AfD party officials have branded the move by Germany’s intelligence agency as “transparent and a pitiful attempt at denunciation”
US blocks UN Security Council demand for ceasefire in Israel’s genocidal war
Press TV – December 8, 2023
The United States has vetoed a United Nations Security Council demand for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Israel’s genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip despite mounting calls to stop the regime’s atrocities.
On Friday, 13 Security Council members voted in favor of a draft resolution, put forward by the United Arab Emirates, while Britain abstained and the US vetoed it, isolating itself while sheilding Israel’s aggression.
“Tonight, the UK refused to back a UN resolution for a ceasefire,” said former UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
“We mourn those who will die because their lives were deemed unworthy of protection. And we vow to keep demonstrating in solidarity with the Palestinian people to end the bombings, blockades and occupation,” Corbyn added.
The vote came after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres formally warned the 15-member council on Wednesday of a global threat from the two-month-long Israeli war against the defenseless people of Gaza.
“What is the message we are sending Palestinians if we cannot unite behind a call to halt the relentless bombardment of Gaza?” Deputy UAE UN Ambassador Mohamed Abushahab asked the council.
Deputy US Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood called the draft resolution an imbalanced text “that was divorced from reality.”
“Although the United States strongly supports a durable peace in which both Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace and security, we do not support this resolution’s call for an unsustainable ceasefire that will only plant the seeds for the next war,” Wood claimed.
Washinton’s ally London abstained. Britain’s UN Ambassador Barbara Woodward said her country abstained because there was no condemnation of Hamas.
“Israel needs to be able to address the threat posed by Hamas and it needs to do so in a manner that abides by international humanitarian law so that such attack can never be carried out again,” she told the council.
Guterres convened the meeting on the “humanitarian catastrophe” in the besieged Palestinian territory, two months after Israel launched its air and ground strikes on the besieged territory.
The brutal war has so far killed more than 17,487 people and left the territory in ruins.
Wood told the meeting that Washington does not support a ceasefire.
The General Assembly, where the US has no veto power, overwhelmingly supported a humanitarian ceasefire. On Oct. 26, the assembly approved the cease-fire with 120 votes in favor and only 14 against the non-binding resolution.
UN inaction makes it complicit in Gaza slaughter: MSF
The medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said Friday that the council is “complicit in the ongoing slaughter” in the Gaza Strip through inaction and vetoes.
The charity said that “the inaction of the United Nations Security Council and vetoes from member states, particularly the United States, make them complicit in the ongoing slaughter; this inaction has given license to the mass killing of men, women and children.”
The meeting was convened after Guterres activated Article 99 — a step no one in his post has taken for decades.
The article allows the secretary general to bring to the council’s attention “any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.”
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, also rejected calls for a ceasefire as he addressed the Security Council.
Erdan once again threatened that the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has to be “eliminated.”
Israel waged its war on Gaza on October 7, after Hamas carried out the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm into the occupied territories in response to Tel Aviv’s intensified crimes against the Palestinian people.
In the event, the regime’s leaders ordered Israeli military forces to attack the besieged Gaza Strip with a force “like never before.”
End ‘decimation’ of Palestinian lives in Gaza
The head of the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) called on Friday for an end to the “decimation” of Palestinian lives in the territory.
Philippe Lazzarini urged all UN member states to “take immediate actions to implement an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.”
Diplomats from Arab countries call for immediate ceasefire
In a related development, chief diplomats from a grouping of Arab and Islamic nations, on a visit to Washington, called for an end to Israel’s war on Gaza.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan on behalf of the group, called on the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution calling for a ceasefire.
“Our message is we believe it is absolutely necessary to end the fighting immediately.”
He was in Washington as part of a visit of the Arab-Islamic Ministerial Committee.
Earlier this week, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) condemned Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians and called for a ceasefire, in remarks at the summit of the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council in Qatar.
He said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is pushing the entire region into danger for the sake of his political future.”
Global PR Giant Launches Provocative HPV Vaccine Ads Targeting Gen Zers
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | December 7, 2023
A multinational public relations firm last week launched a provocative advertising campaign — under the slogan “HPV Fucks Everybody” — designed to persuade Gen Zers to get the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine.
The PR firm, Publicis Groupe, launched the campaign in collaboration with the nonprofit Fuck Cancer. The campaign doesn’t name a specific HPV vaccine brand name. However, Merck’s Gardasil vaccine is the only HPV vaccine brand distributed in the U.S., and Merck is a client of Publicis Groupe.
When asked if Merck was funding the campaign, a spokesperson for Fuck Cancer told The Defender, “This campaign has no connection with Merck and is a collaboration between Publicis Health Media and Fuck Cancer (a non profit). Please note that we are promoting a vaccine that is safe and saves lives.”
There are currently 80 cases pending in federal court against Merck alleging Gardasil caused injuries and the federal Vaccine Court has paid out more than $70 million to people making claims regarding Gardasil.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), also a Publicis client, developed the HPV vaccine technology, which it licenses, in the U.S., exclusively to Merck.
In addition to Merck and the NIH, other Publicis Groupe clients include the World Economic Forum (WEF), pharmaceutical giants including Pfizer, GSK, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Purdue Pharma and several pharmacy chains that administer the HPV vaccines, including Walmart, Rite Aid and CVS Health (owners of Target pharmacies and clinics).
