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By Richard Falk

I found it sad that when David Ray Griffin died on November 2022 so little public notice was taken to report on the death of one of the most important thinkers of our time who illuminated our understanding of many crucial scholarly and academic concerns. He did so in a consistently independent and progressive manner, fully using the work of others, whether ally or adversary.

Late in life Griffin achieved fame; for some, shameful notoriety, for others as the leading exponent of an alternative narrative of what really happened on 9/11 when the key symbolic sites of US wealth and power, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, were attacked by terrorists in 2001, resulting in the death of over 3,000 persons. To those who knew him, whether or not persuaded by his dissenting views of 9/11, there was never a loss of respect for Griffin, the probing thinker and scholar who fearlessly followed the evidence wherever it led, and whose scholarly effort was directly linked to his sense of an US intoxicated by its power imperiling itself and the world.

Griffin’s friendship and exemplary role as a public intellectual was influential and inspirational for me and many others in several realms of thought long before he became obsessed with his strong sense of duty to expose the realities of the 9/11 controversy.  His earlier work had focused on a philosophical and social rethinking of the nature of religion, with a full awareness of its economic, political, civilizational, and ecological implications under conditions of modernity. It is impossible to summarize his wide-ranging interests and scholarly achievements.

Yet one feature of almost all of his voluminous writing is unusual and stands out: Griffin’s willingness to go beyond the boundaries of what was deemed by conventional opinion to be ‘responsible thought’ or ‘acceptable dissent’ as interpreted by the self-censoring filters relied upon by the most influential media platforms that made Griffin’s death a public happening that never happened. I have come to believe that it was not mainly because his views aligned with the main currents of progressive thought in the United States and abroad. Something more and different was at stake that is worth reflecting upon as a result of his public persona being linked so closely to views on 9/11 that governing elites not only wanted to be discredited but forgotten.

Like Noam Chomsky, or Jean-Paul Sartre before him, Griffin had distinguished himself by way of breakthrough scholarship long prior to venturing onto the precarious terrain of controversial politics. Yet Chomsky, eminent as a linguist before he ventured into public space with devastating critiques of the U.S. role in the world, will be recognized and even celebrated whether dead or alive as a progressive public intellectual almost everywhere in the world, raising the elusive question as to what are the elusive differences among notable public intellectuals.

In my view there are certain ‘no-go’ zones that Chomsky and Sartre more or less respected, not from prudence, but due to their beliefs and interests. In contrast, Griffin continuously breached such limits during his long productive scholarly life, even in his early philosophical and theological works that took seriously the truth claims of parapsychology and reports confirming life after death, anathemas to those who believed that modern science with its mechanistic views of causation were decisive criteria of the real.

Griffin’s early creativity centered on stripping religion of supranaturalism, while enlarging our understanding of more expansive views of scientifically verified reality. He proceeded by affirming the continuous relevance in the modern world of the stress on the experientially validated philosophical assessments associated with the philosophical work of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. If Griffin had stopped here, his contributions would be appreciated by devoted followers in a few relatively esoteric academic circles, and there would be little reason to be puzzled as to why his unconventional work and life did not receive wider public recognition. Actually, a respected obit writer might have been impressed by Griffin’s work and depicted his life as centering on a maverick’s challenge to the dogmas of truth, currently strictly adhered to by the scientific community.

Chomsky and Sartre were certainly controversial and denounced by right-wing critics, but their stature as world class intellectuals fully entitled to comment on global issues was never called into serious question. Some critics insisted that their views were expressions of radical thought and neither Chomsky nor Sartre had the benefit of specialized training in international affairs, but attacks on their opinions were seen as part of the normal give and take encountered in any liberal democratic society, and especially in Chomsky’s case were largely confined to the tightly knit professional class of foreign policy experts and their bureaucratic counterpart.

True, Chomsky’s sharp criticisms of Israel and Zionism are second only to 9/11 in the pushback they receive, but Chomsky has moved on to emphasize broader issues of policy, that indict the judgment of elites, but do not question their behavior and integrity in the Griffin manner. These considerations foreground the question as to why Griffin’s later work on 9/11 set off a different set of alarms that produced this ‘conspiracy of silence’ with respect to his scholarly achievements, which were easily sufficient to have earned Griffin sufficient eminence to make his passing a public event worthy of notice and commentary.

After much puzzlement, I have come to explain this neglect of such an outstanding scholar as an indirect consequence of Griffin daring to challenge the official version of the 9/11 attacks of 2001 on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Not only did he mount this challenge by publishing a book provocatively entitled The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 (2004), but he followed this carefully crafted critique with an incredible additional eleven books that debunked every facet of the official version of these events, and gained a worldwide following for what had become a crusade to bring the truths he discovered about what happened on 9/11 to the public arena in ways that would produce a reliably objective inquiry rather than a thinly rationalized whitewashing of official culpability.

What may have been even more inflammatory than the accusation that the government and the media had orchestrated a massive coverup were Griffin’s views of the motivations and consequences involved. What was undoubtedly most incriminating from the perspective of Washington and the threats posed by Griffin to its matrix of ideological control was his well-evidenced belief that this denial of 9/11 truth was tied to an underlying foreign policy agenda that had fueled past war-making and imperial interventions, and were integral to implementing the post-Cold War neoconservative resolve to fill permanently the geopolitical vacuum created by the Soviet implosion. By doing so, the U.S. could exert control over the whole world on behalf of financially-oriented world capitalism operating under the security blanket of US militarism masked as ‘democracy promotion.’

9/11 truth tellers are generally portrayed as crazy enemies of the people animated by mental disorder, which in Griffin’s case is totally false, whose personal life possessed all the attributes of middle class normalcy, including a lively involvement with a loving family. By using their pervasive influence, the overlords of public belief succeed in painting Griffin, and others who subscribed to his deconstruction of the main rationale for the War on Terror as wing nuts the established order survived the Griffin storm.

I think it was the successful branding of the 9/11 skeptics as ‘wacky’ that proved more useful in squelching their influence than by labeling them as ‘dangerous,’ ‘subversive,’ and ‘radical’ or ‘socialist.’ It might be understood as the advent of a more advanced, more sophisticated version of McCarthyism, a discrediting ploy that George Orwell would have immediately understood. I experience a touch of this treatment when the US ambassador to the UN at the time, John Bolton, called me ‘a fruitcake’ in the course of a rant opposing my appointment in 2008 as Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine. He called my appointment as illustrative of all that was wrong with the UN.

Griffin found his audiences around the world through well attended lectures, foreign media outlets, and most of all through his defiant books on why it was vital to get the true story of 9/11 as widely disseminated as possible. He fully earned his international celebrity by linking the exposure of the 9/11 events to the before and after stories of US foreign policy in a series of outstanding books: Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined the United States and the World (2015); The American Trajectory: Divine or Demonic (2018). Both of these books connect the grandiosity of the past US claims of Manifest Destiny and ‘exceptionalism’ to the neoconservative determination to make the entire world subject to U.S. hegemony.

Griffin’s passion and talent were saved for his dying days in a hospice when he was nearly paralyzed by pain but determined to make one last attempt to alert the North American people about the disastrous future that is being scripted in the manner of responding to the Ukraine War.

His book soon to be available to the public bears the graphic title America on the Brink: How U.S. Foreign Policy Led to the War in Ukraine (2023). This book is indispensable reading for all who want to understand why the current behavior of the United States is dooming the prospects of the human species for a peaceful and ecologically stable future.

Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, at Queen Mary University London,  Research Associate the Orfalea Center of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Fellow of the Tellus Institute.

27 February 2023

Source: www.transcend.org

By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan

23 Feb 2023 – Malcolm X was assassinated 58 years ago, on 21 Feb 1965, standing at the podium before a crowd in Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom. His wife Betty Shabazz, pregnant with twins, and his four daughters, aged 6, 4, 2 and five months, were in the ballroom, looking on. As Malcolm began speaking, a man shouted, accusing another of picking his pocket, creating a disturbance. A smoke bomb was thrown. Amidst the confusion, three gunmen at the front of the hall opened fire. Malcolm was hit 17 times in the ensuing hail of bullets. He died on the stage as chaos erupted.

Talmadge Hayer (a.k.a. Mujahid Abdul Halim) was shot in the leg by one of Malcolm X’s bodyguards as he fled the ballroom. He was caught on the scene with ammunition that matched one of the murder weapons. In the days that followed, two other men, Khalil Islam and Muhammad Aziz, were arrested and accused of being the two additional shooters, even though they were nowhere near the ballroom that day and could prove it. Hayer testified under oath that his two codefendants were innocent but was ignored.

Aziz would go on to spend 20 years in prison, and Islam, 22 years. Then, in 2021, more than 56 years after Malcolm X’s assassination, these two wrongfully convicted men were exonerated. Muhammad Aziz was 83 years old. Khalil Islam died in 2009. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. opened a reinvestigation of the assassination and prosecution, complementing years of dogged research by journalists, historians and independent researchers that pointed not only to the innocence of Aziz and Islam, but to the guilt of others.

The reinvestigation spanned almost two years, and uncovered previously undisclosed FBI and New York Police Department (NYPD) documents. It was revealed, more than half a century later, that the FBI had up to ten informants inside the Audubon Ballroom. The NYPD had at least three undercover officers there as well, one of whom was actually on Malcolm X’s security team. Evidence gathered by both the FBI and the NYPD that was exculpatory was “deliberately withheld” from Aziz and Islam. This information and more, the Manhattan DA argued, “would have resulted in verdicts more favorable to the defendants.” The court agreed, and vacated the convictions in late 2021.

Muhammad Aziz and the estate of Khalil Islam sued both the City and State of New York for wrongful conviction and imprisonment, and, in late 2022, they reached a combined settlement of $36 million.

