The resignation letter of Craig Mokhiber, Director of the New York Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has gone viral on social media but most posts only show page one. Here is the full four page letter.
This needs no gloss from me. Craig is one of the world’s leading international lawyers.
I am writing this in Geneva where I am tomorrow meeting UN officials to pursue my own case: both my unprecedented in modern times jailing for contempt of court, and the current surreal persecution under the terrorism act. I shall also be raising the case of other journalists subjected to persecution under the terrorism act, including Kit Klarenberg, Vanessa Beeley and Johanna Ross.
This account from John Laughland is interesting in how precisely it accords with my own experience, particularly in being held for exactly an hour with no right to remain silent and no right to a lawyer.
By one of those astonishing coincidences in life, tomorrow is the United Nations International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists.
I am not making it up, that really is a thing.
And the major theme of the keynote meeting is
“to bring visibility to a new Study on the impact of counter-terrorism and other criminal laws on media freedom and safety of journalists. Panellists will explore legal challenges faced by journalists and the increasing practice of resorting to restrictive legal frameworks to unduly interfere with the work of journalists.”
So I could hardly have walked in at a more auspicious moment.
Subject to an “anti-terrorism investigation”, I do not view it as safe currently to return to the UK. Whether the investigation relates to my support for Wikileaks or to my support for Palestine, or to both, I do not know as the police have not said why I am being investigated.
I honestly believe I am not fighting for me, but against encroaching fascism in western societies. It is for freedom from an ever encroaching police state and from a political class trying to enforce a monopoly of information to the public. The fight can only happen at all with financial support from the amazing readers of this blog. You have seen me through so much, and I am very grateful.
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A very strong and honest letter that is on point through and through, of course the MSM do not cover this story.
And honesty is what is lacking, honesty to even name Israel by name:
This is a typical comment by western institutions:
What happened and continues to happen in the📍#GazaStrip is forced displacement.
More than 670,000 people are sheltering in nearly 150 overcrowded @UNRWA
installations.
These people face deteriorating humanitarian conditions and severe health and protection risks.
https://twitter.com/UNRWA/status/1719729092986081576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
….and WHO is commiting this forced displacement??? Why use the term “forced displacement” when the obvious term is ethnic cleansing?
Or take this:
Stephane Dujarric said the UN secretary-general reiterated that all parties must abide by international humanitarian law, “including the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution”.
Everytime, this “all parties” sigh. Why are they so afraid to name Israel that are the only party last 3 weeks that have commited massacres after massacres?!
Or this: Amnesty calls for arms embargo on ‘all parties in the conflict’
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/11/1/israel-hamas-war-live-anger-grows-over-israeli-attack-on-gaza-refugee-camp
All parties?? This equalization of the parties/conflict is so absurd, there are 1 party that oppress the other! It is 1 party that have weapons, the oppressor, the occupied on the other hand have_the_right to use weapons against the occupier, why should the occupied be pacified?!
folks, Craig Mokhiber on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman:
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/1/craig_mokhiber_un_resignation_israel_gaza
(Craig M.s everywhere!)
Yes, he is omnipresent.
Anyway, I just posted the following tirade on Skwawkbox, so I may as well post it on here as well:
As the call for a ceasefire grows, and millions around the world march and demonstrate against the mass murder every single day of hundreds of men, women and children and babies in Gaza, the fascists – because THAT is what they are – come up with ever-more pathetic reasons why there shouldn’t be a ceasefire, including Starmer of course, along with Sunak et al. And each and everyone of these lying bastards is complicit in these daily mass murders, and they are lying through their goddam teeth when they claim that they are concerned about the Palestinians. The reality is that these people, as with Netanyahu and Co, are Psychopaths of the highest order, and they know that the vast majority of people don’t have the slightest inkling that they are, and, that it is inconceivable to them that they ARE psychopaths. And that is why they can get away with the slaughter of millions, and in this instance, give Netanyahu carte blanch to kill and maim and destroy until his black heart is satiated. You have to understand that these people are mega-sadists and they – like Bush and Blair and Co – get a total rush from this orgy of death and destruction. They are not human in any sense that we – non-psychopaths – think in terms of, and it would be more accurate to describe them as anti-human.
The reality is that the anti-human psychopaths in the US and Europe have fully endorsed their Israeli psychopath buddies in all they’ve done and been doing for seventy-five years or more, and if and when the issue comes to the fore, as of now, for example, they make all sorts of pronouncements about finding a permanent solution, and do so knowing that when the focus is no longer on the Palestinians, they can just forget all about them until the next crisis arises, which of course is always Israel killing Palestinians en masse one way or another – ie either bombing them or shooting them.
I’ve had the TV on mute whilst typing this out, but a short while ago it came up on the screen that nearly 9,000 Palestinians have now been killed in Gaza. If I remember correctly a journalist asked Starmer yesterday after he finished his B/S speech, how many men, women and children will have to be killed in Gaza before he calls for a ceasefire, and, needless to say, he avoided answering the question and slithered his way out of it. But how many will it be?! 15,000, 20,000, 25,000, 30,000? 50,000?!!
These people really are the lowest of the low, to put it politely.
And when will the Israeli people realise that they brought October the 7th on themselves!
You are smearing psychopaths with that comparison. They are born that way; these fuckers display learned behaviours.
The fact remains that Israel are nuclear-armed. The moslem world is aware of this. The only moslem nation with nukes is Pakistan. Would they intervene? Not sure; their focus is India. A difficult situation to read into, especially for amateurs like me and others who read blogs.
I think in local terms, Israel is aware of their position (impregnable). Especially with two US carriers mobilised. They have the nuclear option in the event of Iran stirring. The only other sizeable nation in the area is Turkey but I don’t imagine they would intervene.
It must be that whoever has done the ‘gaming’ has made a very bad job of it. The US seems the likeliest culprit with a long history of fubar in geopolitical scenarios.
