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christinaur · 3 months

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So this is a German history book that I own, down below I’ll leave a translation, and it talks about the Gaza strip but mostly about Israel. It kinda touches some topics that makes it seem like there’s an understanding for the Palestinians but all in all it’s just really biased. I wanted to publish this here so other people could form an opinion as well and I wanted to see if it feels wrong to other people as well.

Side note: This book was published in 2016, I think some of it was revised in 2019 and is being used in schools. (Geschichte und Geschehen 9 (Baden-Württemberg für Gymnasien)). I also didn’t translate the side things written on the side since they’re definitions.

English translation:

Divided World and the Cold War (1945-1991)

An unbearable conflict?

Seeking Peace in the Middle East The Middle East has been a hotspot for decades. Pictures of bloody attacks by Palestinians on Israelis, retaliatory strikes by the Israeli army and reports of disputed Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory dominate the news. How did this happen and what are the possible solutions?

A State for the Jews Since antiquity, Jews have lived in the Diaspora. They formed a minority in many countries in Europe and North Africa. They were often persecuted for religious, political or social reasons. Growing anti-Semitism, riots against Jews in Eastern Europe and the search for their own identity at the end of the 19th century reinforced the desire to return to the "land of the fathers", Zion. Under the leadership of the Austrian journalist Theodor Herzl, the Zionists united in 1897 the establishment of a Jewish state. By 1914, 85,000 Jews had emigrated to Palestine to establish settlements, with more to follow soon. In 1917, the English Foreign Secretary promised Lord Balfour to give a new home to the Jews of Palestine, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire, which was at war with Britain.

Immigration and Conflict

Palestine, however, was not an unpopulated country. The immigrants encountered an Arab population that had lived there for centuries. Major Palestinian landowners sold a significant portion of the new settlement areas to Jewish immigrants, which contributed to unrest among the Arab population. Their national sentiment had awakened in the fight against the Osmen. But the desire for an Arab empire was not fulfilled after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. Palestine remained under British administration. Mandate power soon faced fierce clashes between the Arab population and the growing number of Jewish immigrants. Between 1931 and 1939 alone, 265,000 Jews immigrated. Thousands who had escaped the Nazi regime’s Shoah in Germany hoped to find a new home in Palestine. Attempts by the British Mandate in Palastina to limit immigration in order to defuse rising tensions have failed.

Israel - a State for the Jews

In the UN partition plan of 29 November 1947, the first step in the process of decolonization was to divide Palestine into a loose economic union and a neutral zone of Jerusalem under UN control. Only the Jewish side accepted this decision. On 14 May 1948, the State of Israel was founded. The next day, five neighbouring Arab states attacked Israel with their armies. Israel won the so-called War of Independence, thereby expanding its territory. Jerusalem, with the most important religious sites for Jews and Muslims, was divided. Between 600 000 and 750 000 Palestinians have fled the conflict or been driven from their homes. To this day Israel refuses to withdraw from the occupied territories or to grant the Palestinian refugees the right to return. To date there are around 3.5 to 4 million refugees in camps in neighbouring countries, mostly in poor conditions. They were not sent to the camps in the respective countries societies are integrated and, as tolerated refugees, are still mostly without citizenship rights.

New Wars

The new state developed along Western lines. To this day, Israel remains the only democratic country in the Middle East. Economically, too, Israel soon ranked among the most modern and efficient countries in the region. In three other wars, Israel had to defend its existence against attacks or threats in 1956, 1967 and 1973. For military reasons, it occupied Palestinian territories in the region Jordan Valley and the Gaza Strip. With the agreement of the government, Israeli settlers followed and wanted to take over more parts of the country. Their refusal to re-establish what they saw as the "holy land" to this day makes any peace solution more difficult.

Victories, but no peace

But victories and land occupations did not mean peace. Only Egypt and Israel made peace in 1979 under American mediation. It was the first Arab country to recognise Israel. Palestinian fighters from neighbouring countries continued to attack Israeli settlements. In 1987, civil disobedience such as refusal to pay taxes and demonstrations occurred in the occupied territories, but also violent resistance to the occupying power - the Intifada. The Palestine Liberation Front (PLO) wanted to destroy Israel. Conversely, the Israelis were unwilling to recognise the right of the Palestinians to self-determination.

The end of the Cold War

The end of the Cold War in 1991 seemed to herald a new era of peace for the Middle East as well. Israel and the PLO recognized each other in 1993 and agreed on a gradual autonomy of the occupied territories (Oslo I). However, many questions remained unanswered. These include, above all, the future of Jewish settlements, the fate of millions of Palestinian refugees, and the development of a functioning society and economy in the Palestinian territories. Particularly controversial is the status of Jerusalem, which Israelis and Arabs consider one of their holiest sites.

Peace in sight?

Despite all the problems, the 1993 agreement represented significant progress: Israeli troops withdrew, a Palestinian parliament and its own president - the leader of the PLO, Yasser Arafat - were elected. Jordan also made peace with Israel in 1994. Other Arab states remain hostile to Israel. The murder of the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 by a radical Jewish settler showed how much extremists were trying to derail the peace process. These include members of the Islamic resistance movement Hamas, which sees itself as the true representative of the Palestinian people and rejects any agreement with Israel. In the summer of 2000, negotiations on an independent Palestinian state failed. In September 2000, a second intifada began. Since then, Palestinians have been trying to fight Israeli rule through assassinations, attacks on Israeli settlements and violent demonstrations. The Israeli government responded by occupying parts of the autonomous territories and massive military action, as well as building an eight-meter-high concrete wall to prevent attackers from entering Israel. Hundreds of people have lost their lives on both sides.

Why is there no peace?

One of the answers to this question lies in the changed framework conditions since the peace of 1993. Instead of peace, there have been wars and civil wars in the region for many years. States such as Syria and Iraq are on the verge of disintegration, while others such as Iran openly threaten Israel. This is accompanied by a strengthening of radical Islamist forces in Israel's neighboring states. They support those groups among the Palestinians who continue to refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist and attack Israelis with rockets from the Gaza Strip. This results in the fear of many Israelis of compromises that could endanger their own existence, even if many do not approve of the behavior of the settlers in the occupied territories. The most important prerequisites for resolving the conflict are the creation of mutual trust and the stabilisation of the entire region.

#palestine #israel #free palestine #free gaza #gaza #current events #history #Germany #german school #german politics

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ausetkmt · 1 year

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Video shows migrants waiting before ill-fated migrant boat voyage

03:41 - Source: CNN

CNN —

The hull of the fishing trawler lifted out of the water as it sank, catapulting people from the top deck into the black sea below. In the darkness, they grabbed onto whatever they could to stay afloat, pushing each other underwater in a frantic fight for survival. Some were screaming, many began to recite their final prayers.

“I can still hear the voice of a woman calling out for help,” one survivor of the migrant boat disaster off the coast of Greece told CNN. “You’d swim and move floating bodies out of your way.”

With hundreds of people still missing after the overloaded vessel capsized in the Mediterranean on June 14, the testimonies of those who were onboard paint a picture of chaos and desperation. They also call into question the Greek coast guard’s version of events, suggesting more lives could have been saved, and may even point to fault on the part of Greek authorities.

Rights groups allege the tragedy is both further evidence and a result of a new pattern in illegal pushbacks of migrant boats to other nations’ waters, with deadly consequences.

This boat was carrying up to 750 Pakistani, Syrian, Egyptian and Palestinian refugees and migrants. Only 104 people have been rescued alive.

CNN has interviewed multiple survivors of the shipwreck and their relatives, all of whom have wished to remain anonymous for security reasons and the fear of retribution from authorities in both Greece and at home.

One survivor from Syria, whom CNN is identifying as Rami, described how a Greek coast guard vessel approached the trawler multiple times to try to attach a rope to tow the ship, with disastrous results.

