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By M K Bhadrakumar

The election victory of Donald Trump in the November 5 election is being perceived in the West Asian region with growing anxiety as presaging the US aligning one hundred percent with the Zionist project for Greater Israel.

Although Trump has kept out vociferous neocons from his government positions, the same cannot be said for pro-Zionist figures. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims he has spoken three times with Trump already since the election and they “see eye-to-eye regarding the Iranian threat and all of its components.”

The “components” implies that Netanyahu hopes to get a blank cheque from Trump to accelerate the ethnic cleansing in Gaza, for annexation of West Bank, violent reprisals against Palestinians and, most important, to carry the war right into Iranian territory.

Three events in as many days this week show the first signs of a backlash building up. On Monday, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei gave Tehran’s first official reaction to Trump’s election victory. Baqaei took a nuanced line saying, “What matters to us in this region is the United States’ actual behaviour and policies regarding Iran and the broader West Asia.”

Notably, Baqaei expressed “cautious optimism that the new [Trump] administration might adopt a more peace-oriented approach, reduce regional hostilities, and uphold its commitments.” (Tehran Times) Baqaei also refuted the recent allegation by Washington that Iran was involved in plots to assassinate Trump. He called the Biden Administration’s allegation as “nothing more than an attempt to sabotage relations” between Tehran and Washington by “laying traps to complicate the path for the next administration.”

Baqaei also held out an assurance to the incoming US administration that Tehran firmly adheres to a nuclear programme for peaceful purposes. He announced that Rafael Grossi, head of International Atomic Energy (IAEA) was due to arrive in Tehran  on Wednesday night.

Taken together, Baqaei’s remarks suggest that Iran hopes there’s still daylight possible between Trump and Netanyahu. The clincher here would have been the remark that Trump slipped into his victory speech with great deliberation on November 6 that “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”

Trump was on record during his election campaign that “I don’t want to do damage to Iran but they cannot have nuclear weapons.” Tehran’s consultations with Grossi responds to Trump’s concern. This is smart thinking. Iran’s non-provocative stance would mean there is no alibi for attacking Iran.

That said, however, the “known unknown” still remains — namely, Iran’s retaliation to the Israeli attack on October 26. On November 2, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a video released by Iranian state media, promised “a crushing response” to Israeli attack. Conceivably, the period till January 20 when Trump is sworn in, is going to be critical.

Meanwhile, this week witnessed that Iran and Saudi Arabia have given verve to their detente, which is now manifesting as Riyadh’s solidarity and open support for Iran in its growing confrontation with Israel.

Amidst the growing tensions in the region, the chief of staff of Saudi Arabia’s armed forces, Fayyad al-Ruwaili, visited Tehran on November 10 and met with his Iranian counterpart General Mohammad Bagheri. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian spoke on the phone with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on the phone in the context of a summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) – Arab League in Riyadh on November 11-12. Iran has extended an invitation to MbS to visit Tehran!

Two hugely significant highlights of the Riyadh summit have been, first, the Saudi prince’s inaugural address where he warned Israel against hitting Iran. This marked a historic turn by Riyadh toward Tehran-Israeli conflict, and away from US-supported normalisation with Jerusalem.

MbS told the summit that the international community should oblige Israel “to respect the sovereignty of the sisterly Islamic Republic of Iran and not to violate its lands.”

Again, Saudi Arabia accused Israel for the first time of committing “genocide” in Gaza. MbS told the leaders who gathered in Riyadh, that the kingdom renewed “its condemnation and categorical rejection of the genocide committed by Israel against the brotherly Palestinian people…”

Trump has been put on notice that he’s meeting a radically different geopolitical landscape in West Asia compared to his first term as president. The Trump transition team is keeping its cards close, offering NatSec Daily a boilerplate statement that Trump will take “necessary action” to “lead our country” and “restore peace through strength.” But warning bells are ringing.

The key pillars of Trump’s “maximum pressure” strategy against Tehran — isolating Iran and ramping up economic pressure while  maintaining a credible threat of military force as deterrent — have become wobbly.

On the other hand, the massive Iranian ballistic missile attack on Israel on October 1 and the colossal failure of the Israeli air strike on Iran twenty-six days later convey a loud message all across West Asia that Israel is no longer the dominant military power it used to be — and there is a new sheriff in town. Trump will have to navigate the fallout of both sides of this issue with diminished US diplomatic and geopolitical capital at his disposal.

Meanwhile, Tehran is also deepening its cooperation with Russia, which adds a giant new Ukraine-sized complexity to Trump’s Iran policy. While in Eurasia, the US has allies, Trump is navigating in West Asia pretty much alone.

The US’ stark isolation comes home dramatically by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s announcement on Wednesday that Turkey, a NATO member country, has severed all ties with Israel. Erdogan disclosed this to journalists aboard his plane after visiting Saudi Arabia. A regional trend to ostracise Israel is visible now and it is destined to expand and deepen.

The summit in Riyadh witnessed the African Union joining hands with the Arab League and OIC to sign a tripartite agreement on Tuesday to establish a mechanism to support the Palestinian cause, which will be coordinated through the three organisations’ secretariats as a game changer to strengthen their influence in international forums. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan noted that the three organisations will now onward speak with one voice internationally.

Even as the summit concluded in Riyadh, Crown Prince Salman had a call on Wednesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin readout stated that the two leaders “reaffirmed their commitment to continue the consistent expansion” of Russian-Saudi ties and specifically “stressed the importance of continuing close coordination within OPEC Plus and stated the effectiveness and timeliness of the steps being taken in this format to ensure balance on the global energy market.”

On the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Kremlin readout noted with satisfaction that “the principled approaches of Russia and Saudi Arabia with regard to the Middle East settlement are essentially identical.”

MbS’ initiative to re-invigorate his conversation with Putin can only be seen against the backdrop of the profound misgivings in Riyadh regarding the Trump-Netanyahu bromance and the spectre of a possible regional war haunting the region stemming out of Israel drawing encouragement from the seamless US support expected through the coming 4-year period for the Zionist cause.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar served the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years. He introduces about himself thus: “Roughly half of the 3 decades of my diplomatic career was devoted to assignments on the territories of the former Soviet Union and to Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan.

15 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Palestinian Territory – In a new ‘flour massacre’, the Israeli occupation army has killed dozens of Palestinians who were gathering in the Sudanese roundabout area, northwest of Gaza City. The victims were waiting for the arrival of humanitarian aid after roughly 50 consecutive days of a complete denial of aid.

