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Workers, trade unionists mobilise to block arms supply sites in the UK

MEMO | May 1, 2024

Workers and trade unionists shut down major UK sites involved in arms supplies to Israel this morning in response to a call to mobilise from Palestinian trade unions for workers to take action.

United under the banner “Workers for a Free Palestine” (WFFP), over 1,000 staffers and trade unionists blockaded the UK Department for Business and Trade in London and three BAE Systems’ arms factories in Wales, Scotland and North-West England to mark International Workers’ Day.

Today marks the 208th day of Israel’s ongoing bombing campaign in Gaza, which has seen over 35,000 Palestinians killed. The British Government has not implemented an arms embargo on Israel, in contrast to actions taken by its allies, including Canada, the Netherlands, Japan, Spain and Belgium. In response, British workers are engaging in direct action by initiating their own embargo against arms supplies to Israel.

A trade unionist and organiser for WFFP taking part in the London blockade, Tania, said: “If arms company bosses and Britain’s political elite won’t impose an arms embargo, we, the workers, will enforce it from below.”

“In our most disruptive action yet, a wave of People’s Arms Embargoes is sweeping across England, Scotland and Wales on May Day, as workers and trade unionists shut down arms factories and a government which enables this genocide profiteering and makes the UK directly complicit in these crimes against humanity.”

The blockade at the Department for Business and Trade was organised in support of civil servants who have urged the government to “cease work immediately” on arms export licences to Israel, citing concerns that the administration is complicit in war crimes being committed in Gaza. Their union, the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), is considering legal measures to protect its members from being compelled to engage in unlawful acts.

The establishment of these “People’s Arms Embargoes” across the UK coincides with a recent decision by a High Court judge to allow a legal challenge against UK arms exports to Israel to proceed, with a hearing scheduled for later this year.

This surge of activism also comes in the wake of a letter signed by 600 lawyers, academics,and retired senior judges, including former Supreme Court justices, which cautions that the UK government’s ongoing arms sales to Israel may violate international law, referencing the International Court of Justice (ICJ)’s finding that Israel’s actions in Gaza could constitute genocide.

“When Israel massacres entire families and razes cities to the ground, companies like Elbit Systems, BAE, Leonardo, Thales and Raytheon make vast profits. When we see hospitals turned into mass graves of over 300 people and many of those killed having been stripped of their clothes and had their hands and feet tied, the knowledge that British-made weapons which enable such atrocities are being manufactured on my doorstep makes me feel complicit,” said Aisha, a community worker blockading the arms factory in the north of England.

Aisha added: “I’m taking this action because I simply can’t stomach arms to Israel’s murderous regime being supplied in our name by companies which are subsidised by our taxes – if the company bosses and the government continue to refuse to listen to us, we will keep shutting them down and impose our own arms embargoes.”

Three British aid workers were killed in early April in an Israeli drone strike, parts of which were manufactured in the UK, highlighting the significant impact of UK-made arms in the attacks on Gaza. Since 2015, the UK has authorised arms sales to Israel totalling £487 million ($608 million), a figure that excludes weapons exported under open licences. Additionally, a considerable amount of US military aid is funnelled to Israel via a British air force base in Cyprus, while British military forces have conducted surveillance flights over Gaza to assist Israel’s ongoing military offensive.

May 1, 2024 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Rights group urges probe into Israeli arms that ‘turn victims to ash’

The Cradle | May 1, 2024

The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med) released a report on 30 April urging an investigation into Israel’s potential use of illegal thermal weapons.

“An international committee of experts must be established to look into the weapons Israel has been using as part of its genocide in the Gaza Strip … including the potential use of bombs that produce such high heat that victims’ bodies evaporate,” the Euro-Med report said.

The rights group cites testimonies received from Gaza which revealed a “horrific new level of killing in the Strip.” The bodies of Palestinian victims appear to have been vaporized by the weapons Israel used against residential buildings.

“Thousands of victims remain missing, either because it was impossible to recover them from under the debris in light of insufficient equipment and technical know-how, or because their bodies were either hidden by the Israeli army or no longer exist,” the Euro-Med report reads.

The report continues to say, “A number of the victims killed in these horrifying Israeli raids on residential buildings have vanished and may have turned to ashes, raising questions about the type of bombs used in the attacks.”

Thermobaric weapons, also referred to as vacuum bombs, are two-stage munitions. The first charge disperses a fine aerosol cloud of materials ranging from carbon-based fuel to metal particles. The second charge ignites the materials used, creating a fireball, shock wave, and vacuum as it sucks up the surrounding oxygen.

