- Post author:dizzy
- Post published:26 September 2024
- Post category:Fascism/genocide/human rights violations/Israel/Palestine/politics/Zionism
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Trump Condemned for ‘Genocidal’ Threat to Destroy Iran
Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“Trump’s threat to blow Iran’s largest cities and the country itself ‘to smithereens’ is an outrageous threat that should be widely condemned,” said the National Iranian American Council.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat on Wednesday to blow Iran “to smithereens” if he returns to power was condemned by a leading Iranian American advocacy group as “genocidal.”
Trump—the 2024 Republican nominee—addressed a campaign rally in North Carolina on Wednesday after he was reportedly briefed about alleged Iranian assassination threats against him.
“If I were the president, I would inform the threatening country—in this case, Iran—that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens,” he said to raucous applause. “We’re gonna blow it to smithereens, you can’t do that. And there would be no more threats.”
Responding to the former president’s remarks, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) said in a statement that “Trump’s threat to blow Iran’s largest cities and the country itself ‘to smithereens’ is an outrageous threat that should be widely condemned as psychotic and genocidal.”
“Just like his threat to target 52 of Iran’s most cherished cultural sites, Trump appears disturbingly willing to kill millions of Iranians who have no say over the actions of their authoritarian government,” NIAC continued. “These remarks should be disqualifying for a man vying to once again be commander in chief and have sole authority over launching nuclear weapons with the power to make good on his horrifying threat.”
“Likewise, we unequivocally condemn any Iranian threats that may be targeted at Trump or former officials,” the group added. “Political violence must be rejected and prevented in all forms. Assassinations are a path to war and human suffering, as was demonstrated by the strike on [Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Maj. Gen.] Qasem Soleimani that engendered these threats, and risk further embroiling the region in violence.”
Trump ordered the January 2020 airstrike that killed Soleimani in Iraq. He also unilaterally withdrew from the so-called Iran nuclear deal and ramped up sanctions on Tehran, exacerbating Iran’s economic woes.
While Trump is known for his boastful and sometimes empty claims, as president he also followed through on his 2016 campaign promise to “bomb the shit out of” Islamic State fighters and “take out their families,” resulting in thousands of civilian casualties in countries including Iraq and Syria.
Although Trump often presents himself as the peace candidate, critics have warned voters not to be fooled.
“He’s a liar. C’mon, you know he doesn’t tell the truth at all,” Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Calif.)—the only member of either legislative chamber who voted against authorizing the so-called War on Terror in 2001—said in a recent interview with The Nation.
“Just look at his record, who he cozies up to in terms of dictators,” Lee added. “He wants more investment in the military budget. What his strategy is, is to create a more dangerous world.”
Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
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Biden’s UNGA address espousing democracy and cooperation contrasts with reality
Original article by Natalia Marques republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
Biden’s final address to the United Nations as president was riddled with falsehoods and hypocrisies typical of US foreign policy
When US President Biden ended his final address to the UN General Assembly with “my fellow leaders, there is nothing that’s beyond our capacity if we work together,” it can be easy to forget that the United States is the number one obstacle to mutual cooperation around the world.
Biden’s mention of the various conflicts and aggressions around the world—from Ukraine to Sudan to Gaza—of course made no mention of the US’s complicity in each of these conflicts.
Biden calls for “a ceasefire and hostage deal” for Gaza in order to “bring the hostages home, secure security for Israel, and Gaza free of Hamas’ grip, ease the suffering in Gaza, and end this war.”
But while Biden calls for an end to the war, the US continues to send weapons and other forms of aid to Israel as it carries out genocide in Gaza, aggression in the West Bank, and extends the war to Lebanon. Biden’s administration has ignored the popular demand for an arms embargo against Israel, supported by major labor unions which represent almost half of all unionized workers in the US as well as 61% of the US population. Instead, the US has only expanded its military support for Israel, approving a USD 20 billion dollar arms package to the Zionist state in August.
The US has maintained its unconditional support of Israel, even as Israel floats a possible ground invasion of Lebanon. Yet ironically Biden said of the war in Sudan, “the world needs to stop arming the generals.” According to the Palestinian Youth Movement, an international Palestinian diaspora organization, “the Biden-Harris administration is responsible for the current massacres in Lebanon.”
The US’s support for Israeli genocide has received additional scrutiny after it was revealed that USAID and the State Department knew that Israel had deliberately blocked humanitarian aid to Gaza. US law requires the government to cut off weapons shipments to countries which block deliveries of US-backed aid, and so US Secretary of State Antony Blinken seems to have deliberately told Congress that Israel did not block aid so that weapons shipments to Israel would remain unaffected.
Yet in his speech to the UNGA, Biden entreated Sudanese generals to “stop blocking aid to the Sudanese people.”
“We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance,” Blinken told Congress on May 10, despite being told the opposite by USAID and the State Department in April.
In Ukraine, not only were the US and NATO’s violations of Russian security red lines the chief cause of that war, but the West continues to be an obstacle to a peaceful settlement of the conflict. There has been no negotiation between Ukraine and Russia ever since the West allegedly forced Ukraine to withdraw from talks in April 2022, and the US in its usual fashion continues to supply billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine to continue the war.
And while Biden urged other UNGA member nations to “stand up” for the Ukrainian people, US military officials openly thirst for Ukrainian blood—complaining in a New York Times article from last year that the Ukrainian military has become too “casualty averse,” causing it to “race through precious [US-provided] ammunition supplies” as opposed to human lives.
