Facts to be investigated by the IDF. They already know who the sniper is!! The US on Monday also appeared to reject calls for an independent investigation into the fatal shooting of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi. State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel declined to acknowledge that Eygi was killed by an Israeli soldier, but he called for the process to “play out and for the facts to be gathered”.
The imperial spin machine operates by reversing victim and victimizer, aggressor and defender — claiming to act in self-defense while existing in a continuous state of attack, writes Caitlin Johnstone.
US economic and military interests across West Asia could come under direct fire as Israel’s aggressions drag Washington into a region-wide escalation.
Over nine months since October 7, Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza continues — and the US is still aiding and abetting it. Jacobin spoke with two pro-Palestine activists about the movement for Palestine in the US and its prospects for changing American policy.
At least 210 Palestinians were killed and 400 others were injured in the central Gaza Strip on Sunday after Israeli forces carried out a “rescue operation” to retrieve four captives. Reports of U.S. involvement in the operation have sparked backlash.
Al Jazeera quoted Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan with Doctors Without Borders as saying the emergency department at Al-Aqsa Hospital “is a complete bloodbath … It looks like a slaughterhouse.”
“The images and videos that I’ve received show patients lying everywhere in pools of blood … their limbs have been blown off,” she told Al Jazeera, adding “That is what a massacre looks like.”
It is reported that there are 120 captives still held in the Gaza Strip, including 43 who have been killed since October, many reportedly by Israel’s own forces.
Reported U.S. involvement in the attacks on central Gaza on Saturday, and the alleged use of the pier in the operation, has sparked intense criticism and outrage online.
“The White House must leave no stone unturned in its effort to stop the Israeli government’s offensive on Rafah—the hundreds of thousands displaced there do not have more time,” said the head of Win Without War.
Suddenly, western politicians from US President Joe Biden to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have become ardent champions of “restraint” – in a very last-minute scramble to avoid regional conflagration.
“‘Security Council resolutions are binding,’ Lin Jian, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said on Tuesday.”
Beijing is correct on the law, and the Biden administration is being disingenuous. If President Biden did not want a ceasefire resolution to pass, he should have vetoed it. By abstaining and letting the world community vote on the matter, Biden has elicited a binding decision, and his officials should stop dancing around it.
AIPAC and Christian Evangelists will use even more Money Power
Also on Monday, Palestine defenders rallied in Washington, D.C. to protest a visit to the State Department by Gallant and to demand an end to U.S. aid and weapons to Israel. Another high-level Israeli delegation’s visit to Washington was canceled Monday after the U.S. abstained from a U.N. Security Council vote on a resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.
Palestinian Authority riot police take control after clearing out protesters near Al Menarah square, in Ramallah, occupied West Bank, on Oct. 18, 2023.
Before They Vowed to Annihilate Hamas, Israeli Officials Considered It an Asset
The Israelis “always try their best to provoke us to react violently so they can justify their crimes.”“They are trying all the time to prove that we are a failure and cannot keep law and order and cannot keep the security of the place we’re supposed to be responsible for, to justify their daily incursions and killings of our people.”
“If no protection is provided to you from a third party, from your own government, or from the occupying power,” said Jabareen, of Al Haq, “you will try to look for your own ways to protect yourself.”
While Israel has the right to strike back at the Hamas organization in the wake of the latter’s hideous October 7 attack on Israel, it doesn’t have the right to do so in a way that recklessly endangers civilian lives. Beyond that issue, Israel is recognized by the United Nations at the occupying power of Gaza, and therefore has responsibilities under the 4th Geneva Convention of 1949 to preserve the lives and well-being of the occupied population. Finally, according to the Rome Statute that underpins the International Criminal Court, targeting a group such as “the Palestinians of Gaza” for death is a form of genocide, regardless of the number killed.
U.S. efforts to secure strategic mineral supply chains may squeeze China out of the Australian market with the Antipodean nation being used as a raw materials supplier like the days of the British empire, writes Tony Kevin.
Israel America’s ally turned it’s back on aiding Ukraine
Virtually no country in Africa, Asia or the Middle East has rallied to Biden’s cause of defending Ukraine. The lack of enthusiasm has many roots, but one of them is a strong sense that the U.S. is not principled on this issue and is merely pursuing a narrow national interest. They do not see Washington as actually upholding a rules-based international order. And they are correct in this assessment.
