Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal speaks to the UN Security Council, detailing huge financial corruption and unsustainable rationale for supporting Ukraine war. Update, 7 July: The United States' 'response' to Blumenthal's testimony has been added.
Jim Fitton, 66, arrived at court in Baghdad and was given a 15-year sentence after being convicted of smuggling antiquities.
The other side of the story: Russians say their troops left Bucha before the massacre happened. They point to video by Bucha mayor of street clearing after the Russians had left, which shows no bodies in the streets. The Russians think that Ukrainian troops carried out the atrocity after the Russians left, as a false flag. Russia has demanded an immediate investigation of the UN Security Council but the UK and the US are trying to avoid this.
The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) is busy finalising its consideration of the Inquiry into the impact of the exercise of law enforcement and intelligence powers on the freedom of the press.
The Chair, Mr Andrew Hastie MP, said ‘The Committee has received considerable evidence from submitters and witnesses regarding the media and their ability to operate effectively within Australia’s democratic society. All members are endeavouring to achieve a bipartisan report, which delivers tangible areas for reform and consideration. This will not be possible by the end of November.’
The Deputy Chair, Hon Anthony Byrne MP, said ‘As this inquiry has progressed, the complexity and nuances of the issues raised have become acutely emphasised to the Committee. The ability for the Committee to make targeted recommendations is reliant on time, and the Committee would rather report later to ensure that occurs.’
The Committee has written to the Attorney-General informing him of the later reporting requirement, with the undertaking to present a report in the week before Christmas at the latest.
Further information on the inquiry can be obtained from the Committee’s website.
See also Can do better's earlier article announcing this inquiry here.
The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) has commenced an inquiry into the impact of the exercise of law enforcement and intelligence powers on the freedom of the press. The inquiry was referred by the Attorney-General, The Hon Christian Porter MP, on 4 July 2019, for the PJCIS to inquire into the Terms of Reference. (Details inside.) This is a reaction to public and press reaction over the raid by the Australian federal police of the home of News Corp Australia journalist Annika Smethurst, to find out how she had come by a leaked plan to allow government spying on Australians. A warrant from an ACT magistrate gave police authority to search the home, computer and mobile phone of the journalist. News Corp Australia called this a "dangerous act of intimidation targeted at public interest reporting." Smethurst had authored an article about heads of defence and home affairs ministries in Australia having talked about "draconian new powers to allow the Australian Signals Directorate to spy on Australian citizens for the first time. Under the mooted plan, spies would be allowed to secretly access emails, bank accounts and text messages with approval from the defence and home affairs ministers." See inside for how you can contribute - by 26 July 2019. Consider how Australian governments have failed to protect Julian Assange in the name of a perceived right to conceal war crimes.
The Committee has been requested to report back to both Houses of Parliament by 17 October 2019.
The Chair, Mr Andrew Hastie MP, said ‘the government has referred this inquiry based on concerns raised in relation to recent search warrants executed on members of the press, and the issue of balancing national security with the freedom of the press’.
‘This inquiry will allow the Committee to hear from the media, government agencies and other interested stakeholders as to the direct impact of these powers on civil society and their importance to both national security and the public interest. We will consider these issues closely and carefully.’
The Committee invites written submissions to this inquiry, to be received by Friday, 26 July 2019.
Further information on the inquiry can be obtained from the Committee’s website.
Media inquiries:
Chair, Mr Andrew Hastie MP (Canning, WA)
08 9534 8044 (Electorate office)
(02) 6277 4223 (Parliament House)
For background information:
Committee Secretariat, Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security
(02) 6277 2360
[email protected]
For more information about this Committee, you can visit its website. On the site, you can make a submission to an inquiry, read other submissions, and get details for upcoming public hearings. You can also track the Committee and receive email updates by clicking on the blue ‘Track Committee’ button in the bottom right hand corner of the page.
