Predictably, Joe Biden is being flayed by the Republicans over the killing of three U.S. troops in Jordan by Iraqi militants.
The Democrat president is slammed for being weak and a coward by his political opponents.
Donald Trump, his main Republican rival, mocked Biden as a “loser” and said the attacks on U.S. troops were because of the president’s “weakness and surrender”.
Nikki Haley, the other Republican vying for the presidential election this year, also taunted Biden for showing spinelessness toward Iran. She called for direct retaliation on the Islamic Republic “with the full force of American strength”. Logically, that could imply the use of nuclear weapons.
Unanimously across the mainstream U.S. political spectrum, it was assumed that Iran was ultimately responsible for the deadly attack on the U.S. military base on Sunday in Jordan where three military servicemen were killed and 34 were reportedly wounded, according to early reports.
The attack was claimed by Iraqi militants, the Kata’ib Hezbollah, as part of an umbrella group known as the Islamic Resistance. The militants are believed to be an alliance of militias based in Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, and Yemen. The latter two include Hezbollah and the Ansar Allah movement also known as the Houthis. All are allied with Iran. But each is understood to have its own agency in directing and executing operations.
These groups have carried out hundreds of attacks on U.S. and Israeli bases since October 7 when Israel launched its offensive on Gaza following the deadly raid on Israel by Hamas. The Yemenis bring a maritime dimension to the region-wide resistance with the ongoing targeting of U.S. and other ships in the Red Sea area.
Iran has denied that it was involved in the latest attack on the U.S. base in Jordan. Tehran also denies it is behind the Yemeni operations in the Red Sea.
Iran and the resistance groups say they are an anti-imperialist alliance that is united by opposition to the U.S.-backed Zionist genocide in Gaza. These groups are not “Islamist” in the mold of Islamic State and its hardline Sunni (Wahhabi or Takfiri) offshoots. Far from it. The resistance groups were galvanized to defeat the Islamists which have been fomented and supported covertly by the United States for its regime change war in Syria. That proxy war was defeated after Russia intervened in 2015 in support of Syria.
The Americans are locked into a downward spiral created by their own flawed logic and cumulative imperialist occupation in the region.
Even President Biden has accused Iran of being responsible for the killing of the three U.S. military personnel. Biden vowed to respond at a time of “our choosing”.
So, Washington unquestioningly determines that Iran is the master culprit. That means the U.S. has committed itself to going after Tehran without any evidence or realistic understanding of where such a direction is leading. That is, how bad it could get for the Americans.
In a U.S. election year shaping up to be more fraught than ever, and with Biden facing dwindling poll numbers, the White House incumbent is highly susceptible to being goaded by Republican adversaries.
Trump has already been hammering Biden for being weak and frail. With the Middle East turning into a cauldron over the Israeli slaughter in Gaza, the Commander-in-Chief is cornered to show mettle. Biden is a hostage of stupid macho politics and bankrupt American imperialism. Diplomacy is simply not an option for the empire, according to its own logic and delusions.
After the deadly drone strike on the U.S. base in Jordan, Republican Senator Tom Cotton dialed up the revenge with the usual warmongering ranting and raving: “The only answer to these attacks must be devastating retaliation against Iran’s terrorist force… Anything less will confirm Joe Biden as a coward.”
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Biden’s inaction was the problem because it was emboldening enemies in the Middle East, saying: “The time to start taking this aggression seriously was long before more brave Americans lost their lives.”
How hilarious that Biden is scoffed at for being dovish. During his long career, he has been one of the most warmongering politicians in Washington. He backed the U.S.-led NATO wars in former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and presently in Ukraine. The only thing cowardly about Biden is that he is a craven tool of the military-industrial complex and a pathetic psychopath.
Biden is also known for his bad temper and macho knee-jerk character. We can be quite certain that the Republican taunts about his supposed pusillanimous policy in the Middle East will get his hackles up. Biden has already taken a reckless militarist position over supporting Israeli aggression. The shocking mass killing of over 26,000 Palestinian civilians under a brutal blockade of starvation has shocked the world and in particular Arab and Muslim people. And yet Biden has not paused in his “unwavering support” for Israel.
Biden has led U.S. imperialism out of the quagmire of Afghanistan into an even bigger quagmire in the Middle East. With the goading by his equally brainless political rivals, the Americans are plowing further into disaster.
With over 50 military bases strung across the Middle East in 10 countries and with over 50,000 U.S. troops stationed in the region, the Americans are sitting ducks for the resistance. The advent of drones and newer missile technology is a new realm of warfare the Americans have not adapted to with their land garrisons in remote deserts and gaudy warships.
The death of three U.S. troops has long been on the cards. The stupid American politicians think they are going to get revenge. They have no idea what is coming to them given the long history of U.S. aggression, provocation, and illegal occupation in the region. The support of Israel’s genocide, the heartrending scenes of children being torn apart by American bombs, the bombing of Yemen – the poorest Arab country – the crazed threats to Iran, the insufferable American arrogance, and decades of impunity are all now welling up in the Middle East.
The stupid American politicians are digging a hole for themselves and have no awareness of how to reverse it. Democrats, Republicans, Biden, Trump, and so on, they are all a ship of fools.
You have to hand it to the U.S. and its henchmen for brazenness. In order to protect their client state Israel and its genocide in Gaza, the U.S., together with the UK, have in one week launched air and sea attacks on the Houthis in Yemen five times, referring to it as “self-defense” in their Orwellian lingo. The ostensible reason being Yemen’s refusal to allow ships bound for Israel, which is committing genocide in Gaza, to enter the Red Sea, while permitting other ships to pass freely.
To any impartial observer, the Houthis should be lauded. Yet, while the International Court of Justice considers the South African charge of genocide against Israel that is supported by overwhelming evidence, the U.S. and its allies have instigated a wider war throughout the Middle East while claiming they do not want such a war. These settler colonial states want genocide and a much wider war because they have been set back on their heels by those they have mocked, provoked, and attacked – notably the Palestinians, Syrians, and Russians, among others.
While the criminalization of international law does not bode well for the ICJ’s upcoming ruling or its ability to stop Israeli’s genocide in Gaza, Michel Chossudovsky, of Global Research, as is his wont, has offered a superb analysis and suggestion for those who oppose such crimes: that Principle IV of the Nuremberg Charter – “The fact that a person [e.g. Israeli, U.S. soldiers, pilots] acted pursuant to order of his [her] Government or of a superior does not relieve him [her] from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.” – should be used to supplement the South African charges and appeal directly to the moral consciences of those asked to carry out acts of genocide. He writes:
Let us call upon Israeli and American soldiers and pilots “to abandon the battlefield”, as an act of refusal to participate in a criminal undertaking against the People of Gaza.
South Africa’s legal procedure at the ICJ should be endorsed Worldwide. While itcannot be relied upon to put a rapid end to the genocide, it provides support and legitimacy to the “Disobey Unlawful Orders, Abandon the Battlefield” campaign under Nuremberg Charter Principle IV.
While such an approach will not stop the continuing slaughter, it would remind the world that each person who participates in and supports it bears a heavy burden of guilt for their actions; that they are morally and legally culpable. This appeal to the human heart and conscience, no matter what its practical effect, will at least add to the condemnation of a genocide happening in real time and full view of the world, even though no one will ever be prosecuted for such crimes since any real just use of international law has long disappeared. Yet there is a edifying history of such conscientious objection to immoral war making, and though each person makes the decision in solitary witness, individual choices can inspire others and the solitary become solidary, as Albert Camus reminded us at the end of his short story, “The Artist at Work.”
With each passing day, it becomes more and more evident that Israel/U.S.A. and their allies do want a wider war. Iran is their special focus, with Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen targets on the way. Anyone who supports the genocide in Gaza, explicitly or through silence, bears responsibility for the conflagration to come. There are no excuses.
And the facts show that it is axiomatic that waging war has been the modus operandi of the U.S./Israeli alliance for a long time. Just as in early 2003 when the Bush administration said they were looking for a peaceful solution to their fake charges against Sadam Hussein with his alleged “weapons of mass destruction,” the Biden administration is lying, as the Bush administration lied about September 11, 2001 to launch its ongoing war on terror, starting in Afghanistan. Without an expanded war, President Biden – aka the Democrats, since he will most probably not be the candidate – and his psychopathic partner Benjamin Netanyahu, will not survive. It is bi-partisan war-mongering, of course, internationally and intramurally, since both U.S. political parties are controlled by the Israel Lobby and billionaire class that owns Congress and the “defense” industry that thrives on never-ending war to such an extent that even the notable independent candidate for the presidency, Robert Kennedy, Jr., who is running as an anti-war candidate, fully supports Israel which is tantamount to supporting Biden’s expanding war policy.
Biden and Netanyahu, who are always claiming after the fact that they were surprised by events or were fed bad advice by their underlings, are dumb scorpions. They are stupid but deadly. And many people in the West, while perhaps decent people in their personal lives, are living in a fantasy world of “sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity,” in MLK, Jr.’s words, as the growing threat of a world war increases and insouciance reigns.
Neither the Israeli nor American government can allow themselves to be humiliated, U.S./NATO by the Russians in Ukraine and the Israelis by the Palestinians. Like cornered criminals with lethal weapons, they will kill as many as they can on their way down, taking their revenge on the weakest first.
