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TODAY. The monstrous lie – that Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians is OK

With its usual snivelling sycophancy, my own country, Australia, and other Western countries go along with this basic lie – and all the other lies that accompany it. Below are just a few of these lies that spring to mind.

*As someone else , (Hamas) committed an atrocity – that makes it OK for us (Israel) to commit an even bigger atrocity.

* “ I have confirmed pictures of (Hamas) terrorists beheading children,” Biden said. (yes – he later went back on that but the damage was done)

* Israel’s massacre of Palestinians is necessary for the security of the United States of America. (Are we supposed to believe that tiny impoverished and oppressed Gaza is a military threat to America?)

* Seeing that Israel’s atrocity (sorry I mean ‘defense‘) is justified, then it’s OK for Israel to use illegal weapons – white phosphorous, and illegal methods – starvation, against the Palestinian people.

* Israel is killing only Hamas members – “human animals” (most adults in Gaza must join Hamas, if only to get a good job, – and what about the children?)

* It’s OK for Israel to have nuclear weapons, and even threaten to nuke Gaza, as long as we pretend that we don’t know .

* Seeing that the Jews were victims of the holocaust, we should let Israel itself do a holocaust

* Those who criticise Israel are just being anti-semitic.

* Those who protest against the genocide in Palestine are terrorist supporters and must be arrested

* Supplying weapons to Israel (and Ukraine, and Taiwan) has nothing to do with promoting USA’s one most prosperous and successful manufacturing industry business – weapons making

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The beauty of lies and dishonest propaganda is that you can go back later, and unsay them, and beat your breast in hypocritical sadness, – once your awful purpose is happening, and can’t be stopped

President Joe Biden on Friday acknowledged the “humanitarian crisis in Gaza”

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Then there are the lies of omission:

With the death toll mounting in Gaza as Israeli jets relentlessly bomb the densely populated territory, Biden did not mention Palestinian casualties. Instead, he focused on Israeli victims of Hamas’s attack. Biden also did not address the root causes of the conflict.

“Let there be no doubt: The United States has Israel’s back. — today, tomorrow, as we always have. It’s as simple as that,” he added. #Israel #nuclear #antinuclear #NuclearFree #NoNukes #NuclearPlants

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Christina's notes, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

US weapons costs way beyond $886billion: call for nuclear weapons spending blowout -USA congressional commission.

The commission notes in its report that while it “did not conduct a cost analysis of our recommendations, it is obvious they will cost money.”

A July Congressional Budget Office report projects that nuclear modernization efforts will cost $756 billion over the next decade, and that excludes costs for the additional nuclear initiatives the commission would like the U.S. to pursue.

Congressional commission calls for more nuclear arsenal expansion

Defense News, By Bryant Harris, Oct 13, 2023

WASHINGTON ― A congressionally mandated commission on Thursday released its final report on the U.S. nuclear posture, recommending an increase in additional assets as China rapidly expands its own arsenal.

At the same time, the commission found the Pentagon and Energy Department are lagging behind their modernization goals, raising questions about the ability to develop additional nuclear assets.

Republicans seized on the report to call for more aggressive nuclear modernization, including additional investments in an industrial base that’s struggling to keep pace with the tight timelines needed to implement current strategic objectives………………………

Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee reiterated his calls for a defense supplemental spending package to bypass the $886 billion security funding caps laid out in the May debt ceiling agreement while growing the military budget annually beyond inflation……………………………………….

The commission notes in its report that while it “did not conduct a cost analysis of our recommendations, it is obvious they will cost money.”

A July Congressional Budget Office report projects that nuclear modernization efforts will cost $756 billion over the next decade, and that excludes costs for the additional nuclear initiatives the commission would like the U.S. to pursue.

Specifically, the commission calls for “additional U.S. theater nuclear capabilities” in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, modernizing nuclear command and control capabilities and effectively employing emerging technology including hypersonics, quantum computing, generative AI and autonomous vehicles.

It also calls for plans to “re-convert” submarine-launched ballistic missile launchers and B-52 bombers that were rendered unable to deliver nuclear payloads under the New START treaty. Russia suspended its participation in that treaty, its last remaining nuclear arms control accord with Washington, last year. Moscow has also threatened to pull out of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, though it says it will only resume testing if the U.S. does. The U.S. Senate has never ratified the test ban treaty.

Additionally, the commission calls for uploading “some or all of the” unemployed warheads in U.S. inventory, deploying additional Sentinel Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles and long-range standoff weapons, increasing the planned number of B-21 bombers and upping the planned production of the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines………………………………………….

the commission says the Defense Department should “establish or renovate a third shipyard dedicated to production of nuclear-powered vessels, with particular emphasis on nuclear-powered submarines.”

