Tag: perpetual war

AT THE HAGUE, ISRAEL MOUNTED A DEFENSE BASED IN AN ALTERNATE REALITY

A TEAM OF Israeli lawyers and officials presented their defense at The Hague on Friday in the second day of the genocide case brought before the International Court of Justice by the government of South Africa. The lawyers portrayed Israel as the actual victim of genocide, not Gaza, accused South Africa of supporting Hamas, and painted South Africa’s government as functioning as the legal arm of the Palestinian militants who led the deadly raids into Israel on October 7.

Israel benefitted greatly from the fact that there was no cross examination permitted or debate allowed during these proceedings. It embarked on a bold mission to do in a court of international law what its military and political officials have done day and night throughout the course of this war against Gaza: unleash a deluge of what was known within the Trump administration as “alternative facts.” 

Israel’s defense was the inverse of South Africa’s case yesterday, and as weak in offering documented facts as South Africa’s was powerful. History began on October 7, the Israelis seemed to say, South Africa is Hamas, South Africa did not give Israel a chance to meet up and chat about Gaza before suing for genocide, and actually the Israel Defense Forces is the most moral entity on earth. As for the voluminous public statements by senior Israeli officials indicating genocidal intent, those were just “random assertions” by some irrelevant underlings. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statements invoking a murderous story from the Bible about killing the women, infants, and cattle of your enemies? The South Africans just don’t understand theology and presented Netanyahu’s words out of context.

While Israel’s lawyers made legal arguments that the genocide charges leveled against it are invalid, their primary strategy was to appeal to the court on jurisdictional and procedural matters, hoping that they could form the basis for the panel of international judges to dismiss South Africa’s case. Aware of the global audience, Israel also sought to reinforce its claims of righteousness and self-defense in fighting the war in Gaza. 

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BIDEN ADMIN DEPLOYED AIR FORCE TEAM TO ISRAEL TO ASSIST WITH TARGETS, DOCUMENT SUGGESTS

TARGETING INTELLIGENCE — THE information used to conduct airstrikes and fire long-range artillery weapons — has played a central role in Israel’s siege of Gaza. A document obtained through the Freedom of Information Act suggests that the U.S. Air Force sent officers specializing in this exact form of intelligence to Israel in late November.

Since the start of Israel’s bombardment in retaliation for Hamas’s strike on October 7, Israel has dropped more than 29,000 bombs on the tiny Gaza Strip, according to a U.S. intelligence reportOpens in a new tab last month. And for the first timeOpens in a new tab in U.S. history, the Biden administration has been flying surveillance drone missions over Gaza since at least early November, ostensibly for hostage recoveryOpens in a new tab by special forces. At the time the drones were revealed, U.S. Gen. Pat Ryder insistedOpens in a new tab that the special operations forces deployed to Israel to advise on hostage rescue were “not participating in [Israel Defense Forces] target development.”

“I’ve directed my team to share intelligence and deploy additional experts from across the United States government to consult with and advise the Israeli counterparts on hostage recovery efforts,” saidOpens in a new tab President Joe Biden three days after the Hamas attack. 

But several weeks later, on November 21, the U.S. Air Force issued deployment guidelinesOpens in a new tab for officers, including intelligence engagement officers, headed to Israel. Experts say that a team of targeting officers like this would be used to provide satellite intelligence to the Israelis for the purpose of offensive targeting. 

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SA’s Impassioned Plea to Stop Israel’s Genocide

South Africa asked the International Court of Justice on Thursday to order Israel to stop its genocidal rampage against Palestinians in Gaza, saying that the “very reputation of international law … hangs in the balance” in the historic case it has brought.   

The South Africans laid out what seems like a difficult case to refute that Israel is violating four sections of Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which Israel ratified, namely that: 

“… Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”

South Africa was not arguing on Thursday the merits of the case of whether Israel is or isn’t committing genocide, which will be decided much later, but rather whether there is sufficient evidence at the outset for the Court to issue a “provisional measure” ordering Israel to immediately end its military operation.

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US Military Showdown Imminent in Red Sea as UN Issues Final Warning

The UN Security Council’s warning to Yemen’s Houthi movements to halt attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea was among the last diplomatic steps before military action, according to officials from multiple countries participating in a coalition to protect sea traffic.

The Houthis control large swaths of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa, in the wake of a decade-long civil war and military intervention by neighbouring Saudi Arabia. The Iranian aligned group has used its Red Sea coastline to target international shipping with an array of homemade missiles and drones in protest against Israel’s ongoing offensive in the Gaza Strip.  

The attacks, which include the seizure of a Japanese-managed containership, have drawn the ire of the U.S., U.K., and other allies as they attempt to secure the sea lanes that account for about 15 percent of global commercial traffic.

The security council issued its warning Wednesday after Houthis fired at least 18 cruise missiles and drones at U.S. and U.K. warships patrolling the area on Tuesday. 

Voting 11-0 with abstentions by China and Russia, the resolution is expected to provide additional diplomatic cover for military action.

