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interview Daniel Falcone with Richard Falk:
“Rafah Attack Escalates “Most Transparent Genocide of All Time,”
https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/rafah-attack-escalates-most-transparent-genocide-of-all-time-scholar-says/Intro:
Over 85,000 Palestinians in Gaza may be killed over the next six months in the likely event of further escalation by Israel and epidemic outbreaks in the besieged territory, according to a recent prediction made by researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and John Hopkins University. Such grim predictions are not implausible in light of Israel’s plan for a ground invasion of Rafah, a city in southern Gaza, in March, amid the continued widespread destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure, as well as the collapse of humanitarian aid deliveries and operations. Rafah has become one of the most densely populated areas on Earth, with over 1.5 million Palestinians now living in the area bordering Egypt. Talks for prisoner exchanges and a ceasefire are taking place in Paris following three days of hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Israel’s occupation. Israel has killed nearly 30,000 Palestinians since its military operation began after October 7 — an average of about 250 Palestinians every day, far more than the daily death toll in any other recent armed conflict, according to Oxfam.
In this exclusive interview for Truthout, international relations scholar and expert Richard Falk discusses the latest developments of the tragedy in Rafah and unpacks Israel’s goal to destabilize the region and undermine resistance.
JACK
This post is an exception:
But since it´s an actual article and in an odd way fits here as a rarity in political discourse:“How Italy’s Post-Fascists Fell in Love With J. R. R. Tolkien
By John Phipps
A lifelong fan of J. R. R. Tolkien, Italy’s far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, was first in line for last year’s exhibition on him in Rome. Like others before her, Meloni has appropriated Tolkien’s fantasies to refashion fascism for the 21st century.”
https://jacobin.com/2024/02/giorgia-meloni-tolkien-fascism-fantasy
In my youth people would read Tolkien and still be completely aware of the fascist nature of his aesthetics. With the movies this feature of his work became even more obvious. But no one seemed to care in our oh-so critically enlightened world. Only a blind person would not notice.
p.s. Interestingly neither “The Hobbit” nor his superior “Silmarillion” – which were more heterogenic and open to non-jingoist thought – became as popular as LOTR (whether due to the text, or rather due to less PR?) .
Which is why especially “Silmarilion” is much less known today.
AG I think the LOTR is shot through with Tolkien’s WW1 PTSD. Frodo and Sam crossing the Dead Marshes is a direct lift of Tolkien and his working class batman (Sam Gamgee) being lost in no-man’s-land in WW1 for a week or so! I agree the Silmarillion is a good effort, closer to the roots of his academic work in the historical literature of Northern Europe. Arguments over the political implications of his work have been going on a while. The background Imperial racism is not unique to him – most writers exhibited this trait in those days.
For myself, I’ve reduced it to the mythology ie the Silmarillion – LOTR and the rest was a good read as a youngster but the cosmology and narrative of the “Elder Days” as written in the book is a brilliant resynthesis of the Old Norse and Old English literature etc that he studied.
Recently it has started to strike me as a warning, if one is to look for the central motif. It is about totalitarianism – the slightly unpleasant inchoate conservative politics seem secondary. To show you what I mean l’ll ask you a riddle.
Q One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them, what am I?
A The Internet
“
will
The genesis of LOTR as you put it is most likely beyond debate.
And so is the imperial tradition of racism mirrored in (British et al.) literary traditions. Which is, surprisingly may be, still alive in today´s psyche. (Until 2022 at least, naively, I would have thought differently).
For this I might hint at the last interview with Nicolai Petro that I posted in the UKR thread with THE DURAN, where he mentions that the fear of Russia has always been a means of identification and constitution of identity for (Western) Europe. Only by segregation from Russia, Europe would become the current elite project. And thus however a mere projection.
The term “Orcs” for RU soldiers (vs. “Elves” as TATYANA pointed out in re: of Western hackers) being the most primitive expression of popular culture being instrumental to imperialist Western state PR.
On the transcendental level, “internet” as an indefinite space of meaning and power today indeed might amount to the mythical function of what the Ring is in the literary work.
Considering the consequences is indeed frightening. Since a mere construct of fantasy has become a political truth and reality. So your comparison is way more than speculative.
(I am aware that I am shifting incorrectly the focus from Germany to RU, concerning Tolkien.)
Of course one cause for this is the constant intent in capitalist culture to break down complexities into narratives.
As far as I remember, Tolkien felt it his job to provide England with a national myth, which it lacked, of the likes of the Roland Saga in France or the Nibelungen in Germany. Both of which are fascist but have become so only over the course of centuries of narrative “purification”.