Campaign ‘uses sex to sell its case’
The new campaign targets young adults directly through a series of ads featuring “diverse, sexy images” and edgy music, accompanying the message that it doesn’t matter who you are, you are at risk because “HPV Fucks Everybody.”
Photos of a black couple, a white couple and a furry couple kissing, and a multiracial group of young people partying are featured on the website and will be featured in the ads.
The images are accompanied by lines like, “Stop the spread. Get the shot. Keep doing you,” according to “Pharma & Health Insider” — a PR site that publishes promotional stories with a news-like appearance.
HPV transmission is likely to occur via sex, the PR story said, so the campaign “uses sex to sell its case.”
“Targeting all 18–26-year-olds who are sexually active (or who want to be), the campaign behaves just like its audience: honest, bold and unbounded by tradition,” said Alison McConnell, chief marketing officer at Publicis Health Media — one of Publicis’ “solution hubs.”
Michelle Stiles, author of “One Idea To Rule Them All: Reverse Engineering American Propaganda,” told The Defender that campaigns run by elite global PR firms may appear absurd to a skeptical observer, but they have tremendous power to shape global public health agendas.
She said:
“The trendy and provocative messaging targeting sexually active youth for yet another vaccination campaign should hopefully be met with ample amounts of skepticism or outright laughter for those who paid attention during the previous rollout of the COVID-19 shots.
“Unfortunately, these million-dollar campaigns are extremely dangerous because they are so effective.”
Ben Mallory, executive vice president/creative director for Digitas Health, another Publicis subsidiary collaborating on the campaign, said the campaign is designed to inform young people that they will be infected with HPV, that such infection will be risky and that vaccination is the answer.
“For a generation that doesn’t discriminate, it’s important they realize that HPV doesn’t either,” he said. “That’s what the campaign communications [sic]: It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’re into, if you’re not vaccinated, you’re at risk.”
Trying to reach ‘largest and most influential generation’
The campaign will air 30-second and one-minute ads on 150 college campuses and in 150 malls in major markets, and also post on lifestyle websites like Thrillist, PopSugar, the dating site Grindr.
An audio campaign will follow, along with advertising in “points-of-care,” which can include clinics or pharmacies.
On the campaign’s website, people can also sign up to “get the shot” at major retail pharmacies including Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aid, Walmart, Target and Kroger — companies Publicis Groupe also represents.
McConnell, Publicis’ marketing director for the campaign, said they are trying to reach Gen Z because it is “the largest and most influential generation.”
That makes this campaign different from most previous HPV vaccination PR campaigns that targeted parents.
This shift in focus reflects recent shifts in direct advertising by Gardasil maker Merck.
Merck’s early ads targeted parents of adolescents, but in 2022 they shifted gears and started targeting parents of young children with ads like this one, which appeals to parents of the older elementary school children.
These ads focused on marketing the vaccine as “cancer prevention” rather than as acting on a sexually transmitted disease, a strategy the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) promoted to encourage more young people to get vaccinated.
Last year, Merck expanded its advertising campaign to target adults through age 45, in commercials like this one, marketing the vaccine as protecting against a long list of cancers.
Merck has invested heavily in shaping the market since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the drug in 2006. In October, it announced that its 2023 third-quarter Gardasil sales grew 13% to $2.6 billion.
Fact-checking the campaign’s claims
The campaign sample ad and its website, which provide no citations, make many misleading or erroneous claims.
The campaign’s approach appears to be rooted in the “fear-based” or “fear-appealing” messaging designed to “nudge” people into getting vaccinated, commonly utilized during the COVID-19 pandemic and in global public health more generally.
According to the CDC, HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the U.S. and the majority of sexually active people will get it at some point in their lives, even if they have only one or very few sexual partners.
But the vast majority of HPV infections are cleared by the immune system and less than 10% of infections are linked to any clinical symptoms. Clinical symptoms can include a variety of warts and cervical dysplasia, which may be benign or precancerous.
Yet the campaign website claims, “HPV turns into cancer about 10% of the time,” a claim public health agencies don’t make.
There are over 200 strains of the HPV virus, a subset of which are deemed “high-risk.” HPV can cause genital warts and some strains have been associated with some types of cancer. However, HPV is not the sole risk factor for any cancer, and cancers associated with HPV can also sometimes develop without the presence of the virus.
Methods like regular pap screening are highly effective and have been found to reduce the incidence and mortality of cervical cancer among women by at least 80%.
But the sample ad on the site presents HPV as something always scary and dangerous.
It says:
“HPV Fucks Everybody. In fact, there are more than 14 million new HPV infections in the US each year, because HPV doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t care who you are, what you look like who you love or what you’re into. HPV will infect more than 85% of sexually active people of all races, ethnicities and genders. It can lead to genital warts, or worse, over ten types of cancer. So it doesn’t matter if your status is single, committed, or complicated. It doesn’t even matter if you’re not currently sexually active.”
The website also claims the HPV vaccine can prevent a whopping 33,700 types of HPV-related cancers. Even Gardasil 9’s package insert and the CDC website only indicate the HPV vaccine for some cancers of the cervix, vagina, vulva, penis, anus and back of the throat with the HPV virus.
