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Why Joe Biden Is a Foreign Policy Failure

the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) has an iron grip on American foreign policy. As I’ve recently described, foreign policy has become an insider racket, with the MIC in control of the White House, Pentagon, State Department, the Armed Services Committees of the Congress, and of course the CIA, all in a tight embrace with the major arms contractors. Only an exceptional president could resist the endless war-profiteering of this mammoth war machine.

Biden’s 2024 military budget breaks all records, reaching at least $1.5 trillion in outlays for the Pentagon, CIA, homeland security, non-Pentagon nuclear arms programs, subsidized foreign weapons sales, other military-linked outlays, and interest payments on past war-related debts. On top of this mountain of military spending, Biden is seeking an additional $50 billion in “emergency supplemental funding” for America’s “defense industrial base” to keep shipping munitions to Ukraine and Israel.

America foreign policy is rudderless, with a president whose only foreign policy recipe is war.

JEFFREY D. SACHS

Jan 15, 2024,  https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/biden-foreign-policy-failure

Only an exceptional president could resist the endless war-profiteering of this mammoth war machine; alas, Biden doesn’t even try.

When it comes to foreign policy, the president of the United States has two essential roles. The first is to rein in the military-industrial complex, or MIC, which is always pushing for war. The second is to rein in U.S. allies that expect the U.S. to go to war on their behalf. A few savvy presidents succeed, but most fail. Joe Biden is certainly a failure.

One of the savviest presidents was Dwight Eisenhower. In late 1956, he confronted two simultaneous crises. The first was a disastrously misguided war launched by the United Kingdom, France, and Israel to overthrow the Egyptian government and retake control of the Suez Canal following its nationalization by Egypt. Eisenhower forced the allies to stop their brazen and illegal attack, including through a U.S.-sponsored United Nations General Assembly resolution. The second crisis was the Hungarian Uprising against Soviet domination of Hungary. While Eisenhower sympathized with the uprising, he wisely kept the U.S. out of Hungary and thereby avoided a dangerous military showdown with the Soviet Union.

Eisenhower’s historic farewell address to the American people in January 1961 alerted the public to the growing power of the MIC:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Even Eisenhower did not fully rein in the military-industrial complex, especially the Central Intelligence Agency. No president has done so entirely. The CIA was created in 1947 with two distinct roles. The first and valid one was as an intelligence agency. The second and disastrous one was as a covert army for the president. In the latter capacity, the CIA has led one calamitous failure after another from Eisenhower’s time till now, including coups, assassinations, and stage-managed “color revolutions,” all of which have produced endless havoc and destruction.

Following Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy brilliantly resolved the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, narrowly avoiding nuclear Armageddon by facing down his own war-mongering advisers to reach a peaceful solution with the Soviet Union. The following year he successfully negotiated the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union, over Pentagon objections, and then won Senate ratification, thereby pulling the U.S. and Soviet Union back from the brink of war. Many believe that Kennedy’s peace initiatives led to his assassination at the hands of rogue CIA officials. Biden has joined the long line of presidents that have kept classified or redacted thousands of documents that would shed more light on the assassination.

Sixty years onward, the MIC has an iron grip on American foreign policy. As I’ve recently described, foreign policy has become an insider racket, with the MIC in control of the White House, Pentagon, State Department, the Armed Services Committees of the Congress, and of course the CIA, all in a tight embrace with the major arms contractors. Only an exceptional president could resist the endless war-profiteering of this mammoth war machine.

Alas, Biden doesn’t even try. Throughout his long political career, Biden has been supported by the MIC and has in turn enthusiastically supported wars of choice, massive arms sales, CIA-backed coups, and NATO enlargement.

Biden’s 2024 military budget breaks all records, reaching at least $1.5 trillion in outlays for the Pentagon, CIA, homeland security, non-Pentagon nuclear arms programs, subsidized foreign weapons sales, other military-linked outlays, and interest payments on past war-related debts. On top of this mountain of military spending, Biden is seeking an additional $50 billion in “emergency supplemental funding” for America’s “defense industrial base” to keep shipping munitions to Ukraine and Israel.

Biden doesn’t have any realistic plans for Ukraine, and even rejected a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine in March 2022 that would have ended the conflict based on Ukrainian neutrality by ending Ukraine’s futile bid to join NATO (futile because Russia will never accept it). Ukraine is big business for the MIC—tens and potentially hundreds of billions of dollars of arms contracts, manufacturing facilities across the U.S,, the opportunity to develop and test new weapons systems—so Biden keeps the war going despite the destruction of Ukraine on the battlefield, and the tragic and needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians. The MIC, and hence Biden, continue to shun negotiations, even though direct U.S.-Russia negotiations regarding NATO and other security issues (such as U.S. missile placements in Eastern Europe) could end the war.

In Israel, Biden’s failure is even more on display. Israel is led by an extremist government that reviles the two-state solution, according to which Israelis and Palestinians should live side by side in two sovereign peaceful and secure states, or indeed any solution that grants Palestinians their political rights. The two-state solution is deeply embedded in international law, including U.N. Security Council and General Assembly resolutions and supposedly in U.S. foreign policy. The Arab and Islamic leaders are committed to normalizing and securing safe relations with Israel in the context of the two-state solution.

Yet Israel is led by violent zealots who make the messianic claim that God has given Israel all the land of today’s Palestine, including the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. These zealots therefore insist on political domination over the millions of Palestinians in their midst, or their annihilation or expulsion. Netanyahu and his colleagues don’t even hide their genocidal intentions, though most foreign observers don’t fully understand the biblical references that the Israeli leaders invoke to justify their ongoing mass slaughter of the Palestinian people.


