Category Archives: military spending

Gaza War Crimes Make a Mockery of Western “Democracy”

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By Margaret Kimberley

Source: Black Agenda Report

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.

A Ceasefire is Necessary But Not Sufficient: The Demand Must Be for Decolonization and Palestinian Self-Determination

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By Ajamu Baraka

Source: Dissident Voice

“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:

  1. 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.

The Hannibal Directive and Zionist Israel’s False Flag Terrorism

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By Gary D. Barnett

Source: GaryD.Barnett.com

“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.”

~ Stewart Stafford

Reference links:

October 7th testimonies reveal Israeli’s military shelling of Israeli citizens with tanks and missiles

Evidence shows that Israel deliberately killed its own citizens, UN personnel, and journalists

Did Israel Decide to Kill Hamas and Israeli Hostages Indiscriminately?

The Hannibal Directive: What really happened on October 7th?

Israeli False Flag and Intelligence Operation

The history of the Israeli expulsion of Palestinians is vital to understand

The Grim Prospects of US Proxies: Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan

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By Brian Berletic

Source: New Eastern Outlook

As Russia’s special military operation (SMO) approaches two years of intense fighting, having parried Ukraine’s “spring counteroffensive” and with the initiative shifting to Russian forces, Western capitals are now admitting they are reaching the limits to remaining support for Kiev.

During the Ukrainian offensive alone, the Western media has admitted Ukrainian forces have suffered catastrophic losses in both manpower and material. The Ukrainian economy has all but been replaced by heavy subsidies from the United States, Europe, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Ukrainian infrastructure including its power grid and ports have suffered severe damage the collective West is unable to repair in a timely manner.

Ukraine’s territory has shrunk. Four oblasts, Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson are now considered by Moscow as part of the Russian Federation. Crimea had already joined the Russian Federation following a referendum conducted in 2014 after the US-backed overthrow of the elected Ukrainian government.

In fact, from 2014 onward, Ukraine’s sovereignty had been stripped away, with the resulting client regime installed into power by the US answering to Washington at the expense of Ukraine’s best interests. To say Ukraine’s status as a viable nation state hangs in the balance because of this arrangement would not be an understatement.

Ukraine, as a US proxy, has suffered irreversible losses economically, politically, socially, and militarily. In a wider sense, Europe is also politically captured, led by the European Union bureaucracy who, like the Ukrainian government, serves Washington’s interests entirely at the expense of Europe’s collective interests.

Germany stands out as a particularly poignant example, having ignored the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, imposing sanctions on Russia to restrict any remaining hydrocarbons required by Germany’s industry and public, beginning a process of recession and deindustrialization.

Europe’s wider economy is suffering from similar setbacks, setbacks that cannot be offset by alternatives such as US liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) moved by ship across the Atlantic Ocean which will always be more expensive than Russian hydrocarbons piped in directly to Europe.

The price of subordination to the United States is in reality the existential threat the US claims Russia poses to Europe in fiction.

It should be noted that the US had long-planned to use Ukraine as a proxy to overextend Russia. Laid out in a 2019 policy paper published by the US government and arms industry-funded think tank, RAND Corporation, titled, “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground,” US policymakers would recommend providing lethal aid to Ukraine to draw Russia into the ongoing conflict between Kiev and militants in eastern Ukraine. The idea was to “increase the costs to Russia, in both blood and treasure,” as it dealt with the conflict between Kiev and eastern Ukraine along its borders.

The paper also noted, however, the strategy posed a high risk to Ukraine. Such a move, the paper warned, might:

…come at a significant cost to Ukraine and to U.S. prestige and credibility. This could produce disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows. It might even lead Ukraine into a disadvantageous peace. 

Despite these acknowledged risks, the United States pressed ahead with the plan anyway. Today, we see that fears expressed by US policymakers proposing this strategy have been fully realized, if not entirely surpassed.

Taiwan is Next… 

As Ukraine is destroyed by a US-engineered proxy war against Russia, with members of the US Congress vowing to fight Russia to the “last Ukrainian,” a similar arrangement is being used to organize the Chinese island province of Taiwan as a heavily US-armed proxy against the rest of China.

