The Illusion of Green Capitalism

Green Capitalism Will Not Solve Climate Change or Any of the Other Problems Driving Us Toward Extinction

by Charles Derber and Suren Moodliar / October 14th, 2023

Adapted from Dying for Capitalism: How Big Money Fuels Extinction and What We Can Do About It

Many Americans – even those who recognize capitalism’s destructive impacts – find the idea of discarding capitalism for a more just system unimaginable. Yes, capitalism is part of the problem. But, they think, realistically, the world is not going to invent anytime fast a visionary postcapitalist system. Meanwhile we barrel toward environmental destruction. If we’re going to be pragmatic, as millions of concerned Americans believe, we should listen to the growing number of capitalist leaders and companies who are taking climate change seriously and proposing their own solution: green capitalism.

Capitalist companies are already responding to market incentives promoting green technologies that are important in slowing climate change. In fact, Big Tech leaders such as Bill Gates are beginning to focus on climate change, with Gates writing a 2021 book on how to transform the world to save the environment. But a closer look shows that Gates, like most corporate leaders in the United States and around the world, sees climate change as mainly a technological problem to be solved not by system change or politics but by innovative technologies. Gates starts off saying he is not a political guy but a tech expert. New technologies can get carbon emissions way down, without needing to distract ourselves with the giant and disagreeable task of changing our economic system. In fact, in his view, it is the Big Tech capitalist companies, as well as the smaller tech capitalist entrepreneurs that will solve climate change; capitalism is not the problem but the solution!

Gates’s technological approach to the climate crisis typifies the “progressive” capitalist factions, including powerful capitalist groups in Europe and the developing world, willing to acknowledge a deep climate crisis. Technological innovation on a grand scale, subsidized by states when necessary, makes “green” capitalists like Gates, believe even more fervently in capitalism because they see it as the only system generating and rewarding technological initiatives of the kind necessary to stop climate change.

Moreover, because they see markets as rational and responsive to consumers, increasing public concern about flooding, drought, and extreme heat, are likely viewed as providing the “market signals” that will presumably increase the profitability of green investments. Twenty-first-century capitalist entrepreneurs – people like Elon Musk who have already made a fortune from electric cars – see this as the wave of the future. And even big corporations will end up on the global green capitalist wave. GM has announced it plans to stop producing gas engine cars by 2035 and go fully electric. Ford is building its electric F-150 Lightening trucks – one of the most popular vehicles in America – and plans to dramatically increase its electric truck and car fleet, President’ Biden’s 2023 executive order that half of all new US cars and trucks must be electric by 2030. Many other huge global companies are promising to drastically reduce their carbon emissions; Amazon has pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2040 and Walmart promises to eliminate emissions by 2035. Their expectation is that the entire global capitalist system will follow – and save the planet.

This “capitalist solution” is seductive but deeply flawed. “Green” technology, such as wind turbines, solar panels, and electric cars, incurs grave environmental costs:

Every stage of the life cycle of any manufactured product exacts environmental costs: habitat destruction, biodiversity loss and pollution (including carbon emissions) from extraction of raw materials, manufacturing/ construction, through to disposal. Thus, it is the increasing global material footprint that is fundamentally the reason for the twin climate and ecological crises.

As material or resource costs escalate, both climate change and material depletion imperil survival and the environment.

Since unlimited growth is in the DNA of capitalism, the shift to green technology is not enough to prevent environmental destruction. The tech-based vision, by focusing simply on technology, ignores all the other aspects of capitalism – from profit maximization to the public goods deficit to commodity fetishism as well as unlimited growth – that cause environmental destruction.

The green tech capitalist solution actually protects the wealth and power of Big Tech and other corporations, and is likely to accelerate environmental destruction by deflecting focus from the underlying systemic aspects of capitalism fueling climate change. But this doesn’t mean we should ignore technology nor that capitalist innovation and reforms can’t play a role. Technology obviously has a major role to play in solving climate and other environmental crises. Where capitalist corporations seek to invest massive amounts of capital into non-carbon energy sources, this may help with the larger economic, social, and political changes that will need to ultimately transcend the capitalist-driven forces that green capitalists such as Gates claim to champion. The greening that is possible within capitalism is hugely important, when not used as a substitute for crucial system change.

The key is to accelerate the green innovation possible within capitalism while making larger systemic changes where these technologies can truly prevent extinction. In the current corporate order, despite the importance of electric cars and other green products, the purely technological approach de-linked from systemic change will not create a sustainable world.

Green capitalists’ reforms may be a step forward, but their claims of social responsibility should not be confused with actual solutions to the climate crisis. Even the biggest global corporate emission-spewers – Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron, and other large oil and gas companies – now advertise themselves as green companies, promoting a brand mixing renewables and fossil fuel together as the only road to prosperity and survival in a green capitalism. But these same companies used their money and political clout to prevent the necessary systemic changes that would solve the climate change crisis. In the United States, the American Petroleum Institute, the leading oil and gas lobbyist, put Exxon and Chevron’s money to work opposing Biden- proposed climate policy changes. Nevertheless, these companies brand themselves as “green.”

Green brands, according to extensive research, are most likely to create “green-washing” rather than sustainability. Global auto manufacturers are talking aspirations rather than committed realities to electric cars; and the US auto firms, also talking a good green story like Big Oil, tried in 2021 to limit stricter carbon emission standards introduced by the Biden Administration. As one Forbes commentator noted, the greenwashing temptation is inherent to work of industry leaders, “The allure of greenwashing sustainability initiatives often taps into what CEOs are best at: projecting confidence, managing risk, and creating followership.” Again, this does not mean that we should not use all the reforms in capitalism that actually contribute to mitigation. But we should also not confuse those reforms with solutions that will save humanity.

