In the American Prospect article linked below, The Road to Medicare for Everyone, Jacob Hacker is once again working to dissuade single payer healthcare supporters from demanding National Improved Medicare for All and use our language to send us down a false path. Once again, he comes up with a scheme to convince people to ask for less and calls those who disagree “purists”. Hacker calls his “Medicare Part E” “daring and doable,” I call it dumb and dumber. Here’s why.
Hacker makes the same assertions we witnessed in August of 2017 when other progressives tried to dissuade single payer supporters.
He starts with “risk aversion,” although he doesn’t use the term in his article. Hacker asserts that those who have health insurance through their employers won’t want to give it up for the new system. Our responses to this are: there is already widespread dislike for the current healthcare system; people don’t like private insurance while there is widespread support across the political spectrum for Medicare and Medicaid; there is also widespread support for single payer; and those with health insurance can be reassured that they will be better off under a single payer system. It is also important to note that employers don’t want to be in the middle of health insurance. Healthcare costs are the biggest complaint by small and medium sized businesses and keep businesses that operate internationally less competitive.
Next, Hacker brings up the costs of the new system and complains that it will create new federal spending. He points to the failures to pass ‘single payer’ in Vermont and California. First, it must be recognized that the state bills were not true single payer bills, and second, states face barriers that the federal government does not, they must balance their budgets. Hacker ignores the numerous studies at the national level, some by the General Accounting Office and the Congressional Budget Office that demonstrate single payer is the best way to save money. Of course there would be an increase in federal spending, the system would be financed through taxes, but the taxes would replace premiums, co-pays and deductibles, which are rising as fast as health insurers can get away with. Hacker proposes a more complex system that will fail to provide the savings needed to cover everyone, the savings that can only exist under a true single payer system.
Hacker also confuses “Medicare for All” with simply expanding Medicare to everyone, including the wasteful private plans under Medicare Advantage. This is not what National Improved Medicare for All (NIMA) advocates support. NIMA would take the national infrastructure created by Medicare and use it for a new system that is comprehensive in coverage, including long term care, and doesn’t require co-pays or deductibles. The system would negotiate reasonable pharmaceutical prices and set prices for services. It would also provide operating budgets for hospitals and other health facilities and use separate capital budgets to make sure that health resources are available where they are needed. And the new system would create a mechanism for negotiation of payment to providers.
Finally, Hacker tries to convince his readers that the opposition to NIMA will be too strong, so we should demand less. We know that the opposition to our lesser demands will also be strong. That was the case in 2009 when people advocated for the ‘public option’ gimmick. If we are going to fight for something, if we are going to take on this opposition, we must fight for something worthwhile, something that will actually solve the healthcare crisis. That something is NIMA. We are well aware that the opposition will be strong, but we also know that when people organize and mobilize, they can win. Every fight for social transformation has been a difficult struggle. We know how to wage these struggles. We have decades of history of successful struggles to guide us.
One gaping hole in Hacker’s approach is that it prevents the social solidarity required to win the fight and to make the solution succeed. Hacker promotes a “Medicare Part E” that some people can buy into. Not only will this forego most of the savings of a single payer system, but it also leaves the public divided. Some people will be in the system and others will be out. This creates vulnerabilities for the opposition to exploit and further divide us. Any difficulties of the new system will be blown out of proportion and those in the system may worry that they are in the wrong place. When we are united in the same system, not only does that create a higher quality system (a lesson we’ve learned from other countries), but it also unites us in fighting to protect and improve that system.
Hacker succeeded in convincing people who support single payer to ask for something less in 2009 and we ended up with a law that is further enriching the health insurance, pharmaceutical and private healthcare institutions enormously while tens of millions of people go without care. Now, Hacker rises again to use the same scare tactics and accusations that he used then to undermine the struggle for NIMA. This is to be expected. The national cry for NIMA is growing and the power holders in both major political parties and their allies in the media and think tanks are afraid of going against the donor class. Social movements have always been told that what they are asking for is impossible, until the tide shifts and it becomes inevitable.
Our task is to shift the tide. We must not be fooled by people like Jacob Hacker. We know that single payer systems work. We have the money to pay for it. We have the framework for a national system and we have the institutions to provide care. Just as we did in 1965 when Medicare and Medicaid were created from scratch, and without the benefit of the Internet, we can create National Improved Medicare for All, a universal system, all at once. Everybody in and nobody out.
We know that we are close to winning when the opposition starts using our language to take us off track. “Medicare Part E” is not National Improved Medicare for All, it is a gimmick to protect the status quo and convince us that we are not powerful. We aren’t falling for it. This is the time to fight harder for NIMA. We will prevail.
Read Jacob Hacker’s article in the American Prospecthere.
China is planning to build its second foreign naval base in Pakistan following the ribbon cutting ceremony for its first overseas base in Djibouti last July.
Sources close to the People’s Liberation Army have confirmed to the South China Morning Post that a Chinese naval port is being built at a strategic location on Pakistan’s southern coast.
“China needs to set up another base in Gwadar for its warships because Gwadar is now a civilian port,” Zhou Chenming, a Chinese military analyst, told the South China Morning Post on Friday. “Gwadar port can’t provide specific services for warships,” Zhou said; hence the need for a new base.
Gwadar is less than 50 miles east of the Pakistan-Iran border and sits in Balochistan Province, where fiercely independent Baloch nationalists have waged guerrilla wars against both the Pakistani and Iranian governments. “Public order there is a mess,” Zhou said.
“China and Pakistan have found common ground in terms of maritime interest in the region,” Pakistani analyst Sheikh Fahad says. “Gwadar port can be used for joint naval patrols in the Indian Ocean, further increasing the naval outreach of China and Pakistan in the region. Gwadar port will increase the countries’ naval movements and further expand defense cooperation, especially in the naval field,” Fahad noted.
