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Tag: US

  • ‘Finish the Problem’: Presumptive GOP Nominee Trump Endorses Gaza Genocide

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

    Former U.S. President Donald Trump attends a Super Tuesday election night watch party in Palm Beach, Florida on March 5, 2024.  (Photo: Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images)

    One commentator argued that while President Joe Biden has “bent over backward to support Israel,” Donald Trump would “be even worse.”

    Shortly before winning nearly every GOP primary on Super Tuesday and all but locking up the 2024 Republican nomination, former President Donald Trump said in a Fox News interview that he wants Israel to “finish the problem” in Gaza—a clear endorsement of a military campaign that has killed more than 30,000 people in less than five months and sparked one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in recent history.

    Fox host Brian Kilmeade told Trump that voters who have marked “uncommitted” on their primary ballots to register their opposition to President Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s war are “not gonna like you either because you are firmly in Israel’s camp.”

    “Yeah,” Trump responded.

    Asked whether he is “on board with the way the [Israel Defense Forces] is taking the fight to Gaza,” Trump said, “You’ve gotta finish the problem.”

    “You had a horrible invasion. It took place. It would have never happened if I was president, by the way,” said Trump, who went on to claim that Hamas militants attacked Israel because they “have no respect for Biden” and because Israel “got soft.”

    Trump dodged when asked whether he would support a cease-fire in Gaza.

    Watch:

    Until Tuesday, Trump had largely been quiet about Israel’s large-scale attack on the Gaza Strip, but as president he was a staunch supporter of the Israeli government.

    Trump’s administration recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, and reversed longstanding U.S. policy that deemed Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory “inconsistent with international law”—a shift that the Biden administration rolled back last month.

    Following Trump’s Fox interview Tuesday morning, the former president’s national press secretary Karoline Leavitt toldNBC News that Trump “did more for Israel than any American president in history.”

    “When President Trump is back in the Oval Office, Israel will once again be protected, Iran will go back to being broke, terrorists will be hunted down, and the bloodshed will end,” Leavitt added.

    With former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley officially dropping out of the GOP presidential primary race on Wednesday, a rematch between Biden and Trump is now essentially set for November.

    As Democratic voters have used state party primaries in recent weeks to voice their objections to Biden’s unconditional support for Israel, The New York Times reported Friday how the Trump campaign and its allies “plan to exploit that division to their advantage” during the general election.

    “One idea under discussion among Trump allies as a way to drive the Palestinian wedge deeper into the Democratic Party,” the Times reports, “is to run advertisements in heavily Muslim areas of Michigan that would thank Mr. Biden for ‘standing with Israel.’”

    In a column on Monday, The Intercept‘s James Risen argued that Trump and “his MAGA Republicans” would “be even worse” on Israel than the Biden administration, which has supported Israel’s Gaza assault militarily and diplomatically while also issuing mild calls for the protection of civilians, delivery of humanitarian aid, and a temporary cease-fire.

    “Trump is a big fan of war crimes, especially against Muslims,” wrote Risen, The Intercept‘s senior national security correspondent. “During his first term, he intervened on behalf of Special Operations Chief Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL platoon leader convicted of posing for a photo with the body of a dead Iraqi; another SEAL team member told investigators that Gallagher was ‘freaking evil,’ but Trump said at a political rally that he was one of ‘our great fighters.’ Trump also pardoned Blackwater contractors convicted of killing Iraqi civilians in a wild shooting spree in Baghdad’s Nisour Square. There is no chance that he would try to stop Israel from indiscriminately killing Palestinians.”

    “Although the Biden administration has bent over backward to support Israel, the president has said repeatedly in recent weeks that an independent Palestinian state is still possible. What’s more, political unrest within the Democratic Party is starting to have an impact on Biden, forcing changes in the White House’s approach to Israel,” Risen continued. “Trump would never face such pro-Palestinian pressure from within the Republican Party. He and his MAGA cult of Christian nationalists would never force Israel to accept a cease-fire—or a Palestinian state.”