During a press comment in Bahrain, where he is meeting with regional officials about the situation in Gaza, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned the Houthi leadership that “actions have consequences.”

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Pentagon Aims to Create a Human-Machine Soldier as Part of Dangerous New Artificial Intelligence Race

“In 1962, J.C.R. Licklider created the US Information Processing Techniques Office at the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). His vision, published two years earlier in his seminal work Man–Computer Symbiosis (Licklider 1960), heralded an ambitious, and ultimately successful, push to develop artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The Agency, now called DARPA with the D emphasizing its focus on defense applications, has supported AI research, as popularity has ebbed and flowed, over the past 60 years.”[1]

The Pentagon has been at the forefront of researching and developing artificial intelligence technologies for use in warfare and spying since the early 1960s, primarily through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).[2] According to the Brookings Institution, 87% of the value of federal contracts over the five years 2017-2022 that had the term “artificial intelligence” in the contract description were with the Department of Defense.[3] This article reviews the Pentagon’s current application of AI technologies.[4]

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Screams without proof: questions for NYT about shoddy ‘Hamas mass rape’ report

The Grayzone has identified  serious issues with the credibility of key sources quoted in the New York Times’ December 28 story, “Screams Without Words: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on October 7.” Authored by Jeffrey Gettleman, Anat Schwartz, and Adam Sella, the article purports to prove “a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7” than even Israeli authorities have been willing to allege . However, the Times report is marred by sensationalism, wild leaps of logic, and an absence of concrete evidence to support its sweeping conclusion.

The Times has come under fire from family members of Gal Abdush, the so-called “girl in the black dress” who features as Exhibit A in Gettleman and company’s attempt to demonstrate a pattern of rape by Hamas on October 7. Not only have Abdush’s sister and brother-in-law each denied that she was raped, the former has accused the Times of manipulating her family into participating by misleading them about their editorial angle. Though the family’s comments have sparked a major uproar on social media, the Times has yet to address the serious breach of journalistic integrity that its staff is accused of committing.

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String of US and Israeli Assassinations Further Inflame the Middle East

On December 25, 2023, Razi Mousavi, a senior officer in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was assassinated by an Israeli airstrike in the Syrian capital of Damascus. Mousavi was close to former IRGC Quds force commander, Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated in 2020 by US President Donald Trump in Baghdad. Israeli airstrikes in Syria earlier in December also killed two other Iranian generals.

On January 2, an Israeli drone strike assassinated Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut, Lebanon along with six others.

Al-Arouri was the deputy chief of the Hamas political bureau, and one of the founding members of Hamas’ armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades. On October 31, Israeli forces destroyed al-Arouri’s house in Aroura near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

On January 3, at least 93 people were killed in twin bombings in Kerman, Iran, with 284 wounded, including children. The crowd there was gathered to mark the fourth anniversary of the US assassination of Qassem Soleimani. 

On January 4, ISIS claimed responsibility for the two explosions in a statement posted on its affiliate Telegram channels, and said two ISIS members had detonated explosive belts in the crowd in Kerman.

Experts pointed to the Islamic State branch based in neighboring Afghanistan, known as ISIS-Khorasan, or ISIS-K. Tehran has alleged that ISIS-K has been behind many foiled plots in the last five years. Most of those arrested were Iranians, Central Asians, or Afghans from the Afghanistan-based affiliate’s network. 

On January 4, a US airstrike assassinated Mushtaq Talib al-Saidi in central Baghdad, Iraq. The Iraqi deputy commander was killed on Palestine Street, at the headquarters of an Iraqi military group, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, which has claimed several attacks on US forces.

Hezbollah al-Nujaba falls under the command of the Iraqi army, and had played a vital role in the defeat of ISIS in Iraq. The group immediately condemned the assassination of al-Saidi, and said the US-Iraqi military agreement had been violated.

Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, confirmed that US forces carried out an airstrike in Baghdad, killing a military commander, but excused the killing because al-Saidi was backed by Iran. 

Iraqis in the streets promised revenge against the US after the assassination. “No American soldier shall stay in Iraq!” one man yelled, firing his gun into the air.

Besides the 2,500 US troops in Iraq, which were invited to Iraq initially, there are 900 US troops in Syria illegally occupying the most productive oil wells in the northeast.

Now that the US-supported genocide on Gaza has killed well over 20,000 Palestinians, local groups in Iraq and Syria have been attacking US troops there in an effort to drive them out.

US officials have ordered about 120 attacks since October 17, usually using drones or rockets against groups in Iraq. The Pentagon acknowledged they had killed a number of “militants”.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani, had said last year he backed the need for US troops in Iraq, but condemned the US attack in Iraq, which killed an Iraqi service member and injured 18 other people, including civilians.

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Several Large Accounts That Criticized Israel and Musk Banned from X

A group of journalists and political commentators with large followings were banned on X without notice. The owners of the banned profiles pointed to criticisms of Israel and Elon Musk. 

On Tuesday morning, the accounts of Alan MacLeod, Ken Klippenstein, Rob Rousseau, the True Anon Podcast, Steven Monacelli, and an anonymous account @Zei_Squrill, were all banned on the platform owned by Musk. 

