2/16/2024 Planned BBC smear on UK Palestinians will rely on Israeli spy source By: Asa WinstanleyRead NowCiting Israeli “terror” allegations, the BBC plans to broadcast an attack on prominent British Palestinians in a television program presented by pro-Israel reporter John Ware. The Electronic Intifada has learned that the episode of Panorama is likely to be based partly on “confidential evidence” which has almost certainly been provided by Israeli spies. The BBC and Panorama declined to comment when asked a series of detailed questions about the forthcoming program. Panorama is the BBC’s flagship current affairs program. The episode is scheduled for 19 February and is titled “Hamas’ Secret Financial Empire.” Ware’s producer Leo Telling sent out letters last month to at least four prominent British Palestinians and Muslims, offering an opportunity to respond to allegations raised in the episode. Ware and Telling were also behind a discredited 2019 episode of the show which alleged “anti-Semitism” in Labour, the UK’s main opposition party, during the leadership of Palestine solidarity campaigner Jeremy Corbyn. The producer wrote that they “intend to broadcast a 30-minute Panorama documentary primarily about Hamas,” the Palestinian resistance group, and “how support for Hamas has also grown beyond Gaza, including in the UK.” Addressing Anas Altikriti, a prominent British Iraqi campaigner and broadcaster, producer Telling asserted that the program “may also include evidence of the support you have voiced for Hamas, which as you know is designated as a terror group by the UK government.” As “evidence” of such “support” for “terror,” the producer cited four posts to X (formerly Twitter) by Altikriti, where he called into question some of Israel’s most high-profile atrocity propaganda about the Palestinian military assault on 7 October. These Israeli narratives have been widely discredited and called into question across the world. While the producer conceded that “there is currently no evidence (at least, of which we are aware) that 40 babies had been beheaded,” he claimed to have “gathered evidence” of other crimes. Telling’s equivocal wording comes despite the fact that the “40 babies” claim has been definitively proven to be a total fabrication, and not simply an unproven claim. Despite Telling trying to give the impression of new evidence, the claims he makes in the letters about Hamas fighters’ alleged behavior on 7 October strongly resembles already discredited and debunked Israeli claims about the alleged killing of babies and alleged sexual violence. “Babies were shot in the head at very close range,” “women were raped and sexually molested” and “breasts were cut from women” the producer claimed. But even official Israeli government figures do not support such claims. The database of names of “Victims of October 7” maintained by Israeli newspaper Haaretz lists the death of one baby that day: 10-month-old Mila Cohen. According to press reports, Cohen was killed by a stray Palestinian bullet fired in the course of breaking into a settlement home in order to take captives – and not executed as claimed by the BBC. Furthermore, the graphic Israeli claim the producer put forward about alleged mutilation of a women’s breasts very closely resembles a discredited, fiction-like Israeli account put forward in a now-infamous New York Times piece from December by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Jeffrey Gettleman. As my colleague Ali Abunimah explained last month: “The article is an emotionally manipulative fraud aimed at justifying or distracting from Israel’s genocide in Gaza.” Central to the fraudulent Times story was the claim that an Israeli woman called Gal Abdush was raped and killed on 7 October. But Abdush’s family – no friends of the Palestinians – have denied this, insisting there’s is no evidence the woman was raped and saying they were misled by the Times. Gettleman’s article has sparked growing dissent within the Times newsroom. An episode of the paper’s high-profile podcast The Daily based on his reporting was scrapped before broadcast “amid a furious internal debate about the strength of the paper’s original reporting on the subject,” The Intercept revealed. Despite such loud Israeli claims about “mass rape” on 7 October, not a single alleged victim has come forward. The Electronic Intifada Podcast’s livestream and other independent media sources have repeatedly debunked Israel’s “mass rape” story as atrocity propaganda. A similar letter went out from the Panorama producer to Azzam Tamimi, a prominent British Palestinian academic and broadcaster, who has written two books about Hamas. The producer similarly accused Tamimi of “support you have voiced for Hamas.” Instead of tweets, Telling cited two public talks Tamimi gave in November. In those talks, Tamimi emphasized that Hamas are “a Muslim movement. They train their members on Islamic values before they train them on resistance tactics. And they are told that in warfare in Islam, you don’t ever harm noncombatants.” Tamimi accused Israel of lying propaganda. He said that, “the Israeli story [about 7 October] that was marketed to the Westerners was mostly lies. They claimed that Hamas went in, killed civilians and beheaded babies. And it’s nonsense.” As well as promoting Israeli propaganda narratives, the BBC producer’s letters also twisted basic facts. Putting the program’s allegations to Altikriti, the producer described one of the campaigner’s tweets as a response to “a post by UK women.” Yet the tweet Telling cites was actually a response to a pro-Israel lobby group, We Believe in Israel, which was spreading the Israeli propaganda about rape. The group is actually run by a man, Luke Akehurst, and the post in question does not quote women. After another similar post to X by @Israel – an account run by the Israeli foreign ministry – Altikriti had responded that they were “murdering liars.” Yet in his letter, producer Telling misleadingly described this as “a post by Israeli women,” neglecting to mention that it was an official government account. These inaccuracies do not bode well for the integrity of the upcoming BBC program. The Electronic Intifada has spoken to a third campaigner, a British Palestinian, who has received a similar letter from the same producer. They asked not to be named, citing potential pre-broadcast legal action. The Electronic Intifada also understands that a fourth recipient of the letters from Telling cited “the Israeli authorities” providing “confidential evidence” against that person. The context of the letter’s citation of “confidential evidence” suggests that its ultimate source was the Shin Bet, Israel’s local spy agency, notorious for its assassination and torture of Palestinians. Ware has a long history of promoting the Israeli military and intelligence establishment’s narratives and of relying on Israeli spies as his main sources. On Monday Altikriti responded to Panorama on X, writing that “I have no idea,” why the BBC were coming to him (a British Muslim campaigner) to comment on a program about Hamas. “There used to be a time when the BBC’s Panorama … shaped events and public opinion,” Altikriti wrote. “But for a while now, most of its outings seem to be more befitting of CBeebies” – a TV channel for young children. He said that he would not be taking the BBC’s request for comment seriously and described Ware as “discredited.” Tamimi also posted to X, quoting Altikriti’s post and writing: “I too received a similar request from the BBC Panorama team. John Ware is a discredited journalist who does not deserve attention.” “Entirely misleading” John Ware and Leo Telling were also behind a much criticized episode of Panorama in 2019. “Is Labour Antisemitic?” seemed determined to scupper Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s chances in the then-upcoming election. The episode relied almost entirely on Israel lobby sources, often without even disclosing the sources’ agendas or names. In one particularly contentious part of the program, Panorama claimed that two left-wing Labour activists – summoned by party officials for questioning as part of the “anti-Semitism” witch hunt – had asked Jewish party official Ben Westerman, “Are you from Israel?” Panorama did not seek the activists’ side of the story, or even name them. Rica Bird and Helen Marks – both Jewish women – stridently denied Westerman’s account, and even produced an audio recording which verified their version of events. Bird later told Al Jazeera that Westerman’s claim was “an absolute lie.” In a 14,000-wordessaylater posted to the website of Israel lobby publicationFathom, Ware stood by Westerman as “honest” but speculated that he may have “misremembered.” An independent barrister tapped by Labour to investigate claims of racism in the party described the episode as “objectively entirely misleading.” Martin Forde told Middle East Eye last year that “I had a fuller picture [than Panorama] because I interviewed not only some of the participants in the programme; I also interviewed those who hadn’t participated in the programme from the alternative faction.” Forde was referring to the fact that the episode relied heavily on the partisan claims of pro-Israel lobby group the Jewish Labour Movement, ignoring pro-Corbyn groups like Jewish Voice for Labour. Eight out of the 10 anonymous Jewish speakers in the episode claiming to have been the victim of “anti-Semitism” in the party were actually current or recent senior JLM figures. The very first speaker was Ella Rose, who was both former JLM director and former officer in the Israeli embassy itself. But Ware and Panorama’s history of relying on Israeli sources has a much longer history. Back in 2006, Ware fronted another Panorama attack on British Muslims and Palestinians, titled “Faith, Hate and Charity.” Its primary target was Interpal, a British charity focused on aid to Palestinians. The episode posited a global Muslim conspiracy, led by Hamas, to use various charities around the world “to avoid being labeled terrorists.” One of the episode’s primary sources was Reuven Paz, a former senior Shin Bet officer. An investigation launched by the Charity Commission – the British government’s regulator – soon after Ware’s broadcast ultimately concluded there was no evidence of the documentary’s central claim of an Interpal “terror” link. The BBC also had to apologize and pay undisclosed libel damages after accepting the program had defamed Waseem Yaqub, former general manager of Islamic Relief UK. After the program aired, the Muslim Council of Britain called Ware “an agenda-driven pro-Israeli polemicist.” Israeli spy agencies have for many years falsely accused Palestinians in Britain of being “Hamas affiliates.” No comment Telling was a producer on the 2019 Panorama episode but is now executive producer on this episode about Hamas – a promotion perhaps awarded after he helped besmirch Corbyn. As well as putting the main points of this article to them before publication, John Ware, Leo Telling and the BBC were all asked about the nature of their contact or collaboration with Mossad, Shin Bet, Unit 8200 or other Israeli spy agencies in the making of this upcoming program. A spokesperson for the BBC declined to comment: “We do not comment on investigations.” Leo Telling also declined to comment. John Ware declined to comment on the forthcoming program and therefore did not deny collaboration with Israeli spy agencies. But he did deny being “discredited,” and asserted that his 2019 Panorama episode had been “vindicated in court proceedings.” He did not deny neglecting the basic journalistic duty to seek Bird and Marks’ side of the story. But his Fathomessay alleged that Westerman “could not remember” the women’s names. He also asserted that “Mr. Forde’s criticism was itself objectively entirely misleading” and pointed to another 14,000-word essay on the Fathom website. Finally, he denied that his 2006 program had relied heavily on the Shin Bet. AuthorAsa Winstanley This article was produced by Asa Winstanley. Archives February 2024
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2/16/2024 "In The War Of Propaganda, It Is Very Difficult To Defeat The United States"By: Caitlin JohnstoneRead Now
One under-appreciated moment from Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Vladimir Putin came after Putin implied that NATO powers were behind the 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream pipeline. Carlson responded by asking why Putin wouldn’t present evidence of this to the world, so as to “win a propaganda victory.”
“In the war of propaganda it is very difficult to defeat the United States because the United States controls all the world’s media and many European media,” Putin replied, adding, “The ultimate beneficiary of the biggest European media are American financial institutions.” I don’t know about the specific nature of his Nord Stream insinuations, but Putin is definitely correct about the strength of the American propaganda machine. Of all the fronts one could possibly choose to challenge the United States on, propaganda is surely the least favorable. The US empire has by far the most sophisticated and effective propaganda machine ever to have existed, operating with such complexity that most people don’t even know it exists.
In a “fact-checking” article titled “5 lies and 1 truth from Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson”, Politico Europe labels the above claim a lie on the basis that Russia has state-run media whereas US media is privately owned.
“The biggest news media companies are privately owned and operate without direct government control, in contrast to the state-controlled media landscape in Russia,” writes Politico’s Sergey Goryashko. “Russian state TV and the primary news agencies there are the property of the government, and the Kremlin controls other media or destroys those not willing to collaborate.” At the bottom of the article is a line which reads as follows: “Sergey Goryashko is hosted at POLITICO under the EU-funded EU4FreeMedia residency program.” EU4FreeMedia is a European Union narrative management operation set up to help integrate “Russian journalists in exile” into leading European publications, ie to provide maximum media amplification to Russian expats who have a bone to pick with the current government in Moscow. It is run with participation from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a US government-funded media op under the umbrella of the US propaganda services umbrella USAGM.