Back to the wall in the Middle East America renegotiates Yemen
After years of backing a disastrous, Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen, the United States is shifting its approach to the war, supporting a UN-brokered truce that has resulted in the most significant reduction of violence since the war began.
Truss is, as the 2021 essay forecast, entirely immersed in the world and personnel of the billionaires’ ultra free market lobby groups masquerading as thinktanks. Her Chancellor is an ideologue and true believer in the message. The “thinktanks” face the moment of testing: who was the liberty for that they championed? Only the Ultra High Net Worth class and their High Net Worth enablers? Both the UK and the US stand on the brink of something unthinkable a decade ago. Australians must fight to ensure that our radicalised right (and the “thinktanks” that foster the internationally-networked radicalisation) don’t take us back down that path. We have a chance to rebalance the playing field. Will our right resume playing the game as a contest, or continue to try to trash the field?
And there’s little sign from Beijing of an approach that better tries to woo the hearts and minds of Taiwan’s 23 million people, if China is still intent on peacefully seizing control of them.
Ignoring the will of the voters and continually writing off the governments they choose as “Taiwan separatist forces” who “are doomed to fail” isn’t cutting through.
Even the head of the opposition KMT party — which Beijing still pins its hopes on as the more friendly side of Taiwan’s political spectrum — voiced support for Nancy Pelosi’s visit and chided Beijing’s militaristic response, overruling some within his party who opposed the US House Speaker’s visit.
Murdoch Practice. In the UK criminal phone taps anything to get ahead of the competion. In US largely PR staging Interviews & promoting Republican interests while trashing the Dems. In Australia, simply being the largest private player in the nation’s quid pro quo cash for comment business.
On Friday, CNN reported that Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo supplied former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows with questions in advance of interviewing former President Donald Trump.
Australia’s LNP is increasingly adopting the same policies as the Republican’s in the USA. Along with banning of teaching subjects, sacking teachers, removing books, privatising media and ridding us of the ABC all have been central policies for over 8 years. Now they want our defamation laws changed, made easier and even suggest that taxpayers fund actions taken to sue by their MPs. Parliamentarians who already have privilege. But want it stretched beyond parliament in order to shut down criticism. It has become a priority for the Morrison Government whose standing and opinion in the eyes of the public in the polls has become lead.
Experts say trend is accelerating as groups push for bans of works that often address race, LGBTQ issues and marginalized people Adam Gabbatt @adamgabbatt Mon 24 Jan 2022 21.00 AEDT Last modified on Mon 24 Jan 2022 21.01 AEDT Conservative groups across the US, often linked to deep-pocketed rightwing donors, are carrying out a campaign to ban books from school libraries, often focused on works that address race, LGBTQ issues or marginalized communities.
But the stalemate shows how differently the Putin and Biden administrations interpret the security situation on Europe’s periphery. For the US, Russia’s determination to act as a spoiler stems from a petulant unhappiness with the post-Soviet geopolitical status quo. Get news curated by experts, not algorithms. For Russia, the US is the chief instigator of instability in Europe, pushing Western-dominated political and security institutions, like NATO and the European Union, ever closer to its borders. These contrasting viewpoints give both protagonists entirely different objectives for the outcome of the talks – one wants to build walls, the other seeks to break them down.
So much for AUKUS, CHUKUS seems a more apt term for this immediate agreement where China the UK, and the US are in step, Why? It’s patently clear. But not so for the A in AUKUS. However, given China hasn’t invaded anyone recently and the LNP has why are they acting as if China has? How embarrassing for Morrison whose been left out of the loop not advised of 30 secret meetings his besty has had. He will feel the sting of his do-nothing climate policy in the near future well before he gets any submarines. Because America China, and the UK will invest in climate cooperation which translates into much wider cooperation and they will leave the climate laggard, Morrison’s Australia, out in the wilderness.
The US-China competition is much more like European rivalries in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, as between France and Britain or Britain and Germany, where capitalist countries competed for entry into foreign markets on the most favorable terms and for diplomatic and military spheres of influence. Despite President Xi’s sabre rattling, China isn’t at the point where it has taken over other countries (as the US did most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan).
