By Ted Rall – Sputnik – 16.06.2024
When residents of the Middle East woke up on the morning of October 7, 2023, the Palestinian cause was in a sorry state.
700,000 radical Israeli settler-colonists and sealed-off “military zones” occupied 60% of the occupied West Bank, which was blockaded by a Berlin-style border wall, so much that the United Nations human rights chief no longer believed that Palestinian sovereignty was even theoretically possible. The occupied Gaza Strip was subject to an Israeli blockade that destroyed the economy and drove the unemployment rate to 80%. President Donald Trump had moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem—a strong signal to Palestinians that the world would never allow them their own State—and Joe Biden had let it stay there. Muslim nations that had previously supported the Palestinian struggle (Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco and Sudan) normalized diplomatic relations with the hard-right government of Israel; Oman, Indonesia, Somalia and Saudi Arabia were expected to follow.
The world, including numerous Arab governments, had forgotten the Palestinians.
By the end of the day, everyone remembered them.
It had been necessary, Khalil al-Hayya, a member of Hamas’s top leadership told The New York Times two weeks after the attack, to “change the entire equation and not just have a clash. We succeeded in putting the Palestinian issue back on the table, and now no one in the region is experiencing calm.”
Whether you call it terrorism, asymmetric warfare, guerrilla warfare or resistance, an action like the October 7th raid on an Israeli music festival and nearby kibbutzim is a disadvantaged, underarmed and poorly-situated group’s attempt to flip the game table, catch an adversary by surprise and scramble the positions of the players in order to create a different situation.
It’s also a test of their adversary. More about that below.
Hamas has accomplished its objectives. Israel’s saturation bombing and starvation campaign launched after October 7th, which military analysts call the most brutal and systemic assault against a civilian population since World War II, shocked Muslims (and many other people) around the world. Under pressure from their subjects, the Saudis now say they will only consider a normalization deal that explicitly guarantees Palestinian statehood—something that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to consider. Biden, a self-declared Zionist and faithful supporter of the Jewish state throughout his career, now says he wants a two-state solution. He has also threatened to withhold arms, though using weasel words to justify redefining his “red line.” 61% of voters in the United States, to which Israel owes its creation and its closest military ally by far, now say the U.S. should stop supplying all weapons to Israel.
The long-ignored Palestinian issue is so “back on the table” that Democrats worry that they might lose the battleground state of Michigan and the presidency due to the state’s substantial Arab population.
Many Israelis and their supporters fail to grasp the reality of the current situation. How can Hamas be winning? they ask. Israelis support the war effort and the IDF has only lost a few hundred troops, a fifth of them to friendly fire and accidents. Gaza, on the other hand, has been flattened. The IDF has killed at least 37,000 Palestinians, though Ralph Nader is surely closer to the truth when he estimates the total number, including the bodies buried under tens of millions of tons of rubble, at 200,000. Israel’s obvious objective, the expulsion of the surviving population and annexation of Gaza into Israel, appears tantalizingly close.
Yet, the Hamas leader Yehiya Sinwar was right when he told his close associates recently: “We have the Israelis right where we want them.”
The Israelis have committed the cardinal error of warfare: underestimating the intelligence of your enemy. Of course Hamas’ leaders knew exactly what Israel would do in response to October 7th. They have studied Israel’s behavior repeatedly over decades: when attacked, Israel always responds with overpowering force, much of it directed against civilians. And they don’t care how it looks. “Hamas knew Israel would strike back hard. That was the point,” Rita Katz of the SITE Intelligence Group told The Washington Post. “To Hamas, Palestinian suffering is a critical component in bringing about the instability and global outrage it seeks to exploit.”
The IDF always tortures civilians and demolishes homes and other infrastructure at an extravagant scale. So, like a chess player, Hamas goaded its aggressive adversary into a fierce attack because it was willing to make sacrifices—Hamas fighters, Palestinian civilians, Gazan infrastructure—in order to obtain something even more valuable.
As we’ve seen recently in northern Gaza, Hamas remains a potent military force able to engage the IDF in street combat. But survival isn’t Hamas’ primary objective. Making Israel look evil is—and Israel has fallen into their trap.
The test Israel faced on October 7th was: can we exercise restraint? Like the United States, which faced a similar test on 9/11, Israel failed miserably. Israel’s over-the-top craziness has fulfilled Hamas’ main goal, which was to expose the Israeli government as bloodthirsty, oppressive monsters unworthy of the support of the world upon which it depends.
As a result, most of the world now recognizes Palestinian sovereignty. The International Criminal Court has ordered Israel to stop its military actions in southern Gaza. The International Court of Justice is preparing an arrest warrant for Netanyahu. And the United Nations expressly states that Israel is morally and ethically the same as Hamas, a terrorist organization guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Never mind the two-state solution — it’s dead, and not only because of Netanyahu. The globe is moving toward a new consensus: an end to the Israeli ethnostate from a bygone colonial era, replaced by a one person-one vote post-apartheid democracy.
