“A huge loss.” “A cherished friend and mentor.” “His appointment said as much about his greatness as it did America’s greatness.” Tributes are pouring in after the death of Henry Kissinger, America’s best known diplomat.
Kissinger died Wednesday at the age of 100 at his home in Kent, Connecticut. Having served as US Secretary of State for eight years under the presidencies of Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon, Kissinger strove to maintain global US dominance during a time when it was in doubt. His influence molded America’s foreign policy for years to come.
But not everyone celebrates the empire built by the highly consequential statesman.
An Argentine speaks with Sputnik about how her family was affected.
“What it really is, is a kingdom built on the ashes of genocide,” said Agustina Montes in an interview with Sputnik.
Montes is an Argentine citizen now living in New Zealand. Inflation neared 150% in her home country last month amidst an economic crisis that’s wreaked havoc on Argentina for half a decade.
Compounding the financial disruption, Montes sees an Argentine society still torn apart by its recent history.
“Genocide denialism is at an all time high,” laments the 37-year-old. “With the elections in Argentina, it’s more pressing than ever. Politicians make barely veiled threats about military uprising. We know what that can mean.”
Argentina’s vice president-elect Victoria Villarruel has downplayed the brutality of the South American country’s seven-year military dictatorship. Villarruel made headlines last month when she criticized UNESCO’s decision to declare Buenos Aires’ ESMA Navy school a World Heritage site. Tens of thousands passed through the facility before being tortured or killed.
Among them were Montes’ uncles, Miguel and Guillermo.
Reorganization
The “National Reorganization Process” was the benign name for the regime that seized power in 1976.
Argentines knew it was a military dictatorship. They’d seen several throughout the 20th century. If the generals sought to “reorganize” Argentine society it was through the barrel of a gun.
Amid the violence, one figure in Washington provided Argentina’s new rulers with the legitimacy they craved.
“We have followed events in Argentina closely,” said then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to the country’s new foreign minister Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti. “We wish the new government well. We wish it will succeed. We will do what we can to help it succeed.”
“If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly.”
For the junta, the things that had to be done were kidnapping, torture, and murder. The regime faced pressure from armed resistance groups. Some of them aligned with charismatic former President Juan Perón. Many were socialists. The regime was intent on snuffing them out.
“I have a ‘desaparecido’ on each side of my family,” Montes told Sputnik, using the Spanish term for people who vanished during that period. “My dad’s brother Guillermo and my mum’s brother Miguel Angel.”
“Miguel Angel Fiorito – Milan to his family – was taken on July 12th, 1976, so pretty early in the dictatorship. My uncle was 21 and very idealistic, I’ve been told he was very funny and warm. He worked in the villas, or slums, and had a very keen sense of social justice.”
“Guillermo Montes was my dad’s brother. He was a bit older when he was taken, about 27 or 28. He made it to 1977. He was a massive man, called ‘the Yeti’ by his companions. He went to work one day and never came back.”
In the repressive fog of the time, “disappeared” became the euphemism for those who fell prey to the reorganization. The word was terrifying as much because of the uncertainty it implied as anything else. Families rarely received closure. “The army never spoke,” says Montes.
Parents throughout the country sought answers. The Madres de Plaza de Mayo was formed when a group of mothers came together in Buenos Aires’ central square. The group became known for their unique form of silent protest, wearing white headscarves symbolizing the cloth diapers of their disappeared children.
Montes said her grandmother knew of the Madres, but “she lacked the political beliefs they had. She loved her son but didn’t believe that what he had done was right.”
Politics provoked sharp divisions in Argentine society in those days.
“My mum’s family was pretty pro-dictatorship up until that point [that Miguel was kidnapped],” says Montes, “mostly because they were anti-Perón.” Montes explained that Miguel began Argentina’s required military service in March of 1976.
“He was also a part of the Montoneros, one of the leftist anti-dictatorship movements. Growing up in the ‘90s, where the rhetoric was that everyone involved in the guerrilla was a terrorist, I had a deep sense of shame about this. We did not discuss politics in my house.”
“My uncles were very present ghosts but we would not talk about them.”
The Chilean Method
The divisions within Montes’ family mirrored those throughout Latin America. Cuba’s revolution sent shockwaves across the region with the reverberations felt at the highest echelons of American power. They only intensified as grassroots movements approached political legitimacy.
Washington’s worst fears were realized in 1970, when the socialist Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile.
“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people,” said Kissinger during a closed-door meeting with Nixon. “The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”
The CIA immediately went to work destabilizing Allende’s democratic government, infiltrating Chile’s trade unions, provoking strikes, fomenting opposition within the military. Within three years Allende was overthrown in a military coup backed by Kissinger. The country’s new leader General Augusto Pinochet declared war on the left, and Santiago’s national soccer stadium was filled with dissidents waiting to be tortured, jailed, and killed.
Nixon’s embrace of Pinochet was justified under the Cold War banner of anticommunism. Socialists, democratically-elected as they may be, were also simply bad for business as it turned out. Concerned about their investments in Chile, the US-based International Telephone & Telegraph Corporation funneled millions of dollars toward forces plotting Allende’s downfall.
Three years later, Argentina’s military government sought a similar approach to repress opposition. “Their theory is that they can use the Chilean method,” aide Harry Shlaudeman informed Kissinger in 1976. “That is, to terrorize the opposition – even killing priests and nuns and others.”
By then an axis of dictatorship stretched across the Southern Cone, with American-backed juntas in Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, and now Argentina. Under the coordination of the US Central Intelligence Agency the governments coordinated their efforts in a campaign of state terror known as Operation Condor.
“I don’t remember the first time I heard or read his name,” said Montes of Kissinger. “My family didn’t speak about this, and back then this whole period of Argentine history was completely erased from history classes at school.”
“I think of his name in proximity to the names of our dictators: Videla, Massera. Kissinger, the CIA, ‘Plan Condor.’ Like shadowy figures behind it all.”
Montes is likewise unsure about what drew her uncles towards issues of social justice.
“They didn’t get that from their families,” she insisted. “None of my grandparents were particularly socialist, quite the contrary. I believe they saw the disparities, the injustice all around them. But they were both middle class. My mum always says Miguel would give the clothes off his back if it meant helping someone else.”
The Latin American left was a diverse array of forces. Some admired the guerrilla tactics of Che Guevara. Others simply advocated for Western European-style labor reforms. Still, others professed Liberation Theology, a strain of Catholicism that stressed concern for the poor.
But after Cuba’s popular uprising against US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista trended towards socialism, any movement from below could be suppressed in the name of fighting the communist threat.
“Some people still say that my uncles and others like them were terrorists,” claims Montes, “that they did all sorts of horrible things, bombed child care centers and schools. Where is the evidence of that?”
“And if they did, why did the military – that was in control of the government, the police and the judicial system – not put them through a trial and in jail? Why did they disappear them and destroy any evidence and witnesses of what they allegedly did?”
Miguel and Guillermo stood firm by their beliefs, even as the military consolidated its rule.
“There is resentment towards them from my parents and grandparents,” says Montes. “They both could have escaped Argentina. They chose to stay knowing what could happen to them.”
Heaven and Earth
Kissinger stayed on as secretary of state through 1977. Then-US President Jimmy Carter continued to support the junta until the following year; when he moved to end arms transfers, Kissinger registered his opposition by attending the 1978 World Cup in Argentina as the personal guest of dictator Jorge Videla.
US relations with the regime were restored and expanded after the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 as the CIA sought their assistance in training Central American death squads.
Lieutenant General Videla’s government shaped up to be perhaps the most repressive of all those of the Condor era. Of the 60,000 who were killed across the continent, it’s estimated that around half of them were Argentines.
Montes’ grandparents were determined to make sure Miguel and Guillermo weren’t among them.
“[Miguel] was taken and my grandma, who was also widowed around that time, started moving ‘heaven and earth,’ as we say, to find him,” she said. “She was threatened by police and even by the church when she went there, they told her she would end up just like him.”
“My parents met through their mothers’ – my grannies’ – fight to find out what happened to their sons. I used to think it was a very romantic story when I was a child. But the reality is that two very broken people met each other because of one of the most horrific things that happened to them.”
The final years of the dictatorship saw mounting economic instability. The military attempted to distract from the matter by waging war against the United Kingdom for control of the Falkland Islands. When they failed, the days of the junta were numbered.
Liberal democracy was restored in 1983. Time went by, but Miguel and Guillermo were still gone. President Carlos Menem’s pardon of the junta leaders six years later suggested a desire to forget about the nightmare of Argentina’s Dirty War.
It was only in 2003, when new investigations were opened, that the relatives of Argentina’s desaparecidos finally saw the potential to receive some closure. For Montes’ family the process would take over a decade.
“We didn’t get to find out what happened to my uncles until very recently, almost 40 years after the fact,” says Montes. “The only reason we know what happened is because of witnesses, people that survived, who saw them.”
In that moment Miguel and Guillermo reappeared, but only in memory as Montes’ family imagined their tragic last days.
“They were both taken to the same concentration camp, the ESMA. Miguel Angel was tortured with electricity until he died. We don’t know what happened after, his body was likely burned.”
“Guillermo was able to survive the electric torture. He was drugged and put on a plane, and dropped alive in the River Plate.”
Very Present Ghosts
Montes recounts the horrible toll of her uncles’ kidnappings on her family.