“The third time they towed us, the boat swayed to the right and everyone was screaming, people began falling into the sea, and the boat capsized and no one saw anyone anymore,” he said. “Brothers were separated, cousins were separated.”

Another Syrian man, identified as Mostafa, also believes it was the maneuver by the coast guard that caused the disaster. “The Greek captain pulled us too fast, it was extremely fast, this caused our boat to sink,” he said.

The Hellenic Coast Guard has repeatedly denied attempting to tow the vessel. An official investigation into the cause of the tragedy is still ongoing.

Coast guard spokesman Nikos Alexiou told CNN over the phone last week: “When the boat capsized, we were not even next to (the) boat. How could we be towing it?” Instead, he insisted they had only been “observing at a close distance” and that “a shift in weight probably caused by panic” had caused the boat to tip.

The Hellenic Coast Guard has declined to answer CNN’s specific requests for response to the survivor testimonies.

Direct accounts from those who survived the wreck have been limited, due to their concerns about speaking out and the media having little access to the survivors. CNN interviewed Rami and Mostafa outside the Malakasa migrant camp near Athens, where journalists are not permitted entry.

The Syrian men said the conditions on board the migrant boat deteriorated fast in the more than five days after it set off from Tobruk, Libya, in route to Italy. They had run out of water and had resorted to drinking from storage bottles that people had urinated in.

“People were dying. People were fainting. We used a rope to dip clothes into the sea and use that to squeeze water on people who had lost consciousness,” Rami said.

CNN’s analysis of marine traffic data, combined with information from NGOs, merchant vessels and the European Union border patrol agency, Frontex, suggests that Greek authorities were aware of the distressed vessel for at least 13 hours before it eventually sank early on June 14.

The Greek coast guard has maintained that people onboard the trawler had refused rescue and insisted they wanted to continue their journey to Italy. But survivors, relatives and activists say they had asked for help multiple times.

Earlier in the day, other ships tried to help the trawler. Directed by the Greek coast guard, two merchant vessels – Lucky Sailor and Faithful Warrior – approached the boat between 6 and 9 p.m. on June 13 to offer supplies, according to marine traffic data and the logs of those ships. But according to survivors this only caused more havoc onboard.

“Fights broke out over food and water, people were screaming and shouting,” Mostafa said. “If it wasn’t for people trying to calm the situation down, the boat was on the verge of sinking several times.”

By early evening, six people had already died onboard, according to an audio recording reviewed by CNN from Italian activist Nawal Soufi, who took a distress call from the migrant boat at around 7 p.m. Soufi’s communication with the vessel also corroborated Mostafa’s account that people moved from one side of the boat to the other after water bottles were passed from the cargo ships, causing it to sway dangerously.

The haunting final words sent from the migrant boat came just minutes before it capsized. According to a timeline published by NGO Alarm Phone they received a call, at around 1:45 a.m., with the words “Hello my friend… The ship you send is…” Then the call cuts out.

The coast guard says the vessel began to sink at around 2 a.m.

The next known activity in the area, according to marine traffic data, was the arrival of a cluster of vessels starting around 3 a.m. The Mayan Queen superyacht was the first on the scene for what soon became a mass rescue operation.

Human rights groups say the authorities had a duty to act to save lives, regardless of what people on board were saying to the coast guard before the migrant boat capsized.

“The boat was overcrowded, was unseaworthy and should have been rescued and people taken to safety, that’s quite clear,” UNHCR Special Envoy for the Central Mediterranean Vincent Cochetel told CNN in an interview. “There was a responsibility for the Greek authorities to coordinate a rescue to bring those people safely to land.”

Cochetel also pointed to a growing trend by countries, including Greece, to assist migrant boats in leaving their waters. “That’s a practice we’ve seen in recent months. Some coastal states provide food, provide water, sometimes life jackets, sometimes even fuel to allow such boats to continue to only one destination: Italy. And that’s not fair, Italy cannot cope with that responsibility alone.”

Survivors who say the coast guard tried to tow their boat say they don’t know what the aim was.

There have been multiple documented examples in recent years of Greek patrol boats engaging in so-called “pushbacks” of migrant vessels from Greek waters in recent years, including in a CNN investigation in 2020.

“It looks like what the Greeks have been doing since March 2020 as a matter of policy, which is pushbacks and trying to tow a boat to another country’s water in order to avoid the legal responsibility to rescue,” Omer Shatz, legal director of NGO Front-LEX, told CNN. “Because rescue means disembarkation and disembarkation means processing of asylum requests.”

Pushbacks are state measures aimed at forcing refugees and migrants out of their territory, while impeding access to legal and procedural frameworks, according to the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR). They are a violation of international law, as well as European regulations.

And such measures do not appear to have deterred human traffickers whose businesses prey on vulnerable and desperate migrants.

In an interview with CNN last month, then Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis denied that his country engaged in intentional pushbacks and described them as a “completely unacceptable practice.” Mitsotakis is widely expected to win a second term in office in Sunday’s election, after failing to get an outright majority in a vote last month.

A series of Greek governments have been criticized for their handling of migration policy, including conditions in migrant camps, particularly following the 2015-16 refugee crisis, when more than 1 million people entered Europe through the country.

For those who lived through last week’s sinking, the harrowing experience will never be forgotten.

Mostafa and Rami both say they wish they had never made the journey, despite the fact they are now in Europe and are able to claim asylum.

Most of all, Mostafa says, he wishes the Greek coast guard had never approached their boat: “If they had left us be, we wouldn’t have drowned.”

#‘If they had left us be #we wouldn’t have drowned:’ CNN investigation raises questions about Greek coast guard’s account of shipwreck tragedy #greek coast guard #greece #brown skin #white privilege #racism in immigration #africans #european racism

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posttexasstressdisorder · 5 months

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dailyanarchistposts · 5 months

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Chapter VII. Fifth Period. — Police, Or Taxation.

2. — Antinomy of the tax.

I sometimes hear the champions of the statu quo maintain that for the present we enjoy liberty enough, and that, in spite of the declamation against the existing order, we are below the level of our institutions. So far at least as taxation is concerned, I am quite of the opinion of these optimists.

According to the theory that we have just seen, the tax is the reaction of society against monopoly. Upon this point opinions are unanimous: citizens and legislators, economists, journalists, and ballad-writers, rendering, each in their own tongue, the social thought, vie with each other in proclaiming that the tax should fall upon the rich, strike the superfluous and articles of luxury, and leave those of prime necessity free. In short, they have made the tax a sort of privilege for the privileged: a bad idea, since it involved a recognition of the legitimacy of privilege, which in no case, whatever shape it may take, is good for anything. The people had to be punished for this egoistic inconsistency: Providence did not fail in its duty.

From the moment, then, of the conception of the tax as a counter-claim, it had to be fixed proportionally to means, whether it struck capital or affected income more especially. Now, I will point out that the levying of the tax at so much a franc being precisely that which should be adopted in a country where all fortunes were equal, saving the differences in the cost of assessment and collection, the treasury is the most liberal feature of our society, and that on this point our morals are really behind our institutions. But as with the wicked the best things cannot fail to be detestable, we shall see the equalitarian tax crush the people precisely because the people are not up to it.

I will suppose that the gross income in France, for each family of four persons, is 1,000 francs: this is a little above the estimate of M. Chevalier, who places it at only 63 centimes a day for each individual, or 919 francs 80 centimes for each household. The tax being today more than a thousand millions, or about an eighth of the total income, each family, earning 1,000 francs a year, is taxed 125 francs.

Accordingly, an income of 2,000 francs pays 250 francs; an income of 3,000 francs, 375; an income of 4,000 francs, 500, etc. The proportion is strict and mathematically irreproachable; the treasury, by arithmetic, is sure of losing nothing.

