The term “free world” was a mainstay of the cold war lexicon for decades. Although the United States and its NATO allies still portray themselves as paragons of free thought and action and declare anyone they don’t like as laggards in regard to human rights. They make quite a show of bragging about being democracies but their actions prove otherwise.
The U.S. and Israel continue their killing spree in Gaza which now totals 11,000 fatalities of men, women, and children. While the President of the United States claimed to have seen confirmation that Hamas beheaded children, Palestinians in their sorrow display the broken bodies of their children, some of them headless or limbless as Israel bombs homes, hospitals, and ambulances. The U.S. and the European Union are steadfast in their support of the bloodletting.
Of course most of the world has unambiguously condemned the ongoing crime. Millions of people have protested on every continent to express their outrage and revulsion as the sick plot to kill Palestinians en masse and force the survivors to leave their homes intensifies by the day.
Eight nations, including South Africa, Bolivia, and Colombia have cut diplomatic ties with Israel. In Washington DC, headquarters of the aiders and abettors of the genocide, an estimated 300,000 people took to the streets in just one protest. Similar numbers were seen in London and other European capitals.
But these displays of empathy and solidarity pose a problem for the nations known as the collective west. The U.S. and its friends in NATO are committed to imposing their will on the rest of the world and they don’t want to hear from pesky citizens who point out their wrongdoing.
France and Germany both banned pro-Palestinian demonstrations and yet thousands marched anyway. The United Kingdom actually charged two young women with a terrorism offense for wearing images of a Hamas hang glider on their jackets as they marched in London. In the U.S., doxing, job termination, and even the censure of a member of Congress, Representative Rashida Tlaib, are all used to silence anyone who strays from official narratives.
Lest anyone think this assessment is overly harsh, consider that Joe Biden is proposing that any additional military aid to Israel be discussed in secret without any congressional oversight. Biden has little reason to fear rejection when even many “progressives” join in giving billions of dollars to the military industrial complex. Clearly something else is afoot that the people don’t want. Perhaps they want to put more U.S. boots on the ground in Israel and attack another nation. No one knows for sure but something very serious is in the offing. The desire to keep what ought to be public under very tight wraps ought to give everyone pause.
It must be pointed out that the repression of protests on Palestine is not occurring in a vacuum. The “democratic” nations are nothing of the sort. They are under the rule of capital which means that the popular will must be subverted. NATO nations are obligated to spend at least 2% of GDP on military spending, which means that people’s needs are not met in the way that they want. The European Union also demands austerity as a condition of membership.
The U.S. oligarchy is quite clear that even minor efforts to do what people want will be rejected. There is no Build Back Better, no minimum wage increase, no student loan debt relief. All of these options are off the table. Of course it has been proven that the U.S. electoral system provides smoke and mirrors but little else. Americans are harangued into voting but the results rarely result in the changes they seek.
The same is true in the rest of the collective west. The last thing they want is an energized citizenry making political demands they have no intention of fulfilling.
Palestine is the flashpoint now, but it is not the only crisis facing the fake democracies. Joe Biden’s re-election prospects are diminished as long as he is Israel’s genocide co-conspirator. He may churn out blather about Bidenomics but he has failed to live up to the phony “most progressive since FDR” trope and he can’t live down his role in perpetrating a slaughter that most Americans want to end. The fact that it hasn’t ended is further proof that political leadership are committed to ignoring whatever the people want.
The repression will only intensify as conditions worsen. Protesters in Atlanta who oppose the Cop City militarized policing project have been shot and killed by police, and charged as RICO conspirators. That heavy hand is a harbinger of what is potentially in store for everyone who dares to speak up. The repression isn’t fake, but any claims of true democracy are.
My title is redundant for a reason, since the root of the word radical is the Latin word, radix, meaning root. For I mean to show how the use and misuse of language, its history or etymology, and ours as etymological animals as the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gassett called us, is crucial for understanding our world, a world once again teetering on the edge of a world war that will almost inexorably turn nuclear as events are proceeding. If our language is corrupted, as it surely is, and political propaganda flourishes as a result, the correct use of our language and the meaning of words becomes an obligation of anyone who uses them – that is, everyone, especially writers.
The United States government exists to wage war. In its present form, it would crumble without it; and in its present form, it will crumble with it. Only a radical structural change will prevent this. For war-making is at the core of its budget, its raison d’être – 816.7 billion for the Fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act alone – a deficit-financed sum that tells only part of the story. This amount that finances the military-industrial complex and its blood money is for a country that has never been invaded, is bordered by friendly neighbors, and is oceans away from the multitude of countries its leaders attack and call our enemies. The U.S. wages wars around the world because killing is its lifeblood, its structural essence.
In writing of the misuse of language, George Orwell wrote, “It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” So with these words Orwell slyly places us within the enigma of the chicken and the egg, a conundrum or paradox that relates to my theme in a weird way, but which I will directly ignore.
By radical I do not mean the widespread political usage as in radical-right or radical-left or radical meaning one who plays the role through dress or demeanor. I am using the word in its primary meaning – a radical is one who is rooted in the earth, which means everyone. Everyone therefore is mortal, human not a god, and comes from the earth and returns to it. Everyone is radical in this sense, although they may try to deny it. And the more one feels alive the more one senses one will die and doesn’t like the thought, therefore many tamp down their aliveness in order to reduce their fear of death. The best way to do this is to disappear into the crowd, to become a conventional person. To act as if one didn’t know that one’s political leaders were in love with death and killing and were not obedient cogs in a vast systemic killing machine. Maybe the unconscious assumption is that these “leaders” can kill death for you by killing vast numbers of people and make you feel someone has control of this thing called death.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who stood strongly against the Vietnam War and marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., put the basic sense of radical well when he said:
Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. . . . get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.
To be radically amazed that we exist is to be equally amazed that we will die. And there’s the rub.
Yesterday I got in our car and drove away to meet a journalist friend. It was evening and my wife had previously used the car. I had just spent time following all the dreadful news about the massive slaughter by Israel of Palestinians in Gaza, including the death of more than 3,000 children whose numbers are climbing fast. Visions of those children and babies played havoc with my spirits, and I kept thinking of my own children and the love and tenderness that comes with being a parent. A musical cd that my wife had been listening to started playing. The case was on the console. It was Sacred Arias by Andrea Bocelli. He of the majestic voice was singing Silent Night. I was overwhelmed with tears by his passionate words:
Silent night! Holy night! All is calm, all is bright round yon Virgin Mother and Child, Holy infant so tender and mild, sleep in Heavenly peace! sleep in Heavenly peace!
I saw nights in Gaza as Israeli bombs burst and shattered everyone and everything to bits, all the holy infants, the children and adults.
I felt beside myself with grief, a U.S. citizen driving down a safe country road contemplating the savagery of my nation and its support for the Israeli government’s brutality and mass killings of Palestinians for all the world to see on screens everywhere.
I felt ashamed to live in a land where justice is a game reserved for rhetoric alone as it joins in the massacre of the innocent, as it always has, now together with the apartheid Israeli regime.
I thought of all the compromised politicians who pledge their allegiance to the killers, Biden and all his presidential predecessors, now including the aspirant Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a man with a conscience on many important issues whom I have supported in his quest for the presidency, but a man whose conscience has abandoned him when it comes to the Palestinians, as Scott Ritter has recently documented. I have privately urged Kennedy to reconsider his “unwavering, resolute, and practical” support for the Israeli government following the Gaza breakout of October 7, but to no avail. In fact, I have been trying to get him to withdraw his unconditional support for Israel since the summer when he withdrew his support for Roger Waters, marched with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach in the Israel parade in NYC, and allowed Boteach to say that Sirhan Sirhan had killed his father without correcting him since he knew it was an egregious lie. My failure in this regard deeply saddens me.
I felt betrayed again – perhaps you will call me naïve – as when I was young and last put my trust in voting for a US presidential candidate in 1972. I thought I had learned to radically grasp the systematically corrupt nature of the U.S. warfare state. Now more than three weeks have passed and Bobby Kennedy has remained silent, only to ask for our prayers for the victims of the mass shooting in Maine. For the Palestinians, not a word. Although he considers the Israeli-Palestinian situation complicated, there is nothing complicated about genocide; it doesn’t necessitate long analyses and discussions with advisers. The facts of the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza are evident for all to see, if they wish. Bobby Kennedy has turned away. And I have now sadly turned away from him.
I remembered the Gospel words I heard long ago about the fulfillment of the words of the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loudly lamenting: it was Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because they were no more.” But this time it is not the Jewish Rachel, for Herod has assumed the name Netanyahu and his U.S. allies, and the weeping ones are Palestinian mothers and fathers. Nothing can justify such slaughter, not the terrible killings of innocent Israelis on October 7 that I denounce; not the fear that the birth of messengers of peace might strike into Herod/Netanyahu’s heart – nothing! Seventy-five years of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians continues apace. The Jewish child Jesus, the radical preacher of love and peace for all people, didn’t die on a private cross, nor do the Palestinians. So it goes.
