One of the many unsubstantiated claims of “Napalm attack” made by the UK/US created propaganda construct, the White Helmets in Eastern Ghouta.
Napalm was a US invention. Napalm “was invented in a top-secret 1942 war research collaboration between Harvard University and the U.S. government”. In 1952 the U.S. Patent Office issued certificate 2,606,107 for “Incendiary Gels” and made napalm’s precise formula available worldwide.
“U.S. troops used a substance known as napalm from about 1965 to 1972 in the Vietnam War; napalm is a mixture of plastic polystyrene, hydrocarbon benzene, and gasoline. This mixture creates a jelly-like substance that, when ignited, sticks to practically anything and burns up to ten minutes. The effects of napalm on the human body are unbearably painful and almost always cause death among its victims.” ~ The Vietnam War
The accusation of “napalm attack” conjures up terrible images designed to shock. In 1945 the US B29 bombers dropped their payload of 69,000 pounds of Napalm over Tokyo, Japan in one hour. An estimated 100,000 Japanese men, women and children perished in the resulting fire storm. Washington considered the 10 days of Napalm bombing raids across all Japan’s major cities, a huge success. The US also used Napalm in North Korea with devastating consequences for its people in the 1950s. Washington dropped 32,557 tonnes of Napalm on Vietnam.
The US’ most recent use of Napalm was during the Iraq war in 2003 when “dozens of napalm bombs were dropped near bridges over the Saddam Canal and the Tigris River, south of Baghdad” according to an article in the Independent. In the same article a US commander of Marin Air Group 11 states:
“We napalmed both those [bridge] approaches,” said Colonel James Alles, commander of Marine Air Group 11. “Unfortunately there were people there … you could see them in the [cockpit] video. They were Iraqi soldiers. It’s no great way to die. The generals love napalm. It has a big psychological effect.”
According to Robert M Neer, author of Napalm: An American Biography, the countries who have used Napalm are:
“Countries that have used napalm, in addition to the United States, include: Greece (the first use after World War II), France, Britain, Portugal, United Nations forces in Korea, the Philippines, South Vietnam and North Vietnam (in flamethrowers), Cuba, Peru, Bolivia, Israel, Egypt, Turkey, India, Iraq, Nigeria, and Brazil.”
Syria is not mentioned.
Neer goes on to explain that the UN had banned the use of Napalm against “concentrations of civilians” under Protocol III of the 1980 UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. The US signed the protocol almost thirty years after it had been adopted by the General Assembly, on January 21 2009. It was President Obama’s first full day in office. The caveat being “the US can disregard the treaty at its discretion if doing so would save civilian lives.” Considering just how many civilian lives had been destroyed by the US deployment of Napalm, it is hard to imagine a scenario where Napalm might be beneficial to civilians… but the inference is “we should trust the US to make that decision on our behalf and on behalf of the civilians in any given situation.”
The Syrian Napalm Narrative
The ‘Chemical Weapon’ narrative has sustained the conflict in Syria with alleged attacks being attributed almost entirely to the Syrian government, the Syrian Arab Army and Russia. The seven year information war has been ferocious with NATO-aligned media, think tanks and self appointed experts such as Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat doing all in their power to reinforce the “Syria did it” narrative.
If we were to map the chemical weapon claims in each terrorist held area undergoing liberation by the Syrian Arab Army, we would clearly see that the claims are commensurate with the pressure felt by the terrorist factions as the SAA closes in on their stronghold. … continue
April 8, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Fake News, War Crimes | Harvard University, Syria, United States |
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Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has asked Israeli Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit to investigate rights group B’Tselem for asking Israeli soldiers not to kill Gaza protesters.
In a tweet, Liberman urged the state to “probe the heads of B’Tselem for incitement to disobedience after their call for soldiers to refuse orders in defending the border.”
“This subversive and impermanent organisation, together with those who hate Israel and the international media who are trying to delegitimize our soldiers who are acting in a legal and moral manner in a complicated situation,” he says. “We will put an end to this.”
B’Tselem hit back at Lieberman, stressing that live fire to disperse demonstrators is illegal under Israeli law.
In a statement, the human rights group said that the order violates Section 110 of Israel’s penal code, and Lieberman’s efforts to have the group investigated are without merit.
“The defense minister is the one inciting to break the law, and it’s good that the attorney general will now have the opportunity to officially determine this,” B’Tselem says, according to Days of Palestine.
(Al Ray archive image)
April 8, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Turkey which has deployed troops to northern Syria says if France steps up its military presence in the Arab country, it will amount to an “invasion.”
“If France takes any steps regarding its military presence in northern Syria, this would be an illegitimate step that would go against international law and in fact, it would be an invasion,” Turkish Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli said Saturday.
Turkey sent troops to the northern Syrian region of Afrin on January 20 to force out Kurdish militants, known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which it suspects of having ties with anti-Ankara separatists.
France, which has criticized Ankara over the offensive, operates in Syria as part of the so-called US coalition.
French President Emmanuel Macron hosted a delegation of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which has the YPG as its backbone, at the Elysee Palace on March 29.
On Saturday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan railed against Paris. “France, you are abetting terrorism, supporting it by then hosting them at the Elysee Palace,” he said.
“Especially, if they intend to support terror group elements or give direct or indirect protection with armed forces, this would be a really calamitous step,” Canikli said during a visit to the northeastern province of Giresun.
After the Paris meeting, Kurdish officials said France was planning to send new troops to the city of Manbij, also in northern Syria.
Paris has also threatened to attack Syria if it was established that Damascus had deployed chemical weapons in its military operation, an accusation strongly rejected by the Syrian government.
