As a result of the backlash against Israel from Western media and human rights organisations as a result of the recent bombing and shelling of Gaza, Israeli supporters are going into overdrive in the United States, Germany, the U.K. and elsewhere to portray any criticism of Israel’s apartheid system against the Palestinians as antisemitisim.
One assumes that ‘antisemitism’ in this case applies to supporting the 70 odd year Palestinian struggle for the return of their homeland – and an end to the murder, brutality, dispossession and terror inflicted on Palestinians by the Israeli state and its settler shock troops.
Even now we are told by mainstream media that the continuation of the bombing and shelling of the Israeli prison that is Gaza, is “in response” to incendiary balloons send from Gaza into Israel. The Israeli is just a little disproportionate as Activist Post notes: It is, unfortunately, always the case that no matter what Israel does, even when Hamas does not fire rockets, the story always starts with “but the Palestinians”. To say that a valid response to a balloon with a flaming object being sent to land and perhaps start a fire in lands stolen from Palestinians in Gaza, is an F-16 dropping tons of explosives on one of the most densely populated civilian areas on earth (half of which are children) is a tad ridiculous to say the least. That is kind of like your neighbor flicking a cigarette in your back garden and so you decide to blow up his home with a ton of C-4.
Strangely we are never told what Hamas and its allies in Gaza are ‘responding to’ from the Israeli side- 70 years of a savage brutality that occurs each and every day for Palestinians purposely trapped in that hell by the Israeli regime, where the majority of Israelis (just like ‘white’ South Africans before them) have incorporated sickening personal and systemic racism against Palestinians into their ‘culture’,in an attempt to absolve themselves of the crimes of the Israeli state machine and its settler terrorist groups.
Here is what Israeli stands for……
Chants from yesterday’s state-sanctioned nationalist march through Jerusalem:
“Death to Arabs!”
“The 2nd Nakba is coming. You will end up in refugee camps.”
Or perhaps you might like to read about the daily endless accounts of murder, brutality, theft and savagery conducted by everyday Israelis and their state machine against Palestinians, in a weekly report of the countless Palestinian sufferings every day at the hands of Israelis, by the International Middle East Media Center
THIS is what our so reasonable and democratic allies in the Western world continue to unconditionally support……
This ‘unconditional support’ by the West for Israel’s long-term barbarity is not an accident or simply ignorance of the realities in Palestine. These are deliberate policies of support for the slow genocide of the Palestinian people, because it suits “our interests’.
Since 1948, (over 70 years) Israel and its vanguard army- the “settlers”, have brutalised, killed, tortured, intimidated and stolen the land of the Palestinian people. For over 70 years Western media have assisted the Israeli regime in portraying Palestinians as terrorists and that every Israeli action against Palestinians is a ‘response’ to some terrorist act by the Arabs.
In this latest round of the Israeli attempt to destroy Palestinian resistance to 70 years of brutality and theft, we are told that Israeli military action is a ‘response’ to Hamas in Gaza firing rockets into Israel. In reality this latest round of hostilities is inextricably connected to the Nakba – the catastrophe of 1948 when Israeli settlers and an Israeli military , murdered thousands of Palestinians and displaced many more to refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and beyond, simply to steal their land.
Palestinians expelled from their homes at gunpoint during the Nakba; from bsdsmovement.net
As the Discourse Blog notes: “This is not a ‘clash’ between two equal sides. This is a straightforward attack by Israel on Palestinians. For days, the Israeli government has been systematically assaulting Palestinians worshipping at one of the holiest sites in Islam, during Ramadan, all while enforcing a move to ethnically cleanse a Jerusalem neighborhood of its Palestinian residents. Israeli forces have fired rubber bullets and stun grenades, injuring hundreds of people. The deputy mayor of Jerusalem has been filmed lamenting that Palestinian activists weren’t shot in the head“.
Ramzy Baroud of Common Dreams has a more detailed analysis of the attempted Israeli ethnic cleansing of the Sheik Jarrah community which sparked this latest response from Hamas. This ‘legalised theft’ of Palestinian property is beautifully outlined in this paragraph from Ramzy Baroud:
‘Last February, the Israeli Supreme Court awarded Jewish settlers the right to many Palestinian homes in Sheikh Jarrah. Following a Palestinian and international backlash, it offered Palestinians a ‘compromise’, whereby Palestinian families relinquished ownership rights to their homes and agreed to continue to live there as tenants, paying rents to the very illegal Jewish settlers who have stolen their homes in the first place, but who are now armed with a court decision.‘
Human Rights Watch have finally decided in the past few weeks that only now is Israel guilty of crimes against humanity, of persecution of Palestinians and is an apartheid state – something that has been indisputable for 70 years!
