United Against Nuclear Iran, a secretive neoconservative organization with close links to the CIA and the Mossad, is trying to escalate the Israeli assault on Gaza into an Iraq-level U.S. Attack on Iran.
Most of the world has watched the Israeli assault on Gaza in horror. As tens of thousands have been killed and millions displaced, tens of millions of people around the world have poured onto the streets to demand an end to the violence. But a few select others have taken to the pages of our most influential media to demand an escalation of the violence and that the United States help Israel strike not just Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon but Iran as well.
“I might have once favored a cease-fire with Hamas, but not now,” wrote Bush-era diplomat Dennis Ross in The New York Times, explaining that “if Hamas is perceived as winning, it will validate the group’s ideology of rejection, give leverage and momentum to Iran and its collaborators and put [our] own governments on the defensive.”
In the wake of Hamas’ October 7 assault, arch-neoconservative official John Bolton was invited on CNN, where he claimed that what we witnessed was really an “Iranian attack on Israel using Hamas as a surrogate” and that the U.S. must immediately respond. When asked whether he had any evidence, given the implications of what he was saying, he shrugged and replied, “This is not a court of law.”
On December 28, Bolton doubled down on his hawkish stance, writing in the pages of Britain’s Daily Telegraph that “The West may now have no option but to attack Iran” – a position he has held for at least a decade.
Meanwhile, in an interview with Saudi state-funded broadcaster Iran International, senior Bush official Mark Wallace bellowed that, “This is Iran’s work. Iran will suffer at the hands of retribution and will suffer the consequences of supporting this terror group and its horrific attack on Israel.” Wallace continued:
No civilized country wants further conflict. But the Iranians are forcing the civilized world’s hand. And you will see a dramatic response soon as the United States, Israel, and our allies begin to position assets around the world in preparation.”
If there was any doubt as to what sort of “dramatic response” Wallace wanted to see, he added a message to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps: “I look forward to seeing you hanged from the end of one of your own ropes.”
Iran was recently the victim of a deadly terrorist attack. As mourners commemorated the U.S. assassination of Qassem Soleimani, two bombs exploded, killing 91 and injuring hundreds more. In this context, it was understandable why Iranian officials pointed the finger at the U.S. and Israel.
WARMONGERS, INC
What these individuals all have in common is that they are board members of United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), a shadowy but influential organization dedicated to pushing the West toward a military confrontation with the Islamic Republic.
Founded in 2008, the group is led by neoconservative hawks and has close ties to both U.S. and Israeli intelligence. It does not divulge where it receives its copious funding. However, it is known that right-wing Israeli-American billionaire Sheldon Adelson was a source. There is strong circumstantial evidence that Gulf dictatorships may also be bankrolling the group, although UANI has strongly denied this. In 2019, Iran designated UANI as a terrorist organization.
When asked by MintPress what he made of UANI’s recent statements, Eli Clifton, one of the few investigative journalists to have covered the group, said, “It’s very consistent with the positions and advocacy that the organization has taken since its inception.” Adding,
United Against Nuclear Iran does not miss an opportunity to try to bring the United States closer to a military conflict with Iran. And on the other side of the equation, they also have worked very hard to oppose efforts to de-escalate the U.S.-Iran relationship.”
UANI’s board is a who’s who of high state, military and intelligence officials from around the Western world. Among its more notable members include:………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
In addition, notable former board members include ex-CIA Director R. James Woolsey; head of Mossad between 2002 and 2011, Meir Dagan; and one-time chief of British spy agency MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove.
For 15 years, UANI has organized conferences, published reports, and lobbied politicians and governments, all with one goal: pushing a neoconservative line on Iran. “UANI are a force multiplier. They provide at least the veneer of an intellectual infrastructure for the Iran hawk movement. They did not invent being hawkish on Iran, but they sure made it a heck of a lot easier,” Ben Freeman, Director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy Program at the Quincy Institute, told MintPress.
CONFLICTS AND CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
For such a large, well-financed, and influential organization filled with senior officials, United Against Nuclear Iran keeps its funding sources very quiet. However, in 2015, Clifton was able to obtain a UANI donor list for the 2013 financial year. By far and away, the largest funders were billionaire New York-based investor Thomas Kaplan and multibillionaire Israeli-American casino mogul Sheldon Adelson……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
PUTTING IRAN IN THE CROSSHAIRS
One of United Against Nuclear Iran’s primary activities, Iranian political commenter Ali Alizadeh told MintPress, is to create a worldwide “culture of fear and anxiety for investing in Iran.” The group attempts to persuade businesses to divest from the Islamic Republic and sign their certification pledge, which reads as follows:…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
INTELLIGENCE CONNECTIONS
That UANI is headed by so many state, military and intelligence leaders begs the question: to what extent is this really a non-governmental organization? “That is one of the dirty secrets of think tanks: they are very often holding tanks for government officials,” Freeman said, adding:
The Trump folks all had to leave office when Biden won, so a lot of them ended up in think tanks for a while, four years, let’s say. And if Trump wins again, they will bounce back into government. And the same is true of Democratic administrations, too.”
he U.S. government also clearly has a longstanding policy of outsourcing much of its work to “private” groups in order to avoid further scrutiny. Many of the CIA’s most controversial activities, for example, have been farmed out to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a technically non-governmental organization funded entirely by Washington and staffed with ex-state officials. In recent years, the NED has funneled millions of dollars to protest leaders in Hong Kong, organized an attempted color revolution in Cuba, organized anti-government rock concerts in Venezuela, and propped up dozens of media organizations in Ukraine………………………………………………………………………………………….
