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Is the UK a rogue state? 17 British policies violating domestic or international law

By Mark Curtis • Declassified UK • February 7, 2020

UK governments routinely claim to uphold national and international law. But the reality of British policies is quite different, especially when it comes to foreign policy and so-called ‘national security’. This explainer summarises 17 long-running government policies which violate UK domestic or international law.

British foreign secretary Dominic Raab recently described the “rule of international law” as one of the “guiding lights” of UK foreign policy. By contrast, the government regularly chides states it opposes, such as Russia or Iran, as violators of international law. These governments are often consequently termed “rogue states” in the mainstream media, the supposed antithesis of how “we” operate.

The following list of 17 policies may not be exhaustive, but it suggests that the term “rogue state” is not sensationalist or misplaced when it comes to describing Britain’s own foreign and “security” policies.

These serial violations suggest that parliamentary and public oversight over executive policy-making in the UK is not fit for purpose and that new mechanisms are needed to restrain the excesses of the British state.

The Royal Air Force’s drone war

Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF) operates a drone programme in support of the US involving a fleet of British “Reaper” drones operating since 2007. They have been used by the UK to strike targets in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

Four RAF bases in the UK support the US drone war. The joint UK and US spy base at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire, northern England, facilitates US drone strikes in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia. US drone strikes, involving an assassination programme begun by president Barack Obama, are widely regarded as illegal under international law, breaching fundamental human rights. Up to 1,700 civilian adults and children have been killed in so-called “targeted killings”.

Amnesty International notes that British backing is “absolutely crucial to the US lethal drones programme, providing support for various US surveillance programmes, vital intelligence exchanges and in some cases direct involvement from UK personnel in identifying and tracking targets for US lethal operations, including drone strikes that may have been unlawful”.

Chagos Islands

Britain has violated international law in the case of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean since it expelled the inhabitants in the 1960s to make way for a US military base on Diego Garcia, the largest island.

Harold Wilson’s Labour government separated the islands from then British colony Mauritius in 1965 in breach of a UN resolution banning the breakup of colonies before independence. London then formed a new colonial entity, the British Indian Ocean Territory, which is now an Overseas Territory.

In 2015, a UN Tribunal ruled that the UK’s proposed “marine protected area” around the islands — shown by Wikileaks publications to be a ruse to keep the islanders from returning — was unlawful since it undermined the rights of Mauritius.

Then in February 2019, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in an advisory opinion that Britain must end its administration of the Chagos islands “as rapidly as possible”. The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in May 2019 welcoming the ICJ ruling and “demanding that the United Kingdom unconditionally withdraw its colonial administration from the area within six months”. The UK government has rejected the calls.

Defying the UN over the Falklands

The UN’s 24-country Special Committee on Decolonisation — its principal body addressing issues concerning decolonisation — has repeatedly called on the UK government to negotiate a resolution to the dispute over the status of the Falklands. In its latest call, in June 2019, the committee approved a draft resolution “reiterating that the only way to end the special and particular colonial situation of the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) is through a peaceful and negotiated settlement of the sovereignty dispute between Argentina and the United Kingdom”.

The British government consistently rejects these demands. Last year, it stated:

“The Decolonisation Committee no longer has a relevant role to play with respect to British Overseas Territories. They all have a large measure of self government, have chosen to retain their links with the UK, and therefore should have been delisted a long time ago.”

In 2016, the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf issued a report finding that the Falkland Islands are located in Argentina’s territorial waters.

Israel and settlement goods

Although Britain regularly condemns Israeli settlements in the occupied territories as illegal, in line with international law, it permits trade in goods produced on those settlements. It also does not keep a record of imports that come from the settlements — which include wine, olive oil and dates — into the UK.

UN Security Council resolutions require all states to “distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967”. The UK is failing to do this.

Israel’s blockade of Gaza

Israel’s blockade of Gaza, imposed in 2007 following the territory’s takeover by Hamas, is widely regarded as illegal. Senior UN officials, a UN independent panel of experts, and Amnesty International all agree that the infliction of “collective punishment” on the population of Gaza contravenes international human rights and humanitarian law.

Gaza has about 1.8 million inhabitants who remain “locked in” and denied free access to the remainder of putative Palestine (the West Bank) and the outside world. It has poverty and unemployment rates that reached nearly 75% in 2019.

Through its naval blockade, the Israeli navy restricts Palestinians’ fishing rights, fires on local fishermen and has intercepted ships delivering humanitarian aid. Britain, and all states, have an obligation “to ensure compliance by Israel with international humanitarian law” in Gaza.

However, instead of doing so, the UK regularly collaborates with the navy enforcing the blockade. In August 2019, Britain’s Royal Navy took part in the largest international naval exercise ever held by Israel, off the country’s Mediterranean shore. In November 2016 and December 2017, British warships conducted military exercises with their Israeli allies.

Exports of surveillance equipment

Declassified revealed that the UK recently exported telecommunications interception equipment or software to 13 countries, including authoritarian regimes in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Oman. Such technology can enable security forces to monitor the private activities of groups or individuals and crack down on political opponents.

The UAE has been involved in programmes monitoring domestic activists using spyware. In 2017 and 2018, British exporters were given four licences to export telecommunications interception equipment, components or software to the UAE.

UK arms export guidelines state that the government will “not grant a licence if there is a clear risk that the items might be used for internal repression”. Reports by Amnesty International document human rights abuses in the cases of UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman, suggesting that British approval of such exports to these countries is prima facie unlawful.

Arms exports to Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia has been accused by the UN and others of violating international humanitarian law and committing war crimes in its war in Yemen, which began in March 2015. The UK has licensed nearly £5-billion worth of arms to the Saudi regime during this time. In addition, the RAF is helping to maintain Saudi warplanes at key operating bases and stores and issues bombs for use in Yemen.

Following legal action brought by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, the UK Court of Appeal ruled in June 2019 that ministers had illegally signed off on arms exports without properly assessing the risk to civilians. The court ruled that the government must reconsider the export licences in accordance with the correct legal approach.

The ruling followed a report by a cross-party House of Lords committee, published earlier in 2019, which concluded that Britain is breaking international law by selling weapons to Saudi Arabia and should suspend some export licences immediately.

Julian Assange’s arbitrary detention and torture

In the case of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange — currently held in Belmarsh maximum-security prison in London — the UK is defying repeated opinions of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) and the UN special rapporteur on torture.

The latter, Nils Melzer, has called on the UK government to release Assange on the grounds that officials are contributing to his psychological torture and ill treatment. Melzer has also called for UK officials to be investigated for possible “criminal conduct” as government policy “severely undermines the credibility of [its] commitment to the prohibition of torture… as well as to the rule of law more generally”.

The WGAD — the supreme international body scrutinising this issue — has repeatedly demanded that the UK government end Assange’s “arbitrary detention”. Although the UN states that WGAD determinations are legally binding, its calls have been consistently rejected by the UK government.

Covert wars

Covert military operations to subvert foreign governments, such as Britain’s years-long operation in Syria to overthrow the Assad regime, are unlawful. As a House of Commons briefing notes, “forcible assistance to opposition forces is illegal”.

A precedent was set in the Nicaragua case in the 1980s, when US-backed covert forces (the “Contras”) sought to overthrow the Sandinista government. The International Court of Justice held that a third state may not forcibly help the opposition to overthrow a government since it breached the principles of non-intervention and prohibition on the use of force.

As Declassified has shown, the UK is currently engaged in seven covert wars, including in Syria, with minimal parliamentary oversight. Government policy is “not to comment” on the activities of its special forces “because of the security implications”. The public’s ability to scrutinise policy is also restricted since the UK’s Freedom of Information Act applies an “absolute exemption” to special forces. This is not the case for allied powers such as the US and Canada.

Torture and the refusal to hold an inquiry

In 2018 a report by parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee found that the UK had been complicit in cases of torture and other ill treatment of detainees in the so-called “war on terror”. The inquiry examined the participation of MI6 (the secret intelligence service), MI5 (the domestic security service) and Ministry of Defence (MOD) personnel in interrogating detainees held primarily by the US in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay during 2001-10.

The report found that there were 232 cases where UK personnel supplied questions or intelligence to foreign intelligence agents after they knew or suspected that a detainee was being mistreated. It also found 198 cases where UK personnel received intelligence from foreign agents obtained from detainees whom they knew or suspected to have been mistreated.

In one case, MI6 “sought and obtained authorisation from the foreign secretary” (then Jack Straw, in Tony Blair’s government) for the costs of funding a plane which was involved in rendering a suspect.

