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UAE ‘directly benefiting’ from illegal Israeli settlement enterprise

MEMO | February 7, 2022

The UAE is directly benefitting from Illegal Israeli settlements and is in violation of international law according to recently signed bilateral trade agreements between Abu Dhabi and the occupation state, Hugh Lovatt, Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, has pointed out in a series of tweets.

Lovatt has worked to advance the concept of EU Differentiation, which includes a variety of measures taken by the European bloc and its member states to exclude settlement-linked entities and activities from bilateral relations with Israel.

The EU has never recognised the legality of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories (including those in East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights that have been formally annexed by Israel). This means that the EU has an obligation to practically implement its non-recognition policy by fully and effectively implementing its own legislation against Israel’s incorporation of settlement entities and activities into its external relations with the EU.

In 2016, Lovatt worked to have this measure enshrined within UN Security Council Resolution 2334. It passed in a 14–0 vote, with the US notably abstaining. The Resolution states that Israel’s settlement activity constitutes a “flagrant violation” of international law and has “no legal validity”. It demands that Israel stop such activity and fulfil its obligations as an occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Lovatt claims that recently released details of bilateral agreements between the UAE and Israel show that that the Gulf State is in violation of Resolution 2334 and the principal of differentiation which all UN member states are expected to abide by.

“Has the UAE respected international law and its obligations to differentiate between Israel and the settlements as per UNSCR 2334?” asked Lovatt in his tweet. “The answer: No.”

Lovatt explained that “to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 2334, every bilateral agreement signed with Israel should contain a ‘differentiation’ clause defining the territorial scope of its application to Israel’s pre-June 1967 borders. This is not the case in this UAE-Israel agreement”. He shared a screen shot of a clause from the bilateral agreement indicating that no such territorial distinction was made.

The definition of territory applied in the agreement includes all the land that is under “Israel’s jurisdiction”, which Lovatt explained include Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian territory.

Notably Japan’s trade agreement with Israel includes a definition of “Israeli territory” which upholds the differentiation principal and, therefore, does not fall foul of Resolution 2334, Lovatt said. The absence of this distinction in the bilateral agreement between Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv means that the UAE is “directly” befitting from illegal settlements through its normalisation with Israel.

Lovatt admits that the UAE may have a different interpretation of the agreement than he does, in which case “it would be incumbent on the UAE government to clarify the agreement’s territorial applicability as soon as possible,” he added.

February 7, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

Why Smedley Butler left the imperialist front despising ‘Gangsters of Capitalism’

New book shows how the American general’s contempt for ‘the racket’ was born during his service in the 20th century ‘small wars.’

Review by Daniel Larison | Responsible Statecraft | January 28, 2022

Smedley Butler was one of the most decorated Marines in U.S. history, and by the end of his life he was also one of the most outspoken critics of the U.S. imperialism that he had spent most of his life enforcing. That contradiction between Butler the antiwar critic and Butler the builder of empire is at the heart of an important new book by Jonathan Katz, Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire. Katz’s book is an essential reminder of what the U.S. did during those decades and of the lasting effects that those interventions had on the countries where Butler went.

Butler took part in America’s so-called “small wars” in Asia, the Caribbean, and Central America in the early twentieth century. Like those wars, his military career has mostly been forgotten by the American public. That career was defined by aggressive military interventions on behalf of corporate interests, and by the end he was disgusted by it. As the author of War Is a Racket, Butler has been an inspiration to many antiwar and anti-imperialist Americans over the years, but he was also one of the military officers responsible for implementing destructive American colonialist designs at the expense of other nations. Twice awarded the Medal of Honor, he never believed he had done anything to deserve it, and the massacre that he took part in at Fort Rivière in Haiti haunted him.

In his later life, Butler came to see much of his career as a disreputable series of actions in the service of wealthy American interests, and he called himself a “racketeer for capitalism.” The racket he denounced was one that benefited a very few at the expense of the many. That core problem with our foreign policy that Butler identified almost ninety years ago is still very much with us. The U.S. still wages unnecessary wars based on flimsy pretexts against countries that cannot possibly threaten us, and today it also enables other wars with its weapons sales. The military budget grows every year despite the extraordinary physical security that the United States enjoys, and the hunt for new monsters to slay is unending. The racket is bigger and more destructive than ever.

Katz has produced a superb book in which he traces Butler’s steps from his first deployment to Cuba through his last mission in China. Through extensive use of Butler’s correspondence with his family, Katz is able to reconstruct to a remarkable degree what Butler thought about his various missions. Occasionally, there are flashes of anger at policies he was ordered to carry out that anticipate his later antiwar arguments. Appalled by the losses suffered during the invasion of Veracruz in 1914, he applauded his father’s belated vote in Congress against the mission. Katz writes, “The trauma fed Butler’s misgivings about the immorality and pointlessness of war.”

