Ukraine conflict updates: Record Russian gains, Kursk encirclement and Donbass push
By Sergey Poletaev, information analyst and publicist, 13 Dec 24 https://www.rt.com/russia/609229-overview-situation-on-front/
An overview of the frontline situation during November and December of 2024
Since October, intense battles have been raging all along the front. In that month and November, the Russian army advanced at its fastest pace since the start of the Special Military Operation, capturing over 1,500 square kilometers.
The Russian army is currently advancing at eight sections of the front, which marks a new record. Below, we’ll focus on four key directions, from north to south.
Kursk direction: Ongoing battles and the encirclement of the AFU
The situation here hasn’t changed much since our last report, and clashes continue. Despite major challenges at other sections of the front, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) is still sending reserves to Kursk. Kiev believes that retaining control over this section of the front is crucial since it gives it leverage with the new presidential administration in the US.
According to Western and Ukrainian sources, North Korean soldiers have reportedly been deployed to Kursk region, though their presence hasn’t been confirmed.
Interesting fact: The first major encirclement of Ukrainian forces since the battles for Mariupol (which occurred in the spring of 2022) happened at this section of the front – several hundred AFU soldiers found themselves encircled near Olgovskaya grove. Russian President Vladimir Putin relayed this information on October 24, and by November 20, the area had been cleared.
What’s the current situation? This week, battles have become more intense. Kursk remains one of the few directions where Ukrainian forces are actively counterattacking, able to hold their ground and even occasionally advancing.
Pokrovsk direction: Russians advance along the railway
The Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk) urban agglomeration is the second largest urban area in Donbass that remains partially under Ukrainian control (along with the Slaviansk-Kramatorsk urban area).
Before the war, its population was around 200,000 people. Moreover, the city is a crucial logistics hub for supplying Ukrainian forces along the entire southern front.
At the end of summer, the Pokrovsk direction was considered a priority; however, after the city of Novogrodovka was captured with minimal resistance, further progress westward stalled. Selidovo (the pre-war population of the city and its suburbs was about 50,000) held out for nearly two months, but, surrounded from the north and south, it eventually fell without major urban combat. Following a brief pause, the Russian army resumed its advance toward Pokrovsk, moving around the city’s southern flank.
Interesting fact: Russian troops mainly advanced along the main railway line, moving from Avdeevka to Novogrodovka. Now, the Russians are also advancing along another railway line further south, which leads directly to Pokrovsk.
What’s the current situation? Since the end of November, Russian troops have advanced further – breaking through Ukrainian defensive lines near Novotroitskoye, they moved closer to Pokrovsk and are now positioned 10-11 kilometers south of the city.
Civilians have been evacuated from Pokrovsk (pre-war population 60,000) and the supply of electricity and gas to the city has been cut off. Will the AFU be able to hold their flanks and engage in serious urban combat? Most likely, Ukrainians will attempt to do so, driven by the same political motivations as in Kursk region.
Kurakhovo: The main hotspot
The battles for Kurakhovo began right after the fall of Ugledar in early October. The Russians advanced from several directions: from the north toward the reservoir, from the front line via Ostroye-Ostrovskoye, from the south via Bogoyavlenka, and along a broader front from Yasnaya Polyana to Konstaninopol. The latter direction was also useful for encircling Velikaya Novoselka, which we’ll discuss below.
Interesting fact: The Kurakhovo operation has been the biggest one since Mariupol; it involves two groups of troops, and encompasses an area of 1,200 square kilometers. While it may not be a strategic-scale operation, it is quite significant. For example, the area of the Avdeevka operation was less than one tenth the size, and the infamous “Bakhmut meat grinder” was one fifth or one fourth its size. The map shows only the central area of this operation.
What’s the current situation? Over the past week, two significant developments occurred. First, Russian forces have taken control over the entire northern bank of the reservoir and the village of Starye Terny, along with the dam. This gives them complete fire control over both the residential areas and the industrial zone located to the west, where a thermal power station is located.
Second, the Russians are pushing the Ukrainians out of the area along the Sukhie Yaly River south of the city. Their foes have practically been driven into a ravine along the river, with some sources even suggesting that encirclement is imminent.
However, even despite desperate situation, the Ukrainian forces are clinging to their positions along the river since if they lose control over this area, the city will fall within a few days.
Velikaya Novoselka: In memory of Ukraine’s counteroffensive
Velikaya Novoselka is a relatively large settlement with a population of around 6,000 (more than that of Sudzha in Russia’s Kursk region). This area is held by various Ukrainian forces, including half a dozen AFU brigades, territorial defense units, the National Guard, and some marine units.
By the end of November, the situation for the AFU grew a lot worse following the unexpected breakthrough of Russian forces toward the highway near Razdolnoye, north of Velikaya Novoselka.
Once again, the Russian army had employed its preferred strategy – flanking and encircling the settlement and securing control over communications. Combined with continuous pressure from the front, this quickly depletes the enemy’s resources. The AFU has a tendency to hold onto their positions even in desperate circumstances and to withdraw only when it’s too late, so this tactic has been particularly costly for the Ukrainians.
Interesting fact: During the summer of 2023, this was one of two key directions of the Ukrainian counteroffensive. Over four months, the AFU managed to advance only 5-6 kilometers southward, from Velikaya Novoselka to the settlement of Urozhaynoye. In contrast, Russian forces have advanced about 20km on the eastern flank just in the past month.
What’s the current situation? Reports indicate that the AFU has deployed a reserve mechanized brigade to reinforce the flanks around Velikaya Novoselka. This has not been confirmed, but we do know that the Ukrainians managed to launch a series of counterattacks, successfully repelling the advance of the Russian troops in the village of Novy Komar and easing some of the pressure on the northern flank of Velikaya Novoselka.
Finding the Unmentionable: Amnesty International, Israel and Genocide
Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.com/finding-the-unmentionable-amnesty-international-israel-and-genocide/ 14 Dec 24
It was bound to happen. With continuing operations in Gaza, and increasingly violent activities being conducted against Palestinians in the occupied territories, human rights organisations are making increasingly severe assessments of Israel’s warring cause. While the world awaits the findings of the International Court of Justice on whether Israel’s campaign, as argued by South Africa, amounts to genocide, Amnesty International has already reached its conclusions.
In a 296-page report sporting the ominous title “You Feel Like You Are Subhuman”, the human rights body, after considering the events in Gaza between October 2023 and July 2024, identified a “pattern of conduct” that indicated genocidal intent. These included, among other things, persistent direct attacks on civilians and objects “and deliberately indiscriminate strikes over the nine-month period, wiping out entire families repeatedly launched at times when these strikes would result in high numbers of casualties”; the nature of the weapons used; the speed and scale of destruction to civilian objects and infrastructure (homes, shelters, health facilities, water and sanitation infrastructure, agricultural land”; the use of bulldozing and controlled demolitions; and the use of “incomprehensible, misleading and arbitrary ‘evacuation’ orders’.”
The report does much to focus on statements made from the highest officials to the common soldiery to reveal the mental state necessary to reveal genocide. 102 statements made by members of the Knesset, government officials and high-ranking commanders “dehumanized Palestinians, or called for, or justified genocidal acts or other crimes under international law against them.” The report also examined 62 videos, audio recordings and photographs posted online featuring gleeful Israeli soldiers rejoicing in the “destruction of Gaza or the denial of essential services to people in Gaza, or celebrated the destruction of Palestinian homes, mosques, schools and universities, including through controlled demolitions, in some cases without apparent military necessity.”
From its alternative universe, the Israeli public relations machine drew from its own agitprop specialists, working on mangling the language of the report. The formula is familiar: attack the authors first, not their premises. “The deplorable and fanatical organisation Amnesty International has once again produced a fabricated response that is entirely based on lies,” came the howl from Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein.
Other methods of repudiation involve detaching Hamas and its war with Israel from any historical continuum, not least the fact that it was aided, supported and backed by Israel for years as a counter to Fatah in the West Bank. Isolating Hamas as a terrorist aberration also serves to treat it as alien, artificially foreign and not part of any resistance movement against suffocating Israeli occupation and strangulation. They, so goes this argument, are genocidal, and countering such a body can never be, by any stretch, genocidal. The pro-Israeli group NGO Monitor abides by this line of reasoning, calling allegations of genocide against Israel “a reversal of the actual and clearly established intent of Hamas and its allies (including its patron, Iran), to wipe Israel off the map.”
