Working for Peace on Earth and Peace with Earth since 1952
Working for Peace on Earth and Peace with Earth since 1952
Immense celebrations all across Syria. The tyrant, mass murderer Bashar Assad ran away to Moscow. The picture at the right is Dr. Sahloul Gandhi Peace Award winner 2020.
Good article by Joseph Daher
https://tempestmag.org/2024/12/understanding-the-rebellion-in-syria/
“Neither the U.S.nor Israel had a hand in these events….Netanyahu said Israel would only act against perceived threats, such as Iran and Hezbollah’s forces and influence, explaining, “We haven’t had a problem with the Assad regime, for 40 years not a single bullet was fired on the Golan Heights.”
Looking at HTS and SNA’s policies in the past, they have not encouraged a democratic space to develop, but quite the opposite. They have been authoritarian
The Tankies: Ali Abunimah, Julian Assange, Mate, Max Blumenthal, Rania Khalek, and their delusions
Yassin Al Haj on Democracy Now on Monday
https://youtu.be/1ZwQiUVBaAw?si=5kbmTgEIk6xYlK6K
Sean O'Brien will speak on Sat., December 7 about the tech "everybody" is talking about and using AI. The talk will take place at 2 p.m. in the Community Program room of the New Haven Public Library (opposite the Green) at 133 Elm St.
Free Refreshments
Title of the talk "AI Isn't Funny"
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has introduced disruptive technology into the fabric of our society. This presentation examines the intersection of AI with issues of privacy, cybersecurity, environmental sustainability, and human creativity. We'll discuss the growing surveillance structure of both corporate and state actors and examine specific cases of AI-powered targeting of populations.
We’ll talk about how AI is being used by the military and the massive energy AI requires, accelerating problems with fossil fuel and nuclear energy.
AI may be able to tell jokes, but it's not funny.
Check out his website IvyCyber.com
To learn about his expertise click here
Here are some useful articles about AI
Massive Energy Use of AI and Blockchain - Democracy Now November 19, 2024
‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza - 972mag
As Use of A.I. Soars, So Does the Energy and Water It Requires - Yale 360
AI Poses Risk of Extinction - Industry Leaders Warn - NYT, May 2023
Obscene Energy Demands of AI - Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker, March 2024
ChatGPT reaches 100 million users two months after launch - Guardian (UK) 2/2023
Staggering Variety of Clandestine Trackers Found in Android Apps - The Intercept
Merely changing from fossil fuels to electric cars is not a winning strategy. For one thing, right now electricity is mostly produced by natural gas and in many places by coal. For another a massive demand for lithium and other minerals may cause a “green colonialism” as the powerful countries ravage poorer countries and indigenous areas for what they need. The 20th century idea of prosperity being a “new car in every garage” is a now a mistake and a danger. For the sake of a livable climate for humans and other animals we need mass transportation. The most energy efficient electric vehicle is the bus. Big buses for long trips and small buses or vans to pick up people from their homes.
Click here for Simon Pirani's remarks about a free bus campaign in London
The state of Karnataka in southwest India has a population of 61 million. It started a program in 2023 where women can travel on its buses for free. Here's a video about it. [For some reason everyone uses the word "scheme" when talking about the program. In the U.S. a "scheme" is something crooked. ]
https://youtu.be/7m55bWD59_E?feature=shared
Here's three videos about electric powered buses.
Finland
https://youtu.be/mF-Tw0BsaxE?si=ITh6TG-g4EzwWYfo
London
https://youtu.be/1kJf0-lUoRw?si=4C3nDx6_g4DhVaLu
Top 10 Electric Buses 2021
https://youtu.be/jghNvTW6zqE?si=C_16UcrPLzRqLW7_
Now just going to free electric buses would cause problems. A number of places had free buses after COVID moderated as a way to get people to use buses again. It was a mixed blessing. To some extent the buses became a place where people would go who were unhoused, unemployed or having psychological problems. They could ride around on a warm bus not really going anywhere. There were sometimes physical attacks on bus drivers. Piecemeal efforts to make reform have this limitation. There has to be big efforts on all sides of climate and social problems all at once.
