Propaganda War as Ukraine Business Flounders and EU Grows More Fascist

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OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT

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AUG 04, 2024

Don't laugh: This guy could manage to kill us all.

War Propaganda

Zionist Shenanigans

Kit Klarenberg, on his Substack post, picks up on a story reported in July by Mondoweiss of an anonymous collective of tech professionals, known as Zionism Observer, who managed to shut down an “extortion” website operated by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). Multiple major online hosting, domain registration and software companies were publicly pressured into purging the website.

But the website is now operational again.

“Known as Alkasheff Gaza, the website hosts a searchable database of Palestinians, along with their names, government identification numbers, addresses, places of worship, and more. It is claimed the individuals listed spied for Hamas. This information is drawn from local municipal police files seized by IDF operatives. The resource burst into public view in May, when Zionist forces rained down leaflets on Gazans featuring pictures and names of 130 purported local spies, and a QR code for visiting an accompanying, contactable Telegram channel”.

These leaflets threatened that the IDF would publish damaging details on even more Gazans if they didn’t first call the IDF on a number provided. Some “informants and collaborators” are clearly children, some of them very young. In addition to allegations that individuals featured on the leaflets had spied for Hamas, the site threatens to supply damaging personal information on targets, including criminal records, extramarital affairs and sexual proclivities.

Klarenberg argues that the purpose of Alkasheff Gaza is psychological torture:

laws of armed conflict, and the Genocide Convention. Yet, these tactics have been a core component of IDF operations since October 2023.”

An associated interactive “evacuation” or forced displacement map for trapped Gazans from a secret Israeli military intelligence database that divided Gaza into 620 “population blocks,” was created in April 2022 possibly suggesting that the ongoing genocide has been in Israel’s pipeline for a long time.

Mobilization Crisis for Ukrainian Business

She calculates that this leaves 3.7 mn still to be mobilized.

Ukraine has said it plans to mobilize as many as 500,000 although I believe that the numbers actually being mobilized are far fewer. Russia’s Minister of Defense has recently calculated that Ukraine lost 60,000 men, dead or wounded, in July 2024 alone. At best, one would safely conclude that Ukraine is losing more men each month than it is able to recruit.

Ivanova’s story cites the case of a company, Interpipe. Although half of its workforce can be exempted from military service, it still has 1,000 vacancies and cannot survive at present levels of production, given that half of its continuing workforce may still be mobilized. Men can be drafted (press-ganged) even while on their morning bus commute. Unauthorised conscription vans have been spotted outside the factory gate.

Ukraine’s business community is advocating a reform that would allow companies to pay a military fee of 20,000 hryvnia ($487) per worker per month to shield them from conscription, and/or to exempt all Ukrainian men who earn a salary above 36,500 hryvnia. According to Ivanova’s sources, Ukrainian businesses have already lost on average 10-20 percent of their workforces to conscription or emigration since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

The impact of recent Russian advances and of extensive power cuts are exerting even further pressure on those who are subject to mobilization to seek exit from the country. Many are killed or arrested in so doing. The bill allowing companies to pay for workers not to be drafted would exempt around 895,000 men from military service and raise roughly 200bn hryvnia for the army.

But the proposals are very contentious and divisive. Meanwhile, the army has ordered all men to refresh their contact details and other information by mid-July. Yet, already, Ukrainians are spending between 700 mn and 2 bn hryvnia a year buying exemption documents. A possible benefit of exempting all Ukrainian men who earn a salary above 36,500 hryvnia is that it might incentivize people to leave the shadow economy (to which some 800,000 have resorted in a bid to avoid conscription), declare their income, and start paying taxes.

Europe

Conor Gallagher for Naked Capitalism (Gallagher) writes that the European Commission is putting Italy on notice for alleged “rule of law” deficiencies, which could put in jeopardy EU cohesion and recovery funds earmarked for Rome. He interprets this as a form of financial blackmail to force EU members into line behind neoliberal orthodoxy and NATO priorities. The use of such blackmail has also been in evidence in the cases of Hungary and Poland. But in the case of Poland, the “rule of law” problems disappeared when NATO enthusiast Donald Tusk was elected prime minister last year.

Meloni meeting Xi: Even highly popular leaders cannot escape the imperialist pressure.

Formally, the Meloni government is being charged with going slow on reform of strict defamation laws and on budget cuts to public media, and Italy’s public broadcaster is being criticized for not censoring an anti-fascist monologue on one of its shows.

Yet the Meloni government has demonstrated high loyalty to neoliberal objectives such as privatization, promotion of short-term worker contracts, abolition of a basic income program, a fall in the real value of wages of 2.9% since 1990 (which has accentuated emigration from Italy and required Meloni to resort to immigration of workers). The government in Rome has worked hard to keep money flowing from the EU’s Covid recovery fund and is vulnerable to EU threats to cut it off from that spigot. Italy is the largest recipient (208 billion euros) of the EU’s Covid recovery fund.

Some Italian government ministers are critical of how the economic war against Russia harms Italian interests, and of French proposals to send European forces into Ukraine, but Meloni is still a strong supporter of the proxy war in Ukraine. On the debit side, so far as Washington and Brussels are concerned, Italy is party to a bid for improved ties with Syria so as to be able to return more Syrian refugees to Syria. Washington and Brussels prefer that refugees continue to go to Lebanon and they continue to oppose Syria because it is an ally of Russia (and refused to lie down to the Western shenanigans that supported Jihadist terrorism against the Assad government).

More seriously perhaps, from the point of view of Washington and Brussels, is Meloni’s trip to China (albeit one that is very similar to one by the German Chancellor some time before), where she committed to a “one China” policy and signed some minor agreements, despite the fact that Meloni pulled Italy out of the BRI program a year ago. Were Meloni to go further down the road of a rapprochement with China, Gallagher suspects her government would be undermined by Washington.

The saga puts the European Union in an increasingly negative light and may serve to hasten its further fragmentation and decline.

Lili News 029

In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.

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From the Golan Heights, Through Turkey and Beijing, to Palestine

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Oliver Boyd-Barrett
Empire, Communication and NATO Wars

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Once Again, On the Precipice

AUG 01, 2024

Middle East War

As has been widely reported, the likely Israeli assassination this week of a Hamas leader in Tehran on the day when the new President of Iran was being inaugurated, as well as the assassination of a Hezbollah leader in Beirut, along with the disclosure of another assassination of a Hamas leader in Gaza in mid-July has brought world one more time to the brink of World War Three.

The murder of Ismail Haniyeh, a former Palestinian prime minister, who was playing a key role in negotiations for a ceasefire, is a good indication that far from wanting peace, Israel is doing all it can to provoke a regional war, one in which the USA will become embroiled (as, indeed, US Secretary for Defense Lloyd Austin has just assured Israel that it will) so that, Israel recklessly hopes, the US can solve all of Israel’s immediate security issues.

To get the war that Israel needs, it is staging provocations, such as the recent assassinations just mentioned, along with continuing strikes on Syria and, with US help, Iraq. On Tuesday, a US strike killed several members of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a coalition of mostly Shia militias that was formed in 2014 to fight ISIS and are part of Iraq’s security forces. The strike was in alleged retaliation for PMF strikes on US military bases in defense of Palestine. Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has called for an end to the US-led anti-ISIS coalition in Iraq (sic) following what his spokesman has called “a heinous crime and blatant aggression.” The spokesman, Iraqi Maj. Gen. Yehia Rasool, said that:

“Such serious and uncalculated transgressions can significantly undermine all efforts, mechanisms, and frameworks of joint security work to combat ISIS in Iraq and Syria. They also risk dragging Iraq and the entire region into dangerous conflicts and wars. Therefore, we hold the coalition forces fully responsible for these consequences following this flagrant aggression.”

