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US diplomats told to avoid calls for Gaza ‘ceasefire’

RT | October 14, 2023

The US State Department has advised diplomats to avoid calling for “de-escalation” or a “ceasefire” in Gaza amid continued fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants, multiple media outlets have reported. US officials have voiced loud support for the Jewish state’s right to “self-defense” in the wake of a deadly Hamas raid last week.

In an email addressed to a small group of officials on Friday, the State Department said US press materials should steer clear of phrases such as “restoring calm,” “end to violence/bloodshed,” or “de-escalation/ceasefire,” unnamed administration officials told NBC News and other outlets.

The Huffington Post, which obtained a copy of the email, called the missive a “stunning signal” and an indication of the White House’s “reluctance to push for Israeli restraint.” The email was sent amid a new round of airstrikes on Gaza in response to a Hamas-led terrorist attack last Saturday.

Asked about the directive, an unnamed State Department official told HuffPo that they would not comment on internal communications.

Despite the discussions behind the scenes, at a press event in Qatar later on Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that Washington had stressed to Israel the “importance of taking every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians” in Gaza. He added, “We recognize that many Palestinian families in Gaza are suffering through no fault of their own and that Palestinian civilians have lost their lives.”

President Joe Biden described last weekend’s Hamas attack as “pure evil” and insisted that Israel has the right to respond. However, in recent remarks, he claimed that Washington and its allies “uphold the laws of war,” and reportedly asked his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza during private discussions, according to NBC.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin relayed a similar message to IDF officials during meetings in Israel on Friday, the outlet added, noting that he urged them to “observe international rules of warfare.”

Since last Saturday, at least 1,300 Israelis and nearly 1,900 Palestinians have been killed in hostilities, with thousands more injured on both sides, according to local officials. IDF bombing raids have continued into Saturday morning, leveling whole apartment blocks in some strikes, while Israeli ground troops have begun their initial thrust into Gaza.

The Israeli government has ordered more than 1 million residents in northern Gaza to evacuate the area for their own safety, though the United Nations and other rights groups have slammed the directive, saying it would be impossible to accomplish without a massive humanitarian toll. Asked about the policy on Friday, White House spokesman John Kirby declined to endorse or condemn it, merely calling it “a tall order.”

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Putin compares ‘unacceptable’ Gaza blockade to Nazi siege of Leningrad

Press TV – October 13, 2023

Russian President Vladimir Putin has denounced Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip as “unacceptable,” comparing it to the Nazi blockade of Leningrad during World War II.

Israel is now about to do something that is “comparable to the siege of Leningrad during the Great Patriotic War,” Putin told journalists in Kyrgyzstan on Friday. “In my opinion, this is unacceptable.”

Putin also warned the regime against hurting civilians in Gaza, stressing that “hardly anyone will agree” with Israel’s siege of Gaza due to the civilian casualties incurred in it.

“By the way, all of us hear – we will discuss this informally – we hear about preparations for a ground operation in Gaza. But you and I understand how it is, quite semi-professionally speaking, the use of heavy equipment in residential areas is a complicated matter fraught with serious consequences for all sides. And it is even more difficult to carry out these operations without equipment in residential areas. But the most important thing is that civilian casualties will be absolutely unacceptable,” he said.

“More than two million people live there, and not all of them support Hamas, by the way,” the Russian leader said.

“We proceed from the fact that there is no alternative to a negotiated solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Their goal should be the realization of the UN two-state formula, which envisages the creation of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, existing in peace and security with Israel,” he said.

He also said Israel has responded to Hamas operation with “quite brutal methods.”

Israel has been constantly bombing Gaza since Saturday, when Hamas launched a surprise operation in response to the regime’s atrocities.

Israel used banned white phosphorus munitions against desperate people in Gaza, a human rights monitor said.

The Health Ministry in Gaza announced on Friday that at least 1,799 Palestinians, including 583 children, and 351 women have been martyred so far. More than 7,000 Palestinians have also been wounded in the bombardment.

Hundreds of thousands of Gazans have also been displaced as a result of the regime’s relentless and indiscriminate attacks.

At least 423,000 people have now been forced to flee their homes in the Gaza Strip, the United Nations said.

The coastal territory remains under Israel’s complete siege with no access to electricity, water, food, and medicines.

Various governments have warned over Israel’s indiscriminate bombings targeting Gaza, where 2.3 million Palestinians are trapped in what is described as the world’s biggest open-air prison.

Iran has called for global action to halt attacks by the apartheid regime against Gazans and prevent a genocide of innocent people there.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday Israel is committing a massacre in the besieged strip. Erdogan said Israel is trying to portray its bombing civilians as proof of its skills.

China’s envoy to the Middle East Zhai Jun called for “an immediate ceasefire” to the conflict during a phone call with a Palestinian official, the Chinese foreign ministry said Wednesday.

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Weaponizing Salt Water: An American Tradition

Deprivation and Destruction in the Spirit of ‘73

BY N. JOSEPH POTTS • UNZ REVIEW • OCTOBER 12, 2023

It all ends up in salt water. The tea in 1773 Boston’s harbor, the Russian natural gas in 2022’s Baltic Sea. Of course, the tea would have drifted away and eventually sunk, while the gas bubbled to the surface and from there dissipated into the atmosphere, but either way, nobody got to buy, much less drink, the East India Company’s tea, and nobody in Europe got to buy or burn Russia’s gas, which was the American perpetrators’ purpose—in a word, deprivation.

Both times, and many of the times in between, the Americans either flew a false flag (“Mohawk Indians” in Boston) or were totally concealed underwater (the Baltic), emerging first to let Russia to take the rap for destroying its own pipeline, then to foment a rumor about a gang of incredibly intrepid Ukrainians on a sailing yacht. The East India Company was going to distribute (sell) the duty-free or -privileged tea to thirsty Bostoners, while Russia’s Gazprom proposed to sell natural gas cheaply to cold, energy-hungry Germans. The fact that 1773’s gangsters (Benjamin Franklin deplored their act) destroyed the actual goods while the US Navy’s unseen marauders destroyed the means of delivery does not change the character of the deeds, nor does the fact that the victims in Boston included the perpetrators’ own countrymen and the victims in Germany were foreign allies conquered by the USA over 70 years ago.

In both cases, the American perpetrators stood ready to “make good” their victims’ losses—at higher prices, to be sure, and certainly in 2022’s case in insufficient quantity. That is, the 1773 hooligans were professional smugglers of tea and other goods subject to duties levied by the British government on imports, and the infusion of “government tea” wrecked the market for their illicit goods, inspiring the famous raid in the first place—pretty much a turf war, viewed in its essence. That disruption would surely have petered out as the shipment of tea was exhausted, but the patriots were never a patient lot, as oppressed populaces sometimes are not (and other times such as the present apparently, are). The 2022 caper, on the other hand, promised to have far-more-nearly permanent effects on its hapless European victims, despite the rapid diversion of gas supplies from America via tankers loaded with liquified natural gas (LNG) in quantities far too small to make up for the destroyed pipelines’ capacity, never mind the higher costs that have to be borne by the sacrificial lambs of America’s brutal, covert foreign policy.

