The last thing the Founding Fathers wanted for our country was omnipotent government — that is, a government that wields totalitarian-like powers. Thus, when the U.S. Constitution called the federal government into existence, it expressly restricted its powers to those enumerated in the Constitution. If a power wasn’t enumerated, it could not be legally exercised.
The powers enumerated in the Constitution were few and limited. The Constitution’s enumerated powers did not include the power to murder people. That’s because our American ancestors did not want to live under a government that had the power to murder people.
Americans were leery about the enumerated-powers concept. They were concerned that federal officials would ignore the concept and exercise totalitarian-like powers anyway, including the power to murder people.
That’s why the Bill of Rights was enacted. It expressly prohibited the federal government from exercising totalitarian-like powers that would destroy the fundamental, God-given rights of people. The Bill of Rights made it clear that our American ancestors were concerned about the power to murder people. Thus, the language of the Fifth Amendment is clear and unequivocal: “No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law.”
Notice that the term “person” is used. Not “American” but rather “person.” Our ancestors did not want the federal government to wield the power to murder anyone.
What is “due process of law.” It is a term stretching all the way back to Magna Carta. It requires a formal criminal charge and a trial before the federal government can kill someone. In other words, the Fifth Amendment prohibits federal officials from murdering people.
Why do I bring all this up? Because a few days ago the Associated Press reported that the Pentagon conducted an airstrike in central Baghdad, Iraq, that intentionally murdered two Iraqi citizens and injured five more.
No formal criminal charges. No trial. Just outright murder. Permit me to repeat the express restriction of the Fifth Amendment: “No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law.”
Notice that it doesn’t say: “except when it’s the Pentagon or the CIA that is doing the killing.” It also doesn’t say “except when the person is a citizen of Iraq.” It says “No person.”
But wait a minute! Did that Associated Press article actually say that these killings took place in Iraq? Isn’t that the nation that the Pentagon and the CIA invaded after the 9/11 attacks, where they killed, injured, tortured, and abused countless Iraqi people in the process of installing a pro-U.S. regime? Given such, what in the world is the Pentagon doing murdering Iraqi citizens in the middle of Baghdad?
The Pentagon says that it is retaliating against militias in Iraq who are attacking U.S. military bases in Iraq. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, if the Pentagon didn’t have U.S. soldiers based in Iraq, there would be no attacks in U.S. military personnel in Iraq and, therefore, no need to murder people in Baghdad.
An obvious question arises: Why do people in Iraq want to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq? I thought that their “Operation Iraqi Freedom” invasion was supposed to cause the Iraqi people to love the U.S. government. The reason for the widespread anger is because people in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East are extremely angry over the U.S. government’s unconditional military and financial support for the Israeli government and its brutal and deadly military campaign in Gaza. Question: Where in the Constitution is the U.S. government authorized to deliver taxpayer-funded military and financial aid to any foreign regime, including the government of Israel?
In any event, here you have a classic example of how one U.S. intervention — i.e, the unconditional U.S. support of the Israeli government — ultimately leads to another intervention — i.e., the cold-blooded murder of people who are suspected of targeting U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq. Of course, the operative word is “suspected” given that there was never a formal criminal charge or trial accorded to the murder victims, as the Fifth Amendment expressly requires.
The recent U.S. murders in Baghdad reveal how the conversion of the U.S. government to a national-security state has resulted in the type of government our American ancestors feared and opposed: one that exercises omnipotent powers with impunity, including the power to murder people.
January 9, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | CIA, Human rights, Iraq, United States, Zionism |
Leave a comment
January 9, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video | Hamas, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
Leave a comment
In yet another significant act of solidarity with the people of Gaza, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq on Sunday struck “a vital target in occupied Haifa” with an advanced long-range cruise missile, grabbing headlines and taking the embattled regime in Tel Aviv by another surprise.
In a statement, the Iraqi resistance emphasized that the operation was carried out because of “our ongoing support for people in Gaza,” who have been reeling under the Israeli aggression since Oct. 7.
The statement added that the operation was “in response to the massacres committed by the usurping entity against Palestinian civilians, including children, women, and the elderly.”
The Iraqi resistance, which has in recent months launched a string of attacks on US military bases in Iraq and Syria, said it will continue to hit enemy strongholds, warning that “more is yet to come”.
The concluding part of the statement was the most attention-grabbing.
Such is the stringent Israeli media censorship of the occupying regime’s war on the besieged Gaza Strip; it is difficult to speculate what vital infrastructure has been hit.
The Iraqi resistance struck Haifa with a long-range cruise missile, named al-Arqab, from Iraqi territory. The distance from Baghdad to Haifa is almost 1,000 kilometers.
According to sources, the launch of the missile took place closer to the Western Iraqi deserts. That is still roughly 600 kilometers away, or perhaps more, depending on the launch site.
It essentially means that Haifa, which is located in the northern part of the occupied territories, can expect attacks again from the Iraqi soil, the timing of which will be decided by the resistance.
More importantly, the long-range cruise missile traveled the same distance that can put Tel Aviv and all other Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories within the range of Iraqi fire.
On Monday, Iraq’s Harakat al-Nujaba resistance movement claimed responsibility for the strike, warning that Israel should await more crippling attacks in retaliation for its bloody war on Gaza.
“The Axis of Resistance is determined to disrupt US scenarios in the region and thwart the occupying Israeli regime’s schemes in Gaza,” Hussein al-Moussawi, spokesman for the group, said.
Should we be surprised that the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), under which the Islamic Resistance in Iraq operates, possesses such world-class military technology?
The short answer is no.
The Iraqi government itself armed the PMU with the most capable military equipment from Baghdad’s weapons depots because it plays the most fundamental role of all the Iraqi armed forces.
The attack on Haifa points to the start of a new chapter by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, in what is expected to be an even stronger show of support for the Palestinian resistance in Gaza and its people.
In this latest phase, we must expect an escalation in attacks on crucial Israeli infrastructure inside the occupied Palestinian territories, facilitated by the utilization of sophisticated long-range cruise missiles.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has made no secret of its iron-clad support and solidarity with the oppressed people of Gaza amid the Israeli regime’s indiscriminate bombings and inhumane siege.
It had also made no secret of its military operations against the Zionist regime and its Western backers, which has been completely evident in the past few weeks.
Shortly after the Israeli regime launched its war on Gaza on October 7, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq carried out a number of operations against Israeli interests and its main backer, the United States.
In late December, the Iraqi Resistance struck a vital target in the Eli-ad settlement, in the southern Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights with drones.