Wicker has held up key authorizations needed to implement AUKUS, demanding the Biden administration and Congress put more money into the submarine industrial base. The two authorizations Wicker is holding up would permit the transfer of two Virginia-class submarines to Australia and allow the Defense Department to accept Canberra’s $3 billion contribution in the submarine industrial base.  https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2023/10/12/congressional-commission-calls-for-more-nuclear-arsenal-expansion/ #nuclear #antinuclear #NuclearFree #NoNukes #NuclearPlants

October 14, 2023 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US bails on Ukraine…but doesn’t tell Zelensky.

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 13 Oct 23

In an astonishing statement at a press briefing Wednesday, National Security Department spokesperson John Kirby admitted the US is running out of interest in weaponizing Ukraine for the long term. Since Ukraine is on US life support to continue fighting their lost cause to recapture Crimea, Donbas and join NATO, it’s clear ‘game over’ for Ukraine looms.

“I think in the immediate term, right now, we can continue to support Ukraine – with the authorities in the appropriations we have. But, you know, we’re … certainly running out of runway.”

Kirby then shifted from the runway metaphor to one even starker. “The US administration had the means to support Ukraine in the near term. But you don’t want to be trying to bake in long-term support when you’re at the end of the rope,” And on the Ukraine funding, we’re coming near to the end of the rope.  I mean, today we announced $200 million, and we’ll keep that aid going as long as we can, but it’s not going to be indefinite”

Is Ukraine President Zelensky listening to Kirby’s ominous warning? If he had an iota of understanding of Ukraine’s rapidly deteriorating plight, he’d immediately partner with responsible countries such as Turkey to initiate negotiations with Russia to end the war. He did that 18 months ago, Marcy 31-April 1, 2022, inking a tentative deal with Russia to end the war without losing any territory in Donbas, albeit giving Donbas regional autonomy under Ukraine sovereignty. The agreement would also have ended Ukraine’s self-destructive NATO aspirations.

To sum up: The US provoked the war by championing Ukraine NATO membership and weaponizing their civil war that killed thousands in Donbas. When Russia invaded to prevent both, the US sabotaged every effort to end the war quickly and peaceably, prolonging it with $113 billion in weapons and other aid.   Result? Hundreds of thousands of dead Ukrainians with no chance of victory.

It’s not just the US that is “certainly running out of runway” and “coming near to the end of the rope.” The US is moving on to enabling and supplying the ongoing destruction of Gaza. No more runway and no more rope are much more appropriate to the former comedian staring in ‘Tragedy in Ukraine.’ #Ukraine #nuclear #antinuclear #NuclearFree #NoNukes #NuclearPlants

October 14, 2023 Posted by | politics international, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

Israel Is Using Starvation as a Weapon of War Against the Palestinian People

Jewish Voice for Peace demanded “that the U.S. government immediately take steps to withdraw military funding to Israel and to hold the Israeli government accountable for its gross violations of human rights and war crimes against Palestinians.”

13 Oct 23

A full-scale ground offensive on Gaza is imminent, even as Palestinians are already suffering collective punishment.

By Marjorie Cohn / Truthout

After Hamas launched more than 2,000 missiles from Gaza and sent hundreds of fighters into Israel on October 7, killing hundreds of civilians, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared war on Hamas. But Israel’s retaliation, including massive bombing from the land, air and sea, and its collective punishment of Gazans — denying them food, water, electricity and gas — reveals that Netanyahu has actually declared war on the Palestinian people, especially those in Gaza.

Israeli warplanes are conducting indiscriminate bombings throughout Gaza, targeting homes, schools, hospitals, mosques and civilian buildings. As of October 10, Israel had reportedly used 1,000 tons of explosives and targeted 500 locations, primarily in civilian residential areas.

“The quantity of injured people arriving to our hospitals is huge and will mean we will not be able to accept more patients in Gaza,” Ashraf Al-Qidra, spokesperson for the Gaza Ministry of Health, told PBS. “I send water to those who have had their houses demolished. All those who have been displaced don’t have anything. All they have is suffering, fear and horror,” Ahmed Youssef Mekhimar, a resident of Gaza, said. Shames Ouda told PBS, “This power station served all Gaza Strip, and now is turned off, Gaza without fuel, without electricity, without Internet, without food. Gaza dying. The people will pay the price of this war.”

A full-scale Israeli ground offensive on Gaza is reportedly imminent, with 360,000 Israeli Occupying Force reserve troops poised to invade. In 2014, Israeli forces bombed and invaded Gaza, killing 2,251 Palestinians, most of them civilians, in “Operation Protective Edge.”

