Our Friday News Analysis | What the World Reads Now!

Attendees hold "freedom" signs on the second day of the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, 20 August 2024, at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Melina Mara / The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Waleed Aly, Presenter

Scott Stephens, Presenter
Sinead Lee, Producer
The Minefield
ABC News Radio Australia
Religion and Ethics
Wednesday, 8 August 2024, 20:00 hours (8 PM)

Guest: Dalia Nassar is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. Her most recent book is Romantic Empiricism: Nature, Art, and Ecology from Herder to Humboldt.

Listen here (53 minutes, 57 seconds)

Even for a nation obsessed with the concept of “freedom” — or perhaps it would be better to say concepts, not all of them easily reconciled, some of them utterly incommensurable — the prominence it was given during the recent Democratic National Convention was arresting – [Editor’s note: as American as Apple Pie, to many a bit pie in the sky].

It was as though the Democratic Party vaulted the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush alike — both of which used ‘freedom’ as a mantra, a talisman, a point of vital differentiation against communism and terrorism — and return to the muscular wartime rhetoric of Franklin Roosevelt, with his vision of domestic or civic freedom – [Editor’s Note: I, too, love apple pie with heaps of whipped cream].

But are these competing visions of freedom not doomed to remain in an untenable tension without a mediating or underlying conception of freedom’s nature and limits?

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Editor’s Note |

This Aussie-produced Podcast has changed my view of all Aussies. Though many still seem or pretend to be boisterous, beer-drinking rednecks, some – certainly the participants of the radio broadcast – are genuinely intellectually arresting. I got hooked. I listened to this podcast twice and learned a lot. It helped expand my imagination not just about America in particular but the world in general.

Listen here (53 minutes, 57 seconds)

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What is the Side of the Story that is Not Yet Decisive? Edited by Abraham A. van Kempen.

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EDITORIAL … The Pendulum Swings and Planet Earth Continues to Spin (Part 2)

The Building the Bridge Foundation will not claim to be perfectly endowed with the truth, nothing but the truth. Besides, truth often changes with the wind. Adapting to newfound discoveries and grasping the truth is more critical than remaining stuck in ruts.

So, in the U.S., both competing presidential candidates claim to champion democracy—freedom—while denigrating the other as advocating autocracy. Neither has expressly stated how their version of American democracy will affect America and the world.

We hear the talk. Where is the WALK? Will either former President Trump or Vice President Harris make a difference in assuring that:

1. The U.S. will harness Israel to prevent World War III.
2. The U.S. will rein in NATO to circumvent World War III.
3. The U.S. will diplomatically resolve the EU-US/NATO-Middle East crisis.
4. The U.S. will do everything possible in its power to avoid World War III.
5. The U.S. will encourage people everywhere, especially in the U.S., to interact freely with opposing views.

Frankly, the people of the world have given up on the U.S., and so have many Americans. I believe the better candidate would be the one who states humbly:

               “We screwed up. We blew it. We compromised our values. Let’s stop the madness and the insanity. Let’s work together to heal our broken humanity.”

Our Planet Earth has existed for an estimated 4,500 million years. Whether or not we are present, it will continue to spin.

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MAJORITY OF ISRAELIS BACK CENSORING GAZA WAR SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS, EXPOSING JEWISH-ARAB DIVIDE, POLL SHOWS

Political divisions further shape opinions on censorship, the poll finds. Among Israelis on the right, 76 percent want to block posts supporting Gaza's civilians, compared to only 25 percent on the left.

A woman takes images of posters in support of hostages kidnapped during the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas in Tel Aviv, Israel, July 29, 2024. Credit: Ricardo Moraes/ REUTERS

By Etan Nechin
Haaretz Israel
5 September 2024

A new Pew Research Center survey found that a majority of Israelis support censoring social media content related to the Israel-Hamas war.

Conducted in March 2024, the poll shows that 92 percent of Israelis believe posts inciting violence should not be allowed, while 87 percent say posts supporting Hamas should be censored. Additionally, 72 percent want graphic images or videos from the war removed.

Fifty-nine percent think posts expressing sympathy for civilians in Gaza should be restricted, while 41 percent think posts criticizing the government should be censored.