Was Hamas receiving advice? Seems they have taken very bad advice or have made a very bad job of interpreting it. It was a bit predictable that Israel would react strongly and without reserve. They have a number of hammers in their repertoire. (It’s all they seem to have.) The only choice for them is ‘what hammer?’ – toffee, lump, sledge or mechanically assisted demolition device.
douglas leighton
“what hammer?” – the same one as Edward Longshanks aka “The Hammer of the Scots”
What a fantastic video. Thanks for the link
And let the character assassination of Mokhiber begin……
Grauniad has already begun. He was already subject to complaints and investigation for “anti-Israeli basis” according to “Lawyers for Israel”.
The mob had lawyers too, in their pocket. Same thing.
“Grauniad has already begun”.
Which goes a long way to confirming my suspicions that it is firmly under the control of Mossad.
And to think, the Guardian used to stand for independent press freedom. Peter Preston must be rolling in his grave.
You also might want to consider raising the case of Graham Phillips a journalist who has been sanctioned by the UK government for his reporting on Ukraine.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Phillips_(journalist)
Enjoy Geneva, it’s a beautiful city.
Was that link supposed to enhance Phillips’s reputation?
Not sure that Mr Phillips would pass the bar for being granted a modern ‘Persilschein’ but the use of what amounts to a Bill of Attainder against UK Citizens, or others for that matter, is what should be concerning.
Does Graham Phillips’ reputation matter?
In a country which respects the rule of law, the government can’t punish a person for having a bad reputation. It has to at least charge a person with an offence.
Cracks in the rule of law began to appear when Parliament decided that a person could be extradited from the UK without the requesting country having actually charged that person with an offence; but at least a British court could consider the situation and rule on the validity of the request. Rubber-stamp it, usually, but at least there was a token nod to the rule-of-law concept.
But if Parliament, i.e. politicians, can effectively destroy a person’s life (as the Tories have attempted to do in Graham Phillips’ case) without any involvement of a court, the rule of law has gone from this country.
Craig wrote about him last year, in an article titled ‘Freedom of Speech and Graham Phillips’:-
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/08/freedom-of-speech-and-graham-phillips/
Craig will probably want to steer clear of cases that are mired so deeply in controversy and accusations of bias.
Aren’t they all ? Surely that’s the point, all enemies of TPTB are going to be mired in MSM BS.
they want people to steer clear of cases that are mired deeply in controversy and accusations of bias. Like Craig’s and Julian’s.
In a future secular Scotland, it should be unlawful to teach racist ideologies to children whether humanist or theist. I think we need to address and confront religious indoctrination, which is defended by a large constellation of interests. I note that Israeli academic Yuval Noah Harari was highly critical of Israeli education in his book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, and noted the central racist tenets of Orthodox Judaism, as well as children bring indoctrinated into believing their tribe was central to the universe and innately heroic. That’s a stronger version of the crap I was told as a child that Scots invented everything, an educational approach that should also be banned. I support Harari’s call for a measure of humility, and that applies against speciesism too.
” I think we need to address and confront religious indoctrination”, absolutely.
We also need to address the sexualisation and grooming of children by the educational establishment.
The leftists are the only power within the west that could change the course of this senseless mayhem going on.
The leftist parties (including socialists and should include Labour) must wake up, because the leftist parties in the West are much to fault for the passivity within the west. Go back 20-30-40 years and you had leftist parties that dared to be honest, dared to be radical, dared to say the truth about issues like Palestine>@ But the left have abdicated this role and have become so politically correct that they don’t dare to say anything but what the right-wing/neo-liberal opposition and media dictate. It is like the left have tossed foreign-policy issues in the dustbin.
Today the left do not dare to single out Israel; they do not dare to utter the words “war crime” or “apartheid”. They even use the same rhetoric as the right-wing: that Palestinians use terror and Israel is just defending itself. It is a utter shame how decimated the left have made themselves to be and that is throughout the west.
‘Left’, ‘right’…left nut, right nut… same sack – it’s all bollocks, to divide and rule. (The ‘old left’ is dead anyway, killed by ‘woke’ and social media/the world of advertising/legacy propaganda/brainwashing…)
When witnessing mass murder, it isn’t easy to ‘step back’ and view things dispassionately. Attempting to do so, I’ve come to the conclusion that the events of 7/10 were a false flag operation, to be used as a pretext to launch the massacre of civilians now happening.
Clue: Sunak/Schtarmak, ‘Biden’, Ursula Fond O’ Lyin’ etc. etc. ad nauseam… all cheerleaders for the killing, all down with the siege, all against a ceasefire, all egging on the relentless, ubiquitous propaganda – the usual globalist warmongers. Acting in lockstep, as on many other issues.
Their Zionist stenographers keep churning it out… in the ‘news’ papers, and also via their troll armies: https://www.mintpressnews.com/pro-israel-trolls-mobbing-twitter-community-notes/286099/
It’s all too convenient for that lying terrorist cun* Netanyahu. He was without a paddle until this ‘Hamas attack’ gave him licence to go into full Hitler mode. I can’t even watch the TV ‘news’ at all, now. Not even ironically, to see what they’re lying about. Just can’t stomach it anymore.
There are numerous left-wing and Independent journalists and bloggers calling out the slaughter of the Palestinians etc, and I don’t think I need to list them all, but John Pilger posted the following a few days ago on X:
“The blood never dries in Palestine. The crowds and flags in London and other UK cities today are a glimpse of the resistance all over the world to the barbarism and lies of an occupation sponsored and armed by the West’s ‘leaders’ – those who demand your support. Deny it now.”
11:58 PM · Oct 28, 2023 234.1K Views
https://twitter.com/johnpilger/status/1718401924125413581?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
“Attempting to do so, I’ve come to the conclusion that the events of 7/10 were a false flag operation, to be used as a pretext to launch the massacre of civilians now happening.”
I think that it is more likely that Netanyahu knew what was coming – after all he had been warned by Egypt and presumably he had his own sources in Gaza – and decided to let it happen. The moving of the border guards away from, and the rave closer to, the border is also suspicious, as is the “failure” of the surveillance equipment.