Netanyahu warned Gazans to “leave now” as Israeli forces would “act with all force.” But the people in Gaza cannot leave. Except for one border crossing with Egypt, Israel controls all ingress and egress into the Gaza Strip. As of October 11, Israel has bombed the Egyptian border crossing twice, and Egypt has refused to allow refugees through.

More than 1,200 Israelis and 1,354 Palestinians have been reported killed and thousands wounded on both sides. Israel said that additionally 1,500 bodies of Hamas members have been found inside Israel.

In the face of the tragic deaths of Palestinian and Israeli civilians, President Joe Biden issued a statement saying the United States “unequivocally condemns this appalling assault against Israel by Hamas terrorists from Gaza,” and pledged “all appropriate means of support” to Netanyahu. He did not decry the loss of Palestinian lives.

Biden called Hamas’s attack “pure, unadulterated evil” in an October 10 news conference. But he refused to urge Israel to exercise restraint in its retaliation against the Palestinians.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a statement that U.S. Navy vessels, including an aircraft carrier and a guided missile cruiser, had been sent to the Eastern Mediterranean……………………………………….

under international law, Israel, an occupying force, does not have the right to use military force in self-defense against people under its occupation.

Targeting civilians and civilian objects constitute war crimes under the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, whether committed by Israel or by the Palestinians. The presence of noncivilians within civilian populations does not deprive the population of its civilian character under Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Convention………………..

Even if some of the actions taken by the Palestinians in their resistance are illegal under international humanitarian law, there is no legal justification for Israel to claim it is acting in self-defense under the UN Charter.

Collective Punishment and Using Starvation as a Weapon Are War Crimes

Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Often called the largest open-air prison on Earth, the Gaza Strip is home to more than 2 million Palestinians in this 365-square-kilometer area. Israel controls Gaza’s land, air and maritime borders.

Israel’s Minister for the Advancement of the Status of Women May Golan said at a meeting of the Israeli government, “All of Gaza’s infrastructures must be destroyed to its foundation and their electricity cut off immediately. The war is not against Hamas but against the state of Gaza.”

Israel has imposed a “complete siege” on the Gaza Strip. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared, “No electricity, no food, no water, no gas — it’s all closed,” adding that “we are fighting animals and are acting accordingly.”

Using starvation as a weapon of war constitutes a war crime under Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Convention. Gallant’s order is a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute. It is also a call for genocide, prohibited by the Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute, since many Gazans will die as a result of the siege.

The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the punishment of people in an occupied territory for offenses they didn’t personally commit. Israel’s reprisals against civilians for actions they did not take constitutes collective punishment, which amounts to a war crime.

Earlier this year, the International People’s Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism, for which I served as a juror, examined 15 countries in the Global South to assess the impact of economic coercive measures on the lives of their people. In May, we heard testimony from witnesses in Gaza as Israeli bombs were dropping on their neighborhoods. The tribunal concluded that Israel’s siege in the Gaza Strip is a form of warfare used as “an integral tool of imperialist aggression designed to facilitate the theft of global south wealth and uphold racial hierarchy.” The siege on Gaza is “just as deadly” as other forms of warfare, the tribunal found.

Root Cause of Hamas Attack Was “Cruelty of a Half-Century of Abusive Occupation”

“Although the Hamas attack included war crimes against innocent civilians, its root cause was the cruelty of a half-century of abusive occupation by Israel that violated the most basic human rights of the Palestinian people, and relied on apartheid practices of governance, according to reports by the leading human rights organizations in the U.S. and Israel,” Richard Falk, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied Since 1967, told Truthout.

Falk attributes the timing of Hamas’s attack to “the extremism of the Netanyahu coalition government” that “provoked resistance by its complicity with settler violence and violations of the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound, and by erasing Palestine from its official maps of the Middle East and negotiating a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia.” Falk called the Hamas attack “a shrill reminder to Israel and the world that ‘we Palestinians are still here and will not be erased and forgotten.’”

In an October 8 statement, Palestinian human rights organizations cited “compelling evidence” that the Israeli authorities had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity against Gaza’s civilian population, including illegal indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks. They urged the international community, including the UN Security Council, to take immediate action to stop Israel’s revenge and reprisal against Gazan civilians, including the imposition of sanctions and an arms embargo on Israel. They also called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to expedite its pending investigation into the situation in Palestine as promised in December 2022. The ICC launched an investigation in 2021 of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by both Israel and the Palestinians, but the probe has stalled due to pressure from the U.S. government.

