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MPs demand Iran restrict IAEA inspections after scientist assassination

Press TV | November 29, 2020

Iranian lawmakers have issued a statement demanding that the country respond to the recent assassination of a senior nuclear scientist near Tehran by restricting the United Nations’ regulatory mandate regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

Members of Majlis (Iran’s Parliament) offered the proposal in a statement that was read out at the legislature on Sunday.

“Such atrocity entails an immediate and regret-inducing response,” they said, stressing that the best means of retaliation is through “the revival of the country’s brilliant nuclear industry by ending its voluntary adherence to the Additional Protocol” and restricting the UN nuclear watchdog’s unprecedented inspection regime.

Iran undertook to adhere to the Additional Protocol of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as part of its 2015 nuclear agreement with world countries. Under the protocol, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, is allowed to carry out “more intrusive” inspections of the country’s nuclear work.

Iran’s nuclear activities and the deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), have frequently been the target of sabotage by the United States and the Israeli regime.

The US left the JCPOA in 2018, and its allies in the accord – the UK, France, and Germany – subsequently failed to secure Iran’s interests guaranteed by the deal, under Washington’s pressure.

Two of the most recent acts of sabotage — where the Islamic Republic strongly suspects Israel to have acted with US intelligence – include a July incident at the central Natanz nuclear site that caused material damage to the facility and the Friday assassination of nuclear expert Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

Fakhrizadeh, the head the Defense Ministry’s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, was targeted in a multi-pronged terrorist attack by a number of assailants in Absard city of Tehran Province’s Damavand County.

Qalibaf: Enemies should be made to regret this

Majlis Speaker Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf also urged a “strong response” to the assassination, saying the country’s enemies would not be made to regret their atrocity in any other way.

A response, he said, has to both avenge the assassination and deter the enemies from repeating such atrocities in the future.

The assassination showed that the adversaries have been frustrated by Iran’s rising power and therefore have resorted to eliminating its scientists, he noted.

The senior parliamentarian, however, expressed certainty that the nation would be able to weather the loss as it has in countless other cases since the 1979 victory of its Islamic Revolution and “pursue the path of its martyrs more strongly than before.”

November 29, 2020 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Joe Biden and Terrorism

By Daniel Lazare | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 28, 2020

As Joe Biden unveils his hawkish cabinet picks, it’s hard not to get the sense that we’re all hurtling back in time to those glorious days of regime change when the United States believed it had a sacred right to topple any government that got in its way. It also seems like we’re returning to the days that when jihadi terrorism aimed at America and its allies was horrible, terrible, a crime against humanity, and so on, while terrorism aimed at people the US didn’t like was, well, distasteful and unpleasant but not something to bring up in polite company.

While no one wants to blow up innocent civilians, in other words, what really counts is which civilians and in whose behalf.

With that in mind, it’s worth revisiting a talk that then-Vice President Biden gave at Harvard’s Kennedy School in October 2014. If you enjoy listening to an empty-headed politician spouting endless clichés, you can access all ninety minutes of it here. But if you’re not a glutton for punishment, you can jump to the 53:35 mark and zero in on Sleepy Joe’s specific thoughts regarding America’s Mideast partners and their inordinate fondness for ISIS and Al Qaeda.

The topic was the US-Saudi effort to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and here’s what the veep had to say, run-on sentences and all:

“The Saudis, the emirates, etc. what were they doing? They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad, except the people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and Al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world. … So now what’s happening? All of a sudden everybody is awakened because this outfit called ISIL, which was Al Qaeda in Iraq when they were essentially thrown out of Iraq, found open space and territory in … eastern Syria, worked with Al Nusra, who we declared a terrorist group early on, and we could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them. So what happened? Now all of a sudden, I don’t want to be too facetious, but they have seen the Lord. … Saudi Arabia has stopped funding, Saudi Arabia is allowing training on its soil… the Qataris have cut off their support for the most extreme elements of terrorist organizations, and the Turks, President Erdogan told me, he’s an old friend, he told me, you were right, we let too many people through. Now he’s trying to seal their border….”

Words like these are worth savoring because they undermine years of propaganda about American exceptionalism and the US as a force for good. Obama, for instance, claims to oppose sectarianism. Yet here was his second-in-command saying that US allies didn’t merely want to topple Assad, but that they wanted to topple him by fomenting “a proxy Sunni-Shia war.”

In other words, they wanted to mobilize thousands of bigoted Sunni head-choppers in order to topple the Alawite president of one of the most religiously diverse countries in the Middle East.

