The US secretary of state and a Bilderberg surveillance tech oligarch have both made some very interesting admissions about the burgeoning protest movement against the US-backed slaughter in Gaza and the problems it poses for the empire they help run.
During a vitriolic rant about university demonstrators at the Ash Carter Exchange on Innovation and National Security on Tuesday, Palantir CEO Alex Karp came right out and said that if those on the side of the protesters win the debate on this issue, the west will lose the ability to wage wars.
“We kind of just think these things that are happening, across college campuses especially, are like a sideshow — no, they are the show,” Karp said during his rant. “Because if we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any army in the west, ever.”
Everyone should listen very carefully to Karp’s words here, because he’s giving the whole game away. He’s making it very clear how crucial it is for the empire to stomp out this protest movement and the zeitgeist upon which it rides, because the very existence of the imperial war machine depends on it. At a time when most imperial spinmeisters are trying to dismiss the importance of this movement and what young people are doing on college campuses around the world, this is a really extraordinary admission from someone who lives deep in the guts of the imperial hydra.
Such conferences are great for obtaining useful information from swamp monsters that you don’t normally hear, because when they’re surrounded by like-minded empire goons they tend to get a lot more loose-tongued than they are when they’re more aware that they have an audience of normal people.
We saw this illustrated again in a conversation between Senator Mitt Romney and Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the McCain Institute last week, during which both acknowledged some facts that generally go unstated by such creatures.
After bemoaning Israel’s lack of success at “PR” regarding its Gaza assault, Romney just came right out and said that this was “why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature” — with “us” meaning himself and his fellow lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
“How this narrative has evolved, yeah, it’s a great question,” Blinken responded, saying that at the beginning of his career in Washington everyone was getting their information from television and physical newspapers like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
“Now, of course, we are on an intravenous feed of information with new impulses, inputs every millisecond,” Blinken continued. “And of course, the way this has played out on social media has dominated the narrative. And you have a social media ecosystem environment in which context, history, facts get lost, and the emotion, the impact of images dominates. And we can’t — we can’t discount that, but I think it also has a very, very, very challenging effect on the narrative.”
to each other, because that’s how they think about everything.
This is because empire managers are always acutely aware of something that normal human beings are not: that real power comes from manipulating the stories — narratives — that people tell themselves about their reality.
They understand that humans are storytelling animals whose inner lives are typically dominated by mental narratives about what’s happening, so if you can control those narratives, you can control the humans.
They understand that power is controlling what happens, but true power is controlling what people think about what happens.
US Senators sent a letter to the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor, threatening to impose sanctions and even invade the Hague if it issues arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Biden administration is also pressuring the ICC not to charge Israeli officials over their war crimes in Gaza.
US government officials have threatened the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague, telling its Prosecutor Karim Khan that if he issues arrest warrants against Israeli officials over their war crimes in Gaza, the US government could impose sanctions on him, other ICC personnel, and their family members.
US senators even threatened to invade the Hague if it tries to prosecute Israeli officials.
UN experts: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza
This April, Israel’s extreme-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a prominent member of the state security cabinet, called for “total annihilation” of Gaza.
Smotrich cited the Biblical nation of Amalek – a genocidal reference also made by far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
These invocations of Amalek are clear calls for genocide. In the Book of Samuel, God orders King Saul, “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys”.
The UN’s top legal body, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled this January that Israel could be investigated on “plausible” charges of violating the Genocide Convention. (The ICJ and ICC are separate institutions, although both are located at the Hague.)
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have stated that Israel is violating this ICJ ruling that demands that it abide by the Genocide Convention.
In addition to bombing civilian areas and killing tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children, Israel has used hunger as a weapon, starving Palestinian civilians.
The missive was signed by major GOP leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Tom Cotton.
In the aggressively worded letter, the senators pledged to “sanction your employees and associates, and bar you and your families from the United States” if Israeli officials face charges over their war crimes in Gaza.
“Target Israel and we will target you”, they threatened.
Issuing an arrest warrant for Netanyahu or other top officials would be seen “not only as a threat to Israel’s sovereignty but to the sovereignty of the United States”, the US politicians wrote, making it clear that they see Israel as a key part of the US empire.
“Our country demonstrated in the American Service-Members’ Protection Act the lengths to which we will go to protect that sovereignty”, they added.
The American Service-Members’ Protection Act is popularly known as the “Hague Invasion Act”. The legislation was signed into law in 2002 by President George W. Bush.
Human Rights Watch explained that this law “authorizes the use of military force to liberate any American or citizen of a U.S.-allied country being held by the court”.
By invoking the Hague Invasion Act in their 2024 letter to the ICC prosecutor, the Republican senators made it clear that the two-decade-old legislation is still valid: hawks in Washington are willing to invade the Hague to save Israeli officials if they are prosecuted.
Biden administration double standards on the ICC
It is not just Republicans who are threatening the ICC. This is bipartisan in Washington.
In 2020, when Donald Trump was in the White House, the ICC opened an investigation into war crimes committed in the war in Afghanistan. The US and NATO forces were included in this inquiry.
When Biden came into power in 2021, he sought to differentiate himself from his Republican predecessor. Secretary of State Antony Blinken publicly announced the end of the Trump-era sanctions and visa restrictions against ICC personnel.
However, despite the Democratic administration’s claims to support the so-called “rules-based international order”, the Biden White House is now also intimidating ICC staff – if only a bit more quietly and less extravagantly than Trump and the Republicans have done.
The Biden administration furiously opposes any efforts to hold Israeli officials responsible for the war crimes they have committed in Gaza, with US weapons and political support.