The blast from these weapons can last significantly longer than conventional explosives, enabling it to vaporize human bodies.

Mass graves in Gaza hospitals previously raided by Israel show that civil defense staff found “bodies without skin,” according to Gaza’s Government Media Office.

According to the Euro-Med report, “The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and international humanitarian law all forbid the use of thermal bombs against civilians in populated civilian areas. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court also classifies the use of thermal bombs as a war crime.”

Israel has also illegally deployed white phosphorus weapons on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon.

According to a Washington Post analysis, the white phosphorus munitions used in Lebanon’s south were supplied to Israel by the US.

Palestine’s Agricultural Work Committees Union said that Israel intentionally uses chemical weapons on farmlands in the Gaza Strip to contaminate its soil, posing an increased cancer risk to farmers.

The agricultural union’s lobbying director, Moayyad Bsharat, also points to Washington as the supplier of such munitions to Tel Aviv in an interview with Anadolu Agency.

Bsharat stressed how chemical attacks render Gaza’s soil unusable for five years, and effectively harm its food security and public health.

May 1, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Report of the Independent Task Force on National Security Memorandum-20 Regarding Israel

By Noura Erakat and Josh Paul | Just Security | April 24, 2024

In early February, we formed the Independent Task Force on the Application of National Security Memorandum-20 to Israel, whose report we provided to the Biden Administration on April 18. The National Security Memorandum 20 (NSM-20), adopted by President Joe Biden, directs the Department of State to seek assurances from partners involved in conflict and receiving U.S. military grant assistance that they would abide by U.S. and international law and also requires the Departments of State and Defense to report to Congress within 90 days on the extent to which such partners are abiding by their assurances.

Though delegated as a task to the Executive Branch, the administration’s disregard for credible media reporting as well as recommendations from its own experts within the State Department, alleging Israeli abuses, catalyzed us to act.

The Task Force, which has worked on a voluntary basis, consists of experts on U.S. and international law, U.S. security assistance, and U.S. military best practices. For the past two months, we have combed through thousands of lines of data from credible nongovernmental organizations, ranging from human rights watchdogs to aid organizations working on the ground in Gaza.

The final report features sixteen clear, credible, and compelling incidents that should certainly be included in the administration’s upcoming reporting to Congress as well as an 18-page appendix of additional incidents worthy of examination. It also identifies multiple restrictions on humanitarian assistance, including strikes by the IDF, that trigger Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act (which bars military assistance to states impeding U.S. humanitarian aid) and should be reportable to Congress by the Departments of State and/or Defense under the terms of NSM-20.

Our findings were striking. Though Israel has attributed the 34,000 Palestinian casualties, 70 percent of whom are women and children, to alleged human shielding by Hamas, we found that in 11 out of the 16 incidents we analyzed, Israel did not even publicly identity a military target or attempt to justify the strike. Of the remaining five incidents, Israel publicly named targets with verification in two incidents, but no precautionary warning was given and we assess the anticipated civilian harm was known and excessive.

In one of the worst incidents in a strike on Gaza City on October 25, 2023, Israel nearly flattened the entire neighborhood of Al Yarmouk, including seven residential towers. In just the Al Taj residential tower, the bombing killed 91 Palestinians, including 28 women and 39 children. Israel’s only explanation was that a Hamas tunnel ran beneath the neighborhood. Not only did this attack disregard the duty to take precautionary measures and the duty to refrain from an attack where the civilian harm exceeds the military objective to be achieved, it suggests that Israel had the authority to bomb nearly all of Gaza in similar fashion which lay above 350 miles of subterranean tunnels.

Aware of the controversial terrain of international humanitarian law in asymmetric warfare, two-thirds of our report documents violations under applicable U.S. law or policy, including civilian harm mitigation in U.S. military best practices and Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act mandating no military support be given to states restricting access to humanitarian aid. In his analysis, our expert on U.S. targeting came to the same conclusion as did Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who said that the U.S. military would “absolutely not” systematically conduct strikes with a well understood high risk of civilian casualties, as the IDF have continuously.   

Our aggregate data demonstrates a broader context of systematic disregard for fundamental principles of U.S. and international law, due to reliance on the steady and sure flow of U.S. armaments. According to a high ranking former IDF officer, Israel’s combat could have achieved similar military outcomes “with 10 percent of the destruction [Israel has] caused.” He attributes this “reckless conduct” to” an absolute assumption that the U.S. will continue to arm and finance [Israel’s military operations].” Indeed, since October 7, the United States has approved over 100 Foreign Military Sales arms transfers to Israel, two of them using an emergency authority to bypass Congressional review, and none of them accompanied by any conditions or “red lines” on usage despite conditionality inherent in U.S. laws and policies.

