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Analysis of the ICJ’s Ruling that Israel’s Occupation Is Illegal

Analysis of the ICJ’s Ruling that Israel’s Occupation Is Illegal

I joined Libertarian Institute Director Scott Horton on his show to discuss the International Court of Justice’s recent ruling that Israel’s persistent occupation of Palestinian territory for 57 years now violates international law and must end immediately.

I had explained the context and summarized the ICJ’s judgment in my July 20 article, “ICJ Declares Israel’s Occupation Illegal”, which is a great short primer to read before listening to this episode of Scott’s show.

During our conversation, we delved into numerous aspects of the ruling in considerably greater detail, and we also discussed numerous points that I didn’t raise the article, so be sure to listen!

Bullet-Point Summary

Here are specific points we discussed about the significance of the ICJ’s ruling:

  • Why we can recognize the importance of the ICJ’s ruling and application of international law despite opposing statehood itself and the corrupt global order, and notwithstanding how the United Nations (UN) itself played a major role in creating the conflict in the first place (as documented in detail in Obstacle to Peace).
  • How the ICJ’s ruling essentially repudiates the entire framework for the US-led so-called “peace process”.
  • Why the ICJ rejected Israel’s objection that the court has no jurisdiction on the grounds that the conflict is a bilateral dispute between Israelis and Palestinians and doesn’t involve the international community.
  • How the ICJ’s new ruling goes beyond its 2004 ruling that the settlement regime and the annexation wall Israel was constructing in the West Bank were illegal.
  • How Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories began in 1967, and how Israel’s unilateral and invalid interpretation of UN Security Council Resolution 242 calling on Israel to withdraw was accepted by the US as the framework for the “peace process”.
  • How the two-state solution is premised on the applicability of international law to the conflict, whereas the “peace process” was premised on a rejection of the applicability of international law.
  • How Israel has perpetually violated UN Security Council resolutions in contravention to its obligations as a member of the organization.
  • How the ICJ detailed Israel’s numerous violations of international law with many varied aspects of its occupation and, moreover, ruled that the occupation itself is illegal and that Israel must therefore immediately end its occupation regime.
  • How people living under a belligerent occupation have a recognized right under international law to take up arms against their oppressors.
  • How the ICJ affirmed that the Palestinians’ right to self-determination is inalienable and therefore that Israel may not place conditions on their exercise of that right as it has done perpetually for over 57 years.
  • Why the ruling is significant even though the ICJ lacks any enforcement authority.
  • Why there is no government that is going to bring peace in the Middle East, it is up to us.
  • What the first step must be for us to bring the conflict to an end.
  • How the ICJ ruling really reflects the will of the international community, which is unfortunately limited in its ability to bring the conflict to an end by the whole framework the UN organization, where the US habitually uses its veto power in the Security Council to protect Israel from international censure and accountability for its crimes against the Palestinians.
  • How US government officials could be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), a separate non-UN entity, for their complicity in supporting Israel’s violations of Palestinians’ human rights, including Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
  • Why the action of moving the US government’s Israel embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem under the administration of President Donald Trump violated international law.
  • How Trump’s killing of the so-called “peace process” was actually a good thing, despite his malevolent intentions toward the Palestinians.
  • How public opposition to Israel’s genocide has at least placed a certain level of restraint on the Biden administration’s support for this crime against humanity, indicating the importance of solving this conflict from the bottom up: again, it is up to us.
  • How the ICJ also implicitly affirmed that Israel’s discriminatory policies with its occupation regime constitute the crime of apartheid.
  • How it isn’t true that Arab citizens of Israel have equal rights.
  • Why it is so utterly perverse and delusional to describe the state of Israel as a “democracy”.
  • How the Palestine Mandate violated the League of Nations’ own charter.
  • How Christian Zionism is the elephant in the room in terms of explaining the US policy of supporting Israel’s systematic violation of Palestinians’ fundamental human rights.

If you find our discussion informative, please consider supporting the Libertarian Institute!

Doubling Down on Failure: Ford Fiasco Follies

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A new updated CRS report dated 5 August 2024 is out on the USS Ford debacle.

I read these reports so you don’t have to.

For plenty of reasons, the carrier is the crossbow and chariot of the 21st century. Yet the US insists on spending tens of billions of dollars on these obsolete and antiquated exquisite platforms that are more vulnerable now than ship at sea in the history of mankind.