To read Butler’s story is to be reminded of our country’s long and ugly history of dominating many of our weaker neighbors. As Katz shows throughout the book, these countries are still living with the effects of those policies a century later. Katz traveled extensively to visit all the places where Butler served to learn more about his experiences and to document the legacy of the interventions in which Butler participated, and he bears witness to the lasting damage that U.S. policies have done. While most Americans know little or nothing about these interventions, many people in the affected countries still remember what U.S. forces did when they were there.

Butler is most loathed in Haiti, where he is viewed simply as “the Devil” and mechan (evil), because of his role in forcibly dissolving Haiti’s National Assembly to push through a new constitution, his reintroduction of a cruel system of forced labor, and the counterinsurgency campaign he waged against Haitian resistance to American rule. The Gendarmerie that Butler created became the national army and went on to interfere in and dominate Haitian politics for much of the rest of the century.

The outrages that the U.S. committed in its wars in the Philippines and Haiti, among other places, still affect how the U.S. is perceived today. The police and military institutions that the occupying U.S. authorities created in several countries became the apparatus of oppression used by later dictators, some of whom, like the Dominican Republic’s Trujillo, had been trained by the U.S. and became U.S. client rulers. During his brief time as the head of Philadelphia’s police force, Butler used the tactics he had employed against insurgents in other countries to fight “bandits” at home in an early example of the militarization of the police and the abuses that came with it.

The period of U.S. foreign policy between the start of the war with Spain and WWII is often wrongly described as “isolationist,” but no one can look at these decades of frequent, violent intervention in the affairs of other nations in the early twentieth century and still believe that. The U.S. took sides in Mexico’s civil war, it invaded other countries on the slightest pretext that a foreign rival might be gaining influence, and it militarily occupied some of them for years or decades. Like colonial empires the world over, the U.S. dominated weaker nations because it could and because its political leaders saw some economic advantage to be exploited.

While these interventions benefited private interests and were done on their behalf, they did nothing to make the United States more secure and were never really intended to. As Butler concluded in his later years, America’s colonial possessions in the Pacific only exposed the country to the dangers of a new, much larger war. “Sooner or later, if we hold onto them, America will be jerked into a damn war before we know what it’s all about,” Butler told a reporter in 1933. That was why he became an early supporter of independence for the Philippines as part of his broader antiwar advocacy. Butler did not live to see that prediction come true, but he was proven right eight years later.

Today there are still some neo-imperialists that look back on the “small wars” Butler fought as a model for how the U.S. should police the globe. Butler would be among the first to reject that idea out of hand. If his experience teaches us anything, it is that wars for empire cause tremendous harm to both the people being dominated and to the people sent to fight in those wars. Gangsters of Capitalism is an excellent account of Butler’s career, and it is also an outstanding history of the development of overseas American imperialism. The wars that Butler fought in anticipated and paved the way for the later militarization of U.S. foreign policy, and they serve as cautionary tales of the long-term harm that military intervention usually does to the nations that experience it. In order to find a way to stop the endless wars for good, we need to remember and learn from the brutal history of America’s empire-building.

January 30, 2022 Posted by | Book Review, Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | 1 Comment

Uninvited foreign troops must leave, African nation says

RT | January 24, 2022

Denmark must “immediately withdraw” some 90 troops it deployed to Mali last week “without [the government’s] consent and in violation of the protocols” allowing European nations to intervene in that African country, the government in Bamako said on Monday.

Some 91 Danes from the Jaeger Corps special forces arrived in Mali on January 18, as part of Task Force Takuba, a French-led counter-terrorism mission in the West African country. According to the Danish defense ministry, their job will be to reinforce the border with Niger and Burkina Faso, train Malian Armed Forces, and provide medical services to the peacekeepers.

While the government of Mali is grateful to “all its partners involved in the fight against terrorism,” it stressed “the need to obtain the prior agreement of the Malian authorities” before sending any troops to the country, says the communique signed by Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga, spokesman for the Ministry of Administration and Decentralization.

Announcing the deployment of the force last week, the government in Copenhagen said it had been scheduled in April 2021, as France sought to withdraw some of its troops from Mali.

Their objective was “to stabilize Mali and parts of the border triangle between Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, and to ensure that civilians are protected from terrorist groups,” the Danish military said.

The Jaegers are also experienced in “training and educating” local militaries, a job they have previously performed in Afghanistan and Iraq. They were sent shortly after Sweden withdrew its contingent from Mali. The French-led operation also involves forces from Belgium, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden.

Task Force Takuba has operated in Mali since March 2020, when Paris decided to wrap up the previous Operation Barkhane. France has maintained a military presence in its former West African colony since 2013, to help the government in Bamako deal with a Tuareg rebellion in the northwest of the country and subsequent terrorist insurgency loyal to Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).

Relations between Bamako and Paris have grown chilly since the latest military takeover in Mali in 2021, and France has since closed three of its military bases there, in Kidal, Tessalit, and Timbuktu.

