US strikes Kataib Hezbollah HQ in Iraq, Syria
Kataib Hezbollah members wave the party’s flags during a parade in Baghdad. © Reuters / Thaier al-Sudani
RT | December 29, 2019
US airstrikes have pounded three Kataib Hezbollah military facilities near the town of Qaim, Iraq, as well as two targets in Syria, in response to the group’s alleged bombing of an Iraqi military base on Friday.
The US carried out “defensive strikes” against the supposed Kataib Hezbollah facilities on Sunday, US officials told Reuters. The targets included weapons storage locations and command and control stations, and F-15 fighter jets were used in the attack. Three locations near Qaim, on the Iraq/Syria border, and two locations in Syria were hit.
Chief Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement that the strikes were a “response to repeated Kataib Hezbollah attacks on Iraqi bases that host Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) coalition forces.”
Reuters’ military sources said that at least 18 militiamen were killed in the strikes, including at least four local Kataib Hezbollah commanders.
Two days earlier, the same Kataib Hezbollah fighters and their Iraqi Shia allies were blamed by US officials for a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base in Kirkuk, some 250 miles east of Qaim. The rocket barrage killed an American contractor and wounded several US troops.
Kataib Hezbollah is an Iraqi paramilitary group, but is financially supported by Iran. Its allies in the so-called Popular Mobilization Forces were first deployed by the Iraqi government to combat Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) jihadists in 2014, but the government has since struggled to bring them under the command of the Iraqi military.
The rocket attack inflamed anti-Iran sentiment in the US, with Republican Senator Tom Cotton (Arkansas) warning that “Tehran ought to face swift and severe consequences” for its alleged involvement. Responding to similar attacks, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatened Iran earlier this month with a “decisive US response” should they continue.
Iran’s involvement, however, has not been conclusively established.
Survivors tell of France’s ‘dirty war’ for Cameroon independence
Press TV – December 28, 2019
The Cameroonian war of independence was a “dirty war” waged by French colonial troops but it never made headlines and even today goes untold in school history books.
The brutal conflict unfolded in Cameroon, which on January 1 marks its 60th anniversary of independence — the first of 17 African countries that became free from their colonial masters in 1960.
Many decades on, those who witnessed the violence recall events which shaped countless lives in the central African country yet remain unchronicled today.
“My life was overturned,” Odile Mbouma, 72, said in the southwestern town of Ekite.
On the night of December 30, 1956, French troops arrived in the town and slaughtered dozens of people, perhaps as many as a hundred, she recalls.
“We were sitting under a tree when we suddenly heard the crackle of gunfire,” she said. “It was everyone for themselves.”
Taking to her heels, the seven-year-old found herself jumping over bodies. “They were everywhere.”
The troops were looking for independence fighters — members of the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC), a nationalist movement established in 1948 that faced repression first by the French and later by Cameroonian soldiers.
French authorities labeled the UPC “communist” and cracked down on them from 1955, driving the movement underground, though its charismatic founder Ruben Um Nyobe preached non-violence.
Buried in cement
In September 1958, Um Nyobe — nicknamed Mpodol (for “he who brings the word” in the Bassa language) — was killed by French troops.
“His body was dragged around and displayed so that everybody (saw the corpse) of a man who was considered immortal,” said Louis Marie Mang, UPC activist in Eseka, where Um Nyobe is buried in a Protestant graveyard.
“To prevent traditional rites from being held, he was put in a block of cement and buried (without) a coffin.”
The conflict continued long beyond independence, for repression of the nationalists continued under Cameroon’s first president, Ahmadou Ahidjo, who also banned public references to the UPC and to Um Nyobe.
The violence “passed unnoticed, wiped from memories,” according to Thomas Deltombe, Manuel Domergue and Jacob Tatsitsa, authors of “La guerre du Cameroun” (“Cameroon’s War”), published in 2016.
They estimate that between 1955 and 1964, tens of thousands of people, including civilians as well as UPC members, were killed.
In Ekite, a wreath of flowers lies on the soil of a scrubland field at the end of a dirt track. “The Nation will remember your sacrifice,” says a memorial notice.
“This is one of the mass graves where the nationalists were buried,” said Jean-Louis Kell, a UPC militant.
A second ditch was apparent a dozen meters away, and “a third was discovered not long ago,” said Benoit Bassemel. He was seven during the French massacre and has tears in his eyes when he tells how his father was murdered.
Benoit Bassemel, who’s father was killed during the massacre on the night of December 31 1956, files his machete at his home in Edéa, on December 11, 2019. (Photo by AFP)
‘Free like the others’
UPC nationalists believe that the independence granted on January 1, 1960, was not what they fought for.
They view the country’s two post-independence presidents, Ahidjo and Paul Biya, who has been in office since 1982, as working hand-in-hand with France.
“We wanted to be free like the other countries. We no longer wanted white people to subjugate us,” said 80-year-old Mathieu Njassep, in his tiny family apartment in Petit Paris, a poor district of Douala, the economic capital.
In 1960, aged 21, Njassep joined the Cameroon National Liberation Army (ALNK), the UPC’s armed wing.
After two years of fighting, he was appointed secretary to Ernest Ouandie, a leading figure in the movement. He was sentenced to death but escaped the firing squad, unlike Ouandie, who was executed in 1971.
“We had almost nothing to wage a war with,” Njassep said. “We carried out ambushes with machetes, sticks and homemade guns. If we had had enough weapons, we would have beaten them.”