After the report was published, the government announced it was refusing to hold a judge-led, independent inquiry into the UK’s role in rendition and torture as it had previously promised to do. In 2019, human rights group Reprieve, together with Conservative and Labour MPs, instigated a legal challenge to the government over this refusal–which the High Court has agreed to hear.

The UN special rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, has formally warned the UK that its refusal to launch a judicial inquiry into torture and rendition breaches international law, specifically the UN Convention Against Torture. He has written a private “intervention” letter to the UK foreign secretary stating that the government has “a legal obligation to investigate and to prosecute”.

Melzer accuses the government of engaging in a “conscious policy” of co-operating with torture since 9/11, saying it is “impossible” the practice was not approved or at least tolerated by top officials.

UK’s secret torture policy

The MOD was revealed in 2019 to be operating a secret policy allowing ministers to approve actions which could lead to the torture of detainees. The policy, contained in an internal MOD document dated November 2018, allows ministers to approve passing information to allies even if there is a risk of torture, if “the potential benefits justify accepting the risk and legal consequences”.

This policy also provides for ministers to approve lists of individuals about whom information may be shared despite a serious risk they could face mistreatment. One leading lawyer has said that domestic and international legislation on the prohibition of torture is clear and that the MOD policy supports breaking of the law by ministers.

Amnesty for crimes committed by soldiers

There is a long history of British soldiers committing crimes during wars. In 2019 the government outlined plans to grant immunity for offences by soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland that were committed more than 10 years before.

These plans have been condemned by the UN Committee Against Torture, which has called on the government to “refrain from enacting legislation that would grant amnesty or pardon where torture is concerned. It should also ensure that all victims of such torture and ill-treatment obtain redress”.

The committee has specifically urged the UK to “establish responsibility and ensure accountability for any torture and ill-treatment committed by UK personnel in Iraq from 2003 to 2009, specifically by establishing a single, independent, public inquiry to investigate allegations of such conduct.”

The government’s proposals are also likely to breach UK obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, which obliges states to investigate breaches of the right to life or the prohibition on torture.

GCHQ’s mass surveillance

Files revealed by US whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013 show that the UK intelligence agency GCHQ had been secretly intercepting, processing and storing data concerning millions of people’s private communications, including people of no intelligence interest — in a programme named Tempora. Snowden also revealed that the British government was accessing personal communications and data collected by the US National Security Agency and other countries’ intelligence agencies.

All of this was taking place without public consent or awareness, with no basis in law and with no proper safeguards. Since these revelations, there has been a long-running legal battle over the UK’s unlawful use of these previously secret surveillance powers.

In September 2018, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that UK laws enabling mass surveillance were unlawful, violating rights to privacy and freedom of expression. The court observed that the UK’s regime for authorising bulk interception was incapable of keeping “interference” to what is “necessary in a democratic society”.

The UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal, the body which considers complaints against the security services, also found that UK intelligence agencies had unlawfully spied on the communications of Amnesty International and the Legal Resources Centre in South Africa.

In 2014, revelations also confirmed that GCHQ had been granted authority to secretly eavesdrop on legally privileged lawyer-client communications, and that MI5 and MI6 adopted similar policies. The guidelines appeared to permit surveillance of journalists and others deemed to work in “sensitive professions” handling confidential information.

MI5 personal data

In 2019, MI5 was found to have for years unlawfully retained innocent British people’s online location data, calls, messages and web browsing history without proper protections, according to the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office which upholds British privacy protections. MI5 had also failed to give senior judges accurate information about repeated breaches of its duty to delete bulk surveillance data, and was criticised for mishandling sensitive legally privileged material.

The commissioner concluded that the way MI5 was holding and handling people’s data was “undoubtedly unlawful”. Warrants for MI5’s bulk surveillance were issued by senior judges on the understanding that the agency’s legal data handling obligations were being met — when they were not.

“MI5 have been holding on to people’s data—ordinary people’s data, your data, my data — illegally for many years,” said Megan Goulding, a lawyer for rights organisation Liberty, which brought the case. “Not only that, they’ve been trying to keep their really serious errors secret — secret from the security services watchdog, who’s supposed to know about them, secret from the Home Office, secret from the prime minister and secret from the public.”

Intelligence agencies committing criminal offences

MI5 has been operating under a secret policy that allows its agents to commit serious crimes during counter-terrorism operations in the UK, according to lawyers for human rights organisations brin

ging a case to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.

The policy, referred to as the “third direction”, allows MI5 officers to permit the people they have recruited as agents to commit crimes in order to secure access to information that could be used to prevent other offences being committed. The crimes potentially include murder, kidnap and torture and have operated for decades. MI5 officers are, meanwhile, immune from prosecution.

A lawyer for the human rights organisations argues that the issues raised by the case are “not hypothetical”, submitting that “in the past, authorisation of agent participation in criminality appears to have led to grave breaches of fundamental rights”. He points to the 1989 murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane, an attack carried out by loyalist paramilitaries, including some agents working for the British state.

The ‘James Bond clause’

British intelligence officers can be authorised to commit crimes outside the UK. Section 7 of the 1994 Intelligence Services Act vacates UK criminal and civil law as long as a senior government minister has signed a written authorisation that committing a criminal act overseas is permissible. This is sometimes known as the “James Bond clause”.

British spies were reportedly given authority to break the law overseas on 13 occasions in 2014 under this clause. GCHQ was given five authorisations “removing liability for activities including those associated with certain types of intelligence gathering and interference with computers, mobile phones and other types of electronic equipment”. MI6, meanwhile, was given eight such authorisations in 2014.

Underage soldiers

Britain is the only country in Europe and Nato to allow direct enlistment into the army at the age of 16. One in four UK army recruits is now under the age of 18. According to the editors of the British Medical Journal, “there is no justification for this state policy, which is harmful to teen health and should be stopped”. Child recruits are more likely than adult recruits to end up in frontline combat, they add.

It was revealed in 2019 that the UK continued to send child soldiers to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan despite pledging to end the practice. The UK says it does not send under-18s to warzones, as required by the UN Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, known as the “child soldiers treaty”.

The UK, however, deployed five 17-year-olds to Iraq or Afghanistan between 2007 and 2010: it claims to have done so mistakenly. Previous to this, a minister admitted that teenagers had also erroneously been sent into battle between 2003 and 2005, insisting it would not happen again.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child expressed concern at the UK’s recruitment policy in 2008 and 2016, and recommended that the government “raise the minimum age for recruitment into the armed forces to 18 years in order to promote the protection of children through an overall higher legal standard”. Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights, the children’s commissioners for the four jurisdictions of the UK, along with children’s rights organisations, all support this call. DM

Mark Curtis is editor of Declassified UK and tweets at @markcurtis30

February 9, 2020 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | GCHQ, Israel, MI6, Middle East, Pakistan, Palestine, RAF, Somalia, UK, Yemen | Leave a comment

Israel uses civilian flight as shield to raid Damascus after Syrian troops liberate Saraqib

Press TV – February 7, 2020

An Israeli airstrike, carried out as Syria troops were liberating the terrorist-held town of Saraqib in northwestern Idlib province, has endangered a civilian flight carrying 172 passengers, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said Friday the civil Airbus-320 was heading to Damascus from the Iranian capital early Thursday when it was forced to divert its route as the Syrian capital’s air defenses were intercepting Israeli missiles.

The plane made an emergency landing in the Hmeymim air base in Syria’s western coastal province of Latakia.

“Only due to timely actions of the Damascus airport dispatchers and the efficient operation of the automated air traffic control system, the Airbus-320 managed to… successfully land at the closest alternative airfield,” Konashenkov said.

‘Israel using passenger jets as shields’

The spokesman stressed that Israel was well aware of civilian flights around Damascus and that such missions demonstrated the regime’s reckless disregard for human lives.

“The Israeli general staff’s use of passenger jets as a cover for its military operations or as a shield from Syrian missile system fire is becoming a typical trait of Israeli air force,” he said.

Russia had previously warned that Israeli airstrikes against Damascus were endangering civilian jets.

Lebanese officials have also stated that Israeli jets illegally conducting operations against Syria from the country’s airspace pose a danger to civilian aircraft in Lebanon.

In 2018, Syrian air defenses mistakenly shot down a Russian Ilyushin Il-20 reconnaissance plane after it was similarly used as a cover by Israeli warplanes, killing 15 people on board.