Before targeting Eli-ad, the resistance also pounded the regime’s main offshore (occupied) Karish gas field in the eastern Mediterranean Sea with a direct hit, inflicting heavy damage.
That came after the Iraqi resistance struck a target in occupied Umm al-Rashrash (Eilat) with appropriate weapons and released images of the operation for the public.
The regime evacuated the settlers of Eilat, transforming the area into a military garrison. It made the site an ideal target for Iraq as well as Yemen, another Arab country that has upped the ante recently.
Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement have carried out a series of operations against Israeli interests with a barrage of long-range drones and missiles.
At times, the goal has simply been to fire a barrage of missiles and drones to preoccupy the Israeli Iron Dome and Patriot Missiles. These calculated efforts have proven successful.
They effectively ease the pressure on the Palestinian resistance while at the same time drain out Israeli military resources, which have in recent months become extremely depleted.
The regime has killed more than 22,000 Palestinians since Oct. 7, the majority of whom have been women and children. Thousands more are missing, presumably dead under the rubble.
Among the countries and movements taking the lead in militarily pressuring the U.S. and its apartheid regime to end its inhumane attacks on Gaza, Iraqis have played a courageous role.
In Iraq, the resistance has targeted illegal American military bases on its territory as well as in Syria more than 110 times since the Israeli war against Gaza began three months ago.
Rockets, mortar shells, drones, and short and long-range ballistic missiles have all been used in these operations, leading to scores of casualties among US troops and collateral damage.
Now, the question that everyone is asking is: Why has the Iraqi resistance opened a new chapter?
Lately, the illegal US military occupation on Iraqi soil made a costly mistake by attacking sites belonging to the PMU, which means Washington and Tel Aviv have to pay the price.
Recent US attacks against affiliates of the PMU, including Kataib Hezbollah, and the recent deadly strike on the headquarters of Harakat al-Nujaba, which led to the assassination of one of its leaders in Baghdad, Haj Mishtaq, means the time is ripe for the resistance to expand its operations.
For context: In the eyes of the Iraqi resistance, there is no difference between the US military occupation of Iraqi soil and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The liberation of the Palestinian territories begins with the expulsion of American troops from Iraq and the rest of the region.
While the Israeli regime commits horrendous crimes against humanity in Gaza, America is shielding, arming, funding and facilitating this madness of death and destruction campaign in the coastal strip.
Taking a closer look at the events unfolding in Gaza, it is, in essence, an American war on Gaza.
This direct complicity means that Washington has to pay the same price as the Israeli regime is paying for its massacres of civilians in Gaza. They are two sides of the same coin.
Whilst illegal US bases in Iraq and Syria are closer to the line of fire for the resistance, the indiscriminate Israeli attacks against women and children in Gaza have seen the PMU increasingly target the Israeli regime, the latest being Haifa.
What the Al-Aqsa Storm (or Al-Aqsa Flood) operation provided was an opportunity for the Iraqi resistance to strike at Israeli interests for the first time in history.
As pressure grows on the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Mohammad Shia’ al-Sudani to expel the illegal US forces, it has also opened a new window for the PMU to end the American occupation and avenge Washington’s assassination of its deputy leader Abu Mehdi al-Muhandis.
For the moment, the main goal of the resistance is to expand its scope of attacks against the Israeli regime in order to mount pressure on the apartheid occupation as well as the US.
And, as the Iraqi resistance warned after the Haifa attack, “more is yet to come”.
Wesam Bahrani is an Iraqi journalist and commentator.
January 8, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Wars for Israel | Gaza, Iraq, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
Leave a comment
European investigators probing the September 2022 attack on the Nord Stream pipeline network have told US business media that Polish officials have refused to cooperate with an international investigation into the incident. But the report is just another attempt to divert attention from Washington’s role in the blasts, a Russian observer says.
Polish officials have dragged their feet in providing any useful info related to the movement of individuals suspected of plotting and carrying out the 2022 attack on the Nord Stream pipeline network and have generally refused to cooperate, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing unnamed ‘European investigators’ looking into the case.
Some European officials are reportedly considering appealing directly to the office of newly elected Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk for help in investigating the sabotage attack, with investigators expressing “suspicions” over Warsaw’s “role and motives” amid the lack of cooperation from the previous government.
The new ‘Polish chapter’ in the CIA-inspired cover story diverting attention from evidence of the US’s central role in the Nord Stream attack comes after more than a year of meticulous attempts to pin the blame on Ukrainians – first in the form of a shadowy amateur group of operatives without connections to any governments, and then to claims that the sabotage was coordinated by Ukrainian special operations colonel Roman Chervinsky, who is now conveniently rotting in a Kiev jail.
The narrative, crafted by US and German media after revelations last year by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh that US Navy divers planted explosives on the pipelines under the cover of a NATO drill, claimed that the Ukrainian operatives rented a yacht from a Poland-based, Ukrainian-owned company and proceeded to place explosives on the pipeline infrastructure – situated some 80 and 110 meters underwater in the Baltic Sea.
New Narrative to Distract From Mounting EU-US Tensions
Speaking to Sputnik and asked to comment on why the WSJ piece was published now, Russian political analyst Peter Kolchin explained that it’s designed to reinforce the US narrative about foreign actors’ involvement in the Nord Stream attack, particularly as Europe continues to face the economic consequences resulting from the unprecedented act of sabotage against another NATO country’s infrastructure.
“The United States is currently suffering one diplomatic defeat after another. In the face of problems in the Middle East, in the face of a defeat in Ukraine, it’s very important for Washington to consolidate the entire NATO bloc,” the observer explained. The attack on Nord Stream “is a very difficult topic for the bloc, because factually, the destruction of this infrastructure significantly weakened Europe’s economic capabilities and left it dependent on the US energy sector. Now, Europe is forced to buy American gas and to incur huge costs because of it,” Kolchin noted.
How huge? According to a recent Sputnik review of Eurostat data, EU countries have had to pay some €185 billion ($202 billion US) extra on natural gas over the past 20 months after being cut off – by choice or by force, from cheap Russian pipeline gas. Between early 2022 and late 2023, the bloc spent more on natural gas purchases than it did over the entire eight-year period between 2013 and 2021.
Consisting of four pipelines stretching from Russia to northeastern Germany along the bottom of the Baltic Sea, Nord Stream singlehandedly had the capability to provide Europe with up to 110 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas per year, equivalent to more than a quarter of the bloc’s 412 bcm consumption in 2021. The September 2022 attack on the infrastructure, combined with Polish and Ukrainian moves to close the taps to Russian gas, have left TurkStream and ship-based LPG the only means for Russian gas to get to EU countries.
