Saturday, October 19, 2024

The Israeli Spies Writing America’s News
October 18, 2024
Source: 
Image from MintPress News

One year after Oct. 7 attacks, Netanyahu is on a winning streak.” So reads the title of a recent Axios article describing the Israeli prime minister riding on an unbeatable wave of triumphs. These stunning military “successes,” its author Barak Ravid notes, include the bombing of Yemen, the assassinations of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and the pager attack against Lebanon.

The same author recently went viral for an article that claimed that Israeli attacks against Hezbollah are “not intended to lead to war but are an attempt to reach ‘de-escalation through escalation.’” Users on social media mocked Ravid for this bizarre, Orwellian reasoning. But what almost everybody missed is that Barak Ravid is an Israeli spy – or at least he was until recently. Ravid is a former analyst with Israeli spying agency Unit 8200, and as recently as last year, was still a reservist with the Israeli Defense Forces group.

Unit 8200 is Israel’s largest and perhaps most controversial spying organization. It has been responsible for many high-profile espionage and terror operations, including the recent pager attack that injured thousands of Lebanese civilians. As this investigation will reveal, Ravid is far from the only Israeli ex-spook working at top U.S. media outlets, working hard to manufacture Western support for his country’s actions.
White House Insider

Ravid has quickly become one of the most influential individuals in the Capitol Hill press corps. In April, he won the prestigious White House Press Correspondents’ Award “for overall excellence in White House coverage”—one of the highest awards in American journalism. Judges were impressed by what they described as his “deep, almost intimate levels of sourcing in the U.S. and abroad” and picked out six articles as exemplary pieces of journalism.

Most of these stories consisted of simply printing anonymous White House or Israeli government sources, making them look good, and distancing President Biden from the horrors of the Israeli attack on Palestine. As such, there was functionally no difference between these and White House press releases. For example, one story the judges picked out was titled “Scoop: Biden tells Bibi 3-day fighting pause could help secure release of some hostages,” and presented the 46th President of the United States as a dedicated humanitarian hellbent on reducing suffering. Another described how “frustrated” Biden was becoming with Netanyahu and the Israeli government.

Protestors had called on reporters to snub the event in solidarity with their fallen counterparts in Gaza (which, at the time of writing, comes to at least 128 journalists). Not only was there no boycott of the event, but organizers gave their highest award to an Israeli intelligence official-turned-reporter who has earned a reputation as perhaps the most dutiful stenographer of power in Washington.

Ravid was personally presented with the award by President Biden, who embraced him like a brother. That a known (former) Israeli spy could hug Biden in such a manner speaks volumes about not only the intimate relationship between the United States and Israel but about the extent to which establishment media holds power to account.

Ravid has made a name for himself by uncritically printing flattering information given to him by either the U.S. or Israeli government and passing it off as a scoop. In April, he wrote that “President Biden laid out an ultimatum to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in their call on Thursday: If Israel doesn’t change course in Gaza, ‘we won’t be able to support you,’” and that he was “making his strongest push for an end to the fighting in Gaza in six months of war, and warning for the first time that U.S. policy on the war will depend on Israel’s adherence to his demands,” which included “an immediate ceasefire.” In July, he repeated anonymous sources that told him that Netanyahu and Israel are striving for “a diplomatic solution” – another highly dubious claim.

Other articles by Ravid following the same pattern include:Scoop: Biden tells Bibi he’s not in it for a year of war in Gaza
Scoop: White House cancels meeting, scolds Netanyahu in protest over video
Biden “running out” of patience with Bibi as Gaza war hits 100 days
Biden-Bibi clash escalates as U.S. accused of undermining Israeli government
Biden and Bibi “red lines” for Rafah put them on a collision course
Biden on hot mic: Told Bibi we needed “come to Jesus” meeting on Gaza
Scoop: White House loses trust in Israeli government as Middle East spirals
Israeli minister lambasted at White House about Gaza and war strategy
Scoop: Biden told Bibi U.S. won’t support an Israeli counterattack on Iran

This relentless whitewashing of the Biden administration has drawn widespread mockery online.

“AXIOS EXCLUSIVE: After selling Netanyahu millions of dollars worth of weapons, Biden played —loudly — Taylor Swift’s ‘Bad Blood.’ ‘Everyone could hear it,’ a source close to Biden says,” tweeted X user David Grossman. “Continuing to hand over big piles of cash and weapons, but shaking my head so everyone knows i sort of disagree with it,” quipped comedian Hussein Kesvani, in response to Ravid’s latest article suggesting that Biden has become “increasingly distrustful” of the Israeli government.

Throughout this supposed split between the U.S. and Israel, the Biden administration has continued to voice enthusiastic support for Israeli offensives, block ceasefire resolutions and Palestinian statehood at the U.N., and has sent $18 billion worth of weapons to Israel in the past 12 months. Thus, no matter how questionable these Axios reports are, they serve a vital role for Washington, allowing the Biden administration to distance itself from what international bodies have labeled a genocide. Ravid’s function has been to manufacture consent for the government among elite liberal audiences who read Axios, allowing them to continue to believe that the U.S. is an honest broker for peace in West Asia rather than a key enabler of Israel.

Ravid does not hide his open disdain for Palestinians. In September, he retweeted a post that stated:


That’s the PaliNazi way…they pocket concessions without giving anything in return and then use those concessions as the baseline for the next round of negotiations. PaliNazis don’t know how to tell the truth.”

Less than one week later, he promoted Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s highly dubious claim that Israeli Defense Forces had found a picture of the children al-Qassam Brigades leader Mohammed Sinwar celebrating in front of a huge picture of planes hitting the World Trade Center. Gallant stated that they had found this picture – clearly trying to falsely associate Palestinians with 9/11 – in a tunnel “where the Sinwar brothers were hiding like rats.”
An Infamous Spy Agency

Founded in 1952, Unit 8200 is the Israeli military’s largest and most controversial division.

Responsible for covert operations, spying, surveillance and cyberwarfare, since October 7, 2023, the group has been at the forefront of the world’s attention. It is widely identified as the organization behind the infamous pager attack on Lebanon, which left at least nine dead and around 3,000 people injured. While many in Israel (and Ravid himself) hailed the operation as a success, it was condemned worldwide as an egregious act of terrorism, including by ex-CIA director Leon Panetta.

Unit 8200 has also constructed an artificial intelligence-powered kill list for Gaza, suggesting tens of thousands of individuals (including women and children) for assassination. This software was the primary targeting mechanism the IDF used in the early months of its attack on the densely populated strip.

Described as Israel’s Harvard, Unit 8200 is one of the most prestigious institutions in the country. The selection process is highly competitive; parents spend fortunes on science and math classes for their children, hoping they will be picked for service there, unlocking a lucrative career in Israel’s burgeoning hi-tech sector.

It also serves as the centerpiece of Israel’s futuristic repressive state apparatus. Using gigantic amounts of data compiled on Palestinians by tracking their every move through face recognition cameras monitoring their calls, messages, emails and personal data, Unit 8200 has created a dystopian dragnet that it uses to surveil, harass and suppress Palestinians.

Unit 8200 compiles dossiers on every Palestinian, including their medical history, sex lives and search histories, so that this information can be used for extortion or blackmail later. If, for example, an individual is cheating on their spouse, desperately needs a medical operation, or is secretly homosexual, this can be used as leverage to turn civilians into informants and spies for Israel. One former Unit 8200 operative said that as part of his training, he was assigned to memorize different Arabic words for “gay” so that he could listen out for them in conversations.