Which brings us to 2023. Today, the Audubon Ballroom has been restored, and is the Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial & Education Center. On February 21st, the 58th anniversary of Malcolm’s assassination, the family, along with their lawyers, held a press conference there to announce a forthcoming $100 million wrongful death lawsuit. The suit will name the City of New York, the District Attorney, the NYPD, the FBI, the U.S. Justice Department, and, interestingly, the Central Intelligence Agency.

“We intend to have vigorous litigation of this matter,” civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump said. “To have discovery, to be able to take depositions of the individuals who are still alive 58 years later, to make sure that some measure of justice can be given to Malcolm X’s daughters, who in this very room were present with their mother when he was shot at 21 times, 17 bullets hitting him. If anybody deserves justice after these decades, it is these women.”

Malcolm X’s third daughter of six, Dr. Ilyasah Shabazz, an educator and author, spoke next, her voice shaking:

“On February 21st, 1965, my mother came here excited to see her husband, because a week prior her home had been firebombed. She walked in here happy, and she left shattered.”

Ilyasah was also there that day, just two years old.

She continued,

“For years our family has fought for the truth to come to light concerning his murder, and we’d like our father to receive the justice that he deserves. The truth about the circumstances leading to the death of our father is important not only to his family but to many followers, many admirers, many who looked to him for guidance, for love. And it is our hope that litigation of this case will finally provide some unanswered questions. We want justice served for our father.”

Malcolm X was just 39 years old when he was assassinated, as was Martin Luther King, Jr. three years later when felled by a sniper’s bullet in Memphis. Both men were leading revolutionary movements for Black liberation, and both were heavily surveilled and targeted by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI.

The time for knowing the full truth behind Malcolm X’s assassination is long past due. May this lawsuit provide the answers, and the overdue justice, that his daughters, and this country, deserve.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 900 stations in North America.

Denis Moynihan is the co-founder of Democracy Now! Since 2002, he has participated in the organization’s worldwide distribution, infrastructure development, and the coordination of complex live broadcasts from many continents.

27 February 2023

Source: www.transcend.org

By Ralph Nader

23 Feb 2023 – I wrote the following column ten years ago. Note the absence of any accountability or regret by Bush, Cheney and their co-war criminals.Ten years ago [now 20 years ago, on March 19, 2003] George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, as war criminals, launched the sociocide of the people of Iraq – replete with embedded television and newspaper reporters chronicling the invasion through the Bush lens. That illegal war of aggression was, of course, based on recognized lies, propaganda and cover-ups that duped or co-opted leading news institutions such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Wars of aggression – this one blowing apart a country of 25 million people ruled by a weakened despot surrounded by far more powerful adversaries – Israel, Turkey and Iran – are major crimes under international law and the UN Charter. The Bush/Cheney war was also unconstitutional, never declared by Congress, as Senator Robert Byrd eloquently pointed out at the time. Moreover, many of the acts of torture and brutality perpetrated against the Iraqi people are illegal under various federal statutes.

Over one million Iraqis died due to the invasion, the occupation and the denial of health and safety necessities for infants, children and adults. Far more Iraqis were injured and sickened. Birth defects and cancers continue to set lethal records. Five million Iraqis became refugees, many fleeing into Jordan, Syria and other countries.

Nearly five thousand U.S. soldiers died. Many other soldiers committed suicide. Well over 150,000 Americans were injured or sickened, far more than the official Pentagon under-estimate which restricts nonfatal casualty counts only to those incurred directly in the line of fire.

So far, the Iraq War has monetarily cost taxpayers about $2 trillion. Tens of billions more will be spent for veteran’s disabilities in addition to continuing expenses in Iraq. Taxpayers are paying over $600 million a year to guard the giant U.S. Embassy and its personnel in Baghdad, more than what our government spends for OSHA, whose task is to reduce the number of American workers who die annually from workplace disease and trauma – currently about 58,000.

All for what results? Before the invasion, there was no al-Qaeda in Saddam Hussein’s secular dictatorship. Now a growing al-Qaeda in Iraq is terrorizing the country with ever bolder car bombings, and suicide attacks taking dozens of lives at a time and spilling forcefully over into Syria.

Iraq is a police state with sectarian struggles between the dominant Shiites and the insurgent Sunnis who lived together peacefully and intermarried for centuries. There were no sectarian slaughters of this kind before the invasion, except for Saddam Hussein’s bloodbath against rebellious Shiites. The Shiites were egged on by President George H.W. Bush, who promptly abandoned them to the deadly strafing by Saddam’s helicopter gunships at the end of the preventable first Gulf War in 1991.

Iraq is a country in ruins with a political and wealthy upper class raking off profits from the oil industry. The U.S. is now widely hated in that part of Asia. Bush/Cheney ordered the use of cluster bombs, comprised of white phosphorous and depleted uranium, against the people of Fallujah where infant birth deformities have skyrocketed.

As Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi-American analyst observed, “Complete destruction of the Iraqi national identity.” Moreover, the sectarian system introduced by the U.S. invaders in 2003, resulting in Iraqis being favored or excluded based on their sectarian and ethnic affiliations, laid the basis for the current cruel chaos and violence – a nasty, brutish form of divide and rule.

The results back home in our country are soldiers and their extended families suffering in many ways from broken lives. Phil Donahue’s gripping documentary Body of War follows the pain-wracked life of one soldier returning in 2004 from Iraq as a paraplegic. That soldier, Tomas Young, nearing the end of his devastated life, has just written a penetrating letter to George W. Bush, which every American should read. [https://nader.org/2014/11/14/tomas-youngs-last-letter-to-bush-cheney/].

The lessons from this unnecessary quagmire should be: first, how to stop any more wars of aggression by the Washington warmongers – the same neocon draft dodgers are at it again regarding Iran and Syria. And second, the necessity to hold accountable the leading perpetrators of this brutal carnage and financial wreckage who are presently at large – fugitives from justice earning fat lecture and consulting fees.

In the nine months running up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, at least three hundred prominent, retired military officers, diplomats and national security officials publicly spoke out against the Bush/Cheney drumbeats to war. Their warnings were prophetically accurate. They included retired Generals Anthony Zinni and William Odom, and Admiral Shanahan. Even Brent Scowcroft and James Baker, two of President George H.W. Bush’s closest advisors, strongly opposed the invasion.

These outspoken truthsayers, notwithstanding their prestige and experience, were overwhelmed by a runaway White House, a disgraceful patsy mainstream media and an abdicatory Congress. Multi-billionaire George Soros was also courageously outspoken. Unfortunately, prior to the invasion, he did not provide a budget and secretariat for these men and women to provide continuity and to multiply their numbers around the country, through the mass media and on Capitol Hill. By the time he came around to organizing and publicizing such an organized effort, it was after the invasion, in July 2003.

Nine months earlier, I believe George Soros could have provided the necessary resources to stop Bush/Cheney and their lies from stampeding our government and our country into war.

Mr. Soros can still build the grassroots pressure for the exercise of the rule of law under our Constitution and move Congress toward public hearings in the Senate designed to establish an investigative arm of the Justice Department to pursue the proper enforcement against Bush/Cheney and their accomplices.

After all, the Justice Department had such a special prosecutors’ office during the Watergate scandal and was moving to indict a resigned Richard Nixon before President Ford pardoned him.

Compare the Watergate break-in and obstruction of justice by Nixon, with the horrendous crimes coming out of the Bush and Cheney war against Iraq – a nation that never threatened the U.S. but whose destruction takes a continuing toll on our country.

[Additional note: As Senators, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden voted for the Iraq war in 2003. Will President Biden, Congress and other Americans recognize the massive war crimes committed against the Iraqi people with appropriate declarations and actions on March 19, 2023?].

 Ralph Nader is a US political activist, author, lecturer, and attorney noted for his involvement in consumer protection, environmentalism, and government reform causes.

27 February 2023

Source: www.transcend.org

By Ben Norton

19 Feb 2023 – A Chinese balloon that the US military shot down had likely been pushed off course by unexpected weather conditions, according to multiple officials in Washington.

This is according to numerous reports in major US media outlets, including the Washington Post and CNN.

In response to hysteria surrounding the Chinese rubber object, the US Air Force subsequently spent roughly $2 million to destroy what appears to have been a hobby group’s $12 balloon.

Weather pushed Chinese balloon off course, US shot down $12 hobbyist balloon in $2M missile attack

On February 1, a large Chinese balloon was first seen over the US state Montana.

On February 4, US military fighter jets shot down the rubber object, off the coast of South Carolina.

Washington accused Beijing of using the balloon to spy on US territory.

China adamantly denied that the rubber object was a surveillance device, instead maintaining that it was used for weather research.

There are legitimate reasons to take Beijing at its word. The Washington Post had acknowledged on February 3, “Experts in national security and aerospace said the craft appears to share characteristics with high-altitude balloons used by developed countries around the world for weather forecasting, telecommunications and scientific research”.

The Pentagon itself said that “the payload wouldn’t offer much in the way of surveillance that China couldn’t collect through spy satellites” and that “the balloon posed no serious physical or intelligence threat”.

— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) February 4, 2023

The newspaper quoted an anonymous US “senior defense official” who “said the payload wouldn’t offer much in the way of surveillance that China couldn’t collect through spy satellites”, stating, “I wouldn’t characterize it as revolutionary”.

Even the bellicose right-wing think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) – which is funded by the US government and weapons industry and is notorious for its anti-China bias – called for caution early on, conceding in a February 3 article: “China has not used balloons for spying before, and using a balloon would be a step back. The most likely explanation is that this is an errant weather balloon that went astray—lost weather balloons are the basis of many ‘UFO sightings’”.

It was clear from the beginning that the Chinese balloon was part of a manufactured crisis, and its significance, like the rubber object itself, was being blown out of control.

But the media’s hot air had the effect of ratcheting up tensions with China, creating fear among the US public, and leading Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel a diplomatic trip to Beijing.

