Journalists Demand Blinken Back Israel Arms Embargo
August 16, 2024 https://scheerpost.com/2024/08/16/journalists-demand-blinken-back-israel-arms-embargo/
The following letter was delivered to the State Department on Thursday morning with a request to meet with the Secretary of State.
August 15, 2024
Dear Secretary Blinken,
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed more than 160 Palestinian journalists. This is the largest recorded number of journalists killed in any war. While Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of the densely populated Gaza means no civilians are safe, Israel has also been repeatedly documented deliberately targeting journalists.
Israel’s military actions are not possible without U.S. weapons, U.S. military aid, and U.S. diplomatic support. By providing the weapons being used to deliberately kill journalists, you are complicit in one of the gravest affronts to press freedom today.
On World Press Freedom Day this year, you called on “every nation to do more to protect journalists,” and reiterated your “unwavering support for free and independent media around the world.”
As journalists, publications and press freedom groups in solidarity with the courageous Palestinian journalists of Gaza, we call on you to do more to protect journalists and show unwavering support for free and independent media by supporting an arms embargo against Israel.
Israel has gone to great lengths to suppress media coverage of its war in Gaza, imposing military censorship on both its own journalists and international reporters operating in the country; and, with Egypt’s help, blocking all foreign journalists from Gaza.
Israel shut down Al Jazeera, raided its office, seized its equipment, and blocked its broadcasts and website within Israel. The world relies only on the Palestinian journalists in Gaza to report the truth about the war and Israel’s widespread violations of international law.1
Israel’s deliberate targeting of these journalists seems intended to impose a near blackout on coverage of its assault on Gaza. Investigations by United Nations bodies, NGOs, and media organizations, have all found instances of deliberate targeting of journalists.
In a joint statement, five U.N. special rapporteurs declared:
“We have received disturbing reports that, despite being clearly identifiable in jackets and helmets marked “press” or traveling in well-marked press vehicles, journalists have come under attack, which would seem to indicate that the killings, injury, and detention are a deliberate strategy by Israeli forces to obstruct the media and silence critical reporting.”3
Israel has also killed journalists during the war outside of Gaza, such as on October 13, 2023 when an Israeli tank fired across the Lebanese border at clearly identified press, killing a Reuters reporter and injuring six other journalists.4
Under international law, the intentional targeting of journalists is a war crime.5 While all governments are bound by international law protecting reporters, U.S. domestic law also prohibits the State Department from providing assistance to units of foreign security forces credibly accused of gross violations of human rights.6 Israel’s well-documented pattern of extrajudicial executions of journalists is a gross violation of human rights.
Additionally, the First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects the American people’s right to receive information and ideas.7 Israel’s deliberate targeting of journalists follows a longstanding pattern by the Israeli government to suppress truthful reporting on its treatment of Palestinians and its war in Gaza. By providing Israel with the weapons used to kill journalists, the State Department is abetting Israel’s violent suppression of journalism.
The U.S. is providing the weapons Israel continually uses to target Palestinian journalists in Gaza. This is a violation of International law and U.S. domestic law. We urge you to immediately cease the transfer of all weapons to Israel.
Signed,
113 journalists
20 news outlets
7 press freedom organizations
Journalists – a long list of names here
Press Freedom Organizations – a long list
‘The dumbest climate conversation of all time’: experts on the Musk-Trump interview
Trump talked about ‘nuclear warming’ while Musk said the only reason to quit fossil fuels is that their supply is finite
Oliver Milman, Wed 14 Aug 2024 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/13/trump-musk-x-climate
Donald Trump and Elon Musk both made discursive, often fact-free assertions about global heating, including that rising sea levels would create “more oceanfront property” and that there was no urgent need to cut carbon emissions, during an event labeled “the dumbest climate conversation of all time” by one prominent activist.
Trump, the Republican US presidential nominee, and Musk, the world’s richest person, dwelled on the problem of the climate crisis during their much-hyped conversation on X, formerly known as Twitter and owned by Musk, on Monday, agreeing that the world has plenty of time to move away from fossil fuels, if at all.
“You sort of can’t get away from it at this moment,” Trump said of fossil fuels. “I think we have, you know, perhaps hundreds of years left. Nobody really knows.” The former US president added that rising sea levels, caused by melting glaciers, would have the benefit of creating “more oceanfront property”.
Trump, who famously once called the climate crisis a “hoax”, also said it is a “disgrace” that Joe Biden’s administration did not open up a vast Arctic wilderness in Alaska to oil drilling, claimed baselessly that farmers are having to give up their cattle because of climate edicts and that a far greater threat is posed by the prospect of nuclear war.
“The one thing that I don’t understand is that people talk about global warming or they talk about climate change, but they never talk about nuclear warming,” Trump pondered during the exchange.
Musk, meanwhile, said it was wrong to “vilify” the oil and gas industry, the key driver of planet-heating pollution, and that the only imperative to ditch fossil fuels was that they will one day run dry.
“If we were to stop using oil and gas right now, we would all be starving and the economy would collapse,” said Musk, who is also chief executive of the electric car company Tesla. “We do over time want to move to a sustainable energy economy because eventually you do run out of oil and gas.
“We still have quite a bit of time … we don’t need to rush and we don’t need to like, you know, stop farmers from farming or, you know, prevent people from having steaks or basic stuff like that. Like, leave the farmers alone.”
Musk said the main danger of allowing carbon dioxide to build up in the atmosphere was that at some point it will become difficult to breathe, causing “headaches and nausea” to people. This would occur with CO2 at about 1,000 parts per million of the Earth’s atmosphere, more than double the current record-breaking concentrations.
Scientists have been clear that current global temperatures are hotter than at any point in human civilization, and probably long before this time too, which is causing mounting disastrous impacts in terms of heatwaves, droughts, floods and the destruction of the natural world.
Governments have agreed to restrain the global temperatures rise to 1.5C above the preindustrial era, with researchers warning of cascading catastrophes beyond this point. The world faces the steep task of rapidly cutting emissions in half this decade, and then to net zero by 2050, to avoid these worst impacts.
Despite Trump’s claims of new beaches, sea levels are rising faster along the US coastline than the global average, with up to 1ft of sea level rise expected in the next 30 years – an increase that equals the total rise seen over the past century, US government scientists have found.
Instances of significant flooding have risen by 50% since the 1990s, with millions of Americans set to be affected as homes, highways and other infrastructure are inundated. In Florida, where Trump has his own coastal property at Mar-a-Lago, several insurers have decided to exit the state due to the increasing costs of flooding from the rising seas and fiercer storms.
Trump and Musk’s discussion on the climate crisis, therefore, “spelunked down into entirely new levels of stupidity”, according to Bill McKibben, a veteran climate activist and co-founder of 350.org. McKibben wrote it was “the dumbest climate conversation of all time”.
“The damaging impacts of climate change, and in particular from more extreme weather events, such as wildfires, floods, heatwaves, more intense hurricanes, are actually in many respects exceeding the predictions made just a decade ago,” said Michael Mann, a leading climate scientist and author. “It is sad that Elon Musk has become a climate change denier, but that’s what he is. He’s literally denying what the science has to say here.”
Mann said that if CO2 levels get so high breathing becomes difficult, then the impacts of the climate crisis “will be so devastating as to have already caused societal collapse. It’s actually Elon’s ill-informed and ill-premised statements that are causing headaches and nausea.”
Mann added that Trump’s statement that sea level rise will lead to more oceanfront property “does not betray a lack of understanding of climate physics. It betrays a lack of understanding of grade school geometry.”
During his election campaigning, Trump has routinely denigrated electric vehicles but has recently changed his stance towards them after an endorsement from Musk, who previously described himself as a moderate Democrat.
Trump, the former president convicted of 34 felonies, has vowed to undo the “lunacy” of Biden’s climate policies should he return to the White House, with his presidency expected to unleash a glut of new oil and gas drilling, accelerate gas exports and remove the US, once again, from the Paris climate agreement.
‘Massive disinformation campaign’ is slowing global transition to green energy
UN says a global ‘backlash’ against climate action is being stoked by fossil fuel companies
Fiona Harvey Environment editor, Thu 8 Aug 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/08/fossil-fuel-industry-using-disinformation-campaign-to-slow-green-transition-says-un
Fossil fuel companies are running “a massive mis- and disinformation campaign” so that countries will slow down the adoption of renewable energy and the speed with which they “transition away” from a carbon-intensive economy, the UN has said.
Selwin Hart, the assistant secretary general of the UN, said that talk of a global “backlash” against climate action was being stoked by the fossil fuel industry, in an effort to persuade world leaders to delay emissions-cutting policies. The perception among many political observers of a rejection of climate policies was a result of this campaign, rather than reflecting the reality of what people think, he added.
“There is this prevailing narrative – and a lot of it is being pushed by the fossil fuel industry and their enablers – that climate action is too difficult, it’s too expensive,” he said. “It is absolutely critical that leaders, and all of us, push back and explain to people the value of climate action, but also the consequences of climate inaction.”
