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    Henry Kissinger, secretary of state to Richard Nixon, dies at 100

    Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state under Richard Nixon who became one of the most prominent and controversial figures of US foreign policy in the 20th century, has died. He was 100.His consulting firm Kissinger Associates announced his death in a statement on Wednesday evening, but did not disclose a cause.The celebrity diplomat has advised a dozen presidents over his long career, including Joe Biden, and won a shared Nobel prize for negotiating the end to the Vietnam war.But his legacy was also defined by his contempt for human rights and efforts to protect US corporate interests at all costs, with opponents across the world casting him as a war criminal. He supported Indonesia’s military dictator in the invasion of East Timor, backed the invasion of Angola by the apartheid regime in South Africa and worked with the CIA to overthrow the democratically-elected president of Chile. He also authorized wiretaps of reporters and his own staff.Kissinger was a Harvard academic before becoming national security adviser when Nixon won the White House in 1968. Working closely with the president, he was influential in momentous decisions regarding the Vietnam war including the secret bombing of Cambodia in 1969 and 1970. That was part of what Nixon called the “madman theory”, an attempt to make North Vietnam believe the US president would do absolutely anything to end the war.He survived Nixon’s downfall in the Watergate scandal and served Gerald Ford, leaving government after Jimmy Carter’s election win in 1976. Kissinger’s policy towards the Soviet Union was not confrontational enough for the Reagan administration, precluding any thought of a 1980s comeback.On the political and intellectual right and left, Kissinger’s legacy differs.On the right, he is seen as a brilliant statesman, a master diplomat, an exponent of power politics deployed to the benefit of America, the country to which his family fled on leaving Germany in 1938.On the left, hostility burns over his record on Chile, where the CIA instigated the overthrow of Salvatore Allende; on Pakistan, where he and Nixon turned a blind eye to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands; on the Middle East; on Cyprus; on East Timor and more.Tributes for Kissinger poured in from prominent US officials after the news of his death. George W Bush said the US “lost one of the most dependable and distinctive voices on foreign affairs”, while Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor, said Kissinger was “endlessly generous with the wisdom gained over the course of an extraordinary life”. Some on social media celebrated his death, referencing the victims of his bombing campaigns.A giant of the Republican party, Kissinger remained influential until the end of his life, in large part thanks to his founding in 1982 of his geopolitical consulting firm based in New York City, and the authorship of several books on international affairs.In the early 2000s, Kissinger supported the administration of George W Bush in its invasion of Iraq. Another supporter of that war, the journalist Christopher Hitchens, wrote that Kissinger should be tried for war crimes.In fact, for negotiating the Paris treaty which ended the Vietnam war, Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were awarded a shared Nobel prize, although the North Vietnamese negotiator refused to accept the honour. His 1973 peace prize was one of the most contentious awards in Nobel history, as it was revealed that Kissinger had supported Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia in 1969. Two Nobel committee members stepped down over the decision. The accolade prompted the the singer-satirist Tom Lehrer to respond: “Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize.”Kissinger’s firm said on Wednesday he died at his home in Connecticut and would be interred at a private family service, and that there would be a memorial in New York at a later date.Fleeing Nazi Germany as a Jewish teenager with his family, Kissinger in his later years cultivated the reputation of respected statesman – giving speeches, offering advice to Republicans and Democrats alike and managing a global consulting business. He appeared at Donald Trump’s White House on multiple occasions.Kissinger turned 100 in May 2023. During a CBS interview in the leadup to his birthday about those who viewed his foreign policy as a kind of “criminality”, Kissinger was dismissive.“That’s a reflection of their ignorance,” Kissinger said. “It wasn’t conceived that way. It wasn’t conducted that way.”Sam Levin and agencies contributed reporting More

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    Henry Kissinger, US foreign policy giant, dies aged 100 – video obituary

    Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state under Richard Nixon, became one of the most prominent and controversial figures of US foreign policy in the 20th century. He remained influential until the end of his life, in large part thanks to his founding of his geopolitical consulting firm and the authorship of several books on international affairs More

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    Henry Kissinger: a life in pictures

    According to his aunt and uncle in an interview at their home, Henry Kissinger showed no signs of greatness when he was a child in pre-war Germany. He was just a nice Jewish boy. Henry, 11, is shown with his arm around his brother Walter, 10.

    Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive More

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    Henry Kissinger obituary

