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In blatant defiance of world opinion and international law, the Israeli state continues its daily massacre of civilians in Gaza. After nearly four weeks of non-stop aerial bombardment, the death toll has exceeded 9,000, with thousands more missing under rubble.
Richard Falk
[Prefatory Note: A modified version of this interview conducted by Daniel Falcone, with a long introduction was published online in Truthout on October 29, 2023, The situation in Gaza and its increasingly regional implications grow more humanly distressing and politically menacing with each passing day. Israel has succeeded in influencing the Global West and its corporate main media platforms to accept two interpretations of events following the Oct 7 Hamas attack that are at best highly contentious and controversial and, in my understanding, deeply misleading and distorting: (1) that Hamas is nothing other than a group of terrorists engaged in barbaric crimes, and should be addressed in the same manner as ISIS and Al-Qaeda; (2) that it is legitimate in such a conflict to override normal rules of international law, even to the extent of engaging in genocidal means of ethnic cleansing.
[Source: thestar.ng]Humankind is on the edge of an extremely dangerous military and moral precipice. It faces the prospect of internationally approved and widely applauded genocide (the destruction of an ethnic group) and radical ethnic cleansing (its forced displacement) on a large-scale in record time. To make things worse, the war crimes are being perpetrated by a state actor (Israel) that calls itself “democratic” against a disenfranchised people (the Palestinians) in a fight between David and Goliath that is likely to take a different turn than the biblical story.
Racism, in essence, involves dehumanisation, the attaching of less value to certain lives. And it can also involve criminalisation, for example by turning one group into a suspect community needing control and harsher punishment. What we have witnessed here since 7 October is a transformation of a knee-jerk anti-Palestinianism into a fully-fledged anti-Palestinian racism permeating politics and British culture on a scale never witnessed before. For now the frameworks of the war on terror are superimposed on anti-Palestinianism, leading to the criminalisation of national symbols and cultural expressions in the diaspora such as the Palestinian flag or the Keffiyeh – moving the British Palestinian Committee to demand that public bodies ‘uphold their legal responsibilities to protect equal participation in democratic and civic space, by defending the rights of Palestinians in Britain and those who stand with our people in a spirit of solidarity and common humanity’.
By Pepe Escobar
China’s State Council has released a crucial policy paper titled ‘A Global Community of Shared Future: China’s Proposals and Actions’ that should be read as a detailed, comprehensive road map for a peaceful, multipolar future.
There are reasons for Libya’s ‘chaotic’, ‘dysfunctional’ response to the disaster. And to identify them, we need to look closer to home
Middle East Eye – 15 September 2023
The reality of the West’s trademark current foreign policy – marketed for the past two decades under the principle of a “Responsibility to Protect” – is all too visible amid Libya’s flood wreckage.
Tikur Netsanet
Author Bio: This article was produced by Globetrotter.
“The worst-case scenario is unfolding in Ethiopia,” Gabriel Bizuneh tells me, as he organizes in the Ethiopian community in Washington, D.C. Once again, the federal government is at war with another region in a federal system where regions are demarcated on ethnic lines. Moreover, each region in Ethiopia has its own police force, special units, and local militia. This time, the federal government is at war with the Fano and Amhara special forces, which fought against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and have been protecting civilians from the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA)/ ONEG Shene attacks. “We have been pleading for so long for this conflict not to escalate further,” Bizuneh adds, “but Henry Kissinger’s policy of dismantling Ethiopia based on ethnicity, which the TPLF was an anchor for, remains in place.”
“We are demanding urgent answers”, say a coalition from the Doctors’ Association UK, Just Treatment and the National Pensioners Convention.
Last month they sent a legal letter to the government about the plans to centralise all UK health data into a new database, the “Federated Data Platform” (FDP). The government is currently running the procurement process for the management of the FDP and “US spy-tech firm Palantir is widely considered the bid frontrunner.”
The coalition are concerned “because, despite multiple requests, we still don’t have all the information we need about exactly how this platform will work, if and how the public will be consulted and whether the government will seek patient consent before they completely overhaul the way our most sensitive health data is managed.”
They plan to launch a judicial review if they don’t get answers.