Obama also claims to oppose terrorism and, of course, vehemently objects to any suggestion that Al Qaeda is a western creation. Yet here was Biden stating in the very next sentence that Saudi Arabia & Co. had “poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into … Al Nusra and Al Qaeda” and that “we could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them.”

So they did supply Al Qaeda despite US protests, which, in any event, were strictly private. While Biden went on to say that the Saudis have seen the light thanks to the dramatic rise of the Al Qaeda offshoot known as ISIS or ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), his wording was curious. Qatar, he said, had cut off support for “the most extreme elements,” while adding that Turkey, after admitting that it had let too many fighters traverse its border, was now trying to close the barn door after the horse had left.

But what does “most extreme” mean? That Qatar was still funding some Al Qaeda elements providing that they were not too outré? As for letting “too many people through,” was Biden suggesting that Turkey was right to let some Al Qaeda fighters cross, but that too many were spoiling the stew?

So it seems, and so numerous other reports attest. So not only did the Saudis fund Al Qaeda and ISIS to the hilt, they cut off aid to the latter only when they finally figured out, as Biden went on to say, “that ISIL’s target wasn’t Ramadi” in northern Iraq, but Mecca and Medina in their own kingdom. Killing thousands of people, raping and enslaving hundreds of Yazidi women, imposing a terrifying theocracy – such activities are permissible as long as they remain confined to Syria and Iraq. But once they threaten the House of Saud, well, that’s more than any civilized nation can bear.

The fresh-faced Harvard students who listened to such nonsense did not respond by booing, jeering, or tossing buckets of red paint. Amazingly, they instead responded with polite applause. Even more striking was the reaction when word got back to Washington. Instead of congratulating Biden for his forthrightness, Obama ordered him to go on what the New York Times described as “a Middle East apology tour” by phoning up Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Ankara, etc. and conveying his personal regrets – not for being incorrect, that is, but for being indiscreet. Vice presidents are supposed to know what they can and cannot say in a public place.

All of which calls to mind something known as the Bush Doctrine. In case no one can remember that far back, it goes like this:

“Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”

So George W. Bush told a joint session of Congress just a few days after 9/11, and since no subsequent administration has expressly repudiated those words, presumably they’re still in effect. If so, then the next time reporters get an opportunity, they should ask the president-elect if he still supports the doctrine and whether he plans to sever ties with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and the UAE if he does.

They might also ask Hillary Clinton whether she would recommend a cut-off since, right around the time Biden was holding forth at Harvard, she was confiding in an email that “the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia … are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region.” It’s yet another example of top US officials saying one thing in public and the opposite when they think no one is listening.

Of course, the chances of severing ties with the Saudis are zero, while the chances of America’s fearless press corps posing such a question in the first place are nil as well. The Saudis may be terrorists, but they’re America’s terrorists, and that’s all that counts.

November 28, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

AngloZionists are trying to provoke a war with Iran

The Saker | November 27, 2020

There is really nothing particularly complicated about what just happened: the AngloZionists have murdered a top Iranian scientist in the hope that this murder will trigger a war. The Iranians have promised a retaliation, but have not taken any action, at least so far.

Since there are those who will inevitably conclude that “Iran cannot do anything“, or “Iran is afraid” or even “Iran should strike Israel“, all I want to do today is to mention a few basic things about deterrence and retaliation. Let’s begin by the former: deterrence.

Deterrence: there are two fundamental ways to deter an enemy: denial and punishment. The first case in infinitely more desirable than the second one. Why? Denial simply means that you can counter-act your enemy’s attack plans by preventing your enemy from achieving success. This is what an air defense system does: it destroys the incoming missile before it reaches the target.

In our case, an effective denial strategy would have been executed by effectively protecting Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and his family from any attacks. It is clear that the Iranians miserably failed at this task. Frankly, I have to say that I find no possible excuse for this: everybody knew for years that Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was on the Israeli hit list thus the Iranian authorities had years to prepare to fully defend him. In truth, that is not as hard as it seems. Yet, all they apparently did, was to provide him with two body guards and what looks to me like a non-armored car. It is also obvious that the attackers knew exactly where his car would drive by and when. Again, this is simply inexcusable. If the Iranian counter-terrorist and counter-intelligence services are so sloppy, then that means that there are many more key Iranian officials which could be killed next. Bottom line: the Iranians have proven that they are not capable of denial.

Hopefully, they have now learned their lesson and that more competent and determined specialists will now be in charge of protecting key Iranian figures.