Israeli army forces opened fire on dozens of Palestinian civilians waiting for aid trucks on the sea road northwest of Gaza City on Wednesday 13 November at around 10:00 am. The Israeli forces killed and injured dozens of them when they attempted to seek refuge inside a nearby house, and then bombed the building, destroying it. Many more individuals are now missing and presumably trapped beneath the debris.

According to an eyewitness, the Israeli army targeted a group of civilians who had been enduring weeks of famine as a result of the occupation army blocking the entry of food and aid supplies into the Gaza City and North Gaza. When they went to get flour, the army opened fire on them with shells and bullets, forcing them to take cover in a two-storey residential house nearby. As soon as they reached the building, the Israeli army bombed it. Screams from those still inside the targeted house were heard, but the victims’ cries for help could not be answered, as the area was inaccessible to ambulance and civil defence personnel.

Initial reports indicate that there were around 200 people gathered in the area at the time of the attack, 70 of whom were killed and injured. Many more are still unaccounted for and likely stuck beneath the rubble, and no rescue efforts have been conducted as the Israeli army has effectively shut down Palestinian civil defense and ambulance services after threatening, confiscating, shelling, and burning fire trucks and ambulances in the northern Gaza Strip for 23 days now.

The international community must take immediate action to ensure that rescue and civil defense teams can safely work and transport victims to hospitals, since there may be survivors of yesterday’s attack.

After 41 days of Israel’s ground invasion of northern Gaza, the situation has descended into an unprecedented catastrophe, with the occupation army still bombing and destroying hundreds of homes, killing and injuring thousands, and forcing 10s of thousands to flee the area.

The ongoing Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, which uses starvation as one of its main tools of implementation, must be stopped. Additionally, efforts must be made to quickly and efficiently bring in life-saving supplies via land routes and crossings to the entire Gaza Strip, particularly Gaza City and the northern part of the Strip. This will allow municipal crews to repair and restore water, sanitation, and health services, as well as provide safe and sufficient food for the entire population, including baby formula, which is nearly nonexistent in the northern Strip. The restoration of local production systems and the entry of commercial goods must also be allowed. The international community is both legally and morally obligated to take swift action to preserve the lives of the Gaza Strip’s roughly 2.3 million residents.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe

15 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Human Rights Watch

• Israeli authorities have caused massive, deliberate forced displacement of Palestinian civilians in Gaza since October 2023 and are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
• There is no plausible imperative military reason to justify Israel’s mass displacement of nearly all of Gaza’s population, often multiple times. Rather than ensuring civilians’ security, military “evacuation orders” have caused grave harm.
• Governments should adopt targeted sanctions and other measures, and halt weapons sales to Israel. The International Criminal Court prosecutor should investigate Israel’s forced displacement and prevention of the right to return as a crime against humanity.

(Jerusalem) – Israeli authorities have caused the massive, deliberate forced displacement of Palestinian civilians in Gaza since October 2023 and are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The report is being published at the time of an ongoing Israeli military campaign in northern Gaza that has most likely created a new wave of forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

The 154-page report, “‘Hopeless, Starving, and Besieged’: Israel’s Forced Displacement of Palestinians in Gaza,” examines how Israeli authorities’ conduct has led to the displacement of over 90 percent of the population of Gaza—1.9 million Palestinians—and the widespread destruction of much of Gaza over the last 13 months. Israeli forces have carried out deliberate, controlled demolitions of homes and civilian infrastructure, including in areas where they have apparent aims of creating “buffer zones” and security “corridors,” from which Palestinians are likely to be permanently displaced. Contrary to claims by Israeli officials, their actions do not comply with the laws of war.

“The Israeli government cannot claim to be keeping Palestinians safe when it kills them along escape routes, bombs so-called safe zones, and cuts off food, water, and sanitation,” said Nadia Hardman, refugee and migrant rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Israel has blatantly violated its obligation to ensure Palestinians can return home, razing virtually everything in large areas.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed 39 displaced Palestinians in Gaza, analyzed Israel’s evacuation system, including 184 evacuation orders and satellite imagery confirming the widespread destruction, and verified videos and photographs of attacks on designated safe zones and evacuation routes.

The laws of armed conflict applicable in occupied territory permit displacement of civilians only exceptionally, for imperative military reasons or for the population’s security, and require safeguards and proper accommodation to receive displaced civilians. Israeli officials claim that, because Palestinian armed groups are fighting from among the civilian population, the military has lawfully evacuated civilians to attack the groups while limiting civilian harm. Human Rights Watch research shows this claim to be largely false.

There is no plausible imperative military reason to justify Israel’s mass displacement of nearly all of Gaza’s population, often multiple times, Human Rights Watch found. Israel’s evacuation system has severely harmed the population and often served only to spread fear and anxiety. Rather than ensure security for displaced civilians, Israeli forces have repeatedly struck designated evacuation routes and safe zones.

Evacuation orders have been inconsistent, inaccurate, and frequently not communicated to civilians with enough time to allow evacuations, or at all. The orders did not consider the needs of people with disabilities and others who are unable to leave without assistance.

As the occupying power, Israel is obliged to ensure adequate facilities to accommodate displaced civilians, but the authorities have blocked all but a small fraction of the necessary humanitarian aid, water, electricity, and fuel from reaching civilians in need in Gaza. Israeli attacks have damaged and destroyed resources that people need to stay alive, including hospitals, schools, water and energy infrastructure, bakeries, and agricultural land.

Israel is also obliged to ensure the return of displaced people to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area have ceased. Instead, it has left swathes of Gaza uninhabitable. Israel’s military has intentionally demolished or severely damaged civilian infrastructure, including controlled demolitions of homes, with the apparent aim of creating an extended “buffer zone” along Gaza’s perimeter with Israel and a corridor which will bifurcate Gaza. The destruction is so substantial that it indicates the intention to permanently displace many people.

Israel should respect the right of Palestinian civilians to return to the areas in Gaza from which it has displaced them. For almost eight decades, Israeli authorities have denied the right to return of the 80 percent of Gaza’s population who are refugees and their descendants who were expelled or fled in 1948 from what is now Israel, in what Palestinians call the “Nakba,” or the catastrophe. This ongoing violation looms over the experience of Palestinians in Gaza, with many of those interviewed speaking of living through a second Nakba.

