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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.

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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.

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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 

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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.

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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

By Jordan Shilton

The United States has led a boycott by six G7 members of Friday’s ceremony commemorating the atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II. Justified on the basis that the mayor of Nagasaki refused to invite the ambassador of the genocidal Israeli regime to the ceremony, the coordinated decision by the imperialist powers to stay away underscores that they are prepared to risk a world war waged with nuclear weapons.

A ceremony is held each year on August 9 at the Nagasaki peace statue to mark the dropping of the second atomic bomb, which killed an estimated 40,000 people instantaneously and killed tens of thousands more over subsequent weeks and months. It followed just three days after the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. American imperialism remains the only power to have used these barbaric weapons in warfare.

The ambassadors to Japan of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the US and the European Union addressed a letter to the city authorities in July stating that “it would become difficult for us to have high-level participation” if Israel was excluded. Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki confirmed Thursday his refusal to invite Israel, citing the security threat posed by potential protests against the Zionist regime’s genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. In June, the Japanese city addressed a letter to the Israeli government calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, where the Israeli military has slaughtered upwards of 200,000 people over the past 10 months, according to an estimate by The Lancet medical journal.

In this context, the insistence by the imperialist powers that the representative of a regime guilty of crimes on a scale not seen since the Nazis’ Holocaust of European Jewry and the incineration of two Japanese cities by American imperialism is a scandalous provocation. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government has bombed hospitals, universities and all other civilian infrastructure, intentionally starved more than 2 million Palestinians, authorised the torture and abuse of prisoners, and cut off water, electricity, fuel and medical supplies to the Gaza Strip. On Thursday alone, the Israel Defence Forces struck two schools sheltering displaced people in Gaza City, killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens.

By the end of March 2024, Israel had dropped some 65,000 tons of ordnance on Gaza, more than three times the explosive power of the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A large proportion of the explosives used to raze Gaza to the ground consists of the 14,000 2,000-pound bombs sent by the Biden administration to Israel since October 2023.

In their letter protesting Israel’s exclusion, the ambassadors of the imperialist powers nonetheless had the audacity to accuse city authorities in Nagasaki of “politicising” the ceremony by failing to invite Israel. They asserted that it would be unjustified to place Israel on par with Russia and Belarus, the only other two countries excluded from the ceremony in Nagasaki. This is rich coming from Washington, Berlin, London and Paris, the very imperialist powers that organised the overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian president in a fascist-led coup in 2014, armed Kiev to the teeth, and provoked the reactionary Putin regime to invade Ukraine in 2022. In the more than two years since, the imperialist-fuelled conflict has claimed the lives of at least 500,000 Ukrainians and tens of thousands of Russians.

Moreover, these same imperialist powers have endorsed the Gaza genocide as part of advanced preparations for a region-wide war against Iran, which would plunge the long-suffering Middle East into a bloodbath and risk the lives of millions. The war in the Middle East is one front in what is rapidly emerging as a third world war involving all of the imperialist powers in a redivision of the world to secure their geostrategic and economic interests. In pursuit of these interests, the imperialists are prepared to sanction any crime, including the use of nuclear weapons.

The dropping of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by American imperialism led to the deaths of over 200,000 people in the blasts and subsequent radiation. With this demonstration of its utter ruthlessness and brutality, Washington wished to demonstrate to the world its readiness to use unrestrained force to secure its hegemony and ensure a swift end to the Second World War so as to prevent the further advance of Soviet troops into Japanese-occupied parts of China.

As the World Socialist Web Site wrote in an article marking the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings,

There is a certain naïveté on the part of the American people with regard to the utter ruthlessness of the American ruling class, particularly in relation to the Second World War. That war has long been presented by the American media and political establishment as a great war for democracy, against fascism and tyranny. In fact, the principal reason that the United States entered the war—and the underlying motivation behind all its actions in prosecuting the war—was to establish itself as the dominant and unchallenged world power. In pursuit of this aim the lives of hundreds of thousands of Japanese were of little consequence.

Almost 80 years on, American imperialism’s determination to offset its rapidly deteriorating economic position through the use of military might takes precedence over the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, Ukrainians and Russians, whose fate is as inconsequential for the imperialist warmongers as that of the Japanese civilians was for their predecessors.