LOTR should have taken that role in Tolkien’s imagination. If he did consider LOTR fit for England’s new national saga I don´t know.
Roland´s and Nibelungen´s true origins of course were far too convoluted for a nationalist purpose.
The real Roland under Emperor Charlemagne e.g. was originally attacked by Basques not Arabs. But in times of conquest of Spain Basques, as Christians, were unfit as enemy for such a legend.
The German case with Nibelungen is even more exemplary as there used to be a contest between The Song of the Nibelungen and Grimms’ Tales in the 18th century over which was to become the national saga of Germans. Nibelungen ended up to take it away because it was mor monolithic and easier to fill with ideology of Germanism and hatred for the East than Grimms’ Tales, which in many cases didn´t even originate in Germany but France and their episodic structure was an anti-epic form anyway.
In an act of self sacrifice reminiscent of the self-immolation of a monk during the Vietnam war a young US air force active duty member, Aaron Bushnell set himself alight outside the US Israeli embassy. He later died from his burn injuries. May he rest in peace.
Will the corporatocratic propaganda machine even acknowledge his act of protest?
The link above is to Moon of Alabama site. B links to a piece in Time magazine.about it. It’s difficult not to be moved by this one brave man’s singular compassion. Condolences to his family and loved ones.
ET
Yes, I think his last statement is something that we all feel these days: The unbearable, intrusive thoughts that ‘I must do something!’:
Image: https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/aaron-bushnell.jpg [ warning – potentially disturbing content ]
and
Video: Aaron Bushnell burns himself to death – YouTube, 0m 58s [ warning – potentially disturbing content ]
it is sad that his life had to end this way, another life Israel took away.
And the israelis are of course already mocking him. Sick people.Was not the UN led multinational-force in Lebanon supposed to stop these attacks, or did I miss something?
Israel strikes deep inside Lebanon
https://swentr.site/news/593231-israel-strikes-deep-lebanon/The world is in dire need of another resistance block that stand up against israel/western states and their impunity.
Some Republicans called today for a negogiated settlement of the conflict:
The news outlet cited GOP Senator Marco Rubio, vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, as saying that “the reality at this point that we have to confront is that war ends with a negotiated settlement.”
He was echoed by his colleague J.D. Vance, who said “That’s probably where this thing ends up,” calling a negotiated settlement the most likely outcome of the conflict.Swedish centre-politician made a protest in the EU parliament today about EU complicity and hypocrisy:
Video: https://twitter.com/AbirAlsahlani/status/1762557177602924888Brazil president Lula Da Silva keep telling the truth: ‘Israel commit genocide against women and children.’
Video: https://twitter.com/Lowkey0nline/status/1762851390437638627Perhaps as many as 150 palestinians were today killed when they waited for humanitarian aid/food.
This must be the most heinous, the most sadistic of crime: innocent people wainting for aid…are bombed to gore and the murderer keep flooding the world with disinformation that ‘we did no wrong’.Israeli attack on Gazans waiting for humanitarian aid kills 150, injures hundreds
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/02/29/721006/Palestine-Israel-Gaza-war-civilians-killed-attack-Israeli-regime-Gaza-City-humanitarian-aidCondemnations from the western capitals are nowhere to be found of course. Imagine if Russia did this. The UNSC would have an meeting right now urging sanctions against Russia. Or imainge if Syria did this, oh Syria would be bombed by now!
It is sickening how easily and quick Russia was implicated in the ICC but when it comes to Gaza ICC nowhere to be found and ICJ keep draging their feet.
THE INTERCEPT with a new comprehensive piece about how NYT staff botched the reporting about rapes.
“Between the Hammer and the Anvil”
The Story Behind the New York Times October 7 Exposé”
https://theintercept.com/2024/02/28/new-york-times-anat-schwartz-october-7/It starts like this:
“(…)
Anat Schwartz had a problem. The Israeli filmmaker and former air force intelligence official had been assigned by the New York Times to work with her partner’s nephew Adam Sella and veteran Times reporter Jeffrey Gettleman on an investigation into sexual violence by Hamas on October 7 that could reshape the way the world understood Israel’s ongoing war in the Gaza Strip. By November, global opposition was mounting against Israel’s military campaign, which had already killed thousands of children, women, and the elderly. On her social media feed, which the Times has since said it is reviewing, Schwartz liked a tweet saying that Israel needed to “turn the strip into a slaughterhouse.”
(…)”It then goes into pretty much detail about how the reporting developed.
I myself am asking simply: Are these people who are being paid incredible wages, this dumb? Or are they in fact this racist AND dumb?
