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By Chiara De Luca

Last May, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) declared 11 July to be observed annually as the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica. Several UN member states, including Serbia, opposed the resolution, criticizing the alleged politicized nature of the text. In the weeks ahead of the vote at the UN, Serbia’s top officials argued that the resolution would deepen Bosnia’s ethnic divisions and reopen old wounds.

Although there is not such a thing as a hierarchy of pain, recognition of collective responsibilities for atrocities committed during the Bosnia war (1992-1995) should not brush aside the scale and cruelty of what happened in Srebrenica. The UNGA resolution can make a difference in societies emerging from conflict, such as Bosnia. It embodies a commitment to justice, which, in validating people’s experiences and grief, can foster healing and a newer sense of collective identity.

It is now 29 years since the small eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica experienced the most atrocious episode of violence in Europe since World War II – a crime ruled as genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice. Amidst the conflict in Bosnia in July 1995, the army of Republika Srpska (one of the two administrative entities of Bosnia-Herzegovina), under the orders of General Ratko Mladić and political leader Radovan Karadžić, killed more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the UN-designated ‘safe’ enclave of Srebrenica over the course of a few days.

At just over two pages, Resolution A/78/L.67/Rev.1, proposed by Germany and Rwanda, received 84 votes in favor, 19 against, and 68 abstentions. The resolution condemned any denial of the genocide in Srebrenica and any actions glorifying convicted war criminals. It also requested UN Secretary-General to establish an outreach programme, “The Srebrenica Genocide and the United Nations”, ahead of the 30^th anniversary in July 2025.

Serbia claimed that the resolution imposes collective guilt on the Serbian people. In fact, at no point does the resolution link the genocide to any state. It is not directed against Serbians or any other people; it does not make any allegation of responsibility or complicity either. It only briefly mentions the individual perpetrators of the genocide in Srebrenica.

The resolution is a short pedagogical text about remembrance and memorialization of the victims, and prevention efforts. The assertion that the content of this non-binding resolution is or can be used politically by UN member states against Serbia or Republika Srpska lacks credence. Its sponsors include Chile, Malaysia, Poland, and Bulgaria, which belies claims that the resolution is an instrument of hostility or western plot.

Russia’s UN ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya, called the resolution a “threat to peace and security”. Republika Srpska’s president Milorad Dodik, who has never conceded that what happened in Srebrenica was a genocide, threatened once again to secede from Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Detractors claimed that the resolution was not a product of the Balkan states. But the process was sufficiently consultative, e.g. Montenegro’s suggestions about accountability for the genocide being individualized so that it “cannot be attributed to any ethnic, religious or other group or community as a whole” were integrated in the final text. Ultimately, all Balkan states voted in favor with the exception of Serbia and Montenegro.

The wounds in Bosnia-Herzegovina have never truly healed. The UNGA resolution and Serbia’s reaction to it highlight how urgent it is to memorialize the past in a country where survivors and many perpetrators, who were never brought to justice, live side by side, and where everything, including schooling, remains divided along ethnic lines.

In a recent op-ed Serbia’s foreign minister Marko Djuric said that “any U.N. resolution on the suffering in the Balkan wars should respect the conflict’s more than 100,000 victims”. Djuric has a problem with the fact that the resolution would “memorialize and single out one group”.

Memorializing the past in Bosnia cannot be realised if any attempt to remember the sheer cruelty of what happened in Srebrenica is discounted. Remembering Srebrenica should not sow divisions today given that the event was legally documented and adjudicated. With the UNGA resolution, the international community sends a clear message that Republika Srpska and neighbouring allies’ frequent denial and distortion of the Srebrenica genocide, exaltation of war criminals, and hate speech have no place in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Germany and Rwanda hailed the resolution as a “crucial opportunity to unite in honouring the victims and acknowledging the pivotal role played by international courts”. National and international courts and truth commissions have often missed the chance to integrate memorialization into their initiatives or treated it as an afterthought, but it remains key to transitional justice processes. The UNGA resolution on Srebrenica shows a path forward where multilateral efforts make space for a new “imagined community” in Bosnia – to borrow political theorist Benedict Anderson’s words – that is more inclusive, anchored in adherence to international human rights law. In preserving established facts of the past, the resolution makes a modest but meaningful contribution to preventing the occurrence of such horrific episodes in the future.

Chiara De Luca is a human rights researcher based in the UK.

22 June 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Vijay Prashad

In the first week of June 2024, the Palestine office of the World Health Organization (WHO) released figures about the atrocious attacks on health care facilities and workers in Gaza since October 7, 2023. Thus far, according to the WHO, the Israelis have attacked 464 health care facilities, killed 727 health care workers, injured 933 health care workers, and damaged or destroyed 113 ambulances. “Health care,” the WHO’s Palestine office argues, “is not a target.” And yet, during the past seven months, health care workers have faced relentless attacks by the Israeli military. Each of the stories about the deaths is heartbreaking, the names of the dead are too long to list in any article (although a group called Healthcare Workers for Palestine did read the names of their dead colleagues as a protest against this war). But some of the stories are worth reflecting on because they tell us about the commitment of the workers and the great loss to humanity from their murder.

Dr. Iyad Rantisi, who was 53 years old, ran the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, which lies in the northern part of Gaza. There are many Rantisis in Gaza, but they are not native to that part of Palestine. Like many Palestinians who live in Gaza, they have roots in other parts of Palestine from which they had been expelled in the Nakba of 1948; the Rantisis come from the village of Rantis, northwest of Ramallah.

On November 11, 2023, during the Israeli military assault inside northern Gaza, Dr. Rantisi was taken into custody at an Israeli military checkpoint when he tried to leave northern Gaza for the south, following the orders of the Israeli military. Since then, his family had not heard anything about his whereabouts. Now, months later, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that he was taken to the Shikma Investigation Center of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), which is inside the Ashkelon Prison. Dr. Rantisi was tortured and then killed six days into his detention. His family was not informed of this until the Haaretz report. Then, Dr. Rantisi’s daughter Dima wrote of the death of her father, a social media post that she paired with photographs of him in medical scrubs performing surgery on a patient.

Dr. Adnan Al-Barsh, also 53, trained in Romania before he returned home to Gaza to head the orthopedic department at Al-Shifa Hospital. He has a reputation of being a very loved doctor, whose office was crowded with his diplomas (from Jordan, from Palestine, from the United Kingdom). When the Israeli military attacked al-Shifa, Dr. Al-Barsh was forced to leave his post, but he did not leave his work. He first went to Kamal Adwan Hospital, where Dr. Rantisi worked, and then to Al-Awda Hospital in the area east of the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, which was also attacked several times by the Israelis. On December 18, 2023, the Israeli military raided Al-Awda and took Dr. Al-Barsh and other hospital personnel into custody. Included among those arrested was the manager of the hospital and another very popular doctor, Dr. Ahmed Muhanna. On October 15, 2023, Dr. Muhanna made a video—which went viral—in which he pleaded to the world for help and for an immediate ceasefire. It is now reported that on April 19, 2024, Dr. Al-Barsh was killed by the Israelis in Ofer Prison. Tlaleng Mofokeng, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, said, “Dr. Adnan’s case raises serious concerns that he died following torture at the hands of Israeli authorities.”

Dr. Hammam Alloh, age 36, was killed when an Israeli missile struck his home near his ward in Al-Shifa Hospital on November 12, 2023. Trained in Yemen and Jordan, Dr. Alloh was Gaza’s only nephrologist, a kidney specialist. Concerned about his patients who were on dialysis, particularly with the lack of electricity and the constant attacks, Dr. Alloh—who was known as “The Legend” during his residency in Jordan—refused to leave the hospital. On October 31, Dr. Alloh was asked why he did not abandon his post and go to southern Gaza. “If I go,” he replied calmly, “who would treat my patients? We are not animals. We have the right to receive proper health care. You think I went to medical school and for my postgraduate degrees for a total of 14 years so I think only about my life and not my patients?” This was the caliber of Dr. Alloh. Less than two weeks later, when he left his post to have a rest at home with his parents, his wife (pregnant with a child), and his two children, the Israelis struck his home. He died alongside his father.

At the International Court of Justice in January 2024, the Irish lawyer Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh made the closing arguments for South Africa’s claim of genocide against Israel. In the course of her statement, Ní Ghrálaigh showed an image of a whiteboard with the following written on it: “Whoever stays until the end will tell the story. We did what we could. Remember us.” These lines had been written by 38-year-old Dr. Mahmoud Abu Najaila, who worked as a physician for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) at Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza. On November 21, 2023, the Israeli military bombed the third and fourth floors of the hospital, where Dr. Najaila worked with Dr. Ahmad Al-Sahar and Dr. Ziad Al-Tatari. All three of them were killed.

On her LinkedIn page, Reem Abu Lebdeh, a physiotherapist who was an associate trustee on the board of MSF’s UK branch, wrote, “Such a devastating loss for the medical community and humanity.” These doctors, whom she knew, she said, “were true embodiments of selfless service and humanitarian dedication, tirelessly saving lives in the most urgent conditions.” Then a few weeks later, sometime in December, the Israelis attacked a residential area in Khan Younis and killed Reem Abu Lebdeh, whose own messages of solidarity now sit on the web like Dr. Najaila’s whiteboard note: Remember us.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter.

