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Denials of Washington’s Links to Murder of Russian General Igor Kirillov Highly-Suspect

By Henry Kamens – New Eastern Outlook – December 31, 2024

The mysterious assassination of General Igor Kirillov raises suspicions of a covert connection between U.S. biolabs, Ukraine, and the broader geopolitical interests of the West, highlighting potential motives linked to sensitive military research.

Maria Zakharova, speaking for Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, confidently dismissed U.S. State Department claims of no involvement in the killing of Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, Russia’s chief of Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Protection Troops. Zakharova had accused the U.S. of creating and funding the Kyiv regime, supplying it with weapons, and failing to condemn its terrorist acts. The suspicious timing of such assassinations can be compared to historic high-profile killings before major events, from WWI to operations in Afghanistan.

Such assassinations, often aimed at demoralizing Russia and targeting those Kyiv considers war criminals, which Ukraine defends as legitimate wartime tactics, raise many questions. Knowing Kirillov’s access to sensitive documents and possessing many of the same and similar materials, I can offer some insights into the “likely motives” behind him and his deputy being blown up in Moscow.

Peter Daszak, Spooky Guy with a Checkered Past

A very spooky guy with a Ukrainian father, Peter Daszak, is President of EcoHealth Alliance, a global nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting wildlife and public health from the emergence of disease. It should come as no surprise that this person is connected with BSL 3 labs Worldwide, Ukraine, Georgia and China.

This was also one of the main players at Lugar Lab, Tbilisi, Georgia too, at least when it comes to bat research and diseases transmitted between animals and humans (zoonosis). It is claimed Daszak is a fellow traveller with the Bat Lady from Wuhan, China. Coincidence or not, the British zoologist and president of EcoHealth Alliance Peter Daszak provides much revealing information in a video that was originally taken on Dec. 9, 2019, three weeks before the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission announced an outbreak of a new form of pneumonia.

EcoHealth Alliance presents itself as a nonprofit that protects the world from the emergence of new diseases and predicts pandemics. Since 2014, Daszak’s organization has received millions of dollars of funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), which it has funneled to carry-out research on bat coronaviruses.

There are other suspects to investigate: Daszak was named by the World Health Organization as the sole U.S.-based representative on a team sent to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, a team that also includes Marion Koopmans, Hung Nguyen, Fabian Leendertz, and Christian Drosten. This is more than coincidence, especially since many believe COVID is not naturally occurring, and if made in a lab, nature is not picking up where lab workers left off.

Too many ducks are lining up, COVID-19 pandemic. On February 9, 2020, Newt Gingrich invited Daszak as a special guest along with Anthony Fauci on Newt’s World to discuss the coronavirus and how it could potentially evolve into a global pandemic.

A lizard loving kid!

As one source describes, Dasak is not very honest, and the cover face, poster boy, for disguising military research and experiments. He started out in zoology, e.g., a lizard loving kid, who studied reptiles and then was able to help his wife get a job at the CDC in Atlanta, he tagged along unemployed with her and “suddenly” got a job coordinating virus research among seven (7) USAID and DoD universities.

Coincidence or not, Daszak described during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2011,

“Our research shows that new approaches to reducing emerging pandemic threats at the source would be more cost-effective than trying to mobilize a global response after a disease has emerged”.

As the NYT reported, in October 2019, when the federal government “quietly” cut off funding to the ten-year-old program called PREDICT, operated by United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s emerging threats division, much to the dismay of experts like Daszak, He was worried that shutting PREDICT down, could “leave the world more vulnerable to lethal pathogens like Ebola and MERS that emerge from [unexpected places], such as bat-filled trees, gorilla carcasses and camel barns.”

These disease sources can be considered as Red Herrings, and there is still great speculation that many of these Especially Dangerous Pathogens, EDPs, were manipulated in labs, and not only one country may be involved.

Daszak said, “PREDICT” a USAID project, was an approach to heading off pandemics, instead of sitting there waiting for them to emerge, and then mobilizing” in reaction.  But in reality it was to seek out potential bio weapons.

EcoHealth also claims that it looks at the nexus between emerging viruses and how they affect public health, and what is underlying that … and it is claimed that “almost” all emerging disease are linked to some underlying drivers, some cause that’s related to people: travel and trade and building roads into forests around the world,

We have this unprecedented population growth. We’re doing things on the planet that we never used to do. We’re building roads into the remotest forests and what we do is we come into contact with wildlife species and pick up those artists. What we do at EcoHealth is to look at the relationship between people and animal, and the environment, and how that [leads] to pandemics and [then] we try and do something about it.

Peter Daszak plays a central role in discussions about the origins of SARS-CoV-2. According to an expert collaborating with independent scientists investigating military labs, Daszak is widely viewed as a key figure of suspicion, allegedly disguising his self-interest as humanitarian work. Despite potential conflicts of interest due to his close ties with Wuhan and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Daszak headed up a WHO group in Wuhan and another group under the Lancet to investigate the virus’s origins.

General Igor Kirillov’s death is most likely connected to sensitive documents reportedly involving Ukraine, Georgia, and the Lugar Lab in Tbilisi. These documents, (still classified and under investigation, detail a joint Georgian-U.S. military research project on diseases potentially affecting Georgian and Ukrainian military recruits. The project, primarily funded by the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) in collaboration with the CDC and other institutions, outlines research objectives, budgets, and criteria for participant selection. Specific pathogens of interest, such as anthrax, are noted for their military relevance.

The WHO’s decision to appoint Daszak to monitor COVID-19 outbreaks in China has been criticized as politically motivated. Articles by Henry Kamens (NEO) and Jeffrey Silverman (Veterans Today ) support the allegation that that Kirillov’s death and the likelihood of U.S.-Ukrainian collusion in bio weapons research are not coincidental.

Silverman, whose work often focuses on Georgia’s unique geopolitical dynamics, has participated in RT documentaries on U.S. biolab activities and foreign policy. These documentaries have faced bans and restrictions on platforms like Facebook, reflecting their controversial nature, and bans for those who share the link with others.

The nexus between Daszak, the Lugar Lab, and broader U.S. geopolitical strategies are more than speculative. The closed-source verification and personally being involved with undisclosed documents, especially some of the actual documents which resonate within the context of broader Russian criticisms of Western intervention and bio­­-weaponization of animal diseases, (Zoonosis).

Peter Daszak a British zoologist and president of EcoHealth Alliance, which researches emerging diseases and zoonotic pathogens has too many links to controversial funding for bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, raising questions about his role in the origins of COVID-19 and the covert development of new bio weapons for offensive purposes, at various BSL3 labs as being funded and operated by the US government in blatant violation of the 1972 bio weapons treaty.

It is clear that what Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov had access to, as confirmed by others, and his knowledge and role in sharing of these documents may have been the main motivation for his murder.

Kirillov “most likely” had a treasure trove of either highly classified or sensitive information about the links of these labs to the acquisition, development, and potential use of weapons of mass destruction, including but not limited to highly resistant strains of anthrax.

