Strangler fig is the generic name given to a class of vines that sprouts high in the canopy of trees in tropical forests. It is deposited by birds that eat its fruit. Its roots envelope the tree and feed off it, weakening the tree. If the process is allowed to continue indefinitely, it sinks its roots into the ground at the base of the tree and destroys it completely but takes its form, creating a hollow shell of living vines where the tree once stood.
On Friday, July 18, 2014, as one of the most powerful military forces in the world laid waste to the besieged and impoverished Gaza Strip, leaving widows and orphans in its wake while nevertheless killing a significant number of them, the United States Senate, without objection and by unanimous consent from all 100 senators, passed a resolution supporting this act of genocide and condemning its victims for provoking the powerful aggressor by trying to resist.
At that point, Israel had killed more than 250 Palestinians, mostly civilians, while the resistance forces in Gaza had killed one Israeli, who had been delivering food to troops at the time. The Senate resolution had been drafted by the AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, one of the pillars of the Israel Lobby. Fifty days later more than 2000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and 72 Israelis, mostly soldiers, lay dead.
How did the Israel Lobby come to so totally dominate the US Senate and in fact the entire US government?
The story goes back more than a century, to the early years of the Zionist movement to create a Jewish state. Zionism grew out of the 19th and 20th century European racist and nationalist philosophies like Fascism, Nazism and Falangism, which promoted the idea that each race in the world needed a homeland and should seek to fulfill its national destiny there.
The definition of both race and homeland were given much latitude. Despite all genetic evidence to the contrary, Jews were considered a race, and after considering Uganda and Argentina as potential homelands, the Zionists settled on Palestine.
In order to fulfill its “destiny”, however, the Zionists realized that they would need the support of at least one great power in order to force themselves upon an unwilling population in Palestine and ultimately expel or eliminate them, as the Europeans had largely accomplished in the great genocide of indigenous peoples in the western hemisphere. For this purpose, they selected Great Britain as it was about to take control of Palestine, and when the Zionists might be able to argue that their support could be critical to British ambitions, both during and after the Great War.
Indeed, Britain served their purpose well, facilitating the settlement of Palestine with Zionist Europeans. Zionist leaders also assisted Nazi Germany in removing its Jewish population and transferring them to Palestine, arguing that Nazism and Zionism had complementary interests. Before long, however, the relationship with Britain turned adversarial when Zionist terrorist groups began attacking the British in Palestine, with a view toward forcing the creation of an independent Jewish state in a territory where they constituted a minority of the population.
Although the Zionists continued to maintain an important support community in Great Britain, they knew that they would need other sponsors, and found their warmest welcome in the United States, starting in the late 19th century. Following World War II, President Harry Truman considered the Zionists to be important enough to his 1948 election campaign that he showered them with whatever they wanted, and especially immediate recognition of their declaration of statehood on May 14, 1948. This event set a pattern for Zionist influence in the US that would be repeated on a vast scale decades later.
During the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, the Israel Lobby, though powerful, could not act with impunity. Eisenhower suspended aid to Israel and forced it to pull back from its invasion of Sinai in 1956. Kennedy supported Senator J. William Fulbright’s hearings to force AIPAC to register as a foreign agent.
Those hearings were cut short in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, and Lyndon Johnson proved much more compliant, twice ordering the US sixth fleet to recall its aircraft sent to defend the US naval ship Liberty, which was attacked by Israeli air and naval forces in June, 1967. The Liberty sustained 34 dead and 171 wounded US military personnel, and barely avoided being sunk with all lives lost. However, the entire affair was quashed, with the Johnson administration foisting flimsy excuses upon a compliant American press and public, which accepted them with little question.
Since then, the Israel Lobby has grown with few constraints, fed by its domination of the American Jewish community, extensive control of publishing and the media, the establishment and control of strategic think tanks that provide governmental advisers, and by a well-coordinated and lavishly funded political campaign machine. This machine is now sufficiently influential to assure huge congressional appropriations to Israel that are filled by contractors who in turn show their gratitude by donating to the lobby that feeds them.