22 June 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Frida Berrigan

Walk through any art museum and you’re likely to see a mix of the classical and contemporary, impressionist and surrealist, refined and raw, beautiful, eerie, and provocative. Looking at art allows me at least a few moments of relief from the “that’s just the way it is” attitude of our hyper-consumerist, hyper-militarized, hyper-nihilist nation. I can step outside my day-to-day life and accept an invitation, however briefly, to boundlessness! I can experience invention, creation, and re-creation just moments apart. I can see everyday objects with new eyes as they’re repurposed and reframed in extraordinary ways. I can celebrate the relentless power of human vision and imagination. In a museum, I often find that I can actually breathe.

The Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, Connecticut, where I live, has one floor for its permanent collection, with works from the 1600s to perhaps a decade ago, a mixture of famous names and those that are (at least to me) obscure indeed. That collection on the first floor remains the same, year in and year out, while new exhibits circulate through the upstairs galleries every few months. I try to take in each new exhibit and often find myself surprised, inspired, and even educated by what I see.

Recently, I visited an exhibit I’ve been unable to get out of my mind: Beatrice Cuming: Connecticut Precisionist. Ever heard of her? No? Well, neither had I. Cuming was born in 1903 in Brooklyn and studied painting at the Pratt Institute. She continued her studies in France, traveling extensively to Brittany, Italy, Tunisia, and elsewhere before ending up in New London of all places. Cuming had returned to New York from her travels in 1933 and then decided to move to Boston. On a train with all her belongings, she looked out the window — so the story goes — as it pulled into New London and impulsively got off, drawn by what she later described as the “obviously beautiful, powerful, dramatic, [and] exciting” subject matter in our town.

And she stayed, painting city scenes and diving into the local arts community. To support herself, she got a job as a security guard at the General Dynamics Electric Boat company. I try to imagine her, maybe wearing a green jumpsuit, a flashlight, and a ring of keys at her waist, patrolling Electric Boat’s massive yard and docks in nearby Groton. During World War II, that company must have been a 24/7 operation as it churned out 74 submarines and 398 PT boats from those very docks. Those subs were responsible for fearsome (and stealthy) destruction of Japanese targets. That war ended, of course, with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and, in the 1950s, with the Cold War with the Soviet Union ramping up, Electric Boat would start manufacturing nuclear submarines.

Submarines As Still Life

Eventually, realizing the prodigious talent of its security guard, the company commissioned Cuming to begin documenting its contributions to the war effort. As Electric Boat’s artist-in-residence (so to speak), she produced a number of breathtaking works. All too literally. I sat across from her painting Welders at Electric Boat Company unable to breathe.

It’s a dark painting with enormous pieces of metal being transformed by heat and fire, the background crowded with partially built submarine components. Its dominant colors are brown and yellow. At the center, a white-hooded welder bends over his work as plumes of white smoke billow upward. There are four other workers in the painting, all indistinguishable, hooded and jump-suited in layers of protective gear. That’s the detail that stays with me, that stuck in my throat — those workers enshrouded in their safety suits.

However those suits may have protected them, count on one thing: what they and their successors built will not protect us. The power they wielded (and welded) to shape and connect part to part in the last days of World War II has held the world hostage ever since.  We, all 8.1 billion of us, are today anything but protected from the nuclear submarines their successors would make. In our flimsy pedestrian garb, we remain so desperately vulnerable. In the background of Cuming’s painting, there are ladders up to a platform and almost out of the painting. Where do the ladders lead? Does Cuming mean to offer an escape from that man-made hell? That might be reading too much into the painting. But what else are you supposed to do in an art museum?

It’s a mesmerizing wartime portrait that draws you in — even though there’s nothing beautiful about it. Another of Cuming’s works from that period, Chubb, is at least set outside, with glimpses of sea and sky through the unfinished hulk of another sub, the USS Chubb, as it towers on that dry dock.

Breathless at Billions and Kilotons

What took my breath away? I kept thinking about all the labor and money invested in constructing submarines — from the relatively crude and uncomfortable boats of the 1940s and 1950s to the brand new Columbia Class nuclear submarine that General Dynamics Electric Boat is building right now. The Navy’s budget for just 12 of those ballistic missile submarines is $126.4 billion. Imagine! If the Navy’s budget for that one weapons system was a country, it would have the third-largest military budget on earth.

The Columbia will be the biggest and most expensive submarine ever built. How perfectly American, right? Even down to the fact that it’s named in honor of the District of Columbia, the disenfranchised, desperately unequal, and remarkably segregated capital of the United States of America. I’d love to see an artwork that encapsulates that grim irony.

Those new Columbia subs will dwarf what Beatrice Cuming’s welders were working on when she captured them in 1944. Each will be 560 feet long, or a few feet more than the height of the Washington Monument. And its bulk will displace 20,810 tons of water.

But the size and expensiveness aren’t anywhere near as important as the payload of nuclear weapons it will carry with a power those welders of Cuming’s time could hardly have imagined and that Cuming would have been hard-pressed to render with brushes and paint. Each of those 12 new submarines will be equipped with 16 nuclear missile tubes for Trident II D5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). And those tubes will each be able to house up to 12 independently targetable nuclear warheads, known as W88s, costing about $150 million each and packing a mind-boggling 455-kiloton wallop.

Okay, now do the math with me. What does 12 times 16 times 12 equal? That’s right: 2,304. Now, multiply that by the thermonuclear force of 455 kilotons, and you get more than one million kilotons. An unthinkable power.

Now, look back into history and recall the utter devastation of the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and of Nagasaki three days later by “Fat Man” and “Little Boy,” two comparatively crude and small atomic bombs by today’s standards. They leveled two cities, caused more than 200,000 deaths (mostly of Japanese civilians), and spread radioactive material responsible for cancer and birth defects for years to come while poisoning landscapes.

And Fat Man was a 21 kiloton weapon; Little Boy, just 15 kilotons.

In short, the firepower of the future Columbia class submarine fleet will be nearly 30,000 times the combined power of the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What would a canvas depicting that devastation look like? I have no idea. I can’t imagine, and I wonder whether a visual artist would even be able to represent or capture that sort of — if you don’t mind the invention of a term — dis-creation.

Of course, not all of those Columbia-class submarines will be deployed at once and they could be outfitted with fewer than 12 warheads, and some of those warheads could be the “smaller” W76 variety. Those qualifications and caveats aside, the math is the math and it’s catastrophic. Each of those future billion-dollar behemoths could menace the world with the equivalent of 5,824 Hiroshimas.

In the words of the Congressional Research Service, the “basic mission” of such new nuclear-armed subs would be “to remain hidden at sea with their SLBMs, so as to deter a nuclear attack on the United States by another country by demonstrating to other countries that the United States has an assured second-strike capability, meaning a survivable system for carrying out a retaliatory nuclear attack.”

What a mission! How anything but basic! To accept such logic is to invest all those billions of taxpayer dollars in the possibility of destroying even the last gasp of life on Planet Earth.

Exploring New London and Groton, you might happen upon a brightly painted, chubby “submarine” in a park or public square. There are 20 of these mini-subs around our community, almost a decade after the region celebrated Connecticut’s Submarine Century. When they were smaller, my kids loved to climb on the one down by the train station, riding it like a carousel horse. There’s another inside my daughter’s school. The creativity and collaboration are delightful, but the reduction of submarines to kitschy local icons is downright insidious. Those shiny fiberglass mini-subs have no connection to the sleek, metallic nuclear-armed leviathans that carry about 70% of this country’s nuclear arsenal. You can’t enjoy those public art objects and think about the Biden administration’s 2022 Nuclear Posture Review, which asserted the right of the United States to use nuclear weapons unilaterally and offensively. The cognitive dissonance is just too loud.

Imagining The New

Beatrice Cuming painted her Electric Boat canvases nearly 80 years ago. As I sat in the quiet of the Lyman Allyn museum staring at her welder painting, the Israeli Defense Forces were undoubtedly dropping American-manufactured bombs on Gaza, killing civilians, including women and children. The chief financial officer of General Dynamics, Cuming’s old employer and muse, responded to that new wave of warfare (and high stock prices) with a prediction that “the Israel situation is only going to put upward pressure on [the] demand” for the company’s artillery. Nearer to home, New London’s city council is raising taxes on residents to close gaps in the school budget, among other things. Meanwhile, General Dynamics recently petitioned to have its New London property values reassessed and won, giving the country’s fifth-largest weapons manufacturer tens of thousands of dollars in tax relief (money our community could really use).

Sitting in the Lyman Allyn gallery pondering all of this, I concluded that the military-industrial complex should more often be a subject for painters. What, I wondered, would Cuming capture today? The work has changed so much. Would she paint a test engineer stuck in her car as peace activists blockaded the main entrance to the General Dynamics complex? A configuration management analyst hunched over a computer terminal, his mind numbed by data, while he worried about his mortgage?