Unit 8200 operatives have gone on to create some of the world’s most downloaded apps and many of the most infamous spying programs, including Pegasus. Pegasus was used to surveil dozens of political leaders around the world, including France’s Emmanuel Macron, South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, and Pakistan’s Imran Khan.

The Israeli government authorized the sale of Pegasus to the Central Intelligence Agency, as well as some of the most authoritarian governments on the planet. This included Saudi Arabia, who used the software to surveil Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi before he was assassinated by Saudi agents in Türkiye.

A recent MintPress News investigation found that a large proportion of the worldwide VPN market is owned and operated by an Israeli company headed and co-founded by a Unit 8200 alumnus.

In 2014, 43 Unit 8200 reservists penned a joint statement declaring that they were no longer willing to serve in the unit on account of its unethical practices, which included making no distinction between ordinary Palestinian citizens and terrorists. The letter also noted that their intelligence was passed on to powerful local politicians, who used it as they saw fit.

This public statement left Ravid bristling with anger at his co-workers. In the wake of the scandal, Ravid went on Israeli Army radio to attack the whistleblowers. Ravid said that to oppose the occupation of Palestine was to oppose Israel itself, as the occupation is a fundamental “part” of Israel. “If the problem is really the occupation,” he said, “then your taxes are also a problem — they fund the soldier at the checkpoint, the education system… and 8200 is a great spin.”

Leaving aside Ravid’s comments, the question arises: is it really acceptable that members from a group designed to infiltrate, surveil and target foreign populations, that has produced many of the planet’s most dangerous and invasive spying technology, and is widely to be behind sophisticated international terror attacks, are writing Americans’ news about Israel and Palestine? What would the reaction be if senior figures in U.S. media were outed as intelligence officers for Hezbollah, Hamas, or Russia’s F.S.B.?
News About Israel, Brought to You by Israel

Ravid is far from the only influential journalist in America with deep ties to the Israeli state, however. Shachar Peled spent three years as an officer in Unit 8200, leading a team of analysts in surveillance, intelligence and cyberwarfare. She also served as a technology analyst for the Israeli intelligence service, Shin Bet. In 2017, she was hired as a producer and writer by CNN and spent three years putting together segments for Fareed Zakaria and Christiane Amanpour’s shows. Google later hired her to become their Senior Media Specialist.

Another Unit 8200 agent who went on to work for CNN is Tal Heinrich. Heinrich spent three years as a Unit 8200 agent. Between 2014 and 2017, she was the field and news desk producer for CNN’s notoriously pro-Israel Jerusalem Bureau, where she was one of the principal journalists shaping America’s understanding of Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s bombardment of Gaza that killed more than 2,000 people and left hundreds of thousands displaced. Heinrich later left CNN and is now the official spokesperson of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

CNN’s penchant for hiring Israeli state figures continues to this day. Tamar Michaelis, for example, currently works for the network, producing much of its Israel/Palestine content. This is despite having previously served as an official IDF spokesperson in the Israeli Defense Forces.

The New York Times, meanwhile, hired Anat Schwartz, an ex-Israeli Air Force Intelligence officer with zero journalistic experience. Schwartz co-wrote the infamous and now discredited “Screams Without Words” expose, which claimed that Hamas fighters systematically sexually violated Israelis on October 7. Times staff themselves revolted over the lack of evidence and fact-checking in the piece.

Multiple New York Times employees, including star columnist David Brooks, have had children serving in the IDF; even as they report or offer opinions on the region, the Times never disclosed these glaring conflicts of interest to its readers. Nor has it disclosed that it purchased a Jerusalem house for its bureau chief that was stolen from the family of Palestinian intellectual Ghada Karmi in 1948.

MintPress News interviewed Karmi last year about her latest book and Israeli attempts to silence her. Former New York Times Magazine writer and current editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg (an American) dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania to volunteer as an IDF prison guard during the first Palestinian Intifada (uprising). In his memoirs, Goldberg revealed that, while serving in the IDF., he helped cover up the abuse of Palestinian prisoners.

Social media companies, too, are filled with former Unit 8200 agents. A 2022 MintPress study found no fewer than 99 former Unit 8200 operatives working for Google.

Facebook also employs dozens of ex-spooks from the controversial unit. This includes Emi Palmor, who sits on Meta’s oversight board. This 21-person panel ultimately decides the direction of Facebook, Instagram and Meta’s other offerings, adjudicating on what content to allow, promote, and what to suppress. Meta has been formally condemned for its systematic suppression of Palestinian voices across its platforms by Human Rights Watch, which documented over 1,000 instances of overt anti-Palestinian censorship in October and November 2023 alone. A measure of this bias is highlighted by the fact that, at one point, Instagram automatically inserted the word “terrorist” into the profiles of users who called themselves Palestinian.

Despite the widespread claims by U.S. politicians that it is a hotbed of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic racism, TikTok also employs many former Unit 8200 agents in key positions in its organization. For example, in 2021, it hired Asaf Hochman as its global head of product strategy and operations. Before joining TikTok, Hochman spent over five years as an Israeli spook. He now works for Meta.
Top Down Pro-Israel Censorship

When it comes to the Israeli attack on its neighbors, corporate media has consistently displayed a pro-Israel bias. The New York Times, for example, regularly refrains from identifying the perpetrator of violence when that perpetrator is the Israeli military and described the 1948 genocide of around 750,000 Palestinians as a mere “migration.” A study of the paper’s coverage found that words like “slaughter,” “massacre,” and “horrific” appear 22 times more frequently when discussing Israeli deaths than Palestinian ones, despite the gigantic disparity in the number of people killed on both sides.

Meanwhile, in a story about how Israeli soldiers shot 335 bullets at a car containing a Palestinian child and then shot the rescue workers who came to save her, CNN printed the headline “Five-year-old Palestinian girl found dead after being trapped in car with dead relatives” – a title that could be interpreted that her death was a tragic accident.

This sort of reporting does not happen by accident. In fact, it comes straight from the top. A leaked New York Times memo from November revealed that company management explicitly instructed its reporters not to use words such as “genocide,” “slaughter,” and “ethnic cleansing” when discussing Israel’s actions. Times’ staff must refrain from using words like “refugee camp,” “occupied territory,” or even “Palestine” in their reporting, making it almost impossible to convey some of the most basic facts to their audience.

CNN staff are under similar pressure. Last October, new C.E.O. Mark Thompson sent out a memo to all staff instructing them to make sure that Hamas (and not Israel) is presented as responsible for the violence, that they must always use the moniker “Hamas-controlled” when discussing the Gaza Health Ministry and their civilian death figures, and barring them from any reporting of Hamas’ viewpoint, which its senior director of news standards and practices told staff was “not newsworthy” and amounted to “inflammatory rhetoric and propaganda.”

Both the Times and CNN have fired multiple journalists over their opposition to Israeli actions or support for Palestinian liberation. In November, the Times’ Jazmine Hughes was forced out after she signed an open letter opposing genocide in Palestine. The newspaper terminated Hosam Salem’s contract the previous year after a pressure campaign from pro-Israel group Honest Reporting. And CNN anchor Marc Lamont Hill was abruptly fired in 2018 for calling for Palestinian liberation in a speech at the United Nations.