And speaking of prices, the draining of America’s supplies of natural gas to fill the tankers bound for Germany, however inadequate to make up for what the Russians would have delivered if only they were allowed to, cannot but drive up the prices paid for what is left by … Americans, the benighted dupes of their very own clandestine, vicious government. If they only knew these undeniable, practically obvious facts, it surely would warm the cockles of their ever-patriotic hearts as we head into the second of many, many winters made colder and more-costly by the greatest destruction of energy infrastructure so far this century. And they think the tea-bearing British of the Eighteenth Century were tyrannical brutes!

Depriving other countries of critical imports of energy as well as other resources has long been a staple of the American playbook of aggression and an immediate cause of war, including the one pitting Japan against the US and the British Empire that began in 1941. In this instance, the US at least operated in the open, teaming up with the UK, China and the Netherlands to deprive Japan of 80 percent of its petroleum consumption in the nefarious ABCD (American, British, Chinese, and Dutch) Pact. Since the Japanese attack on the US Fleet at anchor in Hawaii in 1941, Americans in particular have remained little aware that Japan attacked the colonial holdings of both Britain and Holland in Malaya and the East Indies at the very same moment, although the date in those places at the same instant was December 8, 1941 instead of the infamous December 7 date of Pearl Harbor. The role of the Pact in triggering Japanese military actions would seem obvious in the light of this fact.

Perhaps the most-wanton American act of spiteful destruction took place on the Pacific island of Espiritu Santo in the aftermath of World War II and, as in the Nord Stream case, made a European ally (France) its victim. Its scale dwarfed that of the Boston Tea Party, but still had nothing approaching the impact of destroying the Nord Stream Pipeline, which already after the mild winter of 2022-2023 is credited with having led to 68,000 excess deaths in Europe.

In 1947, the US Navy was preparing to pull out of its huge base on Espiritu Santo, which at that time was brimming over with supplies and equipment costing untold millions of (big, 1947) dollars staged for the invasion of Japan two years earlier that had never transpired. Having decided not to ship all this matériel back to the US, the Americans invited France (the colonial overlord of the island) to pay 6 cents on the dollar of its cost in order to inherit the massive trove. Noting that the US was indeed “stuck” with a great deal of material that it would be difficult and uneconomical to move, the French cannily chose to decline this seemingly generous offer.

The French had correctly figured that the US would be abandoning the haul in any case, so why pay anything at all for it? But the French had forgotten about the American tradition that began in Boston Harbor in 1773 involving the deliberate destruction of goods by immersion in salt water, plenty of which happened to surround Espiritu Santo. True to their tradition, the spurned Americans built a long jetty out from the island to nearby deep water, and drove, dragged and rolled hundreds of trucks, tractors and even tanks out to the end of the jetty along with thousands of cases of Coca Cola (1947’s equivalent of tea), bale upon bale of brand-new clothing and countless other treasures, and deep-sixed it all, creating an underwater junkyard that draws SCUBA-diving tourists to the island to this day, to a destination since named “Million-Dollar Point.” For good measure, the ungenerous Americans even blew up the jetty after they had completed their exercise in wanton destruction. At least, uniquely in this case, the Americans actually owned what they destroyed. And they performed their misdeed very much in the public eye, for all to see.

Doing this sort of thing after a major war might be dismissed as merely a materialistic tantrum little worse than that of the piqued child who gathers up his marbles and runs off home.

But doing this sort of thing before a major war could incline the thoughtful observer to see cause and effect.

This is much more serious than marbles. America could greatly improve the lot of humanity by desisting from such behavior. If it isn’t already too late.

October 13, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Yes, Treating COVID Patients With Hydroxychloroquine Can Save Lives

By Angelo DePalma, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 11, 2023

Hospitalized COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) alone, or HCQ plus the antibiotic azithromycin, had significantly lower mortality than those not receiving the drugs, according to a study released this month in New Microbes and New Infections.

Researchers in Belgium report that just 16.7% of COVID-19 patients given HCQ, with or without azithromycin, died within 28 days compared to 25.9% among those not taking HCQ — a 35% lower mortality.

After adjusting for age differences, the risk of death was still 24% lower for HCQ-treated hospitalized patients.

The survival benefit was seen across all ages and was statistically significant.

The results support the efficacy of HCQ and azithromycin in improving outcomes for hospitalized COVID-19 patients. This contrasts with earlier studies using dangerously high HCQ doses that found no benefits.

Who participated in the study?

Led by Dr. Gert Meeus, a nephrologist at AZ Groeninge Hospital, Kortrijk, Belgium, researchers collected data from March 16 to May 20, 2020 — the first few months of the pandemic.

They compared outcomes for 352 COVID-19-positive, HCQ-treated adults hospitalized at AZ Groeninge Hospital with those of 3,533 patients across Belgium who did not receive the drug.

Treated patients averaged 69.7 years versus 73.1 years for the control group. While this age difference favors the younger subjects who face less risk from the virus, this factor was more than offset by the treatment group’s higher incidence of high blood pressure, diabetes, liver and lung diseases, and weakened immunity.

Treated subjects were also more obese — a COVID-19 risk factor — with lower blood oxygen (suggesting severe illness) and higher C-reactive protein levels. C-reactive protein is a blood marker for inflammation and poor COVID-19 outcomes.

During the 28 days following initial treatment, 16.7% of patients who received HCQ, either alone or with azithromycin, died compared with 25.9% in the control group.

How was HCQ administered?

For the study, 299 patients (85%) received HCQ plus azithromycin versus 53 who took HCQ alone. Researchers only prescribed the antibiotic when they suspected bacterial pneumonia. Data for HCQ alone and HCQ plus azithromycin were combined.

Subjects received HCQ as two 400-milligram doses on day one and two 200-milligram doses on days two through five.

Patients younger than 75 years received 500 milligrams of azithromycin for five days. Older patients took 500 milligrams on day 1 and 250 milligrams per day for four days.

88% of patients received the full treatment course but 12% took the drugs for less time, at the caregiver’s discretion, due to side effects or reaching a terminal condition.

Otherwise, side effects observed in 197 patients were mild and mostly stomach issues. One patient had hallucinations and two developed a skin rash.

Thirteen patients dropped out of the study due to side effects, including 4 of 15 who developed heart muscle abnormalities — despite an earlier study reporting an association between HCQ and lower cardiovascular risk.

Nine patients dropped out because of digestive upset. One patient developed an abnormal but nonfatal post-study heart rhythm, but no treated patients experienced sudden death or irregular heartbeat during the study.

How the drugs work

HCQ and azithromycin work together to eliminate the COVID-19 virus, but the drugs may benefit patients in other ways.

Both drugs act on the immune system in ways that may suppress the COVID-19 cytokine storm responsible for much of COVID-19-related illness and death.

HCQ may also prevent blood clots in COVID-19 patients, while azithromycin may prevent additional, non-lung bacterial infections.

HCQ was approved in the U.S. in 1955 to treat malaria, but because of its anti-inflammatory effects it is also prescribed to adults to treat autoimmune diseases like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

Most serious side effects — including retinopathy, which causes blindness — occur after years of use, while COVID-19 treatments generally last for less than one week.

The World Health Organization lists HCQ as an “essential medicine” based on its “safety, efficacy and public health relevance.”

Study strengths and weaknesses

Meeus designed his study and interpreted his findings to include results that may not have supported the “safety and efficacy” of HCQ.

