Friday, August 16, 2024

Every Place in Gaza—Including Schools—Is a Target

August 16, 2024
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Photograph Source: Saleh Najm and Anas Sharif – CC BY 4.0

It is almost as if the Israeli army is trying to gather as many Palestinians as possible in one place and then kill them all. Ahmed Abed and his family fled the Dalal al-Maghribi school in early August after an Israeli airstrike displaced them. That airstrike killed 15 Palestinians who had taken refuge there after Israel had bombed their homes in the Ash Shujaiyeh neighborhood of Gaza City. The family arrived at the al-Taba’een school, a private school with an attached mosque, that sheltered 2,500 people. Since the Israelis began their most recent bombardment of Gaza in October 2023, Palestinians have taken refuge in private schools and in schools run by the United Nations (UN). The UN reports that in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli attacks have damaged 190 of their facilities, most of them schools. There are few sanctuaries left in Gaza. These schools—whether private or UN—are the only places that were seen as relatively safe.

At 4:30 a.m. on August 10, Israeli jet fighters flew over Gaza City and dropped U.S.-made GBU-39 250-pound bombs on the al-Taba’een school and mosque. During that time, a large number of the inhabitants had lined up at the mosque to go for the Fajr or dawn prayer. The bombs hit the people near the mosque, killing at least 100 Palestinians. It is a grotesque massacre that took place just when the United States decided to rearm Israel with these kinds of weapons. Sarah Leah Whitson, former Middle East and North Africa division director for Human Rights Watch, wrote that the arms sales to Israel by the United States on the day of this bombardment demonstrated a “Pavlovian conditioning for a feral army.”

The United States, despite occasional statements about withholding weapons, has consistently armed Israel during this genocidal war. Since 1948, the United States has provided $130 billion worth of weapons to Israel. Between 2018 and 2022, 79 percent of all weapons sold to Israel came from the United States (the next was Germany, which supplied 20 percent of Israel’s arms imports). The U.S. arms sales have come in deliberately small bunches of under $25 million per sale so that they do not require the scrutiny of the U.S. Congress, and therefore public debate. From October 2023 through March, the U.S. approved 100 of these small sales, which amount to over $1 billion in weapons sales, including the GBU-39. It is important to know that the bomb, created in the United States, was likely loaded onto an Israeli fighter jet by a U.S. technician seconded to the Israeli bases.

A Pattern of Targeting Schools

Mahmoud Basal, the spokesperson for Gaza’s civil defense unit, said that the medics who got to the scene at the al-Taba’een school, many of them already veterans of this kind of violence, were confounded by what they found. “The school area is strewn with dead bodies and body parts,” he said. “It is very difficult for paramedics to identify a whole dead body. There’s an arm here, a leg there. Bodies are ripped to pieces. Medical teams stand helpless before this horrific scene.” At least 40,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli bombings since last October, and 2 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes.

In the lead-up to the attack on al-Taba’een school, the Israeli forces have been escalating their bombings of schools in Gaza that serve as shelters. In July, the Israeli military struck 17 schools in Gaza, killing at least 163 Palestinians. In the week before August 10, Israel hit the Khadija and Ahmad al-Kurd schools in Deir al-Balah killing 30 Palestinians (July 27), the Dalal Moghrabi school in Ash Shujaiyeh killing 15 Palestinians (August 1), the Hamama and Huda schools in Sheikh Radwan killing sixteen Palestinians (August 3), the Hassan Salame and Nasser schools in al-Nassr killing 25 Palestinians (August 4), and the al-Zahraa and Abdul Fattah Hamouda schools killing 17 Palestinians (August 8).

This sequence of attacks on schools came before the August 10 bombing, which shows that there is a pattern of targeting civilians who are seeking shelter in schools. The massacre at al-Taba’een is the 21st attack by Israel against a school that has been serving as a shelter since July 4. Ahmed Abed lost his brother-in-law Abdullah al-Arair in the massacre at al-Taba’een. “There is nowhere else to go,” he said. “Every place in Gaza is a target.”

Israeli Denials

Israel accepted that it had bombed these schools but denied that it had killed civilians. In fact, Israel no longer names these places such as al-Taba’een and Dalal Moghrabi as schools; it calls them “military facilities.” The Israeli military said that it had killed at least 20 “terror operatives” since it is reported to have claimed to have hit an “‘active’ Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad command room embedded within a mosque.” The Israeli authorities released the names of at least 19 people who they claimed were senior operatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

The EuroMed Human Rights Monitor, an independent organization based in Switzerland, studied the claims made by Israel’s military and found them to be factually wanting. The Monitor’s staff went to the school, did a survey of the survivors, and reviewed the Israeli-controlled civil registry for the names. The team’s “preliminary investigation found that the Israeli army used names of Palestinians killed in Israeli raids—some of whom were killed in earlier raids—in its list.” The three people killed earlier, but whose names appeared in the Israeli lists, include Ahmed Ihab al-Jaabari (killed on December 5, 2023), Youssef al-Wadiyya (killed on August 8, 2024), and Montaser Daher (killed on August 9, 2024). The Israeli list also had three elderly civilians who have no connection to any militant group, including Abdul Aziz Misbah al-Kafarna (a school principal) and Yousef Kahlout (an Arabic language teacher and deputy mayor of Beit Hanoun). The list also includes six civilians, “some of whom were even Hamas opponents.”

It is remarkable that even in their own statements the Israeli officials seem unsure about their claims. Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari of the Israeli military said that “various intelligence indications” show that there was a “high probability” that Ashraf Juda, a commander of the Islamic Jihad’s Central Camps Brigade, was in al-Taba’een school. But the Israelis could not confirm it. So, the Israelis killed 100 civilians even though they were not certain if their target was in the facility at that time.