I really couldn’t have come up with a more perfect illustration of what I’m talking about here than the US government and its European lackeys running a complex and elaborate project to further slant European media against the Russian Federation, which then manifests as a Politico article calling Putin a liar and claiming propaganda does not exist in the west.
There’s an old joke that goes like this: A Soviet and an American are on an airplane seated next to each other. “Why are you flying to the US?” asks the American. “To study American propaganda,” replies the Soviet. “What American propaganda?” asks the American. “Exactly,” the Soviet replies. In reality the nature of the US-centralized empire allows it to run a massive, nonstop international propaganda campaign through mass media platforms which are mostly privately owned. A diverse network of factors feeds into this dynamic which I’ve detailed in my unusually lengthy article “15 Reasons Why Mass Media Employees Act Like Propagandists”, but the gist of it is that anyone who’s wealthy enough to control a mass media platform is going to have a vested interest in preserving the status quo upon which their wealth is premised, and they will cooperate with establishment power structures in various ways toward that end. The fact that these mass media outlets look independent but function as propaganda organs for the US empire allows its propaganda to fly into people’s minds without triggering any gag reflex of critical thinking or skepticism, which wouldn’t be the case if people knew those outlets were feeding them propaganda. Propaganda only really has persuasive power if you don’t know it’s happening to you.
The invisibility of US propaganda is further aided by the subtle methods by which it is administered, which we’ve seen exemplified beautifully in the coverage of Israel’s ongoing US-backed mass atrocity in Gaza.
In an article titled “Coverage of Gaza War in the New York Times and Other Major Newspapers Heavily Favored Israel, Analysis Shows,” The Intercept reports that a review of 1,000 articles from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times about Israel’s war on Gaza found that the outlets consistently used word choices which served Israeli information interests. “Highly emotive terms for the killing of civilians like ‘slaughter,’ ‘massacre,’ and ‘horrific’ were reserved almost exclusively for Israelis who were killed by Palestinians, rather than the other way around,” The Intercept’s Adam Johnson and Othman Ali report. “The term ‘slaughter’ was used by editors and reporters to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and ‘massacre’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 125 to 2. ‘Horrific’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 36 to 4.” This is the sort of manipulation that a casual news consumer wouldn’t notice. Unless you’re on alert for bias and are keeping track of what words are and aren’t being used where, you’re probably not going to notice the absence of emotionally-charged words when reporting on Palestinians who are killed by Israelis.
This type of slant shows up in all sorts of ways, like today’s headlines about the IDF killing a six year-old Palestinian girl named Hind Rajab along with her family. Reliable propaganda organs of the empire like CNN, The New York Times and the BBC have respectively gone with the headlines “Five-year-old Palestinian girl found dead after being trapped in car under Israeli fire”, “Missing 6-Year-Old and Rescue Team Found Dead in Gaza, Aid Group Says,” and “Hind Rajab, 6, found dead in Gaza days after phone calls for help”. In contrast, Al Jazeera reports on the same story with the headline “Body of 6-year-old killed in ‘deliberate’ Israeli fire found after 12 days,” and Middle East Eye goes with “Hind Rajab: Palestinian girl found dead after being trapped under Israeli fire for days”. It’s easy to spot the difference when they’re placed next to each other like I just did, but unless you’re really watching out for it and have a good background on what’s going on here you’re likely to miss what’s happening. If you’re like most people and don’t read past the headline, you’d never know from the imperial media headlines that the child was killed by Israel, and you’d certainly never know about her terrified phone call for help while trapped by IDF fire and surrounded by the bodies of her dead relatives. If you look to the legacy media and its algorithmically-boosted online iterations for information about the world, you went one more day with a distorted perspective of what’s happening in Gaza. The western press constantly write headlines like this when trying to minimize the impact of someone’s death at the hands of a party they sympathize with, particularly with regard to Palestinians. Last month the BBC published an article titled “Record number of civilians hurt by explosives in 2023”, as though they were mishandling fireworks or something instead of being actively killed by Israeli bombs. The BBC later revised their atrocious headline, but revised it in the opposite direction, replacing “Record number” with “High number” to further minimize the impact. Contrast this with the BBC’s headlines when it’s reporting on Ukrainians killed by Russian airstrikes . Here’s a recent one titled “Ukraine war: Russian air strikes claim five lives in Kyiv and Mykolaiv”, and another titled “Ukraine war: Baby killed in Russian strike on Kharkiv hotel”. Got it? In Ukraine people die from bombs because Russia launched Russian airstrikes and killed them very Russianly, whereas in Gaza people get hurt by explosions because they got too close to some type of explosive material.
Last week The Washington Post ran an opinion piece titled “Is America complicit in Israel’s bloody war in Gaza?”, which is already a ridiculously skewed headline because the answer is self-evidently yes — implying that there’s any question of this skews things in America’s favor. But even this was too much for the Post’s editors, who re-titled the piece “Has the Israel-Gaza war changed your feelings about being American?” to keep Americans from thinking too hard about Israel’s bloody war in Gaza and their country’s complicity in it.
In a Wednesday article titled “Biden Tries Again With Arab Americans in Michigan”, New York Times editorial board member Farah Stockman wrote the absolutely insane line “The Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel seems to be affecting Biden’s election prospects.” And then The New York Times actually printed it. Read that line again. She’s saying Arab Americans are rejecting Biden because of the October 7 Hamas attack, which is of course absurd; they’re rejecting Biden because he’s backing a genocide in Gaza. She wrote this nonsensical line because in the New York Times you can’t say things like “Israel’s genocide in Gaza” or “the president’s facilitation of crimes against humanity”, and you won’t be hired if you’re the sort of person who’d be inclined to. Instead we’re pretending that for some inexplicable reason Arab Americans are just hopping mad at Biden because October 7 happened. But again, these little manipulations fly under the radar if you’re not on the lookout for them. Such is the brilliance of the US empire’s invisible propaganda machine. That’s why it’s very difficult to win a propaganda war against the United States, that’s why westerners have been so successfully manipulated into accepting a status quo of endless war, ecocide, injustice and exploitation, and that’s why the world looks the way it looks right now. Author
This article was produced by Caitlin Johnstone.
ArchivesFebruary 2024 2/16/2024 The International Court of Justice Censures Israel for Its Genocidal War. By: Vijay PrashadRead NowOn January 26, 2024, the judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) released their 29-page order that found “plausible” (paragraph 54) evidence that Israel was conducting a genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza. The court intervened in that war due to South Africa’s application that Israel had violated its obligations to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948). South Africa came to the ICJ two months and three weeks into Israel’s brutal military bombardment against the Palestinians. The 84-page indictment from South Africa, presented to the ICJ on December 29, 2023, included statements made by Israel’s high officials calling for the total annihilation of the “human savages” in Gaza and included details of how Israel was acting on such statements. The ICJ agreed with South Africa’s claims and called upon Israel to “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts” that are genocidal (paragraph 78). The order is not a final verdict since there was no trial. These are “provisional measures.” It would take the ICJ several years to adjudicate whether Israel is actually committing genocide against the Palestinians. The ICJ did not directly call for a ceasefire or a “cessation of hostilities” (as it had done in March 2022, when it ordered Russia to “suspend the military operations”). However, it is hard to read paragraph 78 in any other way than that it calls on Israel to silence its guns. Twenty years ago, the ICJ studied the building of a wall around the West Bank in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). In July 2004, the ICJ found that “the construction of the wall by Israel… is contrary to international law.” There has been a relentless battle over the jurisdiction of the ICJ to rule over Israel’s behavior in the OPT, including in 2022 when a legal opinion was sought by several states over the finding of a UN Human Rights Council commission of inquiry chaired by the South African judge Navi Pillay. Pillay’s report found “reasonable grounds to conclude that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is now unlawful under international law due to its permanence and the Israeli government’s de-facto annexation policies.” Israel contested the ICJ’s jurisdiction in the case. Now, with this charge of genocide, the court established its jurisdiction and Israel accepted it by participating in the proceedings. Provisional Measures The ICJ was set up by the United Nations as a dispute settlement mechanism between states. South Africa took its dispute with Israel to the ICJ, accusing Israel of violating an international treaty. Having looked at the dispute, the ICJ found for South Africa and offered “provisional measures” to defend the rights of the Palestinian people. The order by the ICJ has no appeal. It is final. The ICJ gave Israel one month to show that it has taken measures to protect the Palestinians. If Israel either fails to respond or does not respond satisfactorily, then the ICJ will send its order to the UN Security Council (UNSC) for enforcement. The UNSC will be bound by the UN Charter to enforce the order. Israel has already rejected the order. That means that the order will be sent, a month from now, to the UNSC. At that point, it will be interesting to see how the three veto-power Global North countries (France, the United Kingdom, and the United States) will react to the order. On January 25, the U.S. State Department’s spokesperson Vedant Patel said that the U.S. government believes that “the allegations that Israel is committing genocide [are] unfounded.” Patel said that Israel should “take feasible steps, additional steps to prevent civilian harm,” but that there is no genocide being conducted by Israel. This will set up a showdown at the UNSC. Algeria, a member of the UNSC at this time, has asked for a meeting to be held to discuss the verdict and to have the UNSC call for an immediate ceasefire. The Reputation of the Court Alongside the ICJ order, Judge Xue Hanqin wrote a separate opinion, in which she noted that 60 years ago, the governments of Ethiopia and Liberia had brought South Africa to the ICJ for its role in South-West Africa (now Namibia). The ICJ, she wrote, rejected the case, and this “denial of justice gave rise to strong indignation” against the ICJ “severely tarnishing its reputation.” Judge Xue came to the ICJ in 2010, and—due to her seriousness of purpose—was elected to be the court’s vice president in 2018. In March 2022, Judge Xue voted against the provisional order that called upon Russia to suspend its military operation in Ukraine (by the time of that order, just over a thousand civilians had been killed in the war, whereas by the time the ICJ took up the Israeli bombing, more than 25,000 civilians had been killed). In the case of Israel’s brutal war against the Palestinians, Judge Xue raised the issue of erga omnes (“towards all”), which implies that this is a case where Israel’s actions harm the world community and Israel must be impelled to stop its war on behalf of all of humanity. “For a protected group such as the Palestinian people,” Judge Xue wrote, “it is least controversial that the international community has a common interest in its protection.” There are three Asian judges on the court, with Judge Xue joined by Judge Iwasawa Yuji of Japan and Judge Dalveer Bhandari of India. Judge Bhandari has had a distinguished career in India on the Delhi High Court (1991-2004), on the Bombay High Court (2004-2005), and on the Supreme Court (2005-2012) before he was elevated to the ICJ. Only five judges appended their opinion to the order, one of whom was Judge Bhandari. In his opinion, Judge Bhandari went over the legal merits of South Africa’s case, but made sure to put on the record his view that other international laws than the Convention on Genocide apply to this war and that all parties must adhere to these laws. While the order itself did not directly call for a cessation of hostilities, Judge Bhandari did so. “All participants in the conflict,” he wrote, “must ensure that all fighting and hostilities come to an immediate halt and that remaining hostages captured on 7 October 2023 are unconditionally released forthwith.” It is likely that Judge Bhandari affixed his own opinion to the court in order to register the necessity of asking directly for such a direct ceasefire. The Reaction of Israel and Its Allies Israel’s reaction to the order by the ICJ was characteristic. Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said that the ICJ was an “antisemitic court” and that it “does not seek justice, but rather the persecution of Jewish people.” Strangely, Ben Gvir said that the ICJ was “silent during the Holocaust.” The Holocaust conducted by the Nazi German regime and its allies against European Jews, the Romani, homosexuals, and Communists took place between late 1941 and May 1945 (when the Soviet Red Army liberated the prisoners from Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen, and Stutthof). The ICJ was established in June 1945, a month after the Holocaust ended, and it began work in April 1946. To try and delegitimize the Court by saying that it remained “silent” when it was not in existence, and then to use that false statement to call the ICJ an “antisemitic court” shows that Israel has no answer to the merits of the ICJ order. What is interesting is that the Israeli judge at the ICJ, Aharon Barak, joined the majority of the judges in a vote of 16-1 to say that Israel is not allowing in humanitarian aid to the Palestinians in Gaza, and that Israel must “prevent and punish the incitement of genocide.” It is hard for Israeli high officials to consider Barak “antisemitic” or to disparage his credentials. Barak has held high positions in Israel, such as Attorney General (1975-1978), Justice on the Supreme Court of Israel (1978-1995), and President of the Supreme Court (1995-2006). Barak did vote against the claim that there was “plausible” evidence of genocide by the Israeli government. “Genocide,” he wrote in his own opinion, “is more than just a word for me; it represents calculated destruction and human behavior at its very worst. It is the gravest possible accusation and is deeply intertwined with my personal life experience.” While Barak, the Israeli nominee on the ICJ for this case, did not vote on the accusation that genocide is being conducted in Gaza, Judge Barak nonetheless agreed that there was “incitement of genocide.” The difference between the two hangs on a thread, haunted by the ghost of the dead 30,000 Palestinians (nearly half of them children). Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in trouble politically within Israel, welcomed the fact that the ICJ did not order a ceasefire and then said that his War Cabinet will continue to prosecute its war. This spin on the verdict is implausible. It will not convince anyone, least of all the judges of the ICJ who have found the accusation of genocide “plausible” and have called upon Israel to stop its genocidal war. Author Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power. This article was produced by Globetrotter. Archives February 2024 2/16/2024 Eyes on the South: Low intensity conflict & escalation-risk in Lebanon. By: Sammy IsmailRead NowHezbollah fighter, on border guard duty, sitting astride a motorbike blocking the pathway of an Israeli Merkava tank that had broken through the electric fence into Lebanese territories, the photo was taken by Al-Manar correspondent Ali Sheaib, Jalet al-Mahafer, 2022 (Illustrated by: Mahdi Rtail, Al Mayadeen English) More than 100 days have passed since the Al-Aqsa Flood came crashing down on the colonial outpost of US imperialism in West Asia; the tide has been only gaining momentum since. The war quickly spilled over beyond the territories of Occupied Palestine to include south Lebanon most notably. Revisiting Johan Galtung's Conflict Theory, this paper will borrow theoretical concepts introduced by Galtung to analyze and structure the Al-Aqsa Flood. Galtung introduces a set of simplistic classifications and twin criteria that bring burgeoning conflicts into perspective and allow for a formal analysis. The two classifications that I chose to expound on are Scale and Intensity. Scale will be useful to lay out the overarching context to then zero in on Lebanon which is the primary subject of study for this paper. Intensity serves to demonstrate conflict as being dynamic fluctuating along lines of escalation and de-escalation. An interesting nuance that Galtung formalizes is that between Latent Conflict and Manifest Conflict. The former describes the underlying tensions, between two parties, that are not yet explicitly acted upon (typically, this state of affairs is understood to be "Negative Peace" where Direct Violence is absent). The latter describes the state of affairs where strife is actively occurring (Direct Violence breaks out). Development from Latent Conflict into Manifest Conflict can also be understood using the heuristic of Galtung's ABC Triangle of Violence. In the Triangle, Galtung pinpoints three focal points in conflict: Attitude, Behavior, and Contradiction. In the case of liberation struggles, as is the struggle against Zionist colonialism and US imperialism, the Contradiction is the nexus, the primary focal point from which violence spirals out: the spiral of violence originates from Contradiction and develops into Attitudes and Behaviors. In Attitude, it develops as latent conflict. In Behavior, it develops as manifest conflict. Conflict Scale: Beligrents and Fronts Gaza became ground zero for the war on October 7th, but the Al-Aqsa Flood has resonated throughout the region since. Beligrents in support of the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza have included the Palestinian resistance factions in the West Bank, the Lebanese Resistance, the Islamic Resistance factions in Iraq, the Yemeni Armed Forces (in cooperation with the Yemeni resistance), and the Islamic Revolution's Guard in Iran. Beligrents on the side of the Israelis have included the US-led occupation coalition in Syria, the US-led occupation coalition in Iraq, the US-led aggression coalition in the Red Sea, and the Takfiri terrorist network in the region (Daesh, Jaish ul-Adl, etc.). Fronts from which operations are being launched directly against the Israeli occupation, in addition to Gaza, include most notably South Lebanon (which serves as the second battlefront of this war), the West Bank (where lone-wolf stabbing/shooting/ramming operations and counter-raid concerted action by underground resistance cells have increased in frequency), in addition to Syria, Iraq, and Yemen (from where drones and missiles have been launched against the occupied territories most notably al-Jalil "Galilee Heights", Um al-Rashrash "Eilat", and even recently Haifa). Complimentary fronts, from where operations don't directly target "Israel" but rather aim to build up pressure on "Israel" and its imperialist proppers to consolidate a ceasefire in Gaza. These complimentary fronts include the Red and Arabian Seas (where the Yemeni Armed Forces and Resistance have enforced a naval blockade against Israeli and "Israel"-bound ships), northeast Syria (where the US-led coalition occupation bases are being shelled by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq), and Iraq (where, similarly, US-led coalition occupation bases are being shelled by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq). Mired "Israel" thrashes at the entire region Throughout modern history, all parties involved in materially supporting the Palestinian resistance have been punished by being subjected to imperialist and zionist terrorism. Prior to the war, it had manifested primarily as economic sanctions (with the exception of Gaza, the West Bank, and Syria which had frequently fallen subject to Israeli military aggression in addition to economic sanctions). After the war, especially after being frustrated by the little-yielding ground invasion of Gaza, this terrorism had manifested in brazenly more savage means. Over the span of the war, the Israeli occupation bombed Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria, while the US occupation forces bombed both Iraq and Yemen. Jointly, the US imperialist forces and the Israeli Occupation Forces assassinated prominent resistance commanders: including IRGC commander Razi Mousavi (by "Israel"), Hamas politburo official Saleh al-Arouri (by "Israel"), Iraqi Kataib Hezbollah commander Moshtaq al-Saidi (by the US), and most recently Hezbollah high-ranking commander Wissam Tawil (by "Israel") In addition to a US-UK large-scale aerial aggression against Yemen last week, and the Daesh twin-terrorist bombings that targeted hundreds of Iranian civilians earlier this month. Digressing briefly, Iran has long been sanctioned for materially and consistently supporting the Palestinian resistance: Economic embargos, political subversion, covert sabotage operations, assassinations, terrorist attacks, etc. The Islamic Republic of Iran, even before getting involved in any proactive military action, before becoming neither a front nor a belligerent, has been subjected to imperialist warmongering and the terrorism of imperialism's takfiri footsoldiers: affirming the persistent neocon tradition of hawkishness in the White House but, now, discreetly through proxies. Conflict Intensity: escalation or de-escalation Carrying on with Galtung's theory, violence as he defines is tripartite Direct Violence (commonly militaristic), Structural Violence (commonly in law or regime), and Cultural Violence (commonly in beliefs and consequent attitudes). The latter two are latent forms of violence: characteristic of Latent Conflict. The former is the manifest form of violence: characteristic of Manifest Conflict. Manifest Conflict follows from an escalation in Latent Conflict. Similarly, escalation beyond a certain threshold would lead a Manifest Conflict to become an Escalated Conflict. Furthermore, Galtung details that a Conflict if escalated develops into Crisis or War (throughout the paper, I will not be committing to the gradation-escalation levels of conflict, crisis, and war; I will be using War and Conflict interchangeably). Conflict is not a sudden state of affairs that flutters in and out of existence at the whims of the conflict parties but rather is a long-lasting state of affairs that fluctuates along a scale of intensity, escalating and de-escalating: becoming dormant at times and resurfacing at others based on the development of events, and ceasing to exist only when the contradiction of interests is resolved (i.e. Positive Peace or Sustainable Peace is achieved). This prospect of escalation is best understood as formulated by the Fourth Law of Dialectics: Quantity into Quality. A state of affairs intensifies accumulatively till it reaches a threshold whereby quantitative increase is not possible anymore and the state of affairs changes qualitatively into a different state of affairs (Politzer, 1946). Gaza and South Lebanon: the build-up to the war Despite the macroscopic scale of Al-Aqsa Flood, Gaza, and south Lebanon remain thus far the only active battlefronts against the Israeli occupation. Throughout recent history, both Lebanon (primarily the South) and Palestine (primarily Gaza) have suffered severely under the plight of US-sponsored Israeli aggression: massacres, forced displacement, and occupation. In this struggle, the two nations grew more radicalized against their enemy (bearing arms and organizing their people into resistance movements) and steadily consolidated their binational solidarity (institutionalizing their alliance and proliferating it as the Axis of Resistance). In Gaza, in recent years, the latent structural violence of colonialism has been brazenly intensifying, especially with the extremist right-wing cabinet headed by Netanyahu (installed in late 2022) and the increasingly frequent incidents of settler violence in the West Bank and al-Quds. October 7th, 2023 was the threshold day. Violence broke out on a large scale after the Palestinian resistance had launched the long-deliberated operation that was the natural result of years of intensifying oppression. Latent Conflict developed into a Manifest Conflict and escalated at a sharp pace with the savage bombing campaigns and the ground invasion. The aggression against Gaza quickly snowballed into an all-out War (a high-intensity conflict). In Lebanon, the front erupted following Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and in solidarity with the Palestinian Resistance. (Despite the intertwined stakes of Lebanese national interest and Palestinian national interest in contradiction to Israeli security) there was no buildup of a recent Latent Conflict between Lebanon and the Israeli occupation that reached a threshold on October 8th (in contrast to Gaza). The eruption of the front in south Lebanon came to echo Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, i.e. in solidarity with the people of Gaza and their valiant and honorable resistance (as the opening of the resistance's military statements commonly read). Patience and far-sightedness However, other latent frustrations in Lebanon preceded the eruption of the battlefront. In addition to solidarity with Gaza and anticipating long-term advantages to Lebanese national interest, a key factor that goes unnoticed is the latent economic frustrations. To digress again, when discussing the war build-up, a key prospect that commonly goes unnoticed is the radicalizing effect that the economic crisis has had on the Lebanese. In addition to national interest, binational solidarity, and religious fervor which are the primary drives mobilizing the Lebanese towards anti-zionist resistance, the prospect of accumulated economic frustration has radicalized a large segment of the Lebanese population against imperialism which was perceived to play a key role in enabling such a drastic crisis in Lebanon. For the past five years, the Lebanese have experienced the worst socio-economic crisis in recent history after the Ponzi scheme engineered by the US-propped central bank chief crashed. A systematically un-industrial rentier economy structured by the US and the Gulf back in the 1990s broke down: coupled with active efforts to economically pressure Lebanon to draw political concessions regarding the resistance. In addition to a sectarian consociational regime of governance that is doomed to recurrent cases of zero-sum game gridlock, making it impossible for a government to make decisions regarding the economy, public policy, or foreign relations. Recent years have exercised an extensive economic strain on the Resistance. Lebanese stability recurrently faltered as "protracted social conflict" seemed to sharpen in light of dire economic conditions (Edward Azar, 1990): with Christian right-wing parties and liberal NGO-type groups blaming the resistance for the crisis (for refusing to make the political concessions dictated by the West and the Gulf States that would restore the old insovereign rentier economic system). Thus, the extensive social and economic strain on the milieu of the Resistance or the "masses of the Resistance" (as Sayyed Nasrallah commonly refers to them), radicalized them further against the US: who pulled out the centerpiece of the make-shift kaleidoscopic Lebanese economy they had engineered sending it crashing down on Hezbollah. This new level of anti-imperialist radicalization among a segment of the Lebanese reaffirmed the aptness of the decision to organize into anti-zionist resistance factions; for "Israel" is understood to be an advanced outpost for imperialism in the region, and the security of "Israel" is understood to be one the primary objectives of imperialism in the region (in addition to accumulating super-profits for oligarchs). If this frustration has been discharged satisfactorily by any means, it was through anti-zionist military action. It's poetic justice for the Lebanese to threaten Israeli security after being economically bullied for five years to concede to "Israel" its security by disarming the resistance. Low-Intensity Conflict in South Lebanon In Gaza, a latent conflict steadily intensified until a manifest conflict broke out: quickly escalating into a high-intensity conflict. In Lebanon, however, the conflict was the result of intensifying latent frustrations, national interest, and binational solidarity. On October 8th, the front erupted in Lebanon and it has steadily escalated