At the time, the ALNK had established its headquarters in the village of Bandenkop, on the land of the main western tribal group, the Bamileke. Fighting was fierce between the nationalists and the French army.
In the rugged valley from which ALNK commanders led operations, there is no sign of human life today and the only sound is that of a bubbling stream.
“This whole zone was regularly bombed” by the French air force, said Michel Eclador Pekoua, a former UPC official.
Pekoua and other nationalists say French planes dropped napalm. France has neither confirmed nor denied the use of the notorious incendiary weapon.
Decapitations
On a road 30 kilometers to the north, in Bafoussam, a roundabout is known as the “crossroads of the guerrillas,” for it was where the decapitated heads of nationalists were placed on show, said Theophile Nono, head of a historical association, Memoire 60.
The regime’s methods “ranged from the arrest and arbitrary imprisonment of any Cameroonian suspected of ‘rebellion’ to systematic torture, with extrajudicial summary executions,” Nono said.
For many years the conflict mostly remained taboo in Cameroon. It was in the 1990s, when the authorities came under mounting pressure for democratic change, that people began to consider the historic past.
Biya, in a speech in 2010, paid tribute to “people who dreamed of (independence), fought to obtain it and sacrificed their lives for it… Our people should be eternally grateful to them.”
After years of French silence, then president Francois Hollande in 2015 became his country’s first head of state to speak of “a repression” of Cameroonian nationalists leading to “tragic episodes”.
For many survivors, this is not enough.
“France must accept its responsibility,” Nono said. “It must undertake to compensate victims of the dirty war, which has been carefully concealed by both the French side and the Cameroonian side.”
US uses ISIS as ‘scarecrow’ to intimidate others, while secretly backing them, Syrian FM tells RT
RT | December 25, 2019
Despite claiming to fight jihadists in Syria, the Americans are gladly using them to further anti-Damascus policies and occasionally giving them a helping hand, the Syrian foreign minister told RT.
“The Americans are using ISIS as a scarecrow,” Minister Walid Muallem said in an interview with RT Arabic. “At the same time they are feeding ISIS, [they] encourage them, protect ISIS leaders and help them move from one area to another.”
“The US policy is aimed at investing into terrorism.”
The Syrian government has long accused the US of fueling groups of foreign Islamist fighters, even those bragging of committing atrocities in Syria, as long as they were willing to fight against the forces loyal to Damascus. Washington claimed its illegal deployment of troops in Syria was aimed at destroying IS, but even after the group was declared defeated the American boots remain on the ground.
The latest public justification coming from the US is that oil in northeastern Syria needs to be “secured” from the defeated jihadists. In practice, the US denies the internationally recognized government of Syria of using the country’s national resources.
Muallem also said the US continues its attempts to topple the government he serves with various measures, including by targeting Damascus with economic sanctions. A new round of those is expected after the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) earlier this month.
Part of the NDAA orders punishment of companies who would help the Syrian government in rebuilding infrastructure and the energy sector – which presumably should not be allowed to happen while President Bashar Assad remains in power.
“All nations that were victimized by this system need to join forces and resist those sanctions,” the Syrian official said.
A Criminal State Under investigation
“If you have the law, hammer the law. If you have the facts, hammer the facts. If you have neither the law nor the facts, hammer the table”. – Anonymous legal advice
By Gilad Atzmon | December 22, 2019
Reports from Israeli press outlets this weekend show that the Jewish State fears the ICC’s (International Criminal Court) decision to move forward with an investigation into whether Israel committed war crimes in the Palestinian territories. Such a probe may expose current and former government officials and military personnel to prosecution on the global stage.
The ICC will investigate Israel’s policy of settling its citizens in the West Bank, its actions during the 2014 war in Gaza, and its response to Palestinian protests on Gaza’s border beginning in March of last year. The ICC will examine indiscriminate shooting by Hamas and other Palestinian groups into Israeli cities as well.
Israel plans to refuse to cooperate with the ICC, although such a move may put a long list of Israeli officials, potentially including the prime minister, defense ministers, IDF chiefs, the heads of the Shin Bet security service, and military officers as well as low-ranking soldiers, at risk of international arrest warrants if, in the absence of a state response, the ICC proceeds with the prosecution of individuals for the alleged crimes.
Israel’s reaction to the ICC’s top prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s decision to investigate is instructive. Instead of responding ethically and showing a willingness to defend its actions, Israel is hiding behind legalistic Talmudic arguments that seek to refute the ICC’s legitimacy and deny its jurisdiction over Israel and Israeli war criminals.
Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s defense is based on the ICC’s supposed ‘lack of jurisdiction.’ On Saturday, Mandelblit said that Israel “is a democratic state of law, obligated and committed to respecting international law and humanitarian values. This commitment has stood strong for decades, through all the challenged and tough times Israel has faced. It is rooted in the character and values of the State of Israel and guaranteed by a strong and independent justice system… there is no place for international judicial intervention in such a situation.”
Is this really an accurate description of Israel? If Israel is ‘democratic state of law’ that adheres to a universalist value system as Mandelblit insists, why is Israel so afraid of the ICC looking into its behaviour? The reality of Israel contradicts Mandelblit’s position. We are dealing with a criminal state, an institutional ethnic cleanser that explores barbarian tactics locking millions of people in the largest open-air prisons known to man.