UANI’s funders certainly also have extensive connections to Israel. Kaplan is the son-in-law of Israeli billionaire Leon Recanati and is said to be close with Prime Ministers Naftali Bennet and Yair Lapid. He has also employed a number of Israeli officials at his businesses. An example of this is Olivia Blechner, who, in 2007, left her role as the Director of Academic Affairs at the Israeli Consulate General in New York to become Executive Vice-President of Investor Relations and Research at Kaplan’s Electrum Group – a rather perplexing career move……………………………………………………………
A NETWORK OF REGIME CHANGE GROUPS
While United Against Nuclear Iran is already a notable enough organization, it is actually merely part of a large group of shadowy non-governmental groups working to cause unrest and, ultimately, regime change in Iran. These groups all share overlapping goals, funders and key individuals…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
In short, then, there exists a network of American NGOs with the mission statements of helping Iran, opposing Iran, preserving Iran, and bombing Iran, all staffed by largely the same ex-U.S. government officials……………………………………………………………………………………………………..
A LESSON FROM HISTORY
The history of Iran has been intimately intertwined with the United States since at least 1953 when Washington orchestrated a successful coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The slaughter in Gaza has been horrifying enough. More than 22,000 people have been killed in the Israeli invasion, and a further 1.9 million displaced. Israel is also simultaneously bombing the West Bank, Syria and Lebanon. The U.S. is facilitating this, sending billions of dollars in weaponry, pledging iron-clad political support to Israel, silencing critics of its actions, and vetoing United Nations resolutions.
But United Against Nuclear Iran is eager to escalate the situation to a vastly greater level, urging Washington to attack a well-armed country of nearly 90 million people, erroneously claiming that Iran is behind every Hamas or Hezbollah action. ………………………………………………………………………
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) Executive Director Melissa Parke is set to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki from Jan. 19 to 21, ahead of the three-year anniversary since the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) entered into force.
The risk of a nuclear conflict is at an all-time high since the end of the Cold War, and the TPNW has taken on an increasingly significant role to abolish all nuclear weapons to ensure safety for humanity, Parke said. The executive director sat down for an online interview with the Mainichi Shimbun prior to her first visit to the World War II atomic bombing sites, to share her views on the elimination of nuclear weapons……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20240117/p2a/00m/0op/028000c
It’s not that I am against technology. I’m using it now. It does wonderful stuff (some of the time)
But our daily lives are now so involved with digital technology. IT is in control of so many systems. We are in danger of being constantly supervised, and indeed controlled, by digital technology. China already gives an example of how that can work.
I have grave misgivings about personal privacy, and the loss of human skills to computer wizardry. And that’s when information technology is working OK.
Britain’s Post Office scandal gives a timely illustration of what can happen when IT is not working OK. Hundreds of decent, honest people were wrongly convicted: they had to pay thousands of pounds, homes were lost, reputations ruined, lives were lost.
Of course, Post Office and Fujitsu authorities and others covered up and lied about the faulty Horizon IT system. It continues to amaze me, how these gutless individuals are happy to hang on to their big salaries, and lie their heads off, in loyalty to their employing body. It’s been going on since the notorious tobacco industry executives lied about smoking and cancer.
Unfortunately, it seems to be embedded in the corporate climbing-the-ladder system - mindless loyalty to the industry.
It is not just the fault of these dishonest individuals. It is also the fault of our general mindless acceptance of IT “progress”, and our reverence for the megawealthy tech boys developing it.
We need to maintain a healthy scepticism about digital systems - how necessary are they , and what if they go wrong?
What a cowardly act it was. A national broadcaster, dedicated to what should be fearless reporting, cowed by the intemperate bellyaching of a lobby concerned about coverage of the Israel-Gaza war. The investigationby The Age newspaper was revealing in showing that the dismissal of broadcaster Antoinette Lattouf last December 20 was the nasty fruit of a campaign waged against the corporation’s management. This included its chair, Ita Buttrose, and managing director David Anderson.
The official reason for that dismissal was disturbingly ordinary. Lattouf had not, for instance, decided to become a flag-swathed bomb thrower for the Palestinian cause. She had engaged in no hostage taking campaign, nor intimidated any Israeli figure. The sacking had purportedly been made over sharing a postby Human Rights Watch about Israel that mentioned “using starvation of civilians as a weapon of war in Gaza”, calling it “a war crime”. It also noted the express intention by Israeli officials to pursue this strategy. Actions are also documented: the deliberate blocking of the delivery of food, water and fuel “while wilfully obstructing the entry of aid.” The sharing by Lattouf took place following a direction not to post on “matters of controversy”.