For example, all patients receiving at least one dose of HCQ were included in the treatment group regardless of whether they completed the study. One dose of HCQ was unlikely to affect their survival, but including such patients would have increased mortality numbers in the treatment group, thereby underestimating HCQ survival benefits.

Excluding very sick patients in a survival study tends to make data appear stronger because fewer deaths invariably occur among healthier subjects. Meeus and coworkers did not do this.

Meeus’ results also likely underestimated the benefits of HCQ treatment by reviewing patients only after hospitalization, when they were already quite sick. COVID-19 treatment experts stress the importance of treatment before patients reach this stage.

This retrospective study associated a current outcome (death) with an earlier effect (receiving HCQ). Retrospective studies are less capable of establishing causation than prospective studies that first look at the intervention or cause and only later for effects.

Another potential study shortcoming involves the statistics investigators chose to report HCQ’s benefits. A reduction in deaths from 25.9% to 16.7% is a 36.5% decrease, but the effect is smaller when survival, not death, is the outcome measured.

Death rates of 25.9% and 16.7% mean that 83.3% of treated and 74.1% of untreated patients survived, for an overall survival benefit under 10%.

Reporting relatively large differences between two small numbers is a common strategy for amplifying modest clinical benefits.

Meeus did not account for the many observational studies carried out by such doctors as Didier Raoult, Vladimir Zelenko, Pierre Kory, Peter McCullough and others using HCQ with azithromycin and/or zinc to treat COVID-19 beginning in 2020 — some with very large practices — all demonstrating significant benefits with early treatment.

He also did not review early treatment randomized control trials or the many other studies showing clear benefits of HCQ treatment.

Conclusion: ‘remarkable’ results

The authors described their results as “remarkable” since large HCQ studies during the first pandemic year showed no benefit.

However, where Meeus and co-workers used HCQ at standard doses, the earlier trials used a fourfold higher total dose, including an initial dose seven times higher than the maximum approved dosage.

For example the WHO “Solidarity” and U.K. “Recovery” clinical trials used HCQ dosages that were considered fatal.

According to Meeus, other studies (see here, here, and here) using more reasonable HCQ dosing failed because they did not recruit enough subjects to show a statistically significant effect.

One of these studies found a 44% reduction in death at 28 days but included too few patients to be able to claim an HCQ benefit.

Percentage of patients who died in the HCQ group (white bars) vs. the no-HCQ group (black bars) by age group. A survival benefit was seen in all age groups. While about 2.5% of untreated 31- to 44-year-olds died during the study, no treated patients in this age group died. Credit: Gert Meeus et al.

Meeus concluded:

“Our study suggests that, despite the controversy surrounding its use, treatment with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin remains a viable option. The favorable results and reassuring safety data support the need for adequately powered confirmatory randomized controlled trials using low dose hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin.

“Given the pandemic emergency it is reasonable to give this treatment the benefit of the doubt pending the results of these trials or the advent of better treatment options.”

Angelo DePalma, Ph.D., is a science reporter/editor for The Defender.

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.

October 12, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Palestinians have faced ‘unprecedented levels’ of Zionist terrorism for decades

Palestinians mourn after 8 members of Shamlah family killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City, Gaza on 9 October 2023 [Mustafa Hassona – Anadolu Agency]
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | October 12, 2023

The White House National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby told the Times of Israel this week that, “Our focus right now is making sure that they [Israel] have the tools they need to defend themselves against this truly historic, unprecedented level of violence against their people.” The statement conveniently obliterates the fact that the US guarantees Israel a qualitative military edge which secures the occupation state’s military power in the region, the preservation of which it is scrambling to ensure, in the context of the Abraham Accords.

What else does Israel need, then? What the settler-colonial entity unleashed in Gaza has nothing to do with the protection of its illegal settler population. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration of war, and what followed next, including the spread of misinformation and lies, was reminiscent of the “war on terror” narrative post 9/11, which was used to justify foreign intervention. Only, there is no war; it’s just yet another display of Israel’s colonial power and violence that traces its roots back to the then “unprecedented level of violence” that Palestinians experienced at the hands of Zionist paramilitary terrorists during the 1948 Nakba.

Who supported or even mentioned the Palestinians’ right to defend themselves back in 1948? No one. Palestine was ethnically cleansed, the major part of its population replaced by settler-colonialists, and all the UN could come up with was a very flawed right of return that placed all the burden of hypothetical coexistence on the Palestinian people. The colonialists became “neighbours”, and Israel was accepted as a full UN member state in 1949 largely due to the fact that some of the major 1948 Nakba atrocities happened before the state was established. Which means that the UN decided to ignore the establishment of Israel as a violent, settler-colonial entity founded on terrorism.

Under the guise of a state, and in line with what other colonial powers did to their former colonies, Israel’s impunity was guaranteed.

When the US and Israel comment on “unprecedented levels of violence”, therefore, we should revert to history. And if Israel wishes to play the card that it wasn’t established at the time of the Tantura massacre, for example, or Deir Yassin, one can always refer to the Kafr Qasem massacre in 1956, which was approved by the Israeli government and took place on the same day as the tripartite — Israel, France and the UK — attack on the Suez Canal. And Lydda. And Saliha. And Safsaf. And Jish. And Al-Dawayima. And Khan Yunis. And, and, and; all the way to Sabra and Shatila, Hebron and Jenin. And Gaza, of course.

Each of these examples draws attention to the annihilation of the Palestinian people in their own towns and villages. The international community stayed silent in years gone by, and has maintained its silence every time Gaza has been bombed by Israel.

Now, when Netanyahu declares war and a total siege on the entire Palestinian population in Gaza, the international community dares not speak of war crimes. Instead, it promotes Israel’s security and self-defence narrative, which plays into the terror narrative that the US and Israel are spreading. However, it is the Palestinian people who face Zionist terror and colonial violence, and have done for decades; “unprecedented levels of violence” for a population that was coerced into territorial appropriation, population elimination and replacement; which continues to face displacement, massacres and mass graves. Why else does Israel refuse to open the state’s Nakba archives completely for fear of the corroboration between Palestinian narratives of the Nakba and the atrocities that the Israeli government wants to keep hidden from sight?

From the Zionist paramilitary terrorists, to the colonial establishment and continuity of Israel, it is the Palestinians that have faced unprecedented levels of terrorism. Anyone who stands with Israel, therefore, is complicit, not only in terrorism, but also in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

October 12, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Biden, US politicians greenlighting ‘potential genocide’ of Palestinians: Analysts

The ruins of houses destroyed in Israeli strikes in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Tuesday, October 10, 2023.
Press TV – October 12, 2023

Political analysts have warned that US President Joe Biden’s unflinching backing of Israeli aggression against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip could give the Tel Aviv regime the greenlight to commit mass atrocities and genocide against the people of Palestine.

And while the US has always supported Israel in previous incursions and attacks on Palestinians, a number of concerned experts say this time is completely different.

“What’s different now is that the president and Congress have provided the greenest of possible green lights to enable Israel to do anything that it wants to do up to and including genocide,” Josh Ruebner, a political analyst, told Middle East Eye on Thursday.