Vocabulary note. We're talking about vitally needed carbon zero not the "net zero" scam whereby companies can burn fossil fuels while supposedly paying for planting trees or some other green scheme.
Weather reporter veteran South Florida meteorologist John Morales broke down on live TV on October 7 describing the oncoming storm. His voices hesitated and cracked as he said, “This is just and incredible, incredible, incredible hurricane. … "I mean, the seas are just so incredibly, incredibly hot, a record hot, as you might imagine," he explained. "You know what's driving that? I don't need to tell you. Global warming, climate change are leading to this and becoming an increasing threat for the Yucatan, including Merida and Progreso and other areas there [in Mexico]."
From @billmckibben on Twitter
“All hurricane are frightening, but there’s something gabout #Milton’s track and behavior that really makes my heart drop. Deeply hope I’m wrong."
“It’s into very densely populated country, and in particular an area that hasn’t had a direct hit for decades. So much has been built along the water.”
“The rapid rapid growth of Milton – tropical storm to category 5 in less than 24 hours – is almost unprecedented.”
@enkidu360 “Wondering about the decommissioned nuclear plant at Crystal River too” [It's about 60 miles north of Tampa, right on the coast]
Ellie Cohen writes on McKibben’s thread “Truly…and meanwhile, BP abandons goal to cut oil output by 25% by 2030 (which originally was 40%) as it continues to grow new production…
McKibben again “just a reminder that in May Governor DeSantis signed a bill removing consideration of climate change from all state laws.” And indeed NPR gave the details " Amy GREEN: Well, the law restructures Florida's energy policy so that climate change and addressing planet-warming pollution no longer are priorities, and instead, the priorities now are reducing reliance on foreign energy sources
There’s a recent forum on climate well worth watching. It’s called “The Strategy, Tactics and Demand to Defend our Climate”. Lots of good ideas in it but one sticks out, a demand for free public electric-powered transportation. Speakers agreed that an idea to put everyone in electric cars is a bad one from the point of climate and what it will do to weaker countries with “rare” minerals. It turns out that buses are the best form of transit in terms of global warming emissions. A campaign for free bus fare makes sense for the climate (and let’s work for high, high quality buses, not just bare bones transport that we grant to poor people). It would also be popular with transport worker unions.
And from the System Change Not Climate Change site these ideas on energy transition [which includes the idea of using less energy].
With all the great new ways to use solar, wind, tides, etc. for energy the hard truth is that if we continue to burn fossil fuels and garbage and such the air is going to fill with global warming gases. We go over tipping points in 2030 (see our Climate Countdown clock by clicking here to get to our climate and nature page).
Our bold plan for the climate.
Go to a plant-based diet.
The little state of Connecticut burns 40,000,000 gallons of gasoline for lawncare. 40 million gallons. Here's an alternative.
AI could soon need as much electricity as an entire country (2023 New York Times)
Bitcoin, a New and Dangerous Climate Disrupter - 2021
Join our two listservs to discuss aspects of this. One is called "All Out 4 the Climate". That's one to discuss bold plans to redo energy and the industries are are making the climates unlivable. The other is "Alternatives to Small Gas Engines for Lawncare". If you want to join either list write to office@pepeace.org and indicate either "All Out" or "Alternatives" or both.
Amid grotesque attacks on people in Gaza (the killing of 100 in al-Tab'een school, the rape of a Palestinian prisoner, The B'tselem report on Israel's "network of torture prisons" Congress gave Netanyahu 40 standing ovations, Biden released $3.5 billion in weapons, and Kamala told agonized protesters "I'm talking now".
Resisting all foreign and internal Israeli pressure to make a deal with Hamas Netanyahu tried to provoke Hezbollah of Lebanon and the Iraqi regime into an all-out war. He had assassinated Hamas' lead negotiator in Tehran and in the same week had his military kill Hezbollah's chief military leader in Beirut. Rather than yank on Netanyahu's chain Biden/Harris send ships to reinforce Israeli impunity.
