💼 EU Built on Treaty-quicksand

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PEACEFUL | JUST | SUSTAINABLE | WORLD

September 29th, 2022

Articles in this Issue:

Iranian Regime's Allergy to Reform Breeds Violence for Change

Trita Parsi

The Alignments of Latin America Reflected through its Leaders in the UN

Gustavo A Maranges

EU Built on Treaty-quicksand

Dr. Leo Klinkers

Ukrainian Army's War Crimes Go Unreported

Eva Bartlett

Top Hollywood Producers Working with Israel to Defend Its War Crimes

Alan Macleod

Einstein on Peace: "...I have become a kind of enfant terrible in my new homeland, due to my inability to keep silent and to swallow everything that happens there." "Unfortunately, the most farsighted among the people in this country have been so intimidated by the pseudo-patriotic pressures to which they have been exposed that their scope for effective action has been greatly reduced."

Iranian regime’s allergy to reform

breeds violence for change

Trita Parsi

Protesters reacting to the death of Mahsa Amini are already calling for the overthrow of the government.

EXTRACTS: Unprecedented protest and resistance has emerged in Iran this week after Mahsa Amini’s death in the custody of Iran’s “morality” police.

The next few days may prove decisive. The ball is in the Supreme Leader’s court: he can choose to shut down the “morality” police who beat and harass women, he can listen to the young women and men of Iran and allow meaningful change and avoid violence — or he can choose force and repression, and in doing so, make the population even more angry, frustrated and desperate. READ MORE

by Trita Parsi, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft 9/22/22

The Alignments of Latin America Reflected

through its Leaders in the UN

Gustavo A Maranges RESUMEN

The 77th high-level segment of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) began on September 13 and so far 16 Latin America countries have spoken, and the differences in the tone and topics of the speeches reflects the complex political situation in the region.

The ultra-right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was the first one to address the Assembly. His highly politicized and electoral speech did not surprise anyone, except for the hypocrisy he showed when talking about climate change, since his government is responsible for the dramatic increase in deforestation and the massive neglect of the Amazon rainforest. However, his name made headlines after the New York City Empire State Building’s facade was lit with phrases of protest against him.

Both Bolivia and Colombia raised the need to accelerate the global energy transition and reduce dependence on hydrocarbons, which are the main cause of global warming.

Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador’s presidents spoke for Central America. The three presidents agreed that the migratory waves that pass through their countries towards the United States will not be stopped by more discrimination against migrants or fences. Instead, it is necessary to foster cooperation and improve people’s living conditions. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele affirmed powerful states should respect the sovereignty of their small neighbors and stop obstructing their development, which is a clear reference to U.S. interference in the affairs of his country and the region. READ MORE

EU Built on Treaty-quicksand

Dr. Leo Klinkers

Between the year zero and the present, the European state system evolved three times. Anno 2022, a fourth phase announces itself. That phase is what the book The Making of the Constitution for ‘The Federated States of Europe’ is about. To fully understand its seriousness, one needs to know the character of the previous three phases.

Until the 17th century, there was the Europe of warring tribes and nobles. Some were kings, others counts or dukes. Revolts prevailed in various places, including that of the Netherlands led by William of Orange against the Spanish king. With its affiliation to the Holy Roman Empire - a political alliance of secular and religious leaders in central Europe, not averse to decades of warfare - even the Pope of Rome was involved in that violence.

That phase of the European state system disappeared slowly after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. People started making countries, with borders. Residents were no longer subjects of a nobleman or residents of a city but became citizens of a state. This second phase was the birth of European nation-states.

According to agreements in Westphalia, those states were sovereign. In the sense that no country had the right to attack and take over another.

The reality was different. Wars went on as usual. Some more gruesome than others. Up to and including the Second World War. After the violence of World War I (1914-1918), there was first an attempt to rule out wars for good with the forging of a League of Nations. But it was too weak to prevent World War II (1939-1945).

In essence, the book The Making of the Constitution for ‘The Federated States of Europe’ is about the legal nature of that weakness and that it can only be overcome by never again working with large-scale treaties and instead opting for a federal state in Europe. READ MORE

Ukrainian Army War Crimes Include Shelling of Ambulances, Firetrucks, and Rescue Workers in the Donbass Republics—Similar to Israelis and U.S. Backed Terrorists in Syria

Eva Bartlett

WORLD PUBLIC INTEREST JOURNALISM

DWF NEWS Editor's note: Eye witness accounts by journalists (such as Eva Bartlett) in the Ukraine war are rare. Western mainstream media cannot be trusted due to an obvious one-sided propaganda campaign which falsely claims that the Russian invasion was "unprovoked," and which focuses on alleged Russian war crimes while completely ignoring the years of Donbass war crimes, still ongoing, committed by the neo-nazi/US-NATO/Ukraine army.