This history is well documented in works like The Lobby: Jewish political power and American foreign policy, by Edward Tivnan (1987), The Israel lobby and U.S. foreign policy, by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt (2008), Against Our Better Judgement, by Alison Weir (2014), and other publications and articles. Today, Israel oversees the careers of politicians throughout the US from the city and county level up to state and national races to make sure that no one hostile to Israel achieves significant political office and that its agenda receives overwhelming approval. It prevails upon the gratitude of elected officials to appoint its candidates as staffers throughout Congress as well as state and local offices. It maintains control of news, cinema, television, publishing and other media, so that its narrative will dominate public portrayal of Middle East issues. It even implants both volunteers and paid staff to populate web comment lists.
As a result, Israel is now much more than a lobby. Powerful lobbies may bend a government to their benefit, but their strength and survival ultimately depend upon the health of the country or countries that are their home. In a sense, therefore, they serve the national interest, even if they serve the interests of certain segments of society more than others. This is also why they care little for the health of the countries that they exploit, which are not their home.
It also explains why Israel increasingly treats the US like an exploited colony: the Israeli elite can use the US to their benefit, but it is not their home. Israel now controls US policy in the Middle East much more than it ever did Great Britain, to such an extent that it can often use US resources and power even in defiance of US national interest.
Trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives have been expended to destroy Iraq, Libya, Syria and Lebanon. Did these wars strengthen or weaken the strategic interest of the US and its economy? Would these wars have been fought if not for the Israel lobby in the US? While Israeli policy has been to weaken and destroy its neighbors, it is far from obvious that the same policy is in the US national interest.
To the contrary, until the end of World War II and even until the 1960s, the US was widely regarded in the Arab world as the “good” western power, untainted by colonialism in the region and without Arab blood on its hands. As John Sheehan, SJ said, “Every time anyone saysthat Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can’t help but think that before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East.”
Of course, some will argue that these and other US government policies and actions are in fact consistent with some definition of national interest. That is necessary, because anything that is obviously destructive to the well-being of the country will encounter too much resistance to implement. Every policy benefits someone. However, there is an important difference between those who benefit more than others from enterprise that in fact strengthens the nation and those who benefit from the sacrifices – and to the detriment – of the rest of the nation.
The Middle East wars of the G.W. Bush and Obama administrations are different from earlier ones, including the first Iraq war, primarily with respect to the degree to which Israel supplied the intelligence on which they were based and the extent to which their lobby influenced Congress to act. The Bush administration, for example, is notable for the Office of Special Plans, which was a veritable Israel liaison office in the heart of the Pentagon with extraordinary access to top secret information and in fact set up by Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense.
In fact, the G.W. Bush administration marks the maturation of a program of Israel-nurtured neoconservative influence and control that began at least a decade earlier and coalesced into the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a Washington think tank that brought together many of the principals that would hold high office in that administration. Although initially derided as fanciful in the Clinton administration and its predecessors, it constituted the first open presentation of plans to orient and ultimately subordinate U.S. policy to the goals and policies of the state of Israel.
The plans took shape as part of what became known as the neoconservative agenda. This was a major departure from the paradigm that began in 1947 with the publication of George Kennan’s seminal work counseling the projection of American power in order to maintain an equilibrium of power, (known as the “containment” principle) in international relations, so as to avoid disastrous and dangerous confrontations of the type that characterized the first half of the twentieth century. One may argue the extent to which such policy was effective, but the neoconservatives in PNAC argued that the end of the Soviet Union and the advent of the unipolar world provided the US with an unprecedented opportunity for domination, if only it would pursue a policy of military intervention and adventurism.
It is no accident that the early movement found favor with Israel. Israel quickly saw that neocon interventionism could be made to use American military might to serve Israel’s agenda of crushing its real, potential and perceived opponents in the Middle East. The Israel lobby therefore invested heavily in university departments and think tanks devoted to strategic studies and promoting the careers of neoconservatives that became advisers and appointed officials throughout government.