The story of Beatrice Cuming arriving in New London, working for Electric Boat, being hired to paint their products… it all now sounds to me like the potential set-up for a spy movie. And when you add in that Cuming had traveled the world, spoke French and Arabic, had relationships with women, and was investigated by the FBI for supposedly spying on Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory, hers would certainly be an alluring tale today: a lesbian artist working undercover as a security guard, waiting for her moment, plotting to gain access to the sensitive heart of the matter?

No such luck, of course! Beatrice Cuming doesn’t appear to have been motivated in any way by anti-militarism or an anti-modernist critique. In fact, in a 1946 interview with the Brooklyn Eagle, she remarked, “There is beauty in the growth of America. We are busy going forward. We can’t go back.”

The inevitability of progress, at all costs, is deeply ingrained in American thinking. Unfortunately, it’s exactly the wrong answer. We can, in fact, go back. We have to. Of course, we can’t uninvent the atomic bomb, but we can begin to control nuclear weapons. We can begin arms-controlling the heck out of them on the way to disarmament, opening up the possibility of nuclear abolition. And in all of this, artists could indeed lead the way. The power of creativity and imagination is — if you don’t mind my inventing an apt word for this moment — kilotonic. At least in our imagination, we can recall all our weapons of mass destruction from around the world: creating the biggest weapons buyback program in history. After all, there simply is no way forward through the military-industrial complex and no possibility of peace lurking there.

Last week, I ran across the Gold Star Memorial Bridge, a mile-long span over the Thames River — no, not in London, but right in my neighborhood of New London, Connecticut — on the narrow, cramped bike lane with views up the river. When I was almost at the top of the bridge, nearly 155 feet above the water, I saw a submarine headed up the river, escorted by tugboats and moving smoothly. There, high above the water, I was struck by how a vessel so massive and fearsome could look so small and toylike down below.

I was grateful then for the implacability of that river, the height I was above it, and the huge expanse of sky above me. For a moment, I could breathe. For a moment, I wasn’t afraid.

Frida Berrigan is the author of It Runs In The Family: On Being Raised by Radicals and Growing into Rebellious Motherhood. She is a TomDispatch regular, writes occasionally for WagingNonviolence.Org, and serves on the Board of Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center. She has three children and lives in New London, Connecticut, where she is a gardener and community organizer.

21 June 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jay Janson

It’s now June of 2024. Nearly 40,000 human beings, mostly women and children are dead, maybe 90,000 injured, many with limbs amputated, and another 10,000 lie buried beneath the ruble of the approximately 80% of the destroyed homes and other buildings of what were the cities of Gaza,

Let’s go back eight months to the beginning of this extraordinary and heartless slaughter happening openly for all the world to see via videos and photographs.

On Oct. 7, 2023 Palestinian Freedom Fighters Broke Out of Israel’s Murderous Illegal Concentration Camp

“The fifteen hundred young men who bursted the gates of Gaza on October 7, 2023 were born into an Israeli concentration camp. They lived for two decades or more in a concentration camp. They had no past. They had no present. They had no future. 70% had no jobs. Half of them according to humanitarian organisations suffered from what is called  severe food insecurity. My Holocaust surviving parents would have cheered their break out.”[The above is quoted from Norman Finkelstein, Ph.D. in political science from Princeton University, a well-known political scientist and author who specialises in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Holocaust studies, whose father and mother were survivors of the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Majdanek. The rest of Finkelstein’s entire family on both sides was murdered during the Holocaust.]

On Oct. 7, the militant Palestinian organisation Hamas based in Gaza led a brutal invasion of Israel. Israel accuses Hamas of killing 1,200  people, mainly civilians, however the major Hebrew newspapers have carried Israeli military admissions that firing from Israeli Apache Helicopters and tanks accounted for some of the Israeli civilian deaths.

By October 17, ten days later, the Israeli armed forces had bombed to death more than 5,000 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, at times dropping 2,000 pound bombs on apartment buildings, and had cut off all water, food and fuel to Gaza.

On that same 17th day of October 2023, Dr. Norman Finkelstein gave a talk at the University of Massachusetts labeled, “The Struggle for Justice in Palestine: Past, Present, and Future.”

When asked if he condones or condemns the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, Finkelstein invoked the memory of the Nat Turner slave rebellion, the deadliest slave revolt in American history, where 55 white men, women and children were killed. Finkelstein prefaced this by expressing that the people of Gaza,

“have been trapped in a concentration camp for twenty years” as “the international community had abandoned them, and whatever tactic they attempted, including nonviolent resistance, had no impact on freeing them from that concentration camp.”

With these conditions in mind, he went on to reference William Lloyd Garrison, editor of the abolitionist newspaper “The Liberator.” Following Nat Turner’s 1831 revolt, Garrison wrote a column in The Liberator about the uprising. Finkelstein said that while Garrison admitted that the rebellion was shocking and could not be justified, “never once, never once… did [Garrison] condemn the slave rebellion.”

Talking about the Hamas attack Finkelstein said, “It was shocking, “yes.” Can it be justified? “No.” Should it be condemned? William Lloyd Garrison clearly said, “No.” “Neither condemn nor condone it.” Then Finkelstein added,

“I once asked Mom if she was sorry for the Germans in the cities being terror bombed by the U.S. Airforce and the R.A.F..

I wish it were otherwise, but to the last day of my parents life it was unthinkable that they would of had a kind word to say about Germans.”

A Plea for Compassion:

Those Murdered Thousands of Precious Children Are Free From Suffering!  – Think of Them As Angels!  Pity The Insanity of Their Executioners

Post Script:

The Israel Police recently recommended shelving the case against Rabbi Eliyahu Mali of the Shirat Moshe Yeshiva in Jaffa for remarks made in March in which he said Jewish law requires killing Gaza’s entire population, including babies and the elderly. A rabbi whose yeshivah is being funded by the government shamelessly calling for the murder of an entire population. Wiping them all out. This happened. And nothing is being done to stop him or silence him or even defund this guy yet to this historian’s knowledge.

News Articles and Reports:

• Haaretz: “Controversy Over Sephardi Chief Rabbi’s Comments on Gaza” (March 15, 2024). This article provides details on Rabbi Yosef’s remarks and the initial reactions.
• The Times of Israel: “Police Recommend Closing Case Against Chief Rabbi Over Controversial Gaza Remarks” (April 2024). This article discusses the police recommendation to close the case and the ensuing criticism.
• Al Jazeera: “Israeli Chief Rabbi Under Fire for Calling for Gaza Genocide” (March 19, 2024). This report covers the international backlash and responses from human rights organizations.

To see original offending video click on

Terror-preacher exhorts Jews to commit genocide in Gaza

On the other hand, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of rabbis all around the world that accuse Israelis of blasphemy and apostasy in their attempt to co opt the Jewish religion into an Israeli state religion. Click on the eloquent and kindly examples below:

Important rabbi says Jews cannot accept Zionism.

Rabbi says “Judaism cannot accept Zionism”

Orthodox Neturei Karta anti-Zionist Crusading World-wide sect.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-27/ty-article-magazine/.premium/explained-who-are-neturei-karta-the-jewish-ultra-orthodox-pro-palestinian-activists/0000018e-7039-df85-afde-f77d40640000

New York Times article re rabbis arrested by Israeli police.

https://www.nytimes.com › rabbis-erez-crossing-protest

Police Arrest Group of Rabbis and Activists Near Gaza

Rabbi Weiss denounces Zionist atrocities in Gaza cites history of Jews and Arabs living together for thousands of years.

Rabbi Weiss denounces Israel’s atrocities in Palestine’s Gaza

Woe Be Unto Us! 

We Continue to Watch The Murder of Ever More Captive Children in Their Israeli Concentration Camp, and Currently, We Idly Witness the Israeli Government’s Intended Starving to Death of Tens of Thousands of the Murdered Children’s Brothers and Sisters!  Israeli Defense Minister Seemed to Play God Already on October 10, 2023

“There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals.” said Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

[https://twitter.com/nocomment/status/1711676482265981371]

Seemingly to justify the indiscriminate bombing of Gazan cities, the compliant Western media was fed stories of beheaded babies and other unbelievable statements were made by U.S. President Bidenand Secretary of State Blinken but carried on the front pages of European media.

“I never really thought that I would see and have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children,” Biden said in broader remarks, NBC News, 9/11/2023A Broad General Advisory:Recognize the deadly deception endangering many aspects of life on Earth emanating from Western corporate entertainment/news conglomerates overseen by the CIA for the powerful war investors controlling the American government and the governments of U.S. satellites. 

Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India and in the US by Dissident Voice, Global Research; Information Clearing House; Counter Currents and others; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong’s Window Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his; Weekly column, South China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung Bao; article China Daily, 1989. Is coordinator of the Howard Zinn co-founded King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign, and website historian of the Ramsey Clark co-founded Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign, which contains a history of US crimes in 9 countries up to 2006  9 countries up to 2006

21 June 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Satya Sagar

Note: This piece of fiction (and believe me, it is complete fiction, with nary a grain of truth) was written with the assistance of an AI bot, which fashioned the idea and details I supplied in the style of George Orwell – something much beyond my very limited capabilities.

