Tag: perpetual war

From the Arsenal of Democracy to an Arsenal of Genocide

During World War II, American leaders proudly proclaimed this country the “arsenal of democracy,” supplying weapons and related materiel to allies like Great Britain and the Soviet Union. To cite just one example, I recall reading about Soviet armored units equipped with U.S. Sherman tanks, though the Soviets had an even better tank of their own in the T-34 and its many variants. However, recent news that the United States is providing yet more massive arms deliveries to Israel (worth $20 billion) for 2026 and thereafter caught me off guard.  Israel quite plainly is engaged in the near-total destruction of Gaza and the massacre of Palestinians there.  So, tell me, how over all these years did the self-styled arsenal of democracy become an arsenal of genocide?

Israel, after all, couldn’t demolish Gaza, killing at least 40,000 Palestinians in a population of only 2.1 million, including thousands of babies and infants, without massive infusions of U.S. weaponry. Often, the U.S. doesn’t even sell the weaponry to Israel, a rich country that can pay its own bills. Congress just freely gifts body- and baby-shredding bombs in the name of defending Israel from Hamas. Obviously, by hook or crook, or rather by shells, bombs, and missiles, Israel is intent on rendering Gaza Palestinian-free and granting Israelis more living space there (and on the West Bank). That’s not “defense” — it’s the 2024 equivalent of Old Testament-style vengeance by annihilation.

As Tacitus said of the rampaging Romans two millennia ago, so it can now be said of Israel: they create a desert — a black hole of death in Gaza — and call it “peace.” And the U.S. government enables it or, in the case of Congress, cheers on its ringleader, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.

Of course, anyone who knows a little American history should have some knowledge of genocide. In the seventeenth century, Native Americans were often “satanized” by early colonial settlers. (In 1994, a friend of mine, the historian David Lovejoy, wrote a superb and all-too-aptly titled article on exactly that topic: “Satanizing the American Indian.”) Associating Indians with the devil made it all the easier for the white man to mistreat them, push them off their lands, and subjugate or eradicate them. When you satanize an enemy, turning them into something irredeemably evil, all crimes become defensible, rational, even justifiable. For how can you even consider negotiating or compromising with the minions of Satan?

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Cheney Backs Harris: The War Hawk’s Blessing Reveals Continuity in Foreign Policy

If there is one eternal rule in Washington, it is that “politics makes for strange bedfellows.” If you were to presume twenty years ago, that former Vice President Dick Cheney would one day endorse a progressive Democrat from California for president, you would be sent to an insane asylum. The idea that a diehard neoconservative and perhaps the biggest war criminal in recent American history would one day endorse someone like Kamala Harris would have been laughable. But due to the prevalence of “Trump derangement syndrome” amongst many neoconservatives, this has become the political reality.

As someone who generally considers himself a member of the political left and who does not support Donald Trump, “Trump derangement syndrome” is not a term I use flippantly. Nevertheless, I cannot seem to find any other phrase to describe the type of voter who would view an endorsement from Dick Cheney for Kamala Harris as a positive. Former Vice President Cheney’s support of Harris is emblematic of a deeper, unsettling continuity in American foreign policy that transcends partisan boundaries.

Dick Cheney is not the only member of his family who has thrown their support behind Harris. His daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney, has also endorsed Kamala Harris after voting for Trump in 2020. In a recent episode of System Update, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald pointed out that Liz Cheney – whose entire political career revolved around her defending her father’s depraved imperialism – has become a useful idiot for the establishment wing of the Democratic Party. This shift is par for the course, as proponents of military adventurism have increasingly found a home in a Democratic Party committed to providing endless military aid to both Israel and Ukraine.

This is not surprising as the GOP has moved towards isolationism, ostensibly at least in Ukraine, with Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance, stating that “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.” But both Liz Cheney and her father “care” about Ukraine, as they have an ideological interest in spreading the tentacles of American imperialism across the world. But in the modern Republican Party under Donald Trump, the Cheney family likely believes they have no tenable political future. Dick Cheney is a decrepit reminder of a time long ago, and Liz Cheney lost in the Republican primary for her district by 32 points.

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Most Americans Want to Stop Arming Israel. Politicians Don’t Care.

