On January 26, the International Court of Justice proved once again that it is mired in the putrid fermenting swamp of Western corruption, decay and injustice with its pro-Israeli ruling in the legal case South Africa brought against Israel for committing genocide in its attacks on the people of Gaza.
The Western commentators, everyone, left or right, to cover up the real meaning of the ruling, to justify it, claimed that Israel had been ordered to stop genocide. The Court did nothing of the kind. It simply reminded Israel to obey the laws of war but refused to grant the South African request for an order compelling Israel to stop its operations and to withdraw its forces. The Court did the opposite and allowed Israel to continue its campaign of genocide. Essentially, the Court said, “Your genocide attack can continue, just behave yourselves as you commit genocide.”
The logic is lost on everyone except the deluded talking heads of the West. Russian and Chinese media largely ignored the ruling. And for good reason, because the ICJ and the commentators ignored the important fact that the ICJ, just 22 months before, issued a ruling in the case that Ukraine brought against Russia regarding its military operations in Ukraine. The Kiev regime, with the help of its masters in Washington, filed a case with the ICJ against Russia alleging that Russia was committing genocide. Unlike the Israeli case, Ukraine filed no evidence before the ICJ to back up its false allegations. Russia refused to take part as the ICJ had no jurisdiction since there was no dispute between Russia and Ukraine on the issue, that is, no formal dispute about genocide or no genocide, and further because Russia’s action were purely military in nature, and there was and has been no attack on the civilian population of Ukraine except by the Kiev Nazis attacking the civilians of the Donbass Republics and Russia. Russia told the ICJ it had no jurisdiction and refused to take part in a farce.
But despite the fact there was no jurisdiction for the ICJ to act, and no evidence of genocide or any war crimes were presented to the Court by Ukraine except simple assertions, the ICJ on March 16, 2022 made a provisional order that Russia must stop its military operations and withdraw its forces.
The double standard is stunning. The more so since even in the ICJ ruling on the 26th of January 2023, the judges of the Court cited the compelling evidence presented by South Africa that proved that Israel was and is committing genocide against the Palestinians, Yet, the judges of the ICJ ignored their own references to this evidence and instead accepted the Israeli sophistry that Israel has a right to defend itself and that it was trying to obey the laws of war.
But the law is very clear Israel has no right to self defence under international law against legitimate attacks by resistance forces on its forces engaged in the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. The Hamas attack of October 7, 2022 was an attack against the Israel occupation forces. Israel has no legal right to retaliate whatsoever. Its only legal recourse in the face of such an attack is to withdraw its forces.
No only did the Court display vividly its hypocrisy and double standards by ruling that Russia must stop its military actions in defence of the Donbass peoples and Russia, while permitting Israel to continue its campaign of slaughter, and by ignoring the law that Israel has no right to self defence, it even purported to make an order, or to “urge” Hamas to release the Israeli hostages it holds, even though Hamas is not a party to the South African-Israeli case and even though the Court refused to order the Israelis to release the thousands of Palestinian hostages it has held for years, including women and children, some of the then born in Israeli prisons.
Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel rightly scoffed at the ICJ ruling, stating the Israeli war will continue and that Israel is already complying with the laws of war. Washington, London, Ottawa and the rest all welcomed the decision and that it upheld Israel’s right to self-defence. Commentators, trying to put a brave face on the ruling to save face for South Africa, wrung their hands and moaned there was no ceasefire order but whimpered at least the Israelis were told to watch their behaviour and that the ruling confirmed Israel was committing genocide.
Well, twist the ruling anyway they want, it does not say that at all, The judges said South Africa had presented evidence that made that claim of genocide plausible, but did not affirm it was taking place. That remains to be determined when the main case is argued some time in the unknown future and unless these commentators can collapse Time and have a future decision now, they are stuck with what they have, a loss for South Africa, a win for Israel and a continuing tragedy for Palestine.
But the lawyers for South Africa have some explaining to do themselves, as they left the door open for this injustice. Their opening remarks in the oral hearings of the case began with a recitation of the Israeli propaganda version of the October 7 Hamas attack. There was no need for them to have done that. They should have instead simply stated the fact that Hamas attacked Israeli forces illegally occupying Palestinian territory in a legitimate resistance attack. They should have stated firmly that Israel has no right of self-defence against such an attack. But they did not state that. In fact, they evaded the issue entirely and when the British lawyer for Israel stated in his opening remarks that Hamas attacked “Israeli sovereign territory, the lawyers should have risen immediately and objected that was a lie. But they did nothing, said nothing.”
And despite the fact the Irish lawyer for South Africa referenced Russia’s military operations in Ukraine and, by the way, in a disparaging manner, never once reminded the Court that just 22 months prior they had ordered Russia to stop its military operations where no evidence was presented of crimes so that the Court now had no choice but to order Israel to stop its military operations in Gaza, It was not mentioned at all. The failure to do so was fatal to their case and as a lawyer, can only be explained by negligence and incompetence, or a deliberate decision was made to not refer to that precedent. And one made so recently.
