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US Southern Command Chief Admits Plans Against Venezuela

teleSUR- October 7, 2020

Venezuela’s Foreign Affairs Minister Jorge Arreaza Monday denounced that the U.S. Southern Command Admiral Craig Faller openly admitted his country’s plans to violently overthrow President Nicolas Maduro.

On Monday, Faller commented at an online meeting organized by the business forum Council of the Americas that the international attempts to bring down Venezuela’s government have worked, although not quickly enough for the Venezuelan people.

He not only said that such efforts have not worked quick enough but also that it took an entire generation to get to this point and that it will take a while to unblock Venezuela’s democratic framework.

The Admiral also attributed certain external factors such as the help of Cuba, Russia, China and Iran to the alleged slow change within Venezuela.

Arreaza pointed out that this arrogant position of the members of the White House is unacceptable as they insist on violating the Charter of the United Nations and the most basic principles of international law through threats and blockades.

This statement shows Washington’s systematic and widespread attacks on Venezuela, which constitutes a crime against humanity.

Venezuela’s government will add Faller’s confessions to the criminal complaint it filed against the U.S. government on Feb. 13 before the Hague’s International Criminal Court.

In this complaint, President Maduro requests the White House to lift all coercive measures against his country since the U.S. government prevents Venezuela from acquiring food and medicines and from negotiating freely on the international market.

October 8, 2020 Posted by | Economics, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Calls for France to reveal location of nuclear waste dumped in Algeria

MEMO | October 5, 2020

France should take initiative to solve the problem of the nuclear waste buried in the Algerian Sahara in the early 1960s, as no one knows its exact location, which is a classified military secret, the head of the Paris-based Observatory for Armament said.

In an interview with Radio France Internationale yesterday, Patrice Bouvre said: “When France suspended its nuclear tests in 1966, it simply buried the waste of the 17 experiments it conducted over the years.”

He added that Paris classified the location or locations of the buried nuclear waste and the documents related to the affair as “a military secret”, which remains to date.

As a result, there is no information available about the exact location of the nuclear waste buried in the Algerian desert, Bouvre explained.

He called on the French authorities to reveal the truth about this file and to cooperate with Algeria to clean up the areas contaminated by the nuclear waste that still exposes these regions to serious environmental damages.

France conducted 17 nuclear tests between 1960 and 1966 in the Algerian Sahara, and the waste from these experiments is buried in an unknown location in the area, hindering attempts to remove the radioactive materials and protect the population and the environment.

October 5, 2020 Posted by | Environmentalism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Gantz: During Next War with Hezbollah, ‘Israel’ Will Strike Governmental Targets in Lebanon

Al-Manar | October 5, 2020

The Israeli minister of defense, Benny Gantz, threatened to strike governmental targets in Lebanon during any upcoming war with Hezbollah, considering that ‘Israel’ can no longer differentiate between the resistance military posts and the residential buildings which house missiles.

In an online interview with Saudi, Emirati and Bahraini journalists, Gantz said that the normalization deals with the Gulf countries will reinforce the fight against Iran, adding that the best approach to confront Tehran is to exert the heavy pressures and impose tough sanctions on it.

Gantz pointed out that no one can accept the demands of the Palestinians in the context of the ‘peace’ negotiations, adding that the normalization deals would reinforce the Zionist-Palestinian settlement.

October 5, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

‘We were deceived’, says Syria mercenary fighting in Azerbaijan

MEMO | October 1, 2020

A Syrian fighting in Azerbaijan’s disputed Nagorno-Karabkh region has spoken to BBC Arabic and claims he, along with others, were deceived when being recruited by the Turkish-backed “Syrian National Army”, formerly known as the Free Syria Army.

The fighter using the nom de guerre “Abdullah” is among hundreds of Syrians aged 17 to 30 who arrived last week “with the knowledge of the Turkish army the SNA”. However he was under the impression that he was recruited for a job paying $2,000 a month.

“Last week, Saif Abu Bakr, the commander of the Hamza Division of the opposition Syrian National Army, suggested that we go to Azerbaijan to guard military points on the border with a monthly wage of up to $2,000,” said Abdullah.

“There was no war at the time, and we were transferred from Northern Syria to the village of Hor Kilis, and there we have stripped us from the opposition Syrian National Army of all our money, phones and clothes, so that our identity is not recognised.”

