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Does Every Person in Israel Deserve to Die?
David Swanson
I fervently hope, dear reader, that you do not agree that every person in Israel deserves to die. But I know some of you do, and I hope to suggest a better way of looking at it. I know that you’re even more unlikely to agree with me that nobody ever anywhere “deserves to die.” But the closer you can get to agreeing with that, the better!
Have you heard people calling the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel a “success,” despite the perfectly predictable results piling up in mass graves? You can quickly search and find that claim, not just from Iranian militarists quoted in Israeli media, but also from former UN inspectors, and hip leftist revolutionaries all over social media and all over the world.
In fact, I recently participated in an online debate on whether war can ever be justified. The moderator asked whether it wasn’t obviously counterproductive in terms of halting NATO for Russia to have invaded Ukraine and in terms of liberating Palestine for Hamas to have attacked civilians on October 7th. The answer on both points seems to be a clear yes. You can agree with me that NATO and the West are largely to blame for problems in Ukraine, including for preventing a negotiated agreement to end the war, as well as for not supporting adherence to the previous agreement of Minsk 2, and still — mirabile dictu — recognize that nothing has benefitted NATO more than the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as — for godsake — a RAND report advocated for creating for just that reason. And you can recognize that many in the Israeli government have been passionately drooling for an excuse to genocide Gaza for years, and still think it was counterproductive to hand them that excuse. You can recognize how many lies and exaggerations have been told about what happened on October 7 and still think it was counterproductive to hand them that excuse.
What is critical global geopolitics?
Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic
From the very pan-global perspective, the best-known geopolitical thesis is of the British Mackinder – "Heartland Thesis". According to the thesis, the Asian "Heartland" is a pivotal area of global geopolitics. Who controls this area provides a chief position in world politics and, therefore, global domination. This "Pivot Area" is surrounded by the "Outer Rim" of the lands divided into two territories: 1) "Inner or marginal crescent"; and 2) "Lands of outer or insular crescent"). If not resistance from the area of the "Outer Rim", which is proximate to the "Heartland", some occupying power could quite easily come to control first Europe and then the world. According to Mackinder's thesis from 1919, the precondition to command "Heartland" is to rule East Europe. However, whoever rules "Heartland" commands the World Island which is a precondition to rule over the World.
Mackinder's geopolitical analysis of world politics, nevertheless, had a very practical task – to assist British global colonial imperialism. In other words, he suggested to the British policymakers to be wary of powers that are occupying the "Heartland" and should establish a "buffer zone" around the territory of "Heartland" to prevent the accumulation of power in the future that might challenge the hegemony of the British Empire within both "Inner" and "Outer Crescents". Mackinder's geopolitical reasoning had a certain influence on both British foreign policy and popular imagination.
Asymmetric Warfare
Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic
At least from the very academic viewpoint, war is a condition of armed conflict between at least two sides (but, in fact, states). There are, historically, several types of warfare as conventional warfare, civil war, lightning war (blitzkrieg in German), total war, hegemonic war, liberation war, war on terrorism, etc. However, according to the used warfare technique, there is, for instance, little war (guerrilla war in Spanish) or according to the (counter)balance of warfare sides, there is asymmetric war as an example.
Asymmetric warfare exists in the case when two sides of combat forces (two states, two blocs, a state vs. one military bloc, etc.) are very or even extremely different regarding their military and other capacities to fight each other. They are also very different in terms of their areas of comparative strategic advantage, Therefore, the confrontation between such two different sides is coming to turn on one belligerent side's ability/capacity to force the other side to fight on their terms and conditions.
On the Importance of Tents
By: Brett Redmayne-Titley.
“… we see the brutal repression that we have not seen in the [US] universities...The truth is that this unprecedented brutal repression...expresses at state of panic for the western system in general.”- Bashar al-Assad.
As University campuses across America attempt to re-educate their students that Genocide is intellectually “acceptable,” these university presidents and administrations have a problem: No matter how hard these Zionist-inflicted champions of re-education try, their students will not be convinced to rip out from their minds the page containing the definition of the word “Genocide” contained in the dictionaries of every campus library in America.
Duplicitous college presidents nationally cannot mandate that the students sacrifice the scholarship of their minds and fail to bear witness to 35,000 arbitrarily slaughtered Palestinians. University administrators will not magically make those of correct conscience-nor the students- go away.
I’m currently searching for my tent. Enough is enough. For I have seen the power of the tent… and the people who occupy them, before. Just down the road at LA City Hall too long ago the outraged citizens of Los Angeles brought our tents and made a stand against “the System” and “the 99%.”
We won!
Is the Electoral Fix Already In?
Matt Taibbi
The 2024 presidential race increasingly looks like it will be decided by lawyers, not voters, as Democrats unveil plans for America's first lawfare election.
The fix is in. To “protect democracy,” democracy is already being canceled. We just haven’t admitted the implications of this to ourselves yet.
On Sunday, January 14th, NBC News ran an eye-catching story: “Fears grow that Trump will use the military in ‘dictatorial ways’ if he returns to the White House.” It described “a loose-knit network of public interest groups and lawmakers” that is “quietly” making plans to “foil any efforts to expand presidential power” on the part of Donald Trump.
The piece quoted an array of former high-ranking officials, all insisting Trump will misuse the Department of Defense to execute civilian political aims. Since Joe Biden’s team “leaked” a strategy memo in late December listing “Trump is an existential threat to democracy” as Campaign 2024’s central talking point, surrogates have worked overtime to insert existential or democracy in quotes. This was no different:
The Frankfurt School and the Culture of Victimhood
"When you rinse it right down, the PC/Cultural Marxist revolution has as its objective the emasculation of the white male and the eradication of all values and power systems which are laid at his door, including religion, tradition and the normative family."