-- R. Kotila, Ph.D.

EXTRACTS: In the more than eight years of bombing the civilians of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, Ukraine has committed untold numbers of war crimes. These include bombing residential areas, markets, hospitals, schools, parks—including with prohibited heavy weapons and banned cluster munitions—and, since late July, raining banned “Petal” mines down on populated civilian areas, including the very center of Donetsk, including as recently as September 7.

A lesser-known war crime is Ukraine’s routine targeting of ambulances, fire trucks, medics and rescuers, and their headquarters and stations. Many of the times Ukraine bombs such heroic rescuers, it is when they are on the way, or already on site, to help civilians often themselves just bombed by Ukraine.

Speaking to DPR Rescuers

During my last two visits to the DPR, in June and August 2022, I interviewed a number of Emergency Services workers and medics.

According to Konstantin Zhukov, the Chief Medical Officer of Donetsk Ambulance Services, ambulance services workers face shelling daily, constantly, and many employees have been wounded while working. One of the ambulance stations was completely destroyed by Ukrainian shelling.

Emergency Services arrived and, not long after, Ukraine resumed its shelling. Fortunately, they were able to get inside, but this is just one example of Ukraine’s double strikes.

According to Levchenko, Ukraine does not only shell two times, but they sometimes shell three times: “They wait again, our guys hide in the shelters, as soon as we go out, put out the fire, help people, there could be people under the debris, doors stuck, people can’t get out and get to the basement…then shelling resumes.”

He described the people engaging in this sort of warfare against civilians and rescuers as “Shameless. Scumbags. Terrorists.”

He is not wrong.

Targeting Rescuers: A Terrorist Tactic Adopted by U.S. Allies in Ukraine, Israel, and Syria

As the DPR Emergency Services chief pointed out damage to the fire truck, I was reminded of Israel’s attacks on Palestinian medics and fire brigades in Gaza, including during the December 27, 2008-January 18, 2009, Israeli war on Gaza, where I was living at the time.

During those three weeks, I rode in the medics’ ambulances, documenting the destruction and the victims of Israel’s war crimes, but also in a sense as a human shield, in the hope that Israel would not strike ambulances in which a handful of internationals and I were riding.

Ukraine Continues Killing Donbass Rescuers

On September 1, 13 DPR Emergency workers were killed and 9 injured from Ukrainian shelling. According to a representative of the Emergency Situations, the shelling was intentional.

“The missiles exactly hit residential buildings. The vehicle was outside and it was hit with shrapnel and pieces of the destroyed building. But again, you can see it’s an emergency vehicle—a fire vehicle. This is a war crime.” READ MORE [If link fails, go to globalresearch.ca or covertactionmagazine.com to find full article listed under Eva Bartlett.]

Eva Karene Bartlett is a Canadian-American journalist who has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years). She was a recipient of the 2017 International Journalism Award for International Reporting, granted by the Mexican Journalists’ Press Club (founded in 1951), and was the first recipient of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism. See her extended bio on her blog In Gaza. She tweets from @EvaKBartlett and has the Telegram Channel, Reality Theories. Eva can also be reached at evabartlett@hotmail.com.

The Israel Files: Wikileaks Docs Show Top Hollywood Producers Working with Israel To Defend Its War Crimes

Alan MacLeod, Mintpress News

EXTRACTS:

Together, the Sony Archive – a cache of emails published by Wikileaks – proves that influential entertainment magnates attempted to whitewash Israeli crimes and present the situation as defending itself from an impending “genocide”, liaised with Israeli military and government officials in order to coordinate their message, attempted to cancel those who spoke out against the injustice, and put financial and social pressure on institutions who hosted artists criticizing the apartheid government’s actions.

As Israel Attacks, Hollywood Plays Defense

“[Israel’s message] Must be repeated ad infinitum until the people get it,” wrote Hollywood lawyer and producer Glenn D. Feig, in an email chain to many of Tinsel Town’s most influential executives. This was in response to the unprovoked 2014 Israeli attack on Gaza, one of the bloodiest chapters in over half a century of occupation.

Named “Operation Protective Edge”, the Israeli military engaged in seven weeks of the near-constant bombing of the densely populated coastal strip. According to the United Nations, over 2,000 people were killed – a quarter of them children. 18,000 houses were destroyed, leaving more than 100,000 people homeless.

The Israeli military deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure, knocking out Gaza’s only power plant and shutting down its water treatment plants, leading to economic, social and ecological devastation in an area Human Rights Watch has labeled the world’s largest “open-air prison”.

Turning The Tide

Despite the best efforts of Simmons and others, however, American public opinion has, in recent years, begun to turn against Israel. Young Americans, in particular, are more likely to sympathize with the plight of the Palestinian people and support an independent Palestinian state. READ MORE