Here’s a strange connection between Israel and the United States. Let me put it to you as a kind of quiz: Which two leaders on this planet have, at least in part, organized their political lives to avoid trial convictions and/or possible jail time? Yes, in case you hadn’t guessed, I’m thinking of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the former American president and once again candidate Donald Trump.

With that in mind, consider the mayhem, the literal hell on earth, that one of those two has already caused due, at least in part, to his desire not to find himself convicted in a corruption trial — and don’t hold your breath waiting for the other to repeat that, in his own fashion, whether he wins or loses the American presidency in November. At least Benjamin Netanyahu has only one trial, still ongoing in the background of the present war in Gaza and the West Bank. Donald Trump, on the other hand, has so many of them that it’s hard to count. Only the other day the judge in his New York State bribery trial, where he has indeed been found guilty of 34 felony counts, put off his sentencing from September 18th to November 26th, after the election is over. That means on Election Day, despite facing 91 felony counts across four criminal cases, he will remain a “free” man.

Of course, should Donald Trump win this November, he can shut down the ongoing federal trials completely (a good reason for him to deny losing, no matter what the vote count may be) and, like Netanyahu, potentially distract us all from his personal problems by, starting in January 2025, committing mayhem on this planet.

And with that in mind, consider it a kind of hell on Earth that Benjamin Netanyahu’s all-out war on a strip of land 25 miles long and only four to seven miles wide is about to enter its 12th month and, as TomDispatch regular Juan Cole, creator of the must-read Informed Comment website, suggests today, is causing both chaos and a changing set of alliances in the Middle East (in which the United States could prove to be a big loser). Tom

The Sphinx and the Sultan

by JUAN COLE

How Biden’s Bear Hug of Netanyahu Caused Washington’s Mideast Policy to Crash and Burn

At least one thing is now obvious in the Middle East: the Biden administration has failed abjectly in its objectives there, leaving the region in dangerous disarray. Its primary stated foreign policy goal has been to rally its partners in the region to cooperate with the extremist Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu while upholding a “rules-based” international order and blocking Iran and its allies in their policies. Clearly, such goals have had all the coherence of a chimera and have failed for one obvious reason. President Biden’s Achilles heel has been his “bear hug” of Netanyahu, who allied himself with the Israeli equivalent of neo-Nazis, while launching a ruinous total war on the people of Gaza in the wake of the horrific October 7th Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.

Biden also signed on to the Abraham Accords, a project initiated in 2020 by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and special Middle East envoy of then-President Donald Trump. Through them the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco all agreed to recognize Israel in return for investment and trade opportunities there and access to American weaponry and a U.S. security umbrella. Not only did Washington, however, fail to incorporate Saudi Arabia into that framework, but it has also faced increasing difficulty keeping the accords themselves in place given increasing anger and revulsion in the region over the high (and still ongoing) civilian death toll in Gaza. Typically, just the docking of an Israeli ship at the Moroccan port of Tangier this summer set off popular protests that spread to dozens of cities in that country. And that was just a taste of what could be coming.

Breathtaking Hypocrisy

Washington’s efforts in the Middle East have been profoundly undermined by its breathtaking hypocrisy. After all, the Biden team has gone blue in the face decrying the Russian occupation of parts of Ukraine and its violations of international humanitarian law in killing so many innocent civilians there. In contrast, the administration let the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu completely disregard international law when it comes to its treatment of the Palestinians. This summer, the International Court of Justice ruled that the entire Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal in international law and, in response, the U.S. and Israel both thumbed their noses at the finding. In part as a response to Washington’s Israeli policy, no country in the Middle East and very few nations in the Global South have joined in its attempt to ostracize Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Worse yet for the Biden administration, the most significant divide in the Arab world between secular nationalist governments and those that favor forms of political Islam has begun to heal in the face of the perceived Israeli threat. Turkey and Egypt, daggers long drawn over their differing views of the Muslim Brotherhood, the fundamentalist movement that briefly came to power in Cairo in 2012-2013, have begun repairing their relationship, specifically citing the menace posed by Israeli expansionism.

