According to Spiegel, SPD members of the Bundestag in a recent meeting joined local and regional politicians in voicing doubts over Scholz’s chances to succeed and called for Pistorius to step in.
The comments were made on Tuesday at a meeting of the Seeheimer Kreis (Seeheim Circle), a conservative wing of the SPD which claims to be aiming at “a modern and pragmatic policy,” the German newspaper reported
The present report contains information regarding the efforts of the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories to implement its mandate and documents human rights concerns in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the occupied Syrian Golan from October 2023 to July 2024. The Special Committee was not able to conduct visits to the occupied territories, but did conduct its annual consultations in Geneva and undertook a visit to Amman, and met with government officials, United Nations organizations and mechanisms, representatives of civil society organizations, youth representatives, human rights defenders, and Palestinian families.
The report raises serious concerns of breaches of international humanitarian and human rights laws in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including starvation as a weapon of war, the possibility of genocide in Gaza and an apartheid system in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. It documents the impact of the conflict escalation since 7 October 2023 on Palestinians’ rights to food; to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment; to physical integrity, liberty and security of persons; as well as the disproportionate effects on the rights of women, children, and future generations more broadly. The report also highlights the ongoing attacks against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and refers to developments in the occupied Syrian Golan. The report provides recommendations to the General Assembly and Member States; to the State of Israel; and to businesses operating with Israel, that in any way contribute to maintaining Israel’s unlawful presence in the occupied territories.
(…)
IX. Conclusions
69. The developments in this report lead the Special Committee to conclude that the policies and practices of Israel during the reporting period are consistent with the characteristics of genocide. The targeting of Palestinians as a group; the life-threatening conditions imposed on Palestinians in Gaza through warfare and restrictions on humanitarian aid – resulting in physical destruction, increased miscarriages and stillbirths – and the killing of and serious bodily or mental harm caused to Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are violations under international law. Civilians have been indiscriminately and disproportionally killed en masse in Gaza, while in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Israeli colonial settlers, military and security personnel have continued to violate human rights and humanitarian law with impunity. Senior Israeli government and military officials must be held accountable, including for using dehumanizing language and inciting violence.
Less than 48 hours after the Biden administration said it does not believe Israel is unlawfully obstructing humanitarian assistance in Gaza, a United Nations special committee issued a report Thursday arguing that the Israeli military‘s actions in the Palestinian enclave bear „the characteristics of genocide.“
(November 12, 2024)
Last month, the Biden administration—which has approved tens of billions of dollars in military aid for Israel and provided nearly unconditional diplomatic support since October 2023—sent a letter to the Israeli government threatening to cut off U.S. arms transfers if it failed to take „urgent and sustained actions“ to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza within 30 days.
Asked during a Tuesday press conference if the Israeli government has met the letter‘s demands, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said that „we have not made an assessment that they are in violation of U.S. law.“
(April 14, 2023)
Peo0le with clearance and access to „Top Secret“ U.S.federal government information, by employee type
Government 605.579
Contractor 472.576
Other 173.803
Total 1.251.958
As of Oct.1, 2019
Source: Office of the Director of National Intelligence via Federation of American Scientists
(July 20, 2010)
The Post investigation uncovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America created since 9/11 that is hidden from public view, lacking in thorough oversight and so unwieldy that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.
It is also a system in which contractors are playing an ever more important role. The Post estimates that out of 854,000 people with top-secret clearances, 265,000 are contractors. There is no better example of the government‘s dependency on them than at the CIA, the one place in government that exists to do things overseas that no other U.S. agency is allowed to do.
(…)
Contractors kill enemy fighters. They spy on foreign governments and eavesdrop on terrorist networks. They help craft war plans. They gather information on local factions in war zones. They are the historians, the architects, the recruiters in the nation‘s most secretive agencies. They staff watch centers across the Washington area. They are among the most trusted advisers to the four-star generals leading the nation‘s wars.
