neo-con

US Peace Advocates ‘Utterly Condemn’ Biden Decision to Send Israel 1,700 500lb Bombs

Spread the love

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Palestinian rescue workers search the rubble of a house destroyed by an Israeli airstrike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza on July 6, 2024. 
(Photo: Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

“The Biden administration is fully culpable for the slaughter of civilians in Gaza, and should be held accountable for its role in aiding and abetting Israel’s shocking war crimes.”

The Biden administration’s decision this week to lift a pause on the transfer of 500-pound bombs to the Israeli military drew outrage from U.S. peace advocates who warned the weapons would be used to commit additional war crimes in the Gaza Strip, which has been pulverized by nine months of relentless Israeli attacks.

Sara Haghdoosti, executive director of Win Without War, said in a statement Thursday that “we utterly condemn” the administration’s decision to release a shipment of 1,700 500-pound bombs to Israel’s military, which has killed more than 38,000 people in Gaza since the Hamas-led October 7 attack. The shipment was paused in May as Israel prepared to launch its deadly assault on Rafah.

“We are dismayed because these bombs will almost certainly be used to kill more innocents in Gaza, where indiscriminate bombing continues and where a starvation crisis only worsens,” said Haghdoosti. “And if they are not used there, they risk being used to terrible effect in Lebanon, where civilians would again bear the brunt of a disastrous possible war between Hezbollah and the Israeli government.”

“We are perplexed because the White House is, yet again, using arms transfers to directly undermine its stated policy aims—both to secure a cease-fire and protect civilians in Gaza, and to avoid a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah that would devastate the region,” Haghdoosti continued. “Releasing this transfer signals to the Israeli government that, if cease-fire talks again stall, the war in Gaza can continue and that a massive conflict with Hezbollah can begin, with no real U.S. pushback.”

President Joe Biden “must reverse this decision, which makes no sense as politics or policy,” she added.

Biden, who is facing mounting calls to drop his reelection campaign, was not asked about the reversal during his closely watched press conference at the conclusion of NATO’s 2024 summit in Washington, D.C. late Thursday.

The administration’s decision to lift the pause came following what The Washington Post described as “a pressure campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and pro-Israel lobbyists in the United States, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, demanding the resumption of all weapons shipments regardless of their lethality.”

Last month, Netanyahu—who is facing a possible arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC)—released a video complaining that the administration was “withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel.”

The U.S. is Israel’s top arms supplier and has sent Israel billions of dollars worth of weapons and other military equipment since October 7—weaponry that Israel has repeatedly used to commit atrocities in Gaza.

An unnamed administration official told the Post that the U.S. was mostly concerned about the 2,000-pound bombs that were part of the initially planned shipment, rather than the 500-pound bombs. The 2,000-pound bombs will remain on hold, the official said.

Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) joined Win Without War in demanding that the Biden administration walk back its decision to lift the pause on the 500-pound bombs, warning that “providing such massive, explosive weapons with wide-area effects despite Israel’s systematic and deliberate deployment of such bombs in built-up civilian areas throughout Gaza further exposes U.S. officials to liability for war crimes prosecution.”

“This week alone, Israel used U.S. weapons to strike a school during a soccer game killing scores of children, and ordered the forced evacuation of hundreds of thousands of desperate civilians from Gaza City,” said DAWN senior adviser Josh Paul, who resigned from the U.S. State Department last year over the Biden administration’s continued arming of Israel.

“Lifting a suspension on the delivery of 500lb bombs meant to prevent the invasion of Rafah, only to then send Israel those bombs to enable the further destruction of Gaza City, is not only an act of perversity but a lawless one as well,” Paul said.

Raed Jarrar, DAWN’s advocacy director, called on the ICC to “investigate U.S. officials for their complicity in the genocidal atrocities in Gaza, insisting on providing Israel with some of the most lethal weapons in the world despite full knowledge that Israel is using them unlawfully against Palestinian civilians.”

“The Biden administration is fully culpable for the slaughter of civilians in Gaza, and should be held accountable for its role in aiding and abetting Israel’s shocking war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Jarrar added.

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Failed US Military Pier Offered ‘Humanitarian Gloss’ as Israel Starved Gaza

Entire Families Among Dozens of Bodies Recovered After Israel’s Gaza City Onslaught

Continue ReadingUS Peace Advocates ‘Utterly Condemn’ Biden Decision to Send Israel 1,700 500lb Bombs

Failed US Military Pier Offered ‘Humanitarian Gloss’ as Israel Starved Gaza

Spread the love

Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

U.S. troops prepare components of the Gaza aid pier on March 15, 2024. (Photo: United States Naval Institute)

“The entire operation was a failed exercise in public relations by the Biden administration,” said one observer.

