Instilling fear in the minds of the public has been a powerful tool of social control since the dawn of human civilization. Today, it is clear that the Western elite are using fear and terror as a means of ushering in totalitarian control. The mainstream media has been force-feeding the Western public a steady diet of war, fear and terror since the neocons “new Pearl Harbor event” in 2001.
After the latest terror attack in Belgium, the media is playing its usual role of amplifying the incident beyond any rational comprehension. The majority of the public are caught up in the vortex of emotive propaganda and sensationalist rhetoric. Images of terror; horror; fear; and panic dominate the news landscape. The main message is that you should be afraid.
The only solution to latest crisis (in the eyes of the elite) is for even greater spying powers and totalitarian control. Hillary Clinton, the political prostitute par excellence, called for more surveillance and an expansion of the police state in response to the attacks in Belgium. Both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump support a further erosion of civil liberties and have called for increasing surveillance of Muslims (Trump even advocated torturing terror suspects).
Yet not one political figure has called for prosecuting CIA and other US officials for war crimes, after years of the West openly funding and arming terrorists in Syria. Accountability is what is needed, not authoritarianism.
Every terror attack produces the same response by the elite: more surveillance, more state power, more war, more barbarism and more control. It’s frankly boring. You know what the puppets are going to say prior to them opening their mouths. It was the same response after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, when David Cameron was pushing for greater surveillance powers in the UK and leading the charge for an insane ban on all encryption.
We know that NSA spying has nothing to do with stopping terrorism, and everything to do with controlling the domestic population. In the words of the high-level NSA whistleblower, William Binney: “The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control.”
We know that Western intelligence agencies and their regional allies were instrumental in supporting the rise of ISIS (and other terror groups), by funding and arming these factions in a failed attempt to topple al-Assad. In the words of the former US military intelligence chief, Michael T. Flynn, the Obama administration took the “willful decision” to support the rise of these radical forces.
The criminal Western elite have no intention of winning the ‘war on terror,’ as the ‘war on terror’ was always designed to be perennial. The elite create the terror groups because without the faux ‘war on terror,’ the surveillance state loses the entire pretext on which it was built.
For any totalitarian elite, it is essential that “a state of war should exist,” as Orwell wrote in 1984:
“It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist… The consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable situation of survival” (2008 edition: p.200 & p.201).
As the elite create a perpetual state of war, chaos, fear and terror, the people of the West increasingly allow more power to be concentrated in the hands of the ‘superclass.’ If the Western public continues to be duped into believing that this phony ‘war on terror’ is real, the elite will use this as a pretext to completely destroy civil liberties and any semblance of freedom in the West.
Sometimes even to the most towering cynic, American hypocrisy is more than breathtaking.
As they lambast their latest “despot”, Syria’s President al-Assad — a man so popular in his country and the region that the US Embassy in Damascu had, by the end of 2006, devised a plan to oust him — arms sales to countries where human rights are not even a glimmer on the horizon have for the US (and UK) become an eye watering bonanza.
The latest jaw dropper, as Saudi Arabia continues to bombard Yemen with US and UK armaments dropped by US and UK-made aircraft, is sales worth $33 Billion in just eleven months to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) according to Defense News.
The GCC, a political and economic alliance of six Middle East countries, comprises of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman. It was established in the Saudi Capital, Riyadh, in May 1981.
Weapons sold to the alliance since May 2015 have included: “… ballistic missile defense capabilities, attack helicopters, advanced frigates and anti-armor missiles, according to David McKeeby, a spokesman for the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.”
“In addition, the U.S. government and industry also delivered 4,500 precision-guided munitions to the GCC countries in 2015, including 1,500 taken directly from U.S. military stocks – a significant action given our military’s own needs,” he added, stressing: “that the US government would like to continue to strengthen partnerships with Kuwait and Qatar through defense sales and other security cooperation activities.”
A metaphor for our times that “partnerships” are “strengthened” with lethal weapons, not in trade of goods, foods, medical, educational or intellectual exchanges.
A fly or two in the oil of the wheels of the US arms trade is the two year delay in approval of sales 40 F/A-18 Super Hornets to Kuwait and Qatar and also 72 F-15 Silent Eagles to Qatar.
Suspicion has been voiced that this has something to do with a pending US-Israel military financing deal, a suggestion emphatically denied by Washington.
In the meantime as Yemen continues to be blitzed, with the UN stating that eighty percent of the population are in need of humanitarian assistance, 2-4 million are displaced and approaching four thousand dead.
It seems Saudi and its allies have more than enough ordinance to continue the slaughter and more than enough US and UK military advisors to help them in the decimation.
Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist with special knowledge of Iraq. Author, with Nikki van der Gaag, of Baghdad in the Great City series for World Almanac books, she has also been Senior Researcher for two Award winning documentaries on Iraq, John Pilger’s Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq and Denis Halliday Returns for RTE (Ireland.)
[The condemnation of Radovan Karadzic to forty years of imprisonment by the International Crime Tribunal-Yugoslavia occasions these reflections.]