From the first days of the hostilities, senior officials in the Israeli government and the war cabinet have declared their intent to displace the Palestinian population of Gaza, with government ministers stating that its territory will decrease, that blowing up and flattening Gaza is “beautiful,” and that land will be handed to settlers. In November 2023, Israeli Minister of Agriculture and Food Security Avi Dichter said, “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba.”

Human Rights Watch found that forced displacement has been widespread, and the evidence shows it has been systematic and part of a state policy. Such acts also constitute crimes against humanity.

The Israeli authorities’ organized, violent displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, who are members of another ethnic group, is likely planned to be permanent in the buffer zones and security corridors. Such actions of the Israeli authorities amount to ethnic cleansing.

Victims of serious abuses in Israel and Palestine have faced a wall of impunity for decades. Palestinians in Gaza have been living under an unlawful blockade for 17 years, which constitutes part of the continuous crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution that Israeli authorities have been committing against Palestinians.

Governments should publicly condemn Israel’s forced displacement of the civilian population in Gaza as a war crime and crime against humanity, and pressure it to immediately halt those crimes and comply with the International Court of Justice’s multiple binding orders and with the obligations laid out in its July advisory opinion.

The International Criminal Court prosecutor should investigate Israel’s forced displacement and prevention of the right to return as a crime against humanity. Governments should also publicly condemn efforts to intimidate or interfere with the court’s work, officials, and those cooperating with the institution.

Governments should adopt targeted sanctions and other measures, including reviewing their bilateral agreements with Israel, to press the Israeli government to comply with its international obligations to protect civilians.

The United States, Germany, and other countries should immediately suspend weapons transfers and military assistance to Israel. Continuing to provide arms to Israel risks complicity in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other grave human rights violations.

“No one can be in denial about the atrocity crimes the Israeli military is committing against Palestinians in Gaza,” Hardman said. “Transfer of additional weapons and assistance to Israel by the United States, Germany, and others is a blank check for further atrocities and increasingly puts them at risk of complicity.”

14 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Damon

The US State Department determined Tuesday that Israel is not violating international human rights law by withholding food to Gaza, effectively endorsing Israel’s policy of deliberately seeking to exterminate the population of Gaza through starvation.

Multiple US laws, including Section 502B and 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act and the “Leahy Law,” prohibit the government from arming militaries that the State Department deems to be committing “gross violations of human rights.” A National Security Memorandum, dubbed NSM-20, issued by the Biden administration declared that “the United States must maintain an appropriate understanding of foreign partners’ adherence to international law.”

On October 13, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin sent a letter to the Israeli government warning that unless Israel massively increased the provision of food to Gaza, “these measures may have implications for US policy under NSM-20,” implying that Israel was in danger of being deemed as having violated human rights law and would not receive further military aid.

The letter demanded that Israel enable “a minimum of 350 trucks per day to enter Gaza.” As of Tuesday, only 400 trucks had entered the territory for the entire month, meaning that the amount of food allowed into Gaza is just one-tenth of that officially demanded by the US.

[https://twitter.com/Andre__Damon/status/1856419693835231481]

Pressed by reporters, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel declared, “We have not made an assessment that the Israelis are in violation of US law” and by implication international law.

Under conditions in which Israeli officials have made clear that they are implementing a deliberate policy of starvation as a method of war and collective punishment, this assessment constitutes an open embrace by the US government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s mass starvation policy.

The letter by Blinken and Austin was intended as a diplomatic smokescreen, aimed at obscuring the fact that the United States had in fact endorsed Israel’s policy of deliberate starvation of the population of Gaza. But in issuing their ultimatum, the US officials created the circumstances for what happened today: the explicit and public endorsement by the US government of mass starvation as a weapon of war.

On October 12, CNN reported that the Netanyahu government had adopted a “version of” the so-called “Generals’ Plan” proposed by retired IDF General Giora Eiland, which calls for completely cutting off all food to northern Gaza and treating all civilians there as enemy combatants, subject to killing by Israeli forces. CNN reported:

A former senior military official who is aware of the Israeli government and security leadership’s thinking—though not directly involved in decision-making—told CNN that the cabinet had adopted “a version of” Eiland’s proposal, which has come to be known as “The Generals’ Plan.” Eiland told CNN the claim was “quite true.”

On November 5, IDF Brigadier General Itzik Cohen told reporters that the IDF would not allow food to enter northern Gaza because there are “no more civilians left.”

In reality, between 50,000 and 75,000 people are estimated to remain in northern Gaza, according to the United Nations. These civilians, officially designated enemy combatants by the Israeli government, are being subjected to deliberate and explicit starvation and mass killing.

The declaration by the State Department that Israel is not committing human rights violations by its deliberate mass starvation policy in fact makes official the contents of a private discussion between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Netanyahu on October 22.

The Washington Post reported:

US officials told Netanyahu there is a “perception” that Israel is pursuing a strategy of “isolating the north, telling people that if they don’t leave they’re effectively targets and denying food to go in,” said the official.

In response to this blunt declaration, Blinken issued a communique declaring the United States’ blanket support for Israel: “The Secretary reaffirmed the United States’ ironclad commitment to Israel’s security” and pledged to continue “ongoing efforts by the United States and its partners” to support Israel.

As a result of Israel’s mass starvation policy, the humanitarian situation in Gaza is catastrophic. According to the US’s self-imposed deadline to assess Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law, a group of international human rights organizations issued a statement declaring:

That situation is in an even more dire state today than a month ago. The principals of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee now assess that “the entire Palestinian population in North Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence.” The findings of this scorecard underscore Israel’s failure to comply with US demands and international obligations. Israel should be held accountable for the end result of failing to ensure the adequate provision of food, medical, and other supplies to reach people in need.

This deliberate policy of mass starvation is accompanied by continuous Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians in Gaza. In its latest update, the UN Human Rights Office reported:

Between the afternoons of 5 and 12 November, according to the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza, 274 Palestinians were killed and 729 were injured. Between 7 October 2023 and 12 November 2024, at least 43,665 Palestinians were killed and 103,076 were injured.

The open embrace by the Biden administration of Israel’s mass starvation policy has far-reaching implications. The world’s leading self-proclaimed “democracies” are openly embracing the deliberate starvation of civilian populations as a method of war, setting a precedent not only for the waging of future wars, but also for domestic repression against internal political opposition among broad sections of their own populations.