Just to prove how ‘ethical’ the Jewish State is not, Israeli Transportation Minister Bezalel Smotrich called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to give the Palestinian Authority a 48-hour ultimatum to pull its petition to the ICC or see the Ramallah-based political authority “torn down.”
Blue and White Party Chairman, Benny Gantz, also attacked the ICC’s decision. Citing his decades of military service, including as the IDF’s 20th chief of staff, Gantz unequivocally stated that “the IDF is one of the most moral armies in the world.” Gantz forgot to mention that he is himself a suspected war criminal and may be charged by the ICC. In 2016 we learned that the District Court of the Hague was holding a hearing to determine whether to hear a war crimes case against Gantz relating to his command decisions during the 2014 Gaza War.
Former ‘justice’ minister, Ayelet Shaked, called the move “a political, hypocritical and predictable decision.” Shaked said the ICC “has no authority” to open the probe. She urged the government to “fight the court with all the tools at its disposal.”
PM Netanyahu called the ICC’s announcement “a dark day for truth and justice.” What, one may wonder, would Netanyahu consider a shining moment for truth and justice?
As we now see and could have anticipated, the official Israeli response in opposition to the ICC’s probe is legalistic as opposed to ethical. Israeli officials made public a legal opinion by Mandelblit arguing that the court does not have jurisdiction to conduct an investigation. Instead of attempting to refute the substance of the complaint, Israel and its officials invest in a wall-to-wall attempt to deny the court’s jurisdiction.
The rationale for Israel’s defiance is pretty obvious. Israeli decision makers are clever enough to grasp the prospective outcome of such an investigation. It would drain whatever is left of the Israeli military’s will to fight. Israeli combatants – platoons, pilots, drone operators, commanders- would know that their actions have legal consequences and as a result might be reluctant to execute military orders. The ICC may have closed the door on Israel’s military options and strategy. For a country that survives by the sword and invests in the ‘War between the Wars,’ the ICC investigation is understood as a lethal threat.
I am not holding my breath for the ICC to accomplish its job. I anticipate intensive Lobby efforts to interfere with the court’s work. However, by now we know that an attempt by Jewish power to silence opposition to Jewish power, can only be realised through the manifestation of such power. In Britain, for instance, the Israel Lobby and its stooges within politics and media exposed itself through its relentless war against Corbyn and his party. By the time Corbyn and his party were literally wiped out, every Brit knew who runs this country for real.
The Lobby is more than welcome to expose its sharp teeth and interfere with the ICC’s work. It may destroy the ICC, but Israel won’t be vindicated of its crimes against Palestinians, as these crimes are committed in the open for everyone to see.
US State Department ‘firmly opposes’ ICC probe into Israeli war crimes allegations, insisting court lacks jurisdiction
RT | December 21, 2019
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has voiced “firm” opposition to a bid in the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate alleged war crimes committed by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories.
After nearly four years of preliminary investigation, the ICC’s top prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said on Friday that the war crimes probe would be expanded into a full-scale inquiry, looking into whether Israel has carried out atrocities in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as Gaza. In a statement echoing earlier remarks by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Pompeo said the case had no merit.
“We firmly oppose this and any other action that seeks to target Israel unfairly,” Pompeo said on Friday, arguing that because Palestine does not qualify as a “sovereign state” and is not a party to the ICC’s founding charter, the Rome Statute, it cannot bring cases before the court.
The top US diplomat also reiterated a “long standing objection” to any claim that the ICC has jurisdiction over non-member states, such as Israel and the United States, “absent a referral from the UN Security Council” or explicit cooperation from the nation in question. While then-President Bill Clinton signed the Rome Statute in 2000, it was never formally ratified by the Senate. Israel, too, was an early signer to the statute, but also never finalized its membership in the organization.
PM Netanyahu made a nearly identical argument to Pompeo’s earlier on Friday, insisting the court had no jurisdiction and that Palestine had not achieved statehood – a goal Palestinians have pursued for decades despite tooth-and-nail opposition from both Tel Aviv and its American benefactor.
While Palestine has yet to achieve statehood, the quasi-governmental Palestinian Authority was accepted into the ICC in 2015. Nonetheless, Bensouda signaled that she will convene with the court to confirm exactly how far its jurisdiction extends before moving ahead with the investigation.
Tel Aviv has been accused repeatedly over the years of carrying out war crimes against Palestinians, including the demolition and shelling of civilian homes and other structures, forcible relocation of residents and the use of live ammunition on unarmed demonstrators. Many of the allegations stem from Israel’s settlement project in the occupied territories.
In November, Pompeo declared that Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank were legitimate under international law, overturning long-standing US policy on the question. Palestinians and their advocates argue the settlements make the long-sought statehood project increasingly unlikely, as Israel’s Jewish-only housing units sprawl across Palestinian land and tie up important resources. Much of the international community and the UN have long considered the settlements illegal and continue to do so, despite the American about-face.
Panama: A Grieving People Recalls 30 Years of the US Invasion
teleSUR | December 20, 2019
For the first time over the last 30 years, Panamanian authorities agreed to declare “National Day of Mourning” on December 20, which is the date on which the United States invaded Panama in 1989.
“The government acknowledges declaring December 20 as a day of national mourning to honor Panamanians and all the innocents who lost their lives and defended our territory’s integrity,” President Laurentino Cortizo tweeted on Wednesday.