“Make no mistake about it, by providing 100 percent backing for any action that Israel takes in the Gaza Strip, President Biden is complicit in Israel’s commission of war crimes, and potentially much, much worse,” said Ruebner, who is also the author of Shattered Hopes: Obama’s Failure to Broker Israeli-Palestinian Peace.

“As of this point, I do not believe that President Biden will stop Israel at any point,” Ruebner added.

“It’s unclear how long this green light will last. It’s unclear to what extent mass murder would need to be committed by Israel before it’s reined in by the United States,” he said.

In his public address on Tuesday, Biden described the actions of Hamas, the Palestinian resistance group against the Israeli regime, as “sheer evil,” and said that the US stands behind Israel and will provide it whatever it needs to attack Gaza.

“We will make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of its citizens, defend itself, and respond to this attack,” Biden said. “Let there be no doubt. The United States has Israel’s back. We’ll make sure the Jewish and democratic state of Israel can defend itself today, tomorrow, as we always have.”

No mention of concern for Palestinians

Yet none of Israel’s actions against the civilian population of Gaza received a mention in Biden’s speech on Tuesday.

“Biden’s address to the nation, was horrifying in that he didn’t express one iota of concern for the loss of Palestinian civilian life, the war crimes that are being committed currently by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip, and the widescale incitement to genocide that we’ve heard in recent days from Israeli political and military leaders,” Ruebner said.

Instead, Biden said with confidence that “we uphold the law of war.”

However, experts said the US and Israel both have an extensive history of violating international humanitarian law and the laws of war.

“The United States has been the most fervent violator of the laws of war and international law in general on a global scale ever since it played a leading role in establishing the so-called ‘rules-based’ international order during the post-WWII years,” Kenney-Shawa said.

“I want to be clear with my words right now. It’s rich that the US would claim to abide by the laws of war. Anyone who still believes that the US would uphold the laws of war or respect the international laws it wrote is deluding themselves.”

“In the past, the US may have been counted on to go through the motions of parroting the usual de-escalatory talking points, like calling for ‘both sides’ to avoid civilian casualties or for Israel to exercise a modicum of restraint,” said Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a US policy fellow for al-Shabaka think tank.

“But today, Biden and the rest of the American political establishment are fervently united in giving Israel carte blanche to completely devastate Gaza.”

Ahmad Abuznaid, executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, said that rather than calling for a ceasefire and end to the hostilities, the US is “cheerleading” the latest Israeli assault.

“The Israeli forces are murdering entire families in Gaza while supplying arms to their violent settlers in the West Bank to carry out attacks. The situation in Gaza was already devastating and again the people of Gaza are facing attacks from the most powerful military force in the region, with no Iron Dome, no military, and no US government valuing their lives,” Abuznaid said.

Israel fighting religious war, hellbent on exterminating Palestinians

US Senator Lindsey Graham has said clearly and unequivocally in an interview aired on right-wing channel Fox News that “we are fighting a religious war, and I am on Israel’s side”.

Graham’s message to Israel was: “Do whatever it takes. Raze this place to the ground.”

And nearly 400 members of US Congress signed a measure introduced on Tuesday, in which it condemned the Hamas resistance group for its attack on Israel and gave complete support for Israel’s right to defend itself.

“Lawmakers on the left and on the right, from Lindsey Graham to Ritchie Torres, are using this opportunity to viciously demonize Palestinians in order to drum up anti-Palestinian hatred that will give Israel cover to commit unspeakable crimes right in front of our eyes,” said Kenney-Shawa.

“Israel is hellbent on exterminating Palestinians in Gaza, and it knows no one will get in between them and what they see as their divine objective.”

Deadly Israeli bombing campaign

Israeli air strikes have so far targeted hospitals, mosques, and residential buildings across Gaza. Entire families have been wiped out by the bombing campaign.

The Israeli violence has also once again made its way into the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces have killed 28 Palestinians.

So far, in addition to about 1,500 Palestinians that have been killed, at least 6,268 have been injured. It is unclear how many buildings have been razed, as the number continues to rise by the hour.

Israel has imposed a full siege on the already blockaded enclave, cutting off electricity and water and also refusing requests to allow the entry of food and medical supplies. It also threatened to bomb aid trucks trying to enter from the Egyptian border with Gaza.

The UN Refugee Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) said on Tuesday that it has about 12 days of supplies of food and water for the nearly 200,000 people taking shelter in its school buildings. While a blockade is not necessarily a war crime, the intentional starvation of a civilian population as a war tactic is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

In previous Israeli incursions on Palestinians, the US had called for Israel to use restraint. However, in the past few days, there have been no such calls coming from Washington, at least in public.

The attack on Israel from Hamas and Palestinian resistance groups has been dubbed by Israelis as their own 9/11.

The rhetoric around it has caused even more concern about the fallout for Palestinian civilians, as well as Palestinians across the Western diaspora, as Western governments have begun using the rhetoric aimed at cracking down on pro-Palestinian sentiment by equating it with support for Hamas.

“The mass attack on Israeli civilians on Saturday was not only unprecedented in its scope, in terms of Israeli civilians being impacted by Palestinian attacks. That’s obvious. What hasn’t been discussed so much yet, is that what Hamas did on Saturday is the deepest, darkest fear of every settler colonial society,” Ruebner said.

He added that in looking throughout history, settler-colonial states have often responded in “an overwhelming perhaps eliminatory response.”

“And I gravely fear that Israel’s response will pale in comparison to anything that it has inflicted on innocent Palestinians up to this point, including 1948. That’s how dire I think the situation is.”

The Israeli regime launched its onslaught on Saturday after Gaza-based resistance groups carried out a multi-front operation in response to Israeli crimes.

According to media, the Hamas operation has left 1,200 Israelis dead and nearly 3,000 others injured.

UN Chief Antonio Guterres has already expressed concern over the situation in Gaza, saying the clashes will deteriorate the situation exponentially. He said he was “deeply distressed” by an announcement that Israel will initiate a complete siege of Gaza.

October 12, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Biden Invokes Mystery Evil to Cover Up U.S. Criminal Responsibility

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 12, 2023

In a nationwide televised address, U.S. President Joe Biden did his best to sound righteous and angered by the eruption of violence in the Middle East.

“There are moments in this life − I mean this literally − when pure unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world,” Biden intoned with phony gravitas. “The people of Israel lived through one such moment this weekend.”

This American duplicity is nauseating. Slurring his words, Biden has no idea what he is talking about or how culpable he and his nation are in the violence.

Then we have White House spokesman John Kirby breaking down and crying on live TV, overcome with emotion about Israeli deaths. Meanwhile, this same person advocates pumping arms into Ukraine, killing hundreds of thousands of people, without a tear shed for those deaths.

This American disconnect is equally nauseating.

Biden promised the immediate supply of advanced weapons to Israel to defend itself against Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, even while hundreds of Palestinian civilians are being slaughtered in revenge by the Israeli military in Gaza.

A U.S. aircraft carrier, missile destroyers and squadrons of fighter jets are also being deployed to the region, in the words of Washington, “deter” any wider violence.

How sickening is this knee-jerk recourse to more militarism and inevitably more violence?

Biden’s invocation of a mysterious “pure evil” to account for the surge in deadly violence may sound righteous and indignant, but the truth is the appalling destruction of life and ongoing war is the result of something more mundane and deliberate – the failure of criminal U.S. policy.