Large organizations like Axios, CNN and the New York Times obviously know who they are hiring. These are some of the most sought-after jobs in journalism, and hundreds of applicants are likely applying for each position. The fact that these organizations choose to select Israeli spies above everybody else raises serious questions about their journalistic credibility and their purpose.

Hiring agents from Unit 8200 to produce American news should be as unthinkable as employing Hamas or Hezbollah fighters as reporters. Yet former Israeli spooks are entrusted with informing the American public about their country’s ongoing offensives against Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Iran and Syria. What does this say about the credibility and biases of our media?

Since Israel could not continue to prosecute this war without American aid, the battle for the American mind is as important as actions on the ground. And as the propaganda war wages, the lines between journalist and fighter blur. The fact that many of the top journalists supplying us with news about Israel/Palestine are literally former Israeli intelligence agents only underlines this.

Activist Killings In Colombia, Critical Context For The COP-16
October 19, 2024
Source: Ojalá


Members of the Indigenous guard from Cauca participate in the inauguration of President Gustavo Petro in Bogotá, Colombia on August 8, 2022. (Photo: Daniela Díaz)

Colombia’s biodiversity is as varied and enormous as the panorama of violence facing those fighting to conserve it. But the Colombian state appears to have forgotten the plight of land defenders, who are facing unprecedented attacks against their organizing.

This was evidenced in the latest report published by Global Witness, which relies on the work of the Colombian organization Somos Defensores. The report casts a shadow on Colombia, which is the most dangerous country in the world to be an environmental leader. Last year 79 environmental activists were killed, 40 percent of the worldwide total.

Since Somos Defensores began to keep a registry in 2012, the number of killings of defenders adds up to over 400. But this is just the tip of the iceberg in regards to structural violence against those who dare to defend the environment and their territory. They not only face threats but also stigmatization and legal persecution.

Repression in Colombia is also related to the high level of social organization, and at least twelve types of organizers can be identified, some more threatened than others. The leadership of Indigenous peoples is the most affected by the killings, followed by community leaders, who tend to be people who represent their municipality, town, neighborhood, or the place where they live. Environmental defenders face the third highest number of aggressions.

The characterization of the Somos Defensores project, which tracks violence against rights defenders in Colombia, also looks at attacks on organizing by victims, human rights activists and defenders of women’s rights, Afro-descendants, youth, LGBTQI+ people and union leaders.
Fighting despite the risks

Pedro Abel Castañeda is one among hundreds of local leaders in Colombia. For at least thirty years, he has been dedicated to protecting the Pisba Paramo in the Boyacá department from mining exploitation on the part of large U.S. multinationals.

“We have constantly organized ourselves to stop the devastating advance of mining that has negatively impacted the water in an entire region,” said Castañeda in an interview with Ojalá. “Our land defense against these large companies has generated a great deal of conflict.”

In 2013, Castañeda, together with other farmers in the area, succeeded in expelling the Hunza Coral mining company, which had opened more than 60 mine shafts in the area in an irregular manner, threatening a water source that supplies two departments. Then came the threats, which dissipated with time, but that reappear periodically.

The most recent intimidation against Castañeda took place last May, when men claiming to be from the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla declared him a “military target” in a telephone call. Although he alerted authorities about the calls, he has no protection other than a bulletproof vest, a cell phone and a panic button. With these bare bones tools, he continues working the fields and fighting for the environment as part of the Association of Community Aqueducts of Tasco.

The story of Pedro Abel Castañeda is repeated over and over again throughout Colombia. According to the Somos Defensores program, there are 170 socio-environmental conflicts in the country. In 2023 alone, the organization recorded reports of 765 aggressions—concentrated primarily in nine departments—against defenders.
Historical violence

To understand the bloody panorama faced by Colombia’s social leaders, it is essential to take a look at the history of violence and how people have organized themselves to protect against it, often in a communitarian manner.

Astrid Torres, the director of Somos Defensores, says social movements in Colombia have been exterminated for at least a century. This has been exacerbated in the context of an armed conflict that has plagued its territory for over 60 years. “For a long time women defenders were considered enemies of democracy, equivalent to guerrillas,” Torres explained in an interview with Ojalá. “This is what we call the doctrine of the internal enemy.”

This permanent tragedy has multiple causes, and although there have been periods of tense calm, it is ongoing through to today. After the signing of a Peace Agreement with the now-extinct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) insurgencies in 2016, many Colombians thought perhaps we were going to be able to move on. The agreements included measures to safeguard the environment and those who protect it. But in the eight years since it was signed, the government failure to implement the accords has triggered a renewed cycle of violence.

Organizers point out that it is not only the lack of implementation of policies and measures, but also that there are key points yet to be resolved, including the very conception of the notions of protection and emergency. Currently, the National Protection Unit (UNP) provides superficial measures to those under threat, and killings have been registered against people who are part of the protection system. It is unclear how many people under protection have been killed.

The highest level protection consists of a security detail with two armored vans, but in most cases those under threat are given only a bulletproof vest, a cell phone and a panic button, as in the case of Castañeda. As of August of last year, 8,067 people were under UNP protection.

In addition these measures take an individual approach, when resistance in Colombia is most often communitarian and collective.

Added to the lacking protection system is the shameful figure of impunity with regards to the perpetrators of crimes against defenders. Somos Defensores told Ojalá that, according to its study, between 2002 and 2022, the Attorney General’s Office has issued only 179 convictions for murders of human rights defenders. This despite the fact that at least 1,300 complaints have been filed. That’s an impunity rate of 87 percent.
Petro and the COP-16

With the rise of Gustavo Petro, who is historically close to social movements and whose program pushes Total Peace—a plan that seeks dialogue with all illegal armed groups in Colombia—it was hoped obstacles to justice would be removed.

But this has taken longer than expected. The protection of social leaders has been omitted in negotiations related to ambitious pacification policy, even though many of these illegal structures are the main perpetrators. “It makes no sense to open a dialogue if [the lives of] social leaders are not going to be respected,” said Torres, who adds that it is urgent this issue be given greater importance in thinking about peace.

Both Castañeda and Torres understand the problem as structural, and think the government and private actors in particular must work to stop the killings. Today, the regions with the most threats against land defenders tend to align with those where extractivism and the presence of multinationals threaten the environment.

Colombia’s Truth Commission and the Special Jurisdiction for Peace created in the 2016 Agreement shed light on the criminal alliances between companies and illegal armed groups, which are also called “civilian third parties” in the transitional justice system.

Both entities established that national and international companies had dealings with paramilitary structures like the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), paying for the assassination of social leaders who hindered their interests. The most emblematic case is that of the US company Chiquita Brands, which was recently found guilty of similar alliances and forced to pay reparations to eight victims.

With the United Nations Conference on Biodiversity (COP-16) right around the corner (it will be held from October 21 to November 1, 2024 in the city of Cali) the focus is on the environment and those who fight for its conservation, particularly in the Amazon.

Organizations such as Crisis Group have warned of increasing destruction of the Amazon carried out by the post-agreement armed group Estado Mayor Central. Since October 2023, the national government has been holding talks with a faction of this armed group.

Pedro Castañeda will also travel to be at the COP next week. With just a vest and panic button he says he still feels unsafe, but that his best protection is an organized community.

“I was born here, I grew up here, and I’m going to die here,” he said in a phone interview from Tasco. He hopes that one day—in the not too distant future—working in defense of water will not cost him his peace of mind, or his life.