Charles Derber is Professor of Sociology at Boston College and has written 25 books. Most recently he is the coauthor of Dying for Capitalism: How Big Money Fuels Extinction and What We Can Do About It. Suren Moodliar is editor of the journal Socialism and Democracy and coordinator of encuentro5, a movement-building space in downtown Boston. He is the coauthor of Dying for Capitalism: How Big Money Fuels Extinction and What We Can Do About It. Read other articles by Charles Derber and Suren Moodliar.

 

Fast-Food Graveyard: Sickened for Profit

by Colin Todhunter / October 14th, 2023

The modern food system is responsible for making swathes of humanity ill, causing unnecessary suffering and sending many people to an early grave. It is part of a grotesque food-pharma conveyor belt that results in massive profits for the dominant agrifood and pharmaceuticals corporations.   

Much of the modern food system has been shaped by big agribusiness concerns like Monsanto (now Bayer) and Cargill, giant food companies like Nestle, Pepsico and Kellog’s and, more recently, institutional investors like BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street.  

For the likes of BlackRock, which invests in both food and pharma, fuelling a system increasingly based on ultra processed food (UPF) with its cheap and unhealthy ingredients is a sure-fire money spinner.   

Toxic junk 

Consider that fast food is consumed by 85 million US citizens each day. Several chains are the primary suppliers of many school lunches. Some 30 million school meals are served to children each day. For millions of underprivileged children in the US, these meals are their only access to nutrition. 

In 2022, Moms Across America (MAA) and Children’s Health Defense (CHD) commissioned the testing of school lunches and found that 5.3 per cent contained carcinogenic, endocrine-disrupting and liver disease-causing glyphosate; 74 per cent contained at least one of 29 harmful pesticides; four veterinary drugs and hormones were found in nine of the 43 meals tested; and all of the lunches contained heavy metals at levels up to 6,293 times higher than the US Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum levels allowed in drinking water. Moreover, the majority of the meals were abysmally low in nutrients. 

As a follow up, MAA, a non-profit organisation, with support from CHD and the Centner Academy, recently decided to have the top ten most popular fast-food brand meals extensively tested for 104 of the most commonly used veterinary drugs and hormones.  

The Health Research Institute tested 42 fast-food meals from 21 locations nationwide. The top ten brands tested were McDonald’s, Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, TacoBell, Wendy’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, Burger King, Subway, Domino’s and Chipotle. 

Collectively, these companies’ annual gross sales are $134,308,000,000. 

Three veterinary drugs and hormones were found in ten fast food samples tested. One sample from Chick-fil-A contained a contraceptive and antiparasitic called Nicarbazin, which has been prohibited. 

Some 60 per cent of the samples contained the antibiotic Monesin, which is not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for human use and has been shown to cause severe harm when consumed by humans. 

40 per cent contained the antibiotic Narasin. MAA says that animal studies show this substance causes anorexia, diarrhoea, dyspnea, depression, ataxia, recumbency and death, among other things. 

Monensin and Narasin are antibiotic ionophores, toxic to horses and dogs at extremely low levels, leaving their hind legs dysfunctional. Ionophores cause weight gain in beef and dairy cattle and are therefore widely used but also “cause acute cardiac rhabdomyocyte degeneration and necrosis”, according to a 2017 paper published in Reproductive and Developmental Toxicology (Second Edition). 

For many years, ionophores have also been used to control coccidiosis in poultry. However, misuse of ionophores can cause toxicity with significant clinical symptoms. Studies show that ionophore toxicity mainly affects myocardial and skeletal muscle cells. 

Only Chipotle and Subway had no detectable levels of veterinary drugs and hormones. 

Following these findings, MAA has expressed grave concern about the dangers faced by people, especially children, who are unknowingly eating unprescribed antibiotic ionophores. The non-profit asks: are the side effects of these ionophores in dogs and horses, leaving their hind legs dysfunctional, related to millions of US citizens presenting with restless leg syndrome and neuropathy? These conditions were unknown in most humans just a generation or two ago. 

A concerning contraceptive (for geese and pigeons), an antiparasitic called Nicarbazin, prohibited after many years of use, was found in Chick fil-A sandwich samples.  

The executive director of MAA, Zen Honeycutt, concludes:  

“The impact of millions of Americans, especially children and young adults, consuming a known animal contraceptive daily is concerning. With infertility problems on the rise, the reproductive health of this generation is front and center for us, in light of these results.” 

MAA says that it is not uncommon for millions of US citizens to consume fast food for breakfast, lunch or dinner, or all three meals, every day. School lunches are often provided by fast-food suppliers and typically are the only meals underprivileged children receive and a major component of the food consumed by most children.  

Exposure to hormones from consuming ​​concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) livestock could be linked to the early onset of puberty, miscarriages, increasing incidence of twin births and reproductive problems. These hormones have been linked to cancers, such as breast and uterine, reproductive issues and developmental problems in children.  

So, how can it be that food – something that is supposed to nourish and sustain life – has now become so toxic? 

Corporate influence 

One answer lies in the influence of a relative handful of food conglomerates, which shape food policy and dominate the market.   

For instance, recent studies have linked UPFs such as ice-cream, fizzy drinks and ready meals to poor health, including an increased risk of cancer, weight gain and heart disease. Global consumption of the products is soaring and UPFs now make up more than half the average diet in the UK and US. 