The group say that that “Palantir mainly has a history in military, security, and policing – not health.” They also point out that “Palantir’s chair, Peter Thiel recently described British love of the NHS as “Stockholm Syndrome” adding: “In theory, you just rip the whole thing from the ground and start over.”
According to their case page: “A recent YouGov poll illustrated current public opinion about the plans. The results showed that if the FDP is brought in and run by a private company – like Palantir – 48% of adults in England who have not yet opted out [of sharing data] are likely to do so.
If even half that figure stopped sharing their health data it would be catastrophic for the future quality of NHS data – one of the most precious health resources we have as a country.”
Read the latest updates on the case here.
Thank you for support,
Maeve at CrowdJustice
Xuhui (China), ’92 Paternalism, 1992.Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
In 2003, high officials from Brazil, India, and South Africa met in Mexico to discuss their mutual interests in the trade of pharmaceutical drugs. India was and is one of the world’s largest producers of various drugs, including those used to treat HIV-AIDS; Brazil and South Africa were both in need of affordable drugs for patients infected with HIV as well as a host of other treatable ailments. But these three countries were barred from easily trading with each other because of strict intellectual property laws established by the World Trade Organisation. Just a few months prior to their meeting, the three countries formed a grouping, known as IBSA, to discuss and clarify intellectual property and trade issues, but also to confront countries of the Global North for their asymmetrical demand that the poorer nations end their agricultural subsidies. The notion of South-South cooperation framed these discussions.
by All African People’s Revolutionary Party (AAPRP)
On July 26, 2023 in a military coup d’etat, the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP) ousted Niger president Mohamed Bazoum and took control of the country. This followed recent coups in Burkina Faso, Guinea-Conakry, Mali, and Chad. These countries are bound togethe by the Sahel, a semi-arid region on the edge of the Sahara desert that stretches from the Atlantic ocean in the west and to the Red Sea in the east. The Sahel region suffers from a number of complex factors resulting from French political and economic domination designed to exploit the region’s vast natural and human resources, while subordinating the region’s sovereignty to France. The US and European powers have collaborated to promote an imperialist agenda. Consider the NATO led invasion of Libya, which led to the murder and overthrow of Pan-Africanist leader, Muammar Gaddafi. Libya then became a breeding ground for Western armed terrorist groups that destabilize the region. Because of these ongoing conflicts instigated and perpetuated by Western imperialist powers, life in the Sahel has been, and remains, hellish.
By VJ Prashad
On July 26, 2023, Niger’s presidential guard moved against the sitting president—Mohamed Bazoum—and conducted a coup d’état. A brief contest among the various armed forces in the country ended with all the branches agreeing to the removal of Bazoum and the creation of a military junta led by Presidential Guard Commander General Abdourahamane “Omar” Tchiani. This is the fourth country in the Sahel region of Africa to have experienced a coup—the other three being Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Mali. The new government announced that it would stop allowing France to leech Niger’s uranium (one in three lightbulbs in France is powered by the uranium from the field in Arlit, northern Niger). Tchiani’s government revoked all military cooperation with France, which means that the 1,500 French troops will need to start packing their bags (as they did in both Burkina Faso and Mali). Meanwhile, there has been no public statement about Airbase 201, the U.S. facility in Agadez, a thousand kilometers from the country’s capital of Niamey. This is the largest drone base in the world and key to U.S. operations across the Sahel. U.S. troops have been told to remain on the base for now and drone flights have been suspended. The coup is certainly against the French presence in Niger, but this anti-French sentiment has not enveloped the U.S. military footprint in the country.
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In 1955, a guy named Seymour Rosen brought a film camera into New York City’s Palladium Ballroom. Incredible footage!
The Tito Rodriquez Orchestra was on the bandstand and the place was rocking.
by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR
Reuters carried a speculative report last week that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi might not attend the BRICS summit in Johannesburg in person and, furthermore, that India disfavoured an expansion of the grouping. Reuters’ long history of cold war skulduggery notwithstanding, the gullible Indian media fell for the rumour mongering.
Alexander Rubinstein and Kit Klarenberg
The New Dark Age 