The Security Council, which has an obligation under the UN Charter to restore international peace and security, has done nothing to stop the carnage because its permanent members cannot agree on a course of action. While the U.S. demanded a blanket condemnation of Hamas’s actions, Russia and China refused to agree to the unilateral denunciation of Hamas; they favored calling for an immediate ceasefire and the beginning of a peace process that has been frozen for years.

“The bloodshed of today and the past 75 years traces back directly to U.S. complicity in the oppression and horror caused by Israel’s military occupation,” Jewish Voice for Peace said in an October 7 statement titled “The Root of Violence is Oppression.” Jewish Voice for Peace blamed the U.S. government which “consistently enables Israeli violence and bears blame for this moment. The unchecked military funding, diplomatic cover, and billions of dollars of private money flowing from the U.S. enables and empowers Israel’s apartheid regime.” Moreover, Jewish Voice for Peace noted, “Those who continue calling for ‘ironclad’ U.S. support for the Israeli military are only paving the path to more violence.”

Jewish Voice for Peace demanded “that the U.S. government immediately take steps to withdraw military funding to Israel and to hold the Israeli government accountable for its gross violations of human rights and war crimes against Palestinians.”

U.S. congressmembers Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) and Cori Bush (D-Missouri) have called for an end to the U.S. government’s unconditional financial support of Israel’s military occupation and apartheid government. The United States has been providing Israel with $3.8 billion a year in military assistance.

While Western countries and their media decry the loss of Israeli lives, they don’t express similar outrage at the deaths of Palestinians. This hypocrisy is racist and ignores the context of decades of settler colonialism and Israeli apartheid.

We must pressure the U.S. government to call for an immediate ceasefire and stop sending weapons to Israel. “There is no military solution here,” Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, told my cohost Heidi Boghosian and me on Law and Disorder radio.

The consequences of allowing Israel to continue and escalate its aggression against the Palestinian people are unimaginable.  https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/13/israel-is-using-starvation-as-a-weapon-of-war-against-the-palestinian-people/

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The US Is Just As Culpable As Israel For The Atrocities Committed In Gaza

The primary job of Israel apologists in the coming days will be producing and circulating narratives explaining why this self-evidently terrible thing is actually perfectly fine and acceptable.

And top-down commands are being issued within the US government to support this massacre unconditionally. 

So be perfectly clear, the US government is fully behind this massacre, and is just as culpable for everything that happens in Gaza as the Israeli government.

These abuses are being perpetrated using US weapons, US funding and US consent.

Washington could end this mass atrocity with a word, and instead they’re fully aligning themselves behind it. Israel’s crimes in Gaza are not meaningfully separate from the crimes of the US war machine.

Caitlin’s newsletter CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, , OCT 14, 2023

The Israeli government dropped thousands of leaflets on Gaza telling everyone who lives in the northern part of the strip that they have 24 hours to evacuate to the southern part, and then bombed the people who were trying to evacuate.

United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric denounced the evacuation order, saying the UN “considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences.” Many Palestinians have said they’re going to stay where they are because they have nowhere safe to go, despite being told by Israel they must leave if they want to “save their lives”.

We’re about to see the death and destruction get much, much worse in Gaza, and it’s already very, very bad. As of this writing the official death toll from Israeli airstrikes in Gaza is speeding past 1,900, a number which includes 614 children. The primary job of Israel apologists in the coming days will be producing and circulating narratives explaining why this self-evidently terrible thing is actually perfectly fine and acceptable.

It’s so incredibly obvious what we’re looking at here. The only thing putting a wobble on people’s perception is the immense amount of propaganda distortion the media is churning out on this issue, plus the fact that the demographics look a bit different from what history has conditioned people to watch out for. If there were two million Jewish people trapped by Christians in a giant concentration camp and placed under total siege, being told that half of them had 24 hours to relocate into the other half or be killed, nobody would have any confusion about what they were witnessing.

And top-down commands are being issued within the US government to support this massacre unconditionally. 

The Huffington Post reports that the State Department has been circulating internal emails telling staff to avoid calls for peace, instructing them to refrain from using phrases like “de-escalation/ceasefire,” “end to violence/bloodshed” and “restoring calm.”

Asked about progressive congressional members calling for a ceasefire, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “we believe they are wrong, we believe they’re repugnant, and we believe they’re disgraceful.”

On the question of whether there are any potential Israeli actions that the White House would not tolerate, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters “I’m not here to draw red lines or issue warnings or give lectures to anybody.”

