Language, objectivity, and political power

August 29, 2022

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by Francis Lee

Contemporary politics consists of the usual timeless formula of Machiavelli – namely: rule by force and fraud – but now with the current emphasis being on fraud, writes Francis Lee.

‘’Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, their inhabitants driven out into the countryside, their cattle machine gunned, their huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.’’ (Politics and the English Language – 1946)

‘’There is a high probability that Russia will intervene in the Baltics to test NATO’s Article 5 … ‘’ (Anders Fogh Rasmussen, ex head of NATO, February 2015).

It would be true to say that the language of politics and power – machtpolitik or realpolitik – is patently neither objective, nor particularly interested in the pursuit of truth. Quite the contrary in fact. If we take the above examples, the first is simply an attempt to mask what is an international war crime into a reasonable policy of ‘humanitarian’ intervention. All rather reminiscent of the language which evolved during the Indo-China wars, e.g. ‘we destroyed the village in order to save it.’ The purpose of the second assertion was simply designed to ramp up the current war psychosis in order to justify the eastern expansion and build-up of NATO on Russia’s western frontiers. Please note that Mr Rasmussen isn’t saying that a Russian intervention is possible, or even probable, but highly probable. This seems somewhat strange as Russia couldn’t wait to get rid of the Baltic states when it declared its independence in 1991, and now we are expected to believe that Russia wants to invade those same states!

It is said that knowledge is power, in fact the reverse seems more accurate. Those who control the means of communication are now able to create a virtual reality. This is nothing new. The father of modern Public Relations, Edward Bernays, postulated that ‘invisible’ people create knowledge and propaganda and rule over the masses, with a monopoly on the power to shape thoughts, values, and citizen response. “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.” (Propaganda).

One of Bernays’ great admirers was Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels who was to apply his theories with alacrity during the Nazi ascendency 1934-1945. JG was able to convince enough of Germany’s population that ‘total war’ was really quite good fun. He and they were apparently not aware that this would ultimately involve the fire-bombing of German cities like Hamburg and Dresden. This amply demonstrates that skilful techniques of mass indoctrination are able to get people to imagine and support policies which are not necessarily in their own best interests.

In our own time this mass manipulation was identified by Edward S Herman and Noam Chomsky in their seminal work The Manufacture of Consent first published in 1988. The mass communication media of the U.S. “are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion.” This seems to be the most salient political phenomenon of our times.

Returning to Orwell, it was during his period in Spain during the war against Franco (1936-39) that he first became aware of the political potentialities of modern mass communications systems. Orwell was a passionate believer in truth, and that objective facts existed and could be identified. However, as a result of his experiences in Spain he discovered that mere facts were of secondary or even no importance. What counted was a propaganda narrative which was a function of political expediency. At the time he was serving in the military wing of POUM (Workers’ Party of Marxist Unity) sister party of the British ILP (Independent Labour Party) which he later joined – 1938. This was in 1937 after the Comintern’s right turn, away from the ultra-leftism of the Third Period, towards the Popular Front phase, a move from a policy of international revolution (identified as Trotskyism) to the defence of democracy through alliances with bourgeois political groups. Unfortunately for Orwell he was in the wrong place at the wrong time – this was the time of the big Stalinist push against Trotskyism, and in Spain this meant the POUM. He wrote:

‘’I must say something about the general charge that the POUM was a secret fascist organization in the pay of Franco and Hitler. This charge was repeated over and over in the Communist press … according to the Frenti Rojo (the Valencia Communist Newspaper) ‘’Trotskyism, is not a political doctrine; it is a capitalist organization in league with the Fascists, a Fascist terrorist band, and part of Franco’s 5^th column.’’

What was noticeable from the start was that there was no evidence to support this accusation; the thing was simply asserted with an air of authority.’’ (My emphaisis – FL)

Yep, sounds familiar.

Orwell’s pessimism in this respect reached its terminal stage in his disturbing dystopian novel, 1984

This manufacture of a virtual reality is now common currency in the mass media. The press in particular – including the putatively left-wing publications, (more catholic than the Pope) the Guardian and the Independent – pretty much operate as an appendage to the ‘invisible’ people or are the ‘invisible people’ identified by Bernays. A case in point being a recent snippet in the Independent newspaper which read:

‘’60,000 tortured to death in (Syrian) government jails.’’

‘’At least 60,000 people have died in Syrian government jails during the 5-year conflict, according to a report by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) which said they died ‘’either as a result of direct bodily torture or denial of food and medicine.’’ The Observatory’s director, Abdulrahman said more than 20,000 had died in Sednaya prison near Damascus. The Observatory claimed it had been able to verify the deaths of 14,456.00 (sic) under the age of 18, since the start of the Syrian uprising since 2011.

The Independent 23-05-2106 By Tom Perry – Beirut.

Closer examination reveals that Mr Abdulrahman has lived in Coventry – a small provincial town in middle-England – since 2006 and owns a shop which he runs with his wife; nonetheless he asserts that his sources were serving officials seeking to expose what is going on.

So, we get one guy in Beirut publishing a report based upon another guy who has lived in Coventry since 2006 and who claims to have contacts at high levels in the Syrian government. Yeah, right!

Yet the Independent, which is said to be a ‘left leaning’ newspaper owned by the Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev who purchased it in 2010, will it seems publish extremely dubious stories without checking the sources but simply takes what they say at face value. No doubt this dishonesty serves a greater cause.

The post-modernist denial of the possibility of objective reality is now firmly entrenched in reactionary elite circles. It involves, 1. ‘Groupthink’ defined as a process where a group with similar backgrounds and largely insulated from outside opinion makes decisions without critically testing, analysing and evaluating ideas and outcomes. 2. ‘Doublethink’ where two incompatible thoughts can be carried on at the same time. It of course follows that if everyone is thinking the same then no-one is thinking at all. Finally, 3. Double standards. Describing the behaviour of your opponents as despicable, inhuman and a violation of human rights, when ‘our’ side is doing exactly the same. Of necessity this involves all of the above mechanisms. Orwell explained:

‘’Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits but according to who does them, and of course there is no kind of outrage – torture, the use of hostages, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians – which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side.’’ (Notes on Nationalism – 1945).

The Goebbels propaganda template was/is disarmingly simple: tell a lie, preferably a big one and then repeat it endlessly until it seeps into the popular consciousness. Taking their cue from this policy the mainstream media messages are relentless, ubiquitous, and obedient to their political masters. This was apparent during the EU referendum campaign and the geopolitical tensions in eastern Europe and the South China Sea. This information war is now the primary political phenomenon of our times, and the mass media speaks with one voice.

As Orwell opined: ‘To begin with, the era of free speech is closing down, the freedom of the press in Britain has always been something of a fake, because in the last resort, money controls opinion.’ That’s the bad news. ‘… still as long as the legal right to say what you like exists, there are always loopholes for the unorthodox writer.’ (Why I joined the Independent Labour Party – 1938). With due deference to Orwell, however, those loopholes are disappearing fast.

Sad to say, however, Orwell actually ended up spying for the British Foreign Office. At the time, 1946, the USSR and Stalin were both very popular amongst the working people of the UK. The Soviet football (‘soccer’ for all our American friends) team, Moscow Dynamo, did a tour of the UK and played Chelsea at Stamford Bridge (London); it was a mass sell-out where upwards of 100,000 fans spilled over onto the pitch. Chelsea won by the way, 4-1. (See below).

Members of my own family were actively involved in the war both in the army, Royal navy and merchant navy. One such, Uncle Tom, took part in convoys carrying armaments to the USSR – a rather dangerous undertaking from Scotland to Murmansk all the time being bombed and torpedoed by German aircraft and U-Boats based in occupied Norway. He was lucky to survive.

But that was then, and this is now.

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Unfortunately, however, and according to Ben Norton of The Greyzone 2016 , the popularity of the USSR was not to the liking of the British political class and intelligentsia. Indeed!

Norton noted the following:

‘’It is fascinating seeing people in the 21st century, especially self-declared leftists, still lionizing George Orwell, the worst kind of reactionary turncoat.

For years, the cat has been out of the bag: George Orwell secretly worked for the UK’s Foreign Office. At the end of his life, he was an outright counter-revolutionary snitch, spying on leftists on behalf of the imperialist British government.

The US government also found Orwell’s work quite useful. The coup-plotting, death squad-training assassins and torturers at the Central Intelligence Agency turned Orwell’s books into a propaganda weapon. The CIA even funded the Animal Farm movie, which is now mandatory viewing in many high schools.

But that happened after Orwell’s death in 1950. What is more scandalous is that he knowingly collaborated with the UK government when he was still alive.

“Orwell’s List” is a term that should be known by anyone who claims to be a person of the left. It was a blacklist Orwell compiled for the British government’s Information Research Department; an anti-communist propaganda unit set up for the Cold War.

The list includes dozens of suspected communists, “crypto-communists,” socialists, “fellow travellers,” and even LGBT people and Jews — their names scribbled alongside the sacrosanct 1984 author’s disparaging comments about the personal predilections of those blacklisted.

The document was declassified by the British government in 2003. The leading neoliberal newspaper The Guardian reported at the time that the blacklist “contains the names of 38 public figures, from the actors Charlie Chaplin and Michael Redgrave to the author JB Priestley, whom Orwell suggested should not be trusted by the IRD as anti-communist propagandists.”

Timothy Garton Ash, the historian who obtained the document, revealed that Orwell gave the blacklist to his close friend Celia Kirwan, who worked for the Foreign Office’s Information Research Department, from his sickbed in May 1949.

Orwell had told Kirwan in April that the list included journalists and writers who “in my opinion are crypto-communists, fellow-travellers or inclined that way and should not be trusted as propagandists.”

“There seems to be general agreement by Orwell’s fans, left and right, to skate gently over Orwell’s suspicions of Jews, homosexuals and blacks, also over the extreme ignorance of his assessments,” wrote legendary radical journalist Alexander Cockburn, sardonically referring to the anti-communist blacklist as “St. George’s List.”

“If any other postwar left intellectual was suddenly found to have written mini-diatribes about blacks, homosexuals and Jews, we can safely assume that subsequent commentary would not have been forgiving,” he added. “Here there’s barely a word.”

Cockburn’s The Nation article on the subject, “St. George’s List,” is difficult to find today. I have republished it in full below. The article was also expanded into “The Fable of the Weasel,” Cockburn’s foreword for John Reed’s Animal Farm parody Snowball’s Chance.

Apologists insist Orwell simply “sold out” later in life and became a cranky conservative, yet the story is more complex. Orwell had a consistent political thread throughout his life. This explains how he could go from fighting alongside a Spanish Trostkyite militia in a multi-tendency war against fascism to demonizing the Soviet Union as The Real Enemy — before returning home to imperial Britain, where he became a social democratic traitor who castigated capitalism while collaborating with the capitalist state against revolutionaries trying to create socialism.

Sure, the USSR did some objectionable things, but it was also the only large country in the entire world that supported the Spanish Republicans in their fight against fascism (excluding a bit of extra support from Mexico). The Soviet Union understood that one cannot have a revolution if one cannot even defeat the fascist counterrevolution first — a lesson many on the left still have not learned today.

Yet leftists like Orwell and his devoted followers continue to lament Kronstadt and revel in their ideological purity — while conveniently living relatively comfortable lives in Western imperialist country.’’

So, if it is the case that Orwell fell foul of some reactionary impulses in later life, then none of us is apparently immune to this type of propaganda. I think Orwell’s conversion dates back to his political period working for the British Colonial Office in India. His novels – Burmese Days, for example – as well as articles such as (Shooting and Elephant) and (A Hanging) seem to have insinuated themselves into his belief system. This was not at all unusual among intellectuals from the 1950’s onwards – with the honourable exception of C Wright Mills perhaps – who became fervent supporters of imperialism and is still the case today. The blue pill is apparently still all the rage among the decadent and fashionable elite! This much is manifest. Like the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, who in 1918 said of the political/moral degeneration of the West:

‘’The best lack all conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity…

‘’And what rough beast its hour come round at last slouches toward Bethlehem to be born.’’

(The Second Coming)

But like the carthorse, Boxer, in Animal Farm, we, the western ‘intelligentsia’ (sic! or what passes for it) must try harder.

Goodbye, Trafalgar Square: Celebrating Freedom in Europe

August 16, 2022

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A Look Forward to 2035 by Batiushka

England

Following the 2034 collapse of Britain and the popular overthrow of its millennial Establishment after nearly two decades of political turmoil, England moves ahead. Last week international arrest warrants were issued by the new People’s Government for the detention of the elderly war criminals Blair (Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq), Cameron (Libya, Syria and the Yemen) and Johnson (the Ukraine), who are all believed to be in hiding, cowering from justice somewhere in Florida, where they are now being hunted down.

As regards internal changes to the English Capital, just today the following changes have been announced by the People’s Government in London, the Capital of England, part of its programme of ‘Re-Englanding England’, also known as ‘Debritainisation’.

England Square

Today, exactly two hundred years after ‘Trafalgar Square’ in London was given the name of an Arabic-named Cape in Spain, the Square is to be renamed ‘England Square’. The statue of Nelson on its column is to be replaced by a statue of the effective founder of England, King Alfred the Great, known as ‘England’s Darling’, ‘The Truthteller’ and ‘The Lawgiver’. It will then be known as ‘Alfred’s Column’. A spokesman for the People’s Government said that it in no way wished to denigrate Nelson, whose tactical genius and personal bravery are undoubted, but Demilitarisation is an inherent part of Debritainisation. The statue will be removed to the English Museum, formerly called ‘The British Museum’. This has plenty of empty space, since so many of its artefacts, looted from around the world by British imperialists mainly since the eighteenth-century, have been returned to their countries of origin.

At the same time the four lions around the base of Alfred’s Column will also be sent to the English Museum as part of the policy of Demilitarisation, that is, as part of the policy of the removal of aggressive symbols of imperialist militarism. They will be replaced by four female figures, personifying Motherhood, Peace, Justice and Freedom. The four plinths for statues on England Square, at present occupied by three statues (the fourth plinth is empty) of the German King George IV and the imperialist militarists, Napier and Havelock, are also to be sent to the English Museum. They will be replaced by statues of literary and social geniuses of English history, known as ‘The Four Williams’: William Langland (1332-1386), William Shakespeare (1564-1616), William Blake (1757-1827) and William Cobbett (1763-1835).

As readers may know, Langland wrote a visionary English-language poem and allegory called ‘Piers Plowman’, in which he denounced the corruption of the medieval Catholic Church and praised the simple faith of the people. As for Shakespeare, he was the most brilliant poet of the English language and a very perceptive psychologist, who described in detail the good and bad in human nature and their motivations. Blake was the visionary poet and artist who opposed the appalling exploitation of his age and wrote the new English National Anthem, ‘Jerusalem’, in which he denounced the ‘dark, satanic mills’ of the so-called ‘Industrial Revolution’, that is, of the mass exploitation of industrial workers. Cobbett was a politician who struggled for social justice and wrote against the collectivisation, or privatisation, that is, just plain theft, of the common land in England, euphemistically called the ‘Enclosures’. He constantly campaigned against corruption and poverty and in favour of rural prosperity and freedom.

As for the busts of the three imperialist Admirals, Jellicoe, Beatty and Cunningham, in England Square, they are also to be sent to the English Museum and be replaced by busts of three well-known poets: a soldier (Wilfred Owen), a merchant sailor (John Masefield) and an airman, John Gillespie Magee (author of ‘High Flight’). They are in memory of the sacrifices of ordinary men, ‘the lions led by donkeys’, in the imperialist wars of the British past. The statue of Charles I on the south side of England Square, usurped and then beheaded by a clique of grasping merchants, will be retained. However, the statues in front of the National Gallery, of the Scottish King James II and of the slave-owning colonist George Washington, will be sent to the English Museum and be replaced by statues of the two Patronal Saints of England, St George and St Edmund.