“My mum was around 14 years old when her brother disappeared and her dad died. That family was destroyed… Most of the people this happened to have been destroyed: mentally, physically. My parents have had substance abuse issues, mental health issues.”
“A lot of people in my country want us to ‘move on’ from what happened, to stop talking about it. But how can you do that when the collective trauma still remains?”
Montes now feels much differently about her uncles – especially Miguel, who she’s heard many stories about.
“I have since learned a lot about my uncle and believe he was an incredible man. It feels weird to say, when he died at 21. But what made Miguel and Guillermo literally give their lives for what they believed in? I don’t know. I wish I got to meet them, to talk to them.”
Among the many condolences and the judicious praise of Kissinger as a friend, a pioneer, and even a peacemaker, the eulogy of former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk may contain the most truth: “He was deeply skeptical of those who would aim to try to achieve a peaceful world. He was much more focused on establishing order because order was more reliable than peace.”
“I’m not surprised,” responded Montes. “Order for most, freedom for few.”
And what about George Bush’s comment, that Kissinger was a symbol of “America’s greatness?”
“I feel like they are saying the quiet part out loud. He is a symbol of America’s imperialism,” says Montes.
“Living in South America – and I’m sure this is true of many other so-called ‘Third World countries’ – we get sold this glossy idea of the US, you know? The Land of the Free, of Opportunity, of Freedom and Dreams.”
“I used to be enamored with the US! I grew up watching US TV shows and movies. I learned English from watching ‘Friends.’ It’s only when you grow up a bit that you start seeing it for what it is.”
The Palestinian American scholar Edward Said once remarked:
Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort.
And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn’t trust the evidence of one’s eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice.
When asked about the influence of the junta – and that of Kissinger and the United States – Montes is unequivocal.
“Their legacy is seen in the poverty in the villas, in the sunken eyes of hungry kids all over the world, in the missing but remembered, in the children of women who were taken that we are still looking for. It’s still very much there.”
But Montes doesn’t think the final chapter has been written in the story of Latin America. “I wholeheartedly believe in justice.”
After seven weeks of relentless Israeli bombing throughout Gaza, according to the modest estimates of the UN as of November 23 (right before a humanitarian ceasefire came into effect), more than 14,800 people have been killed in the enclave, including about 6,000 children and 4,000 women.
While these Israeli attacks on Gaza are by far the worst yet, with Israel dropping a reported 40,000 tons of explosives in less than two months, it is worth recalling that Israel has repeatedly waged assaults against the Palestinians of Gaza over the past 15 years.
Living in Gaza for years between late 2008 to March 2013, I was witness to two major Israeli assaults (and countless smaller ones over the years). Here, I will highlight what I saw and documented, to show that the horrific Israeli war crimes we are seeing coming out of Gaza are not new, even if they are exponentially worse this time around.
On December 27, 2008, Israel unloaded 100 bombs on Gaza within the first minutes of its Operation Cast Lead. The Shifa Hospital (Gaza’s main), was receiving the dead and the injured non-stop. The ICU beds were filled, and doctors told me that as soon as one patient died another took their place.
Together with a handful of international activists in Gaza I made the decision to ride in ambulances with Palestinian medics as they searched for the wounded and took them to hospitals. We did so aware that Israel barred journalists from Gaza, and knowing that, in the past, medics and ambulances had been targets for the Israeli army.
I would see this first-hand soon after first joining the medics, when an Israeli sniper targeted the ambulance I rode in, injuring one medic in the leg when one of at least 14 bullets hit the rear of the car as we sped away.
This was during the January 7, 2009 “humanitarian cease-fire” hours. The Geneva Conventions explicitly state that “medical personnel searching, collecting, transporting or treating the wounded should be protected and respected in all circumstances.”
Some days prior, Israeli shelling had killed Arafa abd al-Dayem, a medic I knew and had accompanied. He was rescuing injured Palestinians, standing at the rear of the ambulance when it was hit with a shell containing flechettes. Flechette munitions are designed to spray thousands of small metal darts in a wide arc, increasing the chance of injuries and death. The dart’s sharp head is designed to break away, increasing the amount of internal damage done. Another 21-year-old medic, a volunteer, was injured, his legs lacerated.
The day after Arafa was killed, the Israeli army fired three times within two minutes on the neighborhood where family and neighbors had gathered to pay their respects. The shelling, again with flechettes, killed six more civilians, including a young pregnant mother, and injured 25 more.
The night the Israeli land invasion began, on January 3, shells flew dangerously close to the Red Crescent station in the district east of Jabaliya I was then based in, when not in one of the ambulances. By morning it was impossible to access, and by the end of the war, we returned to find it riddled with bullet holes from machine-gun fire and blasted by shelling.
The ambulances and their medical equipment were some of the most bare-bone I’ve seen, supplies depleted by the long Israeli siege and blockade of Gaza. The medics drove quickly over bumpy roads to get to the people in need, wasted little time collecting them, and bolted away, trying to avoid being targeted by the Israeli army.
After invading the Tel al-Hawa district in the third week of its war on Gaza, the Israeli army repeatedly bombed the Quds hospital, while Israeli snipers targeted Palestinians fleeing residential areas. I was with an ambulance that went to evacuate civilians from the hospital and take them to the Shifa hospital (which had no space), going back repeatedly to save Palestinian civilians, each time at risk of being shot by Israeli soldiers.
By the end of the 2009 war, the Israeli army had killed 23 medics, and injured 57 more, destroying at least nine ambulances and damaging 16 more. None of the journalists or medics that I knew had protective body armor – including me. Given the massive bombs which Israel was dropping on us, it would’ve made little difference.
One evening, after giving an interview to RT about what I’d seen while riding in ambulances in the extremely dangerous areas of Gaza’s north, just after finishing the interview, Israel shelled the building at least seven times. We scrambled down ten flights of stairs, thankfully intact. Incidentally, in 2021, Israeli airstrikes destroyed the same building as well as another, collectively housing 20 media outlets.
During and after the 2008-2009 war, I took countless testimonies of Palestinian parents who said their children were deliberately murdered by Israeli soldiers: shot point blank, drone struck during ceasefire hours, shot by a sniper. In Shifa hospital, I met the mutilated survivors whose home had been shelled with white phosphorus munitions, killing six family members, including an infant burned alive. I followed up on their story afterwards, learning more chilling details and seeing their bombed-out home with my own eyes. Graffiti, apparently left on the walls by Israeli soldiers, included hate messages and threats, like “it will hurt more next time.” (Warning: disturbing images)
In the last two months, Israel has repeatedly bombed schools, including UN-affiliated ones that housed displaced Palestinians seeking safe shelter. It did the same back in January 2009, bombing numerous UN schools, including the Fakhoura school that has suffered in the current war as well.
I could, unfortunately, write pages more on what I saw and heard in those three weeks of Israeli bombing, and also during the November 2012 Israeli campaign (when I was based at a hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza), but for the sake of some brevity will stop. What did not stop were the Israeli bombings and shooting immediately post ceasefire, both in 2009 and in 2012.
But almost as brutal as the Israeli bombing campaigns has been the over-16-year-long strangling siege on Gaza. I’ve written about it at length, but which in summary it has caused a vast increase in poverty, food insecurity, malnutrition, anemia, stunted growth, diabetes, treatable illnesses going untreated, water that was 95% undrinkable (already back in 2014).
On November 24 of this year, a four-day ceasefire was implemented, to allow for exchange of Hamas hostages for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, as well as for deliveries of desperately needed food, water, fuel and medical aid, of which the 2.4-million population of Gaza had been deprived for weeks. Unsurprisingly, there were reports of the truce being violated, including snipers firing on Palestinian civilians.
In the first day after the ceasefire expired, over 100 Palestinians were killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, as Israel started to deliver the promised “mother of all thumpings,” ostensibly to Hamas militants.
There is no space for me here to outline all the horrors inflicted upon Gaza in the past two months, nor do I need to: social media and Telegram channels are filled with horrific scenes of schools housing displaced civilians getting bombarded again, entire blocks of refugee camps bombed, hospitals and churches housing tens of thousands of displaced civilians bombed, white phosphorous again rained down on densely inhabited residential areas, and on, and on.
What I do want to highlight is that there is no doubt in my mind, or in the minds of numerous other international reporters and observers who have seen the situation on the ground first-hand, that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, and the intent, if not the reality, is genocidal.
We have globally watched as Israel commits the definition of genocide: “The intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” Raz Segal, a genocide expert, wrote of this after only one week of Israel’s bombardment, since which Israel has committed uncountable heinous crimes.
In late October, former Director of the UN’s New York (OHCHR) office, Craig Mokhiber, resigned from his position in protest and disgust, stating, “Once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the organization that we serve appears powerless to stop it. As someone who has investigated human rights in Palestine since the 1980s, lived in Gaza as a UN human rights advisor in the 1990s, and carried out several human rights missions to the country before and since, this is deeply personal to me.”
He explicitly stated that Israel’s “wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people… coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt, this is a textbook case of genocide.”
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).
Canada’s top politicians were recently served a notice of intention to seek prosecution for aiding and abetting Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, National Revenue Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau and Justice Minister Arif Virani were warned they could be liable and face charges before the International Criminal Court for aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes.