The Israeli army has set up a pattern for its genocidal campaign. It first bombs civilian neighborhoods, sending terrified people into shelters such as schools and hospitals. Then, it announces blanket evacuation orders from an entire area, forcing people in these shelters to live in fear since many of them do not have the wherewithal to leave them for other places (indeed, “There is nowhere else to go,” said Ahmed Abed). Having made these evacuation orders, Israel then bombs the protected shelters, including hospitals and schools, with the argument that these are military targets. This formula was enacted in Gaza City and in other parts of Gaza.

Now, Israel has announced forced evacuation orders for people in Khan Younis, a city in central Gaza. Alongside these orders, Israeli forces have begun aerial and artillery attacks at the eastern edge of Khan Younis. We will now see these kinds of attacks on schools and hospitals that are shelters for desperate people in the center of Gaza, with every building seen by the Israelis as a legitimate target.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Vijay Prashad’s most recent book (with Noam Chomsky) is The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and the Fragility of US Power (New Press, August 2022).

Does Disability Pride Month include children in Gaza?

by Gary Smith

August 16, 2024

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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

A few weeks ago, I learned that July is Disability Pride Month in recognition of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in July 1990 (only 34 years ago) that breaks down legal barriers for inclusion of those with disabilities.

Being a person with a disability, you’d think I’d have known there was a month dedicated to recognizing people with disabilities. I suppose like my diagnosis, I’m a little late.

When I began to crawl, my parents noticed something was off. They took me to a doctor who said I had one leg that was shorter than the other. This took me down a years-long path of seeing orthopedists, surgeons, and other experts who either confirmed I had one shorter leg, or disagreed and said one hip was higher. Regardless of the cause, the effect was I walked with a limp.

I had heel cord surgery, a special shoe, metal braces, physical therapy, and more throughout my childhood years. Once I became an adult, I said no more surgeries, no more therapies, no more appliances, no more “fixes,” and resigned myself to the fact that I walk with difficulty.

It wasn’t until I was 37 and in need of bunion surgery from the toll walking takes on my body that the surgeon sent me to a neurologist before agreeing to the surgery The neurologist came back with the cerebral palsy diagnosis. A couple of weeks later, the foot surgeon sent me to a hip specialist who looked at my x-ray and said that he could indeed perform a surgical procedure to put the hip socket back into place, but that it would not improve my walking ability because this was a neurological issue, not a structural issue. He confirmed that I had cerebral palsy.

So, after 37 years of believing I had one leg that was shorter than the other, or something along those lines, I came face to face with the idea that I had a disability. A serious disability.

Being someone with depression and anxiety since I was five or six years old, I did what I normally would do when I was overwhelmed with life’s sufferings: I mostly ignored the diagnosis.

That sufficed until the past few years. Other medical conditions have arisen due to the cerebral palsy as well as my mobility problems, poor balance, and falls (on top of garden-variety aging). I found a doctor at UCLA’s Cerebral Palsy clinic. This doctor confirmed the CP diagnosis and said I was a Level 2 on the Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFS), which uses a five-level system that corresponds to the extent of ability and impairment. A higher number indicates a higher degree of severity.

After the diagnosis at 37, I believed I had a mild case of CP. I was not wheelchair-bound, I had no speech impediments, I worked, I drove a car, I did all sorts of things people with severe disabilities didn’t do. But the CP doctor’s diagnosis concerned me, suggesting it is a more serious case, and was getting worse.

She did Botox injections in my right leg to help with the spasticity and dystonia (muscle contractions). I took a couple of different medications for essentially the same purpose and had a very expensive brace sculpted specifically to my body, none of which helped.

In a follow-up appointment, the CP doctor admitted that she has exhausted her tools. She suggested that I get in touch with companies that make walking implements like canes, walkers, and arm braces to help me walk more safely. I occasionally fall, and fall hard, resulting in wrist and hip injuries.

All of this exacerbated my depression, self-loathing and tendency to feel sorry for myself. As I started down rumination road, I thought about a photograph I saw recently in my social media feed of a very young girl in Gaza who had her leg blown off by the Israeli military and government. What was this little girl’s life like, living with a serious disability, trying to survive a genocide and famine caused by Israel? Was the amputation done with anesthesia? Did she have access to proper painkillers and other medicines while Israel continues to block food, water, medicine and fuel from getting into the territory?

Following her into the rabbit hole, I learned that prior to October 7, 21% of households in Gaza had at least one member with a disability. That is one-fifth of the population, and that was prior to Israel’s 10-month genocidal war.

Being a Jewish person who has made a point of following this war very closely, I needed to find out more. According to a World Health Organization (WHO) report, “It is reasonable to expect that there are between 2760 and 3600 limb amputations, though some anecdotal reports indicate this number may be higher. As with extremity injuries, the majority are likely to be lower limb injuries. At present, there are no operational prosthetic and orthotic services in Gaza. A scale up of sustainable prosthetic services is needed – in careful coordination with existing providers who are already planning surge capacities.”

The report further states that at least 17,000 children are orphaned or separated from their families. Every day since early October, an estimated 37 mothers are killed, leaving families devastated and children vulnerable.

A couple of weeks earlier, a report came out from the journal Lancet, which says that the true death toll in Gaza could reach more than 186,000 people. The Gaza Ministry of Health’s death toll reports more than 39,175 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its military offensive, and driven most of the 2.3 million citizens from their homes.

The U.N. human rights office and the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health also say that the true figures are likely higher than those published.

More than 90,923 people have been injured. How many of those 90,923 are now disabled? How many are children?

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently spoke in front of Congress, he received a standing ovation. The man leading the genocide, the man responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of people, two-thirds of whom are women and children, the man responsible for blowing off the leg of the little girl in my social media feed, was being honored by the U.S. political apparatus and elite. It was like living in some surreal world where killing and maiming children is love, and protesting genocide on college campuses is evil. These men and women cheering on a genocide, funding a genocide, and providing the weapons to blow off the limbs of children cannot represent me—a disabled person.