I thought of the indescribable sweet wonder of holding your baby in your arms while realizing how many Palestinian parents have been holding their dead children in theirs. Rage welled up in me at the obscenity of those who support this and those who shut their eyes to it and those who remain silent.
I realized that as a Christian I am baptized into the human family, not some special in-group, which is the opposite of Jesus’s message. Every child is holy and innocent and to massacre them is evil. And to remain silent as it happens is to be complicit in evil.
I remembered how these many ongoing weeks of terror started and thought of a poem that is succinctly apposite: Harlem by Langston Hughes:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore- and then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over- like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
And I thought that he could have omitted that final question mark because we have our answer, then and now.
Then the music stopped and I arrived at my destination to meet my friend.
Yes, to be radical is to be rooted in the earth and to realize all people are part of the human family, each of us made of flesh and blood and therefore sisters and brothers deserving of justice, peace, and dignity. But this is just a first step in the grasping of the full dimension of the radical vision. It can end in fluff if a second step is not taken: to use our freedom to uproot ourselves from the conventional government and mass media propaganda and mind control that clouds our understanding of how the world works. This takes study and work and an understanding of the historical and systemic roots of all the alleged “unprovoked” violence that ravages our world.
Thus the existential and socio-historical merge in the radical vision that allows us to grasp the structures of evil and our personal responsibility.
Today that obligation is clear: To oppose the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians.
“The nightmare in Gaza is more than a humanitarian crisis. It is a crisis of humanity,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres told reporters in New York, adding that the need for a ceasefire is becoming “more urgent with every passing hour.”
Hundreds of thousands of people are demonstrating across the planet in opposition to the outrage of being forced to witness the barbaric state terror and collective punishment of the occupied and oppressed people of Palestine by the illegitimate settler-colonial state of Israel.
The flood of images of dead Palestinian children and even the audio of Palestinian women screaming in between the sounds of bombs being dropped on buildings in the pitched black darkness of Gaza that house the 2.2 million displaced Palestinians sparked a moral outrage that politically is being expressed by the call for a ceasefire. It’s believed that a ceasefire would at least stop the carnage. And it probably would, but that is the problem. While a ceasefire would temporarily stop the mindless slaughter of innocent Palestinians, the ongoing agony of Palestinians forced to live under the inhumane conditions of occupation in the Gaza concentration camp and the rest of occupied Palestine would continue until the next escalation of resistance or attacks by the settlers.
Why?
Like all European settler projects since 1492 when Europeans spilled out of what became Europe first into the “Americas” where they grew fat and powerful off of the stolen land and most vicious form of slavery humanity has ever known and then through the industrial fueled global colonial/capitalist expansion, the Jewish European settlers have one objective – the expansion of Israeli colonial power and control over all of the lands currently occupied by the Indigenous Palestinians. Unlike other settler projects where the indigenous peoples were subjected to genocide, the Israeli bourgeoisie has the problem that they have not been able to murder and/or displace all of the Palestinian peoples.
The incessant expansion of Israeli settlements, the apartheid wall, checkpoints meant to make live miserable for Palestinians, the neighborhood raids, impunity for the violence of the settlers, thief of houses, massive incarceration, assassinations of Palestinians leaders, peaceful demonstrations met with live fire, the inhumane siege of Gaza and periodic attacks (mowing the lawn as the Israeli govt calls it) in Gaza – all expose the extreme violence of the Israeli settler project that will persist until the colonial relationship is altered.
This means quite clearly that without ending the Israeli settler project with its apartheid laws, racialization of Palestinians and normalized violence, it will be ceasefire today and war tomorrow, because opposition by Palestinians will continue until they are all murdered and/or expelled, and even then, opposition will continue from the displaced Palestinians joining the other displaced Palestinians from the last 75 years of Palestinian dispersal.
The only solution is authentic decolonization. But that solution must be imposed on the Israeli colonists in a similar fashion as the wars for national liberation that took place in Algeria, Vietnam, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Israelis understand that the success of European settler projects only occurred where the settlers were able to murder most of the indigenous population and then subject the survivors to permanent internal colonization such as the current situations in the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Elements of the Israeli ruling class represented by the fascist coalition of forces currently in power under Netanyahu, are quite clear that they are prepared to impose a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem.
Genocide has been the handmaiden of the European Settler Projects
No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel…We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.” (Yoav Gallant, Israeli Defense Minister)
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), or the Genocide Convention, defines genocide as the intentional destruction of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole, or in part. A genocide is accepted to be represented by any of five acts:
Killing members of the group 2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part 4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group 5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
It should not be necessary to systematically chronicle Israeli policies from the murder of Palestinian resisters to the gruesome stories of Palestinian women dying in the process of giving birth at Israeli checkpoints, to the current murder of thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza and the West Bank, to conclude that the colonial policies of Israel fit the classic definition of genocide.
The horrific violence deployed by the colonial powers to establish the parasitic colonial relationship pales in comparison to the violence needed to impose a settler colonial project where the intent to permanently settle the conquered land with the population from the “mother-country” or other territories that requires eliminating or severely reducing the physical presence of the indigenous peoples.
This understanding of the genocidal nature of settler-colonialism should be more developed in the U.S. as a result of it being the most developed settler state with its history of violent conquest, slavery, and internal colonization. However, the framing of the U.S. as a settler state with a practice of systematic genocide that continues up to this day has only started to penetrate the theoretical frameworks of left and radical discourse in a meaningful way over the last two decades.
Yet for those of us struggling against this colonial criminal state, its nature is clear, and as a consequence, the historic task – turning imperialist/colonial wars into wars against colonialism it all its various forms.
Therefore, as necessary as it is to demand that the Israeli stop the slaughter, a ceasefire is not enough. The genocidal Israeli project must be completely dismantled and the officials directly responsible for its implementation along with their enablers in the successive U.S. regimes must be brought to justice.
There must not be any hesitation in calling for justice in this form. Gaza has revealed the true nature of European colonialism to a public that had not given much thought to the subject. Establishing the connection between colonialism and capitalist exploitation must be the next step to take advantage of this incipient new consciousness among the public in the West. Today it is going to be a little easier to do that as a consequence of Gaza. The gap between the “collective West” and the global humanity beyond the 10% that represents the U.S. and Europe, a population that the collective West refers to as the “world,” is hardening. But the gap between the elite policymakers and the people in the West and Europe is also expanding and hardening – that is a positive development.
The demands that must serve as the foundation of for a realistic resolution of the colonial relationship in Israel/Palestine must also be demands that serve as basis for the global movement to finally identify and defeat what the Black Alliance for Peace calls the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination.
“False Flag operations by governments are the easiest and quickest way to persuade the population to sacrifice their own in order to achieve goals of the elite.”
~ James Thomas Kesterson Jr.
First, let me make it perfectly clear that Zionism is not Judaism, although the blending of the two obviously takes place at times, due to a complete misunderstanding, and false reverence for bogus nation-state ‘patriotism.’ Zionism is certainly an evil political nationalist ideology, but at its core, it is pure colonialism. To have to preface this conversation with such a statement is to expose the ignorance of those who have been brainwashed and indoctrinated to such an extent, as to be willing to accept historically counterfeit propaganda, without any critical scrutiny or logic applied. This is the imminent result of becoming a cog in the machine of life amid an ‘organized’ non-thinking, like-acting collective mob, lost in a fog of oblivion.
We are living in the clear presence of genocidal terror at the hands of Zionist Israel. Please do not feign disgust, or pretend to be aghast at this pronouncement, as when something is this apparent, it is excruciatingly embarrassing to witness blind apathy in the midst of mass murder. The plot by the Zionists to take over Palestine and other parts of that region, to expel and exterminate the masses of Palestinians, and to claim the entirety of the region for a new Israeli State, has been ongoing since long before the 1933 agreements, and has been brutally pursued since that time until today. It has been a violent expulsion, a destruction of most all Palestinian homes, villages, and cities, and slaughter of men, women, and children, for the past 75 years. Currently, all efforts by the Zionists are meant to finalize the genocide that began so long ago.
This long-planned ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians by the Zionists, is now close to fruition, and with the help, support, and funding of the United States and its military, and the ‘blessing’ of so many confused fools, the complicity of the U.S. means that not only are the Zionists committing genocide, but by proxy and with the use of ruthless force and funding, so is the U.S. government and its ruling class.
What this not only indicates, but fully exposes, is that expulsion of an entire race, genocide by ethnic cleansing, a heinous crime against humanity, and the essence of holocausts, is apparently accepted only if committed by Zionists. The hypocrisy here is astounding, and any who cannot see it, are completely blinded by asinine and ideological indifference so insane as to be pathological.