On Dec. 20, 1989, President George H.W. Bush ordered “Operation Just Cause” and deployed some 26,000 soldiers to overthrow General Manuel Antonio Noriega.
Until then, he had been one of the most faithful collaborators of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Noriega fueled the Bush administration’s hostility when he requested the closure of “The School of the Americas,” where the U.S. had trained thousands of Latin American military since 1946. Upon losing Washington’s support, however, the U.S. Department of Justice accused him of drug trafficking.
Official declassified documents, which were published by Panama Files for the first time this week, indicate that 202 civilians and 314 militaries were killed during Operation Just Cause.
In an unofficially recognized manner, historians, activists, and families argue that the U.S. invasion killed up to 4,000 civilians.
“El Chorillo neighborhood, where the Panamanian Defense Forces central headquarters were located, was razed during the battle,” local outlet El Siglo recalls.
Mirta Guevara, who was a Public Prosecutor at the time, remembers that nobody imagined what the U.S. was planning to do. She was studying court records on the night of December 19 when her husband came in and told her, “Close those files. They are going to invade us.”
“I was shocked because, although one sees such things at the movies, I had never imagined it. I think that no Panamanian imagined that they were going to invade us,” Guevara recalls and now says that such an action had no justification. “Many people died.”
Of what happened in Panama not only oral accounts remained. A year after the invasion, a documentary showed a woman who asked the U.S.-imposed government to recognize whether what happened was “war, invasion or liberation.” They replied to her that it was a “government of democracy and justice.”
“Democracy for whom? Justice for whom? For those who are in the mass graves or for those who are in the government? For those of us who go hungry or for those who have everything?” the woman said without fear of the repression that was lived in the country.
In another documentary called “Unjust Cause,” which was made by the Panamanian filmmaker Rafael Vergara, scenes of brutal aggression are reported, one of which happened when U.S. troops bombarded a civil building because their inhabitants did not want to leave.
To resist the invasion, the Panamanians organized themselves in the “Battalions of Dignity”, which were groups of guerrilla fighters who were persecuted by the invasion-born government, which was led by Guillermo Endara, to whom a judge gave the presidency secretly the night before the invasion.
“Those who seized power mounted on the invading tanks remain silent,” a witness told Prensa Latina.
“After 30 years, the curtains, which hid the worst massacre experienced by Panama and the largest U.S. military deployment after Vietnam, begin to fall.”
In his chronicle “The Panama Invasion: A Heroine of the Little Hiroshima,” Colombian journalist Hernando Calvo described what happened in El Chorrillo neighborhood through the testimony of Ana.
She recalled a Dantesque scenario in which invading troops prevented helping injured family members, tanks hit dead or alive people lying on the street, and flamethrowers burned dead bodies at the beach.
Turkey vows to retaliate if US imposes sanctions on Russian gas pipeline
RT | December 20, 2019
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has hit back against US threats to impose sanctions on the TurkStream pipeline that is set to deliver Russian gas to Turkey and further to southern and southeastern Europe starting next year.
“Now they [the US] say ‘we will impose sanctions on TurkStream,’” Erdogan told reporters on Friday in Malaysia. “This is a complete violation of our rights,” he said, adding that Ankara would retaliate against such a step.
The TurkStream project was created as an alternative to the South Stream pipeline. The project to deliver Russian gas to southern Europe was blocked by Bulgaria in 2014 under pressure from the US.
TurkStream is a two-string pipeline that will go from Russia along the bottom of the Black Sea to the European part of Turkey and will have a throughput capacity of 31.5 billion cubic meters. The official launch of the pipeline is scheduled for January 8, when Russian President Vladimir Putin comes to Turkey to met Erdogan.
Earlier this week, the US Senate adopted the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, which stipulates sanctioning vessels that engaged in pipe-laying for the TurkStream project as well as punitive measures against companies working to complete the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. The bill is now on the way to the White House where President Donald Trump is set to sign it into law.
The bill also sanctions Turkey for its acquisition of the Russian-made S-400 air defense system and implies prohibiting the transfer of F-35 jets to the country. Addressing the matter, the Turkish leader said these issues are “closed” and warned against treating Ankara as a “tribal nation.”
Why Western Media Ignore OPCW Scandal
Strategic Culture Foundation | December 20, 2019
The credibility of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is on the line after a series of devastating leaks from whistleblowers has shown that the UN body distorted an alleged CW incident in Syria in 2018. The distortion by the OPCW of the incident suggests that senior directors at the organization were pressured into doing so by Western governments.
This has grave implications because the United States, Britain and France launched over 100 air strikes against Syria following the CW incident near Damascus in April 2018. The Western powers rushed to blame the Syrian government forces, alleging the use of banned weapons against civilians. This was in spite of objections by Russia at the time and in spite of evidence from independent investigators that the CW incident was a provocation staged by anti-government militants.
Subsequent reports by the OPCW later in 2018 and 2019 distort the incident in such a way as to indict the Syrian government and retrospectively exculpate the Western powers over their “retaliatory” strikes.
However, the whistleblower site Wikileaks has released more internal communications provided by 20 OPCW experts who protest that senior officials at the organization’s headquarters in The Hague engaged in “doctoring” their field reports from Syria.