Why their legal team would decide such a thing I will leave for readers to ponder. But it seems to this writer that South Africa was trying to please two sides at the same time, the global south by filing the action in the first place, which we all commend, and the West, that is Washington, by providing the Court with space to make a decision which would allow Israel to get away with the very thing South Africa brought the case to prevent-genocide.
Once again we observe the injustice of the international legal justice system, the corruption of and within that system, and, once again, that international justice is just a tool of power politics and instead of serving to stop war, does its best to enable it, justify it and encourage it. The fumes from the swamp have become overwhelming. But who is going to drain that swamp before we all die from suffocation from the stench?
Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
February 1, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | ICJ, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Republican representative in the US Congress from Florida, Brian Mast, appeared to call for a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, saying there were no innocent children there.
In a video circulating on social media, two activists ask Mast, “You haven’t seen the pictures of all the babies being killed?” To which he replied: “These are not innocent Palestinian civilians.”
When confronted by two CodePink activists who explained that Israel has destroyed more infrastructure in Gaza than was destroyed in the German city of Dresden during World War II, Mast replies: “And there’s more infrastructure that needs to be destroyed… Did you not hear me? There is more that needs to be destroyed. And there will be more that gets destroyed.”
Mast describes the United Nations as “moronic” for creating the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). This comes after Washington’s announcement that it has suspended its financial support for the agency.
“And I do wanna make sure that we don’t give $1, one penny to UNRWA and that it actually be totally abolished,” Mast said, adding: “I’ll make sure your tax dollars don’t go to UNRWA.”
Mast had served in the Israeli occupation army, and stood inside the US Congress in October 2023, wearing his Israeli military uniform.
“As the only member to serve with both the United States Army and the Israel Defence Forces, I will always stand with Israel,” he wrote in a post on X on 13 October.
February 1, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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Minister of Development Cooperation and Major Cities Policy, Caroline Gennez, posted photos of the building housing aid agency offices before and after being destroyed on X.
A Belgian official posted photos showing the building housing its aid agency’s offices in Gaza was destroyed by an Israeli air strike on the besieged Palestinian enclave. The building was targeted as Belgium is refusing to cut off assistance to the Palestinian UN aid agency.
Minister of Development Cooperation and Major Cities Policy Caroline Gennez posted photos of the building before and after it was destroyed on X. “The office building of Enabel, the Belgian Agency for Development Cooperation, in Gaza, has been bombed and is completely destroyed,” her post explained. “Attacking civilian buildings is and remains totally unacceptable.”
She added that Brussels had summoned Tel Aviv’s ambassador.
Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute, Trita Parsi, noted that Israel targeted the Belgian office as Brussels is resisting pressure to cut funding to the Palestinian UN aid agency. “Belgium is one of the Western countries that has refused to cut funding to UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency). So Israel just bombed the office of the Belgian Agency for Development Cooperation in Gaza,” he wrote on X. “This is a direct result of the impunity Washington has provided Israel.”
Last week, Israel informed UNRWA that a dozen of its employees participated in the October 7 Hamas attack. The agency’s leadership took immediate action to terminate the employees, even as Tel Aviv’s evidence was based on confessions given during interrogation. It is a dubious source, given Israel’s widespread abuse of Palestinian prisoners over the past four months.
Tel Aviv has since claimed that it also has evidence obtained from cell phones.
The US, Germany, and several other Western countries cut funding to UNRWA over the Israeli allegations. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US Ambassador to the UN, said Washington would not resume funding to UNRWA until the organization undergoes substantial reforms. “We need to look at the organization, how it operates in Gaza.” She continued, “how [UNRWA] manage their staff and to ensure that people who commit criminal acts, such as these 12 individuals, are held accountable immediately so that UNRWA can continue the essential work that it’s doing.”
Several human rights officials have warned that the aid cuts will push Gaza into famine and increase the death of Palestinians in the Strip. On Sunday, Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, posted on X, “Some states decided to defund UNRWA for the alleged actions of a small number of employees. This collectively punishes +2.2 million Palestinians. Famine was imminent. Famine is now inevitable.”
February 1, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Palestinians from Khan Younis kept by Israeli troops and released in Rafah after weeks have recounted their suffering due to inhuman treatment and abuse at the hands of the regime’s jailers.
The Palestinians displayed their injuries at a hospital in Rafah on Thursday. They suffered as a result of beatings by the Israeli forces.
The Palestinians were held without any charge. Arbitrary detention is used by Israel as a tool to persecute the Palestinians.
The Gaza crossings authority said 114 people, including four women, were released through the Kerem Shalom crossing on Thursday.
Khaled al-Nabrisse, 48, a resident of southern Khan Younis, was hit in the neck. He was wearing a neck brace. Palestinians have been “tortured relentlessly,” he said. “During the first 72 hours, drinking, eating or using the restroom was banned, and we were handcuffed and blindfolded,” Nabrisse said.
“The situation was really tough and we suffered torture like we never saw before.”
Nabrisse said the regime’s troops also used dogs to intimidate them.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said the released Palestinians included Mohammed al-Ran, head of the surgery department at the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza. Ran was taken by the Israeli military when they stormed the hospital two months ago, the ministry said.
