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By Yanis Varoufakis

Dear International Criminal Court judges,

It is now beyond dispute: Israel has set out systematically to eliminate every aspect of Palestinian life in Gaza. It is not just the 186,000 lives that the Lancet estimates to have been lost. It is more than that.

You have already witnessed:

1. The most intensive bombing of any densely populated urban area in living memory

2. The most deliberately targeted starvation of a population in post-WW2 history

3. The greatest number of journalists killed in any war worldwide

4. The largest number of UN staff killed in 10 months.

And that’s not all: Israel attacks schools, universities, libraries, archives, cultural centres, heritage sites, mosques and churches. It assassinates professors and slaughters teachers, along with their students—often their entire families too. When will you act?

[https://twitter.com/yanisvaroufakis/status/1822214344081305645]

If you don’t act now, what is the point of having the ICC?

If you don’t act now, is there a smidgeon of an iota of a possibility that anyone will take the ICC seriously in the future?

Yanis Varoufakis is a Greek economist and politician. A former academic, he served as the Greek Minister of Finance from January to July 2015 under Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. He has been Secretary-General of MeRA25, the political party he founded in 2018.

10 August 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Marwan Asmar

More than 100 Palestinians were killed and dozens injured, Saturday morning, after Israeli occupation forces bombed the “Al-Tabi’een” school, which houses displaced people in the Al-Daraj neighbourhood east of Gaza City.

[https://twitter.com/QGhifari50771/status/1822175445585965114]

Local sources reported that the occupation warplanes bombed the school while Palestinians were performing the dawn prayer, and they were specifically targeted after the Takbeer of the dawn prayer.

Eyewitness reports say limbs – arms, hands, feet and heads of those performing prayers were scattered around the school’s prayer hall in what is described as one of the worst massacres committed by the Israeli army yet.

[https://twitter.com/bloeddadels/status/1822168832674263528]

The Civil Defense said that the bodies of citizens caught fire as a result of the Israeli bombing of the school, noting that the crews are trying to control the fire to retrieve the bodies of the martyrs and rescue the wounded but it’s a difficult and painful exercise.

Reports say the four-storey school was hit by three missiles each weighing 2000 pounds according to Al Jazeera. The prayer hall which was at the bottom of the building was itself hit by a devastating missile.

Director of Ambulance and Emergency in the Gaza Strip described the massacre as a heinous crime, while the spokesman for the Civil Defense in the Gaza Strip confirmed that the Israeli bombing of the school led to the martyrdom of 90% of the displaced people there.

[https://twitter.com/Juliette_ue/status/1822172408553296243]

In the first response from the Israeli occupation army, the Air Force confirmed it targeted the school because it was used by the resistance as a headquarters, which is the excuse that the occupation uses every time it commits a massacre with reporters on the scene saying this is an absolute lie.

[https://twitter.com/FranceskAlbs/status/1822184214860534271]

About 350 families were sheltering at the school, amounting to around 1000 people. It recently received dozens of displaced persons from the northern town of Beit Hanoun, after they were forced by the occupation to leave their homes in search of a so-called safe area where non exist in Gaza.

According to the Civil Defense, Israeli warplanes used American-made missiles that reach high temperatures of up to 7,000 degrees Celsius, causing bodies to melt and fires to rage.

All the martyrs are scattered remains, and the majority of injuries are to the upper body (head and chest), with burns of the first and second degrees, in addition to limb amputations, according to the administration of the Baptist Hospital.

This is not the only school targeted; the occupation targeted five schools in northern Gaza last week, according to the Civil Defense.

It is worth noting that the Baptist Hospital is the only one dealing with injury cases in Gaza City after the occupation destroyed Al-Shifa Hospital and rendered 25 hospitals and medical centers out of service, according to the Ministry of Health.

The Israeli occupation forces continue their aggression on the Gaza Strip, by land, air and sea, since October 7, 2023, which resulted in the martyrdom of 39,699 Palestinians, the majority of whom are children and women, and the injury of 91,722 others, in an incomplete toll, as thousands of victims are still under the rubble and on the roads, and ambulance and rescue crews cannot reach them.

Dr Asmar is a writer based in Amman covering Middle East affairs.

10 August 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By María Páez Victor

“We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”
Elon Musk, 25 July 2020, Twitter

4 Aug 2024 – Once again, as in 2002, Venezuela has been the victim of a combined media and diplomatic coup attempt, but this time with the added element of organized crime and a cyber-attack.

By Murat Sofuoglu | Richard Falk

Venezuelan Election Sparks Geopolitical Feud Between US, China and Russia

6 Aug 2024 – Whether incumbent President Nicolás Maduro holds on to power could very well depend on his allies, and the result could have global ramifications.

One week after Venezuela held its presidential election on July 28, the United States and its rivals China and Russia are taking sides in the debate over who actually won power in the South American state, which has had an anti-Western socialist leadership under President Nicolas Maduro.

The US contests the official results declared by the National Electoral Council (CNE), the country’s election oversight authority, which said that Maduro won 51 percent against opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia’s 44 percent.

Meanwhile China and Russia are standing by the incumbent president.

According to the US-backed opposition, Gonzalez won the presidency with a large margin. He has called for protests against Maduro, and anti-government demonstrations have been raging across Venezuela since the CNE’s declaration of election results. Maduro described the unrest as a far-right conspiracy against his government.

Venezuela’s election has also divided Latin America, where pro-Western governments from Argentina to Peru, Panama and several other states rejected the official result. Countries like Cuba, which have socialist leaderships, have backed Maduro’s reelection.

“At present, Maduro’s victory has received congratulatory messages from left governments in the region including Cuba, Nicaragua, and Bolivia and critical reactions from the US and European countries,” said Richard Falk, a leading international relations expert.

Meanwhile, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, the three critical Latin American countries with leftist or left-leaning governments, have distanced themselves from the US position. These nations have important interactions with both Russia and China, and oppose external interference to address the Venezuelan impasse.

But the three states also called on Caracas to release details of election results, urging an internal “institutional solution”. Caracas says that a hacking attack prevents the electoral oversight body from releasing detailed outcomes as its website continues to be down. 

History of tensions

Venezuela has seen at least two failed coup attempts against anti-Western governments since the Bolivarian Revolution in 1999, which was launched by Venezuelan socialist leader Hugo Chavez, who passed away in 2013 which brought his protege Maduro to power.

The Bolivarian revolution refers to Simon Bolivar, a 19th-century Venezuelan leader who was instrumental in achieving the independence of some South American states from Spanish rule. Like Bolivar in the past, Chavez and later Maduro along with their allies have aimed to form an anti-Western socialist bloc across the region.

“The natural stance of the opposition and of countries (Western powers) is to oppose Madurismo-Chavismo,” said Juan Martin Gonzalez Cabañas, a researcher at Moscow State Linguistic University (MSLU) and a Eurasia specialist at the Argentine-based Center of Studies “Soberanía”.

Madurismo-Chavismo refers to the ongoing leftist governance in Venezuela since the Bolivarian revolution. So far, at least two failed coup attempts were launched against the Venezuelan socialist leadership.

In 2002, US-linked forces ousted Chavez for a brief time from power, but in a dramatic reversal, much of the military loyal to Chavez restored him to power after a tense 47 hours. In 2020, there was another failed coup attempt against Maduro’s government. This one was orchestrated by Jordan Goudreau, a US Green Beret, who was recently arrested by the US in New York for arms smuggling.

“More or less impartial commentators believe that the political outcome will depend on whether the Venezuelan armed forces continue to back Maduro and whether the opposition is militant and organised enough to threaten the survival of the Maduro government,” Falk told TRT World. 

Cabanas assesses that Western powers’ antagonist relationship with Maduro and their approach to his reelection bid are clearly related to their political interests. “A [Venezuelan] government opposed to Chavismo would be more functional to their objectives,” he told TRT World.

Russia and China weigh in

On the other hand, the Kremlin is on the side of Maduro, “firmly” backing him and the outcomes of elections that recognised him and his government as winner of elections, according to Cabanas.

China, which has already congratulated Maduro on a third term following the release of election results, also reiterated its support for the socialist leader.

“China will, as always, firmly support Venezuela’s efforts to safeguard national sovereignty, national dignity and social stability, and firmly support Venezuela’s just cause of opposing external interference,” President Xi Jinping said last week.

Both Chavez and Maduro have been long aligned with the anti-Western camp, ranging from Russia to China and regional leftist states like Cuba to counter US influence in Venezuela.

But Caracas faces a serious economic recession under US-led sanctions, which has led more than 7.7 million Venezuelans to migrate to other countries, particularly the US, since 2014.

It’s difficult to present a fair assessment of the elections because “they are being undertaken in a country that operates in a state of economic siege and hostile relations with the United States,” said Alexander Moldovan, a researcher on social movements and security in Latin America at York University.