Examples of these are the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, the Hudson Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Cato Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the Project for a New American Century, the Hoover Institution, the American Enterprise Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (founded by AIPAC) and others. Through their doors have passed the likes of Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Elliott Abrams, John Bolton, Dennis Ross, Douglas Feith, Robert Kagan, Martin Indyk, David Wurmser, Michael Ledeen and many others that have achieved high government office, especially since the start of the G.W. Bush administration in 2001.
Israel’s investments have paid off in a big way. Today, all officials elected or appointed to national office are either pro-Israel or must say they are. In fact, they cannot deviate or dissent or disagree with the Israel lobby in any way without risk of losing their career, as Cynthia McKinney, Paul Findley, Earl Hilliard, Pete McCloskey, William Fulbright, Roger Jepsen, Adlai Stevenson III and others have discovered to their dismay. Other prominent figures, like Vanessa Redgrave and others in entertainment and the arts, that have dared to criticize Israel, also find themselves pilloried in the press and subject to fewer opportunities for their professional practice. Those aspiring to careers in mainstream film, journalism and even sports or music may find the doors closed to them if speak out in any way against Israel.
Israel has thus constructed a strangler fig network of roots and vines that is feeding itself from the resources of world’s most powerful nation while gradually starving that nation. It is placing itself inside the workings of the US government and society so as to hobble its workings to Israel’s requirements under the carefully crafted illusion that they are serving the US national interest.
An example of this is the US relationship with Iran, and specifically the Iranian nuclear program, as set forth in Gareth Porter’s book, Manufactured Crisis [Just World Books, 2014]. As Porter meticulously shows, although Iran has no nuclear weapons program, never had one and never proposed to have one, and although the US has repeatedly found no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program and only evidence to the contrary, the US continues to impose sanctions against Iran for the sole reason that Israel wants to do as much damage as possible to Iran and to prevent good and productive relations between Iran and the United States.
Porter shows that Israel has brought to bear its skill in creating forged documents, its influence in American intelligence, its threat of Congressional opposition to administration policies and other instruments of deception and coercion in order to prevent a rapprochement between the US and Iran. Israel’s hand can also be seen in US policy toward Syria, the rise of ISIS, the overthrow of Egypt’s very first democratically elected government, the destruction of Libya and many other of the developments in the Middle East. If we ask cui bono, Israel will be at the top of the list, at least from its own definition of objectives. Whether the US benefits from a strategic and economic viewpoint is highly questionable, although Israel’s allies in the US rarely fail to come out ahead.
There are of course limitations to Israel’s power. Even a strangler fig cannot change the shape of the tree. The US has thus far resisted the Israeli attempt to create an actual war with Iran, and it barely skirted direct intervention in Syria, which continues to be on Israel’s wish list. Nevertheless, the power of Israel over the workings of the US government and society is unprecedented in international relations that are otherwise as asymmetrical as those of the US and Israel.
Ordinarily the relation is the reverse: powerful nations are infamous for manipulating their vassals and colonial nations for exploiting their colonies. Yet Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu infamously bragged that “America is a thing you can move very easily.” What Israel has done is to create the potential for a new type of superpower, a small nation that survives and advances its interests by penetrating the workings of nations that have larger economies and militaries, and harnessing those resources.
In fact, Israel appears to be applying this model to other countries. In England, for example, a majority of the MPs of the three major parties belong to the “Friends of Israel” societies within those parties. Similarly, the BBC coverage of Israel and the Middle East is controlled by appointees that are invariably selected for their bias towards Israel. Canada and India are two formerly nonaligned nations that are now governed by parties and coalitions that have sworn allegiance to Israel. In India’s case, Israel’s promotion of Islamophobia has created an alliance with racist Hindu nationalist parties while making India the world’s largest customer of the Israeli arms industry.
Where will it end? Will Israel exhaust the economic and military resources of the US for its own perceived benefit? To what extent did it already contribute to the economic problems of the last decade? Or will Israel overextend its reach and find that the Zionist experiment to create and perpetuate a nation based on dubious historical, ethnic and religious claims and at the expense of other peoples will precipitate the very reaction that it was ostensibly formed to prevent?