December 31, 2024 Posted by | Deception, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel and the United States: Who Rules the Roost?

By Dr. M. Reza Behnam | Palestine Chronicle | December 8, 2024 

We had several other people in the country (USA), even among the Jews,the Zionists particularly, who were against anything that has to be done if they couldn’t have the whole of Palestine and everything handed to them on a silver plate so they wouldn’t have to do anything. It couldn’t be done. We had to take it in small doses. You can’t move 5 or 6 million people out of a country and fill it up with 5 or 6 million more and expect both sets of them to be pleased….don’t think that the decision to recognize Israel was an easy one. I had to make a compromise with the Arabs and divide Palestine.”

President Harry S. Truman, 1945-1953

The Palestinian catastrophe in the United States began with the 33rd president and has continued with the 47th.

And then there was one, or two—one country, two systems. The political, economic, military and intelligence “interests” of the United States and Israel have become intertwined and often indistinguishable since President Truman decided to officially recognize Israel in 1948.

President Joe Biden has repeatedly stated, “I am a Zionist.” With that avowal, he placed the government and the American people firmly in the Israeli camp, linking the United States to apartheid, genocide and crimes against humanity.

Fifty-seven years ago, the United States chose to inextricably link its interests with an apartheid entity. And since then, for Biden and many in Washington, Israel has become a religion. Very few American politicians, especially since the 1990s, have had the mettle to challenge Israel’s dominance over US policy in the Middle East.

Israel’s leaders are well-practiced in manipulation. They have a long history of insolence toward their number one patron. Americans and US policy in the Middle East have been seen as naive and easily exploited, said Uri Dromi, who served as spokesman for the regimes of Yitzhak Rabin (1974-77; 1992-95) and Shimon Peres (1984-86).

American presidents engage in public rebukes and short-term responses to Israel’s brutal actions, but rarely, if ever are there consequences. The following encounters are just a limited edition of instances when US politicians have buckled under Israeli pressure.

The interactions, for example, between President Ronald Reagan (1981-89) and Prime Minister Menachem Begin (former Irgun terrorist) were fraught. On June 7, 1981, Israel used US warplanes to destroy Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor without informing President Reagan.

Instead Begin called Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority, to inform him of the impending attack. Begin and his Likud Party had been cultivating ties to evangelical leaders like Falwell to build the alliance between US evangelical Christians and Israel. Today there are more than 30 million Christian Zionists in the United States.

As a US “ally,” Reagan expected Israel to consult when planning measures that would impact US strategic interests in the region. The administration temporarily suspended the delivery of additional F-16 jets and supported a UN Security Council resolution denouncing the attack on an International Atomic Energy Agency-approved nuclear reactor. Despite Begin’s rejection of US proposals and refusal to apologize, the White House lifted the suspension of the F-16s deliveries in August 1981.

Reagan faced another affront a few months later in December 1981, when again, without informing the president, Begin illegally annexed the captured Syrian Golan Heights. The slight came shortly after the two countries had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on strategic cooperation, written specifically so that Israel would no longer surprise the United States.

In response to the annexation, the United States suspended the MoU and imposed limited economic sanctions on Israel. Begin then accused the United States of anti-Semitism and “pointed out” that the United States had a strong Jewish community and millions of Christians supportive of Israel. The underlying message of electoral consequences was not lost on Reagan. Like measures taken after the Osirak attack, the penalties imposed on Israel were merely temporary window dressings.

George H.W. Bush, who succeeded Reagan in 1989, experienced his measure of clashes with then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir (former Zionist leader of the right-wing Stern Gang) and Benjamin Netanyahu, who was deputy foreign minister at the time.

The Bush administration was the last to “seriously” negotiate peace. Pro-Israel lobbies, both Jewish and Christian, in the United States did their best to sabotage the 1991 comprehensive peace conference in Madrid.

Bush’s secretary of state, James A. Baker, came under fire for negotiating directly and officially with Palestinians. He was also criticized for leveraging US aid to stop Israel’s expanding colonization of the occupied West Bank and for calling on Israel to lay aside its expansionist policies and unrealistic vision of a Greater Israel.

Frustrated by Israeli intransigence, Baker reportedly referred to Tel Aviv’s stalwart supporters in the US Congress as “the little Knesset.”

The Madrid Conference failed to produce results. Although Palestinians were essentially asked to negotiate with their Israeli occupiers, little was asked of Israel. To get Shamir to attend, the United States accepted Israel’s conditions that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) be excluded, that the Palestinian delegation be subject to Israeli approval, and that Palestinian independence and statehood not be addressed.

The famous confrontation in 1991 over US loan guarantees to Israel was yet another example of its insouciance about bypassing the executive to achieve its aims.

Shortly after America’s war against Iraq in 1991, Israel sought an additional $10 billion in loan guarantees from Washington to help populate Palestinian land with Jewish emigres from the former Soviet Union. The White House wanted assurances that the money would not go toward the building of additional “settlements,” and threatened to withhold funds until it received guarantees.

Recalling the event years later, Baker explained that the clash between the two governments resulted because Prime Minister Shamir had threatened that if the administration did not provide the funds, he would bypass the executive and take his case directly to Congress. Baker said he responded, “you’re damn well not going to do that. You can’t go around the President of the United States.”

The Jewish right to this day views Baker as toxic. The Jewish Press, a religiously conservative pro-Israel newspaper, described him as one of the most “reviled” public figures in Israel and among American Jews.

Although the administration eventually yielded on the loan issue, President Bush remained convinced he lost re-election in 1992 because of the pro-Israel lobby campaign against him.

The willingness to enter into political struggles with Israel’s leaders and their Washington supporters and to seriously ask something of Israel essentially came to an end with the election of President Bill Clinton (1993-2001).

The Madrid Conference paved the way for the Oslo Accords (1993 and 1995) negotiated during the Clinton presidency. For the Palestinians, it was a sham. For Israel, it consolidated domination over Palestinians and their land.

Israel can be more thoroughly understood by observing the conduct of incumbent prime minister and international fugitive, Benjamin Netanyahu. It has been his mission since the early 1990s to expand illegal colonies in occupied Palestine, prevent the creation of a Palestinian state and crush Palestinian resistance.

Netanyahu thinks of the United States as gullible. A former Israeli minister who worked with him remarked that in cabinet discussions whenever someone raises the question of how America would act, Netanyahu says “Leave the Americans to me.”

To show America who’s the boss, Netanyahu has embarrassed presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden.

One of Netanyahu’s first acts as prime minister in 1996 was to sabotage the Oslo Accords, antagonizing President Clinton who had helped negotiate the agreement. After his first meeting with Netanyahu, Clinton let loose, saying “Who the f**k does he think he is? Who’s the f***ing superpower here?”

By the time Netanyahu’s first term ended in 1999, the Oslo agreements had collapsed and Zionist colonies were firmly entrenched.