During the past six weeks Israeli ministers have repeatedly expressed their genocidal intent towards what they’ve called “human animals” in Gaza. Israel has cut off water, food, fuel and electricity to the open-air prison and one minister even declared a desire to “eliminate everything” in the coastal strip of 2.2 million. Tens of thousands of houses, hospitals, Mosques, schools and other buildings have been destroyed. So far over 30,000 Palestinians have been injured and 14,000 killed, including 6,000 children. As the notice to Canadian ministers’ highlights, a director at the United Nations, Craig Mokhiber, called Israeli policy a “text-book case of genocide.”
Ottawa has enabled Israel’s bid to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from a small part of what’s left of their historic homeland. During a visit foreign minister Melanie Joly offered Canada’s approval for Israel’s genocidal siege and violence. In describing the meeting a week into its onslaught, Israel’s foreign minister Eli Cohen boasted, “We continue to mobilize the world for the fight against Hamas! I met today with Canada’s Foreign Minister Melanie Joly, who also came to support Israel.”
At a rhetorical level Trudeau has repeatedly supported Israel’s “right to defend itself” while defence minister Bill Blair declared that “Hamas has to be eliminated.” At the same time Canadian officials have largely refused to condemn Israel’s war crimes and have rebuffed calls for a ceasefire.
At the United Nations Canada abstained on a General Assembly resolution calling for “protection of civilians and upholding legal and humanitarian obligations.” It was backed by 120 countries.
Beyond the diplomatic sphere, Canada has offered more concrete assistance. After Hamas’ October 7 attack the Canadian Air Force flew 30 Israeli reservists back into the country. With flights evacuating Canadians from Tel Aviv to Athens, military aircraft transported Israeli reservists in the other direction.
Alongside assisting Israeli reservists to return, Canadian special forces were dispatched to Israel. The stated reason for the deployment of these soldiers is to assist the embassy with security and evacuations. That may be true. But the Canadians may have a more direct role in Gaza and — at a minimum — the deployment reflects Canada-Israel military co-operation.
Through the Five Eyes and NATO the Canadian military has significant ties with its Israeli counterparts. Bilaterally, Canada and Israel both have military attachés in each other’s countries and top military officials regularly visit each other. The Israeli Air Force trains in Canada and for 15 years Canadian troops training Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank have coordinated with their Israeli counterparts. Canada also has a “border management and security” agreement with Israel, even though the two countries do not share a border.
The Canada-Israel Industrial Research and Development Fund has pumped tens of millions of dollars into joint research ventures between the countries’ military companies. In recent years Canada has exported a little more than $20 million worth of arms to Israel annually (Canadian weapons makers sell many millions of dollars more in components to US firms that arm Israel.) But Canada is a signatory to the UN Arms Trade Treaty, which is designed to limit weapons from entering conflict zones and preventing their use by human rights violators.
As detailed in the notice of intention to prosecute, the Trudeau government has failed to fulfill its obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty and Canada’s Export and Import Permits Act despite repeated calls by the opposition NDP to end arms sales to Israel. The intention to prosecute also cites the government’s failure to stop illegal recruitment for the IDF or Canadian charities from unlawfully assisting Israel’s military.
Private organizations and Israeli officials have long recruited in Canada. Three years ago, a multi-faceted campaign was launched calling on the federal government to apply charges under the Foreign Enlistment Act against those “recruiting” or “inducing” Canadians to assist the Israeli military.
The government immediately sought to downplay the issue after they were delivered a formal complaint and an open letter signed by Noam Chomsky, Roger Waters, filmmaker Ken Loach, author Yann Martel and 150 others. Responding to a Le Devoir reporter’s question on the matter then Justice Minister David Lametti simply said, “it’s up to the police to investigate” any violation of an act that states “any person who, within Canada, recruits or otherwise induces any person or body of persons to enlist or to accept any commission or engagement in the armed forces of any foreign state or other armed forces operating in that state is guilty of an offence.”
The Trudeau government hasn’t simply downplayed illegal IDF recruitment. They’ve boosted it. In January 2020 the Canadian embassy in Tel Aviv hosted a pizza party to celebrate the 78 Canadians fighting in the Israeli military.
The government has also been indifferent to other illegal forms of support for the Israeli military. Many of the 200+ Canadian-based Israel-focused registered charities assist the Israeli military in contravention of Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) rules, which state that “increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of Canada’s armed forces is charitable, but supporting the armed forces of another country is not.”
The HESEG Foundation, Canadian Zionist Cultural Association (CZCA) and many other registered charities assist the IDF. But the CRA has been slow to apply its rules to Israel-focused charities.
The Trudeau government’s indifference to Canadian law has enabled Israeli impunity. Ditto for Ottawa’s indifference to international law. In 2020 Ottawa pressed the International Criminal Court to stop investigating Israeli war crimes. Their letter said it didn’t believe the ICC had jurisdiction over Palestine and implied Canada could sever its funding if the ICC pursued an investigation of Israeli crimes. In a similar move, three months ago Ottawa sought to block a World Court opinion on Palestine. Canada submitted a statement opposing an International Court of Justice advisory opinion called for by a UN General Assembly resolution titled “Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”.
To protect Israel from criticism the Trudeau government created a special envoy to combat antisemitism and formally adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which is designed to marginalize those criticizing Palestinian dispossession. The Trudeau government also sued to block proper labels on wines from illegal settlements while expanding the Canada-Israel free trade agreement that grants duty free status to products produced in illegal West Bank settlements.
Since taking office in 2015 the Trudeau government has voted against nearly 100 UN resolutions, often supported by most of the world, upholding Palestinian rights. They’ve also repeatedly justified Israeli violence against Palestinians while mostly ignoring its brutal blockade of Gaza, demolition of Palestinian homes in the West Bank and growing Jewish supremacy inside its 1948 borders.
The notice to prosecute was delivered by activists to the ministers’ offices in Toronto, Ottawa, Sherbrooke and Montreal. Subsequently the lawyers driving the initiative held a press conference to explain the legal process behind the notice of intention to seek prosecution. A few Canadian media reported on it, but it was widely covered in international pro-Palestinian outlets.
The notice of intention to seek prosecution concludes:
“In order to reduce the risk of further complicity, the Government of Canada must immediately take the following diplomatic and economic measures:
1. Call for a ceasefire to prevent further loss of life in Gaza;
2. Call for secure provision of meaningful humanitarian aid to Gaza;
3. Issue a public statement condemning Israel’s breaches of international law;
4. Insist that Israel fully comply with international law;
5. Cancel all Canadian permits for arms exports to Israel;
6. Prosecute those recruiting Canadian volunteers for Israel’s armed forces; and
7. Prevent Canadian charities from using donations to benefit Israel’s armed forces.”
The least Canadians should be able to expect of their government is adherence to international law.
Americans remain largely ignorant about the extent to which foreign influence pervades the United States government, and I am not referring to the fraudulent claims made by Hillary Clinton that Russian has interfered materially in US elections. The real threat comes from elsewhere. Few outside the government itself are likely to be aware of the extent to which the state of Israel and its domestic affiliate-lobby operating out of Washington and New York have corrupted the United States political system, to the point where nurturing and enabling the Jewish state in its ambitions to dominate much of the Middle East has become effectively US policy. As the exchanges surrounding the recent fighting in Gaza, rightly referred to as a war crime and ethnic cleansing, perhaps even the first steps in a planned genocide, demonstrate that even when the US has genuine interests at stake Israel believes itself empowered to say “no” to the president of the United States. The assault on Gaza and the ongoing killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians started again on Friday after a week long pause for hostage/prisoner exchanges. It will continue and Washington is complicit in the deaths as it has politically shielded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government no matter what it does while also arming and funding the Israeli actions.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon once said that “We the Jewish people control America.” Indeed, the Israeli dominance of the “fools on the hill” in DC has been carefully contrived, cultivated and sustained. One prime example is the regular rush to the Israeli door whenever Congress is in recess. It is not widely reported how large gaggles of congressmen usually drawn in separate groups from each major party travel to Israel on all expenses paid trips where they are wined and dined and subjected to round after round of presentations that drill into their otherwise empty heads all the virtues of Israel and what it represents. This is propaganda combined with indoctrination at its finest with many “facts” presented by the speakers conveniently fabricated to support Israel’s perpetual victimhood and to hide the fact that Israel is a strategic liability for the US rather than an actual ally or asset. Nor is it a democracy. It is a formula for dissimulation and lying that worked with the Jewish officials in the Pentagon under George W. Bush to provoke a war against Saddam Hussein that killed one million Iraqis and cost the US taxpayer nearly $2 trillion.
The trips to Israel are funded by the “educational” affiliate of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) called the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF). One might reasonably ask why an organization connected to AIPAC, which describes itself on its website as having the “mission” to “…strengthen, protect and promote the US-Israel relationship in ways that enhance the security of the United States and Israel,” should be able to fund the annual mass migration of congress-critters to promote Israeli interests without having to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) as an agent of the Jewish state’s government? The answer is actually quite simple. Congress and the Justice Department have been so corrupted by pro-Israel money and other manifestations of Jewish power that they do not enforce the law when it comes to Israel. The venal creatures in Congress are a large part of why that is so.
And the trips are structured in a way that discourages any actual discussions of real issues affecting the two countries. The payoff is exceptional from Israel’s point of view, with the United States serving as, in Netanyahu’s own words, a near unlimited source of money and weapons from a country in thrall, an “America [that] is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction” possessing “an inherently dupable people.”