The campaign also repeats Merck’s claims that the vaccine is “safe and effective” and that the side effects are “mild.”
But a series of ongoing lawsuits against Merck allege the drugmaker fast-tracked Gardasil through the FDA’s approval process and deceptively conducted clinical trials to mask serious side effects and exaggerate the vaccine’s effectiveness.
Some of the signature impacts observed following HPV vaccination in thousands of adverse events reports worldwide include permanently disabling autoimmune and neurological conditions such as postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, fibromyalgia and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.
To date, there are no valid studies showing the HPV vaccine prevents cervical cancer. However, there are studies suggesting the vaccine could increase the risk of cancer.
Finally, the campaign promises that getting vaccinated can “put an end to HPV. For you, for us, for them. For everyone.”
However, the Gardasil 9 vaccine is designed only to suppress nine of the over 200 strains of HPV, and recent research has shown that when the HPV vaccine suppresses certain types of “high-risk” HPV strains, those strains are replaced with other strains associated with some cancers.
While the World Health Organization has launched a global campaign to eradicate cervical cancer as a public health threat, it has not indicated a similar project for HPV.
Publicis is part of ‘the propaganda arm of the global elite’
The campaign is spearheaded by Publicis Health Media and Digitas Health, which are both part of Publicis, along with Fuck Cancer.
According to the campaign publicity, Publicis Health Media is particularly concerned with HPV because the company CEO Arthur Sadoun was diagnosed and treated for HPV-associated cancer.
Last year, the company published a holiday video where board chair Maurice Lévy and Sadoun were joined by actor Michael Douglas, who was diagnosed and treated with throat cancer a decade ago, to promote the HPV vaccine and the Publicis Groupe.
As part of its cancer marketing focus, Publicis Groupe launched its Working with Cancer initiative, at the WEF. In partnership with 30 of the largest global companies, including Pfizer, Sanofi, PepsiCola, Meta and others, the campaign seeks to “abolish the stigma and insecurity that exist for people with cancer in the workplace,” according to the campaign website.
During Super Bowl LVII in February, it ran a commercial about the campaign that won a Gold Lion from the Health & Wellness jury at the 2023 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in June.
Publicis Groupe is an ad holding company, which recently rebranded “for the connected age” itself as a “platform,” according to its website.
As Stiles details in her book, just a few such companies — including Publicis, Omnicom, WPP and Interpublic Group — dominate the global media landscape.
Each ad-holding company has billions of dollars in revenue and serves thousands of corporate clients along with universities, nonprofits and governmental and nongovernmental organizations.
As public relations firms, they design ad campaigns and they develop and strategically place print and broadcast media content in mainstream news and PR publications for their clients. They also create public relations campaigns like those described here to develop, promote and defend the reputations of their clients.
They design their strategies in part by collecting data “on virtually every U.S. consumer” and on journalists, politicians and scientists.
Other tactics include flooding the media landscape with spin, developing talking points for “experts” to use in public appearances and generally “using underhanded tactics to promote and defend their clients,” Ecowatch reported.
According to Stiles, an estimated two-thirds to 80% of the content broadcast and published by corporate media comes from public relations firms.
She said:
“There is no doubt that the top three PR holding firms WPP, Omnicom, and Publicis, whose collective revenue is over 44 billion, function and should be thought of as the propaganda arm of the global elite.
“The finely-tuned, targeted messages not only create revenue for the transnational capitalist class but just as importantly define the global problems to be solved and the way in which they should be solved, leaving very little room for other creative options.”
Each agency has smaller subsidiaries and PR affiliates under the same corporate ownership, creating the appearance that there are more players in the media field than there actually are. More recently, they have also begun to “gobble up” data companies.
For example, in this campaign, two of three collaborators are part of the Publicis Groupe.
The public relations site Pharma & Health, where one of the “stories” about the “HPV Fucks Everybody” campaign was posted by MediaPost Inc., a marketing company that posts up to 50 different industry blogs.
“Adding together the global revenue of the top 250 independent PR firms ($17 billion) with the PR holding companies ($44 billion) and we are literally swimming in marketing messages intended to consolidate capital for the mega-corporations,” Stiles said.
“The medical messaging repeatedly advises us to outsource health and wellness to drugs or vaccines, poor choices indeed,” she added.
A Defender investigation into Publicis’ clients last year, found it serves a wide range of corporate, governmental and supra-governmental agencies including the WEF and U.S. government agencies like the National Security Agency, tech giants like Google, Amazon, Disney, Microsoft and Meta, and corporate clients PepsiCo, Phillip Morris and Saudi Aramco.
Publicis Groupe was implicated in the “Monsanto File” scandal, where the company was found to be using Publicis Consultants and FleishmanHillard, an Omnicom subsidiary, to launch a PR offensive to rehabilitate the image of genetically modified organisms and pesticides.
Newsguard, a for-profit fact-checking organization backed by Big Pharma, Big Tech, the U.S. government and the American Federation of Teachers — a staunch advocate of mandatory COVID-19 vaccination and masks for schoolchildren — is also a client.
So is the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a politically driven service consistently attacking anyone who raises questions about vaccine efficacy or safety, and the organization responsible for creating the so-called “Disinformation Dozen” list.