Netanyahu’s contemptuous approach toward the United States was in full view in a secretly recorded video of a conversation he had with colonists in their house in the occupied West Bank in 2001. In it, he bragged that he had deceived Clinton into believing that he was implementing the agreement, that he knew how to manipulate Americans, and that he had essentially put an end to the Oslo Accords.

The video was taped during the second intifada (Palestinian uprising) when the Israeli military was crushing the resistance. Netanyahu talked about hitting Palestinians “hard” many times so that “the price will be unbearable.”

A skeptical colonist asked him if he worried about what the United States and the world would think and say of Israel “hitting Palestinians hard.” Netanyahu responded:

“The world will say nothing… that we are defending ourselves…  I know what America is. America is a thing that can be easily moved… moved in the right direction. The Americans will not bother us. Let’s suppose that they will say something… So they say it. Eighty percent of Americans support us. It’s absurd. We have such support there!”

Netanyahu’s belligerence intensified during the presidency of Barack Obama. His flippancy toward Obama was unabashed during a tense public meeting in the Oval Office in May 2011.

The meeting took place a day after Obama had attempted to revive the stalled peace process, where he stated that the borders between Israel and Palestine should be based on 1967 lines, with some adjustments for existing Zionist colonies.

Netanyahu bluntly responded, “It’s not going to happen,” Israel would never return to 1967 borders, warning Obama not to chase “illusions” of peace. He then brazenly lectured the president on the history of the region. After the meeting, Obama’s national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, said: “I have never seen a foreign leader speak to the president like that, and certainly not in public… ”

Netanyahu used the Oval Office exchange during his 2019 campaign by releasing a campaign video in which he boasted of how he stood up to Obama and stared him down.

An additional insult came on 3 March 2015. On that date, Netanyahu addressed a joint session of the US Congress (for the third time), excoriating the Obama administration’s signature foreign policy initiative—the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or Iran nuclear deal. He had come to Washington at the invitation of then-Republican House Speaker John Boehner. The White House was not informed of the arrangements.

Although the relationship between the two leaders was fraught, Obama was one of the most pro-Israel presidents, giving it more money and arms than any of his predecessors. Before leaving office, Obama approved one of the largest military aid packages yet: $38 billion for the next ten years.

Netanyahu repaid President Obama’s favors with a number of slights. During his campaign for re-election in 2012, for example, he endorsed the president’s opponent, Republican Mitt Romney. In addition, Netanyahu also embarked on a very public and intense campaign to sabotage the Iran nuclear agreement. That was finally accomplished in May 2018, when President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the JCPOA.

With the election of Biden in 2021, the pro-Zionist/pro-Israel sentiment of the US regime has become more pronounced.

In service to Israel, the Biden administration has spent more than $22 billion on military aid and made more than 100 military aid transfers and weapons sales to Israel from October 7, 2023, to September 30, 2024. Another $680 million arms sales deal was recently approved. And for the fourth time (November 20, 2024), the administration vetoed UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Our history reveals that some American politicians in the past exhibited the ethical and moral courage necessary to speak and write on the pitfalls of following Israel uncritically. There have not been many. Among the few, Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright stands out. In his 1989 book, The Price of Empire, he wrote:

“The (Israel) lobby can just about tell the president what to do when it comes to Israel. Its influence in Congress is pervasive and, I think, profoundly harmful to us and ultimately to Israel itself… So completely have many of our principal officeholders fallen under Israeli influence that they not only deny today the legitimacy of Palestinian national aspirations, but debate who more passionately opposes a Palestinian state…,” adding,

“AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and its allied organizations have effective working control of the electoral process. They can elect or defeat nearly any congressman or senator that they wish, with their money and coordinated organizations. They are the really important power to negotiate within the Middle East if you want an agreement.”

Senator Fulbright served for 30 years, 15 of those as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Another critic of Israeli arrogance was Admiral Thomas Moorer. He was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1970 to 1974. Republican Congressman Paul Findley of Illinois recalled Moorer’s comments on page 161 in his book, They Dare to Speak Out:

“I’ve never seen a president… stand up to them (the Israelis)… They always get what they want. The Israelis know what’s going on all the time… If the American people understood what grip those people have on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens don’t have any idea what goes on.”

The political climate in Washington has gone from bad to worse since Findley served in Congress from 1961 to 1983. His recollections on page 84 of his book are noteworthy:

“Today, on Middle East issues at least, independence and courage are almost unknown… Since the establishment of modern Israel in 1948, only a handful of senators have said or done anything in opposition to the policies of the government of Israel. Those who break ranks find themselves in difficulty.”

George Ball, US Under Secretary of State (1961-1966), also spoke frankly when he discussed Israel and its relationship with US politics and American politicians. In a 1988 CBS “60 Minutes” report on AIPAC influence on US politics, he remarked: “Practically every congressman and senator says his prayers to the AIPAC lobby.”

Amnesty International, in December 2024, released its well-documented 293-page report, “You Feel like You Are Subhuman: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza.” In a warning to all, it stated: “Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: “This is genocide. It must stop now.”

The State Department’s response to the report: “What I can say as a spokesperson for the US government and as a spokesperson of this administration is that the findings of the accusations of genocide, we continue to believe those to be unfounded.” The non-response bears witness to America’s complicity in genocide and the continuous catastrophe for Palestinians.

Caveat lector: As long as Israel and its lobbies have ownership over America’s Middle East policy, Palestinians will experience more of the same indifference and injustice, the region will be thrown into more chaos, the American public will continue to be red-pilled and international law will become worthless.

Dr. M. Reza Behnam is a political scientist specializing in the history, politics and governments of the Middle East.

December 31, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s collateral killing of civilians is finally in the spotlight

The New York Times’ recent “bombshell” presents facts that have been known for a long time – and does its best to sanitize them

By Robert Inlakesh | RT | December 30, 2024

The New York Times recently published a piece admitting that an unprecedented amount of “collateral damage” was permitted by the Israeli military. However, it omits key statistics that were previously revealed in order to sanitize the revelations it claims to be uncovering.

Presented as a bombshell piece, the December 26 article reveals that Israel had sent through an order that permitted killing up to 20 civilians for each low-level Hamas target. “The order, which has not previously been reported, had no precedent in Israeli military history,” the article reads.

However, in early April of 2024, an Israeli media outlet called +972 Magazine had not only published this fact, citing sources within Israel’s military, but uncovered much more damning figures detailing what was to be considered “acceptable” collateral damage.

The +972 article revealed that the Israeli airstrike that killed Hamas’ Shujaiya Battalion Commander, Wisam Farhat, was authorized to kill 100 civilians. Even more shocking was the infamous case of Ayman Nofal, the commander of Hamas’ Central Gaza Brigade, where, according to the sources, “the army authorized the killing of approximately 300 civilians.”

The +972 report was mentioned in passing by The New York Times, with the caveat that Israel’s military had denied it. However, +972 Mag’s investigative work on this topic did not begin in April. In fact, a piece published in November of 2023 cited a source who claimed the following:

“The numbers increased from dozens of civilian deaths [permitted] as collateral damage as part of an attack on a senior official in previous operations, to hundreds of civilian deaths as collateral damage.”