They come; they see; people die. They laugh. Or say it was worth it. Their maps are not a territory inhabited by living beings; they are military targets. They bomb from safe altitudes, no lower than 15,000 feet (Yugoslavia, 1999, for example) to protect their own volunteer warriors. In 38,000 sorties and 22,000 tons of bombs in three months (Yugoslavia, 1999), they never lost a plane. They promise the people their bombs will not harm a hair on their heads; then, they bomb markets and bridges at noon, when people are at their thickest; the say they are as careful at noon as they are at midnight. They claim they have nothing against the people—only against their leaders; then they bomb water supplies, electrical grids, schools, hospitals, churches, libraries, museums. They hold civilians in their power, hostages to their air force, their cluster and phosphorus bombs. They poison the land with depleted uranium and raise whole crops of human cancers for generations. They send drones. They fund, train, and arm cutthroat armies. They terrorize civilians for their political ends. They are the humanitarians of the “international community,” and they have nothing to envy the conquistadores, the exterminators of native people, the enslavers, the imperialists of times gone by. They are the agents of collateral genocide.
They are the terror they claim to fight, and they dress it in noble words.
“Operation Iraqi Freedom” (9 March to 9 April 2003) claimed from 40,000 to 100,000 Iraqi military deaths. “Insurgent” deaths (April 2003 to January 2009) amounted to between 26, 320 and 27, 000. Iraqi civilian deaths are estimated from between 190,000 and one million. The death toll for “Operation Enduring Freedom-Afghanistan” (2001-2014) adds up to 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan. By contrast, the NATO British contingent in Afghanistan, a total of 134,780 troops, lost 447. At a conservative estimate the total deaths caused by the “war on terror” in these three war zones alone are 1.3 million (estimates from Iraqi Body Count, The Lancet, Physicians for Social Responsibility). But these estimates include only deaths resulting from violent conflict. They do not include deaths resulting from the aftermath of war—destroyed infrastructure and support institutions. From sanctions: the regime of sanction in Iraq, August 6th (Hiroshima Day) 1991 to 2003, claimed 1.7 million Iraqi lives, according to UN data.
How do they get away with it? By thwarting, strong-arming, co-opting, bribing, rewriting, and abusing international law: the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the 1976 amended Geneva Conventions (on the laws and customs of war, which the US did not sign), the Charter of the United Nations, and their own constitutions. They wage wars of aggression in the name of abstractions or noble causes—“the war on terror,” R2P, “human rights,” and the prize, “genocide,” debasing the term, if convenient, to a street rumble between two ethnic groups.
What if the United Nations issued a resolution banning wars on abstractions? The “wars on terror” would become illegal (and, no, they didn’t end with Obama; they just became the “humanitarian wars”). The Security Council could order a “global police action” to sweep up and “neutralize” the army of cutthroats. So far, only Russia has shown, with actions in Syria, that it is willing to act to remove the terrorist scourge, whose atrocities proliferate and extend from the Middle East, through the heart of Africa, to European capitals. As I write, the Syrian Army, backed by Russian airstrikes, has retaken Palmyra, a significant strategic victory, opening the way to liberation of Raqqa, the IS stronghold, in the east of Syria.
But, in fact, there is no need for such a resolution. The UN Charter forbids wars of aggression. It specifies that breaking the peace to wage a “war of choice” is the “supreme international crime.” The provisions of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court (ICC) include jurisdiction over crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes but exclude the “supreme international crime,” the crime of aggression. This exclusion resulted at the instigation of the US in 1998-99, just as it prepared to attack Serbia in the Kosovo War. The US signed (Clinton) and then unsigned (Bush) the statute, without ever intending to ratify it, but it meddled, bullied and coerced so as to make it clear who was in charge of writing and unwriting the laws, who had the right to impunity ad infinitum, based on its assumed altruistic morality of intervening to adjust the affairs of the world.
The US exercised every political muscle to subordinate the ICC to the authority of the Security Council, where it could exercise its veto power to deep-six any prosecution of crimes it opposed. It favored ad-hoc tribunals such as the International Tribunal for Crimes in Yugoslavia (ICTY), instituted by the Security Council in 1993, at the request of the US. A virtual kangaroo court, it abducted and tried Slobodan Milosevic at the Hague in a show trial for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes—without any substantial evidence, limiting time for cross-examination by the defense, using pseudo-legal pretexts to harass and obstruct it, treating the defense contemptuously, and in every way demonstrating that the tribunal was politically motivated, a feature contrary to the spirit and purpose of criminal law. The tribunal refused to investigate credible evidence charging NATO with war crimes, though it was charged with investigating crimes committed by all parties in the tragic secession wars of Yugoslavia. An example will suffice to demonstrate the political bias of the tribunal: Milosevic was indicted, among other spurious charges, for murdering 374 people; NATO killed 500 civilians. Only one of the two was investigated.