Human Rights Watch might be accused of many things: the dolled up corporate face of human rights activism; the activist transformed into fundraising agent and boardroom gaming strategist. But to share material from the organisation on alleged abuses is hardly a daredevil act of dangerous hair-raising radicalism.
Prior to the revelations in The Age, much had been made of Lattouf’s fill-in role as a radio presenter, a stint that was to last for five shows. The Australian, true to form, had its own issue with Lattouf’s statements made on various online platforms. In December, the paper found it strange that she was appointed “despite her very public anti-Israel stance” (paywalled). She was also accused of denying the lurid interpretations put upon footage from protests outside Sydney Opera House, some of which called for gassing Jews. And she dared accused the Israeli forces of committing rape.
It was also considered odd that she discuss such matters as food and water shortages in Gaza and “an advertising campaign showing corpses reminiscent of being wrapped in Muslim burial cloths.” That “left ‘a lot of people really upset’.” If war is hell, then Lattouf was evidently not allowed to go into quite so much detail about it – at least when concerning the fate of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli war machine.
What also transpires is that the ABC managers were not merely targeting Lattouf on their own, sadistic initiative. Pressure of some measure had been exercised from outside the organisation. According to The Age, WhatsApp messages had been sent to the ABC as part of a coordinated campaign by a group called Lawyers for Israel.
The day Lattouf was sacked, Sydney property lawyer Nicky Stein buzzingly began proceedings by telling members of the group to contact the federal minister for communication asking “how Antoinette is hosting the morning ABC Sydney show.” Employing Lattouff apparently breached Clause 4 of the ABC code of practice on impartiality.
Stein cockily went on to insist that, “It’s important ABC hears from not just individuals in the community but specifically from lawyers so they feel there is an actual legal threat.” She goes on to read that a “proper” rather than “generic” response was expected “by COB [close of business] today or I would look to engage senior counsel.”
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Did such windy threats have any basis? No, according to Stein. “I know there is probably no actionable offence against the ABC but I didn’t say I would be taking one – just investigating one. I have said that they should be terminating her employment immediately.” Utterly charming, and sufficiently so to attract attention from the ABC chairperson herself, who asked for further venting of concerns.
Indeed, another member of the haranguing clique, Robert Goot, also deputy president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, could boast of information he had received that Lattouf would be “gone from morning radio from Friday” because of her anti-Israeli stance.
There has been something of a journalistic exodus from the ABC of late. Nour Haydar, an Australian journalist also of Lebanese descent, resigned expressing her concerns about the coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict at the broadcaster. There had been, for instance, the creation of a “Gaza advisory panel” at the behest of ABC News director Justin Stevens, ostensibly to improve the coverage of the conflict. “Accuracy and impartiality are core to the service we offer audiences,” Stevens explained to staff. “We must stay independent and not ‘take sides’.”
This pointless assertion can only ever be a threat because it acts as an injunction on staff and a judgment against sources that do not favour the accepted line, however credible they might be. What proves acceptable, a condition that seems to have paralysed the ABC, is to never say that Israel massacres, commits war crimes, and brings about conditions approximating to genocide. Little wonder that coverage on South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice does not get top billing on in the ABC news headlines.
Palestinians and Palestinian militias, on the other hand, can always be written about as brute savages, rapists and baby slayers. Throw in fanaticism and Islam, and you have the complete package ready for transmission. Coverage in the mainstays of most Western liberal democracies of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as the late Robert Fisk pointed out with pungency, repeatedly asserts these divisions.
After her signation Haydar toldthe Sydney Morning Herald that, “Commitment to diversity in the media cannot be skin deep. Culturally diverse staff should be respected and supported even when they challenge the status quo.” But Haydar’s argument about cultural diversity should not obscure the broader problem facing the ABC: policing the way opinions and material on war and any other divisive topic is shared. The issue goes less to cultural diversity than permitted intellectual breadth, which is distinctly narrowing at the national broadcaster.
Lattouf, for her part, is pursuing remedies through the Fair Work Commission, and seeking funding through a GoFundMe page, steered by Lauren Dubois. “We stand with Antoinette and support the rights of workers to be able to share news that expresses an opinion or reinforces a fact, without fear of retribution.”
Kenneth Roth, former head of Human Rights Watch,expressed his displeasure at the treatment of Lattouf for sharing HRW material, suggesting the ABC had erred. ABC’s senior management, through a statementfrom managing director David Anderson, preferred the route of craven denial, rejecting “any claim that it has been influenced by any external pressure, whether it be an advocacy group or lobby group, a political party, or commercial entity.” They would, wouldn’t they?
A new wave of denial about climate change is on the rise even as there is greater acknowledgment of human-caused global warming, a study of more than 12,000 videos by a disinformation campaign group warns. The “new denial” seeks to undermine confidence in green energy solutions, as well as climate science and scientists, the research led by a group of academics and the Center for Countering Digital Hate shows.