This much we know: that if a strangler fig is allowed to thrive, its host will wither and die, and only its form will remain as an empty shell for as long as the parasite continues to survive.
Paul Larudee is one of the founders of the Free Gaza and Free Palestine Movements and an organizer in the International Solidarity Movement.
A military alliance in search of an identity: For over two decades NATO has had branding issues. To justify its existence, it absolutely needs an enemy. In the wake of the Ukraine crisis, Russia now fits that bill.
CrossTalking with Mark Sleboda, Alexander Mercouris and Brian Becker.
Arms firms that provide core military components for drones deployed by the US to conduct covert strikes in violation of international law allegedly bought access to NATO’s summit in Wales last week, a British human rights charity says.
The defense companies concerned doled out up to £300,000 to ‘exhibit’ their military wares at the conference in Newport. Among the firms present were General Dynamics, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and MBDA, according to a British government press release.
General Dynamics manufacture Hellfire missiles utilized in most US drone strikes, while Raytheon make the targeting system for the Reaper drone deployed by the CIA and other actors to conduct strikes across the globe. Lockheed Martin operates as a contractor to provide select support services for both the Reaper and Predator, and MBDA is a European company that manufactures the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) Brimstone – a variant of the Hellfire missile.
The US drone program has received widespread public criticism both at home and abroad. Critics say attacks carried out in foreign countries, including Yemen and Pakistan, are in violation of both international and US law.
Although US drone strikes have culminated in hundreds of civilian casualties, they are subject to little oversight, according to Reprieve. President Barack Obama has refused to formally acknowledge the program’s existence.
Reprieve’s Legal Director Kat Craig said it’s “deeply worrying” that a group of firms who potentially profit most from this breach of international law were able to buy access into an international global summit like NATO.
“It is unacceptable that the US’ drone campaign, and the UK’s support for it, has been allowed to remain in the shadows for so long”, he added.
“President Obama must be far more open about it – as must his European allies, especially the UK and Germany, about the support they provide.”
Craig suggested the drone manufacturers’ presence at NATO signaled their inherent capacity to buy political influence “behind closed doors,” highlighting the opaque, illicit and legally questionable nature of much of the global arms trade.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has accused the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel of prolonging Colombia’s guerilla war.
FARC negotiator Marcos Calarca leveled the accusation on Saturday at a news conference ahead of another round of peace talks with a delegation of the Colombian government in the Cuban capital Havana.
He pointed to “the responsibility of the government of the United States, of companies involved in the business of war, various intelligence agencies, especially the British and Israeli, whose involvement throughout the conflict encouraged its continuation, escalation and intensification.”
The latest accusation against Israeli and British agencies is a new twist in the 28th round of peace talks in Havana.
He, however, said, “The FARC will acknowledge its responsibility where it concerns us, on the understanding that our military actions have had essentially political goals, derived from our political project to take power.”
The FARC is Latin America’s oldest insurgent group and has been fighting the government since 1964.
Bogota estimates that 600,000 people have been killed and more than 4.5 million others have been displaced due to the fighting.
The rebel organization is thought to have around 8,000 fighters operating across a large swathe of the eastern jungles of the Andean nation.
NATO has pledged some 15 million euros to Ukraine, with several of the bloc’s member states pledging separate bilateral support and military cooperation, involving medical supplies as well as lethal and nonlethal military equipment.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen announced a “comprehensive and tailored package of measures” including the donation of 15 million euros “through NATO” at a joint news conference with the Ukrainian president on Thursday on the first day of the NATO summit in Wales.
He said that this would be in addition to other measures such as advising Ukraine on defense reforms and further bilateral aid.
“This is about improvement of logistics, the improvement of command and control, the improvement of communications, and cyber defense,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said.
He added that bilateral aid would include the provision of “high precision weapons” as well as medical equipment.
Poroshenko made careful statements regarding Ukraine’s potential induction into NATO, saying that membership criteria need to be met first.