To see this occur during Disability Pride Month, well, that’s literally adding insult to injury.

Yemen’s Inexpensive Drones Wreaking Expensive Havoc

As the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia continued to conduct siege warfare in Yemen, the Houthis threatened to use drones to attack the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia if the blockade and daily bombardments of Yemen continued. In October 2019, the Houthis used ten drones to attack the Saudi Aramco facility, knocking it offline for days and causing the global oil markets to spiral for weeks after the attack. A few months later, in January 2022, the Houthis launched a sophisticated drone attack on the illustrious UAE capital of Abu Dhabi. The Houthi attack on Abu Dhabi seemed to shake the Emirates into rethinking their war strategy in Yemen, and less than a month later, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE were locked in peace talks.

More recently, the Houthis have used drones to form a blockade of the Red Sea, throwing a stick into the bike spokes of global trade. According to the Armed Conflict Location Event Data project, Operation Prosperity Guardian has been successful in knocking down roughly 75% of the Houthi drones launched into the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, but the problem is the missiles they are using to shoot down Houthi drones cost millions of dollars, and the Houthi drones cost thousands of dollars. Legacy media outlets spew a common misconception that the Houthis are getting these drones directly from Iran despite the fact that the UN Panel of Experts on Yemen concluded that components to build the drones are smuggled from abroad and manufactured locally in Yemen. Iran gave the Houthis the blueprint to create their own drone fleet in 2018; the drones fired from Yemen are developed and manufactured in Yemen. The United States gave Iran the blueprints to start its nuclear program in the 1950s. Does that mean that the United States is responsible for Iran’s nuclear program?

The Houthis first made their drone program public in 2017, but it had little to no impact on the war in Yemen until technology from Iran expedited the Houthi drone program in 2018, and in April of that year, the Houthis announced their first successful drone attack. According to an ACLED report from 2019 to 2020, the Houthis launched over 100 drone attacks, with the majority of them targeting Saudi Arabia and coalition forces in Yemen. Most of these attacks were conducted using one-way Qasif-1 suicide drones, and in 2021, the group was introduced to multi-use commercial drones that could drop different weapons and return to base. Over the next two years, the Houthis continued to develop their drone program, unveiling their multi-use drone fleet of short and long-range drones like the Mudhud-1, Rujum, Mersad-1, Mersad-2, Sammad-3 and Sammad-4.

The Houthis used their new fleet to change the course of the war in Yemen. In 2021, the Houthis launched 280 successful drone attacks, with half of them hitting their targets in Saudi Arabia and the other half targeting the Houthis domestic foes in Southern and Western Yemen. The following year, the Houthis carried out 240 drone attacks, most of them pummeling forces loyal to the GCC coalition and the Internationally Recognized government of Yemen, driving them to the bargaining table for peace talks in April 2022. After a truce was reached in the nine-year war in Yemen, Houthi drone attacks outside of Yemen came to a halt. The Houthis started to use the drones more in their domestic battles to support ground initiatives like the assault on Marib in mid-2022.

That all changed in October 2023 when tensions between Hamas and Israel reached a boiling point after a string of attacks that killed over 1,200 Israelis, marking the largest attack on Israeli soil in the nation’s history. The world is still waiting for the region to break out into a much larger war, and geopolitical minds pointed to all the normal players like Hezbollah and Iran while completely ignoring the Houthis. Even when the Houthis threatened to attack international trade if Israel did not halt its bombardment of Gaza, Israel, the United States, and the rest of the global world scoffed at the idea that the Houthis could actually impact international trade. Since November 2023, the Houthis have launched 360 drone attacks, with over 50% of them targeting international waters.

Simon Heaney, senior manager of container research for Drewry, told the AP that at least 90% of container ships that used to travel through the Red Sea are now rerouting around Africa. According to Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the cost to send a standard 40-foot container ship from China to Europe went from $1,400 to $4,000. After one month of the Houthi blockade of the Red Sea, economists estimated an overall 1.3% decline in world trade during the 2023 Christmas season, and sea traffic passing through the Bel el Mandeb strait fell by 60%. By May of 2024, traffic at the port of Eilat, Israel’s only Red Sea port, ground to a halt, profits had fallen by 80% since the Houthi imposed blockade, and the Jerusalem Post announced the port of Eilat filed for bankruptcy.

Tensions between the Houthis, Israel, and the United States go back decades and did not start when the Houthis began their blockade of the Red Sea. The Houthis first burst onto the scene in 2002 as they held protests for days outside the Great Mosque in Sanaa against America’s invasion of Iraq. The US was offended that the protesters were chanting “Death to America and Death to Israel” and asked President Saleh to quash the protests. Yemeni police and troops arrested over 650 Zaydi revivalists in widespread crackdowns, and a 10 million dollar reward was offered to anyone in Yemen who killed or captured the group’s leader, Hussein al-Houthi. Tribal militias that rivaled the Zaydis teamed up with local police and government troops to attack Zaydi villages in the northern province of Sada to force out Hussein al-Houthi until he was eventually killed. This was when the Believing Youth Movement of Zaydi revivalists transitioned into being the armed militia group the world now knows as the Houthis.

Since October 7th, the Houthis have attacked Israel 53 times; the most significant attack occurred on July 19th when a drone launched from Houthi-controlled Yemen traveled 1,600 miles, subverting Israel’s air defenses before crashing into a high-rise in Tel Aviv, killing one Israeli and injuring four others. Yemen has proven that its drone program can not only change the tide of its civil war but also change Yemen’s standing on the global stage.