Beijing and Moscow hold a second series of exercises in October Japan said a group of 10 vessels from the two nations sailed through the Tsugaru Strait The patrols are maintaining “peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region”, according to the Russian defence ministry
The close relationship between actors in Australian and US intelligence of course goes back prior to the Prime Ministership of Whitlam, as evidenced by Australia’s secret role in the overthrowal of the Allende Government in Chile and the Sukarno Government in Indonesia.
As the war hawks today swirl at the spectre of a Chinese paper tiger, it seems we are locked into a more offensive UK-US alliance structure and a government determined to undermine our rights and welfare at every turn. What a betrayal those days of Hawke now seem to those who long for a country that supports social justice and an independent foreign policy. Surely this is the task of a new Labor Government.
“Almost comical”. Experts lambast Scott Morrison’s “crazy” AUKUS deal to buy nuclear submarine tech from parlous UK and US programs. Marcus Reubenstein finds a real prospect Australia will be used to “underwrite” the foundering foreign submarine industry.
Rather than rely solely on the US, Australia should bolster its own defence capabilities. At the same time, it should collaborate more with regional partners across Southeast Asia and beyond, particularly Indonesia, Japan, India and South Korea, to deter further belligerence and mitigate the risk of tensions escalating into open war.
A British judge has rejected a Trump administration bid to extradite Julian Assange to face charges relating to WikiLeaks’ publication of classified diplomatic cables a decade ago, saying that he would be a suicide risk.
Scott Morrison says Australia’s position has been wrongly interpreted as siding with the US over China. Yet two of the main funders of the Federal Government-owned think-tank ASPI, a constant critic of China, are the US State Department, whose secretary Mike Pompeo has led the charge of global anti-China sentiment, and foreign weapons makers. Marcus Reubenstein investigates.
The best we can hope for when picking up our daily paper is that an attempt has been made to present opinions with at least a passing nod to objectivity. That should not be too much to ask but increasingly opinion is clearly just that: opinion. What happens when propaganda replaces journalism?
The Republican-led legislature passed a new law presenting another hurdle — felons had to pay off all their fines to vote — but last week, billionaire Michael Bloomberg donated US$16 million to a fund designed to help them do that.
SINCE DONALD TRUMP became President, the relationship between the U.S. and China has deteriorated to the point that some observers talk of war. Why is this? In simple terms, America feels threatened by China’s rapidly expanding wealth and influence. Dangerous confrontation has resulted and Australia has been sucked in. How far remains to be seen, but it is not in Australia’s interest to be used by Trump or Murdoch.
According to commander of US Naval Forces in Europe, Africa, and NATO’s Allied Joint Force Command Admiral James Foggo:
“NATO can no longer ignore China’s activities in Europe.” Citing no credible evidence, he falsely claimed Beijing aims to undermine the international rules-based order.
Claiming as well that it maintained peace throughout the post-WW II era ignored endless US preemptive wars against invented enemies.
Is US conflict with China inevitable — given the country’s growing prominence on the world stage while the US declines?
China pursues cooperative relations with other countries. So do Russia, Iran, and other nations the US is hostile toward.
Washington’s drive for unchallenged dominance risks unthinkable nuclear war if it pushes things too far against nations able to hit back hard in self-defense if attacked.
By focusing on the historical crimes of Western imperialism, we are in danger of forgetting that some terrible wrongs were done more recently in US-led ‘regime-change’ operations for which no one has yet apologized.
It’s not as if our standards are wonderful. But by comparison to the revolting practices in the US, our food rules, laid down by the European Union, are a haven of sanity. As well as washing chicken flesh with chlorine to compensate for the filthy conditions in which it is raised and processed, and injecting dangerous substances into cattle and pigs, Big Farmer and Big Food in the US use 72 pesticides that are banned in the UK and food colourings that have been linked to hyperactivity in children, impose no limits on the amount of sugar in baby food and permit cow’s milk to contain twice the amount of pus that the UK allows.