Just as was the case with Ukraine, US policymakers acknowledge the existential threat Taiwan faces in its role as a US proxy.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), likewise funded by the US government and arms manufacturers, published a 2023 paper titled, “The First Battle of the Next War: Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan.” In it, policymakers acknowledge that during any fighting between a US-backed Taiwan administration and the rest of China, heavy damage would be inflicted on the island.

The paper notes that any infrastructure the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) does not destroy in the fighting, because of its possible use to the PLA, the US itself would target and destroy it:

Ports and airfields enable the use of more varied ships and aircraft to accelerate the transport of troops ashore. The United States may attack these facilities to deny their use after Chinese capture. 

Beyond infrastructure useful to Chinese military forces, US policymakers have also explored the possibility of destroying economically useful infrastructure on Taiwan. An October 2022 Bloomberg article titled, “Taiwan Tensions Spark New Round of US War-Gaming on Risk to TSMC,” would report:

Contingency planning for a potential assault on Taiwan has been stepped up after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to people familiar with the Biden administration’s deliberations. The scenarios attach heightened strategic significance to the island’s cutting-edge chip industry, led by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. In the worst case, they say, the US would consider evacuating Taiwan’s highly skilled chip engineers.

The article also stated:

At the extreme end of the spectrum, some advocate the US make clear to China that it would destroy TSMC facilities if the island was occupied, in an attempt to deter military action or, ultimately, deprive Beijing of the production plants. Such a “scorched-earth strategy” scenario was raised in a paper by two academics that appeared in the November 2021 issue of the US Army War College Quarterly.

CSIS’ paper would analyze the possible outcome of a conflict between China and the US-backed administration on Taiwan, surmising:

In most scenarios, the United States/Taiwan/Japan defeated a conventional amphibious invasion by China and maintained an autonomous Taiwan. However, this defense came at high cost. The United States and its allies lost dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and tens of thousands of servicemembers. Taiwan saw its economy devastated. Further, the high losses damaged the U.S. global position for many years. 

In other words, even under the best-case scenario, following a US-backed defeat of any Chinese military operation aimed at reunification, the US would nonetheless have suffered heavy losses in terms of its military while Taiwan would have suffered catastrophic losses both militarily and economically.

Like Ukraine, Taiwan, in its capacity as a US proxy, would be destroyed.

Israel Will Not Be Spared Either 

US policy papers are also abounding with strategies employing Israel as an eager military proxy in the Middle East. Israel is elected to strike at nations across the region with impunity, freeing Washington of the political, military, economic, and diplomatic baggage of carrying out such military operations itself.

Of course, such military operations expose Israel to the same dangers that have threatened Ukraine’s self-preservation and threaten to undermine Taiwan’s.

With the US having demonstrated a fundamental inability to sponsor and win proxy wars against peer and near-peer adversaries in both Ukraine and Taiwan, there is little reason to believe that an already overstretched US military industrial base could somehow give Israel the ability to wage and win protracted proxy war in the Middle East.

Such a proxy war has already unfolded from 2011 onward both in Syria and Yemen with little success. Israel has already played a role in Syria, carrying out missile strikes across the country in an attempt to provoke Syria into a wider conflict.

Syria and its allies Iran and Russia have only strengthened their positions in the region and are driving a fundamental transformation across the Middle East. Even long-time US allies like Saudi Arabia and Turkey find themselves gradually divesting from a US-led regional order to one that better fits with the wider trend toward global multipolarism.

This has left the US and its remaining proxies in the region more isolated and vulnerable than ever. The US itself finds its own troops illegally occupying eastern Syria in an increasingly precarious position.

Israel, in many ways, finds itself likewise isolated. Should it lend itself to a major US proxy war more directly, it may find itself in a similar position as Ukraine – locked in intense, protracted combat with its US allies unable to provide the arms and ammunition necessary to win.