So, while a big deal is made of the fact that such high numbers of collateral damage have “no precedent in Israeli military history,” the IDF has been knowingly writing off civilians as collateral damage for years. One need only look at literally any UN report on Israel’s past military conduct to see it.

It isn’t only in Gaza that such horrendous “collateral damage” has been normalized, it has also been the case in Lebanon. When Israel carried out the assassination of Hezbollah’s Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, it openly announced that it estimated the total death toll to be around 300, as a result of leveling a number of civilian buildings in southern Beirut.

There is literally nothing in the article published by The New York Times that is new; all it does is affirm what has already been reported, yet it is done in a way that works to water the killings down by omitting key facts and repeating old tropes.

For example, it repeats as proven fact the widespread allegation that Hamas purposely embeds itself amongst civilians to use them as human shields, a point that has been found at least questionable before.

What is undeniable however, is that Israel uses Palestinians as human shields, as has been copiously documented throughout the war and used to be an accepted part of Israel’s military doctrine.

“From November 2023 onward, amid a global outcry, Israel began to conserve ammunition and tighten some of its rules of engagement, including by halving the number of civilians who could be endangered when striking low-ranked militants who posed no imminent threat” states the NYT. The question here is, where did this information come from? According to the article itself, the sources are all Israeli soldiers and officials.

The only evidence presented is the words of the Israelis. Was there any analysis done or examples cited to prove that the IDF would only kill ten civilians on average for every low-ranking Hamas fighter? Absolutely not, because not even Israel can present this information to the public, nor the names of the thousands of supposed “Hamas fighters” it has targeted.

If we go by Israel’s official figures for the number of alleged Hamas militants killed, they rise at such a rate that it doesn’t match the death toll figures accepted by the United Nations. While the official death toll in Gaza is nearly 46,000, with 10,000 missing and presumed dead, the only way Israeli “Hamas fighter” figures make sense is if the toll is much higher. However, accepting a higher death toll in order to give Israel’s claims about Hamas fighters more legitimacy would mean that The New York Times would face another issue: they would then have to wrestle with the fact that the killing only escalated in November of 2023.

In addition to this all, the +972 article from April 3 provides a much more in-depth insight into the artificial intelligence systems used by the Israeli army and points out that the targets it generated were highly inaccurate. The investigation discovered that when the Lavender system chose junior Hamas targets, the Israeli army would actually use its more lethal unguided munitions, because “you don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people.”

Furthermore, +972 noted that while a human has to verify targets chosen by the AI before a strike is ordered, eventually this boiled down to simply making sure the target is male – spending about 20 seconds on average before pulling the trigger.

Nowhere in the New York Times article is there any mention of the slaughter of civilians where no military target is located, there is no mention of the mass torture, sexual abuse, or demolition of homes for the pure vanity of soldiers. Everything is framed as a military that went a little overboard after the Hamas-led October 7 attack.

Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’.

December 30, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

More than Dozen Martyred in Israeli Strike on Syria’s Adra

Al-Manar | December 30, 2024

At least ten people were martyred on Sunday in an Israeli strike on Syria’s Adra Industrial City in rural Damascus, Syrian and Arab media reported.

Reports said there was an explosion in the city of Adra, on the eastern outskirts of the capital.

An Israeli drone had reportedly fired two missiles at a building in the vicinity Adra industrial zone.

Arab media outlets reported that 11 people were killed, while other reports put the death toll at 17, with a number of others being injured.

A video shared on social media showed the aftermath of the attack. The video showed a building reduced to rubble with several bodies scattered among the debris.

The Zionist entity has been taking advantage of the former Syrian regime’s fall earlier this month, with the occupation military launching hundreds of strikes in the last weeks on several areas across the Arab country, and seizing positions including the summit of a mountain with an uninterrupted sightline to the capital Damascus.

December 30, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

In America It’s Another Week to be Proud of!

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • December 26, 2024

Something good happened in Washington last week, suggesting that the year might actually end on a high note without Joe Biden starting World War 3 and opening up all the country’s prisons for the on-the-street rehabilitation of the inmates where they will undoubtedly learn new skills. The good thing was the signing by Biden of a bill, perhaps with a little bit of help from his friends to make sure he spelled his name correctly, to make the Bald Eagle the official bird of the United States of America. The Eagle has been around the American Republic virtually since its foundation, appearing on the Great Seal and on various documents and even on currency, but it has never been officially dubbed the national bird.

All honor of place is due to the great bald eagle, but one might recall that Benjamin Franklin once suggested that the best choice for the national bird would be the wild turkey. And Biden still has time for mischief, including possibly ennobling turkeys or even the issuance of a pardon to himself for ignoring the United States Constitution for four years. And Joe might well choose to go preemptive by pardoning Hillary Clinton for all those classified emails and other documents that somehow disappeared from her home and office ten years ago. But apart from that, it is somehow reassuring to be able to keep repeating “only three more weeks of Biden and Harris” even though the potential for more damage to the Bill of Rights remains enormous.

Joe is well remembered for his open borders invitation which has produced huge crowds of happy American voters who were clearly not delighted to share the burden of millions of uneducated and unskilled foreigners who have demonstrated their ability to burn to death women sleeping on subway trains in New York City just to see what a flaming human body looks like. Oh, and the new Americans have to be housed and fed by the existing population as the process grinds on, but that is what the Democrats running nearly all the major US cities have come to expect from a cowed population that now understands that opposing government policies puts one on the FBI enemies list.

Joe and his stalwart band of liars have also connived in pulling together two wars in which the United States had no actual interest, arming and funding both Ukraine and Israel. Israel has said thank you by adroitly engaging in genocide against the Palestinian people while Kiev is somewhat clumsily occupied in trying to draw the US and NATO into open warfare against Russia, which would become a nuclear World War 3, so there is still time Joe! And then there is the new war going on in Syria where the US armed and trained militias are fighting similarly armed and trained militias controlled by the Turks, who are poised to divide what once was a place called Syria with the Israelis. The Zionists have for many years been planning to exterminate Lebanese and Syrians as well as Palestinians to create a Greater Israel.

But Joe and his buddies apparently are not satisfied with having started two wars when there are so many other places that need a stern dose of the old “rules based international order” to get their houses in order. China is number one on the list as it is outperforming the United States and the Europeans economically. And one can always use the excuse that it is threatening good old Taiwan to crank up a shooting war. And then there is Iran, everyone’s favorite when it comes to “who is next on the list?” Israel has eliminated Hezbollah and Syria, with US connivance and approval, to open the door to destroying the Iranian non-existent nuclear weapons program. Both Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been openly discussing that option as it would mean bombing Iran’s military bases as well as its technical research facilities. Donald Trump has been involved in similar discussions with Netanyahu.