Abu Khamis, from the Bureij refugee camp, said he had to undergo “torture, hits and insults” while he was held by the Israeli military. “As you see, these (wounds) happened in prison. My hands were hurt and are going to be treated,” said the 50-year-old, with a blanket around his shoulders.
Another person released on Thursday was lying on a trolley struggling to even lift his head, a black zip tied around one of his wrists.
Harrowing testimonies by the released Palestinians as well as human rights lawyers, and several pieces of video footage illustrate some of the worst forms of torture and ill-treatment by the Israeli forces since October 7.
Similar accounts of torture have already been documented from decades of Israeli hostility across the occupied West Bank.
The United Nations human rights representative in the Palestinian territories told reporters last month of the “horrific” conditions the Palestinians kept by the regime face.
Ajith Sunghay said the Palestinians held by Israel “reported being blindfolded for long periods – some of them for several consecutive days.” Sunghay said he was unable to give an exact figure of the number of the Palestinians the regime is holding but it was “believed to number in the thousands.”
February 1, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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“Israel is refusing the entry of a significant amount of aid to Gaza for unclear reasons,” UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Martin Griffiths, has warned.
In a press statement issued yesterday, the UN official added: “We continue to face the frequent rejection for entry of much-needed items into Gaza by Israel, for unclear, inconsistent and often unspecified reasons.”
“We must also have access to civilians in need across Gaza. At present, our access to Khan Younis, the Middle Area and North Gaza is largely absent,” he added.
“The ability of the humanitarian community to reach the people of Gaza with relief remains grossly inadequate. This is not for want of trying.”
He emphasised that anyone who has been displaced from their home in Gaza should have the right to return voluntarily as required by international law.
Since 7 October, Israel’s genocidal military operation in Gaza has forced more than 1.7 million Palestinians out of their homes. Many of them have been displaced multiple times, as families have been forced to move repeatedly in search of safety.
Almost 66,000 have been injured, many losing one or both their limbs with Israel banning the entry of crutches in the enclave and thus leaving them immobile.
February 1, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Gaza, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United Nations, Zionism |
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Benjamin Netanyahu shows Joe Biden who’s boss
Over the past ten days there have been several interesting developments in the continuing ethnic cleansing of Gaza, as well as increasingly on the West Bank, by the Israeli military supplemented by armed settlers. In one particularly grotesque killing, Israeli commandos disguised as medical staff and Arab civilians burst into a hospital room in Jenin refugee camp on the West Bank and shot dead three Palestinians. The Israeli military said one of the victims belonged to Hamas and was planning an imminent attack “inspired by the events of October 7” but provided no evidence in support of the claim. Palestinian hospital staff reported afterwards how “They raided one of the patients’ rooms and killed him, and the people who were in the room with him, his brother and friend. He was a patient, paralyzed and using a wheelchair.” One might observe that Israel, like the White House, lies about everything.
To be sure, Israel and the United States deservedly continue to be subjected to legal challenges, both internationally and in the United States, over their carrying out of a policy in Gaza that many, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, might eventually consider to be a full scale and active genocide, the most notorious crime against humanity. The court’s Order last Friday to Israel “to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza and punish incitement for genocide accepts the possibility of Israel being a perpetrator of genocide” and not just a perpetual historical victim, as it chooses to depict itself. As the court continues to pursue the completely plausible claim of genocide submitted by South Africa and to come to a final ruling, which could easily take months to complete, it has “already made history.” But in the meanwhile, manipulation of both the judicial and constitutional processes by the United States to support Israel has enabled the Jewish state to keep bombing and killing an average of 300 Palestinians each day while also controlling and cutting off relief supplies desperately needed by the starving and dying two million nearly all civilians physically imprisoned by the barriers erected by Israel surrounding Gaza.
In the latest act of undoubted collusion staged to kill even more Palestinians, Israel claimed that 12 members of the United Nations Gaza Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) participated in the Hamas October 7th attack on Israel. The UN has fired some of those accused out of its 13,000 employees in the organization and it is investigating further but that did not prevent the US from immediately cutting its funding to UNRWA in spite of the fact that Israel had produced no evidence to back up its claim and there was no explanation provided why such a report was not issued until more than 100 days after the alleged incident. Timing is everything. Clearly the moves were preplanned by President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to help counter the negative impact of the ICJ report, which was released several days before, and it will accomplish nothing except to increase the misery of the Palestinians.
The international focus on Israel and the United States regarding Gaza is because of the widely held and absolutely correct perception that Israel keeps getting away with murder, literally, and Washington is the accomplice in the crime, using its power and United Nations veto to avoid holding the Jewish state accountable for its misdeeds. Ironically, Israeli behavior often negatively impacts on the actual interests of the United States to include killing American citizens without there being and consequences for the perpetrators. This recklessness has recently been on display not only in Gaza but also on the occupied West Bank where just last week another Palestinian-American has been shot dead in what appears to be something like a vigilante killing.
