War
American Philosophers Should Condemn the War in Gaza (guest post)
“American academic philosophers should speak out to condemn the Israeli assault on Gaza.”
In the following guest post, Matthew Noah Smith, associate professor of philosophy at Northeastern University, argues that American philosophers and the American Philosophical Association have strong reasons, as academics, to condemn the war in Gaza and call for a sustained ceasefire.
This post is part of the ongoing series, “Philosophers On the Israel-Hamas Conflict“.
Hazem Harb, “Dystopia is Not A Noun 1” (detail)
American Philosophers Should Condemn the War in Gaza
by Matthew Noah Smith
–1–
American academic philosophers should speak out to condemn the Israeli assault on Gaza. At the very least, the American Philosophical Association (APA) should issue a statement condemning Israel’s wanton destruction of every university in Gaza, its destruction of most other educational institutions in Gaza, and its use of violence which continues to threaten all remaining forms of education and research in Gaza. Additionally, there are many in Israel who threaten to silence critics—even Jewish Israeli critics—of the war on Gaza. A statement condemning these practices could be issued on the very narrow grounds recognized by the APA.
In fact, the APA should issue a statement calling for a ceasefire. Just as it would be appropriate for the APA to issue a statement calling for greater funding for the humanities on the grounds that such funding is, all else being equal, necessary for the advancement of philosophy in the US, the APA should issue a call for a ceasefire since, all else being equal, the only way for research and education to begin to be repaired in Gaza is for the Israeli assault on Gaza to end. For, Israel not only has destroyed but it continues to destroy both the material and social bases of Gazan civil society. Palestinians in Gaza cannot rebuild their most basic educational institutions, much less their universities, so long as the Israeli assault on Gaza continues.
–2–
The October 7th attack on Israel, in which approximately 1100 people were killed, was a horrifying war crime. The subsequent Israeli assault on Gaza is also a horrific moral catastrophe. As of this writing on February 8, at least 27,000 people have been killed and 67,000 have been wounded. The vast majority of those killed and wounded are civilians, with up to two-thirds of them being women and children. War crimes have almost certainly been committed. The International Court of Justice has also issued a preliminary ruling that it is plausible that Israel is committing a genocide (as the term is defined by international law).
Furthermore, even if all military operations immediately ceased today, experts believe hundreds or perhaps even thousands more will probably die as result of the war. For, Israel has also destroyed Gaza’s infrastructure, including nearly its entire health care system, and has caused both a famine and a widespread shortage of potable water. Finally, Israel has traumatized—in the most intense and horrible sense of the term and not in the recently deployed sense of causing “psychic harm”—at least tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of the Palestinians who have so far survived through this terrible war.
In short, Israel is committing a terrible injustice and may be committing a genocide. There is also good evidence that Palestinians in the West Bank are targets of new and intensive forms of violence. The Israeli public has expressed broad support for the war in Gaza. They have also elected a succession of increasingly racist governments, with the last government having been accused of being anti-democratic and threatening the rule of law.
This injustice alone is sufficient for every person of conscience to speak out. But, as we know, many academics do not wish our professional associations to weigh in on generic injustices, no matter how serious. Rather, for the APA to have a conclusive reason to speak out, the injustice must be directly related to our professional lives. Ten thousand murdered children is not enough.
–3–
So, what is this special reason for philosophers to collectively as philosophers call for ceasefire, instead of as individuals, members of some social justice group, or members of a labor union, and so on?
We should do this because of the Israeli policy of totally destroying every Gazan university and almost every other educational institution in Gaza. This is a direct attack on the very possibility of a university education, to say nothing of the humanities. Israel has also been credibly accused of silencing critics within its own academic institutions. At least one teacher has been arrested for posting critical views on Facebook. Israel has targeted communities of scholars of which we are a part. We, as academics, are therefore directly implicated in this war. So, we, as academics, ought to collectively express our moral outrage.
Public expressions of moral disapprobation at attacks on university education is par for the course for philosophers. It is not some unusual demand to care about what isn’t relevant to our lives as academics. When Australian Catholic University shut down the Dianoia Institute, there was, among the community of philosophers, a public outrage and a call to action. Similar expressions and calls to action have occurred in response to university leaders, state legislators, and other powers-that-be proposing cutting philosophy departments or laying off tenured staff. When would-be dictators such as Victor Orban attacked the Central European University, there was public support for CEU. The APA has issued many statements against proposed cuts to university programs. These are but a few prominent examples.
It is entirely consistent, then, for academics to respond publicly to and with horror at the total destruction of the entire Gazan educational ecosystem. In the near future, there is unlikely to be anything in Gaza we would recognize as a university education (at least for Palestinians—it remains to be seen whether Israel will colonize any portion of northern Gaza with Jewish settlers). We should, as educators, protest that.
At the very least, then, our professional organizations should issue public proclamations against the destruction of universities in Gaza. But, such proclamations are insufficient. If we oppose the destruction of educational opportunities of Gazans, then we should oppose not merely the fact that they have been destroyed but also the threat that the remaining ones will be destroyed. Furthermore, we should oppose the affirmative effort to ensure that these institutions cannot be rebuilt. To that end, then, we as philosophers should call for a ceasefire.
–4–
The horrible war in Gaza has been widely supported by the Israeli public. Any Israeli of conscience should welcome outside pressure on their country for the sake of pressuring it to stop the injustice. Even if this pressure is modestly costly, it is a burden every Israeli of conscience should be willing to bear for the sake of justice. It is especially the case that, given the very high levels of support for violence against Gazans and the concomitant difficulties of internal organizing, Israelis who seek an end to injustice are probably morally required to welcome outside help, of whatever peaceful form, in their efforts at ending the war and seeking justice for those who suffered as a result of the war.