Even worse is the very strong possibility that some Iranian officials might have been recruited by the AngloZionsts to assist in the execution of the assassination plan. Never say never, but I strongly believe that such assassinations are not possible without local accomplices. Again, this is a question which Iranian security services will have to not only answer, but answer for!

If the Iranians are not capable of denial, then this means that their only option  to deter such attacks is punishment.

Can the Iranian punish the US and/or Israel?

Yes, of course they can, but only at the risk of doing exactly that which the AngloZionists want to achieve: give the Empire a pretext for war or, at the very least, a non-symbolic strike on key Iranian facilities (and, possibly, officials).

The key factor to consider here is that the aggregate power of Iran is still much weaker than the aggregate power of the AngloZionist Empire. Like it or not, but this is a fact.  Even Russia and China are globally weaker than the Empire, so they all share the same problem: how to deter a stronger party?

In fact, there are options other than immediately responding to the attack.

One option is what the CIA calls “plausible deniability” (the Russian equivalent would be “make sure your ears don’t stick out“): you make sure that there is no way to prove that you took any action. That can be done by using proxys and/or by covert operations.

[Sidebar: I read that the Iranians killed two of the attackers and captured one alive; if that is true, then I bet you that these terrorists were neither US nor Israels but locals, meaning terrorists hired either in Iran or elsewhere in the Middle-East. This is how the CIA always operates, just remember how the CIA engaged in a campaign of car bombing in Lebanon in which local CIA assets were used to plant the bombs. In a typical CIA fashion, these attacks resulted in 83 dead and hundreds of wounded, but missed the intended target: Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah].

Another option is what could be called “retaliation by a thousand cuts” – this is what the Iranians are doing to the USA in Iraq: pro-Iranian forces regularly attack US forces and positions, but always below the threshold at which the USA has to take major, public action. This approach can be summed up like so: “surely you will not start a full scale war just over a relatively minor incident?“  Keep the “incidents” “minor” enough and your enemy will be frustrated and unable to articulate an adequate response, especially over time.

Let’s discuss time now. It is said that “revenge is a dish best served cold.“ This is true! When the AngloZionists execute a high-risk covert operation they will typically try to get their forces in a higher state of readiness in case of a overt retaliatory strike. But here is the problem: no force or facility can remain at maximum readiness forever. It is too expensive, too complicated, too disruptive of normal operations and, finally, some form or other of boredom sets in. Even better, the primitive attacker will sooner or later conclude that “we dodged that bullet” or “they did not dare attack us“, breathe a sigh of relief and resume normal activities.

Next, comes place/location: if you are the weaker party but you do want to retaliate, not only are you much better off doing that after enough time passes for your adversary to let down his guard, you also can chose to retaliate very far away from where you yourself were attacked. In our case, that means that since the AngloZionists did commit their terrorist act in plain view of the world, you need not to the same thing.  Hit them somewhere as far away from their own national territory as possible. The good news is that the AngloZionist Empire has a planet-wide footprint. And, even better, the Empire is really already dead and unable to keep a high state of readiness worldwide. Simply put, there are *a lot* of very easy targets out there, it is quite easy to pick one.

Keep in mind that you do not have to retaliate in kind. If they murder one of your scientists this does not at all mean that you have to murder one of theirs: there are many venues open for retaliation which do not at all require killing anybody: you can retaliate economically, politically and you can also chose to retaliate against any US/Israeli colony out there (of which there are still plenty). How?

For example, the Iranians could retaliate against any so-called US or Israeli “ally” in the Middle-East and even elsewhere. Remember, the huge footprint of the Empire makes it indefensible and the current political chaos in the USA might be exactly what some of these so-called “allies” need to try to slip from under the US/Israeli control.

In truth, Iran has options galore!

Yes, Iran will probably not execute and immediate and public action of retaliation similar to what happened following the murder of General Soleimani. Why? Because they don’t have to! The main point of the Iranian counter-strike was to show the world, and especially the US decision-makers, that the US posture in the Middle-East makes it extremely vulnerable to Iranian missile strikes. They don’t need to do this again.  In fact, if the logic or the Iranian counter-strike was to show that there would be hell to pay for the US and Israel in case of full scale attack, it would be completely illogical and counter-productive to now do exactly that which could trigger such an attack.

I think that we can be absolutely sure that Iran will retaliate for the murders of Soleimani and Fakhrizadeh, but my guess is that this retaliation will be “served cold” and, probably, in an asymmetrical manner. This has nothing to do with any Iranian “fears” or “weaknesses” and everything to do with the fact that Iranians are superb strategists.