13 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Vijay Prashad

If you go to the bluff at Kings Park in Perth, Australia, you can overlook the Swan River and enjoy a remarkable view. Across the bay, there is a phalanx of steel and glass buildings that rise to the skies. Each of these buildings carries a sign that glistens in the sharp sun: BHP, Rio Tinto, Chevron, Deloitte, and others. Kings Park no longer survives merely with the patronage of the British King, who continues to claim sovereignty over Australia. Part of it is now named Rio Tinto Kings Park, needing the corporate profits from this enormous mining company to sustain its charms. Down one of the avenues of the park there are trees set apart by a few meters, and at the base of these trees are small markers for dead soldiers from past wars; these are not graves but remembrances that are crowned by Australian flags. The park brings together the three crucial pieces of Western Australia, this province of which Perth is the capital which is the size of Western Europe: the British monarchy, the mining companies and its affiliates, and the role of the military.

Of Kings

A few days before I arrived in Canberra, an aboriginal senator, Lidia Thorpe, interrupted the celebration of King Charles III to say, “You are not my king. This is not your land.” It was a powerful demonstration against the treatment of Australia ever since the arrival of English ships to the country’s east in January 1788. In fact, the British crown does claim title to the entirety of the Australian landmass. King Charles III is head of the 56-country Commonwealth and the total land area of the Commonwealth takes up 21 percent of the world’s total land. It is quite remarkable to realize that King Charles III is nominally in charge of merely 22 percent less than Queen Victoria (1819-1901).

The day after Senator Thorpe’s statement, a group of aboriginal leaders met with King Charles III to discuss the theme of “sovereignty.” In Sydney, Elder Allan Murray of the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council welcomed the King to Gadigal land and said, “We’ve got stories to tell, and I think you witnessed that story yesterday in Canberra. But the story is unwavering, and we’ve got a long way to achieve what we want to achieve and that’s our own sovereignty.” When Captain James Cook (1770) and Captain Arthur Phillip (1788) arrived on this Gadigal land, they were met by people who had lived in the area for tens of thousands of years. In 1789, a smallpox epidemic brought by the British killed 53 percent of the Gadigal, and eventually—through violence—they reduced the population to three in 1791. It is accurate, then, for Elder Murray to have said to the press after King Charles III left that “The Union Jack was put on our land without our consent. We’ve been ignored.” What remained were barrangal dyara (skin and bones, as the Gadigal would have said). Given the value of the land in Sydney, the Gadigal clan would today be one of the richest groups in the world. But apart from a few descendants who do not have title to the land, the ghosts of the ancestors walk these streets.

Of Minerals

Australia is one of the widest countries in the world, with a large desert in its middle section. Underneath its soil, which has been walked on by a range of Aboriginal communities for tens of thousands of years, is wealth that is estimated to be $19.9 trillion. This estimate includes the country’s holdings of coal, copper, iron ore, gold, uranium, and rare earth elements. In 2022, Australia’s mining companies—which are also some of the largest in the world—extracted at least 27 minerals from the subsoil, including lithium (Australia is the world’s largest producer of lithium, annually providing 52 percent of the global market’s lithium).

On May 24, 2020, Rio Tinto’s engineers and workers blew up a cave in the Pilbara area of Western Australia to expand their Brockman 4 iron ore mine. The cave in the Juukan Gorge had been used by the Puutu Kunti Kurrama people for 46,000 years and had been kept by them as a community treasure. In 2013, Rio Tinto approached the Western Australian government to seek an exemption to destroy the cave and to extend the mine. They received this exemption based on a law called the Aboriginal Heritage Act of 1972, which had been drafted to favor mining companies. Rio Tinto, with substantial operations in Western Australia and around the world, has a market capitalization of $105.7 billion, making it—after BHP (market cap of $135.5)—the second largest minerals company in the world (both Rio Tinto and BHP are headquartered in Melbourne). Hastily, BHP began to reconsider its permission to destroy 40 cultural sites for its South Flank iron mine extension in the Pilbara region (and after its investigation and conversation with the Banjima community) decided to save 10 sites.

Craig and Monique Oobagooma live in the northernmost homestead in Australia near the Robinson River. They are part of the Wanjina Wunggurr, whose lands are now used for the extraction of uranium and other metals and minerals. The uranium mines in the north are owned and operated by Paladin Energy, another Perth-based mining company that also owns mines in Malawi and Namibia. There is also a large military base in nearby Yampi. Craig told me that when he walks his land, he can dig beneath the soil and find pink diamonds. But, he says, he puts them back. “They are sacred stones,” he says. Some parts of the land can be used for the betterment of his family, but not all of it. Not the sacred stones. And not the ancestral sites, of which there are only a few that remain.

Of Militaries

In 2023, the governments of Australia and the United Kingdom signed an agreement to preserve “critical minerals” for their own development and security. Such an agreement is part of the New Cold War against China, to ensure that it does not directly own the “critical minerals.” Between 2022 and 2023, Chinese investment in mining decreased from AU$1809 million to AU$34 million. Meanwhile, Australian investment in building military infrastructure for the United States has increased dramatically, with the Australian government expanding the Tindal air base in Darwin (Northern Territory) to hold U.S. B-1 and B-52 nuclear bombers, expanding the submarine docking stations along the coastline of Western Australia, and expanding the Exmouth submarine and deep space communications facility. All of this is part of Australia’s historically high defense budget of $37 billion.

In Sydney, near the Central Train station, I met Euranga, who lived in a tunnel which he had painted with the history of the Aboriginal peoples of Eora (Sydney). He had been part of the Stolen Generation, one in three Aboriginal children stolen from their families and raised in boarding schools. The school hurt his spirit, he told me. “This is our land, but it is also not our land,” he said. Beneath the land is wealth, but it is being drained away by private mining companies and for the purposes of military force. The old train station nearby looks forlorn. There is no high-speed rail in vast Australia. Such a better way to spend its precious resources, as Euranga indicated in his paintings: embrace the worlds of the Aboriginal communities who have been so harshly displaced and build infrastructure for people rather than for wars.

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

14 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

Arab and Muslim American voters did not remove Democrats from office, nor did they cost Kamala Harris the Oval Office. They merely sent a strong message that Palestine matters, not only to Arabs and Muslims but to many Americans as well.