He contrasted the perception of a backlash with the findings of the biggest poll ever conducted on the climate, which found clear majorities of people around the world supporting measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The survey found 72% of people wanted a “quick transition” away from fossil fuels, including majorities in the countries that produce the most coal, oil and gas. Green parties and plans may have suffered reverses in some parts of the world, he said, but in others they have gained seats, and seen policies that would once have been considered radical enter the mainstream.
Governments must take note, said Hart, who acts as special adviser on climate to the UN secretary general, António Guterres. “This should alert political leaders – those that are ambitious are not only on the right side of history, they’re on the side of their people as well.
“Climate appears to be dropping down the list of priorities of leaders,” he said. “But we really need leaders now to deliver maximum ambition. And we need maximum cooperation. Unfortunately, we are not seeing that at the moment.”
He warned that the consequences of inaction were being felt in rich countries as well as poor. In the US, many thousands of people are finding it increasingly impossible to insure their homes, as extreme weather worsens. “This is directly due to the climate crisis, and directly due to the use of fossil fuels,” he said. “Ordinary people are having to pay the price of a climate crisis while the fossil fuel industry continues to reap excess profits and still receives massive government subsidies.”
Yet the world has never been better equipped to tackle climate breakdown, Hart added. “Renewables are the cheapest they’ve ever been, the pace of the energy transition is accelerating,” he said.
Governments should also take care to ensure that their climate policies did not place unfair burdens on those on low incomes, as poorly designed measures could hurt the poor, according to Hart. “Each country will really need to ensure its transition is well planned to minimise the impact on people and vulnerable populations, because a lot of the so-called pushback comes when there’s a perception that the costs on poor and vulnerable persons are being disproportionately felt,” he said.
For that reason, the UN is calling for new national plans on the emissions reductions required under the 2015 Paris agreement, in which governments must set out clearly not just their targets but how they will be achieved through policy, and what the probable impacts are.
The new national plans, called nationally determined contributions (NDCs), should be “as consultative as possible so that whole segments of society – young people, women, children, workers – will be able to provide their perspective on how the transition should be planned and well-managed, and how it will be financed”, he said.
“Despite everything we see [in the form of extreme weather], we’re still not seeing the level of ambition or action that the world desperately needs.”
The Hidden Ties Between Google and Amazon’s Project Nimbus and Israel’s Military
By Caroline Haskins, Jul 15, 2024 https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-google-project-nimbus-israel-idf/?utm_brand=wired&utm_source=twitter&utm_social-type=owned&mbid=social_twitter&utm_medium=social
A WIRED investigation found public statements from officials detail a much closer link between Project Nimbus and Israel Defense Forces than previously reported.
On April 16, police entered Google offices in New York and California to detain several employees protesting a $1.2 billion cloud contract with Israel’s government called Project Nimbus. The deal, shared with Amazon, has met pushback from some employees at both companies since 2021, but the protests have grown louder since Israel’s renewed conflict with Hamas after the attacks of October 7, 2023.
Current and former Google and Amazon workers protesting Project Nimbus say it makes the companies complicit in Israel’s armed conflicts and its government’s illegal and inhumane treatment of civilian Palestinians. Google has insisted that it is not aimed at military work and is not “relevant to weapons or intelligence services,” while Amazon, seemingly, has not publicly discussed the scope of the contract.
But a WIRED review of public documents and statements by Israeli officials and Google and Amazon employees shows that the Israel Defense Forces have been central to Project Nimbus since its inception, shaping the project’s design and serving as some of its most important users. Top Israeli officials appear to think the Google and Amazon contract provides important infrastructure for the country’s military.
In February, at a conference dedicated to Project Nimbus, the head of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, Gaby Portnoy, was quoted by Israeli media as crediting the contract with helping the country’s military retaliation against Hamas.
“Phenomenal things are happening in battle because of the Nimbus public cloud, things that are impactful for victory,” Portnoy said, according to an article published in People & Computers, which coorganized the conference. “And I will not share details.” Portnoy and the Cyber Directorate did not respond for comment.
Portnoy’s statement contradicts Google’s statements to media, which have sought to downplay the military connections of Project Nimbus. “This work is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services,” Google spokesperson Anna Kowalczyk said in an emailed statement. “The Nimbus contract is for workloads running on our commercial cloud by Israeli government ministries, who agree to comply with our Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy.”
Google’s terms forbid customers from “high risk activities,” defined to include situations where “use or failure of the Services would reasonably be expected to lead to death, personal injury, or environmental or property damage (such as the creation or operation of nuclear facilities, air traffic control, life support systems, or weaponry).” It is unclear how supporting IDF combat operations would fit within those rules.
Portnoy’s claim and other documents and statements reviewed by WIRED add to recent reporting that appears to confirm the Nimbus contract’s long-established military connections. Time quoted an internal Google document that said the Israeli Ministry of Defense has its own “landing zone” into the company’s Project Nimbus infrastructure. The Intercept reported that two state-owned Israeli arms companies are required to use Google and Amazon cloud services through Project Nimbus.
In response to a detailed list of questions from WIRED, Google spokesperson Anna Kowalczyk repeated the company’s boilerplate statement.
Likewise, Amazon spokesperson Duncan Neasham repeated boilerplate language Amazon has used in the past to talk about Project Nimbus, which says the company provides its technology to customers “wherever they are located” and that employees have the “right to express themselves.”
“We are committed to ensuring our employees are safe, supporting our colleagues affected by these terrible events, and working with our humanitarian relief partners to help those impacted by the war,” Neasham added. (Sasha Trufanov, a Russian-Israeli Amazon employee, is currently being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza. He was last seen alive in a hostage video released on May 28.)
Making Project Nimbus
Project Nimbus began in 2019 as a major upgrade to Israeli government technology. The multi-year project, led by the Ministry of Finance, had no specific end-date and called for the government to pick preferred cloud providers that would build new data centers to store data securely inside Israel. Like other Cloud customers, the Israeli government could use Google for data storage, and use its built-in tools for machine learning, analyzing data, and developing apps.
An early trace alluding to the Israeli military’s involvement in Project Nimbus came in a June 2020 LinkedIn post from Shahar Bracha, former chief executive officer of Israel’s National Digital Agency, then called the ICT Authority. “I am happy to update that the Ministry of Defense (in the name of the IDF) decided to join with the Cloud Center and in doing so changed the center to be greater and more attractive,” he wrote, suggesting the military would be a major user of services under the project.
Over the three-year bidding process, many other documents and public statements were explicit about the IDF’s intimate involvement in Nimbus and its expected role as a user. “Project Nimbus is a project to supply public cloud services to the government, the defense department and the IDF,” a statement provided by Israel’s Ministry of Finance in 2022 to Israeli online news outlet Mako said. . It added that “the relevant security bodies were partners of this project from its first day, and are full partners still.”
The IDF’s involvement included having a say in which companies would win the Nimbus contract. An Israel State Comptroller audit report from 2021 that says the IDF joined “to enable the transfer of declassified systems to the public cloud” and notes that “the Ministry of Defense and the IDF are crucial parts of the team working on the tender, both in creating the requirements and in assessing the outcomes.”
Ultimately, Google and Amazon won the Project Nimbus contracts, beating out Microsoft and Oracle. A May 2021 press release in English that congratulated the companies and announced “The Israeli Government is Moving to the Cloud” said that Project Nimbus is intended to serve “the Government, the Security Services and other entities.”
The Times of Israel reported the same day that Google and Amazon could not pick and choose which agencies they worked with, quoting an attorney for the Israeli Finance Ministry saying that the contract bars the companies “from denying services to particular government entities.”
That appears to still include the IDF. WIRED identified several Israeli government statements and documents published since 2022 that confirm the IDF’s continued involvement with Project Nimbus, although they do not provide details of the tools and capabilities it uses.
For instance, a government document published on June 15, 2022, that outlines the scope of the project, says “The Ministry of Defense and the IDF” will get a dedicated “digital marketplace” of services they can access under Project Nimbus.
In July 2022, The Intercept also reported on training documents and videos provided to Nimbus users in the Israeli government that revealed some of the specific Google technologies the contract provided access to. They included AI capabilities such as face detection, object tracking, sentiment analysis, and other complex tasks.
Official government pages old and new, both in Hebrew and English, feature the same boilerplate description of Project Nimbus. It calls the contract “a multiyear and wide-ranging flagship project, led by the Government Procurement Administration in the Accountant General’s Division in the Ministry of Treasury together with the National Digital Unit, the Legal Bureau in the Ministry of Finance, the National Cyber Unit, the Budget Division, the Ministry of Defense and the IDF.” The statement appears on one of the main government pages about Project Nimbus, an undated news release, a 2022 cloud strategy document, and a press release from January 2023.