The survey highlights a significant divide between Jewish and Arab Israelis. While 70 percent of Jewish Israelis favor censoring posts sympathetic to Gaza's civilians, only 18 percent of Arab Israelis agree. There's also a split on posts critical of the Israeli government, with 55 percent of Jews supporting censorship, compared to 31 percent of Arabs.

Continue reading …

LISTEN/READ | LIBERALISM REMOVES ITS MASK

Upper-class America pretended to care about rights until the rabble moved too close to home.

By Matt Taibbi
Substack.com
2 September 2024

Listen to Podcast: (10 minutes, 18 seconds)

In the Washington Post today, under the headline, “Musk and Durov are facing the revenge of the regulators”:

While freewheeling internet companies have long clashed with authoritarian regimes — Google in China, Facebook in Russia, or pre-Musk Twitter in Turkey — Western governments until recently generally did not regard social media and the vision of free speech they promoted as being fundamentally at odds with democracy… Banning entire social networks or arresting their executives simply wasn’t something liberal democracies did… Now, for better or worse, it is.

Columnist Will Oremus noted that although the Durov and Musk cases differ, both “involve democratic governments losing patience with cyberlibertarian tech moguls” who “thumbed their noses at authorities.” He highlighted a “vibe shift,” noting that “high-flying tech leaders will have to think a bit more carefully” about “whose soil they’re on when they step off a plane.”

American liberalism railed against Bush conservatives who said those who didn’t break the law had nothing to hide. Now, once-liberal voices are tripping over each other to make more extreme versions of the same argument. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich published a guide to how to “rein in” Elon Musk in The Guardian that includes a recommendation that “regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest,” adding cheerfully that “global regulators may be on the way to doing this, as evidenced by the 24 August arrest in France of Pavel Durov.” Following up its July article about how “The First Amendment is Out of Control,” the New York Times also has a piece titled, “The Constitution is Sacred. Is it Also Dangerous?”

My old employers at Rolling Stone described defenders of Durov as “far-right extremists” and Musk as a “grandstanding” charlatan seeking to evade “consequences.” All this aligns with the views of Kamala Harris, who argued that “there has to be a responsibility placed” on social media sites to prevent misuse of speech “privileges.” The Harris take previewed the complaint this year by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson that the First Amendment was “hamstringing the government” despite this being its purpose.

There’s no “vibe shift.” Having written bestselling books on criminal justice for blue-leaning audiences, I can attest: American liberalism’s trumpeting of “rights” always stopped at the border of whatever tony suburb or upscale city neighborhood it inhabited. While public defenders fought rights violations at peasant wages, wealthy Democrats in the privacy of voting booths consistently voted in the truncheon, lapping even law-and-order Republicans in aristocratic disgust of the rabble. As podcast partner Walter Kirn put it, the mask is off:

A dozen years ago, I covered court proceedings involving a pair of fortysomething black men named Anthony Odom and Michael McMichael. The pair were ex-cons, long retired from the drug game, who’d been stopped in the Bronx, yanked out of a Range Rover, thrown in a van, and hauled to jail because an undercover cop on foot claimed to smell weed through closed windows as they drove by in winter. Were they questioned? “You don’t know the New York City police,” Anthony said. “They won’t be asking you anything.”

Finding no drugs, prosecutors offered generous deals. What about a guilty plea and a twenty-five-dollar fine? No? How about community service? (“It’s just two hours!” a prosecutor pleaded.) Only after a year of both men saying no did the city drop the case, which I was following after running into a series of these “thrown in a van” stories while writing The Divide. They were part of a “fishing with dynamite” enforcement strategy that forced beat cops to satisfy massive arrest and summons quotas laid down by stats-obsessed captains and commissioners. (“We need three more,” McMichael and Odom heard over the police radio.)

How city politics work: wealthy developers get Mayors elected, and Mayors use police to keep developers happy. “Community policing” strategies used to round up McMichael and Odom were part of a statistical dragnet wealthy New Yorkers repeatedly endorsed. The developer-pol relationship was a subtext to the death of Eric Garner, who dressed in rags and at 350 pounds, drew complaints from builders of fancy condos across the street from Garner’s Staten Island corner. On the day Garner was killed, a lieutenant from the 120th precinct saw Garner as he drove past, remembered complaints, and dispatched detectives to move him off the corner. They ended up killing him instead.