Is this how people should be treated? How can you, how can we, accept this day to day 70 year humiliation of a people simply because others want their lands?
Ironically, Israeli settlers’ and the Israeli regime’s constant ‘acquisition’ of Palestinian land over the past 70 years means that an Israeli/Palestinian two state solution is no longer a viable solution.
The United States has for much of those 70 years since the Nakba, pretended to act as the independent arbiter between Palestine and Israel in various peace agreements- peace agreements that all sides knew were a farce and had no possibility of ever happening because Israel had overwhelming force and had no intention of stopping its acquisition of Palestinian land. Perhaps President Biden will in reality finally show some moral backbone and force the Israelis to agree to a full and fair settlement with its Palestinian population and the Palestinian enclaves it controls. However, given Biden’s latest response to Israeli atrocities is to say ‘the ‘Israeli bombardment of Gaza is not significant’, we can get a clear sense of Biden’s moral and ethical framework. (Note that the U.K., Germany and Austria have now (15/5/21), once again, also acknowledged their ongoing support for Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people)
The only solution now for Israel and Palestine is a single state where all its residents have equal rights and where dispossessed Palestinians have the inalienable right of return and compensation for the lives, properties and olive groves confiscated or destroyed by the Israeli state. This apartheid nuclear-armed regime will hopefully depart peacefully.
Rachel Aliene Corrie (April 10, 1979 – March 16, 2003) was an American activist and diarist. A member of the pro-Palestinian group International Solidarity Movement (ISM), she was crushed to death by an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) armored bulldozer in southern Gaza in 2003 as she tried to block it from destroying Palestinian homes in Gaza .
You can read the weekly list of casual mindless brutal war-crimes committed by the Israeli regime and its settler groups here at the International Middle East Media Center.
Postscript
With the Israeli ‘Defence’ Forces now (as of 14/5/21) using their $3.8 billion dollars worth of gifted latest military hardware from the United States to bomb and shell Gaza, it is time to acknowledge that this rogue state must be controlled. An extensive United Nations neutral peace force must be put in place across Israel, Gaza and the West Bank to ensure safety for all of its populations, and Hamas and Israeli armed forces and settler terrorists must be immediately disarmed. Where I wonder is the West’s much vaunted “Responsibility to Protect” now?
The West’s ongoing support for the Israeli regime, and its slow genocide of the Palestinian people (that Israel has a responsibility to protect as the occupier of those territories), puts the lie to the West’s vaunted statements about supporting democracy freedom and human rights across the world.
There is no justification for Israel and its Western backers to use the horrors of the Holocaust to justify and legalise its horrific 70 year abuse of Palestinians.
Thankfully an Egyptian brokered ceasefire was declared between Israeli forces and Hamas and Islamic Jihad on 20th May. The message from Biden to Netanyahu in Israel was undoubtedly -‘stop the blitzgrieg, you’re damaging our and your international reputation’. Biden’s pledge to help restore Gaza but ensure no money went to Hamas, who are the legitimately elected government of the West Bank and Gaza, was assuredly a hollow one. The money will instead go to “President” Abbas from the Palestinian Authority, a venal entity who illegitimately govern the West Bank with the full support of the West and the Israeli regime.
Those in Gaza are thankful for this temporary ceasefire, but they know the Israeli war against them will continue regardless; the humanitarian blockades, the limiting of access to essential health services, clean water and sewage services, and the ongoing harrassment, murder and humiliation of Palestinians by the Israeli entity.
(Note: this is a slightly re-edited version of a NewAntarctica post first published in 2014)
Every year in this fair little country of New Zealand, we “celebrate” Anzac Day on 25th April. We remember our “glorious dead” who fought in all those wars for king and country; beginning way back then with the Second Boer War of 1899 in South Africa, supporting our British countrymen in the British Empire’s fight against the “evil” Boers, to ensure South Africa could become a safe place for English speaking white men to colonise and rule over the black man.