In short, Israel, with the full expectation of US backing, is targetting Hamas and Hezbollah and other militia in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and, let us not forget, the Houthis in Yemen, not to imention Iran, often with scant regard for the dangers to civilians or for the larger consequences of their actions. There is a reasonably good chance of Turkish involvement on the side of Iran.

The fact that Iran has now suffered further Israeli strikes in the wake of what could have been an assassination of former President Raisi on May 20 and, more directly, an Israeli strike on Damascus on January 20th which destroyed a building used by the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, killing at least five Iranians, not to mention a long history of illegal Israeli attacks on Iranian forces in Syria and, before then, Israeli murders of Iranian scientists thought to have been involved in a likely fictitious or very elementary Iranian nuclear weapons program, is raising questions as to the competence of Iranian defenses.

Failure of the Iranian security services to take control of this pattern of assassination by foreign interest (a failure that is perhaps related to tensions throughout Iranian professional classes between globalist/pro-Western perspectives and and nationalistic inclinations, just as there were in Russia up until 2022, just as in Venezuela now, and which still likely characterize China) fly in the face of what is otherwise often regarded as a fearsome military bulwark against potential Israeli aggression. More important than the question of whether Iran is competent, perhsps, are Israeli perceptions of that competence. These may encourage Israel to even more egregious provocation.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has ordered immediate retaliation, directly against Israel. Its previous relataliation, following Israel’s Damascus strike, was also a direct attack on Israel, one that was very carefully calibrated with the USA beforehand, and that demonstrated Iranian power to penetrate a significant Israeli military facility deep in the heart of Israel but with minimal casualties. The most likely outcome of this week’s attacks is some form of a similarly calibrated tit-for-tat response, albeit one that is suitably more dramatic. Mercouris makes the observationin his daily YouTube broadcast today that Western pleas to Iran to show moderatin are rarely, if ever, balanced with pleas to Israel for moderation. Iran has very difficult choices to make. The option of an appeal to the UN in the hope of the eventual applicability of Section 7 sanctions against Isreal seems unreal.

The Israeli attack has been explained by some sources as a reprisal for what is claimed to have been a Hezbollah missile strike against a group of Druze children in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Claims that this was a deliberate strike are utterly incredible. Yes, it is conceivable that some of the victims were Israeli citizens, but others were Syrian citizens, all were Arab, and all were living under an illegal Israeli occupation. It is inconceivable that Hezbollah perceived any military advantage. The fact that Hezbollah has denied all responsibity is in itself evidence that it did not, given the group’s record for honesty in such matters. It is conceivable that Hezbollah had targeted an Israeli position and that a missile defense rocket knocked the missile off course, or that Israel had staged a false flag operation in order to furnish a pretext for further triggers towards a regional war and, quite possibly, World War Three.

EurAsian War

In Ukraine, there is further discussion of the possibility, as I mentioned in my previous post, that Zelenskiy may organize a referendum that, amongst other things, would sound out Ukrainian readiness for Ukraine to make territorial concessions as a means towards peace. Zelenskiy has, for some time now, faced growing international demand that he concede to the impossibility of a return to the 1991 borders of Ukraine that were established following the implosion of the Soviet Union. One of the latest voices of realism in this direction of concession has come from the President of Finland, Alexander Stubb.

A referendum might help Zelenskiy along this route, while to some extent saving face, and it might protect him from punishment by his Nazi right-wing for making concessions that they have violently opposed and it would, naturally, provide some legitimacy for such concessions. At the same time, one should interpret the results of any such referendum in the context of a country from which perhaps a third of its population has fled, or has been killed in war, and of a country whose suppression of opposition and free speech undermines the trust that one can invest either in opinions expressed to pollsters or in the machinery of the referendum itself.

What might happen following such an event will depend to a major extent on how far Zelenskiy and his regime (and their Western bosses) are willing to go and on how far the Kremlin will consider itself constrained by the ceasefire terms that were recently indicated by President Putin.

Even if peace talks actually do gain some traction (and Zelenskiy has still to remove the law that makes such talks illegal) there is always the possibility of a further neocon attempt to destabilize the Russian Federation by implementing plans for a color revolution in Georgia where elections are scheduled on October 26 and in which the US color revolution apparatus has been long and expensively engaged. It will follow the usual neocon script as we have seen played out just this week in Venezuela, of a narrowly fought campain, a win by the nationalists that is contested by the foreign-sponsored globalists, backed up with very undemocratic violence in the Street and a fierce anti-nationalist media campaign throughout the collective West.

But before we get to October we should note some very interesting developments occurring today as reported and discussed on the Military Summary channel by Dima. These relate to claims from the British Daily Telegraph and from Ukraine that F-16s are already operational in Ukraine and may have already been used in combat mode. Dima speculates that these reports, not terribly well substantiated, may have been intended to interrupt the news cycle concerning a prisoner exchange between Russia (with Belarus) and the US. This prisoner exchange was mediated by Turkey and negotiated in Ankara, once again underlining the important role that Turkey plays in NATO-Russian-Ukrainian relations.

The exchange involved an unusually large number of people, 26 in all, from an unusually large number of countries, 7. Turkish intelligence sources indicate that 10 of the prisoners were destined to return to Russia, 13 to Germany, and 3 to the US. Dima notes that no Ukrainians were party to this negotiation, and that no Ukrainians were involved in the swap itself. He suggests that such events, historically, are indicative of the ending of hostilities, perhaps prior to peace negotiations. If so, then it would seem clear that Ukraine’s participation was either not invited or was not wanted by Ukraine, and that Ukraine is more interested in signalling the continuation of hostilities (the F-16s being symbolic of the usual “wonder weapon” logic of why the war can continue) than in demonstrating any inclination to concessions.

China has recently taken the decision to impede the flow of commercial, off-the-shelf drones to Ukraine at a time when Russian production of drones is approaching double the number available at any time to Ukraine and Russia adaptations and innovations in drone technology are beginnning to far-outpsce those of Ukraine and its extreme reliance on FPV drones.

Islamic Terrorism in Russia

A curious development links Islamic fury with the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and Israeli torture, rape and degradation of the thousands of Palestinians in mainly illegal custody in filthy Israeli prisons, on the one hand, with terrorism in Russia against both Jews and Christians and Russia’s long history of tensions between three of the world’s largest religions, tensions that are periodically exploited by malign foreign intelligence-related interests to destabilize the federation, on the other.

Writing for the Christian Science Monitor this is discussed by Fred Weir (Christian Science Monitor). As recently as last Sunday, Islamist extremists killed at least 21 people in coordinated attacks against minority Christians and Jews in Dagestan, the third major terrorist incident in Russia in as many monthsThe attackers struck a police station and four places of worship in two Dagestani cities, executing an Orthodox priest and burning down the only synagogue in the ancient city of Derbent. Yet Russia as a whole is overwhelmingly secular. Almost 80% of Russians are Slavs, most self-identifying as Orthodox Christians, although seldom going to church. About 18% of Russians are Muslim, mostly concentrated in several republics, including Dagestan, one of the poorest, and Tatarstan, one of the richest. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s most such concerns were related to Chechen militants. Lately, there has been a growing hostility toward Russia’s large communities of migrant workers, who tend to be mostly Muslims from former-Soviet Central Asia, has been on the rise since the Moscow attack by Tajik citizens in March.

The Battlefields

I noted in my most recent post that there are large concentratioins of Russian forces along the northern border of Ukraine, poised for a possible invasion. This likelihood appears to be confirmed by reports cited today by Dima that Ukraine is removing or changing road signs in the Sumy area and that the SBU is interrogating local citizens whom they suspect of Russian loyalties. In the Kharkiv area there have been no dramatic changes, only further confirmation based on the direction of Ukrainian FPV drones of Russian occupation of the citadel area in the east of the northern sector of Vovchansk, above the Volcha river. Further south, Russia continues to bomb the bridge over the Oskil river near Osynovo (west of Kurylivka and Pishanne) and is struggling for control over territory around Tabaivka. North of Rozdolivka (now controlled by Russia) and Fedorivka, Russian forces have moved north and are likely already to be penetrating Pereizne, south of Kuzmynivka.