Israel now faces highly credible charges of genocide in the International Court of Justice in a case brought by South Africa. The documentary record presented by South Africa and others is as clear as it is chilling. Israeli politics is not the politics of pragmatism and certainly not the politics of peace. It is the politics of biblical apocalypse.

Biden nonetheless provides Israel with the munitions to carry out its massive war crimes. Instead of acting like Eisenhower and pressing Israel to end its slaughter in contravention of international law including the Genocide Convention, Biden continues to ship munitions, even bypassing congressional review to the maximum extent he can. The result is U.S. diplomatic isolation from the rest of the world, and the growing involvement of the U.S. military in a war that is rapidly and all-too-predictably expanding across Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Yemen. In the recent U.N. General Assembly vote backing political self-determination for the people of Palestine, the U.S. and Israel stood alone save two votes: Micronesia (bound by compact to vote with the U.S.) and Nauru (population 12,000).

America foreign policy is rudderless, with a president whose only foreign policy recipe is war. With the U.S. already up to its neck in the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, Biden also intends to ship more arms to Taiwan despite China’s strident objections that the U.S. is thereby violating long-standing U.S. commitments to the One-China policy, including the commitment made 42 years ago in the U.S.-PRC Joint Communique that the U.S. government “does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan.” Eisenhower’s dire prophecy has been confirmed. The military-industrial complex threatens our liberty, our democracy, and our very survival.

January 17, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

South Africa has made its genocide case against Israel in court. Here’s what both sides said and what happens next


Paul Taucher, Lecturer in History, Murdoch University, Dean Aszkielowicz, Senior Lecturer in History and Politics, Murdoch University, January 16, 2024  https://theconversation.com/south-africa-has-made-its-genocide-case-against-israel-in-court-heres-what-both-sides-said-and-what-happens-next-221017

Following the October 7 attack by Hamas, Israeli forces have carried out sustained attacks on the Palestinian controlled territory, dividing the international community.

Last week, the South African government presented a case to the International Court of Justice. They argued the Israeli government’s attack on Gaza, and especially the actions of its forces within Gaza since early October, could amount to genocide.

Few cases that have gone before the court are as explosive and potentially significant as this one.

Here’s how the hearings unfolded and what happens now.

Defining genocide

The crime of genocide is covered in the 1948 United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

It is defined as acts committed with intent to destroy, either in part or in whole, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, including:

  • killing members of the group
  • causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
  • deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about a groups physical destruction, in whole or in part
  • imposing measures to prevent births
  • forcibly transferring children.

The Genocide Convention is designed to not only prosecute individuals and governments who committed genocide, but to prevent it from occurring.

Therefore, the Convention states that while genocidal acts are punishable, so too are attempts and incitement to commit genocide, regardless of whether they are successful or not.

The South African case

The South African government argued that Israeli forces had killed 23,210 Palestinians. Approximately 70% were believed to be women and children.

Crucially for the court, South Africa argued Israeli forces were often aware that the bombings would cause significant civilian casualties. It said many of the Palestinians were killed in Israeli declared safe zones, mosques, hospitals, schools and refugee camps.

Beyond the death toll, South Africa argued that there were 60,000 wounded and maimed Palestinians. The separation of families through arrest and displacement has caused large scale and likely enduring harm to civilians. South Africa highlighted the displacement of 85% of Palestinians, particularly the October 13 evacuation order which displaced over one million people in 24 hours.

The South African government also alleged the Israeli attacks and the actions of its forces were preventing the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people being met. It particularly emphasised the Israeli decision to cut off water supply to Gaza. The distribution of food, medicine and fuel were also hampered. Israeli attacks on hospitals were also highlighted.

South Africa alleged the denial of adequate humanitarian assistance, especially medical supplies and care, amounts to the imposing of measures to prevent births.

Finally, South Africa focused on speeches by Israeli political leaders and soldiers advocating for the erasure of Gaza. This included Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reference to the biblical destruction of enemies of ancient Israel and military commanders’ reference to Palestinians as “human animals” that need to be eliminated. These were used as evidence of incitement to genocide.

If the International Court of Justice doesn’t find that Israel is committing genocidal acts, South Africa has argued the Israeli forces have demonstrated an intent to commit genocide, and that there should be an interim order made to stop it.

The Israeli response

The Israeli government rejects all of the allegations by South Africa. Israel presented its arguments on January 12.

Israel’s overall argument is that the attacks on Gaza have been directed at Hamas soldiers. It says the civilian casualties have been an unfortunate consequence of carrying out military operations in an urban environment. Accordingly, the deaths, injuries and damage are not genocidal in nature, but instead, are incidental to military action.

Israel has presented evidence that it is delivering food, water, medical supplies and fuel to Gaza, demonstrating the opposite of genocidal intent. The Israeli Defence Force also runs a Civilian Harm Mitigation Unit.

These actions, according to Israel, are “concrete measures aimed specifically at recognising the rights of the Palestinian civilians in Gaza to exist”.

Finally, Israel has argued that the quotes South Africa have argued display incitement to commit genocide have been taken out of context. According to Israel, the court has no grounds to find that there are acts of genocide taking place, or that there is genocidal intent.

At this point, the court will not decide whether Israel has committed genocide or not. Determining that will likely take several years. Instead, the court will decide whether the allegations are at the least plausible, and if so, likely order that Israel and Palestine reach an interim ceasefire, and for Israeli forces to take all necessary steps to prevent genocide.

How significant is it?

If the court rules in favour of South Africa, a major world power – supported by the US and much of the Western world – will have been found to have committed what has, historically, been the most notorious of crimes.