In mid-December, Lawrence Sellin, a retired US Army Reserve colonel, reported for the Daily Caller that high-ranking Chinese and Pakistani officials had met in Beijing to discuss future projects.
Last June, a Pakistani diplomat said China’s help was needed as an “equalizer,” pointing to the naval base as all-but-inevitable. “Previously it was the US and Saudi Arabia… Now it’s China,” the diplomat told NBC. A Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman later dismissed the report as “pure guesswork,” but now it seems the port will, in fact, be built.
Experts have noted that India is keeping a close eye on the development of China-Pakistan relations. “China finds it very useful to use Pakistan against India and ignore India’s concerns, particularly on terrorism issues. That has created a lot of stress in the relationship between Beijing and Delhi,” Rajeev Ranan Chaturvedy, a researcher at the National University of Singapore, told SCMP.
But “Indian naval capabilities and experience in the Indian Ocean region are fairly good — much better than Pakistan and China,” Chaturvedy said.
The Egyptian wing of Daesh Takfiri terrorists has released a new execution video, declaring war on the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement based in Gaza.
The video, released Wednesday, purports to show the execution of a man who Daesh claims cooperated with Hamas’ armed wing.
“Never surrender to them. Use explosives, silenced pistols and sticky bombs. Bomb their courts and their security locations, for these are the pillars of tyranny that prop up its throne,” said one of the militants in the video.
The Egyptian wing of Daesh, known as the Sinai Province, is notorious for its brutal massacres, including the Sinai 2015 plane crash which killed 224 passengers and mass killing of over 300 people at a Sufi mosque in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, the deadliest attack in modern Egyptian history.
The video comes as Hamas has been cooperating with Egyptian security forces to restore stability to Sinai, which borders Gaza.
In October, the Palestinian resistance movement arrested four senior Daesh terrorists in Sinai.
In July 2015, Daesh released a video saying that it would overthrow Hamas “tyrants” for their perceived lack of religious rulings in Gaza.
Takfiri groups such as Daesh have never attacked Israel despite operating close to Syria’s borders with the occupied Palestinian territories. Israel is widely believed to be supporting terrorists in Syria by launching airstrikes against various targets there from time to time.
Meanwhile, the US and its allies, which have been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh targets inside Syria, have repeatedly been accused of providing logistic support and air cover for Daesh terrorists.
Daesh, however, lost all the territory under its control in Syria and Iraq late last year.
It’s over a year since the presidential elections. Yet some folks seem ever more obsessed about possible Russian influence; what with revelations of Moscow gold spent on Facebook ads for clickbait showing adorable puppies and the outing of alleged Kremlin operative Jill Stein. With the hindsight of history, we can now look back at what some Democrats have called the crime of the century and see how it could have been averted.
What a crime it was! After all, the US is the one that is supposed to have a monopoly on “democracy promotion” in other countries. Our government most recently endorsed the fraudulent re-election of the incumbent in Honduras, who was a product of a coup backed by the Obama administration. And let us not forget Bill Clinton’s well timed loan to good ole Boris Yeltsin in Russia. The WTO should fine Russia for unfair practices and infringement on the US concession.
For, as Obama proclaimed, we are an “exceptional” nation with correspondingly exceptional electoral practices. Where else are corporations considered people and spending obscene amounts of cash to influence politicians protected as free speech? Our press is free to anyone who can afford to buy one. We wouldn’t want rich and powerful foreigners competing with our domestic plutocrats, unless they represent such bastions of zealotry as Saudi Arabia or Israel.
Looking beyond the myopia of the Washington consensus, the most outstanding fact about the 2016 US presidential election was not who won… given the alternative.
No, the most outstanding fact of that election and of elections in the US in general is that close to half of the adult population doesn’t vote. Only 55% of the electorate cast ballots in the hotly contested 2016 presidential race, and that was considered a great achievement. Compared to other developed nations, the US is among the ones with the lowest voter turnouts… and for good reasons besides the unpalatability of the proffered candidates.
It is not for lack of nifty ideas that the US has low voter turnout. Any number of measures could be instituted to increase voter participation in US elections: making election day a national holiday, eliminating voter identification laws, allowing registration on election day, automatic voter registration (AVR), and even making voting mandatory.
The political will to increase voter participation is lacking by the two major parties lest their duopoly be challenged. The consequence is that few measures are enacted to increase political participation, despite lip service to the contrary. Meanwhile plenty is being done to suppress the vote.
What if everyone voted?
Yes, what if everyone voted? The answer is that our politics would look very different than what we have now. For this deep reason, the two-party duopoly wants to keep voter participation low for fear the populace would make the wrong choices. It is an open secret that the Democratic National Committee preferred suffering a Trump victory over allowing even such a compliant progressive as Bernie Sanders getting a shot at the Oval Office.
A group of disproportionately powerful people exist in most societies. These rich and powerful in the US are the ones who have the highest class consciousness. They are called the ruling class. One of their means of exercising power is through the two major political parties.
This ruling class is not monolithic, so they have two political parties to work out and represent differences within their class. As Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere observed, “The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.”
While leaders in each of the two parties like to win, their fundamental loyalty is to their class as seen in Al Gore’s refusal to contest the Florida election results in 2000. Likewise, John Kerry admitted he took a fall for his class in 2004. The Democrats, in both instances, chose to accept defeat rather than give the appearance to engaging in uncomely intra-class conflict.
Viable third parties are needed if other class interests are to be represented. Ralph Nader – and he should know – cites measures restricting participation of third parties in the US:
+ Gerrymandering, which ensures that very few incumbents are at risk in one-party districts. Of the 435 seats in the US House of Representatives, only 33 to 40 were considered contested in the 2016 election.
