Spencer Ackerman, Rolling Stone:

Every single person who died in Vietnam between autumn 1968 and the Fall of Saigon — and all who died in Laos and Cambodia, where Nixon and Kissinger secretly expanded the war within months of taking office, as well as all who died in the aftermath, like the Cambodian genocide their destabilization set into motion — died because of Henry Kissinger.

Ω Ω Ω

A true tally will probably never be known of everyone who died so Kissinger could be national security adviser.

Once in the White House, Nixon and Kissinger found themselves without leverage to produce a peace accord with Hanoi. In the hopes of manufacturing one, they came up with the “Madman Theory,” the idea that North Vietnam would negotiate peace after they came to believe Nixon was adventurous and bloodthirsty enough to risk anything. In February 1969, weeks after taking office, and lasting through April 1970, U.S. warplanes secretly dropped 110,000 tons of bombs on Cambodia. By the summer of 1969, according to a colonel on the Joint Staff, Kissinger — who had no constitutional role in the military chain of command — was personally selecting bombing targets.

Guardian:

The cable TV channel MSNBC and its sister network NBC’s Peacock streaming service is cancelling the weekend news show The Mehdi Hasan Show, with its eponymous outspoken host, people familiar with the decision have told the news website Semafor.

…

Along with Mohyeldin and NBC’s Ali Velshi, Hasan was among the few Muslim anchors in American television.

Before what is reportedly the official cancellation of the Mehdi Hasan show, NBC faced criticism for temporarily taking these Muslim anchors off of the air in the midst of the war in Gaza. Although one of Hasan’s scheduled Thursday night episodes did not air, plans were scrapped for Ayman Mohyeldin to fill in for the host Joy Reid on her show, and Alicia Menendez filled in for Ali Velshi, NBC denied reports it was sidelining Muslim voices and that the move was purely coincidence.

Tariq Ali:

At last. He’s finally gone. The Rolling Stones headline says it all: “Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies.” He was a world class criminal and as, in better times, the late Verso author Christopher Hitchens, in his excellent polemical book The Trial of Henry Kissinger, many offenses huge and small must be laid at his door.

Omar Shakir, Los Angeles Times:

As of Nov. 1, Israeli authorities held nearly 7,000 Palestinians from the occupied territory in detention for alleged security offenses, according to the Israeli human rights organization HaMoked. Far more Palestinians have been arrested since the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel than have been released in the last week. Among those being held are dozens of women and scores of children.

The majority have never been convicted of a crime, including more than 2,000 of them being held in administrative detention, in which the Israeli military detains a person without charge or trial. Such detention can be renewed indefinitely based on secret information, which the detainee is not allowed to see. Administrative detainees are held on the presumption that they might commit an offense at some point in the future. Israeli authorities have held children, human rights defenders and Palestinian political activists, among others, in administrative detention, often for prolonged periods.

The large number of Palestinian detainees is primarily the result of separate criminal justice systems Israeli authorities maintain in the occupied territory. The nearly 3 million Palestinians who live in the occupied West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, are ruled by military law and prosecuted in military courts. By contrast, the nearly half a million Israeli settlers in the West Bank are governed under civil and criminal law and tried in Israeli civil courts. Discrimination pervades every aspect of this system.

Under military law, Palestinians can be held for up to eight days before they must see a judge — and then, only a military judge. Yet, under Israeli law, a person has to be brought before a judge within 24 hours of being arrested, which can be extended to 96 hours when authorized in extraordinary cases.

Palestinians can be jailed for participating in a gathering of merely 10 people without a permit on any issue “that could be construed as political,” while settlers can demonstrate without a permit unless the gathering exceeds 50 people, takes place outdoors and involves “political speeches and statements.”

In short, Israeli settlers and Palestinians live in the same territory, but are tried in different courts under different laws with different due process rights and face different sentences for the same offense. The result is a large and growing number of Palestinians imprisoned without basic due process.

Discrimination also pervades the treatment of children. Israeli civil law protects children against nighttime arrests, provides the right to have a parent present during interrogations and limits the amount of time children may be detained before being able to consult a lawyer and to be presented before a justice.

Israeli authorities, however, regularly arrest Palestinian children during nighttime raids, interrogate them without a guardian present, hold them for longer periods before bringing them before a judge and hold those as young as 12 in lengthy pretrial detention. The Assn. for Civil Rights in Israel found in 2017 that authorities kept 72% of Palestinian children from the West Bank in custody until the end of proceedings, but only 17.9% of children in Israel.

Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News:

Israel’s real-time barbarity in Gaza has worsened the relationship between media — Western media, I mean — and the powers they are supposed to report upon. As to audiences, they — we — are left utterly confused to the extent the common language with which people can communicate begins to fail them.

The result is not silence. It is a senseless cacophony that echoes through a weird no-man’s land in which nothing can be said without the risk of retribution or condemnation or banishment. Civil discourse is more or less out of the question.

We are now a dreadful step on from embedding, it seems. It is no longer enough to tether correspondents to the perspective of the military from whose side they report. We appear to be on the way to having wars fought — huge, bloody, consequential wars — without any witnesses.

Bürgerrechtler aus der ehemaligen DDR:

Wir verweigern uns diesem Krieg.

Nur eine Diktatur braucht linientreue Parteisoldaten. Demokratie braucht mündige Bürger. Lassen wir Medien, Parteien, Kultur und Wissenschaft nicht von röhrenden Funktionären gleichschalten.

Die erbärmlichen und erschreckenden Umstände der Rot-Grünen Entscheidung für den Krieg lassen keinen Raum mehr für parteitaktische Spielchen, für die Sorge um den eigenen warmen Arsch – machen wir endlich den Mund auf!

Reden wir mit unseren Kindern und mit unseren Eltern über diesen Krieg, über Gerechtigkeit in Deutschland und der Welt und über die Rechtsstaatlichkeit, die uns zwischen den Fingern zu zerrinnen droht!

Wir haben 1989 gelernt, daß es Sinn hat, zu widersprechen.

Berlin, den 13. Dezember 2001

:

Neben den typischen Friedensfahnen – weiße Taube auf blauem Grund – wehten zahlreiche Gewerkschaftsfahnen über der Menschenmenge.

ich habe auch irgendwie angst davor: flucht in ein neues gefängnis (klingt viel zu hart), vielleicht ist es auch die angst davor, daß die ansprüche, die ich jetzt stellen würde, nicht mehr die sind, die es vielleicht in einem jahr sind … ich höre gerade shine on your crazy diamond … könnte nach hinten umfallen, die augen schließen, schweben auf wogen von musik in irgend eine traumwelt — ich spinne! oder ganz allein auf einen berg stapfen, rennen und brüllen, die ganze verklemmtheit herausschreien. und dann liege ich wieder in meinem bett, habe einen haufen wilder ideen, die ich hier niemals verwirklichen kann. vielleicht ist es ein sagenhafter lebenshunger, ich könnte stunden damit zubringen zu träumen.träumen — ich glaube träume sind sehr wichtig für uns, sie können sehr viel kraft geben. die gefahr ist allerdings, daß man sich zu sehr in diese träume hineinlebt, seine eigene traumwelt baut, die beziehungen verliert. es müßte viel mehr und tiefer geredet werden.

—Matz Domaschk, 1978, in Peter Wensierski, »Jena-Paradies«, (Berlin: Aufbau Verlage GmbH & Co. KG, 2023), 159-60.

Ralph Nader, CounterPunch:

“The Israeli operation precisely fits the Genocide Convention’s definition by ‘intentionally creating conditions of life calculated to physically destroy a racial, religious, ethnic, or national group in whole or in part.’”