“Democracy and national security are difficult to balance,” Moldovan told TRT World, referring to the Venezuelan political dilemma. He sees that the country’s post-election process will be difficult as both pro-government and opposition forces have been entrenched into their firm positions.

Prior to the election, Maduro has shown his flexibility and held talks with Washington to address the two countries’ differences, aiming to reach an agreement to ease sanctions.

“Although Maduro’s victory is a win for the counter-hegemonic powers that counterweights the West, this fact should be measured in its proper context: Venezuela is facing an economic recovery after very hard years, and Chavismo is no longer an ideological ‘export brand’ as it used to be, at least in its region (South America/Latin America),” Cabanas added.

Madurism and regional socialist trends

Falk said he believes that Madurism’s future might depend on how “governments with progressive credentials, such as Colombia, Brazil and Mexico, will influence” its perceptions outside Venezuela if the socialist leader’s reelection is “sustained in a future period that is bound to be turbulent.”

The three countries are part of BRICS, a non-Western alliance, and have not sided with the Western stance, as Brazil’s leftist President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva said he found “nothing abnormal” in the election process.

“If Maduro manages to hold on, and especially if he gains support from Brazil and other moderate governments, it will be interpreted as a setback for ideologically motivated US coercive diplomacy, including an effort to exert political influence by imposing sanctions unilaterally,” Falk said.

But if the opposite political scenario becomes a reality, then Maduro’s exit and opposition success could be perceived “as allied with the right and the beneficiary of US intervention,” according to Falk. This perception would essentially empower leftist tendencies in Latin America, “not so much for the sake of socialism or electoral integrity, but to assure sovereign rights and resistance to foreign intervention, especially on behalf of capitalist vested interests.”

The professor also drew attention to the media’s use of political language when it comes to internal settings and processes of anti-Western states like Venezuela.

While pro-Maduro forces describe María Corina Machado Parisca, a leading opposition leader, and Gonzales, as the leaders of “right-wing” or “far-right” groups, “the liberal media never uses this language, painting the struggle as between “autocratic” and “democratic” tendencies,” he said.

On the other hand, “Maduro describes his movement as one on behalf of the people, especially the poor and marginalised, rarely speaking of ‘socialism’ as the inspiration or goal,” he added.

__________________________________________________

Source: TRT World

Submitted byTRANSCEND Member Richard Falk

12 August 2024

Source: transcend.org

By Rick Sterling

9 Aug 2024 – US political and media elites tried but failed to sink the Chinese swimming team at the Paris Olympics.  The Chinese swimmers performed well despite the increased stress caused by media-induced rumors of “Chinese doping”. And now, the tables are being turned as the US anti-doping regime is coming under increasing scrutiny and criticism.

The Media Manufactured Cloud of Suspicion

Just a few months ago the NY Times and German ARD media ignited  the controversy with an “investigation” regarding an incident from December 2021. At that time, 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a trace amount of the heart medication Trimetazadine (TMZ) during a swim meet for top swimmers from across the country.  The Chinese Anti Doping Agency investigated and learned that all the positively tested swimmers were staying at the same hotel and eating in the same dining room. The amount of TMZ detected was so low that in some cases it was detected one day, and not the next. Testing in the kitchen revealed that TMZ was on the counters and in the vent hood.

The Chinese Anti Doping Agency (CHINADA) concluded that the athletes had been contaminated through food served in the dining room. They reported the facts to the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) and the international swimming federation (World Aquatics, formerly known as FINA) . Both organizations concurred with the conclusion that the athletes were innocent and should not be charged with an anti-doping rule violation.

But the NY Times and ARD suggested something shady had occurred and the athletes may not have been innocent. They further suggested that  CHINADA and WADA may be in collusion and covering up mass doping.  .

This story ignited a storm of accusations with the head of the US Anti Doping Agency (USADA), Travis Tygart, leading the pack.  Some prominent international swimmers have joined the fray with suggestions that the Chinese swimming accomplishments at the 2022 Tokyo Olympics were tainted, “not clean,” or based on cheating. The insinuations and suspicions continued into swimming competitions at the Paris Olympics. Many TV commentators at the Olympics referred to the insinuation one way or another. Media kept the suspicion alive by highlighting when a prominent international swimmer said anything about it. American champion swimmer Katie Ledecky said it was difficult to accept coming second behind a Chinese swimmer who might have doped. Legendary US swimmer Michael Phelps said any athlete guilty of doping should be banned forever – “one and done”.

The US Congress got involved with Congressional representatives  to suspend or cancel US contributions to WADA. With the 2019 Rodchenkov Act, the US Congress has granted itself the power to arrest and penalize anyone in the world involved in “doping”.

Paris 2024 Olympics

Swimming at the 2024 Paris  Olympics is now over. The swimming powerhouses US  and Australia won the most medals with 28  and 18 respectively. But China did well, coming third with 12 swimming medals.  China’s Pan Zhanle was one of the superstars of the event, setting a new world record in the 100 m freestyle. He also anchored the Chinese relay team to their victory in the 4 x 100 meter medley relay, an event the US has dominated for 64 years.

Chinese swimmers spoke about feeling additional stress and discomfort because of the accusations and rumors about doping. They were tested much more than any other team, with some 600 doping tests conducted leading into and during the games. There were zero violations.

The superstar Pan Zhanle was not one of the swimmers who tested positive in 2021.

So it was left to some critics to say his performance was not “humanly possible”.

Tables Are Turned

Chinese and other media are now pushing back and exposing the hypocrisy and double standards of the US anti-doping regime. Even the mainstream Newsweek magazine headlines “China turns the table on US doping accusations.”

More significantly, on August 7 the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) publicly denounced USADA for having “allowed athletes who had doped, to compete  for years, in at least one case without ever publishing or sanctioning their anti-doping rule violations, in direct contravention of the World Anti-Doping Code and USADA’s own rules. The USADA scheme threatened the integrity of sporting competition, which the Code seeks to protect.”

Other international organizations are also reacting negatively to the US efforts to be the global judge and jury. The International Olympic Committee has said that the US may lose hosting of future Olympic Games if the US undermines the global anti doping establishment.

NY Times Misleading Information

The NY Times and Germany’s ARD launched and spurred this controversy with misleading reporting. A recent NYT article titled “A Doping Scandal” claims there is “a troubling pattern of positive doping tests in the Chinese swimming program.” Twelve members of the Chinese Olympic team tested positive in recent years for powerful performance-enhancing drugs but were cleared to keep competing.”  They insinuated malfeasance on the part of the Chinese swimmers, China Anti Doping Agency and World Anti Doping Agency.  By implication, the world swimming federation (World Aquatics) was also guilty.

The NY Times claim that Trimetazidine is a “powerful performance-enhancing drug” is false. The medication is helpful for elderly individuals with weak hearts but does nothing for young athletes with healthy hearts.  As noted at SwimSwam magazine, “Dr. Benjamin Levine, a renowned sports cardiologist at UT Southwestern Medical School, says he doesn’t think it provides any benefit.”  If Western athletes doubt this or want to test it, Dr. Levine says they can imbibe RANOLAZINE which is very similar to TMZ and NOT PROHIBITED.

The insinuation that dozens of Chinese swimmers from diverse parts of the country with different coaches were collectively imbibing a prohibited medication risking their careers and reputations does not pass the sniff test. Simple logic would indicate an accidental contamination of the food they were all eating, confirmed by the presence of the chemical in the dining room kitchen. That is what CHINADA, WADA and World Aquatics all determined. The commitment of Chinese swimmers to anti-doping and clean sport is confirmed by the renowned Australian swim coach Denis Cotterell.

The Need for Thresholds

This incident points to the need for there to be appropriate thresholds for determining a doping rule violation. Currently this is inconsistent. There are minimum levels for some chemicals and none for others. Modern test instruments can detect extremely small amounts – molecules – of a chemical. As a scientist at an official doping test laboratory said, “It is very dangerous to not have a minimum threshold because all sorts of chemicals are in the environment.”

How Did the TMZ Get in the Kitchen?

A very important question remains unanswered: How did TMZ get into the hotel kitchen and the food that was being prepared for consumption by the Chinese athletes?

There is a curious coincidence. During the same month, December 2021, the Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva – widely recognized as the best in the world – tested positive for a trace amount of TMZ when she was competing in the Russian Nationals in St. Peteresburg.  However  this was not reported by the Swedish laboratory until February,  just in time to disrupt the Beijing Winter Olympics.  Unlike the Chinese swimmers, Valieva was alone and unable to identify where the contamination seven weeks earlier came from. This one positive test for a trace amount of TMZ resulted in huge turmoil in Beijing, assumption of guilt contrary to common sense, and ultimately the destruction of Valieva’s international competitive career. Her suggestion there may have been sabotage was ignored. The NY Times thinks this case is “how it’s supposed to work.”