Israel’s closest ally and sponsor, the United States, proved predictable in rejecting the findings while still claiming to respect the humanitarian line. The US State Department’s principal deputy spokesman, Vedant Patel, expressed disagreement “with the conclusions of such a report. We had said previously and continue to find that the allegations of genocide are unfounded.” Patel did, however, pay lip service to the “vital role that civil society organizations like Amnesty International and human rights groups and NGOs play in providing information and analysis as it relates to Gaza and what’s going on.” Vital, but only up to a point.
Far less guarded assessments can be found in the American pro-Israeli chatter sphere. These follow the usual pattern. Orde Kittrie, senior fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a name that can only imply that crimes committed in such a cause are bound to be justifiable, offers a neat illustration. Amnesty, he argues, “systematically and repeatedly mischaracterizes both the facts and the law.” Kittrie suggests his own mischaracterisation by parroting the IDF’s line that Hamas had “increased casualty counts by illegally using Palestinian civilian shields and by hiding weapons and war fighters in and below homes, hospitals, mosques, and other buildings.” This conveniently ignores that point that the numbers are not necessarily proof of genocidal intent, though it helps.
The report also notes that, even in the face of such tactics by Hamas, Israel was still “obligated to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians and avoid attacks that would be indiscriminate or disproportionate.”
Amnesty International’s report is yet another addition to the gloomy literature on the subject. Human Rights Watch, in November, pointed to violations of the laws of war, crimes against humanity, and the provisional measures of the ICJ issued urging Israel to abide by the obligations imposed by the UN Genocide Convention of 1948. The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem stated in no uncertain terms in October that “Israel intends to forcibly displace northern Gaza’s residents by committing some of the gravest crimes under the laws of war.”
Battling over the designation of whether a campaign is genocidal can act as a distraction, a field of quibbles for paper pushing pedants. The “specific intent” in proof must be unequivocally demonstrated and beyond any other reasonable inference. A smokescreen is thereby deployed that risks masking the broader ambit of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But no amount of pedantry and disagreement can arrest the sense that Israel’s lethal conduct, whatever threshold it may reach in international law, is directed at destroying not merely Palestinian life but any worthwhile sense of a viable sovereignty. Amnesty Israel, while rejecting the central claim of the parent organisation’s reportdid make one concession: the country’s brutal response following October 7, 2023 “may amount to crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.”
Why is Israel attacking Syria?
What does Israel gain by attacking Syria in the wake of al-Assad’s overthrow?
Aljazeera, By Justin Salhani and Simon Speakman Cordall, 11 Dec 2024
After the fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, Israel has been encroaching on its neighbour’s territory.
Since al-Assad’s dramatic flight to Russia on Sunday, Israel has attacked Syria more than 400 times and, despite UN protests, launched a military incursion into the buffer zone that has separated the two countries since 1974.
…………………………….Israel has justified its attacks on Syria for years by claiming it is eliminating Iranian military targets. However, Iran has said none of its forces are currently in Syria.
Now, Israel says it is focused on destroying Syrian military infrastructure.
Israel claims that it is trying to stop weapons from landing in the hands of “extremists”, a definition it has applied to a rotating list of actors, most recently Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the primary Syrian opposition group that led the operation to overthrow al-Assad.
srael has also deployed military units to the buffer zone along the Golan Heights separating Syria and Israel. The terrain has been an officially designated demilitarised zone as part of a 1974 UN-brokered ceasefire deal.
Israel occupies approximately two-thirds of the Golan Heights, with the UN-administered buffer zone spanning a narrow, 400-square-kilometre (154-sq-mile) area. The rest has been controlled by Syria.
Syrian security forces have also reported Israeli tanks advancing from the Golan Heights into Qatana, 10km (six miles) into Syrian territory and close to the capital.
Israeli military sources have denied any such incursion……………………………………….
What is Israel’s justification for this latest attack on a sovereign nation?
That it is acting in its defence.
Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters on Monday that the former Syrian territory along the Golan Heights, which has been classed as a demilitarised zone since 1974, would remain part of Israel “for eternity”.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar has defended the Israeli strikes since Sunday, saying Israel’s intention had been solely to target suspected chemical weapons sites and long-range rocket sites – to prevent their seizure by armed groups opposed to Israel’s ongoing offensives on its neighbours.
At a briefing for foreign media, Sa’ar said Israel was acting “in a precautionary manner”.
What does Israel want from Syria?
That’s not clear yet.
The government has not made any statements outside of “acting in the interest of Israel’s defence” that could indicate its intent.
However, some prominent Israeli figures have spoken about their views of what should happen next…………………..more https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/12/11/israel-attack-syria-explainer
US Bombs Over 75 Targets in Syria After Assad Falls
“The Western press are waxing lyrical about the new Syria being born—but not a word on the U.S. and Israeli bombs falling from the sky,” said Yanis Varoufakis.
Brett Wilkins, 10 Dec 24,
https://www.commondreams.org/news/us-bombs-syria-again?utm_source=Common+Dreams&utm_campaign=c2578f3f4f-Top+News%3A+Mon.+12%2F9%2F24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-3b949b3e19-600558179
U.S. military forces launched dozens of airstrikes on more than 75 Islamic State targets in Syria on Sunday after the fall of longtime Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid ongoing Israeli and Turkish attacks on the war-torn Middle Eastern nation.
According to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), warplanes including B-52 bombers, F-15 fighters, and A-10 ground attack aircraft “conducted dozens of precision airstrikes targeting known ISIS camps and operatives in central Syria.”
CENTCOM called the strikes “part of the ongoing mission to disrupt, degrade, and defeat ISIS in order to prevent the terrorist group from conducting external operations and to ensure that ISIS does not seek to take advantage of the current situation to reconstitute in central Syria.”
The U.S., “together with allies and partners in the region, will continue to carry out operations to degrade ISIS operational capabilities even during this dynamic period in Syria,” CENTCOM added.
“The Biden administration ordering ongoing airstrikes is a disappointing sign that they have no intent on reversing their deadly policy of interventionism.”
Responding Monday to the latest attacks on Syria by U.S. forces, Danaka Katovich, national co-director of the peace group CodePink, told Common Dreams: “We condemn the U.S. airstrikes in Syria. The U.S. has sowed chaos in Syria and the entire region for years and the Biden administration ordering ongoing airstrikes is a disappointing sign that they have no intent on reversing their deadly policy of interventionism.”
U.S. and coalition forces have killed and maimed at least tens of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis during the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations as part of the anti-ISIS campaign and wider so-called War on Terror.
Commenting on the dearth of coverage of the strikes by the corporate media, prominent Greek leftist Yanis Varoufakis said on social media that “the Western press are waxing lyrical about the new Syria being born—but not a word on the U.S. and Israeli bombs falling from the sky.”
“Is there no bottom to the moral void of the Western press?” he added.
Sunday’s U.S. strikes came as al-Assad and relatives fled to Russia—where they have been granted asylum—amid the fall of the capital, Damascus, to rebel forces.
Also on Sunday, Israeli forces seized more territory in Syria’s Golan Heights and ordered residents of five villages to “stay home and not go out until further notice” if they want to remain safe. Israel conquered the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights in 1967 and has unlawfully occupied it ever since. In 1981, Israel illegally annexed the occupied lands.
“We will not allow any hostile force to establish itself on our border,” right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza—said in a video posted on social media.
Numerous Israelis celebrated the seizure on social media, while others cautioned against boasting about what is almost certainly an illegal conquest.
Meanwhile in northern Syria, Turkish airstrikes in support of Syrian National Army rebels—who are battling U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters in and around the Kurdish-controlled city of Manbij—reportedly killed numerous civilians along with dozens of militants.
In what it called a “horrific massacre,” the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Monday that 11 civilians from the same family, including women and six children, were killed in a Turkish drone strike on the SDF-controlled village of Al-Mustariha in northern Raqqa Governate.
The growing arsenals
by beyondnuclearinternational, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/12/08/the-growing-arsenals/
We must quickly realign priorities before nuclear weapons are used, writes M.V. Ramana
The relationship between nuclear weapons and human security is similar to that of the relationship between economic inequalities and social justice: if you have the first, the second is very difficult to obtain. Jacqueline Cabassso and Ray Acheson.