In late September, however, a media briefing in London suggested consumers should not be too concerned about UPFs. After the event, The Guardian newspaper reported that three out of five scientists on the expert panel for the briefing who suggested UPFs are being unfairly demonised had ties to the world’s largest manufacturers of the products. 

The briefing generated various positive media headlines on UPFs, including “Ultra-processed foods as good as homemade fare, say experts” and “Ultra-processed foods can sometimes be better for you, experts claim”. 

It was reported by the Guardian that three of the five scientific experts on the panel had either received financial support for research from UPF manufacturers or hold key positions with organisations that are funded by them. The manufacturers include Nestlé, Mondelēz, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever and General Mills. 

Professor Janet Cade (University of Leeds) told the briefing that most research suggesting a link between UPFs and poor health cannot show cause and effect, adding that processing can help to preserve nutrients. Cade is the chair of the advisory committee of the British Nutrition Foundation, whose corporate members include McDonald’s, British Sugar and Mars. It is funded by companies including Nestlé, Mondelēz and Coca-Cola.

Professor Pete Wilde (Quadram Institute) also defended UPFs, comparing then favourably with homemade items. Wilde has received support for his research from Unilever, Mondelēz and Nestlé.  

Professor Ciarán Forde (Wageningen University in the Netherlands) told the briefing that advice to avoid UPF “risks demonising foods that are nutritionally beneficial”. Forde was previously employed by Nestlé and has received financial support for research from companies including PepsiCo and General Mills. 

Despite what industry-backed scientists may say, increased consumption of UPFs was associated with more than 10 per cent of all-cause premature, preventable deaths in Brazil in 2019, according to a 2022 published peer-reviewed study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.  

In high-income countries, such as the US, Canada, the UK and Australia, UPFs account for more than half of total calorific intake. Brazilians consume far less of these products than countries with high incomes. This means the impact would be even higher in richer nations.   

In a 2016 report by the research and campaign group Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), it was noted that obesity rates were rising fastest among lowest socio-economic groups. That is because energy-dense foods of poor nutritional value are cheaper than more nutritious foods. 

At the time, key trade associations, companies and lobby groups related to sugary food and drinks were together spending an estimated €21.3 million annually to lobby the EU. 

One of the best-known industry front groups with global influence is the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI). In January 2019, two papers by Harvard Professor Susan Greenhalgh in the BMJ and in the Journal of Public Health Policy revealed ILSI’s influence on the Chinese government concerning issues related to obesity. 

A 2017 media report noted that ILSI-India was being actively consulted by India’s apex policy-formulating body – Niti Aayog. ILSI-India’s board of trustees was dominated by food and beverage companies. ILSI’s expanding influence coincides with India’s mounting rates of obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. 

In 2020, a study published in Public Health Nutrition revealed details about which companies fund the group. ILSI North America’s draft 2016 IRS form 990 shows a $317,827 contribution from PepsiCo, contributions greater than $200,000 from Mars, Coca-Cola and Mondelez and contributions greater than $100,000 from General Mills, Nestle, Kellogg, Hershey, Kraft, Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, Starbucks Coffee, Cargill, Unilever and Campbell Soup. 

Professor Janet Cade told the recent media briefing in London that people rely on processed foods for a wide number of reasons; if they were removed, this would require a huge change in the food supply. She added that this would be unachievable for most people and potentially result in further stigmatisation and guilt for those who rely on processed foods, promoting further inequalities in disadvantaged groups.  

While part of the solution lies in tackling poverty and reliance on junk food, the focus must be on challenging the power wielded by a small group of food corporations and redirecting the massive subsidies poured into the agrifood system that ensure massive corporate profit while fuelling bad food, poor health and food insecurity.  

A healthier food regime centred on human need rather than corporate profit is required. This would entail strengthening local markets, prioritising short supply chains from farm to fork and supporting independent smallholder organic agriculturalists (incentivised to grow a more diverse range of nutrient-dense crops) and small-scale retailers.  

Saying that eradicating UPFs would result in denying the poor access to cheap, affordable food is like saying let them eat poison.   

Given the scale of the problem, change cannot be achieved overnight. However, a long food movement (leading up to 2045) could transform the food system, a strategy set out in a 2021 report by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems and ETC Group.  

More people should be getting on board with this and promoting it at media briefings. But that might result in biting the hand that feeds.

Colin Todhunter is an independent writer specialising in development, food and agriculture. You can read his new e-book Food, Dependency and Dispossession: Resisting the New World Order for free here.

  Read other articles by Colin.

 

Ten Years on: Uncontacted Tribe in Danger as Land Protection Stalls

by Survival International / October 16th, 2023

The last of the Kawahiva are forced to live on the run from armed loggers and powerful ranchers. Still from unique footage taken by government agents during a chance encounter. © FUNAI

Ten years after Brazilian authorities released extraordinary footage showing the existence of an uncontacted Amazonian tribe, their lands have still not been fully protected – and loggers and land-grabbers surround them.

In 2013 Brazil’s Indigenous Affairs Department FUNAI released video that they had filmed during a chance encounter with the Kawahiva people of Mato Grosso state, deep in the Amazon.

Award-winning actor Mark Rylance recording the narration for The Last of the Kawahiva. © Survival 2015

Oscar-winning actor Mark Rylance later narrated a film about their plight, “The Last of the Kawahiva,” for Survival International.