MacLeod, who had over 200,000 followers on X, posted on Telegram that the suspension came without warning. “Today, without warning or explanation, Twitter suspended my account, @AlanRMacLeod. They told me to check my email for a reason, but no email has been forthcoming,” the journalist wrote. “I have never even remotely been involved in any controversy/been reported/been stuck in Twitter jail before, so I assume the real reason is political, especially as high-profile leftist accounts like Rob Rousseau and Zei_Squirrel were also targeted today.”

In a statement provided to The Libertarian Institute, MacLeod said, “I’m deeply concerned about Twitter banning a host of influential anti-war accounts today, including my own. It is a sign that Elon Musk’s supposed passion for free speech might not be all that it seems.”

Musk acquired Twitter in October of 2022 and later renamed the platform X. At the time, he said he aimed to make Twitter a “platform for free speech around the globe.” 

In one of his first acts as owner of Twitter, he allowed Matt Taibbi and other journalists to access the business communications of the company’s leadership. In the Twitter Files, Taibbi exposed a coordinated effort between the government and Twitter to censor speech that countered the establishment narrative on the election, covid, and the war in Ukraine. 

However, as America has entered an election year, Musk-owned X is stepping up its censorship efforts. 

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Silencing the Lambs: How Propaganda Works

In the 1970s, I met one of Hitler’s leading propagandists, Leni Riefenstahl, whose epic films glorified the Nazis. We happened to be staying at the same lodge in Kenya, where she was on a photography assignment, having escaped the fate of other friends of the Führer.
She told me that the “patriotic messages” of her films were dependent not on “orders from above” but on what she called the “submissive void” of the German public.

Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? I asked.  “Yes, especially them,” she said. 

I think of this as I look around at the propaganda now consuming Western societies. 

Of course, we are very different from Germany in the 1930s. We live in information societies. We are globalists. We have never been more aware, more in touch, better connected. 

Or do we in the West live in a Media Society where brainwashing is insidious and relentless, and perception is filtered according to the needs and lies of state and corporate power? 

The United States dominates the Western world’s media. All but one of the top 10 media companies are based in North America. The internet and social media – Google, Twitter, Facebook – are mostly American owned and controlled.

In my lifetime, the United States has overthrown or attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, mostly democracies. It has interfered in democratic elections in 30 countries. It has dropped bombs on the people of 30 countries, most of them poor and defenceless. It has attempted to murder the leaders of 50 countries.  It has fought to suppress liberation movements in 20 countries. 

The extent and scale of this carnage is largely unreported, unrecognised, and those responsible continue to dominate Anglo-American political life.

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Ukrainian Tragedy That Might Escalate Into Armaggedon

The war in Ukraine is about to enter its 3rd year with no signs of ending, meaning more deaths and destruction for this unfortunate country. It was provoked by those in the U.S. who decided to use Ukrainians for their geopolitical gains which is sort of innovation in military affairs contrary to the U.S. wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries where American soldiers were sent to the battlefields.

Members of Congress from both parties, for example, Richard Blumenthal,  Lindsey Graham, Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, and many other politicians and journalists like Washington Post’s Lee Hockstader applauded American military and financial aid to Ukraine presenting it as a well spent bargain because it is “without a single American service woman or man injured or lost.” None of them obviously cares about hundreds of thousands lost lives of Ukrainians as long as they are dying for the sake of U.S. hegemonic ambitions.  So much for their Western and Judeo-Christian values.

This war was easily avoidable until February 23, 2022 when one phone call from Biden to Putin saying that the U.S. accepts neutral status of Ukraine, no longer insists on its entrance to NATO, and agrees to enter into serious strategic security and negotiations which Moscow proposed in December 2021.

However, Biden and his advisors Blinken, Sullivan, Nuland with the bipartisan congressional backup missed this chance because they were sure about having the most powerful packages of sanctions in their pocket that were capable of inflicting a devastating strategic defeat on Russia and pushing it in the geopolitical corner for good.

Still the war that started on February 24 could end quickly in a month or two when the peace deal between the Russians and Ukrainians was ready for signature. Enter British premier Boris Johnson who obviously with the blessing if not instructions from Biden rushed to Kyiv to disrupt it.  Ukrainian comic turned president Zelensky shamefully obeyed in exchange for promises of money and weapons for “as long as necessary.”  Human costs for all of them were not important but the results for Ukrainians were devastating. Now the future waves of Ukrainian cannon fodder including their women and old or sick men are about to be mobilized and thrown into the meat grinder.

This tragedy shouldn’t have happened. After the collapse of the USSR Ukraine not only could have its land intact, including Crimea, but to become one of the most prosperous European states.  The neutrality status would be a roadmap for peace and prosperity but unfortunately for Ukrainians Washington and the West had other plans for their country, which were to turn it into a strategic anti-Russia beachhead.  Two color revolutions, Orange in 2004 and Maidan in 2014 were openly backed by Washington while Maidan was directly coordinated by Biden, Blinken and Sullivan with Nuland working on the location.

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