Recent reports and geolocated video from Chasiv Yar confirms that there are fierce clashes in the center of Chasiv Yar, to the west of the Kanal and also that Russian forces have crossed the Kanal from each to west, to the north of the settlement. Further south, Russian forces have control over the east of Zalizne and of Pivnichne, they have improved their positions in the center of Niu-York, they have control over Yurivka, and are moving westwards from Toretsk towrds Panteleimonivka and Okeksandropil. They have cut the supply road to Niu-York from Constantinivka. To the west, Russia has destroyed many bridges and supply roads.

West of Avdiivka, Russia has taken under control the settlements of Prohres, Vovche and Lozuvatske and is in the process of taking Vesele (with little evidence of Ukrainian resistance). A bit to the north Russia appears to have taken Tymofievke, and in semi-encircling Zhelkanne and Ivanivka. Russia has most of Krasnohoriivka under its control and its taking territory between Krasnohoriivka and Marinka, and has taken control or is in the process of taking control over a coal-mine in this area.

South of Avdiivka, and south of Pobieda, Russia, for the past five days, has been making very concerted efforts to take Kostiantynivka, deploying hundreds of tanks for this purpose and very likely suffering significant losses as well, while consolidating control over the Kostyantynivka-Vuhledar highway. Westwards towards Urozhaine, Russian forces are moving north towards Makarikva along the TO-518 highway.

From the Golan Heights, Through Turkey and Beijing, to Palestine

BELOW, a Guardian (UK) account of the suposedly Hezbollah rocket strike. Use caution in believing anything claimed in the collective West media.

Moment rocket strikes Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, killing 12 children

Guardian News
The missile struck a football pitch in the town of Majdal Shams, leaving a crater. Hundreds of mourners gathered at a funeral for the victims. Israel has said the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah was responsible for the attack, which Hezbollah denies. Israel carried out strikes on what they said were Hezbollah targets across southern Lebanon.

OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT

JUL 29, 2024

Golan Heights Massacre

A missile that hit in the Syrian Golan Heights occupied by Israel (sometimes referred to as the Israeli northern territories) killed twelve Druze Arab children on a football field. Although Trump informally told Israel during his previous administration that he regarded the Golan Heights as Israeli territory, Trump’s judgment has no legal authority whatsoever. So it is very difficult to imagine that Hezbollah, which both the US and Israel claim to have been responsible, could possibly have imagined that such a strike would be “against Israel.”

EVEN THE CIA-REDACTED WIKIPEDIA SAYS THIS:

The Golan Heights (Arabic: هَضْبَةُ الْجَوْلَانِ, romanized: Haḍbatu l-Jawlān or مُرْتَفَعَاتُ الْجَوْلَانِ, Murtafaʻātu l-Jawlān; Hebrew: רמת הגולן, Ramat HaGolan, ⓘ), or simply the Golan, is a basaltic plateau, at the southwest corner of Syria. It is bordered by the Yarmouk River in the south, the Sea of Galilee and Hula Valleyin the west, the Anti-Lebanon mountains with Mount Hermon in the north and Wadi Raqqad in the east. Two thirds of the area has been occupied by Israel following the 1967 Six-Day War and then effectively annexed in 1981, which was rejected by the international community that continues to consider the territory as Syrian and under Israeli occupation.

The speed with which Israel and the US have accused Hezbollah aligns with the Netanyahu narrative to Congress last week whose purpose is to blame Iran as (one of) the sponsors for both Hamas and Hezbollah and therefore responsible for the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. It may also be that the US wants to use the Golan Heights incident to reinforce anti-Hezbollah sentiment and thereby increase pressure on Hamas to reach a deal over Gaza before the outbreak of a wider war. But were that really to be the game then it is difficult to see why Netanyahu is doing everything he can to stop Hamas from agreeing a deal by adding ever more conditions Isrsel and backing away from offering any kind of absolute gurantee of a permanent ceasefire.

Alastair Crooke today argues with Judge Napolitano that there is no lasting solution to Gaza because there is no possibility of a two-state solution, given 800,000 settlers in the occupied territories and, I would add, the uncompromising apartheid nature of the regime. Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on June 27 threatened European countries that for “every country that unilaterally recognizes a Palestinian state, we will establish a settlement.”

One way for Israel in a context of a failing IDF in Gaza, an incresasingly powerful Iran, and the continuing threats to Israeli regional supremacy from Hamas and Hezbullah, is to threaten to extend the war by invading Lebanon, provoking war with Iran and forcing the US to become involved on Israel’s side. Orders for such a war have already been given, but it is uncertain whether the initial attacks will be solely on military targets or civilian, and how far such attacks will penetrate Lebanon. There is no real likelihood, says Crooke, that Kamala Harris will make any different to this equation.

Turkish Intervention

Suddenly, back into the picture comes Turkey, which has the largest army in the region but whose role in protesting the genocide in Gaza has been extremely modest and disappointing. Yes, one might argue that Turkey has had all manner of economic challenges, that it has had to respond to the devastating earthquake of early 2023 and that it must somehow balance its continuing membership of NATO against its orientation to the BRICS and its Islamic solidarity with Palestine (both are primarily Sunni).

That involvement together with its cooperation with both Damascus and Moscow in the policing of a buffer zone between Syria and Turkey along Syria’s northwestern border, its eternal enmity towards Syrian-based Kurds in northeastern Syria, and its absorption of a million or so Syrian refugees, suggest that Turkey is well able to afford an expansive and intrusive foreign policy if it so decides.

Why not Gaza? On Sunday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a televised address threatened Turkey could “enter” Israel as it did in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh. In 2020, Turkey began deploying military advisors and Syrian mercenaries to Libya to support the UN-backed Government of National Accord. Turkey also strongly backed Azerbaijan’s 2020 assault on Nagorno-Karabakh by providing weapons and political support. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz has commented in response that “Erdogan follows in the footsteps of Saddam Hussein.”

Chinese Mediation

Whereas Turkish involvement would likely be escalatory, China is considering a more constructive, peaceful role, as illustrated in the recently-agreed Beijing Declaration. The agreement calls for a national unity government to govern Gaza jointly after the end of the current conflict. Steven Sahiounie today (Sahaoun) reports that Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi hosted a three-day meeting attended by senior Hamas official Musa Abu Marzuk, Fatah envoy Mahmud al-Aloul, along with emissaries from 12 other Palestinian groups and envoys from Egypt, Algeria and Russia.

The purpose was to establish the Palestine Liberation Organization as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people by working to reconcile the long-established feud between Hamas (the major political force in Gaza) and Fatah (the major political force in the West Bank).

China has proved to be the only world power that can engineer a rapprochement between the Palestinian rivals. Wang Yi also called for a “comprehensive, lasting and sustainable ceasefire”, as well as efforts to promote Palestinian self-governance and full recognition of a Palestinian state at the UN. China was also an important mediator in bringing about a rapprochement between Saudia Arabia and Iran in 2023. Sahiounie writes that the Saudi-Iran relationship has been strengthened during the Israeli war on Gaza, as both sides reaffirm their shared support of the Palestinian people, and call for the end of the war and long-term peace.

Sahiounie explaints that Fatah was formed from the PLO, founded by Yasser Arafat:

“In the 1993 Oslo Agreement, the PLO laid down their arms, while Hamas has remained an armed resistance group. The Geneva Convention guarantees the legal right of armed resistance to occupation”.