    A previous version of this story misidentified Nikki Haley as the former governor of North Carolina.

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

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  • ‘Make Argentina Great Again’: Far-Right Trump and Milei Embrace at CPAC

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

    US-POLITICS-CONSERVATIVES 
    Argentine President Javier Milei speaks during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) meeting on February 24, 2024, in National Harbor, Maryland. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

    “This is an unholy alliance,” said one critic of the pair, “mark my words.”

    Disgraced former President Donald Trump of the United States and Argentina’s recently-elected libertarian President Javier Milei met and shared a warm embrace backstage at the annual CPAC gathering on Saturday.

    Milei, the libertarian firebrand who vowed to “chainsaw” his nation’s social programs and usher in a new era of neoliberal austerity in the Latin American nation, was in town to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference where Trump also spoke on Saturday afternoon.

    “It’s a very big honor for me,” Milei said to Trump as they met, with the Argentinian seeming to thank him for political support during his campaign.

    Trump responded by saying, “MAGA! Make Argentina Great Again.” As they posed for photos together, Trump said, “You look fantastic” and told Milei he was doing a great job.

    “I won’t forget you, I can promise you that,” Trump said.

    “I’ll see you again,” said Milei. “And next time I hope you will be president.”

    “I hope so too,” said Trump.

    Critics of the pair, like researcher Ana M. Fuentes, suggested the meeting was an ominous one.

    “Oh man. I was hoping the Milei meets Trump clip was a parody…but it’s not,” Fuentes said on social media. “This is an unholy alliance, born at CPAC, mark my words.”

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

  • The US Must Stop Arming Israel’s Assault on Hospitals

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

    Injured Palestinians, including children, are brought to Nasser Hospital to receive medical treatment following Israeli attacks in Khan Younis, Gaza, on January 22, 2024.  (Photo: Belal Khaled/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    If we can’t find the morality to stop, we may find we have created a world in which no one can count on upholding basic human rights.

    Many decades ago in Chicago, my favorite of several part-time student jobs was operating the “old-style” telephone switchboard at a small hospital called Forkosh Memorial. The console of coils and plugs included a mirror so operators could keep an eye on the hospital entrance, which on weekends and evenings was also monitored by an elderly, unarmed security guard named Frank. He sat at a classroom style desk near the entrance with a ledger book.

    Over the course of four years, on weekends and evenings, “security” at the hospital generally consisted solely of Frank and me. Fortunately, nothing much ever happened. The possibility of an attack, invasion, or raid never occurred to us. The notion of an aerial bombardment was unimaginable, like something out of War of the Worlds or some other sci-fi fantasy.

    Now, tragically, hospitals in Gaza and the West Bank have been attacked, invaded, bombed, and destroyed. News of additional Israeli attacks is being reported on a daily basis. Last week, Democracy Now! interviewed Dr. Yasser Khan, a Canadian ophthalmologist and eye surgeon who recently returned from a humanitarian surgical mission at the European Hospital in Khan Younis in Gaza. Dr. Khan spoke of bombings taking place every few hours resulting in a constant influx of mass casualties. The majority of patients he treated were children from age 2 to 17. He saw horrific eye injuries, shattered faces, shrapnel wounds, abdominal injuries, limbs severed above the bone, and traumas caused by drone-launched laser-guided missiles. Amid the overcrowding and chaos, healthcare workers tended to patients while lacking basic equipment, including anesthesia. Patients lay on the ground in unsterile conditions, vulnerable to infection and disease. Most of them also suffered from severe hunger.

    At Forkosh Hospital in the 1970s, I had a mirror to see what was happening behind my back, but everyone on Earth can see, directly, the horror of U.S. support for a genocidal event happening on our watch.

    Normally, a child who undergoes an amputation faces as many as 12 additional surgeries. Khan wondered who would do the follow-up care for these children, some of whom have no surviving relatives.

    He also noted sniper fire prevented doctors from going to work. “They’ve killed healthcare workers, nurses, paramedics; ambulances have been bombed. This has all been systematic,” Khan explained. “Now there are 10,000 to 15,000 bodies decomposing. It’s the rainy season right now in Gaza, so all the rainwater mixes with the decomposing bodies and that bacteria mixes with the drinking water supply and you get further disease.”