Since then we have had the First World War where 100, 000 New Zealand men (and some women) were shipped overseas, out of a total population of just over 1 million people. 18,500 New Zealanders were killed in that ‘war to end all wars’ and more than 40,000 wounded. Anzac Day “celebrates” the day New Zealand and Australian troops along with troops from other parts of the Empire, India, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, India, and Newfoundland as well as French forces invaded Turkey (a German ally) at Gallipoli ( or Gelibolu as the Turks call it).
The “Great War”, as it was once known, was initially at least, a European war to divide up the spoils of empire, with each countries’ soldiers the cannon fodder for money and power.
‘Only’ 2799 New Zealand soldiers died at Gelibolu attempting to break the Turkish defences in the harsh hills above the beaches, where 87,000 Turks died defending their homeland. Nothing in comparison to the many thousands killed and wounded in the trenches in Flanders and other parts of France; machine gunned, shelled and gassed by the “Hun” -the Germans.
Yet New Zealand collectively now glorifies Gallipoli; it was apparently (according to later New Zealand historians who should know) our “nation-building” exercise. Yet after that first world war to end all wars, every cenotaph
The Unknown Soldier
in every little town and city across New Zealand which named their dead, inscribed the lines “Lest We Forget”. In my imagination perhaps , it is ‘lest we forget’ those who died for nothing; the horror, the stupidity , the inhumanity to man of soldiers at war; not “lest we forget” our glorious war dead.
Let us not forget either, the many thousands of women and children who suffered at the hands of those damaged men returning from the wars; the family and community violence caused by the trauma of war and death.
The Send-off: a Poem by Wilfred Owen: -English soldier poet, 1918
And then we have the “good war”; the war against the Nazis and the Japanese between 1939 and 1945, where 140,000 New Zealand men and women were conscripted to fight overseas. Kiwi soldiers, while comparatively small in numbers, played a significant role in the European war against Germany and later against the Japanese in the Pacific. Could that war have been avoided without appeasement of Nazi and Japanese supremacism? There are many historians who say , that had the terms of the Versailles Treaty not been so punitive against Germany , German nationalistic fervour would never have produced such a cancer as the national socialists (Nazis). Similarly there are those who argue that had the Japanese also been able to obtain their Imperial “place in the sun” , Pearl Harbour would never have happened. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
New Zealand’s obligations for self-defence against the Japanese is inarguable; The Japanese were planning to invade New Zealand as part of their Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, along with invading Australia. The evil of the Nazis is also inarguable, and the horrors committed by them; New Zealand soldiers helped to bring those horrors to an end. Ultimately 11,900 New Zealand soldiers lost their lives in the second world war. However New Zealand is implicated in the war crimes resulting from the bombing missions undertaken by the Allies against German dams and the firebombing of Dresden; Tokyo and Kyoto .
New Zealand’s role in wars since the second world war has (aside from several small UN peace-keeping missions) been less than exemplary. 4,700 New Zealand soldiers fought in Korea between 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953, with 49 men killed in action. New Zealand (under U.N. auspices but without Russian attendance at that security council meeting ) was a party to the genocide committed largely by the Americans carpet bombing every North Korean town and city over that period.
Fighting as part of ANZUS, New Zealand enthusiastically supported the American pretext for invading Vietnam from 1963 to 1975 ( supposedly to halt the insidious spread of Communism (the ‘YellowPeril”) across Asia), while the New Zealand national government supported the bombing by the U.S. of cities and towns across Vietnam Laos and Cambodia, causing more than a million deaths. 37 New Zealand soldiers were killed in that war and many more afflicted by the impacts of “Agent Orange”, the chemical warfare “defoliant” sprayed by U.S. planes over the jungles and hamlets of South Vietnam. 33 New Zealand soldiers were also killed in the preceding Korean War where millions of Koreans were killed in that largely forgotten genocidal war.
Once again supporting the U.S., New Zealand inserted a small number of troops into southern Iraq near Basra during the second Iraq War. While for most of its service there, NZ troops were confined to base, it is highly likely that NZ troops were well aware of the wide-spread torture and murder of Iraqi civilians in that area by British troops . New Zealand is, by its support of that war, also implicated in the deaths of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died as a result of a war based on the pretext of Saddam’s non-existent “weapons of mass destruction.”