The ones who cost the Democrats the elections are the Democrats themselves. Their humiliating defeat on November 5 was due largely to their undeniable role in the Israeli war and genocide in Gaza.

Peter Beinart put it best in his November 7 op-ed in the New York Times, entitled “Democrats Ignored Gaza and Brought Down Their Party.”

“Israel’s slaughter and starvation of Palestinians — funded by U.S. taxpayers and live-streamed on social media,” according to Beinart, has “triggered one of the greatest surges in progressive activism in a generation”. The writer correctly indicates that the core of this activism was “Black Americans and the young”.

Undeniably, for the first time in US election history, Palestine has become a domestic American political issue – a nightmare realization for those who labored to maintain US foreign policy in the Middle East as an exclusive Israeli domain.

Aside from Arab voters, black voters and voters from other minority groups who prioritized Palestine, many white Americans felt the same way. This claim is particularly important as it suggests that American voters are challenging the identity politics paradigm, and are now thinking around common struggles, values and morality.

“Democrats may no longer be able to rely on young voters to boost numbers, as Harris appears on track to have the lowest support among voters aged 18-29 in this century,” a report in the British Independent newspaper noted. Knowing the relatively strong support for Palestine among young Americans, US politicians have much to worry about in coming elections.

We already know that support for Palestine is overwhelmingly strong among young Democrats. A poll conducted by Gallup in March 2023 indicated that, for the first time, Democrats’ “sympathies .. now lie more with the Palestinians than the Israelis, 49% versus 38%.”

Even more astonishing, the overall US Democratic constituency is more pro-Palestine than Israel. According to a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center last April, the overall young American population “are more likely to sympathize with the Palestinian people than the Israeli people.” While a third of adults under 30 sympathized “entirely or mostly” with Palestinians, only 14% sympathized with the Israelis.

These numbers did not seem to matter to the Democrats who continued to take for granted the votes of youth and other minority groups. They made a grave mistake.

The Biden Administration has played a central role in funding and sustaining the Israeli war machine, thus facilitating the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Millions of Americans took notice and acted upon their sense of collective rage to punish the Democrats for what they had done to the Palestinian people.

According to a report prepared for Brown University’s Costs of War project, the Biden Administration has granted Israel a record of at least $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel in the first year of the war. Additionally, according to a report published on October 4 by the non-profit investigative newspaper ProPublica, “the US has shipped more than 50,000 tons of weaponry” to Israel since October 7, 2023.

Merely hours after the US presidential election results were announced, the Israeli Ministry of Defense signed a deal “to acquire 25 F-15IA combat jets from U.S. manufacturer Boeing for $5.2 billion, with an option to get 25 more,” according to Defense News. In other words, Biden remains unrepentant.

Biden, Harris and others may twist the logic to justify their support for Israel in any way they wish. However, there can be no denying that their administration has played a leading role in the Israeli genocide in Gaza. For this, they were duly and deservedly penalized by American voters.

The understandable euphoria among many of Palestine’s supporters in the US notwithstanding, we must not harbor any illusions. Neither President-elect Donald Trump nor his entourage of right-wing politicians will be the saviors of Palestine.

We must recall that it was Trump’s first term in office that paved the road to the complete marginalization of the Palestinians. He did so by granting Israel sovereignty over occupied East Jerusalem, recognizing the illegal settlements as legitimate, waging financial warfare against Palestinians, and attempting to destroy the UN refugee agency, UNRWA, among other actions.

If Trump returns to his old destructive policies in Palestine, another war will certainly start.

This means that the pro-Palestine camp, which has managed to convert solidarity into decisive political action, must not wait for the new US administration to adopt a more sensible political line on Palestine. Judging by the history of Republican support for Israel, no such sensibility should be expected.

Thus, it is time to build on the existing solidarity among all American groups that voted against genocide in the latest elections. This is the perfect opportunity to translate votes into sustained action and pressure so that all aspects of the US government may hear and heed the deafening chants of ‘ceasefire now’, and ‘free, free Palestine.’

This time around, however, these chants are backed by solid evidence that American voters are capable of destabilizing the entire political paradigm, as they did on November 5, 2024.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

14 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies

When Donald Trump takes office on January 20th, all his campaign promises to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours and almost as quickly end Israel’s war on its neighbors will be put to the test. The choices he has made for his incoming administration so far, from Marco Rubio as Secretary of State to Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor,  Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense and Elise Stefanik as UN Ambassador make for a rogues gallery of saber-rattlers.

The only conflict where peace negotiations seem to be on the agenda is Ukraine. In April, both Vice President-elect JD Vance and Senator Marco Rubio voted against a $95 billion military aid bill that included $61 billion for Ukraine.

Rubio recently appeared on NBC’s Today Show saying, “I think the Ukrainians have been incredibly brave and strong when standing up to Russia. But at the end of the day, what we’re funding here is a stalemate war, and it needs to be brought to a conclusion… I think there has to be some common sense here.”

On the campaign trail, Vance made a controversial suggestion that the best way to end the war was for Ukraine to cede the land Russia has seized, for a demilitarized zone to be established, and for Ukraine to become neutral, i.e. not enter NATO. He was roundly criticized by both Republicans and Democrats who argue that backing Ukraine is vitally important to U.S. security since it weakens Russia, which is closely allied with China.

Any attempt by Trump to stop U.S. military support for Ukraine will undoubtedly face fierce opposition from the pro-war forces in his own party, particularly in Congress, as well as perhaps the entirety of the Democratic party. Two years ago, 30 progressive Democrats in Congress wrote a letter to President Biden asking him to consider promoting negotiations. The party higher ups were so incensed by their lack of party discipline that they came down on the progressives like a ton of bricks. Within 24 hours, the group had cried uncle and rescinded the letter. They have since all voted for money for Ukraine and have not uttered another word about negotiations.

So a Trump effort to cut funds to Ukraine could run up against a bipartisan congressional effort to keep the war going. And let’s not forget the efforts by European countries, and NATO, to keep the U.S. in the fight. Still, Trump could stand up to all these forces and push for a rational policy that would restart the talking and stop the killing.

The Middle East, however, is a more difficult situation. In his first term, Trump showed his pro-Israel cards when he brokered the Abraham accords between several Arab countries and Israel; moved the U.S. embassy to a location in Jerusalem that is partly on occupied land outside Israel’s internationally recognized borders; and recognized the occupied Golan Heights in Syria as part of Israel. Such unprecedented signals of unconditional U.S. support for Israel’s illegal occupation and settlements helped set the stage for the current crisis.