This demonstrates Washington’s glaring double standards, as Biden himself had praised the ICC for issuing an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2023.
Secretary of State Blinken urged ICC member states to arrest Putin if he entered their territory. But a year later, he is aggressively pressuring the ICC to stop it from charging Israeli officials.
US and Israel supported Karim Khan as ICC prosecutor
But today, seven months into Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, the ICC is facing global condemnation for its inaction in the face of what UN experts say is clearly a genocide.
Khan is being forced to act, if he hopes to save face and salvage the legitimacy of the ICC. But his former sponsors in the US and Israel have turned against him.
It is not just justice for the Palestinian people, but the reputation of the International Criminal Court itself that is at stake.
Sam Altman, best known as the CEO of OpenAI, is also chairman of a nuclear power company called Oklo, which has just gone public through a special purpose acquisition company.
Oklo merged with AltC Acquisition Corp., Altman’s SPAC, and is now trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “OKLO.”
The company received about $306 million in gross proceeds upon closing the transaction, according to a release.
Sam Altman is now chairman of a public company. But it’s not OpenAI.
On Friday, advanced nuclear fission company Oklo started trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The company, which has yet to generate any revenue, went public through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) called AltC Acquisition Corp., founded and led by Altman.
Under the ticker symbol “OKLO,” shares plummeted 54% on Friday to $8.45, valuing the company at about $364 million. Oklo received roughly $306 million in gross proceeds in the transaction, according to a release.
Oklo’s business model is based on commercializing nuclear fission, the reaction that fuels all nuclear power plants. Instead of conventional reactors, the company aims to use mini nuclear reactors housed in A-frame structures. Its goal is to sell the energy to end users such as the U.S. Air Force and big tech companies.
Oklo is currently working to build its first small-scale reactor in Idaho, which could eventually power the types of data centers that OpenAI and other artificial intelligence companies need to run their AI models and services.
Altman is co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, which has been valued at over $80 billion by private investors. He’s said that he sees nuclear energy as one of the best ways to solve the problem of growing demand for AI, and the energy that powers the technology, without relying on fossil fuels. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have also invested in nuclear plants in recent years.
“I don’t see a way for us to get there without nuclear,” Altman told CNBC in 2023. “I mean, maybe we could get there just with solar and storage. But from my vantage point, I feel like this is the most likely and the best way to get there.”
In an interview with CNBC Thursday, Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte confirmed that the company has yet to generate revenue and has no nuclear plants deployed at the moment. He said the company is targeting 2027 for its first plant to come online.
Going the SPAC route is risky. So-called reverse mergers became popular in the low-interest rate days of 2020 and 2021 when tech valuations were soaring and investors were looking for growth over profit. But the SPAC market collapsed in 2022 alongside rising rates and hasn’t recovered.
AI-related companies, on the other hand, are the new darlings of Wall Street.
“SPACs haven’t exactly had the best performances in the past couple of years, so for us to have sort of the outcome that we’ve had here is obviously a function of the work we put in, but also what we’re building and also the fact that the market sees the opportunity sets here,” said DeWitte, who co-founded the company in 2013. “I think it’s very promising on multiple fronts for [the] nuclear, AI, data center push, as well as the energy transition piece.”
The company has seen its fair share of regulatory setbacks. In 2022, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission denied Oklo’s application for an Idaho reactor. The company has been working on a new application, which it isn’t aiming to submit to the NRC until early next year, DeWitte said, adding that it’s currently in the “pre-application engagement” stage with the commission.
Altman got involved with Oklo while president of the startup incubator Y Combinator. Oklo went into the program in 2014 after an earlier meeting between Altman and DeWitte. In 2015, Altman invested in the company and became chairman.
It’s not Altman’s only foray into nuclear energy or other infrastructure that could power large-scale AI growth.
In 2021, Altman led a $500 million funding round in clean energy firm Helion, which is working to develop and commercialize nuclear fusion. Helion said in a blog post at the time that the capital would go toward its electricity demonstration generator, Polaris, “which we expect to demonstrate net electricity from fusion in 2024.”
Altman didn’t respond to a request for comment.
In recent years, Altman has also poured money into chip endeavors and investments that could help power the AI tools OpenAI builds.
Just before his brief ouster as OpenAI CEO in November, he was reportedly seeking billions of dollars for a chip venture codenamed “Tigris” to eventually compete with Nvidia.
Altman in 2018 invested in AI chip startup Rain Neuromorphics, based near OpenAI’s San Francisco headquarters. The next year, OpenAI signed a letter of intent to spend $51 million on Rain’s chips. In December, the U.S. compelled a Saudi Aramco-backed venture capital firm to sell its shares in Rain.
DeWitte told CNBC that the data center represents “a pretty exciting opportunity.”
“What we’ve seen is there’s a lot of interest with AI, specifically,” he said. “AI compute needs are significant. It opens the door for a lot of different approaches in terms of how people think about designing and developing AI infrastructure.”
It is entirely possible for the surging anti-genocide protest movement and its accompanying zeitgeist in the general public to push the empire to retreat on Gaza. The imperial murder machine has many strengths, but it also has weaknesses.
The globe-spanning power structure that is loosely centralized around Washington has invested in perception management more heavily than any other empire in history — that’s what you’re seeing with all the mass media propaganda, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, oligarch-funded think tanks, and mainstream culture manufacturing in New York and Hollywood. By using mass-scale psychological manipulation via the most sophisticated perception management system that has ever existed, the US-centralized empire is able to manufacture support for its agendas at home and abroad while dissuading the public from protest and revolution.