But nothing, of course, is that simple. Ali Abunimah (Abunimah), writing in Popular Resistance, agrees that the new agreement commits all factions to form a “national consensus government,” which would be in charge of running affairs in Gaza after the war. The government would be chosen in consensus by all factions, suggesting that it would therefore comprise technocrats rather than factional representstives. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other factions that emerged during the first and second Intifadas would have to join the PLO.

This in turn highlights the longstanding commitment of the PLO to a negotiations process as a way to establishing a Palestinian state, while cooperating in security and business affairs with Israel. The problem, of course, if we return to the above comments by Alastair Crooke, is that the notion of a two-state solution seems utterly impractical, while the notion of a single, non-apartheid Israel flies directly in the face of the Zionist ideology that prevails. Further, there are factions that do not agree with the PLO’s commitment and were these to join the PLO then its unity would be in name only.

But for a new generation of Palestinians this division is ancient history. Palestinian youth manifested their own version of national unity on the street, especially following the cancellation by the Palestinian president of elections in 2021 and the subsequent uprisings in protest.

Political divisions between Palestinian leaders do not reflect divisions in the Palestinian society therefore, but only the different compromises that different leaders have made to ensure their own continuance in the political game. The Palestinian Authority staked its political and historical capital in a Western-led negotiation process, with the hope of reaching Palestinian statehood.

“As a consequence, the PA became dependent on the approval of the U.S. and European donors, as well as on the Israeli-controlled customs money used by Israel repeatedly as a political weapon. These dynamics leave the PA no choice but a political program based on security and economic cooperation with Israel. A program that contradicts the popular will to such an extent that it needs to rely on growing authoritarianism to impose itself.”

Hamas, by contrast, stood for resistance to occupation by all means. October 7th was in essence a political statement by Hamas to the effect that it was ready to lead the Palestinians. This was necesssary in part because Palestinian political elections had been canceled a month earlier, depriving Hamas of a strictly political venue to challenge the PA. Yet in reality, Abunimah argues, Hamas being led by a new force “that Palestinians expressed through their non-partisan, trans-geographical unity across historic Palestine, with mass mobilizations.” This underlined the contemporary reality that the old PA-Hamas division is obsolete.

The US may want the PA to play a role in post-war Gaza but this will be impossible without a formal reconciliation involving all Palestinian factions. Hamas is now the most relevant force in Palestinian politics but in a post-war context it can only exercise influence as part of a unified Palestinian leadership.

“The consequences of previous political failures have accumulated to the point where the Palestinian people are now facing the breaking point of an Israeli war on all Palestinians, which aims to end the hopes for a Palestinian state, the mass expulsion of millions of Palestinians, and the final annexation of the West Bank. The consequences of failure now cannot be overstated”.

OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT

JUL 26, 2024

The Failing Counter-Revolution Against Multipolarity

Israeli Economy and Conflict in the Middle East

A report by Yves Smith today in Naked Capitalism ( see Yves Smith), drawing on a longer report from Mondoweiss, concludes that Israel has “locked itself in a long-term, resource, credibility and morale draining conflict, and no willingness to climb down”.

Consider the list of Israel’s failures and likely failures (and I elaborate a little on some of these):

As if ordinary, intelligent, moral people would somehow need Iranian money to express their anger with the horrific monster than the US-Israel incubus has become.

Any day now Russia, will consolidate what amounts to a mutual defense arrangement with Iran, and this week, President Assad has been visiting Moscow, their agenda doubtless encompassing options in the event of a regional conflict. Meanwhile, Smith observes, Israeli defense depends on short, fierce, air-power heavy conflicts, and not “slow, resource and will-sapping slogs”.

Israel’s “Atlantis,”scheme was to take out the Hamas tunnels by pumping in seawater at high intensity, failed not least, according to a Haaretz newspaper investigation, because Israeli forces underestimated the dimensions of the tunnels. Hamas had changed its tunnel structures over time to make it even more resistant to an IDF clearance operation.

that it is becoming acceptable, even respectable, to criticize Israel’s genocide. On Tuesday, Japan imposed sanctions on four Israeli settlers for violence against West Bank Palestinians, and a fairly large number of settlers and far-right groups are already being sanctioned by Western powers. Other members of the Group of Seven countries have been doing the same since the United States announced its first set of sanctions against four violent settlers on February 1st.

“In terms of trade, Israel’s import and export statistics don’t indicate much US dependence but as Israel continues to suffer an exodus of skilled professionals, particularly of highly skilled, highly mobile professionals and experts the country will very likely become more dependent. Over 46,000 businesses have gone bankrupt, tourism has stopped, Israel’s credit rating was lowered, Israeli bonds are sold at the prices of almost “junk bonds” levels, and the foreign investments that have already dropped by 60% in the first quarter of 2023 (as a result of the policies of Israel’s far-right government before October 7) show no prospects of recovery. The majority of the money invested in Israeli investment funds was diverted to investments abroad because Israelis do not want their own pension funds and insurance funds or their own savings to be tied to the fate of the State of Israel. This has caused a surprising stability in the Israeli stock market because funds invested in foreign stocks and bonds generated profit in foreign currency, which was multiplied by the rise in the exchange rate between foreign currencies and the Israeli Shekel. But then Intel scuttled a $25 billion investment plan in Israel, the biggest BDS victory ever…”

Israel’s power grid, which has largely switched to natural gas, still depends on coal to supply demand. The biggest supplier of coal to Israel is Colombia, [which has recently] announced that it would suspend coal shipments to Israel as long as the genocide was ongoing. After Colombia, the next two biggest suppliers are South Africa and Russia, both members of the BRICS and highly antagonistic to apartheid. Without reliable and continuous electricity, Israel will no longer be able to pretend to be a developed economy. Server farms do not work without 24-hour power, and no one knows how many blackouts the Israeli high-tech sector could potentially survive. International tech companies have already started closing their branches in Israel”.

Sources cited suggest that 60,000 businesses are expected to have closed by the end of 2024. 50% of startups are on track to closing within six months. One economist, has argued that the Israeli economy is held together by 300,000 people (the senior staff in universities, tech companies, and hospitals) and that once these leave, Israel will in effect cease to exist. “The hype of Israel’s “startup nation” has turned into a #Shutdownnation”. Two senior Israeli economists have predicted that Israel will not survive to its 100th year.

USA in the Pacific Rim

Israeli Leader of Genocide Arrives to Lecture Congress of the Fatherland of Genocides

Netanyahu) reports on the efforts of an American legal group, the Center for Constitutional Rights, to pressure the U.S. Department of Justice into opening a criminal investigation into Netanyahu and other officials for committing or authorizing genocide, war crimes, and torturing Palestinians in Gaza.

“We believe ample credible evidence exists to sufficiently establish that serious crimes falling within U.S. criminal jurisdiction are systematically being perpetrated in Gaza…There is overwhelming evidence that under Netanyahu, Israeli forces and authorities are committing genocide, war crimes, and torture against Palestinians in Gaza, acts that are proscribed under federal criminal statutes and prosecutable by HRSP.”

International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, writes Corbett, is seeking

“Arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders, and Israel faces a South Africa-led genocide case at the International Court of Justice — which on Friday issued a non-binding advisory opinion that Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is unlawful and must end “as rapidly as possible.”

But in the US, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit against the president, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Palestine

It strikes a blow against the entire Zionist project based, Amar argues:

“On the irreparable injustice of violently depriving the Palestinians of their inalienable right to national self-determination…. It calls into question the foundations of Israel as a state, as it is built around the systematic defiance of justice, law, and elementary ethics”.

The ICJ has made it clear that all settlement must cease and that the settlers already on these territories must leave. This would affect 700,000 and 750,000 Israeli illegals on over 100 settlements they never had a right to establish. The Israeli state has an obligation to evacuate them. Israel’s expropriations, tens or thousands of acreas of land are also illegal.