Trump seems as unlikely as Biden to cut U.S. weapons to Israel, despite public opinion polls favoring such a halt and a recent UN human rights report showing that 70% of the people killed by those U.S. weapons are women and children.

Meanwhile, the wily Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is already busy getting ready for a second Trump presidency. On the very day of the U.S. election, Netanyahu fired his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, who opposed a lasting Israeli military occupation of Gaza and had at times argued for prioritizing the lives of the Israeli hostages over killing more Palestinians.

Israel Katz, the new defense minister and former foreign minister, is more hawkish than Gallant, and has led a campaign to falsely blame Iran for the smuggling of weapons from Jordan into the West Bank.

Other powerful voices, national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also a “minister in the Defense Ministry,” represent extreme Zionist parties that are publicly committed to territorial expansion, annexation and ethnic cleansing. They both live in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

So Netanyahu has deliberately surrounded himself with allies who back his ever-escalating war. They are surely developing a war plan to exploit Trump’s support for Israel, but will first use the unique opportunity of the U.S. transition of power to create facts on the ground that will limit Trump’s options when he takes office.

The Israelis will doubtless redouble their efforts to drive Palestinians out of as much of Gaza as possible, confronting President Trump with a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in which Gaza’s surviving population is crammed into an impossibly small area, with next to no food, no shelter for many, disease running rampant, and no access to needed medical care for tens of thousands of horribly wounded and dying people.

The Israelis will count on Trump to accept whatever final solution they propose, most likely to drive Palestinians out of Gaza, into the West Bank, Jordan, Egypt and farther afield.

Israel threatened all along to do to Lebanon the same as they have done to Gaza. Israeli forces have met fierce resistance, taken heavy casualties, and have not advanced far into Lebanon. But, as in Gaza, they are using bombing and artillery to destroy villages and towns, kill or drive people north and hope to effectively annex the part of Lebanon south of the Litani river as a so-called “buffer zone.” When Trump takes office, they may ask for greater U.S. involvement to help them “finish the job.”

The big wild card is Iran. Trump’s first term in office was marked by a policy of “maximum pressure” against Tehran. He unilaterally withdrew America from the Iran nuclear deal, imposed severe sanctions that devastated the economy, and ordered the killing of the country’s top general. Trump did not support a war on Iran in his first term, but had to be talked out of attacking Iran in his final days in office by General Mark Milley and the Pentagon.

Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, recently described to Chris Hedges just how catastrophic a war with Iran would be, based on U.S.military wargames he was involved in.

Wilkerson predicts that a U.S. war on Iran could last for ten years, cost $10 trillion and still fail to conquer Iran. Airstrikes alone would not destroy all of Iran’s civilian nuclear program and ballistic missile stockpiles. So, once unleashed, the war would very likely escalate into a regime change war involving U.S. ground forces, in a country with three or four times the territory and population of Iraq, more mountainous terrain and a thousand mile long coastline bristling with missiles that can sink U.S. warships.

But Netanyahu and his extreme Zionist allies believe that they must sooner or later fight an existential war with Iran if they are to realize their vision of a dominant Greater Israel. And they believe that the destruction they have wreaked on the Palestinians in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, including the assassination of their senior leaders, has given them a military advantage and a favorable opportunity for a showdown with Iran.

By November 10, Trump and Netanyahu had reportedly spoken on the phone three times since the election, and Netanyahu said that they see “eye to eye on the Iranian threat.” Trump has already hired Iran hawk Brian Hook, who helped him sabotage the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran in 2018, to coordinate the formation of his foreign policy team.

So far, the team that Trump and Hook have assembled seems to offer hope for peace in Ukraine, but little to none for peace in the Middle East and a rising danger of a U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

Trump’s expected National Security Advisor Mike Waltz is best known as a China hawk. He has voted against military aid to Ukraine in Congress, but he recently tweeted that Israel should bomb Iran’s nuclear and oil facilities, the most certain path to a full-scale war.

Trump’s new UN ambassador, Elise Stefanik, has led moves in Congress to equate criticism of Israel with anti-semitism, and she led the aggressive questioning of American university presidents at an anti-semitism hearing in Congress, after which the presidents of Harvard and Penn resigned.

So, while Trump will have some advisors who support his desire to end the war in Ukraine, there will be few voices in his inner circle urging caution over Netanyahu’s genocidal ambitions in Palestine and his determination to cripple Iran.

If he wanted to, President Biden could use his final two months in office to de-escalate the conflicts in the Middle East. He could impose an embargo on offensive weapons for Israel, push for serious ceasefire negotiations in both Gaza and Lebanon, and work through U.S. partners in the Gulf to de-escalate tensions with Iran.

But Biden is unlikely to do any of that. When his own administration sent a letter to Israel last month, threatening a cut in military aid if Israel did not allow a surge of humanitarian aid into Gaza in the next 30 days, Israel responded by doing just the opposite–actually cutting the number of trucks allowed in. The State Department claimed Israel was taking “steps in the right direction” and Biden refused to take any action.

We will soon see if Trump is able to make progress in moving the Ukraine war towards negotiations, potentially saving the lives of many thousands of Ukrainians and Russians. But between the catastrophe that Trump will inherit and the Warhawks he is picking for his cabinet, peace in the Middle East seems more distant than ever.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books, with an updated edition due in February 2025.

14 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jordan Shilton

Israel carried out four major air strikes on the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut yesterday, as well as a series of strikes on bridges and other infrastructure on the Lebanon-Syria border. Coming as the Zionist regime continues to starve Gaza and the US military once again struck targets in Yemen, the attacks show that there is no let-up in the drive by Washington’s attack dog to redraw the map of the Middle East.

The four strikes targeted the suburbs of Haret Hreik and Burj al-Barajneh. The strikes flattened six residential buildings, but no official casualty figures were initially reported. After at least 78 people were killed in Israel Defence Forces (IDF) raids on Tuesday, the official death toll in Lebanon since October 8 stands at 3,365, with 14,344 wounded.

Defence Minister Israel Katz, who replaced Yoav Gallant after his firing by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, vowed to continue to escalate the conflict in Lebanon. In a visit to the IDF’s Northern Command, Katz declared, “We will not make any ceasefire, we will not take our foot off the gas, and we will not allow any arrangement that does not include the achievement of the war’s goals.”