New Zealand continues its commitment to “freedom and democracy” by supporting the Americans in Afghanistan. Initially promoted to the public as an incursion to eliminate Al Qaeda as a threat after the 9/11 bombing of the New York towers, the war has dragged on since its inception in 2001 and morphed into the elimination of the Taleban (an Afghan Pashtun tribal entity with previous links to Al Qaeda). New Zealand troops have likely been involved in capturing Taleban fighters and sending them to the US Bagram air base in Kabul for torture. A rather dubious analysis suggest that up to 20,000 civilian casualties alone have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001- the mortality figures for direct war impacts are likely to be in the many many thousands. ( the U.S. doesnt “do headcounts” anymore.)
New Zealand continues to be a key member of the U.S. run western intelligence community “Five Eyes”, which attempts to maintain the U.S state’s power and control over most of the world, and while NZ has publicly been cast in the shadows of ANZUS because of its nuclear-free stance, it in reality maintains an extremely active role.
However , even with the huge amount of information provided by internet and phone tapping provided to “Five Eyes” intelligence ‘experts”, it is clear that those security operatives have over the years since the second world war, acquired a farcical level of incompetence and lack of intelligence and judgment. Their wild misinterpretation of other states’ and non-state entities’ intent and motives has resulted in massive suffering to millions of human beings. It is highly likely that incompetence is not going to be changing any time soon.
In summary, ANZAC Day; that tribute of poppies and wreaths and guns , celebrates not our glorious dead, but the utter farcical futility of war and the greed of the powerful.
At the time of writing, the jingoistic drumbeats of war are sounding to fight once more the Russian threat against “poor little” Ukraine.
I note the U.K.s Daily Telegraph criticizm of the New Zealand’s stance in not following the white Anglosaxon “Five Eyes’ ‘intelligence’ group in condemning China’s excesses at home and abroad, and our ‘cosying up to China’s communist rulers’.
One wonders when the Daily Telegraph and other jingoistic British and other Western mainstream media, will begin condemning the U.K.s longstanding abuse of foreign populations; its enthusiastic military support for the House of Saud’s genocidal war in Yemen, its ongoing support of Wahhabist jihadists in Syria and elsewhere, its illegal deportation of Chagos Islanders so it can help its buddy in war-crimes, the United States, establish an air base there, the ongoing imprisonment of Julian Assange; human rights media activist on spurious charges, or even begin to question for a moment the Uyghur genocide allegations almost exclusively coming from the clearly disturbed Adrian Zenz
I am thankful that the New Zealand government and Foreign Minister Mahuta has the balls to stand up to the bullying by the U.K. U.S., Australia and Canada in their zenophobic racist attacks on China (whose sole aim is to ensure that the United States and its buddies can continue to engage in genocidal action around the world for fun & profit without constraint), but it is now time that New Zealand exits from this shameful alliance and closes down the Five Eyes spy station in Marlborough.
Five Eyes is an alliance of bullies and war-mongering murderers, and we as New Zealanders are currently actively supporting their drone murders against innocents, supporting illegal wars, and of helping to amp up a nuclear confrontation with China and Russia.
New Zealand has a proud history as a nuclear free nation.
The Council’s 10 Year Plan’s ‘climate change’ position is remarkable in its minimalism, absence of vision and lack of understanding of the enormous impacts climate change and biodiversity loss will do to the way we survive in our district and around this country and the globe.
All previous measurements of CO2 levels in the past indicate that while we are predominantly in a latency period as oceans continue to absorb most CO2, we are heading for long term considerable temperature and sea level rises for many millennium.
We cannot stop these changes occurring to our world, even if we were to make good on our global promises and reduce carbon dioxide emissions substantially right now , but we can take action now to somewhat mitigate the extreme risks that climate change will bring to both humans, and other species that we depend upon for our survival- both the known and the currently unknown species.
Additionally, there is now considerable evidence that the loss of species diversity globally is likely to significantly reduce survivability risks for humans in the medium to long term. Retaining and restoring as much biodiversity in our communities as possible is therefore just as vital as attempting to reduce the impact of global heating.
Growing more trees that live for centuries is one of the key opportunities to reduce the impacts of rising levels of CO2, reduce species loss, provide some protection from intense weather events, enhance human wellbeing, and provide shade in summer and warmth in winter.
BELOW AREJust some of the key changes required :
Develop a well-funded programme to develop a local nursery to grow native plants indigenous to this locality, for both Council planting regimes, and also for property owners and community agencies.
Provide an educational resource (online and in person) on how to plant and grow more native vegetation and its importance to our communities and the planet.
