Their courage radiates hope in our shared humanity – one that Israel has completely abandoned through its relentless, horrific genocide. With 2023 coming to a close in the most dark and heavy way, the one constant we must hold on to is hope – not giving up is the best gift we can give our Palestinian sisters and brothers. In keeping with this spirit, here are 10 things fueling our determination to continue fighting for peace and justice in 2024:
Palestinians Are the Ones Liberating Us: Nothing has been more inspiring than the bravery of Palestinians facing unimaginable horrors under Israel’s genocidal occupation, with the knowledge that each moment could be their last. When most would give up, their incredible endurance and selflessness is a beacon of hope for all those resisting injustice around the world. Palestinian journalists and doctors have been tragically and mercilessly murdered by Israel, but those who persist are awakening us from our complacency. Not only are they exposing the horrific truth about the deadly occupation of Palestine; but they are also showing that true freedom lies in resistance, and that it is all of us who need liberation from the trappings of a morally bankrupt, capitalist, white supremacist world.
24/7 Worldwide Demands for a Ceasefire: Record-breaking rallies, marches and actions in most of the world’s cities, with over 300,000 people marching in Washington DC for Palestine show the people of the world stand with Palestine. Since Israel’s assault began over two months ago, not a single day has gone by without a protest, march, rally or action demanding a ceasefire. With congressional phone lines clogged with calls for a cease-fire, CODEPINK has been in the halls of Congress with rabbis, doctors, teachers, lawyers and mothers from day one, staging sit-ins, die-ins, hunger strikes, and more. We even managed to confront Genocide Enabler-in-Chief Joe Biden not once but twice this year.
The Kids Are Alright: At almost every defining moment in 2023, young people have been leading the way, showing older generations they will not put up with any more bullsh*t. More than 140 Congressional interns and fellows —in a shining example of bold leadership—have written an open letter accusing Congress of suppressing and ignoring the overwhelming number of constituents calling for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza. “It is genocide,” their letter reads. “There is a clear disconnect between what the American public wants and what their representatives are doing.” Similarly, countless high school and college students across the country are bravely pushing their communities to end complicity in Israel’s genocide, despite threats of surveilance, suspension and expulsion.
Traditional News Declines as Digital Activism Becomes the New News Medium: When traditional news becomes a mouthpiece for genocide, it’s no surprise that viewership will fall. The latest Pew Research reports a third of US young adults get their news on TikTok, where sky-rocketing pro-Palestine hashtags are proving that it’s not only the young people’s platform of choice for news but also for global solidarity. According to TikTok’s official blog, this trend continues across platforms. Instagram reported 5.7M total posts tagged #FreePalestine compared to 214K total posts tagged #standwithIsrael. Similarly, public Facebook data showed 11M total posts tagged #FreePalestine compared to 278K total posts tagged #standwithIsrael……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………more https://www.codepink.org/hopefor2024?recruiter_id=981106
NATO to buy 1,000 Patriot missiles to enhance Allies’ air defences
NATO 3 Jan 24
NATO’s Support and Procurement Agency will support a coalition of Allies, including Germany, the Netherlands, Romania and Spain to procure up to 1,000 Patriot missiles to strengthen their air defences amid Russia’s war against Ukraine. The contract will expand the European production of the missiles, enhancing supply and ensuring the replenishment of Allied stockpiles….
The $5.5 billion contract has been awarded to COMLOG, a joint venture between the US company Raytheon and German company MBDA, located in Schrobenhausen, Germany. The large volume of the order will support the set up of a production facility for Patriot missiles in Germany. ……….. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_221626.htm
Citing “the urgency of Israel’s defensive needs,” the Biden administration on Friday said it would bypass Congress for the second time this month to approve an immediate arms sale to the key Middle East ally as it continues to wage a genocidal war against Gaza.
The Associated Pressreported that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken notified lawmakers of the new emergency determination involving the sale of $147.5 million in equipment including fuses, charges, and primers for 155mm artillery shells that Israel has already purchased from the United States.