PS: those interested in Iranian covert operations could look into PanAm 103 and how the Iranians used Iraqi exiles to deflect the planned AngloZionist attack on Iran to their mortal enemy next door: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. I just don’t have the material time to write about these now, but follow the leads and you can find out for yourself what actually happened.

November 28, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Gangsters Without A Code

Eric Striker – National Justice – November 28, 2020

A respected physics professor who taught at Imam Hussein University of Tehran was ambushed by gangsters sent by Washington and Israel.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is now the sixth Iranian scientist murdered by Jewish state actors. Fakhrizadeh was put on a hit list in 2018 when during a powerpoint presentation Benjamin Netanyahu accused him of being a leading expert in Iran’s nuclear program.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repeatedly stated that there is about as much evidence for an Iranian nuclear weapons program as there was for Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction or Basher Assad’s gas attack. This has not stopped Jews around the world, including Netanyahu himself, from insisting otherwise.

Trump, in his usual candid form, revealed the real agenda behind the assassination by retweeting a loose-lipped Jewish journalist named Yossi Melman. According to the bragging Melman, Fakhrizadeh’s shooting is meant to be “a major psychological and professional blow for Iran.” In other words, the goal is to inflict fear; to send a message. The textbook definition of terrorism.

Men like Fakhrizadeh have been a vital resource as the country endures its “maximum sanctions” campaign. Fakhirzadeh’s research center has been busy dealing with the crippling blockade by developing effective homegrown treatments for COVID, while his defense work focused on upgrading legal anti-aircraft weapons through his knowledge of laser systems.

To call Trump, his Jews and the Israelis “gangsters” is a disservice to real mobsters. Unlike Steve Mnuchin, Al Capone had an honor code that prohibited torturing little kids with cancer to death.

But under the US Treasury Department’s “maximum sanctions” program, international medical companies risk American reprisals if they sell to Iran. The end result is a manufactured humanitarian crisis where children in need of cancer treatments are dying “in droves.”

The goal of this cruelty is, to reiterate Melman, to deal a psychological blow. The Iranians don’t have nuclear weapons, their crime is effectively resisting Israeli aggression in their region.

The Iranians are reacting to these provocations with incredible patience. State officials have remarked that they know Trump is trying to bait them into a war, possibly to win Jewish support for a second term, avoid prosecution once out of office or permanently destroy diplomatic channels between Iran and the US. The Persians are hoping, that a Biden administration, which will also be full of Zionists, will be more fair to them. Perhaps the bridges Trump burns will only provide a convenient cover for incoming Democrats to continue the siege indefinitely.

It doesn’t end there. Jared Kushner and Trump have done the equivalent of going back in time and giving Genghis Khan modern fighter jets by selling $100 billion dollars in high tech weapons for the Saudi barbarians to utilize against neighbors in Yemen.

Even with US support and an overwhelming technological advantage, the willful Houthis have fought the Saudis to a stalemate. In response, the US-Saudi alliance is engineering a man-made famine against the civilians in Yemen that is already being compared to the starvation in 1980s Africa.

When the US Senate passed bipartisan legislation to end American support for this atrocity, Trump used his microscopic amount of political capital to veto it. The Trump-obsessed Jewish media did not seem as upset about this abuse of executive authority as they are about his meaningless tweets. In fact, Trump’s most fanatical media critics “hailed” the president’s all-in support for Saudi brutality because of the terms he set: you only get our support if you restore ties to Israel.

The murder of Fakhrizadeh should be seen as a national embarrassment for our country. As the “liberal order” begins to sink, the Zionists are relying ever more on dirty tricks.

November 28, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

‘The Machines Did The Killing’: Obama Awkwardly Defends Drone Kill List In New Memoir

By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 11/24/2020

Former President Barack Obama still can’t shake his legacy as the “drone president” given he still holds the record for number of ordered covert assassination strikes via drones.

“There were ten times more air strikes in the covert war on terror during President Barack Obama’s presidency than under his predecessor, George W. Bush,” one prior human rights study found.

“Obama embraced the US drone program, overseeing more strikes in his first year than Bush carried out during his entire presidency. A total of 563 strikes, largely by drones, targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during Obama’s two terms, compared to 57 strikes under Bush,” the study said.

This infamously included not only the killing of Yemeni-American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki due to his suspected al-Qaeda links, but also his son, 16-year-old US citizen and Colorado native Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki, by a drone airstrike ordered by Obama on October 14, 2011. The boy was not even suspected of a crime upon his death while he had been casually eating dinner with this friends at a cafe in Yemen.