Looking back to October, the only way Israel could have won at war with Hamas was to learn the lesson of the classic 1980s movie “War Games”: don’t play. Imagine, if you can, how Hamas’ leadership would have felt had Israel refused to take the bait on October 7th, responding only with pinpoint raids to try to rescue hostages, or negotiating for them, while playing the weeping victim for the cameras. It would have been a devastating moral and political defeat and the beginning of the end for the cause of Palestinian liberation.
Israel wanted Gaza. They may not even keep Israel.
Al Mayadeen | June 14, 2024
Al Mayadeen obtains a document outlining the fundamental principles of the Palestinian Resistance’s response to the Israeli proposal, as presented by US President Joe Biden, regarding the ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip.
After the Palestinian Resistance in the Gaza Strip recently submitted its response to the American proposal for a ceasefire, including comments and amendments reflecting its conditions, Al Mayadeen acquired a document outlining the basic principles of the response document.
Here is the text of the Resistance’s response:
Here are the foundational principles for an agreement between the Israeli and Palestinian sides in Gaza concerning the exchange of detainees and prisoners, as well as achieving sustainable calm.
This text outlines the fundamental principles for an agreement, referencing the Palestinian response to the Israeli proposal dated May 6, 2024.
The framework aims to release all Israeli captives in the Gaza Strip, including civilians and soldiers, regardless of their status (alive or deceased) or the duration of their detention. In exchange, there would be a reciprocal release of an agreed-upon number of prisoners held in Israeli prisons, to achieve a state of calm.
To achieve a permanent ceasefire, the following steps are proposed: the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, the reconstruction of Gaza, and the lifting of the blockade. This includes opening all border crossings to facilitate the movement of residents and unrestricted transport of goods.
The framework agreement consists of three related and interconnected stages as follows:
The first phase (42 days)
1. Both parties agree to temporarily cease military operations, with Israeli forces withdrawing eastward and away from densely populated areas to position themselves along the border throughout the Gaza Strip. This includes the Philadelphi Axis and the Gaza Valley (Netzarim Axis and the Kuwait roundabout), as outlined below.
2. Temporary cessation of flights (both military and reconnaissance) over the Gaza Strip daily, to be restricted to 10 hours, extended to 12 hours on days designated for the exchange of captives and prisoners.
3. The agreement includes provisions for returning displaced individuals to their respective areas of residence, along with the withdrawal of forces from the Philadelphi axis and Gaza Valley (specifically the Netzarim axis and the Kuwait roundabout).
4. Prisoner-captive exchange between both sides:
During this initial phase, Hamas will release 32 Israeli captives, including both living individuals and the remains of the deceased. This group includes women (both civilians and female soldiers), children (under 19 years who are not conscripts), elderly individuals (over 50 years old), and civilians who are sick or wounded. In exchange, an agreed number of prisoners held in Israeli prisons and detention centers will be released.
5. Mechanism for exchanging detainees and prisoners between the two parties during the first phase:
This exchange is expected to occur during the fifth week of this phase.
6. The Palestinian detainees who are liberated will not be re-detained on the same charges for which they were initially detained. “Israel” will not reincarcerate these prisoners to serve the remainder of their sentences, nor will they require them to sign any documents as a condition for their release. These measures will be accompanied by necessary legal procedures to ensure compliance with these terms.
7. The principles and criteria for exchanging detainees and prisoners in the first phase mentioned above do not serve as the basis for negotiating the exchange criteria in the second phase.
8. By the 16th day at the latest, indirect discussions will commence between the two parties to finalize the criteria for exchanging detainees, including conscripts and remaining individuals, for the second phase. This process must be completed and agreed upon before the end of the fifth week of this phase.
9. The United Nations, its agencies (including UNRWA), and other organizations will actively engage in providing humanitarian services across all areas of the Gaza Strip, a commitment that will be sustained throughout all stages of the agreement.
10. Infrastructure rehabilitation (including electricity, water, sewage, communications, and roads) across all areas of the Gaza Strip will commence immediately from day one. Necessary equipment for civil defense, public works, and municipal services will be deployed for debris removal and reconstruction, a process that will persist throughout all phases of the agreement.
11. The necessary supplies and resources will be provided to accommodate displaced persons who lost their homes during the war, ensuring a minimum of 60,000 temporary homes and 200,000 tents.
12. An agreed-upon number of wounded soldiers will be permitted to travel (at least 50 per day) through the Rafah crossing. Restrictions on travel will be lifted, and the movement of goods and trade will resume from the first day of this phase.
13. Arrangements and plans are underway for the reconstruction of homes, civilian facilities, and infrastructure destroyed during the war. Those affected will receive support and compensation under the supervision of several countries and organizations, including Egypt, Qatar, and the United Nations.
14. All procedures from this stage will carry over into the second stage, encompassing temporary cessation of military operations by both parties, relief efforts, shelter provisions, withdrawal of Israeli forces, cessation of flights, and more, until a sustainable calm is declared, marking a permanent cessation of military and hostile operations that comes into effect.