The unguided explosive rounds—which Israel is using in heavily populated urban areas—have a “kill radius” of about 50 meters, with shrapnel able to inflict lethal wounds on people hundreds of meters away.
“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to U.S. national interests to ensure Israel is able to defend itself against the threats it faces,” the State Department explained.
The move follows a similar State Department determination on December 9, which expedited 13,000 rounds of tank ammunition to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), whose troops have killed and maimed more than 80,000 Palestinians—mostly women, children, and elders—during 84 days of near-relentless attacks on Gaza.
Some of the deadliest Israeli attacks of the war have been carried out with U.S. weapons, including an October 31 airstrike with 2,000-pound bombs on the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp. More than 120 civilians were killed.
The State Department also said that “we continue to strongly emphasize to the government of Israel that they must not only comply with international humanitarian law, but also take every feasible step to prevent harm to civilians.”
Critics pushed back against that language, with Ibrahim Zabad, a professor of international relations at St. Bonaventure University in upstate New York, asserting on social media that the State Department’s move to bypass Congress “shows the U.S. administration wholeheartedly supports the mass slaughter of Palestinians, their ethnic cleansing, and the demolition of Gaza.”
British journalist Andy Worthington, known for his work chronicling the cases of Guantánamo Bay detainees, asked: “Do they think not enough Palestinian children are being orphaned or killed in Gaza?”
Eli Clifton, a senior researcher at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, noted Blinken’s lamentation Thursday that 2023 “has been an extraordinarily dangerous year for press around the world.” Blinken’s statement did not mention the scores of journalists killed—sometimes allegedly on purpose—by Israeli troops during the war.
The U.S. already gives Israel almost $4 billion in nearly unconditional military aid each year. Since the October 7 Hamas-led attacks and Israel’s retaliatory onslaught, U.S. President Joe Biden has repeatedly affirmed his “unwavering” support for Israel. His administration has blockedmultiple global cease-fire efforts at the United Nations while seeking an additional $14.3 billion in armed assistance for Israel.
While Biden recently decried Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza, he has refused to acknowledge what many international experts have called Israel’s genocide against the people of the besieged strip. Some activists have dubbed him “Genocide Joe.”
On Friday, South Africa filed a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
Hundreds of rights groups and a handful of progressives in the U.S. Congress have implored the Biden administration to suspend military aid to Israel, while others including Democratic lawmakers have called for conditions to be placed on such assistance.
Earlier this month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) led a letter urging Biden to boost oversight of how American arms are used against Palestinian civilians. The letter specifically mentions 155mm artillery shells.
“The IDF has previously used these shells to hit populated areas including neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, shelters, and safe zones, causing a staggering number of civilian deaths,” the senators noted.
According to a Quinnipiac University poll published on December 20, less than half of registered U.S. voters support sending military aid to Israel—an approximately 10-point decrease from the previous month.
All eyes are currently riveted on Israel’s ground war in Gaza, but it’s not too soon to consider what is all too likely once the dust settles — a U.S.-brokered deal to normalize Israeli-Saudi relations. Before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, President Joe Biden had already offered Riyadh a formal defense commitment and civil nuclear energy cooperation including enriching uranium — a process that can bring a state within weeks of acquiring a bomb. American, Israeli, and Saudi officials are still interested in sealing a deal.
This should cause pause. As Eric Gomez and I note in a piece for The Hill, “Improving Saudi-Israeli ties shouldn’t breed nuclear bombs,” Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has repeatedly threatened to build nuclear bombs to counter Iran. If Tehran and Riyadh build the bomb, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Turkey and Egypt — all of which have nuclear technology thanks to cooperation agreements with the U.S. — will want nuclear weapons of their own.