How the attacks on Iran might play out is interesting to contemplate and might follow something like the model of what happed to Syria. Recent reports indicate that something unexpected took place during an Israeli bombing attack directed against a Syrian strategic military site located near the city of Tartus. Israel has been bombing Syria constantly since the government of Bashar al-Assad fell and it has particularly targeted any sites or weapons warehouses that the new government can use to defend itself or establish its territorial integrity. The bombing in question used what many suspect to be a tactical nuclear weapon in an effort to completely obliviate the Syrian military installation that houses scud surface-to-surface missiles among other high-level ordnance. A huge explosion was noted on seismographs located five hundred miles away, as far as Iznik in Turkey. The blast might have been caused by the detonation of the many weapons stored in the facility, but the suspicion grows that Israel, protected as always by Washington even when it commits mass murder or defies international conventions on banned weapons, continues to believe that it can do and get away with anything.

Even if Biden does not open any new doors to further deploy the US military, there is considerable danger that he will succeed in locking new President Donald Trump in the conflicts currently going on. Trump is not averse to using force when it is what he considers the best option. He has lately said some ridiculous things, arguing that the United States considers the “ownership and control of Greenland” to be an “absolute necessity” for maintaining American “national security” and “freedom throughout the world.” This has naturally riled the people who actually live in Greenland who now are wondering how they are blocking freedom globally.

The statement on Greenland came after Trump in a conversation at Mar-a-Lago demoted Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada by giving him the title of “Governor”, calling Canada the 51st State of the United States “union,” which would “save on taxes and military protection.” Trump also has threatened to take over the Panama Canal and tweeted “we’ll see about that!” in response to the President of Panama’s declaration that every inch of the Panama Canal belongs to Panama. Trump then posted up a graphic on his website featuring “Welcome to the United States Canal!” above a picture of the American flag flying over a lock in the Panama Canal. Trump has also allegedly privately considered invading Mexico in order to combat the drug cartels on the US border and using American soldiers to block illegal immigrants seeking to cross.

Trump’s ignorance over who is doing what in the Middle East is astonishing but largely derives from his own personal and family attachment to Zionism and more particularly to his reliance on billionaire Jewish donors. The serial appointments of pro-Israel nominees to the key cabinet posts where decisions impacting Israel will be made for the next four years both will shape policy and guarantee that Trump stays on track with Israel, just as Joe Biden did when surrounded by his own Jewish neocons. Trump has already vowed that there will be “hell to pay” in the Middle East if the remaining Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip are not released by his January 20th inauguration.

Likewise, Israeli government officials, including Netanyahu, cannot wait for current Secretary of State Antony Blinken to be replaced by Florida congressman Marco Rubio. Blinken has been a complete tool of Israel but he projects a certain timidity. Rubio shows no such restraint and is very clear on what he believes to be true. He recently called Hamas “animals” and made clear that they are “100% to blame” for everyone killed in Israel and in Gaza during the current war. The moment he assumes control, there will be the “maximum pressure” that Trump often cites on Hamas to surrender or face the consequences. The Trump administration will supply Israel with bunker-busting bombs and whatever else is needed to kill anyone perceived to be an enemy of the Jewish state. Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has said, “If you love America, you should love Israel.” He will back that up by delivering on Israel’s military needs as defined by Netanyahu.

So there you go! The old year is ending on both a bang and a whimper. Joe Biden still has plenty of opportunity to raise hell and tie Trump to certain policies, particularly when it comes to continuing “useless” wars. Trump for his part will enter office owned by Israel and led by the nose by his belligerent cabinet. The actual needs and interests of the American people will be, as usual, invisible to the politicians and lost in the shuffle.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

December 27, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Alawites Are Syrians Too

By Peter Ford | 21st Century Wire | December 27, 2024

Alawites in their towns and villages in the Tartous and Lattakia provinces of Syria are being subjected to hideous pogroms under the new Islamist dispensation in Syria. And the world turns its back. The Alawites are just too inconvenient for the emerging preferred narrative.

While Christians, Kurds, Armenians and women have their vocal champions in the West, Alawites have no-one. Abandoned by Asad, the Russians and even the Iranians, the Alawites are all alone.

Historically despised in Syria for poverty, backwardness and ‘superstition’, not accepted until recently even by Shia as fellow Muslims, the Alawites are now anathematised for having allegedly been the backbone of the fallen Assad ruling system.

Ravening wolves descend on Alawite villages

Since Day 1 of the new jihadi era Alawites have been hounded, intimidated, beaten up, killed, mutilated, raped and pillaged. Gangs of gunmen have rounded up surrendering Alawite soldiers for roadside executions. Alawite judges have been murdered. Alawite householders have been expelled from their houses to make way for jihadi families. Thousands have been put to flight into the mountains or across the Lebanese border. Shrines have been desecrated. Armed gangs roam the streets flaunting ISIS and Al Qaida flags.

If any of this gets reported at all in Western or Middle Eastern media it is always alongside claims by the new HTS junta in Damascus that these incidents are aberrations and that perpetrators are being called to order. But they are not. The instances multiply. And how unsurprising is that when the slogan of the so-called Islamist revolution was “Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the grave”? What the world would see if it would just open its eyes is visceral bloody sectarianism. This goes way beyond the score-settling that inevitably occurs when one side wins a conflict. It is in the DNA of the fundamentalist pro tem winners.

Myths about Alawite power

Some of the hatred of Alawites arises from the myth that the Alawites ruled Syria in the Assad era. It is true that the Alawites as a community saw their position in Syrian society improve after the Alawite general Hafez Al Asad became President. Young Alawite men from impoverished families had since the days of the French mandate seen career opportunities in the army when other communities with opportunities in business or elsewhere in the state spurned such careers. A cadre of Alawites made their way up the ladder, culminating in Hafez Al Asad’s coup.

But Alawites never dominated Assadist Syria as much as was alleged. The business sector remained firmly in the hands of Sunnis and Christians. Alawites rarely held key positions in government cabinets. In the army, while a disproportionate segment of officers were Alawites, the top generals were almost always Sunnis. As were most of the rank and file. Alawites held key positions in the security apparatus, but even there the pinnacle was usually occupied by Sunnis.

In their heartlands of coastal Syria Alawite social life was much like that of the related Alevi community just up the coast in Turkey: more liberal, more emancipated than predominantly Sunni areas.

For this, and for their links to Assad, the Alawites are now being punished. Even those links to Assad were often strained: Alawites, perhaps because they were less likely to be accused of disloyalty, were often more vocal in their criticisms of the government and the security services than others. Alawites suffered as much as anybody from the impoverishment brought on by the war and by Western sanctions, blocking of reconstruction and deprivation of the oil and gas in the US/Kurdish area.

Persecution of Alawites doesn’t fit the narrative

Western powers and media look away from the vile torment of the Alawites. They can hardly disguise their glee at having had their Christmas come early with the toppling of Assad and the discomfiture of Russia and Iran. They prefer to revel in the new genre of ‘Assad porn’: stories, rarely fact-checked, of mass burials of political prisoners (mostly war dead, in fact), increasingly sensational claims about the notorious Sednaya Prison, as well as fake prisoners stumbling out of torture chambers, ‘liberated’ by CNN star reporters, and of course – chemical weapons somehow not quite yet found etc, etc.