The Square of the Peoples

Meanwhile, there will also be changes to the statues outside ‘Parliament’, renamed ‘The House of the People’ since the abolition of the House of Lords, to that in the Guildhall, and to the twelve statues in Parliament Square, now renamed ‘The Square of the Peoples’. Outside the House of the People, the statue of Cromwell is to be replaced by a statue of an Irish peasant, at least 200,000 (10% of the population) of whom the brutal thug Cromwell had massacred. In the Guildhall the statue of Thatcher is to be replaced by the statue of a Yorkshire coal-miner. Both old statues are to be taken to the English Museum to protect them from vandalism.

In The Square of the Peoples, nine of the present twelve statues are also to be removed. These are, in anti-clockwise order: the statue of Churchill, replaced by that of an English child orphaned by bombing in the Second World War; that of David Lloyd George by an injured World War One Welsh soldier; that of the South African Prime Minister Smuts by a Boer woman from a British concentration camp during the Boer War; that of the British Imperialist Prime Minister Palmerston by that of a Russian peasant-soldier from the British invasion of Russia (the so-called ‘Crimean War’); that of the British Imperialist Prime Minister Smith-Stanley (the Earl of Derby) by that of a Chinese woman suffering in the so-called, British-caused ‘Opium War’ (Genocide of China); that of the British Imperialist Prime Minister Disraeli by that of a Bulgarian peasant-woman, oppressed by the Ottomans whom Disraeli immorally supported; that of the British Imperialist Prime Minister Peel by that of a starving Irishwoman from the Irish Potato Famine; that of the British Imperialist Prime Minister Canning by that of a Scottish crofter, removed by force from his land which was stolen from him in the so-called ‘Highland Clearances’; that of Lincoln by that of a Tasmanian Aborigene, representing the treatment of North, Central and South American Natives, Australian Aborigenes, genocided Tasmanians and Maori, all as a result of British ‘colonisation’ (land-theft). The statues of Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and Millicent Fawcett will remain as symbols of the striving for freedom of Africans, Indians and of women, who were freed from Victorian oppression and the deprivation of rights.

Europe

The new English People’s Government, elected by over 85% of the electorate according to the new proportional democracy, is keen to depose the old tyrants and celebrate the victims of tyranny. It has come to our knowledge that parallel events are about to occur not only in newly-reunited Ireland and newly-independent Scotland and Wales, but also in the newly-freed countries of the former EU. This follows last month’s sacking of the EU headquarters in the Berlaymont building in Brussels. Everywhere in Western Europe the flags of freedom are beginning to flutter defiantly.

In Paris the Arc de Triomphe in Paris is to be renamed ‘L’Arc du Peuple’ (‘The People’s Arch’) and Napoleon’s bloody battles are to be removed from it. Rome, Brussels, Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Lisbon – all are reviewing names of streets, statues and monuments. As for the English Government, it has already joined the new Confederation of Free European Nations (CFEN), a loose structure which will meet in various European Capitals. It was originally suggested by the paternal Russian government and has been formed to replace the old centralised EU and its unelected bureaucrats and tyrants.

15 August 2035

Breaking News:

It has just been announced that Antony Blair has been captured by the Free American Police after being found hiding in a hole in the ground near a farmhouse outside Miami. Blair was shown in a photograph with a full beard and hair longer than in his familiar appearance. He was described by police officials as being in good health despite his 82 years. The details of his double trial, which is to take place in Belgrade and then in Baghdad, have not yet been determined. The local police call their prisoner ‘Vic’, which stands for ‘Very Important Criminal’. Officials said that Blair whined to them after his arrest: ‘I am innocent, I did not do anything, I was only following orders from the White House’.

Why is Amnesty apologising for telling the truth about Ukrainian war crimes?

16 August 2022

JONATHAN COOK

Allowing only one side to be criticised for its crimes – reinforcing the loaded western political narrative of good guys versus bad guys – is likely to fuel war rather than resolve it

Middle East Eye – 16 August 2022

Should a human rights organisation apologise for publishing important evidence of war crimes and human rights abuses?

If it does apologise, what does that suggest about its commitment to dispassionately uncovering the truth about the actions of both parties to war? And equally, what message does it send to those who claim to be “distressed” by the publication of such evidence?

Those are questions Amnesty International should have pondered far more carefully than it obviously did before issuing an apology last week over its latest report on the war in Ukraine.

In that report, Amnesty accused Ukrainian forces of committing war crimes by stationing troops and artillery in or near schools, hospitals and residential buildings, thereby using civilians effectively as human shields. Such practices by Ukrainian soldiers were identified in 19 different towns and villages.

These incidents did not just theoretically endanger civilians. There is evidence, according to Amnesty, that return fire by Russian troops on these Ukrainian positions led to non-combatants being killed.

The Israeli army regularly accuses Palestinian factions like Hamas of hiding among civilians in Gaza, while obscuring its own, long-documented practice of using Palestinians as human shields.

But whatever the truth of Israel’s claims, unlike the tiny and massively overcrowded Gaza, which offers few or no hiding places outside of built-up areas for Palestinian fighters to resist Israeli aggression, Amnesty concluded of the situation in Ukraine: “Viable alternatives were available that would not endanger civilians – such as military bases or densely wooded areas nearby, or other structures further away from residential areas.”

In other words, it was a choice made by the Ukrainian army to put its own civilians in harm’s way.

Mounting pressure

Notably, this is the first time a major western human rights organisation has publicly scrutinised the behaviour of Ukraine’s soldiers. Until now, these watchdog bodies have focused exclusively on reports of crimes committed by Russian forces – a position entirely in line with the priorities of their own governments. By its own admission, Amnesty has published dozens of reports condemning Russia.

The pushback against the latest report was relentless, coming even from Amnesty’s own Ukrainian team. Oksana Pokalchuk, its head, quit, explaining that her team “did everything they could to prevent this material from being published”.

Under mounting pressure, Amnesty made a statement last week in which it said it “deeply regrets the distress and anger” caused by its report, while at the same time stating: “We fully stand by our findings.”

The idea that only one side has been committing war crimes in Ukraine was always implausible. In wars, all sides commit crimes. It is in the nature of wars.

Faulty lines of communication mean orders are misunderstood or only partially relayed to those on the front lines. Inevitably, soldiers prioritise their own lives over those of the enemy, including civilians. Terrorising the other side – through human rights violations – can be an effective way to avoid combat, by sending a warning to enemy soldiers to desert their posts and civilians to flee. Sadists and psychopaths, meanwhile, find themselves with plenty of opportunities to exploit during the fighting.

But conversely, parties to wars invariably struggle to acknowledge their own abuses. They prefer simple-minded, self-serving narratives of good and evil: our soldiers are heroes, morally spotless, while their soldiers are barbarians, indifferent to the value of human life.

Western governments and establishment media outlets have readily peddled this foolish line in Ukraine, too, even though neither Europe nor the United States are supposed to be directly involved in the war. They have reflexively amplified Ukrainian claims of Russian war crimes, even when the evidence is lacking or the picture murky, and they have resolutely ignored any evidence of Ukrainian crimes, such as evidence that Russian prisoners of war have been executed or that Ukraine has been using petal cluster bombs in civilian areas.

More self-censorship

In such circumstances, only the human rights community is in a position to provide a more faithful picture of how events are unfolding, and hold to account both sides for their crimes. But until Amnesty stepped out of line, western human rights groups had moved in lockstep with western governments, the same governments that appear to want endless war in Ukraine, to “weaken Russia”, rather than a quick resolution.

Even the author of Amnesty’s new report, Donatella Rovera, has conceded: “I think the level of self-censorship on this issue [Ukrainian war crimes] has been pretty extraordinary.”

Amnesty should not be apologising for providing a rare window on such crimes. It should be emphasising the importance of monitoring both sides for serious breaches of international law. And for very good reason.

Amnesty’s apology sends a message to those partisans trying to shut down scrutiny of Ukrainian crimes of just how easy it is to put the human rights community on the defensive. Efforts to deter reporting of a similar nature in the future will intensify.

Ukraine’s foreign affairs minister, Dmytro Kuleba, was among those who lost no time vilifying Amnesty by characterising its report as “Russian disinformation”.

Amnesty’s apology suggests such pressure campaigns have an effect and will lead to increased self-censorship – in a situation where the evidence already indicates that there is a great deal of self-censorship, as Rovera pointed out.

The apology betrays the civilians who have been, and will be, used as human shields – putting them in lethal danger – over the coming months and potentially years of fighting. It means Ukrainian forces will feel even less pressure to rein in behaviour that amounts to a war crime. 

Amnesty would never apologise to Russian partisans offended by a report on Russian war crimes. Its current apology indicates to the victims of Ukrainian human rights abuses that they are less worthy than the victims of Russian abuses.

Flooding the battlefield

Turning a blind eye to Ukrainian crimes also lifts the pressure on western governments. They have been recklessly channelling arms worth many billions of dollars to Ukraine, even though they have little idea where most end up. (In a further worrying sign of self-censorship in the west, CBS recently postponed the broadcast of an investigation suggesting as little as a third of western weapons reach their intended destination in Ukraine.)

That is all the more dangerous because, even before Russia’s invasion in late February, Ukrainian forces – including the neo-Nazi elements now glossed over in western narratives – were engaged in a vicious civil war with ethnic Russian communities in Ukraine’s east. That region, the Donbas, is where Moscow has been focusing its military advances.

Human rights violations by Ukrainians against other Ukrainians were regularly committed during the eight-year civil war, as western monitors documented at the time. Such crimes are almost certainly continuing under cover of the war against Russia, but with the aid now of western arms shipments.

Ignoring abuses by Ukrainian forces gives them a free hand to commit crimes not only against Russian soldiers but also against the large number of Ukrainians who are not seen as loyal to Kyiv.

A failure to closely scrutinise how and where western artillery is being used is almost certain to result in more, not less, of the kind of Ukrainian crimes Amnesty has just highlighted.

Western governments, and publics, need to be confronted with the likely consequences of flooding the battlefield with weapons before they prefer such a policy over pursuing diplomatic solutions.

Ultimately, allowing one side only to be criticised for its crimes – reinforcing the simple-minded narrative of good guys versus bad guys – is likely to fuel the war rather than resolve it.

War-mongering

Amnesty’s conduct over this latest report is not exceptional. It is part of a pattern of behaviour by a western human rights community vulnerable to political and financial pressures that detract from its ostensible mission. 

As the near-exclusive focus on Russian crimes in Ukraine illustrates, international humanitarian law is all too often interpreted through the prism of western political priorities.

There has long been a revolving door between the staff of prominent human rights groups and the US government. And pressure from elite donors – who are invested in these dominant narratives – doubtless plays a part, too.

Anyone departing from the narrow political consensus imposed by western political and media elites is defamed as spreading Russian “disinformation”, or for being apologists for dictators like Syria’s Bashar al-Assad or Libya’s late ruler Muammar Gaddafi. Criticisms of Israel, meanwhile, are demonised as proof of antisemitism. 

Certainly, Russian, Syrian and Libyan leaders have committed war crimes. But the focus on their crimes is all too often an excuse to avoid addressing western war crimes, and thereby enable agendas that advance the interests of the West’s war industries.

I experienced this first hand during the month-long conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in the summer of 2006. Israel accused Hezbollah of using its own population as “human shields” – framed by the Norwegian politician and United Nations official Jan Egeland as “cowardly blending” – an allegation lapped up by the western media.

Whatever the truth of that claim, it presented a very one-sided picture of what took place during that summer’s fighting. Though no one was allowed to mention it at the time because of Israel’s strict military censorship laws, it was common knowledge among Israel’s minority of Palestinian citizens that many of their own communities in northern Israel were being used as locations for Israeli tanks and artillery to fire into Lebanon.

The Israeli army had forcibly recruited these third-class citizens as human shields, just as the Ukrainian army is now accused by Amnesty of doing to civilians.

I saw for myself a number of the locations where Israel had installed batteries in or next to the minority’s communities. There were later Israeli court cases that confirmed this widespread practice; Palestinian politicians in Israel raised the matter in the Israeli parliament; and a local human rights group later issued a report documenting examples of these war crimes.

But these revelations never gained any traction with either the western media or human rights groups. Western publics were left with an entirely false impression: that Hezbollah alone had endangered its own civilians, even though Israel had undoubtedly done the same or worse.

The reality could not be acknowledged because it conflicted with western political priorities that treat Israel as a valued ally with a moral army and Hezbollah as a depraved, bloodthirsty terrorist organisation.

Saints and sinners

Human rights groups reporting on the 2006 Lebanon war actively echoed these self-serving western narratives that unfairly differentiated between Hezbollah and Israel, as I highlighted at the time.

I found myself in a very public row with Human Rights Watch over comments made by one of its researchers to the New York Times claiming that Hezbollah had intentionally targeted Israeli civilians whereas Israel had avoided targeting Lebanese civilians.

First, it completely failed to fit the known facts of the war. Israel’s strikes on Lebanon had caused a disproportionately large number of civilian deaths, despite the use of precision weapons. Hezbollah, using far more primitive rockets, meanwhile, had killed mostly soldiers, not civilians. 

But more problematic still, HRW had ascribed intentions to each side – good and bad – when it could not possibly know what those intentions were. As I wrote at the time of its researcher’s comments:

Was he or another HRW researcher sitting in one of the military bunkers in northern Israel when army planners pressed the button to unleash the missiles from their spy drones? Was he sitting alongside the air force pilots as they circled over Lebanon dropping their US-made bombs or tens of thousands of ‘cluster munitions’, tiny land mines that are now sprinkled over a vast area of south Lebanon? Did he have intimate conversations with the Israeli chiefs of staff about their war strategy? Of course not. He has no more idea than you or I what Israel’s military planners and its politicians decided was necessary to achieve their war goals.

HRW’s comments made sense only in a political context: that the group faced enormous pressure from US politicians and funders to focus on Hezbollah’s crimes. It also faced a damaging vilification campaign led by Israel lobbyists who wished to shield Israel from scrutiny. They accused the group’s senior staff of antisemitism and spreading a blood libel.

It looked very much like HRW caved into that pressure, just as Amnesty is now effectively doing in apologising for upsetting Ukrainian partisans and those emotionally invested in the one-sided narrative they hear constantly from their politicians and media.

Neither Amnesty nor Human Rights Watch responded to a request for comment. 

The reality is that western publics need more, not less, scrutiny of the crimes committed in wars, if only to tear the facade off narratives designed to paint a picture of saints and sinners – narratives that dehumanise official enemies and fuel more war.

The minimum needed to achieve that is an independent, fearless, vigorous human rights community, not an apologetic one. 

If you appreciate my articles, please consider hitting a donate button (left for Paypal, right for GoCardless):

What I’ve seen of Ukraine’s war crimes against civilians in the Donbass over the past few months

August 10, 2022 

Eva Bartlett

I haven’t “blogged” consistently for many years, since my Gaza days really, and use this site as a place to re-post my writings and interviews, generally.

Today, because I’m strapped for time, still in the Donetsk People’s Republic, I’m doing a short blog post, to share this:

What I've seen of Ukraine's war crimes in the past few months:https://t.co/g1ETUIMw1U

— Eva Karene Bartlett (@EvaKBartlett) August 7, 2022

If you’re not on Twitter, the thread is also here on the Thread Reader

RELATED:

–The West is silent as Ukraine targets civilians in Donetsk using banned ‘butterfly’ mines

–Today, Ukraine bombed a Donetsk hotel full of journalists – here’s what it felt like to be inside at the time

–Western media and politicians prefer to ignore the truth about civilians killed in Donetsk shelling [When Kiev’s guilt in attacks on a maternity hospital cannot be denied, it’s simply brushed under the carpet]

–Who killed the POWs at Yelenovka? All signs on the ground point to a Ukrainian attack

–Ukrainian strike on Donetsk market was a terrorist act

AUGUST 10, 2022 EVA BARTLETTDONBASS, DONETSK, GORLOVKA, LUGANSK, MAKEEVKA, MARIUPOL, MEDIA LIES, UKRAINE

Al-Quds Brigades responds to latest assassinations using 130 missiles

7 Aug, 2022

Source: Al Mayadeen Net

By Al Mayadeen English 

Al-Quds Brigades announces the bombing of large areas in the occupied lands with salvoes of missiles as part of its initial response to the assassination of one of its commanders, Khaled Mansour.