But on the side of the taxpayers the affair totally changes its aspect. The tax, which, in the intention of the legislator, was to have been proportioned to fortune, is, on the contrary, progressive in the ratio of poverty, so that, the poorer the citizen is, the more he pays. This I shall try to make plain by a few figures.

According to the proportional tax, there is due to the treasury: for an income of 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 francs, etc. a tax of 125 250 375 500 625 750

According to this series, then, the tax seems to increase proportionally to income.

But when it is remembered that each annual income is made up of 365 units, each of which represents the daily income of the taxpayer, the tax will no longer be found proportional; it will be found equal. In fact, if the State levies a tax of 125 francs on an income of 1,000 francs, it is as if it took from the taxed family 45 days’ subsistence; likewise the assessments of 250, 375, 500, 625, and 750 francs, corresponding to incomes of 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, and 6,000 francs, constitute in each case a tax of 45 days’ pay upon each of those who enjoy these incomes.

I say now that this equality of taxation is a monstrous inequality, and that it is a strange illusion to imagine that, because the daily income is larger, the tax of which it is the base is higher. Let us change our point of view from that of personal to that of collective income.

As an effect of monopoly social wealth abandoning the laboring class to go to the capitalistic class, the object of taxation has been to moderate this displacement and react against usurpation by enforcing a proportional replevin upon each privileged person. But proportional to what? To the excess which the privileged person has received undoubtedly, and not to the fraction of the social capital which his income represents. Now, the object of taxation is missed and the law turned into derision when the treasury, instead of taking its eighth where this eighth exists, asks it precisely of those to whom it should be restored. A final calculation will make this evident.

Setting the daily income of each person in France at 68 centimes, the father of a family who, whether as wages or as income from his capital, receives 1,000 francs a year receives four shares of the national income; he who receives 2,000 francs has eight shares; he who receives 4,000 francs has sixteen, etc. Hence it follows that the workman who, on an income of 1,000 francs, pays 125 francs into the treasury renders to public order half a share, or an eighth of his income and his family’s subsistence; whereas the capitalist who, on an income of 6,000 francs, pays only 750 francs realizes a profit of 17 shares out of the collective income, or, in other words, gains by the tax 425 per cent.

Let us reproduce the same truth in another form.

The voters of France number about 200,000. I do not know the total amount of taxes paid by these 200,000 voters, but I do not believe that I am very far from the truth in supposing an average of 300 francs each, or a total of 60,000,000 for the 200,000 voters, to which we will add twenty-five per cent. to represent their share of indirect taxes, making in all 75,000,000, or 75 francs for each person (supposing the family of each voter to consist of five persons), which the electoral class pays to the State. The appropriations, according to the “Annuaire Economique” for 1845, being 1,106,000,000, there remains 1,031,000,000, which makes the tax paid by each non-voting citizen 31 francs 30 centimes, — two-fifths of the tax paid by the wealthy class. Now, for this proportion to be equitable, the average welfare of the non-voting class would have to be two-fifths of the average welfare of the voting class: but such is not the truth, as it falls short of this by more than three-fourths.

But this disproportion will seem still more shocking when it is remembered that the calculation which we have just made concerning the electoral class is altogether wrong, altogether in favor of the voters.

In fact, the only taxes which are levied for the enjoyment of the right of suffrage are: (1) the land tax; (2) the tax on polls and personal property; (3) the tax on doors and windows; (4) license-fees. Now, with the exception of the tax on polls and personal property, which varies little, the three other taxes are thrown back on the consumers; and it is the same with all the indirect taxes, for which the holders of capital are reimbursed by the consumers, with the exception, however, of the taxes on property transfers, which fall directly on the proprietor and amount in all to 150,000,000. Now, if we estimate that in this last amount the property of voters figures as one-sixth, which is placing it high, the portion of direct taxes (409,000,000) being 12 francs for each person, and that of indirect taxes (547,000,000) 16 francs, the average tax paid by each voter having a household of five will reach a total of 265 francs, while that paid by the laborer, who has only his arms to support himself, his wife, and two children, will be 112 francs. In more general terms, the average tax upon each person belonging to the upper classes will be 53 francs; upon each belonging to the lower, 28. Whereupon I renew my question: Is the welfare of those below the voting standard half as great as that of those above it?

It is with the tax as with periodical publications, which really cost more the less frequently they appear. A daily journal costs forty francs, a weekly ten francs, a monthly four. Supposing other things to be equal, the subscription prices of these journals are to each other as the numbers forty, seventy, and one hundred and twenty, the price rising with the infrequency of publication. Now, this exactly represents the increase of the tax: it is a subscription paid by each citizen in exchange for the right to labor and to live. He who uses this right in the smallest proportion pays much; he who uses it a little more pays less; he who uses it a great deal pays little.

The economists are generally in agreement about all this. They have attacked the proportional tax, not only in its principle, but in its application; they have pointed out its anomalies, almost all of which arise from the fact that the relation of capital to income, or of cultivated surface to rent, is never fixed.

Given a levy of one-tenth on the income from lands, and lands of different qualities producing, the first eight francs’ worth of grain, the second six francs’ worth, the third five francs’ worth, the tax will call for one-eighth of the income from the most fertile land, one-sixth from that a little less fertile, and, finally, one-fifth from that less fertile still. [24] Will not the tax thus established be just the reverse of what it should be? Instead of land, we may suppose other instruments of production, and compare capitals of the same value, or amounts of labor of the same order, applied to branches of industry differing in productivity: the conclusion will be the same. There is injustice in requiring the same poll-tax of ten francs from the laborer who earns one thousand francs and from the artist or physician who has an income of sixty thousand. — J. Garnier: Principles of Political Economy.

These reflections are very sound, although they apply only to collection or assessment, and do not touch the principle of the tax itself. For, in supposing the assessment to be made upon income instead of upon capital, the fact always remains that the tax, which should be proportional to fortunes, is borne by the consumer.

The economists have taken a resolve; they have squarely recognized the iniquity of the proportional tax.

“The tax,” says Say, “can never be levied upon the necessary.” This author, it is true, does not tell us what we are to understand by the necessary, but we can supply the omission. The necessary is what each individual gets out of the total product of the country, after deducting what must be taken for taxes. Thus, making the estimate in round numbers, the production of France being eight thousand millions and the tax one thousand millions, the necessary in the case of each individual amounts to fifty-six and a half centimes a day. Whatever is in excess of this income is alone susceptible of being taxed, according to J. B. Say; whatever falls short of it must be regarded by the treasury as inviolable.

The same author expresses this idea in other words when he says: “The proportional tax is not equitable.” Adam Smith had already said before him: “It is not unreasonable that the rich man should contribute to the public expenses, not only in proportion to his income, but something more.” “I will go further,” adds Say; “I will not fear to say that the progressive tax is the only equitable tax.” And M. J. Garnier, the latest abridger of the economists, says: “Reforms should tend to establish a progressional equality, if I may use the phrase, much more just, much more equitable, than the pretended equality of taxation, which is only a monstrous inequality.”

So, according to general opinion and the testimony of the economists, two things are acknowledged: one, that in its principle the tax is a reaction against monopoly and directed against the rich; the other, that in practice this same tax is false to its object; that, in striking the poor by preference, it commits an injustice; and that the constant effort of the legislator must be to distribute its burden in a more equitable fashion.

I needed to establish this double fact solidly before passing to other considerations: now commences my criticism.

The economists, with that simplicity of honest folk which they have inherited from their elders and which even today is all that stands to their credit, have taken no pains to see that the progressional theory of the tax, which they point out to governments as the ne plus ultra of a wise and liberal administration, was contradictory in its terms and pregnant with a legion of impossibilities. They have attributed the oppression of the treasury by turns to the barbarism of the time, the ignorance of princes, the prejudices of caste, the avarice of collectors, everything, in short, which, in their opinion, preventing the progression of the tax, stood in the way of the sincere practice of equality in the distribution of public burdens; they have not for a moment suspected that what they asked under the name of progressive taxation was the overturn of all economic ideas.