At a minimum, this recommends weighing any U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal more seriously than current U.S. law allows — i.e., with little more than a presidential announcement. Instead, Congress should treat it as deliberately as it would any bilateral trade agreement — i.e., with majority approvals in both houses. This, in turn, would entail hiving off a U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal from whatever Israeli-Saudi normalization package the White House might recommend and considering it separately.
If there’s one thing Blinken and his cohorts understand, it’s that you’re not supposed to describe the evil things you want to do in evil-sounding language. You’ve got to tapdance gracefully around the actual depravity you intend to inflict, uttering flowery prose about humanitarian concerns and compassion for both sides to keep everyone dazzled and hypnotized while the killing machines are quietly rolled out in the background. You’ve got to be eloquent and elusive about your murderousness.
“The United States rejects recent statements from Israeli Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir advocating for the resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza. This rhetoric is inflammatory and irresponsible. We have been told repeatedly and consistently by the Government of Israel, including by the Prime Minister, that such statements do not reflect the policy of the Israeli government. They should stop immediately.
“We have been clear, consistent, and unequivocal that Gaza is Palestinian land and will remain Palestinian land, with Hamas no longer in control of its future and with no terror groups able to threaten Israel. That is the future we seek, in the interests of Israelis and Palestinians, the surrounding region, and the world.”
The offending statements by Ben Gvir and Smotrich promoted the idea of “encouraging” Palestinians to flee Gaza en masse, absurdly referring to this hypothetical outcome as “voluntary migration” despite the fact that Israel has been doing everything in its power to make living in Gaza impossible.
You will note, probably without surprise, that the statement contains nothing but empty scolding. No mention is made of the faintest possibility of any consequence of any kind being brought to bear should Israeli officials continue to openly advocate for eliminating the Palestinian population of Gaza and replacing it with Jewish settlements. This is because the US has no intention of actually doing anything to hinder Israel’s ethnic cleansing agendas.
And make no mistake, that absolutely is Israel’s agenda. The State Department can claim all it wants that “such statements do not reflect the policy of the Israeli government” and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has assured Washington that there are no plans to resettle Palestinians outside of Gaza, but Netanyahu himself has been publicly contradicting this claim with increasing brazenness.
Just last week at a Likud party meeting Netanyahu explicitly said that his government is working on finding countries who would be willing to “absorb” Palestinian refugees from Gaza, claiming that the world is “already discussing the possibilities of voluntary immigration.”
Indeed, it’s fair to say that the extreme-right ministers Ben Gvir and Smotrich are not actually saying anything on this front that is significantly different from what Netanyahu himself has been saying. Bibi’s just a bit more polite about it, with Ben Gvir openly thumbing his nose at the State Department’s remarks saying “we aren’t another star on the American flag” and “facilitating the relocation of hundreds of thousands from Gaza will allow those in the Israeli Gaza border communities to return home and live securely while safeguarding the IDF soldiers.”
In fact, one could easily argue that Netanyahu as well as Ben Gvir and Smotrich have been entirely in alignment with the State Department’s own language on this subject. The idea of “voluntary immigration” does not contradict the position asserted by Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the US vision for Gaza involves “no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza — not now, not after the war.”
Notice Blinken’s careful insertion of the word “forcible” there. His wording makes it clear that the US would only object if Palestinians were actually forced onto ships or marched across the Egyptian border at gunpoint, as middle east analyst Mouin Rabbani recently observed on Twitter:
“Alarm bells should have started ringing in early November when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other Western politicians began insisting there could be ‘no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza’. Rather than rejecting any mass removal of Palestinians, Blinken and colleagues objected only to optically challenging expulsions at gunpoint. The option of ‘voluntary’ displacement by leaving residents of the Gaza Strip with no choice but departure was pointedly left open.”
So contrary to its self-righteous moral posturing, the State Department is not actually upset with Ben Gvir and Smotrich for advocating the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. They’re just upset they said the quiet part out loud.