The question the United States and Israel should be asking themselves is how they allowed such a drastic intelligence failure. They sat back on their hands as a former youth group with zero governing experience performed a geopolitical checkmate, shutting down one the most vital waterways in the world. The US and Israel often brag about being the global leaders in military intelligence and strategic awareness, yet they completely whiffed it as a volatile nation rapidly developed a drone fleet that could disrupt global commerce, travel over 1,500 miles undetected, and penetrate one of the most protected airspaces in the world.

Joziah Thayer is a researcher with the Pursuance Project. He founded WEDA in 2014 to combat mainstream media narratives. He is also an antiwar activist and the online organizer behind #OpYemen.

US Resumes Offensive Weapons Sales to Major Human Rights Abuser: Saudi Arabia

One issue that has slipped beneath the radar in terms of news coverage is the recent decision by the Biden administration to resume the sale of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia. For starters, the U.S. will be sending a shipment of bombs worth $750 million in the coming months.

These weapons were cut off by the Biden administration in 2021 because the Saudis were using them in Yemen in their war against the Houthis, killing thousands of civilians.

The resumption of the sale of offensive weapons is part of U.S. efforts to push the Saudis to normalize relations with Israel. In 2020, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) signed normalization agreements that are collectively known as the Abraham Accords. These deals were brokered primarily by the Trump administration. Some of the countries that signed on, such as the UAE, view the accord not only as a way to bolster trade, but as a military alliance against their historical rival, Iran.

For the Saudis, however, normalization has been pushed off the table by the Israeli assault on Gaza and public sympathy for the Palestinians. A December 2023 survey by the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy found that a near unanimous 96 percent of Saudis say that Arab countries should break all contacts with Israel to protest against Israeli attacks in Gaza.

The Saudis say that Israel must first end the war in Gaza and, even more elusive, create a credible pathway to a Palestinian state. Saudi Arabia has told the United States it will not open diplomatic relations with Israel unless it agrees to accept an independent Palestinian state on the internationally-recognized pre-1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Such a Palestinian state is precisely what Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Knesset are dead set against.

But U.S. officials still want to push for normalization, and the Biden administration has offered a series of incentives, including negotiating a defense pact and an agreement for civil nuclear cooperation.

The U.S. also wants to build closer Saudi ties to drive a wedge into the peace process between Saudi Arabia and Iran that was brokered by China last year, and to counter the inroads that China is making in the region. More immediately, the U.S. wants Saudi cooperation in repelling Iranian retaliatory attacks on Israel. In mid-April, when Iran retaliated against the April 1 Israeli airstrike that killed a top Revolutionary Guard commander in Syria, the Saudis, along with Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, cooperated with the U.S. and Israel in repelling some 300 missiles and drones that Iran fired on Israel. The Israelis are now bracing for another Iranian response to the killing in Tehran of Hamas political leader Ismael Haniya.

But the arms sales violate the Biden administration’s earlier promises of a new approach to Saudi Arabia that would focus on human rights. In 2020 Biden vowed to treat Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, as a “pariah,” mainly because of the 2018 assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Despite recent cosmetic openings like musical concerts and some real reforms like giving women the right to drive and the abolition of the religious police, Saudi Arabia remains one of the most repressive countries in the world. While U.S. officials regularly criticize elections in neighboring Iran, there are no elections in Saudi Arabia. It continues to be one of the last remaining absolute monarchies in the world.

You don’t have to look at the damning reports from groups like Amnesty International and Human Right Watch to see the extent of Saudi repression. Just look at the U.S. State Department’s 2023 human rights report. It talks about extrajudicial killings; enforced disappearance; torture; life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; lack of an independent judiciary; punishment of family members for alleged offenses by a relative; violence against journalists and press censorship; serious restrictions on internet freedom, religious freedom and freedom of movement, including the right to leave the country; bans on independent trade unions; violence against gay and transgender persons; and the excessive use of the death penalty.

Remember: this stinging critique is coming from the US government–a major ally of the Saudis.

Sending more weapons to the Saudis will only strengthen this repressive regime and increase regional conflicts. But, of course, it will also increase the profits of weapons companies, such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. That, in turn, increases the campaign coffers of our politicians.

So the U.S. government is authorizing the sale of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, while it continues to tout itself as the defender of the “free world.” Go figure.

Medea Benjamin, cofounder of the peace group CODEPINK, is author of the book Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection.

The US Is Preparing for an Unwinnable War Against China

In war, there are no winners – and in a war between the US and China, the entire world would lose.

That’s not just considering the mass loss of life that would occur, but also the reverberating effects of war that would sink millions into economic devastation, destroy the environment, and lead to widespread displacement and human rights atrocities.

The potential use of nuclear weapons is often disregarded as a side note, but it shouldn’t be. According to experts, conflict between the US and China could easily escalate into nuclear war – and a nuclear winter isn’t much farther away.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Charles Q. Brown disagrees. He says he is “fully confident” that the US would defeat China if war were to break out over Taiwan, even though the Commission on National Defense Strategy predicts extreme losses on the US side. Just last week he announced, “It’s going to take all the nation if we go to conflict with the PRC, and I’m confident, if we’re challenged, we will be there.”

“I play to win,” he continued, after acknowledging that “these will be major conflicts akin to what we saw in WW2, and so we’ve got to come to grips with that.” Born in 1962, Gen. Brown knows nothing of the horrors of WW2. For him, it’s words in a textbook – a game to “play.” For others, it will be lost limbs and terror.

The US has been in near constant conflict since its inception, and our more recent wars paint an obvious vision of ineptitude. The only things Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan accomplished were widespread death and destruction. Violence does not end just because war does, but hangs over communities like a specter, negatively affecting the health and economic well-being of nations, as well as contributing to environmental harm.

While our government has been edging us towards war with China for some time, it’s not often we hear the words spoken so starkly. Gen. Brown’s point is clear: the US is preparing for war, and they’re not holding back.

