David Swanson
World BEYOND War

“Despite the fact that deterrence remains an article of faith among the ‘realists’ who have orchestrated U.S. strategic policy and who continue to do so, despite its incoherence and instability, much of this faith is lip service only, analogous to deeply religious individuals who profess belief in heaven, yet rarely rejoice when a loved one dies. Thus, if the U.S. government really believed in nuclear deterrence — or in the billions of dollars spent on Ballistic Missile Defense — there wouldn’t be such hyperventilating about the threat posed by a nuclear-armed North Korea or possibly by Iran in the future.” —David Barash

There was a webinar [a while ago] about nuclear deterrence. I’ve also just been reading a fantastic book on the topic called Threats: Intimidation and Its Discontents by David P. Barash. There’s an online book club with the author and free copy of the book coming up for that. Barash’s central thesis is that the idea of nuclear deterrence makes no sense. It’s kind of hard to see why anyone would argue with him.

MSNBC recently aired this old comment by U.S. nuclear scientist Leo Szilard: “Here, I have made a little calculation. Assuming that we make a radioactive element that will live for five years and we just let it go into the air… forming a dust layer on the surface of the Earth, everybody would be killed. . . . And you may, of course, ask, ‘What is the practical importance of this? Who would want to kill everybody on Earth?’ I do not know whether we would be willing to do it, and I do not know whether the Russians would be willing to do it. But I think that we may threaten to do it. And I think that the Russians might threaten to do it. And who will take the risk, then, not to take that threat seriously?”

Dmitry Medvedev (Дмитрий Медведев)
Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council
RT.com / Pravovedenie (.pdf)

"Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi" – The world keeps changing, and not always for the better. We have witnessed the rapid degradation of many supranational legal structures, which have fallen victim to their dependence on the will, funding and values of the so-called collective West. This is true, for instance, for the International Criminal Court (the Hague Criminal Court). The good intentions which guided those who established it two decades ago have evidently paved the road to hell. The further, the more so.

Deplorable as it may seem, it is more than natural. Suffice it to remember the history of this legal institution, which has gone a short way from alleged demand to full uselessness on the edge of absurdity, bias and cynicism. It is important to understand what its current actions are conditioned by, how to react to them and what, in the end, shall replace this international body, which has compromised itself so quickly.

Stephen J. Sniegoski
The Passionate Attachment
[Originally posted on this blog here: 08/15/12]

Stephen Lendman, Israel's Longstanding Middle East Plan
Oded Yinon, "A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties" /
Israel Shahak, "The Zionist Plan for the Middle East"[*]

💬 If everything goes according to plan, the end result will be a Middle East composed of disunited states, or mini-states, involved in intractable, internecine conflict, which would make it impossible for them to confront Israeli power and to provide any challenge to Israel’s control of Palestine.

It is widely realized now that the fall of President Bashar Assad’s regime would leave Syria riven by bitter ethnic, religious, and ideological conflict that could splinter the country into smaller enclaves. Already there has been a demographic shift in this direction, as both Sunnis and Alawites flee the most dangerous parts of the county, seeking refuge within their own particular communities. Furthermore, it is widely believed in Syria that, as the entire country becomes too difficult to secure, the Assad regime will retreat to an Alawite redoubt in the northern coastal region as a fallback position.

Syrian Kurds, about ten percent of the country’s population, are also interested in gaining autonomy or joining with a larger Kurdistan. The Syrian Kurdish Democratic Party (PYD)—linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has engaged in a separatist insurgency in Turkey’s Kurdish southeast region for nearly three decades—has gained control of key areas in northeast Syria. While Turkey has supported the Syrian opposition, it is terrified of a Kurdish autonomous zone in Syria, believing that it could provide a safe haven for staging attacks into Turkey. Moreover, Kurdish autonomy would encourage separatist sentiment within the Turkish Kurdish minority. Turkey has threatened to invade the border areas of Syria to counter such a development and Turkish armed forces with armor have been sent to Turkey’s border with the Syrian Kurdish region. A Turkish invasion would add further complexities to the fracturing of Syria.

Daniele Ganser
Journal of 9/11 Studies

The “Strategy of Tension” in the Cold War Period *

[06/02/14] Historians today and in the coming years face a challenging task: they must write the history of the events of September 11, 2001. What they write will be taught in history classes. But what will they write? Will they write that Osama Bin Laden sent 19 Muslims to launch a surprise attack on the U.S.? Or will they write that the administration of President George W. Bush was responsible for the attack, either constructing it or deliberately permitting it in order to shock the U.S. population and to create a pretext for increasing military spending and attacking Afghanistan and Iraq?

