West Asia and Russia: Recent Publications
WEST ASIA
Palestinian Deaths
335,500 Gaza Dead Ignored By Western Mainstream Media: Input To Special Rapporteur Report To Human Rights Council
by Dr Gideon Polya
17/10/2024
Excerpts
“I have made a detailed and documented Submission (below) in response to the Call for input for the report of the Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory to the Human Rights Council 58thsession. My position is that a major contributor to the horrific and ongoing Palestinian Genocide and specifically the ongoing Gaza Genocide is lying by omission and lying by commission by Western Mainstream media. Genocide ignored yields genocide repeated.
“Put simply and bluntly, a major contributor to the ongoing Palestinian Genocide by Apartheid Israel and the ongoing Gaza Genocide in particular is massive and remorseless lying by omission and lying by commission by Western Mainstream journalist, editor, politician, academic and commentariat presstitutes. Presstitute is defined thus by Wikipedia: “Presstitute is a term that references journalists and ‘talking heads’ in mainstream media who give biased and predetermined views misleadingly tailored to fit a particular partisan, financial or business agenda, thus neglecting the fundamental duty to report news impartially” [1].
“War is the penultimate in racism and genocide the ultimate. The core ethos of Humanity is Kindness and Truth. More specifically, the key moral imperatives from the WW2 Jewish Holocaust – and indeed from all WW2 holocausts and from all of about 70 genocides and holocausts – are “zero tolerance for lying”, “zero tolerance for racism”, “bear witness” and “never again to anyone”. However these moral imperatives are resolutely ignored by Western Mainstream presstitutes lying to hide numerous genocidal atrocities in living memory by the US and the US Alliance, including Apartheid Israel”.…
“Palestine was a culturally rich part of the Semitic Fertile Crescent that gave the World the alphabet, civilization, cities, agriculture, mathematics, astronomy, plant breeding and philosophy. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem was the World’s second oldest mosque. Gaza had a rich history. The Nabateans exported spices and perfumes to the Roman Empire via Gaza. Gaza was important in the spread of India-derived Arab mathematics to Italy, Spain and Europe [19]. Oil was discovered in Iraq in 1906, the British invaded Iraq in 1914, the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement divided the Middle East between the UK and France, war-related famine killed 100,000 Palestinians and 2 days after the 31 October 2017 Australia victory over the Turks at Beersheba the British gave over Palestine as a Homeland for non-Semitic Ashkenazi Jewish Zionist settler colonialists, and thence started the Palestinian Genocide after 400 peaceful years under the Ottoman Turkish Caliphate. In 1948 the British-armed and British-trained Zionists seized 78% of Palestine and expelled 800,000 Palestinians (about 60% of the population). In 1967 a nuclear-armed Apartheid Israel seized all of Palestine plus bits of Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, and expelled a further 400,000 Arabs – and thus began the 57 year Occupation.
“Before the 7 October 2023 Palestinian Breakout from the Gaza Concentration Camp the World’s 15 million Palestinians included 7 million Exiled Palestinians (excluded from the homeland continuously inhabited by their forebears for over 3,000 years), 5.6 million Occupied Palestinians (with no human rights under brutal foreign military rule and confined to ever-dwindling West Bank patches and the Gaza Concentration Camp), and 2.1 million Israeli Palestinians (able to vote for the government ruling them albeit as Third Class citizens under 65 race-based, Nazi-style discriminatory laws and under threat of dispossession and expulsion). Before 7 October 2023 the Gaza Concentration Camp was already subject to severe blockade for over 16 years (from June 2007), as well as several massive bombing and killing episodes, although none as horrendously lethal as the present Gaza Massacre. Before 7 October 2023 the deadly Jewish Israeli-imposed blockade was designed to permit bare survival of the Gaza population. Before 7 October 2023, the GDP per capita was about $52,000 for Occupier Apartheid Israel, $3,400 for the Occupied Palestinian Territory and a mere $l,000 for the Gaza Concentration Camp. There was a 10 year life expectancy gap between Occupied Palestinians and Israelis [21].