Ensure all available areas in the surrounding hills are replanted in native trees (not pines, which dry out the atmosphere and ground). This will not only create more habitat for native birds, insects and other biota, but also, once the trees are established, help restore rainfall levels in summer to what they were prior to settlement, and somewhat mediate temperature fluctuations.
Plant native plant corridors from the hills to the coast to ensure long term viability of native wildlife.
Ensure all existing non-pine tree’d areas are maintained and extended on public and private lands..
Plant all available park and reserve areas with native trees. There are far too many grass areas in our district with no trees, which serve no use, other than to employ lawn mowers and produce more CO2.
Ensure streams that have been buried in culverts are re-opened to the air, and the water margins planted in native plants.
Provide incentives for businesses to plant trees on their properties- e.g. rates rebates.
Provide stronger guidance and enforcement of local agricultural businesses about their use of toxic pesticides, artificial fertilizers, and the considerable current threat to human welfare of groundwater contaminated with fertilizer runoff, particularly nitrates.
Financial and other encouragement for local food producers to become organic growers.
Develop a project alongside other local councils and the NZ Transport Agency to develop a low emission public rapid light transit system using electric public vehicles.
Council needs to be encouraging businesses and services to be truly sustainable and to use organic sources wherever possible whilst discouraging businesses that damage the remainder of our living environment through fines and regulation.
Council needs to establish a bio-impact measure for all goods and services within its catchment. Ie a simple graded scale that measures a business’ impact on climate change and species loss, so that consumers can start to make more informed choices about the products they consume.
Long term planning for ocean level rises, which will progressively increase; particularly road access to our coastal towns.
________________________________________
Postscript
My Council’s response below to anyone who made a submission to them on climate change… As can be clearly seen, there is no recognition that traditional cost/benefit analysis processes do not work when it comes to nature, and no recognition of the gravity of the environmental crises that have started to impact us, and will increasingly do so.
Nor is there any recognition of the other equally disastrous impacts of environmental damage; particularly species loss.
This planning strategy of burying one’s head in the sand is an option pursued by many local and central governments across the world…
Climate Change
We are experiencing more frequent weather extremes and effects, including floods, droughts and fires as a consequence of our changing climate. We have a large coastline, inhabited by thousands of residents. Adding to the complexity, much of our public infrastructure is built near the coast. Where to spend our time, effort, and funds to best prepare the <x> community for the likely effects of climate change and mitigate our greenhouse gas emissions is a key decision we needed to make. We asked you which of two spending options you preferred for Council to take to respond to climate change.
We decided to proceed with an affordable level of investment spread over the next 10 years. Once we have measured Council’s baseline emissions, we will investigate methods to reduce our emissions. The <x> Climate Action Plan is designed to be a living document. Suggestions from submitters and new knowledge (e.g. results from our emissions measurements) can be incorporated into a review of the Action Plan. The financial implications can then be worked through in further detail and consideration given to including them in future Annual or Long Term Plans.
Apparently we are expected to now believe that the Russians have now not only been paying the Taliban to kill U.S. occupying troops (likely ‘admitted’ after a little bit of healthy torture of a Talban suspect) but have also been blowing up Czech munitions dumps.
Apparently we are expected to now believe that the Russians have now not only been paying the Taliban to kill U.S. occupying troops (likely ‘admitted’ after a little bit of healthy torture of a Talban suspect) but have also been blowing up Czech munitions dumps. And that those pesky Russian GRU ‘intelligence’ operatives Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, identified by the ‘brilliant’ Western intelligence funded masterminds at Bellingcat (using Google Photos and other hi tech equipment) not only botched the poisoning of Sergie Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury in March 2018 , but had, 4 years earlier, botched the blowing up a Czech munitions dump, whose armaments were supposedly destined for the Ukraine after the Maidan anti-Russian coup in Ukraine.
“Hey guys, they swallowed that ridiculous story we made up about Gadaffi and the boxes of viagra for his troops to rape civilians, I’ll bet they swallow this one about Petrov and Boshirov again!”
The Russian government it would appear, has now lost its patience with the Americans after Biden deliberately insulted the Russian president as a ‘soul-less killer’, after years of sanctions of the Russian state, and will now make life very difficult for the remaining American diplomats in Moscow .
Diplomacy is thus now at an end between the two countries. In addition, the forceful tit for tat Russian response to the Czech expulsion of Russian diplomatic staff will mean that diplomatic efforts are also unlikely to occur in Eastern Europe in the near future.
