Trump’s Cabinet Picks Aren’t Looking Good For Peace In Ukraine
Caitlin Johnstone, Nov 25, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/trumps-cabinet-picks-arent-looking?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=152120142&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Conventional wisdom about the outgoing Biden administration’s reckless escalations in Ukraine these past few days is that things will cool down once Donald Trump takes office, but Trump’s cabinet picks aren’t really selling this idea.
While Trump did campaign on ending the war in Ukraine, the president elect has given multiple cabinet appointments to strategists who say that the way to achieve that peace is to substantially escalate aggressions against Russia. Michael Tracey has been doing a great job compiling footage of Trump’s recent cabinet picks advocating extreme measures which happen to be in perfect alignment with the nuclear brinkmanship of the demented outgoing president and his handlers.
Sebastian Gorka, who Trump has named as his next senior director for counterterrorism, is on record saying that Trump has told him he plans on saying to Putin, “You will negotiate now or the aid that we have given to Ukraine thus far will look like peanuts.”
Mike Waltz, who Trump has selected as his next national security advisor, promotes a similar vision. Waltz says Russia can be pressured to come to the negotiating table via increased energy sanctions combined with “taking the handcuffs off of the long-range weapons we provided Ukraine.” Biden has since removed those very “handcuffs” by authorizing Kyiv to use US-supplied long-range missiles to attack Russia.
If it seems like these remarks from Trump’s incoming administration work very nicely with the actions of the outgoing administration, then you may find it interesting that Waltz just told Fox News Sunday that the two administrations are working “hand in glove” as the presidency changes over.
“Jake Sullivan and I have had discussions, we’ve met,” Waltz said. “For our adversaries out there that think this is a time of opportunity, that they can play one administration off the other — they are wrong. We are hand in glove. We are one team with the United States in this transition.”
This would seem to be an oblique reference to Russia specifically, since that’s the only US adversary with any hope that the incoming administration might be a bit less hawkish toward it than the outgoing one, and since years of mass media coverage went into spinning narratives about Trump being a pawn of Vladimir Putin.
But Trump was never a pawn of Vladimir Putin. Contrary to the narratives of both Democrat-aligned punditry and Republican-aligned punditry while he was in office, Trump spent his entire term ramping up cold war aggressions against Russia which helped pave the way to the war and brinkmanship we are seeing in Ukraine today. Tracey recently shared an audio clip of Gorka on X Spaces back in January 2023 exuberantly boasting about the way Trump ordered the US military to kill hundreds of Russian mercenaries in Syria in 2018. Putin himself cited the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty in 2019 when defending his decision to hit Ukraine with a new type of intermediate-range missile the other day in response to its use of US- and UK-supplied long-range missiles to strike inside Russia.
Other cabinet appointments who have taken extremely hawkish positions on Russia include secretary of state nominee Marco Rubio, secretary of defense nominee Pete Hegseth, CIA director nominee John Ratcliffe, and National Security Council appointee Doug Burgum. But it’s those comments from Waltz and Gorka which I find most concerning, because they explicitly refer to escalatory strategies that Trump might employ once he takes office.
This all comes out as we get news that US and European officials recently discussed providing nuclear weapons to Ukraine under the gamble that Putin will not escalate against the west before Trump takes office. The more aligned the Trump administration’s posture toward Russia appears to be with that of the Biden administration, the less safe a gamble this appears to be.
It seems likely that the Trump administration will end the Ukraine proxy war at some point down the road in order to reallocate those resources toward preparation for war with Iran and/or China. But it is not at all clear that this will happen soon enough before soaring escalations spin out of control into the single worst-case scenario that could possibly unfold on this planet.
Israel Has Killed Over 1,000 Doctors and Nurses in Gaza
“These people, they target everyone, but I swear, this will not stop us from continuing our humanitarian work,” said a Gaza hospital director injured in an Israeli strike.