since, however, it has thus far remained, arguably, a low-intensity conflict. Since the commencement of the first operation, the Lebanese resistance has deliberated not to give in to the appeal of adventurism (going all in for all-out war): for a set of reasons elucidated in the speeches of the Secretary-General of Hezbollah (which include losing the advantage of a surprise attack, the weakened Lebanese economy, as well as the comparative advantage of low-intensity conflict etc). This strategy of decisively targeting Israeli military sites within the framework of a low-intensity conflict has proved effective in accumulatively inflicting small losses on the IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces), and building up pressure on "Israel". The immediate and announced objective of the operations from Lebanon has been clear: building up pressure on "Israel" to concede to a ceasefire in Gaza. In the long term, the persistence of the status quo of low-intensity warfare within the frame of the laws of engagement of deterrence between the Lebanese resistance and the Israeli Occupation Forces is a lot more harmful to "Israel" than it is to Lebanon given the nature of the conflict (profit-driven colonizers vs a popular indigenous liberation movement). "You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and I will win." -Vietnamese Communist Revolutionary Ho Chi Minh to French Colonizers on the eve of the liberation war (1946) Low-intensity conflict: accumulative small gains, minimized losses On the Lebanese battlefront, as aforementioned, the war burgeons within the framework of a low-intensity conflict which allows for decisive contained hits: accumulating in advantage. In 100 days, the Lebanese resistance has executed more than 700 operations against the occupation. The resistance targetted all front-line military sites along the borders and even managed to target 17 settlements, according to figures cited by the Secretary General of Hezbollah in a speech earlier this month. While the IOF continues to underreport losses fearing demoralization in the settler society, Israeli media outlets report that hospitals have been abounding with injured soldiers and cemeteries with killed soldiers. Israeli media also report that thousands of Israeli soldiers have been incapacitated; estimates range from 4,000 (confirmed) up to 30,000 (estimated). The primary objective of the Lebanese battlefront, as is the case with other complimentary fronts, has been to build up pressure against the Israeli-War Cabinet to agree to a ceasefire and a prisoner exchange deal on the terms of the Palestinian resistance, and dissolving the blockade against Gaza. The secondary objective of the Lebanese resistance, as is the case with other complimentary fronts, is the respective national interest (in Lebanon it manifests as consolidating the equation of deterrence and tipping its balance against "Israel" so that it concedes occupied Lebanese territories, namely Shebaa farms). Both of these objectives are being steadily worked for in Lebanon. IOF losses in the north have been steadily accumulating:
The IOF spokesperson cited intense exhaustion as being a key factor behind the blunders of the IOF in Gaza and the underwhelming efficiency of the ground operation: Explaining that most soldiers have been on duty continuously without substitution because their compatriots are mobilized in the north. Phase 3 in Gaza: de-escalation or redirecting escalation? Due to the ongoing pressure against "Israel", whether through the admirable steadfastness of the Palestinian resistance, the intensifying decisive operations by the Lebanese resistance, the blockade against Israeli navigation in the Arabian and Red Seas by the Yemeni Armed Forces and the Yemeni resistance, the increasingly frequent strikes against US occupation bases in Syria and Iraq by the Iraqi Resistance, and the international efforts to condemn "Israel" spearheaded by South Africa in the ICJ, the vehemence of the US-sponsored death machine in Gaza seems to be getting slowly quelled. The US has announced that it will be pressuring the Israeli government to mitigate its genocidal war which has been detrimental to both parties' international PR. The IOF has announced that it has started shifting to a lower-intensity Phase 3 (decreasing the bulk of troop presence in Gaza, relying more on airstrikes, and employing targeted raids). Ever since the preliminary steps of Phase 3 started coming into effect under the plight of US pressure against the fascist Israeli War Cabinet, Netanyahu, along with his genocide boyband, seems to have started looking for different avenues to continue the war to perpetuate his ill-fated political career against a seemingly imminent soft-coup by the Biden administration. "Israel" is pushing Hezbollah to its limits: Amal Saad "Just as Israel revealed its plan to withdraw thousands of troops from northern Gaza for the next phase of its ongoing war, the senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri was killed in a targeted assassination in Beirut," Amal Saad writes in a recent piece for The Guardian published on January 5th shortly after the assassination of Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut. Amal Saad elucidates the significance and possible implications of this grave attack against Lebanon which seemed to try to nullify the deterrence enforced by the Lebanese resistance against the IOF since 2006. "Hezbollah is in all likelihood concerned that a failure to respond decisively will invite Israel to go on an extrajudicial killing spree in Beirut – not just against Hamas but also eventually against its [Hezbollah] own officials," she explains. "This would require a carefully measured retaliation that simultaneously signifies an escalation in terms of scope and intensity, but falls short of all-out war." The Lebanese resistance's retaliation followed one day later. A combined Kornet-Grad artillery attack by the Resistance pummelled the Meron airforce base which served as an intelligence military command hub for the occupation. The operation, as Amal Saad had reasoned, was a high-intensity retaliation falling short of an all-out war. Furthermore, she explains that the objective of the Israeli attempt at undermining the deterrence equation seemingly serves as an attempt at provoking Hezbollah into an all-out war. "An even greater concern is that Israel is seeking to provoke Hezbollah into a full-scale war that would involve the US as a co-belligerent." "...whether or not Israel, which is incapable of confronting Hezbollah on its own, is seeking to drag the US into a full-blown regional war." Commenting on this, Amal Saad later emphasized that "Hezbollah is keen to avoid an all-out war – but it is ready for one." This was later emphasized in the latest speech by the Secretary General of Hezbollah on January 14th. "We have gone to war within the framework of this low-intensity warfare," he said "[However] since 99 days we have been ready for war, we do not fear it. We will not hesitate. we will venture on this war [if it's forced upon us]. We will fight with no boundaries any limits or any restrictions," Sayyed Nasrallah warned. Hypothesizing Netanyahu seems to have foresaw the imminent dead end in Gaza. Complete withdrawal will turn Gaza into "Israel’s" Cuba: stuck in a perpetual Missile Crisis. Persisting with the ground operation will turn it into "Israel’s" Vietnam: a swamp of attrition warfare that would surely end his career and possibly end his state: steadily inching away at it. The only way "Israel" could achieve the objectives of its ground operation (i.e. uprooting the resistance) is if every last Palestinian in Gaza was killed or expelled from the strip. Killing two million people in the 21st century is not beyond "Israel" but it would end the US' morally credible soft power. It would strip the latter’s imperialist foreign policy of its leading pretext. Netanyahu's plan seems to be spreading out the conflict: so that they can advertise the war as asymmetrical against "Israel" to legitimize direct US intervention. Netanyahu is desperately flailing to provoke large-scale retaliation from the Axis of Resistance to justify a US invasion of the region to rebalance power relations in favor of "Israel" and perpetuate Israeli security for a couple more decades. Netanyahu acts in line with the outdated teachings of his neocon mentors of the early 2000s, but the pragmatics of the US oligarchy have since recognized the futility of savage militarism in West Asia and have since switched course for proxy warfare and color revolutions for being more efficient. Author Sammy Ismail Lebanese communist, Philosophy and Political Science graduate from the Lebanese American University, columnist and news-editor at Al Mayadeen English, twitter: @klashinkovv First published in Al Mayadeen Archives February 2024 2/16/2024 A Dementia Patient Is President Because It Doesn't Matter Who The President Is By: Caitlin JohnstoneRead NowSo it turns out the dementia symptoms Biden’s supporters have long dismissed as a “stutter” are actually exactly what they look like. The special counsel assigned to investigate Joe Biden for mishandling classified documents reports that investigators “uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” but concludes that “no criminal charges are warranted in this matter.” Which normally would be cause for a sigh of relief by this administration and its supporters, except that among the reasons given for this conclusion is that the president has gone senile. “We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Special Counsel Robert Hur writes to Attorney General Merrick Garland, saying that “Mr. Biden’s memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017, and in his interview with our office in 2023. And his cooperation with our investigation… will likely convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake, rather than acting willfully — that is, with intent to break the law — as the statute requires.” Hur reports that in interviews Biden couldn’t even remember things as fundamental as the years of his term as vice president, or when his son Beau died. Hur also writes that Biden’s memory had gotten worse between the aforementioned recorded 2017 interviews and the interviews with the president last year. In short, the president’s brain don’t work. It’s shot. The “leader of the free world” has rusted out gray matter. It’s like swiss cheese in there. And it is indeed getting worse. During a press conference in which Biden was ostensibly meant to reassure the world that his brain is working fine in light of the big news, the president referred to the president of Egypt as the president of Mexico and froze mid-speech when he unsuccessfully tried to remember where his son got the rosary he carries from. Just this week Biden has mistakenly referred to dead European leaders as still being in office, not once but twice. If you were still laboring under the delusion that it matters who the US president is, the fact that an actual, literal dementia patient has held that office for three years now should dispel that notion once and for all. The US empire has been marching along in exactly the same way it was before Biden took office, completely unhindered by the fact that the person who’s supposedly calling the shots is in a state of degenerative neurological free-fall. Literally anyone could hold that office and it would make no meaningful difference in the way the US empire is run. A coma patient could be president. A jar of kalamata olives could be president. The position which Americans hold elections over in the belief that it could bring positive changes to their country and their world is nothing but a figurehead. Which is a bit of a problem for Americans who would like to change certain aspects of their government’s behavior, like for example the backing of an active genocide in Gaza. Whose conscience do they work to appeal to if the person they were told is in charge actually isn’t? Who do they vote for if the people who really call the shots aren’t even on the ballot? The fact that the US president has dementia exposes the uncomfortable truth that the functioning of the empire is too important to be left in the hands of voters. There’s too much power riding on the behavior of the US government from year to year for the electorate to be permitted a say in it. The globe-spanning power structure that is centralized around the United States is run not by the official elected government of that nation, but by unelected empire managers who filter in and out of each administration and maintain a steady presence in government agencies and government-adjacent institutions. These empire managers form alliances with corporate powers and working relationships with the many nations, assets and partners who function as members of the undeclared US empire. Which means there’s not really any way for Americans to vote their way out of this mess. If you have a problem with genocide, militarism, economic injustice, authoritarianism, or any other crucial building block for the US-centralized power structure, you will never be permitted to have any influence over those things through the official electoral system. Voting in western “democracies” is done to give us the illusion of control, like letting a toddler play with a toy steering wheel while you drive so they can feel like they’re participating. That doesn’t mean there’s no way out of this mess, just that there’s no way out of this mess that involves voting. We’re already seeing pro-Palestine activists throwing significant obstacles in the operations of Israeli weapons dealers, and the push to educate and inform the public about what’s happening in Gaza has caused Israel to lose control of the narrative so severely that it’s now resorting to desperate online influence ops. Measures like this can be implemented across the board to bring about the end of the imperial power structure. Once enough people begin turning against the empire, using the power of our numbers to force real change will quickly move from impossible to possible to likely to inevitable. But we’ve got to stop hanging all our hopes on the electoral system first. Every four years we see American attention get sucked up into this empty puppet show about which soulless empire manager should be the temporary official figurehead at the front desk of the permanent imperial machine, and if you want to vote by all means go ahead and vote. But don’t let that performative ritual distract you from the real project: to wake up our fellow humans and begin forcing real change. AuthorThis article was produced by Caitlin Johnstone. Archives February 2024
The Central American nation has called on Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, and Canada to stop sending arms to Israel
The Nicaraguan government has started legal proceedings to take Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, and Canada to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for complicity in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and other violations of international law.