Imagine anyone suggesting to put this much effort into Arab victims?
Nah. What for.
The question wouldn´t even arise.
THAT´S the real issue here –Or in fact it does – you guessed when – in the very end of this long read, literally in the last paragraph:
“(…)
After the article was published, Gettleman was invited to speak on a panel about sexual violence at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. His efforts were lauded by the panel and its host, Sandberg, the former Facebook executive. Instead of doubling down on reporting that helped win the New York Times a prestigious Polk Award, Gettleman dismissed the need for reporters to provide “evidence.”“What we found — I don’t want to even use the word ‘evidence,’ because evidence is almost like a legal term that suggests you’re trying to prove an allegation or prove a case in court,” Gettleman told Sandberg. “That’s not my role. We all have our roles. And my role is to document, is to present information, is to give people a voice. And we found information along the entire chain of violence, so of sexual violence.”
Gettleman said his mission was to move people. “It’s really difficult to get this information and then to shape it,” he said. “That’s our job as journalists: to get the information and to share the story in a way that makes people care. Not just to inform, but to move people. And that’s what I’ve been doing for a long time.”
One Times reporter said colleagues are wondering what a balanced approach might look like: “I am waiting to see if the paper will report in depth, deploying the same kind of resources and means, on the United Nations’ report that documented the horrors committed against Palestinian women.
(…)”.One Israeli hurt is an epic.
1000 Arabs are worth a single line.Even after such a damning piece NYT staff and their readers who recruit from the same rich groups won´t get what is really wrong here. It´s not the TIMES. It´s an entire elite, sick culture.
AG
Gettleman said his mission was to move people. “It’s really difficult to get this information and then to shape it,” he said. “That’s our job as journalists: to get the information and to share the story in a way that makes people care. Not just to inform, but to move people. And that’s what I’ve been doing for a long time.”
Sigh, Gettleman does not seem to understand that what he describes here is not the principle of a journalist but the principle of a propagandist that seeks to shape a story and “move” people into a certain direction of feelings.
I assume there will soon be laws created in the west to stop any questioning, doubting, minimizing the event of 7th October.
JACK
“I assume there will soon be laws created in the west to stop any questioning, doubting, minimizing the event of 7th October.”
Sounds like an excellent idea. On the other hand in one German state there already is (brand new!) a law that in order to get citizenship you have to sign a confirmation that you affirm Israel´s right to exist.
* * *
JACOBIN on the NYT story:https://jacobin.com/2024/02/new-york-times-anti-palestinian-bias
“The New York Times Has an Ugly Anti-Palestinian Bias
By Ben Burgis
The fact that the New York Times assigned its investigation of October 7 sexual assault claims to Anat Schwartz, a non-journalist with anti-Palestinian beliefs and ties to the Israeli military, is an extreme reflection of the paper’s unflagging pro-Israel bias.”
Israeli minister hails soldiers who killed over 100 aid seekers in Gaza
“We must give complete support to our heroic fighters operating in Gaza, who acted excellently against a Gazan mob that tried to harm them,” Itamar Ben-Gvir, the so-called “national security” minister, said in a statement on Thursday.https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/03/01/721061/Israeli-minister-hails-soldiers-aid-seekers-Gaza
If Israel was Germany, these government, ministers would be labeled as literally nazis.
And here we have the useful idiots:
US blocks UNSC motion to condemn Israel over shooting of Gaza aid-seekers
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/03/01/721072/US-blocks-UNSC-Israel-Gaza-aid-seekersI do not understand why Russia not starting a campaign against US support for human rights violations in Gaza to show the western hypocrisy like the west have been campaigning against Russia regarding Ukraine.
Russia need to stop sucking up for Israel too, they are no friend to Russia!Another bad deal for the palestinians, the occupied palestinians are set to release hostages while thousands of palestinians in israeli prisons are not part of the deal. Meanwhile, what get they in return? Nothing? Meanwhile Israel try to get some goodwill and rest before they continue to slaugter the palestinians.
Israel ‘accepts six-week ceasefire deal’ as Hamas response awaited, US officials say
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/03/israel-accepts-six-week-ceasefire-deal-as-hamas-response-awaited-usUK mulls ban on MPs supporting Palestine
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and James Cleverly, home secretary, are due to discuss the proposals, put forward by the government’s adviser on political violence, John Woodcock.
The plans suggest banning MPs and councilors from engaging with groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), as well as environmental organizations like Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil.
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/03/04/721247/UK-mulls-ban-MPs-supporting-Palestine
If this proposal is approved that will be another step towards fascism.
