'This could go nuclear'

 

     By Reginald Johnson

         Although there's still hope for a diplomatic solution to settle the dispute between the United States and Iran, chances remain high that the US and Israel will attack the Middle Eastern country.

    And should war break out with Iran, a global conflict involving the major powers could be triggered, and the possibility that nuclear weapons will be used is not out of the question.

   That's the view of one the most prominent US foreign policy critics, Prof. Jeffrey Sachs.

    Speaking on the Danny Haiphong podcast recently, Sachs said:  "No war is inevitable, but this war is likely. It's championed by Israel, and Israel is running American foreign policy in the Middle East."

   Sachs added that US President Donald Trump is a "puppet" of Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, who, he said, "has wanted a US attack on Iran for 30 years." 

  The former advisor to the UN Secretary-General and now teacher at Columbia made his remarks as tensions build between Washington and Tehran, with Trump demanding that Iran end its nuclear development program and threatening to use military force against Iran if it refuses to do so. Talks are ongoing between the two nations, but there's skepticism about whether the negotiations are going anywhere.

Sachs said the situation vis a vis Iran is "fraught with danger."

Unlike other countries like Venezuela, Syria or Somalia that US has been able to attack with little or no  pushback, Iran would be a much more formidable opponent. Iran is a much larger country with a strong ballistic missile system; it has a nuclear energy program which could be retooled to build a nuclear bomb, if leaders chose to do that; and it has major powers for allies, in Russia and China, both nuclear-armed.

  "Iran is not isolated in this and their friends are many, and some are nuclear-armed. This is just the kind of thing that can absolutely lead to a disastrous cycle of escalation." Sachs said.

  "This could go nuclear," he said. 

Sachs said it was critical at this point for the leaders of other large countries that have a stake in the Middle East, such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Russia and China, to get involved and "explain to Mr. Trump, 'Don't do this.' "

  " And whether that is enough remains to be seen," he said. 

  

  

Activists call for UN military intervention in Gaza

   By Reginald Johnson

  A group of pro-Palestinian activists are leading a campaign to push the United Nations to intervene in Gaza.

 Led by former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, the coalition wants the General Assembly to use a little-known process called “Uniting for Peace” to send a peacekeeping force to Gaza to protect civilians, ensure that food supplies are reaching the people and impose an embargo on military aid to Israel.

 The General Assembly used the Uniting for Peace resolution once before in 1956, when the assembly forced Israel, Britain and France to withdraw their troops from the Sinai during the Suez Canal dispute with Egypt.

 By invoking the process, the General Assembly is able to circumvent the Security Council where the United States has repeatedly used its veto power to block any punitive action against Israel.

 Members of the coalition called Lifeline for Palestine believe they have the votes to reach the two thirds majority needed to invoke the Uniting for Peace provision.

 “This is an unprecedented opportunity,” said Stein. “We do have the power to end the genocide and we should not accept powerlessness.”

 September 18th (Thursday) is the one year anniversary of the General Assembly voting by a 10 to 1 margin for a resolution demanding that Israel withdraw its forces from the Gaza Strip, or face UN penalties.

 Thursday will see a “Global Day of Action” on ending the war in Gaza, including a march and rally starting outside the public library at 41^st Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City, beginning at 12 noon. The musician and activist Roger Waters will perform.

 It is almost two years since the Gaza war began, touched off by an attack on Israel by Hamas militants, which left 1200 Israelis dead. Since then, Israel has waged a brutal and unrelenting military campaign, which has left by official counts 65,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, dead. But recent calculations by researchers put the death toll as high as 680,000. Most of Gaza's infrastructure, including hospitals and schools have been heavily damaged or destroyed. Blocks of high-rise housing have been leveled.

 Meanwhile, people have starved to death because Israel has impeded the supply of food aid.

 The World Court and human rights organizations have labeled the Israeli campaign a genocide.

  Craig Mokhiber, a former human rights official with the UN, said that if the General Assembly votes to approve an intervention through the Uniting for Peace process, Israel has no right to block the action, according to a previous World Court ruling.