Turkey, which has pushed the YPG out of Afrin, has also threatened to extend its operation to Manbij, which hosts American forces.
Ankara has further locked horns with Washington on several occasions over the latter’s providing arms, training, and logistical support to the Kurds.
April 8, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | France, Syria, Turkey |
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Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Sunday that there were “no innocent people” in the besieged Gaza Strip after days of protests and clashes left 30 Palestinians martyred, including a journalist.
“There are no innocent people in the Gaza Strip,” Lieberman told Israel’s public radio.
“Everyone’s connected to Hamas, everyone gets a salary from Hamas, and all the activists trying to challenge us and breach the border are Hamas military wing activists.”
Referring to the journalist Yasser Murtaja, who was martyred during Friday protest, Lieberman claimed: “We know that in many instances Hamas has used journalists and the media and the Red Crescent and ambulances to carry out terror activities.”
“Whoever flies a drone over [Israeli] forces, over our soldiers – we won’t take any chances,” Lieberman said, alleging that Murtaja was using a drone for photos and videos when he was targeted by occupation forces on Gaza border.
Two journalists who were accompanying Murtaja stressed that the 30-year-old journalist was not using a drone during Friday protest.
“He was using a normal video camera all day,” Ashraf Abu Amra, one of the two journalists said.
April 8, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Introduction
As of April 7, nearly three thousand unarmed Christian, Muslim and secular Palestinians have been wounded, over three dozen are in critical condition and at least twenty-five unarmed protestors, including children have been assassinated by hundreds of Israeli snipers and heavily armed troops shooting tank shells into crowds of civilians protesting their decades of incarceration by the racist Israeli state.
The Israeli government praised the ‘restraint and morality’ of the IDF, as did the fifty-two Major Jewish American Organizations (MJAO) who largely control the US Congress. These grotesque massacres began during the Christian Holy Week on Good Friday and Easter, coinciding with the Jewish Passover. The self-righteous officials of the MJAO and their relatives and friends broke matzos at joyful Seders as the blood of Palestinians soaked into ground at the fence containing the largest open-air prison camp in history, Gaza.
While tribal loyalties bonded the Israeli and Jewish American leaders, the politicians of the Western oligarchic electoral regimes refrained from criticizing the shocking display of brute force and even defended Israel’s cold blood mass killings of Palestinian civilians in their Gaza prison.
This paper will discuss and analyze the reasons for Israel’s willing Western accomplices and the centrality of its fifth column in the United States.
Israel’s Willing Accomplices
Because of the US veto power, the United Nations Security Council refused to condemn or even discuss Israel’s wanton slaughter in Gaza. The Secretary General of the UN meekly mentioned ‘violence’ and the need for an ‘investigation’ into the killings. The United States Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, prevented any investigation into the ongoing Israeli war crimes. She characterized Israel’s mass murder of unarmed Palestinians as ‘defensive action against terrorists’.
Both major US political parties defended Israel’s crimes against humanity and threatened critics, labeling them as ‘hypocrites’, while deflecting attention away from the state slaughter of Palestinian civilians, pointing to the behavior of the Arab countries.
With the notable exception of Bernie Sanders, both legislative houses and the executive branch expressed unconditional support for Israel’s ongoing slaughter.
The mass media, including all the major television, newspaper and radio outlets echoed the vituperative speeches of Israel’s Ziofascist leaders.
All the major political lobbies in Washington followed the leading arm of the US-Israel lobby, the ‘52 MJAO’.
The key question is what explains the power of Israel to continuously commit crimes against humanity with impunity?
Clearly Israel, by itself, lacks the economic, political and media power to influence international organizations. Nor does Israel exercise sufficient ‘soft power’ or cultural influence to neutralize the tens of millions of critics around the world with any persuasive arguments . . . except in the United States.
Where does the power that protects Israel from any consequences for its brutal crimes reside?
The key to Israel’s impunity lies in a chain of command beginning with the local grass roots of hundreds of fanatical, unconditional Zionist-Israel First organizations in the US.
Every major and minor US city has local Zionist-councils who use their influence to intimidate local professional, business, political and media groups into ensuring that critics are censored and Israel’s war crimes are covered up. The tactics range from ‘friendly’ influence within local civic organizations to outright threats, bullying and slander.
Local Zionist organizations are linked to state-wide and national political and economic confederations that influence the nomination and financing of all candidates, the elected officials and the composition of editorial boards of the major media outlets.
Equally important, Zionist activists pressure and recruit leaders of civil society groups through guided propaganda tours to Israel. They enforce obedience and submission to Zionist objectives by blacklisting critics, contacting their places of employment and demanding they be fired. They employ even more repressive tactics against perceived threats to Israel’s interests, including threatening phone calls and unwelcome ‘visits’. At the commanding heights of the Zionist pyramid, hundreds of billionaires and millionaires finance and influence the corporate mass media, the political parties and conservative and liberal religious and educational institutions and demand adherence to Israel’s agenda.
The Zionist power configuration (ZPC) parlays its influence far beyond its dues-paying members, who, in reality, comprises only a very tiny fraction of the US population.
Wider networks extend and magnify the Zionist presence, multiplying power centers up to the highest levels of public policy making. The ideological influence of the Israel Fifth Column is concentrated on a single issue: Defending Israel and its crimes against humanity. They succeed because of their enormous impact on the US role in world politics, including Washington’s trade and military policy in strategic regions, especially in the Middle East.