Their “mistakes” are always well intentioned. They stumble into wars through faulty intelligence. They drop the ball because of bureaucratic mix-ups. They miscalculate the perfidy of the moneyed elites whom allegedly they oppose while pocketing their cash and ushering them into the national coffers out of necessity since they are too big to fail. They never see the storm coming, even as they create it. Their incompetence or the perfidy of their enemies is the retort to all those “nut cases” who conjure up conspiracy theories or plain facts to explain their actions or lack thereof. They are innocent. Always innocent. And they can’t understand why those they have long abused reach a point when they will no longer impetrate for mercy but will fight fiercely for their freedom.
All signs point to a major war on the horizon. Both the U.S.A. and Israel have been shown to be rogue states with no desire to negotiate a peaceful world. Believing in high-tech weapons and massive firepower, neither has learned the hard lesson that anti-colonial wars have historically been won by those with far less weapons but with a passionate desire to throw off the chains of their oppressors. Vietnam is the text-book case, and there are many others. Failure to learn is the name of their game.
The Zionist project for a Greater Israel is doomed to fail, but as it does, desperate men like Biden and Netanyahu are intent on launching desperate acts of war. Exactly when and how this expanded war will blaze across the headlines is the question. It has started, but I think it prudent to expect a black swan event sometime this year when all hell will break loose. The genocide in Gaza is the first step, and the U.S./Israel, “not wanting” a wider war, have already started one.
(For an excellent history lesson on the Zionist oppression of Palestinians and the current genocide, listen to Max Blumenthal’s and Miko Peled’s impassioned talk – “Where is the War in Gaza Going? – delivered from the heart of darkness, Washington D.C. Two Jewish men who know the difference between Zionism and Judaism and whose consciences are aflame with justice for the oppressed Palestinians.)
If you read Western mainstream propaganda these days, you’ll find the truth hidden so deep no archaeologist could unearth it. A case in point is a buried lead in a story from the New York Post suggesting Russia has secret plans to hit NATO hard in the coming months.
According to the Post’s Chris Nesi, leaked secret documents released by German newspaper BILD tell of Europe preparing for Vladimir Putin to expand his military operation in Ukraine and to attack NATO ally countries next year. If readers take the headline and a keen graphic illustrating Putin’s alleged diabolical plan, you’d be in the right stocking up those bomb shelters in Wisconsin and Luxembourg.
Fortunately, Nesi’s story is entirely misleading. It suggests BILD got hold of Russian secret plans, conveniently categorised as a “plot” to sound more sinister, when in fact, German generals made plans to etch out WW3 like some chessboard game. The New York Post super sleuth waited until the article’s end to tell readers the truth about these “plans.” Here’s the passage.
“While the plans obtained by BILD are a potential scenario prepared by generals in the German army, European allies take Russia’s threat seriously and are preparing accordingly.”
The biggest problem with these misleading stories is the downstream effect of main outlets, and their tabloid cousins, spreading the lies to the broader public. Iona Cleave of The Sun titled her version “COUNTDOWN TO CONFLICT Putin’s ‘step-by-step plan to bring West to brink of WW3’ revealed in leaked intel doc…including date of ‘Day X’ in 2025.” In this case, the lead of the story is not just buried. It’s cremated and scattered into the digital air before publication by the tabloid. Still, grocery shoppers in London and Edinburgh catch the stunning revelations about “X-Day” while waiting in the checkout line. The Putin bad man campaign continues, and the everyday citizen wonders what their government will do to protect them.
Then the narrative arrives for curious business people via Banking News: “Britain sends 20,000 troops to mammoth NATO exercise against ‘Putin threat’.” Mail Online takes things further by quoting the former head of NATO forces in Europe, retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, assuring readers the “plot” is actual. So, the German Ministry of Defence’s so-called step-by-step doomsday guide is deftly transformed into a bored staff officer scenario-building game in leather armchairs somewhere beneath the Brandenburg Gate into a bonafide Putin strategy to take over Europe.
The media is not the only conduit for Russophobia these days. Leaders of state like Rishi Sunak, Prime Minister of the UK, say the Russians will not stop at Ukraine’s borders. American President Joe Biden has warned my people that if Putin wins a victory over Ukraine, Russia will attack a NATO country. And the minions of continual conflict for the Liberal Order are out in force in academia, business, and on the NGO and think tank circuit. One fine example is retired Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, who’s gone on the media/propaganda circuit to sell more gas masks and military headgear via companies he’s affiliated with, told The Telegraph, “Putin may be about to launch an apocalyptic assault.” For those unfamiliar, Colonel Hamish Stephen de Bretton-Gordon commanded NATO’s Rapid Reaction CBRN Battalion between 2005 and 2007. He was in all the right places about the time America was introduced to the post-9/11 idea of a “war on terror.” He later led a company profiting from his and other analysts’ apocalyptic prophecies. When regime change schemes came to Syria, it was the good colonel who “informed” the House of Commons and the waiting BBC audience of Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons on his people. Bretton-Gordon and many others trained by the spooks and the Anglo-American military-industrial complex play a continuous melody of crisis and fear.
“The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.” ― Adolf Hitler
Logic, the holy of holies these days, seems as lost as the Ark of the Covenant. Who could fail to notice, for instance, Russia taking up a defensive stance to save her soldiers’ lives and those of countless civilians in Ukraine cities like Kyiv, Karkhov, and Dnipro? With nearly half a million troops held in reserve and with Ukraine’s forces decimated, why haven’t the Russians already pushed through the weak spots on the way to the Dnieper River? And what about the billions and billions in arms and cash Western states have now lost to an impossible cause?
Looking at the latest tally of destroyed Ukraine equipment since the start of the operation tells the real story. So far, the Russians have knocked out almost 600 Ukrainian warplanes, 265 helicopters, almost 11,000 UAVs, 450 SAM systems, 14,645 tanks and armoured vehicles, 1,202 rocket launching systems, 7,750 artillery pieces, and 17,507 special military vehicles. Unbiased experts put the number of Ukraine dead at between 400 and 500 thousand combatants. And the number of wounded surely exceeds a million by now.
And finally, let’s remember that the elitist-controlled Western media, the politicians, and the so-called experts have been telling us Russia was finished for years now. Sanctions, the blown-up pipeline, and the weapons and money dump to Zelensky were supposed to weaken Russia. This is not the truth. Russia is more vital now than ever since the 1980s, militarily and economically. This points to another point of lost logic. Why would Russia want to take over states protected by NATO? Europe is a consumer continent. It’s where a billion people need feeding, not a breadbasket for good Russian families. There is nothing in Europe that Russia needs. It is Europe, on the other hand, that desperately needs Russia and the other BRICS countries. So, who are the most likely aggressors in all this?
Never believe their slogans, especially not NATO/good, Russia/bad.
Joe Biden ordered airstrikes on Iraq, against Iranian-backed militants, in retaliation for recent attacks by those militants that severely injured three American soldiers. Joe didn’t consult with Congress or anyone else before ordering the strikes, and no declaration of war exists of course. Yet no one believes the militias, following their spanking, will disappear or stop harming Americans.
That sums up the Biden Foreign Policy, call it a doctrine if you’d like: a series of geopolitically unsuccessful, inconsequential, mostly reactive unilateral actions, with no end game. Underlying it all is the sense that no one is particularly frightened, respectful or wary of American power anymore. Let’s see how this worked on a global scale over the last three bloody years.
The disastrous evacuation of Kabul in August 2021 should have warned all of us we were dealing with foreign policy amateurs. The rush for the last planes was an expected unexpected event. Yet the Biden administration did not quietly start the evacuation in February with high-value personnel, nor did it negotiate ahead of time for third country landing rights. Mistakes made as long ago as Vietnam evacuating locals who worked with us were clear, yet Biden did not kick start processing SIV visas for translators and others until literally the last flights were scheduled out. The entire evacuation appeared as an unplanned free fall, just “land some planes and see if that works.” No endgame really, simply a unilateral decision to cap the evacuation off at a certain point in time and declare it over no matter who was or was not saved.
Ukraine is some yellowed vision of cold war. The Biden plan was based on a Wonka-like act of imagination, that U.S. arms wielded by amateur fighters backed up by intelligence, space-based targeting, and special forces infiltrated on the ground would hastily defeat a determined opponent (See Afghanistan, failure of the same strategy, 2001-2003.) When the miracle cure strategy failed, there was no Plan B except to continue to pour arms in to a war that had no clear end game, that was not winnable, only sustainable. Meanwhile, Biden restrictions on domestic mining mean the United States is the largest purchaser of Russian enriched uranium. If the Russians are scared of American power they hide that well.
The results have not been better elsewhere. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine preceeded what one pundit described as “the 2023 brazen Chinese spy balloon’s uncontested trajectory over the United States, the recent Hamas invasion of Israel, the serial Iranian-fueled terrorist attacks on U.S. installations in Iraq and Syria, and the terrorist Houthis’ veritable absorption of the Red Sea. America’s enemies had become opportunistic, not deterred.” Biden took the bait at each open-ended opportunity, and now Joe is dangerously close to letting Gaza and Yemen spiral into a global conflict.