This kind of police murder was rare. What was and is common is the use of draconian methods to harass people on the borders of rich and poor neighborhoods. The stats era saw cops staking out parked bicycles to hand out summonses for riding on sidewalks or seizing cash in stop-and-frisk searches before telling citizens they could bring in pay slips to get it back. Undercovers were dispatched on buses to homeless shelters to catch homeless fare-beaters, and vast quantities of arrests and tickets were issued for offenses like loitering and “obstructing pedestrian traffic.”

Those tactics were born in the court of famed liberal Justice Earl Warren, who, at the end of his career, chafed at criticism that he’d “coddled criminals.” His opinion in Ohio v. Terry, which legalized stop-and-frisk, read like an apologetic walk-back of ideals, worrying that a “rigid” application of his exclusionary rule barring illegal searches may extract a “high toll” in “frustration of efforts to prevent crime.” Terry threw the police a bone. Years later, former Boston, New York, and Los Angeles police Commissioner William Bratton used that precedent to turn urban policing into a volume game, where young black men got to put “against the wall.” At the same time, residents in the West Village or Upper East Side hardly saw police (or young black men, for that matter).

These strategies were often described as “experiments,” which is what America’s cities are: giant labs for testing dystopian police methods. The core recent innovation is aggressive enforcement of minor offenses like disorderly conduct so that anyone can be arrested anytime. A little-discussed part of the experiment? Virtually all the cities are one-party states. The politicians are nearly always Democrats, and the biggest whip-crackers are more typically people like Baltimore Democrat Martin O’Malley than interlopers like Rudy Giuliani.

I was always confused by young white activists holding up signs protesting police GENOCIDE. Again, murders of unarmed men were relatively rare. The genuine outrage was in the stops, harassment, and, worst of all, the political monopolies in cities that made it impossible to fix solvable problems like the rooting out bad officers or COMPSTAT-type programs that pre-mandated tickets and arrests. This out-of-sight, out-of-mind policing program was a product of the weird paternalistic bigotry of America’s intellectual class, which wants to appear enlightened while avoiding contact with minorities. By the end of I Can’t Breathe, I came to believe the extraordinary willingness to support Constitution-flouting enforcement tactics was rooted in a psychological need of affluent voters to avoid facing their racial views while keeping working-class cops the symbols of racism.

It was big news in June of 2016 when Reuters published a poll showing that 32% of Trump supporters believed blacks were less “intelligent” than whites. The fact that 22% of Clinton supporters said the same thing got less ink. Since 2016, a lot has changed, but the more infantilizing version of racism made famous by text-borrowing dingbat Robin DiAngelo became chic after the murder of George Floyd. Academics argue that black people are so historically damaged that they now need far more than equal opportunity, and health authorities regularly trumpet an idea I first saw expressed in the Obama years: that “belief in meritocratic ideology may be detrimental to African American health.”

Another change? The experiment with two-tiered justice moved outside cities. Bill Bratton is now the Homeland Security Advisory Council co-chair, asserting that your “cognitive infrastructure” is a policeable space. You can read the HSAC’s “Disinformation Best Practices” recommendations here. Affluent urbanites didn’t want to hear about all those poor people. They voted to stop, frisk, ticket, strip-search en masse, arrest on bullshit crimes, and send north to all those prisons built by Mario Cuomo. But they’ll gush over prosecutions of J6 protesters, surveillance of “DVEs” and terrifying aviation threats like Tulsi Gabbard, and censorship of “far-right” Internet users who spread “disinformation” or disobey federal lockdown or vaccine policies.

This is all freeing for white liberals. In the age of Trump, there’s no longer a need to pretend to care about people on the business end of unconstitutional crackdowns, who can and must be painted as deserving of all of upscale America’s most aggressive enforcement plans.

In fact, as columns like Reich’s show, they can barely restrain their glee at using institutional power to go after unwelcome visitors to what they consider their political neighborhood, i.e., earth. They’ll keep painting shutdowns and arrests as blows against “unaccountable” billionaires, but make no mistake, the real targets of their anger are the millions of ordinary slobs refusing their advice and calling them names online. In cities, they arranged it so the riff-raff were neither seen nor heard (and those who disobeyed went upstate, fast). Until they get the same service everywhere else, aristocrats go to aristocrats. They don’t feel like hiding it anymore.