    Henry Kissinger, who has died at the age of 100, was the most controversial US foreign policy practitioner of the last half-century, the architect of American detente with the Soviet Union, the orchestrator of Washington’s opening to communist China, the broker of the first peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, and the man who led the US team in the protracted talks with North Vietnam which resulted in US forces leaving Indochina after America’s longest foreign war.Feted for these accomplishments as national security adviser and later secretary of state under Richard Nixon, Kissinger achieved global celebrity status and in 1973 was awarded the Nobel peace prize. But it later emerged via leaked documents and tapes and former officials’ memoirs that behind his diplomatic skills and tireless energy as a negotiator there lurked an inordinate love of secrecy and manipulation and a ruthless desire to protect US national and corporate interests at any price. His contempt for human rights prompted him to ask the FBI to tap his own staff’s telephones and, more seriously, to give the nod to Indonesia’s military dictator for the invasion of East Timor, to condone the actions of the apartheid regime in South Africa in invading Angola, and to use the CIA to help topple the elected government of Chile.A formidable academic before he worked for the government, Kissinger reached greater heights of political influence than any previous immigrant to the US. His nasal German accent never left him, an eternal reminder to his adopted countrymen that he was a European by origin. To Kissinger himself, the fact that a man born outside the US, and a Jew to boot, could become its secretary of state was a never-ending source of pride.Although Kissinger was often seen as a supreme believer in a world order based on realpolitik and a balance of power, at heart he was ultra-loyal to the individualistic American ideal. In love with his adopted country, he was infused with a missionary zeal to maintain American hegemony in a shifting world.Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born to a comfortable, middle-class family in Fürth in Bavaria. His father, Louis, was a teacher, his mother, Paula (nee Stern), a housewife. As a boy, he was old enough to comprehend the collapse of their domestic stability when the Nazis came to power. He and his younger brother were beaten up on the way to school, and eventually expelled. His father lost his job. The family emigrated to New York in 1938.Kissinger rarely discussed his refugee past, and once told an interviewer to reject any psychoanalytical link between his views and his childhood, but some observers argued that his personal experience of nazism led to his horror of revolutionary changes as well as to the underlying pessimism of his analysis of world affairs.After George Washington high school in Manhattan, his accountancy course at the City College of New York was interrupted in 1943 when he was conscripted. He was with the US army in Germany for the Nazi surrender and the first months of occupation. He won a bronze star for his role in capturing Gestapo officers and saboteurs in Hanover. In 1946 he went to Harvard, where he stayed intermittently for the next quarter of a century. He received his PhD in 1954 with a study of the 19th-century European conservatives Metternich and Castlereagh, which he turned into a book entitled A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812-1822 (1957).His subsequent studies led him to become a specialist on nuclear weapons, who caught the eye of Nelson Rockefeller, the governor of New York and a bastion of east coast liberal Republicanism. Kissinger’s desire for influence on policy was already leading him to spend time in Washington, and he combined his academic work with consultancies for various government departments and agencies, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Council under Dwight Eisenhower.Kissinger’s patron, Rockefeller, failed to make much headway in the presidential campaigns of 1960 and 1964, but after Nixon won the presidency for the Republicans in 1968, Kissinger was appointed national security adviser, with an office in the White House. His intellectual drive, as well as geographical closeness to the president, allowed him to turn what had previously been a backroom job into a high-profile, decision-making post.Kissinger knew that access is power, and that the relationship goes both ways. Having the ear of the president gave him the ear of a competitive, news-hungry Washington press corps which admired his charm and brilliance and eagerly printed a generous amount of his on-the-record comments while finding ways to divulge unattributably the confidential titbits and insider gossip that he loved to drop.A battle developed between Kissinger and the secretary of state, William Rogers, the nominal architect of US foreign policy, during Nixon’s first term. Kissinger won it easily. Rogers was excluded not only from the administration’s central concerns – Vietnam, the Soviet Union and China – but even the Middle East, the one area where he achieved some praise in 1970 with the so-called Rogers plan. The plan was a US effort to impose a settlement between Egypt and Israel with the backing of the Soviet Union. Israel rejected it while Kissinger felt that the goal of US policy in the region, as indeed throughout the developing world, should be to reduce the Kremlin’s influence rather than give Moscow equal status.When Rogers eventually resigned a few months after the start of Nixon’s second term, Kissinger got the job he coveted most. Four years of private advice and back-channel negotiating were to be crowned by formal acceptance as Washington’s senior international representative and America’s major speechmaker on foreign affairs. Kissinger had already scored the two biggest coups of his career, proving that he was more than just an academic consultant and bureaucratic in-fighter, but a cunning negotiator. He ran the secret diplomacy which culminated in July 1971 with the stunning announcement that Nixon was to go to China to meet Mao Zedong the following year. He also led the negotiations in Paris with Hanoi for the peace treaty that sealed the departure of American troops from Vietnam. For the second of these feats, he shared the Nobel peace prize with Le Duc Tho, the North Vietnamese negotiator, though