Summary

In Paris unlike Beijing in 2022, the accusations were a distraction but not totally disruptive. The fans in the swimming arena were respectful and appreciative of the Chinese athletes. Some international swimmers also  ignored the controversy and did the right thing. They congratulated the Chinese swimmers when they were victorious. Australian Kyle Chalmers congratulated Pan Zhanle.  American Caleb Dressel acknowledged the Chinese swimmers were the best that day they won the 4 x 100m medley.

The attempt to torpedo the Chinese swimmers and undermine China’s international image did not succeed.

___________________________________________

Rick Sterling is a member of the TRANSCEND Network and an investigative journalist who lives in the SF Bay Area, California.

12 August 2024

Source: transcend.org

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

First published on February 7, 2023

Author’s Introduction 

My  long-standing commitment is to “the value of human life”,  “the criminalization of  war” , “peaceful co-existence” between nation states and “the future of humanity” which is currently threatened by nuclear war.

I have been researching nuclear war for more than 20 years focussing on its historical, strategic and geopolitical dimensions as well as its criminal features as a means to implementing what is best described as “genocide on a massive scale”.

What is presented below is a brief history of nuclear war: a succession of U.S. nuclear war plans going back to the Manhattan Project (1939-1945) leading up to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

Unknown to the broader public, the first U.S. Doomsday Blueprint of a nuclear attack directed against the Soviet Union was formulated by the US War Department at the height of World War II, confirmed by “Top Secret” documents on September 15, 1945 when the US and the Soviet Union were allies.

There is an element of political delusion and paranoia in the formulation of US foreign policy. The Doomsday Scenario against the Soviet Union has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for almost 80 years.

Had it not been for the September 1945 plan to  “wipe the Soviet Union off the map” (66 urban areas and more than 200 atomic bombs), neither Russia nor China would have developed nuclear weapons. There wouldn’t have been a Nuclear Arms Race.

Numerous US nuclear war plans have been formulated from the outset, leading up to The 1956  Strategic Air Command SAC Atomic Weapons Requirements Study (Declassified in December 2015) which consisted in targeting 1200 urban areas in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China.

The World is at a dangerous crossroads: it should be understood that the use of nuclear weapons in relation to the confrontation between US-NATO and Russia would inevitably lead to escalation and the end of humanity as we know it.  

Michel Chossudovsky, Hiroshima Day, August 6, 2024

Scroll down for article 

________________________________________

Video: The Dangers of Nuclear War.

Michel Chossudovsky and Caroline Mailloux

April 23 2024,

MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY – THE DANGERS OF NUCLEAR WAR

Video Odysee

Earlier video interview, April 2022

MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY – THE DANGERS OF A NUCLEAR WAR

__________________________________________________

What is required is a Worldwide peace movement coupled with the banning of nuclear weapons.  

In recent developments,  several EU-NATO proxy heads of state and heads of government  including President Macron (acting on behalf of powerful financial interests) have candidly intimated the need for NATO to wage war against Russia on behalf of a Neo-Nazi government, which indelibly would lead us into a World War III scenario.

What is unfolding is not only “the criminalization of  “La Classe politique”,

the judicial system is also criminalized with a view to upholding the legitimacy of the war criminals in high office.

And the corporate media through omission, half truths and outright lies upholds war as a peace-making endeavor. In the words of the Washington Post, “war makes us safer and richer”

Globe and Mail 

And Many More…

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, August 6, 2024

***

The Hiroshima Nagasaki “Dress Rehearsal”: 

Oppenheimer and the U.S. War Department’s 

Secret September 15, 1945 “Doomsday Blueprint” to

“Wipe the Soviet Union off the Map”

by

Michel Chossudovsky

February 1, 2023

90 Seconds to Midnight according to the Doomsday Clock

The Nobel Peace Laureates are casually blaming Russia, without recalling the history of nuclear war, not to mention Joe Biden’s 1.3 trillion dollar program to develop “more usable”, “low intensity” “preemptive nuclear weapons” to be used on a “first strike basis” against both nuclear and non nuclear states as a means of “self defense”.

This is the nuclear doctrine which currently prevails in US-NATO’s confrontation against Russia.

It is clearly outlined in the NeoCons’ Project for the New American Century (PNAC)

America’s Manhattan Project

Let us recall the history of  the “doomsday scenario” which was part of America’s Manhattan project launched in 1939 with the participation of Britain and Canada.

The Manhattan Project was a  secret plan to develop the atomic bomb coordinated by the US War Department, headed (1941) by Lieutenant General Leslie Groves.

Prominent physicist  Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer  had been appointed by Lt General Groves to head the Los Alamos Laboratory (also known as Project Y) which was established in 1943 as a “top-secret site for designing atomic bombs under the Manhattan Project”. Oppenheimer was entrusted in recruiting and coordinating a team of prominent nuclear scientists including Italian Physicist and Nobel Prize Laureate Dr. Enrico Fermi who joined the Los Alamos Laboratory in 1944.

Oppenheimer not only played a key role in coordinating the team of nuclear scientists, he was also engaged in routine consultations with the head of the Manhattan project Lieutenant General Groves, specifically with regard to the use of the first atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which resulted in more than 300,000 immediate deaths.

Below is the Transcript of an August 6, 1945 telephone conversation, declassified (Between Gen. Groves and Dr. Oppenheimer) hours after the Hiroshima bombing:

Gen. G. I am very proud of you and your people [nuclear scientists]

Dr. O. It went alright?

Gen. G. Apparently it went with a tremendous bang.

screenshot below, click link to access complete transcript )

The September 15, 1945 Blueprint to “Wipe the Soviet Union off the Map” 

Barely two weeks after the official end of World War II (September 2, 1945), the US War Department issued  a blueprint  (September 15, 1945) to “Wipe  the Soviet Union off the Map” (66 cities with 204 atomic bombs), when the US and the USSR were allies. This infamous project is confirmed by declassified documents. (For further details see Chossudovsky, 2017)

Below is the image of the 66 cities of the Soviet Union which had been envisaged as targets by the US War Department.

The 66 cities. Click image to enlarge 

The Hiroshima Nagasaki “Dress Rehearsal”

The preparatory documents (see below) confirm that the data pertaining to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks were being used to evaluate the viability as well as the cost of  a much larger attack against the Soviet Union. These documents were finalized 5-6 weeks after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings (6, 9 August 1945).

“To Ensure our National Security”

Note the correspondence between Major General Norstad and the head of the Manhattan Project, General Leslie Groves, who was in permanent liaison with Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Los Alamos team of nuclear scientists. 

On September 15, 1945 Norstad sent a memorandum to Lieutenant Leslie Groves requesting an estimate of  the “number of bombs required to ensure our national security”  ( The First Atomic Stockpile Requirements )

Lieutenant General Groves no doubt in consultation with Dr. Oppenheimer responded to Major General Norstad in a Memorandum dated September 29, 1945 in which he refers to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

See section 2, subsections a, b and c.

“It is not essential to get total destruction of a city in order to destroy its effectiveness. Hiroshima no longer exists as a city even though the area of total destruction is considerably less than total.”

Read carefully. The text below confirms that Hiroshima and Nagasaki was “A Dress Rehearsal”.

Bear in mind the name of the country which is threatening America’s “national security” is not mentioned.

Answering your memorandum of 15 September 1945, [see response below]

The 1949 “Dropshot Plan”: 300 Nuclear Bombs, Targeting More than 100 Soviet Cities

Numerous US war plans (under the Truman presidency) to attack the Soviet Union were “formulated and revised on a regular basis between 1945 and 1950”. Most of them were totally dysfunctional as outlined by J.W. Smith in his book entitled “The World’s Wasted Wealth 2”.

“The names given to these plans graphically portray their offensive purpose: Bushwhacker, Broiler, Sizzle, Shakedown, Offtackle, Dropshot, Trojan, Pincher, and Frolic.

The US military knew the offensive nature of the job President Truman had ordered them to prepare for and had named their war plans accordingly”

Dr. Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod in their book entitled: “To Win a Nuclear War: the Pentagon’s Secret War Plans,”

provide evidence (based on declassified documents) that the September 1945 blueprint was followed by a continuous plan by USG to bomb the Soviet Union (as well as Russia in the post-Cold War era):

“This book [preface by Ramsey Clark] compels us to re-think and re-write the history of the Cold War and the arms race… It provides a startling glimpse into secret U.S. plans to initiate a nuclear war from 1945 to the present.”

The September 1945 Blueprint (66 Cities) was followed in 1949 by another insidious project entitled the Dropshot Plan: 

According to Kaku and Axelrod, the 1949 DropShot consisted of  a plan directed against the Soviet Union to “drop at least 300 nuclear bombs and 20,000 tons of conventional bombs on 200 targets in 100 urban areas, including Moscow and Leningrad (St. Petersburg).

According to the plan Washington would start the war on January 1, 1957.

The Dropshot Plan was formulated prior to Russia’s August 1949 announcement pertaining to the testing of its nuclear bomb.