If there’s one thing Blinken and his cohorts understand, it’s that you’re not supposed to describe the evil things you want to do in evil-sounding language. You’ve got to tapdance gracefully around the actual depravity you intend to inflict, uttering flowery prose about humanitarian concerns and compassion for both sides to keep everyone dazzled and hypnotized while the killing machines are quietly rolled out in the background. You’ve got to be eloquent and elusive about your murderousness. Like Obama.
The US war machine is every bit as depraved as the state of Israel, and the Biden administration is just as culpable for the horrors being unleashed in Gaza as Netanyahu and his goons. Ignore their words and watch their actions. Don’t let them dazzle you with their feigned concern for human rights.
Researchers with the Canadian Museum of Nature say a proposed nuclear waste storage facility upstream could destroy the delicate balance of two endangered species thriving in an Ottawa River cave network.
Last month, the museum’s André Martel lowered his scuba goggles and plunged into what he deemed an “extraordinary” segment of the river around Lac Coulonge east of Pembroke, Ont.
An absence of hydroelectric dams, a fast-flowing current, naturally forming fluvial sand dunes and the country’s longest freshwater cave network have made this an Eden for an endangered, wavy brown mollusc called the Hickorynut mussel.
Martel believes the delicate population of the freshwater mussel has a secret ally in a fish just as enigmatic and just as threatened: the lake sturgeon………………………………………………………………………………………
New facility at Chalk River
Though they don’t yet have the full answer, there is real concern about a proposal to dump nuclear waste near the shoreline upstream in Deep River, Ont.
A consortium led by SNC-Lavalin has proposed a “near surface disposal facility” waste site just one kilometre from the river.
“Let’s be sure that we are aware of what we’re doing, what is at stake,” Martel said.
He said special protection is needed for the 141-kilometre segment of river where the fragile hickorynut and ancient sturgeon are working together to filter silt and bacteria from the water like a massive river kidney.
Katriina Ilves, a Canadian Museum of Nature ichthyologist — a marine biologist who studies different fish species — called the Lac Coulonge-area sturgeon population “an important, and enigmatic species.”
“I would have some concerns over any type of development that would have the potential to lead to contamination of this water system,” she said.
As another major quake struck Japan, the country was still reckoning with the nuclear crisis triggered by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake and a tsunami of 13 years ago.
As Japan assesses the damage from Monday’s major earthquake, it is still reckoning with the devastating nuclear crisis triggered by an quake nearly 13 years ago, one that placed the name of Fukushima on par with Chernobyl’s and traumatized the nation.
In March 2011, an 8.9-magnitude earthquake and a tsunami devastated the northeast coast of Japan and knocked out cooling systems at three of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant’s reactors, causing a triple meltdown that spewed radioactive fallout over large swaths of land around it.
The quake and tsunami killed more than 19,000 people, and the nuclear calamity, one of history’s worst, raised alarms around the world. Tens of thousands of people were evacuated from towns and farming villages around the plant, and a decade later some still had not returned.
The cleanup of the area around the Fukushima plant is still in an early phase. The government said the treated radioactive wastewater that was used to cool nuclear fuel rods would likely be released over a period of 30 years.
Last summer, the government announced that it would start releasing the treated water into the ocean. The International Atomic Energy Agency declared that the government’s plan had met the agency’s safety standards, but it still raised objections from some scientists, anxiety among fishermen who feared it would hurt their business, and tensions with the Chinese and South Korean governments.
All of Japan’s nuclear reactors were shut after the 2011 crisis, and much of its nuclear power program remains shuttered.
A devastating earthquake hit central Japan today with a preliminary magnitude of 7.6, prompting mass evacuations – in what will have been a chilling reminder for the country of its tsunami disaster in 2011.
A total of 21 quakes above 4.0 magnitude rang out shortly after 4pm local time (7am UK time) today, and videos shared on social media and broadcast on Japanese TV showed how buildings collapsed in Suzu, a city close to the epicentre of the largest quake, with huge cracks appearing in roads.
