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Youth Lead Global Strike Demanding ‘Climate Justice Now’

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

Climate strikers march in Stockholm, Sweden, on April 19, 2024.  (Photo: Albin Haglund via Greta Thunberg/X)

“We are many people and youths who want to express our frustration over what decision-makers are doing right now: They don’t care about our future and aren’t doing anything to stop the climate crisis,” one young activist said.

Ahead of Earth Day, young people around the world are participating in a global strike on Friday to demand “climate justice now.”

In Sweden, Greta Thunberg joined hundreds of other demonstrators for a march in Stockholm; in Kenya, participants demanded that their government join the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty; and in the U.S., youth activists are kicking off more than 200 Earth Day protests directed at pressing President Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency.

“We’re gathered here to fight, once again, for climate justice,” Thunberg told Agence France-Presse at the Stockholm protest, which drew around 500 people. “It’s now been more than five and a half years that we’ve been doing the same thing, organizing big global strikes for the climate and gathering people, youths from the entire world.”

“I lost my home to climate change. Now I’m fighting so that others don’t lose their homes.”

The first global youth climate strike, which grew out of Thunberg’s Fridays for Future school strikes, took place on March 15, 2019. Since then, both emissions and temperatures have continued to rise, with 2023 blowing past the record for hottest year. Yet, according to Climate Action Tracker, no country has policies in place that are compatible with limiting global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.

“We are many people and youths who want to express our frustration over what decision-makers are doing right now: They don’t care about our future and aren’t doing anything to stop the climate crisis,” Karla Alfaro Gripe, an 18-year-old participant at the Stockholm march, told AFP.

The global strikes are taking place under the umbrella of Friday’s for Future, which has three main demands: 1. limit temperature rise to 1.5°C, 2. ensure climate justice and equity, and 3. listen to the most accurate, up-to-date science.

“Fight with us for a world worth living in,” the group wrote on their website, next to a link inviting visitors to find actions in their countries.

Participants shared videos and images of their actions on social media.

European strikers also gathered in London, Dublin, and Madrid.

In Asia, Save Future Bangladesh founder Nayon Sorkar posted a video from the Meghna River on Bangladesh’s Bola Island, where erosion destroyed his family’s home when he was three years old.

“I lost my home to climate change,” Sorkar wrote. “Now I’m fighting so that others don’t lose their homes.”

Also in Bangladesh, larger crowds rallied in Dhaka, Sylhet, Feni, and Bandarban for climate action.

“Young climate activists in Bandarban demand a shift to renewable energy and away from fossil fuels,” said Sajjad Hossain, the divisional coordinator for Youthnet for Climate Justice Bangladesh. “We voiced urgency for sustainable energy strategies and climate justice. Let’s hold governments accountable for a just transition!”

In Kenya, young people struck specifically to demand that the government sign on to the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.

“As a member of the Lake Victoria community, the importance of the treaty in our climate strikes cannot be overstated,” Rahmina Paullette, founder of Kisumu Environmental Champions and a coordinator for Fridays for Future Africa, said in a statement. “By advocating for its implementation, we address the triple threat of climate change, plastic pollution, and environmental injustice facing our nation.”

“Halting fossil fuel expansion not only safeguards crucial ecosystems but also combats the unjust impacts of environmental degradation, ensuring a more equitable and sustainable future for our community and the wider Kenyan society,” Paullette said.

In the U.S., Fridays for Future NYC planned for what they expected to be the largest New York City climate protest since September 2023’s March to End Fossil Fuels. The action will begin at Foley Square at 2:00 pm Eastern Time, at which point more than 1,000 students and organizers are expected to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to rally in front of Borough Hall.

The strike “is part of a national escalation of youth-led actions in more than 200 cities and college campuses around the country, all calling on President Biden to listen to our generation and young voters, stop expanding fossil fuels, and declare a climate emergency that meaningfully addresses fossil fuels, creating millions of good paying union jobs, and preparing us for climate disasters in the process,” Fridays for Future NYC said in a statement.

The coalition behind the climate emergency drive, which also includes the Sunrise Movement, Fridays for Future USA, and Campus Climate Network, got encouraging news on Wednesday when Bloomberg reported that the White House had reopened internal discussions into potentially declaring a climate emergency.

“We’re staring down another summer of floods, fires, hurricanes, and extreme heat,” Sunrise executive director Aru Shiney-Ajay said in a statement. “Biden must do what right Republicans in Congress are unwilling to do: Stand up to oil and gas CEOs, create green union jobs, and prepare us for climate disasters. Biden must declare a climate emergency and use every tool at his disposal to tackle the climate crisis and prepare our communities to weather the storm. If Biden wants to be taken seriously by young people, he needs to deliver on climate change.”