So be perfectly clear, the US government is fully behind this massacre, and is just as culpable for everything that happens in Gaza as the Israeli government. These abuses are being perpetrated using US weapons, US funding and US consent. Washington could end this mass atrocity with a word, and instead they’re fully aligning themselves behind it. Israel’s crimes in Gaza are not meaningfully separate from the crimes of the US war machine.

This is just a continuation and extension of the violence and bloodshed the US government has been inflicting around the world for generations. There’s a clip of George W Bush going around from a California event on Tuesday in which, for some bizarre, unfathomable reason, the former president was asked to provide his opinion on what Israel should do in response to the Hamas attack on October 7.

Bush said pretty much what you’d expect him to say: “You’re dealing with cold-blooded killers,” “negotiating with killers is not an option,” “one side is guilty.” The same book he’s been reciting from since September 11, 2001. What I find much more interesting is, why is anyone asking the absolute worst person you could possibly ask about what should be done in response to such an attack………………………………..

 the United States never learned any moral lessons from its warmongering after 9/11 — if it had, George W Bush would be sitting in a prison cell, and the US wouldn’t be backing a mass atrocity in Gaza………. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-us-is-just-as-culpable-as-israel?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=137943417&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email #Israel

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Israel, politics, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

How To Explain U.S. Empire’s Support For Israel Right Or Wrong?

Finally, this list would be incomplete without mentioning narrative control. In our day this looks like inflammatory claims of beheading babies both quickly debunked and repeated endlessly even after debunking. After President Biden claimed to have seen the pictures (his staff says no, he didn’t see any such pictures). Similar playbook to the false claim that Iraq’s army threw babies out of incubators in Kuwait. Also, calling it Israel’s 9/11 sure sounds useful for tightening up internal security.

LISA SAVAGE, OCT 13, 2023

This morning came word that the Biden administration will next try to tie funding for Ukraine to funding for Israel, Taiwan, and more fortifications along our bipartisan wall on the Mexican border. Good luck with that grouping — Ukraine funding fatigue is so strong at the moment that it was used to oust the Speaker of the House.

I had already been mulling a blog post on the question of why every politician, elected official, and talking head in Western media seems wedded to the concept of Israel right or wrong. Especially when it’s wrong……………………..

The answers to this question are many, and what relative importance to assign each is up for debate. I’ll list them in rough order of importance as I see it, but you may have other thoughts.


Israel was created as the U.S./NATO outpost in the oily region. Despite certain knowledge of the Holocaust unfolding (known by U.S. government but not the general public), it was allowed to proceed until the Soviet Army began liberating the concentration camps. The Holocaust was then tremendously useful as it underpinned the charge of antisemitism against anyone who dared to criticize Israel.

Meanwhile, actual Nazis were whisked away to found NASA, head up NATO, and populate Canada and the U.S. midwest with staunch anticommunist immigrants.

Israel was allowed to develop nuclear weapons, which is common knowledge but has never been admitted by either Israel or its enablers. PM Golda Meir reportedly jacked up President Nixon over sending war materiel he was withholding, threatening to nuke Russia and make it look like the U.S. did it. She got the ammunition.

Meanwhile AIPAC got busy facilitating the funding of election campaigns and running free trips to Israel for newly minted congressmen and women. It lobbied hard on college campuses knowing that one’s brand loyalties are typically set in place rather early in life. 

A young man told me that the Jewish community he grew up in did not agree with AIPAC, however, they felt guilty for emigrating to New York instead of Israel after WW2. And, their guilt encouraged them to never criticize Israel, buying their silence about the ethnic cleansing of the Nakba and the following decades of violent occupation and apartheid. And allowing the perception that AIPAC spoke for them.

  • Young Jews in the U.S. were raised to defend Israel right or wrong. Groups like Birthright also worked the demographic angle, taking teenagers on trips to Israel to socialize with IDF soldiers.  See the recent documentary ISRAELISM for more details on this.


We’ve not seen the black book of Jeffrey Epstein’s contacts which was used in his procuress Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial. As many have speculated, the federal government isn’t going to release the names in Epstein’s black book because they are the names in the book. What we have instead is some fierce investigative reporting by Whitney Webb and the artifact that is the flight log for the Lolita Express. Flying outside the U.S. on a plane used to traffic underage girls for sex is bad for a powerful man’s reputation, so why would Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Bill Gates (among many others) do so? I can’t answer that but Melinda Gates had some choice things to say about her ex-husband’s participation.

Webb reported that a mansion in Manhattan heavily equipped with surveillance devices was gifted to Epstein before the island scheme came into play. It’s also known that Maxwell’s father, Robert, and other family members worked with Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency.

