The USA by a slim margin votes for Fascism, Rascism, Mysogeny, Hate.

[Peter Lemkin]

Ethnic Cleansing or Genocide? (in Gaza)
by Kim Petersen / February 10th, 2025

[A] coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.
— Raphael Lemkin describes genocide1

Protesters in Australia urge the government to back South Africa’s court case against Israel. (AAP Photo)
South Africa took leadership among the world’s nations by filing a request for the application of the Genocide Convention against Israel with the International Court of Justice. On 20 April 2024, The Lancet published an article that cited a “not implausible … 186 000 or more” dead Palestinians following the Israeli massacres on Gaza after Hamas stepped up its 7 October 2023 resistance to Israeli occupation and oppression. It must be noted that a group living under the conditions of occupation and oppression has a right of resistance. But apparently not for the US government.

The US is Israel’s preeminent supplier of weapons. Since 7 October, the US has supplied Israel with F-15 jets, tank cartridges, explosive mortar cartridges, army vehicles, more than 10,000 2,000-pound bombs and thousands of Hellfire missiles. Obviously, the US is not a neutral party to the fighting between Israel and Palestine. In fact, the US’s involvement makes it a participant in a proxy war against the lightly armed Palestinian resistance, who have no fighter planes, no tanks, no Iron Dome.
Seeing an opportunity, US president Donald Trump declared that the US would take over the Gaza Strip. So said Trump in a White House press conference with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Of note is that Trump’s guest has an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes dating back to 8 October 2023.
Trump boasted, “We’ll own it … We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal … the Riviera of the Middle East.”
Trump stated that the Gaza Strip has been “a symbol of death and destruction for so many decades” and “an unlucky place for a long time.” Trump called on “countries of interest with humanitarian hearts” to build “various domains that will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza.”
Though the US will own it, according to Trump, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that there was no plan to put American boots on the ground in Gaza and that the US would not pay for Gaza reconstruction. Ownership without investment.
One imagines that Trump’s Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner, an investor who remarked in March 2024 that “Gaza’s waterfront property it could be very valuable,” must be rubbing his hands together with glee.
Of course, there was widespread consternation and condemnation of Trump’s plan to take over Gaza. It is blatantly illegal. There are several UN Security Council resolutions on the borders of Palestine, and UN Security Council resolutions are binding upon UN member states. Moreover, Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory.”
Curiously, writer Pepe Escobar in an interview described Trump’s taking over Gaza as “transforming a genocide into an ethnic cleansing operation.” (around 15:30)
It seems that Escobar saw ethnic cleansing as diminishing the genocidal onslaught.
The UN Genocide Convention states in Article II that

genocide means any of the following acts committed with
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as
such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
© Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its
physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Obviously, (b) and © would factor in when it comes to determination of a genocide versus ethnic cleansing.
Citing Trump’s figure of 1.8 million Palestinians to be transferred, whereas the Gaza population was given as 2.3 million prior to 7 October 2024, Escobar is among the analysts who have noted that the uncounted Palestinian population of 500 000 might portend a much higher fatality count that what is reported in the mass media.
Linguistic Accuracy
Previously, I wrote an article about an academic paper by public health researchers Rony Blum, Gregory H. Stanton, Shira Sagi and Elihu D. Richter. Blum et al. called for the expunging of the term “ethnic cleansing” from official use, declaring that it “bleaches the atrocities of genocide and its continuing use undermines the prevention of genocide.” The researchers noted, “The term ‘ethnic cleansing’ is used as a euphemism for genocide despite it having no legal status.”
The researchers considered that mislabeling a genocide as ethnic cleansing might well provide cover for further killing. Consequently, they advocated
The researchers considered that mislabeling a genocide as ethnic cleansing might well provide cover for further killing. Consequently, they advocated linguistic accuracy so that agents of flagrant criminal actions will bear full culpability and responsibility. Blum et al. made a compelling case for ditching the term “ethnic cleansing” and calling genocide what it is. Given the abhorrence evoked by genocide, linguistic cleansing is required.
Arguably, of greater importance than linguistic accuracy though is the recognition and identification of the genocidaires. Blum et al. focused on countries outside their backyards and overlooked genocides perpetrated by their own countries. This is not only intellectually dishonest, but it detracts from the morality that implicitly underlies their position.
Ilan Pappe, author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, at first drew a distinction between genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Did Pappe fudge on the question of genocide?