Having examined much of the data related to the 9/11 events, I am convinced a new and thorough investigation is needed. But when I have questioned the official narrative of 9/11 in my native Switzerland I have encountered vigorous objections from people. Why would any government in the world, they have asked, attack its own population or, only slightly less criminal, deliberately allow a foreign group to carry out such an attack? While brutal dictatorships, such as the regime of Pol Pot in Cambodia, are known to have had little respect for the life and dignity of their citizens, surely a Western democracy, the thinking goes, would not engage in such an abuse of power. And if criminal elements within a Western democracy, in North America or in Europe, had engaged in such a crime, would not elected officials or the media find out and report on it? Is it imaginable that criminal persons within a government could commit terrorist operations against innocent citizens, who support the very same government with the taxes they pay every year? Would nobody notice? These are difficult questions, even for academics who specialize in the history of secret warfare. But in fact, there are historical examples of such operations being implemented by Western democracies.

In this essay, I will not deal directly with 9/11 but will look at what we can learn from history. I will report on some of the newest academic data about secret warfare during the Cold War. A secret military strategy that targets domestic populations with terrorism does indeed exist. It is called the “strategy of tension.” And it was implemented by Western democracies.

Jonathan Cook
Jonathan Cook Blog

Britain’s authoritarian new prime minister is expanding the scope of already draconian laws to redefine his critics as ‘supporters’ of terrorism

The arrest yesterday of Palestine solidarity activist Sarah Wilkinson, following the arrest of journalist Richard Medhurst last week – both based on an improbable claim they have violated Section 12 of the Terrorism Act – is definitive proof that Keir Starmer’s authoritarian purges of the Labour left are being rolled out against critics on a nationwide basis.

Now safely ensconced in No 10, Starmer can crush the basic rights of British citizens with as much relish as he earlier pummelled the remnants of democracy inside the Labour party – and for much the same reason.

The British prime minister is determined to terrorise into silence critics highlighting his, and now his government’s, complicity with Israel and its genocide in Gaza.

Starmer would rather dramatically expand the scope of already draconian “counter-terrorism” laws than act against the wishes of the United States, either by stopping arms sales to a fascist Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu or by joining South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

There, judges have already ruled that the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians over the past 11 months is a “plausible genocide”. The next step is for South Africa and the many states backing it to persuade the World Court that the genocide is proven beyond doubt.

The usual Israel lobby ghouls, such as David Collier, have been salivating over Wilkinson’s arrest. She faces up to 14 years in jail for supposedly “supporting” a proscribed organisation – namely, Hamas.

Semyon Boykov (Семен Бойков)
Izvestia

How the West now is helping the Ukrainian military

The operation of the AFU in the Kursk region was prepared with the participation of special services of the USA, Great Britain, and Poland. This was reported to Izvestia by the press bureau of the Foreign Intelligence Service. They added that the units involved in the attack had undergone combat alignment in training centers in Britain and Germany. Experts emphasize that the Ukrainian attack is essentially doomed to failure. Moreover, Moscow will not negotiate with Kyiv now because of its aggressive actions. About why the West decided to enter the Russian region, and how advisers of the North Atlantic Alliance countries are now helping the AFU, [is covered below based on the information obtained by] “Izvestia”.

Who was preparing Ukraine for an attack on the Kursk Region?

The Foreign Intelligence Service has reliable information about the participation of NATO countries in preparing and carrying out a terrorist attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the border areas of the Kursk Region, the SVR press bureau has told Izvestiya. They specified that due to the deteriorating situation of the Ukrainian troops at several sections of the line of contact in the SVR zone, Western handlers have been actively pushing Kyiv in recent months to move military operations deep into Russian territory, including to provoke an upsurge in anti-government sentiments and destabilize the internal political situation in Russia.

💬 “According to available information, the AFU operation in the Kursk region was prepared with the participation of special services of the United States, Great Britain, and Poland. The units involved in it underwent combat training in training centers in Great Britain and Germany. Military advisers from NATO countries are providing assistance in the management of AFU units invading the territory of Russia and in the use by Ukrainians of Western models of military equipment. The alliance countries also provide the Ukrainian military with satellite recon-naissance data on the deployment of Russian troops in the area of the operation,” the SVR said.

Shahrokh Saei
Tehran Times

A new round of negotiations held in the Qatari capital aimed at halting Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip has been thrust into the limelight as the death toll from regime’s onslaught in the besieged Palestinian territory passed the grime milestone of 40,000.

Senior American, Egyptian and Qatari officials held talks with an Israeli delegation in Doha on Thursday and Friday.

It has been reported that CIA director William Burns, White House Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman Al Thani and Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel attended the talks. They met with the Israeli delegation which included Mossad chief David Barnea, Shin Bet head Ronen Bar, and the Israeli military’s captive chief, Nitzan Alon.

Israelis have launched a smear campaign against Hamas which did not join the negotiations. The resistance movement wanted mediators to discuss a ceasefire plan based upon earlier negotiations rather than starting fresh talks. However, mediators relayed messages to Hamas officials based in Doha.