Other clips showed terrified shoppers thrown to the ground in department stores and flooding at a train station after water pipes burst, as tsunami waves began lashing the coastlines.
For many, it will have been a painful reminder of when tragedy struck on March 11, 2011…………………………………………………………………………………….
The ensuing meltdown of three of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant’s reactors blanketed nearby areas with radiation, rendering some towns uninhabitable for years and displacing tens of thousands of residents.
Seawater flooded electrical grids in the area, and took out many of the power plant’s backup generators.
This meant there was no energy to cool down the reactors, leading to a catastrophic meltdown.
Heat built up, and hydrogen gas was generated, accumulating in the upper part of the refuelling hall.
Upon ignition, the roof of the refuelling hall exploded, spreading radioactive material everywhere.
Everyone within a 12 mile radius was evacuated, and the tens of thousands of people who left fearing radiation are still displaced. Around two percent of Fukushima remains off-limits.
Previously classified papers detail how the US embassy in Canberra responded to WikiLeaks’ release of embassy cables in 2010 and ‘sensationalist’ local media
American officials monitored pro-Assange protests in Australia for “anti-US sentiment”, warned of “increasing sympathy, particularly on the left” for the WikiLeaks founder in his home country and derided local media’s “sensationalist” reporting of the explosive 2010 cable leaks, previously classified records show.
Documents released by the US state department via freedom of information laws give new insight into how the US embassy in Canberra and its security team reacted to WikiLeaks’ release of 250,000 embassy cables in late 2010.
They show the embassy’s regional security office (RSO) monitoring and reporting on pro-WikiLeaks rallies held across Australian capital cities, feeding information to Washington via the embassy……………………………………………………………………………….
The embassy was particularly critical of Australian media’s reporting of cables that showed the US government was closely watching the rise of the then deputy prime minister, Julia Gillard……………………………………………………………………………………
The cable is the result of a lengthy, expensive FoI battle by Maurizi, supported by the Logan Foundation and her lawyers, Lauren Russell and Alia Smith. She said it provided “indisputable evidence that the U.S. diplomacy’s Regional Security Office (RSO) in Canberra was monitoring the peaceful protests in support of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks in December 2010, as WikiLeaks had just started publishing the most important cables on Australia”.
“We know that the Regional Security Office protects U.S. diplomatic facilities, personnel and information, which is a legitimate activity, at the same time, one wonders what kind of monitoring activities were devised against peaceful protesters: were they identified? Were they intercepted? Were their donations to WikiLeaks tracked?” she said. “These are important questions, considering that we now know that later on, in 2017, Julian Assange, his wife, Stella … the WikiLeaks journalists, lawyers, doctors, and even we media partners were subjected to unprecedented spying activities inside the Ecuadorian embassy.”
The Italian journalist first filed an FoI request in February 2018, but it was ignored for two years, prompting her to sue the US state department.
She has filed similar FoI requests across the world, including in Australia, which she described as “the worst jurisdiction on earth when it comes to FOIA [Freedom of Information Act]”………………………………………..
Water from the fuel pools at the top floors of the No. 7 and No. 2 reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture spilled over due to strong earthquakes, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc. announced Monday. No damage or leakage out of the buildings was confirmed.
No further details on damage to people or the environment were immediately available
Nuclear Waste Management Organization has stated that they will put to a vote in two communities, Ignace/Wabagoon First Nation and South Bruce/Saugeen Ojibway Nation, for a permanent burial of nuclear waste.
I have been following this search for a burial place for nuclear waste since the early 1980s when Atomic Energy of Canada was in charge of the process. The planning and testing the concept of burial of nuclear waste goes back to the 1960s with drilling in Northern Manitoba. Manitoba has a High-Level Nuclear Waste Act, which states that there will be no storage of any nuclear waste that was not produced in Manitoba.