That said, the prospect of any ruling by the International Court of Justice having a meaningful impact on the conflict in Gaza is remote.

The UN and its legal institutions are powered solely by a belief the international community is respectful of international institutions and international law. The problem is when a powerful country does not believe a ruling by a United Nations body applies to them, little can be done to enforce it.

January 17, 2024 Posted by | Israel, Legal | Leave a comment

Biden, Israel’s accomplice in Gaza, pretends to be a bystander

Biden is a willing scene partner in a barely disguised performance: pretending to be up in arms about Israel’s genocidal conduct while doing everything he can to support it.

While the White House claims to be “frustrated” with Israel’s conduct in Gaza, US support for the carnage continues.

AARON MATÉ, Substack, JAN 16, 2024

On October 15th, President Biden took umbrage at a suggestion that his administration could not back both the Ukraine proxy war and Israel’s assault on Gaza at the same time.

 “We’re the United States of America for God’s sake, the most powerful nation… in the history of the world,” Biden told CBS News. “We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense.”

Three months and well over 20,000 defenseless Palestinians slain later, the self-declared leader of the most powerful nation in the history of world now claims to be a helpless bystander.

According to four US officials, Biden is “increasingly frustrated” and “losing his patience” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has rejected “most of the administration’s recent requests related to the war in Gaza,” Axios reports. “The situation sucks and we are stuck,” one official complained. “The president’s patience is running out.” Another official fumes that “there is immense frustration” in the Oval Office. According to Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen: “At every juncture, Netanyahu has given Biden the finger. They are pleading with the Netanyahu coalition, but getting slapped in the face over and over again.”

Van Hollen is correct that the administration is getting slapped in the face by Israel. But he omits that Biden is a willing scene partner in a barely disguised performance: pretending to be up in arms about Israel’s genocidal conduct while doing everything he can to support it.

As Likud parliamentarian Danny Danon explained last month, any US demand of Israel’s military is perfunctory. “They didn’t agree to a ground invasion — we invaded,” Danon said. “They didn’t agree to [attacking] Al-Shifa hospital — we ignored their request. They wanted a pause without hostages — we didn’t accept that. We have no American ultimatum. There is no deadline from the US.”

The US not only imposes no conditions on its support for Israel’s mass murder campaign in Gaza, but has twice bypassed Congress to expedite weapons for it. After all, this administration professes to have “no red lines” when it comes to Israeli aggression, and is fronted by a president who has declared that there is “no possibility” of a ceasefire.

While Biden and his aides now pretend to have their hands tied, their instrumental role is undeniable. “Biden is president of the United States, still the most powerful country in the world by almost every measure and a country without whose support Israel has no future,” former US diplomat Patrick Theros writes. “A firm public demand to cease and desist immediately would have enormous domestic political repercussions in Israel — far less in the United States. Biden would not have to publicly threaten to cut off weapons deliveries; a few words delivered in private to Netanyahu and a few members of his war cabinet would probably suffice.”

“If you want to use your leverage, use your leverage,” former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy says of Biden’s stance. “You’ve chosen to give Israel a blank check.”

That choice continues. In meetings with Israeli officials on Nov. 30th, Secretary of State Antony Blinken informed his counterparts that they had “weeks, not months” to “wrap up combat operations at the current level of intensity,” US officials later told the New York Times. Upon a return visit to Israel this week, Blinken again touted his push for what he called “the phased transition of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.” That “transition” to a “lower-intensity phase,” White House spokesperson John Kirby said on Sunday, “is coming here very, very soon.”

But away from the news cameras, the posture changes. A senior US official now explains to the Washington Post that it’s in fact “pointless to urge them [the Israelis] to change.” Accordingly, “Washington’s priority has now shifted to tolerating Israel’s high-intensity operation throughout January, while insisting instead that it downgrade the tempo in February.”

In other words, the US has decided to tolerate Israel’s genocidal tempo in Gaza as normal. From Washington’s point of view, saving thousands of Palestinian lives from murder at the hands of US-supplied weaponry would be pointless.

Biden is so committed to continuing the Gaza slaughter that he has even expanded the war zone to Yemen. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“No one should have to endure even one day of what they have gone through, much less 100,” Biden said of the hostages. By refusing to acknowledge them, Biden is affirming via omission that he believes the exact opposite — and in fact infinitely worse — for Gaza’s two million Palestinian hostages. After 100 days of genocide, the people of Gaza are fated to endure continued atrocities as a direct result of US policy, no matter the Biden team’s ongoing effort to pretend otherwise.
 https://www.aaronmate.net/p/biden-israels-accomplice-in-gaza?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=100118&post_id=140693425&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&utm_medium=email

January 17, 2024 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US Offers Up To $500MM for Advanced Nuclear Fuel Production

by Jov Onsat, Rigzone Staff, Monday, January 15, 2024

The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is offering contracts worth up to $500 million in total for the production of a uranium fuel for smaller nuclear reactors, as it announced a breakthrough in an enrichment project

The request for proposals is for the enrichment of high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU). Currently this fuel is produced only in Russia and the US but only the former makes it at a commercial scale, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The United Kingdom government earlier this month announced funding to enable domestic HALEU production.

“Currently, HALEU is not commercially available from U.S.-based suppliers, and boosting domestic supply could spur the development and deployment of advanced reactors in the United States”, the DOE noted in a press release announcing the funding offer……………………………………………………

Each contractor is assured of a minimum order value of $2 million. They must conduct enrichment and storage activities in the continental US and comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, the DOE said. Proposals are until March 8.