Many Israeli academics are not in fact innocent bystanders. Many have gone out of their way to provide intellectual cover for the war effort. They have rushed to publicly defend the assault on Gaza and have dragged their feet to condemn the injustices, if they have condemned them at all. Any of their complaints about the negative esteem associated with such statement expressing outrage at the Israeli conduct of the war are not especially morally salient.
Furthermore, it is objectionable to treat minor setbacks in esteem Israeli academics might suffer as a result of expressions of disapprobation at the horrible injustices committed by Israel as worthy of greater consideration than the suffering of Gazans. The greatest injuries are being suffered by Palestinians, not Israelis. It is one thing to have a professional organization issue a statement, and another thing altogether to have one’s entire educational system destroyed by the Israeli military.
Anglophone philosophers are mostly white people who don’t know many Palestinian philosophers. Most do know, or at least read, Israeli philosophers. We therefore are more apt to take up the perspective of Israelis than of Palestinians. As a result, we are more apt to sympathize with the setbacks suffered by the occupiers than the setbacks suffered by the occupied. Were we to center our reasoning on the Palestinian experience—to begin with concern for the most vulnerable, the ones who are currently suffering terribly—then our attitudes might be different. Americans might be less inclined to offer concessions to comfortable Israeli academics whose feelings at hurt when they read their foreign colleagues are disgusted by Israel’s destruction of every Gazan university.
–5–
What about Hamas? Shouldn’t we condemn Hamas too?! Perhaps. But Hamas has not blown up universities. Hamas has not engaged in a systematic, sustained effort to destroy other educational institutions. But, if Hamas’s wanton violence on October 7th warrants our professional association issuing a statement, then we do not need to seek the narrow grounds discussed above for the APA to condemn Israeli violence.
Should the APA offer solutions to the violence? No. The APA does not issue detailed budgetary proposals for, e.g., the Australian Catholic University or the West Virginia legislature. We might call for proper funding but we needn’t be more specific. Similarly, the APA needn’t develop a plan for how Israel will protect itself from future paroxysms of brutal, disgusting violence directed at it by those Israel oppresses through the Occupation. It merely needs to call for a basic cessation of the destruction, which is what calling for a ceasefire would do. Similarly, the question of the hostages is, per the narrow grounds under consideration here, moot, even if it is in principle morally urgent.
–6–
The APA should issue a statement condemning the near total destruction by Israel of Gaza’s educational institutions, including all its universities, and should also call for a ceasefire. This is the minimum we can and should do as a professional academics in the United States.
The post American Philosophers Should Condemn the War in Gaza (guest post) first appeared on Daily Nous.
The US Keeps Bombing People While Saying It Doesn’t Want To Fight
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/c884c974e22255af4465a1c43d77cd97/href
One of the weirdest things happening in the world today is the way US officials keep insisting that they are not at war with the groups they’re dropping bombs on in the middle east, and that they do not seek conflict with the people they are attacking.
Shortly after another massive round of attacks on Houthi targets in Yemen, Pentagon Press Secretary Pat Ryder told reporters on Monday that the US is not at war with the group.
“We don’t seek an escalation with the Houthis. We’re not at war with the Houthis. We’re not seeking to go to war with the Houthis,” Ryder said.
The day before, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN’s State of the Union that “the United States also is not looking for a wider war in the middle east,” even as he refused to rule out direct attacks within Iran, and even as the US-backed war on Gaza has expanded to US bombing campaigns in Yemen, Syria and Iraq.
This is just days after President Biden released a statement saying “The United States does not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world” while the United States was in the process of dropping bombs on multiple middle eastern countries.
Ken Klippenstein on Twitter: "Pentagon Press Secretary today: "Our focus when it comes to striking Houthis targets is to disrupt and degrade their capabilities. We don't seek an escalation with the Houthis. We're not at war with the Houthis." pic.twitter.com/A2y3OXKHFX / Twitter"
Pentagon Press Secretary today: "Our focus when it comes to striking Houthis targets is to disrupt and degrade their capabilities. We don't seek an escalation with the Houthis. We're not at war with the Houthis." pic.twitter.com/A2y3OXKHFX
It’s just so surreal. It’s like someone running up to you and slinging punches at your face while screaming “I DO NOT WISH TO FIGHT! THIS IS NOT AN ASSAULT!” They wear a plastic smiling mask and pay lip service to peace while operating the single most aggressive and murderous power structure on this planet.
The empire has been doing this same freakish Nice Guy Axe Murderer schtick with Gaza. The Biden administration could force an end to Israel’s genocidal atrocities in the Gaza Strip at any time but are instead choosing to provide those atrocities with full unconditional support, and as they do this they’re simultaneously putting on a performance to suggest that they disapprove of Israel’s actions. The White House has expressed “concern” over the death and suffering of civilians in Gaza no fewer than twenty times as of this writing, yet has continued to back the Israeli onslaught without taking any concrete actions to make the death and suffering stop.
That’s what we’re seeing when Biden administration officials tell the press that Biden referred to Netanyahu as a “bad fucking guy”, or when Secretary of State Antony Blinken solemnly finger-wags at Israel saying the dehumanization of the October 7 attack “cannot be a license to dehumanize others.” They’re putting on a big show about opposing Israel’s crimes against humanity as though they are not enthusiastically facilitating those crimes. They’re acting like they’re a passive witness to the atrocities in Gaza when in reality they’re an active participant. They’re posing as the peacemaker while acting as the warmaker.