This week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin brought $500 million to the Philippines to boost their military capabilities. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was negotiating a deal to move US operational control of Japanese forces from Hawaii to Japan.

Make no mistake: this is not another small play of some far-away war game. This is a big deal.

Having operational control over Japan’s military means our government doesn’t need to send as many American soldiers across the ocean to engage in battle. They’ll have full command and control of thousands of Japanese troops to do with as they please. The US already has operational control over South Korea’s military, meaning that if war broke out, all ROK troops would be placed under US command as well.

This isn’t just about war strategy – it’s about public perception. The American people are far more likely to support a war when they aren’t losing loved ones left and right. That might be the only lesson our government learned from Vietnam, and Iraq only solidified it. Drones and special forces won’t cut it in a war with China, which is why the US is working overtime to solidify military partnerships across the Asia Pacific.

Modern US war-waging often occurs through the use of proxy states and funding the troops of another country as long as they act in US interests. They’ll call it military strategy, but at the very root of it, you’ll find a dark feeling of indifference towards the citizens of other nations. Our government could not care less what happens to innocent people in Japan, South Korea, or the Philippines – as long as US global hegemony is preserved, they will let them die.

Meanwhile, opposition has been growing within. In South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines, protests are on the rise, calling for an end to US imperialism. The people don’t want to be cannon fodder between the US and China, which is exactly what will happen if the situation escalates into war.

At a Foreign Relations Committee hearing last week on strategic warfare with China (the 7th so far), Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell stressed the importance of AUKUS and other trilateral partnerships when dealing with China. “This will be never ending,” Campbell told the committee, emphasizing that the Asia Pacific “requires the most capable naval and advanced long-range air capabilities that the United States has ever needed before.”

Well, alliances are being made and billions of tax dollars continue to fund hyper-militarization of the region. Gen. Brown even commented that he is accelerating the effort of stockpiling weapons, ammunition, and other supplies in the Asia Pacific in preparation for war.

Just a few months ago, a trilateral summit between Japan, the Philippines, and the United States deepened their military alliance in the region. Biden reaffirmed the US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty, which states the US will respond to any attack on the island nation. AUKUS, which Secretary Campbell repeatedly stressed the importance of, is a defense alliance between the US, the UK, and Australia in the Asia Pacific region. Criticized by China for its “cold war mentality,” the strategic partnership is not unlike those that led us into global wars during the 20th century.

Everywhere we look, our government speaks of war with China as if it is an inevitable and warranted endeavor. It’s not. War never is.

And yet, the media will continue to follow our politicians like lap dogs and feed the narrative that war with China is unavoidable – even though China itself has repeatedly denounced any potential escalation into conflict. At this point, it rests on the shoulders of the people to say otherwise.

It’s time for the American public to take a stand against the normalization of conflict and the preparation for war with China. It’s time to tell our government that war with China is not only unacceptable, but global suicide. We now stare this unwinnable conflict in the face and there’s no time to look away. The time for action is now.

Megan Russell is CODEPINK’s China is Not Our Enemy Campaign Coordinator. She graduated from the London School of Economics with a Master’s Degree in Conflict Studies. Prior to that, she attended NYU where she studied Conflict, Culture, and International Law. Megan spent one year studying in Shanghai, and over eight years studying Chinese Mandarin. Her research focuses on the intersection between US-China affairs, peace-building, and international development.

The US and Japanese Forces Are Integrated and Prepare a War

The Japanese government denies some fears that its forces will be subordinate to U.S. forces. However, the U.S. and Japanese forces are being integrated, and there is a secret agreement that a single commander is indispensable in an emergency and that the U.S. should appoint the person.

Japan will create the Joint Operations Command (JJOC) of Self-Defense Forces by the end of March 2025. Currently, the Joint Staff Office is responsible for military advising and assisting the Prime Minister and Defense Minister and for commanding the military operations of the Ground, Maritime, and Air Self-Defense Forces. However, the new joint headquarters will accept commanding the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, and this change will relieve the Joint Staff Office’s burden and enable it to concentrate on advising.

In April 2024, the U.S. and Japan issued a Joint Leaders’ Statement: Global Partners for the Future. In the statement, the U.S. welcomed “plans to stand up the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) Joint Operations Command to enhance command and control of the JSDF.” They announced their intention to bilaterally upgrade their respective command and control frameworks to enable seamless integration of operations and capabilities and allow for greater interoperability and planning between U.S. and Japanese forces in peacetime and during contingencies.”

In June 2024, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said appointing a four-star general to head of U.S. Forces Japan was still considered. Currently, the U.S. Forces Japan’s head is a three-star general, and the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, based in Hawaii, has command authority over U.S. Forces in Japan, which head is a four-star general. However, there is a distance and a time difference between Hawaii and Japan. In order to cooperate smoothly with Japan in operational planning and training to respond to contingencies, the authority of the U.S. Forces Japan headquarters should be strengthened.

On July 28, 2024, the U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee (U.S.-Japan “2+2”), which both countries’ Foreign Affairs Ministers and Defense Ministers attended, released a joint statement. In the statement, the U.S. announces that it “intends to reconstitute U.S. Forces Japan (USFJ) as a joint force headquarters (JFHQ) reporting to the Commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM). This reconstituted USFJ is intended to serve as an important JJOC counterpart” to facilitate deeper interoperability and cooperation on joint bilateral operations in peacetime and during contingencies.

The Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) Joint Operations Command will be included in the Alliance Coordination Mechanism (ACM).

The Alliance Coordination Mechanism (ACM) was established in November 2015 by the U.S. and Japanese governments for bilateral Defense Cooperation. The ACM coordinates policy and operational aspects of activities conducted by the U.S. Forces and JSDF in all phases, from peacetime to contingencies. This Mechanism also contributes to timely information sharing and the development and maintenance of common situational awareness.

