, tanks, heavy weapons. This extreme provocation of the world’s second nuclear power is met with silence in the West.

What makes the prospect of nuclear war even more dangerous is a parallel campaign against China.

Seldom a day passes when China is not elevated to the status of a “threat”.  According to Admiral Harry Harris, the US Pacific commander, China is “building a great wall of sand in the South China Sea”.

What he is referring to is China building airstrips in the Spratly Islands, which are the subject of a dispute with the Philippines – a dispute without priority until Washington pressured and bribed the government in Manila and the Pentagon launched a propaganda campaign called “freedom of navigation”.

What does this really mean?  It means freedom for American warships to patrol and dominate the coastal waters of China.  Try to imagine the American reaction if Chinese warships did the same off the coast of California.

I made a film called The War You Don’t See, in which I interviewed distinguished journalists in America and Britain: reporters such as Dan Rather of CBS, Rageh Omar of the BBC, David Rose of the Observer.

All of them said that had journalists and broadcasters done their job and questioned the propaganda that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction; had the lies of George W. Bush and Tony Blair not been amplified and echoed by journalists, the 2003 invasion of Iraq might not have happened, and  hundreds of thousands of men, women and children would be alive today.

The propaganda laying the ground for a war against Russia and/or  China is no different in principle. To my knowledge, no journalist in the Western “mainstream” — a Dan Rather equivalent, say –asks why China is building airstrips in the South China Sea.

The answer ought to be glaringly obvious. The United States is encircling China with a network of bases, with ballistic missiles, battle groups, nuclear -armed bombers.

This lethal arc extends from Australia to the islands of the Pacific, the Marianas and the Marshalls and Guam, to the Philippines, Thailand, Okinawa, Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India. America has hung a noose around the neck of China. This is not news. Silence by media; war by media.

In 2015, in high secrecy, the US and Australia staged the biggest single air-sea military exercise in recent history, known as Talisman Sabre. Its aim was to rehearse an Air-Sea Battle Plan, blocking sea lanes, such as the Straits of Malacca and the Lombok Straits, that cutoff China’s access to oil, gas and other vital raw materials from the Middle East and Africa.” See this.

Why does the US follow an aggressive foreign policy that threatens nuclear war with Russia and China? Pilger finds the answer in a 1992 plan to dominate the globe:

“Events today are the direct result of plans laid in the 1992 Defence Planning Guidance, a document that laid out how the US would maintain its empire and see off any challenges, real and imagined. The aim was US dominance at any cost, literally. Written by Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney, who would play key roles in the administration of George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq, it might have been written by Lord Curzon in the 19th century. They formed The Project for a New American Century. America, it boasted, ‘would oversee a new frontier’. The role of other states would be as vassals or supplicants, or they would be crushed. It planned he conquest of Europe, and Russia, with all the zeal and thoroughness of Hitler’s imperialists. The roots of Nato’s current war on Russia and the provocations of China are here.”

For Pilger, history is not a matter of impersonal forces but rather of concrete decisions by particular people. In his account of history, there are heroes and villains. One of his main contemporary heroes was Julian Assange, who courageously leaked documents that proved the warmongering plans of the Washington elite. The US government seeks to extradite Assange, who is now in jail in London on trumped-up charges, and imprison him in a hellhole for the rest of his life. Pilger waged a long campaign to prevent this. Here is what he said in an article written in 2018:

“When I first met Julian Assange more than ten years ago, I asked him why he had started WikiLeaks. He replied: “Transparency and accountability are moral issues that must be the essence of public life and journalism.”

Image: Julian Assange court sketch, October 21, 2019, supplied by Julia Quenzler.

I had never heard a publisher or an editor invoke morality in this way. Assange believes that journalists are the agents of people, not power: that we, the people, have a right to know about the darkest secrets of those who claim to act in our name.

If the powerful lie to us, we have the right to know. If they say one thing in private and the opposite in public, we have the right to know. If they conspire against us, as Bush and Blair did over Iraq, then pretend to be democrats, we have the right to know.

It is this morality of purpose that so threatens the collusion of powers that want to plunge much of the world into war and wants to bury Julian alive in fascist America.

In 2008, a top secret US State Department report described in detail how the United States would combat this new moral threat. A secretly-directed personal smear campaign against Julian Assange would lead to “exposure [and] criminal prosecution”.

The aim was to silence and criminalise WikiLeaks and its founder. Page after page revealed a coming war on a single human being and on the very principle of freedom of speech and freedom of thought, and democracy.

The imperial shock troops would be those who called themselves journalists: the big hitters of the so-called mainstream, especially the “liberals” who mark and patrol the perimeters of dissent.

And that is what happened. I have been a reporter for more than 50 years and I have never known a smear campaign like it: the fabricated character assassination of a man who refused to join the club: who believed journalism was a service to the public, never to those above.

Assange shamed his persecutors. He produced scoop after scoop. He exposed the fraudulence of wars promoted by the media and the homicidal nature of America’s wars, the corruption of dictators, the evils of Guantanamo.

He forced us in the West to look in the mirror. He exposed the official truth-tellers in the media as collaborators: those I would call Vichy journalists. None of these imposters believed Assange when he warned that his life was in danger: that the “sex scandal” in Sweden was a set up and an American hellhole was the ultimate destination. And he was right, and repeatedly right.

The extradition hearing in London this week is the final act of an Anglo-American campaign to bury Julian Assange. It is not due process. It is due revenge. The American indictment is clearly rigged, a demonstrable sham. So far, the hearings have been reminiscent of their Stalinist equivalents during the Cold War.

Today, the land that gave us Magna Carta, Great Britain, is distinguished by the abandonment of its own sovereignty in allowing a malign foreign power to manipulate justice and by the vicious psychological torture of Julian – a form of torture, as Nils Melzer, the UN expert has pointed out, that was refined by the Nazis because it was most effective in breaking its victims.

Every time I have visited Assange in Belmarsh prison, I have seen the effects of this torture. When I last saw him, he had lost more than 10 kilos in weight; his arms had no muscle. Incredibly, his wicked sense of humour was intact.

As for Assange’s homeland, Australia has displayed only a cringeing cowardice as its government has secretly conspired against its own citizen who ought to be celebrated as a national hero. Not for nothing did George W. Bush anoint the Australian prime minister his “deputy sheriff”.

It is said that whatever happens to Julian Assange in the next three weeks will diminish if not destroy freedom of the press in the West. But which press? The Guardian? The BBC, The New York Times, the Jeff Bezos Washington Post?

No, the journalists in these organisations can breathe freely. The Judases on the Guardian who flirted with Julian, exploited his landmark work, made their pile then betrayed him, have nothing to fear. They are safe because they are needed.

Freedom of the press now rests with the honourable few: the exceptions, the dissidents on the internet who belong to no club, who are neither rich nor laden with Pulitzers, but produce fine, disobedient, moral journalism – those like Julian Assange.

Meanwhile, it is our responsibility to stand by a true journalist whose sheer courage ought to be inspiration to all of us who still believe that freedom is possible. I salute him.”

Let’s do everything we can to carry on John Pilger’s fight against war and fascism and defeat braindead Biden and his gang of neocon controllers. This is my aim at LRC, and this is why we featured so many articles by John Pilger over the past twenty years.

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Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him mail], former editorial assistant to Ludwig von Mises and congressional chief of staff to Ron Paul, is founder and chairman of the Mises Institute, executor for the estate of Murray N. Rothbard, and editor of LewRockwell.com. He is the author of Against the State and Against the Left. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

Featured image: John Pilger, photographed in 2006, whose decades in journalism included Reuters and 23 years at the Mirror, then ITV’s World In Action (Wikicommons)

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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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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On December 6, it was announced with much fanfare that the 10/7 Project, a new “centralized communications operation to promote continued US bipartisan support for Israel; push for accurate, complete coverage of the Israel-Hamas war,” and achieve a “stronger” media “focus” on the victims of October 7’s Al-Aqsa Flood would be launched, by a quintet of the largest Israeli lobby groups on U.S. soil.

Who and what is funding the 10/7 Project isn’t at all clear. Publicity material spoke vaguely of an unnamed “coterie of philanthropists” and the organization’s interest in sourcing “more philanthropic support” moving forward. Future formal financial disclosures may make for fascinating reading, but its founders offer some clues.

The five comprise the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. This is quite the rogue’s gallery of Zionist entities, several of which have deplorable track records of actively whitewashing, if not outright facilitating, Israeli apartheid propaganda activities that have become turbocharged since October 7.

As such, the 10/7 Project’s professed mission of countering “disinformation” about October 7 and “Israel’s response” to the events can only be considered highly disquieting, especially given its target audience is “key media and government influencers.” In reality, of course, the organization is just the latest salvo in the Zionist state’s long-running information war against Palestinians and the Western world. This pitched battle has recently become ever more treacherous, specifically due to Tel Aviv’s genocidal “response” to Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

One could be forgiven for thinking the 10/7 Project had already floundered in its objectives. After an initial ripple of mainstream interest, primarily from Israeli outlets and Zionist news platforms, the organization has seemingly vanished without a trace from the media landscape – or at least, its name has. As we shall see, though, it’s evident that in the manner of an iceberg, the 10/7 Project’s public footprint represents but the visible tip of something far larger and considerably more destructive.

‘Stranglehold on Congress’

While the 10/7 Project may not be directly making headlines daily, its parent organizations certainly are. The ADL has since October 7 published a steady stream of reports, lapped up by the media largely without question, testifying to an explosion of “anti-Semitic incidents” across the Western world in the wake of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

Read the fine print to discover 45% of these “2,031 antisemitic incidents” were actually “anti-Israel rallies” https://t.co/dYjxH1dReM pic.twitter.com/g4yyFkY7mu

— Wyatt Reed (@wyattreed13) December 12, 2023

Shocking stuff, one might think. Yet, as an investigation by MintPress News Senior Staff Writer Alan MacLeod revealed, the ADL is producing such staggering figures by categorizing anti-Israel and pro-Palestine rallies and corresponding chants at both as individual “anti-Semitic incidents.” Despite the exposure of its embarrassing, Enron-style accounting, the League continues to pump out the same bogus “research” at regular intervals. On December 12, it claimed “anti-Semitism” in the US was now up 337% in the wake of October 7, “an all-time record.”