When Kamala Harris sat down with CNN’s Dana Bash last month, Bash asked a question: “Would you withhold some U.S. weapons shipments to Israel? That’s what a lot of people on the progressive left want you to do.” 

Harris sidestepped the question, talked about a ceasefire, and ultimately said that she would not change course from the Biden administration’s policy of arming Israel as its war on Gaza enters its 11th month. 

But polls of the American voting population show that she’s ignoring more than just the “progressive left”: A majority of voters support ending arms transfers to Israel, and support for an arms embargo is growing.

“The reality is that the public is far more in favor of stopping arms sales to Israel than opposed,” Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine/Israel Program at Arab Center Washington D.C., told The Intercept. He pointed to a June poll from CBS that showed 61 percent of all Americans said the U.S. should not send weapons to Israel, including 77 percent of Democrats and nearly 40 percent of Republicans. 

Poll results have been consistent for months. 

Since the start of the war in Gaza, a majority of Americans have expressed support for some form of restrictions on the U.S. sending weapons to Israel in repeated public surveys. Americans are even more overwhelmingly in favor of a ceasefire.

Among the most consistent string of polls on the issue of weapons transfers to Israel has come from CBS News, which partnered with YouGov to carry out its survey. About two weeks after the October 7 attacks by Hamas, as Israel’s bombardment had already killed more than 2,000 civilians in Gaza, a CBS poll of more than 1,800 Americans found that 52 percent of American adults said the U.S. should not send weapons to Israel. The totals included large majorities among both Democrats and independents, and 43 percent of Republicans. 

In April, CBS News/YouGov asked the same question in a new poll and found that an even larger number of Americans (60 percent), including 68 percent of Democrats, said they felt the U.S. should not send arms to Israel. The poll was conducted days after an Israeli strike killed seven aid workers in a clearly marked World Central Kitchen convoy. 

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Exposed: The US and Canadian Funding Behind Israeli Soldiers Accused of Rape

Cuffed and blindfolded 24 hours a day. Confined to animal pens. Attacked by dogs. This is reportedly the treatment of Palestinian detainees at Sde Teiman, an Israeli military base in the Naqab desert. While claims of torture and abuse at the facility began circulating in December, the Israeli military did not open an investigation into the allegations until July 29, when 10 Israeli soldiers were detained on suspicion of sexually abusing a detainee.

In response to the soldiers’ detention, a mob of right-wing extremists stormed Sde Teiman and later broke into the Beit Lid military base, where the detained soldiers were being held. Among those detained were soldiers from the Force 100 unit, which was resurrected at the onset of the war and has been responsible for guarding the detainees at Sde Teiman. Masked soldiers, wearing black shirts emblazoned with the unit’s logo—a snake inside the Jewish Star of David—were seen participating in the protests.

Several Israeli lawmakers took part in the riots, including Otzma Yehudit’s (Jewish Power) Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu, Religious Zionism member of parliament, Zvi Sukkot, and parliamentary members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, Nissim Vaturi and Tally Gotliv.

Protests have continued to erupt in support of the soldiers, including, most recently, outside an Israeli High Court hearing on the case on August 7, 2024.

As allegations of torture and sexual abuse at Israel’s Sde Teiman detention facility escalate and Israeli Military Police prepare to conclude their investigation and file indictments against the suspects, MintPress uncovers the financial and political infrastructure, including from the U.S. and Canada, backing these soldiers through tax-exempt organizations and crowdfunding platforms. This marks a disturbing shift in global support for human rights violations, now extending even to those implicated in the Israeli military’s acts of sexual violence.

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“Fire Away”: Florida State Rep. Randy Fine Celebrates Israel Killing an American Citizen

Jewish Florida State Rep Randy Fine (R) reacted to news that Israel killed an American peace activist in the occupied West Bank by celebrating and encouraging the Jewish state to “fire away” and kill even more.

On Friday, Israel killed Aysenur Eygi, 26, “with a bullet to the head” while she was taking part in a protest against Jewish settlement expansion (which ostensibly aligns with official US government policy opposing such settlements).

A Jewish witness from the Israeli paper Haaretz said she did not pose any threat whatsoever when she was shot.

Rep. Fine cheered her murder, writing Friday evening on X: “Throw rocks, get shot. One less #MuslimTerror ist. #FireAway.”