First, history has shown that governments and bureaucracies tend to become addicted to a war footing, with failure sucking them in further — think of America’s war on terror, or Vietnam. War encourages a perverse cycle of escalation in which huge financial and political gains accrue for governments and the military-industrial complex while the costs tend to be borne by weaker parties — before they start to come home in some shape or form.
We’ve called this bipartisan pattern “wreckonomics” and have found it especially present in wars or conflicts with costs that Western politicians can largely outsource — from fighting terrorism, drugs and smugglers to quasi-colonial interventions during the Cold War.
(November 8, 2024)
Democrats actually benefitted from Trump‘s rise, which presented an opportunity for them to win votes freely by positioning themselves as the only alternative to outright fascism.
Yet, instead of looking inwards for answers on why Harris lost to a candidate as problematic as Trump, these liberal Democrats chose to reprimand minorities. Signalling a sense of superiority, they could not hide their racism, implying that it was incumbent upon these minority communities to vote within the guidelines provided by their liberal saviours.
By this logic, Arabs, Muslims and Latinos must vote for a Democrat no matter what.
„Who would have guessed lying about Biden’s cognitive health for 2 yrs, refusing to do an open convention for a new nominee, never mentioning public healthcare & embracing fracking, the Cheneys & a yr long slaughter of children in Gaza wouldn’t be a winning strategy?“ he said.
„Anyone with half a brain?“ he continued. „But I thought liberals’ whole thing is being smart? It’s not? They actually just blindly cheer the parade of rickety optics wrapped up in New York Times fonts that is the modern Dem Party?“
Mr. Scholz vowed to keep governing until the end of the year and then to demand a confidence vote in Parliament in January, a test he may fail. That would open the way for early elections, a rarity in Germany since World War II, possibly in March.
(October 24, 2024)
Laut Auswärtigem Amt wurden seit August Ausfuhren im Wert von 94,05 Millionen genehmigt. (…)
Die neue Zahl geht aus einer Antwort des Auswärtigen Amts auf eine Anfrage der BSW-Abgeordneten Sevim Dagdelen hervor, die der Nachrichtenagentur dpa vorliegt.
…Als Politikwissenschaftlerin kann man natürlich nicht geheim halten, dass das alles hochinteressant und spannend ist und man sich darüber freut, das beobachten zu können. Als Bürgerin des Landes gebe ich aber auch offen zu, dass das bewegende Zeiten sind und weitreichende Zeiten, und insofern ist es ein gemischtes Gefühl, mit dem man auf das schaut und sich schon fragt, wenn wir in den USA gestern früh anfangen und hier in Deutschland, in Berlin gestern Abend enden, was so an einem einzigen Tag alles an Bewegungen stattfinden kann und uns jetzt über Monate, womöglich Jahre beschäftigen wird. …
Over the past year, Israel’s slaughter and starvation of Palestinians — funded by U.S. taxpayers and live-streamed on social media — has triggered one of the greatest surges in progressive activism in a generation. Many Americans roused to action by their government’s complicity in Gaza’s destruction have no personal connection to Palestine or Israel. Like many Americans who protested South African apartheid or the Vietnam War, their motive is not ethnic or religious. It is moral.
The agreement, part of a broader military aid package approved by the Biden administration and the U.S. Congress earlier this year, was finalized hours after Vice President Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election to Republican nominee Donald Trump following a campaign in which she resisted calls to support an arms embargo against Israel.
(November 6, 2024)
According to a statement by the Palestinian Environment Quality Authority today, Wednesday, over 85,000 tons of bombs have been deployed by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the conflict on October 7, 2023.
(June 4, 2024)
Israel dropped 70,000 tons of bombs on Gaza Strip since last October, exceeding World War II bombings in Dresden, Hamburg, London combined, according to rights monitor
The Democrats assumed the working class had nowhere else to go. They were wrong!
“Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy, which has so much economic power?” Sanders asked.
“Probably not,” he said in response to his own question.
Sanders, 83, highlighted several issues he believes the nation has failed to address under the Biden-Harris Administration, from wealth inequality and a worsening standard of living to high prescription drug prices and the lack of guaranteed medical leave.