And so another “coalition” fight, this time in Ukraine with NATO, ended up a U.S. primary struggle. It is NATO mostly walking away from the meat of the Ukraine struggle, and the baby NATO coalition elsewhere of France, Italy, and others that was supposed to control the Red Sea breaking down. It is a thin gruel of happy talk about caring for civilians backed up by unlimited arms to Israel, handled so poorly diplomatically that the U.S. has inherited pariah status globally. The modern version of American power was demonstrated when Egypt snubbed Joe Biden’s visit over the mess in Gaza. The question of Palestine, always simmering, is now another major issue to divide Red and Blue and further polarize society. In addition to receiving $6 billion in frozen oil funds from Biden as a ransom for five American hostages, Iran controls the playbook, attacking with impunity via its proxies across Iraq, Syria, and southern Lebanon; Iran’s partners carried out more than 100 attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, Syria and the Red Sea. They decide if and when the 1:1 conflict with Israel goes regional, and the U.S. will be again forced to react. The Houthis, also Iran-backed, have dragged the U.S. into a broad promise to keep the Red Sea open to shipping, as the world rolls its eyes as Pax Americana once again looks like a punchline. Can anyone say we are still indispensable?
Another Biden foreign policy disaster has come home, literally, in the immigration crisis. For reasons too vague to enunciate, the Biden administration did away with any semblance of immigration law and flung open the southern border to anyone interested in wandering in. Already more than eight million illegal entrants have come across, with another quarter-million entering each month. As in Ukraine and elsewhere, there is no endgame. When will the border close? How much will caring for the millions cost (New York City has processed more than 160,000 migrants; some 70,000 remain in the city’s care. In Denver, caring for the new migrants has consumed 10 percent of the city’s budget)? The United States has now exceeded, both in real numbers and in percentages, all past numbers of non-native born American residents. What impact on our greater society will such an influx have, especially given how it is targeted at a handful of cities? Will the Russians ever surrender? What about the immigrants?
Three years ago, there was no war in Ukraine and certainly no U.S. military involvement in the Crimea and Donbas. Israel and Hamas existed in their tinder-like stasis condition, no brutal massacre of 1,600 Jews (30 of whom were Americans) and no invasion of Gaza. Campus protestors limited their protestations that they were not anti-Semitic in their hatred of Israel. Iran and the U.S. cooperated on fighting ISIS in Iraq, uneasy partners for certain but not shooting cousins as now. The Houthi struggle was confined within Yemen’s borders. On the positive side, efforts were being made to watch diplomacy bloom with North Korea, which instead is now test firing missiles aplomb once again. Biden has made no progress on China either to limit their opportunistic stance or reduce their hold over America economically. Biden has largely ignored most of Africa and South America as well as the world’s most populous democracy (and nuclear power) India. It is impossible to call it progress and all too easy to call it sadly the Biden Doctrine.
While this article will focus on the genocide in Gaza, it is important to recognize that this genocide against the Palestinians – second only in its severity to the original Nabka in 1948 – is simply exploiting longstanding Zionist aspirations to play a key part in fulfilling a wider Elite program.
If you prefer watching film, this four-part series does an excellent job with archival footage to also illustrate the long history of Zionist planning, political manipulation and imperial collusion that generated and maintains the extraordinary violence inflicted on the people of Palestine. See ‘Al-Nabka: The Palestinian catastrophe – Episodes 1-4’.
But whichever way(s) you acquire a deeper understanding of what has taken place and why it is still taking place, several things will become clear. Most notably for me was (again) perceiving the sheer terror and insanity (and thus warped worldview and predisposition to violence) of those ‘behind’ the entire enterprise from the beginning right through to those responsible for imposing it now. I have discussed this issue many times previously, including here: ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.
And if you would like to read the 23 emotional characteristics that define the psychological profile of ‘archetype perpetrators of violence’ (such as people like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and the Elite figures who put people like this in place), you can do so in the document ‘Why Violence?’ pp.12-15.
This partly explains why the amount of time it takes to kill or displace the bulk of the Palestinian population is of no consequence to Elite agents, including the Israeli and US governments, despite some authors expressing concern that the death of Israeli soldiers is costing the Israeli government support for its genocidal invasion. See ‘Industrial Killing of Civilians in Gaza Won’t Defeat the Armed Insurgency’.
This is because it is neither the Israeli government nor the government of the United States orchestrating this genocide, even though it appears to constitute the latest manifestation of C19th Zionist aspirations to create a Jewish ‘homeland’ in an ethnically cleansed Palestine. Hence, what the respective electorates of Israel and the United States think of this genocide is inconsequential to their governments. The governments answer to a higher power.
But with Elite plans for all cities extensively documented in the ‘smart city’ literature readily available, there remains much more to make Gaza, particularly following its recent substantial destruction, into the technocratic prison that Elite planners envisage for us all.
This was highlighted by Elon Musk’s latest visit to Israel to discuss ‘the operation of Starlink satellite internet in Gaza’ with Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog, during which it was made clear that deployment of the satellites – a critical foundation stone that enables creation of the new technocratic surveillance and control-oriented ‘smart cities’ – is already being planned even while the genocide is still being conducted and whatever ‘humanitarian’ slant might be attached to their deployment in the short-term. The agreement between Musk’s company SpaceX and Israel allows the company’s Starlink Internet satellites to operate in the Gaza Strip ‘with the approval of the Israeli ministry of communication’. See ‘Has Power of Starlink Turned Elon Musk Into Tech Oligarch?’ and ‘Elon Musk’s Power as Geopolitical Arbiter Signals “Decay” of US State’.
After all, even with Gaza largely populated by Israeli settlers, Elite plans to imprison us all in ‘smart’ cities means that there is no distinction between Palestinians and ‘ordinary’ Israelis when it comes to how the future population of Gaza will be treated.
If you would like to read an account of how the televised genocide in Gaza is being used to advance the Elite program – including the extensive interests of the Rothschild family – while some sections of the world (including the UN, various national leaders, some Islamic and Arabic organizations and members of the protesting public) complain powerlessly, even while Hamas and its allies within Gaza and the West Bank as well as in the Axis of Resistance (Iran, Syria, the Ansar Allah [Houthis] in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq) offer military resistance, you can do so in this article: ‘Will Palestine Ever Be Free? Understanding Elite Strategy in the Global Context’.
The problem is simple. Whether in politics or in other domains, while listening to what people say it is imperative to observe what they do. While articles such as these document a range of actors from the US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, prominent actors in West Asia such as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and others in key Arab and Muslim states suggesting what Israel should do to end the genocide, none of them is willing to take any action that would force Israel’s hand, such as cut off weapons supplies, or even take action that would seriously impede Israel’s genocidal assault. The unspoken message to Israel is as follows: ‘We will make ourselves look good by calling on you Israelis to take some token action to end the genocide but we won’t get in your way. So go ahead.’
And it has never troubled the Elite (and thus its agents) about what might appear to be happening. To reiterate, it is no ‘strategic defeat’ for Israel, as some commentators have argued, or even a ‘political defeat of Israel on the global stage’ because it ignored ‘the fundamental precepts of international humanitarian law’ and allowed itself ‘to be characterized as a practitioner of genocide, and its actions against Gaza as war crimes’. See ‘Israel Headed for Strategic Defeat in Gaza’.
So why don’t these issues concern the Elite and its agents? The answer is simple: As explained below, at the superficial level, the Elite knows that it cannot be held accountable (and it can protect those of its agents that it chooses for as long as it chooses). But there is a more fundamental reason which I will explain after briefly elaborating why the Elite knows it cannot be held accountable.
First, international law is a toothless tiger. Moreover, there is no national jurisdiction that can hold the Elite accountable either. The Elite is immune from prosecution in any court, anywhere.
So don’t be impressed/deceived by governments ‘calling for a ceasefire’ or its various equivalents, UN resolutions, scholars and others signing statements, calls for accountability under international law and large numbers of people signing petitions or protesting. Whatever the level of revulsion expressed, history teaches us that such actions mean nothing but are useful in convincing the ill-informed wider public that ‘something is being done’. It isn’t.
And this brings us to the most fundamental issue: For the Elite, ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ in limited contexts such as Gaza is not important. Killing as many people as possible, enslaving those left alive (these days, technocratically), redistributing wealth and reshaping world order to enhance Elite control are the desired outcomes. As has been the case for the past 230 years at least.
This is why, for example, the United States has been engaged in perpetual war since World War II, has conducted a wide range of coups d’état (‘regime changes’) or otherwise militarily intervened in other countries. See Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II.
The point is this: These wars killed millions of people (mainly civilians), enslaved many people (by forcing them into the periphery of the world economy), transferred enormous wealth to the Elite in a wide range of ways and consolidated Elite control. So it matters nought to the Elite if the US government is $34trillion dollars in debt – see US Debt Clock – and much of the US population impoverished.
But to return our attention to Gaza: If you want an accurate understanding of what is actually being done, just keep an eye out for any individual, government, international organization or other entity taking action that actually impedes the genocide and/or moves Palestine closer to liberation.
And people participating in the ongoing Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement – see ‘Act Now Against These Companies Profiting from the Genocide of the Palestinian People’ – are leading the resistance to the Israeli occupation and genocide in the nonviolent realm, although a great deal more needs to be done in this realm for it to have the strategic impact necessary to succeed.
My point is straightforward: After documenting ‘this catastrophe for the Palestinians’, long-time and highly regarded scholar Professor John Mearsheimer poses ‘one simple question for Israel’s leaders, their American defenders, and the Biden administration: have you no decency?’ See ‘Death and Destruction in Gaza’.