The coalition is planning events leading up to Monday including dozens of Earth Day teach-ins beginning Friday to encourage members of Congress to pressure Biden on a climate emergency and Reclaim Earth Day mobilizations on more than 100 college and university campuses to demand that schools divest from and cut ties with the fossil fuel industry.

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

Continue ReadingYouth Lead Global Strike Demanding ‘Climate Justice Now’

From America with cash: Right-wing groups want to end abortion in the UK

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Original article by Sian Norris republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Emboldened by the overturning of Roe vs Wade, US anti-abortion groups have the UK in their sights
 | Future Publishing/GettyImages / Pexels / Composition by James Battershill

A right-wing political and media ecosystem pushing a US-style anti-abortion agenda is gaining traction in the UK

Conservative MPs, hard-right media personalities, and US-backed Christian anti-abortion charities are working to spread their anti-abortion agenda ahead of a parliamentary debate on legislation that would stop women being imprisoned for terminating a pregnancy after 24 weeks.

Emboldened by their success in the United States with the Dobbs decision – the 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned the right to safe and legal abortion in the US – groups such as the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Edmund Burke Foundation are now seeking to rollback progress on reproductive rights around the world.

Their campaigns in the UK are based on strategies honed and perfected in the US. They use language shaped over decades to seed anti-abortion falsehoods that begin on social media before becoming talking points on conservative-friendly TV stations modelled on right-wing US news channels and far-right podcasts. Crucially, those behind the campaigns also invest millions of dollars to push their agenda in the UK.

“As if the US anti-abortion movement didn’t already have sufficient momentum, the Dobbs’ decision turbo-charged their motivation and reach,” Gillian Kane, the director of policy and advocacy research at pro-abortion non-governmental organisation Ipas, told openDemocracy.

“There are veteran organisations continuing their line of work, but also traditionally domestic-focused groups… see an opportunity to dip their toes in these crowded international waters.”

In the UK, Labour MP Stella Creasy being viciously attacked on social media for backing an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill that would end criminal sanctions for late-term abortions. These attacks were not started by a far-right activist or even an anti-abortion campaigner – but by her fellow MP Neil O’Brien, a former junior health minister in the Conservative Party-led government.

O’Brien claimed Creasy was “arguing for people to be able to kill a baby before the day it is due to be born”, branding the amendment “an incredibly extreme and bad proposal”. Contrary to his allegation, the legislation would not increase the 24-week limit in which abortions must be carried out. Rather, it would mean women who self-administer late-term abortions will not be imprisoned, after Carla Foster, a mother-of-three from Staffordshire, was jailed last year for illegally procuring her own abortion at around 33 weeks pregnant.

We shouldn’t send women to prison for decisions they make about their own bodiesLouise McCudden, MSI Reproductive Choices

“On principle, we shouldn’t send women to prison for decisions they make about their own bodies,” said Louise McCudden, the UK head of external affairs at MSI Reproductive Choices, an NGO providing contraception and safe abortion services. “However, the solution has to be about more than prison and sentencing. We need to remove women who end their own pregnancies from criminal law altogether. That can be done without making any changes to the way abortion care is regulated or provided.”

O’Brien’s message was provably wrong – but it was still shared by five of his Conservative colleagues. Soon, hard-right broadcasters began making similarly incendiary posts about the amendment, with GB News’ Darren Grimes and TalkTV’s Isabel Oakeshott branding Creasy’s proposal “infanticide” and “butchery” respectively.

On social media, posts targeting Creasy started to quote far-right conspiracy theories and descended into misogyny and transphobia. It is no coincidence that such rhetoric directly echoes the far-right propaganda that led the US Supreme Court to overturn Roe vs Wade – openDemocracy has found that many of those making false claims about the amendment have links to the US anti-abortion movement, which sees an opportunity to make reproductive rights a new frontline of the UK’s culture wars.

“Abortion isn’t divisive in this country like it is in the US,” said McCudden “Ninety percent of people [in Britain] are pro-choice, and many people are frankly shocked to discover that abortion sits within criminal law at all. That said, there’s a small but very vocal minority which does seem to be getting more aggressive.

“There has been a worrying trend towards greater policing of women’s reproductive choices, with women’s bodies implicitly treated as national resource, especially in policy debates about the ageing population.”

Funded by US cash

The campaign against the UK amendment is reminiscent of the ‘partial-birth abortion’ propaganda successfully deployed by the US-anti-abortion movement since the mid-1990s.