+ Setting prohibitive ballot access laws, obstructing third party candidacies. Each state has its own arcane rules making it difficult for a new party to mount a national campaign. The de facto one-party state of California with its “top two primaries” regularly has the bizarre spectacle of two Democrats running for the same office in the general election with all other parties barred from the ballot.
+ Also instituting proportional representation and ranked choice voting (see links for explanations of how these measures would work) would encourage people to vote third party because the spoiler dilemma would be removed.
But most of all, the exorbitant expense of engaging in almost any electoral activity is what limits political access to those who can buy it. If the best that money could buy from the two-party despotism – a cold $2,386,733,696 in 2016 – was a Mr. Trump, we should all be promoting third parties.
Which is the lesser evil?
The problem is not just Trumpism but a more fundamental one of class rule. Barring a challenge to class rule, we’ll at best only get a more mannerly, genteel representative of the rich from the Democratic Party, who will be better at selling their class agenda than the current reigning barbarian.
The idea of relying on the Democratic Party is a seductive interim measure, especially since no third party presently even comes close to contesting for state power. Somehow the Democrats feel in some subjective way to be better than the Republicans. And anyone seems better than Trump.
But reflect for a moment. If the choice is always the lesser evil, then the time for a third party challenge to rule by the rich is never, and the US will continue to spiral into greater evil.
Which of the two major parties is the lesser evil is becoming less clear by the day. It’s an unenviable choice between Clinton threatening to “totally obliterate” Iran with a population of 80 million or Trump’s more recent pronouncements to “totally destroy” North Korea with a population of 25 million. Barbara Lee, considered the most liberal Democrat in Congress, tweeted that dialogue between the presidents of the US and Russia amounts to treason.
The so-called “defense” budget funds the US empire abroad and is used as an excuse for not sufficiently supporting social programs at home. Yet instead of challenging Trump’s already dizzying $54 billion proposed increase to that bloated budget, 60% of the Democrats voted in the $80 billion increase.
Bernie Sanders’ admonition about accelerating inequality resonated with many. Yet neither party of the rich is willing or able to address an alternative to what, for most Americans, has amounted to forty years of neoliberalism, resulting in stagnating wages, deteriorating health and education services, and creeping insecurity from wars abroad and the surveillance state at home.
Obama presided over the greatest income redistribution to the rich in US history. His quantitative easing (QE) policies gifted trillions to the affluent, vastly increasing income inequality according to such cheerleads of neoliberalism as Forbes, Bloomberg, and Brookings. Now just three American tycoons have a greater combined wealth than the entire poorest half of our citizenry.
No wonder more potential voters identify as independents than either Republicans or Democrats. While not widely publicized, polls consistently show a majority of Americans want a choice that is independent from the two-party duopoly.
Fighting Phantoms
The Democrats continue to fault phantom Russians, unable to accept that Clinton’s presidential loss was consistent with the other Obama-era losses of 11 governors, 13 Senators, 69 House seats, and 913 state legislative seats/30 state legislative chambers.
Russian sources purportedly spent $100k on Facebook ads, though most ads appeared after the 2016 election. To put $100k into perspective, that amount is 0.004% of the total spent on the election.
But let’s give the Democrats the benefit of the doubt and assume their constituency is as easily and cheaply duped as claimed. What happened? Comparing the Romney-Obama run to the Trump-Clinton race, the usual number of Republicans in certain key Electoral College states went to the polls in 2016, while the Democrats lagged in participation compared to 2012.
Assume for a moment that there’s hard evidence backing up the Democrat’s alibi for losing the 2016 presidential sweepstakes to the most unpopular rival in history. Then increasing voter participation in the US would go long way to flooding out any ostensible Russian meddling. To activate the electorate, we need more attractive candidates who represent the majority of Americans. And to achieve that, we need political parties that represent the interests of working folks and not just the rich.
Roger D. Harris is on the State Central Committee of the Peace and Freedom Party, the only ballot-qualified socialist party in California.
If the shoe were on the other foot, one can imagine the absolute outcry in the Western media. If social protests were to break out in the United States or Europe, and Iranian leaders issued interfering calls in support of those protests, there would be mouth-foaming denunciations of Tehran for “mischievous meddling” in others’ sovereignty.
Yet over the past week, this is exactly what Western governments and news media have been doing in regard to public protests in Iran.
The US government has taken the lead with President Trump labelling the Iranian authorities a “brutal and corrupt regime”.
European governments have been a little more circumspect in their statements, urging the Iranian authorities to be “restrained” and to “allow peaceful protests”.
Nevertheless, European leaders are subtly shoring up the American narrative that the street demonstrations across Iran are a righteous democratic cause against an oppressive regime. That was the implication in statements made by Britain’s foreign minister Boris Johnson and French president Emmanuel Macron. This week, the French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian cancelled an official trip to Tehran. Such moves represent an unacceptable attempt to undermine the Iranian authorities.
Images carried by American media, in particular CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post, of protesters holding up clenched fists have sought to simplify the events in Iran as a “good-citizens-versus-bad-regime” scenario. Notwithstanding that the protests have been relatively small and the grievances are mainly about economic concerns – not a rebellion against state institutions.
By contrast, Russia called on foreign states to back off making prejudiced comments on the Iranian disturbances. Moscow said the events in Iran were an internal political matter for Iranians to resolve without foreign countries interfering.
The irony of Western doublethink is rich. Over the past year, there has been a recurring theme among Western governments and media of “foreign interference” allegedly in their political affairs. Russia has been the focus of these allegations, even though there is no evidence to support such claims. The ever-so pious Western governments and media have no such reservations about “foreign meddling” when it comes to their brazen rush to pile into Iran’s internal politics as shown this week. Or in the forthcoming Russian presidential elections.