U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT REVEALS LEGAL ACTION AGAINST RT

Two individuals identified as employees of the Russian network were criminally charged, and four more were sanctioned.

FILE PHOTO. © Misha Friedman / Getty Images

RT Newsroom

HomeWorld News
4 September, 2024 18:29

The U.S. Department of Justice has charged two Russians it identifies as RT employees with money laundering and working as foreign agents for their alleged role in pushing video content that sowed “discord and division” in the U.S.

In a criminal indictment unsealed on Wednesday, U.S. prosecutors claimed that Konstantin Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva financed and directed a Tennessee-based production company that published English-language videos to various social media platforms aimed at amplifying “domestic divisions in the United States.”

These videos were viewed more than 16 million times on YouTube alone. The indictment alleged, and, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray, represented an attempt to “trick Americans into unwittingly consuming foreign propaganda.”

               Producing videos highlighting U.S. social and political divisions is not a crime.

               However, Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva broke the law by not registering as foreign agents, according to the Justice Department.

READ MORE: Russia has never tried to dictate any narrative to me, unlike the West – Scott Ritter

Back in 2017, the Department of Justice forced the now-defunct RT America to register as a foreign agent after a host of U.S. intelligence agencies claimed that RT had helped to elect Donald Trump by publishing “negative coverage” of Hillary Clinton and criticizing the U.S.’ “corrupt political establishment.”

READ MORE: RT America’s ‘foreign agent’ registration driven by error-riddled intel report.

Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva face a maximum sentence of five years in prison for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act and 20 years for money laundering. However, the charges against them will likely never be proven in an American courtroom, as the U.S. has no extradition treaty with Russia.

The two Russians were also sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday, along with RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan and three other senior RT employees. Simonyan dismissed the charges, responding, “Great job, team!” on Telegram.

In a press conference on Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said that the allegations against Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva, as well as a separate Russian scheme to allegedly spread anti-Ukraine content online, “make clear the ends to which the Russian government, including at its highest levels, is willing to go to undermine our democratic process.”

Simonyan ridiculed U.S. officials for claiming – for the third election in a row – that RT is attempting to interfere in American politics. “If they kick us out completely, how will they conduct the next elections?” she wrote in a follow-up post on Telegram. “They don’t have any other strategies except to scaremonger about the almighty RT.”

READ MORE |BIDEN TO TAKE ‘LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTION’ AGAINST RT – CNN

The White House is expected to claim, yet again, that the Russian network is a crucial player in a plot to interfere with the US election.

HomeWorld News
4 September 2024 15:27

The administration of US President Joe Biden is planning to accuse Russia of meddling in this year’s presidential election and will announce “law enforcement action” against those supposedly responsible, CNN reported on Wednesday. RT will be the prime target of this action, the network stated.

Continue reading …

NETANYAHU ESCALATING GAZA WAR TO HELP TRUMP WIN ELECTIONS, NY TIMES’ THOMAS FRIEDMAN SAYS

New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman argues that Netanyahu's decisions during the negotiations for a Gaza deal are based on an attempt to strengthen Trump in the upcoming elections, who he believes will help him politically.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump shake hands at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Credit: Sebastian Scheiner,AP

By Rachel Fink
Haaretz Israel
4 September 2024

New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman argued that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is escalating the war in Gaza to help Donald Trump win the U.S. presidential election in November because Netanyahu believes a Trump presidency is the key to his political survival.

Friedman's latest opinion piece begins with an ominous warning for Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate: be afraid. "Madam Vice President," Friedman writes, "I have no doubt this will lead [Netanyahu] to do things in the next two months that could seriously harm your election chances and strengthen Donald Trump's."

READ MORE: Republican Jewish confab to back Netanyahu's 'total victory' over Hamas –Biden

Friedman then lays out what these "things" are: dragging out hostage negotiations, derailing any discussion of a possible two-state solution, refusing to evacuate the Philadelphi corridor, and escalating Israel's military campaign in Gaza.

"The whole thing is a fraud," Friedman argues, one that Netanyahu has created to keep himself alive politically via the U.S. presidential election.