The term, which refers to late-stage abortions, is designed to make people think not of a fetus but “of a young child”, as conservative Robert Arnakis explained in 2017 at an event hosted by the anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+ think tank, Family Research Council.

Such is its effectiveness, according to the Family Research Council’s president, Tony Perkins, that Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election win can be traced back to the moment he referred to “partial birth abortions” during a candidate debate in Las Vegas.

So-called ‘partial birth abortions’ had been banned nationwide in the US by 2003. When that ban was challenged by Planned Parenthood in 2007, a Christian legal charity successfully argued it was constitutional all the way up to the Supreme Court. That charity was Alliance Defending Freedom, which would go on to fund the lawyer who won a fight to implement an abortion ban in Texas in 2021 and was influential in the Dobbs ruling that revoked Roe vs Wade.

But the ADF, which was founded in 1993, never intended to limit its influence over sexual and reproductive rights to the US. It has spent more than $31m on foreign activities since 2015, of which $27m has gone to Europe.

The charity is now splashing more cash in the region than ever before; in 2015, its European spend was $1.4m – by 2022 that had risen to $5.2m. While US organisations must declare who they fund at home, for foreign spending they only need to name the region their money is going to. This means it is impossible to parse the details of where exactly ADF’s dollars flow overseas – though tax returns reveal much of it goes to its own international branches.

The UK’s ADF branch, for example, has received more than £2m from its parent company since its first tax return in 2017. This has been spent on legal support for anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ protesters and societies, as well as on growing its political influence in the UK – more than doubling its expenditure from £370,000 in 2018 to £770,000 today.

ADF UK’s communications lead, Lois McLatchie-Miller, was among those amplifying opposition to Creasy’s amendment. The day after she tweeted Creasy’s plans were “barbaric”, she appeared on the far-right podcast Hearts of Oak, which claims to “bridge the transatlantic and cultural gap between the UK and the USA” and has platformed conspiracist voices.

British anti-abortion groups have also increased their spending and activity in recent years. Right to Life UK, an anti-abortion charity with close ties to numerous UK MPs, spent £705,000 last year, up from £200,000 five years earlier. And the extremist anti-abortion group Centre for Bio-Ethical Research UK – which in 2019 erected a billboard featuring graphic abortion imagery outside Creasy’s office – is now targeting her constituency with leaflets and “education displays”. Although the group’s small size means it does not have to report full accounts, its staff numbers have risen from four in 2017 to 12 today, suggesting an uptick in its spending.

US campaigns, UK MPs

Money alone won’t help global anti-abortion actors to push their agenda in the UK. As the posts on X reveal, they are being aided and legitimised by Conservative Party politicians, media channels such as GB News, and events such as the annual National Conservatism Conference.

In 2019, ADF International paid for flights and other travel expenses for anti-abortion MP Fiona Bruce to attend its youth conference – Areté Academy – in Vienna. The same year, she attempted to ban late-term abortions for specific fetal anomalies. Academy alumni have gone on to work at Bruce’s legal firm, and in September 2023, she took another donation to cover expenses from ADF International, this time worth £1,737.92.

In Westminster, ADF UK also “engages with the members of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Freedom of Religion or Belief”. It featured alongside a host of anti-abortion and pro-Brexit MPs – including then-home secretary Suella Braverman, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates – on the line-up of last year’s National Conservatism Conference, which was held in London.

NatCon, as the conference is more commonly known, is run by the Washington DC-based Edmund Burke Foundation. The 2024 conference – which took place in Brussels this week – was marred by controversies after police shut down the event during a speech by British hard-right politician Nigel Farage, following an order from a local mayor who feared a threat to public order. A court later ruled the event could resume and the ADF – which was again present at the conference – is backing a legal challenge against the mayor’s order.

On the bill for this year’s event were Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban and French presidential hopeful Eric Zemmour, as well as British politicians including Braverman and Cates. The latter made a name for herself at the 2023 event, when she echoed the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, saying: “There is one critical outcome that liberal individualism had failed to deliver and that is babies.” The white nationalist theory accuses Black and Brown migrants of ‘colonising’ white Europeans and blames white women’s “selfish individualism” for low birth rates.

Cates is now part of a number of MPs pushing anti-gender narratives, including attacks on trans rights, LGBTQ+ inclusive education, and abortion. Alongside Kruger, she is a co-chair of the New Conservatives, a group of Tory MPs that says it is fighting “a dangerous new culture that despises national sentiment…, welcomes mass migration, denigrates our nation’s history, and pursues a radical agenda on sex and gender which is directly harmful to children”.