Syria: Saraqib fully liberated

The Israeli airstrikes took place as Syrian troops were entering the terrorist-controlled town of Saraqib, which lies at the crossroads of two key highways in the Idlib province, the last major terrorist bastion in Syria.

The town has currently been fully liberated by Syrian forces.

Damascus has highlighted that the Israeli airstrike on Thursday happened at the same time the Turkish military was deploying a military caravan in Idlib to “protect the terrorists” and halt the Syrian military advance in the province.

Damascus has slammed the operation as evidence of Tel Aviv and Ankara’s coordinated support for the terrorists.

Israel is known for conducting airstrikes against Damascus during major Syrian military advancements.

The reported joint Israeli-Turkish operations in Syria come as Ankara – which has also been a major backer for terrorists in Syria – has warned that it may resort to military action if Syria does not withdraw its troops battling terrorist forces in Idlib until the end of February.

The ongoing Syrian army offensive in Idlib was launched last August after terrorists failed to honor the Sochi de-escalation zone agreement brokered between Russian and Turkey in September 2018.

Large swathes of the province have since been liberated by Syrian troops.

Tehran offers mediation, stresses political resolution

Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations Majid Takht-Ravanchi said Iran, as a main party to the Astana peace process, was ready to help solve disputes between Damascus and Ankara regarding the Idlib province.

“We have to guarantee that this crisis is solved politically while at the same time prohibiting terrorists from using this as an opportunity to fortify their positions, turn Idlib into a safe refuge and target more civilians,” he said.

“We have to be aware that the goal of protecting civilians doesn’t get replaced with protecting terrorists,” he added.

The UN envoy added that an Astana meeting, which is planned to be held in the near future in Tehran, provides an “indispensable opportunity” to resolve issues related to the Syria conflict.

The Astana peace process was launched by Iran, Turkey and Russia in 2017 and had a major role in reducing violence in the country by agreeing to de-escalation zones in the war-wracked country.

February 7, 2020 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Israel, Syria, Turkiye | Leave a comment

Palestinians in Israel are the next target for the deal of the century

Women in Gaza come together to protest against Trump's 'peace deal' on 5 February 2020 [Mohammad Asad/Middle East Monitor]

Women in Gaza come together to protest against Trump’s ‘peace deal’ on 5 February 2020 [Mohammad Asad/Middle East Monitor]

MEMO | February 6, 2020

Israelis of all political persuasions welcomed the Trump “peace plan”, but the Palestinian citizens of the self-styled Jewish state are angry because the deal refers to land and population swaps between Israel and Palestinian Authority territory. This confirms that Israel wants to displace them, fulfilling right wing aspirations.

Arab members of the Israeli parliament have said that they will not agree to the deal of the century and its explicit annexation proposal. Nevertheless, the right-wing Israeli government now has a green light to strip citizenship from hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in the “Triangle” in northern Israel.

It is clear that Trump’s plan is not just about taking more of the Palestinian land occupied in 1967, but that it also wants to “transfer” Palestinians from the areas occupied in 1948. Israel wants to “swap” the area with the PA; protests against this are not, therefore, simply in solidarity with the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the refugees in the diaspora. There is also a conspiracy against their existence in Israel.

The Palestinians in Israel have held crisis talks about the implications of the deal, especially for those in the Triangle, which is a predominantly Arab area in Israel, near the West Bank, divided into the Northern Triangle and the towns of Kafr Qara, Ar’ara, Baqa Al-Gharbiyye and Umm Al-Fahm, and the Southern Triangle, which includes Qalansawe, Tayibe, Kafr Qasim, Tira, Kafr Bara and Jaljulia. It is a stronghold of the Islamic movement in Israel, led by Sheikh Raed Salah.

The part of the Triangle mentioned in the Trump plan covers 350 square kilometres. The area threatened by the swap proposal covers more than 42,000 acres, inhabited by 300,000 Palestinians, who make up 20 per cent of the total Palestinian population inside Israel and have Israeli citizenship. These villages are thus a source of demographic concern for Israel due to the steadily increasing population, which is expected to reach 500,000 in the next five years, tipping the demographic balance in favour of the Palestinian Arabs.

The Triangle is more conservative in nature than the more integrated Arab regions in Israel. Swapping the land and population out of Israel will see the loss of those who best preserve traditional Palestinian identity. Local political groups believe that the land and population swap is an extension of previous efforts by Israel to liquidate the Palestinian issue; Israel wants more land but without the people of Palestine on it. It is not the first time that the Israelis have sought to transfer the largest number of Triangle residents and the least amount of land. Such a move will not only hit the Palestinians directly involved, but also their extended families and social connections, many of which will be severed.

Efforts to Judaise the Triangle areas to provide Israel with some strategic depth have included a belt of settlements on the outskirts of the Arab towns. This has caused anxiety among the Palestinians, with almost daily attacks by settlers against them and their properties. There is also a fear that another massacre like that at Kafr Qasem in 1956 is on the cards in order to make the local population leave of their own accord.

A plan developed by the late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, called the “Seven Stars” project, tried to change the demographic nature of the Triangle. A Jewish majority was to be created by establishing religious centres, hemming-in Umm Al-Fahm so that it could not be developed further, and linking the area to settlements in the West Bank. This would also have seen the removal of the so-called Green “Armistice” Line of 1949 dividing the Palestinian territories occupied in 1948 from those occupied in 1967. The latter were supposed to form the “State of Palestine” according to the international consensus. Sharon’s project did not get beyond the discussion stage.

It is clear that Israel is seeking to buy enough time to impose a fait accompli on the ground by getting Knesset approval for the deal. Although the Arab MKs have the third largest coalition with 12 seats, their chances of thwarting the vote on the plan are almost non-existent in light of the general agreement within Israel to implement Trump’s plan.

Israelis have declared the Palestinian-Israeli population growth as a “demographic time bomb”. With a falling birth rate among Israeli Jews, the fear is that Palestinians will outnumber them across historic Palestine within the next ten years.

Land swaps to defuse this “threat” to the “Jewishness” of the state of Israel have been mooted before, of course. Post-1967, Israel’s policies in the newly-occupied territories have included the annexation of Jerusalem, still unrecognised by most countries in the world; land confiscation; house demolitions and the removal of residency rights.

In 1982 a secret document called for the Interior Ministry to crack down on the Palestinians and push them to leave their land. This was picked up by the racist General Rehavam Ze’evi in 1988, and notorious Rabbi Meir Kahane, who called for Umm Al-Fahm to be attacked as a means of provoking its residents.

By 2004, former Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman was proposing the swap of minor Israeli settlements in the West Bank with Arab villages and towns in the Triangle, based on similar agreements made post-World War Two in different parts of the world. Donald Trump’s “peace plan” is in many ways simply a US-endorsed Judaisation project giving Israel everything that it wants, for now. Its aims and objectives mirror those of earlier schemes.

Israeli security agencies are also concerned about the growing influence and activities of the Islamic movement within the “Jewish state”, particularly in the Triangle, as its ideas are similar to those of the Muslim Brotherhood. The movement also mobilises volunteers against Israeli violations at Al-Aqsa Mosque. The fear is that the conflict will spill over into serious clashes between Palestinian Muslims and religious Jews.

The timing of the release of the deal of the century helped Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces yet another general election next month — the third in less than a year — as well as indictments for corruption. The deal is a bit of a lifeline for the Israeli Prime Minister. Nevertheless, approval and implementation of its terms may be postponed until after the election, giving the Arab MKs time to try to prevent the displacement of citizens from the Triangle.

Palestinians within Israel believe that the Trump “peace plan” is anything but peaceful, and will lead to violence. In fulfilling the aims and aspirations of the Israeli far-right, it looks set to entrench even further Israel’s status as an apartheid state, with the indigenous people facing ever more discriminatory legislation and displacement. It remains to be seen if they can prevent the implementation of the plan, at least the land swap clause, which seeks to rob so many people of their citizenship and transfer them against their will.

February 6, 2020 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Benjamin Netanyahu, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

Syrian Army captured Saraqib. Netanyahu and Erdogan come to the rescue

South Front | February 06, 2020

In Greater Idlib the defences of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other favorites of the foreign powers supporting ‘Syrian democracy’ are collapsing.

On February 5, the Syrian Army, supported by Russian airpower, took control of a number of villages in southeastern Idlib and southwestern Aleppo including Resafa, al-Dhahabiyah, Ajlas, Talafih and Judiydat Talafih. They besieged a Turkish observation post established near Tal Toqan and reached another one, near al-Sheikh Mansur.