Days after arriving, the untrained Syrians were forced to fight on the front lines as the fighting broke out between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces over the disputed region.

“They loaded us into troop carriers, we were wearing Azeri uniforms, and each of us was armed with a single Kalashnikov weapon. Most of the people here are poor civilians who wanted the money, not soldiers, stopped the car and we were surprised that we were in the line of fire. We did not even know where the enemy was.”

Abdullah and others later said they wanted to return to Syria, but were prevented and threatened with long prison terms if they refused to fight “We are almost exiled”, he said.

Both Turkey and Azerbaijan have denied the accusations that Syrian fighters have been sent to fight for Azerbaijan. However, according to the Guardian, at least three Syrian opposition fighters have been killed in Nagorno-Karabkh.

On Monday, Armenia’s ambassador to Moscow said that Turkey had sent around 4,000 fighters from northern Syria. France today also weighed in on the accusations, the office of President Emmanuel Macron said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the issue and both “share concern about the sending of Syrian mercenaries by Turkey to Nagorno-Karabakh”.

Turkish media outlets have claimed that Armenia is recruiting Kurdish PKK terrorists in their ranks, although critics argue it is using the reports to justify military intervention and that no evidence has been provided.

Turkey has previously sent Syrian fighters to Libya despite denials by the internationally-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA).

October 1, 2020 Posted by | Deception, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

The Leahy Laws: why Biden’s promise to Israel is illegal

By Zarefah Baroud | MEMO | September 30, 2020

While co-hosting an interview for the Palestine Chronicle, I asked Professor Richard Falk, a former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, about his thoughts on Kamala Harris’ promise to maintain unconditional aid to Israel. Harris is the Democratic Party vice presidential candidate in November’s election.

“I am disappointed of course by the Harris-Biden positions on Israel,” replied Falk. “I would have hoped for something closer to what Bernie Sanders was saying as a way of shifting the policies closer to what I think a majority of American people would support and want. Again, it illustrates this disparity between the will of the people and the will of the governing elites… I don’t think we can be very hopeful. Possibly on the annexation issue… but I am not very optimistic that there will be any changes.”

Once more, the only option that this presidential election cycle gives American voters is to choose between the lesser of two evils. It is particularly difficult to find any differences between the two candidates, sitting President Donald Trump and Joe Biden, especially their attitudes towards the Israeli occupation and American responsibility for this as the Israel Defence Forces’ largest sponsor.

Notably, the “progressive” Biden does not have a discourse which is more developed than his conservative opponent. In July, he ordered the removal of any reference to the “Israeli occupation” from his campaign platform, which contradicts international recognition of Israel’s presence in the Palestinians territories as a belligerent occupation.

Progressive Americans have organised against Trump for his frequent violations of constitutional law and lack of human rights standards, domestically and internationally. Many, though, have missed that Biden has already committed himself to campaign promises which guarantee not only a lack of regard for international law, but also that he is ready to violate US law.

According to Tony Blinken, Joe Biden’s senior advisor, “He [Biden] would not tie military assistance to Israel to any political decisions that it makes. Period. Full stop. He said it; he’s committed to it.”

Of course, Biden’s running mate Harris has reaffirmed the sentiments communicated by Blinken. She said during an online event on 26 August that, “Joe [Biden] has made it clear he will not tie security assistance to any political decisions that Israel makes, and I couldn’t agree more.”

These various statements should have struck many as more problematic than they did. After all, Biden and Harris are pledging to break US law for Israel. In 1998, the first of what are known as the Leahy Laws were established by Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy. The first institution of this resides in the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) of 1961 in Section 620M, and the second in the Department of Defence appropriations bill/the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2014. Essentially, the law states that foreign military assistance must be suspended or discontinued if there exists credible information that the recipient foreign security force unit has committed a gross human rights violation. A “gross human rights violation” is defined by the FAA as: “Cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment or punishment; prolonged detention without charges and trial; causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction and clandestine detention of those persons; and other flagrant denials of the right to life, liberty, or the security of person.”

