Global Charade: Israel, Palestine and the “Rules-Based Order”

by Media Lens / April 15th, 2025

The post-WW2 ‘international rules-based order’ that supposedly underpins global affairs in the interests of peace, democracy and prosperity has always been largely a charade. But Israel’s continuing Gaza genocide, carried out with seeming impunity and with the complicity and even active participation of the US and its allies, has exposed the charade like never before.

Twenty years ago, at the 2005 World Summit, the United Nations General Assembly endorsed the doctrine of the ‘responsibility to protect’ or ‘R2P’. The key concerns were to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Whenever populations are at risk of such crimes, the international community is supposed to take collective action ‘in a timely and decisive manner’ to prevent mass atrocities from taking place.

In practice, only some massacres matter, whether threatened or actual: namely, those that can be exploited by Western powers to further their own geostrategic interests (for example, see our media alerts here and here). The Nato-led attack on Libya in 2011 is a textbook example. Western politicians and their cheerleaders across the media ‘spectrum’ declared that the world had to act to prevent a ‘bloodbath’ in Benghazi when Gaddafi’s forces there were allegedly threatening to massacre civilians.

In fact, the public were subjected to a propaganda blitz to promote the Perpetual War that had already wreaked havoc in Iraq, resulting in the deaths of over one million people, the virtual destruction of the Iraqi state and the proliferation of Al-Qaeda and other militia groups.

In 2016, a report from the UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee summarised the destructive consequences of Nato’s 2011 intervention in Libya:

‘The result was political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of ISIL [Islamic State] in North Africa.’

As for the supposed threat of a massacre by Gaddafi’s forces in Benghazi, the alleged motivation for Nato’s ‘humanitarian intervention’, the report concluded that this ‘was not supported by the available evidence’. Likewise, claims that Gaddafi used African mercenaries and employed Viagra-fuelled mass rape as a weapon of war were invented.

Nato’s actual goals were regime change and Libya’s oil, long pursued by the UK. After years of the West cosying up to Gaddafi, including by Tony Blair, the Libyan leader had become a hindrance to Western interests.

As historian Mark Curtis observed:

‘three weeks after [then UK prime minister David] Cameron assured parliament in March 2011 that the object of the intervention was not regime change, he signed a joint letter with President Obama and French President Sarkozy committing to “a future without Gaddafi”.’

Curtis added:

‘That these policies were illegal is confirmed by Cameron himself. He told Parliament on 21 March 2011 that the UN resolution “explicitly does not provide legal authority for action to bring about Gaddafi’s removal from power by military means”.’

Like Blair, Cameron should have ended up in The Hague facing charges of war crimes.

‘Unapologetic Genocide’

If the doctrine of ‘R2P’ was authentic, then there would have been massive international action to prevent Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, as well as Israeli terror acts committed in the occupied West Bank, including the routine killing of Palestinian children.

It took Amnesty International 14 months after the attacks of 7 October 2023 to publish a finding of genocide against Israel on 5 December 2024. A further four months have passed. In March, Israel shattered the ceasefire it never intended to keep, killing almost 1,600 Palestinians since then. According to the Health Ministry in Gaza, around 51,000 people have been killed by Israel since October 2023. The actual death toll is likely much higher. Israel has also halted all supplies of food, fuel and humanitarian aid into Gaza.

The killing of 15 medics and emergency workers last month by Israeli soldiers, and the attempted Israeli cover-up, with bodies and vehicles buried in a shallow mass grave, provoked not a single public condemnation of Israel from Western leaders, as far as we are aware.

BBC News, no doubt aware of public scrutiny and perhaps also under internal pressure from some of their own journalists, set its ‘BBC Verify’ team to work. This followed the publication of harrowing video footage of Israel’s attack found on the mobile phone of Rifaat Radwan, one of the victims. Heartbreakingly, he could be heard saying moments before his killing:

‘Forgive me mother because I chose this way, the way of helping people. Accept my martyrdom, God, and forgive me.’

The 19-minute clip revealed that the vehicles in the convoy of the Palestinian Red Crescent had their headlights and emergency lights on, with high-vis jackets being worn, flatly contradicting Israel’s dishonest statements of the convoy behaving ‘suspiciously’ and constituting a ‘threat’.

Early BBC reports carried the headline: ‘Israel admits mistakes over medic killings in Gaza.’

This was the BBC once again bending over backwards to minimise Israel’s crimes.

The headline was later updated to a more accurate, but still soft-pedalling:

‘Israel changes account of Gaza medic killings after video showed deadly attack’

Notably, BBC News did not use the word ‘massacre’ in its reports, which it plainly was. Nor did they spell out that Israel’s spokespeople had been deceitful in their statements. In fact, Israel has a long history of spreading disinformation and even outright lies: a crucial fact that is routinely missing from ‘mainstream’ news reports.