Rockets are launched from the Gaza Strip towards occupied lands, Gaza city, Palestine, Saturday, August 6, 2022 (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)

The Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement (PIJ), announced Sunday the bombing of large areas of “Tel Aviv,” the central settlements, and the Gaza envelope using salvoes of rockets, as part of its initial response to the assassination of one of its officials, Khaled Mansour. 

The brigades said in a statement, “As a preliminary response to the crime of assassinating the great leader Khaled Mansour and his martyred brothers, we bombed large areas of Tel Aviv, the central cities, and the Gaza envelope.”

سقوط صواريخ أطلقت من غزة بشكل مباشر على مستوطنة "نتيفوت" pic.twitter.com/ExJfC4pC3E

— وكالة شهاب للأنباء (@ShehabAgency) August 7, 2022

The statement added, “As part of Operation Unity of Battlefields, Al-Quds Brigades launched massive missile strikes against Tel Aviv, Palmachim base, Ashdod, Beer Al Sabe, Askalan, Netivot, Mefalsim, Mivtachim, and all the usurped areas of the Gaza envelope.”

إعلام عبري: وابل من الصواريخ يطلق من قطاع غزة، وقوع إصابات وأضرار بين المستوطنين . pic.twitter.com/DDsNpuxgDw

— وكالة شهاب للأنباء (@ShehabAgency) August 7, 2022

In this context, Al Mayadeen‘s correspondent in Gaza pointed out that “the Al-Quds Brigades fired about 130 rockets at the settlements within 10 minutes.

#شاهد الرشقة الصوارخية للمقاومة من قطاع غزة قبل قليل. pic.twitter.com/UiMP0avf28

— وكالة شهاب للأنباء (@ShehabAgency) August 7, 2022

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement mourned those who were martyred in the aggression that targeted a residential area in the Yabna camp in Rafah, including commander Khaled Mansour.

The Israeli occupation began on August 5 aggression on the Gaza Strip on Friday, and Al-Quds Brigades announced that Tayseer Al-Jaabari, a military commander in the northern Gaza Strip, had been martyred.

The Palestinian Resistance factions mourned the martyrs of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, stressing that the occupation shall bear all the consequences of the aggression. 

Consequently, Al-Quds Brigades launched an operation in response to the Israeli occupation’s aggression on the Gaza Strip, by launching salvoes of rockets toward the occupied Palestinian territories.

Destruction, tears, and screams. #GazaUnderAttack #فلسطين_تقاوم_الغدر pic.twitter.com/BQxDb05VKj

— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) August 6, 2022

Earlier today, Palestinian sources revealed Sunday to Al Mayadeen that “the Islamic Jihad movement (PIJ) possesses a game-changing weapon.”

The sources confirmed that this weapon is capable of seriously changing the course current battle, adding that “the resistance has not decided yet whether or not to use this game-changing weapon now or postpone it for a coming decisive battle.”

Who killed the POWs at Yelenovka? All signs on the ground point to a Ukrainian attack

August 2, 2022 

There is every reason to believe that the July 29 bombing of a detention center holding Ukrainian POWs was carried out on Kiev’s orders

Eva Bartlett

There is every reason to believe that the July 29 bombing of a detention center holding Ukrainian POWs was carried out on Kiev’s orders

https://twitter.com/EvaKBartlett/status/1553045892109934592

The next morning, I went around Donetsk to document the extremely dangerous “petal” mines Ukraine has dropped on the city. According to DPR Emergency Services, eight civilians had been killed by these mines just the day before. If you step on one of these tiny-but powerful-explosives, chances it will merely tear off a leg instead of outright killing you. And they are insidiously toy-like in appearance, likely to attract children’s attention.

Even with warning, these nefarious "petal"/"butterfly" mines dropped by Ukraine on Donetsk are hard to see & easy to miss.

Ukraine is committing war crimes against the civilians of the Donbass, and has been for 8+ years. pic.twitter.com/p5byG95GVG

— Eva Karene Bartlett (@EvaKBartlett) August 1, 2022

Who benefits from the war crime at Yelenovka? 

Ukraine and Western media, as would be expected, blame Russia for the bombing of Yelenovka detention center, which killed 53 people. Russia and the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), in turn, point the finger at Kiev.

In addition to those killed, the 2am bombing, which DPR officials say was carried out using American-supplied HIMARS, injured at least eight employees and over 70 POWs held there. The prisoners were captured Ukrainian combatants, mainly members of the Azov neo-Nazi militia who’d surrendered in Mariupol in May.

If HIMARS, or High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System, were indeed the source of the destruction and death, then it is almost certain it was Ukraine who bombed the prison, given that Kiev had the coordinates and is the only side in the conflict that possesses such weapons. Even the Pentagon admits it is possible, albeit characterizing the strike as “unintentional.”

From a logical perspective, Russia had no motivation to bomb the prison. For Ukraine, on the other hand, these POWs represented a liability, in that they could testify to the alleged war crimes they committed against Donbass civilians.

Ukraine has made a litany of claims meant to incriminate Russia throughout the current conflict –the Bucha massacre, the strike on the Mariupol maternity hospital, the Ghost of Kiev hoax, the supposed mass graves of civilians, the outlandish false allegations of Russian soldiers committing sexual crimes, which even saw the former Ukrainian Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights fired by Kiev’s own parliament.

Russia has invited the UN and the International Red Cross to investigate the Yelenovka prison bombing. Meanwhile, observers online have used the publicly available data to put together a picture of what occurred. Here’s an insightful analysis from the Rybar Telegram channel (with more than 627,000 followers), specializing in military analytics:

“The eastern part of the building suffered the most damage, where a powerful fire and explosion occurred, which blew out the windows.” Judging by the angle of impact, the analyst concludes that “the shooting was carried out from the trajectory of Marinka-Kurakhovo –the Sergeevka triangle– Pokrovsk-Udachnoe.” This is Ukrainian-controlled territory. The analysis could not conclude whether HIMARS was used, from the information at hand. 

Along the ‘who benefits?’ line of thinking, a number of circumstances also point to Kiev. These have also been pointed out by Russian observers and compiled into a chronology. The captured Azov Nazis were taken to the Yelenovka detention center in late May. While prisoner exchanges between Ukraine and Russia have included Azov fighters, there is a strong opposition to handing them back over to Kiev, meaning that there’s no guarantee that they would be exchanged in the future – potentially making them a liability to Kiev. By June 20 reports of Ukraine shelling the prison already appeared on Russian channels watching the conflict. On July 28 the confession of an Azov member emerged, claiming that neo-Nazis in Kharkov and Kiev had direct orders from Zelensky’s office to torture and murder Russian prisoners of war. Late that night/early next morning, Ukraine struck the very detention center holding the Azov member who confessed, as well as others who might have done so.

Elsewhere, other neo-Nazis in captivity have confessed to deliberately murdering civilians, a PR disaster for Ukraine, made worse were the prisoners in Yelenovka to follow suit.

Last but not least, just two days before the Yelenovka strike, the US Senate passed a resolution urging the State Department to recognize Russia as a “sponsor of terrorism.” By perpetrating an attack and blaming it on Moscow, Kiev could be aiming to push that decision through – even though the State Department is reportedly reluctant.

And here’s the reason behind today's Ukrainian missile attack: Yermak, head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, wrote that the “Russian terrorist attack in Yelenovka” should lead to the recognition of Russia as a sponsor of terrorism. pic.twitter.com/MYFqoJhBNt

— Maria Dubovikova (@politblogme) July 29, 2022

Given Ukraine’s multiple attempts to incriminate Russia, and eight years of bombing Donbass civilians, killing their own soldiers is not too far-fetched. In fact, surrendered Ukrainian soldiers have claimed their commanders threatened to shoot them if they attempted desertion, and indeed Ukrainian nationalists firing on them when they attempted to surrender, in one case killing or wounding dozens .

It is left to Russian and DPR doctors to preserve the lives of Ukrainian POWs – even those apparently injured by friendly fire. Outside a Donetsk hospital after the Yelenovka bombing, one of the doctors working on wounded Ukrainians said that five had already had successful surgery for their shrapnel wounds, and two more were to undergo operations.

“It doesn’t matter which side you’re on, we will help you,” he said. 

The ghastly scenes of charred flesh and shrapnel-studded bodies I saw at the prison will remain etched in my mind for a long time. Yes, war is ugly, but Ukraine is upping the ante when it comes to both war crimes and hypocrisy.

*Warning: below are extremely graphic images, which I’ve blurred slightly, but still, not for the weak of stomach.*

RELATED LINKS:

–Here’s what I found at the reported ‘mass grave’ near Mariupol

–Western media and politicians prefer to ignore the truth about civilians killed in Donetsk shelling

5 thoughts on “Who killed the POWs at Yelenovka? All signs on the ground point to a Ukrainian attack”

1. Tom WelshAugust 2, 2022 at 14:38‘Even the Pentagon admits it is possible, albeit characterizing the strike as “unintentional.”’One minute with Google Maps or equivalent will show that the prison compound stands in open fields, some way distant from the nearest houses. And even those are just a small hamlet. There is literally nothing else in the vicinity that could have been the target.
2. 5onic5ocialistAugust 3, 2022 at 09:23Eva I can’t imagine what kind of spirit you must have to be able to do what you do and have done. Looks like fucking Empire like rust will never sleep. They would only be too happy to put us all to sleep permanently. Admire your passion and adhesion to the truth and not bullshit propaganda. If only Empire had the qualities you possess. The world would turn unfettered by nascent greed. Peace Dear Sister. And much thanks.
3. EsmondAugust 3, 2022 at 12:21Thank you, Eva. It’s heartbreaking but it’s reality. I can’t help but be concerned over the effect these horrible events have on all our human psyches particularly you who has witnessed it firsthand. You and those around you are in our thoughts and meditations. Much love to you.
4. 10 to 1August 4, 2022 at 00:35Very tragic. How low has the US leadership sunk to support the Ukrainian government which does this to their own soldiers. When their own soldiers become liabilities of the Ukrainian government and are slaughter like cockroaches. Not to mention was the US leadership a party to the decision to attack the Ukrainian POW’s, to hide the US involvement and possibly being the ones making the decisions to commit them?As word of this gets out, my guess is the defense of Ukraine will collapse very rapidly and the US will have few friends. Now how far will the US leadership go to stop this story in its tracks and do all it can to bury it?Please stay safe Eva.
5. Mark ChapmanAugust 4, 2022 at 06:33Great work, Eva. This incident has gotten quite a lot of notice, and here’s a good piece from Awful Avalanche which affirms many of your details – although to the best of my knowledge, the motive of having Russia declared a state sponsor of terrorism is unique to your site.https://awfulavalanche.wordpress.com/2022/08/03/ukraine-war-day-161-yelenovka-erratum/

• Today is Remembrance Day for Child Victims of the Donbass War, 130 of Them.

Syria Labels ‘Israeli’ Brutality in Occupied Al-Quds Neighborhood as ‘War Crime’

February 15, 2022

By Staff, Agencies

Syria roundly condemned the brutal practices of the ‘Israeli’ occupation military forces and Zionist settlers against Palestinians in the occupied East al-Quds neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah as “war crimes,” calling on international organizations to put an end to the rising acts of the regime’s aggression.

“The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates follows up on ferocious ‘Israeli’ assaults being committed by ‘Israeli’ settlers and troops against local Palestinians in the occupied al-Quds. The attacks have claimed several lives and caused damage to property,” the ministry said in a statement released on Monday.

It denounced the displacing of Palestinian families from their ancestral homes in Sheikh Jarrah as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and a flagrant violation of international law and humanitarian principles.

“Syria calls on world states as well as international humanitarian organizations to immediately stop ‘Israeli’ practices and prevent the regime from killing more Palestinians and trampling on their rights,” the ministry stated.

Confrontations broke out in Sheikh Jarrah on Sunday as far-right ‘Israeli’ lawmaker Itamar Ben Gvir of the Religious Zionism alliance opened a parliamentary office there, in what was described as an effort to exacerbate the situation in the neighborhood.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned Ben Gvir’s step as a “provocative” move that “threatens to ignite violence.”

The ministry said the failure of the international community and the UN Security Council to take necessary measures to compel ‘Israel’ to stop its occupation of al-Quds encourages the occupying regime to forge ahead with its colonial Judaization projects in the Holy City.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry then held the Zionist regime fully and directly responsible for the escalation in occupied al-Quds and the potentially dire consequences.

Sheikh Jarrah has been the scene of frequent crackdowns by the ‘Israeli’ police on Palestinians protesting against the displacement of dozens of Palestinian families in favor of Zionist settler groups.

Since the Tel Aviv occupation regime seized East al-Quds in the 1967 war, Zionist settler organizations have claimed ownership of land in Sheikh Jarrah and have filed multiple lawsuits to force Palestinians out of their homes in the area.

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Israel Bombs Latakia Port for the Second Time This Month – WAR CRIME

DECEMBER 28, 2021

 ARABI SOURI 

Israel bombs Latakia sea port 2nd time in December 2021

Latakia commercial seaport was the target of an Israeli bombing for the 2nd time within this month of December, this time the Israeli aggression was much larger betting on the lack of direct retaliation the last time, and the previous times.

Latakia commercial seaport is one of the main and oldest ports on the Mediterranean, it’s the largest in Syria and it’s the country’s main breathing lung for the Syrian people since the United States of America joined directly on the side of Al Qaeda and ISIS back in 2014 where US forces were deployed on the main routes of trade between Syria and Iraq, where they are also tasked to steal Syrian oil, and in Lebanon by controlling all the security agencies there, and naturally, in Jordan in the south.

A Syrian military spokesperson stated:

At approximately 3:21 in the morning today, the Israeli enemy carried out air aggression with missile bursts from the depth of the Mediterranean, west of Latakia, targeting the container yard in the commercial port in Latakia.

‘The Israeli aggression led to the ignition of fires in the place and the occurrence of great material damage, and work is still going on to put out the fires and check the results of the aggression,’ the military spokesperson concluded.

Local sources confirmed that the scale of this aggression is much larger than the previous one, most of the buildings on the Latakia main Cornishe sustained damage including the Al Nada Hospital, residents in the province of Tartous to the south of Latakia were also shaken by the tremors of the explosions, so did the Russian base in Hmeimim and the Russian service military seaport in Tartous.

Russian Reassurance, the Star Wars Trap for Russia in Syria

Russia, one of the 5 permanent members of the United Nations Security Council is losing its popularity ground in Syria favoring its relations with Israel

Friends in Latakia added that the fire in this aggression has engulfed more containers carrying essential foodstuffs like rice and sugar, and dozens of these containers were destroyed by this attack, a war crime by all definitions. Syria had to import essential food items also because the US forces with the help of their Kurdish separatist SDF terrorists occupy the main food basket region of the country.

This Israeli aggression and provocation come one day after the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the Israeli ‘cabinet’ blatant provocation in the Syrian Golan and vowed to liberate the occupied Syrian land by all means.

It’s beyond any doubt that the Israeli officials are getting more anxious to provoke a regional and they hope for a much larger war that would halt any plans to withdraw the US troops which serve as their first defense line, without the US direct support and the sacrifices of thousands of US soldiers killed and tens of thousands others maimed, and the 7 trillion dollars of US taxpayers hard-earned taxes in wars on behalf Israel, the latter would not stand a chance in any confrontation with any of its neighbors which it stole their lands to build settlements for its settlers it imports from Europe, Russia, and elsewhere.

All indications were that the United States of America is withdrawing from the region especially after its regional proxies proved their incapabilities to fight their wars by themselves despite the abundance of weapons, financial aid, and military and economic wars the US waged against the peoples of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya, and everywhere the US spent those 7 trillion dollars on.