Antiwar.com on Twitter: "Report: US Military Advisors Deployed to Taiwan-Controlled Islands on China's CoastWhen asked to confirm deployment to #Kinmen, Pentagon told https://t.co/gQTCCELFzi it won't comment on military operations in #Taiwanby Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #China https://t.co/7kN1pgQWcs pic.twitter.com/ZlDPPdjW7F / Twitter"
Report: US Military Advisors Deployed to Taiwan-Controlled Islands on China's CoastWhen asked to confirm deployment to #Kinmen, Pentagon told https://t.co/gQTCCELFzi it won't comment on military operations in #Taiwanby Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #China https://t.co/7kN1pgQWcs pic.twitter.com/ZlDPPdjW7F
And now we learn that US military advisors have been deployed to Kinmen, a group of Taiwan-controlled islands so close to the Chinese mainland that in the late sixties giant loudspeakers were built there to blast anti-communist propaganda over the water into the PRC.
Contrast this move with a recent headline from The Times saying “China opens Antarctic base on America’s doorstep,” which will show up as self-evidently nonsensical to anyone who has ever looked at a globe. It’s taken as a given that the US is entitled to amass a military presence right on China’s coastline, but the idea of China establishing a presence literally anywhere on planet Earth is interpreted as extreme aggressions on “America’s doorstep”.
It’s almost a cliché at this point to say imagine if China did this to the US, but seriously. Imagine if China did this to the US. As one Twitter follower put it, at just three kilometers away the Kinmen islands are closer to mainland China than Martha’s Vineyard is to the coast of Massachusetts. If China came anywhere near amassing any kind of military presence that close to the United States, it would be considered an act of war and the US would attack immediately.
So the US is clearly the aggressor here. It has been rapidly surrounding China with war machinery in ways it would never permit itself to be surrounded by any rival nation, and doing so more and more aggressively by the day. But if at any point China decides that too many of its red lines have been crossed and it needs to act before it’s too late, the US will with absolute certainty have a melodramatic fit about China’s unprovoked attack on the poor innocent US military presence on its border.
Caitlin Johnstone on Twitter: "The Single Dumbest Thing The Empire Asks Us To BelieveThe dumbest thing the US-centralized empire asks us to believe is that the military encirclement of its top two geopolitical rivals is a defensive action, rather than an act of extreme aggression.https://t.co/LhZW6sQv9I / Twitter"
The Single Dumbest Thing The Empire Asks Us To BelieveThe dumbest thing the US-centralized empire asks us to believe is that the military encirclement of its top two geopolitical rivals is a defensive action, rather than an act of extreme aggression.https://t.co/LhZW6sQv9I
That’s exactly what happened with Ukraine. The US was fully aware that it was acting in an extremely aggressive and provocative way on Russia’s western border and that it was playing very dangerous games sending weapons to Kyiv while expanding NATO and ramping up cold war aggressions, and so were many experts and analysts who spent years warning that the west’s actions would lead to war. Yet when Russia finally attacked, the entire western political-media class began bleating the word “unprovoked” in unison.
This is the kind of bizarre two-step you have to do if you want to be the global hegemon with all the violence and tyranny that necessarily comes with the job while also needing to present yourself as the nice guy. The US empire exists at an oddly contradictory point in history when our society no longer considers it acceptable to be a might-makes-right strongman dominator, and yet that’s precisely the sort of disposition you need to have when you’re an empire held together by endless military violence and the threat thereof.
So you get weird nonsense like US officials bombing the shit out of the middle east while proclaiming they have no interest in war, and engaging in extremely reckless aggressions against nuclear-armed rivals while pretending they’re just innocent witnesses to unprovoked aggressions if those nations respond.
Their information interests require them to be the good guy, but their strategic interests require them to be the bad guy. You can already tell without looking that straddling these contradictory positions will result in absurdity, and looking at today’s headlines confirms it.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via U.S. Secretary of Defense (CC BY 2.0)
The Western Press Are Just Printing Straight Up Nazi Propaganda About Middle Easterners Now
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/d59840c1e3f6f99dbe7b2dc0f7892690/href
Mass media outlets like The Guardian, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have been allowing the publication of some amazingly racist pieces these last few days. All are directed at middle easterners and those of middle eastern descent, just as the western empire drops more and more bombs on more and more countries in the middle east.
On Monday The Guardian published a political cartoon which would be indistinguishable from Nazi propaganda of the 1930s, except that it happens to depict a Muslim instead of a Jew. The cartoon features Iranian leader Ali Khamenei holding puppet strings to so-called Iranian proxy groups in the middle east like the Houthis, Hezbollah and Hamas, in exactly the same way Nazis used to depict Jews as malignant puppet masters manipulating world affairs.
Compare this:
to Nazi propaganda about Jews puppeting world leaders during the lead-up to the Holocaust:
To this day it’s understood by the mainstream press that it’s unacceptable to depict anyone of the Jewish faith as any kind of puppet-master figure in any context at all. Fox News, the Dutch paper De Volkskrant, the Indian Bharatiya Janata Party and right wing political cartoonist Ben Garrison have all come under fire in recent years for depicting Jewish people in that way, so it’s safe to say that if The Guardian had published a similar cartoon about Israeli influence featuring an Israeli leader it would have been a massive scandal subject to international outcry.