January 24, 2022 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Yemen to keep up counterstrikes until the end of invasion: Ansarullah official

Press TV – January 23, 2022

A senior Yemeni official vows that the country will keep up its counteroffensives until its complete liberation from the scourge of a United States-backed and Saudi-led invasion and siege.

Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a member of the Yemeni popular resistance Houthi Ansarullah movement’s Political Bureau, made the remarks on Sunday in an exclusive interview with Iran’s al-Alam Arabic-language television network.

Saudi Arabia and several of its allies have been attacking Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest nation, since March 2015 in an unsuccessful bid to change its ruling structure in favor of its former Riyadh-aligned regime.

The war, and an ensuing siege that the aggressors have been employing, has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and turned the entire Yemen into the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The Yemeni forces that feature the Yemeni army and its allied fighters from the Popular Committees have, however, vowed not to lay down their arms until the expulsion of all foreign forces.

“Yemen’s operations against the countries of the [invading] coalition will continue at the domestic and overseas levels until the coalition stops its attacks and ends the blockade,” al-Bukhaiti said.

Invaders’ systematic denial

The invading countries are trying to deflect the international public opinion from their atrocities through a number of methods, he noted.

“They first deny any responsibility for their crimes, but later admit their involvement only to say they are going to investigate the atrocities,” said the official.

Al-Bukhaiti, meanwhile, rebuffed the invaders’ claims that they are attacking the impoverished country to retaliate for the Yemeni forces’ operations.

He said the aggressors took Yemen under heavy bombardment throughout the first three years of the war, during which the country did not have the deterrent power that it is using now to return the Saudi-led offensives.

“The invaders used to commit such crimes from the very first day of the invasion for three [consecutive] years,” long before Yemen became able to retaliate the aggression with ballistic missiles and drones, the Ansarullah official said.

He also hailed that the counterattacks had managed to force the invaders to reduce the number of their military assaults.

‘US, Zionists support aggressors’

“Those who support the invading countries, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE [in their crimes against the Yemeni people], are the United States and the Israeli regime, which are bereft of all human values,” al-Bukhaiti said.

The atrocities are being perpetrated to force Yemen to surrender and devolve into a vassal state, he added.

“But we tell them that these atrocities will have the opposite result” because they would prompt more Yemeni soldiers to join the battlefront against the aggressors, the official concluded.

January 23, 2022 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , | 1 Comment

Born in Deir Yassin (2017) Complete Film with English Subtitles

January 22, 2022 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , | 1 Comment

Blinken’s blinkered vision of Russia

By Scott Ritter | RT | January 12, 2022

“One lesson of recent history is that once Russians are in your house, it’s sometimes very difficult to get them to leave.”

The level of hubris-laced ignorance it would take an ostensibly intelligent, well-informed individual to make such a statement, in public, in an official capacity, goes beyond political parody.

And yet, there was the American Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, uttering those words at the tail end of a press statement where he questioned the legitimacy of Russia’s dispatch of military forces to Kazakhstan. The Russian actions took place in the wake of widespread violence that prompted the Kazakh President to request help from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which Russia leads.

It should be noted that Russia was invited to send troops to Kazakhstan. Russia was also invited to send troops to Syria. As Blinken was speaking, the US had between 900 and 1,200 troops inside Syria, none of whom were there at the request of the Syrian government. Likewise, the US continues to maintain a force of some 2,500 troops in Iraq, even though the Iraqi parliament has called for their withdrawal for more than a year.

When it comes to understanding what an “unwanted houseguest” looks and acts like, Tony Blinken need only look in the mirror for the perfect illustration.

The US is scrambling to seize the moral high ground when it comes to the issue of military intervention, seeking to exploit the 2008 Russian-Georgian War, the 2014 reabsorption of Crimea, and the 2015 military intervention in Syria to illustrate its position.

While the issue of Russo-Georgian relations is a difficult one, dating to before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it is an undisputed fact – indeed, one backed up by the European Union’s inquiry into the incident – that the 2008 conflict was triggered by a Georgian military incursion into South Ossetia, including an unprovoked attack on Russian peacekeeping forces stationed there. Subsequent Russian actions are attributable to Georgian aggression.

Likewise, Russia’s actions vis-à-vis Crimea and the Donbass region, where Moscow supports ethnically Russian separatists, all derive from the so-called ‘Maidan Revolution’, a US and EU-backed insurrection that overthrew Viktor Yanukovich, the duly elected president of Ukraine, and replaced him with a more Washington-friendly government.

And, lastly, the Russian intervention in Syria came at the request of the legitimate government in Damascus, which was under siege from foreign-funded and trained terrorists and insurrectionists. Russia’s actions were decisive, helping shift the military balance in favor of the Syrian government, and leading to the defeat of most of the anti-government fighters. The irony behind the Russian intervention is that it exposed the hypocrisy of the US, in so far as several of the terrorist groups Russia helped defeat were not only affiliates of Al-Qaeda but were also being funded by the US and its allies.

The US presence in Iraq and Syria, however, is the direct consequence of the illegal US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. Between the US and Russia, only one nation has violated international law when it comes to disregarding the sovereignty of others – and it is not Russia.