Our findings echo the concerns recently articulated by forty House Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who have demanded that Biden halt weapons transfers to Israel. As their letter noted, “it is critical to ensure that the U.S. government is fully utilizing the expertise of State Department and DoD officials and legal experts, [including] important intelligence community assessments and data, in thoroughly assessing Israel’s actions in Gaza.”

It is our hope the Task Force’s work facilitates the drafting efforts currently under way within the administration to meet the reporting requirements of NSM-20, resulting in the overdue enforcement of applicable U.S. law as it relates to arms transfers and security assistance, and using all available means to remove all restrictions on the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza.

The mounting evidence before the Biden administration now pales only in comparison to the humanitarian crisis afflicting Palestinians in Gaza. As the Task Force’s work demonstrates, the facts could not be more clear. It is now up to the Biden administration to act on them.

May 1, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Several Western Countries Propose Cutting Weapon, Technology Transfers to Israel

Sputnik – 30.04.2024

ANKARA – Several Western countries have proposed introducing cuts in weapons sales and impose restrictions on delivering technologies to Israel in a package of measures discussed during a two-day meeting in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported on Tuesday, citing sources.

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the League of Arab States and a number of European countries discussed measures that may be applied against Israel and countries supporting the Jewish state in the Gaza conflict at the meeting in Riyadh on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, the newspaper reported.

The discussion aimed to involve as many countries as possible in the package of “pressure elements” that contains a proposal on airspace restrictions, among other things, the report said.

Earlier on Tuesday, Politico reported that a group of more than 90 US lawyers, including at least 20 from the presidential administration, called on US President Joe Biden to stop military aid to Israel because of its actions in the Gaza Strip, which they said contradict US and international humanitarian law.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a large-scale rocket attack against Israel and breached the border, attacking both civilian neighborhoods and military bases. Nearly 1,200 people in Israel were killed and some 240 others abducted during the attack. Israel launched retaliatory strikes, ordered a complete blockade of Gaza, and started a ground incursion into the Palestinian enclave with the declared goal of eliminating Hamas fighters and rescuing the hostages. Over 34,400 people have been killed so far by Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip, according to local authorities.

April 30, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

US lawmakers threaten ICC against issuing arrest warrants for Israeli officials

The Cradle | April 30, 2024

A bipartisan group of US lawmakers has threatened the International Criminal Court (ICC) with “retaliation” if international arrest warrants are issued against senior Israeli officials for war crimes committed in Gaza.

According to officials who spoke with Axios, “legislation to that effect is already in the works.”

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul told the US publication that the legislation would call for sanctions against ICC officials “involved in investigating the US and its allies.“

Representative Brad Sherman is quoted as saying that Washington should “think of whether we stay a signatory“ to the Rome Statute — the treaty that established the ICC and established four core international crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.

Neither Washington nor Tel Aviv are among the 124 states that remain signatories of the ICC Rome Statute of 1998.

“We have to think about talking to some of the countries that have ratified [the treaty] as to whether they want to support the organization,“ he added.

“If unchallenged by the Biden administration, the ICC could create and assume unprecedented power to issue arrest warrants against American political leaders, American diplomats, and American military personnel,“ House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement issued on 29 April.

The Republican lawmaker also called on the White House to “immediately and unequivocally demand that the ICC stand down” and “use every available tool to prevent such an abomination.”

Based in The Hague, Netherlands, the ICC has been investigating war crimes committed by the Israeli military in Gaza. The court says it is also probing alleged violations by Palestinian resistance groups.

After reports broke earlier this month saying the ICC was looking to issue arrest warrants against top Israeli officials – including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant – the US and its allies began pressuring the court to back out, claiming the warrants could “jeopardize” a ceasefire deal for Gaza.

“Group of Seven nations have begun a quiet diplomatic effort to convey that message to the Hague-based court,” diplomatic sources who spoke with Bloomberg are quoted as saying.

Israel has been accused of genocide by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also based in The Hague.

An interim ruling at the start of the year determined that Israel was plausibly guilty of the crime of genocide and ordered it to stop genocidal acts during its war on Gaza and take measures to guarantee the efficient provision of humanitarian aid to the strip.

In 2002, two years after Washington withdrew from the Rome Statute, then-president George W Bush signed into law the “American Servicemembers Protection Act of 2002,” which authorizes the use of military force in the Netherlands to “liberate” any US citizen or citizen of a US-allied country held by the ICC.

April 30, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Medical Coder during COVID-19

CHD – April 15, 2024

“I didn’t know it was possible for a human to die so horrifically, so quickly, before they rolled out the mRNA injections… [For] days, patients would be seizing, and no medications would stop it, and eventually they… kinda had to be put down.”

