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| Since October 7, 2023, the U.S. has poured between $31-34 billion into Israel’s war on Gaza and related military operations across the region, according to the Brown University Costs of War Project. Roughly $21.7 billion went directly to Israel in military aid, while an additional $9.6–$12 billion funded U.S. operations in Yemen, Iran, and elsewhere. |
2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado, a US government-funded far-right coup leader, vowed to privatize Venezuela's oil and give it to US corporations.
"We are going to privatize all our industry", she told Donald Trump Jr. "American companies ... are going to make a lot of money", she promised.
She maintains that her reign as corporate king of the nation, after Washington kills current president Maduro, that "Venezuela will be the brightest opportunity for investment by American companies."
Bingo - another proxy war for Washington's elite. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, Palestine...the dead man's train keeps on rolling along.
It's 'chaos theory'.
Moon Of Alabama
Kishore Mahbubani is a Singaporean diplomat who has served for ten years as as ambassador to the United Nations. His talks about global policies and their development are always of interest.
His most recent one under the question “What will geopolitics look like in the next ten years?” is no exception.
The most important part starts [in above video] at 22:54 min. Here I am mostly interested in what Mahbubani has to say about Europe (edited machine transcript):
I want to emphasize that the in current situation the key word you got to understand is complexity. [The world] is extremely complex because there are a lot of moving parts all the time. So for a start clearly and at the at the highest strategic level as you know in the cold war was bipolar the cold war ended and it became unipolar. And now we have what you have a strange combination of both a bipolar and multipolar world.
[…]
But there are also other powers [besides the U.S., China and India] that are clearly changing the situation.
Again, clearly Russia matters, right? And the biggest strategic mistake that the Europeans made in dealing with Russia is that they only look at the size of its economy and didn’t look at the overall national strength and their military capability.
So the Ukraine war could have been avoided if the Europeans had just shown some degree of respect for Russia’s own long-term strategic interests. And the tragedy of the Europeans trying to punish the rest of the world for buying Russian oil is that they could have avoided this war with Russia if they had shown some strategic common sense in dealing with Russia.
He later blames the mistake on the serious lack of abilities of the current crop of European leaders:
So all that is what I mean with complexity. It is not a simple black and white chessboard, you know, it’s extremely complex and you got to watch all the moving parts.
The people who can get the big picture are the ones who will succeed and thrive and those who don’t, like the Europeans, sadly .... The Europeans live in a delusionary world, and I mean that quite seriously because they, you know if you just look at the photograph of the European leaders sitting on sofas in front of the school teacher Donald Trump at his desk lecturing these European leaders. They look like school children. I mean the optics itself captured what had happened.
And for a respected prime minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte, whom I met, who is a very thoughtful intelligent guy by the way, for him to call Trump daddy? I mean it shows you that something has gone wrong.
So this actually I must tell you: In my last conversation with Kissinger he told me candidly that the quality of mind of these Europeans has gone down so much they don’t understand how much the world has changed. So this is an example of where – if you understand the world you can navigate through it, but if you don’t understand the world, like the Europeans, they seem to be in trouble.
Mahbubani diagnosis of Europe’s disease is in my view correct. But what might be the best therapy to correct this situation?
Trump Tariffs Hit India's Garment Makers as US Buyers Say Move Production
Bankrolling Trump, Miriam Adelson's $60bn, she who must be obeyed.
Lol at Pakistan's Shehbaz Sharif.
And if Erdogan's so tough why didn't he do anything about Gaza?
Israel has never signed an agreement that it has not reneged on. The sham of the Gaza ceasefire is no different. Within the first 24 hours of the ceasefire going into effect, the Israelis killed 35 civilians and injured 72 others. At least nine civilians were killed and a further 35 injured within just the past 24 hours, according to the figures released by the Gaza Health Ministry on Wednesday. Five were killed in a drone strike in the Shuja’iyya neighbourhood while additional strikes in Jabalia in the north and Khan Yunis and Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip resulted in further casualties. Ceasefire or no ceasefire, the killings have continued.
