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Russia will hold West responsible for Kiev’s crimes – UN envoy

RT | November 8, 2023

Repeatedly targeting civilians and first responders in Donetsk with US-made HIMARS missiles was a deliberate crime, for which both the Ukrainian government and its Western sponsors will be held accountable, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN Vassily Nebenzia told the Security Council on Wednesday.

“Yesterday’s attacks killed 6 and injured 55 people, including three children,” Nebenzia said at the emergency session of the UN body, calling it “yet another flagrant violation by the Kiev regime of the norms of international humanitarian law and further evidence of its purposeful actions to destroy the civilian population of Donbas.”

The Russian diplomat laid out evidence that the Ukrainian strike amounted to a premeditated terrorist attack. The first strike hit the social services building in Donetsk at 4:25pm local time. The second followed 15 minutes later, after first responders showed up, while the third came at 6:27pm, targeting journalists that came to report from the scene, the diplomat said.

A doctor, a paramedic and a police officer were among the killed, while 23 first responders were among the wounded.

“No doubt this is a deliberate tactic,” Nebenzia told the Security Council. As further proof, he brought up the October 31 attack of another district of Donetsk, when Ukrainian artillery fired US-made HIMARS missiles to start a fire and then targeted first responders with US-supplied cluster munitions, killing two and injuring 15 people. The third strike then targeted journalists but did not cause any casualties.

“These are conscious and cynical crimes that have no statute of limitation,” the Russian diplomat said, adding that Moscow will hold responsible not just the “Kiev regime” but also “Western countries who flood Ukraine with weapons and – as we are well aware – also approve targets of the strikes.”

Nebenzia described these attacks as “strikes of despair” that make no sense from the military standpoint but represent frustration with battlefield failures and hatred of the former fellow citizens, which the Kiev government considers subhuman.

There have been more than 25,000 artillery attacks on the Donetsk People’s Republic since February 2022, with over 145,000 projectiles striking Donetsk city alone, the Russian diplomat told the UN Security Council. In that period, Ukrainian bombardment has killed 4,755 civilians – including 140 children – and wounded over 5,300 people.

That is not counting more than 20,000 civilian casualties of Ukraine’s crackdown on the Donbass since 2014, after the local population “did not accept the unconstitutional Maidan coup d’état in Kiev and stood up to defend their rights and freedoms,” Nebenzia noted.

November 8, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Biden regime moves to clamp down on pro-Palestine student groups in US

By Shabbir Rizvi | Press TV | November 8, 2023

Since the onset of the Al Aqsa Storm Operation more than a month ago, the US has seen an unprecedented level of support and solidarity for the Palestinian people and resistance.

Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets in different US cities, not only condemning the Zionist regime for its horrific war crimes in the besieged Gaza Strip and the ongoing occupation but for the US government’s direct role in supporting such crimes.

A particular note has to be made regarding the role of young people – specifically university student groups and coalitions – who have organized marches, rallies, speakouts, walkouts, and more.

Organizations such as the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Muslim Students Association (MSA), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and others have not only devoted much of their time and energy championing the Palestinian cause on campuses – but have done so with tremendous bravery.

These demonstrators have been braving great risks and threats from pro-Israel lobbies.

Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are conflated in the political mechanisms of the United States. These political tendencies, which are really just Zionist propaganda points, are also disseminated into college campuses through special interest organizations and the academic curriculum itself.

Pro-Palestine organizers put themselves at great risk with their activities – groups like the “Anti-Defamation League” or other Zionist groups often target activists to smear or doxx them.

Despite this, the Palestinian cause has become unshakable on campuses. From prestigious universities like Harvard to the small-town community college, the Palestinian struggle is making itself known – and it has turned heads. So much so that the federal government is now taking action to clamp down on it.

The Joe Biden administration, revising Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, asserted a new, egregious clarification to the 1964 law – insisting it prohibits “certain forms of antisemitic, Islamophobic, and related forms of discrimination in federally funded programs and activities.”

It is worth noting that the update to the civil rights legislation is being done directly through the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights.