Yesterday you said to Commentator Ian who was detailing the Israeli government killing their own civilians two days after the 7th September
“October 7th is looking more and more like a set-up by the Israeli government, isn’t it?”
Is your above statement a comment on the “set-up by the Israeli government”. If so, what is the difference you see between a “false-flag” and a “setup”?
ConsortiumNews features a 5-part series on the ongoing Israeli domestic radicalization pushed by the far right there.
The author I don´t know, Dan Steinbock, but it appears to be more in depth than usual stuff.
frankly this doesn´t give away much but eventually the text is what counts:
“Dr. Dan Steinbock is the founder of Difference Group and has served at the India, China and America Institute (US), Shanghai Institute for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see https://www.differencegroup.net/.”
part 1
“The current war is the latest manifestation of a strategy dating from the aftermath of the 1973 October War and rise of U.S.-Israeli ties, writes Dan Steinbock. First of a five-part series.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/10/30/gaza-israel-catastrophe-strategy-of-tension/
part 2
Dan Steinbock describes the process by which the Netanyahu government has sought to transform Israel from within and annex the occupied territories. Part 2 of a 5-part series.
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/11/01/gaza-israel-catastrophe-autocracy/
Re the October 7th events in Palestine, it’s worth looking at this Electronic Intifada report, which considers who was responsible for the deaths on the 7th October (youtube doesn’t work, but the twitter link does).
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/watch-video-about-7-october-youtube-doesnt-want-you-see
Just a thought, given Starmer and Braverman are married to Israelis (and Zionists), how many other senior figures are married to potential fifth columnists. We know many MSM figures are self-avowed believers, but how deep does the rot go? I’d suggest the allegiance of the Zionists is certainly not to the UK, or to peace in Palestine.
And. Talking of fifth columnists, after destroying Corbyn, Labour has been more heavily infiltrated.
More than half of Starmer’s shadow cabinet are listed as parliamentary supporters or officers of LFI.
It has … described itself as “a Westminster based lobby group working within the British Labour Party to promote the State of Israel”.
https://www.declassifieduk.org/two-fifths-of-keir-starmers-cabinet-have-been-funded-by-pro-israel-lobbyists/
You have done the right thing to shelter outside the U.K., I guess temporarily. But as I have suggested to you before on a couple of occasions, they will not cease to try to silence you and worse, so you really need to find a permanent expatriate settlement for yourself and your family. There are numerous candidates worldwide and many offer a better life experience than is available in the U.K. now. I speak from experience.
Meanwhile Hezbollah have stated that they will enter the war if Hamas are seen to be struggling. I have seen reports that with Iran at their back, they are sufficiently armed to destroy Israel, so with the USA and the U.K. champing at the bit, there is only one direction in which this going.
palestinechronicle.com ex NYT
Hi Walt. I watched your film “A Taste of Palestinian” on vimeo but was unable to comment due to email registration problems. I note you have several films up on vimeo, I’ll watch the rest, as long as they are of a similar quality as “A Taste of Palestine”.
I much enjoyed your film. The narration was well paced and let the images do the talking. The narrator’s voice I found unusual and interesting and the emotional control in the voice-over, once again focused my attention on the imagery, which I often found striking. The checkpoint queues, the hill with the trees gone, the Wall, the writing on a building in Ramallah,
“a new youth shall come and bring new days
and resume our songs unfinished in living fire forged”
and the landscape descending into the Dead Sea. For a brief moment viewing those arid hills, a thousand long-forgotten passages from Bible lessons flooded my mind. It was a little eerie. Especially since you had already mentioned how long people have been living in Palestine. I think you presented a broad sweep of time artfully and treated the subject matter without manipulation.
Thanks for this personal view – it has moved me deeply. I’ll watch it again. Considering where we are, with many thousands of dead Palestinian children, I am unable to comment on the children performing the small dramas of childhood in your film. In light of the truth written on a building in Ramallah, I can add nothing.
US & UK media have largely ignored this.
BBC narrative control : Exaggerate Israeli suffering while downplaying that of Gazans.
The BBC seem to find it necessary to keep reminding UK viewers that Hamas ‘are a banned terrorist organisation,’ as if that somehow excuses every war crime we are witnessing.
Detailed history of the Sinai resettlement plan by Jonathan Cook on ICH this morning.
https://informationclearinghouse.blog/2023/11/01/mounting-evidence-suggests-israel-may-be-ready-to-cleanse-gaza/
that´s just a drawing from a Scheerpost article that I liked:
https://i0.wp.com/scheerpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/01e3bd6c-3808-4e07-b734-34ee7c2149ee.webp?resize=1021%2C1024&ssl=1
title “Peace Dove by Jose Trujillo”
I was told the Italian quarter in Geneva is a good place to spend time and to eat.
Albeit personally I have found Switzerland in general very money oriented.
By this I mean how people treat each other and what eventually makes the difference: ideals or money.
And this being true regardless of political colours.
But may be I was just unlucky.
Since I really don´t believe in prejudiced views. Even if they are being confirmed in my small private space.
On the other hand I have met several Swiss expatriates who left their home for exactly this reason.
After all: Being surrounded by wealth 24/7 in terms of ideology and means alike leaves its marks on your soul. Money can deform humans.
I’m still waiting for someone on the medias to ask whether it would have been OK for the British to start carpet-bombing Dublin (and the rest of Ireland for that matter), in response to IRA terrorism.
The analogy could go much further. Shouldn’t the British have put a full blockade on Ireland, hemmed in a substantial part of the population to a west bank, say, and the Cork Strip, and bombed the bejeezes out of them if they got uppity?
Shouldn’t Northern Ireland have got ‘settlers’ in, and expanded their territory deep into the south?
This analogy could just run and run. Perhaps – while a two-state solution was being pursued – the southern Irish could make do with far lesser rights, and have to give up land and homes to ‘settlers’ unless they could produce documentation of ownership to the satisfaction of British officials.
The British – England, anyway – surely would have been just as entitled to such behaviour. Can’t the Americans see this?
“Can’t the Americans see this?”
Some can but for some reason they are nowhere near the levers of power.