These include the disarming of Hezbollah, the pushing of its forces north of the Litani River, and the return of residents to towns and villages on Israel’s northern border, he added. The Defence Minister asserted that Israel would retain “the right to enforce” any ceasefire deal, i.e., the “right” to launch attacks inside Lebanon at will after a ceasefire is concluded.

On the ground, the IDF reported six casualties following a gun battle with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. The clash reportedly occurred as Israeli forces sought to advance to the second line of villages inside the border.

Syrian state news agency SANA reported that the air strikes near the border caused “significant damage” to infrastructure. According to the IDF, the attacks were aimed at smuggling routes used by Iran to transfer weaponry to Hezbollah. They come less than three weeks after Israel’s air strikes on Iran on October 26, which targeted military sites and were described by the World Socialist Web Site as a “dress rehearsal” for a region-wide war.

US Central Command also announced Wednesday that it struck numerous sites in Yemen on Saturday and Sunday, reportedly destroying weapons supplied to the Houthis by Iran.

American imperialism has backed Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians and subsequent war on Lebanon to the hilt, seeing them as components of its preparations for a region-wide war targeting Iran. Washington is pursuing the goal of consolidating its hegemony over the oil-rich region as part of a renewed redivision of the world, which encompasses the war on Russia in Ukraine and advanced preparations for war with China in the Asia-Pacific.

If Katz’s pledge to intensify the war in Lebanon is fulfilled, the likelihood that the conflict will spread throughout the energy-rich region will become ever greater. President-elect Donald Trump, who drastically escalated tensions with Tehran during his first term in office by abrogating the nuclear accord with Iran, has nominated Marco Rubio, a vocal anti-Iran hawk, as his secretary of state. At a campaign rally last month, Trump urged Israel to strike Iran’s nuclear sites at a time when the bourgeois-clerical regime in Tehran was warning that such a decision would lead to all-out war. In the end, Netanyahu chose the more limited, but nonetheless provocative, attack on October 26 that struck military sites.

Mike Huckabee, a staunch defender of the Zionist state’s expansionist plans, is set to be Trump’s ambassador to Israel. The second Trump administration is expected to give Netanyahu a free hand to expand settlements in the West Bank and intensify the genocide in Gaza. As Huckabee put it in 2017, “There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria. There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighbourhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.”

Israel continued its bombardment of Gaza Wednesday, where 26 people were reported killed in a series of strikes throughout the day. One targeted the al-Mawasi district in the southwest, an ostensible “safe zone” where many displaced people are sheltering. Another strike on the Maghazi refugee camp killed five.

The UN’s World Food Programme noted on X that markets across the enclave are “in decay,” adding that basic staples “barely exist.” It stated, “Fresh foods, eggs and meat barely exist and the prices of any food available have reached record highs.” The UN’s aid coordination office OCHA added that all attempts to gain Israeli approval for the delivery of supplies to northern Gaza since the beginning of November have been rebuffed.

In early October, Netanyahu’s far-right regime adopted what is known as the “Generals’ Plan,” which calls for the denial of all food aid to northern Gaza and the treating of all civilians who remain as enemy combatants.

On Tuesday, the Biden administration defended Israel against criticism from aid organisations pointing to the abysmally low level of deliveries entering the enclave. Even though the Zionist regime is allowing just one-tenth of the 350 aid trucks into Gaza per day called for by the Biden administration last month, the State Department asserted Tuesday that Israel was not violating international humanitarian law by withholding food aid, and refused to place any restrictions on Washington’s massive weapons deliveries.

The UN Security Council held a briefing the same day on the threat of famine in northern Gaza. It was requested by Guyana and Switzerland following a November 8 alert from the Integrated Food Phase Classification (IPC) stating that there is “a strong likelihood that famine is imminent within areas of the northern Gaza Strip.” An earlier October 17 snapshot from the agency revealed that the entirety of Gaza is at risk of famine between November and April 2025 “under a worst-case scenario that has a reasonable chance of occurring.”

“We are witnessing acts reminiscent of the gravest international crimes,” Joyce Msuya, interim head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told Tuesday’s Security Council meeting. She described Israel’s ongoing siege of northern Gaza as “an intensified, extreme, and accelerated version of the horrors of the past year.”

Head of the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) Rein Paulsen told the Security Council that the number of people facing “catastrophic food insecurity,” the highest classification on the IPC’s food insecurity scale, would treble from the current level of 133,000 in the coming months. “Men, women, boys and girls are effectively starving as the conflict rages, with humanitarian organizations blocked from delivering assistance to those in need,” Paulsen continued. “By the time famine has been declared, people are already dying of hunger, with irreversible consequences that can last generations.”

An FAO release on the briefing noted that local food production has “collapsed”: “nearly 70 percent of croplands—which contributed up to one-third of daily consumption—have been destroyed; over 70 percent of olive trees and orchards have been burned to the ground; agricultural infrastructure has been decimated; and 95 percent of cattle and more than half of sheep and goat herds, have died.”

None of these horrors move the imperialist barbarians represented in the Security Council. They are dead set on continuing with their support for Israel’s genocide and vicious attacks on anyone who protests it at home. The only social force capable of putting an end to this savagery is the international working class, mobilised on the basis of a socialist and internationalist programme for the abolition of capitalism, the root cause of genocide and imperialist war.

14 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Kevin Reed

Israeli air strikes across Gaza and Lebanon killed dozens of people on Sunday, including at least 20 children, as the Israeli regime intensified its genocide of Palestinians and expanded its wider war in the Middle East.

Health officials reported at least 30 people were killed in northern and central Gaza as tanks entered the refugee camp at Nuseirat in a new incursion. A report by Al Jazeera said, “Health officials at Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat, in the central Gaza Strip, said 20 people were killed in a series of air and ground attacks overnight and into Monday, including one that hit a tent encampment.”

In a message sent to Reuters via a chat app, 25-year-old resident Zaik Mohammad said tanks opened fire on the Nuseirat camp without warning and caught residents by surprise. The residents and displaced families were sent into a panic. “Some people couldn’t leave and remained trapped inside their homes, appealing to be allowed out, while others rushed out with whatever they could carry as they fled.”

Al Jazeera also reported four people were killed in an Israeli air attack in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, which Israeli forces have besieged from the air and with tanks since the beginning of October. Others were killed in an air attack in Gaza City.

