WASHINGTON – Just a few months after the U.S. declared ISIS in Iraq “defeated,” a new study has concluded that the U.S.-led battle to remove Daesh (ISIS) from Mosul, once Iraq’s second-largest city, ultimately killed nearly 12 times the number of civilians than were killed by the infamous terror group.
The study, published in the journal PLOS Medicine, surveyed 1,200 households in Mosul for cases of civilian deaths by intentional violence since Daesh first occupied the city in 2014. The leading causes of reported deaths were found to have been direct results of the U.S.-led coalition battle to remove Daesh, with airstrikes accounting for around 40 percent of all reported civilian deaths and explosions accounting for another 34 percent.
Together, deaths attributable to the coalition accounted for 373 of the 505 total deaths reported. In contrast, the study found that only 22 civilian deaths, accounting for those killed by beheadings and gunshot wounds, were attributable to Daesh.
While only around 500 civilian deaths were reported by the households surveyed, the study’s authors noted that these figures are likely an underestimate — citing a high probability of survivor bias, the concentration of air strikes in the western part of the city, and the fact that many Mosul civilians had fled the city prior to the survey.
Beyond the imbalance in civilian death tolls caused by the U.S. coalition and Daesh, Gilbert Burnham of Johns Hopkins University, the study’s lead author, pointed out that another key conclusion was the inaccuracy of the coalition airstrikes, which had long been advertised domestically as highly precise, and the coalition’s extensive use of “scorched earth” warfare.
The high-velocity, high-explosive weapons have a huge range and using these weapons in tightly packed urban areas is a major risk. You might be targeting snipers or a group of [Daesh] fighters but if they’re closely surrounded by large numbers of civilians you can expect substantial casualties.”
He added:
There’s always collateral damage and that’s recognized in the Geneva Convention and in warfare. But the more powerful the weapons become, the larger the area of potential collateral damage. That raises a whole question of proportionality.”
Indeed, much of Mosul still remains reduced to rubble, with an unknown number of bodies still hidden under collapsed buildings and debris. Just last month, the bodies of 22 children were pulled from a pile of rubble in the western part of the city, the area most heavily targeted by coalition strikes.
Humanitarian concerns or war crimes?
Though the findings of this study are troubling, it is hardly the first to examine the deaths of civilians during the U.S.-led operation to “liberate” the city of Mosul. A previous report, published by the United Nations in November of last year, found that the coalition was responsible for the deaths of one in four civilians, with an estimated 2,521 civilians killed and 1,673 wounded during the military operation.
While it found the U.S.-led coalition to be responsible for fewer deaths than this more recent study, the UN report raised similar concerns about the coalition’s use of “imprecise, explosive weapons, killing thousands of civilians,” further suggesting that the coalition’s bombing tactics “may constitute [a] war crime.” Such concerns about war crimes have also been raised by human-rights groups, such as Amnesty International, which has criticized the coalition’s use of unnecessary force and practice of indiscriminately targeting civilians.
Despite concern over the coalition’s bombing tactics and the resulting civilian casualties, the Pentagon has long been dismissive of such concerns, shifting from denial to defiance over the high death toll. For instance, in responding to criticism over a single strike that killed hundreds of civilians in Mosul, the Pentagon cited video footage of Daesh forcing hundreds of civilians into the buildings the U.S. later bombed as “provoking the attack” — essentially admitting that the U.S. knew those buildings were full of civilians but chose to bomb the location anyway.
Aside from likely U.S. complicity in war crimes that led to the deaths of scores of civilians in Mosul, the U.S.-led coalition has also admitted to using white phosphorus, a chemical weapon, during the battle for Mosul. In June of last year, U.S.-led coalition member New Zealand’s Brig. Gen. Hugh McAslan told NPR that “we have utilized white phosphorous to screen areas within West Mosul to get civilians out safely.”
Though the chemical weapon is authorized for use to illuminate targets and create smokescreens, its use is not authorized to do so near civilian populations, particularly dense urban centers like Mosul. Furthermore, video footage showing white phosphorus bombs in the center of the Mosul suggest that the chemical was not being used a “smokescreen” to help shield escaping civilians from view but was rather part of the coalition’s bombing strategy.
In addition, despite all the carnage the U.S. coalition brought on Mosul in its bid to drive out Daesh, Daesh militants are still present in the city, suggesting that the “defeat” of Daesh in Mosul was not quite what it was made out to be. On Sunday, three Daesh militants were caught in Mosul, followed by two more who were arrested yesterday.
While Mosul is certainly better off under the control of the Iraqi government as opposed to foreign-funded terrorist groups, this latest study adds more evidence to the charge that the U.S.-led coalition’s actions in Mosul were hardly grounded in the humanitarian concern that the U.S. government so frequently invokes when justifying the use of its military abroad.
Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.
The past couple of weeks saw a number of truly tectonic events taking place simultaneously in the US, in Russia, in Israel, in Syria, in Iran and in the EU. I think that it would also be reasonable to say that most of those who opposed the AngloZionist Empire have felt feelings ranging from mild disappointment to total dismay. I sure did not hear many people rejoicing, but if somebody was, they were in the minority (uncharacteristically, Mikhail Khazin, for example). These reactions are normal, we all form expectations which can be, and often are, disappointed. Still, even when the news is clearly bad it is helpful to keep a number of things in mind.
First, people, countries and events are not frozen in time. They are processes. Processes, by definition, are subject to change, evolution and (even radical) changes in direction.
Second, each process carries within itself the seeds of its own contradiction. This is what makes processes dynamic.
Third, people are imperfect. Even good people make mistakes, sometimes with tragic consequences. Yet it would be wrong to separate them all into either “infallible hero” or “abject villain and loser”. In fact, I would argue that any kind of mistake, especially a serious one, carries within itself its own contradiction which, in turn, can end up “energizing” the original process by creating a different set of circumstances.
All this is to say that the real world is not like Hollywood when the outcome of the story is only 90 minutes or so away. The real world is at war with the Empire and in this war, like in any other wars, there are mistakes and losses on both sides Both sides make mistakes and the results of these mistakes affect the future course of the war.
I would argue that in the past couple of weeks Russia suffered not one, but several PR disasters. I would also argue that the Zionists have had some tremendous PR successes. I will list them further below, but I want to suggest to you that PR disasters and successes are not quite the same as real-world, tangible victories. Furthermore, PR disasters and successes can sometimes be useful, as they reveal to the world previously overlooked, or underestimated, weaknesses. Finally, PR disasters and successes, while existing mostly in the realm of perceptions, can have a real-world effect, sometimes a dramatic one.
The usual chorus of Putin-haters who immediately declared final victory is completely mistaken and their reaction is the reflection of an infantile understanding of the complex world we live in. In the real world, a person like Putin can, and usually does, commit mistakes (PR and real-world mistakes) and the enemy can mount very effective counter-attacks. But the outcome of the war is not decided on a single battle. Furthermore, in politics, like in regular warfare, tactical mistakes and successes do not at all imply operational or, even less so, strategic successes. During WWII the German military usually performed better than the Soviet one on the tactical level, but the Soviets were superior on the operational and strategic levels. We all know how that war ended. If you want to read a good analysis and debunking of the “Putin caved in” nonsense, I recommend the article ”Russia Betrayed Syria”: Geopolitics through the eyes of a fearful “pro-Russia” Westerner” by Ollie Richardson.
The other extreme is to deny, against all evidence, that there is a problem or that mistakes have been made. That kind of stubborn flag-waving is actually unhelpful as mistakes are inevitable, and the first step towards mitigating them is to recognize them. The extreme version of that kind of flag-waving (pseudo-)patriotism is to denounce a person brining up problems as a traitor or a defeatist.
It is with all this in mind that I would like to revisit what has taken place and try to gauge what the real-world consequences of these PR events might be.
Part one: Putin disappoints
Quick summary: Putin re-appointed Medvedev, appointed Alexei Kudrin as Chairman of the Accounts Chamber of Russia and Vitalii Mutko as Deputy Prime Minister in charge of construction, he then hosted Bibi Netanyahu in the Kremlin while the latter bombed Syria right before, during and after Netanyahu’s visit. Finally, there is the disgraceful zig-zag about the S-300 for Syria: first, yes we will do it, then, no we won’t. All these events can, and should, be carefully analyzed and explained, but I don’t think that it makes sense to deny that most people feel a sense of disappointment over it all (except, of course, the bright geniuses who will claim that they knew all along that Putin was “fake”, but this is precisely the “Hollywood-thinking” types on whom any real analysis would be lost in the first place).
I would argue that even those who think that this is no big deal and that nothing terrible happened will not, if they are honest, deny that Putin must have known, without any doubt, that his decisions would be unpopular with the Russian public and that, very uncharacteristically for him, he deliberately chose to ignore his only public opinion and favor other considerations. That is something very new and, I think, something important.
There are roughly two camps vying for power inside the Kremlin: I call them the Atlantic Integrationists and the Eurasian Sovereignists. The former group is a pure product of the 1990s. We can think of them as “liberals”, IMF/Washington Consensus/WTO/WB types; folks who came to power thanks to the regime of oligarchs which ran Russia from about 1990 to 2000 and which was both deeply pro-American and which had extremely close ties to Israel and the various political Jewish and Zionist organizations in the West. The latter group is primarily a product of the armed forces and the security services. The “bridge” between the two is, by the way, the Russian military industrial complex in which both groups are represented. Unsurprisingly, most Russian “elites” (defined simply as people who made their fortune or, at least, a good living in the 1990s and after) support the Atlantic Integrationists, while most “regular” Russian people overwhelmingly support the Eurasian Sovereignists. This is why Putin is so popular and Medvedev never was. What is interesting is to look into how these groups relate to Israel and Zionism.
Atlantic Integrationists: unsurprisingly, they are pro-Israeli to the hilt. For them, Israel is a totally normal country, even to be admired, as they all have personal/family and business ties to Israelis in Israel and in the US. While there is no official version of AIPAC in Russia, let’s just say that the ADL would give the Atlantic Integrationists a perfect score for loyalty and service.