It is far from the first time ADL definitions of anti-Semitism have failed to pass muster. For example, in December 2022, The Grayzone’s Alex Rubinstein revealed that the League did not categorize Ukraine’s openly Neo-Nazi paramilitary Azov Battalion to be the “far right group it once was.” This, despite the fact that Azov’s mission to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen,” as articulated by founder Andriy Biletsky, remains unchanged.

Meanwhile, the infamous AIPAC – accurately described by U.S. political scientist John Mearsheimer as “a de facto agent for a foreign government, [with] a stranglehold on Congress” – has made clear its significantly intensified mission to rid Washington DC of any elected official possessed of even vaguely anti-war, pro-Palestinian views, by declaring war on lawmakers such as Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.

When AIPAC moves against, or in favor, of particular politicians, they mean business – and depressingly, the organization usually wins. Annually, the organization publishes a report on its “policy and political achievements” that year. Its 2022 installment boasts, among other things, of bagging $3.3 billion “for security assistance to Israel, with no added conditions” and having gifted $17.5 million – the most of any U.S. PAC – to “pro-Israel candidates,” 98% of whom won their elections, in the process defeating 13 anti-Israel challengers.

Conflicts of Interest

The official website of the 10/7 Project is spartan in the extreme. Visitors are offered a “contact us” form, a link to subscribe to its regular newsletter, and a “what we do” section listing purported activities. This includes informing the public “with credible, real-time information about events in Israel and Gaza,” highlighting “excellent reporting,” calling out “biased coverage,” holding “biased media accountable,” and offering “expert spokespeople for press and broadcast outlets.”

Unmentioned anywhere is that the 10/7 Project is represented by a trio of notorious PR and political consultancies – CKR Solutions, OnMessage Public Strategies, and SKDK. Together, they move in the shadows to advance the organization’s interests and messaging publicly and on Capitol Hill. SKDK’s contribution will inevitably be the most insidious and impactful.

Since its founding in 2004, the company has careened from damaging scandal to damaging scandal yet consistently secures major, big-ticket clients. The reason for this is clear. SKDK was founded by and employs a retinue of high-ranking, well-connected Democratic operatives. Among them is Anita Dunn, Barack Obama’s White. House Communications Director, credited as the “mastermind” of Joe Biden’s 2020 election win and widely regarded as a key member of the President’s “inner circle.”

Joe Biden speaks with SKDK’s Anita Dunn ahead of his State of the Union address in February 2023. Adam Schultz | White House

Ever since Obama’s 2008 election win, SKDK has been plausibly accused of selling privileged access to the White House to clients despite failing to register as a lobbying firm. This means major corporations have a direct means of encouraging – and bribing – the Oval Office to offer tax breaks, shred regulations, dump legislation, smash unions, and generally harm the U.S. public interest with total impunity and in absolute secrecy.

SKDK’s expansive Rolodex also helps politicians get out of serious trouble. In 2018-2019,  Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan paid the company $200,000 for “crisis communications” assistance after one of his campaign workers sued him for harming her professionally when she complained of sexual harassment by one of his top aides. Meanwhile, in August 2021, it was revealed a senior SKDK staffer personally intervened to suppress negative media coverage of sexual harassment allegations against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Even more perversely, it’s since been revealed that at the same time, SKDK was advising Madigan on how to navigate his public controversy, the company was also helping his former campaign worker bring a lawsuit against the aide who’d sexually harassed her. A more perfect demonstration of the DC blob’s incestuous nature and SKDK’s total lack of ethical and professional scruples one would be hard-pressed to find. And both are highly competitive categories.

SKDK’s website boasts of its work on some of the Democrat’s top pet projects

SKDK played a pivotal role in Biden’s 2020 presidential bid, decisively reversing his fortunes after abysmal performances in various caucuses. While the mainstream media primarily praised the miraculous work of the company and Dunn – his de facto campaign director – there has also been fierce controversy surrounding its electioneering activities. For example, SKDK fired off daily “Misinformation Briefings” to major tech and social media firms, including Google, Meta and Twitter, requesting that specific content be suppressed or removed.

In most cases, the recipients complied, meaning SKDK exerted extraordinary influence over what voters did and did not know and could and could not see during the controversial 2020 Presidential election. Which surely at least partially accounts for Biden’s victory. To make matters even worse, the company was simultaneously. reaping a $35 million windfall from the government of California by running the state’s supposedly bipartisan “get-out-the-vote” campaign. The contract, originally to be financed by local taxpayers, was mysteriously awarded to SKDK on a “no-bid” basis.

‘Dictate Terms’

Clearly, the 10/7 Project was intended to be a very public affair. In an early promotional interview, executive director Josh Isay – perhaps unsurprisingly, until August 2022 SKDK’s longtime CEO – boasted about the “widespread enthusiasm” with which the organization’s “efforts to set the record straight and combat misinformation spouted by Hamas terrorists and their anti-Israel allies” had so far been received:

We look forward to continuing to do the critically important work of providing policymakers and the American public with reliable information about Israel and Hamas, and uplifting the stories of the innocent victims of the October 7th massacre.”

Yet, there is no obvious sign of those ambitions bearing fruit to date. A partial explanation for this failure may lie in the 10/7 Project’s wish to transform the “innocent victims” of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood into human interest stories and atrocity propaganda while elevating the organization’s eponymous date to the position of 9/11 in the American public’s mind.

In the weeks since the 10/7 Project’s inception, it has become ever-increasingly clear the Zionist narrative of what unfolded when Hamas breached Gaza’s armored concentration camp walls – unquestioningly regurgitated over and again for weeks after that by the Western media – is completely and grotesquely fraudulent.

For example, on December 15, it was reported based on social security data that Tel Aviv’s claim that 1,200 civilians died in the initial assault was greatly exaggerated. In reality, just 695 lost their lives. The previous figure was itself a revision from an initial civilian casualty “estimate” of 1,400.

Every civilian death in a warzone is an extremely grave crime. It is surely for this reason that Tel Aviv on December 12 desperately argued “it would not be morally sound” to investigate “friendly fire” incidents in “kibbutzim and southern Israeli communities” during Operation Al Aqsa Flood – civilians killed by Israeli Occupation Forces. Nonetheless, the numbers involved are avowedly “immense.”

Among the “stories of the innocent victims of the October 7th massacre” selected by the 10/7 Project for public “uplifting” in service of whitewashing and justifying the Gaza genocide will have been a great many individuals slaughtered in cold blood by indiscriminate, excessively violent IDF actions. This is all but inevitable. Urgently casting those victims into obscurity while ensuring the entire issue of Zionist “friendly fire” is not examined is now of paramount importance.

More significantly, though, the exposure – and occasional admission – of Tel Aviv’s brazen lies has fundamentally shifted mainstream narratives and sympathies away from Israel and towards the Palestinians. Audiences of every extraction globally can witness the monstrous reality of the genocide in Gaza and learn of Zionist abuse of the Palestinians even before the colonial entity’s founding in 1948 with their own eyes and ears.

Israeli deceit has been so relentless and so readily exposed that even typically subservient Western news networks and their featured pundits are treating official claims with enormous skepticism. Similarly, Zionist violence is so constantly unremitting and wantonly sadistic that graphic reports of carpet bombs maiming and slaughtering every generation of Palestinians are now commonplace.

Meanwhile, developments such as the revelation that IDF soldiers killed three shirtless Israelis waving a white flag, speaking Hebrew and seeking their assistance have traveled widely, in turn highlighting prior examples of identical “peacetime” atrocities inflicted upon Palestinians. By contrast, there has to date been no “misinformation spouted by Hamas terrorists and their anti-Israel allies” to combat at all.

A Losing Battle

As a result, the 10/7 Project and its founders are placed in the invidious position of having to publicly defend the indefensible – namely, a modern-day genocide unfolding on television screens and front page headlines the world over. In such circumstances, overt and unashamed advocacy work is best conducted behind the scenes. Yet, it is precisely in this context that the 10/7 Project may be most dangerous and potent due to its open-door Oval Office access.

Tireless solidarity efforts by European activists, protesters, citizen journalists, and civil society organizations have produced significant results. Paris went from mulling legislation criminalizing anti-Zionism in November to now leading global pressure for a ceasefire. Multiple governments and opposition leaders are likewise changing their tune. Senior British officials openly warn Netanyahu to drastically rein in his unquenchable bloodlust if he wishes to retain any international support.

Stateside, however, while the crusading work of grassroots pro-Palestine voices and groups has been redoubtable, the Biden administration’s commitment to facilitating, encouraging, and exacerbating the Gaza genocide, however it can, remains undimmed. While the President has demanded Netanyahu’s slaughter be wrapped up by the new year, there is no indication material, financial, and diplomatic support upon which the new Nakba depends is being curtailed. On December 18, during an official visit to Tel Aviv, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a bloodcurdling oath:

This is Israel’s operation, and I’m not here to dictate timelines or terms. Our support [for] Israel’s right to defend itself is ironclad, as you’ve heard me say a number of times, and that’s not going to change.”

One way greater pressure could be brought to bear against the Biden administration might be for citizens to demand their elected representatives in Washington to disclose what dealings they may have had with the 10/7 Project or its representatives since its launch.

To ascertain whether and how White House policy and public pronouncements are being directly informed, if not explicitly dictated, by the wishes and wills of a shadowy and unaccountable lobbying coalition with indeterminate but no doubt intimate political and financial connections to the perpetrators of a 21st century Holocaust. Perhaps then the President might be sufficiently embarrassed to at last rein in his out-of-control, genocidal proxy.

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Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.

Featured image: President Joe Biden participates in a restricted bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Hotel Kempinski in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, October 18, 2023. (Official White House Photo by Cameron Smith)

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu urged that Israel “must find ways for Gazans that are more painful than death” to defeat them and break their morale, as the US did with Japan.