Western interference is not just limited to pejorative statements on Iran’s protests. The US State Department has openly admitted that it is communicating via social media with anti-government protesters. This active involvement by Washington is a repeat of similar outside agitation during the so-called Green Movement disturbances in Iran back in 2009. As mentioned above, one can imagine the hue and cry in Western capitals if Iran, or Russia, or some other foreign state, was agitating anti-austerity demonstrations in Washington, London and Paris.
Iranian authorities have sound reason to suspect that Western interference may be even more sinister. The protests – while largely peaceful – have included what appears to be an organized violent element. At least one police officer was reportedly shot dead and police stations have come under armed attack. The rapid escalation of violence and burning of public property suggest a subversive agenda. Comparisons have been made to the way protests in Syria in 2011 were exploited by Western powers for an agenda of regime change which led to all-out war in that country.
For now, the demonstrations in over a dozen cities across Iran appear to have subsided. They have been replaced by much larger public rallies in support of the government and President Hassan Rouhani, as well as the country’s spiritual leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
The economic grievances that sparked the initial protests last week are real enough. Iranians are reportedly enduring hard economic times with soaring inflation of basic living costs and high unemployment among the youth population. But this is a political challenge for the Iranian government to overcome in response to their nation’s grievances.
Ironically, however, it illustrates another aspect of Western doublethink. Western media have reported – with upside-down logic – that President Rouhani “has failed to deliver on economic improvements”. But that “failure” is largely due to the US and Europe not fully implementing the nuclear accord signed with Iran in July 2015, which was also signed by Russia and China and who are abiding by the treaty. That internationally binding accord obliges the end to decades of Western-imposed economic sanctions on Iran.
While the Europeans have begun normalizing economic relations with Iran, not so the Trump administration. Washington has in fact increased the financial blockade under the tendentious pretext of Iran’s alleged “support for terrorism”. Trump has repeatedly threatened to rip up the 2015 nuclear accord. Washington has also intimidated European states, companies and banks from engaging fully with Iran.
The European Union needs to show more backbone towards the US and tell Washington that the nuclear accord is a legal mandate to lift economic sanctions off Iran. Iran’s economic problems are directly related to the bad faith that Western states are showing with regard to the UN-approved nuclear deal. Washington’s policy towards Iran is a continuation of decades of US-led aggression towards the Islamic Republic ever since its 1979 revolution against the American-backed stooge regime of Shah Pahlavi.
The readiness shown by the US and Europe to interfere in Iran’s internal problems is nothing but arrogant doublethink. Get over it.
When you think that British ‘Left’ has reached rock bottom you wake up to learn that this political comedy act has no limits.
We learned today that the ‘anti witch-hunt’ labour group LAW (Labour Against the Witch-hunt ) has expelled half of its members over ‘anti-Semitism.’
Times of Israel reports today that LAW has cut ties to Socialist Fight because of the views of its members. Socialist Fight is accused of being “supportive of controversial Israeli-born author Gilad Atzmon.”
Needless to mention that I am thrilled by all of that. I enjoy being supported by proper radical left groups; people who adhere to universal principles of equality and human brotherhood. Despite the fact that in my entire life, I have never been a member of any political body or party, I can clearly see that my writing is now making a change.
If you are wondering what it is that I am saying that pushes LAW leaders Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein, two self identified (political) Jews, over the edge, to the point that they themselves have decided to act, in the open, as witch hunters, I will provide a brief answer.
I argue that if Israel defines itself as a Jewish State we must ask who are the Jews, what is Jewishness and what is Judaism. We should then proceed and examine Israeli politics and Jewish lobbying in the light of the above questions. I basically argue that Zionism is just one symptom of Jewish choseness. I actually identify the exact same exceptionalist tendencies in Jewish Left and in particular in Walker and Greenstein’s political act. To add to my sins, I am also responsible for the popular adage “by now, we are all Palestinians.” Like the Palestinians we are not allowed to articulate the true nature of our oppression.
No one could articulate this observation better than Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein. In the minutes of the LAW meeting, Walker and Greenstein apparently said “Making a connection between the number of Jewish billionaires in the US or who is Jewish amongst the richest sections of society and imperialist support for Israel is anti-Semitic.”
For Walker and Greenstein pointing at a concentration of mammon and political influence as the core of Zionist power is a ‘hate crime.’ For Walker and Greenstein a principled universal socialist position based on dialectical materialism is crude ‘antisemitism.’
I am delighted as well as amused to see myself, an immigrant saxophonist at the centre of this ridiculous political storm. But I may assure you that none of this is new to Brits. They have seen it all before, they know about the People’s Front of Judea.
The editor of a prominent Jewish community newspaper has come under strong attack for making a joke about a war in which more than a million Iranians and Iraqis lost their lives.
Stephen Pollard, editor of Britain’s Jewish Chronicle, now stands accused of inciting hatred and bigotry following a tweet in which the staunchly pro-Israel and equally enthusiastic Tottenham Hotspur fan compared the Premier League game between Chelsea and Arsenal yesterday to the war between Iran and Iraq because he wanted both sides to lose.
“Time to wheel out my regular comment,” tweeted Pollard. “It’s Arsenal v Chelsea tonight, the football version of the Iran/Iraq war when you want both sides to lose.”
Other twitter users condemned the JC editor for his insensitive and callous remarks about a war in which more than a million people were killed.
“I wonder what your reaction would of been if someone made football related jokes about the Holocaust!” one furious twitter user responded. Another said: “Wow, how callous can you be? 1 Million people died and 10s of thousand people suffer from chemical attack and you make this comment. What is next? you will compare it to Holocaust?”
Others described the comment as “vile” and “disgusting”. Many were keen to point out the latent racism displayed by Pollard.
“You despicable man. A million people died & you make fun of them? Is this implicit #Islamophobia coming out? If someone had made such a hideous analogy with Israel etc you’d be crying antisemitism. Truly hideous man”.