Breaking: Israel Escalates its Aggression on Syria, Bombs Latakia Seaport

The Axis of Resistance, Syria, Hezb Allah in Lebanon, the PMU in Iraq, the Yemeni armed forces and Ansar Allah in Yemen, the IRGC in Iran, and some of the Palestinian factions in Gaza like Jihad and PLFP-GC, this axis is fighting the wars imposed on them strategically, unlike the evil camp spearheaded by the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and other NATO member states who are fighting tactically and in pieces, hence, the overall map is being shaped in favor of the axis that chose strategical gains over tactical ones, and the party that chose tactical gains is imploding from within, each by its own and has lost its wars in the region.

The last attempts to involve the US forces in a new war is the last chance of the Axis of Evil to keep the US cannon fodders and human shields to defend their states, sheikhdoms, and kingdoms, will, or in better terms, can the USA fight a new war where it is poised to lose thousands of its soldiers in the first wave, proven by the Iranian retaliation on the Ain Asad US strategic and heavily fortified base in western Iraq where the US soldiers sat hapless betting their lives on the accuracy of the Iranian incoming missiles which warned them beforehand through the Iraqi government and which only targeted the empty buildings it promised to target? The answer is a big no, the United States has taken its decision, replacing its combat fighters into ‘diplomats’ and ‘advisers’ and reducing its heavy and criminal presence in West Asia and North Africa regions.

The attack in the early hours of this dawn on the Latakia port in Syria will not go without retaliation, it’s an added item on the retaliation list that Syria maintains, fighting and eliminating the tens of thousands of NATO-sponsored terrorist groups in the country was and is its main priority, these types of attacks will not deviate the Syrians from the strategical battleground and will not give the Israelis their lifeline by involving the US troops who should complete their withdrawal from Syria and Iraq within the coming 4 days; this heavily depends on whether there are still officials in the Pentagon and the White House who care for the thousands of US troops sitting ducks in both Syria and Iraq.

The new year, we remind is after 4 days, will bring a lot of changes to the region, Israel does have some interesting seaports to bomb their yards, some of which were recently developed by China, and destroying them in retaliation is very lucrative for the commanders of the Syrian army, the coming 4 days and the first week of 2022 will bare many developments.

Terrified from the US Withdrawal, Israel Bombs Syria trying to Start a War

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• Syrian Foreign Ministry Strongly Condemns Israeli Escalation in the Golan
• More Weapons, Munition, and a Drone for NATO Terrorists Seized in Daraa
• Dangerous NATO/ Al Qaeda Terrorist Group Captured by Syrian Security

كيف تحاسَب أميركا على جرائمها بحق المدنيين؟

الثلاثاء 21 12 2021

العميد د. أمين محمد حطيط*

في كلّ مرة كانت أميركا تطلق بها أكذوبة أو تلفق فيها مسرحية تتهم بها جيشاً من جيوش الخصوم والأعداء بأنه خرج في الميدان عن قواعد القانون الدولي الإنساني، أو تتهم فيها مكوناً مسلحاً يقاوم احتلالها المباشر أو غير المباشر تتهمه بأنه فصيل إرهابي، في كلّ مرة تطلق فيها أميركا ذلك نجدها تخفي جريمة ارتكبتها، أو تحضر المسرح لجريمة سترتكبها منتهكة قواعد الحرب وقواعد القانون الدولي. فأميركا خلافاً لجيوش المعمورة تمارس في الميدان القتل للإرهاب وأحياناً القتال للتدمير، بينما وظيفة الجيوش عادة هي القتال دفاعاً أو هجوماً من أجل تحقيق هدف وطني أو قومي ما.

وفي احتلالها لمناطق في الشرق الأوسط بخاصة في كلّ من أفغانستان والعراق وسورية، لم تخرج أميركا عن هذا السلوك النمطي الاجرامي في أدائها الميداني، ففي الوقت الذي كانت تدّعي فيه مثلاً أن الجيش العربي السوري استعمل الأسلحة الكيماوية ضدّ «المواطنين السوريين الأبرياء» وقتل منهم الكثير، كانت طائراتها النفاثة أو المسيّرة ترتكب المجازر غير المبرّرة بحق المدنيين السوريين، على حدّ ما أوردت صحيفة «نيويورك تايمز» الأميركية، التي ذكرت أنّ هناك أكثر من 1300 تقرير سرّبت من البنتاغون تتضمّن إحصاء لحجم الخسائر الهائل في صفوف المدنيين التي أوقعتها الطائرات الأميركية، التي تدّعي أنها تملك أرقى تقنية في العالم لتحديد الأهداف وضبط النار ومنع الخطأ.

والسؤال المركزي الذي يُطرح هنا هل أن الجيش الأميركي يقتل المدنيين عن طريق الخطأ؟ أم أن القتل مسألة تدخل في صلب قواعد العمل العسكري الأميركي في الميدان؟ سؤال يفتح على سؤال آخر فيه القول كيف يمكن منع أميركا من ارتكاب هذه الجرائم؟

من يعرف ما تملكه أميركا من وسائل المراقبة والاستطلاع وتحديد الأهداف، يصل إلى نتيجة يستبعد فيها إمكان حصول الخطأ في قتل المدنيين بهذا الحجم. فأميركا وفقاً للوثائق المسرّبة نفذت خلال 5 سنوات في البلدان الثلاثة التي احتلتها كلياً أو جزئياً أكثر من 50 ضربة جوية ارتكبت فيها مئات المجازر بحق المدنيين، تنوّعت بين استهداف الجماعات والمناطق الآهلة وقوافل السير والمدارس والأعراس والتجمعات والبنى التحتية إلخ… وكلها أهداف يمنع القانون الدولي العام قصفها. وفي المقابل لم يسجل البنتاغون حادثة واحدة لوحق بها مسؤول عسكري بجريمته أو حتى اتخذ بحقه تدبير تأديبي مسلكي.

إنّ إمعان أميركا باستهداف المدنيين دونما اكتراث أو حذر يعود برأينا إلى سببين… الأول عائد إلى أنها تدرج قتل المدنيين في صلب استراتيجية ممارستها للقوة القمعية بحق الشعب في الدولة المحتلة من أجل ترهيبه ودفعه للاستسلام للاحتلال، والسبب الثاني عائد إلى شعور أميركي بالاستعلاء والممارسة فوق القانون وعدم قدرة أحد على محاسبتها أو معاقبتها، فالشعور الأميركي بالقدرة التامة على الإفلات من العقاب والتصرف بأنها فوق القانون، يدفع العسكري الأميركي للعمل باستخفاف حيال أمن الآخرين وسلامتهم، ويحول دون إلزامه باتخاذ تدابير الحيطة والحذر المفروضة في الميدان، فضلاً عن التقيد الصارم بقاعدة «التناسب والضرورة» الحاكمة في العمليات العسكرية.

والمثير للاستهجان أن أميركا التي هذا هو حال ممارستها ضدّ المدنيين، تدّعي أو تنصّب نفسها مدافعاً عنهم في وجه دولهم وجيوش دولهم، وتجيز لنفسها العدوان على تلك الجيوش بذريعة حماية المدنيين، كما فعلت أكثر من مرة في سورية، حيث زعمت أن الدولة استهدفت الشعب بالسلاح الكيماوي وقامت هي بالعدوان علي الجيش العربي السوري انتقاماً للشعب كما زعمت! ومن المفارقات المضحكة المبكية هنا أن أميركا في الوقت الذي ادّعت أن ضحايا السلاح الكيماوي في أحد المواقع كانوا32 مدنياً، تبيّن أن طيرانها كان، قبل 5 أيام فقط، قد أجهز على تجمع اجتماعي عام وقتل 120 شخصاً في سورية.

أمام هذا الواقع المثير للإدانة والاستنكار الشديدين يطرح السؤال الأساس كيف يمكن أن تعاقَب أميركا على جرائمها بحق المدنيين؟

مع تأكيدنا لرفض الاحتلال الأميركي لأيّ دولة أو منطقة واعتباره عدواناً مداناً وغير مشروع، فإنّ قتل المدنيين وفي الشكل الذي يحصل على يد القوات الأميركية يفرض البحث عن وسائل الدفاع المناسبة، خاصة أن أميركا ترى نفسها فوق القانون وبمنأى عن المحاسبة الدولية من أيّ نوع كانت. لذلك ومع عدم الجدوى من اللجوء إلى المؤسسات والقضاء الدولي لمحاسبتها لن يكون مناص من أن يتولى الشعب المعتدى عليه والمستهدف بالجرائم الأميركية، أن يمارس حق الدفاع المشروع عن النفس عبر مقاومة ضدّ قوات الاحتلال لا بدّ منها من أجل وقف الجرائم وإنهاء الاحتلال، وهذا ما أكدت عليه وقائع التاريخ الحديث التي سجلت ضدّ أميركا بدءاً بفيتنام حيث طرد الأميركي مهزوماً، وفي أفغانستان حيث هرب الأميركي مكسوراً أو في العراق حيث ألزمت المقاومة العراقية أميركا بوضع حدّ لوجودها القتالي، وتستمر المقاومة لأنهاء هذا الوجود كلياً.

أما في سورية فإنّ المقاومة الشعبية الوطنية السورية الواعدة التي تشكلت شرقي الفرات، باتت في مستوى يجعل المتابع يتفاءل خيراً بنتائجها، حيث أن تكرار التصدي للجيش الأميركي المحتلّ أثناء تنقلاته ومنعه من إكمال المسير أكثر من مرة أو استهداف مراكز عسكرية أميركية أو لأدوات أميركا من قسد وغيرها، كلها أمور تنبئ بأمر هامّ مفاده أن على أميركا أن تنهي احتلالها لشرقي الفرات السوري قبل أن تدفع الثمن الكبير الذي يجبرها على الرحيل عنه، كما طردت من سواه من مناطق احتلالها.

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*أستاذ جامعي ـ باحث استراتيجي

Colin Powell’s Death: Liar of the Century

19 Oct 2021

Source: Al Mayadeen Net

Hussam AbdelKareem

Colin Powell was part of the Quartet (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & Powell) of American officials who were responsible for the illegal, unethical, and criminal invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Colin Powell passed away at the age of 84. In his eulogy, writers in the American press will certainly talk about the “brave soldier” who ascended the US army ranks to the “Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff” position and who eventually became the first African-American Secretary of State (he’s born to Jamaican parents). But in fact, he will be remembered for his role in Iraq’s invasion more than anything else in his career. Colin Powell was part of the Quartet (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & Powell) of American officials who were responsible for the illegal, unethical, and criminal invasion of Iraq in 2003. It was Colin Powell who presented America’s case for the war on Iraq to the world in the famous UN Security Council session on Feb 5, 2003.

“Every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence”

– Colin Powell; Feb 5, 2003. 

During the UN Security Council session, Powell detailed the serious threats Iraq was posing to the world by its Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) secret programs and its links with terrorism. He even went on to show a vial in his hand saying that it could be used to store Iraq’s Anthrax germs as part of biological warheads.  

Powell actually used that UN Security Council meeting as “show business”, using projectors and audio recordings to “prove” to the world that Iraq was an imminent threat and that the US has no other option but to go to war. Well, it was all lies, nothing but lies and fabrications. Powell was lying all-out when he talked about: 

– Iraq’s possession of mobile labs to produce WMD’s 

– Iraq’s links to Al-Qa’eda and Bin-Ladin.

– Iraq’s buying Uranium from Niger

– Iraq’s possession of long-range missiles (900 km)

All that was proven false. America failed to find any evidence to support those allegations even after years of extensive search operations all over Iraq after its invasion. 

Colin Powell was lying intentionally. He was not “mistaken”, he knew exactly what he was doing. His boss, Bush, tasked him with the dirty work of presenting a convincing “war case” to the world even if he needs to use lies, misleading information, and false evidence, and Powell accepted to do it. It’s as simple as that. It’s typical soldier behavior: obey the commander. He’s part of the crime and cannot distance himself from it as he tried to do at a later stage in his life. 

After he left office, Powell tried to blame others for what he said in the UN Security Council, portraying himself as “deceived” not as a liar. On Feb 16, 2011, The Guardian newspaper of the UK published an article titled “Former US secretary of state asks why CIA failed to warn him over Iraqi defector who has admitted fabricating WMD evidence”. Also in 2011, Powell told Al Jazeera News Channel that “I deeply regret some of the information I presented was wrong. It has blotted my record, but you know, there’s nothing I can do to change that blot”. And in 2017 Powell said in an interview on Bloomberg “I was more than embarrassed. I was mortified”.

Well, that can hardly be an apology. Talking about the CIA not informing him, his embarrassment, and the blot on his record is no more than an excuse and justification. 

Colin Powell died after he actively participated in destroying another country without any legal or moral basis. His name will remain in history’s list of invaders and barbarians.The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.

An Everlasting Trauma: Sabra and Shatila by the Hours

September 16, 2021

Source: The Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 31, No. 1. 16 Sep 23:31

By Al Mayadeen

Ariel Sharon gave the commands, the Israeli-backed militiamen did the dirty work.

On one occasion of forty hours of ruthless slaughter, “Israel’s” June 6, 1982 invasion of Lebanon, called “Operation Peace for Galilee,” hardly experienced any sense of peace. Linda Butler, an associate editor at the Journal of Palestine Studies, narrates it well. 

According to “Israel,” the aim of the operation was to push back the frontiers of the Palestinian resistance fighters to “protect the people of Galilee” – however, little did 3500 Palestinian and Lebanese know about how their death, sans criminal record, would protect settler colonialism miles and miles away. The second goal of the invasion was to station a government that has an affinity to Israeli settler colonialism. In this case, the president that was to assume office was right-wing leader Bashir Gemayel. 

Sharon called it, “ridding the world of international terrorism.” 

West Beirut, which engulfed the Sabra and Shatila camps, was besieged for 70 days. Three months into the invasion, 17,825 people were killed in occupied regions. West Beirut’s death toll alone, due to airstrikes, artillery and gunfire, took up 2,461 civilians.

As the death toll incessantly mounted, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) came to an understanding in August: to evacuate 11,000 Palestinian fighters and officials under the supervision and auspices of French, US, and Italian troops. The troops left by September 10, 1982. 

On the afternoon of the 14th of September, Bashir Gemayel was assassinated in the Kataeb (Arabic for Phalengist) headquarters in Achrafieh, East Beirut. Habib Shartouni, a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, was blamed for the explosion. 

Ariel Sharon, the security minister at the time, capitalized on the assassination to execute a plan that has impacted the lives of thousands.

Sharon immediately pused the narrative that the Palestinians were behind the assassination of the Christians’ leader, and that they must be avenged as soon as possible.

Accordingto an Israeli journalist, Amnon Kapeliouk, the horrendous operation to be launched by Sharon had been “meticulously planned long in advance.” 

At 3:00 AM on the 15th of September, Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan, Major General Amir Drori, Chief of Intelligence Elie Hobeika, and the Lebanese militia’s new commander-in-chief Fadi Frem met to discuss entry into the Sabra and Shatila camps. Sharon instructed, “Only one element, and that is the IDF, shall command the forces in the area.” While the IDF gave the orders, the Phalangist militiamen did the dirty work:

Fighter jets flew at a low altitude and tankers and troops surrounded the camps from all sides. Israeli snipers were at work, tanks were shelling the premises, and all exits and entrances were blocked by the IDF. Families locked themselves in their homes. 

By 11:30 AM on the 16th of September, the Israelis announced that they had taken control of Beirut. 

At 4:00 PM, jeeps supplied by the Israeli occupation forces drove into Shatila with the guidance of arrows drawn on the walls by the Israelis. 

A platoon of 150 militia soldiers, armed with guns, knives, and axes, stormed the camp. Immediately, they entered homes, slit throats, axed, shot, and raped. On many occasions, they would also slit pregnant women’s bodies open, leaving them and their fetuses to bleed to death. Entire families and neighborhoods were lined up on the streets and shot ruthlessly. 