Instead, the BBC said that Israel had merely ‘changed its account’ of what had happened. Likewise, the Guardian went with:

‘Israeli military changes account of Gaza paramedics’ killing after video of attack’

The 15 victims were but statistics, with little or no attempt to name or humanise them; no interviews with grieving relatives or account of their lives, their hopes, their ambitions.

Owen Jones put it well via X and, at greater length, in a video:

‘Imagine Russia executed 15 Red Cross medics and first responders, burying them in a mass grave.

‘Imagine it lied about this grave war crime. Imagine footage then proved this.

‘Would the BBC frame that as “Russia admits mistakes over medic killings in Ukraine”?

‘No it would not.’

On BBC News at Six on 7 April, international editor Jeremy Bowen concluded his account of Israel’s massacre of the 15 medics and emergency workers with a shameful piece of bothsidesism:

‘Israel now admits that its soldiers made mistakes when they attacked the convoy. It consistently denies it commits war crimes in Gaza. The evidence indicates that all the warring parties have done so.’ [Bowen’s own emphasis]

The egregious false balance, the failure to point out Israel’s long and disreputable record of lying, and the BBC’s refusal to use words such as ‘massacre’ and ‘genocide’ are all glaringly obvious to the public.

Historian and political commentator Assal Rad observed via X that Western media have no compunction giving headline coverage whenever ‘Russia lies’. But, in the case of Israel, the headlines use the weasel phrase: ‘Israel changes account’.

As mentioned, it is possible that both public and internal pressure on BBC News are occasionally having an impact on the broadcaster. As trade unionist Howard Beckett pointed out, the BBC initially reported the appalling Israeli attack on 13 April on the al Ahli Arab Hospital, the last fully functional hospital in Gaza City, with the headline:

‘Gaza hospital hit by Israeli strike, Hamas-run healthy ministry says’

BBC News systematically includes the phrase ‘Hamas-run healthy ministry says’ in its headlines, implying that the source may not be trustworthy. The headline was later updated to:

‘Israeli air strike destroys part of last functioning hospital in Gaza City’

As ever with BBC News, Israel’s excuse for the attack appeared near the top of the article:

‘The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it targeted the hospital because it contained a “command and control centre used by Hamas”.’

Richard Sanders, an experienced journalist and filmmaker, noted via X:

‘BBC again reports the Israeli claim the Al-Ahli Baptist hospital was a “command and control centre used by Hamas” without caveats – despite the fact such claims in the past have proved to be entirely untrue again and again. Bad, bad journalism.’

‘Bad, bad journalism’; namely, propaganda. But entirely standard for BBC News and much of what passes for ‘mainstream’ news.

Readers may recall that this is the same hospital where a devastating explosion occurred on 17 October 2023, killing 471 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Israel mounted a huge propaganda operation to try to convince the world that the cause was a ‘misfiring’ Palestinian rocket. However, detailed analysis by Forensic Architecture, a multidisciplinary research group based at Goldsmiths, University of London, which investigates human rights violations, revealed that a more likely conclusion is that the cause was an exploding Israeli interceptor rocket.

In the hours after the explosion, doctors who treated the wounded held a news conference at nearby al-Shifa Hospital. There, the British-Palestinian surgeon Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, currently Rector of the University of Glasgow, said that: ‘This is a massacre’, predicting that ‘more hospitals will be targeted’.

Dr Abu-Sittah would later say that the blast at al Ahli hospital was the moment when it seemed clear to him that Israel’s military campaign ‘stopped being a war, and became a genocide’.

Sky News correspondent Alex Crawford pointed out that this was the fifth time the hospital had been bombed by Israeli military forces since October 2023.

As investigative journalist Dan Cohen noted of the latest attack:

‘This is the same hospital Israel bombed in October 2023 and waged a massive media disinformation campaign to blame a Palestinian rocket. Now they don’t even pretend. Unapologetic genocide.’

Does Italy Have A Right To Exist?

Last November, perhaps seeking a viral ‘gotcha’ moment, a journalist challenged Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, with the clichéd question, ‘Does Israel have a right to exist?’

Albanese’s cogent response is worth contemplating:

‘Israel does exist. Israel is a recognised member of the United Nations. Besides this, there is not such a thing in international law like a right of a state to exist. Does Italy have a right to exist? Italy exists. Now, if tomorrow, Italy and France want to merge and become Ita-France, fine, this is not up to us. What is enshrined in international law is the right of a people to exist. So, the state is there. The state of Israel is there. It’s protected as a member of the United Nations. Does this justify the erasure of another people? Hell, no. Not 75 years ago. Not 57 years ago. Surely not today. Where is the protection of the Palestinian people from erasure, from annexation, from illegal occupation and apartheid? This is what we need to discuss.’