Late on the same day, the army’s Tiger Forces captured the eastern entrance to Saraqib and established fire control over the open roads leading from the town. According to local sources, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other al-Qaeda so-called freedom fighters started fleeing the town. The Turkish Army had stuck several observation posts right in the area, but these apparently did not help.

Early on February 6, pro-government forces seized the area of Duwayr, cutting off the M5 highway north of Saraqib. Thus, the road through Saramin remained the only way to flee for militants remaining in the town. However, it is under the fire control of the Syrian Army.

Several hours after this government forces took full control of Saraqib.

Saraqib Nahiyah is the largest subdistrict of the Idlib district of the province. The subdistrict is located on the crossroad of the M4 and M5 highways. Its pre-war population was approximately 88,000. The fall of Saraqib into the hands of Damascus and its allies will allow government troops to continue the operation clearing the entire M5 highway and open the road to Idlib city itself.

Right on cue, while the Syrian Army was storming Saraqib, the Israeli Air Force delivered a wide-scale strike on targets in the countryside of the Syrian capital, Damascus, and in the province of Daraa. The Al-Kiswa area, Marj al-Sultan, Baghdad Bridge and the area south of Izraa were among the confirmed targets of the attack.

Syria’s State media claimed that the Syrian Air Defense shot down most of the Israeli missiles before they were able to reach their targets. Pro-Israeli sources claim that the strikes successfully hit Iran-related targets destroying weapon depots and HQs of Iranian-backed forces. The Israeli leadership once again officially confirmed its participation in the club of terrorism supporters in Syria.

Another member of the al-Qaeda Rescue Rangers is Mr Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

On February 5, he vowed that Turkey would deploy locally made air-defense systems along the border with Syria. The President did not provide many details on the matter, but the aforementioned systems were likely the HISAR-A low-altitude air-defense system which will be deployed along the border with Idlib.

Additionally, Erdogan delivered an ultimatum to Syria claiming that “if the Syrian regime will not retreat from Turkish observation posts in Idlib in February, Turkey itself will be obliged to make this happen.” In other words, the Turkish president threatened to declare war on Syria if the Syrian Army does not withdraw from the territory it liberated from terrorists.

Video Report

February 6, 2020 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | al-Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Israel, Middle East, Syria, Turkiye | Leave a comment

Intimidating or Coercing a Civilian Population Is Terrorism. Right?

So Trump’s ‘peace plan’ threatening to wipe out the Palestinians’ legitimate rights and reduce them to a fragmented vassal mini-state with restricted freedom and limited self-rule, to be forever at the mercy of their cruel and lawless neighbor, is a terror document. Right?

By Stuart Littlewood | American Herald Tribune | February 5, 2020

The US administration uses GW Bush’s Executive Order 13224, Section 3, to outlaw and crush any individual, any organisation or any nation that gets in its way. It deals with Blocking Property and Prohibiting Transactions With Persons Who Commit, Threaten To Commit, or Support Terrorism. And for this purpose, the term ‘‘terrorism’’ means an activity that—

(i) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; and

(ii) appears to be intended—

(a) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;

(b) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or

The joke is that the US itself, and its special buddy Israel, fall straight in. It fits them like a glove. And they can’t see it.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is unhappy with the way the US State Department defines terrorism, pointing out that it only includes “violent acts carried out by non-state actors”. Where the Department, in its main report, does include “State Sponsors of Terrorism” it means only nations that sponsor non-state actors. Nowhere does it address the fact that states commit direct acts of terrorism or the extent to which non-state actors are simply reacting to such terrorism.

With America, it’s always the other guys who are terrorists. “For over a decade, Gaza has been ruled by Hamas, a terror organization, responsible for the murder and maiming of thousands of Israelis,” says Trump’s land-grab plan.

It adds: “Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza nearly 15 years ago was meant to advance peace. Instead, Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist group, gained control over the territory, and increased attacks on Israel, including the launching of thousands of rockets…. As a result of Hamas’ terror and misrule, the people of Gaza suffer from massive unemployment, widespread poverty, drastic shortages of electricity and potable water, and other problems that threaten to precipitate a wholesale humanitarian crisis.”

The White House and their Tel Aviv puppet masters still delude themselves that they can fool all the people all the time. But alternative media speaking truth to power is increasingly heard, so fewer people are swallowing their lies. The Trump plan claims the governance structure in Gaza is run by terrorists who provoke confrontations, therefore, Israel will only implement its obligations under the Peace Agreement if the Palestinian Authority or some other body acceptable to Israel is in full control of Gaza and Gaza is fully demilitarized. It threatens that Hamas, if it is to play a role in a Palestinian government, must adopt the Quartet principles, which include “unambiguously and explicitly recognizing the State of Israel, committing to non-violence, and accepting previous agreements and obligations between the parties, including the disarming of all terrorist groups”. There’s no similar obligation placed on Israel, no symmetry whatsoever.

At every opportunity, Hamas and Hezbollah, legitimate resisters to Israeli aggression, are demonized. It’s a bit rich for any ally of Israel to call Hamas terrorists. It would be very difficult objectively to classify Hamas as a terror government, given the context of decades of brutal military occupation, economic suffocation, ethnic cleansing and denial of human rights at the hands of a lawless intruder. And never mind the fact that Hamas was voted into power in full and fair elections.

In contrast, the state of Israel was founded on terror, which is well documented. Some years ago a colleague sent me a list of terror techniques in the Middle East “first used by Zionists”. They had appeared on several forums with requests for corrections. I’d seen evidence for some, but others were new to me. I mention them here only as claims and invite readers to point out any errors.

Bombs in Cafés: first used by Zionists in Palestine on March 17, 1937 in Jaffa (actually grenades).
Bombs on Buses: first used by Zionists in Palestine August 20-September 26, 1937
Drive-by shootings with automatic weapons: IZL [Irgun] in 1937-38 and 1947-48 (Morris, Righteous Victims, p681.)
Bombs in Market Places: first used by Zionists on July 6, 1938 in Haifa. (Delayed-action, electrically detonated)
Bombing of a passenger ship: first used by the Zionists in Haifa on 25 November 1940, killing over 200 of their own fellows.
Bombing of Hotels: first used by Zionists on July 22, 1946 in Jerusalem [the infamous attack by Irgun on the King David Hotel which served as the central offices of the British Mandatory authority of Palestine] Irgun’s leader, Menachem Begin, went on to become Prime Minister of Israel.
Suitcase bombing: first used by Zionists on October 1, 1946 against British Embassy in Rome.
Mining of Ambulances: First used by Zionists on October 31, 1946 in Petah Tikvah.
Car-bomb: first used by Zionists against the British near Jaffa 5 December 1946.
Letter Bombs: first used by Zionists in June 1947 against members of the British government, 20 of them.
Parcel Bomb: first used by Zionists against the British in London 3 September 1947.
Reprisal murder of hostages: first used by Zionists against the British in Netanya area on 29 July 1947.
Truck-bombs: first used by Zionists 4 January 1948 in the centre of Jaffa, killing 26.
Aircraft hijacking: world-first state hijack by Israeli jets Dec 1954 on a Syrian civilian airliner (random seizure of hostages to recover 5 spies).
Biological Warfare: pathogens used by Zionists in 1948, prior to the seizure of Acre, putting typhus into the water supply.
Chemical Warfare: nerve gas very likely used by Zionists in February/March 2001 in at least 8 attacks in Khan Younis and Gharbi refugee camps (Gaza) and the town of Al-Bireh (West Bank).
Nuclear threats made by Zionists e.g. 2003: “We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen, before Israel goes under.” – Remarks of Martin Van Creveld, a professor of military history at Israel’s Hebrew University, 1 Feb 2003.

We can probably add “sofa slaughter” with armed drones. The Israelis use this armchair technique extensively in Gaza, unleashing death and destruction on civilians by remote control at no personal risk to themselves. There are interesting variations too. For example, during the 40-day siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2002 the Israeli Occupation Force set up cranes on which were mounted robotic machine guns under video control. According to eye-witnesses eight defenders, including the bell-ringer, were murdered, some by the armchair button-pushers and some by regular snipers.

Banned horror weapons spread terror

There’s also the use, suspected or real, of prohibited weapons to put Palestinians in a state of fear. In July 2006 doctors in Lebanon and Gaza were saying: “We never saw before wounds and corpses like those that arrive in the ward…” The majority of victims were women, children and elders caught in Israeli attacks in the street, in the market place and at home.