Eliyahu expressed, in statements to Israeli radio station 103 FM, that Israel must decide the battle by breaking the morale of the Palestinians in Gaza and causing them pain involving their land, destroying homes, breaking their national dream and voluntary immigration. When the presenter interrupted him, saying this was not possible, Eliyahu replied that it was, similar to what happened during the Arab Spring when large numbers of the region’s population immigrated to Germany.

According to the Israeli minister’s statements, the residents of Gaza should be encouraged to immigrate to other countries as part of revenge measures against them after the events of Operation Al-Aqsa flood.

Eliyahu widely criticised Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for the plan he developed for the post-war period, whereby civil affairs in the Gaza Strip would be handled by Palestinian parties not hostile to Israel. Eliyahu argued that no group fit this description.

In November, the Israeli minister called for dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza, wiping it off the face of the earth.

Eliyahu belongs to the far-right extremist Otzma Yehudit party, led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. This party supports building settlements, regaining control of the Gaza Strip and extremist ideas.

Eliyahu’s new statement comes amid Israeli calls to displace the residents of the Gaza Strip and resettle them in other countries.

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Featured image: Far-right Israeli Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Minister, Amichai Eliyahu [@Eliyahu_a/Twitter]

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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Why does Big Pharma anticipate over 300% growth in fatal Prion Diseases?

Source: Azyr and Data Bridge

Here are 25 cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease

Jan. 6, 2024 – New Glarus, WI – 63 year old Diane Wagner was diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) on Jan.3, 2024, which “will soon take Diane’s life”. “Just a few weeks ago, she was healthy & living an everyday normal life.”

Jan. 4, 2024 – Fredericksburg, VA – Marcia Stinson has been diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).

Jan. 1, 2024 – Beach City, TX – 61 year old Aaron Aguillard was hospitalized on Nov. 11, 2023 with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and died 7 weeks later on Jan. 1, 2024.

Dec. 25, 2023 – Kailua, HI – Fernando Pizarro was diagnosed with CJD on Dec. 4, 2023 and died 21 days later.

Dec. 6, 2023 – Edgewood, TX – 47 year old Texas Firefighter Jody McPherson died on Dec. 6, 2023. “He was recently diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, or CJD” Prion disease.

Nov. 25, 2023 – Lakeville, PA – 63 year old Eleanor Meilinger started having neurological symptoms on Aug. 5, 2023 and was diagnosed with CJD. She died 3.5 months later.

Nov. 14, 2023 – Ebenezer, SA, Australia – 60 year old Tony Diotallevi died after a 3 month battle with CJD.

Oct. 25, 2023 – Bonita, CA – 59 year old Rosie Mouritzen died from CJD.

Oct. 9, 2023 – VA – Dianith Benzaquen died a few days after CJD diagnosis she received on Oct. 5, 2023.

Sep. 23, 2023 – San Dimas, CA – 48 year old firefighter Ryan Palmer was diagnosed with CJD on Aug. 2 and died after 7 weeks on Sep. 23, 2023.

Sep. 2, 2023 – Saint-Sauveur, QC, Canada – Maheux family – husband and father has been diagnosed with CJD.

July 25, 2023 – Woodstock, GA – 32 year old Cameron Pistacchio was diagnosed with CJD on July 9 and died 16 days later on July 25, 2023.

Click here to read the full article.

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

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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John Pilger, who died in his hometown of Sydney aged 84 on December 30, was a unique journalist, equipped with the combination of moral outrage, relentless sleuthing and unparalleled interviewing skills required to understand South Africa’s deep structural injustices. Setting aside all the scoops and awards elsewhere, no one else could have periodically parachuted into this country – first in 1967 when he was banned by apartheid, and lastly in 2017 – and then fit that half-century of dramatic turmoil into a hard-hitting film, Apartheid Did Not Die, and a dozen influential articles and book chapters.

Above all, John represented a chronicler of what can be considered the independent-left critique, one who connected the dots from imperialism to local power relations to suffering individuals with passion and eloquence. No one was spared by his savage pen. He wrote in 2013,

“In 2001, George Soros told the Davos Economic Forum, ‘South Africa is in the hands of international capital’… This led directly to state crimes such as the massacre of 34 miners at Marikana in 2012, which evoked the infamous Sharpeville massacre more than half a century earlier. Both had been protests about injustice. Nelson Mandela, too, fostered crony relationships with wealthy whites from the corporate world, including those who had profited from apartheid.”

There were three distinct phases of his work here, resulting in scores of references to South African injustice peppering many of his other international observations – including about Israel’s version of apartheid in his 2002 film Palestine is Still the Issue. 

In the first phase, during apartheid, his book Heroes (1986) contains a long chapter covering the gritty realities he encountered in 1967, before he was banned by Pretoria from visiting again. 

In the second, after returning in 1995, Pilger was aghast at post-apartheid triumphalism, which meant his 1998 film Apartheid Did Not Die was received with outrage by old and new elite alike. Pilger asked Nelson Mandela what were probably the toughest ethical and practical questions about the new system the president ever received. 

Likewise, debating FW de Klerk, Pilger was forthright: 

‘Didn’t you and your fellow white supremacists really win?’

It was as if a secret truth had been put to him. Waving away the smoke of an ever-present cigarette, he said: “It is true that our lives have not fundamentally changed. We can still go to the cricket at Newlands and watch the rugby. We are doing okay.” 

“For the majority, the poverty has not changed, has it?” I said. 

Warming to this implied criticism of the ANC, he agreed that his most enduring achievement was to have handed on his regime’s economic policies, including the same corporate brotherhood… “You must understand, we’ve achieved a broad consensus on many things now.” 

Pilger’s mix of hectoring and charm compelled the likes of Anglo-American spokesperson Michael Spicer, real estate mogul Pam Golding and fashion trend-setter Edith Venter to reveal similar white-greed truths. Spicer’s team would later show the film to the firm’s management trainees, I’ve been reliably told, as providing the best example of what not to do in an interview.

Famed liberal journalist Alister Sparks headed up the SABC’s current affairs division in 1998, and was incensed at what he saw as Pilger’s distortions due to “reliance mainly on fringe sources and disaffected people” (such as community activist Mzwanele Mayekiso and lawyer Richard Spoor).

Rebutted Pilger in the Mail & Guardian, “The film’s primary source is Mandela himself, who reveals just how much he has changed his views.” The national broadcaster, he went on, “having bought the South African rights to my film, sought first to ban it, then to muffle it. Sparks’s explanation for this has a Kafkaesque tone similar to Cold War tracts denouncing journalists, writers and playwrights who begged to differ with the regime in the Eastern bloc. He describes me as ‘a man with an ideological mission.’”

Pilger had previously written admiringly of Sparks’s bravery as a journalist reformer, but now complained,

“Inexplicably, my ideological masters and the colour of my party card are never identified, no doubt because it would be too truthful to point out that I have never allied myself with any political group. Indeed, I have always been intensely proud of my independence.”

In a third phase of his engagement, Pilger continued to provoke the elite, especially when after his book Freedom Next Time was published in 2006 and excerpted here, Thabo Mbeki’s finance minister Trevor Manuel and minister in the presidency Joel Netshitenzhe were enraged. The Sunday Independent was the site of a fierce battle over whether progress was really being made. 

In his essay, “ANC government has yet to free citizens from the fear of poverty,” Pilger wrote of the “arrogance that comes from undisputed power, which is the conundrum of South African political life – that the vote has given the nation democracy in many ways, but the price has been effectively a one-party state.” 

Pilger’s last event here was the inaugural Saloojee Memorial Lecture just over six years ago: “South Africa: how a nation was misled and became a model for the world, and how the people can rise again.” He declared,

“South Africa is where much of my political education took place,” and concluded, “what makes South Africa so interesting and so hopeful and probably unique because there are so many grassroots popular movements.”

In 2008, poet Dennis Brutus, journalist Ferial Haffajee and I hosted John at the Time of the Writer conference in Durban, just after an epic Pilger film fest at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (all his works are online here). Within 20 months, Dennis had passed on, leaving John to lament,

“I was so honored to meet Dennis last year, finally. He was a giant of a human being who changed the world in so many ways. His tenacious humanity inspired so many to go on and not let the bastards win in the long run.” 

As can be testified by so many who met him here – or learned about our realities from him – Pilger deserves the same tribute, as his films and writing renew our sense of indignity and our instincts for justice.

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Patrick Bond, Professor, University of the Western Cape School of Government. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

Featured image: John Pilger in his film, Palestine Is Still the Issue (johnpilger.com)

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New Year Donation Drive: Global Research Is Committed to the “Unspoken Truth”

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I am writing to flag a truly important document that should be widely circulated and read carefully by anyone interested in the ongoing Gaza War.

Specifically, I am referring to the 84-page “application” that South Africa filed with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 29 December 2023, accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.[1] It maintains that Israel’s actions since the war began on 7 October 2023 “are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnic … group in the Gaza Strip.” (1) That charge fits clearly under the definition of genocide in the Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory.[2]

The application is a superb description of what Israel is doing in Gaza. It is comprehensive, well-written, well-argued, and thoroughly documented. The application has three main components.

First, it describes in detail the horrors that the IDF has inflicted on the Palestinians since 7 October 2023 and explains why much more death and destruction is in store for them.

Second, the application provides a substantial body of evidence showing that Israeli leaders have genocidal intent toward the Palestinians. (59-69) Indeed, the comments of Israeli leaders – all scrupulously documented – are shocking. One is reminded of how the Nazis talked about dealing with Jews when reading how Israelis in “positions of the highest responsibility” talk about dealing with the Palestinians. (59) In essence, the document argues that Israel’s actions in Gaza, combined with its leaders’ statements of intent, make it clear that Israeli policy is “calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza.” (39)

Third, the document goes to considerable lengths to put the Gaza war in a broader historical context, making it clear that Israel has treated the Palestinians in Gaza like caged animals for many years. It quotes from numerous UN reports detailing Israel’s cruel treatment of the Palestinians. In short, the application makes clear that what the Israelis have done in Gaza since 7 October is a more extreme version of what they were doing well before 7 October.