The Cold War List of 1200 Targeted Cities

The initial 1945 Blueprint to attack 66 cities, the subsequent 1949 Dropshot Plan (targeting 100 cities) were updated in the course of the Cold War. The 1956 Plan included some 1200 cities in the USSR, the Soviet block countries of Eastern Europe and China (see declassified documents below).

The bombs slated for the attack significantly more powerful in terms of explosive capacity than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (see below)

We are talking about planned genocide against the Soviet Union, China and Eastern Europe .

Excerpt from list of the 1200 cities targeted for nuclear attack in alphabetical order. National Security Archive, op. cit.

Details pertaining to the “The SAC [Strategic Air Command] Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959, produced in June 1956 were declassified on December 22, 2015 (Excerpts below, click to access full text).

According to the National Security Archive www.nsarchive.org, the SAC, 1956: 

“…provides the most comprehensive and detailed list of nuclear targets and target systems that has ever been declassified. As far as can be told, no comparable document has ever been declassified for any period of Cold War history.

The SAC study includes chilling details. …  the authors developed a plan for the “systematic destruction” of Soviet bloc urban-industrial targets that specifically and explicitly targeted “population” in all cities, including Beijing, Moscow, Leningrad, East Berlin, and Warsaw.  

The SAC document includes lists of more than 1100 airfields in the Soviet bloc, with a priority number assigned to each base. …

A second list was of urban-industrial areas identified for “systematic destruction.”  SAC listed over 1200 cities in the Soviet bloc, from East Germany to China, also with priorities established.  Moscow and Leningrad were priority one and two respectively.  Moscow included 179 Designated Ground Zeros (DGZs) while Leningrad had 145, including “population” targets.  … According to the study, SAC would have targeted Air Power targets with bombs ranging from 1.7 to 9 megatons. 

Exploding them at ground level, as planned, would have produced significant fallout hazards to nearby civilians.  SAC also wanted a 60 megaton weapon which it believed necessary for deterrence, but also because it would produce “significant results” in the event of a Soviet surprise attack. One megaton would be 70 times the explosive yield of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.  (emphasis added).

Read carefully:

Had this diabolical project been carried out against the Soviet Union and its allies, the death toll would be beyond description (ie. when compared to Hiroshima. 100,000 immediate deaths). The smallest nuclear bomb contemplated had an explosive yield of 1.7 megatons, 119 times more “powerful’ than a Hiroshima bomb (15 kilotons of TNT)

The 9 megaton bomb mentioned above was 630 times a Hiroshima bomb, The 60 megaton bomb:  4200 times a Hiroshima bomb. 

The Bulletin: Founded by Manhattan Project Scientists in September 1945

In a bitter irony, in the immediate wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 in Chicago by Manhattan Project scientists, who had been involved in the development of the atomic bomb.

Two years later, in 1947, The Bulletin devised the Doomsday Clock, “with an original setting of seven minutes to midnight”.

The initiative was formulated at a time when there was no arms race: 

There was only one nuclear weapons state, namely the USA, which was intent upon carrying out a Doomsday scenario (genocide) against the Soviet Union formulated in September 1945.

In 1947, when the Doomsday Clock was created, the “justification” which was upheld by The Bulletin was that:

“the greatest danger to humanity came … from the prospect that the United States and the Soviet Union were headed for a nuclear arms race.”

The underlying premise of this statement was to ensure that the US retain a monopoly over nuclear weapons.

While in 1947, “The Plan to Wipe the Soviet Union of the Map” was still on the drawing Board of the Pentagon, the relevant documents were declassified thirty years later in 1975. Most of the former Manhattan project scientists were unaware of the September 1945 blueprint against the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union emerged as a nuclear power in August 1949, two years after the launching of the Doomsday Clock, largely in view of applying what was later entitled “deterrence”, namely an action to discourage a nuclear attack by the US. At the height of the Cold War and the Arms Race, this concept eventually evolved into what was defined as “Mutually Assured Destruction”.

While several authors and scientists featured by The Bulletin have provided a critical perspective concerning America’s nuclear weapons program, there was no cohesive attempt to question the history nor the legitimacy of  the Manhattan Project.

The broader tendency has been to “erase history”, sustaining the “rightfulness” of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while also casually placing the blame on Russia, as well as China and North Korea.

Nuclear War versus the “Imminent Dangers of CO2”

In the last fews years, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists “seeks to provide relevant information about nuclear weapons, climate change, and other global security issues”.

According to Mary Robinson, Chair of The Doomsday Clock Elders and former President of the Republic of Ireland (2023 statement):

The Doomsday Clock is sounding an alarm for the whole of humanity. We are on the brink of a precipice. … From cutting carbon emissions to strengthening arms control treaties and investing in pandemic preparedness, we know what needs to be done. … We are facing multiple, existential crises. Leaders need a crisis mindset. (emphasis added)

This perspective borders on ridicule. CO2 is casually put forth as a danger to humanity comparable to nuclear war. It becomes an instrument of propaganda. 

The Doomsday Clock is now said to “represent threats to humanity from a variety of sources” according to a collective of Nobel Prize Laureates.

What nonsense.

2023  January Statement, ScreenShot from WP

Presenting C02 or Covid as a danger comparable to nuclear war is an outright lie.

Its intent is to mislead public opinion. It is part of a rather unsubtle propaganda campaign which provides legitimacy to the US doctrine of first strike “preemptive nuclear war”, i.e. nuclear war as a means of “self-defense” (formulated in the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review).

What is of concern is that U.S. decision makers including Joe Biden believe in their own propaganda, that a preemptive first strike nuclear war against Russia is “winnable”. And that tactical nuclear weapons are “instruments of peace”.

Meanwhile history is erased. America’s persistent role in developing “a Doomsday Agenda” (aka genocide) since the onslaught of the Manhattan Project in 1939 is simply not mentioned.

What is of concern is that there is a continuous history of numerous projects and WWIII scenarios consisting in “Wiping Russia off the Map” and triggering  a Third World War.

Nuclear war against Russia has been embedded in US military doctrine since 1945.

_____________________________________

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca .

11 August 2024

Source: globalresearch.ca

Video: Western “Liberal Democracies” Responsible for Genocide in Palestine – Prof. Richard Falk

Mike Billington : This is Mike Billington with the Executive Intelligence Review and the Schiller Institute. I have the pleasure of having an interview today with Professor Richard Falk, who has done another interview with us earlier. He is a professor emeritus at Princeton, among other positions he holds in institutions around the world, mostly peace related. Between 2008 and 2014, he was the UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine. So, given the circumstances that we have today in the Middle East, it’s a very timely moment to have a discussion with Professor Falk. So let me begin with that. Professor, the assassination of Haniyeh today in Tehran is clearly a sign that Israel is trying its best to get an all out war with Iran started, but also, it’s the fact they just killed the person whom I believe was the leading negotiator with Israel for peace in Palestine. So what are your comments on that?

Prof. Falk: I agree with your final sentences that this is certainly either gross incompetence or a deliberate effort to provoke a wider war. And from Israel’s point of view, to stimulate the engagement of the United States in their struggles in the region. One should also mention the double assassination. Not only Haniyeh, but Nasrallah’s right hand assistant and prominent military commander, Fouad Shaqra, who was killed 2 or 3 days ago, in Beirut. And so now Israel in successive assassinations has attacked the two capitals of Lebanon and Iran, certainly signaling an almost intentional search for some kind of response. The Supreme leader of Iran has already said that that Iran will arrange — he didn’t go into detail — arrange a response, a punishment for this criminal act. In the Lebanese context, Nasrallah and the Hezbollah deny the Israeli justification for the attack, which was the missile that landed in the Golan Heights a few days ago, killing a bunch of Syrian children on a soccer field. It is almost certainly not intended as the target by whoever fired the missile, and it’s still being denied by Hezbollah. The very explosive situation in the Middle East — perhaps it is a distraction from Israel’s failures in Gaza and Netanyahu’s unpopularity in Israel. A very dangerous way of proceeding because a war of this wider character will bring widespread destruction and probably involve attacks on Israeli cities, something Israel has avoided pretty much over the course of its existence. So it’s a dramatic turning point in the whole experience of Israel’s defiance of international law, international morality and just plain geopolitical prudence.

Mike Billington : You have been a very outspoken supporter of the role of the International Court of Justice, ICJ, and their rulings, including the decision on the South African petition that Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza; the issuing of arrest warrants on both Israeli and Palestinian leaders; and more recently, the verdict that the entire occupation of the Palestinian territories has been illegal from the beginning, ordering it to end the occupation and withdraw the settlements. But of course, Israel has ignored them totally, while the US and the EU have equally ignored them. As you pointed out in one of your articles, Bibi Netanyahu even said “No one will stop us,” from driving all the Palestinians out or killing them. What can be done overall to deal with the Gaza genocide?