A recent video from Rajghat made headlines when the police tried to remove an elderly man fasting in solidarity with Gaza. That man was former IIT professor VK Tripathi. When an officer asked why Gaza mattered to him, he replied: “You are a human being first, inspector later.”
It was just a glimpse into a fight he has carried on for three decades. The 1990 Bhagalpur riots, he recalled, shook him so deeply that he left a teaching career in the US and returned to India to create a public response to the politics of hate based on Gandhian non-violence. Since then, he has travelled neighbourhoods and campuses, challenging communal politics with dialogue, leaflets, and sheer persistence.
Newslaundry walked with Tripathi through Delhi’s streets as he handed out pamphlets, stopped strangers for a conversation, and tried – patiently, sometimes in vain – to convince them why they must not turn a blind eye to the human suffering in Gaza. Many brushed him off, others argued back, a few listened. But he finds hope even when just “5 percent” of the people he has reached out to understand.
He warns that India’s most vulnerable are now easy prey for political exploitation, that caste bias still corrodes even elite institutions like the IITs, and that sectarian control over temples is not just a theft of religion but of humanity itself. Yet his faith endures.
Despite rejection and ridicule, Tripathi believes young people still carry the capacity to choose empathy over hate. And so, he walks on, repeating his message with quiet conviction: “India is still alive.”
BlackRock and other asset managers are profiting off of every aspect of your life.
It's not a conspiracy — it's an open restructuring of society.
Learn what the 'Big 3' is on Wall Street and how they use their economic and political power.
By Pavel Durov (Telegram founder)
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| Catholic Worker activists outside the Pentagon in Washington for their weekly vigil. |
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| On October 5 activists held a protest outside Croughton which is actually a US base posing as a British installation. Croughton is involved in the network of data gathering, command and control functions for U.S. missile defence and space warfighting. |
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| AlMS B School students and staff gather in Visakhapatnam, India for one of several events across the city during space week. |
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| Scottish CND outside their Parliament on Oct 6. Several locations across Scotland are now building space launch facilities that are most likely to be for military operations. |
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| Another student event in Visakhapatnam, India honoring the work of the UN and space week. |
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| A combined event in South Korea supporting a woman Jeju activist on the Flotilla to Gaza who was arrested by Israel and not released at that time. Also space week was remembered as the US is dragging South Korea into its space war program aimed at China and Russia. |
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| Engineering students in Visakhapatnam, India hearing about the concerns of moving the arms race into space. |
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| Catholic Worker activist in front of the White House in Washington during space week. |
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| Darth Vader made an appearance at Bath Iron Works (General Dynamics) in Maine on Oct 11 with a sign revealing that Navy Aegis destroyers have proven to be able to shoot a satellite out of the sky in 2008 during 'Operation Burnt Frost'. These destroyers have been/are now deployed near Yemen, Iran, Venezuela, China and Russia. |
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| Group photo in front of the administration building on Oct 11 at Bath Iron Works in Maine. |
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| Linking genocide in Gaza and US-Israeli space militarization at BIW. |
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| On October 10 Reject Raytheon elders walked around a jammin’ touristy Asheville, North Carolina with our signage, giving out colorful and informative flyers. We hung out at the Friday drum circle for a while where we got a lot of thumbs up, then went over to the Elder & Sage Community Garden for a pic at the peace pole. |
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| Police and peace activists clashed outside Christchurch, New Zealand convention centre as protesters set up a blockade against an aerospace summit taking place in the city. About 120 activists from the group Peace Action Ōtautahi positioned themselves around the central city building early on October 8, some chained themselves to gates of the various entrances. More than 20 were arrested. Protesters stated that links exist between some parts of the aerospace industry, the US military, the Israeli Defence Force. A spokesperson said, “The industry is operating under the guise of aerospace when in reality [some] companies ...are launching technology for the Israeli Defence Force, technology that they use to target and murder Palestinian civilians.” |
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| Also outside the New Zealand convention center protesting against the weaponization of space. |
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| UK Ministry of Defence's Global Operations Security Control Centre, which routes secure military commands and communications via the Skynet satellite system. |
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| Convicted drug trafficker and ISIS-affiliate Yasser Abu Shabab, leader of the so-called Popular Forces. |
From Drug Lords to Death Squads: Israel’s Gaza War Continues through Collaborator Gangs: Israel’s latest tactic relies on arming criminal gangs and former security agents to carry out assassinations and terrorize civilians, continuing its war on Gaza by other means.