The $500 million offer includes a DOE request announced November for services to deconvert the uranium enriched through this funding into metal, oxide and other forms to be used as fuel for advanced reactor  https://www.rigzone.com/news/us_offers_up_to_500mm_for_advanced_nuclear_fuel_production-15-jan-2024-175378-article/

January 17, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | 1 Comment

Bypassing Parliament: Westminster, the Royal Prerogative and Bombing Yemen

Australian Independent Media, January 16, 2024, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark

There is something distinctly revolting and authoritarian about the royal prerogative. It reeks of clandestine assumption, unwarranted self-confidence and, most of all, a blithe indifference to accountability before elected representatives. That prerogative, in other words, is the last reminder of divine right, the fiction that a ruler can have powers vested by an unsubstantiated deity, the invisible God, and a punishing force beyond the reach of human control. It is anathema to democracy, a stain on republican models of government, a joke on any political system that has some claim on representing what might be called the broader citizenry.

On January 11, the UK government, in league with the United States with support from a number of other countries, attacked Houthi positions in Yemen. The decision had been made without recourse to Parliament and justified by Article 51 of the UN Charter as “limited, necessary and proportionate in self-defence.”

In his statement on the attacks, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pointed to the Houthi’s role in staging “a series of dangerous and destabilising attacks against commercial shipping in the Red Sea, threatening UK and other international ships, causing major disruption to a vital trade route and driving up commodity prices.” He made no mention of the Houthis’ own justification for the attacks as necessary measures to disrupt Israeli shipping and interests in response to their systematic, bloodcurdling razing of Gaza.

Lip service has been paid by the executive within the Westminster system to Parliament’s importance in deciding whether the country commits to military action or not. The stark problem is that the action is always decided upon in advance, and no dissent among parliamentarians will necessarily sway the issue. Motions can be proposed and rejected but remain non-binding on the executive emboldened by the prerogative………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The Yemen strikes eschew humanitarianism (the humanitarian justifications advanced by the Houthis in protecting Palestinian civilians has been rejected), but shipping interests. The Armed forces minister, James Heappey, was satisfied that an exception to the convention in consulting Parliament had presented itself. “The Prime Minister,” the minister parroted, “needs to make decisions such as these based on the military, strategic and operational requirements – that led to the timing.”

With the horse having bolted merrily out of the stable, Heappey remarked with all due condescension that Parliament would, in time, be able to respond to the decision to strike Yemen. An “opportunity” would be made available “when Parliament returns for these things to be fully discussed and debated.” The sheer redundancy of its role could thereby be affirmed.

Much agitated by this state of affairs, former shadow Chancellor John McDonnell opined that no military action should take place without Parliament’s approval. “If we have learnt anything in recent years it’s that military intervention in the Middle East always has dangerous & often unforeseen consequences. There is a risk of setting the region alight.”

Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesperson Layla Moran was of the view that Parliament should not be bypassed in matters of war, yet opting for the rather fatuous formula arising out of the 2011 convention. “Rushi Sunak must announce a retrospective vote in the House of Commons on these strikes, and recall Parliament this weekend.”

The use of the royal prerogative in using military force remains one of those British perversions that makes for good common room conversation but offends the sensibilities of the democratically minded elector. A far better practice would be to make the PM of the day accountable to that most essential body of all: Parliament. That same principle would be extended to other constitutional monarchies, which are similarly weighed down by the all too liberal use of the prerogative when shedding blood. If a country’s citizens are to go to war to kill and be killed, surely their elected representatives should have a say in that most vital of decisions?  https://theaimn.com/bypassing-parliament-westminster-the-royal-prerogative-and-bombing-yemen/

January 17, 2024 Posted by | politics, UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

With friends like Netanyahu, President Biden needs a good war crimes defense lawyer

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL  15 Jan 24

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the US Saturday that his 100 day war of genocidal ethnic cleansing of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza has got ‘MADE IN USA’ stamped all over it.

“This is not just our war – it is also your war. This is the war of the sons of light against the sons of darkness. This is a war against the axis of evil led by Iran and its three proxies: Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.”

Apparently, Netanyahu wants Joe to join him in the dock of potential genocidal ethnic cleansing charges currently being litigated at the International court of Justice.

“No one will stop us, not The Hague, not the axis of evil, and not anyone else,”Netanyahu boasted, knowing that the one man who can stop him, Joe Biden, is all in with billions in weapons to bomb virtually the entire Gaza population from their homes. In addition, Joe publicly supports the ongoing genocide, and gives Netanyahu veto proof protection in the UN Security Council.

After a 52 year political career supporting every senseless US war to the hilt, Biden is fading into oblivion a genocide denier, a genocide enabler. His overextended stay on the public stage is ending with the worst single criminal conduct toward humanity in US history. The best war crimes defense lawyers would be hard pressed to save him from conviction at The Hague should he end up there. But no one can save his soul from the harsh verdict of history.

January 17, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

São Tomé and Príncipe 70th State to ratify Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

 https://www.icanw.org/sao_tome_and_principe_ratifies_treaty_on_the_prohibition_of_nuclear_weapons?utm_campaign=sao_tome&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ican 15 Jan 24

São Tomé and Príncipe has become the first new state party to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in 2024. At UN Headquarters in New York on 15 January, the Minister of Justice of São Tomé and Príncipe, H.E. IIza Amado Vaz, deposited the instrument of ratification for this landmark treaty on behalf of the government, bringing the total number of states parties to 70.

The National Assembly of São Tomé and Príncipe unanimously approved ratification of the TPNW on 16 November 2023.

São Tomé and Príncipe’s ratification comes shortly after states parties to the TPNW renewed a “call for all States that have not yet done so to sign and ratify or accede to the Treaty without delay”, and reiterated their commitment to pursue universalisation of the Treaty as a priority, in a declaration issued at the second meeting of states parties of the treaty in New York in December 2023.