Negotiations will persist under the guarantee of mediators until both parties agree on the criteria for exchanging captives and detainees during the second phase.
The second phase (42 days):
15. Announcing the restoration of sustainable calm, which signifies a permanent cessation of military and hostile operations, will take effect before the captive-prisoner exchange between the two parties.
This exchange will involve all remaining Israeli male captives who are alive (both civilians and soldiers), in exchange for an agreed-upon number of detainees from Israeli prisons and detainees from Israeli detention centers. Additionally, it includes the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip.
The third phase (42 days):
16. Both parties will exchange all body parts or remains of the deceased after their arrival and identification.
17. Initiate the Gaza Strip reconstruction plan, scheduled to span three to five years, encompassing the rebuilding of homes, civilian facilities, and infrastructure to support and compensate all affected groups. This effort will be overseen by several countries and organizations, including Egypt, Qatar, and the United Nations.
18. Ending the complete siege of the Gaza Strip entails opening all border crossings, notably the Rafah crossing, to facilitate the movement of residents and goods. Additionally, ensuring uninterrupted electricity supply throughout all areas of the Gaza Strip is paramount.
Guarantors of this agreement:
Qatar, Egypt, the United States, the United Nations, Turkey, Russia, and China
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 15.06.2024
Russia and Ukraine were close to concluding a peace treaty in April 2022, but the Kiev regime tore the deal up at the last minutes after then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pressured Volodymyr Zelensky not to sign.
The New York Times has published what it claims is the full text of then 2022 draft peace treaty between Russia and Ukraine.
The never-signed documents — treaty drafts dated March 17 and April 15, 2022 — were purportedly leaked to the newspaper by Ukrainian, Russian and European sources.
Kiev ultimately pulled out of the deal, brokered by Turkey over several weeks of talks in Istanbul between Russian and Ukrainian negotiating teams from February to April of 2022, after then-British prime minister Boris Johnson promised huge arms supplies from NATO countries.
According to the key points from the document:
After Moscow launched its special military operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russian and Ukrainian delegations engaged in several rounds of peace talks. Talks in Turkiye took place in March 2022 but ended without signing any documents. In November 2023, Ukraine’s former chief negotiator with Russia, David Arakhamia, said then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson talked Kiev out of signing an agreement with Moscow to end the conflict. In October 2022, Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree stating that Kiev could not hold peace talks as long as President Vladimir Putin is in power in Russia.
German newspaper Welt Am Sonntag claimed in April it had obtained the 17-page draft peace treaty between Russia and Ukraine.
It stated that while the sides had come close to sealing a peace treaty, The Zelensky regime objected to terms restoring Russian as an official language and Kiev’s repudiation of Nazism.
Efforts to strike a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine were thwarted by Johnson at the behest of the US, Russian Ambassador to the UK Andrey Kelin said in February.
“He blocked the peace efforts with Washington’s blessing, obviously, because he could not do it on his own accord,” Kelin told Turkish broadcaster TRT World.
After Johnson arrived in Kiev, “the document, which had already been initialled by the head of the Ukrainian delegation, [David] Arakhamia, was thrown into the wastebasket, and Ukraine started fighting,” he added. “These are the consequences of what the prime minister of the United Kingdom did.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin stated in his February interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson that talks with Ukraine in 2022 were close to agreement, but Ukraine broke the deal after Russia pulled its troops back from Kiev as a good-will gesture requested by western European leaders.
The Cradle | June 15, 2024
The US military says it has spent about $1 billion in an unsustainable campaign to fight the Ansarallah-led Yemeni armed forces in the Red Sea, the Wall Street Journal reported on 15 June.
Since November, Yemeni forces have attacked Israeli-linked commercial ships traveling through the Red Sea, the world’s most important commercial sea route, in response to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
After US and UK naval warships began carrying out attacks on the Yemeni navy and sites in the capital, Sanaa, Yemeni forces began attacking the warships as well.
To defend against Yemeni attacks, the US Navy has conducted more than 450 strikes and intercepted 200 drones and missiles in a campaign that US officials worry is not sustainable.
“Their supply of weapons from Iran is cheap and highly sustainable, but ours is expensive, our supply chains are crunched, and our logistics tails are long,” said Emily Harding of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “We are playing whack-a-mole, and they are playing a long game.”
The Wall Street Journal provided details of a Yemeni attack on a US naval destroyer on 9 January, one of 80 attacks overall, which illustrated the difficulties US personnel face.
“It was just after 9 p.m. when radar operators aboard this U.S. Navy destroyer in the Red Sea spotted a tiny arrow on their screens: a missile hurtling toward them at five times the speed of sound,” The Journal reported.
“The crew of the warship with 300 sailors aboard had just seconds to shoot it down. As the projectile closed in, the Laboon launched an interceptor from silos beneath its deck, destroying the incoming missile in flight.”