These efforts of brutality, displacement, and murder, are always dependent on acceptance and support by the populations involved in the slaughter, and most always, the people allowing State crimes of war and genocide, also become the victims of the same monsters they endorse who rule over them. None of you are exempt from harm or death during these times of aggression, as you, all of you, are expendable, and nothing more than fodder for the sake of the State. Those who happen to be in the way, and whose deaths can enhance the State’s power, are simply considered collateral damage by the governments involved in conflict. This is even spelled out in many cases, and openly admitted. One case in point, and very appropriate considering what is going on today in Israel, is Israel’s Hannibal Directive, which spells out that killing Israeli hostages in order to ‘protect’ the State is warranted, and accepted political and military policy. Remember, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country — die is the answer expected!
To understand governments and nation-states, the motives for gaining power and control, and the ill-considered necessity for war by the State, one must understand that the common people are held in little regard when political agendas are sought, and their sacrifice is simply considered a necessary (and uncaring) consequence of State actions. This is no different in this Zionist Israeli slaughter of defenseless Palestinians, as the common Israelis, have been used to set up the ethnic cleansing in Palestine. One of the most advanced militaries on earth, one that has many of the highest capabilities, modern weaponry, a huge nuclear arsenal, and that controls the border with Gaza to such an extent as to know when even a bird breeches this walled concentration camp, removed all soldiers and guards, and allowed their own created terrorist organization, Hamas, to come across with an attack, and did not even respond for hours, while Israelis were killed and hostages were taken. In other words, this was an intentional set up to cause the populace to support the genocide of all Palestinians, while using its own citizens as bait, knowingly killing many in the process in order to further their terror.
How many false flag operations have to take place in order for the blind to see? The U.S. government, its military, the CIA, and all its accomplices in government and corporate America, have used many false flag attacks to stoke war and division for over a century, and Israel is now allowing and committing purposeful acts of terror against its own and Palestine in order to further its agenda of colonialism and murder by way of a false flag event. This has led to thousands of deaths of innocents, (likely tens of thousands) mostly children, as much of the world stands by applauding the carnage, or at least fully supporting the Zionist’s crimes against humanity.
What has happened to mankind? What has happened to sanity. What has happened to the moral fiber of man, when genocide can be not only accepted, but praised? This is the insane world we live in today. It is not normal, it is not due to individual terrorists, or to outlying terrorist cells mostly created purposely with nation-state funding, with weapons supplied by Western powers. It is conspiratorial at every level, and done to affect a particular outcome; that outcome is to advance the reset of the world in favor of those who run it.
Every false flag operation, every unnatural firestorm, every geo-engineered weather tragedy, and the multitude of attacks on the innocent; are plotted and intentional, and in most all cases, they are soon eliminated from the fake news cycles, and then forgotten. Consider 9/11, the many economic crises, the fake ‘covid’ terrorism, chemical spills, the Lahaina, Maui murders, and many, many more. Competent reporting, as well of course as mainstream ‘reporting’ on the horrors in Palestine are already subsiding, and this is a tragedy in and of itself. Do not let the political and media scum erase this slaughter and genocide of innocents from your minds, as that will be the plan. Then, the next atrocity will simply take the place of the last, and on and on it goes until it doesn’t. There are no political accidents, no coincidences, so legitimate reaction does not exist, as all is premeditated, planned out over time, and released on the lowly proletariat at a time when beneficial to the State. The State is forever and always the enemy of the people, and never is it your protector and savior; it is only evil.
What is missed (or ignored) by most all Americans, as well as most others around the Western world, is that we are all Palestinians now. To believe that it cannot happen here is not only ludicrous, but also far beyond naïveté, and borders on extreme psychosis. What will you do when you, your family, and your children are targeted by the State for elimination? Will you run and hide, or will you defend your life and family?
Knowledge is entirely provisional; ignorance is not. What you think you know and what is reality is more often than not reversed, and this can lead only to confusion, mistakes in judgement, and bad decisions. Instead of taking sides, consider only right and wrong, and always embrace the side of right, instead of accepting the lies and false narratives of the State. Place yourself in the shoes of others, and then side only with the innocent victims.
Concerning the State:
“The concept of good versus evil is a handy construct for framing a narrative. When you see someone applying that concept to real-world events, however, be aware that you’re in the presence of a peddler of fiction.”
As the Elite program to kill or enslave us all proceeds virtually unimpeded, one way in which this is being accomplished is by using two of the Elite’s oldest known tools: War and genocide. With the active complicity of its agents in governments and elsewhere, the Elite is killing off substantial numbers of ‘ordinary’ people (but certainly not Elite members or agents) in wars between various countries, most notably, Ukraine and Russia, as well as in genocidal attacks such as that by Israel against the Palestinian ghetto of Gaza.
While I have previously explained how the war between Russia and Ukraine (along with the latter’s NATO allies) is being used to advance the Elite program – see ‘The War in Ukraine: Understanding and Resisting the Global Elite’s Deeper Agenda’ – it is equally clear that wars anywhere, as well as genocides, serve the same purpose.
Unfortunately, very few people are perceiving this connection and the fundamental threat it poses to us all and, in the sense that this is being achieved, the genocide in Gaza is successfully distracting people from the wider program to kill or enslave everyone.
This is obvious from any candid assessment of the evidence readily available to those seeking it. Let me start with an overview of the evidence in relation to Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza.
In the words of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: ‘Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas’. See ‘Analysis: Another Concept Implodes: Israel Can’t Be Managed by a Criminal Defendant’.
Did it actually matter that Hamas appears to have achieved movement in the direction of its stated goals – as noted by Ritter: to reassert the right of the Palestinian people to a homeland, release of the 10,000-plus Palestinian political prisoners (including children) locked up in Israel, a return to the sanctity of the Al Aqsa Mosque – as Ritter claims and despite or even because of the enormous ‘sacrifice’ made by the ordinary men, women and children of Gaza?
Did all of those Palestinians – including children – who weren’t consulted about the raid and have been (or will be) killed during Israel’s genocidal response knowingly and willingly sacrifice their lives? Or were they hapless victims of the violent ideology of their leaders who do not value ‘ordinary’ lives?
Despite the truism that Ritter identifies – ‘you can’t solve a problem unless you first properly define it…. any solution which has nothing to do with the problem involved is, literally, no solution at all’ – with which I agree, Ritter has a very limited, essentially military, interpretation of the conflict and what will be necessary to resolve it. That is, he suggests, the conflict is between the Israeli government and Hamas, it is military in nature and it will be won (or lost) according to political shifts the military resistance offered by Hamas generates in other parts of the world (including the Arab/Islamic worlds and the United States).
But as will be obvious from my explanation below, Ritter does not understand this conflict, particularly the global forces driving it and their reasons for doing so and that, from the perspective of ‘ordinary’ people, the ‘gains’ from the raid he nominates (and the genocide following) are worth nothing, and that the deaths of both ordinary Israelis and Palestinians as a result is a terrible price to pay.
In any case, whatever the origin of the military raid by Hamas (and its ongoing engagement with Israeli forces in Gaza), the evidence of the killing of ordinary Israelis and Palestinians is well documented.
In his thoughtful analysis of the situation, former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Professor Richard Falk offers a similar conclusion:
My analysis leads me to conclude that this ongoing war is not primarily about security in Gaza or security threats posed by Hamas, but rather about something much more sinister and absurdly cynical.
Israel has seized this opportunity to fulfill Zionist territorial ambitions amid “the fog of war” by inducing one last surge of Palestinian catastrophic dispossession. Whether it is called “ethnic cleansing” or “genocide” is of secondary importance, although it already qualifies as one of the biggest humanitarian catastrophes of the 21st century. See ‘Israel-Palestine war: Israel’s endgame is much more sinister than restoring “security”’.
While Hasan Illaik argues that the plan to ‘displace millions of Palestinians’ is ‘nigh impossible to achieve’ and notes that the plan has been rejected by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi – see ‘The US is fueling, not avoiding, a regional war’ – even its substantial or just partial fulfillment would open new possibilities for Israel and the United States.
Nevertheless, despite the evidence presented above and the considered opinion of the experts cited, Scott Ritter argues that Israel will find it extraordinarily difficult to defeat Hamas. Ritter offers historical evidence of battles taking place in confined spaces where damage has been inflicted by prior bombing that impedes subsequent ground operations because of the vast quantities of rubble. He also cites other battles where large tunnel networks were extremely difficult to neutralize. In Ritter’s view, Hamas has both of these battlefield advantages in Gaza, including over 500 kilometres of tunnels. See ‘Israel Faces “Near Impossible Task” in Gaza’.
Unfortunately, however, there is some evidence that Israel is planning to flood Hamas tunnels with nerve gas – see ‘Israel-Palestine war: Israel plans to flood Hamas tunnels with nerve gas, source says’ – but, whether or not it does so, a ground invasion is not the only way to ‘clear’ Gaza of its ‘surface’ population with another weapon already being used by Israel against Gaza.