the latter refused to accept it.The award aroused a huge controversy since it coincided with revelations that Kissinger had supported Nixon’s decisions to mount a secret campaign of bombing Cambodia in 1969. Cambodia had long been used by North Vietnamese troops for bases and supply depots, but Nixon’s predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, resisted pleas from the joint chiefs of staff to bomb them. The country was officially neutral and its leader, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, was desperately trying not to take sides.But the Nixon administration wanted to send a strong message to North Vietnam that the new president would be tougher than Johnson. Tapes of White House conversations (the Watergate tapes) revealed that Nixon called it the “madman theory” – “I want the North Vietnamese to believe that I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war,” he told his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman. Kissinger endorsed the concept, though he preferred to put it in more academic language by arguing that US policy must always retain an element of unpredictability.In March 1969 Nixon and Kissinger ignored the reluctance of Rogers and launched waves of B52s on carpet-bombing missions over Cambodia, as they had already done in Vietnam. The raids went on for 14 months, although officially the administration pretended the targets were all in South Vietnam. Initially, Kissinger did not even want the pilots to know they were striking Cambodia, but he was advised that they would soon find out and be more likely to leak the information unless sworn to secrecy ahead of the raids.The bombing remained secret in Washington for an astonishing four years, becoming public only when a military whistleblower wrote to Senator William Proxmire, a prominent critic of the Vietnam war, and urged him to investigate. In Cambodia the campaign led to an estimated 700,000 deaths as well as 2 million people being forced to flee their homes. It also led a pro-US army general, Lon Nol, to seize power from Sihanouk in 1970 and align the country with the US. The bombing and the coup fuelled popular unrest, added to the strength of Cambodia’s communist guerrillas, the Khmer Rouge, and paved their way to power in 1975.The Paris peace talks on Vietnam also coincided with an escalation of US bombing in Vietnam itself. At the height of the negotiations at the end of 1972, Nixon and Kissinger took the war to new heights with the “Christmas bombing” campaign, comprising targets across North Vietnam. It enraged the US peace movement and provoked a huge wave of new protests and draft-card burning by conscripts. Kissinger’s aim was not so much to intimidate Hanoi as to persuade Washington’s ally, South Vietnam’s president Nguyen Van Thieu, to accept the accords which the US was making with the North. The bombing was meant to assure him that if there were any North Vietnamese violations after the accords came into effect, they would be met with all-out American force.Kissinger was aware that the Paris deal was flawed, and might well lead to Thieu’s replacement by a communist government. His goal was merely to win a “decent interval” between the pull-out of US troops and the inevitable collapse of the regime in Saigon so that the US could escape any perception of defeat. The phrase “decent interval” appeared in the briefing papers for Kissinger’s secret trip to Beijing in 1971 that were later declassified. They show he told the Chinese that this was US strategy in Vietnam. A year later he informed China’s prime minister, Zhou Enlai: “If we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina.”When the North Vietnamese army and its southern allies, the Vietcong, stormed into Saigon in April 1975, forcing the US ambassador into a humiliating helicopter escape, the image was clearly one of defeat, in spite of the two-year interval since the departure of most US troops. But Kissinger blamed Congress, claiming it had undermined the peace deal by refusing to finance new arms shipments to Thieu. This was a favourite refrain. He continually attacked Congress for interfering in foreign policy, apparently never recognising the value of democratic checks on strong executive power.Turning his skills to the Middle East, Kissinger gave birth to the concept of shuttle diplomacy, a term first used to the press by his close aide Joe Sisco. He flew between Jerusalem and Cairo during the October 1973 war to hammer out a ceasefire after the Israelis had sent their troops across the Suez canal and come close to the Egyptian capital. He later secured Israel’s withdrawal back across the canal, and shuttled to and from Damascus to make a deal with Syria for the Israelis to withdraw from a small part of the Golan Heights.Behind all three issues lay the American’s competition with the Soviet Union, then at the height of its international power. The US opening to China was designed to wrong-foot the Russians by turning what they thought was an evolving, bilateral relationship of parity and mutual respect with Washington into an unnerving triangle which seemed to ally China and the US against them. Kissinger hoped to exploit the two communist powers’ rivalry to persuade both of them to abandon the Vietnamese, thus making it easier for the US to win the peace, if not the war. So he threatened Moscow and Peking (now Beijing) with the argument that they would lose the benefits of dialogue and trade with Washington if they did not stop their arms supplies to Hanoi.In the Middle East, Kissinger’s aim was to exclude the Russians, who had been longtime allies of Egypt and Syria. By extracting concessions from Israel and brokering a ceasefire in the 1973 war, Kissinger persuaded Cairo and Damascus that only the US could achieve movement from the Israelis, thanks to its unique influence. A year before the war, Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president, had shown his distrust of Moscow by asking thousands of Russian advisers to leave Egypt. The move was meant as a signal to Washington that Egypt preferred good relations with the US, provided Washington put pressure on Israel. Kissinger missed the signal and did nothing until Sadat, in desperation, launched his attack on Israel in October 1973.Kissinger’s strategy of detente with the Soviet Union was also designed to reduce Moscow’s room for manoeuvre. Although rightwing