  • Finally, this list would be incomplete without mentioning narrative control. In our day this looks like inflammatory claims of beheading babies both quickly debunked and repeated endlessly even after debunking. After President Biden claimed to have seen the pictures (his staff says no, he didn’t see any such pictures). Similar playbook to the false claim that Iraq’s army threw babies out of incubators in Kuwait. Also, calling it Israel’s 9/11 sure sounds useful for tightening up internal security. #Israel

October 14, 2023 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

NATO will hold a major nuclear exercise next week as Russia plans to pull out of a test ban treaty

On Tuesday, a top Russian diplomat said that Moscow would pull out of the treaty to put itself on par with the United States but would only resume nuclear tests if Washington does it first.

BY LORNE COOK, October 13, 2023

BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO will hold a major nuclear exercise next week, the alliance’s chief said Thursday, an announcement that came after Russia warned it would pull out of a global nuclear test ban agreement.

NATO’s “Steadfast Noon” exercise is held annually and runs for about a week. It involves fighter jets capable of carrying nuclear warheads but does not involve any live bombs. Conventional jets and surveillance and refueling aircraft also routinely take part…………………………………….

The exercise is scheduled to run from Monday until Oct. 26. It will involve 13 NATO allies and a mix of aircraft types, including advanced fighter jets and U.S. B-52 bombers that will fly in from the United States. The bulk of the training is held at least 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from Russia’s borders…………

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, adopted in 1996 and known as the CTBT, bans all nuclear explosions anywhere in the world, although it has never fully entered into force. It was signed by both the Russian and U.S. presidents but was never ratified by the United States.

On Tuesday, a top Russian diplomat said that Moscow would pull out of the treaty to put itself on par with the United States but would only resume nuclear tests if Washington does it first…………………………………………

NATO does not possess atomic weapons; as an organization, it owns no weapons of any kind, only its individual members do. Three allied nations — the United States, the United Kingdom and France — are nuclear powers.  https://apnews.com/article/nato-russia-nuclear-treaty-ban-test-a6dc00cf5b634b6c71d24e8da265d6c6 #nuclear #antinuclear #NuclearFree #NoNukes #NuclearPlants

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Flashback: Israel’s 2009 firing of white phosphorous mutilated & murdered Palestinian civilians

Signs of the Times, (SOTT) Eva Bartlett, In Gaza, Sat, 17 Jan 2009 

It’s daily hard to believe it can get worse, but daily it does.

Last week, I saw what seemed to be the white phosphorus clouds doctors have written about, condemned. From a tall Gaza city building, the panoramic view showed a spreading stream of poison, on eastern Gaza.

The chemical burns deeply, to the bone, experts say. It is considered illegal warfare, not to be used in civilian areas. Yet the accounts grow of its use: heavy use in the Khosar region, east of Khan Younis, and in the northwest of Gaza, and in eastern Jabaliya, Sheik Zayid, Sheik Rajleen, Zaitoun… Everywhere. The UN headquarters housing hundreds of fleeing Palestinians which was bombed on January 15 was hit with white phosphorus.

“Five days ago, in Jabaliya, I saw an abnormal material: white dust, spread out in spinning circles which spread the dust further. From inside there was something falling down which looked like snow. It covered a large area, over many houses,” Maher el Madhouan, head of Physiotherapy department in Sheik Radwan had told me last week.

Dr. Nafez Abu Shabaan, Head of the Burn Department, told me they’ve received some burn cases unlike anything they’ve seen. “We’re not familiar with phosphorous burns, but some patients have very deep burns, very strange burns.” He cites the case of a patient sent for a brain scan who three hours later, still alive, “came back smoking”.

In one room, Ghada, 20, lies staring blankly, half of her pretty face and soft skin mottled with burns and blisters. Her right hand is bandaged, so the extent of the burn has to be judged by her unbandaged left hand, which has burn gashes and bloated fingers. A medical report charts her burns: right side of face and head; right arm, hand, side, abdomen, leg, and foot. Apparently the incendiary chemical struck from her right. 43% of her total body surface is covered by these deep burns. She comes from Siatta, north of the northwestern area Attatra, where a tank invasion now rages, well into its first week. [UPDATE: Ghada later died of her extensive burn injuries]………………………………………… more https://www.sott.net/article/485107-Israels-firing-of-white-phosphorous-mutilated-murdered-Palestinian-civilians #Israel

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Fascism in the West to Enable Genocide in Palestine 

Craig Murray,    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2023/10/fascism-in-the-west-to-enable-genocide-in-palestine/

The UK and the US are both sending military assistance to Israel to commit a calculated and deliberate act of genocide, which is already underway.