One particularly tone-deaf recent trip to Israel occurred in 2019. In the wake of two heavily reported mass killings in Dayton and El Paso that were attributed both by the media and the Democrats to “racism” a senior US Congressman led a delegation of 41 of his Democratic Party colleagues plus spouses on a week-long luxury all-expenses-paid trip to Israel, which is one of the few countries in the world that defines its full citizenship as a matter of race and religion and which was at that time as now widely criticized for its human rights record. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland led the annual excursion, having made the pilgrimage to Israel more than fifteen times. “I am pleased to join so many House Democrats in traveling to Israel to reaffirm our support for a critical US ally and to continue learning about the opportunities and the challenges facing Israel and the Middle East,” he said shortly before departing for Tel Aviv.
Other politicians at state levels have followed the federal government lead by making their way to Israel to kiss Benjamin Netanyahu’s ring. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is a presidential aspirant, has gone way overboard in expressing his love for the Jewish state. He transported his whole cabinet to Jerusalem to publicize his legislation to combat what he views as antisemitism and has followed through on that by banning Palestinian student groups at the state universities. He also opposes allowing Palestinian immigrants into the US because they are “antisemites.”
More recently, California governor Gavin Newsom has made the pilgrimage trip and his office has released his comments on just how wonderful Israel is. He wrote his heart out, meaning that the memo is totally phony and contrived bullshit which demonstrates no sympathy at all for the tens of thousands of Palestinian victims: “As I reflect back on the extraordinary people I just met today in Israel, I am reminded of the deep connections between my home state and this country. A country that has faced many dark times before, and certainly is in one now. But amid this present struggle against terrorists are stories of unimaginable heroism — and unspeakable tragedy. I grieved with families in mourning, I met with young soldiers fresh from bomb shelters and battlefields, and I sat with leaders who bear the responsibility of response to it all. Despite the horror, what I saw and heard from the people of Israel was a profound sense of resilience. A commitment to community and common purpose, especially in these most difficult of times. That’s the Israeli spirit. And it’s also the California spirit…”
Republican presidential wannabe Chris Christie has also recently shown up in the Jewish state to kiss the ring and we expect that Nikki Haley will soon arrive bowing and scraping, particularly as it is Jewish money honoring her passion for Israel that is floating her campaign. And there is lots of love even at the bureaucratic level in a number of states to make sure Israel is getting enough American money. In some states including Virginia Israel trade commissions have been funded which have benefited Israeli businesses and investors much more than local workers or companies. In Virginia the commission is staffed by American Jews and Israelis even though it is funded by the state.
The Israeli power over Congress is also reflected in billions of tax dollars that flow from the US Treasury to the Jewish state each year in spite of the fact that Israel is a wealthy country. Also one might consider the White House’s supine behavior vis-a-vis Netanyahu and its large percentage of senior level staff appointments that are given to Jews. Donald Trump gave away the house to Netanyahu by moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, approving the annexation of the Golan Heights, and giving the Israeli government a free hand to “deal with” the illegally occupied Palestinian areas on the West Bank and Gaza, which has produced thousands of Arab arrests without trial. Trump’s Ambassador to Israel was his lawyer David Friedman, who spent four years covering for Israel and represented its interests rather than those of the United States. Biden arguably has done even worse by becoming complicit in war crimes by enabling Netanyahu and his band of criminals to perform a developing genocide in Gaza.
One must look at how the power of the Lobby has influenced senior staffing decisions coming from the White House in Israel’s favor because that is where foreign policy is made. President Joe Biden personally considers himself to be a “Zionist.” The president’s Chief of Staff and the State Department’s top three officials have been Zionist Jews. Jews also head Treasury, Homeland Security, the Office of National Intelligence, the Justice Department, the National Security Council and the deputy director slot at CIA.
Regarding some other appointments that smell very bad, two recent stories stand out. The first, entitled “Tel Aviv’s Man in Washington”, comes from journalist James Carden. It concerns Amos Hochstein who, has been reportedly tapped as President Joe Biden senior adviser for consultations with top Israeli officials in order to mediate between Israel and Lebanon. Hochstein is an odd choice as he was born and raised in Jerusalem and is a Jewish Israeli-US dual national who served in the Israeli Defense Forces in the early 1990s and who still has a mother and father living in Israel. He moved to Washington after military service and began his unusually rapid ascent to the highest levels of the US government, beginning with a staff position for Jewish Congressman Sam Gejdenson and then as Staff Director of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It is not clear how he obtained a security clearance given his background, but he obviously was given highly sensitive assignments. Carden cites the Lebanese news source L’Orient which reported that Hochstein, as a congressional staffer in the 1990s,” met with an Iraqi Foreign Ministry official to discuss a plan to resettle Palestinians in Iraq in return for sanctions relief.” This background suggests that Hochstein is a bit of a specialist in removing Palestinians from Israel.
After that job, Hochstein joined the Obama administration, eventually being placed in charge of the energy portfolio at the State Department, an astonishing leap in status for a man billed as “Biden’s favorite energy guy” who appears to have no college degree. And what about a biographical sketch that mentions Hochstein’s ownership interests in two Washington restaurants and a movie theater? And then there is his obtaining a well remunerated board seat on the Ukrainian state oil and gas giant Naftogaz, which positively exudes a Hunter Biden odor? And it was reported that early in the Biden administration, Hochstein was the president’s choice to lead efforts to block or destroy the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which presumably would have inter alia enhanced his own likely financial interests in Ukrainian energy companies.
Carden also poses the big question, which is “How could someone of Hochstein’s (opaque) background possibly be viewed as an honest broker in the Middle East?” He responds to that himself with “He isn’t” and then goes on to explain “The practice of appointing foreign nationals in sensitive positions of public trust are wildly inappropriate and lead, inevitably, to a subversion of US national interests. As Biden and his staff of bought and paid for political appointees drag us deeper and deeper into two wars 5,000 miles from our shores, the pernicious influence of foreign nationals at the highest levels of the US government is a danger the American people need to awaken to.”
To that expert analysis I would add that naming an Israeli as US-envoy for dealing with a highly manipulative Israel is completely delusional. Hochstein will lean strongly towards benefitting his country, which is Israel, and when it comes to energy there are large gas and oil fields just off the Gazan coast, which would fall into Israeli hands if the Gazans were completely eliminated. The fields are worth many billions of dollars. It will be interesting to watch the development of what Hochstein will contrive to hand them over to his Jewish countrymen while also benefitting his own interests.
The other story is similar in that it illustrates why you should not send Israelis or even American Jews who feel very strongly about Israel to deal with the Israeli government or even anywhere near the Middle East. I say this not to punish them for being Jewish but rather to avoid placing them in situations where there would be a presumption of serious potential conflict of interest. A former senior US official fitting that profile is facing a backlash after being caught on video included on the link repeatedly harassing a halal food vendor in New York and aggressively calling for the deaths of more Gazan children. Stuart Seldowitz previously served as deputy director of the United States Department of State’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs where he must have been quite a lot of fun to be around. How does a man like that get a senior diplomatic post dealing with the Middle East? Well, the only answer must be that he is given the job precisely because he is Jewish and will do the “right thing” for the state of Israel. And you wonder why US foreign policy might be politely described as “completely screwed up”? It did not happen by accident!
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
You might think that a government faced with a barbaric public stabbing of schoolchildren and an unprecedented night of rioting in its capital city would extend condolences to the victims, take a deep breath, and try to figure out how a city managed to spiral out of control on its watch. But instead, Thursday’s riots in Dublin were met by a shallow, one-dimensional analysis by all of the key authorities involved: to blame the “far right.”
The Irish government would have us believe that the most destructive riot in Dublin in living memory was not a symptom of failed governance, but the result of an ideological fringe group going on a looting spree. That is a suspiciously convenient narrative for the powers that be, for it absolves them of all responsibility for losing control of the city. By fingering a Far Right fringe, public officials can wash their hands of any role they themselves may have played in bringing the city to the brink of anarchy.
But blaming these riots on the “far right” only serves as an excuse for not engaging in serious reflection about the deeper causes of this incendiary atmosphere, and the ensuing events. These events did not come out of nowhere and cannot be simplistically reduced to the work of a fringe “far right” mob. “Far right” talk is an excuse for not thinking hard about what led up to this and how public authorities lost control of Dublin’s city centre.
Of course, any sane and sensible person would recognise that going on a looting spree and setting fire to trams and buses is an absolutely destructive, anti-social and counterproductive way to react to a horrible crime. And given that there is documentary evidence that some of the rioters used explicitly anti-immigrant rhetoric, yes, there was undeniably an element of “Far Right” sentiment at work in these riots, if, by that, we mean indiscriminate hatred and anger directed toward immigrants in general.
Nonetheless, to suggest that Thursday’s chaotic scenes can be blamed exclusively on the “Far Right” would be profoundly disingenuous. To begin with, many of the “hooligans” that joined the riots seemed at least as interested in looting shops and finding an excuse to set something on fire as in joining a political movement. Secondly, even if there were important xenophobic elements among the rioters, this does not explain how a city can be so fragile as to succumb to chaos and looting in a few hours.