A version of the statement has also been posted in an Amazon guidance document about Nimbus from January 2023, and on the event page for the 2024 “Nimbus Summit,” a privately run event that brings together tech workers from Amazon, Google, and the dozens of other companies that have played some hand in modernizing Israel’s tech infrastructure in recent years.
Close Ties
Social media posts by Israeli officials, Amazon employees, and Google employees suggest the country’s military remains closely involved with Project Nimbus—and the two US cloud companies working on it.
In June 2023, Omri Nezer, the head of the technology infrastructure unit at the Israeli Government Procurement Administration, posted a recap of a cloud conference held by the Israeli government to LinkedIn. He wrote that it was meant to bring together people from “different government offices within ‘Project Nimbus.’”
Nezer’s post mentions a panel at the conference that featured “an IDF representative” and the head of engineering IT for Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, a defense company originally created as a research and development company for the Israeli military. The Intercept reported last month that Rafael and Israel Aerospace Industries, both Israeli government-backed weapons manufacturers, are “obligatory customers” of Google and Amazon through Project Nimbus. Amazon spokesperson Duncan Neasham tells WIRED that Rafael is “not required to use AWS or Google only for cloud services” and can “also use other cloud providers’ services.”
National security agencies remain an important part of Project Nimbus. In a 2023 LinkedIn post tagged #nimbus, Omri Holzman, defense team lead at Amazon Web Services, summarized a recent event AWS put on for defense customers. “We had attendees from each security organization in Israel,” Holzman wrote, without specifying which agencies. “AWS puts a lot of focus on the National Security (NatSec) community which has its unique needs and requirements.”
Google has recently been pitching Israeli policing and national security officials on its Gemini AI model, the centerpiece of the search company’s attempts to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Shay Mor, director and head of public sector and defense for Google Cloud Israel, said in a March Linkedin post that he recently presented information about its “groundbreaking Nimbus projects” with agencies that include the Israeli Police, the Israel National Digital Agency, and the Israel National Cyber Directorate.
“It was an honor and a pleasure to present our Gemini technology and some of our groundbreaking Nimbus projects with the Israeli Police, Israel National Digital Agency, Ministry of Education, and the Israel National Cyber Directorate today at the Nimbus event,” Mor posted, referring to the same event where Portnoy the Cyber Directorate leader said Nimbus helped the battle with Hamas. Mor didn’t specify how the IDF or security agencies could use Google’s AI, but the company has said Gemini could help its cloud customers write code, analyze data, or identify security challenges.
In his own reported comments at the event, Portnoy suggested that the Nimbus project is set to deepen Amazon’s and Google’s ties with Israel’s national security apparatus. He said that the companies have been “working partners” on a new project creating “a framework for national defense” with cloud-based security tools. Portnoy likened it to Israel’s missile defense system, calling it the “Iron Dome of Cyber.”
Growing Outcry
The recent protests against Project Nimbus do not mark the first time that a cloud deal with military connections has prompted protests—in particular, protests inside Google. A former Google employee who was fired along with dozens of others after protesting Project Nimbus in April says years of trying to steer the company in a more ethical direction had left them exhausted. “I became convinced that basically, you cannot trust anything they say,” says the former employee. They protested in 2018 against Project Maven, a now-lapsed Pentagon contract that saw Google algorithms analyze drone surveillance imagery, Google’s work with US Customs and Border Protection in 2019, and Project Nimbus starting in 2021 with the group No Tech for Apartheid. “I have zero trust in these people.”
The first major action against Project Nimbus took place in October 2021, when a coalition of Google and Amazon employees published an open letter in The Guardian decrying the contract. No Tech for Apartheid also formed explicitly in response to Project Nimbus at around this time. Many of the same people who joined these early organizing efforts were also involved in No Tech for ICE, a tech worker-led movement formed in 2019 to oppose their companies working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Ariel Koren, at the time a project manager at Google who helped draft the open letter, says that her manager told her in early November 2021 that she had to agree to move to São Paulo, Brazil, within 17 business days “or lose her position,” according to the Los Angeles Times. Koren announced that she had resigned in March 2022. A few weeks later, a group of tech workers and activists led protests outside Google and Amazon offices in New York, Seattle, and Durham, North Carolina, to express solidarity with Koren and her demand to wind up Project Nimbus.
Protests have escalated from there. Emaan Haseem, a former engineer for Google Cloud, was fired in April alongside 48 others after she traveled from Seattle to San Francisco to participate in a group sit-in inside the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian. She says that No Tech for Apartheid is part of a wider movement known as Boycott Divest Sanction, using economic pressure to encourage Israel to end occupation of Palestinian territories.
Opposition to Israel’s military actions in Gaza and the West Bank, Haseem said, is a central pillar of No Tech for Apartheid. Poject Nimbus “is a contract that stands out the most for anyone who has their eyes on the genocide in Gaza currently.”
Mass Media Goons Are Still Reporting That Biden Is Getting Tough On Netanyahu
Caitlin Johnstone, Aug 03, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/mass-media-goons-are-still-reporting?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=147305961&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Another day, another Axios article falsely asserting that President Biden is really getting tough on Benjamin Netanyahu.
In a write-up titled “Biden warns Netanyahu against escalation as risk of regional war grows,” Barak Ravid reports that while Biden has pledged to support Israel against any strikes from Iran in retaliation for its insanely escalatory assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, he also told Netanyahu that he “expects no more escalation from the Israeli side” from here on out.
“President Biden privately demanded in a ‘tough’ call Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stop escalating tensions in the region and move immediately toward a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal,” writes Ravid, citing two US officials who as usual remain unnamed.
“At the end of the meeting with Netanyahu in the Oval office last Thursday, Biden became emotional, raised his voice and told Netanyahu he needs to reach a Gaza deal as soon as possible, three Israeli officials with knowledge of the meeting told Axios,” Ravid reports.
Ravid writes:
“One U.S. official said Biden complained to Netanyahu that the two had just spoken last week in the Oval Office about securing the hostage deal, but instead Netanyahu went ahead with the assassination in Tehran.
“Biden then told Netanyahu the U.S. will help Israel defeat an Iranian attack, but after that he expects no more escalation from the Israeli side and immediate movement toward a hostage deal, the U.S. official said.”
Sure, sure. This time Biden really means it when he draws a firm line with Israel, unlike all those other times when this administration has continued to back Israel’s psychopathic actions unconditionally since October 7.
Commentators on US foreign policy are less than impressed with this report.
“It’s the umpteenth installment of ‘Biden is secretly mad at Bibi’: he became emotional! He raised his voice!” tweeted The Economist’s Gregg Carlstrom. “Can’t imagine anyone takes these self-serving leaks seriously. Least of all Netanyahu, who has ignored Biden with impunity for ten months”
“Biden reportedly told Netanyahu he’ll help defeat an Iranian attack, but expects no more escalation from Israel, warning Netanyahu that he shouldn’t count on the US to bail him out again,” tweeted Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi, adding, “Fine, but given Biden’s record, why should Netanyahu believe him?”
Barak Ravid has made an entire career out of writing up these anonymously sourced White House press releases about how badass and un-genocidal the president is and packaging them as real news stories. Here are some of the headlines from Ravid’s reporting since October:
Biden “running out” of patience with Bibi as Gaza war hits 100 days
Scoop: Biden in “frustrating” call told Bibi to solve Palestinian tax revenue issue
Biden’s ultimatum to Bibi: Change Gaza policy or we will
White House temperature is “very high” ahead of Biden-Bibi call
“We won’t support you”: Inside Biden’s ultimatum to Bibi
Israel and U.S. deeply divided in meeting on key Rafah operation issues
Biden and Bibi “red lines” for Rafah put them on a collision course
Biden-Bibi clash escalates as U.S. accused of undermining Israeli government
Biden and Netanyahu hold first call in a month amid public split
Biden breaks with Netanyahu but sticks with Israel
Biden on hot mic: Told Bibi we needed “come to Jesus” meeting on Gaza
Biden, in rare criticism, warns Netanyahu that Israel risks losing global support
Biden, in rare criticism of Bibi, says pause in Gaza fighting should have come sooner
Scoop: Blinken warns Israeli officials global pressure will grow longer war goes on
Israeli minister lambasted at White House about Gaza and war strategy
Scoop: Biden tells Bibi he’s not in it for a year of war in Gaza
Blinken unloads on Bibi: “You need a coherent plan” or face disaster in Gaza
Scoop: White House cancels meeting, scolds Netanyahu in protest over video
Netanyahu irked by “critical” Harris comments
This is just one guy, from just one outlet. These “Biden is very upset with Netanyahu and wants him to be different” reports have been coming out throughout the US media since the early weeks of this ongoing mass atrocity, all of which are flatly contradicted by the White House taking zero meaningful action this entire time to rein in Israel’s demented genocidal aggressions.