“Before 7 October 2023 the Indigenous Palestinians represented about 51% of the Subjects of Apartheid Israel but after the killing of 335,500 Gazans by 5 September 2024 this had shrunk to 50%. Apartheid Israel is a democracy by genocide. Before the 7 October 2023 Breakout the Palestinian Genocide was associated with about 2.2 million deaths from violence (50,000) and deprivation (the remainder). However as set out below the Palestinian Genocide is now associated with about 2.5 million deaths from violence (100,000) and imposed deprivation (2.4 million) i.e. similar to Jewish deaths in the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million) [22-24] and indeed I have referred to a Palestinian Genocide and Palestinian Holocaust [8, 9, 25, 26].
“Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor (6 October 2024): “Since the start of the genocide in Gaza, more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army, including around 42,000 recorded by the Gaza Ministry of Health, the majority being women and children. In addition, approximately 100,000 have been injured, with thousands of bodies still lying under the rubble and in the streets, unreachable by rescue and medical teams. An estimated 10 per cent of Gaza’s population has been killed, injured, reported missing, or detained as a result of Israeli military assaults. Of the 50,292 Palestinians killed—including those still buried under the debris—33 per cent were children [16,596 children], and 21 per cent were women [10,561 women and hence 23,134 men]. Thousands more have been forcibly detained, with 3,600 still languishing in various Israeli prisons and detention centres” [27]. The Mainstream media have been typically reporting about 40,000 killed for some months but this does not include those dead in the rubble (perhaps 10,000) and a huge and growing number of Gazans killed by the Jewish Israeli siege and the deadly lack of water, food, shelter, electricity, sanitation, medicine and medical care”.
Western Censorship
By: Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada
Excerpts
Attack on journalist part of broad crackdown on Palestine reporting, activism.
“Approximately 10 officers arrived at Winstanley’s North London home before 6 am and served the journalist with warrants and other papers authorizing them to search his house and vehicle for devices and documents.
“A letter addressed to Winstanley from the “Counter Terrorism Command” of the Metropolitan Police Service indicates that the authorities are “aware of your profession” as a journalist but that “notwithstanding, police are investigating possible offenses” under sections 1 and 2 of the Terrorism Act (2006). These provisions set out the purported offense of “encouragement of terrorism.”
“An officer conducting Thursday’s raid informed Winstanley that the investigation was connected with the journalist’s social media posts. Attempts to reach the Metropolitan Police Service for comment for this story have been unsuccessful.
“Although his devices were seized, Winstanley was not arrested and has not been charged with any offense.
“Winstanley is active on several social media platforms, and has more than 100,000 followers on Twitter/X, where he frequently shares articles, other peoples’ opinions and his own comments on Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people, British government support for these crimes, and the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide”.
RUSSIA
Pressuring Russia from the West
Uriel Araujo: Gulf of Finland may become site of new conflict between NATO and Russia
By Uriel Araujo, InfoBrics, 10/4/24
Excerpts:
“Finland and Estonia, two NATO countries, have recently signed an agreement about Baltic Sea security. Moreover, and more importantly, they have announced their intention to blockade the Gulf of Finland by closing it to Russian shipping. The Russian Foreign Ministry reacted by stating that Russia would regard any such action as a violation of maritime law. Establishing their boundaries (pertaining to the Gulf of Finland’s contiguous zones) would be within their sovereign rights, of course. However, restricting maritime shipping the way they intend to do cannot be described as anything else than a violation of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea – with potential serious consequences.
“The Gulf of Finland extends to Saint Petersburg in Russia to the east. Its southern coast contains a network of ports plus the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant. The port of Primorsk at the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland is important for oil products, for example – there are several others. It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of the gulf for Russia. For one thing the construction of the Nord Stream pipeline began in Finnish waters.