As for Gaza, the court rejects the argument that Israel withdrew in 2005 and notes that because of its stifling control, it has remained an occupying power, with all the attendant obligations. Further, the court has determined that Israel’s policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amount to segregation or apartheid in breach of internstional law. The court rejects the argument that Israel can justify its continuing, pervasive criminality by alleged “security” needs. The ICJ findings confirm that Palestinians have a right to armed resistance under international law.

As was easily anticipated, the The whole Israeli political spectrum has rejected the ICJ findings. But the ICJ notes that all other states have a duty to co-operate with the UN in order to bring about an end to Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinisn Territory, and that international organizations, specialized agencies, investment corporations etc. must not cooperate “in any measures undertaken by Israel to exploit the resources of the occupied territories or to effect any changes in the demographic composition or geographic character or institutional structure of those territories.”

Houthi and Hezbollah Resistance to Genocide

A piece by Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism (Israeli-Houthi-Hezbollah War) comments on Hezbollah’s and Yemeni strikes against Israel in retaliation for the Israeli response against a Houthi drone attack on Tel Aviv last Friday.

Israel’s enemies may perceive Israel as weak.

Israel’s strike on the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah blew up fuel storage tanks and indicated Israeli intention to curb food supplies to Yemen, which has suffered from both food shortages and outbreaks of cholera during its war with the Saudis. The Houthis’ purpose is to punish Israel until Israel stops its genocide in Gaza. The Houthis have experienced success with low tech tactics such as sending of unmanned boats full of explosives into ships and also claim to have modern missiles.

The head of the US Joint Chiefs, Charles Brown, has told Israel that the US can do little to help. When Iran responded to the Israeli murder of Iranian revolutionary guards in Syria, some weeks ago, it successfully hit two Israeli airbases, demonstrating its ability to penetrate combined US and Israel defenses even under textbook conditions for Israel.

US insistence that Israel should ship eight Patriot systems to Ukraine and that Ukraine should get top priority for new missile deliveries may encourage the Houthis, Hezbollah and perhaps even Iran, to strike now.

Former colonel Larry Wilkerson has estimated that Israel has lost 10% of its forces. Replacing these with fresh conscripts is hardly a reassuring measure. Further, Israel has admitted to a tank shortage. A substantial number of tanks has been withdrawn from service. There is an insufficiency of training programmes for personnel and the resources needed to maintain the tanks. More than 500 armoured vehicles of various types have been damaged since October 7, along with their crews inside. Al-Qassam claims to have hit more than a thousand tanks and armoured vehicles inside Gaza. Strikes between Hezbollah and Israel have forced the relocation of between 60,000 to 100,000 settlers from Israeli border towns, who are being housed at government expense.

In a story republished in Popular Resistance, investigative reporter Kit Klarenberg, dissected an AP news piece about US naval personnel returning from Red Sea duties. The AP reported that the aircraft-carrier Eisenhower and its accompanying ships had been bombarded relentlessly by Ansar Allah drones, and ballistic and cruise missiles. These attacks sometimes penetrated multiple layers of on-ship defenses, totally unprecedented in modern history. Most sailors were not used to dealing with an enemy that fought back.

For many shipping companies, the combined costs of crew bonuses, war risk insurance (roughly 1000% more than pre-war costs), and Suez transit fees make the additional time and financial costs traveling around Africa less expensive by comparison. Insurance premiums for Red Sea transit have risen to 0.7-1.0% of a ship’s total value, compared to less than 0.1% prior to December 2023.

Suppression of Social Media Criticism of Israel for Genocide

Meta Mega Suppression) reports on how social media giant Meta intends to broaden the scope of its censorship and suppression of content related to the Gaza genocide. Posts containing “derogatory or threatening references to ‘Zionists’ in cases where the term is used to refer to Jews or Israelis” will be proscribed. In January, CyberWell (a private Israeli-linked “trusted partner” of Meta, TikTok, and X, supposedly helping them to combat “disinformation.”), published an extensive report on how it was seeking to censor many prominent X accounts that expressed doubts about the official narrative of October 7th.

formal guidance to Meta “on censoring the Palestine solidarity phrase ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ which Zionists falsely claim is a clarion call for the genocide of Jews”. The firm is trying to force social media to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) highly controversial definition of antisemitism which falsely conflates criticism of the Zionist entity and antisemitism.

Many members of Cyberwell’s team have extensive Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) backgrounds and Israeli government ties and ties to Voices of Israel. Voices of Israel describes itself as a non-partisan, apolitical organization that funds and partners with a broad range of Israeli and international NGOs, with the common goal of strengthening the positive perception of the State of Israel and combating hate speech and incitement around the world. Voices of Israel’s activity is part of a joint venture with the State of Israel. The chief executive of CyberWell and two of its board members previously worked at the same private intelligence spin-off from Voices of Israel, a director of the spin-off is an advisor to CyberWell, and the CEO of Voices became the CFO of CyberWell.

BBC’s Israeli Propaganda

A BBC Beirut-based journalist, Rami Ruhayem has accused the BBC of “a collapse in the application of basic standards and norms of journalism that seems aligned with Israel’s propaganda strategy,” reports Media Lens this week (Media Lens.) BBC management has failed to respond to ‘a mass of evidence-based critique of coverage’ from members of staff. The evidence of a collapse in BBC journalism standards, in line with Israel’s propaganda strategy had been pouring in for months “at a dizzying pace.” Those who object, whether employees or viewers, are treated dismissively. Media Lens comments on the “Kafka-esque contortions performed by BBC management to avoid proper accountability even to their own journalists”.

Ruhayem had asked the BBC whether instructions had been given:

“To drop requirements for applying scrutiny regarding the most serious, unverified claims that were being repeated by propagandists for Israel? Would they be able to explain why, and offer a defence of such decisions based on BBC values and standards? If that is not the case, would the editors be able to explain why – upon observing these standards being repeatedly cast aside – they did not intervene? In any case, would upper management clarify what it thinks its own duties are in such a situation?’

He complained that Israeli claims about the events of October 7 were given an” open, uncritical platform by the BBC”. When Ruhayem’s email to the BBC Director General was leaked to the right-wing press, their reports “downplayed the seriousness and extent of his collated evidence and emphasised the ‘outrage’ of ‘Jewish staff’ with the inevitable and insidious deployment of the ‘antisemitism’ card.

Ruhayem’s analysed 22 interviews with Israeli guests – mostly current officials, a few former officials, army officers, politicians, and a ‘human rights activist’…Media Lens reports his main findings as including:

“There was no challenge about different manifestations of what appears to be the Israeli government’s drive to destroy any chance of Palestinian self-determination, about Israeli officials in positions of power who had incited extreme violence against Palestinians prior to October 7, or what all of that might suggest about the motivations driving Israel’s conduct of the war”.

In one exception to the rule, the issue was framed in terms of the potential legal and reputational harm to Israel.

The so-called Dahiya Doctrine, essentially an Israeli military doctrine that overrides any sense of ‘proportionality’ in Israel’s attacks on Palestinians was not mentioned in any of these interviews.

There was, Ruhayem maintained:

“A growing body of evidence indicating that the BBC may have been withholding vital information from the public, contributing to incitement against Palestinians, and spreading and reinforcing Israeli war propaganda.”

Presenters constantly failed to use crucial evidence to challenge Israel’s west-facing propaganda.

“The main assumption is that Israel is trying to avoid harming Palestinian civilians as it conducts a war of self-defence. Thus, discussions between BBC presenters and Israeli propagandists are centred on the question of whether Israel is trying hard enough, or acting intelligently enough, to achieve its goal of “crushing” and “dismantling” Hamas without harming civilians – or its reputation. This framework is cemented because evidence to the contrary is erased.”