Prof. Falk: Well, it is, of course, a terribly tragic moment for the Palestinian people who are faced with this massively sustained and executed genocide, that has now gone on for more than nine months on a daily basis. As your question suggests, Israel has been backed up throughout this process by the complicity of the liberal democracies, above all the US. And so long as that power relationship persists, it’s very unlikely that an effective intervention on behalf of Palestine, or in order to stop the genocide, can be organized and implemented. So from that point of view, these judicial rulings, although they give aid and comfort to the supporters of Palestine, are not able to influence the situation on the ground. At the same time, the rulings are important in depriving Israel and the West of complaining about Palestine and Hamas as violators of international law. In other words, by finding that Israel is in gross violation of international law and issuing arrest warrants, the judicial procedures deprive these aggressive countries from opportunistically using international law as a policy instrument the way they have against Russia in the Ukrainian context. It also has an effect on civil society, particularly activists throughout the world, who feel both vindicated and challenged to do more.

There are is a variety of initiatives underway in civil society that not only brand Israel as a rogue state, but also propose nonviolent boycotting, divesting, and shows of opposition, including the activism of students in university campuses around the world. Which is a quite distinctive phenomenon — even during the earlier activist periods involving South African apartheid and the Vietnam War, there wasn’t nearly as much passion or spread of this kind of Civil society activism. This is the most universal reaction, including of the people in the country whose governments are complicit in supporting the genocide.

And it has uncovered a very unusual gap between what the citizenry wants and what the government is doing. Highlighted and dramatized by the scandalous, honorific speech that Netanyahu gave last week to a joint session of Congress, where he received a hero’s welcome, standing ovations, applause and a meeting in the White House with Biden and Kamala Harris, although it was notable that Harris didn’t attend the joint session of Congress, where ordinarily the vice president presides when a foreign leader is speaking at that sort of event.

Mike Billington : Your friend, and mine, Chandra Muzaffar, who is the founder and the head of the International Movement for a Just World based in Malaysia, has written a letter to all member nations of the UN noting, as you have also, that the West is ignoring the evil in Gaza, and called on the UN General Assembly to act upon Resolution 377, which, as I understand it, allows the General Assembly, when the Security Council fails to take action to stop a disaster against peace, to act in its own name, to deploy forces, I think un-armed forces, to intervene. You are, among other things, a professor of international law. What is your view of this option?

Prof. Falk: There is that option, that was adopted in the context of the Korean War. It was thought initially to give the West a possibility of nullifying the Soviet veto and mobilizing the General Assembly in that sort of situation. But as the anti-colonial movement proceeded, the US particularly became more and more nervous about having an anti-capitalist General Assembly empowered to act when the Security Council was paralyzed. To my knowledge that Resolution 377 has never been actually deployed in a peace – war situation. I think there is a reluctance to press the West on this kind of issue, because it would require, to have any significance, a large political and financial commitment, as well as a difficult undertaking to make effective. So I’m not too optimistic. I think the law can be interpreted in somewhat contradictory ways, as is often the case, particularly where there’s not much experience. But I don’t think the political will exists on the part of a sufficient number of governments to make the General Assembly act. In this context, though I think in general to have an effective UN, this empowerment of the General Assembly is a very important option that should be supported by people that want to have a more law governed international society.

Mike Billington : On that broader issue, do you have any hope or any expectation that the UN in general will be reformed in the current crisis situation internationally?

Prof. Falk: I’m more or less skeptical of that possibility. There is this Summit of the Future on September 22nd and 23rd. That is an initiative of Secretary-General Guterres which seeks to have at least discussed fairly ambitious ideas about reform, civil society, enlarged participation in the UN and a more democratic, transparent UN. But my guess is that the Permanent Members, and probably including China and Russia, will not push hard for that kind of development, because they’re both very conscious that their interests are better protected in a state-centric world than in a world which is more centralized in its authority structure and therefore would be more susceptible to Western domination and manipulation.

Mike Billington: On the US situation, you issued a public letter to Kamala Harris soon after Biden dropped out of the race. There and elsewhere, you have denounced what you called the “diluted optimism” of President Biden, who talks about American greatness and the great future America is looking forward to, and so forth. You called it: “a dangerous form of escapism from the uncomfortable realities of national circumstances and a stubborn show of a failing leader’s vanity.” you express some hope that Kamala Harris will dump the Biden team of Blinken and Sullivan. Who do you think could possibly come to be her advisors? Who could, in fact, change the failed direction of the Biden-Harris administration?

Prof. Falk: Well, it’s a difficult issue, because it’s hard to govern. And I think Harris would know, if you go too far outside the Washington Consensus and therefore the choices are somewhat restricted because those that are prominent enough to be eligible for confirmation in the top job are either conforming to this geopolitical realism, or they’re too controversial to get through the congressional gatekeepers and the media gatekeepers. So in fairness to her, or any leader for that matter, it’s a difficult undertaking to make American foreign policy particularly more congruent with the well-being of people and more oriented toward sustaining peace in a set of dangerous circumstances that exist in different parts of the world. And, of course, the Israeli domestic factor is probably also at least a background constraint. So the best that I think I could hope for, realistically, is some critical realist personalities like John Mearsheimer or Anne-Marie Slaughter, or possibly Stephen Walt. These are people that have been more enlightened in their definition of national interest and more critical of the Jewish lobby and of other manipulative private sector forces. But they’re strictly, properly, categorized as realists, A more progressive possibility, but probably too controversial for serious consideration, would be Chas Freeman, who has a distinguished diplomatic background. Obama wanted to give him an important position in the State Department. But he was perceived at that time as sufficiently controversial as to be blocked, and the proposed appointment was withdrawn. Obama himself is an outside possibility. He’s privately let it be known that he’s quite critical of the way in which Israel has behaved in this period. He is more oriented toward domestic policy and would like to promote a more peaceful, less war oriented world. But whether he would be willing to play that kind of role, having been previously President is uncertain, and whether she would want such a strong personality within her inner circle is another matter of doubt. Possibly, if he was willing, he could be the US Ambassador at the UN or some kind of other position. But it’s strange that in a country of 330 million people, there so few that are able to do the job and get through the gatekeepers, who make sure that more progressive voices are not allowed to do the job. So, for instance, someone like Chomsky or Ellsberg, if he had lived, would be perhaps amenable to serving in a Harris government. And she might be eager to chart a somewhat independent path and give more attention to foreign policy and more support to the people that have been suffering from inflation and other forms of deprivation resulting from a cutback in social protection that has occurred in the last decade or so.

Mike Billington : In a more general sense, you’ve been critical of what you call the “incredible stance of Democratic Party nominees to be silent this year about the world out there, beyond American borders, at a time when the US role has never been more controversially intrusive.” As you know, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the head of the Schiller Institute, has initiated an International Peace Coalition (IPC) which is aimed at addressing that problem, bringing together pro-peace individuals and organizations from around the world, many of whom have different political views, but to put aside those differences in order to stop the extreme danger of an onrushing nuclear conflict with Russia, and also possibly with China, and to restore diplomacy in a West which has fully adopted the imperial outlook of the British Empire, which they now call the “unipolar world.” How can this movement be made strong enough to make those kinds of changes in the paradigm?

Prof. Falk: That’s an important challenge. There are other groups that are trying to do roughly parallel things. I’ve been involved with SHAPE [Save Humanity And Planet Earth], the group that Chandra Muzaffar is one of the co-conveners along with Joe Camilleri [and Prof. Falk himself]. But it’s extremely difficult to penetrate the mainstream media, and it’s very difficult to arrange funding for undertakings like your own, that challenge the fundamental ways that the world is organized. The whole point, I think, of these initiatives is to create alternatives to this kind of aggressively impacted world of conflict, and to seek common efforts, common security, human security, that meets the challenges of climate change and a variety of other issues that are currently not being addressed in an adequate way. But it depends, I think ultimately, on the mobilization of people. Governments are not likely to encourage these kinds of initiatives. So the question needs to be rephrased: how does one mobilize sufficient people with sufficient resources to pose a credible challenge to the political status quo in the world?

Mike Billington : In that light, Helga Zepp-LaRouche has also called for the founding of what she called a Council of Reason, reflecting back on the Council of Westphalia, which led to the Peace of Westphalia, where people of stature, as you indicated, are brought to step forward and speak out at a time when that kind of truthful, outspoken approach is sorely lacking and very, very much needed. What’s your thought on that?

Prof. Falk : I think all such initiatives help to build this new consciousness that is more sensitive to the realities of the world we live in. There has been, as you undoubtedly know, a similar Council of Elders composed of former winners of the Nobel Peace Prize and a few selected other individuals, but it hasn’t had much resonance either with the media or with government. It’s very difficult to gain political space the way the world is now structured, through a coalition of corporate capitalism and a militarized state. It’s hard not to be pessimistic about what can be achieved. But that doesn’t mean one shouldn’t struggle to do what at least has the promise and the aspiration to do what’s necessary. And the Counsel of Reason, presumably well selected and adequately funded, and maybe with an active publication platform, could make a difference to international public discourse. It’s worth a try, and I would certainly support it.