Clearly, the ongoing struggle for Palestinian freedom has struck a nerve with the Biden administration.

Adding this clarification would threaten universities with having federal funding pulled – which many universities cannot exist without – if the federal government deems the university is breeding “anti-semitism.”

Anti-Semitism, under the Biden administration’s official definition, conflates criticism of Israel with anti-semitism.

Through this egregious conflation, Zionist groups can play the victim as they notoriously do and claim that cases of anti-semitism are on the rise when that is simply not the case. Calls for Palestinian liberation is on the rise, which the state – through its legal definition – deems as “anti-Semitic.”

The definition lays the groundwork for enforcing a total ban on all pro-Palestine student activity as the very nationhood of Palestine is under direct threat by the US-backed Israeli occupation regime.

Every and any act of solidarity with Palestine on university campuses could mean arrest or expulsion.

Through bureaucratic measures, the Biden administration – and those that would follow after – could crack down on Pro-Palestine groups within universities by forcing the university to either comply with its new definition of anti-semitism – or face all of its federal funding being revoked.

Universities would then be the ones forced to stop Palestine solidarity demonstrations – and not an arm of the state, which would likely invite different legal hassles and challenges.

The Biden administration is moving fast to enforce this unpopular measure – more than 200 security experts at the Department of Homeland Security have now been deployed to schools to “monitor antisemitism” according to a White House official.

The state is acknowledging that it is devoting a significant amount of resources to prevent the spread of the Palestinian freedom movement.

And as such, some universities are already caving in to Zionist and state pressure.

Brandeis University, in Massachusetts, has completely banned the Students for Justice in Palestine organization. The local SJP chapter was then forced to cancel a vigil they had planned for Monday night to honor the 10,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza by US-funded bombs used by the Zionist regime.

Other states are experiencing more heavy-handed repression. Florida governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis has issued a complete ban on Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

Of course, legal action is always an option on the table. But the process can be lengthy, and full of different obstacles – such as money, time, and ongoing threats from the state and Zionist lobby.

This is by design – slowing down the rapidly growing march of the Palestinian cause on universities is pivotal for the Biden administration as it brazenly defends Israeli war crimes.

So even if the student groups could win a legal case, this critical moment in US politics would be something the student organizations could not legally pursue through campus mechanisms.

The binding false definition that ties anti-Semitism to anti-Zionism will be the primary legal hurdle, and not just in universities.

By using this standard on campuses, it is plausible to extend it to cities too – threatening to cut federal funding for city projects if local authorities do not crack down on Palestinian groups and their activities.

It is a dangerous precedent being set and lays bare the hypocritical nature of freedom of speech and assembly in the United States.

The silver lining here is perhaps tied to that exactly – never before has the Palestinian cause been so powerful in the United States as it is today.

With Biden’s tanking numbers in the polls ahead of an election year, complimented by hundreds of thousands attending Palestine marches in the streets, this legislation has the potential to backfire against not only Biden but the US political apparatus as a whole.

Only time will tell what legal battles will arise from this political fiasco. But one thing is for certain: the road ahead is long, and the state should expect a fierce fight from activists who are already willing to risk their lives for Palestine.

Shabbir Rizvi is a Chicago-based political analyst with a focus on US internal security and foreign policy.

November 8, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

US media say Israel is retaliating. The facts show the opposite

A woman taking part in the women’s march near Israel’s fence imprisoning Gazans on July 3, 2018 is carried on a stretcher
By Alison Weir | If Americans Knew | November 8, 2023

US media reports virtually always say that Israeli violence against Palestinians is “retaliation”. The chronology, however, shows the opposite.

Time after time, US news coverage of the issue begins when Palestinians have committed violence, without noting that this violence was preceded by Israeli violence.

Most recently, US news reports make it appear that the current violence began on October 7th, while failing to mention that Israeli forces had been killing Palestinians regularly in the days, weeks, months, and years before that.