Tony Blinken did not limit his Russo-phobic commentary simply to the issue of unwanted houseguests. When asked during an interview on a Sunday morning talk show on January 9 whether he agreed that Russian President Vladimir Putin was seeking to restore the Soviet Union, Blinken answered: “I think that’s right… I think that’s one of President Putin’s objectives, and it is to re-exert a sphere of influence over countries that previously were part of the Soviet Union,” something that, Blinken added, was “unacceptable.”

First and foremost, as Russia has been making clear during its ongoing European security framework discussions with the US, NATO, and the OSCE this week, the issue of what is or isn’t acceptable when it comes to defining the scope and scale of Russian national security and related spheres of interest, is not something Moscow is willing to subordinate to Washington or its allies. Rather, it is a matter for Russia alone to decide.

It is the US, not Russia, which is seeking to continuously breathe life into the Cold War relic that is the NATO alliance. The history of broken American promises when it comes to the issue of NATO expansion – “not one inch east” has a different meaning in Brussels than anywhere else, it seems.

The ostensibly “defensive” NATO alliance has been, since the end of the Cold War, used for almost exclusively offensive military action, much of which has taken place outside the geographic boundaries defined by the treaty. Whether it be intervention in the former Yugoslavia, the dismemberment of Serbia, intervention in Libya, supporting the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, or sustaining the illegal presence of US forces in Syria, NATO has made itself an unwanted houseguest across the globe.

Truth be told, if it were not for NATO actively seeking to attract both Georgia and Ukraine to its roster, the events of 2008 and 2014 might have unfolded completely differently.

Tony Blinken’s comments about the suitability of Russia as a houseguest are as fact-free as any made by senior international statesmen in modern times. The reality is the US is the unwanted houseguest, habitually overstaying its welcome, sowing chaos, death, and destruction in its path.

Using this analogy, Russia could be seen as the emergency clean-up crew tasked with trying to clean up the mess that accrues in the wake of America’s foreign policy tornado. Tony Blinken and his boss, President Joe Biden, seem to have difficulty focusing on the real consequences of their words and deeds, as their gaze is constantly fixed on an artificial horizon that only they can see.

Unfortunately for Washington, the rest of the world knows the truth, and who is to blame for what. Blinken can continue uttering nonsense about Russia but, from such ignorance, does not sound policy come. This should be a lesson for any nation, especially those in Europe, who are looking to the US for sound guidance and leadership when it comes to solving the world’s problems.

January 13, 2022 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , | 5 Comments

Israeli Aggression on New Year’s Weekend

By Stephen Lendman | January 2, 2022

Any pretext or none at all unjustifiably justifies Israeli aggression against blockaded/defenseless Gazans.

At its discretion, the apartheid state bombs, shells, invades, and otherwise immiserates long-suffering Strip residents.

Despite Israeli state terror repeating with disturbing regularity, the world community yawns and ignores its worst crimes of war and against humanity against Palestinians for the “crime” of not being Jewish.

NGO Gisha supports enforcement of the rule of law and free movement of Palestinians — especially illegally blockaded Gazans, explaining the following:

Since Israel illegally occupied the West Bank and Gaza with intent to steal and develop Palestinian land for exclusive Jewish use, its ruling regimes instituted “a complex system of rules (and) restrictions” in flagrant breach of international law.

Fundamental rights of Palestinians — especially Gazans — are consistently and repeatedly violated.

Israeli regimes deny them “the right to life, the right to access medical care, the right to education, the right to livelihood, the right to family unity and the right to freedom of religion.”

Gisha’s website explains the following:

For nearly 15 years under illegal Jewish state blockade, Gazans suffer from oppressively “high unemployment, long blackouts, and severe shortages of clean water.”

Their basic rights Gazans are denied — with no world community to help reverse what no one should have to tolerate.

“Electricity is only available for about half the day” — on some days for a few hours alone or none at all.

The vast majority of Gazans have no access to clean water.

“More than 70% of Gaza’s population relies on humanitarian aid to meet basic needs.”

“The vast majority of residents do not meet Israel’s (apartheid) criteria for travel permits.”

They have little or no chance to leave the Strip for employment, education, medical care unavailable to them under blockade,

“or to visit or reunite with family members living in Israel, the West Bank, and abroad.”

Israel blocks free land, sea and air movement to or from the Strip.

It “oversees entry of goods into Gaza… demands to know (what) they’re intended for, (who’ll) receive them, and who paid for them.”

Its ruling regimes decide “what goods produced in Gaza can be sold outside the Strip, how much, when and where.”

They also decide how much electricity the Strip is allowed to have — reducing or cutting it off entirely at its discretion.

They repeatedly close “Gaza’s crossings and den(y) access to its sea space as a means of punishing and pressuring the population.”

At all times, Israel enforces severe restrictions on the movement of goods and people.

It “blocks access to opportunities, prevents economic development, and violates basic human rights.”