One of the legacies of the 1960s ideological culture to the present is what is called ‘political correctness’ (PC), which the average citizen perceives as a weird and slightly infuriating agenda to stop people talking about certain things, but in an irritating rather than a worrying way. The restricted topics form a pattern of sorts, but it is difficult for the uninitiated to say what it is. There is a general sense that it has to do largely with sexual preferences and ‘gender stuff’, feminist diktats and what is called 'diversity' and 'multiculturalism'.
The phrase 'political correctness’ has tripped off the lips of alleged conservatives for so long that it is no longer a tool of clarity. 'PC' is generally regarded as a prim, precious, faintly amusing obsession with the relentless promotion of 'equality', and ‘rights' for what are called ‘minorities'. Most people are unsure why such areas are subject to a particular regime of untouchability, but don't really worry about it too much because there are lots of other things to worry about already and, without getting into too much detail, they are broadly in favour of things like ‘rights’ and ‘equality’.
A standard meme of modern political discourse is the intellectual who, when challenged that some element thrown up by political activism or activity is ‘political correctness gone mad’, simply grins and shakes his head and says: ‘If I hear one more time this nonsense about political correctness, I'm going to start screaming!’ This manner of implying that PC is simply a perverse and eccentric invention of the enemies of ‘equality' and ‘rights’ is just one of the weapons in the armoury which has been developed to protect the very phenomenon being denied. Similarly, depictions of a continuing orchestrated conspiracy, which allow activists operating under the general banner of what has become known as ‘Cultural Marxism’ to dismiss claims of political correctness as 'conspiracy theory'. The point is that the conspirators are no longer around and are not needed now, having long ago constructed a mechanism that operates more or less by its own momentum.
AI Faces Its ‘Oppenheimer Moment’ During Killer Robot Arms Race
by Jonathan Tirone
Tel Aviv-based +972 Magazine reported this month that
Israel was using an artificial intelligence program called
“Lavender” to come up with assassination targets
Regulators who want to get a grip on an emerging generation of artificially
intelligent killing machines may not have much time left to do so, governments were warned on Monday.
As autonomous weapons systems rapidly proliferate, including across battlefields in Ukraine and Gaza, algorithms and unmanned aerial vehicles are already helping military planners decide whether or not to hit targets. Soon, that decision could be outsourced entirely to the machines.
“This is the Oppenheimer Moment of our generation,” said Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg, referencing J. Robert Oppenheimer, who helped invent the atomic bomb in 1945 before going on to advocate for controls over the spread of nuclear arms.
Western Weapons From Ukraine On Darknet Marketplaces
Oriental Review Editorial
The failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive and the prospects for a peaceful resolution of the conflict further boost the activities of arms smuggling participants at all levels.
On January 10, 2024, the U.S. Department of Defense Office of Inspector General released a report admitting that the Pentagon was unable to trace the fate of weapons delivered to Ukraine costing more than USD 1 bn.
The 'lost' weapons listed in the document included not only small arms but also man-portable air defense systems, guided anti-tank missiles, and even medium-range AIM-9X missiles.
A large number of weapons offered for sale are available in the Ukrainian segment of the Darknet. The goods may be picked up at a designated place once they are paid for in cryptocurrency. Such a scheme rules out personal contact between the buyer and the seller, the ability to track the transaction, and identify parties to the transaction in the future. The weapons are sold by corrupt officials and commanders of the Ukrainian army. Arguments that Ukrainians are unable to use high-tech weapons due to the lack of appropriate training among Ukrainian soldiers are raised in explanation of the sale.
Debt Dollars – The Unused Leverage
By Adil Aboobakar
U.S. Treasuries or War Bonds?
When U.S. taxpayers protest the use of their tax dollars to continually fund wars, the assumption is only 67% correct, as of the first Fiscal Semester 2024 [1].
The assumption is that the U.S. government is only funded by tax dollars. Yet, no.
The U.S. government borrows. And it can borrow very easily, from both Americans and the whole world. The latter is often very enthusiastic in lending.
In fact, there are reasons why a government might prefer to borrow to fund wars rather than increase taxes. It is cheaper, quicker, and puts less stress on the voters’ pockets. And if the government can borrow from other countries, far from home, that is even better. We have seen this during the Iraq War, and during the Gaza War. Swap shoes for a second, it makes political sense.
U.S. Treasuries are debt securities issued by the U.S. Department of the Treasury (USDT), the national treasury and finance department of the federal government. The purpose of these debt securities is to finance the federal government’s borrowing needs, including to fund wars.
The Gaza Flotilla Sails While Blinken Attempts to Take Focus from Israeli / U.S. Genocide of Gaza to China
Cargo and small passenger ship of the 2024
Gaza Flotilla. FFC Coalition photo
By Colonel Ann Wright
While I am in Istanbul, Turkiye with hundreds of international participants from 40 countries who are attempting to sail in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla to break the illegal Israeli naval blockade of Gaza and bring food and medicine to starving Palestinians in Gaza, the survivors of the Israeli / U.S. genocide of Gaza, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is brazeningly attempting to divert world attention from U.S. complicity in the genocide of Gaza to China’s human rights issues.
Hundreds of thousands of university students in the United States are defying the Biden administration’s blatant attempt to divert eyes away from Gaza by their remarkable stand for Palestine in their camps on college campuses across the country.
Biden and his band of politicos in the White House and in Congress are seriously misjudging the mood of citizens around the world who can see with their own eyes the slaughter Israel and the U.S. are doing to those in Gaza . . . and the West Bank.