  "Israel has no right to refuse or obstruct," Mokhiber said.

 The coalition is also asking that the UN remove Israel's credentials as a General Assembly member; reactivation of the UN's long-dormant anti-apartheid mechanism; and establishment of a war crimes tribunal.

 Endorsing the Lifeline for Palestine campaign include the following organizations: CODE Pink; Doctors Against Genocide; various Green Party chapters; and a number of state and local peace organizations.

   (For more information go to lifelineforpalestine.com)

Media ignores starving children in Gaza

 

  ­(I submitted the following op-ed to the Connecticut Post (part of the Hearst chain) last week and so far it hasn’t run. I don’t think it will. I mention the sacred cow, Israel, in a negative light, so that generally means you’re in a no-go zone for most media. It doesn’t matter apparently that tens of thousands of people, many children, will die of starvation because of Israel’s supremely cruel blockade that prevents food from getting in to Gaza.  Nope, can’t run it. The Connecticut Post is not alone. Did you see anything about the Gaza famine on last weekend’s TV news shows? No. This terrible catastrophe is being ignored. Shame on the media. I reprint here the op-ed piece I submitted to the Post,)

 

 

                           END THE GAZA BLOCKADE

 

    By Reginald Johnson

    May 7, 2025

 

    A human catastrophe is unfolding in Gaza.

    For the past two months, Israel has been imposing a blockade on the shipment of all food and medical supplies into Gaza, where Israel has been fighting Hamas militants since October of 2023. Trucks loaded with food are lined up at the Gaza border and they can’t get in.

  As a result, some 1.1 million residents are trapped in the zone without any new food, medicine and precious little water. Starvation is on the rise.

 Just days ago, officials of the Gaza Health Ministry reported that 57 Palestinians have died of starvation. According to officials of the Gaza Government Media Office, some 3500 children under the age of five years “face imminent death by starvation” and some 290,000 children are “on the brink of death.”

 Olga Cherevko, an aid worker with the United Nations Humanitarian Office (OCHA) in Gaza City said, “Hungry people are scavenging in mounds of waste for anything that would help them survive…I am seeing children and I am seeing elderly people rummaging through these piles of trash not only in search of things to burn but also things to eat daily.”

 The CEOs of 12 major aid organizations, including Oxfam, Save the Children, CARE and NRC, said in a joint statement recently that, “Survival itself is now slipping out of reach and the humanitarian system is at a breaking point.”

 Those organizations said that they are ready to begin resupplying humanitarian aid if they get the go-ahead, but they’re still waiting. Israeli officials say they are imposing the blockade in order to put pressure on Hamas to release the remaining Israeli hostages they have been holding.

 But officials of human rights organizations and the UN say Israel is violating international law by imposing the blockade. “Any use of starvation of the civilian population as a method of war constitutes a war crime and so do all forms of collective punishment,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk.

 If the blockade is not ended very soon, a famine of catastrophic proportions will set in for the people of Gaza. It is imperative now that world leaders, including President Trump, European heads of state and others, put pressure on Israel to end the blockade and allow desperately needed food supplies to reach Gaza.

  

 

 Reginald Johnson is a freelance writer who lives Bridgeport, CT

 

 

Israel bombs Gaza during polio vaccination drive

                                            Commentary

 By Reginald Johnson

 How low can Israel go? And how low can the United States go in supporting Israel?

 In the latest atrocity brought on the Palestinians, the Israeli military has bombed Gaza while humanitarian pauses are in effect so children can be given polio shots. A hospital has been hit and a school has been bombed.

 The vaccination drive by the UN is in question now after the IDF detained UN staff at gunpoint and bulldozed UN vehicles.

  These actions that impede a life-saving vaccination drive for children are not just shameful, they are barbaric. And the United States is aiding and abetting the barbarism.

Read it and weep.

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/israel-strikes-gaza-amid-polio-vaccination-drive

UN warned about danger of nuclear war over Ukraine

 

      By Reginald Johnson

     The outstanding writer and peace activist Dan Kovalik urged the UN Security Council this week to deal with the growing crisis in Ukraine, which threatens to spark a nuclear war between the United States and Russia.