Hawkish US politicians from both the Republican and Democratic Parties, along with neoconservative think tanks, capitalized on the bubble to portray China as a dangerous threat.

Slate reported that Republican Congressman James Comer, who chairs the US House Oversight Committee, warned that the balloon could have “bio-weapons” made in Wuhan, while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich insisted it “could be trial runs for low-visibility deliver[y] of devastating EMP weapons”.

CNBC declared that the balloon “threatens NATO members”, citing the Western military alliance’s bellicose Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who denounced the rubber object as a sign of a dangerous “pattern of Chinese behavior”, insisting, “We need to be aware of the constant risk of Chinese intelligence and step up what we do to protect ourselves”.

US Air Force spent $2 million to shoot down hobbyists’ $12 balloon

From February 10 to 12, Air Force fighter jets shot down three objects. At first, US government officials and Western media outlets implied that Washington had targeted more Chinese surveillance devices, but they actually appeared to have been civilian balloons.

The website Aviation Week reported that an amateur balloon belonging to a hobbyist group called the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade went missing in the same place at the same time as one of these Air Force bombings.

Aviation Week noted: “The descriptions of all three unidentified objects shot down Feb. 10-12 match the shapes, altitudes and payloads of the small pico balloons, which can usually be purchased for $12-180 each, depending on the type”.

The founder of a company that makes pico balloons for hobbyists told Aviation Week, “I tried contacting our military and the FBI—and just got the runaround—to try to enlighten them on what a lot of these things probably are. And they’re going to look not too intelligent to be shooting them down”.

British newspaper The Guardian followed up on this report, in its own article amusingly titled “Object downed by US missile may have been amateur hobbyists’ $12 balloon“.

Researcher Stephen Semler estimated that the Pentagon spent around $2 million in this operation to shoot down the hobbyists’ balloon over Lake Huron.

The Air Force used two AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles in the attack, which cost more than $440,000 each and are manufactured by the arms corporation Raytheon.

Immediately after the attacks, the Democratic majority leader of the US Senate, Chuck Schumer, had insisted without evidence that the three objects were spy balloons, declaring, “The Chinese were humiliated – I think the Chinese were caught lying… It’s a real setback for them”.

But the US National Security Council spokesman, John Kirby, revealed on February 14 that the three objects destroyed by the US military were likely balloons “tied to some commercial or benign purpose”.

“We haven’t seen any indication or anything that points specifically to the idea that these three objects were part of [China’s] spying program, or that they were definitively involved in external intelligence collection efforts”, Kirby added.

President Joe Biden himself admitted on February 16 that the three objects the military blew up were “most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research”.

US intelligence officials acknowledge the Chinese balloon may have been blown off course by weather

Ten days after the Air Force shot down the Chinese balloon, US officials conceded that the rubber object had probably been blown off course by weather.

The Washington Post acknowledged in a February 14 report that the Chinese balloon “may have been diverted on an errant path caused by atypical weather conditions”.

The newspaper reported that the balloon “took an unexpected northern turn, according to several U.S. officials, who said that analysts are now examining the possibility that China didn’t intend to penetrate the American heartland with their airborne surveillance device”.

US “intelligence analysts are unsure whether the apparent deviation was intentional or accidental”, the Post wrote.

“This new account suggests that the ensuing international crisis that has ratcheted up tensions between Washington and Beijing may have been at least partly the result of a mistake”, the newspaper said.

CNN also cited numerous anonymous sources and reported, “US intelligence officials are assessing the possibility that the suspected Chinese spy balloon was not deliberately maneuvered into the continental US by the Chinese government and are examining whether it was diverted off course by strong winds“.

The major US media outlet stated that the balloon took “a path that US officials are not sure was purposeful, and may have been determined more by strong winds than deliberate, external maneuvering by Beijing”.

“Weather modeling done by CNN suggests it is plausible that the wind currents at the time diverted the balloon northward toward Alaska”, the network wrote.

CNN added, “US officials have acknowledged that the balloon’s maneuverability was limited”.

In a speech at the Munich Security Conference on February 18, top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi said Washington’s response to the balloon was “absurd and hysterical“.

He added, “It does not show the US is strong; on the contrary it shows it is weak”.

Benjamin Norton is an investigative journalist, analyst, writer and filmmaker.

27 February 2023

Source: www.transcend.org

By Ben Norton

23 Feb 2023 – The Chinese government has published a lengthy report condemning “US hegemony” and its destructive effects on the world.

The document analyzed the ways in which the United States has “abused” its hegemony politically, militarily, economically, financially, technologically, and culturally.

China’s Foreign Ministry noted that Washington has roughly 800 foreign military bases all around the world and has launched 400 foreign military interventions.

China condemns ‘US hegemony’, war crimes, CIA coups, 400 foreign interventions

The United States committed genocide against Indigenous nations, imposed its colonialist “Monroe Doctrine” in Latin America, and annexed independent territories like Hawaii, Beijing pointed out.

China denounced the US for sponsoring coups, regime-change operations, and “color revolutions” in dozens of countries, while constantly spreading “misinformation” and propaganda to destabilize foreign adversaries.

Just since 2001, US wars have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, wounded millions, and created tens of millions of refugees, Beijing recalled.

These devastating facts were laid out in the report “US Hegemony and Its Perils“, which China’s Foreign Ministry released on February 20. It was subsequently republished by major Chinese media outlets.

Beijing said the goal of the report was to “draw greater international attention to the perils of the U.S. practices to world peace and stability and the well-being of all peoples”.

The Foreign Ministry wrote:

Since becoming the world’s most powerful country after the two world wars and the Cold War, the United States has acted more boldly to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, pursue, maintain and abuse hegemony, advance subversion and infiltration, and willfully wage wars, bringing harm to the international community.

The United States has developed a hegemonic playbook to stage “color revolutions,” instigate regional disputes, and even directly launch wars under the guise of promoting democracy, freedom and human rights.

Clinging to the Cold War mentality, the United States has ramped up bloc politics and stoked conflict and confrontation.

It has overstretched the concept of national security, abused export controls and forced unilateral sanctions upon others.

It has taken a selective approach to international law and rules, utilizing or discarding them as it sees fit, and has sought to impose rules that serve its own interests in the name of upholding a “rules-based international order.”

Political hegemony

China condemned the countless examples of “U.S. interference in other countries’ internal affairs”.

It noted that the US has treated Latin America as its colonial territory with the so-called “Monroe Doctrine”.

Beijing denounced Washington’s illegal, 61-year blockade of Cuba; the 1973 CIA coup against Chile’s democratically elected President Salvador Allende; and the Donald Trump administration’s attempt to overthrow Venezuela’s government.

China likewise blasted the “color revolutions” and “regime change” operations that the United States supported in George, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and beyond.

“The U.S. exercises double standards on international rules. Placing its self-interest first, the United States has walked away from international treaties and organizations, and put its domestic law above international law”, Beijing wrote.

“The U.S. arbitrarily passes judgment on democracy in other countries, and fabricates a false narrative of “democracy versus authoritarianism” to incite estrangement, division, rivalry and confrontation”, it added.

Military hegemony

“The history of the United States is characterized by violence and expansion”, the Chinese Foreign Ministry wrote, explaining:

Since it gained independence in 1776, the United States has constantly sought expansion by force: it slaughtered Indians, invaded Canada, waged a war against Mexico, instigated the American-Spanish War, and annexed Hawaii.

After World War II, the wars either provoked or launched by the United States included the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Libyan War and the Syrian War, abusing its military hegemony to pave the way for expansionist objectives.

In recent years, the U.S. average annual military budget has exceeded 700 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 40 percent of the world’s total, more than the 15 countries behind it combined.

The United States has about 800 overseas military bases, with 173,000 troops deployed in 159 countries.

“As former U.S. President Jimmy Carter put it, the United States is undoubtedly the most warlike nation in the history of the world”, Beijing added.

It cited a Tufts University report that found that the United States carried out almost 400 military interventions from 1776 to 2019.

Since 2001, US wars have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, injured millions, and created tens of millions of refugees, China pointed out.

Economic hegemony

“By taking advantage of the dollar’s status as the major international reserve currency, the United States is basically collecting ‘seigniorage’ from around the world; and using its control over international organizations, it coerces other countries into serving America’s political and economic strategy”, the Chinese Foreign Ministry wrote.

It identified the “hegemony of U.S. dollar” as “the main source of instability and uncertainty in the world economy”.

Through the use of sanctions and other measures, “The United States willfully suppresses its opponents with economic coercion”, and “America’s economic and financial hegemony has become a geopolitical weapon”, Beijing warned.

Technological hegemony

“The United States seeks to deter other countries’ scientific, technological and economic development by wielding monopoly power, suppression measures and technology restrictions in high-tech fields”, China said.

Beijing condemned Washington’s global use of cyber attacks and surveillance.

“The United States monopolizes intellectual property in the name of protection”, it wrote.

“The United States politicizes, weaponizes technological issues and uses them as ideological tools”, it added.

Cultural hegemony

“The United States has often used cultural tools to strengthen and maintain its hegemony in the world”, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said.

Washington uses movies, TV shows, and media outlets as weapons of soft power, Beijing pointed out.

“U.S.-dominated Western media has a particularly important role in shaping global public opinion in favor of U.S. meddling in the internal affairs of other countries”, it wrote.

Citing a report from The Intercept, the Chinese Foreign Minister noted how the “U.S. Department of Defense manipulates social media”, spreading war propaganda on Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms.

“The United States uses misinformation as a spear to attack other countries, and has built an industrial chain around it”, Beijing warned.

US propaganda is “targeting socialist countries” in particular, it noted, stressing that Washington “pours staggering amounts of public funds into radio and TV networks to support their ideological infiltration, and these mouthpieces bombard socialist countries in dozens of languages with inflammatory propaganda day and night”.