These forms of denial made up 70 per cent of falsehoods related to climate change in videos published on sites such as YouTube and X over a six-year period, said the report, which was published on Tuesday. Videos that were identified as containing climate denial claims received more than 325mn views in total, based on research that used artificial intelligence tools to sort and classify the assertions in content uploaded from 2018 to 2023.
The academics led by Travis Coan from the UK’s Exeter university found older forms of denial about climate change had fallen to one-third of the disinformation. Fewer instances highlighting cold weather or a coming ice age were found, for example, as meteorological evidence of global warming increased.
Instead, the majority of claims focused on three new main categories: that the consequences of global warming were either harmless or even beneficial; that climate science was unreliable; and that climate solutions offered would not work — the most predominant theme. Examples of this included that electric vehicles produce three times as much toxic pollution as internal combustion engines when mining of the rare earth materials involved in making the vehicle are taken into account. In fact, the US Environmental Protection Authority and many scientists are clear that over an EV’s lifetime the total greenhouse gas emissions are typically lower even when accounting for manufacturing.
Climate misinformation is mutating on YouTube – and the platform is profiting. Researchers analysed thousands of hours of YouTube content from the past six years and found that ‘old’ climate change denial is giving way to a new type of misleading content intended to muddy the waters.
The success of renewables is not only a story of records and data on energy progress.
It is a story of a pivotal shift in the global energy priorities, culminating in the monumental acknowledgement by the governments around the world at COP28 that tripling renewables and doubling energy efficiency by 2030 is the most effective way to stay on the 1.5°C pathway.
This review of the latest achievements in renewable energy expansion shows that renewables remain resilient through multiple crises. The renewable-based energy transition offers a solution to the climate crisis and energy security concerns whilst delivering positive socio-economic impacts for communities and societies.
Still, are the current records enough to achieve the climate goals and a sustainable future for all?
SO -AMERICA IS NOT POWERFUL.Because quite clearly Biden cannot do anything in the least effective to stop the suffering of the people of Gaza.
However – Biden’s very feeble crocodile tears are a bit hard to believe ! “we will continue working to protect civilians, consistent with obligations under international humanitarian law.”
THE PROBLEM IS: We are expected to believe that Biden’s USA is so powerful - in the face of its obvious weakness to do anything !
Of course, the answer to this conundrum is so simple: Biden is insincereand a hypocrite.
Biden is 100% behind the Israel genocide of Palestinians. Here’s what he says about the Israel hostages held in Gaza “I will never forget the grief and the suffering” And then there’s Biden’s comment on the Gaza death toll (which has now passed 24,000)-“I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed. I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war. … I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”
And there’s Joe Biden meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet during his visit to Israel, - “I don’t believe you have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist.” He made it clear that he stands with Israel and will commit U.S. military aid to protect it from future attacks. Citing “the urgency of Israel’s defensive needs,” the Biden administration on 29/12/23 said it would bypass Congress for the second time this month to approve an immediate arms sale to Israel.
Biden showcased his unflinching support for Israel’s war aims in his address 0n 12 December 23 - He likened Hamas to “animals” and vowed that he would not “walk away from providing Israel what they need to defend themselves and to finish the job against Hamas.”
Don’t expect anything meaningful or truthful to come out of the mouths of Joe Biden and his coterie of mealy-mouthed well-paid sycophants – Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland, Lloyd Austin Karine Jean-Pierre etc
Following the October 7 attack by Hamas, Israeli forces have carried out sustained attacks on the Palestinian controlled territory, dividing the international community.
Last week, the South African government presented a case to the International Court of Justice. They argued the Israeli government’s attack on Gaza, and especially the actions of its forces within Gaza since early October, could amount to genocide.
Few cases that have gone before the court are as explosive and potentially significant as this one.
Here’s how the hearings unfolded and what happens now.
It is defined as acts committed with intent to destroy, either in part or in whole, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, including:
killing members of the group
causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about a groups physical destruction, in whole or in part
imposing measures to prevent births
forcibly transferring children.
The Genocide Convention is designed to not only prosecute individuals and governments who committed genocide, but to prevent it from occurring.
Therefore, the Convention states that while genocidal acts are punishable, so too are attempts and incitement to commit genocide, regardless of whether they are successful or not.
The South African case
The South African government argued that Israeli forces had killed 23,210 Palestinians. Approximately 70% were believed to be women and children.
Crucially for the court, South Africa argued Israeli forces were often aware that the bombings would cause significant civilian casualties. It said many of the Palestinians were killed in Israeli declared safe zones, mosques, hospitals, schools and refugee camps.
Beyond the death toll, South Africa argued that there were 60,000 wounded and maimed Palestinians. The separation of families through arrest and displacement has caused large scale and likely enduring harm to civilians. South Africa highlighted the displacement of 85% of Palestinians, particularly the October 13 evacuation order which displaced over one million people in 24 hours.
The South African government also alleged the Israeli attacks and the actions of its forces were preventing the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people being met. It particularly emphasised the Israeli decision to cut off water supply to Gaza. The distribution of food, medicine and fuel were also hampered. Israeli attacks on hospitals were also highlighted.
