Einer nimmt uns das Denken ab
Es genügt seine Schriften zu lesen
und manchmal dabei zu nicken

Einer nimmt uns das Fühlen ab
Seine Gedichte erhalten Preise
und werden häufig zitiert

Einer nimmt uns die großen Entscheidungen ab
über Krieg und Frieden
Wir wählen ihn immer wieder

Wir müssen nur
auf zehn bis zwölf Namen schwören
Das ganze Leben nehmen sie uns dann ab

—Erich Fried

Die Zeit:

Der Westen macht Russland stärker, als es ist

Diese Stabilität und Stärke ist in weiten Teilen vom Westen mitverschuldet. Bizarr wirkt aus heutiger Sicht die Debatte über den Umgang mit Russland aus der Zeit unmittelbar nach dem Überfall auf die Ukraine.

Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint!

Doctors Without Borders:

On 18 November 2023, an MSF evacuation convoy came under fire in Gaza city. Two people were killed in what immediately appeared as a deliberate attack against clearly identified MSF cars. Both were family members of MSF staff, one of them was also a volunteer supporting MSF medical teams at Al-Shifa hospital.

Two weeks later, after collecting the testimonies of MSF staff present that day in the convoy, MSF considers that all elements point to the responsibility of the Israeli army for this attack.

MSF has also collected testimonies of the destruction of five MSF vehicles and the severe damage caused to the MSF clinic in Gaza city, all clearly identified by the organization’s logo, on 20 November, which can also be attributed to the intervention of an Israeli bulldozer and a heavy military vehicle. These vehicles were potential evidence, in case of an independent investigation on the attack on the MSF convoy. Shots were aimed at the MSF facilities where these colleagues were sheltering, leaving bullet holes in the interior walls. On 24 November, MSF staff also witnessed the destruction of a minibus, also clearly identified by the organization’s logo, by an Israeli tank. This minibus had been sent by the MSF team in south Gaza, following the destruction of the vehicles a few days before, to facilitate the evacuation of colleagues in the north.

MSF condemns again in the strongest terms the attack on its convoy and extends again its condolences to the families of the victims. MSF requested a formal explanation for this attack from the Israeli authorities and calls for an independent investigation to establish the facts and the responsibilities.

In These Times:

“We opposed fascism in World War II, we opposed the Vietnam war, we opposed apartheid South Africa and we mobilized union resources in that fight,” Mancilla says. ​“The UAW International has joined the call for a cease-fire. [We are] calling for an immediate, permanent ceasefire, and [we are] building a global community of solidarity.” The UAW now joins other national unions including the American Postal Workers Union, the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE), the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT), and a long list of local unions, including the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), in the call for a cease-fire.

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.