Jessica Corbett, Nov 24, 2024, https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-has-killed-over-1000-doctors-and-nurses-in-gaza
More than 1,000 doctors and nurses are among at least 44,211 people killed in Israel’s 13-month assault on the Gaza Strip, officials in the Hamas-governed Palestinian enclave said Sunday.
“Over 310 other medical personnel were arrested, tortured, and executed in prisons,” Gaza’s Government Media Office also said in a statement, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency. “The Israeli army also prevented the entry of medical supplies, health delegations, and hundreds of surgeons into Gaza.”
“Hospitals have been a declared target for the Israeli army, which bombed, besieged, and stormed them, killing doctors and nurses, injuring others after directly targeting them,” the office said. The statement came after the director of the main partially functioning hospital in northern Gaza was injured in an Israeli strike.
Hussam Abu Safiyeh is the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital—which, according toAl Jazeera, Israeli forces have repeatedly attacked, damaging “the facility’s generators, fuel tanks, and main oxygen station.”
The wounded director said: “These people, they target everyone, but I swear, this will not stop us from continuing our humanitarian work. We will keep on providing this service no matter what it costs us.”
Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, in addition to killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, Israeli forces have injured at least 104,567 others. Along with attacking hospitals, they have destroyed many homes, schools, and religious sites, and displaced most of the enclave’s 2.3 million people.
More than 1,000 doctors and nurses are among at least 44,211 people killed in Israel’s 13-month assault on the Gaza Strip, officials in the Hamas-governed Palestinian enclave said Sunday.
“Over 310 other medical personnel were arrested, tortured, and executed in prisons,” Gaza’s Government Media Office also said in a statement, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency. “The Israeli army also prevented the entry of medical supplies, health delegations, and hundreds of surgeons into Gaza.”
“Hospitals have been a declared target for the Israeli army, which bombed, besieged, and stormed them, killing doctors and nurses, injuring others after directly targeting them,” the office said. The statement came after the director of the main partially functioning hospital in northern Gaza was injured in an Israeli strike.
Hussam Abu Safiyeh is the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital—which, according toAl Jazeera, Israeli forces have repeatedly attacked, damaging “the facility’s generators, fuel tanks, and main oxygen station.”
The wounded director said: “These people, they target everyone, but I swear, this will not stop us from continuing our humanitarian work. We will keep on providing this service no matter what it costs us.”
Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, in addition to killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, Israeli forces have injured at least 104,567 others. Along with attacking hospitals, they have destroyed many homes, schools, and religious sites, and displaced most of the enclave’s 2.3 million people.
Israel—which has been armed by the Biden administration and bipartisan U.S. Congress—faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice over its conduct in Gaza. Additionally, the International Criminal Court earlier this week issued arrest warrants for Israel’s current prime minister and former defense minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri.
Last month, 99 U.S. healthcare providers who have volunteered in Gaza since last fall sent U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris a letter detailing “the massive human toll from Israel’s attack” and urging them to “end this madness now!”
“It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza’s population,” the Americans wrote. “With only marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both. This includes every national aid worker, every international volunteer, and probably every Israeli hostage: every man, woman, and child.”
“We quickly learned that our Palestinian healthcare colleagues were among the most traumatized people in Gaza, and perhaps in the entire world,” they continued. “All were acutely aware that their work as healthcare providers had marked them as targets for Israel. This makes a mockery of the protected status hospitals and healthcare providers are granted under the oldest and most widely accepted provisions of international humanitarian law.”
They added that “we wish to be absolutely clear: Not once did any of us see any type of Palestinian militant activity in any of Gaza’s hospitals or other healthcare facilities. We urge you to see that Israel has systematically and deliberately devastated Gaza’s entire healthcare system, and that Israel has targeted our colleagues in Gaza for torture, disappearance, and murder.”
Despite such appeals and accounts, the outgoing Biden-Harris administration has declined to cut off weapons to the Israeli government and earlier this week most U.S. senators from both major parties rejected a trio of resolutions from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that would have blocked some American arms sales to Israel.