The imperialist ambassadors’ decision to boycott the ceremony comes in the wake of the NATO summit last month in Washington at which plans were finalised to directly intervene into the war with Russia in Ukraine. The aggressive military alliance announced the creation of a permanent office in Ukraine, and a command centre in Germany tasked with overseeing weapons deliveries to the fascistic Kiev regime and waging the war on nuclear-armed Russia. This is a prelude to the deployment of NATO troops, hundreds of whom are already in Ukraine. These reckless moves intensify the conflict with Russia, which threatens to spiral into a nuclear exchange that would risk human life across Europe and the world.

Washington and its NATO allies are not only risking a nuclear exchange with Russia, but also with China in the Asia-Pacific. Last month’s NATO communique denounced Beijing as “a decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine.” The preparations for war with China are supported by Japanese imperialism, which agreed to an expansion of the US-Japan Security Treaty to deepen bilateral cooperation on military and defence cooperation. Washington has established a series of bilateral, trilateral and quadrilateral alliances in the Asia-Pacific, including its regional allies Japan, Australia and India, to isolate Beijing diplomatically, economically and militarily. The trilateral AUKUS alliance between the US, Britain, and Australia specifically focuses on the construction of long-range nuclear attack submarines for use in a war with China.

The only way to stop the descent into imperialist barbarism in a third world war is through the development of a global anti-war movement led by the working class. The international working class must unify under its leadership all progressive elements in society in a fight for the socialist transformation of society to put an end to imperialist war and the capitalist profit system in which it is rooted.

9 August 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Maureen Clare Murphy

Israel issued new forced displacement orders in Gaza, killed another journalist and massacred more civilians at schools being used as shelters for displaced Palestinians as the genocide stretched into its 11th month.

The latest attacks on Palestinians in Gaza come amid a looming regional war following the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last Wednesday and the killing of Fuad Shukr, Hizballah’s top military commander in Beirut, hours earlier.

Both Iran and Hizballah have promised significant retaliatory attacks.

Israeli officials have stayed silent over the country’s role in the killing of Haniyeh, though Tel Aviv is widely assumed responsible. Israel did admit responsibility for the killing of Shukr, who was described by Hizballah Secretary-General Hasan Nasrallah as a founding leader of the group during remarks delivered on Tuesday.

Hamas announced on Tuesday that Yahya Sinwar, the former head of the faction in Gaza who is believed to be one of the architects of the unprecedented and devastating 7 October operation dubbed al-Aqsa Flood, would be succeeding Haniyeh as head of the movement.

The announcement was likely a surprise to some after international outlets suggested that other Hamas figures such as Khaled Meshaal or Khalil al-Hayya would be likely to succeed Haniyeh, whose deputy Saleh al-Arouri was assassinated in Beirut in January.

[https://twitter.com/AliAbunimah/status/1820916346395263199]

Whereas Haniyeh was based in Qatar, and was considered a more moderate figure in the movement, the succession of Sinwar was seen as sending a message that Hamas remains committed to armed struggle and that there is unity between the leadership in Gaza, the West Bank, those in Israeli prison and in the diaspora.

Because a full leadership meeting of Hamas’ decision-making Shura council would be impossible to convene with dozens of its members in Gaza, Sinwar appears to be a consensus pick before a formal election, as political analyst Hani al-Masri anticipated in a comment given to the AP news agency.

The decision reinforced that “the decision-making lies in Gaza and on the ground,” according to commentator Ibrahim Hamami, who added that it is a “clear message” that negotiations for a ceasefire and exchange of captives happen there.

It also was a sign of discontent over the subservient role played by Arab states during the Gaza genocide, Hamami said, and of Hamas’ strengthened relations with Iran, which the faction may lean on to rebuild when the war is over.

Amal Saad, an expert on Hizballah, said that the selection of Sinwar not only signals a harder line in Gaza ceasefire talks with Israel, it “also broadcasts an uncompromising and resolute message for the ‘day after’ political landscape.”

Saad added that this “implies that Hamas has secured commitments from its partners guaranteeing ongoing and steadfast military backing.”