In her book, Stiles also explains that asset management firms Vanguard and BlackRock are among the top 10 shareholders in the top four ad agency holding companies.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Germany: AfD ban proposal struggles to gain traction in parliament, but next year could be different
BY JOHN CODY | REMIX NEWS | December 7, 2023
A Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician who lost to an Alternative for Germany (AfD) politician in his local elections is on a one-man mission to ban the party, but is struggling to gather the required signatures from fellow MPs. However, after a court ruling in February next year, efforts to ban the party may pick up steam.
The 48-year-old Marco Wanderwitz has so far failed to make progress with his signature campaign, which requires 37 MPs, 5 percent of all MPs, to introduce a motion in parliament. He is aiming to gather the required number of signatures by the end of the year.
“I’m having a lot of good conversations, I’m getting a lot of encouragement,” Wanderwitz told taz newspaper. “I am optimistic.” However, he will not divulge how many MPs have so far said they were willing to sign his motion.
Wanderwitz, who hails from Chemnitz in the east of Germany, lost his constituency to AfD’s Mike Moncsek, but has been able to stay in the German parliament because the CDU kept him on its list of candidates for Saxony. Ever since his loss to an AfD candidate, he has been one of the most vocal politicians in all of parliament about banning the party.
Remix News reported on his efforts earlier in the year, where he appeared on the Panorama state-run television program from ARD, where he said democracy needs to be saved by banning the party. The AfD is not only the second most popular party in Germany, but in Wanderwitz’s home state of Saxony, it is the single most popular party. Furthermore, nearly half of Germans say they could imagine a coalition government that includes the AfD.
“We are dealing with a party that seriously endangers our free democratic basic order and the state as a whole,” which is why “it is high time to ban them,” said Wanderwitz on the ARD program.
Wanderwitz not only wants the party banned, but says he wants everyone involved in the AfD to be jobless following a ban.
“All people who work for the party would immediately lose their jobs. All mandates, from honorary local councilors to seats in the European Parliament, would be forfeited immediately. All employees of MPs and parliamentary groups at all levels would immediately lose their jobs. We would reduce the structure of the AfD to zero,” he said. After the ban, he claims that people would vote for “democratic parties” again.
This may be the most important poll yet for the AfD and its future chances to wield real political power
Although Wanderwitz’s efforts have so far fallen short, the CDU MP says he is waiting for a Feb. 27 Higher Administrative Court decision from Münster, which will rule on a complaint filed by the AfD against the domestic intelligence agency the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV).
Wanderwitz says he hopes the judges there will confirm that AfD is a “suspected right-wing extreme organization,” at which time, his efforts to ban the party might gain steam.
How Russia Strategically Counters Western Economic Pressure
Sputnik – 08.12.2023
Russia has confounded the West’s sanctions strategy to outstrip Europe in economic growth, pundits say.
Speaking at the plenary session of VTB Bank’s investment forum “Russia Calling!”, Putin highlighted that Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) had grown by 3.2% in the first 10 months of this year and is expected to reach 3.5% by the end of the year.
“Despite Western sanctions against Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine, the Russian economy manages to stay afloat due to various factors, including the restrictive economic policy of the EU and strategic alliances Russia has formed around the world,” Imelda Ibanez, a specialist in the history of Russian diplomacy and foreign policy at St. Petersburg State University, told Sputnik.
When the United States and its European allies decided to impose sanctions on Moscow, commodity prices rose significantly, resulting in an increased trade deficit for those countries.
“One factor [influencing the strengthening of the Russian economy] is the monetary policy of the European Union and the United States, as well as high commodity prices,” Ibanez said.
However, she emphasized that “Russia is one of the world’s leading producers of raw materials, including hydrocarbons, coal and even diamonds.”
“Russia has been able to strategically resist sanctions because it has relied on a geopolitical strategy that is aligned with its allies,” she added.
Isela Valdez, a lecturer in economics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), also speaking to Sputnik, noted that although European countries were strong partners for Moscow before the Ukrainian crisis, they were not the only ones.
“They are not Russia’s only trading partners; yes, they are obviously among the strongest, but there are also the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and even parts of Africa, which are alternative markets with which [Moscow] can develop trade relations,” she noted.
According to Ibanez, Russia’s strategic, commercial and economic link is China, a country with which it shares a common space in BRICS, the group of developing nations founded in 2009 that currently represents more than 31.5 percent of the world’s GDP and 42 percent of its population.
What will happen if the conflict in Ukraine drags on for even longer?
Western countries will find themselves in an even more difficult position in 2024, as another conflict between Israel and Palestine has burst onto the geopolitical chessboard, Valdez warned.
“It is more of an economic containment mechanism that we are beginning to see [in the West]. Next year, the situation for Europe will be very complex because it is on the central axis of the conflicts, almost acting as a mediator, and this will affect its production levels,” the expert noted.
Ibanez noted that Russia has managed to build bridges and alliances with the Global South through BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization — and these are platforms where Moscow could stand out.
Biden regime touts ‘year of suffering’ for Russian troops
RT | December 8, 2023
The White House wants to keep funding Ukraine in its conflict with Russia because it believes that in a year Moscow may be willing to concede to Kiev’s demands, an aide to Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, said in an interview on Tuesday.