I think a few people in lower positions in the power structure have resigned over it, even one man at the State Department.
I’m still waiting for someone on the medias to ask whether it would have been OK for the British to start carpet-bombing Dublin (and the rest of Ireland for that matter), in response to IRA terrorism.
LBC asked a similar question to a pro-israeli caller the other day:
LBC: What if Hamas hide inside Israel, would Israel then start carpet bombing the whole place too?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP-Pynw6ye4
Of course the pro-israeli could not give a proper reply and therefore prove the excess violence by Israel in Gaza.
Whilst it was of nowhere the same scale, and from a time before the more recent ‘Troubles’, some might suggest that the British did something on the road to such actions in their suppression of the Easter Rising, and the subsequent employment of the ‘Tans and Auxies’?
And again, after the Partition, some could argue that some residents of NI did indeed have lesser rights ?
Clearly a difference in scale when compared to the present situation in the Holy Land, but some parallels could be drawn ? And maybe its instructive that Great Britain, which was still (barely) the worlds Big Dog at the time, realised that it could not get away with the continuation of trying to crush Irish aspirations in the court of world opinion. Something which seems absent from the minds of the Yanks right now.
The UN, a 1945 construct of the victors of WW II and dominated by the US and located there has become a 21st century joke:
“The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) has expressed outrage over the appointment of Iran’s UN ambassador to serve as chairman of the UN Human Rights Council’s 2023 Social Forum. ”
https://www.rferl.org/a/human-rights-group-outrage-iran-un-ambassador/32408307.html
Another proof: If a death toll below ~ 0.25% (Gaza) of a population is today called a ‘text book case of genocide” than there are a few genocides every year. Covid, Ukraine, Sudan.
Too much ME oil money and Chinese manufacturing money have now tilted the UN scales in other directions than level or just.
I don’t know if anyone posted this Guardian article from October 19th in a recent thread, but I’ll post it anyway, having just come across it:
‘Do not use our pain to bring death’: plea to Israel from peace activists’ grieving families
Many of the massacre’s survivors and bereaved people said they felt abandoned by a government that knew it had few voters in the areas near Gaza. Under Netanyahu, military funds and attention had been shifted to the West Bank and the settler outposts there that were a priority for his voters and allies.
Their warnings went unheard, but now their anger and frustration may be more widely shared. A recent poll commissioned by the Jerusalem Post found that about four in five Israelis blame Netanyahu for the massacres, and most think he should resign when the war is over.
“For a decade plus we have been telling ourselves fairy tales, that we can ignore the fact that we are controlling millions of people by force,” said, Gvaryahu of Breaking the Silence. “That has totally burst.
“This conception that we can ignore an occupation, ignore that there are millions in Gaza without rights, millions in the West Bank without rights,” he added. “This could be a moment that will cement it, or this might be a moment when we could help change the tide. That is the biggest challenge ahead.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/19/do-not-use-our-death-to-bring-death-plea-to-israel-from-peace-activists-grieving-families
If you need a bolt hole, I’ve a spare room, fly into Shannon and you’ll be plied with porter and Redbreast.
A different approach to extracting information, perhaps?
Is it safe?
Two weeks ago Bassem Youssef the US comedian (& former Egyptian heart surgeon) lit up social media in an interview on Piers Morgan’s Talk TV show where he mocked the Western attitude to the Gaza crisis using satire and sarcasm. Now there’s a sequel: Piers flew over to Los Angeles to interview him again, face to face, in the Comedy Store. This time, the conversation is more intimate and probing, sometimes amicable, sometimes antagonistic. Once again, Bassam paints the mental landscape with alternative perspectives that Piers (and most viewers) never considered. He’s a very powerful speaker and more than a match for Piers. It’s a deep dive into the oncoming genocide and its historical antecedents.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqjO5Z9Lt_M
Be warned, it’s long watch – 1 hour 46m.
Moon of Alabama dug out some older stories concerning Hamas and Gaza and Western reporting:
Economist Fakes Political History Of Gaza
The Economist is faking history:
Bibi Netanyahu is the wrong man in the wrong place – Economist – October 31, 2023:
“In the absence of clear government direction the Israeli defence establishment is doing all the planning. Its preferred solution is to see the PA ultimately return to Gaza, which it controlled until Hamas’s coup in 2007.”
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/11/the-economist-fakes-political-history-of-gaza.html#comments
MoA: response “There was no ‘Hamas coup’, neither in 2007 nor before or after it. But there was indeed a coup attempt in Gaza. It was led by Muhammad Dahlan of the Fatah, which was also leading the Palestinian Authority, who, with U.S. support, was trying to overthrow the legally elected Hamas government of Gaza.”
“US seeks strategic dialogue with Russia”
by October 30, 2023 by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR
https://www.indianpunchline.com/us-seeks-strategic-dialogue-with-russia/
interesting (however not a revelation)
But I don´t agree:
“The fact remains that the US, despite its self-proclaimed status as the “Indispensable Nation” (Madeleine Albright) and the guarantor of “rules-based order,” failed to prevent the latest eruption of conflict in the Middle East.”
Says who?
The US needs to upset things.
If the world were to agree on world peace, all the goals set out by the UN, and focus on battling climate change, it would be the
end of the US in its current form on a geopolitical and industrial level. They know it. Everyone else does. So why claim such foolish thing.
And again:
“Equally, Western leaderships understand that the war against Russia is practically lost — although they will not admit it publicly — and engagement with Russia is needed.”
I am still holding the position that the “loss” applies to little Europe not to the US. And while I understand that some here and elsewhere have pointed out that a US defeat is also relevant if only on the “symbolic level” as to “projecting” might, for the US in its limited areas of long-term thinking again it needed an upset. And in substance UKR was only a gain.
If the Middle East might not follow orders as it used to be that goes back to developments long before UKR.
The article fails to mention the US electoral dimensions of all of this.