The City of Nagasaki would not invite representatives from Israel for the annual ceremony. This led the U.S., the U.K. and a few others to boycott the ceremony. Why would Nagasaki do this? Is it overly sensitive to genocide? Or is it that Israel won't sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? Biden-Harris, of course, stands behind imperialism's attack dog.
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Putin has said that he could respond with nuclear weapons if any of Russia was invaded. Well, Ukraine just attacked and occupied in the Kursk region.
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From the site WorkersVoiceUS.org
" In “Hiroshima Notes,” Oe Kenzaburo writes of a moment in the midst of the Korean war when the United Press bureau chief in Tokyo asked a blind A-bomb victim, “I suppose we could end the war if we dropped two or three atomic bombs on Korea; as an A-bomb victim, what’s your opinion?”
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Click here for Program Friday 8/9 at 6:30 p.m. in Quaker Meeting House
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From the Hiroshima Declaration of the World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs - Hiroshima August 4, 2024
On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings in 2025, let us launch a grand campaign for the abolition of nuclear weapons:
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) is a "beacon of hope". It embodies the cause of human survival, and despite obstructions by nuclear powers, 93 countries have signed and 70 have ratified or acceded to the treaty.
- Never allow the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons. let the humanitarian consequences of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as of nuclear tests conducted worldwide be widely known, and let public opinion for the abolition of nuclear weapons be greatly developed. Support Japanese and Korean Hibakusha and the victims of nuclear tests around the world, and cooperate with and contribute to activities to implement articles of the TPNW.
- Strengthen the campaign for the abolition of nuclear weapons and for participation in the TPNW in particular. Strengthen this movement especially in the nuclear-armed countries and countries that rely on “extended nuclear deterrence”.
- Make the 79th session of the UN General Assembly, the Meeting of the Parties to the TPNW, and the NPT Review Conference as milestones to develop these campaigns in each country and develop international joint actions and cooperation between governments and civil society movements.
- Refuse military expansion, dismantle foreign military bases, dissolve military alliances, provide compensation and support to victims of war such as by Agent Orange and eradicate war-damages, promote peace education, end the war in Ukraine based on the principles of the UN Charter and diplomatic solution of the problems, stop genocidal attack on and blockade of Gaze by Israel, oppose terrorism by Hamas, and demand immediate ceasefire, and build wide-ranging cooperation with various peace movements working on these demands.
- Turn the tide of global conflict, division, and military expansion to build inclusive peace and redirect resources to solving the problems facing humanity.
Venezuela President Maduro claims to be building socialism and most of the U.S. Left parrots that line.
Watch this interview with Venezuelan activist Simon Rodriquez. In this 30-minute interview Rodriquez reveals:
Don't be fooled by rhetoric. Just because a government uses Leftist words and slogans and rails against U.S. imperialism that doesn't mean it's for social progress and democracy. As they say the proof is in the pudding.
Update August 2 Venezuelan leftist parties reject the dictatorship’s fraud and repression
Update August 3. Read today's piece in the British paper The Guardian
It was great to see students supporting Palestinians this spring with encampments and marches. One of their slogans was "Disclose, Divest and Reinvest". College students mostly have gone home but there's no lack of targets for them over the summer. See this article by Stanley Heller in the CT Mirror calling for the special session called by the governor to include divestment of CT's $95 million invested in Apartheid and Genocidal Israel.
Find out who is in charge of your state's investments (Treasurer? Comptroller?) and ask her/him how much in invested in Israel. Put the investment spreadsheet through the American Friends Service Committee investigate app and find in seconds questionable investments.
Do the same thing with unions that you may be part of. Here's a link to the contact page of the American Federation of Teachers. Ask how much of AFT money is invested in State of Israel Bonds or other Israeli bonds and stocks. Back in 2006 the AFT had $300,000 in Israel Bonds. The New York City United Federation of Teachers probably has much more.
Over the past few years you've seen many pictures of Anas in Gaza working with Plant the Land. We took part in a fund raiser to get him successful eye treatment in Egypt that grew out of sporadic access to insulin. He has remained in Gaza City with as many as 300,000 others. We've told you about fundraisers for his organization since.