Jon Finer, Sullivan’s principal deputy, discussed the White House Ukraine strategy at an event hosted by the Aspen Institute, an influential US think-tank. On Wednesday, President Joe Biden’s request to allocate over $110 billion in foreign security aid, including for Ukraine, was blocked from a vote in the Senate.
Finer made a case for releasing the funds despite Kiev’s inability to secure any major successes on the battlefield during its summer counteroffensive. He said he disagreed with the notion that the operation “not going as far as people wanted reflects some degree of Ukrainian failure.” If Washington keeps bankrolling Kiev’s war effort for the next year, the Ukrainian government will maintain “a degree of parity” with Russia, he promised.
“Another year of funding and another year in which Russia will have to suffer on the battlefield is fundamentally a better position than we are in today without that funding,” Finer said. “I think there is no way to dispute that.”
By the end of 2024, Western nations will have ramped up arms production and be helping Ukraine do the same, the White House expects. Then Russia will have to either “come to the negotiating table on terms that would be acceptable to Ukraine” or face a stronger opponent, according to Finer’s expectations.
Kiev’s demands for peace include full control over pre-2014 Ukrainian territory, war reparations and a tribunal for the Russian leadership, as detailed last year by President Vladimir Zelensky. Moscow has dismissed it from the start as detached from reality.
Moscow has cited NATO expansion in Europe and the promised inclusion of Ukraine into the US-led military bloc as a threat to its national security. Preventing that outcome is imperative, senior Russian officials have said.
In the first weeks of hostilities, Ukraine and Russia came to a preliminary agreement on a truce, which would have seen Kiev drop its NATO aspirations and pledge neutrality. Then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Kiev to “make war instead,” David Arakhamia, who led the Ukrainian delegation at the talks in Istanbul, confirmed in a recent interview.
Flooding Gaza would be war crime – Russia
RT | December 8, 2023
If Israel is truly considering flooding the “Hamas tunnels” under Gaza with seawater, this would be a clear-cut atrocity, Russia’s first deputy permanent representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, said at the Security Council meeting on Friday.
China, Russia and the United Arab Emirates called for the emergency session, given the deteriorating situation in the Palestinian enclave after the Israel forces resumed military operations at the start of December.
“In recent days, shocking information has spread about Israeli plans to flood underground structures in the Gaza Strip with seawater,” Polyansky told the council. “According to publicly available information, the IDF has already built a system of pipes and pumps designed to pump seawater, and is currently discussing with the United States the practical possibility of such flooding: will there be enough water, will the ‘topography’ of the tunnels allow it, and so on.”
“Such a step, if taken, would constitute a clear war crime.”
Polyansky explained that the flooding would be indiscriminate and the equivalent of ordering “take no prisoners,” while the sea water would contaminate the groundwater in Gaza and make the area uninhabitable.
Documents published in mid-October suggest that the Israeli authorities would like to displace all of Gaza’s Palestinian population into Egypt.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared war on Hamas after the Gaza-based militant group raided nearby Israeli settlements on October 7, [allegedly] killing an estimated 1,200 people and taking scores hostage. Since then, more than 16,000 [17,000] Palestinians have died in Israeli operations in Gaza.
After a week-long “humanitarian pause” at the end of November, Israel has launched a “more brutal and bloody phase” of its operation, Polyansky told the UN, with the scale of destruction indicating “indiscriminate” use of force and striking of targets considered protected by humanitarian law.
“The brutal Hamas raid on October 7 cannot justify Israeli crimes against humanity,” the Russian diplomat argued. “Failure to respect humanitarian law by one side does not relieve the other from the same obligations.”
Polyansky added that he doubted the International Criminal Court would do anything, as it will not act “against its Western masters.” The ICC is likely to “forgive” Israel just as it turned a blind eye to Western atrocities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, he added.
US ‘Only Administration With Leverage’ to Stop Israeli Assault, End ‘Humanitarian Crisis’ in Gaza
By Fantine Gardinier – Sputnik – 08.12.2023
An international human rights lawyer said the United States is the only country with the necessary pull on the Israeli government to be able to force an end to the war in the Gaza Strip, which has generated a massive humanitarian crisis.
As the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip enters a new phase, turning its attention toward the southern cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah, more than 1 million refugees who fled from the north have been left in an increasingly precarious position.
The war has aroused fury among populations around the globe, including in the United States, where a mass protest movement has generated large demonstrations in dozens of cities every day demanding a permanent ceasefire. However, the Biden administration has remained staunchly in support of the Israeli operation, even as the White House begins to moderate its tone and express more concern for the civilian population in Gaza.
“We need three things from the US: munitions, munitions, and munitions,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently told a group of ministers, according to Israeli media. “There are huge demonstrations in Western capitals. We need to apply counterpressure … There have been disagreements with the best of our friends.”
In the territory of 2.3 million people, an estimated 80% of Gaza’s population has been displaced from their homes amid the Israeli operation, which has devastated the area. As of Monday, analysis of data collected by satellite photography had revealed more than 60% of the buildings in northern Gaza had been destroyed or severely damaged by the Israeli bombing campaign and ground invasion. The most recent reports from Gaza’s Health Ministry on Friday said that 17,177 people, including 7,112 children, had been killed and 46,000 wounded since October 7.