In fact the bar is quite a bit lower for what qualifies as an outrageous racist trope when it comes to criticism of Israel. Mainstream platforms like The Guardian, The New York Times and the Sunday Times have been pressured to remove cartoons critical of Israel which are far less clearly anti-semitic than cartoons about sinister puppet masters. In 2014 the Sydney Morning Herald was pressured to remove and apologize for a cartoon which was labeled anti-semitic because it featured “a grotesque stereotype of a Jew using a remote-control device to blow up houses and people in Gaza,” something that for the last four months has been a daily occurance and an objective fact of life.
There is zero chance that The Guardian’s editors would have even for a second entertained the idea of publishing such a cartoon about Israeli leaders in the year 2024, but apparently publishing the exact same sort of rehashed Nazi propaganda about Iranian leaders is perfectly fine.
Ben Norton on Twitter: "The NY Times is comparing victims of US-Israeli genocide and colonialism to insects.This is the contemporary equivalent of Nazi rhetoric that dehumanized their victims as cockroaches. Except now fascist ideology is so mainstream in the US, NYT columnist Thomas Friedman uses it. https://t.co/6pBTkoesrw / Twitter"
The NY Times is comparing victims of US-Israeli genocide and colonialism to insects.This is the contemporary equivalent of Nazi rhetoric that dehumanized their victims as cockroaches. Except now fascist ideology is so mainstream in the US, NYT columnist Thomas Friedman uses it. https://t.co/6pBTkoesrw
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, who has never met a middle eastern war that didn’t physically arouse him, was somehow permitted to publish an article titled “Understanding the Middle East Through the Animal Kingdom” which compares middle easterners to insects and parasites.
There is of course no meaningful analysis in Friedman’s piece; he’s literally just comparing countries he likes to cool animals and countries he doesn’t like to yucky bugs. Hamas is a spider. Iran is a “parasitoid wasp”, and Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq are the caterpillars it lays its eggs in. Netanyahu is a lemur, hopping side to side based on the political demands of the moment, and the United States? You guys, get this: the United States is a lion. Rooooar!
Again, there is no mainstream western outlet in existence who would permit a columnist to compare Israelis to insects or parasites, and rightly so — it’s exactly the type of dehumanizing language was used by the Nazis to pave the way to the Holocaust. But comparing Muslim populations is a-okay in the eyes of the western press.
“We have no counterstrategy that safely and efficiently kills the wasp without setting fire to the whole jungle,” Friedman writes, as though this is a perfectly sane and normal thing to print in the most influential newspaper in the western world.
“Sometimes I contemplate the Middle East by watching CNN. Other times, I prefer Animal Planet,” Friedman concludes, apparently never having been told that contemplating the middle east by watching either is an embarrassing admission.
And that’s it. That’s the extent of the analysis here from mister Thomas L Friedman, who has won no fewer than three Pulitzers for this kind of baby-brained schtick. And if that isn’t an indictment of the state of western journalism, nothing is.
Abdullah H. Hammoud on Twitter: "It's 2024 and the @WSJ still pushes out this type of garbage. Reckless. Bigoted. Islamophobic. Dearborn is one of the greatest American cities in our nation. - fastest growing city in MI- home to the #1 travel destination in MI (Greenfield Village / Henry Ford Museum)-... pic.twitter.com/81iQGGKWPx / Twitter"
It's 2024 and the @WSJ still pushes out this type of garbage. Reckless. Bigoted. Islamophobic. Dearborn is one of the greatest American cities in our nation. - fastest growing city in MI- home to the #1 travel destination in MI (Greenfield Village / Henry Ford Museum)-... pic.twitter.com/81iQGGKWPx
Not to be outdone, The Wall Street Journal has published an article by Steven Stalinsky titled “Welcome to Dearborn, America’s Jihad Capital” about the Michigan city which is home to the largest per capita Muslim population in the United States.
In recent decades Dearborn saw a wave of immigration from Palestine and from Muslim-majority nations that the US is currently bombing like Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and apparently Mr Stalinsky finds it outrageous and scandalous that such a population would be opposing Israel’s actions in Gaza at this time. He frets over a Palestinian American Islamist cleric calling President Biden a “senile pharoah”, which I think we can all agree is hilarious.
Stalinsky runs a think tank called the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which was literally founded by a former Israeli intelligence officer. Pro-Palestine activist and academic Norman Finkelstein has accused MEMRI of using “the same sort of propaganda techniques as the Nazis,” and even brazenly unprincipled empire propagandist Brian Whitaker has written that MEMRI “poses as a research institute when it’s basically a propaganda operation.”
In the last few days The Wall Street Journal has also published editorial board pieces with demented headlines like “Chicago Votes for Hamas” after the Chicago City Council voted to support a ceasefire in Gaza, and “The U.N.’s War on Israel” about the since-discredited narrative that some UNRWA staff are known to have participated in the October 7 attack.
And I must say it sure is an interesting coincidence how all this mass media demonizing and dehumanizing of Muslim populations is happening at the exact same time the western empire is raining military explosives upon nations full of Muslims. It’s almost like the western press are trying to manufacture consent for the military aggressions of western governments. It’s almost like they always have.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Wars of De-Civilization
Syria, Ukraine, Nagorno-Karabakh and now Gaza: connecting all recent wars is disregard for national sovereignty as recognised by international law....