As in earlier manifestations of war and genocide, military forces have sometimes laid siege to a trapped population to starve it to death. And this is now happening in Gaza. According to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant: ‘We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed. We are fighting against human animals, and we are acting accordingly.’ See ‘Israeli Defense Minister Announces Siege On Gaza To Fight “Human Animals”’.
You can see photos of the devastation in Gaza and its genocidal impact on the Palestinian people in the compilation presented by Antonio C. S. Rosa here: ‘Genocide in Pictures: Worth a Trillion Words’.
In any case, if we step back from the immediacy of this conflict and consider the Elite perspective on what is taking place, plenty of people are being killed and other Elite objectives are being achieved by what is happening.
A Regional War?
Beyond what happens in Gaza, however, the conflict includes evidence that this war could be expanded beyond Israeli and Palestinian borders into the wider region so that the killing can be compounded and a wider set of Elite objectives fulfilled.
In fact, as Chossudovsky points out in his most recent video interview, Israel has a vast military (including nuclear) capability compared to the poorly-armed Palestinians and is reinforced by both extensive military aid from the United States as well as a major US military presence (including two aircraft carrier battle groups, a substantial fleet of fighter aircraft and special forces troops) that has been deployed to the Middle East to engage in a wider war in pursuit of long-standing US political objectives to subjugate Iran and reshape the Middle East. See ‘A Planned US-Israeli Attack on Iran is Contemplated: The U.S. led War on the People of Palestine and the Middle East is a Criminal Undertaking’.
Professor Michael Hudson agrees. In an interview, Hudson indicated that ‘the United States has always viewed Israel as just our foreign military base, not Israel…. [our] landed aircraft carrier… takeoff point’ for the US to control the Middle East with its vast oil and gas reserves. But in elaborating his explanation, Hudson goes on to highlight that the US supports Netanyahu (rather than Israel itself), ‘an unpleasant, opportunist, and corrupt person’ to distract attention from the US role in supplying the military weapons to kill people in Gaza and the West Bank which is essentially designed to provoke a response from Hezbollah in Lebanon. Why? By using the corporate media to keep talking about Hamas and Hezbollah as puppets of Iran, the intention is to use any military response from Hezbollah to ‘justify’ a ‘move not only against Lebanon, but all the way via Syria, Iraq, to Iran’ with the aim of controlling Middle Eastern oil. This would make it possible ‘to cut off oil and gas and to sanction any country that tries to go multipolar, any country that tries to resist US unipolar control.’ In essence, Hudson summarizes, ‘Basically, there’s a fight for who is going to control the world right now’. Watch ‘Why Does the US Support Israel?’
Many analysts have discussed the possibility of a wider war with Hasan Illaik arguing that ‘Both in practice, and publicly, the US government and military are running this Israeli war’ with the intention of fueling a wider one. See ‘The US is fueling, not avoiding, a regional war’. Huseyin Vodinali considers the possible role of countries like Yemen and Turkey as the war expands and argues that ‘China and Russia support Palestine and declare that they will stand by Syria and Iran.’ See ‘“A Big Event is Coming, its Name is a Regional War”? The Danger Waiting for Turkiye’.
In contrast, however, Scott Ritter cogently argues that the US and Israel combined do not have the logistical capacity to successfully fight and defeat Iran. See ‘US Not Ready for War With Iran’.
Military and geopolitical analyst Andrei Martyanov agrees. In a wide-ranging interview in which he referred to the two US aircraft carriers now in the region as ‘sitting ducks’, he offered an outline of Iran’s sophisticated air-defense systems and its ballistic missile capabilities (which could easily knock out all US bases in the Middle East, the carrier battle groups now in the region and leave ‘Tel Aviv and Jerusalem… burning’) as just two of the problems confronting the US and Israel in any consideration of an attack on Iran. Beyond these problems and among others, he mentioned that the mythology attached to the Israeli military was largely propaganda from 1967 and 1973 and did not apply now. He described the Israeli army as a ‘very well equipped police force’ and also briefly discussed the debilitating decline in US military production and noted that ‘the decline and degradation of the American political class is astonishing’. Watch ‘The US and Israel cannot defeat Iran’.
In contrast, and despite the use of a nuclear weapon on Gaza being advocated by Israeli government Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, Timothy Alexander Guzman argues that ‘There is no doubt that Russia and other world powers including China would not allow Israel to hit Iran with a nuclear bomb. If Israel decided to use a nuclear weapon anywhere in the Middle East, it would unite all Muslims against Israel’ and that is something for which Tel Aviv and Washington are not prepared. See ‘“Drop a Nuclear Bomb on Gaza”: Israeli Minister Says Using Nukes on Gaza an Option’.
In essence, while there are sound political and military reasons for both Israel and the US to avoid the use of nuclear weapons, given the insanity of some key figures in this conflict, it is difficult to assert anything with certainty in this regard.
Moreover, irrespective of the many factors that might be considered in relation to the ‘wider war’ issue, it should be noted that there are plenty of ‘minor’ military clashes already taking place throughout the Middle East. As reported by the highly reputable ‘South Front’, and confirmed by the Telegram channel ‘War Monitor’, ongoing military engagements are being reported taking place involving Hezbollah (for example, targeting Israeli army positions on the Lebanese-Palestinian border), Syria (for example, using air defences to confront Israeli targets in the vicinity of Damascus), Yemen (for example, with the Houthis reporting the targeting of sensitive sites in Israel’s Eliat area on the Gulf of Aquaba) and the US Pentagon (reporting engagement by pro-Iranian groups in both Syria and Iraq).
These reports are also confirmed in the article by Professor Adham Saouli who suggests that, like the US, ‘Hezbollah is using the time to set the stage for a regional war should that become necessary.’ See ‘Hezbollah and the 2023 Israeli War on Gaza’.
Before proceeding however, there is one more critical issue to consider, nothwithstanding what has been written above.
What is the prospect of the US orchestrating a false flag attack – perhaps on a US vessel in one of its two carrrier strike groups in the region – to ‘justify’ an attack on Iran? With the USS Gerald R. Ford and escort vessels stationed in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and escorts currently operating in the Gulf of Oman off the Arabian Peninsula – see ‘Aircraft Carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Now in Gulf of Oman’ – such an attack could ignite a regional war (and easily expand beyond the Middle East).
How might this be done?
Most simply by directing Israel to launch a missile (from land, sea or air) at the designated target and then deluging the corporate media with the claim that it was Iran that launched the missile.
Under cover of the initial confusion, it would be simple enough to initiate military action against Iran (and, possibly, certain allies) by Israeli and US forces to ‘respond’ to this attack and any debate about the source of the attack would be relegated to the backburner while the war quickly inflamed and national populations were manipulated to ‘rally around the flag’.
You might ask, of course, why would this be done? Why start a war where there is none?
The answer is the same as it has been throughout history. If you like, you can read brief accounts of 42 false flag attacks in the past century. See ‘42 ADMITTED False Flag Attacks’.
Wars enable Elites to consolidate and expand their power, and make vast profits. Every weapon fired represents profit; every weapon, building and other asset destroyed represents profit (for example, in subsequent rebuilding); every country subjugated represents profit in the form of control of its resources (strategic minerals, fossil fuels, fresh water, cultural heritage…); every person killed represents progress in the Elite depopulation program; and every war presents opportunities for tightening Elite control (particularly while submissively frightened populations tolerate government actions supposedly to enhance ‘national security’ but really to enslave us in one of the Elite’s increasingly technocratic prisons cities).
Have you ever wondered why governments are never really interested in avoiding or even winning wars (despite rhetoric to the contrary)?
The Elite most effectively consolidates its power and maximizes its profit by ensuring perpetual war. And it simply ensures that its agents in government make this happen.
In this scheme of things, you are the victim in every sense of the word: You vote in elections believing you are living in a ‘democracy’, you pay the taxes to buy the weapons, you join the military to fight (believing you are defending ‘your country’), you are the soldier or civilian who is killed (not a member of the Elite profiting from your killing/dying), and you do the suffering when someone you love dies.
War is one of the Elite’s most profitable enterprises and control of everything from the human ‘socialization’ (that is, terrorization) process and ‘education’ systems to the messaging of the corporate media and ‘entertainment’ industry means that you learn that violence is not only ‘necessary’ but really the ‘only’ effective way to deal with international conflict.
So far, however, Putin has shown himself to be adept at avoiding direct military confrontation with the USA over the war in Ukraine and, from a nation-state perspective, the latter clearly lacks the capacity to engage Russia directly for the reasons Martyanov gave in relation to the USA and Iran.
But to elaborate my point above: There are plenty of powerful vested interests with a stake in this conflict and a lot of insane individuals involved too which means that there are enormous pressures pushing for a wider regional war. However, if the war expands beyond Israel and Palestine, there is no guarantee it will remain contained within the region either.
And, as explained just above, it doesn’t matter what countries are involved or how many are killed. The Elite will carefully consider its options with the inclination to expand its power and increase its profits at every opportunity.