The Nord Stream “problem” isn’t going anywhere, Kolchin believes. “Both in Europe and the United States, the mainstream publications and politicians are asking questions about it.” Therefore, “it’s important for Washington to give the public some more or less plausible scenario” regarding the attack.
“Of course, for many months now Washington has been attempting to shift all responsibility onto Ukraine. Here, the appearance of publications in US media adding credibility to a role played by Warsaw is only part of this big campaign. The United States is trying to shift responsibility from itself onto others, in this case Warsaw,” the observer said.
“Poland, which no longer enjoys agency, cannot oppose the will of the United States, and is being forced to accept what Washington is trying to pin on them,” even if in reality, “it has been noted more than once and at the highest levels that the involvement of the United States in the terrorist attack on Nord Stream is obvious,” Kolchin said.
President Putin commented on Washington’s suspected role in the Nord Stream attack at his year-end press conference last month, dismissing European complaints about Russia ‘turning off the taps’ of energy supplies to the region by pointing out that “it wasn’t us that blew up… Nord Stream,” but “most likely the US, or someone at their suggestion.”
Nevertheless, Washington will continue to push its policy line on the Nord Stream incident, regardless of what the evidence, and elementary logic, say, Kolchin believes.
America’s “methodical” approach is particularly important in light of growing splits in the North Atlantic alliance as Washington continues to ride roughshod over Europe’s basic interests, the observer noted.
“Let’s be honest, it’s difficult in principle to speak of any kind of trust within the alliance. And this is largely connected with the Nord Stream events. European countries understand who is responsible, but have very reluctantly been forced to swallow this harsh reality,” the observer summed up.
January 8, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Economics | CIA, European Union, Poland, United States |
Leave a comment
On January 2, Frank Kitson, a lifelong British Army officer, writer, and military theorist died peacefully in his sleep at the grand age of 97. It was an undeservedly dignified exit for an individual who directly and indirectly inflicted misery upon untold people for much of his lifetime. It is likely many will continue to suffer adverse consequences as a result of his teachings for decades to come.
Kitson was a pioneer in the field of counterinsurgency, defined as “the totality of actions aimed at defeating irregular forces.” His assorted views on the topic were informed by Britain’s experience of brutal, asymmetric wars against nationalist rebellions and attempted revolutions throughout the Global South, as its Empire rapidly disintegrated following World War II. In several cases, he was on the literal frontline of these bloody disputes.
Kitson wrote a series of books about counterinsurgency, which were hugely influential internationally. Most notoriously, his proposed strategies for “defeating irregular forces” were deployed throughout “the Troubles” – London’s secret dirty war against the Catholic population of Northern Ireland and the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Ever since, these methods have been deployed over and again to devastating effect in theatres of war domestic and foreign, by multiple governments.
Even sympathetic mainstream obituaries of Kitson were forced to acknowledge this highly controversial legacy. The Times of London noted how in his final years, “he was still dogged by litigation” from his time leading Britain’s war on Catholics throughout the Troubles. “Threats to his personal security and that of his family continued to the end” as a result of his posting, the newspaper recorded.
Absent from these eulogies was any reference to a core, clandestine component of Kitson’s patented counterinsurgency credo – a very specific, uniquely British form of torture. Actively practiced and exported abroad by London for decades, these techniques of maltreatment have been adopted by countless militaries, security and intelligence agencies, and police forces. Just as the primary casualties of battles against “irregular forces” are invariably innocent civilians, average citizens of the world have been the ultimate victims of this mephitic push.
‘Propaganda Cover’
In the Autumn of 1969, Kitson’s British Army superiors personally tasked him with an extremely sensitive mission. He was to enroll at Oxford University and produce a thesis “to make the army ready to deal with subversion, insurrection and peace-keeping operations” over the next decade, if not beyond. The 42-year-old lieutenant colonel was an ideal candidate for the role.
Pyrrhic victory over the Nazis severely weakened London financially and militarily, prompting populations of her colonies and imperial holdings to rise en-masse against their oppressors. This produced bitter end-of-Empire wars on every continent. Kitson was a veteran of two – the 1952 – 1960 Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya, and the 1948 – 1960 Malayan Emergency. There, he witnessed first-hand the British innovate new, vicious ways of dealing with unconventional threats, in real-time.
Kitson was dispatched to Oxford at a time when London struggled desperately to contain another popular civilian rebellion. Escalating tensions between indigenous Catholics and Protestant colonizers in Northern Ireland resulted in the British Army’s formal deployment to the province in August 1969. Initially welcomed as protectors, the situation rapidly spun out of control. The “peacekeepers” became embroiled in endless, unwinnable street-to-street battles against IRA insurgency and hostile Catholic civilians.
In September 1970, Kitson took command of the British Army’s 39th Brigade, responsible for keeping the peace in Belfast and much of the east of Northern Ireland. Serendipitously, his thesis was published as “Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping” not long after. Received with some relief by soldiers, military chiefs, and government officials wrestling with how to deal with “the Troubles”, its contents provoked an outcry in certain public quarters.
Of particular concern were passages in which Kitson argued against conducting counterinsurgency efforts “against those practicing subversion” under typical civil, legal, and political conditions. Instead, he contended that standard freedoms, protections, and rights should be suspended, before launching military operations against “irregular targets”. In such contexts, laws could not “remain impartial and [be administered] without any direction from the government.”
“Law should be used as just another weapon in the government’s arsenal…a propaganda cover for the disposal of unwanted members of the public. For this to happen efficiently, the activities of legal services have to be tied into the war effort in as discreet a way as possible.”
Elsewhere, Kitson likened counterinsurgency to catching a fish, with civilian populations of areas where enemy groups operate as “the water in which the fish swims.” He argued that if a fish could not be caught via traditional means such as a net or rod, “it may be necessary to do something to the water which will force the fish into a position where it can be caught. Conceivably it might be necessary to kill the fish by polluting the water.’’
‘Five Techniques’
In August 1971, Operation Demetrius commenced in Northern Ireland. British soldiers went home-to-home across the province, mass-arresting IRA suspects and their family members, frequently based on outdated or outright false intelligence, in service of “internment”. This policy was entirely in keeping with Kitson’s counterinsurgency pronouncements and executed under his direct watch. It meant detention without trial for hundreds of “terrorism” suspects, over lengthy periods.
While jailed, internees were subjected to some or all of London’s “Five Techniques” of torture to make them talk. These methods, in keeping with Kitson’s counterinsurgency philosophy, evolved over the course of Britain’s assorted end-of-Empire conflicts. Catholics were spared the absolute worst excesses of the horrors meted out to indigenous populations. For example, while women were victims of internment, broken bottles, gun barrels, knives, snakes, and hot eggs were not routinely thrust into their genitalia, as was done with female Mau Mau suspects in Kenya.