When Blood Money Isn’t Enough: Raytheon Admits to Defrauding Pentagon

RTX’s bombs regularly kill children and civilians. It does white-collar crimes too, according to a $950 million fraud and bribery settlement this week.


October 19, 2024
Source: The Intercept



RTX Corporation, the weapons giant formerly (and better) known as Raytheon, agreed on Wednesday to pay almost $1 billion to resolve allegations that it defrauded the U.S. government and paid bribes to secure business with Qatar.

“Raytheon engaged in criminal schemes to defraud the U.S. government,” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kevin Driscoll of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division on Wednesday. “Such corrupt and fraudulent conduct, especially by a publicly traded U.S. defense contractor, erodes public trust and harms the DOD, businesses that play by the rules, and American taxpayers.”

RTX, as part of this agreement that spanned multiple investigations into its business, admitted to engaging in two separate schemes to defraud the Defense Department, which included deals for a radar system and Patriot missile systems. It also agreed to enter a separate deferred prosecution agreement, which requires increased government oversight and transparency for the next three years, in connection with the Qatari kickbacks.

“Over the course of several years, Raytheon employees bribed a high-level Qatari military official to obtain lucrative defense contracts and concealed the bribe payments by falsifying documents to the government, in violation of laws including those designed to protect our national security,” said Breon Peace, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York. “We will continue to pursue justice against corruption, and as this agreement establishes, enforce meaningful consequences, reforms and monitorship to ensure this misconduct is not repeated.”

The $950 million payment includes criminal penalties, civil fines, restitution, and the return of profits that RTX made by bilking the Pentagon.

The announcement is a rare example of a major defense company being held accountable for its white-collar crimes. But while defrauding the government and breaking international corruption laws, Raytheon has also been party to potential war crimes in recent years.

One of the largest military contractors on Earth, Raytheon makes missiles, bombs, components for fighter jets and many other weapon systems used in war zones from Afghanistan and Iraq to Gaza and Yemen. Civilians have frequently paid the price.

“Not only does Raytheon rip off the government on a regular basis, but its weapons have been used to kill civilians in Yemen, Gaza, and other war zones,” William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and longtime weapons industry watcher, told The Intercept.

RTX spokesperson Chris Johnson said the company was taking responsibility for its wrongdoing in the fraud and bribery scandal. “We have worked diligently during the investigations to remediate that misconduct and continue to do so,” he told The Intercept but declined to comment on civilian casualties caused by Raytheon’s weapons.

Prior to 2023, the Israeli military used Raytheon’s 5,000-pound GBU-28 “bunker buster” and laser-guided Paveway bombs, as well as AGM-65 Maverick air-to-ground missiles, AIM-9X missiles, AIM-120 Sidewinder missiles, and TOW long-range missiles to attack targets in Gaza, according to a 2022 report by the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization.

Such weapons are typically launched or dropped from F-15, F-16, and F-35 fighter jets for which Raytheon provides weapon systems, components, and maintenance services. The Israeli military has possibly used its “bunker buster” bombs — weapons prohibited for use in areas with large civilian populations — in Gaza during the current war as well.

The Saudi-led coalition’s war in Yemen was also waged using Raytheon munitions. In 2022, the coalition conducted an airstrike on a detention center that, according to Doctors Without Borders, killed at least 80 people and injured more than 200. An investigation by Amnesty International found a Raytheon-made GBU-12, a 500-pound laser-guided bomb, was used in the attack. Amnesty also found that Raytheon bombs were used in a 2019 Saudi-led airstrike that killed six civilians — including three children.

An investigation by CNN and Yemen-based human rights group Mwatana found evidence that Raytheon weapons systems were used by the Saudi-led coalition in numerous instances of civilian harm, such as a 2018 attack on a wedding party that killed 21 civilians, including 11 children, and injured another 97 people, 48 of them children; a 2016 airstrike that killed 15 members of a single family including 12 children, the youngest a 1-year-old boy; the 2016 bombing of an apartment that killed six; and a 2015 strike on a residential neighborhood that killed one civilian and wounded six others, including two women and a young girl.

“The Raytheon allegations are stunning, even by the lax standards of the arms industry,” Hartung told The Intercept this week. “Engaging in illegal conduct on this scale suggests that, far from being an aberration, this behavior may be business as usual for the company.”

While Raytheon has been a key U.S. defense contractor since the 1940s, cashing in on tens of billions of dollars in government contracts, the company has, indeed, been embroiled in scandals and malfeasance for decades, though it has rarely been compelled to pay fines and penalties of this magnitude.

The company pleaded guilty to “illegally trafficking in secret military budget reports” (1990); paid $4 million to settle charges that it overbilled the Pentagon (1994); paid $10 million to settle a class-action lawsuit contending that its Amana unit sold defective furnaces and water heaters (1997); paid $2.7 million to settle allegations that it improperly charged the Pentagon for expenses incurred in marketing products to foreign governments (1998); paid $400,000 to settle claims that it overcharged the Defense Department (1999); paid the federal government more than $1 million to resolve quality-control issues on various electronic devices sold to the Pentagon (2000); paid $3.9 million to settle charges that it overbilled the Defense Department (2003); agreed to pay a $25 million civil penalty to resolve State Department charges that the company violated export controls (2003); agreed to pay $12 million after the SEC found it made “false and misleading disclosures and used improper accounting practices that operated as a fraud” (2006); agreed to pay an $8 million fine for export control violations (2013); agreed to pay $1 million to settle a claim involving procurement fraud (2019); agreed, along with a subsidiary, to pay $515,000 to settle False Claims Act allegations (2021); and agreed to pay $59.2 million to settle an Employee Retirement Income Security Act complaint after using an outdated mortality table to improperly calculate retirement benefits (2021).

Earlier this year, RTX agreed to pay $200 million to settle allegations that it violated U.S. export controls, including by transferring some technology behind Air Force One and U.S. military aircraft to China, among other wrongdoing, and was named in a class-action lawsuit for allegedly discriminating against job-seekers who are 40 years or older. This week’s $950 million agreement includes a $428 million civil settlement for allegedly deceiving the government about its labor and material costs to justify pricier no-bid contracts and for double-billing on a weapons maintenance contract.

“Raytheon Corporation engaged in a systematic and deliberate conspiracy that knowingly and willfully violated U.S. fraud and export laws,” said Special Agent in Charge William S. Walker of Homeland Security Investigations, New York earlier this week. “Raytheon’s bribery of government officials, specifically those involved in the procurement of U.S. military technology, posed a national security threat to both the United States and its allies.”

Johnson, the RTX spokesperson, would not comment on Raytheon’s long history of alleged misconduct, noting only that “RTX has entered into agreements with the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) and the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) related to previously disclosed investigations,” characterizing them as “legacy legal matters.” He also failed to respond to questions about the company endangering U.S. national security and its obligation to the U.S. taxpayers.

While taxpayers have been harmed by Raytheon’s corrupt business practices, the weapons giant’s investors have cashed in during Israel’s war on Gaza. “Raytheon’s total return for investors in the past year is 82.69 percent, outperforming the S&P 500 by about 46 percent,” Eli Clifton, a senior adviser at the Quincy Institute, wrote recently.

“At this point Raytheon appears to be a rogue company that is more interested in increasing revenues for its executives and shareholders than serving as a reliable supplier of defense equipment,” Hartung told The Intercept. “The scale of Raytheon’s malfeasance suggests that the Justice Department should take a close look at the practices of other arms contractors to determine whether the kinds of things Raytheon has done are an industry-wide practice.”



