TODAY. The failed social species – Homo-not-sapiens-at-all
‘We’re supposed to be “social animals”, but I wonder about that.
Especially the “advanced” world, the predominantly white people, and particularly the anglophone world are directing their attention, their energy, and above all their MONEY. into ways to kill each other. More importantly perhaps, to kill “less white” people – Arabs and Chinese.
In Pakistan, melting of glaciers and extreme rain is causing heavy loss of life.
Today I read that millions of people in China are threatened by record-breaking floods – tens of thousands evacuated.
European villages are suffering unprecedented extreme heat stress, with rising numbers of heat deaths, as well as having experiencing months of drought and wildfires
One might think that the most important task for a social species would be to help these victims of global heating, and indeed to put a stop to, or at least slow down global heating.
But perhaps, the not-very-bright leaders of the advanced countries do not understand that we are all in fact one species, that for example, Palestinians are not a separate species of untermenschen. That even Russians and Chinese are people, too.
And that we’re all in the same perilous boat -and the job is to deal with climate change – not to enrich weapons manufacturers.
‘A little awkward’: Coalition faces internal tension over nuclear plans
Sky News host Chris Kenny says the Coalition is in an “awkward” situation with their behind the scenes negotiations around nuclear energy.
It is reported that a rift has formed with the Coalition regarding Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s nuclear energy plans.
“Inside the Coalition, there is argument about where the nuclear power stations might be sited in this country,” Mr Kenny said.
“Apparently some MPs saying they don’t want them in their backyard.
“Sounds like there is tension.”
Bankers upgrade Lockheed stock after Iran strikes at Israel
defense contractors are actively shaping U.S. foreign policy through lobbying and campaign contributions, among other tactics.
The American company has played an outsized role in Tel Aviv’s bombing and invasion of Gaza since Oct. 7
NICK CLEVELAND-STOUT, APR 17, 2024 https://responsiblestatecraft.org/lockheed-martin-israel-war/
Over the weekend, Iran launched over 300 missiles at Nevatim Air Base, a base in southern Israel that houses U.S.-made F-35 fighter jets. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who oversaw a strike on an Iranian consulate in Syria just a few weeks ago, has already promised to retaliate. Observers viewed these brewing tensions with concern, ringing the alarm bells of the breakout of a wider war.
Not JP Morgan analyst Seth Seifman. On Monday morning, Seifman upgraded JPMorgan’s outlook from “hold” to “buy” for Lockheed Martin, the manufacturer of Israel’s F-35s, and set a higher price target for the stock.
Seifman says the change was pre-planned, but noted that these developments could be good for business. “What we can say is that it’s a dangerous world and while that is not a sufficient condition for defense stocks to outperform,” he said, “it is a potential source of support, especially when they are under-owned.” JP Morgan owns $355 million worth of Lockheed Martin stock, about a third of which was bought in the last quarter of 2023.
UK investment bank Liberum Capital was similarly bullish on defense stocks, so long as a wider war does not break out. “In our base case scenario of Israel retaliating but in a limited way that keeps the conflict from escalating further, this could lead to a 5-10% correction in the stock market together with further strength in the U.S. dollar,” Liberium told investors. “The obvious short-term winners will be oil & gas stocks as well as defense contractors.”
As finance journalist Jacob Wolisnky put it in a recent preview of defense stock picks, “Where there’s war, there’s money to be made.” At least one member of Congress agrees. Yesterday, Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) disclosed that he bought Lockheed Martin stock on March 29.
Lockheed Martin has played a large role in Israel’s bombing and invasion of Gaza, manufacturing Hellfire missiles, providing transport planes, and supplying F-16 and F-35 fighter jets. A missile that hit journalists on November 9 of last year in Gaza City was reportedly manufactured by Lockheed Martin. “Their core business model has no respect for human rights,” said Jilianne Lyon, who leads shareholder advocacy campaigns at Investor Advocates for Social Justice.
While privately acknowledging conflict is good for business, the defense industry and its financiers publicly claim they are simply doing America’s bidding. As Lockheed Martin CEO James Taiclet once said, “It’s only up to us to step to what we’ve been asked to do and we’re just trying to do that in a more effective way, and that’s our role.” After all, it was the U.S. government — not Lockheed Martin — that came to Israel’s defense and intercepted the majority of Iran’s missiles.
But this “we just do what we’re told” defense doesn’t quite work given that defense contractors are actively shaping U.S. foreign policy through lobbying and campaign contributions, among other tactics. Aaron Acosta, program director at Investor Advocates for Social Justice, told Responsible Statecraft that defense contractors “are often the ones creating demand by lobbying the U.S. government and pushing for sales of these weapons.”