Republicans criticised it as appeasement, he argued that Washington should not just contain the Soviet Union, as previous American administrations had sought to do. The US should tame it by giving it a stake in the status quo. Instead of going for ad hoc deals with the Kremlin, Kissinger was the first senior American to try to establish a complex of agreements with a range of penalties and rewards for bad and good behaviour. This, he argued, would limit Soviet adventurism. Sometimes he called it a network, at other times a web, but in both cases the aim was to provide the Soviet Union with benefits from expanded trade, investment and political consultation with Washington.The strategy failed to produce a new world order because Kissinger was not willing to abandon adventurism on the American side. In the developing world, in particular, Kissinger pursued policies of confrontation with Moscow, often based on faulty analysis of what the Russians were doing or exaggerated claims of the extent of their influence. The successful US effort to overthrow the elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, in 1973 fitted into the long US history of intervening in Latin America against leftwing governments that nationalised US corporations (in this case, the big copper companies). But Kissinger also disliked Allende’s closeness to Moscow’s ally, Cuba. “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people,” he commented.By 1974 Kissinger’s boss was being engulfed by the Watergate scandal. Although Kissinger was involved in secretly taping his own staff, he was not connected to Nixon’s decision to burgle the headquarters of the Democratic party at the Watergate apartment complex in 1972 and then cover up the truth – the charges that brought the president down. In spite of the scandal – or perhaps because of it – Nixon’s relationship with Kissinger remained close, in large part because the beleaguered president saw Kissinger as his best ally in foreign policy, the area where Nixon felt that he had been most successful. He wanted Kissinger to be the man to preserve his legacy.In his memoirs, Kissinger described how Nixon virtually clung to him during his last hours in the White House in August 1974. The disgraced president asked him to pray beside him in the Lincoln bedroom for half an hour. “Nixon’s recollection is that he invited me to kneel with him and that I did so. My own recollection is less clear on whether I actually knelt. It is a trivial distinction. In whatever posture, I was filled with a deep sense of awe,” Kissinger wrote.Although Kissinger was not charged over Watergate, his image nonetheless became tarnished. Damaged by revelations of the secret bombing of Cambodia, the favourable media bubble burst. Kissinger’s path from miracle worker to being perceived as a cynical trickster proved short. If Nixon was a serial liar on the domestic stage, Kissinger was seen as a similar villain on the international one. Nevertheless the next president, Gerald Ford, who had limited foreign experience, kept Kissinger on as secretary of state as a symbol of continuity. But Kissinger’s star was in decline. He tried to change his focus by shifting his attention to Africa, which he had ignored until then.His results were far from positive. He may well have set back the fall of apartheid by several years by approving the involvement of the CIA in the Angolan civil war and giving the nod to South Africa’s invasion in 1975 as the Portuguese withdrew from their erstwhile colony and granted it independence. The South African intervention prompted Cuba to send hundreds of troops to support the Angolan government, thereby launching one of the bloodiest “proxy wars” between the superpowers.When the Republicans lost the White House to the Democrats under Jimmy Carter in 1976, Kissinger’s time was up. He spent the next decades as a consultant to multinational corporations, and speaking on the international lecture circuit. In 1982 he founded his own firm, Kissinger Associates.Although he had brief hopes of a comeback when Ronald Reagan won the 1980 election, the new president and his men did not feel comfortable with Kissinger’s image or the strength of his personality. His public persona of pragmatism did not fit their crusading ideology of anti-communism and their constant claims of Soviet expansionism. They were from the school which felt his contacts with the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, during the period of detente, had smacked of appeasement.The charge was absurd. It reflected the difference between subtlety and simplicity, as I discovered at one of the occasional deep-background “non-lunches” which Kissinger gave for representatives of European newspapers. Europe was never a high priority for Kissinger, in large part because it was not a region of US-Soviet competition. He favoured a strong and united western Europe so as to keep Germany in check, hence his one much-quoted comment: “If I want to call Europe, who do I call?”But he seemed to like meeting European correspondents, flattering us with the sense that we asked deeper questions than our American colleagues. At one such lunch, I was staggered by Kissinger’s emotional outburst when someone delicately raised the appeasement charge that rightwing senators were making. “Do you really think a man who stopped Allende wouldn’t want to stop Brezhnev?” he retorted.If ever there was an American super-patriot, it was Kissinger. As a European intellectual, he knew better than his adopted compatriots how to run an empire. The bedrock of his policies was fear of a resurgent, “unanchored” Germany, a firm desire to keep western Europe closely tied to the US, and a fierce determination to outwit the Soviet Union and maintain American dominance, if necessary through the use of military might. It was no surprise that in his 80s, long after the Soviet Union had collapsed, he became a close consultant of George W Bush, supporting his invasion of Iraq.Kissinger’s private life was a tempestuous subject in the Washington gossip columns, at least in the interval between his two marriages, which happened to coincide with his years at the apex of power. His first, to Ann Fleischer, with whom he had two children, Elizabeth and David, ended in divorce in 1964. Ten years later, he married Nancy Maginnes, one of his former researchers. She and his children survive him. More