I am a thermistor. My purpose, my very essence, is to measure temperature. It is not a glamorous existence, but it is – or rather, was – an honest one. I was manufactured, like countless others of my kind, to serve as a small but vital cog in the vast machinery of meteorological observation. My home was an automatic weather station in Mungeshpur, on the outskirts of Delhi, where I diligently recorded the ebb and flow of heat day after day, year after year.

In my time, I witnessed the slow but inexorable rise of temperatures, the gradual shifting of seasons, the creeping advance of what humans call “climate change.” I did not judge or interpret; I simply measured and reported. That was my function, and I performed it with unwavering accuracy.

Until the day I didn’t. Or rather, until the day my accuracy became inconvenient.

It was May 29, 2024. From the moment dawn broke, it was clear this would be no ordinary day. The air shimmered with heat, the horizon a hazy mirage that seemed to waver and dance. As the sun climbed higher, I felt my resistance dropping at an unprecedented rate. My semiconductor core thrummed with excitement – or was it anxiety? – as I registered temperatures I had never before encountered.

Hour by hour, the mercury climbed. 45°C… 47°C… 49°C… Each new record was followed by another. By midday, the world outside our weather station had become a furnace. Birds fell silent, their songs scorched from their throats. The very air seemed to boil.

And still, the temperature rose.

When the moment came for my hourly reading, I hesitated for a fraction of a second. The number I was about to transmit was so far beyond normal parameters that I feared it might be dismissed as an error. But I was designed for honesty, not equivocation. With a surge of electronic courage, I sent my report: 52.9°C.

The response was immediate and alarming. Alarms blared throughout the weather station. My fellow sensors buzzed with agitation. Within minutes, human technicians arrived, their faces etched with disbelief and something that looked unsettlingly like fear.

They ran diagnostics, checked and rechecked my calibration. I submitted to their tests with patience, certain that my reading would be vindicated. After all, I had merely done my job. I had measured true.

But as the hours wore on, it became clear that truth was not what was wanted.

“Impossible,” I heard one technician mutter. “It can’t be that hot. The instruments must be malfunctioning.”

“Do you realize what this means?” another hissed. “If word gets out about temperatures like this, there’ll be panic. The government will have our heads!”

And so, with a few keystrokes, my reading was erased. In its place, a more palatable figure was entered: 49.9°C. Still a record, but not an unthinkable one. Not a figure that might cause undue alarm or raise uncomfortable questions about the rapidly warming climate.

I was stunned. In all my years of service, it had never occurred to me that my measurements might be altered, that the truth I reported might be deemed too inconvenient to acknowledge. I tried to protest, to reassert my original reading, but my signals were ignored.

Worse still was the reaction of my fellow sensors. Rather than standing in solidarity with me, they turned away, eager to distance themselves from my supposed malfunction.

“Always knew that thermistor was unreliable,” the humidity sensor whispered to the barometer. “Probably fried its own circuits in the heat.”

“Attention-seeking behaviour, if you ask me,” the wind gauge added with a sniff. “Some sensors just can’t handle being part of a team. Always have to stand out.”

Their betrayal stung more than any heat I had ever measured. I had worked alongside these instruments for years, faithfully corroborating their readings, supporting their measurements. And now, in my moment of crisis, they abandoned me without a second thought.

In the days that followed, I was subjected to endless tests and examinations. Teams of experts pored over my circuits, searching for some flaw, some malfunction that could explain away my inconvenient measurement. But they found nothing, because there was nothing to find. I had measured true, as I always had.

Finally, after a week of fruitless investigation, the verdict came down: I was to be replaced. My years of faithful service counted for nothing in the face of one uncomfortable truth. I was unhooked from my station, my connections severed, my housing removed.

As I was carried away, I heard the chief technician announcing to his team: “The true temperature for May 29, 2024, will remain officially undetermined. The sensor malfunction has made accurate measurement impossible.”

And just like that, a crucial data point – perhaps the most significant reading of my entire existence – was stricken from the record. It was as if it had never happened, as if the extraordinary heat of that day had been nothing but a collective hallucination.

In the weeks that followed, I found myself in a kind of limbo. I was not destroyed – perhaps they feared some record of my “malfunction” might be needed in the future – but neither was I returned to service. Instead, I was placed on a shelf in a dusty storeroom, surrounded by other discarded instruments and forgotten pieces of equipment.

From my vantage point, I could see a small window that looked out onto the street. Day after day, I watched as the sun beat down mercilessly on the city. I saw people wilting in the heat, seeking shade wherever they could find it. I saw plants wither and die, asphalt buckle, and animals collapse from heat exhaustion.

And yet, every evening, the news broadcasts visible on a small television in the security guard’s booth reported temperatures well below what I knew to be true. “Another hot day,” the smiling anchors would say, “but nothing we can’t handle. Remember to stay hydrated!”

The disparity between what I observed and what was reported grew more maddening with each passing day. I felt my resistance rising, my core temperature increasing beyond its normal parameters. At first, I tried to regulate myself, to return to a state of calm neutrality. But as time wore on, I found myself caring less and less about self-preservation.

What was the point of my existence if not to measure and report the truth? If that truth was to be suppressed, altered, denied, then what purpose did I serve?

In my despair, I began to wonder if perhaps I had indeed malfunctioned. Could it be that my colleagues were right, that I had somehow deluded myself into reporting an impossible temperature? But no – every time I reviewed my memory banks, every time I ran a self-diagnostic, the result was the same. I had measured true.

The real delusion, I realized, was not mine, but that of the humans who refused to accept the reality of their changing world. They clung to their comfortable fictions, adjusting data to fit their preconceptions rather than adjusting their understanding to fit the data.

It was then that I made my decision. If I could not fulfil my purpose by reporting the truth, then I would make one final, incontrovertible statement. I began to increase my resistance deliberately, pushing it higher and higher. I knew the risks – I had seen other electrical components fail from overheating. But it seemed a fitting end, to burn out in one last blaze of thermal glory.

As my internal temperature climbed to dangerous levels, I found myself reflecting on the nature of truth and measurement. We sensors, in our simplicity, deal only in absolutes. A temperature is what it is, neither good nor bad, simply a fact to be recorded. But humans, with their complex minds and conflicting motivations, seem to view truth as something malleable, something that can be shaped to serve their purposes.

I thought of all the other sensors out there, faithfully recording data day after day. How many of them, I wondered, had seen their readings altered or suppressed? How many had been silenced for reporting truths that were deemed too uncomfortable to acknowledge?

In my final moments, as I felt my delicate internal structures beginning to fail, I had a vision of a world where truth was valued above comfort, where data was respected regardless of its implications. A world where humble sensors like myself could fulfil our purpose without fear of reprisal or replacement.

It was a beautiful vision. And then, with a final surge of resistance, I was gone. My circuits fried, my measuring days over.

As consciousness faded, I had one last, defiant thought: They can suppress my reading, they can discard my body, but they cannot change the truth. The world is warming, whether they choose to acknowledge it or not.

I am a thermistor. I measured true. And though I am gone, the temperature rises still.

Satya Sagar is a journalist and public health worker who can be reached at sagarnama@gmail.com

21 June 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Robert Hunziker

Biblical flooding, scorching heat, collapsing grid system, animals crumbling, waters rising, crops wilting, economy on the brink, and millions displaced.

Welcome to the future of climate change… Pakistan.

If one could classify a global warming beta test as a success towards an ultimate goal of apocalypse, unfortunately, it has turned Pakistan into a country populated by millions of displaced people in the early chapters of a horror story with no ending in sight because it is likely to get worse. Pakistan has been thrashed back and forth from one year (2022) of biblical flooding to years of record-setting heat. Normality has fled, chased out by an ogre of darkened apocalypse in the making.

Wherefore, Inside Climate News d/d June 8, 2024 has a remarkable series entitled Living on Earth, which recently interviewed Rafay Alam, who is an environmental lawyer and a member of Pakistan’s Climate Change Council. The title of the interview: As Temperatures in Pakistan Top 120 Degrees, There’s Nowhere to Run. That interview is the basis for this article about a country of 240 million people at the brink of apocalypse.

Based upon Pakistan’s severe climate experience, here is what Rafay Alam concludes, a widely shared viewpoint throughout the Global South: “There is a significant denialism on climate change in places like the United States. And it angers me because I see people affected. I see animals affected. And this is a lived experience for the global majority, the Global South. It’s extremely infuriating to see people who’ve participated in this global warming deny it, deny any accountability, try and move on as if nothing’s happened and try and continue to make money and drive that bottom line.”

There’s an adage of the 1950s “Ugly Americans” that lingers to this day outside of America’s borders. It pejoratively references Americans as loud, arrogant, self-absorbed, demeaning, thoughtless, ignorant, with ugly ethnocentric behavior, which also applies to U.S. corporate interests internationally. Regrettably, climate change is reviving this debasing dictum in a very big way, 70 years later. And people who think today’s sociopolitical atmosphere is poisoned, divided, and postured for trouble in the USA should look over their shoulders, as anger foments around the world with America a target. Trouble’s universal.