In 2023, Lockheed Martin spent over $14 million lobbying Congress. The three companies that lobbied the House’s version of the annual defense policy bill the most were RTX (formerly known as Raytheon), Lockheed Martin, and General Dynamics. During the 2022 election cycle, Lockheed Martin contributed nearly $4 million to political candidates. So far, 2024 promises similar results. In its 2023 annual report, Lockheed Martin wrote that, “Changes in the U.S. Government’s priorities, or delays or reductions in spending could have a material adverse effect on our business.”
Sure, 84% of voters might be concerned about the U.S. being drawn into conflict in the Middle East. But as far as defense companies and their shareholders are concerned, business is booming.
Under UN Charter, Iran’s Attack Was a Legal Response to Israel’s Illegal Attack
Iran’s attack on Israel was lawful self-defense carried out in compliance with international humanitarian law.
On April 13, Iran’s aircraft struck two air bases in the Negev desert, where the April 1 attack on Iran’s consulate had been launched. “Iran retaliated against those targets in Israel directly related to the Israeli attack on Iran,”
By Marjorie Cohn , TRUTHOUT, April 18, 2024
On April 1, Israel mounted an unprovoked military attack on a building that was part of the Iranian Embassy complex in Damascus, Syria, killing seven of Iran’s senior military advisers and five additional people. The victims included Gen. Mohamad Reza Zahedi, head of Iran’s covert military operations in Lebanon and Syria, and two other senior generals.
Although Israel’s attack violated the United Nations Charter, the UN Security Council refused to condemn it because the United States, the U.K. and France exercised their vetoes on April 4.
Iran considered this attack on its consulate “an act of war,” Trita Parsi wrote at Foreign Policy.
On April 11, the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations stated: “Had the UN Security Council condemned the Zionist regime’s reprehensible act of aggression on our diplomatic premises in Damascus and subsequently brought to justice its perpetrators, the imperative for Iran to punish this rogue regime might have been obviated.”
Then, on April 13, in response to Israel’s attack, Iran fired more than 300 drones and missiles at the Israeli air base from which the April 1 attacks had emanated. Only two of them landed inside Israel and no one was killed; a Bedouin girl was injured. The U.S., U.K., France, Jordan and Israel intercepted the remaining Iranian missiles and drones. A senior U.S. military official said “there’s no significant damage within Israel itself.”
The Iranian mission to the UN wrote in an April 13 letter to the UN secretary-general that Iran’s action was conducted “in the exercise of Iran’s inherent right to self-defense” under Article 51 of the UN Charter “and in response to the Israeli recurring military aggressions, particularly its armed attack” on April 1 “against Iranian diplomatic premises, in the defiance of Article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations.”
The April 1 attack was not the first time Israel had attacked key Iranian personnel………………………………………………………………………….
Iran made clear that it seeks to avoid further escalation that could spark a widespread regional war. An April 13 social media post from Iran’s permanent mission to the UN stated, “The matter can be deemed concluded. However, should the Israeli regime make another mistake, Iran’s response will be considerably more severe. It is a conflict between Iran and the rogue Israeli regime, from which the U.S. MUST STAY AWAY!”
At a Security Council meeting on April 14, Iran’s UN Ambassador Saeid Iravani defended the lawfulness of the missile and drone attack on Israel. He noted the hypocrisy of the U.S. and its allies that claim Israel is acting in self-defense as it conducts its genocide of the Palestinian people:………………………………………..
Israel’s Attack on Iranian Consulate Violated the UN Charter and Vienna Conventions
Iran’s April 13 attack on Israel was a lawful exercise of self-defense in response to Israel’s unlawful April 1 attack on the Iranian consulate. The Israeli attack was an illegal act of aggression.
Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter states, “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
An act of aggression is inconsistent with the purposes of the UN. Article 39 of the Charter says, “The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression.”
An “‘act of aggression’ means the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations,” under the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court. Aggression includes “the invasion or attack by the armed forces of a State of the territory of another State.”
Moreover, “Consular premises shall be inviolable,” according to Article 31 of the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. Article 1 defines consular premises as “the buildings or parts of buildings and the land ancillary thereto, irrespective of ownership, used exclusively for the purposes of the consular post.”
The 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations likewise provides in Article 22.1 that, “The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.”
During Israel’s bombing of Iran’s consulate in Syria, it targeted and killed very senior Iranian officials. The attack constituted an act of aggression, which triggered Iran’s right to self-defense.
Iran’s April 13 Attack on Israel Constituted Lawful Self-Defense
Article 51 states, “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”
An armed attack includes not just an attack against the territory of a state, including its airspace and territorial sea, but also attacks directed against its armed forces or embassies abroad.