“With that said, as Pavel Klachkov (Russian political scientist and a Financial University director) remarks, NATO’s military presence is increasing in the Baltic region, which is such a strategic area for Russia as well. In April, for instance, NATO joint military exercises commenced in Lithuania. Finland’s accession to the Alliance, he argues, gave “new momentum to the northern direction, where conditions are being created for a potential conflict between NATO and Russia.” The Atlantic Alliance has also begun setting up a headquarters in Mikkeli, a Finnish city, which lies very close to the Russian border.”…
“Moreover, NATO exercises have been rehearsing the blockade of key routes for Russia – both the Suwalki Gap and the Gulf of Finland are crucial for supplying Russia’s northwestern regions. This is the larger context behind the recent Finnish-Estonian announcement…
“In November 2020 I wrote that, under Joe Biden’s presidency, Washington would pursue the policy of countering and encircling Russia, bringing changes not only in US relations to Ukraine and Eastern Europe, but to the entirety of Europe. At the time, tensions were rising in most – if not all – countries neighboring Russia. For one thing, in September 2020 NATO troops took part in provocative military exercises in Estonia near the Russian border.
“Earlier that same year Washington sent no less than 20,000 troops to Europe to take part in the NATO exercise “Defender Europe 20”, It involved 18 countries across 10 European nations, including Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Georgia (all of which share a border with the Russian Federation). It was described as the “largest military exercises on the continent since before the end of the Cold War.” From 2020 onwards things intensified considerably – with vast consequences for the continent and the whole world.
Pressuring Russia from the South
Western Politics of Regime Change
The West and Georgia’s Crisis
Anatol Lieven, Almut Rochowanski and Artin DerSimonian
Posted on October 17, 2024
Excerpts
Executive Summary
“Until recently, Georgia was often held up in the West as an example of a relatively healthy post-Soviet democracy. For example, the Atlantic Council report “2024 Atlas: Freedom and Prosperity Around the World” rated Georgia in the top quarter of all nations for the health of its democratic institutions, ahead of countries like Poland and Ukraine. Yet, in advance of this month’s Georgian parliamentary election, claims are being made that the ruling Georgian Dream party is falling under the control of Moscow, and that Georgia is on the edge of sliding into autocracy. Both the U.S. and the E.U. have begun to put sanctions in place against Georgia. What happened?
In this research brief, we give a background analysis of the current challenges to Georgian democracy. We explore the history of Georgia’s democracy over the past several decades, conditions leading into the upcoming election, recent controversies such as the “foreign influence” law put forward by the ruling party, and the Georgian government’s reluctance to take a stronger line against Russia over the Ukraine war.
We argue that a fuller examination supports a more balanced view of Georgia’s situation, one that avoids an extreme black-and-white perspective on Georgian politics and the current election. Claims that the ruling party has fully embraced a Putin-like authoritarianism, or that it has even fallen under Russia’s direct control, seem highly exaggerated given Georgia’s recent history of real — if imperfect — democracy, and evidence of the government’s desire to cooperate with the West and join the E.U.
Unfortunately, it remains true that heated rhetoric on both sides has raised the stakes of the coming elections, and increased the likelihood of a new political crisis that could destabilize Georgia and potentially risk its relationship with the West. The Georgian government has threatened to ban opposition parties after the election, while the opposition has implied that if they do not accept the results of the elections, they will attempt to overturn them through street demonstrations.
Western governments should seek to avoid playing into this spiral of mutual radicalization between opposing political sides in Georgia and stress the importance of the Georgian people deciding their own future through democratic means. Western analysts should also appreciate the objective imperatives created for Georgian policymakers by Georgia’s geographical position bordering on Russia and its economic ties to Russia.
The U.S. and the E.U. can best honor Georgians’ right to self-determination by supporting election monitoring by objective international observers, and by committing to respect the election’s outcome. Georgian democracy would be hurt, not helped, if the West supports efforts to overturn an election result due to dissatisfaction with its outcome”.