“The new parliamentary election will help us a lot to accelerate the reform process,” Poroshenko said, adding that the most significant reforms to be made would be to the economy, and ensuring the rule of law and anti-corruption.
He said that he had some optimism for Friday’s peace talks in Minsk, Belarus, after which a ceasefire is expected to commence.
Rasmussen expressed caution: “If recent statements from President Putin represent a genuine effort to find a political solution, I would welcome it,” Rasmussen told reporters. He said that recent offers had been a “smokescreen” for further destabilization on the ground.
A yes vote in the upcoming referendum on Scottish independence is expected to pose challenges over the future of the UK’s strategic nuclear Trident program.
Keeping the nuclear base in Scotland for a least a number of years would be part of the independence negotiations, says Professor Malcolm Chalmers, a research director at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) and co-author of a recent report on relocating the Trident base.
According to the report, cited Thursday in The Guardian newspaper, while any relocation could not be completed by the 2020 target date currently proposed by the Scottish government, it could be put off – under a specific UK-Scotland basing agreement – perhaps until 2028, the date a new fleet of Trident submarines is due to start entering service.
The relocation would add up to £3.5bn to the cost of retaining Britain’s nuclear forces, a program estimated to cost £80bn over 25 years.
Yet, as the Rusi report concedes, negotiations following a yes vote in the Scottish referendum this month would trigger a wider debate in the rest of the UK about whether or not the strategic benefits of retaining nuclear weapons exceed the costs involved.
Chalmers adds that the debate over British nuclear weapons has always been politically driven and the military is divided over the issue.
The US, in particular, which wants its major British NATO ally to retain nuclear weapons, has made it clear that it would not welcome such a debate.
However, Colin Fleming, a Scottish defense and security academic, put it this way in a recent edition of the Chatham House think tank Journal of International Affairs : “There is no reason why Scotland would not provide a modern, flexible, defence force capable of securing Scottish territory and playing its part in the broader security of the British Isles as a whole.”
British officials have admitted that nearly two million households are set to miss out on a government energy rebate and millions of more will see delays up to a year before being refunded.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said Sunday that supplier would start giving the rebate from mid-October, after government officials decided to refund consumers money paid to a Warm Home Discount Scheme.
According to the DECC, an estimated 678,000 British households would not be refunded as their accounts were considered “in transit,” meaning costumers who pay by direct debit and who are in the process of switching supplier or moving house.
Another estimated 1.2 million homes using prepayment meters would not be refunded as they would not be able to complete necessary steps to receive vouchers by mail.
The department said electricity suppliers had indicated that there would be “delivery barriers,” which would prevent all eligible customers to receive the rebate.
In addition, a further 15 million customers who pay by direct debit would only receive the refund once their supplier reviews their accounts, which could be conducted just once a year.
The move to refund came after the government decided to cover payments to the discount scheme through taxation. Earlier consumers paid an average of 12 pounds annually on their energy bills to the scheme. The discount program was launched in 2011.
This comes as British people are experiencing a large rise in energy prices in recent years. A report published in June revealed that the prices of domestic energy in the UK rose by 45 percent between 2008 and 2014.
Meanwhile, Britain’s biggest six power firms – Centrica, SSE, EDF Energy, Scottish Power, E.ON, RWE npower – had seen their profits rise from £233 million in 2009 to more than £1 billion by 2012, according to energy regulator Ofgem.
British secret service MI6 has been accused of aiding Nepal’s authorities in the torture of Maoist rebels during the South Asian country’s civil war.
The accusations were made by author Thomas Bell in his new book Kathmandu citing sources in the Nepalese security establishment on Britain’s involvement in the country’s decade long civil war.
Bell said British authorities funded a four-year intelligence operation in Nepal in 2002 that financed safe houses and provided training in surveillance and counter-insurgency tactics to Nepal’s army and spy agency, the National Investigation Department (NID).
The British agency “also sent a small number of British officers to Nepal, around four or five — some tied to the embassy, others operating separately,” said Bell.