According to witnesses, the completely unprovoked recent killing consisted of the fatal shooting of American-Palestinian teen Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, 17, a Louisiana native, who was driving a pickup truck near his village Al-Mazra’a Ash-Sharquiya on the Israeli occupied West Bank. Without any warning, a volley of Israeli gunfire struck the back of the truck, hitting Tawfik in the head and killing him, resulting in the out-of-control vehicle turning over several times on a dirt road. Family members who rushed to the scene were confronted by Israeli soldiers at gunpoint, who blocked their access to the truck. In an initial statement, Israeli police admitted that the shooting targeted Tawfic, but claimed the victim was “purportedly engaged in rock-throwing activities.” Police would not identify who fired the shots but did describe the incident as “ostensibly involving an off-duty law enforcement officer, a soldier and a civilian.” That suggests an armed settler was involved. The US Embassy has demanded an explanation but Israel never convicts Jews who kill Palestinians. That is what is expected in this case, which recalls the May 2022 killing by an army sniper of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh at a demonstration which she was covering at the Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli occupied West Bank. She was wearing a clearly identifiable journalist’s jacket. No one was ever held accountable and even the Zionist dominated US State Department eventually believed she had been targeted and deliberately executed. Indeed, there is currently a law pending in the Knesset that blocks prosecution of any Israeli soldier or policeman who kills an Arab.
And when it comes to other dead Americans, there is the still uninvestigated killing of 34 crewmen on the USS Liberty in June 1967 by Israeli warplanes and gunboats, the killing of activist Rachel Corrie by being run over by an Israeli army bulldozer in 2003, and the killing of Turkish-American boy Furkan Dogan and eight others in international waters on the Mavi Marmara ferry in 2010. If Israel decides to kill Americans it does not hesitate and the US never does anything but whine after the fact, if that. In that case of the Liberty the White House and Pentagon actually participated in the cover-up, such is the power of the Israel Lobby.
So once again the gloves are off in terms of the abuse that the United States has to take at the hands of “best friend” Israel, particularly now that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a group of fascist ultra-nationalists have formed a war cabinet that is intent on driving out or exterminating the Palestinians. Both in Gaza and on the West Bank any living Palestinian is little more than target practice for the Israel Defense Force half trained thugs in uniform.
And Netanyahu is not even trying to hide what he wants to do to Palestine, even though he is now running into concern from President Joe Biden who apparently is afraid that all the bloodshed in Gaza being endorsed and enabled by Washington will damage his re-election prospects. Netanyahu has not budged however and has made some significant comments over the past two weeks, one of which directly rejects a Biden call to look at options for reviving the so-called Two States plan that would give the Palestinians a mini-state that has actual sovereignty at some level, unlike the almost total military and police occupation by Israel that prevails currently.
Speaking at a press conference on January 22nd, Netanyahu insisted that “I will not compromise on full Israeli security control over all the territory west of the Jordan River”. His statement also prefigures an assault on the West Bank and the seizure of all Palestinian-held territory. War would “continue until the end, until the victory, until the elimination of Hamas” and “nothing will stop us.” Ending the war prematurely “would harm Israel’s security for generations,” he said, suggesting this could mean military action continuing until next year.
Netanyahu has said that there will be no Palestinian state with actual sovereignty and that Israel will control all of the former historic Palestine “From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” Yes, Netanyahu is using the very words that Israel’s friends have condemned as “antisemitic” when used by Palestinian demonstrators in the US objecting to the slaughter in Gaza.
Meanwhile, a number of Israeli cabinet and other senior officials have indicated clearly that achieving the goal of an Israeli state incorporating the whole area into what will legally be defined as a Jewish state will be achieved no matter what will have to be done to the Palestinians. This will all start with the ethnic cleansing and resettlement of Gaza by Jews, no matter how long it takes to accomplish, and then will proceed to the West Bank. The displacement of the Palestinians is being justified by claiming that that population is not redeemable as they are nothing but “terrorists,” to include incitement from government officials with comments like “We kill the children otherwise they will grow up to kill Jews.”
To be sure, there has been some pushback against the Netanyahu revelation, coming from many dissatisfied Israelis and even originating within the normally massively pro-Israel US Congress. Calls have come for a cease fire and 15 Jewish Democratic congressmen have supported a two-state solution with a Palestine state having true sovereignty. They issued a brief statement saying “We strongly disagree with prime minister [Netanyahu]. A two-state solution is the path forward.” And there also has been something of a rebellion from the civil service in Washington, where there was a walkout of employees rejecting the Biden Administration’s Gaza policy.
Senator Bernie Sanders and some others in Congress have repeated calls to stop funding what Israel is doing, particularly as the war is already spilling over to Yemen and Iraq and Syria where illegal US military bases are under attack producing most recently three deaths by drone fired from an Iraqi shi’ite militia, allegedly hitting a base in Jordan, and causing more than thirty injuries. The incident will possibly lead to further escalation as Joe Biden has said there will be some retaliation against the militia group that staged the attack and its sponsors. Predictably, Joe and others in Washington are actually blaming the attack on Iran though there is no evidence supporting that claim. Several Congressmen and presidential candidate Nikki Haley have nevertheless already called for an attack on Iranian military and economic installations and CBS news is now reporting that preparations are underway for the US to hit “Iranian targets” in Syria and Iraq. The Iranian government has said it was not involved in the incident and has already announced that it would retaliate if attacked. A better policy would be a withdrawal from those illegal bases, reportedly under consideration by the Pentagon, but it has been denied by the inimitable Victoria Nuland at the State Department.