The Israeli operation was launched in response to a massive cross-border raid by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups based in Gaza, which attacked several Israeli border towns and killed an estimated 1,200 people. However, Israeli media has revealed that many of those deaths were likely caused by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) firing on civilians. In the aftermath, Netanyahu announced a “complete siege” of Gaza and an operation to destroy Hamas for good.
International human rights attorney Moien Odeh told Radio Sputnik’s The Backstory on Thursday that it was likely impossible for the IDF to achieve its stated goal of destroying Hamas, saying that the military operation would only generate enmity among more generations of Palestinians, who will join Hamas or organizations like it, and continue to fight Israel.
“I believe until the US understands that this war is going to have its own interests in the region and until they understand that there is no exit for Israel from this war, they will continue supporting Israel doing whatever they want,” he said.
He said that Israel’s position that the war in Gaza will not stop until it has achieved its military goals is intended as a message to two different audiences.
“One is internally for their own people, for the Israeli people, to tell them that ‘we will [take] revenge [for] what happened on October 7 and then the Palestinians will pay a very heavy price for that’. This is from one side. The other side will be, of course, to the whole world that ‘we will not stop until we will achieve our own military goal’ – which is until now, we keep changing every couple of weeks, and it’s clear that it’s unachievable, but until now, they are continuing the war despite all the thousands of dead Palestinians and the tens of thousands of injured, the hundreds of thousands displaced. But unfortunately, the end of this war doesn’t look close, for now at least.”
“Unfortunately, international law is bent mainly on the international will to follow it or not,” he observed. “And so far, it looks like the international will – and mainly that the US will – does not exist. So without any political will from the world and really from the US, the international law will continue to be only on the shelves of an international organization. So I can’t say that the support of the US is allowing Israel to continue its crimes without any kind of responsibility. And in this regard, we can mention the visit of the ICC, the International Court Criminal Court, last week to the Palestinian territories. And until now, despite over 60 days of war on Gaza, they or Mr. Khan, the ICC prosecutor, didn’t even start an investigation against all of these crimes.”
“I think many Palestinians have already lost hope and belief in international law. But I think it’ll be a devastating result on the whole system, and prove again and again that the International Criminal Court is a hostage, unfortunately, for the Israeli narrative and and that the double standard is happening all the time and that the ICC is just a political tool to punish some countries, mainly the the the African countries, for some crimes without any real results in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Odeh said that the international community is largely incapable of stopping the Israeli operation even if they wanted to, noting that the United States is “the only administration that has any leverage on the Israeli government.”
“And unfortunately, so far there was no kind of clear push for a ceasefire to stop all these bombings against civilians, against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” he said.
‘No Safe Area’ in Gaza
Odeh noted that the IDF has launched a new phase of its military operation in Gaza, which has brought the same strength against the south of the territory, where it had told more than 1 million Gazans to flee to, as it did previously against the north of the territory, from which it had previously evicted them due to the military operation.
“I think it’s worse now, because at least at the beginning, they used to claim that if you tell the civilians that you can leave the north and go to the south and you’ll be safe. Now, they are saying that you can’t go either back to the north, you can’t stay in the south. But what should people do? [There is] no safe area, despite that they keep talking about safe areas in the south. But from the other side, they keep saying that Hamas is using the safe areas to launch rockets against Israel, so they attack in these areas.”
“I think the people are really in a very, very bad situation now. They are suffering a lot, I think it’s literally a humanitarian crisis now in the Gaza Strip. Not enough food, no clear water at all, and fuel, no houses, after thousands of housing units were destroyed and many others were affected. So people are very, very suffering. And unfortunately, until now, the international community keep ignoring all of this stuff and thinking that Israel still can achieve its goals by destroying Hamas, which is I don’t believe that it’s achievable even if they will be able to destroy Hamas militarily, which is the big question, Hamas would continue existing in other places and this will just create another generation of Palestinians who hate Israel more for what’s happened in 2023, now.”
Odeh said that it appeared the IDF had drawn up its present war plans years ago and was waiting for an opportunity to implement them – which they found in the October 7 attacks.
“I think even before this war and for years, Gaza was a big problem for Israel. They already had ideas and plans about how to deal with Gaza. And it looks like after the attacks on October 7, they found it a good opportunity to start moving people and displacing people inside Gaza, hoping that many people will really move to Egypt or to Sinai and they will clean as much [of the population] as possible from the Gaza Strip.
“All of what’s happening, all the bombing, It’s not really helping them to achieve the military goal that they had at the beginning. And it’s proof again that all the displacement, all of these attacks are just for one reason: it is just to collectively punish the people and to push the people to be against Hamas itself, which is – I don’t think this is an option for many people now, to stand against Hamas and to show up to tell Hamas that ‘you did this to us’. People will only see Israel as the only reason behind their suffering and they will continue this conflict with Israel for more and more generations.”
Martyrdom of Dr. Refaat Al-Areer, the PIC social media founder and manager
Palestinian Information Center | December 8, 2023
The Palestinian Information Center (PIC) mourns with grief and pride Dr. Refaat Al-Areer (Abu Omar) one of the pillars of the PIC English language site and the founder and manager of its social media department.