Pappe writes, “Massacres accompany the operations [of ethnic cleansing], but where they occur they are not part of a genocidal plan: they are a key tactic to accelerate the flight of the population earmarked for expulsion. (p. 2) [italics added]
“Ethnic cleansing is not genocide, but it does carry with it atrocious acts of mass killing and butchery.” (p. 197) [emphasis added] Pappe is generous with the definition of “ethnic cleansing” (e.g., “part of the essence of ethnic cleansing is the eradication, by all means available, of a region’s history”) but parsimonious with the definition of “genocide.”2

My colleague Gary Zatzman wrote, in a personal communication (March 2007):

Here’s the thing about ethnic cleansing: it’s not the same as genocide. The latter [genocide] is consciously aimed at destroying the people-hood of a people by attacking how, as well as where, they live, their ideas, their outlook, their culture etc etc. The former [ethnic cleansing] displaces people, but the question of whether there is a genocidal intention, or merely a desire to take over the land and property of others, is left moot.

Ilan Pappe is one of those who fudges this question. He says what the Zionists do today in Gaza is genocide, but what they did in Mandate Palestine since 1947 and in the West Bank since 1967 was ethnic cleansing. DISINFORMATION ALERT! …

It is ALL genocide. The intention of the Haganah was to genocide the Palestinians. It’s very convenient to say, à la Golda Meir, that the Zionists didn’t think of the Palestinians as a people or nationality, just an inconvenient obstacle. The FACT is they prepared and executed genocide. It doesn’t matter, either, that the Zionists didn’t get all the Palestinians in one fell swoop, but have dragged it out over the last 58 years. It is still genocide. To suggest the survivors of the Judeocide were incapable of such a thing, which seems to be the only substance at the heart of the liberal Zionists’ argument, is utter nonsense. Were these survivors not psychically damaged by what they experienced before they were “liberated”? Such people were the ideal human material to set upon the Palestinians like wild beasts.

Perhaps the excellent analyst Escobar might reconsider his usage of the term “ethnic cleansing” — especially if referring to it as a lesser form of genocide.
ENDNOTES:

• 1
  Raphael Lemkin, “Genocide.” In Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation — Analysis of Government — Proposals for Redress (Washington, D.C.:  Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944), 79-95. Available at prevent genocide international. 
  
• 2
  See Kim Petersen, “Nakba: The Israeli Holocaust Denial,” Dissident Voice, 18 March 2007.
  

[Peter Lemkin]

Trump is assaulting his own legitimacy
Defying the courts could bring a steep cost.
David R. Lurie
Feb 11

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Trump leaves Mar-a-Lago to play golf with Tiger Woods on Sunday.

---

---

Donald Trump’s cronies are threatening to defy the authority of the federal courts. If they follow through, the nation’s rapid descent into dictatorship will be complete, and the risk of the first challenge to the legitimacy of the federal government since the Civil War could soon be upon us.
Over the past several weeks, Trump and consigliere Elon Musk have embarked on an unprecedented barrage of illegality, including an attempt to destroy whole government agencies and misappropriate (and likely misuse) government and personal data on a massive scale. In the face of compliant Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, the only brakes on the MAGA crime spree have come from a handful of federal judges who have issued injunctive decrees prohibiting some portions of the criminal scheme.

Trump and his lawyers embrace the logic of dictatorship
Lisa Needham
·
Feb 10
In recent days, Trumpers have engaged in bad faith efforts to evade some of the judicial constraints. But there are limits to the effectiveness of that strategy. And other orders they cannot fake complying with — such as the ruling keeping Treasury data out of Musk’s hands — have clearly made Trumpers’ blood boil.
Hence the now open threats by Musk, his sidekick Vice President JD Vance, and others to challenge the proposition — which has been foundational to our constitutional structure since 1803 — that the courts have the exclusive power to decide what the Constitution and laws of the United States mean and require, and can issue orders that bind everyone else (including the president) to comply.
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(X)

The first failed imperial presidency
In the wake of Watergate, Richard Nixon famously told David Frost that “when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” Nixon’s declaration that the president is the arbiter of legality flew in the face of the longstanding principle of judicial review providing that the judiciary has exclusive power to decide disputes over the nation’s Constitution and laws.
Nixon had a personal bone to pick with that principle, because it was an order by the Supreme Court requiring him to turn over evidence that brought his would-be imperial presidency crashing down.
Nixon had attempted to bring the Watergate investigation — and in particular, a subpoena for White House tapes — to a halt by firing prosecutors. HIs gambit ultimately failed, culminating in a Supreme Court ruling ordering him to turn the tapes over. Among them was the so-called “smoking gun” recording that caught Nixon directly engaged in what (until very recently) would have been deemed criminal presidential conduct.
Nixon might well have defied the Court’s ruling. But, unlike Trump today, he understood that most Republicans in Congress would not support him. He ultimately turned over the tapes, and, shortly thereafter, relinquished the White House. As his later remarks to Frost made clear, however, he left power believing that he had been wronged, as did many of his partisans.