On Thursday and Friday, Israelis fired light flares into the camps to guide the militiamen in the massacre. One Dutch nurse described the camp as bright as “a sports stadium lit up for a football game.”

By 8:40 PM, a briefing by an army general, Yaron, took place: He said that the militiamen are confused as to what to do with the men, women, and children. They were concerned that they found no terrorists, which left them to wonder what to do with the population they have rounded up. 

At this point, the Israelis were divided on whether the operation should proceed or not. On the one hand, one commander thought things “may have gotten too far,” another commander was impressed with the militiamen’s work and that they should continue, as they called it, “mopping up” till Friday, 5 AM the next day. Upon requesting another bulldozer to “demolish illegal structures,” the Israelis unconditionally granted it to the Phalangists. 

On Friday the 17th of September, the systemic murdering persisted. Bulldozers were at work: they were digging mass graves, and scooping bodies into piles on trucks just outside the camps. The “illegal structures,” which were inhabited buildings, would be destroyed so that bodies would be buried under the wreckage. At the height of this round of massacre, 400 militiamen were involved.

On Saturday at 6 AM, loudspeakers passing through the camps would order civilians to give in to the militia, to exit their homes, and turn themselves in. At that point, it was reported that a thousand people marched out of their homes in lines. The Israeli-backed militiamen would take some of the civilians out of the line and execute them on the spot, whereas others would be dragged to trucks nearby the Kuwaiti embassy and kidnapped…never to be found again. 

At 9 AM, international journalists and media outlets entered the camps only to find piles of bodies lying down on the floor – many mutilated, maimed, and unidentifiable. Many graves were shallowly dug, leaving dead body parts to appear arbitrarily. 

By 10 AM, the militiamen left the camp and the Israelis stayed out of the “scene” as to not be blamed for anything, refusing any accountability and denying any involvement in the disaster. 

Nasrallah: Afghanistan is worst debacle in US history, Biden hopes for civil war

Date: 22 August 2021

RESISTANCE NEWS

Speech by Hezbollah Secretary General, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, on August 17, 2021, on the occasion of the commemoration of the 9th night of Ashura, two days before the martyrdom of Imam Hussein.

Source: video.moqawama.org

Translation: resistancenews.org

Transcript:

[…] My last point is Afghanistan, which I quickly mentioned before. What is happening in Afghanistan right now is an emergency situation that is grabbing the attention of the whole world. Inside the United States, this is the main event all are talking about, and of course everyone blames each other, just like in Lebanon, people are all the same: the Republican Party blames the Democrat Party, blames Biden, and describes the scene as a humiliation for the United States, (a proof of) weakness, helplessness, failure, historic defeat, shame, disgrace, etc. If we want to faithfully describe (the political situation in the United States), we can say that they are tearing each other apart. The same goes for the position of European countries, of the leaders of certain European countries [United Kingdom, France, Germany…], who speak with very strong and very negative words to assess the situation in Afghanistan.

Suppressed crocodile tears: that's all British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace has to offer all his Afghan allies that the Royal Army won't evacuate.#Afghanistan https://t.co/HbIh7DR9ay

— Le Cri des Peuples (@cridespeuples2) August 21, 2021

It is indeed a striking and vitally important spectacle, filled with lessons to be learned, and we all must… It is not something that one or two speeches is enough to describe, for the situation continues to develop, and deserves everyone to watch it carefully and think about it seriously, very seriously. This should not simply be of interest to (pseudo-)experts (in) strategic (issues), who are very numerous today, ma sha Allah, experts, analysts, no: all men and women (must feel) that what is currently happening in Afghanistan (is their concern), and all that has been said so far remains little in the face of the importance and consequences of what is happening in Afghanistan, at the historical, strategic, ideological, cultural, political, psychological and moral levels. And those who must be the most assiduous in the reading (and the interpretation) of this (considerable) event to draw the strategic and historical consequences from it are the peoples of this region. Yes, the people of the Middle East must be the first to care about what is happening. Because what is happening in Afghanistan is a very big and even masterful lesson.

The images that you see and have all seen on TV screens speak for themselves… and all the media around the world (follow and broadcast what is happening), because however strong the censorship system of the United States may be, (it is powerless to prevent the mass distribution of these images). On the subject of social networks and the Internet, which the United States has opened up and spread around the world to instrumentalize them in color revolutions here and there, they find themselves caught in their own trap, because even inside the United States, the Biden government can certainly influence such newspapers or such television channels (to dissuade them from broadcasting these humiliating images), but how could it prevent millions and tens of millions of users of social networks to share these images? And glory to God, these are exactly the same images as in Vietnam! Just like in Saigon! The (American nationals) climbed stairs to access a helicopter on a roof (and escape), and we see exactly the same thing happening at Kabul airport! It’s extraordinary ! A real photocopy! Can we believe that this is just a coincidence?

PHOTO 1: US diplomat evacuate US from embassy via helicopter as the #Taliban enter #Kabul from all sides. #Afghanistan (2021)

PHOTO 2: US diplomat evacuate US from embassy via helicopter as the PAVN & Viet Cong capture of Saigon, Vietnam (1975) pic.twitter.com/YamWmzjOay

— Stefan Simanowitz (@StefSimanowitz) August 15, 2021

Either way, the images of Afghanistan and the fall of Afghanistan into the hands of the very movement that the United States fought for 20 years and expelled (from power), before handing the country over to them on a silver platter… The Taliban flag flies over Kabul airport. I have already mentioned Afghanistan in my previous speech [cf. below], and today Biden took the floor to try to defend himself… I said before that instead of rushing to achieve the withdrawal of his troops, as long as the American forces were present, and since the Afghan forces (formed by the USA) have 300,000 to 400,000 members —between soldiers and police forces— he should have cut a deal between the Afghan government and the Taliban, in favor of the formation of a transitional government, which would have avoided everything that happened, allowing the United States to withdraw with dignity. Why didn’t he do this? Because he couldn’t bear to stay any longer (in Afghanistan). Honestly! It was not out of respect that Biden did not do this. And don’t take my word for it, listen to what Biden himself said! Listen to Biden, listen to his Secretary of State and his National Security Advisor… Because now they are forced to explain themselves to the American people… They do not explain themselves to the peoples of the world, but to the American people who is amazed at these humiliating images of defeat and failure. Listen to his explanations, and you will understand the American point of view. I’m not going to make you a (full) TV report, but I hope everyone will listen carefully to what Biden said yesterday, what he said today, and what American (authorities) will say in the days to come. Give seriously some time to their statements, as this will give a good understanding of the historical and strategic consequences of the (humiliating) defeat and (monumental) failure of the United States and NATO in Afghanistan. It is a matter of concern to us as peoples of the region, and gives us lessons that we can use for our present and our future.

I’m going to stop on two points (of Biden’s speech). In his speech today, he said “We have spent over a trillion dollars“, that is over a thousand billion dollars! They spent a trillion dollars in Afghanistan! And they left crestfallen, empty-handed, with Honaïn’s shoes as the Arabic saying goes, humiliated, defeated, ashamed, in disgrace. And this according to the admission of their own media, and Western media. What does this prove? That they have failed (miserably), that they have been routed, that they are helpless, ignorant and stupid. Biden himself said that the US did not foresee that the Afghan government and forces would collapse so quickly, and was surprised that they neither fought nor resisted. The Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor said the same thing. What does this indicate? People imagine the United States to be a demigod, omniscient, analyzing and mastering everything at their fingertips, knowledgeable about everything, able to plan everything through its state-of-the-art study and planning centers with top notch skill and technology, with huge & masterful plans, etc. But the reality is far from all that! In our region, the United States is ignorant, unable to understand anything! For decades, they have been repeating the same mistakes, deploying the same (failed) experiments and the same (wrong) calculations! This is one of the lessons to be learned!

Biden says it is not the fault of the United States, but the fault of the Afghan forces who did not fight. But my dear, these Afghan forces, you left them without air force, because the air force is in your hands, (and you did not allow them to develop it), while claiming that you spent a trillion dollars. This is the first point. Second, these Afghan forces were led by your generals, who prepared doomed (war) plans for them! What (war) plans did you concoct, what (military) advice did you provide to these Afghan forces? Third, what did Biden want (ultimately)? What does his confession reveal? Because he did not know how to hold his tongue, too entangled in his (clumsy) defense (and he unmasked himself). He wanted a civil war! He wanted the Afghan forces to wage war on the Taliban, a war between hundreds of thousands (of fighters) against hundreds of thousands (of fighters), and he would just have to sit down and enjoy the bloody spectacle in Afghanistan.

Civil war, bloodbath… BHL's wildest dream for #Afghanistan

"It's good for Israel" https://t.co/cKg7aC3YyR

— Le Cri des Peuples (@cridespeuples2) August 21, 2021

Whereas if he had humanity, and cared (for the well-being) of people as he claims, he would have presided over an agreement and a settlement of the conflict before withdrawing from Afghanistan. (This contempt for the lives of Afghans) is an ethical and moral downfall of the American administration! This moral degradation is emphasized even by leading politicians and commentators in the United States and elsewhere. This is why Biden says today that he wanted a political solution (between the Afghan government and the Taliban), but that Ashraf Ghani, the Afghan President, did not want it. You see? Biden pins the blame on him, and claims to be faultless!

These words reminded me of those verses of the Qur’an which speak about the devil: « [And Satan will say when the matter is decided: “It was God Who gave you a promise of truth: I too promised but I failed in my promise to you. I had no authority over you except to call you but ye listened to me.] Then reproach not me but reproach your own souls.” » [Quran, 14, 22] (The damned) are invited not to impute to the devil (their bad actions which will lead them to Hell), but to only blame themselves!

What were the American administrations doing with all the those tax dollars in Afghanistan? pic.twitter.com/winabg5GEn

— Syrian Girl 🇸🇾🎗 (@Partisangirl) August 16, 2021

It was you (pro-US Afghans) who put yourselves at the service of the Americans, who listened to them and obeyed them, who placed your hopes in them and bet on them, but they got to the point where they told you (quite simply) fare well,  « Bye-bye » [Nasrallah says it in English]. And what kind of « Bye-bye » are we talking about? What is happening at Kabul airport is incredible, it is heartbreaking and sad. Because in the end (these Afghans who want to flee) are human beings. We have all seen this (American military) plane advance with dozens of people around it, without worrying about them, without the pilot stopping, while he could have run over them!

🇦🇫⚡️AFGHANISTAN CONFLICT

Kabul airport on the morning Of August 16, 2021#HORRIFIC

❌ ⚡️SHOCKING video shows Afghans HANGING ONTO AMERICAN AIRCRAFT'S UNDERCARRIAGE as it takes off!#Afghanistan #Kabul #AfghanistanCrisis #Taliban #USA pic.twitter.com/WR1v1niXK4

— The RAGEX (@theragex) August 16, 2021

And he saw that people had clung to the plane, but took off anyway! Whether they fall and crash (horribly to the ground) or not, that’s not his problem!

Desperate Afghans trying to flee the Taliban hanging on to US military plane to get out of Kabul and fall to their deaths. Low flying US Apache helicopters chasing Afghan civilians off the runway with their rotor blades. But Julian Assange is the criminal? pic.twitter.com/RPT1o48MqL

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) August 16, 2021

This is the United States! What I’m telling you is all over the media, I’m not inventing anything! They embarked police dogs, but did not embark the Afghans who collaborated with them!

U.S. military dogs being evacuated from Afghanistan on Sunday. pic.twitter.com/fxfIA49zEq

— Phillip Walter Wellman (@pwwellman) August 16, 2021

They embarked equipment which costs only money, but did not embark human beings, who are human beings, men, with human rights! Such is the United States, (this is their true face)!

Everything that is happening in Afghanistan, even if in Lebanon we are absorbed by our daily problems, I hope that we will pay attention to it and will consider it as the pivotal moment that it is, because for 50 or 60 years, there was nothing like it. And this will have a great impact on international policies, international relations, international alliances. And today, those who observe and comment on these events most attentively are the Israelis!

Because when Biden said, and this is a message to all of America’s allies in the region (including Israel), when Biden was defending himself, he said something very, very, very, very, very, very, very… (repeat it until you lose your breath) important, and I hope America’s “friends” in Lebanon and the region will read this very carefully. Biden said “American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war in the place of anyone else.“ If anyone expects the Americans to come and fight for them, this is what Biden says! And in order not to fight for anyone else, he is ready to endure a historic and humiliating defeat in Afghanistan! When we talk about Lebanon or whatever, in comparison, it is only an (insignificant) detail (in the eyes of the Americans).

At least 40 people have died since Monday in a stampede and shooting in Kabul International Airport, TOLOnews TV channel reported – citing a Taliban commander who is inside the airport.
According to him, the people died after "foreign troops opened fire" as well as a stampede

— ASB News / MILITARY〽️ (@ASBMilitary) August 17, 2021

In conclusion, in what is happening in Afghanistan, are very big and very important lessons, and we must take advantage of them and act accordingly, at the cultural, ideological & emotional levels, at the level of our choices, of our hopes, of our our reading (of events), of our alliances, of our infrastructure, at the economic, political, military, security levels, etc. This was my conclusion during my last speech, when I said that we must only rely on God and on ourselves! We must not wait for the United States, nor their training, nor their advice, nor their support, nor their false promises, nor their plots! We do not want their good nor their evil. Of course no good can come from them. The good resides in our people, in our (Arab-Muslim) Community, in our region, in the Arab-Muslim peoples. It is on them that we must rely. Because we have all these possibilities and capacities.

This is so sweet.
The Iranian interpreter got emotional when Sayyed Nasrullah said Iran never abandones its allies, biggest evidence being the dismembered hand of martyr Qassem Soleimani in Iraq where he was assassinated beside his ally and friend Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis❤ https://t.co/m1nRrXbkkA

— Marwa Osman || د. مروة عثمان (@Marwa__Osman) August 20, 2021

I am done on this subject. I will meet you tomorrow, for the 10th night (of the month of Muharram, the eve of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein), the night of the last meeting, and of the big fare well.

Peace be upon you, O my master Aba ‘Abdillah al-Hussein, and on the souls who dwell in your court! On you, from me, the Peace of God, forever, as long as I exist and as long as night and day last! May God not make this the last time I am visiting you! Peace be upon Hussein, upon ‘Ali son of Hussein, upon the children of Hussein and upon the companions of Hussein!

Peace be upon you, as well as the Mercy of God and His blessings.

Imperial NATO Chaos: Taliban Are Terrorists while al Qaeda in Syria Supported

MIRI WOOD AUGUST 20, 2021

The Taliban immediately moved into the Afghanistan presidential palace upon the exit of Ashaf Ghani, with his five million in cash, and possibly his wife, upon the US leaving the tattered country on a jet plane, not knowing when it will be back again. The ensuing hysteria among various factions of NATO imperialist hypocrites — politicians, diplomats, NGO’s, fake charities, media stenographers, underpaid mercenaries — has been so on the same page as to appear to almost be a form of coordinated chaos.

This relatively short piece will mostly involve the double standards of hatred of the Taliban and adoration of the al Qaeda terrorists in Syria, by the finely coiffed and overpaid unindicted war criminals.

Syria News reminds our readers of a few salient points: [1] The US has not officially declared war since 11 December 1941. Such a declaration can create all kinds of extraneous logistical problems, while engaging in invasion, occupation, slow or fast genocide without an official declaration can allow for res inter alios acta and other forms of plausible deniability. [2] Ronald Reagan did not call the Taliban “freedom fighters,” as they did not yet exist in their military formations; he invited the progenitor of the Taliban, the mujahedeen, to visit the White House, where he praised them as similar to the US founding fathers. [3] Ashraf Ghani was considered the president of Afghanistan since 2014, though he functioned more like the chief warlord of Kabul, possibly given his remarkable background that included being a high school exchange student in Oregon, getting a bachelor’s degree at the evangelical American University of Beirut, making the rounds through John Hopkins, the UN, World Bank, the Fulbright scholarship folk — which might explain that impressive net worth of between five and nine million USD in a least developed country that comes in the second to the last in poverty, with an average annual income of $500.