The attempt to scapegoat the “Far Right” for the breakdown in public order that we saw on Thursday conveniently ignores the fact that successive Irish governments have allowed criminals to wander the streets of Dublin with relative ease. Budding criminals know they will face lenient sentences, partly because there is simply no room in Irish jails to hold them for long, leading to a “revolving door” scenario in our prisons, as pointed out five months ago by the Irish Prison Services.
People feel less safe in Dublin city than ever before, and there is a widespread belief that criminals in Dublin can act with impunity, or else will not suffer a prison sentence proportionate to their crimes. The government most certainly must answer for failing to address this problem over the years. This failure most certainly cannot be blamed on “far right” ideology.
Thirdly, while there is no excuse for attacking police officers or setting vehicles alight, the Irish government has undoubtedly paved the way for these riots by refusing to listen to its citizens for years. Ireland’s political establishment has consistently been dismissive toward reasonable concerns about its immigration and refugee policies, reducing them to the rantings of a “Far Right” fringe. This has created an atmosphere of pent-up resentment and frustration, and it was only a matter of time before this frustration erupted onto the streets.
Many aspects of Ireland’s immigration policies strike people as profoundly unfair and destructive, including allowing very large numbers of asylum-seekers to avail of free or cheap housing on the taxpayer’s dime while Irish citizens are frozen out of the housing market; and flooding local communities with large numbers of refugees with no prior consultation whatsoever. In response to complaints, the Irish government has just doubled down, and given us more of the same “open door” immigration policies.
So when a city is taken over by thugs for a night, we should be less worried about whether there were “far right” elements among them, and more worried about why they felt they could openly engage in this level of brazen violence and destruction and get away with it; and how the atmosphere in Dublin become so tense and angry that a single stabbing incident, however unspeakable, could spark riots on a level we have not seen in generations.
In a new study, six scientists (Dentelski et al., 2023) effectively eviscerate a methodologically flawed 2021 study (Lynas et al.) that claims 99.53% of 3,000 scientific papers examined (by subjectively classifying papers based only on what is written in the abstracts) support the anthropogenic global warming, or AGW, position.
The Lynas et al. authors begin with the assumption that a consensus on the human attribution for global warming not only exists, it is ensconced as the unquestioned, prevailing viewpoint in the scientific literature. So their intent was to effectively quantify the strength of this assumed widespread agreement by devising a rating system that only assesses the explicit rejection of AGW in the paper’s abstract as not supporting the presumed “consensus.”
Of the 3,000 papers analyzed in Lynas et al., 282 were deemed not sufficiently “climate-related.” Another 2,104 papers were placed in Category 4, which meant either the paper’s authors took “no position” or the position on AGW was deemed “uncertain”… in the abstract. So, exploiting the “if you are not against, you are for” classification bias, Lynas and colleagues decided that the authors of these 2,104 scientific papers in Category 4 do indeed agree with AGW, as what is written in the abstract does not explicitly state they do not agree.
Interestingly, if this classification bias had not been utilized and the thousands of Category 4 (“no position” or “uncertain”) papers were not counted as supporting AGW, only 892 of the 2,718 (climate-related) papers, or 32%, could be said to have affirmatively stated they support AGW. So, simply by assuming one cannot divine the AGW opinions of authors of scientific papers by reading abstracts, it could just as facilely be said that 67% (1,826 of 2,718) of climate-related papers reject AGW.
Dentelski and colleagues also point out that by their own analysis, 54% of the papers they examined that were classified by Lynas et al. as only “implying” support (Category 3) for AGW or Category 4 (“no position” or “uncertain”) actually described a lack of support for AGW in the body of the paper itself. But since this expressed non-endorsement of AGW was not presented in the abstract, these papers were wrongly classified as supporting AGW anyway.
To fully grasp the subjective nature of the methodology employed by Lynas and colleagues, Dentelski et al. uncover the internals of the study indicating 58% of the time two independent examiners did not agree on numerical classification scale (from 1 to 7) for a paper. If two people agree just 42% of the time when classifying papers, it cannot be said that the rating system is sufficiently objective.
The Lynas et al. paper appears to be little more than an exercise in propaganda.
The Mossad is preparing to assassinate Hamas leaders around the world once the war between Palestinian resistance forces in Gaza and Israel winds down, the Wall Street Journal(WSJ) reported on 1 December.
“With orders from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s top spy agencies are working on plans to hunt down Hamas leaders living in Lebanon, Turkiye, and Qatar,” the report reads.
“I have instructed the Mossad to act against the heads of Hamas wherever they are,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a nationwide address on 22 November.
In the same address, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that the Hamas leaders are living on “borrowed time.”
“They are marked for death,” Gallant continued. “The struggle is worldwide, both the terrorists in Gaza and those who fly in expensive planes.”
Usually, Tel Aviv keeps talks of these assassination attempts secret. However, since 7 October, Tel Aviv has thrown caution to the wind in most cases and voiced its view of taking out resistance leaders openly.
“Israel is already working to kill or capture Hamas leaders inside Gaza,” officials told the WSJ. “The question now for Israeli leaders isn’t about whether to try to kill Hamas leaders elsewhere in the world, but where—and how.”
Some Israeli officials wanted to launch an immediate hunt on Khaled Mashaal and other Hamas leaders who live abroad, citing anger over footage of Mashaal and other Hamas officials, including political chief Ismail Haniyeh, celebrating the start of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation.
Former Mossad director Efraim Halevy said that the plan to pursue Hamas officials internationally is “a desire to exact revenge, not a desire to achieve a strategic aim,” adding that such a plan is “far-fetched.”
Amos Yadlin, a retired Israeli general, said, “All the Hamas leaders, all those who participated in the attack, who planned the attack, who ordered the attack, should be brought to justice or eliminated […] It’s the right policy.”
The Mossad has a legacy of international assassinations, dating back to the 1950s with the assassination of the head of Egypt’s Military Intelligence on Israel, Mustafa Hafez, who urged then-President Gamal Abdel Nasser to form a commando brigade that would conduct cross-border attacks on Israel.
On 12 July 1956, Israel assassinated Hafez with an explosive device hidden in an envelope.
The intelligence agency also murdered Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh on 28 November 2020, who had been on Mossad’s hit list since 2009.
According to Ronen Bergman’s Rise and Kill First, Israel has conducted more than 2,700 targeted assassinations since the second World War.
Palestinian doctors in the Gaza Strip have said in a report that they were detained, interrogated and used as “human shields” during Israel’s violent raids on hospitals and medical facilities in the besieged territory.
Several doctors and surgeons were cited in a report by the UK-based news website Middle East Eye on Friday that the occupying regime’s forces used them as “hostages” when they invaded the al-Shifa Hospital during the weeks-long Israeli siege and bombardment of the largest medical complex in Gaza.
The doctors said the Israeli troops detained Mohammed Abu Silmiya, head of al-Shifa Hospital, along with more than 20 other medical personnel from Gaza.
Silmiya was reported to have been in custody and interrogated twice by Israeli officers inside the al-Shifa Hospital.
Marwan Abu Saada, head of the surgery department at al-Shifa Hospital, said, “For several days, Israeli aircraft kept bombing different buildings and departments of the hospital. Quadcopters were shooting directly at people, including patients and displaced persons. People were killed inside the hospital.”
“They besieged the hospital for five days before they stormed its departments. They kept us [in certain areas] and threatened us [with being targeted]. When they stormed the ground stores, they used us [doctors] as human shields to enter and search them. They found the technical maintenance employees there and interrogated them, before they detained them.”
He added that the Israeli forces took several doctors with them while moving from one department to another and searching the different offices and rooms of al-Shifa Hospital.
“We felt that we were hostages, used to [protect] Israeli soldiers. They took me and Dr Abu Silmiya and interrogated us. They did not use violence with me or Dr. Abu Silmiya. But they interrogated Dr. Abu Silmiya twice,” Abu Saada continued.
The doctor said Israeli forces questioned him and Abu Silmiya about the presence of any members of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas or hostages in the hospital’s offices or if there was any activity being conducted by Hamas in al-Shifa.
“We said no because we have never seen any Hamas members there. They besieged us in the hospital for five days, and on the eve of the truce, I returned home, and patients and some medical staff members were evacuated to the south,” Abu Saada said.
Fadel Naim, a doctor who had witnessed the Israeli attacks, was cited by the Middle East Eye as saying that Israeli forces interrogated the doctors to gain information about the Palestinian resistance groups.
“Many doctors and healthcare professionals have been interrogated and detained,” Naim said.
“Every Palestinian is subject to detention, but they detain doctors in particular thinking that they would get information that might prove their allegations about the resistance. They interrogate them to get information and details about other people.”
Naim added that since the beginning of the Israeli attacks on Gaza, he had witnessed or heard of many doctors getting killed or wounded.
“Many of our colleagues were directly killed. Every day, we hear the name of another doctor who was killed. Many of the doctors who were once our students were also killed or detained,” he said.
Israel waged its war on Gaza on October 7 after Hamas launched an operation against the occupied territories on that day in response to the Israeli regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
Tel Aviv also blocked water, food, and electricity to Gaza, plunging the coastal strip into a humanitarian crisis.
More than 15,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed in the Israeli strikes.
Make no mistake. Israel has committed massive crimes in Gaza and in the West Bank against the Palestinians. When will the thousands killed get justice? Or are we all supposed to just go on with our lives and pretend that it’s all the pursuit of “the right of self-defense?” Who are these IDF snipers who anonymously shoot children, and no one is even curious to know who these killers are? Is this the way of war now, according to the “international rules based order” that we should be so proud of in the West, which is supposedly the hallmark of our “civilization?”