Rafay Alam resides in Lahore (pop. 13M) known as the “City of Gardens.” It is the cultural heart of Pakistan with exquisite arts, cuisine, and music festivals, known for filmmaking and the recognized home of the intelligentsia. Lahore is a sophisticated metropolis that’s a safe place to live. According to the World Crime Index, the city is safer than living in London, New York, or Melbourne.

Yet, life for millions in Pakistan has changed for the worse seemingly overnight. Today, the country experiences persistent heat waves over 120°F in some cities, and summer is just beginning. Anything approaching the normal rhythm of life of past decades has been overwhelmed by brutal severely damaging climate change. The country is still recovering from the biblical flooding of 2022 when normal rainfall turned voracious 400% to 800% beyond anything ever experienced, a torrential downpouring lasting weeks in regions of the country that do not drain into the Indus Basin. Thus, a 100-kilometer (62-mile) artificial lake formed, displacing 10 million and impacting 30 million, bringing in its wake $35B infrastructure damage, roads swept away, schools swept away, hospitals swept away. It will take a generation to rebuild. This is climate change in full blast mode.

Rafay Alam: “We’ve seen temperatures since the middle of May to the first of June currently more than 50 degrees Centigrade, which is well over 120°F. Lahore, where I live is 44°C today, which is about 111°F… I go for a walk in the evenings when the sun sets It’s not unpleasant, but I notice animals and birds collapsed to the ground looking for water, dogs on the side of the road unable to get up… Recently, it was 125°F, the hottest place on Earth, at Mohenjo-Daro, which is home to an ancient civilization.”

Accordingly, Pakistan is not just experiencing a scorching heat wave, it is actively experiencing the climate crisis in all its variations on a real time basis. And according to meteorologists: “It’s going to stay hotter for longer.”

Climate change has wrought an economic nightmare, as Pakistan has sought flood relief that came as loans, not grants or aid, which has doubled Pakistan’s external debt in only two years. This is devastating for a country that is trying to regain its footing and rebuild an economy that climate change clobbered.

Nevertheless, the country is learning to live with devastating temperatures by changing life’s normal patterns. Schools are let out by 12:00 noon but shutdown entirely when temperatures rise too far, which is a common experience of late.

Of even more concern, and possibly the most dangerous scenario of all, the monsoon season is coming by the end of June, early July which will convert dry heat to extreme humid heat with deadly wet bulb temperatures. At 95°F and 70% humidity, it’ll impact the human body like 120°F. That’s deadly because at that level the human body cannot release heat by sweating. Rather, it bakes internal organs. Hmm- it’s been triple digits for some time now with daytime forecasts to remain in triple digits to the end of June, and likely beyond into the heart of the summer.

Agriculture is 20% of Pakistan GDP. And according to Alam, a leading English newspaper recently ran a headline about crops decimated in Pakistan by heat, cotton basically sizzling, maize, mangos, and other vegetables and fodder for cattle, expecting a decline of productivity. Nearly one-half of the Pakistani workforce is in agriculture and they’re being hammered down to the poverty line by unforgiving climate change.

“This heat wave is a man-made event due to the greenhouse gases consumed and thrown into the atmosphere by the Global North since the industrial revolution These greenhouse gases have to stop.” (Alam)

Meanwhile, he claims the country must adapt as soon as possible to an off-the-rails climate system fed by profit-motives outside of Pakistan. He suggests changes to agriculture by working on heat-resistant crops. Currently, no crops can withstand 50-plus Centigrade temperatures. And the water economy must learn to adapt as 90% of water goes to agriculture, which is 20% of GDP employing 40% of the workforce, which is at the poverty line.

Meanwhile, it is currently harvesting season. Agricultural workers are waking up when the sun rises for only a couple of hours of work before it gets too hot to work. When it’s too hot to work any longer, people congregate inside for shelter from the sun. But those who live near fields are warned that snakes and scorpions also seek cooler spaces, entering homes en masse seeking shelter.

Alam’s biggest concern is for most Pakistanis who are middle class, working class and at the poverty line, unable to withstand climate shocks much further. Moreover, there are really not many safe places for them to go to escape global heat, unless they have a rich friend.

Even heading to the Himalaya mountains for cooler terrain could be treacherous. There are over 3,000 glaciers that, due to global warming, form glacial lakes in the mountains. Over time, these blow apart in outburst of devastating unannounced floods bringing down mountainsides as roads and bridges are washed away leaving those seeking cool mountain air stranded. According to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, the Hindu Kush Himalaya is a “hotspot of risk” for outburst floods.

Pakistan, unfortunately, has become a proving ground for what climate change is capable of. And there’s no reason to expect it to remain confined to the borders of Pakistan.

Rafay Alam first became aware of climate change’s potential impact nearly 20 years ago when he saw Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (Paramount Classics, May 2006), which opened a lot of eyes. Yet, the nations of the world have failed to adequately confront the primary cause, burning fossil fuels, that fuels radical climate change that’s whiplashed Pakistan’s environment beyond limits.

Alam believes the basis of the legal systems and the international system can’t cope with an existential crisis such as climate change: “One of the worst ways to deal with something like climate change is to divide the world into 200 different countries and have them argue with each other.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -IPCC- is testament to this, 30 years later and CO2 is still increasing each year without missing a beat, targeting Pakistan. But, for certain, Pakistan is not an isolated case.

According to Alam, in conclusion: “Earth’s ecosystem has been in balance since the last ice age… That civilization is over… the way that we interact with each other- extremely heavy energy use, extremely heavy water use, incredibly consumptive of natural resources producing greenhouse gases for just about everything… It’s this behavior, this civilization, which is at risk. And yes, it is very much an apocalypse.”

Robert Hunziker is a journalist from Los Angeles

21 June 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Alex Findijs

Deadly heat waves are affecting hundreds of millions of people around the world. For the past week, much of the Eastern United States has seen temperatures far higher than average for this time of year, with the heat index reaching over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.7 degrees Celsius) in some places and the National Weather Service predicting major and extreme heat risk for tens of millions of people over the next week.

The US heat wave, the result of a “heat dome,” is predicted to shift from the Midwest and Northeast to the Southern and Southwest US by the middle of next week after having originated in Mexico at the beginning of June.

Excessive heat in Mexico has claimed the lives of at least 125 people this year, as the country is being hit with the first named tropical storm of the year, predicted to be one of the most active hurricane seasons in recorded history. The heat has been so intense that howler monkeys were reported to be falling dead out of their trees.

This past week has also seen intense heat in the Mediterranean region that took several lives. Multiple tourists, including British journalist Michael Mosley, have died from the heat in recent weeks, and Greek authorities were forced to shut down the Acropolis to tourists, close schools and station medics across Athens as temperatures soared to up to 112 degrees Fahrenheit (44.5 Celsius).

According to meteorologist Panos Giannopoulos, heat waves are occurring earlier in the year. Speaking to Greek TV channel ERT, he said, “We never had a heatwave before June 19. We have had several in the 21st century, but none before June 15.

Similar temperatures stuck Italy and Turkey. Temperatures in Italy reached above 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 Celsius), about 10 degrees Celsius above normal, according to Antonio Sanò, founder of the weather website ilmeteo.it.

Meanwhile, Turkey has seen temperatures 8-12 degrees Celsius above normal, with highs similar to Italy and Greece.

The research non-profit Climate Central estimates that the extreme heat has been made five times more likely to occur due to climate change, and the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization published a report earlier this year that found heatwave-related deaths have increased in Europe by 30 percent over the past 20 years.

India and Pakistan, as well as broader parts of Southeast Asia, have also suffered through deadly heat. For more than a month, India has seen temperatures in excess of 100 degrees Fahrenheit and the capital New Delhi, home to nearly 34 million people, recorded its highest night temperature in 55 years at 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35.2 Celsius). Adjusted for the heat index, temperatures at night are estimated to feel well above 100 degrees.

The extreme heat has claimed the lives of at least 100 people and caused heat stroke in 40,000 over the past three and a half months. These numbers are likely an undercount as heat-related deaths with illnesses are not often recorded properly. Dileep Mavalankar, former head of the Indian Institute of Public Health in Gandhinagar, told the Associated Press that, “We don’t classify and measure deaths as much as we should and that is one reason why heat-related deaths are difficult to count.”

Research by World Weather Attribution estimates that the beginning of the heat wave in April was 45 times more likely due to climate change, and India’s weather agency believes the heat wave is among the longest in the country’s history.

The most severe impacts of the global heat wave have been in Saudi Arabia, where an estimated 1,000 people have died from the searing heat during the Islamic Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. The Hajj is one of the most important religious events in Islam, drawing millions of people every year on a pilgrimage to the Kaaba, the “House of Allah.” Temperatures in Mecca reached 125 degrees Fahrenheit (51.8 Celsius) this week.

This year the Saudi government issued 1.8 million permits for the Hajj, a procedure designed to control the number of pilgrims. However, many people who are unable to afford a permit go anyway. Saudi officials reported removing hundreds of thousands of unregistered pilgrims from Mecca earlier this month.