“This support is all the more meaningful considering the very real possibility of a worst case scenario unfolding – where Israel exploits Iran and Hizballah’s retaliatory actions as a justification for initiating all out war against the entire [Resistance] Axis,” Saad said, referring to armed groups throughout the region.

More than 300 days of genocide

The government media office in Gaza said on Tuesday that since the beginning of Israel’s offensive in early October, more than 39,650 fatalities had been received at hospitals, including 16,365 children and more than 11,000 women, indicating that the vast majority of Palestinians killed were civilians. An additional 10,000 people remain missing under the rubble or their bodies not yet recovered from the streets or inaccessible areas.

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor estimates that at least an additional 51,000 Palestinians have died as a result of Israel’s siege on Gaza and its deliberate collapse of the medical sector in the territory, as well as the widespread destruction of infrastructure and mass displacement of civilians, leading to the spread of disease.

Nearly three dozen hospitals and 68 health centers in Gaza have been knocked out of service due to Israel’s assault. Israel’s military offensive has inflicted $33 billion in “direct initial losses” overall, the government media office added.

After more than 300 days of genocide, the media office said, more than 91,500 people in Gaza had been injured, at least 36 people had starved to death, while nearly 900 medical workers and nearly 80 civil defense members were killed.

The Israeli military had dropped 82,000 tons of explosives on Gaza, according to the office, destroying homes, universities, schools, mosques, churches, government buildings, sports and recreation facilities, water and hygiene infrastructure, and archaeological and heritage sites.

Meanwhile, Gaza has gone 300 days without electricity, the government media office said on Friday after Israel cut off the supply of power on 7 October and the only power plant in the territory was forced to shut down four days later after running out of fuel.

In what is widely cited as proof of Israel’s genocidal intent, Ghassan Alian, the head of the military body that deals with the civil administration of the occupation, said in early October that “Israel has imposed a total blockade on Gaza, no electricity, no water, just damage.”

“You wanted hell – you will get hell,” he added while referring to the population of Gaza as “human beasts.”

Israel Katz, Israel’s electricity minister, likewise stated following the cut-off of fuel in early October that this is what Israel would do “to a nation of murderers and butchers of children. What was will not be.”

The absence of electricity has prevented the normal operation of vital infrastructure and services for Gaza’s population, which before the war stood at 2.3 million Palestinians. This includes health, water and sanitation facilities, schools, flour mills and bakeries. The resulting environmental catastrophe has allowed for the spread of diseases and the emergence of the highly infectious polio virus and meningitis.

Journalist killed

The government media office in Gaza said on Tuesday that the number of journalists killed in the territory since last October now stands at 166 after the death of Muhammad Issa Abu Saada, a correspondent and photographer with several media outlets, in an Israeli attack.

[https://twitter.com/NourNaim88/status/1820846614581272827]

Last week, Israel deliberately killed prominent Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi in an airstrike in Gaza City. Khaled al-Shawa, a 17-year-old bystander, was also killed in the strike.

Basma al-Shawa, the slain teen’s mother, said that the boy was killed while out delivering food to an older man and told The Washington Post that “my son is not just a number.”

Israel attempted to justify the killing of the two journalists by accusing al-Ghoul of participating in the 7 October attack “while working as a journalist for Al Jazeera,” though he only joined the network in November. An Israeli military spokesperson claimed that a file from a Hamas computer showed that al-Ghoul was “an engineer in the Hamas Gaza Brigade.”

Al Jazeera Media Network rejected the accusations as “baseless” and pointed to “Israel’s long history of fabrications and false evidence used to cover up its heinous crimes.” It pointed out that Israel is denying international journalists access to Gaza, thereby preventing them from reporting on “the deteriorating humanitarian conditions and suffering” there.

The accusation against al-Ghoul echoed Israel’s attempted justification for previous attacks targeting Al Jazeera personnel.

In January, an Israeli strike killed Hamza Dahdouh, a journalist and son of the broadcaster’s Gaza bureau chief. Mustafa Thuraya, a drone operator, was killed alongside Hamza Dahdouh, along with their driver, after they had used “a drone to document the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike south of Khan Younis,” a Washington Post investigation found.

Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail Abu Omar was severely injured in a deliberate Israeli attack in February but survived.

Irene Khan, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, condemned the killing of al-Ghoul and al-Rifi and said “the Israeli military seems to be making accusations without any substantive evidence as a license to kill journalists, which is in total contravention of international humanitarian law.”

A statement released by Khan noted Israel’s “total ban on [Al Jazeera] in Israel, and the vicious smear campaign against the broadcaster” and called for the International Criminal Court “to move swiftly to prosecute the killing of journalists as a war crime.”

Schools, hospital courtyard attacked

On Wednesday, 7 August, Israel issued additional forced displacement orders in the already hard-hit areas of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, instructing residents to evacuate to shelters in central Gaza City. Local media warned that “a ‘large scale’ Israeli army operation is expected to begin there soon,” Al Jazeera reported.

Palestinians in central Gaza were also bracing for an Israeli invasion after “concentrated air attacks” on the area, “coupled with heavy artillery in the past few days,” Al Jazeera reported on Wednesday.

Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, now densely populated with people displaced from other areas of the Strip, is the only city in the territory that has remained largely intact, “with buildings people can shelter in,” the broadcaster added.

“But right now, there is a growing concern that the repeated attacks on Deir el-Balah indicate that this area, and largely the central area, is on the verge of a wider-scale attack and a larger invasion,” according to Al Jazeera correspondent Hani Mahmoud.

Three Palestinians were killed in a home in the al-Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

Several Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike on a tent housing displaced Palestinians east of Khan Younis the same day, according to Al Jazeera.

Journalist Anas al-Sharif reported that the victims included a woman and child whose bodies were burned by the fire caused by the bombing:

[https://twitter.com/AnasAlSharif0/status/1821170812235255817]

Also on Wednesday, at least four Palestinians were killed in an Israeli attack in western Khan Younis, “a very busy area,” Al Jazeera reported.

Israel bombed three schools sheltering displaced people on Saturday and Sunday, killing dozens of Palestinians.

At least 17 Palestinians, including women and children, were reportedly killed in a strike on the Hamama school in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City on Saturday.

[https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1820090066431012912]

On Sunday, at least 30 Palestinians were killed in strikes on al-Nasser and Hasan Salama schools in the Nasser neighborhood. Another 16 people were missing under the rubble of al-Nasser school, according to the Palestinian Civil Defense.

That same day, five Palestinians were killed and 15 injured in an Israeli strike on tents in the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah. Thousands of displaced people were at the hospital complex at the time of the attack, which occurred without warning, according to Physicians for Human Rights Israel.

[https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1819878417212297654]

The strike on the hospital sheltering displaced people came the same day as the Israeli military issued new orders for the forcible displacement of Palestinians in parts of Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza.

UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, said on Saturday that “people in Gaza are constantly displaced, living in tents under the scorching summer sun with minimal access to drinking water.”

The UN human rights office stated on Monday that it was “horrified by the unfolding pattern” of “escalating” Israeli attacks on schools being used as shelters.

“Strikes on at least 17 schools just in the last month reportedly killed at least 163 Palestinians, including children and women,” the UN office said, adding that it indicates “a failure to comply with the principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions in carrying out these attacks.”

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said “the Israeli military is systematically creating a coercive environment by repeatedly, violently and directly bombing homes, residential neighborhoods and shelter centers.”

Israel hands over “desecrated” bodies

Israel transferred the decomposed remains of 89 people whose corpses had been handled in an undignified manner, the government media office said on Monday.

Yamen Abu Suleiman, the director of the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service in Khan Younis, told media that Israel provided no information about the “names, or ages, or anything” regarding the bodies and that it was unclear whether they had been exhumed from cemeteries or if they belonged to “detainees who had been tortured and killed.”

“He said the bodies would be examined in an attempt to determine the causes of death and to identify them, before being buried in a mass grave at a cemetery near Nasser hospital in Khan Younis,” Reuters reported.

Israeli forces have seized more than 2,000 human remains from cemeteries in Gaza during the military’s ground offensive, according to the government media office in the territory.

Israel has previously returned bodies to Gaza “after confirming that they were not Israeli hostages taken by Hamas,” according to Reuters.