Nick Turse is an American investigative journalist, historian, and author. He is the associate editor and research director of the blog TomDispatch and a fellow at The Nation

Preventing Climate Change Isn’t Expensive. Doing Nothing Is.

The price tag for enacting the most basic measures needed to mitigate climate change might seem steep — until you realize just how devastatingly expensive the natural disasters exacerbated by climate change are and will be very soon.


October 19, 2024Z Article
Source: Jacobin


Flooding road closures by U.S. Forest Service (source) is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

There’s no other way to say this: worrying about how much it costs to prevent catastrophic climate change is patently absurd.

It is absurd in a political system where money is simply conjured out of thin air and trillions of dollars are pumped into the black hole of waste that is the Pentagon. And it is absurd when the stakes are the survival of civilization itself, at which point the deficit isn’t exactly going to matter a whole lot.

But let’s play this game for a moment, since this selective deficit hand-wringing continues to be one of the main weapons of the fossil fuel lobby and its proxies in Congress and the media. Even if we accept this ridiculous discourse on its own terms, the destruction heaped on the East Coast this past month by hurricanes Helene and Milton alone — both of which were made extra destructive as a result of the rapidly warming climate — shows that it is far more expensive to do nothing about climate change than to invest in mitigating its effects and preventing it from getting worse.

Let’s take the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Biden administration’s chief accomplishment on fighting climate change, and the most recent target of this price-point fearmongering. First estimated to cost $370 billion, its unlimited tax credits have led some economists to revise this estimate upward to anywhere between around half a trillion dollars to, on the high end, more than $1 trillion. That’s a lot of money.

Now let’s look at the hurricane damage from just these two events in the past month. The most recent assessment of the damage left by Helene, carried out by experts at AccuWeather, puts the total estimate for damage and economic loss — meaning disruptions to travel and business, and the hurricane’s impact on future tourism and other industries — at $225–250 billion.

A different estimate by analytics firm CoreLogic that looks only at the physical damage puts it at $30.5–$47.5 billion. Moody’s Analytics puts the recovery cost at $34 billion. Only a small fraction of this will actually be covered by insurers, because few people in the regions affected are covered for flood damage.

We’re still waiting for more accurate figures for Milton’s damage, but according to President Joe Biden, a preliminary estimate puts it at $50 billion. Moody’s has put it at anywhere between $50–$85 billion, when property damage and economic losses are combined, though other analysts have put it at as much as $175 billion in the worst-case scenario for the Tampa region alone.

These figures will almost certainly be revised in the months ahead. But already we can see that, on the lowest end, just these two disasters — disasters that, remember, will become the new normal as the climate heats up — adds up to roughly one-twelfth of the high end of estimates of what the IRA will spend over ten years. If we take the higher end of the damage estimates — or about $335 billion — that’s about one third of that same total, and it comes close to equaling the original price tag of the IRA, which, again, is the planned spending over the next decade.

And that’s only these two hurricanes. We’re not counting how six of this century’s other deadliest hurricanes add up to more than half a trillion dollars in damage. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data shows the number of severe weather disasters has been steadily rising year by year, with twenty-eight disasters last year that cost more than $1 billion a piece, like the Maui wildfire, which caused $5.5 billion in damage. Nor are we counting the damage and economic loss from more destructive wildfires, worse droughts, increased non-hurricane-related flooding, and countless other climate-related disasters and disruptions that are going to become more and more common if we do nothing — or, even worse, actively fuel the problem, as both presidential candidates are currently promising.

Analysts have already put the economic cost of climate change into hard numbers. Back in 2021, insurance company Swiss Re predicted climate change would slice global economic output by 11 to 14 percent by 2050, or a staggering $23 trillion reduction — including shrinking the US economy by 7 percent. (By contrast, the US economy shrank 4.3 percent due to the Great Recession). A more recent study from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany predicts that by 2049, climate change would reduce global income by 19 percent, or $38 trillion, with US households seeing their incomes drop 11 percent.

But to reiterate, even talking about the monetary cost of climate change is somewhat absurd in the face of its vast human consequences: death, disease, starvation, war, political instability, and mass human displacement, not just from other countries but within the United States too. The smartest thing to do, and the biggest bang for the UStaxpayer’s buck, would be to start making unprecedented investments — ones much larger and more wide-ranging — in the infrastructure, technology, logistical resources, and expanded safety net that we will need to resolve this accelerating crisis and make sure Americans’ living standards are safeguarded.

The easiest way to do that is to divert the bulk of the more than $1 trillion a year the United States already spends on the military, a gargantuan sum that is not only wasteful, but fuels the climate crisis (since war and the military are some of the world’s worst fossil fuel polluters), while regularly endangering Americans. The price is simply too high not to do it.



Branko Marcetic is a staff writer at Jacobin magazine and a 2019-2020 Leonard C. Goodman Institute for Investigative Reporting fellow. He is the author of Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden.


Interview: Spain's green hydrogen industry strengthened by cooperation with China, says expert


Source: Xinhua
Editor: huaxia
2024-10-19 


MADRID, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- Collaboration projects with China on green hydrogen reinforce Spain's potential in renewable energy and contribute to its decarbonization objectives, Javier Brey, president of the Spanish Hydrogen Association (AeH2), has said.

Citing a deal reached between the Spanish Ministry of Industry and China's Envision Energy in September to develop an electrolyzer manufacturing plant in Spain with an expected investment of 1 billion U.S. dollars, Brey depicted it as "a significant milestone for Spain."

The deal "strengthens Spain's leadership in the renewable hydrogen industry and advances its decarbonization objectives," Brey told Xinhua in a recent interview.

"At AeH2, we highly value this decision as it further builds upon the strong foundation and significant potential we have in renewable energy, technology and industrial capacity," he said.

Spanish companies have been manufacturing electrolyzers for decades, while universities and research centers are pioneering cutting-edge hydrogen technologies, Brey said. "Each announcement that boosts this industry helps us progress towards our goal of consolidating the renewable hydrogen value chain in Spain and moving toward a more sustainable future."

Brey voiced confidence that strategic investments and partnerships will enable Spain to expand hydrogen production capacity and boost related technologies, thereby helping achieve its goals both nationally and across Europe.

In its energy and climate plan 2023-2030 approved in September, the Spanish government increased its target of electrolyzers for green hydrogen production capacity to 12 gigawatts by 2030.

International cooperation is essential for the development of the hydrogen industry in Spain, as "it allows us to share knowledge, technologies and resources," said the expert.

The development of green hydrogen can also be an engine of economic revitalization for regions suffering from depopulation in Spain as it will generate employment, attract investments and develop local infrastructure, he said. According to the Spanish government, the plant invested by Envision will generate more than 1,000 direct and indirect jobs.

Brey said that there is still "a long way to go" and it is crucial to continue to have financial incentives, develop a clear regulation, ensure an adequate infrastructure and consolidate public-private collaboration. ■
The UK’s Draconian Repression of Journalism Continues as Police Raid Home and Seize Devices of Asa Winstanley

October 18, 2024
Source: The Electronic Intifada


Asa Winstanley (R Witts Photography)

British counterterrorism police on Thursday raided the home and seized several electronic devices belonging to The Electronic Intifada’s associate editor Asa Winstanley.

Approximately 10 officers arrived at Winstanley’s North London home before 6 am and served the journalist with warrants and other papers authorizing them to search his house and vehicle for devices and documents.