The answer, of course, is ‘no’. Elite agents, whether in Israel or the US (or elsewhere), do as they are directed, and morality of any kind is not a consideration. If wars and genocides throughout history, including the C20th, have taught us anything, it is that ‘decency’ is not a factor that enters into Elite deliberations when mass killing is organized and perpetrated to serve Elite ends. And anyone with a cursory knowledge of history and the capacity to analyze should know this too.
In essence, if the primary objectives of Hamas – notably including statehood for Palestine, the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails and an end to Israeli settler and police incursions into the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem: see the Hamas document ‘Our Narrative… Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ – are used as the measure of progress (as they should be), then the results are little short of catastrophic so far.
How even ‘winning’ the war in Gaza, assuming this ultimately occurs, achieves Palestinian statehood is problematic, to put it mildly; so far only about 240 Palestinian detainees and prisoners out of 5,000 – see ‘Statistics on Palestinians in Israeli custody’ – have been released in exchange for over 100 Israeli hostages; and there is no mention in anything I have read that suggests that any progress has been made on putting in place a protocol for ending Israeli civilian and police incursions into the al-Aqsa mosque, with the latest Good Shepherd Collective report advising ‘Settlers continue with their program to change the status quo at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, with armed incursions.’ See ‘Weekly Report’.
So the only clear tangible gain for Hamas so far (in relation to its apparent objectives) is some 240 released prisoners.
The strategic reality is that halting the genocide in Gaza and, ultimately, liberating Palestine while also defeating imposition of the global technocracy which this conflict is facilitating, will not be achieved by such tactics.
And the genocide will not be halted, Palestine liberated or the advancing global technocracy impeded by those solidarity groups, such as Palestine Action in the UK, that campaign against Elbit (Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer) by encouraging secretive acts of sabotage by individuals or small ‘cells’ – see ‘The Underground Manual’ – despite occasional apparent ‘victories’. See ‘Palestine Action Campaign Leads to Fisher German Ending Ties with Elbit’.
Halting the Genocide in Gaza and Ending the Occupation of Palestine using Nonviolent Strategy
If the genocide is to be halted and the occupation ended, it will require a substantial mobilization of people to participate in a comprehensive strategically-oriented campaign that precisely identifies the tactics to be undertaken (not just a random list of actions) and, as the historical record demonstrates, not by using secrecy and sabotage in their execution. For detailed explanations of these points, see The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach.
Before proceeding, if you doubt that a nonviolent strategy can halt a genocide in progress, you can read a solid account of when this has occurred historically and how it was accomplished in the section titled ‘Nonviolent Defense Against an Extremely Ruthless Opponent’ on pp.238-245 of the book just cited.
But if we are able to mobilize enough people to halt the genocide, we will be in a stronger position to keep struggling to end the occupation as well so, strategically speaking, it is useful to see these two political purposes as related.
And while defeating the attempt to impose a global technocracy on us all will require a worldwide mobilization far beyond what has even begun yet, success in Palestine could bolster these efforts. After all, what is happening in Gaza is coming to us all, one way or another, although few people are aware of this yet.
Anyway, to illustrate what both a nonviolent strategy to halt the genocidal assault by Israel against Gaza and a nonviolent strategy to liberate Palestine would entail, I have reproduced below just nineteen ‘consolidated’ strategic goals, written in a form appropriate for this particular context, taken from the comprehensive but generalized list of 50 ‘Strategic Goals for Defeating a Genocidal Assault’.
In most cases, I have also briefly explained the value of that strategic goal and perhaps offered examples, either historically or in the current context, where tactics in pursuit of that goal have been undertaken.
This incomplete/consolidated list of strategic goals is based on principles not explained here but carefully elaborated on the website just identified. Needless to say, it is a straightforward task to consult the full list of strategic goals (to halt a genocide or liberate an occupied country) and reword each of the remaining goals to make it appropriate to the Palestinian situation and nominate the specific groups that should be mentioned where appropriate.
Thus, just nineteen strategic goals that would contribute both to defeating Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza and liberating Palestine (which conform to the formula described on the website) are listed below (with brief explanations and historical examples where appropriate). It should be noted, however, that the list would be considerably longer as individual organizations – such as each organization involved in inciting, facilitating, organizing, conducting and/or benefiting from the genocide (for whatever reason but including national and religious groups with competing perspectives as well as corporations involved in media, banking and resource extraction) – should be specified separately.
Of course, individual groups within the defense would usually accept responsibility for focusing their work on achieving just one or two of the strategic goals. It is the responsibility of the struggle’s strategic leadership to ensure that each of the strategic goals (identified and prioritized according to local circumstances) is being addressed (or to prioritize if resource limitations require this).
If there is no identified strategic leadership, individuals and local groups should proceed to tackle those strategic goals most relevant to their circumstances, interests and capacities.
(1) To cause the people of Palestine(men, women and children) to identify their support for, and participation in, the Palestinian resistance strategy by wearing a symbol of Palestinian unity (a keffiyeh,as a head covering or scarf, orthe colors of the Palestinian flag: black, white, green and red) and by boycotting all corporate/governmentmedia and social media outlets that support the genocide in Gaza and/or the occupation of Palestine.
(2) To cause the people of Israel(men, women and children) to identify their solidarity with the people of Palestineand opposition to the genocide and occupation by wearing a symbol of solidarity(a keffiyeh,as a head covering or scarf, orthe colors of the Palestinian flag: black, white, green and red) and by boycotting all corporate/governmentmedia and social media outlets that support the genocide in Gaza and/or the occupation of Palestine.
Government and corporate media and social media have long been used to control the narrative regarding what is happening in Palestine. If you choose to boycott these outlets, in favor of outlets committed to telling you the truth, you play a valuable role in holding media that lies accountable and supporting those telling the truth who are often suppressed.
(3) To cause people elsewhere in the world(men, women and children) to identify their solidarity with the people of Palestineand opposition to the genocide and occupation by wearing a symbol of solidarity(a keffiyeh,as a head covering or scarf, orthe colors of the Palestinian flag: black, white, green and red) and by boycotting all corporate/governmentmedia and social media outlets that support the genocide in Gaza and/or the occupation of Palestine.
(4) To cause young people in Israel to resist conscription and recruitment into the military, police, intelligence services and other forces/organizations inciting, facilitating, organizing and/or conducting the genocide or maintaining the occupation of Palestine.
For example, prior to the current genocide and despite four stints in prison, 19-year-old Israeli woman Hallel Rabin resolutely stood her ground, refusing to serve in the Israeli army occupying Palestine. This article includes a video of Rabin speaking eloquently about her reasons for resisting. See ‘Refusing to serve in the army is my small act of making change’.
And despite the risk of a significant jail sentence, Ariel Davidov, a 19-year-old Israeli ‘refusenik’ believes that ‘not joining the army is one of the most effective things you can do’ to ‘end the cycle of violence’. See ‘Why Israeli army refusers are crucial to ending the cycle of violence’.
These intelligent and conscientious young people are far from alone and highlight the possibilities open to those of us who choose to mobilize an effective nonviolent resistance to violence, wherever it occurs in the world.
We just need their commitment and courage.
(5) To cause soldiers, airmen, sailors, intelligence personnel, drone pilots and others in the Israeli military to refuse to obey orders that will lead to the arrest, assault, torture, shooting, bombing and other forms of harm to Palestinians, medical personnel, foreign aid workers, journalists, solidarity activists and othersin Palestine.
Of course, the right and duty to make decisions based on conscience were enshrined in international law a long time ago, including in Principle IV of the Nuremberg Charter: ‘The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of [their] Government or of a superior does not relieve [them] from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to [them]’. See ‘Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nürnberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal 1950’.
And the historical record demonstrates that dialogue and nonviolent action designed to convince troops to disobey their orders have sometimes been successful. For example, it was a vital element of the Czechoslovakian resistance to the Warsaw Pact invasion during 1968, it was the defining feature of the nonviolent revolution in the Philippines in 1986, it was the crucial factor in thwarting the Chinese government’s first attempt to clear Tiananmen Square on 20 May 1989, and it was fundamental to the defeat of the Soviet coup in 1991. See The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach. pp.256-8.
Individuals in Israel who make such conscience-based choices are supported by Mesarvot, one of the organizations that supports Israeli ‘refuseniks’ in a campaign against the occupation of Palestine.
[An earlier organization – Yesh Gvul (‘There is a limit’) – was founded in 1982 ‘as a political movement aimed at supporting refuseniks and conscientious objectors’. It now appears to be inactive.]
But the potential for something more significant might be inferred from this article by Shimri Zameret, a soldier who conscientiously resisted participation in the Israeli military response to the Palestinian second Intifada, spending 21 months in prison as a result, and now comments on disquiet within the military for the anti-democratic ‘reforms’ pursued by Netanyahu in 2023. See ‘A mass wave of Israeli army refusal could be a transformative moment’.
Zameret and many others are part of another organization – the Refuser Solidarity Network – that also supports soldiers opposed to the occupation and the policies (genocidal and otherwise) that derive from it.
In any case, there is enough evidence of disquiet among young Israeli conscripts and serving soldiers (and possibly personnel in other services, such as the intelligence services) concerned about participating in the genocide and occupation to make it strategically worthwhile for people, whether in Israel or elsewhere, to contact serving personnel with encouragement to consider their conscience about the moral path in this context and offers to listen while they deliberate.