US President Joe Biden also followed up on the recent Netanyahu statements with what was reportedly his first phone call with Netanyahu for a month, after which he suggested that the Israeli leader might consider some “type” of two-state solution. But Netanyahu’s spokesman dismissed Biden’s claim on the following day, saying that “In his conversation with President Biden, prime minister Netanyahu reiterated his policy that, after Hamas is destroyed, Israel must retain security control over Gaza to ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel, a requirement that contradicts the demand for Palestinian sovereignty.”
Netanyahu then personally expanded on the message, saying how “I emphasized to President Biden our determination to achieve all the goals of the war, and to ensure that Gaza never again constitutes a threat to Israel.” Under his leadership, Netanyahu pledged that Israel would go beyond that to wage a far wider regional war “on all fronts and in all sectors. We are not giving immunity to any terrorist: not in Gaza, not in Lebanon, not in Syria, and not anywhere.”
Netanyahu and his generals have repeatedly stated that Israel is waging war not just on the Palestinians but also against Iran and its allies, with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant explaining that Israel is confronted by a war on seven fronts: Gaza, the West Bank, and Iran and its proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen. Replying to a question from a reporter asking why Israel is not attacking Iran directly, Netanyahu responded, “Who says we aren’t attacking Iran? We are attacking Iran.” Indeed, Israeli forces have repeatedly bombed Syria’s capital, Damascus, targeting Iranian forces allied to the Syrian government. In the most recent incident, Israeli missiles fired from the occupied Golan Heights killed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Syria intelligence chief and four more IRGC members.
As a final observation, Netanyahu and his supporters appear to be using the prospect of a Donald Trump victory in the US presidential elections in November to put more pressure on Biden to make him back off from supporting any concessions over Gaza and a Palestinian state. Bibi is also intent on extending the war until the end of 2024 to make his domestic opponents who are demanding his resignation appear unpatriotic, many of whom believe that the Israeli actions vis-à-vis Gaza have been motivated by Netanyahu’s own political and personal interests. As Netanyahu might well otherwise be in jail currently due to corruption charges, many critics now support the theory that Gaza may have been a false flag setup with the Prime Minister himself giving the green light to an operation that would open the door to keeping himself in power while also destroying Gaza and ridding Israel of the Palestinians forever. If Netanyahu plays his cards right with the clueless Biden he might also be able to convince the United States to attack Iran very soon, something that he has been seeking for more than twenty years. That may be what is coming next.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
February 1, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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Washington plans to ship its first batch of ground-launched long-range bombs to Kiev this week. The arms were designed for the Ukrainian military and will give Kiev another option for deep strikes.
The new weapon was developed by Boeing and Saab. It combines a 250-pound guided bomb intended to be launched by an aircraft and straps it to a rocket motor. Washington believes it has a range of 90 miles.
Boeing and Saab pitched combining the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) with the M26 rocket motor in November 2022. President Joe Biden approved the transfer of the long-range bomb to Ukraine in February 2023. However, the delivery of the munitions was delayed because it needed to be developed and tested.
Politico spoke with four officials who confirmed the first batch would arrive in Ukraine this week. The officials touted the weapons as giving Ukraine “a significant capability.” “It gives them a deeper strike capability they haven’t had, it complements their long-range fire arsenal,” the US official said. “It’s just an extra arrow in the quiver that’s gonna allow them to do more.”
The officials did not say how many bombs will be sent to Ukraine. At times, Washington has sent an extremely limited number of some types of arms to Kiev. Ukrainian forces recently conducted strikes deep in Russian-held territory on civilian targets. Earlier this month, at least 27 people were killed in a Ukrainian attack on a market on the outskirts of the city of Donetsk in the Russian-controlled portion of the Donetsk Oblast.
While the bombs may give Ukraine another option for deep strikes, it does not fill massive gaps in Kiev’s war needs. Ukraine is running short on manpower. Additionally, front-line troops lack artillery shells to fight back advancing Russian forces, and Kiev is short on air defense interceptors to protect its key infrastructure.
Ukraine’s Western backers are facing multiple hurdles to providing Kiev with more weapons. In Washington, the White House is gridlocked with Republicans in Congress on the supplemental defense spending bill that includes $61 billion in aid for Ukraine. However, even if the legislation is passed, Western reserves of 155 mm artillery shells and air defense interceptors are nearly depleted.
February 1, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, War Crimes | Ukraine, United States |
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I am thinking of a certain industry. See if you can guess what it is.
This industry is huge, constituting a large portion of the nation’s GDP. Millions of people earn their living through it, directly or indirectly. The people at the top of this industry (who operate mostly behind the scenes, of course) are among the super-rich. This industry’s corporations lobby the nation’s government relentlessly, to the tune of billions of dollars per year, both to secure lucrative contracts and to influence national policy in their favor. This investment pays off richly, sometimes reaching trillions of dollars.