A global campaign by Survival International, alongside Indigenous people, pressured the authorities to act, and in 2018 cattle ranchers and loggers who had occupied the Kawahiva territory were evicted.

But since then the land protection process has stalled – loggers and landgrabbers are surrounding their territory, and an illegal road has been built just 2km away.

A FUNAI team at a protection post nearby have been working to keep the loggers and ranchers out, despite the dangers – their post has been attacked several times.

Massacres and disease have already killed many Kawahiva – the only chance of survival for those who remain is if their territory is finally demarcated (legally recognized and marked out).

The government has already been given two deadlines to finish demarcating the Kawahiva territory: in 2013 – the year the video was first released – a Brazilian court ordered the demarcation to be carried out. Ten years on, this still has not happened, and in August of this year, Brazil’s Supreme Court gave FUNAI 60 days to finalize a plan for the definitive demarcation of the territory.

Eliane Xunakalo of Indigenous organization FEPOIMT (Federation of Indigenous peoples and organizations of Mato Grosso) said today: “It’s vital to finish the demarcation for our uncontacted relatives. The “Kawahiva do Rio Pardo” territory is coveted by outsiders, and it’s also extremely dangerous for the FUNAI employees who work on the protection post there. We will only be able to guarantee the survival of our uncontacted relatives if the territory is demarcated.

“It’s up to us to protect our relatives, to protect their way of life, because they are the resistance and resilience in the midst of all these threats and challenges that exist here in Mato Grosso,” she added.

This is one of the most crucial cases concerning uncontacted tribes anywhere in Brazil. The Kawahiva are survivors of countless genocidal attacks which have wiped out many of them; the land demarcation process has ground to a halt; and loggers and landgrabbers see the territory as open for business. We know that they have been active inside the Kawahiva’s forest, and any encounter between the Kawahiva and these outsiders, who are usually armed, could be deadly. The authorities must act now to finish the job, and legally protect the Kawahiva territory once and for all.

Survival International, founded in 1969 after an article by Norman Lewis in the UK's Sunday Times highlighted the massacres, land thefts and genocide taking place in Brazilian Amazonia, is the only international organization supporting tribal peoples worldwide. Contact Survival International at: info@survival-international.org. Read other articles by Survival International, or visit Survival International's website.

 

Edwin Montagu, the Only Jew in the UK Cabinet, Opposed the Balfour Declaration and Called Zionism “a mischievous political creed”

by Stuart Littlewood / October 14th, 2023

… while Lord Sydenham warned: “What we have done, by concessions not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist extreme section, is to start a running sore in the East, and no-one can tell how far that sore will extend.”

It extends all the way to this horror-show 106 years later.

What the latest phase of the Palestine-Israel struggle teaches us is that UK and other Western media are determined to bully anyone with pro-Palestine views into condemning Hamas as terrorists.

Even the Palestinian ambassador to Britain, Husam Zomlot, was cruelly treated in this way by a BBC interviewer only hours after several of the poor man’s family had been indiscriminately killed in an Israeli revenge attack.

And political leaders, acting like the Zionist Inquisition, are threatening anyone who voices criticism of Israel with expulsion from their party.

Even the BBC has been pressured by the Government’s culture secretary, Lucy Frazer, to call Hamas “terrorists” instead of “militants”. The BBC (so far) has resisted her silliness. Ms Frazer is Jewish and served an internship with the Israeli Ministry of Justice.

And while our Government was projecting an image of the Israeli flag onto the front of 10 Downing Street to emphasise solidarity with the apartheid regime our home secretary, Suella Braverman, was threatening Palestinian flag wavers with prosecution.

Our monarch King Charles III has graciously favoured us with a royal opinion. “His Majesty is appalled by and condemns the barbaric acts of terrorism in Israel,” a palace spokesperson said. And a spokes for Prince William and his wife, Kate, said they were “profoundly distressed by the devastating events that have unfolded in the past days. The horrors inflicted by Hamas’ terrorist attack upon Israel are appalling; they utterly condemn them. As Israel exercises its right of self-defence, all Israelis and Palestinians will continue to be stalked by grief, fear and anger in the time to come.” No mention of the “barbaric” day-to-day terror tactics by Israel which led up to the present crisis. Or the Palestinians’ right of self-defence.

A response to these attempts to humiliate and punish could simply be: “and when did you last condemn Israel for its 75 years of atrocities?” Or “if Hamas committed war crimes why is Israel responding with even bigger war crimes?”

The crisis has brought from the US an unforgettably half-witted speech which conjured up the priceless image of Biden supergluing himself to Netanyahu’s backside in a pathetic show of undying unity.

And after all the nonsense uttered in high places sincere thanks go to Moeen Ali, the England cricket vice-captain, who posted on social media a quote from Malcolm X: “If you’re not careful the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” Sadly it has already happened.

So what exactly is driving our Establishment élite to defend and revere a criminal regime whose inhumane policies disgust ordinary folk?

Who started it all?

Should we go back 106 years and pin it on Balfour? Or 75 years when Zionist militias rampaged through Palestine massacring, pillaging and driving local residents from their homes as they pursued ‘Plan Dalet’, their ethnic cleansing blueprint for a violent and bloody takeover of the Holy Land? Or 2006 when Israel (backed by US and UK) began the siege of Gaza after Hamas won the 2006 elections fair and square according to international observers.

It helps to understand a little of the earlier history too. There was a Jewish state in the Holy Land some 3,000 years ago, but the Canaanites and Philistines were there first. The Jews, one of several invading groups, left and returned several times, and were expelled by the Roman occupation in 70AD and again in 135AD. Since the 7th century Palestine has been mainly Arabic, coming under Ottoman rule in 1516.