Of course, the US is building five of these proven failures. Let’s do easy math and suspend our disbelief and price these colossal strategic blunders at 20 billion each for procurement but inflation and projections of the last ship rolling into the ocean in FY2030 will surely stretch that number north.

20 billion times five equals 100 billion dollars. That’s just to buy the ship and if the Ford is any indicator, many hundreds of millions will have to be allotted to fix what is, in the end, a severely flawed ship design embracing a mid twentieth century concept that is now a military anachronism.

Here’s the procurement breakdown:

CVN-78 (Gerald R. Ford) was procured in FY2008. The ship was commissioned into service on July 22, 2017, and achieved initial operational capability in December 2021. The ship’s first deployment began in October 2022, more than five years after the ship was commissioned into service.

CVN-79 (John F. Kennedy) was procured in FY2013. The Navy’s FY2025 budget submission states that the ship is scheduled for delivery in July 2025.

CVN-80 (Enterprise) was procured in FY2018. On April 2, 2024, the Navy announced delays in the scheduled deliveries of several of its shipbuilding programs, including CVN-80, whose delivery, the Navy stated, will be delayed approximately 18 to 26 months. The Navy’s FY2025 budget submission, which was submitted to Congress in March 2024, shows the ship’s scheduled
delivery date as September 2029, or 18 months later than the March 2028 date shown in the Navy’s FY2024 budget submission, which was submitted to Congress in March 2023.

CVN-81 (Doris Miller) is treated in this report as a ship that was procured in FY2019, consistent with congressional action on the Navy’s FY2019 budget. (The Navy’s FY2025 budget submission, like its FY2021-FY2024 submissions, shows CVN-81 as a ship that was procured in FY2020.) The ship is scheduled for delivery to the Navy in February 2032.

CVN-82, as noted above, is programmed for procurement in FY2030 under the Navy’s FY2025 budget submission. Procuring CVN-82 two years earlier, in FY2028, could involve providing roughly $550 million in AP funding for the ship in FY2025.

CVN-80 and CVN-81 were procured under a two-ship block buy contract that was authorized by Section 121(a)(2) of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 (H.R. 5515/P.L. 115-232 of August 13, 2018). The use of the two-ship block buy contract reduced the combined estimated procurement cost of the two ships.

You will also note that it took five years after being commissioned before it was deployed.

Five years.

And they certified its deployment status without completing the necessary cyber survivability tests nor the usual shock testing of the Total Ship Survivability Trial (TSST):

The CVN 78 Total Ship Survivability Trial (TSST) has been delayed by approximately one year, until 4QFY24 [fourth quarter of FY2024], due to the ship’s deployment being earlier than planned. The TSST is an onboard, extensive damage-control test to demonstrate how the ship design enables the crew to perform its recoverability-related procedures. For the CVN 78 TSST to be adequate, the testing will require at-sea execution with participation of an embarked air wing. Planning is ongoing to ensure that this adequacy requirement is met.

In 1QFY24, the Navy intends to publish two vulnerability assessment reports (VARs) examining the class’s survivability against above-water and underwater kinetic threats. These reports will include findings from survivability testing and modeling of the ship conducted since 2007. However, these reports as drafted do not accurately model the ship as built and do not include findings from more recent testing. Without updating the models, the analysis in the VARs will not support conclusions on the survivability of the CVN 78 class against threat weapons. The Navy intends to issue a final survivability assessment report that will include the findings from recent testing and update model-based survivability analysis by 4QFY25. If the survivability modeling and simulation (M&S) is updated to accurately model the ship as built, this assessment will support DOT&E’s report on the survivability of the class against threat weapons.

Please note, they deployed a new carrier with an embarked air wing in operational status in 2022 and has not completed its survivability tests which it claims will be the last quarter of 2025, three years after deployment. This is like a new car on the market that has not been safety tested and certified but declared safe and road-worthy.

Despite alleged cost caps for the Ford at 11.5 billion it has quickly exceeded that to balloon to 20 billion plus when all is said and done. Are these the teething pains of a new class of exquisite platform costs, that is possible but the history shows the costs continue to rise upwards. An analyst with more time than me can look at all the promises since 2008 of how much the Ford carrier will cost and consistently underestimate the true cost.

One final note, an aircraft carrier has one job: launch and retrieve aircraft otherwise it is useless. The Electromagnetic Aerial Launch System (EMALS) has been a reliability disaster, to wit.