Benjamin Norton is an investigative journalist, analyst, writer and filmmaker.

27 February 2023

Source: www.transcend.org

By Vanessa Beeley

20 Feb 2023 – The REAL Syria Civil defence has been usurped in public consciousness in the West by the White Helmets – a shadow state construct established in Turkey and Jordan in 2013 by a former British Military Intelligence operative, James Le Mesurier.

Since then the White Helmets have been embedded with the Western-proxy armed groups dominated by Al Qaeda rebrands and they have been tasked with the criminalisation of the Syrian government, forces and allies in order to bring about regime change as part of the UK/US-led agenda in the Middle East.

The REAL Syria Civil Defence was established in 1953 inside Syria and is the only recognised SCD in Syria by the International Civil Defence Organisation in Geneva. While White Helmets have an annual budget from their handlers in the West of $ 35 million for less than 3000 alleged volunteers (who have a stipend of $ 150 per month, 3 times the salary of a Syrian Arab Army soldier), the REAL Syria Civil Defence have a budget of $ 50, 000 for 10,000 volunteers who do not receive a stipend much of the time.

The RSCD covers an area of Syrian territory that is home to approximately 80% of the Syrian population. The White Helmets are in a pocket of territory in the north-west of Idlib governorate that is (according to Brett McGurk) the largest Al Qaeda haven since 9/11.

Since the earthquake the West has seized the opportunity to resurrect the White Helmet brand that had been severely tarnished by their role in staging alleged chemical weapon attacks since 2013 including the much discredited claims of Syrian government chemical weapon use in Douma 2018.

Additionally Syrian civilians have accused the White Helmets of multiple crimes including organ trafficking, child abduction, theft, murder, torture and desecration of Christian churches under their control.

A REAL Syria Civil Defence officer explains who are the White Helmets

In 2018 I visited the REAL Syrian Civil Defence in Layramoun, Aleppo.

“They (terrorists) targeted us deliberately in order to destroy our equipment & structures. They wanted to prevent us being able to work for our people. They would target our crew with sniper fire and explosive bullets. Their main mission was to kill the crew and destroy our base so we couldnt care for the people of Aleppo” ~ Commanding Officer (CO) of RSCD, Layramoun.

According to the Commanding Officer of this RSCD centre, the main terrorist objective was to paralyse the essential infrastructure for the 1.5 million Syrian civilians sheltering in the Syrian Government controlled West Aleppo. This included the destruction of water trucks, water pipes, electricity stations and the RSCD crews, vehicles and equipment.

I was told that the terrorist groups systematically carried out double-tap attacks on the RSCD crew. Nusra Front or one of their affiliates would fire mortars into a densely populated civilian area of West Aleppo. For example in June 2016, terrorist groups intensified their attacks on West Aleppo.

The district of Midan was pounded by mortar fire and during one attack, a huge number of civilians were injured and trapped in destroyed buildings. The RSCD sent teams to evacuate the wounded and to dig out those trapped inside the buildings.

“The terrorists waited for us to arrive and begin work, before they targeted the same area again – with mortars and hell cannon missiles”  ~ CO, RSCD

I was told that the terrorist groups systematically carried out double-tap attacks on the RSCD crew. Nusra Front or one of their affiliates would fire mortars into a densely populated civilian area of West Aleppo. For example in June 2016, terrorist groups intensified their attacks on West Aleppo.

The district of Midan was pounded by mortar fire and during one attack, a huge number of civilians were injured and trapped in destroyed buildings. The RSCD sent teams to evacuate the wounded and to dig out those trapped inside the buildings.

“The terrorists waited for us to arrive and begin work, before they targeted the same area again – with mortars and hell cannon missiles” ~ CO, RSCD

So the White Helmets receive more than twenty times the annual financing of the REAL Syria Civil Defence. The White Helmets operate in less than 15 % of Syrian territory that is entirely under the control of terrorist factions.

The White Helmets do not appear to provide rescue services for civilians except when the camera is trained on them, they work as “Nusra Front civil defence” for the majority of the time. The White Helmets are the go-to organisation for media in the West, the UN and their State handlers in the US, EU and UK. The reports supplied by the White Helmets, however dubious, are accepted without question by all these entities who diseminate them across as many platforms as possible with a terrifying uniformity.

The REAL Syria Civil Defence is ignored, marginalised, disappeared from view while they are working to rescue civilians in 85% of inhabited Syria now back under the protection of the Syrian state. The RSCD also works on rebuilding and restoring infrastructure in the recently liberated areas yet the rare western media journalists who actually do bother to come to Syria never mention them.

In 2016, the Lattakia Fire Brigade published the following statement on the White Helmets:

This organization was established by a British person, and is mainly supported by UK and USA. It does not have a number that people can reach them through in emergencies, they choose where and when to operate, they choose the missions they want only.

Surprisingly enough, this organization that came to exist only two and a half years ago has gained the full support and credibility for Western and Arab community, while Fire Brigades and the REAL Civil Defense forces that have been working in Syria since 1953 were completely marginalized despite all the efforts they have done.

They were called “The White Helmets, the world’s most photogenic rescuers”.

Their work is pure media propaganda, where every worker has a helmet camera with a whole team supplied with cameras. They are considered as a rescue and firefighting team stronger than any media specialized team! However, you cannot but question all their videos and how they’re edited and how all the victims they rescue happen to be only children.

On the other hand, to be honest, when we first heard of those White Helmets and before we knew who they are and who is behind them – and here I talk about myself – we thought that this was a good thing because many of the members of fire brigades and the REAL Syrian civil defense members had been repeatedly targeted, killed and kidnapped from the early days of the Syrian crisis (March, 17, 2011) until now whenever they head to any rescue mission in any area, whether in areas under the control of the Syrian Army or outside its control.

We thought that this way every area would have its specialized group that would handle rescue and humanitarian missions regardless of the party that controls that areas.

Unfortunately, their mission turned out not to be humanitarian. They have revealed their real intentions as we have seen them holding arms and participating in executions and abusing prisoners taken by Al-Nusra Front and other terrorist groups. Most of their videos are fabricated, crops can be clearly noticed, and easily one can recognize what was cropped, or what they were attempting to hide.

When in Aleppo I interviewed Walid Houri about his heroism during the desperate search for survivors in Aleppo after the double earthquake strike. I also asked him about the White Helmets and he gave me a statement although he also told me that he would be targeted by the White Helmets and their terrorist associates for speaking out.

Later as we were walking through the streets of the Old City he told me that the White Helmets were not only members of various armed groups including Nusra Front but that they had their own assassination team and booby trap team – which laid the dreadful mines and explosive items that killed and maimed civilians returning to their homes after the liberation of Aleppo districts from terrorist occupation from 2016 onwards.

When I met with Hilal Assi,  the Director of SARC in Aleppo, also in January 2018 he told me:

“We never saw the White Helmets in East Aleppo. They belong to the terrorists and they receive money from outside Syria, from more than one country”.

Rania A, a SARC Volunteer for three years in Salamiyah who had worked in both Hama and Idlib on the outskirts of terrorist held areas, told me:

“White Helmets are terrorists. They are specialists in acting and drama, not humanitarian work. The White Helmets abuse the “humanitarian” title to gain trust and to brainwash people in Syria and outside. They are a big lie. There are many foreigners working with the White Helmets”

Vanessa Beeley – Creating Articles, Photographs, Interviews

27 February 2023

Source: www.transcend.org

By Jan Oberg, Ph.D.

Introduction: 1 year of violence on top of 30 years of conflict: Too much wrong thinking

23 Feb 2023 – The world’s focus is on the war. On February 24, it is one year since Russia launched its so-called special military operation. Much more important is to focus on the underlying conflicts – because there exists no war or other violence without root causes.

The focus on war, by definition, won’t lead to a solution or wider, sustainable peace – like feeling the pain in a patient without diagnosing where it comes from can never lead to healing.

Unless you ask: What is the problem, the conflict, that stands between the conflicting parties – NATO and Russia – it will end with escalation until one of the sides feel that the nuclear button is the only way out.

International politics is still so immature that the simple distinction between the violence and the conflict seem too intellectually demanding for the decision-makers, the media and most researchers.

However, understanding it would help save humanity’s future.

But the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex, MIMAC, of course, thrives on the focus on war, weapons and ever more – blind – militarist thinking.

The conflict is about 30 years old, and the war is one year.

Whatever the reader may think about Putin, Russia, the invasion, Ukraine etc., the infantile blaming, demonisation and the projection of all guilt on one side in such a complex, multi-party and history-based conflict should stop. It’s emotionalist and stands in the way of rational and prudent policy-making.

Moreover, it is dangerous in its consequences. Therefore, it’s time for the West – US/NATO and the EU – to do some soul-searching and stop living in denial about its complicity in the conflict and this terrible war.

The overarching fallacy is to think and believe that because Russia did something wrong, everything NATO/EU did and do is right.

Contrary to good academic practice and my other writings, this article merely states points and conclusions, while my arguments can be found in the 200-300 pages of analyses I have written since 2014. Much of it can be found here and here.

I focus here on NATO/EU policies and why they are wrong and won’t succeed; that does not mean that I find Russia’s policies right and successful. But before you accuse others, take a look at yourself. The day after the invasion, I distanced myself from it and also made six – correct, as it turned out – predictions.
The basic psycho-political elements of the West’s policy vis-a-vis Russia

The building blocks of the West’s – NATO/EU – policies vis-a-vis Russia can be characterised by the following psycho-political concepts:

Immaturity and banalisation – in blaming everything on Russia in general and Putin in particular (it can be said that Putin also blames everything on the West, but that won’t help the EU and NATO – just make ‘us’ as stupid as ‘we’ think he is).