A powerful reply indeed. Where is the much-vaunted ‘R2P’ when it comes to Palestine? Instead of discussing how best to protect the Palestinian people and, more importantly, taking immediate decisive action to do so, the West continues to support the apartheid and genocidal state of Israel: arming it, providing diplomatic cover, colluding with the Israeli air forces with RAF spy flights over Gaza and war operations, including the secret supply of weapons to Israel, being conducted from the RAF base in Cyprus.

As is well known by now, the International Court of Justice in The Hague is currently deliberating over a case of genocide against Israel. Last year, the ICJ declared that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories – Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem – is illegal. And the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant. And yet, Netanyahu was recently welcomed with open arms in Washington, DC, having flown through airspace in France and other European countries which, under their ICC obligations, should have denied him that privilege.

Palestinian journalist Lubna Masarwa, Middle East Eye’s Palestine and Israel bureau chief, observed that:

‘To western leaders, there are no red lines for Israel’s slaughter. Emboldened by the US and other western powers, Israel feels it can get away with unleashing hell on all Palestinians.’

She added: ‘The inhumanity of these times scares me, as a journalist and as a person.’

Last Friday, Mirjana Spoljaric, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said that Gaza has become ‘hell on earth’. Israel was ‘threatening the viability of Palestinians continuing to live in Gaza at all’. What is happening in Gaza is, she said, an ‘extreme hollowing out’ of international law.

As Andrew Feinstein, the author, activist and former South African MP, stated in a recent powerful video for Double Down News:

‘The West has a choice: stop supporting genocide or mutate their own democracies and destroy international law forever. The West has chosen the latter.’FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Media Lens is a UK-based media watchdog group headed by David Edwards and David Cromwell. The most recent Media Lens book, Propaganda Blitz by David Edwards and David Cromwell, was published in 2018 by Pluto Press. Read other articles by Media Lens, or visit Media Lens's website.

Trump and Netanyahu Plot Gaza’s Future Without Palestinians

Trump and Netanyahu continue pushing the ethnic cleansing of Gaza

by Derek Albert Schurbon Posted onApril 16, 2025

It’s difficult to describe how deranged reality has become

On Monday, the leaders of the two governments most responsible for a seemingly endless stream of horror – the US and Israel – sat down for a press briefing in the Oval Office, casually discussing how valuable Gaza is to them and how they want to take it over and control it. As though they’re not the ones primarily responsible for the massacres happening there.

We are witnessing the deliberate annihilation of a people, while those carrying it out pretend it’s just an unfortunate natural disaster – some heavy sustained winds blowing through the area. They want us to believe they’ll be the ones to bring ‘peace’ and ‘freedom’ to the land and people they are actively decimating.

As if to say:

“Here, just drink this and don’t think about it too hard — it’ll all be over soon. We’re the good guys doing good things and that’s all you need to know.”

All while they keep piling onto the body count.

Just about all I’ve been seeing are truckloads of shredded or beheaded children, families crushed or buried beneath bombed buildings, medics and rescue workers executed, journalists targeted and burned alive, the murder of a 14-year-old American citizen – even mounds of flesh that no longer resemble human beings. All of it carried out by the US and Israel.

That 14-year-old boy was killed, and the journalist set on fire, on the same day Trump and Netanyahu sat down to talk about taking the land, while they continue lying about it all and blame everything on Hamas.

This is the kind of terror that most people in the west could never fathom through their comfort and convenience. Imagine everything you know for miles is a grey hollowed-out moonscape. Many people you know have been slaughtered, including friends and family. And after 18 months of this, you’re still being deliberately bombed – because the governments behind it want the “very valuable” and “incredible piece of important real estate” that you live on.

The reporter who prompted these responses from Trump and Netanyahu is an IDF reservist who “might be called up in a month.” He asked whether the IDF “fighting to get into the Gaza Strip” or “blocking humanitarian aid” was a more “effective pressure point” to get Hamas to make a deal. This entire framing ignores that it was not Hamas, but the US and Israel who torched the ceasefire agreement. The soldier was asking which war crimes are more effective for carrying out this campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing.

It’s madness – the way they use language to evade responsibility. They implement the passive voice and use abstractions like “unfortunate events” – sanitizing their war crimes to make it sound like they aren’t the ones doing the killing.

It really is an art form to dance around with language in this way. Saying it would be a “good thing” to have a “peace force” like the US and Israel “controlling and owning the Gaza Strip,” while they intentionally kill and displace the civilian population to acquire what they freely admit is “an incredible piece of important real estate,” is actual madness.

They talk about making Gaza a “freedom zone… where people aren’t going to be killed every day,” while actively denying Palestinians freedom and killing them every day. They say they want a “free zone” while forcibly maintaining “kill zones.” They’re calling Gaza a “hell of a place” while they “unleash hell” on that place.