What we haven't talked about is the toll on his body of being totally without insulin since October. In pictures he looks OK but HbA1c is over 12. We asked a doctor what the lack of insulin does to someone with his conditions. Please at least skim this. [Note, we put words in boldface for emphasis.]
"Normal blood sugar is about 70-100 mg/dL. When it is higher than that for extended or repeated episodes it causes deposits of sugar-based molecules on red blood cells. The level of these deposits, which are known as HbA1c can be measured and used to estimate what the average blood sugar has been over the previous weeks. A normal HbA1c should be around 5.5 or less. An HbA1c of 6.0 corresponds to an average blood sugar of 115. 9.0 corresponds to 215, and 12.0 indicates an average blood sugar of 315. 12.2 HbA1c is clearly in the danger zone and here’s why.
Blood sugars that are elevated cause damage to blood vessels, especially the tiny blood vessels that supply blood to nerves, the retina, and nephrons which are the functional units of the kidneys. Prolonged exposure to high blood sugars results in harmful deposits in these tiny arteries which over time causes them to get blocked up and quit supplying blood to the structures that they support.
· In the retina this results in blindness. It also causes cataracts, malformations of the lens of the eye, and blurry vision even if the retina is still functioning relatively well.
· In the kidneys there are 2 million nephrons. As their function progressively diminishes, the kidneys are no longer able to get rid of excess water and the normally occurring toxins that they filter from the blood. This results in kidney failure and is the number one cause for which people are on dialysis. In addition, the kidneys make a hormone that stimulates the bone marrow to make red blood cells and when it is gone, the person develops worsening anemia.
· In the brain, overall blood supply is reduced resulting in decreased mental function. There is also damage to larger arteries which develop plaques that can cause sudden obstruction of parts of the brain resulting in strokes.
· As individual nerves experience decreased blood supply they begin to malfunction resulting in the numbness and tingling of the extremities which is known as diabetic neuropathy. Over time, the loss of feeling in the feet results in increased injury even from minor causes resulting in poor healing, infection, and a high risk of amputation.
· The heart also suffers from damaged blood vessels and people with poorly controlled diabetes have much higher risk of heart attacks.
These things can and do occur very frequently in people with poorly controlled diabetes. In someone who has diabetes with no access to insulinand very limited access to clean drinking water, an HbA1c of 12 signifies the presence of a metabolic timebomb. A minor infection, a bout of diarrhea, or any other acute condition which can worsen dehydration and stress on the immune system can rapidly lead to a diabetic coma and death. This is a grave situation."
We have tried to get insulin to him through many different agencies but Israel controls north Gaza and lets very very little in. What can be done? First, get Israel to stop its war and get out of Gaza. Then people can flood the area with food and medicine. Please devote yourself to that cause.
In the meantime you can donate to the newest fundraiser as Anas uses the money to help others. Click here for information.
Make no mistake about it. The calls by politicians for sending the National Guard to stop protest on college campus is a call for murder of students. It’s a call for another Kent State. Back in May 1970 there were protests at Kent State University in Ohio to protest Nixon and his expansion of the Vietnam war into Cambodia, just as there were at many campuses throughout the country. An unknown person set fire to a small building, very possibly a police provocation. Then the Ohio National Guard was brought in by the Ohio governor. On May 4 after a demonstration that was mostly done and breaking up Guardsmen chased students and opened fire from around a hundred yards away. They killed 4 and injured 9, one who suffered for the rest of his life.
So what has so riled up the knuckle-dragging politicians? Students have occupied parts of their campus and put up tents. And they oppose the genocide of the Palestinians! That’s enough for the politicians. They want to smash the demonstrations and restore “order” just like Nixon and the governor of Ohio tried to back in the 70's.
No national guard on campus anywhere.
Protect the right to protest.
Israel out of Gaza.
Muralist Mike Alewitz lives in New London CT and maintains the Red Square Museum. He was an eyewitness to the Kent State Massacre. These are TSVN videos Alewitz’ presentation and interviews with Alewitz by Stanley Heller.