Yemeni forces launched 18 drones and cruise missiles, along with the ballistic missile, at four American destroyers, a US aircraft carrier, and a UK warship throughout the 12-hour battle that day.
“These things are telephone pole-sized, you get three minutes of flight time, you detect it for 45 seconds, you get like 10 seconds to determine whether you’re going to shoot at it or not,” said Capt. David Wroe of the US carrier strike group in the Red Sea.
The longer the Yemeni attacks continue, the more likely it is that a US warship could be hit, Frank McKenzie, a retired Marine general, told The Journal. “There’s always a chance that something happens and one of our ships could be struck, and that chance only increases the longer we allow the situation to continue,” he added.
By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | June 15, 2024
It’s been reported by Georgian media that Tbilisi is now “actively working” to restore the country’s diplomatic relations with Moscow, severed by the then regime in August 2008, following its trouncing in a calamitous five-day war with Russia. While this may seem mundane to outside observers, it is a seismic development, amply testifying to the extraordinary pace and scale of the US Empire’s self-inflicted collapse.
Over decades, Washington has invested enormous energy and money into turning Georgia against Russia. Tbilisi has deep and cohering cultural, economic, and historic ties with its huge neighbor. Today, nostalgia for the Soviet Union is widespread, and Joseph Stalin remains a local hero for a significant majority of citizens. While public support for Euro-Atlantic integration and EU and NATO membership is strong, recent developments have prompted many Georgians to reconsider their country’s relationship with the West.
Since taking office in 2012, the ruling Georgian Dream has struck a delicate balance between strengthening Western ties and maintaining civil coexistence with Moscow. This has become an ever-fraught dance since the outbreak of the Ukraine proxy conflict, with external pressure to impose sanctions on Russia and send arms to Kiev perpetually rising. Against this backdrop, there have been multiple apparent plots to overthrow the government and install a more belligerent administration.
In order to neutralize the threat of a coup by Georgian Dream’s domestic and international adversaries, legislation compelling foreign-funded NGOs – of which there are over 25,000 in Tbilisi – has been passed. Its gestation produced a bitter showdown with the EU and US, ending with lawmakers who voted for the law being sanctioned by Washington and the threat of further action to come. Along the way, Georgian citizens were confronted with the poisonous reality of their relationship with the West. And they didn’t like it.
‘Foreign assistance’
Contemporary media reports on Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan “revolution” either ignored the unambiguous Western role in fomenting it or dismissed the proposition as Russian “disinformation” or “conspiracy theory”. Ever since the proxy conflict began, Western journalists have become even more aggressive in rejecting any and all suggestions that the insurrectionary upheaval in Kiev was anything other than an overwhelmingly – if not universally – popular grassroots public revolt.
Yet, it was not long ago that the Empire unabashedly advertised its role in orchestrating “color revolutions” throughout the former Soviet sphere, of which Maidan will surely in future be considered the final installment. In 2005, intelligence cutout USAID published a slick magazine, Democracy Rising, documenting in detail how Washington was behind a wave of rebellious unrest in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, and elsewhere during the first years of the 21st century.
Two years prior, the Washington-sponsored “Rose Revolution” unseated longtime Georgian leader Eduard Shevardnadze, replacing him with handpicked, US-educated Mikheil Saakashvili, a close associate of George Soros. Shevardnadze had since Tbilisi’s 1991 independence from the Soviet Union eagerly served as a committed agent of Empire, opening up his country to far-reaching privatization for the benefit of Western investors and extensive societal and political infiltration by US and European-funded organizations.
In a bitter irony, such subservience was Shevardnadze’s ultimate undoing. Brussels and Washington exploited this space to lay the foundations of his overthrow, financing individuals and organizations who would serve as shock troops in the “Rose Revolution”. For instance, Democracy Rising reveals that in 1999, US funding “helped Georgians draw up and build support for a Freedom of Information Law, which the government adopted.” This allowed Western-funded media and NGO assets “to investigate government budgets, [and] force the firing of a corrupt minister.”
The US, moreover, bankrolled the training of “lawyers, judges, journalists, members of parliament, NGOs, political party leaders, and others” to wage war against their government. The official purpose of this largesse was to “give people a sense that they should regulate the government.” As per Democracy Rising, “the Rose Revolution was the climax of these efforts.” Following Tbilisi’s November 2003 election, US-financed exit polling suggested the official result – pointing to the victory of a coalition of pro-Shevardnadze parties – was fraudulent.
Scores of anti-government activists from across the country then descended upon Tbilisi’s parliament building, ferried on buses paid for by Washington. Nationwide demonstrations led by US-bankrolled NGOs and activist groups raged for weeks, culminating on November 23 with activists storming parliament brandishing roses. The very next day, Shevardnadze resigned. One recipient of Western support remarked in Democracy Rising, “Without foreign assistance, I’m not sure we would have been able to achieve what we did without bloodshed.”