Abu Omar was killed along with his brother, sister and her four children in an Israeli shelling that targeted her house in Gaza City in yet another proof of the barbarity of the Israeli genocidal campaign on the Gaza Strip that has been ongoing for more than two months.
Dr. Refaat was an English language professor in the Islamic University that was destroyed in the barbaric Israeli aggression and whose rector was also killed by Israeli shelling along with his family.
The martyr was distinguished for advocating the Palestine cause at various western and international media platforms. He wrote a book about Gaza titled “Gaza Writes Back” in the English language and had numerous notable interviews with western media outlets.
While mourning our academic and media expert colleague Abu Omar, we strongly condemn Israel’s escalating targeting of reporters and journalists in a bid to cover up its army’s crimes that have violated and continue to violate all human rights laws and doctrines.
We further call on international human rights institutions worldwide to adopt whatever is necessary to protect journalists and enable them to do their job without hindrances or harassment. We also call on world organizations concerned with protecting journalists to condemn the premeditated Israeli targeting of journalists and deliberate targeting of Palestinian civilians. We also call for bringing all those responsible for such crimes to justice.
75 Palestinian journalists have so far been killed and 80 others were injured while two are still missing due to the Israeli aggression on Gaza Strip that started on October 7.
Israel targeting Gaza’s history, destroying ancient mosques, churches
MEMO | December 8, 2023
Israel has deliberately destroyed dozens of archaeological sites and ancient sites in the besieged Gaza Strip since 7 October, in a blatant attempt to target Palestinian cultural heritage.
Yesterday Israeli warplanes bombed the ancient Othman Bin Qashqar Mosque in the Old City of Gaza, killing a number of Palestinians and causing damage to nearby homes.
The mosque was built in 620AH in the Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood, east of Gaza City, and is considered one of the oldest mosques and archaeological sites in the Gaza Strip.
According to Palestinian sources, the Ministry of Culture recorded that Israeli warplanes have bombed eight museums since the beginning of the war, including the Rafah Museum, Al-Qarara Museum and the Khan Yunis Museum, in addition to destroying most parts of Gaza’s Old City, including dozens of historical buildings i.e. churches, mosques, museums and archaeological sites.
Israel has also destroyed nine publishing houses and libraries and destroyed or partially damaged at least 21 cultural centres.
The Great Omari Mosque, located in the Daraj neighbourhood in Gaza, is considered one of the most important and oldest mosques in Palestine and the first mosque in the Gaza Strip. It was destroyed in an air strike.
The mosque was named after the second Muslim Caliph, Omar Bin Khattab, and which was later described as “the beautiful mosque” by traveller Ibn Battuta.
The Israeli bombardment also targeted the Church of Saint Porfirio, located in the Zaytoun neighbourhood, which was built in 425AD and was renovated in 1856.
The Sayyed Al-Hashim Mosque, considered one of the most important mosques in the Old City of Gaza because it is thought to hold the tomb of Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him)’s grandfather, Hashim Bin Abd Manaf, was also destroyed.
The Byzantine church in Jabalia, a prominent landmark in the Levant, was also levelled, along with Al-Khader Shrine in the city of Deir Al-Balah, which is the first and oldest Christian monastery built in Palestine by Saint Hilarius during the Byzantine era.
Toothless body: Why has International Criminal Court failed Palestinians?
By Ivan Kesic | Press TV | December 8, 2023
International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan’s recent visit to the occupied West Bank and Ramallah once again laid bare the Hague-based international tribunal’s strong pro-Israel bias.
It was his first-ever visit to the occupied Palestinian territories and came amid the Israeli regime’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, with the backing of the United States.
Even though the Tel Aviv regime does not recognize ICC’s jurisdiction and refuses to cooperate with it, Khan told the Israeli authorities that his office would be happy to cooperate with the regime.
Amid the Israeli regime’s war against Palestinians in Gaza, which started on October 7, many world leaders, activists, and commentators have raised questions over the submissiveness of the ICC.
The first reaction of Khan, a British lawyer who has been serving as the ICC prosecutor since June 2021, came three days after the Israeli regime launched bombings on Gaza in October.
In a statement issued on October 10, Khan confirmed that the ICC’s mandate applies to the latest confrontation between the Israeli regime and Palestinians, adding they are continuously gathering information in support of an investigation about what happened on October 7.
Palestine joined the international court in 2015, while the regime in Tel Aviv is still not a member of the ICC and has repeatedly rejected its jurisdiction and does not formally engage with it.
ICC’s Rome Statute gives it legal authority to investigate crimes committed on the territory of its 123 member states or by their nationals on other territories when domestic authorities are “unwilling or unable” to do so.
Continued indifference of ICC
Toward the end of October, Khan visited the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, when he criticized Israel for denying food and medicine to Palestinians at a Cairo conference.
He warned that curtailment of these rights could give rise to criminal responsibility under the Rome Statute, adding that the ICC has active investigations about war crimes committed there since 2014.
His statements, however, were characterized as vague as he wittingly tried to equate Israeli and Palestinian “crimes”, even though one side is an aggressor and the other side is a victim.