    According to Khan, Israeli forces have kidnapped 40 to 45 doctors, specifically targeting specialists and hospital administrators. Three healthcare professional organizations have issued a statement expressing deep concern that the Israeli military has abducted and unlawfully detained Dr. Khaled al-Serr, a surgeon at the Nasser Hospital in Gaza.

    On February 19, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described conditions in the Nasser hospital after Israel ordered evacuation of Palestinians from the complex. “There are still more than 180 patients and 15 doctors and nurses inside Nasser,” he said. “The hospital is still experiencing an acute shortage of food, basic medical supplies, and oxygen. There is no tap water and no electricity, except a backup generator maintaining some lifesaving machines.”

    Eight years ago, in October of 2015, the United States military destroyed Afghanistan’s Kunduz hospital, run by Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). For more than an hour, a C-130 transport plane repeatedly fired incendiary devices at the hospital’s emergency room and intensive care unit, killing 42 people. Thirty-seven additional people were injured. “Our patients burned in their beds,” read the MSF’s in-depth report. “Our medical staff were decapitated or lost limbs. Others were shot from the air while they fled the burning building.”

    The horrific attack outraged war resisters and human rights groups. I remember joining a group of activists in upstate New York who assembled outside a hospital emergency room with a banner proclaiming, “To bomb this site would be a war crime.”

    In 2009, on a smaller, yet still horrific scale, I witnessed an Israeli onslaught in Gaza called “Operation Cast Lead.” In the emergency room of the Al Shifa hospital, Dr. Saeed Abuhassan, an orthopedic surgeon, described experiences similar to Khan’s. This surgeon grew up in Chicago, very close to the neighborhood where I lived. I asked him what he would want me to tell our neighbors back home. He listed a litany of horrors, and then he stopped. “No,” he said. “First, you must tell them that U.S. taxpayer money paid for all of these weapons.”

    Taxpayer money feeds the bloated, swollen Pentagon budget. U.S. Senators, last week, cowed by AIPAC, decided to send Israel an additional $14.1 billion to boost military spending. Only three Senators voted against the bill.

    From Palestine, Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian-American human rights attorney, wrote on X: “The scary part is not that Israel is planning the forcible transfer of the Palestinians it hasn’t slaughtered, but that the so-called ‘civilized world’ is allowing it to happen. The ramifications of this coordinated evil will haunt its collaborators for generations to come.”

    At Forkosh Hospital in the 1970s, I had a mirror to see what was happening behind my back, but everyone on Earth can see, directly, the horror of U.S. support for a genocidal event happening on our watch. Gravely distorted versions of what occurred on October 7, cannot—even if believed—justify the scale of the horrors being reported in Gaza and the West Bank each day.

    The U.S. government continues enthusiastically to bankroll Israel’s systemic and inhumane destruction of Gaza. U.S. advisers make feeble attempts to suggest Israel should pause or at least try to be more precise in their attacks. In its quest for hegemonic superiority, the United States tears into ever tinier shreds whatever remains of a commitment to human rights, equality, and human dignity.

    What kept Forkosh Hospital secure, decades ago, was a social contract that presumed safety for a small hospital serving the local population.

    If we can’t find the morality to stop supplying weapons for ongoing Israeli onslaughts against Gaza and its places of healing, we may find we have created a world in which no one can count on upholding basic human rights. We may be creating intergenerational wounds of hatred and sorrow from which there will never, ever be any safe place to heal.

    A version of this article first appeared on The Progressive website.

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

  • Chicago Joins ‘Historic Wave of Lawsuits’ Against Big Oil

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

    Environmental activists march during the Global Climate Strike in downtown Chicago, Illinois, on September 15, 2023.  (Photo: Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images)

    The city alleges the industry “funded, conceived, planned, and carried out a sustained and widespread campaign of denial and disinformation about the existence of climate change and their products’ contribution to it.”