As the USAID pamphlet noted, many US-financed and trained assets in Georgia central to the “Rose Revolution” went on to become officials within Saakashvili’s government. One, Zurab Chiaberashvili, was appointed as chair of Tbilisi’s Central Election Commission from 2003 to 2004, before becoming mayor of Tbilisi. He was quoted in Democracy Rising as saying:
“Under US assistance, new leaders were born… [the US] helped good people get rid of a bad and corrupted government… [this assistance] made civil actors alive, and when the critical moment came, we understood each other like a well-prepared soccer team.”
‘Demonstrations of will’
The Empire’s in-house journal Foreign Policy has conceded the results of the “Rose Revolution” were “terribly disappointing”. Far-reaching change “never really materialized,” and “elite corruption still continued apace.” Saakashvili was no more democratic or less authoritarian than his predecessor – in fact, his rule was brutal and dictatorial in many ways Shevardnadze’s was not. Questions abound about his involvement in several suspicious deaths, he directed security services to assassinate rivals, and at his personal behest, prisons became politicized hotbeds of torture and rape.
The Empire could forgive Saakashvili all this though, for further facilitating his country’s economic rape and pillage, and even more crucially, intensifying Tbilisi’s anti-Russian agitation locally and internationally. This crusade came to a bloody head in August 2008, when Georgian forces, with US encouragement, began shelling civilian positions in the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Moscow intervened to decisively defend the pair. As many as 200,000 locals were displaced in subsequent battles, with hundreds killed.
Dissident journalist Mark Ames visited sites of the fighting in December of that year and witnessed “an epic historical shift” – “the first ruins of America’s imperial decline.” The Georgian army had been trained, armed, and even clothed by the US over many years, only to be comprehensively crushed by Russia’s military – and there was “no American cavalry on the way.” His first-hand insights led Ames to dub the outbreak of war that year, “the day America’s empire died.”
Ames had previously visited Georgia in 2002 to report on the arrival of US military advisors to the country. As the journalist records, “At the time, the American empire was riding high.” TIME magazine had recently celebrated George W. Bush’s inauguration with a column declaring that Washington was “the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome,” and thus positioned “to re-shape norms, alter expectations and create new realities,” via “unapologetic and implacable demonstrations of will.”
US military expansion into Georgia was one such bold “demonstration of will.” Military advisors were dispatched ostensibly to train Tbilisi’s soldiers to combat “terrorism”. In reality, as Ames wrote, the purpose was to tutor them “for key imperial outsourcing duties.” It was expected that “Georgia would do for the American Empire what Mumbai call centers did for Delta Airlines: deliver greater returns at a fraction of the cost.” The move would also secure Washington’s “strategic control of the untapped oil in the region.”
The benefit for Georgia? “[Moscow] wouldn’t f*** with them, because f***ing with them would be f***ing with us – and nobody would dare to do that.” In the event, however, Saakashvili’s intimate bromance with the West was no deterrent at all. The blitzkrieg’s success, moreover, left Russia “drunk on its victory and the possibilities that it might imply”:
“Now it’s over for us. That’s clear on the ground. But it will be years before America’s political elite even begins to grasp this fact… We have entered a dangerous moment in history – America in decline is reacting hysterically, woofing and screeching and throwing a tantrum, desperate to prove that it still has teeth. Russia, meanwhile, is as high as a Hollywood speedballer from its victory… If we’re lucky, we’ll survive the humiliating decline… without causing too much damage to ourselves or the rest of the world.”
The Maidan coup starkly showed the Empire failed to learn lessons from the 2008 war, and Ames’ hope that Washington’s “humiliating decline” could be endured by US citizens and politicians alike “without causing too much damage to ourselves or the rest of the world” was futile. The West is now struggling to confront its undeniable defeat on Ukraine’s eastern steppe and accept the unraveling of its long-running efforts to absorb Moscow’s “near abroad”, openly mulling direct intervention in the proxy conflict. God help us all.
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | June 13, 2024
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | June 13, 2024
Unlike COVID, the bird flu has one distinctly different feature that is threatening American food security. As nearly 100 million birds and counting have been culled, will governments use this tragic opportunity to push net zero goals?
MEMO | June 14, 2024
More than 2,000 academics have signed a letter demanding the resignation of Germany’s Education Minister over her attempt to sanction scholars who supported pro-Palestinian students’ right to protest, Anadolu Agency reports.
Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger has come under growing criticism after media reports revealed that her Ministry initiated a legal review last month to examine the open letter released by these scholars, and the possibility of dropping funding for their studies.
“Academics in Germany are experiencing an unprecedented attack on their fundamental rights, on the 75th anniversary of the Basic Law,” the scholars said in a statement on Friday, and underlined that recent actions taken by the Ministry make Stark-Watzinger’s position as Minister untenable.
“The withdrawal of funding ad personam on the basis of political statements made by researchers is contrary to the Basic Law: teaching and research are free. The internal order to examine such political sanctions is a sign of constitutional ignorance and political abuse of power,” the scholars said.