Unlike either Ukraine or Taiwan, Israel is believed to be in possession of between scores to hundreds of nuclear weapons. While Israel will thus never face the same sort of defeat Ukraine faces, a protracted military conflict will leave Israel exhausted economically and isolated diplomatically. Its Arab neighbors will move on with the multipolar world while Israel exhausts itself fighting to reassert US-led unipolarism.

Because of the deliberate, premeditated manner in which the US uses and then disposes of its proxies around the globe, there is little reason to believe it will spare Israel. While Israel has several advantages over other US proxies in terms of its economy, military capabilities, and diplomatic connections, these advantages will only prevent Israel’s use and disposal by US foreign policy if there is a conscious decision to pivot with the rest of the region away from US subordination and toward regional and global multipolarism.

More Lethal “Aid” for Israel

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Can’t the Israelis Pay for their Own Bullets, Bombs, and Missiles?

What U.S. “aid” to Israel produces: Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza after a bombing that killed dozens 11/1/23

By W.J. Astore

Source: Bracing Views

Apparently the top priority in the U.S. Congress is sending more “aid” to Israel, most of it lethal. It’s more important than health care for Americans, aid for the poor and disadvantaged, or even aid to U.S. schools and cities. Basically, it’s more important than anything.

Why is this? What elevates sending more bullets, bombs, and missiles to Israel above all other matters in the U.S. government? How does this make any sense?

Last time I checked, Israel is a modern country with healthy finances and is capable of buying this “aid” if it really needed to. Why is the U.S. taxpayer footing the bill for more munitions to kill innocent people in Gaza? I don’t want my money going to ethnic cleansing and more death; do you?

Most Americans, roughly two-thirds, support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Our voices are simply ignored by “our” government, which of course shows us that “our” government truly isn’t ours. The owners and donors, the oligarchs, have their own priorities, and they are not ours.

In a note to accompany an article with Medea Benjamin at Common Dreams, Nicolas Davies notes that:

The US media have failed to inform the public how isolated the US is in its support for the massacre taking place in Gaza. 120 countries voted for an immediate ceasefire in the UN General Assembly, while only 12 small countries voted with the US and Israel to oppose the resolution. US and Israeli leaders are not just out of touch with the rest of the world, but with their own people. Only 29% of Israelis wanted a full-scale invasion of Gaza, while 66% of Americans wanted a ceasefire – and that included 80% of Democrats.

Not only that, but new House Speaker Mike Johnson has decided to connect $14.3 billion in aid to Israel to an identical reduction in the budget of the IRS! He wants to cripple the ability of the IRS to go after tax cheats in America while giving a huge handout to America’s weapons makers in the cause of “defending” Israel.

You know the saying about death and taxes being the most certain things we face in life? Obviously in America selling death trumps collecting taxes.

Ukraine Fatigue Is Worrying NATO Elites – and So They Should Be

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On both sides of the Atlantic, there is now discernible fatigue and anger among citizens over NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.

By Finian Cunningham

Source:Information Clearing House

On both sides of the Atlantic, there is now discernible fatigue and anger among citizens over the bottomless money pit that is NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.

The only wonder is that it has taken so long for the Western public to get wise to the scam.

The disgraceful adulation of a Nazi war criminal by the whole Canadian parliament in a perverse show of solidarity with Ukraine against Russia has helped focus public attention on the obscenity of the NATO proxy war.

All told, since the NATO-induced conflict blew up in February last year, the American and European establishments have thrown up to €200 billion into Ukraine to prop up an odious Nazi-infested regime.

All that largesse that is billed to U.S. and European taxpayers has resulted in a slaughter in Europe not seen since the Second World War – and a failed Ukrainian state. And of course huge profits for the NATO military-industrial complex that bankrolls the elite politicians.

Times are changing though. In the United States, the financially conservative Republicans have had enough of the blank checks to the Kiev regime. The U.S. Congress finally showed a modicum of sanity to prevent a government financial shutdown – by dropping military aid to Ukraine. That shows how twisted Washington’s priorities have become when national self-interest has to wrestle with funding for a Nazi regime.