In a statement, Managua said it has informed the governments of “the [UK], Germany, the Netherlands, and Canada of its decision to hold them responsible under international law for gross and systematic violations to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, international humanitarian law and customary law, including the law of occupation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, in particular the Gaza Strip.” The statement also states that Nicaragua called on the nations above to “immediately halt” the supply of weapons, ammunition, technology, and other components to Israel as it suspects these items may have been used to “facilitate or commit violations of the Genocide Convention including [...] acts of genocide, attempted genocide, complicity in genocide and conspiracy to commit genocide.” Managua has also warned that the suspension of funds for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) by the four governments shows their disregard for their obligations and continues to facilitate violations of international law by Israel. “Nicaragua has underscored that this act contributes to the collective punishment of the Palestinians and to the apparent objective of forcing the Palestinian population to leave the Occupied Palestinian Territories, particularly Gaza, and preventing the exercise of their right to self-determination,” the statement reads.
Nicaragua shares the stage alongside Turkey, Jordan, Venezuela, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Maldives, and Namibia in its support of South Africa’s genocide case against Israel.
On 26 January, the ICJ ruled on provisional measures in South Africa's case against Israel, which ordered the latter to stop attacks on Palestinians in Gaza, stop incitement against Palestinians as a group, provide humanitarian aid to Gaza, and a report in one month detailing measures being taken to ensure that these orders, alongside others, are met.
However, the ICJ failed to demand an end to Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza or call for a ceasefire.
AuthorNews Desk
This article was produced by The Cradle.
ArchivesFebruary 2024 Land area under ECOWAS, which is condemned by West Africa’s popular movements as an agent of French imperialism, has been reduced to less than half after their withdrawal Representatives of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger at the formation of the Alliance of Sahel States. Photo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Mali In a televised statement on Sunday, January 28, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger announced their withdrawal from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Their exit has shrunk the regional bloc, condemned by West Africa’s popular movements as an agent of French imperialism, to less than half its previous size, given the relatively vast expanse of Mali and Niger in the region. Reduced from 15 member states to 12, ECOWAS has nevertheless said that the three countries, against whom it was set to go to war last year, “remain important members,” although it had already suspended and sanctioned them. The “illegal, illegitimate, inhumane and irresponsible sanctions in violation of its own texts… have further weakened populations already bruised by years of violence… by… remote-controlled terrorist hordes,” said the joint statement of the three countries. First to be suspended and sanctioned was Mali, where in 2020, the government of Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, widely perceived by their populations as a puppet of their former colonizer France, was overthrown by a military coup that enjoyed mass support. Following another coup in 2021, Col. Assimi Goita formed a transitional military government with popular support, including from the trade unions and the mass protest movement against the domination and military presence of its former colonizer France. Its popularity was consolidated as mass celebratory demonstrations cheered in the streets of Mali’s capital Bamako when Goita’s government ordered the French troops out in February 2022. A month before, in January 2022, a similar set of events had been set into motion with a military coup against the government of Roch Marc Christian Kabore in neighboring Burkina Faso, which was also in the throes of mass anti-French protests. Following another coup in September that year, Captain Ibrahim Traore formed a popularly supported transitional military government which followed in the footsteps of Mali and ordered the French troops out in January 2023. Only months after the withdrawal of French troops from Burkina Faso was completed in February 2023, another popular military coup followed in neighboring Niger on July 26. Its President Mohamed Bazoum, who had invited the French troops ordered out of Mali into Niger, was ousted by General Abdourahmane Tchiani. The ECOWAS not only suspended Niger and imposed sanctions on the largest country in the bloc, but also threatened a military invasion if Bazoum was not restored to presidency. The West African Peoples’ Organization (WAPO) condemned this ultimatum by ECOWAS as “a maneuver by colonial France and Great Britain, under the hegemony of American imperialism, to resort to armed intervention under the guise of restoring democracy and human rights in Niger.” Thousands took to the streets in Niger to demonstrate in support of the transitional military government, which ended the defense agreements with France on August 3 and ordered the withdrawal of French troops. Initially refusing to withdraw its troops and its ambassador from Niger on the grounds that it will only deal with the ousted government of Bazoum and does not recognize the military government, France backed the military invasion threatened by the ECOWAS. However, many of its member countries were faced with domestic opposition on the streets as well as in the parliament. In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with the strongest military in the bloc, its President Bola Tinubu, chosen as the chairperson of ECOWAS just over two weeks before the coup, could not secure the approval of the Senate for the military invasion. It called on Tinubu’s government to instead focus Nigeria’s armed forces on securing its own territory from Boko Haram’s insurgency. The African Union (AU) also clarified that it does not support the planned military invasion by ECOWAS. In the meantime, Mali and Burkina Faso extended support to Niger, and declared that an attack on it would be regarded as an attack on their own countries. Agreeing to mobilize the militaries of all three countries if anyone were attacked, the trio went on to form the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in mid-September. Later that month, France, which was also facing increasingly angry mass protests as a regular feature outside its base and embassy in Niger, retreated from its earlier position and announced the withdrawal of its troops, which was completed in December. The G-5 Sahel coalition partnering with France’s failed military campaign against insurgencies in the Sahel also came to an end that month. Following the lead of Mali, which had already withdrawn from this coalition in May 2022, Burkina Faso and Niger announced their withdrawal from G-5 Sahel in December. “The organization is failing to achieve its objectives. Worse, the legitimate ambitions of our countries, of making the G5 Sahel a zone of security and development, are hindered,” its joint statement said, adding “independence and dignity is not compatible with G5 participation in its current form.” With three of the five countries of the coalition having withdrawn, the remaining two countries who are not ECOWAS members, namely Chad in central Africa and Mauritania in the continent’s northwest, dissolved the coalition on December 6. France had up to 5,500 troops in the Sahel at the peak of Operation Barkhane, which started in 2014 and ended in 2022 in failure as the violence by Islamic insurgencies it was fighting increased multifold in this period. This deployment, anchored in the G-5 Sahel, has been reduced to about a thousand troops in Chad, which is ruled by a French-backed military junta. However, the future of its grip on power appears uncertain as an anti-French protest movement is growing here too. Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have all alleged that on being forced to withdraw, France is backing the very terrorist groups it had purported to be fighting over the last decade, after spawning them across the Sahel by participating in NATO’s war destroying Libya in 2011. Their statement announcing exit from ECOWAS also mentioned “remote-controlled terrorist hordes,” where the adjective insinuated alleged French involvement. The statement also added that “under the influence of foreign powers”, the regional bloc of ECOWAS “has become a threat to its member states”. ECOWAS has insisted in response that it “remains determined to find a negotiated solution to the political impasse.” Such a statement, in the given context, can also be read as a reiteration of its determination to continue pressuring the three countries, including by penalizing its citizens with sanctions, to force a compromise with the French-backed political elite within. AuthorPeoples Dispatch This article was produced by Peoples Dispatch. Archives February 2024 The Arabic word Asabiyya, or 'social solidarity,' is a soundbite in the west, but taken very seriously by the globe's new contenders China, Russia, and Iran. It is Yemen, however, that is mainstreaming the idea, by sacrificing everything for the world's collective morality in a bid to end the genocide in Gaza. When there is a general change of conditions, Yemen's Ansarallah resistance forces have made it very clear, right from the start, that they set up a blockade in the Bab el-Mandeb and the southern Red Sea only against Israeli-owned or destined shipping vessels. Their single objective was and remains to stop the Gaza genocide perpetrated by the Israeli biblical psychopathy. As a response to a morally-based call to end a human genocide, the United States, masters of the Global War Of Terror (italics mine), predictably re-designated Yemen's Houthis as a “terrorist organization,” launched a serial bombardment of underground Ansarallah military installations (assuming US intel know where they are), and cobbled together a mini-coalition of the willing that includes its UK, Canadian, Australian, Dutch, and Bahraini vassals. Without missing a beat, Yemen's Parliament declared the US and UK governments “Global Terrorist Networks.” Now let’s talk strategy. With a single move, the Yemeni resistance seized the strategic advantage by de facto controlling a key geoeconomic bottleneck: the Bab el-Mandeb. Hence, they can inflict serious trouble on sectors of global supply chains, trade, and finance. And Ansarallah has the potential to double down -- if need be. Persian Gulf traders, off the record, have confirmed insistent chatter that Yemen may consider imposing a so-called Al-Aqsa Triangle -- aptly named after the 7 October Palestinian resistance operation aimed at destroying the Israeli military's Gaza Division and taking captives as leverage in a sweeping prisoner swap deal. Such a move would mean selectively blocking not only the Bab el-Mandeb and the Red Sea route to the Suez Canal, but also the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off oil and gas deliveries to Israel from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE – although the top oil suppliers to Israel are in fact Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. These Yemenis are afraid of nothing. Were they able to impose the triangle – in this case only with direct Iranian involvement -- that would represent the US-assassinated Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani's Grand Design on cosmic steroids. This plan holds the realistic potential of finally bringing down the pyramid of hundreds of trillions of dollars in derivatives -- and consequently, the whole western financial system. And yet, even as Yemen controls the Red Sea and Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz, Al-Aqsa Triangle remains just a working hypothesis. Welcome to the Hegemon's blockade With a simple, clear strategy, the Houthis perfectly understood that the deeper they draw the strategy-deprived Americans into the West Asian geopolitical swamp, in a sort of “undeclared war” mode, the more they’re able to inflict serious pain on the global economy, which the Global South will blame on the Hegemon. Today, Red Sea shipping traffic has plunged in half, compared to the summer of 2023; supply chains are wobbly; ships carrying food are forced to circumnavigate Africa (and risk delivering cargo after its expiry date); predictably, inflation across the vast EU agricultural sphere (worth €70 billion) is rising fast. Yet, never underestimate a cornered Empire. Western-based insurance giants perfectly understood the rules of Ansarallah's limited blockade: Russian and Chinese ships, for instance, have free passage in the Red Sea. Global insurers have only refused to cover US, UK, and Israeli ships -- exactly as the Yemenis intended. So the US, predictably, changed the narrative into a big, fat lie: ‘Ansarallah is attacking the whole global economy.’ Washington turbo-charged sanctions (not a big deal as the Yemeni resistance uses Islamic financing); increased the bombing, and in the name of sacrosanct “freedom of navigation” – always applied selectively -- placed its bets on the “international community,” including leaders of the Global South, begging for mercy, as in please keep the shipping lanes open. The goal of the new, reframed American deceit is to elbow the Global South into ditching its support for Ansarallah's strategy. Pay attention to this crucial US sleight of hand: Because, from now on, in a new perverse twist of Operation Genocide Protection, it is Washington that will be blockading the Red Sea for the entire world. Washington itself, mind you, will be spared: US shipping depends on Pacific trade routes, not West Asian ones. This will ratchet up the pain on Asian customers and especially on Europe's economy – which already took the heavies blows from Ukraine-associated Russian energy sanctions. As Michael Hudson has interpreted it, there is a strong possibility that the neocons in charge of US foreign policy actually want (italics mine) to have Yemen and Iran implement the Al-Aqsa Triangle: “It will be the main energy buyers in Asia, China, and other countries that are going to be hurt. And that (…) will give the United States even more power to control the oil supply of the world as a bargaining chip in trying to renegotiate this new international order.” That, in fact, is the classic Empire of Chaos modus operandi. Calling attention to “our people in Gaza” There is no solid evidence the Pentagon has the slightest clue about what its Tomahawks are hitting in Yemen. Even several hundred missiles won’t change a thing. Ansarallah, which has already endured eight years of nonstop US-UK-Saudi-Emirati firepower -- and basically won -- will not relent today over a few missile strikes. Even the proverbial “unnamed officials” informed the New York Times that “locating the Houthi targets has proven more difficult than expected,” essentially because of lousy US intel on Yemeni “air defense, command centers, ammunition depots, and drone and missile storage and production facilities.” It’s quite enlightening to listen to how Yemeni Prime Minister Abdulaziz bin Saleh Habtoor frames Ansarallah's Israel-blockade initiative decision as “based on humanitarian, religious and moral aspects”. He refers, crucially, to “our people in Gaza.” And the overall vision, he reminds us, “stems from the vision of the Axis of Resistance.” It is a reference smart onlookers will recognize as General Soleimani’s ever-lasting legacy. With a keen historical sense -- from the creation of Israel to the Suez crisis and the Vietnam war — the Yemeni prime minister recalls how “Alexander the Great reached the shores of Aden and Socotra island but was defeated (…) Invaders tried to occupy the capital of the historical state of Shebah and failed (…) How many countries throughout history have tried to occupy the west coast of Yemen and failed? Including Britain.” It's absolutely impossible for the west and even the Global Majority to understand the Yemeni mindset without learning a few facts from the Angel of History. So let’s go back to the 14th century universal history master Ibn Khaldun -- the author of The Muqaddimah. Ibn Khaldun cracks the Ansarallah Code Ibn Khaldun’s family was a contemporary to the rise of the Arab Empire, on the move alongside the first armies of Islam in the 7th century, from the austere beauty of the Hadramawti valleys in what is now southern Yemen all the way to the Euphrates. Ibn Khaldun, crucially, was a precursor of Kant, who offered the brilliant insight that “geography lies at the basis of history.” And he read the 12th century Andalusian philosophy master Averroes – as well as other writers exposed to Plato's works and understood how the latter referred to the moral strength of “the first people” in the Timaeus, in 360 B.C. Yes, this boils down to “moral strength” -- for the west, a mere soundbite; for the east, an essential philosophy. Ibn Khaldun grasped how civilization began and was constantly renewed by people with natural goodness and energy; people who understood and respected the natural world, who lived light, united by blood or brought together by a shared revolutionary idea or religious drive. Ibn Khaldun defined asabiyya as this force that binds people together. Like so many words in Arabic, asabiyya exhibits a range of diverse, loosely connected meanings. Arguably, the most relevant is esprit de corps, team spirit, and tribal solidarity - just as Ansarallah exhibits. As Ibn Khaldun demonstrates, when the power of asabiyya is fully harnessed, reaching way beyond the tribe, it becomes more powerful than the sum of its individual parts, and can become a catalyst to reshape history; to make or break Empires; to encourage civilizations; or force them to collapse. We are definitely living an asabiyya moment, brought about by the Yemeni resistance’s moral strength. Solid as a rock Ansarallah innately understood the threat of eschatological Zionism -- which happens to mirror the Christian Crusades a millennium ago. And they are virtually the only ones, in practical terms, trying to stop it. Now, as an extra bonus, they are exposing the plutocratic Hegemon, once again, as bombers of Yemen, the poorest Arab nation-state, where at least half the population remains “food-insecure.” But Ansarallah is not heavy-weapons-free like the Pashtun mujahideen who humiliated NATO in Afghanistan. Their anti-ship cruise missiles include the Sayyad and the Quds Z-O (range up to 800 km) and the Al Mandab 2 (range up to 300 km). Their anti-ship ballistic missiles include the Tankil (range of up to 500 km); the Asef (range of up to 450 km); and the Al-Bahr Al-Ahmar (range of up to 200 km). That covers the southern part of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, but not, for instance, the islands of the Socotra archipelago. Accounting for roughly one-third of the country’s population, Yemen's Houthis, who form the backbone of the Ansarallah resistance, do have their own internal agenda: gaining fair representation in governance (they launched Yemen's Arab Spring); protecting their Zaydi (neither Shia nor Sunni) faith; fighting for the autonomy of the Saada governorate; and working for the revival of the Zaydi Imamate, which was up and running before the 1962 revolution. Now, they are making their mark on The Big Picture. It’s no wonder Ansarallah fiercely fights the Hegemon’s vassal Arabs – especially those who signed a deal to normalize relations with Israel under the Trump administration. The Saudi-Emirati war on Yemen, with the Hegemon “leading from behind,” was a quagmire that cost Riyadh at least $6 billion a month for seven years. It ended with a wobbly 2022 truce in a de facto Ansarallah victory. A signed peace agreement, it should be noted, has been disallowed by the US, despite Saudi efforts to seal a deal. Now, Ansarallah is turning geopolitics and geoeconomics upside down with not just a few missiles and drones but also oceans of craftiness and strategic acumen. To invoke Chinese wisdom, picture a single rock changing the course of a stream, which then changes the course of a mighty river. Epigones of Diogenes can always remark, half in jest, that the Russia-China-Iran strategic partnership may have contributed with their own well-placed rocks in this path to a more equitable order. That’s the beauty of it: we may not be able to see these rocks, only the effects they cause. What we do see, though, is the Yemeni resistance, solid as a rock. The record shows the Hegemon, once again, reverting to auto-pilot mode: Bomb, Bomb, Bomb. And in this particular case, to bomb is to redirect the narrative from a genocide committed in real time by Israel, the Empire’s aircraft carrier in West Asia. Still, Ansarallah can always increase the pressure by sticking firmly to its narrative and, driven by the power of asabiyya, deliver to the Hegemon a second Afghanistan, compared to which Iraq and Syria will look like a weekend at Disneyland. AuthorPepe Escobar is a columnist at The Cradle, editor-at-large at Asia Times and an independent geopolitical analyst focused on Eurasia. Since the mid-1980s he has lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore and Bangkok. He is the author of countless books; his latest one is Raging Twenties. This article was produced by The Cradle. Archives February 2024 It’s been Democrats’ favorite refrain for years now. Don’t like something? Call it Russian. For years, Democrats labeled Donald Trump a Russian agent. Despite multiple investigations yielding no evidence to support this lofty claim, they cling to it. Or what about when Hillary Clinton accused Tulsi Gabbard of being groomed by Russia for a spoiler presidential run? Clinton’s theory was little more than a petty attack against someone who called her “the queen of warmongers.” Gabbard suspended her campaign in March 2020 and immediately endorsed Joe Biden. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi also parroted her party’s go-to smear during a recent CNN interview. As Israel genocides Gaza, Pelosi accused pro-ceasefire demonstrators of Kremlin ties. “For them to call for a ceasefire is Mr. Putin’s message,” claimed Pelosi. “I think some of these protesters… are connected to Russia.” Pelosi’s soundbite raised eyebrows. With over 27,000 Gazans dead, calling for an end to Israeli aggression just seems morally prudent if not obligatory. But morality probably matters little to someone whose most durable commitment is to an apartheid state. That Vladimir Putin supports a ceasefire doesn’t mean demonstrators must be in cahoots with him. It’s easy to lose sight of the truth in the imperial core, but the world stands against Israel’s war crimes. At the United Nations, 153 member states — over 80% of the entire body — voted for a ceasefire. Are they all Russian operatives? A whopping 113 of those 153 states voted to condemn Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. Being pro-ceasefire and pro-Russia can and do come apart. But there is a connection between the two positions — though not the one Pelosi asserts. Each represents an opposition to fascism and ethnic supremacy. In this sense, countries that both voted for a ceasefire and condemned Russia are inconsistent. During World War II, the Soviet Union was the world’s preeminent bulwark against fascism. The Soviets were willing to sacrifice millions of their own to almost single-handedly destroy the expansionist Nazi regime. As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt admitted to General Douglas MacArthur: “I find it difficult to get away from the simple fact that the Russian armies are killing more Axis personnel and… destroying more… materiel than all the other [25 Allies] put together.” Americans often like to goad Europeans by saying, “if it wasn’t for the United States, you’d all be speaking German.” Replace “United States” with “Soviet Union” and that might be true. Much has changed since the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. But steadfast Russian opposition to the far Right has not. As filmmaker Oliver Stone explains, Russia hasn’t been at odds with Ukraine for long. Prior to 2014, the two countries had friendly relations. Then an American-backed coup deputized ultra-conservative Ukrainian nationalists to overthrow their government and install a right-wing puppet government. In a tasteless display of imperial hubris, US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland even handed out cookies at far right Ukrainian riots. Overnight, the fascist menace came to Russia’s border. They’ve understandably struggled to cope, with the ongoing special military operation being the last tool in an exhausted arsenal. Ukraine runs the fascist gambit. It glorifies Nazis and builds statues honoring them. There’s even a sizable, openly Nazi contingent in the Ukrainian military known as the Azov Battalion. Ukraine’s economic system, defined by parasitic relations between oligarchs and state actors, is characteristic of fascism. The country also lacks a free press. For all the chat about Russia persecuting journalists, Ukraine is a far worse offender. Just last month, Ukrainian authorities tortured and murdered dissident blogger Gonzalo Lira for criticizing Volodymyr Zelenskyy and “spreading pro-Kremlin ideas.” Though a longtime resident of Ukraine, Lira was never a citizen. As his father notes, the Ukrainian government could’ve just deported him. But fascist regimes are sadistic. The cruelty is the point. Fewer than 20 degrees south of Ukraine resides another far-right supremacist state. Israel is the world’s foremost apartheid regime and a close ally of Ukraine. Zelenskyy is a proud Zionist and supporter of Israel’s ongoing genocide against Gaza. He has analogized Hamas to Russia, calling both unprovoked aggressors. Like Ukraine with its Azov Battalion, Israel’s military is a hotbed of extremism. In fact, terrorist groups like Irgun and Lehi — infamous for massacres including hotel bombings — consolidated to become the so-called Israeli Defense Forces. Zionism animates Israel’s military crimes, with perpetrators using it to excuse their worst atrocities. Similarly, in Ukraine, malfeasance finds solace in Banderaism — a Ukrainian nationalist ideology that advocates the killing of Poles and non-fascists. Ukraine and Israel thus represent similar politics. To support one and not the other therefore makes little sense. Pelosi, to her credit, is consistent. She backs both Ukraine and Israel. Her overarching commitment is to promoting fascism and ethnic supremacy abroad. Huge swaths of the global masses are on the opposite side of this ideological divide. They support Russia and Palestine. Their overarching commitment is to defeating the far Right and ensuring freedom and equality for all. Riley Miller is an American Marxist writer specializing in imperialist geopolitics. Their writing centers decolonization, the rise of multipolarity, and socialist development in the Global South. Archives February 2024 A short note before we start. The paper below was presented on October 23rd, 2023, at the Autonomous University of Mexico City (UACM in Spanish), a school on the outskirts of the capital in one of the poorer regions of the country. I was asked to give an overview of the foundation of the American state, its structure, and my views on the upcoming 2024 elections. It kicked off the Congress on Interculturality, Juridical Pluralism, Human Rights and Critique of Law, hosted by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM in Spanish). The presentation could not have gone any better. The auditorium was filled with workers and indigenous people. The level of class consciousness was astounding. While presenting most heads nodded in agreement, something quite hard to imagine happening in the US with a lecture so critical of American capitalist-imperialism. All the questions were terrific, most of which expressed a curiosity as to what the American people felt about x or y event. It was clear to me that they understood very well the difference between the American people and the imperialist state which wrongly acts in their name. In replying to one of the questions on the on-going genocide of the Palestinians I almost found myself in tears, both because of the gravity of the topic I was discussing, but also because of the heartfelt reactions I saw from the crowd. I did not have a doubt that most people in that room sympathized with the Palestinian plight, seeing in it their own struggles against capitalist-imperialism. "Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto" - Terence. The American Political System and the 2024 ElectionsThe United States was founded out of an intense class struggle against British colonialism. It produced the first anti-colonial revolution in the hemisphere, serving as an inspiration for virtually all other bourgeois revolutions in the late 18th and 19th century. The revolution, and the subsequent contradictions which ensue after its success, were a reflection of the contradictions within the colonists themselves, many of which were temporarily placed aside to coalesce forces against the principal contradiction of British colonialism. While it was a historically progressive bourgeois revolution, a lot of the fighting was done by the popular classes, folks who made their livings as carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers, etc. These popular classes were driven to action, not just by the immediacy of their deteriorating situation, but by their democratic desires for popular sovereignty and a democratic state controlled by the people as a whole. These desires, while given lip-service throughout American history, have never been actualized. The American state, like every other state in human history, has been a tool for protecting the interests of the economically dominant class. The class in whose hands control over the means of production is, also controls the politics, judicature, media, and all other social institutions, shaping their central function to the smooth reproduction of the existing state of affairs. That the American state has warped itself into being the bulwark of reaction and counterrevolutionary struggles, does not mean that its founding revolution did not have a historically progressive kernel. It was the first state in history to proclaim its freedom with appeals to a universal humanity, where all are created equal and endowed with the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These rights, when oppressed by a government, offer the citizens not only the right, but the duty, to overthrow such a government. It brought into being a successful struggle against feudal absolutisms, radically transforming the whole mode of life – its economic, political, social, and juridical dimensions. It ushered in the separation of church and state; a republican