B’Tselem said Gazans endure made-in-Israel “humanitarian crisis” conditions at all times.

Its ruling regimes “sentenced” two millions Gazans “to a life of abject poverty and… inhuman conditions.”

They control “critical aspects of life” in the blockaded Strip.

“Isolating Gaza from the rest of the world, including separating it from the West Bank,” is part of a longstanding Israeli policy.

What began in the 1990s has grown more oppressive since that time for invented reasons.

Two million Gazans are virtually held captive in the world’s largest open-air prison.

Over 80% of Gazans need humanitarian aid to survive.

Even with what Israel allows into the Strip, nearly two-thirds of its people are food insecure — unsure where their next meal is coming from.

Gazan infrastructure and public services are bare-bones.

Over 95% of Strip water is contaminated and unpotable.

What’s considered normal in Israel and the West is nonexistent in Gaza.

At its discretion for invented reasons, Israel wages war on Gaza.

Any time for any reason or none at all, it terror-bombs, shells, or otherwise strikes Strip targets — including residential buildings, schools, hospitals, mosques, and shops.

Free-fire policy lets IDF soldiers shoot Gazan children, farmers in their fields, and other Strip residents for target practice.

Blockades are acts of war by other means, Law Professor Francis Boyle explained — “because of the(ir) belligerent use of force…”

Gazans pose no threat to Israel.

Blockading the Strip is solely for political reasons, not security ones.

On most issues, Al Jazeera’s reports resemble US/Western propaganda — fake news over the real thing.

All things related to Israeli state terror against Palestinians is an exception to its standard practice on most other issues.

On New Year’s eve, Qatar-based Al Jazeera (AJ) spoke to Gazans injured and disabled from Israeli aggression last May.

“The assault… killed at least 260 people, including 39 women and 67 children, and wounded more than 1,900, according to the health ministry in Gaza,” AJ reported, adding:

“The bombardment also destroyed 1,800 residential units and partially demolished at least 14,300 other units.”

Since that time, the Netanyahu and Bennett regimes blocked entry of many reconstruction materials on the phony pretext of alleging their dual use, including for military purposes (sic).

Israeli aggression last May blinded 7-year-old Mohammed Shaban.

His new year’s wish is to see his mother’s face, he said.

Badly damaged by Israeli terror-bombing last May, his eyes couldn’t be saved and were surgically removed.

“I can’t stop crying whenever I see him,” his mother said, adding:

“He keeps asking his siblings, ‘Why can I only see black darkness? Why can’t I go to my school?’ ”

“Last night, he told me: ‘Mum, I wish I could see your face.’ ”

Recently enrolled in a school for visually challenged children, his mother, Somayya Shaban, expects no positive change in the new year.

“I believe Gaza’s destiny is to face more torture and suffering,” she said.

She wishes her son ,Mohammed, could see again. “I wish I could give him my eyes,” she stressed.

Countless thousands of other Gazans were killed, injured or disabled from multiple Israeli wars and other attacks on the Strip since 2008.

On New Year’s weekend, Israel terror-bombed and shelled Strip targets again.

Its latest aggression came in response to two rockets allegedly fired from the Strip on New Year’s day.

Reportedly, they fell harmlessly into offshore waters, harming no one, doing no damage.

According to an IDF statement, no sirens were sounded for Israelis to take cover.

The Bennett regime’s Iron Dome air defense system wasn’t activated.

In its yearend annual report, Israel said only five rockets were fired from the Strip, injuring no one.

According to the Times of Israel (TOI) on Sunday:

IDF “warplanes and helicopters hit (multiple) Hamas targets” overnight — over virtually nothing, TOI left unexplained.

“Palestinian media first reported airstrikes in the southern part of the Strip shortly before midnight” on Saturday.

“Hamas media claimed ‘resistance fighters’ launched ‘experimental rockets’ toward the sea.”

Gaza’s health ministry said three Palestinians were wounded from strikes on northern Strip targets.

How many others may have been injured or killed is unclear as of early Sunday morning — or the extent of damage to Strip targets.

Life in blockaded Gaza is harsh by any standard.

Israeli inflicted misery on Strip residents followed Hamas’ sweeping January 2006 electoral triumph to become historic Palestine’s legitimate government.

At the dawn of a new year, the message of weekend terror-bombing and shelling of the Strip shows that dirty Israeli business as usual continues unchanged.

Two million Gazans are victimized by apartheid ruthlessness — with no end of it in prospect.

The same goes for all occupied Palestinians.

Largely ignored by the world community, the highest of Israeli high crimes of war and against humanity continue to go unpunished.

The same reality applies to US-dominated NATO’s war on humanity at home and abroad.

January 2, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Vietnam War Mythology

Tales of the American Empire | December 23, 2021

It is difficult to discuss the Vietnam war since most Americans have been misled by myths. These are so common that they appear in documentaries about the war. As a result, many Americans become angry when facts are presented.