As a long-time Senator, as well as two-time U.S. Vice President and for the past three years incumbent President, Joe Biden must take a sizable share of the blame for this systematic failure and the concomitant bloodshed.

First of all, there is the abject failure of the so-called Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Decades of neglect and indifference from Washington towards the rights of Palestinians for statehood have created a dead-end that has exploded in violence. Furthermore, successive American administrations have relentlessly and unconscionably green-lighted the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and despicable oppression. Biden has been a particularly slavish booster for Israel’s apartheid regime, saying previously on several occasions in his smart-ass cloying way that if “Israel didn’t exist then the United States would have to have invented it”.

Washington’s cynical pretence of being a neutral peace broker between Israel and Palestinians has served to prolong the historic injustice that makes violence a recurring cycle. Western media have highlighted the deaths of over 1,000 Israelis during the past week while many more Palestinian victims over the years hardly register any coverage. That hypocritical double standard is fomented by U.S. policy.

The chronic diseased state of the Middle East, with its toxic tensions and seething conflicts largely stems from the deliberate failure of U.S. policy.

Added to this are the countless illegal wars and proxy interventions sponsored by Washington, including the covert manipulation of terror groups like Islamic State (ISIS, Daesh) for regime-change objectives.

The rampant militarism and arms dealing that underpin U.S. foreign policy and its hegemonic ambitions are further fuel for the maelstrom of violence.

The devastating attacks launched by Hamas against Israel have apparently been enabled by the acquisition of American weaponry from stockpiles abandoned in Afghanistan.

Two decades of illegal occupation in Afghanistan were brought to a chaotic end by President Biden in 2021 when he hurriedly pulled U.S. troops out, finally realizing that the endless war was a lost cause.

America’s imperialist warmongering all over the planet leaves a trail of weapons and black market vice.

Ukraine is the latest U.S. killing field along with NATO allies who have pumped that country with up to $100 billion worth of weapons in a proxy war against Russia (cynically under the pretext of “defending democracy and Europe”). The hopelessly corrupt NeoNazi regime in Kiev has siphoned off up to 70 per cent of weapons for lucrative black market business.

Russia and other observers have repeatedly warned with evidence that the American and NATO arsenals supplied to Ukraine were making their way to other continents and conflict zones.

It appears that as well as obtaining American weaponry from Afghanistan, the Hamas militants also stocked up with NATO arms sourced from Ukraine.

Yet the Ukrainian comedian President Vladimir Zelensky who is implicated in the massive Kiev corruption has the brass neck to accuse Russian leader Vladimir Putin of triggering the violence towards Israel.

The wicked absurdity of it all is that American weapons plied to supposed allies and proxies are being deployed to kill civilians in Washington’s top foreign ally Israel.

Among the victims of the latest violence are dozens of U.S. citizens, as acknowledged by Biden in his nationwide address this week. The U.S. president also admitted that several American citizens remain unaccounted for in Israel, some of them feared to have been taken hostage. Washington’s support for Israeli revenge is putting its own citizens at risk of being killed.

It is no wonder that Biden and other U.S. politicians and their news media would prefer to invoke mysterious “pure evil” when they talk about the horrific suffering in the Middle East.

Such meaningless, vacuous talk serves to obscure and mystify what is the reprehensible truth.

Washington’s criminal warmongering, reckless militarism and double-dealing foreign policy are the fountainhead for violence and the enemy of peace in the Middle East and beyond.

Sending more aircraft carriers, warplanes, troops and munitions is the wretched response of a failed policy begetting more violence, death and ultimately more failure.

Biden is a warmonger. Trump is no less a warmonger as was evident from his shameless support for Israeli state violence and oppression of Palestinians while he was in the White House. So-called “independent” presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr. has also declared his fulsome support for Israel in recent days.

America’s problem is way beyond individual politicians. It is rooted in its systematic criminal policy that sows and breeds violence across the world.

October 12, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

U.S. Official Lies to Armenians Worldwide

By Steven Sahiounie | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 12, 2023

Samantha Power recently arrived in Armenia to meet with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, and pledged U.S. support for Armenia in the aftermath of the armed conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, which has left thousands of Armenians homeless at the hands of Azerbaijan. Power is the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and had previously served as U.S. Ambassador to the UN from 2013-2017.

Power is lying again to the Armenians. In 2014, she lied to the Armenians from the UN, and now she is again lying to the Armenians from USAID, which is an agency of the U.S. State Department.

According to her profile in Forbes, “Samantha Power, the youngest-ever U.S. ambassador to the UN, is considered to be the moral compass of American diplomacy” while adding, “… she has been a powerful crusader for U.S. foreign policy as well as human rights and democracy since she took office in 2013.”

Samantha Power’s moral compass is broken. She stood by lying and humiliating the homeless Armenians in Kessab, Syria in 2014, and she is again lying to the Armenians arriving as refugees in Yerevan.

Samantha Power, Presidents Obama and Biden, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken do not care about Armenia, or Armenians wherever they are.

From her Forbes profile, Power has warned of the threat of ISIS globally. But, what the profile fails to reveal, is that Power, while part of the Obama administration, was funding, training and supporting the armed ‘rebels’ in Syria, which eventually morphed into ISIS. In fact, the last remaining ‘rebel’ controlled area in Syria today, Idlib, is under the control of Mohamed al-Julani, formerly with ISIS in Iraq, and Al Qaeda in Syria. Julani enjoys the protection of both the U.S. and Turkey, and all humanitarian aid coming into Idlib goes through his hands exclusively, including from USAID.

Nagorno-Karabakh

Pashinyan received the delegation led by Power, and he said, “The process of ethnic cleansing of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh continues.”

This is the same process used by the U.S., and their ally Turkey, in Syria in 2014 at Kessab, which is a Christian Armenian village on the border with Turkey, north of Latakia. The village had no Syrian government buildings, nor Army posts, nor weapons storage. There was no reason to attack Kessab, it had no strategic value for the ‘rebels’ in their war to overthrow the Syrian government. The only reason for the attack, occupation, massacre, rapes and destruction at Kessab was ethnic cleansing. The U.S.-NATO backed ‘rebels’ were Radical Islamic terrorists, cut from the same cloth as ISIS, and their goal at Kessab was to wipe out the Christians.

“The United States of America will continue to work with both your Government and the government of Azerbaijan to bring about lasting peace between the countries, also considering the profound economic dividends and stability it will bring for the Armenian people,” said Power to Pashinyan recently.

Power delivered the real message from Biden: the U.S. is pleased Azerbaijan has won, and the Armenians are forever defeated, because the U.S. values its relationship with the oil rich Azerbaijan. The Biden administration’s message to Pashinyan is: the EU gets their winter gas supplies from Azerbaijan, and Armenia has no economic resources to be exploited by the U.S. or the EU, therefore, Armenia is of no value.

Power said in Yerevan, her mission was to mobilize resources, to support local authorities in finding places to stay, and other means of support, but also get other countries to do the same. But, the U.S. never helped any of the 2,000 Armenians made homeless and destitute in Kessab in 2014. The U.S. never even sent one loaf of bread, and because of U.S.-EU sanctions on Syria, even the Armenian churches in the U.S., and other charities, were prevented from sending even one dollar to Kessab. The millions raised in USA, with Kim Kardashian sending 1 million herself, was sent to the Armenian church in Lebanon, and has never been distributed to Kessab. The U.S. sanctions prevented even other Arab countries from sending aid to Kessab.