U.S. Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 5 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Monday. Credit: AFP

According to Friedman, Netanyahu understands Harris's difficult position regarding her position on Israel. He explains: "If Netanyahu continues the war in Gaza until 'total victory,' with more civilian casualties, he will force Harris either to publicly criticize him and lose Jewish votes or bite her tongue and lose Arab and Muslim American votes in the key state of Michigan."

"As Harris will likely find it hard to do either, this will make her look weak to both American Jews and American Arabs," he adds.

Friedman argues that this would play right into Trump's hands. Netanyahu wants him to win and to be able to tell Trump he helped him win.

From there, Netanyahu could give himself credit for winning the war, agree to some semblance of a cease-fire to bring back hostages, if any are still alive at this point, and return to the Saudi-Israel normalization deal that was derailed on October 7.

Friedman's vision of the future was that to happen is bleak.

               "Netanyahu wins," he writes. "Trump wins.

               Israel loses. Gaza will still be boiling, of course. Israeli troops will still be occupying it. Israel will be more of a pariah state than ever, with more and more talented Israelis leaving for jobs abroad."

2016 | WHY IS TRUMP SILENT?' U.S. LAWMAKERS ASK AFTER PUTIN SAYS 'JEWS' MAY BE BEHIND ELECTION MEDDLING

U.S. Jewish group says Putin's statement is 'eerily reminiscent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion'

Russian President Vladimir Putin attended an interview with NBC journalist Megyn Kelly in Kaliningrad, Russia March 2, 2018. Picture taken March 2, 2018. Credit: Michael Klimentyev/AFP

By Amir Tibon, reports from Washington, D.C.
Haaretz Israel
11 March 2018

WASHINGTON - Democratic legislators called on President Donald Trump to take a tougher stance towards Russia following remarks by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who suggested in an interview over the weekend that perhaps it was "Jews" who stood behind Russia's meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.

Putin said in an interview with NBC News that perhaps the people responsible for Russia's interference in the election "are not even Russian. Maybe they're Ukrainians, Tatars, Jews, just with Russian citizenship. Even that needs to be checked. Maybe they have dual citizenship. Or a Green Card."

Putin tells NBC: 'Jews' may be behind election meddling.

In response to the interview, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said, "Repulsive Putin remark deserves to be denounced, soundly and promptly, by world leaders. Why is Trump silent? Intolerance is intolerable."

Meanwhile, Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) said that the remarks highlighted Trump's refusal to sign into law the harsh sanctions the U.S. Congress approved against Russia last year in retaliation to its election meddling.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal Credit: Kyle Constable / CTMirror.org file photo

"Putin suggests that Russian attacks on US elections may have been made by 'Jews, just with Russian citizenship.' This man is not our friend, and the Trump administration needs to move on from the sanctions Congress passed," Beyer said on Saturday.

The American Jewish Committee took a more cautious approach, stating that "Putin suggesting that Russian Federation minorities, be they Ukrainian, Tatar, or Jewish, were behind U.S. election meddling is eerily reminiscent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He should clarify his comments at the earliest opportunity."

• Putin: Maybe 'Jews With Russian Citizenship' Meddled in U.S. Elections
  
• Putin Calls Washington to Present Hard Evidence of Election Meddling
  
• World Peace Hangs on Weird Chemistry Between Trump and Kim
  

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, also criticized the Russian president for his controversial statement. "It is alarming to see the Russian president giving new life to classic anti-Semitic stereotypes that have plagued his country for hundreds of years, with a comment that sounds as if it was ripped from the pages of the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion.'"

"We live in a moment when anti-Semitic violence is on the rise, and words can have profound consequences, particularly when spoken by public figures or elected officials like President Putin," Greenblatt continued. "We hope he swiftly clarifies his words before they cause further damage to those communities he has singled out.

Concerned Americans

A poll that was released last week, before Putin's statement, showed that a majority of Americans are worried about future Russian aggression against the U.S. Most are also not convinced that Trump is doing enough to address the problem.

The poll was conducted by John McLaughlin, a veteran political pollster affiliated with the Republican party who has advised Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu in the past. According to the results, 52% of the respondents were "not convinced" that Trump was doing enough to protect the U.S. and its allies from Russia and wanted him to do more on the subject. Only 34.5% believe Trump is doing enough on the subject.