Psycho-political projections – what Russia does, NATO/EU countries have done themselves and in some respects much worse; and Putin is hysteric when he feels threatened by us, whereas we are justified – always were – that Russia is a huge threat and that Ukraine is only the first of a series of future aggressions. In other words, comparative studies and media mention of NATO countries’ aggression and violations of international law are prohibited.

Just one example: President Joe Biden, the leader of today’s only global empire with over 600 bases in more than 130 countries and the most war-fighting and mass-killing country since 1945, stated on February 24, 2022, that “This was … always about naked aggression, about Putin’s desire for empire by any means necessary.”

Untruthful innocence – NATO, by constitution, never did and doesn’t do anything wrong; it is innocent. NATO’s S-G Stoltenberg has repeatedly stated that ‘NATO is not a party to the conflict’ (but also, inconsequently, that Putin must not win because, then, ‘we’ shall have lost). The homepages of NATO and the EU state untruthfully that the extremely well-documented promises made to Gorbachev about not expanding NATO ‘one inch’ were never given.

The same untruthful innocence produces the lie that it all began with Russia’s annexation of Crimea or the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and that it was ‘unprovoked.’ The word reveals with abundant clarity that NATO knows it behaved in a provocative way. The only relevant history is the history of the conflict – which began at the end of the First Cold War in 1989-90. The rest is make-believe, opportunistic ignorance and pure propaganda.

An example of symbol politics and “sending messages”

Groupthink – which implies that a group of elite decision-makers constantly and over time confirm each other in being fundamentally right and cannot be on the wrong track; they meet (latest in Munich) and confirm each other; their ministries, presumed analytical institutions and think tanks as well as the mainstream media hardly ever raise questions or criticise; every interpretation and information not identical with this groupthink is repelled, the world is interpreted selectively to fit the group’s worldview – and eventually, it is totally convinced that it cannot be wrong and that it’s decisions are smart and productive and will lead to the goal.

In this case, the US/NATO stated goal is to weaken Russia militarily and damage its economy to such an extent that it can never do such a thing again – a punishment for what it has done. Groupthink is dangerous because it defies reality checks, leads to hubris, to fatally wrong decisions, and invariably ends up as lemmings running to doom.

Hubris – or arrogance: In reality, ‘we’ are omnipotent. As former NATO S-G, Anders Fogh-Rasmussen has stated: Putin knows that “NATO spends ten times more on the military than he does and that we can beat the crap out of him.” Yet, paradoxically, no Western leader seems to be even thinking of aligning the idea that NATO shall win this war with NATO’s consistent propaganda to its citizens that Russia was a formidable threat which NATO had to defend itself against.

That was done by NATO having actually 12 times higher military expenditures before the war the war anyhow happened, and its ‘deterrence’ failed. And NATO has moved into the largest-ever re-armament to ‘defend’ with goals like 2-4% of the GNP spent/wasted on ‘warfare planning, ‘security’ and ‘defence.’ (As if that was a serious way to determine thow to meet perceived threats).

Militarism – every’ solution’ mentioned is about military actions. We shall win on the battlefield. Nobody in NATO/EU circles knows how to pronounce words such as peace, conflict-resolution, mediation, peacemaking, peace-keeping, reconciliation, dialogue, talks…

Of course, it is implicitly understood that President Putin is at such a low intellectual and moral level that the only thing he understands is that we – the bigger boys in the schoolyard – beat that crap out of him.

Sadly, the only thing that today keeps the Western world together is militarism, winning over Russia together. No other or more positive cause has had the same solidifying function. Militarism has become a religion, NATO its church – and only infidels question that faith and God’s existence. And they know that God is always on’ our’ side.

With warfare, people come together and, in enigmatic ways, their lives may acquire a new meaning that replaces a sense of meaninglessness, and fills an existential void.

Omnipotence – the EU/NATO world has no sense of limitations. It can fight economic crises, recover after the Corona years, handle refugees, solve climate change, alleviate poverty – you name it – and it can re-arm for billions upon billions of dollars. It – the US in particular – can wage a Cold War on everything China – an industry of non-documented accusations – and it can print any amount of greenbacks and repay debts, fix all the infrastructure and other problems of the US society, compete and win in the fields of advanced technology.

The EU – which hasn’t gotten its acts together and built a modern transport infrastructure based on an all-Europe high-speed train network – believes it can always do that later.

All these countries can install sanctions ad libitum – the disease I call ‘sanctionitis’ – believing that they will not be hurt themselves by them. And we shall, of course, re-build Ukraine after we have contributed to destroying it, now it has fought so nobly for ‘our’ values.

We are second to none, and we can do everything simultaneously. No need to prioritise. Significantly, all decisions are made knee-jerk: Sanctions, cancelling of Russia in all other fields, Finland’s and Sweden’s NATO member decisions without analyses of the short, mid-and long-term consequences.

All major decision-makers will be retired or dead, leaving it our children and grandchildren to pay the price by living in a Cold War-impoverished, de-developed and unhappy Europe and US – the more so, the longer the war lasts.

Lacking world awareness – 80-85% of humanity lives in countries whose governments do not side with the NATO/EU world. If the NATO/EU world thought about global attitudes before they made their decisions in response to Russia’s invasion, they made a Himalayan miscalculation – or thought they could later bully everybody into lining up behind them.

This is interesting also because NATO does not only have 30 members, it has 42 partners – some on all continents – and it tries very clearly to move towards becoming a global rather than transatlantic organisation.

This dimension is brilliantly summarised by the High Rep of the EU Foreign and Security Policy (and Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party member), Josef Borell’s racist statement from late 2022: “Europe is a garden. We have built a garden. Everything works. It is the best combination of political freedom, economic prosperity and social cohesion that the humankind has been able to build – the three things together. The rest of the world,” he went on, “is not exactly a garden. Most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden.” (Stated when opening the European Diplomatic (!) Academy in Bruges).

This leads to:

Intellectual poverty – EU/NATO policies now operate on simplifying Twitter-like statements, assertions, non-documented accusations, self-legitimising marketing language, slogans, empty promises and symbolic blue-yellow emblems, ties, dresses – instead of on analyses, arguments and complex understanding.

Following these things every day is utterly boring, predictable and – filled with repetition. Mr Stoltenberg could easily enter Guiness World Records in Banality Repetition. The awareness or focus of politics, media and research is on weapons, war reporting, media war, more weapons fast into Ukraine – and ‘we shall win’ and ‘Russia must not win.’

The obvious questions never asked are: And then what? At what cost to whom? And what will Europe and the world look like afterwards – if it exists? These groupthinkers don’t seem to bother. The idea of asking: If war, what are the underlying conflicts? What are the real, tangible problems – a conflict is an unsolved problem – that stand between NATO and Russia and seriously contributed to the latter blowing up – is prohibited.

The intellectual poverty also comes through in believing, as it seems, that the word ‘Putin’ explains everything. So, this enormously complex conflict accumulating and deepening since the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact dissolved, is reduced to Mr Putin – The (D)Evil – his personality, childhood, or his being physically or mentally ill, a man you shall not listen to who runs a country whose people we punish collectively (against international law, but who cares?).

Furthermore, it comes through in cancelling all critical voices and calling people who ar capable of seeing two sides in a conflict ‘Putinists’ or ‘Putin Versteher’ – the poor trick of framing, of attacking the messenger instead of saying something intellectually qualified.

So, nine psycho-political building blocks in synergy.

Reality checks are very unlikely – at least until the crisis is on the verge of complete breakdown. These building blocks alone guarantee, in my view, that this is not going to go well, and that the NATO/EU leaders are likely to make ever larger miscalculations and live on delusions. Wars tend to narrow down people’s minds. There is no space or time for reflection, for stopping to think.

Ukraine in NATO? Rather NATO in Ukraine the last 30 years. And peace?

2. What does it mean to win?

The usual, again intellectually deficient, argument is that’ we’ must and will, therefore, win, ‘they’ shall lose. And, implicitly, we win because they lose, we win over them. That could turn out to be wrong because ‘they’ might win and ‘we’ might lose.

But it is actually a fourfold table; apart from these two outcomes, both could somehow win, and both could lose.

But even this is a fallacy – because there are not two but many parties: Russia (government and people), Ukraine (government and people), NATO with 30 member states (governments and people) and the US as the leader (government and people). And there is the rest of the world and how the conflict and war impact the global system as time passes.

But let’s stick to the winning idea. What does it mean? Winning militarily, of course – but also winning politically, morally, economically and culturally? Who will be stronger in which respects when the war ends?

The most likely scenario I see on this first anniversary of the war, is a long struggle rather than a quick end to it. The longer it lasts, the more difficult it will be to solve the underlying conflicts – because of the immense accumulated hatred, traumas, devastations, death and wounded, the destroyed economies, etc.

Although the human and material destruction in Ukraine is, so far, rather limited in comparison with, say, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen etc. – it is already as huge as it is heartbreaking. Therefore, the slogan “This war must stop now!” – is the most powerful and truthful – but it is unlikely that the parties will listen anytime soon. They are all in a blind chicken game.

Apart from arms-producing companies and major energy corporations, I see none among the many conflict parties mentioned above who will be better off after this war than before 2014 (the US-instigated and financed regime change in Kyiv and the Russian annexation afterwards of Crimea) or before February 24, 2022.

Instead, everyone – you and me, too – will pay various types of prices. This applies to the immediate after, but also to decades ahead. Healing this conflict and the wounds of this war, building trust as well as a new security system, will take several decades.

In summary, this war cannot be won in any reasonable sense of the word. The ad nauseam repeated NATO/EU slogan “We shall win, stand with Ukraine as long as it takes,” is ill-considered, intellectually poor and delusional.

And it is dangerously irresponsible also because it means killing even more Ukrainian citizens who – in any thinkable scenario – will be the main losers.