The Committee is to inquire and report back to both Houses of Parliament on the following matters:
a) The experiences of journalists and media organisations that have, or could become, subject to the powers of law enforcement or intelligence agencies performing their functions, and the impact of the exercise of those powers on journalists' work, including informing the public.
b) The reasons for which journalists and media organisations have, or could become, subject to those powers in the performance of the functions of law enforcement or intelligence agencies.
c) Whether any and if so, what changes could be made to procedures and thresholds for the exercise of those powers in relation to journalists and media organisations to better balance the need for press freedom with the need for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to investigate serious offending and obtain intelligence on security threats.
d) Without limiting the other matters that the Committee may consider, two issues for specific inquiry are:
whether and in what circumstances there could be contested hearings in relation to warrants authorising investigative action in relation to journalists and media organisations.
the appropriateness of current thresholds for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to access electronic data on devices used by journalists and media organisations.
The Committee is to report back to both Houses of Parliament by 17 October 2019.
The Syrian army discovered a highly-equipped hospital which had been built with the support of the western states and Israel for the terrorists and their family members in Quneitra province.
The Arabic-language service of RT reported on Wednesday that the Syrian police forces entered the town of al-Bariqeh in Quneitra and took control of a hospital with modern equipment and medication.
It added that the hospital is equipped with different types of x-ray systems, an advanced central heating system, well-equipped beds and a surgery section and a vast storage drugs, including new and advanced medications needed for surgical operations.
A medical source said that a large number of Israeli, US and French equipment and drugs have been found in the hospital, saying that some of the medicines and equipment are not at all available to Syrian citizens.
Quneitra province in Southwestern Syria came under government control around two months ago, when terrorists, mostly from the al-Nusra Front, were forced to withdraw to Idlib. Others agreed to the government peace offer, ended the war of insurgency and received government amnesty.
The hospital is one of the last placed that had remained unknown to the government forces ever since they came in control of the province that neighbors the occupied Golan Heights, but it is not the only instance of the US and Israeli support for the terrorists.
In another instance on Tuesday, the Damascus army launched two separate ambush operations against ISIL in Palmyra (Tadmur) region in Eastern Syria, and discovered a large volume of arms, including American weapons.
The army soldiers ambushed a group of ISIL that tried to move from al-Tanf in Southern Homs towards al-Bayarat al-Qarbi in Palmyra to further move towards Raqqa via al-Taweinan and Wadi Abyaz Dam region.
The army men killed two terrorists and capturd two more, forcing the remaining pockets of the terrorist to flee the battlefield.
The army soldiers also seized a large volume of military equipment and six motorcycles.
In the meantime, other units of the army ambushed another group of ISIL terrorists in al-Forou’a region 70 km Southeast of Palmyra, and captured five terrorists.
The army units seized two military vehicles with communication devices on board and a large volume of the US-made machineguns and M16 rifles and several boxes of munitions.
FARS First published on September 19, 2018 at https://en.muraselon.com/2018/09/damascus-terrorists-hospital-israel-us-france-quneitra/
The Democrats and Soros-backed groups are desperately looking to impeach Trump. The US activities in Syria offer the perfect opportunity, but of course Trump's enemies won't pursue it because they are right behind the US-NATO war crimes in Syria. It is ironic that, when Trump is really doing bad illegal stuff, he is also doing the will of the Democrats. This would be because the external policies of both political parties are driven by the Deep State. A further complication is that, if Trump could be impeached, then all those behind the illegal war on Syria would also be in danger of pursuit under criminal law. Automatic transcript provided.
Below is a cut and paste of Youtube's automatic transcript of the speech, which may contain errors, notably based on machine spellings of sounds. Emboldened emphases are by Editor of candobetter.net.