“The United States is deeply concerned about reports on the humanitarian conditions in Nagorno-Karabakh and calls for unimpeded access for international humanitarian organizations and commercial traffic,” said Power in Yerevan. She wants to send food and medicine to Yerevan, but refused to allow even one bandage or one blanket to be delivered to Kessab in 2014, where the mountainous terrain is blanketed in snow each winter.

On social media formerly known as Twitter, Power wrote recently: “I’m here to reiterate the U.S.’s strong support & partnership with Armenia and to speak directly with those impacted by the humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh.”

Azerbaijan received tremendous military aid and support from Turkey, a U.S. ally, and fellow NATO member. Armenia received no military help from the U.S. Of course they lost their territory to the stronger, wealthy and heavily militarized Azerbaijan, who are allied with the EU and NATO member Turkey. Now Power is going to oversee sending Armenians some bread crumbs.

Kessab 2014

According to the Syrian Bureau of Statistics, Kessab had a population of 1,754 in the 2004 census, and with the surrounding villages, had a total population of around 2,500 predominately Armenian Christians which date back to the medieval ages there.

The high elevation and pine covered mountains sloping down to the Mediterranean Sea made Kessab a favorite summer vacation resort.

Some feared that the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) might perpetrate genocide against the inhabitants. In August 2013, in the mountains near Latakia, at Ballouta, the FSA had massacred hundreds of unarmed civilians sleeping in their own homes. Men, women and children were killed, along with a pregnant woman who was cut apart, and her unborn fetus was hung in the trees. That community was also a religious minority targeted by the FSA. General Salim Idriss, the commander of the FSA, had been visited by Senator John McCain, (R. AZ), and McCain had lobbied vigorously in Congress to keep the money and weapons flowing to the FSA in Syria.

In the early hours of March 21, 2014, Kessab was attacked by FSA and their allies coming from Turkey over the border.

Residents of Kessab fled to Latakia where they sheltered in a church; however, 36 very elderly and immobile residents were left behind and were later kidnapped by the FSA and taken to Vikifly, Turkey. While in Vikifly, the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, Francis J. Riccardone, Jr. and his wife visited the kidnapped Armenian hostages, and the elderly begged him for help to get to Latakia and rejoin their family there. Riccardone refused to help them, even though his wife was the translator of their pleas to him, and captors were under U.S. support and control.

On April 1, Ahmad Jarba, head of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), visited the FSA front-line in Kessab to congratulate his troops on their victory and the occupation of Kessab. The FSA was the military wing of the SNC, which were supported completely by the White House and Congress.

While in Kessab, the FSA and their allied terrorist groups, burned three churches, dug up graves looking for gold rings, looted every home and shop, burnt the cultural center, raped elderly women because they could find no girls, and murdered a 21-year-old man in front of his parents. When the parents begged to be able to bury him, the FSA refused, saying they wanted the dogs to eat him because he was a heathen.

On April 2, during a hearing before the House State-Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, Rep. Adam Shiff (D. CA) asked the UN Ambassador Samantha Power about Kessab.

“Most of the [UN Security] Council members raised the issue of Kessab, calling on the UN to do more, to try to meet the needs of these people. […] I would note that, unfortunately, the extremist group that appears to have taken hold of that town is not one that the United States and the United Nations overall has a great deal of leverage over. And so, our emphasis now, is on supporting the moderate opposition in Syria that is taking on those extremist groups and making sure that the UN has the funding it needs, and the resources of all kinds that it needs to accommodate […] in this case, the Syrian Armenian community, as you said, an internally displaced population flow.,” said Samantha Power.

Samantha Power lied to the U.S. Congress, and to the Armenian people. The FSA were in Kessab, as evidenced by Jarba’s personal visit to Kessab. The FSA and their political wing SNC were directly supported, funded, trained and directed by the Obama administration. President Trump cut off the funding of the CIA program Timber Sycamore in 2017, which shut down the U.S. support of the FSA. Power called the FSA the ‘moderate opposition’, and continued to support them even though they had committed war crimes and atrocities in Kessab.

On April 3, Ruben Melkonyan, deputy dean of the Oriental Studies department at Yerevan State University, said that the Armenian community of Kessab was unlikely to recover and that what had happened were “crimes that make a genocide”. As of 2023, Kessab is almost a ghost town. Residents have not all returned, as they had no funds to rebuild homes, farms, and businesses.

On June 15, 2014, the Syrian Arab Army entered Kessab and retook control over the surrounding villages and the border with Turkey. The massacre at Kessab was reminiscent of the Armenian Genocide, which took place about 100 years ago, perpetrated by the Ottoman Turkish Empire.

Gennady Gatilov, Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia, condemned the attack on Kessab and the ethnic cleansing of Armenian Syrians in Latakia. He accused Turkey, the U.S. and Europe, and the Persian Gulf states of supporting terrorism in Syria and called for an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss the situation. The UN Security Council declined Russia's meeting proposal.

On May 13, 2014 U.S. President Barack Obama, met with Ahmed Jarba of the SNC in the Oval Office after Jarba left his troops in Kessab raping and looting.

“President Obama welcomed the Coalition’s leadership and constructive approach to dialogue, and encouraged the Coalition to further its vision for an inclusive government that represents all of the people of Syria. President Jarba thanked President Obama for U.S. non-lethal assistance, which totals $287 million and supports the Coalition, local communities inside Syria, and the moderate armed opposition. He also thanked the United States for being the largest donor of humanitarian assistance. The $1.7 billion committed by the United States goes to those in need inside of Syria and in neighboring countries,” according to the White House. But, they failed to mention that not one dollar of the $1.7 billion went to Kessab to rebuild from the U.S. sponsored attack and occupation.

Samantha Power is a high ranking U.S. government official, and well aware in 2014 that the Armenian government had sent soldiers to fight the U.S. sponsored FSA in Kessab. Power was lying in 2014, and is still lying to Armenia.

October 12, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Nothing To Sea Here Folks

Climate Discussion Nexus | October 2, 2023

In this “Fact Check” video from the Climate Discussion Nexus, Dr. John Robson expands on our Sea Level Check series to rebut claims of dangerous, accelerating, man-made sea level rise by examining the actual history and current state of melting land ice, changes in the land and other complex factors that contribute to this non-crisis.

To support the Climate Discussion Nexus, subscribe to our YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_egd…, our Rumble channel (https://rumble.com/user/ClimateDN), our newsletter (at http://www.climatediscussionnexus.com/) and our podcast on Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6IX3QVN…) and Google (https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0…, like us on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/ClimateDN/), follow us on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/ClimateDN) and Gettr (https://www.gettr.com/user/climatedn).

October 12, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

Decades before Snowden, this American patriot waged war against illegal surveillance in the US

In the 1970s, US Army Captain Christopher Pyle blew the lid on government agencies’ domestic spying

Former undercover agent Christopher Pyle testifies in the Senate that the Army has spied on politicians and thousands of ordinary Americans, February 24, 1971. © Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
By Robert Bridge | RT | October 11, 2023

In 1970, a US Army captain went rogue after he discovered that the military was conducting surveillance on dissidents across the country, thus sparking the first effort in modern times to tame US intelligence.