On the same day, Washington and Tokyo also established the Bilateral Planning Mechanism (BPM), which ensures Ministerial-level directions and supervision and the involvement of relevant government ministries and agencies. It also coordinates various forms of U.S.-Japan cooperation conducive to the development of bilateral plans. The two governments conduct bilateral planning through the BPM.

Both Mechanisms are based on the Guidelines for U.S.-Japan Defense Cooperation, published in 1978 and revised twice in 1997 and 2015. The Guidelines are documents agreed upon on what defense cooperation should be concretely based on the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, and the alliance was advanced beyond offering bases. Though the guidelines read that it does not obligate either government to take legislative, budgetary, or administrative measures, Tokyo has enacted laws and spent money to fulfill them.

The 1978 Guidelines were laid down on the assumption that the Soviet Union’s invasion of Hokkaido, Japan. They stated that the U.S. and Japanese forces endeavor to achieve a posture for cooperation, conduct studies on joint defense planning, and undertake necessary joint exercises and training in order to perform coordinated operations jointly.

The 1997 Guidelines aimed at creating “a solid basis for more effective and credible U.S.-Japan cooperation under normal circumstances, in case of an armed attack against Japan, and in situations in areas surrounding Japan.” The Guidelines declared to establish the bilateral coordination mechanism, which was operated only during contingencies, and both countries should cooperate in situations surrounding Japan that would have an essential influence on Japan’s peace and security. “Areas surrounding Japan” was not geographic but situational. This change enabled Japan to conduct logistics support activities for U.S. Forces that are conducting operations to achieve the objectives of the Security Treaty even if there is no attack on Japan.

The U.S. and Japan revised the Guidelines in 2015, which are still effective. The 2015 Guidelines extended both countries’ cooperation sphere to the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.

The Guidelines state the establishment of the abovementioned Alliance Coordination Mechanism (ACM) and reflect the 2014 Japanese Cabinet approval for exercising the right of collective defense. Japanese “Self-Defense Forces will conduct appropriate operations involving the use of force to respond to situations where an armed attack against a foreign country that is in a close relationship with Japan occurs and as a result, threatens Japan’s survival and poses a clear danger to overturn fundamentally its people’s right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, to ensure Japan’s survival, and to protect its people.” The Guidelines also declare that “Japan and the United States will cooperate as appropriate with other countries taking action in response to the armed attack.”

Article 9 of the Japanese constitution prohibits maintaining military force and states renunciation of war. So, the use of force even for self-defense and the existence of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and the U.S. Forces in Japan are unconstitutional. However, the Japanese government has interpreted the text broadly and admitted the minimum use of force for self-defense. Now, Tokyo includes exercising the right of collective defense in the minimum use of force for self-defense and makes noncommittal explanations to leave room for further broad interpretation.

On July 29, 2024, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Toshimasa Hayashi denied fear that Japanese forces would be subordinate to the U.S. forces. He stated, “All Japanese Self-Defense Forces operations are conducted based on this country’s judgment. There is no change in policy that each force operates in accordance with its own chain of command.”

However, there was a secret agreement. On July 23, 1952, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Robert Murphy, U.S. Far East Commander in Chief Mark Clark, and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida agreed that a single commander was indispensable in an emergency and that the U.S. should appoint the person. Yoshida asked that this agreement be kept secret because it would significantly impact the Japanese public.

Japan intends to play a significant role in a war as the world’s biggest host nation of the U.S. military. The U.S. has been completing its long ambition to fully use Japan in order to wage war and dominate the world.

Reiho Takeuchi is a Japanese journalist whose work focuses on the geopolitical issues in the Asia-Pacific. He writes at https://reihotakeuchi.substack.com/. E-mail: reihotakeuchi@gmail.com.

Who Owns America?

Oligarchs Have Bought up the American Dream

by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / August 13th, 2024

The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls. They got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear… They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying. Lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else… It’s called the American Dream, ’cause you have to be asleep to believe it.”
— George Carlin

Who owns America?

Is it the government? The politicians? The corporations? The foreign investors? The American people?

While the Deep State keeps the nation divided and distracted by a presidential election whose outcome is foregone (the police state’s stranglehold on power will ensure the continuation of endless wars and out-of-control spending, while disregarding the citizenry’s fundamental rights and the rule of law), America is literally being bought and sold right out from under us.

Consider the facts.

We’re losing more and more of our land every year to corporations and foreign interests. Foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land has increased by 66% since 2010. In 2021, it was reported that foreign investors owned approximately 40 million acres of U.S. agricultural land, which is more than the entire state of Iowa. By 2022 that number had grown to 43.4 million acres. The rate at which U.S. farmland is being bought up by foreign interests grew by 2.2 million acres per year from 2015 to 2021. The number of U.S. farm acres owned by foreign entities grew more than 8% (3.4 million acres) in 2022.

We’re losing more and more of our businesses every year to foreign corporations and interests. Although China owns a small fraction of foreign-owned U.S. land at 380,000 acres (less than the state of Rhode Island), Chinese companies and investors are also buying up major food companies, commercial and residential real estate, and other businesses. As RetailWire explains, “Currently, many brands started by early American pioneers now wave international flags. This revolution is a direct result of globalization.” The growing list of once-notable American brands that have been sold to foreign corporations includes: U.S. Steel (now Japanese-owned); General Electric (Chinese-owned); Budweiser (Belgium); Burger King (Canada); 7-Eleven (Japan); Jeep, Chrysler, and Dodge (Netherlands); and IBM (China).