“It illustrates an increasing rift between decision-makers in the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and those who support the academic system through their research and teaching. Through its intimidating effect alone, the Minister’s actions risk permanently damaging the hard-won right of academic freedom against political and state interference,” they added.
On 8 May, more than 300 academics from Berlin universities expressed their support for pro-Palestine protest camps on the campus of the Free University of Berlin, and defended the students’ right to demonstrate.
“Regardless of whether we agree with the specific demands of the protest camp, we stand up for our students, and defend their right to peaceful protest, which also includes the occupation of university grounds,” they said.
The academics accused the university’s management of subjecting the demonstrators to “police violence”.
Media reports have revealed that, a few days after this open letter, Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger’s office initiated a legal review to examine the possibility of sanctions under civil service law and criminal law against these academics, including the option to revoke funding for their studies.
By Robert Inlakesh | RT | June 14, 2024
US President Joe Biden’s ceasefire push has so far led to further violence in Gaza and threatens to spill over into a war with Lebanon. Washington is either asleep at the wheel or is willing to push the entire region off a cliff in order to avoid ditching its “unconditional support” for Israel.
The speech delivered by Joe Biden on May 31, in which he presented an Israeli ceasefire proposal, urging both Hamas and the Israeli government to accept it, provided a glimpse of hope that finally the US was putting its foot down. The US President gave what seemed to be a reasonable roadmap to secure a lasting cessation of hostilities in Gaza and a prisoner exchange.
The immediate Hamas response was to view the speech “positively,” while still maintaining that it required an Israeli withdrawal of its forces from Gaza and a complete end to the war, in order to agree to any proposal. On the other hand, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, stuck with his previous rhetoric about the need to destroy Hamas, was indicating that he was not going to agree to a ceasefire.
Netanyahu took things even further by asserting that Joe Biden’s description of the Israeli ceasefire proposal was ”not accurate,” also making it clear that there would be no ceasefire until his war goals were achieved. Giving legitimacy to the Israeli PM’s assertions was an article published in The Economist that revealed details of the proposal, in which it became clear that the three-phase ceasefire would be more difficult to conclude, beyond its first phase, than Biden had let on.
Although a series of articles have been released in the Western media, including a Reuters interview with an anonymous Biden administration official, portraying the president’s actions as a bold attempt to pressure Israel to agree to its own proposal, it appears that this move is failing. As the daily death toll rises in besieged Gaza, the Israeli government continues to declare its intention to destroy Hamas, the Palestinian Party that it is supposedly about to conclude a deal with. This as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is being sent on yet another Middle East trip to try and help conclude a ceasefire deal as the effort nears collapse.
Israel, meanwhile, continues to escalate its assault on the southernmost Gazan city of Rafah, while renewing incursions and aerial assaults throughout the strip. All of this flies in the face of the International Court of Justice (ICJ)’s recent ruling that ordered Israel to halt its military operation in Rafah. On top of this, the tit-for-tat battles that have been going on since October between Hezbollah and the Israeli military along the Lebanese border, have also escalated to what many consider to be a point of no return; making a new Israel-Lebanon war nearly inevitable.
All of this is very reminiscent of what happened before, when Hamas announced, on May 6, that it had agreed to a ceasefire proposal. The proposal was admitted to be almost identical to the one that was repeatedly lauded by Antony Blinken as a ”strong” deal during his last visit to the region.
On that same day, the Israeli military immediately launched its long-threatened offensive in southern Gaza, seizing the Rafah Crossing between the Palestinian territory and Egypt. At that time, the Israeli PM reiterated what he had been consistently saying beforehand about pursuing the destruction of Hamas and his government decided to signal their refusal to agree to the ceasefire.
Again, with the US now bringing forward Israel’s own ceasefire proposal, the predicament does not seem to have changed much. Benjamin Netanyahu is in a difficult position domestically, after failing to achieve any of his war goals in Gaza, he faces the prospect of his governing coalition collapsing if he accepts a ceasefire agreement with nothing to show for eight months of war. The Israeli people also heavily favor re-occupying the strip, with 0% of Israeli Jews polled saying they would like to see Hamas continuing to govern the besieged coastal enclave after the war.
Therefore, Netanyahu knows the political repercussions for him and others in the Israeli ruling class if he accepts a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. However, he also knows that, despite US pressure on his government to bring the war in Gaza to an end, the American government has no teeth behind its forceful statements and will indefinitely continue its “unconditional support” for Israel.
Not only that, when the International Criminal Court (ICC)’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, called for the issuance of arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, the US government threatened the court. US lawmakers immediately began to draft legislation to sanction the ICC. When the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued its provisional rulings, as a result of the so-far successful South African genocide case against Israel, the US announced it disagreed with the conclusions.