This was the chart before October 7th, 2023.
The recent deaths dwarf the already large numbers from previous years. (source)

Current news reports also fail to note that October 7th was basically a prison break from what many have accurately described as the world’s largest open air prison, imprisoning over 2 million men, women, and children.

Media reports also neglect to inform Americans that the communities surrounding Gaza are built on stolen Palestinian land, many of the former owners imprisoned in the Gaza ghetto, destitute and desperate.

Media reports also fail to inform Americans that before the October operation, thousands of Gazans had gathered every week for over a year and a half to protest their imprisonment and dispossession – and Israeli forces had shot them, week after week.

Media also fail to inform Americans that it is Israel that regularly initiates the violence after periods of calm, according to an MIT professor’s study on the subject.

This type of news coverage is not new, and has often been found in alternative media as well as legacy media companies.

While the pro-Israel lobby in the US is arguably the most powerful special interest group in the country (it appears that $19 billion may go to Israel this year alone), and while media coverage of the issue is demonstrably slanted toward Israel, there are growing numbers of Americans who are demanding a stop to US support for Israeli crimes.

Until Americans learn the many facts on this issue being obscured by US media, the tragic violence in the region, and the wars fought on Israel’s behalf, will continue, and Americans, too, will continue to die.

Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew, president of the Council for the National Interest, and author of Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel.

November 8, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

Why Does US Keep Mum on Arms Supplies to Israel?

By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 08.11.2023

The Biden administration remains tight-lipped about “critical” US military equipment being delivered to Tel Aviv amid the ongoing armed conflict between Palestine and Israel.
US claims that transparency about Washington’s weapons delivers to Tel Aviv would endanger Israel’s operational security are misleading, experts have told The Intercept.

William Hartung, a fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and an expert on weapons sales, said: “The notion that it would in any way harm the Israeli military’s operational security to provide more information is a cover story for efforts to reduce information on the types of weapons being supplied to Israel and how they are being used.”

According to him, “the purposeful lack of transparency over what weapons the US is supplying to Israel ‘on a daily basis’ is tied to the larger administration policy of downplaying the extent to which Israel will use those weapons to commit war crimes and kill civilians in Gaza.”

Hartung added that even as the Biden administration supports Israel with “weapons and rhetoric, it is a delicate matter politically to give all the details on US weapons supplied to the Israeli military, some of which will certainly be used in illegal attacks on civilians if the war continues to grind on.”

The Intercept also cited an unnamed retired US Marine general as saying that Washington keeping mum on details on its arms supplies to Tel Aviv can be attributed to the political sensitivity of the Palestine-Israel conflict.

In particular, weapons used in door-to-door urban warfare, which […] result in civilian casualties, are not going to be something the [Biden] administration wants to publicize, the retired officer said.

The remarks come after US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby admitted late last month that the White House is “being careful not to quantify or get into too much detail about what Israel is getting [in terms of military aid]— for their own operational security purposes, of course.”

Although the US Department of Defense at first declined to identify any specific weapons systems supplied to Israel, it finally revealed that these include “precision guided munitions, small diameter bombs, artillery, ammunition, Iron Dome interceptors and other critical equipment.”

The Intercept noted in this vein that, “What ‘other critical equipment’ entails remains a mystery, as do specifics about the quantity of arms being supplied, which the US administration has refused to disclose.”

The US news website also recalled that while the Biden administration “put out a three-page list of arms for Ukraine, information on weapons sent to Israel could fit in one sentence.”

US President Joe Biden earlier requested $14.3 billion in funding for Israel in addition to the over $3 billion in military assistance Washington already provides.

November 8, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | 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

Jim Jordan Announces Investigation into DOJ For Spying on Congressional Staffers

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | November 7, 2023

Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, who serves as the House Judiciary Committee Chairman, has issued demands to five major tech companies. The prominent lawmaker insisted AT&T, Alphabet – the parent company for Google, Apple, Verizon, and T-Mobile, release information potentially exposing surveillance tactics endorsed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) against congressional representatives and their staff.

We obtained an example of the letters for you here.