The Obama administration later claimed the teen’s death was “collateral damage” and despite lawsuits related to the CIA operation, no US official has ever been held accountable for literally assassinating two US citizens without trial or so much as filing official charges.

In his new 768-page memoir out this month, A Promised Land, there’s scant mention of the massively expanded secret drone ‘targeted killing’ program under his watch, however, when it does receive brief attention, it’s merely in passing but is still filled with cringeworthy level of self-justification and rationalization:

“… the machinery I commanded, more often had me killing them instead,” he wrote.

Clearly he and the editor (and his ghostwriters) took pains to twist the limits of grammar and bizarre sentence structure to create as much distance as possible between the former president and owning up to the killings.

Here’s the section in full from the book, where he actually attempts to present himself as the ‘savior’ of those victims he ordered killed:

In places like Yemen and Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, the lives of millions of young men like those three dead Somalis (some of them boys, really, since the oldest pirate was believed to be nineteen) had been warped and stunted by desperation, ignorance, dreams of religious glory, the violence of their surroundings, or the schemes of older men. I wanted somehow to save them—send them to school, give them a trade, drain them of the hate that had been filling their heads. And yet the world they were a part of, and the machinery I commanded, more often had me killing them instead.

Under Obama estimates of the number of victims that were a result of the White House’s secretive “Kill List” often range from 300 to over 500 civilians killed, including over 60 children.

But that’s just a snapshot of a few years out his total two terms, and the true numbers remain classified.

The New York Times would report in 2012 that Obama began to designate “all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.”

Obama adviser Robert Gibbs previously said when asked point blank about the ordered killing of a 16-year old American citizen: He should’ve “had a more responsible father.”

So it seems years later Obama’s justification is now essentially ‘the machines did it’.

Or again in his own bizarre and twisted words, “… the machinery I commanded, more often had me killing them instead.”

Abdulrahman Awlaki, the 16-year old American-born son of Anwar al-Awlaki, was ordered killed by Obama in 2011.

And let’s not forget, this is the man awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, and who is still heralded by Liberals as the most enlightened leader this country has ever had.

November 24, 2020 Posted by | Book Review, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Khamenei: Sanctions crime of US, European partners against Iran

Press TV | November 24, 2020

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has described the illegal sanctions the United States has imposed on Iran with the support of its European partners as a “bitter reality” and a “crime” against the nation.

Ayatollah Khamenei made the remarks on Tuesday during a meeting of the Supreme Council for Economic Coordination among the three branches of the Iranian government.

The Leader said the Iranian nation has been subjected to such a crime for many years, but that the sanctions have been stepped up over the past three years under the current US administration.

Ayatollah Khamenei said there are two ways to end the restrictions, either by “neutralizing the sanctions and overcoming them” or having “the bans removed.”

“Of course, we tried the path of [having] the sanctions lifted once and negotiated for several years [to that effect], but it produced no results,” he added.

Referring to the other solution, the Leader said, “This path may have difficulties at the beginning, but there will be a positive outcome.”

Ayatollah Khamenei said, “We have a lot of potential and capabilities to render the sanctions ineffective, provided that we muster the will, strive and meet the challenges outright.”

“If we manage to overcome the sanctions through [our own] efforts and initiatives while holding firm against the problems, the other side will gradually lift the bans since it will see their ineffectiveness,” the Leader added.

The Leader further urged Iranians not to rely on aid from abroad to resolve domestic problems.

“The situation of the United States is far from clear and the Europeans are constantly adopting positions against Iran,” the Leader said. “They tell us not to interfere in the region, whereas it is them who are interfering the most wrongly in the affairs of the region, with Britain and France possessing destructive nuclear missiles and Germany being on the same path. Then they tell us not to have missiles.”

November 24, 2020 Posted by | Economics, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian Court Holds First Session in Lawsuit against UK over Balfour Declaration

Palestine Chronicle – November 17, 2020

A Palestinian court yesterday held the first session to review a lawsuit filed against the British government over its crimes in Palestine during the British Mandate between 1917- 1948 and the Balfour Declaration which promised Palestine as a national home for the Jewish people.

The Court of First Instance in the city of Nablus, in the northern occupied West Bank, heard Palestinian witnesses who had been evicted from their villages in 1948 by Jewish militias and the crimes committed during that period.

The United Kingdom did not send a representative to attend the session.

The judge postponed the session until December 6.

One of the lawsuit initiators, Munib Al-Masri, said this is a serious and organized step to bring Britain to account for the damage caused by the Balfour Declaration, adding that after the Palestinian court issues its decision, they plan to go to the British judiciary and the international courts.