Eurasian Sovereignists: here, things are much more complicated. Some Eurasian Sovereignists are profoundly anti-Zionist ideologically, while others don’t really care. But even for those who have no love for Israel, or who are deeply opposed to the Zionist influence in Russia in the 1990s or even today (especially in the Russian media), do not necessarily find it useful to say much about it. Why? Primarily because they think, and I would say correctly so, that being pro-Russian (in the sense of patriotic and wanting a truly sovereign Russia) does not have to entail being anti-Zionist, anti-Israeli or anti-Jewish. Furthermore, there are, and have always been, patriotic Russian Jews who have been an integral part of the Russian culture and history. Just like I often write that for Russians, Muslims are not “aliens” in the way many westerners perceive them, and Jews are not “aliens” for Russians either. This is why you can often meet the following Russian type: they will bitch and complain about all the Jewish “crooks and politicians”, but have “good” Jews as their closest and best friends. This is not blindness at all, this is the expression of the fact that to loathe an ideology is one thing, but to collectively feel hostility towards a group of people you know very well is a completely different proposition. I will never cease to repeat it: Russia is, has always been, and still remains a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society in which the presence of “others” simply is a fact of life.
Then there is the WWII factor, which the Israelis and Russian Zionists have been extremely skilled at exploiting to the max: Russians and Jew are united in a common memory of the horrors the Nazis inflicted upon them and they also often sense that West Europeans and Americans are, well, maybe not quite as sincerely sympathetic to their plight even if political correctness forces them to pretend to be. As a result, you will find that most anti-Zionist Russians, while surely not “ADL compatible” in their views, hate the Nazis and everything western racism stands for no less than Jews would. If fact, when faced with the modern wave of rabid russophobia, many Russians say “we are the new Jews”, meaning that everything evil on the planet is blamed on them regardless of fact or logic. Like it or not, but that common memory does bind Russians and Jews in a profound way.
I can already imagine the rage and disgust my words above will trigger in western Jew-haters for whom the world is split into two groups: Jew-haters (good) and all those who “sold out” to “the Jews” (as if there was such monad as “the Jews”). All I can tell them is this: don’t project your reductionist world view on others, especially not on Russia. If you do, you will never “get” Russia and you will be stuck with the kind of proverbial nonsense like “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”.
Part two: The Empire Strikes back
The past couple of years have been terrible for the Zionists, both in the US and in the rest of the world. First, there was the crushing defeat of their candidate in the US and the election of a candidate they rabidly hated. Then there was the Russian military intervention in Syria which prevented them from overthrowing the last secular “resistance” regime in the Arab world. In Russia, “their” Atlantic Integrationists were slowly but surely losing power and all in all, the western sanctions turned out to be a blessing for Russia. Putin’s popularity was soaring to new heights and the the global “Zionist house” was on fire. In the US, the Zionists counter-attacked with lightening speed and with a devastating effectiveness, breaking Trump in about 30 days (as shown by Trump’s betrayal of Flynn and later Bannon). After that, Trump made appeasing AIPAC his full-time job.
But that left another problem: while the US was re-taken under control, Russia, in the meantime, had succeeded in developing the capabilities to completely negate the entire US ABM system, to make much of the surface fleet obsolete and severely impairing the ability of US air power to operate in airspace contested by modern Russian air defenses. In other words, in purely military terms, this was “game, set, match for Russia”.
[Sidebar: to those shocked by this statement and who would dismiss this as “Russian propaganda” I will submit the following: US military power is predicated on the following:
The ability to deploy a carrier strike group anywhere on the planet.
The ability to protect that carrier strike group from any major counter-attack.
The ability to strike any country in the world with enough missile and airstrikes to break its will to continue to fight.
The complete and total control of the skies (air supremacy). US forces simply never train for a combat scenario where they don’t control the skies or, even less so, when their enemy does.
The very strong belief that no enemy would dare attack major overseas US bases.
The very strong, quasi religious, belief that US military technology is superior.
The absolute certitude that the US mainland would never be hit in a counter-attack.
None of the previous beliefs are based in reality anymore and, in fact, their opposite is true. This is why when dealing with a near-peer or peer enemy the US armed forces are more or less useless. The only very notable exception is the US nuclear triad and the US submarine fleet. The current situation in Syria (and by implication, Iran and Russia) is finally gradually bringing this new reality to the awareness of US decision-makers and military commanders.]
This is why Russia, albeit with only a tiny contingent, succeeded in turning the tide of the war in Syria and even now presents the AngloZionists with a frustrating challenge: a (comparatively) tiny contingent of Russian forces completely derailed the Empire’s plans for the entire Middle-East: not only is there a real chance of peace breaking out in Syria, but the situation is far from having the Takfiris and Shia killing each other in Syria and Lebanon (a key part of the Israeli plan for the region). Hezbollah, Iran and the Syrians are now in a victorious coalition on the ground with the “Axis of Kindness” forces roundly defeated.
So the Israelis decided on a simple, very effective and very dangerous counter offensive plan: 1) start a war between the US and Iran by creating an acute crisis as a result of the US reneging on its legal obligations and 2) bait Iran into a counter-attack in response to Israel air operations against Iranian and pro-Iranian forces in Syria. But for that plan to succeed, Russia needed to stay out.
So far, at least, it looks like the Israelis have convinced the Russians to stay out. But is that perception really well founded?
Part three: factors inhibiting Russia
First and foremost, as I have already explained in great detail in the past, Russia has absolutely no legal or moral obligation to support, protect, arm, train or otherwise assist anybody in the Middle-East. None. Russia has already done more for Syria than the entire Arab/Muslim world combined with the notable exception of Iran and Hezbollah. As for the Arab/Muslim world, it has never done anything for Russia and still is doing nothing. So those who like to whine about Russia not doing enough simply have no case whatsoever.
Second, the Russian air defense and air forces in Syria have only one mission: to protect the Russian task force in Syria. Whoever got the idea that Russia is supposed to shoot down Israeli aircraft or missiles over Syria has not been paying attention to public Russian statements about this. The notion that the Russian task force in Syria is there to engage US/NATO/CENTCOM forces is just as ridiculous.
Third, and contrary to a frequently held misconception, the Syrian government, Iran, Hezbollah and Iran have different agendas in the Middle-East. Yes, they are de-facto allies. They also have the same enemies, they often work together, but they all think of their own interests first. In fact, at least in the case of Iran and Russia, there are clear signs that there are several ‘camps’ inside the Russian and Iranian government and the ruling elites which have different agendas (I highly recommend Thierry Meyssan’s recent articles on this topic here and here). To think that any or all of them will instantly come to the defense of any one of them is supremely naïve, especially when the aggressor (Israel) is backed by the full power of an already warmongering Empire run amok.
Fourth, the sad reality is that Russia, unlike Iran, never took a principled position concerning the nature and behavior of the state of Israel. I very much deplore that, and I consider it a shame, but I hasten to add that this shame is shared by every single country on the planet except Iran, Bolivia and, maybe, to some extent Turkey. Not to excuse anything, but only to explain, there is very little awareness amongst Russians about the true nature and behavior of the Israelis, and most of what makes it to the media is hopelessly pro-Israeli (hence the almost constant presence of the likes of Lakov Kedmi, Avigdor Eskin, Evgenii Satanovskii and other Israeli agents – they don’t even really bother to deny it – on Russian TV). The Russian media, especially the TV stations, could easily get a “ADL seal of approval”. Simply put: the vast majority of Russians don’t feel that the plight of the Palestinians or the constant Israeli attacks on neighboring countries is their problem.
[Sidebar: such a view can appear very self-centered until you recall the kind of “gratitude” Russia got in the past from her former interventions. There are countries out there who exist only because Russia decided that they should exist and which today are members of NATO. I won’t even go into the “Slavic brotherhood” or, for that matter, “Orthodox brotherhood” nonsense. The only people with whom Russia truly has a strong bond are the Serbs. The rest of them were more than happy to back-stab Russia as soon as convenient. Thus history has taught Russia a painful lesson: give up on any naïve notions of gratitude or brotherhood. Very sad, but true. Today, even countries like Kazakhstan, Armenia or Georgia are showing a very ambivalent (and even ambiguous) attitude towards Russia. As a result the idea that Russia owes some form of protection to anybody out there has almost no support in Russia.]
Fifth, even the Eurasian Sovereignist’s analysts and media in Russia have this absolutely amazing “blind spot” about Israel and the Zionist ideology: I think of analysts whom I sincerely admire and respect (like Sergei Mikheev or Ruslan Ostashko) and whose analysis is superb on pretty much everything and who simply never mention the power and influence of what is clearly a powerful pro-Israeli lobby inside Russia, especially in the Russian media (even when they mention the power of the Israel lobby in the US). Considering how different the tone of much of the Russian Internet is, the only explanation I have for this situation is that any public anti-Israeli or anti-Zionist statements are career-terminators in Russia (we also clearly see the same phenomenon at work with RT and Sputnik). You can completely forget about any Russian religious figures speaking up, and that goes both for the Orthodox and Muslims: they all take their orders from the Kremlin and have no personal opinion on anything (I am only talking about the “official” senior religious leaders – the rank and file faithful do not display this type of behavior).
Sixth, there are plenty of people in Russia who fully realize two simple things: first, a war between Iran and the Empire would be disastrous for the Empire (and therefore great for Russia) and, second, the Iranians are also “problematic” allies at best who have their own version of “Atlanticists” (remember the “Gucci Revolution”?) and “Sovereignists”, which means that tensions, or warfare, between Iran and the US would be greatly advantageous for the anti-US camp inside Iran (just like the rabid russophobia of western politicians did more to re-elect Putin than any of his own campaign rhetoric). To put it crudely, if the Israelis are dumb enough to attack the Iranians, and if the Americans are subservient enough to Israel to join into the fight – why should Russia take great risks and openly stand in the way? Finally, any conflict with Iran (which will most likely also involve the KSA) will have oil prices skyrocket. What do you think this will do to the Russian economy?
Seventh, the war which Israel is currently waging against Iran and pro-Iranian forces in Syria is entirely a symbolic war. Even the Pantsir which was recently destroyed by the Israelis (with the usual pro-Israeli PR campaign) was not even on combat alert: the unit was not even camouflaged and its crew was standing around and smoking. The Israelis are masters at making this look all very impressive and heroic, but in military terms, this is nonsense: they clearly hit a unit which was not even part of the action (whatever that “action” was).
The basic rule of warfare still remains valid today: unless you can put boots on the ground, your efforts will never have a decisive military effect. And thank God for the fact that nobody in the “Axis of Kindness” has any credible ground forces; not the Israelis (remember 2006?); not the Saudis (look at Yemen); and most definitely not the US (when is the last time they beat somebody capable of resisting?). That is why the AngloZionist Empire always tries to use proxies like the Kurds or the “good terrorists” to fight on its behalf. Thus the Russian military specialists fully understand that even if the Israelis bombed Syria for the next several months, they would not be able to change the fundamental correlation of forces on the ground. Hence, the Israeli strikes are mostly about PR.
Still, for all these reasons, and more, we all have to come to terms with the fact that Russia is what I would call a “limited actor” in the Middle-East. I have been saying from day 1 – when some were having visions of Russian airborne divisions (supported by MiG-31s!) landing near Damascus – that “the Russians are not coming” (see here, here, here, here and here). Furthermore, I tried to explain that the Russians are under no obligation whatsoever to protect or save anyone anywhere, including in the Middle-East (see here). Finally, I tried to explain that the Russian-Israeli relationship is a multi-layered and complex one (see here) and that Putin is facing some tremendous internal opposition which he has failed to successfully tackle (see here). But trying to describe a complex reality is often a futile task in a world in which simple, black and white, binary-kind of representations are the rule and where every complex argument is immediately turned into a long list of straw-man misrepresentations. This is still very much the case with the latest developments.
Those who say that “Putin sold out” are wrong, but so are those who think that “the Russians are coming” to save anybody. It is just not going to happen. Russia will not fight a war against Israel (unless she is attacked first) and Russia will only support Iranian operations and policies insofar as the Iranians negotiate a deal with Russia and coordinate their efforts. As soon as Iran, or Hezbollah, make a move without prior consultations with Moscow, they will be on their own to deal with the consequences.
Part four: is Russia caving in to Western and Israeli pressure?
Setting aside the issue of the Russian role in the Middle-East, there remains the issue of why Putin failed to deliver on what was clearly a mandate of the Russian people to get rid of at least of the most hated personalities in the Russian government. Most folks in the West know how toxic Kudrin is, but the promotion of Mutko is nothing short of amazing too. This is the man who is most to blame for the gross mismanagement of the entire “Russia doping scandal” operation and who is absolutely despised for his incompetence. Now he is in charge of construction. There is even a good joke about this: Putin put Mutko in charge of the construction industry because the Russian construction market badly needs some doping. Funny, sure, but only so far. When I see Rogozin removed for his “poor management” (now put in charge of the Russian rocket and space industry) and Mutko promoted, I wonder if they have all gone crazy in the Kremlin.
We can all argue ad nauseam why exactly this has happened, but let’s first agree on one simple fact: Putin has failed to purge the Atlantic Integrationists. The big expectation of him getting a strong personal mandate from the people and then finally kicking them out of the Kremlin has, alas, been proven completely unfounded. There are a couple of interesting explanations out there such as:
Objectively, the Medvedev government has done a very decent, if not good job, with the economy. True, some/many believe that mistakes were made, that there were better economic policies available, but it would be hard to argue that the government completely failed. In fact, there are some pretty strong arguments which indicate that the Medvedev government (see this article discussing this in detail and it’s machine translation here and this article and its machine translation here)
Putin’s very ambitious internal economic growth program needs the support of the interests represented by the Atlantic Integrationists. In fact, internal development and economic growth are the core of his very ambitious political program. Possibly not the best time to purge the Kremlin from those who represent the interests of Russian big business.
The Medvedev “clan” has been weakened (see here for details) and now that it has been put on a much shorter “technocratic” leash, it is far less dangerous. In fact, it has been been subdued by Putin and his allies. Lavrov and Shoigu are both staying, by the way.
Trump’s reckless behavior is deeply alienating the Europeans to whom Putin is now presenting negotiation partners which they would trust (imagine Merkel and Rogozin in the same room – that would not go well!). Check out this excellent article by Frank Sellers in The Duran looking at the immense potential for Russia-EU cooperation.
Meh. I am personally unconvinced. How can Putin say that he wants serious reforms while keeping the exact same type of people in command? If indeed the Medvedev government did such a great job, then why is there any need for such major reforms? If Putin’s power base is indeed, as I believe it to be, in the people, then why is he trying to appease the financial elites by catering to their interests and agenda? Most crucially, how can Russia free herself from the financial and economic grip of the Empire when the Empire’s 5th column agents are (re-)appointed to key positions? And in all of Russia was there really nobody more qualified than Mutko or Kudrin to appoint to these positions?
Of course, there always this “Putin knows something you don’t” but I have always had a problem with that kind of logic which is essentially an open-ended universal cop-out. I hope that I am wrong, but to me this does strongly suggest that Putin is on the retreat, that he has made a major mistake and that the Empire has scored a major victory. And I will gladly admit that I have yet to hear an explanation which would explain this, never mind offer one of my own.
On the external front, has Russia caved in to Israeli pressure? Ruslan Ostashko offers a very good analysis of why this is hardly the case: (I don’t necessarily agree with his every conclusion, but he does make a very good case:
Yes, Netanyahu *did* with his repeated strikes on Syria, thumb his nose at Putin (that famous Israeli chutzpah at work for you!), and yes, Putin wining and dining Netanyahu was a painful sight and a PR-disaster. But on substance, did Israel get Russia to “betray Iran”? No, and not because the Russians are so heroically principled, but because Israel really has nothing to offer Russia. All Israel has is a powerful pro-Israel lobby inside Russia, that is true. But the more they use that lobby the more visible it becomes, the more questions at least Eurasian Sovereignists will ask.
The Israelis sure don’t want to give the impression that theyrun Russia the way they run the US, and Netanyahu’s reception in the Kremlin recently has already raised a lot of eyebrows and the impression that Putin caved in to the demands of this arrogant bastard are not helping Putin, to put it mildly. A lot of Russian analysts (Viktor Baranets, Maksim Shevchenko, Leonid Ivashev) wonder what kind of arguments Netanyahu used with Putin, and the list of possibilities is an outright uninspiring one.
Part five – another truism: there is a difference between excellent, good, average, bad and terrible
Even if the situation in Russia has changed for the worse, this is hardly a reason to engage in the usual “Putin sold out” hysteria or to declare that “Russia caved in”. Even when things are bad, there is still a huge difference between bad and worse. As of right now, Putin is not only the best possible person to be the President of Russia, Russia also continues to be the objective leader of the resistance to the Empire. Again, the black-and-white “Hollywood” type of mindset entirely misses the dynamic nature of what is going on. For example, it is quite clear to me that a new type of Russian opposition is slowly forming. Well, it always existed, really – I am talking about people who supported Putin and the Russian foreign policy and who disliked Medvedev and the Russian internal policies. Now the voice of those who say that Putin is way too soft in his stance towards the Empire will only get stronger. As will the voices of those who speak of a truly toxic degree of nepotism and patronage in the Kremlin (again, Mutko being the perfect example). When such accusations came from rabid pro-western liberals, they had very little traction, but when they come from patriotic and even nationalist politicians (Nikolai Starikov for example) they start taking on a different dimension. For example, while the court jester Zhirinovskii and his LDPR party loyally supported Medvedev, the Communist and the Just Russia parties did not. Unless the political tension around figures like Kudrin and Medvedev is somehow resolved (maybe a timely scandal?), we might witness the growth of a real opposition movement in Russia, and not one run by the Empire. It will be interesting to see if Putin’s personal ratings will begin to go down and what he will have to do in order to react to the emergence of such a real opposition.
Much will depend on how the Russian economy will perform. If, courtesy of Trump’s megalomaniacal policies towards Iran and the EU, Russia’s economy receives a massive injection of funds (via high energy prices), then things will probably stabilize. But if the European leaders meekly cave in and join the sanctions against Iran and if the US succeeds in imposing even further sanctions on Russia, then the Medvedev government will face a serious crisis and the revival of the Russian economy promised by Putin will end up in an embarrassing failure and things could also go from bad to even worse. As for right now, our always courageous Europeans are busy handing the latest Eurovision prize to an Israeli (Eurovision prizes are always given to countries the EU leaders want to support) while the self-same Israelis “celebrate” the new US Embassy in Jerusalem by murdering 55 Palestinians (and promised to kill many more). So let’s just say that I am not very hopeful that the Europeans will grow a spine, some balls, a brain or, least of all, acquire some moral fiber anytime soon. But maybe they will be greedy enough to reject some of the most outrageous US demands? Maybe. Hopefully. After all, the European supine subservience to the US has to have cost the EU billions of dollars already…
Part six: dealing with the S-300 fiasco
The entire S-300 business for Syria has been an ugly mess but, again, more in the PR realm than in the real world. The constant “we will deliver, no we won’t, yes we will, no we won’t” creates a terrible impression. The explanations for this zig-zag make things only worse. Let’s take a look at what those who do not disapprove of this zig zag are saying. Their arguments go more or less as follows.
The S-300s would place the Israeli Air Force at risk not only over Syria, but also over Lebanon and even Israel. This is overkill because Russia never moved into Syria to fight a war against Israel. So the entire idea of delivering S-300s to Syria was a bad idea in the first place.
Syria does not really need S-300s. Lavrov and others mention the S-300s as a threat (because the Israelis really fear these systems), but in reality what Syria needs are Buk-M2E (see analysis in Russian and it’s machine translation here).
The Russians made a deal with Israel and in exchange for the non-delivery of the S-300s (see analysis in Russian here and the machine translation here) they are getting something very tangible: Israel will stop supporting the “good terrorists” in Syria thereby making it much easier for Damascus to finish them off.
I don’t like these arguments very much except for the 2nd one. First, I do agree that the Buk-M2E is a very modern and capable system with some advantages over the S-300 in the Syrian context, but I would still add that the infamous sentence “Syria has got all it needs” is an absolutely terrible and ridiculous statement (read Marko Marjanović devastating critique of it in his article “Israel Took out a Syrian Pantsir Air Defense Unit, S-200 Radars. Russia: ‘No S-300 Transfer, Syria Has All It Needs’” from Russia Insider ). I think that this “Syria has all it needs” is yet another of these self-inflicted PR disasters and an absolutely ridiculous statement until you take it one step deeper.
So, if by “Syria has all it needs” you mean “Syria has no need for any other help” or “the Syrian air defenses can deal with any Israeli or US attack” – then this is total nonsense. Agreed. But if you just rephrase it and say “Syria has all the types of weapons it needs”, then I think that this is basically true. By far the single most important air defense system for the Syrians is the Pantsir-S1, not the S-300 or any other system.