It’s one of the most grotesque campaigns of gaslighting imaginable. “All I hear about is killing,” is a shocking thing to hear from the people doing the killing – literally openly bragging about bombing civilians. And what we do know about is a severe under-reporting of what’s actually going on.

They talk about it all openly, evading any culpability or condemnation. No accountability. No shame. Just the artful sale of war crimes to the American public, who, unfortunately, are the ones paying for this.

This is not just a humanitarian crisis – it’s a moral collapse and a psychological assault on the public’s grasp of reality. Americans are being lied to constantly. We’re told our government is pursuing peace while we fund its atrocities; told we’re helping people while they are bombed to death; told our leaders are solving problems when they’re the ones creating them.

It’s the kind of cognitive dissonance you’d feel if someone spoke about wanting to create a nonviolent, peaceful environment while you visibly witnessed the hand behind their back choke a child or bash someone’s face in. That’s the level of reality distortion we are fed on a daily basis. It’s no wonder American’s struggle with mental well-being when they’re forced to ingest a fiction from a broken, oppressive, and murderous system.

No one should get to stand for ‘peace’ and ‘freedom’ while committing the world’s worst crimes. You don’t heal land by scorching it. And you aren’t saving lives by incinerating them.

The truth is as simple as it is horrifying: the US and Israel won’t stop and fix it, because they want the land. That’s it. It really is that simple. They just need a nice way to sell it to you and make you feel good about it, while keeping you blind to what they are actually doing.

Again, this is about an “incredible piece” of “very valuable” and “important real estate” that they want for themselves and are willing to turn it into a “demolition site” full of “kill zones” in order to get it.

They do not care about the people on that land.

They care about owning the land. It’s that simple.

Hamas is not the reason – they are the excuse.

Netanyahu even admitted as much long before October 7, 2023, ever happened.

These are war criminals discussing war crimes and how profitable it will all be for them. And you are paying for it.

This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.
~ US airmen Aaron Bushnell, in his last moments (Source)

Derek Albert Schurbon is an independent citizen journalist with a focus on US foreign policy and narrative manipulation – writing on topics helping us to move in a brighter direction, collectively awaken, and create a healthier world. Derek also works in the behavioral/mental health field and teaches mindfulness meditation for mental and emotional well-being, and cutting through biases and inner and outer false narratives. You can find Derek at: writing: derekalbert.substack.com; meditation: takebackyourmind.online.

 

Indian Government Plans Spell Disaster for Uncontacted Island Tribe

by Survival International / April 16th, 2025

A group of Shompen men in the Great Nicobar Island rainforest. ©Survival

One of the world’s most isolated tribes will be wiped out if the Indian government presses ahead with a mega-development project on their island, according to a new report published today.

The report “Crushed: How India plans to sacrifice one of the world’s most isolated tribes to create ‘the new Hong Kong’” is published by Survival International.

It warns that the uncontacted Shompen people, who live only on Great Nicobar Island in the Indian Ocean, will not survive if the Great Nicobar Development Project goes ahead.

The project includes plans to build a mega-port, defense base, power station and new city of 650,000 people, and bring in around a million tourists and other visitors to the small island each year.

Indian government visualisation of the Great Nicobar mega-port, just one part of the huge project planned for the island.

Survival International said today that it is sending the report to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, UN Special Rapporteurs, and other UN officials, and urging them to call for the project to be scrapped.

Thirty-nine genocide scholars wrote to the Indian government in February 2024 warning that the project would wipe out the Shompen if it went ahead.

Around 300 Shompen people live in the lush rainforests of the island’s interior, the majority of whom are uncontacted. Great Nicobar is part of the same island chain that is home to the uncontacted Sentinelese people, where an American influencer was arrested this month for trying to contact the tribe.

Survival International Director Caroline Pearce said today: “It’s appalling that the authorities in India are pressing ahead with this project that will wipe out the Shompen, one of the world’s most isolated tribes. While they’re prosecuting someone for going to the island of the Sentinelese, they cannot justify building a city of 650,000 people on the island of their uncontacted neighbors the Shompen.

“This project would seem absurd if it weren’t so deadly. The Shompen have the right to survive, and just want to be left in peace. The government must allow them to do so by scrapping this project, rather than pressing ahead and condemning the Shompen to annihilation.”Facebook

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

Binoy Kampmark

Flexible and Sly: Indonesian Defence Policy, Russia, and Australian Anxiety

by Binoy Kampmark / April 16th, 2025

Island states tend to be anxious political entities. Encircled by water, seemingly defended by natural obstacles, the fear of corrupting penetration is never far. Threats of such unwanted intrusion are embellished and magnified. In the case of Australia, these have varied from straying Indonesian fishermen who are seen as terrors of border security, to the threatened establishment of military bases in the Indo-Pacific by China. With Australia facing a federal election, the opportunity to exaggerate the next threat is never far away.