state; public education; the elimination of laws of entail that allowed the monopolization of wealth within a select few families; the elimination of primogeniture; it expropriated the lands of the king and Tories, redividing them on a significantly more equitable basis; it made efforts to abolish indentured servitude, and limited African slavery to the southern states; and, by removing the feudal fetters to the development of the productive forces, it stimulated the onslaught of capitalism, moving history forward. It was, in general, a step forward in universal history. In many of the European states, teachers in the late 18th century could be blackballed from the academy if they taught the Declaration of Independence. The democratizing potential, although never fully realized, was evident to the elite across Europe at its time. Even well into the 20th century the radicalism of the Declaration of Independence was still being appealed to, by, for example, Fidel Castro in History Will Absolve Me, and Ho Chi Minh, in the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson, himself a figure riddled by contradictions, condemned the concentration of wealth within a few hands. He felt that the revolution was threatened by a small aristocracy of wealth that was in constant contrast with the misery of the many. For this, he proposed various measures for preventing such grotesque wealth inequality – some of these measures, such as progressive taxation, are still being fought for by social democrats today. In 1779, the Virginia Gazzette, caught up in the democratic fervor of the revolution, made a call for what today we would describe as the nationalization of property put under administration by the people for the people. It urged that we must “take the whole trade of the continent out of the hands of individuals and let it be carried on for the benefit of the public by persons authorized by the legislature under stated but liberal salaries.” In 1776 Connecticut adopted price-fixing legislation to combat the profiteering of the capitalists, whom they described as the “great pests of society, who prefer their own private gain to the interest and safety of their country.” It is not hard to see the danger that this general democratic fervor presented for the bourgeois order that ushered it in – an order that would create its own forms of tyrannical absolutisms rooted in the modernized form the master/slave relation takes with the capitalist and the worker. The American elite was not oblivious to this. While the progressive elements favored a more expansive democratization of society, other segments fought vehemently against it. Their rejections of feudal absolutisms were less based on a democratic fervor than on the limitations these presented for their class interests. The embryonic development of the American state is a product of these contradictions, of the compromises each faction of the revolutionaries took to usher in a new state. The revolution would go on to produce a constitutional federal republic with a presidential system. Taking its cues from John Locke, Montesquieu, and other bourgeois political philosophers, the US constitution would enshrine the separation of powers between three branches of government destined to check each other and sustain the balance of power between them. The executive branch is composed of the President which is the head of state, leader of the federal government, and Commander in Chief of the United States armed forces. While there are presidential elections, the voters elect the president only indirectly, as it is ultimately the electoral college that picks the president. Within the executive branch you also have the Vice-President who becomes president if the President is unable to serve, and who presides over the U.S. Senate and breaks ties in Senate votes, and the Cabinet advisors to the president, which include the vice president, heads of executive departments, and other high-ranking government officials nominated by the president and approved by the Senate. The legislative branch is composed of a bicameral congress that drafts proposed laws, confirms or rejects presidential nominations for heads of federal agencies, federal judges, and the supreme court, and has authority to declare war. The senate, known also as the upper chamber, is composed of 100 members, two for each state. Originally, the senators were selected by the state legislators. This would change with the 17th amendment, ratified in 1913, where senators would be directly elected by the people. Once elected, senators stay in power for 6 years. The House of Representatives, known as the lower chamber, is dictated by the proportion of the population of each state, with small states like Wyoming having 1 and large states like California having 53. The House has the power to initiate all revenue bills, impeach federal officers, and elect the president if no candidate receives a majority of votes in the Electoral College. They are in power for 2 years once elected. Both senators and house members are not subject to term limits. There are currently around 8 people who have been in congress for more than 40 years, with Iowa’s Chuck Grassley at the lead with 48 years in power. Lastly there is the judicial branch, which is composed of the Supreme Court and other federal courts. Its task is to interpret the meaning of laws, apply the laws to individual cases, and decide if laws violate the Constitution. Federal judges are selected by the president, and, if approved by the senate, can serve for life, without any term limits. The US constitution also includes the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments of the document. The Bill of Rights was produced as a compromise between the federalists and the anti-federalists, who were skeptical of governmental power and wished to guarantee individual freedoms within the constitution. Amongst these are the rights to free speech, religious freedom, media and assemblage, the rights to bear arms, the prohibition of soldiers quartering private dwellings in peace time, the protection against unreasonable search and seizure, the right to a grand-jury indictment for serious offenses, protecting against double jeopardy in criminal cases, the prohibition of compelling testimony by a person against himself, the rights of the accused to a speedy trial, an impartial jury, and guarantees to the right of legal counsel and to the obtaining of witnesses in his favor, the prohibition of excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishment, and the reserving to the states and people any powers not delegated to the federal government. While the American state was shaped with an eye to the rejection of feudal absolutism, there was another class feared by a good number of the founders: working people. Most founders deeply distrusted the people, the tyranny of the majority as De Tocqueville would say. In many ways, the priority of the state they established was not democracy – as today’s narrative urges – but the liberty of capital. Like Locke in the Second Treatise of Government, the American constitution is a document deeply embedded in a tradition that holds that the government’s central purpose is the protection of property and propertied individuals. Instead of Lincoln’s assertion of a government of, by, and for the people, what the US state has actually produced is a government of, by, and for capital, or, extending Lincoln’s understanding of people, government of, by, and for people with capital. This is clearly seen in James Madison’s Federalist 10, where he provides a lesson in divide et impera. Discussing the topic of factions, he notes that the most common and dangerous forms of factions are those rooted on the “unequal distribution of property.” To prevent a faction of the majority/people that can threaten the order of the rich elite, it is necessary, Madison observed, to factionalize them as much as possible. As he argued: to prevent a majority faction from emerging: “you [must] take in a greater variety of parties and interests … make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens [i.e., the rich]; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other.” The struggle to overcome the divisions the elite thrust on the people has been at the heart of class struggles in the US. The Civil War, in some ways the second American revolution, overthrew the institution of slavery and the South’s cotton kingdom. It was, as W. E. B. Dubois shows in Black Reconstruction, a revolution of the black or enslaved proletariat, who won the war through a general strike where millions of black workers fled to enemy lines in the North – providing the North with new soldiers, spies, workers, and denying the South their productive base. For a period of less than a decade the Northern army would defend what Dubois called a dictatorship of the working class in the South (for my analysis of the importance of Dubois’s Black Reconstruction as a foundational text of American Marxism see HERE). This will end with the counterrevolution of property in 1876, where a fascist order would take hold in the South, making Jim Crow and unfettered Lynching the order of the day. This apartheid order would be overthrown, de jure, in 1964 with the Civil Rights act, the product of the political revolution Martin Luther King Jr. led. In each of these cases, the advancement of American society was premised on the overthrowing of the anti-democratic and factionalist aspects of the state’s founding – always with an eye to fulfilling the genuinely democratic and egalitarian aspirations of the progressive faction of the founders. In some ways, the class and ideological contradictions at the founding of the state have merely taken new forms in accordance with new contexts. Political scientists often talk about the founder’s anti-democratic sentiments as a form of ‘distrust of the people.’ But is it? Is it trust that is lacking? Or is it the awareness that the business interests they upheld clashed with the interests of the vast majority of propertyless working people? This was the view that many radical historians of the early 20th century like J. Allen Smith, Charles A. Beard, Richard Franklin Pettigrew and others took, lambasting the anti-democratic character of the constitution. However, even superficial understandings of democracy, such as those that reduce it to elections and each person having equal power with their vote, would come to see the deeply anti-democratic character of the constitution the American state is based on. The bourgeois political theorist Robert Dahl, for instance, displays a variety of undemocratic aspects of the American constitution in his book, How Democratic is the American Constitution. He notes how at the time of writing, the antifederalists were already calling the constitution an “aristocratic document calculated to create an undemocratic government benefiting the few at the expense of the many.” While Dahl was himself a supporter of the constitution (and the status quo in general), he would nonetheless point to the following various areas where the constitution was deeply undemocratic. Some of these are a result, Dahl and others argue, of ‘compromises’ given to the small slave-holding states that were needed to establish a central government. 1- The Constitution defended slavery, considering slaves three-fifths of a person. 2- There were limitations to suffrage. At first, only white men with property could vote. It was not until 1856 that all states in the union had removed property qualifications for white men voting. In 1870, following the victory of the North in the Civil War, the 15th amendment prohibits the denial of voting rights on the basis of race. In 1920, following the women’s suffrage movement, the denial of voting rights on the basis of sex is prohibited. Lastly, in 1964, following the success of the Civil Rights political revolution, the 24th amendment prohibits the conditioning of the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax – measures which were used to disenfranchise African American voters in the era of Jim Crow segregation. 3- Each state, regardless of size, gets 2 senators. Considering that the president is elected, not directly by the voters, but by the electoral college, a number of electors proportional to the state’s representation in congress (and hence, not to their population), this means that one can win the popular vote and lose the election. In fact, in our century, the presidencies of George W. Bush and Donald Trump occurred after both lost the popular vote but won in the electoral college. An individual vote in Wyoming, for instance, is 3.6 times more influential – because of the 2 senators’ system – than one in California. 4- Until the passage of the 17th amendment in 1913, the senate was not elected by the people, but by state legislators. 5- Unelected judges who are in power for life have the power to reject the passage of any legislation – popular though it may be – simply by calling it ‘unconstitutional’. At the most basic structural level, it is evident how deeply anti-democratic the Constitution was, and how its democratizing over time has been the product – not of the good will of the rulers of the people – but of people’s struggles. However, democracy is not reducible to elections. Elections are but one mean, and surely not the only one, through which democracy can be realized. Democracy, in its etymological sense, simply means that common people (the demos) are in power (kratos). Democracy is when power is in the hands of common people. The factor fettering real democracy the most is omitted from Dahl's discussion. Let me ask you all a question. If the richest companies in the country give tens of millions of dollars to the campaigns of political candidates, ensuring that if those candidates win, an agenda friendly to their business will be passed, what would one call this other than corruption? Well, in the US it is perfectly legal and normalized, and it goes by the name of 'lobbying.' In the US, the candidate that raises the most money is more than 90% likely to win. Considering that most of the money raised comes from big capital and the wealthiest individuals, it is easy to track a candidate's policies in office to the donors that ensured that their campaign had enough money to win. In America, the dollar is the real voter. It is a 'money democracy,' a democracy for the rich, the insignificant minority (as Lenin would say). This isn't just some partisan Marxist analysis saying this, regular liberal political scientists have shown, statistically, how the will of the people is virtually irrelevant in policy outcomes. The only will which they could correlate to policies taken and those rejected by politicians was the will of the elite, of the richest in the country. As Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page show, In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagree with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it. How can a political system where the people have virtually no control over policies, while the elite have virtually all control over it, be called a democracy? Isn’t it more accurate to say, as Manuel Lopez Obrador recently said, that the US is an oligarchy with the façade of being a democracy? It is natural that the American people, in the face of their powerlessness to affect policy change, have demonstrated some of the lowest voter turnouts in the so-called developed world. In presidential elections 40% of the population eligible to vote does not vote, and in local elections this number goes up to 73%. Only 20% of them