“His hate and contempt for Arabs and Muslims is so obvious. And this is the editor of a major Jewish paper!” wrote another angry user.
One took aim at Pollard’s well-known support for Israel: “Is it a bit like the Israeli Palestinian conflict where you wish Israel would just leave after their away game with Palestine, instead of permanently making the stadium their home?”
The Israeli Knesset approved on Wednesday a first reading of the death penalty bill which would allow the authorities to execute Palestinian prisoners accused of taking part in “operations against Israeli targets,” Anadolu has reported. The bill was proposed by the right-wing leader of the Jewish Home party Naftali Bennet; it was approved by a vote of 52 to 49 but needs a second and third reading before it becomes law.
Extremist Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s Moldovan-born Defence Minister, endorsed the bill, which he said would increase Israel’s deterrence effect. In televised comments last week, Lieberman said that the law would specifically target Palestinians convicted of attacking Israeli civilians and soldiers.
Last year, at a rally following the death of three Israeli police officers, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced his support for the death penalty for Palestinians, whom he described as “terrorists with blood on their hands.”
Israel applies civilian law to illegal Jewish settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Palestinians, however, face military courts and military law. The proposed death penalty would only be applicable in military courts. In the already unlikely event of an Israeli being convicted for killing a Palestinian, the accused would never face the death penalty.
“The fact that Israel lacks a constitution allows its prime ministers to enact legislation that serves the interests of their respective racist governments,” explained Mohammed Dahleh, a Palestinian expert on Israeli affairs. “Israel refuses to adopt a constitution. This also allows it to create laws — or modify them — to suit its expansionist tendencies.”
According to international lawyer Yasser Al-Amouri, the proposed Israeli law violates basic international legal tenets. “The conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis is not criminal in nature but nationalist,” he pointed out. “This means Israel cannot sentence Palestinian prisoners to death under the provision of the Fourth Geneva Convention relating to the treatment of prisoners of war.”
One commentator in London suggested that this legal nicety wouldn’t make any difference. “Israel already treats international laws and conventions with contempt,” said MEMO’s senior editor Ibrahim Hewitt, “so why would it sit up and take notice of this point? The state is guilty of the crime of apartheid, and this bill demonstrates that fact.”
“If opposing Israel is anti-semitism then what do you call supporting a state that has been engaged in brutal ethnic cleansing for seven decades. What does that make you?” It’s a question posed by Miko Peled, an Israeli Jew and son of an Israeli general, former Israeli soldier and now a leading voice in the struggle for Palestinian freedom. You couldn’t find a more authentic insider.
What else has Peled been saying about Israel?
“The name of the game: erasing Palestine, getting rid of the people and de-Arabizing the country…”
As for talk about Israel giving up the West Bank for a Palestinian state: “If it wasn’t so sad it would be funny. It shows a complete misunderstanding of the objective of Zionism and the Zionist state…. By 1993 the Israelis had achieved their mission to make the conquest of the West Bank irreversible.”
Peled also describes the Israeli army, in which he served, as “one of the best trained and best equipped and best fed terrorist organisations in the world.”
So let’s repeat Peled’s question. What does supporting Israel make you when Israel has been busy ethnically cleansing the native Palestinians for seven decades? What should we call people who defend the indefensible?… who admire the despicable?… who applaud the expulsion at gunpoint of peaceable civilians and the confiscation of their homes and land?
Give them a name, one that will stick.
The claim by Conservative Friends of Israel that 80 percent of the party’s MPs and MEPs are members is alarming and reveals how lacking in integrity we are at the heart of government. It puts us almost on a par with US Congress which is almost totally controlled by the Israel lobby through AIPAC.
Being a Friend of Israel, of course, means embracing the whole rotten kit and caboodle, including the terror and racism on which the state of Israel was built. It means embracing the dispossession and oppression of innocent Palestinians. It means embracing the discriminatory laws against those who remain n their homeland. It means embracing the jackboot thuggery that abducts civilians — including children — and imprisons and tortures them without trial. It means embracing the theft and annexation of Palestinian land and water resources, the imposition of hundreds of military checkpoints, severe restrictions on the movement of people and goods, and maximum interference with Palestinian life at every level.
It means approving the bloodbaths inflicted by Israel on Gaza and feeling comfortable with blowing hundreds of children to smithereens, maiming thousands more, trashing vital infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, power plants and clean water supplies, and causing $6bn of devastation that will take 20 years to rebuild. And, by the way, where is the money coming from?
It means embracing the strangulation of the West Bank’s economy and the vicious ten-year blockade on Gaza. It means embracing the denial of Palestinians’ right to self-determination and return to their homes. It means embracing the religious war that humiliates Muslims and Christians and prevents them from visiting their holy places. It means endorsing a situation in which hard-pressed American and British taxpayers are having to subsidise Israel’s illegal occupation of the Holy Land.
And if, after all that, you are still Israel’s special friend, where is your self-respect?
It is ludicrous that a foreign military power which has no regard for international law and rejects weapons conventions and safeguards can exert such influence on foreign policy in the US and UK. Pandering to Israel has been immensely costly in blood and treasure and stupidly damaging to our reputation.
Everyone outside the Westminster/Washington bubble knows perfectly well that there can be no peace in the Holy Land without justice. In other words no peace until the occupation ends. Everyone knows that international law and countless UN resolutions still wait to be enforced. Everyone knows that Israel won’t comply unless sanctions are imposed. Everyone knows that the siege on Gaza won’t be lifted until warships are sent.
What’s more, everyone now knows that the US is not an honest broker, Israel wants to keep the pot boiling and justice won’t come from more sham ‘negotiations’. Nor will peace. Everyone knows who is the real cause of turmoil in the Middle East. And everyone knows that Her Majesty’s Government’s hand-wringing and empty words serve no purpose except to prolong the daily misery for Palestinians and buy time for Israel to complete its criminal scheme to make the occupation permanent.