And to be clear, none of this is actually news. “Anonymous sources say X, Y and Z about how the president’s feelings are feeling” is not a news story. These reports serve no purpose other than to create distance in the eyes of the American public between the genocidal monster Benjamin Netanyahu and the president who is unconditionally supporting his genocidal atrocities in every way possible. They are PR spin and nothing more, which would be surprising to anyone who still believes the mainstream western press exist to report the news instead of promulgate propaganda for the advancement of the information interests of the western empire.
All they’re doing here is trying to wash this administration’s hands of the horrors that are being inflicted in the middle east with the direct facilitation of this administration. Don’t let them. All the monstrous actions being perpetrated by Israel today are just as much the fault of the US government as they are of Israel itself. This is who they are. Make them own it.
The Folly of Atomic Power
by Ron Jacobs, 2 Aug 24, https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/08/02/the-folly-of-atomic-power/
This past June, a couple of my sisters and I drove from California to Minnesota. One of the states we traveled through was Idaho. We gassed up in a town called Atomic City, which advertised itself as the first city in the United States to have nuclear-powered electricity. This town is inside what grounds of the Idaho National Laboratory, an 890 square mile research site run by the Department of Energy together with various commercial and military interests. Its website currently touts its scientific expertise and its mission devoted to carbon-free nuclear energy, alternative energy and military security. There are currently over 6000 employees working at the various sites of the laboratory, which includes over fifty nuclear reactors and has an annual budget of $1.6 billion dollars. The laboratory and its web page provide a perfect example of how the business of nuclear energy as described by author M. V. Ramana in his brilliant new book Nuclear is Not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change actually works.
Indeed, the laboratory’s work is a physical and very real representation of the triple threat Ramana describes in the text: the development of nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, and, almost as an afterthought, alternative energy sources like solar and wind. Ramana, who holds the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and is a Professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, is a longtime opponent of the nuclear power industry and the government that collaborate and support it. His scientific background provides a solid rebuke to those in the industry and those who shill for it who repeat the same half-truths and lies whenever nuclear energy is brought up. In addition, this book is a convincing response supported by solid science (and a bit of political economy) to those who want the public to believe that nuclear power is a reasonable and affordable alternative to fossil fuels and the global climate crisis.
Chapter by chapter, Ramana addresses the health risks, the economics of, and the unbreakable link between nuclear power and the nuclear war industry. Instead of talking in terms of possibility, he focuses on the existing circumstances. To those who would try and sell the public a new nuclear plant by suggesting that the possibility of a nuclear accident at the plant is infinitesimal, Ramana writes:
“Theoretical predictions of stupefyingly low accident probabilities do not square with the empirical evidence of severe accidents at nuclear reactors.”(26)
In other words, believe what you see, not what the industry says. In another chapter, Ramana questions the method by which the private power utilities socialize the costs while privatizing the profits. Perhaps the most shocking aspect of this phenomenon is the contracts and laws that force utility companies to pay for plants that never go online (and, in some cases, are never even built.) I recall this occurring when I lived in North Carolina. South Carolina Electric & Gas Company (SCE&G) lobbied for and received the go-ahead to build two nuclear reactors. As costs mounted, the company asked the Public Utilities Commission to allow the firm to charge customers for the costs associated with building the plants. To make a long story short, customers are still paying for the plants, and the plants were never built. Ramana provides a detailed account of this story in a chapter he titles “Private Profits, Social Costs: Industry Strategies” as a perfect example of how the industry works.
In his chapter on the links between nuclear power and the nuclear war industry, the author is equally scathing. When discussing the claim made by some environmentalists who support nuclear power that the nuclear power industry and the nuclear war industry are two different things, Ramana is clear: any separation is simply an illusion. In fact, he argues that one reason governments are so willing to support the nuclear power industry is because it produces the essential element plutonium for nuclear weapons as a supposed by-product. In fact, it appears more likely that plutonium is not a mere by-product but one of the primary reasons for the ongoing governmental support for the industry.
Nuclear is Not the Solution discusses the nuclear industry in a frank and honest manner. There are no questionable claims about nuclear energy or fantastic excuses made for the industry’s mistakes and its questionable premises. The text details the industry’s lies, mistakes and cover-ups, reminding the reader that they should focus on the historical and empirical facts, not fanciful advertising and promises. He describes an industry rife with corruption and hungry for profits. Although his primary focus is on the industry in the United States, Ramana does not spare other nuclear powers from his reasoned and well-informed exposé. Those who think nuclear energy should be the future would do well to read his book. It should convince one the opposite is more likely the truth.
Ron Jacobs is the author of Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies published by CounterPunch Books. He has a new book, titled Nowhere Land: Journeys Through a Broken Nation coming out in Spring 2024. He lives in Vermont. He can be reached at: ronj1955@gmail.com
U.S. media downplays and ignores ICJ ruling declaring Israeli occupation illegal
The New York Times and the rest of the U.S. mainstream media downplayed, covered up, and even ignored the historic ICJ opinion declaring the Israeli occupation illegal.
BY JAMES NORTH , https://mondoweiss.net/2024/07/u-s-media-downplays-and-ignores-icj-ruling-declaring-israeli-occupation-illegal/
The International Court of Justice’s landmark opinion that Israel’s “settlements” in the occupied Palestine West Bank violate international law should have been on the front page of the New York Times. Prominently.
But no. Instead, the Times, along with the rest of the U.S. mainstream media, downplayed, covered up, and even ignored the historic July 19 decision.
Let’s start with the Times. The print edition the day after ran the story at the bottom of page 5. Two days later, the report has already disappeared from the paper’s online home page.
This site has long and regularly explained how the New York Times tried to finesse its reporting about Israel’s illegal settlements. Here’s what we said last year: the paper’s tactic has been to “insinuate that there are ‘two sides’ about whether Israel was legally allowed to move hundreds of thousands of Jewish-only ‘settlers’ into the occupied territory.” The paper’s favorite word was “disputed;” some say yes, some say no, you decide.
No longer. The Times can certainly report that Israel disagrees with the Court’s decision and will not respect it. But “disputed” is over.
Here’s another suggestion. In a triumph of Orwellian language, Israel and its supporters have successfully labeled those 700,000 people as “settlers.” We have long argued that the word “colonists” is more accurate. But the court decision suggests a third possibility: “illegal settlers.” The phrase is not an insult, or an example of bias. After July 19, 2024, it’s just a fact.
Other news outlets
By contrast, the Washington Post was the only outlet that did an acceptable job on the news. Here was its headline: ‘Israel should evacuate settlements, pay reparations, ICJ [International Court of Justice] says.’
National Public Radio is notoriously biased in favor of Israel, and its coverage did not disappoint. Here’s the headline to NPR’s 3-minute on-air report: “Drone attack hits Tel Aviv; ICJ rules West Bank Israeli settlements are unlawful.” That drone attack, apparently carried out by Ansar Allah from Yemen, was certainly news — but in what universe is it more important than the World Court’s finding that Israel has been violating international law for nearly five decades, and that the 700,000 Jewish-only “settlers” are living in Palestine illegally, and should evacuate the territory? (NPR did produce a slightly longer report, but it only appeared on its online website.)
What about CNN? Not much there either — so far, a single online report that apparently did not appear on the air. MSNBC? Its site has a 1:37 report, with no indication of how often it was broadcast.
CBS News was the worst. The network, which once employed genuine journalists like Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather, has so far not aired a single report on the court’s decision.
Meta’s Policy On Zionism Exposed: Cyberwell Scrambles After Israel Ties Revealed
falsely conflating criticism of the Zionist entity and antisemitism
KIT KLARENBERG, Mintpress News, 22 July 24
In July 10, it was announced that social media giant Meta would broaden the scope of its censorship and suppression of content related to the Gaza genocide. Under the new policy, Facebook and Instagram posts containing “derogatory or threatening references to ‘Zionists’ in cases where the term is used to refer to Jews or Israelis” will be proscribed. Unsurprisingly, a welter of Zionist lobby organizations – many of which aggressively lobbied Meta to adopt these changes – cheered the move. Emboldened, the same entities are now calling for all social media platforms to follow suit.
The Times of Israel noted that “nearly 150 advocacy groups and experts provided input that led to Meta’s policy update.” This prominently included Tel Aviv-based CyberWell, mundanely described by the outlet as “a nonprofit that has been documenting the swell of online antisemitism and Holocaust denial since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.” These malign activities have had a devastating impact on what Western audiences see and hear about the Gaza genocide on their social media feeds.
In January, CyberWell published an extensive report on how it was seeking to censor many prominent X accounts that expressed doubts about the official narrative of October 7, including the widely disseminated, proven-to-be-false libel that Hamas fighters beheaded dozens of infants. Users in the firing line included popular anonymous Zei Squirrel, Al Jazeera, The Grayzone chief Max Blumenthal, and famous rapper Lowkey, of MintPress News. CyberWell claimed such legitimate skepticism was comparable to Holocaust denial.
