Trump’s Conspiracy Theory Campaign
Stoking and exploiting racist fears of immigrants is essentially all that Trump is running on.

James RisenSeptember 23 2024, 11:40 a.m.
Former President Donald Trump at the Israel-American Council (IAC) Summit 2024 at the Washington Hilton on Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024 in Washington.
Donald Trump at the Israel American Council Summit 2024 on Sept. 19, 2024, in Washington, D.C. Photo: Angelina Katsanis/Politico
Donald Trump doesn’t try to campaign on any real issues. Instead, he traffics in racist tropes and conspiracy theories as he tries to get Americans to go down a rabbit hole into a dark alternate reality where immigrants kidnap and eat cats, the 2020 election was stolen, vaccines are poison, and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is not really Black.

He has filled his third campaign for the presidency with a team that peddles conspiracy theorists, including Laura Loomer, JD Vance, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Racism, misogyny, and anti-intellectualism are at the heart of many of Trumpworld’s conspiracy theories, but it is up to Trump’s most loyal MAGA cultists to sort out the political meaning of each new harebrained idea they are told to believe. Meanwhile, the nation’s political press corps lags far behind trying to fact-check Trump and his minions, like King Canute trying to hold back the tide.

Above all, Trump has built his campaign around conspiracy theories designed to stoke racist fears of immigrants and minorities, exploiting the hysteria that grips many white Americans over the demographic changes of the last few decades that have transformed the U.S. into a more diverse nation.

This is not new for Trump, who announced his 2016 campaign alleging Mexican immigrants were criminals and rapists. But this time around, stoking and exploiting racist fears of immigrants is essentially all that he’s running on.

Trump has frequently said that nonwhite immigrants are “poisoning the blood of the country.”


Related

America’s Racist, Xenophobic, and Highly Specific Fear of Haiti

Considering his rhetoric, Trump’s campaign slogan might as well be “Blood and Soil.” That was the Nazi slogan calling for a racially pure Aryan German nation built around the pastoral ideal of rural life. It was also the original headline on a September 14 column in the New York Times by Jamelle Bouie describing Vance’s willingness to spread false conspiracy claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were kidnapping and eating cats. Faced with complaints from Trump operatives and other right-wingers, the New York Times softened the headline to mush.

But “Blood and Soil” does capture what Trump and his legion of conspiracy theorists are doing. Trump and the MAGA cult have turned their backs on the cherished American tradition that the United States is unique because it is built on shared beliefs, rather than whether someone was born here or immigrated here.

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Members of Trump’s legion of conspiracy theorists live in their own swamps of lies and disinformation.

Loomer, an extremely online far-right figure who until now was perhaps best known for spreading the lie that 9/11 was an inside job, has been traveling closely with Trump during the campaign. Kennedy, meanwhile, who ended his fringe presidential campaign and endorsed Trump in August, has a long history of spreading anti-vaccine misinformation and has branched out to add baseless conspiracy theories that Wi-Fi causes cancer, that anti-depressants cause school shootings, and that chemicals in the water supply could turn children transgender.

What binds these conspiracy theories together is the way they are designed to damage the credibility of experts, scientists, and governments.
What binds these conspiracy theories together is the way they are designed to damage the credibility of experts, scientists, and governments. Well-informed and educated voters have fled Trump and MAGA, and he relies on so-called low information voters instead.

They are far more susceptible than other voters to Trump’s racist lies, and winning over these voters with conspiracy theories is a way for Trump to shore up his base.

While spreading the lie that Haitians are eating pets in Springfield, Trump and Vance have refused to denounce bomb threats and other threats of violence targeting the city as a result of their lies. The threats of violence have gotten so bad that the Ohio state police have had to step in and announce that it will help protect schools in Springfield, while Republican Gov. Mike DeWine personally debunked the rumors spread by Trump and Vance.

Vance’s role in spreading the vile falsehood about the immigrants eating pets has been particularly egregious — since he knows that he has continued to lie even after he and his staff were told that the stories weren’t true. He’s now added new lies that Haitian immigrants are causing an increase in communicable diseases in Springfield, which the director of the Ohio health department quickly said was false.

Of all of the members of Trump’s conspiracy legion, Vance is the most intriguing, because we can now watch, in real time, as he descends into a conspiracy theory-fueled alternative reality. Loomer and Kennedy have long since left reality behind, but Vance was as recently as 2016 lionized as a bestselling author and an important new literary voice and a Trump critic. Unlike many others who have slowly fallen into the madness of the alt-world, Vance seems to be making a very conscious choice to suddenly jump in, as if that was part of his bargain to become Trump’s running mate.

On CNN last weekend, Vance admitted as much.

When confronted with the fact that he is spreading lies about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Vance said, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

Vance has sold his soul. Just like every other Republican who has allowed the GOP to be captured by conspiracy theorists.

https://theintercept.com/2024/09/23/trump-campaign-conspiracy-theories/

Commentary: Sabah and Sarawak are proving to be a political headache for Anwar
HOBART: With mere months to go before the second anniversary of Anwar Ibrahim becoming Malaysia's prime minister, the current delicate state of relations between Putrajaya and the Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak could pose significant political challenges for him and the unity government.

There isn't a consensus among the Malay establishment regarding how to handle an assertive Sabah and Sarawak, despite the general agreement that Malaysians are now much more aware of the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63), and how the Borneo states were marginalised over the past 50 years.

For the past six years, both Sabah and Sarawak have been insisting that Putrajaya rigorously abide by the spirit of the promises in MA63. In MA63, they are referred to as "safeguards”, but they are really a collection of assurances prior to the formation of the federation that both states will have a high degree of socio-political autonomy from the federal government.

Prior to 2018, the dominance of the Barisan Nasional (BN) ruling coalition meant that they could ignore all the MA63 promises made. In fact, voters in Sabah and Sarawak were commonly described as “fixed deposits” for BN, for consistently supporting the party and helping it remain in power. This all changed when BN lost power in 2018 and the Borneo states began agitating for the return of MA63 rights.

Since then, Putrajaya has formed various MA63 committees to decentralise some of the powers back to Kuching and Kota Kinabalu, and increase infrastructure projects and development funds for both states, such as the Borneo Highway.

With many of the simple devolution problems have been resolved, the main ones are up for discussion now. All the progress achieved over the past few years could be undone by these core issues.

Related:


CONTINENTAL SHELF

The continental shelf off the coast of the Borneo states is the first problem. These regions are abundant in gas and oil, and advances in technology will enable mineral extraction from the deep water in the near future.

The federal government owns all oil and gas resources, as stipulated by the Petronas Development Act (PDA 1974). The Borneo states contest this, arguing that since they were included in the legally delineated limit of British colonial territory in 1954, the continental shelf truly belongs to them.

According to MA63, when the federation was formally established on Sep 6, 1963, all legislation passed before then automatically became operative. Thus, the legal ownership is still with Sabah and Sarawak.

In the event that the Borneo States successfully win this legal interpretation, Petronas will no longer be able to conduct its oil and gas exploration off the coast of the Borneo states without engaging in direct negotiations with Sabah and Sarawak.

There are far-reaching political consequences, not to mention even more far-reaching financial consequences. At least 20 per cent of Malaysia's development budget is accounted for by Petronas alone.

An even bigger consequence of Sabah and Sarawak getting control of the oil and gas resources on their continental shelves, is oil and gas-producing states in the peninsular. Terengganu and Kelantan, likewise, will undoubtedly demand control of their oil and gas fields if the Borneo states are successful. This could effectively mean the end of Petronas’ oil and gas monopoly.

Related:


REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

Another key issue is representation in parliament, specifically a return to the one-third composition for Sabah and Sarawak as stipulated in MA63.

Back in 1963, Malaya had 104 seats in the then 159-member federal parliament, while Sarawak, Sabah, and Singapore were given 55 seats, or 34.6 per cent. When Singapore left the federation in 1965, Singapore’s 15 parliamentary seats were not redistributed to Sabah and Sarawak. Thus, both states ended up with only a quarter of seats in parliament.

This leaves Sabah and Sarawak in an unfavourable position as a successful constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds majority vote in parliament. In other words, Peninsular Malaysia alone could change the constitution without any support from the Borneo states.

Sarawak has formally submitted a proposal to the federal Cabinet to increase the number of seats from Sabah and Sarawak to 35 per cent. This will require a constitutional amendment. There are many who are against this, believing that it will give too much power to the Borneo states.

Mr Anwar, in public at least, has been silent, suggesting that there is no consensus. If the Borneo states get the 35 per cent, this will fundamentally change the nature of federal-Borneo relations. It means that Putrajaya will have to consult with Kuching and Kota Kinabalu on any constitutional issues thereafter.

SABAH’S REVENUE

The third main issue is the constitutional requirement to refund Sabah 40 per cent of the net revenue collected from the state.

The constitution centralises revenue collection - including all forms of taxes - at the federal level. The federal government then returns a percentage of this to the states based on their population.

From the early 1970s, the federal government stopped paying. The Sabah government then was too weak politically to pursue this issue. The current stalemate is due to disagreements over the actual amount plus the arrears, called the “lost years”.

The Sabah state government has proposed several formulas, while the federal government has its own formula as well. No matter which formula is used to calculate the amount, it will at least be in the region of RM20 billion (US$4.6 billion), money the federal government does not have.

QUE SERA SERA

The three issues listed above, if determined in favour of Sabah and Sarawak, could fundamentally alter the entire basis of federal-Borneo ties.

It would be the first significant step in ensuring that the Borneo states are considered as "equal partners" and founders of the Malaysia Federation, rather than simply as one of the 13 states in the federation.

It would also result in a considerable shift of political power from Peninsular Malaysia to Borneo.

At present, Sabah and Sarawak’s support for Anwar is crucial for him to stay in power. Anwar claims he has the support of 154 members of parliament. More than 50 of them, however, are from the Borneo states. Without Sabah and Sarawak, there would be no political stability at the federal level.

In return for this support, Anwar has been careful not to reject, in public, any MA63-related proposals from Sabah or Sarawak. He has also appointed Fadillah Yusof, the second deputy prime minister to chair the federal MA63 committee. Fadillah comes from Sarawak, and more than a quarter of the federal Cabinet comes from Borneo. Anwar has even gone as far as to say he will “resolve” all MA63 issues as a matter of priority.

Anwar, however, will have to tread carefully.

The broader Malaysian political establishment harbours suspicion of Sabah and Sarawak. The unstated fear is that as the Borneo states gain more and more autonomy, it will be more likely to demand some form of quasi-independence in the future.

The nightmare of course is secession. However, the reality is that Sabah and Sarawak elites are not even considering secession. They understand that they will not be able to survive politically outside of Malaysia for the time being.

James Chin is Professor of Asian Studies at the Asia Institute Tasmania, University of Tasmania. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Jeffrey Cheah Institute on Southeast Asia.

Source: CNA/aj

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/malaysia-sabah-sarawak-ma63-safeguards-demands-anwar-4571486

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Kamala vs. Trump: Who is More Zionist? - VT Foreign Policy
September 3, 2024
VT Condemns the ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINIANS by USA/Israel

$ 280 BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation; $ 150B direct "aid" and $ 130B in "Offense" contracts
Source: Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C. and US Department of State.

I am in personal distress. I am an ethnically cleansed Arab-American and the country of my citizenship is funding the ethnic cleansing of our family in Palestine. Many of my cousins and American friends feel the stress each day and, frankly, feel helpless.

We are looking for answers; for heroes to help us and our families. But all we get is a few tin words from Kamala and a middle finger from the vulgar Trump.

In our distress, many Arab Americans are beyond offended by the Biden Administration’s actions against Palestinians. In Gaza, they are openly murdering civilians including children and no one is stopping the Americans and Israeli’s.



In Michigan, which has the most Arab-American voters, the two parties are concerned they will lose those votes and so they are trying to pretend they care about Palestinians; at least for the next 2 months. But we all know that is bullshit. So who should Arab-Americans or any Americans vote for that care for helpless millions of people stuck in the Israeli controlled Gaza concentration camps funded by the US Government?

The short answer is …

It does NOT matter! They both equally suck! So stop pretending one is better than the other because there is NO difference! Period!

The USA is pro-Israel and has been its greatest ally since 1945. Period! End of Story! So if any of you are expecting the USA, the chief funding source for the Euro-Western Outpost in the Middle East commonly known as Israel, to be sympathetic towards Palestinians and the indigenous peoples of the area, well, I refer you to “Chief Always Getting Bullshitted” who now lives on a reservation, whatever the fuck that means.



In fact, from 1778 to 1871, the United States government entered into more than 500 treaties with the Native American tribes; all of these treaties have since been violated in some way or outright broken by the U.S. government, with Native Americans and First Nations peoples still fighting for their treaty rights. This is how the USA and Israel do their business. And if you were unaware of this reality, then that’s on you.

Okay, so now you know… stop depending on the USA to save Palestine! And vote your conscience despite the USA policy towards Israel because it matters not! The USA is the problem, not the solution! Wake Up McFly! Anybody Home! Think McMfly Think!

Never mind the Back To The Future references, if you still think one of these political animals will save Palestine, then let’s take a deeper look at Kamala vs. Trump.


Then US President Donald Trump getting his balls buttered as he awards Israeli Billionaire Zionist Miriam Adelson with the US Medal of Freedom during a ceremony at the White House in Washington, November 16, 2018. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Comparing the foreign policy positions of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump regarding Israel reveals distinct approaches that reflect their broader political ideologies and party affiliations.

Both figures have prioritized the U.S.-Israel relationship but have different perspectives on how to maintain and enhance this alliance.

Below is a comparison of their views and policies on key issues related to Israel:

U.S.-Israel Relationship

Donald Trump: During his presidency, Trump adopted a staunchly pro-Israel stance, which was seen as a significant departure from the more balanced approach of his predecessors. Trump’s policies were characterized by a strong personal rapport with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a commitment to solidifying the U.S.-Israel strategic partnership. This included moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. These actions were celebrated by many in Israel and by pro-Israel groups in the United States but drew criticism from some international actors and U.S. political figures who argued they could undermine peace efforts with the Palestinians.

Kamala Harris: Vice President Harris, aligned with the broader Democratic stance, emphasizes a strong commitment to Israel’s security while also giving the typical same ole bullshit lip service pretending to advocate for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Harris has voiced her support for Israel’s right to defend itself and has reiterated the importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship. However, unlike Trump, her position emphasizes diplomacy and engagement with both Israel and the Palestinian Authority to achieve a peaceful resolution. Harris supports keeping the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem but has been more cautious about unilateral actions that could exacerbate tensions in the region.


Bibi letting Kamala know where she stands in the scheme of global power!
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Donald Trump: Trump’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was one-sided, favoring Israeli positions. Period! The only thing Trump hides is his head up Bibi’s ass. His administration’s “Peace to Prosperity” plan, unveiled in early 2020, proposed a two-state solution but was criticized for heavily favoring Israeli security needs and territorial claims. The plan included provisions for Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank, which many Palestinians and international observers viewed as detrimental to the prospects of a viable Palestinian state. Trump’s administration also cut aid to the Palestinians and closed the Palestine Liberation Organization’s office in Washington, D.C.

Kamala Harris: Harris says she supports a two-state solution and has expressed concern about actions that could undermine this goal, such as settlement expansion in the West Bank. But everyone in the world knows that’s bullshit. It is the same ole words since 1945. Means nothing because the actions are the actions. Harris and the Biden administration say they advocate for renewed diplomatic engagement and have restored aid to the Palestinians that was cut under Trump. Harris emphasizes the need for direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians and has called for both sides to avoid unilateral measures that would make peace more difficult to achieve. Her approach tends to be more balanced, aiming to consider both Israeli security concerns and Palestinian aspirations. But in the end, it’s all 100% Israel and everyone knows it.

Normalization of Relations with Arab States

Donald Trump: A significant foreign policy achievement for Trump was the facilitation of normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab states, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco, known collectively as the Abraham Accords. These agreements marked a shift in Middle Eastern dynamics, promoting economic cooperation and reducing isolation for Israel in the region. Trump’s administration positioned these accords as a pathway to broader peace in the Middle East by changing the regional order and shifting focus away from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Kamala Harris: Harris has expressed support for the Abraham Accords and views them as a positive development for regional stability and economic cooperation. The Biden administration has continued to endorse these normalization efforts and looks to build on them. However, Harris also underscores that while normalization between Israel and Arab states is important, it should not come at the expense of addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She believes that a comprehensive peace in the Middle East must include a viable solution for both Israelis and Palestinians.

Iran and Regional Security

Donald Trump: Trump took a hardline stance against Iran, withdrawing from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, which he criticized as flawed and insufficient. His administration imposed stringent sanctions on Iran, aiming to pressure Tehran into renegotiating a more stringent agreement that also addressed ballistic missile development and regional influence. Trump’s policies aligned closely with Israeli security concerns regarding Iran’s influence and nuclear capabilities.

Kamala Harris: Harris, as part of the Biden administration, supports re-engaging with Iran to limit its nuclear program while addressing broader regional security concerns. This includes a potential return to the JCPOA, provided Iran returns to compliance with its nuclear commitments. Harris’s approach is more focused on diplomacy and multilateral efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions and stabilize the region. While Harris shares concerns about Iran’s behavior in the Middle East, her strategy emphasizes a coordinated international response rather than unilateral sanctions.


A man reacts as Palestinians search for casualties a day after Israeli strikes on houses in Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. American politicians don’t care, period! They are funders of murder and death! Period!
Human Rights and Democracy Promotion

Donald Trump: Human rights and democracy promotion in relation to Israel and the Palestinian territories were not primary focal points of Trump’s Middle East policy. His administration often overlooked concerns about human rights violations or democratic backsliding in favor of strategic and security interests. Trump’s administration was criticized for not addressing issues like Israeli settlement expansion or Palestinian rights adequately, focusing instead on bolstering strategic alliances.

Kamala Harris: Harris places more emphasis on human rights and democracy as integral components of U.S. foreign policy. She supports continued military aid to Israel but with a focus on ensuring that such aid is consistent with human rights standards. Harris has called for accountability on all sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has advocated for measures that support peace, security, and human rights. She believes that promoting democratic values is key to achieving long-term peace and stability in the region.

Conclusion

The foreign policy positions of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump regarding Israel reflect their broader ideological differences and priorities. Trump’s approach was characterized by strong, unilateral support for Israeli government policies, emphasizing security and regional realignment.

In contrast, Harris advocates for a more balanced approach that maintains strong support for Israel while emphasizing diplomacy, human rights, and a commitment to a two-state solution. Both approaches aim to strengthen U.S.-Israel relations but differ significantly in their strategies for achieving peace and stability in the Middle East. And both are 100% pro-Israel. They simply do NOT care how many Palestinians get murdered by their bombs. It means nothing to American Politicians. Period!

So Mister Arab-American looking for a hero to save Palestinian peoples, look somewhere else cause Kamala and Trump won’t save anyone! This is a big power business and you’re nobody to them!


The US has been the chief funder of colonialism in Palestine since 1945
References

Here are some references that can be used to substantiate the comparisons between the foreign policy positions of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump regarding Israel:

1. U.S.-Israel Relationship

Trump’s pro-Israel stance and key policy actions:
“Trump recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and orders U.S. embassy to move,” The Washington Post, December 6, 2017.
“Trump officially recognizes Golan Heights as Israeli territory,” BBC News, March 25, 2019.
Kamala Harris’s views and actions related to Israel:
“Kamala Harris: U.S. will never let Iran acquire nuclear weapon,” The Times of Israel, March 1, 2021.
“Kamala Harris affirms US support for Israel, commitment to two-state solution in call with Netanyahu,” The Hill, November 30, 2020.
2. Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Trump’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process:
“Trump’s Israel-Palestine ‘peace plan’ grants Israel most of what it wants, including settlements and Jerusalem,” Vox, January 28, 2020.
“Trump cuts $200 million in aid to Palestinians,” Reuters, August 24, 2018.
Harris’s stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
“Kamala Harris reiterates support for two-state solution in call with Netanyahu,” Haaretz, November 30, 2020.
“Biden administration to restore US aid to Palestinians, including for UNRWA,” The Guardian, April 7, 2021.
3. Normalization of Relations with Arab States

Trump and the Abraham Accords:
“What are the Abraham Accords? The significance of UAE, Bahrain, Israel deals,” Al Jazeera, September 15, 2020.
“Morocco joins the Abraham Accords, becoming the fourth country to normalize relations with Israel,” The New York Times, December 10, 2020.
Kamala Harris and her support for normalization agreements:
“Kamala Harris supports Israel normalization deals, two-state solution,” Jerusalem Post, August 12, 2020.
“Biden and Harris to continue pushing Arab-Israel normalization efforts,” Middle East Eye, October 29, 2020.
4. Iran and Regional Security

Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal:
“Trump abandons Iran nuclear deal he long scorned,” The New York Times, May 8, 2018.
“U.S. reimposes all Iran sanctions lifted under Obama nuclear deal,” Reuters, November 5, 2018.
Harris’s support for diplomatic engagement with Iran:
“Kamala Harris on Iran: ‘The Biden-Harris administration will seek to re-enter the JCPOA’,” The National Interest, August 2020.
“Harris supports Biden’s commitment to diplomacy with Iran,” The Times of Israel, March 1, 2021.
5. Human Rights and Democracy Promotion

Human rights and Trump’s foreign policy:
“Trump’s foreign policy record: The good, the bad, and the ugly,” Brookings Institution, January 19, 2021.
“Trump’s record on human rights,” Human Rights Watch, January 2020.
Harris’s focus on human rights and democracy:
“Kamala Harris: US will stand up for human rights and democratic principles,” The Times of Israel, March 1, 2021.
“Harris tells AIPAC Biden administration will keep aid to Israel with no strings attached,” Haaretz, March 2, 2020.
Johnny Punish
Johnny Punish founded VT in 2004. After 20 years at the helm, he “retired” from the daily operations in late 2023 passing the ball over to the new owner of VT, Chief Justin Time. He now writes for VT as “Writer Emeritus”. He is also a global citizen eco-activist, visionary, musician, artist, entertainer, businessman, investor, life coach, podcast host, and syndicated columnist.

Punish is an ethnically cleansed Palestinian-American whose maternal family was evicted from their home in Haifa, Palestine in 1948. He is also the founder and owner of Global Thinkers, a freedom media for free minds.

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https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/2024/09/kamala-vs-trump-who-is-more-zionist/

Turkish infectious diseases specialist Dr. Esin Davutoğlu Şenol speaks out on the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic
2 August 2024
“Pandemics are the symptoms of the earth sick with capitalism. They will relapse until we have a better, nature-compatible society.”


The World Socialist Web Site conducted the following interview on the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic with Prof. Dr. Esin Davutoğlu Şenol, a leading specialist in infectious diseases and clinical microbiology at Gazi University Medical Faculty in Ankara, Turkey.


Dr. Esin Davutoğlu Şenol
Evan Blake (EB): Can you briefly describe your professional background and expertise, and the work that you’ve done during the pandemic?