During FY23, DOT&E observed EMALS reliability remained consistent with recent developmental test (460 mean cycles between operational mission failures (MCBOMF) in FY21 and 614 MCBOMF in FY22).

In order to leave the deck with a naval jet aircraft, the combination of full military power and the catapult assigns the necessary physical loft to get it off the deck and airborne. The failure of the EMALS puts that aviator in the hazard for not getting the loft and ditching the aircraft in the sea (hence the offset of the launch deck so the ship steaming forward doesn’t run over the plane in the drink). That means in combat with sortie generation (number of planes cycled aloft), that is a number that will be on the minds of every naval aviator queued up to be rocketed off the deck.

Withe the nearly century-old steam catapult technology used on all carrier classes before the Ford, the MCBOMF was approx 1:35,000.

I urge you to read the report.

Stop building these things!

Navy Ford (CVN-78) Class Aircraft Carrier Program: Background and Issues for Congress 5 August 2024

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The Case for Not Voting

The Case for Not Voting

I recently joined Bretigne Shaffer again on her show, this time to discuss not who Americans should vote for but whether they should vote. We made the case that the most socially responsible course of action is to not vote.

It was a great discussion, and whatever your thoughts on voting, I am certain that you will find it intellectually stimulating; and even if Bretigne and I don’t manage to persuade you to our view, you will at least have some serious food for thought. If you aim to vote, I challenge you to consider this other point of view that you will never be exposed to by the mainstream media!

Listen below, or watch the full video version of the interview on Bretigne’s Substack.

Highlights

How we don’t have a legitimate government but a criminal organization in Washington, DC:

read more…

The Royal Navy Submarine Force Remains Surfaced

faslane

The Royal Navy is experiencing readiness and maintenance shortfalls in its submarine force that is similar to the throughput problems for the US nuclear submarine forces. The logistical tail for exquisite platforms like nuclear submarines is enormous and a first world nation is the only entity capable of deploying these boats. The Royal Navy is not up to the task.

Here is my forecast: the Royal Navy will never be a blue water fleet action war machine again for the remainder of this century (if the UK lasts that long). Especially when you take the one third rule into account for peacetime navies which means that one third are in operational status, one third in maintenance and one third in training.

In wartime, one may see increased deployments but those will be offset by losses.

You will see a complete reassessment of surface navy efficacy in the next generation that will be driven by a demand to completely adapt to new unmanned and hyper-sonic realities that existentially threaten current naval thinking for surface warfare.

screenshot 2024 08 06 at 09 47 37 the royal navy size and strength over time in visuals

This graphic is from 2017 and if any readers have an updated list of RN surface ships, I am obliged if you send it to me. As of 2023, the Royal Navy had 80 vessels, including warships and non-commissioned vessels. 29% are in refit or maintenance or some type of inactive status.

ALL six hunter-killer subs are stuck in port as the Royal Navy has no working docks for repairs (presently).

The nuclear-powered vessels are designed to hunt Russian subs, spy on Britain’s enemies and deliver special forces on secret missions.

But none of the Astute-class subs — the fleet’s newest — have conducted a single operational voyage this year.

HMS Ambush has not sailed for two years.

HMS Audacious has spent 15 months in His Majesty’s Naval Base Devonport.

The mess is worse than you think.

HMS Artful has been 14 months at HMNB Clyde, where HMS Astute has been since December.

A ship-lift to crane subs out of the water at Faslane has been out of action for over a year after the firm that made the ropes closed down, and the Navy couldn’t replace them.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/29679184/six-british-hunter-killer-subs-stuck-in-port/

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The F35 Follies: Britannia Rules a Little

SF_F-35B Racing By Trailing Vapes_JAKMy recommendation to the British MoD: don’t buy anymore of these flying failure factories.

U.K. planned to buy138 F-35s, bought 48, delivered 35, aims at 75 by 2025.

Judging from the delays and failures universally in the program, achieving a delivery of all functional fighters is probably a pipe dream. Since the readiness rate for the F35B (carrier-borne) in US hands is below 20 percent, one can imagine the the British will not be able to keep that percentage aloft. Do the math and single digits of these aircraft still functional in five years is not a sure bet.

Not to mention the two new massive oil-fired 65,000-ton Queen Elizabeth-class carriers can’t safely navigate beyond the shores of England without a catastrophic engine casualty. They may become very expensive aircraft ferries to tour the circumference of the UK.