Failing to secure impunity for aggression by placing the ICC under the authority of the Security Council, the US insisted on an amendment, preventing the court from exercising that jurisdiction, until seven eights of ratifying states agreed on a definition of aggression and the means by which it could be prosecuted. Until the angels stop dancing on the pin of that prevarication, the US and its junior partners in the “international community” can freely exercise their right to crimes of aggression. This is how the ICC lists the crimes of aggression it is prevented from prosecuting:
*Invasion or attack by armed forces against territory
*Military occupation of territory
*Annexation of territory
*Bombardment against territory
*Use of any weapons against territory
*Blockade of ports or coasts
*Attack on the land, sea. Or air forces or marine and air fleets
*The use of armed forces which are within the territory of another state by agreement, but in contravention of the conditions of the agreement
*Allowing territory to be used by another state to perpetrate an act of aggression against a third state
*Sending armed bands, groups, irregulars, or mercenaries to carry out acts of armed force
Tell me one crime of aggression the “international community,” the dogs of war, has not committed with impunity since the unfortunate downfall of the Soviet Union in their unopposed quest for recolonizing the world? Do you wonder that Putin is garnering so much global popularity for insisting on acting within the law? How many Security Council resolutions have authorized actions by the “international community” in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen—not to mention actions in martyred Africa or the underhanded counter-reform chicaneries in Latin America? None. This is a period of American absolutism, which is wiping clean the rule of law off the face of the earth. The result is creeping barbarism. No one is safe from Timbuktu to Brussels. Anarchy is indeed loosed upon the world.
Take Libya: now that it is not even a functional state, does any law there even apply? Why do the cowards who destroyed it bother to twist themselves into knots, like serpents in a pit, to justify a second intervention? Why don’t they maraud right in—like ISIS does? Because cowards cannot admit to cowardice, much less submit to judgment–and because the tatters they made of the law are the last cover for these scoundrels’ moral nakedness. They drag others into their bolgia of deepening Hell. Right now, for NATO member Italy, it’s a question of complying with US request, already approved in late February, to use the military base at Sigonella, Sicily, to send drones to Libya to protect American Special Forces while they clear out ISIS. Since when have Special Forces required the assistance of a mechanical Mary Poppins? They’re supposed to be in dangerous situation, by definition. It’s not conscience that “makes cowards of [them] all.” It’s criminality. If Qaddafi had not been sadistically and illegally removed (check list of crimes of aggression above) there would be no ISIS in Libya.
Never mind: Sigonella will be used for American drone raids in Libya. Opposition in the Italian Parliament and public opinion are vocally against this use, so the Italian government is presenting the project as “defensive,” just as in 1999 the formula of “integrated defense” was deployed to justify the use of Italian Tornadoes bombing Yugoslavia. Drones in this case will not be “defensive.” Contrary to the idea of protecting Special Forces, drones depend on precisely those forces on the ground to furnish the exact coordinates of the target the drone must hit and destroy. Precisionattacks will be launched from Sigonella not “integrated defense.”
And then what? Retaliation— Paris, Istanbul, Beirut, Brussels in Rome or Milan? State of siege in Italy? Suspension of civil liberties? Hecatombs of dead civilians? Well may the Italian government resent the publicity the United States has bestowed on the accord over the use of Sigonella. They would have preferred to keep the accord secret, hoping that ISIS wouldn’t notice Italy’s collaboration with US forces in Libya. Fat chance, but cowards and gangsters think like that—make it look like an accident or construct “plausible deniability.”
“Your wars; our dead” is a popular poster in protests against wars in Italy. It expresses the consciousness of the ultimate cowardice of these wars, and, indeed, of all aggressive wars.
Luciana Bohne is co-founder of Film Criticism, a journal of cinema studies, and teaches at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania. She can be reached at: lbohne@edinboro.edu
Free-market consultants in Britain are taking hundreds of millions of pounds ring-fenced to alleviate poverty in the developing world, as the government continues with its agenda of privatizing aid, a damning report has warned.
A study conducted by British NGO Global Justice Now (GJN) raises grave concerns over the sheer amount of aid money the Department for International Development (DfID) has given to consultants Adam Smith International (ASI) for overseas aid projects.
It found that ASI has won a minimum of £450 million (about US$640 million) in aid-funded contracts over the last five years. DfID funneled almost £90 million of its budget through the consultancy firm, more than the total amount given to human rights and women’s rights groups. This figure is almost double that spent on projects to tackle Aids and HIV, according to the report.
The study examined how much of DfID’s work was geared towards supporting market-based development and the private sector in poor states. Recent projects included backing for a “business advocacy capacity development program” in Zimbabwe, and projects to increase private schooling in Kenya.
The report also analyzed a number of existing case studies on ASI projects, such as the consultancy firm’s role in privatizing Nigeria’s energy system and making Afghanistan “investor friendly” by helping to rewrite energy extraction legislation there.
The NGO said the legislation, which was later passed into law, lacks transparency and does not protect local citizens’ rights. ASI has also helped to develop new mining legislation and regulations in Papua New Guinea, where the energy extraction technique has a legacy of violent conflict. GJN’s report says the laws have been branded “authoritarian and regressive” by critics.
The NGO argues that Westminster’s increasing use of consultancy firms forces out smaller companies in impoverished states and highlights DfID’s tendency to embrace private partnerships and back private-sector development schemes that risk jeopardizing communities in the developing world. It has called on DfID to explain why it chooses to hire profit-driven British firms like ASI rather than using its own employees or companies in the developing world.
GJN also urged DfID to be more transparent on contractors’ costs, and to release a robust plan on spending more through organizations in developing countries.
DfID defended its use of private contractors, arguing British aid is assisting highly vulnerable people in crisis-ridden states.
“UK aid is focused on tackling extreme poverty, helping people in some of the most fragile and dangerous places on Earth, including war zones and disaster areas,” a spokeswoman for the government department told the Guardian.