On April 13, Iran’s aircraft struck two air bases in the Negev desert, where the April 1 attack on Iran’s consulate had been launched. “Iran retaliated against those targets in Israel directly related to the Israeli attack on Iran,” former U.S. weapons inspector Scott Ritter wrote.
Nevertheless, the Security Council has failed to adopt a resolution condemning Israel’s attack on Iran’s consulate, as Iran pointed out in its April 13 letter to the UN secretary-general.
At an April 14 meeting of the Security Council, the Israeli representative declared that Iran is the number one global sponsor of terrorism and the world’s worst human rights violator. It is Israel, however, that has killed nearly 34,000 Palestinians — two-thirds of them women and children — during its campaign of genocide in Gaza that has now entered its seventh month.
Iran’s self-defense action was the natural outcome of Israel’s violations of international law — both on Syrian territory and elsewhere — the representative from the Syrian Arab Republic said at the April 14 council meeting. Israel is trying to cover up its genocide and military failures in Gaza, the Syrian representative added.
Iran’s Attack Satisfied the Principles of Proportionality, Distinction and Precautions……………………………………………………………….
Netanyahu Is Gunning for War With Iran
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would like nothing better than to start a war with Iran. Netanyahu considers Iran an “existential threat” to Israel. He persuaded former President Donald Trump to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, which was working to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
As the world waits for Israel’s response to the Iranian attack, President Joe Biden said the U.S. would not assist Israel in an offensive military action against Iran but it would give Israel defensive support if Iran attacks Israel. “But the distinction between offensive or defensive support becomes meaningless the second a war breaks out,” wrote Trita Parsi.
Today, the U.S. and U.K. imposed additional punishing sanctions on Iran. Unilateral coercive measures, levied without the imprimatur of the Security Council, are illegal and generally harm only the general population…………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://truthout.org/articles/under-un-charter-irans-attack-was-a-legal-response-to-israels-illegal-attack/
5 Reasons Why What Congress Just Did Does Not Help Ukraine
Crimea was Russian or Soviet from 1783 to 1991. No election should ever be held with armed troops anywhere within sight. And it’s no simple matter to say that Crimea should hold a new referendum, since people have left and entered. But nobody seriously doubts that any fair election in 2014 or at any time since would have resulted in a majority choosing Russia. The Donbas needed some degree of independence before Minsk II and still does.
It needs it free of militarized borders and chest-thumping empires. Some consideration should be given to whether the people who live there “win” or “lose” — that is, how their lives look going forward. For them and for the world, peace is preferable to war, and peace is prevented by endless weapons and endless opposition to negotiations.
By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, April 21, 2024, https://worldbeyondwar.org/5-reasons-why-what-congress-just-did-does-not-help-ukraine/
You may have heard that the U.S. Congress is finally doing the decent, moral, liberal, democratic, Democratic thing and aiding Ukraine.
You may believe, as pretty much everyone I ask tells me, that there was only one other choice available, namely “letting Putin win.”
You may agree with me that the Russian government and its leader — like every government I’ve ever heard of — have done horrendous things, that invading a country militarily is one of the worst things that can ever be done (with the possible exceptions of invading Libya or Yemen or Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere in Latin America, but still), and that rewarding a military invasion is a terrible precedent that could encourage more military invasions (with the possible exception of keeping those bases in Iraq or Syria, or selling more weapons to Saudi Arabia, or marketing that empty beachfront property in Gaza — and who the heck is Niger to tell U.S. troops to leave Niger? I mean come ON! — but still). I’m with you. Between (A) send more unimaginably huge piles of money that materializes out of nowhere and (B) allow a military invasion to succeed, I’m for A.
But please consider five slight complications to this simple tale.
- What the U.S. Congress just did is send huge piles of money that comes out of urgent non-optional crises like climate, eco-collapse, disease, poverty, and homelessness, mostly to U.S. weapons dealers, damaging — yes damaging — the U.S. economy, in order to send mountains of weapons to the war in Ukraine, the war in Gaza, and a yet-to-be-ginned-up war in Asia. No matter how much you support the war in Ukraine, unless you also support providing enough weapons to murder every last person in Gaza and the West Bank, and in addition support building up toward a catastrophic war with China, you ought to at least have mixed emotions here.