Reagan invited ”freedom fighters” mujahedeen to White House; “Mommy” stayed away.

Synopsis of 40 years of undeclared war in Afghanistan.

Ashraf Ghani has a spook-y history.

Evangelical preacher cum founder of independent American school accredited by NY, in Beirut, Daniel Bliss

The author has just been made aware that Ghani’s background is even more malevolent. He has been involved with the Atlantic Council (which recently came into partnership with Big Brother, Facebook), the UN Democracy Fund, and the World Economic Forum Global Agenda.

In 2021, he co-authored a twenty-four page paper demanding that President Bashar al Assad be removed from office, employing the standard NATO lying propaganda as the cover story for supremacist regime change.

Had the corrupt US warlord not fled the Taliban with five million, one might suggest he also fell prey to that Assad Curse.

ghani demanded transition imposed on syria

institute for state effectiveness

The UAE Foreign Ministry has announced that the Syria-hating, globalist, Taliban-fleeing Ghani and his family have been welcomed with opened arms, despite being almost as “dead broke” as were the impoverished Clintons when they left the White House.” The Ministry claims the five million USD report is “completely baseless,” “lies” (everyone who believes that may cast a vote in the comment sections).

We shall now take a look at a cross-section of the NATO hypocrites, outraged over the Taliban having taken control of the ‘abandoned’ Afghanistan, and compare their rage and wrath to their adoration and full support of terrorists in the Syrian Arab Republic. As these humanitarian bastards are cut from the same cloth of that colonial savior complex, the order of their listing is of no consequence.

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Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), willfully joined the army in 2005, four years after 9/11, which was plenty of time for even the most naive to grasp that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, time to know there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that the con involved idiot Bush citing Tony Blair’s lies in his State of the Union Address, time enough to grasp that the destruction of the secular country was to enrich Dick Cheney’s Halliburton war machine. With flagrant amorality, he invaded Iraq, and did his part to destroy the country.

Cotton has ignored all requests by this author to investigate the Arkansas-based charity without charitable status, in its financial support of a chilling organization run by al Qaeda in Idlib, involving little girls garishly made up to look as though degenerates are pimping them on the dark net for pedophiles who should be locked up.

The same Cotton who recently called on Biden to bomb “every Taliban fighter in the vicinity of Kabul,” supported Trump’s war criminal bombing of Syria for al Qaeda terrorists in Idlib, cheered the US/UK/French bombing of Syria for al Qaeda in Douma, supported Trump’s criminal assassination of Major General Qasem Soleimani, gave full support to terrorists in Hong Kong murdering police and torching innocents, and approved of Trump appointing Langley boy Guaido as president of Venezuela — as though the former president were King George, appointing governorships.

He also called for deployment of US military on the streets to such down demonstrations after the George Floyd suffocation killing.

Cotton outraged over Taliban terrorists taking control of Afghanistan.

Cotton silent on Arkansas ‘charity’ engaged in Epstein-like situation with little girls in Idlib.

Cotton cheered war criminal bombing of Syria for al Qaeda terrorists in Douma.

UNSG Antonio Guterres also went the round of fake teeth-gnashing, being “deeply concerned by accounts of human rights violations against the women and girls of Afghanistan” because of the takeover by the Taliban. Guterres was not Secretary-General in August 2013, when al Qaeda and Qattar’s al Jazeera raided villages in Latakia, slaughtering men and kidnapping women and their children.

He was, however, in office for one month at the time the remaining 57 women and their children were released from captivity in February 2017, in an exchange for arrested terrorists, in a moment long awaited. Guterres was utterly, silent when al Qaeda terrorists massacred upwards of 130 mostly women and children in al Rashidin during another terrorist-abductees exchange, 17 April 2017.

antonio hypocrite

kidnapped latakia women

freed syrian women

freed syrian women2

Latakia Freed Women and Children with President Assad and First Lady Asma

al Rashidin

Shahd survived the massacre in al Rashidin

rashidin

Why has Guterres never been deeply concerned by kidnapped Syrian women being driven around in caged trucks before being murdered for war porn? Why was he not revulsed by the sight of a near full-term baby surgically carved out of his mother’s womb, by terrorists?

women in cages3

atrocity

Were an award to be given for the most arrogant, two-faced, hypocritical, unindicted war criminal on Capitol Hill, it would surely go to Congressman Adam Kinzinger, likely jockeying for a presidential nomination. Previously seen on the Hill trying to squeeze out a couple of tears over 6 January, Kinzinger’s double standards are unprecedented.

He was a bomber pilot, which means that he used to fly over other people’s countries and drop bombs on them.

Now, he is devastated over the Taliban taking over Afghanistan and has shared a suicide hotline for veterans who invaded and occupied Afghanistan who might be depressed over this news.

In 2014, he held a meeting with terrorists — including an armed insurrectionist who supported ISIS terrorists and called them ‘brothers’ — in Turkey. Three years later, he tweeted an attack on Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who visited Syria and had a meeting with President Assad. He sadistically reminded her of Omran, neglecting to mention the child was kidnapped, painted in moulage trauma, and had his iconic photograph taken by the savage who was friends with the deranged psychotics who kidnapped 12 year old Abdullah Issa from a hospital, and cut off his head with a kitchen knife, and videoed the horrific atrocity (Kinzinger has never mentioned Abdullah’s name).

Omran’s sister was a distraction from the “iconic” intention of the photograph.

Original “iconic” photo included gray-painted siblings. Sis was cropped out. AMC is US-funded, with same initials as a

takfiri rslan

Meth freak selfie, lauding child beheaders of al Zinki

hamza friend taunting abdullah

Abdullah Issa, 12 year old Syrian-Palestinian, kidnapped from hospital, moments before his heinous beheading

rslan (2)

Syrian-Palestinian 12 yr old Abdullah Issa was kidnapped from a hospital and beheaded on camera. Congress was sil

These are the degenerates for whom perverts Trump, May, & Macron bomb Syria. Credibility, anyone?

Al Qaeda FSA/Zinki branch kidnapped a child & proudly videoed themselves carving off his head.

Around the same time, he launched an anti-Syria congressional caucus, to support the armed insurrectionists, the criminally insane who slaughtered Syrian soldiers, and mutilated their corpses.

In late 2019, Kinzinger was so offended by Trump’s anemic tweet that gave a whisper of inference that maybe there might be a withdrawal, that he was giving apoplectic interviews condemning the possible ‘abandonment’ by Trump regime troops war criminally in Syria, of the terrorist, Obama-created SDF-NATO-armed-insurrectionists.

Kinzinger whined that they would be slaughtered by the “Turks” — secure in his arrogant knowledge that stenographer media would not point out that he held his meetings with terrorists in Turkey.

kinzinger hypocrisy

kinzinger taliban

suicide hotline for depressed invaders

Babycakes cried at hearings.

kinzinger attack on gabbard

kinzinger brokered c isis akidi

Okaidi with ISIS terrorist in Syria, before meeting Kinzinger in Turkey.

okaidi isil bakr

Okaidi callled other terrorists his brothers.

Peculiarly poetic, immediately after a Category 5 hurricane passed, the author found her notes on Kinzinger in a dirty puddle on the floor, among other, undefinable detritus.

Kinzinger on floor c rest of detritus

As our hypocritical, lying, warmongering ilk on the Hill flaunt their phony attacks of amnesia, and their deadly double-standards, we remind their constituents of the war crimes our taxes fund, the support that these politicians give to the criminally insane, and that our tax dollars arm these savages so that they are able to destroy other people’s countries.

NATO stenographer journalists have treated the world to the imperialist double standards of weeping for the fallen soldiers who invaded Afghanistan, and died there, allegedly fighting terrorists. These are the same supremacists who have supported terrorists in Syria, and who have defamed Syrian Arab Army soldiers who were killed defending their homeland from foreign invaders, within their sovereign borders — including the 83 SAA soldiers that Obama ‘accidentally’ massacred to protect al Qaeda terrorists in al Thardeh, Deir Ezzor. The same western supremacy media wailing over the western soldiers who died in Afghanistan — fighting the Taliban — were silent when Syria released the news of a mass grave containing the remains of 57 Syrian soldiers slaughtered by unknown sects of al Qaeda, discovered in al Raqqa.

soldiers

Unindicted war criminal Blair shows his respect for Brit soldier killed fighting Taliban.

Mass funderal for 83 Syrian soldiers massacred when Obama accidentally bombed them to assist al Qaeda terrorists.

It is a war crime to set up military bases in other people’s homelands without their permission. While Obama merely did the sneaky special operative forces invasion of the SAR, the Trump regime actually invaded with armed soldiers, to steal the oil, and to further arm terrorists and to increase armed insurrection — which are politician crybabies continue to wail about regarding 6 January — against the Levantine republic. The Biden regime, now partially under attack for the abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan, leaving that ‘vacuum’ for the Taliban to fill (when not playing in the gym, or in the amusement park bumper cars).

The first two screenshots are self-evident. The third shows the degenerate necrophiliac tendencies of the al Qaeda terrorists the US taxpayer arms and funds. These not Taliban psychotics have decapitated a Syrian Arab Army soldier, and are having a fun time pretending to feed the severed head.

The schmuck with the cigar and the rifle is American terrorist in Syria, Brace Belden. A self-described juvenile delinquent, druggie, and young alcoholic who spent much of his time engaged in self-ejaculatory efforts, this criminal somehow found the means to leave his mommy’s home, travel to and illegally enter Syria, and bomb the sh*t out of everything, including helping to turn the city of al Raqqa, population pre-takfiri invasion, 800,00, into rubble.

American terrorist Sotloff is seen practicing with a ground-to-ground military weapon. Sotloff — absurd backstory and other American illegals’ fantastic backstories, here — was reputedly sold by his FSA terrorist friends to ISIS terrorists. Armed American terrorist Eric Harroun had an alleged non-combat vehicular closed head injury which gave him an honorable, medical military discharge. Despite not having put enough money into Social Security, he managed on a paltry disability income to find his way into Syria, where he embedded with the FSA and al Nusra, helping to engage in such freedom-ish things as bombing a military helicopter from the sky, and then stealing salvageable parts (upon returning home, he was arrested, then charges were immediately dropped and he subsequently and conveniently killed himself with a heroin overdose.).

In May 2017, armed insurrectionist terrorists thank the United States for sending them trucks loaded with military weapons, which they planned to use to slaughter SAA soldiers in the battle to destroy Deir Ezzor. The full video of gratitude, here. Please note that these chunks of human garbage succeeded in murdering Gen. Issam Zahreddine, not long after the gifts from Donald Trump.

Matthew VanDyke was reared by a single mother, yet after graduation, he had beaucoup funds to acquire a motorcycle and expensive camera equipment and then enjoyed the good life of traveling to various hot spots in the world, stopping in Libya where he helped al Qaeda destroy the country, before illegally settling in Syria.

From there, he proclaimed that there was no ‘Syrian revolution,’ that the fraud would collapse without the savagery of the “foreign” terrorists, that Jabhat al Nusra — comprised of mostly ‘foreign fighters’ — should be removed from the US, UN, EU terror lists. In between time spent sodomizing goats, he wrote to British intelligence operative Elliot Higgins that the ‘foreign fighters’ had chemical weapons and was prepared to use them and blame on President Assad, who was winning the war.

His recent concern over women under the Taliban rang a bit hallow, given his seduction of a naive, Syrian traitor, the star in his award-winning fraudumentary. Emails he exchanged with her suggests he instructed her in the art of fellatio, and then turned her out, and subsequently sexually harassed her (his hacked emails with her, and with Higgins, here).

A thinking mind might wonder that the NATO stenographers that went into a swoon over his 15 minute docudrama all missed the fact that these armed terrorists supported with US tax dollars had invaded, occupied, and destroyed countless homes of Syrians, though we have no evidence the indigenous habitants were slaughtered in the making of the movie.

armed terrorist in syria

american armed terrorists in syria

armed insurrectionist necrophiliacs

brace belden

brace beldon2

raqqa obliterated

sotloff in syria

eric harroun

takfiri now training c us illegals in syria

vandick

american terrorist vandick

where are the owners

Whose home was this, that was destroyed by US armed and funded terrorists?

The supremacist double-standards involving condemnation of Taliban terrorists and financial support of the various factions of al Qaeda deployed into Syria, are not limited to the rabid dogs of war on the Hill, but are equally shared by other NATO terrorist scum around the world — powerful mobsters who dumped their human garbage into the Levantine republic, to butcher its population, destroy its homeland, and then be killed off, so that they could not return to their filthy homes of birth. The U went so far as to write a paper on how various European countries could protect themselves from ”foreign fighters” come home to roost — though the 149-page report significantly lied about the numbers of human detritus dumped into the SAR.

In addition to providing glowing news stories on the criminally insane foreigners, Germany, France, Italy, and the UK were among the countries with the biggest pockets for arming the beasts with two legs.

These unindicted war criminals now so concerned about the Taliban in Afghanistan dumped in its pathogens, armed them, funded them, cheered their every crime. Italy went so far as to use its odalisques opératives phony kidnapping to launder $12 million to al Qaeda savages, under cover of a ransom story (the pretty Italian agents’ backstory also included in The Final Days of Armageddon missive.

colonialist EU

germany arms terrorists

German Gay in ISIS – Roles and Duties

Yes, indeed. The German media celebrate Al-Qaeda in Syria.

germany-sent-weapons-to-syria

Illegal alien and German terrorist Denis Caspert was killed by the SAA in 2013. Caspert was one of hundreds of pieces of hu

As Obama cheers Merkel’s compassion, she prepares for the deportation of more than 12,000 Afghanis. Note the hypo

17 aug merkel

reuters

bj helmets

British terrorist-illegal Oliver Hall.

bj and death squads

No mention of this short order cook being armed in a foreign country. [Virtue suiciding doubtful]

This Brit illegal was the source of the anti-Syria ‘sarin’ hoax.

Brit terrorist whose medical license was revoked, is interviewed by American terrorist Kareem

French – Belgian Wahhabi terrorist Abdul Rahman Ayachi

hollande-breached-sanctions

Shamima Begum’s alleged concubinator.

italy taliban

haisam saqar idlib

Phony humanitarian aid workers begged their country in English to help them.

italy laundered 12 million to al qaeda in syria

Perhaps the most sanctimonious post Taliban power grab came from the great enucleator of the Gilets Jaunes activists, the criminal who arms and funds al Qaeda and bombs Syria for al Qaeda atrocities, the criminal who gasses his people and then projects his crime onto the beloved Syrian president. The little man throw a hissy fit claim that his words were “twisted,” and so his peeps added English captions: France and other U countries must “protect against large irregular migratory flows that endanger those who are part of them and fuel trafficking of every kind” (the French is not any more intelligible).

What I said about Afghanistan, words which some people have twisted: France does and will continue to do its duty to protect those who are in the most danger. pic.twitter.com/MKIWovJgQB

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) August 17, 2021

For the rabid dogs of war — in political office, or in media stenography work — there is never enough chaos, never enough Pavlovian tricks to set one group against another, along comes a warmonger to attack a war pimp, and the Business Insider immediately reported that a man politician had launched ‘out of context’ accusations against a woman reporter.

As the old Aretha Franklin hit goes, Who’s Zoomin’ Who? Both Cruz and Ward are indictable under Nuremberg Principle VI, Crimes against Peace (i) and (ii):

Cruz supported Trump’s war criminal bombings of the SAR for al Qaeda terrorists there. Ward — who only wears niqab when embedded with terrorists, be they Taliban or various sects of al Qaeda occupying Syria — has an extensive history of criminal propaganda lies, and multiple criminal entries into the Levantine republic to embed herself with (male) terrorists who have destroyed the country, who have kidnapped, raped, and butchered Syrian women, so the scam of sisterhood and or gender victimization were better shoveled elsewhere.