On April 14, the specialist military publication Janes reported that Indonesia had “received an official request from Moscow, seeking permission for Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) aircraft to be based at a facility in [the country’s] easternmost province.” The area in question is Papua, and the relevant airbase, Biak Numfor, home to the Indonesian Air Force’s Aviation Squadron 27 responsible for operating surveillance aircraft of the CN235 variety.

Indonesian government sources had informed the magazine of a request received by the office of the defence minister, Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin, following a February meeting with the Security Council of the Russian Federation Sergei Shoigu. This was not the first time, with Moscow making previous requests to Jakarta for using a base for its long-range aircraft.

The frazzled response in Australia to the possibility of a Russian presence on Indonesian soil betrays its presumption. Just as Australia would rather not see Pacific Island states form security friendly ties with China, an anxiety directed and dictated by Washington, it would also wish those in Southeast Asia to avoid the feelers of other countries supposedly unfriendly to Canberra’s interests.

Opposition leader, Peter Dutton, who has an addict’s fascination with security menaces of the phantom variety, sprung at the claims made in Janes. “This would be a catastrophic failure of diplomatic relations if [Australian Foreign Minister] Penny Wong and [Prime Minister] Anthony Albanese didn’t have forewarning about this before it was made public,” he trumpeted. “This is a very, very troubling development and suggestion that somehow Russia would have some of their assets based in Indonesia only a short distance from, obviously, the north of our country.”

The Albanese government has tried to cool the confected heat with assurances, with the PM reaffirming Canberra’s support for Ukraine while stating that “we obviously do not want to see Russian influence in our region”. It has also accused Dutton for a streaky fabrication: that Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto had “publicly announced” the details.

Australia’s Defence Minister, Richard Marles, also informed the press that he had spoken to his counterpart Sjamsoeddin, who duly replied “in the clearest possible terms [that] reports of the prospect of Russian aircraft operating from Indonesia are simply not true.”

Besides, a country such as Indonesia, according to Marles, is of the friendly sort. “We have a growing defence relationship with Indonesia. We will keep engaging with Indonesia in a way that befits a very close friend and a very close friendship between our two countries.” This sweetly coated nonsense should have gone out with the façade-tearing acts of Donald Trump’s global imposition of tariffs, unsparing to adversaries and allies alike.

Marles continues to operate in a certain twilight of international relations, under the belief that the defence cooperation agreement with Jakarta “is the deepest level defence agreement we’ve ever had with Indonesia, and we are seeking increasing cooperation between Australia and Indonesia at the defence level.” Whether this is the case hardly precludes Indonesia, as an important regional power, from conducting defence and foreign policy on its own terms with countries of its own choosing.

In January, Jakarta officially added its name to the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) group, an alternative power alignment that has been foolishly disregarded in terms of significance by the United States and its satellites. Subianto’s coming to power last October has also heralded a warmer turn to Moscow in military terms, with both countries conducting their first joint naval drills last November in the Java Sea near Surabaya. (Indonesia is already a market for Russian fighter jets, despite the cloud of potential sanctions from the US Treasury Department.) For doing so, self-appointed disciplinarians, notably such pro-US outlets as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, have questioned the country’s fabled non-aligned foreign policy. Engaging Russia in cooperative military terms supposedly undermined, according to the think tank’s publication The Strategist, Jakarta’s “own stated commitment to upholding international law.”

Such commentary is neither here nor there. The Indonesian military remains jealous and proprietary, taking a dim view of any notion of a foreign military base. Retired Major General TB Hasanuddin, who is also a Member of Commission I of the Indonesian House of Representatives, points to constitutional and other legal impediments in permitting such a policy. “Our constitution and various laws and regulations expressly prohibit the existence of foreign military bases.”

Any criticism of Jakarta’s recent gravitation to Moscow also refuses to acknowledge the flexible, even sly approach Indonesia has taken to various powers. It has done so while maintaining a firm independence of mind. In the afterglow of the naval exercises with the Russian Navy, Indonesia’s armed forces merrily went about the business of conducting military exercises with Australia, named Keris Woomera. Between November 13 and 16 last year, the exercise comprised 2,000 personnel from the navy, army and air force from both countries. As Australia frets and fantasises about the stratagems of distant authoritarian leaders, Indonesia having the last laugh.

Blue Origin’s Female Celebrity Envoys

Gender Stunts in Space

by Binoy Kampmark / April 15th, 2025

Indulgent, vain and profligate, the all-female venture into space on the self-piloted New Shepard (NS-31) operated by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin was space capitalism and celebrity shallowness on full show, masquerading as profound, moving and useful.

The crew consisted of bioastronautics research scientist and civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King, pop entertainer Katy Perry, film producer Kerianne Flynn, former NASA scientist and entrepreneur Aisha Bowe and Lauren Sánchez, fiancée of Jeff Bezos. The journey took 11 minutes and reached the Kármán line at approximately 96 kilometres above the earth.