The lawsuit was filed by the International Commission to Support Palestinian Rights (ICSRP) on behalf of Palestinian families last October.

The lawsuit holds “the UK legally responsible for the consequences arising from violating rules, morals and international law and for the crimes it committed during the colonization of Palestine, including the Balfour Declaration.”

The Balfour Declaration refers to the letter sent by then British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, in 1917 to Jewish Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, favoring a Jewish national homeland in Palestine.

November 17, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Susan Rice has blood on her hands: Journalist

By Don DeBar | Press TV | November 15, 2020

Susan Rice is another one of the recycled Clinton people, and in fact the Democratic Party had her going back even before that.

Her mother has been around. She helped design Pell Grants. She had been with Brookings since ‘92 which is about when Susan graduated into the Clinton administration (in 1993) and went directly to the National Security Council.

She was with Bill Clinton for his administration. Obama had her – first at the UN, and then as his National Security Adviser (I think). She’s about as inside as it gets. She has blood on her hands in Africa, Rwanda.

The people’s understanding of the Rwandan genocide in the United States is exactly upside down. There was a genocide there, but it was the side that the US-backed, not surprisingly, and that was Susan Rice’s project. She was a member of the National Security Council to do international affairs and that was one big act of the Clinton administration – that move to pivot to Africa, around Rwanda.

It was also the enabling of their so-called humanitarian interventions, and in any way that’s her child.

At the United Nations, she helped bring us the destruction of Libya, enabled the situation in Syria to the extent that she could, and tried to sell authority for the US to bomb the hell out of Syria as well.

It’s going to be more war, really.

Let me remind people when Trump took office in January of 2017 the foreign policy that Susan Rice and Barack Obama and the Clintons, and John Kerry had set in motion had us where we were having war games at Russia and China’s borders from the Baltics to the Korean peninsula, on a constant basis, with a number of international incidents – including NATO members shooting down Russian pilots over Syria – any of which could have escalated, and really turning on a dime into a global thermonuclear war.

Trump for all the things he has done does not leave us – if he’s leaving – in that situation. But what they’re doing is installing the very people who created that condition to start from day one to bring us right back to the brink with Russia and China.

I think it’s very scary that Susan Rice is being considered for this. I don’t think it’s a surprise at all. Anyone who knows who Joe Biden is not surprised.

Don DeBar is an American journalist and political commentator based in New York.

November 15, 2020 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

US Training Daesh Detainees for Recruitment Into Illegal Militant Groups in Syria, Russia Says

By Henry Batyaev – Sputnik – 11.11.2020

US instructors are training around 30 Daesh detainees from the Al-Hawl camp in Syria with the purpose of recruiting them to illegal armed formations, the head of the Russian-Syrian co-ordination centre for refugees return said on Wednesday.

The prisoners underwent a two-month course of special training under the guidance of US instructors, Mikhail Mizintsev said at the opening of the Damascus International Conference on the Return of Refugees.

“Those who benefit from this situation should understand the wisdom of the proverb: They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind”, Mizintsev warned.

Russia has repeatedly called on the United States to disband hundreds of refugee camps on the territories outside Syrian government control, including the biggest ones such as al-Rukban and al-Hawl.

The Al-Hawl camp is located in the north of Syria controlled by the Arab-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). According to various estimates, the camp is home to 65,000-70,000 refugees, mostly women and children from the families of Daesh militants.

Syria and Russia have repeatedly expressed concerns over the plight of those living in the camp located in the area occupied by US-backed forces.

November 12, 2020 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Australia’s War Crimes and Culture of impunity

By Ramona Wadi | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 8, 2020

There is yet no reckoning for Australia’s SAS war crimes in Afghanistan, although details of horrendous atrocities are coming to light. A 2016 report detailing the extent of torture and extrajudicial killings by the Australian SAS forces in Afghanistan have been described as “fuelled by blood lust”, and compared on a scale to the infamous torture and murder practices at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

The 2016 report which has recently been seen by two leading Australian news outlets, was compiled by sociologist Dr Samantha Crompvoets. Testimonies of war crimes, accompanied by the normalisation of such action and recurring impunity, have been characterised by a reliability in narration among different participants, pointing towards routine practices that escalated over time.

Notably, the report points towards an adulation of violence. The Australian special forces working alongside British and US counterparts held up the latter as the pinnacle of violence to emulate. However, the torture and killing of Afghan civilians by the Australian SAS is held on a par in terms of desensitisation and normalisation. A report earlier in March this year, which is based upon the witnessing of an execution of an Afghan man, states, “The visual image to me was, the guy had his hands up and then it was almost like target practice for that soldier.”