__________________________

“The Two Vietnams 1954-65”; Encyclopedia Britannica; https://www.britannica.com/place/Viet…

“The Viet-Nam Demarcation Line is not an international boundary in the traditional sense; rather it is a provisional military demarcation line. As such, it should never be shown on official maps by the standard symbol for an international boundary.” US State Department; September 10, 1962; http://library.law.fsu.edu/Digital-Co…

Related Tale: “The Illusion of South Vietnam”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B9BM…

Related Tale: “The American Retreat from Vietnam”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvMqb…

Related Tale; “Ten Lost Battles of the Vietnam War”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g75i4…

December 28, 2021 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

The NY Times reports US forces ‘killed dozens in Syria.’ The reality is far worse.

By Eva Bartlett | RT | December 15, 2021

Two recent reports by the New York Times highlight some of the US’ manifold crimes in Syria, murdering untold numbers of Syrian civilians over the years, under the pretext of fighting the Islamic State.

They exposed a 2019 US bombing in Baghuz, eastern Syria, which killed 70 civilians, and that this was but one of numerous instances, with the Delta Force routinely launching “reckless airstrikes” while purportedly fighting ISIS.

Stating the obvious: had the wanton and repeated mass murder of civilians been committed by Syria or Russia, it would have been in headlines, ad nauseum… because the legacy media genuinely cares about the Syrian people. But, since the crimes were committed by the US, we’ll neither see outrage nor crocodile tears. In fact, it’s pretty shocking that the New York Times, a noted apologist for American Imperialism which has promoted outright fabrications about Syria over the years, has deigned to report honestly on actual war crimes in the country.

In April 2019, Airwars (and Amnesty International) reported that, “at least 1,600 civilians died in Coalition strikes on the city of Raqqa in 2017 during the battle to evict so-called Islamic State – ten times the number of fatalities so far conceded by the US-led alliance, which had admitted 159 deaths to April 24th.”

It noted that, “most of the destruction during the battle for Raqqa was caused by incoming Coalition air and artillery strikes – with at least 21,000 munitions fired into the city over a four-month period. The United Nations would later declare it the most destroyed city in Syria, with an estimated 70% laid waste.”

Along with reporting from Syria since 2014, I’ve keenly followed news on the subject and, unless my memory betrays me, I don’t recall overwhelming media outrage following this report.

In November, former United Nations Weapons Inspector and former Marine Corps Intelligence Officer, Scott Ritter, wrote: “The Battle of Raqqa became a template for all future anti-ISIS operations involving the SDF and the US going forward. By the time the mopping up operations around Baghuz were conducted, in March 2019, there was in place a seamless killing machine which allowed the US to justify any action so long as it was conducted in support of an SDF unit claiming to be in contact with ISIS.”

The US strikes were apparently meant to be portrayed as “self-defense” protecting US proxies on the ground, a feeble excuse for the slaughter that occurred. Yet, what Syria, with the aid of allies, has been doing the past ten years has literally been self-defense: defending the country against the death squads supported and funded by the West, the Gulf, Turkey and Israel in their war on Syria.

Were such death squads to descend on Western cities, they would almost immediately be eviscerated. This scenario is highly unlikely given that the terrorists are tools of the West, but this illustrates the hypocrisy of the situation: Syria has been doing its utmost to restore security to the nation, via strategic warfare against terrorist factions, as well as reconciliation deals enabling Syrian armed men among the foreign terror groups to lay down their weapons and return to civilian life. Simultaneously, the US, their allies, and the terrorists they support, have wantonly murdered Syrian civilians and wreaked destruction on the country.

Referring to the New York Times reports, RT reported recently that former Pentagon and State Department adviser Larry Lewis, who co-authored a 2018 DoD report on civilian harm based on classified casualty data, said the rate was “10 times that of similar operations he tracked in Afghanistan.’ … and that, when interviewed by the New York Times, Gen. Townsend blamed any civilian casualties on “the misfortunes of war.”

Funny how that works. When Syria is actually fighting terrorism, they are condemned. When the US is fake fighting terrorism and slaughtering civilians, it’s just a “misfortune of war.” 

It should be no surprise to any thinking person that the US has committed untold war crimes in Syria (and many other countries) during its illegal presence in the country. Still, even with ample documentation of these crimes, the US is not held accountable. Completing this unjust scenario, the US and allies have repeatedly hurled unfounded accusations of chemical weapons attacks and Russian war crimes, providing no evidence and generally relying on unnamed sources or the al-Qaeda-affiliated White Helmets.

I wrote about this last year, noting, “A UN-mandated report, which accuses Russia of war crimes in Syria, heavily relies on anonymous sources and lacks evidence, but also smacks of deliberate disinformation that is halting the eradication of terrorism in Idlib.”

Emphasizing that this report was based on testimonies taken in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon or by phone, I noted, “I scoured the 24 pages of the report, but even in the annexes I could find no transparent and credible sources, only the following vague terms repeatedly referred-to: Witnesses, civilians, NGO rescuers, medical teams, first responders, flight spotters, and early warning observers.”