For the vast majority of the world’s people, the most important impact of the possession of nuclear arsenals by some of the most powerful countries has been the danger of instant and painful death. In the words of psychologist Robert Jay Lifton: “The central existential fact of the nuclear age is vulnerability.”
This vulnerability has become more apparent in recent years. In the last 16 months, the world has witnessed government officials from Russia (Dmitry Medvedev) and Israel (Amihai Eliyahu) threatening to use, or calling for the use of, nuclear weapons against the people of Ukraine and Gaza respectively. The rulers of these countries have already shown the willingness to kill tens of thousands of civilians.
The ‘uses’ of nuclear weapons
What these recent invocations of nuclear threats illustrate is that nuclear weapons are most ‘useful’ to nuclear-armed aggressors to intimidate those they attack and all who might aid them. All countries possessing nuclear weapons make plans for using nuclear weapons under some contingency or the other. As British historian E. P. Thompson once noted, “It has never been true that nuclear war is ‘unthinkable’. It has been thought and the thought has been put into effect.”
There are other uses for nuclear weapons. In his book, The Doomsday Machine, Daniel Ellsberg, best known for sharing the secret study of the U.S. Department of Defense on the Vietnam War – the Pentagon Papers – with the media, documents twenty-five instances when U.S. presidents have repeatedly used their nuclear weapons to coerce other governments into acting in ways they do not want to. This, Ellsberg argued, was also use of nuclear weapons in the same way “that a gun is used when you point it at someone’s head … whether or not the trigger is pulled.”
Despite countries trying to justify their nuclear weapons by claiming that they are for deterrence, the beneficiaries of any such property are not the people. When the World Court was deliberating on the question of the legality of nuclear weapons in the 1990s, India – before it declared itself to be a nuclear weapon state in 1998 – described the practice of nuclear deterrence as being “abhorrent to human sentiment since it implies that a state if required to defend its own existence will act with pitiless disregard for the consequences to its own and adversary’s people.”
This statement, besides stating how India once upon a time viewed nuclear deterrence, also points to a deeper reality: It is not threats to the people of a country that may result in the use of nuclear weapons; it is threats to the State. And the statement makes it clear that the interests of the State are not the same as that of the people; people can be sacrificed for the State.
Justifications for nuclear weapons often invoke the idea that these are necessary for national security. This ill-defined concept allows those in power to pass on their interests as the interests of the people living in the country.
Nuclear weapons are inimical not just to security but also to democracy. They are deeply implicated in the processes that perpetuate inequalities of power, both among and within states. Nuclear weapons are inherently undemocratic, with layers of secrecy surrounding activities. Decisions – be they about development of nuclear weapons capability, or about how many and what kinds of nuclear weapons to develop, or about how to plan for their utilization, or about their actual use – are never made in consultation with the public. Entities like the scientific and technical laboratories and the military involved in their development and deployment benefit from seemingly unlimited financial resources and overwhelming political power. Any society that desires to be open, or liberal, or progressive will find those values being undermined – or more accurately, further undermined – if it acquires nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons and the two freedoms
Nuclear weapons, and all of the multiple layers of violence underlying these means of mass destruction, are clearly inimical to people being free of fear. The rational response to the fact that countries possess these sophisticated means of killing and maiming is to be afraid.
At the same time, merely the absence of fear will not result in real peace or security. In 1945, when the United Nations was being founded, the American secretary of state, Edward R. Stettinius, wrote: “The battle of peace has to be fought on two fronts. The first is the security front where victory spells freedom from fear. The second is the economic and social front where victory means freedom from want. Only victory on both fronts can assure the world of an enduring peace.”
This dual basis of peace is reflected in the concept of human security, as laid out in the 1994 Human Development Report that calls for both ‘freedom from fear’ and ‘freedom from want’. How do nuclear weapons and the many other technologies used to carry out widespread killing affect the latter?
In any country or society that invests heavily in armaments, individuals and communities will necessarily suffer from wants of all kinds. That large amounts of money are spent on such pursuits makes it less likely that there will be resources to meet the basic needs of people so that they can enjoy ‘freedom from want’.
According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the nine nuclear-armed states spent a combined total of over 91 billion US dollars in 2023 on nuclear weapons. The spending has been increasing over the years, with an increase of over 10 billion US dollars just in 2023. The United States alone spent over 51 billion US dollars. The cost is expected to go up in the coming years and the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the United States will spend 756 billion US dollars over the next ten years (2023-2032).
These large amounts of money are being used for developing the most destructive of weapons even as there are pressing human needs around the world. For example, the United Nations World Food Program estimate of the yearly cost “to feed all of the world’s hungry people and end global hunger by 2030” is 40 billion US dollars – just over half of the average annual expenditure of 75.6 billion US dollars projected for the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
Expenditure on nuclear arsenals is not the whole story. Nuclear weapons are not developed or deployed in a vacuum. Countries that possess nuclear weapons, and those that want to possess them, all have bloated militaries too. Although nuclear weapons might be the most destructive in their military arsenals, countries that possess nuclear weapons have far more often used other weapons to kill and maim people. Both of the countries mentioned earlier engaged in active wars, Russia and Israel, have used multiple ways to slaughter Ukrainians and Palestinians (not to mention the Lebanese), while nuclear weapons have only been invoked verbally, at least so far.
Yet again, the amounts of money spent on these weapons is obscenely large. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), world military expenditures reached over 2,443 billion US dollars in 2023 – the highest it has ever been since the institute began recording data in the last 1980s. Four of the five countries with the largest military budgets, and six of the ten countries with the largest budgets, possess nuclear weapons. The other countries in that obscene list are in military alliances or negotiating one with nuclear weapon states.
These figures only focus on direct military equipment and operations. But today’s wars involve much more. While bombs and missiles are often the proximate cause of death and destruction, their use is guided by sophisticated forms of information technology. For example, artificial intelligence programs like Lavender and Where’s Daddy and Habsora (The Gospel) have been used by Israel to decide which individuals and buildings in Gaza are to be targeted for killing. And the U.S. Department of Defense is spending billions (for example) in having companies apply AI to other aspects of warfare.
What countries and private corporations spend on developing such sophisticated technologies does not contribute to people’s freedom from want either. Because research and development on these technologies cut across government and corporate lines, and because companies and governments rely on claims about civilian applications of these technologies, there are no reliable estimates on how much is spent on such efforts. But without a doubt, there are tremendous opportunity costs resulting from this kind of spending.
Weapons as a reflection of priorities
Notwithstanding these monetary comparisons, the problem of military spending cannot and should not be reduced to a ‘guns versus butter’ question as disarmament activist Andrew Lichterman has emphasized. These reflect much deeper societal and political forces – which are also at the base of the rise of power of authoritarian nationalists in many countries around the world.
The connections between governments developing the means to kill large numbers of people and the drying up of resources for human development remains a subject to be explored more deeply. Pakistani scholar Sadia Tasleem has argued that it is the responsibility of intellectuals “to investigate and bring forth the myriad ways in which nuclear policies are connected to various aspects of social and political life and to uncover the dynamics that perpetuate the already existing grave inequalities of power and wealth undermining human security at multiple levels.” Even among those interested in disarmament, the intellectual effort invested in uncovering these connections, especially at the deeper level of underlying social and political forces, has remained far more meagre than the intellectual effort invested in documenting the real or hypothetical destructive effects of weapons.
Ultimately, nuclear weapons and the development of other means of destroying people is a matter of justice and human security, and a reflection of the priorities of governments and powerful institutions that control decisions on spending. These misplaced priorities are what Martin Luther King warned about in his 1967 Beyond Vietnam speech: “When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” Those giant triplets are yet to be conquered, because capital, profit, and property continue to be valued more than people are by governments, which prioritize the security of the state above the security of individuals and communities.
Figuring out how to realign priorities is a critical question for our times, dealing as we are with vast social inequalities and multiple cascading ecological crises. Not to mention the possibility of the use of the large nuclear arsenals that are growing in size and destructiveness.
M. V. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia. His latest book is Nuclear Is Not The Solution. The Folly of Atomic Power In The Age Of Climate Change, available from Verso Books.