The poll also showed that just over 60% of Americans are worried about more attacks by Russia against the United States and its allies in light of Russia's conduct in recent years. 72% of the respondents said they believe Russia poses "a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States, our NATO allies in Europe, and our Mideast allies, such as Israel."

The poll was ordered by Joel Rosenberg, an author and Evangelical activist residing in Jerusalem who recently published a new political thriller on U.S.-Russia relations called "The Kremlin Conspiracy." The poll showed that even among Evangelical Christians, who are usually very highly supportive of Trump, no less than 39% said they are not convinced Trump understands the threat posed by Russia. In comparison, only 46% said they were confident that he does.

THE GUARDIAN EXCLUSIVE: ISRAELI DOCUMENTS SHOW EXPANSIVE GOVERNMENT EFFORT TO SHAPE U.S. DISCOURSE AROUND GAZA WAR

As the Gaza war rages, Israeli funds target US college campuses and push to redefine antisemitism in US law.

Amichai Chikli speaks in Krakow, Poland, on 22 January 2024. Photograph: Omar Marques/Getty Images

By Lee Fang and Jack Poulson
The Guardian – London
24 June 2024

Last November, just weeks into the war in Gaza, Amichai Chikli, a brash, 42-year-old Likud minister in the Israeli government, was called into the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to brief lawmakers on what could be done about rising anti-war protests from young people across the United States, especially at elite universities.

               “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again now, that I think we should, especially in the United States, be on the offensive,” argued Chikli.

Chikli has since led a targeted push to counter critics of Israel. The Guardian has uncovered evidence showing how Israel has relaunched a controversial entity as part of a broader public relations campaign to target US college campuses and redefine antisemitism in US law.

Continue Reading … Scroll down The Friday News Analysis of 25 July 2024

US KNOWS RUSSIA’S RED LINES – LAVROV

Moscow takes the supply of long-range missiles to Ukraine very seriously, the foreign minister has said.

Sergey Lavrov holds a press briefing at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, July 17, 2024 © Getty Images / Adam Gray.

HomeRussia & FSU

4 September 2024

The US is well aware that any decision to supply Ukraine with long-range missiles crosses Moscow’s “red lines” and could trigger a third world war, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned.

American officials are “close” to approving the supply of long-range cruise missiles to Kyiv, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing anonymous sources. The rockets in question – Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM) – range up to 900km and can be fired from Ukraine’s Western-supplied F-16 fighter jets.

               “The Americans have already stepped over the red line that they set up,” Lavrov told reporter Pavel Zarubin on Wednesday, referring to Washington’s long-standing reluctance to provide Ukraine with weapons capable of striking deep inside Russian territory.

               “They’re emboldened, and [Ukrainian leader Vladimir] Zelensky certainly sees this and uses it,” Lavrov continued.

               “But they need to understand, they’re joking about our red lines. Please don’t joke about our red lines. They know perfectly well what they are.”

READ MORE: US ‘close’ to giving Kyiv long-range missiles – Reuters

Last month, Lavrov declared that the US and its allies would be “asking for trouble” if they lifted their rules prohibiting Ukraine from launching long-range strikes against Russia.

“I’d like to again quote a statement by [White House National Security Council spokesman John] Kirby, who said that [the US] should be cautious about increasing support for Ukraine to avoid World War III,” Lavrov told Zarubin.

Back in June, Kirby said that a significant escalation of the Ukraine conflict could have “disastrous consequences, potentially across the European continent” and would harm US interests in the region.

Zelensky maintains that the West shouldn’t fear escalation from Russia and that Ukrainian forces’ incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region proves that Moscow has no “red lines.” However, while Russia has typically been reluctant to respond to provocation by either Kyiv or the West, it has continued to fight in a manner that favors its strengths – namely, its massive advantages in artillery, missile stocks, and workforce.

Kyiv’s attacks on the Crimean Bridge, for example, were met not by reciprocal attacks on Ukrainian civilians but by massive and crippling missile strikes on the country’s energy infrastructure. Likewise, the presence of Western military instructors in Ukraine has been met with precision strikes on their positions, which the Russian Defense Ministry usually announces days later.