[Music]
0:01 welcome to talk nation radio a half-hour
0:04 discussion of politics as if the people
0:07 mattered
0:08 I'm David Swanson it is my great
0:10 pleasure to welcome to talk nation radio
0:13 this week Francis Boyle Francis Boyle is
0:15 a professor of international law at the
0:17 University of Illinois College of Law he
0:20 has served as counsel to Bosnia and
0:22 Herzegovina and to the provisional
0:24 government of the Palestinian Authority
0:25 he has represented the Blackfoot nation
0:28 the nation of Hawaii the Lakota Nation
0:30 he drafted the US domestic implementing
0:33 legislation for the biological weapons
0:36 convention known as the biological
0:37 weapons anti-terrorism Act of 1989 and
0:41 he has been a strong advocate over the
0:43 years for the proper use of the power of
0:45 impeachment Francis Boyle welcome to
0:49 talk nation radio well thank you very
0:52 much for having me on David my best to
0:54 your listening audience very glad to
0:56 have you on should Donald Trump be
0:59 impeached well I've taken the position
1:05 certainly that his attacks on Syria
1:09 clearly violate the War Powers Clause of
1:14 the United States Constitution the War
1:17 Powers Resolution of 1973 and the United
1:22 Nations Charter they would constitute
1:26 crimes against peace as recognized by US
1:31 Army Field Manual 27:10 so certainly in
1:35 my opinion those are impeachable
1:38 offenses for sure is there a reason you
1:41 named Syria in particular as opposed to
1:44 Afghanistan or Iraq or Yemen or you know
1:47 other places where Donald Trump has
1:50 dropped bombs no I just think that you
1:54 know that clear the serious situation is
1:57 is a clear-cut case for impeachment I
2:01 guess the rest weed we have to talk
2:04 about that the press release we put out
2:08 was prompted by Trump
2:13 to latest attacks on Syria yoga it seems
2:19 that there's a view that if the latest
2:22 attack was on Syrian forces as opposed
2:25 to some other forces in Syria then that
2:28 makes a difference but it seems to me
2:31 the the list of violations you went
2:34 through the UN Charter etc covers
2:37 killing anybody in Syria or for that
2:39 matter Afghanistan or Iraq or anywhere
2:42 else that the United States is illegally
2:44 killing people well David I you know I'm
2:49 a law professor I just have to be
2:52 precise in my analysis when we're
2:54 dealing with each of one of these
2:55 countries but certainly when it comes to
2:59 Syria the United States government has
3:02 no right to be in Syria at all and as
3:05 you know we have military forces up
3:08 there and Raqqa we're bombing up there
3:11 we also have military forces in Syria
3:15 itself near the border with Jordan those
3:19 are the ones who are fired
3:21 this time arm so our whole presence in
3:25 Syria is is completely illegal unlawful
3:30 unconstitutional it's never been
3:32 approved by our Congress and so
3:34 definitely that's that's impeachable for
3:37 sure from my perspective we you know we
3:42 can talk about other countries if you
3:43 want to but you know I I have to be
3:47 precise I just can't lump everything
3:50 together in you know in one bucket
3:54 absolutely well I would be delighted to
3:57 simply impeach Trump for Syria I was
3:59 just trying to grasp what the
4:00 distinction is between Syria and say
4:03 Afghanistan because it seems that
4:05 Congress allows both to go on provides
4:08 the funding that is used for both the UN
4:11 Charter covers neither etc so I am just
4:15 you know looking for what's the what's
4:17 the legal distinction between the two
4:20 well again right now I just you know I
4:22 want to talk about Syria if you want to
4:24 talk about other countries we can
4:27 and in in terms a you know I've seen
4:32 also references to the fact that Donald
4:36 Trump apparently owned stock in hidden
4:38 raytheon you know in the missiles that
4: sends into Syria is that sort of
4:43 corruption make it make it any worse or
4:45 any more of an impeachable offense or is
4:47 it is the attack on Syria enough well
4:52 that's why I'm arguing the attack on
4:54 Syria's enough I I think you know if you
4:57 look at other potential articles of
5:00 impeachment and I've been this through
5:03 this before I was counsel to the late
5:07 great Henry B Gonzales on his bill of
5:11 impeachment against Bush senior for the
5:14 Gulf War and Ramsey Clark and Gonzales
5:17 and I set up a national campaign to
5:19 impeach bush senior for that war on and
5:22 when when the war started congressman
5:25 Gonzales introduced his bill of
5:27 impeachment and in his memoirs Bush
5:30 senior did state that the reason he
5:33 stopped at Basra and did not go all the
5:36 way to Baghdad was that he feared
5:37 impeachment so we did have have an
5:40 impact there unfortunately couldn't stop
5:44 that war but right now uh you know I'm
5:49 certainly prepared to say that the
5:51 Trump's attacks on Syria are impeachable
5:54 offenses for sure it's it's a slam-dunk
5:57 to use that phrase a type of situation
6:02 yeah right there I could I could draw
6:04 those that article of impeachment now if
6:07 a member of Congress wanted to see it as
6:11 I recall a you and Ramsey Clark also
6:14 presented a case for the impeachment of
6:17 Bush jr. to the Democrats in Congress
6:20 just a week or so before the the attack
6:25 on Baghdad you know which could
6:27 conceivably have saved over a million
6:30 lives and the Congress members there as
6:33 I recall from your account of it
6:37 accepted the the logic of the of the
6:40 case but decided it would be better for
6:42 the Democrats to wait until the next
6:45 election and be able to campaign against
6:48 the war is that what happened basically
6:52 yes David what happened is just before
6:57 the start of go for two by Bush jr.
