Tag: perpetual war

Activating the Genocide Convention

There are 149 states party to the Genocide Convention. Every one of them has the right to call out the genocide in progress in Gaza and report it to the United Nations. 

In the event that another state party disputes the claim of genocide — and Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom are all states party — then the International Court of Justice is required to adjudicate on “the responsibility of a State for genocide.”

These are the relevant articles of the genocide convention:

“Article VIII
Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III.

Article IX
Disputes between the Contracting Parties relating to the interpretation, application or fulfilment of the present Convention, including those relating to the responsibility of a State for genocide or for any of the other acts enumerated in article III, shall be submitted to the International Court of Justice at the request of any of the parties to the dispute.”

Note that here “parties to the dispute” means the states disputing the facts of genocide, not the parties to the genocide/conflict. Any single state party is able to invoke the convention.

There is no doubt that Israel’s actions amount to genocide. Numerous international law experts have said so and genocidal intent has been directly expressed by numerous Israeli ministers, generals and public officials.

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Israel’s Other War: Ethnic Cleansing in the South Caucasus

Over the past month, legacy and social media have been saturated with reports of the Netanyahu regime’s war on Gaza, which is being met with growing calls from the international community to invoke the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Less known, however, is the role the Israeli government has played in another genocide that took place in West Asia only a month and a half ago. This genocide, little noted in the Western press, involved the ancient Christian community of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, known within Armenia as the Republic of Artsakh, that was ethnically cleansed by the Ilham Aliyev, the Shia dictator of Azerbaijan, in late September and early October. The muted response to Azerbaijan’s crime might plausibly be chalked up to the strength of its well-funded and influential lobby in Washington which profits off of the oil and gas revenue generated by SOCAR, the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic. SOCAR has links to the Podesta Group (co-founder John Podesta currently serves as a senior adviser to President Biden), lobbying powerhouse BGR Government Affairs, LLC, as well as numerous think tanks and academics associated with, among others, The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and the American Foreign Policy Council.

Yet another reason for the subdued response by Washington is the well documented ‘special relationship’ between the 51st US state, Israel, and Azerbaijan. A discussion I had last week with the Armenian academic Dr. Benyamin Poghosyan, who serves as Chairman of the Center for Political and Economic Strategic Studies and Senior Research Fellow on Foreign Policy at the Applied Policy Research Institute (APRI) of Armenia, shed some light on the role the Israeli government and its defense industry has played in enabling Azerbaijan – and why.

The relationship between the two countries began to deepen around 15 years ago when Azerbaijan, flush with revenue from its oil and gas deposits in the Caspian basin, began looking to purchase advanced weapons systems.

According to Poghosyan, “as late as September 2023, just before the most recent Azerbaijani attackseveral cargo planes went to Israel and came back to Azerbaijan full of weapons. And there is even information that Israel continued to supply weapons to Azerbaijan even after October 7th.”

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Israel admits burning hundreds of people on 7 October

On Thursday, MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan challenged Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev about the many lies and false claims that Israel has made to justify its genocidal bombing and invasion of Gaza.

While attempting to parry Hasan’s challenges, Regev told many more lies, trying to change the subject and shift the blame for the horrifying toll away from Israel and onto Israel’s Palestinian victims.

But Regev made one admission whose significance neither Regev nor Hasan appears to have recognized.

Regev was trying to make the point that Israel – supposedly unlike Hamas – can be trusted because when Israel makes a mistake, it admits it.

Regev gave this example: “We originally said, in the atrocious Hamas attack upon our people on October 7th, we had the number at 1,400 casualties and now we’ve revised that down to 1,200 because we understood that we’d overestimated, we made a mistake. There were actually bodies that were so badly burnt we thought they were ours, in the end apparently they were Hamas terrorists.”

Earlier this month, Israel did in fact revise down the number of Israelis it says were killed on 7 October to “around 1,200.”

Although it has offered no direct evidence, Israel has claimed that Hamas fighters burned Israeli civilians en masse, in atrocities not seen since the Holocaust.

Israel has also never explained how Palestinians fighters could have achieved this or caused the enormous damage to Israeli houses with only the light weapons they were generally seen carrying.

It simply makes no sense that 200 bodies burned beyond recognition that Israel thought were Israeli civilians could turn out to be Hamas fighters unless Israel killed people indiscriminately.

Obviously Hamas fighters did not set themselves on fire and burn themselves beyond recognition. And Israel must know the circumstances in which these people died.

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U.S. MILITARY IS SECRETLY SUPPLYING WEAPONS TO ISRAEL USING UK BASE ON CYPRUS

Respected Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported that over 40 US transport aircraft, 20 British transport aircraft and seven heavy transport helicopters have flown to RAF Akrotiri, Britain’s vast base on Cyprus, carrying equipment, arms and forces.

RAF Akrotiri has long been the staging post for British military operations and bombing campaigns in the Middle East. It sits 180 miles from Tel Aviv with a flight time of 40 minutes. 