Prof. Dr. Esin Davutoğlu Şenol (EŞ): I’m currently a Professor of Medicine at the Gazi University Faculty of Medicine, which is one of three academic centers in Ankara. I am working in this hospital as a medical doctor and teaching as an attending staff.

I have established the first official “Adult Immunization Center” in Turkey in my hospital, as well as an “Adult Immunization Study Group” on behalf of the Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Association (KLİMİK), which is the first and largest national specialty association. We conducted courses and trainings on adult immunization. I have also studied infections in cancer and transplant patients.

When I studied as a research assistant at the Tufts-New England Medical Center (Tufts-NEMC) in Boston, I worked on cytomegalovirus (CMV) diagnosis and trained at a virology lab, while also doing consultations with transplant patients as well.

We established the Febrile Neutropenia Association in Turkey and I was the secretary general of this association for a long time.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we established a “COVID Coordination Center” at the Gazi Hospital. We ran processes such as patient monitoring and treatment, vaccination clinics and coordination of health workers. I have conducted and published academic research in immunology, virology, vaccination and clinical follow-up of patients with COVID-19.

Ulaş Ateşçi (UA): We know that virtually all surveillance of the COVID-19 pandemic has ended in Turkey and throughout much of the world, but the pandemic is by no means over. What data do you track that allows you to follow the ongoing impacts of the pandemic in Turkey and other countries? Are you seeing increases in heart attacks, strokes, kidney disease or other negative long-term impacts from COVID infection in Turkey?

EŞ: Turkey first loosened the monitoring of COVID-19 cases and deaths by making the conditions for testing more difficult in 2021. At the end of 2022, the Turkish government announced that it ended pandemic surveillance much earlier than the rest of the world, believing that the Omicron variant would have a milder course. It also began to convince the public that this variant would be “milder.” However, most deaths and Long COVID cases have occurred in this period.

The Health Ministry last announced the daily number of cases on its website in May 2022. But according to the Worldometer website that monitors the pandemic globally, as of April 2024 Turkey has updated its situation as 102,000 deaths and 17 million cases in total.

The World Health Organization’s announcement of the end of the Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on the pandemic was taken by everyone as the end of the pandemic. In fact, when the PHEIC was ended by the WHO, Fahrettin Koca, the Turkish Health Minister at that time, not surprisingly misunderstood it as usual and thought it was a declaration that the pandemic was over. He even made a statement saying, “We had ended it long before they did.”

But in fact these two are very different, and unfortunately the pandemic cannot be declared over. The end of the PHEIC means that international measures such as border closures are no longer in place, not that the pandemic is over. While the very deadly and stormy phase of the pandemic has subsided, COVID-19 has not yet been contained. Moreover, at the places where there have been human contacts with animals, the virus has spilled back into wild habitats, leading to new mutations and new variants.

In Turkey, there are international codes that we use to monitor and define diseases and prescriptions. However, things can get complicated when using these codes to write prescriptions. For example, there are drugs that you cannot prescribe if you do not report a diagnosis of pneumonia, [which] should not be so restricted.

We also have to notify the Health Ministry for some infectious diseases that require social protections. But the integration of primary and tertiary care data is not sufficient. All the data is collected at the Health Ministry, but this data is not shared with academia.

In summary, we have problems with data collection, data recording and data analysis.

COVID-19 affects people as in waves throughout all the seasons, causing recurrent infections as well. It has not become a seasonal virus. The virus is known to indirectly cause heart attacks, strokes, kidney diseases, etc. It probably is the main reason for excess deaths during these waves. However, since these are not measured in proper means here, we cannot assess them.

In other words, we don’t look, we don’t follow and we don’t know. In this way, responsible institutions are relieved of their vaccination and treatment obligations.

The Turkish Medical Association (TTB) Pandemic Working Group, which has been very functional during the pandemic, and Güçlü Yaman, a data scientist in our group, share some graphs comparing summer and winter deaths with previous years.

If there is no other explanatory reason, 60 or 70 percent of the increase in winter deaths over the previous year can be attributed to the direct and indirect effects of respiratory viruses, including COVID-19, while the increase in summer deaths can be attributed to the heat effect and the COVID-19 effect.

EB: Can you elaborate a bit more on the data you use to show that there are more deaths and Long COVID cases since the emergence of the Omicron variant? Are there any reliable estimates of excess deaths in Turkey?

EŞ: On the TTB website and Güçlü Yaman’s social media account, you can find some data for the estimates of excess deaths based on the burials of some municipalities. We know the data of the other countries and project their scientific-evidence-based data. It allows us to make a rational inference since this is a global problem.

In summary, we can say that we have strong predictions even though we have no data.

EB: You tweeted recently, “In the field of health care, we are rapidly slipping back into the Middle Ages.” This is absolutely correct; all of the gains since the Black Death are being thrown away. Can you comment further on this, and how the COVID-19 pandemic triggered the repudiation of the most basic principles of public health?

EŞ: The Middle Ages was a time when outbreaks could not be controlled and the average human lifespan did not exceed 40 or 50 years. It was an epoch of epidemics, and there was no modern medicine.

Now diseases such as measles and whooping cough, which we had brought under control with vaccines, have once again begun to cause epidemics. Tuberculosis is back, AIDS and syphilis have exploded.

Currently medicine in Turkey is disconnected from the universal possibilities in medicine, vaccines and technology.

Under the title of “traditional medicine,” methods that are not accepted by modern medicine and those who tout them are promoted on television or at ministry-sponsored symposiums. Harmful practices in inappropriate conditions and charlatans are not inspected or caught by the authorities.

The Health Ministry seems to be very generous in its affiliated hospitals promoting interventions and medicine use instead of protective health. So patients themselves [have to pay for] these imported technologies and mostly locally produced medicines. In this way they can afford the rentals of these hospitals.

However, due to the quantitative and qualitative problems in the healthcare system, such as trained personnel, especially physicians and nurses, there are patients walking around with their bags full of tests, hospital germs that have become widespread due to unnecessary surgeries, damaged organs and damaged health conditions due to too many unnecessary medicines, etc. Of course, after a while, we will witness the shortening of the average life expectancy of human beings.

UA: We know that the current vaccines alone cannot stop the pandemic, but they have been shown to reduce risk of hospitalization, death and Long COVID. Can you comment on the refusal of the Erdoğan government to provide updated vaccines to the Turkish population, and similar policies globally? Recent WHO data indicate that vaccination rates for COVID and other diseases have plummeted globally.

EŞ: The Turkish government views citizenship on the basis of whether they are pro-government or not. This is also the case for many basic rights and laws, especially justice and employment. The government’s voters do not like science and scientists. The Health Ministry has backed the anti-vaccine and anti-science movement by targeting us, either through misleading or deliberate manipulation. Many of these anti-vaxers and anti-scientists are part of their voting base.

There is a heavy financial burden in the health care industry. On the other hand, due to the build-operate-transfer model in city hospitals, many patients need to enter these hospitals and many operations need to be performed. Vaccines or preventive medicine would reduce patient and hospital costs, which I don’t think the government wants.

Graph showing drastic decline in anti-COVID vaccine uptake globally [Photo: World Health Organization]
UA: Can you share your thoughts on the science of airborne transmission and the importance of wearing N95 masks? What do governments need to do to prevent airborne transmission of COVID and other respiratory pathogens?

EŞ: The most effective masks for airborne respiratory viruses are always N95, which we healthcare professionals have been using extensively in the care and treatment of patients since before the pandemic.

During the pandemic, when there were no vaccines yet, these masks were essential for all of us in areas such as public transportation and hospitals. However, they can be very inconvenient and expensive to use. Now I only use this type of mask in areas such as airplanes, hospitals and public transportation where everyone, vaccinated or unvaccinated, can be together.

EB: What concerns you most about the COVID-19 pandemic at this stage? There are the ever-growing ranks of Long COVID patients, the threat of a new and more dangerous variant evolving, the potential for long-term damage we haven’t even seen yet, and other ongoing risks we face.

Mehring Books

COVID, Capitalism, and Class War: A Social and Political Chronology of the Pandemic

A compilation of the World Socialist Web Site's coverage of this global crisis, available in epub and print formats.

EŞ: First of all, the virus needs to be properly tracked. We are talking about a virus that has come back as a relative of SARS-CoV-1, which was responsible for a local outbreak in Asia in 2002 and started a pandemic.

Long COVID is rarer in vaccinated people, but the population in Turkey has skipped three new variant vaccines. Our population is vulnerable and unvaccinated. Doctors in the country are not very familiar with Long COVID.

Some of the most prevalent symptoms of Long COVID
In addition, COVID affects many systems; most importantly it is associated with diabetes. The prevalence of diabetes is already increasing like an outbreak in Turkey, and COVID-19 has triggered this increase.

The current official strategy is: don’t see, don’t know, pretend the virus doesn’t exist. But this is not a sustainable attitude.

EB: What was your opinion of the Zero COVID elimination program that was implemented in China, New Zealand and other countries? We advocate the global implementation of this policy as the only way to stop the pandemic, but argue that this is impossible under capitalism.

EŞ: The Zero COVID policy would have been sustainable and very effective if the world had implemented similar control/protection programs. Millions of lives have been saved in countries that have implemented them.

But then, despite the completion of basic vaccinations, there were many deaths in those countries during the Omicron storm, which was falsely called “mild.” I have always described the response to the pandemic as a “patchwork.” China was hit by the Omicron surge when it first opened itself to rest of the world.

The only way to prevent deaths before vaccination was strict control/protection. If there had been an equal distribution of vaccines, if there had been a global effort, perhaps these new variants would not have developed.

Let’s not forget that smallpox was eradicated by vaccination and a global effort. Before that, it was a scourge of humanity for hundreds of years.

UA: There are now reports of a growing polio epidemic in Gaza, on top of the over 186,000 people killed so far in Israel’s genocidal war. Can you comment on this, and what connections you see between the capitalist response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Gaza genocide?

EŞ: The four horsemen of the apocalypse: Pestilence, War, Famine and Death.

War destroys all the gains made by the established order in the name of health and safety. The Spanish flu spread through the front lines and the battalions and then into the North American population.

Next door in the Middle East we have cholera and malaria and other vector-borne diseases that have been eliminated in many countries. For polio, we proudly hold a “certificate of elimination” in our hands, but war can start a new spread that threatens the whole world.

War is also forced migration. Although the first major pandemic of this century was spread by international air travel, migration due to war would connect the whole world, as it did in ancient times with infectious diseases.

Displaced child Sham al-Hessi, who suffers from skin disease, sleeps at a makeshift tent camp in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Monday, July 29, 2024. Skin diseases are running rampant in Gaza, health officials say, from appalling conditions in overcrowded tent camps housing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians driven from their homes. [AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana]
EB: Dr. Şenol, thank you for taking the time to speak with us today, and for your persistent efforts to raise awareness of the ongoing dangers of the COVID-19 pandemic. Any final thoughts you’d like to share?

EŞ: Capitalism is destroying everything except itself at full speed. This is becoming a viral century and humanity needs to get prepared in a proper way, which means very close coordination internationally in order to track the emergence of new pathogens and raise the alarm at once. As we have already witnessed with COVID-19, when the alarm bells ring to announce the start of a pandemic it is already too late.

At least in the beginning of a pandemic, you can never hide even in a very well-equipped and rich country. Viruses or microorganisms do not distinguish, no matter how sophisticated their host.

Pandemics are the symptoms of the earth sick with capitalism. They will relapse until we have a better, nature-compatible society.

Join the fight to end the COVID-19 pandemic

Someone from the Socialist Equality Party or the WSWS in your region will contact you promptly.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/08/02/smru-a02.html

Gaza records first polio case in 25 years – Day 314
[email protected] August 17, 2024 arms embargo, ceasefire, DNC, freedom flotilla, from the river to the sea, humanitarian aid, icc arrest warrant, Jayson Gillham, Mark Smith FCDO, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, pogrom, polio, safe zone, UC Irvine, uncommitted movement
Smoke rises from the Hamad area following an Israeli attack, which came immediately after Israel issued an evacuation warning to the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis on August 16, 2024 [Doaa Albaz/Anadolu Agency] (photo)
Polio epidemic begins; new flyers about Gaza to distribute; just 11 percent of Gaza for Gazans; Israeli settlers carry out pogrom in Palestinian town of Jit; Gaza Freedom Flotilla drawing near – will it break Israel’s blockade?; Israeli leaders mull how to dodge ICC arrest warrants; German courts grapple with the meaning of “from the river to the sea”; awaiting UC-Irvine’s fall policy on Palestine protest; Dems want ceasefire and arms embargo, but will Kamala listen?; senior UK diplomat resigns over Gaza; Australia’s classical music scene scuffle over Gaza; “Blue Vote Red Line” movement continues to gather signatures; more.

By IAK staff, from reports.

Gaza records first polio case as UN calls for truce to tackle virus

Al Jazeera reports: The Health Ministry in Gaza has said that it detected the first polio case in the besieged enclave, hours after United Nations officials called for a pause in the fighting to enable a vaccination campaign for children against the virus.

In a statement on Friday, the Health Ministry blamed the “difficult” conditions in Gaza – including the spread of sewage water in the streets, shortages of medical supplies and lack of personal hygiene products due to the Israeli blockade – for the emergence of the virus in the territory.

Hours earlier, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had called for humanitarian pauses in the war in Gaza to conduct a polio vaccine campaign.

“It is impossible to conduct a polio vaccination campaign with war raging all over,” he told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York.

Guterres appealed for assurances of humanitarian pauses to be provided immediately from the warring parties as he warned that preventing and containing the spread of polio in Gaza would take a massive coordinated and urgent effort.

“Let’s be clear: The ultimate vaccine for polio is peace and an immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” Guterres said. “But in any case, a polio pause is a must.”

(Read the full article here.)

Details of the proposed vaccination campaign are here.

After Israel destroyed Gaza's water and sewage systems, filthy water runs or stands stagnant all over the enclave, carrying polio and other diseases.
After Israel destroyed Gaza’s water and sewage systems, filthy water runs or stands stagnant all over the enclave, carrying polio and other diseases. (collage)
New fact sheets about Gaza to be distributed in Chicago and around the country

If Americans knew has produced two new flyers printed front and back with facts about Gaza for educating Americans.

These will be available in Chicago at the demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention for everyone to distribute widely. To obtain these, email [email protected]. Below is one of the flyers:


Front and back sides of one of the new factsheets about Gaza. (IAK)
Latest evacuation order leaves just 11 percent of Gaza for Gazans; food kitchens in crisis

OCHA reports: The Israeli military issued an order on 16 August that affects six blocs in Deir al Balah and Khan Younis, including two within the Israeli-designated zone in Al Mawasi in western Khan Younis.

This is one of the largest evacuation orders affecting the zone to date, and it shrinks the size of the so-called “humanitarian area” to about 41 square kilometers, or 11 per cent of the total area of the Gaza Strip.

Initial mapping indicates that this order affects 122 internally displaced persons sites, makeshift shelters, and collective centers that are collectively hosting over 170,000 people.

There is an urgent need for increased hot meal capacity in Gaza due to recurrent waves of displacement, the World Food Programme (WFP) reported on 12 August. Many community kitchens in central and southern Gaza struggle due to unstable supplies of humanitarian cargo and the lack of food and fuel.

The situation has worsened since 22 July following the issuance of multiple evacuation orders in Deir al Balah and Khan Younis, which forced the relocation of four kitchens and the closure of 19 food delivery points.

Moreover, in Deir al Balah, about 1,400 metric tons of food stocks in one of the warehouses became inaccessible and only one WFP warehouse with about 3,000 metric tons of commodities is currently accessible but is insufficient to meet the August cycle requirements.

In July, 70 community kitchens in Gaza supported by WFP provided around 11.5 million hot meals to more than 200,000 people, the majority in central Gaza.

Of the total food cargo entering through Kerem Shalom Crossing in July, only eight per cent was humanitarian aid and the rest were commercial trucks. There was reportedly a slight improvement in food availability and diversity in Deir al Balah and Khan Younis, but a deterioration in other governorates, and persistent challenges to market functionality including high food prices, lack of liquidity and the emergence of “thieves markets.”



Israeli settlers rampage across Palestinian town in latest West Bank pogrom

The Cradle reports: More than 70 armed Jewish settlers invaded the Palestinian town of Jit in the occupied West Bank on 15 August, firing bullets and tear gas at residents and setting several homes and cars and other property on fire, CNN reported.

Settlers killed 23-year-old Rashid Sedda during the pogrom. The Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Health confirmed the 23-year-old Palestinian died due to a gunshot wound to the chest.

“We have attacks but nothing to this level,” the head of Jit’s village council, Nasser Sedda, told CNN. “We haven’t seen anything like this before, and without a prior warning. They caught the people off guard – women, children, and elders were there.”

“Dozens of Israeli civilians, some of them masked, entered the town of Jit and set fire to vehicles and structures in the area, hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails,” the Israeli military said in a statement.

Haaretz reported that the only person arrested after the settler raid on the village of Jit was suspected of interfering with a policeman and was released. No arrests have yet been made for those involved in the pogrom.


New film from the Freedom Flotilla Coalition:



And as this IAK video reported eight years ago, Israeli blockades of Gaza began years before Hamas came to power:



Gaza Freedom Flotilla: Activists prepare to defy Israel naval blockade of Gaza

Reuters reports: Peace activists from several countries are setting out on a converted trawler to defy an Israeli blockade and deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

“The purpose of this mission is to send a message that civil society is not OK with what’s happening in Gaza,” said Fellipe Lopes, the Portuguese media coordinator of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition on board the ship, “Handala” during a stopover in Malta.

It will be a trip fraught with danger. Another coalition ship on a similar mission to Gaza in 2010 was stopped and boarded by Israeli troops, and nine activists died. Other ships were similarly stopped and boarded, without loss of life.

“We expect to encounter resistance throughout our mission,” said Australian activist, Michael Coleman.

“Ours is not an illegal activity in any shape or form. The International Court of Justice has asked them to grant unfettered access to aid into Gaza and I implore them to let us and other aids through immediately,” he said.

The “Handala” was visited in Malta by 78-year-old retired US Army Colonel and diplomat, Ann Wright, who was on board another coalition ship boarded by Israeli troops in 2010, in the incident in which nine activists died.

“These people are very brave, because we don’t know what’s going to happen. If the Israelis stop them, we know it’ll be brutal,” Wright said.

The brightly colored “Handala” carries activists from Italy, France, Norway, Australia, the Netherlands, Syria and a number of Palestinians. It has made several port calls around Scandinavia and the Mediterranean to raise awareness about the situation in Gaza.

Its hull carries slogans reading: “Free Palestine”, “Gaza you are not alone” and “Stop the Genocide”, while its humanitarian aid cargo consists mostly of medicines.

The trip along the Eastern Mediterranean to Gaza will take a week but organizers said they might stop over in another harbor on the way.

NOTE: The flotilla movement was begun by activists Greta Berlin, Paul Larudee and associates.

The ship named Handala, belonging to the Freedom Flotilla (Ship to Gaza), which set sail from the capital of Norway, Oslo, on May 1st with the aim of delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza arrives in Rotterdam, Netherlands on 25 May, 2024 [ Abdullah Asiran/Anadolu via Getty Images]
The ship named Handala, belonging to the Freedom Flotilla (Ship to Gaza), which set sail from the capital of Norway, Oslo, on May 1st with the aim of delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza arrives in Rotterdam, Netherlands on 25 May, 2024 [ Abdullah Asiran/Anadolu via Getty Images] (photo)
Israeli leaders strategize about how to dodge ICC arrest warrants

Andalou Agency reports: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant met with other officials Thursday to discuss efforts by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants against them.

“The Attorney General reiterated her position regarding the establishment of a State Commission of Inquiry to examine the humanitarian situation in Gaza even though, according to the view of the Attorney General herself, there is no certainty that establishing this commission would lead to the cancellation of the request to issue the warrants,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.



‘From the river to the sea’: six words that are testing freedom of speech in Germany

The Guardian reports: Is it legal to say the words “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” in Germany? The answer appears to be yes: you can shout them from the rooftops in German, English, Arabic or Hebrew, so long as a court accepts that you are not doing so to indicate support for Hamas or its murderous assault of 7 October.

This distinction came to bear on the activist Ava Moayeri last week, when she was convicted of “condoning a crime” for leading a chant of the slogan at a Berlin rally on 11 October. If the speaker of the phrase is understood to mean, for instance, that they support the peaceful liberation of Palestinians, then the utterance would be protected.

But the presiding judge, Birgit Balzer, didn’t think that was possible in this case, citing the date of the protest in her decision. Moayeri is expected to challenge the verdict in a higher court.

The slogan has come to symbolize a rift running through German society amid Israel’s war in Gaza. For some people, the expression is implicitly genocidal, especially because of its long history of use by Hamas and other terrorist organizations. The judge reportedly said that it was clear to her that it “denied the right of the state of Israel to exist”, while Germany’s interior minister, Nancy Faeser, has declared it to be a Hamas slogan.

(Read the full article here.)



Student protesters at UC Irvine were suspended with no chance to defend themselves. Will courts return them to campus?

The Intercept reports: Amid the brutal police crackdowns at more than 100 campus protests against the war in Gaza the spring, one university in California stood out for its especially harsh treatment of student protesters. The school effectively eliminated any due process for the students by suspending them without making specific allegations of misconduct or allowing the students to respond to vague charges.

Last month, student protesters at University of California, Irvine sued the school regents and chancellor for suspending them without any notice or a chance to present evidence in their defense. On Tuesday, plaintiffs in the suit filed a motion to ask the Superior Court of California to step in.

The five students are asking the court to force the school to halt the suspensions and allow students to resume their studies, register for fall classes, go back to campus jobs, and regain access to campus housing.

More than 3,000 people were arrested during brutal police crackdowns on campus protests this year, according to a protest tracker developed by The Appeal. UCI is still an outlier — it’s one of the only schools in the country that issued interim suspensions banning students from campus before they had a chance to respond. The university’s approach was, a representative for the students said, unprecedented.

(Read the full article here.)

Are these people Hamas? Photo by Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images
Are these people Hamas? Photo by Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images (photo)
‘Not Another Bomb’ to Israel Demand Grows Ahead of Democratic Convention

Common Dreams reports: Leading up to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week, calls for the U.S. government to stop arming Israel’s devastating assault on the Gaza Strip—widely denounced around the world as genocide—continued to mount on Friday.

“We join the millions of people who’ve taken action the last 10 months, taxpayers who don’t want to pay for genocide and are demanding an immediate arms embargo on Israel,” U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) executive director Ahmad Abuznaid said in a statement Friday.

“We know that politicians won’t change their unjust policies until it’s in their own self-interest to do so,” he continued. “We must double down on our demands ahead of the DNC, where we’ll be marching in the streets for the liberation of all.”

Pro-Palestine protests in Chicago are set to start Sunday, a day before the DNC officially begins. They will continue throughout the week, according to a schedule shared Friday by the Chicago Sun-Times. The March on the DNC is planned for Monday afternoon.