The Rothschilds
Before departing this immensely complex subject, about which a great deal has been written, there is another dimension to this conflict that is invariably ignored. And that dimension concerns the role of the Rothschild family.
Why highlight the Rothschild family? Consider the following.
As noted by Richard S. Dunn in his historical overview of events leading to the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine – see ‘Israel Should Know: “What Thou Sowest, Thou Shall Also Reap”’ – the letter advising the Jews of the British government intention was sent to Lionel Rothschild.
According to the official Rothschild Archive:
On November 2, 1917, the British Government expressed its sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations and announced that it would use its “best endeavours” to facilitate “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. The announcement came in a letter from Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lionel Walter, 2nd Lord Rothschild (1868-1937), the unofficial leader of the British Jewish community. The Balfour agreement became the diplomatic foundation stone of the state of Israel….
The Balfour Declaration used deliberately vague language. The term “national home” was chosen in order to minimize the Zionist dream, to make Palestine a Jewish state. The Arabs, whose “civil and religious” (not national and political) rights were not to be prejudiced as the declaration put it, were referred to only as “existing non-Jewish communities”. You can read the letter and the Rothschild commentary on it here: ‘Walter Rothschild and the Balfour Declaration’.
The Rothschild commentary on this development includes these words: ‘Beginning in 1916, the British hoped that in exchange for their support of Zionism, “the Jews” would help to finance the growing expenses of the First World War, which was becoming increasingly burdensome. More importantly, policy-makers in the Foreign Office believed that Jews could be prevailed upon to persuade the United States to join the War.’
Since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 (at the expense of the indigenous Palestinians), in which they played such a critical role, the Rothschilds have continued to exercise their enormous political and economic clout to both build the state of Israel and ‘defend’ Israel, including by mobilizing the military and financial support for it from the United States. While some of this support is publicly known (such as that of James de Rothschild in financing the building of the Knesset in Israel), as with the bulk of Rothschild affairs (including in the US), most of this support is concealed behind a myriad of Rothschild-controlled corporations, front groups and ‘third parties’, many with significant public profiles.
And this explains why supposedly scholarly books such as Jews in American Politics do not reference the Rothschilds even once while Benjamin Ginsberg, one of the authors, readily acknowledges that ‘the greatest triumph of American Jewish organizations during the postwar period [was] recognition of the state of Israel. Despite the opposition of large segments of the British government and the U.S. State and Defense departments, American Jewish groups succeeded in securing President Truman’s support for the creation of a Jewish state to house Jewish refugees from Europe. Over the ensuing decades, American Jews successfully urged the U.S. government to provide Israel with billions of dollars in American military and economic assistance. In recent years, Jewish groups have fought not only for aid for Israel but for American humanitarian intervention in other regions of the world as well.’
While not discounting the roles of other prominent individuals and families, it is nevertheless the case that the long-standing Rothschild practice of obscuring their role has ensured that much of what it does is concealed. This is why, for example, few people know that the Rothschilds control the US Federal Reserve and own substantial holdings (again, often through tightly-controlled ‘third parties’) in the global (including US) weapons industry. So while Molly Gott and Derek Seidman offer a fine report on ‘Corporate Enablers of Israel’s War on Gaza’ and even name some prominent individual donors to pro-Israeli lobby groups, rarely do studies of this nature expose the human individuals who ultimately own the weapons corporations.
But now with a significantly expanded range of ways of obscuring the family investments, such as through the private but major asset management corporation Vanguard, the Rothschilds will benefit handsomely from President Biden’s recent announcement of a ‘giant’ weapons package to Israel – see ‘Biden asks Congress for Israel, Ukraine aid in giant defense package’ – with most of the money going to US weapons corporations in which the Rothschilds have substantial investments. Profiting from war (and military conflict generally) is the second oldest trick (after profiting from money) in the Rothschild money-making machine. See Historical Analysis of the Global Elite: Ransacking the World Economy Until ‘You’ll Own Nothing.’
And there is a third old trick too: ownership of massive resource corporations, starting with oil and gas.
While Felicity Arbuthnot, in the 2013 article just cited, nominated the interest of the BG Group in Gaza’s gas and oil reserves, in early 2016, the BG Group became part of Shell Global. See ‘Combining Shell and BG: a simpler and more profitable company’.
Of course, Shell has been a Rothschild corporation since the very early 20th century. According to the Rothschild Archive: ‘As it turned out, Rothschilds had a decisive influence in shaping Royal Dutch Shell, more so than anyone had previously imagined.’ See ‘Searching for oil in Roubaix’. But Shell does not represent the only Rothschild investment in energy supplies.
Another motivation for Rothschild involvement concerns a long-standing interest of the family’s. Following a brief discussion with British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli on 14 November 1875, Lionel Rothschild agreed to finance the British Government’s purchase of 177,000 shares in ‘one of the world’s great commercial and strategic assets’, the Suez Canal Company, from Egypt’s debt-ridden Khedive for £4,000,000 at 3% interest. See The Rothschilds: A Family Portrait pp. 150-152. This gave the British government a majority holding in the waterway that enabled commercial and military shipping to bypass the Cape of Good Hope in traveling from Europe to Asia and Oceania.
In 1882 the UK invaded and occupied Egypt, taking control of the country as well as the Suez canal which then became a geopolitical weapon during subsequent wars. It also later became critical for the transport of oil from the Middle East to Europe (and elsewhere).
During and following World War II, Britain maintained a vast military complex at Suez with a garrison of some 80,000 soldiers.
But following a military coup that removed the Egyptian monarchy in 1952 and in the context of a geopolitical world in considerable turmoil on various levels (including the decolonization process, the Cold War, and the Arab-Israeli conflict), ownership of the Suez Canal became increasingly contentious. Thus, on 26 July 1956, the Suez Canal Company was nationalized by Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. This led to the Suez Crisis in October when Israel and, subsequently, the UK and France invaded Egypt and Gaza in an attempt to remove President Nasser and restore western control. Pressure from the United States and the UN led to withdrawal of the invaders.
The plan was eventually shelved, presumably at least in part because the fallout from the nuclear explosions would have made the environmental cost of the project prohibitive. But what if such a plan was now feasible and the shortest route went through Gaza?
Is there a more ‘acceptable’ (that is, non-nuclear) weapon that could be deployed to create the canal now?
The obvious domain to look for possible answers is the expanding range of geoengineering weapons.
Why?
After many years spent researching geoengineering weapons, in a 1996 article, Dr. Rosalie Bertell summarized 50 years of destructive programs targeting control of the upper atmosphere. She concluded the article with the following words: ‘The ability of the HAARP/Spacelab/rocket combination to deliver very large amounts of energy, comparable to a nuclear bomb, anywhere on earth via laser and particle
So if one considers the range of geoengineering weapons that might be used in this context, one possibility would be to use HAARP: the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program. HAARP is currently ‘the most important facility used to generate extremely low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic radiation in the ionosphere. In order to produce this ELF radiation the HAARP transmitter radiates a strong beam of highfrequency (HF) waves modulated at ELF…. high-power ELF radiation generated by HF ionospheric heaters, such as the current HAARP heater, can cause Earthquakes, Cyclones and strong localized heating.’ See ‘High-power ELF radiation generated by modulated HF heating of the ionosphere can cause Earthquakes, Cyclones and localized heating’.
If this weapon could be used, it would need to be calibrated to perform the massive task of excavating the canal (or at least pulverizing the materials that need to be excavated into a readily removable form).
So, as in the case in relation to the HAARP ELF radiation option, if this weapon was to be used to construct another canal, it would need to be calibrated to be less destructive than those used in Turkey.
But whatever technological challenges might remain in choosing the geoengineering weapon(s) and deploying it/them effectively, the financial rewards of having a second canal would be vast. And given existing Rothschild financial interests in infrastructure – ‘Over the last 200 years the Rothschilds have systematically gained control of much of the infrastructure of the modern industrial world.’ See Enemies of the People: The Rothschilds and their corrupt global empire p. 23. – and geoengineering – see ‘The Rothschilds and the Geoengineering Empire’ – it is reasonable to postulate their interest in financing such a project and profiting from it indefinitely into the future.
Beyond its profound control of money, weapons, energy and infrastructure (not to mention other sectors), the Rothschilds own a substantial proportion of the corporate media, again both directly and through agents. For example, by the late C19th their Paribas Bank ‘controlled the all-powerful news agency Havas, which in turn owned the most important advertising agency in France.’ See Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War p. 214.
But Rothschild interests in the corporate media extend far beyond France. If you would like to read more about the extensive Rothschild ownership and control of the media, Paul Cudenec offers more examples in his thoughtful and wide-ranging overview of the family’s extraordinary violence and exploitation in Enemies of the People: The Rothschilds and their corrupt global empire.