However Bad You Think Israel Is, It’s Worse
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/93b896568a5fd9adb332188674fbbe45/href
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So it turns out the IDF has been running a Telegram channel featuring homemade snuff films in which Gazans are brutally murdered by Israeli forces, captioned with celebrations of the gore and pain therein like “Burning their mother… You won’t believe the video we got! You can hear their bones crunch.” The IDF had previously denied any association with the channel, but Haaretz now reports that it was directly run by an IDF psychological warfare unit.
This is one of those many, many times where Israel is so awful that at first you’re not sure what you’re looking at. You think you must be misreading the report. Then you read it again and go “Oh wow, that’s SO much worse than I would have guessed.”
However bad you think Israel is, you can always be sure that information will come out later that proves it’s even worse.
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Tucker Carlson has been spotted in Moscow, generating speculation that he’s there to interview President Vladimir Putin, and the liberal commentariat are losing their minds about it.
There’s no valid basis for westerners to object to Putin being interviewed by a western pundit. There’s no moral basis because Israeli officials have had unfettered access to a wildly sympathetic western press throughout four months of administering an active genocide. There’s no basis on the grounds that it hurts US information interests, because that would be admitting that US information interests depend on hiding information from the public about matters as basic as what a foreign leader thinks about his own actions, and essentially acknowledging that the western media are supposed to function as propaganda services for US military and intelligence agencies.
Every possible objection is also a confession about what the US empire and its media actually are.
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Americans: healthcare please
US government: Sorry did you say bomb Syria, Iraq and Yemen in facilitation of an active genocide?
Americans: no, healthcare
US government: Alright you drive a hard bargain but let’s go bomb Syria, Iraq and Yemen in facilitation of an active genocide.
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Biden isn’t technically lying when he says the US does not seek conflict in the middle east. The US seeks DOMINATION in the middle east, and would prefer to receive that domination willingly from submissive subjects. Only when middle easterners refuse to submit is there conflict.
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The US has never done anything good for the middle east. All it’s brought to the region is a bunch of murderous military operations and the nonstop murderous military operation that is the state of Israel.
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Setting up a bunch of military bases in countries on the other side of the planet and then going to war with anyone who tries to kick them out is pretty much the exact opposite of how a sane and ethical military would be used.
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US foreign policy is essentially one big long war against disobedience. Bombing, regime changing, starving and destabilizing any population anywhere on earth who dares to insist on its own self-sovereignty instead of letting itself be absorbed into the folds of the global empire.
They call different parts of it the Israel-Hamas War, the Iraq War, the War on Terror, but really it’s all the same war: the war on disobedience. One long operation to brutalize the global population into obedience and submission, year after year, decade after decade.
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When it comes to Israel the main difference between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives support Israel because they like it when Muslims get murdered while liberals support Israel because mumble mumble something something antisemitism Israel has a right to defend itself but we have serious concerns about the humanitarian HEY LOOK OVER THERE IT’S TRUMP!
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If the Gaza genocide had happened pre-internet it would’ve been a fringe issue hardly anyone knew about. The western press would have been able to get away with exponentially more cover-ups of Israeli crimes, western politicians would’ve been able to get away with way more lies about what’s really happening, Israeli officials would have been far less careful about their statements of genocidal intent in their own media, and the IDF would’ve been vastly more blatant and obvious about its extermination campaign.
It’s only because normal people are getting eyes into what’s really happening that this issue is subject to worldwide outcry and condemnation that has placed the empire on the back foot. The political/media class never does the right thing because it wants to, it does the right thing when it is forced to by normal human beings with healthy consciences. The fate of humanity rests on the ability of ordinary people to freely circulate truth.
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We’ve got a podcast coming out soon. Stay tuned.
________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via Adobe Stock.
Never Before Has The Empire Been So Exposed
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/e126e188b3b2ef376926a303565de8d6/href
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The Iraqi government says 16 people were killed in the latest round of US airstrikes in Iraq, including civilians. You might think 16 deaths as payback for three Americans killed by Iraqi militants would be more than enough, but you would be wrong. There will be many more.
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I’ve been railing against the US war machine for around seven years now, and never during that time have I had more westerners on my side than right now. Never has the depravity of the western empire been more starkly exposed in the cold light of day.
Usually perceiving the monstrousness of US foreign policy requires some knowledge and understanding, some background and context, and I’ve had to spend my time providing that so readers could see what I’m seeing. Now it’s just a deluge of massacred children appearing right on people’s social media feeds, with the US president proudly acknowledging that he’s backing it and bombing countries throughout the middle east to help it continue.
There’s not really any way for the imperial propagandists to spin that as anything other than what it is. They try (my god do they try), but not enough people are buying it. Too many people are looking right at the emperor’s shriveled nutsack in the cold morning air and saying “Hey wait a second, this bitch is ass dick naked!”
Everyone who opposes the US war machine has that one moment that snapped their eyes open, where they realized the media are lying to them and they’ve been cheering for the imperial stormtroopers this entire time. Syria. Libya. Iraq. Vietnam. There’s always something. And in terms of freshly opened eyes, this moment in history may wind up leaving the rest far behind.
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Top ten reasons people support Israel:
1. Their favorite political party supports Israel
2. They were taught to support Israel and revising your worldview is hard
3. They believe the media would never lie to them
4. They hate Muslims
5. They want Jesus to come back and send nonbelievers to hell
6. Their employment depends on it
7. They have a personality that always sides with power
8. They want to fit in socially with other people who support Israel
9. They hope to retire in an Israeli settlement someday
10. They want a career in politics or media
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https://medium.com/media/966a53a937d018148338f46d84b749dc/href
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Step 1: See the most horrific thing you can possibly imagine on your social media feed.