Still, what was done to detainees can only be considered barbarous in the absolute extreme. In November of that year, a senior commandant within the British Army’s Intelligence Corps sketched an official history of the development of London’s military interrogation methods since World War II. Its contents were so sensitive and shocking that senior government officials wished for the report to remain secret for a century. As it was, the document was declassified after just three decades.
In brief, Britain had devised a system of torture, combining prolonged stress positions, subjection to white noise, sensory deprivation, and cessation of food, drink, and sleep. The Five Techniques could be applied to anyone in almost any context, cost little or nothing to employ, and would not leave physical marks on victims. As such, public exposure, scandal, or prosecution for human rights abuses and/or war crimes was extremely unlikely, if not impossible.
Physical pain and psychological devastation inflicted by the Five Techniques were nonetheless dependably gargantuan. In stress positions, detainees were stripped, then forced to wear buttonless boiler suits and hoods, before being forced to stand with their legs spread apart, leaning forward with their arms held high against a wall, supporting all their weight with their fingers alone. Simultaneously, relentless white noise was pumped into their cells. If a prisoner did not maintain the stress position, they were beaten into compliance.
‘Very Simple System’
The Intelligence Corps report notes these methods had been applied over the past three decades to prisoners of war, refugees, guerrilla fighters, and spies. Contained therein is a lengthy section documenting the deployment and refinement of the “Five Techniques” in numerous counterinsurgencies, while discussing their efficacy and the results gained by usage. For example, the author cites how Mau Mau “terrorists” in Kenya “were persuaded under interrogation to switch their allegiance and subsequently guided British patrols against their erstwhile comrades.”
In British Cameroon 1960/1, “members of a subversive group from the neighbouring Cameroon Republic were arrested on British-controlled territory, which they were using as a base.” An Army team set up shop in a “converted hotel annex” to interrogate 20 “high grade subjects”, of which 15 “cooperated fully” as a result of torture.”
“Information elicited included full details of rebel training camps in Morocco and other north-west African countries – even course syllabi.”
In June 1963, British Army interrogators flew to Swaziland, a protectorate of London, after 1,500 workers at a British-owned asbestos mine went on strike, demanding a basic wage of £1 a day. In a perverse irony, “it was thought that the labour problem [was] created by [a] subversive organisation,” rather than legitimate and reasonable grievances over grossly exploitative low wages paid by their colonial overlords.
After the Five Techniques were liberally applied to strikers – and, given their racial extraction, surely more gruesome methods too – “no subversive organisation was found” to be behind the strikes. This “negative result” was considered “valuable”, as “it quickly established that local grievances were the cause of unrest.” The effort was also “successful in clearing up the labour problems,” the report commended. But of course – when industrial action results in torture, workers quickly learn to stay in line.
Fast forward to March 1971, a British Army interrogation center was set up in a “disused camp” in Northern Ireland. The site “was not perfectly adaptable to the task, but was the best available,” the report records. The stage was thus set for Catholics to be subjected to the Five Techniques with total impunity. Savage tactics tested and honed against Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans were being brought “home” to British soil.
The report’s author understood the monstrousness that had been created. They noted the importance of training British soldiers to withstand comparable interrogation techniques and to know “what to expect at the hands of an unscrupulous enemy.” It is nonetheless likely that British trainees were spared the indignity of being beaten, kicked in the genitals, and having their heads smashed into walls, as many Catholic internees suffered.
The result in every case was prolonged pain, physical and mental exhaustion, severe anxiety, depression, hallucinations, disorientation, and repeated loss of consciousness. No detainee ever fully recovered from their internment – long-term psychological trauma was universal. Yet, it appears only 14 prisoners were subjected to every single one of the Five Techniques. They became known as the “Hooded Men”, and in 1976, their case was considered by the European Commission of Human Rights. It ruled that the Techniques amounted to torture.
The case was then referred to the European Court of Human Rights, which astoundingly ruled two years later that while the Five Techniques were “inhuman and degrading” and breached Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, they did not amount to torture. In 2014, after it was revealed that British government ministers had expressly greenlit the use of the Five Techniques in Northern Ireland, Dublin asked the ECHR to review its decision. Four years later, the Court declined.
The declassified British Army Intelligence Corps report notes many foreign countries “show considerable interest” in the Five Techniques, with students from the US, Netherlands, Jordan, Belgium, Germany, Norway, and Denmark regularly attending training sessions convened by London. “Our European allies look to the UK for advice… our very simple system is admired,” the report boasts. This surely explains why the Five Techniques cannot be formally recognized by the most influential and powerful human rights court in the world.
January 8, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Jordan, Kenya, Netherlands, Norway, UK, United States |
Leave a comment
Team Biden is doing damage control ahead of the election by hastily refilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). Alas, it is coming at a cost for American taxpayers as the administration is purchasing crude at twice the historic average, Just the News says.
The US Department of Energy (DOE) is currently buying three million barrels a month to refill the nation’s SPR in the wake of Joe Biden’s release of over 225 million barrels of oil between March 2022 and August 2023, dumping levels in the reserve to the lowest in 40 years.
Tim Stewart, president of the US Oil and Gas Association, alleges that Team Biden is doing nothing short of damage control ahead of the 2024 election given that the nation’s depleted SPR has recently become the public’s concern.
“Prior to 2022, the average person knew nothing about the SPR. That has completely changed. When the lovely 75-year-old blue-haired lady at church complains to me how Biden has drained the SPR – they must have caught the public’s attention,” Stewart told Just the News, an independent US media outlet founded by award-winning investigative journalist John Solomon.
Apparently, the Biden administration would have bought “refill barrels” at a greater pace, but it is facing limits on how much crude can be funneled into the reserve per month. That means it will take a whopping 75 months to bring the SPR back to the level at which it was before US President Joe Biden started draining it.
To sweeten the pill, the US administration triumphantly claims that it is buying oil for the SPR at an average price of $77.31 per barrel, which is considerably below the average of $95 per barrel it was in 2022.
Per Stewart, it’s by no means “a good deal for American taxpayers”: one should bear in mind that the average price paid per barrel in the SPR has been $29.70 per barrel, the expert pointed out.
It appears that the Biden administration is guided by its own political interests rather than those of the nation. It began draining the SPR in spring of 2022, ahead of the midterm election: at the time gasoline prices went up and American voters were not happy with that.