In an interview with Robert Wright on Non-Zero podcast, Sarah Posner, a left Democrat and if necessary I assume a supporter of Biden, pointed out, that if there were any serious contenders they would have long been established due to the internal nomination process. So it will be Biden. And Biden will most likely win the election. (I don’t know what she said about the Russiagate saga). But her voice was seldom among the more critical leftist ones. (I can’t judge that since I know too little of what’s happening behind the scene.)
All in all to assume Biden was not in the picture on Gaza is ridiculous. And UKR achieved obedience by the EU re: RU & ISR & CHINA. That’s a perfect 10 out of 10.
By that the usual tropes of US foreign policy have been established that have always been part of any election: containing RU and the “Angry Arab”.
final point: Will the regional powers risk a major war over Palestinians? A refugee for any society is at some point just that, a refugee. The Roman Empire was not broken over its refugee issues but geopolitical greed and too high a concentration of capital.
That’s why the civil movements are so important as Mokhiter said in the interview on Democracy Now.
He knows that big power politics will not remedy the Palestinian suffering. How far that will take us is unclear however.
But if global focus will shift to Asia, it might even become imaginable that in the long run Israel won’t have a choice but begin a process as we have seen it in South Africa.
They know this and so might try to create faits accomplis before.
“I am still holding the position that the “loss” applies to little Europe not to the US.”
Yes. America’s allies have only sanctioned themselves and eliminated themselves as trade rivals to America.
I agree with the man’s criticisms of Israel. His proposals are certainly ambitious and not unfair. But I can’t help respond with “you and whose army, mate?”
A UN peacekeeping force on a mission of nation building? You’d need enough members to contribute to such a force and agree on a mandate. Then you’d need some kind of peace to keep, which has just been blown out of the water by extremist psychopaths on both sides who have no interest in any kind of peace at all. Or you could just try asking everybody nicely, I suppose.
Don’t get me wrong, as I am largely pro-Palestinian, but a “one-state solution” is an absurd fantasy. Palestinians (and other non-Jewish inhabitants of Israel, including the Druze, Circassians, et al) vastly out number the Jews. If everyone had a vote, the state of Israel would be dissolved tomorrow.
Effectively, that’s no difference than losing a war, for the people for whom Israel’s Jewish nature is essential to their religious/cultural identity.
“If everyone had a vote, the state of Israel would be dissolved tomorrow.”
In South Africa, the black inhabitants vastly outnumbered the white ones. Giving the blacks the vote didn’t result in the state of South Africa dissolving overnight.
On the subject of votes.
If the US and UK had fair voting systems (proportional representation) the power of the Israeli lobby would be greatly diminished. The most powerful weapon Israel possess is their insidious hold over the two big parties in the US/UK.
This would be an excellent time for Corbyn to launch his Peace & Justice Party. There are literally hundreds of thousands marching in the streets of London each weekend. All of them looking for a new political home. Too opportunistic? Maybe, but that’s how you build an unstoppable political movement fast.
PR sounds like a good setup until you realise that it will invariably involve a ‘List System’ that sees people getting into the Cockpit of the Nation merely by being on some party list as opposed to having to present themselves and their personalities to public scrutiny. It’s such systems that end up seeing the likes of Ursula fondof Lying, and other two bob merchants wielding the levers of power. Maybe we ought also to remember not so far back here in the UK, when UKIP was shouting the odds about PR ? Imagine Mr Farage in Parliament ? No doubt it would have pleased and dismayed in equal measure.
It’s probably the case that First past the Post serves to exclude the unelectable, and acts as a brake on ‘Unstoppable Political Movements’ which often differ little from King Mob, and can be quite hard to get rid of if they get power.
GE’s are far too expensive, some 300 million plus, and the councils in charge of counting will always present the same counters and election coordinators who have been under the ‘guidance’ of one or other main party for decades.
Further the idea of postal votes that can be sent out and accepted on election date is open to fraud, as it favors tribal voting in large families where mostly old elderly males make the decisions on who to vote for.
A random selection using NI numbers, pulling either a woman or man according to the search result and stipulate to those willing to represent their constituency, that they are only selected for one year due to corruption preventative measures, cost nothing more than the software doing the random selection.
Should the selected possible future representative not feel able to do the job and says No in a phone call, another person can be drawn within seconds and asked whether s/he is willing to do the job.
Advantages are a strong barrier against corruption, guaranteed gender balance, as a man who has served for a year will be replaced with a random selection of a woman thereafter, and a minimum of public expense.
The real bonus would be that political parties would have no foothold over the election process, there would be no more ‘aspirational’ lies at the doorstep and a new collaboration in Parliament by groups who would automatically organise themselves around the most burning and necessary issues that the public wants to address.
If there is PR, more real Independent candidates would see a chance against the rich supported parties; it’s not good enough. Politics should be done by the people for the people, those with outrageous inhumane ideas, such as the current Suella or Starmski, would stick out like a sore thumb the moment they open their mouth.
Rabid political groups would be countered by this random selection and the civil service would bend over backwards to make it work.
Casual Observer
I don’t like closed party list systems either. They aren’t inevitable under PR.
You can easily have open lists : party preference box, then below that an open list of candidates(say) 6 per party for a given area. They can be ranked by voters in order of preference. That’s the PR system Japan uses for one of its two houses, don’t remember which? I’ve seen the ballot papers. Logical and prevents the party machine foisting unpopular candidates on voters.
A much better system than PR, which has PR-like elements, but no “list system”, is multi-member constituencies. It has the advantages of being already in use for parish and town councils, simplicity and of having been used before in the past. Each constituency returns, say, five members to Parliament. Every voter gets one vote for one member. Any party fielding more than one member will therefore split their vote and be vulnerable to being beaten by a candidate for a party fielding only a single member. Thus the vast majority of voters would end up with the MP they voted for. Very few “safe seats” would be safe for more than two MPs from the same party.
It is for all these reasons that such a system will never be introduced.
As currently is the electoral system in Rep. of Ireland, i.e. proportional representation by the single transferable vote (STV) in multi-seat constituencies.
There are other places in the world using the same for some of their elections.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/proportional-representation-what-it-is-and-how-it-works-1.579519
The only criticism I’ve heard is the order in which the candidates are listed on the ballot paper, currently alphabetically, with one candidate I remember changing his name by deed poll so as to appear top of the list. Easy fix by printing ballot papers in multiple random orders.