Western governments and UN agencies lose all dignity rushing to kiss the feet of the erstwhile terrorist now moderate new Sultan of Damascus. They mouthe platitudes about the need for ‘inclusion’ as though all that was at stake was a corporations’ DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) score, rather than very lives of terrified Alawites and others, just over the hill. They want to lift sanctions and get on with cementing the new regime into the Western system. Human rights come way down the list of priorities now that the West has what it wants.

The new Badlands

But the Alawites are brave. They are fighting back. They are resisting the Islamist gangs who come to confiscate their weapons, without which they and their families fear they will be butchered. And how is this presented in the media? Ah, these are ‘Assadist forces’.

Well let me tell you this. The new jihadi overlords may rule but they will not have control in areas like the Alawite and Kurdish heartlands, where they fail to respect communities and try to impose their jihadi system out of the barrel of a gun. These will be the jihadis’ Badlands, just as the Eastern areas bordering Iraq were the ISIS-spawning Badlands for the Assad government.

Author Peter Ford is a geopolitical and global affairs analyst, and former British Ambassador to Syria (2003-2006) and Bahrain (1999-2002). See more of Peter’s work here.

December 27, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Convicted US spy worked on ‘genetic screening’ of Russians – FSB

RT | December 27, 2024

US national Eugene ‘Gene’ Spector, who was found guilty of espionage earlier this week, had been collecting “biomedical” data in the country, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has said. The authorities believe these materials could have been used by the US government to develop a genetic screening system for analyzing Russia’s population.

Over the past several years, there have been a number of high-profile cases in which Russian security services have accused American citizens of espionage. Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, Moscow and Western nations have also increasingly expelled each other’s diplomats, claiming they are spies.

In a press release on Friday, the FSB alleged that the “American national, acting in the interest of the Pentagon and a commercial organization affiliated with it, gathered and handed over to a foreign party various biotechnological and biomedical data, including classified materials, with the aim of creating a high-speed genetic screening system of Russia’s population by the US.”

On Monday, a court in Moscow sentenced Spector to 15 years in prison as well as a 14 million-ruble ($135,000) fine.

The former chair of the board of Russia’s Medpolymerprom Group, a supplier of disposable medical items, was handed the punishment in conjunction with his previous sentencing for acting as an intermediary in a bribery case. In 2022, the US citizen of Russian origin was sentenced to 3.5 years behind bars after being found guilty of providing an aide to former Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich with free trip vouchers from 2015 to 2016. The judge ruled at the time that Spector had thus remunerated the woman for promoting the products of several pharmacy companies.

Last August, a court separately ordered his arrest on suspicion of espionage, though the details of the case were not made public.

Earlier this year, Russia and the US exchanged a total of 26 individuals held in several countries, in the largest prisoner swap of this kind since the end of the Cold War. Among those sent to the US were Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan – both of whom had been convicted of espionage in Russia. In return, ten Russian nationals who Washington accused of being intelligence agents and cybercriminals were sent to Moscow.

In September, Moscow declared six British diplomats persona non grata, claiming that their activities in the country “showed signs of intelligence and subversive work.” The UK Foreign Office dismissed the accusations as “completely baseless.”

December 27, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

A Palestinian year in review: Genocide, resistance and unanswered questions

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | December 26, 2024

The story of the Israeli war on Gaza can be epitomized in the story of the Israeli war on Beit Lahia, a small Palestinian town in the northern part of the Strip.

When Israel launched its ground operations in Gaza, Beit Lahia was already largely destroyed due to many days of relentless Israeli bombardment which killed thousands.

Still, the border Gaza town resisted, leading to a hermetic Israeli siege, which was never lifted, even when the Israeli military redeployed out of much of northern Gaza in January 2024.

Beit Lahia is largely an isolated town, a short distance away from the fence separating besieged Gaza from Israel. It is surrounded mostly by agricultural areas that make it nearly impossible to defend.

Yet, a year of grisly Israeli war and genocide in Gaza did not end the fighting there. To the contrary, 2024 has ended where it started, with intense fighting on all fronts in Gaza, with Beit Lahia, a town that was supposedly ‘conquered’ earlier, still leading the fight.

Beit Lahia is a microcosm of Israel’s failed war in the Strip, a bloody grind that has led nowhere, despite the massive destruction, the repeated ethnic cleansing of the population, the starvation and the genocide. Every day of Israel’s terrible war on the Palestinians serves as a reminder that there are no military solutions and that the Palestinian will cannot be broken, no matter the cost or the sacrifice.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, remains unconvinced. He entered the new year with more promises of ‘total victory’, and ended it as a wanted criminal by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The issuing of an arrest warrant for the Israeli leader was a reiteration of a similar position taken by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the start of 2024.

The ICJ’s position, however, was hardly as strong as many had hoped or wanted to believe. The world’s highest court had, on 26 January, ordered Israel “to take action to prevent acts of genocide”, but stopped short of ordering Israel to halt its war.

The Israeli objectives of the war remained unclear, although Israeli politicians provided clues as to what the war on Gaza was really all about. Last January, several Israeli ministers, including 12 from Netanyahu’s Likud party, took part in a conference calling for the resettlement of Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. “Without settlements, there is no security,” extremist Israeli minister of finance, Bezalel Smotrich, said.

For that to happen, the Palestinian people themselves, not merely those fighting on the ground, had to be tamed, broken and defeated. Thus, the ‘flour massacres‘, a new Israeli war tactic that was centered around killing as many Palestinians as possible while waiting for the few aid trucks that were allowed to reach northern Gaza.

On 29 February, more than 100 Gazans were killed while queueing for aid. They were mowed down by Israeli soldiers, as they desperately tried to lay their hands on a loaf of bread, baby milk or a bottle of water. This scene was repeated, again and again in the north, but also in other parts of the Gaza Strip throughout the year.

The aim was to starve the Palestinians in the north so that they would be forced to flee to other parts of the Strip. Famine actualized as early as January, and many of those who tried to flee south were killed, anyway.

From the early days of the war, Israel understood that to ethnically cleanse Palestinians, they must target all aspects of life in the Strip. This includes hospitals, bakeries, markets, electric grids, water stations, and the like.

The Gaza hospitals, of course, received a large share of Israeli attacks. In March, once more, Israel attacked the Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City with greater ferocity than before. When it finally withdrew, on April 1, the Israeli army destroyed the entire compound, leaving behind mass graves with hundreds of bodies, mostly medical staff, women and children. They even executed several patients.

Aside from a few statements of concern by western leaders, little was done to bring the genocide to an end. Only when seven international aid workers with the charity, the World Central Kitchen, were killed by Israel, a global outcry followed, leading to the first and only Israeli apology in the entire war.