There is no question that many of the facts described in the South African document have previously been reported in the media. What makes the application so important, however, is that it brings all those facts together in one place and provides an overarching and thoroughly supported description of the Israeli genocide. In other words, it provides the big picture while not neglecting the details.

Unsurprisingly, the Israeli government has labelled the charges a “blood libel” that “has no factual and judicial basis.” Moreover, Israel claims that “South Africa is collaborating with a terror group that calls for the destruction of the state of Israel.”[3] A close reading of the document, however, makes it clear that there is no basis for these assertions. In fact, it is hard to see how Israel will be able to defend itself in a rational-legal way when the proceedings begin. After all, brute facts are hard to dispute.

Let me offer a few additional observations regarding the South African charges.

First, the document emphasizes that genocide Is distinct from other war crimes and crimes against humanity, although “there is often a close connection between all such acts.” (1) For example, targeting a civilian population to help win a war – as occurred when Britain and the United States bombed German and Japanese cities in World War II – is a war crime, but not genocide. Britain and the United States were not trying to destroy “a substantial part” of, or all the people in those targeted states. Ethnic cleansing underpinned by selective violence is also a war crime, although it is also not genocide, an action that Omer Bartov, the Israeli-born Holocaust expert, calls “the crime of all crimes.”[4]

For the record, I believed Israel was guilty of serious war crimes–but not genocide—during the first two months of the war, even though there was growing evidence of what Bartov has called “genocidal intent” on the part of Israeli leaders.[5] But it became clear to me after the 24-30 November 2023 truce ended and Israel went back on the offensive, that Israeli leaders were in fact seeking to physically destroy a substantial portion of Gaza’s Palestinian population.

Second, even though the South African application focuses on Israel, it has huge implications for the United States, especially President Biden and his principal lieutenants. Why? Because there is little doubt that the Biden administration is complicitous in Israel’s genocide, which is also a punishable act according to the Genocide Convention. Despite his admission that Israel is engaged in “indiscriminate bombing,” President Biden has also stated that “we’re not going to do a damn thing other than protect Israel. Not a single thing.”[6] He has been true to his word, going so far as to bypass Congress twice to quickly get additional armaments to Israel. Leaving aside the legal implications of his behavior, Biden’s name – and America’s name – will be forever associated with what is likely to become one of the textbook cases of attempted genocide.

Third, I never imagined I would see the day when Israel, a country filled with Holocaust survivors and their descendants, would face a serious charge of genocide. Regardless of how this case plays out in the ICJ – and here I am fully aware of the maneuvers that the United States and Israel will employ to avoid a fair trial – in the future Israel will be widely regarded as principally responsible for one of the canonical cases of genocide.

Fourth, the South African document emphasizes that there is no reason to think this genocide is going to end soon, unless the ICJ successfully intervenes. It twice quotes the words of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on 25 December 2023 to drive that point home: “We are not stopping, we are continuing to fight, and we are deepening the fighting in the coming days, and this will be a long battle and it is not close to being over.” (8, 82) Let us hope South Africa and the IJC bring a halt to the fighting, but in the final analysis the power of international courts to coerce countries like Israel and the United States is extremely limited.

Finally, the United States is a liberal democracy that is filled with intellectuals, newspaper editors, policymakers, pundits, and scholars who routinely proclaim their deep commitment to protecting human rights around the world. They tend to be highly vocal when countries commit war crimes, especially if the United States or any of its allies are involved. In the case of Israel’s genocide, however, most of the human rights mavens in the liberal mainstream have said little about Israel’s savage actions in Gaza or the genocidal rhetoric of its leaders. Hopefully, they will explain their disturbing silence at some point. Regardless, history will not be kind to them, as they said hardly a word while their country was complicit in a horrible crime, perpetrated right out in the open for all to see.

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Notes

[1] https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf

[2] https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf

[3] https://www.timesofisrael.com/blood-libel-israel-slams-south-africa-for-filing-icj-genocide-motion-over-gaza-war/

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/opinion/israel-gaza-genocide-war.html

[5] https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/death-and-destruction-in-gaza

[6] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/12/how-joe-biden-became-americas-top-israel-hawk/ 

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

Breaking: Florida Will be the First Jurisdiction to Halt COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines

By Dr. William Makis, January 05, 2024

COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines damage the immune system and each additional dose causes additional immune damage, increasing the risk of COVID-19 infection and other infections and complications of infections (such as sepsis, septic shock).

‘Enormous Amount of Evidence’: Jonathan Turley Says Joe Biden’s Connection to His Son’s ‘Corruption’ Is ‘Impeachable’

By Haily Gomez, January 08, 2024

Turley appeared on “Fox News Sunday” to discuss the process for the president following the House’s recent resolution to launch an impeachment inquiry. Fox Host Shannon Bream asked the legal analyst about his thoughts on those who claim that there is no “smoking gun” evidence on Biden.

The International Court of Justice: A Glimmer of Hope and a Cloud of Doubt

By Dr. Paul Larudee, January 08, 2024

A lot of hope is being placed in the ruling of the ICJ. But even if the decision is, as expected, a powerful one, the only enforcement mechanism is the agreement of the parties to the convention that they will take all necessary actions to end the culpable actions and prosecute the perpetrators.

Video: Obama Chilling Movie, “Leave the World Behind”: Cyberattack, Power Grid Goes Out, Synchronized Chaos, Collapse, “Civil War”

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, January 07, 2024

“Leave the World Behind” depicts the unraveling of society in the wake of a surprise attack by an unknown assailant. Many believe the film, produced by Barack and Michelle Obama, predicts a cyberattack on the U.S. power grid.

Circle of Secrecy: The Iraq War’s Missing Cabinet Documents

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, January 08, 2024

The recent non-story arising from the cabinet documents made available as to why Australia participated in a murderous, destructive and most probably illegal war against Iraq in 2003 proves that point. The documents available showed, for instance, that a country, without mandatory parliamentary consultation, can go to war under the stewardship of a cabal influenced by the strategic interests of a foreign government.

Sudan Talks Between Military Leaders Cannot Bring Genuine Peace

By Abayomi Azikiwe, January 07, 2024

After nine months of warfare, which has been centered in the areas around Khartoum, al-Jazirah state and in sections of the Darfur region, the RSF leader Mohamed Dagalo (Hemedti) indicated that he was interested in unconditional negotiations on ending the conflict. Former interimPrime Minister Abdalla Hamdok put forward a framework for the beginning of talks which drew the support of the RSF leader.

Nuclear Alert: Another 32 US Bases in Europe Close to Russia

By Manlio Dinucci, January 07, 2024

Sweden will join NATO under US command next July. Meanwhile, the United States has already entered Sweden. An agreement was signed last December, that gives them unrestricted access to 17 Swedish military bases. Here the United States can deploy its forces and pre-position weapons. 

Video: Who Is Behind the Deadly Iran Bombing and Why? The US has Backed Terrorism in Iran for Years

By Brian Berletic, January 07, 2024

The US has used armed terrorist organizations for decades as proxies against their adversaries worldwide, including most recently in Syria, Iraq, and against Iran.

Coalition of “Grassroots Diplomats” Take the Lead on International Solidarity with South Africa in the Absence of Diplomacy and Accountability from U.S. Officials

By Melissa Garriga, January 07, 2024

Peace activists across the country have embarked on a campaign to mobilize global support for South Africa’s charge of genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The campaign, spearheaded by CODEPINK, World Beyond War, and RootsAction, aims to rally nations to submit a “Declaration of Intervention” supporting South Africa’s case at the ICJ.

History: Nationalism and the Rise of Leftist Politics: Jamaica’s Foreign Policy under Michael Manley and Edward Seaga (1972-1989)

By Tina Renier, January 06, 2024

The economic situation, the domestic political ideology, the individual leader, the context, and other key factors heavily influenced the pursuit of Jamaica’s foreign policy under the leadership of Michael Manley in the 1970s and in  in the 1980s.

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Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley stated Sunday that President Joe Biden’s connection to his son, Hunter Biden’s, “corruption” is cause for impeachment given the “enormous amount of evidence.”

Turley appeared on “Fox News Sunday” to discuss the process for the president following the House’s recent resolution to launch an impeachment inquiry. Fox Host Shannon Bream asked the legal analyst about his thoughts on those who claim that there is no “smoking gun” evidence on Biden.

Turley pushed back against the argument stating that not only has there been an “enormous amount” of evidence against the president and his family, but that most people agree it is “influence peddling.” 

“It’s simply not true. I mean, there’s been an enormous amount of evidence put together by the House committees – millions of dollars that have gone through a labyrinth of different accounts and shell companies to Biden family members,” Turley stated.

“There are Biden associates, who said that what the president has said publicly is nonsense, that he did know about this influence peddling. And most people agree that this is influence peddling. This is corruption.”

Turley continued to state that there is no necessity to “really show” that the money had “directly” gone to Biden for him to be impeached, emphasizing the “standard” in federal cases that have involved bribery and other similar crimes.

“But I have to correct one notion that is being bantered about and that is that you have to really show that money went directly to the president. That’s not the standard that in federal cases involving bribery and other crimes, giving money to a principal’s family members is in fact a benefit under federal law. Otherwise, everyone would just give money to family members and say it’s not a bribe, it’s not impeachable,” Turley stated.

“And by the way, it is impeachable. I was lead counsel in the last traditional impeachment trial, my client was impeached because benefits were given to a judge’s family member. So many of these congressmen repeating this argument voted on that impeachment and said, it is impeachable.”

The House passed a resolution Dec. 13 to open an impeachment inquiry into Biden, voting 221-212. Following the vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson released a joint statement with fellow Republicans Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer, and New York Rep. Elise Stefanik.

The four Republicans stated that not only did the House take a “critical step” into the investigation regarding Biden’s involvement in his family’s foreign affairs, but that “authorizing the inquiry puts us in the strongest position to enforce these subpoenas in court.”

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If the International Court of Justice rules that Israel has committed and is committing genocide, will it save Gaza?