The impact of these lobbying efforts isn’t clear, although almost simultaneously, Zei Squirrel was abruptly suspended from X without warning or explanation, sparking widespread outrage. It was only due to relentless backlash that the account was reinstated. More recently, CyberWell submitted formal guidance to Meta on censoring the Palestine solidarity phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which Zionists falsely claim is a clarion call for the genocide of Jews.
That intervention is part of a broader effort by the firm to force the social network to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) highly controversial working definition of antisemitism. This definition, which has been condemned by many sources – including academic David Feldman, who helped draft it – for falsely conflating criticism of the Zionist entity and antisemitism, is a major inspiration for CyberWell. So, too, it seems is a sinister Israeli government psychological warfare blitzkrieg, concerned with “mass consciousness activities” in the U.S. and Europe.
On June 24, independent journalists Lee Fang and Jack Poulson reported that CyberWell was one component of this insidious effort to shape and spread pro-Israeli narratives across the Western world, known as Voices of Israel. In response to the exposé, CyberWell repudiated any affiliation with the long-running, Israeli-funded hasbara operation or receiving government funding “from any country.” As we shall see, though, there are unambiguous grounds to doubt these denials.
It is vital to clarify the political, ideological, and financial forces guiding CyberWell’s operations and the malign interests that its censorship activities serve. The non-profit is now a “trusted partner” of Meta, TikTok, and X, ostensibly assisting these major social networks to combat “disinformation.” In reality, this grants a shadowy private firm with open links to Israel’s intelligence apparatus and evident ambitions to take its censorship crusade global, unrestrained power to prevent the reality of Israel’s genocide from emerging publicly.
‘NOTHING WRONG’
In response to the exposures of Fang and Poulson, CyberWell – which had hitherto operated with a reasonable degree of transparency – went scurrying underground. Many sections of its website were pruned of incriminating information or deleted outright. This included a highly illuminating section on the individuals running and advising the outfit. Now, visitors to CyberWell’s website are offered no indication of who or what is behind the initiative, which promises to deliver “more data, less hate” by tackling “antisemitism” online using artificial intelligence…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
‘TIGHTLY KNIT’
CyberWell’s deep and cohering – if well-concealed – ties to Voices of Israel and the Israeli government don’t end there. The non-profit’s 2022 annual report lists its Chief Financial Officer as Sagi Balasha, the very first CEO of Voices of Israel when the operation was still named Concert. He took up the post after leaving the influential Zionist lobby group, the Israeli-American Council (IAC), right around the time IAC donated thousands of dollars to Keshet David under its former name, Israel Cyber Shield…………………………………………………………………………
To make this mephitic web even murkier and more incestuous, CyberWell partnered with the notorious Act.IL, which is closely associated with IAC and the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs. The latter leads Zionist entity anti-BDS efforts globally. CyberWell’s 2022 annual report noted that the non-profit “served as the data provider to Act.IL’s community for their end of year call to action on the state of online antisemitism…………………………………………………………………………………………………………
We can expect similar “studies” to circulate in the wake of every election and political incident in the years to come unless CyberWell’s Israeli intelligence-run operations are brought to a rapid – and wholly deserved – halt. https://www.mintpressnews.com/meta-policy-zionism-exposed-cyberwell-scrambles-israel-ties-revealed/287923/
BBC correspondent exposes ‘collapse of journalistic norms’ after 7 Oct
BBC presenters interviewing Israeli guests consistently failed to interject when unverified claims were made on air following the events of 7 October
News Desk. 22 July 24 https://thecradle.co/articles-id/26046
Leaked emails published by Jadaliyya on 18 July reveal grievances expressed by BBC staff over the UK broadcaster’s coverage of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza since 7 October.
In a 1 May email, BBC correspondent in Beirut, Rami Ruhayem, wrote to the broadcaster’s Director General Tim Davie and several other departments of its news staff, detailing “evidence of a collapse in the application of basic standards and norms of journalism that seems aligned with Israel’s propaganda strategy.”
He highlights that BBC staff did not respond to “a mass of evidence-based critique of coverage” on 7 October and the days that followed.
“Instead of putting together mechanisms for a thorough examination of output, and for inclusive, respectful, and professional discussions guided by [BBC] standards and values, it appears management has opted to oversee a continuation of the editorial direction the BBC has taken since October,” Ruhayem’s email added. JUL 22, 2024
Jadaliyya has also obtained the content of all of Ruhayem’s email attachments. In the first attachment, the BBC correspondent analyzes interviews with Israeli guests on the British news channel between 10 October and 25 October.
In the second, he analyzes BBC content relating to Hamas’ Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
“This paper is not about what happened on that day and the days that followed; rather, it is an inquiry into whether – and to what extent – the BBC applied, misapplied or simply cast aside journalistic standards in treating various claims about what happened on that day. I’ve found a sustained collapse in some of the most basic standards and values, one which seems to complement Israel’s propaganda purposes and strategy,” Ruhayem wrote.
“From the start, it was evident that unverified claims of the most atrocious acts by Hamas fighters against Israelis were being circulated and repeated at the highest levels. Even though it was not possible to rule them out, especially at an early stage, a set of basic measures should’ve been initiated; one of them would’ve been to make sure presenters inquire about evidence when such claims are made on air and clarify that the BBC had not verified them,” he added.
He then gives examples of such claims, including the claim that a Hamas fighter cut open the stomach of a pregnant Israeli woman and killed the fetus after pulling it out. Ruhayem highlights that this claim was made at least twice during BBC interviews without interjection from the presenters.
Ruhayem then discusses the claim made in a number of interviews that Hamas fighters “went street to street,” shooting babies, raping girls, beheading, and burning people alive.
“A few basic questions could’ve shed some light on these claims, and helped other teams put together a comprehensive picture of verified atrocities to inform audiences. But in all of the examples above and more, no such questions were asked, and the allegations passed with no comment, clarification, or interjection of any sort.”
Comment: Whereas they were, unsurprisingly, quick and consistent in applying these standards to anti-genocide representatives.
“Once again, the BBC was implying to its audiences that it had verified all these claims, although in these cases, it wasn’t clear what – exactly – it had supposedly verified,” he added.
Since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, claims of atrocities committed by the Palestinian resistance have yet to be verified.
Comment: They haven’t been verified, and investigations into them reveal that this is likely because they did not happen.
Israel’s Haaretz newspaper confirmed earlier this month that the Israeli army ordered troops to kill their own soldiers and civilians on 7 October, turning the Gaza border into an “extermination zone” under the Hannibal Directive.
This had been reported extensively prior to the Haaretz report and has cast significant doubt over claims that Hamas fighters carried out mass killing and mass destruction on 7 October.
Stories of the mass rapes allegedly committed by the Palestinian resistance also remain unproven, including by Israeli police, who were unable to verify accounts of sexual assault committed by Palestinian fighters that day, according to a Haaretz report in January.
New Book. The Scientists Who Alerted us to Radiation’s Dangers
March 29, 2024, https://www.ianfairlie.org/news/new-book-on-radiation-whistleblowers/
“The Scientists Who Alerted us to Radiation’s Dangers”, now published, contains the biographies of 23 radiation scientists who blew the whistle on radiation risks but were victimised by their governments and their nuclear establishments for doing so. Most of these scientists are no longer with us.
Recent epidemiology evidence clearly shows that the denials and obfuscations on radiation risks by successive governments and their nuclear establishment in the past on both sides of the Atlantic were and are wrong and the maligned scientists were right. Radiation is considerably more dangerous than official reports indicate, both in terms of the numerical magnitudes of cancer risks, but also in terms of the new types of diseases, apart from cancer, now shown to be radiogenic.
Written by a former UK government scientist Dr Ian Fairlie and a US anti-nuclear campaigner, Cindy Folkers, the book preserves the memories of the radiation scientists over the previous half-century or so, mostly from the US and UK.
They portray another 15 more recent radiation scientists who have followed in their footsteps but have managed to avoid being victimised. The book also lists over 150 activists in North America, Japan and Europe who have raised their voices against radiation risks and exposures over the past 30 to 40 years.
Radiation and radioactivity and their current risks are explained in easy-to-understand terms. All scientific statements are backed by evidence via hundreds of references, 14 Appendices, 6 Annexes, a glossary and an extensive bibliography.
This is an up-to-date reference book for all academics on the dangers and risks of radiation and radioactivity. The book also serves to help journalists and students counter the misrepresentations, incorrect assertions, wrong assumptions, and untruths about radiation risks often disseminated by the nuclear (power and weapons) establishments on both sides of the Atlantic.
With Media Enamored by US Presidential Race, Israeli Massacres in Gaza Get Even Deadlier
“We must not lose sight of what is happening in Gaza, where an unprecedented humanitarian crisis continues to get even worse,” said U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.
By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams, https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-gaza-massacres, 16 July 24
Israeli forces have massacred nearly 60 people in the Gaza Strip over just the past 24 hours, and the past week has been one of the deadliest since the war began more than nine months ago.