The Royal Navy is a shadow of its former majesty and there is simply no future for a blue-water armada under the Union Jack for the remainder of this century, if England lasts that long since London is a first world city in a third world country.

The extinction of British steel on the alter of the green religion will play a role in this demise that will roll well into the future.

Former Trotskyist Keir Starmer is the new PM of the rickety old England and the new UK Labor government is reviewing military spending and is unclear on F-35B fate. The UK is also the only country to solely purchase the naval F-35B S/VTOL variant of the fighter for both its navy and air force.

For a long time, the stated goal of the UK was to purchase 138 F-35s, but later, the government seemed to grow cold on that number and seemed to want to reduce it. However, with the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the UK affirmed its plan to eventually purchase 138 F-35s.

While Labour may adjust the number of F-35Bs to be procured, it is highly unlikely to cancel the F-35 program. The new government will undoubtedly adjust Britain’s military procurement, but it is unclear at this point what those adjustments will be. Labour has committed itself to increasing military expenditure to 2.5% of GDP “as soon as they can” (up from around 2.1% now).

Labour also claims the previous government “failed on defense” and that under the Torys, “200 aircraft have been taken out of service in the last five years alone.” It is possible Labour will increase the number of fighter jets to be purchased – time will tell.

https://simpleflying.com/what-to-know-britains-f-35-lightning-ii-program/

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Anti-War Blog – Not Enough Paper Cranes

Anti-War Blog – Not Enough Paper Cranes

When I was in primary school we were taught about a little Japanese girl named Sadako Sasaki and her paper cranes. She was one of the many victims of the Hiroshima atomic bomb blast, dying after the initial detonation from radiation sickness. One of many thousands who would die painfully in the days, weeks, months and years following the bombs explosion. We learned that in the time before her impending death, she had set a goal of making 1,000 paper Origami cranes. She died at 644. We even learned a song, and a group of ten year old Australian sang and put on a play, pretending to be Japanese children who died from the blast. Then we were told that the bombings were necessary. That the babies, children had to die. The greater good. Collective punishment. We were educated. Killing Sadako saved American lives. Next subject. The next dance to be performed to Tina Turner’s Nutbush City Limits. The ten year old’s forgetting Sadako.

It’s that time of year, when the anniversary of the atomic bombs of Japan are upon us. It’s a period where the culmination of all bombings, on every belligerent city is justified. We are taught that the fascists bombing Guenica or the blitz on London was wrong, the enemies intentional bombing of civilians an evil act that validates their evil status as an enemy. When the Allies bombed French, Italian, German, Romanian, Phillipine and Japanese towns and cities we are told it was a necessity. The Axis were evil. The babies, children included. Even those in occupied nations.

An American GI in Vietnam was quoted as saying, “We need to burn down the village in order to save it.” Perhaps one needs to murder millions in order to save them.

The Japanese empire was evil, it murdered millions, raped, tortured. The ancient Chinese capital of Nangking is forever to be associated with what the Japanese soldierrs did to it’s inhabitants. Like a blight, the empire of Japan savaged Asia, embracing a colonialism which was allowable for Europeans decades earlier. This was the twentieth century, the Japanese could not have such an empire. At least not at the expense of the British, Dutch, French or US empires.

Then the US bombed Korea, to the point that the Air Force ran out of targets. Destroying the North, wooden hut or bridge it did not matter. Millions died. Biological weapons were even dropped. Those developed by the sinister Japanese scientists who had become US assets. The very Japanese military torturers many use to justify the nuking of little Sadako, shared their putrid secrets with Uncle Sam who then used them on Koreans and Chinese. The Japanese had done that too. Though at the time, North Korea was not known as a pariah entity, not to the point of Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany. Communist imperialism was a danger that needed to be opposed, opposed by murdering the people it enslaved. Every enemy leader was the next Hitler, while millions of the next Sadako’s suffered.

Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam would follow in the decades after Korea. More bombs were dropped on Laos, than were dropped in all of World War Two. “They just kept sending us more bombs,” an Air Force man said when asked why. More bombs were dropped on South Vietnam, the allied side, than were dropped in the North, the enemy side. Millions died. Even to this day, the chemicals used to obliterate nature and human life poisons generations later. Bombs and mines randomly explode, shredding mostly the young to death or maiming them for life. All those bombs and lives taken to free the Vietnamese? Save American lives? Freedom? To preserve the Union?