Step 2: Israel supporters show up to explain why the thing you just saw is actually fine and normal and should probably happen more.
Step 3: Repeat Steps 1 through 3, every day, for months.
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If Israel was the moral and responsible force it purports to be it wouldn’t need a huge army of paid and unpaid apologists running around all day every day explaining why its latest documented atrocity is fine/is being misunderstood/didn’t happen/is someone else’s fault.
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Israel has been the sole perpetrator of atrocities since October 7, so they keep “discovering” new atrocities Hamas perpetrated on October 7 to make it look less one-sided. Oh look they beheaded babies on October 7! Oh look there were mass rapes on October 7! Oh look UNRWA was involved in October 7! Etc.
❖
“Am Yisrael Chai” is a popular Hebrew political slogan which loosely translates to “Palestinians should not have hospitals”.
❖
Only liars and manipulators try to reframe criticisms of Israel as criticism of Jews instead of criticisms of the specific actions of a specific state power. Revealingly, both Zionists and neo-Nazis do this constantly.
❖
Get out of the middle east. Just get the fuck out. Stop backing a genocide in Gaza, stop murdering people to shore up domination of world resources, and leave. Leave before you unleash something far worse than the nightmare you’ve already inflicted upon our species.
________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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Biden Says The US “Does Not Seek Conflict In The Middle East” While Actively Dropping Bombs There
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/35963cee17667815fb6c97d437a8adf6/href
The Biden administration has begun its latest bombing campaign in the middle east, reportedly dropping over 125 munitions on more than 85 Iranian and Shia militia targets in Iraq and Syria on Friday.
The mainstream press have been falling all over themselves to describe the strikes as “retaliatory” in nature, framing it as a provoked response to a drone attack which killed three US troops at a base on the border of Jordan and Syria. Which is a bit odd, given that this supposed “retaliation” is being directed at a nation which the US government itself admits is not known to have been involved in said drone attack at all.
While US Central Command says the strikes targeted “Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and affiliated militia groups,” the US has already openly admitted that it has no evidence Iran was behind the drone attack. On Monday Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh admitted that there was no information showing that Iran had actually ordered or orchestrated the attack, saying only that Iran “bears responsibility” for the strike because it has been supporting such groups in the region. This position was later confirmed by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and by President Biden himself.
Michael Tracey on Twitter: "Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says "we don't know" how operationally involved Iran was in the January 28 attack that killed three US troops, "but it really doesn't matter" pic.twitter.com/j57JLFuirG / Twitter"
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says "we don't know" how operationally involved Iran was in the January 28 attack that killed three US troops, "but it really doesn't matter" pic.twitter.com/j57JLFuirG
Asked by the press on Thursday how much Iran knew in advance about the drone attack by Iraqi militants, Austin said “we don’t know, but it really doesn’t matter because Iran sponsors these groups.”
Austin was almost telling the truth. Yes it’s true the US has no knowledge of any Iranian involvement in the deaths of those three US troops, and yes it is true that it doesn’t matter to the US whether it did or didn’t. But the real reason it “doesn’t matter” has nothing to do with Iran sponsoring militia groups which align with its interests. In reality, “it really doesn’t matter” whether Iran was behind the attack because Iran is the most powerful non-US-aligned state in the middle east, and for that reason the US has spent generations seizing every opportunity to harm and subvert it and its interests in the region. This is just one more opportunity for the US empire to do what it always does in the middle east.
It is a bit odd, then, that the US president announced the beginning of this new series of airstrikes with a statement which claims “The United States does not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world.” Conflict in the middle east is what the US empire does. The entire US empire is held together by endless conflict, especially in resource-rich regions where strategic control is necessary to retain planetary hegemony. The US empire is conflict.
President Biden on Twitter: "Today, at my direction, U.S. military forces struck targets in Iraq and Syria that the IRGC and affiliated militia use to attack U.S. forces.We do not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world.But to all those who seek to do us harm: We will respond. / Twitter"
Today, at my direction, U.S. military forces struck targets in Iraq and Syria that the IRGC and affiliated militia use to attack U.S. forces.We do not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world.But to all those who seek to do us harm: We will respond.
Saying the US does not seek conflict in the middle east is like saying the Kardashians do not seek attention. It’s like saying Jeff Bezos doesn’t seek money. It’s like saying the Hamburglar doesn’t seek hamburgers. It’s kind of their thing. To make such a ridiculous claim while actively raining military explosives upon the middle east, in “retaliation” for an attack which the people you’re bombing didn’t even commit, is just extra icing on the cake of ridiculousness.
From Gaza to Iraq to Syria to Iran to Yemen, conflict in the middle east is the US empire’s bread and butter. The most murderous power structure on the planet continually paints itself as a poor little victim of any backlash against its abuses and as an innocent passive witness to the suffering it orchestrates, but nobody who’s involved in that many acts of violence has ever been interested in peace.
____________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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Democrats Are Demented Genocidal War Sluts
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/50d71b5d9286392fe4bf6701fbe8e0b7/href
President Biden is reportedly preparing to begin a new weeks-long bombing campaign in the middle east in retaliation for a drone attack which killed three US troops this past weekend. These strikes are expected to include Iranian targets, tempting the nightmare scenario of a full-blown war with Iran, despite the public acknowledgement that there’s no evidence Iran was behind the drone strike.
Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp explains:
“US officials told NBC News that the US is planning to launch a weeks-long bombing campaign in the Middle East in retaliation for the drone attack in northeast Jordan that killed three American soldiers.
“The officials said that the targets are expected to include Iranian targets outside of Iran, and the campaign will involve strikes and cyber operations. Other reports have said the US is considering targeting Iranians in Iraq and Syria or the Iranian navy.
“While the potential targets are not inside Iran, direct attacks on the Iranian military could provoke a full-blown war between the US and Iran. The US is considering taking this course of action even though the Pentagon admitted it has no evidence Iran was directly involved in the drone attack in Jordan.”
Dave DeCamp on Twitter: "Biden, the man the media is telling us doesn't want war, is planning a weeks-long bombing campaign against Iranian targets in the Middle East. Remember, they have no evidence Iran was even involved in the attack that killed 3 US troops. pic.twitter.com/6OZNfUvfqL / Twitter"
Biden, the man the media is telling us doesn't want war, is planning a weeks-long bombing campaign against Iranian targets in the Middle East. Remember, they have no evidence Iran was even involved in the attack that killed 3 US troops. pic.twitter.com/6OZNfUvfqL
Iran threatened to “decisively respond” to any US attack, either upon the Islamic Republic itself or upon the nation’s “interests and nationals under any pretexts.”
So this looks to be yet another dramatic escalation in the middle east by the warmongering policies of the sitting US president, who has also been waging a new bombing campaign in Yemen and backing a genocide in Gaza of unbelievable savagery where starving Palestinians are now eating grass and drinking polluted water in a desperate attempt to survive. According to a memo obtained by The Intercept, US troops have been put on standby for possible involvement in Israel’s assault on Gaza as well.
In the midst of all that murderousness the Twitter account from this bloodthirsty ghoul of a president is posting cutesey tweets at Elmo from Sesame Street about the importance of emotional wellbeing, which is about the most dystopian thing you can possibly imagine.
“Our friend Elmo is right: We have to be there for each other, offer our help to a neighbor in need, and above all else, ask for help when we need it,” Biden tweeted during an active US-backed genocide.
President Biden on Twitter: "I know how hard it is some days to sweep the clouds away and get to sunnier days.Our friend Elmo is right: We have to be there for each other, offer our help to a neighbor in need, and above all else, ask for help when we need it.Even though it's hard, you're never alone. https://t.co/ffMJekbowo / Twitter"
I know how hard it is some days to sweep the clouds away and get to sunnier days.Our friend Elmo is right: We have to be there for each other, offer our help to a neighbor in need, and above all else, ask for help when we need it.Even though it's hard, you're never alone.
Longtime Democratic Party leader Nancy Pelosi has been behaving even more freakishly. The former House Speaker said this past Sunday that people advocating a ceasefire in Gaza are promoting “Mr. Putin’s message,” claiming on no basis whatsoever that some pro-Palestine demonstrations are backed by Russia and should be investigated by the FBI.
In a video posted the very next day by antiwar activist group Code Pink, Pelosi is seen admonishing protesters against Biden’s Gaza genocide to “Go back to China where your headquarters is.” Pelosi’s demented accusation is presumably a reference to a New York Times smear piece which used sleazy insinuations to falsely imply a connection between Code Pink and the Chinese government without ever actually showing one to exist, and not even that smear piece ever claimed that Code Pink had a headquarters in China.
The “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party isn’t much better, with political pop stars like Bernie Sanders flailing all over the place to avoid advocating a ceasefire and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saying she fully supports Biden despite his actions in Gaza and adamantly refusing to say if the president is backing a genocide.
Ali Abunimah on Twitter: "In open defiance of the ICJ ruling, and largely due to unlimited support from @joebiden and @TheDemocrats, the Zionist extermination regime continues to plan its genocidal crimes in the open pic.twitter.com/kMAVGgxEOe / Twitter"
In open defiance of the ICJ ruling, and largely due to unlimited support from @joebiden and @TheDemocrats, the Zionist extermination regime continues to plan its genocidal crimes in the open pic.twitter.com/kMAVGgxEOe
A Democratic president engaging in genocide during a re-election year is highlighting the depravity of this warmongering capitalist party more starkly than anything else I can remember. Democrats frame themselves as responsible humanitarians who stand in opposition to the reckless murderousness and fascism of the Republican Party’s worst impulses, yet here they are openly falling all over themselves to justify mass atrocities driven by the racist feeding frenzy of a tyrannical far-right regime.
In reality the Democratic Party exists to promote the interests of the murderous US empire just as much as the Republican Party does. They might sometimes promote imperial interests in different ways, in the same way the left jab and the right cross are used differently in boxing. But just as a boxer uses jabs and crosses together to score a knockout blow, the empire uses the Democratic and Republican parties in conjunction to keep the imperial war machine trudging forward over human bodies, year after year and administration after administration.
________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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Cartoon: Signs your government is committing crimes against humanity
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More US-Driven Escalations Toward War In The Middle East
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/17b01bf81f8f701f3f648e2a2f0c1405/href
Well, it finally happened. The scores of attacks on US troops in the middle east in response to Israel’s US-backed atrocities in Gaza have resulted in American deaths, just as critics of US foreign policy have been saying would happen for months. At least now we can stop bracing for it, I guess.
Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp, among those who have long warned of this eventuality, writes the following:
“Three US troops were killed by an overnight drone attack in northeastern Jordan, the first Americans to die by enemy fire in the region since President Biden threw the US’s weight behind the Israeli onslaught in Gaza.