If too many people realize that their government is psychopathic and their news media and other indoctrination systems have been lying to them about it all their lives, the empire will lose the ability to propagandize them, because propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening to you. If too many people wake up from the propaganda matrix it won’t have any effect any longer, and without their propaganda our rulers cannot rule, because that’s the entire control system upon which their rule is premised
The empire therefore needs to tread very carefully when public opinion starts to turn against it, and retreat whenever public trust in imperial institutions would be compromised too severely for the empire to continue on a given path. It simply cannot afford to wake the public up from the propaganda-induced coma it has spent generations lulling them into.
What this means is that the empire can be pressured into retreat simply by spreading enough awareness and sowing enough opposition to its depraved actions. If enough eyes open to the truth of what’s happening in Gaza, there’s no amount of geostrategic middle east agendas or Israel lobby funding that can outweigh the empire’s existential need to prevent a mass-scale awakening from the mainstream imperial worldview and a transition into widespread revolutionary consciousness. The empire would necessarily need to step back before things reached that point, because its very existence depends on it.
The empire has been walking that line this entire time. Whenever you see it doing things like stepping back from regime change invasions of Cuba or Syria or refraining from going as authoritarian as it could go on a given issue, it isn’t because the empire suddenly evolved a conscience. It’s because it hasn’t yet succeeded in manufacturing public consent for such agendas, and imposing them before the public has been manipulated into accepting them would snap them out of the matrix of psychological control. They work so hard to manufacture public consent because they absolutely need it.
So the empire can be pressured on Gaza and on every other issue if enough people put enough energy into spreading awareness of the truth. That’s why the empire managers are freaking out about this new protest movement right now; they understand the absolutely fundamental role that narrative control plays in the existence of imperial power structures, and how much they stand to lose if it is taken away.
The bill allows the energy secretary to issue waivers but aims to wean the U.S. off Russian nuclear fuel.
Legislation that restricts imports of unirradiated low-enriched uranium (LEU) from Russia is now headed to the president’s desk after the Senate passed it by unanimous consent last week.
The restriction will take effect 90 days after the president signs the legislation, which is expected to occur.
The act allows the secretary of energy to issue waivers for imports up to certain limits if there is no other viable source of LEU available. As of 2022, U.S. civilian nuclear power plants collectively sourced about 12% of their uranium from Russia.
Once the restriction is in place, the Department of Energy is permitted to spend up to $2.72 billion to support domestic production of LEU and high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), which is a more concentrated fuel intended for use in prospective advanced reactors.
Congress allocated these funds through the final appropriations legislation for fiscal year 2024 but made them contingent on the U.S. restricting imports of Russian uranium.
The funds will specifically go toward implementing the Nuclear Fuel Security Act, which aims to expand U.S. capacity to make HALEU fuel and ensure there is a reserve of uranium that can sustain U.S. reactors in the event of supply chain disruption.
The report came after Israel captured the border crossing in an operation that was approved by the Biden administration. The private American firm was not named, but Haaretz said that it employs veterans of elite US Army units and has been employed in several Middle Eastern and African countries to guard sensitive sites.
State Department spokesman Matt Miller was asked about the report and said he wasn’t aware of any plan for Israel to transfer control of the border crossing.
Under the reported arrangement, American mercenaries would take responsibility for overseeing the border crossing, which would include monitoring goods coming into Gaza and preventing Hamas from taking control. Vital deliveries have been cut off since Israel took control of the crossing early Tuesday.
The Haaretz report said the arrangement was part of an effort by Israel to “win agreement” from the US and Egypt for a Rafah operation. The report said Israel had given assurances that it would limit its attack on Rafah to securing the border crossing, although Israeli bombs have been pounding the city.
Note: The following are remarks I delivered on Saturday, May 4, 2024 at the 55-year reunion of the Stanford University antiwar movement, in which I participated. On April 3, 1969, an estimated 700 Stanford students voted to occupy the Applied Electronics Laboratory (AEL), where classified research on electronic warfare was being conducted at Stanford. That spawned the April Third Movement (A3M), which holds reunions every five to 10 years. The sit-in at AEL, supported by a majority of Stanford students, lasted nine days. Stanford moved the objectionable research off campus, but the A3M continued with sit-ins, teach-ins and confrontations with police in the Stanford Industrial Park.
his reunion comes at an auspicious time, with college campuses erupting all over the country in solidarity with the Palestinian people. Once again, 55 years later, Stanford students are rising up for peace and justice. They have established a “People’s University” encampment and they are demanding that Stanford: (1) explicitly condemn Israel’s genocide and apartheid; (2) call for an immediate ceasefire, and for Israel and Egypt to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza; (3) immediately divest from the consumer brands identified by the Palestinian BDS National Committee and all firms in Stanford’s investment portfolio that are complicit in Israeli war crimes, apartheid and genocide.
At this moment in history, there are two related military occupations occurring simultaneously – 5,675 miles apart. One is Israel’s ongoing 57-year occupation of Palestinian territory, which is now taking the form of a full-fledged genocide that has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians. The other is at Columbia University, where the administration has asked the New York Police Department to occupy the school until May 17. Both occupations are fueled by the Zionist power structure. Both have weaponized antisemitism to rationalize their brutality.
The students at Columbia are demanding that the university end its investments in companies and funds that are profiting from Israel’s war against the Palestinians. They want financial transparency and amnesty for students and faculty involved in the demonstration. Most protesters throughout the country are demanding an immediate ceasefire and divestment from companies with interests in Israel. More than 2,300 people have been arrested or detained on U.S. college campuses.
Israel has damaged or destroyed every university in Gaza. But no university president has denounced Israel’s genocide or supported the call for divestment.