Despite Israeli forces having largely ceased fire, they are now hatching a plot using collaborator proxies across Gaza as part of a continuation of the genocide. This includes using these criminal gangs to execute civilians, murder security force members, and even assassinate journalists.
Under the current ceasefire agreement, ‘phase one’ has triggered an Israeli withdrawal from many populated areas of the Gaza Strip, yet the military still remains in between 56-58% of the besieged enclave’s territory. On the first day of the ceasefire’s implementation, Israeli forces murdered nearly 40 civilians, mostly through gunfire.
While Israeli army fire began to subside, the three primary militia forces that Israel has backed against Hamas have escalated their attacks on both civilians and Hamas-aligned security forces. These militant groups are led by drug-traffickers, ex-Palestinian Authority Preventive Security Force members, and Salafist militants. They are also linked to ISIS.
These groups have begun to carry out assassinations in the Gaza Strip over the past week, starting with the murder of Mohammed Imad Aqel, the son of a senior Al-Qassam Brigades Commander.
On Sunday, they even murdered prominent Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi, along with the son of Hamas politburo member Bassem Naim. These Israeli-backed militants had ambushed a group of Gazan security force members, murdering them along with civilians returning to their homes in the north.
According to Gaza’s Dr. Mohammed Abu Lahia, in the case of Aljafarawi, the Israeli collaborator gang had kidnapped the beloved journalist, tortured him and then executed him with seven bullets from point-blank range.
Hours later, Hamas’ security forces, reportedly alongside members of the Qassam Brigades, pursued these militants to their hideout in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City, eliminating dozens and arresting others.
According to reports on the ground, the internal security forces seized Israeli-supplied weapons and a hit list containing the names of prominent figures in the north of Gaza.
A Gaza Proxy War
These militia groups are located throughout the Gaza Strip, but each wing of this anti-Hamas coalition of Israeli-backed death squads is responsible for managing different turf.
Operating out of eastern Rafah is the armed gang calling itself the “Popular Forces”, led by convicted drug trafficker and ISIS-affiliate Yasser Abu Shabab. This force began receiving overt backing from Israel to carry out coordinated armed robberies of humanitarian aid trucks heading into Gaza, following the Israeli seizure of the Rafah Crossing on May 6, 2024.
The so-called “Popular Forces” is a newer name for the group that had previously operated in the shadows, solely focusing on stealing humanitarian aid.
Under Israeli supervision, inside territory considered an active ‘kill zone’ for anyone other than the Israelis, Abu Shabab’s men, and coordinated aid truck entries, the militants would demand $4,000 bribes from humanitarian organizations, or they would seize all the aid.
While civilians in Gaza were suffering severe malnutrition and lacked the ability to get their hands on medical supplies, clean water, shelter, and food, Abu Shabab’s men were hoarding the aid and living under 24-hour Israeli military protection in eastern Rafah. They stockpiled the stolen aid and then drip-fed it onto the black market, where civilians were forced to pay exorbitant prices for the bare necessities.
Later in 2024, however, Yasser Abu Shabab began trying to change his ISIS-linked gang’s image, a project that Western mainstream media attempted to aid him in doing. Suddenly, the Israeli and corporate media began presenting Abu Shabab and his gang of criminals as a grassroots anti-Hamas opposition force.
The Western media’s facelift to a band of drug-dealers, Salafist militants and murderers began. Then, during the Gaza ceasefire that began in January of 2025, Israel supplied Abu Shabab’s men with Israeli tactical vests, helmets, badges, weapons and vehicles. After Israel decided to collapse the ceasefire in March, the so-called “Popular Forces” were born.