Since 1946, the American government has provided billions in military aid to Israel, as well billions in loan guarantees to help Israel develop its qualitative military edge which it uses almost exclusively to torment and slaughter Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Specific infractions include Israeli prisons holding around 700 Palestinian children, over 75 per cent of whom report being tortured and physically abused; the use of white phosphorus on civilian targets in Gaza; and the bullets that have murdered and disabled thousands of peaceful Palestinian demonstrators.

In theory, a single violation is enough to have military aid revoked from the violating unit — in this case Israel — as per the Leahy Laws. The most reputable human rights organisations have reported on and recorded details of Israel’s violations extensively. However, aid packages to Israel have been increased annually, with the help of Joe Biden. Only a single publically known investigation has ever taken place against Israel, in 2006, even though the author of the law, Senator Leahy, requested that the State Department investigate Israeli human rights violations in 2016.

In 2017, and again in 2019, Minnesota Representative Betty McCollum drafted a bill, now classified under H.R. 2407: Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act. The bill employs the Leahy Laws to argue for an inclusion into US legislation of the issue of Palestinian youth forced to stand before Israel military courts, and therefore revoke aid from Israeli military and police units which carry out such practices.

In August of this year, Representative McCollum similarly released H.R. 8050: Israeli Annexation Non-Recognition Act, which vows to revoke aid from Israel that could be used to directly or indirectly assist the annexation of Palestinian land in the West Bank.

This legislation has garnered more and more support from representatives around the country, including Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (NY-14), Rashida Tlaib (MI-13), and Ilhan Omar (MN-05), reserving a space for Palestine in American politics. Unfortunately, though, the conversation amongst election candidates remains uninformed, trivial, and dangerous.

Regardless of who prevails in November, both presidential candidates undoubtedly have an “unshakeable” commitment to the apartheid regime that is Israel and must be held to account according to US law at the very least. This is not about electability, but complicity in crimes against humanity (and possibly war crimes), and American voters have every right to insist that they raise their standards.

September 30, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

PLO: US puts pressure on Sudan to settle Palestine refugees

MEMO | September 28, 2020

The United States is putting pressure on Sudan to accept settling Palestine refugees on its soil, member of the PLO’s Executive Committee, Bassam Al-Salhi, was reported saying by Anadolu yesterday.

“Special sources told me that the ongoing normalisation talks between Washington, Israel and Sudan include Sudan’s possibility to resettle [Palestine] refugees on its soil as part of the deal of the century,” Al-Salhi said, in reference to the US ‘peace deal’ for the region.

He stated that “this is part of the conspiracy against the Palestinian cause,” stressing the issue between Israel and Sudan goes beyond the normalisation of ties.

The PLO official called on Sudan “to reject being dragged into these American-Israeli plans in order to maintain its interests and future.”

Resettling Palestine refugees had been raised dozens of times by Israel and the US mainly in Egypt and other host countries; however, Al-Salhi said, proposing to resettle them in Sudan is new.

Sudan did not issue an immediate comment on the remarks, but the country’s officials have several times denied reports about the possible normalisation of ties with Israel despite several meetings between Sudanese and Israeli officials.

September 28, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Dark Side of the 1991 Gulf War

Tales of the American Empire | November 22, 2019

The 1991 Gulf war is remembered as a great war. In reality, worldwide sanctions would have forced Iraq to peacefully withdraw. The Gulf war cost billions of dollars, killed or sickened a million people, left the region much worse off, assisted Iran, and caused a worldwide economic recession.

________________________________________

The creation of oil-rich Kuwait by Britain; Keesing’s; July 8, 1961; http://web.stanford.edu/group/tomzgro…

“Gulf War Documents: Meeting between Saddam Hussein and US Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie”; Wikileaks/Global Research; March 5, 2012; https://www.globalresearch.ca/gulf-wa…

Stephen C. Pelletiere’s Jan 31, 2003 New York Times OpEd on the evidence that Iran was responsible for the gassing of 5000 Kurds at Halabja, not Iraq: https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/31/op…

“Overwhelming Force – What happened in the final days of the Gulf War?”; Seymour Hersh; New Yorker; May 22, 2000; http://cryptome.org/mccaffrey-sh.htm

“Lucky War; Third Army in Desert Storm”; Richard M. Swain; US Army Command and General Staff College Press; 1994; https://history.army.mil/html/bookshe…

Video of tons of foreign munitions blown up at the Iraqi Khamisiyah storage area in 1991: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzrqj…

September 27, 2020 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Remembering Israel’s botched attempt to assassinate Khaled Meshaal

MEMO | September 25, 2020

What: On 25 September, 1997, Israelis from the Mossad spy agency attempted to assassinate Palestinian political leader Khaled Meshaal in Amman, the capital of Jordan. The brazen attempt on the life of the then 41-year-old head of the Hamas Political Bureau sparked a diplomatic row which threatened to wreck the newly-signed peace deal between Jordan and Israel. The crisis ended with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu making a number of humiliating concessions.