Regrettably, this does not prevent those who say it from believing their own words. It’s just that they have never thought through what they mean – because of the 9 psycho-political points above.

3. All basic NATO/EU assumptions are either plain wrong, unrealistic or unsustainable.

1 • Putin wanted to split NATO, but we stand united.

The first is plain wrong. If NATO is not a party to the conflict, why is Russia’s invasion of a non-NATO country an attempt to split the alliance? Ten former Warsaw Pact countries have become members of NATO despite the well-documented promises all important Western leaders gave Gorbachev over 30 years ago that, if they got united Germany into NATO, the alliance would not expand “one inch” to the East? Why did Russia not split that expanded NATO earlier – and why did it intervene in the case of Ukraine?

It is true, however, true that the only thing the West stands united around is hatred, demonisation and re-armament – winning the war on Ukraine’s territory. Western cohesion has much to thank Putin for – for as long as it lasts.

2 • Putin is out to conquer one country after the other.

Well, so far, it’s not gone that well in Ukraine, and why did he not do that over the last 20 years during which he has been president? Does Russia – with 8% of NATO’s military expenditures and falling – really have the capacity to invade one country after the other, occupy and administer a series of NATO members? Some people say, look at the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008. Well again, that was not what it really was – but the repeated propaganda works.

3 • Russia/Putin threatens Finland and Sweden and may even make an isolated attack on the Swedish island of Gotland – therefore, Sweden must join NATO.

Well, what about a shred of evidence of such an intention? Any assessment of the ‘correlation of forces’? Goodhearted people seem to believe that Sweden would have to fight it alone but – no – the US would come to its rescue even if Sweden wasn’t a member of NATO. That was already agreed upon and planned.

Sweden will instead now be drawn early into warfare and have to accept US and perhaps other bases/weapons prepositioning on its territory and thereby ensure that Russian missiles will target Sweden. It has said goodbye to 200 years of beneficial non-alignment, an independent foreign policy, options of being a mediator and an advocate of common security and the UN goal of general and complete disarmament.

The Swedish PM Kristersson has – without any mandate – promised full loyalty even with NATO’s nuclear doctrine. The Swedes will now live much more dangerously – with sharp, confrontational borderlines instead of neutral buffers. And with much less diversity and freely stated opinions in a more militarist security debate.

4 • Russia will fall apart economically.

Yes, of course, there are economic problems and they may likely increase year by year – but Russia is far from falling apart – for at least four reasons. Furthermore, the Russians know how to suffer – 27 million dead in WW2 – whereas Westerners don’t know much about suffering for their principles and stated ideals.

Ukraine is an existential issue for Russia and many Russians, but absolutely not for the US/NATO – except for the fact that NATO’s only raison d’etre is expansion for the sake of expansion and to keep the conflict with Russia as a-symmetrical as possible and weaken Russia.

Moreover, Russia has the world’s by far largest territory and deposits of natural resources – it is certainly able to slowly but surely turn its back on the EU and NATO countries and cooperate, instead, much more closely with China, India, Iran, the Middle East and the rest of the world, also in the China-driven Belt And Road Initiative, BRI.

Out there, they may not love Russia, but they unite with it because they are sick and tired of the West in general and the US Empire’s operations in particular. And because the Global South has been hard hit by both global economic crisis, the fallout from the Corona and now the West’s response to the invasion.

No ceasefire, no talks, no mediation, no UN or OSCE, no China, no peacekeepers,  no demilitarisation, no brainstorming on possible solutions – in short, no-brainer and therefore no peace

5 • We can win this war by letting the Ukrainians fight it for us.

We’ve all heard it repeatedly: Ukraine’s cause is our cause. Ukraine is fighting for our liberal values, for us, for Europe. Ukraine struggles impressively for freedom, democracy, human rights – and therefore, we have a duty to support it with weapons and humanitarian aid.

This idealised, or glossy, Western media image of ‘our’ Ukraine has a political purpose and should be discussed. Understandably, a country fighting for its survival may have to compromise on some of those fine values; the relevant question is what Ukraine might look like – given parts of its history and the de-moralising effects of multi-year warfighting.

Additionally, do the Ukrainians have the military, political, economic and psychological strength to carry the West’s burden on its shoulders, fight for years against NATO’s allegedly formidable nuclear enemy? For a time, yes, but hardly for much longer.

We should not be surprised if more and more Ukrainians begin to wonder: How much of our country and our future must be destroyed to – perhaps – become a NATO member? Is our president doing what is best for Ukraine or is he actually more loyal to the US/NATO than to his citizens? What about internal conflicts, power struggles, coup d’etat attempts and war fatique if this war drags on and, for years, doesn’t lead to anything that can be called victory?

And will Europe take more millions of Ukrainian refugees who have to run away or see no future there?

What we see is the tyranny of the small steps – incremental NATO de facto involvement “for as long as it takes.” It means both fighter aircraft, long-range missiles, and substantial depletion of NATO’s military arsenals. It won’t be for Ukraine’s sake – the country could well be pulverised – but because ‘we’ need to win this war.

6 • The ethics is abominable.

Is Ukraine really important enough for the US and NATO to risk major war, perhaps nuclear war? Do NATO countries have real ideals, and do they want to show that deeds are more important than words? Does NATO really want to win and pay victory’s price?

Today’s leaders would say ‘Yes.’ Then the moral dilemma can be formulated in this way: Why not put in 300 000 – 400 000 NATO troops and conduct the war you have developed plans for since decades back – make it your war, not a proxy war in which the Ukrainian people shall pay the price for the – predictable – consequences of NATO’s expansion (Remember that before the invasion, there was only a minority of all Ukrainians who were in favour of NATO membership and 2/3 of the people who wanted the question decided by a referendum – they never got. NATO and President Poroshenko made the decision).

So, how much are the Ukrainians willing to sacrifice for ‘our’ goals? And for how long?

7 • Peace will emerge from the victory on the battlefields of Ukraine.

It won’t. It never has. Militarism and being drunk on weapons exclude every thought of peacemaking – the words mentioned above under militarism. When you allocate all your resources to the arsenals of war, you deplete the arsenals of peace.

The NATO/EU countries have, in contrast to Putin in 2014, never proposed that the UN come in as a mediator, disarmer and dialogue facilitator. The Minsk process was nothing but a way to buy time for Ukraine to be armed as much as possible before the great battle for ‘our values’ and the killing of 14 000 Russian-leaning Ukrainian citizens. Ukraine is not a country without internal conflicts – that may blow up when the present war ends.

The incredible conflict and peace illiterate assumption seems to be that the NATO/EU countries can be both a fighting party and, later, a mediator. Or that there will be no need for any mediation and reconciliation with Russia: A new Iron Curtain, just tighter, in the making.

8 • The people of Europe will put up with all this because we tell them it is an existential fight.

I do not think they will. There are already doubts and demonstrations against the US/NATO/EU media narrative. It will dawn among the EU’s 420 million citizens that the skyrocketing prices are not “Putin’s prices” but of their own politicians’ making.

It may dawn upon them that Nord Stream’s destruction was an act of economic terrorism against friends and allies, a deep humiliation of Germany and Chancellor Scholz personall – a hitherto unseen US arrogance that will not be forgotten even with the media avoiding it as much as they can – a 9/26 as a European 9/11?

According to this survey published by Euronews, people’s attention is shifting from Ukraine’s battlefield to the wider-felt impacts, including supply-chain disruption, energy price spikes and rising inflation. Time will exert its influence on what can be done by whom and for how long.

9 • We can make Ukraine a NATO member and ignore Russia’s concerns, protests and anger.

Well, not exactly prudent but, rather, a result of the above 9 psycho-political mechanisms. That’s is why NATO’s expansion cannot be discussed and the narrative has it that Putin acted out of the blue.

Generally, people who feel ignored will, as time passes and their frustration builds, force others to listen to them.

In my online book, The TFF Abolish NATO Catalogue, I have analysed this expansion process and dealt with essentially important and trustworthy analyses. And Ted Snider writes in his article “We all knew the dangers of NATO expansion” that:

“In 2008, William Burns, who is now Biden’s director of the CIA but was then ambassador to Russia, warned that “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin).” He warned Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that “I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.” Short even of expansion into Ukraine, Burns called NATO expansion into Eastern Europe “premature at best, and needlessly provocative at worst.” If it came to Ukraine, Burns warned, “There could be no doubt that Putin would fight back hard.”

This is one of numerous facts that you are prevented systematically by our politicians and media to know and discuss.

The list of intellectuals – Realpolitik as well as peace experts – who have warned that Ukraine was a No Go place for full NATO membership is long and most mentioned in my book. NATO, the hubris alliance, did not believe it had to listen or take serious what they – and every Russian president – have stated the last 30 years and CIA’s Burns expressed so well in the same year as NATO decided that Ukraine should become a NATO member (without ever asking the Ukrainian people).

10 • The West will come out stronger and keep its role as a world leader.

It won’t, it will be weakened. If it wants to outcompete China, the Belt and Road Initiative as well as other big powers, it would be wiser to sleep out the militarist hangover and get up early in the morning. If anything, this extremely resource-consuming war for a non-important, non-NATO country will weaken the West more than it will weaken Russia, which will join the emerging new multi-polar world order.

It will instead accelerate the decline of the US global empire and cause it to fall sooner rather than later. Which is what I predict, for instance, in the article “The Occident is now militarising itself to death for a second time.”

Instead of conclusions

• We are where we are now for a series of reasons. We did not have to be here. This could all have been avoided.

• The – superior – NATO/EU world is in denial, and its policies have no chance of succeeding because they are intellectually and morally deficient.

• This is true irrespective of what you feel about Putin and Russia. If you or the West think he is stupid or evil, don’t believe that anything you do is wise and good. It hasn’t been. And don’t ever reciprocate in kind – tit-for-tat – because that makes you a mirror image of Putin. (Read your Gandhi).