A day of reckoning will come. There are good men and women who are wokring to make that a reality.
And what are we to make of our politcal class that utters not a peep about the slaughter that Netanyahu is doing, but who earlier could not get the ICC to issue an arrest warrant for President Putin fast enough, because Putin was assumed to have “kidnapped” Ukrainian orphans that they might have a decent life in Russia. But Netanyahu can kill as many children as he wants, since that is not a crime according to the “rule of law,” so the “jurists” at the ICC stay busy identifying “Russian crimes” that might be spotted at the backs of their cereal boxes.
Kurt Tucholsky was paraphrasing a French joke when he observed that “the death of one person: that’s a catastrophe. One hundred thousand dead: that’s a statistic!”
What Israel has done for over a month in Gaza is now a matter of statistics, for they have killed over 15,000 so far, more than 4000 of them children. It is the Palestinian Holocaust, because there are many more thousands buried under all those pancaked buildings where people once lived. And now that the Israeli assault continues, many thousands more will die.
Given these grim statistics, it becomes more and more important to remember the one person, rather than mention in passing the vast number of the now faceless thousands dead.
One such person was Elham Farah, a Christian Palestinian, living in Gaza, where she had taught music all her life. She was 84 years old and was the daughter of the Palestinian poet, Hannah Farah.
On November 12, 2023, an Israeli sniper shot her in the leg, as she came out of the Holy Family Church in Gaza City, where she had been sheltering to escape the bombing. She wanted to make sure that her home had not been hit. A sniper was waiting who are trained to shoot in the leg.
Those inside the church tried to rescue her, as she cried out for help, but people were afraid of Israeli snipers who long have had a reputation for being merciless. Elham Farah bled to death over several days. No one came to help her because of the sniping. She had just survived the bombing of Saint Porphyrios, the 850-year-old church in Gaza, which took the lives of 18 other Christians. Is such a death for a gentle old lady acceptable to those who see themselves as “civilized?” And why no one even knows about the crimes of Israeli snipers is unimaginable.
The hell unleashed by the Herod of our time in the Holy Land escapes the mind’s ability to describe horror—to see little children torn apart by bombs, dropped by pilots in their sophisticated flying machines is beyond the reach of words…
Then Herod perceiving that he was deluded by the wise men, was exceeding angry: and sending killed all the menchildren that were in Bethlehem, and in all the borders thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men.
Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremias the prophet, saying:
A voice in Rama was heard, lamentation and great mourning; Rachel bewailing her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not (Matthew 2:16-18).
“Rama” or “Ramah” is the name of several Palestinian towns, and “Rachel” stands in for all mothers whose children have been slaughtered by the powerful. Such killing was “righteous revenge” because the Hamas razzia of October 7th was fabricated as brutal, with beheaded babies and babies in ovens, when it was the IDF that did most of the slaughter of Israelis that day. Why the need to lie by Israel? The full truth about what really happened on October 7th is now coming out: Hamas killed IDF soldiers in combat. It was not a “terrorist” attack:
Thus on October 7th:
The IDF killed anything that moved;
Many Israeli captives were still alive, two days after October 7;
Israelis were killed by the IDF with heavy shelling of houses and cars;
Most of the civilian deaths happened because of the IDF;
It was a razzia by Hamas because most of the captives taken were IDF officers.
And in the West, we have the war enthusiasts, eagerly cheering on Netanyahu and his ilk to kill more, to kill without compunction, for there will be no red lines drawn, because Israel is for “civilization,” because that is how you fight wars, by killing as many babies as you can with bombs.
Perhaps in the months or even years ahead, there will come a time for a “Nuremberg Trial” for the murderers that are now in power in Israel—and for the IDF soldiers snipers who shot down Elham Farah and the two liitle Christian Palestinian boys, and also for the many “journalists” and “scholars” who justified and whitewashed the crimes against humnaity now permanently recorded for the world to see. Remember, they did hang Julius Streicher, even though he perosnally had killed no one.
It says a lot about former secretary of state and presumed presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton that she’s a member of the Henry Kissinger Fan Club. Progressives who despised George W. Bush might want to examine any warm, fuzzy feelings they harbor for Clinton.
She has made no effort to hide her admiration for Kissinger and his geopolitical views. Now she lays it all out clearly in a Washington Post review of his latest book, World Order.
Clinton acknowledges differences with Kissinger, but apparently these do not keep her from saying that “his analysis … largely fits with the broad strategy behind the Obama administration’s effort over the past six years to build a global architecture of security and cooperation for the 21st century.”
Beware of politicians and courtiers who issue solemn declarations about building global architectures. To them the rest of us are mere “pieces upon a chess-board.” Security and cooperation are always the announced ends, yet the ostensible beneficiaries usually come to grief. Look where such poseurs have been most active: the Middle East, North Africa, Ukraine. As they say about lawyers, if we didn’t have so-called statesmen, we wouldn’t need them.
If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect some pseudonymous writer of having fun with irony in this review. Behold:
President Obama explained the overarching challenge we faced in his Nobel lecture in December 2009. After World War II, he said, “America led the world in constructing an architecture to keep the peace…”
Keep the peace — if you don’t count the mass atrocity that was the Vietnam War, the U.S.-sponsored Israeli oppression of Palestinians, and various massacres carried out by U.S.-backed “leaders” in such places as Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan), East Timor, Chile, and elsewhere.
One Henry Kissinger had a hand in all these crimes, by the way. Strangely, Clinton doesn’t mention them. (See Christopher Hitchens’s devastating two-part indictment here and here, later turned into The Trial of Henry Kissinger.)
America, at its best, is a problem-solving nation.
Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Libya are only the latest examples of problems America solved during Madam Secretary’s tenure, building on the glorious successes of George W. Bush’s team. Henry the K is no doubt flattered by the homage.
Kissinger is a friend, and I relied on his counsel when I served as secretary of state. He checked in with me regularly, sharing astute observations about foreign leaders and sending me written reports on his travels.
Now things make sense. That Hillary Clinton thought Kissinger — Henry Kissinger — a worthy advisor is something we should all know as 2016 looms.
What comes through clearly in this new book is a conviction that we, and President Obama, share: a belief in the indispensability of continued American leadership in service of a just and liberal order.
There really is no viable alternative. No other nation can bring together the necessary coalitions and provide the necessary capabilities to meet today’s complex global threats. But this leadership is not a birthright; it is a responsibility that must be assumed with determination and humility by each generation.
It takes chutzpah to write humility even remotely in connection with Kissinger. And if the U.S. empire is indispensable to justice and liberalism — and where are these, exactly? — we are in trouble. The record is not encouraging. Kissingerian “realism” creates global threats.
The things that make us who we are as a nation — our diverse and open society, our devotion to human rights and democratic values — give us a singular advantage in building a future in which the forces of freedom and cooperation prevail over those of division, dictatorship and destruction.
Devotion to human rights and democratic values — as shown in Egypt, where Clinton stuck by another friend, Hosni Mubarak, against a popular uprising. The woman has some friends!
“Any system of world order, to be sustainable, must be accepted as just — not only by leaders, but also by citizens,” he writes.
The suggestion that Kissinger cares what ordinary citizens anywhere think is ridiculous. What he cares about is states, which he puts in one of two categories: those that buckle under to the Indispensable Empire and those that do not.
Henry, er, Hillary in 2016? You might want to rethink that.
With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Nations (U.N.) this month launched an “ambitious-country-led campaign” to promote and accelerate the development of a global digital public infrastructure (DPI).
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said its “50-in-5” campaign will spur the construction of “an underlying network of components” that includes “digital payments, ID, and data exchange system,” which will serve as “a critical accelerator of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”
“The goal of the campaign is for 50 countries to have designed, implemented, and scaled at least one DPI component in a safe, inclusive, and interoperable manner in five years,” the UNDP stated.
In September 2022, the Gates Foundation allocated $200 million “to expand global Digital Public Infrastructure,” as part of a broader plan to fund $1.27 billion in “health and development commitments” toward the goal of achieving the SDGs by 2030.
The Gates Foundation stated at the time that the funding was intended to promote the expansion of “infrastructure that low- and middle-income countries can use to become more resilient to crises such as food shortages, public health threats, and climate change, as well as to aid in pandemic and economic recovery.”
California-based privacy attorney Greg Glaser described the “50-in-5” campaign as “a totalitarian nightmare” and a “dystopian” initiative targeting small countries “to onboard them with digital ID, digital wallets, digital lawmaking, digital voting and more.”
“For political reasons, U.N. types like Gates cannot openly plan ‘one world government,’ so they use different phrases like ‘global partnership’ and ‘Agenda 2030,’” Glaser told The Defender. “People can add ‘50-in-5’ to that growing list of dystopian phrases.”
Another California-based privacy attorney, Richard Jaffe, expressed similar sentiments, telling The Defender the “50-in-5” initiative “point[s] to the much bigger issue of the globalization, centralization and digitalization of the world’s personal data.”
“My short-term concern is bad actors, and that would be individuals and small groups, as well as state mal-actors, who will now have a big fat new target or tool to threaten the normal operation of less technologically sophisticated countries,” he said.