The Legatum Institute – a British think tank that openDemocracy previously revealed receives funding from the foundation of US billionaire Charles Koch, who donates to an array of anti-abortion causes – gave £50,000 to the New Conservatives in December 2023.

Legatum is also behind the recently launched ARC Forum, where Cates and Kruger sit on the advisory board, and is a co-owner of GB News, a right-wing news channel that offers a platform to commentators promoting anti-gender disinformation and anti-trans and anti-drag conspiracies.

While GB News and its presenters and guests maintain a veneer of respectability, the anti-abortion disinformation they amplify is picked up by far-right social media accounts that espouse conspiracies such as the Great Replacement.

One such post attacked Creasy’s amendment and suggested that white women should be banned from having abortions, while black women should be encouraged to have them. Another, which came in reply to a post by Grimes warned the plan would mean “the native birth rate will further decline”.

Despite the growing volume of attacks, and the increased spending on attempts to reverse abortion rights, the UK has seen progress in liberalising reproductive healthcare in recent years. Parliament voted to decriminalise abortion in Northern Ireland in 2019, and women have been able to access telemedicine for abortion since the pandemic. MPs also voted to introduce buffer zones around clinics, although the law has yet to be implemented.

But such success is often met with increased backlash. While the attacks on Creasy’s amendments seem disparate, our analysis shows they are connected by a global anti-abortion movement funded by hard-right interests determined to shout louder and spend more to roll back women’s rights in the UK. Such forces have already succeeded in making trans rights part of their culture war. They want abortion to be next.

openDemocracy approached ADF UK, O’Brien, Cates, Bruce, Clarke-Smith, Grimes and the Legatum Institute for comment, including clarification on what they believe the sanction should be for women who terminate their pregnancy after 24 weeks. We received no reply.

Original article by Sian Norris republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. 

A dying baby, a Trump tweet: Inside network setting global right-wing agenda

Continue ReadingFrom America with cash: Right-wing groups want to end abortion in the UK

International coordinated actions shut it down for Gaza

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

Across the United States, Australia, and the UK, Palestine solidarity activists took action on April 15 as part of global call to strike for Gaza

Protesters blockade the entrance to O’Hare International Airport in Chicago (Photo: Dissenters)

April 15 marked yet another global day of solidarity with Palestine, in which activists across the globe in countries such as the United States, Australia, and the UK took action for Gaza. Activists were responding to a global call to strike for Gaza, which originated within Palestinian civil society.

In the United States, the global strike for Gaza also coincided with the day that taxes are due in the country (Tax Day). Activists used this as an opportunity to highlight how much of taxpayer money goes to the weapons industry.

In several cities, activists strategically targeted sectors of the war machine, including the offices of Lockheed Martin in Arlington, Virginia, the largest weapons manufacturer in the world. Activists who occupied the Arlington office highlighted that Lockheed Martin receives billions of dollars in taxpayer money each year, which is used to produce the arms that Israel uses to kill Palestinians.

While activists occupied the building, protesters outside marched up to the office doors, staging a rally and shouting at employees inside the building to quit their jobs. 

Activists also blockaded the entrance to a facility belonging to Boeing, another massive weapons manufacturer that supplies Israel, in St. Charles, Missouri.

A facility of weapons manufacturer Pratt and Whitney was also targeted in Connecticut, where organizers blocked the entrance to the factory to impede production. 

On the same day, several activists blockaded the road going to the Chicago O’Hare International Airport, blocking Terminals 1 through 3. Over 40 protesters were arrested after taking this action, who have as of now all been released.

Several bridge blockades took place in the Bay Area. Protesters first stopped traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge, holding banners that read “Stop the world for Gaza” and “End the siege on Gaza now!”

Protesters later took further action and shut down the Interstate 880 in Oakland. Altogether, the California Highway Patrol announced the arrests of 38 people. 

In London, activists with Palestine Action targeted the office of BNY Mellon, demanding that the bank divest with Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons company. BNY Mellon offices in Manchester were also targeted. 

In Adelaide, Australia, pro-Palestine activists occupied the office of Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s office. Activists said this action had been undertaken to “protest the government’s ongoing complicity in, and facilitation of, the genocide occurring in Gaza—a genocide which has been enabled by international forces, like Australia, to continue for over six months.”

In Melbourne, hundreds gathered in front of the parliament building, demanding that the Australian government stop cutting deals with Elbit systems. 