Mike Billington : I appreciate that. What are your thoughts on the peace mission undertaken by Viktor Orban?

Prof. Falk: Well, I don’t have too many thoughts about that. It seemed to uncover what many independent, progressive voices were saying. In any event, the interesting thing is that he’s a head of state, and therefore his willingness to embark on such a journey and to seek ways of ending the Ukraine conflict is certainly to be welcomed. He, of course, has a kind of shadowy reputation as a result of widespread allegations of autocratic rule within Hungary. I don’t know how to evaluate those, I haven’t been following the events in Hungary, but he’s seen as an opponent of liberal democracy. And for that reason, he doesn’t get a very good hearing from the media or from Western governments as a whole. The message may deserve wider currency, but whether he can deliver that message effectively seems to me to be in fairly significant doubt. I think the Chinese are in a better position to make that point of view more influential in the world.

Mike Billington : You’re saying that he is accused of being against “liberal democracy.” Do you think criticism of liberal democracy is wrong?

Prof. Falk: No, no. And I consider myself a critic of liberal democracy. But I think it’s powerful because it’s linked to corporate capitalism on the one side, and the most militarized states on the other side. So it’s an ideological facade for a rather repressive phase of world politics.

Mike Billington : You’re generally very pessimistic about the US election, saying that you saw the choice — this was before Biden dropped out — but you saw it as “a warmonger and a mentally unstable, incipient fascist.” That’s pretty strong. You welcomed Biden dropping out, but do you see any improvement in the choices today?

Prof. Falk: Yes, I see at least the possibility of an improvement, because we don’t know enough about how Kamala Harris will try to package her own ideas as an independent position. It’s conceivable it would even be to the right of Biden, but I don’t think so. Her own background is one of being quite progressive. As a younger person, she has a mixed record, to say the least. When she served as prosecuting attorney and attorney general in California. But I think there is a fairly good chance that she will be more critical of Israel than has been true in the last few years. She’s already indicated a determination to not support Israel, very openly, if they engage in a massive killing of Palestinian civilians. She probably feels she has to walk a narrow path to avoid alienating Zionist funders and others who would be hostile should she show a shift to a more balanced pro-Palestinian position.

Mike Billington : you referred to Trump in that passage as a warmonger. But on the other hand…

Prof. Falk: No, you misunderstood me. Biden is the warmonger.

Mike Billington : Oh, a “warmonger and a mentally unstable, incipient fascist.” I got it. So those terms were both as a description of Biden.

Prof. Falk: I wouldn’t call Trump “peace minded,” but he has at various points suggested an opposition to what he and others have called “forever wars,” these engagements in long term interventions that always seemed to end up badly, even from a strategic point of view, such as Iraq and Afghanistan. But he’s so unpredictable and unstable that I wouldn’t place any confidence in him. He does seem determined to move the country in a fascist direction if he’s successful in the election. And if he isn’t successful, he seems to want to agitate the country sufficiently so that it has an experience of civil strife, or at least unrest.

Mike Billington : Well, he clearly is insisting that there must be peace and negotiation with Russia on the Ukraine issue. Do you see any hope that he would also negotiate with China in terms of the growing crisis there?

 Prof. Falk: I doubt it because of his seeming perception of China as an economic competitor, and as one that, in his perceptions has taken advantage of the international openness to gain various kinds of economic leverage. So I think he, if anything, would be likely to escalate the confrontation with China and put it on a very transactional basis, which meant that only when it was to the material benefit of the US would the US in any way cooperate with China.

Mike Billington : Of course, we saw just recently in China that the Xi Jinping government brought many diverse Palestinian factions together in Beijing, and that they did come to an agreement. What are your thoughts on the agreement that they came to and what effect will that have?

 Prof. Falk: Well, I hope it lasts. I mean, there have been prior attempts, mostly in the Middle East, mostly by Egypt before its present government. And none of them have lasted. There is a lot of hostility between the PLO, Fatah and Hamas. It relates to the religious – secular divide and the difference of personality. It was encouraging to me that Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, condemned the assassination of Haniyeh. That, I think, was an early confirmation of the importance of this Beijing Declaration and the successful, at least temporarily successful, effort at bringing these Palestinian factions together. And from the Palestinian point of view, unity has never been more important as a practical matter to achieve and sustain. Their entire future probably depends on being able to have a more or less united front in seeking a post-Gaza arrangement.

Mike Billington : You recently signed an appeal which was issued by the Geneva International Peace Research Institute, which has called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, for alleged complicity in war crimes and genocide committed by Israel. What are your expectations for that effort?

Prof. Falk: The ICC, the International Criminal Court, is much more susceptible to political pressure than is the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which is part of the UN and was established when the UN was established back in 1945. The ICC was only brought into existence in 2002. It doesn’t have many of the most important countries among its members or signatories to its treaty, to the so-called Rome Treaty, and so it would be a pleasant surprise if it follows the prosecutor’s recommendation and issues these arrest warrants. Already, Netanyahu has given the recommendation of the prosecutor an international visibility by denouncing them and calling on the US and, and the liberal democracies to bring pressure to avoid their being actually issued. And that reflects the sense that even though Israel defies international law, it is very sensitive about being alleged to be in violation, especially of international criminal law and particularly of the serious offences. The arrest warrant doesn’t cover the elephant in the room — genocide. It enumerates other crimes that Israel, that Netanyahu and Gallant, are said to be guilty of perpetrating, and does the same thing for Hamas, in trying to justify issuing arrest warrants for the three top Hamas leaders. Of course, they don’t have to worry about Haniyeh anymore, and I think, I’m pretty sure he was one of the three that was recommended as sufficiently involved in the commission of international crimes, that an arrest warrant should be issued.

Mike Billington: As I mentioned, you were the UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine from 2008 to 2014. During that period, you were regularly declared by Israel to be an anti Semite for things you said and did during that time. I’d be interested in your thoughts on that at this point. Also, the current person in that position, Francesca Albanese, is also under attack from Israel. What do you think about her role today?

Prof. Falk: Well, as far as my own role is concerned, the attacks came not directly from the government, but from Zionist oriented NGOs, particularly UN Watch in Geneva and some groups in the US and elsewhere, all in the white Western world. I mean, all the attacks on me. And of course, they were somewhat hurtful. But this kind of smear is characteristic of the way in which Israel and Zionism has dealt with it for a long time. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party leader in the UK, has been a victim of such smear and defamatory attacks. It’s unfortunately a tactic that has a certain success in branding one as not fit to be listened to in the mainstream. Israel and its Zionist network are not interested in whether the allegations are truthful or factual, they just use it as a way of deflecting the conversation away from the message to the messenger.

And they’ve done, shockingly, the same thing with Francesca Albanese, who’s a dedicated, very humanistic person and very far from having any kind of ethnic prejudice, much less anti-Semitism. She’s written very good reports in the time she’s been the Special Rapporteur.

It’s a real disgrace that this unpaid position is dealt with in such an irresponsible and personally hurtful way. The special rapporteurs enjoy independence, which is important, but they’re essentially doing a voluntary job, that frees them from the discipline of the UN, but also makes them vulnerable to this kind of attack. The UN does nothing very substantial to protect those of us that have had that kind of position, because they’re too anxious about losing funding from the countries that support Israel. After I finished being Special Rapporteur, I collaborated with Virginia Tilley to produce one of the early reports in 2017 on Israeli apartheid. That was denounced by Nikki Haley [US Ambassador to the UN] in the Security Council. I was singled out by her as a kind of disreputable person. The UN secretary General Guterres, newly appointed at that time, was threatened with the withholding of funds if he didn’t remove our report from the UN website, and he complied. He did remove the report, though it was the most widely read and requested report in the history of the Economic and Social Commission for West Asia, which is a regional commission of the UN.

Mike Billington: And who was it that had that removed?

Prof. Falk: Guterres. Yes. The head of this UN agency, the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), a  civil servant, resigned, Rima Khalaf, as a consequence of what was done. Our report was more or less an academic study. We were treated as independent scholars, not part of the UN. But the report was sponsored by a UN agency.

Mike Billington: Is there anything else you’d like to add before we close?

Prof. Falk: No, I think we’ve covered a lot. I would hope that things will look better in a few months, but I’m not at all confident that they will. They could look a lot worse if this wider war unfolds in the Middle East. And if they are new tensions that come to the surface in the Pacific area, and one can just have this marginal hope that Kamala Harris will surprise us by being more forthcoming in promoting a different image of what liberal democracy means internationally.

 Mike Billington: Let us hope. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate your taking the time to do this at a critical moment, with your own personal role in the Middle East having been so important historically and still today. So we’ll get this circulated widely. And let’s hope that, in fact, we do see a big change at a moment where the crisis is such that you would think people would be stepping forward all over the world to stop the madness.

