A Middle East Peace That Could Happen (But Won’t)

In Washington-Speak, “Palestinian State” Means “Fried Chicken”

Noam Chomsky (Tom Dispatch)

The fact that the Israel-Palestine conflict grinds on without resolution might appear to be rather strange. For many of the world’s conflicts, it is difficult even to conjure up a feasible settlement. In this case, it is not only possible, but there is near universal agreement on its basic contours: a two-state settlement along the internationally recognized (pre-June 1967) borders — with “minor and mutual modifications,” to adopt official U.S. terminology before Washington departed from the international community in the mid-1970s.

The basic principles have been accepted by virtually the entire world, including the Arab states (who go on to call for full normalization of relations), the Organization of Islamic States (including Iran), and relevant non-state actors (including Hamas). A settlement along these lines was first proposed at the U.N. Security Council in January 1976 by the major Arab states. Israel refused to attend the session. The U.S. vetoed the resolution, and did so again in 1980. The record at the General Assembly since is similar. (...)

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Tags: #israel #palestine #palestinians #occupied_territories #gaza #west_bank #two_state_solution #illegal_settlements #settlements #jeruzalem #war #war_crimes #un #united_nations #un_resolutions #us #united_states

Bombing Muslims for Peace

Complete article

A few quotes:

(...) Right now, of course, the world is witnessing yet another U.S. bombing campaign, the latest in a series that seems all too predictable (and futile), meant to teach the restless rebels of Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and possibly even Iran a lesson when it comes to messing with the United States of America. (...)

Israel is systematically destroying Gaza, rendering it essentially uninhabitable for those Palestinians who survive the ongoing rampage. In fact, early in its war of annihilation, Israeli leaders cited the Allied destruction of the German city of Dresden in 1945 in support of their own atrocious air and ground campaign against the Palestinians.

Looking at this dispassionately as a military historian, the Dresden reference makes a certain twisted sense. In World War II, the Americans and their British allies in their “combined bomber offensive” destroyed German cities indiscriminately, seeing all Germans as essentially Nazis, complicit in the crimes of their government, and so legitimate targets. Something similar is true of the right-wing Israeli government today. It sees all Palestinians as essentially members of Hamas and thus complicit in last year’s brutal October 7th attacks on Israel, making them legitimate targets of war, Israeli- (and American-) style. Just like the United States, Israel claims to be “defending democracy” whatever it does. Little wonder, then, that Washington has been so willing to send bombs and bullets to its protégé as it seeks “peace” through massive firepower and genocidal destruction. (...)

Putting [the issue of genocide] aside, it’s undeniable that Israel has been using indiscriminate bombing attacks and a devastating invasion in a near-total war against Palestinians living on that 25-mile-long strip of land, an approach that calls to mind the harrowing catchphrase “Exterminate all the brutes!” from Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness. (...)

Try to imagine such events from the perspective of a historian writing in the year 2200. Might that future scribe not refer to repeated U.S. invasions of, incursions into, and bombing campaigns across the Middle East as a bloody crusade, launched under the (false) banner of democracy with righteous vengeance, if not godly purpose, in mind? Might that historian not suggest that such a “crusade” was ultimately more about power and profit, domination and control than (as advertised) “freedom”? And might that historian not be impressed (if not depressed) by the remarkable way the U.S. brought seemingly unending chaos and death to the region over such a broad span of time?

Consider these facts. More than 22 years after the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. still has at least 30,000 troops scattered across the Middle East. At least one Navy carrier strike group, and often two, dominate the regional waters, while striking numbers of military bases (“Little Americas”) are still sprinkled across countries ranging from Kuwait to Bahrain, from Qatar to the United Arab Emirates and beyond. So many years later, about 900 U.S. troops still illegally occupy part of Syria (not coincidentally, where that country produces most of its oil) and 2,500 more remain in Iraq, even though the government there would like them to depart. (...)