[Peter Lemkin]

Trump Is In A Far More Vulnerable Place Than It Appears Right Now. He Is Weak, Not Strong And Making Mistakes
Our Mad King has the highest disapproval of any President at this point in their Presidency, and concerns about his reckless economic policies are rising
Simon Rosenberg
Feb 11

Morning all. I have vowed to you to not turn Hopium into a daily catalog of the Mad King’s outrages (there a lot of them this morning) and to keep the focus on countering him. The good news today is that courageous judges are blocking elements of the extraordinary Trump/Musk crime spree and attack on the government of the United States. Trump continues to lose in courtrooms of all kinds all across the US. Yes, Trump keeps losing, and having him be seen as a loser, a failure, a weak, desperate and old man, not a strong man is critical to these next phase of our work together. As we say here, we need to keep pulling the curtain back on the Wizard, every day.

Our Mad King and his Vance have now even really pissed off The Pope:

Pope Francis issued a major rebuke Tuesday to the Trump administration’s plans for mass deportation of migrants, warning that the forceful removal of people purely because of their illegal status deprives them of their inherent dignity and “will end badly.”

Francis took the remarkable step of addressing the U.S. migrant crackdown in a letter to U.S. bishops in which he appeared to take direct aim at Vice President JD Vance’s defense of the deportation program on theological grounds.

History’s first Latin American pope has long made caring for migrants a priority of his pontificate, demanding that countries welcome, protect, promote and integrate those fleeing conflicts, poverty and climate disasters. Francis has also said governments are expected to do so to the limits of their capacity.

The Argentine Jesuit and President Donald Trump have long sparred over migration, including before Trump’s first administration when Francis famously said anyone who builds a wall to keep out migrants was “not a Christian.”

Our Daily Reminder:

Trump 2.0 is a profound, ongoing betrayal of America, and everything that has made this remarkable nation the most powerful and prosperous in the world. It is why we must fight. As dark as all this is, we cannot for one moment forget that what Trump is doing is wrong; he and his project remain deeply unstable and his coalition fractious; he is doing deeply unpopular things, going far beyond his narrow “mandate;” he is old, impulsive, reckless and clearly in decline; and extremists and ideologues are often far better at bread and circuses than governing.

Another place where Trump is struggling out of the gate right now is on the economy. Here’s the summary of the new University of Michigan consumer confidence survey that I shared on Friday. Folks are not buying what Trump is selling:

Consumer sentiment fell for the second straight month, dropping about 5% to reach its lowest reading since July 2024. The decrease was pervasive, with Republicans, Independents, and Democrats all posting sentiment declines from January, along with consumers across age and wealth groups. Furthermore, all five index components deteriorated this month, led by a 12% slide in buying conditions for durables, in part due to a perception that it may be too late to avoid the negative impact of tariff policy. Expectations for personal finances sank about 6% from last month, again seen across all political affiliations, reaching its lowest value since October 2023. Many consumers appear worried that high inflation will return within the next year.

This important survey was their first of the Trump Presidency. It was taken after he became President. And consumer confidence dropped. It is one third lower at the beginning of this Trump Presidency that it was throughout his last one. Look at this graph. Compare Trump’s first term to now. It is much, much lower today and importantly consumer confidence DROPPED when Trump took office.



The U of Michigan team clearly believes that voters already understand that Trump’s tariffs and agenda are likely to re-ignite inflation, and that it worries them. Look at what happened to their tracking of consumer inflation expectations in recent weeks. For many consumers Trump = tariffs = higher prices = bad.



And yesterday our Mad King levied tariffs. The trade wars have begun, and prices will rise now.