Desperate to distract from its failure in Gaza, but also Lebanon, and keen on presenting the Israeli public with any kind of victory, the Israeli military began escalating its war beyond Gaza. This included the strike on the Iranian Embassy in Syria on 1 April. Despite repeated attempts, which included the assassination in Iran of the head of Hamas’s Political Bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, on 31 July, an all-out regional war has not yet come to pass.

Another escalation was taking place, this time not by Netanyahu but by millions of people around the world, demanding an end to the Israeli war. A focal point of the protests were student movements that spread across US campuses and, ultimately, worldwide. Instead of allowing free speech to flourish, however, America’s largest academic institutions resorted to the police, who violently shut down many of the protests, arresting hundreds of students, many of whom were not allowed to return to their colleges.

Meanwhile, the US continued to block international efforts aimed at producing a ceasefire resolution at the United Nations Security Council. Ultimately, on 31 May, US President Joe Biden delivered a speech conveying what he termed an “Israeli proposal” to end the war. After some delay, Hamas accepted the proposal, but Israel rejected it. In his rejection, Netanyahu referred to Biden’s speech as “incorrect” and “incomplete”. Strangely, but also unsurprisingly, the White House blamed the Palestinians for the failed initiative.

Losing faith in the American leadership, some European countries began changing their foreign policy doctrines on Palestine, with Ireland, Norway and Spain recognizing the State of Palestine on 28 May. The decisions were largely symbolic but indicated that western unity around Israel was faltering.

Israel remained unfazed and, despite international warnings, invaded the Rafah area in southern Gaza on May 7, seizing control of the Philadelphi Corridor – a buffer zone between Gaza and the Egyptian border that extends for 14 kilometers.

Netanyahu’s government insisted that only war can bring their captives back. There was very little success in that strategy, however. On June 8, Israel, with logistical support from the US and other western countries managed to rescue four of its captives held in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. To do so, Israel killed at least 276 Palestinians and wounded 800 more.

In August, another heart-wrenching massacre took place, this time in the Al-Tabaeen school in Gaza City, where 93 people, mostly women and children, were murdered in a single Israeli strike. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, women and children were the main victims of the Israeli genocide, accounting for 70 per cent by 8 November.

An earlier report by the Lancet Medical Journal said that if the war stopped in July, “186,000 or even more” Palestinians would have been killed. The war, however, went on. The rate of genocide in Gaza seemed to maintain the same killing ratio, despite the major regional developments including the mutual Iranian-Israeli tit-for-tat strikes and the major Israeli ground operation in Lebanon.

In October, Israel returned to the policies of targeting or besieging hospitals, killing doctors and other medical staff, and targeting aid and civil defence workers. Still, Israel would not achieve any of its strategic goals of the war. Even the killing of Hamas’ leader, Yahya Sinwar, in battle on 16 October  would not, in any way, alter the course of the war.

Israel’s frustration grew by leaps and bounds throughout the year. Its desperate attempt to control the global narrative on the Gaza genocide largely failed. On 19 July, and after listening to the testimonies of over 50 countries, the ICJ issued a landmark ruling that “Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is illegal.”

That ruling, which expressed international consensus on the matter, was translated on 17 September to a UN General Assembly resolution “demanding an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine within the next twelve months”.

All of this effectively meant that Israel’s attempt at normalizing its occupation of Palestine, and its quest to illegally annex the West Bank was considered null and void by the international community. Israel, however, doubled down, taking its rage against West Bank Palestinians, who, too, were experiencing one of the worst Israeli pogroms in many years.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, by 21 November, at least 777 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October 2023, while thousands more were wounded and over 11,700 arrested.

To make matters worse, Smotrich called, on November 11, for the full annexation of the West Bank. The call was made soon after the election of Donald Trump as the next US President, an event that initially inspired optimism amongst Israeli leaders, but later concerns that Trump may not serve the role of the saviour for Israel after all.

On 21 November, the ICC issued its historic ruling to arrest Netanyahu and his Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. The decision represented a measure of hope, however faint, that the world is finally ready to hold Israel accountable for its many crimes.

2025 could, indeed, represent that watershed moment. This remains to be seen. However, as far as Palestinians are concerned, even with the failure of the international community to stop the genocide and reign in Israel, their steadfastness, sumoud, will remain strong until freedom is finally attained.

December 27, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Act of terrorism’ sank Russian cargo ship – owner

RT | December 25, 2024

A “terrorist attack” is to blame for the sinking of the Russian cargo ship Ursa Major in the Mediterranean Sea, Russian state shipping company Oboronlogistics announced on Wednesday.

The freighter went down in waters between Spain and Algeria on Monday. Initial reports spoke of an explosion in the engine room that caused the vessel to list sharply to the starboard. Spanish rescue ships recovered 14 crew members, but two are still missing.

“Oboronlogistics believes that on December 23, 2024, a targeted terrorist attack was carried out on the Ursa Major vessel,” the company said in a statement.

According to the surviving crew members, “three successive explosions” happened on board the ship, which then began to take on water.

Built in 2009, the 142-meter-long Ursa Major was one of the largest Russian cargo vessels, and was headed from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok with several specialized pieces of port and ship construction equipment.

Ursa Major set sail on December 11 and was scheduled to arrive by January 22. It had undergone scheduled maintenance this past summer. According to Oboronlogistics, it was carrying many empty containers and was not overloaded at the time of the sinking.

Oboronlogistics is a shipping company that is part of the Russian Defense Ministry. The Ursa Major was operated by its subsidiary SK-Yug.

The company did not name a culprit in the alleged act of terrorism. Ukraine has previously taken responsibility for multiple attacks on Russian ships in the Black Sea.

According to Spanish media, the Ursa Major sent a distress signal as it transited the Strait of Gibraltar. After the vessel deviated from its course and began to list, fishing vessels came to the crew’s rescue. They were later joined by Spanish Navy and the coast guard vessels Clara Campoamor and Serviola. The 14 surviving crew members were taken to the port of Cartagena.

December 25, 2024 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Five Syrians injured by Israeli army gunfire in Quneitra countryside

By Ahmad Karakira | Al Mayadeen | December 25, 2024

Israeli forces have established new positions in the countryside of Quneitra in Syria, specifically along the axes of Rasm al-Rawadi, Umm al-Edam, and al-Mantara Dam.

The village of Swisah in the southern countryside of Quneitra witnessed a protest against the Israeli occupation forces that had advanced into the village, entering barracks within and around it, local sources told Al Mayadeen.

The Israeli forces, consisting of bulldozers and tanks, stormed a barracks in the center of the village, carrying out acts of vandalism and cutting down trees in its surroundings but without approaching residential homes, the sources indicated.

Subsequently, the occupation forces moved to a barracks west of the village, continuing their acts of destruction, which prompted residents to gather near the site in protest against the incursion and raise the Syrian flag.

The Israeli forces then opened fire to prevent the protesters from approaching, injuring five individuals.

According to the sources, the Israeli forces transported equipment, including bulldozers, to the al-Tallayn al-Homr area, where they have been stationed for some time.