Complete article

Tags: #us #united_states #isael #gaza #palestine #palestinians #bombing #weapons #military-industrial-congressional_complex #pentagon #middle_east #kuwait #bahrein #qatar #uae #iran #united_arab_emirates #iraq #syria #houthi #yemen #saudi_arabia #crusade #war #dresden

Unilateral Sanity Could Save the World

Tom Dispatch

In my childhood, we at least acknowledged the ominous existence of nuclear weapons, no matter how weirdly. (...)

we children and our parents lived through that relatively hot period of the Cold War deeply aware that the world could indeed be blown out from under us at any moment. (...)

Today, the strange thing is that the world-ending weaponry of my childhood has only grown more horrific as global arsenals have continued to expand.

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The U.S. now has an estimated 5,200 sea, air, and land-based nuclear weapons that could obviously devastate several Earth-sized planets. And of course, there are now nine nuclear powers, not just the two of my early childhood. Worse yet, future nuclear arsenals, whether in the U.S., China, Russia, North Korea, or Israel, are only likely to grow ever larger and more ominous.

And yet today, perhaps because — miracle of all miracles — since August 9, 1945, no country has ever used such a weapon again, nukes are barely acknowledged in our daily lives or, for that matter, in our culture. (...)

Daniel Ellsberg, (...) who, in the midst of the Vietnam War, risked life in prison to leak the Pentagon Papers simply never stopped talking about subjects that should obsess us all. (...) he spent the rest of his life warning us about the nuclear danger we’re still facing. (...)

[F]or more than five decades, Ellsberg didn’t hesitate to publicly address what he really did know all too much about — the patterns of government secrecy and lies that sustained America’s wars in one country after another, along with the chronic deceptions and delusions at the core of the nuclear arms race. He had personally seen such patterns of deceit at work in the upper reaches of the warfare state. As he told me, “That there is deception — that the public is evidently misled by it early in the game… in a way that encourages them to accept a war and support a war — is the reality.”

And how difficult was it to deceive the public? “I would say, as a former insider, one becomes aware: it’s not difficult to deceive them. First of all, you’re often telling them what they would like to believe — that we’re better than other people, we are superior in our morality and our perceptions of the world.” (...)

In his 2017 book The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, he highlighted this all-too-apt epigraph from philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: “Madness in individuals is something rare. But in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule.” The ultimate madness of policies preparing for thermonuclear war preoccupied Dan throughout his adult life. (...)

[Ellsberg] was a realist about the probability that a nuclear war might indeed occur.

Such a probability now looms larger than at any other time since the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, but its most essential lessons seem to have been lost on President Biden and his administration. (...)

Meanwhile, in U.S. media and politics, such dangers rarely get a mention anymore. It’s as if not talking about the actual risks diminishes them, though the downplaying of such dangers can, in fact, have the effect of heightening them. (...)

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and powerless on the subject. The narratives — and silences — offered by government officials and most media are perennial invitations to just such feelings. Still, the desperately needed changes to roll back nuclear threats would require an onset of acute realism coupled with methodical activism. As James Baldwin wrote: “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Daniel Ellsberg was accustomed to people telling him how much he inspired them. But I sensed in his eyes and in his heart a persistent question: Inspired to do what?

Complete article

Daniel Ellsberg The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner Bloomsbury, 2017

Tags: #books #nuclear_weapons #war #nuclear_war #thermonuclear_war #atom_bomb #us #united_states #russia #ukraine #putin #doomsday_clock #ellsberg #daniel_ellsberg #pentagon_papers #cuba_crisis #truthtelling_project #whistleblower #icbm #propaganda

The Mass-Media Memory Hole – Blair, Ukraine and Libya

Media Lens

A key function of state-corporate media is to keep the public pacified, ignorant and ill-equipped to disrupt establishment power.