The members of Israel’s Fifth Column may be liberal or conservative on a broad spectrum of domestic socio-cultural issues, (gay rights, immigration reform, racial and cultural identity, feminism, the environment, etc . . . ) while, at the same time, they provide unconditional support for Israel’s oppression, imprisonment, expulsion and massacre of tens of thousands of Palestinians.
In fact, the Fifth Column’s primary commitment to Israel has guaranteed that the US would wage a sequence of catastrophic wars against Israel’s regional rivals and targeted adversaries – Iraq, Libya and Syria – even at enormous cost in US lives and wasting multi-trillions of dollars of US taxpayers funds. This Zionist-promoted drain on the US treasury to finance disastrous wars has completely undermined any policies to address the domestic needs of US working people (which the progressive Zionists have loudly claimed to support!) The consequences have been tragic to the people of the Middle East and to the increasingly impoverished and desperate American working poor and minorities.
Israel’s power to freely murder unarmed civilians in Gaza is derived from the Fifth Column’s influence in the US. Without it Israel would have no power to block the UN from imposing sanctions, or the International Court of Justice from convening a tribunal for war crimes. Israel would not have nuclear weapons or advanced missiles to threaten its neighbors and destabilize the hundreds of millions of civilians who live in the greater Middle East, were it not for the its US-based Zionist power configuration. The nation of Israel would be ‘confined’ within internationally agreed borders and it would be forced to reverse its policy of ethnic cleansing. Israel would have to become a diverse – society based on laws, instead of a lawless, apartheid ethno-fascist police state dedicated to oppressing half of the people within its declared and occupied territories.
The key to Israel’s power is found in its leaders’ command structure, which dictates policy to its tribal diaspora. Their overseas accomplices command the regional, state and local organizations to relay “the message” and apply various means to enforce it. Dissent by Jews and non-Jews is swiftly and viciously punished, adherence to Zionist dictates is rewarded.
Opponents are ostracized, blacklisted and slandered – without recourse.
Ideological conformity or submission to the Zionist agenda ensures employment, promotions and political and judicial appointments. No Jewish critics of Zionism, no matter how prestigious, have ever received senior political or economic appointments. Even academic careers are systematically derailed. This is well understood by everyone in the US, especially by upwardly mobile ‘silenced critics’.
The so-called ‘uniformity’ of the Zionist-Jewish community is maintained by the stick and carrot. The leading stockbrokers, bankers, casino and media moguls know they can hold liberal or conservative opinions on US domestic issues but must support or remain silent on Israel’s war crimes or else . . . suffer reprisals.
Even critics are careful to temper their dissent by blaming ‘both sides’: They equate the 25 murdered civilians in Gaza with the IDF snipers who complain of fatigue from repeatedly pulling the trigger.
Conclusion
Defending Palestinian rights and finally stopping the massacre(s) in Gaza requires taking on the Israel-Zionist chain of command in the United States. First and foremost, it requires opposing Israel’s corrupt and spineless apologists in the US Congress, who have consistently supported the policies of Israel, taken Israeli-Zionist money, submitted to Zionist blackmail and sent thousands of American troops to their deaths to support Israel’s interests in the Middle East. It requires taking on the local Zionist boosters, including the thugs and blackmailers, as well as the local ‘respectable’ elite.
The prestigious Israel First crowd at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and other elite Ivy League universities just celebrated Passover. Meanwhile, the thuggish enforcer of Zionist expansion, a former nightclub bouncer, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman praised the IDF snipers who murdered Gazan school kids, saying they “deserved commendation” (FT, 4/2/18 p. 3).
Not a single US Congressperson raised a critical voice against the grotesque brutality of Lieberman fearing the Fifty-Two Presidents of the Major Jewish American Organizations. The 52 respectable presidents endorsed the wounding of nearly three thousand unarmed Palestinian civilian protesters, who never even crossed from their horrific mass prison into the Zionist state of Israel.
To support a meaningful protest one must shame and name the Zionist 5th column close at hand, because they are politically responsible for making sure that US political leaders submit to Israel’s agenda and guarantee total impunity and indeed praise for all the brutal ‘Liebermans’.
Zionist tribal organizations and leaders, their networks and organizers who ‘commend’ the IDF killers need to be named, exposed and confronted.
The US enablers, who protect, promote and defend Israeli war criminals are Zionist psychologists, lawyers, journalists and experts who can talk at great lengths about ‘Jewish ethics’ but who have never shown a shred of decent human compassion and solidarity for the victims in Gaza.
The issue of Zionist crimes resonates across the social spectrum.
Prominent progressive working-class leaders, like Jeremy Corbyn, the head of the British Labor Party, are routinely slandered as anti-Semites for speaking publicly about Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. Leading Zionist spokespeople have launched a vindictive media campaign to destroy Corbyn and prevent a courageous politician from leading tens of millions of British workers in their struggle for social justice.
In the United States, Zionists organize to slander any and all popular leaders engaged in the struggle for social justice, labor and minority rights if they dare to speak against Israel’s injustice against their counterparts – workers and oppressed minorities in Palestine.
The struggle for Palestinian self-determination has a profound significance for the United States as its youth and minorities confront increasing desperation and injustice in their communities. American youth and minorities see their own struggles for justice against an increasingly oligarchic police state mirrored in the protests of Palestinian youth. Their defense of free speech (including the freedom to criticize and confront Israel’s war crimes), freedom of assembly (including the freedom to organize boycotts of Israeli products) and self-determination, mean that American working class youth must confront the oligarchy run by and for the plutocrats at home and in Israel.