The persistence of Secretary of State Antony Blinken in pressing Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. security partner, to recognize Israel at a moment when the Arab public is boiling with anger over what they see as a campaign of genocide in Gaza, is the closest thing since the Trump administration to pure idiocracy. Washington’s pressure on Riyadh elicited from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman the pitiful plea that he fears being assassinated were he to normalize relations with Tel Aviv now. And consider that ironic given his own past role in ordering the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In short, the ongoing inside-the-Beltway ambition to secure further Arab recognition of Israel amid the annihilation of Gaza has America’s security partners wondering if Washington is trying to get them killed — anything but a promising basis for a long-term alliance.

Global Delegitimization

The science-fiction-style nature of U.S. policy in the Middle East is starkly revealed when you consider the position of Jordan, which has a peace treaty with Israel. In early September, its foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, warned that any attempt by the Israeli military or its squatter-settlers to expel indigenous West Bank Palestinians to Jordan would be considered an “act of war.” While such anxieties might once have seemed overblown, the recent stunning (and stunningly destructive) Israeli military campaign on the Palestinian West Bank, including bombings of populated areas by fighter jets, has already begun to resemble the campaign in Gaza in its tactics. And keep in mind that, as August ended, Foreign Minister Israel Katz even urged the Israeli army to compel Palestinians to engage in a “voluntary evacuation” of the northern West Bank.

TomDispatch for more

by RICHARD DENNISS

Apparently, the world is about to get its first trillionaire.

A report from the business intelligence agency Informa Connect says, at his present rate of wealth accumulation, tech billionaire Elon Musk is on track to be the world’s first trillionaire, three years from now.

At the moment Musk is said to be worth US$195 billion (A$293 billion), but if his wealth continues growing at the recent rate of 110% per year, he will hit US$1.195 trillion in 2027.

The next trillionaire after Musk should be Indian mining magnate Gautam Adani, followed by Nvidia chief Jensen Huang and Indonesian mining mogul Prajogo Pangestu, all of whom are on track to hit the milestone in 2028.

The nearly 1 billion human beings who don’t yet have electricity connected to their homes will doubtless be looking on with interest as the tech bros and mining bosses vie to crack 13 digits.

Before examining how it is that someone could ever make a trillion-dollar fortune, and what it might mean for the world for so much of the world’s wealth to be held in the hands of one person, it is important to first try to comprehend how big a trillion actually is.

One trillion seconds last 31,000 years

A million is a big number: it is 1,000 thousands. If you managed to retire with that many dollars in superannuation, you would have saved up more than 90% of your fellow retirees.

One billion is 1,000 millions. It takes 12 days for a million seconds to pass, but 31 years for a billion seconds to tick over.

That means a trillion seconds would equal 31,000 years.

If you had $1 trillion and did no more than stick it in the bank where it earned 4% interest per year you would get $40 billion per year in interest.

No one needs $1 trillion, and it is hard to see how anyone could spend it as fast as it grew, which raises important questions about how societies, economies and democracies will be able to function if and when governments allow trillionaires to emerge.

For mortals, a trillion is hard to justify

France’s King Louis XIV spent today’s equivalent of US$200 billion-300 billion building his palace at Versailles, and it was by no means his only palace.

Pyramids and sphinxes didn’t come cheap either, but these sorts of expenditures were seen as needed for beings selected by gods and not entirely mortal.

For mortals, some believe that the entire population benefits when a small minority controls most of the resources on the basis that it builds incentives.

Just as peasants spent millennia awaiting their reward in the afterlife while their rulers enjoyed heaven on earth, in modern economies we are told wealth and prosperity will trickle down to us eventually if we keep working hard.

Unfortunately for most of us, despite the wealth of the richest 200 Australians growing from A$40.6 billion to $625 billion over the past 20 years, neither the Australian economy nor the wages of ordinary Australians are soaring.

The Conversation for more

by URBAN C. LEHNER

An old quip has it that everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. The same could be said about food waste — or, rather, could have been said before South Korea gave it a try. More on that try in a minute.

For what seems like decades now, the statistic everyone quotes has basically remained unchanged: A third of the food the world’s farmers produce is wasted. Oh, sure, sometimes the number is nearer 30%, sometimes 40%. But it’s generally within a few percentage points of a third.

If somebody is doing something about it, then, it’s not working.