DR. WILLIAM MAKIS MD – APRIL 27, 2024:

A hospital medical coder who goes only by “Zoe” for this interview describes for Children’s Health Defense (ChildrensHD) the horrors she witnessed following the rollout of the COVID injections. Among the unthinkable, and deadly, illnesses were things like encephalitis, gangrene of the spine, blood clots, strokes, and multiple system organ failure.

“I didn’t know it was possible for a human to die so horrifically, so quickly, before they rolled out the mRNA injections… It was insane, I’ve never seen anything like that. The worst of them, they called it sepsis, but it was like instant multi-organ failure. Like, within hours patients would die of liver, lung, kidney… failure [all at once]…” Zoe tells CHD. She adds that “Some of the records… [from the] emergency crew that found them [the injection victims], it’s like their body tried to reject everything and [in] some of these cases their family would be there 30 minutes before, and then within an hour they’re dead.”

Zoe notes that “there were patients coming in with seizures like I’d never seen before,” and that hospital staff “couldn’t control some of them.” The coder adds, “[For] days, patients would be seizing, and no medications would stop it, and eventually they… kinda had to be put down.”

“They called it encephalitis, or encephalopathy, and then later on, even the coding organization… [called it] COVID-19-associated encephalitis,” Zoe says.

“[T]he clots were insane,” the coder notes. “Never seen clots like that before—even the interventional radiologists that were going in with…scopes where they can do heart interventions and do stents [a stent is a tube usually constructed of a metallic alloy or a polymer] in carotid artery (if you have a stroke going to your brain), normally it’s rare to have more than one stent go in, and they were documenting… multiple locations all at once. They had heart attack cases that were like that where they needed massive amounts of stents that they never needed before.”

Zoe goes on to say that “There were people that were hiking in their 20s that were totally healthy, that had been running marathons, that suddenly needed a leg amputated because they had a massive blood clot going from their hip all the way down to their leg, and it couldn’t be saved.”

“There were some cases of overnight spinal gangrene, which I’d never seen before,” the coder adds. “And, you know, you can’t amputate the spine when it goes gangrenous. Normally they cut out tissue that’s dying like that so it prevents further infection and they didn’t know what to do. The only thing they could do was… basically replace that part of [their] spine with an implant, that’s the best they could do… It was really intense.”

As for doctors’ responses to these horrors, Zoe says, “[they] were baffled, they weren’t connecting the dots.” However, she adds that “Knowing what the potential symptoms of a vaccine injury could be, we 100% had all the things I just described.” Despite that knowledge, “doctors would never tell [patients] that. They would just say, ‘It’s a stroke. It’s a heart attack. It’s a blood clot.’ And then they would never connect the two.”

April 30, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

US military’s pier in Gaza to cost $320m

MEMO | April 29, 2024

The US military’s cost estimate to build a pier off Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid has risen to $320 million, a US defence official and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The figure illustrates the massive scale of a construction effort that the Pentagon has said involves about 1,000 US service members, mostly from the Army and Navy.

Still, the cost has roughly doubled from initial estimates earlier this year, according to a person familiar with the matter.

“The cost has not just risen. It has exploded,” Senator Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Democratic-led Senate Armed Services Committee, told Reuters.

“This dangerous effort with marginal benefit will now cost the American taxpayers at least $320 million to operate the pier for only 90 days.”

Democratic President Joe Biden announced the pier in March as aid officials implored Israel to ease access for relief supplies into Gaza over land routes. Biden opted for a sea route for the delivery of aid rather than press Israel to open land borders with Gaza and allow aid into the Strip which is experiencing a “man-made famine”.

Wicker and some other lawmakers have questioned whether the pier is a worthwhile endeavour, particularly given the risk that US military personnel could face if they were targeted during the war.

“For every day this mission continues, the price tag goes up and so does the level of risk for the 1,000 deployed troops within range of Hamas’ rockets,” Wicker said.

Biden has ordered US forces to not step foot on the Gaza shore.

The pier will initially handle 90 trucks a day, but that number could go up to 150 trucks daily when it is fully operational. The United Nations said last week that the daily average number of trucks entering Gaza during April was 200. They have also repeatedly warned that there can be no alternative to a land route for the delivery of aid, adding that though aid being delivered by sea may help Palestinians in Gaza, the amount arriving will be insufficient to stop the spread of famine.

A senior Biden administration official said last week that humanitarian aid coming off the pier will need to pass through Israeli checkpoints on land.