Ward was the first to whitewash al Qaeda — including foreign terrorists — when the savages changed their names and pretended to have gone through an amicable divorce. She subsequently spoke at the UN (seated next to SAMS liar and no longer in niqab), \essentially functioning as mouthpiece for al Qaeda terrorists with who she had criminally embedded herself, winning awards for interviewing foreign savages also illegally in the SAR. On 6 September 2016, she blew kisses to American illegal Bilal Kareem, former stand-up comic from NYC, who is embedded with foreign terrorists in the SDN list, who interviewed the degenerate head of the al Zinki terror gang who kidnapped 12 year old Abdullah Issa from a hospital, and hacked off his head with a kitchen knife. The degenerate lied that the child was a man, and that the poor terrorists had been under a great deal of stress.

Abdullah Issa, 12 year old Syrian-Palestinian, kidnapped from hospital, moments before his heinous beheading with a kitchen knife.

The gruesome video of the child being tormented while asking to be shot in the head, instead, has been expunged from the internet — not because of its heinousness, but because: The psychopaths are funded by the US taxpayer; one of the savages was involved with bombing a bakery (while Channel 4 was criminally embedded with him. This video was also expunged, but a screengrab from it found here); and one of the deranged killers was a friend of the fake physician married to the woman whose fraudumentary was nominated for an Oscar early this year.

ward kisses to kareem

To be completely explicit, Clarissa Ward has been a proponent of regime change against Syria since the onset of the NATO Spring. She has consistently embedded with terrorists, and spoken as their mouth piece. She has never concerned herself with the horrors that Syrian women have endured. Anyone who claims that the warmongering Cruz has attacked her because she is a woman — spending time in her element, with terrorists, the recently the Taliban ones — is a low-level propagandist for a variation on war propaganda.

Ward concerned over Taliban terrorists, but safe & secure with al Qaeda in Syria.

cruz and ward war criminals

ward of death

femicide

blocked by ward of death

Hands folded in supplication, head bowed in interview with terrorist in Syria.

Criminal illegal Ward in Syria, interviewing terrorists. Video showed her bowed head, walking several feet behind ma

AFP also somehow missed CNN’s Ward of Death’s tweet tribute to merc Kareem, in Sept. 2016.

Terrorists Kareem & SDN Muhaysini discuss need for Wahhabis of the world to invade Syria .

Bilal Abdul Kareem, American illegal in Syria, interviewed foreign terrorist with explosives belt in Aleppo, 2016.

Kareem interviewed an armed terrorist in Aleppo, groping his explosives belt which he was prepared to use against S

Criminal Bilal Abdul Kareem gives his degenerate audience noble explanation for kidnap & decapitation of a child in S

kareem-supports-childbeheadings

Ward intervieiwing al Qaeda terrorist in Syria.

Ward interviewing American illegal al Qaeda terrorist in Syria.

The western audience, trained over many decades of Operation Mockingbird, to eat the lies of warmongers, then beg, Please, Sir, may I have another, whose previously closeted sadoerotic fantasies pour out whenever it can feign sadness over countless atrocities, and slobber over outright lies, such as the incubator hoax funded by American taxpayers to dupe American taxpayers — is now being deluged with scary photographs of armed Taliban terrorists, some of whom drive around in trucks, reportedly terrifying Afghans, and threatening to kill, or outright killing of civilians, with alleged focus on women and girls.

The media manipulators now feign astonishment that the Taliban has come into possession of NATO weapons; Syria News has published countless reports on hundreds of millions of dollars worth of such weapons, abandoned by fleeing al Qaeda terrorists in the SAR — completely ignored by the double standard bearers of the MSM and corrupt political circles.

Similarly deranged-looking al Qaeda terrorists throughout Syria, armed with RPG’s and MANPAD‘s, have consistently been censored by the media stenographers, now in a frenzied outpouring of fear, regarding the Taliban takeover.

nato armed taliban

Taliban in Afghanistan

Terrorists in Syria supported by NATO that is worried about the Taliban.

scary taliban

arab spring flowers

deranged

Saudi Jaish al Islam was to have released 3,500 hostages.

filthiest of the filth

rpg taliban

helmet terrorist

takfiri 2

takfiri

taliban 5

taliban whiners

Jaish-ISIS-alQaeda terrorist friend of the NYT source.

terrorist c rpg

US CIAID

Were some of these last terrorists of Douma culled from the 1,239 death row inmates the Saudis dumped into Syria?

Journalistic integrity requires us to make note of the very curious terror warning ejaculated by the US Department of Homeland Security, on 13 August 2021 and in effect through 11 November. Though the Biden regime officially announced the beginning of withdrawal from Afghanistan on May Day, 2021, the squirrely declaration of the DHS was shoe-horned between the Taliban taking control of Kunduz on 6 August, and entering Kabul on the 15th.

The warning was unprecedented in an eerie form of inclusivity, a “diverse and challenging threat” from malign foreign influences, foreign terrorists, domestic terrorists, possible grievance based violence during the ongoing global pandemic in which perceived government restrictions over public health safety measures require all to dutifully say something upon seeing something.

Less than one week later, the obviously disturbed Floyd Ray Roseberry — with a history of financial difficulties — live-streamed threats to detonate his truck near to the Congressional Library, as he told the world his mother recently died of cancer, his wife cannot get treated for her skin cancer, and he cannot get treatment for his bad knees. He live streamed from his Facebook account until it was shut down.

It took almost 15 hours after his uneventful surrender, before US law enforcement official announced no bomb was found in his truck, “but possible bomb making materials were collected from the truck” (emphases added).

Domestic terrorist under financial distress Floyd Ray Roseberry fit most of the inclusivity in the DHS warning.

The author again reminds our readers that the NATO junta which controls the UNSC has repeatedly supported terrorists in and against the Syrian Arab Republic, has repeatedly lied in support of them, since the launch of the NATO Spring against the Levantine republic, in 2011.

These klan members — and NATO — have begun to issue warnings against the Taliban, not to engage in terrorist activities against their entitled countries.

Gosh, it is almost as though they have decided wave the proverbial red flag in front of the bull in the China shop (mixed metaphors are currently of some use).

Brit ambassador to UN warns Taliban.

Frog ambassador to UN says no money for terrorists…

…except, of course, al Qaeda in Syria.

US supremacist ambassador to UN warns Taliban.

Et voilà! NATO warns the Taliban.

The Taliban – related imperial chaos unleashed by NATO politicians and diplomats has only just begun, and will persist even as the criminal liars continue to arrogantly flaunt their support of terrorists in Syria.

— Miri Wood

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Biden Occupation Regime Criminally Brings more Weapons into Syria

 MIRI WOOD JULY 13, 2021

Biden invaders and occupation regime criminally entered Syria — again — on 12 July. This supremacist convoy contained 37 trucks “loaded with weapons and ammunition” and logistical equipment, along with “three trailers carrying new armored military vehicles and eight other trailers loaded with huge camouflaged boxes” and three four-wheeled cars equipped with machine guns.”

The criminal US military convoy came in through the illegitimate al Walid crossing from Iraq, part of the ”autonomous zone” that voted against being an independent country, a couple of years ago.

For NATO colonialists among our readers, we return to our friends, the maps. The first one shows the location of both Syria and the US; the second, the location of al Walid, Hasaka governate, which is in Syria, which is not in the United States.

This map clearly shows that Syria is not part of the US.

Arrow shows al Walid crossing, which the Biden regime uses illegally.

When not criminally using the al Walid crossing, the Biden regime forces — American illegals — criminally use the al Yaaruibayah crossing from that (Kurdish) autonomous region in Iraq, that would collapse without the US and other NATO criminals holding it up; sometimes the American illegals switch them up, using one for Biden continuing Trump’s oil and grains stealing, and the other for criminally bringing NATO weapons into the Levantine republic.

As H.E. Bassam Sabbagh has mentioned to the NATO junta ruling the UNSC, Biden forces illegal enter the SAR with the aplomb of traveling between New York and New Jersey.

At this time, the only difference between the Trump and Biden regimes in Syria is that the latter has not yet torched any wheat field, he only stole wheat from the Syrian wheat silos.

On 7 July the supremacist Biden regime convoy was a bit larger, with 44 US occupation vehicles bringing in oil tankers, refrigerated tankers, trailers carrying ”bulldozers for the aim of reinforcing the occupation’s bases” in Syria, which is not in the US, as we have noted in the map, above.

While stenographer journalists are all aflutter over the US fake leaving Afghanistan, they have made no comments about our criminals remaining in Syria, a breach of both international law, and the noble UN Charter, both of which are ignored by NATO supremacists. The increase in the criminal American military fortification appears to be related to the ongoing bombings of the Biden illegals, by the resistance groups (akin to true anti-fascist partisan underground operations when civilized human beings were trying to rid their homelands of actual fascists and assorted occupiers, in Europe and in Libya — where Omar Mukhtar led the resistance against fascist Mussolini’s Quarta Sponda occupiers.).

Banned in Italy, 1982, lest Italians be reminded that they were once under fascist dictatorship.

The resistance has been busy since soon after 28 June, when the Biden regime criminals bombed both Syria and Iraq from within Syria (both Operation Mockingbird leftist success stories — bleating daily about racism — and the rightwingers who see no racism, are aligned in support of these colonial, supremacist war crimes).

Immediately, the resistance bombed back the Biden occupiers. The Syrian resistance even celebrated the Fourth of July by bombing Biden occupiers in Deir Ezzor.

The resistance continues to celebrate America’s independence day with ongoing bombings of the Biden regime occupiers.

One other difference between the Trump and Biden regimes: Trump claimed US troops in Iraq bombed by resistance groups after the Soleimani assassination had some ”headaches,” while the Biden-Dr. Jill-Harris-Nance-Pentagon collective presidency claims zero casualties.

— Miri Wood

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أحمد جبريل.. الرجل الذي بقي وفياً للبندقيّة

كاتب وباحث من الأردن

09/07/2021

حسام عبد الكريم

المصدر: الميادين نت

لم تكبّله الأيديولوجيا، ولم يكن يميِّز بين إسلامي ويساري ووطني وقومي عربي، ما دامت فلسطين هي الهدف، والبندقية هي السبيل. بالنسبة إلى أحمد جبريل، فلسطين تجمعنا، والثورة أمنا وأبونا، وكفى!

أحمد جبريل.. الرجل الذي بقي وفياً للبندقيّة

الرفيق المناضل والأخ المجاهد أحمد جبريل في ذمة الله. هو من الجيل الأول المؤسّس للثورة الفلسطينية في ستينيات القرن الماضي؛ جيل البندقية والجبال والأغوار والكهوف والأنهار، جيل الـ”أر بي جي” والكلاشنكوف؛ الجيل الذي نهض من غبار نكبة فلسطين ليرفع راية الثورة والمقاومة في أحلك الظروف وأصعبها.

لم يلِن يوماً ولم يهن. بقيت بوصلته نحو القدس، وظلّ طريقهُ الكفاح المسلّح. لم يتلوّن ولم يتلوّث، وبقي ثابتاً على مواقفه، وقابضاً على البندقية. ابتعد عن السياسة ودهاليزها. لم تكن فلسطين بالنسبة إليه طاولة مفاوضات أو جولة مباحثات أو “أوسلو” ومناطق ولم تكن أيضاً حدود 67، بل هي كلّ فلسطين، من البحر إلى النهر، ولم يعرف غيرها. (A,B,C)

في العام 1985، نجح أحمد جبريل في عقد أول وأهم صفقة تبادل أسرى مع العدو الإسرائيلي، استطاع من خلالها تأمين إطلاق سراح 1150 مجاهداً ومناضلاً فلسطينياً من سجون العدو، من بينهم الشيخ أحمد ياسين والفدائي الياباني، بطل عملية اللد، كوزو أوكاموتو، وغيرهما من الفدائيين ذوي الأحكام العالية، في مقابل الإفراج عن مجموعة من جنود العدو.

في العام 1987، كان له دور في التمهيد لانطلاقة الانتفاضة الفلسطينية الأولى، بعد أن كان وراء العملية الفدائية الكبيرة والفريدة من نوعها التي نفّذت بواسطة الطائرات الشراعية عبر الحدود اللبنانية، وهي عملية الشهيد خالد أكر، التي كان لها صدى واسع جداً في أوساط الشعب الفلسطيني في الداخل المحتل على وجه الخصوص، إذ رفعت المعنويات والهمم، وأثارت موجة من الحماس، وأعادت الثقة بالمقاومة والثورة.

فعلاً، لم يمضِ سوى أسبوعين بعدها حتى اندلعت الانتفاضة الفلسطينية الكبرى. وقد ساهمت إذاعته “القدس – الإذاعة العربية الفلسطينية على طريق تحرير الأرض والإنسان”، التي كان إرسالها ينطلق من دمشق في الحشد باتجاه الانتفاضة الشعبية، عن طريق بثّ بياناتها ونداءاتها. وكان الناس يضبطون أجهزة الراديو على تردّداتها، في زمن لم يكن فيه إنترنت وفضائيات.

في العام 2002، قدَّم ابنه البكر شهيداً في درب الثورة. كان جهاد أحمد جبريل يتولّى مسؤولية التنظيم العسكري وتهريب الأسلحة إلى الأرض المحتلة حين تعرض لعملية اغتيال غادرة على يد الموساد أودت بحياته، ولكنها زادت أباه عزماً وإصراراً على المضي في طريق الثورة.

لم تكبّله الأيديولوجيا، ولم يكن يميِّز بين إسلامي ويساري ووطني وقومي عربي، ما دامت فلسطين هي الهدف، والبندقية هي السبيل. بالنسبة إلى أحمد جبريل، فلسطين تجمعنا، والثورة أمنا وأبونا، وكفى!

عاش عفيفاً نظيفَ اليد. لم يتاجر بالقضية، ولم يبنِ قصوراً، ولم يكنز مالاً. بقي في مخيم اليرموك في دمشق إلى أن مات شريفاً.

رحم الله أبا جهاد.

فيديوات متعلقة

Gaza: Visualizing Destruction – Palestine Chronicle Short Documentary

June 17, 2021

Gaza: Visualizing Destruction is a short documentary produced by the Palestine Chronicle. (Image: The Palestine Chronicle)

By Palestine Chronicle Staff

What does ‘toppled to the ground’ actually mean in real life? What happens to a neighborhood once a missile explodes and the bodies of dead and wounded are collected?

In this latest video production by The Palestine Chronicle team, we attempt to visualize destruction and locate the names of those who died in the homes and neighborhoods in which they once lived.

A Gaza-based Palestinian Journalist, Wafaa Aludaini takes us on this emotional but necessary journey throughout the war-torn Gaza Strip. 

“Numbers without names, stats without faces and charts without the human being that gives them true meaning, are insufficient to tell the story of Palestine,” Palestinian journalist and editor of The Palestine Chronicle Ramzy Baroud said. 

“At the Palestine Chronicle, we have always defied that norm, which plagues much of the media. The Palestinian people are not sound bites and are not faceless, passive victims. This short video is our attempt at helping our readers visualize Gaza, the destruction of the last Israeli war and the people who underwent that harrowing experience,” Baroud added. 

“It is extremely important for the world to see how Gaza looks like right now, after the latest, bloody Israeli offensive. It is important to visually experience the destruction, to know that our attention towards Palestine cannot be limited to the days in which Israel bombards Gaza,” Romana Rubeo, managing editor of The Palestine Chronicle said.

“During the 11-day war, at The Palestine Chronicle, we tried to provide as much information as we could. I think that associating words with images is a powerful tool to keep attention high. For each child, for example, a home is a safe haven. Seeing how Israel turned these safe havens into heaps of rubble in a matter of seconds is as painful as it is necessary,” Rubeo added.