Still, Just the News failed to mention that the hike in prices was partially caused by Team Biden’s energy sanctions slapped on Russia over Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine. If one digs deeper, one would learn that the special military operation started after the Biden administration snubbed Moscow’s draft security agreement aimed at safeguarding Europe’s peace, protecting Russia’s borders and restoring the balance of forces vis-à-vis NATO.
Now, the Biden administration is buying oil at twice the historic average to replenish the SPR before the 2024 presidential election in a bid to look good in the eyes of the US voters. The crux of the matter is that the US administration and the Democratic Party in general may have avoided this tricky situation ahead of the election if it had green-lighted Donald Trump’s initiative to fill the SPR at the time when oil prices were extremely low, per Stewart.
Back in 2020, in the midst of the COVID pandemic, then US President Donald Trump moved to buy oil for the SPR when West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil prices were under $25 per barrel. Trump requested $3 billion from the US Congress to jump at this lucrative opportunity, but Democratic lawmakers nipped the president’s endeavor in the bud. Per Just the News, Democratic lawmakers bragged at the time that they had “eliminated a $3 billion bailout for big oil.”
“They could have picked up several hundred million barrels at $15, but because it was what President Trump wanted, Congress said no,” Stewart told the media outlet.
The Biden administration’s blunders have not gone unnoticed by the US public. A new Gallup poll shows that none of the US federal government’s top officials have a job approval rating above 50%. When it comes to President Joe Biden, he ended 2023 with “a persistently low job approval rating of 39%,” per the pollster.
January 8, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Russophobia | United States |
Leave a comment
In 2015, the “Defend the Guard Act” was introduced in the West Virginia legislature, aiming to bring sanity to our nation’s foreign policy and the legal abuses foisted upon our servicemen within our state’s National Guard.
This proposed law emerged from long forgotten principles, pieced together into legislation that was committed to the idea that our troops ought to only be sent into foreign wars with a declaration of war by the U.S. Congress—a constitutional mandate forsaken for over eighty years now.
With the Congress renouncing its solemn responsibility, over time, the process of throwing American troops into foreign wars has become a matter of unilateral decree by the president, an office swayed carelessly by the administrative state and impulsive bureaucrats from the Pentagon.
The consequences of this radical departure from our nation’s traditional governance have been predictable: a catastrophic state of “Forever Warfare,” financially and morally bankrupting our country.
The Defend the Guard Act, then, is a last-ditch effort to reassert legislative oversight before it’s too late, and force Washington to confront the neglected ethics long held by the Western “Just War Tradition”—that armed conflict should always be a measure of last resort.
The legislation, however, is more than just a simple procedural check. A crucial aspect is its focus on keeping our Guard units at home, where they’re needed most. A state’s National Guard is essential for handling local emergencies like floods and storms or securing our borders.
Over the years, a troubling trend has emerged: many of the National Guard members who have been cut down on the front lines of Washington’s perpetual foreign wars hail from rural states akin to West Virginia—states like Arkansas, Ohio, and Kentucky, or Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming.
This disproportionate burden of foreign wars borne by our country’s rural regions—areas often dismissed by the elites of this nation as “flyover country”—is not just a tragedy, it’s an outrage. To the ruling coastal elite, our servicemen from such states are seen as expendable.
During the height of the Iraq War, for instance, nearly half of all combat brigades were National Guardsmen, a great many from rural states held in contempt by the managerial ruling class, who don’t think twice about them or their families.
Central to this entire affair has been the incredible efforts of Sgt. Dan McKnight (Ret) and the organization he formed, Bring Our Troops Home. Dan’s leadership and organizational skills have propelled this idea from a meager initiative in West Virginia to a national movement.
Dan’s devotion to the cause, coupled with his talent to articulate its urgency, has galvanized massive support and brought critical attention to the subject—amplifying the voices of combat veterans everywhere and motivating state legislators across the country to take action.
Each year, as we’ve fought to advance this ‘Defend the Guard’ legislation, formidable resistance is encountered, primarily from the Pentagon and their bureaucratic lackeys. The “Brass” and the useful idiots sent to carry out their bidding employ a wide range of sordid tactics; from disingenuous accusations of “failing to support the troops,” to more aggressive methods behind closed doors—like threats of federal-funding cuts and hints of public defamation against those who support the legislation—the hostility has only intensified.
The escalation of these schemes if a sign of their growing desperation. It’s quite common now for uniformed general officers to patrol the halls of state capitols, lobbying state legislators against the bill with Machiavellian tactics.
These blatant measures on behalf of public “servants” attached to the Pentagon pose a direct challenge to the fundamental American principle of civilian authority over the military—raising questions as to who really controls the armed forces of this country anymore.
Despite this ordeal, the Defend the Guard Act has begun to spread like wildfire, thanks again in large part to Dan McKnight’s heroic efforts. This once-regional idea has now found resonance in dozens of state capitols across the nation.
Huge victories have been achieved with the bill’s passage in the Arizona Senate, and—as of four days ago—its success through the New Hampshire House, marking an even bigger milestone. With the potential to reach up to 40 states this coming year, a pivotal turning point is at hand.
The success of this movement underscores a very critical moment for our states to leverage their inherent powers within our country’s federalist framework, compelling the federal government in Washington to adhere to its foundational principles.
Paramount in this endeavor is the protection of our courageous servicemen within the National Guard—along with the prudent treatment of all of our country’s warriors, who honor their sacred oaths they swore to the Almighty when they donned the uniform.
By reviving long-neglected political principles and promoting the classical virtues, true leaders can be encouraged to emerge and drive efforts that can also safeguard our nation as a whole.
Next week, for the tenth consecutive year, I’ll re-introduce the Defend the Guard Act here in West Virginia. As the idea spreads, I’m hopeful a growing resolve to uphold the virtues our country was founded upon will as well.
Pat McGeehan is a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates representing the first district.
January 8, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Militarism | United States |
Leave a comment
“Endless hysteria will keep you free,” said none of the Founding Fathers. But President Joe Biden missed that message before his absurdly overheated speech last Friday near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Biden draped himself in Revolutionary War virtue as he demanded that Americans quiver in fear at the prospect of his reign ending. Biden invoked the third anniversary of the January 6 Capitol clash to effectively call for canceling the 2024 presidential election.
At a minimum, Biden wants to turn the November election into a referendum on Adolf Hitler. Biden boasted, “We are still a nation that gives hate no safe harbor.” A few minutes before that uplifting assertion, Biden accused Donald Trump of “echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany.” CNN reported last week that Biden campaign aides plan to go “full Hitler” on Trump, making “a direct comparison to the Nazi leader rather than couching their attacks by saying Trump ‘parroted’ him.” A few weeks ago, the Biden campaign posted a graphic on Twitter comparing Trump and Hitler’s rhetoric.