Human rights organisations in Australia and Afghanistan have called upon the Australian government to release the inquiry report into war crimes committed by the SAS, which commenced in 2016, in a manner which would hold the country accountable to upholding International Humanitarian Law. The open letter makes an important point that resonates even in relation to other countries subject to foreign intervention and impunity for the perpetrators. It states, “The Afghan people have remained trapped in an unbroken cycle of a 40 year long conflict which is profoundly rooted in a culture of impunity, with many actors operating in total disregard of local and international laws and norms in the firm belief that nobody will ever hold them accountable.”

Under the guise of foreign intervention and the democracy narrative which is used to sell war to the public, impunity for human rights violations is being cultivated. The lack of accountability is related to several processes, including policy, leadership failure, and dysfunctional communication between divisions; the latter amounting to secrecy that develops further possibilities for impunity.

One story featured in Australian media in March this year detailed the killing of an Afghan man who posed no threat to soldiers, and whose corpse was chewed upon by an assault dog. In another case captured on camera, another Afghan man, again posing no danger, is shot three times at point blank range – for no other reason than abuse of power, as indicated by the perpetrator.

Democracy and war crimes go hand in hand when it comes to foreign intervention and the bloody trail they leave behind. In an investigation by the Australian Defence Forces (ADF), the soldier who killed the Afghan man in a field was exonerated and is still serving in the Australian special forces; the narrative being that the victim had been seen with a radio, despite evidence to the contrary.

Such coverups are a regular occurrence which serve to perpetrate additional human rights violations. It is possible that the Australian government, as indicated by Defence Minister Linda Reynolds, will agree to publish parts of the report for “transparency” this month. The so-called War on Terror has unleashed a brand of state terror on targeted countries which so far has been met with an ingrained reticence from leaders to investigate accusations of war crimes. Between the bureaucratic delays of the International Criminal Court, and opposition to the institution by world leaders intent on saving the culture of impunity, there is little chance of implementing justice unless the international justice system is pressured to work against the globalisation of war.

November 8, 2020 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Under US Commands, SDF Seizes Civilian Houses in Hasakah, Northeastern Syria

Houses in al-Hasakah city, specifically in “al-Barad al-Alee” street inside the security square in the city, taken on October 26, 2017. Photo credit: STJ
By Khaled Iskef | American Herald Tribune | November 2, 2020

SDF members stormed a residential complex in the “Al-Nashwa Al-Sharia” neighborhood of Hasakah city and seized houses there by force after expelling its residents at gunpoint.

Local sources said that “SDF” members, after threatening the residents and demanding they evacuate the houses, stormed the residential complex and seized a number of Syrian governmental buildings which are the General Company for Water Projects and the General Company for Roads and Bridges.

Twenty families of government employees were displaced, who have lived in the neighborhood for decades and found themselves without shelter under the SDF threat to use weapons against their families if they refrain from evacuating. The sources pointed out that the targeted housing complex oversees the government buildings which US forces have captured and taken as their bases since residents of the complex can watch the transfer of weapons and ammunition in addition to US forces’ operations in the region.

“SDF” members also stormed the housing association dwellings of officers, non-commissioned officers, and members of the Syrian Army in the “Al-Omran” neighborhood in Hasakah city, and told the residents to evacuate within 48 hours. The dwellings contain 100 houses that belong to the retired officers and non-commissioned officers and their inheritors who have bought the houses within years, but SDF targeted them as well in the implementation of US orders.

November 2, 2020 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

The Return of the Democrats and the Undead Past

By Martin Sieff | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 2, 2020

The partisan swallowing of ridiculous anti-Russia conspiracy theories by Democrats in Congress added to Hunter Biden’s truly sleazy business adventures in Ukraine have created an exceptionally dangerous brew to threaten and demonize Russia if former Vice President Joe Biden wins the U.S. national election on November 3. All the curses and bungles of America’s past 20 years will rise up anew to threaten the nation’s entire future,

If Joe Biden wins the election, we face an unprecedented situation in U.S. and global affairs since the beginning of the Atomic Age in 1945-49:

The problem is far deeper and more dangerous than any personal problem with Biden or his apparently sleazy son (Hunter Biden’s business dealings with both Ukraine and China cry out for serious honest congressional inquiries in the interests of sane and disinterested U.S. future relations with China and Ukraine – as well as with Russia.)