  Speaking as a member of the executive committee of the U.S. Peace Council, Kovalik said “we are very alarmed by what appears to be a creep towards World War III emanating from the Russia-Ukraine conflict.”

  Kovalik said the Biden administration’s recent decision to allow Ukraine to use US weaponry to strike deep inside Russia is a provocative step that ratchets up tensions with the Russians. He said that Ukraine will now be able to hit early warning radar systems that were built by the Russians years ago to warn them about incoming ICBM missiles from the US.

  “This raises the question for Russia: what are you attacking these particular radar sites for? Are you planning for a first strike?” he said.

  Kovalik said the situation is similar to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 when America and the Soviet Union almost went to war over the placement of Russian missiles on Cuban soil.

   The author and human rights activist also criticized the Biden administration for its decision to arm the Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi group in Ukraine.

  The administration announced its support for Azov shortly after the 80th anniversary celebration of D-Day in World War II when American and Allied forces launched the invasion of Europe and began the offensive which led to the defeat of the Nazi regime in Germany.

  He said the Azov Battalion is part of a right-wing network which is spreading racism and Naziism in Europe.

  "How can the West and the United States in particular talk about democracy and human rights when it is arming Nazis in Ukraine?" Kovalik asked. 

 He urged the Security Council to “address this issue and halt support for modern-day Nazis in Europe.”

 To hear the full briefing by Kovalik before the Security Council, go to https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1h/k1heo8r3qy?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR2bKtEdznDmvUYSyvwgRcbVEUFlv1kzWS6Qrz-QRlUJ5Wj60uiSteoGceI_aem_ZmFrZWR1bW15MTZieXRlcw

 

The genocide must end

                                                 Commentary

    

            By Reginald Johnson

        

    How long will the world community stand by and do nothing?

   For five months, Israel has been conducting a brutal, some would say barbaric military campaign to punish the people of Palestine for the attacks of October 7, when Hamas extremists assaulted a music festival in Israel, killing over 1,200 people.

  Israel says their military operation in Gaza is only targeting individuals tied to Hamas (which is the governing authority for Palestine) but news reports say otherwise. Israel has carried out a carpet bombing campaign which has leveled apartment buildings, schools, and universities. There have been airstrikes as well on hospitals, churches, mosques, refugee camps, food centers and ambulances. All these attacks are war crimes under international law.

   At this point, more than 31,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed.  The real fatality figure is probably a lot higher because not everyone has been accounted for, including people whose bodies are under the rubble of destroyed buildings.

 Another 1.5 million people have been displaced from their homes.

 Israeli authorities have also blocked aid trucks from getting into Gaza, resulting in acute food shortages. UN officials say that more and more people are going hungry and cases of starvation have already been verified.

  A group of UN experts declared recently that “Israel has been intentionally starving” Gaza, and that “widespread famine” in the besieged enclave is “imminent,” according to a report in Mondoweiss.

  “We’ve never seen a civilian population made to go hungry so completely and so quickly,” said Michael Fahkri, UN Special Rapporteur. “Never in modern history.”

   Medical care in Gaza is also collapsing, as hospitals and health facilities have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli bombing. This has led to people dying from inadequate medical care and disease.

 The death toll in Gaza could jump exponentially with the onset of famine and the spread of disease. Prof. Devi Sridhar, chair of the global public health division at the University of Edinburgh, predicts that a quarter of Gaza’s 2 million population --- close to half of 1 million human beings --- could die within a year.

 Almost on a daily basis, atrocities are being carried out against Palestinians, particularly in Gaza but also in the West Bank and East Jerusalem --- territories illegally occupied by Israel for the past 57 years.

 On Thursday, at least 21 Palestinians were killed after Israeli forces opened fire on thousands of people waiting for aid in Gaza City in the same area that was targeted hours earlier, according to the Al Jazeera news service. In the earlier incident, the same food distribution point at the Kuwait roundabout, Israel forces shot dead at least six Palestinians, according to the report. Israeli officials claimed that it was actually Palestinians who were shooting at their own people.