Jaffe said Gates’ involvement “scares the hell out of him.” Derrick Broze, editor-in-chief of The Conscious Resistance Network, told The Defender that it is “another sign that this renewed push for digital ID infrastructure will not benefit the average person.”
“Projects like these only benefit governments who want to track their populations, and corporations who want to study our daily habits and movements to sell us products,” Broze said.
Initiatives to promote DPI globally also enjoy the support of the G20. According to The Economist, at September’s G20 Summit in New Delhi — held under the slogan “One Earth, One Family, One Future” — India garnered support from the Gates Foundation, UNDP and the World Bank for a plan to develop a global repository of DPI technologies.
‘World doesn’t need 50-in-5’
The 11 “First-Mover” countries launching “50-in-5” are Bangladesh, Estonia, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Moldova, Norway, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Togo.
“Countries, regardless of income level, geography, or where they are in their digital transformation journey, can benefit from being part of 50-in-5,” the campaign states, adding that “with steadfast and collective efforts, the world can build a future where digital transformation is not only a vision but a tangible reality.”
According to Glaser, the 11 initial countries were chosen not because they are “digital leaders” but because the U.N. sees smaller nations as a “unique threat” because their leaders are occasionally accountable to the people.
“We have seen what happens to leaders of small nations who reject international intelligence agencies’ favorite products, such as COVID-19 vaccines, GMOs [genetically modified organisms] and petrodollars,” Glaser said. “U.N. programs like ‘50-in-5’ are a way for smaller countries to sell out early to Big Tech and preemptively avoid ‘economic hitmen,’” he added.
Speaking at the “50-in-5” launch event, Dumitru Alaiba, Moldova’s deputy prime minister and minister of Economic Development and Digitalization said, “The source of our biggest excitement is our work on our government’s super app. It’s modeled after the very successful Ukrainian Diia app [and] will be launched in the coming few months.”
"We are committed to enhancing & establishing key DPI components (digital ID, payments) .. The source of our biggest excitement is our work on our government's super app modeled after the very successful Ukrainian Diia app": Moldova Deputy Prime Minister Dumitru Alaiba, 50-in-5 pic.twitter.com/z173VsKqBr
At the same event, Cina Lawson, Togo’s minister of Digital Economy and Transformation, said, “We created a digital COVID certificate. All of a sudden, the fight against the pandemic became really about using digital tools to be more effective.”
According to Hinchliffe, Togo’s DPI system had seemingly benign origins, launching as a universal basic income scheme for the country’s citizens, “but shortly after that, they expanded the system to implement vaccine passports.”
Today, Togo became the first sub-Saharan African country whose digital COVID-19 vaccination certificate is recognized by the @eu_commission. Travelers with a Togolese certificate will be able to validly present it in the EU & vice versa. @AmbUETogo@KoenDoenspic.twitter.com/Uy9mRF8bkU
Togo’s vaccine passport was interoperable with the European Union’s (EU) digital health certificate. In 2021, the EU was one of the first governmental entities globally to introduce such passports. In June, the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted the EU’s digital health certificate standards on a global basis.
Speaking at the G20 Summit in September, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, “The trick is to build public digital infrastructure that is interoperable, open to all and trusted,” citing the EU’s COVID-19 digital certificate as an example.
The future is digital. I passed two messages to the G20:
→ We should establish a framework for safe, responsible AI, with a similar body as the IPCC for climate
→ Digital public infrastructures are an accelerator of growth. They must be trusted, interoperable & open to all
Four of the “First-Mover” countries are African. Shabnam Palesa Mohamed, executive director of Children’s Health Defense (CHD) Africa Chapter, told The Defender the “50-in-5” campaign will be used as a geo-political tool. “Africa is always a prime target because it is comparatively untapped digitally,” she said.
“Africa needs respect, food, water and peace,” she said. “It does not need DPI.”
Along similar lines, Hinchliffe said, “The world doesn’t need ‘50-in-5.’ The people never asked for it. It came from the top down. What the people want is for their governments to do their actual jobs — to serve the people.”
Digital ID intended to be ‘securely accessed’ by government, private stakeholders
According to The Economist, India is heavily promoting its digital ID technologies, first deployed domestically, for global implementation in “poor countries.” These technologies have garnered support and funding from Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation.
For instance, Lawson said Togo was issuing biometric digital ID “for all our citizens using MOSIP” — Modular Open Source Identity Platform — a system developed at India’s International Institute of Information Technology in Bangalore.
MOSIP, backed by the Gates Foundation, the World Bank and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, is modeled after Aadhaar, India’s national digital ID platform — the largest in the world — which has been beset by controversy.
Glaser said Aadhaar “has been a nightmare for Indians. It is constantly hacked, including, for example the largest personal information hack in world history earlier this month, with personal information sold on the dark web.”
“Aadhaar is openly mocked in India,” Glaser said. “The only reason it is still used by the citizenry is because people have no practical choice. To participate meaningfully in Indian society, you need the digital ID,” he added.
A Business 20 (B20) communique issued following this year’s G20 summit called on “G20 nations to develop guidelines for unique single digital identification … that can be securely accessed (based on consent) by different government and private stakeholders for identity verification and information access within three years.”
In April, Nandan Nilekani, former chair of the Unique Identification Authority of India, told an International Monetary Fund panel on DPI that digital ID, digital bank accounts and smartphones are the “tools of the new world.” He added that if this is achieved, “Then, anything can be done. Everything else is built on that.”
“The lesson of course for the rest of the world is to never let digital ID take root in your society,” Glaser said. “Once a nation’s consumer class adopts digital ID with global partners, as in India, it is basically checkmate for that nation.”
‘When they say inclusive, they really mean exclusive’
According to The Sociable, DPI “promises to bring about financial inclusion, convenience, improved healthcare, and green progress.”
According to the “50-in-5” campaign, DPI “is essential for participation in markets and society in a digital era [and] is needed for all countries to build resilient and innovative economies, and for the well-being of people.”
But Hinchliffe refuted that assertion. “You don’t need digital ID and digital governance to provide better services to more people,” he said. “The tools are already available. It’s about incentives. Businesses, governments, and private citizens all have the power to come up with better solutions now, but why don’t we?”
Still, “inclusivity” is one of the key narratives employed to promote DPI. The “50-in-5” campaign states, “Countries building safe and inclusive DPI … can foster strong economies and equitable societies” and that DPI “promotes innovation, bolsters local entrepreneurship, and ensures access to services and opportunities for underserved groups, including women and youth.”
Experts who spoke with The Defender warned DPI has the potential to be exclusionary.
“While the United Nations, the Gates Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation promote DPI as necessary for an ‘equitable’ world, the reality is that these tools have the potential for furthering exclusion of political activists, whistleblowers, and other individuals who hold controversial opinions,” Broze said.
Similarly, CHD Africa’s Mohamed claimed, “People, groups and organizations that pose a threat to the establishment will be targeted for digital surveillance and socio-economic isolation” via DPI. “This … is an easier way to control critical thinkers.”
Hinchliffe said DPI will “accelerate technocratic control through digital ID, CBDC and massive data sharing, paving the way for an interoperable system of social credit.”
Similarly, Glaser said, “With DPI, the U.N.’s plan is to issue everyone a social credit score in line with U.N. SDGs (Agenda 2030) … Your digital ID will become the new you. And from the perspective of governments and corporations, your digital ID will be more real than your flesh … required in various measures to travel, work, buy/sell, and vote.”
“When they say inclusive, they really mean exclusive, because the system is set up to exclude people who don’t go along with unelected globalist policies,” Hinchliffe said. “What they really want is for everybody to be under their digital control.”
Notably, a June 2023 WEF report titled “Reimagining Digital ID” concedes that “Digital ID may weaken democracy and civil society” and that the “greatest risks arising from digital ID are exclusion, marginalization and oppression.”
Making ID — digital or otherwise — mandatory may exacerbate “fundamental social, political and economic challenges as conditional access of any kind always creates the possibility of discrimination and exclusion,” the report adds.
Experts who spoke with The Defender said people must be given the choice to opt out.
“If the U.N. and its member states push the digital ID agenda, they must ensure that their respective populations have a simple way to opt out without being punished or denied services,” Bronze said. “Otherwise, the digital ID creep will eventually become mandatory to exist in society and we will see the end of privacy, and, in the long-term, liberty,” Broze said.
Jaffe said that while he does not oppose digital payment systems, he “would be vehemently opposed to the elimination of non-digital payment, like fiat paper currency,” calling this an issue of “freedom and privacy.”
Similarly, Hinchliffe said, “There should be non-digital alternatives available at all times and this should be a right of every citizen. Systems can fail. Databases can be breached. Governments can become tyrannical. Corporations can become greedy.”
‘The endgame is sovereignty by transhumanists’
Many of the initiatives that are backing “50-in-5” are themselves interlinked — in addition to their connections to entities such as the Gates Foundation.
For instance, the Omidyar Network, one of the supporters of “50-in-5,” has provided funding to MOSIP — as has the Gates Foundation.
The Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the UNDP and UNICEF participate in the Digital Public Good Alliance’s “roadmap” of entities that “strengthen the DPG [digital public goods] ecosystem.”
Earlier this year, Co-Develop invested in the establishment of the Center for Digital Public Infrastructure, which is headquartered at the International Institute of Information Technology in Bangalore, and is also home to MOSIP. Co-Develop was co-founded by the Rockefeller Foundation, along with the Gates Foundation and the Omidyar Network.