In 1968, almost half a century before the world heard the name of Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who blew the whistle on a US-run global surveillance system, Christopher Pyle, an Army captain who taught law at the Army’s intelligence school at Fort Holabird, Maryland, was about to do something no less memorable.

After Pyle had concluded one of his popular lectures on civil disorder, which focused on how the military could better quell riots in those highly volatile times, a military officer directly involved in such operations approached him with the request for a meeting. Several days later, Pyle was escorted into a large warehouse facility that once had been used to assemble railroad engines. In his 2006 book, No Place to Hide, Robert O’Harrow described what happened next.

“Pyle walked into the cage, where an officer showed him books containing mug shots. He looked in the first volume and saw a familiar face. It was Ralph David Abernathy, Martin Luther King’s assistant. Officers called the books the ‘black list.’”

“Outside the cage, Pyle saw more than a dozen teletype machines. The head of the CONUS [acronym for Continental United States] intelligence section told him they were spitting out reports from some fifteen hundred Army operatives about demonstrations with twenty people or more. Pyle was starting to understand how naive he’d been. He began formulating a plan. He would be getting out of the Army soon. He could tell the world about what was going on. When he joined the Army he took an oath to defend the country against all enemies, here and abroad. In his mind now, that included the Army’s intelligence operation. They turned in their security badges and left the building.”

And thus was born one of the most consequential whistleblowers of the post-World War II era.

In January 1970, Pyle, now a full-fledged private citizen, penned an article for the Washington Monthly entitled, ‘CONUS Intelligence: The Army Watches Civilian Politics.’ The explosive opening paragraph said it all: “[t]he U.S. Army has been closely watching civilian political activity within the United States. Nearly 1,000 plainclothes investigators … keep track of political protests of all kinds – from Klan rallies in North Carolina to anti-war speeches at Harvard.”

Immediately, some US media swung into action as journalists began hounding the Department of Defense and the US Army to determine the veracity of the claims. Given Pyle’s extreme proximity to the subject matter at hand, however, it soon became clear that Uncle Sam got caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar.

Pyle’s revelations were enough to prompt Congress, as well as a slew of litigation lawyers, to sit up and take notice. The chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Senator Samuel James Ervin, a self-described “country lawyer” from North Carolina, worked together with Pyle to investigate and expose the clandestine domestic spying program.

Pyle and Ervin eventually spent countless hours delivering testimony before various congressional meetings over a span of several years. The first fruit of their labors came with passage of the Privacy Act of 1974. Signed into law by President Gerald R. Ford on December 31, 1974, the legislation states: “No agency shall disclose any record which is contained in a system of records by any means of communication to any person, or to another agency, except pursuant to a written request by, or with the prior written consent of, the individual to whom the record pertains…” In other words, although the law didn’t actually stop the US Army or intelligence agencies from infiltrating civil action groups and public demonstrations, it did hamper the feds from disclosing the identities of the activists without their foreknowledge.

To this end, Pyle served as a consultant for three Congressional committees: the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights on the Judiciary Committee (1971-1974), the Committee on Government Operations (1974), and the Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (1975).

According to Pyle, as a result of those successful investigations, “the entire US Army Intelligence Command was abolished and all of its files were burned.” For his actions, Pyle ended up on then-President Richard Nixon’s notorious “Enemies List.”

Given the severity of their overall findings, however, the congressional investigations triggered by the US Army captain did not stop there.

1975, the ‘Year of Intelligence’  

On January 27, 1975, by a vote of 82 to 4, the US Senate created the so-called Church Committee, chaired by Democrat Senator Frank Church, to further examine abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The House carried out its own set of investigations with the Pike Commission and the Rockefeller Commission, thereby prompting the media to label 1975 as the ‘Year of Intelligence,’ and not in a way that was flattering to the intelligence community.

Pyle lent his expertise to the ambitious Church Committee, headed by Iowa Senator Frank Church, which discovered a number of questionable, unethical and outright illegal activities by the CIA between 1959 and 1973. Detailed in a series of reports dubbed the ‘Family Jewels’, these activities included conducting physical surveillance on journalists, amassing files on nearly 10,000 Americans connected to the antiwar movement, funding behavior modification research on unwitting subjects, and plots to assassinate foreign leaders, including Cuban President Fidel Castro and DR Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba.

The most impactful discovery made by the Church Committee, however, was that of Project SHAMROCK. Started in 1940 during World War II and running into the 1970s, the NSA was given secret authority to access all incoming, outgoing, and transiting telegrams via the Western Union and its associates RCA and ITT. At the peak of Project SHAMROCK, 150,000 messages were captured and analyzed by NSA personnel in a month. The pertinent information contained in these messages was then forwarded to other intelligence agencies, including the CIA, FBI, Secret Service and the Department of Defense. This formed the basis of the so-called ‘Watch List’ of the 1970s that included thousands of American citizens, including high-ranking politicians, celebrities, academics and antiwar activists.

The findings led Senator Frank Church to conclude that Project SHAMROCK was “probably the largest government interception program affecting Americans ever undertaken.”

Based on the recommendations of the Church Committee, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978. Under FISA, the government is required to obtain warrants to conduct electronic surveillance against individuals from a special court. Such a warrant requires “probable cause to believe” that the surveillance target is a foreign government or organization, or an agent thereof, “engaging in clandestine intelligence activities or international terrorism,” as per a Department of Justice (DOJ) clarification.

Yet, as we shall see, even this minor legislative hurdle would prove too cumbersome for the Bush administration in its war on terror.

Privacy in the age of terrorism

The tireless work of the Church Commission was put to a test in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks as US lawmakers from both sides of the political aisle were prepared to sacrifice citizens’ privacy in the name of national security. Thus, less than one week after three hijacked aircraft toppled the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon, killing some 3,000 people in the process, one of the most comprehensive plans for conducting surveillance on American civilians and individuals worldwide – the USA PATRIOT ACT (an acronym for ‘Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act’) – was already being disseminated to members of Congress.

Arguably the most controversial part of the Patriot Act is contained in Section 215 of the 342-page document, which calls for sweeping government powers against private and public enterprises, individuals, and personal privacy. Most crucially, Section 215 did away with the requirement that the target of the records search be a non-US citizen and “an agent of a foreign power.” American citizens were now legitimate targets as well.

In the Senate, the Patriot Act passed in a 99 – 1 vote. The only senator to vote against it was Wisconsin Democrat Russell Feingold. “There is no doubt,” he declared on the Senate floor before the historic vote, “that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists…But that would not be a country in which we would want to live.”

Even with this widening of surveillance powers, then-US President George W. Bush, as part of the global ‘War on Terror’ that he declared following the events of 9/11, ordered the NSA to tap the communications of an untold number of people in the US, including citizens, without the warrants demanded by the FISA court – despite the fact that between 1979 and 2005, only four out of over 15,000 warrant requests were rejected by the FISA court.

Christopher Pyle, who was still committed to his cause over 30 years after he chose to become a whistleblower, labeled Bush “a criminal” for violating the FISA law and suggested that he should be impeached.