April 8, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Gaza, Human rights, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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GAZA – Head of Hamas’s Political Bureau Ismail Haneyya on Saturday said that the Palestinian people are capable of challenging the Israeli occupation even under the most difficult circumstances.
Speaking at the funeral of the Palestinian photojournalist Yaser Murtaja in Gaza, Haneyya said that the Great March of Return represents a battle of awareness to emphasize on national constants, most importantly the right of return.
Haneyya praised the courage of journalist Murtaja who sacrificed his life for the sake of conveying truth to the world.
Murtaja died earlier Saturday after he succumbed to a serious injury he sustained after being deliberately shot in the abdomen by an Israeli sniper while covering peaceful protests near the border fence east of Khuza’a town in the southern Gaza Strip.
Hundreds of Palestinian citizens and dozens of journalists took part in Murtaja’s funeral chanting slogans calling for prosecuting Israel’s leaders over their crimes against the Palestinian people.
April 7, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | Hamas, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Thousands of Google staff have been speaking out against the company’s work for “Project Maven,” according to a New York Times report this week. The program is a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) initiative to deploy machine learning for military purposes. There was a small amount of public reporting last month that Google had become a contractor for that project, but those stories had not captured how extensive Google’s involvement was, nor how controversial it has become within the company.
Outcry from Google’s own staff is reportedly ongoing, and the letter signed by employees asks Google to commit publicly to not assisting with warfare technology. We are sure this is a difficult decision for Google’s leadership; we hope they weigh it carefully.
This post outlines some of the questions that people inside and outside of the company should be mulling about whether it’s a good idea for companies with deep machine learning expertise to be assisting with military deployments of artificial intelligence (AI).
What we don’t know about Google’s work on Project Maven
According to Google’s statement last month, the company provided “open source TensorFlow APIs” to the DoD. But it appears that this controversy was not just about the company giving the DoD a regular Google cloud account on which to train TensorFlow models. A letter signed by Google employees implies that the company also provided access to its state-of-the-art machine learning expertise, as well as engineering staff to assist or work directly on the DoD’s efforts. The company has said that it is doing object recognition “for non-offensive uses only,” though reading some of the published documents and discussions about the project suggest that the situation is murkier. The New York Times says that “the Pentagon’s video analysis is routinely used in counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations, and Defense Department publications make clear that the project supports those operations.”
If our reading of the public record is correct, systems that Google is supporting or building would flag people or objects seen by drones for human review, and in some cases this would lead to subsequent missile strikes on those people or objects. Those are hefty ethical stakes, even with humans in the loop further along the “kill chain”.
We’re glad that Google is now debating the project internally. While there aren’t enough published details for us to comment definitively, we share many of the concerns we’ve heard from colleagues within Google, and we have a few suggestions for any AI company that’s considering becoming a defense contractor.
What should AI companies ask themselves before accepting military contracts?
We’ll start with the obvious: it’s incredibly risky to be using AI systems in military situations where even seemingly small problems can result in fatalities, in the escalation of conflicts, or in wider instability. AI systems can often be difficult to control and may fail in surprising ways. In military situations, failure of AI could be grave, subtle, and hard to address. The boundaries of what is and isn’t dangerous can be difficult to see. More importantly, society has not yet agreed upon necessary rules and standards for transparency, risk, and accountability for non-military uses of AI, much less for military uses.
Companies, and the individuals who work inside them, should be extremely cautious about working with any military agency where the application involves potential harm to humans or could contribute to arms races or geopolitical instability. Those risks are substantial and difficult to predict, let alone mitigate.
If a company nevertheless is determined to use its AI expertise to aid some nation’s military, it must start by recognizing that there are no settled public standards for safety and ethics in this sector yet. It cannot just assume that the contracting military agency has fully assessed the risks or that it doesn’t have a responsibility to do so independently.
At a minimum, any company, or any worker, considering whether to work with the military on a project with potentially dangerous or risky AI applications should be asking:
- Is it possible to create strong and binding international institutions or agreements that define acceptable military uses and limitations in the use of AI? While this is not an easy task, the current lack of such structures is troubling. There are serious and potentially destabilizing impacts from deploying AI in any military setting not clearly governed by settled rules of war. The use of AI in potential target identification processes is one clear category of uses that must be governed by law.
- Is there a robust process for studying and mitigating the safety and geopolitical stability problems that could result from the deployment of military AI? Does this process apply before work commences, along the development pathway and after deployment? Could it incorporate the sufficient expertise to address subtle and complex technical problems? And would those leading the process have sufficient independence and authority to ensure that it can check companies’ and military agencies’ decisions?
- Are the contracting agencies willing to commit to not using AI for autonomous offensive weapons? Or to ensuring that any defensive autonomous systems are carefully engineered to avoid risks of accidental harm or conflict escalation? Are present testing and formal verification methods adequate for that task?
- Can there be transparent, accountable oversight from an independently constituted ethics board or similar entity with both the power to veto aspects of the program and the power to bring public transparency to issues where necessary or appropriate? For example, while Alphabet’s AI-focused subsidiary DeepMind has committed to independent ethics review, we are not aware of similar commitments from Google itself. Given this letter, we are concerned that the internal transparency, review, and discussion of Project Maven inside Google was inadequate. Any project review process must be transparent, informed, and independent. While it remains difficult to ensure that that is the case, without such independent oversight, a project runs real risk of harm.
These are just starting points. Other specific questions will surely need answering, both for future proposals and even this one, since many details of the Project Maven collaboration are not public. Nevertheless, even with the limited information available, EFF is deeply worried that Google’s collaboration with the Department of Defense does not have these kinds of safeguards. It certainly does not have them in a public, transparent, or accountable way.