Governments insist they want to bring the number down. In June, for example, the Biden administration put out a “fact sheet” listing what it’s done about the problem and what it plans to do. (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/06/12/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-releases-first-ever-interagency-national-strategy-for-reducing-food-loss-and-waste-and-recycling-organics/)

Some of these things — like easing restrictions on giving unused food to food banks or clarifying the meaning of “best by” dates — seem like good ideas. Whether they’ll move the needle much off a third is debatable.

It seems food waste isn’t a problem governments are well-equipped to solve. In developing countries, some of what farmers raise never makes it to someone’s table. The produce falls victim to poor transportation infrastructure and lack of refrigeration. Fixing these problems costs money developing-country governments don’t have.

In rich countries, the causes of waste include large restaurant portions and the unwillingness of many consumers to buy fruits and vegetables that aren’t picture-perfect. Governments can raise awareness, but they can’t make people eat all the food they buy or give what they don’t eat to someone who doesn’t have enough.

The harm in wasting food isn’t just the waste of money or the missed opportunities to feed the hungry. A less obvious harm is what happens to food waste.

Progressive Farmer for more

by C. J. POLYCHRONIOU

Why people, and radicals in particular, fail to grasp the reasoning behind this argument is truly mind-boggling.

One of the most bewildering reactions on the part of certain segments of the U.S. left (whatever that means these days) is that every time there is a crucial election, and the voice of reason dictates casting a ballot in a direction which will help the most to keep out of public office the most extreme, and often enough the positively nuts, candidate in the race, is to scream that this is a case of “the lesser of two evils” thinking and to imply in turn that the one making such an argument is, somehow, a sellout.

Noam Chomsky, of all people, has been the recipient of such brainless reactions for much of his life as he has repeatedly made the argument that voting for a third-party or independent candidate in a swing state would accomplish nothing but increase the possibility of the most extreme and positively nuts candidate winning the election.

Why people, and radicals in particular, fail to grasp the reasoning behind such an argument is truly mind-boggling. Either they don’t understand the nature of U.S. politics, with its winner-take-all election system, or they are simply wrapped up in the “feel-good” factor in politics to even notice such subtleties. But since even a fairly bright elementary student would most likely be able to understand the difference between a winner-take-all election system and proportional representation, it would be logical to conclude that what we have here is nothing less than a display of the politics of feeling good, which basically translates to acting in whatever manner makes one feel good, politically speaking, regardless of the consequences of those actions.

Now, one might say that when the Comintern adopted Stalin’s thinking in the 1920s that “social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism” and proceeded later to lump together Hitler’s Nazi party and the German Social Democratic Party that it was doing so out of conviction that the capitalist world was teetering on the brink of collapse and that the communists would inevitably emerge as the victorious party.

But what is the excuse of the tiny segment of U.S. self-professed radicals who fail to see that in order to advance the program of socialism we must first defeat Trump at the ballot box? Incidentally, this also happens to be the official stance of the Communist Party USA. Yet, one can already hear the argument that U.S. communists must have also fallen victims of the picking a lesser of two evils mental attitude. However, in numerous conversations I’ve had with radicals (leftists, anarchists, and communists) across Europe, their own thinking was also in line with the reasoning of the Communist Party USA—namely, that priority number one of U.S. progressive voters should be to defeat wannabe dictator Donald Trump in the upcoming U.S. presidential election.

Can this be done by voting in a swing state for someone like Cornel West or Jill Stein when these candidates have zero chance of winning? My chances of being attacked and killed by a shark, which are estimated to be one in 3.75 million, are far greater than either of these two candidates making it to the White House in November 2024.

Oh, but I forgot! Such realizations hardly matter in comparison to how good it might make one feel by voting for a candidate outside of the two existing parties. Who cares if the candidate who would love to turn the U.S. into an autocracy wins the election? The other candidate is simply the lesser of two evils, which is like saying that it makes no difference to live under a political regime that is inadequate in realizing the ideals of a decent society and one that is bent on a process of societal fasticization.

Still, there is something even more bewildering with the lesser-of-two evils dictum that is thrown around by small segments of the left. Generally speaking, as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, there have been two doctrines about voting: the official doctrine, “which holds that politics consists of showing up every few years, pushing a lever, then going back to one’s private pursuits,” and the “left doctrine.” For the latter, “politics consists in constant direct popular engagement in public affairs, including a wide variety of activism on many fronts. Occasionally an event comes up in the formal political arena called an ‘election….’ It’s at most a brief departure from political engagement.”