(Read the full article here.)

NOTE: If Americans Knew has created fact sheets about Gaza that will be distributed at the protests shown above. IAK will also have a digital billboard truck in Chicago during the convention and large posters about Gaza will be plastered around the city.

Protesters in Atlanta, Georgia, demand a ceasefire in Gaza on June 27, 2024. Photo by Octavio Jones/Getty Images
Protesters in Atlanta, Georgia, demand a ceasefire in Gaza on June 27, 2024. Photo by Octavio Jones/Getty Images (photo)
New Poll Suggests Gaza Ceasefire and Arms Embargo Would Help Dems with Swing State Voters

A new poll, just released Wednesday by YouGov and the Institute for Mideast Understanding (IMEU) showed that in three key battleground states, “About a quarter of those surveyed across these states say the violence in Gaza will sway how they vote,” and that “60% or more disapprove of more weapons to Israel.”

Even more stunning, the number of Democratic and Independent voters who would be less likely to vote for Harris if she vowed to stop arming Israel is minuscule. In Pennsylvania, only 7% said they would be less likely to vote for Harris if she pledged to stop sending weapons to Israel; in both Arizona and Georgia, that figure was just 5%.

The gaps are huge. In those same states, the numbers saying they would be more likely to vote for Harris if she pledged to stop arming Israel were 34% in Pennsylvania, 39% in Georgia, and 35% in Arizona. The rest said it wouldn’t affect their vote.

“This polling clearly shows that if the Democrats want Vice President Harris to be the strongest nominee possible going into November, then they should be demanding that President Biden stop the flow of weapons to Israel and secure a permanent ceasefire immediately,” IMEU Policy Project Executive Director Margaret DeReus said in a statement. “Not only are these policies popular, but they actually move voters from the ‘undecided’ or ‘not voting’ column and into the Democrats’ column in the states Democrats will need to win.”

It is clear that the idea that forcing Israel into a ceasefire by withholding weapons would be beneficial to Harris, and all the more so if Israel then stops its genocide, and Iran and the rest of the Axis of Resistance stand down, as has been promised, and is the overwhelmingly likely result.

Harris leads Trump in Pennsylvania by 2.1%, Arizona by 0.7%, and Georgia by 0.1%, according to the data-driven news site FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages as of Aug. 14.

An Israeli soldier carries a 155mm artillery shell near a self-propelled howitzer deployed at a position near the border with Lebanon in the upper Galilee region of northern Israel on October 18, 2023. (Photo: Jalaa Marey/AFP via Getty Images)
An Israeli soldier carries a 155mm artillery shell near a self-propelled howitzer deployed at a position near the border with Lebanon in the upper Galilee region of northern Israel on October 18, 2023. (Photo: Jalaa Marey/AFP via Getty Images) (photo)
Senior diplomat resigns over UK’s complicity in ‘war crimes’ in Gaza

Middle East Monitor reports: A senior British diplomat has resigned from the Foreign Office over the UK’s continued arms sales to Israel, which he said have “no justification”.

Mark Smith, the head of Africa Programmes and Expertise Department and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, submitted a resignation letter entitled “FCDO complicity in War Crimes” reports revealed yesterday.

“It is with sadness that I resign after a long career in the diplomatic service,” he wrote, “however I can no longer carry out my duties in the knowledge that this Department may be complicit in War Crimes. ”

“Each day we witness clear and unquestionable examples of War Crimes and breaches of International Humanitarian Law in Gaza perpetrated by the State of Israel,” he continued.

He went on to highlight how “senior members of the Israeli government and militar have expressed open genocidal intent, Isralei soldiers take videos, deliberately burning destroying, and looting civilian property and openly admit to the rape and torture of prisoners.”

Melbourne orchestra leaders voted out for removing pianist over Gaza tribute

Middle East Eye reports: Musicians at the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) have passed a vote of no confidence in its board after it cancelled a show by a pianist who had dedicated a performance to Palestinian journalists killed by Israeli forces in Gaza.

In a letter to the management, the musicians said, “We believe it is the duty of senior management to lead and manage in accordance with the MSO’s values and behaviors, however, it has become apparent that these values no longer appear to be aligned with those of the orchestra and staff.”

On Sunday, British-Australian pianist Jayson Gillham premiered a five-minute piece called Witness, which he performed after a brief comment on Israel’s killing of journalists in Gaza, which he referred to as a war crime.

Following the concert, MSO announced that it had cancelled Gillham’s upcoming performance, which was to take place on Thursday, due to “a series of introductory remarks” he made.

It said that it had sought “independent security advice” following Sunday’s concert, and in light of the advice, “had no option but to cancel” Gillham’s next show.

AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW ADDS: After a litany of protest from its staff, some subscribers and members of the public, the MSO had by Thursday relented and released a statement admitting its cancellation of Gillham had been “an error”, and that it was working to program a new concert with him shortly.

The backdown has in turn upset some Jewish stakeholders.

“The MSO got it right the first time,” said the co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Peter Wertheim.

Jayson Gillham has been involved in the Palestinian issue in the past.

“Blue Vote Red Line” movement continues to gather signatures

The “Blue Vote Red Line” movement seeks to collect 1 million voters to pledge a vote for the Democratic ticket if, and only if, it commits to 1) enforce an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, as ordered by the World Court and UN Security Council Resolution 2735 or 2) end all military aid to Israel.

Their goal is to “force the Democratic Party to listen to its voters and not just its donors. The pledge can be viewed and signed here.

MORE NEWS:

IMEMC Daily Reports.

BBC: ‘On verge of an explosion’: Policeman’s killing part of spiraling West Bank violence

The Cradle: Canada violates UN arms treaty with ‘unofficial’ shipments to Israel via US

DropSite News: While Elon Musk battles the UK and EU over social media censorship, Israel is jailing citizens for Instagram posts

Palestine Chronicle: Deceptive Optimism – What is really happening at the Gaza ceasefire talks (analysis)


STATISTICS OCTOBER 7 – AUGUST 16:

Palestinian death toll from October 7 – August 16: at least 40,706* (40,074 in Gaza* – 11,445 women (30%), 16,251 children as of July 22. [The Ministry’s figures have been contested by the Israeli authorities, although they have been accepted as accurate by Israeli intelligence services, the UN, and WHO. These data are supported by independent analyses, comparing changes in the number of deaths of UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) staff with those reported by the Ministry, which found claims of data fabrication implausible.]

This is expected to be a significant undercount since thousands of those killed have yet to be identified – and at least 632 in the West Bank (~145 children). This does not include an estimated 10,000 more still buried under rubble (4,900 women and children). Euro-Med Monitor reports 46,848 Palestinian deaths.

Lancet: “Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death9 to the 37,396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.

Ralph Nader earlier estimated 200,000 Palestinians may have been killed in Gaza.

At least 45 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons (27 from Gaza, 18 from West Bank).
At least 41 Palestinians have died due to malnutrition**.
About 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million population are currently displaced.
Almost 500,000 Gazans are currently experiencing catastrophic levels of food insecurity.
Palestinian injuries from October 7 – August 16: at least 97,957 (including at least 92,537 in Gaza and 5,420 in the West Bank, including 830 children). [It remains unknown how man Americans are among the casualties in Gaza.]

Reported Israeli death toll from October 7 – August 16: ~1,454 (~1,139 on October 7, 2023, of which ~32 were Americans, and ~36 were children); 290*** military forces since the ground invasion began in Gaza; 25 military and civilians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Israel) and~10,000 injured.

NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries in Israel on October 7 were caused by Israeli soldiers.

*Previously, IAK did not include 471 Gazans killed in the Al Ahli hospital blast since the source of the projectile was being disputed. However, given that much evidence points to Israel as the culprit, Israel had previously bombed the hospital and has attacked many others, Israel is prohibiting outside experts from investigating the scene, and since the UN and other agencies are including the deaths from the attack in their cumulative totals, if Americans knew is now also doing so.

**Euro-Med Monitor reports that Gaza’s elderly are dying at an alarmingly high rate. The majority die at home and are buried either close to their residences or in makeshift graves dispersed across the Strip. There are currently more than 140 such cemeteries. Additionally, according to Euromed, thousands have died from starvation, malnourishment, and inadequate medical care; these are considered indirect victims as they were not registered in hospitals.

***Approximately ten of the deaths listed above were Israeli soldiers killed by Hezbollah in fighting at the Israel-Lebanon border. The figure does not include the reportedly 41 Israeli soldiers – nearly 16% of the total Israeli military deaths – killed due to friendly fire in Gaza and other military-related accidents.

† For most of the conflict, women and children accounted for about 70% of deaths in Gaza, with children making up a little over 40% of those killed, according to official statistics.

Find previous daily casualty figures and daily news updates here.

Hover over each bar for exact numbers.
Source: IsraelPalestineTimeline.org
Human rights reports on Israel-Palestine (regularly updated)
Understanding what motivates ultra-orthodox Jewish attacks on West Bank Palestinians
Palestinians’ harrowing stories of rape by Israeli soldiers (including female soldiers)
A Palestinian journalist visited Ismail Haniyeh’s home in Gaza to report on his death. Israel assassinated him too.
I reported a piece for the New York Times on antisemitism. I found a major error, but the Times didn’t care.
How Israel plans to whitewash its war crimes in Gaza
Why the West Bank is on the verge of economic collapse
Netanyahu’s plan to involve US in regional war on its behalf
Western media continue to withhold the truth about Israel and Gaza – 4 stories
“Well What SHOULD Israel Have Done After October 7?”
Welcome to Hell
More dead children. More BBC ‘news’ channelling Israeli propaganda as its own
U.S. media downplays and ignores ICJ ruling declaring Israeli occupation illegal
Israeli soldiers tell story of savage cruelty in Gaza – one given blessing by the West
Searching for Gaza’s missing children
What Would You Do With An Extra $320 Million?
Assassination of Haniyeh an intentional, dangerous escalation – Parsi, Macgregor
When Israel Burned Refugees Alive, Establishment Media Called It a ‘Tragic Accident’
Israel has turbocharged West Bank housing demolitions under the cover of war
Western media ignores Israeli confirmation of Hannibal Directive on 7 Oct
US Should Arrest Benjamin Netanyahu When He’s in Washington
Airwars investigation: Israeli airstrikes uniquely lethal (video)
Hesen Jabr paid the price of conscience
Gaza genocide denial
Why the news media’s job is to groom us
‘Disappeared, buried, detained’: The horrors of Gaza’s missing children

https://israelpalestinenews.org/gaza-records-first-polio-case-in-25-years-day-314/

New confessions of spy cell reveal US targeting of political reality in Yemen
New confessions of spy cell reveal US targeting of political reality in Yemen
SANA'A August 18. 2024 (Saba) - New confessions of the US-Israeli spy cell broadcast by the security services this evening revealed the extent of the American targeting of the political reality in Yemen before and during the youth revolution in 2011.

The confessions included the American side's recruitment and polarization of party leaders, controlling the course of the elections, as well as fueling conflicts among parties, in addition to targeting the parliament and recruiting some of its members to work on implementing the American agenda.

The confessions in this aspect also included the major American role in infiltrating the youth revolution, recruiting leaders in the arena, and supporting certain components to control the revolution.

In this context, spy Shayef al-Hamdani explained that the democratic sector worked from the beginning to determine the president who manages Yemen by supporting the presidential elections and controlling the High Election Commission.

The spy Abdul Moeen Azzan explained that the election program at the American Democratic Institute was run by a Yemeni expert named Murad Zafer, and it was apparent that the program would provide technical support to political parties regarding the elections, how to participate in the elections, target voters and others, and on the basis that it also provides technical support to the Supreme Elections and Referendum Commission.

He pointed out that the election program was no different from other programs, as it had a hidden intelligence role, most notably attracting party leaders who were interested in the subject of elections, and most importantly, the institute and its successor the embassy and US intelligence were seeking through the program to obtain the electoral register of citizens, with the justification of seeking to automate the record, which was then paper.

In the context of his confessions, spy Shayef al-Hamdani revealed that USAID in Yemen worked with the rest of the offices and attachés at the US embassy with the High Election Commission on the days of the presidential elections between Ali Abdul Allah Saleh and Faisal bin Shamlan.

He acknowledged that he was part of a team consisting of various departments of the US embassy managed by "Brad Hansen", who assigned him to follow up on the Supreme Election Committee to find out that the election process is going according to what America wants and to see the progress of work and arrangements made by the committee and to go to the most prominent constituencies and electoral centers in terms of the number of voters, with a focus on the districts in which there is the public weight that will determine who will win the elections.

He explained that "Brad Hansen" was assisting the High Election Commission and his administration was likely to win Ali Abdul Allah Saleh in the elections at the time.

Recruitment of party leaders

According to spy Abdul Moeen Azzan, he worked indirectly for US intelligence through Murad Zafer, who was then the director of programs and played a role in preparing Yemeni employees and preparing them to work later for US intelligence, as he gave him instructions on how to recruit, obtain information and establish relationships.

The party platform, which was run by a Serbian woman named Saša Pšvić, ostensibly provided support to Yemeni political parties and leaders, when in fact it was working to attract party and political leaders and recruit them for US intelligence, he said, and also worked to convince the parties that the US embassy is the sponsor of the political process in Yemen and the arbitrator of political disagreement and conflict between the various parties.

In turn, the spy Shayef Al-Hamdani said that support was provided to people in certain political parties to strengthen their parties, so everyone was seeking to please America in terms of building a relationship with it, and all parties and personalities were seeking to satisfy it, such as Dr. Yassin Saeed Noman, who was one of the closest confidants and friends of the US embassy, and Abdulmalik Al Mekhlafi from the Nasserite party.

About the Islah Party, the spy Al-Hamdani explained that the meeting was taking place with the leader of the party, Abdul Wahab Al-Ansi, and others, but on the military side, there was an intimate relationship between Lieutenant General Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar and the US Embassy, especially with Ambassador "Fire Stein", who frequented him a lot and had many joint visits between them.

He stated that one of the most important goals sought by the embassy and the agency was to have an integral role between the various agencies of the embassy concerning the aspect of democracy and good governance until joint decisions were reached that provide support or intelligence benefit for everything, by attracting these figures to work to create unrest between political parties, so that reform cannot tolerate the General People's Congress, and does not tolerate socialism for ideological reasons, so all parties were involved in conflicts at the behest of America. So that the political situation remains sleazy.

According to the spy Azzan, there was a program that ostensibly sought to build the capacity of parties to be able to participate in elections and attract voters and others, but its real goal was to attract large political elites, especially those who refused to deal with the Americans at that period. He pointed out that the entry of the Institute at the end of the nineties coincided with the fall of the Soviet Union and the beginning of what was called the new world order "unipolar system" that Clinton was heralding.

He pointed out that most of the Yemeni parties were nationalist, leftist, and Islamist, and all of them were not favored to work or cooperate with America, but the Democratic Institute played a role in attracting many of the leaders of these parties to work to support the American agenda, which enabled the US embassy to play a role larger than its size due to the different roles played by the programs of the Democratic Institute.

The spy Azzan admitted that he worked as an assistant to the head of the parliament program at the institute, who was of Canadian nationality, in following up the sessions of the House of Representatives daily and making summaries, both from the news and later through journalists who were working inside the House and even from deputies. He indicated that he was communicating with MPs on behalf of the Canadian person to get the information he wanted.

"During my work at the Democratic Institute within the parliamentary program, Murad Zafer, along with a Lebanese expert named Ali Shaheen, was studying mainly the emergence of the emerging movement at the time, the Ansar al-Allah movement, its movements, size, activity, and others, and they were very interested in it, and I also helped in the studies and reports they were preparing about the Ansar Allah movement at that time," he said.

The spy Azzan pointed out that he was promoted to an official in the parliament program and continued to manage the program until mid-2009 when the program attracted a group of parliamentarians through a person named "Saad Eddin bin Talib", who was a member of parliament before joining the Institute, and he is a CIA and he attracted a group of deputies and made personal relations with them.

He pointed out that the so-called student used to host parliamentarians in his house and exploit, as is the American method, the conflict between the authority and the opposition in promoting the role that America provides, whether to the authority by maintaining it in its hand, or to the opposition by helping it to reach power.

The spy Azzan revealed that one of the intelligence works carried out by attracting parliamentarian "Abdul Moez Dibwan", through which he obtained a lot of information and sites, some of which were used in the oil side in Yemen and work for oil companies, explorations, and others.

He explained that he was reporting directly to the head of the Yemen office within the administration of the Democratic Institute in Washington, "Katherine Miles," on the Yemeni parliament and its conditions, especially about the aspects of oil, exploration, and others.

The role of the embassy in targeting parliament

On the negative role of the US embassy in targeting the parliament, spy Abdul Qader Al-Saqqaf explained that the embassy was intensifying meetings with active members of parliament, establishing extensive relations with them, sending them to courses in America, visits to the US House of Representatives, and also within the international visitor program, which is a tourism program to strengthen relations with them.

He pointed out that the embassy was keen on the presence of parliamentarians in the parties held annually as well as the parties held in foreign and Arab embassies, so that during these intensive meetings coordination with them regarding what is addressed in parliament, to pass what the Americans request concerning loans and the purchase of weapons, and any agreements in the field of security, counter-terrorism, economic fields and any projects in favor of the Americans, as well as obstructing projects that are not in the interest of the American side.

He stated that one of the most prominent parliamentarians who had a strong relationship and communicated with the US embassy was "Sultan al-Barakani" and sometimes invited the political attaché at that time to attend the sessions as a guest of honor, and arranged many meetings.

"Some mixed parliamentarians had an organization called Parliamentarians Against Corruption, including Sakhr al-Wajeeh, Muhammad Ali al-Shaddadi, and others, who were holding their meetings at al-Shadadi's house when the organization was in the process of being formed, and the political attaché of the US embassy attended these meetings," he said.

Al-Saqqaf pointed out that meetings were also held between Mohamed Al-Hazmi of the Islah bloc and the political official at the US embassy in 2009 or 2010, as well as between Hashem Al-Ahmar at his home with the assistants of the political attaché.

He pointed out that MP Othman Megally was preparing to meet with the US ambassador directly at the embassy headquarters, and there were meetings of the embassy with other members such as Shawqi Al-Qadi, who had an organization to train mosque preachers and had a relationship with the Media and Cultural Attaché in the Middle East Partnership Initiative "MEPI" department, where he used to get ideas and proposals on how to implement training courses for preachers and obtain financial grants to run this organization.

He reported that the head of the Islah parliamentary bloc, Zaid al-Shami, and his deputy, Abdul Razzaq al-Hijri, had meetings with the political attaché at the headquarters of the Islah party on parliamentary and party matters.

Intelligence work across organizations' projects

The spy Hashem al-Wazir revealed that all USAID projects and any Western projects of the United Nations and other Western organizations have always come under the banner of providing aid to the country and the people, but they include a more important and dangerous hidden part related to intelligence work through these projects, regardless of their different fields.

"For example, the NDI Institute is entrusted with the process of attracting VIPs, recruiting them, and linking them directly to the US embassy, specifically with the US ambassador and the deputy ambassador, so that they manage from them directly and provide information directly to the CIA, which is the most important department in the embassy and the most important US agency in formulating foreign policies," he said.

"The institute was entrusted with the recruitment process, the departments of media figures, leaders of civil society organizations, women and youth, who were usually managed by American diplomats who are heads of departments concerned with these topics and provide information to them to be submitted directly to the CIA department at the embassy," he said.

This spy explained that the RGP project had a similar work in providing networks of American labor in the various entities in which it worked under the name of capacity building, whether in the Presidency of the Republic, for example, or in the Prime Minister's Office by recruiting department managers, deputy directors, director of the Prime Minister's Office and spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office, who are linked to the project manager, who connects them directly to both the director of the agency and his deputy, who manage them for the CIA department through Take information from them directly.

He explained that opposition political elites were also attracted by inviting them to various embassy meetings and parties, where most political figures used to come to those occasions, and these figures were also sent in programs related to the exchange of visits with the United States. He pointed out that these visits were carried out by several personalities with political, economic, and social weight until the matter reached the level of judges who participated in the international visitor program.

The minister confirmed that these people were closely connected to the cultural attaché and the US embassy in general and were a source of data and information, especially about the judiciary and law-making.

Federalism is an American scheme for the division of Yemen

In this context, the spy Hisham Al-Wazir explained that through his review of documents in the United States Agency for Development, he noticed that there were projects supported by the Ministry of Local Administration during the period in which the Agency was opened in 2004 to 2010, and coordination was at the highest level between the Agency and the Americans themselves and other donors, and the United Nations Development Program participated in this matter with the support of local councils and decentralization between the years 2005 to 2009 with the Ministry of Local Administration, and There is coordination at the highest level on this issue with the Germans through the German Development Agency, the British, the Dutch and the World Bank.

He stressed that working on the issue of federalism in Yemen is a previous American work. He pointed out that during his work in the commercial department, he heard the US ambassador say that "the solution to the problems of Yemen is federalism," and when he joined the US Agency for Development, he heard the same words from his co-worker, Afrah Al-Zoba, who reported that she was informed in one of her visits to Washington that Yemen as a unified state will end and will not exist anymore and there will be a federal state divided into several sections.

American targeting of the youth revolution

In this aspect, spy Shayef Al-Hamdani revealed that when the youth revolution began in 2011, there was a hidden role for the US embassy in general, including the United States Agency for Development through the democracy and good governance sector, where some youth components were secretly supported to ensure building relationships with those who have a decision regarding the youth revolution.

"I am talking about the leaders of this youth revolution, including Tawakkol Karman, who participated in the International Visitor Program through the United States Agency for Development, as well as Hossam Al-Sharjabi, Afrah Al-Zouba and Osama Al-Roaini, who had a prominent role in this context," he said.

He pointed out that the aim is to form personalities with a future role in reaching the decision-making center and enabling the United States to control the decision through these people, and there was interest by the US embassy to control the revolution to keep the political, economic and social situation in Yemen under their control, so the focus was on the youth component as they are the largest segment in society. He pointed out that many personalities have reached prominent positions in the national dialogue, such as Osama Al-Roaini, Afrah Al-Zoba, Hossam Al-Sharjabi, and other young people who have reached government centers that can make decisions, such as Jalal Yaqoub, who also reached the position of Undersecretary of the Ministry of Finance.

In the context, the spy Abdul Moeen Azzan also revealed the intelligence role assigned to him in 2011 during the protests in the squares, where civil society organizations present in the square or their representatives were contacted to obtain information about the square and any movements or orientations of young people and the various blocs within the square through these organizations that were partners of the so-called "MEPI", which in turn carried out activities inside the tents in the square.

He explained that these organizations were receiving support and grants from the MEPI, which had relations and contacts with the various youth groups within the arena, and reports with all the information were submitted to Joan Cummins.

Spy Mohamed al-Kharashi said groups were sent to monitor the squares and find out which prominent figures joined them daily, as well as the most prominent events, and worked to write them in a report and send them to the regional security officer immediately.