During the First World War the country was ‘liberated’ from the Turkish Ottomans after the Allied Powers, in correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and Sharif Hussein ibn Ali of Mecca in 1915, promised independence to Arab leaders in return for their help in defeating Germany’s ally, Turkey. However, a new Jewish political movement called Zionism was finding favour among the ruling élite in London, and the British Government was persuaded by the Zionists’ chief spokesman, Chaim Weizman, to surrender Palestine for their new Jewish homeland. Hardly a thought, it seems, was given to the earlier pledge to the Arabs, who had occupied and owned the land for 1,500 years – longer than the Jews ever did.

The Zionists, fuelled by the notion that an ancient Biblical prophecy gave them the title deeds, aimed to push the Arabs out by populating the area with millions of Eastern European Jews. They had already set up farm communities and founded a new city, Tel Aviv, but by 1914 Jews still numbered only 85,000 to the Arabs’ 615,000.

The infamous Balfour Declaration of 1917 – actually a letter from the British foreign secretary, Lord Balfour, to the most senior Jew in England, Lord Rothschild – pledged assistance for the Zionist cause with no regard for the consequences to the native majority.

Calling itself a “declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations”, it said:

His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing and non-Jewish communities…

Balfour, a Zionist convert and arrogant with it, wrote: “In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country. The four powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now occupy that land.”

There was opposition, of course. Lord Sydenham warned: “The harm done by dumping down an alien population upon an Arab country may never be remedied. What we have done, by concessions not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist extreme section, is to start a running sore in the East, and no-one can tell how far that sore will extend.”

And Lord Edwin Montagu, the only Jew in the Cabinet, was strongly opposed to the whole idea and to Zionism itself, which he called “a mischievous political creed”. He wrote to his Cabinet colleagues:

…I assume that it means that Mahommedans [Muslims] and Christians are to make way for the Jews and that the Jews should be put in all positions of preference and should be peculiarly associated with Palestine in the same way that England is with the English or France with the French, that Turks and other Mahommedans in Palestine will be regarded as foreigners, just in the same way as Jews will hereafter be treated as foreigners in every country but Palestine. Perhaps also citizenship must be granted only as a result of a religious test.

Nevertheless his Zionist cousin Herbert Samuel was appointed the first High Commissioner of the British Mandate of Palestine, a choice that showed impartiality was never a priority.

The American King-Crane Commission of 1919 thought it a gross violation of principle. “No British officers consulted by the Commissioners believed that the Zionist programme could be carried out except by force of arms. That, of itself, is evidence of a strong sense of the injustice of the Zionist programme.”

There were other reasons why the British were courting disaster. A secret deal, called the Sykes-Picot Agreement, had been concluded in 1916 between France and Britain, in consultation with Russia, to re-draw the map of the Middle Eastern territories won from Turkey. Britain was to take Jordan, Iraq and Haifa. The area now referred to as Palestine was declared an international zone.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Balfour Declaration and the promises made earlier in the McMahon-Hussein letters all cut across each other. It seems to have been a case of the left hand not knowing what the right was doing in the confusion of war.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917 Lenin released a copy of the confidential Sykes-Picot Agreement into the public domain, sowing seeds of distrust among the Arabs. Thus the unfolding story had all the makings of a major tragedy.

And now another spanner has been tossed into the works. Law expert Dr Ralph Wilde argues that Article 22 of the 1923 League of Nations ‘Mandate Agreement’ for Palestine required provisional independence to be conferred on Palestine and that this could not be lawfully bypassed. Britain’s failure, as the Mandated power, to comply was a violation of international law then with ongoing consequences now, and is therefore a basis for action today.

Article 22 says that those colonies and territories which, as a consequence of World War 1, ceased to be under the sovereignty of the States which formerly governed them and are not yet able to stand by themselves should come under the tutelage of “advanced nations who by reason of their resources, their experience or their geographical position can best be exercised by them as Mandatories on behalf of the League…. Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognizedsubject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatoryuntil such time as they are able to stand alone.”

So Britain’s underhandedness is exposed again.

And who started the Palestine-Israel war that inevitably broke out 25 years later? Read the history – it’s all documented. And no, they don’t teach it in schools, it’s far too embarrassing for this ‘great power’.

The slaughter has been horrific

Today, propaganda would have us believe that Israelis have continuously suffered at the hands of Palestinian terrorists. But it’s actually the other way around. Don’t take my word for it, just look at the figures supplied by Israeli NGO B’Tselem which was established in 1989 by a group of Israeli lawyers, doctors and academics to document human rights violations in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and combat any denial that such violations happened. The previous year had seen the First Intifada (uprising) in which Israeli forces killed 311 Palestinians, 53 of whom were under the age of 17.

The figures compiled by B’Tselem run from 29 September 2000 (the start of the Second Intifada) to 27 September 2023.

• Palestinians killed by Israeli forces 10,555
• Palestinians killed by Israeli civilians 96
• Palestinians Killed by unknowns 16
• Total 10,667
• Israeli forces killed by Palestinians 449
• Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians 881
• Total 1,330

So Israelis are far more proficient at killing fellow humans and they’ve been killing Palestinians at the rate of 8:1. Worse still is the butchery of children. The figures show 2,270 Palestinian children killed versus 145 Israeli children, a ratio of nearly 16:1. And when it comes to women it’s 656 Palestinians to 261 Israelis, about 2.5:1.

