Telesure – January 26, 2024
Applying ICJ Orders Implies a Ceasefire in Gaza: South Africa
"How do you provide aid and water without a ceasefire? If you read the order, by implication a ceasefire must happen," FM Pandor said.
On Friday, South African Foreign Affairs Minister Naledi Pandor warned that a ceasefire in Gaza is essential for Israel to comply with the measures demanded by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
"How do you provide aid and water without a ceasefire? If you read the order, by implication a ceasefire must happen," Pandor said in statements to the press after leaving the Court.
"We believe the moment is now right to open negotiations for a two-state solution to end this conflict decisively," she added.
In its first resolution on the genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel, the Hague court outlined the following provisional measures:
1) "The State of Israel shall, in accordance with its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of this Convention, in particular:
(a) killing members of the group;
(b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and
(d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
2) The State of Israel shall ensure with immediate effect that its military does not commit any acts described in point 1 above.
3) The State of Israel shall take all measures within its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip.
4) The State of Israel shall take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
5) The State of Israel shall take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts within the scope of Article II and Article III of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide against members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip.
6) The State of Israel shall submit a report to the Court on all measures taken to give effect to this Order within one month as from the date of this Order.
Commenting on the ICJ's decision, the South African diplomat expressed that she would have liked a clear statement demanding a ceasefire.
Pantor also pointed out that she was not disappointed by the decision because the issuance of some of the requested interim measures by South Africa represents a "decisive victory."
At this stage of the proceedings, however, the ICJ has only decided on the need for provisional measures and has not pronounced on whether Israel committed genocide.
61 Palestinian Journalists Are Imprisoned in Brutal Conditions
Currently, Israel is one of the countries with the highest number of imprisoned media workers.
Shurua Asad, the spokeswoman for the Palestinian Journalists' Union, denounced that Israel is holding 61 journalists in poor conditions.
Among them, 15 were detained in the first eight months of 2023, and another 46 after the conflict with Hamas erupted. This means a significant increase in media employees detained by Israel since the outbreak of the war in October.
Most of the journalists are from occupied West Bank. They are held under "administrative detention," a system whereby Israel arrests Palestinians without formal charges or a trial date, leaving them uncertain about the duration of their imprisonment.
"Many have been arrested for things they said or content they posted on social media about Gaza," Asad said, adding that Israel is implementing a campaign of repression and increased pressure on Palestinian journalists.
"They are treated very brutally, with harsh and intense interrogations," she said, relying on the testimony of released Palestinians.
"One Palestinian reported that Israeli forces would constantly beat him, expose him outdoors without clothing, insult him, provide minimal food and water, and keep him isolated with no means to contact anyone, leaving his family unaware of his situation."
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), "journalists and media outlets across the region have faced a hostile environment, making reporting from the ground exceptionally challenging."
As of January 24, this U.S.-based NGO has documented 25 arrests, along with "numerous assaults, cyberattacks, and censorship." Nineteen of these journalists remained in custody. Furthermore, Israel joined the countries with the highest number of imprisoned journalists.
CPJ Director Joei Ginsburg pointed out that the inclusion of Israel in the 2023 list of imprisoned reporters "is evidence that a basic democratic norm like press freedom is fading as Israel employs draconian methods to silence Palestinian journalists."
Houthi authorities order US and British aid workers out of Yemen within 30 days
Alexis Boddy | City Law School, U. of London, GB
Houthi authorities sent a letter Tuesday to the UN’s acting humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, Peter Hawkins, requesting that all British and American nationals leave Yemen within a month.
The letter comes as US and British forces continue strikes against targets in Yemen. Houthi forces had been targeting ships in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a busy shipping lane between Yemen and Eritrea, calling for an end to Israel’s strikes on Palestine. A range of ships from around the world had been targeted, and the US and UK responded earlier this month by initiating strikes against Houthi targets.
The latest of these happening just a few days ago, with the US Department of Defense issuing a statement that they had completed additional strikes on Houthi underground storage sites and “locations associated with the Houthis’ missile and air surveillance capabilities.” They went on to state that their aim “remains to de-escalate tensions and restore stability in the Red Sea.”