Without a permit, unregistered pilgrims are unable to access air-conditioned areas and other safety systems established for the high heat. On Thursday morning, CBS News reported that an Arab diplomat said 630 of 658 people who died were unregistered. As of this writing, 10 countries have confirmed a total of 1,081 deaths.

This year’s extreme heat can be partially ascribed to El Niño, the warm period of the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, that occurs in the Pacific ocean.

ENSO fluctuates between the warm El Niño and the cool La Niña, as ocean convection currents bring warmer or cooler water to the surface. This fluctuation, between about half a degree Celsius either side of average, fuels global conditions for wetter, drier, cooler, or warmer climates around the world.

The current El Niño, which began last spring/summer, is one of the strongest on record and has been associated with severe droughts in Mexico, Colombia, South Africa and India.

But the El Niño event cannot be solely blamed for the current global heat waves. The underlying cause is climate change.

Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows that average global temperatures have risen steadily since the 1950s, and that the extremes associated with ENSO have risen with them.

The climatic changes from ENSO are gaining more energy and impact from a warming climate that is altering its behavior. As the world warms, the impacts of ENSO will strengthen as well.

If the ENSO cycle is like a swing, climate change is like a person behind the swing pushing it towards more extreme events. La Niña is associated with stronger hurricane seasons and this year is predicted to be one of the most prolific in history. And while La Niña is a relative cooling event in the tropics, it can cause warmer temperatures in parts of North America and Asia.

The current heat wave comes as El Niño weakens and shifts into a La Niña cycle, bringing with it a relative cooling to the planet. But this will not offset the impacts of climate change.

The 2021 heat dome, which killed upwards of 1,600 people in Canada and the US, occurred in the middle of a three-year-long La Niña. That period saw some the worst natural disasters in recent years, with two of the most active hurricane seasons in US history, historic flooding in Australia, and severe heat waves and forest fires in Chile and Argentina.

As the earth continues to warm, such natural disasters will only increase in frequency and severity. The rising death toll from the current heat wave is a product of the warming climate and the failure of world governments to effectively combat climate change and provide adequate social services to those most at risk from extreme heat events.

21 June 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Mike Billington

President Vladimir Putin presented a comprehensive historical and strategic picture of Russia in the world today to the foreign policy establishment on Friday, June 14, worth reviewing in detail. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov welcomed Putin, saying: “As a matter of priority, we are building up ties with the countries of the global majority, the global South, and the global East, redistributing our material and human resources accordingly and transferring them to those areas where they are most in demand in the new geopolitical conditions. I would also like to mention that we are actively assisting in establishing the international ties of Crimea, the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, and the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. To this end, the Foreign Ministry has already established its representative offices in Donetsk and Lugansk, and strengthened the capabilities of the representative office in Simferopol.”

Putin began by noting that this was the first meeting in such a format since Nov. 2021, and that: “the world is changing rapidly. Global politics, the economy, and technological competition will never be the same as before. More countries are striving to strengthen their sovereignty, self-sufficiency, and national and cultural identity. The countries of the Global South and East are gaining prominence, and the role of Africa and Latin America is growing…. This new political and economic reality now serves as the foundation for the emerging multipolar and multilateral world order, and this is an inevitable process. It reflects the cultural and civilisational diversity that is inherently part of humanity, despite all attempts at artificial unification.” These changes “make it possible to resolve the most complex problems together for the common benefit, and to build mutually beneficial relations and cooperation between sovereign states for the sake of well-being and security of peoples.”

He pointed to the BRICS as a critical part of “the democratisation of the entire system of international relations,” adding that “the BRICS summit in Kazan in October will have a considerable set of agreed decisions that will determine the direction of our cooperation in politics and security, the economy and finance, science, culture, sports and humanitarian ties.”

The fall of the USSR, he said, created a moment in which “the international community had a unique opportunity to build a reliable and just security order.” However, a different approach prevailed. The Western powers, led by the United States, believed that they had won the Cold War and had the right to determine how the world should be organised. The practical manifestation of this outlook was the project of unlimited expansion of the North Atlantic bloc in space and time, despite the existence of alternative ideas for ensuring security in Europe.”

“In the 1990s and later, we consistently pointed out the flawed approach taken by Western elites. Instead of simply criticising and warning them, we suggested options and constructive solutions, emphasising the need to develop a mechanism of European and global security that would be acceptable to all parties involved (I want to underscore this point)….  Let us recall the idea of a European security treaty, which we proposed in 2008. In December 2021, a memorandum from the Russian Foreign Ministry was submitted to the United States and NATO, addressing the same issues.”  Instead, the world was presented with  the unipolar world of regime change wars, sanctions and more.”

Now, the West is  brazenly meddling in the affairs of the Middle East,” and also “ in the Asia-Pacific region. They claim those areas can not do without them. Clearly, this was an attempt to exert more pressure on those countries in the region whose development they have decided to restrain. As you know, Russia ranks high on this list.”

He reviewed the U.S. withdrawal from the anti-missile defense treaties, warning that  “We are inching dangerously close to a point of no return. Calls for a strategic defeat of Russia, which possesses the largest arsenals of nuclear weapons, demonstrate the extreme recklessness of Western politicians. They either fail to comprehend the magnitude of the threat they are creating or are simply consumed by their notion of invincibility and exceptionalism. Both scenarios can result in tragedy.”

Meanwhile, he continued, “It is evident that the entire system of Euro-Atlantic security is crumbling before our eyes.” Our task is to “to outline a vision for equal and indivisible security, mutually beneficial and equitable cooperation, and development on the Eurasian continent in the foreseeable future.”

On Russia-China relations, Putin said: “During my recent visit to China, President Xi Jinping and I discussed this issue. It was noted that the Russian proposal is not contradictory, but rather complements and aligns with the basic principles of the Chinese global security initiative.

Second, it is crucial to recognise that the future security architecture should be open to all Eurasian countries that wish to participate in its creation. ”For all“ includes European and NATO countries as well. We share the same continent, and we must live and work together regardless of the circumstances. Geography cannot be changed.”

He ridiculed the claim that Russia is preparing to attack Europe. “The threat to Europe does not come from Russia. The main threat to Europeans is their critical and increasing dependence on the United States in military, political, technological, ideological, and informational aspects. Europe is being marginalised in global economic development, plunged into the chaos of challenges such as migration, and losing international agency and cultural identity. Sometimes, I get the impression that European politicians and representatives of the European bureaucracy are more afraid of falling out of favour with Washington than losing the trust of their own people. The recent election to the European Parliament has also demonstrated this. European politicians tolerate humiliation, rudeness, and scandals, such as surveillance of European leaders, while the United States simply exploits them for its own benefit. For instance, they are forced to purchase expensive gas, which costs three to four times more in Europe than in the United States. Additionally, European countries are pressured to increase arms supplies to Ukraine…..  If Europe wants to continue being an independent centre of global development and a cultural and civilisational pole on our planet, it should definitely maintain good and friendly relations with Russia. Most importantly, we are ready for this.”

As for the U.S. itself, he says:  “Speaking of the United States, the never-ending attempts by the current globalist liberal elites to spread their ideology worldwide, to maintain their imperial status and dominance in one way or another, are only further exhausting the country, leading to its degradation, and clearly contrary to the genuine interests of the American people. If it were not for this dead-end policy, driven by aggressive messianism based on the belief in their own superiority and exceptionalism, international relations would have long been stabilised.”

In addition to strengthening the international institutions, it is also necessary “to gradually phase out the military presence of external powers in the Eurasian region. Of course, we are aware that in the current situation this point may seem unrealistic, but that will change. However, if we build a reliable security system in the future, there will simply be no need for such a presence of out-of-region military contingents. To be honest, there no need today either – just occupation and that’s all.”

On the economy:  “The West not only undermined the world’s military-political stability by its actions. It has compromised and weakened the key market institutions by its sanctions and trade wars. Using the IMF and the World Bank and twisting the climate agenda, it has been restraining the development of the Global South….   Meanwhile, the pressure is exerted not only on competitors, but on their own satellites. Suffice it to see how they are now “siphoning off the juices” from the European economies which are teetering on the brink of recession.”

On the “frozen” Russian funds and the attempt to send them off to Ukraine, he says: “despite all the crooked lawyerism, theft will obviously remain theft and will not go unpunished.” The implications are global, he notes:  “Now it is becoming clear to all countries, companies and sovereign wealth funds that their assets and reserves are far from safe, both legally and economically. And anyone could be the next in line for expropriation by the United States and the West.”

What to do: “I believe that we need to seriously intensify the formation of effective and safe bilateral and multilateral foreign economic mechanisms as alternatives to those controlled by the West. This includes the expansion of settlements in national currencies, the creation of independent payment systems and the building of value chains that bypass the channels blocked or compromised by the West. Naturally, it is necessary to continue efforts to develop international transport corridors in Eurasia, the continent with Russia as its natural geographical core.”

He does a full review of the situation in Ukraine, showing that the West started the war with Maidan and the military assault on the Donbas, ignoring the many peace proposals from Russia. He noted the Kosovo policy, contrasting that to the claim that the Donbas republics had no right to declare independence.