Where: Amman, Jordan.

When: 25 September, 1997.

What happened?

In an attempt to cripple the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, Netanyahu, then in his first term as prime minister, authorised the assassination of Meshaal. The little-known Palestinian leader was born in 1956 in Silwad, which was then in the Jordanian administered West Bank. In 1967, Meshaal’s family and 300,000 other Palestinians were expelled from their homes by Israeli occupation forces in a second wave of ethnic cleaning that came to be known as the Naksa (Setback). Netanyahu is said to have personally picked Meshaal from a number of Hamas operatives for Mossad agents to kill. The attempt on Meshaal’s life came in the wake of a series of suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

A six-member Mossad team arrived in Amman a week before the assassination using false Canadian passports. The plan was clear: kill the exiled Hamas leader using a lethal toxin without leaving any trace of the killers. The idea was that after the toxin had been administered covertly, Meshaal would go about the rest of his day as normal and then, when tiredness overcame him, he would take a nap, never to wake up again; he was expected to die within 48 hours.

On the morning of the assassination attempt, two of the six agents moved into position to deliver a lethal dose of toxin — identified later as fentanyl — as Meshaal entered his office. The other four Israeli agents are said to have been deployed around the block either as drivers or as lookouts.

The Mossad agents delivered the toxin using an aerosol device and fled from the scene. One of Meshaal’s bodyguards gave chase and managed to apprehend the assassins after some hand to hand combat. Their capture was to have major ramifications.

What happened next?

Hours after the arrest of the two agents by the Jordanian authorities, the Israelis hatched a plan to diffuse the situation. With the diplomatic consequence of his actions dawning on Netanyahu, he attempted to conceal the botched assassination attempt from the rest of the world. He dispatched Mossad head Danni Yatom to plead with King Hussain of Jordan for the agents’ release. Yatom’s pre-emptive disclosure and plea for help from the Jordanian monarch exploded in Israel’s face, sparking a diplomatic crisis with the Hashemite Kingdom, which had normalised relations with the Zionist state three years earlier.

While the Israelis tried frantically to keep a lid on the botched plot, Meshaal’s health deteriorated. The toxin had done its job and within 48 hours he would be dead. King Hussain warned Israel that if the Hamas leader died, the Mossad agents would be hanged as murderers. The King had gone out on a limb to sign a peace treaty with Israel against the wishes of his people, so he called US President Bill Clinton to enlist his support. It was said that US anger was such that no one within the normally pro-Israel White House was willing to make Netanyahu’s case for him. “This man is impossible,” Clinton is reported to have said upon hearing that the Israeli Prime Minister had authorised the assassination attempt with little regard for Jordanian sovereignty, and thus endangered the fragile peace treaty.

Having been stonewalled by Netanyahu for the antidote to the toxin at the first time of asking, an angry King Hussein relayed his message through Clinton, insisting that the Israelis must deliver a vial of the antidote, which was the only way to save Meshaal’s life. “If Meshaal dies, the peace treaty dies with him,” he insisted. With the US applying pressure, Israel had no choice but to comply. A light aircraft delivered the antidote.

The indignity for Netanyahu did not end there. The two Mossad agents were still under arrest facing a death sentence and the Israeli Embassy in Amman, in which the other four members of the six man Mossad team had taken refuge, was surrounded by Jordanian security forces. In exchange for allowing them to leave Jordan, King Hussain was determined to exact a heavy price. He demanded a prisoner exchange, which was agreed.

Under the deal, Israel released the ailing Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the quadriplegic founder and spiritual leader of Hamas who was one of the most notable Palestinians in its prisons, along with 70 other Palestinian prisoners.

Meshaal was saved with just hours to spare. His reputation grew within the Palestinian resistance movement as “the man who wouldn’t die”. He became the leader of Hamas when Israel assassinated Yassin in 2004.