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement was launched in 2005 by 170 Palestinian civil society organizations who described BDS as “non-violent punitive measures” to last until Israel fully complies with international law………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
On April 3, 1969, 700 Stanford students voted to occupy the Applied Electronics Laboratory (AEL), where classified research on electronic warfare was being conducted at Stanford. That spawned the April Third Movement (A3M), which holds reunions every five to 10 years. The sit-in at AEL, supported by a majority of Stanford students, lasted nine days. Stanford moved the objectionable research off campus, but the A3M continued with sit-ins, teach-ins and confrontations with police in the Stanford Industrial Park.https://scheerpost.com/2024/05/07/students-demanding-divestment-youre-on-the-right-side-of-history/
President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed Israel’s plans to capture the Rafah border crossing in southern Gaza before the Israeli military launched the operation, Axios reported on Tuesday.
The report said that the operation didn’t cross Biden’s “red line,” although it’s unclear if the US has actually set red lines for Israel. US officials have said they’re opposed to a “major operation” in Rafah since it would incur huge civilian casualties. But the capturing of the border crossing will have a devastating impact on civilians since it cut off vital aid deliveries, and it’s unclear when or if they will resume.
A senior Israeli official told Axios that during the call with Netanyahu, Biden didn’t “didn’t pull the hand break on the capture of the Rafah crossing during the call.” Two US officials said Biden didn’t view the current Israeli operations as a “breaking point” in relations.
“We’ve been very consistent about our concerns of a major ground operation in Gaza that would put at great risk the refugees that are still there, and nothing’s changed about that,” Kirby said. “The Israelis have told us … that that’s not what this is.”
He said that Israel assured the US that the operation was “of limited scope, scale, and duration, and aimed at cutting off Hamas’ ability to ship arms across the Rafah border.”
Israeli tanks and soldiers took the border crossing as Israeli strikes pounded the city of Rafah, killing at least 23 Palestinians, including five women and six children.
INTERNATIONAL DARK SKY ASSOCIATION vs. FCC AND SPACEXOn December 29, 2022, the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) sued the U.S. Federal Communications Commission over its decision to approve SpaceX’s application for up to 30,000 more low-orbit satellites, in addition to the 12,000 already approved and in process of filling our skies. This is Case No. 22-1337 before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and has not yet been decided by the court.
American plasma physicist Sierra Solter implored the FCC to “please save our night sky… Please, please, don’t take away my stars. To feel that my place of comfort and calm — a starry sky — is being taken away and given to billionaires is suffocating.”
On December 18, 2023, Ms. Solter published a scientific article detailing her fear for our planet. Each of the 42,000 planned Starlink satellites, she wrote, has a design lifespan of only 5 years, after which it will be de-orbited, burned up in the atmosphere, and replaced. She calculated that this will require 23 satellites per day — each the size of an SUV or truck — to be burned up in the atmosphere forever into the future, leaving an enormous amount of toxic chemicals and metallic dust to accumulate in the air we breathe and in the ionosphere.
This is already happening, she wrote, and should be stopped if we value our lives. “Since the beginning of the space industry, approximately 20,000 tons of material have been demolished during reentry… This is over 100 billion times greater than [the mass of] the Van Allen Belts.” She estimated that if 42,000 Starlink satellites are deployed and regularly demolished — let alone the 1,000,000 satellites planned by other companies and governments — “every second the space industry is adding approximately 2,000 times more conductive material than mass of the Van Allen Belts into the ionosphere.”
“Unlike meteorites, which are small and only contain trace amounts of aluminum, these wrecked spacecraft are huge and consist entirely of aluminum and other exotic, highly conductive materials,” she explained in an April 16, 2024 article in The Guardian.
Much of the metallic dust will settle into the ionosphere where, she says, it could act as a magnetic shield, reducing the magnitude of the Earth’s magnetic field in space. If that happens, the atmosphere itself could eventually be destroyed, because the Earth’s magnetic field — the magnetosphere — is what deflects the solar wind and prevents it from stripping away Earth’s atmosphere, as she told Teresa Pulterova in an interview on Space.com.
Other astronomers involved in the litigation before the FCC and now the Court of Appeals include Meredith Rawls with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile; Gary Hunt with Action Against Satellite Light Pollution in the UK; Samantha Lawler at the University of Regina in Canada; Graeme Cuffy of Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; Mark Phillips, President of the Astronomical Society of Edinburgh; Roberto Trotta of the Imperial Centre for Inference and Cosmology in London; Carrie Nugent, Associate Professor of Computational Physics and Planetary Science at the Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts; and Cameron Nelson of Tenzing Startup Consultants in Virginia.
Other issues are also mentioned in the appeal. For example, the burned up aluminum produces aluminum oxide, which destroys ozone and contributes to climate change. So does the water vapor, soot, and nitrogen oxides in rocket exhaust.
Cameron Nelson told the FCC that “Humans, not to mention all other animal and plant life, have not given our consent for SpaceX to send the signals it is proposing into our bodies and irrevocably alter us.”
The BroadBand International Legal Action Network (BBILAN) mentioned “RF/EMF radiation from linked base and earth stations” in comments sent to the FCC. Starlink earth stations, also called Gateways, are far more powerful than the Starlink dishes that people are putting on their homes. The (as of March 2024) 2.6 million Starlink dishes each send one signal up to the moving network of satellites above them. All of this traffic is coordinated in space by thousands of lasers linking the satellites to one another, and on the ground by Gateways, which relay the thousands of signals in a large geographic area to and from the satellites. This is what a Gateway with 5 antennas (“radomes”) looks like:
Some Gateways have up to 40 radomes. Each of those domes weighs 1750 kilograms. Each aims a narrow beam at moving satellites. According to FCC filings by SpaceX, each beam can have an effective radiated power of more than 1,000,000 watts, which it can aim as low as 25 degrees above the horizon. If you are a bird you do not want to fly anywhere near a Starlink Gateway. And if you are a human you do not want to live near one either. When a satellite aims its beam containing thousands of signals at a Gateway, that beam is about 10 miles in diameter by the time it reaches the Earth.