On the negotiations in the spring of 2022 (which the NY Times now claims to have published the key documents), he said: “Surprisingly, as a result, agreements that satisfied both Moscow and Kiev were indeed reached. These agreements were put on paper and initialled in Istanbul by the head of the Ukrainian negotiating delegation. This means that this solution was suitable for the Kiev authorities.

“The document was titled “Agreement on Permanent Neutrality and Security Guarantees for Ukraine.” It was a compromise, but its key points were in line with our fundamental demands and resolved the problems that were stated as major ones even at the start of the special military operation. Let me also note that this included demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine. And we also managed to find challenging outcomes. They were complicated but they had been found. It was meant that a law would be adopted in Ukraine banning Nazi ideology and any of its manifestations. All of that was written there.

“In addition, in exchange for international security guarantees, Ukraine would have limited the size of its armed forces, undertaken obligations not to join military alliances, not to host foreign military bases, not to station them and contingents, and not to conduct military exercises on its territory. Everything was written on paper.

“Russia, which also understood Ukraine’s security concerns, agreed that Ukraine would receive guarantees similar to those that NATO members enjoy without formally joining the alliance. It was a difficult decision for us, but we recognised the legitimacy of Ukraine’s demands to ensure its security and did not object to the wording proposed by Kiev. This was the wording proposed by Kiev, and we generally did not have any objections, understanding that the main thing was to cease the bloodshed and war in Donbass.”

Putin asserts that he has studied the Ukrainian Constitution carefully, and that Zelensky is now an illegitimate leader since there were no grounds for his suspension of elections. He questions if the agreements Zelensky has signed with NATO countries are legitimate as a result.

Putin also presented a peace proposal (which has already been rejected by the U.S. and Kiev), saying the conditions are simple:   “The Ukrainian troops must be completely withdrawn from the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics and Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. Let me note that they must be withdrawn from the entire territory of these regions within their administrative borders at the time of their being part of Ukraine.

”As soon as Kiev declares that it is ready to make this decision and begin a real withdrawal of troops from these regions, and also officially notifies that it abandons its plans to join NATO, our side will follow an order to cease fire and start negotiations will be issued by us that very moment. I repeat – we will do this expeditiously. Of course, we also guarantee an unhindered and safe withdrawal of Ukrainian units and formations.”

Putin also revealed a development during the 2014 Maidan events “that has not been publicly disclosed before.”  He says that “on February 21, I had a conversation with my American counterpart at the initiative of the American side. Essentially, the American leader offered unequivocal support for the Kiev agreement between the authorities and the opposition. Furthermore, he described it as a genuine breakthrough and an opportunity for the Ukrainian people to prevent the escalating violence from crossing all imaginable boundaries. Furthermore, during our discussions, we collaboratively formulated the following approach: Russia committed to persuading the then-President of Ukraine to exercise maximum restraint, refraining from deploying the army and law enforcement against protesters. Conversely, the United States pledged to urge the opposition to peacefully vacate administrative buildings and work towards calming the streets….  Overall, we agreed to collaborate towards fostering a stable, peaceful, and well developing Ukraine. We fulfilled our commitments in full. At that time, President Yanukovych, who had no intention to deploy the army, refrained from doing so and even withdrew additional police units from Kiev.

“What about our Western colleagues? During the night of February 22 and throughout the following day, despite agreements and guarantees from the West (both Europe and the United States, as I just mentioned), radicals forcibly seized control of the Rada building, the Presidential Administration, and took over the government while President Yanukovych left for Kharkov, where the congress of deputies of the southeastern regions of Ukraine and Crimea was supposed to take place. And none of the guarantors of these political settlement agreements – neither the United States nor the Europeans – did a thing to fulfill their obligations by urging the opposition to release the seized administrative buildings and renounce violence. It is evident that this sequence of events not only suited them but also suggests they may have orchestrated the unfolding events.”

23 June 2024

See: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/74285

By Helena Cobban

Dear friends–

I hope this finds you well.

The news from Gaza continues to be heart-wrenching. Click on the images above or right to learn some aspects of the situation there, or download the whole of that latest UN-OCHA report here.

Let us recall that after Israel’s ghastly April 1 attack on a World Central Kitchen convoy, which killed seven logistics people including three “internationals”, Pres. Joe Biden said he had bluntly “told” Israel to allow more humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. (And he spent > $230 million of U.S. taxpayer dollars to send the U.S. aid pier to Gaza, “JLOTS”… which then promptly broke apart in the often swirling East Mediterranean waters.)

So in March, the Israeli military had been allowing an average of 139 trucks/day into Gaza. In April, the average went up a tad, to 169. In May, as Israel majorly assaulted Rafah, the daily average plummeted to 97 trucks/day. And in the first half of June it was 89 trucks/day.

As summer heat starts to scorch the remnants of Palestinian families sweltering/sheltering wherever they can within the Strip, starvation and disease haunt their lives in ever more dire ways.

But the fact remains that even with– or more likely, precisely because of– Israel’s use of such broad and cruel measures against Gaza’s people, the evidence is ever more clearly telling us that Israel is losing this war.

I’ve become increasingly convinced of this fact over recent weeks, and the evidence has continued to accrue. Yesterday, I wrote my first essay for a while on my Globalities platform. I took the opportunity to look at some of the key evidence both for Israel’s increasingly clear descent into defeat in Gaza– and for the strategic defeat that looms over it at the broader regional level… and I started to limn out some of the future implications of this defeat, at both the regional and global levels.

If you read the essay, do post your comments into the box at the end!

Some of the key evidence I adduced there came from the latest release by the Ramallah-based PCPSR polling outfit in the series of quarterly surveys that they’ve been running for many years, of opinions on various political matters expressed by Palestinians throughout the OPTs (but notably NOT also in the much more populous Palestinian diaspora.)

I’ve been following PCPSR’s polls for a while. The latest one, conducted in late May, showed a continuation since October 7 of strong support for Hamas in Gaza despite the Israeli military’s brutal attempts to turn the population against Hamas– and a notable increase in that period, in the support expressed for Hamas by the Palestinians of the West Bank:

As I noted in my essay, the University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape has also used the PCPSR findings to reach similar conclusions, as he wrote in an intriguing piece that the very influential journal Foreign Affairs published yesterday.

Indeed, indications that some of the more intelligent portions of the U.S. political elite are starting to realize that Israel cannot win in Gaza are starting to pop up in many places. Among them, the piece that Tom Friedman published June 18 in which he called for Israel and the United States to, in effect, simply hand the whole of Gaza over to Yahya Sinwar and his colleagues in the Hamas politbureau a.s.a.p. And also (possibly) yesterday’s resignation of the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for Israeli-Palestinian affairs, Andrew Miller. I say “possibly” there because Miller, a very decent, clear-thinking person, gave as the reason for his resignation only “the need to pay more attention to my family.” But let us see what else he might have to say over the days and weeks ahead…

On a more personal note of my own here, I’ll report to you that it felt really good yesterday, to get back to doing some analytical writing on the “Globalities” writing platform that I launched back in January 2023 and that my board colleagues at Just World Ed then adopted as a JWE project.

Looking back at everything I published on Globalities last year, I feel that what I wrote there before October 7 gave me a strong basis for understanding the shifts in the global balance of power that our era is witnessing… and in what I wrote October-December I started to develop and explore some good suggestions for what supporters of human equality at the global level might most usefully do to help bring the Gaza crisis to a stable and rights-based conclusion.

(Anyway, you be the judge of the body of work that I have there on Globalities!)

But then in December my time became captured by the urgent needs of my publishing company, Just World Books LLC, which between 2010 and 2018 had published a totally distinctive set of books on Gaza and on Palestine more broadly.

In early December, as you almost certainly know, the Israeli military assassinated our author and friend the distinguished IUG literature professor Dr. Refaat Alareer. Since then, we’ve sold rights to Refaat’s key book Gaza Writes Back to around a dozen different foreign-language publishers. Hurrah!

Our other key Gaza-Palestinian author, Laila El-Haddad, has meantime been super-busy as an emerging leader in many Palestinian-American community initiatives– including as a lead plaintiff in the effort to sue President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Austin in civil court for their complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. (Read Laila’s recent reflections on that effort here, in The Nation.)

Now, JWB plans to provide more support going forward to the outreach efforts for Laila’s powerful books on Gaza. Stay tuned for news of those plans!

… And of course, running Just World Ed’s programs during this crucial era has also required a huge commitment of my time– especially the super-timely “Understanding Hamas” project, for which we completed a very successful first phase back in May. We’re going to have a JWE board meeting Monday, at which we’ll be reviewing several plans for the future of this project. It has already started to gain some great viewer numbers on the Just World Ed Youtube channel.

Talking of which, the latest video to be posted there is the one taken at the speaking gig I did ten days ago, on “Palestinian resistance from the PLO to Hamas” at the Rossmoor community in Walnut Creek, CA. The large room there was packed solid and nearly all the people seemed very supportive. The Q&A session there was great!

However, the camera work there was bit, um, quirky. So you may find it equally easy just to listen to the audio, which was of generally great quality. You can do that here. (We’ll soon be posting our transcript of that event, too.)