The third doctrine about voting, which is the “lesser of two evils” principle, has appeared on the political scene rather recently and, as Chomsky highlighted, is “now consuming much debate on the left.” The debate, he went to say, “also falls within the official doctrine, with its laser-like focus on elections.”

Common Dreams for more

by NATHAN M GREENFIELD

The publication in mid-July of a letter from the Pope on the value of literature as part of one’s path to “personal maturity” has been welcomed by some academics as an unexpected invitation to reflect on the importance of literature and humanities in education around the world.

Described by Father Professor Andrea Spatafora, who teaches theology at St Paul’s University in Ottawa, Canada, as a “bit of a bombshell”, the “Letter of His Holiness Pope Francis on the Role of Literature in Formation” started out as guidance to seminaries but was reworked into a pastoral letter.

Its contents also surprised Peter Kilpatrick, president of the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. “The whole Catholic world was asking: ‘Where did this come from?’”, he noted, before calling the letter an “unexpected treasure”, which he underscored has caught the attention of the secular Chronicle of Higher Education and of these pages.

Neither St Paul’s University, which is a pontifical university, meaning the Vatican evaluates its programmes and the rector is confirmed by the Vatican Dicastery for Culture and Education, nor the Catholic University of America, which was a pontifical university but since the 1970s has been a private university, is bound by the letter in the way that the almost 7,000 Catholic seminaries (in which seminarians earn a “licentiate”, roughly equivalent to an MA) are.

Yet, the letter “invites us to reflect on the place, the importance of literature, of the humanities in education”, said Father Andrea.

Accordingly, he and Kilpatrick expect their universities and the other 1,360 pontifical and Catholic universities around the world will interrogate their curriculum in the light of the Pope’s letter about the role of literature in a fulsome education for Catholics as well as those outside the orbit of the Catholic Church.

With 11 million students worldwide, the network of Catholic colleges and universities is the world’s largest.

The decline of humanities

The letter comes at a critical time for literary studies and, as readers of these pages know, for the humanities in general. In the past two years, the proportion of liberal arts majors in the United States has fallen dramatically.

At Ohio State (Columbus, Ohio), for instance, between 2012 and 2020, the number of students who graduated with humanities degrees fell by 46% while Boston University recorded a 42% drop.

From a high of 17.2% of all BA graduates in 1967, the percent of students graduating in the humanities in the US fell to 3.3% in 2020. This past summer, Delta State University in Mississippi eliminated 21 degree programmes, including history and English.

In the summer of 2022 in Britain, both Roehampton and Wolverhampton universities announced drastic cuts to their humanities departments. Other countries too have seen cuts to their humanities programmes.

The letter has several theological sections. It opens, however, with the Pope laying down his marker on a surprising square: he speaks of the all-too-human experience of “moments of weariness, anger, disappointment or failure, when prayer does not help us find inner security” (emphasis added).

In these times of stress, he continues, “a good book can help us weather the storm until we find peace of mind”.

Reading opens, Francis continues, “new interior spaces that help us avoid becoming trapped by a few obsessive thoughts that can stand in the way of our personal growth”.

A common experience

Pope Francis, the leader of the Catholic Church’s 1.3 billion adherents, is, by definition, a moralist. But he is hardly a stereotypical one, like the evangelical ministers who condemned the Harry Potter series for its positive description of magic. Nor does the letter rail against the less salubrious parts of the internet.

As befits the Jesuit who cut his theological teeth on the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola written in the early 1520s, the Pope points his finger at the “obsession with ‘screens’ and with toxic, superficial and violent fake news”.

This problem is so prevalent in some seminaries, Francis writes, that they have set aside “time for tranquil reading and for discussing books, new and old, that continue to have much to say to us”.

University World News for more

by B. R. GOWANI

When faced with two adverse unethical options, a person may try to avoid the more harmful immoral choice. This is ancient strategy people have talked and written about, and applied in various situations. In the US political parlance, the term “lesser of two evils,” is choosing the evil that will be less damaging.

There is talk about voting for the “lesser of two evils.” The rationale behind this thinking is to prevent the greater “evil” from gaining power and thus causing more havoc. This is an intelligent thing to do especially in countries where million of peoples’ future is at stake — but when the United States is involved, the well being of the entire planet is at stake.