In the relentless propaganda against Syria, and Russia, that report got a lot of traction in regime-change media. The recent reports on US crimes in Syria? Not so much.

Some days ago, the Twitter account @USEmbassySyria tweeted about the US standing firm in its commitment to human rights and the rights of women. A ludicrous tweet given the US’ support for terrorists who quash human rights and imprison and rape women.

It is also worth mentioning that Twitter account represents a non-existent entity: in their push for human rights for Syrians (as they bomb and murder Syrians or starve them with sanctions), the US Embassy in Syria long ceased to exist, as did most embassies involved in the plan to put extremist terrorists in power.

In a world where Israel can daily imprison and slaughter children and other Palestinians, and Saudi Arabia can wage war on Yemen while beheading its own civilians, the crimes of the US (and allies) in Syria are sadly not surprising. Nor are they new. The US has a decades-long history of attempting regime-change in Syria.

But seriously? Syria and Russia are to blame in this upside-down world…?

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).

December 15, 2021 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | 1 Comment

Hamas slams UK’s intention to label it as a ‘terrorist organization’

MEMO | November 19, 2021

The Palestinian Hamas resistance movement, on Friday, decried the British intention to label it as a “terrorist organization”, Anadolu News Agency reports.

In a statement, the group said Britain continues “favouring the (Israeli) aggressor at the expense of the (Palestinian) victims.”

“Resisting the occupation with all possible means, including armed resistance, is a guaranteed right by the international law for the people under occupation,” Hamas statement said.

It added: “The (Israeli) occupation is terrorism. Killing the indigenous people, expelling them by force, demolishing their homes and detaining them are terrorism.”

The statement urged the international community, including Britain, to stop the “double standards and the grave violation of the international law.”

UK Home Secretary, Priti Patel, is expected to outlaw Hamas for “links to terrorism and anti-Semitism against Jewish people.”

Since 2001, the UK has been calling the Hamas armed wing—Ezzeddin Al-Qassam Brigades—a terrorist organization, but did not include the Hamas political bureau within the designation.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, on Twitter welcomed the decision by Britain, claiming: “Hamas is a terrorist organization.”

“I welcome the UK’s intention to declare Hamas a terrorist organization in its entirety because that’s exactly what it is,” he added.

November 19, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , | 6 Comments

Bashar Assad getting accepted by Arab leaders. US and Israel losing their chance

By Robert Inlakesh | RT | November 12, 2021

In a significant move towards normalising Syria’s government, UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed visited Damascus to discuss strengthening the ties between the two nations, sparking outrage from the US and Israel.

A surprise visit to the Syrian capital on Tuesday by Abu Dhabi’s foreign minister sparked condemnation from the United States, which seeks to encourage its Arab State allies to steer clear of President Assad. According to State Department spokesperson Ned Price, the US urges “states in the region to carefully consider the atrocities that this regime, that Bashar al-Assad himself has perpetrated on the Syrian people over the last decade, as well as the regime’s ongoing efforts to deny much of the country access to humanitarian aid and security.” That seems to have fallen on deaf ears over in Abu Dhabi.

However, despite the Biden administration having voiced its opposition to Assad’s government, behind the scenes, it may actually be working to create a temporary amendment to its 2019 “Caesar Act” sanctions, the mechanism it is speculated the US may implement to protect the likes of neighbouring Jordan. This would involve Amman liaising with the Syrian government to allow Egypt to send oil through to struggling Lebanon. Back in September, Jordanian, Egyptian and Lebanese representatives even met to discuss the logistics of managing such a transfer of oil, so as to provide Lebanon with the means to generate electricity.

Publicly, it seems the UAE – which reopened its embassy in Damascus three years ago – is leading the push to have Syria reinstated into the Arab League and enhance cooperation between the two. But, for Abu Dhabi, the so-called ‘brotherly’ nature of their relationship comes with strings attached. From an Emirati perspective, the relationship between the Syrian government and the UAE is threefold: first, Abu Dhabi sees Syria as a potential partner in the fight against the Muslim Brotherhood; second, it sees an opportunity to work towards facilitating the cooperation between Egypt and Jordan on the potential oil transfer to Lebanon; and last, it seeks to bring Syria closer to the Arab reactionary regimes and distance it from Iran. Both Egypt and Jordan have also taken strides to normalise relations with Damascus: in October, Jordan’s King Abdullah II participated in a phone call with President Assad and, on Tuesday, Egypt’s foreign minister made it clear he was open to the idea of Syria re-entering the Arab League.

Prior to the war in 2011, the Syrian government had embraced neo-liberal economics, but in terms of its foreign policy, it has always maintained a nationalist agenda. When the war in Syria began, the UAE jumped on the bandwagon of conspiring against Assad and financed armed groups to overthrow him. In and of itself, this makes it clear that Abu Dhabi is not acting in the interests of regular Syrians. It is easy to foresee the Syrian government developing its relationship with the UAE in order to strengthen its position in the region and secure investments to rebuild its war-torn nation in the future.