In the letter, the Houthi-controlled Foreign Affairs Ministry has requested that all aid workers with British and American citizenship leave within the next 30 days and that the UN not recruit any more people with dual nationality from the UK or Amercia. They ended the letter by stating that, “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Yemen takes this opportunity to express appreciation and respect to the office of the United Nations Resident Coordinator.”
Yemen has been in a state of civil war since 2014, between the Iran-backed Houthi and government forces. The conflict has lead to what has been described as the worst crisis in the world, with over 21 million people in need of humanitarian assistance.
Thousands in India flock to a recruitment center for jobs in Israel
despite the Israel-Hamas war
Thousands of Indians flocked to a recruitment center on Thursday for jobs that would take them to Israel despite the three-month Israeli-Hamas war that is devastating Gaza and threatening to ignite the wider Middle East, the Associated Press reported from Lucknow.
Many among the crowd of men, mostly skilled construction workers and laborers, said they would take their chances in a country embroiled in war as they are struggling to find jobs in India, where unemployment remains high despite a swelling economy.
Anoop Singh, a college graduate and construction worker, was told AP that he would make about $1,600 a month if he was selected to go to Israel — significantly more than the $360 to $420 he could get as a monthly wage for the same work in India.
“That’s why I have applied to go to Israel,” he said as he waited at the center in Lucknow, the capital of India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, for his job interview.
https://apnews.com/article/india-israel-hamas-war-recruitment-jobs-646b684c10a4384213b399fe6c221151
Information Clearing Huouse – January 26, 2024
Five Variables Defining Our Future
By Pepe Escobar
Losers Don’t Dictate Terms
1. The stalemate: That’s the new, obsessive US narrative on Ukraine – on steroids. Confronted with the upcoming, cosmic NATO humiliation in the battlefield, the White House and the State Dept. had to – literally – improvise.
Moscow though is unfazed. The Kremlin has set the terms a long time ago: total surrender, and no Ukraine as part of NATO. To “negotiate”, from the Russia point of view, is to accept these terms.
And if the deciding powers in Washington opt for turbo-charging the weaponization of Kiev, or to unleash “the most heinous provocations in order to change the course of events”, as asserted this week by the head of the SVR, Sergey Naryshkin, fine.
The road ahead will be bloody. In case the usual suspects sideline popular Zaluzhny and install Budanov as the head of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the AFU will be under total control of the CIA – and not NATO generals, as it’s still the case.
This might prevent a military coup against the sweaty sweatshirt puppet in Kiev. Yet things will get much uglier. Ukraine will go Total Guerrilla, with only two objectives: to attack Russian civilians and civilian infrastructure. Moscow, of course, is fully aware of the dangers.
Meanwhile, chatterbox overdrive in several latitudes suggest that NATO may even be getting ready for a partition of Ukraine. Whatever form that might take, losers do not dictate conditions: Russia does.
As for EU politicos, predictably, they are in total panic, believing that after mopping up Ukraine, Russia will become even more of a “threat” to Europe. Nonsense. Not only Moscow couldn’t give a damn to what Europe “thinks”; the last thing Russia wants or needs is to annex Baltic or Eastern European hysteria. Moreover, even Jens Stoltenberg admitted “NATO sees no threat from Russia toward any of its territories.”
2. BRICS: Since the start of 2024, this is The Big Picture: the Russian presidency of BRICS+ – which translates as a particle accelerator towards multipolarity. The Russia-China strategic partnership will be increasing actual production, in several fields, while Europe plunges into depression, unleashed by the Perfect Storm of sanctions blowback against Russia and German de-industrialization. And it’s far from over, as Washington is also ordering Brussels to sanction China across the spectrum.
As Prof. Michael Hudson frames it, we are right in the middle of “the whole split of the world and the turning towards China, Russia, Iran, BRICS”, united in “an attempt to reverse, undo, and roll back the whole colonial expansion that’s occurred over the last five centuries.”
Or, as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov defined at the UN Security Council this process of BRICS leaving Western bullies behind, the changing world order is like “a playground scuffle – which the West is losing.”