Usually mainstream movies are not the place to look for political wisdom.
Surprising therefore is this interview with the producer of the “Auschwitz movie” “Zone of Interest”, James Wilson.
It´nothing radical but still noteworthy for that area of our society:
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/5/the_zone_of_interest_gaza“(…)There’s not like a message where we’re trying to pin it, you know, tie it up with a neat bow. But I think the whole — I think the whole question of the film and the idea, the thinking space of the film, it’s a film, I think, that asks you to — tries to make a space in which you can think, was to lean into some kind of identification with those people, as you say, the commandant of Auschwitz and his partner, his wife, to look for the similarities, not the differences. The typical way the Holocaust is narrated is of a sort of — you know, sort of is of something — it’s the discourse of what’s called Holocaust exceptionalism, right? That the Holocaust stands apart from history, outside of history, as this sort of mythic, almost evil, mystical event. And there’s something apolitical and ahistorical in that idea. So the idea of this film was to look for the similarities, rather than the differences, between us and the perpetrator(…)”
Now they accuse Houthi of cutting cables in the Red Sea, give me a break!
World hit by internet outages
Yemen-based Houthi militants could have cut underwater cables in the Red Sea, several media outlets have claimed
https://swentr.site/news/593855-global-internet-outage-red-sea-cables/Is this a way that west/Israel is trying to justify a massive bombardment of Yemen?
March 21st Hedges&Finkelstein at Princeton U
“Thursday, March 21, 4:30pm, McCosh 50
Conversation on the Gaza Genocide with
Norman Finkelstein & Chris Hedges”Hilarious to see all those useful, naive right-wing extremists in europe supporting Israel:
When the fact is that Israel could not care less for their interests but those racists are obviously too stupid to understand that:Video: jewish nationalists in Israel celebrate and push for muslim immigration to europe
https://twitter.com/BrinkandHoff23/status/1765763381833916690REUTERS today is quoting a UN-report from Febr. about IDF torturing UNRWA-employees into admitting complicity with “Oct. 7th attacks” (I hate that term).
It sounds like someone in the IDF is a major Abu Ghraib aficionado.
see here:
“UNRWA report says Israel coerced some agency employees to falsely admit Hamas links
Story by Reuters”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/unrwa-report-says-israel-coerced-some-agency-employees-to-falsely-admit-hamas-links/ar-BB1jzR5h“In addition to the alleged abuse endured by UNRWA staff members, Palestinian detainees more broadly described allegations of abuse, including beatings, humiliation, threats, dog attacks, sexual violence, and deaths of detainees denied medical treatment, the UNRWA report said.”
Must be some 10000+ killed people since ICJ refused to call for a ceasefire in their statement some weeks, month back.
The death toll seems to be around 35000 total by now. Some 14000 children and 9000 have women killed.
In Ukraine, some 600 kids have been killed. 600 vs 14000. 600 is of course 600 too much but for the same west to sit in silent or even in support when 14000 children have been killed (and more it will be), unfathomable.
I thought, naively obviously, that the western elite would reach a limit too sooner or later …but it is the other way, less and less focus are spent on Gaza by the western elite – especially despicable is people to the left/socialists that either keep their mouth shut or even support “israel’s right to defend itself”.
–At least 545 (ukrainian) children have been killed – the equivalent of a child dying every day since the war escalated, mostly from bombardment. At least 1,156 children have been injured.
https://www.unicef.org/ukraine/en/documents/18-months-of-war-for-ukraines-children
Excerpts from Mehdi Hassan pulling the pants down on Piers Morgan biased approach to Israel/Palestine:
” Mehdi Hassan challenges Piers Morgan’s treatment of pro-Palestinian guests ”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXIuliSNDS4The arrogant Piers have obviously no idea what the word “terrorism” mean.
Great summary by Chas Freeman: Israel demonstrate the values of KKK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip8YGeLMUMYIn other news: Spanish politician Belarra urges government to end arms sales to Israel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe97tgxnLS4Israeli talkshow talk about burning palestinian villages and joke about how many they killed to the cheer of the audience:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex2c08g4zpM
Absolute sick people.Sigh, we are in a world where the EU blast a religious leader calling to end, stop the ukrainian bloodshed.
EU criticizes Pope’s call for Ukraine to make peace
“The Holy Pope entered a garden where no one invited him… But calling on Ukraine to surrender is more than a wish for peace,” the diplomat said during an interview on Thursday with Spanish public radio RNE.
https://swentr.site/news/594287-borrell-blasts-pope-ukraine/
I always knew that this EU project were about to turn ugly sooner or later.