The use of AI in weapons systems is a crucially important topic and one that deserves an international public discussion and likely some international agreements to ensure global safety. Companies like Google, as well as their counterparts around the world, must consider the consequences and demand real accountability and standards of behavior from the military agencies that seek their expertise—and from themselves.
April 6, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Google, United States |
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Thousands of Google employees, including dozens of senior engineers, have signed a letter protesting the company’s involvement in a US military drone project, which has stirred concern among experts who think such cooperation is not ethical.
The Pentagon program is testing the internet giant’s artificial intelligence (AI) system to analyze vast amounts of footage captured by the US military’s unmanned surveillance planes around the world and to establish targets for drone strikes.
More 3,100 staff are thought to have signed a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, demanding that the company pulls out of pilot experiment, called Project Maven.
The program intends to help the Pentagon conduct more precise attacks by drones against targets in other countries, including Syria and Iraq.
“We believe that Google should not be in the business of war,” says the letter. It asks that Google announce a policy that it will not “ever build warfare technology.”
This plan will irreparably damage Google’s brand and its ability to compete for talent,” the letter says. “Amid growing fears of biased and weaponized AI, Google is already struggling to keep the public’s trust.”
Project Maven is one of the many US drone projects aimed at automatically and quickly singling out points of interest so that analysts can work more efficiently in pinpointing new targets.
Google has described its work on Project Maven as “non-offensive” in nature, though the Pentagon’s video analysis is routinely used in counterterrorism operations.
But that explanation has not convinced those Google employees who think their work is being used for attacks that have on many occasions led to civilian deaths.
Through the formation of the Defense Innovation Board in 2016, Silicon Valley has advised American military officials to adopt breakthrough technology developed by technology pioneers such as Microsoft and Amazon.
Google is widely expected to compete with other technology giants for a multiyear, multibillion-dollar contract to provide cloud services to the US Defense Department.
“The argument that other firms, like Microsoft and Amazon, are also participating doesn’t make this any less risky for Google,” the letter says. “Google’s unique history, its motto Don’t Be Evil, and its direct reach into the lives of billions of users set it apart.”
There has been a sharp rise in the number of US drone strikes since US President Donald Trump took office, according to a report published in December by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. … Full article
April 6, 2018
Posted by aletho |
War Crimes | Human rights, United States |
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British military intervention in Russia in 1918-1919 was unlawful and indefensible, British government papers held by the National Archives reveal. It turned Russian public attitudes towards Britain from friendly to hostile.
In March 1918 the Bolshevik government signed a peace treaty with Germany, as they had promised to the nation exhausted by four years of the devastating and senseless WWI. The Russian Revolution was triggered by the overwhelming public desire for peace. The war-weary Russian army simply could not carry on fighting. Britain and France immediately accused Russia of betraying the Allied cause and sent in their troops. In a show of “solidarity” reminiscent of today, a dozen Anglo-French allies took part in the armed intervention in Russia. The official excuse was to keep the Eastern front against Germany and protect the Russian war materiel from falling into German hands.
The map of foreign military intervention in Russia in 1918-1919.
In reality, the British, the French, the Americans, the Japanese and many others fought the locals, engaging in “frolics” and “high handed behaviour,” according to British government papers.
The legality of their action under international law was not considered until 1972 when the British government, locked in a dispute with Moscow over mutual debts, sought advice from a Foreign Office legal counselor, Eileen Denza. The advice was damning of London’s actions and was kept under wraps for a long time.
“In my own view there is no legal justification for any of the major incidents of intervention by British forces,” Ms. Denza wrote in her paper. “Nor have I formed an impression from … research from such original sources as Foreign Office archives and Cabinet documents that any consideration whatsoever was given at the time to the legal aspects of the matter by those in London, or by the army commanders while they were actually in Russia.”
© Photo: Crown copyright National Archives, UK
FCO Legal Councellor paper on legality of British intervention in Russia
Ms. Denza had explored possible avenues for defending the British intervention but failed to find any convincing arguments.
Argument 1. Certain incidents of intervention took place at the invitation of a Russian government which Britain then recognized as a de facto government.
This, Ms. Denza said, would cover the intervention in Estonia [which Britain helped break away from Russia — NG] but not any of the other occasions on which British troops landed in Russia. Britain did recognize the Russian Provisional government after the overthrow of the Tsar in March 1917, but after it was overthrown by the Bolsheviks in November Britain gave no indication that she continued to recognize it. Indeed, when its premier Kerensky visited Britain later he was treated as a refugee, and not as a prime minister of a government in exile or of a government which London continued to recognize de jure.
“We did business with the Bolsheviks,” Ms. Denza reminded the British government. “We kept consular relations until well after intervention had begun, and the Prime Minister’s envoy, Bruce Lockhart, was … accorded diplomatic privileges and immunities [which he abused — NG]”.
Initially Lockhart devoted a great deal of effort to securing a Bolshevik invitation to the Allies to intervene, but when he failed in this he advised the British government to intervene anyway. He started plotting for the overthrow of the Bolsheviks, and channeled his energy into persuading the reluctant US President Woodrow Wilson to support the British and Japanese intervention in the North and Far East of Russia.
Argument 2. The intervention was intended to protect British lives and property.
There was no British community in Russia to speak of.
“The question of defence of British property was never raised or put forward at any stage,” wrote the FCO legal counselor, “and it had always been clearly understood that it was intervention which led the Bolsheviks (who began by being friendly to Britain) to take much more extremist measures against property generally and to adopt the position that no compensation would ever be paid to the Allies in respect of their expropriated property, since it was the necessity caused by external pressures and Allied intervention which had made it necessary to seize foreign property on such a scale.”