[Peter Lemkin]

On Google and its "Map"
Mike Brock
Feb 11


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One observes, with a mixture of mordant amusement and genuine horror, the spectacle of Google—that self-proclaimed cathedral of the digital age—genuflecting before a cut-rate Caligula's cartographic fantasies. Here we have the perfect crystallization of corporate spinelessness meeting authoritarian vanity, producing what might be called, if one were feeling generous, a masterclass in institutional prostitution.
The renaming of the Gulf of Mexico—that body of water whose name has outlasted empires—to satisfy the fragile ego of a Queens real estate hustler turned wannabe Caesar, represents something beyond mere corporate cowardice. It is the voluntary surrender of truth to power, the willing participation in what Orwell called the 'protective stupidity' that makes authoritarianism possible.
One is reminded of how the courtiers of Caligula were required to acknowledge his horse as a senator. At least they had the excuse of operating under genuine threat of death. What's Google's excuse? A marginal hit to quarterly earnings? The fear of an angry tweet?
The truly obscene aspect isn't just the change itself—though that's bad enough—but the precedent it sets. Today it's the Gulf of Mexico. Tomorrow? Perhaps we'll need to acknowledge that Mar-a-Lago has always been the Winter White House, that Trump Tower has always been taller than the Empire State Building, that the popular vote has always been a Chinese hoax.
This is how liberty dies—not just through the actions of tyrants, but through the willing collaboration of institutions that should know better. One might have hoped that Google, of all entities, might have remembered its own motto: “Don't be evil.” Though perhaps that's been renamed too, to better suit our post-truth age.
Perhaps Google might consider updating it to something more befitting their current posture: “Evil? Let's run the numbers.” Or better yet: “Don't be evil, unless quarterly projections suggest otherwise.”

[Fred Steeves]

You are new here and have missed the many past years, 

I've been a member here for nearly 11 years.



"If you spend some time reading my older posts you will see I am NO 'fan' of the 'USA' and their actions/hidden power-structure/history"

It doesn't matter what you may have written in some distant past. Even if you were Noam Chomsky, I'd be questioning how Uncle Noam could have incredible knowledge of Deep Politics at his fingertips, the ins and outs of manufacturing consent, yet demonstrate in real time a hyper partisan MSNBC resistance type of philosophy.  



"yet you choose to attack me. You apparently attack for the sake of attack, facts a far distant second". 

I'm not attacking you Peter, I'm challenging you on your stated positions, big big difference. 



"I believe TEMPORARILY we must use the Democrats to remove the Fascist threat already actively destroying out polity and Nation. Once accomplished, I'd be the first to want to dump or completely transform the Democrats".

Then you've totally lost the plot, which is pretty much why we're having this "conversation" in the first place. Someone with such deep rooted knowledge of deep politics and history, should be seeing quite clearly that it was democrats, starting with Bill Clinton, who have been selling the forgotten man down the river. While saying all the right things of course... They quite adept at lip service.

What you're so urgently advocating for, is blindly voting for the same people that opened the very door to Pandora's Box in the first place.



"May I suggest you abandon your primary [and only] style of nay-sayer attack, and instead offer your own ideas for how to move forward in this existential mess we face. I think we have little time and the odds are not on our side"

I don't think there IS any realistic remedy by this point. Sure some judges can block things here and there, the liberal class (as opposed to the left) can scream til their blue in the face, but I'm afraid this thing just has to run it's course like a fever.

Over the last 4, 8, even ten years there was plenty could have been done to avoid this, but the dems thought it better to instigate a Russia hoax, impeach over bullshit, make up conspiracy theories (the Steele dossier), hit him with sleazy lawfare, advocate for draconian Covid restrictions, use social media to curtail speech of their political enemies (The Twitter Files), start a dangerous proxy war with Russia, and to top it off being up to their eyeballs in facilitating a genocide.

All that... when they could have EASILY beaten this clown of a man hands down, by simply rolling up their sleeves, and addressing the long ignored concerns of the still forgotten man. 

THAT'S, what I would have advocated for, and I did; but of course it fell on deaf ears, we done FAFO, and now we sleep in the bed we have made for ourselves. 

The dems, the resistance, COULD... immediately do some self reflection on why they keep losing elections to this fucking guy, get their act together and make a run at going back to their roots as the Party of Roosevelt which would give them immediate wins in the upcoming midterms and in 4 years; but mark my words, they won't, they're going to keep doing exactly what got them and us here in the first place. Keep doing the same thing, expecting different results. 



" I am not your enemy"

I'm not your enemy either. I don't know, maybe you're so high up on the totem pole that even though we're on a format custom made for just that, you're not used to having your views challenged. Again, challenging views and research is not attacking.



"Watch any Chris Hedges video. His view are closer to my own than many. I could name others."

Sure, we could go down the list. John Mearsheimer, Jeffrey Sachs, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Abby Martin, Whitney Webb, The Grayzone, etc. I'd be right there marching alongside you, but unfortunately, none of these intellectual giants have the first thing to do with the Rachel Maddows of shitlib politics, the hyper partisan black/white - good/evil of resistance politics. 