After failing to re-anchor its “humanitarian pier” in Gaza, the Pentagon said Thursday that the much-ballyhooed project—which critics dismissed as a “public relations ploy” that did next to nothing to stop the deadly starvation spreading in the besieged Palestinian enclave—would shut down indefinitely.

Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder said U.S. troops had failed to reconnect the floating Trident Pier to Gaza’s shore due to “technical and weather-related issues,” according to The Washington Post.

The $320 million project—which consists of a floating offshore barge and 1,800-foot causeway to the shore—was touted as eventually being able to accommodate up to 150 aid trucks per day. Instead, it facilitated the shipment of the equivalent of about a single day’s worth of prewar food deliveries while operating for a total of less than three weeks.

“As a pier, it’s shutting down. As a metaphor, it will live forever,” said Tom Philpott, a senior researcher at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for a Livable Future.

Stephen Semler, co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute, welcomed the project’s demise.

“The U.S. pier was never supposed to work. It was designed to give a humanitarian gloss to [U.S. President Joe] Biden’s pro-genocide policy in Gaza,” he said on social media. “Good riddance to this failed PR stunt.”

However, during a Thursday press conference, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan defended the pier, arguing that it “has made a difference in trying to deal with the heartbreaking humanitarian situation in Gaza.”

“I see any result that produces more food, more humanitarian goods getting to the people of Gaza, as a success,” he asserted. “It is additive. It is something additional that otherwise would not have gotten there when it got there. And that is a good thing.”

Even if the pier had achieved its expected capacity, it would still have been far fewer than the prewar daily mean of more than 500 truckloads that U.S. and United Nations officials said are required to meet the needs of a population facing critical shortages of food, water, medicine, and other lifesaving supplies.

The pier was in operation for only about 20 days in May before it broke apart during stormy conditions. The structure was subsequently repaired, but then was dismantled just a week after reopening in June due to more rough seas.

It is also likely that the pier was used for military purposes during the June raid by Israel Defense Forces troops, who killed or wounded hundreds of Palestinians—including many women and children—during the rescue of four Israelis kidnapped by Hamas militants on October 7.

“It seems clear that the entire operation was a failed exercise in public relations by the Biden administration, which has sat on its hands while the extremist Netanyahu cabinet, full of the Israeli equivalent of neo-Nazis, has half-starved or in some instances whole-starved the Palestinians of Gaza,” Middle East expert Juan Cole wrote Friday, referring to the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

At least dozens of Palestinians, mostly children, have died in Gaza due to a lack of food, water, and medical treatment. Palestinian and international agencies say that Israel’s 280-day war on Gaza has left at least 137,500 people dead, maimed, or missing; around 90% of the embattled strip’s population forcibly displaced; and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians starving.

“A U.S. administration has to have an answer when reporters ask it why it is allowing Palestinian children to become emaciated, and the pier was an attempted answer,” Cole added. “The other possibility was for the Biden administration to man up and just tell Netanyahu and his rogues’ gallery cabinet that they cannot starve innocent civilians as part of their campaign against Hamas, and that if they do not cut it out there will be hell to pay. But Biden is in the tank for the Israeli government.”

U.N. experts and others have called Israel’s forced starvation of Palestinians in Gaza “a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine.”

The International Court of Justice—which is weighing whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza—has ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts in the embattled enclave, to “immediately halt” its offensive in Rafah, and to stop blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza in the face of worsening “famine and starvation.” Israel is accused of flouting all three ICJ orders.

Meanwhile, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan accused top Israeli officials of using “starvation as a weapon of war” and “extermination” in his May application for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Khan is also seeking to arrest three Hamas leaders for alleged crimes including extermination and rape.

Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingFailed US Military Pier Offered ‘Humanitarian Gloss’ as Israel Starved Gaza

Morning Star Editorial: Starmer in Washington continues a calamitous drive to war

Spread the love

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-starmer-washington-continues-calamitous-drive-war

Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria board a plane at Stansted Airport in Essex, England, July 9, 2024 as they head to Washington DC to attend a Nato summit

LABOUR has spent its first week in power signalling a changed approach from the Tories — a national wealth fund for infrastructure projects, a reset to devolution with a new council of the regions.

In Washington Keir Starmer’s purpose is different — to show his “cast-iron commitment” to continue the last government’s subordination to US foreign policy, co-ordinated through the Nato military alliance.

