|
WAR
Oct 21, 2023 14:00:24 GMT
Post by Admin on Oct 21, 2023 14:00:24 GMT
8,000 artists and cultural workers warn of genocide in Gaza and call for ceasefire Fred Mazelis 15 hours ago www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/10/20/uaft-o20.htmlEight thousand artists, writers and other cultural workers have signed an open letter warning of ongoing genocide of the Palestinian population of Gaza and demanding an immediate ceasefire. The letter follows other statements, including one from more than 2,000 British filmmakers, artists, actors, curators, playwrights and others that surfaced a few days ago. The latest open letter includes names from all over the world, and reflects the anger and outrage of many millions, indeed most of humanity, in the face of the Zionist siege of Gaza and the preparations for a ground assault that is predicted will claim tens of thousands of lives.
|
|
|
WAR
Oct 21, 2023 14:01:17 GMT
Post by Admin on Oct 21, 2023 14:01:17 GMT
Death toll in Israeli genocide against Gaza more than 4,100 www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/10/21/vqrk-o21.htmlIsrael’s genocide of the Palestinian people, carried out with the support of the US, UK, French and German governments, continued Friday with the murder of another 352 Palestinians. Since October 7, Israel has launched a systematic campaign to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza and systematically demolish the area’s housing, hospitals and schools, while starving and dehydrating its population. Over the past week, US President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have all visited Israel to give their unequivocal endorsement of the genocidal policies of the Netanyahu regime, which is widely despised within Israel and by Jewish people around the world. The death toll in Gaza has reached 4,137, with 70 percent of these killed being women and children, according to figures cited by the United Nations. Another 1,000 people are missing or trapped beneath the rubble, many fighting for life amid heroic rescue efforts by volunteers and humanitarian organizations. International humanitarian organizations fighting to save lives are themselves being targeted by the Netanyahu government. Two more United Nations personnel were murdered in airstrikes in the past 24 hours. “We are devastated to confirm that two more @unrwa colleagues have been killed in #Gaza. The entire Agency is grieving,” wrote the UN agency for Palestine refugees on Twitter. At least 16 UN personnel have been killed in airstrikes and “the actual number is likely to be much higher,” it wrote. There have been 33 separate Israeli airstrikes against UN installations. The UN estimated that there are 1.4 million refugees within Gaza, including half a million sheltering in UN-designated emergency shelters. Amid the relentless bombings, Israel is blocking all food, fuel and water from entering Gaza, threatening famine and mass dehydration.
|
|
|
WAR
Oct 21, 2023 14:02:04 GMT
Post by Admin on Oct 21, 2023 14:02:04 GMT
Biden’s demand for $105 billion in military spending: A declaration of war against the working class www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/10/21/ihqr-o21.htmlIn his national address Thursday, US President Joe Biden demanded Congress allocate an additional $105 billion to fund the US military, escalate the US/NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and arm the Israeli military with bullets, bombs and shells for its genocidal campaign against the people of occupied Palestine. This massive tranche of money is greater than the GDP of two-thirds of the countries on earth and would cause unimaginable levels of death and destruction in the months ahead. The latest demand includes $14 billion for Israel on top of the $260 billion the US has provided in military aid since 1948, and $61 billion for Ukraine, nearly doubling the $75 billion spent on the war against nuclear-armed Russia so far. Biden is also demanding $3 billion for military submarines, $2 billion for military encirclement of China, and $14 billion to further militarize the US-Mexico border and criminalize immigration as a sop to Trump and the far-right wing of the political establishment. Biden said the $105 billion is necessary to make sure those who “cause chaos and death and destruction” are made to “pay a price for their aggression.” Over 20 years ago, then-president George W. Bush used the same language to justify launching imperialist wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which were to last 20 years, kill more than one million people, and cost more than $8 trillion, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project. A 2022 report published by the Pentagon admitted that each taxpayer paid $8,278 for the wars in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021, though the figure is likely an order of magnitude higher. In concluding his speech, Biden called for shared sacrifice to fund the escalation of war on a global scale: “In moments like these, we have to remember who we are. We are the United States of America. The United States of America. And there is nothing, nothing beyond our capacity, if we do it together.” Make no mistake, the US population will not pay for these wars “together.” The cost will be born entirely by the working class, while the spoils will go to the rich. Biden’s demand is a declaration of war against the working class, and all talk about “shared sacrifice” to “defend democracy” is nothing but lies.