Mike Alewitz’ slide show
https://youtu.be/buylp63TLKk?si=Q2WKrMpgrhtkUwVi
Four shot were fired from another part of the campus
https://youtu.be/L7JfwnqK8QU?si=ZWRjMr2ADAQuaDNE
Kent State Eyewitness Says Shootings Ordered at Highest Level
https://youtu.be/DpRTDt2COBU?si=_9p8ZmN0RZJiBwzH
and this is Neil Young’s song, “Ohio” performed in 1971
Update: March 1
On Thursday, March 7, the Connecticut legislature's Energy & Technology Committee is holding a public hearing. One of the bills on their agenda, SB 300, is, as we see it, a pro-fracked gas bill with the ultimate aim of prolonging and expanding gas pipelines in Connecticut. Please, speak up in opposition and help stop this terrible bill. Even a brief statement, a few short sentences, can help.
Register to testify in person or via Zoom
Here is a document with more info about 2 hearings and the bills of note, including this one!
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The Enbridge Company has its eyes set on the Northeast. In 2023, Enbridge shockingly announced plans to resurrect the “Access Northeast” pipeline expansion, under a new name: “Project Maple”. Enbridge is working to secure contracts for the additional gas that would be shipped into the Northeast as part of the project. Preliminary documents show that Enbridge is hoping to expand pipelines, and compressor stations in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. Meanwhile, last ditch plans to once again build LNG export terminals in Nova Scotia have remerged.
This plan would include building out compressor stations and other dirty energy infrastructure — wreaking havoc on our air and climate, and directly contradicting the clean energy goals mandated by New York's Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.
The new fight against this pipeline project and massive fracked-gas build out is just beginning. But by taking cues from the Stop Spectra movement, it’s important to start organizing regional opposition, building up our tool kit to launch a diversity of tactics, all while following the lead of frontline communities. Together we can stop Project Maple, and End Enbridge.
It's important to oppose ALL expansion of natural gas facilities.
In Connecticut: Milford and Brookfield
From the CT Sierra Club:
As you may know, TC Energy and Berkshire Hathaway are attempting to expand their compressor stations along the "Iroquois" pipeline route that runs from Canada to NYC. This project includes adding cooling systems to a compressor station in Milford, CT and doubling the size of a compressor station in Brookfield, CT.
The facility in Brookfield is situated just 1900 feet from a Middle School, posing a serious health and safety risk. It also lies at the intersection of the Enbridge pipeline and can switch gas between the two pipeline systems. The expansion project already has its FERC permit, so the final permit needed for the Brookfield compressor station is from the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP).
Brookfield residents and Sierra Club CT are asking Connecticut based groups to sign on to this letter urging DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes, and Governor Ned Lamont to reject the permit for the expansion, and to fund air monitoring in Brookfield.
Please let me know if you have any questions about the letter, or the proposed expansion. We are asking that groups sign on to the letter by February 8th.
Thanks so much,
-Nick
--
Nick Katkevich
Northeast Field Organizer
Sierra Club
Also see Food and Water Watch
Promoting Enduring Peace was founded in Connecticut in 1952 and we're still based there so we take special interest in what goes on in the state. Read PEP Administrator Stanley Heller's piece about CT investments in Israel that appeared in the Connecticut Mirror. Shamefully the apartheid and genocide practiced by the Israeli government has not caused Connecticut to stop investing in Israel. One of the investments is in Elbit, Israel's largest weapons-maker.
The problem is not only with Connecticut. We suspect every state Treasury has investments in Israel. (and a lot of unions, too). Why not google your state Treasury office and write and ask about exposure of the state's pension fund money to Israeli corporations, Israel State bonds and Israeli currency. And then start complaining
Here we are at the start of 2024 and the climate news continued to be bad. COP28 was a joke. Temperatures for the year averaged just a hair under the 1.5 degree centigrade limit that climate scientists believe necessary to avoid catastrophic changes to world climates. Parts per million of carbon dioxide last month where at 423, far above the 350 that should be the limit for that gas in our air.
The Biden Administration continues Obama's "all of the above" strategy, combining incentives to go electrical with continued oil drilling, pipeline and subsidies for oil exploration.
Groups like Climate Defiance, Extinction Rebellion, 350 and Greenpeace in different ways are trying to rise to the challenge.