This was never in doubt — Starmer is merely affirming Britain’s role in the US-led imperialist bloc as every postwar Labour prime minister has before him.

There are good reasons, though, to regard British foreign policy as every bit as disastrous as domestic policy in recent decades.

On one level the Morning Star can agree with Starmer’s lines at the Nato summit — yes, the world is getting more dangerous.

Two current major wars, in Palestine and Ukraine, show a real capacity to expand into wider conflicts and drag in other powers.

Both relate, in different ways, to the major fault line in international relations, that between the US and the old European colonial powers on one side, and the rest of a world in which that transatlantic bloc carries less and less weight.

Starmer’s speech, calling on Nato members to spend more on their militaries, follows the Western convention of presenting the alliance as guarantors of a “rules-based international order” which is under threat from rising “authoritarian states.”

In reality, the arms race is driven by Nato. Not only does the United States spend more on its military than the next 10 countries put together, the Nato bloc taken together is responsible for 75 per cent of all military spending worldwide, though it comprises just 12 per cent of the world population and 30 per cent of its GDP.

Three-quarters of all arms spending is not, in Starmer’s eyes, enough. Though Labour opts to stick to arbitrary Tory spending rules overall, it promises billions more for the military: raising the defence budget to 2.5 per cent of GDP entails a rise from £64.6bn to £87.1bn, a £22.5bn increase in spending annually. By contrast, axing the two-child benefit cap to lift hundreds of thousands of kids out of poverty is something Labour says it cannot afford: the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates this would cost £3.4bn a year.

Nor can Nato’s claim to spend this money defending a “rules-based order” stand scrutiny. Last month saw Julian Assange secure his freedom after years of persecution in British jails for exposing the war crimes of “the empire,” as the US bloc is widely known in the global South.

Britain has been alongside the US in ripping up international law with wars of aggression against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, conflicts whose consequences persist in ongoing conflicts and refugee crises today. Today’s militarism risks igniting a new world war with China, the principal economic and technological rival to the US. All in the name of upholding a global system of unfair trade treaties and unfettered corporate access to resources that keeps a majority of the human race in poverty, is wrecking ecosystems at an accelerating rate and is destabilising the climate into the bargain.

Nothing could be more important than stopping this war. Those who claim the troop build-ups are a deterrent ignore history, not just that of the first world war but recent history: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine followed the expansion of Nato to its borders, its encirclement by US bases and a whole series of enormous Nato military manoeuvres — the “Defender Europe” exercises — simulating war against it. Unsurprisingly, frightening Russia did not prevent war but provoked it, feeding a parallel rise in nationalist militarism there.

The drive to World War III will not be challenged by the opposition Conservatives, or by more than a handful of MPs. But its consequences if unchallenged are unthinkable. So a real opposition must be built outside Westminster.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-starmer-washington-continues-calamitous-drive-war

Continue ReadingMorning Star Editorial: Starmer in Washington continues a calamitous drive to war

Two Thirds of Anti-Net Zero Tories Wiped Out in UK Election

Spread the love

Original article by Adam Barnett and Joey Grostern republished from DeSmog.

From left to right, outgoing net zero sceptic MPs Steve Baker, Miriam Cates, Liz Truss, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Andrea Jenkyns and Philip Davies. Credit: Official House of Commons portraits. Design: Adam Barnett

The result has “buried Sunak’s anti-green agenda once and for all”, said Will McCallum of Greenpeace UK.

Labour’s landslide victory over the Conservatives has left the party’s anti-net zero wing in tatters. 

DeSmog’s analysis of Westminster’s influential Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG) found that two thirds of its supporters are no longer represented in parliament following the July 4 general election.

Twenty-four of the 37 MPs supportive of the backbench grouping were voted out – a loss of 65 percent of its backers. Outgoing supporters include former energy secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg, former NZSG co-chair Steve Baker, and Net Zero Watch board member Andrea Jenkyns. 

A further five stood down or resigned before the election, among them veteran climate crisis John Redwood.

The group’s former chair Craig Mackinlay, who contracted sepsis in September, has been appointed to the House of Lords by outgoing prime minister Rishi Sunak. Mackinlay has said he would use this platform to campaign for “sensible net zero”. 

The NZSG has actively campaigned against climate action since it was formed in 2021. The group’s joint letters to the Telegraph made front page news, as supporters urged the government to scrap “environmental levies on domestic energy”, “expand North Sea exploration” for oil and gas, and support “shale gas extraction” by lifting the ban on fracking. 