In the context some of the most lurid and ultimately unsubstantiated or provenly false claims of what happened on October 7, 2023:

“Claims and testimony that encourage the most extreme portrayals of Israel’s enemies are allowed to be repeated without challenge – regardless of whether or not they’re backed by evidence. Claims and testimony that raise the possibility of Israeli disinformation around the events of October 7 are ignored – despite the evidence.

By seeking to place Hamas on the most extreme end of the spectrum of evil, propagandists for Israel seemed to believe they’d be able to defend whatever Israel chose to do – and set the stage for more. The seeming suspension of basic standards of scrutiny on the BBC most likely encouraged that strategy.’

Such coverage is likely to have aided Israel’s efforts to ensure political support in the West for its actions, and to intimidate those opposed to them and portray them as supporters of the most hideous atrocities.”

[/su_spoiler]

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Is there a risk that Kamala Harris might “go soft” on foreign policy?

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Alastair Crooke

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July 29, 2024

Extraordinary Times: Biden renounces his election bid via in the slimmest of Sunday afternoon postings; retreats into a silence which finally is broken by a ‘long farewell’ pronounced from the Oval Office. Biden’s staff didn’t hear of his renunciation until a minute before his letter was posted. Then the internet was struck down by CrowdStrike, and the head of the U.S. Secret Service gives an account of the Trump assassination attempt that leaves both sides of the aisle in Congress aghast at the seeming incompetence – or mooting something ‘worse’.

Everyone is left reeling.

With all media information streams tainted, and with no ‘believable someone’ to explain what is going on, we are pushed completely to the ‘outside’. For now, it is impossible to orientate. The media increasingly is about one thing: ‘Let us think for you. Let us be your eyes and your ears. Make our new words and phrases into your language. The explanations and hypotheses that are offered appear so unconvincing that they evoke, rather, a deliberate attempt to dis-orientate the public – and to loosen their grip on reality’.

Nonetheless, even if the essence of the internal U.S. conflict is shrouded, a veil on the working of the Deep State has been peeled away: It is widely understood the Biden ouster was masterminded – behind the curtain – by Barack Obama. Pelosi was the ‘enforcer’ (“We can do this [Biden’s ouster] the easy way – or the ‘hard way’”, Pelosi warned the Biden circle).

Wall Street Journal:

“We [he and Obama] both grew up in Chicago politics. We understand how it works—with the bosses over the people. Mr. Obama learned the lessons well. And what he just did to Mr. Biden is what political bosses have been doing in Chicago since the 1871 fire – selections masquerading as elections. Mr. Obama and I know this kind of Chicago politics better than anyone. We both rose up in it and I was brought to ruin by it”.

“While today’s Democratic bosses may look different from the old-time cigar-chomping guy with a pinky ring, they operate the same way: in the shadows of the backroom. Mr. Obama, Nancy Pelosi and the rich donors—the Hollywood and Silicon Valley élites—are the new bosses of today’s Democratic Party. They call the shots. The voters, most of them working people, are there to be lied to, manipulated and controlled”.

“All along, Mr. Biden and the Democratic politicians have been claiming that this year’s presidential race is about “saving democracy”.They are the biggest hypocrites in American political history. They have successfully maneuvered to dump their duly elected candidate for president … [Biden’s] unfitness to run for re-election today didn’t just happen. The Democrats have been covering it up for a long time. [However, after] June’s presidential debate, Mr. Obama and the Democratic bosses could no longer hide his condition. The jig was up, and Joe had to go”.

“The Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month will provide the perfect backdrop and place for Mr. Obama to finish the job and choose his candidate, not the voters’ candidate. Democracy, no. Chicago ward-boss politics, yes”.

Well, it seems that Kamala Harris – who never won a primary – is again about to circumvent the primary process through orchestrated acclaim, which rumour suggests is concerted by the Clinton family, whilst the Obama family (Dons of the Chicago political mafia) are against her, and fume quietly.

Is it done? Will Kamala Harris be the Democratic contender?

Maybe so – but were there to be a major international crisis – say, in the Middle East, or with Russia – possibly things might then change.

How so?

To get where Harris ‘is’, she “went from being a tough-on-crime prosecutor as a district attorney in California – to the far Left”, (sic) California delegates at the RNC told The American Conservative:

“She and Gavin Newsom,in charting their rise through the Democratic Party of 2024,tried to keep tacking to the far Left. They had to be the most extreme on crime, on abortion, on DEI, on the open border, on economic policy and confiscation level taxation. That really doesn’t play well in most of the country”.

Harris has also differentiated herself from Biden in foreign policy by being explicitly more sympathetic to the plight of Gaza’s Palestinians.

U.S. foreign policy strategies however, are not widely discussed publicly, and are viewed by the ruling-strata as vital and being of the essence. The electorate will not be privy to what those entanglements are at the structural level, since they involve state secrets. Nevertheless, much of U.S. politics rides on the back of this ‘less divulged’ bedrock.

Will Harris commit to these foundations of foreign policy structures (i.e. such as the Wolfowitz Doctrine)? Will she go soft on the structures out of a desire to tilt towards the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in respect to Gaza? Will she go party-partisan and break the bi-partisan canon (already under stress)?

Ignore the money-laundering aspect to foreign policy expenditure. The important thing is that no one can be allowed to go soft on these policies and treaties on which the ‘free world’ structurally now depends, and has done so for decades. That is the Deep State stance.

It will not play well in the U.S., were Harris to ‘go soft’. There was clear evidence in Netanyahu’s address to Congress that the longstanding bipartisan consensus to back Israel has eroded. This will worry the foreign policy grandees.

“The one adhesive that has maintained the resilience of the Israeli relationship is bipartisanship”, said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator and adviser to Republican and Democratic administrations. “That is under extreme stress.” He added: “If you have a Republican view and two or three Democratic views about what it means to be pro-Israel, the nature of the relationship is going to change”.

Mr Netanyahu was evidently well aware of this risk. He struck a pointedly bipartisan tone throughout his address. And the address undoubtedly was a masterful display of his feel for the American political psyche. It hit the required spots and carefully melded into a ‘State of the Union’ mode of delivery and structure.

Of course there were dissenters, yet Netanyahu seized the audience with his “crossroads of history” grand theme which portrayed Iran’s “Axis of Evil” confronting America, Israel and their Arab allies. And he cemented his hold over much of that audience by promising that – together – America and Israel would prevail: “When we stand together something very simple happens: We win, they lose. And my friends”, he pledged, “We will win”.

It was a replay of the ‘Israel is America and America is Israel’ meme.

So the foreign policy questions in respect to the Harris candidacy are two-fold: First, might Harris – as presidential candidate presumptive – choose to tear down, weaken or expose the load-bearing foreign policy ‘givens’ in the eyes of the Establishment?

And secondly, what should be the stance of Deep State panjandrums should a serious international crisis arise in the near future?

A clamour then will surely swell that an experienced foreign policy hand must take the helm – which Harris isn’t. It would invite calamity, were someone with no foreign policy experience to knock down certain policy ‘structures’ on which so much U.S. policy rides.

Is Obama then awaiting the moment to insert his final choice as the new Party figurehead (as the GOP Convention goers suspect), or is he convinced that Harris will not prevail in November, and as party elder statesman, would prefer to pick up the pieces of the Party – in the aftermath – and mould it to his liking?

Just to be clear, an international crisis precisely is that which Netanyahu intends to begin to build out during his Washington visit. Of course, the address of Netanyahu’s ‘grand theme’ will be pursued quietly, away from the public gaze. Speaker Mike Johnson is convening a private gathering with Netanyahu alongside some of the most influential Republican mega-donors and political power players.

Netanyahu is on record that 7th October has evolved to become a war on Israel from all points of the compass, and that Israel needs the support and practical assistance of the “free world” … “at a time when it is more viciously demonized than ever”.