Zoom Webinar 6 December – US mid-range weapons in Germany
WEBINAR. Date & Time Dec 6, 2024 04:00 AM in time zone Etc/GMT-10 7:00 pm Berlin time, 1:00 pm Washington, D.C. time, 10:00 am California time.
On the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington D.C., on July 20, 2024, US President Biden and German Chancellor Scholz announced a major bilateral agreement: “The United States will begin episodic deployments of the long-range fires capabilities of its Multi-Domain Task Force in Germany in 2026, as part of planning for enduring stationing of these capabilities in the future.” What is behind the introduction of US long-range conventional missiles in Germany? What role do such conventional strike weapons play in US war planning? What are the escalation risks of the planned deployment? And why are many Germans more than worried? Three international experts will address these questions and more:
Jürgen Scheffran, Professor (ret.) at Hamburg University, is a co-founder of Abolition 2000 Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons and has worked on arms race dynamics with a focus on ballistic and cruise missiles and missile defense systems since the 1980s.
Dan Plesch, Professor of Diplomacy and Strategy at SOAS University of London, is the co-author with Manuel Galileo of the recent report “Masters of the Air: Strategic stability and conventional strike”.
Regina Hagen, spokesperson of the German network “atomwaffenfrei.jetzt” (nuclear-weapons-free now) and a member of the Coordinating Committee of Abolition 2000, is co-founder of the new campaign “Friedensfähig statt erstschlagfähig” that, calls for an immediate halt of the planned deployment.
Andrew Lichterman, a lawyer and policy analyst at the Western States Legal Foundation and a member of the Coordinating Committees of Abolition 2000 and the U.S.-based network United for Peace and Justice, will moderate the discussion.
What: Zoom webinar
When: December 5, 2024, 7:00 pm Berlin time, 1:00 pm Washington, D.C. time, 10:00 am California time.
White House finally confirms greenlight for deep Russia strikes
https://www.rt.com/news/608194-us-admits-russia-strikes/ 25 Nov 24
Ukraine can use ATACMS to strike in the vicinity of Kursk Region, John Kirby has said
Washington on Monday officially confirmed a well-flagged policy change allowing Ukraine to strike inside Russia using US-supplied ATACMS missiles.
Numerous international officials have spoken about the change in stance over the past week. While US President Joe Biden and his administration remained silent, Kiev fired a volley of ATACMS projectiles at Russia’s Bryansk Region last Monday.
“They are able to use ATACMS to defend themselves in an immediate-need basis,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters at a White House briefing on Monday.
“We did change the guidance and gave them guidance that they can use them to strike these particular types of targets,” Kirby said, referring to the Ukrainian attacks “in and around Kursk.”
The US and its allies have provided increasingly powerful weapons systems to Kiev since 2022, while maintaining that it does not make them a party to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Ukraine’s use of long-range weapons would change the character of the hostilities and make NATO a direct participant. He explained that weapons such as the ATACMS or the UK-supplied Storm Shadow cannot be deployed by Kiev’s forces without the participation of NATO military personnel.
Moscow’s response came last Thursday, when a brand-new hypersonic ballistic missile, the Oreshnik, was used against the Yuzhmash military-industrial complex in Dnepropetrovsk. Putin called it a “combat test” of the new weapon and said such tests would continue depending on circumstances.
Iran to hold nuclear talks with France, Germany, UK
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/24/iran-to-meet-with-germany-france-uk-in-nuclear-talks
The meeting follows an IAEA resolution denouncing Iran for what it called a lack of cooperation.
Iran says it will hold nuclear talks with officials from France, Germany, and the United Kingdom this week, amid escalating tensions over Iran’s nuclear programme.
The meeting, which is set to happen on Friday, was announced by Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Sunday, and UK officials confirmed the meeting.
“A range of regional and international issues, including the issues of Palestine and Lebanon, as well as the nuclear issue, will be discussed,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said.
Neither London nor Tehran said where the meeting would take place.