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

Continue ReadingInternational coordinated actions shut it down for Gaza

U.S. imperialism’s ‘ironclad’ support for Israel increases fascist danger at home

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Original article by C.J. ATKINS republished from peoples world under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States.

The Biden administration’s declaration of ‘ironclad support’ for Israel threatens to drive a wedge between the president and progressive voters, a potential electoral gift for Trump. In this photo, a woman walks by an election campaign billboard in Tel Aviv for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party that shows the Israeli leader with Donald Trump, Sept 15, 2019. Hebrew on billboard reads: ‘Netanyahu, in another league.’ | Oded Balilty / AP

President Joe Biden declared Saturday that U.S. support for Israel is “ironclad” as more than 300 slow-moving Iranian drones and missiles meandered across the sky toward Israeli military installations. With assistance from the U.S., Britain, France, and Jordan, it’s estimated that 99% of the weapons were destroyed in the air before reaching their targets. There were zero people killed.

As Biden’s declaration was being reported, the Pentagon issued a statement saying that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had spoken with his Israeli counterpart “and made clear that Israel could count on full U.S. support.”

On television, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu peddled the image of a besieged Israel fighting for its life. Wearing a stern face, he said, “We will defend ourselves against any threat and will do so level-headedly and with determination.”

Of course, once the cameras were off, the Israeli leader was no doubt smiling. That’s because the pledges from Biden and Austin guaranteed that U.S. weapons will keep flowing his way and that Western leaders’ criticism of his genocidal war in Gaza—which has killed more than 33,000 Palestinians—will be tamped down.

It wasn’t just Netanyahu celebrating this weekend, though. Here in the U.S., ex-President Donald Trump and his allies were also beaming. The militaristic neocons and religious extremists that make up different wings of the Republican coalition were united in cheering for a bigger war and blaming Biden for disaster.

They sense a moment of opportunity to divide anti-MAGA forces, and the policy being pursued by the White House is unfortunately aiding them in their effort. All these developments combine to make the demand for an immediate arms embargo on Israel all the more urgent.

Settler rampage: A Palestinian woman attacked by illegal Israeli settlers arrives at the Palestine Medical Complex in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Friday, April 12, 2024. While the world was consumed with the Iranian attack on Israel, dozens of Israeli settlers rampaged through a Palestinian village, killing Palestinians and destroying property. In Gaza, meanwhile, the genocidal destruction also continued unabated. | Nasser Nasser / AP

Netanyahu’s partial victory

The U.S. response to the Iranian attack was a partial victory for Netanyahu.

The weekend assault by Tehran was the result of Israel’s April 1 bombing of the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Syria. That last part is worth stating again—the Iranian attack this weekend was not some unprovoked incident; it was retaliation for an Israeli action that killed 13 people at an Iranian diplomatic outpost two weeks ago.

If one were only getting their news from the mainstream corporate media in the U.S. or listening to the words of many political leaders in Washington, they would probably never know that it was Israel that had provoked Iran.

That doesn’t make the latter part of some anti-imperialist alliance nor necessarily a friend of the Palestinians, but it is a context that is inconvenient for the narrative of an innocent Israel alone against aggressive neighbors.

At any rate, Netanyahu managed to prompt Iran to elevate the war danger. That will get him his weapons and temporarily hush the increasingly critical voices of allies skeptical of his execution of the war in Gaza. But the Iran provocation was not quite the complete win he’d hoped for.

The bigger goal was to escalate the war against Gaza into a wider regional war that would include direct U.S. involvement in the fighting. He wants to make U.S. imperialism not just his accomplice but his direct partner in waging war in the Middle East.

Why? The reasons are many.

So far, the Gaza genocide is not achieving many of its declared aims. Hamas has not been smashed. The hostages have not been freed. Gaza has been destroyed and tens of thousands have been killed, but the plan to completely eradicate the Palestinian presence there hasn’t materialized. That’s the case thanks to both Palestinian resistance and the refusal of Israel’s neighboring states to transform themselves into permanent refugee camps.

Meanwhile, the war is increasingly unpopular at home, and hundreds of thousands are demanding elections in Israel—elections which would certainly result in Netanyahu’s removal from office and the resumption of a long-delayed corruption trial that could send him to prison.

Clearly, he needs and wants this war to drag on as long as possible and to become as big and involve as many countries as possible, particularly one country—the United States.

To Netanyahu’s disappointment, however, Biden told him to consider the shootdown of all the Iranian missiles “a win” and close the book for now: Don’t expect U.S. help in any follow-up attacks on Iran.

The coalition for war

But there are other forces coalescing to give Israel the bigger war it wants.