Copies of the doctored OPCW reports are seen to have suppressed important evidence casting doubt on the official Western narrative claiming that the Syrian government was to blame. That indicates the OPCW was engaged in a cover-up to retrospectively “justify” the air strikes by Western powers. This is a colossal scandal which implies the US, Britain and France wrongly attacked Syria and are therefore guilty of aggression. Yet, despite the gravity of the scandal, Western media have, by and large, ignored it. Indicating that these media are subordinated by their governments’ agenda on Syria, rather than exposing the truth as independent journalistic services.
An honorable exception is Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson who has given prominence to the scandal on US national TV. So too has veteran British journalist Peter Hitchens who has helped expose the debacle in the Mail on Sunday newspaper.
Apart from those sources, the mainstream Western media have looked away. This is an astounding dereliction of journalistic duty to serve the public interest and to hold governments to account for abusing power.
Major American news outlets have been engrossed in the Trump impeachment case over his alleged abuse of power. But these same media have ignored an arguably far more serious abuse of power with regard to launching missiles on Syria over a falsehood. That says a lot about the warped priorities of such media.
However, their indifference to the OPCW scandal also reflects their culpability in fomenting the narrative blaming the Assad government, and thereby setting up the country for military strikes. In short, the corporate media are complicit in a deception and potentially a war crime against Syria. Therefore they ignore the OPCW scandal.
That illustrates how Western news media are not “independent” as they pompously claim but rather serve as propaganda channels to facilitate their governments’ agenda.
An enlightening case study was published by Tareq Haddad who quit from Newsweek recently because the editors censored his reports on the unfolding OPCW scandal. Haddad explained that he had important details to further expose the OPCW cover-up, but despite careful deliberation on the story he was inexplicably knocked back by senior editors at Newsweek who told him to drop it. There is more than a hint in Haddad’s insider-telling that senior staff at the publication are working as assets for Western intelligence agencies, and thus able to spike stories that make trouble for their governments.
Given the eerie silence among US, British and European media towards the OPCW scandal it is reasonable to posit that there is a systematic control over editorial policies about which stories to cover or not to. What else explains the blanket silence?
The scandal comes as Western powers are attempting to widen the powers of the OPCW for attributing blame in such incidents. Russia has objected to this move, saying it undermines the authority of the UN Security Council. Given the scandal over Syria, Russia is correct to challenge the credibility of the OPCW. The organization has become a tool for Western powers.
Russian envoy to the OPCW and ambassador to the Netherlands Alexander Shulgin says that Moscow categorically objects to expanding the OPCW’s functions and its powers of attributing blame. The extension of powers is being recommended by the US, Britain and France – the three countries implicated in abusing the OPCW in Syria to justify air strikes against that country.
The Russian envoy added: “The OPCW’s attribution mechanism is a mandate imposed by the US and its allies, which has nothing to do with international law and the Chemical Weapons Convention’s provisions. Any steps in this direction are nothing more than meddling in the UN Security Council’s exclusive domain. We cannot accept this flagrant violation of international law.”
Thus, the OPCW – a UN body – is being turned into a rubber-stamp mechanism by Western powers to legalize their acts of aggression. And yet despite the mounting evidence of corruption and malfeasance, Western corporate media studiously ignore the matter. Is it any wonder these media are losing credibility? And, ironically, they have the gall to disdain other countries’ media as “controlled” or “influence operations”.
Trump Impeachment… Slapstick Diversion From Reality
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 20, 2019
Fittingly for the jolly season, the House of Representatives’ vote to impeach Trump was more pantomime than serious politics.
“Oh yes, he is!.. Oh no, he isn’t!..” and so it went on for nearly 10 hours of to-and-fro between Democrats and Republicans. Eventually, the finale came when black-clad Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi hammered the gavel, announcing President had been impeached – only the third-ever in two-and-half centuries of 45 presidents.
It was a foregone conclusion given the Democrat majority in the House. The next step in the impeachment process goes to the Republican controlled Senate next month where Trump will almost certainly be acquitted.
For all the grandstanding drama and feverish media coverage, the storyline – like all pantos – is scant in credibility. The accusations against Trump of abusing his office in a phone call with the Ukrainian president and of obstructing subsequent Congressional inquiry are light on evidence while heavy on innuendo. For all his flaws, Trump and the Republicans are right in their call that the Democrats and anti-Trump media are hamming it up in a desperate bid to overturn the 2016 election. For the past three years, Washington has been fixated with Trump Derangement Syndrome.
With faux solemnity, Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi said the impeachment vote was a “sad and tragic day” for US democracy. Then she had to quickly check Democrats from bursting into cheers and applause when the impeachment vote was announced. So much for a “sad day”! The Democrats were elated that their three-year plan to oust Trump was at last happening – albeit for a short-lived period until the Senate takes up the matter.
What was truly sad, however, is how the impeachment fiasco dominated other news, thereby drawing the curtain on several far more significant events.
On the same day as the House brouhaha, over in the Senate Inspector General Michael Horowitz was continuing to give withering testimony from his report into FBI wiretapping of the Trump election campaign back in 2016. The misconduct by the FBI in carrying out surveillance on private American citizens is a shocking abuse of power by the intelligence agency. All the implications suggest that the Obama administration engaged with secret services to sabotage the election campaign of Donald Trump in 2016 with phony allegations about Russia collusion. The constitutional violations by the FBI are colossal.
Knowing the murky past of the FBI and its dirty tricks, we shouldn’t be surprised by Horowitz’s findings. A follow-up report by attorney John Durham promises to be even more damning. But what is so astounding is how the US media, by and large, had their focus on the impeachment debacle instead of this far bigger show of grave importance. Perhaps not really astounding given that major media outlets like CNN, New York Times, MSNBC and Washington Post have invested so much capital in whipping up the Russia claims. Their ignoring the FBI misconduct is vital for self-preservation by avoiding accountability for their “Russia collusion” fantasies.