Their extensive media ownership means that the Rothschilds have significant control of the primary narrative presented in worldwide ‘news’ outlets, including in relation to Israel: the ‘victim’ Israel must always ‘defend’ itself. So that even when some accurate and graphic media get through some corporate social media channels (Facebook, X, Youtube…) or some events not sponsored by the Elite, such as the current wave of pro-Palestinian demonstrations around the world, are reported in the corporate media – see ‘Around the world, people take to the streets for Palestine’ and ‘More Demonstrations for Palestine’ – it doesn’t mean anything. Even footage of demonstrations that are protesting the genocide in Gaza can be blandly presented as demonstrations ‘calling for a ceasefire’ or something equally effective at distracting people from the truth. And even if they do not, demonstrations are routinely ignored. History records the futility of such protest demonstrations even when they garner some attention for a secondary narrative.
Because for any particular tactic (action) to have strategic value, it must be derived from a strategy that has been designed to alter the power relationship between the actual perpetrator and their victim. If there is no comprehensive strategy to guide tactical choice, or if the tactic is chosen to achieve a political objective rather than a strategic goal – see ‘The Political Objective and Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions’ – it is not possible for the tactic to achieve a strategic gain (although it might allow those doing the action to let off a little emotional steam and feel good about themselves).
But to return to the theme above, if you believe that the Rothschilds do not leverage their ownership and control of such vast assets (in money, weapons, energy, infrastructure and media to name just a few key sectors) to achieve outcomes in the perceived interest of the family, including by manipulation of political leaders, you can read relevant Rothschild history – and even the official biography written by Niall Ferguson cited above – which documents a rather endless list of ‘gifts’ (that is, bribes) to a range of monarchs, including the British Crown, and political leaders.
Moreover, while many people are a little squeamish in response to the profoundly distasteful images of Palestinian children mangled by Israeli-fired weapons, the Rothschilds had turned their backs on such suffering more than 200 years ago. You cannot profit by financing both sides of wars for more than 200 years and have any sense of human compassion. From the Rothschild perspective and compared to other mass slaughters from which they have profited enormously, such as World Wars I and II, the genocide in Gaza is inconsequential.
Hence, if we are to understand the current Israeli genocidal campaign against the Palestinians in Gaza, it is necessary to understand the foundations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the background role that the Rothschilds continue to play. Using a longstanding network of allies and agents, which includes corrupt (that is, ‘bought’) politicians in Israel and the United States as well as such networks as the ‘The Israel Lobby’ in the USA, it is not difficult to shape the words that come out of the mouths of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and US President Biden as well as the military actions that follow.
They do not answer to their electorates and Netanyahu and Biden are well aware of that. As long as they serve their masters faithfully, their roles are secure (however they unfold), even despite their extensively-documented corruption as well. See ‘Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption scandals, explained’ and ‘Joe Biden – Corrupt’.
Of course, Rothschild allies and agents ensure that these two individuals are surrounded and supported by a wide coterie of equally corrupt and politically unaccountable agents ranging from a wide spectrum of other national political leaders, to members of the US Congress and Israeli Knesset.
In fact, issuing statements is an industry in itself and highlights the powerlessness of a staggering array of actors, some of whom might be more meaningfully engaged in the struggle to liberate Palestine were they given strategically impactful actions to take. See ‘War of the Statements: The unusual way Americans have processed the Israel-Hamas War’.
Consequently, and despite possible initiatives by third parties, a critical variable that cannot be ignored is that containing the insane Global Elite that is driving these wars and genocides as well as the overall descent into technocracy is extraordinarily difficult. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.
And it means that their wars, genocides and the ongoing imposition of their technocracy won’t be stopped by statements, petitions, lobbying politicians, protests or legal challenges although Elite-controlled media will talk about these as part of their strategy to ensure our dissent is absorbed and dissipated.
Summary
Thus, as is happening behind the scenes of mass slaughter of ordinary (mainly Ukrainian but also Russian) soldiers in Ukraine, where the creation of all of the infrastructure necessary to impose the Global Elite’s technocracy on both populations proceeds apace with Presidents Putin and Zelensky fully complicit – again, see ‘The War in Ukraine: Understanding and Resisting the Global Elite’s Deeper Agenda’ – there is little doubt that the heavily technocratized Israel at the behest of the United States and (intentional or otherwise) complicity of Hamas, is simply killing Palestinians in Gaza (and the West Bank) while displacing as many as possible. This is being done to precipitate responses from other countries that will enable the United States to ‘justify’ pursuit of a range of geopolitical goals – inevitably involving more killing – on behalf of its Elite masters, while facilitating the more elaborate imposition of the necessary ‘smart city’ technologies on whatever population lives in Gaza when the genocide is concluded and the inevitable technocratic rebuilding commences.
My point is unpalatable but simple: The Global Elite is in the process of implementing its long-planned and complex program to kill off vast numbers of people and imprison those left alive as transhuman slaves in their technocratic cities. So while there is value in considering events from various perspectives, it is important that sight is not lost of this fundamental Elite program and the insight that this perspective offers.
Of course, the Elite’s ‘kill or enslave’ program is being implemented everywhere, not just in war zones and zones of obvious genocide. And all governments are complicit, not just the US and Israeli governments and the Palestinian leadership.
So whatever position we might take on any given war, genocide or other violent conflict, we also need to understand and resist the fundamental Elite program – see below – if we are to successfully defend ourselves and those we love, from both its genocidal programs and rapidly advancing technocracy.
In addition, as always, if we want to end war as an instrument of Elite policy, we must strategically campaign to do so. See ‘Strategic Goals for Ending War’.
And if national populations such as the Palestinians wish to defend themselves from genocidal attacks, rather than simply lobby for the beneficial intervention of third parties, they must use an appropriate strategic response (modified from this template). See ‘Strategic Goals for Defeating a Genocidal Assault’.
Of course, it they wish to liberate themselves from occupation, they must bypass the corrupt Palestinian leadership in both the West Bank and Gaza and mobilize ‘ordinary’ Palestinians and international solidarity activists to campaign strategically to do so, as I have been explaining since the early 1990s. See ‘Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy’ or, for the fullest elaboration, The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach.
This means they must do far more than encourage involvement in just a few tactics as advocated by the Boycott Divestment Sanctions Movement. Of course, these tactics could usefully form part of a comprehensive strategy.
Needless to say, there are a great many social groups (within Palestine, in Israel and in third-party countries) – identified on the ‘Strategic Goals’ page – who can be mobilized to take action, as well as a large number of nonviolent acts of noncooperation and intervention – listed in ‘198 Tactics of Nonviolent Action’ – from which the appropriate combination of tactics can be strategically chosen as explained in ‘Strategic Considerations in the Selection and Implementation of Nonviolent Tactics’. By following this process, concerned people anywhere can take solidarity action with Palestine (not just protest) to end the genocide in the short term and the occupation in the medium term.
The reality is simple: Unless Palestinians commit to developing and implementing a comprehensive nonviolent strategy of liberation, Palestine will continue to be the victim of forces beyond its control at the cost of an enormous number of lives, whatever optimism some might feel at the outpouring of popular support being exhibited by those attending Palestinian solidarity demonstrations around the world at the moment.
Strategy is determinative; not numbers.
Resisting the Elite’s Technocracy
Beyond the defense of Palestine, if you are committed to being strategic in your resistance to the Elite’s ongoing imposition of its genocidal and technocratic programs on us all, you are welcome to participate in the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ campaign which identifies a list of 30 strategic goals for doing so.
More simply, and as a minimum, you can download the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ one-page flyer that identifies a short series of crucial nonviolent actions that anyone can take. This flyer, now available in 23 languages (Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Malay, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Slovak and Turkish) with more languages in the pipeline, can be downloaded from here: ‘One-page Flyer’.
And you might also consider organizing or participating in a local strategy to halt the deployment of 5G, given its crucial role in making the Elite’s ‘smart city’ technocratic prisons function. See ‘Halting the Deployment of 5G’.
If you like, you can also watch, share and/or organize to show, a short video about the campaign here: ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ video.
Moreover, if this strategic resistance to the ‘Great Reset’ (and related agendas) appeals to you, consider joining the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ Telegram or Signal groups (with advice on accessing the necessary links on the website).
Thus, what happens now in a particular global, regional, national or even local context has been fundamentally shaped by detailed Elite plans that have been ongoingly formulated and refined, as well as progressively implemented over the past 5,000 years. And we have long ago past the point in which a local population confronts a local Elite in what might once have been a local fight.
Consequently, what happens in this world system is an outcome of power. Laws and legal systems, human rights and human needs count for nothing in this world, unless they do not impact power relationships. Whatever laws exist are breached when it is convenient for powerful actors to do so. And no-one holds those responsible for such breaches accountable. Do you really think that anyone in Israel, or the Rothschild family and its agents, will be held accountable for the genocidal atrocities inflicted on Gaza?