A letter addressed to Winstanley from the “Counter Terrorism Command” of the Metropolitan Police Service indicates that the authorities are “aware of your profession” as a journalist but that “notwithstanding, police are investigating possible offenses” under sections 1 and 2 of the Terrorism Act (2006). These provisions set out the purported offense of “encouragement of terrorism.”

An officer conducting Thursday’s raid informed Winstanley that the investigation was connected with the journalist’s social media posts. Attempts to reach the Metropolitan Police Service for comment for this story have been unsuccessful.

Although his devices were seized, Winstanley was not arrested and has not been charged with any offense.

Winstanley is active on several social media platforms, and has more than 100,000 followers on Twitter/X, where he frequently shares articles, other peoples’ opinions and his own comments on Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people, British government support for these crimes, and the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide.

The vaguely worded provisions relating to “encouragement of terrorism” would clearly violate the First Amendment of the United States Constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech, however the United Kingdom lacks similar constitutional protections for freedom of expression.

The draconian legislation “curtails a range of freedoms,” according to University of Edinburgh law professor Andrew Cornford, including “the freedoms to discuss controversial topics openly, and to share moral, political and religious opinions.”

Human Rights Watch has called on the British government to repeal the repressive provisions of the Terrorism Act (2006), noting that “the definition of the encouragement of terrorism offense is overly broad, raising serious concerns about undue infringement on free speech.”

In August, Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service issued a warning to the British public to “think before you post” and threatening that it would prosecute anyone it deemed guilty of what it calls “online violence.”
“Journalism is not a crime”

The police raid on Winstanley’s home and the seizure of his devices appears to be the latest use by British authorities of repressive “counterterrorism” legislation to crack down on journalists and activists involved in reporting on or protesting Israel’s crimes, including its ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip.

In December, Winstanley reported for The Electronic Intifada on how British counterrorism police arrested Mick Napier and Tony Greenstein, two prominent activists, for saying they support the Palestinian right to resist Israel – a right enshrined in international law.

As part of his bail conditions, Greenstein, an author and contributor to The Electronic Intifada, was ordered “not to post on X (formerly Twitter) in regards to the ongoing conflict in Gaza.”

In mid-August, British journalist Richard Medhurst was arrested on arrival at London’s Heathrow Airport, detained under the Terrorism Act (2000), and had his phone and recording devices that he used for his journalism seized.

“Richard Medhurst’s arrest and detention for almost 24 hours using terrorism legislation is deeply concerning and will likely have a chilling effect on journalists in the UK and worldwide, in fear of arrest by UK authorities simply for carrying out their work,” Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the UK’s National Union of Journalists and Anthony Bellanger, general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, said at the time in a joint statement.

“Both the NUJ and IFJ are shocked at the increased use of terrorism legislation by the British police in this manner,” Stanistreet and Bellanger added. “Journalism is not a crime. Powers contained in anti-terror legislation must be deployed proportionately – not wielded against journalists in ways that inevitably stifle press freedom.”

Nonetheless, later in August, British counterrorism police raided the home of Sarah Wilkinson, a Palestine solidarity activist with a large following, also reportedly in relation to content she posted online.
Full solidarity with Asa Winstanley

The letter handed to Winstanley by police refers to the raid on his home as being part of “Operation Incessantness,” perhaps indicative of a broad and ongoing crackdown against critics of Israel’s British-backed crimes.

Winstanley’s most recent investigative article, “How Israel killed hundreds of its own people on 7 October,” brings together a year of The Electronic Intifada’s reporting, along with new information, detailing Israel’s use of the Hannibal Directive – a secret order that allows Israeli forces to kill their own citizens rather than allowing them to be taken captive.

Winstanley is the author of Weaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn, a book culminating from his years of reporting on Britain’s Labour Party while it was in opposition.

Since 2019, the Labour Party launched an investigation and has made legal threats in apparent retaliation for Winstanley’s journalism.

Now that Labour is the UK’s ruling party, it has the potential to use the apparatus of the state against those it views as its own – or Israel’s – political enemies.

The raid on Winstanley’s home is clearly intended to intimidate and silence him, as well as other journalists and activists.

As far as The Electronic Intifada is concerned, it will have only the opposite effect. Our colleague Asa Winstanley can count on our full support and solidarity, and as a publication we will continue to pursue with vigor any stories documenting British complicity in Israel’s crimes.



Ali Abunimah is one of the founders of The Electronic Intifada website, a non-profit online publication which covers the Israeli–Palestinian conflict from a Palestinian perspective, which was established in 2001

Palestinian hospital patients burned alive in Israeli air strike should shame Labour into action

By Talat Yaqoob
Columnists
Published 19th Oct 2024

Since coming into power, the Labour government has suspended just 30 out of 350 licences to sell arms to Israel

Over the last year, I, along with so many others, have joined multiple rallies, marches, and vigils in solidarity with Palestinians calling for an immediate ceasefire and the protection of civilian lives. We have marched to demand an end to Israel’s disproportionate response and the collective punishment being inflicted upon Gaza and now Lebanon.

It is thought that more than 40,000 people have been killed in Gaza – though the numbers are likely to be far higher. The United Nations estimates that 90 per cent of the population has been displaced, many repeatedly – the very definition of collective punishment. In Lebanon, over 2,500 people have been killed and Israel has repeatedly struck civilian areas with high populations.

These marches have been in pursuit of humanity, yet repeatedly they have been belittled and dismissed as hate marches. Surely hate is staying silent (or, for some, even endorsing) in the face of the continued bombardment and indiscriminate attacks on innocent lives?

Horrific accounts


These marches have continued, weekly, over the last year, with millions of people enraged at this ongoing injustice. Whilst more attention has been on Palestine over the last year, the occupation they have lived under has continued for decades.

In 2021, I was at rally in central Edinburgh when it was, at the time, found to be the deadliest year for children in the occupied Palestinian territories since 2014 with 73 children killed by Israeli forces. This last year the current estimate is that over 17,000 children have been killed.
An injured child receives medical attention at the al Aqsa Martyrs hospital after an Israeli missile strike in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, earlier this month
 (Picture: Eyad Baba) | AFP via Getty Images

At these rallies, we often hear from Palestinians in Scotland who have lost their homes or lost family members. We hear from medics who tell harrowing stories of the reality on the ground: children with their limbs blown off, people being operated on without anaesthesia, medics trying to respond whilst their hospitals crumble around them in the latest attack.

I have listened along with hundreds of others with tears in my eyes. There is a constant stream of social media posts, news articles, and Whatsapp messages sharing the ongoing horrors in Gaza, in the West Bank, and in Lebanon. This is necessary, we must see the truth, we must acknowledge this reality and not simply turn off the news when it gets too much.

Burned alive


Over the last year, I thought I had witnessed the worst of humanity. But on Monday, images emerged of an Israeli air strike on the Al-Aqsa hospital compound, most of which has already fallen apart with patients in make-shift shelters.

In the early hours of the morning, the deadly strike set the tents alight. Whilst many ran, some patients were trapped inside – they burned alive. A video quickly circulated of a patient engulfed in flames, still attached to his IV drip. His name was Sha’ban Al-Dalou.

These are innocent people, already displaced from their homes, attempting to survive and recover from wounds in what they assumed would be a place of safety. He burned alive. That image will forever be in my mind and it should shame us all.