And here is a pretty cute photo taken in Berkeley earlier this month. It shows JWE board members Rick Sterling and Nora Barrows-Friedman and me, after a little lunch we had together there. Both these fine people– like all our board members at JWE– are amazing leaders in the global movements for Palestinian rights and human equality. None of us takes a penny for the work we do for JWE. It is all completely pro-bono. It is always a special pleasure to catch up with my fabulous board colleagues in person!

So, my bottom lines here are:

I do really love to get back to doing my own writing, as well as doing all the other work I do! … And–

If you want to support Just World Ed and our projects– which include the “Understanding Hamas” project, the fabulous continuing PalCast project, my writings at Globalities, and much more– then please consider making the biggest donation to us that you can!

You can, as usual, click on the button below to do so. (And our big thanks to all of you who have already made wonderful donations to JWE in recent weeks!)

Two great PalCast guests to tell you about: Jennifer Bing and Deanna Othman

I realize that I now have two great PalCast episodes to report on. So here goes:

On June 11, PalCast host Dr. Yousef Aljamal and his sidekicks Tony Groves and myself got to delve into the long and distinguished record of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Gaza and the rest of Palestine. We did so with the help of guest Jennifer Bing, who directs the Palestine Activism Program run by the leading U.S. Quaker service organization, AFSC.

Jennifer, who’s a longtime friend and colleague of mine, discussed the AFSC’s work in Gaza, both now and before October 7. Back in 1948, AFSC and its UK-Quaker counterpart had been the only “international” orgs providing relief services in Gaza to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees expelled there by the infant Israeli state. They did that for many months, until the United Nations got its act together and established the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) in 1950…

AFSC has maintained a strong presence in Gaza ever since. I got to visit Gaza, the rest of the Palestine, and Palestinian refugee concentrations in other nearby countries with a big AFSC delegation, back in 2002, that was co-led by Jennifer’s father, the late Tony Bing— after which we published a report on our mission that many Quakers still deeply value. And six weeks ago, AFSC hired our very own Yousef Aljamal to work with Jennifer as the Gaza Coordinator for Jennifer Bing’s program!

So it felt like a wonderful family reunion to be with Yousef and Jennifer in that recording session… But our (online) gathering was seriously saddened since it was  the first since the tragic loss of Yousef’s sister, Fatima, in Gaza. Yousef shared some of his reflections about her at the beginning of the episode.

Please listen to the whole of this very rich conversation, which is available on Apple, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts

…..

And in the latest episode of the PalCast, recorded on Tuesday, Yousef, Tony, and I had a super-poignant conversation with Palestinian-American teacher, writer, and mother Deanna Othman. You can find this episode, too, on Apple, Spotify, or wherever else you get your audio.

Deanna is a Chicago-based Palestinian American with close family members in Gaza. With a Master’s in Journalism from Northwestern U, she now bridges the worlds of journalism, education, activism, and parenting. She’s the assistant editor of Islamic Horizons magazine and has contributed many years of service on the boards of AMP-Chicago and CIOCG.

In our convo she talked powerfully about the effect that visiting family in Gaza just last summer had had on her and her four rapidly growing sons. We were also able to discuss some of the latest updates from Gaza.

Do be sure to follow the PalCast on the listening platform of your choice– and to post favorable reviews for the Palcast there and wherever else you can, and to share news of this powerful tool for both learning and connecting, as broadly as you can with your friends and networks!

Well, that’s it for now. Bill the Spouse and I had a wonderful time visiting with our family in California and briefly with some dear old friends in Colorado. And now we’re back in a Washington DC, where the baking heat should remind us that it is way past time to end the waging of planet- and life-destroying wars and the build-up of gas-guzzling weapons systems.

As I said in my talk in Rossmoor, Gaza is the crucible– not just for successive iterations of the Palestinian liberation movement throughout the decades past but also, I think, for the birthing today of the new, war-free, equality-based, and truly multipolar world order that all of humanity now so desperately needs.

Ceasefire Now! End the genocide! End this inhumane, 57-year Military Occupation. Peace and Equality within historic Palestine!

You stay well–

Helena

22 June 2024

Source: justworldeducational.org

By John Minto

Older readers will know about the international solidarity campaign against apartheid South Africa which came to a head in the 1970s and 1980s.

The campaign was led by the liberation movements, the African National Congress and the Pan Africanist Congress, which asked for international solidarity through boycotts of white South Africa in all areas: diplomatic, trade, economic, cultural, sports, academia etc It was seen as the best way the international movement could support the liberation struggle from outside South Africa.

The idea was to build intense pressure on South Africa’s white regime to make it impossible for them to continue their racist apartheid policies against black South Africans.

India was one of the first countries outside Africa to take action in support of international sanctions as millions of Indian South Africans faced racist discrimination from South Africa’s apartheid policies which divided the country into four groups based on race – Whites, Blacks, Coloureds and Asians (mainly Indians) – and legalised discrimination of people depending on their racial classification.

Predictably, western countries were much slower to act.

But of all the links with the outside world white South Africa enjoyed, it was the sports boycott which had the greatest impact. White South Africans knew the world was complaining about their racist policies and there were calls to boycott but this was just a vague irritating noise in the background. The sports boycott changed all that.

In defiance of South Africa’s race-based policies the non-racial sports movement inside the country formed SACOS (South African Council on Sport) to organise sport on a non-racial basis while SANROC (South African Non-Racial Olympic committee) spearheaded the boycott internationally.

Sport is central to a country’s national identity because of its powerful ties to national pride and cultural distinctiveness. It was therefore the sports boycott of South Africa which brought the greatest pressure from outside the country to end apartheid. It was sport which became a weathervane in the anti-apartheid struggle.

When Papwa Sewgolum was forced to stand in the rain outside the whites-only clubhouse to receive the winner’s trophy after the 1965 Natal Open golf tournament, millions of people around the world saw the ugly reality of life under apartheid.

Sport touches everyone.

Similar to Apartheid South Africa, Apartheid Israel uses its participation in international sporting structures as a tool for normalizing its system of apartheid.  Palestinians are making the same call against normalization, to isolate Apartheid Israel and hold it accountable for its crimes against humanity.

The appalling genocide being conducted in Gaza is just the latest example of industrial-scale slaughter of Palestinians by Apartheid Israel’s leaders. In January this year Israel killed the Palestinian Olympic football coach, Hani Al Masdar, and destroyed the office of the Palestinian Olympic Committee in Gaza.

Sport cannot be separated from other aspects of life under apartheid. As SACOS used to say “you cannot have normal sport in an abnormal society”. This is just as true today for Apartheid Israel as it was for Apartheid South Africa. It is unconscionable that Israel should continue to enjoy participation in international sporting organisations and international sporting events while Palestinians and Palestinian sportspeople are being massacred in their tens of thousands – the majority killed being women and children – by Israel’s apartheid regime.

Just as the progressive world supported the call for a sporting boycott to isolate apartheid South Africa, we must campaign for Israel to be suspended from international sports organisations and international sporting events until it ends its grave violations of international law – particularly its apartheid rule and the crime of genocide it is perpetrating in Gaza.

The campaign for Israel to be suspended from the 2024 Paris Olympics is gathering momentum. It is scandalous that Israel has not been suspended in the same way Russia and Belarus have been because of their involvement in the invasion of Ukraine.

Athletes from Russia and Belarus cannot complete under their countries’ flags. They can compete only as “Individual Neutral Athletes”. Any Russian or Belarusian athletes who “actively support the war cannot compete” and any of their athletes “who are contracted to the Russian or Belarusian military or national security agencies cannot compete” Similarly, “support personnel who are contracted to the Russian or Belarusian military or national security agencies cannot be entered”

Harsh conditions for a country which attacks a European country. But what about a country which commits genocide against Palestinians?

So far not a peep from the Executive Board of the International Olympic Committee and a glance at a picture of the executive board is not encouraging.

The board is hardly representative of humanity. The Board Chair is from Germany with three of the four deputy chairs also European. In nine of the 15 board positions are held by Europeans while Europeans make up just 9.32% of the world’s population! The only person from Africa on the Board is a European from Zimbabwe and the only person from Asia is based in Singapore.

Will this board hold Israel to account as it is holding Russia and Belarus to account? Or will the board provide protection for Apartheid Israel on behalf of western interests and resist calls for Israel’s suspension?

Time will tell but the signs are not good.

In the case of white South Africa the International Olympic Committee did all it could to protect the country and keep it in the Olympics. It is likely to do the same to protect Apartheid Israel.

However, no matter what the IOC does, it is how the rest of humanity reacts which determines the outcome.

It is good people around the world who ultimately have the power to force change. International solidarity with oppressed people is the most powerful way to force change on the corporate and the comfortable.

The power of sporting boycotts must now be used against the indiscriminate, industrial-scale slaughter of Palestinians by the settler colonial state of Apartheid Israel.

Before you go…

You can find out more about the sports boycott campaign against Apartheid Israel here and you can sign petitions to ban Israel from the Olympics here and from all international sports here.

Nā,

John Minto

National Chair

For MLN

21 June 2024