 On Wednesday, Israeli forces attacked a food distribution center in Gaza killing one worker and injuring 22, according to the BBC.

 Also on Wednesday, in  East Jerusalem, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 12-year-old boy who was playing with fireworks. Eyewitnesses said the boy posed no threat to the soldiers and was using small fireworks.

 On February 29, UN officials reported that 112 people were killed when Israeli forces opened fire on a group that gathered around a food supply truck in the early morning hours. In what is being called the "Flour Massacre,” a number of people were killed by gunshots while others died after being trampled by the crowd that went into frenzy after the gunfire erupted. Others died when they were run over by the truck that began driving away to escape the chaos.

 On February 15, dozens of doctors were detained and tortured after a raid by Israeli forces on Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, according to the BBC. The doctors were forced to strip, were blindfolded, forced to remain in a kneeling position, and then were beaten, One doctor was set upon by muzzled dogs, the report said.

 Israeli spokesmen said the IDF raided the hospital because they had evidence Hamas fighters were hiding there.

  Also in February, two little Palestinian girls, sisters, who were putting water into a bucket in the courtyard of their home, were shot dead by an IOF tank. When their father came out and lay down next to them, he was shot dead, too.

The atrocities, the indiscriminate killings, the vast numbers of people being killed and the apparent attempt to engineer a famine, all point towards one conclusion: Israel is conducting an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinians.

 The International Court of Justice reached a similar conclusion when it determined that there was a “plausible case” to be made that Israel was carrying out a "genocide" in Gaza.

 It's clear a great moral crime against humanity is taking place in Gaza.

What is happening in Palestine rivals the ethnic cleansing/genocidal campaigns that took place in the 1990s in Rwanda and Yugoslavia. 

The question is, what is the world going to do about this, if anything?

Certainly some in the UN are oriented to taking action. Fahkri and some of his other colleagues on March 5 called for an arms embargo against Israel until Israel ceases its military campaign.

 A majority of countries on the Security Council of the UN have also agreed to a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.

                    

Backers of a ceasefire in Gaza lobby for support from the City Council in Bridgeport, CT  The council approved a ceasefire resolution. (Reginald Johnson photo)

 But every time a ceasefire resolution has been presented to the Security Council, the United States has used its veto to kill it, making clear that the United States is the major stumbling block for the world taking collective action against Israel to stop the genocide.

 President Biden has talked recently, as have other Democratic Party leaders about the need for Israel to control its military forces and avoid civilian casualties. However, talk is cheap. The fact is Biden has not gotten tough with Israel to really back up his words. He could threaten the cutoff of aid to Israel to force that nation to stop the carnage, but he hasn’t done that. He could also ask the US ambassador at the UN to vote with the other nations on the Security Council in passing a resolution ordering Israel to stop its military operations. But he hasn’t done that either.

So until the United States changes its position on what Israel is doing that nation is going to continue with its grossly immoral and totally illegal ethnic cleansing campaign in Palestine.

The United States is the key. The policy here must change. This is why it’s so important that people on the local level continue to speak out and press their members of Congress as well as the White House to get on board behind a cease-fire and insist that Israel stop its barbaric operations. It should be noted that Congress has been as bad as Biden has been on the issue of Israel --- most members in Congress still oppose a cease-fire in Gaza, and that includes both Republicans and Democrats.

 It is somewhat of an indictment of our democracy that while a strong majority of the American people want a cease-fire in Gaza a strong majority in Congress are against it. This is almost entirely because of the huge contributions that are given by pro- Israel lobbies to members of Congress in both parties. The members of our national legislature are in Israel’s pocket.

People and voters have to make it clear to these members of Congress that they need to change their positions and get behind a cease-fire and in turn put pressure on the Biden administration to insist that Israel also agree to a cease-fire, or they will be voted out.

 The genocide in Gaza must be stopped.