Blue Origin had advertised the enterprise as an incentive to draw girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). It also shamelessly played on the background of some of the crew, with Nguyen promoted as “the first Vietnamese and south-east Asian female astronaut” whose presence would “highlight science as a tool for peace” and also project a potent “symbol of reconciliation between the US and Vietnam”.

Phil Joyce, Senior Vice President of New Shepard, thought it a “privilege to witness this crew of trailblazers depart the capsule today”. Each woman was “a storyteller” who would “use their voices – individually and together – to channel their life-changing experience today into creating lasting impact that will inspire people across our planet for generations.”

What was more accurately on show were celebrity space marketers on an expensive jaunt, showing us all that women can play the space capitalism game as well, albeit as the suborbital version of a catwalk or fashion show. Far from pushing some variant of feminism in the frontier of space, with scientific rewards for girls the world over, we got the eclipsing, if not a wholesale junking, of female astronauts and their monumental expertise.

It hardly compared, at any stretch or by any quantum of measure, with the achievement of Russian cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova, who piloted a Vostok 6 into earth’s orbit lasting 70 hours over six decades prior. To have Sánchez claiming to be “so proud of this crew”, tears cued for effect, gave the impression that they had shown technical expertise and skill when neither was required. It was far better to have deep pockets fronting the appropriate deposit, along with the necessary safe return, over which they had virtually no control over.

Dr Kai-Uwe Schrogl, special advisor for political affairs at the European Space Agency, offered a necessarily cold corrective. “A celebrity isn’t an envoy of humankind – they go into space for their own reasons,” he told BBC News. “These flights are significant and exciting, but I think maybe they can also be a source of frustration for space scientists”. How silly of those scientists, who regard space flight as an extension of “science, knowledge and the interests of humanity.”

The Guardian was also awake to the motivations of the Bezos project. “The pseudo progressiveness of this celebrity space mission, coupled with Bezos’s conduct in his other businesses, should mean we are under no illusion what purpose these flights serve.” With Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the space tourism market, marked by its bratty oligarchs, is becoming competitive. In an effort to corner the market, attractive gimmicks are in high demand.

The cringingly superficial nature of the exercise was evident in various comments on the fashion aspect of the suits worn by the crew. Here was branding, and the sort that could be taken to space. As Sánchez stated: “Usually, you know, these suits are made for a man. Then they get tailored to fit a woman. I think the suits are elegant, but they also bring a little spice to space.” Blue Origin had capitalised on NASA’s own failings in 2019, which saw the abandoning of an all-female spacewalk for lacking appropriately fitting spacesuits.

On their return, the female cast performed their contractual undertakings to bore the press with deadly clichés and meaningless observations, reducing space travel to an exercise for the trivial. “Earth looked so quiet,” remarked Sánchez. “It was quiet, but really alive.” King, after getting on her knees to kiss the earth, merely wanted “to have a moment with the ground, just appreciate the ground for just a second”. (Surely she has had longer than that.) Perry, on her return after singing What a Wonderful World during the trip, overflowed with inanities. She felt “super connected to life”, as well as being “so connected to love.”

On the ground were other celebrities, delighted to offer their cliché-clotted thoughts. “I didn’t realise how emotional it would be, it’s hard to explain,” reflected Khloé Kardashian. “I have all this adrenaline and I’m just standing here.” From a family of celebrities that merely exist as celebrities and nothing else, she had some advice: “Dream big, wish for the stars – and one day, you could maybe be amongst them.”

Amanda Hess, reflecting on the mission in the New York Times, tried to put her finger on what it all meant. “The message is that a little girl can grow up to be whatever she wishes: a rocket scientist or a pop star, a television journalist or a billionaire’s fiancée who is empowered to pursue her various ambitions and whims in the face of tremendous costs.” Just not an astronaut.

Perfume, Power, and Emmanuel Macron

Olfactive Implications

by Binoy Kampmark / April 14th, 2025

Apparently, he is addicted to it. The French President, Emmanuel Macron, adores using perfume. The variety: Dior Eau Sauvage. Dior states that the perfume is characterised by notes of Calabrian bergamot and Papua New Guinean vanilla extract. The company is also keen to glorify elements of power and nobility in the scent.

Apparently, the use of that particular fragrance by the France’s head of state happens to be “industrial” in application, “at all hours of the day”, intended to impress “less-accustomed visitors” with “the floral and musky scent, as refined as it is powerful.” A former aide is quoted as claiming that the President’s use is far from subtle, a way of “marking his territory”. Former minister Stanislas Guerini is also found stating that “everyone holds their breath for a few moments before [his] arrival.” That’s if we believe the findings of Le Parisien journalist Olivier Beaumont in The Tragedy of the Élysée (La Tragédie de L’Élysée).