Biden’s Nuclear Going Out of Business Sale
The only way Ukraine wins is for the West to stop the war and negotiate an agreement with Russia which restores Ukraine’s sovereignty, neutrality and way of life. Otherwise, the war grinds on, the casualties on both sides mount, Armageddon looms and the world gets to indulge in thinking the unthinkable, annihilation.
This is real. This is not a drill. The world is teetering on a precipice of nuclear war.
Dennis Kucinich, 7 Dec 24, https://freepress.org/article/biden%E2%80%99s-nuclear-going-out-business-sale
Has the world forgotten the real danger of nuclear war?
Do we live in a fantasy world where we think we can escalate tensions and put entire portions of the world under threat by using Ukraine as a sacrificial pawn (in what is classically sold as providing humanitarian and ally support) in a decades-long psychopathic foreign policy play to destroy Russia?
According to the laws of war, NATO, the U.S., the U.K., and France have determined to become “direct participants” in Europe’s deadly conflict as their home-grown offensive missiles are being launched from inside Ukraine to attack Russia.
Translated, a state of war exists between the West and Russia.
Putin is not absolved for his invasion of Ukraine. But how are western nations, led by the U.S., protecting Ukraine’s or their own national interests by quickening the dialectic of conflict, bringing nuclear weapons into the calculus?
Russian President Putin and his government have experienced long-standing western policies of encirclement and NATO encroachment through Ukraine, something the U.S. government swore would not happen. It did happen, reawakening Russia’s deepest fears of invasion.
Most Americans are unaware that in 2014, the U.S. forced out the elected President of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovych, which resulted in Kiev ordering attacks on ethnic Russian enclaves of Donetsk and Luhansk, baiting Russia into the beginning of a three year war, with the lure of NATO membership fluttering above Ukraine.
As the war barrels to a climactic, perhaps irredeemably fatal stage, the Ukrainian people have lost at least 600,000 of their fellow countrymen and women. Even so, at this late hour, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken demands that Ukraine lower its age of compulsory military service from 25 years of age to 18, to send even more young Ukrainians into the slaughter. Russian casualties will soar past 400,000 dead, with latest reports of 1,000 casualties a day.
One million Europeans have been killed for a war which was not inevitable, should never have been fought and, once it started, could have been brought to a fast conclusion. According to Naftali Bennett, former Prime Minister of Israel, peace talks were sabotaged by the US, just a month into the conflict.
The constitutions of the U.S., the U.K. and France, which forbid executives to unilaterally wage war, are being circumvented. Leaders have gone rogue and are consciously choosing nuclear brinkmanship over diplomacy.
In the past month, escalation is being stoked by the West. The launch of ATACMS and other advanced missiles necessarily involves U.S. personnel and intelligence data. This new phase of the war compelled the Kremlin to lower its threshold for a nuclear strike in an attempt to stop the use of even higher grade weapons against it from the West.
What happened? … The 2024 Presidential Election happened.
The escalation is intended to sabotage President Trump’s stated desire to bring an end to the Russia-Ukraine war and for the architects of the war to try to escape the blame for miscalculations, bumbling and cynical protraction of a bloody conflict. It is clear the West does not want peace.
Remember, the sacrifice of Ukraine and everything that has led up to this point is due to the West’s long time policy to advance the strategic defeat of Russia.
The Cold War never ended. It has given way to a boiling Hot War whose aim is to antagonize, provoke, diminish and conquer Russia. Key elements are the attempted dismantling of Russia’s energy infrastructure, and the massive transfer of arms to our proxy, Ukraine, through US appropriations which are approaching $200 billiion dollars, an amount equal to over $5,000 dollars for every Ukrainian man, woman and child.
In order to set the stage for this war, Western interests resorted to conjuring Putin as a demon, an arch-enemy of freedom, as was done with Hussein in Iraq, Khaddafy in Libya, and Assad in Syria. Once the enemy machine goes to work, military assets are mobilized to advance the overthrow of the noxious government, and the cash registers of defense contractors ring with the energy of a pinball arcade.
The Democratic Party unleashed an entire kennel of the dogs of war upon Russia, often at the urging of warden Hillary Clinton, mastermind of the Russiagate hoax. The nadir of the Dems descent into the indecent was ballyhooing the support of its 2024 presidential ticket by Dick Cheney, the sterling warmonger whose endorsement is to mass homicide what the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval is to stylish domesticity.
Think of the political consequences to the credibility of the entire Western foreign policy establishment if President Trump succeeds in bringing the war to a close. President Biden’s foreign policy, led by Secretary Blinken, will be forever tainted, as will the Democratic Party’s steadfast support for guns over butter.
The overthrow of the elected Ukrainian government in 2014, Russia’s subsequent invasion; the Prime Minister’s Gambit, Boris Johnson’s April 2022 scuttling of a peace agreement; the severe damage to the European economy through the destruction of Nordstream pipeline, by GUESS WHO, [readers hereby invited to guess]; NATO’S teeter-totter, penny-pinching one moment, saber-rattling burlesque the next, and harrowing brinkmanship — misdirecting public attention during the inevitable collapse of Ukraine. All this chest thumping and war pimping will be called into question, presuming there is time.
Another knock-on effect of the war and the failure of sanctions: Russia and China have been pushed together into a deep long-term military and economic partnership. Could the Biden Administration have been unaware of the military, economic and political fallout from a BRICS+-type alliance?
Rational military observers predict the transfer of the newest missiles will not change the outcome of the war, and some Trump advisers believe the next president’s bargaining position vis a vis Moscow will be strengthened as Ukraine’s offensive capacity is temporarily enhanced.
However, a sharp escalation in the next six weeks could result in a devastating response from an increasingly anxious Russia. Biden isn’t trying to help Trump or the process of peace, he’s handing him, and the world, a poisoned chalice.
The only way Ukraine wins is for the West to stop the war and negotiate an agreement with Russia which restores Ukraine’s sovereignty, neutrality and way of life. Otherwise, the war grinds on, the casualties on both sides mount, Armageddon looms and the world gets to indulge in thinking the unthinkable, annihilation.
Rear Admiral Thomas Buchanan of the US Strategic Command, isn’t calling for nuclear war, but he did say at a Project Atom 24 meeting recently, “If we have to have a(n) [nuclear] exchange then we want to do it in terms that are most acceptable to the United States,” where, presumably, even after nuclear war, we still lead the world, or its ashes – in strategic weapons.
President-Elect Trump, has assessed the extreme danger of the moment, saying: “We have never been closer to World War III than we are today under Joe Biden. A global conflict between nuclear-armed powers would mean death and destruction on a scale unmatched in human history.”
Vladimir Putin has clearly stated that Russia would “mirror” or match all escalations. Russia responded to an ATACM missile launch with a new hypersonic intermediate range ballistic missile, the Oreshnik, that reputedly reaches speeds of MACH 11 and delivers some 36 payloads. It devastated a Ukrainian missile factory.
It was an unmistakable message: Those six major payloads with six submunitions within them could be nuclear ones next time.
The next firing of ATACMs could bring a Russian response endangering or killing the American personnel responsible for firing these munitions. Even a skilled negotiator will find it difficult to diffuse the conflict once American blood has been shed. Why in the world would our government cause our troops, let alone our nation, to be so vulnerable?
Eight trillion dollars of our $36 trillion deficit is due to wars of choice since 9/11. The continued failure of American diplomacy, preferring war to statecraft, has been a persistent hubris. Pray that it not be fatal for our nation and the world.
Everyone who loves our country must speak out, now, to help avert a catastrophe.
We used to laugh at North Korean nuclear submarine boasts. Not any more
In January 2021, North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un stood before thousands of
members of the Worker’s Party of Korea in Pyongyang and announced that
North Korean industry was in the late stages of developing a
nuclear-powered submarine – the first such sub for the North Korean navy.
At the time, it may have been wise to be sceptical: nuclear submarines are
among the costliest and most complex weapon systems in the world. North
Korean industry isn’t exactly known for its wealth and sophistication.
Nearly four years later, there’s much less reason to doubt Kim’s claim.
Because now North Korea has Russia’s help. And for all its woes, Russian
industry still builds a lot of world-class nuke boats.