On July 24, the Wall Street Journal even published an article entitled “Gazans Are Finished With Hamas”, which they claim was written by Yasser Abu Shabab. However, this promotional piece for the ISIS-linked aid-looting death squad could not have been written by Abu Shabab, not only because he doesn’t speak English, but because he is reportedly illiterate in Arabic too.
The so-called “Popular Forces” were even collaborating with the American Private Military Contractor (PMC) led Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which was labeled by Gazans as a “death trap” where over 1,500 civilians were murdered after being lured towards food, after being deprived of any aid for three months.
There was even a plot for Abu Shabab’s men to be used to rule over a concentration camp in southern Gaza, which Israel constructed and was planning to herd the population of the territory into.
Later in August, another group popped up in Khan Yunis, calling itself the “Counterterrorism Strike Force” (CSF) and led by Hosam al-Astal, a former member of the PA’s Preventive Security Forces – intelligence branch – who has long been linked with the Israeli Shin Bet.
The CSF has been accused of raiding hospitals, killing civilians, stealing aid, and looting homes, but its primary role has been to launch raids against Palestinian resistance fighters.
Earlier this year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was forced to admit his backing of these ISIS-linked gangs after Israeli Knesset Member Avigdor Lieberman criticized the strategy publicly.
On September 17, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz confirmed that the Israeli support extended beyond simply arming these militants and that they were given orders directly from the Israeli chain of command. The Israeli media outlet even interviewed officers who expressed their disapproval of the use of these militants, as they were out of control and potentially posed a threat to Israeli military objectives.
Both the “Popular Forces” and CSF are directly connected with one another. Granted cash, weapons and control of territory under Israeli supervision in exchange for attacking Hamas on their behalf.
Then came a new Israeli-backed militia with the beginning of Israel’s “Operation Gideon’s Chariots 2”, otherwise known as the attempt to occupy Gaza City. This militia is composed primarily of members from the Doghmush clan and is led by Ashraf Mansi, calling itself the “People’s Army Northern Forces”.
They are comprised of Palestinian Authority-affiliated militants and were also responsible for looting aid trucks throughout the genocide.
The territory in which the northern Gaza death squad operated was Jabaliya, Beit Lahia, and areas in Gaza City. During the Israeli military’s re-invasion of northern Gaza, these militants had carried out a number of operations against Palestinian resistance factions.
The Israeli Vision For Gaza
The Israelis are currently allowing these militant groups to operate out of the territory their army is still occupying in Gaza, providing them with drone cover and, as it appears here, hit lists that appear to include prominent journalists.
As a strategy, this means backing these collaborator death squads to do Israel’s dirty work without them having to lift a finger. Tel Aviv and its propagandists can then point to the clashes as a “Palestinian civil war” or “anti-Hamas uprising”, when in reality they are actively using these forces to do their direct bidding.
According to Palestinian journalist Muhammad Shehada, there are signs that civilians in Gaza could be offered to live in the areas that are under the control of the militias and Israeli occupation forces, luring them there through claims that they can rebuild their lives.
This strategy is extremely unlikely to work, however, as all of those used by Israel to run these groups are deeply unpopular. For instance, in northern Gaza, the militia is run by members of the Doghmush clan, which is a family long stereotyped as “trouble makers” locally.
Despite this reputation, many members of this family explicitly refused to collaborate with Israel and were murdered for it, the clan also lost nearly 100 relatives to Israeli airstrikes during the genocide.
A group of Palestinians from northern Gaza told the Palestine Chronicle that the Dogmush family is infamous. While noting that not all of the family is to blame, one man stated that “I remember that before the Intifada they used to steal cars from 48 and sell them in Gaza”, another remarked that “ask anyone in Gaza and they will tell you they are known for making problems”.
Similarly, Yasser Abu Shabab comes from the Bedouin Tarabin clan. They are widely stereotyped as drug dealers and criminals inside Gaza. It should be noted, however, that the Tarabin family has openly condemned Abu Shabab and stands against his so-called “Popular Forces”.
It would be unfair and untrue to adopt the understanding that an entire clan is responsible for the actions of their relatives, yet the importance of mentioning this is to point out that Israel has chosen the most unpopular people to lead their anti-Hamas proxy war.