The call for transparency comes on the heels of revelations that six-year-old subpoenas had facilitated the department’s breach of personal phone and email accounts for numerous lawmakers and their official aides.

The account framing the current plight was provided by Jordan, who propounded that the DOJ’s intervention strategically targeted the very congressional individuals scrutinizing the agency’s mishandling of the Russia collusion investigation.

Jordan’s theory postulates that such actions tampered with the squarely drawn lines of both the Constitution’s principle of separated powers and Congress’s independent oversight of federal agencies.

Conveying his objections through letters to the tech CEOs, Jordan stated: “The Justice Department’s efforts to obtain the private communications of congressional staffers, including staffers conducting oversight of the Department, is wholly unacceptable and offends fundamental separation of powers principles as well as Congress’s constitutional authority to conduct oversight of the Department. This revelation also follows news that the Department issued subpoenas to obtain the private emails and records of congressional staffers on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence who were conducting oversight of the Justice Department’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”

An additional point of contention for Jordan was the DOJ obtaining private emails and records from staffers with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, who had been examining the Department’s Crossfire Hurricane” investigation. In Jordan’s view, “These revelations strongly suggest that the Justice Department weaponized its law-enforcement authority to spy on the entities seeking to hold it accountable.”

These troubling revelations expose a disturbing overreach of surveillance, a flagrant violation of privacy, and a stark shakeup of the checks-and-balances system, propelling the call for corporate accountability and congressional autonomy into the spotlight.

November 7, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | | 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

U.S. Out of Africa Now!

By Brad Pearce | The Libertarian Institute | November 7, 2023

On October 26, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) forced a debate and vote on the U.S. military presence in Niger. The Senate overwhelmingly voted to keep our troops in that troubled country. There has been an increased focus on Africa due to widespread instability and a contest between superpowers for the continent. The presence of U.S. troops puts Americans in danger while failing to solve any of Africa’s problems.

During the Cold War era, the United States mostly relied on “soft power” in Africa, but U.S. military presence has continued to increase over the past 30 years. It is time to acknowledge that the U.S. military presence in Africa is a failure, bring our troops home, and replace violence with diplomacy and commerce. It is the right thing for America and the best thing for Africa.

Prior to the advent of the Global War on Terrorism, U.S. military actions in Africa were primarily evacuating American nationals in times of crisis, something which they did on many occasions due to frequent volatility. The first major U.S. deployment was the United Nations Operation in Somalia, which has transformed into one of the longest conflicts in American history while failing to make Somalia secure. The U.S. footprint has continued to expand; currently the largest U.S. base in Africa is in the small Red Sea nation of Djibouti, while there is also an enormous and expensive drone base in Agadez, Niger in the central Sahel. Further, the United States trains troops around the continent, having commandos deployed to at least 22 African nations in 2022.

When U.S. troops were first permanently deployed to Africa following 9/11 there were no known transnational terrorist organizations on the continent. The United States got a better excuse for its presence after the Islamic Courts Union took control of Somalia in 2006. The ICU were then expelled by an Ethiopian-led invasion, leaving in their wake an offshoot known as Al-Shabab which later pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda. Following the Ethiopian invasion, the United Nations authorized the African Union Mission in Somalia [ANISOM] which the United States has supported since it began in 2007 with a large air and ground presence.

Radical Islamic terrorism did not spread across Africa in earnest until the 2010s, when it was greatly spurred by U.S. and NATO actions across North Africa and the Middle East. Most notably, when a NATO coalition overthrew Libya’s longtime leader Gadaffi in 2011 fighters he had been employing looted his armory and returned to their home countries, restarting dormant rebellions. The war in Syria began around the same time, and ultimately led to the Islamic State and Al Qaeda gaining a great deal of power and territory in the Middle East. This was simultaneous to the increasing popularity of drone warfare within the Obama Administration, who saw it as a “cheap” way to conduct counter-terror operations throughout the Muslim world. When they were chased out of some of their strongholds by airstrikes, Al Qaeda and the Islamic State expanded rapidly in West Africa, giving the United States yet more of a justification to increase its military presence in the region, most notably in Niger.