Argument 3. The intervention was justifiable as an act of military necessity, or self-defense, in order to protect the Allied military position in the east after Russia’s withdrawal from the war following the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed with Germany in March 1918.
Britain at the time made a great deal in public that the motive for intervention was related entirely to the conduct of the war, and that there was no intention to intervene in the domestic affairs of Russia. However, once they arrived in Russia, the British and other Allied forces “did not limit their actions to cutting off supplies to the Germans,” wrote Ms. Denza. “They did not confine themselves to supporting factions which had clearly stated that once in power they would bring Russia back into the war.”
“In the main the commanders in the field seem to have gone off on frolics of their own with very little clear political coordination.” [Those “frolics” included bayoneting the locals to death, and forcing captured Russian gunners to turn their cannons on their compatriots, according to British commanders’ combat logs held by the National Archives — NG]
© Photo: Crown copyright National Archives UK
Excerpt from a British Dvina (North Russia) Force battle instructions issued on 5 August 1919
When large-scale intervention began in the summer of 1918 Britain withdrew its embryonic diplomatic and consular mission from Russia [thereby implying it was an invasion rather than intervention — NG].
Most important of all, Ms. Denza wrote, the intervention did not cease with the surrender of Germany in November 1918. Indeed the military justification for intervention, which could have existed during the many months when plans for intervention were being made and discussed “virtually ceased to exist very soon after our troops first went in [Russia — NG] in substantial numbers [shortly before Armistice — NG].”
Overall, the FCO legal counselor said, the British and Allied intervention in Russia painted “such a damning picture.”
“The immediate effect of the intervention was to prolong a bloody civil war,” wrote American historian James W Loewen, “thereby costing thousands of additional lives and wreaking enormous destruction on an already battered society.”
During the Anglo-Soviet debt negotiations in 1972-1973 this destruction was estimated to be between two and four billion pounds.
British government papers of the time record a flurry of Whitehall discussions on how to avoid admitting any liability for the damages caused by the unlawful intervention. As one note put it:
“I think it inevitable the Russians will raise the intervention claim in reaction to whatever HMG decides to do” [e.g., expropriate Russian gold held by Britain in payment for Russian debt — NG].
In this eventuality our aims should be:
(a) To avoid admitting the unlawfulness of the intervention (this would be unacceptable)
(b) To avoid discussing the lawfulness and morality of our part in the intervention (Mrs. Denza in her minute of 28 July has shown we could not win on this score); and hence
(c) To minimize unfavourable press coverage.
© Photo: Crown copyright National Archives UK
FCO claims department note on avoiding liability for military intervention in Russia
Whatever the press coverage, the intervention did create very unfavorable attitudes towards Britain in Soviet Russia.
In 1921 a British Parliamentary Committee produced a report which included the following perceptive passage:
“There is evidence to show that, up to the time of military intervention the majority of the Russian intellectuals were well disposed towards the Allies, and more especially to Great Britain, but that later the attitude of the Russian people towards the Allies became characterised by indifference, distrust and antipathy.” [Report (Political and Economic) of the Committee to Collect Information on Russia; (Russia (No.1), 1921, Cmd. 1240]
American Historian William Henry Chamberlin, who was the Moscow correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor in the 1920-30s, wrote that the consequences of the intervention “were to poison East-West relations forever after, to contribute significantly to the origins of World War II and the later Cold War, and to fix patterns of suspicion and hatred on both sides which even today threaten worse catastrophes in time to come.”
God forbid his prophecy comes true…
April 5, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Russia, UK |
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During peaceful protests on March 30 in eastern Gaza, an unarmed Palestinian man walked on farmland towards the fence built by his occupiers. Within minutes, he was shot by one of the 100 Israeli special forces snipers deployed along the fence precisely to quash dissent—by any means necessary—under the old pretext of “self-defense.”
On the same day, a Palestinian woman, armed solely with a flag, walked towards the fence which has imprisoned her for so many years. She, too, was targeted by one of the snipers.
Among the 17 killed that day was a 16-year-old girl and a 27-year-old farmer, the latter killed by Israeli tank fire.
Even the BBC, which is not generally known to report fairly on Palestine, noted: “The first to die was Omar Samour, 27 – a Palestinian farmer killed in Israeli shelling as he worked his land near Khan Younis early on Friday, before the protests began.”
Yet, according to Israel, this farmer was a “terrorist infiltrator,” the lexicon which Israel uses to whitewash its extrajudicial assassinations.
Sputnik reports that the Israeli Army spokesperson proudly tweeted they knew “where every bullet landed,” but later deleted the tweet, likely because it was clear these bullets landed in the bodies of unarmed protesters.
In my three years living in Gaza, I frequently accompanied such demonstrations, and also did so in countless demonstrations when I stayed as an activist for eight months in the West Bank. Having experienced these first hand, I’m acutely aware that Israel has zero moral authority on conduct.
In the tens of demonstrations in the West Bank and Gaza which I accompanied, “violence” always began with the Israelis shooting live ammunition, lead bullets covered with a thin rubber layer, and suffocating tear gas at unarmed Palestinians. That Palestinian youths chose to respond with slingshot-spun rocks is entirely within their rights. But in my experiences, it was always Israel which began, shooting to maim and kill, kidnapping and imprisoning unarmed protesters.