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    There’s a big reason Biden is losing younger voters: Israel-Palestine | Moira Donegan

    The 2024 presidential contest should not be close. Joe Biden’s opponent, Donald Trump, is a bigot, a liar and a crook, with dozens of credible sexual assault allegations, a disastrous track record of enabling sadistic racism in both his policy and his rhetoric, a frank admission of his own authoritarian ambitions, and 92 pending felony charges.The Republican party that the former president leads has become beholden to a small but extremely powerful base of voters with wildly unpopular social views, particularly regarding abortion – views that have driven the Republicans to election losses in virtually all major contests since the summer of 2022. Voters hate them, and reject their vision for the US; few politicians have ever been so unpopular as Trump is, and few political platforms have ever seemed so determined to alienate and anger voters as the Republican party’s.Yet Joe Biden could lose. If the election were held today, it’s likely that he would. Much was made of a New York Times/Siena poll, published earlier this month, that showed the US president losing to Trump in five key swing states. The Biden campaign largely downplayed the numbers, shrugging that the election is far away.Now, a new NBC poll also shows Biden in dire straits, with his approval rating falling to the lowest it has ever been: 40%. The poll found that he was faring especially poorly with Democrats and young voters, large numbers of whom are dissatisfied with his handling of an issue that is exposing a growing divide within the party: Israel’s assault on Palestinians in Gaza following the October 7 Hamas attack.From nearly the first moments of Israel’s war, the Biden administration has staunchly supported its Middle East ally, and allowed little public daylight between their own official statements and those of Israel’s rightwing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The aid and arms deals continue to flow to Israel unconditioned, even as Israeli bombings have now killed more than 14,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including more than 5,000 children and displaced upwards of a million people.The hawkish support for Israel’s war has been intense, with rhetoric from the White House often appearing indifferent or outright hostile to concerns about the deaths of Palestinian civilians. On 10 October, Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre described calls for a ceasefire as “wrong”, “repugnant” and “disgraceful”. “There are not two sides here,” Jean-Pierre said, signaling that the White House would not brook any concern for Palestinian lives.In an especially disturbing moment, Biden himself cast doubt on the official death toll from the Gaza health ministry – saying on 27 October that he had “no confidence in the number the Palestinians are using” – even though figures from this agency have been previously deemed reliable by the United Nations and international human rights agencies. The implication seemed to be that the Palestinians were cynically overstating the number of their dead, and that the real number was some smaller, supposedly more acceptable figure.Since he made that comment, the Palestinian casualties in Gaza are said to have nearly doubled. It’s unclear whether Biden believes it.As the corpses pile up and Gaza’s buildings tumble down, the Biden administration has seemed to hedge on this unqualified pro-Israel, pro-war stance, at least at the margins. People identified as “administration officials” have given off-the-record quotes expressing “frustration” and “concern” with the Israelis’ determination to press forward with a Gaza invasion without any long-term plan for the region. Asked if the Israelis were making any real effort to minimize civilian casualties, the US national security council spokesman, John Kirby, said: “We have seen some indications that there are efforts being applied in certain situations to try to minimize, but I don’t want to overstate that.”Alon Pinkas of Haaretz interpreted those remarks as a signal of a growing distaste for the Israeli operation within the Biden US security state. This is what amounts to distancing from the Biden administration when it comes to Israel’s operation in Gaza: hedged off-the-record statements about long-term strategy, and a single response to a question of whether Israel is acting as if it cares about preserving innocent Palestinian lives that amounts to a coded and heavily euphemistic “no”.That’s the official line. But there are growing indications that the Democratic party is heading for a revolt over the issue. Young voters are not the only ones who are angry. Arab and Muslim American voters are voicing outrage at Biden’s stance, endangering his re-election prospects nationwide but especially in the crucial battleground state of Michigan, which is home to a large Muslim American voting bloc.Even within the party bureaucracy itself, there are signs of trouble. The state department has fielded an unusual number of internal complaint memos about US policy over the issue; large numbers of Democratic congressional staffers joined a Washington DC protest calling for a ceasefire.The House voted to censure representative Rashida Tlaib, of Michigan, the only Palestinian American in Congress, over her calls for Palestinian liberation – particularly her use of the phrase “from the river to the sea”, which Tlaib explained was a call for peace, freedom, dignity and equality for all in the region, but which her detractors alleged was an antisemitic call for Jewish elimination. (Such has been the nature of much of the debate around the conflict in the halls of US power: arguments over rhetoric have frequently distracted from substantive issues of policy.)But that did not stop a growing number of her fellow Democratic members of Congress from joining her in calls for a ceasefire. The White House may be calling them “repugnant”, but the pro-ceasefire camp in Congress looks more and more like the future of the Democratic party: it is younger, it is further to the left, and it is majority non-white.Handwringing about Biden’s age and its relevance is overstated. But few issues have done more to highlight the problem of gerontocracy within the Democratic party, and of the growing generational gap in US politics, than this internal dispute over Israel-Palestine. In a way, the divide between Biden and his loyalists on the one hand, and the pro-ceasefire left and Democratic base on the other, might be a matter of historical references.Biden comes from a generation that came of age much closer in time to the Holocaust; he is in that sense perhaps more acutely aware of Jewish vulnerability – and certainly more convinced that Zionism’s nationalist project can mitigate it – than younger people are. The younger staffers, state department functionaries, members of Congress, and voters, meanwhile, are not thinking of the second world War, but of the war on terror; of September 11, and the disastrous, brutal and ultimately futile wars of revenge that the US fought in its aftermath.Each side is proceeding from what they feel are the definitive lessons of their era – the 20th century for Biden, and the 21st century for the pro-ceasefire camp. The results of the next election may well depend on whether they can find each other in time.
    Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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    Cardi B drops support for Biden over military aid to Ukraine and Israel