Ali Mohsen's joining is a service to America

According to spy Shayef al-Hamdani, the United States noticed that the revolution in Yemen began to take another dimension and worked to preserve its interests through the component of the Yemeni Congregation for Reform, so Ali Mohsen was instructed to announce his separation from the armed forces and join the youth revolution, as well as other figures from the Islah Party such as Hamid al-Ahmar and others to provide support and control over the youth revolution at the time for political goals that serve American interests.

"Through my work during this period in the political attaché at the US embassy, it was clear that the American interventions led to the disruption of society and the creation of inter-conflict until we reached 2011, which witnessed a division in society, parties, and even within the framework of the ruling conference itself," he said. He pointed out that all this prepared for foreign interventions, which brought the idea of the Gulf initiative adopted by Saudi Arabia with the help of the five permanent members and other supporting countries that became called the "ten countries sponsoring the initiative", which led to the expansion of chaos.

He pointed out that with the widening circle of chaos, the UN envoy was sent to save the national dialogue, which ultimately serves the interest of America through the so-called "Yemen regionalization project", which is part of the plan to fragment the country required.

E.M


https://www.saba.ye/en/news3360012.htm

Violence against West Bank Palestinians intensifies, as Gaza’s “safe” space shrinks – Day 313
[email protected] August 16, 2024 amputation, arms embargo, ceasefire, east jerusalem water crisis, evacuation, israeli economy, israeli outposts, israeli settler violence, pogrom, west bank deaths


The taps have run dry in Jerusalem’s largest Palestinian neighborhood
+972 Magazine reports: In the searing heat of summer, Jerusalem’s largest Palestinian neighborhood is facing a major water crisis. Since June, residents of Kufr ‘Aqab have been receiving just 2 to 12 hours of water per week. Their complaints have been redirected from one official to the next, yet no one has provided them with a solution — nor taken responsibility for the problem.
Located within Jerusalem’s northeastern municipal boundary but severed from the rest of the city by the separation wall, Kufr ‘Aqab’s residents have grown accustomed to the systematic neglect they face from the Israeli authorities. But the current crisis is the worst it’s ever been. During the few hours that the water does flow, residents try to do everything they can with it: take showers, do laundry, and clean the house. The rest of the time, they are forced to buy water from private suppliers and store it in containers on the roofs of their apartment blocks.
“We have hospitals, nurseries, and schools in the area,” Iyad Sanduka, a member of the neighborhood’s residents’ committee, told +972 Magazine and Local Call. “Everyone suffers from the water shortage.”
Despite the fact that the majority of the neighborhood is officially part of Jerusalem, Kufr ‘Aqab doesn’t receive water from the municipal water supplier, Hagihon. Instead, like Palestinian communities across the occupied West Bank, water is provided by the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) — an arm of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) — which purchases it from the Israeli national water company, Mekorot.
This is symptomatic of Israel’s system of water apartheid in the occupied territories: Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are denied control of the aquifers under their feet, and must instead buy the water back in limited quantities from Israel. While Israelis have access to an average of 300 liters of water per day, Palestinians in the West Bank enjoy only 80 liters — 20 liters less than the World Health Organization’s recommended daily quantity. For Palestinians in Gaza, it is currently as low as 3 liters.
(Read the full article here.)
RECOMMENDED READING: ‘Buying Our Own Stolen Water’ in Bethlehem – Scorching Summer Awaits Palestinians in the West Bank
New York Times reports: Israel has achieved all that it can militarily in Gaza, according to senior American officials, who say continued bombings are only increasing risks to civilians while the possibility of further weakening Hamas has diminished.

With the Biden administration racing to get cease-fire negotiations back on track, a growing number of national security officials across the government said that the Israeli military had severely set back Hamas but would never be able to completely eliminate the group.

Israel has made bold claims about the number Hamas deaths, without proof.

But one of Israel’s biggest remaining goals — the return of the roughly 115 living and dead hostages still held in Gaza after being seized in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks — cannot be achieved militarily, according to current and former American and Israeli officials.

Israel’s most recent military operations have been something of a Whac-a-Mole strategy in the eyes of American analysts. U.S. officials are skeptical that approach will yield decisive results.

While Israel has tried to damage the tunnels, it has failed to destroy them, American officials said. The network has proved much larger than Israel anticipated, and it remains an effective way for Hamas to hide its leaders and move around fighters.

And even as the Israel Defense Forces have seized territory and killed Hamas fighters from north to south of the territory, they have repeatedly had to go back in as Hamas fighters regrouped. For example, Israel weakened Hamas’s grip in the Jabaliya camp, in northern Gaza, but had to return to the area in May after the group reconstituted in the power vacuum.

Biden administration officials say diplomacy is the only way that Israel can achieve possibly its biggest goal — getting its hostages back.

Israeli economy on the brink as it awaits retaliation from Resistance Axis

The Cradle reports: The Israeli economy is on the ropes as the country awaits retaliation for its attacks against Iran, Lebanon, and Yemen over the past month, according to reports in Hebrew media.

“These two weeks have exhausted the market, as some economic activities have been canceled, and another part has been reduced due to public fear,” the economic affairs commentator for Israel’s Channel 13 News said on 15 August.

Israel’s tourism industry, in particular, has recorded massive losses due to the broad cancellation of flights by international airlines.

Israel’s education sector will also be severely affected if the wait continues into September, as institutions will have to “maneuver within combat scenarios,” according to the Israeli broadcaster.

The Israeli economy has already taken several hits 10 months into the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, with the most recent one being the decision by US financial services firm Fitch to downgrade the nation’s credit rating.



UN rapporteur says ‘shocking’ 40,000 deaths in Gaza were preventable

Al Jazeera reports: UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese says the “shocking” death toll in Gaza, which has reached a landmark 40,000 people, was predictable and avoidable as United Nations experts have long issued warnings and called for international action to stop the violence.

In spite of this, the UN Security Council and other international bodies have failed to stop the conflict.

“The moral abyss in which [Israel has] fallen is hard to comprehend,” Albanese told Al Jazeera, adding that the war in Gaza points to “an epic failure of the system of international law that was built after World War II to prevent and punish crimes such as this”.

The conflict also shed light on the “hypocrisy” in the legal system, where “a few countries have the power to determine to whom international law can be applied and to whom it cannot”.

Palestinians examine the destruction left behind after the Israeli army’s withdrawal in Tal al-Hawa, Gaza City [File: Mahmoud İssa/Anadolu Images]
Palestinians examine the destruction left behind after the Israeli army’s withdrawal in Tal al-Hawa, Gaza City [File: Mahmoud İssa/Anadolu Images] (photo)
“Blue Vote Red Line” movement seeks commitment from Harris for Palestine justice

The “Blue Vote Red Line” movement seeks to collect 1 million voters to pledge a vote for the Democratic ticket if, and only if, it commits to 1) enforce an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, as ordered by the World Court and UN Security Council Resolution 2735 or 2) end all military aid to Israel.

Their goal is to “force the Democratic Party to listen to its voters and not just its donors. We demand concrete results from the current Biden-Harris Administration to end the Gaza Genocide and a credible commitment from a Harris-Walz ticket which will pressure Israel to achieve a just and lasting solution to the illegal occupation of Palestine.”

“We hereby pledge to vote Democratic on November 5th only if the current administration: 1) enforces an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, as ordered by the World Court and UN Security Council Resolution 2735 or 2) ends all military aid to Israel.”

The pledge can be viewed and signed here.

Pledging arms embargo on Israel would help Harris gain more voter support: Poll

Middle East Eye reports: According to a new poll, roughly one-third of Democratic Party voters in the US states of Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania have said they are more likely to vote for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election if she were to agree to stop sending arms to Israel.

In Pennsylvania, 34 percent of voters were more likely to vote for Harris if she agreed to the arms embargo, while 44 percent were more likely to vote for her if Biden achieved a ceasefire.

In Georgia, an arms embargo would make 39 percent of voters more likely to vote for Harris, and a ceasefire would similarly make 44 percent of voters more likely to choose the vice president.

Arizona showed similar numbers, with 35 percent of voters more inclined to choose Harris if she agreed to an arms embargo on Israel, while 41 percent of voters would do so if Biden achieved a ceasefire in Gaza.

Columbia students protest in support of Palestine on campus on Oct. 12. More demonstrations have occurred since, including one on Nov. 9 that appears to have led to the suspension of two groups. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Columbia students protest in support of Palestine on campus on Oct. 12. More demonstrations have occurred since, including one on Nov. 9 that appears to have led to the suspension of two groups. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images) (photo)
Journalists Demand Blinken Back Israel Arms Embargo

From Consortium News: In an open letter to Antony Blinken, 113 journalists, 7 press freedom groups and 20 news outlets accused the U.S. secretary of state of being “complicit in one of the gravest affronts to press freedom today” in Gaza. Here are excerpts from the letter, which was delivered to the State Department on Thursday morning with a request to meet with the Secretary of State.

Dear Secretary Blinken,

Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed more than 160 Palestinian journalists. This is the largest recorded number of journalists killed in any war. While Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of the densely populated Gaza means no civilians are safe, Israel has also been repeatedly documented deliberately targeting journalists.

Israel’s military actions are not possible without U.S. weapons, U.S. military aid, and U.S. diplomatic support. By providing the weapons being used to deliberately kill journalists, you are complicit in one of the gravest affronts to press freedom today.

On World Press Freedom Day this year, you called on “every nation to do more to protect journalists,” and reiterated your “unwavering support for free and independent media around the world.”

As journalists, publications and press freedom groups in solidarity with the courageous Palestinian journalists of Gaza, we call on you to do more to protect journalists and show unwavering support for free and independent media by supporting an arms embargo against Israel…

Under international law, the intentional targeting of journalists is a war crime.5 While all governments are bound by international law protecting reporters, U.S. domestic law also prohibits the State Department from providing assistance to units of foreign security forces credibly accused of gross violations of human rights.6 Israel’s well-documented pattern of extrajudicial executions of journalists is a gross violation of human rights.

Additionally, the First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects the American people’s right to receive information and ideas.7 Israel’s deliberate targeting of journalists follows a longstanding pattern by the Israeli government to suppress truthful reporting on its treatment of Palestinians and its war in Gaza. By providing Israel with the weapons used to kill journalists, the State Department is abetting Israel’s violent suppression of journalism.

The U.S. is providing the weapons Israel continually uses to target Palestinian journalists in Gaza. This is a violation of International law and U.S. domestic law. We urge you to immediately cease the transfer of all weapons to Israel.

An Israeli soldier carries a 155mm artillery shell near a self-propelled howitzer deployed at a position near the border with Lebanon in the upper Galilee region of northern Israel on October 18, 2023. (Photo: Jalaa Marey/AFP via Getty Images)
An Israeli soldier carries a 155mm artillery shell near a self-propelled howitzer deployed at a position near the border with Lebanon in the upper Galilee region of northern Israel on October 18, 2023. (Photo: Jalaa Marey/AFP via Getty Images) (photo)
MORE NEWS:

IMEMC Daily Reports.

Al Jazeera: Israel-Hamas ceasefire talks: A timeline of obstruction

Middle East Eye: UK judge tells Muslim man jailed for fighting back against rioters to ‘rise above’ racism

Middle East Eye: ‘Good riddance’: Ex-Columbia University president remembered for silencing pro-Palestine speech

The New Arab: Polio: Israel’s dirty bioweapon is bringing Gaza to its knees



STATISTICS OCTOBER 7 – AUGUST 15:

Palestinian death toll from October 7 – August 15: at least 40,634* (40,005 in Gaza* – 11,445 women (30%), 16,251 children as of July 22. [The Ministry’s figures have been contested by the Israeli authorities, although they have been accepted as accurate by Israeli intelligence services, the UN, and WHO. These data are supported by independent analyses, comparing changes in the number of deaths of UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) staff with those reported by the Ministry, which found claims of data fabrication implausible.]

This is expected to be a significant undercount since thousands of those killed have yet to be identified – and at least 632 in the West Bank (~145 children). This does not include an estimated 10,000 more still buried under rubble (4,900 women and children). Euro-Med Monitor reports 46,848 Palestinian deaths.

Lancet: “Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death9 to the 37,396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.

Ralph Nader earlier estimated 200,000 Palestinians may have been killed in Gaza.

At least 45 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons (27 from Gaza, 18 from West Bank).
At least 41 Palestinians have died due to malnutrition**.
About 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million population are currently displaced.
Almost 500,000 Gazans are currently experiencing catastrophic levels of food insecurity.
Palestinian injuries from October 7 – August 15: at least 97,821 (including at least 92,401 in Gaza and 5,420 in the West Bank, including 830 children). [It remains unknown how man Americans are among the casualties in Gaza.]

Reported Israeli death toll from October 7 – August 15: ~1,454 (~1,139 on October 7, 2023, of which ~32 were Americans, and ~36 were children); 290*** military forces since the ground invasion began in Gaza; 25 military and civilians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Israel) and~10,000 injured.

NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries in Israel on October 7 were caused by Israeli soldiers.

*Previously, IAK did not include 471 Gazans killed in the Al Ahli hospital blast since the source of the projectile was being disputed. However, given that much evidence points to Israel as the culprit, Israel had previously bombed the hospital and has attacked many others, Israel is prohibiting outside experts from investigating the scene, and since the UN and other agencies are including the deaths from the attack in their cumulative totals, if Americans knew is now also doing so.

**Euro-Med Monitor reports that Gaza’s elderly are dying at an alarmingly high rate. The majority die at home and are buried either close to their residences or in makeshift graves dispersed across the Strip. There are currently more than 140 such cemeteries. Additionally, according to Euromed, thousands have died from starvation, malnourishment, and inadequate medical care; these are considered indirect victims as they were not registered in hospitals.

***Approximately ten of the deaths listed above were Israeli soldiers killed by Hezbollah in fighting at the Israel-Lebanon border. The figure does not include the reportedly 41 Israeli soldiers – nearly 16% of the total Israeli military deaths – killed due to friendly fire in Gaza and other military-related accidents.

† For most of the conflict, women and children accounted for about 70% of deaths in Gaza, with children making up a little over 40% of those killed, according to official statistics.

Find previous daily casualty figures and daily news updates here.

Hover over each bar for exact numbers.
Source: IsraelPalestineTimeline.org
Human rights reports on Israel-Palestine (regularly updated)
Palestinians’ harrowing stories of rape by Israeli soldiers (including female soldiers)
A Palestinian journalist visited Ismail Haniyeh’s home in Gaza to report on his death. Israel assassinated him too.
I reported a piece for the New York Times on antisemitism. I found a major error, but the Times didn’t care.
How Israel plans to whitewash its war crimes in Gaza
Why the West Bank is on the verge of economic collapse
Netanyahu’s plan to involve US in regional war on its behalf
Western media continue to withhold the truth about Israel and Gaza – 4 stories
“Well What SHOULD Israel Have Done After October 7?”
Welcome to Hell
More dead children. More BBC ‘news’ channelling Israeli propaganda as its own
U.S. media downplays and ignores ICJ ruling declaring Israeli occupation illegal
Israeli soldiers tell story of savage cruelty in Gaza – one given blessing by the West
Searching for Gaza’s missing children
What Would You Do With An Extra $320 Million?
Assassination of Haniyeh an intentional, dangerous escalation – Parsi, Macgregor
When Israel Burned Refugees Alive, Establishment Media Called It a ‘Tragic Accident’
Israel has turbocharged West Bank housing demolitions under the cover of war
Western media ignores Israeli confirmation of Hannibal Directive on 7 Oct
US Should Arrest Benjamin Netanyahu When He’s in Washington
Airwars investigation: Israeli airstrikes uniquely lethal (video)
Hesen Jabr paid the price of conscience
Gaza genocide denial
Why the news media’s job is to groom us
‘Disappeared, buried, detained’: The horrors of Gaza’s missing children

https://israelpalestinenews.org/violence-against-west-bank-palestinians-intensifies-gaza-safe-space-shrinks-day-313/

"An Intricate Fabric of Bad Actors Working Hand-in-Hand" – So is War Inevitable?, by Alastair Crooke - The Unz Review
Netanyahu did not appreciate Iran’s moderation. He doubled-down on war, making it inevitable, sooner or later.

Walter Kirn, an American novelist and cultural critic, in his 2009 memoir, Lost in the Meritocracy, described how, after a sojourn at Oxford, he came to be a member of ‘the class that runs things’ – the one that “writes the headlines, and the stories under them”. It was the account of a middle-class kid from Minnesota trying desperately to fit into the élite world, and then to his surprise, realising that he didn’t want to fit in at all.

Now 61, Kirn has a newsletter on Substack and co-hosts a lively podcast devoted in large part to critiquing ‘establishment liberalism’. His contrarian drift has made him more vocal about his distrust of élite institutions – as he wrote in 2022:

“For years now, the answer, in every situation—‘Russiagate,’ COVID, Ukraine—has been more censorship, more silencing, more division, more scapegoating. It’s almost as if these are goals in themselves – and the cascade of emergencies mere excuses for them. Hate is always the way,”

Kirn’s politics, a friend of his suggested, was “old-school liberal,” underscoring that it was the other ‘so-called liberals’ who had changed: “I’ve been told repeatedly in the last year that free speech is a right-wing issue; I wouldn’t call [Kirn] Conservative. I would just say he’s a free-thinker, nonconformist, iconoclastic”, the friend said.

To understand Kirn’s contrarian turn – and to make sense of today’s form of American politics – it is necessary to understand one key term. It is not found in standard textbooks, but is central to the new playbook of power: the “whole of society”.

“The term was popularised roughly a decade ago by the Obama administration, which liked that its bland, technocratic appearance could be used as cover to erect a mechanism for a governance ‘whole-of-society’ approach” – one that asserts that as actors – media, NGOs,corporations and philanthropist institutions – interact with public officials to play a critical role not just in setting the public agenda, but in enforcing public decisions.

Jacob Siegel has explained the historical development of the ‘whole of society’ approach during the Obama administration’s attempt to pivot in the ‘war on terror’ to what it called ‘CVE’ – countering violent extremism. The idea was to surveil the American people’s online behaviour in order to identify those who may, at some unspecified time in the future, ‘commit a crime’.

Inherent to the concept of the potential ‘violent extremist’ who has, as yet, committed no crime, is a weaponised vagueness: “A cloud of suspicion that hangs over anyone who challenges the prevailing ideological narratives”.

“What the various iterations of this whole-of-society approach have in common is their disregard for democratic process and the right to free association – their embrace of social media surveillance, and their repeated failure to deliver results …”.

Aaron Kheriaty writes:

“More recently, the whole of society political machinery facilitated the overnight flip from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris, with news media and party supporters turning on a dime when instructed to do so—democratic primary voters ‘be damned’. This happened not because of the personalities of the candidates involved, but on the orders of party leadership. The actual nominees are fungible, and entirely replaceable, functionaries, serving the interests of the ruling party … The party was delivered to her because she was selected by its leaders to act as its figurehead. That real achievement belongs not to Harris, but to the party-state”.

What has this to do with Geo-politics – and whether there will be war between Iran and Israel?

Well, quite a lot. It is not just western domestic politics that has been shaped by the Obama CVE totalising mechanics. The “party-state” machinery (Kheriaty’s term) for geo-politics has also been co-opted:

“To avoid the appearance of totalitarian overreach in such efforts”, Kheriaty argues,“the party requires an endless supply of causes … that party officers use as pretexts to demand ideological alignment across public and private sector institutions. These causes come in roughly two forms: the urgent existential crisis (examples include COVID and the much-hyped threat of Russian disinformation) – and victim groups supposedly in need of the party’s protection”.

“It’s almost as if these are goals in themselves – and the cascade of emergencies mere excuses for them. Hate is always the way”, Kirn underlines.

Just to be clear, the implication is that all geo-strategic critics of the party-state’s ideological alignment must be jointly and collectively treated as potentially dangerous extremists. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea therefore are bound together as presenting a single obnoxious extremism that stands in opposition to ‘Our Democracy’; versus ‘Our Free Speech’ and versus ‘Our Expert Consensus’.

So, if the move to war against one extremist (i.e. versus Iran) is ‘acclaimed’ by 58 standing ovations in the joint session of Congress last month, then further debate is unnecessary – any more than Kamala Harris’ nomination as Presidential candidate needs to be endorsed through primary voting:

Candidate Harris told hecklers on Wednesday, chanting about genocide in Gaza, ‘to pipe down’ – unless they “want Trump to win”. Tribal norms must not be challenged (even for genocide).

Sandra Parker, Chairwoman of the political advocacy arm for the three thousand members of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) was advising on correct talking points, the Times of Israel reports:

“The rise of Republican far right-wingers who spurn decades of (bi-partisan) pro-Israel orthodoxies, favouring isolationism and resurrecting anti-Jewish tropes is alarming pro-Israel evangelicals and their Jewish allies… The break with decades of assertive foreign policy was evident last year when Sen. Josh Hawley derided the “liberal empire” that he dismissively characterised as bipartisan “Neoconservatives on the right, and liberal globalists on the left: Together they make up what you might call the uniparty, the DC establishment that transcends all changing administrations””.

At the CUFI talking points conference, the fear of increased isolation on the Right was the issue:

“You’re going to see that adversaries will see the U.S. as in retreat” – should isolationists get the upper hand: Activists were advised to push back: Should lawmakers claim that NATO expansion is what triggered Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: “Should anybody begin to make the argument that the reason the Russians have moved in on Ukraine – is because of NATO enlargement – can I just say that this is the age-old ‘blame America trope,’” the Chair advised the assembled delegates.

“They have the strain of isolationism that’s – ‘Let’s just do China and forget about Iran, forget about Russia, let’s just do one thing’ – but it doesn’t work that way,” said Boris Zilberman, director of policy and strategy for the CUFI Action Fund. Instead , he described “an intricate fabric of bad actors working hand in hand”.

So, to get to the bottom of this western mind-management in which appearance and reality are cut from the same cloth of hostile extremism: Iran, Russia and China are ‘cut from it’ likewise.

Plainly put, the import of this “behavioural-engineering enterprise (it no longer having much to do with the truth, no longer having much to do with your right to desire what you wish – or not desire what you don’t wish)” – is, as Kirn says: “everyone is in on the game”. “The corporate and state interests don’t believe you are wanting the right things—you might want Donald Trump— or, that you aren’t wanting the things you should want more” (such as seeing Putin removed).

If this ‘whole of society’ machinery is understood correctly in the wider world, then the likes of Iran or Hizbullah are forced to take note that war in the Middle East inevitably may bleed across into wider war against Russia – and have adverse ramifications for China, too.

That is not because it makes sense. It doesn’t. But it is because the ideological needs of ‘whole of society’ foreign-policy hinge on simplistic ‘moral’ narratives: Ones that express emotional attitudes, rather than argued propositions.

Netanyahu went to Washington to lay out the case for all-out war on Iran – a moral war of civilisation versus the Barbarians, he said. He was applauded for his stance. He returned to Israel and immediately provoked Hizbullah, Iran and Hamas in a way that dishonoured and humiliated both – knowing well that it would draw a riposte that would most likely lead to wider war.