What doctors saw led them to believe that a new generation of weapons was being tested. Common to all victims was the lack of visible wounds, but they had serious internal edema and hemorrhage with loss of blood from all orifices. All the bodies had a covering of dark powder making them look black, but they were not burnt. Clothes and hair were not damaged or burnt.

Electron microscope scans showed the presence of phosphorous, iron and magnesium at below normally detectable levels. Elements that are used as additives to boost the blast of thermobaric (fuel-air energy) bombs and grenades were found on skin samples, but none of these could be seen by instruments normally used in hospitals and emergency wards.

The United States had developed thermobaric bombs and grenades for the war against “terror” in Afghanistan. “All enemy personnel within the effective radius will suffer lethal effects as opposed to the conventional fragmentation round.” These weapons produce a thermobaric overpressure blast and leave no fragments on or in the victims’ bodies, making it all the more difficult to provide proper care for the injured. “This fact already puts them outside established conventions of war, regardless of whether they are used against military or civilians,” say the doctors.

Thermobaric effects are devastating. “Those near the ignition point are obliterated. Those at the fringe are likely to suffer many internal, and thus invisible injuries, including burst eardrums and crushed inner ear organs, severe concussions, ruptured lungs and internal organs, and possibly blindness. The destruction, death, and injury are caused by the blast wave,” says one report.

Another, in Defense Technology, says: “Each tissue type… is compressed, stretched, sheared or disintegrated by overload according to its material properties. Internal organs that contain air (sinuses, ears, lungs and intestines) are particularly vulnerable to blast.”

Is the US sure it hasn’t supplied its bosom-pal Israel with these horrendous items knowing perfectly well they’d use them against women and children packed like sardines in Gaza?

And let’s not forget the assassinations and extra-judicial executions. In the US there’s a presidential prohibition on assassination except in war situations, but if they can conjure up an intelligence ‘finding’ that enables them to label the target a ‘terrorist,’ and claim assassination is an act of self-defense in a war situation, they’re in the clear – as Trump demonstrated when ordering Soleimani killed.

But for Israel, there are no such restraints. Assassination became an official Israeli policy in 1999. Their preferred method is the air-strike, which is lazy and often messy, as demonstrated in 2002 when Israeli F-16 warplanes bombed the house of Sheikh Salah Shehadeh, the military commander of Hamas, in Gaza City killing not just him but at least 11 other Palestinians including seven children, and wounding 120 others.

Which brings us back to Trump’s so-called peace deal designed to deny Palestinians their rights and put them in fear for their freedom, security, sovereignty, prosperity, dignity, and hopes for nation-building – now and forever.

It’s the very model of a vile terror document.

February 6, 2020 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

Kurdish-led forces in Syria say they will keep conscription system

MEMO | February 4, 2020

A senior Kurdish official in the “Defence Board” of the so-called Autonomous Self-Administration in Syria’s northeast town of Ain Al-Issa has stated that there are no plans to stop the controversial forced military conscription of young men in the Syrian territory currently controlled by Kurdish-led forces, known as the Syrian Defence Forces (SDF).

According to Kurdistan24 Shirin Qamar, co-chair of the Board, reiterated the decision to keep the system in place, describing the military service as “for the sake” of the defence of their homeland.

“The process is known to everyone: it includes 45 days of patriotic education and self-knowledge, as well as military training. And later on, they serve their homeland in the position of border guards,” she explained.

The Kurdish administration passed their own law making conscription compulsory in the “autonomous areas” on 14 July 2014, which was implemented in November of the same year on military-aged men and applies to all men regardless of their ethnic or religious background and regardless of whether they have previously served in the Syrian-state army.

However, every local authority in Kurdish-controlled Syria has the right to decide its own military conscription age, leading to complaints against discrimination and inconsistency.

There are documented allegations of child soldiers serving in the SDF, despite an order issued banning their recruitment in 2018.

The SDF has received funding and arms from the US to aid its efforts to combat Daesh. The force consists largely but not exclusively of YPG fighters, which is considered to be the Syrian faction of the terrorist PKK organisation. It has recently been reported that Saudi and US officials have held talks on potentially financing Arab factions who are currently affiliated to the SDF, under the pretext of “resisting the Iranian expansion attempts” in the country.

February 4, 2020 Posted by aletho | War Crimes | Human rights, Syria | Leave a comment

Trump Green Lights Greater Israel

Palestinians lose again

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • February 4, 2020

Many interested parties have already weighed in on President Donald Trump’s “Deal of the Century.” Even though it sounds like a phrase that a used car dealer would use, the “Deal” is dead serious in that it effectively denies to the Palestinians in perpetuum any political entity that has attributes of genuine sovereignty. Israel, which has just postponed a vote to immediately annex some of its illegal settlements on the West Bank with the blessing of the White House, will completely surround the fragmented Palestinian holdings by virtue of the annexation of the entire Jordan River Valley. It is the Zionist dream of a Greater “Eretz” Israel from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea finally achieved. The empty shell swiss-cheese-like completely disarmed state of Palestine will have no authority over its borders and airspace, no means to defend itself and no right to manage its own water resources.

Within the territory granted to Palestinians by Trump there will remain Israeli settler enclaves guarded by soldiers and police. Israel will have total control over the entire West Bank. Millions of Palestinians under its control will de facto be stateless people without basic civil rights whose land will be stolen by settlers. They will be unable to travel even within their “state,” forced to pass through checkpoints, arrested and imprisoned for speech harming “public order” and jailed through indefinite “administrative detentions” without any charges or trial.

Gaza will be completely disarmed and connected to the West Bank by a tunnel controlled by Israel. Presumably, the Mediterranean will continue to be a restricted area for Gazan fishermen, patrolled by the Israeli navy with the offshore oil and gas reserves exploited by Israeli companies. In return for their complete surrender, the Palestinians will be required to express gratitude for being able to survive as helots in what will be largely an open-air outdoor prison. If they behave well, they may or may not get money doled out by Trump to Israel for distribution to the Palestinians as long as they keep quiet and smile as they writhe under the Israeli thumb.

One of the more interesting features of the Deal is that Trump insists that the Palestinians will have East Jerusalem as their capital while at the same time confirming that an undivided Jerusalem will be under total Israeli control. If one looks at the map provided by the White House when the Deal was unveiled, it appears that a piece of East Jerusalem is indeed shown as part of the Palestinian land. But obviously, even though it will have that area technically as its capital it will have no sovereignty over it. It is a detail that is clearly unsustainable and may in fact be a complete fiction designed to demonstrate how magnanimous Israel and the United States are in giving the Palestinians a “state.”

Trump’s one-sided Deal was crafted around Israeli interests, not those of the United States and without any input whatsoever from the Palestinians themselves. The team pulled together by presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner consisted of Orthodox Jews and they worked closely with U.S. Ambassador (sic) David Friedman, whose time in Israel has consisted mostly of being an apologist for Netanyahu, excusing accelerated Israeli settlement building as well as the weekly shooting party along the fence line in Gaza. Immediately after Trump and Netanyahu announced the outline of the Deal in Washington, Friedman stated that the Israeli government was at that point free to begin the annexation of any or all of the illegal settlements.

The sad part of what we see unfolding in front of our eyes is that the United States, long an enabler of Israel, is now openly a partner in Israeli war crimes. The Fourth Geneva Convention, adopted in 1949, was intended to protect civilians in time of war. It clearly states that occupying a territory obtained by war and colonizing it with your own people is a war crime. Germany’s demand for lebensraum for German colonists during the lead up to the Second World War and its defining the Slavs who would be displaced as Untermenschen was the crime that motivated the drafters of the Convention. Does that sound familiar? The words are probably somewhat similar in Yiddish.

Most of the mainstream media commentary on the Deal is neutral or even mildly critical, observing inter alia that it is a gift to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was at the podium and beaming alongside Trump. If the boost from the White House succeeds in getting Bibi reelected, Trump will expect payback big time in 2020 through the Israel Lobby’s influence over Jewish voters and from the generosity of Jewish billionaire donors named Sheldon Adelson, Paul Singer and Bernard Marcus.

That Trump has betrayed U.S. interests repeatedly in the Middle East and has also flipped on his pledge to remove American soldiers from its “loser wars,” makes him a disgrace as president, though he will likely be re-elected as the voters have been fed a steady diet of propaganda both by the mainstream media and government on Israel. That just might be because Jews are vastly over-represented both in the media and in the choke points in government that deal with the Middle East and foreign policy in general. Even liberal Jews who are critical of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians tend to rally round-the-flag at election time and vote for the candidate perceived as being “strongest” on Israel. One notes with interest that while Senator Bernie Sanders roundly condemned the Deal, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi saw “some areas of common ground here” in it. She would, wouldn’t she? And I am sure Senator Chuck Schumer, the self-proclaimed protector of Israel in the Senate, is secretly delighted.