From a realist point of view, however, the decision-makers in the Emirates see that Assad is not going anywhere. They are seeking to combat Islamist forces regionally, so why not try to influence a nationalist nation while working alongside it to weaken the Muslim Brotherhood and erase Iran’s footprint in the country?

Given Turkey may imminently open up another offensive into northeastern Syria to combat the Kurds in areas controlled by the US and Kurdish SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces), the Emirati foreign minister may well have wished to discuss this issue during his visit to Damascus. Turkey, which currently controls two pockets in Syria’s north through its Syrian National Army mercenary militia, is aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. To the UAE, Turkey and Qatar are its biggest regional rivals.

But Washington, which is surely well aware of the policy positions its Middle Eastern allies are taking on Syria, continues to not only economically restrain Damascus, but also occupies roughly a third of Syrian territory with its proxy forces. The US currently presides over 90% of that nation’s oil resources and is even looting its most fertile agricultural lands, which those Syrians who are suffering under an economic crisis are unable to access. The US not only blocks progress and has extirpated attempts to rebuild the country, but adopts a militaristic approach and views itself as maintaining the right to remain there, despite not having acquired any congressional approval to be operating in Syria.

The main role of the US occupation of Syrian lands, through its Kurdish proxy forces in northeastern Syria and its mercenary forces in the al-Tanf region of south Syria, is to combat Tehran. Until significant Iranian influence is cleared out of the land, they will not leave of their own free will.

Then we have Israel, which will also not leave the Syrian lands it illegally occupies unless it is forced out in a war between the two nations. In tandem with Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) terrorists who have crawled out from their caves and suddenly received anti-tank munitions and a spike in their numbers, Israel has picked up its attacks against Syria. In fact, it has carried out at least five in Syria over the past month, killing soldiers and assassinating an ex-member of parliament. Israel is also seeking to quadruple its settler population in the Golan Heights, with Israeli PM Naftali Bennett having announced new construction plans just last month. It’s clear that Israel is seeking to provoke a reaction from Damascus and test how far it can cross the line before drawing defensive fire.

Instead of the Syrian Arab Army responding to US and Israeli aggression, independent groups that align with Iran have been at the forefront of combating Tel Aviv and Washington. The reality is that Syria is so embroiled in this hostile situation between different foreign powers attempting to extract different things from it that it is difficult to tell where the government is currently headed, and whether it will continue to follow a nationalist path or eventually adopt a more business-minded rather than ideologically driven approach. Ultimately, it seems the UAE will play a limited role in Syria for now, but only time will tell who gets the better of the other in this ever-expanding relationship.

Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News and Press TV. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’.

November 13, 2021 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | 9 Comments

Russia: Syria held back fire as Israel used civilian aircraft as cover in Homs raid

Press TV – October 15, 2021

Israel has once again used civilian aircraft as a shield against Syrian air defense systems during its attacks on the Arab country, says a Russian general.

“On October 13, from 23:35 to 23:39, four F-16 tactical fighters of the Israeli Air Force entered Syrian airspace in the US-occupied al-Tanf zone in Homs Province and struck a phosphate ore processing plant in the Palmyra region,” Rear Admiral Vadim Kulit, deputy head of the Russian Center for the Reconciliation of Warring Parties in Syria, said at a briefing.

Kulit said the Syrian military, however, decided not to target the Israeli jets that carried out the strike in central Syria because there were two civilian airliners in the sky at the time.

“The Syrian military leadership decided not to use air defense systems, since at the time of the Israeli aviation attack, two civilian passenger aircraft were in the zone of destruction of the anti-aircraft systems,” Kulit said, Sputnik news reported.

The Syrian Defense Ministry announced earlier that the Wednesday attack killed one soldier and injured three others.

Israel has repeatedly used civilian aircraft as a shield against Syrian air defense systems in its aggression against the Arab country.

In February, an Airbus A320 with 172 passengers on board was forced to make an emergency landing at the Russian-operated Hmeimim Air Base during an Israeli attack.

Back in 2018, Israel had to apologize for using a Russian Il-20 reconnaissance aircraft as a shield during an attack, causing a Syrian S-200 surface-to-air missile to shoot down the Russian aircraft instead and kill 15 Russian and two Syrian service members.

Israel’s Wednesday attack came just days after Syria’s air defenses thwarted an Israeli missile attack on a military air base, known as T-4, in Homs, shooting down most of the incoming projectiles.

That aerial assault had been initiated from the direction of the al-Tanf area as well, with Syrian official news agency SANA reporting that it wounded six soldiers and resulted in some material losses.

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. The Syrian government says the Israeli regime and its Western and regional allies are aiding Takfiri terrorist groups.

Israel frequently targets the positions of the Syrian military and its allies, who are fighting against the foreign-backed terrorists wreaking havoc in the Arab country.

October 15, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , , | 3 Comments

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