John Bolton—former Trump cabinet member and one of the architects of the U.S. war in Iraq—is rallying neocons in the U.S. to squeeze Biden. Ever since President George W. Bush declared Iran to be part of the “Axis of Evil” over 20 years ago, Bolton and his allies have been angling for a fight with that country.

In January this year, he was already telegraphing the message that the U.S. has “no option but to attack Iran.”  This weekend, he said “passivity…would be a big mistake” and said Biden was “an embarrassment” for urging Israel not to attack Iran (again).

The Evangelical Christian leaders who command major swathes of the Trump MAGA coalition, meanwhile, are revving up their followers for war, as well.

Televangelist Pastor John Hagee, founder of the lobbyist group Christians United for Israel, characterized the Iranian attack as the fulfillment of prophecy, the beginning of the “Gog and Magog war” predicted in the Bible. Demonizing those who advocate a ceasefire in Gaza, Hagee said on Sunday that “the word de-escalate is music to the ears of Hamas and Iran.”

He and other pro-war Christian leaders will be going to Congress “like a bulldozer” in the coming days, he said, ordering lawmakers to “bless Israel” with more U.S. taxpayer-funded weaponry. In the meantime, he urged the faithful to bless the ministry run by him and his son with their hard-earned money.

Then, turning to the 2024 U.S. elections, Hagee indirectly endorsed Donald Trump when he called the Iranian attack on Israel “a tribute to the weak and pathetic leadership of Joe Biden.”

Fascist threat, imperialist strategy

Although Hagee’s remarks are often dismissed as the ravings of a conman cult leader, he illuminates the class and democratic contradictions that define U.S. capitalism and an electoral contest that is forcing voters to choose between two varieties of imperialism.

The absurdity of the moment was perhaps best illustrated when the red-hatted legions at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania on Sunday broke into chants of “Genocide Joe,” and their leader responded, “They’re not wrong!”

Trump paired his apparent acknowledgement that Israel was committing genocide with U.S. complicity with a “God bless Israel” platitude and an affirmation that the Iranian attack wouldn’t have happened if he was president.

Follow the logic (if there is such a thing with Trump), and you get a pledge that he will do an even better job at assisting in genocide and supporting the Israeli military if he is re-elected.

An open fascist who has already tried to overthrow the U.S. government before and is working tirelessly with Republican officials across the country to destroy democracy is openly and cynically attempting to drive a wedge between the Democratic nominee and anti-war voters with a pro-war message.

Does Trump actually expect to win the votes of many pro-Palestinian voters? No, most of them wouldn’t give him the time of day, and he knows it. The goal is to demobilize progressive voters and stoke discontent toward Biden. Trump’s team has done its calculations, and it knows that getting Democratic-leaning voters to stay home in a few key states could be enough for him to win. And the threat extends down-ballot, because it’s not just Biden who’d be in trouble but other progressive candidates running on the Democratic ticket at the state and local levels, as well.

Unfortunately, the imperialist strategy being pursued by the Biden administration is making Trump’s task easier. The unity that’s needed to block fascism at the polls in November is jeopardized every time the president approves another weapons shipment to Israel or reaffirms his “ironclad” support of the government in Tel Aviv.

Ceasefire alone cannot be the demand of the peace movement in our country. A total and complete arms embargo on Israel is an absolute necessity—not just for saving the lives of the Palestinian people and preventing a wider Middle East war, but for saving U.S. democracy from a fascist takeover.

Many organizations and leaders are already making that call, including Jewish Voice for Peace, which on Sunday issued yet another call for the U.S. to end all military funding and weapons sales.

Rep. Cori Bush again reiterated the demand she and other lawmakers have made for an end to the “shameful and unconditional” arming of the Israeli government as it commits war crimes. “The people of our country do not want war,” she said.

There are a million reasons to vote against Trump in November, and almost everyone who is a part of or connected to the mass labor, anti-war, African-American, Latino, immigrant rights, LGBTQ, and other democratic movements know them by heart. But the Democratic National Committee and the Biden campaign cannot simply rely on the bogeyman of Trump to motivate voters. The administration’s Gaza policy must change.

Every dollar for Israel’s war is another crack in the anti-MAGA coalition that’s needed to stop fascism in November.

As with all news-analytical and op-ed articles published by People’s World, this article reflects the views of its author.

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Original article by C.J. ATKINS republished from peoples world under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States.

Continue ReadingU.S. imperialism’s ‘ironclad’ support for Israel increases fascist danger at home

UN Tells Israel: Cease Fire; NYT Says: If You Want

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Original article by DAVE LINDORFF republished from FAIR under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The editorial boards of the nation’s major media organizations must have been frantic last week.