At last count there were 277 Starlink Gateways in operation or under construction in the world: 181 in North America and the Caribbean, 26 in South America, 2 in Africa, 26 in Europe, and 42 in Asia and the Pacific.
The FCC maintains a webpage listing thousands of licenses that it has handed out to hundreds of companies to operate both fixed and mobile satellite earth stations in the United States. Some of these stations are far more powerful than the Starlink Gateways. SES’s earth station at Bristol, Virginia emits up to 1,900,000,000 watts of effective radiated power, and it is allowed to aim it as low as 5 degrees above the horizon. SES’s earth station at Brewster, Washington is allowed to emit almost 1,000,000 watts in the actual direction of the horizon! SES owns O3b mPOWER, which is the satellite system that had its first radomes on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship, the ship that had the famous outbreak of disease blamed on COVID-19 at the beginning of the pandemic.
The International Criminal Court is a dusty jewel, a creation of heat, tension and manufacture in the international community. Various elements have gone into its creation. As with any international institution which draws its legitimacy from nation states and the like, its detractors are many, the invective against it frequent. Some 124 countries have signed the Rome Charter of 1998 that gives the body its authority and jurisdictional force, but no one is foolish enough to think that its reach can ever be anything but tempered by political consideration and self-interest.
Be it issuing a problematic arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, attempting to investigate alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan, or busying itself with some nasty examples of African despotism, the scope of the body is potentially extensive. At present, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan is sniffing out the prospect of issuing arrest warrants against senior Israeli officials in the context of the war in Gaza. The sniff, however, has come with a rebuking blast from Israel, joined by various politicians in the United States champing at the bit to take a swipe at the body.
Such attacks have only been emboldened by the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, an instrument from 2002 that prohibits federal, state and local governments from furnishing the ICC with assistance in any way while authorising the US president “to use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release” of any “US person” or “allied persons” detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request,” of the ICC.
In what is expedient and legally anomalous, Washington has chosen not only to avoid signing the Rome Statute but reject ICC jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories. The ICC begs to differ, noting the acceptance of the court’s jurisdiction on the part of “the Government of Palestine” and its accession to the Rome Statute in January 2015.
In late October 2023, Israel announced that it would not be permitting Khan to enter Israel, signalling its intention to frustrate, as far as possible, his investigative functions. In April this year, Axios revealed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had requested US President Joe Biden to prevent the ICC from issuing arrest warrants against senior Israeli officials. A broader lobbying effort of the US Congress by the Netanyahu government is also taking place.
On May 1, a bipartisan group of US senators held a virtual meeting with members of seniority from the ICC, worried about the prospect that arrest warrants for top Israel might issue from the prosecutorial pipeline. In a threatening letter to Khan from a dozen Republican senators led by Tom Cotton, the promise for retaliation was unequivocal: “Target Israel, and we will target you.” Issuing such warrants would be “illegitimate and lack legal basis, and, if carried out, will result in severe actions against you and your institution.” They would “not only be a threat to Israel’s sovereignty but to the sovereignty of the United States.”
This was hardly novel and was unlikely to have phased Khan or his staff. In June 2020, President Donald Trump implemented an executive orderdirected at the ICC. The order authorised the blocking of assets and imposed family entry bans into the US in response to the court’s efforts to investigate the alleged commission of war crimes in Afghanistan by US personnel. In September that year, pursuant to the executive order, targeted sanctions were imposed on then ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and senior prosecution official Phakiso Mochochoko.
Since 2021, the ICC has been vested in examining alleged war crimes committed by both the Israeli Defense Forces and Palestinian militants stretching back to the 2014 Israel-Hamas war. “Upon the commencement of my mandate in June 2021,” Khan states, “I put in place for the first time a dedicated team to advance the investigation in relation to the Situation in the State of Palestine.” Its mission is to collect, preserve and analyse “information and communications from key stakeholders in relation to relevant incidents.”
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In November 2023, the office of the prosecutor received a referral from South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros and Djibouti to investigate “the Situation in the State of Palestine.” The referral requests the prosecutor “to vigorously investigate crimes under the jurisdiction of the Court allegedly committed” on various grounds, including, among others, the unlawful appropriation and destruction of private and public properties, the forcible transfer of Palestinians, the unlawful transfer of Israel’s population into Occupied Palestinian Territory and a discriminatory system amounting to apartheid.
The spectacularly brutal Israeli campaign in Gaza following the October 7 attacks by Hamas also enlivened interest in using the ICC’s jurisdiction to investigate allegations of genocide, crimes against humanity and relevant war crimes. But the notable catch, and bound to be threatening to its intended targets, was the request that culprits be found, and perpetrators be outed and held accountable. South Africa, more specifically, requested that the prosecutor “investigate the Situation for the purpose of determining whether one or more specific persons should be charged with the commission of such crimes.”
On May 3, officials from the ICC openly reproached efforts to tamper and modify any opinions on the part of the body regarding its activities. The ICC welcomed, according to Khan, “open communication” with government officials and non-governmental entities, and would only engage in discussions so long as they were “consistent with its mandate under the Rome Statute to act independently and impartially.”