The planes have been loaded with cargo from strategic depots belonging to the US and NATO in Europe, Haaretz reported. Around half the US flights are said to be “delivering military aid”. 

Declassified has found these US weapons and equipment are likely being delivered to RAF Akrotiri from US bases in Turkey, Spain and Germany.

On October 18 and 24, the US flew two huge C-17A Globemaster military transport vehicles to RAF Akrotiri from its air base at Rota in southern Spain. On October 25, the US flew another C-17 to Akrotiri from Ramstein air base in Germany, the site of NATO’s air command. 

The C-17 is capable of transporting 134 personnel and many types of military equipment, including Abrams tanks and Black Hawk helicopters. The US military notes that the C-17’s role is to “rapidly project and sustain an effective combat force close to a potential battle area”.

On November 5, a US C-130J Hercules military transport aircraft flew from Adana in southern Turkey to RAF Akrotiri. Adana is home to the Incirlik air base, a major US facility with 5,000 American personnel. The Hercules can carry 128 combat troops and 19,600kg of cargo.

Declassified could find no US Air Force (USAF) planes arriving from these bases in the two months before the Gaza bombing campaign began. 

US planes landing at Nevatim Air Force Base – located in southern Israel near the Negev desert – have delivered arms for the Israel’s military, Haaretz also reported. In addition, US aircraft landing at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv have carried, among other things, armoured vehicles.

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Pentagon Fails To Account For Over $3 Trillion For 6th Year In A Row

The Pentagon has failed its independent annual audit for the sixth year in a row, as US defense officials could not provide auditors with enough information to form a full accounting evaluation, according to the Defense Department’s yearly financial report released on Thursday.

“Auditing the department’s $3.8 trillion in assets and $4 trillion in liabilities is a massive undertaking,” Pentagon Comptroller Michael McCord said.

The 2023 audit gave a “disclaimer of opinion,” which means the Pentagon could not provide auditors enough financial data to allow them to form an opinion. An unqualified, or “clean,” opinion is the highest possible rating and a qualified opinion is an acceptable rating. Both mean that auditors were given enough information to make a complete judgement.

In 2022, the Pentagon only managed to account for 39 percent of its $3.5 trillion in assets. With this failure, the Pentagon has kept its spot as the only US government agency to have never passed a comprehensive audit. It also highlights the US war department’s persistent lack of internal financial control, its poor budget estimations and rampant overspending. 

A clear example of this is the F-35 program, which has gone over its original budget by $165 billion to build a plane tasked to perform many different tasks, none of which it does well.The Pentagon is slated to buy more than 2,400 F-35s for the Air Force, Marines, and Navy. The estimated lifetime cost for procuring and operating these planes – $1.7 trillion – would make it the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons project ever.

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MSM Admits “Magical Thinking” Guided Its Reporting On Ukraine… Many Thousands Of Deaths Later

A very short while ago, any US politician or media pundit publicly calling for peace negotiations in Ukraine with Russia’s Putin was branded ‘pro-Kremlin’ and somehow compromised. For example, mainstream media has sought to isolate and cancel thinkers like John Mearsheimer for his realism toward Moscow and the conflict, and urging immediate ceasefire which would require territorial concessions from Kiev. It was only in September that one prominent publication branded him “the world’s most hated thinker.”

But now, at a moment Ukraine’s leadership itself has become more desperate while admitting its forces are facing almost insurmountable odds, the D.C. beltway consensus has clearly and drastically changed, and now it’s apparently okay to admit the following…

The WSJ piece actually calls for a longer-term strategy of confronting Russia, while also admitting that Washington’s approach thus far has been based on “magical thinking”. 

Or else we might just call the establishment narrative to this point fraudulent…

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FOR A CENTURY, THE AMERICAN WAY OF WAR HAS MEANT KILLING CIVILIANS

NEARLY A CENTURY ago in Nicaragua, American Marines in an armed propeller plane spotted a group of civilian men chopping weeds and trimming trees far below. Convinced that something nefarious was underway, they opened fire. The U.S. never bothered to count the wounded and dead.

Four decades later in Vietnam, American troops hovering above a group of woodcutters grew unnerved when the men, women, and children failed to look up. Without provocation, the Americans unleashed rockets and machine-gun fire. Eight of the nine civilians below were killed.

For hours in 2021, Americans peered down at a man driving through the Afghan capital of Kabul and convinced themselves that he was a terrorist. They launched a missile that killed him and nine other civilians, including seven children.

In each instance, Americans displayed clear signs of confirmation bias, in which people seek information that reinforces their preexisting beliefs. The same failings contributed to a 2018 drone strike in Somalia that killed at least three, and possibly five, civilians, including 22-year-old Luul Dahir Mohamed and her 4-year-old daughter Mariam Shilow Muse.