These statistics are available to everyone. What’s extraordinary is the large number of senior politicians who, with one voice it seems, condemn Hamas and sympathise with Israel. Why would they rush to protect the feelings of an apartheid state that has been brutally oppressing, murdering, dispossessing and generally making life unbearable for Palestinian in their own homeland?

That said, nobody is approving Hamas’s methods (if they have been reported accurately) which may have alienated a lot of otherwise sympathetic supporters and damaged the Palestinian cause. But the facts show that what they did a few days ago was nothing compared to the Israelis’ 75 years of terror and oppression.

Israel is notorious for its disinformation, or ‘hasbara’, and Hamas say their fighters have been targeting Israeli military and security posts and bases – all of which are legitimate targets – and seeking to avoid hurting civilians. They call on Western mainstream media “to seek both truth and accuracy in reporting on the ongoing Israeli aggression against the besieged Gaza Strip”.

But this is an era of false flags, deception and plain bad journalism, as we’ve seen from Ukraine, so mainstream media cannot be trusted. I’ve watched the media eagerly interviewing Israeli families who live close to the Gaza border and commiserating their loss. But, on reflection, what do you think of people who have spent years nextdoor to a security fence on the other side of which their government has cruelly incarcerated another people for 17 years, denying them essential power supplies, water, food, medicines, goods, and freedom of movement, while bombing them regularly in a diabolical policy called “mowing the grass”, and even limiting access to their own coastal waters and blocking access to their marine gasfield…. and don’t seem in the least concerned that such hideous crimes are perpetrated in their name? How innocent are they?

Self-defence?

Then there’s the endlessly repeated claim the Israel has a right to defend itself. But Israel is illegally occupying the Palestinians’ homeland and using military force to maintain its grip and to tightly control every aspect of the Palestinians’ increasingly miserable lives. As for Israel’s armed squatters, they have been implanted outside their own territory and are classified as war criminals. Like Israel’s army of ongoing occupation they are the aggressors and have no right of self-defence. The Palestinians on the other hand, being subjected to an illegal military occupation, are the ones with the right under international law to defend themselves.

What gives them that right is United Nations Resolution 37/43 of 3 December 1982 which is concerned with “the universal realization of the right of peoples to self-determination and of the speedy granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples for the effective guarantee and observance of human rights…. Considering that the denial of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, sovereignty, independence and return to Palestine and the repeated acts of aggression by Israel against the people of the region constitute a serious threat to international peace and security, [the Resolution]

1. Calls upon all States to implement fully and faithfully all the resolutions of the United Nations regarding the exercise of the right to self-determination and independence by peoples under colonial and foreign domination;

2. Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for their independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial domination, apartheid and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.”

It goes on to strongly condemn “the constant and deliberate violations of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, as well as the expansionist activities of Israel in the Middle East, which constitute an obstacle to the achievement of self-determination and independence by the Palestinian people and a threat to peace and stability in the region.”

That we are still waiting after 40+ years for these fine principles to be implemented shows how useless the UN really is and how little the major powers value international law unless it happens to suit their own often questionable purposes.

Jewish voices

JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace) has sent me their latest statement:

We wholeheartedly agree with leading Palestinian rights groups: the massacres committed by Hamas against Israeli civilians are horrific war crimes. There is no justification in international law for the indiscriminate killing of civilians or the holding of civilian hostages.

And now, horrifyingly, the Israeli and American governments are weaponizing these deaths to fuel a genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza, pledging to “open the gates of hell.” This war is a continuation of the Nakba, when in 1948, tens of thousands of Palestinians fleeing violence sought refuge in Gaza. It’s a continuation of 75 years of Israeli occupation and apartheid.

Already this week, over 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed. The Israeli government has wrought complete and total devastation on Palestinians across Gaza, attacking hospitals, schools, mosques, marketplaces, and apartment buildings.

As we write, the Israeli government has shut off all electricity to Gaza. Hospitals cannot save lives, the internet will collapse, people will have no phones to communicate with the outside world, and drinking water for two million people will run out. Gaza will be plunged into darkness as Israel turns its neighborhoods to rubble. Still worse, Israel has openly stated an intention to commit mass atrocities and even genocide, with Prime Minister Netanyahu saying the Israeli response will “reverberate for generations.

And right now, the U.S. government is enabling the Israeli government’s atrocities, sending weapons, moving U.S. warships into proximity and sending U.S.-made munitions, and pledging blanket support and international cover for any actions taken by the Israeli government. Furthermore, the U.S. government officials are spreading racist, hateful, and incendiary rhetoric that will fuel mass atrocities and genocide.

The loss of Israeli lives is being used by our government to justify the rush to genocide, to provide moral cover for the immoral push for more weapons and more death. Palestinians are being dehumanized by our own government, by the media, by far too many U.S. Jewish institutions. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that Israel is “fighting human animals” and should “act accordingly,” As Jews, we know what happens when people are called animals.

We can and we must stop this. Never again means never again — for anyone. [bold added]

Thank you JVP. Amen to that.

Stuart Littlewood’s book Radio Free Palestine, with Foreword by Jeff Halper, can be read on the internet by visiting radiofreepalestine.org.uk. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

After the Attack, Israeli Rulers Launch Genocidal Destruction

by Ralph Nader / October 14th, 2023

In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s horrific counterattack on mostly Israeli civilians and Israel’s hourly genocidal bombing on Gaza’s more than 2 million people – nearly 40% of whom are children – it is unlikely that the Western or U.S. mass media will focus on what should be the U.S. government’s response.