As early as June of last year I wrote a column for the Unz Review entitled “Russia vs. America in Syria” in which I had a section entitled “Forget the S-300/S-400, think Pantsir”. I wrote that at a time when most observers were paying no attention to the Pantsir at all, and the entire world seemed obsessed with the S-300 and S-400s. I still believe that the Pantsir is the key to the outcome of the struggle for the Syrian airspace. But Syria, and Iran, need many more of them. Basically, the ideal situation is numerous Russian, Iranian and Syrian Pantsirs all over Syria, all of them integrated with already existing Russian long radar capabilities and supported by modern electronic warfare. With enough Pantsirs deployed and on full alert (not like the one the Israelis recently destroyed) and fully integrated into a single air defense network, the Syrians would be able to mount a very robust air defense capability, at a relatively cheap cost, without offering the Israelis any high value and lucrative targets.
Pantsirs can deal with most of the US and Israeli threats even if, unlike their S-300/S-400 counterparts, they cannot engage aircraft at long distance (hence the suggestion to deploy some Buk-M2E’s to approximate that capability). The truth is that S-300′s were never designed to operate more or less autonomously or to intercept cruise missiles or bombs. Yes, they *can* do that, but they were designed to deal with long range high value targets and within a multi-layered system which included many other systems, such as the Buks, Tors, Pantsirs and even Iglas and Verbas MANPADs. That multi-layered air defense system is currently absent in Syria and would take a lot of time and money to deploy. In contrast the Pantsirs can function completely autonomously, can detect any target up to 50km away, track and engage it 20km away, protect itself and others with its 30mm guns up to 3km away. Pantsirs can even do that while moving up to 30km/h on rough terrain. This makes it an extraordinarily effective and survivable air defense system, which is relatively easy to hide, deploy and engage with no warning for the enemy. By the way, the Pantsir can also use both its 30mm canons and its missiles against ground targets, including tanks. No current air defense system can boast such a combination of capabilities.
Russia needs to deliver as many of those Pantsir-S1 systems to Syria as physically possible. A large number of Pantsir’s in Syria would present Israel and the US with a far bigger headache than a few S-300s. Currently there is something in the range of 40-60 of such Pantsir’s in Syria. This is far from enough considering the magnitude of the threat and the capabilities of the threat. That number needs to be at least doubled.
However, and regardless of the real-world technical and military aspects of the issue, the Russian zig-zags gave the world a terrible impression: the Israelis attack a Russian ally, then the Russian promise to do something about it, then Netanyahu goes to Russia, and Putin meekly caves in. This is all a massive self-inflicted political faceplant and yet another major mistake by Putin and other Russian leaders.
Frankly, the main Russian mistake here was to *ever* mention S-300s deliveries to the Syrians.
Part Seven: the lessons from the Divine Victory of 2006 – survival is victory
In 2006 Hezbollah inflicted a massive and most humiliating defeat upon Israel. And yet, there is some pretty good evidence that it all began by a mistake. Not by Israel, by Hezbollah. Check out this now often forgotten statement made by Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah:
“We did not think, even one per cent, that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude. You ask me, if I had known on July 11 … that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not”
Amazing, no? Hassan Nasrallah spoke these words after Hezbollah’s superb victory against the “invincible Tsahal”. The truth is that Hezbollah had underestimated the violence and magnitude of the Israeli attack. Not only that, but Israel did not lose a single inch of its territory while all of Lebanon, not just the south, was viciously bombed and scores of civilians died. Hezbollah did destroy a few “indestructible” Merkava tanks and almost sank the Israeli Navy’s flagship. But compared to the damage and pain inflicted by the Israelis, this was nothing. Even Hezbollah’s missiles had a comparatively small effect on the Israeli population (mostly just the typical Israeli panic). And yet, even if politicians did not want to admit it, it was as clear as can be for both sides: Hezbollah had won a “Divine Victory” while the Israelis had suffered the worst defeat in their history. Why? For a very simple reason: Hezbollah survived.
That’s it and that’s crucial. Olmert and his goons had set out to destroy Hezbollah (or, at least, disarm it). This is what Trump will probably try to do to the Islamic Republic of Iran, and this is what the AngloZionist Empire is trying to do to Russia: eliminate it.
Once the goals are thus defined, then the definition of victory is also obvious: surviving. That’s it.
For Hezbollah, Iran or Russia to defeat Israel, the US or the entire Empire, there is no need to plant a flag on the enemy’s main symbolic building like what Soviet soldiers did in Germany. All they need to do to win is simply to survive because the other’s sides survival is predicated upon their elimination, it’s really that simple. Israel cannot claim victory as long as Hezbollah exists, the US cannot claim world Hegemony if Iran openly defies it, and the AngloZionist Empire cannot claim world hegemony over the our planet as long as the Russian civilizational realm openly challenges it. So while all the talk about the Iranians wanting to “wipe Israel off the map” is just a typical ziomedia invention, it is true that by their very existence Hezbollah, Iran and Russia do represent an existential threat to Israel, the US and the Empire.
This is the biggest and the fatal weakness of the AngloZionist Empire: its survival depends on the colonization or destruction of every other country out there. Every independent country, whether big and powerful, or small and weak, represents an unacceptable challenge to the hegemony of the “indispensable nation” and the “chosen people”, which now try to rule over us all. This might well be the ultimate example of Hegelian dialectics at work in geopolitics: an Empire whose power generates it’s own demise. Many empires have come and gone in history, but the globalized world we live in, this dialectical contradiction is tremendously potentialized by the finite conditions in which empires have to operate.
Conclusion one: support for Putin and Russia must only be conditional
Over the past few years, Putin and Russia haters were predicting doom and gloom and all sorts of betrayals (for Novorussia, Syria, Iran, etc.) by Putin and Russia. Then time passed and all their predictions proved false. Instead of just talking, the Russians took action which proved the nay-sayers wrong. This time however, the Russians said and did a number of things which gave *a lot* of fuel to the Putin-haters and the only way to undo that is to take real action to prove them wrong. Right now as a result of these self-inflicted PR-disasters Russia looks very bad, even inside Russia where many Putin supporters are confused, worried and disappointed.
Externally, the Syrian and, especially, the Iranians need to come to terms with the fact that Russia is an imperfect ally, one which sometimes can help, but one which will always place its personal interests above any other consideration. In a personal email to me Eric Zuesse wrote “I think that Putin and Netanyahu are negotiating how far Israel can go and what Russia can accept — and what cooperation each will provide to the other — drawing the red lines of acceptability, for each side”. I think that he is spot on, but I also think that Putin is wrong in trying to make a deal with Israel, especially if a deal is at the expense of Iran. Ostashko is right. Objectively Israel has very little to offer Russia. But if this kind of collaboration between Russia and Israel continues, especially if Iran is attacked, then we will know that the Israel lobby inside Russia is behind these policies which go counter to the Russian national interest. We will soon find out.
In the meantime, Lavrov can’t try to get a deal going with Israel and, at the same time, whine about the “US Plan on Arab Troops Deployment in Syria ‘Sovereignty Violation’”! How about the never-ending violation by Israel of Syria’s sovereignty? How is it less repugnant than the one being perpetrated by the US? Are such statements not fundamentally hypocritical?
We can observe a paradox here: Putin has criticized the evil immorality of the western society and imperial policies many times (most famously in Munich and at the UN). But Putin has never said anything about the evil immorality of the state of Israel. And yet Israel is the center of gravity, the nexus, of the entire AngloZionist Empire, especially since the Neocons turned Trump into their subservient lackey. In this, and in so many other areas, Russia needs to follow the example of Iran whose leaders have shown far more morality and principled policies in spite of Iran being much smaller and comparatively weaker than Russia.
In 2006 a thousand men or so of Hezbollah dared to defy the entire AngloZionist Empire (the US was, as always, backing Israel to the hilt) and they prevailed. Russian soldiers have shown time and again, including recently in Syria, they they have the same type of courage. But Russian politicians really seem to be of a much more tepid and corruptible type, and there is always the risk that Putin might gradually become less of an officer and more of a politician. And this, in turn, means that those of us who oppose the Empire and support Putin and Russia must imperatively make that support conditional upon a clearly stated set of moral and spiritual principles, not on a “my country right or wrong” kind of loyalty or, even less so, on a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” kind of fallacy. Should Putin continue in his apparent attempts to appease the Israelis a new type of internal opposition to his rule might gain power inside Russia and new internal tensions might be added to the already existing external ones.
Right now Putin still has a lot of “credibility capital” left in spite of his recent mistakes. However, Putin recent decisions have raised a lot of unpleasant questions which must be answered and will so in time. In the meantime, as they say in the US, “hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and settle for anything in the middle”. The Scripture also warns us not to make idols of leaders: “Trust not in princes, nor in the children of men, in whom there is no safety” (Ps 145:3 LXX). The worldly evil we are fighting, today in the shape of the AngloZionist Empire, is but a manifestation of a much deeper, spiritual evil: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph. 6:12). The young men and women from the Shia movement Amal got it right when they chose the name “Party of God” for their movement when they created Hezbollah in 1985. And Iran was right when it became an Islamic Republic: if we want to defeat the Empire we need to always let spiritual matters and moral criteria remain above any of our “pragmatic” worldly political considerations or national/ethnic loyalties: that is how we can defeat those who place a dollar value on absolutely everything they see in their narrow materialistic worldview.
Conclusion two: the quest for “Russian values”
Russian political ambiguities are the direct result of the fact that Russia, as whole, has yet to define what “Russian values” really are. The historical Russia was founded on Patristic Christianity and the Roman civilizational model and the Soviet Union on Marxism-Leninism. The 1990s marked the total triumph of materialism run amok. But unlike Hezbollah or Iran, the “New Russia” (as I like to call it) is not based on anything other than a Constitution written mostly by US advisors and their proxies and a general opposition to the western civilizational model (especially since 2014). Being against something is not an inspiring, or even tenable, political or moral stance (as the White Guards discovered during the Russian civil war). Furthermore, in her confrontation with an AngloZionist Empire which stands for absolutely nothing besides base instincts, Russia needs to stand *for* something, not just against something else. As long as Russia will not firmly define and proclaim a set of spiritual/moral values she stands for, the current zigs-zags will continue and Russian policies will prove to be inconsistent, at best.