We’re digging ourselves deeper and deeper into debt, both as a nation and as a populace. Basically, the U.S. government is funding its existence with a credit card, spending money it doesn’t have on programs it can’t afford. The bulk of that debt has been amassed over the past two decades, thanks in large part to the fiscal shenanigans of four presidents, 10 sessions of Congress and two wars. The national debt (the amount the federal government has borrowed over the years and must pay back) is more than $34 trillion and will grow another $19 trillion by 2033. Foreign ownership makes up 29% of the U.S. debt held by the public. Of that amount, reports the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, “52 percent was held by private foreign investors while foreign governments held the remaining 48 percent.”

The Fourth Estate has been taken over by media conglomerates that prioritize profit over principle. Independent news agencies, which were supposed to act as bulwarks against government propaganda, have been subsumed by a global corporate takeover of newspapers, television and radio. Consequently, a handful of corporations now control most of the media industry and, thus, the information dished out to the public. Likewise, with Facebook and Google having appointed themselves the arbiters of disinformation, we now find ourselves grappling with new levels of corporate censorship by entities with a history of colluding with the government to keep the citizenry mindless, muzzled and in the dark.

Most critically of all, however, the U.S. government, long ago sold to the highest bidders, has become little more than a shell company, a front for corporate interests. Nowhere is this state of affairs more evident than in the manufactured spectacle that is the presidential election. As for members of Congress, long before they’re elected, they are trained to dance to the tune of their wealthy benefactors, so much so that they spend two-thirds of their time in office raising money. As Reuters reports, “It also means that lawmakers often spend more time listening to the concerns of the wealthy than anyone else.”

In the oligarchy that is the American police state, it clearly doesn’t matter who wins the White House, because they all work for the same boss: a Corporate State that has gone global.

So much for living the American dream.

“We the people” have become the new, permanent underclass in America.

We’re being forced to shell out money for endless wars that are bleeding us dry; money for surveillance systems to track our movements; money to further militarize our already militarized police; money to allow the government to raid our homes and bank accounts; money to fund schools where our kids learn nothing about freedom and everything about how to comply; and on and on.

This is no way of life.

It’s tempting to say that there’s little we can do about it, except that’s not quite accurate.

There are a few things we can do (demand transparency, reject cronyism and graft, insist on fair pricing and honest accounting methods, call a halt to incentive-driven government programs that prioritize profits over people), but it will require that “we the people” stop playing politics and stand united against the politicians and corporate interests who have turned our government and economy into a pay-to-play exercise in fascism.

Unfortunately, we’ve become so invested in identity politics that label us based on our political leanings that we’ve lost sight of the one label that unites us: we’re all Americans.

The powers-that-be want us to adopt an “us versus them” mindset that keeps us powerless and divided. Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the only “us versus them” that matters is “we the people” against the Deep State.Facebook Twitter

John W. Whitehead, constitutional attorney and author, is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He wrote the book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015). He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Read other articles by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

On the Call Not to Protest in Chicago

by Riva Enteen / August 13th, 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris in August 2021. (White House /Erin Scott)

Two college professors who studied and lived in the 1960s recently published an opinion piece in The Los Angeles Times urging dissidents not to protest at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The first paragraph is a stark example of uber-liberals suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome:

A collection of fringe radical groups are calling for demonstrations in Chicago this August at the Democratic National Convention — a ‘March on the DNC’ for Palestine. We study political movements, and we’ve participated in more than a few ourselves. We share the concerns of many Americans about Israel’s actions in Gaza, the need for an immediate cease-fire and the release of hostages and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel. But we’re not going to heed the call to protest in Chicago. We hope others will stay away as well.

Cheri Honkala, an advocate for decades for the poor and homeless in the streets of Philadelphia, plans to lead the Poor People’s Army in a march to the steps of the United Center on the convention’s opening day. If she is “radical fringe,” then so am I.

The tireless and fearless founder of Philadelphia’s Kensington Welfare Rights Union in 1991, Honkala is now the Poor People’s Army’s national spokesperson and national coordinator of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign.

She has been arrested over 200 times, but says that her worst was at the July Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee where she tried to serve an arrest warrant on Trump and the Republican Party for crimes against humanity.

Police cuffed her, then drove her alone in a van to a closed prison where 200 military police officers sat at tables, ready to be of service to convention security on demand. They locked her in a room with glass walls for hours, then drove her to an empty warehouse district where they let her out at night in a thunder and lightning storm, with no wallet and no phone.

She is now preparing to confront the Democrats. Chicago was compelled to grant the Poor People’s Army a permit to march to the steps of the convention at Chicago’s United Center after failing to respond to her appeal of a permit denial. Authorities are now attempting to reroute the march, but the Poor People’s Army does not plan to back down.

The protests will address domestic crises as well as the genocide against Palestinians. Honkala talks about the reality of the streets, telling Black Agenda Report that:

More Americans have died because of the opiate crisis than died in the Vietnam War. Millions of dollars have come into Philadelphia, supposedly to help with recovery programs and housing and services here, but it never makes it to the people.

However, these learned professors of the 1960s writing in the LA Times assert that those preparing to protest must support the Democratic Party and its candidates because Donald Trump is a new Hitler who will end democracy. They say this is not the time for protest.

Malcom X Comes to Mind

But who determines when to be patient and ask for incremental change, and when to demand radical change? At this point even national health care, closing Guantanamo, or increasing the national minimum wage to minimum subsistence, would be radical change. Malcom X comes to mind: “That’s not a chip on my shoulder. That’s your foot on my neck.” Sometimes, incrementalism doesn’t work.

Though the professors express “concern” about the genocide in Gaza, their piece speaks only of the Israeli hostages, not of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners, many of them children, held without charges, sexually assaulted, and tortured. A Knesset member recently said that rape of Palestinian prisoners is legitimate.