Meanwhile, a chastened Netanyahu was forced to apologise. His act of contrition came two days later when he arrived in Amman to pledge that Israel would not make another attempt on Meshaal’s life. This was not the end for the humiliated Israeli Prime Minister. He lost his bid for re-election in 1999, after which he retired temporarily from politics.

September 25, 2020 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Are You Feeling Safer? ‘War of the Worlds’ Pits U.S. and Israel Against Everyone Else

By Philip Giraldi – Strategic Culture Foundation – September 24, 2020

The media being focused on an upcoming election, coronavirus, fires on the West Coast and burgeoning BLM and Antifa unrest, it is perhaps no surprise that some stories are not exactly making it through to the evening news. Last week an important vote in the United Nations General Assembly went heavily against the United States. It was regarding a non-binding resolution that sought to suspend all economic sanctions worldwide while the coronavirus cases continue to increase. It called for “intensified international cooperation and solidarity to contain, mitigate and overcome the pandemic and its consequences.” It was a humanitarian gesture to help overwhelmed governments and health care systems cope with the pandemic by having a free hand to import food and medicines.

The final tally was 169 to 2, with only Israel and the United States voting against. Both governments apparently viewed the U.N. resolution as problematical because they fully support the unilateral economic warfare that they have been waging to bring about regime change in countries like Iran, Syria and Venezuela. Sanctions imposed on those countries are designed to punish the people more than the governments in the expectation that there will be an uprising to bring about regime change. This, of course, has never actually happened as a consequence of sanctions and all that is really delivered is suffering. When they cast their ballots, some delegates at the U.N. might even have been recalling former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s claim that the death of 500,000 Iraqi children due to U.S. imposed sanctions had been “worth it.”

Clearly, a huge majority of the world’s governments, to include the closest U.S. allies, no longer buy the American big lie when it claims to be the leader of the free world, a promoter of liberal democracy and a force for good.  The vote prompted one observer, John Whitbeck, a former international lawyer based in Paris, to comment how “On almost every significant issue facing mankind and the planet, it is Israel and the United States against mankind and the planet.”

The United Nations was not the only venue where the U.S. was able to demonstrate what kind of nation it has become. Estimates of how many civilians have been killed directly or indirectly as a consequence of the so-called Global War on Terror initiated by George W. Bush are in the millions, with roughly 4 million being frequently cited. Nearly all of the dead have been Muslims. Now there is a new estimate of the number of civilians that have fled their homes as a result of the worldwide conflict initiated by Washington and its dwindling number of allies since 2001. The estimate comes from Brown University’s “Costs of War Project,” which has issued a report Creating Refugees: Displacement Caused by the United States Post-9/11 Wars that seeks to quantify those who have “fled their homes in the eight most violent wars the U.S. military has launched or participated in since 2001.”

The project tracks the number of refugees, asylum seekers applying for refugee status, and internally displaced people or persons (IDPs) in the countries that America and its allies have most targeted since 9/11: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya and Syria. All are predominantly Muslim countries with the sole exception of the Philippines, which has a large Muslim minority.

The estimate suggests that between 37 and 59 million civilians have become displaced, with an extremely sharp increase occurring in the past year when the total was calculated to be 21 million. The largest number of those displaced were from Iraq, where fighting against Islamic State has been intermittent, estimated at 9.2 million. Syria, which has seen fighting between the government and various foreign supported insurgencies, had the second-highest number of displacements at 7.1 million. Afghanistan, which has seen a resurgent Taliban, was third having an estimated 5.3 million people displaced.

The authors of the report observe that even the lower figure of 37 million is “almost as large as the population of Canada” and “more than those displaced by any other war or disaster since at least the start of the 20th century with the sole exception of World War II.” And it is also important to note what is not included in the study. The report has excluded sub-Saharan Africa as well as several Arab nations generally considered to be U.S. allies. These constitute “the millions more who have been displaced by other post-9/11 conflicts where U.S. forces have been involved in ‘counterterror’ activities in more limited yet significant ways, including in: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Niger, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia.”