Another blockbuster story roundly ignored was the unfolding scandal at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The number of whistleblowers from the UN body has grown to 20, according to Wikileaks. They allege that an OPCW report published in 2018 into a purported chemical weapon incident in Syria was “doctored” to wrongly incriminate the Assad government for carrying out an attack on civilians. As a result of the incident on April 7, 2018, the United States, Britain and France days later launched over 100 air strikes against Syria in apparent revenge. President Trump labeled Assad “an animal”. According to the whistleblowers, the OPCW report later in 2018 was deliberately suppressed by senior officials in the organization’s headquarters in The Hague under pressure from the American government. The implication is that the US, British and French air strikes against Syria were naked aggression based on false information. Indeed, the incident on April 7 has the hallmarks of a false-flag operation carried out by Western-backed anti-government militants.
Despite the urgent public interest of this scandal, the Western corporate media have largely ignored the matter, apart from notable exceptions, such as Tucker Carlson at Fox and Peter Hitchens in Britain’s Mail newspaper.
Surely on any objective scale, the OPCW scandal is worth far more media attention than the turgid proceedings in the House. But then again invoking objectivity is a naive request when the polarized politics in the US have become so hyper-subjective.
Other important stories that got sidelined this week include the appeal by 100 Australian doctors demanding the release of Julian Assange from prison in Britain. They reiterated similar concerns expressed by Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur, warning that Assange could die in prison if he is not given immediate medical care. The Wikileaks founder is awaiting extradition to the US where he faces 175 years in jail for “espionage”. As the leaks this week from Wikileaks regarding corruption at the OPCW demonstrate the real “offense” committed by Assange is his exposure of war crimes by the US and its Western allies. He is being tortured for telling the truth by Western governments that claim to be bastions of democracy and law. Why aren’t Western media covering this bombshell?
Still another huge story to be buried this week under the avalanche of impeachment popcorn was the report that over 90 US companies on the Fortune 500 list paid zero tax in the year 2018, despite having made combined profits of $100 billion. The companies include Amazon, Bank of American, Chevron, General Motors, Goodyear, Honeywell, JP Morgan Chase, Starbucks, and Verizon, to mention only a few. These companies were able to reduce their federal tax bill to zero because of corporate tax breaks and accounting loopholes introduced by President Trump in 2017.
If the Democrat party was a genuine political opposition to Trump then it should be taking up issues that really matter to ordinary citizens. Issues like abuse of power by unelected state agencies that spy illegally on civilians. But the Democrats this month voted for the latest edition of the Patriot Act extending such powers. They also voted for a record $738 billion spend on the US military, instead of deploying some of that for public good in healthcare and education.
If the Democrat party was a genuine political opposition, then it would be highlighting the crimes of illegal wars the US carries out on foreign countries with impunity. It would be defending the rights of whistleblowers like Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden who have exposed systematic state crimes.
If the Democrat party was a genuine political opposition, it would be campaigning for US corporations to pay their fair share of taxes so that working families can benefit from a decent society. They would be going after Trump for aiding and abetting the corporate kleptocracy that America has become.
But they don’t. Because the Democrats – most of them anyway – are part of the same bipartisan corporate feeding trough and war machine that is Washington.
The obscenity is so disgraceful that’s why the need for an impeachment pantomime. And the corporate media dutifully obliges.
US Treasury’s Steve Mnuchin Virtue Signals Economic Terrorism
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 19, 2019
US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin seems to think that nations under the hammer of American sanctions should be thanking Washington for not attacking them militarily instead. How generous, how virtuous of Uncle Sam!
Speaking at the Doha Forum in Qatar last week, Mnuchin made a virtue of the US imposing economic sanctions on countries it dislikes because such measures, he claimed, were a way to avoid the worse alternative of war.
“The reason why we’re using sanctions is because they are an important alternative for world military conflicts,” said the US Treasury Secretary.
The sleight of hand here is to portray Washington as somehow being more responsible and principled in its foreign policy by using coercion against other nations supposedly without harming civilians, damaging infrastructure or spilling blood.
Billionaire Mnuchin is living in a bubble of American propaganda if he thinks that economic sanctions are some kind of sterile lever which do not have any impact on human suffering. Sanctions are acts of war, conducted as other means to troop invasions, air strikes and naval blockades.
International lawyer and former UN diplomat Alfred de Zayas calls the sanctions imposed by the US on Venezuela “economic terrorism”. Tens of thousands of Venezuelans are estimated to have died as a result of Washington’s tightening embargo on the South American country since 2017.
Iran’s government has also condemned US sanctions on its nation as “economic terrorism”. So too has Syria, North Korea and Cuba – the latter having been embargoed by the US for nearly six decades without relent.
Typically, sanctioned countries cannot import vital medicines and medical equipment due to US restrictions on banking systems and trade. That leads to premature deaths from terminal illnesses that go untreated, and to worsening health of vulnerable sections of the population, the young and elderly. Less perceptibly, but no less real, is increased mortality from general deprivation caused by sanctions-hit economies.
Remember how former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright infamously admitted on national TV that American sanctions killed 500,000 children in Iraq during the 1990s, and with monstrous callousness added, “it was worth it”.