On January 11-12 the ICJ will hear the accusation brought to it by South Africa. Specialists in International law Francis Boyle and (independently) Daniel Machover firmly believe that this is how the ICJ will rule, and that it will invoke the requirement that all 152 countries belonging to the genocide convention – including Israel and the US – must comply by desisting (in the case of Israel) and stopping all contact and services that enable Israel to commit the crime (in the case of the US and all other parties to the convention).

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They are unlikely to be revelatory, will shatter no myths, nor disprove any assumptions. Cabinet documents exist to merely show that a political clique – the heart of the Westminster model of government, so to speak – often contain the musings of invertebrates, spineless on most issues such as foreign policy, while operating at the behest of select interests. Hostility to originality is essential since it is threatening to the tribe; dissent is discouraged to uphold the order of collective cabinet responsibility.

The recent non-story arising from the cabinet documents made available as to why Australia participated in a murderous, destructive and most probably illegal war against Iraq in 2003 proves that point. The documents available showed, for instance, that a country, without mandatory parliamentary consultation, can go to war under the stewardship of a cabal influenced by the strategic interests of a foreign government. The Howard government, famously buried in the fatty posterior of the US imperium, was always going to commit Australian military personnel to whatever military venture Washington demanded of it. (In some cases, even without asking.)

It was modish to suggest during the “Global War on Terror” that governments with fictional weapons of mass destruction might pass them on to surrogate non-state actors.  It was fashionable to misread intelligence material alleging such links, and, when that intelligence did not stack up, concoct it, as Tony Blair’s government happily did, sexed-up dossiers and all, in justifying Britain’s participation in the mauling of Iraq.

The larger story in the recent documents affair over Iraq was what documents were withheld from the provision to the Australian National Archives in 2020. In his January 3 press conference, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese outlined the process. Normally, cabinet documents would be released two decades after their creation. Such documents are provided to the Archives three years in advance by the government of the day. But on this occasion, 78 were omitted from the transfer, enabling Albanese to point the finger firmly at his predecessor, Scott Morrison. (Those documents have since been transferred to the Archives.)

In Albanese’s view,

“Australians have the right to know the basis upon which Australia went to war in Iraq. Australians lost their lives during the conflict and we know that some of the stated reasons for going to war was not correct in terms of the weapons of mass destruction that was alleged Iraq had at the time.”

Australians, he went on to say, had “a right to know what the decision-making process was”.

The mistake in question had to be corrected, and the Archives had to release the documentation provided to them. A constricting caveat, however, was appended to the declaration: the release of the documents had to “account for any national security issues  […] upon the advice of the national security agencies.”

The caveat is a good starting point to suggest that this documents saga, and the restrictions upon the disclosure of the missing 78 Cabinet records, are set to continue. For one thing, Albanese has added to the farce of secrecy by commencing an independent review that is barely worth that title. The review is to be chaired by the very sort of person you would expect to bury rather than find things: Dennis Richardson, former director of the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation and former head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

Richardson’s appointment continues a practice of partisan control over a process that should be beyond the national-security fraternity. There are fewer strings of accountability, as would apply, say, to the Commonwealth Ombudsman. There are no terms of reference outlined. Short of simply being a political manoeuvre that might cast a poor light on the previous government’s practices, it is unclear what Richardson’s purpose really is apart from justifying the retention of any of the said documents from public view.

Either way, he will be on a tidy sum for the task, something which he is becoming rather used to. As The Klaxon reports, Richardson has been well remunerated by the PM&C for previous work. A $50,000-a-month contract was awarded to him last year for “strategic advice and review” between August 2 and October 31. The department refuses to state what it was for, preferring the insufferably vague justification of some “need for independent research or assessment”. Be on guard whenever the term “independent” is coupled with “inquiry” or “assessment” in an Australian government context.

A media release from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet further notes that no department official or Minister has a direct role in the release or otherwise of the documents in question; the Archives will have the final say on whether those documents will be released or otherwise, whatever Albanese says. Researchers, transparency activists and those keen on open government, are almost guaranteed disappointment, given the habitual secrecy and dysfunction that characterises the operation of that body.

If there is a true lesson in this untidy business for the Albanese government, it must surely lie in the need to debate, discuss and dissent from matters that concern the entanglement of Australia, not merely in foreign wars but in alliances that cause them. That, sadly, is a lesson that is nowhere being observed. Howard’s crawling disposition has found its successor in Albanese’s obsequiousness, in so far as foreign conflicts are concerned. Wherever the US war machine is deployed, Australia will hop to its aid with gleeful obedience.

And as for anything to do with revealing the Australian decision-making process about the decision to invade, despoil and ruin yet another Middle Eastern state in 2003, one is better off consulting records from the White House and the US State Department.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: [email protected]

Featured image: A Long Range Patrol Vehicle-mounted SASR patrol in western Iraq (Licensed under Fair Use)

I vaccini mRna sono: “un pericolo  per la salute e l’integrità del genoma” e per questo andrebbero aboliti. Il Dipartimento della Salute dello Stato della Florida si muove concretamente per scrivere la parola fine, una volta per tutte, alla somministrazione dei vaccini mRna.

Il capo del dipartimento sanitario dello Stato americano, Joseph Abiodun Ladapo denuncia apertamente il rischio di contaminazione del Dna umano. “Se i rischi dell’integrazione del Dna non sono stati valutati per i vaccini mRna -dice –, questi non sono appropriati per l’uso negli esseri umani”.

Ladapo scrive all’FDA e al CDC: l’approvazione accelerata dei farmaci è rischiosa

In una lettera inviata poche settimane fa al commissario della Food and Drug Administration Robert M. Califf  e al direttore del Centro per il controllo e la prevenzione delle malattie (CDC), Mandy Cohen, Ladapo scrive: “Garantire che i prodotti farmaceutici siano sicuri ed efficaci per il pubblico è la missione principale della Food and Drug Administration. Questa funzione è essenziale e funge da base per la fiducia del pubblico nelle agenzie di regolamentazione e nei funzionari sanitari. Sebbene le approvazioni accelerate per i farmaci soggetti a prescrizione esistano da oltre due decenni, la crisi degli oppioidi e la pandemia di Covid-19 sono solo due esempi che illustrano i rischi associati a questi processi accelerati per le approvazioni dei farmaci”.

A sostegno della sua tesi, il chirurgo alla guida dell’ente sanitario ricorda che già nel 2007 la Food and Drug Administration,  l’ente governativo statunitense che si occupa della regolamentazione dei farmaci, aveva prodotto un report nel quale segnalava che: “L’integrazione del Dna potrebbe teoricamente avere un impatto sugli oncogeni umani, i geni che possono trasformare una cellula sana in una cellula cancerosa” e che l’integrazione del Dna potrebbe “provocare instabilità cromosomica”.

Come rileva Patrizia Floder Reitter in un articolo pubblicato oggi sul quotidiano ‘La Verità’, si tratta di “dichiarazioni che hanno dato un altro, violento scossone alla credibilità delle verifiche effettuate dall’agenzia regolatoria statunitense”.

I precedenti in Florida: vaccini mRna sconsigliati ai bambini e ai maschi under 40

Non un fulmine a ciel sereno se si considera che il capo del Dipartimento della sanità dello Stato della Florida, già nel marzo 2022 aveva sconsigliato la somministrazione dei vaccini anti covid ai bambini sani e qualche mese più tardi, precisamente il 7 ottobre 2022, la stessa raccomandazione era arrivata anche per quanto riguarda i maschi sotto i 40 anni perché, come si legge in una nota dello stesso dipartimento: “Il beneficio della vaccinazione è probabilmente controbilanciato da un rischio insolitamente alto di morte per cause cardiache tra gli uomini di questa fascia di età”.

Dagli Stati Uniti all’Europa. Il caso della Florida segue quello della Danimarca, che, a settembre dello stesso anno,  aveva interrotto le somministrazioni dei sieri anti-Covid in tutti i soggetti sotto i 50 anni, ad eccezione delle persone fragili.

Ron DeSantis: vietato obbligare i dipendenti a vaccinarsi

Lo stesso governatore Ron DeSantis aveva consigliato a tutti i cittadini con meno di 65 anni di non effettuare il richiamo e aveva ​​firmato un pacchetto di leggi contro le norme federali che obbligano i lavoratori a vaccinarsi. Disposizioni che, di fatto, vietano ai datori di lavoro privati di imporre la somministrazione dei vaccini mRna ai propri dipendenti permettendo a questi ultimi di “scegliere tra numerose esenzioni, incluse ma non solo, problemi religiosi o di salute, gravidanza o futura gravidanza”.

Giorgio Valleris

 

VIDEO :

https://www.byoblu.com/2024/01/05/i-vaccini-mrna-contro-il-covid-sono-pericolosi-la-florida-chiede-di-abolirli/

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“Leave the World Behind” depicts the unraveling of society in the wake of a surprise attack by an unknown assailant. Many believe the film, produced by Barack and Michelle Obama, predicts a cyberattack on the U.S. power grid

A cyberattack that will make the COVID pandemic look like a minor inconvenience in comparison has been repeatedly “promised” in recent years by World Economic Forum (WEF) founder Klaus Schwab

“Leave the World Behind” doesn’t preach preparedness ideologies or indulge in apocalyptic fantasies. Instead, it offers a glimpse into the potential ramifications of societal breakdowns and the human condition’s capacity for both despair and resilience

It urges viewers to confront their own vulnerabilities, fostering a critical examination of our dependency on interconnected systems and the importance of building individual and communal resources

Take inspiration from the film, not to live in fear, but to act with intention. Build your own “ark,” hone your skills and cultivate a strong community around you. By embracing preparedness, you can face the uncertainties of the future with resilience and hope

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Video

In the video above, Patrick Bet-David, Adam Sosnick, Tom Ellsworth and Vincent Oshana with the PBD Podcast discuss whether Barack Obama’s chilling new Netflix film based on Rumaan Alam’s unsettling novel, “Leave the World Behind,” might be predicting that a cyberattack on the U.S. power grid is imminent.

Certainly, a cyberattack that will make the COVID pandemic look like a minor inconvenience in comparison has been repeatedly “promised” in recent years by World Economic Forum (WEF) founder Klaus Schwab and other globalists.

Lightly-Veiled Narratives

“Leave the World Behind” doesn’t just depict the unraveling of society as we know it in the wake of a surprise attack by an unknown assailant, it serves as a stark wake-up call for us to consider our own preparedness for a world without the familiar crutches of modern infrastructure.

Forget zombies and alien invasions; this film dives into the scarier, more plausible possibility of a slow, insidious breakdown of the systems that underpin our daily lives. Approaching this film with awareness helps unpack several lightly-veiled narratives.

Technocratic centralized global agendas like The Great Reset, depopulation, or social credit scoring systems that will erode autonomy could manifest through engineered crises that rally public obedience. Whether it’s from bioterror events, cyberattacks, lockdowns or strategic electric grid sabotages that override liberty for “security,” societal PTSD primes people to accept new norms for stability.

Totalitarian tip-toe tactics and manufactured chaos lets hidden hands manipulate populations toward desired power shifts disguised as natural outcomes. Disaster births massive opportunities for control when the public is too overwhelmed to scrutinize capital flows or ask questions.

Cui Bono?

Who benefits? Those who orchestrated the crisis. Interestingly, one of the false narratives this film tries to casually embed in the public psyche is that there is no shadowy cabal pulling the strings. Quoted from the film:

“A conspiracy theory about a shadow group of people running the world is far too lazy of an explanation, especially when the truth is far scarier. No one is in control. No one is puling the strings. When an event like this happens, the best even the most powerful people can hope for is a heads-up.”

“Do you actually believe that no one pulls the strings?” Bet-David asks. I for one don’t. There’s ample evidence to show that certain groups, organizations and individuals are paving the path for humanity, oftentimes decades in advance, if not longer. Schwab has even admitted as much. During remarks at the May 2022 WEF Summit in Davos he told the carefully curated audience:¹

“The future is not something that just happens. The future is built by us, by a powerful community, as you here in this room.”

Conspiracy Theory or Cautionary Tale?

Whether “Leave the World Behind” proves conspiracy theory or cautionary tale, arm yourself with provisions and principles that will check any tyranny rising from the orchestrated ashes. We the people, united, will never be defeated. Where decentralization flourishes, so does freedom.

This controversy extends beyond the film’s story, weaving into questions about media’s potential to influence real-world events and the anxieties of a society constantly on the precipice of change.

The film centers around the Sanford family, their idyllic Hamptons vacation shattered by cryptic warnings of a brewing catastrophe. As communication networks flicker and the familiar hum of infrastructure fades, the Sanfords are forced to confront a sobering reality: Their existence depends on a web of interconnected systems precariously balanced on the edge of collapse.

This vulnerability, mirrored in countless aspects of modern life, becomes the film’s central theme, serving as a stark reminder of our reliance on electricity, internet and logistical supply chains that now seem so easily disrupted. 

Predictive Programming?

But “Leave the World Behind” isn’t merely a cautionary tale: It’s a catalyst for uncomfortable questions. Some speculate it constitutes predictive programming due to the inclusion of cryptic signs and symbols. Predictive programming theory suggests media subtly expose future agendas in a way audiences ingest without resistance.

In the video above, Dutch legal philosopher Eva Vlaardingerbroek discusses the predictive programming angle of the film on Bannon’s “War Room.” Like many others, she believes the film is showing us what globalists like the WEF have in store for us.

Archie, the Sanfords’ son, sporting a T-shirt emblazoned with the word “Obey” throughout the film, throws suspicion into the narrative. The “Obey” T-shirt is a reference to the 1988 John Carpenter film “They Live,” which similarly deals with society’s obsession with mass media and the public’s inability to see the body snatchers for what they were. In short, people were unable to see reality as it was.

Is Archie’s “Obey” T-shirt simply a nod to the childish expression of rebellion, or a chilling foreshadowing of a future where compliance becomes paramount in the face of chaos?

Adding further fuel to the fire is the film’s production company — Higher Ground Productions, cofounded by Barack and Michelle Obama. This connection, many say, also suggests a veiled agenda.

Dangers of Relying on Modern Conveniences

The Sanfords’ reliance on modern-day comforts and technology highlights the dangers of complacency and the fragility of our existence. In contrast, Mr. Scott, the enigmatic neighbor, embodies preparedness and resourcefulness. His stockpiling of supplies and proactive approach showcases the power of personal responsibility in the face of crisis.

“Leave the World Behind” doesn’t preach preparedness ideologies or indulge in apocalyptic fantasies. Instead, it offers a glimpse into the potential ramifications of societal breakdowns and the human condition’s capacity for both despair and resilience. It urges viewers to confront their own vulnerabilities, fostering a critical examination of our dependency on interconnected systems and the importance of building individual and communal resources.

Easter Eggs Hidden in the Movie

While there have been many articles written about the hidden messages in the movie, most of them miss the most important ones. In my view, it is these Easter eggs that push the movie into a good watch. There is no doubt in my mind that these concealed communications had nothing to do with the Obamas, who produced the film. They were far more likely put in by editors of the film.

The video above helped me identify the ingenious and intricately concealed Easter eggs embedded in the movie, which illuminate the imminent importance of trust as a pivotal element in the catastrophic circumstances depicted in the movie. Within this cryptic storytelling, the vital role of trust during tumultuous times is unraveled.

The narrative strategically implies that the values and structures individuals build their lives upon might become obsolete overnight, and it exposes the unfortunate reality that amidst turmoil, human nature often leads to a disintegration of unity, where trust erodes, and individuals tend to betray rather than help one another. As such, the film unveils the inherent vulnerabilities in human interactions.

At its core, the narrative hints at the unsettling reality that in a crisis, human relationships will likely falter. This exposes vulnerabilities as people, driven by instinct or desperation, might betray one another, leaving the very essence of trust fractured in the face of adversity.

The video above has a completely different take on Rose’s character. Her childlike innocence amidst the chaos is a stark contrast, and her naiveté serves as a lens through which we witness innocence amid the turmoil, as she grapples with an unfamiliar situation.

Rose symbolizes a profound truth about trusting oneself — an attribute that often wanes as individuals transition into adulthood. Her role as a surrogate for all children becomes evident, offering a profound lesson amid turbulent times.

Children, with their unwavering trust in themselves, can serve as powerful role models and teachers in tumultuous moments. Rose’s innocence mirrors this unwavering trust, highlighting a valuable lesson lost in the journey to adulthood — a reminder to rekindle trust in oneself, especially in times of uncertainty and upheaval.

Rose’s obsession with watching the final episode of “Friends” may also be symbolic of her desire for resolution, an answer to the question, “How does it end?” which is something the viewers of “Leave the World Behind” do not get.

Avoid Venturing Outside Your Home During the Initial Chaos

While the film may raise uncomfortable questions about media manipulation and societal control, it also offers a beacon of hope — the hope that by acknowledging our vulnerabilities, fostering resilience, and engaging in honest conversations, we can emerge from the shadows of potential collapse more informed, adaptable and empowered.

I believe there is a very real possibility that the scenario the movie depicts could happen. Given everything we know, it would be foolish to ignore this warning and be unprepared for a disaster like this.

In case of a grid failure and infrastructure collapse, understanding that chaos will prevail in the streets is crucial, and must inform your decisions and preparations. And, the longer the grid failure persists, the more severe the chaos will become. While lockdowns might not be enforced, venturing outside of your property will be perilous.

Being able to stay sheltered at home will be paramount for safety, considering the risks of harm or worse amidst the chaos. So, preparation is key; identifying and acquiring essentials now, while you still can, is crucial. Two fundamental necessities stand out: food and water. Both are addressed in the sections below.

Food Prepping

Most prepping advice is clueless about optimal health, and while their suggestions of crackers and beans will keep you alive, it will also worsen your health.

After careful analysis and reflection, I suggest you consider stocking enough of the healthy provisions listed below to last you for two to eight weeks, as they will improve your health. If you are storing larger quantities, it will be helpful to rotate your food items and eat the oldest ones first.

Healthy Carbs

Consider stocking several pounds of fruit for each adult. These items are perishable and may only last up to two weeks. Fruit is, without a doubt, the healthiest carbohydrate you can consume. Choose your favorite fruits. Bananas are less than ideal because of their tendency to create higher tryptophan levels. The fruits should be ripe and sweet; otherwise it is best to avoid them.

You can store fruit juices in your freezer. They are typically in plastic bottles and if you freeze them the plastic expands and will accommodate the extra volume, whereas if they are in glass the container will break. The best commercial juice is the Evolution brand, as it is cold pressed and unpasteurized. Uncle Matt’s is one of the next best.

White rice stores well and is far better than brown rice, the fibers of which don’t digest well and therefore feed endotoxin-producing bacteria in your gut. It is not unreasonable to store eight 20-pound bags of white rice as an emergency source of calories for yourself, pets and your community. It can be stored for years as it is mostly pure carbohydrate with very little fat that can go rancid and, unlike most all other grains, has virtually no linoleic acid (LA).

Protein/Fat

In nature protein typically comes with fat, so I combined them. You can easily store a few months of meat in a freezer, but vegetarians will need other options. Meats from ruminant animals (not chickens or pigs) is typically very low in LA and are therefore the better choice. Also stock up on a high-quality protein powder. Make sure you enjoy the taste. I use our Collagen Complex Protein powder, which tastes great.

Eggs yolks are one of the finest nutrient dense foods on the planet as they contain both choline and vitamin K2. I personally consume six egg yolks a day from chickens I raise to have a very low LA content. I would caution against consuming much of the egg whites long-term. If a crisis catches you short of food, then it would be helpful to have the extra protein from egg whites. Just be sure to cook them first.

It is best to consume your egg yolks raw, which can easily be done by creating a smoothie or putting them in the white rice, which turns to rice pudding if you add a sweetener.

There is compelling science to support that butter and ghee should be considered essential because they contain odd-chain saturated fats like pentadecanoic acid and heptadecanoic acid. Both fats are ultimately metabolized to succinic acid, which is an important nutrient to keep the Krebs cycle moving smoothly. You can also drink milk for both fat and protein. It is mostly water, though, so it’s less than ideal for long-term storage, as it takes up so much space.

Shelf-Stable and Nonperishable Foods

You may also want to stock up on freeze-dried foods, which have a shelf life of 25 years or more. Other good long-term storage options that do not require refrigeration include canned salmon, canned cod livers, sardines in water (avoid ones preserved in vegetable oil), powdered milk and whey and other nutritional powders you can mix with water.

Ideally, you’ll want to store food in a cool, dark place with low humidity. Bags of rice are best stored in a sealed food-grade bucket with some oxygen absorbers. Vacuum sealing food can also extend shelf life. Fermented vegetables are also easy to make and will allow you to store fresh veggies (ideally from your own garden) for long periods of time.

Your favorite dried beans can also be a useful source of food as they can be soaked in water and sprouted, and some can even be consumed without cooking. But experiment with these before you just store them and aren’t sure if they will work for you.

Electricity for Preserving and Cooking Food

You can be highly confident that at some point you will not have any electrical power for a few weeks. There are two primary survival needs for electricity and both are related to food. One is preserving your food and the other is cooking it.

There are two options and for many it would be helpful to consider both. One is solar and the other is a gas generator. Neither of these solutions is cheap and can easily cost over $1,000 to 10 times that, or more, depending on your needs.

A starting place to research your options would be Amazon, to give you an idea of the more inexpensive options.²

While solar roof panels would be ideal, if you are hooked up to the grid and selling your electricity back to your utility, which most people do, then you will be unable to use your solar system during an outage as there are safety switches installed in most systems that prevent them from turning on, as it could put current into the system when repair technicians are working on downed lines.

If you have a generator and enough fuel, you could likely pulse it on and off to keep your refrigerator and freezer cold. Ideally, you will want to pair your generator with a battery storage solution like the ones from Yeti. This is an example of a 3,000-watt model³ that could run your freezer and fridge for 12 to 24 hours depending on how big they are.

If you don’t have a generator, then a small 12-volt refrigerator⁴ could be used. You could purchase solar panels for about $1/watt of power and pair it with a battery so you can store the energy.

You just need to determine how many watts you need for your refrigerator and secure the appropriate size pane. The refrigerator in the example above requires about 50 watts per hour or 1200 watts per day. A 250-watt solar panel should produce about 200 watts per hour when the sun is shining.

If it is cloudy, you won’t get much power, but it could theoretically power the refrigerator depending on sunlight availability. You can always purchase more panels for security. The benefit of sticking with a DC refrigerator is that the solar panel can power that directly, and there is no need to use an expensive inverter to convert the DC power from the solar panel to AC current.

Other options that will allow you to cook water and food during a blackout include (but are not limited to) solar cookers, which require neither electricity nor fire, small rocket stoves, propane-powered camping stoves and 12-volt pots and pans that you can plug into a backup battery.

Water

You’ll also want to secure a potable water source, as you can survive far longer without food than you can without water. An ideal system to consider, especially if you also have a garden, is to install a large cistern to collect rainwater.

Since I have a full acre of land that I grow food on, I have a 5,000-gallon cistern that collects rainwater from the gutters on my roof. This serves to augment my irrigation system but is also a large emergency source of water. Another strategy is to install a series of connected rain barrels to your gutters.

If you live next to a river or pond or have a swimming pool, you may not need a cistern as you can simply filter the water from them. I discuss this and other strategies in “How to Secure Your Water Supply for Emergencies.”

Also remember to stock up on means to purify less-than-ideal water sources. Examples include water purification tablets or drops, and/or independent water filtration systems that can filter out pathogens and other impurities (meaning a filtration system that is not tied to the tap in your home, in case pumps go down and you have no tap water).

Even a small survival water filtration system is better than nothing, as drinking contaminated water can result in serious illness and/or death. Having a rain barrel connected to your gutter downspout is a good idea. You can use it to water your garden, and in a worst-case scenario, you have a source of fresh water to drink, cook and take sponge baths in.

Be Prepared

“Leave the World Behind” reminds us that while societal collapse may seem like a distant dystopian fantasy, a little foresight and preparation can transform you from a helpless victim into an empowered survivor.

You can take inspiration from the film, not to live in fear, but to act with intention. Build your own “ark,” hone your skills and cultivate a strong community around you. By embracing preparedness, you can face the uncertainties of the future with resilience and hope, leaving the world behind, not with panic, but with the strength to navigate a new path forward.

I would encourage you to do the mental exercise of imaging if the scenario depicted in the film occurs. The obvious plan is to do everything you can to survive the two to four weeks during the chaos. You will want to avoid traveling at all costs as there will be a great risk in doing that. So, let’s make like a Scout, be prepared, and get everything you need to hole up in your home for this possibility. If it happens you will never regret being prepared.

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Notes

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Since April 15 the two most armed institutions inside the Republic of Sudan have turned the weapons on each other resulting in massive deaths, destruction and dislocation in this oil-rich state of 46 million people.

The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have tens of thousands of soldiers now fighting over the future direction of the country.

After nine months of warfare, which has been centered in the areas around Khartoum, al-Jazirah state and in sections of the Darfur region, the RSF leader Mohamed Dagalo (Hemedti) indicated that he was interested in unconditional negotiations on ending the conflict. Former interim Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok put forward a framework for the beginning of talks which drew the support of the RSF leader.

In a report published by the Sudan Tribune on January 4:

“The Coordination of Civilian Democratic Forces (Taqaddum) has called on the Chair of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), Ismail Omar Guelleh, to ensure civilian participation in the upcoming meeting between the leaders of the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). This request comes as IGAD is facilitating direct talks between Sudanese Army Chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF Commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, ‘Hemedti,’ which were originally scheduled for late December but were postponed. Saleh Ammar, a spokesman for the Civil Forces Alliance in Eastern Sudan and a member of the Tagaddum delegation that met with Djiboutian President Guelleh, stated that the demand for civilian participation was a key topic of discussion during the meeting. Ammar further indicated that all IGAD member states support the inclusion of civilians in all stages of the political process.” 

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Sweden will join NATO under US command next July. Meanwhile, the United States has already entered Sweden. An agreement was signed last December, that gives them unrestricted access to 17 Swedish military bases. Here the United States can deploy its forces and pre-position weapons. Nuclear weapons are not mentioned in the Agreement, but the United States will have exclusive control over pre-positioned weapons, therefore there is the possibility of deploying nuclear weapons in Sweden also.

The USA signed a similar agreement with Finland last December, which joined NATO under US command last April. Finland grants the United States unrestricted access to 15 military bases, including the prepositioning of weapons and the entry of US planes, ships, and military vehicles. Since the United States has exclusive control over these forces, it can deploy both nuclear weapons and carriers at Finnish bases. Five of the 15 bases are located in Lapland on the Russian border.

At the same time, the United States is deploying the new B61-12 nuclear bombs in Europe. They are deployed in Italy, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Turkey to replace the B61 nuclear bombs. The B61-12s may also be secretly located in Poland and other European countries. While their deployment is underway, the Pentagon announced the decision to develop a further variant of the bomb, called B61-13. It will have a power output of 360 kilotons, much higher than the B61-12’s maximum output of 50 kilotons.

The Pentagon reports that “the B61-13 will provide the President of the United States with additional options against more resistant military targets and targets over large areas”. In other words, the United States is deploying first-strike nuclear bombs in Europe, clearly aimed at Russia, to destroy command centre bunkers and large areas of strategic importance. Russia’s response is inevitable: it has completed the deployment in Belarus of tactical nuclear weapons capable of hitting US-NATO nuclear bases in Europe. At the same time, the risk of nuclear war is growing in the Middle East, where Israel – the only nuclear power in the region – is preparing, with US support, to attack Iran.

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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 recent bombing in Iran and US support of terrorism in Iran:

The US has used armed terrorist organizations for decades as proxies against their adversaries worldwide, including most recently in Syria, Iraq, and against Iran;

US weapons and equipment “fell into the hands” of ISIS and other terrorist organizations, consisting of the largest, most effective militant groups participating in the US proxy war against Syria;

US government and corporate-funded think tanks like the Brookings Institution in its 2009 “Which Path to Persia?” policy paper proposed using listed terrorist organizations like the MEK to undermine, coerce, and possibly even overthrow the Iranian government;

The 2009 paper suggested MEK be “delisted” as a terrorist organization by the US State Department, which the Department eventually did in 2012 following intense lobbying and media campaigning by senior US and European representatives;

The MEK is currently still supported by senior US-European representatives with undermining, coercing, and overthrowing the Iranian government remaining as a key Western geopolitical objective;

Western media warns the recent terrorist attack in Iran could trigger a wider regional conflict, which the US has openly sought since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023;

The 2009 Brookings paper feared Iran might not retaliate against US provocations, denying the US the wider regime-change war it sought;

Between the US-backed brutalization of Gaza and now a terrorist attack on Iran itself, the US is making it as politically unlikely as possible for Tehran to avoid retaliation if and when a major US or Israel strike on Iran takes place.

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Sources

BBC – Iran leader vows harsh response to deadly bombings that killed 84 (January 5, 2024): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle…

Al Jazeera – ISIL weapons traced to US and Saudi Arabia (2017): https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/1…

NY Times – Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A. (2013): https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/wo…

NYT – Behind the Sudden Death of a $1 Billion Secret C.I.A. War in Syria (2017): https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/wo…

New Yorker – The Redirection, Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism? (2007): https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20…

Brookings Institution – Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran (2009): https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/…

Brookings Institution – The Brookings Institution’s Contributors List (2020): https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/…

NYT – M.E.K.: The Group John Bolton Wants to Rule Iran (2018): https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/07/wo…

Guardian – Who is the Iranian group targeted by bombers and beloved of Trump allies? (2018): https://www.theguardian.com/world/201…

Politico – Graham returns cash to exile group (2013): https://www.politico.com/story/2013/1…

Voice of America – Pence, Truss Attend Paris Rally of Exiled Iran Opposition Group (July 2023): https://www.voanews.com/a/pence-truss…

US Department of State – Delisting of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (2012): https://2009-2017.state.gov/r/pa/prs/…

Guardian – Whoever is behind Kerman bombing risks igniting regional war (January 3, 2024): https://www.theguardian.com/world/202…

Featured image: 2024 Kerman bombings on 3 January (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)

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Peace activists across the country have embarked on a campaign to mobilize global support for South Africa’s charge of genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The campaign, spearheaded by CODEPINK, World Beyond War, and RootsAction, aims to rally nations to submit a “Declaration of Intervention” supporting South Africa’s case at the ICJ.