October 7 happened in part because of all the Palestinians in prison with no charges or hope of a trial. The only ceasefire after October 7 brought Palestinian prisoners home at a 3:1 ratio to Israeli hostages but the ratio of remaining Palestinian prisoners to Israeli hostages is still far higher. Prisoner release will be part of any negotiation and must be one of the demands of the Palestinian solidarity movement.

Palestinian Youth Accord for Prisoners rally in Gaza support of Palestinian administrative detainees on a mass hunger strike, May 12, 2014. (Joe Catron, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)

The professors say they support a two-state solution, but that dream is long dead; members of the U.N. Security Council and the General Assembly have repeated it like a mantra for decades as Israel colonized more land in the West Bank and rained bombs on Gaza. President Joe Biden and the U.S. State Department continue to invoke it but say that it can only be created by negotiation between Israelis and Palestinians, which is to say not at all.

October 7 happened because 75 years of negotiations failed. The recent Israeli assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh dimmed hopes of a negotiated settlement any time soon.

These men of the ’60s claim that “the convention protests of 1960 and 1964 followed a sophisticated and pragmatic strategy of working within and without the party apparatus.” But why would anyone trust their “within and without” strategy after the Democratic Party elite stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020 and kept Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from running as a Democrat this year?

The long cover-up of Biden’s decline and his unceremonious replacement with Kamala Harris, a lock-em-up candidate who has never won a single delegate, reeks of Deep State. Many are asking, “Who is in charge, given the president’s obviously impaired faculties?”

While praise is showered on Biden’s alleged prowess in negotiating the recent historic and complicated international prisoner exchange, his incompetence was evident in the disastrous June 27 debate. He confuses Haifa with Rafah, and Mexico with Egypt. There is no way he negotiated the prisoner exchange.

According to the LA Times editorialists, Chicago in 1960 and 1964 had good protesters who “worked within the party apparatus.” The 1968 protesters, they say, were bad and “set back the cause.”

The DNC protests are allegedly why Hubert Humphrey lost to Richard Nixon, who continued the Vietnam War longer — they hypothesize — than Humphrey would have. Of course, the anti-war candidate, Robert F. Kennedy, had probably just been assassinated by the Deep State, after winning the California primary, all but assuring his nomination. But rather than protest, we should have quietly urged an anti-war platform?

Humphrey promised to stop bombing North Vietnam and seek a ceasefire after the convention and before the election, because it was clear that the anti-war movement couldn’t be ignored. Would he have made those promises without the protests in Chicago? Would he have kept them if elected? There is no way to know for sure.

As one who was on the streets protesting the Vietnam War, I knew that it was imperative to let the Vietnamese know we were in solidarity with them, and the Palestinians deserve no less. We must express our outrage at both parties for their support of the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Demonstration outside the The Watergate Hotel in Washington, where Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu was staying, July 22. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

“The key organizers,” the professors write:

the ones who will determine the message this protest conveys by its slogans and actions, are members of the ultra-leftist Party for Socialism and Liberation, and its front organization, the ANSWER coalition. This is the same group behind the demonstration that burned an American flag and defaced monuments in a ‘day of rage’ as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress last week.

If burning an American flag, a form of protest protected by the Supreme Court, and defacing monuments as acts of rage against war criminal Netanyahu make protestors “ultra-leftist,” then sign me up.

Rather than using labels like “ultra-leftist”, why not challenge what this group actually says, specifically and factually? The global stakes are quite high, so clarification and accuracy are essential. The Poor People’s Army and Code Pink are also among the organizers. The protests are organized by a coalition of groups determined to challenge the Democrats in the streets over their position on Palestine. Let’s not bring back Red baiting.

According to the professors, “…the primary goal has to be to defeat Donald Trump, and to help Democratic candidates win in the House and Senate.”

They don’t want to lose voters “to a perception that Democrats are the party of chaos…” But it is past time to expose the chaos to the light of day. We would be immoral to stand passively by as the U.S. funds genocide in Palestine and plays a game of nuclear chicken with Russia in Ukraine.

Rather than conceding all political space to the Democratic Party’s coronation of Kamala Harris, we must expose how fundamentally undemocratic it is. They stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders twice, kept RFK Jr out of this year’s Democratic primary, then shoehorned Kamala Harris into place with the barest semblance of Democratic process; a bunch of no-name delegates quickly met and agreed to throw their support to her.

According to renowned journalist Seymour Hersch, Barack Obama threatened Biden with the 25th Amendment if he didn’t step down. It’s all about backroom deals and Deep State manipulations, while the rest of us wonder who’s really in charge. Yet the professors scoff at the notion that the Democratic Party is “a tool of billionaires and corporations.” It’s not?

Ajamu Baraka recently wrote:

The fact that select oligarchs, in this case, the cabal that actually runs the Democrat Party, can remove a presidential nominee and expeditiously anoint Kamala Harris as his replacement cannot be characterized as anything else but a coup…The oppressed must have a clear and sober understanding of the class and power dynamics in the Democrat Party but also in the broader society. The gangster move by the oligarchs who control the Democrats stripped away any pretense that any real structures of democracy exist in that party.

People who went to Chicago in 1968 to protest the Vietnam War at the DNC were courageous and righteous. People planning to go to Chicago’s DNC this year to protest Democratic Party complicity in the ongoing Gaza genocide are also courageous and righteous. Crash the party is a slogan of the Chicago chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. Sign me up. We need to get that foot off our necks.

• First published in Consortium NewsFacebook

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Riva Enteen, former Program Director of the SF National Lawyers Guild, is a lifelong peace and justice activist, retired social worker, lawyer, and editor of "Follow the Money" a collection of Pacifica Radio's Flashpoints Interviews by Dennis J. Bernstein. In 2019, she went to Russia with a 50-member peace delegation. Black Agenda Report printed many of her articles. Riva can be reached at rivaenteen@gmail.com. Read other articles by Riva.

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