Israel’s excessive demands — Israel stands accused of adding new demands to a previous ceasefire plan presented by the US president on May 31.

On June 10, the United Nations Security Council approved a US resolution backing Joe Biden’s three-phased ceasefire plan to which Hamas agreed in principle.

The first phase of the Biden proposal would include a "full and complete ceasefire" lasting six weeks, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from all populated areas of Gaza, and the exchange of some of the captives held in the enclave in exchange for the release of Palestinian inmates from Israeli jails.

The second phase would involve the release of all remaining captives and a "permanent end to hostilities". The third would see the start of a major reconstruction plan for the Gaza Strip which has been devastated during the Israeli onslaught that was launched on October 7 last year.

The state of the forests, deforestation, and what we can do about it
By Kersasp D. Shekhdar
The People's Voice

Amazon Forest: World watches wildfires lash through
'lungs of the earth'

Deforestation at warp speed

Up until about the Industrial Revolution, deforestation—if it could be called that—used to be a not unnatural consequence of man’s need for timber, the expansion of human settlements, and slash-and-burn agriculture which has been practised since the Neolithic Age and is still used by indigeous or nomadic peoples and settlers. Forests have been cleared “to make space for agriculture and animal grazing, and to obtain wood for fuel, manufacturing, and construction.” Further and other drivers of deforestation vary from one geographical region to another.

Fully a third of the planet’s forests, comprising two billion hectares, have been destroyed since the Great Ice Age but the pace of deforestation has not been even—far from it. The rate of deforestation has accelerated exponentially such that, according to the World Wildlife Fund, “the fastest rate of forest destruction has been in the past couple of centuries,” as “up to 15 billion trees are now being cut down every year.” While the first half of total deforestation took place over nearly 100 centuries (from 8,000 B.C. to 1900), the second half occurred in the blink of an eye within only the past one century, culminating in the 1980s with no let up (unless one is to fall for corporate-sponsored happy statistics).

So though only a few centuries ago an old man could take his grandchild for a walk in a nearby forestland or woodland, identifying tree species and small wildlife along the way, how many grandfathers can do so today? All too few, for how many human habitations are still blessed with nearby forestlands or woodlands? And when such is the reality in our time, what forests might a grandfather show his ten-year-old only a century from now?

World BEYOND War
The People's Voice

Ottawa — A large protest is blocking the entrances to CANSEC, North America’s biggest weapons and military convention. Hundreds of demonstrators are confronting representatives of Israeli and Canadian militaries and weapons companies over their complicity in the killing of more than 36,000 Palestinians in Gaza as Israel has carried out a prolonged assault from the air, sea, and on the ground over the past seven and a half months. The criminality of Israel’s actions, and of Canada’s complicity with them, is underscored by the horrific killing of 45 Palestinians by an Israeli air strike on a camp for displaced people in Rafah. At least 23 women and children died in the attack, many burned to death as fire engulfed their tents.

“Dozens of people were burned alive in Israel’s attacks on a displaced persons camp in Rafah this week, a spot Israel had designated a ‘safe’ zone. And the people profiting from this atrocity, who have been providing the weaponry for the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians, are right here at CANSEC,” said Rachel Small, organizer with World BEYOND War. “Today we are making it impossible for anyone to come anywhere near this weapons fair without confronting the war crimes and devastating bloodshed these arms dealers and military representatives are complicit in.”

Many of the weapons companies currently arming the Israeli military’s assault on Gaza are exhibiting and presenting at CANSEC, including: Elbit Systems, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, L3Harris, Leonardo, and dozens more. Israeli government and military representatives had also planned to be in attendance. Canadian Defense Minister Bill Blair was scheduled to give the keynote address at the Official Opening Breakfast for CANSEC starting at 7:45AM on Wednesday. Blair recently oversaw DND’s purchase of $32.2 million dollars worth of Spike LR2 missiles, which are made by Israeli state-owned weapons giant Rafael Advanced Defense System, and are being used by Israel in Gaza.

David Swanson
World BEYOND War

Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty declares that NATO members will assist another member if attacked by “taking action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force.” But the UN Charter does not say anywhere that war-making is authorized for whoever jumps in on the appropriate side.

The North Atlantic Treaty’s authors may have been aware that they were on dubious legal ground because they went on twice to claim otherwise, first adding the words “Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.” But shouldn’t the United Nations be the one to decide when it has taken necessary measures and when it has not?

The North Atlantic Treaty adds a second bit of sham obsequiousness with the words “This Treaty does not affect, and shall not be interpreted as affecting in any way the rights and obligations under the Charter of the Parties which are members of the United Nations, or the primary responsibility of the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security.” So the treaty that created NATO seeks to obscure the fact that it is, indeed, authorizing war-making outside of the United Nations — as has now played out in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Libya.