Hundreds of thousands of Sadako’s suffered. Blown to pieces, burned to death, maimed, born into mutated agony all so that men in uniform could enforce policies for men in suits. When the war was over those places became historical chapters, the mass death down played or ignored. It was after all how the greatest nation on Earth learned to wage war. Killing them all. Tokyo fire bombings, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, ‘saved American lives and ended the war’. A war that was ending long before the Los Alamo tests. A war that all but ended when the Japanese had been suing for peace, months before. A war that was allowed to end the moment the Soviet Union destroyed the Japanese forces in North China, Korea and Manchuria. The Allies now needed a healthy Japan to curtail the next enemy, Soviet imperialism.

It’s all complicated I suppose. Blowing up children, wiping out families. Strangers who have no say in policy, individuals who never stabbed a woman in China with their penis or bayonet, babies not even born when Pearl Harbor was attacked, they are all Japs. All the same race, from the same nation. So goes the collectivist rationale. Sadoko may as well have been Tojo or a Japanese swordsman beheading prisoners. Do collectivists allow that reasoning to reverse? That their babies, their children should also be fair game should the national government they either support or have no love for does evil? Or is it more primal than that. Despite the facade of order, justice, civility the savage and ancient supremacy, to conquer and wipe out the other. Sadako is thus inferior. Kill them all! We have the facade, and the reality. Silver B-29’s may as well be horseback archers churning up the steppes in blood.

On my computer, I have this image of a mother, her body burned to impossible recognition. Beneath her, still attached is an umbilical cord that leads to a baby. As her body was burned in napalm, she gave birth. Perhaps natures instinct, to save the child as the mother dies. A last ditch hope of life. Instead mother and new born baby lay as burned remnants among a city full of burned remnants. Scientists tinkered to perfect chemicals and metallurgy, engineers conceived machines and mechanisms that trained war fighters could fly and use so that mother and child may lay lost to history, as burned images on a screen. I stare at such a photo knowing out there are many who will remind me that the mother and child deserved to die. They needed to die. The killers, scientists, engineers, are heroes. The baby, not even named, an enemy. It takes a love of government or some form of nationalism to think that way. To hate a mother and baby so much, that they should be burned to death as little Sadako dies from the bombs radiation.

Unfortunately little Sadako did not make enough cranes to save herself, or anyone else for that matter. Though her killers did build more bombs and planes. No one wants paper cranes, making them doesn’t pay very well, if at all. Next August it will be the same, the bombs loved. The dead, deserving of their fate. Perhaps humanity is at it’s 644 paper cranes, “May the crane of peace fly everywhere!” This is our cry, this is our prayer, “Crane of peace fly everywhere!”

August, 2024

Speaking of democracy…

Democracy has been a much discussed topic of late, what with the separation of President Joe Biden from his delegates only weeks before the upcoming Democratic party convention, to be held in Chicago from August 19 to 22, 2024.

There have been brokered conventions in history before, but will Vice President Kamala Harris secure the Democratic party’s presidential nomination after entirely bypassing the primary process and receiving not a single vote from the electorate? Only time will tell.

Right before the DNC palace coup, and just after the attempt on former President Trump’s life, Alex Bernardo interviewed Laurie Calhoun on The Protestant Libertarian Podcast, focusing on the question:

Is Democracy a Sham?

The springboard for this discussion was an essay, “Sham-ocracy, Scam-ocracy,” published by the Libertarian Institute on June 17, 2024.

 

Corruption-A-Go-Go: Taliban Continues to Receive US Funding

statetaliban

The US State Department needs to be disbanded and all overseas embassies should be converted to ATM-style kiosks.

The Taliban has just received 239 million debt-bucks in US State Department aid.

239 millions dollars.

The disaster in Afghanistan continues to cascade forward and is now underwritten by unborn taxpayers.

The government watchdog, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), issued a July 2024 report identifying at least 29 grants where the Taliban may have erroneously received counterterrorism funds.

But the funds have already been distributed despite violating the standards for release.

However, we analyzed DRL’s vetting documentation and found that it only provided us with supporting vetting
documentation for three of its seven awards. The four awards missing documentation were missing other types
of supporting vetting documentation in addition to the missing risk assessments, such as final eligibility
notices. This means that even if DRL had provided us with the missing risk assessments, the four awards
would still be missing other supporting documentation.

https://justthenews.com/world/middle-east/taliban-gets-239-million-aid-after-bad-state-dept-vetting

Very detailed summary of US State Department incompetence here:

https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/audits/SIGAR-24-31-AR.pdf

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