“We draw on specialist expertise from charities, NGOs and the private sector to get the job done and get the best value for taxpayers.”
Labour’s Shadow Secretary for International Development Diane Abbott said the government must take a serious look at how aid money is spent.
“UK aid is being used to pay for consultants instead of alleviating poverty in the global south. We must look beyond simply spending 0.7 percent of UK GNI on aid, but look at how it is spent. UK aid should be first and foremost about tackling poverty and inequality and not benefitting the UK,” she said.
“We need to critically assess if the sort of free market reforms that Adam Smith International are enabling in the developing world, using UK taxpayers’ money, are actually helping to alleviate poverty or if they are making it worse.”
ASI defended itself against the allegations in the report.
“The vast majority of the world’s poor are in the informal private sector. To bring people out of poverty, one must address the factors that are keeping them poor,” the firm said in a statement.
“We engage with the private sector to reduce poverty by helping create jobs and make markets more accessible. This type of development is widely reflected in donor strategies and recognized in the 8th sustainable development goal.”
ASI stressed its “expert associates” and employees hail from diverse backgrounds, and are “all committed to poverty alleviation.” The think tank went on to claim the projects mentioned in GJN’s study had been misreported and “taken out of context.”
However, GJN’s campaigns and policy officer, Aisha Dodwell, hit back, saying British taxpayers would be shocked if they knew how much UK aid money was given to free-market consultants.
“UK aid could be used to strengthen public services, support civil society, and build democratic and accountable institutions,” she said.
“Instead of padding the pockets of big UK contractors like Adam Smith International.”
ASI describes itself as a transparent, objective organization dedicated to making public services more robust. It also claims to support economic growth and civil society, while building “democratic and accountable institutions.”
Gone are the good ol’ days when Russia was only a ‘threat’ to countries on its periphery. Moscow now represents a threat to “all of us” according to British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond.
Speaking to Reuters during a trip to Georgia, Hammond said Russia was a threat to all countries on the basis that it “ignores the norms of international conduct and breaks the rules of the international system” — and this, he said “represents a challenge and a threat to all of us.”
The first, but most minor point to make here is that Russia’s allies would probably beg to differ. Hammond’s comments are a prime example of the flippant way in which leaders and representatives of Western nations make sweeping statements about “us all” or the “international community” when what they actually mean is “us and our friends.”
But, like I said, that is a minor issue in comparison to the outrageously hypocritical reasoning Hammond gave to justify his opinion.
International law, except not for us
In March 2014, Curtis FJ Doebbler, a professor of international law in the Faculty of International Relations at Webster University in Geneva wrote forCounterPunch that “like any source of law, a large part of the legitimacy of international law depends on its equal application to all.” This, demonstrably, has not been the case when it comes to the United States.
American lawyers and diplomats, Doebbler continued, have attempted to twist international law “into an instrument justifying the actions of the United States, while criticizing the actions of other States based on misinterpretations or misapplication” of that law.
There simply can be no question mark here. It is incontrovertibly true. To get through all the examples of Washington’s blatant disregard for international law would take an eternity. But let’s do a quick recap of some of the more egregious examples:
US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, illegal under international law: Civilian death toll up for debate, a Guardian report estimated that as many as 20,000 could have been killed in the first year of conflict alone.
US invasion of Iraq in 2003, illegal under international law: Left one million dead, according to various reports.
NATO intervention in Libya in 2011 violated the parameters of the UN resolution permitting NATO action, hence also illegal. The intervention left scores of civilians dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. Libya, once the richest country in Africa, is now a failed state.
US bombing of Syria in 2014, illegal under international law. Washington has been given no authority to carry out airstrikes in Syria. Nor, by the way, has the United Kingdom (maybe someone should tell Hammond?)
Ongoing use of drone strikes, killing hundreds of innocents, including children.
Continued use of Guantanamo Bay for indefinite detention and torture of people ‘perceived’ as threats. In one of the grossest injustices, Shaker Aamer was held at Guantanamo for 13 years without trial or charge before finally being reunited with his family in the UK.
None of this is up for debate — and yet Hammond has not, to my knowledge, classified the United States as a threat to “all of us”. If breaking international law is the benchmark here, it would follow that he probably should.
What’s an invasion or two among friends?
Unfortunately, as Hammond has just displayed, Western nations often confuse ‘consensus among friends’ to mean ‘legal’. As such, they believe that none of their actions deserve to be scrutinized in the same manner as the actions of their declared enemies. This however, does not stop them from using the subject of international law as an “instrument of political rhetoric” to condemn other countries.
Washington has displayed such flagrant disregard for international “norms” and the “rules of the international system” so consistently and so appalling that the world has become desensitized to it. To acknowledge the sheer scale of the horror that has been unleashed by our collective indifference is too uncomfortable. Our best bet is to distract ourselves with a convenient bogeyman.
Hammond might be happy to bury his head in the sand, but it doesn’t make what he is saying any less ridiculous when all the facts are laid on the table.
What Hammond really means
And it’s not the first time Hammond has hugely exaggerated (or fabricated, if you prefer) the threat Russia poses to the UK. In March of last year, he said Russia could potentially pose the “single greatest threat” to Britain’s security. It’s unclear what kind of alternate universe you need to be living in to believe this, but what is clear is that Hammond has upped sticks and taken residence there.