Churchgoing British prime minister Theresa May praises Israel for being “a thriving democracy, a beacon of tolerance” when it is obviously neither. It’s an obnoxious ethnocracy. She says our two countries share “common values” when we obviously don’t — although her rotten party probably does.
Given the Israeli regime’s endless crimes against humanity and cruelty to the rightful inhabitants of the Holy Land her remarks are insulting to anyone who lives by Christian values. She even claims that Israel is a country where people of all religions “are free and equal in the eyes of the law” and “Israel guarantees the rights of people of all religions, races and sexualities, and it wants to enable everyone to flourish”. Her ignorance in these matters rivals Trump’s.
And May would do well to call off her efforts to ciminalise the successful BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) campaign, which is a grass-roots civil society based resistance movement. She warns that her government will “have no truck with those who subscribe to it”. But Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights bestows on everyone “the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”. So she boobs even on that.
In an interview with Jonas Alexis, Miko Peled sounds upbeat about BDS. As long as Israel has a blank check [cheque] from the US and the UK and is undefeatable militarily and diplomatically, BDS “is possibly the only positive change one can point to at this time.”
Many of us have urged beefing up BDS, extending its reach and orchestrating its efforts globally. There seems no other way to force the spineless international community to finally impose the sanctions they should have slapped on Israel decades ago.
It has got to the point where I wouldn’t mind seeing individuals among the political élites targeted by BDS if they deserve it. And many of them surely do.
The Israeli government is planning a series of measures aimed at fully denying Palestinians their legal rights in Jerusalem and precluding any future peace settlement based on sharing the city between Israel and a future Palestinian state.
One of the most aggressive measures to date is a bill that was approved by the Israeli Knesset on Tuesday, January 2.
The bill, which passed with the support of Israel’s ruling rightwing and far-right coalition has several dangerous stipulations.
According to the bill, two thirds of the Knesset majority is required for Israel to relinquish sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem. International law insists that Israel has no sovereignty over East Jerusalem, illegally occupied and annexed in 1967 and 1980 respectively.
An equally disturbing stipulation in the bill is that it removes two Palestinian neighborhoods from the municipal jurisdiction of the city.
The two affected neighborhoods are Kufr Aqab and the Shufat refugee camp.
By doing so, the Israeli government would have achieved another milestone in its demographic war on Palestinians.
It is important to note that the two Palestinian areas are located on the other side of what Israel refers to as the ‘Separation Wall’.
This move confirms the assumption that the Wall was built around Palestinians areas that Israel plans to annex in the future.
Now, that the wall construction is at an advanced stage, the process of annexation seems to have begun.
But the latest bill – dubbed by Palestinians as the ‘race law’ for it aims at vacating Jerusalem from Palestinian Arabs and increasing the number of the city’s Jewish settlers – is a rewritten version of an earlier bill.
‘The Greater Jerusalem Law‘, which was poised to win a majority vote at the Knesset was only shelved temporarily.
The delayed bill called for expanding the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem to include major illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including Ma’aleh Adumim and the Gush Etzion settlement cluster.
Moreover, it endeavored to bring 150,000 Jewish settlers into Jerusalem as eligible voters, who would naturally tip the political scene more to the right.
Concurrently, the law would further demote the status of 100,000 Palestinians, who would find themselves in a politically gray area.
That bill was cast aside only weeks before the United States government agreed to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
While many in the international community were focused on what the American move would mean for the future of the region and the so-called peace process, few paid heed to the fact that the US and Israel had something far more consequential in mind.
News agencies at the time reported that Israel agreed to shelf a popular bill “under US pressure.” But that ‘pressure’ only aimed at giving President Donald Trump the needed time to formulate his own strategy and make the troubling announcement.
Since then, many Palestinians were killed, hundreds wounded and more detained as Palestinians and their allies around the world displayed outrage by the US decision.
A symbolic but telling vote at the United Nations on December 21 showed that the US and Israel stood alone in their fight to deny Palestinians their rights in their unlawfully occupied city.
Wasting no time, Israeli lawmakers are now pushing forward with designs to further isolate Jerusalem and to empty it from its Palestinian inhabitants.
They understand that the unparalleled US support must be exploited to the maximum, and that any delay on these bills would certainly be missed opportunities.
The nature of the US-Israel coordination is indeed unprecedented. Just as the Knesset voted to approve the bill, the US moved quickly to cap any strong Palestinian reactions.
That job was entrusted to US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, who has gone further than any other US official in her attempt to intimidate, and even bully Palestinians.
Haley declared that the US will cut off US funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and will only resume funding when the Palestinians agree to return to the negotiations.
UNRWA is the main channel for support for Palestinians refugees. That decision will further tighten the noose on a struggling Palestinian economy and the Palestinian Authority which relies mostly on international aid to survive.
Haley, of course, understands that no Palestinian leadership can engage politically with Israel and the US when the two countries refuse to accept international law as a frame of reference in the negotiations.
Now, the Palestinian leadership has to choose between its existing humiliation or further humiliation.
But Haley’s threat is also aimed at changing the conversation, and taking the focus away from the racist Israeli bill that will surely lead to further annexation in Jerusalem itself and throughout the West Bank.
The US and Israel are now actively invested in a system of political Apartheid in Palestine, and are twisting the arm of the PA to facilitate such a dreadful regime.
PA officials have made many threats so far, including the exclusion of the US from the peace process and changing their demand to a one state solution.
But there is nothing concrete so far regarding that coveted Palestinian strategy; one that is predicated on a united Palestinian leadership that truly explores new options, allies and future outlook.
It is that lack of vision that compromises the Palestinian position even further, emboldening Israel to push forward with its racist laws and apartheid walls.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His forthcoming book is ‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’ (Pluto Press, London). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. His website is http://www.ramzybaroud.net.