In the rather less restrained alternative media, there is much banter about how the Deal is little more than a sweeping annexation plan that is really Apartheid by another name. That in itself is a bit of a fudge as the reality in Palestine is far worse than South African Apartheid ever was. Some braver individuals have observed how the United States is controlled by Israel in terms of its engagement in the Middle East, but the language used to describe the situation really misses the point. The United States vis-à-vis Israel is not controlled by Israel per se but rather by subversion from within, Jewish billionaires having bought both major political parties and a Jewish dominated media spouting nonsense about the “only democracy in the Middle East” and “America’s best friend and ally.” Israel is neither a democracy nor a friend. And the American Jews and their allies the Christian Zionists who are full time promoters of the Israel myth are little more than traitors to the United States and everything it once upon a time stood for.

The Palestinians have already rejected the Deal, but their refusal to participate will be seen by Trump and Israel as an insult, or at least it will be spun that way. Trump has already warned that his proposal is the Palestinians’ “last chance” and his United Nations Ambassador Kelly Craft has advised Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas not to raise the issue at all with the world body. Unwillingness to embrace it will provide a good opportunity to really lower the hammer on the Arabs. The map provided by Trump shows a cluster of Bantustans surrounded by Israel soldiers and police who historically have regarded nominally Palestinian areas as a free fire zone. When violence erupts, which it will, the largely unarmed Arabs will be slaughtered and David Friedman, Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu will all conveniently blame it on the Palestinians as it was the Israelis who “wanted peace” and the only obstacle remaining was and is the obduracy of the Palestinians. If only they had accepted the Deal, the outcome would have been different the contrived narrative will go.

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 3, 2020 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

Organization of Islamic Cooperation rejects Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ peace plan for Middle East

RT | February 3, 2020

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which consists of more than 50 Muslim-majority countries, has asked member states not to cooperate in any way with US President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Israel and Palestine.

During a special session in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on Monday, the OIC’s executive committee called on all member states “not to engage with [Trump’s] plan or to cooperate with the US administration in implementing it in any form.” The body also asked members to refrain from any actions that “do not adhere to the inalienable rights of Palestinians.”

OIC Secretary General Yousef Al-Othaimeen said that the organization will support any international peace effort that is in accordance with international law.

Touted as the ‘deal of the century’ by the Trump administration, the plan describes the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with its capital set up in the outskirts of East Jerusalem, currently controlled by Israel.

The plan, however, allows Israel to keep existing settlements in the occupied West Bank, which the UN considers illegal under international law. The proposed roadmap also rules out the return of all Palestinian refugees, which the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Arab world see as one of the key requirements for lasting peace.

The plan was endorsed by US ally Israel but universally rejected by the Palestinians and the Arab League, who view the plan as heavily skewed in favor of Tel Aviv.

February 3, 2020 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

Iran: Swiss-US channel for medicine too little, too late

Press TV – February 3, 2020

Iran has dismissed as insufficient a Swiss-US “humanitarian” channel set up to enable medicine transfers to the country, arguing that the United States is originally banned by the International Court of Justice from subjecting Iran’s much-needed medical supplies to sanctions.

“We do not recognize any such so-called humanitarian channel,” Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Mousavi told a press conference on Monday. “We do not recognize sanctions [for that matter]. Medicine and foodstuffs were never subject to sanctions in the first place so they can now create a channel [for their transfer] with much publicity,” he added.

The US returned its sanctions against Iran after leaving a historic nuclear accord with the country and others in 2018. The measures defied the agreement’s multilateral nature and the fact that it had been ratified by the United Nations Security Council.

Washington then began forcing others to toe its sanctions line. Britain, France, and Germany have stopped their transactions with the Islamic Republic, bowing under the pressure.

On Thursday, Switzerland launched the so-called Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement (SHTA), claiming it was aimed at facilitating the medicine trade, reportedly using the Central Bank of Iran’s credits. Swiss officials have, however, refused to clairfy how such transactions would continue if the CBI ran out of credit with Swiss banks.

On October 3, 2018, the Hague-based International Court of Justice, the UN’s principal judicial organ, issued a ruling ordering the US to halt its unilateral sanctions on “humanitarian” supplies to Iran. The verdict came following a lawsuit lodged by Iran in July of the same year.

Mousavi said Washington is well aware that as per the ruling, it bears an obligation not to block such transactions, adding that these “conditional waivers” from the sanctions will not result in the US war crimes passing into oblivion.

The medicine supplies, he added, were bound to enter the country a year and a half ago, but their imports were blocked by US obstructionism.

The Swiss company tasked with facilitating the transactions “has been paid to do so,” he said, noting, “Our expectations far exceed such measures. And their obligations are hundreds of times more than what they are offering.”

He noted that the Islamic Republic welcomes all efforts that are aimed at reducing the pressure faced by the country, but still Switzerland’s initiation of the SHTA, falls short of the expectations.

Also on Monday, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif dismissed the efficiency of the Swiss channel and drew attention to the ICJ ruling in this regard.

The top diplomat noted that the US keeps pursuing the policy of “maximum pressure” and denying Iran the financial channels that enable it to import medicine.

“This is a small step and we thank the Swiss government for its efforts … but this channel is not a sign of America’s goodwill at all,” he said.

Last October, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned that the US’s harsh sanctions against Iran posed a serious threat to the Iranian people’s right to health, urging Washington to adopt swift measures aimed at facilitating trade of humanitarian goods with the Islamic Republic.

The sanctions are compromising Iranians “access to essential medicines—and has almost certainly contributed to documented shortages— ranging from a lack of critical drugs for epilepsy patients to limited chemotherapy medications for Iranians with cancer,” it said.

Though the US government has supposedly built exemptions for humanitarian imports into its sanctions regime, “broad US sanctions against Iranian banks, coupled with aggressive rhetoric from US officials, have drastically constrained Iran’s ability to finance such humanitarian imports,” the rights organization added.

A month later, an NGO said Iranian children suffering from a rare skin condition known as EB were losing their lives as US economic sanctions hampered the flow of vital medical products.

Hamid Reza Hashemi-Golayegani, the head of the NGO that helps such patients, said that at least 15 Iranian children with epidermolysis bullosa (EB) had died since the US restored the sanctions.

February 3, 2020 Posted by aletho | Deception, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Sanctions against Iran, United States | Leave a comment

Stumbling into Catastrophe

By Daniel McAdams | Ron Paul Institute | February 1, 2020

There is a real danger for foreign policy advisors and analysts – and especially those they serve – when they are in a bubble, an echo chamber, and all of their conclusions are based on faulty inputs. Needless to say it’s even worse when they believe they can create their own reality and invent outcomes out of whole cloth.

Things seldom go as planned in these circumstances.

President Trump was sold a bill of goods on the assassination of Iran’s revered military leader, Qassim Soleimani, likely by a cabal around Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the long-discredited neocon David Wurmser. A former Netanyahu advisor and Iraq war propagandist, Wurmser reportedly sent memos to his mentor, John Bolton, while Bolton was Trump’s National Security Advisor (now, of course, he’s the hero of the #resistance for having turned on his former boss) promising that killing Soleimani would be a cost-free operation that would catalyze the Iranian people against their government and bring about the long-awaited regime change in that country. The murder of Soleimani – the architect of the defeat of ISIS – would “rattle the delicate internal balance of forces and the control over them upon which the [Iranian] regime depends for stability and survival,” wrote Wurmser.

As is most often the case with neocons, he was dead wrong.

The operation was not cost-free. On the contrary. Assassinating Soleimani on Iraqi soil resulted in the Iraqi parliament – itself the product of our “bringing democracy” to the country – voting to expel US forces even as the vote by the people’s representatives was roundly rejected by the people who brought the people the people’s representatives. In a manner of speaking.

Trump’s move had an effect opposite to the one promised by neocons. It did not bring Iranians out to the street to overthrow their government – it catalyzed opposition across Iraq’s various political and religious factions to the continued US military presence and further tightened Iraq’s relationship with Iran. And short of what would be a catastrophic war initiated by the US (with little or no support from allies), there is not a thing Trump can do about it.