On Thursday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) adopted a resolution denouncing Iran for what it called a lack of cooperation. The three European nations, whose representatives will meet Iranian officials, were among those voting for the resolution.
Nineteen countries out of the 35-member IAEA voted to censure Iran – a largely symbolic gesture – while 12 countries abstained. Russia, China, and Burkina Faso voted against the resolution. Thursday’s resolution marked the third time the United Nations body had taken such action since 2020.
The move came as tensions ran high over Iran’s nuclear programme, which critics fear is aimed at developing a nuclear weapon – something Tehran has repeatedly denied.
On Friday, Iran announced a “series of new and advanced centrifuges”, technology that refines enriched uranium into gas. “We will substantially increase the enrichment capacity with the utilisation of different types of advanced machines,” Behrouz Kamalvandi, Iran’s atomic energy organisation spokesman, told Iranian state TV.
Despite the announcement, Iran said it would continue to cooperate with the IAEA.
“We remain committed to taking every diplomatic step to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, including through snapback if necessary,” the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office told the AFP news agency.
In 2015, Iran reached an agreement with world powers, including the United States, to curb its nuclear programme due to concerns about the country potentially developing nuclear weapons.
But in 2018, during President Donald Trump’s first term, the US unilaterally withdrew from the agreement and imposed sanctions on Iran – a move that stoked tensions between Washington and Tehran.
Since then, Tehran has scaled back its cooperation with the IAEA, deactivating surveillance devices put in place by the UN. Concurrently, Iran has increased its stockpile of enriched uranium.
Iran has “begun implementation of preparatory measures” to cap its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. According to leaked reports from the IAEA, Iran is close to the 90 percent threshold needed to produce a nuclear warhead.
Christian Nationalism Marches on With ‘Bible-Infused’ Texas Curriculum
“What we’re seeing here in Texas with these lessons is a larger national push to promote the idea that American identity and Christian identity are woven together, are one in the same,” said one professor.
Jessica Corbett, Nov 22, 2024, Common Dreams
Parents, teachers, and other critics of Christian nationalism were outraged by a Texas board’s Friday vote to approve a “Bible-infused” curriculum for elementary school students—part of a broader right-wing push to force Christianity into public education.
“They chose politics over what’s best for students, promoting an evangelical Christian religious perspective and undermining the freedom of families to direct the religious education of their own children,” declared the Texas Freedom Network, accusing the State Board of Education (SBOE) of ignoring warnings from religious studies experts, national media attention, and overwhelming negative feedback from the people they’re elected to serve.”
Like a preliminary vote Tuesday, eight of the SBOE’s 15 members voted to approve Bluebonnet Learning, instructional materials proposed by the Texas Education Agency. Three Republicans joined all four Democrats in opposing the curriculum. The deciding vote in favor of it was cast by Leslie Recine, a Republican recently appointed by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott to temporarily fill a vacant seat.
“In a state as diverse as Texas, home to millions of people from countless faiths and beliefs, the Texas Republicans on the State Board of Education voted to incorporate Biblical teachings into the state curriculum—completely undermining religious freedom,” said Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa in a statement after the final vote.
“This move has ultimately violated parents’ rights to guide their children’s faith while presenting teachers with additional needless challenges,” Hinojosa argued. “Our public schools should be focused on equipping students with the education and skills they need to succeed beyond grade school whether it’s pursuing a higher education or entering the workforce. The teaching of religious doctrine should stay in our places of worship where it belongs.”
Although the curriculum isn’t required, The Texas Tribunereported, “the state will offer an incentive of $60 per student to districts that adopt the lessons, which could appeal to some as schools struggle financially after several years without a significant raise in state funding.”
“Christian nationalists have bought their way into every governing body of the state, including the SBOE. And they will not stop with inserting Biblical content in English textbooks.”