    Chicago on Tuesday joined the growing list of U.S. cities and states suing Big Oil for lying to the public about how burning fossil fuels causes and exacerbates the climate emergency.

    The administration of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a progressive Democrat, filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court against ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66, and the industry lobby American Petroleum Institute, which “funded, conceived, planned, and carried out a sustained and widespread campaign of denial and disinformation about the existence of climate change and their products’ contribution to it.”

    “The climate change impacts that Chicago has faced and will continue to face—including more frequent and intense storms, flooding, droughts, extreme heat events, and shoreline erosion—are felt throughout every part of the city and disproportionately in low-income communities,” the suit contends.

    In a statement, Johnson said that “there is no justice without accountability.”

    “From the unprecedented poor air quality that we experienced last summer to the basement floodings that our residents on the West Side experienced, the consequences of this crisis are severe, as are the costs of surviving them,” he added. “That is why we are seeking to hold these defendants accountable.”

    Climate campaigners welcomed the lawsuit.

    “Big Oil has lied to the American people for decades about the catastrophic climate risks of their products, and now Chicago and communities across the country are rightfully insisting they pay for the damage they’ve caused,” Center for Climate Integrity president Richard Wiles said in a statement.

    “With Chicago, the nation’s third largest city, joining the fray, there is no doubt that we are witnessing a historic wave of lawsuits that could finally hold Big Oil accountable for the climate crisis they knowingly caused,” he added.

    Chicago joins eight U.S. states plus the District of Columbia and numerous municipalities across the country that have sued to hold Big Oil accountable for deceiving the public about its role in the climate emergency.

    “To date, eight federal appeals courts and dozens of federal district courts have unanimously ruled against the fossil fuel industry’s arguments to prevent these lawsuits from moving forward in state courts,” noted the Center for Climate Integrity. “In 2023, the U.S. Justice Department added its support for the communities. The U.S. Supreme Court has denied Big Oil petitions to consider the industry’s appeals of those lower court rulings three separate times, most recently in January.”

    Angela Tovar, Chicago’s chief sustainability officer, told the Chicago Sun-Times that “the fossil fuel industry should be able to pay for the damage they’ve caused.”

    “We have to see accountability for the climate crisis,” she added.

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

  • Australian lawmakers call for Julian Assange’s release ahead of extradition appeal

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

    The motion in parliament, which was supported by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, has called for the return of imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to his family in Australia. Assange is days away from a final court hearing in the UK against his extradition to the US.

    On February 14, lawmakers in Australia’s parliament voted 86-42 in support of a motion calling on the UK and the US to return arbitrarily imprisoned WikiLeaks founder and journalist, Julian Assange, to his home and family in Australia.

    The move, which was also supported by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, came just days before the High Court of Justice in London will decide if Assange can continue to contest his extradition to the US through the UK’s legal system.

    The US has indicted Assange on 18 charges, 17 of which are under the notorious Espionage Act, in relation to the publication of confidential documents on WikiLeaks that exposed the war crimes and atrocities committed by US forces during the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. If convicted, Assange would face up to 175 years in a maximum security prison.

    The 52-year-old journalist has already been held at the UK’s high security Belmarsh prison for nearly five years, without charge or conviction, amid serious concerns over his mental and physical health.

    “Mr. Assange has been deliberately exposed, for a period of several years, to progressively severe forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the cumulative effects of which can only be described as psychological torture.” Nils Melzer, the former UN Special Rapporteur on torture, had said of the journalist’s condition back in 2019.

    Addressing a press conference on February 15, Assange’s partner, Stella, stated that his “life is at risk every single day he stays in prison– and if he is extradited he will die”, warning that Assange could be “on a plane within days”.

    The public hearings on February 20 and 21 will mark the culmination of a protracted legal battle for Assange. A two-judge bench of the High Court will review a June 6, 2023 decision by Justice Jonathan Swift, in which he had rejected all eight grounds of appeal filed by Assange’s legal team.

    If approved, the appeal will challenge the extradition order approved by the UK Home Office in June 2022.