The post was flagged by X and Fine’s account was temporarily suspended for a few hours before being fully restored.

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Yes it Was a “False Flag”, “Murder their Own Soldiers”. Israelis Widely Used “Hannibal Directive” on Oct. 7: Israeli Report

According to a source in the Israeli forces’ Southern Command, the region was designed to become a “killing zone,” while another commanded that “not a single vehicle can return to Gaza.”

Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported that during Operation al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) routinely used a command that allowed soldiers to murder their own soldiers, namely the infamous Hannibal Directive.

The Israeli Air Force targeted at least three military facilities and outposts during the operation and the IOF opened fire on the walled separation barrier dividing Gaza and “Israel,” when Israelis were being taken captive.

According to a source in the Israeli Southern Command, the region was designed to become a “killing zone,” while another commanded that “not a single vehicle can return to Gaza.”

These instructions are known as the “Hannibal Directive,” requiring the IOF to take all measures to avoid the capture of Israeli soldiers, including murdering them.

Haaretz‘s investigation was based on records and testimony from troops, mid-level, and senior army commanders and data indicated that many taken captive were subjected to Israeli gunfire and “were in danger.”

According to Haaretz, Israeli commanders took decisions early on October 7 based on unverified intelligence with one source citing “crazy hysteria,” adding that “No one had a clue about the number of people kidnapped or where army forces were.”

An Israeli source told Haaretz that any person making a decision “knew that our combatants in the area could be hit as well.”

Another order directed all units to fire mortars against the Gaza Strip, despite the occupation’s feeble knowledge of the locations of soldiers and citizens. The order was expanded later to prohibit any vehicle from entering Gaza.

A source in the Southern Command told Haaretz that “Everyone knew by then that such vehicles could be carrying kidnapped civilians or soldiers,” adding that “everyone knew what it meant to not let any vehicles return to Gaza.”

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University of California Rolls Out New Free Speech Policies To Curtail Pro-Palestine Protests on Campus

The term ‘Orwellian’ is rapidly losing its gravitas with how often we make recourse to it in trying to explain global society’s piecemeal tumble into neofascism (same as the old fascism), but a recent batch of policy changes at the University of California, Los Angeles, rolling out this fall in retaliation for students and faculty’s pro-Palestine, anti-genocide protests last spring, truly deserves the epithet.

Reeling in the wake of frequent anti-genocide protests, rallies, and marches last year, the occupation of Royce Quad by a pro-Palestine student encampment in April, and three major graduate student strikes since 2019 (this one, which was at UC Santa Cruz but threatened credibly to spread to UCLA, this one, and the most recent one), UCLA administration is scrambling to enact new campus-wide policies aimed at preventing student movements, activism, protests, and other forms of free expression and free association from taking place on campus, which is public land owned by the State of California.

The most desperate change takes the form of sweeping updates to the (also Orwellian-sounding) Time, Place, and Manner Policies, reported on today by the student paper, the Daily Bruin. Under the new regulations, campus administration redefines “​​publicly accessible spaces” (on a publicly-owned campus on public land with no gates or physical barriers to entry from the street) to include just two locations: a thin strip of walkway known as Bruinwalk, colloquially known by some as “the gauntlet” of leafletters, solicitors, canvassers, and undergraduate clubs seeking to boost their membership; and the area outside Murphy Hall, the main administrative building on campus. According to Daily Bruin, “Separate rules exist for events that receive administration approval 10 days in advance,” such as marches, rallies, and using a megaphone. Other heinous acts that students are no longer allowed to commit include ordering food delivery between midnight and 6a.m., walking outside during the same timeframe, and refusing to identify oneself to campus staff.

Next, a new, ironically stupid “Workplace Violence Prevention Plan” that is to be imposed on all campus employees this fall could have been in the works since before the pro-Palestine spring uprising, but the timing of its release is at best pure bureaucratic tone deafness and at worst another mechanism designed to clamp down on freedom of speech and association on campus. This is especially true because in the legal code to which it refers, ‘violence’ is defined broadly to include threats that result in ‘psychological trauma’. No matter what the boomers say, mental trauma is a genuine form of harm, so there is no issue there. The problem here, as with many of the University of California’s reactionary new policies, lies in the potential for – the likelihood of – selective enforcement. Furthermore, the concept of psychological harm was weaponized by Zionist counterprotesters last spring, led by their on-campus posterboy, who actively antagonized peaceful anti-genocide protesters and then was quoted in this Times of Israel article saying the encampment made him feel ‘not safe’.