That is despite the aid having already been inspected by Israel in Cyprus before being shipped to Gaza.

The prospect of checkpoints raises questions about possible delays even after aid reaches shore. The United Nations has long complained of obstacles to getting aid in and distributing it throughout Gaza.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the Internatinal Court of Justice (ICJ), which in an interim ruling in January, called on the occupation state to ensure no genocidal acts are carried out by its officials or army and to allow for the unhindered delivery of aid to civilians in Gaza.

Palestinians fear the US pier will be used to forcibly displaced civilians from Gaza or to commandeer the occupied territory’s offshore natural resources.

April 29, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Malala slammed for collaboration with Clinton, cheerleader of Gaza genocide

By Humaira Ahad | Press TV | April 29, 2024

Dressed in traditional Shalwar Kameez, with her hair loosely covered, the youngest Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai recently shared the stage with former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the release of a musical about women’s suffrage in the US.

Born in the Swat district of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Malala rose to international fame after she was shot in the head by masked militants while she boarded her school bus in October 2012.

She then left her home country and settled in the UK, where she has been living in Birmingham.

Malala is known for lending her voice to campaigns related to children and education. However, her silence over the killing of children in Gaza and the bombing of schools has enraged her followers.

Her decision to collaborate with Clinton, the self-proclaimed votary of the Israeli regime whose country and party have been deeply complicit in the genocide unfolding in Gaza, came under fire.

The duo made their Broadway production debut this month with the “Suffs”, a Broadway musical about the early 20th-century suffragette movement in the US, which sparked outrage as people accused Malala of blatant double standards.

Many questioned her silence over the killing of more than 34,400 Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, including more than 15,000 children, while sharing the stage with cheerleaders of the genocide.

Branded as a ‘sell-out’ on social media, netizens described Malala as a factotum for partnering with the former US Secretary of State on the music project.

Importantly, the United States has been supplying lethal weapons worth billions of dollars to the Israeli regime, which are used to slaughter Palestinians in Gaza.

President Joe Biden, who, like Malala, is a member of the Democratic Party, has gone out of his way to defend the Benjamin Netanyahu regime’s genocidal onslaught on Gaza, including the murder of civilians and the bombing of hospitals and schools.

After coming under blistering fire for sharing the stage with the former US presidential candidate while maintaining silence over the Israeli-American war on Gaza, Malala swung into damage control mode.

The 26-year-old took to social media to condemn Israel’s aggression on Palestine.

“I wanted to speak today because I want there to be no confusion about my support for the people of Gaza. We have all watched the relentless atrocities against Palestinian people for more than six months now with anger and despair. This week’s news of mass graves discovered at Gaza’s Nasser and al-Shifa hospitals is yet another reminder of the horrors Palestinians are facing,” she wrote on X.

“It is hard enough to watch from afar – l don’t know how Palestinians bear it in their bones. We do not need to see more dead bodies, bombed schools and starving children to understand that a ceasefire is urgent and necessary. I have and will continue to condemn the Israeli government for its violations of international law and war crimes, and I applaud efforts by those determined to hold them to account. Publicly and privately, I will keep calling on world leaders to push for a ceasefire and to ensure the delivery of urgent humanitarian aid,” she added.

The statement, according to critics, was an attempt to appease her legions of supporters scattered across the world who have in recent days and weeks been critical of her silence over Gaza.

Malala’s public appearance with Clinton only added fuel to the already raging fire of anger and outrage as people around the world, including her supporters, lashed out at her.

Clinton, who is co-producing the musical with the Pakistan-born education activist, has been quite outspoken about her support for the occupying regime in Tel Aviv.

Last November, she wrote an op-ed for The Atlantic arguing against a complete ceasefire in Gaza. She said that a ceasefire would “perpetuate the cycle of violence” in the war-torn region.

“A full cease-fire that leaves Hamas in power would be a mistake,” she wrote at the time.

The former first lady of the US also labeled criticism against the Zionist regime as “antisemitic”

In a 2005 speech to “The American Israel Public Affairs Committee” (AIPAC), Clinton defended Israel’s move to build a barrier wall inside the occupied West Bank.

The move was deemed illegal even by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2004. The ICJ had said that Israel should dismantle the wall and should pay reparation to those individuals who had suffered as a consequence of the construction of the wall.

In 2006, when the regime was bombing Lebanon and Gaza, Clinton praised the bombardment at a pro-Israel rally in New York.

During her presidential campaign in 2008, Clinton’s staunch support for Israel was clearly evident.

In a letter in July 2015, she vowed to combat the Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment (BDS) movement, urging the need to “make countering BDS a priority” and“fight back against further attempts to isolate and delegitimize Israel.”