[Sidebar: here I want to contrast the Russian society at large with the Russian armed forces who, besides having a lot of good equipment, have a very strong and clear ethos and a rock solid understanding and clarity about what they stand for. This is why Russian soldiers have consistently and spontaneously been willing to sacrifice their lives. The Russian civilian society still lacks that kind of clarity, and Russian politicians, who are no better in Russia than elsewhere, often make use of that. The Russian armed forces are also the one institution with the strongest historical memory and the deepest roots in Russian history. I would argue that they are the only institution in modern Russia whose roots truly go back to before the 1917 Revolution and even much further back than that. As descendant of “White Russians” myself I have always found it uncanny and, frankly, amazing how much closer I have felt to Russian military officers than to Russian civilians. To me it often feels as if there were two types of Russians simultaneously coexisting: the “new Russian” type (still in the process of being defined) and the military officer corps (Soviet or post-Soviet). That latter type almost instinctively made sense to me and often felt like family. This is hardly a scientific observation, but this has been my consistent personal experience].
There is a very high likelihood that Israel will succeed in triggering a US attack on Iran. If/when that happens, this will trigger a political crisis inside Russia because the space for the current political ambiguities will be dramatically reduced. On moral and on pragmatic grounds, Russia will have to decide whether she can afford to be a bystander or not. This will not be an easy choice as their shall be no consensus on what to do inside the ruling elites. But the stakes will be too high and the consequences of inaction prohibitive. My hope is that a major military conflict will result in a sharp increase of the power and influence of the military “lobby” inside the Kremlin. Eventually and inevitably, the issue of Israel and Zionism will have to be revisited and the pro-Israeli lobby inside Russia dealt with, lest Russia follow the same path to self-destruction as the US. For this reason the concept of “true sovereignization” is the one patriotic slogan/goal that Eurasian Sovereignists must continue to promote (regardless of the actual terminology used) because it points towards the real problems in Russian internal and foreign policies which must be addressed and resolved. This will be a long and difficult process, with victories and setbacks. We better get used to the idea that what happened in the past couple of weeks will happen again in the future.
A sample of Novichok, the nerve agent allegedly used to poison the Skripals, was obtained by German intelligence back in the 1990s, local media report. The substance has since been studied and produced by NATO countries.
Western countries, including the US and the UK, have long been aware of the chemical makeup of the nerve agent known as Novichok, a group of German media outlets reported following a joint investigation. The inquiry, based on anonymous sources, gives new insights into the issue of the nerve agent said to have been used in the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, UK, in March.
Western governments were able to lay their hands on the formula of what is described as “one of the deadliest chemical weapons ever developed” after the German foreign intelligence service, the BND, obtained a sample of the nerve agent from a Russian defector in the early 1990s.
A Russian scientist provided German intelligence with information on the development of Novichok for some time following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the German NDR and WDR broadcasters, as well as Die Zeitand Suedeutsche Zeitungdailies, report, citing unnamed sources within the BND. At some point, the man offered to bring the Germans a sample of the chemical agent in exchange for asylum for him and his family.
A sample was eventually smuggled by the wife of the scientist and sent by the Germans to a Swedish chemical lab, according to the reports. Following the sample analysis, the Swedish experts established the formula of the substance, which they then handed over to Germany.
By the order of the then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the BND then shared the formula with Berlin’s “closest allies,” including the intelligence services of the US and the UK. Later, the UK, the US and Germany reportedly created a special “working group” tasked with studying the substance, which also included representatives from France, Canada and the Netherlands.
“Some NATO countries were secretly producing the chemical agent in small quantities,” the four media outlets reported, adding that it was allegedly done to develop the necessary countermeasures. However, it remains unclear which particular states were involved in the Novichok production.
The sample of the nerve agent was particularly thoroughly studied by British specialists in the Porton Down laboratory. That is why they allegedly were so quick to determine the formula of the substance used to poison the former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia back in March, the report says.
At the same time, the German media admitted that “Novichok has long been not a secret anymore,” calling the claim of the British authorities concerning the origin of the substance used to poison the Skripals “precarious.”
The British government accuses Russia of poisoning the Skripals in Salisbury using the nerve agent A230, which has since become known as Novichok. Part of the argument put forward by Prime Minister Theresa May for Moscow’s complicity is that Russia is the only country able to produce it. That narrative has remained largely unquestioned within the Western mainstream media.
However, Czech President Milos Zeman has recently admitted that his country did synthesize and test a nerve agent of the so-called Novichok family. Earlier, Russian officials named the Czech Republic – along with Slovakia, Sweden, the US and the UK itself – among the countries which have enough technical capabilities to produce the nerve agent.
The international chemical weapons watchdog, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), has repeatedly claimed it cannot identify the source of the agent that was allegedly used to poison the Skripals.
MOSCOW – The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Wednesday that it considers calls to disrupt voting in Venezuela’s presidential elections due May 20 to be interference in the affairs of a sovereign state.
“Assertions about the illegitimacy of the election campaign continue to be circulated, calls for disruption of the voting process are made. This… represents an undisguised interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. We call to abandon this destructive practice,” the statement said.
Moscow considers the upcoming presidential elections in Venezuela as “a possibility to return Venezuela’s political forces to the national dialogue to seek solutions required to advance the country along the path of stable economic development,” it said.
Previous week, a poll conducted by Hinterlaces and released by the Prensa Latina news agency revealed that nearly half of Venezuelan citizens intend to back incumbent President Nicolas Maduro in the upcoming presidential election.
On May 20, Venezuelans will be electing their next president. There are five candidates running for presidency: Reinaldo Quijada, an editor at the Aporrea media outlet and conservative preacher Luis Ratti are to compete alongside Maduro, Falcon and Bertucci.
How high are Pharma’s prices? Novartis wants $475,000 a patient for its new cancer therapy. Hep C drugs cost $95,000 for a course of treatment. The immune drug, Actimmune, costs $52,321.80 a month. The parasite drug Daraprim costs $45,000 a month. And the gallstone drug Chenodal costs $42,570 a month.
But this week in his long-awaited speech, Trump blamed foreign countries for high drug prices in the US and reversed his campaign pledge to use Medicare’s buying power to negotiate lower drug prices. Pharma stock prices rose; the shilling paid off.
Pharma has two lobbyists for every member of Congress. It spends more on lobbying than tobacco, oil and defense contractors combined. It parades patients before public and consumer panels to “provide media outlets a human face to attach to a cause when insurers balk at reimbursing patients for new prescription medications,” writes Melissa Healy of the Los Angeles Times.
And that is not enough for Pharma. Companies also try to incorporate in the UK, Ireland and other overseas locations to dodge the US taxes that fund them such as Medicare. They already manufacture and test drugs overseas because the labor is cheap.
The US government is captured. Pharma operatives head both Health and Human Services and the FDA. The CDC Foundation which receives millions from corporations (not that it affects policies or anything) lists as donors Abbott, AbbVie, Bayer, AstraZeneca, Merck, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, Eli Lilly, Amgen, Genentech, Gilead and many more. (Is that why the CDC allows its name to be used in Gilead ads for its Hep C drug?)
Until 2010, PhRMA, Pharma’s top lobbying group, was headed by former Louisiana Rep. Billy Tauzin who resigned from Congress where he chaired the committee which oversees the drug industryonly to immediately reappear as the leader of PhRMA where he drew a $2 million salary. No conflict of interest there.
Tauzin had played a key role in shepherding the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill through Congress which prohibited government negotiation of lower drug prices and Canadian imports. “It’s a sad commentary on politics in Washington that a member of Congress who pushed through a major piece of legislation benefiting the drug industry, gets the job leading that industry,” Public Citizen’s President Joan Claybrook said.
Two-thirds of Pharma lobbyists previously worked for Congress or federal agencies reports the New York Times. An aide to former Michigan Rep. John D. Dingell now works for PhRMA, and an aide to former Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who was the chairman of the Senate health committee “is now a top lobbyist for Merck.” Gary Andres, former staff director of the House Energy and Commerce Committee now lobbies for biotech companies. And the list goes on.
Having captured Congress, you wouldn’t think Pharma would need a charm offensive. Yet it spends millions trying to convince the public it has our interests at heart as it raises our taxes and health care costs. Currently, “America’s Biopharmaceutical companies” are running their “Go Boldly” campaign, ennobling their work with the pay-off line “here’s to permission to fail.”
Yes, Pharma knows a lot about “permission to fail.” Over 20 of its drugs have been withdrawn from the market -after maximum money was made of course- in recent years because they were so dangerous. They include Vioxx, Bextra, Baycol, Trovan, Meridia, Seldane, Hismanal, Darvon, Raxar, Redux Mylotarg, Lotronex, Propulsid, phenylpropanolamine (PPA), Prexige, phenacetin, Oraflex, Omniflox, Posicor, Serzone and Duract.
Pharma also runs a sappy “Hope to Cures: The Value of Biopharmaceutical Innovation and New Drug Discovery” campaign that showcases patients whose lives were saved by expensive drugs. “If you object to our six-digit drug prices you are signing the death warrant for these patients,” the sleazy campaign seeks to convey.
Two lies lurk under the PR stunt. First, most of Pharma’s profits come from non life-saving drugs that treat acid reflux, ADHD, poor eating habits and a host of trumped up psychiatric illnesses. Secondly, research accounts for only one-fifth of Pharma’s drug costs. Most drug costs Pharma seeks to recoup are for marketing––the ask-your-doctor ads you see on TV––and, of course, lobbying.
Two spectacles unfolded in Palestine on Monday. In Gaza, Israeli army snipers shot and killed 58 Palestinians—including six children—and injured almost three thousand others amid scenes of smoke, fire, teargas, dust, agony and blood. At exactly the same time, to the tinkling of champagne glasses at a glittering reception barely fifty miles away in Jerusalem, Jared Kushner and an elegant Ivanka Trump oversaw the opening of Donald Trump’s new embassy there. The juxtaposition of these two contemporaneous scenes encapsulates at a single glance the entirety of Zionism’s murderous conflict with the Palestinian people.
The Palestinians targeted and executed one-by-one by Israeli snipers had gathered to demand their right of return to their lands and homes inside the rest of Palestine, from the coastal plain up to and including Jerusalem. They or their parents or grandparents were driven from their homes during the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 for the simple reason that they are not Jewish: too many non-Jews in the putative Jewish state would not make for much of a Jewish state after all. (“There could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst. There would be no such state. It would not be able to exist,” the Israeli historian Benny Morris bluntly pointed out in an interview justifying ethnic cleansing with the newspaper Ha’aretz in 2004; “a Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians . . . [therefore] it was necessary to uproot them”). They have been denied the right to return to their homes ever since for the same reason: they are not Jewish, and their presence would upset the carefully-engineered demographic tables maintained by the state to preserve its tenuous claim to an exclusively Jewish identity. The maintenance of that demographic balance and the suspension of their political and human rights are inseparable from one another: the one enables, produces and requires the other.