Used to reporting on US foreign policy, wars and arms exports so as to portray the United States as a benevolent, law-abiding and democracy-defending nation, they were confronted on March 25 with a real challenge dealing with Israel and Gaza. No sooner did the Biden administration, for the first time, abstain and thus allow passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution that was not just critical of Israel, but demanded a ceasefire in Gaza, than US officials began declaring that the resolution that they allowed to pass was really meaningless.

It was “nonbinding,” they said.

The New York Times (3/25/24) reported that US’s UN Ambassdor “Thomas-Greenfield called the resolution ‘nonbinding’”—and let no one contradict her.

That was enough for the New York Times (3/25/24), which produced the most one-sided report on the decision. That article focused initially on how Resolution 2728 (which followed three resolutions that the US had vetoed, and a fourth that was so watered down that China and Russia vetoed it instead) had led to a diplomatic dust-up with the Israeli government: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled a planned visit to Washington by a high-level Israeli delegation to discuss Israel’s planned invasion of Rafah and the future of Gaza and the West Bank.

The Times quoted Richard Gowan, a UN expert at the International Crisis Group: “The abstention is a not-too-coded hint to Netanyahu to rein in operations, above all over Rafah.”

Noting that “Security Council resolutions are considered to be international law,” Times reporters Farnaz Fassihi, Aaron Boxerman and Thomas Fuller wrote, “While the Council has no means of enforcing the resolution, it could impose punitive measures, such as sanctions, on Israel, so long as member states agreed.”

This was nevertheless followed by a quote from Washington’s UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who abstained from the otherwise unanimous 14–0 vote of the rest of the Security Council, characterizing the resolution as “nonbinding.”

The Times offered no comment from any international law scholars, foreign or US, to rebut or even discuss that claim. Such an expert might have pointed to the unequivocal language of Article 25 of the UN Charter: “The members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter.”

If the US offered its claim that this language only applies to resolutions explicitly referencing the UN Charter’s Chapter VII, dealing with “threats to the peace,” an international law expert (EJIL: Talk!, 1/9/17) might note that the International Court of Justice stated in 1971, “It is not possible to find in the Charter any support for this view.”

‘Creates obligations’

The Washington Post (3/26/24) quoted an international law expert to note that the resolution “creates obligations for Israel and Hamas.”

The Washington Post (3/26/24), though like the Times a firm defender of Washington’s foreign policy consensus, did marginally better. While the Times didn’t mention Britain or France, both major US NATO allies, in its piece on the Security Council vote, the Post noted that the four other veto powers—Britain and France, as well as China and Russia—had all voted in favor of the resolution, along with all 10 elected temporary members of the Council.

The Post also cited one international law legal expert, Donald Rothwell, of the Australian National University, who said the “even-handed” resolution “creates obligations for Israel and Hamas.”

While that quote sounds like the resolution is binding, the Post went on to cite Gowan as saying, “I think it’s pretty clear that if Israel does not comply with the resolution, the Biden administration is not going to allow the Security Council members to impose sanctions or other penalties on Israel.”

The Post (3/25/24) actually ran a stronger, more straightforward piece a day earlier, when it covered the initial vote using an AP story. AP did a fairer job discussing the fraught issue of whether or not the resolution was binding on the warring parties, Israel and Hamas (as well as the nations arming them).

That earlier AP piece, by journalist Edith M. Lederer, quoted US National Security spokesperson John Kirby as explaining that they decided not to veto the resolution because it “does fairly reflect our view that a ceasefire and the release of hostages come together.”

Because of the cutbacks to in-house reporting on national and international news  in most of the nation’s major news organizations, most Americans who get their news from television and their local papers end up getting dispatches—often edited for space—from the New York Times, Washington Post or AP wire stories. (The Wall Street Journal, for example, ran the same AP report as the Post.)

‘A demand is a decision’

CNN (3/27/24) quoted US officials claiming the resolution was nonbinding—and noted that “international legal scholars” disagree.

In TV news, CNN (3/27/24) had some of the strongest reporting on the debate over whether the resolution was binding. The news channel said straight out, “While the UN says the latest resolution is nonbinding, experts differ on whether that is the case.”

It went on to say:

After the resolution passed, US officials went to great lengths to say that the resolution isn’t binding. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller repeatedly said during a news conference that the resolution is nonbinding, before conceding that the technical details of are for international lawyers to determine. Similarly, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby and US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield separately insisted that the resolution is nonbinding.