Of course, in Ireland Dustin the Turkey got 1% of the national vote for president 😁 (which is a titular non-political-ish post). Mary Robinson, who won that presidential election, appeared on the show.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l9rUmGAd3PM&pp=ygUXZHVzdGluIHR1cmtleSBiZXN0IGJpdHM%3D
All good responses, but, there’s no doubt that those seeking election will always try to offer promises that might attract a majority of voters, only to pay such promises little regard upon entering office. I’d worry that even the seemingly sensible systems of Ireland and Japan would have the effect of offering truly awful political denizens the ability to hang around in the system ?
The UK system whilst having many of the characteristics of a game of snakes and ladders, does punish parties and individuals who deviate from their platform in egregious ways, fairly effectively.
Remember the notable WSC quotes, ”The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter” and ”Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others”. Cynical views maybe, but containing more than a germ of truth ? As ever, one could have the most perfect of systems for anything, but upon including the human element, unexpected negatives always emerge. 🙂
Naw, it has taken a few decades to dissolve. It’s just about finished now.
I generally agree that a one-state solution is unlikely, but I disagree with some details. Allow me to offer my own speculations.
It just wouldn’t be a Jewish state any more. It would need to have a constitution that takes the split in society into account and guarantees religious rights and certain collective rights of various groups in a very explicit and detailed manner, even including details such as immigration to prevent this from being used as a vehicle for changing majorities.
Currently, the Muslim population is growing faster than the Jewish population. This is an expected effect for disadvantaged populations. They generally have more children. Under a one-state solution this would normalise in the same way that while immigrants from poorer countries have more children than the local average, their children do not. So the percentage of Jews would remain at roughly 50%. Under the current apartheid system, however, the Muslim population will continue to grow significantly faster, and even under a two-state solution they would probably grow somewhat faster. The longer until a proper solution, the more likely that solution will be a Muslim-dominated one-state solution.
A one state solution is the only solution, one man, one vote. There’s ample evidence that the two state solution is a western device to ensure there is never any solution and Israel will only disappear if it doesn’t change. However, as a compromise it may be neccessary to rename ‘Palestine plus Israel’ and recognise Jews (not Israelis) as a ‘protected’ species. I’m sure all those highly paid politicians could come up with a solution, the problem of coexistence only appears to be a zionist issue, not an arab issue, IMO.
I believe Slavoj Žižek´s speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair this year was not documented here, so I link to it, via Youtube.
Highly recommended for its entertaining character because the audience interrupts him.
Less so for its alleged analytic sharpness.
By now, as usual, mostly forgotten; back 2 weeks ago it caused a big splashing scandal in Germany.
It’s in English:
Go to TC 1:35:00.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlzJj0K_AWI
It actually starts with the audience’s friendly laughter – after all, it’s everybody’s darling Slavoj.
Žižek’s speech is convoluted and inconsistent (for those who are familiar enough with the subject.)
On the one hand he speaks about his support for Palestine and his work in Ramallah etc.
He even quotes Moshe Dayan’s and Ben Gurion’s frank speeches.
On the other he simply compares Hitler with Hamas (well I don’t blame him, it’s the same capital letter).
Re: ‘Žižek’s speech is convoluted and inconsistent’
Surely not, AG?
Knowing about Palestinian history what he might know having spent time there and still compare Hamas with Hitler is completely obscene and akin to much of the overblown things Žižek has published over the many years (on countless fields whether he is an expert or not) since he has become a cause célèbre.
With that frequency as he so often does it´s not possible to uphold meaningful quality in one´s work.
I don’t know about GB. In Germany he has developed into that kind of coffee table philosopher everyone would know and hear about and read tiny snippets from even if they have no deeper understanding of philosophical inquiries and analyses nor the inclination to acquire such.
To neglect the history, the details, the lack of human rights of day to day life in Gaza and the West Bank, and for that matter of the Arabs in Israel, the citizens and the non-citizens who are the working force there, entering Israel in the mornings doing their blue-collar work and leaving through the gates in the night; to disregard the deeply cynical character of the Oslo Agreement which was not only condemned by Edward Said or Equbal Ahmad and other non-Jewish scholars but also by saint Israeli state historians as Benny Morris, is to neglect basic rules of human development and the genesis and background of all this madness.
And in doing so Žižek eventually pathologizes Hamas and, even if he won´t express that in a 25 min. speech, the Palestinian social fabric itself since that’s Hamas’ social origin. (Even if 50% of the current Gaza youth never voted for Hamas due to their young age.)
Much has been written and said about the South African Apartheid State. And as much about how the Israeli state relates to that (some described it as even worse). Today none of that would be contested by any serious historian of the subject.
Neither would anyone argue that the ANC terrorists of then became the heroes of now.
Why then is it not possible for a philosopher of all people to endeavour into this speculative matter and point out that Hamas could in 20 years or 100 have a similar fate in hindsight not only in the Arab world but mainstream thinking. But instead compare them with Hitler???
How is it possible that Žižek knows darn well that in 2018/19 200 protesters were shot dead by IDF border guards and several hundred injured, many severely maimed – Palestinians who explicitly had chosen non-violent resistance by using speech and tranparents – and not mention this with a single word?
Were those 200 unarmed protesters shot a humane act?
Were those killings by any means sane? Justified? Why was THAT not a MASSACRE or a POGROM?
Or those (since we all like our numbers) 1400 dead Palestinian civilians (500 children + another 800 armed) killed during operation “Protective Edge” in 2014.
I could go down the list from decade to decade but I will spare us that since I have made my point clear enough and the documentation of Israeli war crimes is one of the best documented in UN history.
Then the last line of defense for many cultured Germans is, well they – the beastly Arabs – use “vicious” methods –
Well, what’s the difference between an Israeli soldier frying your balls or a Palestinian as part of torture?
What’s the difference between 200 hostages taken by Hamas or 5000 being held by IDF under the protection of a security state?