Because he was not a partisan in the Cold War between the U.S./NATO and the U.S.S.R, Albert Camus was an oddball. As a result, he was criticized by the right, left, and center. His allegiance was to truth, not ideologies. He opposed state murder, terrorism, and warfare from all quarters. An artistic anarchist with a passionate spiritual hunger, an austere and moral Don Juan, this sensual man of conscience and honor earned his reputation by a lifelong literary meditation on death in all its guises: disease (he was constantly threatened by tuberculosis), murder, suicide, capital punishment, war, etc.; deaths both “happy” and absurd, sudden and slow. His enemy was always injustice and those powerful ones who thought they had the right to make others suffer and die for their perverted purposes. An artist compelled by history to enter the political arena, he spoke out in defense of the poor, oppressed, and powerless. Among his enemies were liberal imperialism and Soviet Marxism, abstract ideologies used to enslave and murder people around the world.
Popularly known for his writing about absurdity (which for him was but a necessary step toward revolt), when he died on January 4, 1960 in a car crash on a straight country road in France with an unused train ticket in his pocket, the press played up the absurd nature of his death. They still do. But was it such?
In 2011, the media were abuzz with a report out of Italy that, rather than an accident, Camus may have been assassinated by the Soviet KGB for his powerful criticism of the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, their massacre of Hungarian freedom fighters, and for his defense and advocacy of Boris Pasternak and his novel, Doctor Zhivago, among other things. These reports were based on an article in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, and were based on the remarks of Giovanni Catelli, an Italian academic, Slavic scholar, and poet. Catelli said that he had read in a diary, published as a book, Ceĺ́ý zͮivot, written by Jan Zábrana, a well-known poet and translator of Doctor Zhivago, the following:
I heard something very strange from the mouth of a man who knew lots of things and had very informed sources. According to him, the accident that had cost Albert Camus his life in 1960 was organized by Soviet spies. They damaged the tyre on the car using a sophisticated piece of equipment that cut or made a hole at speed.
This claim was quickly and broadly rejected by Camus’ scholars and it just as quickly disappeared from view.
But in 2013 Catelli published a book on the case, Camus deve morire (Camus Must Die), that, oddly enough considering its explosive claims, has not been published in English (or French, as far as I know). I have recently read an English translation kindly provided to me by Catelli, and while I am still studying and researching his thesis, I will say that there may be more to it than those early dismissals of the Corriere della Sera report indicate. One has only to harken back to the 2013 mysterious death of journalist Michael Hastings in the United States when his car accelerated to over 100 miles per hour and exploded against a tree on a straight road in Los Angeles to make one think twice, maybe more. Tree lined straight roads, no traffic, outspoken writers, anomalous crashes, and different countries and eras – tales to make one wonder. And probe and research if one is so inclined.
Whatever the cause of Albert Camus’ death, however, it is clear that we could use his voice today. I believe we should honor and remember him on this day that he died, for as an artist of his time, an artist for our time and all time, he tried to serve both beauty and suffering, to defend the innocent in this murderous world. Quintessentially a man of his age, he was haunted by images that haunt us still, in particular those of being locked in an absurd prison threatened by madmen brandishing weapons small and large, ready to blow this beautiful world to smithereens with weapons conjured out of their hubristic,́ Promethean dreams of conquest.
This world as a prison is a metaphor that has a long and popular tradition. In the past hundred or more years, however, with the secularization of Western culture and the perceived withdrawal of God, the doors of this prison have shut upon the popular imagination, with growing numbers of people feeling trapped in an alien universe, no longer able to bridge the gulf between themselves and an absent God. Death, once the open avenue to the free life of eternity, has for many become the symbol of the absurdity of existence and the futility of escape. Camus was haunted by these images, intensified as they were by a life of personal isolation beginning with the death of his father in World War I when he was a year old and continuing throughout his upbringing by a half-deaf, emotionally sterile mother. His entire life, including his tragic art, was an attempt to find a way out of this closed world.
That is why he continues to speak today to those who grapple with the same enigmas, those who strive to find hope and faith to defend the defenseless and revel in the glory of living simultaneously. Not absurdly, he left clues to that quest in his briefcase on the road where he died – the unfinished manuscript to his beautiful, posthumously published novel, Le Premier Homme (The First Man). It was as if, whether he died in an accident or was murdered, the first man was going to have the last word.
It just might be that the two Koreas are figuring out a way to avoid war, much to the anger and chagrin of President Trump and the U.S. national-security establishment, who are obviously increasingly viewing war as inevitable and even in the best interests of the United States.
Why, even the U.S. mainstream press, which oftentimes seems to operate as an ex officio spokesman for the U.S. government, appears irritated over North Korea’s initiation of talks with South Korea. The press describes North Korea’s overtures not as an attempt to avoid war but instead as a cynical attempt to “drive a wedge” between the United States and South Korea.
Actually, it’s President Trump, who is obviously upset that the Koreas are marginalizing him, that is using his ridiculous and dangerous tweeting abilities to further provoke North Korea, with the obvious intent of “driving a wedge” between North Korea and South Korea, a wedge that could conceivably sabotage talks between them.
Let’s first get to the root of the problem in Korea. That root is the U.S. government, specifically the U.S. national-security branch of the government, i.e., the Pentagon and the CIA. That’s the reason there is a crisis in Korea. That’s the reason why war could suddenly break out, killing hundreds of thousands of people and more if it the war turns nuclear.
The U.S. government and its acolytes in the mainstream press say that the problem is with North Korea’s nuclear development program.