For a time, the presence of U.S. combat troops in West Africa was such a well-kept secret that when four U.S. servicemen were killed in an ambush in Niger in 2017, multiple prominent legislators in charge of overseeing the U.S. military, including noted warmongers Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and the late Senator John McCain (R-AZ), acknowledged that they were not aware there were U.S. troops in the country. One exception to this was Representative Charlie Dent, who told CNN’s Chris Cuomo:

“With respect to Niger, I serve on the appropriations committee. I oversee military construction projects. We have a presence there. Not just there, but within that whole Lake Chad region, supporting local troops to support fight Boko Haram, support operations in West Africa and the operation in Mali. So we have all sorts of people in that region fighting a very dangerous foe, and ISIS in West Africa, especially.”

This is a stunning insight into the lack of thought the United States was putting into its military presence in Africa at the time—the civilian leadership in charge of overseeing military activity were unaware of the military’s presence in West Africa. The only oversight from Congress related to spending the money, which at the time included the construction of the Agadez drone base.

Persistent failure in Africa has not deterred U.S. policy makers from continuing the same strategies. Writing for The Intercept, journalist Nick Turse reports that in 2002 and 2003 the U.S. State Department reported just nine terrorist attacks in all of Africa, whereas in 2022 there were 2,737 in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger alone. The source for these statistics is the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, run by the U.S. Department of Defense which released a devastating report in early 2023 about security in the region following 20 years of heavy U.S. counter-terror involvement. The report states that terrorism fatalities across Africa rose by 48% in 2022 alone; the report notes the irony that terrorism has spiked since the Mali coup, for which poor security was used as a justification, but doesn’t mention the fact that there was almost no terrorism at all before the United States got involved in counter-terror operations in the region.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the training programs which are a key component of U.S. Africa policy have a proven track record of overthrowing the very governments they are meant to prop up. At least 12 coups by U.S. trained personnel have occurred since 2008, as of August 2023. A 2022 study showed that U.S. training makes soldiers more supportive of one-party states and less interested in preserving human rights. Following training, they see the value of reducing conflict within a state by taking sole power and also have been trained in skill sets conducive to conducting successful coups. Don’t worry though, AFRICOM commander General Michael Langley has full faith and confidence in our “curriculum” of telling them “please don’t do coups.”

Nowhere in Africa has U.S. troop presence achieved its goals. After 20 years, Africa has much more terrorism and fewer democratic governments. Both of those things are supposed to be key American objectives. The most important thing for the United States to have a productive future in Africa is to shed the Global War on Terror. Abukar Arman, a Somali geopolitical analyst and former diplomat, argued earlier this year that, “so long as U.S.’ policy toward Africa remains one driven by counter-terrorism and is implemented by AFRICOM drones that are accountable to no one, there will never be a sustainable strategic partnership with key countries such as Somalia.” He is correct that both the men running U.S. Africa policy and the machines which they use are drones and neither are producing desired results.

The U.S. Senate has shown that it intends to continue zombie policies by voting to stay in Niger and put our troops at unacceptable levels of risk without the potential of achieving any goals. The only wise path forward is to end our African terror war and engage with African nations as genuine partners in commerce and development.

November 7, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | 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

Bernie Sanders and the Zionist narrative

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | November 7, 2023

Whenever politicians appear to distance themselves temporarily from the mainstream narrative on Israel, one would do well to be prudent before deciding where their loyalties truly lie, and let the alignment with Zionism reveal itself in due course.

“I don’t know how you can have a permanent ceasefire with an organisation like Hamas which is dedicated to turmoil and chaos, and destroying the state of Israel,” said US politician Bernie Sanders in an interview with CNN. If there is no ceasefire, how can Sanders argue for a humanitarian pause? And what is humanitarian about a lull that provides temporary relief before Israel embarks on the next phase of its murderous bombing campaign in Gaza? Is it “hope”, which Sanders has the audacity to mention as being the ambiguous construct to be given to the Palestinians by the international community, always within the context of the two-state compromise?