Or another 5000 hostages taken by the IDF since Oct 7? Or is it because the IDF calls them prisoners? (Even though there is no public documentation of their whereabouts and no due process – for years.)
To quote Algerian freedom fighter? terrorist? brute? native? hero? Ben M’Hidi from the FLN when taken prisoner 1957 by the French Army after the Battle of Algier:
“Give us your bombers, and you can have our baskets.” (referring to the method of killing by both sides in the Algerian War of Independence and French journalists who argued a 500 kilo bomb from a Mirage III is more civilized than a homemade suicide bomb in a basket carried by a woman.)
btw, Brigadier general Paul Aussaresses in 2000 admitted to first having tortured Ben M´Hidi and eventually killing him, disguised as suicide. That was 1957. Mr. Aussaresses, who additionally admitted the torture and murder of Ali Boumendjel (lawyer), died rather peacefully in 2013. In 2021 (!) French President Macaroni acknowledged these crimes as murders. So I guess its a long way to go for Hamas and the Palestinians.
Well, yes, in the light of supposedly knowing all this, I would call Žižek´s line of thinking as presented on stage, slightly inconsistent and convoluted. To say the least.
p.s. (please do not take my upset tone personally. But I am surrounded by complete blindness and hypocrisy and can talk to almost no one. In fact the lack of analytical capability and theoretical reasoning is worse than it was during the UKR/RU situation. I mean you see it in the Žižek video how those people in their fine suits are reacting to the man who likes to mime the mad man. Since all of this is most professional showmanship by Žižek.)
Thanks for your extensive reply AG. I was being facetious in my previous comment, in case it didn’t come across. I think Slavoj is more an entertainer than a philosopher – and he’s certainly not an expert on the Middle East. If it’s of any interest, I, for one, would argue that the contemporary ANC aren’t exactly ‘the heroes of now’ – and so, I’d imagine, would Julius Malema and his Economic Freedom Fighters.
My comment to my brother about this is:
“Paradox that exposes the impossibility of holding two opposite beliefs.”
Žižek is sometimes too emotional and appears confused. You cannot accept that a racist supremacism apartheid regime or government has the right to exist whilst also berating the actions that are needed to keep this entity in existence by ethnic cleansing and colonialism. But Žižek is not alone in this confusion, all western governments are. It is easy to agree that any current population of any country has a right to exist but but not at the expense of the life of others.
Another night of racial extermination – at least 200 people killed in the refugee camp after Israel’s strike.
Take a look at this photo
https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1759497109-1698914902.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80
It looks like a photo from WW2/nazi atrocities.
Still no one have the human courage to condemn Israel let alone call an end to this!
What will it take to launch a war crimes probe against Israel?
Israeli strikes have hit Gaza’s biggest refugee camp for two days in a row. More than 100 people have been killed in the attacks in Gaza. The UN’s calling the strip a living hell where nearly 8800 people have died. Israel has also targeted hospitals and mosques. What will it take to launch a war crimes investigation?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSBiOO5iUZA
I also think it is absurd how easy people have accepted the idea that Hamas should be eradicated, that Israel have the right to do this – we are talking about a democratically elected party by a people that are occupied! How could the occupied, the victim, be the problem??
Here we have IDF admit that they know they will kill civilians and…. well so be it: if this is not terror what is?
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer:
“You knew there were innocent civilians in that refugee camp, right?”
IDF spokesman (Scottish?)
“This is the tragedy of war. We told them to move south”
Blitzer:
“So you decided to drop the bomb anyway?”
https://nitter.net/MaajidNawaz/status/1719519133149131256#m
Just note how easy it is for the israelis to do this, they do not see palestinians as humans. It is like they lack human empathy for non-jews altogether.
IDF spokesman (Scottish?)
I had the same first impression and wanted to ask here: is he???
(It’s an oddity among all the ongoing madness to have such a thought.)
Lt Col. Richard Hecht was brought up in Newton Mearns, which is a suburb of Glasgow and home to a quarter of Scotland’s (small) Jewish population, AG, and despite moving to Israel 40 years ago, he’s seemingly retained his Scottish accent:
https://www.thenational.scot/news/23844401.scotsman-richard-hecht-international-voice-israeli-military/
Every day’s a school day, as Jim McColl used to say on The Beechgrove Garden (Scottish gardening programme on the much-maligned BBC).
thx LA!
how cool is that fun fact in a sick world managed by sick people
Thanks for your reply AG. The Jewish diaspora does indeed stretch far and wide*. Correction to my above comment: Newton Mearns is actually a town in East Renfrewshire, but you can get there from central Glasgow without passing through any countryside. According to Wiki, East Renfrewshire is home to over 40% of Scottish Jews, so I should probably add it to my (small) list of UK constituencies which have a larger Jewish population than Muslim one:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2023/10/zionism-is-bullshit-2/comment-page-1/#comment-1048915
* The previous First Lady of Iceland was an Israeli-born Jew of Uzbek stock:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorrit_Moussaieff
“Subject to an “anti-terrorism investigation”, I do not view it as safe currently to return to the UK. Whether the investigation relates to my support for Wikileaks or to my support for Palestine, or to both, I do not know as the police have not said why I am being investigated.”
Probably a wise decision, the dis-untied kingdom’s politicians (the majority of them) appear to be closing down any dissent on matters such as the genocide in Gaza, and discussions surrounding freeing Assange.
It does seem an almost unbelievable state of affairs, if people can now be arrested for protesting about genocide overseas.
I really hope the security services are now happy about what they have achieved in the UK, although they may like to explain to the electorate how their current policies help our ‘National Security’.
Or it could be; that because our politicians seem to be pro-genocide (and our PM rushed over as soon as he could to shake hands with the psychopathic bloodthirsty mastermind behind the genocide), that anyone who prefers peace and stability to endless human slaughter is now considered to be an enemy of the state?
I don’t think there is any evidence that the security services care about this slide into fascism; they support it.
I’d like to see all these journalists and minsters asked: Do the Palestinians have a right to armed resistance against occupation? Yes or No?