Bluebonnet Learning features lessons from Christianity in reading and language arts materials for kindergarten through fifth grade………………………
Zeph Capo, president of the Texas arm of the American Federation of Teachers, urged districts “to resist the dollars dangled before them and refuse to use Bluebonnet Learning materials,” arguing that they violate the code of ethics for the state’s educators and “the separation of church and state by infusing lessons with Bible-based references more appropriate for Sunday Schools than public schools.”…………………………………………………………………….
Noting the current “moment of profound political division,” the union leader added that the vote “is the latest evidence that Christian nationalists have bought their way into every governing body of the state, including the SBOE. And they will not stop with inserting Biblical content in English textbooks. We can anticipate what will come next, whether that’s the erasure of contributions of marginalized populations in social studies or the minimalization of climate change in science.
The curriculum push coincides with an SBOE effort to restrict library materials. The ACLU of Texas said on social media that “the same politicians censoring what students can read now want to impose state-sponsored religion onto our public schools.”
The Tribunereported Thursday that “10 members on the board responsible for determining what Texas’ 5.5 million public schoolchildren learn in the classroom voted to call on the Texas Legislature, which convenes in January, to pass a state law granting them authority to determine what books are appropriate for school-age children.
Earlier this week, Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University, toldFox 4 that he supports teaching religion in public schools, but in a fair and unbiased way, and he doesn’t agree with the state proposal…………………………………………………………..
At the federal level, Trump—who is set to return to the White House in January—has advocated for dismantling the U.S. Department of Education. For now, he has named Linda McMahon, a former wrestling executive accused of enabling sexual abuse of children, as his pick for education secretary. https://www.commondreams.org/news/christianity-in-schools?utm_source=Common+Dreams&utm_campaign=08cb74510b-Weekend+Edition%3A+Sun.+11%2F24%2F24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-3b949b3e19-600558179
Huge COP29 climate deal too little too late, poorer nations say
Richer countries have promised to raise their funding to help poorer
countries fight climate change to a record $300bn (£238bn) a year, but the
deal has come under criticism from the developing world.
The talks at the UN climate summit COP29 in Azerbaijan ran 33 hours late, and came within
inches of collapse. The agreement falls well short of the $1.3tr developing
countries were pushing for. The African Group of Negotiators described the
final pledge as “too little, too late”, while the representative from India
dismissed the money as “a paltry sum”.
But after two weeks of often bitter
negotiations in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, poorer nations did not stand
in the way of a deal. Five key takeaways from COP29 climate talks. The
promise of more money is a recognition that developing nations bear a
disproportionate burden from climate change, but also have historically
contributed the least to climate change.
BBC 24th Nov 2024, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd0gx4przejo
Mystery drone spotted over British aircraft carrier
A mystery drone has been spotted following a British aircraft carrier at
sea after unmanned aerial vehicles were seen hovering over three air bases
in England.
An unidentified 1.5 by 1.5 metre drone appeared to tail the
Royal Navy flagship HMS Queen Elizabeth as it entered the port of Hamburg,
in Germany, on Friday. The German military positioned guards around the
port and attempted to target the drone with HP-47 jammers before it flew
away, the German newspaper Bild reported.
On Saturday, the US Air Force
also revealed that “small unmanned aerial systems” flew over RAF
Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall, in Suffolk, as well as RAF Feltwell, in
Norfolk, last week.
Telegraph 24th Nov 2024, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/11/24/russia-ukraine-zelensky-putin-war-latest-news58/
Iran deploys advanced centrifuges in defiance of IAEA resolution
Iran has begun deploying advanced centrifuges which enrich uranium for the
country’s nuclear program in response to a resolution by the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) calling for greater transparency
into Iran’s nuclear activities.
Speaking during an open session of
parliament on Sunday, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf criticized the resolution,
accusing the United States and European nations of using Iran’s nuclear
program as a pretext for unjustified actions. He said, “The Islamic
Republic of Iran’s reciprocal response to this political misuse of the
Board of Governors was immediately put into action, and the deployment of a
set of new and advanced centrifuges has begun”.
Iran International 24th Nov 2024,
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202411240306
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