Telegraph 6th Dec 2024, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/12/06/putin-russia-nuclear-submarine-north-korea-axis-evil/
Amnesty International investigation concludes Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza
By Amnesty International 5 Dec 24
Amnesty International’s research has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, the organization said in a landmark new report published today.
The report, ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza, documents how, during its military offensive launched in the wake of the deadly Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on 7 October 2023, Israel has unleashed hell and destruction on Palestinians in Gaza brazenly, continuously and with total impunity.
“Amnesty International’s report demonstrates that Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza. These acts include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction. Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them,” said Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International.
“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now.
“States that continue to transfer arms to Israel at this time must know they are violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide. All states with influence over Israel, particularly key arms suppliers like the USA and Germany, but also other EU member states, the UK and others, must act now to bring Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza to an immediate end.”
Over the past two months the crisis has grown particularly acute in the North Gaza governorate, where a besieged population is facing starvation, displacement and annihilation amid relentless bombardment and suffocating restrictions on life-saving humanitarian aid.
“Our research reveals that, for months, Israel has persisted in committing genocidal acts, fully aware of the irreparable harm it was inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza. It continued to do so in defiance of countless warnings about the catastrophic humanitarian situation and of legally binding decisions from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering Israel to take immediate measures to enable the provision of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza,” said Agnès Callamard.
“Israel has repeatedly argued that its actions in Gaza are lawful and can be justified by its military goal to eradicate Hamas. But genocidal intent can co-exist alongside military goals and does not need to be Israel’s sole intent.”
WHY IS THIS A GENOCIDE?
………………………………………………………………………… Amnesty International’s report examines in detail Israel’s violations in Gaza over nine months between 7 October 2023 and early July 2024. The organization interviewed 212 people, including Palestinian victims and witnesses, local authorities in Gaza, healthcare workers, conducted fieldwork and analysed an extensive range of visual and digital evidence, including satellite imagery. It also analysed statements by senior Israeli government and military officials, and official Israeli bodies. On multiple occasions, the organization shared its findings with the Israeli authorities but had received no substantive response at the time of publication.
Unprecedented scale and magnitude
Israel’s actions following Hamas’s deadly attacks on 7 October 2023 have brought Gaza’s population to the brink of collapse. Its brutal military offensive had killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, including over 13,300 children, and injured over 97,000 more, by 7 October 2024, many of them in direct or deliberately indiscriminate attacks, often wiping out entire multigenerational families. It has caused unprecedented destruction, which experts say occurred at a level and speed not seen in any other conflict in the 21st century, levelling entire cities and destroying critical infrastructure, agricultural land and cultural and religious sites. It thereby rendered large swathes of Gaza uninhabitable.
Mohammed, who fled with his family from Gaza City to Rafah in March 2024 and was displaced again in May 2024, described their struggle to survive in horrifying conditions:
“Here in Deir al-Balah, it’s like an apocalypse… You have to protect your children from insects, from the heat, and there is no clean water, no toilets, all while the bombing never stops. You feel like you are subhuman here.”
Israel imposed conditions of life in Gaza that created a deadly mixture of malnutrition, hunger and diseases, and exposed Palestinians to a slow, calculated death. Israel also subjected hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza to incommunicado detention, torture and other ill-treatment.
Viewed in isolation, some of the acts investigated by Amnesty International constitute serious violations of international humanitarian law or international human rights law. But in looking at the broader picture of Israel’s military campaign and the cumulative impact of its policies and acts, genocidal intent is the only reasonable conclusion.
Intent to destroy
To establish Israel’s specific intent to physically destroy Palestinians in Gaza, as such, Amnesty International analysed the overall pattern of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, reviewed dehumanizing and genocidal statements by Israeli government and military officials, particularly those at the highest levels, and considered the context of Israel’s system of apartheid, its inhumane blockade of Gaza and the unlawful 57-year-old military occupation of the Palestinian territory.
Before reaching its conclusion, Amnesty International examined Israel’s claims that its military lawfully targeted Hamas and other armed groups throughout Gaza, and that the resulting unprecedented destruction and denial of aid were the outcome of unlawful conduct by Hamas and other armed groups, such as locating fighters among the civilian population or the diversion of aid. The organization concluded these claims are not credible. The presence of Hamas fighters near or within a densely populated area does not absolve Israel from its obligations to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians and avoid indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks. Its research found Israel repeatedly failed to do so, committing multiple crimes under international law for which there can be no justification based on Hamas’s actions. Amnesty International also found no evidence that the diversion of aid could explain Israel’s extreme and deliberate restrictions on life-saving humanitarian aid.
In its analysis, the organization also considered alternative arguments such as ones that Israel was acting recklessly or that it simply wanted to destroy Hamas and did not care if it needed to destroy Palestinians in the process, demonstrating a callous disregard for their lives rather than genocidal intent.
However, regardless of whether Israel sees the destruction of Palestinians as instrumental to destroying Hamas or as an acceptable by-product of this goal, this view of Palestinians as disposable and not worthy of consideration is in itself evidence of genocidal intent.
Many of the unlawful acts documented by Amnesty International were preceded by officials urging their implementation. The organization reviewed 102 statements that were issued by Israeli government and military officials and others between 7 October 2023 and 30 June 2024 and dehumanized Palestinians, called for or justified genocidal acts or other crimes against them.
Of these, Amnesty International identified 22 statements made by senior officials in charge of managing the offensive that appeared to call for, or justify, genocidal acts, providing direct evidence of genocidal intent. This language was frequently replicated, including by Israeli soldiers on the ground, as evidenced by audiovisual content verified by Amnesty International showing soldiers making calls to “erase” Gaza or to make it uninhabitable, and celebrating the destruction of Palestinian homes, mosques, schools and universities.
Killing and causing serious bodily or mental harm
Amnesty International documented the genocidal acts of killing and causing serious mental and bodily harm to Palestinians in Gaza by reviewing the results of investigations it conducted into 15 air strikes between 7 October 2023 and 20 April 2024 that killed at least 334 civilians, including 141 children, and wounded hundreds of others. Amnesty International found no evidence that any of these strikes were directed at a military objective.
In one illustrative case, on 20 April 2024, an Israeli air strike destroyed the Abdelal family house in the Al-Jneinah neighbourhood in eastern Rafah, killing three generations of Palestinians, including 16 children, while they were sleeping.
While these represent just a fraction of Israel’s aerial attacks, they are indicative of a broader pattern of repeated direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects or deliberately indiscriminate attacks. The attacks were also conducted in ways designed to cause a very high number of fatalities and injuries among the civilian population.
Inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction
The report documents how Israel deliberately inflicted conditions of life on Palestinians in Gaza intended to lead, over time, to their destruction. These conditions were imposed through three simultaneous patterns that repeatedly compounded the effect of each other’s devastating impacts: damage to and destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure and other objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population; the repeated use of sweeping, arbitrary and confusing mass “evacuation” orders to forcibly displace almost all of Gaza’s population; and the denial and obstruction of the delivery of essential services, humanitarian assistance and other life-saving supplies into and within Gaza.
After 7 October 2023, Israel imposed a total siege on Gaza cutting off electricity, water and fuel. In the nine months reviewed for this report, Israel maintained a suffocating, unlawful blockade, tightly controlled access to energy sources, failed to facilitate meaningful humanitarian access within Gaza, and obstructed the import and delivery of life-saving goods and humanitarian aid, particularly to areas north of Wadi Gaza. They thereby exacerbated an already existing humanitarian crisis. This, combined with the extensive damage to Gaza’s homes, hospitals, water and sanitation facilities and agricultural land, and mass forced displacement, caused catastrophic levels of hunger and led to the spread of diseases at alarming rates. The impact was especially harsh on young children and pregnant or breastfeeding women, with anticipated long-term consequences for their health.
The international community’s seismic, shameful failure for over a year to press Israel to end its atrocities in Gaza, by first delaying calls for a ceasefire and then continuing arms transfers, is and will remain a stain on our collective conscience.Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International
Time and again, Israel had the chance to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, yet for over a year it has repeatedly refused to take steps blatantly within its power to do so, such as opening sufficient access points to Gaza or lifting tight restrictions on what could enter the Strip or their obstruction of aid deliveries within Gaza while the situation has grown progressively worse.