40,000 NATO troops are massed near Russian borders and 80,000 Russian troops and other units are stationed close to the Russian border with Ukraine.
Steadily increasing NATO military exercises along the border with Russia seem to presage an attempt by NATO forces to probe for weaknesses and then attack Russia, or at least provoke a response from Russia that Western media can proclaim is proof of Russian evil.
Not content with setting the scene for a war over Crimea (a territory occupied by the Russians since it ‘acquired’ it from the Turks in 1774), and the festering Donbass civil war in Russian speaking Eastern Ukraine; the Ukrainian Kiev government is now bizarrely accusing another Russian ally, Iran, of deliberately downing a Ukrainian airliner in the confused aftermath of the Soleimani execution by the United States.
The decision by the Biden administration to withdraw some of it’s forces from Afghanistan by September 11 2021 , is indeed welcome and indicative of the total pointlessness of that 19 year war- other than to maintain a lucrative heroin supply trail for Western intelligence services. However the withdrawal is possibly also indicative of the American military’s recognition that fighting too many wars on two many fronts, is a recipe for defeat.
Alongside these aggressive actions go the sanctions designed to weaken Russia, Iran and China (and Syria, Venezuela and North Korea) for their temerity in not kowtowing to the American ‘world order’.
As American society and their economy continues to implode, we see increasingly desperate measures by the U.S. and their remaining ‘allies’ to try and contain and destroy those governments which do not support the American way of brutal colonial aggression.
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This short and innocuous tweet from U.S. Strategic Command on April 20th 2021, gives Russian and China clear warning that the U.S. is quite prepared to use nuclear weapons as a first option in resolving their differences.
We are all in desperate need of real investigative journalism which is not paid, bullied or feel obliged to follow the current state propaganda line.
There is not much more one can say about Media Lens’ concise summary of the activities of Western countries- particularly the United States and its closest ally, the United Kingdom, in engaging in serial murder over many years, against countries and peoples more vulnerable than their own, whose misery and deaths can be exploited for profit.
While the barbarity of the U.S. and U.K is documented elsewhere in great detail, Media Lens’ great strength is to outline the consistent role Western mainstream media have played in actively supporting those wars and the lies they knowingly propagated ( or in a few cases simply failed to do their journalistic duty of investigation)
As the wheel turns, the U.S. will in a few short years, no longer have the preeminent global role it has acquired through military domination. As the U.S. global role declines, so the need for justice for those many millions victimised by that imperial power will steadily rise until those responsible are indeed facing the court at the Hague for their war crimes .
Alongside them in the dock will surely be those media propagandists who knowingly aided and abetted their crimes with media lies and encouraged the lust for war.
On a more absurd and light-hearted note, we note the allegations from an Australian TV channel, Channel 9, that Vladimir Putin hacked their TV broadcast because he didn’t like what they said about him . While the ridiculous allegations are unsurprising from such a news source, there will be any number of gullible xenophobic Australians ready to be whipped up into a frenzy about malign state actors ( any one of either China, Russia, North Korea or Iran-take your pick) interfering with their TV viewing !
We are all in desperate need of real investigative journalism which is not paid, bullied or feels obliged to follow the current state propaganda line.
John Pilger has for several years now been talking about the ‘Coming War with China’-something I had in earlier years regarded as foolish speculation . However, in recent times I now hear much more loudly the drumbeats of war from America, and its more foolish and racist allies.
John Pilger has for several years now been talking about the ‘Coming War with China’-something I had in earlier years regarded as foolish speculation . However, in recent times I now hear much more loudly the drumbeats of war from America, and its more foolish and racist allies.
And in a more recent John Pilger article about the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima ‘ANOTHER HIROSHIMA IS COMING… UNLESS WE STOP IT NOW‘ he notes: “No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin” said The New York Times front page on 13 September, 1945, a classic of planted disinformation. “General Farrell,” reported William H. Lawrence, “denied categorically that [the atomic bomb] produced a dangerous, lingering radioactivity.”-John Pilger .
It should therefore be no surprise that Western governments have lied and lied again in their pursuit of war and profit. The ongoing deluge of Western propaganda against China and its ally Russia, is clearly designed to ‘soften up’ Western publics for a war with those ‘evil orientals’.