But you’d hardly know it by looking at the front pages of major newspapers in the United States, despite U.S. President Joe Biden fueling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assault with diplomatic support and billions of dollars worth of weaponry.
While outlets such as Al Jazeera and Reuters have kept Israel’s onslaught at or near the top of their pages, coverage of the relentless war on the Palestinian enclave has largely been supplanted in the U.S. by presidential politics, particularly in the wake of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on Saturday—the same day Israeli forces killed around 100 people in an attack on a southern Gaza town that was previously designated a “safe zone,” as Common Dreamsreported.
Fresh Israeli airstrikes across Gaza on Tuesday killed dozens of people—including children—but the massacres didn’t receive mention on the front pages of the web versions of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, or USA Today, each of which heavily featured coverage of the high-stakes U.S. presidential contest between two candidates who have backed Israel’s war on Gaza.
As of Tuesday morning, Gaza was entirely absent from the website landing pages of the Journal and USA Today. The Post‘s home page buried a story about the potential for an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah, while the Times‘ home page contained a piece about surging settler violence in the West Bank amid Israel’s ongoing atrocities in Gaza.
In recent weeks, U.S. corporate media coverage of developments in Gaza has not reflected the extent to which Israel has intensified its aerial and ground attacks, even as recent cease-fire talks have sparked some hope of a pause.
After a 20-year-old gunman attempted to assassinate Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, pictures of the former president’s bloodied ear and raised fist were plastered across the front pages of major newspapers in the U.S. and around the world while the far more numerous images of child victims of Israeli bombs—many of them supplied by the United States—faded from view.
Israel does not allow journalists with major U.S.-based media outlets to enter the Gaza Strip unless they are embedded with Israeli forces and agree to let the military vet their coverage.
Al Jazeera, a Qatari-funded outlet that Israel’s far-right government has repeatedly targeted, reported Monday that “Israeli forces have attacked five separate schools in Gaza in just eight days, killing dozens of people sheltering in them.”
One attack on Sunday, the outlet noted, “struck the United Nations-run Abu Oreiban school in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing at least 17 people and injuring about 80. Most of the victims were women and children, said Palestinian Civil Defense.”
Reporting from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Al Jazeera‘s Hani Mahmoud said he witnessed children “crying out in pain and agony” at the facility, which—like all of Gaza’s remaining hospitals—is under-resourced and only partially functioning.
“This is the result of incinerating bombs,” Mahmoud added.
The death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza is nearing 40,000—likely a dramatic undercount, given how many bodies are missing under the rubble that now dominates the landscape of the enclave and could take 15 years to clear.
Those who have survived Israel’s onslaught are now living amid sewage, decomposing bodies, and the ruins of their homes, shops, schools, and hospitals, with nowhere safe to flee. Famine and disease are spreading rapidly across the territory as the Israeli government continues to restrict the flow of humanitarian aid.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has urged the Biden administration to cut off all offensive weapons assistance to Israel, said in a statement late last week that “while much of the media is focused on the drama of the U.S. presidential election, we must not lose sight of what is happening in Gaza, where an unprecedented humanitarian crisis continues to get even worse.”
“We must end our support for Netanyahu’s war,” said Sanders. “Not another nickel to make this horrific situation even worse. I intend to do everything I can to block further arms transfers to Israel, including through joint resolutions of disapproval of any arms sales. The United States must not help a right-wing extremist and war criminal continue this atrocity.”
For 75 Years, NATO Has Been Terrorizing the Globe
Ukraine Breathes New Life into NATO
Most recently, NATO has performed its familiar war-mongering role in Ukraine, where it has trained Ukrainian troops, including members of the neo-Nazi-led Azov Battalion.
The latter began attacking the people of eastern Ukraine after the 2014 U.S.-backed coup that triggered the devastating ongoing conflict.
This conflict was provoked in part by U.S. efforts to extend NATO membership to Ukraine, which CIA Director William Burns had warned was a red line that should not be crossed.[14]
In late March 2022, thanks to peace talks mediated by Turkey, Russia was ready to withdraw from all the territory it had captured if Ukraine agreed to give up any commitment to join NATO or allow NATO military bases or missiles to be stationed on its territory.
The deal was scuttled when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson flew to Kyiv to tell Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelensky that the “collective West” would not support it.
By Jeremy Kuzmarov, July 13, 2024, https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/07/13/for-75-years-nato-has-been-terrorizing-the-globe/
Will a formidable peace movement ever emerge that can succeed in stopping it?
This past week, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) celebrated its 75th anniversary by hosting a summit in Washington, D.C., where its founding treaty was signed.
A declaration issued at the summit made clear NATO’s intent to continuously confront Russia in Ukraine, and to further expand its operations in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.[1]
The Biden administration announced that: a) they are going to start stationing long-range nuclear and other missiles (including hypersonic missiles, that the U.S. doesn’t even have yet) in Germany, within easy striking-distance of Moscow; b) nuclear-capable F-16 fighter jets will be arriving in Ukraine any day now, and will go into service “during the summer”; and that c) Ukraine is on an “irreversible path” to join NATO.
A commemorative documentary featured now on NATO’s website celebrates NATO’s role in facilitating the Western victory in the Cold War and in allegedly ending ethnic cleansing and genocide in the Balkans in the 1990s, curtailing terrorism from Afghanistan after 9/11, and helping to protect the world from Russian aggression.
NATO’s formation in April 1949 is depicted as being vital in preventing the U.S. from having fallen into dreaded isolationism as it had after World War I, and in protecting European security in the face of the Soviet threat.
Colonel Richard Williams, Deputy Director of NATO’s Defense Investment Division, 1997-2011, states that “NATO is the only organization that offers hope that peace can become a real possibility.”
George Orwell would surely be proud of these latter comments in light of NATO’s long record of war-making. The true, venal history is exposed in a short book by peace activists Medea Benjamin and David Swanson, NATO: What You Need to Know, whose publication was timed to encourage protests at the 75th NATO anniversary summit.
Danger to World Peace
In the preface, Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs wrote that “NATO is a clear and present danger to world peace, a war machine run amok that operates beyond the democratic control of the citizenry of the NATO countries.” Sachs continued: “The war machine lines the pockets of the arms contractors at the core of NATO, U.S. companies like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman and Europe’s arms manufacturers…NATO also sucks one nation after another into the vortex of war, instability, displacement, and poverty. During the past 30 years, NATO has fomented a vast arc of violence stretching from Libya to Afghanistan and with many victims in between.”[2]
Benjamin and Swanson emphasize in their introduction that NATO has repeatedly violated the UN Charter outlawing military aggression and the UN’s 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons because of the placement of U.S. nuclear weapons in five European NATO nations.
NATO’s formation in 1949 as a military defense alliance against the Soviet Union was predicated on rampant propaganda that grossly exaggerated the Soviet threat, and on the ouster of peace-oriented politicians such as Henry Wallace, Franklin Roosevelt’s Vice President.
Wallace had proposed a continuation of Roosevelt’s policy of cooperation with the Soviets and was consequently removed in a coup d’état at the Democratic Party convention in Chicago in 1944 and then fired by Harry S. Truman as Commerce Secretary.
Under the direction of Truman’s advisers, including Joe Biden’s political mentor W. Averell Harriman, NATO established private clandestine armies among fascist elements throughout Western Europe who carried out black-flag terrorist activities as part of a strategy to inculcate fear in local populations and to discredit the political left.
In Italy, NATO operatives bombed a Bologna rail station and then planted evidence in the home of a left-wing journalist to make it look like he was the culprit.[3]
Rather than supporting democracy in Western Europe, NATO has a record of empowering reactionary forces. After World War II, it helped destroy popular movements of the left that had led the fight against fascism and were intent on redistributing wealth.
Greece was accepted as a NATO member only after its “ruthless Western-backed government killed or jailed the last of the partisans who had liberated it from the Nazis.”[4]
Turkey’s membership in NATO gave NATO military control of the Bosporus Strait—the only navigational waterway between the Mediterranean and Black Seas and a choke point for the Soviet ports of Odessa and Sevastapol.[5]
Within a decade of joining the Alliance, both Turkey and Greece were toppled in right-wing coups, which did not affect NATO membership. NATO further accepted Portugal as a member when it was ruled by a fascist dictator, Antonio Salazar, who provided the U.S. with a military base in the Azores.
NATO backed Portugal’s brutal suppression of anti-colonial movements in its African colonies (i.e., Angola and Mozambique), supported France’s colonial war in Algeria and the U.S. aggression in Korea, which resulted in the killing of 20% of North Korea’s population.