“According to CNN, one-way attack drones hit Tower 22, a small US outpost in Jordan near the Syrian border. Over 30 troops were also wounded in the attack.
“Since mid-October, US bases in Iraq and Syria have come under attack over 150 times in response to US support for the Israeli slaughter in Gaza. The overnight drone attack in Jordan appears to be the first time Tower 22 was targeted.”
Antiwar.com on Twitter: "Three American Troops Killed in Drone Attack in JordanBiden is blaming 'Iran-backed militants,' referring to Iraqi Shia militias, and might directly attack Iran in responseby Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Jordan #Iraq #Syria #Iran #Gaza #drones https://t.co/iJxvgxFa5E pic.twitter.com/3YZgBbPxV7 / Twitter"
Three American Troops Killed in Drone Attack in JordanBiden is blaming 'Iran-backed militants,' referring to Iraqi Shia militias, and might directly attack Iran in responseby Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Jordan #Iraq #Syria #Iran #Gaza #drones https://t.co/iJxvgxFa5E pic.twitter.com/3YZgBbPxV7
The Biden administration immediately claimed the attack was backed by Iran, with profoundly influential news agencies like AP and Reuters regurgitating this claim as established fact in their headlines immediately thereafter. As DeCamp notes in the aforementioned article, back in October a US official acknowledged to CNN that that there’s actually a “persistent intelligence gap” as to how much these Shia militias are in fact beholden to the orders of Tehran, but apparently this attack being linked to Iran is now being treated as established gospel truth anyway.
This attribution has allowed perpetually war-horny Republican senators Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton and John Cornyn to call on Biden to attack Iran directly. US officials actually told the press last week that Biden would consider direct strikes on Iran if and when the attacks on US troops led to American deaths, with The New York Times reporting the Biden administration knew it was “only a matter of time” before this occurred.
In a statement on the attacks Biden said the US “will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner our choosing,” meaning yet another military escalation in the middle east is on its way under this murderous administration. A full-scale war with Iran would be the absolute worst-case scenario resulting from the violence which erupted in the middle east this past October, potentially with mass deaths on a scale that would make what’s been happening in Gaza look like child’s play.
Michael Tracey on Twitter: "Lacking any defensible justification for why the three dead US troops were in Syria/Jordan to begin with, the White House resorts to saying they were generically "fighting terrorism." Insult to everyone's intelligence, but that's to be expected for US foreign policy statements pic.twitter.com/V6NMRZQCY8 / Twitter"
Lacking any defensible justification for why the three dead US troops were in Syria/Jordan to begin with, the White House resorts to saying they were generically "fighting terrorism." Insult to everyone's intelligence, but that's to be expected for US foreign policy statements pic.twitter.com/V6NMRZQCY8
In that same statement Biden said the US troops who were killed in the “despicable and wholly unjust attack” died working “to fight terrorism”, which is of course ridiculous. People who live in the middle east have far more legitimacy attacking US troops in resistance to a US-backed genocide than US troops have in being in the middle east to begin with, and the US military presence they attacked is there to shore up geostrategic control, not to fight terror.
As Aris Roussinos explains in a new article for Unherd, the US base by the Jordan-Syria border that was struck by Iraqi forces functions as a support base for America’s al-Tanf garrison, a sprawling “deconfliction zone” (read: illegal military occupation) in Syria which the US has for years been using to disrupt Iranian activities in the region and help Israel carry out its constant airstrikes in Syria. “Fighting terrorism” is just the pretense for the US military presence in the region; as always, the real reason is to facilitate the geostrategic domination of the US empire.
Those three US military personnel didn’t die fighting terrorism. They didn’t even die advancing the interests of ordinary Americans. The real reason they died was summed up nicely by Responsible Statecraft’s Trita Parsi:
“They didn’t die defending US interests, they died defending Biden’s refusal to press Israel for a ceasefire. Their lives were put at risk by Biden to defend Israel’s ability to continue its carnage in Gaza.”
Parsi has spent months arguing that the only thing that can de-escalate the rapidly expanding hostilities in the middle east is a ceasefire in Gaza, since that’s what they all ultimately arise from. The massive increase in attacks on US troops, the Yemeni blockade in the Red Sea, the brinkmanship with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the skyrocketing tensions with Iran are all the direct result of Israel’s massacre in Gaza and the opposition thereto.
Instead of pushing for a ceasefire, the US is preparing to send Israel 50 fighter jets and 12 Apache helicopters in preparation for the next war while stepping toward the horrifying prospect of a hot war with Iran. Meanwhile Nancy Pelosi is saying there needs to be an FBI investigation into people calling for a ceasefire, because they might be Russian secret agents.
Caitlin Johnstone on Twitter: "pic.twitter.com/WLWwFrVPHd / Twitter"
pic.twitter.com/WLWwFrVPHd
Every US military fatality in the middle east is the fault of the US government for putting them there. US troops shouldn’t be in the middle east at all, and the US has no legitimacy in retaliating against efforts to kick them out of the region by the people who live there. Iraqi militias have 100 percent legitimacy in attacking US troops in the middle east during a US-backed genocide, and the US has zero legitimacy in retaliating.
To the managers of the US empire:
Get out of the middle east. Just get the fuck out. Stop backing a genocide in Gaza, stop murdering people to shore up domination of world resources, and leave. Leave before you unleash something far worse than the nightmare you’ve already inflicted upon our species.
___________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
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