“I am very concerned by attempts to compare Israel to South African apartheid. Israel is a vibrant democracy in a region dominated by autocracy, and it faces existential threats to its survival,” she wrote in that letter.

In August 2015, Clinton again bragged about her staunch support for the illegitimate regime in an op-ed published in a Jewish newspaper. I “stood with Israel my entire career,” she said.

Besides her unwavering support for Israel, the top diplomat in the Obama administration oversaw a campaign of deadly American drone strikes targeting tribal areas in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

These drone strikes killed hundreds of civilians in Malala’s home region of Swat, propelling online criticism against the youngest Nobel Laureate’s partnership with Clinton.

Since its inception, the Nobel Prize has been a farce as the award was born out of a blunder.

A French daily in 1888 carried a story of Alfred Nobel’s death, after whom the award is named.

The newspaper wrote, “Dr Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.” Petrified by the thought that he would be remembered as a “death trader”, Nobel set up the foundation for the Nobel Prize, an activity to rebrand himself.

On his TV show ‘Have it Out With Galloway’, George Galloway, a British parliamentarian while responding to a panelist on whether Iran or Houthis should get Nobel Peace Prize this year, said: “Neither will get the prize as you have to be a warmonger for the empire to get that prize.”

The selection process for the Nobel Peace prize has been shady, reducing the whole process to a farce. The people who get the prize are either war criminals or stooges of the imperialist empire.

In 1973, one of history’s most vicious war criminals Henry Kissinger, was a co-recipient of the prize with Vietnamese Le DucTho for the “peace agreement” that did not achieve peace and the Vietnam war continued.

Tho, however, turned down the controversial award. While negotiating the “peace agreement”, Kissinger was also carpet-bombing Cambodia.

Former US President Barack Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. In Obama’s tenure as the president of the US, there were at least ten times more air strikes in the so-called “war on terror” than under his predecessor, George Bush.

A total of 563 strikes, largely by drones, targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during Obama’s two terms, compared to 57 strikes under Bush. Hundreds of people were killed in these strikes.

Another farcical Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Shimon Peres in 1994, who shared that with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat. Peres, one of the founding fathers of the apartheid regime, systematically helped the regime to bolster its nuclear capabilities.

Peres launched two full-scale wars against the Gaza Strip, killing more than 3,700 Palestinians.

Under him, Israel shelled a United Nations compound near Qana, a village in southern Lebanon. The raid killed 106 people and injured around 116 others.

Bushra Shaikh, a London-based political commentator and analyst, in a post on X, said Malala’s case as someone with brown skin used as an operative is an old practice employed by the West:

“Malala Yousafzai working as an agent for the West isn’t new. Her selective activism for women and girls fails to extend to ALL. A personal struggle soon engineered into a Brown face actor for dollar bills. We’ve seen this happen time and time again.”

Zaman from India questioned the Nobel Laureates’ meeting with Clinton, a staunch supporter of Israel’s genocide in Gaza:

“It’s disheartening to see Malala Yousafzai cozying up to war criminals. Meeting with Hillary raises serious questions about her commitment to justice & human rights. She should be using her platform to hold accountable those responsible for violence and oppression, not rubbing shoulders with them.”

Based in California, US, Maryam regarded Malala as a performer activist whose activities bring forth her reality:

“Never forget I was bullied on every platform for weeks for calling Malala Yousafzai a performative activist 3 years ago. And she keeps proving me right without me doing ANYTHING… truth will always come out.”

April 29, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

China calls for ‘international investigation’ into Nord Stream attack

RT | April 27, 2024

China’s deputy envoy to the UN has called for an international probe into the bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, adding that Russia would be involved in such an investigation.

“With the situation standing where it is, one cannot help but suspect a hidden agenda behind the opposition to an international investigation, while lamenting the potential cover-up and loss of quantities of compelling evidence,” China’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Geng Shuang, said on Friday, according to the Xinhua news agency.

“We reiterate our call for the early launch of a UN-led international investigation to bring the truth to light for the international community,” Geng continued, adding that Western nations should “actively communicate and cooperate with Russia and jointly investigate the incident.”

Nord Stream 1 and 2 each comprised two separate pipelines, linking Russia and Germany. Three out of the four lines were destroyed in a series of explosions near the Danish island of Bornholm in September 2022, severing Germany’s energy ties to Russia and leaving its gas-dependent economy reliant on more expensive American liquefied natural gas.

Germany, Sweden, and Denmark all opened investigations into the attack, but Sweden and Denmark closed their inquiries in February. Swedish investigators published no conclusions, while the Danish team concluded that “there was deliberate sabotage,” but declined to blame the attack on anyone.