ICAN’s Executive Director, Melissa Parke, welcomed the move: “It’s great news that Sao Tome and Principe has ratified the Treaty which means it now has 70 states parties. As more and more countries join the TPNW they strengthen the new international norm it has created that makes nuclear weapons unacceptable. These are the responsible states in the international community, and we look forward to more ratifications and signatures in the year ahead.”

A total of 93 countries have signed the TPNW and 70 have ratified or acceded to it. In Africa, there are now 16 states parties and a further 17 signatories. The TPNW complements and reinforces the 1996 Treaty of Pelindaba, which established Africa as a nuclear-weapon-free zone. The states parties to the Treaty of Pelindaba have called upon all African Union member states “to speedily sign and ratify the [TPNW]”.

In January 2023, São Tomé and Príncipe was among the 37 African states that met in Pretoria, South Africa, for the African Regional Seminar on the Universalisation of the TPNW to promote adherence to the treaty by every African state as soon as possible.

Support for the TPNW

São Tomé and Príncipe was among the first countries to sign the TPNW at a high-level ceremony in New York when it opened for signature on 20 September 2017. Since then, it has promoted universal adherence to the TPNW, including by consistently voting in favour of an annual UN General Assembly resolution since 2018 that calls upon all states to sign and ratify the treaty “at the earliest possible date”.

São Tomé and Príncipe participated in the negotiation of the TPNW at the United Nations in New York in 2017 and was among 122 states that voted in favour of its adoption.

January 17, 2024 Posted by | politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Former Polish PM admits Ukraine’s strategy failed

 https://www.rt.com/russia/590598-poland-ukraine-fail/ 15 Jan 23

The conflict is “going in the wrong direction,” Mateusz Morawiecki told the UK’s Express newspaper

Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive was “not successful” and Russia has the upper hand strategically, former Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki admitted, in an interview with Britain’s Express newspaper published on Friday.

The conflict in Ukraine is “not going in the right direction,” Morawiecki told the outlet, outlining his “huge concern” with a situation in which Moscow had apparently outflanked its opponents.

Russia has “huge resources,” he explained, noting the country’s military production capabilities significantly outweighed the EU’s own. “They have this strategic depth, and they have patience in international politics,” he added, also dismissing the country’s elections scheduled for March as mere “theater” unlikely to change the balance of power in Moscow.

Morawiecki also argued, however, that Ukraine’s failure had a silver lining for NATO in that it had brought Finland and Sweden into the alliance and was “awakening” countries like Denmark and Romania. The Scandinavian countries, he said, were among the most vocal in calling attention to the threat allegedly posed by Russia.

“Not only the security of the eastern flank of NATO, but also for the security of the United Kingdom, security of Germany, Denmark and the Scandinavians, they do understand it very, very well,” he said.

The former premier (2017-2023) was speaking to the British press for the first time since his successor, current PM Donald Tusk, had two lawmakers from Morawiecki’s Law and Justice Party (PiS) arrested earlier in the week. The ex-leader described the MPs as “political prisoners” and accused Tusk’s admittedly pro-EU government of “representing Brussels and Berlin, not Warsaw.”

While international attention has largely shifted away from the Ukraine conflict to Israel’s war with Gaza as the latter threatens to erupt into a broader conflict, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak traveled to Kiev on Friday to bestow his government’s largest gift yet on the government of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, announcing £2.5 billion ($3.2 billion) to be paid out over the coming financial year and starting in April, and a bilateral agreement that includes security guarantees for Ukraine “in the event that it is ever attacked by Russia again.”

Zelensky has been vocal about his concern over flagging international support for Kiev’s fight, after unprecedented amounts of foreign aid from the UK, US, and EU failed to appreciably move the needle against Russia. Legislative gridlock has stalled planned aid packages in the US even as the Biden administration insists on an urgency to it, with his political opposition countering that accountability for funds spent must be a requirement for any future aid.

January 17, 2024 Posted by | politics international, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Talks on Zelensky’s ‘peace formula’ are pointless – Kremlin

 https://www.rt.com/russia/590675-zelensky-peace-formula-talks-useless/ 15 Jan 24

Russia’s absence means the negotiations in Davos could not have produced any concrete results, Dmitry Peskov has said

Top officials from dozens of countries who met in Switzerland to discuss Ukraine’s ‘peace formula’ were engaged in a completely useless endeavor without Russian participation, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.

On Sunday, national security advisers from 81 nations and international organizations gathered in Davos ahead of the World Economic Forum to talk about a 10-point initiative floated by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in October 2022 to end hostilities with Russia.

The plan calls for the withdrawal of Russian troops from the territory Kiev claims as its own and insists on the creation of a tribunal to prosecute Moscow for alleged war crimes. Russia has dismissed the proposal as divorced from reality.

Commenting on the Davos meeting, Peskov called it “talking for the sake of talking,” reiterating that the same applied to previous rounds of talks in such a format. “This process is not aimed and cannot be aimed at achieving a concrete result for an obvious and simple reason – we are not there.”

Russia was also absent from previous discussions last year in Denmark, Saudi Arabia, and Malta. At the same time, Moscow has never categorically refused peace talks with Kiev, despite Zelensky signing a decree banning all negotiations with the current Russian leadership after four regions overwhelmingly voted to join Russia in the autumn of 2022.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported on Sunday that the Davos talks had ended “with no clear path forward” despite Ukraine’s hopes that it would be able to secure backing for its plan from members of the Global South, many of whom have proclaimed neutrality in the conflict. That was denied by Ukrainian officials, however, who nevertheless acknowledged differences of opinion among the meeting’s participants.