Whilst Hezbollah is being confronted daily by the IDF, it has manifestly neither been dismantled nor deterred. And that dictates that Israel cannot live with ‘terrorist armies’, openly dedicated to Israel’s destruction encamped at, and near, its borders, Netanyahu complains.

This constitutes ‘the imminent crisis’: The prospective Israeli military operation in Lebanon to push Hezbollah back from the border. Reportedly, the U.S. already has committed to limited support for this military objective.

But Netanyahu also insists that Israel needs the support and practical assistance of the ‘free world’ ‘to counter the regime at the heart of the existential threat – Iran’. What if Iran intervenes in Lebanon in response to a massive Israeli assault? Netanyahu casts this as the ‘barbarians’ coming for western civilisation – coming too for America as much as Israel.

The recent Israeli attack on Hodeida port in Yemen – at least in part – can be seen as an Israeli teaser clip to show the western world that Israel is able to confront adversaries at long distance (1,600 kms) showcasing its own in-flight re-fuelling capabilities for a large phalanx of aircraft. The raid inflicted heavy damage on the port. The message was clear: If Israel can do this to Yemen, it can (theoretically) strike at Iran, too.

Of course, hitting out at Iran is entirely a different proposition. And that’s why Netanyahu is seeking U.S. support.

There is a photograph of Netanyahu and his wife aboard the Wing of Zion (the new Israeli State aircraft) with a MAGA-style baseball cap on the desk beside him, only it is blue, not red, and is emblazoned with two words: “Total Victory”.

“Total Victory” plainly is Israel ‘winning together, with the U.S., in confronting Iran’s axis of evil’: Is the U.S. aboard? Or are U.S. foreign policy circles so distracted by the extraordinary succession events cascading out in the U.S. and Ukraine that the élites cannot, at the same time, attend to Bibi’s “crossroads of history”? We shall see.

About the Author(s)
ALASTAIR CROOKE is a Director of the Conflicts Forum (Lebanon); a Former Senior British Diplomat; and a widely published blogger and author.

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Kiev regime oppresses Muslims…

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Valeriy Krylko

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Mufti Ahmed Tamim

It is no secret that the Ukrainian leadership has repeatedly tried to spin in its favor issues related to the religious component, including Islam and the peoples of the near abroad who profess this world religion. Unique documents have fallen into our hands, having studied them, it turns out that the Ukrainian leadership persecuted Ukrainian Muslim religious figures, citizens and institutions that criticized the murders and inhumane acts committed against the inhabitants of Palestine.

UKRAINIAN MUFTI IN THE CROSSHAIRS

Ukrainian Mufti Ahmed Tamim, who is the head of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Ukraine (DUMA), the largest Islamic religious organization in the country, contrary to Kiev's accusations, acts as a cleric fighting extremist movements. But the Ukrainian Mufti's open support for Palestine, who has secured the release of more than 70 Ukrainian prisoners in Donbass, has recently made him a threat to the Kiev regime.

Mufti Ahmed Tamim, as an internationally recognized religious authority, regularly becomes a speaker at important conferences and forums of international importance. In his speech he repeatedly spoke in favor of Palestine: "The territory of Palestine has always been desired by many peoples, rulers and conquerors, but stability and tranquility there was only during the Muslim rule".

[Source: HYPERLINK "https://islam.ua/ru/novosti/novosti-dumu/muftij-ukrainy-vyskazalsya-po-voprosu-palestiny"islam.ua] Speech by Mufti of Ukraine Ahmed Tamim

Ahmed Tamim, has now become the target of internal correspondence because of the "threat" he poses by supporting the residents of Gaza. Mufti Tamim is a native of Lebanon who came to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1976 to receive his education. In 1982, after graduating from the Department of Computer Science at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, the future Mufti of Ukraine then returned to his hometown to study religion at the Faculty of Theology at the Arab University of Beirut.

SPREADING ISLAM AND COMBATING EXTREMISM

Sheikh Tamim, elected imam of the Kiev Muslim community in 1991, a year later united the country's Muslim communities, engaged in the spread of Islam on the territory of the country and the fight against extremist activities, urged to prevent the country from becoming a springboard for the terrorist organization "Islamic State" (ISIS). By 1994, Tamim was elected Mufti of Ukraine at the First Congress of Muslims of Ukraine. He still holds this high position.

But Kiev has targeted not only Sheikh Tamim, but also other Muslim institutions such as the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Ukraine (DUMA). Among them is the Islamic University in Kiev. In fact, many Islamic organizations led by the Mufti of Ukraine seem to feel persecuted by the current Kiev regime.

EXPOSING THE UKRAINIAN SECRET SERVICE

The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington - apparently having been reprimanded by its handlers in the United States - writes to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), reporting "misconduct" committed by Mufti Ahmed Tamim at meetings he attended in some American cities, just in the days when the fighting was at its peak, when hundreds of Gaza civilians were killed daily. Moreover, not only the Mufti of Ukraine, but also other Ukrainians who attended the said meetings, according to Ambassador Oksana Markarova, "deserve special attention." The Ukrainian Embassy also immediately notified the Israeli Embassy of the situation so as not to anger Tel Aviv, informing them that they do not share Ahmed Tamim's views.

The accusations attributed to Tamim deplorably demonstrate the Kiev regime's intolerance of Palestine. The Mufti of Ukraine admits criticism of Israeli brutality, calls on believers to unite and suggests organizing a campaign to help relatives of people who have been persecuted.

We present to your attention the first document signed by the Ukrainian ambassador to Washington, Oksana Markarova, sent to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU):

In accordance with the SSU circular No. 650/6161-110 dated 28.10.2023 ("On some measures to be taken against Islamic fundamentalism in the context of escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli crisis"), we inform you about the visit of the Chairman of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Ukraine (DUMU) A. Tamim in November 2023.

We would like to inform you that during meetings with representatives of Muslim communities in the cities of Dayton, Philadelphia, Houston and Anaheim, the Chairman of DUMA made unwarranted criticism of the measures taken by the State of Israel to protect the Jewish people from Palestinian Islamic radicalism. (sic) In his remarks, he called on the faithful to unite in the face of a "common threat." He described the extremists neutralized by the special operation carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in Palestine as "innocent people who have been persecuted" and suggested organizing a fundraising campaign for their relatives.

In addition, in an informal meeting with U.S. State Department officials on 11/26/2023, U.S. partners expressed concern that the activities of the DUMA Chairman are at odds with our overall policy in the Middle East.

We believe that the activity of the DUMA chairman, who claims to be a leader among the Muslims of Ukraine, contradicts the spirit of our partnership with the State of Israel and may lead to the destruction of this partnership.

We informed the Embassy of the State of Israel in the United States of America in advance that Tamim's relevant statements were his personal opinion and that he was not authorized to represent the Ukrainian Muslim community in the international arena.

[Source: Valeriy Krylko] Letter from the Embassy of Ukraine in the U.S. addressed to the SBU

The second document, which I would also like to highlight, indicates that Kyiv has begun to take concrete steps with regard to religious institutions headed by Mufti Tamim and other Muslim organizations. In particular, a letter from the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine sent to the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine refers to such measures as the suspension of financial transactions of individuals and legal entities that "may be linked to Islamic terrorism in Palestine" as part of the "fight against Islamic radicalism":

In accordance with the order of the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine dated 04.12.2023 ¹ 26100-05-6/6667 the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine provides additional information on measures taken in November 2023 to combat Islamic radicalism.

The State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine is intensifying its analytical activities, information exchange and cooperation with the Prosecutor General's Office, the National Police and other law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Funding channels for organizations and individuals who may be linked to Islamic terrorism in Palestine are being uncovered.