The site proposed to burial this nuclear waste is half way between Ignace and Dryden, but people in Dryden will not be given the option to vote on this waste site. When there is a leak (not if) the water flow will go into the Wabagoon water system, though to Dryden, Kenora and parts of Manitoba before heading north to Hudson Bay and south to Minnesota.
Do any of the people who will be affected have a vote on this nuclear waste site?
No.
When there is a nuclear accident with a transport moving this waste, we have no knowledge on how long the highway will be closed. We are not talking about a transport truck moving Amazon packages or a logging truck that closes down the highway for 12 hours, we could be talking weeks.
When there is an accident, and your home is contaminated, your insurance policy is null and void. If you read the fine print in your policy, it clearly stated that in case of a nuclear incident you are not covered.
You and everyone who is on the route to move this nuclear waste through Northwestern Ontario is in danger of losing everything you have worked so hard for. But you don’t have a vote because the Nuclear Waste Management Organization has rigged the system on who is allowed to say yes or no.
If this was great jobs and a safe option, do you honestly think that Southern Ontario would allow it to be buried in Northern Ontario? The answer would be no, they would be fighting to keep the jobs down in the South. But they got all the nuclear power, all the jobs, all the spin off jobs, and now they want to “Share” by giving us the hole.
We all know now that Israel can do no wrong, for it is blessed with immunity for being the eternal victim. For Israel, Hitler is the gift that keeps on giving.
We all know that the USA is complicit in the crimes, rushing more and more PMGs to Israel so it will never run short in its precise bombing of important military targets, such as churches, hospitals, schools, mosques, universities, and ordinary homes and residential high-rises.
We all know that no matter how many UN “emergency” meetings are held to rein in Israel’s bloodlust, no matter how many resolutions voted on, the bombs will continue to fall, because Israel can kill as many Palestinians as it wants. There is no one to stop them.
No one seems to know, let alone care, that all the people of Gaza (2.2 million)—not just some—cannot get enough to eat each and every day, and mass starvation is happening right now.
The usual response among most people in the West is—both sides are the same (meaning, Israelis and Palestinians); they both lie and cheat and murder, it’s hard to know where the truth lies. We should worry about our own countries.
If that were true, then why is it that as of now there is only side that has had over 8,000 bombed to pieces? That has had killed nearly 30,000, and left 55,000 people injured? That has had the only place given them to live turned into a wasteland? Why is it that ordinary citizens of one side have been heavily armed with the latest weapons, while those of the other side buy what they can on the black market?
Why is it that one side is well-fed and will not be worrying about food and water, while the other side must starve it out?
How exactly are both sides the same? How is it that both sides lie, cheat and kill?
Then the argument is made that Palestine and Israel are so far away. Let them fight it out. I have other things to worry about.
If that were true, then what about February 2022, when the entire West went into a paroxysm of Russphobia (which still shows little signs of abating), and you couldn’t go to get some milk without being told to to help the poor Ukrainians who were bring “brutally invaded” by the “dictator” Putin, etc.
Why was Ukraine not so far away, then—but Palestine is now so far away? Why was it so easy to care for one side and hate the other in 2022, but now we must be neutral?
Where is the International Criminal Court, which could not issue an arrest warrant for President Putin fast enough, but which now can see no crimes being committed in Gaza by Netanyahu and his ilk?…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
why does Israel slaughter Palestinians with impunity? Because Western powerbrokers and their ruling class have chosen Israel to play the role both of victim and “hero” of civilization. To that end, Palestinians (and Muslims generally) have been assigned the role of “villain,” who can only move from one outrage to the next atrocity. Just imagine the negative press if Zionism were a Muslim invention. In this way, “our values,” the “international rules-based order,” Western “civilization” are stood up against “barbarism.” When Israel kills babies, it kills for our good, for our “civilization,” for “our values.” We, in the West, are the beneficiaries of the “heroic” slaughter by the gallant IDF. Just as all those dead Ukrainians have let us keep our “democracy” and our “freedom.”
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