Steve Mnuchin claims with barefaced lies that US sanctions do not impinge on humanitarian supplies to targeted countries. That is contradicted by independent international observers who have visited Syria, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea where US sanctions have decimated public health services. See this article by independent journalist Eva Bartlett who visited several of the aforementioned countries.
Indeed, the whole purpose of sanctions is to deliberately ravage populations in order to provoke widespread social instability and ultimately regime change.
The practice of unilateral sanctions by the US should be banned under international law as a form of aggression against nations. It is an act of war and, without just cause of self-defense, is therefore a war crime.
Mnuchin’s cynicism pretends that sanctions are a valid legal instrument of foreign policy which are qualitatively different from military warfare. His nauseating attempt to claim that the US is acting with restraint by using sanctions “instead of war” is absurd.
Sanctions are part of the US arsenal to harass and subjugate other nations which Washington deems to be recalcitrant to achieving its geopolitical objectives.
Historically it is seen that economic assault on countries is often the prelude to all-out war. The good “alternative” that Mnuchin talks of is delusional.
Recall how US sanctions against Japan in the 1930s aimed at cutting off the latter’s oil imports led to Japan precipitating the Pacific War with the attacks on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Arguably, the war’s inception was not at Pearl Harbor, but rather found in the prior US policy of strangulating Japan economically.
That’s what makes the current sanctions on Iran by the Trump administration a matter of grave concern. The US economic blockade seems aimed at forcing Iran to make a retaliatory move which would then be cited by Washington as “justifying” American military action. But let’s put those sanctions in proper context. They were imposed unilaterally by the Trump administration when it tore up its signature in May 2018 to the treaty-binding international nuclear accord. Bad faith has been followed by economic aggression, which may, in turn, lead to open military aggression. Thus, sanctions are part of a sliding scale of war, not some abstract benign alternative to war, as the US Treasury Secretary likes to pretend.
What is more disturbing is the increasing use of sanctions as a normal foreign policy by the Trump administration.
The list of nations under US sanctions continues to grow. In addition to countries mentioned above are several others, primarily Russia and China. Countless layers of sanctions originated by the Obama administration have been added on to Moscow by the Trump presidency. The vague and unverified nature of US claims invoked to implement these sanctions against Russia are in themselves provocative.
The threat of American sanctions against Russia’s Nord Stream-2 mega project for increasing gas exports to Europe is perhaps the most egregious example of using economic instruments gratuitously to pursue geopolitical interests. Not only Russia but also European “allies” of the US are being threatened with sanctions over Nord Stream-2.
Nord Stream-2 clearly illustrates how US sanctions are another instrument of unlawful aggression and coercion for achieving American interests.
The complacency of Mnuchin’s virtue-signaling belies a brutal truth. Far from avoiding war, Washington is more and more at war with the rest of the planet by using economic aggression, terrorism and bullying.
The would-be US hegemon is increasingly out of control, no longer restrained by the superficial need for appearance of legal niceties. The international tensions it is stoking by its wanton tyranny are creating a dangerous threshold. US economic warfare through sanctions has ensured that catastrophic military war is but one fatal slip away.
ICC Prosecutor Bensouda ‘Biased In Favour Of Israel – Unwilling to Deliver Justice for Palestine’
By Iqbal Jassat | Media Review Network | December 17, 2019
Whoever has any suspicion that the ICC’s reluctance to prosecute Israel for war crimes is due to pro-Israel bias by its prosecutor, have been spot on.
In a timely intervention, South Africa’s highly respected jurist Professor John Dugard, has called for an urgent investigation into the fitness of Fatou Bensouda to continue holding her position as the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Speaking at an event at an Assembly of State Parties to the Rome Statute, The Hague, Dugard raised a number of crucial concerns about Bensouda’s pro-Israeli bias.
Dugard is no push over. As Emeritus Professor of Law at the universities of Leiden and the Witwatersrand he served as Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, from 2001 to 2008. And as a former Judge ad hoc at the International Court of Justice; and a member of the Advisory Board of The Rights Forum, his opinions are highly regarded.
In his presentation, Dugard said it’s become abundantly clear that the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) is determined not to open an investigation into crimes committed by Israel in Palestine and against the Palestinian people.
He pointed out that despite ten years of preliminary examinations and overwhelming evidence, he found it strange that Bensouda has found no basis to proceed to the next stage of the investigation.
Dugard alluded to the fact that Bensouda refused to do so in the midst of four Human Rights Council’s independent fact-finding mission reports, an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, resolutions of the Security Council and General Assembly, numerous Israeli, Palestinian and international NGO reports, extensive TV coverage and video recordings depicting and testifying to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Shockingly, despite overwhelming grounds for prosecution, Bensouda in her latest report, fails to give a straight and reasoned explanation for her failure to commence an investigation. Though her persistent refusal to proceed makes no sense, Dugard is satisfied that there is more than sufficient evidence to support a finding that Israel has committed war crimes by using excessive and disproportionate force and violence against civilians in Gaza and the West Bank.
In his submission, Dugard said he is convinced the evidence is clear that Israel’s settlement enterprise constitutes apartheid and has resulted in the forcible displacement and transfer of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, meaning that it “has committed crimes against humanity”.
He explained that the law is clear on the crime of the transfer by an Occupying Power – Israel – of parts of its civilian population into the occupied territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. He emphatically insisted that due to both the law and facts being clear, there existed no possibility whatsoever of dispute or debate.