South Africa alleged the denial of adequate humanitarian assistance, especially medical supplies and care, amounts to the imposing of measures to prevent births.
Finally, South Africa focused on speeches by Israeli political leaders and soldiers advocating for the erasure of Gaza. This included Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reference to the biblical destruction of enemies of ancient Israel and military commanders’ reference to Palestinians as “human animals” that need to be eliminated. These were used as evidence of incitement to genocide.
If the International Court of Justice doesn’t find that Israel is committing genocidal acts, South Africa has argued the Israeli forces have demonstrated an intent to commit genocide, and that there should be an interim order made to stop it.
The Israeli response
The Israeli government rejects all of the allegations by South Africa. Israel presented its arguments on January 12.
Israel’s overall argument is that the attacks on Gaza have been directed at Hamas soldiers. It says the civilian casualties have been an unfortunate consequence of carrying out military operations in an urban environment. Accordingly, the deaths, injuries and damage are not genocidal in nature, but instead, are incidental to military action.
Israel has presented evidence that it is delivering food, water, medical supplies and fuel to Gaza, demonstrating the opposite of genocidal intent. The Israeli Defence Force also runs a Civilian Harm Mitigation Unit.
These actions, according to Israel, are “concrete measures aimed specifically at recognising the rights of the Palestinian civilians in Gaza to exist”.
Finally, Israel has argued that the quotes South Africa have argued display incitement to commit genocide have been taken out of context. According to Israel, the court has no grounds to find that there are acts of genocide taking place, or that there is genocidal intent.
At this point, the court will not decide whether Israel has committed genocide or not. Determining that will likely take several years. Instead, the court will decide whether the allegations are at the least plausible, and if so, likely order that Israel and Palestine reach an interim ceasefire, and for Israeli forces to take all necessary steps to prevent genocide.
How significant is it?
If the court rules in favour of South Africa, a major world power – supported by the US and much of the Western world – will have been found to have committed what has, historically, been the most notorious of crimes.
That said, the prospect of any ruling by the International Court of Justice having a meaningful impact on the conflict in Gaza is remote.
The UN and its legal institutions are powered solely by a belief the international community is respectful of international institutions and international law. The problem is when a powerful country does not believe a ruling by a United Nations body applies to them, little can be done to enforce it.
A boom in Chinese solar power construction drove another record-breaking year of renewables growth in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Carbon Brief analysis of figures in the IEA’s Renewables 2023 report show that the world is now on track to build enough solar, wind and other renewables over the next five years to power the equivalent of the US and Canada. Rapid growth has also pushed the IEA to once again significantly upgrade its renewables forecast, adding an extra 728 gigawatts (GW) of capacity to a five-year estimate it made just a year ago.
This is more than the electricity capacity of Germany and India combined. The agency attributes this growth to plummeting costs of solar power and favourable policy regimes, particularly in China. New solar and onshore wind now provide cheaper electricity than new fossil fuel power plants almost everywhere, it says, as well as being cheaper than most existing fossil fuel assets.
Last year was the warmest since records began in the mid-1800s – and likely for many thousands of years before. It was the first year in which average global temperatures at the surface exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial levels in at least one global temperature dataset. Here, Carbon Brief examines the latest data across the oceans, atmosphere, cryosphere and surface temperature of the planet.
Australian politicians across the political divide have launched a last-ditch bid to prevent Julian Assange from being extradited to the United States to face espionage charges as the WikiLeaks founder faces a crucial final legal challenge in Britain next month.
The four co-convenors of the cross-party Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group wrote to British Home Secretary James Cleverly arguing for an urgent review of Assange’s case. This was in light of a judgment in the Supreme Court of the UK in November, striking down Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s controversial plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
On February 20 and 21, two British High Court judges will review an earlier ruling that refused Assange permission to appeal his extradition order. This is expected to be his final bid to prevent being sent to the US.
Assange faces decades in prison over his role in the publication of US classified files and diplomatic cables relating to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“If he loses in the UK courts next month he could be extradited to the USA within 24 hours,” Assange’s brother Gabriel Shipton said of the High Court review.
“This is literally a do-or-die scenario for Julian.”
Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson has argued he was at high risk of suicide if the High Court rejects his final appeal, saying Assange was so mentally unwell that he would be unlikely to survive extradition.
Liberal MP Bridget Archer, Labor MP Josh Wilson, independent MP Andrew Wilkie and Greens Senator David Shoebridge wrote in their letter to Cleverly: “We are deeply concerned that the legal proceedings involving Mr Assange will now continue, first in the United Kingdom and then in the United States, if extradition is ordered and consented to by you.
“This would add yet more years to Mr Assange’s detention and further imperil his health.
“To this end, we are requesting that you undertake an urgent, thorough and independent assessment of the risks to Mr Assange’s health and welfare in the event he is extradited to the United States.”
As Home Secretary, Cleverly is one of the government’s most powerful ministers, presiding over law enforcement, national security and immigration and with oversight of the domestic counter-intelligence agency MI5.