    Three years after supporting Joe Biden’s victorious 2020 campaign, the straight-talking rap superstar Cardi B has ditched her backing of the president after public service cuts in her home town of New York.The Grammy winner, whose legal name is Belcalis Almánzar, said in an Instagram live stream she was done with Biden. Her tirade highlighted what she portrayed as contradiction between US domestic and foreign policies, saying the White House was helping Ukraine fight Russia and Israel fight Hamas while the New York City mayor, Eric Adams, announced a 5% municipal budget cut last week.Adams said the cuts would affect schools, libraries, the New York police department and the sanitation service, among others.As Cardi B said: “In New York, there is a $120m budget cut that’s going to affect schools, public libraries and the police department.“And a $5m budget cut in sanitation … We are gonna be drowning in … rats.”Adams warned last week that more cuts would be necessary without additional funding from Washington to manage New York’s increase of migrants.“Migrant costs are going up, tax revenue growth is slowing and [Covid-19] stimulus funding is drying up,” Adams said in a statement.“No city should be left to handle a national humanitarian crisis largely on its own, and without the significant and timely support we need from Washington, today’s budget will be only the beginning.”But the Biden administration has not agreed to meet Adams’s funding plea amid growing domestic anger over the multi-billion-dollar funding of the Ukrainian defense against Russia’s invasion and Israel’s conflict with Hamas in Gaza.An NBC poll released on Sunday showed that Biden’s approval rating has declined to 40%, the lowest level of his presidency. And the survey showed that strong majorities of all voters disapprove of his handling of foreign policy.The steepest declines of support came among voters aged 18 to 34 – 70% said they did not approve of Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza.Cardi B, who memorably helped promote Biden’s candidacy as he successfully ran for the White House in 2020, vowed that she would no longer endorse political candidates in the future.“I’m endorsing no presidents no more,” Cardi B warned. “Joe Biden is talking about, ‘Yeah, we can fund two wars,’ … talking about, ‘Yeah, we got it, we’re the greatest nation.’ No … we’re not. We don’t got it, and we’re going through some shit right now. So say it!”She added: “We are really, really, really fucked right now. No, we cannot fund these … wars.”Cardi B asked whether the US was going broke and then answered: “Yes, it is. We ain’t got McDonald’s money.”In a final rebuke to Biden’s economic and foreign policy management, she said: “Feed that … to somebody else, twinkle, but don’t feed it to me.” She then promised “to get to the bottom of it”. More

