We live in a state of undeclared martial law. “If you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you. Don’t…
Tag: military
The United States has employed «shock and awe» techniques – described by Pentagon policy documents as the use of «spectacular displays of force» to intimidate an opponent – against the civilian population of the St….
Ferguson Unmasks the War on Black America A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford “The military character and mission of the police is more clear today than when the Black Panther Party…
Wars in an imperialist democracy cannot simply be dictated by executive fiat, they require the consent of highly motivated masses who will make the human and material sacrifices. Imperialist leaders have to create a visible and highly charged emotional sense of injustice and righteousness to secure national cohesion and overcome the natural opposition to early death, destruction and disruption of civilian life and to the brutal regimentation that goes with submission to absolutist rule by the military. The need to invent a cause is especially the case with imperialist countries because their national territory is not under threat. There is no visible occupation army oppressing the mass of the people in their everyday life. The ‘enemy’ does not disrupt everyday normal life – as forced conscription would and does. Under normal peaceful time, who would be willing to sacrifice their constitutional rights and their participation in civil society to subject themselves to martial rule that precludes the exercise of all their civil freedoms?
Part I Israel Gives Jews a Bad Name When I was growing up in a Jewish community in New York in the late fifties, there was a predictable collective response to news events that…
European Bombs Hit Gaza To me, to keep holding under the circumstances the medal of honor that gave me the State of Israel will be an insult.—Henk Zanoli Complicating Europe in the Gaza War, Israel…
Associated Press, December 1, 1990: New York Times, January 17, 1991: CNN, December 16, 1998: New York Times, December 17, 1998: CNN, March 1, 2003: Time, John Dickerson, January 28, 2003: CBS, March…
“Anti-Zionism, in fact, is the form that much of today’s anti-Semitism takes.” ~ Alvin Rosenfeld1 The only way to achieve this is by offering incentives for current and later generations of Zionists to resettle elsewhere,…
Israel (Netanyahu IN PARTICULAR) Speaks: “We PURPOSEFULLY ATTACK CIVILIANS… Because They Deserve It”
In a video recording dated in 2012, Netanyahu can be seen speaking to what presumably are family members, women and children, completely unawares to the fact that his remarks are being recorded the entire time. Netanyahu…
Injured Palestinian children at al-Najar hospital in Rafah, southern Gaza, following an Israeli military strike on 1 August. (Eyad Al Baba / APA images) Friday turned into yet another day of horror for Palestinians in Gaza, as Israel committed massacres and atrocities claiming the lives of at least 100 people. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Friday was meant to be the first day of a three-day “humanitarian ceasefire” announced on Thursday evening by the United Nations and the United States. The short-lived ceasefire was scheduled to begin at 8am local time on Friday morning. Predictably, the United States has blamed Hamas for violating the ceasefire by killing two Israeli soldiers and capturing a third, whom Israel named as Hadar Goldin. Hamas and its military wing the Qassam Brigades deny any knowledge of the missing soldier. Who really broke the ceasefire? And why did Israeli forces shell the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah so indiscriminately on Friday, slaughtering dozens of people? Could it have been in order to kill the captured soldier to prevent him becoming a valuable bargaining chip in the hands of the Palestinian resistance? Israel has long had a murky procedure called the Hannibal Directive that some interpret as an order to do whatever it takes to prevent a soldier’s capture, even if it means killing him in the process.