An Israeli drone fired upon Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya—the only medical facility operating in northern Gaza—injuring three medical workers. Another 10 people were killed in an air strike late Monday in a café in Al-Mawasi—an area designated a “humanitarian safe zone” by Israel—near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

Health Ministry officials reported that at least 43,604 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military since October 2023, with 102,929 injured.

The strikes in Lebanon on Sunday killed nearly 40 people, with the Israeli air assault moving into the north of the country. At least 14 people were killed in a missile attack on the northern town of Ain Yaaqoub, which is approximately 6.2 miles from the border with Syria.

Al Jazeera reported that there may well have been Syrian casualties in this strike because there are so many refugees in the north of Lebanon who have been sheltering there for years. There were also Lebanese people in Ain Yaaqoub who had fled there for safety from the suburbs of Beirut and areas in the Bekaa Valley that have been hit by Israeli bombings.

At least 23 people were killed in another strike about nine miles from the capital Beirut. The Lebanese Ministry of Health said on Monday that at least 3,243 people had been killed in the recent escalation by Israel, including at least 200 children.

There have been numerous indications that the Israeli government—which has been provided with arms and funding by the Biden administration to carry out its ethnic cleansing of Gaza—has been further emboldened to intensify its criminal military operations by the victory of Donald Trump in the 2024 US presidential elections.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed in a recorded message on Sunday that he has spoken to the fascist president-elect three times in recent days. Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly told Netanyahu to “do what you have to do” in Gaza and Lebanon, while simultaneously telling the electorate he would bring both conflicts to an end.

There can be no question that the election of Donald Trump has given the Israeli leaders encouragement to completely drop any pretense of ceasefire negotiations and move forward with the Zionist project to permanently remove Palestinians from Gaza and the so-called “Generals’ Plan.”

In his first meeting with Israeli military officials, new Defense Minister Israel Katz said that “there will be no ceasefire” and “no break in the strikes against Hezbollah” in Lebanon. Katz also posted a statement on X that said, “Iran is more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal—to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel.”

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, speaking to the press on Monday before his Religious Zionism party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset, welcomed Trump’s victory and said it presents an “important opportunity” to “apply Israeli sovereignty to the settlements in Judea and Samaria,” referring to areas of the West Bank by their biblical names.

Smotrich, who is also a minister in the Israeli Defense Ministry, complained that the Biden administration had “unfortunately chosen to intervene in Israeli democracy and personally not to cooperate with me.”

He referred to actions taken by the Trump administration of 2017-2021, such as the transfer of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, the recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli territory, and the decision to declare that Israel’s West Bank settlements are legal under international law, as being in line with his own fascist political agenda.

On Monday, Donald Trump selected Senator Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York, to be US Ambassador to the United Nations. Stefanik has been a rapid supporter of Zionism and a defender of the Gaza genocide. She was a leading figure in Congress who labeled pro-Palestinian protesters at college campuses across the country as “antisemitic.”

Stefanik’s witch-hunting of protesters against the Gaza genocide aligns with her echoing of the Great Replacement Theory of actual antisemitism, which claims that wealthy Jewish people are engineering and financing a mass migration to the United States from Asia, Africa and Latin America to replace the white American population.

12 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

November 07, 2024

Empires do NOT reform. Resilience is the term associated with the Oppressed, not the Oppressor.  (Try imagine being enslaved or colonized for 300 years).  With elite delusions and a popular sense of “being special/exceptional/unique/superior),  Empires get toxic at home and abroad, decay, get overpowered/crushed or simply collapse.  USA is no exception, except it has the capacity to bring humanity at large with it, to Hell.  I do not hate Americans as a people – just another population of fellow humans, who deserve life, not more or less than any other population.

But, with every cell in my body, I absolutely loath Empires and Imperialisms, whatever their names.    Some of the mightiest  imperial entities – Asoka’s India and what it left behind, the Maureans of N. India with its crowning intellectual edifice of Nalanda University – (if you think everything rational and intellectual was rooted in or developed out of the European Enlightenment,  you have not seen even ruins of Nalanda and what it gifted humanity), the Moguls of the latter day Indian subcontinent, the China of the Great Wall,  the Ankgor, the Ottoman, the Mayans, and many others.    We know some of them lasted for 500 years. History has, in due course, humbled them all.

But there is this signature historical ignorance of the imperalist elite – which my dear friend Gayatri  Spivak termed “sanctioned ignorance”.  They are typically drunk with their own cool-aid.     My street in this English countryside is littered with Oxbridge types.  I can only talk to them about the weather, dogs and gardens: their very elite education did not include a single lesson on the crimes against humanity serially perpetrated by Britain during its relatively short reign vis-a-vis other empires that came, and went before the British Empire.

Historical time is not human biological life span.    Whatever is unfolding before our eyes, I for one do NOT despair.  I ask myself were a young African on a slaveship passing through the Middle Passage,  what would I have done?    Certainly, i would not have known that the Evil of Europe would go on to be institutionalized for another 400 years, but the question really is would I have jumped off the ship that was carrying me to the living Hell of Plantations far away, or would I have resisted the attempts to shackle me and my loved ones to eternity.  Of course, this is all academic.  For I was not there.

But I am here, living in the most wretched and horrid era of the United States taking off its mass-murderous gloves, and giving the rest of humanity the middle finger.   Teddy Roosevelt was at least wiser in that he advised his power elite, to carry a big stick but speaks softly.

But the American elites have been talking crude and crass while running 750 military bases around the world and openly threatening any institution or individuals that seek to uphold international law and norms (ICC, UN, ICJ).

I have long adopted the long historical perspective – that Braudel called “long durations”.     I left the United States for good – against my own interests 20 years ago, because i could no longer bear the deep pain of cognitive dissonance – benefitting from being in the belly of the beast while knowing how sick the whole place is.   Yesterday, my 25-years old daughter texted me, “it’s not just Trump, Dad.  All across the board.   Awful country.”   I knew this when she was barely 5.

I keep the faith.   This Evil Empire too has its own expiry date.   Take the long view, if you feel dejected by the Second Coming of Trump.    Genocide Joe and thick-headed and unprincipled Kamala Harris, who also went to the same elementary school as my daughter, are also not good for humanity.   Ask the Palestinians.     Have a great day!

Zarni

Source: drhabibsiddiqui.blogspot.com