Biden spent time lamenting the humanitarian situation in Sudan, and claiming that “the United States has led the world in providing humanitarian aid” to the war-torn country. But like many global conflicts, the war in Sudan has its roots in the savagery of US imperialism. According to Stephanie Weatherbee Brito of the International Peoples Assembly, “Through both military interventions and economic sanctions, the United States has shown its willingness to coerce any nation deviating from its interests. This has fostered a global environment where nations vie for power and influence. The US’s propensity to invade and punish perceived adversaries has spurred countries to bolster their military and geopolitical capabilities to safeguard their sovereignty in a world marked by violence and conflict, saturated with weaponry and lacking effective mechanisms to ensure peace.”
“This is essentially what is happening in Sudan today, where the conflict has resulted in more than ten million displaced persons. The conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces serves to thwart the democratic process the people have been struggling for since 2018, as rival military groups struggle to control the country and its resources,” Brito articulated.
US hybrid wars remains chief obstacle to global cooperation
“Our task, our test, is to make sure that the forces holding us together are stronger than those that are pulling us apart,” Biden claimed in his address to the UN, despite his administration’s wielding of sanctions that cause economic devastation throughout the world.
For decades, the international community has been calling on the United States to lift deadly sanctions on Cuba that are part of an over 60-year-long blockade against the socialist nation. Most recently, a group of nearly 600 parliamentarians from 73 different countries penned a joint letter condemning the continued inclusion of Cuba on the list. And 35 former heads of state from across the globe penned a separate letter to Biden, urging him to remove Cuba from the US’s “State Sponsors of Terrorism” list.
But when it comes to US sanctions and other violations of the sovereignty of other countries, Cuba is but one facet. Comprehensive US sanctions target and put a stranglehold on the economies of countries such as Iran, North Korea, Russia, Venezuela, and Syria. Other nations, such as China, are under constant attack on many fronts, whether through media fear mongering or military exercises near their territories.
And yet in his speech to the UNGA, Biden seems to deny that his administration has deliberately stoked conflict with China. “We also need to uphold our principles as we seek to responsibly manage the competition with China so it does not veer into conflict,” Biden pontificated. “We stand ready to cooperate on urgent challenges for the good of our people and the people everywhere.”
According to Amanda Yee, journalist, anti-imperialist activist, and host of The China Report on BreakThrough News, Biden’s China strategy has nothing to do with managed competition. “In reality, it’s a belligerent policy which will only escalate toward war,” Yee told Peoples Dispatch.
“What he calls ‘strengthening our network of alliances and partnerships across the Indo-Pacific’ really means the continuation of arming Taiwan, building more military bases on allies’ soil and in the South China Sea, sending cruise missiles to Japan, conducting war games exercises in South Korea—all to further build up the military encirclement of China.”
The future of US democracy
“I’ve made the preservation of democracy the central cause of my presidency,” Biden claimed during his address. And yet those in the US who have protested against their governments’ domestic and foreign policies have faced police violence, mass arrests, and even deportation.
As US presidential elections fast approach, whether the winner is Biden’s successor Kamala Harris or the ultra-conservative former president Donald Trump, anti-imperialist activists can expect more of the same repression.
Original article by Natalia Marques republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license
Climate scientists call on Labour to pause £1bn plans for carbon capture
Letter says technologies to produce blue hydrogen and capture CO2 are unproven and could hinder net zero efforts
Leading climate scientists are urging the government to pause plans for a billion pound investment in “green technologies” they say are unproven and would make it harder for the UK to reach its net zero targets.
Labour has promised to invest £1bn in carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) to produce blue hydrogen and to capture carbon dioxide from new gas-fired power stations – with a decision on the first tranche of the funding expected imminently.
However, in the letter to the energy security and net zero secretary, Ed Miliband, the scientists argue that the process relies on unproven technology and would result in huge emissions of planet-heating CO2 and methane – gases that are driving the climate crisis.
“We strongly urge you to pause your government’s policy for CCUS-based blue hydrogen and gas power, and delay any investment decision … until all the relevant evidence concerning the whole-life emissions and safety of these technologies has been properly evaluated,” they write.
The letter, which is signed by leading climate scientists from the UK and US as well as campaigners, argues the plans would:
- Lock the UK into fossil fuel production for generations to come.
- Result in huge upstream emissions from methane leaks, transport and processing of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the US.
- Rely on carbon capture and storage (CCS) during the production of hydrogen – technology they say has been abandoned in the vast majority of similar projects around the world.
- Pose a danger to the public if there are any leaks from pipes carrying the captured carbon. At least 45 people had to be taken to hospital after a leak in the US.
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Labour Conference 2024: ‘Britain needs investment, not austerity mark two’
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/britain-needs-investment-not-austerity-mark-two
Delegates defy Starmer by voting to reject the callous cut to pensioners’ winter fuel allowance after Unite chief’s barn-storming speech
LABOUR conference defied Sir Keir Starmer today and voted to reject the callous cut to pensioners’ winter fuel allowance.
Delegates backed a motion from Unite the union demanding that the government “reverse the introduction of means-testing for the winter fuel allowance.”
It also urged Labour to scrap the “fiscal rules which prevent borrowing to invest” and introduce a wealth tax on the top 1 per cent and an excess profits tax.
In a barn-storming speech, Unite general secretary Sharon Graham recalled how the 1945 Labour government had rebuilt the country despite debt ratios three times the level of today.
She said: “People simply do not understand, I do not understand, how our new Labour government can cut the winter fuel allowance for pensioners and leave the super-rich untouched.
“This is not what people voted for. It is the wrong decision and needs to be reversed.
“We are the sixth-richest economy in the world. We have the money. Britain needs investment, not austerity mark two. We won’t get any gold badge for shaving peanuts off our debt.
“These fiscal rules are self-imposed and the decision to keep them is like hanging a noose around our necks.
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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/britain-needs-investment-not-austerity-mark-two