Not only do the people of Gaza despise these criminal gangs for committing armed robbery, extortion, drug-dealing, aid theft, the murder of civilians, and collaborating with the military that is committing a genocide, but these groups are led by people who have some of the worst reputations imaginable.
What is likely to happen now is that these death squads will continue carrying out assassinations, robberies, and raids on the orders of the Israeli military, as the Palestinian resistance and internal security forces hunt them down.
Amidst this, there will be attempts to sow chaos, to destabilize the security situation and also the publishing of propaganda to claim that Hamas is carrying out abuses. Israeli propagandists are already using old videos, fake videos, or mischaracterizing events to claim that Hamas is cracking down on a grassroots uprising. This will have little impact on Palestinians in Gaza, however.
The most pernicious forms of propaganda will come from Palestinians themselves, who claim to be with the people of Gaza, but who are apologists for the Israeli regime and whose job it is to cause division. These propagandists, most of whom live in the United States, will work hard to spread false propaganda in an attempt to sow chaos and promote Israeli narratives.
In other words, the war is not over yet. Instead, the Israelis are trying to ignite a proxy conflict after they militarily failed to defeat some dozen Palestinian resistance groups in Gaza themselves.
Joe Wasserman interviews Bruce Gagnon, Coordinator and co-founder of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.
There will be no peace in Gaza. Only the temporary absence of war.
There is no shortage of failed peace plans in occupied Palestine, all of them incorporating detailed phases and timelines, going back to the presidency of Jimmy Carter. They end the same way. Israel gets what it wants initially — in the latest case the release of the remaining Israeli hostages — while it ignores and violates every other phase until it resumes its attacks on the Palestinian people.
It is a sadistic game. A merry-go-round of death. This ceasefire, like those of the past, is a commercial break. A moment when the condemned man is allowed to smoke a cigarette before being gunned down in a fusillade of bullets.
Once Israeli hostages are released, the genocide will continue. I do not know how soon. Let’s hope the mass slaughter is delayed for at least a few weeks. But a pause in the genocide is the best we can anticipate. Israel is on the cusp of emptying Gaza, which has been all but obliterated under two years of relentless bombing. It is not about to be stopped. This is the culmination of the Zionist dream. The United States, which has given Israel a staggering $22 billion in military aid since Oct, 7, 2023, will not shut down its pipeline, the only tool that might halt the genocide.
Israel, as it always does, will blame Hamas and the Palestinians for failing to abide by the agreement, most probably a refusal — true or not — to disarm, as the proposal demands. Washington, condemning Hamas’s supposed violation, will give Israel the green light to continue its genocide to create Trump’s fantasy of a Gaza Riviera and “special economic zone” with its “voluntary”relocation of Palestinians in exchange for digital tokens.
Of the myriads of peace plans over the decades, the current one is the least serious. Aside from a demand that Hamas release the hostages within 72-hours after the ceasefire begins, it lacks specifics and imposed timetables. It is filled with caveats that allow Israel to abrogate the agreement. And that is the point. It is not designed to be a viable path to peace, which most Israeli leaders understand. Israel’s largest-circulation newspaper, Israel Hayom, established by the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson to serve as a mouthpiece for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and champion messianic Zionism, instructed its readers not to be concerned about the Trump plan because it is only “rhetoric.”
Israel, in one example from the proposal, will “not return to areas that have been withdrawn from, as long as Hamas fully implements the agreement.”
Who decides if Hamas has “fully implemented” the agreement? Israel. Does anyone believe in Israel’s good faith? Can Israel be trusted as an objective arbitrator of the agreement? If Hamas — demonized as a terrorist group — objects, will anyone listen?
How is it possible that a peace proposal ignores the International Court of Justice’s July 2024 Advisory Opinion, which reiterated that Israel’s occupation is illegal and must end?
How can it fail to mention the Palestinian’s right to self-determination?
Why are Palestinians, who have a right under international law to armed struggle against an occupying power, expected to disarm while Israel, the illegally occupying force, is not?
By what authority can the U.S. establish a “temporary transitional government,” — Trump’s and Tony Blair’s so-called “Board of Peace” — sidelining the Palestinian right to self-determination?