2. Countless experts around the globe believe that the war in Ukraine has placed the world closer than ever before to nuclear apocalypse. I picture two cockroaches endowed with the power of speech meeting each other as they crawl over the ruins of the de-personed Earth. One says “Well, at least they stood up to Putin,” and the other simultaneously, “Well, at least they stood up to NATO.” Upon which the war that eliminates all cockroaches is begun. But where, while we still breathe, are our priorities? Is smashing every aspiration of the criminal Russian government (which I’m all in favor of) in order to uphold a rules-based order in which you can freely fuel a sadistic genocide in Palestine (which I’m not so much in favor of) a higher priority than preserving life? And if so, why are you not over there killing Russians yourself, instead of over here cheering for Congress buying more weapons?
3. ’ll leave the option of Russia “winning” to point #4 below. But what is the other option exactly, the one that has been so correctly and nobly chosen? It’s clearly not Russia losing. Nobody even pretends it is. It’s clearly just continuing the endless slaughter with no desirable outcome for either side anywhere on the horizon. Yet more Ukrainians can go on dying, and Russians can go on dying in larger numbers, but that can’t continue until everyone’s dead, not without nuclear escalation — possibly following a French escalation that U.S. media outlets might begin by opposing. So what is it that you think you’ve chosen? Choosing “Not Putin Winning” is great, like choosing “The Candidate Who Isn’t Trump.” Who could disagree? But what if there were an option superior to “Putin winning” and also superior to endless war that risks apocalypse?
4. It helps to face for a moment the complex story of Ukraine, to come to grips with some facts that are as well established as is the illegal, immoral, murderous Russian invasion of 2022, such as that U.S. and foreign officials (including the current CIA director) warned for decades that NATO expansion would create this war — and some (such as the authors of a RAND Corporation report) advocated for just the provocative steps that were taken in order to create this war, that the U.S. supported a coup in Ukraine in 2014 that overthrew a government pursuing neutrality, that the coup government threated the rights of Russian speakers, that the people of Crimea heavily favored returning to Russia, that Ukraine waged a war on its eastern provinces for 8 years, that Ukraine and its Western partners never intended to and never did honor the Minsk II agreements which could have meant lasting peace, that Russia and Ukraine were ready to agree to peace 1 month into the Russian invasion at talks in Turkey where they agreed on Russian withdrawal and a Ukrainian commitment not to join NATO or allow NATO bases in Ukraine — until the U.S. and UK said No, as they have continued to say in the face of horrific suffering, not to mention in the face of nearly identical peace proposals from African leaders, Latin American presidents, the Pope, the Chinese government, and scholars and activists across the globe. This history does not erase, but does complicate, the tale of angelic Ukrainian innocence against evil Russian outlaws.
Crimea was Russian or Soviet from 1783 to 1991. No election should ever be held with armed troops anywhere within sight. And it’s no simple matter to say that Crimea should hold a new referendum, since people have left and entered. But nobody seriously doubts that any fair election in 2014 or at any time since would have resulted in a majority choosing Russia. The Donbas needed some degree of independence before Minsk II and still does. It needs it free of militarized borders and chest-thumping empires. Some consideration should be given to whether the people who live there “win” or “lose” — that is, how their lives look going forward. For them and for the world, peace is preferable to war, and peace is prevented by endless weapons and endless opposition to negotiations.
5. Prior to this recent “aid” package, 62% of U.S. federal discretionary spending was going into militarism. Now it’s more. The other 38% and shrinking has to cover environment, education, health, housing, transportation, agriculture, and everything else. Normalizing endless massive warmaking, just because it’s non-U.S. troops dying, is a path to disaster. To begin considering a different course, here are a few eye-opening reads:
Primer on Foreign PolicyAction for Ukraine and the WorldThe
EU Can Only Survive as a Peace Project and Not as a NATO SubsidiaryWBW Advisory Board Member
Matt Hoh Addresses United NationsAre We Stumbling Into World War III in Ukraine?
Attacking Pope, Militarists Target Ukrainian
Peace Formula of President ZelenskyyPutin’s Draft Treaty Between Russia and Ukraine Did Exist
Letter on Ukraine from Latin America to the World
Message from Ukraine to Europe After Two Years of War in Ukraine, It’s Time for PeaceA World BEYOND War
Tens of thousands evacuated from massive China floods
Authorities have evacuated nearly 60,000 people from their homes in
Guangdong, as days of heavy rain caused massive flooding in China’s most
populous province. Eleven people have gone missing, while no casualties
have been reported so far.
Footage on state media and online show large
swathes of land inundated by the floods and rescuers ferrying people on
lifeboats in waist-deep water. Several major rivers have burst their banks,
and authorities are closely monitoring “dangerously high” water levels.
They had warned that the level of a river in northern Guangdong could hit a
“once in 100 years” peak on Monday morning, though this had yet to
materialise by noon.
BBC 22nd April 2024
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 