“The Constitution says he must take care that all laws be faithfully executed, not just the ones he likes,” Pyle said during an interview with Democracy Now in 2005. “The statute says … that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is the exclusive law governing these international intercepts, and he violated it anyway. And the law also says that any person who violates that law is guilty of a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. By the plain meaning of the law, the President is a criminal.”

More recently, Christopher Pyle, 83, who now works as Professor Emeritus of Politics at Mount Holyoke College, spoke out on behalf of Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor turned whistleblower who revealed a massive global intelligence program run by the so-called Five Eyes, a once-secretive intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

“He’s just an ordinary American,” Pyle explained in 2013. “He’s trying to start a debate in this nation over something that is critically important. He should be respected for that and taken at face value and we should move on to the big issues, including the corruption of our system that is done by massive secrecy and by massive amounts of money and politics.”

Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of ‘Midnight in the American Empire,’ How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream.

October 11, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

326 Palestinian children killed as Israel plunges Gaza into darkness

Defense for Children International – Palestine | October 11, 2023

Israeli authorities prohibit food, fuel, electricity, and water into the Gaza Strip as Defense for Children International – Palestine has so far confirmed the killing of at least 105 Palestinian children since Saturday, with the total now surpassing 300.

DCIP has confirmed the killing of at least 105 Palestinian children in direct Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip between October 7 and 11, while the Ministry of Health in Gaza announced today that over 326 children have been killed. DCIP staff in Gaza and the West Bank continue to document and confirm Palestinian child fatalities as hostilities continue between Palestinian armed groups and Israeli forces. Intensive Israeli bombardment throughout the Gaza Strip, lack of electricity, Israeli airstrikes on telecommunications infrastructure, and the unprecedented rate of daily child fatalities has resulted in a lag between confirmed fatalities by DCIP and the overall total child fatalities published regularly by the Ministry of Health in Gaza.

“Israeli forces are destroying entire neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip as an apparent full-scale ground assault is imminent,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP. “Immediate humanitarian relief is necessary to protect civilians as Israeli forces prepare to intensify attacks and Israeli officials declare their intention to commit further war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Around 6 p.m. on October 9, Israeli warplanes targeted, without prior warning, a two-story building behind the Golden Hall in the Americana area west of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, killing at least 14 Palestinians, including at least six children: siblings Karam, three, Akram, 10, Watan, one, Mahmoud, nine, Amani, four, and Fatima Mohammad Abdulrahim Al-Madhoon, seven, according to documentation collected by DCIP. Rescue teams were able to recover seven bodies.

An Israeli airstrike targeted without prior warning a residential building in Jabalia refugee camp around 9 a.m. on October 10, killing four Palestinians, including three children: Mohammad, two, Karam, three, and Naheda Mousa Yousef Al-Hesi, 11, according to documentation collected by DCIP. Other children were also injured in the attack.

Israeli warplanes targeted a residential building without prior warning around 11 a.m. on October 10 in Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, killing 14 Palestinians, including seven children, according to documentation collected by DCIP. The airstrike killed seven children from the Ahmad family: siblings Mustafa, nine, and Elayn Tamer Mohammad Ahmad, four, their cousins Sidra, five, Haidy, one, Linda, seven, and Qusai Mohammad Aladdin Ahmad, three, as well as another cousin, two-year-old Obaida Rafat Aladdin Ahmad.

Israeli warplanes completely destroyed a three-story residential building without warning in the Tal Al-Zaatar area of Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip around 9:25 p.m. on October 10, killing everyone inside, including at least one child, 10-year-old Mohammad Baraa Taysir Shahin, according to documentation collected by DCIP. Palestinian civil defense teams have recovered two bodies from the building, while an estimated 10 Palestinians were inside during the bombing.

In addition to these incidents, DCIP has verified the killing of an additional 11 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip in other attacks, though DCIP field researchers are still gathering and verifying details of the incidents. Those killed include:

  • Ali Omar Mousa Al-Qatnani, four, from Jabalia
  • Siblings Layan, two and Majd Mohammad Ismail Salah, two, from Beit Lahia
  • Haitham Khaled Abdulazeem Asayleh, 17, from Jabalia
  • Hassan Mohammad Ismail Salah, nine, from Jabalia
  • Malak Mohammad Majed Al-Daqs, two, from Jabalia
  • Kenan Mohammad Mahmoud Farhat, two, from Jabalia
  • Cousins Nadeen Mohammad Abdulati Salah, 13, and Diaa’ Ahmad Abdulati Salah, six months, from Jabalia
  • Mohammad Hassan Ali Al-Zain, seven, from Khan Younis
  • Sham Mohammad Saleh Al-Sawalha, eight months, from Jabalia

Israeli forces unleashed a massive military offensive on the Gaza Strip on Saturday after Palestinian armed groups fired rockets toward Israel and breached the Israeli perimeter fence surrounding Gaza early on October 7, launching attacks inside Israel. Israeli forces initiated a large-scale military operation dubbed Operation Iron Swords.

At least 1,100 Palestinians, including at least 326 children, have been killed in the Gaza Strip since Saturday morning, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. DCIP is working to document additional attacks and killings. Israeli forces have shot and killed six Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank since October 7, including 12-year-old Ahmad Abdulnaser Adnan Rabi.

DCIP previously confirmed the killing of at least 74 Palestinian children in direct Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip between October 7 and 10, 2023, in a report issued yesterday.

Over 263,934 people in the Gaza strip have fled their homes as mass displacement escalates with intensifying Israeli attacks, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA). More than 175,486 internally displaced Palestinians are sheltering in 88 United Nations schools throughout the Gaza Strip, while over 73,900 Palestinians, whose homes have been destroyed or damaged, are hosted by relatives and neighbors, according to UN OCHA.

October 11, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Members of 13 European PMCs Fighting Against Russia in Ukraine – FSB Head

Sputnik – 11.10.2023

Members of 13 private military companies (PMCs) from Europe and members of nine foreign paramilitary proxy formations are participating in military operations against Russia in Ukraine, Federal Security Service (FSB) chief Alexander Bortnikov said on Wednesday.

“We record the participation of employees of 13 European PMCs and members of nine foreign paramilitary proxy forces in hostilities,” Bortnikov said at a meeting of the CIS Council of the Heads of Security Agencies and Special Services.

Additionally, the identities of 794 mercenaries from 35 countries fighting against Russia in Ukraine have been established, the official said.

There are 17 training camps in EU countries under the auspices of NATO special services, where militants from members of international terrorist organizations and mercenaries are trained for Ukraine, Alexander Bortnikov said.

Ukraine, thanks to the efforts of Washington and its NATO allies, has become a source of military and terrorist threats on the border of Russia and Belarus, Bortnikov added.

The priority of the international terrorist organizations, actively directed by the American and British special services, is to seize power primarily in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan and incorporate them into the so-called “world caliphate,” Alexander Bortnikov said.

The undermining of the power lines of the Smolensk and Kursk nuclear power plants by the Ukrainian saboteurs was aimed at disrupting the technological process of the nuclear power plants’ operation; as a result of their actions, the No. 2 unit of the Kursk nuclear power plant was stopped in an emergency, Bortnikov said.

In August this year, the FSB detained members of the Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group, which was trained by the British Army Special Forces and whose task included sabotage of the Smolensk and Kursk nuclear power plants, Bortnikov stressed.

October 11, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

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