And then following the Congressional vote to temporarily end funding for Ukraine, the Kiev regime’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba dared to reprimand American lawmakers: “We are now working with both sides of Congress to make sure that it does not (get) repeated under any circumstances.”

Meanwhile in Europe, Slovakian citizens have voted for a new government to end the military fueling of war in Ukraine. The Smer-SD party led by Robert Fico won the parliamentary elections primarily on the vow to shut off any further weapons supply to the Kiev regime.

This week also saw massive protests in Germany against Olaf Scholz’s coalition government over the latter’s abject pro-war policies in Ukraine. German Unity Day on October 3 prompted a mass rally in Berlin denouncing the NATO proxy war in Ukraine and calling for peace negotiations to end the conflict.

There were also unprecedented protests across Poland in Warsaw, Lodz and other cities against the PiS government’s slavish implementation of the U.S.-led NATO proxy war in Ukraine. Faced with millions of Ukrainian refugees and neglect of social needs for Poles, the PiS ruling party has recently threatened to end weapons supply to Kiev – a move less about principle and more about trying to buy votes in the forthcoming election on October 15. Nevertheless, the belated move by the Polish government illustrates the concern among European leaders about growing public disdain over the seemingly endless financial aid allocated to Ukraine.

Josep Borrell, the European Union’s top diplomat, says it is a “worrying” sign that Washington for the first time closed the coffers for Ukraine.

The EU foreign ministers held a summit in Kiev on Monday. It was the first time that their summit was convened in a non-EU country. The agenda was a little too self-conscious, slated as a show of “solidarity” with Ukraine.

Borrell and the other EU diplomats said the summit was a warning to Russia to not count on “weariness” among Europeans over support for Ukraine. Who is he trying to convince? Russia or Europeans?

The unelected European elites described the war in Ukraine as an “existential crisis” which requires never-ending support for the Nazi regime against Russia.

Such melodrama needs serious qualification. The conflict is only “existential” for certain people: the NATO ideologues, the elitist leaders, the military-industrial complex, and the corrupt Nazi regime in Kiev. But it’s not existential for most other people who want to end this insane slaughter, grotesque wasting of public finances, and perilous flirting with nuclear war.

Significantly, the contrived EU summit in Kiev was not attended by Hungary’s foreign minister Peter Szijjarto. In highly critical comments on the EU’s misplaced priorities, he said that other countries do not understand why Europe “has made this conflict global” and why people living in Asia, Africa and Latin America have to pay for it due to growing inflation, energy prices and unstable food supplies.

The Hungarian diplomat slammed the EU leaders for their double standards and hypocrisy, adding: “I can say that the world outside Europe is already really looking forward to the end of this war because they do not understand many things. They do not understand, for example, how it can be that when a war is not in Europe, the European Union, looking down with fantastic moral superiority, calls on the parties to peace, advocates negotiations and an immediate end to violence. However, when there is a war in Europe, the European Union incites the conflict and supplies weapons, and anyone who talks about peace is immediately stigmatized.”

At least two members of the EU and the NATO alliance – Hungary and Slovakia’s new government – are opposed to the absurd military and financial support fueling the war in Ukraine. Both countries want peace negotiations with Russia to be prioritized. There is an unavoidable sense that this common sense dissent will grow into a domino effect because it is the truth and has an unassailable moral force.

What the conflict in Ukraine has demonstrated clearly to the Western public is just how morally bankrupt their governments and media have become. American and European elitist leaders may kid themselves a little longer by pretending there is no weariness and fatigue over their proxy war against Russia. The more they pretend the greater the eventual crash and downfall from public anger.

US Stretched Thin as Ukraine Offensive Fails, Israelis Threaten Large-Scale Conflict

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By Brian Berletic

Source: New Eastern Outlook

As Ukraine’s “spring counteroffensive” nears five months of intense fighting and equally intense losses achieving only negligible gains, Kiev’s sponsors in Washington, London, and Brussels find their military stockpiles nearing depletion and their military industrial base stretched far beyond capacity. This single conflict has tested the limits of US military power, diplomatic reach, and economic influence, exposing significant and growing weakness.