Dugard spelled out the relevant imperatives of the Rome Statute which render Israel’s conduct as war crimes. In addition he cited articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as provisions of customary international law. And in setting out the facts, Dugard reminded his audience that 700,000 Jewish Israeli settlers live in about 130 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. These settlements are clearly within Occupied Palestinian Territory – as held by the International Court of Justice.
Thus if the evidence clearly provides a reasonable basis to believe that a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court has been committed, “culpable failure to take steps to suppress a crime when under a duty to do so makes the Prosecutor complicit in the commission of the crime”, claimed Dugard. “There is overwhelming authoritative support for the conclusion that Israel’s settlements are illegal under international law.”
The International Court of Justice unanimously held the settlements have been established in breach of international law. Likewise the UN Security Council has condemned settlements as illegal, most recently in 2016 in Resolution 2334. And Dugard reiterated that even Israel’s own legal adviser Theodor Meron advised that they were illegal when Israel embarked upon this colonial enterprise.
The conclusion drawn by Dugard on why Besouda refuses to indict Israel is that non-legal, political factors have guided her decision. Clearly a stinking rebuke and damning indictment of the OTP, unambiguously accusing Bensouda of ignoring legal imperatives.
Why would Fatou Bensouda be in dereliction of her duty?
In his own words Dugard explained as follows:
“As I see it, there are two possibilities: a deliberate collective decision by the Prosecutor, her deputy and senior officers not to prosecute; or in articulated factors that have led the Prosecutor and her staff to a bias in favour of Israel.”
And unsurprisingly the most likely reason for it would be fear of retaliation from Israel and the United States. Or as Dugard further explained, it might be sensitivity to the widespread view prevalent among European states that the ICC is too fragile an institution to withstand the backlash that might follow such an investigation.
In an interesting background check on Bensouda, Dugard advanced additional factors in what he referred to as her “life-history, particularly in The Gambia” to provide some indication of unarticulated reasons for her decision to protect Israel. During the repressive reign of Yahya Jammeh in The Gambia, Bensouda served as Minister of Justice.
“Repression was the order of the day as human rights vigorously suppressed. The Minister of Justice (Bensouda) could not remain aloof from this. That she was involved in this process of repression has become clear from evidence before The Gambian Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission.”
These shocking facts certainly make a compelling case to have Bensouda removed from her position. Its unimaginable to have the ICC tainted by having its Prosecutor implicated in torture, detention without trial and denial of legal representation during her term in the cabinet of Gambia’s brutal dictator.
It is inexplicable that the world has been silent on the extremely compromised position of Bensouda, limiting her ability to deliver justice for the Palestinian people. Her failure to do so is a tragic reflection of the pervasive levels of injustice that have polluted not only the ICC but most if not all international platforms entrusted to dispense justice.
Iqbal Jassat
Exec Member
Media Review Network
Johannesburg
South Africa
Featured Video
10K More U.S. Troops Deploy as Trump Weighs New Iran Strikes
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Genetic baloney in thick slices
MAYBE COULD BE INC.
By Jon Rappoport | No More Fake News | July 8, 2021
Gene research companies tend to come and go. They start out banging and popping like fireworks in the sky, and then they fade out—selling themselves to larger outfits who’ve hired better liars…
Once upon a time, it sounded easy. Start with a disease, find the gene responsible for the disease, and correct the problem.
Then, researchers wondered, was disease the result of one gene or a group of genes acting together?
Either way, the proof would be in devising cures for diseases using gene therapy. “Not yet, but soon…”
And regardless, the major need was: money. Lots and lots of money.
This need required good PR people. “We have to pump up the idea that we’re on the edge of tremendous breakthroughs. We’re always on that edge…”
This hype also needed to obscure the fact that there wasn’t (and isn’t) ANY gene cure for ANY disease. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- US military withdrawal from Iraq and the collapse of US-Israeli hegemonic project in West Asia
- What does Europe want – a war with Russia?
- She Followed the Actual Data on COVID Vaccines and Masks — Her Career Took a Huge Hit
- Florida AG Sues Pfizer, Bourla Over Deceptive Marketing of COVID Vaccines
- Von der Leyen gifts her spin doctor a job for life
- 10K More U.S. Troops Deploy as Trump Weighs New Iran Strikes /Suliaman Ahmed
- Iranian crew declared Dena training vessel ‘unarmed’ to US warship before deadly torpedo strike: Report
- Iran’s NPT debate moves beyond parliament
- Houthis condemn Saudi claims of attack on Medina
- Fatuous False Flags
- If Americans Knew
- Israel is squeezing the life out of Palestinians – Daily Update
- The Israeli Right Portrays Islam as Murderous. It Serves a Political Purpose
- Jordan Has Had Enough: King Abdullah’s Scathing Warning to Israel
- Israeli Colonizers (i.e. Settlers) Kill Palestinian Man Near Salfit
- New Google Maps images reveal massive scale of devastation in Gaza
- Jewish supremacy, anti-Palestinian bigotry on display in Israel – Daily Update
- Israeli Soldiers Abduct At Least 22 Across Occupied West Bank
- Eight Palestinians Killed in Israeli Attacks on Gaza
- Israeli former leaders and security chiefs threaten legal action over ‘Jewish terrorism’
- Israel map in LA Times ad includes all land from the river to the sea
- No Tricks Zone
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