The corporations supplying this industry with its materiel conduct advanced, highly technical research that is far beyond the understanding of the average citizen. The citizens fund this research, however, through tax dollars. Unbeknownst to them, many of the profits gained from the products developed using tax dollars are kept by the corporations’ executives and investors.
This industry addresses fundamental, life-or-death issues facing the nation. As such, it relentlessly promotes itself as a global force for good, claiming to protect and save countless lives. However, it kills a lot of people too, and the balance is not always a favorable one.
The operational side of this industry is emphatically top-down in its structure and function. Those who work at the ground level must undergo rigorous training that standardizes their attitudes and behavior. They must follow strict codes of practice, and they are subject to harsh professional discipline if they deviate from accepted policies and procedures, or even if they publicly question them.
Finally, these ground-level personnel are handled in a peculiar manner. Publicly, they are frequently lauded as heroes, particularly under declared periods of crisis. Privately, they are kept completely in the dark regarding high-level industry decisions, and they are often lied to outright by those at higher levels of command. The “grunts” even significantly forfeit some fundamental civil liberties for the privilege of working in the industry.
What industry am I describing?
If you answered, “the military,” of course you would be correct. However, if you answered “the medical industry,” you would be every bit as right.
In President Eisenhower’s farewell speech of January 17, 1961, he stated that “…in the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” Sixty-three years on, many Americans understand what he was referring to.
They see the endless cycle of undeclared wars and decades-long foreign occupations that are undertaken on nebulous or even outright false pretenses. They see the ever-hungry mega-industry that produces super-expensive, high-tech killing devices of every imaginable form, as well as the steady stream of traumatized soldiers that it spits out. War (or, if you prefer its Orwellian nickname, “defense”) is big business. And as Eisenhower warned, as long as those profiting from it drive the policy and the money stream, it will not only continue, it will continue to grow.
Other mega-industries – the medical industry in particular – have generally fared better in public perception than the military-industrial complex. Then came Covid.
Among its many harsh lessons, Covid has taught us this: if you substitute Pfizer and Moderna for Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, and swap the NIH and CDC for the Pentagon, you get the same result. The “medical-industrial complex” is every bit as real as its military-industrial counterpart, and it is every bit as real a problem.
As a physician, I am embarrassed to admit that until Covid, I possessed only an inkling that this was so – or more accurately, I knew it, but didn’t realize how bad it was, and I didn’t worry about it too much. Sure (I thought), Pharma engaged in dishonest practices, but we’d known that for decades, and after all, they do make some effective drugs. Yes, physicians were increasingly becoming employees, and protocols were dictating care more and more, but the profession still seemed manageable. True, healthcare was far too expensive (gobbling up a reported 18.3 percent of the US GDP in 2021), but healthcare is inherently expensive. And after all, we’re saving lives.
Until we weren’t.
By early-to-mid 2020, it became obvious to those paying attention that the Covid “response,” while promoted as a medical initiative, was in fact a military operation. Martial law had effectively been declared approximately on the Ides of March 2020, after President Trump was mysteriously convinced to cede the Covid response (and practically speaking, control of the nation) to the National Security Council. Civil liberties – freedom of assembly, worship, the right to travel, to earn one’s living, to pursue one’s education, to obtain legal relief – were rendered null and void.
Top-down diktats on how to manage Covid patients were handed down to physicians from high above, and these were enforced with a militaristic rigidity unseen in doctors’ professional lifetimes. The mandated protocols made no sense. They ignored fundamental tenets of both sound medical practice and medical ethics. They shamelessly lied about well-known, tried-and-true medicines that were known to be safe and appeared to work. The protocols killed people.
Those physicians and other professionals who spoke out were effectively court-martialed. State medical boards, specialty certification boards, and large healthcare system employers virtually tripped over each other in the rush to delicense, decertify, and fire dissenters. Genuine, courageous physicians who actually treat patients, such as Peter McCullough, Mary Talley Bowden, Scott Jensen, Simone Gold, and others, were persecuted, while non-practicing bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci were hailed with false titles like “America’s Top Doctor.” The propaganda was as nauseating as it was blatant. And then came the jabs.
How did this happen to medicine?
It all seemed so sudden, but in fact it has been in the works for years.
Covid taught us (by the way, Covid has been such a harsh tutor, but haven’t we learned so much from her!) that the medical-industrial complex and military-industrial complex are deeply connected. They are not just twins, or even identical twins. They are conjoined twins, and so-called “Public Health” is the tissue shared between them.
The SARS CoV-2 virus, after all, is a bioweapon, developed over a period of years, funded by US tax dollars in a joint effort between Fauci’s NIH and the Department of Defense to genetically manipulate the transmissibility and virulence of coronaviruses (all done in the name of “Public Health,” of course).
Once the bioweapon was out of the lab and into the population, the race was on within the medical-industrial complex to develop and market the supremely profitable antidote to the bioweapon. Cue the full-on military takeover of medicine: the martial law lockdowns, the suppression of cheap and effective treatments, the persecution of dissidents, the ceaseless propaganda and anti-science, and the unabashed whoring of most hospital systems for CARES Act money.