READ MORE: Russia provides details of strike on Ukrainian military training center

While Ukraine’s top military commander hoped that the Kursk operation would trigger an overreaction from Russia and force Moscow to pull troops from a busy sector of the front line near Donetsk, Russia did not take the bait. Instead, Moscow surged more troops to Donetsk, where they breached Ukrainian lines and closed in on several key strongholds.

VIEW | POINT OF NO RETURN IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND UKRAINE

John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Watch the video here: (1 hour, 14 minutes, 56 seconds)

By Glenn Diesen

Substack.com
30 August 2024

I discussed with Professor John Mearsheimer and Alexander Mercouris the political West being on the brink of two major wars. Both Israel and Ukraine are fighting battles they cannot win, both are doubling down through reckless escalation, and neither is pursuing a diplomatic path to a peaceful resolution.

Consequently, both Israel and Ukraine are desperately seeking to drag the US into a wider war as the only solution. With incremental escalation, no diplomacy, and the absence of serious discussions about the deep trouble we are now in - both Israel and Ukraine are successfully getting the US increasingly involved.

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE TUNNELS

We haven’t been told the whole story of Israel’s recent operations under Gaza.

A photograph released this week by the IDF showed the entrance to a Hamas tunnel in Rafah in southern Gaza, where the bodies of six Israeli hostages who had been executed were found. / Israel Defense Forces.

By Seymour Hersh

Substack.com
4 September 2024

The current Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be blamed forever for its failure to protect the citizenry last October 7, despite receiving multiple specific intelligence warnings of Hamas’s planning for the cross-border attack. It will also be blamed for quickly undertaking the ongoing massive retaliation on all in Gaza, whether Hamas supporters or not, without some attempt to negotiate an immediate return of the 251 Israeli and foreign hostages that were seized by Hamas and other militant groups that day.

Netanyahu’s early promise of a full inquiry into the intelligence failure has not happened and most likely never will. President Joe Biden's avidly sought ceasefire agreement with Hamas has also failed to materialize.

Israel’s fanatical right-wing government will further be blamed for Netanyahu’s misreading of Hamas. With its extensive tunnel complex and its ability to withstand Israeli air and ground attacks, Hamas has essentially left the vast majority of the two million citizens of Gaza to fend for themselves. History will not be kind to Hamas or the religious leadership of Israel, or the consistent support of the Israeli response in Gaza by Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic nominee for the White House.

So what happened sometime last week in a tunnel somewhere under Gaza? The initial Israeli military account made no mention of the presence or the fate of Hamas guards. The New York Times reported Sunday, quoting Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani, an Israel Defense Force spokesman, that the dead hostages were not found as a result of “a specific mission to release hostages.”

That account was only partially accurate. The presence of any hostages in the tunnel was not known before an Israeli sapper team—a military unit composed of experts in demolition whose mission is to destroy Hamas tunnels—happened upon a reinforced door, blew it open, and found the bodies of six Israeli hostages (one of whom was the Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, whose parents spoke at the Democratic National Convention last month) who had been executed by their Hamas guards. The IDF team had no idea that the hostages were being held there. The lack of information has been at the core of acute internal dissent between the Israeli military leadership and Netanyahu.

Netanyahu believes that the continuing destruction of the Hamas tunnel system will eventually lead to the final underground hiding place of Yahya Sinwar, the senior Hamas leader. It has long been clear to the senior officers responsible for hostage recovery that the successful rescue of hostages kept underground is impossible because, as an Israeli insider explained to me, there is no way to hide the noisy preparations for blowing up the reinforced doors that are invariably present at underground hostage sites. The six hostages were slain, and their guards escaped two to three days before the IDF team found the reinforced door.

Most of the hostages Israel has rescued have not been in the tunnels. Seven of the eight hostages rescued in recent commando attacks inside Gaza were living above ground in apartments and homes of Hamas family members and sympathizers. The one hostage recovered underground, a 52-year-old Israeli Bedouin named Farhan al-Qadi, was discovered by an Israeli team searching an underground tunnel where he was found alone. The Israeli insider told me what the Israeli military would not say—that al-Qadi initially reported that his Hamas guards had fled in a hurry, without laying a finger on him, after he and the guards overheard the nearby Israelis chatting in Hebrew with each other via CCTV. Al-Qadi’s rescue was initially explained by Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the military’s chief spokesman, as the result of “precise intelligence” that had been collected by Israeli security services.