As he continued to explain in his statement, Khan argued “That independence and impartiality are undermined … when individuals threaten to retaliate … should the office, in fulfilment of its mandate, make decisions about investigations or cases falling within its jurisdiction.” He demanded that “all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence its officials cease immediately.”
Netanyahu had previously promised that, under his leadership, “Israel will never accept any attempt by the ICC to undermine its inherent right of self-defense.” He regarded any “threat to seize the soldiers and officials of the Middle East’s only democracy and the world’s only Jewish state” as “outrageous.” Going heavy on the forces of light battling those of darkness – a favourite theme of his – the Israeli PM went on to claim that such actions “would set a dangerous precedent that threatens the soldiers and officials of all democracies fighting savage terrorism and wanton aggression.”
Far from threatening democracies of whatever flavour, the actions of the ICC can serve the opposite purpose, holding individuals in high office accountable for egregious crimes in international law. In doing so, it can contribute, in no small part, to efforts in defeating impunity and rebutting brutal and often callous assertions of self-defence.
Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sam Brown is under fire from Democrats for 2022 remarks in which he expressed support for plans to store federal nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
Nevada lawmakers from both parties have strongly resisted a federal plan to turn the isolated southwest Nevada mountain — about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas — into a nuclear waste storage facility since the idea was first proposed in the 1980s.
But Brown has expressed support for the idea in the past, and he can be heard in a new recording from his 2022 campaign saying the state risked losing out on an opportunity if it blocked the plans.
“If we don’t act soon, other states … are assessing whether or not they can essentially steal that opportunity from us,” he said in the recording, first obtained by The Los Angeles Times.
Brown, who is seen as a favorite in Nevada’s GOP Senate primary this June, said in a statement to The Hill he was not actively calling for the reopening of Yucca Mountain, but that future proposals should be considered.
“I am not strictly committed to opening Yucca Mountain at this time,” Brown said. “However, I will consider all thoroughly vetted future proposals, with the safety of Nevadans being my top priority, while ensuring the proposals are substantially economically beneficial.”
Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), who is running for reelection, quickly seized on the comments. Rosen is seen as vulnerable this fall in a state where former President Trump is up in polls. The Cook Political Report lists her seat as a toss-up.
“For decades, Nevadans across party lines have been clear that we will not allow our state to become the dumping ground for the rest of the nation’s nuclear waste,” Rosen said in a statement. “I’ve been fighting against Washington politicians trying to force nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain since Sam Brown was still living in Texas, and his extreme support for this dangerous and unpopular project underscores how little he understands the needs of our state.”…………………………………………………. more https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4642131-nuclear-waste-at-center-of-testy-nevada-senate-race/
The Biden administration has halted a shipment of ammunition previously approved to aid Israel in its war efforts with Hamas.
This suspension of munition delivery is the first of its kind since the beginning of the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas last October, when Hamas attacked Israel, murdering 1,200, and Israel launched a full-scale retaliation. According to two Israeli officials who spoke to Axios, the ammunition shipment was stopped last week.
The White House has yet to officially comment on the decision.
In April, Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic representatives issued a signed letter that called on Biden to halt the sale of weapons to Israel, even as they encourage munitions to be sent to Ukraine. The lawmakers called it “unjustifiable” to approve weapons transfers to Israel after an Israeli airstrike that inadvertently killed several humanitarian workers
This recent move comes amidst growing criticism within President Biden’s own base regarding US support for Israel. As left-wing activists across the country have continually called for the US to withdraw its support from Israel, the Biden administration has appeared to soften its initial support for the Jewish state.
The timing of this decision also follows US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Israel last Wednesday. During his visit, Blinken held discussions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about potential military operations in Gaza.
Netanyahu has recently signaled Israel’s intention to launch an invasion of Rafah, a city in southern Gaza where there is a checkpoint between Gaza and Egypt that Egypt keep strictly controlled to prevent the flow of Palestinians into their nation. There have been ongoing efforts to negotiate a ceasefire with Hamas and secure the release of hostages, though Hamas has refused many of these attempts.
Comment: Actually it’s Israel who’s turned down most of the proposals. Any deal requiring them to withdraw from Gaza will interfere with their ongoing ethnic cleansing/genocide project.
…………………………………………… Last February, the Biden administration requested assurances from Israel that any US-made weapons would be used in compliance with international law. Israel responded by providing a signed letter in March affirming its commitment to this standard.
Comment: Biden’s floundering campaign is uppermost in the minds of his handlers. Given the unrest across US. campuses over the Palestinian genocide, it seems that he’s been advised to throw them a bone.
At many college campuses, students are protesting in opposition to the Biden Administration’s unconditional backing, with weapons and diplomatic cover, of Netanyahu’s continuing serial war crimes slaughtering tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, most of them children and women. Hundreds of faculty members are defending these valiant youngsters and criticizing excessively harsh crackdowns by failed University presidents who are calling in outside police.
With graduations approaching, pro-Netanyahu lobbies and cowed University heads (like Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, who makes a salary of over $2,000 an hour) expect the students to disperse from campus for the summer and end their demonstrations.
The Israeli genocidal crimes against Gazans will continue and intensify if Israel invades Rafah. Millions of refugees will suffer. What will become of the organized student calls for a permanent ceasefire, greatly increased humanitarian aid and cessation of U.S. weapons shipments? The students who leave their campus protests can and should focus on members of Congress in their Districts and in Washington.
In two weeks, hundreds of Congressional summer student interns will begin arriving to work in Congressional offices. Congress is the decades-long reservoir for Israeli colonial aggression. Moreover, Congress, under AIPAC’s extraordinary pressure, has blocked testimony by prominent Israeli and Palestinian peace advocates since 1948. Not once have any of these peace advocates, many of whom are Israeli retired cabinet ministers, mayors, security and military leaders been invited to a Congressional Committee Hearing.