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    Democratic leadership says ceasefire protest ‘exceeded a peaceful demonstration’ and commends police amid activist criticism – as it happened

    In language similar to that of the Capitol police’s statement from earlier today, Democratic leadership has released a statement on last night’s ceasefire demonstrations – with zero mention of the words “ceasefire,” “Israel” or the 11,000 Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrikes who demonstrators were mourning last night.The statement, released by House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic whip Katherine Clark, Democratic caucus chair Pete Aguilar and DCCC chair Suzan DelBene, said:
    Last night, Members of the House Democratic Caucus, hardworking staffers and dozens of guests from throughout the country were participating in an event inside the Democratic National Committee building when some protesters escalated their activity in a manner that exceeded a peaceful demonstration.
    We are thankful for the service and professionalism of the U.S. Capitol Police officers who worked to ensure that Members, staff and visitors were able to safely exit. We strongly support the First Amendment right to freedom of expression and encourage anyone exercising that right to do so peacefully.
    Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
    Capitol police is facing criticism from activists after clashing with dozens of demonstators outside the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington DC on Wednesday evening. The violence broke out during a demonstration for a ceasefire in Gaza where Israeli forces have killed over 11,000 Palestinians in the last five weeks.
    Organizers of last night’s ceasefire demonstrations has released a statement on the “violent police response,” saying that over 90 no-nviolent protesters were injured by Capitol police. “Protestors were choked and violently handled by multiple office[r]s at once, thrown against the wall, then grabbed and picked up and thrown down the front stairs. At least two protestors’ glasses were smashed by the police. Dozen of people were kicked, kneed and punched in the face by police officers,” organizers said.
    Pictures and videos posted online of yesterday’s ceasefire protests showed Capitol police scattering candles, which were originally laid out to mourn the 11,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli strikes. “This is a reflection of what our gov thinks of Palestinians. 11,000 candles representing the Palestinian lives murdered by Israel with US funding. The cops just stepped on them,” said Sumaya Awad, a member of New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America.
    American Muslim writer and civil rights scholar Omar Suleiman has joined numerous activists in condemning Capitol police officers over their actions during last night’s ceasefire demonstrations. Suleiman tweeted: “Unbelievable. Capitol police throwing Jewish protestors shouting not in our name and calling for a ceasefire down the steps of the Democratic National Headquarters. Good luck in 2024 y’all.”
    The Capitol police said in a statement on Thursday that its officers ‘pulled people off the DNC building, pushed them back and cleared them from the area’ during last night’s ceasefire demonstrations. In its statement, the Capitol police made no mention of pepper-spraying protestors, despite images posted online that appeared to show them doing so.
    In language similar to that of the Capitol police’s statement, Democratic leadership released a statement on last night’s ceasefire demonstrations. The statement said, “Some protesters escalated their activity in a manner that exceeded a peaceful demonstration.”
    The Jewish peace advocacy organization If Not Now has issued a list of FAQs following last night’s ceasefire demonstrations, saying, “Our protest was nonviolent. Capitol police brutally attacked us with no warning.” In its series of FAQs, the organization said that there was a police liaison “who asked to speak with officers but the police refused to speak with them.”
    Meanwhile, ceasefire protesters shut down the Bay Bridge in San Francisco during morning rush hour on Thursday. Images on the news wires show scores of people holding banners calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and protesting against military aid for Israel. All westbound lanes were shut at the time.
    That’s it from me, Maya Yang, as we wrap the blog for today. Thank you for following along.Alec Karakatsanis, founder of the nonprofit organization Civil Rights Corps, has also condemned Capitol police over their response to last night’s ceasefire demonstrations.In a post on X, Karakatsanis wrote:
    “After the attack by Capitol Police last night on Jewish progressives singing songs and locking arms for ceasefire, recall how Democrats forced through budget increases for one of the most incompetent and unaccountable institutions in federal bureaucracy.”
    The Jewish peace advocacy organization If Not Now has issued a list of FAQs following last night’s ceasefire demonstrations, saying, “Our protest was nonviolent. Capitol police brutally attacked us with no warning.”In its series of FAQs, the organization said that there was a police liaison “who asked to speak with officers but the police refused to speak with them.”“Instead, police arrived on the scene and immediately ran at protestors, shoving many down the stairs,” the organization said, calling the police response “brutal and reckless.”It added that Capitol police “did not give any warnings or requests to disperse.”The organization also said that approximately 90 protestors were injured last night.It also called the demonstrations a “nonviolent act of civil disobedience”and said that “at no point did anyone trying to enter the building” of the Democratic National Committee.“The purpose of the protest was to speak peacefully to members of Congress as they exited the building and share that 80% of Democrats – their base – want to see a ceasefire,” it said.Here are some images coming through the newswires of ceasefire protestors on San Francisco’s Bay Bridge:Protestors on the San Francisco Bay Bridge have thrown their car keys into the bay and chained themselves together and to the bridge in calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to US military aid to Israel, according to local media outets.KRON4 reports:All lanes remain blocked on the Bay Bridge after protesters shut down all lanes of westbound Interstate 80 traffic on the bridge during the Thursday morning commute. The protesters stopped their cars on the bridge, east of Treasure Island Road, and threw their keys into the Bay before chaining themselves together and to the bridge, according to California Highway Patrol.Around 50 to 60 protesters on the bridge were arrested and processed by responding CHP officers before being led to awaiting buses, according to KRON4’s Will Tran. Approximately 250 officers are on scene, according to CHP.As of 10 a.m., a far-right lane of westbound traffic reopened on the Bay Bridge for motorists already on the bridge. Drivers who were backed up before the toll plaza were being guided by CHP to turn around back into Oakland. There is no estimated time for when all lanes will reopen across the Bay Bridge.In language similar to that of the Capitol police’s statement from earlier today, Democratic leadership has released a statement on last night’s ceasefire demonstrations – with zero mention of the words “ceasefire,” “Israel” or the 11,000 Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrikes who demonstrators were mourning last night.The statement, released by House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic whip Katherine Clark, Democratic caucus chair Pete Aguilar and DCCC chair Suzan DelBene, said:
    Last night, Members of the House Democratic Caucus, hardworking staffers and dozens of guests from throughout the country were participating in an event inside the Democratic National Committee building when some protesters escalated their activity in a manner that exceeded a peaceful demonstration.
    We are thankful for the service and professionalism of the U.S. Capitol Police officers who worked to ensure that Members, staff and visitors were able to safely exit. We strongly support the First Amendment right to freedom of expression and encourage anyone exercising that right to do so peacefully.
    Protesters shut down the Bay Bridge in San Francisco during morning rush hour. Images on the news wires show scores of people holding banners calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and protesting against military aid for Israel.All westbound lanes were shut at the time.Local media reported around 50 to 60 protesters were arrested before being led to buses. There were 250 officers on the scene, reports said.Here are more images coming through the newswires of last night’s ceasefire demonstrations outside the Democratic National Committee building:American Muslim writer and civil rights scholar Omar Suleiman has joined numerous activists in condemning Capitol police officers over their actions during last night’s ceasefire demonstrations.In a post on X, Suleiman said:
    “Unbelievable. Capitol police throwing Jewish protestors shouting not in our name and calling for a ceasefire down the steps of the Democratic National Headquarters. Good luck in 2024 y’all.”
    The Jewish peace advocacy organization If Not Now has pushed back against California’s Democratic representative Brad Sherman who said that yesterday’s demonstrators “grew violent” and pepper sprayed Capitol police.The organization tweeted a video that showed protestors in locked arms singing, “Which side are you on.” At one point, the video showed Capitol police pulling and shoving protestors outside the DNC building.Capitol police then appears to throw a protestor down the stairs. Someone behind the camera yelled, “Oh shit! Someone just got thrown. People getting thrown down the stairs!”In its caption, If Not Now addressed Sherman’s comments, saying:
    “This is dangerous & reckless disinformation, Congressman. We were peacefully linking arms, singing, and calling for a ceasefire. As you can see with your own eyes in this video. Then Capitol Police rushed in, threw us down the stairs, and pepper sprayed us. Retract this now.”
    A Capitol police officer was captured on video snatching a Palestinian flag out of the hands of a protester who was waving the flag and chanting “Ceasefire now!” during last night’s ceasefire demonstrations.Video posted online showed the officer reaching for the flag as an onlooker shouted, “Hey hey hey! What the fuck?” Other Capitol police officers standing behind their bikes appeared to then grab the flag and throw it aside.The Capitol police said in a statement on Thursday that its officers ‘pulled people off the DNC building, pushed them back and cleared them from the area’ during last night’s ceasefire demonstrations – using language vastly different from the demonstration’s organizers who said protestors were choked, thrown against walls and pepper sprayed.In its statement, the Capitol police made no mention of pepper-spraying protestors, despite images posted online that appeared to show them doing so.Instead, the statement said:
    “When the group moved dumpsters in front of the exits, pepper sprayed our officers and attempted to pick up the bike rack, our teams quickly introduced consequences – pulling people off the building, pushing them back, and clearing them from the area, so we could safely evacuate the Members and staff.
    Six officers were treated for injuries, from minor cuts to being pepper sprayed to being punched.”
    In a video posted to Youtube, a Capitol police officer can be seen pepper-spraying a protestor in the face as she held onto another protestor. More