Thus they have not seen, for instance, that the tax was progressive from the very fact that it was proportional, the only difference being that the progression was in the wrong direction, the percentage being, as we have said, not directly, but inversely proportional to fortunes. If the economists had had a clear idea of this overturn, invariable in all countries where taxation exists, so singular a phenomenon would not have failed to draw their attention; they would have sought its causes, and would have ended by discovering that what they took for an accident of civilization, an effect of the inextricable difficulties of human government, was the product of the contradiction inherent in all political economy.

The progressive tax, whether applied to capital or to income, is the very negation of monopoly, of that monopoly which is met everywhere, according to M. Rossi, across the path of social economy; which is the true stimulant of industry, the hope of economy, the preserver and parent of all wealth; of which we have been able to say, in short, that society cannot exist without it, but that, except for it, there would be no society. Let the tax become suddenly what it unquestionably must sometime be, — namely, the proportional (or progressional, which is the same thing) contribution of each producer to the public expenses, and straightway rent and profit are confiscated everywhere for the benefit of the State; labor is stripped of the fruits of its toil; each individual being reduced to the proper allowance of fifty-six and a half centimes, poverty becomes general; the compact formed between labor and capital is dissolved, and society, deprived of its rudder, drifts back to its original state.

It will be said, perhaps, that it is easy to prevent the absolute annihilation of the profits of capital by stopping the progression at any moment.

Eclecticism, the golden mean, compromise with heaven or with morality: is it always to be the same philosophy, then? True science is repugnant to such arrangements. All invested capital must return to the producer in the form of interest; all labor must leave a surplus, all wages be equal to product. Under the protection of these laws society continually realizes, by the greatest variety of production, the highest possible degree of welfare. These laws are absolute; to violate them is to wound, to mutilate society. Capital, accordingly, which, after all, is nothing but accumulated labor, is inviolable. But, on the other hand, the tendency to equality is no less imperative; it is manifested at each economic phase with increasing energy and an invincible authority. Therefore you must satisfy labor and justice at once; you must give to the former guarantees more and more real, and secure the latter without concession or ambiguity.

Instead of that, you know nothing but the continual substitution of the good pleasure of the prince for your theories, the arrest of the course of economic law by arbitrary power, and, under the pretext of equity, the deception of the wage worker and the monopolist alike! Your liberty is but a half-liberty, your justice but a half-justice, and all your wisdom consists in those middle terms whose iniquity is always twofold, since they justify the pretensions of neither one party nor the other! No, such cannot be the science which you have promised us, and which, by unveiling for us the secrets of the production and consumption of wealth, must unequivocally solve the social antinomies. Your semi-liberal doctrine is the code of despotism, and shows that you are powerless to advance as well as ashamed to retreat.

If society, pledged by its economic antecedents, can never retrace its steps; if, until the arrival of the universal equation, monopoly must be maintained in its possession, — no change is possible in the laying of taxes: only there is a contradiction here, which, like every other, must be pushed till exhausted. Have, then, the courage of your opinions, — respect for wealth, and no pity for the poor, whom the God of monopoly has condemned. The less the hireling has wherewith to live, the more he must pay: qui minus habet, etiam quod habet auferetur ab eo. This is necessary, this is inevitable; in it lies the safety of society.

Let us try, nevertheless, to reverse the progression of the tax, and so arrange it that the capitalist, instead of the laborer, will pay the larger share.

I observe, in the first place, that with the usual method of collection, such a reversal is impracticable.

In fact, if the tax falls on exploitable capital, this tax, in its entirety, is included among the costs of production, and then of two things one: either the product, in spite of the increase in its selling value, will be bought by the consumer, and consequently the producer will be relieved of the tax; or else this same product will be thought too dear, and in that case the tax, as J. B. Say has very well said, acts like a tithe levied on seed, -it prevents production. Thus it is that too high a tax on the transfer of titles arrests the circulation of real property, and renders estates less productive by keeping them from changing hands.

If, on the contrary, the tax falls on product, it is nothing but a tax of quotité, which each pays in the ratio of his consumption, while the capitalist, whom it is purposed to strike, escapes.

Moreover, the supposition of a progressive tax based either on product or on capital is perfectly absurd. How can we imagine the same product paying a duty of ten per cent at the store of one dealer and a duty of but five at another’s? How are estates already encumbered with mortgages and which change owners every day, how is a capital formed by joint investment or by the fortune of a single individual, to be distinguished upon the official register, and taxed, not in the ratio of their value or rent, but in the ratio of the fortune or presumed profits of the proprietor?

There remains, then, a last resource, — to tax the net income of each tax-payer, whatever his method of getting it. For instance, an income of one thousand francs would pay ten per cent.; an income of two thousand francs, twenty per cent.; an income of three thousand francs, thirty per cent., etc. We will set aside the thousand difficulties and annoyances that must be met in ascertaining these incomes, and suppose the operation as easy as you like. Well! that is exactly the system which I charge with hypocrisy, contradiction, and injustice.

I say in the first place that this system is hypocritical, because, instead of taking from the rich that entire portion of their income in excess of the average national product per family, which is inadmissible, it does not, as is imagined, reverse the order of progression in the direction of wealth; at most it changes the rate of progression. Thus the present progression of the tax, for fortunes yielding incomes of a thousand francs and UNDER, being as that of the numbers 10, 11, 12, 13, etc., and, for fortunes yielding incomes of a thousand francs and OVER, as that of the numbers 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, etc., — the tax always increasing with poverty and decreasing with wealth, — if we should confine ourselves to lifting the indirect tax which falls especially on the poorer class and imposing a corresponding tax upon the incomes of the richer class, the progression thereafter, it is true, would be, for the first, only as that of the numbers 10, 10.25, 10.50, 10.75, 11, 11.25, etc., and, for the second, as 10, 9.75, 9.50, 9.25, 9, 8.75, etc. But this progression, although less rapid on both sides, would still take the same direction nevertheless, would still be a reversal of justice; and it is for this reason that the so-called progressive tax, capable at most of giving the philanthropist something to babble about, is of no scientific value. It changes nothing in fiscal jurisprudence; as the proverb says, it is always the poor man who carries the pouch, always the rich man who is the object of the solicitude of power.

I add that this system is contradictory.

In fact, one cannot both give and keep, say the jurisconsults. Instead, then, of consecrating monopolies from which the holders are to derive no privilege save that of straightway losing, with the income, all the enjoyment thereof, why not decree the agrarian law at once? Why provide in the constitution that each shall freely enjoy the fruit of his labor and industry, when, by the fact or the tendency of the tax, this permission is granted only to the extent of a dividend of fifty-six and a half centimes a day, — a thing, it is true, which the law could not have foreseen, but which would necessarily result from progression? The legislator, in confirming us in our monopolies, intended to favor production, to feed the sacred fire of industry: now, what interest shall we have to produce, if, though not yet associated, we are not to produce for ourselves alone? After we have been declared free, how can we be made subject to conditions of sale, hire, and exchange which annul our liberty?