The problem no addressed here is the involvement and irresponsible incitement by Murdoch Media to incite back to work demonstrations in the English speaking world. The demand to go back to the normal rather than progress to a very different economy. The talk of 28 years of GDP growth doesn’t begin to address the increasing income and wealth gap that helped generate it and the public austerity measures that accompanied it leaving us ill-equipped to deal with emergencies we face. Yes, Australia has fared better but I’d suggest it’s more a sake of good fortune than intent. We have always been some years behind first following the British and now the Americans last in line but nevertheless over that cliff. We aren’t our own masters we do have a level of solidarity but when the Oligarchs, LNP IPA and News Corp hold the wealth and power and are now assisted by the ALP what chance is there of a progressive peoples bailout and not just a corporate one in the future? (ODT)
Morrison government setting itself for an aggressive pro-business plan for our post-pandemic economy. Specifically, that means tax breaks for businesses and even a big swing at industrial relations. It’s the road that leads to lower wages, worse conditions and limited tax revenue. And while some of that might end up being an economic necessity, if that’s not done perfectly, it’s a road of austerity and increasing inequality that has proven so destructive elsewhere.
Obviously, all that will depend on the detail. But we should take this chance to heed the warning from those nations that are presently unravelling. Sacrifice a basic level of equality for economic growth and you risk social and political fracture. There will be much we can’t afford after this, but one of them is losing the threads of social solidarity we still have left, because we’ll need them desperately when the next crisis hits.
The 1% impose the intrinsic instability of their system on the entire population, and then get the government to respond with deficits that even further benefit and reward the greed of the very same 1% oligarchs and corporations.
Ironically, we’ve borrowed so much as a nation from the rich, large corporations and some foreign countries that even they now are unsure they want to continue to lending to us because of today’s astronomical debt. To maintain their loan profits, they want us to eliminate/severely reduce programs for poor and sick people with austerity/cuts in all social and public health programs, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, etc.
The absurdity and danger to our community of such an economic policy is exceeded only by its gross injustice.
The N.R.A. has supported ‘stand your ground’ deadly force laws which encourage racial violence, and opposed all gun restrictions; it has promoted a reinterpretation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – on the people right to keep and bear arms – to provide for a nearly unlimited individual right to bear arms.
The United States is a nation where white men have lived and died by the gun. The gun facilitated the genocide of the Native people and the enslavement of American people, and allowed white people to steal land and seize control. Take away the gun, and society begins to chip away at the myth of ‘white supremacy’.
Consider just one. At the end of the class on World War II, I always asked: “What is the moral difference between flying three planes into the Twin Towers and Pentagon—killing 3,000 civilians—and using hundreds of U.S. planes to firebomb Tokyo on March 9, 1945—killing some 90,000 civilians?” Suffice it to say that most cadets didn’t like this question at all.
In sum, as we compare the two military organizations, one must conclude, ultimately, that CENTCOM is at least as terrorist as the IRGC. Maybe more.
No doubt many critics will label this assessment “treasonous.” I call it “ethically consistent.”
News Corp Australia follows are we now no longer going to shirtfront Putin?(ODT)
On Sept. 26, 2018, President Donald Trump made an extraordinary accusation against China during his remarks to the United Nations Security Council, saying, “Regrettably, we found that China has been attempting to interfere in our upcoming 2018 election coming up in November against my administration.” He made the claim without offering any evidence, but he did speculate about China’s motivation: “They do not want me, or us, to win because I am the first president ever to challenge China on trade.”
So don’t tell the global South how corrupt they are for taking a few petty bribes. Americans are not seen as corrupt because we only deal in the big denominations. Steal $2 trillion and you aren’t corrupt, you’re respectable.
(ANTIWAR.COM) –Â Iraq claimed credit for videos earlier this week showing the use of white phosphorus munitions in densely populated parts of the Old City in Mosul, but their use is becoming even more widespread, with new reports suggesting that the US is also using such shells in both Iraq and Syria. Though white phosphorus shells are not uncommon in the military, and often used as smokescreens, the high temperature at which it burns, and the toxic chemicals emitted makes them wholly unsuitable for populated areas, and their use in any densely populated area or as an incendiary are widely considered
Trumpism and the drag on a nation(ODT
(ANTIWAR.COM) –Â Iraq claimed credit for videos earlier this week showing the use of white phosphorus munitions in densely populated parts of the Old City in Mosul, but their use is becoming even more widespread, with new reports suggesting that the US is also using such shells in both Iraq and Syria. Though white phosphorus shells are not uncommon in the military, and often used as smokescreens, the high temperature at which it burns, and the toxic chemicals emitted makes them wholly unsuitable for populated areas, and their use in any densely populated area or as an incendiary are widely considered
olddogthoughts 
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