The Gaza government media office said on Sunday that Abd al-Fattah al-Zriei, the deputy economy minister in the territory, was killed along with his mother in an Israeli airstrike on a home in Deir al-Balah.

The Israeli military claimed without substantiation that al-Zriei was “involved in the manufacturing department” of Hamas’ military wing and “stopped humanitarian aid from reaching Gazan civilians” – a tacit acknowledgement that al-Zriei was deliberately killed.

One day after the Israeli military implied that al-Zriei had diverted aid from reaching those in need in Gaza, Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, complained that “nobody will let us cause two million civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral, until our hostages are returned.”

Smotrich said that “international legitimacy for this war” was holding Israel back from doing so.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right allies such as Smotrich are viewed within Israel’s defense establishment and its negotiating team, as well as its allies abroad, as the primary obstacle for a negotiated ceasefire agreement that would secure the release of the remaining captives in Gaza – particularly after the assassination of Haniyeh, a key Hamas interlocutor in the talks.

A deal to end the war is also necessary to prevent a further escalation between Israel and Hizballah, the latter of which has reiterated its position that de-escalation will come only once the bloodshed ends in Gaza.

Nasrallah describes existential battle

During his speech on Tuesday, Hizballah’s Nasrallah said that judging by Israel’s actions in Gaza, “it is clear that Netanyahu doesn’t want a ceasefire and he doesn’t want to end the war.”

[https://twitter.com/ME_Observer_/status/1820822136535326858]

He added that Israel’s plan in Gaza is to uproot the population and force it into submission while consolidating its hold on the lands of historic Palestine, Golan Heights and Shebaa Farms.

If Israel and the US “were to achieve victory against the resistance in Gaza, in the West Bank and the region,” Nasrallah warned, it would mean that there would be no deterrence against the genocidal state “running loose in the region.”

“The region today is confronting real dangers, everyone must understand the nature of this current battle,” Nasrallah emphasized. “If [the Israeli] government were to achieve victory in the battle of Gaza and the West Bank, it would mean there is no such thing as Palestine and the Palestinian people, nor Palestinian refugees.”

“Even al-Aqsa mosque, which the Muslims say is our first qibla, our sanctity … will be in very grave danger,” he added.

The defeat of resistance to Israel’s ambitions would endanger Lebanon’s sovereignty while the regime in Jordan, viewed by Netanyahu and his far-right allies as an alternative location for Palestinians, “would become something of the past.”

“I’m speaking about the current dangers, not in the next 10 years,” Nasrallah said.

But a defeat of the resistance is hardly a foregone conclusion.

“Nothing has changed: the captives haven’t returned, the resistance in Gaza hasn’t been eliminated,” Nasrallah said. To the contrary, he added, Israel’s army is becoming exhausted while its economy is suffering and social and political divisions within the country are widening.

“So there’s a horizon for this battle,” Nasrallah said, adding that “the fate of the region is now being determined.”

As if to underscore Nasrallah’s warnings of the danger posed by Tel Aviv, people in Beirut reported sonic booms from Israeli warplanes minutes before his televised address.

“The loud booms sent residents rushing to open their windows to prevent the glass from shattering, or standing on their balconies to get a glimpse of the planes flying over,” the news agency added.

Nasrallah’s speech marked the one-week anniversary of the killing of the resistance group’s senior military commander Fuad Shukr. Israel said that it killed Shukr in retaliation for what it said was a Hizballah rocket strike that killed 12 children in Majdal Shams, a Syrian town in the occupied Golan Heights, late last month.

Hizballah has said that it was not connected in any way to the explosion in Majdal Shams. In a speech last week, Nasrallah blamed it on a failed Israeli missile interceptor.

Earlier on Tuesday, Hizballah said “it launched a swarm of attack drones at two military sites near Acre in northern Israel and also attacked an Israeli military vehicle in another location,” according to Reuters.

Several people were injured, one critically, by an interceptor that “missed the target and hit the ground,” the Israeli military said.

Nasrallah did not divulge anything about the nature or timing of Hizballah’s response to the killing of Shukr but said it “will be strong, effective and impactful.”

A spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry said on Monday that Tehran “seeks to establish stability in the region, but this will only come with punishing the aggressor and creating deterrence against the adventurism of the Zionist regime.”

Maureen Clare Murphy is senior editor of The Electronic Intifada

8 August 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Bharat Dogra

At present there are about 56 conflicts in the world, more than in any year since WW2. In addition there is a tendency for conflicts to be more prolonged. The percentage of conflicts ending with peace agreements has declined from 23% in the 1970s to just 4% in the 2010s. The possibility of ongoing conflicts escalating into much bigger and destructive wars is very high just now. The humanitarian crisis arising from conflicts is endangering the life of many times more people than die directly in the violence of conflicts, while the budgets available for humanitarian aid are diminishing.

All these are important reasons for a significantly enhanced sense of urgency in finding peaceful solutions for conflicts and in particular for such ideas that can bring at least some immediate relief, apart from laying the foundation for more durable peace. With modern heavily destructive weapons in use, it is an immense relief if the shooting, bombing and fighting can stop as early as possible even if various contentious issues take longer to resolve. Thousands of deaths, very painful injuries and disabilities can be stopped on daily basis if such steps can be taken up on a significant scale.

Hence the way forward for peace efforts in the case of most conflicts should be to combine three important steps that are mutually supportive of each other.

The first part in turn consists of two sub-parts. First, the two sides agree to unconditional ceasefire i.e. cessations of all fighting in whatever form, more or less on the basis of the existing line of control. The second sub-part consists of the two sides agreeing at the same time to engage in peaceful negotiations to settle all contentious issues.

Such an agreement has the advantage of stopping the fighting, bombing and shooting immediately and providing immediate relief to long-suffering people. Food and other relief supplies can now be rushed much more easily and safely to people who need these the most. Medical care and medicines for seriously injured and ill people can now be provided more easily. Large-scale reconstruction and repair work can also start now and many displaced people can gradually start returning to their homes.  In addition there is no loss of face for either side as all contentious issues are kept open for future peace negotiations.

The second part of the peace process parts starts a few month later after preparations have been made for peace negotiations. This should not be seen as a hurried affair. Both sides should agree that regardless of any persisting differences, the peace negotiations should not break down. There can be one round, followed with a short rest (I won’t call it a break), then the second round can start, and then after a gap the third round can start. If in the process big differences get resolved that is very good, but even if this does not happen and only some minor ones are resolved, this too is a step forward.  What is important is that the peace negotiations should not be allowed to break down and should be conducted as politely as possible, taking special care to avoid any provocative statements. Attempts should be made to create near consensus on both sides that peace negotiations should not break down and should continue.

The third part of the peace process is that while peace negotiations are taking place with some rest periods, outside of the main peace negotiations a number of other efforts should be made with even greater continuity to create goodwill between the people of the two countries, remove misunderstandings, promote cultural exchanges, have co-production of movies, promote economic ties and trade in such ways that are genuinely beneficial for the people of both countries and strong economic reasons are also created for a relationship of friendship between the two countries.

All the three processes are intended to be mutually supportive towards each other.

While the above suggestions have been in the context mainly of conflicts involving two countries but of course these apply also to conflicts involving more than two countries or to two or more sides of internal conflicts.

These suggestions are for a path which can create durable peace and goodwill.

Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now.

7 August 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Medea Benjamin

Representative Cori Bush, a progressive black woman from St. Louis, MO who is a member of the “Squad” and has been a powerful voice in Congress for poor people, women’s rights, healthcare, housing–and Palestine, just lost her primary because pro-Israel lobby groups flooded the race with outside funding. Her loss is a tremendous blow to progressives and to the U.S. electoral process itself.

This is the pro-Israel lobby’s second “win” of the season. The first was the June defeat of progressive, black congressman from Westchester County, N.Y., Jamaal Bowman, who was a forceful critic of Israel’s attacks on Gaza. AIPAC and its mis-named super PAC, the United Democracy Project, barged into Westchester County to anoint an opponent—white, pro-Israel Westchester County Executive George Latimer—and then shower him with cash.