Iran’s retaliatory attack on two US bases in Iraq was initially sold by President Trump as merely a pin-prick. No harm, no foul, no injuries. This despite the fact that he must have known about US personnel injured in the attack. The reason for the lie was that Trump likely understands how devastating it would be to his presidency to escalate with Iran. So the truth began to trickle out slowly – 11 US military members were injured, but it was just “like a headache.” Now we know that 50 US troops were treated for traumatic brain injury after the attack. This may not be the last of it – but don’t count on the mainstream media to do any reporting.

The Iranian FARS news agency reported at the time of the attack that US personnel had been injured and the response by the US government was to completely take that media outlet off the Internet by order of the US Treasury!

Today the US House voted to cancel the 2002 authorization for war on Iraq and to prohibit the use of funds for war on Iran without Congressional authorization. It is a significant, if largely symbolic, move to rein in the oft-used excuse of the Iraq war authorization for blatantly unrelated actions like the assassination of Soleimani and Obama’s thousands of airstrikes on Syria and Iraq.

President Trump has argued that prohibiting funds for military action against Iran actually makes war more likely, as he would be restricted from the kinds of military-strikes-short-of-war like his attack on Syria after the alleged chemical attack in Douma in 2018 (claims which have recently fallen apart). The logic is faulty and reflects again the danger of believing one’s own propaganda. As we have seen from the Iranian military response to the Soleimani assassination, Trump’s military-strikes-short-of-war are having a ratchet-like effect rather than a pressure-release or deterrent effect.

As the financial and current events analysis site ZeroHedge put it recently:

[S]ince last summer’s “tanker wars”, Trump has painted himself into a corner on Iran, jumping from escalation to escalation (to this latest “point of no return big one” in the form of the ordered Soleimani assassination) — yet all the while hoping to avoid a major direct war. The situation reached a climax where there were “no outs” (Trump was left with two ‘bad options’ of either back down or go to war).

The Iranians have little to lose at this point and America’s European allies are, even if impotent, fed up with the US obsession with Saudi Arabia and Israel as a basis for its Middle East policy.

So why open this essay with a photo of Trump celebrating his dead-on-arrival “Deal of The Century” for Israel and Palestine? Because this is once again a gullible and weak President Trump being led by the nose into the coming Middle East conflagration. Left without even a semblance of US sympathy for their plight, the Palestinians after the roll-out of this “peace” plan will again see that they have no friends outside Syria, Iran, and Lebanon. As Israel continues to flirt with the idea of simply annexing large parts of the West Bank, it is clear that the brakes are off of any Israeli reticence to push for maximum control over Palestinian territory. So what is there to lose?

Trump believes he’s advancing peace in the Middle East, while the excellent Mondoweiss website rightly observes that a main architect of the “peace plan,” Trump’s own son-in-law Jared Kushner, “taunts Palestinians because he wants them to reject his ‘peace plan.’” Rejection of the plan is a green light to a war of annihilation on the Palestinians.

It appears that the center may not hold, that the self-referential echo chamber that passes for Beltway “expert” analysis will again be caught off guard in the consequence-free profession that is neocon foreign policy analysis. “Gosh we didn’t see that coming!” But the next day they are back on the TV stations as great experts.

Clouds gathering…

February 1, 2020 Posted by aletho | Illegal Occupation, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

Ignoring the Elephant at Gitmo: Yet Another 9/11 Crime

By Kevin Ryan | OffGuardian | January 28, 2020

The dubious legal proceedings at the Guantanomo Bay (Gitmo) prison camp continue to promote the idea of justice for victims of 9/11. Unfortunately, these proceedings do not represent an administration of law but an unstated claim that the Global War on Terror is above the law. More importantly, the Gitmo antics have one obvious objective—to perpetuate willful ignorance of the 9/11 crimes.

There is a dangerous elephant in the Gitmo courtroom, however, and if it ever gets reported it could bring down the terror-torture house of cards.

Reporters covering Gitmo continue to call it a trial but it is not a trial, it is a “military tribunal.” They continue to call the site “Camp Justice” when justice is as far from the prison camp as it has ever been from any human endeavor. What they don’t do is think critically about the information they are parroting from court sources.

The history is profoundly absurd. The suspects were brutally tortured and held without charges for up to 18 years. The alleged evidence obtained from the torture was made secret. Then the records of the secret torture evidence were illegally destroyed. Then the secret evidence simply turned out to be completely false. FBI and CIA officers then began to make a mockery of the whole thing, secretly bugging defense team discussion rooms and covertly inserting themselves as translators and defense team members.

This is not just a matter of an extreme violation of human rights and an utter disrespect for the law. Within this sequence of stupidity looms the mother of all oversights. That is, the secret evidence that turned out to be false was used as the basis for The 9/11 Commission Report.

At the center of the media’s willful ignorance is “forever prisoner” Abu Zubaydah, the first alleged al Qaeda leader captured and tortured. In 2009, the U.S. government began correcting the record by admitting, in habeus corpus proceedings, that Zubaydah was never associated with al Qaeda and that he had no role in, or knowledge of, the 9/11 attacks. That Zubaydah was never associated with al Qaeda is no longer challenged by anyone and is regularly repeated in the mainstream press. What is not mentioned is the astounding implication of that admission.

Abu Zubaydah’s “torture testimony” was used to construct the official narrative of 9/11 that is still accepted as fact today.

Check for yourself. Do a quick search for the word “Zubaydah” in The 9/11 Commission Report. You’ll find it 52 times. As you read these references and claims, ask yourself—how could a man who the government now says had nothing to do with al Qaeda have known any of these things? How could he be a key travel facilitator for al Qaeda operatives when he wasn’t associated in any way with al Qaeda? How could Zubaydah give detailed accounts of Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM)’s plans for 9/11 when he had no knowledge of those plans?

Disassociating Zubaydah from al Qaeda causes so many problems for the official narrative of al Qaeda and 9/11 that people like Lee Hamilton, the co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission, simply develop amnesia when asked about him.

As seen in the 9/11 Commission Report, the official account begins with linking “Mukhtar” (KSM) to “al Qaeda lieutenant Abu Zubaydah,” who we now know was never associated with al Qaeda. Both FBI interrogator Ali Soufan, in a 2009 New York Times opinion piece, and Vice President Dick Cheney, in his 2011 book, claimed that Zubaydah (who never had any knowledge or connection to 9/11) identified KSM as the “mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.” The official account of 9/11, and the ongoing fake trial at Gitmo, all proceeded from there.

But none of it was true.

The latest crime of 9/11 is that this fact is not being reported. The media admits that Zubaydah was never associated with al Qaeda but entirely ignores the devastating consequences of that admission. The false official account for 9/11 is the root cause and ongoing justification for greater crimes—1) wars of aggression in multiple countries that have destroyed millions of lives, 2) the public’s acceptance of torture and indefinite detention, and 3) mass surveillance and an overall attack on freedom.

Instead of reporting that the basis for those greater crimes has been obliterated, the media reduces the subject to a discussion of how torture is bad but perhaps still justified by the gain. Of course, torture is bad but mass murder is much worse and the justification for both the wars and the torture is now indefensible! Until the media reports this fact there will be no justice for victims of 9/11 or for the victims of the resulting wars and torture.

We know that there are many striking anomalies and inexplicable facts about 9/11 that have yet to be resolved. But the fake Gitmo trial stands as a final absurd crime in the history of 9/11 as it is represented as an attempt at justice yet includes more farcical elements every day.

For example, the CIA-driven architect of the torture program recently claimed that he was acting on behalf of the 9/11 families and that he would do it again.

The final proceedings have been set to officially begin in January 2021, aligning with the 20th anniversary news cycle and re-emphasizing that propaganda is the primary goal. The propaganda narrative focuses on setting the false official account in stone and further normalizing torture.

Sadly, reporters and editors covering these events don’t seem to have an interest in challenging any substantial part of the story. Let’s hope that one or more of them comes to their senses and proves that suspicion wrong.

February 1, 2020 Posted by aletho | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | 9/11, CIA, Human rights, United States | Leave a comment

A New US Air Force Video Game Lets You Drone Bomb Iraqis and Afghans

By Alan MacLeod – MintPress News – January 31, 2020

The United States Air Force has a new recruitment tool: a realistic drone operator video game you can play on its website. Called the Airman Challenge, it features 16 missions to complete, interspersed with facts and recruitment information about how to become a drone operator yourself. In its latest attempts to market active service to young people, players move through missions escorting US vehicles through countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, serving up death from above to all those designated “insurgents” by the game. Players earn medals and achievements for most effectively destroying moving targets. All the while there is a prominent “apply now” button on screen if players would like to enlist and conduct real drone strikes all over the Middle East.