The Western media claims of Uyghur genocide by the Chinese government have been largely constructed from one source; a somewhat ‘unusual’ gentleman called Adrian Zenz, a Christian fundamentalist evangelist and devout anti-communist. The Gray-Zone has published a damning report on the curious ways Mr Zenz has used public data to support his beliefs that Uyghur genocide is occurring. Western intelligence has latched onto Mr Zenz fundamentalist fervour to promote his views to the wider world, because it fits so well with their need to portray the Chinese government (and all things mainland Chinese) as evil .
As the GrayZone outlines in its article on the U.S. based Uyghur American Association (UAA), the Altay Club and other organisations determined to once again create an independent state in Xinjiang since its re-incorporation into the Chinese state in the 18th Century, there are multiple organisations both internal and external to China, determined to overthrow the current status quo in Xinjiang.
The Chinese government is now in the process of suing Zenz for libel in the courts.
Numerous Muslim Uyghur have in fact been radicalised by the Saudi Wahabbi doctrine and continue to play an important role as Salafi jihadi soldiers in Syria and other Middle Eastern countries, with funding and support from the Saudis and Western intelligence operatives. It is likely therefore that the Chinese government has put considerable effort into reducing the risk of Uyghur radicalisation in mainland China; the truth of how much repression of the Uyghur population in China is occurring is unknown at this point-although the Chinese government denies any such repression. It is however certain, given current population counts, that a Uyghur ‘genocide’ is not happening.
As one of the Chinese government’s representative Yang Jiechi so rightly put it at the recent Alaska China/U.S. Anchorage summit at the Captain Cook Hotel;’ the United States uses its financial and military might to bully other countries. …(and that) America had its own long history of human rights problems and foolish actions abroad. ‘Foolish actions’ is a wonderful euphemism for the scale of genocidal war and terror inflicted by the United States on ‘non-compliant’ countries over the past century and more ( i.e. countries that do not comply with the United States view of it’s ‘international rules based order’- not to be confused in any way with U.N. declarations)
Alistair Crooke summarises the theme of the anti-Russia-China rhetoric as ‘the U.S. thinks to lead the maritime and rim-land powers in imposing a searing psychological, technological and economic defeat on the Russia-China-Iran alliance’.
As with all colonial powers, the current arrogance and bellicosity of the Americans is premised on racism- the view that the Chinese are somehow an inferior nation who need education and ‘realignment’ with Western values and principles of what the Americans call ‘democracy and freedom’-but which in reality are principles based on the exploitation and subjugation of others.
The United States’ personal delusions of their exceptionalism – which align closely to Nazi views on the superiority of the German ‘race’- also play an important role in their incapacity to peacefully collaborate with others.
Given the United States appalling centuries long history of abuse of the vulnerable, at home and abroad, its view of itself as a pure, supremely democratic and exceptional nation (which many in the States undeniably believe) is psychotic, and indicative of the level of risk the world is facing when delusional people hold the reins of power in the worlds’ most militaristic country.
The United States appears ‘hell-bent’ on ensuring that no other country can get in the way of ‘rule-based order’ where the United States can and does whatever it likes, to whomever it likes, to ensure the money keeps rolling into the troughs of its billionaires.
What are we to make, from across the sea, of Trump supporters invading the U.S. Capitol building while Congress members were voting to install Joe Biden as the next president of the United States?
Is this ‘insurrection’?- a new civil war? a ‘revolution’?…
In the mind-numbing complexities and anomalies that is American ‘democracy’, this new episode in the rapidly foreclosing Trump era appear as a comedy of errors, by all parties.
A historic opportunity by Joe Biden and the Democrats to bring together the nation after 4 years of Trumpism, has been completely given away- to childish bi-partisanship, which has the potential to further divide a fractured declining nation. Trump’s devotees- many of whom are frightened at their loss of incomes, law and order, their loss of status, the confusing messages of the U.S. ‘Woke’ culture and many more pressures, are not going to go away. If they are now no longer able to attach themselves to a political forum that supposedly supports their frustrations, as Trump pretended to do, they will find other routes to assert their concerns- perhaps in more damaging ways.
The deletion of Trump’s historic postings and the removal of his capacity to post in the future, was a concerted effort by the major social media outlets. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey commented that the ‘ban is a failure of ours to promote healthy conversation’. While I am very clear that I personally find Trump’s rants and raving inappropriate, often judgmental, rascist and dangerous, and that he is guilty of war crimes in Yemen and Syria among other places ( along with numerous other American presidents) , I don’t believe I (or anyone else) has the ability to judge what is ‘healthy conversation’ for all others; assuming that such a thing as a ‘healthy conversation’ could ever be defined. For a social media tycoon to make such a global statement is both dangerous and indicative of the quality of intellect in such ‘high places’.