According to Bell, the British officers trained Nepalese authorities on how to place bugs, penetrate rebel networks and groom informers.
The sources said “British aid greatly strengthened” NID’s performance, which led to dozens of arrests, of which a number “were tortured and disappeared.”
One of the sources, a Nepalese general with close knowledge of the operation, argued that there was no doubt that British authorities realized that some of those detained would be tortured and killed.
Furthermore, Bell said that a senior Western official told him that the operation was cleared by Britain’s Foreign Office.
Bell said the findings revealed that “while calling for an end to abuses… the British were secretly giving very significant help in arresting targets whom they knew were very likely to be tortured.”
Tejshree Thapa, senior researcher at the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, commented on the book’s findings saying, “Nepal’s army was known by 2002 to be an abusive force, responsible for… summary executions, torture, custodial detentions,” adding, “To support such an army is tantamount to entrenching and encouraging abuse and impunity.”
Nepal’s civil war between the government and Maoists lasted between 1996 and 2006 and left more than 16,000 people killed.
It’s time for Tony to face charges;
It’s time for a Citizen’s Arrest.
There’s an empty dock in the Hague
Dying to have him as its guest.
There’s a million bodies buried in Iraq
Whose ghosts cry out in despair;
‘There were no weapons of mass destruction
So where’s ‘The People versus Tony Blair?’
There were no weapons about to hit London
Within the space of three quarters of an hour.
Tony was lying to Parliament and his country –
For Iraq never toppled the twin towers.
He and Campbell were conned by the neo-cons.
They were impressed by American power
Into letting themselves be drawn into war crimes
With Iraq being bombed for hour after hour.
A million were bombed to smithereens
Killed by shells tipped with uranium –
Causing birth defects to pregnant women
Lasting from generation to generation.
As a lawyer you’re aware that aggressive warfare,
Under the Nuremburg Protocols,
Constitutes the ultimate crime in international law –
Your avoiding justice makes people emotional.
To add insult to injury you’ve profited, Tony,
And you swan about in a private jet.
It’s made you popular amongst the corrupt;
You’re part of the International Set.
But the International Criminal Court
Is keeping your seat in the dock warm,
And anyone carrying out a successful arrest
Promises to go down a storm.
They’ll be rewarded with worldwide cheers
They’ll be greeted by great sighs of relief,
For at last the rule of law and of human rights
Won’t be undermined by a grinning thief.
There is a bounty on the head of Tony Blair. ArrestBlair.org offers a reward to people attempting a citizen’s arrest of Tony Blair for crimes against peace. Read more…
NATO is reportedly working towards the creation of an expeditionary force composed of 10,000 troops from seven different member states as a result of escalating tensions with Russia over the conflict in Ukraine.
According to the Financial Times,the force’s creation will be spearheaded by Britain and involve contributions from Denmark, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Norway, and the Netherlands. Canada is also interested in joining the group, but it’s not known what its final decision will be.
Although no formal announcement has been made, British Prime Minister David Cameron is expected to declare its formation at the upcoming NATO summit in Wales on September 4th.
Many specifics have yet to be worked out or announced, but planners are reportedly implementing ways to increase the number of soldiers involved even more if necessary. Air and naval units will be integrated into the group, as well as ground troops led by British commanders.
As noted by the Times, the creation of the force comes as a response to Russia’s involvement in the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, with the ultimate goal being to “create a fully functioning, division-sized force for rapid deployment and regular, frequent exercises.” NATO has accused Russia of deploying more than 1,000 troops into Ukraine to bolster separatists in the eastern part of the country.
Russia, however, insists that it does not have troops operating inside of Ukraine and has dismissed NATO’s assertions.
Despite the fact that NATO has opted not to act militarily in Ukraine – unnamed sources told Foreign Policy on Friday that there are no plans to confront Russia with anything more than stronger sanctions – Jonathan Eyal of the London-based Royal United Services Institute said the group needs to demonstrate that its eastern European members are just as integral to the alliance as other states.