Even though the US abstained from a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) vote that called on Israel to halt its military operations in Gaza until the end of Muslim Holy month of Ramadan, the Biden administration illogically called the resolution ”non-binding” and gave the Israelis the greenlight to violate it. American lawmakers have even just drafted legislation to condition aid to the Maldives, after that nation made an independent decision to stop Israeli citizens from entering their country due to war crimes committed in Gaza. Now the UN has added Israel to its infamous blacklist for killing Palestinian children, and the US has implemented another double-standard in continuing to provide weapons to a nation added to this list.
Despite the mountains of reports of war crimes from international human rights groups, the decisions made by the UNSC, UN general assembly, the ICC and ICJ, the United States government works to protect the Israeli government at all costs. This has to be kept in mind when we look at the American approach to implementing “red lines” with their Israeli allies, which the Biden administration still cannot find the words to actually define. Even when it comes to the invasion of Rafah, which Washington openly said would be a “disaster,” it was simultaneously preparing another military aid package worth 14 billion dollars.
Understanding all of this, Benjamin Netanyahu was still invited to Washington to address the US Congress and faced with some pressure to conclude a deal. He can rest assured that the Americans will stand by his side no matter what he chooses to do. So, if you are Netanyahu, what incentive is there to stop the war at this point? The Biden administration is filled to the brim with empty and vacuous strategies, which have led to public calls for ending the war, while privately refusing to ever hold Israel accountable.
The big problem this time around is that the continuation of the war will not only mean an escalation of the horrors in Gaza, but is heading towards a massive conflagration with Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Unlike Hamas, Hezbollah possesses the missile capabilities to respond to Israeli airstrikes with devastating effect that could lead to the deaths of hundreds, even thousands, of Israelis. Under great domestic pressure to launch an assault on Lebanese territory, Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be closer to opening a catastrophic conflict with Lebanon, instead of concluding a ceasefire and prisoner exchange with Gaza. In his eyes, a war with Lebanon could even provide the perfect lethal distraction that would enable him to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza, but at the expense of triggering a much larger and deadlier war.
BY DENNIS KUCINICH | JUNE 13, 2024
Our government is planning a big draft, conscripting millions of young Americans for an even bigger war!
I call to your attention a Democratic amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which was slipped into the almost trillion-dollar Pentagon war spending bill, by voice vote, in the House Armed Services committee.
The Democratic Amendment to H.R. 8070, the National Defense Authorization (NDAA) reads:
Section 531. Selective Service System: Automatic Registration. SEC. 3. (a)(1) “Except as otherwise provided in this title, every male citizen of the United States, and every other male person residing in the United States, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six, shall be automatically registered under this Act by the Director of the Selective Service System.”
This amendment is in the NDAA legislation and there is no pending amendment to strip it from the bill. So, when the NDAA passes, as early as this week, Congress will have taken steps to make automatic conscription the law of the land.
Why an automatic draft? Members of Congress and the President have an obligation to explain to the American people to which foreign land will their sons, and perhaps their daughters, be sent to die?
The U.S. has been in a continuous “State of Emergency” since September 11, 2001, which provides a president with over 100 powers he would not ordinarily have. Notwithstanding that the automatic draft provision will go into effect in a year, a presidential order invoking emergency powers and/or an Act of Congress, could readily move millions from their civilian lives to the front lines of a war.
WHAT WE KNOW:
We know that America is fomenting wars around the world
We know that the military industrial complex controls our government
We know that we are on the precipice of a global war, provoking aggression rather than resolution with Russia, China and in the Middle East.
The only winners in these wars are the war profiteers.
They’re now going to take our children to fight in unnecessary, destabilizing, dangerous, debt-creating wars.
Just today President Biden committed the U.S. to an additional decade of support for Ukraine’s war with Russia.
There is no other conceivable reason to require more than 16 million American males to be automatically registered for the draft, other than to prepare for a large-scale war.
The Selective Service System is the vehicle by which individuals are inducted into the armed forces. This NDAA Automatic Registration amendment facilitates an efficient, large-scale draft.
The new law will automatically register all males between the ages of 18 and 26. Selective Service will notify in writing every young American male that they have been registered and will prescribe regulations which can require the registrant to provide “date of birth, address, social security account number, phone number and email address….”
There are members of Congress who advocate that young women also be included in any draft, which could bring to 32 million the number of Americans of draft-eligible age.
The U.S. currently has over 1,300,000 men and women, career soldiers, as well as volunteers, serving in the all-volunteer armed forces.
According to the new automatic draft law, undocumented immigrants, between the ages of 18 and 26, numbering at least 1.5 million, could also be conscripted, if it were to apply to women as well as men.
A government conscription edict covering the undocumented could ironically do damage to the so-called “replacement theory,” where draft-eligible undocumented immigrants could decide to retreat to the other side of the border. Military service may appeal to others as a path toward citizenship, since immigrants serving during “period of hostility,” can seek immediate naturalization.
The last time a draft was instituted in the United States was during the Vietnam War, when 1.9 million Americans were conscripted.
A total of 8.7 million Americans served during the course of that war, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, including married men, who were subject to the draft by Presidential order.