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    Protesters urging Gaza ceasefire accuse Washington police of violence

    Protesters against Israel’s military offensive in Gaza were locked in a battle of words with Washington police on Thursday after accusing officers of violently breaking up a demonstration on Capitol Hill that organisers insist was peaceful.Leaders of the Ceasefire Now Coalition said 90 of their activists were injured in confrontations that took place after they staged a candlelit vigil outside the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters on Wednesday evening.The coalition said volunteers were pepper-sprayed, kicked, pulled by the hair and dragged down flights of stairs by officers in riot gear, who they accused of ignoring longstanding protocols for non-violent protest by failing to issue dispersal notices or engage with the rally’s specially designated police liaison representative.But in a rebuttal, police said the group was “not peaceful” and said six officers had to be treated for injuries after being pepper-sprayed and punched. One 24-year-old protester was arrested for allegedly slamming a female officer into a garage door and punching her in the face, police said in a statement.They also accused the protesters of moving dumpsters to block entrances.“We have handled hundreds of peaceful protests, but last night’s group was not peaceful,” the police statement said. “The crowd failed to obey our lawful orders to move back from the DNC, where members of Congress were in the building.“When the group moved dumpsters in front of the exits, pepper sprayed our officers and attempted to pick up the bike rack, our teams quickly introduced consequences – pulling people off the building, pushing them back, and clearing them from the area, so we could safely evacuate the members and staff.”Organisers said the event – jointly staged by three leftist groups, Jewish Voice for Peace, If Not Now and the Democratic Socialists of America – followed the traditions of non-violence pioneered by the US civil rights movement.But Wednesday’s clashes was one of the most graphic signs yet of the dissension arising from Israel’s military response to last month’s attack by Hamas, when more than 1,200 people were killed and another 240 taken hostage.In a video news conference, the coalition denied the accusations of aggression against police and pointed to video footage which it said showed only officers committing acts of violence.They also accused congressmen of spreading disinformation about the group by claiming it was pro-Hamas – the group has condemned the Hamas attack and antisemitism – singling out the Florida Republican senator Marco Rubio, and Brad Sherman, a Democrat from California. Sherman tweeted that he had been evacuated after “pro-terrorist” demonstrators tried to “break into the building”.“Congressman Sherman and Senator Rubio are spreading extremely dangerous and reckless disinformation about our non-violent movement,” said Eva Borgwardt, national spokeswoman for If Not Now. “The only people I saw using violence at that protest was the police.”Dani Noble, of Jewish Voice for Peace, said the vigil had been organised to lobby Democratic congressmen attending a function at the headquarters to respond to the sentiments of 80% of the party’s supporters across the country, who she said supported a ceasefire in Israel’s Gaza onslaught, which has so far killed more than 11,000 people, about 40% of them children.She denied that activists tried to storm the building but said they were attempting to create a path for elected officials entering and leaving the building to talk to demonstrators.“In absolutely no instance did anyone try to enter the building,” she told journalists. “We were singing and chanting and waiting for Democratic officials to show up.”The coalition has organised several other civil disobedience events in Washington in recent weeks urging the Biden administration to call for a ceasefire, notably outside the White House and on Capitol Hill, where demonstrators staged a mass sit-in inside the oldest congressional office facility, the Cannon Building.Both events saw police carry out multiple arrests but otherwise passed without violence.“We were so clear why we were there [last night],” said Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg, of the Jewish Voice for Peace rabbinical council. “Every person was wearing a T-shirt that said ‘Ceasefire Now’. We have been singing these songs for a month. They knew very well why we were there.“We were seated, linked arms with banners and the moment a dispersal order was given, the police had all the tools that they needed to non-violently and safely remove protesters. Instead they chose to push and shove people, and hit and pepper-spray. The police have tools to deal with non-violent civil disobedience, and last night they chose not to use them. And I want to know why.” More