On Sunday, Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis echoed Peskov’s remarks, arguing that any Ukraine peace talks should involve Russia in one way or another.

January 17, 2024 Posted by | politics international, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Screams without proof: questions for NYT about shoddy ‘Hamas mass rape’ report

The public now knows that many Israeli noncombatants were killed by their country’s military on October 7. They know this largely thanks to the work of The Grayzone and other independent outlets. We were initially attacked for our work, but now Israeli media is demanding answers as well. Major legacy media organizations like yours continue to ignore serious political scandals like these while pursuing factually-challenged, shamefully unethical journalistic efforts aimed at legitimizing the Israeli government’s public relations objectives. 

Haaretz reported on January 4, “The police are having difficulty locating victims of sexual assault from the Hamas attack, or people who witnessed such attacks, and decided to appeal to the public to encourage those who have information on the matter to come forward and give testimony. Even in the few cases in which the organization collected testimony about sexual offenses committed on October 7, it failed to connect the acts with the victims who were harmed by them.”

Were you aware, as The Grayzone documented, that Landau’s previous claims of having seen beheaded babies and a fetus cut from a dead woman’s womb on October 7 have been discredited not only by the Israeli newspaper by Haaretz, but by the Biden White House, which retracted the president’s claim that he had seen photographs of beheaded babies? In fact, only one baby is recorded among those killed on October 7, which means any claim to have seen multiple dead babies must be dismissed out of hand.

MAX BLUMENTHAL AND AARON MATÉ·JANUARY 10, 2024, https://thegrayzone.com/2024/01/10/questions-nyt-hamas-rape-report/—

After dismantling a New York Times front page feature alleging “a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7” by Hamas, The Grayzone is demanding answers of the paper for its journalistic malpractice.

The following was submitted to New York Times editors and lead author, Jeffrey Gettleman. 

The Grayzone has identified  serious issues with the credibility of key sources quoted in the New York Times’ December 28 story, “Screams Without Words: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on October 7.” Authored by Jeffrey Gettleman, Anat Schwartz, and Adam Sella, the article purports to prove “a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7” than even Israeli authorities have been willing to allege . However, the Times report is marred by sensationalism, wild leaps of logic, and an absence of concrete evidence to support its sweeping conclusion.

The Times has come under fire from family members of Gal Abdush, the so-called “girl in the black dress” who features as Exhibit A in Gettleman and company’s attempt to demonstrate a pattern of rape by Hamas on October 7. Not only have Abdush’s sister and brother-in-law each denied that she was raped, the former has accused the Times of manipulating her family into participating by misleading them about their editorial angle. Though the family’s comments have sparked a major uproar on social media, the Times has yet to address the serious breach of journalistic integrity that its staff is accused of committing.

The Israeli police have also issued a statement since the publication of the Times’ article asserting that they themselves are unable to locate eyewitnesses of rape on October 7, or to connect the testimonies published by outlets like the Times with anything remotely resembling evidence.   

We call on the New York Times to publicly address the comments by the Abdush family accusing Times reporters of misleading them and lying about the circumstances of her death. The Times must also address the statement issued by Israel’s police subsequent to the article’s publication and explain why Gettleman and his co-authors apparently omitted it.

Further, we demand a response to our thoroughly sourced debunking of testimony by key witnesses quoted in the story, as well as the documented record of discredited claims and ethically dubious activity by those same witnesses. 

We have provided several questions for your consideration. If you are unable to furnish responses which satisfactorily address the issues we have raised about the credibility of your article, we believe it must be retracted in full.

Family of “the girl in the black dress” accuses NYT of having “invented” rape claim

Continue reading →

January 17, 2024 Posted by | Israel, media, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

‘Transported in Cages’ – Shocking Details of How Israel Treats Female Gaza Prisoners

January 5, 2024, By Fayha Shalash – Ramallah,  https://www.palestinechronicle.com/transported-in-cages-shocking-details-of-how-israel-treats-female-gaza-prisoners/

This is a difficult, but critical read. The collective hardship experienced by Gaza’s female prisoners in Israel is unprecedented even within the tragic history of Israel’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners. The Palestine Chronicle reports .. 

The names of 51 female prisoners, illegally detained by invading Israeli forces during their ground operation in Gaza, have been revealed. 

This number was announced by the Palestinian Prisoners’ Affairs Authority in a statement, without confirming whether there are other female prisoners secretly detained in Israel.

Regardless of the exact number, however, the testimonies that were collected from released prisoners reveal shocking abuse, ill-treatment and torture. 

The Palestine Chronicle spoke with Lama Khater, from Al-Khalil (Hebron), who was arrested on October 26 and released under the prisoner exchange deal between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Resistance on November 30. 

Khater was detained along with ten female prisoners from Gaza and witnessed the abuse they were subjected to.

Arbitrary Arrest

Khater said the conditions of female prisoners from Gaza were particularly difficult, starting with their kidnapping during their displacement from the northern Gaza Strip.

“They were arrested randomly, mostly from the northern Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers detained mothers, too, who have been forced to leave their children with passers-by,” she stressed.

Khater recounted that before arriving at Damon Prison, the female detainees were left without covers, subjected to humiliating strip searches and forced to sleep on the bare floor.

When they were brought into the prisons, they were blindfolded, handcuffed, and deprived of their hijab, said Khater. 

They were reportedly placed in narrow cells in Damon Prison and not allowed to speak to the rest of the female prisoners from the occupied West Bank and Palestine 48.

“All female prisoners are subjected to great restrictions,” Khater said, “but the prisoners from Gaza were treated even worse.”