This power center for the U.S. Empire – Capitol Hill – presents serious students with an opportunity to educate their elders. Such an opportunity materialized during the Vietnam War when Congressional interns in the late 1960s organized a highly visible petition drive and engaged in peaceful protests.
Back in the Congressional Districts, the access is easier and available to many more students and faculty. Because Congress is in “recess” for much of the summer – Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and the entire month of August to Labor Day – students and citizens can demand public meetings preceded by formal summons to Senators and Representatives. (See my column “Sending Citizens Summons to Members of Congress”).
Five hundred to a thousand clearly legible signatures with the individuals’ occupations and emails should get these politicians to your well-prepared community meetings.
There would be no more notorious incommunicado behavior, laced with robo-letters to inquiring constituents. Instead, there would be person-to-person questioning, dialogue, and responses where evasions and sweet talk will be more difficult for the lawmakers to utilize.
The subject matter of these public meetings can extend beyond ghastly scenes of dead, dying, sick, and starving families in Gaza to Biden’s foreign and military policies. Our government is fueling an Empire producing disasters that are conducted in the name of the powerless American people, whose sovereign powers under our Constitution are delegated to Congress and the Executive Branch. The abuse of this power starts with Congress.
Nothing can compare to face-to-face meetings with the lawmakers. Letters, phone calls, and emails rarely can be relied on to reach them directly – that is if you are not a big campaign contributor. Besides, unlike in the past, today’s legislative staffers are much more likely to ignore these missives without even an acknowledgment. (See The Incommunicados report: https://incommunicadoswatch.org/).
A people’s town meeting has an agenda set by the people. Some suggestions follow:
1. There have been no Congressional hearings since before October 7th on the overall policies in the Middle East pursued by the White House and Congress. The House and Senate Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees have not been active. Instead, there have been show hearings berating University presidents to stifle free speech on their campuses and answer hypothetical questions about anti-semitism against Jews but not the other ongoing Congressionally weaponized anti-semitism against Gazan Arabs, who are Semites, being annihilated in that tiny enclave. Disgraceful! Demand public hearings for the citizenry.
2. Make U.S. engagements in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a major electoral campaign issue for November. This is a major opportunity to get the direct attention of the 535 lawmakers and to push them to stop kicking the can down the road. The decades-long control of Congress by the “Israeli-government-can-do-no-wrong lobby” must end. There is too much massive, preventable suffering being ignored in the Middle East, too much danger of wider regional wars involving the super-powers, and too much damage to civil liberties and democratic processes in our own country to avoid these matters any longer.
3. The students and teachers will find allies in their Congressional Districts from long-time advocates like the American Friends Committee (Quakers), the Unitarians, united Jewish, Christian, and Muslim peace groups, the increasing numbers of outspoken labor union leaders, and just plain Americans fed up with the costly U.S. Empire and its military-industrial complex (remember President Eisenhower’s warnings).
People want their tax dollars returned to the crucial public necessities back home. They don’t like big business controlling Congress and getting away with looting Uncle Sam by their out-of-control greed and power. Over 70% of Americans believe these big companies have too much control over their lives including many liberal and conservative families.
Larger reforms, redirections, and horizons of society often start with one compelling abuse or outrageous travesty of justice. This has occurred in the labor, farmer, consumer, environmental, and civil rights movements throughout our history.
There will be high-visibility protests outside the National Democratic Party Convention in Chicago and probable demonstrations at the National Republican Party Convention in Milwaukee this summer. But the laser-focused citizen pressure should be on those 535 members of YOUR Congress, their local offices, and their staff.
Change Congress and you change America! That is leverage!
The U.S. public should by now be realizing that instead of stopping genocide, U.S. institutional and media authority is actively stamping out cries to stop the mass murder being committed with U.S. complicity, writes Elizabeth Vos.
Developments on university campuses and in Congress this week showed that the U.S. government’s top priority is not protecting students or civilian lives in Gaza, but to protect Israel’s ability to continue its unimpeded slaughter.
Anti-genocide student protestors at Columbia University, demanding Columbia divest from Israel, occupied the campus’s Hamilton Hall on Tuesday and renamed it Hind’s Hall after Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza earlier this year. The Columbia protest has inspired more than 40 other anti-genocide university encampments across the country and in other nations.
On the morning the students occupied Hamilton Hall, MSNBC’sMorning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski compared the student protests to Jan. 6, calling for authorities to “just start arresting people.” Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti Defamation League, echoed the comparison in the same MSNBC segment. Other supporters of Israel also made the same Jan. 6 anaolgy on social media early Tuesday morning.
Former CNN anchor Don Lemon wrote on X that the Columbia protest “feels January 6th ish to me” because the protesters had occupied a building. Not a federal government building, but a university hall. Has Lemon not heard of a sit-in?
Missing was the most apt and obvious comparison: the occupation of the same Columbia hall took place 56 years to the day since it was the site of a police crackdown on an historic student occupation against the Vietnam War.
Columbia University itself commemorates the anti-Vietnam War occupation of the same building by student protesters in 1968 on their own website. Nonetheless, the NYPD descended on the Hall on Tuesday night at the direct request of Columbia University President Minouche Shafik.
All the comparisons to Jan. 6 came less than 24 hours before the brutal crackdown at Columbia University and the City College of New York by the NYPD Tuesday night, in which almost 300 people were arrested.