A man possesses government securities which bring him an income of twenty thousand francs. The tax, under the new system of progression, will take fifty per cent. of this from him. At this rate it is more advantageous to him to withdraw his capital and consume the principal instead of the income. Then let him be repaid. What! repaid! The State cannot be obliged to repay; and, if it consents to redeem, it will do so in proportion to the net income. Therefore a bond for twenty thousand francs will be worth not more than ten thousand to the bondholder, because of the tax, if he wishes to get it redeemed by the State: unless he divides it into twenty lots, in which case it will return him double the amount. Likewise an estate which rents for fifty thousand francs, the tax taking two-thirds of the income, will lose two-thirds of its value. But let the proprietor divide this estate into a hundred lots and sell it at auction, and then, the terror of the treasury no longer deterring purchasers, he can get back his entire capital. So that, with the progressive tax, real estate no longer follows the law of supply and demand and is not valued according to the real income which it yields, but according to the condition of the owner. The consequence will be that large capitals will depreciate in value, and mediocrity be brought to the front; land-owners will hasten to sell, because it will be better for them to consume their property than to get an insufficient rent from it; capitalists will recall their investments, or will invest only at usurious rates; all exploitation on a large scale will be prohibited, every visible fortune proceeded against, and all accumulation of capital in excess of the figure of the necessary proscribed. Wealth, driven back, will retire within itself and never emerge except by stealth; and labor, like a man attached to a corpse, will embrace misery in an endless union. Does it not well become the economists who devise such reforms to laugh at the reformers?

After having demonstrated the contradiction and delusion of the progressive tax, must I prove its injustice also? The progressive tax, as understood by the economists and, in their wake, by certain radicals, is impracticable, I said just now, if it falls on capital and product: consequently I have supposed it to fall on incomes. But who does not see that this purely theoretical distinction between capital, product, and income falls so far as the treasury is concerned, and that the same impossibilities which we have pointed out reappear here with all their fatal character?

A manufacturer discovers a process by means of which, saving twenty per cent of his cost of production, he secures an income of twenty-five thousand francs. The treasury calls on him for fifteen thousand. He is obliged, therefore, to raise his prices, since, by the fact of the tax, his process, instead of saving twenty per cent, saves only eight per cent. Is not this as if the treasury prevented cheapness? Thus, in trying to reach the rich, the progressive tax always reaches the consumer; and it is impossible for it not to reach him without suppressing production altogether: what a mistake!

It is a law of social economy that all invested capital must return continually to the capitalist in the form of interest. With the progressive tax this law is radically violated, since, by the effect of progression, interest on capital is so reduced that industries are established only at a loss of a part or the whole of the capital. To make it otherwise, interest on capital would have to increase progressively in the same ratio as the tax itself, which is absurd. Therefore the progressive tax stops the creation of capital; furthermore it hinders its circulation. Whoever, in fact, should want to buy a plant for any enterprise or a piece of land for cultivation would have to consider, under the system of progressive taxation, not the real value of such plant or land, but rather the tax which it would bring upon him; so that, if the real income were four per cent., and, by the effect of the tax or the condition of the buyer, must go down to three, the purchase could not be effected. After having run counter to all interests and thrown the market into confusion by its categories, the progressive tax arrests the development of wealth and reduces venal value below real value; it contracts, it petrifies society. What tyranny! What derision!

The progressive tax resolves itself, then, whatever may be done, into a denial of justice, prohibition of production, confiscation. It is unlimited and unbridled absolutism, given to power over everything which, by labor, by economy, by improvements, contributes to public wealth.

But what is the use of wandering about in chimerical hypotheses when the truth is at hand. It is not the fault of the proportional principle if the tax falls with such shocking inequality upon the various classes of society; the fault is in our prejudices and our morals. The tax, as far as is possible in human operations, proceeds with equity, precision. Social economy commands it to apply to product; it applies to product. If product escapes it, it strikes capital: what more natural! The tax, in advance of civilization, supposes the equality of laborers and capitalists: the inflexible expression of necessity, it seems to invite us to make ourselves equals by education and labor, and, by balancing our functions and associating our interests, to put ourselves in accord with it. The tax refuses to distinguish between one man and another: and we blame its mathematical severity for the differences in our fortunes! We ask equality itself to comply with our injustice! Was I not right in saying at the outset that, relatively to the tax, we are behind our institutions?

Accordingly we always see the legislator stopping, in his fiscal laws, before the subversive consequences of the progressive tax, and consecrating the necessity, the immutability of the proportional tax. For equality in well-being cannot result from the violation of capital: the antinomy must be methodically solved, under penalty, for society, of falling back into chaos. Eternal justice does not accommodate itself to all the whims of men: like a woman, whom one may outrage, but whom one does not marry without a solemn alienation of one’s self, it demands on our part, with the abandonment of our egoism, the recognition of all its rights, which are those of science.

The tax, whose final purpose, as we have shown, is the reward of the non-producers, but whose original idea was a restoration of the laborer, — the tax, under the system of monopoly, reduces itself therefore to a pure and simple protest, a sort of extra-judicial act, the whole effect of which is to aggravate the situation of the wage-worker by disturbing the monopolist in his possession. As for the idea of changing the proportional tax into a progressive tax, or, to speak more accurately, of reversing the order in which the tax progresses, that is a blunder the entire responsibility for which belongs to the economists.

But henceforth menace hovers over privilege. With the power of modifying the proportionality of the tax, government has under its hand an expeditious and sure means of dispossessing the holders of capital when it will; and it is a frightful thing to see everywhere that great institution, the basis of society, the object of so many controversies, of so many laws, of so many cajoleries, and of so many crimes, PROPERTY, suspended at the end of a thread over the yawning mouth of the proletariat.

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stark-stiel · 10 months

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i am absolutely angry and devastated. if you’ve seen the things i’ve posted on my story recently, you’re probably aware about the genocide happening in Palestine right now.

as of today, november 21st 2023 there are:

- 14 000+ deaths, 5 600+ of those being children

- 33 000+ injured, 75% being children and women

- 6 000+ are still missing under rubble

- let’s not forget the 60+ journalists who are being targeted for spreading the truth in both Palestine and more recently, in southern Lebanon

- at least 5 premature babies out of 39 of them have died either due to the lack of electricity, food, water and medicine as most of the others have

- 21 out of 35 of Gaza’s hospital are completely out of service, which one of their largest hospital, Al-Shifa, was targeted and is now not operational, and they plan to do the same to the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza, which is, might i add, an INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIME on top of many other israel has committed

- there are also 7 000+ palestinian prisoners captured by israeli military forces including children, in which the israeli government is deciding whether to execute them, or exchange a release for their own prisoners taken

and that is just the damage in Gaza, not including the destruction in the West Bank:

- which killed 217 people, including 50 children

- injuring more than 2 750 others

these lists only contain the bare minimum of what has happened.

to give you an idea, today, i saw a doctor who was being consoled by others, as he had just performed an amputation on HIS OWN CHILD, which has happened before, but this surgery was done WITHOUT anesthesia, and the child couldn’t survive the pain.

let’s just let that sink in for a minute.

they don’t have the proper medical supplies to provide the care they need because Israel and the United States will not allow a ceasefire. Biden has stated so himself. and Trudeau hasn’t called one either.

they can’t even grieve their dead in peace. they capture all their sorrow, tears, anger, and screams of despair on screen for us to see because no one is listening as their people are slaughtered. whole lineages of families killed, children orphaned, parents carrying their dead child’s body parts in bags, children pleading for us to help them, speaking out IN ENGLISH so we can understand them, that this is what they are going through. please listen to them.

the things you will see on social media are graphic, you might feel sick to your stomach. you should. because this is happening across the world as we speak, and has happened for the past 75 years! and it must stop now. after october 7th, more outrage has emerged from the people, adding pressure on their governments to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

people will try to devalue social media by saying its a “place where people are dumb on camera” but without it, it would NEVER had known what was going on, and i have never been so outraged by what i have seen.

if you don’t know what to do, you can start by not being silent. silence only allows the lies the Zionists are spreading to propagate, and deafens palestinian voices.

you can also educate yourself on what the palestinians have been going through. a very good site i’ve found is decolonizepalestine.com which i’m still learning from. other resources can be found online such as:

- a click a day to help:

https://arab.org/click-to-help/palestine/

- there is also a petition to Trudeau to call for a ceasefire at this link: https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-4649 it closes Nov 23, 2023 at 3:20 p.m. so as many of you, please sign before the deadline! if you have already signed, thank you 🙏