Over 500 children have been killed in Gaza in the last week and over 2,000 maimed, many with life changing injuries. Nobody can claim they do not know what is already happening or what is about to unfold. The cutting off of food and water to Gaza is a major international crime, which the western proponents of the “rules based order” universally refuse to condemn.

In both the UK and the US there can be no more stark illustration of the lack of any kind of meaningful democracy, than the fact that there is no major political party that opposes the genocide – despite massive public opposition.

The bought and paid for media and political class in the west are extremely nervous, throughout the western world. Now they have come to the final genocide for which zionism has always aimed, they face a good deal of popular resistance.

Throughout Europe there is a massive gap between the zionist unanimity of the politicians and the much greater understanding of the Palestinian situation among the general public. Tellingly the response by the zionist political class has been a wave of outright fascist suppression.

In France, Macron has made all pro-Palestinian demonstrations illegal, but as so often the French people are not standing for that kind of authoritarianism.

In the UK, the police have adopted the cowardly tactic of arresting a couple of individuals, one in Brighton and one in Manchester, for pro-Palestinian demonstration. Under Tony Blair’s notorious draconian “anti-terror” legislation, they could face up to 14 years in prison.

The young man in Manchester was arrested on the precise site of the famous “Peterloo massacre”, which generations of British people were taught at school was a terrible crime in breach of the rights to freedom of speech and assembly. Let the irony of that set in.

You can go out in the streets of the UK with an Israeli flag and yell that you want every Palestinian to be cleansed from Gaza. That is not illegal. If you say the Palestinians have a right to resist their genocide, that is illegal.

That appears to be a genuine analysis of the law in the UK, France and many other western countries.

That is intended to terrify all of us. It will not work.

The European Commission has been ferociously zionist and gung-ho for this Palestinian genocide. It displayed the Israeli flag on its Berlaymont headquarters. It has taken a side in the most ferocious way.

It is therefore deeply sinister that the European Commission is actively working to shut down pro-Palestinian information and comment on social media. The European Commission has written to all major social media organisations and is able to threaten them with massive fines if they do not remove information of which the European Union disapproves.

The notion is plainly nonsense that through the fog of war the European Commission – which is 100% parti pris – is qualified to say what information is true and what information is false, and what comment is legitimate.

Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner in charge of this operation, is a former chief executive of electronic companies – and defence contractors – Atos and Thomson. He has no genuine interest in freedom of speech, and is engaged in a process of silencing dissent for military aims, which is quite simply fascist.

We are witnessing almost all western governments deliberately facilitating massacre, ethnic cleansing and genocide. We are witnessing almost all western governments turning on their own people to crush dissent at that complicity in genocide.

This feels not so much like the week that western democracy died, as the week it was impossible any longer to deny that western democracy died some time ago. #Israel

October 14, 2023 Posted by | politics international, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

  Israeli minister says no water or power for Gaza residents (How to put out the fires?)

SOTT 13 Oct 23

Fuel will also be cut off until hostages are released, Energy Minister Israel Katz has warned

Israel’s siege of Gaza will not be lifted unless Hamas releases all the hostages it has captured, Energy Minister Israel Katz announced on Thursday. His statement came after Israeli authorities cut off water, fuel and electricity to the Palestinian enclave following a surprise attack by Hamas militants on Saturday.

“Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be turned on, no water pump will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home,” Katz wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The blockade of Gaza was initially announced by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday, who said he had ordered a “complete siege of the Gaza Strip” and that there will be “no electricity, no food, no fuel and no water.”

“We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” Gallant said.

Meanwhile, both the EU and the UN have raised concerns over Israel’s actions in Gaza, with EU foreign policy commissioner Josep Borrell stating on Tuesday that depriving the civilian population of Gaza of food, water and electricity was not in line with international law………………………..

Comment: So, no way to put out fires caused by IDF carpet bombing. No way to clean wounds at a hospital, nor the light to do it by. No way to cook food, but it doesn’t matter because there will be no food to cook.

Demonic.  https://www.sott.net/article/485084-Israeli-minister-says-no-water-or-power-for-Gaza-residents #Israel

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Canada funding Ukrainian groups that celebrate WW2 Nazis – media

13 Oct 23 https://www.rt.com/news/584757-canada-funds-ukrainians-celebrate-nazi/

NGOs which honor the Waffen-SS reportedly received $2.2 million from the government over the last seven years

Ottawa has given $2.2 million over the last seven years to Ukrainian-Canadian groups that celebrate Nazi collaborators, Jewish-American news outlet The Forward reported on Wednesday.   