We know the rest. The ill-conceived, toxic, gene-therapy antidote, falsely billed as a “vaccine,” was foisted upon the population by blackmail (“the vaccine is how we end the pandemic”), the effective bribery of medical authorities and politicians, as well as other Deep-State directed psyops designed to divide the population and scapegoat dissenters (“pandemic of the unvaccinated”).
The end result even sounds like the aftermath of a gigantic military operation. Millions are dead, many millions more are psychologically traumatized, economies are in tatters, and a few warmongers are fantastically rich. Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel (who, incidentally, oversaw the construction of the Wuhan Institute of Virology years ago) is a freshly minted billionaire. And not one of those who caused all the mischief are in prison.
At this writing, virtually all the major healthcare systems, specialty regulatory boards, specialty associations, and medical schools are standing at attention, still in lockstep with the received – and by now, clearly false – narrative. Their funding, after all, be it from Pharma or the Government, depends upon their obedience. Barring dramatic change, they will respond in the same fashion when orders come down from above in the future. Medicine has been fully militarized.
In his farewell address, Eisenhower said something else that I believe is most prescient here. He described that a military-industrial complex fostered “a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.”
Enter Disease X.
C.J. Baker, M.D. is an internal medicine physician with a quarter century in clinical practice. He has held numerous academic medical appointments, and his work has appeared in many journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine. From 2012 to 2018 he was Clinical Associate Professor of Medical Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Rochester.
January 31, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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The Israeli military granted CNN a three-hour tour inside the Gaza Strip to view the destruction of Palestinian cemeteries. The outlet explained that the evidence presented by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) did not confirm Tel Aviv’s claims about tunnels under the graveyard. Across Gaza, Israel has damaged over a dozen cemeteries.
An IDF general gave CNN’s Jeremy Diamond a guided tour of the Bani Suheila cemetery. Israel claimed it needed to dig up the bodies buried at the graveyard because a Hamas tunnel ran under it. However, the IDF was not able to show CNN evidence supporting that claim.
Diamond explained the evidence presented by the IDF actually suggested that there was no tunnel beneath the cemetery. The IDF invited Diamond into Gaza after he reported that the Israeli military operations in Gaza had damaged 16 Gazan cemeteries. Palestinian officials report that 2,000 graves in the Strip have been damaged or destroyed by the Israeli military.
Janina Dill, co-director at Oxford University’s Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, told CNN that the desecration of burial sites could be evidence of genocide. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled last week it was plausible that Israel was committing a genocide against Palestinians.
Throughout the Israeli war on Gaza, Tel Aviv has attempted to justify destroying civilian infrastructure by claiming below the buildings, Hamas has dug tunnels. Similar to the Bani Suheila cemetery, the IDF has been unable to produce conclusive evidence that the tunnel networks existed.
Still, Washington has not condemned the destruction of hospitals, cemeteries, and universities. The White House has even repeated Israel’s unproven claims regarding the tunnels. President Joe Biden backed the assertion that the Shifa Hospital was above a Hamas headquarters. Additionally, State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller suggested the IDF conducted a controlled demolition of Israa University in Gaza because a tunnel was under the building.
January 31, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said the Israeli occupation refuses to disclose any information about detainees taken from Gaza, Quds Press reported.
In a statement issued yesterday, the rights group said the Israeli occupation is carrying out “the crime of enforced disappearance” against Gaza detainees, following a number of military orders and laws specifically enacted for them.
The Israeli Knesset has recently ratified regulations depriving “Gaza detainees” of meeting with a lawyer for another four months.
Images from Gaza show Palestinian men being rounded up from shelters, stripped to their underwear and made to wait in the cold while naked and blindfolded. They are later seen being taken away on trucks to undisclosed locations.
Those who have been released bear signs of torture, exhaustion and malnourishment.
January 31, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Iran says the world public opinion is witnessing the moral decline and collapse of the West in the Gaza Strip after the discovery of tens of decomposing bodies of blindfolded Palestinians dumped inside a schoolyard in the northern besieged territory.
“The bodies of many Palestinian civilians have been discovered among the debris and garbage in northern Gaza, where the Israeli occupation forces tied their hands and eyes and then executed them,” Spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry Nasser Kan’ani wrote in a post published on X, formerly known as X, on Wednesday.
In the poignant tableau of Gaza, the global audience bears witness to the decline and moral collapse of the West, the Iranian diplomat pointed out.
Palestinian media outlets reported that the bodies of at least 30 Palestinians were discovered at the grounds of the Khalifa bin Zayed elementary school in Beit Lahia after Israeli forces withdrew from the area.
The bodies were reportedly discovered under a mound of rubble with videos showing several of the body bags tied with white plastic zip ties, normally used for tying cables together.
It remains unclear when the Palestinians were killed; but the school had served as a shelter for thousands of displaced Palestinians before it was bombed and besieged by Israeli forces in early December.
Hamas urges rights groups to document execution of blindfolded Palestinians
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement has called on international human rights organizations “to document the horrific crime” of killing of handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinians in Beit Lahia.
It said in a statement that the discovery attests to a massacre against civilians as the victims were killed in execution-style after being tortured.
The Gaza-based group further noted that Israel is continuing to “exterminate” Palestinian people in defiance of the decisions of the International Court of Justice, “which demanded that they stop the crime of genocide and ethnic cleansing.”