The field of scent and odours teems with what might be loosely called analysis of the self-evident and palpably obvious. Scent is worn for calculated reasons: for impression, the pursuit of sex, an expression of power. An article in Women’s Wear Daily from June 1990 is pungent with examples, much of it featuring garden gnome psychology. “Those who select a different fragrance for every occasion use scents as a means of shaping their social image,” Mark Snyder, a professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota is quoted as saying. “All odors trigger an emotional response,” one Susan Schiffman, medical psychologist at Duke University blandly states.

According to the book, Macron’s choice of fragrant dousing is driven by power – and ensuring that everyone else working with him knows about it. “Just as Louis XIV made his perfumes an attribute of power when he paraded through the galleries of Versailles, Emmanuel Macron uses his as an element of his authority at the Élysée.”

These revelations about Macron’s excessive use have caused something of a ripple. “It is one thing at a school dance or nightclub when you are a horny teen,” writes Zoe Strimpel in The Spectator. “Outside of these contexts, it can be a nauseating, terrible thing.” The Daily Telegraph dives into the shallow currents of social media to use the term “blusher blindness”, meant to signify “an inability to objectively gauge how much blusher one is applying – often resulting in overly roughed cheeks.”

Tips are offered for Macron with unasked, hollow generosity, many amounting to a shoddy excuse to plump for preferred products. (The “Mr President Could Do Far Better” discipline.) Fragrance journalist (they do exist), Alice du Parcq is more than up to the task. “Scent can be truly very potent, so if you’re spending time in close proximity to a lot of other people you should be a little more gentle with your approach,” she chides. Avoid, she advocates, spraying on wrists. Why not the top of each forearm? “This makes the scent last longer as it’s less likely to come off every time you wash your hands.” The fragrance lingers, as “the skin is more textured and it also clings to an arm hair, which is porous.”

The advertising note emerges from the opinions of Thomas Dunckley, who markets himself as “fragrance expert, writer, trainer, event host and speaker”. He suggests that products less concentrated in fragrance oils might be appropriate when seeking a balance. “An eau de cologne is a good way for a man to wear a pleasant fragrance without making a statement or overpowering.” He throws in the recommended products: Eau de Guerlain and Acqua di Parma.

The disciplinarian view is most evident in the commentary that accuses the French leader of revealing a character fault. As with one of his predecessors, Nicolas Sarkozy, size and stature are matters of comment regarding Macron, implying that a manufactured defect requires remedies of exaggeration. Small men demand large substitutes, broad covers, gargantuan distractions. The spare frame will not do.

If one has to use perfume, suggests Strimpel, why not do so differently? “A French leader might, one would think, go for something more openly, proudly elite, since he is not hamstrung by the modern British obsession with appearing to be one of the people,” she squawks. A fault is swiftly detected: immaturity. Perhaps Macron confused his abode of power with the school where he met his wife, Brigitte, “planting the seed (or perhaps it was the scent?) that would eventually lead her to return his passion.”

The fragrance analysts and perfumeries will be delighted to know that a head of state is so enamoured with a specific product. Those wishing to make a fuss about workplace attitudes and dispositions will also add, and have added, their worthless observations. Ultimately, the use, or otherwise, of French power would not come down to a fragrance but a decision marked by other considerations. The fragrance cabal and tabloid titterers may have you think otherwise.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

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

 

Reflection on Ecuadorian Elections

by Black Alliance for Peace / April 15th, 2025

The Black Alliance for Peace and Movimiento Afrodescendiente Nacional Ecuatoriano (MANE) reported back on the Ecuadorian presidential elections held on Sunday, April 13, 2025. Despite the fact the current president, Daniel Noboa, issued a last-minute decree (Decree 597) that sealed the northern and southern borders, intending to deny entry to international observers, the election team for the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) was able to enter and observe the elections on the ground.

The National Electoral Council (Consejo Nacional Electoral) has declared Daniel Noboa the winner of the second round of elections, with over an 11-point lead. With this win, it is certain that Noboa’s declared “internal armed struggle” will continue to negatively and disproportionately impact Ecuador’s poor and AfroEcuadorian communities. While the election process ostensibly adhered to international standards, BAP observed several troubling elements, including an excessive military presence, particularly at polling stations located in predominantly AfroEcuadorian precincts. This is precisely why MANE invited an election observation delegation from the BAPs North South Project for People(s)- Centered Human Rights to monitor the situation in those majority African precincts in Guayaquil. It is also reflective of the ongoing human rights issues AfroEcuadorians continue to face since the illegal kidnapping and vicious murder of four AfroEcuadorian youth by Ecuadorian military officials nearly one month ago. These murders are indicative of the human rights crisis Ecuadorians, but particularly AfroEcuadorians, are facing due to the current government’s heavy-handed approach to the phony “War on Drugs.”