Through its repeated “evacuation” orders Israel displaced nearly 1.9 million Palestinians – 90% of Gaza’s population – into ever-shrinking, unsafe pockets of land under inhumane conditions, some of them up to 10 times. These multiple waves of forced displacement left many jobless and deeply traumatized, especially since some 70% of Gaza’s residents are refugees or descendants of refugees whose towns and villages were ethnically cleansed by Israel during the 1948 Nakba.
Despite conditions quickly becoming unfit for human life, Israeli authorities refused to consider measures that would have protected displaced civilians and ensured their basic needs were met, showing that their actions were deliberate.
They refused to allow those displaced to return to their homes in northern Gaza or relocate temporarily to other parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory or Israel, continuing to deny many Palestinians their right to return under international law to areas they were displaced from in 1948. They did so knowing that there was nowhere safe for Palestinians in Gaza to flee to.
Accountability for genocide
“The international community’s seismic, shameful failure for over a year to press Israel to end its atrocities in Gaza, by first delaying calls for a ceasefire and then continuing arms transfers, is and will remain a stain on our collective conscience,” said Agnès Callamard.
“Governments must stop pretending they are powerless to end this genocide, which was enabled by decades of impunity for Israel’s violations of international law. States need to move beyond mere expressions of regret or dismay and take strong and sustained international action, however uncomfortable a finding of genocide may be for some of Israel’s allies.
“The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity issued last month offer real hope of long-overdue justice for victims. States must demonstrate their respect for the court’s decision and for universal international law principles by arresting and handing over those wanted by the ICC.
“We are calling on the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to urgently consider adding genocide to the list of crimes it is investigating and for all states to use every legal avenue to bring perpetrators to justice. No one should be allowed to commit genocide and remain unpunished.”
Amnesty International is also calling for all civilian hostages to be released unconditionally and for Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups responsible for the crimes committed on 7 October to be held to account.
The organization is also calling for the UN Security Council to impose targeted sanctions against Israeli and Hamas officials most implicated in crimes under international law.
Background
On 7 October 2023 Hamas and other armed groups indiscriminately fired rockets into southern Israel and carried out deliberate mass killings and hostage-taking there, killing 1,200 people, including over 800 civilians, and abducted 223 civilians and captured 27 soldiers. The crimes perpetrated by Hamas and other armed groups during this attack will be the focus of a forthcoming Amnesty International report.
Since October 2023, Amnesty International has conducted in-depth investigations into the multiple violations and crimes under international law committed by Israeli forces, including direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects and deliberately indiscriminate attacks killing hundreds of civilians, as well as other unlawful attacks on and collective punishment of the civilian population. The organization has called on the Office of the ICC Prosecutor to expedite its investigation into the situation in the State of Palestine and is campaigning for an immediate ceasefire.
For the Hebrew translation of this press release, click here. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-international-concludes-israel-is-committing-genocide-against-palestinians-in-gaza/
Gaza’s Civil Defense Says Nearly 100 Killed by Israeli Attacks Over 24 Hours
A strike on a house Jabalia killed over 40 Palestinians
by Dave DeCamp December 1, 2024, https://news.antiwar.com/2024/12/01/gazas-civil-defense-says-nearly-100-killed-by-israeli-attacks-over-24-hours/
Gaza’s Civil Defense said Sunday that Israeli attacks killed nearly 100 over the previous 24 hours as Israeli strikes continued to hit targets across the Strip.
“Nearly 100 martyrs were killed in the Gaza Strip within 24 hours as a result of the continuous Israeli bombing operations on homes and citizens’ gatherings,” the agency said, according to Al Jazeera.
Gaza’s Health Ministry put out a lower death toll in its daily update, saying 47 were killed, based on the number of dead and wounded Palestinians brought to hospitals. “The Israeli occupation committed six massacres against families in the Gaza Strip, resulting in 47 martyrs and 108 injuries arriving at hospitals during the past 24 hours,” the ministry wrote on Telegram.
The ministry noted that there are a “number of victims” trapped under the rubble or in areas where rescue crews cannot reach them. The Civil Defense statement said it has been unable to work in northern Gaza, which has been under siege since early October as part of Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign.
“Until this moment, civil defense crews are prevented from exercising their duties in northern Gaza, and this has led to hundreds of citizens remaining under the rubble,” the agency said.
The Civil Defense statement said the most deaths occurred in an Israeli strike on a house sheltering displaced Palestinians in Jabalia, northern Gaza, on Saturday. More than 40 Palestinians were killed in the attack.
Also on Saturday, an Israeli strike on a vehicle in the southern city of Khan Younis killed five people, including three aid workers with the US-based World Central Kitchen. Israel claimed without evidence that one of the aid workers was a “terrorist.”
WCK said that it suspended its operations in Gaza following the strike. “We are heartbroken to share that a vehicle carrying World Central Kitchen colleagues was hit by an Israeli air strike in Gaza,” the group said in a statement.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said that its death toll since October 2023, based on its numbers, has risen to 44,429 martyrs, and the number of wounded has reached 105,250.
A group of American healthcare workers who volunteered in Gaza estimated in an open letter to President Biden in October that the US-backed Israeli onslaught has killed at least 118,908 Palestinians, a total that includes indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, who led the letter, told Antiwar.com in a recent interview that the estimate was the bare minimum they came up with by looking at the available data.
Mass desertions crippling Ukrainian army – AP
29 Nov 24 https://www.rt.com/russia/608398-ukraine-troops-desertion-ap/
Entire units are walking away as forcibly conscripted soldiers refuse to take orders, the news agency has reported,
Mass desertion is “starving” the Ukrainian Army and “crippling” Kiev’s battleplans, as troops flee in their tens of thousands, the Associated Press reported on Friday, citing two soldiers who went AWOL, as well as lawyers and a dozen officials, most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity.
“We have already squeezed the maximum out of our people,” an officer with the 72nd Brigade told the American news agency, explaining why the problem became so acute.
The Prosecutor General’s office lists more than 100,000 soldiers who have been charged over desertion, nearly half of whom quit this year alone, but the actual number is likely significantly higher, AP said. It may be as high as 200,000, one MP told the agency. In some cases, entire units have fled their frontline positions, it was told.
“If there’s no end term [to military service], it turns into a prison – it becomes psychologically hard to find reasons to defend this country,” said one of the deserters, who was named by AP. He was charged shortly after being interviewed.
Earlier this year, Kiev adopted sweeping military service reform, hoping it would bolster the rate of mandatory conscription. The US is now reportedly pushing the Ukrainian government to lower the minimum draft age to 18, down from 25.
Conscription is being brutally enforced by officers and their civilian helpers. One such official said handling his targets is like “dealing with a cornered rat,” The Telegraph newspaper reported earlier this week.
Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky signed a bill into law this week, which waives criminal responsibility for first-time deserters if they volunteer to go back and fight.
In July 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that a shortage of manpower was the biggest problem facing the Ukrainian military, after a failed “counteroffensive” conducted against Russia earlier that year.
“Ukrainian units have suffered huge losses in their suicidal attacks. Tens of thousands of casualties,” he said during a Russian Security Council meeting.
“Despite constant raids, the never-ending waves of total mobilization in Ukrainian cities and villages, the current regime is finding that sending reinforcements to the front line becomes increasingly difficult,” he added. “The country’s mobilization reserve is being depleted.”
Zelensky has been consistently blaming a shortage of Western-donated weapons for Ukrainian setbacks on the battlefield. Meanwhile Russian officials have accused him of waging a war “to the last Ukrainian” on behalf of the US.
These Billionaires Subsidize the Israeli Military Through a US Nonprofit
By Derek Seidman , Truthout, December 2, 2024
A US nonprofit funnels money from billionaires like Home Depot’s co-founder to effectively subsidize Israeli troops.By Derek Seidman , TruthoutPublishedDecember 2, 2024
srael’s war on Gaza — marked by extensive war crimes, and widely seen as an ongoing genocide — has been backed by the U.S. government, which has provided Israel with billions of dollars in weapons to be used against Palestinians. On the ground and from the air, the genocidal siege has been carried out by Israel’s military, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), whose soldiers regularly post videos and images on social media of them destroying Palestinian neighborhoods, looting Palestinian homes and abusing Palestinian prisoners.