The focus is on holding Israel accountable for alleged genocide in Gaza and putting an end to the tragic suffering of an imprisoned population. Delegations from major cities engaged with U.N. missions, embassies, and consulates worldwide, urging countries to invoke the Genocide Convention at the United Nations’ judicial arm.

The campaign started two weeks ago with an open call for people to join in a petition and letter-writing campaign urging countries to invoke the genocide convention and charge Israel with genocide in the International Court of Justice. Since then, over 30,000 people signed the petition, accompanied by an impressive 118,290 letters sent to various countries urging support of the cause.

The nationwide delegations of “grassroots diplomats” took on this campaign because officially appointed U.S. diplomats continue to insist on supporting Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, rejecting the sentiments of a majority of people in the U.S. and around the world who want a ceasefire and an end to the slaughter. 

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby calls South Africa’s 84-page suit accusing Israel of genocide “meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.” Notably, the United States supported Ukraine invoking the Genocide Convention last year in the International Court of Justice with far less evidence. 

In the first week of January, delegations of grassroots diplomats embarked on a petition and letter delivery campaign across the United States, urging missions, consulates, and embassies to support South Africa’s legal action against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) under the U.N. Convention on Genocide. While the visits and deliveries varied from city to city, the overall reception by staff and representatives in each U.N. Mission, Embassy, and Consulate was encouraging and supportive, with some delegations able to meet directly with country representatives. 

The NYC delegation visited around 30 U.N. missions, engaging in significant diplomatic efforts. They had a positive meeting with Colombia’s U.N. Ambassador, Arlene Tickner, exploring the potential for a Declaration of Intervention to support South Africa’s legal action. Another meeting took place with the Deputy Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the U.N. At the Bolivia Mission, the delegation received a warm reception, providing a letter and petition. A productive meeting occurred with the Bangladesh U.N. Consul, who expressed interest in connecting with legal experts. The NYC team met African Union diplomats who offered support and suggested additional efforts for South Africa. A meeting at the South Africa Mission involved discussions with the counselor and Deputy Permanent Representative. The delegation expressed their gratitude and support to the South African government. The South African representative acknowledged and appreciated the delegation’s work in their peace work.

The D.C. team engaged in diplomatic efforts, meeting with the Deputy Minister at the Colombian Embassy to encourage the Colombian government’s continued stance against Israeli actions and to join South Africa’s case. They visited and submitted their petition to the Ghanaian, Chilean, and Ethiopian Embassies, urging support for South Africa’s case against Israel. The team also had discussions with the Bolivian Embassy. Currently, they are arranging a meeting with the Turkish ambassador to further their diplomatic initiatives.

Three delegations from Miami divided their efforts to visit ten consulates, including those of Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Denmark, France, Honduras, Ireland, Spain, and Turkey. The delegations had the opportunity to meet with consular generals from Bolivia, Honduras, and Turkey, all notably welcoming and receptive. In addition, the Miami team reached out to the Turkish ambassador in Washington, D.C., further extending their diplomatic efforts. The Türkiye Consulate in Miami emphasized the visit on their social media platform, underscoring the significance of the engagement.

Miami team at Turkish consulate (Source: CODEPINK)

The Tampa team focused on a single visit to the Greek Consulate, accompanied by a representative from CAIR Florida, based in Tampa. CAIR is a nationwide federation of legally independent chapters dedicated to safeguarding the civil liberties of Americans. The Greek Consulate warmly received the delegation, expressing appreciation for a gift of olive oil. Furthermore, they assured the team they would forward the petition and letter to the Embassy of Greece in Washington, D.C., indicating a positive reception and willingness to address the delegation’s concerns.

Orlando engaged with five consulates representing Mexico, Italy, Brazil, Haiti, and Colombia. The meeting at the Haitian Consulate was mainly positive, with a productive discussion with an Assistant Consul urging support for South Africa’s case against Israel. Similarly, the delegation met with the Vice Consular of Colombia, delivered a petition, and urged their support for South Africa’s case against Israel, indicating a proactive approach in advancing their diplomatic efforts.

In Houston, the delegation reported successful engagements during their visits. They met with the Consulate of Belize staff and spoke with Consulate General Francisco Leal of Chile. The Honduran consulate staff extended kindness during their visit. The delegations also visited the Pakistan consulate as part of their diplomatic efforts.

The San Francisco delegation visited three consulates – Chile, Brazil, and Colombia. They engaged with the staff at the Chilean and Brazilian consulates, delivering the petition and letter at the Colombian Consulate, situated in the same building as the Israeli Consulate. Security at the building instructed the delegation to wait outside for a representative. However, the doors were subsequently locked, preventing entry. In response, the delegation affixed the petition and letter to the building’s door to convey their message.

The delegation in Los Angeles visited nine foreign consulates in the city, including Belize, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Turkey, Chile, Colombia, and Kuwait. The delegation expressed gratitude to the staff at the South African Consulate for South Africa’s filing in the ICJ that charges Israel with genocide. As a goodwill gesture, the activists brought flowers, a simple yet well-received token of peace and unity. They also had an encouraging meeting with Bolivian Consulate Gabriella Silva, who supported the delegation’s effort. 

Belize Consulate LA (Source: CODEPINK)

Delegations from Detroit, Chicago, Boston, and San Antonio also made visits to their local Consulates. Prior to deliveries, Turkey, Malaysia, and Slovakia publicly came out in support of South Africa’s filing. Since then, Jordan announced that they will file a “Declaration of Intervention” supporting South Africa’s case.

This grassroots diplomatic effort represents a unified plea for justice, demanding global solidarity against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. The tireless advocacy seeks to bridge nations in support of South Africa’s pursuit of justice in the International Court of Justice. 

Deliveries will continue into the first of next week with the hopes of engaging with as many missions, consulates, and embassies as possible before the start of the ICJ hearing on Jan. 11. 

The oral argument of South Africa will take place on Thursday 11th January 2024 and Israel’s oral argument on Friday 12th January 2024. The hearings will be streamed live and on demand on the ICJ’s Website and on the UN Web TV.

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Melissa Garriga is the communications and media analysis manager for CODEPINK. She writes about the intersection of militarism and the human cost of war.

Featured image: Sf CA US Chilean consulate (Source: CODEPINK)

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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A member of British Parliament demanded the foreign secretary “take the strongest possible action against” Tzipi Hotovely, the Israeli ambassador to the U.K., after she appeared on a radio broadcast of LBC and told host Iain Dale in no uncertain terms that Israel’s military must target civilian infrastructure in Gaza—a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.

Hotovely told Dale that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have found that “every school, every mosque, every second house, has an access to tunnel,” referring to the tunnels used by Hamas—which were first built when Gaza was under Israeli control in 1980.

“That’s an argument for destroying the whole of Gaza, every single building,” Dale said, prompting Hotovely to ask, “Do you have another solution, how to destroy the underground tunnel city?”

Journalist Hamza Ali Shah said the ambassador’s statement amounted to “a clear call for genocide.”

Israeli ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely says every school, mosque and second house is a target for Israel.

Asked if that’s effectively a call for the destruction of all of Gaza, she asks “do you have another solution?”

A clear call for genocide. pic.twitter.com/VERR3x9XUA

— Hamza (@Hamza_a96) January 3, 2024

Hotovely is hardly the first Israeli official to publicly call for genocidal violence in Gaza—even as the government continues to claim it is targeting Hamas and protecting civilian lives and as the U.S., which has provided military aid for Israel’s bombardment and vehemently defended the IDF, claims accusations of genocide are “meritless.”

But her statement on British national radio underscored how genocidal language has become commonplace among Israel’s mainstream political class since the country began its bombardment in retaliation for Hamas’ October 7 attack.

British journalist Robert Carter said Hotovely’s comments make her “a good pick for Israel’s envoy to the U.K.”

“She always finds a way to properly sum up how evil Israel’s colonialist project is and what Tel Aviv’s true ambitions are—the total genocide and land theft of all Palestine,” he said.

Mitchell Plitnick cautioned observers against dismissing Hotovely’s remarks as the musings of a extremist whose views are outside the mainstream under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

Understand, Tzipi Hotovely is not Smotrich or Ben Gvir. She is a long time Likud stalwart, very much a part of Netanyahu's team, from his party.
Here, she calls for #genocide." When asked about it, she doubles down.
This is the very heart of what the US is supporting. https://t.co/6IyfM7cb4r

— Mitchell Plitnick 🔥🕎 (@MJPlitnick) January 3, 2024

Afzal Khan, a Labour MP, wrote to British Foreign Secretary David Cameron to demand that Hotovely’s comments be met with “stern denunciation” from the government.

“The situation is unfathomable, and the words of the Israeli ambassador make clear that it is the intention of the Israeli government to continue with its horrific bombardment and ground fighting until there is nothing and no one left in Gaza,” wrote Khan.

The Israeli Ambassador, Tzipi Hotovely, has encouraged the full destruction of Gaza. This is a clear call for the genocide of Palestinians.

I've written to the Foreign Secretary, calling on him to condemn this and to take the strongest possible action against the Ambassador 👇 pic.twitter.com/qksXFkC4JM

— Afzal Khan MP (@Afzal4Gorton) January 4, 2024

Others, including Guardian columnist Owen Jones and research analyst Naks Bilal, said Hotovely should be expelled from her role.

“The Israeli ambassador has gone on national British radio and incited genocide,” said Jones. “This is an illegal act under the 1948 Genocide Convention. As such, the U.K. must expel Tzipi Hotovely immediately.”

[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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Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Featured image is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0