The truth is, what Hammond and his neighbors in cuckoo-land really mean when they say these things is that Russia is a threat to Western dominance; the dominance that allows their own breaches of international law to go unchecked and unpunished and anyone else’s to be amplified a thousand-fold. Any threat or challenge to that hegemony in international affairs is unacceptable. And that, more than anything, is the threat which Russia represents.
The funny thing is, Hammond probably doesn’t think that’s what he means. He probably genuinely believes that Russia threatens the security of Britain. Whether he thinks this conflict might take the form of an invasion, an unprovoked nuclear attack, information warfare or something else, he has probably convinced himself that there really is cause for huge concern. After all, he has admitted that for “anyone over the age of about 50” fearing Russia is familiar territory. He is not an expert on today’s Russia, its political system or its foreign policy. All he really has to go on are his bad memories of the Cold War and whatever terribly misinformed advice he is being given.
But threat or no threat, if the “rules of the international system” are really that important to Philip Hammond, he’s got a funny way of showing it.
Danielle Ryan is an Irish freelance journalist and media analyst. She has lived in the US and Germany and is currently based in Moscow. She previously worked as a digital desk reporter for the Sunday Business Post in Dublin. She studied political reporting at the Washington Center for Politics & Journalism in Washington, DC and also has a degree in business and German. She focuses on US foreign policy, US-Russia relations and media bias.
Maintaining the integrity of the judicial system is a cornerstone in ensuring fundamental human rights and freedoms, especially for those, who were persecuted when legal proceedings were bypassed or under a political pretext.
On March 23 at the 31st session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) a Russian draft resolution called Judicial System Integrity was adopted by consensus. The resolution was co-sponsored by Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Cuba, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco and Venezuela. This is an example of the key role UNHRC member states play in strengthening the legal human rights framework.
The resolution calls upon countries that operate military courts or criminal tribunals ensure they are set up as a part of the national judicial systems and meet internationally recognized principles of justice. It is important that anyone under a state’s jurisdiction enjoys all the rights and has access to a common judicial system.
Failure to comply with international standards results in systematic violations of human rights. Dozens of prisoners are held in the US military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay with no fair trial, no right to a defense or to appeal and are outside the legal framework. The resolution calls for the immediate shutting down all secret detention facilities as well as to hold an immediate independent and unbiased investigation into all the cases of so-called “extraordinary renditions”, secret detention, torture and abusive treatment, including under the pretext of combating terrorism.
I have no doubt this resolution will help bring all those involved in such illegal activity to justice, and help international human rights organizations push for full disclosure by the US, UK and other governments of all abuses committed in the name of ‘war on terror’.
Dr Alexander Yakovenko, Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Deputy foreign minister (2005-2011). Follow him on Twitter @Amb_Yakovenko
Washington bears full responsibility for ISIS capturing UNESCO World Heritage site Palmyra last May, causing widespread destruction and looting of precious artifacts, plundered from other sites in the country.
Russian air power helped Syrian ground forces liberate the city after weeks of heavy fighting, the most important strategic victory since Obama launched naked aggression in March 2011, using ISIS and other imported death squads as imperial foot soldiers, a major turning point in the war achieved.
Syrian presidential advisor Bouthiana Shaaban said throughout months of America’s air campaign, begun illegally in September 2014, together with coalition partners Britain, France and others, it “didn’t lift a finger” to prevent Palmyra’s fall.
It “pretended to fight terrorism” while helping ISIS fighters take the ancient city, knowing widespread destruction and looting would follow, priceless artifacts lost forever, ending up in private collections.
Washington and its rogue allies could have prevented what happened. Instead of conducting airstrikes against advancing ISIS fighters, it supported them, its war on terrorism an utter hoax.
Its war on Iraq destroyed the cradle of civilization. It was complicit in the looting of precious artifacts from its National Museum in Baghdad.
Its head, Dony George, said looters knew what they wanted, including the priceless 5,000-year-old vase of Warka.
British Museum’s John Curtis called its theft “like stealing the Mona Lisa.” Occupying US authorities did nothing to stop it.
They let ISIS plunder and destroy ancient sites in the country, including Hatra.
UNESCO called its destruction “a turning point in (its) appalling strategy of cultural cleansing…a direct attack against the history of Islamic Arab cities.”
Stealing Iraqi antiquities from museums and archeological sites began after America’s 1991 Gulf War. Iraq’s National Library was looted, centuries old Korans and irreplaceable historical documents stolen.
Wealthy collectors profited hugely, aided and abetted by Washington. The cradle of civilization and many of its treasures no longer exist.
During and after Obama’s naked aggression on Libya, it was looted and destroyed the same way, its historical artifacts stolen, ancient Roman Empire era city Leptis Magna and Phoenician trading post Sabratha terror-bombed.
America bears full responsibility for the looting and destruction of Syria, many of its priceless artifacts now in private collections, its historical heritage systematically plundered.
Wherever America shows up, mass slaughter, destruction, as well as looting national resources and priceless artifacts follow – a longstanding despicable legacy, continuing with no end in sight.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
Online surveillance on the scale proposed in the UK government’s Investigatory Powers Bill could end up costing more than £1.2 billion, over seven times the Home Office’s highest estimate.
A Danish digital rights group told British MPs the government’s estimated cost of rolling out a new system for spying on internet users is too low and could only cover “a small part” of the population.