“For example, they are only allowed to shower in large groups of at least 50 women, and for not more than 15 minutes a day”.

Khater said that on December 10 and 11, five female prisoners from the Gaza Strip were taken out of Damon prison. Their current location is not yet known. 

Among the female Gazan prisoners, some are in a particularly difficult state; an 80-year-old woman who suffers from Alzheimers and a pregnant woman. Both are subjected to medical negligence.

Held in Cages

The Palestine Chronicle also spoke with Palestinian lawyer Hassan al-Abadi, who collected the testimonies of several female prisoners in Damon. 

Al-Abadi, who volunteered to visit the female prisoners, submitted his first request to the Israeli Prison Administration on November 30, but was told in response that there were no longer female prisoners in the detention facility.

A few days later, however, media reports revealed that dozens of female prisoners, from Gaza, Jerusalem and Palestine 48, were still held there.

Al-Abadi confirmed to The Palestine Chronicle that there are over 40 female prisoners from Gaza in the facility, but they are prohibited from seeing a lawyer.

“When I would visit any female prisoner from the West Bank or Jerusalem, she would tell me about the harsh conditions of detention of the prisoners from the Gaza Strip,” he said.

Al-Abadi said he was particularly disturbed by the way Israeli forces transported the female detainees from Gaza to the prisons.

According to the lawyer, they were placed in trucks carrying cages similar to those used for animal transport. 

“This detail particularly hurt me: these women have been transported in animal trucks. They have been tied, blindfolded and stripped of their head covering, as a way to humiliate them,” al-Abadi said.

Stained with Blood

The lawyer also said that when the female detainees arrived at the prison, their clothes were stained with blood. Most of them were also bleeding from their hands, as the plastic chains had been tightly tied around their wrists for days.

Upon their arrival, they were distributed into three rooms, each containing six iron beds. Most of them were reportedly forced to sleep on the floor without pillows or mattresses.

“The prisoners told me that the food is also very bad and that the Israeli guards deliberately leave it on their cells’ doors for hours, until it turns cold. The water has a rusty taste as well,” al-Abadi said.

“The female detainees from Gaza are even forbidden from talking to the rest of the prisoners and they have to communicate in secret.”

Al-Abadi shared that one of the women had to leave her four children in Gaza. The eldest was only eight years old, the youngest an infant. 

According to the testimony from other prisoners, the woman was walking on Salah Al-Din Street, fleeing from the north of the Gaza Strip, when the Israeli soldiers arrested her.

“When she learned that she would be under arrest, she immediately handed her children to a boy who was walking in the street and told him to take care of them,” al-Abadi said. 

“I learned from the other prisoners that she asked about her children every day, crying inconsolably, but nobody was updating her on their fate.”

A few days ago, however, al-Abadi was able to deliver a verbal message to this woman, that her children had eventually reached their father. “This time, she cried out of joy,” he said.

Great Concern

According to al-Abadi, these women are not only suffering due to the extremely cruel conditions of their detention but because they are constantly concerned about their families. 

They do not know the fate of their children as Israel continues to relentlessly bombard Gaza.

“They are not allowed to hear the news or follow what is happening in any way. They are isolated from the outside world and don’t know anything,” al-Abadi explained.

But there are other forms of violation carried out by Israeli authorities. Al-Abadi told us that the prison administration prevents these women from bringing along sanitary pads 

Therefore, during their period, they are forced to wash their clothes daily and wear them when they are still wet, as the prison administration does not provide them with additional clothes. They only have what they were wearing at the time of arrest.

Israel considers men and women detained in the Gaza Strip to be prisoners of war under the so-called “unlawful combatants” law. Therefore, it prevents them from having contact with lawyers and human rights institutions.

(The Palestine Chronicle)  – Fayha’ Shalash is a Ramallah-based Palestinian journalist. She graduated from Birzeit University in 2008 and she has been working as a reporter and broadcaster ever since. Her articles appeared in several online publications. She contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.

January 17, 2024 Posted by | Israel, Religion and ethics, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Israel’s argument at The Hague: We are Incapable of Genocide

January 15, 2024, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark, Australian Independent Media

Israel’s relationship with the United Nations, international institutions and international law has at times bristled with suspicion and blatant hostility. In a famous cabinet meeting in 1955, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion famously knocked back the suggestion that the United Nations 1947 plan for partitioning Palestine had been instrumental in creating the State of Israel. “No, no, no!” he roared in demur. “Only the daring of the Jews created the state, and not any oom-shmoom resolution.”

In the shadow of the Holocaust, justifications for violence against foes mushroom multiply. Given that international law, notably in war, entails restraint and limits on the use of force, doctrines have been selectively pruned and shaped, landscaped to suit the needs of the Jewish state. When the strictures of convention have been ignored, the reasoning is clipped for consistency: defenders of international law and its institutions have been either missing in the discussion or subservient to Israel’s enemies. They were nowhere to be seen, for instance, when Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser was preparing for war in the spring of 1967. Israel’s tenaciously talented statesman, Abba Eban, reflected in his autobiography about the weakness of the UN in withdrawing troops from the Sinai when pressured by Nasser to do so. It “destroyed the most central hopes and expectations on which we had relied on withdrawing from Sinai.”

…………………………… Israeli authorities are resolute in their calls that Islamic terrorism is the enemy, that its destruction is fundamental for civilisation, and that crushing measures are entirely proportionate. Palestinian civilian deaths might be regrettable but all routes of blame lead to Hamas and its resort to human shields.