(6) To cause the private military contractors (mercenaries) employed by the Israeli Army to refuse to participate in the genocide in Gaza and/or in maintenance of the occupation.
According to one source, there are an estimated 28,000 mercenaries in the Israeli military. This constitutes a heavy drain on the Israeli economy, which is now being threatened by various measures. See ‘Gaza Exhausted Israel’s Economy’.
Apart from efforts to dissuade foreign soldiers from joining the Israeli military, increasing pressure on the Israeli economy will make it difficult for ordinary Israelis impacted – as Mohandas K. Gandhi understood the Indian boycott of cloth imports from Manchester in defence of the indigenous khadi industry would make it difficult for workers in England – but the Israeli leadership will endeavour to hold out against enormous pressure as it will be directed to do. Nevertheless, there are many measures that can be taken, including those outlined below, to keep this pressure building.
(7) To cause the officers in the Israeli police and Shin Bet (the security agency) in Israel to refuse to obey orders toinflict violence on Israeli nonviolent activists and to arrest, assault, torture and shoot Palestinians, medical personnel, foreign aid workers, journalists, solidarity activists and othersin Palestine.
Again, there are many historical precedents around the world of police refusing orders to inflict violence on populations they police, including during the lockdowns imposed as part of the restrictions enforced under the recent Covid-19 regime. See ‘Policing the Elite’s Technocracy: How Do We Resist This Effectively?’
And there is already substantial dissatisfaction within the Israeli Police for various reasons, leading significant numbers to leave the force. A key reason for the dissatisfaction is that senior officers are often abusive of lower ranks (in various ways) and, whether in the police or Shin Bet, punishment of these officers is virtually non-existent (or trivial when it happens). See ‘Why do so many Israel Police officers quit?’
Fortunately, the long legacy of nonviolent struggle in extremely violent contexts has much to teach nonviolent activists about dealing powerfully with such situations. This article offers 20 ideas of use in both the Israeli and Palestinian contexts: ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’.
Not every police or Shin Bet officer will follow orders to be violent unthinkingly. Our challenge is to amplify their inclination to do what is right, irrespective of the orders they are given.
(8) To cause military personnel in the military forces of Israeli-allied countries including the United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere to refuse deployment to the conflict zone near Israel and Palestine.
Since then, the United States has set up and deployed ‘Operation Prosperity Guardian’, a multinational coalition supposedly intended ‘to help protect merchant ships in the Red Sea area from drones and missiles’ fired by Yemen’s Ansar Allah against vessels perceived to be supporting, directly or indirectly, Israel’s attacks on Gaza. See ‘US unveils international force to defend Red Sea. Here’s what we know’.
This can also be resisted by people, including anti-war activists, in the various countries (the United States, United Kingdom, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles and Spain) that are deploying troops and weapons systems to the region by taking targeted nonviolent action against weapons producers and the troops facing deployment to the region. As always, see the list of possible actions in the article ‘198 Tactics of Nonviolent Action’.
(9)To cause members of trade unions and professional associations, activist groups, religious bodies, women’s organizations, student bodies, consumer groups andethnic groups, as well as artists, musicians, intellectuals and members of other key social groupsin Israel to resist the genocide and the occupation by encouraging their members to boycott all government/corporate media and social media that support the genocide or occupation and to withdraw their labor [temporarily/permanently] from any organization complicit in the genocide and/or occupation.
And while loudly condemned by most of his fellow MPs in the Israeli Knesset, Ofer Cassif had the courage to sign a petition in support of the hearing at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. In response to his widespread condemnation, Cassif noted ‘I will not give up the fight for our existence as a moral society. This is true patriotism…’. See ‘Balls of Steel’.
While it will clearly take stronger actions than these to halt the genocide, like the efforts of those young Israelis resisting conscription into the Israeli military, they are undertaken by those who have a conscience and the courage to live it and all movements for justice are built on such individuals.
No doubt Israel has plenty more yet and one of our tasks is to encourage Israelis to act and support them when they do. There are plenty of people in the United States and elsewhere who could usefully focus some effort on contacting Israelis they know and encouraging them to take a conscientious stand (and perhaps listen supportively while any individual considers such a course).
As mentioned above, there are trade unions, professional associations, religious bodies, women’s organizations and a great many other groups in Israel that can be approached to ask their members to boycott media supporting the genocide/occupation and to consider withdrawing their labor from organizations that are complicit.
The wider the resistance is spread, the less pressure there is on any one individual.
(10) To cause members of trade unions and professional associations, activist groups, religious bodies, women’s organizations, student bodies, consumer groups andethnic groups, as well as artists, musicians, intellectuals and members of other key social groupsin countries in which governments are complicit in the genocide (including the USA, UK, Germany and other European countries particularly) to resist the genocide and the occupation by encouraging their members to boycott all government/corporate media and social media that support the genocide or occupation and to withdraw their labor [temporarily/permanently] from any organization complicit in the genocide and/or occupation.
The point is that this discontent is everywhere and, at some point, the more courageous will act and inspire many around them, whatever organization in which they work.
And other forms of resistance that are especially effective in that particular context can be considered. Again, for inspiration, consider ‘198 Tactics of Nonviolent Action’.
(11) To cause members of trade unions and labor organizations, activist groups, religious bodies, women’s organizations, student bodies, consumer groups andethnic groups, as well as artists, musicians, intellectuals and members of other key social groupsin countries in which governments are complicit in the genocide (including the USA, UK, Germany and other European countries particularly) to resist the genocide and the occupation by encouraging their members to boycott those products that are extracted (or produced)and exported by corporations acting in concert with the Israeli government.
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.
Consequently, widespread and persistent consumer boycotts that target Shell, Chevron (for which the key brand names are Texaco and Caltex) and Siemens products could play a valuable role in compelling these corporations, and their Elite owners, to reconsider their role in sponsoring the genocide and occupation.
(12) To cause people in your country to boycott Israel as a tourist destination.
The genocide in Gaza has had a significant, adverse impact on the Israeli economy. See ‘Gaza Exhausted Israel’s Economy’. Causing people to boycott Israel as a tourist destination (in favor of traveling elsewhere) is an effective way to reduce Israeli government finance available for the genocide and occupation.
An important subset of this, which focuses more on removing the apparent legitimacy attached to Israeli institutions, is advocated by the BDS Movement and involves the encouragement of academics, prominent entertainers, cultural figures (such as writers and artists) and sportspeople to boycott Israel. See ‘Academic Boycott’ and ‘Cultural Boycott’. Individuals in this category can set a powerful example for their colleagues/fans.
(13) To cause the workers in the trade unions andprofessional associationsthat work for individual weapons corporations (such as Elbit Systems, Rafael, Lockheed Martin and Boeing)that supply weapons to the Israeli militaryto withdraw their labor [partially/wholly], [temporarily/permanently].
Thus, whether in relation to an Israeli weapons corporation, such as Elbit Systems and Rafael, or a weapons corporation in the US, the UK, Germany or other countries that supply weapons to Israel, each trade union and/or professional association representing employees working for the corporation is effectively supporting individuals to participate in enabling the genocide and maintenance of the occupation.
Individuals and organizations can be encouraged to choose not to do so using a variety of means, always beginning with dialogue but then, if the issue cannot be resolved through listening and clear communication, using a range of nonviolent tactics at worksites, ranging from demonstrations and picket lines to blockades. But again, plenty of options here: ‘198 Tactics of Nonviolent Action’.
(14) To cause corporations that provide vital services/components to weapons corporations that supply weapons to Israel to cease doing so.
But there are a great many possibilities as the sheer diversity of parts in military weapons means that many corporations are drawn into the staggering array of supply lines. Choosing those services and components that are more specific and critical to military impact – including command, control, communications, delivery, targeting – rather than some insignificant, generic part, will ensure strategic value derives from success in any campaign.
If this isn’t feasible (or efforts fail) in a particular context, consider the following strategic goal.
(15) To cause the workers in the relevant trade unions or labor organizations to withdraw their labor [temporarily/permanently] [partially/wholly] from those corporations that supply services/components to weapons corporations that supply weapons to Israel.
A corporation management might not have a conscience but plenty of workers do, and approaching them through their trade union or labor organization might open opportunities to discuss possible ways they can noncooperate with the genocide and occupation.
(16) To cause vessels and cargo planes engaged in transporting goods and weapons to or from Israel to cease doing so [temporarily/permanently].
Beyond that, however, and given that most governments won’t do this, activists working in conjunction with local trade unions can do it too. For example, starting in the late 1980s in Australia, the combined efforts of nonviolent activists and trade unionists caused significant delays in the unloading of imported rainforest timber from cargo ships. The awareness generated by these widely publicized and graphic actions was used to mobilize a massive boycott of imported rainforest timber by the Australian community, effectively eliminating the trade within three years as entire industries switched to sourcing timber from more sustainable sources. Watch ‘Time to Act’ and see ‘Nonviolent Struggle for the Rainforests’.
Of course, trade union action of this nature has a long history. For example, during the apartheid era in South Africa, Danish dock workers in 1963 decided not to unload ships carrying South African products, triggering a similar boycott in Sweden, England and elsewhere.
In relation to Palestine, the first solidarity action of this nature occurred in South Africa when the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) decided not to unload an Israeli ship due to arrive in Durban on 8 February 2009. See ‘The BNC Salutes South African Dock Workers Action!’