On Land Day in March 2010, I joined one of six demonstrations that were held in the Gaza Strip. It was in Khoza’a village, east of Khan Younis. The four young Palestinian men targeted by Israeli snipers all reported being shot with live ammunition without any prior warnings, including one man shot in his head.
And as with the March 2018 Land Day demonstrations, Israel deemed the 2010 assault acceptable: “an investigation showed ‘soldiers operated in accordance with accepted dispersal procedures,’ in regards to the IDF violence against unarmed protestors.”
The “accepted dispersal procedures” of Israel occur on a daily basis throughout occupied Palestine, whether against unarmed protesters in Bil’in village near Ramallah, or against unarmed farmers—from children to elderly—in Gaza.
These procedures include firing on Palestinian civilians from remotely-controlled Israeli gun towers stationed along the fence enclosing Gaza. Israel also targets other civilians working in border regions, including children and youths collecting rubble and scrap metal for use in construction.
Western media is reporting that the 2018 attacks on Palestinian protesters was the single bloodiest day in Gaza since the 2014 “clashes.” The lexicon of “clashes” – used to refer to Israel’s brutal summer 2014 bombardment of Gaza, and also the recent Israeli assassinations of civilians in protests – is corporate media’s typical distortion of reality and of the balance of power. When unarmed protesters calling for human rights are literally gunned down, these are not “clashes,” these are assassinations.
Further, this negates the near-daily Israeli targeting of Palestinian farmers, fishers, and people working in the border regions. This including sniping at and shelling women, elderly, and children.
In the farmer accompaniment work I did in Gaza, many Israeli soldiers fired live ammunition at and around myself and other volunteers, at close proximity, in an effort to aggress and frighten farmers off of their land. Israel’s policy of attacking Palestinian farmers and fishers is a part of their larger policy of rendering Palestinians utterly dependent on inadequate food aid and utterly, needlessly, impoverished.
In 2011, I wrote about the Israeli destruction of Palestinian agriculture in Gaza, noting:
“Around a decade ago, Palestinian farmers could still access land up to 50 metres from the border. The Israeli-deemed ‘no-go zone’ expanded over the years to 150 metres, then 300 metres, cutting Palestinian farmers from their orchards, crops and grazing land.
“A decade later, those orchards bulldozed by Israeli bulldozers, farmers now struggle to access land in some areas up to two kilometres along the 300 metre buffer zone violently rendered off-limits by the Israeli soldiers.
“Over 30 percent of Gaza’s agricultural land is not worked on because of the buffer zone. This is Gaza’s more fertile land, where olive, fruit, citrus and nut trees once flourished, along with wheat, barley, rye and other crops, providing much of Gaza’s needs.”
Two brutal Israeli bombardments of Gaza later, the percentage of workable agricultural land will have decreased still further.
Turkey and Israel compete for moral supremacy
Following Israel’s attacks on Palestinian protesters, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan bashed Israel, stating:
“I do not need to tell the world how cruel the Israeli Army is. We can see what this terror state is doing by looking at the situation in Gaza and Jerusalem. Israel has carried out a massacre in Gaza and Netanyahu is a terrorist.”
While I happen to agree with this statement, it is particularly ironic that it comes from the leader of a state that is warring on Syria, has given safe passage, and weapons, to terrorists to enter Syria, and has in recent months killed hundreds of civilians in northwestern Syria.
Since late January, Turkey has been bombing Afrin, northwestern Syria. The latest casualty count I have found was 222 civilians murdered and 700 injured as of March 10, 2018. A later report states, “more than 1000 civilians martyred and injured,” thousands displaced, by the Turkish bombings.
Then, of course, there is Israel’s direct support to terrorists in Syria, including treating terrorists from the FSA to Al-Qaeda in Israeli hospitals.
Thus, both Israel and Turkey have civilians’ blood on their hands, and neither has been held accountable.
No justice has ever come to those civilians maimed, murdered, imprisoned by Israel. Nor has any international body truly pushed for justice. Weak words, quickly forgotten, are not the pursuit of justice and accountability of the perpetrators of crimes.
Predictably weak UN reaction
Following Israel’s assassination of Palestinian protesters, the United Nations issued weak statements of concern, but no actual condemnation of Israel’s brutality.
Absent the outrage which UN bodies and representatives reserve almost exclusively for war propaganda and whitewashing terrorists in Syria, UN Secretary-General António Guterres blandly offered his “thoughts” to the families of those murdered by Israel. He called for “an independent and transparent investigation into these incidents.” Just who would do such an investigation? Israel? The UN?
Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, known for his rabid anti-Palestinian statements, vetoed the call, stating, “There will be no commission of inquiry. We shall not cooperate with any commission of inquiry.”
The UN assistant secretary-general, Tayé-Brook Zerihoun, described the day of slaughter as having “devolved into violence at several locations across Gaza.” Seventeen unarmed Palestinians murdered by elite Israeli snipers is not “devolving into violence,” it is slaughter. Premeditated slaughter, at that.
We can expect precisely zero action or justice via the UN, when such a massacre is downplayed, and when prior Israeli massacres of Palestinians have never been held accountable by the UN or by the state which the UN routinely requests look into its own murdering.
At that same UNSC meeting, America’s UN delegate, Walter Miller, had the gall to put the blame on Palestinians. Miller described Palestinian civilians as: “Bad actors who use protests as a cover to incite violence [and] endanger innocent lives.”
America is fine with “rebels” like Al-Qaeda “protesting” in Syria, but when genuinely unarmed protesters in Palestine exercise their right under international law to protest the occupiers who violently expelled them from their homes and land, they are “inciting violence.” The hypocrisy of America and the UN never ends, and as a result, the violence of Israel will never end.