Yemen should be added to that list given U.S. military materiel assistance that has enabled the Saudi Arabian bombing attacks on that country, also producing a wave of refugees. There are also reports that the White House is becoming concerned over the situation in Yemen as pressure is growing to initiate an international investigation of the Saudi war crimes in that civilian infrastructure targets to include hospitals and schools are being deliberately targeted.

And even the United States Congress has begun to notice that something bad is taking place as there is growing concern that both the Saudi and U.S. governments might be charged with war crimes over the civilian deaths. Reports are now suggesting that as early as 2016, when Barack Obama was still president, the State Department’s legal office concluded that “top American officials could be charged with war crimes for approving bomb sales to the Saudis and their partners” that have killed more than 125,000 including at least 13,400 targeted civilians.

That conclusion preceded the steps undertaken by the Donald Trump White House to make arms sales to the Saudis and their allies in the United Arab Emirates central to his foreign policy, a program that has become an integral part of the promotion of the “Deal of the Century” Israeli-Palestinian peace plan. Given that, current senior State Department officials have repressed the assessment made in 2016 and have also “gone to great lengths” to conceal the legal office finding. A State Department inspector general investigation earlier this year considered the Department’s failure to address the legal risks of selling offensive weapons to the Saudis, but the details were hidden by placing them in a classified part of the public report released in August, heavily redacted so that even Congressmen with high level access could not see them.

Democrats in Congress, which had previously blocked some arms sales in the conflict, are looking into the Saudi connection because it can do damage to Trump, but it would be far better if they were to look at what the United States and Israel have been up to more generally speaking. The U.S. benefits from the fact that even though international judges and tribunals are increasingly embracing the concept of holding Americans accountable for war crimes since the start of the GWOT, U.S. refusal to cooperate has been daunting. Last March, when the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague authorized its chief prosecutor to open an investigation into U.S. crimes in Afghanistan the White House reacted by imposing sanctions on the chief prosecutor and his staff lawyer. And Washington has also warned that any tribunal going after Israel will face the wrath of the United States.

Nevertheless, when you are on the losing side on a vote in a respected international body by 169 to 2 someone in Washington should at least be smart enough to discern that something is very, very wrong. But I wouldn’t count on anyone named Trump or Biden to work that out.

September 24, 2020 Posted by | War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

UAE signs contracts with Israel firms on UN blacklist

MEMO | September 24, 2020

Emirati companies have signed contracts with Israeli firms and banks blacklisted by the United Nations (UN) for supporting illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, an investigation by Anadolu Agency revealed on Wednesday.

In February, the UN released a database of 112 companies on its blacklist for doing business inside Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

On 13 August, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel announced a US-brokered agreement to normalise their relations. The move was followed by a series of announcements on agreements and contracts between companies from both countries.

However, Anadolu Agency found that some of the deals struck between the two sides included Israeli companies and banks on the UN blacklist.

Pro-settlement banks

Among the contracts announced by Emirati media was one struck with Bank Leumi, one of the banks on the UN blacklist.

According to official Emirati media, this Israeli bank has signed agreements with three of the top Emirati banks: Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB), First Abu Dhabi Bank and Emirates NBD.

Bank Hapoalim, another Israeli bank blacklisted by the UN, has reportedly signed a memorandum of understanding with Emirates NBD, an agreement celebrated as the first between Israeli and Emirati bankers, according to Emirati media outlets.

Film production companies

The agreements that UAE companies have signed with blacklisted Israeli companies were not limited to banks. The Abu Dhabi Film Commission (ADFC) announced that it has reached an agreement with the Israel Film Fund (IFF) and the Jerusalem Sam Spiegel Film & Television School (JSFS), for promoting tolerance and cultural cooperation between the Emirati and Israeli people.

The IFF is supervised by the Israeli Ministry of Culture and the Israel Film Council.

In November 2019, Israeli newspaper Haaretz announced that the IFF approved the establishment of three new cinema funds, including one in the occupied West Bank settlements.

Many international companies have suspended their dealings with their Israeli counterparts on the UN blacklist for fear of being prosecuted by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICC is expected to soon decide on launching a criminal investigation into alleged war crimes committed by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Palestinians have long called for an immediate halt of dealings with the blacklisted Israeli companies.