“We need to end the idea of different zones of security in Europe,” he told the Financial Times. “We need to be talking about prepositioning, regular rotation of troops and making it very clear that we do not accept that the eastern Europeans are in some different category of membership of NATO.”
The revelation also arrives just a few days after NATO’s Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen expressed interest in forming “a more visible presence” in Eastern Europe in the form of facilities capable of rapidly receiving “response forces” needed to counter Russia.
For his part, Russia’s envoy to NATO, Aleksandr Grushko, said any attempt to push stretch further into the region would impact Moscow’s own security planning.
As world leaders prepare to attend the NATO Summit in Newport next week, campaigners are mobilising for a week of protest and debate to challenge this ‘interventionist, expansionist, military club.’
A mass demonstration against NATO will take place in Newport tomorrow (Saturday 30 August), while a Counter-Summit will be held on Sunday 31 August at Cardiff County Hall, and on Monday 1 September in Newport.
CND General Secretary Kate Hudson said:
‘Far from promoting security, NATO is a destabilising global force. Its war of aggression in Afghanistan has killed tens of thousands and left that country fragmented: the ripples of which are being felt across the region.
‘Through its insatiable expansion into eastern Europe, capitalising on the vacuum left following the collapse of the USSR, NATO has contributed to heightening tensions around Russia and Ukraine, and risks provoking a new Cold War.
‘As a nuclear alliance which has repeatedly rejected a “No First Use” policy – as well as adopting an offensive posture for “out of area” operations, NATO has shown itself for what it is: an interventionist, expansionist, military club which favours threats over diplomacy.
‘We don’t want US/NATO nukes on European soil. We don’t want its wars of aggression. And we’re here to challenge this aggressive alliance which makes all of us less safe. Tens of millions around the world want peace, justice and an end to NATO.’
Events
Sat 30 Aug: Demonstration and rally in Newport
Sun 31 Aug: Counter-Summit in Cardiff
Mon 1 Sep: Counter-Summit in Newport
Wed 3 Sep – Fri 5 Sep: Various actions and protests
Was anyone surprised to hear that the International Criminal Court is under pressure not to investigate Israel’s war crimes in Gaza?
The British government wouldn’t even vote for the UN Human Rights Council’s proposal to launch an inquiry and, along with France, abstained. The US, as expected, voted against. Even Ireland, Germany and Italy abstained in an extraordinary show of collective political cowardice. The enemy within had revealed itself.
As The Guardian reported, “at stake is the future of the ICC itself, an experiment in international justice that occupies a fragile position with no superpower backing. Russia, China and India have refused to sign up to it. The US and Israel signed the accord in 2000 but later withdrew.
“Some international lawyers argue that by trying to duck an investigation, the ICC is not living up to the ideals expressed in the Rome statute that ‘the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole must not go unpunished’.”
Britain’s recently departed foreign secretary, William Hague, while still in the job proclaimed his commitment to smoking out war criminals, bringing them to justice and supporting the International Criminal Court in its investigations. “If you commit war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide you will not be able to rest easily in your bed,” he said.
“There is no doubt where Britain stands: we are with those who say that international law is universal and that all nations are accountable to it…. We are a country that believes in and upholds the Responsibility to Protect…
“We pledge to recommit to the importance of fighting impunity for grave international crimes wherever they occur…. We will be a robust supporter of the International Criminal Court in its investigations.”
It was enough to make one warm just a little to the man.
Two years ago Hague delivered an important speech at the Hague, home of the International Criminal Court. He said all the right things, for example:
“The rule of law is critical to the preservation of the rights of individuals and the protection of the interests of all states.”
“You cannot have lasting peace without justice and accountability.”
“International laws and agreements are the only durable framework to address problems without borders.”
“Such agreements – if they are upheld – are a unifying force in a divided world.”
He spoke of a growing reliance on a rules-based international system. “We depend more and more on other countries abiding by international laws…. We need to strengthen the international awareness and observance of laws and rules….”