• Each and every person who says that ‘we’ shall win this war and ‘they’ shall lose should get out of the sandbox and recognise that s/he becomes co-responsible for the limitless suffering of the innocent Ukrainian citizens, perhaps in the millions.

• This war must stop and stop now. We must begin to think and get out of the emotionalist, self-glorifying autopilot straitjacket.

• Or we shall all lose.

• Knowledge-based and intelligent civil conflict resolution is the only road to peace, cooperation and coexistence in the future.

• Peace is still possible.

• And peacemaking is the only chance for the US and Europe to play a positive role in tomorrow’s new and very different world.

Prof. Jan Oberg, Ph.D. is director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, TFF and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.

27 February 2023

Source: www.transcend.org

By Countercurrents Collective

China’s foreign ministry has published its proposal for political settlement of the crisis in Ukraine on its website on Friday.

Media reports said:

China’s 12-point settlement plan includes a call for de-escalation and ceasefire.

The document says: “All sides should show rationality and restraint, avoid fuelling tensions or taking steps to aggravate the conflict, avert further escalation and prevent the situation from spinning out of control, assist contacts between Russia and Ukraine and resumption of direct dialogue, promote gradual de-escalation and d·tente until the fire and hostilities cease completely.”

It says:

“Peace negotiations should begin. Dialogue and negotiations are the only way to settle the crisis in Ukraine. All efforts aimed at resolving the crisis peacefully need to be encouraged and supported.”

Besides, China urges to pay attention to, and ease in a proper way legitimate security interests and concerns of all countries.

“Cold War mentality should be abandoned. Security of one country should not be ensured through harming the security of other states, and regional security cannot be maintained through strengthening and expansion of military blocs,” the Chinese foreign ministry said. “Legitimate security interests and concerns of all countries should be taken into account, and properly eased.”

Also, Beijing urges to resolve the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and prevent it from spreading.

“The humanitarian crisis needs to be resolved. All measures that help to mitigate the humanitarian crisis need to be encouraged and supported. Humanitarian missions should be conducted in accordance with the principle of neutrality and impartiality, in order not to politicize humanitarian issues,” the document says, adding that safety of civilians needs to be properly ensured.

“It is necessary to increase humanitarian aid to relevant areas, improve the humanitarian situation, ensure prompt, safe and unhindered humanitarian access and prevent the crisis from spreading,” the Chinese foreign ministry said.

Besides, China supports the prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine and calls for creating favorable conditions for that. “The protection of civilians and prisoners of war needs to be ensured,” the ministry said. “China supports a prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine, all sides should create more favorable conditions for that.”

The document emphasized that all parties to the conflict should adhere to the international humanitarian law, avoid attacks on civilians and civilian facilities, protect women and children and defend the basic rights of prisoners of war.

It also calls for ensuring that grain exports to the global market continue: “All sides must honor the agreement on grain transportation via the Black Sea – signed by Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and the UN – in a balanced, all-encompassing and effective form.”

The document also urges to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons and avoid a nuclear crisis, and calls to maintain security of nuclear power plants.

“Strategic risks need to be reduced. Nuclear weapons must never be used, a nuclear war must never be unleashed. It is necessary to resist the use of nuclear weapons and threats to use it, to prevent nuclear proliferation and to avert a nuclear crisis,” the document says. “China strongly opposes attacks on nuclear power plants and other civilian nuclear facilities. We call upon all sides to respect the international law, including the Convention on nuclear safety.”

On top of that, “China opposes development and use of biological and chemical weapons by any country, under any circumstances.”

Also, the foreign ministry of China opposes any unilateral sanctions over the crisis in Ukraine, imposed without a relevant decision of the UN Security Council.

“Unilateral sanctions [should be] stopped,” the document says. “We oppose introducing any unilateral sanctions without the UN Security Council’s decision.

“Stability of supply and delivery chains needs to be ensured. All sides should duly protect the existing system of the global economy, oppose attempts to politicize, instrumentalize and weaponize it,” the statement continues.

It also calls for a joint effort to mitigate the crisis and its effects on global cooperation in the sectors of energy, finance, food trade and transport.

“The international community should take measures to support recovery of the conflict zones. In this regard, China also stands ready to help and play a constructive role,” the document says.

Moscow Examines Brazil’s Peace Initiatives On Ukraine

Moscow is studying Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s peace proposals for Ukraine, but it is taking into account the evolving situation “on the ground”, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin said in an interview with TASS.

“We took note of the President of Brazil’s statements on the subject of possible mediation in order to find political ways to prevent escalation in Ukraine, correcting miscalculations in the field of international security on the basis of multilateralism, and considering the interests of all players. We are examining initiatives, mainly from the standpoint of Brazil’s balanced policy, and, of course, taking into consideration the situation ‘on the ground’,” he said.

Galuzin emphasized the importance of Brazil’s view, which is Moscow’s strategic partner both bilaterally and globally. “We are interacting constructively in the BRICS, G20, UN and its Security Council, where this nation is now represented as a non-permanent member,” he added.

Russia appreciates Brazil not supplying weapons to Kiev despite US pressure, Deputy Foreign Minister emphasized.

“I would like to emphasize that Russia values Brazil’s balanced position in the current international situation, its rejection of unilateral coercive measures taken by the US and its satellites against our country, and the refusal of our Brazilian partners to supply arms, military equipment, and ammunition to the Kiev regime,” he said.

“At the same time, we can see how Washington is putting pressure on Brazil. Such sovereign stance deserves respect,” Galuzin added.

Earlier, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva stated that the country’s officials had no intention of transferring weapons and ammunition to third countries to be used in the Ukrainian conflict.

Russia Backs Ending Ukraine Conflict, But The Ball In U.S. Court, Says Lukashenko

Russia advocates an end to the Ukraine conflict, but the peace solution depends on the US’ actions, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said in an interview with Chinese media on Thursday.

“I am 100% convinced that Russians tend to want this conflict to end. Everything is up to the Americans. Make (the United States) practical steps toward peace, and there will be peace,” he said in a video excerpt that was published by Pool One, a Telegram channel close to his press service.

The Belarusian president said that “our path in Ukraine is a path of peace.”

“The Chinese stick to this path,” Lukashenko assured.

By Bharat Dogra

On September 23, 1973 Pablo Neruda, one of the greatest poets ever and a Nobel laureate, breathed his last. This was just 12 days after the US-assisted  military coup in Chile on September 11 1973 which also resulted in the highly tragic and widely mourned death of one of the most sincere and democratic leaders of Latin America—President Salvador Allende—who also happened to be a close friend of Pablo Neruda.

In what way were the two highly tragic events inter-connected? Before attempting to answer this question it should be recalled that Neruda was not just a great poet, he was also a political activist, leader and diplomat who was always allied to left-leaning, pro-people forces of his country (in particular he was very close to President Allende) and hence was considered by various right-wing dictatorships of Chile to be their enemy. After receiving the Nobel Prize for literature his international stature had gone up so much that he was being considered even more of a serious obstacle by extreme right-wing forces.

Although at the time of his death, the cause of Neruda’s death was officially stated to be cancer and/or heart attack, poisoning and murder have been widely stated to be real cause from time to time, and this was even stated in an official statement from Chile a few years back. In 2011 Neruda’s chauffeur had alleged that the great poet was mysteriously injected in the stomach just before his death. In 2013, Neruda’s body was exhumed under orders from a judge. Very recently, on February 15 2023, after a decade-long investigation, a team of forensic experts gave their final report regarding their examination of exhumed remains. These experts found in Neruda’s body a potentially toxic type of bacteria that would not naturally occur, and confirmed that it was in the system when he died. Other circumstantial evidence confirms the murder theory too, including the fact that in 1981 the military regime of Chile poisoned political prisoners with somewhat similar bacteria.

As it appears most likely that Neruda was murdered, a question arises as to who should be held responsible for this? Should this be only the new military regime, or should the international supporters of the coup and the new regime who should also be held responsible?

Before this coup, Chile had enjoyed a well-deserved reputation as a country of strong democratic tradiitions with regular elections and stability for decades. This was further strengthened with the election of Allende as President in September 1970 with a socialist pro-people agenda.

Allende was earlier a public health physician who emerged as leader of the Socialist Party. He joined hands with other left oriented groups to form the Popular Unity Government. Determined to use natural resources of the country to help the poorer people, this government nationalized copper mines and went ahead with land reforms.

This agenda was strongly disliked by the Nixon –Kissinger regime in the USA known for its very aggressive foreign policy. Earlier strong efforts had been made by the USA and its local allies to somehow prevent Allende’s election, using legal as well as illegal methods.

Unfortunately these forces refused even to accept the democratic verdict and inleashed a series of actions aimed at subverting the Allende government. An undeclared economic blockade of sorts was declared towards Allende-led Chile. A CIA telegram to its local station uncovered later stated—it is “firm and continuing” policy that Allende must be overthrown while ensuring that the “American hand be hidden.”

Chilean military officers regularly visiting the USA for training proved to be important contact points. Heavy weapons including missiles were arranged to be available to military units likely to join the coup. Several efforts were made to disrupt economy and then channelize the resulting discontent into opposition  to the Allende government . Several strikes were instigated and added to the chaos.

In June 1973 several rebel tanks advanced towards the Presidential palace but this  coup attempt was foiled. The second attempt starting on September 11 was planned more extensively and Allende found himself cornered in the Presidential palace. Still he strongly refused to accept an offer of escaping to exile and decided to fight on till the end.

With US help the rebels had managed to assemble great military strength. This was one of the few coups where even the Air Force was used to bombard the President’s residence.

With both the Presidential Palace and the radio station being bombarded, President Allende made his famous farewell speech. He started by saying that this would be his last address to his people, conveying immediately the seriousness of the situation. He then announced—I am not going to resign! Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for the loyalty to the people with my life. And I say to them I am certain that the seeds we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands will not be shriveled.”