September 24, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Serious Security Threat’: Beijing Claims US Spy Planes Posed as Airliners Over 100 Times in 2020

By Morgan Artyukhina – Sputnik – 22.09.2020

In light of increased attention being brought on the activities of US spy planes near China, Beijing has accused the US of disguising them as civilian airliners more than 100 times in 2020 alone, calling the practice a “serious security threat” and warning it poses a danger to actual civilian aircraft.

Several times over the last few weeks, observers have noticed US intelligence aircraft seeming to “disappear” in mid-flight on international flight-tracking programs, only to be replaced by what seems to be a civilian aircraft broadcasting what turns out to be a fake transponder code. These “civilian” aircraft then fly typical spy plane routes, patrolling intensively over an area for several hours, before mysteriously turning back into US spy planes on their return flights.

On September 16, a Chinese government official confirmed those suspicions, saying the US has made the practice routine over the last year.

“It is the old trick of the US military to use a transponder code to impersonate civil aircraft of other countries,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told reporters last Wednesday.

“According to incomplete data, since the beginning of this year, the US reconnaissance aircraft have electronically impersonated civil aircraft of other countries in the South China Sea for more than a hundred times. This above-mentioned practice is egregious, which has severely violated international aviation rules, disrupted the aviation order and safety in relevant airspace, threatened the security of China and countries in the region. China firmly opposes that,” he said.

“We urge the US side to immediately stop such dangerous, provocative behaviors to avoid accidents in the air and at sea. China will continue work with regional countries to firmly safeguard the freedoms and safety of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea as well as the peace and stability in the region,” Wang added.

A September 18 report by the South China Sea Probing Initiative (SCSPI), a think tank connected to Peking University, further corroborated the claims by citing multiple, independently verified sources that arrived at the same conclusions.

The practice has continued since: on September 21, a US Air Force RC-135W Rivet Joint signals intelligence aircraft, built by Boeing and based on a modified version of its 707 passenger aircraft, was spotted using a fake transponder hex code to fly through the South China Sea near China’s Hainan Island and the Paracel Islands, China’s claims of control over which are disputed by Vietnam.

​Then on Tuesday, an RC-135S Cobra Ball, an aircraft specialized for observing ballistic missile launches, flew from the US Air Force’s Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, Japan, bound for the Yellow Sea, where it, too, adopted a bogus hex code, as multiple observers confirmed. Hilariously, a KC-135 Stratotanker was even spotted flying out to refuel this aircraft that was supposedly not a US spy plane. The refueler didn’t bother to disguise itself, however.​

The South China Morning Post reported on September 19 that an unnamed source had told the paper about a US Air Force E-8C spy plane doing the same thing near the coast of China’s Guangdong Province, which faces the South China Sea. The report did not say when the incident took place. The E-8 is also modified from a Boeing 707 airliner and resembles it closely.

Another observer recorded a US Air Force RC-135U Combat Sent, which collects information on radar arrays, broadcasting a fake hex code in the Black Sea off the coast of Russia’s constituent Republic of Crimea on September 21. It was one of several aircraft watching Russia’s Kavkaz-2020 drills.

As Sputnik reported, the US spy planes must be turning off their International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) transponders, which broadcast unique information about the aircraft to other planes as well as receivers on the ground in hexadecimal format. They then turn on another transponder, making it look like they’re really another plane in the sky. For many of the US’ intelligence-gathering aircraft, like the RC-135W Rivet Joint and E-8C Joint STARS, the masquerade is only helped by their exterior appearances, which closely resemble a civilian airliner.

When asked about the practice, US Air Force Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, the commander of Pacific Air Forces, only said that “we follow the rules for international airspace, and we were following the rules that day.”

Technically this is true. Steffan Watkins, an open-source intelligence researcher based in Ontario, Canada, noted on Twitter that Wilsbach’s statement amounts to an admission, despite his attempts to dissimulate.

​“He’s confirming that yes, they do whatever they want in international airspace, because there is no law preventing them from changing their ICAO hex mid-flight,” Watkins wrote. “He’s also right, it wasn’t an isolated occurance; the #USAF has done so many times before. See, as a state aircraft they can do whatever they want. They’re not *breaking* any laws, because they’re above the law, essentially. See how that wordplay works?”

Indeed, the ICAO’s regulations specifically note that they “are not applicable to State aircraft (military, police or customs) in general,” and that “there are no requirements for State aircraft to comply with civil requirements in international airspace,” but also notes that it “requires States to ensure that military aircraft do not endanger civil aircraft.”