Palestinian foreign ministry demands probe after discovery of mass grave
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also called for the formation of an international investigation team to look into the gruesome discovery.
“They were killed while blindfolded and with their hands tied, as clear evidence that they were executed… in the most horrific forms,” the ministry said in a statement.
“The Ministry believes that the discovery of this mass grave in this brutal form reflects the scale of the tragedy to which Palestinian civilians are exposed, the mass massacres and executions of even detainees, in flagrant and gross violation of all relevant international norms and laws,” it added.
The Israeli war in Gaza has killed at least 26,900 people, most of them children and women. Another 65,949 individuals have also been wounded.
January 31, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Gaza, Human rights, Israel, Palestine |
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‘Many are also pledging not to take donations from Big Pharma’
More than 100 candidates for public office and nearly as many current officeholders across 35 states have publicly declared that they believe the COVID-19 vaccines should be “immediately discontinued” in the interest of public safety, according to a group of medical freedom advocates.
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, an otolaryngology and sleep medicine specialist who is also president of the group Americans for Health Freedom (AHF), announced Sunday that the tally of public figures who have signed their COVID declaration is up to “106 candidates, 103 elected officials and 1 Surgeon General [Dr. Joseph Ladapo of Florida] from 35 states.”
“Many are also pledging not to take donations from Big Pharma,” she added. “Over 17,000 physicians stand behind them.”
She shared the list of the newest signatories in her announcement post on X (Twitter). Most were state-level candidates, though three are currently running for Congress.
The complete list of signatories can be found at AHF’s website, which also contains the declaration itself.
“We declare, and the data confirms that COVID-19 experimental genetic therapy injections must end,” it reads. “All COVID-19 and other modified mRNA ‘vaccines’ must be immediately discontinued. We demand that Covid-19 vaccines be removed from the pediatric vaccine schedule […] We declare injury from COVID-19 ‘vaccines’ must be recognized. Compensation must be provided for those injured by these injections. Funding must be allocated to the study of these syndromes and the development of diagnostics and treatments should be pursued.”
“We declare Pfizer, Moderna, BioNTech, Janssen, Astra Zeneca studies were severely flawed, and they withheld safety and efficacy information from patients and physicians. They should face legal consequences for their dereliction of scientific duty which resulted in countless unnecessary disability and deaths,” the declaration also says. “We declare governments, media, global regulatory bodies, and medical agencies, such as CDC, FDA, NIH, NIAID, MHRA, NHS, TGA, SAPRA etc., and unelected international bodies including but not limited to WHO, WEF, UN, GAVI, and EcoHealth Alliance must be held accountable for mandating policies and procedures, and directing funding for reckless gain of function research that resulted in massive harms.”
The public health establishment has been overwhelmingly averse to investigating problems with the mRNA-based COVID vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, which were developed and reviewed in a fraction of the time vaccines usually take under former President (and likely 2024 Republican presidential nominee) Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed initiative, yet concerns persist thanks to a large body of evidence affirming they carry significant health risks.
The federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports 36,986 deaths, 213,536 hospitalizations, 21,335 heart attacks, and 28,052 myocarditis and pericarditis cases as of December 29, among other ailments. An April 2022 study out of Israel indicates that COVID infection itself cannot fully account for the myocarditis numbers despite common insistence to the contrary.
Jab defenders are quick to stress that reports submitted to VAERS are unconfirmed, as anyone can submit one, but U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) researchers have recognized a “high verification rate of reports of myocarditis to VAERS after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination,” leading to the conclusion that “under-reporting is more likely” than over-reporting.
A 2010 report submitted to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ (HHS’s) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) warned that VAERS caught “fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events.” On the problem of under-reporting, the VAERS website offers only that “more serious and unexpected medical events are probably more likely to be reported than minor ones” (emphasis added).
In 2021, Project Veritas shed light on some of the reasons for such under-reporting with undercover video from inside Phoenix Indian Medical Center, a facility run under HHS’s Indian Health Service program in which emergency room physician Dr. Maria Gonzales laments that myocarditis cases go unreported “because they want to shove it under the mat,” and nurse Deanna Paris attests to seeing “a lot” of people who “got sick from the side effects” of the COVID shots, but “nobody” is reporting them to VAERS “because it takes over a half hour to write the damn thing.”
Further, VAERS is not the only data source containing red flags. Data from the Pentagon’s Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) shows that 2021 saw drastic spikes in a variety of diagnoses for serious medical issues over the previous five-year average, including hypertension (2,181%), neurological disorders (1,048%), multiple sclerosis (680%), Guillain-Barre syndrome (551%), breast cancer, (487%), female infertility (472%), pulmonary embolism (468%), migraines (452%), ovarian dysfunction (437%), testicular cancer (369%), and tachycardia (302%).
Leading COVID shot manufacturer Pfizer donated more than $8.5 million to political candidates, leadership PACs, trade associations, and party committees representing both parties in 2022, fueling suspicion as to why only a handful of nationally prominent GOP officeholders, such as U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, are opposed to the company’s vaccine.
January 30, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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