At the same time cracks begin to emerge militarily, diplomatically, and economically in the US and among its European allies, the rest of the globe continues its pivot away from the previous US-dominated global order, toward a broader balance of power under multipolarism, further undermining US foreign policy objectives.

Rather than reflect on this paradigm shift and find a rational place for the collective West in this emerging global order, the US and its allies are doubling down in an attempt to reassert their slipping international system and specifically through the use of proxy conflicts.

Just as the US-led collective West is using Ukraine as a focal point to confront, encircle, and contain Russia, the US has maintained Israel as a foothold in the Middle East for decades vis-à-vis Iran and its allies.

In East Asia, the US maintains a presence of tens of thousands of American troops in South Korea and Japan, while expanding its military presence in its former colony of The Philippines. It also has heavily invested in separatist elements on the Chinese island province of Taiwan, setting up the same sort of dynamics seen in Ukraine and Israel that have led to violent conflict in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

It stands to reason that if Washington’s proxy war with Russia in Ukraine is unsustainable and a losing proposition, compounding the strain on US military, diplomatic, and economic power by investing in one or more additional proxy wars around the globe will only accelerate the collapse of US primacy around the globe and the rise of multipolarism.

Ukraine: A Failing Proxy War 

A recent New York Times article titled, “Has Support for Ukraine Peaked? Some Fear So,” highlights growing concern over Washington’s stretched global ambitions. It notes that with growing hostilities in the Middle East and US military aid now being divided between two US proxies, Ukraine and Israel, there is a growing realization that difficult decisions will be necessary.

The article also admits that even before conflict erupted in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas, expanding into a broader and large-scale Israeli military operation against the Palestinians, both support for and interest in Ukraine was already waning.

Beyond political will, the New York Times admits to technical limitations of Western support for its proxies globally.

The article admits:

European vows to supply one million artillery shells to Ukraine by March are falling short, with countries supplying only 250,000 shells from stocks — a little more than one month of Ukraine’s current rate of fire — and factories still gearing up for more production. 

Adm. Rob Bauer, who is the chairman of the NATO Military Committee, said in Warsaw that Europe’s military industry had geared up too slowly and still needed to pick up the pace.

It should be noted that a previous New York Times article revealed that Russia is currently producing as many artillery shells annually as the combined output of the US and Europe if production is expanded by 2025 at the earliest.

Even if the West could rally both political and public support for not only Ukraine, but also Israel, the limitations of the West’s combined military industrial base simply cannot deliver the material support needed to match it.

Israeli Military Gears Up For War, Diverts Military Support for Ukraine 

Following the October 7, 2023 Hamas raids into Israeli-held territory, the Israeli military has begun carrying out large-scale military operations against the inhabitants of Gaza as well as strikes on southern Lebanon and airports in Syria. A military incursion into Gaza alone will require huge amounts of artillery and aerial munitions, as well as small arms ammuniton.

While the US government claims it is capable of supplying both Israel and Ukraine, it is clear that if support was already falling far short of requirements in Ukraine, dividing it among Ukraine and now Israel means US military support will be stretched even thinner still.

In a Politico article titled, “Planes have already taken off’: U.S. sends Israel air defense, munitions after Hamas attack,” admits:

The needs of the Israelis and Ukrainians are different in some key respects. Israel will rely heavily on precision air-to-ground munitions fired from F-16 and F-35 fighter jets and Apache helicopters, none of which is in the Ukrainian arsenal. The issue of 155mm artillery shells, which both countries rely on heavily, will likely loom large, however.

The US has already transferred 300,000 rounds of 155mm artillery ammunition from stockpiles maintained in Israel for both US and Israeli use, to Ukraine. Now 155mm rounds will be flowing back into Israel.

It should be pointed out that Israel also operates M270 multiple launch rocket systems, which fire the same GPS-guided rockets as the HIMARS vehicles the US transferred to Ukraine. There has so far been no discussion of transferring such rockets to Israel and if this will impact shipments of this ammunition to Ukraine, but as CNN pointed out in a May 2023 article, Ukraine’s daily rate of fire was already a meager 18 rockets.