And “endorsing organizations” of the World Bank’s “Principles on Identification for Sustainable Development” report include the Gates Foundation, the Omidyar Network, UNDP, Mastercard, ID2020 and the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
Glaser said that Gates attained wealth by “monopolizing his operating system into every home and business worldwide” and “is doing the same now at the U.N. level with vaccines and DPI applications.”
“DPI platforms essentially outsource sovereignty to international governing bodies that do the bidding of financial entities like Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street,” he said.
“Companies with that much information on citizens hold enormous power to sabotage infrastructure [with] very few ethics to stop them,” Mohamed said.
“The endgame is sovereignty by transhumanists,” Glaser added. “The reason digital ID is an existential threat to society is because it separates people from their local governments, who have always worked cooperatively to prevent tyranny.”
“DPI is being sold to authorities on the grounds that it will include them in the worldwide economy, when in reality it will commodify their people and remove the ability of local authorities to ever govern meaningfully again,” he said.
Hinchliffe also connected DPI to policies that purport to combat climate change.
“With G20 nations committing to net-zero carbon emissions policies by around 2050 … restrictions will be placed on what we can consume, what we can purchase, and where we can go thanks to the widespread implementation of digital ID and CBDC to track, trace, and control our every move in … 15-minute smart cities,” he said.
“They openly talk about using DPI for ‘digital health certificates’ … and I believe that next will come carbon footprint tracking to monitor and control how you travel and what you consume,” Hinchliffe added, calling it “a future of constant surveillance and control.”
“If we can legislate and litigate to retain the right to traditional identification, then this categorically protects all of our rights,” Glaser added. “As long as the consumer classes of large nations like the United States resist digital ID, there is hope.”
“These schemes do little to nothing for the prosperity of the majority of Africans, but rather, they further the interests of a small economic and political class,” Mohamed said. “With growing economic disparity and anger, the attempt to waste more African resources on digital ID may lead to widespread revolt.”
“Generally, once Africans know what Bill Gates is about, they refuse to get involved in or support his activities,” she added.
Watch this Kitco News segment on the ‘50-in-5’ campaign:
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
The most notorious and hawkish America’s former top diplomat, known more for his war crimes and export of imperialism than diplomacy, died on Thursday. He was 100.
Henry Kissinger, a key architect of America’s Cold War foreign policy during the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, breathed his last at his home in Kent, Connecticut.
While in the United States, he is often lauded for bringing about rapprochement with China, around the world, he is known as an infamous war criminal with blood of millions of people on his hands.
It is estimated that the victims of his blatant war crimes number from several hundred thousand to several million, from Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Chile, Cyprus, East Timor, Palestine, South Africa, to Vietnam.
In 1973, quite scandalously, he was handed a Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a ceasefire deal in the Vietnam War, although the earlier flare-up and spread of the devastating war to neighboring Cambodia was entirely his handiwork.
In the eight years that he was the US Secretary of State, Kissinger shaped America’s interventionist foreign policy, which later became a benchmark for his successors to export American hegemony and imperialism around the world.
Christopher Hitchens, the author of The Trial of Henry Kissinger, in his 2001 book called for the former top US diplomat to be prosecuted for conspiracy to commit murders, kidnappings and torture across the world.
“The US could either persist in averting their gaze from the egregious impunity enjoyed by a notorious war criminal and lawbreaker, or they can become seized by the exalted standards to which they continually hold everyone else,” wrote Hitchens.
What are Kissinger’s main crimes?
One of his most notorious roles was in Cambodia, where he masterminded the expansion of the Vietnam War through a secret bombing campaign in 1969 and ground invasions by US forces for years.
The US is believed to have rained down more than 540,000 tonnes of bombs in a campaign called Operation Menu that was executed without the backing or knowledge of the US Congress.
The deadly military adventure caused an eight-year civil war between the Cambodian government and the Khmer Rouge regime, which led to the killing of around 275,000–310,000 people and displaced millions of others.
In declassified cables in 1970, Kissinger was heard conveying this message to his deputy Alexander Haig after speaking to Nixon: “He wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia… It’s an order, it’s to be done. Anything that flies, on anything that moves. You got that?”
Author and TV personality Anthony Bourdain, after visiting Cambodia, wrote in his 2011 book A Cook’s Tour: “Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands”.
“Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.”
He also played an instrumental role in the massacre of the East Timorese people by the Indonesian forces in the mid-1970s.
Kissinger and President Ford, during a meeting with the Indonesian dictator Suharto in December 1975, gave him instructions to invade East Timor, which triggered a civil war that left at least 200,000 people dead, according to 2001 declassified documents.
In Chile, Kissinger worked behind the scenes to destabilize and undermine the government of Salvador Allende who was seen as a threat to US hegemony in South America at a time when all other Latin American countries had US-installed military dictatorships.
Less than three years into Allende’s rule, amid skyrocketing inflation and massive strikes that were orchestrated by the CIA, a US-engineered coup led by General Augusto Pinochet toppled the democratically-elected government.
A Chilean government report later revealed that over 40,000 people were killed, tortured, or imprisoned during Pinochet’s murderous regime at the behest of the US government and Kissinger.
In Argentina, Kissinger militarily backed junta leader General Jorge Rafael Videla after he toppled the democratically-elected government of President Isabel Perón in March 1976, according to declassified cables.
These actions led to the Dirty War between 1976 and 1983, where Argentina’s military junta killed between 10,000 and 30,000 people. Many of them were subjected to enforced disappearances.
Kissinger was also involved in Bangladesh, previously known as East Pakistan, where he and Nixon backed the genocide of people by West Pakistan.
Following his death on Thursday, Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen said Kissinger backed the Pakistani military regime during the 1971 war and failed to apologize to the people of Bangladesh for his actions.
Kissinger was also responsible for consolidating the US vassal dictatorship in Iran in the 1970s, which had long-lasting unwanted consequences for Washington.
What role did Kissinger play in Iran?
Kissinger’s political opportunism is particularly evident in the example of relations with Iran, which American diplomacy under his leadership saw, in the words of Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, as a “milking cow.”
In the 1970s, accompanying then-US President Nixon, he traveled to Tehran and initiated massive military deals on the export of arms worth billions of dollars to Iran.
In his eyes, the best solution for Iran was a rigid military dictatorship that would spend massively on American weapons and other expensive products, and at the same time play the role of a US proxy against the regional countries that refused to lean toward Washington.
Such an attitude was formed partly as a consequence of the defeat in the Vietnam War, which is why the American authorities did not like the idea of repeating the same scenario in West Asia, with huge American casualties.
In 1975, when he held the position of Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, Kissinger was the key man in signing a $15 billion deal that included $6.4 billion for the purchase of eight US nuclear reactors.
The Shah’s regime then planned to build a total of twenty nuclear power plants with the import of enriched uranium, for which Washington and its allies showed great enthusiasm, seeing it as a lucrative opportunity for their companies.
These treaties collapsed four years later due to mass popular discontent with the West-backed dictatorship and the success of the Islamic Revolution, the prospect of which Kissinger understandably dreaded.
He was among the loudest proponents of providing asylum to the deposed Shah, arguing that it was America’s “moral obligation.”
On the aggression of the Baathist Iraqi regime on Iran, he said “It’s a pity they both can’t lose.”
Three decades later, when Iran announced the continuation of the development of a civilian nuclear program, this time with its own technology and without multibillion-dollar contracts with American and Western companies, Kissinger turned the tables.
In an opinion piece for the Washington Post in 2005, Kissinger wrote that “for a major oil producer such as Iran, nuclear energy is a wasteful use of resources.”
This radical switch once again confirmed that Americans have an essential problem with the technological prowess and progress of independent countries because they believe only the US has the right to a monopoly of advanced technologies.
In the 2000s, Kissinger became an advocate of American interventionism in West Asia and met regularly with then-US President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to advise them on the disastrous invasion of Iraq.
The collapse of American imperial ambitions in Iraq and other countries of the region culminated in his intensified anti-Iranian rhetoric.
In 2014, when Iraq and Syria were under the grip of Takfiri terrorism, he stated that “Iran is a bigger problem than Daesh,” arguing that the latter’s fall would open the door to Tehran’s alleged “imperial agendas.”
In addition to giving unequivocal support to anti-Iranian terrorism, he also strongly opposed the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers, clinched during the presidency of Barack Obama.
He maintained the same stance after Obama’s megalomaniac successor Donald Trump scrapped the deal, saying any attempts to reinstall the deal are “extremely dangerous.”
BY LAURENT GUYÉNOT • UNZ REVIEW • NOVEMBER 13, 2021
By a strange paradox, most Kennedy researchers who believe that Oswald was “just a patsy” spend an awful lot of time exploring his biography. This is about as useful as investigating Osama bin Laden for solving 9/11. Any serious quest for the real assassins of JFK should start by investigating the man who shot Oswald at pointblank in the stomach at 11:21 a.m. on September 24, 1963 in the Dallas Police station, thereby sealing the possibility that a judicial inquiry would draw attention to the inconsistencies of the charge against him, and perhaps expose the real perpetrators. One would normally expect the Dallas strip-club owner Jack Ruby to be the most investigated character by Kennedy truthers. But that is not the case. … continue
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