|
|
|
WAR
Nov 7, 2023 10:05:56 GMT
Post by Admin on Nov 7, 2023 10:05:56 GMT
We Must Reject Calls for a Nuclear Buildup Leaders in Washington need to engage in nuclear risk reduction talks rather than proceed down the path of unrestrained nuclear competition. www.truthdig.com/articles/we-must-reject-calls-for-a-nuclear-buildup/The experience of the Cold War teaches us that an unconstrained arms race has no winners, only losers. Leaders in Beijing, Moscow, and Washington need to engage in nuclear risk reduction talks, negotiate sensible and verifiable reductions of their arsenals, and refrain from building new destabilizing types of weapons rather than proceed down the dangerous path of unconstrained nuclear competition. Regrettably, the final report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, released in October, suggests that, in response to Russia’s nuclear and military behavior and the anticipated growth of China’s nuclear arsenal, the U.S. arsenal “should be supplemented” to add more capability and flexibility to counter two “near-peer” nuclear adversaries. The bipartisan commission, which consists of 12 national security insiders, also advises that the United States “must be ready to deter and defeat” both adversaries in simultaneous wars, enhance its missile defense capabilities, and significantly bolster its nuclear weapons capabilities, including with new theater-range weapons. If there is a military conflict between nuclear-armed states, however, deterrence will have failed, and there will be no “winners.” Once nuclear weapons are used in a war between nuclear-armed adversaries, there is no guarantee that a nuclear war could be contained.
|
|
|
WAR
Nov 7, 2023 10:08:26 GMT
Post by Admin on Nov 7, 2023 10:08:26 GMT
The ISIS Prison Camps the World Forgot After defeating ISIS in Syria, the Kurds continue to house tens of thousands of captured militants. Why isn’t the world helping to guard and rehabilitate them? www.truthdig.com/articles/letter-from-northern-syria-the-isis-prison-camps-the-world-forgot/The Syrian Kurdish region known as Rojava is famed for its leading role in the military defeat of ISIS. The conflict presented the starkest contrast imaginable: A genocidal, patriarchal, authoritarian Islamic State versus a secular, Kurdish-led army spearheaded by all-female units. Fighting alongside a coalition of Arab, Christian and Yazidi allies, the Syrian Kurds drove ISIS from their hometowns and implemented a new system of direct-democratic, grassroots, women-led governance. When ISIS’ black standard was torn down in Raqqa and replaced with the Kurds’ vibrant colours in 2019, the world looked on and cheered. But four years on from ISIS’ formal defeat, Rojava has a problem. The region’s Kurdish-Arabic military alliance now guards 2,000 imprisoned foreign ISIS fighters along with 8,000 Syrian and Iraqi combatants, most held in substandard, ad-hoc detention facilities in repurposed schools. Meanwhile, displacement camps in the windswept Syrian desert hold tens of thousands of ISIS-linked women and children, sometimes alongside the very civilians ISIS terrorized. Ironically, the largest female-only space in the Kurdish-led region (or perhaps even the world) lies not in one of its famous communes or all-female cooperatives, but Hol Camp, a vast, U.N.-recognised facility holding just under 50,000 people in a “mini-caliphate.” Walking through Hol, you’re regularly confronted by children chanting ISIS slogans and hurling rocks at ambulances. Members of the Kurdish-Arab military alliance patrol endless rows of tents, while their civilian administration provides food and basic medical care. All the while, radical ISIS affiliates groom their sons to take up the mantle of jihad; some even keep members of the Yazidi religious minority as slaves, secreted among the endless rows of tents.
|
|
|
WAR
Nov 7, 2023 10:09:35 GMT
Post by Admin on Nov 7, 2023 10:09:35 GMT
The Ten Dumbest Things We're Being Asked To Believe About Israel's War On Gaza www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-ten-dumbest-things-were-beingHere are the ten dumbest things we’re being asked to believe about Israel’s war on Gaza, in no particular order: 1. That Israel had no idea what Hamas was up to prior to October 7, but ever since October 7 has known about every hospital, mosque, school, refugee camp and water tower that Hamas is hiding in. 2. That the blame for all of the deaths caused by Israeli weapons launched by Israel rests solely on Hamas. 3. That Hamas is using “human shields” — meaning Hamas bases are hidden amidst civilian populations — yet Israel is managing to kill thousands of civilians without doing any meaningful damage to Hamas. 4. That it would be perfectly fine to murder children by the thousands even if they were being used as “human shields” — as though resolving a hostage situation by mowing down thousands of child hostages would be regarded as reasonable and acceptable by the public if it happened in our own country. 5. That it is only by pure coincidence that Israel bombing “Hamas targets” in civilian infrastructure and residential buildings just so happens to look exactly the same as what you’d expect to see if Israel was simply bombing civilian infrastructure and residential buildings and lying about its reasons for doing so. 6. That satellite images of entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble in Gaza have been caused by “precision strikes” directed solely at Hamas and have been carried out with the greatest of care for human life, despite Israeli officials openly saying that “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy” in this assault and that “Gaza will eventually turn into a city of tents; there will be no buildings.” 7. That this bombing campaign has anything to do with freeing Israeli hostages — as though the bombing campaign itself has not killed dozens of hostages, and as though anyone believes Israel would stop bombing Gaza after the hostages are returned. 8. That the only reason anyone could possibly oppose the detonation of thousands of bombs on an open air prison full of children would be if they had very strong and hateful opinions toward the members of the religion of Judaism. 9. That Hamas attacked Israel entirely out of the blue and completely unprovoked, solely because they are evil and hate Jews. 10. That Washington is powerless to stop this genocide that it is directly funding and supplying.