 

 

 

 

 

   

Fukushima -- A Global Threat

‘                                       

 By Reginald Johnson

  This week, an event will take place at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan that could have grave consequences for the health and well-being of hundreds of millions of people around the world.

  Engineers from the Tokyo Electric Power Corporation, which owns the plant, will attempt to remove more than 1500 highly-radioactive spent fuel rods from a damaged containment building at the plant’s reactor number 4. It is critical to remove the rods and put them in a safe building, given the possibility that another earthquake could strike the area of the plant and bring the existing building down, which could lead to a massive explosion and fire, setting off waves of lethal radiation.

  A powerful earthquake and tsunami already struck the plant in March 2011, creating widespread damage to the complex.

  The problem is that a number of nuclear experts and observers are skeptical of TEPCO’s technical capabilities to perform the removal operation safely. Many of the rods at the reactor 4 building are bent and in a brittle condition, and there is doubt that the company  on its own will be able to extract each one (they’ll be using a 273-foot crane for the operation) without one or several rods breaking. The rods could explode or catch on fire, setting off large doses of radiation, depending on how many rods are involved.

  The amount of radioactivity in the fuel rods at unit 4 is staggering. According to long-time anti-nuclear activist Harvey Wasserman, the amount of cesium 137 in the fuel rods in reactor 4 is equal to 14,000 times the amount released by the dropping of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima.

  Making the situation even more worrisome is that another 6,000 spent fuel rods sit in a cooling pool only 50 meters away from reactor 4. Should those rods somehow get involved during an accident, the consequences are unthinkable, say Wasserman and others.

 “The potential radiation releases in this situation can only be described as apocalyptic,” Wasserman commented in an article in Common Dreams on October 24 (http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/10/24-3).

 Despite the difficulty of the task and the dangers involved, TEPCO is planning on going ahead with the removal operation sometime later this week. The Japanese government has reportedly raised no objections to the plan

  But Wasserman and others, such as nuclear engineer and activist Arnie Gundersen, are trying desperately to get the UN and leading countries like the U.S. to intervene and not allow the operation to go ahead until a team of the world’s best nuclear engineers are assembled and sent to Japan to assist in this project.

  “The bring-down of the fuel rods from Fukushima Unit 4 may be the most dangerous engineering task ever undertaken. Every indication is that TEPCO is completely incapable of doing it safely, or of reliably informing the global community as to what’s actually happening,” said Wasserman. “This is a job that should only be undertaken by a dedicated team of the world’s very best scientists and engineers, with access to all the funding that could be needed.”

  On Thursday, activists will go to UN headquarters in New York City to present a petition with the names of more than 100,000 people asking UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to initiate a global takeover of the Fukushima operation. Prior to the presentation, people will gather at 1 p.m. at Dag Hammerskjold Plaza outside the UN.

  (Just as this blog was being written, TEPCO reportedly announced on its website that U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz had met with company officials about Fukushima and offered Washington’s assistance in the fuel rod removal operation and decommissioning of the plant. The nature of the assistance was not described.)

 It is urgently important that the UN get involved in the Fukushima crisis, as this clearly has world-wide implications. A massive release of radiation into the air, in the event of an accident, affects not only Japan, but everywhere --- just as radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Ukraine in 1986 spread around the world. By all estimates, there is real danger of a radiation accident far worse than Chernobyl taking place at Fukushima.

 The problems at Fukushima’s unit 4 are by no means the only serious issues at the plant. Some reactors at other units have apparently sunk into the earth, due to the earthquake, posing incalculable health and environmental dangers. Hundreds of tons of water contaminated with radioactive elements, are continuing to leak into the Pacific Ocean, affecting fish and seafood. Bluefin tuna caught off the coast of California have been found to contain radioactive elements, most likely picked up when the migratory fish were in waters close to Japan.

   To Wasserman, the situation at Fukushima is beyond dire.  “This is a question that transcends being anti-nuclear. The fate of the earth is at stake here and the whole world must be watching every move at that site from now on. With 11,000 fuel rods scattered around the place, as a ceaseless flow of contaminated water poisons our oceans, our very survival is at stake.”