Bye Bye, Soft Power
3. The Lone Emperor: The “stalemate” – actually losing a war – is directly linked to its compensation: the Empire squeezing and shrinking a vassalized Europe. But even as you exercise nearly total control over all these relatively wealthy vassals, you lose the Global South, for good: if not all their leaders, certainly the overwhelming majority of public opinion. The icing in the toxic cake is to support a genocide followed by the whole planet in real time. Bye bye, soft power.
4. De-dollarization: All across the Global South, they did the math: if the Empire and its EU vassals can just steal over $300 billion in Russian foreign reserves – from a top nuclear/military power – they can do it to anyone, and they will.
The key reason Saudi Arabia, now a BRICS 10 member, is being so meek on the genocide in Gaza is because their hefty US dollar reserves are hostage to the Hegemon.
And yet the caravan moving away from the US dollar will only keep growing in 2024: that will depend on crucial crossover deliberations inside the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and BRICS 10.
5. Garden and jungle: What Putin and Xi have essentially been telling the Global South – including the energy-rich Arab world – is quite simple. If you want improved trade and economic growth, who’re you gonna link to?
So we’re back to the “garden and jungle” syndrome – first coined by imperial Britain orientalist Rudyard Kipling. Both the British concept of “white man’s burden” and the American concept of “Manifest Destiny” derive from the “garden and jungle” metaphor.
NATOstan, and hardly all of it, is supposed to be the garden. The Global South is the jungle. Michael Hudson again: as it stands, the jungle is growing, but the garden isn’t growing “because its philosophy is not industrialization. Its philosophy is to make monopoly rents, meaning rents that you make in your sleep without producing value. You just have a privilege of a right to collect money on a monopoly technology that you have.”
The difference now, compared to all those decades ago of an imperial free lunch, is “an immense shift of technological advance”, away from North America and the US, to China, Russia and selected nodes across Asia.
Forever Wars. And No Plan B
If we combine all these variants – stalemate; BRICS; the Lone Emperor; de-dollarization; garden and jungle – in search of the most probable scenario ahead, it’s easy to see that the only “way out” for a cornered Empire is, what else, the default modus operandi: Forever Wars.
And that brings us to the current American aircraft carrier in West Asia, totally out of control yet always supported by the Hegemon, aiming for a multi-front war against the whole Axis of Resistance: Palestine, Hezbollah, Syria, Iraqi militias, Ansarullah in Yemen, and Iran.
In a sense we’re back to the immediate post-9/11, when what the neocons really wanted was not Afghanistan, but the invasion of Iraq: not only to control the oil (which in the end they didn’t) but, in Michael Hudson’s analysis, “to essentially create America’s foreign legion in the form of ISIS and al-Qaeda in Iraq.” Now, “America has two armies that it’s using to fight in the Near East, the ISIS/al-Qaeda foreign legion (Arabic-speaking foreign legion) and the Israelis.”
Hudson’s intuition of ISIS and Israel as parallel armies is priceless: they both fight the Axis of Resistance, and never (italics mine) fight each other. The Straussian neocon plan, as tawdry as it gets, essentially is a variant of the “fight to the last Ukrainian”: to “fight to the last Israeli” on the way to the Holy Grail, which is to bomb, bomb, bomb Iran (copyright John McCain) and provoke regime change.
As much as the “plan” did not work in Iraq or Ukraine, it won’t work against the Axis of Resistance.
What Putin, Xi and Raisi have been explaining to the Global South, explicitly or in quite subtle ways, is that we are right in the crux of a civilizational war.
Michael Hudson has done a lot to bring down such an epic struggle to practical terms. Are we heading towards what I described as techno-feudalism – which is the AI format of rent-seeking turbo-neoliberalism? Or are we heading to something similar to the origins of industrial capitalism?
Michael Hudson characterizes an auspicious horizon as “raising living standards instead of imposing IMF financial austerity on the dollar block”: devising a system that Big Finance, Big Bank, Big Pharma and what Ray McGovern memorably coined as the MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex) cannot control. Alea jacta est.
https://informationclearinghouse.blog/2024/01/25/pepe-escobar-five-variables-defining-our-future/15/
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