Of 58,220 U.S. service fatalities in the Vietnam War, 17,671 were draftees.
President Biden’s recent D-Day speech, quoted in Politico, contained this noteworthy warning for young Americans: “The price of unchecked tyranny is the blood of the young and the brave.”
Years ago I had a conversation with then-Vice President Biden, who mused, painfully, about his own sons’ lives potentially being at risk in combat. His deep love for his sons is reflective of all Americans’ love for their children. Those parents and grandparents with a first-person understanding of the human cost of wars in Vietnam and Iraq may have a powerful aversion to exposing their children and grandchildren to deadly conflict, unless there is a direct threat to the territory of the United States.
Ukraine understands the price paid for war, having lost hundreds of thousands of its courageous sons and daughters in the ongoing war with Russia.
As Ukraine turns to conscription, there is push back coming from those who are subject to service but who understand they could well be facing a death sentence.
In Israel, the growing ultra-orthodox worshippers have been exempt from military service since the founding of Israel, but the government is being pressed to expand its military ranks creating a political squeeze on the Netanyahu ruling coalition.
Conscription is under discussion in Germany and Italy, while at least nine other European Union countries already use the practice to replenish their armed forces.
Resistance does occur during a draft. I well remember anti-Vietnam war rallies with the cry “Hell, no, we won’t go!” But for a heart murmur and a high draft number, I would have joined my brother Frank Kucinich, Jr. on the battlefield in Southeast Asia.
During the Vietnam war, an estimated 60% of all draft-eligible young men found a means to avoid getting conscripted, (including future a President by the name of Bill Clinton). Some, fearful for their lives, fled to Canada or Sweden.
The Vietnam War ripped apart the country. The protests over the war, fueled by compulsory service and rising casualty numbers of US troops, led President Lyndon Johnson to decide, on March 31, 1968, not to run for reelection. The draft was ended in 1973 and was reinstated by President Carter on January 23, 1980.
We must have a national debate over America’s forever wars which have led to the automatic draft. Just what, exactly, are America’s interests? Our nation’s leaders’ diplomatic skills seem limited to putting a gun on the table and saying “Let’s talk.”
Why does our government choose war over diplomacy?
As directly-elected representatives of the people, Congress, a co-equal branch of government, has a responsibility under Article One, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution to decide to formally take this nation to a state of war.
Yet this congress, and others, have been content to appropriate money for war and then let the President take the responsibility, something the Founding Fathers sought to avoid in devising a system of checks and balances.
Congress must take up the question of war, long before the country institutes an automatic draft. An automatic draft is a preparation for war, dramatically altering the lives of young Americans. They deserve an answer. We all deserve an answer. America’s future is literally on the line.
Postscript: For my part, as a former member of Congress who is seeking re-election to the House of Representatives in November – – upon my return to Congress, I will bring forth legislation which will abolish automatic registration for the draft. I believe it is honorable, a sacred obligation, to serve in defense of one’s country. But our leaders have a deeper obligation, a solemn duty to explain why. They have not done so.
RT | June 14, 2024
There is no agreement in NATO just yet regarding the proposal to fund Kiev to the tune of €40 ($43) billion, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg admitted on Friday.
The issue came up at the meeting of the US-led bloc’s defense ministers in Brussels. Italy reportedly did not agree with the proposal, which was already scaled down from Stoltenberg’s initial €100 billion request.
The “long-term financial pledge” is one of the four things NATO needs to “deliver for Ukraine” by the Washington summit next month, Stoltenberg told reporters after the meeting.
“We have not yet agreement on that,” he admitted.
“Many allies are very supportive of the idea that we need not only to have short term pledges – they are welcome, of course – but if we could have more long-term predictable pledges, it will give the Ukrainians better planning assumptions,” Stoltenberg said. “It will give more predictability and transparency and assure a minimal or fair burden-sharing within the alliance. And most importantly, it will send a message to Moscow that they cannot wait us out.”
NATO ministers did agree on the plan for Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine and pledged to send more ammunition and equipment to Kiev in the short term, Stoltenberg pointed out, adding that “there will be new announcements in the coming days and weeks.”
That leaves the financial pledge and the “language” for Ukraine’s possible membership to be worked out in the “some weeks” remaining before the Washington summit, according to the NATO secretary-general.
Kiev expected a formal invitation to the bloc last year, at the NATO summit in Vilnius. When it did not arrive, Vladimir Zelensky launched a tirade on social media, angering Washington. The US-led bloc eventually said it would be in a position to invite Ukraine “when allies agree and conditions are met.”
On Thursday, Stoltenberg said “an absolute minimum” condition for Ukraine’s membership would be defeating Russia. The US and its allies have funneled weapons, ammunition, and equipment to Ukraine over the past two years, while insisting they are not a party to the conflict.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Friday that Moscow would be ready for a ceasefire if Kiev signed a pledge never to join NATO and withdrew its troops from the four regions that have chosen to join Russia. Kiev has denounced the proposal as an “ultimatum” and rejected it.
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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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