The game has failed to win over David Swanson, director of the anti-war movement World Beyond War, and the author of War is a Lie.

“It is truly disgusting, immoral, and arguably illegal in that it is recruitment or pre-recruitment of underage children to participate in murder. It is part of the normalization of murder that we have been living through,” he told MintPress News.

Tom Secker, a journalist and researcher into the influence of the military on popular culture was similarly unimpressed by the latest USA.F. recruitment strategy, telling us:

The drone game struck me as sick and demented… On the other hand, many drone pilots have described how piloting drones and killing random brown people is a lot like playing a video game, because you’re sat in a bunker in Nevada pushing buttons, detached from the consequences. So I guess it accurately reflects the miserable, traumatised, serial killing life of a drone pilot, we can’t accuse it of inaccuracy per se.”

Game Over

Despite the fact that they are rarely, if ever in any physical danger, the military has considerable difficulty recruiting and retaining drone pilots. Nearly a quarter of Air Force staff who can fly the machines leave the service every year. A lack of respect, fatigue and mental anguish are the primary reasons cited. Stephen Lewis, a sensor operator between 2005 and 2010 said what he did “weighs on your conscience. It weighs on your soul. It weighs on your heart,” claiming that the post traumatic stress disorder he suffers from as a consequence of killing so many people has made it impossible for him to have relationships with other humans.

“People think it is a video game. But in a video game you have checkpoints, you have restart points. When you fire that missile there’s no restart,” he said. “The less they can get you to think of what you’re shooting at as human the easier it becomes to you to just follow through with these shots when they come down,” said Michael Haas, another former USAF sensor operator. The Airman Challenge game follows this path, using red dots on the screen to represent enemies, sanitizing the violence recruits will be meting out.

“We were very callous about any real collateral damage. Whenever that possibility came up most of the time it was a guilt by association or sometimes we didn’t even consider other people that were on screen,” Haas said, noting that he and his peers used terms like “fun sized terrorist” to describe children, employing euphemisms like “cutting the grass before it grows too long,” as justifications for their extermination. The constant violence, even from afar, takes a heavy toll on many drone operators, who complain of constant nightmares and having to drink themselves into a stupor every night to avoid them.

Others, with different personalities, revel in the bloodshed. Prince Harry, for example, was a helicopter gunner in Afghanistan and described firing missiles as a “joy.” “I’m one of those people who loves playing PlayStation and Xbox, so with my thumbs I like to think I’m probably quite useful,” he said. “If there’s people trying to do bad stuff to our guys, then we’ll take them out of the game.”

A Nobel Cause

Drone bombing is a relatively new technology. Barack Obama came into office promising to end President Bush’s reckless aggression, even being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. While he slashed the number of American troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, he also greatly expanded US wars in the form of drone bombings, ordering ten times as many as Bush. In his last year in office, the US dropped at least 26,000 bombs – around one every twenty minutes on average. When he left office, the US was bombing seven countries simultaneously: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan.

Up to 90 percent of reported drone casualties were “collateral damage,” i.e. innocent bystanders. Swanson is deeply concerned about the way in which the practice has become normalized: “If murder is acceptable as long as a military does it, anything else is acceptable,” he says, “We will reverse this trend, or we will perish.”

History did not exactly repeat itself with the election of Donald Trump in 2016, but it did rhyme. Trump came to power having made multiple statements perceived as anti-war, strongly criticizing Obama and the Democrats’ handling of the situation in the Middle East. Egged on even by so-called “resistance” media, Trump immediately expanded drone bombings, increasing the number of strikes by 432 percent in his first year in office. The president also used a drone attack to kill Iranian general and statesman Qassem Soleimani earlier this month.

Killing in the Game of

In 2018, the armed forces fell well short of their recruitment targets, despite offering a package of benefits very attractive to working-class Americans. As a result, it totally revamped its recruitment strategy, moving away from television and investing in micro-targeted online ads in an attempt to reach young people, particularly men below the age of thirty, who make up the bulk of the armed forces. One branding exercise was to create an Army e-sports team entering video game competitions under the military brand. As the gaming website, Kotaku wrote, “Positioning the Army as a game-friendly environment and institution is crucial, or even necessary, to reach the people the Army wants to reach.” The Army surpassed its recruitment goal for 2019.

Although the Airman Challenge game is a new attempt at recruitment, the armed forces have a long history being involved in the video game market, and the entertainment industry more generally. Secker’s work has uncovered the depths of collaboration between the military and the entertainment industry. Through Freedom of Information requests, he was able to find that the Department of Defense reviews, edits and writes hundreds of TV and movie scripts every year, subsidizing the entertainment world with free content and equipment in exchange for positive portrayals. “At this point, it’s difficult to effectively summarise the US military’s influence on the industry, because it’s so varied and all-encompassing,” he said.

The US Army spends tens of millions a year on the Institute for Creative Technologies, who develop advanced tech for the film and gaming industries, as well as in-house training games for the Army and – on occasion – the CIA. The Department Of Defense has supported a number of major game franchises (Call of Duty, Tom Clancy games, usually first or third-person shooters). Military-supported games are subject to the same rules of narrative and character as movies and TV, so they can be rejected or modified if they contain elements the Department Of Defense deems controversial.”

The video games industry is massive, with hyper-realistic first person shooters like Call of Duty being among the most popular genres. Call of Duty: WWII, for example, sold $500 million worth of copies in its opening weekend alone, more money generated than blockbuster movies “Thor: Ragnarok” and “Wonder Woman” combined. Many people spend hours a day playing. Captain Brian Stanley, a military recruiter in California said, “Kids know more about the army than we do… Between the weapons, vehicles, and tactics, and a lot of that knowledge comes from video games.”

Young people, therefore, spend huge amounts of time effectively being propagandized by the military. In Call of Duty Ghosts, for instance, you play as a US soldier fighting against a red-beret wearing anti-American Venezuelan dictator, clearly based on President Hugo Chavez, while in Call of Duty 4, you follow the US Army in Iraq, shooting hundreds of Arabs as you go. There’s even a mission where you operate a drone, which is distinctly similar to the Airman Challenge. US forces even control drones with Xbox controllers, blurring the lines between war games and war games even further.

Cyber Warfare

Although the military industrial complex is keen to advertise opportunities for pilots, they go to great lengths to hide the reality of what happens to the victims of airstrikes. The most famous of these is likely the “Collateral Murder” video, leaked by Chelsea Manning to Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange. The video, which made worldwide news, laid bare the callousness towards civilian lives Haas described, where Air Force pilots laugh at shooting dead at least 12 unarmed civilians, including two Reuters journalists. While those commanders ultimately in charge of military operations in the Middle East appear on television constantly, trying to sanitize their actions, Manning and Assange remain in prison for helping to expose the public to an alternative depiction of violence. Manning has spent the majority of the last decade incarcerated, while Assange awaits possible extradition to the United States in a London prison.

The Airman Challenge video game, for Secker, is merely “the latest in a long line of insidious and disturbing recruitment efforts by the US military.” “If they feel they have to do this just to recruit a few hundred thousand people to their cause, maybe their cause isn’t worth it,” he said.

January 31, 2020 Posted by aletho | Militarism, War Crimes | Afghanistan, Africa, Middle East, United States | Leave a comment

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China names world’s ‘hacking empire’

RT | March 15, 2022

Calling the US a “hacking empire” of the world, the Chinese Foreign Ministry urged Washington to stop “malicious” cyber activities following reports that American hackers subverted a network in China to launch attacks on Russia and Belarus.

“China is gravely concerned about cyberattacks against other countries that originate from the US and use China as a springboard,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told reporters at a press briefing on Monday.

Zhao was commenting on recent Chinese media reports that hackers, mainly from the US but also from NATO allies Germany and the Netherlands, recently hijacked a Chinese computer network for cyberattacks, 87% of which targeted Russia.

“Against the background of the Ukraine situation, such a move may produce the negative effect of misleading the international community and spreading disinformation,” Zhao said, pointing out that “a former US senior official called publicly for launching cyberattacks on Russia not long ago.”

This appeared to be a reference to Hillary Clinton, former US secretary of state and presidential candidate, who made the calls in an MSNBC interview at the end of February. … continue

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Women in Gaza come together to protest against Trump’s ‘peace deal’ on 5 February 2020 [Mohammad Asad/Middle East Monitor]

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