    Read more: Assange completes four years in UK jail, struggle against US extradition continues

    On Wednesday, independent lawmaker Andrew Wilkie introduced a motion in the Australian parliament, calling on the US and the UK to bring “the matter to a close so that Mr. Assange can return home to his family in Australia”.

    “This will be the time for all of us to take a stand, to stand up and to take a stand, and to stand with Julian Assange, stand for the principles of justice, stand for the principles of media freedom and the rights of journalists to do their job…This has gone on too long, that it must be brought to an end.”

    Commenting directly on the matter in Parliament on February 15, PM Albanese stated that there was a “common view” that “enough is enough”. “People will have a range of views about Mr. Assange’s conduct… but regardless of where people stand, this thing cannot just go on and on indefinitely.”

    He went on to state, “I hope it can be resolved amicably. It’s not up to Australia to interfere in the legal processes of other countries, but it is appropriate for us to put our very strong view that those countries need to take into account the need for this to be concluded.”

    The Prime Minister’s ambiguous statements throughout the legal proceedings, including a refusal to outrightly call for a withdrawal of the extradition order, has been criticized by progressive, anti-imperialist forces, with the late renowned journalist John Pilger having called it a “betrayal” in March 2023.

    Read more: The betrayers of Julian Assange 

    Addressing reporters outside Parliament House on Thursday, Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, warned that his extradition would mean that “all the ties to his family, his lifeline that are keeping him alive inside that prison will be cut off and he’ll be lost into a horrific prison system in the United States”.

    He added that the vote in parliament had given the Australian government a “real mandate to advocate very, very strongly for a political solution” to bring Assange home.

    “It’s not just about being extradited. Julian should never have been put in prison in the first place,” Stella Assange implored on Thursday, as journalists and activists across the world have warned of the impact Assange’s case could have on the press.

    “We are seeing a critical attack on press freedom worldwide. It is like a disease, an anti-press pandemic, creeping up on us that has been incrementally taking shape over the years”, said WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson, adding that Assange had been the “canary in the gold mine”.

    Read more: Julian Assange case: 4 things that the media doesn’t tell you

    Assurances about conditions in US prison are “dubious”, say advocates

    This was reiterated by over 35 law professors in the US in a letter sent to the Department of Justice on February 14, stating that Assange’s prosecution posed an “existential threat” to the freedom of speech and press enshrined under the First Amendment.

    These “constitutional implications” could “extend beyond the Espionage Act and beyond national security journalism [to] enable prosecution of routine newsgathering under any number of ambiguous laws and untested legal theories.”

    Assange’s extradition to the US was approved on the basis of supposed “assurances” given by the US regarding his safety, including the avoidance of what are called “special administrative measures” (SAMs) — a horrific punitive measure that combines “the brutality and isolation of maximum-security units with additional restrictions that deny individuals almost any connection to the human world”.

    However, human rights organizations and observers had immediately warned that these “assurances” were unreliable and could be arbitrarily revoked.

    “The US assurances cannot be trusted. Dubious assurances that he will be treated well in a US prison ring hollow considering that Assange potentially faces dozens of years of incarceration in a system well known for its abuses, including prolonged solitary confinement and poor health services for inmates,” stated Julia Hall, the international expert on counter-terrorism and criminal justice in Europe at Amnesty International.

    If the High Court of Justice in London does not rule in favor of Julian Assange next week, Stella Assange has stated that he will then approach the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), seeking urgent measures to halt his extradition under Rule 39— granted when there is an “imminent risk of irreparable harm” — pending a full consideration of his case.

    The present UN Special Rapporteur Dr. Alice Edwards, has also pointed out that outside of the legal process, the ultimate decision to actually proceed with the extradition will lie with the US Secretary of State. Antony Blinken, for his part, had rebuffed calls by the Australian government last year to drop the prosecution.

    “The UK is a party to the UN convention against torture as well as the European convention on human rights, both of them have Article 3 which prohibits states from sending people to where they may face this type of treatment [torture],” Edwards said.

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