In the US, it is understood by many that the greater evil is the Republican Party or the proverbial Charybdis. Noam Chomsky once said, “Republican Party is the most dangerous organisation in human history.” The lesser evil’s title goes to the Democratic Party or the proverbial Scylla.

In dire situations, one could accept voting for the lesser evil – Democrats. But when the Democrats don’t want to address the root causes then voting for them election after election turns into a futile exercise, while the sick state keeps on deteriorating. This is a serious problem. It’s like a person who has a tumor that in initial stages is ignored due to carelessness. However, a timely realization as to the consequences rushes in emergency for treatment as if he/she had not headed for the doctor, the malignancy would have proved fatal.

The above example is equally applicable to the United States — a Sick Empire — physically, that is, in economic decline and mentally, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” to use Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s words spoken on April 4, 1967. The US has steadfastly held on to the title of “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” as if it doesn’t want to prove Dr King wrong in his assessment.

The Republican Party openly supports the capitalist class by lowering taxes for the rich, opposing unions, resisting pay raises, waging foreign wars or domestic ones, such as “war against drugs,” etc. In return, they get favors and election campaign contributions.

But there is something to be said about the lesser evil of the two choices.

Democratic Party is not that naked — it uses a fig leaf to cover up its hypocrisy, it pretends to be what it is not; it claims it is working for the common folks, complains about rich not paying taxes (but does not do anything), and so on. In reality, they do very little for the general public because they too get lots of money from the big donors to contest elections. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman (worth $2.5 billion), in 2024 gave $10 million to Biden-Harris campaign donated another $7 million to Kamala Harris (after Biden quit the presidential bid and nominated Harris as the Democratic candidate, without any intra-party election). Hoffman wants Harris to fire Lina Khan, the FTC chair who is fighting big corporate mergers and monopolistic corporate practices. This is what Hoffman said:

“I do think that Lina Khan is a person who is not helping America in her job in what she’s doing. And so, I would hope that Vice President Harris would replace her.”

Expedia Chairman Barry Diller (worth $4.5 billion) called Khan a “dope,” but then he said he misspoke; he wants her fired. Who knows, may be Harris would listen to her paymasters, as has been the custom.

It is sad that people like Lina Khan, who are honest, incorruptible, and are working for the welfare of the majority, and are rare to find in government, have to face so much opposition from the billionaire class. Lina Khan and people like her are hated by the rich, like Hoffman because they try to enforce laws which assist most people rather than fattening the already obese (financially) like Hoffman and his ilk.

The Young Turks put it rightly: “… we don’t have a democracy. We have an open auction 100%.“

Biden, when he was running for president, had told the wealthy donors:

“I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who has made money.” “The truth of the matter is … nobody has to be punished. No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change.”

One cannot not sympathize with the Democratic presidential candidates who are (or aiming to be) multimillionaires, who hobnob with billionaires, are mostly interviewed by anchors making millions of dollars, who have to feign they are for ordinary people, in order to get their vote.

But the problem with this line of strategy is that it is simply prolonging the onset of the overdue implosion rather than trying to eliminate the rot in the system. If you watch or read the news and various commentaries or watch late night shows in the liberal news media, many a times they are making fun of Donald Trump, his wife and children and portray him as an evil person and thus imply Biden/Harris are virtuous people. (In the mid 1980s, then President Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire” hinting that the US is a sanctimonious entity.) These same people never accuse Biden or his cabinet, as bloodthirsty murderers.

So why go for the lesser evil?

The Democrats and the Republicans are almost twins <1>, as far as warring against foreign countries or overthrowing their governments is concerned. It’s within the US, where the slight difference comes into play. Democrats would not want to go total fascist at home — they permit some freedom to maintain the facade of the US being “the greatest democracy.” On the other hand, the Republicans want to treat, actually mistreat, most people indiscriminately, within and without the US, in the same fascist manner. Many people in the US don’t mind foreign countries becoming victim of US imperialistic fascist policies, either due to their ignorance or indifference or are misled by Republicans’ and Democrats’ warmongering or news media’s and think tanks’ fear inducing presentation etc. On the other hand, many people are frightened now that, it seems if Trump wins, fascism is going to hit most people in the US. That’s why most people prefer the lesser evil.