Denmark recently suspended plans to introduce a similar internet surveillance program after an official study by Ernst & Young (EY) found set-up costs would be much higher than originally projected.
The IT-Political Association of Denmark said in written evidence to the committee scrutinizing the Investigatory Powers Bill that Britain should expect a similarly high price tag.
“Based on the new cost information from Denmark, it seems unlikely that the Home Office budget can cover a sufficiently effective ICR implementation, unless only a small part of the British population is subjected to [ICRs].”
The revised bill, published last month, ignored criticism from MPs by expanding the most controversial powers.
The new legislation requires internet companies to collect and store everyone’s web browsing history for 12 months, and gives security services the power to hack into citizens’ computers and smartphones.
Home Secretary Theresa May estimates the Home Office would need to compensate internet companies between £130.6 million and £164.4 million to start new data systems capable of gathering and storing the public’s Internet Connection Records (ICRs).
In addition, the government projects running costs of £4.4 million to £5.6 million over 10 years.
However, the EY study from Denmark suggests costs could be exponentially higher. EY found the cost of building computer systems capable of collecting and storing ICRs would be about £19 per person.
If this figure is the same for the UK, with its 64.6 million population, it adds up to a hefty £1.2 billion price tag.
Liberal Democrat peer Paul Strasburger, who sits on the committee, called on the government to “scrap this bad idea.”
“This news about the real cost should be the final nail in the coffin for ICRs.
“The Danes found that it was about as useful as a chocolate teapot for catching criminals or preventing terrorism, and anyway it is very easy for the bad guys to evade.
“What’s worse is that collecting everyone’s data would put every British internet user at risk of having their most intimate information stolen by hackers, thieves, and blackmailers,” Strasburger concluded.
The Mirror reports a Home Office spokesperson as claiming the Danish model is not comparable to the plan outlined in the Investigatory Powers Bill.
The Home Office said an updated figure would be published before the bill is passed, but could not give a date.
The United States and some of its European allies have reportedly called for a meeting at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Iran’s recent missile tests, which they claim were carried out in defiance of a UN resolution.
According to a letter reportedly obtained by Western news outlets on Tuesday, the US, Britain, France, and Germany have asked UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Spain’s UN Ambassador Roman Oyarzun Marchesi for discussions on an “appropriate response” by the UNSC to Iran’s missile tests.
The four countries claimed that the missiles used in Iran’s recent tests were “inherently capable of delivering nuclear weapons” and were “inconsistent with” and “in defiance of” UNSC Resolution 2231 (2015), adopted last July to endorse a nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries.
Spain has been assigned the task of coordinating UNSC discussions on Resolution 2231.
The claim comes even as Resolution 2231 does not prohibit Iran from testing missiles, and only “calls upon” the Islamic Republic to refrain from testing missiles “designed to be capable of” carrying nuclear warheads. Iran has made clear that it does not seek to build nuclear warheads to be carried on missiles and has put its atomic activities under unprecedented, enhanced international supervision under the nuclear deal with the P5+1.
On March 9, Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) successfully test-fired two ballistic missiles as part of measures to assess IRGC capabilities. The missiles, dubbed Qadr-H and Qadr-F, were fired during large-scale drills code-named Eqtedar-e-Velayat.
Iran fired another ballistic missile dubbed Qiam from silo-based launchers in different locations across the country on March 8.
A similar US-led bid against the Iranian missile tests failed in March, as other diplomats in a closed-door UNSC meeting on Iran back then made it clear that Resolution 2231 did not prohibit Iranian missile tests and thus a response was not warranted to such tests.
Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin reiterated that, in the view of veto-wielding Russia, Iran’s ballistic missile tests did not violate Resolution 2231.
In the new letter, the four countries refrained from using the term “violation,” saying instead that the Iranian missile tests were “in defiance of” the resolution. However carefully-worded, it is not clear what kind of legal action the four countries would want to be taken against Iran, as the Islamic Republic says it has not violated its commitments.
Resolution 2231 (2015), which endorses the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the Iran-P5+1 agreement — provides for the termination of the provisions of previous Security Council resolutions over the Iranian nuclear program.
Iran argues its missiles are defensive and designed to carry conventional explosives only.
Earlier this month, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the missiles are a means of defense. “We spent a fraction of any other country in the region on defense, and missiles are a means of defense that we require,” he said.
Tehran insists that given the deepening insecurity in the region and the fact that many countries are spending hefty sums on arms purchases, it needs to boost its defensive missile program.
The US, Britain, France, and Germany were, along with China and Russia, members of the P5+1. Iran and the six other countries started implementing the deal on January 16.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has scheduled an emergency hearing to investigate the United Kingdom’s recently adopted Investigatory Powers Bill on its compatibility with EU law, UK media said.
The hearing, which may result in the European Union limiting the powers of the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) surveillance body, has been scheduled for April 12, The Guardian newspaper reported on Sunday.
On March 15, the House of Commons passed the Investigatory Powers Bill, also dubbed as the “snoopers’ charter” by its critics with 281 votes for and 15 against. The bill is now proceeding through the committee stage for further scrutiny.
The ECJ has previously ruled against the UK government’s surveillance legislation. In 2014, the court declared the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 (Dripa) to be inconsistent with EU laws after the case was brought to Luxembourg by two UK lawmakers.
April’s hearing is expected to be attended by the Conservative member of parliament David Davis, of the lawmakers that took Dirpa to the ECJ for scrutiny, according to the newspaper.
The snoopers’ charter has been designed to give UK police and intelligence services sweeping powers. the legislation requires internet providers to store their customers’ browsing history for up to 12 months and grant access to law enforcement regardless of whether a user is under investigation or not. Police will also have the authority to hack into phones, laptops, tablets and computers.
UK Home Secretary Theresa May has defended the bill, claiming it prioritizes privacy and limits intrusiveness into personal data.
UK Labor Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn says the British government should halt its arms sales to Saudi Arabia over the kingdom’s deadly military aggression against neighboring Yemen.
Corbyn said in a statement on Wednesday that the bombing campaign has been “a human rights tragedy and a violation of international law.”
“The British government should halt arms supplies to Saudi Arabia, now being used for this assault on its neighbor, and it should end its diplomatic and military support for the Saudi intervention,” he added in the statement.
The Labor chief further stressed that London should instead focus on promoting peace in Yemen and providing assistance to the people in the country, which has been under military attack by Saudi Arabia since late March 2015.
At least 8,400 people, among them over 2,230 children, have been killed and 16,000 others injured since March 2015. The strikes have also taken a heavy toll on the impoverished country’s facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools, and factories.
Corbyn has previously challenged the UK government over the issue of arms supplies to the Saudi regime which has been accused of “widespread and systematic” targeting of civilians in its aerial campaign in Yemen.
However, London has stood defiant against calls to suspend its arms sales to Saudi Arabia. In January, Prime Minister David Cameron claimed that the UK has “the strictest rules for arms exports of almost any country anywhere in the world.”
According to Amnesty International, the British government has sold 2,400 missiles and 58 warplanes to Saudi Arabia last year alone, enabling the regime to continue its war against Yemen.
British media reports say that the UK government has licensed £6.7 billion ($9.4 billion) of arms to Riyadh since Cameron came to power in 2010, including £2.8 billion ($3.9 billion) since the bombing of Yemen began.
Meanwhile, a powerful cross-party committee on arms exports has launched a full-scale investigation into British arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
“We have launched this inquiry to understand what role UK-made arms are playing in the ongoing conflict in Yemen,” said the arms control committee’s chairman, Chris White.
The Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) has also brought a high court case against the British government, urging London to suspend all current export licenses and refuse all new licenses to Saudi Arabia.
Andrew Smith of CAAT slammed the UK for standing “shoulder to shoulder” with the Saudis throughout its bloody campaign in Yemen.
Yemen financial and food crisis
The Britain-based international charity group Oxfam said on Thursday that Yemen, the Arab Peninsula’s poorest nation, is in the grip of a looming famine in the face of a domestic financial crisis.
Half of the nation’s residents, or nearly 14.4 million people, already struggle to buy food and need assistance in a crisis going largely unheeded in the international community, it said in a report.
The global charity said the possibilities of tightening credit and a currency devaluation threaten Yemen which imports nearly all its food and needs a functioning economic system to fund those shipments.
The warning was issued after reports said Yemen’s Central Bank might cut credit lines that guarantee payment for incoming wheat and rice cargoes.
The Yemeni riyal also runs the risk of devaluation, which could in turn contribute to a rise in food prices in a poor country that imports nearly 90 percent of its food.
Yemeni men receive food aid provided by the World Food Program (WFP) to help families affected by the ongoing conflict, in the Yemeni capital Sana’a on March 16, 2016. (AFP photo)
“An invisible food crisis … risks turning famine warnings into a reality over the coming months,” Oxfam said.
Sajjad Mohamed Sajid, Oxfam’s country director in Yemen, said Yemenis cannot endure the rising prices for food if importers are unable to trade.
Saudi Arabia began a military campaign in Yemen a year ago with the aim of restoring former president Abd Rubbuh Mansur Hadi to power.
“A catastrophe on top of catastrophe … has created one of the biggest humanitarian emergencies in the world today,” Sajid said. “Yet most people are unaware of it.”
The charity reported instances of people eating only a meal a day in Ta’izz city, which is a regular target of Saudi attacks, and empty market stalls with no vegetables on display.
Dramatic loss of life in the terror attacks in Brussels: 34 killed and more than 180 wounded according to the latest reports.
Prior to the conduct of a police investigation, in the hours following the attacks, the Western media went into overdrive, intimating without evidence that the Islamic State (ISIS) operating out of Raqqa, Northern Syria was responsible for the attacks.
According to the Independent “Isis supporters have been celebrating the Brussels attacks online [social media] as speculation mounts that the group is behind a wave of deadly attacks in the Belgian capital.”
The report is based on information emanating from social media, which does not constitute a reliable source of information.
An unkown self-proclaimed news agency (Amaq Agency ) allegedly representing the ISIS provided the following report:
This mysterious agency was then immediately quoted by Reuters in an authoritative report.
In turn, alleged supporters of ISIS on twitter were quoted. According to the Jerusalem Post(March 21, 2016):
The “tears of joy” that were shed by ISIS supporters on Twitter are also related to the fact that the terrorists succeeded in paralyzing the activity in the airport attacked. One of ISIS’ main declared goals is to devastate the Western economy and replace the dollar with its own coin as the only international legal tender.