What the United States desperately needs now is a government that understands its role is to support the dispossessed, the poor, the sick and the unemployed, to live a fair and pleasant lifestyle. There is after all, more than enough to go round in the United States- even now. But instead we see the remaining U.S. health and income support infrastructures steadily being whittled away- the rich getting richer, the poor without hope and the U.S. electoral system dominated by what are euphemistically called ‘corporate donations’.. The dichotomy between the empty promises of those in power and those who need a better life there, are growing ever wider. That widening chasm leads to social destruction.
It is baffling why American society is so willing to ascribe to conspiracy theories -whether it be Joseph McCarthy and the internal communist threat, the Russians, the Chinese, or some other nation Americans have been taught to fear, or now, ‘insurrection’ from white supremacists.
Farcical , if it were not deeply disturbing, are Nancy Pelosi (Speaker of the House at Congress) and Hilary Clinton (ex Secretary of State) stating publicly their view that Vladimir Putin orchestrated the Capitol invasion. Either (hopefully) they are simply attempting to manipulate public opinion to think that somehow Putin is behind all of this, or more disturbingly , they actually believe their nonsensical and delusional statements.
While the invasion of the Capital building is certainly to be deplored, the response from Democrat congresspeople and lawyers has been extraordinary and hugely counterproductive to building truth and reconciliation in the United States. It is hoped that the parallels noted by Eric Rasmussen in his article about the Reichstag Fire of 1933 and the Capital building riot will turn out to be simply coincidence, but they are disturbing.
Is it their lack of education about the wider world and American history?; the efficacy of American mainstream media to lie with advertising and political brainwashing?; their centuries long addiction to violence? the insistence on show and appearance as more important than truth and justice?- or perhaps a mix of all those issues….Whatever the primary causes, Americans are in for a rough ride until they come to terms with their country’s contradictions, and learn the truth about what their country really has stood for.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is apparently incensed about Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian’s posting of an image of an Australian soldier slitting the throat of a young Afghan boy.
Why such a report about murders and abuse should be a surprise to anyone, is a mystery. Western countries have prided themselves on their superiority to the ‘less than pink’ skinned races of the world in their centuries’ old thrust to control the world’s resources for their exclusive benefit. Such superiority extends to a war culture that dehumanises the ‘enemy’ as ‘gooks’, ‘rag-heads’ and the ‘yellow peril’, among many other perjorative names..
Australia and the Western media at large depict their country as an innocent victim of ‘Chinese bullying’, ‘coercion’ and ‘aggression’, through China’s use of tarriffs, border controls and monitoring of import goods’ quality, to press its argument that Australia needs to learn which side its bread is buttered on.
China is particularly annoyed with Australia foolishly following the Trump propaganda line that COVID19 is a Chinese communist government threat to the world. Startling, when it is China who has done most to show the world how to limit infection spread…
Australia’s former finance minister, Joe Hockey, labeled China’s President Xi’s actions “economic coercion.” As Hockey told Bloomberg in a Nov. 3 interview: “That’s not the China that I knew when I was treasurer” for two years until September 2015. This “immature action,” Hockey says, is “not the behavior of a great power.”.
One might be forgiven for laughing at Joe Hockey’s ‘belief’ that Western ‘great powers’ never use extortion, threat and violence to get their economic way. The creation of economic sanctions and wars of aggression on countries the West does not like, is a time honoured tradition- not the sole prerogative of Donald Trump!
One should therefore not be surprised by a Chinese (and North Korean, Vietnamese, Syrian, Iraqi, Libyan etc etc ) call in the future to demand reparations for all those countries Australia and the other Five Eyes and Fourteen Eyes countries ( In addition to the Anglo-Saxon countries, the group includes Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, France, Sweden and Norway), that have ‘bullied’ with war and sanctions over the past 60 years- the genocidal wars in Korea and Vietnam come to mind; let alone Iraq, Libya or Syria…..and recently American sponsored atrocities have come to light….
That Australia and New Zealand continue to defend their positions as ex-colonial powers allied to racist and war-mongering Western European states and the U.S., is no surprise; but it does give an indication of the intelligence and humanity of their political and ‘intelligence’ communities, and their capacity to grasp where the future lies.
New Antarctica 