Saturday November 11, 2023
Paris – The great Voltaire wrote ‘show me whom you cannot criticize, and I will show you who rules you.’
So true. Anyone who dares criticize Israel’s Biblical punishment of Palestinians in the Gaza outdoor prison is immediately subject to a storm of calumny and threats.
No matter that this mass punishment violates the 4th Geneva Convention and other international law, nor that it violates the US’s own arms export act, and has bred deep disgust around the globe for the United States and engendered rising anti-Semitism, terrible retribution is falling on Gaza’s Palestinians – who are now being bombed and shelled out of their homes for a second time.
The killing and abduction of 1,600 Israelis has awakened the direst fears in Israel. The rocketing of Tel Aviv airport sent shudders of fear through Israel that the Jewish state might be cut off from American military support. Meanwhile, the US Congress just proposed another $14 billion in new aide plus $4 billion more for an improved air defense system for Israel – despite the runaway US $4 trillion debt. Some Israelis even talk of fleeing to Ukraine, ‘the second Israel.’
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Saturday November 11, 2023
The movie “Dr. Strangelove,” a Cold War comedy satire, warns about the potential of a thermonuclear war. The film is still pertinent today with the renewed Cold War and political hacks lacking geopolitical understanding and strategic thinking.
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Friday November 10, 2023
Free speech is in a free fall as millions embrace censorship as a political cause, including some now running for federal office on a pledge to silence others. One of the most alarming aspects of this period has been the emergence of a type of triumvirate of censorship, an alliance of government, academic, and media corporations. Together they have established the most comprehensive censorship system in the history of this country.
That system is being forced out into the public by the investigation of House committees. This week the House Judiciary Committee released a 103-page staff report on the academic prong of the triumvirate. What is most chilling about this report is that it adds yet another layer of government-supported speech controls. It also reflects a conscious and coordinated effort to carry out censorship through allies in a labyrinth of academic and public interest groups.
Earlier this year, I testified at the first hearing by the special committee investigating the censorship system. I warned that there was ample evidence of a system based on “censorship by surrogate” where government agencies used academic and media allies to silence those with opposing views.
The latest report reveals details of the critical role played by government officials in “switchboarding” the censorship system by channeling demands for removal or bans from state and local officials. In addition to the direct targeting of individuals by federal agencies, switchboarding allowed the agencies to operate as a control tower in this sprawling system.
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Friday November 10, 2023
The Biden administration is killing people, openly in Ukraine and Gaza and secretly around the world. It has continued to use the killing machinery crafted by President George W. Bush, expanded by President Barack Obama and employed by President Donald Trump. These presidents have used drones and other unmanned projectiles to target persons in foreign countries with which the United States is not at war.
They have done this notwithstanding the prohibition against taking life, liberty or property from any person -- not just any American, but any person -- in the Constitution each has sworn to uphold, and they have done so pursuant to secret rules that they themselves have established for these killings.
Last year, 11 senators and 39 members of the House of Representatives sent a harshly worded letter to President Joe Biden asking him to stop the secret, but not the public, killings. As of this writing, he has not publicly replied.
Here is the backstory.
The purpose of the Bill of Rights -- the first 10 amendments to the Constitution -- is to protect personal liberty by restraining the government.
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Thursday November 9, 2023
The forthcoming first visit by Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi to Saudi Arabia on November 13 marks a milestone in the rapprochement between the two countries mediated by China in March. The relationship is fast acquiring a qualitatively new level of solidarity in the context of the Palestine-Israel conflict.
This marks a shift in the tectonic plates in regional politics, which has long been dominated by the United States but no longer so. The latest China-UAE initiative on Monday to promote a ceasefire in Gaza was rounded off with an extraordinary spectacle of diplomacy at the UN headquarters in New York as the two countries’ envoys read out together a joint statement to the media. The US was nowhere to be seen.
The events since October 7 make it abundantly clear that the US attempts to integrate Israel into its Muslim neighbourhood in its terms is a pipe dream — ie., unless and until Israel is willing to turn its sword into plowshares. The ferocity of the Israeli revenge attacks on the people of Gaza — “animals” — smacks of racism and genocide.
Iran knew all along the bestiality of the Zionist regime. Saudi Arabia too must be in a chastened mood following the wake-up call that it must first and foremost learn to live in its region.
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Thursday November 9, 2023
All of a sudden the Republican Party has returned to its 2002, neocon-dominated warmongering. The pseudo-debate last night signaled the return of the neocons and their disastrous warfare-welfare philosophy. Also today: Biden faces internal revolt over his Gaza policy as US troops hit harder and harder in Syria. Watch today's Liberty Report...
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Tuesday November 7, 2023
Dominique De Villepin, former Prime Minister of France, who famously led France’s opposition to the Iraq war, recently described the term ‘Occidentalism’ (currently the prevalent sentiment in much of Europe) as being the notion that “the West, which for five centuries managed the world’s affairs, will be able to quietly continue to do so”. He continues:
“There is this idea that, faced with what is currently happening in the Middle East, we must continue the fight even more, towards what might resemble a religious or a civilizational war”.
“That is to say, to isolate ourselves even more on the international stage”.
“They’ve gone “all in” on a certain moral and ethical framework of the world, and faced with a situation where the West’s moral fabric has been openly exposed and refuted, they find it extremely difficult—and perhaps fatally impossible—to withdraw”.
It is ditto for an Israel (which is umbilically linked to the West): Were Israel to imagine that its former Arab allies might look the other way, whilst the Jewish state attempts to annihilate resistance in Gaza,- and then expect these allies to help police and pay for a Gaza security apparatus to rule there, they would be guilty of wishful thinking.
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Monday November 6, 2023
Former President Donald Trump is expected to testify today in the New York civil case revolving around the alleged elevated valuation of his business empire. While the lawfare against Trump increases...so do his poll numbers! Also today: Blinken in Baghdad...he wasn't greeted as a liberator. Watch today's Liberty Report...
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Monday November 6, 2023
A trial balloon has gone up on the NBCnews website. It is testing the public reaction to the upcoming US and NATO acknowledgment of their defeat in Ukraine:"
US, European officials broach topic of peace negotiations with Ukraine, sources say - NBCnews - Nov 03 2023
"WASHINGTON — US and European officials have begun quietly talking to the Ukrainian government about what possible peace negotiations with Russia might entail to end the war, according to one current senior US official and one former senior US official familiar with the discussions."
This comes the same week that saw a Time piece about Zelenski's unwillingness to consider the real situation on Ukraine and to admit defeat. The same week the Economist interviewed General Zaluzny who optimistically spoke of a stalemate at the front even while his army is on the cusp of disintegration.
Taken together the three pieces might well be part of a US administration campaign to concede its defeat in Ukraine while blaming its Ukrainian proxy forces for the results of its blunder.
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Monday November 6, 2023
Faced with growing American frustration over more than $100 billion spent on a failed proxy war in Ukraine, President Biden’s handlers have hit on a gimmick to convince us that this foreign aid is actually an investment in our own economy! In his recent television address, Biden explained that as we transfer more weapons to Ukraine we then will build new weapons at home to replace them. That, explained Biden, means more American jobs and a stronger American economy.
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