(The Palestine Chronicle)

Over 500 Democratic staffers (zero GOP) urge Joe Biden to ‘hold Israel accountable’

Open letter comes amid a deepening split in Democratic ranks between progressives and more centrist figures

By VT Editors -May 24, 20211496

Joe Biden has come under increasing pressure to take a firmer stance against Israel after the recent conflict in which more than 230 Palestinians and 12 Israelis were killed. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

VT: As the exclusive video below goes viral around the world, Israel’s friends in Washington with the exception of the GOP, are dissolving away as is the support Israel has always received from an American Jewish community now in shock watching this horrific child murder…done as though it were something Israeli police do all the time…

https://www.bitchute.com/embed/G6SIyALy911r/

Guardian: More than 500 Democratic party staffers and alumni ofJoe Biden’s 2020 campaign have signed an open letter calling for the US president to do more to protect Palestinians and hold Israel accountable for its actions in and over Gaza, where a ceasefire currently holds.

The move comes amid a deepening split in Democratic ranks, between some vocal members of its progressive wing – such as Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez – and more centrist figures including Biden who have taken a consistently pro-Israel stance.

Biden has come under increasing pressure to take a firmer stance against Israel after the recent conflict in which more than 230 Palestinians were killed and dozens of buildings leveled in Gaza, while 12 Israelis died from rockets fired by Hamas.

The letter will add to that push and also reflects a more subtle turning point in broader US public opinion, which has become more critical of Israel.

The signatories write that they “commend [Biden’s] efforts to broker a ceasefire. Yet, we also cannot unsee the horrific violence that unfolded in recent weeks in Israel/Palestine, and we implore you to continue using the power of your office to hold Israel accountable for its actions and lay the groundwork for justice and lasting peace.”

The letter adds: “The very same values that motivated us to work countless hours to elect you demand that we speak out … we remain horrified by the images of Palestinian civilians in Gaza killed or made homeless by Israeli airstrikes.”

While condemning violence on both sides, the letter singles out Israel for more blame due to its greater military power and its ongoing occupation of Palestinian communities and blockade against Gaza.  read more…

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/24/joe-biden-israel-palestine-letter-democratic-staffers

ABOUT VT EDITORS

VT EditorsVeterans Today

VT Editors is a General Posting account managed by Jim W. Dean and Gordon Duff. All content herein is owned and copyrighted by Jim W. Dean and Gordon Duff

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Will Israeli Supremacism continue to get a free pass?

ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said her inquiry will be conducted “independently, impartially and objectively, without fear or favor.”

By Jim W. Dean, Managing Editor -April 9, 2021

…from PressTV, Tehran

[ Editor’s Note: Israel does not really mind being a rogue nation, but would prefer the fact not get too much widespread attention. But this is exactly what the good people at the ICC had finally decided to do.

The Zionist regime, as expected, has responded that the ICC can stuff its investigation of Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinians where the sun does not shine. Everyone knows this is true, but most pretend that Israel is a ‘special’ situation.

In effect Israel is allowed to ‘do onto others that you would not want them to do onto you’ because they are…you know…special. Different rules apply for Israelis and their supporters that don’t apply to you and I, because, you know, we are not one of them.

Historical and contemporary media have swallowed this free pass for Israeli supremacism as some form of dispensation it must pay for the ‘Big H’, guilt for not preventing it. I am not even going to use the word, because the Israelis have inflicted the ‘Big H’ on the Palestinians and write it off as a just security matter.

The last time looked we had 75 to 80 million dead from WWII related causes, a number heavily biased because it left out a chunk of the 50 million Chinese dead estimates. One special group has reserved for themselves to be annointed the most horrible thing that happened during WWII, and everyone else can not only go to the back of the bus, but jump off or be thrown off.

That has always stuck me as rather impolite, and hence I have never had warm and fuzzy spot for Israeli, Zionist, Jewish supremacism, for those who practice it.

They may consider me a bad person for this, but I would consider it just a rational observation. I would even be open to hearing their raionale for one group being allowed to hold the number one supremacism spot as an unquestionable right, and dish out to the Palestinans whatever horrors it many want and that be no one else’s business…

Jim W. Dean ]

First published … April 09, 2021

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will tell the International Criminal Court that it will not cooperate with its investigation into possible war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Netanyahu said in a statement that Israel will respond to a notification letter from the ICC, telling it that Tel Aviv does not recognize the tribunal’s authority.

Last month, ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced in a statement the launch of a war crimes investigation into the Palestinian territories, which have been under Israeli occupation since 1967.

She said her inquiry will be conducted “independently, impartially and objectively, without fear or favor.” The Palestinian Authority (PA) welcomed the prosecutor’s announcement.

It is “a long-awaited step that serves Palestine’s tireless pursuit of justice and accountability, which are indispensable pillars of the peace the Palestinian people seek and deserve”, the PA foreign ministry said in a statement.

Hamas resistance movement also praised the ICC’s move.

“We welcome the ICC decision to investigate Israeli occupation war crimes against our people. It is a step forward on the path of achieving justice for the victims of our people,” Hazem Qassem, a Hamas spokesman said.

“Our resistance is legitimate and it comes to defend our people. All international laws approve legitimate resistance,” Qassem noted.

Palestine was accepted as an ICC member in 2015, three years after signing the court’s founding Rome Statute, based on its “observer state” status at the United Nations.

Both Israel and the United States have refused to sign up to the ICC, which was set up in 2002 to be the only global tribunal trying the world’s worst crimes, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

BIOGRAPHY

Jim W. Dean, Managing Editor

Managing Editor

Jim W. Dean is Managing Editor of Veterans Today involved in operations, development, and writing, plus an active schedule of TV and radio interviews. 

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Freedom of Expression: Good for the Western Goose, Forbidden for the Muslim Gander

By Kim Petersen

Source

When French President Emmanuel Macron was pilloried in some quarters for defending freedom of expression as a French value, Australian prime minister Scott Morrison backed his European counterpart: “We share values. We stand for the same things.” This professed French/Australian value for freedom of expression has now come back to bite the backside of the Australian prime minister.

When it comes to publication of inflammatory western depictions of the prophet Mohammed that raise the ire of many Muslims worldwide, many western voices will step forth to defend freedom of expression. However, this fidelity to the freedom of expression will often change when what is being expressed casts the West in a negative light; a case in point being an image of an Australian soldier slitting a Muslim child’s throat.

News.com.au featured a 60 Minutes Australia report about “disturbing allegations of the murder of children and a ‘killing as a sport’ culture” among Australian fighters deployed in Afghanistan.

A sociologist, Samantha Crompvoets, spent months interviewing Special Forces soldiers about alleged war crimes in Afghanistan. Among the insouciant acts noted were soldiers tallying their kills on wall boards — kills that included civilians and prisoners.

60 Minutes described the killers as a “rogue band” of special forces soldiers. One especially “disturbing allegation” described how Australian Special Forces soldiers mercilessly slit the throats of 14-year-old boys, bagged their bodies, and tossed them in a river.

A Guardian exclusive exposed depravity with a photo of an Australian soldier drinking beer from a Taliban fighter’s prosthetic leg.

The findings by Crompvoets and the 60 Minutes report were corroborated by the Australian government’s redacted Brereton Report of “possibly the most disgraceful episode in Australia’s military history”:

… 39 unlawful killings by or involving ADF members. The Report also discloses separate allegations that ADF members cruelly treated persons under their control. None of these alleged crimes was committed during the heat of battle. The alleged victims were non-combatants or no longer combatants.

What particularly stuck in the craw of political Australia was a tweet by a Chinese official, Zhao Lijian, of a gruesome throat-slitting image.

Australian prime minister Morrison was apoplectic, calling the post “repugnant,” “deeply offensive to every Australian, every Australian who has served in that uniform,” “utterly outrageous,” and unjustifiable noting that it was a “false image.” Morrison demanded an apology from the Chinese government, the firing of Zhao Lijian, and for Twitter to remove the post.

“It is utterly outrageous and cannot be justified on any basis whatsoever, the Chinese Government should be totally ashamed of this post,” Morrison said.

First, calling the image false is deflection because anyone who gives more than a cursory glance to the image will right away realize that it is has been photo-shopped and does not purport in any way to be an untouched photograph.

Second, the Australian prime minister obviously has backward moral priorities. I submit that what should be deeply offensive to Morrison and every human being — not just Australians — and especially offensive for every Australian who has served in the Australian military are the egregious war crimes committed by those wearing the same uniform. The starting and focal point for condemnation must be the war crimes. Logically, if the spate of gruesome war crimes had not been committed by Australians in uniform, then outcry at the crimes would not have been filliped.

Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying did address the outrage by Morrison in a TV address.

“These cruel crimes have been condemned by the international community,” said Hua.

“The Australian government should do some soul searching and bring the culprits to justice, and offer an official apology to the Afghan people and make the solemn pledge that they will never repeat such crimes. Earlier, they said the Chinese government should feel ashamed but it is Australian soldiers who committed such cruel crimes.”

“Shouldn’t the Australian government feel ashamed? Shouldn’t they feel ashamed for their soldiers killing innocent Afghan civilians?”

According to Afghanistan’s president Ashraf Ghani, Morrison did express — not a full-fledged apology — but “his deepest sorrow over the misconduct by some Australian troops.” Australia’s foreign minister Marise Payne also wrote to her Afghan counterpart to extend “apologies for the misconduct identified by the inquiry, by some Australian military personnel in Afghanistan.” The wording would seem to diminish the atrocities as “misconduct.” There is also a overarching emphasis that the crimes were committed by some troops, seeking to exculpate the bulk of the troops from bad apples among them.

It would seem Australia is trying to distract from its horrendous war crimes. Colloquially put, Australia’s political honcho is trying to cover the military’s bare ass.

World Socialist Web Site was scathing in denouncing the Australian Establishment’s response,

The tweet by a mid-ranking Chinese official, condemning Australian war crimes in Afghanistan, has been met with hysterical denunciations by the entire political and media establishment. The response can only be described as a staggering exercise in hypocrisy, confected outrage and an attempt to whip-up a wartime nationalist frenzy.

The illustration is based on an investigative report by the Australian Department of Defense, Hua pointed out, noting that “although it is a painting, it reflects the facts.”

Hua pointed to Morrison’s real purpose: to divert attention and shift pressure from Australian war crimes to criticism of China.

Australia Liberal MP Andrew Hastie preferred that the war crimes had been kept buried. Hastie (who as a captain in the Special Air Services was cleared of wrongdoing in an investigation into soldiers under his command who chopped the hands off dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan) criticized the Australian Defence Force for releasing allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan, saying it has allowed China to malign Australian troops.

Bipartisan support was forthcoming for Australian government indignation as Labor leader Anthony Albanese also criticized the image and shadow foreign affairs minister Penny Wong called it “gratuitous” and “inflammatory.”

Prosecuting Western War Crimes

At the end of World War II war crimes tribunals were set up. In Europe there was the Nuremberg Tribunal and in Asia the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. It was victor’s justice and no Allies were tried. This although the United States and, to a lesser degree France, engaged in a deliberate policy of starving German prisoners of war (who the US re-designated as disarmed enemy forces to evade the Geneva Conventions on POWs, as president George W Bush would later similarly do in Afghanistan when he refused to recognize POWs, labeling them instead as unlawful enemy combatants) and civilians. Germans stated that over 1,700,000 soldiers alive at the end of the war never returned home.

In the Far East, there were no allies prosecuted at the Tokyo War Crimes Trial. It must be noted that just as Nazi scientists were brought back to work at the behest of the US, class A Japanese war criminals were also protected by the US from prosecution.

Australia is not alone in the commission of war crimes. Canadian Airborne Regiment troops tied and blind-folded 16-year-old Shidane Arone, beat him with a metal bar, and burned with cigarellos for hours (he was later found to have burns on his penis), and took “trophy pics.” Arone was dead the following morning. The Canadian Airborne Regiment would be disbanded. US war crimes are numerous. They include My Lai in Viet Nam, Bagram in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib in Iraq, etc.

Western war criminals are seldom punished, or when punished, then not in a meaningful way proportionate to the crimes committed. In fact, if you expose the war crimes perpetrated by a western allied country, then you risk becoming targeted for imprisonment. Such is the situation that Julian Assange finds himself in today. Although an Australian citizen, Morrison has been unsympathetic to the WikiLeaks founder and publisher who exposed egregious US war crimes. Said Morrison, “Mr Assange will get the same support that any other Australian would … he’s not going to be given any special treatment.”

This is what adherence to the tenet of freedom of expression genuinely signifies in much of the western world. In other words, freedom of expression is good for the western goose but bad when it is for the Muslim gander.

For further background view the damning allegations of serious war crimes, including the execution of innocent civilians and detainees.

Azerbaijani Successes In Karbakh Conflict Come Together With War Crimes

South Front

The Azerbaijani Armed Forces have been developing their advance on Armenian positions in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region. As in the previous several days, the main clashes are taking place in the southern part of Karabakh.

As of October 16, Azerbaijani forces finally took full control of the town of Hadrat and started an operation to push the remaining Armenian units out of the town’s surroundings. Despite this, Armenian forces still conduct regular counter-attacks attempting to force the Azerbaijani military to retreat from their recently captured positions.

Azerbaijani troops also seized the villages of Arish in the Fuzuli district, Doshulu in the Jabrayil district and the villages of Edishe, Dudukchi, Edilli and Chiraguz in the Khojavend district. Earlier this week, Azerbaijan captured Garadaghli, Melikjanli, Garakollu, Bulutan, Tagaser, Khatunbulag, Kemertuk and Teke. Thus, Armenian forces lost at least 15 towns and settlements during this week of clashes.

The Azerbaijani side employs its advantage in artillery and air power. Azerbaijani special forces also conducted several raids in the rear of Armenian positions in the south of Karabakh trying to create chaos there.

The town of Fuzuli, which for the previous days remained in the contested area, is now about to fall in the full control of Azerbaijan. If Armenian forces are not able to gain back the initiative, this will become the inevitable.

Meanwhile, the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan announced that the Armenians tried to recapture several positions taken by Azerbaijani forces, but these attacks were repelled. According to Baku, a large number of Armenian forces, including two T-72 battle tanks, a Tor-M2KM surface-to-air missile system, four BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launchers, a D-20 howitzer, a D-30 howitzer, and two D-1 howitzers, as well as several vehicles and UAVs were eliminated.

On the morning of October 15, videos filmed in the area of Hadrut appeared online showing how Azerbaijani troops had captured two Armenian fighters, one of them was an old man (he does not even seem to be able to hold arms), then tied them with Armenian flags and had them killed. A few hours after, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry released a statement claiming that Armenians share in social media some ‘fake videos’ that are ‘not related’ to the Karabakh conflict.

Earlier, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and top Turkish officials repeatedly claimed that the Azerbaijani advance on Nagorno-Karabakh poses no threat to the Armenian population there. Nonetheless, actions like on the aforementioned videos as well as almost no reports about captured Armenian soldiers demonstrate that in fact the conflict creates a real threat of ethnic cleansing of the Armenian population in Karabakh the areas captured by Azerbaijan. In its own turn, the Armenian Defense Ministry claims that despite some ‘tactical retreats’, its forces have been successfully repelling Azerbaijani attacks.

This just week only, the Armenian side claimed that its forces had shot down 3 SU-25 warplanes and multiple UAVs of Azerbaijan. Dozens of Azerbaijani armoured vehicles and hundreds of troops were also allegedly eliminated. Nonetheless, photo and video evidence from the ground demonstrates that in fact Armenian forces are on retreat and are now trying to regroup and prevent further advances of Azerbaijan into the contested region.

Taking into account the current complex diplomatic situation in the region, the Azerbaijani military has all chances to continue its active offensive operations until the start of winter. After this, Baku will likely temporarily halt the military phase of its push to capture Karabakh and return to the negotiating table to force Armenia to surrender the region. If this does not happen, the Azerbaijani advance will likely be resumed in the spring of 2021.

Related

• War In Karabakh: Turkish Proxies Are Allegedly Too Scared To Fight Armenians
• Azerbaijan Strikes Ballistic Missile Sites In Armenia Amid Hadrat Standoff
• Turkey Threatens Armenia With Direct Military Intervention In Karabakh War
• Azerbaijani Military Destroys Armenian S-300s As Humanitarian Ceasefire Nears Its Collapse