However, just because the Elite and its agents are extraordinarily powerful, operate beyond the rule of law and have no conception of morality, it does not mean that they cannot be stopped. But if we are to stop them in any context, we must work together both strategically and in sufficient numbers. Turning up at a demonstration or doing any one or more of a million things when it suits us will not stop them.
Thus, if we are to resolve any conflict, including those that involve military violence, several things are necessary.
Primarily, the conflict configuration must be analyzed very carefully so that it is fully understood. This includes an understanding of who, most fundamentally, is driving the conflict, why (and for what purposes and benefits) and how they are doing so. This is essential and in sharp contrast to just assuming the conflict is how it is routinely presented or even how it superficially appears.
We must then design a strategy that, if implemented, will succeed in achieving our desired outcome. And, finally, we must mobilize sufficient people to participate in implementing this strategy.
For example, in the current context, it is easy to perceive that people like Klaus Schwab, Yuval Noah Harari and Bill Gates are benefiting from the World Economic Forum push to impose a technocracy on us all, but they are just the front men, positioned to act on behalf of far more powerful global actors.
And it is easy to identify that Benjamin Netanyahu is benefiting from the violence in Palestine but this is utterly superficial. Like any politician he is the lackey of more powerful global actors who offer him trinkets (but of value to him) to do their bidding.
So we have a choice. Whether as a global population or a local one, we can continue to be the victims while we attribute blame to the puppets (political leaders and a vast range of organizations) put in place to perform on behalf of others.
Or, as I have tried to do in this article, we can do the work to understand how the world works, who really exercises power, the means they are using to exercise it, and then mobilize enough people to participate in carefully-designed nonviolent strategies to stop them.
If we do not take the latter course very soon now, those of us left alive will all be enslaved in one of the Elite’s technocratic (‘smart city’) prisons.
Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.
Dr. Anthony Fauci and the CIA have some splainin’ to do.
According to a new letter from the House’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Fauci was admitted to CIA headquarters “without a record of entry” while the agency was conducting its official analysis of the origins of COVID-19.
The letter claims Fauci “participated in the analysis to ‘influence’ the Agency’s review.” The date of the alleged meeting is not disclosed.
Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R., Ohio), chair of the committee, gave the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services until October 10 to submit all requested items and pertinent communications related to the then-director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ clandestine meeting at Langley.
“The American people deserve the truth—to know the origins of the virus and whether there was a concerted effort by public health authorities to suppress the lab leak theory for political or national security purposes,” Wenstrup said.
Dr. Fauci has not yet made any public statements on the matter, but his alleged visit to CIA headquarters raises important questions.
Dr. Fauci has not yet made any public statements on the matter, but his alleged visit to CIA headquarters raises important questions.
Did Fauci request the meeting or the CIA?
Why was the meeting held in secret?
Was the CIA aware that Fauci had interests that may have conflicted with his ability to make an objective assessment of the origins of COVID-19?
Each of these questions is important, but let’s begin with the last one.
1. A Conflict of Interest?
As director of NIAID, Fauci, early in the pandemic, dismissed allegations that COVID-19 might have emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, calling these claims “conspiracy theories” and alleging it was “molecularly impossible.”
It was later learned that Fauci made these statements even though scientists he commissioned to author a paper on the origins of the virus privately said otherwise.
It turns out Dr. Fauci had a very good reason to conceal the fact that COVID-19 likely escaped from the lab in Wuhan, as most US government agencies now believe (including the FBI and the CIA).
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the agency that oversees NIAID, admitted in the fall of 2021 that for years the agency had been funding what was described as “risky virus research in Wuhan,” a charge Fauci had repeatedly and vociferously denied. Fauci, a longtime defender of gain-of-function research, had signed off on funding provided to the non-profit organization EcoHealth Alliance that had resulted in an “unexpected result”: an enhanced coronavirus from bats created in partnership with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
That NIH had funded gain-of-function research is now beyond dispute, evidenced by the recent termination of funding for WIV after NIH “determined that…WIV conducted an experiment that violated the terms of the grant regarding viral activity, which possibly did lead…to…unacceptable outcomes.”
According toVanity Fair reporter Katherine Eban, officials at EcoHealth Alliance say they informed NIH of this “unexpected result” (an enhanced coronavirus) in a progress report in 2018, but Fauci says he didn’t see the progress report prior to his congressional testimony.
All of this helps explain why Fauci was so insistent from the very beginning that COVID-19 originated naturally from a wet market, even though scientists who wrote the “Proximal Origin” paper in Nature in early 2020 told him it was “friggin’ likely” and “plausible” the virus emerged from the Wuhan lab.
Was the CIA aware of this potential conflict of interest when Fauci allegedly visited CIA headquarters in an attempt to “influence the Agency’s review”?
2. Why Was the Meeting Held in Secret and Who Authorized It?
Putting aside the question of conflicting interests, there is the simple question of secrecy.
One could argue Fauci visited CIA headquarters because he was director of NIAID and an infectious disease expert. The problem with this argument is that Fauci had already made many public statements on the origins of the virus, and if he was simply offering an elaboration of his points, there would be no need to hold such a meeting secretly.
Moreover, the CIA was conducting an independent review. That means the agency was supposed to reach its determination without outside influence.
A visit from Fauci has all the appearances of attempting to influence the outcome of the CIA’s report, which is no doubt why the visit went “without a record of entry.”
Who authorized the secret visit and why?
3. Who Requested the Meeting and Who Was Present?
The fact that Fauci’s alleged visit to Langley was done surreptitiously suggests that both the CIA and Fauci understood there were troubling ethics in making such a visit when the agency was conducting an independent review of COVID-19’s origins.
This raises an important question: Who requested the meeting, Fauci or the CIA?
This is not a trivial question. Mere weeks ago, a letter sent to CIA Director William Burns stated that a senior-level CIA whistleblower claimed the agency attempted to bribe six analysts who concluded with a low level of confidence that COVID-19 originated in the Wuhan lab, allegedly offering six of the seven agents cash incentives to change their conclusions.
“The whistleblower,” the letter states, “contends that to come to the eventual public determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position.”
If the charge is true, it means public officials attempted to bribe CIA analysts tasked with providing an official government assessment of the origins of the most deadly pandemic in a century to influence the outcome of their report.
That’s a very serious charge. The public deserves answers.
‘A Massive Coverup Spanning from China to DC’?
From the beginning of the pandemic, there has been a persistent government effort to silence and marginalize those who questioned NIH’s policies and conclusions.
It began with coordinated attacks on those who challenged the government’s COVID policies, which was first revealed when the American Institute for Economic Research published emails showing NIH Director Francis Collins instructing subordinates (including Fauci) on the need for “a quick and devastating published take down (sic)” of the premises of the Great Barrington Declaration, whose authors Collins described as “fringe epidemiologists.” (These “fringe” epidemiologists came from Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford University.)
The attacks later shifted toward those who challenged the government’s assertion that COVID could only have originated naturally, a claim that was treated as dogma. Social media sites suspended users (at the behest of the government) who suggested COVID could have been man-made.
It’s become apparent that “fighting misinformation” was never NIH’s goal, or that of any other government agency. The goal was to fight information that conflicted with the government’s narratives, a common practice of authoritarian regimes.
David Asher, the man who led the State Department’s investigation into the origins of COVID-19, recently explained to New York magazine journalist David Zweig that the reason we have so little information about COVID’s origins is because people in power prefer it that way.
“Our own State Department told us ‘don’t get near this thing, it’ll blow up in your face,’” Asher told Zweig. “It’s a massive coverup spanning from China to DC.”
The unprecedented attacks on free speech Americans have witnessed the last three years stem directly from what Asher describes. During the pandemic, NIH was awarded $150 million to fight “misinformation,” a block of money that has been halted in the wake of NIH’s blunders and First Amendment challenges.
The most important thing to understand is that the war on “misinformation” isn’t an effort to spread the truth; it’s an effort to conceal it.
Free speech is truth’s greatest ally, which is precisely why authoritarian regimes throughout history have been so hostile to it. The famed Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis had it right when he observed, in Whitney v. California that “the freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth.”
If Americans want the truth about the origins of COVID-19, they should stop supporting government-led efforts to censor speech and start pressing those in power to answer questions—starting with Dr. Fauci and the CIA.
In a tyrannical dictatorship, the press is operated by employees of the government. In a Free Democracy™️, the press is operated by employees of the oligarchs who operate the government.
The New York Times has published another CIA press release disguised as news, this time aimed at whipping up paranoia toward anyone who criticizes the US proxy war in Ukraine.
The article is titled “Putin’s Next Target: U.S. Support for Ukraine, Officials Say”. Its author, Julian E Barnes, has written so many New York Times articles with headlines ending in the words “Officials Say” that we can safely assume the primary reason for his continued employment in that paper is because empire managers within the US government have designated him someone who can be trusted to print what they want printed. This designation would make him a reliable supplier of “scoops” (read: regurgitations of unevidenced government claims) for The New York Times.