In addition to the NZSG grouping, former Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has become an outspoken critic of net zero since leaving Downing Street in 2022, was voted out on Thursday. 

Campaigners have welcomed the departure of MPs opposed to climate action. “This landslide election victory has buried Sunak’s anti-green agenda once and for all along with many of its principle architects”, Will McCallum, co-executive director at Greenpeace UK, told DeSmog. 

“Most of the former MPs who sought to sow division and disinformation about net zero have lost at the ballot box.”

Meanwhile, 14 anti-net zero MPs were re-elected, including Labour MP Graham Stringer, who is on the board of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s main climate denial group, and Lee Anderson, who defected from the Tories to Reform UK earlier this year.  

Four new Reform MPs were also elected, including party leader Nigel Farage and chairman Richard Tice, both of whom have a record of climate science denial. 

Despite this, campaigners are still positive. McCallum added that “the biggest winners [in the election] – Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party – contested this election on strong green policies that will slash emissions, lower bills and deliver hundreds of thousands of new jobs”. 

“There is and has long been a public consensus on climate action in this country”, he said, and “the new government should feel empowered to be bold”. 

Here are some of the most prominent critics of net zero who have lost their seats: 

Jacob Rees-Mogg

Jacob Rees-Mogg, who lost his North East Somerset seat by more than 6,000 votes to Labour’s Dan Norris, was secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy under Liz Truss between September and October 2022. 

While in office he reportedly argued for lifting the ban on fracking for shale gas, and told the head of the UAE’s state investment company, in a private meeting revealed by DeSmog, that people need to “stop demonising oil and gas”. 

Since January 2023, Rees-Mogg has presented his own show on GB News, which regularly broadcasts climate science denial. Rees-Mogg has been a harsh critic of the government’s net zero policies, stating that “the current headlong rush to net zero risks impoverishing the nation to no global benefit on emissions”.

Steve [“Number two”] Baker

Steve Baker has led the charge against climate policies in parliament. Baker was a trustee of the UK’s main climate denial group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), from May 2021 to September 2022, when he stepped down to serve as Northern Ireland minister. He was co-chair of the NZSG, which operated as the GWPF’s caucus in parliament.  

At a 2021 Conservative Party conference event, Baker said that much climate science is “contestable” and “sometimes propagandised”, while claiming that some UN climate scenarios were “implausible”.

In February 2022, Baker received £5,000, and a further £10,000 in February 2023, from Neil Record, chair of Net Zero Watch, the campaign arm of the GWPF. 

On Thursday Baker lost his Wycombe seat to Labour’s Emma Reynolds by more than 4,000 votes. 

Dame Andrea Jenkyns 

Andrea Jenkyns, who lost her seat of Leeds and South West Morley by more than 7,000 votes to Labour’s Mark Sewards, sits on the board of Net Zero Watch, the campaign arm of the GWPF, the UK’s main climate science denial group. 

In March 2023 Jenkyns told parliament: “Personally, net zero, I think we need to ditch these targets, especially at the moment, and use whatever resources we’ve got under our feet.” She has described herself on Twitter as holding “no-to-net-zero views”.

Miriam Cates

Miriam Cates lost her Penistone and Stocksbridge seat by more than 9,000 votes to Labour’s Marie Tidball in Thursday’s general election. 

Cates was tipped as a rising star of the Conservative party, a “darling” of the Tory right. She is the co-chair of the New Conservatives, a socially conservative faction of the Tory party which received £50,000 in January from GB News investors the Legatum Group.

Cates also sits on the advisory board of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), a right-wing group fronted by prominent climate denier Jordan Peterson. 

Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference in London last year, Cates suggested that “epidemic levels of anxiety and confusion” are being caused by teaching children that “humanity is killing the Earth”. 

Philip Davies  

Philip Davies, who lost his Shipley seat by more than 8,000 votes to Labour’s Anna Dixon, has a long record of opposing climate policies. Davies was one of only five MPs to vote against the UK’s Climate Change Act in 2008. 

He currently works as a presenter for GB News, as does his wife and fellow Conservative politician Esther McVey, who was re-elected on Thursday. 

Liz Truss

A number of net zero sceptic MPs existed outside the NZSG grouping, among them former prime minister Liz Truss, who resigned in October 2022 after just 49 days in the job. As well as appointing Rees-Mogg energy secretary, Truss overturned the UK’s moratorium on fracking for shale gas – a key demand from the Net Zero Scrutiny Group.

Since leaving Downing Street – and in between giving paid speeches to U.S. anti-climate groups like CPAC and the Heritage Foundation – Truss has become an open opponent of net zero policies. 