Clearly Netanyahu, backed by a plurality of Israelis, wants an Armageddon (with full U.S. support, of course). He has the U.S., he thinks, exactly where he wants it. Netanyahu has only to escalate in one way or another – and Washington, he calculates (rightly or wrongly), will be compelled to follow.

Is this why Iran is taking its time? The calculus on an initial riposte to Israel is ‘one thing’, but how then might Netanyahu retaliate in Iran and Lebanon? That can be altogether an ‘other thing’. There have been hints of nuclear weapons being deployed (in both instances). There is however nothing solid, to this latter rumour.

Further, how might Israel respond towards Russia in Syria, or might the U.S. react through escalation in Ukraine? After all, Moscow has assisted Iran with its air defences (just as the West is assisting Ukraine against Russia).

Many imponderables. Yet, one thing is clear (as former Russian President Medvedev noted recently): “the knot is tightening” in the Middle East. Escalation is across all the fronts. War, Medvedev suggested, may be ‘the only way this knot will be cut’.

Iran must think that appeasing western pleas in the wake of the Israeli assassination of Iranian officials at their Damascus Consulate was a mistake. Netanyahu did not appreciate Iran’s moderation. He doubled-down on war, making it inevitable, sooner or later.



Video Link

https://www.unz.com/article/an-intricate-fabric-of-bad-actors-working-hand-in-hand-so-is-war-inevitable/

Alastair Crooke - Netanyahu went to Washington to lay out the case for all-out war on Iran – a moral war of civilisation versus the Barbarians, he said. He was applauded for his stance. He returned to Israel and immediately provoked Hizbullah, Iran and Hamas in a way that dishonoured and humiliated both – knowing well that it would draw a riposte that would most likely lead to wider war.

Clearly Netanyahu, backed by a plurality of Israelis, wants an Armageddon (with full U.S. support, of course). He has the U.S., he thinks, exactly where he wants it. Netanyahu has only to escalate in one way or another – and Washington, he calculates (rightly or wrongly), will be compelled to follow.

Is this why Iran is taking its time? The calculus on an initial riposte to Israel is ‘one thing’, but how then might Netanyahu retaliate in Iran and Lebanon? That can be altogether an ‘other thing’. There have been hints of nuclear weapons being deployed (in both instances). There is however nothing solid, to this latter rumour.

Further, how might Israel respond towards Russia in Syria, or might the U.S. react through escalation in Ukraine? After all, Moscow has assisted Iran with its air defences (just as the West is assisting Ukraine against Russia).

Many imponderables. Yet, one thing is clear (as former Russian President Medvedev noted recently): “the knot is tightening” in the Middle East. Escalation is across all the fronts. War, Medvedev suggested, may be ‘the only way this knot will be cut’.

Iran must think that appeasing western pleas in the wake of the Israeli assassination of Iranian officials at their Damascus Consulate was a mistake. Netanyahu did not appreciate Iran’s moderation. He doubled-down on war, making it inevitable, sooner or later.

https://www.unz.com/article/an-intricate-fabric-of-bad-actors-working-hand-in-hand-so-is-war-inevitable/


"An Intricate Fabric of Bad Actors Working Hand-in-Hand" – So is War Inevitable?, by Alastair Crooke - The Unz Review
Netanyahu did not appreciate Iran’s moderation. He doubled-down on war, making it inevitable, sooner or later.

Walter Kirn, an American novelist and cultural critic, in his 2009 memoir, Lost in the Meritocracy, described how, after a sojourn at Oxford, he came to be a member of ‘the class that runs things’ – the one that “writes the headlines, and the stories under them”. It was the account of a middle-class kid from Minnesota trying desperately to fit into the élite world, and then to his surprise, realising that he didn’t want to fit in at all.

Now 61, Kirn has a newsletter on Substack and co-hosts a lively podcast devoted in large part to critiquing ‘establishment liberalism’. His contrarian drift has made him more vocal about his distrust of élite institutions – as he wrote in 2022:

“For years now, the answer, in every situation—‘Russiagate,’ COVID, Ukraine—has been more censorship, more silencing, more division, more scapegoating. It’s almost as if these are goals in themselves – and the cascade of emergencies mere excuses for them. Hate is always the way,”

Kirn’s politics, a friend of his suggested, was “old-school liberal,” underscoring that it was the other ‘so-called liberals’ who had changed: “I’ve been told repeatedly in the last year that free speech is a right-wing issue; I wouldn’t call [Kirn] Conservative. I would just say he’s a free-thinker, nonconformist, iconoclastic”, the friend said.

To understand Kirn’s contrarian turn – and to make sense of today’s form of American politics – it is necessary to understand one key term. It is not found in standard textbooks, but is central to the new playbook of power: the “whole of society”.

“The term was popularised roughly a decade ago by the Obama administration, which liked that its bland, technocratic appearance could be used as cover to erect a mechanism for a governance ‘whole-of-society’ approach” – one that asserts that as actors – media, NGOs,corporations and philanthropist institutions – interact with public officials to play a critical role not just in setting the public agenda, but in enforcing public decisions.

Jacob Siegel has explained the historical development of the ‘whole of society’ approach during the Obama administration’s attempt to pivot in the ‘war on terror’ to what it called ‘CVE’ – countering violent extremism. The idea was to surveil the American people’s online behaviour in order to identify those who may, at some unspecified time in the future, ‘commit a crime’.

Inherent to the concept of the potential ‘violent extremist’ who has, as yet, committed no crime, is a weaponised vagueness: “A cloud of suspicion that hangs over anyone who challenges the prevailing ideological narratives”.

“What the various iterations of this whole-of-society approach have in common is their disregard for democratic process and the right to free association – their embrace of social media surveillance, and their repeated failure to deliver results …”.

Aaron Kheriaty writes:

“More recently, the whole of society political machinery facilitated the overnight flip from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris, with news media and party supporters turning on a dime when instructed to do so—democratic primary voters ‘be damned’. This happened not because of the personalities of the candidates involved, but on the orders of party leadership. The actual nominees are fungible, and entirely replaceable, functionaries, serving the interests of the ruling party … The party was delivered to her because she was selected by its leaders to act as its figurehead. That real achievement belongs not to Harris, but to the party-state”.

What has this to do with Geo-politics – and whether there will be war between Iran and Israel?

Well, quite a lot. It is not just western domestic politics that has been shaped by the Obama CVE totalising mechanics. The “party-state” machinery (Kheriaty’s term) for geo-politics has also been co-opted:

“To avoid the appearance of totalitarian overreach in such efforts”, Kheriaty argues,“the party requires an endless supply of causes … that party officers use as pretexts to demand ideological alignment across public and private sector institutions. These causes come in roughly two forms: the urgent existential crisis (examples include COVID and the much-hyped threat of Russian disinformation) – and victim groups supposedly in need of the party’s protection”.

“It’s almost as if these are goals in themselves – and the cascade of emergencies mere excuses for them. Hate is always the way”, Kirn underlines.

Just to be clear, the implication is that all geo-strategic critics of the party-state’s ideological alignment must be jointly and collectively treated as potentially dangerous extremists. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea therefore are bound together as presenting a single obnoxious extremism that stands in opposition to ‘Our Democracy’; versus ‘Our Free Speech’ and versus ‘Our Expert Consensus’.

So, if the move to war against one extremist (i.e. versus Iran) is ‘acclaimed’ by 58 standing ovations in the joint session of Congress last month, then further debate is unnecessary – any more than Kamala Harris’ nomination as Presidential candidate needs to be endorsed through primary voting:

Candidate Harris told hecklers on Wednesday, chanting about genocide in Gaza, ‘to pipe down’ – unless they “want Trump to win”. Tribal norms must not be challenged (even for genocide).

Sandra Parker, Chairwoman of the political advocacy arm for the three thousand members of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) was advising on correct talking points, the Times of Israel reports:

“The rise of Republican far right-wingers who spurn decades of (bi-partisan) pro-Israel orthodoxies, favouring isolationism and resurrecting anti-Jewish tropes is alarming pro-Israel evangelicals and their Jewish allies… The break with decades of assertive foreign policy was evident last year when Sen. Josh Hawley derided the “liberal empire” that he dismissively characterised as bipartisan “Neoconservatives on the right, and liberal globalists on the left: Together they make up what you might call the uniparty, the DC establishment that transcends all changing administrations””.

At the CUFI talking points conference, the fear of increased isolation on the Right was the issue:

“You’re going to see that adversaries will see the U.S. as in retreat” – should isolationists get the upper hand: Activists were advised to push back: Should lawmakers claim that NATO expansion is what triggered Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: “Should anybody begin to make the argument that the reason the Russians have moved in on Ukraine – is because of NATO enlargement – can I just say that this is the age-old ‘blame America trope,’” the Chair advised the assembled delegates.

“They have the strain of isolationism that’s – ‘Let’s just do China and forget about Iran, forget about Russia, let’s just do one thing’ – but it doesn’t work that way,” said Boris Zilberman, director of policy and strategy for the CUFI Action Fund. Instead , he described “an intricate fabric of bad actors working hand in hand”.

So, to get to the bottom of this western mind-management in which appearance and reality are cut from the same cloth of hostile extremism: Iran, Russia and China are ‘cut from it’ likewise.

Plainly put, the import of this “behavioural-engineering enterprise (it no longer having much to do with the truth, no longer having much to do with your right to desire what you wish – or not desire what you don’t wish)” – is, as Kirn says: “everyone is in on the game”. “The corporate and state interests don’t believe you are wanting the right things—you might want Donald Trump— or, that you aren’t wanting the things you should want more” (such as seeing Putin removed).

If this ‘whole of society’ machinery is understood correctly in the wider world, then the likes of Iran or Hizbullah are forced to take note that war in the Middle East inevitably may bleed across into wider war against Russia – and have adverse ramifications for China, too.

That is not because it makes sense. It doesn’t. But it is because the ideological needs of ‘whole of society’ foreign-policy hinge on simplistic ‘moral’ narratives: Ones that express emotional attitudes, rather than argued propositions.

Netanyahu went to Washington to lay out the case for all-out war on Iran – a moral war of civilisation versus the Barbarians, he said. He was applauded for his stance. He returned to Israel and immediately provoked Hizbullah, Iran and Hamas in a way that dishonoured and humiliated both – knowing well that it would draw a riposte that would most likely lead to wider war.

Clearly Netanyahu, backed by a plurality of Israelis, wants an Armageddon (with full U.S. support, of course). He has the U.S., he thinks, exactly where he wants it. Netanyahu has only to escalate in one way or another – and Washington, he calculates (rightly or wrongly), will be compelled to follow.

Is this why Iran is taking its time? The calculus on an initial riposte to Israel is ‘one thing’, but how then might Netanyahu retaliate in Iran and Lebanon? That can be altogether an ‘other thing’. There have been hints of nuclear weapons being deployed (in both instances). There is however nothing solid, to this latter rumour.

Further, how might Israel respond towards Russia in Syria, or might the U.S. react through escalation in Ukraine? After all, Moscow has assisted Iran with its air defences (just as the West is assisting Ukraine against Russia).

Many imponderables. Yet, one thing is clear (as former Russian President Medvedev noted recently): “the knot is tightening” in the Middle East. Escalation is across all the fronts. War, Medvedev suggested, may be ‘the only way this knot will be cut’.

Iran must think that appeasing western pleas in the wake of the Israeli assassination of Iranian officials at their Damascus Consulate was a mistake. Netanyahu did not appreciate Iran’s moderation. He doubled-down on war, making it inevitable, sooner or later.



Video Link

Six Signs That America Has Been Taken Over By Psychopaths
One of my Substack subscribers wrote the book "Psychopath Proof; Identifying Psychopathic Communication."

I read the book from cover to cover, and I had no idea how many psychopaths I have and continue to endure throughout my life.

The author, The Rogue Hypnotist, exposes the unsettling reality of how charming and manipulative individuals often rise to power, masquerading as moral leaders while inflicting harm on the empathetic masses. The book highlights the need for vigilance in recognizing the signs of psychopathic behavior, emphasizing that these individuals are not merely misguided but irredeemable agents of chaos. By understanding their tactics and motivations, readers are empowered to protect themselves and society from the destructive influence of these predators, who thrive on manipulation and the suffering of others.

I recommend you read this book as well. We're living in a snake pit, and it will help you better navigate this mad world.


In the grand theater of politics, it seems we've cast a troupe of characters who could give Shakespeare's Iago (known for his cunning and deceitful nature) a run for his money. Our government, it appears, is a veritable breeding ground for psychopaths—those charming, smooth-talking individuals who can hypnotize a room with their words, much like a cobra does with its prey. They come across as the most moral people you know, often playing the victim card with Oscar-worthy performances.

We are seeing this play out currently with the political hyena known as Kamala Harris and the psychopath of the century who is leading us into WWIII, Bibi Netanyahu.

These political thespians have mastered the art of deception, a skill honed through years of pretending to be the saviors of society. They are the ultimate opportunists, creating chaos only to swoop in with solutions that never seem to solve anything. Their modus operandi is to flatter, charm, lie, and then lie again until your guard is down, and then, like a snake, they strike.

Their food is fear.

In the world of governance, these psychopaths thrive. They are drawn to positions of power where they can manipulate systems and individuals to their advantage. Policies that lead to societal upheaval are their bread and butter, and they revel in the constant change that leaves the rest of us spinning. Their charm is superficial, their understanding shallow, but they have an uncanny ability to appear respectable to the uninitiated.

The key to identifying these political psychopaths is to focus on their actions rather than their words. Transparency and accountability are the kryptonite to their supervillain-like tendencies. By recognizing the signs of psychopathic behavior—superficial charm, manipulative tactics, and a penchant for chaos—we can work towards a more stable and empathetic future.

We have failed miserably at this, and because of that, we are witnessing a global psychopathic takeover.

Six factors often act as a prelude to a full psychopathic takeover:

Any forces in society that attack freedom of speech, freedom of inquiry, freedom of criticism, etc.

Common sense disappears on a wide scale.

Social order itself collapses.

Justice vanishes.

Cultural primitivism exists, is imported, or resurfaced.

Psychologically limited, demented, and weak leadership occurs.

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These leaders often exhibit a "savior complex," positioning themselves as the only ones capable of solving the very problems they create. Their behavior is marked by a lack of genuine emotional depth, as they are often described as "dead on the inside," experiencing only a range of anger. This emotional void allows them to exploit others without remorse.

In their quest for power, they are adept at creating environments of constant change, which they thrive in while demoralizing the masses — think Covid. They use flattery, superficial understanding, and a knack for making others feel special (think on the campaign trail), only to betray their constituents later. Their tactics are as old as time, yet they continue to be effective in a world that values style over substance.

To avoid electing these psychopathic leaders, voters must focus on actions rather than words—watch their actions like hawks—ensuring transparency and accountability in governance. Recognizing the signs of psychopathic behavior can help society work towards a more empathetic and stable future. Ultimately, it's our job to identify and remove these individuals from positions of power, as they are irredeemable and thrive on the destruction they cause.

Psychopaths in power are often highly mobile and nomadic, moving from one position to another to evade consequences for their actions. They may establish charities or engage in philanthropic activities as a cover for their true intentions, using these fronts to gain access to resources and manipulate others. This behavior indicates their parasitic nature, as they seek to exploit the goodwill of others while offering little in return.

The impact of psychopathic behavior extends beyond individual interactions; it can shape entire organizations and societies. When psychopaths infiltrate systems of power, they often initiate a process of systemic collapse. Performance declines, scandals emerge, and the organization's overall morale suffers. This deterioration is usually masked by the psychopath's ability to present themselves as dynamic problem solvers, further complicating efforts to address the underlying issues.

We see this with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who states that the country remains on "high alert" following violent protests while advocating for implementing biometrics as a "response.

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The allure of the psychopath lies in their ability to promise a better future. How many times have we seen this during an election cycle? They are experts at making others feel optimistic, even when their actions suggest otherwise. This skill can lead to a cycle of dependency, where victims become increasingly reliant on the promises of the psychopath despite a lack of tangible results.

The book Psychopath Proof doesn't have an answer on how to wrangle a psychopath. Still, it highlights that understanding the nature of psychopathy is crucial for identifying and mitigating its impact on society. By recognizing the signs of psychopathic behavior, individuals can better protect themselves and their communities from the destructive influence of these individuals.

Only through awareness and action can society hope to confront and dismantle the systems that allow psychopathy to thrive.

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https://substack.com/@reinettesenumsfoghornexpress/p-147535679

As Israel continues killing in Gaza, more torture and rape allegations surface – Day 304
[email protected] August 7, 2024 anti-masking law, ceasefire, evacuation, gaza death toll, Israeli prisons, malnutrition gaza, palestinian journalist killed, rape, tim walz, torture, turkey joins icj, turkiye, us troops to israel, west bank deaths
Israeli air strikes have targeted parts of central Gaza where tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought shelter. Pictured: the aftermath of a bombing in Deir el Balah (screengrab)
166th Palestinian journalist killed; child malnutrition in Gaza; another evacuation order; Gaza’s official death toll is way too low; news of Israeli torture and rape of Palestinian prisoners keeps coming, keeps getting worse; Israel killed 12 West Bank Palestinians in 24 hours; majority of Americans don’t support sending troops to assist Israel; NY anti-masking law targets pro-Palestine protesters; VP candidate Tim Walz on Palestine; ceasefire agreement allegedly getting close; Turkey joins ICJ case against Israel; more.

By IAK staff, from reports.

Another Palestinian journalist killed in Israeli attack on Gaza

Al Jazeera reports: Gaza’s Government Media Office says the number of journalists killed in Israeli attacks has risen to 166 since the start of Israel’s war.

It said in a statement that Mohammed Issa Abu Saada, a correspondent and field photojournalist for several media outlets, is the latest to be killed.

Child malnutrition surges in Gaza: UN

OCHA reports: In the five-day period up to Monday, 143 Palestinians were reported killed and 341 injured by Israeli attacks on Gaza from air, land and sea forces, according to the UN’s latest situation report.

Detected cases of child malnutrition in Gaza have jumped almost 50 percent in July compared with June, with more than 650 Palestinian children now suffering from “acute malnutrition” in the enclave, which is a three-fold increase in cases since May.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) also reports that an estimated 10,000 people remain missing or under the rubble of destroyed buildings in Gaza.

Save the Children, in a new statement, said 21,000 children are missing, some separated from their families, some buried under the rubble, their fate unknown. The advocacy group calls for a ceasefire to look for the missing children. Israel's abuses saw it added to the UN's global blacklist of countries that harm children.
Save the Children, in a new statement, said 21,000 children are missing, some separated from their families, some buried under the rubble, their fate unknown. The advocacy group calls for a ceasefire to look for the missing children. Israel’s abuses saw it added to the UN’s global blacklist of countries that harm children. (screenshot)
Israeli Military Orders Another Mass Evacuation in Northern Gaza – ‘To the Known Shelters’

Palestine Chronicle reports: The Israeli military threatened a new military operation in the northern Gaza Strip under the pretext of the firing of rockets from the area.

In a tweet published early Wednesday on the X platform, Israeli army spokesman Avichai Adraee said that all those in the Beit Hanoun area, the Manshiya and Sheikh Zayed neighborhoods should evacuate their areas immediately to “known shelters” in the center of Gaza City.

He added that Hamas and other factions were firing rockets from those areas and that the Israeli army would act “immediately and forcefully against them.”

Throughout the war, Israel has repeatedly targeted refugee encampments of displaced Gazans, resulting in the killing and wounding of thousands.

Israel’s Channel 12 said the army was preparing for what it described as large-scale ground activity in Beit Hanoun.

Meanwhile, there are reports of shelling all over Gaza.

RECOMMENDED READING: ‘The martyrs were cut up and burned’: Survivors of the latest tent massacre in Gaza recount the horror

A scene from the massive fire ignited when Israel struck Rafah
A scene from the massive fire ignited when Israel struck Rafah on May 26 (screenshot)
Gaza’s official death toll is a lie

Jonathan Cook writes: The reported death toll in Gaza is way too low by every imaginable metric. We need to be stressing this — all the more so when Israel’s apologists are vigorously engaged in a disinformation campaign to suggest that the figures are inflated.

On May 6, seven months into Israel’s slaughter, there were reported to be 34,735 dead. That was an average of 4,960 Palestinians killed each month.

Today, nearly three months on, the reported death toll stands at 39,400 — or an increase of 4,665.

It should not need a statistician to point out that, were the rise linear, the expected number of deaths would stand by this point at around 49,600.

So, even by the simplest calculation, there is a large shortfall in deaths — a shortfall that needs explaining.

Such an explanation is easy to provide: Israel destroyed Gaza’s institutions and its medical infrastructure, including its hospitals, many months ago, making it impossible for officials there to keep track of how many Palestinians are being killed by Israel.

The death toll figures started to stall in the spring, around the time Israel completed its destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and kidnapped much of the enclave’s medical personnel.

More than a month ago, Save the Children pointed out that some 21,000 children in Gaza were missing, in addition to the 16,000 known to have been killed by Israel. Many are likely to have suffered lonely, terrifying deaths under rubble — gradually suffocated to death, or dying slowly from dehydration.

But again, even those shocking figures are likely to be a severe undercount.

(Read the full article here.)




Reports of torture in Israel’s Sde Teiman ‘only represent the tip of iceberg’

UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights: Reports of alleged torture and sexual violence in Israel’s Sde Teiman prison are grossly illegal and revolting, but they only represent the tip of the iceberg, independent human rights experts* warned today.

“Israel’s widespread and systemic abuse of Palestinians in detention and arbitrary arrest practices over decades, coupled with the absence of any restraints by the Israeli State since 7 October 2023, paint a shocking picture enabled by absolute impunity,” the experts said.

Around 9,500 Palestinians, including hundreds of children and women, are currently imprisoned—around one-third without charge or trial. Another unknown number are arbitrarily being held in detention facilities and ad hoc camps following a wave of arrest and abduction campaigns across Palestinian territory that targeted men, women and children particularly following 7 October.

The experts received substantiated reports of widespread abuse, torture, sexual assault and rape, amid atrocious inhumane conditions, with at least 53 Palestinians apparently dying as a result in 10 months.

Countless testimonies by men and women speak of detainees in cage-like enclosures, tied to beds blindfolded and in diapers, stripped naked, deprived of adequate healthcare, food, water and sleep, electrocutions including on their genitals, blackmail and cigarette burns. In addition, victims spoke of loud music played until their ears bled, attacks by dogs, waterboarding, suspension from ceilings and severe sexual and gender-based violence.

“Allegations of gang-rape of a Palestinian detainee, now shockingly supported by voices in the Israeli political establishment and society, provide irrefutable evidence that the moral compass is lost,” the experts said. In February 2024, a number of experts also expressed grave concern regarding the reports of sexual and other forms of gender-based violence committed against Palestinian women and girls in Israeli detention.

(Read the full statement here.)