China and Russia have demanded an international investigation into the bombings since last year. However, the UN Security Council rejected a Russian request for such a probe last March, with Washington’s deputy envoy to the UN, Robert Wood, accusing Russia of trying to “discredit the work of ongoing national investigations.”

On Saturday, a spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry appeared to reject Geng’s proposal, telling Russia’s TASS news agency that an “investigation is already being conducted by the German Public Prosecutor General’s Office.”

Absent any official conclusions, two competing theories about the bombings have emerged. According to reports in the Western mainstream media, a team of Ukrainian commandos used a rented yacht to transport explosives to the blast sites, with the CIA and European intelligence agencies being made aware of the plot several months beforehand but ultimately failing to stop it.

American journalist Seymour Hersh has said that US President Joe Biden ordered the CIA to blow up the pipelines. Citing sources in the intelligence community, Hersh has claimed that CIA divers working with the Norwegian Navy planted remotely-triggered bombs on the lines in the summer of 2022, using a NATO exercise in the region as cover.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that he “fully agrees” with Hersh’s conclusions. Russian Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov, who is leading Moscow’s investigation into the blasts, said last month that “everyone knows perfectly well who did it,” and that “the tracks undoubtedly lead beyond the Atlantic,” – an apparent reference to the US.

April 27, 2024 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Colombia University panel slams president for suppressing pro-Gaza protests

Al Mayadeen | April 27, 2024

The President of Columbia University faced increased pressure on Friday as a campus oversight committee strongly condemned her administration’s actions in suppressing a pro-Palestine demonstration in the school.

Universities across the United States have witnessed in the past few weeks a historic surge in student protests in support of Palestine and Gaza, calling for ending all agreements with “Israel” and divesting from the occupation entity. Students also demanded an end to US support to “Israel” and involvement in the genocidal war.

Cross-country protests in the US continue to grow as the Israeli genocide in Gaza reaches its 204th day. The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza announced on Saturday that the number of Palestinians killed in the ongoing Israeli genocide in the Strip since October 7 has now reached 34,388, with 77,437 injured.

After Colombian students established their Gaza Solidarity Encampment on April 17, University President Nemat Minouche Shafik summoned the NYPD to the campus to disperse the demonstrations, resulting in the arrest of over 100 students. But shortly after, outraged by the footage of their fellow students being arrested, a new group of students arrived on campus and set up another encampment in protest.

Shafik: Decamp or ‘alternative options’

On Friday, Shafik issued an ultimatum to student protesters: either negotiate an agreement with the administration to disband the encampment or the school would pursue alternative measures to dismantle it. However, the demonstrators remained steadfast in their demands, with new supporters swelling their ranks.

The Columbia University Senate passed a resolution following a Friday meeting, stating that Shafik’s administration had eroded academic freedom and disregarded the privacy and due process rights of students and faculty members by involving the police and terminating the protest.

“The decision… has raised serious concerns about the administration’s respect for shared governance and transparency in the university decision-making process,” it said.

The Senate, predominantly comprising faculty members and other staff with a minority representation of students, refrained from explicitly mentioning Shafik in its resolution and opted for a less severe tone than a censure. The president, also a member of the senate, did not attend.

A task force was established in the resolution to monitor the “corrective actions” requested by the Senate concerning the handling of protests.

Columbia spokesperson Ben Chang stated that the administration shared the Senate’s objective of restoring calm to the campus and was dedicated to maintaining an ongoing dialogue.

According to a press release from the institution, on Friday, a minimum of 40 demonstrators were arrested at the Auraria Campus in Denver, which is jointly utilized by the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver, and the Community College of Denver.

Near the White House, approximately 200 protesters at George Washington University continued to assemble for a second consecutive day on Friday. The university stated that students failed to comply with instructions to disperse, leading to the suspension and temporary prohibition from campus for several individuals.

Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden described the protests as “antisemitic” and stressed that campuses must remian safe, hinting that current anti-Israeli war protests are a destablizing factor.

Additonally, Congress Republicans said that Shafik and other college administrators are not being firm enough in cracking down on the encapments.

Right to free speech

The University of Texas at Austin’s president, Jay Hartzell, encountered comparable criticism from faculty members on Friday, following his collaboration with Republican Governor Greg Abbott in deploying police to disband a pro-Palestine demonstration two days earlier.

Dozens of protesters were arrested, but the Travis County Attorney’s office stated that charges were dismissed due to a lack of probable cause for the arrests.