Mind you, fascism has never been absent in many people’s life in the US, such as incarcerating a huge segment of population, people who are victims of police violence (injured or killed), PTSD-(Post traumatic stress disorder) traumatized soldiers returning from fabricated bloody wars, homeless people, and so on. Most Democrats haven’t created meaningful improvement in the lives of these people.

The Democrat and Republican led governments have overthrown many governments and are still trying to overthrow many more but Democrats don’t want Trump to do that in the US, such as the January 6, 2021 attempt <2>. It was an unorganized, clumsily executed foolish attempt. Trump should have consulted the experienced hands from both parties and also the CIA before the January 6 attempt. He would have succeeded, for sure.

Q: Why will there never be a coup d’état in Washington?

A: Because there’s no American embassy there.

Is there a difference between Trump and Harris etc.?

Without a second thought, one has to admit that Trump’s virile oral member is long and ejects idiocies and hate on a non-stop basis. Trump is a very cruel person, indeed. But the question is: are Biden, Harris, Anthony Blinken, Lloyd Austin, Harris’ supporter greater evil Dick Cheney any less cruel?

No.

In fact, they are more cruel and have excessively more blood of innocents on their hands than Trump has, that is, until now. His next term will be full of vengeance and who knows, greater bloodshed. Isn’t Biden too full of hate for Palestinians, Lebanese, and Iranians or anyone fighting for their rights and want to go their separate ways? Biden, a grandfather, who still grieves for his son Beau Biden’s death in 2015 due to glioblastoma has neither shed a tear nor has grieved for the 42,511 Palestinians (including 16,660 children) plus 1974 (which includes 127 children) Lebanese killed by Israel with US encouragement, arms and ammunition, money, personnel, and intelligence –without which Israel could not have caused such incredible loss of lives. The opposition to war within the US is squashed by the Israel Lobby.

At this juncture in human history, who deserves more loathing, Trump or Biden and Harris? Of course, today the answer is the Biden/Harris team.

Notes

<1> Just in this century, with the help of the Supreme Court, the greater evil George W. Bush got into White House and gave us Afghanistan and Iraq wars with the help of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and neocons. The lesser evil Barack Obama delivered a speech in Cairo, Egypt, received a Nobel Peace Prize, forgave the wealthy criminals for creating the 2000’s economic turmoil, and then waged war against seven Muslim countries and destroyed Libya. He was followed by the greater evil Donald Trump whose mishandling of Corona Virus killed hundreds of thousand people, enhanced Islamophobia, and created havoc in immigrant families by separating children from parents. Then we got Joe Biden who provoked Russia to fight Ukraine and let the world’s most dangerous man, Israel’s Netanyahu, run amok in Gaza, Palestine, and now in Lebanon. Seems like, very soon, he’ll open another front against Iran.

<2> By the beginning of 2024, 1,240 people had been arrested for the January 6, 2021, incident. Recently, Colorado county clerk Tina Peters was sentenced to nine years. None of the US planners involved, covertly or overtly, has ever been charged, let alone sentenced to prison for a coup and killing of Chile’s Dr. Salvador Allende, ousting Iran’s Mohammad Mosaddegh, and so many others.

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

We speak to acclaimed historian, activist and filmmaker Tariq Ali about Western governments’ support for Israel’s war on Gaza and popular protest in support of Palestine, which Ali calls the “biggest divide we’ve seen in politics almost since the Vietnam War.” He argues that this division is “challenging the very nature of democracy” and the international rule of law. Ali also shares his analysis of South Asian politics — in Pakistan, where former Prime Minister Imran Khan has accused the United States of engineering his ouster, and in Bangladesh, where a student-led uprising recently toppled the authoritarian regime of its former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Finally, we cover developments in Europe. In France, President Emmanuel Macron has appointed conservative leader Michel Barnier as prime minister, despite the electoral gains of the country’s left-wing coalition. This comes as far-right and anti-migrant sentiment spreads throughout the Global North.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Britain to meet with the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Foreign Secretary David Lammy. The focus is expected to be on the Middle East, Ukraine and the Asia-Pacific. Blinken’s meeting comes just days after the United Kingdom announced it’s suspending some arms exports to Israel, citing a risk they might be used to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza. Britain’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer of the Labour Party, defended the decision.

PRIME MINISTER KEIR STARMER: This is a serious issue. We either comply with international law or we don’t. And we only have strength in our arguments because we comply with international law.