At an Asian-African conference in Bandung in 1955, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru called NATO “the most powerful protector of colonialism” and said that Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia “would probably have been independent if it had not been for NATO.”[6]
Upholding Unipolar U.S. Power
The U.S. has long been a driving force behind NATO because NATO “provides a vehicle for imposing U.S. leadership over Western nations,” according to Benjamin and Swanson. It has “tied Europe to U.S. military, geopolitical, and economic interests, made Europeans dependent on U.S. military power, and helped fortify U.S. global economic interests.”[7]
After the end of the Cold War, U.S. weapons companies helped lobby for NATO’s expansion. A lobby group called U.S. Committee to Expand NATO was run by the Vice President of Lockheed Martin.[8]
The father of the Cold War containment strategy, George F. Kennan, warned that NATO expansion in the 1990s would be a disastrous folly that would antagonize the Russians and trigger a new Cold War, but to no avail.
Beholden in part to the Polish-American and other Eastern European lobbies alongside the weapons lobbyists, the Clinton administration expanded NATO to three Eastern European countries (Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic)—in violation of a pledge made by the George H.W. Bush administration to the Russians that NATO would not be expanded “one inch to the East.”
George W. Bush followed Clinton by expanding NATO to seven additional countries—Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Later, NATO was expanded to Montenegro and to Sweden and Finland.
Sowing Methodical Devastation
In 1994, NATO launched its first-ever combat operations in Bosnia, conducting hundreds of air strikes, which contributed to the dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia and transformed Bosnia into what Swanson and Benjamin call a “dysfunctional ward of NATO and the West.”[9]
In 1999, NATO carried out an illegal bombing campaign that dropped 23,000 bombs on Serbia, which killed thousands of civilians. This was followed by the U.S.-NATO invasion and occupation of the Serbian province of Kosovo, resulting in the empowerment of the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which established Kosovo as a mafia state.
As a spoil of victory, the U.S. acquired the 955-acre Camp Bondsteel in southeastern Kosovo, which became a secret CIA black site for illegal detention and torture. (Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner Álvaro Gil-Robles called Camp Bondsteel a “smaller version of Guantanamo.”[10])
NATO caused more mayhem and bloodshed in the catastrophic 20-year military occupation of Afghanistan. During that time, U.S. and NATO forces dropped 85,000 bombs and missiles and conducted tens of thousands of “kill or capture” night raids, largely targeting innocent civilians, in a futile attempt to destroy the Taliban.
In Iraq, NATO soldiers from Canada, Hungary, Italy, Norway and the Netherlands trained senior military officers who carried out massive human rights crimes in sustaining the illegal U.S. military occupation.[11]
NATO played a further instrumental role in the 2011 regime-change operation targeting Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi who had given Libya the fifth-highest GDP per capita in Africa and the highest human development rating there.
Before the start of bombing operations, NATO secretly deployed CIA officers and British, French, Canadian and Qatari Special Forces to organize and lead Libyan jihadist forces intent on toppling the secular nationalist Qaddafi.[12]
NATO took full command of all aspects of the Libyan air war, with warships from 12 NATO countries sent to enforce a critical naval blockade.
Benjamin and Swanson wrote that, “after taking the capital, Tripoli, NATO and its allies cut off food, water, and electricity to the people of Sirte and Bani Walid as they bombarded them for weeks. The combination of aerial, naval, and artillery bombardment, starvation and rebel atrocities on these civilian populations made a final, savage mockery of the UN Security Council’s mandate to protect civilians.”[13]
Ukraine Breathes New Life into NATO
Most recently, NATO has performed its familiar war-mongering role in Ukraine, where it has trained Ukrainian troops, including members of the neo-Nazi-led Azov Battalion.
The latter began attacking the people of eastern Ukraine after the 2014 U.S.-backed coup that triggered the devastating ongoing conflict.
This conflict was provoked in part by U.S. efforts to extend NATO membership to Ukraine, which CIA Director William Burns had warned was a red line that should not be crossed.[14]
In late March 2022, thanks to peace talks mediated by Turkey, Russia was ready to withdraw from all the territory it had captured if Ukraine agreed to give up any commitment to join NATO or allow NATO military bases or missiles to be stationed on its territory. The deal was scuttled when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson flew to Kyiv to tell Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelensky that the “collective West” would not support it.
This ensured that the war would go on—at the cost of the flower of Ukraine’s youth who have been sacrificed in another unwinnable war.
Hope for the Future?
NATO’s dubious role in triggering the ongoing bloodbath in Ukraine is sadly characteristic of a 75-year history of provoking warfare and terrorizing civilians—in the service of U.S. and Western global hegemony.
At the end of their book, Swanson and Benjamin note that people around the world increasingly see the U.S. as the greatest threat to world peace.
Americans themselves remain divided about NATO: 47% want to see the U.S. keep its current commitment, and 28% want to either decrease it or withdraw entirely.
In a reflection of the rising hawkishness of the Democratic Party base and its susceptibility to government propaganda, only 14% of Democrats want no or less participation in NATO compared to 42% of Republicans.[15]
These data, while potentially discouraging, do reflect the fact that a significant percentage of Americans—including many living in the conservative heartland—are weary of foreign military intervention and NATO and represent a significant potential organizing base.
Given the high percentage of support for NATO among liberal Democrats, an urgent task should be for peace activists to embark on a vigorous campaign of public education targeting liberals that focuses on NATO’s horrifying history.
Benjamin and Swanson’s book is a perfect resource for that campaign and should be widely distributed to better inform the U.S. public about the evil ways their tax dollars are being spent.
References…………………………
The Corporate News Media at Work
Oh dear. It seems that free WordPress blog sites now no longer permit me to put Youtube videos into my blogs.
As I run this website on no funding at all, I will now just have to supply the links to Youtube and other videos.
Jonathan Cook – New Media Talk – Festival of Whistleblowing, Dissent & Accountability – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOfLsj_qh4w&t=107s
JULY 14, 2024, By Jonathan Cook
Large numbers of Palestinians and Ukrainians were killed in missile strikes days apart, writes Jonathan Cook. The differing coverage of these comparable events is the clue to the media’s true function.
When all we have to rely on in understanding our relationship to the news media is the media’s self-proclaimed assessment of its own role, maybe it is no surprise that most of us assume the West’s “free press” is a force for good: the bedrock of democracy, the touchstone of a superior western civilisation.
The more idealistic among us think of the news media as something akin to a public service. The more cynical of us think of it as a competitive marketplace in information and commentary, one in which ugly agendas are often in evidence but truth ultimately prevails.
Both views are fanciful. The reality is far, far darker – and I speak as someone who worked for many years in The Guardian and Observer newsrooms, widely seen as the West’s most progressive newspapers.
As readers, we don’t, as we imagine, “consume” news. Rather, the news consumes us. Or put another way, the media uses the news to groom us, its audience. Properly understood, the relationship is one of abuser and abused.
Sounds like a paranoid conspiracy theory?
In fact, just such an argument was set out many years ago — in more academic fashion — in Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman’s book Manufacturing Consent.
If you have never heard of the book, there may be a reason. The media don’t want you reading it.
When I worked at The Guardian, there was no figure more reviled in the newsroom by senior editors than Noam Chomsky. As young journalists, we were warned off reading him. How might we react were we to start thinking more deeply about the role of the media, or begin testing the limits of what we were allowed to report and say?
Chomsky and Herman’s Propaganda Model explains in detail how Western publics are “brainwashed under freedom” by a media driven by hidden corporate and state interests. Those interests can be concealed only because the media decides what counts as news and frames how we understand events.
Its chief tools are misdirection and omission — and, in extremis, outright deception.
Tribal Camps
The Propaganda Model acknowledges that competition is permitted in the news media. But only of a narrow, superficial kind, meant to divide us more usefully into tribal, ideological camps – defined as the left and the right………………………………………………….
To survive, the Western power establishment has to engineer two related kinds of popular endorsement.
First, we must consent to the idea that the West has an inalienable right to control the Earth’s resources, even at the cost of committing terrible crimes both against the rest of humanity, such as the current genocide in Gaza, and against other species, as we wreck the natural world in our pursuit of impossible, endless economic growth on a finite planet.
And second, we must consent to the idea that the richest and most powerful elites in the West have an inalienable right to cream off most of the profits from this industrialised rape of our only home.
The media rarely identifies this wasteful, greed system, so normalised has it become. But when given a name, it is called capitalism. It emerges from the shadows only when the media need to confront and ridicule a bogeyman caricature of its main ideological rival, socialism.
Immersed in Propaganda
The news media have been fantastically successful at making a system of suicidal resource extraction designed to enrich a tiny number of billionaires seem entirely normal to their audiences.
Which is why those same billionaires are as keen to own the news media as they are to own politicians. In fact, gain ownership of the media, and you own the political class too. It is the ultimate two-for-one offer.
No politician can afford to take on key state-corporate interests, or the media that veils those interests — as Jeremy Corbyn soon found out in the U.K. a few years back……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Different Narratives
But rarely do we have examples of propaganda so flagrant from our “free press” that it is hard for readers not to notice them. The state-corporate media just made my job a little easier.
Earlier this month, it reported on two closely comparable events that it framed in entirely different ways. Ways that all too clearly serve state-corporate interests.