"You have me pegged incorrectly and the bias of this Forum pegged incorrectly. If you don't stop the attack for the sake of attack / criticism only for the sake of criticism I will ignore you moving forward."

I'm not talking about this forum as a whole, I'm talking to you specifically in this thread. If the only road we have to go down is Orange Man Bad, vote blue no matter who, and it's seen as attacks or even borderline trolling to question that, then just tell me and I'll bugger on off somewhere else in search of Deep Politics type conversations. 

I don't care to be a burden, or a nuisance.



"Most of our best posters have died and tended to be the first or second wave of deep political researchers. There once were hundreds of new posts here each day and I am working to get back to that. It will take some time."

I'm sorry to hear that, truly. I remember back a ways having some very interesting conversations with David Guyatt. I see he last visited here nearly three years ago now, is he okay?

[Peter Lemkin]

Trump Is In A Far More Vulnerable Place Than It Appears Right Now. He Is Weak, Not Strong And Making Mistakes
Our Mad King has the highest disapproval of any President at this point in their Presidency, and concerns about his reckless economic policies are rising
Simon Rosenberg
Feb 11

Morning all. I have vowed to you to not turn Hopium into a daily catalog of the Mad King’s outrages (there a lot of them this morning) and to keep the focus on countering him. The good news today is that courageous judges are blocking elements of the extraordinary Trump/Musk crime spree and attack on the government of the United States. Trump continues to lose in courtrooms of all kinds all across the US. Yes, Trump keeps losing, and having him be seen as a loser, a failure, a weak, desperate and old man, not a strong man is critical to these next phase of our work together. As we say here, we need to keep pulling the curtain back on the Wizard, every day.

Our Mad King and his Vance have now even really pissed off The Pope:

Pope Francis issued a major rebuke Tuesday to the Trump administration’s plans for mass deportation of migrants, warning that the forceful removal of people purely because of their illegal status deprives them of their inherent dignity and “will end badly.”

Francis took the remarkable step of addressing the U.S. migrant crackdown in a letter to U.S. bishops in which he appeared to take direct aim at Vice President JD Vance’s defense of the deportation program on theological grounds.

History’s first Latin American pope has long made caring for migrants a priority of his pontificate, demanding that countries welcome, protect, promote and integrate those fleeing conflicts, poverty and climate disasters. Francis has also said governments are expected to do so to the limits of their capacity.

The Argentine Jesuit and President Donald Trump have long sparred over migration, including before Trump’s first administration when Francis famously said anyone who builds a wall to keep out migrants was “not a Christian.”

Our Daily Reminder:

Trump 2.0 is a profound, ongoing betrayal of America, and everything that has made this remarkable nation the most powerful and prosperous in the world. It is why we must fight. As dark as all this is, we cannot for one moment forget that what Trump is doing is wrong; he and his project remain deeply unstable and his coalition fractious; he is doing deeply unpopular things, going far beyond his narrow “mandate;” he is old, impulsive, reckless and clearly in decline; and extremists and ideologues are often far better at bread and circuses than governing.

Another place where Trump is struggling out of the gate right now is on the economy. Here’s the summary of the new University of Michigan consumer confidence survey that I shared on Friday. Folks are not buying what Trump is selling:

Consumer sentiment fell for the second straight month, dropping about 5% to reach its lowest reading since July 2024. The decrease was pervasive, with Republicans, Independents, and Democrats all posting sentiment declines from January, along with consumers across age and wealth groups. Furthermore, all five index components deteriorated this month, led by a 12% slide in buying conditions for durables, in part due to a perception that it may be too late to avoid the negative impact of tariff policy. Expectations for personal finances sank about 6% from last month, again seen across all political affiliations, reaching its lowest value since October 2023. Many consumers appear worried that high inflation will return within the next year.

This important survey was their first of the Trump Presidency. It was taken after he became President. And consumer confidence dropped. It is one third lower at the beginning of this Trump Presidency that it was throughout his last one. Look at this graph. Compare Trump’s first term to now. It is much, much lower today and importantly consumer confidence DROPPED when Trump took office.



The U of Michigan team clearly believes that voters already understand that Trump’s tariffs and agenda are likely to re-ignite inflation, and that it worries them. Look at what happened to their tracking of consumer inflation expectations in recent weeks. For many consumers Trump = tariffs = higher prices = bad.



And yesterday our Mad King levied tariffs. The trade wars have begun, and prices will rise now.

[Peter Lemkin]

[Peter Lemkin]

[Peter Lemkin]

[Peter Lemkin]