Read more: MIT, Emerson, other US colleges students launch pro-Palestine protests

Close to 200 university faculty members penned a letter indicating a lack of confidence in Hartzell, citing his actions as “needlessly endangering” students, staff, and faculty when police, equipped with riot gear and mounted on horseback, intervened against the protesters.

Civil rights organizations have denounced the arrests and called on authorities to uphold the right to free speech.

April 27, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

US lawmakers want to deploy ‘anti-Semitism monitors’ at colleges

RT | April 27, 2024

Two US congressmen have introduced a bill that would appoint independent “anti-Semitism monitors” to federally funded college campuses across the country. The draft law comes amid a police crackdown on anti-Israel protests at dozens of US universities.

Introduced on Friday by New York Representatives Ritchie Torres, a Democrat, and Mike Lawler, a Republican, the COLUMBIA Act would task the Department of Education with sending a “third-party anti-Semitism monitor” to any college or university receiving federal money.

The inspector would release a quarterly report on “the progress that a college or university has made toward combating antisemitism.” Schools that fail to sufficiently crack down on alleged hatred against Jews would then have their funding stripped.

“Rising antisemitism on our college campuses is a major concern and we must act to ensure the safety of students,” Lawler said in a statement. “Jewish students have told my office that they feel completely abandoned by their university administrators and they view Congress as the only avenue for accountability and safety,” Torres added.

The bill’s title – an acronym for the College Oversight and Legal Updates Mandating Bias Investigations and Accountability Act – refers to Columbia University, where pro-Palestinian rallies and protests have been taking place for nearly two weeks. Similar rallies have broken out at around 40 universities and colleges in the US and Canada, including Harvard, Yale and UC Berkeley.

Protesters are demanding that their universities “divest” from companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Lockheed Martin that have contracts with the Israeli government. They also want the US to stop giving money to Israel, citing its “genocide” of the Palestinians in Gaza.

Jewish organizations claim that some of the demonstrators have openly praised Hamas, and that the protests have stoked a climate of fear among Jewish students. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu weighed in on Wednesday, claiming that “anti-Semitic mobs have taken over leading universities” in scenes “reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s.”

Police arrested hundreds of protesters on Wednesday in a crackdown targeting 21 universities across the country. In a raid at the University of Texas at Austin, Governor Greg Abbott ordered the deployment of heavily armed officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), who detained more than 30 people. Abbott – a Republican and professed free speech advocate – declared on social media that “these protesters belong in jail.” Hundreds more were arrested on Thursday and Friday.

While mainstream Democrats and Republicans have joined forces in condemning the protests and promising stiff penalties for those involved, members of the Democratic Party’s progressive wing have visited campuses to encourage the demonstrators. “Contrary to right-wing attacks, these students are joyfully protesting for peace and an end to the genocide taking place in Gaza,” Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar said after meeting protesters at Columbia on Thursday. “I’m in awe of their bravery and courage.”

April 27, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

US campus crackdown: 500 pro-Palestinian protesters arrested

Press TV – April 26, 2024

US police have arrested more than 500 protesters during a crackdown against pro-Palestinian protesters on university campuses across the country on Thursday.

Anti-riot police used chemical irritants and tasers against protesters, who set up camps in defiance of police warnings from Massachusetts to California, to protest against Israel’s savage war against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Protesters were arrested at schools including the Ohio State University, the University of Minnesota, Indiana University and Princeton University.

At Emory University in Atlanta, police clashed with protesters, including students from other Atlanta universities and area activists and arrested dozens of protesters, including faculty members.

Videos are shared on social media, showing officers using tear gas, tasers and handcuffs to detain protesters.

Emory’s vice president for public safety Cheryl Elliott said in a statement that law enforcement “released chemical irritants into the ground” to disperse the crowd after protesters ignored multiple warnings.

She said 28 protesters had been arrested, including 20 members of the Emory community, “some of whom have been released.”

“We are working with responding agencies to expedite the release of any Emory community members who remain in custody.”

At Emerson College in Boston, police also tore down an encampment there and arrested more than 100 demonstrators early Thursday morning.

Police detained 93 people at the University of Southern California.

And at The University of Texas at Austin, 60 protesters were arrested.

In the event, faculty members gathered at a rally and called for the school’s president, Jay Hartzell, to resign after he praised law enforcement for exercising restraint against the protestors.

The latest arrests which followed others at Columbia, Yale, Brown and New York University, came as a growing number of students joined the protests after President Joe Biden approved $26 billion in war aid to Israel on Wednesday.

Across the United States, groups of students and activists are now demanding the leadership of their universities to cut financial ties with Israel, whose brutal war on the Gaza Strip has killed more than 34,300 people since early October.

April 26, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

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