They may have assumed this would be a safe place because attacks on schools and hospitals during conflict is one of six grave violations of international law, according to the UN Security Council. Yet these violations continue. Over the last year, according to the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations, 31 out of 36 hospitals in Gaza have been damaged or completely destroyed.

‘Plausible’ genocide case



I am genuinely broken and speechless at those who continue to stand in support of this. I cannot fathom how the world watches on, and how some world leaders do not simply watch on but enable the continuation of funding and arms sales.


The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has declared that Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, is unlawful. Back in May, an ICJ interim ruling found that it was “plausible” that Israel was committing a genocide in Gaza.

Since then, Israel’s attacks have only intensified and extended beyond Gaza. The UN, Amnesty, Save the Children, Human Rights Watch, Médecins Sans Frontières and countless other humanitarian and human rights organisations have demanded a ceasefire, have called out this collective punishment, and demanded an end to arms sales.

UK indifference reserved for Palestinians?


All of this has failed to move most of the world’s leaders and it is utterly reprehensible. Just this week, 38 aid organisations including Oxfam issued a stark warning that Northern Gaza is “being erased” and urged global leaders to immediately end the Israel government’s atrocities.

We have seen some movement from the leaders of France and Spain urging other nations to end arms sales to Israel, but this has not moved the UK Government. Since coming into power, the Labour government has suspended some arms sales but, to put this into context, only 30 out of 350 licenses have been suspended. This is not even a dent in the action needed to have any material effect on the lives of Gazans and, most importantly, to show any real courage and influence others on the world stage.

For those who tell us that the UK ending all arms sales would not make a difference given the higher number of arms sold by other nations or that calling for the UK to change its position will not be effective, these people need to make up their minds – is the UK a world leader? If not, then do we stop influencing on all issues beyond our own borders: Trade? AI? Climate change? Or is this indifference reserved for Palestinians?


If the UK seeks to be a world leader, then it is beyond time it learned to lead on humanity. If not, the harrowing images we see will continue, and they will, should, haunt us all.


Talat Yaqoob is an equalities consultant and campaigner
AMERIKA

Jewish academic sacked for anti-Zionist social media post

'This is a terrifying precedent in higher education and free speech in the United States,' says Maura Finkelstein

Islam Dogru |19.10.2024 -


ISTANBUL

Maura Finkelstein, a Jewish professor at Muhlenberg College in the US, was dismissed from her position due to her anti-Zionist social media posts.

She argued that her termination set a dangerous precedent for higher education and freedom of speech in the US.

Finkelstein, who taught anthropology and offered courses on Palestine at the college in Allentown, Pennsylvania, for nine years, described herself as “an anti-Zionist Jew fighting for Palestinian liberation.”

She discussed with Anadolu how she became anti-Zionist, circumstances surrounding her dismissal and the growing pressures on academic freedom in the US.

Despite growing up in a Zionist family, her perspective changed during a classroom debate about the Oslo Peace Accords. She was assigned to represent Palestine.

"I had only ever been taught about Israel. And all of a sudden, I had this incredible opportunity to learn about Palestine, and I took it very seriously," she said. "And what I learned was that the myth of Israel circulated in the United States, the myth of Israel that, Jews in the United States and across the world, celebrated in the wake of the Holocaust, was complete fiction, and that actually it was a colonial project in which Palestinians were experiencing genocide and dispossession because of this entity that was Israel."

Pressure from donors; dismissal process

Finkelstein said she began facing pressure from pro-Israel donors at her school after Oct. 7, 2023. Following the events of Oct. 7, Finkelstein faced three months of extensive investigations into her teaching, research, and publications. But no violations were found.

The incident that led to her termination occurred in January, when she shared on Instagram a post by Palestinian poet Rami Kanazi that said: "Do not normalize Zionism." A student leader at Hillel, a Zionist organization on campus, filed a complaint, claiming that Finkelstein’s anti-Zionist views made the student feel unsafe in class and violated anti-discrimination policies.

“I had never met this student,” said Finkelstein. On Jan. 24, the school decided to terminate her employment without compensation.

Her dismissal is under appeal.

“That (first) appeals process found in favor of the college,” she said. “Now it's a faculty panel (second appeals process), which I'm hoping will rule in my favor because this is a terrifying precedent in higher education and free speech in the United States.”

Zionism and anti-discrimination laws

Finkelstein highlighted the growing push to equate Zionism with Judaism in the US, with efforts to incorporate Zionism into anti-discrimination policies. "These laws protect against discrimination based on inherent characteristics like gender, race and religion," she said. "But some are pushing for Zionism, an ideology, to be included under these protections."

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) criticized Finkelstein’s dismissal, noting that it was the first instance of a tenured professor being dismissed for comments or social media posts related to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

‘New and chilling McCarthyism’

Since Oct. 7, 2023, Finkelstein has received numerous hate-filled threats, mostly from Zionist Jews. “I would say that almost all of the hate I've experienced has been coming from Zionist Jews, so basically Jews telling me that I'm not really a Jew, that I'm a monster, that I'm a Nazi,” she said.

She added that universities in the US are “incredibly unequal places,” where some individuals are protected more than others. “For a while, I thought that because I was Jewish, I was protected more than my Palestinian Arab Muslim colleagues who would be easily called antisemite just for mentioning Palestine.”

Finkelstein warned that talking about Palestine in academia has always been dangerous, but that the current crackdown on free speech feels unprecedented.

“The far-right white supremacist-like politicians in the US have weaponized antisemitism in order to shut down all criticism of Israel,” she said.

She cited the dismissal of faculty members, expulsion of students and police intervention on campuses as alarming developments:

“I am an alum of Columbia University and I'm not allowed on campus. It's a pretty chilling new McCarthyism,” she said.

“Israel and the United States are the greatest threats to the global community right now, and Israel is showing us exactly who that state has been since 1948. It's a genocidal settler colonial state that has always been very clear about not just wanting to colonize all of Palestine, but move into Lebanon, move into Syria, move into the Sinai,” she said.

Call for political change in US​​​​​​​

Regarding the upcoming US presidential elections, Finkelstein remarked, “We have two politicians who have both been very clear about wanting to continue genocide,”​​​​​​​ as she urged structural changes to the US political system.

“We need to break down this two-party system that basically creates a hostage situation with voters every four years. There is no good outcome to this election, and I hope that it leads to some kind of larger social uprising shift that can reframe the way in which we think about politics in this country.”

*Writing by Efe Ozkan
Guatemalan journalist Zamora granted house arrest after over two years behind bars

October 19, 2024 2:00 AM
By Reuters
FILE - Journalist Jose Zamora, founder and president of elPeriodico newspaper, talks with the media as he attends a court hearing in Guatemala City, Dec. 8, 2022.

GUATEMALA CITY —

A Guatemalan judge on Friday ruled that jailed journalist Jose Zamora can leave prison and be held in house arrest after more than 800 days behind bars.

Zamora, a well-known journalist who founded the now-defunct elPeriodico newspaper and whose work has criticized successive governments, was arrested in July 2022 on money laundering charges.

He has argued that he was a political prisoner due to his work.

Zamora was in 2023 sentenced to six years in prison for money laundering. An appeals court later overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial for 2025.

Judge Erick Garcia on Friday argued that Zamora's time in preventative prison had reached its limit, in line with human rights standards.

"We are imposing house arrest," Garcia said in his ruling. "He is also forbidden to leave the country without judicial authorization."

"I am very satisfied. I appreciate what is happening," Zamora said after the decision.