NOTE: The Cradle reported yesterday that US President Joe Biden has apparently agreed to guarantee that Israel will be able to resume the war against the Palestinian resistance in Gaza after the first phase of an exchange deal, according to Hebrew media. This is the “absolute impunity” to which this report referred.

A leaked photograph of the detention facility shows a blindfolded man with his arms above his head. Obtained by CNN
A leaked photograph of the detention facility shows a blindfolded man with his arms above his head. Obtained by CNN (photo)
Key takeaways from B’Tselem’s report on Israel’s ‘torture camps’

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem collected testimonies from 55 Palestinians, including 21 from the Gaza Strip, who had been held in Israeli prisons since October 7.

The detainees spoke to B’Tselem following their release – here are some details:

The B’Tselem report reveals that more than a dozen Israeli prison facilities were converted into a network of camps “dedicated to the abuse of inmates” following October 7.
“Such spaces, in which every inmate is intentionally condemned to severe, relentless pain and suffering, operate in fact as torture camps,” it said.
The violations include “frequent acts of severe, arbitrary violence; sexual assault; humiliation and degradation; deliberate starvation; forced unhygienic conditions; sleep deprivation; prohibition on, and punitive measures for, religious worship; confiscation of all communal and personal belongings; and denial of adequate medical treatment”.
B’Tselem said at least 60 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody since October 7. Some 48 of them were from Gaza.
The report said that detainee testimonies demonstrate “a systemic, institutional policy focused on the continual abuse and torture of all Palestinian prisoners”. This policy, it said, is implemented under the direction of Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, with the full support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
B’Tselem also noted that the number of Palestinians held in Israeli jails has doubled to 9,623 since the war on Gaza began.
Executive summary of the B’Tselem report can be found here; full report here.

Israeli soldiers stand by a truck packed with stripped, bound, and blindfolded Palestinian prisoners, Friday December 8, 2023
Israeli soldiers stand by a truck packed with stripped, bound, and blindfolded Palestinian prisoners, Friday December 8, 2023 (photo)
UN probe into UNRWA not given full access to Israeli evidence

UNRWA reported earlier this week that an internal UN investigation concluded that nine UNRWA staff members “may have been involved” in the 7 October attacks.

The UN has now revealed that it does not have 100% conclusive evidence, and that the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services was never given full access to Israel’s evidence that it claims it has against the UN personnel.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres ordered this internal review shortly after Israel leveled its claims against UNRWA personnel in late January. Now, because of legal and confidentiality reasons, this OIOS report will not be made public.

Meanwhile, since October 7, more than 200 UNRWA personnel have been killed due to Israel’s continued bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

In Less Than A Day, Israel Killed Twelve Palestinians In West Bank

IMEMC reports: The Israeli occupation army has killed, overnight and earlier Tuesday, twelve Palestinians in Jenin, Tubas, and Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank.

In Jenin, the army fired a missile at the eastern neighborhood of the city, killing five Palestinians whose bodies have been severely mutilated.

Wisam Bakr, the director of the Jenin Governmental Hospital, said the severely mutilated corpses of five Palestinians were transferred to the medical facility after the army fired a missile at them in the Eastern Neighborhood, and prevented Palestinian medics from entering the area for several hours.

Details on the deaths are here.

RECOMMENDED READING: Far right pulling masks off Israeli legal charade



Israelis continue to protest detention of soldiers accused of raping Palestinian prisoner

Al Jazeera reports: Israelis are demonstrating in front of the military court at the Beit Lid base in the center of the country, to protest the continued detention of five reserve soldiers accused of sexually assaulting a Palestinian prisoner in Sde Teiman prison in the Negev desert.

Last week, dozens of Israeli protesters, including far-right members of the Knesset, clashed with military police after at least nine soldiers suspected of abusing a Palestinian prisoner were detained for questioning.

Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth said the demonstration comes ahead of the start of a court hearing on the third extension of the detention of the five soldiers.

Demonstrators chanted slogans such as “This is the state of the Jews and it precedes democracy” and called for the release of the accused soldiers.

Israeli reservists fail polygraph probing sexual abuse allegations: Report

Al Jazeera reports: Two Israeli reservists suspected of sexually abusing a Palestinian prisoner have failed a polygraph test about the allegations, reports Israel’s Channel 12.

The soldiers, among five still detained over sexual abuse allegations at Israel’s Sde Teiman facility, denied committing or covering up an act of sexual assault during the polygraph examination, but the examiner deemed their responses deceptive, said the report.

The allegations against the reservists have divided Israeli society, with a group of far-right activists storming the facility they were held at last week demanding their release.

Israeli forces blindfold and strip Palestinian prisoners who are arbitrarily detained
Israeli forces blindfold and strip Palestinian prisoners who are arbitrarily detained (photo)
Poll: Most Americans don’t want to send troops to defend Israel

Responsible Statecraft reports: According to a survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, only 41% of Americans support the idea of U.S. troops defending Israel, even if its neighbors attacked it. This is a decrease from 53% in 2021 and represents the lowest level of support since the the council started tracking the question in 2010.

According to the survey, 55% of Americans overall are against the idea of sending troops to defend Israel. These numbers show a decrease in support from Republicans, typically Israel’s biggest supporters, from 72% in 2021 to 55% today. Democrats went from 42% in favor of defending Israel with U.S. troops in 2021 to 35% today.

The poll was conducted online from June 21 through July 1.

Americans still believe in a peacekeeping mission, however, with 54 percent of Americans supporting sending peacekeeping troops if a deal between Israel and the Palestinians is arranged and kept, according to the survey.

One Year in Prison and a Fine: NY Mask Ban Targets Palestine Protesters

Palestine Chronicle reports: New York’s suburban Nassau County has passed a bill to ban the wearing of masks intended to hide the identity of pro-Palestinian protesters against US support for Israel’s war in Gaza, Reuters has reported.

The mask ban will cover any sort of public protest, but lawmakers in the Republican-controlled county say that the bill aims to prevent protesters who engage in alleged violence and anti-Semitism from hiding their identity and avoiding accountability.

Civil rights advocates view the step as an infringement on free speech rights.

The bill was approved late on Monday, with all 12 Republicans in the county legislature voting in favor. The seven Democrats abstained.

Veterans for Peace call for immediate ceasefire in Gaza
Veterans for Peace call for immediate ceasefire in Gaza (screenshot)
Tim Walz called Gaza situation “Intolerable,” sought ceasefire, praised Uncommitted; Shapiro did not

Informed Comment reports: Presumptive Democratic Party standard-bearer Kamala Harris’ pick of Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate has widely been implied to have something to do with his stance on the Gaza genocide.

On March 5, Super Tuesday, Abby Phillip at CNN asked Walz about the Gaza protest vote: “We’re seeing a fairly sizable, about 40,000 votes right now, 20 percent of the vote going to uncommitted. And we’ve seen that already in this primary in Michigan. What message are voters in your state trying to send to President Biden? And what do you want to see President Biden do in response?”

Walz replied, “Yeah, look, they’re engaged. We’re really proud of Minnesota civic responsibility. We have some of the highest voter turnouts. These are voters that are deeply concerned as we all are. The situation in Gaza is intolerable. And I think trying to find a solution, a lasting two-state solution, certainly the President’s move towards humanitarian aid and asking us to get to a ceasefire, that’s what they’re asking to be heard. And that’s what they should be doing. We’ve gone through this before. And we know that now we make sure we’ve got eight months. We start bringing these folks back in. We listen to what they’re saying.”

The important thing here is that Walz did not simply dismiss the Uncommitted movement or condemn it. He heard their concern and said it mirrored his own. “The situation in Gaza is intolerable.” He approved of getting “to a ceasefire” and humanitarian aid.

The Intercept reports: “Harris’s selection of Walz could also signal a shift from President Joe Biden’s stance on Israel’s war in Gaza.”

“Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute, contrasted Walz with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who was widely reported to be the other frontrunner for Harris’s running mate, and believes that rejecting Shapiro in favor of Walz bodes well for Harris’s approach to the world.”

“It’s impossible to know exactly what calculations were made and what issues mattered the most,” Duss said, referring to the Walz selection. “But I think it’s clear that there is a growing constituency in the Democratic Party that takes the issue of Palestinian rights much more seriously than in previous years, and it has to be engaged with and its views have to be taken into account.”

“By deciding against Shapiro, Duss said, Harris is showing that she is to some degree listening to this movement within the party…”

“Some observers also noted Walz’s antiwar record while a member of Congress, pointing to his opposition to a war in Syria in 2013 and his support of repealing the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which has given the White House broad powers to bypass Congress to conduct attacks and military operations in other countries.”

The NY times reports: “Selecting Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania could mollify many Jewish voters and other centrists over a subject that has bedeviled the Biden-Harris administration for nearly a year, Israel’s war in Gaza. It could also inflame the left, which has been protesting the administration for months.

“Ms. Harris’s selection of Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota likely avoided fueling the Gaza demonstrations.”

[Tim Walz [File: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images via AFP]
[Tim Walz [File: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images via AFP] (photo)
Blinken says ceasefire negotiations have reached ‘final stage’

Al Jazeera reports: US Secretary of State Blinken has pressed for a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza and warned against the possibility of worsening regional escalation.

Here are a few of Blinken’s key remarks:

An agreement between Israel and Hamas is in the “final stage” and called on all parties to finalise it “as soon as possible”.
Further attacks “only perpetuate” conflict, instability and insecurity.
The US has told Iran and Israel “directly” that regional fighting must not escalate further.
The Cradle reported yesterday that the US has agreed to guarantee that Israel will be able to resume the war against the Palestinian resistance in Gaza after the first phase of an exchange deal, according to Hebrew media.

If the ceasefire agreement says that Israel can resume the war, it is unlikely that Hamas will agree.

Turkey submits bid to join ICJ case against Israel

Middle East Eye reports: Turkey has reportedly submitted its formal bid to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel.

According to the report, Turkey’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Selcuk Unal, presented a “comprehensive and detailed” application to the UN court in The Hague on Wednesday.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who announced the move on Monday, said that Ankara has prepared a dossier that will likely significantly impact the trial.

Turkey’s intervention is expected to be the most impactful in the case, and likely to encourage other countries to join.

International Court of Justice, The Hague, Netherlands
International Court of Justice, The Hague, Netherlands (photo)
US and UK to boycott Nagasaki bombing memorial after Israel disinvited

Middle East Eye reports: The American and British ambassadors to Japan have announced they will skip an upcoming ceremony commemorating the victims of the US’s 1945 atomic bombing because the city’s mayor did not invite the Israeli ambassador.

The Russian and Belarusian ambassadors have also been excluded from the event this Friday by Japanese authorities.

The Nagasaki Peace Memorial Ceremony is intended to mark the 79th anniversary of the US atomic bomb attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima that killed tens of thousands of Japanese civilians, with many more later dying from radiation poisoning.

Pentagon confirms US troops injured in attack on Iraqi air base

The Cradle reports: At least five US soldiers and contractors were injured during a rocket attack that hit Iraq’s Ain al-Asad air base late on 5 August, Pentagon officials have confirmed.

US defense officials revealed to Reuters that at least one person was “seriously injured.” “Base personnel are conducting a post-attack damage assessment,” the unnamed officials added.

The US military took control of Ain al-Assad in 2003 following the White House’s illegal invasion and occupation of the country but withdrew its forces in 2011 when Barack Obama failed to secure a new Status of Forces (SOFA) agreement with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

However, US forces returned to the base under the pretext of training Iraqis to fight ISIS six months after the extremist group invaded and occupied Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, in June 2014. They have remained there since.

Ain al-Assad air base had been targeted at least twice over the past three weeks as local resistance groups working under the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI) umbrella have steadily resumed pro-Palestine operations that were halted earlier this year.

Wednesday’s attack comes just a few days after a US airstrike killed four members of the anti-terror Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) north of Babil.

[Note: Israel partisans were largely responsible for the disastrous US decision to invade Iraq.]

RECOMMENDED READING: The U.S. has dozens of secret bases across the Middle East. They keep getting attacked.

MORE NEWS:

IMEMC Daily Reports.

Drop Site News: Microsoft Encourages Employee Donations to Illegal West Bank Settlements, While Barring UNRWA

STATISTICS OCTOBER 7 – AUGUST 6:

Palestinian death toll from October 7 – August 6: at least 40,292* (39,677 in Gaza* – 11,445 women (30%), 16,251 children as of July 22. [The Ministry’s figures have been contested by the Israeli authorities, although they have been accepted as accurate by Israeli intelligence services, the UN, and WHO. These data are supported by independent analyses, comparing changes in the number of deaths of UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) staff with those reported by the Ministry, which found claims of data fabrication implausible.]

This is expected to be a significant undercount since thousands of those killed have yet to be identified – and at least 615 in the West Bank (~140 children). This does not include an estimated 10,000 more still buried under rubble (4,900 women and children). Euro-Med Monitor reports 46,848 Palestinian deaths.

Lancet: “Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death9 to the 37,396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.

Ralph Nader earlier estimated 200,000 Palestinians may have been killed in Gaza.

At least 45 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons (27 from Gaza, 18 from West Bank).
At least 41 Palestinians have died due to malnutrition**.
About 1.7 million, or 75% of Gaza’s population are currently displaced.
2.15 million (out of total population of 2.3 million) are projected to face Crisis or worse levels of food insecurity.
Palestinian injuries from October 7 – August 6: at least 97,065 (including at least 91,645 in Gaza and 5,420 in the West Bank, including 830 children). [It remains unknown how man Americans are among the casualties in Gaza.]

Reported Israeli death toll from October 7 – August 6: ~1,486 (~1,139 on October 7, 2023, of which ~32 were Americans, and ~36 were children); 331 military forces since the ground invasion began in Gaza; 16 in the West Bank) and~8,730 injured.

Times of Israel reports: The IDF listed 41 soldiers killed due to friendly fire in Gaza and other military-related accidents – nearly 16%.

NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries in Israel on October 7 were caused by Israeli soldiers.

*Previously, IAK did not include 471 Gazans killed in the Al Ahli hospital blast since the source of the projectile was being disputed. However, given that much evidence points to Israel as the culprit, Israel had previously bombed the hospital and has attacked many others, Israel is prohibiting outside experts from investigating the scene, and since the UN and other agencies are including the deaths from the attack in their cumulative totals, if Americans knew is now also doing so.**

Euro-Med Monitor reports that Gaza’s elderly are dying at an alarmingly high rate. The majority die at home and are buried either close to their residences or in makeshift graves dispersed across the Strip. There are currently more than 140 such cemeteries. Additionally, according to Euromed, thousands have died from starvation, malnourishment, and inadequate medical care; these are considered indirect victims as they were not registered in hospitals.

† For most of the conflict, women and children accounted for about 70% of deaths in Gaza, with children making up a little over 40% of those killed, according to official statistics.

Find previous daily casualty figures and daily news updates here.

Hover over each bar for exact numbers.
Source: IsraelPalestineTimeline.org

Human rights reports on Israel-Palestine (regularly updated)
“Well What SHOULD Israel Have Done After October 7?”
Welcome to Hell
More dead children. More BBC ‘news’ channelling Israeli propaganda as its own
U.S. media downplays and ignores ICJ ruling declaring Israeli occupation illegal
Israeli soldiers tell story of savage cruelty in Gaza – one given blessing by the West
Searching for Gaza’s missing children
What Would You Do With An Extra $320 Million?
Assassination of Haniyeh an intentional, dangerous escalation – Parsi, Macgregor
When Israel Burned Refugees Alive, Establishment Media Called It a ‘Tragic Accident’
Israel has turbocharged West Bank housing demolitions under the cover of war
Western media ignores Israeli confirmation of Hannibal Directive on 7 Oct
US Should Arrest Benjamin Netanyahu When He’s in Washington
Airwars investigation: Israeli airstrikes uniquely lethal (video)
Hesen Jabr paid the price of conscience
Gaza genocide denial
Why the news media’s job is to groom us
‘Disappeared, buried, detained’: The horrors of Gaza’s missing children
Hundreds of social media influencers attend Israel strategy summit in NYC
Supporting Israel Is Big Business in the U.S. for Israel partisans
Toys, spices, sewing machines: the items Israel banned from entering Gaza
Synopsis of ICJ’s decision on Israeli occupation, reactions, and take-aways
Russia attacks hospitals in Ukraine; Israel does the same in Gaza. The US response couldn’t be more different.
‘I have the prison inside me’: The emaciated Palestinian bodybuilder broken by Israel
Israel has manufactured an industrial-scale version of Jim Crow rape hoaxes
If Americans Knew Mobile Billboard Truck at Republican Convention
Col. Douglas MacGregor: US is under the control of Israel, likens Gaza to Warsaw Ghetto

https://israelpalestinenews.org/israel-killing-gaza-torture-rape-allegations-surface-day-304/

Surveillance Capitalism and PsyWar
Explanation of the central business model of Google, Facebook, and most social media

Robert W Malone MD, MS

Surveillance capitalism is a novel economic system that has emerged in the digital era. It is characterized by the unilateral claim of private human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data. In this version of capitalism, predicting and influencing behavior (political and economic) rather than producing goods and services is the primary product. This economic logic prioritizes extracting, processing, and trading personal data to predict and influence human behavior by exploiting those predictions for various economic (marketing) and political objectives.

In many cases, surveillance capitalism merges with PsyWar tools and technologies to power the modern surveillance state, giving rise to a new form of Fascism (public-private partnerships) known as techno-totalitarianism. Leading corporations employing the surveillance capitalism business model include Google, Amazon and Facebook. Surveillance capitalism has now fused with the science and theory of psychology, marketing, and algorithmic manipulation of online information to give rise to propaganda and censorship capabilities that go far beyond those imagined by the twentieth-century predictions of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell.

Key Features of Surveillance Capitalism

One-way mirror operations: Surveillance capitalists engineer operations to operate in secrecy, hiding their methods and intentions from users, who are unaware of the extent of data collection and analysis.

Instrumentation power: Surveillance capitalists wield power by designing systems that cultivate “radical indifference,” rendering users oblivious to their observations and manipulations.

Behavioral futures markets: The extracted data is traded in new markets, enabling companies to bet on users’ future behavior, generating immense wealth for surveillance capitalists.

Collaboration with the state: Surveillance capitalism often involves partnerships with governments, leveraging favorable laws, policing, and information sharing to further entrench its power.

Historical Development

Surveillance capitalism has its roots in the early days of the internet, when companies like Google and Facebook exploited the “ungoverned spaces” of the digital realm. The dot-com bust, the success of Apple’s consumer-centric approach, and the surveillance-friendly environment created by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and CIA’s investments in the “war on terror” all contributed to the rise of surveillance capitalism.

Consequences

Loss of autonomy: Surveillance capitalism erodes individual autonomy as users are manipulated and influenced by algorithms designed to predict and shape their behavior.

Threat to democracy: The concentration of power in the hands of surveillance capitalists undermines democratic processes, as they use their influence to shape public opinion and policy.

Economic inequality: The wealth generated by surveillance capitalism exacerbates economic inequality, as those who own and control the data and algorithms reap the benefits while users are exploited as free commodities.

Resistance and Reform

To counter surveillance capitalism, it is essential to:

Promote transparency and accountability: Demand greater openness about data collection and processing practices and mechanisms for users to exercise control over their data.

Regulate surveillance capitalism: Establish robust regulations to limit the power of surveillance capitalists, protect user rights, and promote fair competition.

Foster alternative economic models: Encourage the development of alternative economic systems that prioritize human well-being, autonomy, and democracy over profit and surveillance.


Shoshana Zuboff

“Surveillance Capitalism unilaterally claims our private human experience as a free source of raw material for its own production processes. It translates our experience into behavioral data. Those behavioral data are then combined with its advanced computation capabilities, what people today refer to as AI machine intelligence. Out of that black box come predictions about our behavior, what we will do now, soon and later. Turns out there are a lot of businesses that want to know what we will do in the future, and so these have constituted a new kind of marketplace, a marketplace that trades exclusively in behavioral futures, in our behavioral futures. That's where surveillance capitalists make their money. That's where the big pioneers of this economic logic, like Google and Facebook have become so wealthy by selling predictions of our behavior first to online targeted advertisers, and now of course, these business customers range across the entire economy, no longer confined to that original context of online targeted advertising.

All of this is conducted in secret. All of this is conducted through the social relations of the One-Way mirror. Ergo surveillance, the vast amounts of capital that have been accumulated here are trained to create these systems in a way that keeps us ignorant. Specifically the data scientists write about their methods in a way that brags about the fact that these systems bypass our awareness so that they bypass our rights to say yes or no. I want to participate, or I don't want to participate. I want to contest, or I don't want to contest. I want to fight, or I don't want to fight. All of that is bypassed. We are robbed of the right to combat because we are engineered into ignorance. We saw these same methods being used by Cambridge Analytica with those revelations a year ago with only a tiny difference. All they did was take these same every day routine methods of surveillance, capitalism, pivot them just a couple of degrees toward political outcomes rather than commercial outcomes, showing that they could use our data to intervene and influence our behavior, our real world behavior, and our real world thinking and feeling in order to change political outcomes.”



Publication scheduled for end of September 2024. Pre-purchase link here.


Per Wikipedia

Surveillance capitalism is a concept in political economics which denotes the widespread collection and commodification of personal data by corporations. This phenomenon is distinct from government surveillance, although the two can be mutually reinforcing. The concept of surveillance capitalism, as described by Shoshana Zuboff, is driven by a profit-making incentive, and arose as advertising companies, led by Google's AdWords, saw the possibilities of using personal data to target consumers more precisely.[1]

Increased data collection may have various benefits for individuals and society, such as self-optimization (the quantified self),[2] societal optimizations (e.g., by smart cities) and optimized services (including various web applications). However, as capitalism focuses on expanding the proportion of social life that is open to data collection and data processing,[2] this can have significant implications for vulnerability and control of society, as well as for privacy.