Knowledge that sheds light on how the world operates politically and economically is kept to a minimum by the ‘mainstream’ media. George Orwell’s famous ‘memory hole’ from ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ signifies the phenomenon brilliantly. Winston Smith’s work for the Ministry of Truth requires that he destroys documents that contradict state propaganda. (...)

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In today’s fictional ‘democracies’, the workings of propaganda are more subtle. Notably, there is a yawning chasm between the rhetoric of leaders’ professed concern for human rights, peace and democracy, and the realpolitik of empire, exploitation and control. (...)

If we broaden the scope to British military interventions around the world since 1945, there are as many as 83 examples. (...)

The criminal history of the US in terms of overthrowing foreign governments, or attempting to do so, was thoroughly documented by William Blum, author of ‘Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II’ and ‘Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower’. (...)

These multiple invasions, coups and wars are routinely sold to the public as ‘humanitarian interventions’ by Western leaders and their propaganda allies of the ‘mainstream’ media. (...)

Ukraine
The mass-media memory hole is proving invaluable in protecting the public from uncomfortable truths about Ukraine. Western leaders’ expression of concern for Ukraine is cover for their desire to see Russian leader Vladimir Putin removed from power and Russia ‘weakened’, as US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin admitted earlier this year. (...)

Australian political analyst Caitlin Johnstone noted recently that:

‘Arguably the single most egregious display of war propaganda in the 21st century occurred last year, when the entire western political/media class began uniformly bleating the word “unprovoked” in reference to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.’

Pointing out that the West ‘provoked’ Russia is not the same as saying that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was justified. In fact, we were clear in our first media alert following the invasion:

‘Russia’s attack is a textbook example of “the supreme crime”, the waging of a war of aggression.’ (...)

‘We know that western actions provoked the war in Ukraine because many western foreign policy experts spent years warning that western actions would provoke a war in Ukraine.’

But, ultimately, the US blocked the peace efforts. Sachs paraphrased Bennett’s explanation as to why:

‘They [the US] wanted to look tough to China. They were worried that this could look weak to China.’

Incredible! The US’s primary concern is to look strong to China, its chief rival in world affairs. This recalls the motivation behind the US dropping atomic bombs on Japan at the end of the Second World War as a show of might to the Soviet Union. (...)

Libya
The memory-hole phenomenon is a huge factor in media coverage of Libya which, as we wrote last week, has suffered terribly in recent flooding and the collapse of two dams. The city of Derna was washed into the sea after 40cm of rain fell in twenty-four hours, leaving 20,000 people dead.

But vital recent history has been almost wholly buried by state-corporate media. In 2011, NATO’s attack on Libya essentially destroyed the state and killed an estimated 40,000 people. The nation, once one of Africa’s most advanced countries for health care and education, became a failed state, with the collapse of essential services, the re-emergence of slave markets and raging civil war. (...)

More on this, and the propaganda blitz that enabled NATO’s attack on Libya, can be found in our 2016 media alert, ‘The Great Libya War Fraud’. (...)

Very little of the above vital history and context to the recent catastrophic flooding in Libya is included in current ‘mainstream’ news reporting. At best, there is token mention. At worst, there is deeply deceitful and cynical rewriting of history. (...)

Complete article

Tags: #media #news_media #bbc #propaganda #govrenment_propaganda #the_guardian #regime_change #red_line #nato #humanitarian_interventions #military_interventions #ukraine #libia #blair #starmer #us #united_states #iraq

How do people even come up with ideas like this?

Pepper spray for the school run? The weaponised SUV set to terrify America’s streets

The Guardian

The extreme features of the Rezvani Vengeance – including electrified door handles and blinding strobe lights – are wholly in tune with lethal trends in the US market. (...)

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Road warrior … the Rezvani Vengeance SUV. Photograph: Rezvani Motors.

[T]his souped-up SUV boasts bulletproof glass, blinding strobe lights, electrified doorhandles, and wing mirrors that can shoot pepper spray – handy for putting those pesky cyclists in their place.