- support palestinian voices online

there are also boycotts happening against the companies that are profiting and/or benefiting and supporting the genocide in Gaza. Some include:

- puma

- starbucks

- mcdonalds

- disney+

- burger king

- amazon

- chapters

- squishmallows

- HP

- sabra hummus

- Walmart

- israeli produce and items

etc etc i could go on and on. the point is, to not fund the israeli military.

this website has a complete list and shows which companies have been selected as part of their targeted boycott, to make a more effective boycott: https://bdsmovement.net/economic-boycott

and if boycotting these places is too hard for you, you are definitely not god’s strongest soldier 🫡 (and hey, you can also do it for selfish reasons, to save money by not buying out!)

if after reading all this you still want to turn a blind eye, i can’t stop you. but i hope you can live with that decision

as always, FREE PALESTINE & Ceasefire Now 🇵🇸🫶

links in order of appearance:

http://decolonizepalestine.com

https://arab.org/click-to-help/palestine/

https://bdsmovement.net/economic-boycott

https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-4649

#free palestine #ceasefire #ceasefire now

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catdotjpeg · 9 months

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On Sunday, December 31, over 750 people marched in Denver to demand an end to U.S. aid to Israel and an end to Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people. [...] Shaine Carroll-Frey, a member of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, states, “Working-class people in this country everything to gain by standing in complete, unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people,” and, “I urge everybody, if you're a worker, if you're not a worker, if you're a student, if you're a person of conscience, to get organized, because guess what? Our enemies are organized, and they have billions and billions of dollars. All we have is our numbers and our organization.” Khalid Hamu, a member of Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Colorado, said, “Our government buys up their surveillance technology. Our police get trained by the occupation forces, and our journalists get viruses slipped onto their devices. Our tuition travels across the world, funds a genocide, and then travels back to aid in our own oppression. We must cut ties with Israel for its crimes against humanity.” SDS is currently fighting a campaign to get the University of Colorado and the Metropolitan State University of Denver to completely divest and cut all ties with the Zionist entity. The march served to kickstart a National week of Action called by the US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), the National Alliance Against Racists and Political Repression (NAARPR), and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

-- From "Colorado Palestine Coalition takes the streets for New Year" from Fight Back! News, 2 Jan 2024

#colorado #denver #palestine

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riding-with-the-wild-hunt · 10 months

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“I told the driver that if I could not restore the generator, people like him wouldn’t be able to reach injured civilians. We are no better nor less important than medical staff – a phone call can save lives,” Ahmad said. Once at the centre, Ahmad set to work. By 2am, he had repaired the generator, allowing the telecommunications network to keep operating. He decided to stay in the building until dawn, slipping out around the freshly fallen debris to go home during a lull in Israeli bombing. “Thank God my family was OK and I lived to see another day. This is my work and my life...I do this every day,” he said. Ahmad’s tale has become almost routine among the 750 PalTel staff in Gaza who, despite living through bombing, displacement and death, risk life and limb to keep the telecoms network running. Samir*, one of the staff members killed, had spent 10 hours shuttling fuel between data towers before returning home. Just 15 minutes later, Samir and his brother were killed in an Israeli air raid on their building. Humanitarian workers and journalists have said the operation of communication networks in Gaza is essential for rescue services and for documenting the reality of conditions on the ground to the outside world.

#as always. please read the rest of the article if you can #palestine #amplification

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sebtember5 · 1 year

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Sebastian Vettel

"Sportsman of the Year" 2010.

This was decided by about 1500 sports journalists in their choice. The winners were allowed to be celebrated by 750 invited guests at the traditional family festival of German sport

Group picture without Maria Riesch: The second-placed nine posed for the photographers between Vettel and Lahm. Winner Riesch could not attend the gala until the end, she had to leave early to prepare for the next World Cup

#sebastian vettel #world sport man #2010 #we used to be an actual country #vettel #du bist weltmeister #Sportler des Jahres

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longwindedbore · 11 months

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I couldn’t find on Google when some ‘news’ interviewer - ever - asked Trump why he didn’t produce his ‘evidence’ of voter fraud during the 60+ Court Cases in November and December 2020?

Or why he didn’t produce it before the J6 counting of the Electoral Votes?

Or why he didn’t produce it for Giuliani, Powell, Ellis et Al when they were being sanctioned and sued successfully?

Or did any ‘news’ interviewer asked Giuliani, Powell, Ellis et Al why they didn’t produce Evidence for the Court Cases for Trump or to defend themselves when they were getting sanctioned and sued?

Did any ‘news’ interviewer ask Powell why she didn’t demonstrate on non-stolen Voting Machines the “proof” of stolen votes she insisted they found on the stolen voting machines?

Did anyone ask Fox Broadcasting why they didn’t produce the evidence their investigative ‘journalists’ allegedly uncovered of widespread voter fraud before paying out $750 million and now facing a $2-billion plus lawsuit?

Or why Fox didn’t subpoenaed the ‘evidence’ that Trump must have provided Giuliani, Powell, Ellis et Al in their court cases?

Has any ‘mainstream media’ ‘news’ interviewer asked any one of the GOP election deniers in Congress why - given the foregoing - they still argue that the Democrats have rigged the elections with voter fraud?

Or even why those all-powerful Deep State Democrats allowed Republicans a House majority?

What a pile of 💩! The GOP and the Corporate-Owned ‘mainstream media’.

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mariacallous · 1 year

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The Greek Coast Guard on Wednesday stated that at least 78 migrants have been found dead after a fishing boat was wrecked off Pylos, Peloponnese. So far, 104 migrants have been rescued.

A rescue operation took place in the early hours of the morning in international waters 47 nautical miles southwest of Pylos.

Italian authorities informed the Greek authorities about the boat, which was carrying a large number of migrants. The Greek media reported that about 400 people were on board. Other reports have put the number as high as 750.

The boat had been deported from Libya, bound for Italy. The migrants were not wearing life jackets.

The survivors have been taken to the port of Kalamata, in the Peloponnese, where a reception centre with first aid has been organized in collaboration with the General Secretariat of Civil Protection.

The fishing vessel was spotted on Tuesday by a EU border protection agency FRONTEX aerial vehicle and by two ships. A Greek boat sailed to the spot, while a helicopter took off at the same time.

In successive telephone calls to the fishing vessel, offering assistance, they received a negative response, stating the vessel’s desire to continue the voyage to Italy.

The boat later capsized and sank. Two patrol boats, a coast guard’s lifeboats, a frigate of the navy, seven ships sailing alongside, a helicopter of the navy, and an unnamed aerial vehicle are operating at the site of the investigations.

Six such shipwrecks with migrant victims have occurred in the first six months or so of 2023.

More than 70,000 refugees and migrants have arrived in Europe’s frontline countries this year, with the majority landing in Italy, according to UN data, the BBC reported Wednesday.

The European Court of Human Rights condemned Greece in July 2022 for violating the European Convention of Human Rights over the sinking of a migrant boat in 2014 in which 11 asylum seekers, among them eight children, lost their lives.

CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour asked Greek ex-PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis if he will order a full and independent investigation into a New York Times video allegedly showing Greek authorities illegally setting adrift some migrants in the Aegean. “I have already done so, Christiane. I take this incident very seriously. It is already being investigated by my government,” said Mitsotakis.

On 5 June, MEPs in the LIBE committee debated the situation in Greece with home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson.

The European Union submitted an official request to Greece for an independent investigation into the pushbacks of refugees-immigrants after The New York Times video document.

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mightyflamethrower · 11 months

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Maher: Media ‘Couldn’t Be More Pro-Hamas than It Is Now’

11 Nov 202364

2:30

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher discussed a letter signed by journalists on media coverage of the Israel-Hamas war and stated that media coverage of the Israel-Hamas war “couldn’t be more pro-Hamas than it is now.”