Though he is an Independent, Sanders caucuses with the Democratic Party, and has long championed policies like Medicare for All and a higher federal minimum wage.
Following President Joe Biden‘s victory in the 2020 presidential election, Harrison was nominated by Biden to be the chair of the DNC, succeeding Tom Perez.[23] DNC members elected him on January 21, 2021.[24]
With Trump winning his second term, it is worth noting that there was no absolutely accountability by the Democratic Party when he won in 2016. Losing an election to so dangerous and corrupt a figure as Donald Trump should cause a political party to do some major inward reflection on their own failures of policy and political strategy. Instead, all the Democrats who bore responsibility for the 2016 failure—starting with Hillary Clinton—found a way to blame anyone else but them.
There was also the larger error of anointing Harris without political competition — an insult to the democratic process that handed the nomination to a candidate who, as some of us warned at the time, was exceptionally weak. That, in turn, came about because Democrats failed to take Biden’s obvious mental decline seriously until June’s debate debacle (and then allowed him to cling to the nomination for a few weeks more), making it difficult to hold even a truncated mini-primary.
(December 9, 2023)
(October 11, 2024)
Mehr als 40 000 Menschen wurden im Gazastreifen durch die israelischen Sicherheitskräfte getötet, rund 70 Prozent davon waren Frauen und Kinder. Der Gazastreifen wurde in Schutt und Asche gelegt und gezielt unbewohnbar gemacht. Es wird versucht, die palästinensische Bevölkerung zu vertreiben. Das dürfen Demokraten niemals akzeptieren.
(Beifall beim BSW sowie der Abg. Nicole Gohlke (Die Linke))
Der Internationale Gerichtshof ermittelt wegen des Völkermordes gegen Israel. Und auch die Bundesregierung steht wegen Beihilfe zum Völkermord durch die umfangreichen Waffenlieferungen an Israel am Pranger.
(Andrea Lindholz (CDU/CSU): Unerträglich, ehrlich! – Gitta Connemann (CDU/CSU): Das ist eine Täter-Opfer-Umkehr!)
Mit Ihrer Ankündigung gerade, Herr Bundeskanzler Scholz, erneut Waffen nach Israel liefern zu wollen, setzen Sie Deutschland wieder mit auf die Anklagebank des IGH.
(Christian Dürr (FDP): Unglaublich! – Britta Haßelmann (BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN), an die CDU/CSU gewandt: Ihr Koalitionspartner in Thüringen und in Sachsen!)
Laut Auswärtigem Amt wurden seit August Ausfuhren im Wert von 94,05 Millionen genehmigt. (…)
Die neue Zahl geht aus einer Antwort des Auswärtigen Amts auf eine Anfrage der BSW-Abgeordneten Sevim Dagdelen hervor, die der Nachrichtenagentur dpa vorliegt.
Germany‘s arms exports to Israel are much higher than the government said they were, with new numbers showing the government approved exports worth €94 million since August alone.
Last week, Berlin said it had approved €45 million worth of arms exports to Israel for the entire year up to 13 October — a significantly lower sum than before, all amid rumours that the government had stopped approving arms export permits altogether.
The new numbers were made available in response to a query from an MP of the left-wing nationalist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW).
A spokesperson for Harris’s campaign said Sunday that the comments made by the protester “don’t reflect the position of the Biden-Harris administration or the vice president’s stance.”
The spokesperson added that Harris “didn’t agree with defining the war as a genocide, and she has not expressed such a stance in the past, as this is not her position.”
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled that its “plausible” Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian population of Gaza. There have been massive civilian casualties in the onslaught, and Israeli forces have purposely targeted children.
Harris pursues a policy of death in Gaza, and she expects we will vote for her.
We need to work hard to make sure that she will not be elected to the presidency. Not only will this punish Harris, but it will also send a signal to all politicians that you won’t be rewarded with our votes when you engage in genocide. This movement will transform American politics and bring civil rights into US foreign policy.