The real problem is that for eight years the Obama administration, in which Joe Biden was the putative Number Two figure engaged on a Helter-Skelter, crazed descent towards mindless confrontation with Russia and also institutionalized a reckless and plain wicked policy of toppling governments around the world in straight defiance of international law.

The true architect of these policies was neither Obama nor Biden but their first secretary of state Hillary Clinton. It was she who ordered the CIA to collect DNA samples of Latin American national leaders, an unprecedented seven of whom contracted cancers, some of them exceptionally rare and virulent, including two democratically elected presidents of Brazil and the late democratically elected president of Brazil Hugo Chavez who died of his.

Clinton also unleashed the dogs of chaos and war across the Middle East by approving the undermining and successful toppling of the government of Libya and the undermining although unsuccessful efforts to topple the government of Syria. This unleashed a ferocious civil war, the greatest catastrophe the Middle East has seen since Iraq’s attack on Iran in 1980, also at the time recklessly supported by an ignorant and incompetent president Jimmy Carter.

Carter, like Obama after him was ludicrously ignorant of international affairs. Both presidents allowed themselves to be led by the nose through the region by Zbigniew Brzezinski who served as Carter’s national security adviser. Brzezinski’s eagerness to embrace and support the very worst Islamist genocidal extremist groups was exceeded only by his lifelong, unwavering hatred of Russia and all Russians.

Clinton was succeeded as secretary of state in Obama’s second term starting in January 2013 by a far more experienced, restrained and responsible figure, Senator John Kerry. Kerry rightly worked hard and well with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to prevent the reckless and destructive policies of the rest of the administration from totally destroying constructive communications between Washington and Moscow.

But Kerry could not control even his own State Department. He proved utterly unable to rein in the neo-conservative and neo-liberal super-hawks with whom Clinton had seeded the State Department led by Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland. They joined forces with crazed right wing warmongers like the late Senator John McCain (now sanctified, but whose uncontrollable screaming rages were legendary in his days on Capitol Hill).

Together with ambitious plotters in the European Commission in Brussels they manipulated the toppling of the stable, democratically elected government of Ukraine in the 2014 violent Maidan coup in Kiev. McCain and Nuland actually addressed the violent revolutionaries and openly exhorted them to topple their own democratic and previously peaceful government.

The Kremlin moved – in reality with careful and considered restraint – to safeguard the democratically expressed wishes of the population of Crimea to rejoin Russia, and of the Russian ethnic majorities in the eastern provinces of Ukraine. But the Obama administration joined forces with the openly neo-Nazi movements that had seized undemocratic control in Kiev.

Over the following six years to the present, successive U.S. congresses have voted enormous sums of financial aid and sophisticated weapons systems to be sent to Ukraine with the express purpose of killing Russian soldiers and Russian-supported forces. It is no wonder that false and entirely undocumented reverse accusations have now been lodged against Russia by the very same individuals who have supported the forces of violence, revolution and aggression for so long in Ukraine.

President Donald Trump, to his great credit, ran on for election in 2016 on a policy of reducing tensions with Russia and restoring a state of stable coexistence with the other main thermonuclear power on the planet. At no point did he advocate stripping the United States of its defenses.

On the contrary, Trump doubled up on Obama’s unprecedented more than $1 trillion nuclear weapons modernization program. He expanded spending on both conventional and strategic weapons on the largest scale seen since the Reagan-Caspar Weinberger buildup 40 years before.

Nevertheless, Trump was then subjected to the most unfounded, ridiculous political witch hunt against a sitting national leader in U.S. history – at least since President John Kennedy was openly and repeatedly accused of treason for seeking to reduce the dangers of nuclear confrontation after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Through all of this, hatred and unreasoning accusations against Russia were accompanied by attempted efforts even to destroy the property and economic security of the Russian people. Congress imposed punitive sanctions (they failed completely) with Democrats taking the lead.

Why revisit all this history? It is because, as the great and wise American novelist William Faulkner understood, “The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.”

If the Democrats regain power in Washington, they will return with all the dire and insanely dangerous policies and obsessions they displayed for eight years under Obama and Biden. But those hatreds and prejudices will be superheated by four years of Russiagate fantasies and raving accusations against Russia unsupported by any serious evidence. Indeed, they have been coolly exposed and refuted indeed by many courageous and principled former senior U.S. officials and scholars.

Nevertheless, this Undead Past will rise up, more terrible and destructive than any fantasy of werewolves and zombies, to demolish our Present and horrifically curse our Future.

November 2, 2020 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

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