These arguments have failed to convince a growing number of countries. One of them is South Africa. On December 29, the Republic filed an application in the International Court of Justice alleging “violations by Israel regarding the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide […] in relation to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” Various “acts and omissions” by the Israeli government were alleged to be “genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent … to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza as part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group.” What Pretoria is seeking is both a review of the merits of the case and the imposition of provisional measures that would essentially modify, if not halt, Israel’s Gaza operation.

Prior to its arguments made before the 15-judge panel on January 12, Israel rejected “with contempt the blood libel by South Africa in its application to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).” The Israeli Foreign Ministry went so far as to suggest that the court was being exploited, while South Africa was, in essence, “collaborating with a terror group that calls for the destruction of Israel.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with demagogic rage, claimed that his country had witnessed “an upside-down world. Israel is accused of genocide while it is fighting against genocide.” The country was battling “murderous terrorists who carried out crimes against humanity.” Government spokesman Eylon Levy tried to make it all a matter of Hamas, nothing more, nothing less. “We have been clear in word and in deed that we are targeting the October 7th monsters and are innovating ways to uphold international law.”

In that innovation lies the problem. Whatever is meant by such statements as those of Israel Defence Forces spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, that “Our war is against Hamas, not against the people of Gaza”, the catastrophic civilian death toll, destruction, displacement and starvation would suggest the contrary. Innovation in war often entails carefree slaughter with a clear conscience.


On another level, the Israeli argument is more nuanced, going to the difficulties of proving genocidal intent. Amichai Cohen of Israel’s Ono Academic College and senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute admits that comments from right-wing Israeli ministers calling for the “emigration” of Palestinians from Gaza were not helpful. (They were certainly helpful to Pretoria’s case.) But he insists that the South African argument is based on “classic cherry-picking.” Cohen should know better than resort to the damnably obvious: all legal cases are, by definition, exercises of picking the finest cherries in the orchard.

The Israeli defence team’s oral submissions to the ICJ maintained a distinct air of unreality. Tal Becker, as legal advisor to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, tried to move judicial opinion in his address by drawing upon the man who minted genocide as a term of international law, Raphael Lemkin. Invariably, it was Becker’s purpose to again return to the Holocaust as “unspeakable” and uniquely linked to the fate of the Jews, implying that Jews would surely be incapable of committing those same acts. But here was South Africa, raining on the sacred flame, invoking “this term in the context of Israel’s conduct in a war it did not start and did not want. A war in which Israel is defending itself against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist organizations whose brutality knows no bounds.” Israel, pure; Israel vulnerable; Israel under attack.

In yet another jurisprudential innovation, Becker insisted that the Genocide Convention was not connected in any way to “address the brutal impact of intensive hostilities on the civilian population, even when the use of force raises ‘very serious issues of international law’ and involves ‘enormous suffering’ and ‘continuing loss of life’.” The Convention, rather, was meant “to address a malevolent crime of the most exceptional severity.”

The view is reiterated by another lawyer representing Israel. “The inevitable fatalities and human suffering of any conflict,” submitted Christopher Staker, “is not of itself a pattern of conduct that plausibly shows genocidal intent.” Butcheries on a massive scale would not, in of themselves, suggest such the requisite mental state to exterminate a race, ethnic or religious group.

As for South Africa’s insistence that provisional measures be granted, Staker was unwavering in repeating the familiar talking points. They “would stop Israel defending its citizens, more citizens could be attacked, raped and tortured [by Hamas], and provisional measures would prevent Israel doing anything.”

Legal tricks and casuistry were something of a blooming phenomenon in Israel’s submissions. South Africa had, according to Becker, submitted “a profoundly distorted factual and legal picture……………………………………………..

Malcom Shaw, a figure known for his expertise in the thorny realm of territorial disputes, did his little bit of legal curation. ………………… The only thing that mattered here, argued Shaw, was the attack of October 7 by Hamas, a sole act of barbarity that could be read in terrifying isolation. That, he claimed was “the real genocide in this situation.”………………………. more https://theaimn.com/israels-argument-at-the-hague-we-are-incapable-of-genocide/#

January 17, 2024 Posted by | Israel, Legal | Leave a comment

Analysis: World will add enough renewables in five years to power US and Canada

A boom in Chinese solar power construction drove another record-breaking
year of renewables growth in 2023, according to the International Energy
Agency (IEA).

Carbon Brief analysis of figures in the IEA’s Renewables
2023 report show that the world is now on track to build enough solar, wind
and other renewables over the next five years to power the equivalent of
the US and Canada. Rapid growth has also pushed the IEA to once again
significantly upgrade its renewables forecast, adding an extra 728
gigawatts (GW) of capacity to a five-year estimate it made just a year ago.


This is more than the electricity capacity of Germany and India combined.
The agency attributes this growth to plummeting costs of solar power and
favourable policy regimes, particularly in China. New solar and onshore
wind now provide cheaper electricity than new fossil fuel power plants
almost everywhere, it says, as well as being cheaper than most existing
fossil fuel assets.

 Carbon Brief 12th Jan 2024

Analysis: World will add enough renewables in five years to power US and Canada

January 17, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

State of the Climate: 2023 smashes records for surface temperature and ocean heat

 Last year was the warmest since records began in the mid-1800s – and
likely for many thousands of years before. It was the first year in which
average global temperatures at the surface exceeded 1.5C above
pre-industrial levels in at least one global temperature dataset. Here,
Carbon Brief examines the latest data across the oceans, atmosphere,
cryosphere and surface temperature of the planet.

 Carbon Brief 12th Jan 2024

State of the Climate: 2023 smashes records for surface temperature and ocean heat

January 17, 2024 Posted by | climate change | Leave a comment