In Connecticut there will be a big climate march on February 2nd at noon starting at the Old State House. The legislature promised to bring down emissions nearly in half by 2030, but is nowhere on track to do so. In fact emissions are going up! The rally demands the state keep its promise.
We've updated the look on our climate countdown clock. It counts down the time to 2030, the year the IPCC in 2018 said we MUST cut emissions by 45%. We also link to some new article on climate and nature. Click here to see the clock and the links.
And on a lighter note be sure to see Netflix' "Life on Our Planet" narrated by Morgan Freeman. Spectacular! This is the trailer.
Watch Garrison Hayes’ video which is posted on the "Mother Jones" feed on Twitter.
So in 1967 King cancelled his trip to Israel. 1967 was not the right time for his peace address, not while Israel was reveling in its new conquests.
Here’s a piece on the site “The Conversation” comparing King’s moral stance against the Vietnam war with the Israel war/genocide against Gaza Palestinians today
We’re going to go way way out on a limb and say that King would be calling now for a ceasefire in the war in Gaza. He did not believe in once-and-for-all military solutions to problems. There’s an effort before the New Haven Board of Alders to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire. As of 1-13 it is stalled. Why not write to the Alders? Here’s their emails.
Here's Kings famous 1967 address against the Vietnam War which he gave when many of his advisers said he should stick to civil rights.
See King's 1964 Promoting Enduring Peace Medallion in the next section
In 1964 Martin Luther King Jr. was voted the award by Promoting Enduring Peace primarily for his work with the Southern Christian Leadership Council. He was just 35 years of age. He also won the Nobel Peace Prize that year.
From the book, "In Gandhi's Footsteps" by James van Pelt, " He agreed to come to New York to accept it[the award] in late 1964. Before a date could be arranged, the Nobel Prize Committee announced that he had been chosen to receive the 1964 Peace Prize. Given the intensity of attention that followed for Dr. King, on top of his already gargantuan schedule, and the difficulty in communicating with him as he moved from place to place, it was simply impossible to find a workable date within a period the Board found acceptable. As a result, no award was made in 1964, and Gandhi’s greatest living American exemplar did not become a recipient of the Gandhi Peace Award. "
We've talked many times about Anas Arafat in Gaza City who worked as part of "PLant the Land" making areas more self-sufficient in food and distributing vegan food.
We told you how his diabetes and sporadic access to insulin left him with severe eye problems. Many of you donated to help him get to Egypt where a doctor was able to reverse the damage to a certain extent.
He actually lives north of Gaza City not too many miles from the fence with Israel. When Hamas attacked on October 7 and Israel started dropping bombs from planes he immediately took his wife and two children and started moving from place to place for refuge. He learned that his house had been bombed as was an educational center he ran. Six children who were in that center seeking a place to live were killed. A dozen members of Anas family have been killed since October 7.
He tried to follow Israeli directives and go south with his family, but the vehicles before his were bombed and he turned around. For a while he was living in the ruins of his house.
His pregnant wife gave birth on December 15. He has not had insulin for a month at least. And now they are hungry all the time as are thousands still left in the northern part of Gaza?
How can we help his family? There's no quick fix, no donation to give. There has to be a complete ceasefire. Israel and the U.S. have to let a flood of aid in (the world will give). Roads and hospitals have to be restored.
Let Gaza Live!
Associated Press article says 1 in 4 are starving
Read the Human Rights Watch report.
Of course, this is another vile war crime.
The BDS Movement was set up by Palestinian organizations nearly 20 years ago to call for and guide campaigns of BDS(Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions) to pressure Israel on Palestinian rights. On December 1 it sent out these recommendations:
Unite now to stop #GazaGenocide and dismantle Israeli apartheid! Let’s use our people power to demand:
Click here for printable posters to use at rallies
Videos
Thousands march in New Haven against genocide and for Palestinian rights
more coming
Statements and Articles
PEP Administrator Heller tears up Israeli rationale to bomb Gaza's biggest hospital in this New Politics article.