approve of what congress does, and more than 60% of them have expressed dissatisfaction with the two-party system and an openness to third parties. Amongst the younger generations, around 70% of them have said they would vote for a socialist party. In general, more than 90% of the American people distrust the media, almost all of it which is owned by a handful of companies. The same companies that fund the campaigns of their political puppets are the ones that control what we watch in the media, in movies and shows, they control what we eat, when we go to war and who with, they own all the land, factories and banks, they poison our food, get us addicted with pills, keep us enslaved with debt, and always, and I mean always, make a killing out of killing. They are profiteers of death. Subject to only one goal and God, Capital and its accumulation. The American people today are experiencing, for the first time in the nation’s history, generations which will have a lower living standard than their parents. The average American is around 60,000 dollars in debt, most of which was acquired either because they wanted to get a university education, or because they got sick and lacked insurance or were underinsured, or simply because they wanted to have a home for their families. Basic necessities for human life, things like education, health care, housing, etc., are not only not guaranteed for most Americans, but their struggle to attain these things are often the source of the crippling debt they deal with for most of their lives, functioning as an ever-present engine of stress, trauma, and slow forms of death. More than 60% of Americans are a lost paycheck away from joining the 600,000 homeless wandering around in a country with 33 times as many empty homes as homeless people. The American people today are impoverished, indebted, and powerless in the face of the systemic policies that have placed them in these conditions which intensify and worsen by the day. It is difficult to imagine that things could continue in this way for much longer. As the people suffer at home, all the politicians from both parties have to offer is more war, more invasions and imperialist meddling in other countries’ affairs. More than a third of the world is currently under sanction by the US, often done in the name of democracy and human rights. These are things that in the US itself the people don’t experience. Not only is democracy absent, as we have shown, but even the individual rights enshrined into our bourgeois constitution are stripped once they inconvenience the status quo and those in power. Where was, for instance, the right of free speech and press for Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and others who’ve been condemned by the US for exposing the crimes of its leaders and state institutions? Where is the right to free speech and media for the hundreds of journalists and outlets censored during the beginning of the proxy war against Russia? Or those that have been censored recently for speaking out against the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people? The Institute I work for, for instance, has had 7 of its social media accounts banned, these where accounts where we would reach tens of millions of people weekly with an anti-imperialist message. There are many others like us who suffer the stripping of their constitutional rights as soon as they challenge the narrative of the elite, especially on affairs pertaining to its imperial ambitions. In general, this is the historical and contemporary panorama grounding the upcoming 2024 elections. I would like to run through 5 central candidates before I wrap up this presentation. Leading in the polls by significant percentages is former president Donald Trump, someone whose success is premised on passing himself off as a populist people’s candidate who fights the deep state (the national security state) and who will drain the swamp and stop involving us in wars. He’s been able to pick up a significant base of discontented working people thanks to his hollow anti-elite discourse. In reality, of course, he was – like all the others – simply a puppet of the rich, whom he gave great tax breaks too at the beginning of his term. While he did normalize relations with the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, Trump intensified the hybrid warfare against Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran, where he murdered their beloved general Qasem Soleimani (scaring the world for a while with the potential of a third world war), he intensified the war against China that started with Obama’s pivot to Asia and was, in general, as much of a Warhawk as anyone else in the deep state he, like a good sophist, claimed to oppose. Trump announced his 2024 candidacy by postulating himself as the peace candidate, opposing the US and NATO’s proxy war against Russia. However, within just a couple of months, this same so-called peace candidate is saying that he will invade Mexico if he wins. The reason? The drug and crime epidemic in the US. Invading Mexico for a drug epidemic that has been proven to be manufactured by the American pharmaceutical-industrial complex in collaboration with the government, universities, doctors, and NGO’s is as stupid as invading Iraq because CIA trained Saudis blew up the World Trade Center. But hey, stupid is as stupid does. The other major candidate in 2024 is decrepit Joe Biden. Biden and the democrats’ whole strategy is rooted in postulating themselves as less evil than the republicans: they might be horrible, but at least – so the myth goes – they aren’t worse than the republicans. For the last three years, Biden has not fulfilled any of his campaign promises. While calling himself the most pro union president in history, he squashed the rail workers democratically chosen right to strike for a better contract, illegalizing the worker’s ability to fight for some days off to spend time with their families. He’s done virtually nothing to improve the problems of student debt, health care or environmental issues. On the contrary, by blowing up the Nordstream pipeline, as investigative journalist Seymour Hersh showed, Biden’s administration led to the most catastrophic act of environmental and economic terrorism in human history. Biden’s hawkishness does not end with the role he’s played in escalating the world towards nuclear Armageddon in the proxy war against Russia. He’s been as much an enemy of the Cuban, Iranian, Nicaraguan, Chinese, and Venezuelan people as the administration before him. Currently, he is using Kenya to invade Haiti, and is pledging – like everyone else in American politics – unflinching support for Israel’s genocidal war against the colonized people of Palestine. This party fearmongers Americans into voting for them by claiming that they are defending democracy from Trump’s fascist threat. But can a party that sends hundreds of billions to nazis in Ukraine, a party that supports the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, a party that uses the state to repress peace activists and journalists exposing the lies of empire, that fights to prevent third parties from being on state ballots, a party that has outlawed debates for the party’s presidential nomination, and that has ensured that certain states can only vote for the incumbent, can such a party really be called the best vehicle we have to fight fascism? Wouldn’t it be the case that, on the contrary, this party – and the dialectical interdependency it is in with the republicans – is itself a part of the growing threat (and presence) of fascism we are witnessing, both in the US and abroad? The next candidate of prominence is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nephew of former president John F. Kennedy, who many on the left – following the work of Oliver Stone and others – think was killed by the security state for his lack of compliance to empire’s irrational wishes. RFK started the campaign in the Democratic Party, he has since left to run as an independent. RFK, like Trump, posits himself as an anti-establishment, anti-security state, anti-Big Pharma candidate. He’s been an ardent critic of the US narrative surrounding the war in Ukraine and the pandemic. However, he is perhaps more hawkish than the rest when it comes to the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians and has worked closely with some of the most fascistic of the Zionist voices in the US. Despite the areas where RFK is in full alignment with the elite, his run as an independent is a positive progressive development that, if successful in breaking some of the key parameters (such as 5% of the vote for federal funding and 15% of the vote for being on the debate stage with the other two parties), can help undermine the two-party duopoly that controls the US political spectacle. While the democratic party, as Assange showed, cheated Bernie Sanders in 2016, and then again in 2020, the manipulation of democratic processes within the party has been more explicit with this election. RFK Jr. and other challengers of Biden within the party were not allowed to debate the incumbent, and RFK, when running as a democrat, was denied the usual access to the secret service protection. The significance of the absence of security is intensified by the apparent assassination attempt on RFK’s life that occurred mid-September. The fourth most noteworthy candidate is Dr. Cornel West, perhaps the most notable American philosopher of the century, deeply rooted in the tradition of American pragmatism, the black freedom movement, and revolutionary socialist Christianity. Dr. West is, for those on the US left, almost a national treasure. However, many on the left, while appreciating West’s work and life-long commitment to working and oppressed people, have fallen for the Democratic Party propaganda that labels West a ‘spoiler’ candidate that will only lead to the election of Trump and the destruction of so-called American democracy. Since his announcement the reactions of the US left have been mixed. First, some criticized him for running with the small People’s Party, a break off party from the 2016 Bernie movement that had ballot access only in a couple of states and that was led by people whom the left considered reprehensible. Then West switched to the Green Party, an eco-socialist party that the anti-Peoples Party left was more satisfied with. After two months of dealing with Green Party politics, Dr. West has recently announced that he will be running, like RFK, as an independent. He made this choice because he preferred to engage directly with the people than to have to be mediated by the party politics of the Greens. Some on the left, however, have questioned the strategic value of this choice, since now he would have to achieve ballot access in all states – a process that is incredibly difficult as well as time and resource consuming. The Green Party at least already had ballot access in 17 states and had a whole team working on it for the other 33 states. Dr. West’s biggest challenge will not necessarily be his ideas or platform, but obtaining ballot access and building a movement for a radical transformative politics that lasts well beyond the 2024 election. While he has explicitly stated this as his aim, it seems very difficult to make this a reality without a party. The difficulties that the two-party duopoly has created for third party and independent candidates are formidable. Since each state has different parameters needed to meet ballot access, there is no copy-paste strategy that could be used, each state requires careful attention. This makes third party presidential runs extremely difficult. Additionally, most third parties do not have the experience, or access to, the resources that the uniparty has for campaigning. Since the campaign managers who do have this experience and technological expertise are blackballed from politics for working outside of the two parties, the current system has been incredibly effective in restricting third parties’ access to the technological tools of modern campaigns, putting them necessarily a few-steps behind the ruling parties. Perhaps West could break this spell by working with his new campaign manager Peter Daou, a former campaign staffer for the Democratic party who had a change of heart in 2020 and became a democratic socialist. However, most on the left have been more skeptical about Daou, considering his fierce establishment past, than those who have been cheerful about the campaigning experience he could bring to West’s run. (Note: since the presenting of this paper Daou is no longer West’s campaign manager). Finally, there is Claudia De La Cruz, running from the Marxist-Leninist Party for Socialism and Liberation. While policy-wise the platform would look great for anyone on the socialist left, the candidate and party do not (at least not yet) have the notoriety that makes Dr. West’s campaign hopeful for the radical left. The PSL has been able to double its votes in each of the last election cycles, which is a positive sign of growth. However, with Cornel being in the race outside of the duopoly, many are afraid that the campaign of West and Claudia will split the vote of the socialist left. Since they share, ideologically, a lot more points of commonality than those of difference, it would seem intuitive that some effort at uniting both campaigns in a unity ticket ought to be sought. However, considering West’s leave from the Greens and the reasons for it, and considering the PSL’s announcement well after Cornel had launched his campaign, it seems unlikely that this unity effort will flourish. All in all, if you were betting money on it today, you’d be a fool to not bet on Trump’s victory in 2024. Especially since, following the security state’s lawfare against Trump, he has a renewed source of appeal to show his anti-deep state credentials to his masses. Everything the democrats have done to attack Trump has actually emboldened him and his base. It has fed his fake anti-establishment rhetoric, giving apparent substance to his claim that he will drain the swamp and abolish the deep state. Regardless, whether it’s Trump’s irrational sophism or Biden’s decrepit sophism that wins, both are appropriate metaphorical embodiments of the state the US empire vacillates around. It is unlikely that any major transformational politics will arise out of the 2024 election. What is likely, however, is that it will serve as a moment, in a long spree of others, pointing the masses towards the necessity of a radical transformation in their mode of life. If they genuinely want an order of the people, by the people, for the people (as Lincoln would say), then the current form of life, destined to reproduce the social relations which keep the capitalist class dominant, will have to be overturned. Only socialism can actualize the democratic and egalitarian rational kernel of the progressive faction of the founders. Author: Carlos L. Garrido is a Cuban American philosophy instructor at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He is the director of the Midwestern Marx Institute and the author of The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism (2023), Marxism and the Dialectical Materialist Worldview (2022), and the forthcoming Hegel, Marxism, and Dialectics (2024). He has written for dozens of scholarly and popular publications around the world and runs various live-broadcast shows for the Midwestern Marx Institute YouTube. You can subscribe to his Philosophy in Crisis Substack HERE. Archives January 2024 |
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