New York Times columnist Pamela Paul said that no one at the Times signed the letter, and they’re not allowed to.

Maher responded, “But I bet you there [are] lots of people who work there who would, who wanted to.”

Paul cautioned, “I want to say about that particular letter…is this is by 750 journalists in the same way that open letters — you probably can tell if there’s an open letter in the TV industry, and you look down the names, you’d be like, that guy hasn’t made a show in years. You can look at this letter, a lot of them are not journalists, first of all. It’s similar to other open letters where they’ll say, contributors from The New York Times and a thousand have signed it, and you look and someone maybe wrote a book review 15 years ago and was never hired to do a book review again. A lot of the names on that list are not actual journalists, I just want to make that clear. … Some of them were. A lot of them didn’t — don’t have any affiliation, so they don’t have to worry about having any repercussions, because this is not the role of journalists.”

She added, “And that letter is couched in something that I do think is important to journalism, which is the opening part, which is to say that, I think it’s now at 37 journalists or people who work in the media generally have been killed in this conflict so far, which is tragic. And, obviously…most people don’t want journalists to die. But then, in the substance of the letter, it then goes on to — and what bothers me is they use the Times’ slogan, ‘without fear of favor’, but they go on to list a bunch of things that they would like the media to do to reframe the conversation, which is essentially in a more pro-Hamas direction.”

Maher responded, “It couldn’t be more pro-Hamas than it is now. They’re saying they want the newsrooms to adopt words such as ‘apartheid,’ I hear it all the time anyway. It’s wrong, and I hear it. ‘Genocide,’ again, wrong, Israel [is] not trying to commit genocide, the other side [is] blatantly saying, we would love to commit genocide on you.”

The MSM has become the propaganda wing of America's enemies.

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knuckle · 11 months

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. . .

Palestinian officials blamed the explosion on one of the many Israeli bombs dropped on Gaza since October 7.

Israel, meanwhile, has predictably claimed that a misfired Palestinian rocket was responsible for the massacre at the hospital.

Israel’s response to the hospital bombing – a war crime under international law – is consistent with its usual post-atrocity routine.

The routine goes something like this: Israel commits a human rights atrocity, immediately denies having anything to do with it, says it has solid evidence that Palestinians committed the crime, and then just waits to see if someone manages to prove what really happened. If it eventually becomes clear that Israel did indeed carry out the atrocity, it silently accepts responsibility, but by then, the world’s focus has already moved on to other matters.

Israel performed this exact routine just last year, after it murdered Palestinian-American journalist and Al Jazeera veteran Shireen Abu Akleh.

Immediately after the May 2022 murder, then-Israeli Prime Minister Neftali Bennett blamed Palestinians for “throwing blame at Israel without basis.” At the time, Bennett said, “according to the information we have gathered, it appears likely that armed Palestinians – who were firing indiscriminately at the time – were responsible for the unfortunate death of the journalist.” Then-Defence Minister Benny Gantz stated confidently that “no [Israeli] gunfire was directed at the journalist,” and that the Israeli army had “seen footage of indiscriminate shooting by Palestinian terrorists”.

Later in 2022, though, and following multiple independent investigations proving without a shadow of doubt that Abu Akleh had been killed by Israeli fire, the Israeli government finally admitted that it was a “high possibility” that it was an Israeli bullet that killed the journalist wearing a clearly marked press vest and helmet.

Nevertheless, Israel’s initial denials were picked up prominently by Western media outlets, casting significant doubt over Israel’s culpability in the murder.

...

Over the years, the same scenario played out over and over again as Israel repeatedly committed atrocities, denied responsibility and walked back its baseless denials only when the evidence to the contrary became too compelling and the world’s attention had moved elsewhere.

This course of action proved beneficial for Israel as it bought it precious time in the court of public opinion. With Israeli voices dominating Western media reports, this post-atrocity routine helped Israel create a contested media narrative, and cast doubt over clear evidence of its crimes and excesses.

. . .

In the days before the hospital bombing, BBC News ran multiple reports about alleged Hamas tunnels under public buildings, including schools and hospitals. It doesn’t need much explaining how this kind of uncritical repeating of Israeli propaganda by Western media organisations helps Israel perform its deceptive post-atrocity-routine effectively.

When the dust settles, independent investigations will inevitably show that Israel, which had already been bombing across Gaza’s residential buildings, mosques, banks, and universities, and had already killed thousands of Gaza Palestinians, including 750 children, is responsible for bombing al-Ahli Hospital.

And when the dust settles, Western media likely won’t give as much light to Israel’s guilt as it did to its denials.

#Palestine #Israel #al-Ahli Hospital #long post

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zee-man-chatter · 1 year

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Clinging Bitterly to Guns and Religion

By William J. Astore

June 08, 2023: Information Clearing House --All around us things are falling apart. Collectively, Americans are experiencing national and imperial decline. Can America save itself? Is this country, as presently constituted, even worth saving?

For me, that last question is radical indeed. From my early years, I believed deeply in the idea of America. I knew this country wasn’t perfect, of course, not even close. Long before the 1619 Project, I was aware of the “original sin” of slavery and how central it was to our history. I also knew about the genocide of Native Americans. (As a teenager, my favorite movie — and so it remains — was Little Big Man, which pulled no punches when it came to the white man and his insatiably murderous greed.)

Nevertheless, America still promised much, or so I believed in the 1970s and 1980s. Life here was simply better, hands down, than in places like the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong’s China. That’s why we had to “contain” communism — to keep them over there, so they could never invade our country and extinguish our lamp of liberty. And that’s why I joined America’s Cold War military, serving in the Air Force from the presidency of Ronald Reagan to that of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. And believe me, it proved quite a ride. It taught this retired lieutenant colonel that the sky’s anything but the limit.

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In the end, 20 years in the Air Force led me to turn away from empire, militarism, and nationalism. I found myself seeking instead some antidote to the mainstream media’s celebrations of American exceptionalism and the exaggerated version of victory culture that went with it (long after victory itself was in short supply). I started writing against the empire and its disastrous wars and found likeminded people at TomDispatch — former imperial operatives turned incisive critics like Chalmers Johnson and Andrew Bacevich, along with sharp-eyed journalist Nick Turse and, of course, the irreplaceable Tom Engelhardt, the founder of those “tomgrams” meant to alert America and the world to the dangerous folly of repeated U.S. global military interventions.

But this isn’t a plug for TomDispatch. It’s a plug for freeing your mind as much as possible from the thoroughly militarized matrix that pervades America. That matrix drives imperialism, waste, war, and global instability to the point where, in the context of the conflict in Ukraine, the risk of nuclear Armageddon could imaginably approach that of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. As wars — proxy or otherwise — continue, America’s global network of 750-odd military bases never seems to decline. Despite upcoming cuts to domestic spending, just about no one in Washington imagines Pentagon budgets doing anything but growing, even soaring toward the trillion-dollar level, with militarized programs accounting for 62% of federal discretionary spending in 2023.

Indeed, an engorged Pentagon — its budget for 2024 is expected to rise to $886 billion in the bipartisan debt-ceiling deal reached by President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — guarantees one thing: a speedier fall for the American empire. Chalmers Johnson predicted it; Andrew Bacevich analyzed it. The biggest reason is simple enough: incessant, repetitive, disastrous wars and costly preparations for more of the same have been sapping America’s physical and mental reserves, as past wars did the reserves of previous empires throughout history. (Think of the short-lived Napoleonic empire, for example.)

Known as “the arsenal of democracy” during World War II, America has now simply become an arsenal, with a military-industrial-congressional complex intent on forging and feeding wars rather than seeking to starve and stop them. The result: a precipitous decline in the country’s standing globally, while at home Americans pay a steep price of accelerating violence (2023 will easily set a record for mass shootings) and “carnage” (Donald Trump’s word) in a once proud but now much-bloodied “homeland.”