The economic pressures of capitalism are driving the intensification of online connection and monitoring, with spaces of social life opening up to saturation by corporate actors, directed at making profits and/or regulating behavior. Therefore, personal data points increased in value after the possibilities of targeted advertising were known.[3] As a result, the increasing price of data has limited access to the purchase of personal data points to the richest in society.[4]

Shoshana Zuboff writes that "analyzing massive data sets began as a way to reduce uncertainty by discovering the probabilities of future patterns in the behavior of people and systems.[5] In 2014, Vincent Mosco referred to marketing information about customers and subscribers to advertisers as surveillance capitalism and made note of the surveillance state alongside it.[6] Christian Fuchs found that the surveillance state fuses with surveillance capitalism.[7]

Similarly, Zuboff informs that the issue is further complicated by highly invisible collaborative arrangements with state security apparatuses. According to Trebor Scholz, companies recruit people as informants for this type of capitalism.[8] Zuboff contrasts the mass production of industrial capitalism with surveillance capitalism, where the former is interdependent with its populations, who are its consumers and employees, and the latter preys on dependent populations, who are neither its consumers nor its employees and largely ignorant of its procedures.[9]

Their research shows that the capitalist addition to the analysis of massive amounts of data has taken its original purpose in an unexpected direction.[1] Surveillance has been changing power structures in the information economy, potentially shifting the balance of power further from nation-states and towards large corporations employing the surveillance capitalist logic.[10]

Zuboff notes that surveillance capitalism extends beyond the conventional institutional terrain of the private firm, accumulating not only surveillance assets and capital but also rights, and operating without meaningful mechanisms of consent.[9] In other words, analyzing massive data sets was at some point executed not only by the state apparatuses but also by companies. Zuboff claims that both Google and Facebook have invented surveillance capitalism and translated it into "a new logic of accumulation".[1][11][12]

This mutation resulted in both companies collecting many data points about their users, with the core purpose of making a profit. Selling these data points to external users (particularly advertisers) has become an economic mechanism. The combination of the analysis of massive data sets and the use of these data sets as a market mechanism has shaped the concept of surveillance capitalism. Surveillance capitalism has been heralded as the successor to neoliberalism.[13][14]

Oliver Stone, creator of the film Snowden, pointed to the location-based game Pokémon Go as the "latest sign of the emerging phenomenon and demonstration of surveillance capitalism". Stone criticized that the location of its users was used not only for game purposes, but also to retrieve more information about its players. By tracking users' locations, the game collected far more information than just users' names and locations: "it can access the contents of your USB storage, your accounts, photographs, network connections, and phone activities, and can even activate your phone, when it is in standby mode". This data can then be analyzed and commodified by companies such as Google (which significantly invested in the game's development) to improve the effectiveness of the targeted advertisements.[15][16]

Another aspect of surveillance capitalism is its influence on political campaigning. Personal data retrieved by data miners can enable various companies (most notoriously Cambridge Analytica) to improve the targeting of political advertising, a step beyond the commercial aims of previous surveillance capitalist operations. In this way, it is possible that political parties will be able to produce far more targeted political advertising to maximize its impact on voters. However, Cory Doctorow writes that the misuse of these data sets "will lead us towards totalitarianism".[17]This may resemble a corporatocracy, and Joseph Turow writes that "the centrality of corporate power is a direct reality at the very heart of the digital age".[2][18]: 17 

The terminology "surveillance capitalism" was popularized by Harvard Professor Shoshana Zuboff.[19]: 107  In Zuboff's theory, surveillance capitalism is a novel market form and a specific logic of capitalist accumulation. In her 2014 essay A Digital Declaration: Big Data as Surveillance Capitalism, she characterized it as a "radically disembedded and extractive variant of information capitalism" based on commodifying "reality" and transforming it into behavioral data for analysis and sales.[20][21][22][23]

In a subsequent article in 2015, Zuboff analyzed the societal implications of this mutation of capitalism. She distinguished between "surveillance assets", "surveillance capital", and "surveillance capitalism" and their dependence on a global architecture of computer mediation that she calls "Big Other", a distributed and largely uncontested new expression of power that constitutes hidden mechanisms of extraction, commodification, and control that threatens core values such as freedom, democracy, and privacy.[24][2]

According to Zuboff, surveillance capitalism was pioneered by Google and later Facebook, just as mass-production and managerial capitalism were pioneered by Ford and General Motors a century earlier, and has now become the dominant form of information capitalism.[9] Zuboff emphasizes that behavioral changes enabled by artificial intelligence have become aligned with the financial goals of American internet companies such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon.[19]: 107 

In her Oxford University lecture published in 2016, Zuboff identified the mechanisms and practices of surveillance capitalism, including producing "prediction products" for sale in new "behavioral futures markets." She introduced the concept of "dispossession by surveillance", arguing that it challenges the psychological and political bases of self-determination by concentrating rights in the surveillance regime. This is described as a "coup from above."[25]

Zuboff's book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism[26] is a detailed examination of the unprecedented power of surveillance capitalism and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control human behavior.[26] Zuboff identifies four key features in the logic of surveillance capitalism and explicitly follows the four key features identified by Google's chief economist, Hal Varian:[27]

The drive toward more and more data extraction and analysis.

The development of new contractual forms using computer-monitoring and automation.

The desire to personalize and customize the services offered to users of digital platforms.

The use of the technological infrastructure to carry out continual experiments on its users and consumers.

Zuboff compares demanding privacy from surveillance capitalists or lobbying for an end to commercial surveillance on the Internet to asking Henry Ford to make each Model T by hand and states that such demands are existential threats that violate the basic mechanisms of the entity's survival.[9]

Zuboff warns that principles of self-determination might be forfeited due to "ignorance, learned helplessness, inattention, inconvenience, habituation, or drift" and states that "we tend to rely on mental models, vocabularies, and tools distilled from past catastrophes," referring to the twentieth century's totalitarian nightmares or the monopolistic predations of Gilded Age capitalism, with countermeasures that have been developed to fight those earlier threats not being sufficient or even appropriate to meet the novel challenges.[9]

She also poses the question: "will we be the masters of information, or will we be its slaves?" and states that "if the digital future is to be our home, then it is we who must make it so".[28]

Zuboff discusses the differences between industrial capitalism and surveillance capitalism in her book. Zuboff writes that as industrial capitalism exploits nature, surveillance capitalism exploits human nature.[29]

Zuboff, Shoshana (January 2019). "Surveillance Capitalism and the Challenge of Collective Action". New Labor Forum. 28 (1): 10–29. doi:10.1177/1095796018819461. ISSN 1095-7960. S2CID 159380755.

^ Jump up to:a b c d Couldry, Nick (23 September 2016). "The price of connection: 'surveillance capitalism'". The Conversation. Archived from the original on 20 May 2020. Retrieved 9 February 2017.

^ John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (1 June 2018), Data analytics and big data: chapter 5: Data analytics process:there's great work behind the scenes, pp. 77–99, doi:10.1002/9781119528043.ch5, ISBN 978-1-119-52804-3, S2CID 243896249

^ Jump up to:a b Cadwalladr, Carole (20 June 2019). "The Great Hack". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 4 February 2020. Retrieved 6 February 2020.

^ Zuboff, Shoshana; Möllers, Norma; Murakami Wood, David; Lyon, David (31 March 2019). "Surveillance Capitalism: An Interview with Shoshana Zuboff". Surveillance & Society. 17 (1/2): 257–266. doi:10.24908/ss.v17i1/2.13238. ISSN 1477-7487.

^ Mosco, Vincent (17 November 2015). To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World. Routledge. ISBN 9781317250388. Archived from the original on 19 October 2021. Retrieved 9 February 2017.

^ Fuchs, Christian (20 February 2017). Social Media: A Critical Introduction. SAGE. ISBN 9781473987494. Archived from the original on 19 October 2021. Retrieved 9 February 2017.

^ Scholz, Trebor (27 December 2016). Uberworked and Underpaid: How Workers Are Disrupting the Digital Economy. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9781509508181. Archived from the original on 19 October 2021. Retrieved 9 February 2017.

^ Jump up to:a b c d e Zuboff, Shoshana (5 March 2016). "Google as a Fortune Teller: The Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism". Faz.net. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Archived from the original on 11 February 2017. Retrieved 9 February 2017.

^ Galič, Maša; Timan, Tjerk; Koops, Bert-Jaap (13 May 2016). "Bentham, Deleuze and Beyond: An Overview of Surveillance Theories from the Panopticon to Participation". Philosophy & Technology. 30: 9–37. doi:10.1007/s13347-016-0219-1.

^ Zuboff, Shoshana. "Shoshana Zuboff: A Digital Declaration". FAZ.NET (in German). ISSN 0174-4909. Archived from the original on 22 June 2020. Retrieved 18 May 2020.

^ "Shoshana Zuboff On surveillance capitalism". Contagious. Archived from the original on 6 February 2020. Retrieved 18 May 2020.

^ Zuboff, Shoshana (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. p. 504-505, 519.

^ Sandberg, Roy (May 2020). "Surveillance capitalism in the context of futurology : an inquiry to the implications of surveillance capitalism on the future of humanity". Helsinki University Library. pp. 33, 39, 87. Archived (PDF) from the original on 1 July 2020. Retrieved 29 December 2023.

^ "Comic-Con 2016: Marvel turns focus away from the Avengers, 'Game of Thrones' cosplay proposals, and more". Los Angeles Times. 24 July 2016. Archived from the original on 11 February 2017. Retrieved 9 February 2017.

^ "Oliver Stone Calls Pokémon Go "Totalitarian"". Fortune. 23 July 2016. Archived from the original on 14 February 2020. Retrieved 9 February 2017.

^ Doctorow, Cory (5 May 2017). "Unchecked Surveillance Technology Is Leading Us Towards Totalitarianism | Opinion". International Business Times. Archived from the original on 1 July 2020. Retrieved 19 May 2020.

^ Turow, Joseph (10 January 2012). The Daily You: How the New Advertising Industry Is Defining Your Identity and Your Worth. Yale University Press. p. 256. ISBN 978-0300165012. Archived from the original on 19 October 2021. Retrieved 9 February 2017.

^ Jump up to:a b Roach, Stephen (2022). Accidental Conflict: America, China, and the Clash of False Narratives. Yale University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctv2z0vv2v. ISBN 978-0-300-26901-7. JSTOR j.ctv2z0vv2v. S2CID 252800309.

^ Zuboff, Shoshana (15 September 2014). "A Digital Declaration: Big Data as Surveillance Capitalism". FAZ.NET (in German). ISSN 0174-4909. Archived from the original on 22 June 2020. Retrieved 28 August 2018.

^ Powles, Julia (2 May 2016). "Google and Microsoft have made a pact to protect surveillance capitalism". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 30 May 2020. Retrieved 9 February 2017.

Sterling, Bruce (March 2016). "Shoshanna Zuboff condemning Google "surveillance capitalism"". WIRED. Archived from the original on 14 January 2019. Retrieved 9 February 2017.

^ "The Unlikely Activists Who Took On Silicon Valley — and Won". New York Times. 14 August 2018. Archived from the original on 7 June 2020. Retrieved 28 August 2018.

^ Zuboff, Shoshana (4 April 2015). "Big other: surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization". Journal of Information Technology. 30 (1): 75–89. doi:10.1057/jit.2015.5. ISSN 0268-3962. S2CID 15329793. SSRN 2594754.

^ Zuboff, Shoshana (5 March 2016). "Google as a Fortune Teller: The Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism". FAZ.NET (in German). ISSN 0174-4909. Retrieved 28 August 2018.

^ Jump up to:a b Zuboff, Shoshana (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: PublicAffairs. ISBN 9781610395694. OCLC 1049577294.

^ Varian, Hal (May 2010). "Computer Mediated Transactions". American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings. 100 (2): 1–10. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.216.691. doi:10.1257/aer.100.2.1.


For further information about the theory, practice, and implications of Surveillance Capitalism, I recommend reading the following book:



https://www.malone.news/p/surveillance-capitalism-and-psywar

How Big Tech Spawned Surveillance Capitalism
Robert Malone
Surveillance capitalism is a novel economic system that has emerged in the digital era. It is characterized by the unilateral claim of private human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data. In this version of capitalism, predicting and influencing behavior (political and economic) rather than producing goods and services is the primary product. This economic logic prioritizes extracting, processing, and trading personal data to predict and influence human behavior by exploiting those predictions for various economic (marketing) and political objectives.

In many cases, surveillance capitalism merges with PsyWar tools and technologies to power the modern surveillance state, giving rise to a new form of Fascism (public-private partnerships) known as techno-totalitarianism. Leading corporations employing the surveillance capitalism business model include Google, Amazon, and Facebook. Surveillance capitalism has now fused with the science and theory of psychology, marketing, and algorithmic manipulation of online information to give rise to propaganda and censorship capabilities that go far beyond those imagined by the 20th-century predictions of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell.

Key Features of Surveillance Capitalism

One-way mirror operations: Surveillance capitalists engineer operations to operate in secrecy, hiding their methods and intentions from users, who are unaware of the extent of data collection and analysis.
Instrumentation power: Surveillance capitalists wield power by designing systems that cultivate “radical indifference,” rendering users oblivious to their observations and manipulations.
Behavioral futures markets: The extracted data is traded in new markets, enabling companies to bet on users’ future behavior, generating immense wealth for surveillance capitalists.
Collaboration with the state: Surveillance capitalism often involves partnerships with governments, leveraging favorable laws, policing, and information sharing to further entrench its power.
Historical Development

Surveillance capitalism has its roots in the early days of the internet, when companies like Google and Facebook exploited the “ungoverned spaces” of the digital realm. The dot-com bust, the success of Apple’s consumer-centric approach, and the surveillance-friendly environment created by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and CIA’s investments in the “war on terror” all contributed to the rise of surveillance capitalism.

Consequences

Loss of autonomy: Surveillance capitalism erodes individual autonomy as users are manipulated and influenced by algorithms designed to predict and shape their behavior.
Threat to democracy: The concentration of power in the hands of surveillance capitalists undermines democratic processes, as they use their influence to shape public opinion and policy.
Economic inequality: The wealth generated by surveillance capitalism exacerbates economic inequality, as those who own and control the data and algorithms reap the benefits while users are exploited as free commodities.
Resistance and Reform

To counter surveillance capitalism, it is essential to:

Promote transparency and accountability: Demand greater openness about data collection and processing practices and mechanisms for users to exercise control over their data.
Regulate surveillance capitalism: Establish robust regulations to limit the power of surveillance capitalists, protect user rights, and promote fair competition.
Foster alternative economic models: Encourage the development of alternative economic systems that prioritize human well-being, autonomy, and democracy over profit and surveillance.
Surveillance Capitalism unilaterally claims our private human experience as a free source of raw material for its own production processes. It translates our experience into behavioral data. Those behavioral data are then combined with its advanced computation capabilities, what people today refer to as AI machine intelligence. Out of that black box come predictions about our behavior, what we will do now, soon, and later. Turns out there are a lot of businesses that want to know what we will do in the future, and so these have constituted a new kind of marketplace, a marketplace that trades exclusively in behavioral futures, in our behavioral futures. That’s where surveillance capitalists make their money. That’s where the big pioneers of this economic logic, like Google and Facebook have become so wealthy by selling predictions of our behavior first to online targeted advertisers, and now of course, these business customers range across the entire economy, no longer confined to that original context of online targeted advertising.

All of this is conducted in secret. All of this is conducted through the social relations of the One-Way mirror. Ergo surveillance, the vast amounts of capital that have been accumulated here are trained to create these systems in a way that keeps us ignorant. Specifically the data scientists write about their methods in a way that brags about the fact that these systems bypass our awareness so that they bypass our rights to say yes or no. I want to participate, or I don’t want to participate. I want to contest, or I don’t want to contest. I want to fight, or I don’t want to fight. All of that is bypassed. We are robbed of the right to combat because we are engineered into ignorance. We saw these same methods being used by Cambridge Analytica with those revelations a year ago with only a tiny difference. All they did was take these same every day routine methods of surveillance capitalism, pivot them just a couple of degrees toward political outcomes rather than commercial outcomes, showing that they could use our data to intervene and influence our behavior, our real world behavior, and our real world thinking and feeling in order to change political outcomes.

Shoshana Zuboff

Per Wikipedia

Surveillance capitalism is a concept in political economics which denotes the widespread collection and commodification of personal data by corporations. This phenomenon is distinct from government surveillance, although the two can be mutually reinforcing. The concept of surveillance capitalism, as described by Shoshana Zuboff, is driven by a profit-making incentive, and arose as advertising companies, led by Google’s AdWords, saw the possibilities of using personal data to target consumers more precisely.[1]

Increased data collection may have various benefits for individuals and society, such as self-optimization (the quantified self),[2] societal optimizations (e.g., by smart cities), and optimized services (including various web applications). However, as capitalism focuses on expanding the proportion of social life that is open to data collection and data processing,[2] this can have significant implications for vulnerability and control of society, as well as for privacy.

The economic pressures of capitalism are driving the intensification of online connection and monitoring, with spaces of social life opening up to saturation by corporate actors, directed at making profits and/or regulating behavior. Therefore, personal data points increased in value after the possibilities of targeted advertising were known.[3] As a result, the increasing price of data has limited access to the purchase of personal data points to the richest in society.[4]

Shoshana Zuboff writes that “analyzing massive data sets began as a way to reduce uncertainty by discovering the probabilities of future patterns in the behavior of people and systems.[5] In 2014, Vincent Mosco referred to marketing information about customers and subscribers to advertisers as surveillance capitalism and made note of the surveillance state alongside it.[6] Christian Fuchs found that the surveillance state fuses with surveillance capitalism.[7]

Similarly, Zuboff informs that the issue is further complicated by highly invisible collaborative arrangements with state security apparatuses. According to Trebor Scholz, companies recruit people as informants for this type of capitalism.[8] Zuboff contrasts the mass production of industrial capitalism with surveillance capitalism, where the former is interdependent with its populations, who are its consumers and employees, and the latter preys on dependent populations, who are neither its consumers nor its employees and largely ignorant of its procedures.[9]

Their research shows that the capitalist addition to the analysis of massive amounts of data has taken its original purpose in an unexpected direction.[1] Surveillance has been changing power structures in the information economy, potentially shifting the balance of power further from nation-states and towards large corporations employing the surveillance capitalist logic.[10]

Zuboff notes that surveillance capitalism extends beyond the conventional institutional terrain of the private firm, accumulating not only surveillance assets and capital but also rights, and operating without meaningful mechanisms of consent.[9] In other words, analyzing massive data sets was at some point executed not only by the state apparatuses but also by companies. Zuboff claims that both Google and Facebook have invented surveillance capitalism and translated it into “a new logic of accumulation.”[1][11][12]

This mutation resulted in both companies collecting many data points about their users, with the core purpose of making a profit. Selling these data points to external users (particularly advertisers) has become an economic mechanism. The combination of the analysis of massive data sets and the use of these data sets as a market mechanism has shaped the concept of surveillance capitalism. Surveillance capitalism has been heralded as the successor to neoliberalism.[13][14]

Oliver Stone, creator of the film Snowden, pointed to the location-based game Pokémon Go as the “latest sign of the emerging phenomenon and demonstration of surveillance capitalism.” Stone criticized that the location of its users was used not only for game purposes but also to retrieve more information about its players. By tracking users’ locations, the game collected far more information than just users’ names and locations: “It can access the contents of your USB storage, your accounts, photographs, network connections, and phone activities, and can even activate your phone, when it is in standby mode.” This data can then be analyzed and commodified by companies such as Google (which significantly invested in the game’s development) to improve the effectiveness of the targeted advertisements.[15][16]

Another aspect of surveillance capitalism is its influence on political campaigning. Personal data retrieved by data miners can enable various companies (most notoriously Cambridge Analytica) to improve the targeting of political advertising, a step beyond the commercial aims of previous surveillance capitalist operations. In this way, it is possible that political parties will be able to produce far more targeted political advertising to maximize its impact on voters. However, Cory Doctorow writes that the misuse of these data sets “will lead us towards totalitarianism.”[17] This may resemble a corporatocracy, and Joseph Turow writes that “the centrality of corporate power is a direct reality at the very heart of the digital age.”[2][18]: 17 

The terminology “surveillance capitalism” was popularized by Harvard Professor Shoshana Zuboff.[19]: 107  In Zuboff’s theory, surveillance capitalism is a novel market form and a specific logic of capitalist accumulation. In her 2014 essay A Digital Declaration: Big Data as Surveillance Capitalism, she characterized it as a “radically disembedded and extractive variant of information capitalism” based on commodifying “reality” and transforming it into behavioral data for analysis and sales.[20][21][22][23]

In a subsequent article in 2015, Zuboff analyzed the societal implications of this mutation of capitalism. She distinguished between “surveillance assets,” “surveillance capital,” and “surveillance capitalism” and their dependence on a global architecture of computer mediation that she calls “Big Other,” a distributed and largely uncontested new expression of power that constitutes hidden mechanisms of extraction, commodification, and control that threatens core values such as freedom, democracy, and privacy.[24][2]

According to Zuboff, surveillance capitalism was pioneered by Google and later Facebook, just as mass-production and managerial capitalism were pioneered by Ford and General Motors a century earlier, and has now become the dominant form of information capitalism.[9] Zuboff emphasizes that behavioral changes enabled by artificial intelligence have become aligned with the financial goals of American internet companies such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon.[19]: 107 

In her Oxford University lecture published in 2016, Zuboff identified the mechanisms and practices of surveillance capitalism, including producing “prediction products” for sale in new “behavioral futures markets.” She introduced the concept of “dispossession by surveillance,” arguing that it challenges the psychological and political bases of self-determination by concentrating rights in the surveillance regime. This is described as a “coup from above.”[25]

Zuboff’s book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism[26] is a detailed examination of the unprecedented power of surveillance capitalism and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control human behavior.[26] Zuboff identifies four key features in the logic of surveillance capitalism and explicitly follows the four key features identified by Google’s chief economist, Hal Varian:[27]

The drive toward more and more data extraction and analysis.
The development of new contractual forms using computer-monitoring and automation.
The desire to personalize and customize the services offered to users of digital platforms.
The use of the technological infrastructure to carry out continual experiments on its users and consumers.
Zuboff compares demanding privacy from surveillance capitalists or lobbying for an end to commercial surveillance on the Internet to asking Henry Ford to make each Model T by hand and states that such demands are existential threats that violate the basic mechanisms of the entity’s survival.[9]

Zuboff warns that principles of self-determination might be forfeited due to “ignorance, learned helplessness, inattention, inconvenience, habituation, or drift” and states that “we tend to rely on mental models, vocabularies, and tools distilled from past catastrophes,” referring to the 20th century’s totalitarian nightmares or the monopolistic predations of Gilded Age capitalism, with countermeasures that have been developed to fight those earlier threats not being sufficient or even appropriate to meet the novel challenges.[9]

She also poses the question: “Will we be the masters of information, or will we be its slaves?” and states that “if the digital future is to be our home, then it is we who must make it so.”[28]

Zuboff discusses the differences between industrial capitalism and surveillance capitalism in her book. Zuboff writes that as industrial capitalism exploits nature, surveillance capitalism exploits human nature.[29]