“Vengeance is yours,” trumpets the website, which details how the car can release a dense smoke screen to confuse people following you, as well as detect electromagnetic pulses from nuclear weapons. Always handy for the supermarket run. (...)

Which brings us to the most frightening thing about this weaponised monster of an SUV: that it is aimed not at military personnel, but at everyday soccer moms. (...)

This steroidal tank might seem like an anomalous extreme, but the truth is it represents the broader rise of the average US consumer vehicle into a supercharged killing machine. With its added tactical weaponry and paranoid styling, at least the Vengeance is honest about it.

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, drivers behind the wheel of an SUV are two to three times more likely to kill a pedestrian in a collision than when driving a regular car. (...)

It comes down to simple physics: SUVs are more lethal due to their enormous weight, much taller front ends, and poorer visibility. While a regular car generally strikes a pedestrian’s legs, throwing them on to the bonnet, an SUV strikes their upper torso, or head, and then crushes them under the wheels.

Following the American love for supersizing everything, from Big Macs to McMansions, it is no surprise that the sale of ever bigger, ever heavier cars has mushroomed. Some reports show that 80% of all car sales in the US are now SUVs or pickup trucks. (...)

According to a Governors Highway Safety Association report, pedestrian fatalities have rocketed by 54% over the last decade. Cars might have grown safer for the people inside them, but not for walkers, cyclists or bikers. (...)

SUVs are killing us in another way too, as some of the world’s worst polluters. It was recently found that they are the second biggest cause of the global rise in carbon dioxide emissions over the past decade, eclipsing all shipping, aviation, heavy industry and even trucks. (...)

Complete article

Tags: #cars #car_industry #us #united_states #suv #compact_car #pollution #exhaust #road_safety #pedestrians #cyclists #road_deaths

Caitlin Johnstone: How The Guardian Can Help Assange

Counterpunch

The most effective way for the paper to help end the publisher’s persecution is to publicly acknowledge the many bogus stories they published about him and correct the record. (...)

This is after all the same Guardian that published the transparently ridiculous and completely invalidated 2018 report that former President Donald Trump’s lackey Paul Manafort had met secretly with Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy, not once but multiple times.

Not one shred of evidence has ever been produced to substantiate this claim despite the embassy being one of the most heavily surveilled buildings on the planet at the time. (...)

This is the same Guardian that ran an article in 2018 titled, “The only barrier to Julian Assange leaving Ecuador’s embassy is pride,” arguing that Assange looked ridiculous for continuing his political asylum in the embassy because “the WikiLeaks founder is unlikely to face prosecution in the US.” (...)

This is the same Guardian that published an article titled “Definition of paranoia: supporters of Julian Assange,” arguing that Assange defenders are crazy conspiracy theorists for believing the U.S. would try to extradite Assange because, “Britain has a notoriously lax extradition treaty with the United States … why would they bother to imprison him when he is making such a good job of discrediting himself?” The paper added: “there is no extradition request.” (...)

The same Guardian that has flushed standard journalistic protocol down the toilet by reporting on Assange’s “ties to the Kremlin” (not a thing) without even bothering to use the word “alleged” on more than one occasion. (...)

As we’ve discussed previously, the narrative that Assange recklessly published unredacted documents in 2011 is another smear.

The unredacted files were actually published elsewhere as the result of a real password being recklessly published in a book by Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding (the same Luke Harding who co-authored the bogus Manafort-Assange story). (...)

Complete article

> See also: Don’t Extradite Assange (Media Lens)

The Guardian building in London, 2012. (Bryantbob, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Tags: #assange #julian_assange #wikileaks #journalism #journalist #news #guardian #the_guardian #smear_campaign #manning #news #extradition #us #united_states #julianassange #uk #propaganda #truth #justice #freeassange #weareallassange #censorship #chelsea_manning #press #freedom_of_the_press #bbc #dissidents #witch_hunt #JournalistsSpeakUpForAssange #Nils_Melzer #Melzer #whistle_blower #corporate_media #mainstream_media #double_down_news

‘It felt like history itself’ – 48 protest photographs that changed the world

The Guardian

Protest can change everything. Which is why governments around the world want to suppress it. In a week when thousands in the US expressed their fury over Roe v Wade, we look back at some of the images that helped rewrite laws and change the way we think.