“American officials said they are convinced that Mr. Putin intends to try to end U.S. and European support for Ukraine by using his spy agencies to push propaganda supporting pro-Russian political parties and by stoking conspiracy theories with new technologies,” Barnes writes.
Of course the report never gets any more specific than that, and of course the “American officials” Barnes cites promote their unevidenced assertions under cover of complete anonymity.
“The American officials spoke on the condition their names not be reported so they could discuss sensitive intelligence,” Barnes writes.
One of the most pathetic attempts at proxy war propaganda to date. If you criticize the US role in fueling the Ukraine war, then you have fallen under the spell of the all-powerful Putin’s “disinformation” and “conspiracy theories.” https://t.co/83OlgOUAQd
The only named source cited in the article is a CIA veteran named Beth Sanner, who says that “Russia will not give up on disinformation campaigns,” but adds that “we don’t know what it is going to look like.”
And that’s really the whole article right there. Putin is going to be using his spy agencies to promote political parties and messages which support ending the practice of pouring billions of dollars of weapons into Ukraine, but nobody knows what that will look like exactly, so we all have to just be sort of generally distrustful toward anyone who doesn’t think it’s a swell idea to perpetuate a horrific war with potentially world-ending consequences, because they might be part of an unspecified Russian influence operation.
We saw a similar report from CNN a few weeks ago, in which the public was warned that Russia’s FSB is working to convert westerners into mouthpieces for Russian propaganda using methods so sneaky and subtle that those westerners wouldn’t even know it’s happening. Again, details were extremely vague and the only obvious response to the information provided is for everyone to just get really paranoid toward anyone saying anything that doesn’t support current US foreign policy toward Russia.
As a thought experiment, imagine what it would look like if the CIA or some other agency wanted to advance US information interests by making the public distrustful of any people or information which go against US strategic objectives. Try to imagine some of the things they might say or do.
Do you imagine it would look much different than what we’re seeing currently? Feeding trusted mainstream news reporters extremely vague stories about the Kremlin trying to deceive people into opposing the longstanding agendas of the US intelligence cartel, using online media and social subversion? Can you think of a more effective way to help shore up trust in your preferred narratives and sow distrust in narratives you do not prefer?
Here’s another one: imagine a state media outlet for a tyrannical dictatorship. Think about how its news stories are made, how it would often take orders from the government on what to report and what not to report, and how all its printing or broadcasting would always align with the information interests of that government.
Now ask yourself: in what material way is that reporting different from these CIA press releases we’re seeing from outlets like The New York Times and CNN? In both scenarios the government is feeding the media information it wants printed, and in both scenarios there will be consequences if the media don’t obey. In our hypothetical dictatorship those consequences might be more severe, but in our real life scenario the consequences are no less real.
If Mr Barnes had refused to work on this story, he would have lost his “scoop” and it would have been given to someone else, perhaps at a competing outlet. If Barnes ceased uncritically reporting unevidenced assertions from anonymous government officials, his prominence in the mainstream media would quickly fizzle, and his career would dry up. If The New York Times ceased functioning as a reliable outlet for the credulous printing of unevidenced government claims, then the government agencies who’ve been elevating the paper to prominence with their artificial “scoops” can take those hot stories to another competing outlet and let them get the subscriptions and the glory.
In both scenarios, the government is able to get its propaganda messaging printed as hard news reporting. In one scenario the reporter reports what the government wants because they work for the government, in the other scenario the reporter reports what the government wants because that’s the only way to have a career in media outlets that are owned and controlled by the plutocrats who benefit from the political status quo the government is premised upon. The only major difference is that in our hypothetical dictatorship, the public probably knows it’s being fed propaganda, and is therefore more likely to take what they’re being told with a grain of salt.
In a tyrannical dictatorship, the press is operated by employees of the government. In a Free Democracy™️, the press is operated by employees of the oligarchs who operate the government. In both cases you’re getting state propaganda, but in one of them the propaganda is disguised as objective news reporting.
Ever since the outset of Israel’s genocidal onslaught against Gaza approximately one month ago corporate media has been awash with perspectives sympathetic to the Zionist cause. In fashion typical of the news media establishment parroting the talking points of the military industrial complex, acting as stenographers regurgitating pro war propaganda and maintaining the status quo of the western unipolar hegemony. With complete disregard to historical context, logical consistency, or pesky facts.
In layman’s terms, inverting the reality of the ongoing conflict to fit the agenda of imperialist psychopaths as per usual.
Rehashing much of the same talking points utilized at the outset of the US/ NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. Ukraine good; Russia bad… Just swap out the blue and yellow profile pic flag emoji with the Star of David, rinse, and repeat. Israel good; Palestine bad. They’ve even managed to trudge up some of the old rhetoric from the George W Bush regime to once again help sell the wholesale slaughter of innocent civilians. “There is no room for neutrality”. “You are either with us or you are with the terrorists”. George Bush in 2001 or Lior Hayat in 2023, what’s the difference? Either way the result is a 7000 pound bomb paid for with US taxpayer dollars dismembering Arab children for the crime of being born the wrong color in the wrong region.
Yet in this inverted reality that they facilitate where weapons manufacturers continue to make a killing off of senseless killing somehow the moral fabric of our society has deteriorated so far, our apathy so exorbitant, that it is actually a point of contention whether or not it is ethical to carpet bomb a concentration camp full of kids.
Of course the sad reality is this is nothing new when it comes to the nature of American exceptionalism, or the indifference of many around the world as a whole. Whether it be turning a blind eye to the carpet bombing of children in Gaza today, or those in Iraq twenty years ago, or the instantaneous incineration of whole cities á la Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or even casual dismissal of the mass genocide of over one hundred million indigenous peoples that precipitated the founding of our empire over two centuries ago. So long as people can be lulled into the comfortable ignorance of being insulated from the real world consequences of their governments actions, all is well.
This is partially the consequence of a civilization indoctrinated, psychologically subdued as casualties in the ever intensifying information war. Completely desensitized from the horrific monstrosity that is warfare; the obliteration of our fellow humans, particularly grizzly under the circumstances of false pretenses as established by neocolonialist ambitions.
Keep them dissociated with bread and circus while pundits promulgate empty talking points like it were a football game and let them keep pretending as if their impassivity doesn’t beget atrocity. Meanwhile Israeli officials continue to openly espouse the desire to wipe every Palestinian off the map, man, woman, and child, up to and including with the use of nuclear bombs in an effort to conquer the enclave.
Up to this point upwards of 9,000 civilians have been killed, over half of which are women and children. According to UNICEF Gaza has essentially become a child graveyard.
The sheer unbridled brutality has reached such a scale that even some who are typically in lockstep with the status quo of the war machine have spoken in opposition against it. Even CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and the UK’s Piers Morgan, both notorious war apologists in their own right, have shown brief glimpses of empathy in the face of Israel’s brazen mass murder of innocents.
Despite this there are still those, politicians, pundits, and regular people alike, seemingly divorced from their humanity encouraging this ruthless slaughter to continue. There is still no shortage of propaganda pieces deliberately disseminating misinformation to the average reader in an attempt to sway their sympathies in favor of the occupying apartheid colony.
Most common sense individuals by now understand that western media reporting on foreign policy has about as much reliability as a serial rapist put in charge of safeguarding a battered women’s shelter. Yes, that analogy is crude. But far from being an exaggeration.
So amidst this corporate deluge of disinformation I saw it fit to compose a compilation of essential reporting on the subject matter to help readers grasp a better understanding of the reality of the conflict. The following is an assortment of articles delineating those pertinent facts.
The final piece mentioned in that listing should be read after all else and considered with particular import. It is okay to admit when we are wrong about things. We live in a time when topics have become so overly polarized, positions so deeply tribal, that the mere concept of considering an opposing perspective, much less coming to the acceptance that perhaps we don’t know everything is literally repulsive to many. That is a behavior that we have to unlearn.
Life is about growing, our learning as a thinking species never ceases. Especially when our institutions of learning and education are so hopelessly co-opted to perpetuate the kind of thinking distinctly designed to benefit the ruling class, it is our responsibility to come to terms with the fact that often the notions that were instilled in us as facts were in actuality carefully curated half-truths, and sometimes even blatant lies, intended to manipulate our opinion on a subject and craft a worldview that doesn’t fall out of line with the status quo. It is our responsibility to unlearn the fallacies, so that we can begin to learn the truth.
Truth and liberty go hand in hand. One cannot exist without the other. If one claims to be an advocate of truth they must then in turn also become an advocate of liberty, and vice versa. Liberty is not selective, it is universal. It is an irreconcilable inconsistency to advocate for the liberty of some but not others. Frankly put you are either for the freedom of all people, or you are not for freedom. That includes the Palestinian people; the native Arab inhabitants of a strip of land that has been under illegal occupation and subjugation for more than a century. If you care about truth that is a fact that simply cannot be ignored. If you advocate liberty, it must include the liberation of Palestine.
After the Crash 