Since Malaysia seems to be the nation of choice for US spy planes to disguise themselves as being from, it’s possible Kuala Lumpur could claim the US is unreasonably endangering its civil aircraft by doing so. The southeast Asian nation has historically had close economic ties with China, but in recent years Washington has attempted to drive a wedge between them using their competing claims over parts of the South China Sea.

In May, the US delivered the first six of 12 ScanEagle unmanned surveillance aircraft to the Royal Malaysian Navy, which will be used for maritime patrols.

September 23, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

US requires Kenya to publicly back Israel or forget FTA: Nairobi

Press TV – September 22, 2020

The United States has required Kenya to support Israel’s commercial and political interests or forget a free trade agreement (FTA) with Washington, with activists warning that the inclusion of Israel in the bilateral deal would undermine the Kenyan reputation.

Washington and Nairobi recently resumed trade pact talks after a several-week halt. The US has set a raft of conditions in the ongoing negotiations for the bilateral deal.

In its objectives seen by the Kenyan newspaper East African, Washington has indicated that the conditional deal should, with respect to commercial partnerships, discourage actions that prejudice or discourage business between the United States and Israel.

The White House argues that the FTA should “discourage politically motivated actions to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel.”

The US also wants the “elimination of politically motivated, non-tariff barriers on Israeli goods, services, or other commerce imposed on Israel; and the elimination of State-sponsored, unsanctioned foreign boycotts of Israel, or compliance with the Arab League Boycott of Israel.”

“The United States published its negotiating position before negotiations began for all to see. We are negotiating with transparency and openness,” said the US ambassador to Kenya, Kyle McCarter, when asked about the inclusion of Israel in the trade talks.

“This is how we have treated the numerous other countries with which we have concluded successful free trade agreements benefiting both parties.”

The inclusion of Israel as a third party in the negotiation agenda has sparked criticism from activists who warn that the agreement could be too risky for Kenya.

The East African Tax and Governance Network (EATGN) and East African Trade Network (EATN), the groups who have been following developments on the matter, said Nairobi was being “entrapped” in the Palestine-Israeli conflict.

“Due to Kenya’s own special relationship with Israel and its pragmatic approach in dealing with issues like tensions in the Middle East, US demands for such political connotations in the USFTA would undercut the country’s reputation,” said Leonard Wanyama, the co-ordinator of the EATGN and vice-president of the International Relations Society of Kenya, a lobby for foreign policy experts in Nairobi.

This week, the Tax Network said Washington’s demand could place Nairobi in a difficult situation. It called for officials to reject the demand.

Nairobi’s own published objectives indicate the agreement must be discussed within the limits of the East African Community (EAC) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) regulations.

Kenya also wants a deal that takes into consideration the “special and differential treatment applicable to Kenya as a developing country,” according to the report.

Traditionally, Kenya has often recognized Israel, but rarely makes a public statement endorsing one side or the other and supports the so-called two-state solution to the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It allows Palestine to establish a representative office in Nairobi.

Last year, Israel’s Channel 13 said in a report that Israeli commandos were training local forces in more than a dozen African nations where Israeli arms exporters are already accused of being complicit in war crimes.

The channel showed footage of Israeli officers coaching Tanzanian troopers in hand-to-hand krav maga, hostage operations and urban combat, saying there was a dramatic rise in Tel Aviv’s military activities in Africa.

Tel Aviv’s policy to spice up ties with Africa, the report said, also features combined efforts by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, military, the Mossad spy agency and the regime’s security agency Shin Bet.

The report named Ethiopia, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, South Africa, Angola, Nigeria, Cameroon, Togo, Ivory Coast and Ghana as the African countries that Israel was seeking to stake out a niche with.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made inroads into Africa a key part of his agenda, becoming the first Israeli leader to visit the continent in 50 years in 2016.

The US demand for protection of Israeli interests means that Washington seeks to counter the international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which targets Israel, according to the East African report.

The BDS movement was initiated in 2005 by over 170 Palestinian organizations and later turned international. It is meant to initiate “various forms of boycott against Israel until it meets its obligations under international law” and end its occupation of Palestinian lands.

The BDS, which was inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, has claimed several recent successes in isolating Israel.

September 22, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment