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To Bluff or Not to Bluff

By William Schryver – imetatronink – November 18, 2023

The map pictured below has been circulating:

It purports to portray the current positions of the impressive array of US/NATO naval assets in the eastern Mediterranean, Red Sea, and the Arabian Sea / Gulf of Oman.

Maybe most of it is more or less accurate in terms of the positioning it indicates. But I do not, at present, believe it accurately represents the position of the USS Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, which it suggests is sailing in the far reaches of the Gulf of Oman, more or less at the gates of the Strait of Hormuz.

The Eisenhower CSG is indicated by the bright green number 5 on the map. I am very dubious it has ventured into those dangerous waters.

Many believe the strike group will transit the straits, and take a cruise in the Persian Gulf.

I do not believe that will happen.

It would be, in my opinion, an extraordinary blunder of hubris.

That said, it will be a sure indicator of US intent towards Iran.

If the Eisenhower enters the Persian Gulf, it means the US aims to put it in optimal position to strike Iran — or at least to raise the stakes of its bluff to a level that it will very likely be called.

In other words, if the USS Eisenhower and its escorts enter the Persian Gulf, it will almost certainly compel an engagement with Iranian forces — likely ignited by an Iranian shoot-down of US ISR assets.

If, on the other hand, the Eisenhower remains sailing in the relatively safe deep blue waters of the broad portion of the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea, then you can be sure the US actually has no desire to escalate to war with Iran.

That would be, in my estimation, a very wise course of action.

November 18, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Eyewitness Reveals How Family of Four Died During Israeli Strike in Southern Lebanon

Samira Ayoub with her daughter Huda, granddaughters Rimas, Talin and Lian; her elder brother Samir Ayoub with his son before the tragedy
By Christina Malyk – Sputnik – 14.11.2023

Samir Ayoub, a Russian-Lebanese journalist, lost four of his family members – younger sister Samira (60) and her granddaughters Rimas (14), Talin (12) and Lian (10) – during an Israeli drone strike on the village of Aitarun near the Lebanese-Israeli border. The tragedy occurred right before his eyes.

Samir highlighted that he did not expect that an Israeli drone would attack the civilians who “have nothing to do with the military.” That tragic day, his sister Samira, her daughter Huda, and granddaughters Rimas, Talin, and Lian were packing their things and moving to Beirut, while schools were closed near the Israeli border, and asked Samir for help.

“We, who live near the border, already know that the drone sees everyone and everything that is on earth, even animals. Therefore, I asked the children to play near the car. I thought they would see the children and definitely not touch us. The youngest of the girls even jumped on the hood of the car. Therefore, I am absolutely sure they saw that only children and women got into the car,” he added.

Then, when the family started driving to Beirut, the tragedy suddenly occured. Samir Ayoub described the moment:

“We left Aitarun for Beirut in two cars. I was driving in front. Suddenly, I heard a sound as if pyrotechnics had gone off. The car received a direct hit, and it burned to the ground. My sister was sitting in the passenger seat, she died on the spot. The girls, my niece’s daughters, were burned alive in the back seat. Only my niece survived – she was driving.”

According to him, Huda, mother of the murdered girls and his niece, is still in hospital with serious injuries, but her life is not in danger now. She remembers what happened to her car that day.

“Huda remembers the tragedy every day. Although she is recovering physically, it is extremely difficult for her mentally. We all try to support her as best we can. Her husband also holds on despite such a terrible loss. He and I constantly come to the hospital to visit her,” Samir noted.

Samir wants to remember the murdered girls as “wonderful children,” who had their own dreams about the future. He revealed:

“The eldest, Rimas, was 14, she wanted to become a doctor. The middle one, Talin, was 12 and dreamed of becoming a designer. The youngest, Lian, was 10, and she dreamed of becoming an artist. But, alas, due to the actions of the Israeli army, their dreams will no longer be able to come true.”

The Lebanese government condemned the actions of the Israeli military and filed a formal complaint to the UN for committing a war crime.

“The Israelis reported they had eliminated three terrorists in the south of Lebanon. But what kind of terrorists? These were my sister, a pensioner, and her schoolgirl granddaughters. All we want now is truth and justice,” he concluded.

November 14, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

An Epistle to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

By Edward J. Curtin, Jr. | Behind The Curtain | November 10, 2023 

Dear Bobby,

As you know, I have supported your bid for the presidency even before you declared last spring.  I have admired and believed in you for years, and when you entered the race I felt hope for the first time in decades that your non-violent impulses, honed by your tragic family history and a deep revulsion for our country’s imperial wars and violent history, would triumph and usher in a new era of peace.  Despite the naysayers who dismissed you from the start, I said Yes, that you would shock those who ridiculed and maligned you and that you would be the man to carry out President Kennedy’s American University speech and fulfill his and your father’s legacy of “not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women” because “we all breathe the same air” and “we all cherish our children’s futures” and “we are all mortal.”

I suggested that you would heal the divide and not expand it.  Seeing you stumble on your way by throwing your full support to the Zionist leaders of Israel has been a body blow to me.  At first I thought it might be explained by your reaction to the false antisemitic accusations that were hurled your way once word emerged that you might enter the presidential race.  But as time went on it dawned on me that I was wrong and that you were in sync with the powerful Israel Lobby.  So now, I feel as if we are in the tenth round of fight for your soul’s compassion.  That you have not defended the children of Gaza and condemned their massacre by the thousands has shocked and sickened me.

As a scholar of religion and its intersection with politics, I have been meditating on current events.

Religion has for a very long time been used as a cover for slaughtering people and seizing their land. This is true for the United States and Israel. It is built into their theological underpinnings.  So it should not be at all surprising that the current Israeli massacre of Palestinians is fully supported by the U.S. government led by President Joseph Biden and by almost every presidential aspirant.  You, however, as a self-styled anti-war candidate are a great surprise to me, although I may be naïve and shouldn’t be since you gave your unequivocal support to the Israel government a month ago, following the October 7 Hamas-led incursion into Israel that killed innocent Israelis (many of whom were also probably killed by the IDF as Jonathan Cooke has reported).  Despite that, I still expected your conscience would surely prompt you to condemn what can only be described as genocide, the slaughter of the innocents in Gaza that is ongoing.

You have undermined your claim to “end the forever wars” and to defend children.  Why you have done (or not done) this is a question that so many of your supporters and former supporters are asking.  Only you can say.  Perhaps we might only know if you unequivocally condemned Israel’s actions and faced whatever might come your way as a result.  This is unlikely, I now realize, but one can still hope. I think it would take a spiritual miracle of moral courage, because of your claim that your historical analysis that you say is sincere and true that Israel now and always has been the just and innocent party and the Palestinians the evil ones. I find your analysis unbelievable and your silence as innocents are being slaughtered indefensible, even as I applaud so many of your other positions, as you know.  Everyone knows that running for the U.S. presidency creates strange bedfellows, but your touting of the Israeli propaganda in which you conflate the Palestinian people with Hamas to justify massacring civilians is beyond strange – it is immoral.

I know how much you respect Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and you no doubt have heard his words before.

“And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular – but one must take it simply because it is right.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.

Conscience calls to you, Bobby.  Be true to that voice within.  Politic as it may be, there is a heavy burden of guilt for abandoning the Palestinians to slaughter by silence.  King learned this when he saw those photos of the napalmed and dead Vietnamese children and was conscience-stricken to come to Riverside Church in New York to give his speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence.”  You can do the same.  The pictures of dead Palestinian children, victims of U.S. support for Israeli bombs, are there to see.  Martin quoted your uncle, John, that “those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”  He said that we can no longer worship the God of hate and retribution.  He said, “Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted.”

You too, Bobby, can break your silence, step up high and let your conscience also leave you no other choice but to condemn the genocide in Gaza.  As Martin said, “A time comes when silence is betrayal.”

You say you are making “a moral case for Israel” as the justified party in its seventy-five year long war with the Palestinians.  In doing so you have reneged on your campaign promise to emulate President John Kennedy, who would be appalled by your silence. Your website, Kennedy 24, declares that “[you] Kennedy will revive a lost thread of American foreign policy thinking, the one championed by his uncle, John F. Kennedy who, over his 1000 days in office, had become a firm anti-imperialist.”  In genuflecting to the Israel genocide while touting your connection to JFK and your father, Senator Robert Kennedy, you have in fact taken a position toward Israel diametrically opposed to theirs.  One could sense this coming when under pressure this past summer, you withdrew your support for Roger Waters, a strong Palestinian supporter who was falsely accused of being anti-Jewish, and you then allowed your “friend” Rabbi Shmuley Boteach to say that Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian, killed your father in 1968 when you knew that was a lie and was part of a sophisticated intelligence conspiracy to blame the patsy who was said to hate Israel.  To allow Shmuley to audaciously and heartlessly repeat a CIA trope about your father’s assassination was a telltale sign of worse to come.

For both the U.S. and Israel, the Bible has been used to cover up the crimes of their foundings.  They have analogous histories rooted in religious myths.  In both cases, the indigenous peoples were considered less than human – savages, infidels – or in the description of Palestinians by the current Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, “human animals.”  Such racist, dehumanizing language has been repeated time and again throughout the American and Israeli narratives used to justify their crimes against those they killed and whose land they stole.  The gloss of civilized hypocrisy has been unmasked by such language, just as it was when Hitler repeatedly called Jews “vermin.”  Irony aside, the Nazi rhetoric of denigration and racial superiority to justify exterminating Jewish people has been repeatedly mirrored by American and Israeli leaders, whether it was against the Original Free Peoples of North America, Vietnamese, Koreans, Iraqis, etc. or the Palestinians.  It is the master/slave mentality deeply rooted in U.S. and Israel history.

Bobby, you have said that you hope to be the second independent candidate to become president, the first being George Washington.  Yet Washington was a racist and slave owner who supported the extermination of the Indian natives so the white settlers could take their land.  He himself did so, speculating in Native lands together with most of the other prominent politicians from the early days of the Republic, including Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, Andrew Jackson, et al.  For the governors and legislators of the thirteen states it was also open sesame on the seizure of Indian land which required their slaughter in turn.

One can learn this in Peter P. d’Errico’s important recent book, Federal Anti-Indian Law: The Legal Entrapment of Indigenous Peoples, where he makes clear how U.S. law was used to codify such “legal” theft and killing.  Such federal law was, as d’Errico writes, a claim of unlimited U.S. power and not really law at all but the suspension of law as it granted the U.S. government complete authority over Native peoples, their lives, and their land.  Legal theft, in other words.  Like the English justification for their claim to their colonies – the “right of discovery” proclaimed in Henry VII’s commission to John Cabot: “to subdue and take possession of any lands unoccupied by any Christian Power” – a series of three Supreme Court rulings in the 1830s by Chief Justice John Marshall were based on the claim of “Christian discovery,” which in turn was based on a papal grant from Pope Alexander the Sixth in 1493 that gave to Christopher Columbus’s sponsors, Ferdinand and Isabella, ownership of any land Columbus might discover.  This divine right required the killing and subjugation of non-Christian infidels and heathens who were considered brute animals, just as the Palestinians are today.

Similar justifications have been used by Zionists for the killing of Palestinians and the seizure of their land in the name of the Biblical Jewish God and his instructions to them.  This myth claims that God gave them the ancestral Palestinians’ land, therefore, like native peoples of North America who, according to the non-law U.S. Indian law, only had the right of occupancy, the Palestinians could be killed and dispossessed by the God-given rightful owners, which they were in 1948.  Netanyahu has made such claims many times, as have his predecessors.  He calls for a holy war of annihilation against the Palestinians, based on the Hebrew Bible.  This is widely known and has a long history in the Zionist propaganda narrative that has allowed for seventy-five years of killing and the systematic shrinking of Palestinian land to its pitiful size today.

It is interesting to note that the three primary countries that intersect in the use of religious justification for colonial and imperial policies are England, the U.S., and Israel – together with the Papacy and its May 4, 1493 bull Inter Caetera issued by Pope Alexander the Sixth to declare Christian discovery.  I mention this since I am an Irish-American Catholic, and it was the Irish uprising against the English colonial occupiers that has become a key inspiration for anti-colonial rebels throughout the twentieth century and beyond.  I have taken inspiration from my Irish ancestors.  This is your heritage also, Bobby, so it becomes even more surprising that you, even as you tout the American Revolutionary War rebel fighters against the English colonialists, would support the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians.  As a lawyer, you must be aware of Federal Indian Law and how it, like all law, is rooted in a metaphysics of being human; has presuppositions that are brought to the bar, and in the case of federal Indian law, a Christian nomos at odds with that of Native peoples’.

You surely know that the Israeli assault on Gaza is a massive war crime according to international law, and even within the moderate Catholic just war theory, is, by its distorted proportionality, evil and must be rejected as immoral and a terrible sin.  You claim to want to end all wars but support the ongoing slaughter of thousands upon thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians, including so many children and women.  Nor have you said a word against Biden’s saber rattling with aircraft carriers, U.S. drones, and assistance for Israel’s bloodthirsty assault that raises the threat of a much wider war that could turn nuclear.

Yes, the question is why such silence, which you can break now.  I beg you to speak out.  You are a man of conscience.  MLK, Jr. speaks to us all still.

And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular – but one must take it simply because it is right.

Pax tibi,

Ed

November 12, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Violent clashes break out in northeast Syria in response to US airstrikes

The Cradle | November 9, 2023

Local sources in Syria’s Deir Ezzor governorate report that intense clashes broke out between the US occupation army and its Kurdish proxy – the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – against the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies stationed west of the Euphrates River in the morning of 9 November.

Attacks on the US-occupied territory east of the Euphrates started shortly after US jets bombed an alleged weapon storage facility the Pentagon says was used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced on Wednesday night that two F-15 jets bombed the facility, adding that attacks on US troops in West Asia “must stop.” According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), at least nine people were killed in the attack.

“If attacks by Iran’s proxies against US forces continue, we will not hesitate to take further necessary measures to protect our people,” Austin stressed.

As the clashes raged early on Thursday, missiles and drone strikes hit the US-occupation bases in Al-Omar and Conoco oil fields in Deir Ezzor. Earlier in the night, the Iraqi Resistance in Iraq (IRI) announced that a new round of airstrikes hit US troops stationed at the Al-Harir air base in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

The latest attacks on US troops in Iraq and Syria happened mere hours after Yemeni resistance group Ansarallah announced they had shot down an advanced US MQ9 Reaper drone that was “carrying out hostile, monitoring, and spying operations in Yemeni territorial waters.”

According to the Pentagon, 45 US troops have been injured in drone and rocket attacks by regional resistance forces since the start of the Gaza-Israel war.

In response to the growing threat from the Resistance Axis, Washington has deployed nearly a dozen warships and thousands of troops to the region. Special forces from the UK, Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands have also been deployed recently to provide support for Israel’s campaign of genocide in Gaza.

November 9, 2023 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Pax Americana delusion crumbles as American Empire is heading to a hopeless end

By Nebojsa Malic | Global Times | October 23, 2023

As US President Joe Biden argued for spending another $100 billion on Ukraine, Israel and the island of Taiwan in a televised speech last week, he made a curious claim that American leadership is what holds the world together.

This statement is obviously wrong. At best, American leadership is limited to what is known as the West, which basically amounts to NATO, Australia, Japan and South Korea, as well as a small number of countries in Latin America and Africa. The West’s military might was humiliated in Afghanistan two years ago, and on the fields of Ukraine since. Its economic prestige has been shaken as well. As for culture… the less said, the better.

Biden was articulating what the Western establishment desperately wants to cling to: the delusion of a Pax Americana that supposedly arose at the end of the Cold War, some 35 years ago. Everyone was supposed to embrace liberal democracy and usher in the end of history in which the rules-based world order would reign forever.

Take it from someone who was there at its founding: Pax Americana never really existed.

The name itself is a reference to Pax Romana, the order imposed by the Roman Empire – with fire and sword – over much of Europe, North Africa and the Levant 2,000 years ago. The Romans were harsh; Tacitus famously described it in the famous epigram, stating that they created a desert and called it peace. Yet a peace it was, with lands under Roman rule enjoying technology and a level of civilization that would not be seen again for hundreds of years after the empire’s demise.

Has the American empire, such as it is, created anything of the kind? Hardly. Take the current situation in West Asia, where Washington is not only unable to stop the carnage between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but unwilling to even try. The historic Abraham Accords of the previous presidency may as well not exist at all.

Africa is in turmoil, with country after country in the Sahel rejecting the West and its never-ending anti-terrorism operations that somehow never get rid of terrorists. Latin America also seems to have spurned Washington. Venezuela has defeated the US plot to install an interim president. When El Salvador demonstrated that restoring law and order is not just possible but practical, the US NGOs actually protested about the human rights of organized criminals.

The historic nuclear deal with Iran that was torn up within a couple of years showed that the US does not keep their side of the bargain. The scramble to flee Afghanistan, as the US-backed regime crumbled before the Taliban, even before American boots were off the ground, ended up seared into the eyes of the world back in August 2021.

Russia had offered the West a partnership, but was rejected. To ensure that countries in the post-Soviet space did not get out of line, the West created “color revolutions,” once described as a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in Western branding and mass marketing. In reality, this was a template for winning other people’s elections.

A euphoric British reporter wrote those words about the 2004 coup in Ukraine. A decade later, the US-backed another – leading to the separation of Crimea, the rebellion in Donbass and the war that Moscow finally openly joined in 2022, when all other choices had been exhausted.

A “color revolution” was carried out in 2000, in Serbia, after NATO failed to achieve regime change with the 1999 air war. NATO occupied Kosovo and declared the Serbian province an “independent state” in 2008. Contrary to Western pronouncements, that did not resolve the conflict, nor did it make the people there more prosperous.

Then in 2003, the US led the illegal invasion of Iraq. Weakened by a decade of war, the US-backed Iraqi government then almost collapsed to ISIS, which arose on the winds of the Arab Spring – a chain of “color revolutions” in North Africa and West Asia that promised prosperity and peace, but brought only war and suffering. Just ask the Libyans and the Syrians.

The fraud of Pax Americana began in the 1990s, in the ruins of Yugoslavia – my country of birth. The US had backed the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina to reject a political deal with the Serbs and Croats, plunging that former republic into civil war. Then they repeatedly sabotaged the UN and EU attempts to broker a peace, so that NATO could make a grand entrance in 1995 and save the day like the cavalry, just like in an old Western movie.

As it turned out, the American Empire was not indispensable. It could not create peace or prosperity around the world, only chaos and strife. These days, others have taken up the job of making people’s lives better, for example the BRICS+ group, who are not so much opposed to the West as determined to leave it behind in the blood-soaked mud of its own imperial failure.

The author is a Serbian-American journalist. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

November 8, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

US Lawmaker Slams Pro-Israel Lobby: ‘I Don’t Give a F*** About AIPAC’

Sputnik – 07.11.2023

A congressional lawmaker from Wisconsin recently took the gloves off in an interview with US media about the influence of the Zionist group in Washington politics.

US Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) sharply criticized the influence of the pro-Israel lobby in US politics on Monday, singling out the role of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

“It’s time to call them out for what they are – a front group for conservative policy here in the US – instead of being afraid of them,” said Pocan in an interview with US media.

“I don’t give a f*** about AIPAC – period. I think they’re a cancerous presence on our democracy and politics in general, and if I can be a surgeon, that’s great.”

The statement represents the latest salvo in an ongoing feud between Pocan and the historically influential lobbying group. Last month, AIPAC accused Pocan and several Democratic members of the US House of “trying to keep Hamas in power” in a post on the X social media platform.

The accusation came after several lawmakers voted against a bill expressing unconditional support for Israel’s military action in Gaza (Pocan was not among them). Nine Democratic lawmakers were joined by US Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) in opposing the bill, with Massie stating opposition to the bill’s support for sanctions and implied future commitment of US troops in the conflict.

I condemn the barbaric attack on Israel and I affirm Israel’s right to defend itself.

However, I will not be voting for House Resolution 771 today because:

1) It calls for sanctions on a sovereign country. Sanctions are a prelude to war and hurt the citizens of the country more…

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) October 25, 2023

Pocan responded on the platform, posting “AIPAC is good at not telling the truth… We just don’t support killing kids, which it seems you do.”
At least 4,100 minors and 10,022 people in total have been killed in Israel’s ongoing attacks on the besieged Gaza Strip over the last month, according to latest figures provided by officials.

Additionally, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed 155 people in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, territory illegally occupied by Israel under international law since 1967.

Pro-Israel lobbying groups like AIPAC have helped make Israel the single largest recipient of US foreign aid since World War II, procuring as much as $3.9 billion in yearly assistance for the country.

Criticizing Israel and the influence of the pro-Israel lobby has proven taboo in US politics. US Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), one of only three Muslim members of US Congress, was denounced as antisemitic after criticizing the influence of Zionist lobbyists in 2019. The incident saw her attract criticism from prominent members of her own party, including Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former US President Bill Clinton.

Omar was again castigated after a post on social media criticizing Israel in 2021. Omar shared recordings of a threatening voicemail she received in response to public criticism against her at the time, including threatening messages such as “Muslims are terrorists” and one caller saying he hopes her campaign volunteers “get what’s f***ing coming to you.” Public treatment of Muslim officials such as Omar and fellow Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), the only Palestinian member of US Congress, has prompted discussion of the role of Islamophobia and Orientalism in public life.

Orientalism is prejudice against people from the Middle East and Middle Eastern culture. The term was popularized by Palestinian scholar Edward Said in his 1978 book “Orientalism,” which argued that domination of the region is fueled by Western contempt and stereotypical assumptions about the Arab world.

A recent study by researchers at Brown University found that as many as 3.8 million people have been killed amidst US-backed military action in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and other countries in the 21st century. US interference in the region has been ongoing for decades, and includes a CIA-backed coup in Iran in 1953, US funding of Mujahideen forces in Afghanistan since the late 1970s, and continued US military support for Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.

November 8, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Islamophobia, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

NATO ally warns US about ‘tarnished reputation’ – media

RT | November 7, 2023

Türkiye has told the US that its stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict has both tarnished its reputation and put the entire world community in a tough spot, Hurriyet reported on Tuesday.

According to the Turkish daily, Ankara conveyed that message during a meeting between Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday, which concerned the current crisis in the Middle East.

The sit-down came amid heightened tensions between Türkiye and Israel, Washington’s key ally in the region, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently accusing the Jewish state of “war crimes” in Gaza and denouncing its ground assault as “an open, vicious massacre.”

Israel maintains that it has no intention of harming the civilian population in the Palestinian enclave, stressing that its main objective is to defeat Hamas, which launched a surprise attack on the country on October 7.

Hurriyet claimed that Fidan and his delegation “clearly explained” to Blinken what was happening in Gaza, and that the US vow to stand by Israel while refusing to call for a ceasefire, was “putting everyone in trouble.”

“You are also putting your own image in trouble because you are seen as the patron of the crimes committed by Israel,” the delegation reportedly said.

Following the meeting, the two sides did not issue a joint statement or hold a joint press conference. Speaking to reporters, however, Blinken said that he had a very “productive” conversation with Fidan, including about the need to “significantly expand humanitarian assistance” to Gaza and avoid escalating the conflict.

His remarks came after US President Joe Biden called for a humanitarian “pause” in hostilities. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later signaled that his government was open to “little pauses” in the fighting.

After Hamas attacked Israel last month, the latter responded with air and missile strikes on Gaza while announcing a “complete siege” of the enclave. To date, the fighting has claimed the lives of more than 10,000 Palestinians, and more than 1,400 Israelis.

Meanwhile, Politico reported on Monday that a group of low- and mid-level US diplomats had urged the Biden administration to condemn Israel’s bombing of civilians and demand a ceasefire. They reportedly argued that failure to do so “contributes to regional public perceptions that the United States is a biased and dishonest actor.”

November 7, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Let’s Not Forget the U.S. Mass Killings of Children

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | November 7, 2023

While some American mainstream commentators express concern about the large death toll among children in Gaza, we mustn’t forget that when it is the U.S. government — and, specifically, the U.S. national-security branch of the government — that is killing large numbers of children, most U.S. mainstream commentators go into silent mode or, even worse, play supportive roles in such killings.

Who can forget the 1990s, when U.S. officials were killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, with nary a concern expressed by U.S. mainstream commentators? Oh, sure, it’s true that those killings were being inflicted by economic sanctions, rather than bombs, but so what? The Iraqi children were just as dead. What difference does it make whether a child is killed by sanctions instead of bombs?

The official mindset toward the mass numbers of Iraqi children being killed by the U.S. government was perfectly reflected in the infamous response that Madeleine Albright gave in 1996 to Leslie Stahl of Sixty Minutes. Stahl pointed out that half-a-million Iraqi children had been killed by U.S. and UN sanctions, more than the number killed at Hiroshima as a result of the U.S. government’s targeting of the civilian population, including children, of that city with a nuclear bomb. Stahl asked Albright, “Is the price worth it?” Albright replied, “We think the price is worth it.”

Albright was the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. As such, she was the official spokesperson for the U.S. government to the world. She was serving in the Clinton administration. No one within the government criticized her statement and there was little, if any, condemnation among U.S. mainstream commentators. That’s because her callous statement undoubtedly reflected the mindset of both her cohorts in the U.S. government and the mindset of the government’s loyal supporters in the mainstream press. That mindset was a classic example of Hannah Arendt’s term “the banality of evil.”

What was the “it” to which Albright was referring? The “it” was regime change, a U.S. foreign-policy concept that has been at the center of the U.S. national-security state ever since this governmental structure was brought into existence after the Second World War. 

U.S. officials decided that they wanted to get rid of Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, and replace him with another U.S. stooge. But Saddam refused to budge. Thus, the purpose of the sanctions was threefold: (1) to induce Saddam to resign, after which the deadly sanctions would be lifted; (2) induce the Iraqi people to rise up in a violent revolution against Saddam’s government, which would produce more massive deaths; or (3) incite a coup in which Iraq’s national-security establishment assassinated or otherwise removed Saddam from power and replaced him with a U.S.-approved puppet.

According to a review at National Catholic Reporter of Joy Gordon’s excellent 2012 book Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions, “UNICEF documented the deaths of 500,000 children under 5 from dysentery and malnutrition (Gordon says the latest figure is 880,000). All three U.S. administrations — Bush, Clinton, Bush — whenever challenged on its responsibility for an epidemic or a famine, simply blamed Hussein.”

How could they blame Saddam Hussein? They said that all he had to do to stop the killings of the Iraqi children was resign. U.S. officials made it clear that once he resigned, they would lift their deadly sanctions and, therefore, no more Iraqi children would have to die. Therefore, in their twisted and perverted logic, they said it was Saddam, not U.S. officials who were imposing and enforcing the sanctions, who was actually responsible for the deaths caused by the sanctions.

A 2003 article entitled “Sanctioned Genocide” stated: 

The U.N. humanitarian reports on the blockade’s effects on Iraqi children tell a grisly tale. In December 1995, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reported 567,000 Iraqi children had died as a direct consequence of economic sanctions. In March 1996, a World Health Organization study released found the blockade had caused a six-fold increase in the mortality rate of Iraqi children under age five. UNICEF reported in October 1996 that 4,500 Iraqi children under five were dying every month as a result of sanctions-induced starvation and disease.

Two high UN officials, Dennis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck resigned their posts because they did not want to be part of what they labeled as genocide. In a 2021 interview, Halliday stated:

This completely undermined the water treatment and distribution system of Iraq, which depended on electricity to drive it, and drove people to use contaminated water from the Tigris and the Euphrates. That was the beginning of the death-knell for young children, because mothers were not breast-feeding, they were feeding their children with child formula, but mixing it with foul water from the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers.

In addition, these conflicts introduced a new weapon called depleted uranium, which was used by the U.S. forces driving the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait. That was used again in southern Iraq in the Basra area, and led to a massive accumulation of nuclear debris which led to leukemia in children, which took three, four, or five years to become evident.

When I got to Iraq in 1998, the hospitals in Baghdad, and also of course in Basra and other cities, were full of children suffering from leukemia. Those children, we reckon perhaps 200,000 children, died of leukemia. At the same time, Washington and London withheld some of the medicines and treatment components that leukemia requires, again, it seemed, in a genocidal manner, denying Iraqi children the right to remain alive.

It’s worth mentioning that prior to the U.S. killing of Iraqi children as a way to get regime change in Iraq, Saddam Hussein had been a partner and ally of the U.S. national-security state during the 1980s. That was when U.S. officials were helping Iraqi forces to kill Iranian citizens in Iraq’s war of aggression against that country. See my articles “Where Did Iraq Get Its Weapons of Mass Destruction” and “Where Did Iraq Get Its Weapons of Mass Destruction, Part 2.”

Of course, Iran is pertinent to this discussion because while U.S. officials no longer target the people of Iraq with deadly sanctions, they continue to target people in other nations, including children, with death by sanctions. Iran, along with Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, Russia, China, and other targets of regime change, come to mind, with nary a concern expressed by most U.S. mainstream commentators. 

November 7, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , | Leave a comment

US, Israel to open second front in Lebanon

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | NOVEMBER 6, 2023

The announcement late Sunday night by the US Central Command [CENTCOM] headquartered in Doha about the arrival of an Ohio-class American nuclear submarine in its “area of responsibility” presages a significant escalation of the situation around the Palestine-Israel conflict.

It is very rare that the use of these submarines is publicised. CENTCOM provided no additional details but it posted an image that showed an Ohio-class submarine in Egypt’s Suez Canal. Interestingly, CENTCOM also separately shared an image of a nuclear-capable B-1 bomber operating in the Middle East. 

Taken together, these US deployments, coming on top of the formidable presence of two aircraft carriers and warships hundreds of advanced jet fighters, are with an eye on “the other side of the equation,” as Secretary of State Antony Blinken quaintly described Hamas, Hezbullah, and Iran during his latest visit to Tel Aviv on Friday.

In a related development, perhaps, the CIA director, William Burns arrived in Israel on Sunday for urgent consultations. The New York Times reported that the US is “looking to expand its intelligence sharing with Israel.” 

Arguably, the most charitable explanation for the deployment of a US nuclear submarine, which form part of the Pentagon’s “nuclear triad”, near the war zone is that the Biden Administration is preparing for an Israeli escalation into Lebanon to draw out Hezbollah, which may in turn trigger an Iranian reaction. 

In his speech on Friday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrullah seemed to anticipate precisely such a turn of events when he warned the US explicitly of consequences that couldn’t be any different from the catastrophic American involvement in Lebanon’s civil war in the early 1980s. Ironically, this is also the 40th anniversary year of the suicide bombing of the barracks housing US forces in Beirut International Airport in October 1983 in which 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers were killed forcing a US withdrawal from Lebanon. 

Clearly, the locus of the US strategy in the present Middle situation may be shifting from diplomacy, which has lost traction. Blinken’s desperate attempts to address the mounting international criticism of Israel’s horrific war crimes by diverting attention to a “humanitarian pause” in the fighting has been unceremoniously shot down by Netanyahu. 

The point is, after bombarding Gaza and its people with artillery and bombs, the Israeli army moved in on Friday. So far, it has reportedly advanced to the outskirts of Gaza City but not entered the Hamas stronghold. Fierce urban fighting is expected when it does. 

Equally, the Biden administration’s clumsy attempt to promote a vague outline for a post-war Gaza that might include a combination of a revitalised Palestinian Authority, a peacekeeping force, etc. has been met with a distinct lack of enthusiasm at Blinken’s meeting in the weekend in Amman with the Arab foreign ministers – from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates – who instead demanded an immediate ceasefire, while Blinken said the US would not push for one. 

Blinken travelled to Ramallah from Amman where the head of the Palestine Authority Mahmoud Abbas apparently gave him short shrift saying that the PA would only be ready to shoulder full responsibility for the Gaza Strip in the framework of a “comprehensive political solution” that would include the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza — and, furthermore, that security and peace can only be achieved by ending the occupation of the territories of the “State of Palestine,” and by recognising East Jerusalem as its capital. The meeting lasted for less than an hour and ended without public statements. 

Meanwhile, China and the UAE (by the way, Israel’s Abraham Accords partner) have since called for a closed-door meeting of the UN Security Council in another attempt to seek an immediate ceasefire, which the Biden Administration will certainly oppose. Suffice to say, the Biden Administration feels boxed in and the only way out is for something to give way through the exercise of coercive means.

The US is watching with frustration as new regional equations are appearing among Muslim nations. The foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia held another phone conversation today. The OIC later announced that an extraordinary summit will be held in Riyadh on November 12 at the request of the current chairman, Saudi Arabia, to discuss Israel’s attacks on the Palestinian people. 

As the death toll in Gaza crosses 10,000, feelings are indeed running high in the Muslim world. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said today that “all the evidence and indications show the direct involvement of the Americans in running the war” in Gaza. Khamenei added that as the war goes on, the reasons behind the US’s direct role would become more explicit.

The Fars News Agency, which is close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, also disclosed that Khamenei held a “recent meeting in Tehran” with the Head of Hamas political bureau Ismail Haniyeh where he told the latter that Tehran’s support for the resistance groups is its “permanent policy.”   

Evidently, Tehran no longer sees a problem in acknowledging its dealings with the resistance groups. This is a paradigm shift indicative of the shift in the power dynamic, which the US and Israel seem to have decided to counter through use of force where diplomacy failed to make headway to isolate Iran. 

The Chief of the Israeli General Staff, Herzi Halevi, said on Sunday during a meeting in the Northern Command, “We are ready to strike in the north at any moment. We understand that it can happen… We have a clear goal of restoring a significantly better security situation at the borders [with Lebanon], not only in the Gaza Strip.” 

No power on earth can stop Israel in its tracks now. Its existence is inextricably linked to this war which will ensure abiding US commitment to its security as a key template of American global strategies for the foreseeable future. Therefore, Israel’s best chance of survival lies in expanding the scope of the war in Gaza into Lebanon — and possibly even into Syria — shoulder to shoulder with the Americans. 

There is no question that the location of the US nuclear submarine to the east of Suez is an attempt to intimidate Iran from intervening, as Israel, with US backing, proceed to open a second front. The Israeli authorities have announced evacuation of people from settlements located in a zone up to five kms from the border with Lebanon. 

A prolonged war of indeterminate timeline is set to begin in the Middle East. The Middle East that emerged after World War II is breaking loose and drifting away into the chronicles of history. As the call of the jihad begins, there is no knowing how the 80-year old American president will respond. 

No, this won’t turn into a world war. It will be fought in the Middle East itself, but its outcome will decisively impact the making of a new world order.

November 6, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Iran FM says Tehran received new message from Washington on Gaza

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian
Press TV – November 6, 2023

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian says Tehran has received a new message from Washington claiming that the US seeks a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, but they continue to support Israel’s genocide in the Palestinian territory in practice.

The minister, who was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a Monday meeting between Iranian and Iraqi heads of governments in Tehran, said, however, that the message did not correspond to what the US has done in practice in Gaza where it has supported the Israeli crimes against the civilians.

“The Americans … delivered a message to us in the past three days (claiming) that they are after ceasefire and have carried out efforts in this regard,” said Amir-Abdollahian, but “they, however, back mass killing and genocide” of people in Gaza.

“We hope that the US will soon change its policy and stop supporting the occupying party,” he said.

The US had sent similar messages to Iran, a country with influence over resistance groups in Palestine, since the Israeli aggression on Gaza started on October 7, according to statements by Amir-Abdollahian and other authorities.

Amir-Abdollahian also commented about reports suggesting that his US counterpart Antony Blinken had arrived in the Iraqi capital Baghdad earlier on Monday while wearing a bullet-proof vest out of fears that he could be targeted because of his support for the Israeli carnage in Gaza.

“This is the reality about the US role in the region,” said the diplomat.

Resistance groups in Iraq have launched attacks on US military bases in the Arab country in response to Washington’s offering of direct and open support for the Israeli attacks on Gaza.

Those groups and peers in other countries of the region have warned that such attacks on US interests could expand if Israel does not stop its brutal aggression against Gaza.

Gaza health authorities said on Monday that the number of people killed in 31 days of Israel attacks had exceeded 10,000 with children accounting for nearly half of the death toll.

November 6, 2023 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What Message Does US Tomahawk-Carrying Submarine Send Amid Gaza War?

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 06.11.2023

An Ohio-class guided missile submarine arrived in the Middle East on Sunday, as per a social media post by the US Central Command.

The Ohio-class guided missile submarine (SSGN) – depicted entering the Suez Canal northeast of Cairo by the US Central Command – is one of the four US underwater craft of this type converted to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles rather than nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.

Per the US press, each SSGN sub can carry 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles, which is 50% more than a US guided-missile destroyer and nearly four times what the US Navy’s newest attack submarines are equipped with.

The Tomahawk cruise missile can strike targets precisely from 1,000 miles away and has been used in combat more than 2,300 times by the US and its allies. Most recently, US Navy warships and subs fired 66 Tomahawk missiles at Syrian government facilities in 2018.

According to the US press, the heavily armed submarine sends “a message of deterrence” to Israel’s “regional adversaries, as the Biden administration “tries to avoid a broader conflict amid the Israel-Hamas war.”

The deployment of the submarine is triggering concerns, as per the DC-based think tank Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. The crux of the matter is that the US has already amassed a huge military force in the Middle East over the unfolding Gaza war.

The think tank particularly refers to:

· two aircraft carrier strike groups, with roughly 7,500 personnel on each;
· two guided-missile destroyers;
· nine air squadrons (deployed in the Eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea region);
· 4,000 troops dispatched to the region, with another 2,000 on standby, in addition to roughly 30,000 troops already stationed in the region.

These figures do not include “several dozen” commandos deployed to Israel in order to “actively help the Israelis to do a number of things,” as per Christopher P. Maier, an assistant secretary of defense.

On top of that there are US top military advisers on the ground in Israel to work out strategies to defeat Hamas together with the Israel Defense Forces.

“The United States is barreling toward another war in the Middle East,” Jon Hoffman, a policy analyst in defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute, wrote for RS on Monday. “The conflict between Israel and Hamas is rapidly escalating across the region and risks dragging the United States directly into the fray.”

November 6, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Tulsi Gabbard’s Warmongering is Nothing New

By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | November 5, 2023

Some people are expressing surprise about the warmongering comments Tulsi Gabbard has been making in regard to the Israel war that has been ramping up over the last few weeks.

I thought she was for peace; how can she be saying this? That’s what some people are asking when discovering the recent comments of Gabbard who had worked hard to portray herself in the 2020 presidential election as the candidate for voters favoring peace.

The recent comments by Gabbard that have surprised people include this statement at Twitter on October 9, two days after the Hamas attack that sparked the new war:

The United States must stand with Israel in the face of this terror attack by the Islamist terrorist group Hamas. This is just the latest example of the greater war being waged by both Sunni and Shia Islamist jihadists throughout the world. This should be a wakeup call to leaders everywhere that Islamist jihadists are the greatest short and long-term threat to the safety, security, and freedom of the American people, and people throughout the world.

Saying the United States must “stand with Israel” is a shorthand expression politicians in Washington, DC routinely use to declare that they support the United States government providing whatever aid Israel requests to pursue Israel’s “national security” related objectives. Indeed, Gabbard, a former member of the US House of Representatives, mentioned this week in a Fox News interview with host Laura Ingraham that House members can demonstrate they “stand with Israel” by voting to provide Israel with the roughly 14 billion dollars in aid for Israel’s war effort that was then under consideration in the legislative body.

The House on Thursday approved legislation, HR 6126, to provide this aid. (This money will supplement the billions the US already doles to Israel yearly.) As Gabbard would put it, the House “stood with Israel.”

While Gabbard’s support for the US jumping in to help Israel pursue its new war is surprising to some people, it is in line with a warning I provided in February of 2019 — two weeks into her presidential run. Here is what I stated then:

In 2015, Gabbard spoke regarding foreign policy in her speech at a Christians United for Israel conference. Comments in that speech suggest Gabbard’s foreign policy may be more interventionist than that of President Donald Trump. In comparison with Trump, Gabbard seems in that speech as antagonistic toward Iran, at least as devoted to Israel, more devoted to the Kurds, and much more devoted to the “they attack us because we are free” perspective on terrorism that has been at the heart of the Global War on Terror.

Check out Gabbard’s speech I mentioned here. It is an eye-opener for people who had fallen for the Tulsi Gabbard is an antiwar presidential candidate charade.

Copyright © 2023 by RonPaul Institute.

November 5, 2023 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

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