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CIA, MI6 Praise Ukraine’s Kursk Invasion for Bringing War to ‘Ordinary Russians’

CIA Director William Burns and Richard Moore, the head of the UK’s MI6 foreign intelligence agency, spoke at an unprecedented joint public event in London on Saturday, where they praised Ukraine’s invasion of Russia’s Kursk Oblast.

Moore said the Kursk invasion was “typically audacious and bold on the part of the Ukrainians, to try and change the game” and said it had “brought the war home to ordinary Russians.”

Burns said the operation in Kursk was a “significant tactical achievement” that boosted morale in Ukraine. While the fighting continues in Kursk, Russian forces have been making more rapid gains in Ukraine’s Donbas region since the invasion was launched.

The US and its allies claim they weren’t involved in the planning of the Kursk invasion, but a Ukrainian soldier said Western intelligence was crucial for the attack. Ukrainian forces have been using US and British weapons in the assault, marking a significant escalation of the proxy war.

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Meet the burping Terminator-style robots with mood swings and a torso that shoots BB pellets being used to train Army soldiers

The British Army has recruited Terminator-style robots to help train soldiers in battleground scenarios. 

The machines, created with the same-size head and torso as an average male, are able to speak and react to soldiers as they are fitted with AI software Chat GPT. 

If the soldier becomes angry, the robot, called SimStriker, can become hostile and fire BB pellets from its abdomen. In contrast, a calmer soldier will help control the situation.

In one battleground scenario, soldiers must face SimStriker in a village where locals need food, electricity and medical supplies, The Telegraph reports.

The robot will react differently depending on whether the soldier decides to help the locals.

Army trainers can also manually alter the robot’s mood from a control room if they want to make the scenario more challenging for the soldier.

It is an unprecedented breakthrough in technology for the army, who can now train its soldiers against a ‘thinking’ enemy. Soldiers are used to training with static wooden targets.

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The crisis-ridden U.S. empire wants to take the world down with it in nuclear flames

The United States defines itself in zero-sum terms. Its national myth – let’s indulge the preposterous arrogance for a moment – is that it is an exceptional nation in the history of the world. It is supposedly the indispensable leader of the “free world”, a paragon of democratic virtue and it possesses the most powerful and benevolent military force the world has ever seen.

Thankfully, many decent American citizens know that this is propaganda hogwash. Still, its political class and complacent mass media view the United States as the world’s supreme uni-power. All other nations must pay homage to this consummate hegemon.

Therein lies a fatal contradiction. This untenable definition is essential for justifying its presumed privileges. And yet, by doing so, the U.S. cannot brook any genuine equality or mutual respect essential for peaceful multilateral relations. It must be the top dog – at all costs. That is a definition of imperialism. The concomitants are aggression, belligerence, lawlessness, and duplicity – of course, all concealed with impossibly virtuous rhetoric, or in short, propaganda. So-called allies are merely servile functionaries to augment American global ambitions.

Hence, when the real world does not match the mythical notions of the U.S., there is consequently an ineluctable existential crisis. The zero-sum, all-dominant demands of the would-be hegemony are not achievable. In this situation, the hegemonic power behaves like a drunk in a bar who is refused another drink. Mayhem and violence are almost inevitable.

American narcissism denies there that the U.S. is an empire. It is preferred to pretend that its power is benign and ever-so-magnanimous. Let’s leave such vanity aside. The U.S. is an empire with military garrisons dotted around the world to ensure its economic and political interests are enforced down the barrel of a gun. No nation has conducted as many wars as the United States in its 248-year history.

The exploitation of its allies and the rest of the world with financial leverage through the arbitrarily appointed dollar as the primary global reserve currency is another mechanism of coercion and neocolonial predation of other nations’ resources.

However, all this American pretense and delusion of absolute power is coming to a shuddering, calamitous end. The empire is fragmenting and failing. And that presents a dangerous existential crisis.

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