IOF give Jubatha al-Khashab residents ultimatum to turn in weapons

In a related context, Israeli occupation forces have given the residents of the town of Jubata al-Khashab in the northern countryside of Quneitra a 48-hour deadline to hand over all types of weapons.

This has sparked appeals to the new administration in Damascus, which has yet to take any action.

In response to Israeli threats, the elders of the town indicated that they would only hand over weapons to the Syrian authorities.

They urged active officials on the ground to address their demands “so they would not later be accused of treachery, especially after the Israeli forces claimed responsibility for the area’s security and its arms.”

IOF establishing posts on top of Mount Hermon

A couple of days ago, local sources told Al Mayadeen that the Israeli occupation forces are combing the entirety of Mount Hermon’s peak, and are establishing a new post overlooking Damascus’ southwestern countryside.

According to exclusive sources, the Israeli army seized military equipment in the area, as well as the wreckage of an Israeli helicopter downed during the 1973 war.

Earlier, a local source told Al Mayadeen that Israeli tanks and armored patrols infiltrated the al-Hamidiyah axis in the countryside of Quneitra towards the provincial center in the town of al-Baath, southwest of Syria, coinciding with inspection campaigns carried out by Israeli forces, which targeted some homes and farms in the villages of the central countryside.

December 25, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Four Killed, 5 Injured in Ukraine’s Shelling of Lgov Town in Kursk Region

Sputnik – 25.12.2024

As a result of Ukraine’s shelling of the town Lgov in Russia’s Kursk Region four people have been killed and five have been injured, Governor Alexander Khinshtein said on Wednesday.

“According to preliminary information, three people were killed as a result of the barbaric shelling by the armed forces of Ukraine of the town of Lgov, and another person died later in hospital. Five victims were hospitalized, including one woman in serious condition. They are currently receiving all the necessary medical and psychological assistance,” Khinshtein said on Telegram.

Three residential buildings were seriously damaged, Khinshtein added.

“A five-storey residential building, two one-storey residential buildings, as well as a detached one-storey beauty salon were seriously damaged. Windows were blasted in neighboring private residential buildings, and at least 12 vehicles were damaged. Also, an insignificant section of the gas pipeline was destroyed due to the blast,” Khinstein said.

The operational headquarters of the government of the Kursk Region has been deployed in Lgov after the shelling, the governor added.

According to preliminary data, the attack was carried out using a HIMARS multiple launch rocket system (MLRS), a spokesperson for the military investigative authorities told Sputnik at the scene of the incident.

“During the inspection, fragments and shrapnel of a shell were discovered, presumably from a HIMARS MLRS. All of them will be seized and subsequently sent for examination to determine the specific type and kind of the shell,” the spokesperson said.

December 25, 2024 Posted by | War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

“Greater Israel” Metastasizes

By Kevin Barrett | American Free Press | December 22, 2024

“Israel is a cancer on the Middle East.” Resistance leaders across the region have used that metaphor for generations. The Zionists who dominate American politics, finance and media have attacked it as inappropriate.

But is the metaphor inaccurate? Cancer occurs when a diseased cell or cells begin uncontrollably expanding at the expense of neighboring cells and organ systems. Israel, a malignant body of extremist fanatics implanted into the heart of the Middle East, keeps mindlessly and voraciously expanding, not unlike a virulent tumor. Such pathological Zionist growth has caused untold pain, suffering, and hardship for the people of Palestine, the region, and the world.

Let’s chart Israel’s malignant growth. The original version of modern Israel, as set forth in the Balfour Declaration (1917) consisted of a mere “Jewish homeland” (not a state) guaranteed not to impinge on the rights of non-Jews—who constituted the vast majority of the population and owned virtually all of the land of historic Palestine. After the invading Jewish terrorists began running amok, as recounted in Thomas Suarez’s magisterial State of Terror: How Terrorism Created Modern Israel, Britain rewarded them with the 1937 Peel Commission partition plan, which would have created Israel on 33% of Palestine, leaving the other 67% for Palestinians.

The Peel Commission plan was outright theft. Palestinians owned well over 90% of the land of Palestine, yet the Commission wanted to steal almost one-third of their land and hand it to Eastern European Jewish terrorist invaders. But even such grand larceny wasn’t enough for the Zionists. They held out for more, and got it in 1948 by bribing US President Truman with a suitcase containing two million dollars in cash (as recounted by John F. Kennedy to Gore Vidal). That bribe, and others like it, produced the UN’s partition plan, which almost doubled the size of the Peel Commission’s Israel.

But even that outrageous robbery did not satisfy the Zionist terrorists, who immediately began massacring Palestinians and invading territory outside their UN borders. When the Nakba (Palestinian Holocaust) was over, untold thousands of Palestinians were dead, and more than 750,000 survivors had been robbed of their land and property and forced into exile as permanent refugees. After perpetrating the 1948 holocaust the Zionists refused to return to their UN-approved borders, which would have given them more than 55% of Palestine, and instead continued occupying almost 80%.

But even that didn’t satisfy them. The Zionist leadership spent the next two decades plotting what would become the 1967 war of aggression, in which they stole another 77,000 square kilometers consisting of the West Bank including Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula. Together, those stolen territories are almost four times the size of pre-1967 Israel.

After 1967, Zionist leaders split between those willing to return stolen territory in return for peace, and those dedicated to endless wars of expansion. With the assassination of the land-for-peace Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, the issue was definitively settled in favor of the “forever wars” party.

Rabin was an anomaly—a mere speed bump on the road to Greater Israel. The Zionist leadership has always tacitly agreed that Israel will keep expanding to its Biblical mandate and beyond. David Ben-Gurion defined Zionism’s goal as follows: “to create a Jewish state in the whole of the Land of Israel.” That “whole” includes Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, and part of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, northern Arabia, and arguably Turkey. Such conquests will require genocidal war against those countries and peoples.

2024 will go down in history as the year the Zionist cancer metastasized, sending its toxic tendrils even further into northern Gaza, the West Bank, southern Lebanon, and Syria. Netanyahu’s minister Smotrich is calling for the full annexation of the West Bank and Gaza and the murder or expulsion of all Palestinians from historic Palestine. That process is already underway as northern Gaza is being emptied and Israel has grabbed a full 6000 acres of the West Bank. Meanwhile Israel is violating its ceasefire agreement with Lebanon in an attempt to steal all of south Lebanon up to the Litani River. And in the wake of the US-Turkish-Israeli overthrow of the Syrian government, Israel has massively attacked Syria and grabbed vast swathes of Syrian land.

The ever-expanding cancer of Zionism poses a clear and present danger to the region and the world. The driving force behind Zionism is a virulent version of Jewish messianic millenarianism whose endgame is a Jewish military leader conquering not just the region, but the whole world, and then establishing a Jewish global dictatorship based in Occupied Jerusalem.

First they came for the Palestinians. Israel’s neighbors are next. But this isn’t just a regional problem. Metastasizing Israel threatens all of us.

December 23, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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