Lessons from History on Imperial Decline

I’m a historian, so please allow me to share a few basic lessons I’ve learned. When I taught World War I to cadets at the Air Force Academy, I would explain how the horrific costs of that war contributed to the collapse of four empires: Czarist Russia, the German Second Reich, the Ottoman empire, and the Austro-Hungarian empire of the Habsburgs. Yet even the “winners,” like the French and British empires, were also weakened by the enormity of what was, above all, a brutal European civil war, even if it spilled over into Africa, Asia, and indeed the Americas.

And yet after that war ended in 1918, peace proved elusive indeed, despite the Treaty of Versailles, among other abortive agreements. There was too much unfinished business, too much belief in the power of militarism, especially in an emergent Third Reich in Germany and in Japan, which had embraced ruthless European military methods to create its own Asiatic sphere of dominance. Scores needed to be settled, so the Germans and Japanese believed, and military offensives were the way to do it.

As a result, civil war in Europe continued with World War II, even as Japan showed that Asiatic powers could similarly embrace and deploy the unwisdom of unchecked militarism and war. The result: 75 million dead and more empires shattered, including Mussolini’s “New Rome,” a “thousand-year” German Reich that barely lasted 12 of them before being utterly destroyed, and an Imperial Japan that was starved, burnt out, and finally nuked. China, devastated by war with Japan, also found itself ripped apart by internal struggles between nationalists and communists.

As with its prequel, even most of the “winners” of World War II emerged in a weakened state. In defeating Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union had lost 25 to 30 million people. Its response was to erect, in Winston Churchill’s phrase, an “Iron Curtain” behind which it could exploit the peoples of Eastern Europe in a militarized empire that ultimately collapsed due to its wars and its own internal divisions. Yet the USSR lasted longer than the post-war French and British empires. France, humiliated by its rapid capitulation to the Germans in 1940, fought to reclaim wealth and glory in “French” Indochina, only to be severely humbled at Dien Bien Phu. Great Britain, exhausted from its victory, quickly lost India, that “jewel” in its imperial crown, and then Egypt in the Suez debacle.

There was, in fact, only one country, one empire, that truly “won” World War II: the United States, which had been the least touched (Pearl Harbor aside) by war and all its horrors. That seemingly never-ending European civil war from 1914 to 1945, along with Japan’s immolation and China’s implosion, left the U.S. virtually unchallenged globally. America emerged from those wars as a superpower precisely because its government had astutely backed the winning side twice, tipping the scales in the process, while paying a relatively low price in blood and treasure compared to allies like the Soviet Union, France, and Britain.

History’s lesson for America’s leaders should have been all too clear: when you wage war long, especially when you devote significant parts of your resources — financial, material, and especially personal — to it, you wage it wrong. Not for nothing is war depicted in the Bible as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. France had lost its empire in World War II; it just took later military catastrophes in Algeria and Indochina to make it obvious. That was similarly true of Britain’s humiliations in India, Egypt, and elsewhere, while the Soviet Union, which had lost much of its imperial vigor in that war, would take decades of slow rot and overstretch in places like Afghanistan to implode.

Meanwhile, the United States hummed along, denying it was an empire at all, even as it adopted so many of the trappings of one. In fact, in the wake of the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991, Washington’s leaders would declare America the exceptional “superpower,” a new and far more enlightened Rome and “the indispensable nation” on planet Earth. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, its leaders would confidently launch what they termed a Global War on Terror and begin waging wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, as in the previous century they had in Vietnam. (No learning curve there, it seems.) In the process, its leaders imagined a country that would remain untouched by war’s ravages, which was we now know — or do we? — the height of imperial hubris and folly.

For whether you call it fascism, as with Nazi Germany, communism, as with Stalin’s Soviet Union, or democracy, as with the United States, empires built on dominance achieved through a powerful, expansionist military necessarily become ever more authoritarian, corrupt, and dysfunctional. Ultimately, they are fated to fail. No surprise there, since whatever else such empires may serve, they don’t serve their own people. Their operatives protect themselves at any cost, while attacking efforts at retrenchment or demilitarization as dangerously misguided, if not seditiously disloyal.

That’s why those like Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Daniel Hale, who shined a light on the empire’s militarized crimes and corruption, found themselves imprisoned, forced into exile, or otherwise silenced. Even foreign journalists like Julian Assange can be caught up in the empire’s dragnet and imprisoned if they dare expose its war crimes. The empire knows how to strike back and will readily betray its own justice system (most notably in the case of Assange), including the hallowed principles of free speech and the press, to do so.

Perhaps he will eventually be freed, likely as not when the empire judges he’s approaching death’s door. His jailing and torture have already served their purpose. Journalists know that to expose America’s bloodied tools of empire brings only harsh punishment, not plush rewards. Best to look away or mince one’s words rather than risk prison — or worse.

Yet you can’t fully hide the reality that this country’s failed wars have added trillions of dollars to its national debt, even as military spending continues to explode in the most wasteful ways imaginable, while the social infrastructure crumbles.

Clinging Bitterly to Guns and Religion

Today, America clings ever more bitterly to guns and religion. If that phrase sounds familiar, it might be because Barack Obama used it in the 2008 presidential campaign to describe the reactionary conservatism of mostly rural voters in Pennsylvania. Disillusioned by politics, betrayed by their putative betters, those voters, claimed the then-presidential candidate, clung to their guns and religion for solace. I lived in rural Pennsylvania at the time and recall a response from a fellow resident who basically agreed with Obama, for what else was there left to cling to in an empire that had abandoned its own rural working-class citizens?

Something similar is true of America writ large today. As an imperial power, we cling bitterly to guns and religion. By “guns,” I mean all the weaponry America’s merchants of death sell to the Pentagon and across the world. Indeed, weaponry is perhaps this country’s most influential global export, devastatingly so. From 2018 to 2022, the U.S. alone accounted for 40% of global arms exports, a figure that’s only risen dramatically with military aid to Ukraine. And by “religion,” I mean a persistent belief in American exceptionalism (despite all evidence to the contrary), which increasingly draws sustenance from a militant Christianity that denies the very spirit of Christ and His teachings.

Yet history appears to confirm that empires, in their dying stages, do exactly that: they exalt violence, continue to pursue war, and insist on their own greatness until their fall can neither be denied nor reversed. It’s a tragic reality that the journalist Chris Hedges has written about with considerable urgency.

The problem suggests its own solution (not that any powerful figure in Washington is likely to pursue it). America must stop clinging bitterly to its guns — and here I don’t even mean the nearly 400 million weapons in private hands in this country, including all those AR-15 semi-automatic rifles. By “guns,” I mean all the militarized trappings of empire, including America’s vast structure of overseas military bases and its staggering commitments to weaponry of all sorts, including world-ending nuclear ones. As for clinging bitterly to religion — and by “religion” I mean the belief in America’s own righteousness, regardless of the millions of people it’s killed globally from the Vietnam era to the present moment — that, too, would have to stop.

History’s lessons can be brutal. Empires rarely die well. After it became an empire, Rome never returned to being a republic and eventually fell to barbarian invasions. The collapse of Germany’s Second Reich bred a third one of greater virulence, even if it was of shorter duration. Only its utter defeat in 1945 finally convinced Germans that God didn’t march with their soldiers into battle.

What will it take to convince Americans to turn their backs on empire and war before it’s too late? When will we conclude that Christ wasn’t joking when He blessed the peacemakers rather than the warmongers?

As an iron curtain descends on a failing American imperial state, one thing we won’t be able to say is that we weren’t warned.

William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and professor of history, is a TomDispatch regular and a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), an organization of critical veteran military and national security professionals. His personal substack is Bracing Views.

#us empire #ruling class blindness

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