Following the New York City arrests, CNN’s Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash argued on air that the protests were “harkening back to the 1930’s in Europe,” claiming some Jewish people in the U.S. “feel unsafe,” words that completely echoed those of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
How unsafe did students at the University of Pennsylvania feel when a Zionist counter protester sprayed their belongings with an unknown substance?
How unsafe did students feel at multiple universities when police violently arrested professors trying to shield them? In one case in St. Louis, police broke the ribs of a 65-year-old Southern Illinois professor.
How safe did UCLA students feel when they were attacked with fireworks and bats by counter protesters?
In addition to the repulsive comparison with Nazis, Bash’s claim omits the context of previous legitimate antiwar protests that acted virtually identically to the current-era largely peaceful student actions.
These portrayals also excuse the police brutality that followed hours later and has continued since. Police reportedly allowed Zionist counter protesters to violently attack the UCLA encampment for hours without intervention on Tuesday night, only to clear the encampment the next evening using extreme force that included shooting students at close range with rubber bullets.
Bash and the rest of the talking heads focused on the feelings of Zionists in the U.S., deflecting from the horror taking place in Gaza, further dehumanizing civilians there.
The horror on the ground in Gaza is beyond imagination. We can’t say how many Palestinians have been killed, as the Gaza health authorities were forced to stop counting months ago when the healthcare system there collapsed under Israel’s assault. We’ve been using the ‘15,000 children have died’ number for months, there’s no telling how many have been killed, maimed, or orphaned to date.
The experience of witnessing this ceaseless genocide in the same moment that protests against it are violently put down was summed up by one social media user:
“I am watching a toddler die on a table in a field hospital in Rafah with half her face blown apart while listening to college students fight tears reporting on a police assault on their campus for protesting that, and I feel like I am losing my fucking mind.”
Also unmentioned by Morning Joe and Dana Bash is the fact that Israel’s prime minister is being actively shielded by the U.S. from being charged by the International Criminal Court.
It doesn’t stop there: corporate media and police are not the only parts of the establishment trying to silence students and wider criticism of Israel.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday that, if made law, will codify a definition of anti-Semitism created by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) into Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a federal anti-discrimination law.
This would change the current definition of anti-Semitism to include criticism of Israel as hate speech. The IHRA sets out 11 examples of anti-Semitism.
Critics argue that the bill’s language is vague and would reportedly allow the federal Department of Education to restrict funding and other resources to campuses perceived as tolerating so-called “anti-Semitism,” not to mention the disbarring of discourse on social media platforms by citing “hate speech.” Multiple human rights groups have decried the bill.
The latest House bill is an addition to the anti-BDS laws already in place across 38 states, many of which impact speech on university campuses. One example can be found in Arkansas, where a 2017 anti-BDS law forces speakers at the University of Arkansas to sign an anti-BDS pledge, or they will not be paid.
This resulted in legal action, but the Supreme Court ultimately refused to hear the case, allowing the law to stand in deference to the interests of a foreign nation.
Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn went further, calling for: “Any student who has promoted terrorism or engaged in terrorists acts on behalf of Hamas should be immediately be added to the terrorist watch list and placed on the TSA No Fly List.”
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar denounced Blackburn’s sentiments as “insanely dangerous.” But Blackburn wasn’t alone. House Speaker Mike Johnson also called on the F.B.I. to investigate protesters and suggested the National Guard should be deployed.
We’ve collectively realized that no one, no protective force nor institution of power is going to stop Israel’s violence.
The U.S. public should by now be realizing that instead of stopping genocide, U.S. institutional and media authority is actively stamping out cries to stop the mass murder being committed with U.S. complicity.
Covering for Israel is evidently more important to U.S. leaders than international law, than the lives of civilians or students, than freedom of speech, and even, it seems, their own re-election as they resist polls showing a majority of Americans want an end to the killing in Gaza.
Elizabeth Vos is a freelance reporter, co-host of CN Live! and regular contributor to Consortium News.
The records on renewable and battery storage continue to tumble in the northern spring as the technologies plays an increasingly important role in two of the biggest state grids in the world – California and Texas.
In California, as Renew Economy has reported over the last week, battery storage has emerged as often the biggest supplier of power for multiple hours in the state’s evening peak, meeting as much as 27 per cent of demand from its fleet of more than 10,000 MW of big batteries.
On Tuesday, California time, battery output jumped about 7,000 MW for the first time, reaching a peak of 7,046 MW at 7.55pm local time, nearly 300 MW above the peak set just a day earlier, and more than 1GW above the record that stood just two weeks earlier.
In Texas, battery capacity is also setting new benchmarks, reaching above 2,000 MW for just the second time ever and for the first time this summer. That share will grow dramatically with another 5 GW of battery capacity being added to the grid this year.
Solar records are also tumbling in quick fashion on both grids, underlying the need for battery storage as the solar output ramps down leading into the evening peaks in both states.
In California, a new peak of 18.54 GW of solar was reached at 1.10pm on Thursday, when battery storage was soaking up 4.4 GW of this output. It was the third time the solar output record had occurred in the last week.
Over the past two months, the share of wind, water and solar has imposed itself on the grid, reaching more than 100 per cent of demand on the last 19 consecutive days, sometimes for nine hours or more, and for 48 out of the last 56 days.
In Texas, a new record for solar also occurred last month when it reached 18.8 GW. This week, the PJM grid in the mid-west of the US set a new solar output record of 7.05 GW, the first time it reached above 7GW, and nearly double its record output from a year ago.
Giles Parkinson is founder and editor of Renew Economy, and is also the founder of One Step Off The Grid and founder/editor of the EV-focused The Driven. He is the co-host of the weekly Energy Insiders Podcast. Giles has been a journalist for 40 years and is a former business and deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review.
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