“The main and sometimes only machinery of repressing, killing, genociding and ethnically cleansing Palestinians is the IDF,” Haim Bresheeth, author of the wide-ranging history of the Israeli military, An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defense Force Made a Nation, told Truthout. “This is an illegal, immoral army.”
In the U.S., there’s one group that has long worked to mobilize ironclad support for the Israeli military: the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF).
Founded in 1981, the FIDF is a nonprofit organization that raises tens of millions of dollars annually to fund a range of programs that effectively subsidize the Israeli military by providing numerous services and benefits for Israeli troops. It also channels major donations from a host of powerful billionaires toward these programs.
In building and maintaining support for the IDF, particularly among U.S. Jews, the FIDF promotes and reproduces the dominant Zionist notion that American Judaism is synonymous with support for Israel, and that the essence of support for Israel is support for the Israeli military……………………………………………………………………………………….more https://truthout.org/articles/these-billionaires-subsidize-the-israeli-military-through-a-us-nonprofit/?utm_source=feedotter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=FO-12-02-2024&utm_content=httpstruthoutorgarticlesthesebillionairessubsidizetheisraelimilitarythroughausnonprofit&utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=5bf019f3e8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_12_02_09_18&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-5bf019f3e8-650192793
The Guardian view on a race for missile supremacy: competition fuels a dangerous escalation
The INF treaty kept nuclear missiles off European soil and was a brake on a perilous arms buildup. Now it is gone
Five years ago, the collapse of a landmark cold war arms treaty opened a Pandora’s box, unleashing missile-shaped furies that have struck Ukraine. The 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty ended when the US withdrew, citing Russian violations dating back to 2014 under Vladimir Putin. While abandoning the treaty aligned with the first Trump administration’s broader opposition to arms control, continuing to pressure Mr Putin into compliance would have been the wiser course.
Targeting Kyiv’s forces are the hypersonic Oreshnik missile and the ballistic Iskander missile. Both can carry a nuclear warhead and would have been barred under the INF treaty. These weapons signal an alarming return to cold war-style tit-for‑tat posturing, with great powers ramping up their military capabilities. Their use highlights Moscow’s accelerated missile development. But it also raises questions about the implications of a nuclear-tipped Oreshnik missile – capable of striking European capitals within 12 to 16 minutes – for Nato security.
The deployment of such missiles exposes the risks of abandoning arms control. The cold war INF treaty, banning ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of between 500km and 5,500km, curbed nuclear escalation in Europe. Its lapse, as the UN warned, removed “an invaluable brake on nuclear war”. History offers lessons. In 1983, US plans to station such missiles in Europe – including Britain – sparked mass protests. Tensions peaked that year during the “Able Archer” drill, misread by Moscow as nuclear war preparation. Alarmed, Ronald Reagan eased fears, leading to the INF treaty and broader arms reductions.
Unlike Mr Reagan, the US president-elect lacks interest in such statesmanship. Mr Putin, more insecure than his Soviet predecessors, embraces brinkmanship, recently lowering Russia’s threshold for nuclear use. Under Barack Obama, arms control advanced with Russia’s then leader Dmitry Medvedev, who signed the New Start treaty limiting deployed strategic nuclear warheads. But Mr Putin’s 2012 return to power froze progress on a follow-up deal.
One reason for American indifference to preserving the INF treaty was its irrelevance to China, which was not a signatory and had developed intermediate-range missiles. This may also explain why the Biden administration maintained Mr Trump’s approach, investing significantly in nuclear arms. This shift freed the US to develop weapons aimed at defending Taiwan from a potential Chinese invasion. In Europe, the US also announced plans to deploy long-range weapons in Germany by 2026, followed swiftly by continental powers unveiling plans for “deep-fire” capabilities.
The looming end of the New Start treaty in 2026 demands urgent cooperation between Moscow and Washington to prevent an arms race. Despite the US president-elect’s apparent rapport with Mr Putin, deep-rooted mistrust poses significant hurdles to new arms control talks. To avoid repeating history’s mistakes, western leaders should prioritise negotiations with both Russia and China. A nuclear weapons build-up, with its heightened risks of accidents and catastrophic conflict, is an existential threat of unparalleled immediacy. Without swift action, unchecked competition will overshadow any strategic gains from military posturing./
The Technology for Autonomous Weapons Exists. What Now?
The hypothetical escalation that could result relates to another kind of weapon of mass destruction: the nuclear weapon. Some countries interested in autonomy are the same ones that have atomic arsenals. If two nuclear states are in a conflict, and start using autonomous weapons, “it just takes one algorithmic error, or one miscommunication within the same military, to cause an escalating scenario,” said Hehir. And escalation could lead to nuclear catastrophe.
In the future, humans may not be the only arbiters of who lives and dies in war, as weapons gain decision-making power.
UNDARK, By Sarah Scoles, 11.26.2024
One bluebird day in 2021, employees of Fortem Technologies traveled to a flat piece of Utah desert. The land was a good spot to try the company’s new innovation: an attachment for the DroneHunter — which, as the name halfway implies, is a drone that hunts other drones.
As the experiment began, DroneHunter, a sleek black and white rotored aircraft 2 feet tall and with a wingspan as wide as a grown man is tall, started receiving radar data on the ground which indicated an airplane-shaped drone was in the air — one that, in a different circumstance, might carry ammunition meant to harm humans.
“DroneHunter, go hunting,” said an unsettling AI voice, in a video of the event posted on YouTube. Its rotors spun up, and the view lifted above the desiccated ground.
The radar system automatically tracked the target drone, and software directed its chase, no driver required. Within seconds, the two aircrafts faced each other head-on. A net shot out of DroneHunter, wrapping itself around its enemy like something from Spiderman. A connected parachute — the new piece of technology, designed to down bigger aircraft — ballooned from the end of the net, lowering its prey to Earth.
Target: defeated, with no human required outside of authorizing the hunt. “We found that, without exception, our customers want a human in that loop,” said Adam Robertson, co-founder and chief technology officer at Fortem, a drone-focused defense company based in Pleasant Grove, Utah.
While Fortem is still a relatively small company, its counter-drone technology is already in use on the battlefield in Ukraine, and it represents a species of system that the U.S. Department of Defense is investing in: small, relatively inexpensive systems that can act independently once a human gives the okay. The United States doesn’t currently use fully autonomous weapons, meaning ones that make their own decisions about human life and death.
With many users requiring involvement of a human operator, Fortem’s DroneHunter would not quite meet the International Committee of the Red Cross’s definition of autonomous weapon — “any weapons that select and apply force to targets without human intervention,” perhaps the closest to a standard explanation that exists in this still-loose field — but it’s one small step removed from that capability, although it doesn’t target humans.
How autonomous and semi-autonomous technology will operate in the future is up in the air, and the U.S. government will have to decide what limitations to place on its development and use. Those decisions may come sooner rather than later—as the technology advances, global conflicts continue to rage, and other countries are faced with similar choices—meaning that the incoming Trump administration may add to or change existing American policy. But experts say autonomous innovations have the potential to fundamentally change how war is waged: In the future, humans may not be the only arbiters of who lives and dies, with decisions instead in the hands of algorithms.
For some experts, that’s a net-positive: It could reduce casualties and soldiers’ stress. But others claim that it could instead result in more indiscriminate death, with no direct accountability, as well as escalating conflicts between nuclear-armed nations. Peter Asaro, spokesperson for an anti-autonomy advocacy organization called Stop Killer Robots and vice chair of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, worries about the innovations’ ultimate appearance on the battlefield. “How these systems actually wind up being used is not necessarily how they’re built,” he said.
Many American startups like Fortem aim to ultimately sell their technology to the U.S. Department of Defense because the U.S. has the best-funded military in the world — and so, ample money for contracts — and because it’s relatively simple to sell weapons to one’s own country, or to an ally. Selling their products to other nations does require some administrative work. For instance, in the case of the DroneHunters deployed in Ukraine, Fortem made an agreement with the country directly. The export of the technology, though, had to go through the U.S. Department of State, which is in charge of enforcing policies on what technology can be sold to whom abroad.
The company also markets the DroneHunter commercially — to, say, a cargo-ship operators who want to be safe in contested waters, or stadium owners who want to determine whether a drone flying near the big game belongs to a potential terrorist threat, or a kid who wants to take pictures.
Because Fortem’s technology doesn’t target people and maintains a human as part of the decision-making process, the ethical questions aren’t necessarily about life and death.