Who gave the U.S. the authority to send to Gaza an “International Stabilization Force,” a polite term for foreign occupation?
How are Palestinians supposed to reconcile themselves to the acceptance of an Israeli “security barrier” on Gaza’s borders, confirmation that the occupation will continue?
How can any proposal ignore the slow-motion genocide and annexation of the West Bank?
Why is Israel, which has destroyed Gaza, not required to pay reparations?
What are Palestinians supposed to make of the demand in the proposal for a “deradicalized” Gazan population? How is this expected to be accomplished? Re-education camps? Wholesale censorship? The rewriting of the school curriculum? Arresting offending Imams in mosques?
And what about addressing the incendiary rhetoric routinely employed by Israeli leaders who describe Palestinians as “human animals” and their children as “little snakes”?
“All of Gaza and every child in Gaza, should starve to death,” the Israeli rabbi Ronen Shaulov announced. “I don’t have mercy for those who, in a few years, will grow up and won’t have mercy for us. Only a stupid fifth column, a hater of Israel has mercy for future terrorists, even though today they are still young and hungry. I hope, may they starve to death, and if anyone has a problem with what I’ve said, that’s their problem.”
Israeli violations of peace agreements have historical precedents.
The Camp David Accords, signed in 1978 by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin — without the participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) — led to the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, which normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and Egypt.
Subsequent phases of the Camp David Accords, which included a promise by Israel to resolve the Palestinian question along with Jordan and Egypt, permit Palestinian self-governance in the West Bank and Gaza within five years, and end the building of Israeli colonies in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, were never implemented.
The 1993 Oslo Accords, signed in 1993, saw the PLO recognize Israel’s right to exist and Israel recognize the PLO as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people. Yet, what ensued was the disempowerment of the PLO and its transformation into a colonial police force. Oslo II, signed in 1995, detailed the process towards peace and a Palestinian state. But it too was stillborn. It stipulated that any discussion of illegal Jewish “settlements” were to be delayed until “final” status talks. By then, Israeli military withdrawals from the occupied West Bank were scheduled to have been completed. Governing authority was poised to be transferred from Israel to the supposedly temporary Palestinian Authority. Instead, the West Bank was carved up into Areas A, B and C. The Palestinian Authority had limited authority in Areas A and B while Israel controlled all of Area C, over 60 percent of the West Bank.
The right of Palestinian refugees to return to the historic lands that Jewish settlers seized from them in 1948 when Israel was created — a right enshrined in international law — was given up by the PLO leader Yasser Arafat. This instantly alienated many Palestinians, especially those in Gaza where 75 percent are refugees or the descendants of refugees. As a consequence, many Palestinians abandoned the PLO in favor of Hamas. Edward Said called the Oslo Accords “an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles” and lambasted Arafat as “the Pétain of the Palestinians.”
The scheduled Israeli military withdrawals under Oslo never took place. There were around 250,000 Jewish colonists in the West Bank when the Oslo agreement was signed. Their numbers today have increased to at least 700,000.
The journalist Robert Fisk called Oslo “a sham, a lie, a trick to entangle Arafat and the PLO into abandonment of all that they had sought and struggled for over a quarter of a century, a method of creating false hope in order to emasculate the aspiration of statehood.”
Israel unilaterally broke the last two-month-long ceasefire on March 18 of this year when it launched surprise airstrikes on Gaza. Netanyahu’s office claimed that the resumption of the military campaign was in response to Hamas’s refusal to release hostages, its rejection of proposals to extend the cease-fire and its efforts to rearm. Israel killed more than 400 people in the initial overnight assault and injured over 500, slaughtering and wounding people as they slept. The attack scuttled the second stage of the agreement, which would have seen Hamas release the remaining living male hostages, both civilians and soldiers, for an exchange of Palestinian prisoners and the establishment of a permanent ceasefire along with the eventual lifting of the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
Israel has carried out murderous assaults on Gaza for decades, cynically calling the bombardment “mowing the lawn.” No peace accord or ceasefire agreement has ever gotten in the way. This one will be no exception.