Prof. Falk: Yes but they need — I found that they need the entrepreneurial underpinning. They have to have the support, sufficient funding. Support so that their words will have weight. So unfortunate, but it’s one of the dimensions of following the money,

 Mike Billington: Something we’ve always had to deal with in the LaRouche movement. I invite you to join us on Friday, we will have the 61st weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition, at 11:00 East Coast time, on Friday. And it would be very useful if you could attend and perhaps say some of what you said today in this interview or if that’s not possible, perhaps we could read a section of what you said today, during that event. So I’ll correspond with you to see if you can attend on Friday.

Prof. Falk : I know that I can’t because I have to go to Istanbul. You know, I’m living in southern Turkey, a plane ride away from Istanbul. And I’m taking part in a conference on international law after Gaza , a little bit optimistic in the title. I’m occupied all day either with this trip or with the conference.

 Mike Billington: All right. Well, I’ll correspond with you about whether we may be able to read a portion of what you had to say in the interview today for the for the attendance.

Prof. Falk: Great.

Mike Billington: Okay. Thanks again.

_______________________________________________

1 August 2024

Source: schillerinstitute.com

By Sian Norris

A coalition of hard-right politicians, commentators, and influencers have empowered this hateful movement to inflict widespread violence against families fleeing fear.

Every Saturday night throughout summer, young people gather in Bristol’s historic Castle Park to sit on blankets under the cherry blossom trees, eating ice cream and drinking from cans as reggae, dub, and drum n bass rattle through tinny speakers. The music competes with the squawks of the city’s seagulls, the roar of traffic leaving the Galleries mall, and the strumming of a guitar. Teenagers try out circus skills, while bikes whizz along the river toward the bars and clubs of Old Market.

This weekend, the scene was very different.

Gangs of far-right race rioters stormed the park, passing its commemorative plaque to the city’s anti-fascists who fought in Spain in the 1930s. They were joined by those pulled into the far right via a toxic mix of anti-vax, anti-LGBTQ, QAnon conspiracy theories. Punches were thrown at a Black passerby. Counterprotesters insisted that fascists and racists were not welcome here, before moving south to the river to form a human barrier around a hotel housing migrant people, which the mob attempted to attack.

The scenes in Bristol were repeated across the country. In Rotherham and Tamworth, people who had fled violence and persecution in their own countries hid in hotel rooms as the buildings were set on fire. Asian men were dragged from their cabs to shouts of “kill him,” while Syrian shopkeepers, determined to build a new life away from dictatorship and civil war, watched in despair as their businesses were trashed. By Sunday night, more than 90 people had been arrested, but the violence did not stop, spreading to city after city, to Liverpool and Belfast and Plymouth and London and beyond.

The inciting incident was ostensibly the tragic killings of three girls, and the stabbing of other women and girls, at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport. British-born teenager Axel Rudakubana has been charged with murder and attempted murder.

The horrific deaths of the three children had nothing to do with the terrorising of asylum-seeking people and children in hotels, the destruction of Black and Brown people’s businesses, or the attacks on mosques. The street violence that has gripped much of England and Northern Ireland since 30 July instead tells a story of who the modern far right are, how they organise, what they believe, and the coalition of hard-right politicians, commentators, and influencers who have empowered this hateful movement to inflict widespread violence against families fleeing fear.

Who Is the Modern Far Right?

The early days of the violence were met with suggestions from the new Labour government that the English Defence League (EDL) could be designated as a “proscribed group”—one that is forbidden under U.K. law due to terrorist connections.

But the suggestion fails to understand two crucial issues. The first, is that the EDL does not really exist. Its co-founder and most famous member, far-right activist and convicted criminal Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) left in 2013, claiming he had concerns over the “dangers of far-right extremism,” after which the group’s membership dwindled until it ultimately became defunct a few years later.

The second is that the modern far right is no longer made up of organisations with clear hierarchical structures. Instead, it is an international and online-networked movement. It organises around a shared ideology spread by a core of theorists, leaders, and influencers who use their power to put out statements designed to trigger others to commit violence. In this, the influencers commit what is known as “stochastic” or “random violence,” while of course making sure they are not the ones throwing the punches and smashing the glass themselves, and can claim plausible deniability when it comes to incitement.

The movement breaks out into the real world with violent, racist outbursts and attacks. That violence is filmed and live streamed across its network, with each action used to tell a story that will inspire new followers and, crucially, influence nonmembers by creating an atmosphere of insecurity and fear.

Following the killings in Southport, an online conspiracy claimed the killer was a Muslim man who had arrived into the U.K. illegally on a small boat last year. The lie brought together the two tropes driving the modern far right: Islamophobic claims that Muslim men pose a threat to women and girls and manufactured outrage over “fighting age men” arriving in the U.K. on small boats to live off the taxpayer.

While the false claims about the Southport killings were specific to that incident, the disinformation being shared was built on years of far-right influencers engaged in rhetorical violence against primarily Muslim migrant people. Numerous posts from Robinson’s Telegram channel, for example, discuss how migrant men who “inevitably go on to rape and murder” are “invading” the U.K. and “taken in and housed in hotels at taxpayer expense.” Governments and NGOs are even accused by him of “using little girls to encourage fighting age men to come to the U.K. who see nothing wrong in diddling kids.”

These messages have gathered pace over the past four years as the former Conservative government ramped up messaging to “stop the boats” and accused migrant people of abusing the system while being “child rapists” and “threats to national security.” In the same time period, growing anti-immigrant rhetoric and a failing policy to house asylum-seeking people in hotels has repeatedly triggered real-life violence and intimidation, mainly outside the hotels housing families.

“Citizen journalists” who made their names as “migrant hunters” such as Amanda Smith (who uses the social media avatar Yorkshire Rose) and Alan Leggett (Active Patriot), as well as groups including Britain First and Patriotic Alternative, have increasingly targeted hotels, live streaming their “visits” in footage that shows activists intimidating residents. Smith wrote how “women and girls are frightened to walk around the area of the [Rotherham] hotel at night,” pushing the message that migrant men are a threat to white women. Even children are positioned as a threat: One Britain First post said that a child in a hotel waving at their cameras was mocking them.

When it was revealed that the individual charged with the Southport murders was a British-born teenager, the far-right narrative shifted to maintain its Islamophobic focus. Robinson and others shared disinformation about Muslim men stabbing people in Stoke-on-Trent, giving a new inciting reason for the riots, despite Staffordshire Police confirming there have been no such stabbings. Footage of the so-called “Muslim Defence League” portrayed British towns as under attack.

The claim that white Britain is under attack by Muslim men is then used to incite the far-right’s ultimate goal: a genocidal civil war, otherwise known as Day X.

The Ideology

The networked nature of the modern far right means that rather than coalescing around a physical leader, they instead organise around a shared ideology and aim: the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which can be defeated via a race war.

The theory baselessly claims that white people in the Global North are being “replaced” by migrant people from the Global South, aided by feminists repressing the birth rate via abortion and contraception. All of this is supposedly being orchestrated by “cultural Marxists,” a catch-all term that includes liberal elites, feminists, Black Lives Matter activists, LGBTQ+ people, and Jewish people.

This so-called replacement is commonly referred to as a “white genocide.” To defeat this so-called genocide, the far right wants to incite a civil war—sometimes referred to as Day X or boogaloo—that would result in pure ethno-states. It’s for this reason that the owner of X (formerly Twitter), Elon Musk, warned that “civil war is inevitable” in the U.K., in the wake of the riots. While it is far from inevitable, it is the desired outcome of the global far right, who are looking for an inciting incident to trigger Day X.

When white men in England are dragging Asian men out of cars with shouts of “kill them,” and when white gangs are setting fire to hotels housing families from various countries across the Global South, they are rehearsing the actions they would take during the thing they fantasise about: genocide. When white men attack mosques, they are rehearsing a cultural genocide.

The central replacement/white genocide theory is supplemented by secondary conspiracies designed to provoke anxieties that children are in danger, and that parental authority is being usurped by outside, hostile “others.”

Those attending the riots had signs written with “save the children” and “save our children.” The same slogans also appear at anti-vax protests and anti-drag queen protests. While seemingly a benign slogan—who doesn’t want to save children?—the message now evokes the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory claiming liberal elites are trafficking and torturing children in Satanic rituals in order to harvest “adrenochrome.”

The demand to “save the children” feeds directly into the overarching Great Replacement conspiracy theory. A hostile “other,” the message reads, is coming to take your children away. Children are the frontline against replacement. To prevent white genocide, men are told that it is their duty to defend their family—and to defend whiteness—through violence.

Strategy

The desired outcome of this violence is to create insecurity, fear, and anxiety in the general population, which in turn leads to a collapse in faith in democracy and society.