In a situation that involves humans, whether an autonomous weapon could accurately tell civilian from combatant, every time all the time, is still an open question. As is whether military leaders would program the weapons to act conservatively, and whether that programming would remain regardless of whose hands a weapon fell into.
A weapon’s makers, after all, aren’t always in control of their creation once it’s out in the world — something the Manhattan Project scientists, many of whom had reservations about the use of nuclear weapons after they developed the atomic bomb, learned the hard way.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. escalation could come from robots’ errors. Autonomous systems based on machine learning may develop false or misleading patterns.
…………………………………………………………………….The hypothetical escalation that could result relates to another kind of weapon of mass destruction: the nuclear weapon. Some countries interested in autonomy are the same ones that have atomic arsenals. If two nuclear states are in a conflict, and start using autonomous weapons, “it just takes one algorithmic error, or one miscommunication within the same military, to cause an escalating scenario,” said Hehir. And escalation could lead to nuclear catastrophe.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..Hehir and the Future of Life Institute are working toward international agreements to regulate autonomous arms. The Future of Life Institute and the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots have been lobbying and presenting to the U.N. Future of Life has, for instance, largely pushed for inclusion of autonomous weapons in the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons — an international agreement that entered into force in 1983 to restrict or ban particular kinds of weapons. But that path appears to have petered out. “This is a road to nowhere,” said Hehir. “No new international law has emerged from there for over 20 years.”
And so advocacy groups like hers have moved toward trying for an autonomy-specific treaty — like the ones that exist for chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. This fall, that was a topic for the UN’s General Assembly.
Hehir and Future of Life aren’t advocating for a total ban on all autonomous weapons. “One arm will be prohibitions of the most unpredictable systems that target humans,” she said. “The other arm will be regulating those that can be used safely, with meaningful human control,” she said.
……………………………………… with the current lack of international regulation, nation-states are going ahead with their existing plans. And companies within their borders, like Fortem, are continuing to work on autonomous tech that may not be fully autonomous or lethal at the moment but could be in the future. …………………
Sarah Scoles is a science journalist based in Colorado, and a senior contributor to Undark. She is the author of “Making Contact,” “They Are Already Here,” and “Countdown: The Blinding Future of 21st Century Nuclear Weapons.” https://undark.org/2024/11/26/unleashed-autonomous-weapons/?utm_source=Undark%3A+News+%26+Updates&utm_campaign=c63b00e0ff-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5cee408d66-185e4e09de-176033209
Mass Desertions Over Radiation Could End the War in Ukraine
CounterPunch, Barbara G. Ellis, November 29, 2024
NATO leaders have been dithering about Russia’s recent retaliation against Ukraine’s lofting one of Lockheed’s long-range missiles deep into its interior. Their emergency huddle was about Putin’s new multi-missile (“Oreshnik “) which traveled 10 times the speed of sound (range: 310-3,400 miles) to hit a former ICBM factory . So far, either side seems to have considered the one factor that could end their planet-destroying, nuclear game of chicken.
It’s the real possibility of monumental mutiny and desertions by those boots-on-the-ground that both sides count on to do the heavy lifting in WWIII.
Most soldiers may be willing to risk death by bullets and bombs, but not radiation exposure. Despite recent official assurances by U.S. war planners that nuclear weapons would be used only on battlefields, radiation drifts for thousands of miles. It ignores borders and body protections—as proved by Hiroshima in 1945 and the Chernobyl disaster of 1986.
Russian president Putin claimed Oreshnik’s speed makes NATO’s current defense systems powerless and said its production was imminent. But while the West’s missile designers set up a crash program to counter this latest escalation, these warhawks and their counterparts evidently still ignore the ever-expanding deserter numbers or silent mutinies abuilding in Ukraine and Russia. However, troops usually know military officials traditionally underestimate or conceal death rates lest it demoralize both them and the public to begin questioning the worth of continuing a war.
Current desertion rates in Russia by August were 18,000 and increasing daily, Newsweek reported. Russia’s death rate by September was said to be 71,000 by its independent media outlet Mediazona. The Economist in July put total casualties—dead/wounded/ captured—at between 462,000 and 728,000.
Small wonder then why Putin “borrowed” nearly 12,000 combat troops from North Korea in October for front-line duty. Equally, NATO members have promised troops as well. Many now on site as “advisors” for their equipment—tanks and munitions to aircraft—and infantry training.
Ukrainian desertions have now become legendary, along with increasing populations of neighboring Romania, Poland, and Germany. The Kyiv Post just reported some 60,000 alone are facing criminal charges of desertion since the war’s start in 2022. Thousands of others have not been caught nor wooed or forced back to the ranks. The Eurasian Review also noted Ukrainians on the 629-mile frontline were poorly armed and often out of ammunition. It commented:
frontline were poorly armed and often out of ammunition. It commented:
“Ukraine’s military is now ‘Outgunned and Outnumbered’, struggling with low morale and high rate of desertions….This prolonged war nearing three years have near decimated many Ukrainian infantry battalions, making the situation grim on the battle limes. Reinforcements are few and difficult to be created, leaving soldiers exhausted, demoralized and desert [ing].”
Not to mention the 44,000 draft-age Ukainian males who by August had slipped through border-police lines of other nations. The Wall Street Journal says 15,000 fled to mountainous Romania in particular……………………………………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………So when presidents Putin and Biden and NATO leaders assume those “boots-on-the-ground” will mindlessly obey orders to escalate the Russo-Ukrainian war from super-sonic missiles to nuclear warheads, they better think about the U.S. mutiny in Vietnam. It has furnished lessons and tools for all soldiers for all time so instead of “Do or die,” perhaps an overwhelming number will demand to know “Why?” https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/11/29/mass-desertions-over-radiation-could-end-the-war-in-ukraine/?fbclid=IwY2xjawG41V5leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHcNhNoDwHnDD3OtHWQAgtAw4hnfdNGoSyFdDjYMiBciYjUiG08c1VGHdhw_aem__n-ZgkUj1nxhHZoxRJiKgg
Ukraine has lost almost 500,000 troops – Economist
29 Nov 24 https://www.rt.com/russia/608307-ukraine-losses-estimates-economist/
Vladimir Zelensky previously claimed that only some 31,000 Ukrainian servicemen had been killed.
Up to half a million Ukrainian troops have been killed or wounded in the ongoing conflict with Russia, according to new estimates provided by The Economist, which cited leaked intelligence reports, official statements and open sources.
In an article published on Tuesday, the outlet noted that it is difficult to calculate Kiev’s actual losses, given that Ukrainian officials and their allies are “reluctant to provide estimates.”
Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky claimed in February that only 31,000 troops had been killed since the conflict with Russia escalated in 2022. He refused to reveal how many had been wounded, arguing it would let Moscow know “how many people are left on the battlefield.”
However, The Economist noted that according to US officials, Kiev’s total casualty figure currently stands at more than 308,000 soldiers. According to the outlet’s analysis of other sources, the figure could be closer to half a million troops, of which “at least” 60,000-100,000 are believed to have been killed.
“Perhaps a further 400,000 are too injured to fight on,” the magazine wrote.
The Economist also cited the UALosses website, which tracks and catalogues the names and ages of the dead. According to its data, Ukraine has lost at least 60,435 troops, or more than 0.5% of its pre-war population of men of fighting age.
While the data from UALosses is not comprehensive and not all soldiers’ ages are known, The Economist suggested that the actual number of those killed in the fighting is higher and the amount of servicemen who are too injured to fight is even greater.
“Assuming that six to eight Ukrainian soldiers are severely wounded for every one who is killed in battle, nearly one in 20 men of fighting age is dead or too wounded to fight on,” the outlet estimated.
Earlier this year, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that Ukraine’s military losses since February 2022 had reached almost 500,000, without specifying how many had been killed or injured.
According to the latest information from the ministry, Kiev has also lost over 35,000 servicemen since August in its incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region.
In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that his country’s personnel losses in the conflict were a fraction of those on the Ukrainian side, suggesting that the ratio of casualties was approximately one to five.
1 This Month
of the week – Shut Down Drone Warfare!
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
Petition to revoke the licensing of the Near Surface Nuclear Disposal Facility (NSDF) at Chalk River. https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7247
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