|
|
|
WAR
Nov 7, 2023 10:18:19 GMT
Post by Admin on Nov 7, 2023 10:18:19 GMT
Gaza conflict: if the cycle of violence is to end we must not prioritise one side’s suffering over the other Published: November 6, 2023 1.06pm GMT theconversation.com/gaza-conflict-if-the-cycle-of-violence-is-to-end-we-must-not-prioritise-one-sides-suffering-over-the-other-216922Shortly after the Hamas massacre in Israel on October 7, people I know and respect were posting Palestinian solidarity notices on their social media feeds. I am supportive of the rights of the Palestinian people and am greatly disturbed by their treatment under Israel’s military occupation. But I found this response troubling. Why is it appropriate to respond to rape, torture and murder (including decapitation), as a moment to celebrate Palestinian resistance? This response has only increased with time and the rising Palestinian death toll because of Israel’s bombing campaign. I’ve noticed a discourse in some quarters that repeatedly privileges the victimhood and suffering of one group at the expense of the other – in this case the Palestinian civilian casualties of Israel’s assault on Gaza over the Israeli civilians massacred on October 7. There are also those who tend to prioritise the suffering of Israelis in this terrible conflict. And here’s the problem: it comes down to a zero-sum debate about the righteousness of being the greater victim and dismisses the rights, pain and suffering of the other. This seems to stem from an impoverished way of understanding political responsibility. In political thought, responsibility is often understood as a synonym for being “answerable” for something, which assumes that we can be held to account for our actions. Political or collective responsibility explores the question of being responsible for things that we have not done but arise because of our membership in a specific group. Whatever definition we take, when we hold any individual or group responsible, we are attributing to them a form of moral agency. A problem in the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that responsibility is used to dehumanise the other. ‘Us versus them’ Too much rhetoric about this conflict is a simplistic contrast between right and wrong in its “us versus them” formulation. It is not hard to find fault on both sides. There is nothing inherently wrong with holding both the Israeli government and Palestinian militants such as Hamas liable for their actions.
|
|
|
WAR
Nov 7, 2023 10:41:15 GMT
Post by Admin on Nov 7, 2023 10:41:15 GMT
|
|
|
WAR
Nov 7, 2023 23:38:22 GMT
Post by Admin on Nov 7, 2023 23:38:22 GMT
Total Cost of U.S. Wars on Terror Since 2001 $8,944,515,672,462
|
|
|
WAR
Nov 11, 2023 12:05:35 GMT
Post by Admin on Nov 11, 2023 12:05:35 GMT
During moments of crisis people reach for a framework to help them make sense of what is going on. During the pandemic, that framework was science. “Follow the science” was a kind of mantra, even though as it soon became apparent that not everyone agreed what the science was, or that science alone was enough to guide people’s actions – politics and moral-judgements often creeped in. The same is true now when it comes to how people try to understand the wars that have broken out recently, between Russia and Ukraine, and between Hamas and Israel. The framework this time goes by the name “international law”. The question of whether the countries at war are “following international law” is the new “are governments following the science”. But once again, biases and politics creep in. The fact that war - this inherently violent, brutal and messy way of resolving conflicts - is governed by laws might seem absurd, but the concept of a war crime has become a useful tool in the attempt of the international community, via the United Nations, to hold counties to account. The problem is the way that this framework is being applied by Western countries erodes a fundamental distinction within the rules of war. As distinguished military historian Sir Hew Strachan argues this week in iai News, the distinction in question here is between ius ad bellum, the law governing the resort to war, and ius in bello, the law that governs the way wars are conducted. In the case of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the war has been deemed illegal by the United Nations. That has led Western powers to accuse Russia of war crimes whenever civilian lives are lost, even not all civilian deaths during war are crimes. International law allows for such a thing as fighting an illegal war, legally. At the same time, Israel’s war against Hamas has been deemed legal – a case of a state retaliating in self-defence. But the fact that Israel has a legal right to go to war with Hamas doesn’t mean that it isn’t breaking the law because of the way it’s fighting that war. It still might be committing war crimes, even if in pursuit of a legal and just cause. Focusing only on whether a war itself is legal, while ignoring the details about the way the warfare is conducted not only erodes this crucial distinction in international law, it also exposes the West’s biases, undermining the impartiality and legitimacy of the entire framework. The precarious rules of war The erosion of a crucial distinction iai.tv/articles/the-precarious-rules-of-war-auid-2663