Last Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken abruptly took down his earlier post which read: “Turkish Foreign Minister @HakanFidan and I spoke further on Hamas’ terrorist attacks on Israel. I encouraged Türkiye’s advocacy for a cease-fire and the release of all hostages held by Hamas immediately.”

That was the end of any ceasefire talk by Washington – Israel’s historic patron, protector and unlimited weapons provider. Instead, Biden, Blinken and Secretary of Defense Austin have made statements of unconditional support and further weapons shipments for expanding the bombing and destruction of Gaza, targeting homes, mosques, schools, clinics, hospitals, ambulances and critical infrastructure like water mains.

There was no mention of the far greater destruction of innocent Palestinians using F-16s and U.S.-made missiles that was underway. Are there no lawyers advising these politicians? When Israel ordered a complete siege of tiny, defenseless Gaza (an area much smaller than New York City) Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered his Southern Command to cut off essential services to Gaza, declaring “No electricity, no food, no fuel, no water. … We are fighting animals and will act accordingly.”

Reacting to this omnicidal military order, international law practitioner Bruce Fein noted, “The Genocide Convention defines genocide, among other things, as ‘Deliberately inflicting on [a national, ethnical, racial or religious group] conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part’.”

No problem, said Biden, assuring Israel unlimited military support to do whatever it wants, thus greenlighting genocide by Israel’s extremist ministers with their long, open record of racist hatred against Palestinians. Having met the legal definition of Co-belligerency, Biden, knowing that the laws of war were being systemically violated, later expressed his hope that Israel would abide by them.

Biden/Blinken so far have no diplomatic policy, and no strategy counseling restraint to keep the conflict from escalating uncontrollably in that explosive region. They exercise veto power on the UN Security Council blocking anything like a ceasefire truce and negotiations toward a permanent two-state resolution as envisioned by the Oslo Accords and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process signed by all parties on September 13, 1993.

Our government still hasn’t learned from the history of this region. This is the fifth war on Gaza with the most modern weaponry against Hamas’s fortunately feeble rockets, now intercepted. Over the decades, innocent Palestinian casualties, fatalities, injuries, disease and loss of livelihoods are hundreds of times larger than those suffered by innocent Israelis.

Yet Washington, knowing that the oppressors, occupiers, and blockaders surrounding and infiltrating Gaza keep saying Israel has a right to defend itself without adding that the crushed Palestinians have a similar right to defend themselves under international law and the norms of equity.

The Hamas fighters moving into those border Israeli villages saw themselves on a homicide/suicide mission. Many had lost family members, and co-workers, to decades of Israeli bombs. They knew they were going to die inside Israel. Indeed, Israel counted 1,500 Hamas bodies in the area, larger than the number of Israeli civilians slain by these self-perceived martyrs.

Thus, the cycle of violence expands, and what human rights advocates call “the open-air prison” of Gaza faces total obliteration by Israel. Moral, rational voices for waging peace by Israeli human rights groups, together with their Palestinian counterparts, are lost in the vortex of the killing fields in Gaza – a victim of post-World War II history.

Driven by the Nazi Holocaust, the founders of the state of Israel were in no mood to tolerate the rights of the indigenous Arab peoples. It was their land and we took it, said the father of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, in an oft-quoted public remark to Nahum Goldmann, the head of the World Zionist Organization.

After the UN partitioned Palestine in 1948, many expelled Palestinian refugees ended up in the Gaza Strip. Since then, the Israeli military superpower has expanded its original territory several-fold, now holding 78% of the original Palestine plus the Syrian Golan Heights. After its victory over Arab nations in the 1967 war, Israel, in violation of international law, occupied the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, establishing large colonies in the West Bank.

The U.S. has not been an honest broker, to say the least. It has been meddling in the Middle East, invading countries, toppling regimes, arming dictators and factions, and fueling constant instability. Oil, of course, has also been a key factor driving U.S. foreign policy.

All along, Congress has become a growing chorus calling for unlimited money and weaponry for Israeli militarism, making that country an unchallengeable military superpower, bristling with nuclear weapons. The existential threat is against the right of the Palestinians to have their state. Before the colossal intelligence failure last week in Gaza, Israeli military leaders had been saying that Israel has never been more secure.

It is hard not to charge hawkish Congressional Republicans and Democrats with bigoted, legislated cruelties against Palestinian victims of Israeli war crimes. They have tied themselves at the hip to the most historically extreme Israeli politicians who’ve voiced their view of Palestinians as subhuman and use vicious racist language that nearly all members of Congress refuse to disavow.

The question for Americans of conscience, including American Jews and Arab-Americans – especially Jewish Voice for Peace and the Arab American Institute – is when will the U.S. government assert its influence in the area to say: “Enough.” Stop the slaughter of innocents, demand a ceasefire and commence critical medical and food aid to the suffering survivors.  After years of unconscionable downgrading of the “Palestinian question,” it is time for Washington to launch serious diplomatic negotiations, backing the experienced role of the United Nations (UN) in such conflicts.

The UN also has a grieving stake there. Israeli “precision” bombing once again struck clearly marked, long-standing UN humanitarian sites in Gaza, so far killing 11 courageous United Nations workers.

Ralph Nader is a leading consumer advocate, the author of Unstoppable The Emerging Left Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State (2014), among many other books, and a four-time candidate for US President. Read other articles by Ralph, or visit Ralph's website.