The first such event was an Israeli air strike on July 6 on a school in Gaza, where Palestinian civilians, including children, had been sheltering from months of a rampaging Israeli military that has slaughtered many tens of thousands of Palestinians and destroyed most of the enclave’s homes and infrastructure……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
The pattern to this skewing of news priorities, the constant distorted framing of events is the clue to how we should decipher what the media is trying to achieve, what it is there to do.
BBC news coverage all too often looks like it is exploiting any opportunity to highlight violence by Russia, in strict accordance with British foreign policy objectives. Equally, it all too often looks like the BBC is engineering pretexts to ignore or downplay violence by Israel, again in strict accordance with British foreign policy objectives.
Ukraine is a key battleground for the West in its battle for global “full-spectrum dominance”, Washington’s central foreign policy strategy in which it positions itself so that no other great power, such as Russia and China, can challenge its control over the planet’s resources. The U.S. and its Western allies are ready to risk an entirely unnecessary nuclear war, it seems, to win that battle……………………………………………….
The truth is the BBC, The Guardian and the rest are nothing more than conduits of state-corporate propaganda, masquerading as news outlets.
Until we grasp that, they will continue grooming us. https://consortiumnews.com/2024/07/13/the-corporate-news-media-at-work/
NATO member to fight ‘pro-war propaganda’ – official
https://www.rt.com/news/600664-hungary-fight-war-propaganda/ 10 July 24
Budapest wants media financing. to be “transparent” as part of its “anti-war action plan,” said Gergely Gulyas
Hungary is set to introduce a new “anti-war action plan” which will include measures aimed at countering “war propaganda,” Gergely Gulyas, the head of the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office, announced at a press conference on Monday.
Under the plan, any political forces or media outlets accused of promoting belligerent policies would be required to reveal their funding sources. The goal is “full transparency,” Gulyas said. The measure is primarily aimed at the media, the nation’s news outlets reported, noting that political parties in Hungary are already legally barred from receiving funds from abroad.
The government would also reserve the right to block any foreign funding and send the money back to whoever provided it, if it is used to bankroll “war propaganda,” Gulyas said.
The official provided few details as to how the government would decide what exactly constitutes “war propaganda.” He said that the Justice Ministry would develop a mechanism to determine whether a media outlet is involved in the practice.
When asked if “foreign funding” included money coming from within the EU, Gulyas said that the measure would be focused on financing coming from outside the bloc. He argued, however, that the EU itself is dominated by “war propaganda” focused on the ongoing conflict between Kiev and Moscow.
Gulyas said Budapest is facing “political, legal and financial blackmail” which aims to force it to join the ranks of Kiev’s Western war backers, but that it has so far resisted the pressure. “There is no blackmail that [can force] Hungary to change its conviction that every political step must serve the end of war,” he said.
His words came as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban embarked on what he called a peace mission that included visits to Kiev and Moscow within the span of several days. In the Ukrainian capital, he called for a ceasefire, describing it as a first step towards conflict resolution. The idea was rejected by Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky.
Orban called his Moscow trip the first step to restoring dialogue. The move drew criticism from the EU, which said the Hungarian prime minister, whose nation currently holds the bloc’s rotating presidency, had no mandate to speak on behalf of Brussels.
On Monday, Gulyas addressed the issue by saying that peace cannot be achieved without direct dialogue with all the warring parties. “Hungary would like to be in contact with any country that can contribute to peace,” he added.
COMMENT. From outside the bloc could be countries like the US, and the UK.
The move from Hungary comes after the visits of Victor Orban.
“Nuked” on Aukus ‘fiasco’ says decision to embrace pact will ‘haunt’ Australia’sLabor for years
“undermines any argument that the new submarines – whether nuclear or not – would be used primarily to defend Australia or to protect the nation’s shipping lanes”.
“at least one new cabinet minister wondered if it was possible to stop Aukus, but the suggestion went no further”.
Fowler said he did not believe there had been adequate public debate in Australia about the merits of Aukus,
Andrew Fowler’s book reveals one of Australia’s most important requirements for its submarines was the ability to work alongside the US in South China Sea
Daniel Hurst , 7 July 24, https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/07/book-on-aukus-fiasco-says-decision-to-embrace-pact-will-haunt-labor-for-years
One of Australia’s most important requirements for its new submarines is the ability to work alongside the United States in the South China Sea, a new book discloses.
The book by Andrew Fowler, a former investigative journalist for the ABC’s Four Corners and Foreign Correspondent programs, also predicts that Labor’s rush to embrace the Aukus pact “will haunt them for years to come”.
Fowler examines the Morrison government’s cancellation of the French submarine contract and its pursuit of a nuclear-powered alternative in the book Nuked: The Submarine Fiasco that Sank Australia’s Sovereignty.
The book makes the case that Aukus is a “deeply flawed” scheme that, when combined with a parallel effort to deepen military integration with the US, effectively ties Australia’s future “to whoever is in the White House”.
It includes an interview with David Gould, a former UK undersecretary for defence, who was headhunted by the then Gillard Labor government in 2012 as a consultant on a replacement for Australia’s ageing Collins-class submarines.
“As we sat talking, Gould revealed for the first time what has long been suspected: one of the submarine’s most important requirements would be to work with the Americans in the South China Sea,” Fowler writes.
“He explained that the submarine would need ‘to get through the archipelago to the north of Australia and into the South China Sea and operate in the South China Sea for a reasonable period of time and then come back again, without docking, or refuelling or anything. That’s what it needs to do.’”
The book quotes Gould as saying that the submarine would work alongside the US and Japan in an “integrated system”, which had become “even more pertinent with China”.
Fowler writes that the statement “undermines any argument that the new submarines – whether nuclear or not – would be used primarily to defend Australia or to protect the nation’s shipping lanes”.
Fowler contends that the focus is “to contain China and threaten its trade routes and food and energy supplies in a crisis”.
The Australian government has repeatedly said that its strategic motivation for acquiring nuclear-powered submarines is to “contribute to the collective security of our region” and maintain the global rules-based order.
The Labor defence minister, Richard Marles, has argued that the defence of Australia “doesn’t mean that much unless we have the collective security of our region” and that the nuclear-powered submarines would put a “question mark in any adversary’s mind”.
Fowler contends that the focus is “to contain China and threaten its trade routes and food and energy supplies in a crisis”.
The Australian government has repeatedly said that its strategic motivation for acquiring nuclear-powered submarines is to “contribute to the collective security of our region” and maintain the global rules-based order.
The Labor defence minister, Richard Marles, has argued that the defence of Australia “doesn’t mean that much unless we have the collective security of our region” and that the nuclear-powered submarines would put a “question mark in any adversary’s mind”.
The book reveals that after Labor won the 2022 election, “at least one new cabinet minister wondered if it was possible to stop Aukus, but the suggestion went no further”.
In an interview with Guardian Australia, Fowler said he began researching the book after becoming fascinated with “the overuse of executive power of government in the Morrison government, particularly the exposure of his five secret ministries”.
“I thought that the arrival of a $368bn secret deal that was done and then sprung on the public and the opposition party at the last moment would require an investigation,” he said.
Fowler said he did not believe there had been adequate public debate in Australia about the merits of Aukus, the security partnership with the US and the UK that involves the nuclear-powered submarine project but also collaboration on other advanced defence technologies.
“I think we debate the dollar-and-dime arguments, as the Americans might say, but we don’t debate the really big issues,” Fowler said.
“I don’t give advice to government but I think the Australian people have a right to know what the submarines are being bought for. They’re being bought to run with the Americans and Japan to contain the rise of China.”
Fowler said the then Labor opposition was put “in a diabolical position” when forced by Scott Morrison to make a quick decision on whether to support Aukus in 2021.
“This was a calculated attempt to wedge Labor on this issue and Labor only had 24 hours to make a decision,” he said. “It was obscene and absurd, and yet they made the decision fearing that if they opposed it they would be accused of being anti-American and weak on national security.
“I do understand why they went with it, but I think they also had some time to do some backtracking.”
Fowler called for an inquiry focused on “a failure of due process” in the cancellation of the French contract and the decision to pursue the Aukus arrangement, which officials admitted during Senate estimates hearings had not gone through the normal two-gate process for defence acquisitions.
Instead, the Morrison government announced Australia, the US and the UK would carry out an 18-month joint study to work out how to deliver the project. That led to the Albanese government’s March 2023 announcement of more detailed plans.
The book argues the French submarines would have given Australia “greater independence”, noting the president, Emmanuel Macron, had described Australia, India and France as being at the heart of a “new Indo-Pacific alliance and axis”.
The book says this “more independent thinking” caused “consternation in Washington”.
1 This Month
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
-
Archives
- September 2026 (194)
- August 2026 (330)
- July 2026 (355)
- June 2026 (287)
- May 2026 (306)
- April 2026 (356)
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (267)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (375)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 