The United Nations in August said Zamora was being held in conditions that may amount to torture, citing a report from a panel of experts, and called on authorities to address allegations of inhumane conditions.
Russia's role in the polycrisis of the contemporary world

by Stefano Caprio


In 1846 Nicholas I went privately to Rome to see Pope Gregory XVI to beg him not to give in to the liberal and republican temptations that were also taking hold in the Holy City. And the desire to ‘defend the values’ of Christian Europe led him to the Crimean War. Today, on the contrary, Pope Francis with the ‘humanitarian diplomacy’ mission of Card. Zuppi to Moscow sees the world's crisis in the light of the Gospel.




There is a term used in some circumstances in the recent past by politicians and scholars, which is returning more and more often in the contemporary debate: the ‘polycrisis’, which indicates the multiplicity of crises of wars, climate change, pandemics, nuclear threats, migratory flows and much more, in a connected and global declination.

In 2022, the Financial Times awarded polycrisis the title of ‘word of the year’, summarising the interpretation of various specialists in the meaning of ‘complex mutual relationship of world problems, antagonisms and crises’.

Adam Tooze, a historian at Columbia University, defined polycrisis in an even more extended mode during the Covid-19 pandemic, as a ‘collective feeling of bewilderment’ that stems from the realisation that global phenomena directly and immediately affect everyone's personal life.

Local or regional crises and conflicts have always recurred in large numbers, and have never disappeared even when it seemed we were living in a stable and peaceful world, but the globalisation of recent decades has linked and intertwined them to such an extent that the overall effect has increased more and more.

One of the first to use the term polycrisis was former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who in 2016 believed that Europe was being disrupted by the migration crisis caused by the civil war in Syria, combined with Greece's economic collapse, the annexation of Crimea by Russia and Brexit.

The feeling of global crisis largely stemmed from the collapse of the US stock markets in 2008-2009, spreading anxiety about a flawed and contradictory globalisation, far different from the ideal world of the ‘end of history’ that was thought to have been achieved.

It was at this juncture that Russia, which now seemed to have been reduced to a marginal role in world balances, came into play by invading Georgia in 2008. This, too, appeared to be a peripheral operation of little importance on the continental level, while Europe is now beset mainly by Russia's conflicts in Ukraine, the Caucasus, with considerable tensions in the Baltic States and Moldova.

The now imminent elections in Tbilisi and Chişinău, the impossibility of definitively resolving the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the nuclear threats of the Kremlin and its Belarusian subject Aleksandr Lukašenko, this and much more make Russia the main source of polycrisis bewilderment. Putin's aggressive policy affects all economic, social, ecological, political and cultural factors that make it increasingly difficult to understand the future of peoples, institutions and people in Europe, Asia and the world.

The invasion of Ukraine has re-militarised the economy of many Western countries, as well as those in the former Soviet area. The military expenditure of European countries has increased by 62 per cent since 2014, as Meduza's Signal column points out, from EUR 330 billion to EUR 552 billion.

Before the Putin war, one of the biggest tension factors came from then-US President Donald Trump's warnings to the Europeans about their low contribution to NATO spending, threatening to cut American subsidies; and Trump may soon be back in the White House in a scenario that makes NATO increasingly decisive for the future of the entire West.

In addition to arms issues, Russia's annexation of Crimea and the start of the hybrid war in Ukraine in 2014 have effectively undermined confidence in the effectiveness of the rules of international law and the institutions delegated to enforce them such as the UN, whose credibility is now at an all-time low since its founding, not least because of the issues surrounding the other war between Israel and Gaza.

Russia's blockade of the Black Sea in 2022 has caused peaks of famine and hunger in the global South, Ukraine being one of the world leaders in the grain trade, covering about 10% of the grain market.

The war in Ukraine has opened the largest internal migration crisis in Europe since World War II, with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing the war, but also waves of Russians who do not want to take part. In fact, there are 6.5 million Ukrainians and more than one million Russians who have remained outside their homeland.

The Russian aggression of Ukraine also affects the climate crisis; the destruction of the Kakhovsk hydroelectric power plant in the summer of 2023 destroyed the entire ecosystem of the region, so much so that many have used the term ‘ecocide’, which was invented in the 1970s to describe the devastation of tropical forests in Vietnam by the US military, to describe it.

People and cities, reservoirs and agricultural fields, animals and plants suffer from the war. Russia, after all, is an anti-leader in the rankings of caring for the environment even outside of war actions: in third place for failure to recycle plastic, fourth for carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, third for oil production volumes.

Russia's failure to contribute, which has even kicked out Greenpeace and outlawed almost all the environmentalist associations, makes it very difficult to tackle the problems of the climate crisis, which will be discussed in a few days at the Cop29 in Baku, hoping that the friendship with the Azerbaijanis will provoke some pangs of conscience in the Russians.

The impression is that the polycrisis is not just a transient phase linked to wars, and when the conflicts are resolved (an outcome that is far from being realised) we can finally return to normal.

For many observers, however, we are only at the beginning of an increasingly complex and widespread crisis, which by the end of the 1920s will show an extremely dangerous and inextricable panorama.

Some believe that the polycrisis is not a random phenomenon, but the result of the strategy of certain world power centres, but it is well known that abstract and conspiracy theories serve more as a means for the guilty to escape their responsibilities, a propaganda operation in which the Russians are masters.

Many blame globalising turbo-capitalism, described as a snake biting its own tail, which instead of universal prosperity results in progressive destruction on a planetary level. We would be moving towards the erasure of the human, and its replacement by the yet-to-be-defined post-human virtual reality; the Russians' insistence on “traditional moral values” mirrors “artificial digital values”, showing the inconsistency of one and the other in a “polycritical” worldview.

When the difficult condition of global relations began to be described, half a century ago, the earth's population was less than half of today's, and the new generations will have to bear the burden of a mass of people increasingly unable to cope with the future, in addition to the desertification of many territories and the sinking of others.

Some historians refer the first sensation of polycrisis to the ‘bourgeois revolution’ of the mid-19th century, when terror spread over the political and social changes that would upset the world, still structured on great empires and absolute powers.

The emperor of Russia, Nicholas I, was so frightened by this that he set out to defend all European autocracies, including those with which he was in conflict such as the Ottomans, to the extent that he was called the ‘gendarme of Europe’.

In May 1846, taking advantage of a curative stay of his wife in Sicily, he went privately to Rome to see Pope Gregory XVI, by then at the end of his pontificate, to beg him not to give in to the liberal and republican temptations that were also taking hold in the Holy City.

Russia then tried to affirm its desire to ‘defend the values’ of Christian Europe with the Crimean War of 1853-1856, which caused its isolation and resentment towards the western empires that did not want to join it in the conquest of Turkey and the Middle East as far as the Holy Land, in an anticipation of what is being repeated today in the same territories, between the Crimea and the Black Sea, and with the same motivations.

If then the Tsar had gone to the Pope, today Pope Francis seeks to address Tsar Putin, with the ‘humanitarian diplomacy’ mission of Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, who in recent days has met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow.

The Holy See does not aspire to become the ‘first mediator’ in world military and political negotiations, and it is not just a matter of helping deported children or tortured prisoners: the Church sees the world's crisis in the light of the Gospel, which prepares one to face ‘wars and devastation’ by exhorting one not to lose faith in the salvation of the world, through participation in Christ's sacrifice.

Making peace and helping the needy are signs of caring for all humanity, which always needs to build a new world.

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