This bloody saga is not over. Israel’s goals remain unchanged: the dispossession and erasure of Palestinians from their land.
The only peace Israel intends to offer the Palestinians is the peace of the grave.
South African activists, including Nelson Mandela’s grandson Nkosi Zwelivelile “Mandla” Mandela, returned home after being detained by Israeli forces during the Global Sumud Flotilla mission to Gaza.
Mandela described the harrowing conditions they endured in Israeli custody, calling it “torture and humiliation.”
Their return reignited condemnation of Israel’s blockade and calls for justice.
Kambale Musavuli of the Center for Research on the Congo-Kinshasa explains how eastern Congo is facing a “de facto annexation” by Rwanda-backed M23 rebels, with U.S. backed forces driving a war that has already killed millions in the scramble for the country’s vast mineral wealth.
He reveals that American companies, including Pennsylvania-based GTP, are openly importing tungsten from Rwanda, minerals likely stolen from the DRC, while Washington’s so-called “peace deals” are really about securing control of these resources: “Trump himself said the U.S. got minerals.”
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| What about all the medical people inside Gaza that were killed by Israel? Or the hundreds of journalists shot? Or the amazing emergency relief workers digging people out of the rubble with their bare hands? Or the ambulance drivers shot by the IOF? How about the more than 1/2 a million Gaza citizens killed or wounded so far? Turns out the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado (Venezuela) once asked Netanyahu to militarily intervene and help overthrow President Maduro. She even pledged to move Venezuela’s embassy to Jerusalem. She has been funded and used by the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which is a CIA front group. She's given this prize for inviting a genocidal state to attack her country so Washington can seize it’s oil. Peace prize? Now you see how it really works. Completely bull-shit! |
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| This man is a phony oligarchic fink |
People around the world have overwhelmingly come to see that Israel is a genocidal criminal nation.
No longer can the zionists inside any nation have free reign. The streets virtually everywhere are full of people who now oppose Israel's war crimes.
Will this ceasefire hold? We must be on guard. Israel has violated every ceasefire they have ever signed.
Keep the pressure on your own government to ensure this ceasefire holds.
Don't walk away from Palestine. The West Bank is increasingly under assault by the zionists and Gaza needs huge amounts of material aid and peaceful nights in order to begin to rebuild their lives.
Stay public to make sure that Palestine is not forgotten!
Bruce
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| US space tech war fighting base Croughton (disguised as British RAF) in the UK near Oxford |
By Dr. Dave Webb (Speech delivered at Croughton)
I have been convenor of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space for a long time now. It was founded in 1992 by the joint efforts of the Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice; Citizens for Peace in Space in Colorado Springs and Karl Grossman a professor of journalism from New York.
There are 29 board members from 9 different countries to oversee our work and some 180 affiliates around the world, including Oxford CND and Oxfordshire Peace Campaign.
Thank you for your continued support and for highlighting what goes on here at Croughton which is a vital hub for supporting global military operations such as drone strikes and the processing of military communications in Europe to support NATO and U.S. military commands.
The announcement of this demonstration during Keep Space for Peace Week is nearly always the first to be received and I remember really well the excellent Global Network conference you hosted in June 2018.
Each year the GN provides a poster to highlight the Week of Actions and this year the poster highlights Donald Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ project.
Although this idea for a missile defence system to protect the US from ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missile attack from anywhere in the world is unlikely to be achievable, it is already causing international apprehension for its destabilising effect on international security.
The idea of a shield to protect the US from ballistic missile attack was first proposed by Ronald Reagan in 1983, as his “Strategic Defence Initiative”, or SDI, which became known as Star Wars by those who saw the technological goals as unrealistic and more like science fiction.
SDI was the U.S. moving away from mutual deterrence with the Soviet Union to enable a U.S. nuclear first strike with little or no risk of retaliation. The U.S. unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with the Soviet Union in 2002 in order to build and deploy a limited number of ground-based interceptor missiles.
The US also established important components for their national missile defence system here in the UK, including the powerful missile tracking and targeting radar at Fylingdales and the down link station at Menwith Hill - both US bases in North Yorkshire.