Among the recipients of government grants are defenders of 98-year-old Ukrainian Nazi veteran Yaroslav Hunka, whose presence at a special session of the Canadian parliament last month caused a major scandal, according to the outlet.

The largest recipient of government financial support is the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, which is known for praising Hunka’s Nazi WWII division (SS Galicia) and protecting a monument to it in suburban Toronto, the Forward article claims. The organization is listed as having received  nearly $1.5 million between 2016 and 2022, according to public records.

The Canadian government also supports the Ukrainian National Federation of Canada, whose logo includes the insignia of a faction of the fascist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Between 2015 and 2022, it received $140,000 in grants, mostly to create summer jobs for youth, the outlet reported, stressing that the federation’s leader made statements exonerating Hunka last month.

The New Pathway newspaper, which fought for the monument to Ukrainian ultranationalist and Nazi collaborator Roman Shukhevich in Canada, received about $68,000 from a fund that supports local publishers, The Forward reported. Other Canadian government-funded organizations listed in the publication have also supported veterans of the Ukrainian Nazi unit or otherwise praised collaborators.

In late September, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized for applauding a Ukrainian Waffen SS veteran during a parliamentary ceremony attended by the president of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky.

A few days later, Canadian Governor General Mary Simon reportedly expressed regret that in 1987, her office awarded the country’s second-highest merit to a Ukrainian immigrant who served in the 14th Waffen-SS Division. #Ukraine

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Canada, politics, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Israel’s vengeance will not make for a better world

Pearls and Irritations, By Richard Hill, Oct 14, 2023

The depressing, crushing spectacle of extreme violence and mayhem unleashed across Israel and Palestine over recent days is a reminder of the depths to which humanity can sink.

To see complex historical, cultural and geopolitical questions – let alone humanity and decency – reduced to a ceaseless cycle of hatred, death and destruction is hard to stomach. We gaze at our TV screens aghast, we hear the threats, counter-threats, and the endless justifications and commentary. Meanwhile, the bloodletting goes on – and on. Western politicians, weighed down with simple binaries, take sides and in so doing obliterate any sense of context or complexity that might help us understand how this mess occurred in the first place.

Projecting the colours of the Israeli flag across the Sydney Opera House, declaring unflagging support for a state that for decades has thumbed its nose at UN resolutions and violently oppressed a besieged and impoverished population, is morally abhorrent.

The attempt to erase such concerns over recent days has been startling. At this point, to call for some acknowledgment of the origins of the conflict is to court accusations of siding with terrorists. And yet, as US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, arrives in Israel to demonstrate the US’s unwavering support, Israel is imposing an illegal blockade on Gaza (cutting of life-saving electricity and preventing passage of urgently needed medicines, food and other supplies) as bombs rein down with impunity on a narrow, congested strip of land occupied by 2.3 million people.

How can this be? Why has nuance been shed and historical memory so conveniently erased? Such abstractionism is of course continuing the egregious practice of labelling anyone who dares criticise Israel as antisemitic. This is absurd and ludicrous, and entirely misleading. In the meantime, we have the leader of the most extreme right-wing government in Israel’s history banging his fists together on TV urging extreme violence upon the people of Gaza. He urges them to flee to a checkpoint on the Egyptian border, knowing full well that it’s closed. So, in effect, the people in Gaza are trapped in a hellhole that day-by-day is being reduced to rubble. All this under the watch of the US, Britain and Australia.

Hamas’s attacks were horrific and utterly unacceptable; there’s no denying that. Many innocent people lost their lives, and the human suffering is unimaginable. But to then offer unwavering support to Israel, minus any mention of current and past wrongdoing, borders on the insane. It demonstrates a cruel, collective indifference. And Australia is complicit in this by implicitly endorsing the long-term suffering of Palestinians as Israeli government priority.

There are so many other ways western and other political leaders (including those in Israel) could have responded to a violent attack on innocent people. ……………………………………………..

It is worth remembering the words of former Norwegian Prime Minister, and new NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg who in the wake of the 2011 mass murder of 70 young people by right-wing gunman Anders Breivik said: “We are still shocked by what has happened, but will never give up our values…Our response is more democracy, more openness, and more humanity.” He vowed his country would not seek vengeance; “we will answer hatred with love”. In a later news conference, Stoltenberg added: “The message to whoever attacked us, the message from all of Norway is that you will not destroy us, you will not destroy our democracy and our ideals for a better world.” This better world does not include blind rage and vengeance, or continuing oppression and violence………………more https://johnmenadue.com/israels-vengeance-will-not-make-for-a-better-world/— #Israel

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Israel, politics international | Leave a comment