The Zionist narrative, which the world promotes even as calls for a ceasefire increase, forms the premise of Sanders’s comments. In 2021, he penned an op-ed in the New York Times that called for the recognition of Palestinian rights and lives while upholding Israel’s “absolute right to live in peace and security”. Israel’s so-called rights are rooted in its colonial framework; Sanders’s attempt at equivalence between the colonised and the coloniser is evident even in the language used: the humanitarian versus the political.

In 2019, Sanders suggested that the US should curb its military aid to Israel based on its treatment of Palestinians in Gaza. “I think it is fair to say that some of that should go right now into humanitarian aid,” Sanders added while speaking at J Street’s national conference.

During a presidential debate in the same year in Atlanta, Sanders embarked on another contradiction: “It is no longer good enough for us to be pro-Israel, I am pro-Israel, but we must treat the Palestinians with the dignity they deserve.” Being pro-Israel is being pro-colonialism, for the simple reason that Israel is a colonial enterprise that thrives upon the dispossession of the Palestinian people.

There is nothing about Israel which is not connected to the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestinians known as the 1948 Nakba, the ethnic cleansing that has never ended.

Now that Israel has given the world a view of what the Nakba looks like, this time complete with precision strikes that have killed over 10,000 civilians but failed to take down Hamas, what is Sanders truly advocating? What humanitarian pause does he envisage, for example, given that Israel is dropping bombs on hospitals in Gaza? One hundred Israeli doctors have signed a petition calling for Israel to bomb Al-Shifa Hospital, claiming that it harbours Palestinian resistance groups.

What is humanitarian about the humanitarian pause that Sanders claims to want, when the underlying message is a green light for Israel to destroy Gaza under the pretext of destroying Hamas? Considering the aftermath of the bombing, which Israel is already hinting at, what is Sanders’s stance over Netanyahu’s plans for Israel’s possible physical re-occupation of Gaza “for an indefinite period” under the pretext of the colonial security narrative?

There is no way that Sanders can gloss over Israel’s colonial violence, not even with rhetoric about humanitarian pauses. Besides the fact that Sanders’s statement was too little, too late, it would benefit Palestinians if fewer people jumped on the adulation bandwagon for statements that look at the colonised through a colonial humanitarian lens.

November 7, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

US House Panel Says Disinformation ‘Pseudo-Experts’ Targeted Political Speech Online

Sputnik – 07.11.2023

WASHINGTON – US government officials used a government-linked group of disinformation pseudo-experts to launder the censorship of political speech online, the US House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government said in an interim report.

The Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) – a group of purported disinformation academics led by the Stanford Internet Observatory – worked with US government officials to monitor and censor online speech ahead of the 2020 presidential election, the report, released Monday, said.

“This interim staff report details the federal government’s heavy-handed involvement in the creation and operation of the EIP, which facilitated the censorship of Americans’ political speech in the weeks and months leading up to the 2020 election,” the report said. “This pressure was largely directed in a way that benefited one side of the political aisle: true information posted by Republicans and conservatives was labeled as ‘misinformation’ while false information posted by Democrats and liberals was largely unreported and untouched by the censors.”

The House Weaponization Subcommittee released the report in conjunction with the House Judiciary Committee.

The EIP worked with the US Department of Homeland Security and other US government agencies to bypass First Amendment protections for speech through the consortium of disinformation “pseudo-experts,” the report said.

The EIP was created at the request of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the report said. US government officials would submit misinformation reports to EIP analysts, who would then recommend censorship actions to tech companies, the report added.

An “untold number” of US citizens across the political spectrum were impacted by the censorship of true information, jokes and opinions, the report said.

The House committees’ investigations into the weaponization of the federal government and violations of civil liberties remain ongoing, the report said. There is “more to come,” Judiciary and Weaponization panel chair Jim Jordan also said in a statement via social media platform X.

The American people deserve to know whether they were targeted by the US government and affiliated disinformation pseudo-experts, Jordan added.

November 7, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

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