There has also been no sense of urgency in the ICC investigation, for which the court has been regularly criticized and cajoled by Palestinian politicians and human rights activists.
Amid pressure, in mid-November, Khan announced that five countries had sent him a referral of the situation of Palestine, specifically South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros, and Djibouti.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa noted that his country, together with many other countries across the world, referred the Israeli regime’s action to the ICC.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian also appealed to the ICC president and prosecutor through letters, emphasizing the need for the international court to initiate judicial proceedings.
He urged the ICC not to allow the perpetrators of serious international crimes to escape punishment, highlighting the importance of adhering to the court’s main duty outlined in the Rome Statute by avoiding double standards, selectivity, and politicization.
However, there has been no headway in the ICC probe so far even though the war continues.
Khan’s visit to Tel Aviv
Despite growing international calls for accountability and professionalism, blatant duplicity and hypocrisy reached a new high after Khan’s recent visit to the occupied West Bank and Tel Aviv.
His trip was initiated by a group that represents families of victims of the Al-Aqsa Storm Operation (Al-Aqsa Flood), despite evidence revealing that the Israeli regime killed their own on Oct 7.
The Israeli regime made a major propaganda effort to portray the Oct 7 spectacular military operation and its humiliating defeat as a “massacre,” using the group as the regime’s front-line trumpeters.
For weeks now, they have been bombarding the media with propaganda, also meeting with world leaders, seeking an emotional reaction which the Israeli regime then uses to smear Palestinians.
It ranges from the widely promoted propaganda about 40 “murdered babies” to individual stories like that of Emily Hand, whose father gleefully trumpeted to the media that he was happy that she was dead, only to be declared alive later, and eventually freed.
Hamas’ humane treatment of recently freed Israeli captives prompted the regime to ban their families from speaking to the media, suggesting that they tried to manipulate public opinion.
Khan has been accused of taking the forged Zionist narratives as indisputable facts, commenting in an official statement that the Hamas operation was an “attack on civilians” and that it represents “one of the most serious international crimes that shock the conscience of humanity.”
He called Hamas a “terrorist” organization, which is not an international position and demanded the release of Israeli captives while ignoring that over 6,000 Palestinian civilians are in Israeli captivity, without any charges.
Palestinians criticize Khan
Khan also met with Palestinian officials in Ramallah, including President Mahmoud Abbas.
But he was snubbed by Palestinian political parties and human rights groups who rightly accused him of parroting Israeli accusations of rights abuses over longstanding Palestinian charges.
In a statement, Hamas condemned his visit and his claims regarding alleged atrocities committed on October 7, accusing Khan of bias toward Israel’s “false and misleading narrative” while not conducting “a professional and fair investigation.”
“As Palestinian human rights organizations, we decided not to meet him,” said Ammar Al-Dwaik, director general of the Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR).
“I think the way this visit has been handled shows that Khan is not handling his work in an independent and professional manner,” he said, emphasizing his unequal treatment of Israeli and Palestinian cases.
The BDS movement also voiced criticism, noting that the ICC has failed the Palestinian people for years and now it’s failing to stop the Israeli regime’s genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, undermining the court’s legitimacy.
On the X platform the movement described Khan’s trip to occupied territories as biased and Israeli-sponsored, adding that the visit compounds the court’s failure.
The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, led by Ramy Abdu, has also criticized the ICC prosecutor for failure to act on the situation in occupied Palestine, including the Gaza Strip.
“In light of the extraordinarily high level of documentation, unparalleled in history, of the Israeli wars on Gaza, which fit the definition of a genocide in the making under international law, Khan’s selective vision is a shameful affront to justice,” its statement noted.
They accused Khan of “clear double standards” for not taking “a practical action,” on developments in occupied Palestinian territories, highlighting the fact he did not meet with victims of Israel’s occupation and settler terrorism or their families.
Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, Al-Haq, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, also expressed deep concern over what they said was a “prolonged delay” in Khan’s direct engagement with victims, especially in Gaza.
Triestino Mariniello, a legal representative of Palestinian victims before the ICC, said Khan has “always failed to meet with victim representatives or victims themselves.”
Mariniello noted that since Khan took office, his mandate has been characterized by “double standards” in relation to the situation in Palestine.
“The Prosecutor has not put in place any effective investigation and allocated very minimal and largely insufficient funding to the investigation since it opened,” he said.
Journalist Benjamin Norton commented that although the US and the Israeli regime are not even members, they lobbied for Khan to become the ICC prosecutor, and as a result, he immediately dropped investigations into US and Israeli war crimes in Afghanistan and Palestine.
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Hands off ‘our hemisphere’ or Venezuela pays the price: US Senator warns Russia
RT | February 13, 2019
The US staked a claim on half the world, as Senate Armed Services Committee chair Jim Inhofe said Washington might have to intervene in Venezuela if Russia dares set up a military base not just there, but “in our hemisphere.”
“I think that it could happen,” Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) told a group of reporters on Tuesday. “You’ve got a guy down there that is killing everybody. You could have him put together a base that Russia would have on our hemisphere. And if those things happen, it may be to the point where we’ll have to intervene with troops and respond.”
Should Russia dare encroach on the US’ neck of the woods, Inhofe said: “we have to take whatever action necessary to stop them from doing that.” … continue
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