Who Controls the ISIS social media and twitter accounts?
Police and intelligence are often aware of the identity of ISIS social media, IP addresses, geographic location.
Hackers have claimed that a number of Islamic State supporters’ social media accounts are being run from internet addresses linked to the [UK government] Department of Work and Pensions.
A group of four young computer experts who call themselves VandaSec have unearthed evidence indicating that at least three ISIS-supporting accounts can be traced back to the DWP.
Every computer and mobile phone logs onto the internet using an IP address, which is a type of identification number.
The hacking collective showed Mirror Online details of the IP addresses used by a trio of separate digital jihadis to access Twitter accounts, which have been used to spread extremist propaganda.
At first glance, the IP addresses seem to be based in Saudi Arabia, but upon further inspection using specialist tools they appeared to link back to the DWP. ..
[T]he British government sold on a large number of IP addresses to two Saudi Arabian firms.
After the sale completed in October of this year, they were used by extremists to spread their message of hate.
Jamie Turner, an expert from a firm called PCA Predict, discovered a record of the sale of IP addresses, and found a large number were transferred to Saudi Arabia in October of this year.
He told us it was likely the IP addresses could still be traced back to the DWP because records of the addresses had not yet been fully updated.
What the Daily Mirror report suggests (as well as other reports) is that the IP addresses of the ISIS are indirectly linked to the British government, i.e. 1) the identity of the ISIS social media is invariable known to police authorities, and 2) The ISIS social media are sponsored by Saudi Arabia, which is also involved in the recruitment and training of terrorists in liaison with US-NATO.
It is worth noting that the British government has acknowledged its responsibility:
The Cabinet Office has now admitted to selling the IP addresses on to Saudi Telecom and the Saudi-based Mobile Telecommunications Company earlier this year as part of a wider drive to get rid of a large number of the DWP’s IP addresses. (Mirror, op cit cit, emphasis added)
The State Sponsors of Terrorism
The events in Brussels raises the broader question: who is behind the ISIS?
Israel intelligence sources (DEBKA) in a 2011 report confirmed the role of NATO operating out of its Brussels headquarters and Turkey’s high command in the training and recruitment of terrorists:
NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Turkish high command are meanwhile drawing up plans for their first military step in Syria, which is to arm the rebels with weapons for combating the tanks and helicopters spearheading the Assad regime’s crackdown on dissent. … NATO strategists are thinking more in terms of pouring large quantities of anti-tank and anti-air rockets, mortars and heavy machine guns into the protest centers for beating back the government armored forces. (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011)
This initiative, which was also supported by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, involved a process of organized recruitment of thousands of jihadist “freedom fighters”, reminiscent of the enlistment of Mujahideen to wage the CIA’s jihad (holy war) in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war:
Also discussed in Brussels and Ankara, our sources report, is a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria. (Ibid, emphasis added)
These mercenaries were subsequently integrated into US and allied sponsored terrorist organizations including Al Nusrah and ISIS.
And then in August 2014, Obama launched his counter-terrorism campaign. Yet the evidence confirms that instead of destroying the ISIS, the US and its allies including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel were in fact protecting the ISIS.
Again according to the Daily Mirror in a 2015 report, the counterterrorism campaign was conducive to ISIS doubling the territory under its control, until the launching of the Russian intervention in late September 2015.
Sheer Incompetence of the US Air Force (doubtful) or Washington’s complicity in protecting the terrorists?
Recently the release of the Hillary Clinton email archive as well as leaked Pentagon documents confirm that the US and its allies were supportive of ISIS, which are according to press reports, the alleged architects of the Brussels attacks.
The 7-page Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document dated August of 2012, points to US complicity in supporting the creation of an Islamic State:
Trump claims Iran’s military is routed just as IRGC launched missiles strike American bases
RT | June 10, 2026
The Iranian military has been “completely defeated,” US President Donald Trump has claimed, warning Tehran it will “pay the price” for delaying a deal with Washington.
The warnings came after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced missile and drone strikes on American military facilities in several Arab countries in retaliation for recent US attacks. US Central Command said the operations inside Iran were carried out after an AH-64 Apache helicopter was lost near the Strait of Hormuz, an incident it blamed on Tehran.
Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday that Iran “is all talk and no action,” adding that “The Bully of the Middle East is DEAD!!!” … Full article
HEAT exposure could drive a dramatic rise in cardiovascular disease (CVD) burden across the USA over the next 25 years, with researchers warning that climate change and population ageing may combine to reverse decades of progress in heart health.
Heat Exposure Threatens Future Heart Health A new modelling study estimated that heat-attributable CVD burden could more than triple by 2050 under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario, disproportionately affecting older adults and economically disadvantaged communities. … Full article
… Climate change and land use conversion have the potential to increase the frequency of encounters between snakes and humans. This situation arises due to changes in temperature and rainfall, the loss of natural habitats, and shifts in food sources, which drive snakes to move into areas closer to human activity.
Prof Mirza Dikari Kusrini, a lecturer in the Department of Forest Resource Conservation and Ecotourism, Faculty of Forestry and Environment (Fahutan) at IPB University, explained that climate change affects snakes’ behavior, distribution, and movement patterns. … Full article
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