Useful articles about Palestine/Israel
While we support Palestinian rights 100% we, of course, cannot support gross human rights violations by Palestinians such as what happened on Oct. 7 when the justifiable break out from the Gaza "prison" was accompanied by atrocities against
Israeli civilians in which perhaps 1,000 civilians were slaughtered.
We urge you to join in demonstrations demanding "Ceasefire" and an end to the siege of Gaza
Some chants in rallies may at first seem to allow no place for Israeli Jews in a democratic future, but "Free Palestine" means democracy and human rights for all between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
How Israel and Netanyahu in Particular Helped Hamas
It was seen as a useful rival to the Palestinian Authority
How Israel Helped Create Hamas - The Intercept Feb. 20, 2018
Former Israeli official Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s, told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat.
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Why Did Netanyahu Want to Strengthen Hamas?
article in the Israeli paper Haaretz on 10/11/23 by Dmitry Shumsky
"That’s because since he took office as prime minister a second time in 2009, that same Netanyahu developed and advanced a destructive, warped political doctrine that held that strengthening Hamas at the expense of the Palestinian Authority would be good for Israel."
"This is solidly documented. Between 2012 and 2018, Netanyahu gave Qatar approval to transfer a cumulative sum of about a billion dollars to Gaza, at least half of which reached Hamas, including its military wing."
"In an interview with the Ynet news website on May 5, 2019, Netanyahu associate Gershon Hacohen, a major general in reserves, said, “We need to tell the truth. Netanyahu’s strategy is to prevent the option of two states, so he is turning Hamas into his closest partner. Openly Hamas is an enemy. Covertly, it’s an ally.”
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For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces
The Times of Israel - Tal Schneider, October 8, 2023
"The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state."
"Meanwhile, Israel has allowed suitcases holding millions in Qatari cash to enter Gaza through its crossings since 2018, in order to maintain its fragile ceasefire with the Hamas rulers of the Strip."
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A Shaken Israel Is Forced Back to Its Eternal Dilemma
Roger Cohen, New York Times, Oct 8, 2023
"The assumption was...that it could even be a useful vehicle for weakening the more moderate Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, thus burying talk of a Palestinian state."
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Thomas L. Friedman on Israel’s ‘Morally Impossible Situation’
"Prime Minister Netanyahu really had a very intentional policy of strengthening Hamas and weakening the Palestinian Authority. So strengthening the Palestinian group that would never recognize Israel while weakening the one that would."
Oct 20, 2023
Friedman is a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist
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We also have to mention what was perhaps the founding atrocity that created Hamas, a massacre of Palestinians in Khan Younis camp in Gaza in 1956 on November 3. Historian of Palestine Zachary Foster recounts how on that day between 275 and 525 Palestinian men and youths were stood against walls and executed. The IDF probably thought they were dealing with the problem "once and for all".
Funny how those "solutions" never work out. Abdulassiz Rantissi, then 8-years-old lived in that camp and decades later co-founded Hamas.
Foster's source for the above was Jean-Pierre Filiu in " Gaza: A History. Oxford University Press" published in 2014, p. 271. Also look at the graphic "Footnotes in Gaza" by Joe Sacco. He depicts the massacre extensively.
Ukrainians Government Warns
The Peril:
Ukraine holds disaster drills amid fears Russia could sabotage nuclear power plant - ABC News July 1 - Chief of Military Intelligence Budanov "told The New Statesman magazine that Russian troops had rigged the station's cooling ponds with explosives, that if destroyed could lead to the reactors melting down. He also said Russia had moved explosives-laden vehicles into four of the plant's six power units."
Zelenskiy: Russia may be preparing to trigger nuclear plant explosion - The Guardian (UK)
Russia reducing personnel at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant - Ukrainian intelligence
Also note The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)also warns that as a result of the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam, the nuclear plants have only about two months of water for those cooling pools. [destruction almost certainly caused by Russia]
The Idea:
Get the UN General Assembly to order an international unit under its command to take over control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant complex, a peace-keeping force. Establish a demilitarized zone around the plants.
See this petition created by the Ukraine Socialist Solidarity Campaign
Let anti-nuclear, anti-war and trade unions know about this idea
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