In 2006, Israel’s failed ground incursion into southern Lebanon was accompanied by an intense nation-wide aerial bombardment of Lebanon using a variety of aerial munitions including guided bombs. In less than a month of intense military operations, Israel’s stockpiles were depleted, and as the New York Times reported at the time, additional munitions were rushed from US stockpiles to Israel.

Protracted Israeli military operations will broaden the drain on US military stockpiles and military industrial output across even more weapons and munitions than Ukraine has.

And Taiwan Too… 

It cannot be forgotten that the third focal point of Washington’s Russia-China containment policy, Taiwan, also requires large amounts of munitions to prepare for a conflict the US is openly attempting to provoke with the rest of China.

Even as the US intensifies its pressure on China over Taiwan, America’s stretched military industrial base is struggling to meet even previously agreed upon arms sales.

Bloomberg in its September 2023 article, “Taiwan Arms Supply Is Hobbled by Slow Contractors, US Official Says,” admitted:

Delays in US delivery of promised weapons to Taiwan stem more from defense industry shortcomings than government inefficiency, according to a State Department official handling foreign arms sales. 

“We need to work together to encourage our partners in industry to take more risks, be more flexible, diversify their supply chains and act with deliberate speed to expand production capacity,” Mira Resnick, deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Political Military Affairs, said in prepared remarks for a hearing Tuesday by the House Armed Services Committee. 

Expanding physical production facilities, channeling larger amounts of raw materials and basic components into these facilities, and manning them with sufficient human resources depend on other prerequisite investments to be made, such as in construction, mining, upstream manufacturing, and education.

Thus, despite the ease with which US officials demand military industrial production be expanded, doing so is a resource and time-intensive process that will take years if and only if both the US government and Western arms manufacturers agree to significantly expand production. This takes place at the same time both Russia and China continue expanding their own industrial bases, including the production of military equipment, weapons, and ammunition.

For US, proxy wars to have succeeded, Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan would have needed US military industrial production expanded years ago.

It is clear US geostrategic planning attempted to produce a strategy that achieved its objectives with what it had on hand. This strategy was swallowed up in Ukraine, with the remnants being divided between a depleted Ukrainian military and a nascent Israeli military operation that could escalate out of control.

This leaves US policymakers with two options; increasingly extreme and dangerous options including direct interventions in Ukraine, the Middle East, and against China in what could escalate into nuclear war or a pivot away from achieving global primacy and finding a proportional role for the US to play among, rather than above, all other nations.

The future of the United States will take the shape of either an overextended empire involuntarily retreating into irrelevance and destitution, or a powerful member of the multipolar world prioritizing the rebuilding of its industrial base, infrastructure, and its education system to trade with and contribute alongside the rest of the world. The longer the US invests in the former option, the longer and more difficult the transition will be to the latter.

Israel is committing an epic war crime with US backing and arms

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Where is the U.S. peace movement and the U.S. public outrage?

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By Dave Lindorff

Source: Nation of Change

When the U.S. was bombing levees and hospitals in North Vietnam, peasants in Laos and burning villages in South Vietnam, herding those not killed in the process into “strategic hamlets,” Americans took to the streets en masse, occupied the Pentagon mall, brought central Washington D.C. to a standstill, and broke into an FBI office stealing the records of Cointelpro disruption and spying and into a draft ward destroying the records of potential draftees.

When U.S. military “trainers” helped massacre and slaughter peasant guerrillas and their urban supporters fighting a brutal dictatorship in El Salvador, and the Pentagon was running a proxy war against the revolutionary government in Nicaragua, masses of Americans, even in the absence of a draft and of US deaths, rose to the occasion to massively oppose U.S. intervention in those countries’ internal conflicts.  Even in 2003 when America was preparing to invade Iraq, claiming it was making or hiding weapons of mass destruction, chemical or even nuclear, Americans in record numbers turnout out in Washington to oppose going to war. (It didn’t work, but at least they turned out to protest war.)