The MPs argued in their letter that the judges’ reasoning in the Rwanda Supreme Court case – which found it was illegal for Britain to send asylum seekers to Rwanda – “clearly has direct relevance to the extradition proceedings involving Julian Assange”.
“The decision found that courts in the United Kingdom cannot just rely on third-party assurances by foreign governments but rather are required to make independent assessments of the risk of persecution to individuals before any order is made removing them from the UK,” they wrote.
The MPs said that the justices in Assange’s key extradition hearing had “expressly relied on the ‘assurances’ of the United States as to Mr Assange’s safety and welfare should he be extradited to the United States for imprisonment and trial.
“These assurances were not tested, nor was there any evidence of independent assessment as to the basis on which they could be given and relied upon.”
The MPs wrote that they were deeply worried about Assange being sent to a high-security American prison because he “has significant health issues, exacerbated to a dangerous degree by his prolonged incarceration, that are of very real concern to us as his elected representatives”.
In 2021, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser blocked the attempt to extradite Assange on the basis that the harsh conditions of US solitary confinement would create a substantial suicide risk. Her ruling was overturned on appeal.
As a secular Jew raised in a fiercely anti-Zionist family, I grew up viewing the State of Israel as an unfortunate fait accompli and accepting that the two-state solution was probably the best that could be hoped for.
Since then, I have come to the conclusion that the creation of a Jewish state was a catastrophic mistake and that Zionist Israel has relinquished its right to exist.
What good could possibly have come from a project that handed a group of Jewish Europeans a land that for countless centuries was inhabited by Arab Palestinians?
Not only did Palestinians have no say in the creation of a Jewish state on their homeland, but just at the time when other developing countries around the world were finally breaking free from the yoke of colonial rule Palestinians, like Native Americans and Australia’s First Nations people before them, became the victims of European settler colonialism — this time endorsed by a U.N. resolution that neither the Palestinians nor any of the Arab states agreed to or voted for.
The driving force behind both the 1917 Balfour Declaration that called for a Jewish homeland in the British Mandate of Palestine and the 1948 U.N. Partition Plan that established a Jewish State, was Zionism, a religious, political and cultural movement that began in the late 19th century to claim Palestine as the God-given homeland of the Jewish people.
Contrary to official mythology, however, the Zionist fervour was not shared by the majority of Jews.
The socialist Jewish Labour Bund in Eastern Europe, for instance, believed that Jewish culture should be preserved right at home in the shtetls (villages) as opposed to running off to Palestine and thought that the notion of Jews colonising Palestine was farcical. They even wrote a mocking Yiddish song for the Zionists – “Oy, Ir Narishe Tsionistn” (“You Foolish Little Zionist”).
Meanwhile Jews, Christians and Muslims had been living aside each other in historic Palestine in relative peace for centuries. It was only after the rapid influx of European Jewish refugees fleeing the pogroms in Eastern Europe following World War I, and in the wake of the Holocaust, that the conflicts in Palestine escalated and the bloodshed on both sides began.
By the time of the U.N. partition plan, Israeli Defence Force brigades had already launched a bloody campaign of burning villages and killing men, women and children to drive Palestinians off their land. In all, 750,000 Palestinians were expelled into refugee camps in neighbouring Arab countries.
This was the beginning of the Nakba (the catastrophe) that continues today – most strikingly in Gaza — as Zionist zealots insist Israel has a rightful claim to all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
In their view, all of Palestine belongs to Jews because in the words of Likud Party Knesset Member Danny Danon, the Bible is “our deed to the land.”
For Zionists like Danon, expelling Palestinians is an existential necessity, a view that echoed in 1956 by Moshe Dayan, military commander of the Jerusalem Front in 1948, who proclaimed:
“We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and the cannon we cannot plant a tree and build a home… This is the fate of our generation, and the choice of our life – to be prepared and armed, strong and tough – or otherwise, the sword will slip from our fist, and our life will be snuffed out.
What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived.
Let us not be afraid to see the hatred that accompanies and consumes the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs who sit all around us and wait for the moment when their hands will be able to reach our blood.”
Next Uprising Would Dwarf Oct.7
As Dayan knew then, Israel would never be safe. In Gaza now, Israel is creating the next generation of Palestinian resistance fighters who have witnessed their families slaughtered, guaranteeing that the next uprising will dwarf the Hamas invasion of Oct. 7.
Whatever legitimacy Israel might have claimed as a haven for Jewish refugees who were abandoned in the West after the Holocaust, their right to a state of their own has long since been forfeited.
Both the 1917 Balfour Declaration that promised Jews a homeland in the British Mandate of Palestine and the 1948 U.N. partition plan creating the State of Israel stipulated that the rights of Palestinians had to be safeguarded and, following the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948, U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 of that year specifically said the refugees’ had the right to return “at the earliest practicable date.”
On all counts, Israel has completely failed to live up to its obligations to protect the most basic rights of the Palestinian people.