Balderdash! The problem is with the Pentagon’s and CIA’s decades-old aim to effect regime change in North Korea, a Cold War aim that they have never been able to let go of. That’s why the Pentagon has some 35,000 troops stationed in South Korea. That’s why they have regular military exercises over there. That’s why they have those bomber fly-overs. They want regime change, bad, just like they still do in Cuba and Iran, and just like they wanted (and got) in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Chile, Guatemala, Indonesia, and so many other countries.
That’s why North Korea wants nuclear bombs — to protect its communist regime by deterring the United States from attacking and fulfilling its decades-old aim of regime change. North Korea knows that a nuclear deterrent is the only thing that might deter the Pentagon and the CIA from attacking.
The nuclear deterrent strategy certainly worked for Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Once the Soviet Union installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, that stopped the Pentagon and the CIA from attacking and invading the island again and even caused President Kennedy to vow that the Pentagon and the CIA would not again invade the island.
North Korea also has seen what happens to impoverished Third World regimes that don’t have nuclear weapons, like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. They go down quickly to defeat and regime change at the hands of an all-powerful First World country.
Here’s the big point: Korea is none of the U.S. government’s business. Never has been and never will be. The Korean conflict was always nothing more than a civil war. A civil war in an Asian country is none of the U.S. government’s business. It wasn’t in the 1950s when the war broke out. It still isn’t. Korea is the business of the Korean people.
Keep in mind also that U.S. interventionism into the Korean War was always illegal under our form of constitutional government. The Constitution, which the president, the Pentagon, and the CIA, swear to uphold, requires a congressional declaration of war. There was never a congressional declaration of war against North Korea. That means that U.S. troops and CIA agents had no legal right to kill anyone in Korea, not with rifles, artillery, carpet bombing, or with the use of germ warfare against the North Korean people.
The Pentagon and the CIA claimed that it was necessary to illegally intervene in Korea because the communists were coming to get us. It was a lie, just as the entire Cold War was a lie. It was all just one great big fear-mongering racket to solidify the power and control of the military and intelligence services over the American people.
Those 35,000 U.S. troops in Korea today have no business being there, not only because the communists are still not coming to get us but also because they are simply the outgrowth of the original illegal intervention in the 1950s. The Pentagon has those troops there for one reason and only one reason: No, not to defend and protect the South Korean people, who are of minor importance to U.S. officials compared to the United States, but rather to serve as “tripwire” to guarantee U.S. involvement should war once again break out between the two Koreas.
In other words, no congressional deliberation on a declaration of war on whether to get involved should war break out. No national debate. Once tens of thousands of troops are automatically killed, the United States is, as a practical matter, stuck, trapped, committed. That’s why the Pentagon and the CIA have those troops there — to box in the American people — to deprive them of a choice on whether to get involved in another land war in Asia or not.
That makes U.S. soldiers in Korea nothing more than little pawns. Their assigned role is to die in order to ensure that Congress has no say on whether the U.S. gets involved in another land war in Asia. The Pentagon and the CIA, not Congress, remain in charge.
Why hasn’t the U.S. already attacked North Korea? One big reason: China. It says that if the United States starts the war, it’s coming in on the side of North Korea. China has lots of troops that could easily be sent into Korea to fight against U.S. forces. It also has a nuclear capability that can easily hit the United States.
So, that leaves Trump and his national security establishment doing their best to provoke North Korea into “firing the first shot,” or at least making it look like they have fired the first shot, like what happened at the Gulf of Tonkin or what the Pentagon hoped to accomplish with Operation Northwoods and a concocted war against Cuba.
If Trump can successfully taunt, tease, antagonize, and provoke North Korea into attacking first, then he and his national-security establishment can exclaim, “We’ve been attacked by the communists! We’re shocked! We’re innocent! We have no choice but to protect America by carpet-bombing North Korea again, this time with nuclear bombs.”
And as long as it’s not the United States that suffers the death and destruction, it will all be considered acceptable. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops will be dead. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans will also be dead. Both countries will be devastated. But the United States will remain intact and, equally important, will no longer be threatened by North Korea’s growing nuclear capability. It will all be considered a victory as far as the United States is concerned.
That’s why the South Koreans are smart in agreeing to talk to North Korea. If they were really smart, they would give Trump, the Pentagon, and the CIA the boot. The best thing South Korea could ever do is immediately kick out every U.S. soldier and every CIA agent out of their country. Send them packing back to the United States.
Sure, Trump would be hopping bad, just as the Pentagon and the CIA would be. So what? It would be the best thing that could ever happen to Korea, the United States, and the world.
Inside the book that maps the architecture behind global governance — from the Epstein files to the Pact for the Future
Lies are Unbekoming | April 1, 2026
On June 13, 2019, the United Nations and the World Economic Forum signed a partnership deal to “accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” That same evening, WEF president Börge Brende — Norway’s former Foreign Minister — had dinner with Jeffrey Epstein at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse. The Epstein files, released January 2026, contain an exchange between the two from the previous year. Epstein to Brende: “Davos can really replace the UN. C21, cyber, crypto . genetics… intl coordination.” Brende back to Epstein: “Exactly — we need a new global architecture. World Economic Forum (Davos) is uniquely positioned — public private.”
The next day, the UN General Assembly adopted the framework for restructuring global governance.
That sequence — the partnership signing, the Epstein dinner, the candid admission about replacing the UN with a public-private architecture, and then the formal adoption — opens Jacob Nordangård’s The Digital World Brain. Pages two and three. Footnoted to the UN resolution number, the Epstein files, and the General Assembly record.
I keep coming back to it because it captures what this book does that almost nothing else in the independent research space manages. I’ve followed Jacob’s work for years now and interviewed him about his research. Each book peels back another layer of the same institutional architecture, and each time I think he’s reached the limit of what can be documented, the next one goes further. Nordangård doesn’t speculate. He doesn’t editorialize much. He lays institutional actions next to each other in chronological order and lets the pattern announce itself. … continue
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