President Allende was keen in this hour of crisis to warn his people of its roots—“foreign capital, imperialism, together with the reaction, created the conditions in which the armed forces broke the tradition.”

With bombs and bullets roaring around him, Allende declared—“Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers! These are my last words, and I am certain my sacrifice will not be in vain.”

Allende died soon after.

Given the enormity of the attack including Bombing by Air Force, the relatively much smaller guarding the President fought extremely bravely,but the unmatched battle was over before the evening.

This was followed by military rule. Several thousand were killed, listed to have disappeared, and even more were tortured in the most cruel way. In Nazi type tortures, doctors were employed to somehow keep torture victims alive until torture could start all over again. The number of the imprisoned crossed the hundred thousand mark. Those known to have leftist inclinations were most marked for imprisonment, torture or death. Special caravans of death went around the coutry hunting for targets.  Augusto Pinochet who took over Chile after some time (he was one of the key players in the coup) emerged as one of the most cruel dictators of all times who also threw upon the doors for foreign capital and plunder.

Historian Peter Wins has called this one of the most violent episodes in the history of Chile and pointed to the extensive evidence of US complicity. A US intelligence report in 2000 prepared at  the diection of the National intelligence council  also admitted that the CIA was aware in advance of coup plotting and plotters, had intelligence collection relations them, was involved in an earlier  coup effort in 1970 and actively assisted the military junta which took over after the death of Allende.

When seen in this wider context, it is clear that the likelihood of Pablo Neruda having been murdered by the same forces which toppled and killed democratically elected popular President Allende is very high, and if this is true, then those forces in the USA which supported and instigated this coup also share at least part of the responsibility for the tragic circumstances of the death of Pablo Neruda.

Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Protect Earth.

23 February 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Maureen Clare Murphy

Israeli forces killed 11 Palestinians, including a boy and at least two men over the age of 60, during a daytime raid in the northern West Bank city of Nablus on Wednesday.

More than 100 others were injured, several of them critically, the vast majority by live ammunition, suggesting a further loosening of Israel’s already permissive open fire regulations.

Israeli forces stormed Nablus’ bustling downtown in the mid-morning and besieged a home in which three Palestinian resistance activists were killed, according to media reports.

A military correspondent for Israel’s Channel 13 news said that occupation forces applied the “pressure cooker” procedure, a form of extrajudicial execution.

Under that procedure, occupation forces fire progressively more powerful weapons at the targeted building in an effort to force those inside to surrender. If they refuse to do so, the occupation forces demolish the building, killing all those inside.

Video shows smoke rising from the besieged home in Nablus on Wednesday after it was hit by anti-tank missiles:

Israel released body cam footage recorded during the raid, showing its forces targeting and blowing up the home:

Israeli media reported that the military aimed to arrest three Palestinians “involved in the planning of shooting attacks” in the future and the shooting death of a soldier near a settlement last October.

The three reportedly targeted men – Muhammad Abdalghani Abdalfattah, 23, Walid Dakhil, 26 and Hussam Isleem, 24 – were killed, along with Adnan Saba Baara, 72, Muhammad Khalid Anbusi, 25, Tamer Nimer Minawi, 33, Musab Munir Muhammad Uweis, 26, Abdelaziz Ashqar, 65, Muhammad Farid Muhammad Haj Ahmad, 16 and Yasir Jamil Abdalwahab Qanir, 23.

Palestinian media outlets reported late Wednesday that an older man died from his injuries after inhaling tear gas during the raid.

Civilians killed

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said that at least three of those killed were civilians, including the teenager and Abdelaziz Ashqar, who were shot in front of a medical clinic.

PCHR said that Baara was “hit by no less than eight live bullets in the neck, mouth, head and chest” while he was in Nablus’ vegetable market, where the Israeli raid began, and where the majority of civilian injuries occurred.

The rights group said that Isleem was killed as a result of the tank fire against the besieged home and that Abdelfattah “was hit by more than 20 live bullets in different parts of the body.”

Isleem was reportedly a leader with the Lions Den, a group based in Nablus that engaged in armed resistance against the occupation.

The rights group said that four of those killed were shot during armed battle with occupation forces.

The UK charity Medical Aid for Palestinians stated that Israeli occupation forces prevented paramedics from evacuating the injured. The group said that three Palestine Red Crescent Society ambulances were damaged during the raid.

Videos circulated on social media showing Israel using lethal force against Palestinians in an apparently wanton manner.

Security camera footage shows three people who appear unarmed running along a sidewalk before coming under fire, with one of the men dropping to the ground as eyewitnesses scream in horror:

Another video recorded from a different angle appears to show the same man lying motionless on the ground with another person lying without moving nearby:

Footage shows an Israeli military jeep ramming into a crowd of Palestinians who were confronting the raiding forces:

Another video shows an elderly man lying motionless on the ground after he was apparently shot and occupation forces left him to bleed without rendering aid:

Israel’s deadly raid in Nablus on Wednesday is the third major incursion in a West Bank city this year in which several Palestinians were killed.

Five Palestinian fighters were killed in Jericho earlier this month when Israeli forces raided a safehouse following an attempted shooting attack at a restaurant frequented by settlers. Nine Palestinians were killed during a raid in Jenin refugee camp in late January; a 10th person died from his injuries days later.

Sixty-one Palestinians were killed by Israeli police, soldiers and settlers so far this year, or died from injuries sustained in previous years.

During the same period, 12 people were killed by Palestinians in Israel or in West Bank settlements in the context of the occupation, or died from injuries sustained in previous years. Among them are seven people, including a 14-year-old boy and a Ukrainian national, who died in a shooting attack on a Jerusalem settlement one day after the bloodbath in Jenin.

“Surge in violence”

Tor Wennesland, the UN’s Middle East envoy, warned of a “surge in violence” during his briefing to the Security Council on Monday.

He highlighted “a significant number of Palestinian casualties” during Israeli raids in Area A of the West Bank – areas supposedly under Palestinian Authority control.

Even worse violence is likely to come as the Israeli military is “preparing for retaliatory attacks,” according to the Tel Aviv daily Haaretz.

The spokesperson for Hamas’ military wing stated that “the resistance forces in the Gaza Strip are monitoring the crimes of the enemy and their patience is running out.”

The raid in Nablus comes days after the US thwarted a Security Council vote on settlements in the West Bank sought by the Palestinian Authority after Israel announced that it would legalize several outposts and approve 10,000 new settlement housing units.

The Security Council president instead issued a symbolic statement expressing “deep concern” over the Israeli announcement, using language similar to that of the US State Department by emphasizing peace and security while avoiding any mention of the occupation or Palestinian rights.

Israel reportedly agreed to suspend “unilateral actions in the West Bank, including new announcements on settlement building for several months,” government officials told the news publication Axios.

In addition to suspending home demolitions and evictions, Israel reportedly “agreed to decrease the number of Israeli military raids in Palestinian cities,” Axios added.

The Palestinian Authority agreed to implement a US plan to restore control in Jenin and Nablus, which have seen a resurgence in armed resistance over the past year, and to “start talks on resuming security coordination with Israel,” according to Axios.

Such reports feed widespread suspicions among Palestinians that the Palestinian Authority is directly complicit in Israeli attacks like the one in Nablus.

On Monday, Axios reported that PA leader Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been maintaining a high-level “secret backchannel” despite Abbas’ announcement last month that he would suspend “security coordination” with Israel.

Just before Netanyahu returned to office last month as the head of the most openly far-right government in Israel’s history, Ramallah “passed a message to Netanyahu’s office through the Biden administration about the Palestinian Authority’s willingness to work with the new prime minister,” according to Axios.

Deliberate escalation?

Israeli leaders appear to be aware that the pretexts for their deadly raids are hollow and that attacks like the one in Nablus only escalate violence and make Israelis less safe.

Following Wednesday’s assault on Nablus, Israeli authorities were reportedly bracing “for possible ripple effects from the operation such as revenge terrorist attacks in the West Bank, Jerusalem and the interior or rocket fire from the Gaza Strip,” according to The Jerusalem Post.

According to some close observers, the new far-right government in Tel Aviv may be deliberately seeking a violent escalation to provide a pretext to implement its aims to formally annex West Bank land and further consolidate its colonial, apartheid rule.

A deliberate escalation for strategic gain is hardly without precedent.

Last August, Israel launched an unprovoked attack on Gaza, costing dozens of Palestinian lives over three days.

Israel’s prime minister and defense minister attempted to justify the surprise attack by claiming the strikes were “aimed at removing a concrete threat to the citizens of the State of Israel.”

But Israel had not “substantiated or proven what the threat was,” as Omar Shakir, a program director with Human Rights Watch, told Jewish Currents after a ceasefire was declared.

Likewise, Israel did not specify what imminent threat necessitated the daytime raid in Jenin last month.

A group of UN experts said at the time that the casualties in Jenin could have been avoided.

“None of this violence would occur if Israel were to end its illegal, half-century old occupation immediately and unconditionally as required by international law,” they said.

On Wednesday, António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, said that the situation “is at its most combustible in years,” pointing to impending forced transfer of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem to make way for settlers and threats to the fragile status quo at holy sites in the city.

“It radiates instability across the region and beyond,” he added.

The European Union meanwhile stated that it “deplores the death of civilians” and expressed deep alarm over “the spiraling violence in the West Bank,” while obscuring its root causes.

Likewise, the US expressed concern that the raid could set back its efforts to restore calm but made no mention of how occupation violence is perpetuated by the minimum of $3.8 billion in military aid provided by Washington to Tel Aviv each year.

Maureen Clare Murphy is senior editor of The Electronic Intifada.

Ali Abunimah contributed analysis.

23 February 2023

Source: countercurrents.org