Today, Palestinians living inside Israel remain second-class citizens without equal rights to own property or even use their own language. On the West Bank, Palestinians are dispossessed and murdered daily by Jewish settlers with the backing of the IDF.
In Gaza, even before Israel’s invasion following Oct. 7, Palestinians have lived under a brutal state of siege in an open air prison. The millions of Palestinians who were exiled into refugee camps in neighbouring Arab states are still denied the right to return.
Indeed, the Zionists have brought to Palestine the very scourge they fled in Europe — murdering, expelling and ethnically cleansing an entire population, mirroring the behaviour of their Nazi oppressors.
In the documentary film Tantura about the 1948 massacre of almost 300 Palestinians in the Palestinian village of Tantura, former Israeli soldiers, now in their 90s, retell the story of the slaughter unashamedly.
One brigade member laughs as he recalls, “Of course we killed them, without remorse… If you killed, you did a good thing.” An old woman says matter-of-factly, “Let them remember (what we did to them) like we remember what happened in Europe (the Holocaust). If they did it, we can also.”
Yet, despite the evidence of Israeli war crimes, Zionists have continued to deny Israel’s atrocities while claiming their own superiority. Professor emeritus at Haifa University, Ilan Pappe, says of the mindset:
“I think the self-image of Israel as a moral society is something I haven’t seen anywhere else in the world. We are the ‘Chosen People’ (in the Old Testament Jews were chosen by God as his special people). This is part of the Israeli self-identification…(But) basically, the project of Zionism has a problem… You cannot create a safe haven by creating a catastrophe for other people.”
Today, complicit Western leaders and their media proxies wring their hands about the regrettable loss of civilian lives in Gaza while hypocritically calling for a two-state solution they know is virtually impossible since Israel has reduced the amount of Palestinian land from 45 percent at the time of partition to 15 percent today.
Craig Mokhiber, who recently resigned as New York director for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights over the U.N.’s failure to act on war crimes in Gaza, said in his resignation letter:
“The mantra of the ‘two-state solution’ has become an open joke in the corridors of the U.N., both for its utter impossibility in fact, and for its total failure to account for the inalienable human rights of the Palestinian people.”
Writing On Wall For Two-State Solution
After 75 years of Israel’s colonial oppression of the Palestinian people, it has become glaringly obvious that any notion of a two-state solution has become little more than a fig leaf for Israel’s apartheid regime and the only way forward is one secular democratic state that safeguards the fundamental rights and equality for all of its citizens.
Obviously, it won’t happen overnight or without conflict – Israel will aggressively defend its perceived right to exist as a Jewish state with the massive backing of the Western powers. Palestinians will never abandon their yearning for a homeland as it was before the arrival of European Jewish settlers — but the writing is on the wall.
Almost two decades ago the late Palestinian-American academic Edward Said wrote that:
“The beginning (of one democratic state) is to develop something entirely missing from both Israeli and Palestinian realities today: the idea and practice of citizenship, not of ethnic or racial community, as the main vehicle of coexistence.”
More recently, Palestinian academic and physician Ghada Karmi has cautioned:
“The U.N. that made Israel and must now unmake it, not by expulsion and displacement as in 1948, but by converting its bleak legacy into a future of hope for both peoples in one state.”
But if the U.N. fails to act, Karmi sees a more apocalyptic path to the end of the Zionist state. In her recent book One State: The Only Democratic Future for Palestine, she writes:
“Israel will fiercely reject the shared state, but will be powerless to prevent it from happening. … It will not happen solely as a result of a one-state campaign and solidarity movements. … but rather through people’s natural resistance to relentless oppression leading to the ultimate overthrow of the oppressors.”
If that can happen without cataclysmic global repercussions, possibly bringing the U.S. and Europe to the brink of the next world war, perhaps a new secular democratic state for both Jews and Palestinians will evolve from the struggle.
In any event, it is time to acknowledge that the Zionist project has been a spectacular failure and the status quo can no longer be maintained. Israel has become a pariah state in the eyes of most of the world and the winds of change are now howling across the region.
Stefan Moore is an American-Australian documentary filmmaker. His documentaries have received four Emmys and other awards. In the U.S., he was co-director of TVG Productions in New York, a series producer at WNET and a producer for the prime time CBS News magazine program 48 HOURS. In the U.K. he worked as a series producer at the BBC, and in Australia he was an executive producer for Film Australia and the ABC.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has released a new report revealing that 50% more renewable capacity was added globally in 2023 than in 2022, but financing remains an issue.
Crucially, the standout figure from this year’s document is that global annual renewable capacity additions increased to 510GW in 2023. This represents the fastest growth rate that has been witnessed in the past two decades.
Now this should serve as huge praise to all throughout the global renewable value chain who have worked tirelessly to bolster the energy transition and maintain the Paris Agreement’s legislation to keep global warming increase well below 2°C with a target to limit it to 1.5°C.