In her 2024 book “Ten Years to Save the West”, Truss called for the independent Climate Change Committee to be abolished, and attacked the UN COP process, which coordinates international action on climate change. Truss also claimed that while in cabinet she argued against the UK hosting the COP26 climate summit.

On Thursday, Truss lost her South West Norfolk seat by 630 votes to Labour’s Terry Jermy.

‘Watching Closely’

“It’s obviously fantastic news that 30 Tory MPs who’ve lobbied against climate policies are no longer in parliament”, said Jessica Townsend, founder of the MP Watch campaign group, which used DeSmog research in a recent event on “top ten climate denial MPs”.

Townsend noted that seven of the campaign’s list have won seats, including Reform’s Farage and GWPF director Graham Stringer.

“MP Watch will be watching these MPs closely in coming months as well as the influence fossil fuel companies and their think tanks may have on Labour in Westminster now that the power base has shifted,” she added.

Original article by Adam Barnett and Joey Grostern republished from DeSmog.

What does it mean to be a climate denier?

Continue ReadingTwo Thirds of Anti-Net Zero Tories Wiped Out in UK Election

Jeremy Corbyn wins Islington North as independent; Labour secures victory in general election

Spread the love

Original article republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Labour secures landslide victory in UK general election, but triumph marred by centrist program and stance on Gaza

Jeremy Corbyn has been re-elected to the British Parliament, this time as an independent candidate. Corbyn won in his long-standing constituency of Islington North with a margin of over 7,000 votes over Labour candidate Praful Nargund. According to Corbyn, the result in Islington North is “a warning to the incoming government that dissent cannot be crushed without consequences. That ideas of equality, justice, and peace are eternal.”

Labour leadership blocked Corbyn from standing as a party candidate in this election following years of a campaign against him within party structures and in corporate media. Like other Labour members leaning explicitly towards the left, Corbyn faced extreme pressure and attacks against his policies, even during his tenure as Labour leader, despite receiving widespread support among the public.

The incoming government Corbyn referred to will be a Labour one. Keir Starmer is set to become the next prime minister after the party secured one of its biggest electoral victories in history, winning 412 seats. In comparison, the Conservatives, who held power for almost 15 years, struggled to reach 121 seats. These results align with pre-election polls, which predicted that former prime minister Rishi Sunak and his party would be punished for failing to address crucial issues such as the cost of living crisis, struggling public services, including the National Health Service (NHS), and more.

Election night brought some surprises, even for the triumphant Labour. The party lost to independent candidates running on an explicitly pro-Palestine platform in several constituencies in addition to Islington North. Starmer’s stance on Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip since October last year, as well as Labour’s unwillingness to adopt a decisive call for a ceasefire early in the war on Gaza, alienated a significant part of the Labour voting base. Despite their eagerness to oust the Tories, thousands of voters made clear that the next government would be held accountable for its international alliances, including support for Israel.

Gains were recorded by the Green Party, which secured four seats in Parliament, and Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK, which obtained the same number of representatives despite joining the campaign at the last minute. The Liberal Democrats increased their representation to over 70 seats, while the Scottish National Party (SNP) suffered a major blow, keeping only 9 seats, down by 37 from the last election.

Despite widespread relief being reported at the Tories being ousted from power, many voters remain uncertain about what to expect from Starmer’s new cabinet. Labour’s campaign manifesto was described by many on the left as insufficient to represent a decisive break from the path set by the Tories, including the continued commodification of essential services such as healthcare. Speaking after the announcement of election results, Corbyn described the Labour manifesto as “thin, to put it mildly,” and emphasized that public demands for improvements will be huge.

Although the measures currently proposed by Labour are far from enough to get the UK on the right track, the presence of Corbyn and other progressive voices like Diane Abbott, who is likely to be re-elected as a Labour MP, will ensure the new administration is held accountable for its decisions.

“Tonight’s results in Islington North give us a glimpse of a different future, which puts the interests of the many ahead of those of the few,” Corbyn said in his post-election statement. “Tonight, we celebrate. Tomorrow, we organize. The energy we have unleashed will not go to waste.”

Original article republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Additional comments by dizzy dissident: I regard Keir Starmer as a thoroughly dishonest politician of the Tony Blair and Boris Johnson tradition. He has claimed to be a Socialist while intending to pursue a thoroughly conventional NeoLiberal and Zionist agenda. Despite campaigning on the inane slogan of “change” the reality is no change. Diss ent cannot be crushed without consequences.

Continue ReadingJeremy Corbyn wins Islington North as independent; Labour secures victory in general election