Governments tend to define democracy as narrowly as possible. The story they tell goes as follows: you vote; the majority party takes office; you leave it to govern on your behalf for the next four or five years. (...)

We have seen what happens if we leave politics to governments. Fairly elected or not, they will, without effective public pressure, abuse their power. (...)

Trust in governments destroys democracy, which survives only through constant challenge. It requires endless disruption of the cosy relationship between our representatives and powerful forces: the billionaire press, plutocrats, political donors, friends in high places. What challenge and disruption mean, above all, is protest. (...)

A government that cannot tolerate protest is a government that cannot tolerate democracy.

Such governments are becoming a global norm. In the UK, two policing bills in quick succession seek to shut down all effective forms of protest. (...)

In the US, state legislatures have been undermining the federal right to protest, empowering the police to use catch-all offences such as “trespass” or “disrupting the peace” to break up demonstrations and make arrests. (...) In Russia, a new law against “discrediting the armed forces” has been used to prosecute dissenters engaging in actions as mild as writing “no to war” in the snow. Similar draconian laws are being imposed by governments in many other nations.

Why do governments want to ban protest? Because it’s effective. Why do they want us to accept their narrow vision of democracy? Because it makes our power ineffective. (...)

The extraordinary people in these images understand this – from suffragettes picketing the White House in 1917 to Patsy Stevenson being manhandled by police at last year’s Sarah Everard vigil; from relatives of those killed at Amritsar in India in 1919 to those taking to the streets after George Floyd’s murder in the US.

Almost everything of importance is disintegrating fast: ecosystems, the health system, standards in public life, equality, human rights, terms of employment. (...) Business as usual is a threat to life on Earth. Disrupting it is the greatest civic duty of all. (...)

Complete article with photos

Tags: #protest #pictures #photographs #china #tiananmen #tank_man #abortion #abortion_rights #ireland #democracy #freedom_of_speech #strike_action #great_britain #police #policing_bill #us #united_states #right_to_protest #russia #george_floyd #sarah_everard #pussy_riot #india #amritsar #amritsar_massacre #civil_rights_movement #alabama #racism #discrimination #birmingham #martin_luther_king #mlk #gezi_park #turkey #barbara_kruger #poland #rosa_parks #Thich_Quang_Duc #vietnam #israel #gaza #occupied_territories #palestine #palestinians #Emma_Sulkowicz #rape_culture #march_on_washington #egypt #tahrir_square #mexico #may_day #black_power #olympic_games #march_on_montgomery #handmaids #euromaidan #kyiv #kiev #ukraine #stonewall #gay_rights #standing_rock #dakota_access_pipeline #native_americans #indigenous_people #thailand #rubber_duck_protest #japan #tokyo #vietnam_war_protest #vietnam_war #narita_airport #war_protest #south_africa #soweto #soweto_young_lions #apartheid #earth_day #czechoslovakia #prague #russian_tanks #Dubček #pakistan #Notabugsplat #sweden #Växjö #neo-nazi #neo_nazis #ocasio-cortez #tax_the_rich #colombia #bogota #LGBTQI+ #woolworth #whites_only #germany #hitler #holocaust #posner #lviv #prams #Jan_Rose_Kasmir #south_korea #hong_kong #umbrella_movement #sudan #Alaa_Salah #jamaica #royalty #republican_protest #Greta_Thunberg #climate_strike #sufragettes #Arlen_Siu #Sandinistas #nicaragua #black_muslims #police_violence