Biden continually equated democracy with freedom. And whatever is good for democracy is “close enough for government work” to freedom. Biden declared, “Democracy means having the freedom to speak your mind.” Unless Team Biden disapproves of your thoughts, of course.
Biden neglected to explain why his vision of democracy justifies the near-total suppression of freedom of speech for his opponents. On July 4, Federal Judge Terry Doughty condemned the Biden administration for potentially “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history,” and a federal appeals court condemned Team Biden for “suppressing millions of protected free-speech postings by American citizens”—mostly by conservatives and Republicans.
“If only Uncle Joe had known about that abuse,” right? Like hell. Biden’s Justice Department is fighting tooth and nail at the Supreme Court to preserve his power to secretly censor anyone the feds claim is spouting disinformation, perhaps including denying that Biden is God’s gift to America.
Another key to Biden’s vision of democracy is that the president is entitled to imprison peaceful protestors who opposed him. Biden proved the villainy of Trump supporters by touting case numbers from January 6: “Since that day more than 1,200 people have been charged for the assault on the capitol, and nearly 900 of them have been convicted and they have been sentenced to more than 840 years in prison.”
Biden neglected to quote the bombshell Washington Post report today revealing that vast numbers of the January 6 charges have been crap cases. Federal judges have rejected Biden Justice Department sentencing demands in almost 90% of the January 6 cases—an astounding record. If those cases were not being tried by juries overstocked with federal employees and NPR devotees, the prosecutions would have crashed and burned long ago.
The Supreme Court may obliterate many of the cases. More than 320 of the convictions against J-6 protestors hinge on a bizarre contortion of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law enacted after corporations destroyed documents sought by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“The average sentence for those convicted of obstructing an official proceeding has been 39 months,” the Post reported. Former federal prosecutor Gene Rossi warns that the Supreme Court taking that case is a “red flag and a loud gong” because that law was the “North Star” used by prosecutors. If the Supreme Court strikes down the Biden twist of the 2002 law, that will make the January 6 prosecutions look like one of the worst witch hunts in American history.
Yet, according to Team Biden, the real problem is that not enough lives have been ruined for sinful thoughts on January 6. Last Thursday, Matthew Graves, Biden’s chief prosecutor for the District of Columbia, issued a warning of potentially thousands of more January 6 indictments: “If a person knowingly entered a restricted area [near the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021] without authorization, they already committed a federal crime. Make no mistake: Thousands of people occupied that area that they were not authorized to be present in in the first place.” Talking about hounding people who merely were in the general vicinity of the Capitol confirms that for Team Biden, “Trespassing plus thought crimes equals terrorism.”
Actually, Biden’s FBI already classifies all the people arrested for January 6 Capitol clash offenses as domestic terrorists—even people busted for “parading without a permit.” The FBI presumes that any American suspected of supporting the January 6, 2021 protests forfeited his constitutional rights. An FBI whistleblower revealed in congressional testimony in May 2023 that FBI headquarters pressured FBI agents to treat anyone who attended the January 6 protests as a criminal suspect. Roughly 2,000 pro-Trump protestors (including an unknown number of undercover agents and informants) entered the Capitol that day. But an FBI analyst exploited the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to unjustifiably conduct warrantless searches on 23,132 Americans citizens suspected of January 6 offenses “to find evidence of possible foreign influence, although the analyst conducting the queries had no indications of foreign influence,” according to FISA Chief Judge Rudolph Contreras.
Biden assured the audience that “we still believe that no one, not even the president, is above the law.” Okay, but what if the president or the vice president uses the names Robert Peters, Robin Ware, and JRB Ware as email aliases to hustle business deals for a family member? Is it OK for them to slip the law then?
The only way to assume that Biden is not “above the law” is to assume that his decrees alone are the law. The Supreme Court struck down his COVID vaccine mandate, his moratorium for evicting deadbeat renters, his $500 billion federal student loan forgiveness scheme, and numerous other Biden policies.
Biden spent half an hour fearmongering and then closed by promising “freedom from fear.” This is the famous Biden two-step—demagoguing to his heart’s content and then closing with a few schmaltzy uplift lines, entitling the media to re-christen him as an idealist.
Biden castigated Trump as the “Election Denier in Chief,” a new offense not yet been codified in the statute book. Biden endlessly warned that Trump posed a deadly threat to both freedom and democracy. Biden campaign masterminds were clever enough to permit an unknown local politician to deliver the “takeaway” from the day’s events. Biden was preceded at the podium by Dauphin County commissioner candidate Justin Douglass, who proclaimed that “Donald Trump represents a clear and present danger” to democracy. Since Trump is the ultimate enemy of the Constitution, anything that Biden and his campaign does to banish Trump from the ballot will be pro-democracy.
Obviously, if Americans value democracy, then the presidential candidate favored by the most voters in recent polls must not be allowed on the ballot. Team Biden favors a version of “Guardian Democracy” where voters are only permitted to cast ballots for candidates that the ruling class approves. This is part and parcel with the Democratic Party’s plan to let all future elections be determined by ballot harvesting and tsunamis of unverified mail-in ballots.
Why should we believe that democracy dies unless Biden gets four more years to violate the Constitution, censor and jail his opponents, and domineer practically every aspect of Americans’ lives (“step away from that gas stove before we have to hurt you”)? As Thomas Jefferson declared long ago, “An elective despotism is not the government we fought for.”
January 8, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | FBI, Human rights, United States |
Leave a comment
As one digests Rupert Darwall’s latest report for the RealClear Foundation, the well-known quote from Spanish philosopher George Santayana might ring through the mind: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Anyone looking to combat the activists pushing a ‘net zero’ agenda here in the U.S. would be wise to read Darwall’s piece, entitled “The Folly of Climate Leadership.”
The analysis tells the story of Great Britain heeding the cries for decarbonization, starting when Parliament wrote an 80% decrease in emissions target into law in 2008. They raised it to 100% – or “net zero” – in 2019. The results have clearly been catastrophic.
Since decarbonization efforts commenced, Britain’s economy has grown at half the rate as it did from 1990-2008. According to a research study from noted British economic historian Nicholas Crafts, that’s the second-worst period of British peacetime growth since 1780.
In addition to the economic malaise, British energy prices have skyrocketed, and Britons are now concerned with how to survive the effect of those costs on their wallets, as they look to heat and power their homes and businesses, travel for work and pleasure and live life as best they can.