Those US positions were challenged by China’s UN Ambassador Zhang Jun, who “countered that such resolutions are indeed binding,” and by UN spokesperson Farhan Haq, who said Security Council resolutions are international law, and “so to that extent they are as binding as international law is.”

CNN quoted Maya Ungar, another International Crisis Group analyst:

The US—ascribing to a legal tradition that takes a narrower interpretation—argues that without the use of the word “decides” or evocation of Chapter VII within the text, the resolution is nonbinding…. Other member states and international legal scholars are arguing that there is legal precedence to the idea that a demand is implicitly a decision of the Council.

‘A rhetorical feint’

According to the Guardian (3/26/24), the US’s “nonbinding” interpretation “put the US at odds with other member states, international legal scholars and the UN itself.”

To get a sense of how one-sided or at best cautious the US domestic coverage of this critically urgent story is, consider how it was covered in Britain or Spain, two US allies in NATO.

The British Guardian (3/26/24), which also publishes a US edition, ran with the headline: “Biden Administration’s Gaza Strategy Panned as ‘Mess’ Amid Clashing Goals.” The story began:

The Biden administration’s policy on Gaza has been widely criticized as being in disarray as the defense secretary described the situation as a “humanitarian catastrophe” the day after the State Department declared Israel to be in compliance with international humanitarian law.

Washington was also on the defensive on Tuesday over its claim that a UN security Council ceasefire resolution on which it abstained was nonbinding, an interpretation that put the US at odds with other member states, international legal scholars and the UN itself.

But the real contrast is with the Spanish newspaper El País (3/29/24), which bluntly headlined its story “US Sparks Controversy at the UN With Claim That Gaza Ceasefire Resolution Is ‘Nonbinding.’” Not mincing words, the reporters wrote:

By abstaining in the vote on the UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the United States on Monday sparked not only the anger of Israel, which had asked it to veto the text, but also a sweeping legal and diplomatic controversy due to its claims that the resolution—the first to be passed since the start of the Gaza war—was “nonbinding.” For Washington, it was a rhetorical feint aimed at making the public blow to its great ally in the Middle East less obvious.

El País (3/29/24) quoted the relevant language from the UN Charter: “The members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter.”

After quoting Thompson-Greenfield saying it was a “nonbinding resolution,” and Kirby saying dismissively, “There is no impact at all on Israel,” they wrote,

These claims hit the UN Security Council—the highest executive body of the UN in charge of ensuring world peace and security—like a torpedo. Were the Council’s resolutions binding or not? Our was it that some resolutions were binding and others were not?

The reporters answered their own rhetorical question:

Diplomatic representatives and legal experts came out in force to refute Washington’s claim. UN Secretary-General António Guterres made his opinion clear: the resolutions are binding. Indeed, this is stated in Article 25 of the UN Charter: “The members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter.” Several representatives of the Security Council, led by Mozambique and Sierra Leone, pointed to case law to support this argument. The two African diplomats, both with legal training, said that the Gaza ceasefire resolution is binding, regardless of whether one of the five permanent members of the Council abstains from the vote, as was the case of the US. The diplomats highlighted that in 1971, the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) established that all resolutions of the UN Security Council are legally binding. The Algerian ambassador to the UN summed it up even more categorically: “Security Council resolutions are binding. Not almost, not partly, not maybe.”

Unlike most most US news organizations, El País went to an expert, in this instance seeking out Adil Haque, a professor of international law at Rutgers University, where he is a professor, and also executive editor of the law journal Just Security. Haque, they wrote, “has no doubts that the resolution is binding.” He explains in the article:

According to the UN Charter, all decisions of the Security Council are binding on all member states. The International Court of Justice has ruled that a resolution need not mention Chapter VII of the Charter [action in case of threats to the peace, breaches of the peace or acts of aggression], refer to international peace and security, or use the word “decides” to make it binding. Any resolution that uses “mandatory language” creates obligations, and that includes the term “demands” used in the resolution on Gaza.” He adds, “For now, it does not seem that the US has a coherent legal argument.”

It should be noted that the New York Times, when there is a dispute regarding a document, typically runs a copy of the document in question—or, if it is too long, the relevant portion of it. In the case of Resolution 2728, which even counting its headline only runs 263 words, that would have not been a hard call. Despite the disagreement between the US and most of the Council over the wording of the ceasefire resolution, the Times chose not to run or even excerpt it.

Original article by DAVE LINDORFF republished from FAIR under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Continue ReadingUN Tells Israel: Cease Fire; NYT Says: If You Want