|
|
|
WAR
Nov 11, 2023 12:06:45 GMT
Post by Admin on Nov 11, 2023 12:06:45 GMT
The rules of war are absurd, but necesssary How can war ever be just? iai.tv/articles/the-rules-of-war-are-absurd-but-necessary-auid-2068During the invasion of Ukraine, we have heard frequently terms like ‘war crime’ and ‘just war’. In a fight to the death, when your aim is the taking of the life of another human being, the idea of there even being such a thing as a ‘crime’ or ‘justice’ in that context is seemingly absurd. Furthermore, institutions like NATO are endlessly discussing the ‘rules of conflict’, while in the UN Security Council Russia absurdly has a veto ruling out action against its own aggression. Seeming absurdity on top of seeming absurdity. But the rules of war are necessary. Defining terms like ‘war crime’ and ‘just war’ do have a clear and important role to play, even in the face of the chaos, the heartache and the bloody killing of war, writes Saba Bazargan-Forward Ukraine’s heroic struggle against Russia’s wanton aggression has elicited a lot of talk about the possibility of a ‘morally just’ war. At first, the very idea of such a war might seem absurd. After all, wars are horrific. They represent humanity at its worst, in which our all our ingenuity, our energies, our capacities, are aimed at killing one another. “War is cruelty,” William Tecumseh Sherman famously said, “and you cannot refine it”. Any attempt to unearth moral principles for war seems not just foredoomed to failure but also morally perverse. On this view, there can no more be rules for war than there can be rules for murder or rape. Worse still, it might seem that ethicists and legal theorists, in discussing the very possibility of a just or legal war, or wars fought justly, serve only to lend a veneer of legitimacy to the politicians and plutocrats who, in their vaulting ambition, drive the machine of war at the expense of countless innocents ground up underneath.
|
|
|
WAR
Nov 11, 2023 12:34:52 GMT
Post by Admin on Nov 11, 2023 12:34:52 GMT
|
|
|
WAR
Nov 11, 2023 21:49:32 GMT
Post by Admin on Nov 11, 2023 21:49:32 GMT
Today Let’s Honor the Veterans Who Have Turned Against the US War Machine Hundreds of veterans returned from Iraq ready to fight the horror and injustice of the U.S. military industrial complex. By Derek Seidman , TRUTHOUT PublishedNovember 11, 2023 truthout.org/articles/today-lets-honor-the-veterans-who-have-turned-against-the-us-war-machine/This year marks the 20th anniversary of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. It also marks 20 years since the birth of the massive global antiwar movement that opposed the war. One of the most compelling wings of that movement involved the hundreds of U.S. veterans who protested the war and occupation. In late 2004, I met Patrick Resta, an army medic who served in Iraq and came home to join the newly formed Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). Resta became a leader within the group and spent nearly two years of his life organizing tirelessly against the war. I recently reconnected with Resta to revisit his and IVAW’s story for Truthout. Today is Veterans Day, a holiday that can feed into unquestioning worship of militarism. Instead, on this Veterans Day, two decades after the invasion, with war drums growing louder across the world, we can choose to remember those who spoke out about the horrors and injustices of the war on Iraq and dedicated themselves to ending the occupation.
|
|
|
WAR
Nov 14, 2023 9:26:41 GMT
Post by Admin on Nov 14, 2023 9:26:41 GMT
The Healing We Owe Our Vets More people in the U.S. military are left with lifelong struggles and are committing suicide at unprecedented rates. www.truthdig.com/articles/the-healing-we-owe-our-vets/Americans who served in the U.S. military post-9/11 have had a higher chance of suffering a disability — an astonishing 43% — than any other service cohort. That’s higher than the disability rate among Vietnam and Gulf War vets and higher than the historic rates of the World War II and Korean War era. There are myriad obvious reasons. State-of-the-art body armor coupled with faster evacuation from the battlefield and more effective emergency treatment has allowed soldiers to survive catastrophic injuries that were once death sentences. More soldiers survive, but they are maimed, disabled, left with lifelong struggles. At the same time, people in the U.S. military are killing themselves in record numbers. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, there have been more than 30,100 suicides among active-duty service members and veterans of post-9/11 conflicts. By contrast, U.S. military operations during the roughly 20 years since 9/11 claimed the lives of less than 7,100 personnel. Think about that: The death rate by self-destruction is more than four times the rate of death on the battlefield. The USO reported in September that suicides among active-duty military members were “at an all-time high since record-keeping began after 9/11 and have been increasing over the past five years at an alarmingly steady pace.” According to the USO, some branches of the armed forces have been experiencing the highest rate of suicides since before World War II.
|
|
|
WAR
Nov 14, 2023 11:55:59 GMT
Post by Admin on Nov 14, 2023 11:55:59 GMT
|
|