The demographer Arnon Sofer of Haifa University is the architect of the current isolation of Gaza. In 2004, he advised the government of Ariel Sharon to withdraw Israeli forces from within Gaza, seal the territory off from the outside world, and simply shoot anyone who tries to break out. “When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe,” Sofer told an interviewer in the Jerusalem Post (11 November 2004); “Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.” He added that “the only thing that concerns me is how to ensure that the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings.”
This imperative to kill and kill and kill human “animals” explains the violence taking place at the gates of Gaza—which has been sealed off precisely according to Sofer’s prescription—for the past several weeks, most calamitously this Monday. The killing now taking place is, in other words, exactly, to the letter, the “killing and killing and killing” he called for fourteen years ago. Calmly premeditated and intentionally designed by its architect, it is equally calmly and intentionally being carried out by Israeli soldiers (about whose psychological traumas I, unlike Sofer, am not even remotely interested). In response to the current killing and shooting, a senior member of the Israeli parliament, Avi Dichter, reassured his audience on live television on Monday that they need not be unduly concerned. Their army, he told them, “has enough bullets for everyone.” If every man, woman and child in Gaza gathers at the gate, in other words, there is a bullet for every one of them. They can all be killed, no problem.
Remember Kurtz in Heart of Darkness? “Exterminate the brutes!” The genocidal intent expressed by the likes of Sofer and Dichter—mainstream and senior figures in Israeli politics—is so obvious as to make assiduous interpretation of their words unnecessary. The people of Gaza are exterminable because they are not Jewish: that is what the situation amounts to, not according to critics of the siege of Gaza, but according to its architects, planners, enablers and supporters. For that exterminability, and the ability to calmly and methodically transact it (“kill and kill and kill”) guarantees one thing, according to Sofer (in that same interview): “it guarantees a Zionist-Jewish state with an overwhelming majority of Jews.” To be clear then: according to its own planners and architects—these are their words, not mine—the maintenance of a “Zionist-Jewish” state fundamentally requires the Israeli army to prepare itself with a bullet for every man, woman and child in Gaza, and to shoot them one by one if they approach the gates penning them in. And if none of them are left after the smoke clears, well, so much the better; Israeli “boys and men” will return to their families and sleep better at night for not having to kill them any longer.
Exactly as Israeli snipers were following their orders to “kill and kill and kill,” Jared Kushner was marking the occasion of the opening of the embassy with an inane speech extolling the virtues of his bombastic father in law. Kushner was empowered to present this speech not because of his qualifications (he has none), not because of his accomplishments (he has none), not because of his insights (he has none), not because of his charisma or strength of character (he has none), not because of his oratorial skills (he has none), and certainly not because of the rousing qualities of the speech itself (it had none). He was empowered to do so simply because he is Jewish; that is the one single attribute that brings him to the table: an act of birth.
But acts of birth are randomly distributed by the hand of fate. And fate played one hand to Jared Kushner and a different hand to Ezzedine al-Samaak (14 years old), Ahmad al-Shair (16 years old), Said al-Khair (16 years old), Ibrahim al-Zarqa (18 years old) and Iman al-Sheikh (19 years old). They were all born in Gaza, refugees and the children of refugees driven by Zionist shock troops from their homes elsewhere in southwestern Palestine in 1948. Unlike Jared Kushner, who was in Jerusalem because he is Jewish, they cannot go to Jerusalem, because they are not Jewish. Unlike Jared Kushner, who can go to Jerusalem whenever he wants in the future because he is Jewish, they will never go to Jerusalem because they were shot in the head by Israeli army snipers on Monday and they are now all dead. Having robbed them of their past and their present, the state of Israel stole their future as well. And it did so—it could do so—simply because they are not Jewish.
There is a direct link between the events in Jerusalem and those taking place in Gaza; Netanyahu himself pointed it out. “We are here in Jerusalem, protected by the brave soldiers of the army of Israel,” he said at the opening ceremony on Monday, “and our brave soldiers, our brave soldiers are protecting the borders of Israel as we speak today.” By “brave soldiers,” of course, he meant cowardly snipers hiding in reinforced positions and shooting unarmed civilians at a distance of 1,000 meters; and by “protecting” he meant killing and killing and killing, exactly according to Dr. Sofer’s prescription.
There are two racial groups in close proximity in Palestine. The members of one racial group—the one to which Netanyahu and Kushner belong—are free to come and go as they please, to live life, to travel, to study, to work, to raise children. The members of the other racial group are to varying degrees denied those rights, though nowhere more starkly and abjectly than in Gaza, where over two million people have simply been rounded up and warehoused without prospects or hopes, let alone rights, simply because their very existence is deemed to be a mortal threat to the exclusive racial identity of a state that was violently established on their land and at their expense. To maintain the exclusive identity of that state, these people must either accept their fate as essentially human cargo in permanent storage—a superfluous population—or take the bullets that the Israeli army has prepared for each one of them.
And that, fundamentally, is what Zionism’s conflict with the Palestinians is all about. At few other moments than the present has the juxtaposition between the racially privileged and the racially dehumanized and exterminable been so crystal clear. Liberal Zionists like Peter Beinart or Roger Cohen may wring their hands and bewail the crude and explicit viciousness of Netanyahu and his circle or the hideousness of the spectacle unfolding at the locked gates of Gaza. They harken back to the golden days of the 1950s and 1960s, when the Palestinians seemed (to the fevered Zionist imagination) to have quietly vanished, as though by magic. But what is happening today is not an aberration. This is what Zionism has always entailed and what it will always entail. “Colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties,” Frantz Fanon once pointed out. “It is violence in its natural state.” It is not possible for a settler-colonial regime to racially enable one people at the expense of another people without the use of violence. As Arnon Sofer himself admits, the maintenance of a “Zionist-Jewish state with an overwhelming majority of Jews” requires permanent institutionalized violence. That was already true in 1948 and it remains true today and it will remain true until this project of racial exclusivism and privilege is abandoned once and for all for the hideous anachronism that it is.
Eight-month-old Laila is youngest Palestinian killed in Gaza on Monday, the deadliest day since 2014 war.
From left: Ahmed Alrantisi, Laila Anwar Al-Ghandoor, Ahmed Altetr, Alaa Alkhatib Ezz el-din Alsamaak, Motassem Abu Louley (screengrab)
Sixty-two people were either killed or died of wounds inflicted by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip on Monday and Tuesday as thousands of Palestinians demonstrated across the occupied territory to mark the 70th anniversary of the Nakba.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the Gaza Ministry of Health released the names of 59 Palestinians killed:
1. Laila Anwar Al-Ghandoor, 8 months old
2. Ezz el-din Musa Mohamed Alsamaak, 14 years old
3. Wisaal Fadl Ezzat Alsheikh Khalil, 15 years old
4. Ahmed Adel Musa Alshaer, 16 years old
5. Saeed Mohamed Abu Alkheir, 16 years old
6. Ibrahim Ahmed Alzarqa, 18 years old
7. Eman Ali Sadiq Alsheikh, 19 years old
8. Zayid Mohamed Hasan Omar, 19 years old
9. Motassem Fawzy Abu Louley, 20 years old
10. Anas Hamdan Salim Qadeeh, 21 years old
11. Mohamed Abd Alsalam Harz, 21 years old
From left: Fadi Abu Salah, Motaz Al-Nunu, Jihad Mohammed Othman Mousa, Mousa Jabr Abdulsalam Abu Hasnayn, Ezz Eldeen Nahid Aloyutey, Anas Hamdan Salim Qadeeh
12. Yehia Ismail Rajab Aldaqoor, 22 years old
13. Mustafa Mohamed Samir Mahmoud Almasry, 22 years old
14. Ezz Eldeen Nahid Aloyutey, 23 years old
15. Mahmoud Mustafa Ahmed Assaf, 23 years old
16. Ahmed Fayez Harb Shahadah, 23 years old
17. Ahmed Awad Allah, 24 years old
18. Khalil Ismail Khalil Mansor, 25 years old
19. Mohamed Ashraf Abu Sitta, 26 years old
20. Bilal Ahmed Abu Diqah, 26 years old
21. Ahmed Majed Qaasim Ata Allah, 27 years old
From left: Mahmoud Wael Mahmoud Jundeyah, Ibrahim Ahmed Alzarqa, Musab Yousef Abu Leilah, Jihad Mufid Al-Farra, Saeed Mohamed Abu Alkheir, Mohamed Hasan Mustafa Alabadilah (screengrab)
22. Mahmoud Rabah Abu Maamar, 28 years old
23.Musab Yousef Abu Leilah, 28 years old
24. Ahmed Fawzy Altetr, 28 years old
25. Mohamed Abdelrahman Meqdad, 28 years old
26. Obaidah Salim Farhan, 30 years old
27. Jihad Mufid Al-Farra, 30 years old
28. Fadi Hassan Abu Salah, 30 years old
29. Motaz Bassam Kamil Al-Nunu, 31 years old
30. Mohammed Riyad Abdulrahman Alamudi, 31 years old
31. Jihad Mohammed Othman Mousa, 31 years old
32. Shahir Mahmoud Mohammed Almadhoon, 32 years old
33. Mousa Jabr Abdulsalam Abu Hasnayn, 35 years old
From left: Shahir Mahmoud Mohammed Almadhoon, Khalil Ismail Khalil Mansor, Mahmoud Saber Hamad Abu Taeemah, Mohamed Ashraf Abu Sitta, Mustafa Mohamed Samir Mahmoud Almasry, Obaidah Salim Farhan (screengrab)
34. Mohammed Mahmoud Abdulmoti Abdal’al, 39 years old
35. Ahmed Mohammed Ibrahim Hamdan, 27 years old
36. Ismail Khalil Ramadhan Aldaahuk, 30 years old
37. Ahmed Mahmoud Mohammed Alrantisi, 27 years old
38. Alaa Alnoor Ahmed Alkhatib, 28 years old
39. Mahmoud Yahya Abdawahab Hussain, 24 years old
40. Ahmed Abdullah Aladini, 30 years old
41. Saadi Said Fahmi Abu Salah, 16 years old
42. Ahmed Zahir Hamid Alshawa, 24 years old
43. Mohammed Hani Hosni Alnajjar, 33 years old
44. Fadl Mohamed Ata Habshy, 34 years old
45. Mokhtar Kaamil Salim Abu Khamash, 23 years old
46. Mahmoud Wael Mahmoud Jundeyah, 21 years old
47. Abdulrahman Sami Abu Mattar, 18 years old
48. Ahmed Salim Alyaan Aljarf, 26 years old
From left: Mohammed Hani Hosni Alnajjar, Yehia Ismail Rajab Aldaqoor, Mohammed Riyad Abdulrahman Alamudi, Ahmed Adel Musa Alshaer, Fadl Mohamed Ata Habshy, Ismail Khalil Ramadhan Aldaahuk (screengrab)
49. Mahmoud Sulayman Ibrahim Aql, 32 years old
50. Mohamed Hasan Mustafa Alabadilah, 25 years old
51. Kamil Jihad Kamil Mihna, 19 years old
52. Mahmoud Saber Hamad Abu Taeemah, 23 years old
53. Ali Mohamed Ahmed Khafajah, 21 years old
54. Abdelsalam Yousef Abdelwahab, 39 years old
55. Mohamed Samir Duwedar, 27 years old
56. Talal Adel Ibrahim Mattar, 16 years old
57. Omar Jomaa Abu Ful, 30 years old
58. Nasser Ahmed Mahmoud Ghrab, 51 years old
59. Bilal Badeer Hussein Al-Ashram, 18 years old
60 – 62: Unidentified
Middle East Eye has live coverage of protests in Palestine and Israel here.