Turning our attention to GB, the nation has seen its renewable capacity bolstered significantly over the past year and saw various wind generation records broken. The result saw low-carbon energy sources contribute 51% of the electricity used by Britain with fossil fuels having made up 33% of GBs electricity mix across 2023. Carbon Brief attributed the decline of fossil fuels to two factors: renewables increasing sixfold (by 113TWh) from 2008, and reduced electricity demand, which decreased by 21% (83TWh) since 2008.
Of the renewable energy sources added, solar PV accounted for three-quarters of additions worldwide with China being where the largest growth occurred. For readers wanting to learn more about solar across 2023, our sister site PV-Tech provided its own analysis to the IEA report.
China also saw huge growth in its wind sector with additions having risen by 66% year-on-year. This staggering total has seen the nation become the largest developer of wind in the world, something that could come as a blow to the UK with its offshore wind pipeline having dropped below China over the course of 2023……………………………………..
The need to support emerging and developing economies
Another crucial aspect of the IEA report is its view into the global race to net zero. As referenced by the organisation, G20 countries account for almost 90% of global renewable power capacity today meaning that much must be done to support emerging and developing economies and countries as they transition away fossil fuels……………………..
An eye to the future
The IEA referenced various major milestones that could be achieved by 2028. Firstly, should the current trajectory continue at its rate, the globe could well bring online more renewable capacity between 2023 and 2028 than has been installed since the first commercial renewable power plant was built more than 100 years ago.
Indeed, this showcases the opportunity and collective movement to ensure net zero targets are met. However, this may not be enough. As mentioned previously, more time and resources must be allocated to support developing countries in their own net zero journeys to ensure that the Paris Agreement targets are met and maintained.
Other key milestones include:
In 2024, wind and solar PV together generate more electricity than hydropower.
In 2025, renewables surpass coal to become the largest source of electricity generation.
Wind and solar PV each surpass nuclear electricity generation in 2025 and 2026 respectively.
In 2028, renewable energy sources account for over 42% of global electricity generation, with the share of wind and solar PV doubling to 25%.
The “rules-based international order” allowed NATO powers to knowingly provoke a world-threatening proxy war in Ukraine.
The “rules-based international order” allowed western powers and their regional partners to plunge Syria into a horrific civil war by flooding the nation with heavily armed fascistic extremist factions.
The “rules-based international order” has allowed the US to invade and occupy a vast stretch of Syrian territory in order to control the nation’s natural resources and prevent reconstruction.
The “rules-based international order” allowed the invasion of Afghanistan and a decades-long occupation sustained by lies and corruption.
The “rules-based international order” allowed the imprisonment of Julian Assange for journalistic activities exposing US war crimes.
The “rules-based international order” has allowed the planet to be circled by hundreds of US military bases, including in places where the people who live there vehemently oppose their presence like Okinawa, Iraq and Syria.
The “rules-based international order” has allowed the US and its allies to kill huge numbers of civilians with siege warfare tactics in nations like Yemen, Iraq and Venezuela.
The “rules-based international order” has allowed China to be surrounded by a rapidly increasing amount of US military bases and war machinery in preparation for a future conflict of unimaginable horror.
The “rules-based international order” has allowed the US to plunge the world into a new cold war with rapidly-escalating brinkmanship against nuclear-armed Russia and China.
The “rules-based international order” has allowed unfathomable amounts of government malfeasance to be hidden behind an increasingly opaque wall of government secrecy.
The “rules-based international order” has allowed the interests of ordinary human beings to be subordinated and subjected to the interests of billionaire corporations and sociopathic government agencies.
The “rules-based international order” has allowed the destruction of our ecosystem for the enrichment of powerful plutocrats.
The “rules-based international order” has allowed our planet to be dominated by an empire of extreme murderousness and depravity at the cost of nonstop bloodshed and ever-increasing tyranny.
If the “rules-based international order” has allowed all these things to happen, what kind of “rules” are we talking about exactly? And what kind of “order” do they sustain?
If this is what the “rules-based international order” looks like, would we not, perhaps, be better off without it?
Get Your Armies Off Our Bodies is the inaugural series of Peace Pod.
Wage Peace is beyond proud to present our latest creation: a podcast featuring the stories, passions and insights of some of our most treasured collaborators. Tune in, subscribe and immerse yourself in the journeys of artists, activists and academics campaigning for peace on the stolen lands of this continent and further afield.
Peace Pod features some of the foremost academics, journalists and activists for peace on this continent, such as Michelle Fahey, Mujib Abid, Izzy Brown, Ned Hargreaves and Aunty Sue Coleman Haseldine, along with international luminaries such as Anthony Feinstein and Matthew Hoh.
Dr Miriam Torzillo has put together high quality teaching resources for students in years 10-12. Dr Torzillo has included a guide to curriculum placement:
Curriculum Areas
General Capabilities
Australian Cross Curriculum Priorities and
Key Concepts
The Teachers Resource sits with the Podcast here, in one easily accessible page
There is a huge resurgence in interest in the role of the weapons companies because of the genocide in Palestine. Young people are trying to make sense of militarism and peace. The podcast introduces militarism against First Nations people in both Australia and West Papua and the way STEM is being used by weapons corporations to reproduce militarism in the classroom.