BAP’s delegation met with the families of the latest egregious violations to, and systemic dehumanizing of AfroEcuadorians who police snipers shot during an apparent raid on a Black community in a Guayaquil barrio. One died from the attack, and another is now permanently disabled, while a third teenager remains hospitalized and permanently paralyzed. All of these victims’ main crimes are that they are Black and poor.

These conditions directly connect to the situation in the region of Esmeraldas, which is more than 70% AfroEcuadorians, that was recently devastated by an oil spill after a pipeline operated by the state-owned petroleum company PetroEcuador ruptured and released approximately 25,000 barrels of oil.  Roughly 300,000 of the region’s 500,000 people and the livelihoods of fishermen, farmers, and others are facing dire conditions. The inadequate response to the devastation by the Ecuadorian government, as well as the global environmental community, showcases the environmental racism experienced by AfroEcuadorians in Esmeralda, which is endemic of environmental injustice shouldered by all oppressed Africans from Cancer Alley in the U.S. to Port Au Prince in the Revolutionary Republic of Haiti. BAP affirms the axiomatic nexus between increasing militarism and an increasing climate crisis that disproportionately impacts Africans and Indigenous peoples the world over.

With Noboa’s win, these conditions will certainly deteriorate further. BAP’s concerns are highlighted by the very real danger of the fulfillment of ongoing efforts to expand the U.S. military’s presence in Ecuador as part of a larger conquest of South America’s Pacific coast. This, in turn, will exacerbate the existing militarized presence in Ecuador under the guise of security, already subjecting Afro, Indigenous, and poor Ecuadorians to daily human rights violations. The development of an independent, national AfroEcuadorian politics is even more urgent than before to not only counter U.S. and Ecuadorian reactionary right-wing forces but to ensure the human rights of AfroEcuadorians through the power of the people and popular mass movements.

To this end, BAP will continue to support MANE in developing an independent national AfroEcuadorian formation that will be able to identify and defend the fundamental human rights of the AfroEcuadorian people. The last nine months of collaboration between BAP and MANE exemplify this development and commitment to a popular process.FacebookRedditEmail

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) seeks to recapture and redevelop the historic anti-war, anti-imperialist, and pro-peace positions of the radical black movement. Read other articles by Black Alliance for Peace, or visit Black Alliance for Peace's website.

Trump Posts Press Release with Fabrications

by Eric Zuesse / April 15th, 2025

On April 15th, President Trump posted as “News” on his White House website, “These Sick Criminals Are Who Democrats and the Legacy Media Are Defending”, and opened:

Brutal killers and rapists — all taken off our streets in just the past week thanks to the tireless work of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

If Democrats and the legacy media had their way, these sick criminals would still be roaming free.

Here are just a few of the depraved criminal illegal immigrants ICE has arrested in the past several days:

1. Luis Olmedo Quishpi-Poalasin, a 35-year-old citizen of Ecuador, was arrested by ICE New York City. Quishpi has convictions for forcible rape, sexual abuse contact by forcible compulsion, rape and anal sexual contact with a person incapable of consent, unlawful imprisonment, forcible touching of intimate parts of another person, sexual misconduct by vaginal sexual contact without consent, and subjecting another person to sexual contact without consent in Brooklyn, New York.

2. Eduardo Garcia-Cortez, a 64-year-old, citizen of Honduras, was arrested by ICE Houston. Garcia has a conviction for murder in Los Angeles County, California.

…

There were 18 listed. Using two different web-browsers, I searched online to find those alleged convictions, because if that press release is authentic, then since the alleged crimes were sufficiently significant to have been covered at least by one local TV, radio, print, or other, news-medium, and there would also be a court-record of the case(s), at least one mention of the case(s) would almost certainly be somewhere else on the Web than merely that White House Press Release. But nothing came up on those two alleged criminals, other than this White House ‘news’-report.

If the President’s office were seriously reporting this alleged news, then they would have provided some means — links to each one of the alleged 18 “criminals,” or some other means — by which a reader of it can seek to find whether or not the White House is fabricating this ‘news’; and, since the White House did not do that, any intelligent reader would assume that it is fabricated instead of being any authentic news.

If the President did not authorize his office to post that alleged ‘news’-report, then he will announce this fact and fire whomever was responsible for it. Otherwise, he — and he alone — is entirely responsible for it.

In any case, however, the responsibility to examine further into this incident rests with each one of America’s national news-media. Only in a dictatorship can a head-of-state make a public statement (and a Press Release is a public statement) and no news-medium investigate to determine whether or not it was a total fabrication, and how it came to be produced if it was a fabrication.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Eric Zuesse is an investigative historian. His new book, America's Empire of Evil: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public. Read other articles by Eric.