The US/UK & EU position seems to be that Israel must have a monopoly on violence in the region.
I do not see that the situation has been presented rationally and I am afraid this is true of both sides. This is not a ‘war’ in the usual sense of two armies fighting each other and therefore all the acceptances of civilian deaths let alone on this scale cannot be tolerated. The Palestinians are disarmed and imprisoned. Any violent action by a Palestinian is classified as armed résistance or even if you wish, criminal action or terrorism , by a group of armed individuals. The reaction to this in any normal society is to carry out a police action targeting the ‘criminal’ or the ‘terrorists’ if you wish, but not indiscriminate bombing of the whole population. The Israelis can do this and get away with it only because they have normalized the illegal action of incarcerating Palestinians in two Bantustan enclaves.
Fat John.
I can’t recall the woman’s name but a female UK security service agent quit, I think it was years ago because she said that their remit had changed, instead of spying and collecting info on foreign agents, players etc, the service had turned inwards and began spying and monitoring UK civilians businesses and politicians more and more, and today we see much more of this.
Consecutive UK governments have only increased the powers of these services, sometimes via false flag ops, to further reduce hard fought for freedoms, freedoms our forefathers/mothers often shed blood for. I don’t see things getting any better in the near future, if governments can standby and watch thousands of children slaughtered in Gaza using hi-tec weapons often produced in Europe/UK/US etc, then curtailing free speech say in the UK on such matters, will only increase.
Craig is a prime example of this he went to prison on flimsy evidence, and now he’s in their crosshairs again.
” I think it was years ago because she said that their remit had changed, instead of spying and collecting info on foreign agents, players etc, the service had turned inwards and began spying and monitoring UK civilians businesses and politicians ”
It must’ve been years ago because the security services have been doing this for nigh on 100 years. Certainly MI5 had a file on Harold Wilson when he was PM and prominent fascists and communists in the 1920s and 30s.
Katharine Gun.
Blew whistle on GCHQ collusion with NSA to spy on UN staff over invasion of Iraq.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Gun
Pears Morgaine/Stevie Boy.
Found her.
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Cathy_Massiter
They made a film. It’s been on terrestrial TV, either Ch 4 or Film 4 not long since.
Official Secrets (2019)
In her trial for breaking the Official Secrets Act. Gun’s legal team argued that at the time she leaked the information, she was trying to prevent an illegal war. The case collapsed after the prosecution offered no evidence.
They didn’t want to produce the legal advice from that time. Because, as we subsequently found out, the legal advice was indeed changed. The then Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, has since said he changed his mind on the legality of any invasion just two days after his US visit, due to lobbying in Washington.
LOL
I just recalled girl called Machon 😃.
Another whistleblower from MI 5.
Came across her on you tube!
It’s genocide regardless of how you look at it. It’s genocide all the way around, either way you put it. It’s the Palestinians out of Israel or the Jews into the ocean. Choose. Genocide is nothing compared to the real problems with creating a new nation where one already existed in 1947. So, stop blubbering about nothing.
If Turkey and the rest of the other Middle East countries have their way, both the Palestinians and the Jews will be gotten rid of and somebody else will take over the region. At this point, anything that throws the bums (the West) out works for me. Like Lebanon, Iran, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Eygpt want another set of neighbors like Israel. Israel will cease to exist. Tear the house down and bull doze the property.
The West did this. The UK and the United States. The creation of the State of Israel where another state already existed was galloping insanity — the West’s specialty. No real solutions, just chaos. Since forever. I am sick of it.
The United States is committing suicide with its own open borders policy. The same policy it used in the Middle East and Israel it is practicing right here at home. Open borders. We can’t even feed our own slaves, educate our own slaves, house our own slaves, employ our own slaves (in meaningful jobs), but we can allow millions of foreigners into this country and pay them more than our senior citizens and pensioners get in Social Security. This government hasn’t passed a budget in over 20-years. Our government is a nut job.
The whole idea of the United States getting rid of the Palestinians the same way they got rid of the Native Americans is just more callous disregard for human life, but on a grand, and glorious [sarcasm] global hegemon scale. And now getting rid of American Citizens. Pure nut jobbery.
The human race is beyond redemption. I say Nukes all around for Christmas.
Too little too late,
Tunisia’s parliament to consider bill criminalizing relations with Israel
https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/10/tunisias-parliament-consider-bill-criminalizing-relations-israel#ixzz8Huj13Oc5
Al Jazeera: Bahrain summons envoy to Israel, suspends economic relations
https://www.lbcgroup.tv/news/middleeastnews/732319/al-jazeera-bahrain-summons-envoy-to-israel-suspend/en
The nasty saudis will not break off any relations:
Saudi crown prince indicates Israel normalization can resume after war – White House
https://www.timesofisrael.com/saudi-crown-prince-indicates-israel-normalization-can-resume-after-war-white-house/
Multiple refugee sites attacked past hours. What the hell is wrong this people?
WATCH: Panic at UN school in Gaza hit by Israeli attack
Footage shows an Israeli attack hitting a UNRWA school sheltering thousands of people in the Gaza Strip.
Bureij, where an air raid earlier today killed at least 15 people, is a comparatively small refugee camp situated in the middle of the Gaza Strip.
At least 29 people killed in Israeli bombing on Jabalia refugee camp today
On top of that Israel hinder aid from getting through
Israeli ground attack hinders aid to hundreds of thousands
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/11/2/israel-hamas-war-live-195-killed-120-missing-in-jabalia-strikes
The responsibility lies with the west that not only let Israel do this but are the ones providing the arms, bullets for this perverted killing by Israel.
“I do not view it as safe currently to return to the UK”
That is profoundly disturbing.
Death toll at least 9500 now, at least half of that civilians deliberately indiscriminately murdered. That is some food for thought because the same people that actively support this, actively work against a ceasefire are the ones that early on demanded 4 weeks back that “we” must condemn Hamas.
You see, these people did not care about civilians getting killed, they only wanted to kill Palestinian civilians and to silence the pro-Palestinian side.