Violence Against Human Animals: Images from the Israel-Hamas War

by Binoy Kampmark / October 13th, 2023

With the body count rising in this latest, and particularly bloody Israel-Hamas War, the narrative of Israel the wounded, Israel the desperate, has now been annexed to Israel the just warrior State, fighting darkness and primaeval stone age barbarism.

This has taken two forms.  The first is the way the victims of the Hamas attacks inside Israeli territory have been elevated, ennobled, sanctified.  The second is the manner with which the Hamas killings have been rendered exceptionally ghoulish, visceral, blood curdling.

Regarding the former, Israeli suffering has been personalised, individualised, and given the spit and polish of reverence.  US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, for instance, stated his shock at the “depravity of Hamas” while feeling a jolt of inspiration from the Israeli “grandfather, who drove over an hour to a kibbutz under siege, armed with only a pistol, and rescued his kids and grandkids; the mother who died shielding her teenage son with her body, giving her life to save his, giving him life for a second time; the volunteer security teams on the kibbutzes [sic], who swiftly rallied to defend their friends and neighbors, despite being heavily outnumbered.”

In contrast, the Palestinians die in sheer anonymity by the thousands, untroubling statistical notations.  The names of whole families who perish in the aftermath of machine inflicted slaughter are not known, not published, and not sought.  Reduced to mere numbers, the human element is leached out.

That absence of humanity brings us to the second point: reiterating, portraying, and marking the violence of the Hamas militants as singular and spectacular.  While international debates rage on the issue of holding back media distribution of graphic content, notably showing massacres and atrocities, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to throw all caution to the wind.

On October 12, his office released photos of slain infants, sharing them on the official Twitter (‘X’) account to roughly 1.2 million followers.  A PMO spokesperson explained the rationale for doing so to The Times of Israel: “So that the world will see just a fraction of the horrors that Hamas carried out.”  The Israeli Ministry for Foreign Affairs, in another post accompanied by a “graphic content warning,” featured a bloodied victim with a preamble on Hamas’s achievements: “More than 1,300 Israeli civilians slaughtered.  Women and girls raped.  People burned alive.  Young kids kidnapped.  Babies tortured and murdered.  Parents executed in front of their young children.”

Such distributive efforts depicted Hamas, and it follows, Palestinians, as unalloyed in their savagery, untutored to the finer points of civilised life.  Blinken affirmed the point by stating that such “difficult-to-see images of babies murdered and burned by the monsters of Hamas” served to show that these people were “not human.  Hamas is ISIS.”  As for US President Joe Biden: “I never really thought that I would see, have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children.”

In contrast, an Israeli fighter jet responsible for demolishing a building complex in Gaza resulting in the deaths of whole families is merely a hygienic, industrial consequence of war.  In terms of an unstated moral calculus here, industrial-military murder proves less affronting.  Throw in the justification of self-defence and such terms as “collateral damage” closes the matter.  File it and forget it.

With humans reduced to paper jottings and innocuous markings, it becomes easy for a state, as Israel has done, to simply demand the removal of 1 million individuals from their already precarious dwellings in an imprisoned enclave should they wish to live.  In his address to the nation on October 7, Netanyahu warned those living in Gaza to, “Leave now because we will operate forcefully everywhere.”

Such individuals are moveable stock.  It matters not that they may have no choice in moving, nor the means, nor the inclination.  Arrogating a power to itself, Israel had annulled the autonomy of an entire population, declaring that those who remain are no better than terrorists who deserve speedy liquidation.

The order to evacuate dovetails with sentiments from politicians who see this as a prelude for a more conclusive expulsion, inspired by the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by the embryonic Israeli state in 1948 that came to be known as the Nakba.  Forget the fact that the roots of the Hamas attacks, as with previous wars between Israelis and Palestinians, have been the bitter harvests of those forced, vicious expulsions.

Ariel Kallner, a Knesset member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, could barely conceal his ecstasy at the retributive violence to follow in a social media post: “Right now, one goal: Nakba!  A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48.  Nakba in Gaza and Nakba to anyone who dares to join!”  It was “time,” affirmed Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, “to be cruel” begging the question when Israel’s policy towards Gaza and Palestinians more broadly had been anything other than cruel.

The corollary of such power and treatment is the imposition of a wholesale siege that is deemed that much easier because the targets are not seen as humans.  In the words of the Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.  We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.”

In the mild, though rebuking language of the International Committee of the Red Cross, “The instructions issued by the Israeli authorities for the population of Gaza City to immediately leave their homes, coupled with the complete siege explicitly denying them food, water, and electricity, are not compatible with international humanitarian law.”

To execute what will be an operation of sheer pulverisation, euphemised as a mission to “degrade” and “dismantle” terrorist infrastructure, the Israeli Defence Force has now massed on the border with Gaza and is already making what are stated as “incursions”.  Journalists from a whole stable of Western news outlets are reporting such this state of affairs as cathartic. There is even a charging frisson, a sense of masochistic delight at the handiwork that awaits the fourth most powerful military in the world.

To that end, the coverage is almost cartoonish: the savage Indians circling the caravans have struck the innocent settlers, and now must be punished with the full modern might of the “settling” power that really wants peace, but whose hand was forced.  But the facts remain that the “people’s army,” as the IDF is often called, was hoodwinked, its intelligence community caught unawares.  The murderous rage now following is only informed by vengeance born from impotence.  The diplomatic corps has gone into hibernation, but in time, political realities will have to be acknowledged, though this is likely to be done over a mountain range of corpses.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.