Considering the sequence of recent events in the Middle East, it is obvious that the circumstances regarding the US withdrawal from the nuclear accord with Iran were carefully thought out in advance, as a pre-arranged strategy to pave the way for escalating Israel’s conflict with Iran and the war in Syria.
In presenting their own self-serving narrative of lies and distortions that Iran is conducting a ‘secret’ nuclear weapons program, Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump remain oblivious to the stunning hypocrisy of their own duplicity and stupidity; as if the rest of the world does not see through their pathological deceits. In their most recent public presentations, both pathetically flawed individuals, trapped in a Matrix of their own, continue to confuse war with peace and have no clue how to distinguish the difference.
Publicly projecting one’s ownevil agenda onto an ill-fated population is an old political trick to deflect attention from one’s own sins while pointing the finger elsewhere and it would come as no surprise to discover that National Security Advisor John Bolton, who has dual citizenship with Israel, has been the key choreographer.
We can only speculate on the details of the Putin-Netanyahu conversation but it is an unlikely coincidence that Russia’s previous plan to provide its sophisticated S300 surface to air missile system to Syria has been put on the backburner and it appears the Russians took no active role to counter the Israeli offensive.
All this of course comes after the US, Israel, Saudis and their proxies suffered a humiliating defeat in Syria thanks to the Russians in the air and Iranians on the ground, both of which provided military assistance at the request of Assad.
Netanyahu’s promise to provide a ‘new and conclusive proof of a secret nuclear weapons program that Iran has been hiding for years from the international community in its secret atomic archive” proved to be nothing more than a rehash of outdated, useless talking points.
It was not an oversight that Netanyahu failed to provide his own data about Israel’s super secret nuclear weapon arsenal which has been kept top-secret since the 1960’s. Estimated at 200 nuclear warheads in a 2016 email by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former President Jimmy Carter revised his estimate upwards in 2014 to 300 Israeli nuclear warheads while in 1996 the authoritative Jane’s magazine put the number at 400 Israel nuclear warheads. If American intelligence was correct in 1986 that Israel had 200 nuclear warheads, with a production schedule of ten each year since the mid 1970’s, a more accurate current estimate could be as high as 600 Israeli nuclear warheads.
It might have been worth the price of admission to hear Netanyahu’s response to Iran’s Hassan Rouhani’s first UN visit as President in 2013 when he called for a ‘nuclear free zone’ in the Middle East? Or let’s hear Netanyahu or Trump explain how Iran signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty in 1968 with its Parliament ratifying the Treaty in 1970 while Israel has consistently refused to sign and refused to allow IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspections of its nuclear facilities? The NNPT has now been signed by 191 nations, not including Israel.
It is astonishing that after his ‘fake news’ testimony before a subservient Congress in 2002, Netanyahu continues to perpetuate the Iran lie practically word for word as he perpetuated the Iraq wmd lie in 2002:
“there is no question whatsoever, that Saddam is seeking and is working and is advancing towards the development nuclear weapons, no question whatsoever – and there is no question that once he acquires it, history shifts immediately…”
While Trump’s long anticipated declaration relied heavily on scare tactics, bombast and a barrage of belligerent, unverified accusations citing ‘new evidence’ presented at Netanyahu’s flim-flam event, Trump failed to provide one iota of evidence that Iran had not been in compliance with the Agreement. Trump failed to explain how attempts to improve the Agreement had failed and totally missed the irony when he dutifully parroted that Iran’s ‘regime has funded a long reign of chaos and terror by plundering the wealth of its own people” as if America’s history of spreading global chaos and terror remains a Deep State secret.
Within hours of Trump’s green light, Israel initiated a massive bombing attack on Iranian positions in Syria, according to Haaretz, firing from Israeli positions in the disputed Golan Heights in southwest Syria. The GH, which is within missile range of Damascus, has been occupied by Israel since the Six Day War in 1967 and remains internationally recognized as Syrian territory.
The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) reported that its Iron Dome missile defense system was deployed and intercepted some twenty incoming projectiles in what may have been an unprecedented return volley from Syria which Israel labelled as an “act of aggression”. The Iron Dome system was built for Israel by the American weapons manufacturer Raytheon and with Congress funding the system, courtesy of $705 Million from the American taxpayer.
The speed and ease with which Israel stepped in and took control has been stunning, requiring the capitulation of Trump and Putin as Israel assumed all the authority to initiate attacks with no fear of reprimand or being held accountable to anyone. With the same confident assurance since the confiscation of Arab lands for Israeli settlements began in 1947, Israel has never been a nation that respected diplomatic protocol or honored international law.
Meanwhile, Members of the US Congress continue to “sit in their places with bright, shiny faces.”
Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC.
This is the final article in a four-part series on the NDP leadership’s suppression of debate on the Palestine Resolution. Here are the first, second and third installments on the topic.
To effect change people need to know what and who they are up against. By nakedly suppressing debate on the Palestine Resolution at its recent convention the NDP leadership did internationalist minded party members the favour of clarifying that. They demonstrated the need to directly confront anti-Palestinianism within the party.
Over the next year NDPers who support Palestinian rights and care about party democracy should hound the leadership over their suppression of the Palestine Resolution. Every single elected representative, staffer, riding association executive and party activist needs to be prodded into deciding whether they side with Palestinian rights and party democracy or suppressing the Palestine Resolution and enabling ongoing Canadian complicity in Palestinian dispossession.
The best way to channel disgust with suppression of the Palestine Resolution is by forcing the party to sever its ties with Israel lobby organizations. NDP officials must stop participating in expenses-paid Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) lobbying trips to Israel and reject requests from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to speak at its conferences. They also need to remove their MPs from the Canada–Israel Parliamentary Group, stop inviting Israeli Labor Party MPs to their convention and refrain from events put on by the explicitly racist and colonial Jewish National Fund.
Any MP who takes a CIJA-funded lobbying trip to Israel should receive a deluge of emails from across the country, visits to their office by local activists and the withdrawal of any form of activist support until they apologize. MPs and party representatives need to understand that these lobbying tours may be free, but they have a political cost.
Palestine solidarity activists in Victoria should immediately launch a campaign to force Randall Garrison and Murray Rankin to withdraw from the Canada–Israel Parliamentary Group. If emails don’t do the trick, visiting their offices, questioning them at community events or occupying their offices might.
At an individual level anti-Palestinian comments should be socially stigmatized. Just like members making openly sexist or homophobic statements, individuals espousing anti-Palestinian views need to feel isolated in NDP circles.
An example of the wild anti-Palestinianism accepted in the party, the president of an NDP riding association sits on the board of the explicitly racist and colonialist Jewish National Fund. President of the Windsor-Tecumseh federal NDP, Noah Tepperman is a board member of the Windsor JNF and has funded the organization’s events in other cities. Before the party convention Tepperman sent an email to all riding associations calling on them to oppose Palestine resolutions and he has tweeted that “BDS = Racism” and “Distressed to hear Canada’s Green Party endorsed the anti-free speech/anti-Zionist/anti-Semitic BDS movement.” Heir to the southern Ontario Tepperman furniture, appliance and electronics business, Noah Tepperman should be removed from his position, just as a supporter of a White nationalist group or Christian anti-abortion activist would be.
At the convention, representatives of the NDP-aligned Broadbent Institute supported the party establishment’s move to suppress debate on the Palestine Resolution. Any donor or supporter of that organization who believes Palestinians are human beings or cares about party democracy should ask if those supporting suppression of debate were acting on behalf of the Broadbent Institute. During his time as federal party leader Ed Broadbent (1975 – 89) took a number of anti-Palestinian positions. He should be prodded to apologize and distance himself from suppression of the Palestine Resolution.
Ditto for former Ontario leader (1970-78) Stephen Lewis. Probably the loudest anti-Palestinian at the NDP convention, Janet Solberg works at the Stephen Lewis Foundation and has long worked for her brother. Does Stephen Lewis agree with his sister and will he apologize for his previous anti-Palestinian statements?
While it is essential to challenge various personal and institutional ties to Palestinian dispossession, NDP officialdom’s connections to Israel lobby groups wasn’t what drove their suppression of the Palestine Resolution. Rather, as I detailed, the party establishment’s overriding concern was media backlash. But, silencing and driving out extreme anti-Palestinian voices and disrupting the party leadership’s ties to Israel lobby groups is a more achievable medium-term objective than shifting the dominant media. Additionally, getting the NDP — a powerful political institution — to forthrightly criticize Canada’s complicity in Palestinian dispossession is necessary in order to force open space within the dominant media to challenge Israeli policy.