The differences between British energy costs and those here in the U.S. are staggering: Britons paid an average of $228 per megawatt hour (MWh) for electricity generated from coal in 2022, whereas Americans paid an average of $27 per MWh. For natural gas, 2022 saw Britons paying $251 per MWh, versus American consumers averaging $61 per MWh for their power.
Darwall’s report also highlights the effects of unchecked and anti-market driven government investment in ‘green’ energy on grid reliability, as intermittent production from wind and solar – coupled with a lack of utility-grade energy storage – dropped electricity generated per gigawatt of capacity falling 28% since 2009.
The same arguments that have crippled Britain’s economy are now being used by the Biden Administration here at home, with zealots in Cabinet-level positions – including Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, and EPA Director Michael Regan – pushing the message from their bully pulpits.
The recent – and completely misnamed – Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress provided the zealots with nearly $400 billion to dole out to supportive organizations and start-ups to jump-start our nation’s push for ‘net zero.’ Those dollars – doled out with few oversights or performance metrics attached in many cases – have produced very few wins in the last year, unless a win is measured in keeping political cronies happy and rich.
Consider: wind energy projects in Nebraska, Colorado, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey were scrapped last year, even after untold millions of federal dollars went to their developers. Over 100 solar companies went bankrupt, and solar projects from California to Florida were shuttered in the middle of their development. Battery storage – a key component to offsetting the intermittency of wind and solar – also saw projects stalled, along with at least one lawsuit filed against a storage company when its solution failed.
Despite the perils of ‘green’ energy dependence shown throughout Europe, the eco-left continues to double down on ridding America of traditional energy sources. Supporting those efforts are ideologue billionaires, who continue to fund net-zero initiatives.
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has given well over $1 billion of his personal wealth to the Sierra Club to fund its “Beyond Coal” and “Beyond Carbon” campaigns. Designed to rid the U.S. of every coal-fired power plant by 2030, the Sierra Club/Bloomberg partnership has succeeded in shutting down nearly two-thirds of the plants to-date, with most of the remaining in rural locations, including my home state of Alaska, where alternatives to existing coal plants in the state’s interior don’t readily exist. Without coal, countless Alaskans would have their livelihoods – and very lives – threatened during our long, dark and sub-zero-temperature winters.
With activists entrenched in government bureaucracy, zealots running government agencies and rich men (and women) funding these efforts, only those educated in historical failures of decarbonization – and willing to stand up and fight back against the climate warriors – stand a chance of helping stem the attacks. Darwall’s study should be required reading for anyone looking to build a fortress in their state against job-killing, family-harming decarbonization efforts.
Rick Whitbeck is the Alaska State Director for Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs. Contact him at Rick@PowerTheFuture.com and follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @PTFAlaska
January 7, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | Human rights, UK, United States |
Leave a comment
This week, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) refuted Apple’s plea to veto a “free speech resolution” proposed by shareholders that were concerned about Apple, as a dominant Big Tech giant, to suppress speech.
This proposal, advanced by the American Family Association (AFA), pushes Apple to scrutinize its processes of content curation and to publish a report addressing fears that the corporation’s policies may inadvertently inhibit speech based on differing views.
The SEC dismissed Apple’s attempt to omit the resolution from the discussion during its 2024 Annual Meeting of Shareholders, effectively setting the stage for a vote on the resolution in spring.
Apple is known for its strict terms of use policy for all apps on the App Store. As Apple’s own App Store is the only way to get apps on its platform, this means that Apple’s is the judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to what the public is allowed to say and see.
In November of 2023, concerned about potential Apple censorship, the ADF sent a letter to the SEC insisting that Apple should not be allowed to block the resolution, as it is seen as an area of potential misuse.
Following the SEC’s decision, Jeremy Tedesco, ADF Senior Counsel and Senior Vice President for Corporate Engagement, voiced his approval, referring to the development as a “much-needed step toward transparency.”
He urged Apple to regain the trust of its shareholders and customers by clearly stating its stance on not using its power to discriminate against user’s speech and beliefs – irrespective of their political or even religious persuasion.
January 7, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, United States |
Leave a comment
Earlier this week, the US State Department released a statement rejecting the forced transfer and resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza, attributing the rhetoric from the Israeli side to Israeli Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. “We have been told repeatedly and consistently by the Government of Israel, including by the Prime Minister, that such statements do not reflect the policy of the Israeli government,” US State Department’s Spokesperson Matthew Miller declared.
Maybe the US State Department is unaware of the reports that explicitly name Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as making the suggestion during a closed-door meeting for Likud MKs. Or that the former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon called forced transfer and the international community’s possible complicit participation “a moral imperative”. Going further back, the leaked document by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence also lists the forced transfer of Palestinians as the preferable option for Israel.
If Israel does not go ahead with the plan, it only means that the international community is not willing to go so far as visibly aiding Israel’s colonisation after public opinion has shifted so much towards Palestine, and rightfully so. Before 7 October, the Nakba could only be imagined or read about in terms of statistics on ethnic cleansing and its related destruction. Zionism has now illustrated to the world what genocide looks like, and governments are paying slight heed, if only to prevent themselves from getting further embroiled in the repercussions of Israel’s fabricated security narrative.
To make the forced displacement of Palestinians sound like it was just the concoction of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir lends additional impunity to Israel. Israel was built upon the ethnic cleansing and forced transfer of the Palestinian people. Conceptualising the forced transfer of Gaza’s Palestinian population is a continuation of the Nakba, not an innovative idea conjured up by two far-right-wing politicians. The Times of Israel is perpetuating the narrative of forced transfer being the idea of just two politicians, both of them in the public eye for their ongoing incitement. But the Israeli settler-colonial state is an incitement in itself.
Meanwhile, in a brief interlude, an unnamed Israeli official spoke of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) for its delivery of humanitarian aid as doing its work “for the first time in its history”. There is no forgetting, however, that Israel wants to destroy UNRWA and, during the Donald Trump administration, embarked upon doing so, emboldened by the so-called “deal of the century” and the US-Israeli insistence to alter the definition of who can be classified as a Palestinian refugee.
The bottom line here, however, is that Israel’s expectation that the international community clears up the mess after its atrocities knows no limit. Had Israel not bombed Gaza and rendered 85 per cent of the population forcibly displaced, the current humanitarian catastrophe could have been avoided. As things stand, and with Gaza almost completely destroyed, Israel and the international community can maintain the humanitarian paradigm for Palestinians because basic needs will always be perceived as more important than a political process where Palestinians are concerned. Colonisation required complicity, and there is no proposal Israeli officials come up with that can be separated from the narrative of Israel’s settler-colonial existence.