Days after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the Pentagon quietly dispatched several dozen commandos to Israel to help advise on hostage recovery efforts, U.S. officials said.
Those troops from the Joint Special Operations Command were quickly joined by a group of intelligence officers, some working with the commandos in Israel and others back at the C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va.
The ‘Gaza Effect’ may be much larger than anyone expects. Unless they change course, the Democrats are much likelier to lose in November than most people seem to realize.
It should be self-evident that genocide is bad because it’s genocide, but apparently it isn’t—at least, not to everyone.
“We see no signs that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza,” Fischer stressed to reporters at the press briefing as he was quoted by Anadolu news agency.
He went on to say in reference to a report published by the German Bild newspaper on the topic: “In this light, you may also be able to assess the reporting, and the accuracy of this reporting.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on 16 October promised that Germany would “always” continue delivering arms to Israel for its war against Lebanon and the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
“There are deliveries and there will always be further deliveries. Israel can rely on that,” Scholz said in remarks to parliament, adding that Germany must keep Israel “in a position to defend its country”.
The United States is overwhelmingly the biggest supplier of arms to Israel. In 2023 69% of Israel’s arm imports came from the US, according to a report into international arms transfers by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Germany was the second largest, providing 30%, followed by Italy with 0.9%. The UK, France and Spain were among other minor contributors.
Der Nordkurier stellt folgende Frage:
„Ebenfalls oft kritisiert wird ihre Aussage aus der Corona-Zeit, als sie sagten: ‚Für meine Regierung gibt es keine roten Linien mehr.‘ Wie stehen Sie heute zu diesem Satz?“
Scholz antwortet daraufhin mit den Worten:
„Es darf keine roten Linien geben, das hat uns diese Pandemie nun wirklich gezeigt. Dazu stehe ich auch heute noch. Politik muss handlungsfähig bleiben. Wir müssen immer bereit sein umzudenken, wenn die Umstände es erfordern. Ich habe mich in keinem Politikfeld je auf rote Linien festlegen lassen, weil das nur zu einer hypernervösen Öffentlichkeit führt, wann eine solche Linie möglicherweise doch überschritten wird – weder in der Corona-Pandemie, noch in der Frage von Krieg und Frieden.“
Harris pursues a policy of death in Gaza, and she expects we will vote for her.
We need to work hard to make sure that she will not be elected to the presidency. Not only will this punish Harris, but it will also send a signal to all politicians that you won’t be rewarded with our votes when you engage in genocide. This movement will transform American politics and bring civil rights into US foreign policy.
With a month to go before what is widely expected to be an extraordinarily close election, an extra element of unpredictability looms: In every battleground state, there is at least one third-party or independent presidential candidate on the ballot.
None of these candidates will come anywhere close to winning the presidency. Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee, is polling at about 1 percent nationally, according to New York Times polling released last week. Same with Chase Oliver, the Libertarian Party candidate.
In other campaign news, the Democratic National Committee has released an ad attacking Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein, claiming a vote for Stein is a vote for Trump. Democrats are planning to run the ad in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. In August, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, published a survey that showed Stein is leading Harris among Muslim voters in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin. Stein has criticized Harris for refusing to cut off arms sales to Israel.
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: I am gonna actually announce — we have press in the room — that I have decided, not only will I have a Republican in my cabinet — I was talking to my team about it — I want to create some structure around the following, which is: I love good ideas, wherever they come from. I love good ideas! Right?
So part of what I intend to do and put some structure around is creating a bipartisan council of advisors, who can then give feedback on policy as we go forward.
Because here‘s the thing I also understand, and feel strongly about. In order for us as America to maintain our status as the strongest democracy in the world, we need a healthy two-party system. We have to have a healthy two-party. We have to! It‘s in the best interest of all of us.
The heavy historical burden has compelled Germany to support Israel unconditionally in all international forums. While such support might be understandable in the context of historical relations, using it as a pretext to overlook Israel’s ongoing human rights violations in Gaza is both ethically and politically unjustifiable.