That this is happening now, less than a month into a Labour government, is important to note. Labour has already cancelled the Rwanda scheme and implemented a statutory instrument to start processing asylum claims that were in a backlog as a result of rule changes in the Illegal Migration Act. Though the party, which has a long history of courting anti-immigrant support, is also acting “tough” on immigration, with raids on businesses and deportation flights to Vietnam and Timor-Leste, Labour is the traditional enemy of the far right. It is associated with progressive values, multiculturalism, and “woke.” For the far right to achieve its aims, it has to destroy the electorate’s trust in the Labour Party, in government—and in democracy.

In many ways, the far right is grooming the general public to believe the violence and disorder of the past week—and any future violence—is an inevitable consequence of political failings around immigration. Worse, it is a result of the failure of democracy.

That’s why, following U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s intervention on Sunday night, where he condemned “far-right thuggery,” social media filled up with messages that he was a “traitor to his country,” a “Soros puppet” (an antisemitic trope) running a “radical government.”

Former actor and failed politician Laurence Fox called Starmer a “traitor,” writing that he is on the “side” of “immigrant barbarians” who rape “British girls.” He finished the tweet with the threat of violence: “Fine. Then it’s war.” His tweet echoes Musk’s “civil war is inevitable.”

Following the Southport riot, Reform U.K. Member of Parliament Nigel Farage put out a video where he claimed the violence was a reaction to “fear, discomfort, to unease… I am worried, not just about the events in Southport, but about societal decline that is happening in our country… this prime minister does not have a clue… we need to start getting tough… Because what you’ve seen on the streets of Hartlepool, of London, of Southport, is nothing to what could happen over the next few weeks.”

In his video, Farage hints to the far-right trope of Western decline—an offshoot of the Great Replacement theory. He argues that the government is failing to protect its people. More importantly, he suggests that if the government fails to get “a clue,” it will get worse. The violence, fear, and disorder will increase. And then what happens? What happens when violence leads to people no longer trusting the state?

This is part of the modern far right’s strategy: If the state cannot protect us from inevitable violence, it says, the far-right strongman can. Sowing fear, anxiety, and distrust in societal norms allows for the far right to achieve its ultimate aim: to replace democracy with a strong-man, authoritarian leader who can rule on a war footing.

This is the lesson of the 1930s. It’s one we cannot afford to forget in the 2020s.

Sian Norris is a writer and feminist activist. She is the founder and director of the Bristol Women’s Literature Festival and runs the successful feminist blog sianandcrookedrib.blogspot.com.

9 August 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Richard Falk

[Prefatory Note: This post originated in a series of responses to questions asked by a journalist writing a feature story for the Turkish publication, TRT World. My responses here are derived from that source but took on a different life of their own.]

What does Hamas chief Haniyeh’s assassination in Iran mean for the wider conflict?

It appears that none of the countries directly involved in the conflict with Israel–Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Yemen–seek a wider war in the Middle East. Only Israel, and its leader, Bibi Netanyahu seem to approach such a prospect favorably. This cycle of provocative acts followed by retaliations almost all initiated by Israel have their own escalating momentum that is difficult to control, and at some point, might merges with a deadly commitment to securing a wider victorious outcome.

There is much speculation that Netanyahu has his private motivations centering on his personal survival and the related likelihood that his coalition government would soon collapse after the Gaza war recedes from view. He was also associated with obsessively pushing a vendetta against Iran, especially recently as a useful distraction from the Gaza campaign that failed to achieve its main explicit objective of destroying Hamas and promoting the Greater Israel Project of territorial expansion.

Additionally, the recent cycles of tit-for-tat provocative acts almost exclusively initiated by Israel have an escalating momentum that is difficult to control, and at some point, merges with a commitment to securing a victorious outcome through sustained warfare.

Ismail Haniyeh’s July 31 assassination while attending the inauguration of the new president of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, was a step in the direction of regional war. It was further aggravated because of the location, the occasion, Haniyeh’s reputation as a ‘moderate’ in the Hamas leadership circle. And even further by taking account of his current role as the chief negotiator in the search for a ceasefire, prisoner exchange, and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei immediately threatened a response that will be perceived as a ‘harsh punishment’ by political actors. The religious leader added that Iran is ‘duty-bound’ to inflict a response that ‘avenges’ the assassination. Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian offered his strong condemnation of the killing of Haniyeh: “We will make the occupying terrorist regime [of Israel] regret its action.”

This assassination may also be seen as Israel’s reaction to Iran and Hamas in the aftermath of the Unity Deal between Hamas and Fatah facilitated by the mediation efforts of China. The agreement signed in Beijing on July 23 by 14 Palestinian factions including Hamas and Fatah agreed on the composition of an ‘interim national reconciliation government,’ and seems to be the most serious effort to achieve Palestinian unity since Hamas emerged after the 1967 War. Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority (PA), made a meaningful gesture of his own that is being interpreted as an affirmation of the newfound unity of Palestinian resistance by joining in the condemnation of Israel for carrying out the assassination of Haniyeh. This seems significant as the PA has long been the bitter adversary of Hamas.

The Biden presidency seems intent on managing these tensions in such a way that avoids a general war in the region while not alienating Israel and its supporters in the West. It also purports to play its customary intermediary role in relation to Israel/Palestine conflict by putting forth a three-stage ceasefire, hostage/prisoner exchange, and Israeli Gaza withdrawal. It is odd that the Palestinians would accept such a diplomatic process, given the depth of US complicity in lending crucial support to the genocidal assault during the last ten months directed at the entire population of Gaza.

Even Iran despite its seeming commitment to revenging Haniyeh’s death while on a state visit to a high profile public event in Iran seems searching for a response that is viewed as retaliatory but as signaling its intent to avoid a war with Israel.

There are many actors involved with a wide range of disclosed and disguised motivations, making predictions hazardous. If a wider war  does occur, it will almost certainly be undertaken at Israel’s initiative, quite possibly reflecting Netanyahu’s personal animus. If Iran succeeds in inflicting heavy symbolic or substantive damage in executing its retaliatory attack, Israel might treat magnify the event as a suitable pretext for launching a wider war that I believe it would come to regret. Among other consequences, it may induce Iran to cross the nuclear weapons threshold, assuming this has not happened already. Given the security prerogatives of sovereign states, it would not seem unreasonable for Iran to seek a nuclear deterrent, given the threats and provocations over the years. Such a move would deeply challenge Israel and US-led anti-proliferation geopolitics, being a blow struck against the imperfect regional nonproliferation regime in the Middle East. So long as an aggressive Israel possesses and develops its own nuclear weaponry, without any pretense of accountability, the security situation highlights the double standards embedded in the Biden/Blinken ‘rules governed world.’=

2. How will Iran respond to this? 

My earlier answer tentatively predicts a proportionate retaliation that may be treated by Israel as sufficiently ‘disproportionate’ to induce a further escalatory cycle. Although Iran has shown that it does not seek a wider war, it also seems poised to take risks to avoid being seen as weak by both adversaries and allies—the latter being demeaned by being called ‘proxies’ in the Washington and European official statements and media.

Although the world and particularly Iran, assumed that Israel was responsible for Haniyeh’s assassination, Israel failed to claim responsibility for several days.  Before doing so, Israel had been widely accused by Iran, and assumed responsible for this sovereignty-violating assassination. Israel’s official silence rather than offering an evidence-based denial strengthened the dominant impression that Israel was the culprit.

Also passed almost without prominent noticed was the almost simultaneous assassination of  Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah military commander and close associate of accused by Israel of planning a deadly attack on a Druze town of Majjid-Shams in the Israel occupied Golan Heights, killing 12 children playing on a soccer field. Hezbollah denies responsibility for the attack, and it seems that whoever was responsible for the attack misfired as the missile hit a site unassociated with Israel.

3.   The Gaza/Hamas Angle

In a notable statement, the Prime Minister of Qatar, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, indirectly accused Israel of assassinating Haniyeh in a post published on social media. Al Thani observed, “How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” referring to Haniyeh as one of the main mediators in the cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas. And further, “Peace needs serious partners and a global stance against the disregard for human life.” Israel has failed to respond to such an allegation, although it seems to have backed a rumor that Iran might itself have carried out or at least facilitated this assassination.

The US has been the pioneer in relying on assassination as a major instrument of covert warfare during the Cold Year, generally under the auspices of the CIA. During the Carter presidency Senate hearings were held (‘Church Hearings’), leading to the issuance of Executive Order 11. 905 in 1977 prohibiting political assassinations. This Executive Order was later somewhat relaxed during the Reagan Presidency in the 1980s. There seems to be agreement that the ceasefire proposals that looked quite promising in the days before Haniyeh’s assassination now are indefinite hold given the leadership to the supposedly hardline Yahya Sinwar.

Israel has a long record of assassinations in Iran, including of high profile nuclear scientists (e.g. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh) and a much revered military commanded and diplomat. Qasem Solemani, in January 2020, the last days of the Trump presidency.

Political assassinations carried out on the territory of a foreign country in the form of an official undertaking of a government is a violation of international law, an act of aggression, and a violation of fundamental human rights standards.

Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years.

9 August 2024

Source: countercurrents.org