AMY GOODMAN: Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy told the British Parliament last week many weapons exports to Israel will continue, including parts for F-35 fighter jets.

DAVID LAMMY: This is not an arms embargo. It targets around 30, approximately of 350 licenses to Israel in total, for items which could be used in the current conflict in Gaza. The rest will continue.

AMY GOODMAN: Oxfam responded to the British government’s move by calling for all arms exports to be suspended to Israel.

To talk about Britain, Israel’s war on Gaza, and much more, we’re joined by Tariq Ali, the acclaimed historian, activist, filmmaker, editor of the New Left Review and the author of over 50 books, including the forthcoming You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980-2024. He’s joining us here in our studio in New York.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Tariq. It’s great to have you in person.

TARIQ ALI: Very good to be with you and Juan, Amy. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in this studio, about 12 years almost.

AMY GOODMAN: Amazing. Well, today you are here, and Antony Blinken is meeting with Keir Starmer in London and the Foreign Minister David Lammy. There have been massive protests in London around a U.K. policy toward supporting Israel in its war on Gaza, and now you have this stopping of some arms shipments to Israel. Can you talk about the U.K. stance and the U.K.-U.S. relationship, especially when it comes to Gaza right now and Israel?

TARIQ ALI: The U.K., Amy, has been totally complicit in this war. They’ve sent help. They’ve sent fighter jets. Their personnel are involved. So, for them to pretend somehow that they’re an impartial party is utterly ridiculous. This war has been supported by the Conservative government, and it’s now being supported by the Labour government. Keir Starmer, the prime minister you just showed on the screen, as leader of the opposition, supported the genocide in Gaza, supported the cutting off of electricity, supported the cutting off of all water supplies.

I think they have received legal advice that they have to do something or they are liable to international law by the courts — not that that amounts to very much, as we see these days. But I think that’s the reason they made a few cuts to the aid. But as they themselves say, these are meaningless. They’re purely symbolic.

And the bulk of the country now wants aid to Israel, and the military aid particularly, cut off. The antiwar movement in Britain is one of the largest in the world. We’ve had, I think now — it’s almost a year, Amy, since this war began. Almost a year. And we’ve had dozens and dozens of demonstrations, some including a million people. So the country is opposed to this, you know, across the board.

But we have these governments in power — I call them the extreme-center governments, because, right or left, they do the same thing. And why is Blinken visiting Starmer? Normally they send orders online. So, why the need for a personal visit is to boost each other’s morale. I can see no other reason for it.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Tariq, it’s not just the U.K. government, but most of the European Union governments. Could you talk about the wide gap between how these governments are dealing with Israel’s war on Gaza and the rest of the world, especially the Global South?

Democracy Now for more

by WALTER NORMAN WEHUS

Three quarters of Norwegian youth are not getting enough sleep. “It affects both school and leisure time,” says researcher Erik Grasaas. He wants healthy sleep habits included in the school curriculum.

According to Norwegian sleep recommendations, teenagers are advised to sleep between eight and ten hours each night. A new study shows that only one in four follow this advice.

“We see that sleep and quality of life are connected for young people. Those who get the recommended amount of sleep tend to be more satisfied with their lives,” says researcher Erik Grasaas at the University of Agder.

To assess quality of life, participants were asked about various aspects of their current experiences, ranging from physical and mental health to family and social life.

“Even when we take into account factors such as stress, age, screen time, and socioeconomic status, we see that sleep duration is linked to life satisfaction, both for boys and girls,” he says.

60 per cent blame screens

Grasaas utilised Ungdata, a comprehensive national survey, to examine the sleep habits of more than 32,000 upper secondary school students. He found that:

• Three out of four get fewer than eight hours of sleep a night, regardless of gender. 
• Three out of five say that they feel tired at school at least once or twice a week.
• Three out of five also report that screen time affects their sleep .
• Four out of ten boys say that gaming affects their sleep, while one out of ten girls report the same.

“About half of those who follow the sleep recommendations say they never feel tired during school or leisure activities. In contrast, only 30 per cent of those who don’t follow the recommendations say the same. That is a significant difference,” Grasaas says.

Weekend lie-ins do not help

20 years ago, it took around 17 minutes for teenagers to fall asleep once they got into bed. Today, it takes over an hour.