References

Zuboff, Shoshana (January 2019). “Surveillance Capitalism and the Challenge of Collective Action.” New Labor Forum. 28 (1): 10–29. doi:10.1177/1095796018819461. ISSN 1095-7960. S2CID 159380755.
^ Jump up to:a b c d Couldry, Nick (23 September 2016). “The price of connection: ‘surveillance capitalism.'” The Conversation. Archived from the original on 20 May 2020. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
^ John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (1 June 2018), Data analytics and big data: chapter 5: Data analytics process:there’s great work behind the scenes, pp. 77–99, doi:10.1002/9781119528043.ch5, ISBN 978-1-119-52804-3, S2CID 243896249
^ Jump up to:a b Cadwalladr, Carole (20 June 2019). “The Great Hack.” The Guardian. Archived from the original on 4 February 2020. Retrieved 6 February 2020.
^ Zuboff, Shoshana; Möllers, Norma; Murakami Wood, David; Lyon, David (31 March 2019). “Surveillance Capitalism: An Interview with Shoshana Zuboff.” Surveillance & Society. 17 (1/2): 257–266. doi:10.24908/ss.v17i1/2.13238. ISSN 1477-7487.
^ Mosco, Vincent (17 November 2015). To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World. Routledge. ISBN 9781317250388. Archived from the original on 19 October 2021. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
^ Fuchs, Christian (20 February 2017). Social Media: A Critical Introduction. SAGE. ISBN 9781473987494. Archived from the original on 19 October 2021. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
^ Scholz, Trebor (27 December 2016). Uberworked and Underpaid: How Workers Are Disrupting the Digital Economy. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9781509508181. Archivedfrom the original on 19 October 2021. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
^ Jump up to:a b c d e Zuboff, Shoshana (5 March 2016). “Google as a Fortune Teller: The Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism.” Faz.net. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Archived from the original on 11 February 2017. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
^ Galič, Maša; Timan, Tjerk; Koops, Bert-Jaap (13 May 2016). “Bentham, Deleuze and Beyond: An Overview of Surveillance Theories from the Panopticon to Participation.” Philosophy & Technology. 30: 9–37. doi:10.1007/s13347-016-0219-1.
^ Zuboff, Shoshana. “Shoshana Zuboff: A Digital Declaration.” FAZ.NET (in German). ISSN 0174-4909. Archived from the original on 22 June 2020. Retrieved 18 May 2020.
^ “Shoshana Zuboff On surveillance capitalism.” Contagious. Archived from the original on 6 February 2020. Retrieved 18 May 2020.
^ Zuboff, Shoshana (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. p. 504-505, 519.
^ Sandberg, Roy (May 2020). “Surveillance capitalism in the context of futurology : an inquiry to the implications of surveillance capitalism on the future of humanity.” Helsinki University Library. pp. 33, 39, 87. Archived (PDF) from the original on 1 July 2020. Retrieved 29 December 2023.
^ “Comic-Con 2016: Marvel turns focus away from the Avengers, ‘Game of Thrones’ cosplay proposals, and more.” Los Angeles Times. 24 July 2016. Archivedfrom the original on 11 February 2017. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
^ “Oliver Stone Calls Pokémon Go “Totalitarian.” Fortune. 23 July 2016. Archived from the original on 14 February 2020. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
^ Doctorow, Cory (5 May 2017). “Unchecked Surveillance Technology Is Leading Us Towards Totalitarianism | Opinion.” International Business Times. Archivedfrom the original on 1 July 2020. Retrieved 19 May 2020.
^ Turow, Joseph (10 January 2012). The Daily You: How the New Advertising Industry Is Defining Your Identity and Your Worth. Yale University Press. p. 256. ISBN 978-0300165012. Archived from the original on 19 October 2021. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
^ Jump up to:a b Roach, Stephen (2022). Accidental Conflict: America, China, and the Clash of False Narratives. Yale University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctv2z0vv2v. ISBN 978-0-300-26901-7. JSTOR j.ctv2z0vv2v. S2CID 252800309.
^ Zuboff, Shoshana (15 September 2014). “A Digital Declaration: Big Data as Surveillance Capitalism.” FAZ.NET (in German). ISSN 0174-4909. Archived from the original on 22 June 2020. Retrieved 28 August 2018.
^ Powles, Julia (2 May 2016). “Google and Microsoft have made a pact to protect surveillance capitalism.” The Guardian. Archived from the original on 30 May 2020. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
Sterling, Bruce (March 2016). “Shoshanna Zuboff condemning Google “surveillance capitalism.” WIRED. Archived from the original on 14 January 2019. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
^ “The Unlikely Activists Who Took On Silicon Valley — and Won.” New York Times. 14 August 2018. Archived from the original on 7 June 2020. Retrieved 28 August 2018.
^ Zuboff, Shoshana (4 April 2015). “Big other: surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization.” Journal of Information Technology. 30 (1): 75–89. doi:10.1057/jit.2015.5. ISSN 0268-3962. S2CID 15329793. SSRN 2594754.
^ Zuboff, Shoshana (5 March 2016). “Google as a Fortune Teller: The Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism.” FAZ.NET (in German). ISSN 0174-4909. Retrieved 28 August 2018.
^ Jump up to:a b Zuboff, Shoshana (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: PublicAffairs. ISBN 9781610395694. OCLC 1049577294.
^ Varian, Hal (May 2010). “Computer Mediated Transactions.” American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings. 100 (2): 1–10. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.216.691. doi:10.1257/aer.100.2.1.
Republished from the author’s Substack

Author

Robert W. Malone is a physician and biochemist. His work focuses on mRNA technology, pharmaceuticals, and drug repurposing research. You can find him at Substack and Gettr

View all posts


https://brownstone.org/articles/how-big-tech-spawned-surveillance-capitalism/

As Israel-First politicians embrace Netanyahu, many people say No Thanks – Day 290
[email protected] July 24, 2024 gaza displacement, gaza evacuation, israeli settler violence, jewish activists, jewish voice for peace, kamala harris, khan younis, labor unions, netanyahu speech, Olympics, palestinian unity government, starlink, targeting aid workers, us complicity in war crimes, West Bank
Israel's assault on Khan Younis: Displaced Palestinians seek shelter near hospital (screenshot)
2 million Gazans are squeezed into 20% of their land, as Israeli bombers and snipers keep killing; UNICEF vehicles hit by Israeli gunfire; peace activists arrested in US Capitol; Israeli luminaries call Netanyahu an “existential threat” to Israel and US; Rashida Tlaib: “Netanyahu’s Congress speech is a celebration of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians”; Schumer says he will attend Netanyahu’s Congress speech; Israeli gov’t heavily funding illegal Israeli outposts; 350 “experts” endorse Kamala Harris for her Israel support; Olympics news; Israeli forces killing spree in West Bank; seven major labor unions demand that Biden pull the plug on Israel aid; China brokers reconciliation deal with Palestinian factions

By IAK staff, from reports.

Israel blocks Palestinians from 80 percent of Gaza

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) says the Israeli military has placed more than 80 percent of the Gaza Strip “under evacuation orders or designated as a no-go zone”.

“We just keep hearing the same question: Where do I go?” UNRWA said on X, quoting its spokeswoman’s remarks to the BBC’s Radio 4.

It comes a day after Israel ordered thousands of people to flee from the eastern parts of the Khan Younis governorate to al-Mawasi in the west.

Death toll from Israeli bombing in Khan Younis rises to 89

At least 89 people have been killed in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis governorate, according to the enclave’s Government Media Office, since Israel launched a new military operation in the area yesterday morning, without giving civilians time to flee. Hundreds of people are also reported injured.

Palestinians, including women and children, living in the east of Khan Younis city move towards safe areas with whatever belongings they can take with them after Israel announced that an operation will be carried out and ordered the Palestinians to evacuate the area immediately in Khan Yunis, Gaza on July 22, 2024.
Palestinians, including women and children, living in the east of Khan Younis city move towards safe areas with whatever belongings they can take with them after Israel announced that an operation will be carried out and ordered the Palestinians to evacuate the area immediately in Khan Yunis, Gaza on July 22, 2024. (photo)
UNICEF vehicles attacked with gunfire in central Gaza


NOTE: The targeting of aid workers in Gaza by Israel has been a long-standing pattern. Since October 2023, at least 278 aid workers were reported killed in Gaza, including 201 UN staff members.

Following an Israeli attack on a high-profile humanitarian aid convoy in early April, MSF official Christopher Lockyear decried what was already a norm: “This pattern of attacks is either intentional or indicative of reckless incompetence.”


US Capitol Police arrest activists calling for Israel arms embargo

Al Jazeera reports: The rotunda of an office building in the United States Capitol complex filled in minutes with hundreds of people who appeared as if from nowhere, as part of a surprise protest against Israel’s war in Gaza.

“Let Gaza live,” they chanted in unison inside the Cannon House Office Building, removing their outer garments to reveal matching red T-shirts.

One side of the shirt read, “Jews say stop arming Israel.” The other side: “Not in our name.”

Tuesday’s coordinated protest, led by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), took Congressional staffers and law enforcement agents aback, as it came together within minutes.

But the crackdown started almost immediately after the protesters assembled. Capitol Police quickly declared the area a closed “zone” and arrested hundreds of demonstrators who refused to leave.

“This is a moment in history where we have to say we stood up for Palestinian freedom. We stood up to end this genocide,” said protester Liv Kunins-Berkowitz.

“For so many of us, we are the descendants who survived ethnic cleansing and genocide. Our ancestors and grandparents taught us that the worst thing to do in these moments is to be a bystander.”

The activists are of all faiths, races, and ethnicities. They’re working to overcome the powerful Israel lobby.

Embed from Getty Images




Seven major US labor unions call on Biden to ‘shut off military aid to Israel’

The Guardian reports: Seven major US labor unions representing about 6 million workers sent a letter to Joe Biden on Tuesday calling on his administration to “immediately halt all military aid to Israel” ahead of a visit to the US from Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, this week.

The unions that signed on to the letter include the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), American Postal Workers Union (APWU), International Union of Painters (IUPAT), National Education Association (NEA), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), United Auto Workers (UAW) and United Electrical Workers (UE).

“Our unions are hearing the cries of humanity as this vicious war continues,” said Mark Dimondstein, the APWU president, in a press release. “Working people and our unions are horrified that our tax dollars are financing this ongoing tragedy. We need a ceasefire now, and the best way to secure that is to shut off US military aid to Israel.”

The UAW stated, “This week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to come to Congress to ask our government to keep supporting this war [in Gaza]. We reject this insult to all those calling for peace and justice.”


Amnesty issues fresh warning about US complicity in Israeli war crimes

Middle East Monitor reports: Amnesty International has issued a fresh warning about US complicity in Israeli war crimes as Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington. The human rights NGO also called on the US to halt arms exports to Israel with Netanyahu set to meet Joe Biden and possibly Kamala Harris during his trip.

In the absence of a UN Security Council arms embargo, Amnesty is calling on all countries to impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel immediately, until there is no longer a substantial risk that arms could be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international human rights or humanitarian law.

Countries which continue to transfer arms to Israel with knowledge that the recipient state or group is using these arms to commit “internationally wrongful acts” — which include crimes under international law such as war crimes and crimes against humanity — are not only violating their obligation to ensure respect for international humanitarian law, said Amnesty today, but are in fact also assisting these violations.

Companies manufacturing and exporting arms also have a responsibility to respect human rights and international humanitarian law throughout their value chains. Any companies providing material assistance in the commission of a war crime can be found legally liable for such a crime.

“The US government has been presented with ample evidence from experts around the world that US-origin arms have been used in war crimes and unlawful killings by the Israeli government.”

Continued weapons transfers will make the US “complicit” in violations of international law committed with these arms, explained the Amnesty official.

NOTE: Weapons transfers to armed Palestinian groups also fall within Amnesty’s call for embargo – although in reality, international law supports the efforts of resistance groups against an occupying power, the UN extending that right to the point of armed resistance.

Israel carries out major strikes on three regions in one day
Israel carries out major strikes on three regions in one day (collage)
Israeli executives, former security officials denounce Netanyahu ahead of address to US Congress

Andalou Agency reports: Dozens of Israeli executives, academics, and former national security officials denounced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, warning in a letter to US congressional leaders that he represents an “existential threat” to the US and Israel.

The letter signed by 31 Israelis comes on the eve of Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress where many lawmakers are expected to not attend or stage protests to interrupt the Israeli leader’s speech. It is addressed to House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“We cannot overstate this: Prime Minister Netanyahu poses an existential threat to the State of Israel. He has no clear strategic objectives for the war in Gaza, no plan for the day after, nor a strategy for how to deal with the existential threat of Iran. For decades, he has been inciting Israelis against each other, damaging our national social fabric, dramatically harming our defense capabilities, eroding our economy and devastating our international standing,” the authors wrote. A copy of the letter was posted publicly by CNN.

“Further, Netanyahu severely harms the US national security interests through his approach to this war, which adversely impacts American policy in the Middle East and beyond and further endangers Israel,” they added.

Prominent signatories include former Israeli military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Haloutz, ex-Mossad Director Tamir Pardo, former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, Nobel Prize Laureate Aaron Ciechanover and Israel’s former UN envoy Gabriela Shalev.

Netanyahu’s speech to Congress is a ‘celebration of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians’

Middle East Eye reports: Palestinian-American Representative Rashida Tlaib called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming speech to Congress “a celebration of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians”.

Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, said that “Netanyahu is a war criminal committing genocide against the Palestinian people. It is utterly disgraceful that leaders from both parties have invited him to address Congress. He should be arrested and sent to the International Criminal Court.”

She further remarked, “Make no mistake: this event is a celebration of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. It is a sad day for our democracy when my colleagues will smile for a photo op with a man who is actively committing genocide.

“It is hypocritical to claim concern about the massive death toll of innocent civilians, then turn around and welcome the person responsible for these war crimes to our Capitol. Their silence is betrayal, and history will remember them accordingly. Our government must stop supporting and funding this genocide now.”

Israel was founded in 1948 through a war of ethnic cleansing.

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Schumer says he will attend Netanyahu’s Congress speech despite ‘disagreements’

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at Congress:

“Even though I disagree with many of Bibi Netanyahu’s policies, I will attend this speech because the United States’ relationship with Israel remains ironclad and transcends any prime minister.”

Schumer endorsed Kamala Harris for president.





Ha’aretz reports: The Democratic Majority for Israel wholeheartedly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the party’s nomination for the upcoming presidential election.

Israeli government quietly sends millions to unauthorized West Bank settler outposts

Associated Press reports: The Israeli government has budgeted millions of dollars to protect small, illegal, unauthorized Jewish farms in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, underwriting tiny outposts meant to grow into full-fledged , illegal settlements, according to an anti-settlement monitoring group.

Documents uncovered by Peace Now illustrate how Israel’s pro-settler government has quietly poured tens of millions of dollars into the unauthorized outposts, which are separate from its more than 100 officially recognized – but also illegal – settlements. Some of those outposts have been linked to settler violence against Palestinians and are sanctioned by the U.S.

The group estimates approximately 500 people live on the small, unauthorized farms and 25,000 more live in larger outposts. Those outposts, while not officially authorized by the government, often receive tacit support before they are retroactively legalized.

Rights groups say the expanding network of remote farms atop West Bank hilltops are the primary drivers of violence and displacement of Palestinians.

On Friday, the top United Nations court said Israel’s presence in the Palestinian territories is unlawful and called for an immediate halt to settlement construction.

NOTE: While there has been an uptick in settler violence since October 7th, every one of the more than 700,000 Israeli settlers living on Palestinian land are violating international law.

Israel has illegally built around 280 settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, and incentivized Israeli Jews to live in them.

Many Palestinians believe that Israeli settlements and settlers on Palestinian land are the main barrier to any lasting peace agreement.

Settlers, moreover, have a history of violence against Palestinians, often with the assistance of Israeli military forces.

NOTE: The International Solidarity Movement recently posted this video of Israeli settlers brutally attacking both Palestinians and international volunteers – one day after the ICJ ruled that the Israeli occupation and settlements are illegal.

350 foreign policy and national security personages endorse Kamala Harris, highlighting her involvement in the U.S.’ ‘defense of Israel when Iran attacked in April’

Ha’aretz reports: 350 leading foreign policy and national security experts endorsed U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’s candidacy for U.S. President, calling her “the best qualified person to lead our nation as commander in chief.”

“She has been by the president’s side in the Oval Office and in the Situation Room managing high-stakes international crises and advising on the toughest decisions,” they wrote, highlighting “the United States’ defense of Israel when Iran attacked in April 2024.”

Among those to sign the letter include former U.S. Ambassadors to Israel Tom Nides and Daniel Kurtzer, former Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations Frank Lowenstein, former national security advisers Susan Rice and Thomas E. Donilon, former secretaries of state John F. Kerry and Hillary Clinton; former secretaries of defense Chuck Hagel and Leon Panetta; and former top intelligence officials Michael Hayden and James Clapper.

NOTE: While it’s not hard to find cheerleaders for Israel in its genocidal war on Gaza, voters themselves are not so enthusiastic: A Gallup poll in March showed that 55 percent of respondents disapproved of the Israeli military’s actions in the Gaza Strip. Among Democratic Party voters, the percentage was even higher, with 75 percent of respondents expressing a negative view of Israel’s actions, while 60 percent of independents also said they disapproved.

Politicians have failed to grasp the significance of millions of Americans across the country protesting for ceasefire and an end to military aid to Israel – wrongly accusing them of antisemitism and ignoring their message.

RECOMMENDED READING:

How Israel twists antisemitism claims to project its own crimes onto Palestinians.

AIPAC: Has the pro-Israel lobby bribed and bought the US Democratic Party?

It isn’t Netanyahu who is acting against the will of his people, it’s Biden

Palestinians accuse Israel of Olympic Truce breach

Al Jazeera reports: The Palestine Olympic Committee has called for the “immediate exclusion of Israel from the Paris Olympics 2024”.

In a letter to Thomas Bach, head of the International Olympic Committee, the Palestinians said Israel has been engaged in violations that include illegal colonial settlement, occupation and annexation, as well as genocidal incitement.

The letter also stressed that there has been a breach of the Olympic truce. The UN General Assembly Resolution on the Paris 2024 Olympics mandates an Olympic truce from July 19 to September 15, 2024, to ensure a peaceful environment for the Games.

“However, Israel has violated this truce within the first 24 hours by continuing its bombing on Gaza, resulting in the killing of at least 70 Palestinians. This contravention underscores the urgent need for OIC and FIFA to act in line with its statutes and promote respect for international human rights law,” the letter said.

The letter was also sent to FIFA President Gianni Infantino by the Palestine Football Association.

NOTE: At least 265 Palestinian sportsmen have been killed in Israeli attacks since last October, according to the Palestinian Football Association.

“The victims include players, administrators and technical staff, including 11 in the West Bank” Jibril Rajoub, head of the association, told reporters.

“Dozens of athletes remain under the rubble, and we are unable to count their number,” he said. “Many athletes are also held in Israeli jails.”

RECOMMENDED READING: Palestinians launch first national amputee football team in Gaza



Many West Bank deaths on Tuesday

Five Palestinians were killed Tuesday by Israeli occupation army gunfire in Tulkarm camp, including three men, a young girl, and a 50-year-old woman. Four of the bodies were confiscated by Israeli forces. The men were reportedly a Qassam commander and two members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
A 13-year-old child from the town of Bal’a, east of Tulkarem, succumbed Tuesday to critical injuries he sustained by Israeli forces’ live bullets about two weeks ago.
A 39-year-old Palestinian man was Tuesday morning killed by Israeli occupation forces in the town of Sa’ir, northeast of Hebron.
A young man, age 22, was Tuesday killed by Israeli occupation army gunfire from the town of Shuyoukh, northeast of Hebron.

Palestinians hail new reconciliation deal amid Israeli opposition

Andalou Agency reports: A China-mediated agreement to heal the years-long rift between Palestinian factions and form a national unity government has been met with Palestinian praise and Israeli opposition.

The Palestinian groups on Monday reached a reconciliation agreement following three days of intensive talks in the Chinese capital Beijing to end their political division since 2007.

Representatives of 14 Palestinian groups, including the rival Fatah and Hamas movements, signed a new statement pledging to end the division and strengthen unity.

The agreement aims at maintaining Palestinian control over the Gaza Strip following the end of Israel’s ongoing offensive on the enclave.

Signatories of the agreement said they would form an interim national unity government to supervise the reconstruction of the war-torn Gaza Strip and hold new elections.

“The Beijing declaration is an additional positive step towards achieving Palestinian national unity,” Husam Badran, a member of Hamas political bureau, said in a statement.

He said the factions agreed to form a national unity government to supervise Gaza reconstruction and prepare the conditions for holding elections.

The agreement also underlined the right of the Palestinian people to resist the Israeli occupation and to self-determination based on international laws and UN Charter.

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Palestinians living inside Israel face home demolition

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STATISTICS OCTOBER 7 – JULY 23:

Palestinian death toll from October 7 – July 23: at least 39,668* (39,090 in Gaza* – 11,445 women (30%), 16,034 children as of June 17. [The Ministry’s figures have been contested by the Israeli authorities, although they have been accepted as accurate by Israeli intelligence services, the UN, and WHO. These data are supported by independent analyses, comparing changes in the number of deaths of UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) staff with those reported by the Ministry, which found claims of data fabrication implausible.]

This is expected to be a significant undercount since thousands of those killed have yet to be identified – and at least 587 in the West Bank (~140 children). This does not include an estimated 10,000 more still buried under rubble (4,900 women and children). Euro-Med Monitor reports 46,848 Palestinian deaths.

Lancet: “Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death9 to the 37,396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.

Ralph Nader earlier estimated 200,000 Palestinians may have been killed in Gaza.

At least 46 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons (27 from Gaza, 18 from West Bank).
At least 40 Palestinians have died due to malnutrition**.
About 1.7 million, or 75% of Gaza’s population are currently displaced.
2.15 million (out of total population of 2.3 million) are projected to face Crisis or worse levels of food insecurity.
Palestinian injuries from October 7 – July 23: at least 95,567 (including at least 90,147 in Gaza and 5,420 in the West Bank, including 830 children). [It remains unknown how man Americans are among the casualties in Gaza.]

Reported Israeli death toll from October 7 – July 23: ~1,481 (~1,139 on October 7, 2023, of which ~32 were Americans, and ~36 were children); 326 military forces since the ground invasion began in Gaza; 16 in the West Bank) and~8,730 injured.

Times of Israel reports: The IDF listed 41 soldiers killed due to friendly fire in Gaza and other military-related accidents – nearly 16%.

NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries in Israel on October 7 were caused by Israeli soldiers.

*Previously, IAK did not include 471 Gazans killed in the Al Ahli hospital blast since the source of the projectile was being disputed. However, given that much evidence points to Israel as the culprit, Israel had previously bombed the hospital and has attacked many others, Israel is prohibiting outside experts from investigating the scene, and since the UN and other agencies are including the deaths from the attack in their cumulative totals, if Americans knew is now also doing so.**

Euro-Med Monitor reports that Gaza’s elderly are dying at an alarmingly high rate. The majority die at home and are buried either close to their residences or in makeshift graves dispersed across the Strip. There are currently more than 140 such cemeteries. Additionally, according to Euromed, thousands have died from starvation, malnourishment, and inadequate medical care; these are considered indirect victims as they were not registered in hospitals.

† For most of the conflict, women and children accounted for about 70% of deaths in Gaza, with children making up a little over 40% of those killed, according to official statistics.

Find previous daily casualty figures and daily news updates here.

Hover over each bar for exact numbers.
Source: IsraelPalestineTimeline.org
Human rights reports on Israel-Palestine (regularly updated)
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https://israelpalestinenews.org/many-american-politicians-embrace-netanyahu-real-people-say-no-thanks-day-290/

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