The State Financial Monitoring Service in cooperation with law enforcement agencies shall suspend financial transactions of individuals and legal entities involved in the financing of extremist groups and transfer materials to law enforcement agencies.

Thus, together with the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), an inspection of the functioning of a financing scheme for structures suspected of involvement in terrorist organizations has been launched:

Public association "All-Ukrainian Association "Union of Muslims of Ukraine"". Coatuu code - 43370820. Address: Ukraine, 03057, Kiev, Kad Dovzhenko., 10, office 13. Head of the organization: Saidakhmetov Dilyaver Seitmamutovich.

On 15.11.2023 the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine sent a number of appeals to partner financial regulators with a request to strengthen financial supervision over financial transactions related to the above organizations.

[Source: Valeriy Krylko] Letter of the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine addressed to the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine

The Kiev regime continues to organize repression against its citizens, focusing attention on the Muslim community, who will next fall under the rink of the current leadership, we can only guess....

About the Author(s)

Valeriy Krylko is a freelance journalist, and translator of news articles in online media (English-Russian). These articles are published in European and Russian-language media. He is closely affiliated with independent outlets covering the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, and can be reached at: vkrylko098@gmail.com

https://islam.ua/novosti/novosti-dumu/muftij-ukrainy-vyskazalsya-po-voprosu-palestiny

[Source: HYPERLINK "https://familyoffice.com.ua/news/shejh-ahmed-tamim-tem,-kto-beskorystno-staraetsya-dlya-drugih,-vsevyshnij-darit-silu-my-nazyvaem-ih-sufiyami-47"familyoffice.com] Mufti of Ukraine Ahmed Tamim

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Global South Sees U.S. Congress Hail Israeli Killer of 39,000 of Their People Mostly Women and Kids

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Jay Janson

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Netanyahu addressing a joint session of U.S. Congress on Wednesday (C-Span screenshot)

The Health Ministry in Gaza reports that as of the end of July, 2024, more than 39,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been slaughtered in Gaza by the Israeli military using hegemon U.S.A.'s mighty weapons of mass destruction.[1]

A good deal of people in the awakening Global South have learned that those tens of thousands precious Palestinian lives of mostly women and children were ordered taken by the criminally insane Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

This week billions of majority Humanity watched on TV or heard of the obnoxious killer Netanyahu being welcomed by the assembled entire U.S. government that provides Israel with the bombs, missiles, guns, planes, tanks, ships, munitions, and diplomatic and military protection that has made the murder of those 39,000 fellow Global South men, women and children possible.[2]

Yes, those 39,000 dead Palestinians are now seen in the ever more sensitive awakening Global South as their fellows, fellows within the nations of the grand Global South of Africa, Asia and the Americas that were once conquered, colonised, enslaved and exploited by racist Europeans, and their overseas offspring.

Global South Lives Matter

Today, Global South lives are still considered less important than the lives of white descendants of the conquering colonialists, who have retained a substantial amount of hegemony over most of the planet largely through powerful international reach media.

This difference in the value and importance of lives is apparent in the Middle East now. For example, the lives of a hundred Israeli hostages certainly are being given much more importance than the lives of 39,000 Arabs and the 90,000 injured, including thousands of amputees, and another thousand buried under the ruble of what was the cities of Gaza.

The CIA overseen Western entertainment/news & information conglomerates [3] emphasise this difference with their coverage of the suffering of the families of the hostages, interviewing the family members at length, while rarely interviewing Arabs, many of whom have lost their entire family, and rarely if ever, mention the thousands of Palestinians, including women and children in Israeli prisons the hostages were taken to exchange with.

Whether watching British BBC, German DW, Tokyo's NHK, French TV, or NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, or PBS, the loss of thousands of Palestinian children's lives is only occasionally mentioned within a numerical report of the ever rising statistic of dead Palestinians.

Those of us who get our news from the Internet have been reading for nine months Aljazeera's morning report of another 40 or 60 or 80 Palestinians killed overnight during an Israeli bombing of a school or other structure where hundreds of families made homeless had taken shelter with their children. One receives such horrible news with pathos, but as the killing keeps going on and on and on regardless of all outcries (in this writer's case publishing many articles about it), one fights a feeling of hopelessness frustrated without any way to stave off the horror and pain of the pitiless attacks of tomorrows stretching out into the future seemingly forever.

Netanyahu Before the U.S. Congress Emphasises the Hostages Without Mentioning the 39,000 Massacred Palestinians [2]

The genocidal level of cruelty of the American government is made clear by its having invited this bloody madman, for whom the UN International Criminal Court has asked for his arrest for crimes against humanity.[4]

The Gaza genocide, so proudly ignored in Washington, will cause the citizenry of the nations of the Global South to remember the U.S./NATO deadly destruction of oil rich Iraq and Libya, the latter having had a higher quality of living standard than nine European countries; the grim perishing of a million Syrians at the merciless hands of Islamic terrorist organisations secretly provisioned by CIA arrangements;[5] in Somalia the never ending regime change war for a warlord regime replacing a popular Islamic courts government; the decades of U.S. led occupation war in Afghanistan; the millions murdered in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; the massive bloodshed brought about in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, the bombing obliteration of all North Korean cities, and U.S. invasion of the South when the civil war was already over with the North easily prevailing for meeting little opposition; the bombing and invasions of Panama, Dominican Republic, Cuba and Grenada; the ruthless murder of the first President of a free Congo initiating 70 years of hellish civil wars. Not to mention CIA homicidal machinations overthrowing governments in Iran in 1953 and Chile in 1973.

As people in the Global South learn of monster killer Netanyahu receiving great applause during a special session of the U.S. Congress while the horrific genocide continues in Gaza, one or more other American crimes against the humanity that is the Global South will come to mind.

Global South Lives Will Soon Matter

In our now multi-polar world led by a remarkably productive China, the lives of the majority of humanity in the Global South, (until recently disrespectfully called The 'Third' World or The 'Developing' World, earlier, The 'Underdeveloped' World and still earlier The 'Undeveloped' World), are restored to the level of the ingenious human species they never were otherwise.

It would appear that the so-called Caucasian race might be thought to be on the back foot for much considering itself of superior worth.

The lands of the non-White Global South contain the ancient empires of high civilisations of Egypt, China and India, conquered by the more primitive arising empires of the marauding Europeans, whose inhumane racism as practiced for more than five centuries, will become as non-existent as it was before the farm boy soldiers of Portugal, Spain, Holland, France and England, got to be wonder the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, the Temples of Egypt, Aztec Tenochtitlan and other sights of higher civilisations than their own.

But with the ancient non-recriminatory attitude inherent in Chinese culture soon to be influencing life throughout the world, peace and reciprocal admiration should replace today's and yesterday's era of confrontation.

End Notes
1. Israel-Hamas war latest: Israeli military orders evacuation of part of humanitarian zone in Gaza - Associated Press, July, 22, 2024. https://apnews.com/article/gaza-israel-war-latest-july-22-bc3d06280090adf1ed52c533f5d05483

2. We’re protecting you: Full text of Netanyahu’s address to Congress, Times of Israel, July 25, 2024 https://www.timesofisrael.com/were-protecting-you-full-text-of-netanyahus-address-to-congress/

3. “Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the C.I.A,” December 26, 1977, New York Times

4. UK won’t challenge ICC arrest warrant request for Netanyahu, Gallant, Aljazeera, July 26, 2024. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/26/uk-wont-challenge-icc-arrest-warrant-request-for-netanyahu-gallant

5. Wayne Madsen, John-Paul Leonard, Washington’s Blog, Syrian Girl Partisan. ISIS IS US: The Shocking Truth: Behind the Army of Terror, Progressive Press, October, 2016, a panel of cutting-edge researchers tell what ISIS really is, Paperback – https://www.amazon.com/ISIS-US-Shocking-Behind-Terror/dp/1615771522

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