While Turkey cries crocodile tears for Palestinians, Israel pretends to be the most moral army in the world, and the UN turns endless blind eyes to Israel’s war crimes and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and Palestinians continue to bravely protest the crimes of Israel.
As Gareth Porter tweeted, “many 1000s of Gazans are ready to die as martyrs rather than submit to Israel’s policy of slow death; Israeli snipers will continue 2 kill Palestinian demonstrators in cold blood; US gov’t & news media have given Israel a green light.”
Indeed, the UN, corporate media and world leadership may, and do, ignore or vilify them, but Palestinians keep standing up to the most immoral military and government in the region.
Eva Bartlett is a freelance journalist and rights activist with extensive experience in the Gaza Strip and Syria. Her writings can be found on her blog, In Gaza.
April 4, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Gaza, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United Nations, Zionism |
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The Porton Down lab at the center of the Skripal poisoning case has a dark history of secret government-run human testing. The human trials were conducted as part of the UK’s war preparation against the Soviet Union.
The military laboratory at Porton Down was the hub of Britain’s biological weapons trials between 1939 and 1989. Ministry of Defence scientists conducted chemical experiments on at least 20,000 military personnel and more than 100 secret germ warfare tests on members of the public in preparation for a feared chemical attack from the Soviet Union.
This year, the lab was thrust back into the headlines when it was given the responsibility of determining the substance used to poison Sergei and Yulia Skripal. The lab’s chief executive has since confirmed the team are unable to identify the “precise source” of the nerve agent, and the Foreign Office has denied claiming it was from Russia – despite Boris Johnson’s assertions on just that point.
The government-run experiments on military personal seriously breached ethical standards, according to an official report released in 2006. It followed years of complaints from veterans claiming to have suffered lasting damage to their health as a result of the trials.
During the experiments Porton scientists dripped liquid nerve gas on the bare arms of 440 men and at one point tested nerve gas on eight men without the trial participants knowing what it really was. Six men were exposed to mustard gas for five consecutive days – three of whom suffered burns to their scrotums. Around 450 men had their eyes exposed to sarin nerve gas.
A 60-page government report released in 2002 detailed tests which exposed millions of people to harmful substances. The tests consisted of releasing potentially dangerous chemicals and microorganisms over vast areas of Britain – unbeknownst to the population below.
It also revealed that military personnel were instructed to tell any “inquisitive inquirer” that the trials were part of a research project into weather and air pollution.
Designed to test Britain’s vulnerability if deadly clouds were released over the country, in most cases trials used alternatives to biological weapons such as serratia marcescens bacteria or zinc cadmium sulphide, which was dropped on the public in huge amounts to mimic germ warfare.
The government insisted the chemical involved was safe, however cadmium is recognised as a cause of lung cancer and was considered a chemical weapon during World War II. Families living in the tested areas who have children born with birth defects have demanded a public inquiry.
In another trial a military ship sprayed bacteria including e.coli and bacillus globigii, which mimics anthrax, over a five to 10-mile radius along the south coast of England between 1961 and 1968, exposing more than 1 million people to the micro-organisms. In trials designed to test the vulnerability of government buildings and public transport, bacteria were released on the London Underground, traveling about 10 miles.
The report also confirmed that during World War II Porton Down produced millions of cattle cakes spiked with anthrax which could be dropped into Germany to kill livestock on a mass scale.
Ulf Schmidt, Professor of Modern History at the University of Kent, estimated in his 2015 book ‘Secret Science,’ that up to 30,000 secret chemical warfare experiments were carried out during that time period at Porton Down. It has also been claimed in most cases the military men were not given enough information to properly give consent.
The 100-year-old lab has a reported annual budget of £500 million and employs 3,000 scientists. In 2008 the Ministry of Defence awarded £3 million in compensation to 360 tested veterans without admitting liability.
April 4, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Human rights, UK |
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Pro-Palestinian groups including the Boycott, Disinvestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement along with the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) have called on Netflix to discontinue the series ‘Fauda’ (Chaos in Arabic) for “sanitizing and normalizing war crimes” and “promoting and justifying these grave human rights violations.”
Originally produced by a network named, Yes, the series depicts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and justifies the crimes against humanity by the Israeli intelligence.
Calling the series, “racist propaganda material for the Israeli occupation army,” the BDS movement wrote a letter to Netflix, the United States-based entertainment company to remove the series.
The series produced by the two former Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) officers is scheduled to be broadcast in May, which also marks the 70th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe) of the Palestinian people.
“The two authors [of the series], who are graduates of one of these teams, without any ambiguity have collaborated with the occupation, colonization and the Apartheid regime,” the letter noted, referring to the series’ creators, Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff’s former service in elite IDF units.
The series has won over 11 awards at the Israeli Academy for Film and Television awards in March, after which it was picked up by Netflix.
Netflix needs to “stop broadcasting and not to produce the third season of the series and remove the previous seasons” as “the series promotes and legitimizes the war crimes committed by death squads disguised as people pretending to be Arabs,” the BDS movement said in a statement.
“Fauda promotes and legitimizes violent acts committed against Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory by Israeli army death squads — the so-called “Mistaravim.” The show’s writers, who were members in these units, have based the series on the war crimes committed by these squads against Palestinians,” PACBI said in a press release.
Adding that if Netflix fails to pay heed to the call of Palestinian social movements, it will face “nonviolent grassroots pressure and possible legal accountability.”
April 4, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | Israel, Netflix, Palestine, Zionism |
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