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How to Make Society Accept and Embrace Genocide ‘With This One Simple Trick’

In a glaring display of hypocrisy that has become all too common in the partisan theater, many on the right, who once proudly wore the badge of anti-war, have pivoted their stance amidst the bloody conflict in Gaza. Their anti-war voices, once loud against interventions and regime change wars, have muted, revealing a troubling inconsistency. The invasion of Gaza by Israel following the horrific attack on the Jewish state by Hamas has been met not with calls for peace and diplomacy but with a hawkish embrace of military aid, interventionist policies, and the wholesale embrace of genocide — a significant departure from their previous calls for non-intervention.

This flip-flop is a stark illustration of the power of party lines to cloud judgment, to turn the rational into zealots for causes they once denounced. It’s a phenomenon we at The Free Thought Project have documented extensively over the years, highlighting the cognitive dissonance that grips individuals when party loyalty eclipses principle and rational thought. The abrupt shift from advocating fiscal responsibility and caution in foreign entanglements to endorsing further indebtedness and military support for Israel reflects the influence of partisan lines over these easily dismissed principles. It clearly indicates how easily the masses can be swayed by party loyalty, even when it contradicts their previously held values.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the recent escalations in Gaza. The same individuals who once cried foul over foreign entanglements now stand idly by or, worse, cheer as Israeli forces launch devastating attacks on Gaza, claiming the lives of thousands. The death toll, a harrowing figure predominantly composed of civilians, women, and children, seems to be just another statistic to those who’ve traded their anti-war ethos for a seat at the partisan table. The Ministry of Health in Gaza has released chilling numbers that paint a picture of a population under siege: over 11,100 Palestinians have been killed, with a disproportionate number of the victims being children and women. 1 out of every 200 Palestinians is now dead — which is nothing short of genocide — and instead of decrying it, many are begging for more.

This about-face isn’t limited to war either. For years, Republicans lambasted the left for its rabid intolerance toward opposing viewpoints, decrying the ‘cancel culture’ that silences dissent. Yet, in a disheartening twist, these cries for free speech seem to vanish into thin air when it comes to the defense of Israel’s actions. Any criticism of Israeli policy is met not with debate but with attempts to silence and discredit—a tactic they once condemned.

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Secret Pentagon Investigation Found No One at Fault in Drone Strike That Killed Woman and 4-Year-Old

MARIAM SHILOW MUSE was born in the springtime. When relatives dropped by, the bright-eyed 4-year-old bolted through the yard and beyond the fence to greet them. When her father came home, she smothered him with hugs.

In late March 2018, Mariam’s mother, 22-year-old Luul Dahir Mohamed, planned to visit her brother to see his children for the first time, and Mariam insisted on coming along to meet her young cousins. Luul’s brother had planned to pick them up, but Luul couldn’t reach him by phone, so on the morning of April 1, she and Mariam caught a ride with some men in a maroon Toyota Hilux pickup.

That same afternoon, as Luul’s brother Qasim Dahir Mohamed was on his way to pick up his sister and niece, he passed the maroon Toyota pickup. He noticed mattresses and pillows in the bed and, at the last second, caught sight of Luul, with Mariam on her lap, in the passenger seat. He waved and honked, but the truck kept going. 

Qasim’s phone wasn’t working, so he decided to drive on to El Buur, where Luul and Mariam had just spent the night, to see other relatives before returning home to welcome his sister and niece. Seconds after he reached the house, Qasim heard the first explosion, followed by another and, after a pause, one more blast.

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ISRAELI SPYWARE FIRM NSO DEMANDS “URGENT” MEETING WITH BLINKEN AMID GAZA WAR LOBBYING EFFORT

ON NOVEMBER 7, NSO Group, the Israeli spyware company infamous for its Pegasus phone-tapping technology, sent an urgent email and letter by UPS to request a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and officials at the U.S. State Department. 

“I am writing on behalf of NSO Group to urgently request an opportunity to engage with Secretary Blinken and the officials at the State Department regarding the importance of cyber intelligence technology in the wake of the grave security threats posed by the recent Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel and their aftermath,” wrote Timothy Dickinson, partner at the Los Angeles-based law firm Paul Hastings, headquartered in Los Angeles, on behalf of NSO. 

In the last two years NSO’s reputation has taken a beating amid revelations about its spyware’s role in human rights abuses. 

As controversy was erupting over its role in authoritarian governments’ spying, NSO Group was blacklisted by the U.S. Department of Commerce in November 2021, “to put human rights at the center of US foreign policy,” the agency said at the time. A month after the blacklisting, it was revealed that Pegasus had been used to spy on American diplomats. 

NSO’s letter to Blinken — publicly filed as part of Paul Hastings’s obligation under the Foreign Agents Registration Act — is part of the company’s latest attempt to reinvent its image and, most importantly, a bid to reverse the blacklisting. (Neither the State Department nor Paul Hastings responded to requests for comment.)

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