Some emerging powers, he said, didn’t agree with us about how to act when human rights are violated on a colossal scale, while others didn’t subscribe to the basic values and principles of human rights in the first place. He was actually talking about Syria although many in the audience must have had Israel in mind.
“The international community came together in an unprecedented way to address the crisis in Libya last year,” said Hague. “The Arab League, the UN Security Council, the UN Human Rights Council, the European Union, NATO and the International Criminal Court all stepped forward and played their part to protect a civilian population.”
Funny how they never came together for crisis-torn Palestine these last 65 years.
‘Pledged to fight impunity for grave international crimes ‘wherever they occur’
Hague continued: “Our coalition Government is firmly of the view that leaders who are responsible for atrocities should be held to account…. Institutions of international justice are not foreign policy tools to be switched on and off at will.”
He said that referring leaders in Libya and Sudan to the ICC showed that not signing up to the Rome Statute was no guarantee for escaping accountability. “If you commit war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide you will not be able to rest easily in your bed: the reach of international justice is long and patient…. There is no expiry date for these crimes….”
A year later a policy paper was issued by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, dated July 2013.
“It is a sad truth,” it said, ”that the biggest advances in international justice came about because of our revulsion at atrocities: the horror of the World Wars, the killing fields of Cambodia, the premeditated barbarity in Bosnia and Kosovo, the slaughter in Rwanda, and the mass rapes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, all of which were an unbearable affront to the conscience of humanity. Today, how much better it would be to look ahead and summon the political will to act to prevent conflict and expand human rights without needing to be shamed into doing so by the deaths and suffering of innocent people”.
It hammered home these ‘key messages’:
Our support for international criminal justice and accountability is a fundamental element of our foreign policy.
Our support for the ICC as a court of last resort and the importance of its role when national courts have been unwilling or unable to deliver justice is unswerving.
It is our clear hope that through universality of the Rome Statute and the development of national jurisdictions that the ICC’s role will eventually become increasingly limited.
Until then, the ICC will continue to play a vital role in achieving justice for the victims of the worst crimes.
Did Hague’s successor, the warmonger Philip Hammond (yes, he’s another who “voted strongly” for the Iraq war), read those words? Did his boss David Cameron, whose upbringing on the playing fields of Eton was supposed to have imbued him with the highest moral values and inoculated him with the most honourable intentions?
Where is that “unswerving” support for the ICC now? Why the about-face when Britain ought to be leading the charge against Israel’s genocidal tendencies?
We should remember that Hamas was democratically elected to govern the whole of occupied Palestine, not just Gaza, and that Israel and its Western friends conspired to prevent it. Hamas’s resistance is on behalf of all Palestinians. No matter how much some of us might disagree with Hamas’s methods they have very few defence options. No doubt they would love to replace their garden shed rockets with state-of-the-art guided missiles capable of the same accuracy as Israel’s, and to give Israeli citizens three minutes to evacuate and run for it.
Last night I attended a public meeting on the subject “How can Palestine be Free?” After a very good summary of the root-causes of the struggle no-one was able to put forward a game-changing plan of action. I ventured the opinion that the ICC remained the Great White Hope, even if it had been temporarily nobbled. It was up to civil society groups like the BDS movement and peace coalitions to make sure our shameless politicians at last feel the heat and are made to squirm until they clear their desk or change their ways.
First we must free ourselves from the clutches of the Enemy Within. Only then will Israel be brought to account and the Palestinian know peace and prosperity.
Taking a careful look at the run-up to the U.S./Israeli war on Iran exposes the inner workings of the U.S./Israeli deep state and the covert operations that the CIA and Mossad carry out around the world to lay the groundwork for war.
In this article, I will detail how the U.S. and Israel astroturfed protests in Iran, infiltrated them with rioters, and ran an atrocity propaganda campaign about Iran massacring protestors to manufacture consent for war.
This article will be an examination of the deep state’s war on Iran, prior to the full-scale U.S. invasion.
This article will be specific to Iran, but should be seen as a case study for how American, Israeli, and often British intelligence lay the groundwork for targets of empire around the world. … continue
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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