The ads against Bowman were not about Israel. Instead, AIPAC smeared the congressman’s character and criticized him as a “hot head” who was not a reliable member of the Democratic team. In the words of President of the Arab American Institute Jim Zogby, the race became  “the angry, frightening young black man versus the calm, thoughtful older white guy.”

By throwing $17 million into the race, pro-Israel groups turned Bowman’s primary into the most expensive one in U.S. history. When Bowman was defeated, AIPAC declared the outcome showed that the pro-Israel position is “both good policy and good politics.” On the contrary. It showed that pro-Israel groups can buy elections and it sent a frightening message to all elected officials that if they criticize Israel, even during a genocide, they may well pay with their careers.

Buoyed by its success, AIPAC then took on Cori Bush, marching into St. Louis, MO determined to defeat a black woman who was one of the most unique voices in all of congress. Once a unhoused single mother of two, and a survivor of gun violence, domestic violence and sexual assault, Bush became a nurse and a pastor, and in the wake of the killing of the unarmed black man Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014, she became an activist on the frontlines of the movement to save black lives. After protesting in the streets for 400 days, she jumped into the political arena. In 2020 made a successful run for Congress, becoming the first black representative from Missouri.

In Bush’s two terms in Congress, she demonstrated leadership on many fronts, including reproductive justice and abortion rights. At a House of Representatives committee hearing in 2021, Bush was one of three congresswomen to share her abortion story publicly. And after the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, she introduced a host of bills, including the Reproductive Health Care Accessibility Act, the Protecting Access to Medication Abortion Act, the Reproductive Health Travel Fund Act, and the Protect Sexual and Reproductive Health Act.

She also championed housing rights. When the COVID moratorium on evictions was about to expire, she grabbed her sleeping bag and lawn chair, and organized a “sleep in” on the steps of the U.S. Capitol that resulted in an extension of the moratorium on evictions.

Foreign policy was not her focus, but in the wake of the Hamas attack on October 9, 2023 and Israel’s subsequent bombing of civilians in Gaza, Bush felt compelled to speak out. Just nine days after the October 7 Hamas attack, she had the courage to introduce a ceasefire resolution in the House. She was one of only nine House members who opposed a resolution supporting Israel. She boycotted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before Congress, calling him a “war criminal.”

As a result of defending Palestinians, she found herself in AIPAC’s crosshairs. “Cori Bush has been one of the most hostile critics of Israel since she came to Congress in 2021 and has actively worked to undermine mainstream Democratic support for the U.S.-Israel relationship, “ AIPAC claimed.

AIPAC’s super PAC spent nearly $9 million, much of it coming from Republican mega-donors, to buy ads smearing Bush and shoring up contender Wesley Bell, a St. Louis County Prosecutor. The attacks were vicious, including ads that darkened Bush’s skin and manipulated her racial features. They also distorted her domestic voting record, condemning her for not supporting Biden’s Infrastructure Bill instead of explaining that her vote was part of a strategy to gain leverage for key social programs in the Build Back Better Act.

Curiously, in the cases of both Bowman and Bush, the attack ads did not even mention Israel. But if Israel is AIPAC’s singular focus, why did the ads avoid the issue? That’s because most Americans, especially in those liberal Democrat districts, agree with their positions. Most Americans want a ceasefire and disapprove of Israel’s military actions in Gaza.  As Jewish Voice for Peace Executive Director Stephanie Fox said during a call to rally support for the Congresswoman Bush, “She has been a life raft for our values and principles in Congress and she has been under attack because far right extremist groups like AIPAC are scared.

Jim Zogby of the Arab American Institute agrees.  “Pro-Israel groups are running scared,” he said. “They are losing the public debate over policy—especially among Democrats. Most Democrats are deeply opposed to Israeli policies in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian lands. Majorities want a ceasefire and an end to settlements. And they want to stop further arms shipments to Israel.” So AIPAC hides the Israel issue and then claims the “win” is a victory for Israel.

If we are going to stop U.S. support for Israel’s genocide, prevent the Middle East from erupting in flames and reclaim our elections here at home, we have to stop AIPAC.

Medea Benjamin is an author and the cofounder of the peace group CODEPINK. You can find her on social media @medeabenjamin.

7 August 2024

Source: countercurrents.org