“The IDF knows,” the insider told me, “that the element of surprise does not exist inside the Hamas tunnels.”

That Netanyahu sent the IDF sapper teams to destroy the Hamas tunnel system in the hopes of forcing a confrontation with Sinwar, who would likely surround himself with hostages in any final confrontation, could only mean, the insider said, that “Bibi was willing to sacrifice all the hostages because there is no way to rescue them in a tunnel. Not one hostage will survive the operation if and when Sinwar is cornered underground.” The Israeli insider, who was severely injured in combat for his country, asked, “Why is the leader of a country willing to sacrifice so many citizens of the country he leads? This is the question.” He added that Bibi “served in the Sayeret Matkal,” the covert Israeli commando unit that specialties in hostage operations and authorized assassinations. “So he knows.”

I relayed what I had been told to a second Israeli with long experience in the planning and analysis of military operations. He agreed with the insider’s account and offered an answer to the insider’s question of why Netanyahu gave the orders. The answer is simple, he said. “If he agrees to any of Hamas’s demands, except for a limited ceasefire without any [military] withdrawals, his government will fail” because of the extreme stance of his coalition’s right-wing leadership. There is another reason, which is not tied to politics, the Israeli added. Netanyahu has “convinced himself, with his wife’s and son’s help, that he is the savior of Israel and the Jewish people. Ergo, he must not fail.”

The underground hunt for Sinwar is monitored, I was told, by a specially assembled branch of the IDF that involves hundreds of analysts. The insider said to me that “Bibi has a belief that they are getting close to Sinwar” because his movements inside the Hamas tunnel system would be limited daily as more tunnels are destroyed. “At some point,” the insider said, “it will be physically impossible for Sinwar to hide.” When the end comes, “In Bibi’s view, it will be like getting Hitler. It’s a trophy that will restore his reputation, and the citizens of Israel will love him.”

There are others, the insider added—naming Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister and Netanyahu’s most bitter enemy within the government—who are known to believe the prime minister has been willing to sacrifice hostages for his selfish needs. “Bibi has been told that getting close to Sinwar has come at the cost of killing Israeli hostages. When you try to rescue hostages kept above ground, there is always a chance that a few of them will be killed. When and if there is an underground operation to kill Sinwar, there is a certainty that all of them will be killed before you even reach them.”

At this point in his political life, the insider told me, “Bibi wants the war, any war, to go on because if the war ends, two things happen: an election in Israel and an official investigative committee to examine the failure on October 7. Both these things will be bad for Bibi. They will result in him being removed from office, making it easier for the judges in his [still pending] corruption trials to send him to jail.

“To the extent, there is a weak ray of light which might, just might, restore a smidgen of respectability to Bibi, it is capturing Sinwar, dead or alive. This is his only way to balance the terrible things the voters and the investigation—and history—will say about him.”

BUILDING THE BRIDGE! | A WAY TO GET TO KNOW THE OTHER AND ONE ANOTHER

Making a Difference – The Means, Methods, and Mechanism for Many to Move Mountains

Photo Credit: Abraham A. van Kempen, our home away from home on the Dead Sea

By Abraham A. van Kempen

Senior Editor
Updated 19 January 2024

Those who commit to 'healing our broken humanity' build intercultural bridges to learn to know and understand one another and others. Readers who thumb through the Building the Bridge (BTB) pages are not mindless sheep following other mindless sheep. They THINK. They want to be at the forefront of making a difference. They're in search of the bigger picture to expand their horizons. They don't need BTB or anyone else to confirm their biases.

Making a Difference – The Means, Methods, and Mechanism for Many to Move Mountains

Accurate knowledge promotes understanding, dispels prejudice, and awakens the desire to learn more. Words have an extraordinary power to bring people together, divide them, forge bonds of friendship, or provoke hostility. Modern technology offers unprecedented possibilities for good, fostering harmony and reconciliation. Yet its misuse can do untold harm, leading to misunderstanding, prejudice, and conflict.

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