January 7, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
Leave a comment
College instructors, particularly those in Europe and North America, are generally limited when it comes to meaningful intervention in imperialist horrors afflicting the Global South. Nevertheless, it is usually their governments either orchestrating or abetting the horror. They ought to do something, then, even if it seems pyrrhic or inadequate.
People around the world are now witnessing a particularly gruesome event as the Zionist entity, armed by its U.S. sponsor and enjoying the support of capitalist institutions across the globe, commits one atrocity after the other in the Gaza Strip (along with the West Bank and at times further afield). The atrocities, anyone with a modicum of integrity agrees, add up to genocide. The depth of grief and suffering Palestinians now experience is indescribable, immeasurable.
Do professors and other campus workers have any ability to mitigate the grief and suffering? Not really. But we’re not entirely powerless, either. Higher education is an important sector for information and activism and an industry where participants like to contemplate the role of both exceptional and ordinary people in making a better world. Like anybody else, teachers and researchers can be most effective in their own communities, which are not inoculated from the genocide. Zionist groups have organized hundreds of defamation campaigns against Palestinian students and faculty, often resulting in employment termination and other serious forms of recrimination. These campaigns don’t exist in a vacuum. Targeting Palestinians and anti-Zionists is an extension of the genocide, or at least one of its attendant tactics. And then, of course, many of the campuses are somehow invested in the Zionist entity—financially, politically, or logistically. It does no good to say that “we” aren’t affected by what happens “there.”
The following is a list of suggestions for Western academics, with the understanding that not all professors are equal and each campus is different in terms of its cultural and economic composition. In turn, I have tried to be comprehensive, offering comments that I hope will be useful to everyone from contingent faculty whose employment is precarious to senior scholars with big platforms at elite institutions. (The latter are much more likely to be facilitating the genocide, either obliquely or explicitly, but nevertheless.)
One thing is clear: the world is now experiencing a moral crisis whose enormity will reshape political attitudes and alliances for generations to come. Pretending that life, no matter how sheltered or comfortable, can simply continue as normal is its own kind of moral crisis.
Try one or more of the following if you can:
Defend Palestinian Students: Be it from forces on or off campus, or be it individuals you know or don’t know personally, it is reprehensible that students should suffer doxing and harassment, whether it is orchestrated by skeezy has-beens like Michael Rapaport or hysterical faculty on their own campus. Speak on behalf of your students. It can be done publicly through the usual channels or in private communication with chairs, deans, and other administrators. Or keep it simpler: reach out to the students and offer yourself as a resource.
Defend Palestinian Colleagues: The same idea holds, but with a quick addendum. Being a Palestinian in Western academe can be deeply alienating, in no small part because shitting on Palestinians is a reliable method of upward mobility. I’m sure some of your Palestinian colleagues will appreciate any gesture that might make them feel slightly less alone.
Boycott: Up to this point, academic boycott of Israeli universities has been controversial, even in supposedly progressive quarters of the industry. The facts, however, are clear. Israel has destroyed every institution of higher learning in the Gaza Strip. It has murdered dozens of faculty and administrators, including university presidents, and an untold number of students. There is no academic freedom in Palestine. There is no academe at all in Gaza. Reluctance to boycott is no longer acceptable. It is the baseline of political decency. Anybody who continues to oppose or dissemble about academic boycott should be regarded as untrustworthy on everything else.
Divest: Start or join a local campaign to force your university to divest any holdings from the Zionist entity. Divestment can include study abroad programs in Israel, which inherently discriminate against Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students. In the past decade, students have successfully passed divestment resolutions at numerous universities, but management simply ignores them. Faculty voices will help these efforts.
Invite People from Gaza: Surely the rank-and-file in academe are tired of the same few dozen big-name professors and celebrity activists saying the same three or four things in the lucrative lecture economy. Decisionmakers on campus invite speakers for prestige, for the brand, or else to network or be in the presence of fame. The habit needs to die and there’s no better time than now. Instead of summoning the usual Endowed Chair of Gobbledygook at Wealthy Private University to deliver radical affectations at a cost of multiple thousands, reach out to scholars and journalists from Gaza (and for God’s sake give them a proper honorarium). They will assuredly be more insightful than warmed-over relics of the pre-millennial theory craze. Likewise: recruit graduate students from Palestine. You can also look into bringing Palestinians as visiting writers/scholars or as researchers/consultants in any effort to document the genocide. Start with people who are currently outside of Gaza; when conditions are better, reach out to those still inside the territory. Gaza is filled with individuals of remarkable talent. You will be better off for having sought it.
Organize or Attend a Demonstration: You don’t need to be a seasoned organizer to raise hell about the abomination that is the Zionist entity.
Direct Action: Why should students always be the ones to shut down administrative offices or gum up the machinery of genocide? Professors can participate, as well. I’m not saying you need to do it. I just want you to bear in mind that nobody, no matter how urbane or well-published, is too good to get fired or sit in jail for a few hours in solidarity with a people whose heroism is known and admired around the world.
Teach Palestine: Hundreds of Palestinian poets, novelists, and essayists write in English or are available in translation. Consider including them on your syllabus. So what if your courses don’t focus on Palestine or the surrounding region? If you’re a modernist, then assign Fadwa Tuqan or Mahmoud Darwish. If you’re in gender studies, look up Fatima Bernawi or Rasmea Odeh. If you teach novels, try Susan Abulhawa, Susan Muaddi Darraj, Sahar Mustafah… on goes the list. If you’re an Americanist, there are numerous options. Same for Latin Americanists. A critical theorist? No problem: there’s Elias Sanbar and Bassel Al-Araj and Ghassan Kanafani. And if you’re, say, a medievalist? That’s no problem, either.
Stop Pandering to Customs of Civility: You don’t need to condemn “Hamas.” You don’t need to “affirm Israel’s right to exist.” You don’t need to bang on about “democratic values.” You don’t need to be “nuanced.” You need to defend the people suffering a genocide. Not a single one of them is asking for anything else. (“Who is my audience?” keep asking yourself. If the answer is anything other than “the dispossessed,” then recalibrate your ethics and try again.)
Shun the Genocidaires: Those rationalizing or cheering on the genocide are personae non grata from here on out. No co-authoring articles with them. No sitting together on conference panels. No buddy-buddy bullshit on the networking circuit. Sure, sometimes circumstance will force you onto the same committee or whatever, but, if the association is voluntary, then decline the opportunity and find colleagues who don’t celebrate mass murder.
Speak: [speak]
Or better still: Listen.
January 7, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | European Union, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, UK, United States, Zionism |
Leave a comment