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| US NSA spy war fighting base at Menwith Hill |
As a crucial communications base Croughton is also going to be involved in the network of data gathering, command and control functions for U.S. missile defence and space warfighting.
The idea of a system that could defend against an all-out nuclear attack was soon abandoned as unworkable and instead the cut-down system was said to protect against a very limited attack by terrorists or so-called rogue states rather than the Soviet Union.
Even then it was not clear that it would work reliably.
Networks of hundreds of satellites for early warning, tracking and targeting of ballistic and hypersonic missiles will be needed to form the Golden Dome’s space-based sensor system.
Space-based interceptors had been proposed in SDI but were not developed because of cost and technical difficulties. They are however, planned for the Golden Dome – and if, as Trump says, the system is to be able to intercept missiles launched from anywhere on Earth, then thousands of space-based interceptors will have to be placed in Low Earth Orbit.
Russia and China have issued a joint statement warning about upsetting the global balance and condemning the US for the plan to place interceptors in orbit.
It is estimated that the proposed system would cost well over $550 billion or even trillions of dollars - but, like SDI, it will probably, even then never be fully implemented. The Golden Dome is therefore a colossally expensive and destabilising project with the only winners being the aerospace corporations who are already looking for their share of this boondoggle.
Lockheed Martin has also officially proposed a comprehensive missile defence system for the UK, submitting a detailed proposal to the government in June.
But no defence system is totally effective, and Israel’s Iron Dome, believed to be effective in intercepting short-range missiles fired by Hamas, and the possible inspiration for the Golden Dome, could not cope with large numbers and many missiles got through. It was also swamped and tricked by the barrage of missiles and drones from Iran.
So, missile defence systems are extremely expensive, ineffective and accelerate an already dangerous arms race in outer space.
I guess we should be familiar with Donald Trump’s extraordinarily confused thinking but he spent months campaigning for a Nobel Peace Prize and at the same time, wants to change the name of the. Department of Defence to the Department of War. And, as wars cannot be fought these days without significant support from space systems, the US Space Force’s Space Operations Command is also being renamed - as “Combat Forces Command.”
The U.S. and U.K. have stated that they see space as another battleground and a recent U.S. Space Force publication ‘Space Warfighting: A Framework for Planners’, outlines how it sees “space superiority as a necessary condition for military success” and it includes a strategic framework for space warfare.
Space Domain Awareness involves the detection, tracking, and categorising of all activity within the space domain. Data is collected from satellites and ground-based telescopes and radars and combined with intelligence sources to produce a picture of the space environment.
The proposed Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability, or DARC, to be sited at a National Park beauty spot in Pembrokeshire would be an important enhancement for this.
DARC would not only monitor the activities of others in space but could also provide data for the targeting of anti-satellite systems and therefore play a significant role in Space Battle Management.
However, there is always resistance and the campaign against DARC in Pembrokeshire is working brilliantly to stop any further developments.
Whatever plans the U.S. develops for space warfare, there will be U.S. bases in the U.K., like Croughton, that will be involved, making them targets in the event of a U.S. war.
I’m sure that Peter Burt will outline some of the other space issues facing us in the UK – including the development of space ports that will be used for military space launches and the protest at MoD Corsham planned for next Sunday.
These demonstrations and protests are so important - we cannot let these developments happen without them being challenged.
As the Keep Space for Peace Week poster says: “is space as a war-fighting domain the reality we want to build out future on? Instead of weapons in space for a Golden Dome we should be leading the effort to ban weapons and warfare in space.”
Thank you for being here today - you are not alone - there are other protests, gatherings, demonstrations and actions in England, Scotland, Wales, the U.S., South Korea, Japan, India and elsewhere during this week and the weeks to come.
The theme for UN ‘World Space Week’ is “Living in Space”, encouraging life off the planet, but how much more important is it that we work to "Live in Peace" on Earth?
~ Dr. Dave Webb is the GN Board of Directors convener and also chairs Yorkshire Region CND. He is a retired university professor and lives in Leeds, England.