And in 2014, the Arab Resource and Organizing Center in the United States launched Block the Boat in response to the call by the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) and a coalition of all major Palestinian workers unions and professional associations who called on their fellow trade unionists and workers worldwide to boycott Israel and businesses that are complicit with its apartheid regime. They specifically urged a refusal to handle Israeli goods and support for union members refusing to build Israeli weapons.
Analysing the ten-year history of ‘Block the Boat’ actions in various countries, researchers Rafeef Ziadah and Katy Fox-Hodess identified some crucial variables worth addressing to make these nonviolent actions have maximum impact. Critically, this included thinking carefully about how activists could most effectively get involved in working with unions and how activists can take some of the more extreme pressures off workers, particularly when sanctions for taking solidarity action are onerous. See ‘Dockworkers and Labor Activists Can Block the Transport of Arms to Israel’.
Workers in Palestine has recently posted a video of nonviolent actions undertaken around the world to shut down weapons factories and disrupt weapons shipments to Israel in response to the genocide in Gaza.
If nonviolent actions of this nature in solidarity with Palestine appeal to you and other activists in your local port, you can identify the arrival of Israel’s ZIM vessels on their port schedule – see ZIM vessels Port schedule – and track their vessels on either Marine Traffic or Vessel Finder.
(17) To cause consumers, including members of religious, service, sporting, business and other community organizations,to boycott those products produced by companies taking advantage of the Israeli occupation economy in Palestine.
As the BDS Movement points out, it is superior strategy for people to focus their efforts on certain companies prioritized for targeting (because of their deep complicity in the occupation) rather than dissipate effort so widely that little impact is felt anywhere. See ‘BDS Guide to Strategic Campaigning for Palestinian Rights’.
But if you want more comprehensive lists to view other companies you can boycott, the Who Profits Research Center has compiled a list of companies to boycott because they profit from the Israeli occupation economy.
The American Friends Service Committee has also compiled a list of companies, with two sectors additional to the ‘Who Profits’ list above. See ‘Investigate: What are you invested in?’
Another simple option is to sign the ‘No Tech for Apartheid’ letter to Google and Amazon for providing ‘cloud technology to the Israeli government and military… to surveil Palestinians and force them off their land’. But boycotting Google and Amazon is a far more powerful option given they are spying on you too as part of their role in advancing the Elite’s technocracy.
(18) To cause the individual and organizational investors(including religious and sporting bodies) of banks,asset managers, insurance companies and pension funds in Israel and elsewhere to shift their money to ethical banks and credit unions, asset managers, insurance companies and pension funds that do not finance, invest in or are otherwise involved in supplying banking, asset management, insurance or pension services toIsrael (and Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine) or to weapons corporations that supply weapons to Israel.
The BDS Movement specifically encourages divestment from the French multinational insurance giant AXA ‘for its investments in Israeli banks [with Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, First International Bank of Israel, Israel Discount Bank, Mizrahi Tefahot Bank being the main five], which are deeply complicit in Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise on occupied Palestinian land’. See ‘AXA Divest’.
If you live outside Europe or an organization is not listed and you are in doubt, the general principle is to always seek those (invariably smaller) institutions that identify as ‘ethical’ and investigate these to see if they deserve your patronage.
As an aside, if your knowledge of the management (or membership) of a financial institution with which you deal suggests they might be willing to divest from Israel (or weapons corporations) without significant public engagement first, it may be worth your while to approach them to find out. Obviously, you do not need to boycott or organize a wider boycott of an institution that is responsive to dialogue.
(19) To cause SpaceX, which manufactures and deploys Starlink spy satellites to facilitate genocide in Gaza and the occupation of Palestine generally, to cease doing so.
One way in which pressure can be exerted is by mobilizing people, wherever they live, to boycott the Starlink service (and switch to another provider) in their area. Another less direct way is to boycott X (formerly Twitter) because it is also owned by Elon Musk (who owns SpaceX).
Summary
Not all of the strategic goals nominated above will need to be achieved for the strategy to be successful but each goal is focused in such a way that its achievement will functionally undermine the power of those conducting the genocide and the occupation.
And if we are to defeat the Elite technocracy being imposed on the entire human population, with Palestine (in both the West Bank and Gaza) being used as the testing ground and incubator of so many of the technologies that will be used to kill or enslave us all, then we must resist strategically, as explained in the campaign of ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ with one-page flyers, identifying the simplest version of the strategy, available in 23 languages.
Conclusion
The people of Palestine have the same choice we all face in relation to the Elite’s rapidly advancing technocracy.
We can do nothing, we can complain (by lobbying and petitioning governments or international organizations), we can sign public declarations, we can turn up at demonstrations, and do all of the other things that put the power to change things in the hands of others. And watch this come to nought.
According to Dr Anis Sayigh, Palestinian intellectual and chairman of the Palestine Research Center in Beirut until it was destroyed by Israel in 1983, in 1936 the Palestinians were convinced by Arab leaders in the region to end a nonviolent general strike to give Britain a chance to prove its ‘good intentions’. Dr Sayigh goes on to state: ‘Unfortunately, to this day, we are still discussing UN resolutions and American and European initiatives to give the West a chance to prove its good intentions.’ Watch episode 2 of ‘Al-Nabka: The Palestinian catastrophe – Episodes 1-4’.
The point is simple: Until we learn that the Elite and its agents – no matter who or where they are: western, Arabic, Israeli, Russian, Chinese, Indian, Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, international organization, corporation, NGO, philanthropic foundation…. – will never change a system from which they benefit enormously by exploiting us, we will continue to run the treadmill of defeat whatever the cause for which we fight.
So we have a choice: Keep doing what history clearly demonstrates does not work or plan and take strategically-focused action that makes a difference ourselves.
That choice is yours whether we are fighting to defend Palestinians in Gaza from the ongoing genocide, liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation or defend humanity from the rapidly advancing technocracy.
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.
The U.S. regime carries out its oppression by coercion, and by delay and outright suppression of news-reporting about the key facts of the case. It does this both in domestic matters and in international ones, as will here be exemplified first by the example of an innocent man who was framed by the U.S. regime and given a life sentence in a murder-case, and then by the example of the deeply corrupted Ukrainian nation which was grabbed by the U.S. regime in a February 2014 U.S. coup that the U.S. regime hid behind popular 2013-2014 anti-corruption demonstrations on the Maidan square in Kiev and so turned that nation into a battering-ram against the U.S. regime’s top target for conquest, which is Russia right next door to Ukraine.
In both examples — both domestic and foreign — the U.S. regime’s motivation was to increase and to intensify the power of its owners, whom it serves and who are never satisfied with the immense power that they already have but always crave to acquire yet more.
The police had nothing concrete to go on. But by the time they finally interviewed Elking, they had already latched onto a suspect: 20-year-old Lamar Johnson.
Johnson would soon be arrested and tried for the October 1994 murder on thin and troubling evidence. …
In 1995, Johnson was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Still, he has long maintained his innocence — and now has a powerful ally in his corner: Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, chief prosecutor for the city of St. Louis.
Gardner ran on a reform agenda and in 2016 became the first black elected prosecutor in the city’s history. She won federal funding to start a conviction integrity unit and in 2018, at the behest of the Midwest Innocence Project, began investigating Johnson’s case. A year later, she concluded that he was innocent.
In July 2019, Gardner filed a motion with Circuit Court Judge Elizabeth Hogan conceding that Johnson was wrongfully convicted. She asked the judge to grant a hearing on the matter and, ultimately, a new trial for Johnson. “When a prosecutor becomes aware of clear and convincing evidence establishing that a defendant in the prosecutor’s jurisdiction was convicted of a crime that the defendant did not commit — the position in which the circuit attorney now finds herself — the prosecutor is obligated to seek to remedy the conviction,” Gardner wrote in the court filing.
But [Judge] Hogan balked, questioning whether Gardner had the power to challenge the conviction. She called in Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt to see what he had to say about it. Schmitt argued that not only did Gardner lack that authority, but the court couldn’t even entertain the matter. Hogan aligned herself with Schmitt and dismissed the case without considering the evidence Gardner had uncovered.
Hogan’s decision sparked a unique legal battle that, on April 14, culminated in a video conference hearing before the Missouri Supreme Court. The question before the judges, who are working remotely amid the coronavirus crisis, is whether a prosecutor has any power to right a wrongful conviction. …
Gardner’s yearlong inquiry revealed that Johnson’s conviction had been marred by extensive police and prosecutorial misconduct. She found that police had fabricated witness statements in an effort to frame Johnson (the witnesses said they’d never told police the things that had been attributed to them) and had pressured Elking into making an identification after he’d repeatedly told them he did not know who had attacked Boyd that night. Elking said that a detective told him who to pick out of the lineup.
Elking said that a detective told him who to pick out of the lineup.