Now when America is basically bankrolling and arming Israel as it prepares to commit a massive war crime, collectively punishing and killing ordinary Palestinians trapped in the open-air prison of Gaza. When the Israeli ‘Defense’ Force (IDF)  is giving the 1.1 million Palestinians living in the northern 12-mile-long and 7-mile-wide half of the walled-off enclave 24 hours to relocate themselves to the southern half of the strip or face the full destructive force of an all-out  IDF air and ground attack and invasion of the north—an impossible challenge. When Israel has cut off all supplies of food, medicine, water (in a desert!), electricity, and oil for the enclaves on rickety power plant, already for a week, the protests by Americans have been anemic, and have largely been by specifically pro-Palestinian groups, not by what is left of the once large and broad peace movement.

It is a shameful moment. While a few left-leaning progressive Democratic members of Congress like Reps AOC and Ilhan Omar have denounced Israel’s war crime of collective punishment and U.S. support for it, there is actually more criticism of Israel and of U.S. military aid to that country coming from Republicans than Democrats, (though they aren’t talking about the war crimes, since Republicans favor those tactics in other circumstances). The truth is, one of the arguments being used by Democrats to convince House Republicans to get their shit together and elect a House speaker is so they can pass legislation in that chamber to allow the U.S. to give Israel (and Ukraine) even more military aid.

And still, no burgeoning, blooming peace movement.

The U.S. may not be technically at war, but the U.S. war machine is everywhere, on every continent, in every ocean, its military budget, way over $1 trillion a year when everything is counted, bigger than it was in constant dollars than at the height of the Vietnam War when 500.000 U.S. troops were in that country fighting, dying (and losing) a hot war. But its special forces, its arms merchants of death, and its military “trainers” are busy stirring up and supporting local conflicts and pouring oil on fires like those blazing in Ukraine, Yemen, Gaza, Syria, Niger, Haiti, and elsewhere, while also making trouble off the coast of China, on the Korean peninsula (where it still has troops based and has had since 1950, and in Eastern Europe and the Baltic Sea.

Where is the public anger? Where is the organized protest against this warmongering permanent government in Washington, D.C.?

Americans are mad at Washington to be sure, correctly perceiving that it is corrupt and rotten to the core They know it ignores popular calls for taxes on the rich, for a well funded Social Security system that will pay livable retirement benefits as promised to all retirees into the foreseeable future, instead of facing drastic cuts in a decade or sooner, a medical system that doesn’t drive us into bankruptcy when we get sick, that gives everyone access to care they can afford and doesn’t give mega profits to private insurers and hospital executives, good public schools for our kids, affordable public colleges, an end to debt enslavement, police who are social servants not fear-inspiring centurions, clean air and water, and action of preventing a climate emergency. But too many of us don’t grasp that none of those things that huge majorities of us want will happen as long as the leaders in Washington, almost all of them bought and owned by large corporate and financial interests and the rich, are enamored of weapons, wars and militarism.

We need a focused campaign to use all available means to educate the American public to a common-sense reality: you cannot have guns and butter. And you can’t eat guns.

As a  Vietnam War Era war resister and protester I’m disgusted. How can we U.S. Americans be accepting that almost all the income tax we pay each year (including income taxes on our Social Security benefits for gods’ sakes!) goes straight to funding the Pentagon and America’s endless wars and proxy wars, with the rest of federal government operations being funded using borrowed money– loans that we the taxpayers have to then pay five percent or more  in interest on every year. In the end it’s all because of the military budgets.

Get it?

It’s time to take that to the streets.

A good place to start would be demanding that the U.S. stop propping up the intransigent, apartheid, fake democracy of Israel and demand that it stop its collective punishment of 2.3 million Gazan Palestinians. For once, the U.S. should try to solve an international crisis by taking action to de-escalate conflict instead of pouring oil on the fire by mindlessly offering more weapons and ammunition.

If that approach works there, our troglodyte leaders should try the same thing with the Ukraine/Russia conflict.