There could be various reasons for this change. One could be that young people are consuming too many caffeinated drinks late in the day. However, the researcher believes the change is related to phone use.

It could be because youth are bringing their phones to bed, but it could also be because they’re using screens right up until bedtime.

“You shouldn’t expose your eyes to intense light just before bedtime. A mobile phone is also much closer to your eyes than a TV screen,” he says.

Previous studies have shown that young people tend to sleep more on weekends than weekdays. Unfortunately, this does not appear to have a positive effect, the researcher notes.

“Many believe that they can make up for lost sleep on weekends, but we see that the sleep they get during weekdays is important for how they feel. We also know that going to bed and waking up at the same time every day is best,” he says.

Challenging teenage years

Sleep affects all bodily processes, from memory and learning to nervous system development and physical health. It also significantly influences energy levels during the day.

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by BRUCE E. LEVINE

In the U.S. in 2022, 49,476 people died by suicide, and there were approximately 1.6 million suicide attempts. Not included in suicide statistics is the even more common U.S. “death of despair” of drug overdose death, numbering 107,941 in 2022. While most of us are not attempting to kill our pain in a manner that puts us in the emergency room or the morgue, the majority of Americans are less dramatically trying to disconnect from painful lives.

It is convenient for apologists of U.S. society to see those of us overwhelmed by our pain—anxious, depressed, dissociating, or in some other way having difficulty functioning—as suffering from a “mental illness” and in need of “treatment.” However, the more that Americans have bought the idea that there is an epidemic of mental illness which requires greater access to treatment, the more fucked up we are all getting, and the more we enable a fucked up society to become increasingly more so. Not only is psychiatric treatment—which for most patients means psychiatric drugs—not helping many of them while making some feel even worse; we have also been sidetracked from examining what it is about society that is fucking up so many of us, and we have been diverted from pursuing those nooks and crannies that have yet to be dehumanized.

First, how are the majority of us today disconnecting from our painful lives? Next, what is the core source of our painful lives? And finally, what is a path that makes more sense than increasingly more mental health treatment?

Using Drugs to Disconnect

One way to disconnect from our emotional pain is through psychoactive drugs, which includes not only cannabis, alcohol, and illicit hard drugs, but a wide array of psychiatric drugs. Drugs are by no means the only way we try to disconnect, but I will begin with them.

Recently reported in the journal Addiction, a 2022 U.S. survey revealed that there are now “more daily and near daily” cannabis users (17.7 million) than there are such high-frequency alcohol users (14.7 million). While far more people continue to drink alcohol than use cannabis, the median alcohol user reported drinking 4 to 5 days in the past month compared to the median cannabis consumer who used it 15 to 16?days in the past month; and cannabis users were 7.4 times more likely than alcohol drinkers to use it on a daily basis.

While there is little hypocrisy among alcohol and cannabis users about trying to disconnect from their unpleasant realities to feel better, there is enormous hypocrisy when it comes to psychiatric drugs among some users and most prescribers, who would rather call these drugs “medication,” even though these drugs are in the same psychoactive category as alcohol and cannabis.

Thankfully, there are a handful of non-hypocritical, non-bullshitting psychiatrists such as Joanna Moncrieff, co-chairperson of the Critical Psychiatry Network and author of The Myth of the Chemical Cure (2008). Moncrieff points out, “Psychiatric drugs are psychoactive substances, like alcohol and heroin. . . . Alcohol helps to reduce social anxiety not because it corrects an underlying biochemical imbalance, but because features of alcohol induced intoxication include relaxation and disinhibition.” Moncrieff explains that psychiatric drugs—rather than correcting an abnormal state in the manner of insulin for diabetes— “induce an abnormal or altered state,” and are in the same category as alcohol.

Just how many of us are using psychiatric drugs? In 2020, it was reported that 16.5% of U.S. adults were prescribed psychiatric drugs; so out of a U.S. adult population of 258.3 million in 2020, 42.6 million adults were taking the edge off with prescribed “medication.” This total does not include the millions more Americans under 18 put on psychiatric drugs, often to make their inability to adjust to an alienating school and other surroundings less painful for their parents.

Disconnecting By Other Means

Today, much of the U.S. economy is fueled by buying and selling that which disconnects us from painful realities. For many of us, our “drug of choice” is not an actual drug.

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