Gardner learned that Elking had been paid more than $4,000 in exchange for his testimony and that prosecutors had also fixed a string of traffic tickets for him. None of this information was turned over to Johnson’s defense. … The state also failed to tell the defense that the jailhouse informant, Mock, had an epic criminal history (some 200 pages long) and a history of testifying for the state. … There was also the fact that Johnson had an alibi: He was with his girlfriend, child, and two friends several miles away at the time of the shooting.. … On top of it all, Gardner learned that not long after Johnson was convicted, two men, Phillip Campbell and James Howard, had each separately confessed to killing [Markus] Boyd. Both insisted that Johnson had nothing to do with it. … Given the breadth of the misconduct, Gardner felt she had to find a way to make things right — after all, it was her office that was responsible for Johnson’s conviction. …
Not everyone agrees with that position. Schmitt’s office has since doubled down in opposition to Gardner with a mind-numbing array of arguments. …
No prosecutor in the state of Missouri has the power to undo a wrongful conviction, says the attorney general. … Schmitt says that Johnson can vindicate his rights by following regular post-conviction procedure: File a challenge based on the evidence Gardner has supplied and let the legal system work its ordinary, slogging magic. …
Even if Johnson’s appeal were to survive a procedural challenge, the process would only draw out his already wrongful incarceration. …
Unless the Missouri Supreme Court steps in, prosecutors in the state may remain hobbled, which is essentially what Schmitt is advocating: Keep the power to vet these claims in his hands and dismiss from the process elected prosecutors like Gardner, who vowed on the campaign trail to work toward a more equitable criminal justice system. …
Reform prosecutors across the country have faced varying degrees of backlash from the entrenched power structures they’ve challenged, and they’ve repeatedly had their discretion questioned as they’ve sought changes that upset the old guard. …
Lamar Johnson walked out of the downtown courthouse Tuesday afternoon, a free man for the first time in decades.
Just hours earlier, a St. Louis Circuit judge vacated Johnson’s murder conviction, ruling he was wrongly imprisoned nearly 30 years ago and that there is clear and convincing evidence of his innocence.
The ruling by 22nd Circuit Court Judge David Mason comes roughly two months after a weeklong hearing in December during which another man confessed to the 1994 killing of Marcus Boyd — the crime that sent Johnson to prison with a life sentence.
Cheers erupted in the courtroom as Mason read his decision. …
The ruling ends Johnson’s decadeslong fight to prove his innocence. After years of being turned down on appeals and habeas corpus petitions, Johnson’s case attracted national attention in 2019 when Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s Conviction Integrity Unit reported misconduct by the investigation’s lead detective and other constitutional errors in the 1995 trial. …
Much of Mason’s decision centered on the main witness in Johnson’s 1995 trial, Greg Elking, who said at the December hearing that police coerced his original identification of Johnson as the man who wore a ski mask and shot Boyd. Mason described that identification as “suspect at best.”
”All Elking witnessed was the assailant’s eye, giving a new meaning to the phrase ‘eye witness,’” Mason said, describing it as “yet another serious weakness in the case against Johnson.”
Without Elking’s identification, there was no case. …
Photos: Wrongfully convicted inmate Lamar Johnson set free after serving 28 years for murder he did not commit. …
Once Lamar Johnson was freed, the national press reported the case, as being an example showing that though ‘mistakes’ can happen in American ‘justice’, they can be rectified: in this ‘democracy’, such mistakes can be rectified — the Government isn’t set up so as to produce these ‘mistakes’; it’s not set up that way so as to produce the world’s highest percentage of its population (almost all of which are poor people) being in prisons. It’s only mistakes. So, the public don’t know that it’s NOT mistakes — that it’s the way ‘our’ Government functions.
So: how did the U.S. regime carry out this oppression of the Ukrainian people? It was done by the same means as it had been done in the Lamar Johnson case: coercion, including coercion against the mind, which is deceit, and including coercion against public officials who might otherwise try to do the right thing in order to serve the public instead of to serve their masters who have been funding their political careers.
On 17 June 2015, I headlined “THE WHO’S WHO AT THE TOP OF THE COUP” in Ukraine, and focused upon Dmitriy Yarosh, whom Obama’s Victoria Nuland chose to run the Maidan demonstration in Kiev that provided cover for the Obama-Nuland-organized February 2014 coup in Ukraine; and, on 1 February 2015, I headlined “The Ideology of the New Ukraine”, and focused upon Andrei Biletsky (or Beletsky), who organized and ran the openly nazi Ukrainiani Azov Battalion and, unlike Yarosh, Biletsky didn’t equivocate about his being a Ukrainian Social Nationalist or (National Socialist) in the Hitler vein, but he aimed “to create a Third Empire [a Ukrainian Third Reich],” instead of Hitler’s German “Third Reich.” Then, on 20 March 2022, I headlined “How The Western Press Handles The Ukrainian Government’s Nazism” and presented a universally hidden-in-The-West photo of Biletsky leading his men in salute to what had been Nazi Germany’s Wolfsangel insignia.
On 27 May 2019, the OBOZREVATEL online Ukrainian news site headlined (as translated into English) “Yarosh: if Zelensky betrays Ukraine, he will lose not his position, but his life” , the transcript of their interview with Yarosh, right after Zelensky had won the Presidential election against Poroshenko, and, in that interview, Yarosh made unambiguously clear that if as President, Zelensky were to negotiate seriously with Russia, “he will lose not his position, but his life.” Yarosh — the agent of the regime in Washington DC — was sending the new Ukrainian President the very clear message, that even if the U.S. wouldn’t get rid of such a Ukrainian President, Ukraine’s nazis would. So: Zelensky (like Poroshenko before him) was being controlled not only from above, the empire’s imperial regime in Washington, but also from below, the U.S.-empowered nazis whom the U.S. regime had used in order to take over Ukraine during February 2014.
CONCLUSION
The U.S. Establishment (called “neocons” in foreign policy, and “neoliberals” or “libertarians” in domestic policy, but, in any case, America’s under-1,000 billionaires and their numerous employees and other agents) work via threats, not only against heads-of-state abroad such as Zelensky, but ALSO against domestic public officials such as the Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, to turn the screws upon those down below (such as in plea-bargains to lie in court cases) in order to keep those billionaires on top, and everyone else down below; and this is the empire’s social and political and even international, “rules-based order.” Whereas Lamar Johnson, as an extremely lucky exception to the rule (or “rules-based order”) managed finally to get free in 2023 after entering prison in 1995 for a frame-up against him by the regime that he and other Americans are forced to fund with their taxes, few others are and will be so lucky, but America’s ‘news’-media won’t and don’t report this fact. For example: there is nothing to indicate that Lamar Johnson sees what happened to him as being a frame-up by the regime instead of just a bunch of tragic mistakes that the U.S. Government had made. Even the victims usually remain ignorant of the reality. — the ‘news’-media cover it up. But the whole operation — like that of any other empire — is based ultimately upon requiring the public officials to impose by raw coercion if necessary, their masters’ rule, in this “rules-based order.” It’s the way that any empire functions. And, in the world of today, the only empire that remains is the U.S. and its colonies (‘allies’).
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
The agreement, which has been arranged through National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in the White House and Israel’s President Benjamin Netanyahu, is that poor countries with corrupt leaders will be bribed to accept forced immigrants from Gaza so as to cleanse it in order to carry out settlement of Jews into that area, after Gaza’s post-war reconstruction, which will be done by the Governments of Israel and U.S., by paying contractors from both countries to ‘make the desert bloom’ there for the incoming Jews.
On January 3rd, the Times of Israel — which was founded by the late gambling casino mega-billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who had been the chief donor to the political careers of both Netanyahu and Trump, and so the newspaper that he created has well-connected sources inside Israel’s Government — headlined “Israeli officials said in talks with Congo, others on taking in Gaza emigrants”, and reported:
The Times of Israel’s Hebrew sister-site Zman Yisrael reports that Israeli officials have held clandestine talks with the African nation of Congo and several others for the potential acceptance of Gaza emigrants.
“Congo will be willing to take in migrants, and we’re in talks with others,” a senior source in the security cabinet tells Shalom Yerushalmi.
Yerushalmi quotes Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel saying at the Knesset yesterday: “At the end of the war Hamas rule will collapse, there are no municipal authorities, the civilian population will be entirely dependent on humanitarian aid. There will be no work, and 60% of Gaza’s agricultural land will become security buffer zones.”
Saying education to hatred will continue in Gaza and further attacks on Israel are only a matter of time, she added: “The Gaza problem is not just our problem. The world should support humanitarian emigration, because that’s the only solution I know.”
Yesterday Washington panned far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir for advocating the resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza.
“This rhetoric is inflammatory and irresponsible,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
This is consistent with the news earlier regarding both Biden and Netanyahu, that Netanyahu will be ethnically cleansing Gaza while Biden will give lip-service to criticizing it but will continue to set no conditions upon the U.S. Government’s supplying of weapons and of military intelligence to Israel’s forces to carry out the ethnic cleansing there. Both Netanyahu and Biden, meanwhile, will be arm-twisting at the U.N. General Assembly to gain approval for the forced-resettled-in-Africa Gazans to receive aid from U.N. agencies, in order to keep down the refugees’ maintenance-costs in those countries, sufficiently so as to avoid rebellions by those receiving countries’ publics that might result from tax-increases for those receiving Governments to pay for those immigrants who will have become relocated there.
As I reported earlier, the previous plan by both Netanyahu and Biden was to expel the 2.3 million Gazans to either Egypt or Jordan, but on October 16th and 17th both of those Governments refused to participate. This is what has now led to the negotiations with the Governments of “the African nation of Congo and several others for the potential acceptance of Gaza emigrants.” If the Biden and Netanyahu team cannot find lands to cooperate, then whatever Gazans survive the bombardments and siege might be simply starved to death, in which case the end-result will be a genocide against the Gazans, instead of merely an ethnic cleansing of them. So: the current plan might not be the final plan, the final solution to the Gazan problem.