Confronting suppression of the Palestine Resolution and the party establishment’s ties to Israel lobby groups is also essential to constrain their capacity to repeat the same anti-democratic practices at the next convention. Putting the party leadership on the defensive over the Palestine Resolution and its ties to Israel lobby organizations also increases the likelihood that they will criticize the federal government’s indifference to Israel’s killings in Gaza, detention of Palestinian children, Donald Trump’s decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem and opposition to proper labeling of Israeli settlement wine (issues the NDP foreign critic has recently criticized). The party leadership has taken these basic steps partly as a way to head off activist pressure. Of course, a party serious about opposing Canadian complicity in Palestinian dispossession would also challenge Canada-Israel military ties, a free trade agreement that allows settlement products to enter Canada duty-free, registered charities that channel tens of millions of dollars to projects supporting Israel’s powerful military, racist institutions and illegal settlements, etc.
At a certain level the question is which ideology and individuals are at home in the NDP: Those in favor of suppressing debate on the Palestine Resolution and Canadian complicity in Palestinian dispossession or those who support Palestinian rights and party democracy.
It is necessary, for justice and democracy’s sake, that those who thwarted the Palestine Resolution come to regret their decision. They must realize that while not in control of the party machinery or dominant media, Palestine solidarity activists have righteousness on their side and wind in their sails.
Ernesto Geisel, President of Brazil, hosts a State Dinner for Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter. March 29, 1978 | Photo: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
A declassified memo from the U.S. Department of State revealed that Brazilian dictator Ernesto Geisel (1974-1979) approved summary executions of “dangerous subversive” people personally, continuing with the extrajudicial methods of his predecessors.
The document was made public back in 2015, but it wasn’t until a few days ago that Matias Spektor, an international relations professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) and a columnist at Brazilian newspaper Folha, found it as part of his research work and posted it on social media, along with a picture of Geisel and Joao Baptista Figueiredo, who later became his successor.
The document narrates a meeting between President Geisel, General Milton Tavares de Souza and General Confucio Danton de Paula Avelino, respectively outgoing and incoming chiefs of the Army Intelligence Center (CIE), along with Figueiredo, who at that time was Chief of the National Intelligence Service (SNI).
“This is the most disturbing document I’ve read in 20 years of research: Just after being sworn in, Geisel authorized the continuation of the regime’s killing policies, but it requires the Army Intelligence Center previous authorization from the Planalto Palace.”
General Milton briefed Geisel about the role of the Army Intelligence Center (CIE) against “the internal subversive target” during the presidency of Emilio Garrastazu Medici, and said that “extrajudicial methods should continue to be employed against dangerous subversives.”
He also informed Geisel that about 104 people falling under this category had been executed by the CIE in the previous year. Figueiredo supported this policy and urged Geisel to continue with it.
According to the memo, Geisel “commented on the seriousness and potentially prejudicial aspects of this policy,” and said he wanted to think about it over the weekend. He decided to go along with it, but to limit the executions to “only dangerous subversives,” and required the CIE to consult Figueiredo for approval before any execution.
The entire CIE would then be under Figueiredo’s control, blurring the line between the CIE and the SNI.
“I didn’t know Geisel had given the Planalto Palace the responsibility over summary execution decision. The government’s leadership was not only aware of the executions but also ordered them. That’s impressive, unheard of,” said Spektor.
The memo was sent by William Colby, who was then Director of Central Intelligence Agency, to then U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who also played a key role in promoting military coups against democratically elected governments in Latin America, under the subject “Decision by Brazilian President Ernesto Geisel To Continue the Summary Execution of Dangerous Subversives Under Certain Conditions” and dated April 11, 1974.
First and second paragraphs of the document (7 and 12 and a half lines) are still classified.
After the documents were picked up by Spektor, the Brazilian army stated that any classified documents that could prove Colby’s allegations of the events had been destroyed as it was stipulated by the laws of that period.
How obscenely ironic. Embassies traditionally symbolize diplomacy and peace. The opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem was occasioned by a grotesque baptism of murder of Palestinians, heralding wider war in the Middle East.
Not only that, but on the very anniversary of one of the most shameful episodes of ethnic cleansing and dispossession over the past century – the 1948 Nakba or Catastrophe for Palestinians – the US government is brazenly siding with the heirs of that historic violence, the Israeli state.
Trump’s wholesale abandonment of any shame in endorsing Israeli violations against Arab historic rights is an incitement to regional conflagration.
It’s hard to express the horror. Israeli snipers shooting unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza, while some 100 kilometers away in Jerusalem, US dignitaries and evangelical pastors were blessing the opening of Washington’s new embassy as ‘God’s work’.
US President Donald Trump’s policy in the Middle East, if you could call it “policy”, has descended into absolute lunacy. No wonder, most European states stayed away from the US reception for unveiling its new diplomatic center.
Trump’s reckless disregard for Palestinian-Israeli peace is plunging the region into a blood bath. This week’s incendiary snub to Palestinians and the wider Arab region followed his tearing up of US obligations to the Iran nuclear accord. That violation of an international treaty has left diplomats from Europe, Russia, China and Iran scrambling to salvage a deal, which if it falls apart will unleash more instability and even war in the Middle East.
When Trump announced in December the moving of his country’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem it was roundly rebuked at the United Nations. The move violates decades of international consensus that Jerusalem should be a shared capital between Palestinians and Israelis pending the outcome of peace negotiations.
Trump said his decision was merely a “reflection of reality”. Cynically, it marks US acquiescence to illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
To be fair, Washington’s decision to relocate its embassy to Jerusalem was made over 20 years ago in 1995. Presidents Clinton, GW Bush and Obama opted to delay the actual move, claiming that such a move depended on progress in peace talks. Trump has now put into action legislation that was already on the books.
But what his declaration signifies is the jettisoning of any pretense by the US of being an “honest broker” between Israelis and Palestinians. Palestinian leaders now refuse to even engage with US officials, such is their disgust.
Paradoxically, Trump is helping to clarify the situation. The US is openly backing Israeli conquest of Palestinian territory and oppression of Palestinians. Washington is now transparently complicit in criminal Israeli policy rather than hiding behind a facade of mediation.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Trump this week for “making Israel great again”. With typical chutzpah, Netanyahu urged other nations to follow suit, absurdly claiming that by relocating their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem they would facilitate peace.
The perverse logic, as proven already by the US policy, is that any chance of peace between Palestinians and Israelis is being utterly destroyed.
The hellish conditions that Palestinians are subjected to under relentless Israeli occupation are driving them to the desperate act of lining up in their thousands under the fire of Israeli snipers.
Over the past six weeks since Gaza’s population began the “Great Return March” some 50 unarmed protesters have been murdered by Israeli live fire. On the day of the US Embassy opening, dozens of more civilians were shot dead, within hours of the Jerusalem ceremony.
Israeli commanders have openly admitted that a shoot-to-kill tactic is being used whereby soldiers are even targeting children who dare to approach a separation barrier on Gaza’s eastern border with Israeli-held territory.
The Gaza protests were organized by ordinary Palestinians to highlight their desperate plea against a barbaric occupation and prevention of residents returning to their historic homes, including in Jerusalem. Some 70 per cent of Gaza’s population are descended from refugees who were displaced by Israeli settlers in the 1948 pogroms and later in the 1967 War.
Under Israeli siege, which the UN has described as illegal, Gazans are prevented from moving out of the coastal strip. Some two million people – half of whom are under 18 years old – subsist in unlivable conditions. Over 90 per cent of Gaza’s water supply is contaminated, electricity is available for only a few hours per day, fisherman are prevented from going beyond a few miles from the shore where human sewage runs directly into the sea.
As American historian Norman Finkelstein points out, Gaza is being tormented by military occupation, an inhuman blockade, massacres conducted with impunity by Israeli military, and children being poisoned. It is this context of genocide in which the recent protests are taking place.
Those protests were organized to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Israel’s declared foundation on May 14, 1948. The next day, May 15, is what the Palestinians and many supporters around the world prefer to focus on – the Catastrophe.
Trump’s decision to open the US Embassy in Jerusalem this week could not be more provocative and criminally insane.
It truly is a shockingly callous display of US support for seven decades of barbaric oppression against Palestinians and the wider Arab region.
Jerusalem is seen as a holy site for Muslims and Christians. Washington’s acquiescing to Israel’s declaration of the city as “undivided capital” of the Jewish Israeli state is an outrageous blow to hundreds of millions of people from other faiths. As well as a vandalistic swipe at world opinion based on ordinary principles of justice, morality and compassion towards the long-suffering Palestinian people.
Europe bears a heavy responsibility for the plight of Palestinians. After Hamas won the parliamentary elections in 2006, the EU and the US both moved to sanction the new Hamas government owing to its refusal to recognize the state of Israel. The Israeli siege on Gaza has thus been perpetrated with the complicity of the EU and the US, albeit the latter appearing more brazenly complicit under Trump.
European governments may be discomfited by Trump’s strident contempt for Palestinian rights and international law. But they have contributed to the present deterioration in the Middle East by pandering towards Washington’s policies of sponsoring Israeli occupation, as well as sponsoring reactionary Arab client regimes like Saudi Arabia, and fomenting illegal wars and regime-change operations.
Trump’s impetuousness and ignorance – no doubt encouraged by multi-million-dollar donations from rich Jewish Americans like Sheldon Adelson – has set the US on a collision course with the Arab masses from his insolent indifference to their rights. As if that could not be any more combustible, Trump is pushing the same Israeli-Saudi despot agenda of hostility towards Iran, as evinced by the nuclear accord sabotage.
Europe has for too long tied itself to the shipwreck that is US policy in the Middle East. Surely, European governments must realize by now that if explosive violence and conflict is to be avoided in the Middle East, they must abandon the US shipwreck and begin asserting an independent foreign policy.
A genuine peace process advocating for long-neglected Palestinian rights, and repudiating US attempts to collapse the Iran nuclear accord are two immediate matters for the Europeans to claw back some sanity and respect – before it’s too late.
… At every corner, we are urged to simply believe what we are told. Whether it is about believing Porton Down and MI6 about “novichok”, or believing the White Helmets about Sarin, or believing the FBI about “collusion”, we are presented with no facts, just assertions from authority. Those who question those assertions are deemed “bots” at best or “traitors” at worst.
Well here, fellow traitors, are the Top Ten reasons to question anything and everything the CIA – or any intelligence agency – has ever told you. … Read full article
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Saree Makdisi’s latest book is Palestine Inside Out.
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