Western civilization is characterized by its institutions. Its foundations have been government, organized religion, the military, science, technology, business, academia, media, art, and entertainment. Institutions have been bulwarks of order and have enabled Western civilization to reach unprecedented plateaus of achievement and prosperity. Now, they’re under assault and crumbling, which has been often noted and decried but usually not analyzed or understood as the outcome of an epochal transition.
Institutions have been the victim of their own success. The Industrial and Information Revolutions have put goods, services, wealth, data, and choices in billions of hands in what amounts to an historical blink of an eye, less than two centuries. The average American lives better and longer than royalty did back in monarchy’s heyday and has more personal power. Kings and emperors of yore could order people around and toss them in dungeons, but they couldn’t hop on the Internet and communicate with someone on the other side of the planet or hop on a freeway and journey five hundred miles in a day.
Institutions’ loss has been individuals’ gain, and many of the latter are questioning the necessity of the former. Institutions are staring into an abyss. Many, including governments, do not have convincing justifications for their own existence. They offer little to average people and in many cases they’re a net negative, imposing nothing but burdens. Their leaders are solely devoted to furthering their own prerogatives and power. Now, institutions are fighting a rearguard action to halt or slow a transition that at best will dramatically reduce their power and could mean their extinction.
COVID, climate change, foreign wars, censorship, woke, open borders, surveillance, and digital passports and currencies are Last Gasp efforts to preserve institutional status, wealth, and power. The institutions have responded to their own drum roll with what vigor they can muster, but those causes inspire vapid virtue signaling, not authentic passion. Their only wellspring of true passion is hatred for anyone who believes differently, who challenges their science, propaganda, and mendacity, and, more broadly, their right to dictate and coerce, and to cancel, punish or execute anyone not toeing their line.
Their objective failures—many of which count in their corrupt reckonings as successes—are manifest. The COVID response, particularly vaccines’ deaths and adverse events, completely discredited governments, public health, institutional medicine, the pharmaceutical companies, and social and mainstream media, while inflicting severe collateral damage on official “science,” big business, and central banks. The institutions are regrouping under the banner of climate change, but it’s clear from the pushback they’re already receiving that their agenda can only be implemented through violence and high-tech totalitarianism.
Repeated failures and ever-mounting resistance would seem to be enough to doom their totalitarian designs. Unfortunately, in their desperation and hatred, the willingness of the elite to wage actual, kinetic war on the rest of us shouldn’t be underestimated. While the COVID vaccine death toll numbers in the millions, war still has no rival for murderous effectiveness. However, offensive violence is no solution.
Nuclear weapons changed warfare in a way that’s not generally recognized. The threat that a global nuclear conflagration could eliminate humanity rendered their use a high-risk proposition. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in 1945 remain the only wartime use of nuclear weapons. Under the umbrella created by nuclear weapons’ unemployability, technological advances have fueled the development of a staggering array of armaments that has decisively shifted the military balance from offensive to defensive warfare.
World War II was the last major war in which an offensive, or, more correctly, a counter-offensive, won. The allied powers repelled the axis powers, but at huge cost. Industrial-scale, mechanized warfare’s awesome destructive power left all the major participants except the U.S. in ruins, their populations decimated.
Offensive military power has become enormously expensive relative to the defensive technologies and strategies that can be employed against it. Since World War II, there have been few successful invasions. Both sides were stymied in the Korean War. U.S. invasions have been a string of disasters since Vietnam. Afghan goat herders defeated both the Soviets and the U.S.
On the cusp of victory in Ukraine, the Russian Special Military Operation would seem to belie the trend of offensive failures. However, the Russians have actually won by playing defense. They moved through their major objective, the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine, where the majority of the population speak Russian. Many of them want to be part of Russia and hate the Ukrainian government, which has waged war on them since the 2014 coup. Consequently, the Russians were supported by the local population.
This past year featured a Ukrainian counteroffensive that was supposed to drive the Russians back from Donbass and retake the Crimean peninsula. NATO and Ukrainian strategists refused to recognize that their offensive was akin to sending cavalry units against machine-gun and artillery emplacements. They were up against an opponent well-armed with land mines, state-of-the-art field artillery and long-range missiles, air cover, and surveillance and attack drones. The Russian military, which has a long tradition of waging defensive warfare, employed a complex three-layer defense. The Ukrainians rarely progressed through even the first layer, impaling themselves on the tip of the Russian spear and taking massive losses.
The successful Russian strategies and tactics will be, or should be, studied by military analysts in the U.S. However, what’s most important is that those tactics implicitly acknowledge a truism central to the transition in progress. High-cost offensive warfare can be stymied and often defeated with relatively low-cost defensive weaponry and asymmetric warfare.
It can be argued that an offensive against the world’s most powerful military was obviously doomed, although nobody in the Western brain trust made that argument before the Ukrainians attacked. What truly signals the dawning of a new age have been the repeated successes since World War II of guerrilla or insurgent warfare against ostensibly much more powerful forces.
The Russians learned their lesson from the Soviet failure in Afghanistan. The U.S. government hasn’t learned anything from its string of failures. In Washington, nothing succeeds like failure. Its unconditional backing of Israel’s attempted elimination of Palestinians in Gaza finds it doubling down on what hasn’t worked.
The Israelis recognize a grim reality of fighting an insurgency on insurgent territory: To win, it’s not enough to kill the guerrillas; the guerrilla-friendly local population must be eliminated as well. The Israelis’ campaign has been merciless: destroying structures, killing Palestinian civilians, and making life intolerable for the survivors. The Israeli aim is to drive the Palestinians from Gaza and Israel for good. This meets international-law definitions of genocide and has been rightly decried around the world.
What will it mean if Israel fails? The Israelis may well reduce Gaza to rubble, but that would not be mission accomplished. Rubble provides excellent cover for guerrilla strikes. Hamas’ extensive tunnels indicate that it has prepared for this war for years. In all probability, it launched the October 7 attack to get things going. Israel’s negligence detecting and responding to that attack may have been intentional, indicating that it, too, wanted the war it now has.
Hamas has a network of allies across the Middle East. Israeli and U.S. forces and maritime commerce are under attack in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean. Yemen’s Houthis have already bottled up the Red Sea. It would be an easy matter for Iran to do the same in the Persian Gulf. Control of maritime commerce at important choke points calls into question a plank as central to the American Empire as it was to the British Empire before it: control of the world’s seas and oceans.
What happens if an American-led flotilla tasked with keeping the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf open comes under a swarming missile and drone attack, plus electronic warfare that disrupts its command and control capabilities, and destroyers or aircraft carriers are sunk? Missiles, drones, and cyber disruption cost a pittance compared to battleships, and it would then be apparent that they make conventional surface naval power a paper shark. The vessels in their watery grave would send the same message as the tanks smoldering on Ukraine’s battlefields.
The power of governments rests on their ability to use violence to control populations. Yawning cost disparities, decentralized technologies, and asymmetric warfare have rendered much of conventional offensive power vulnerable or obsolete, marking an historic, tectonic transition in the relationships between governments and governed. This is no secret, particularly in the non-Western world.
Across the globe, insurgents are taking the measure of governments and finding them wanting. Governments that are not feared cannot govern. As they confront their limitations, they will, being governments, make their situations worse.
The American government has a problem not shared by many others. Its potential insurgents—urban, suburban, and rural—are armed to the teeth. They already control many of the cities (see “Ants at the Picnic, Part Two”). Heavily indebted Washington cannot command the resources necessary to subjugate the population. It gets stretched thinner with each new dollar of debt, each new tax, each new institutionalized corruption, each new illegal migrant, each new substitution of gobbledygook ideology for rationality, and each new foreign intervention. Recognition of Washington’s weakness is behind the talk of secession and some states’ defiance of its dictates.
Washington’s weakness is shared by many Western governments, although most of them don’t have to contend with armed opposition. They do have to contend with increasingly restive populations, which by sheer force of numbers can upend existing political arrangements. It is delusional to think that these beleaguered national governments can be replaced by a confederated or unitary global government that could then exercise effective control.
The imposition of global government would entail an invasion by an outside force of millions of globally dispersed localities. The global force would encounter the same problem Israel faces in Gaza. Overt and covert opposition could number in the billions.
The globalists would have to contend with organized insurrection, guerrilla warfare, sabotage, and terrorism, as well as random riots, criminality, and widespread disorder. They would have to resort to the Israeli “solution” in Gaza—mass extermination. While they are relying on propaganda, subversion, electronic control, and biological warfare, perhaps only nuclear weapons could achieve genocide at the necessary scale. Don’t put it past them. Don’t put it past the insurgents to acquire their own nukes.
Short of nuclear conflagration, the world will continue to devolve towards institutional failure, popular disillusionment, mounting rage, and chaotic fragmentation and balkanization. Today’s dinosaur governments are unable to exercise control, and many of them are slated for extinction. They will not be replaced by an even larger and more unwieldy dinosaur—global government—which is only the last, desperate hope of the fading regime. Instead, the vacuum created by failed governments will be filled by those proficient in decentralized violence. Those who have relied on centralized authority for their livelihoods, power, and status will find their worlds turned upside down. Many will not survive the transition.
After the Crash 