7:00 Congressman John Conyers the ranking
7:05 member of the House Judiciary Committee
7:06 that had jurisdiction over bills of
7:09 impeachment invited me and Ramsey Clark
7:13 to come in and argue the case for
7:15 impeachment
7:16 uh before 40 or so of the top lawyers
7:22 affiliated with the Democratic Party and
7:26 he had a draft bill of impeachment there
7:30 uh by me drafted by me you can find it
7:33 on the internet if you want to look for
7:35 arm and Ramsey had one too that was was
7:39 similar to mine so Ramsey and I it was a
7:43 two hour debate
7:44 almost everyone there were were lawyers
7:46 of Ramsey and I both both argued the
7:50 case for impeachment and what happened
7:55 the the decisive factor was that John
7:59 Podesta appeared and no Podesta is
8:03 Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign
8:06 director or was and he said that he was
8:12 appearing there on behalf of the
8:15 Democratic National Committee and the
8:18 Democratic National Committee did not
8:22 want a bill of impeachment put in
8:24 against Bush I also had one for Cheney
8:27 and Ashcroft so you know what can I say
8:33 it's clear the Democrats uh were in on
8:38 this war I mean that debt really put the
8:40 kibosh on on the whole thing whatever
8:43 they say in in public
8:45 I'm not criticizing congressman not
8:47 Conyers of course if you you know if he
8:49 he
8:50 had booked the will of the DNC probably
8:53 would have been stripped of his
8:55 seniority and everything else I know his
8:58 heart was in the right place uh you know
9:01 but he's a team player and so we never
9:05 put put put the bill of impeachment in I
9:08 regret to say it was one of the great
9:10 disappointments of my life certainly uh
9:13 and all those people you know the the
9:16 estimate is maybe 1.5 million Iraqis
9:20 were exterminated in what could only be
9:23 called a war of outright genocide
9:25 against the Iraqis and it still
9:28 continues today but what your listeners
9:30 have to understand is that the
9:33 Democratic Party fully supported that
9:37 you know in fact congressman Danza
9:41 Podesta who was Clinton's campaign
9:45 manager was the one who personally put
9:48 the kibosh on it arm so you know what
9:52 can I say I'm not a political
9:55 independent so I you know wasn't for me
9:59 to tell Democrats what to do although
10:02 Ramsey you know as a lifelong Democrat
10:05 and he you know he tried to make that
10:07 argument from from the perspective of a
10:10 lifelong Democrat I said it I made the
10:13 best legal argument I could actually
10:16 yeah sure you did you did and I recall
10:18 what it looked like congressman Conyers
10:21 also discouraged his colleagues from
10:23 introducing any legislation for
10:26 impeachment implying that once he was
10:29 once the Democrats had the majority then
10:31 he would handle it but of course when
10:34 they had the majority in January 2007
10:39 rahm emanuel openly told the washington
10:42 post we're going to keep the war going
10:43 keep Bush and Cheney in place and
10:46 campaign against them again in 2008
10:49 that'll be better and you know for
10:52 whatever
10:53 strategic reasons John Conyers and the
10:56 rest of them went along with that again
10:59 and that's exactly what obama did he you
11:03 know obama was behind me at harvard law
11:06 school we had the same jurisprudence
11:09 teacher Roberto Unger who publicly would
11:12 later call Obama quote a disaster
11:15 unquote on and Obama used that strategy
11:19 to get elected president in 2008 uh but
11:25 he you know he lied tricked and deceived
11:27 all of us as did the as did the
11:30 Democrats and I you know I'm a political
11:34 independent I bet I did not vote for
11:37 Obama either time between you and me
11:39 because I knew all about his career
11:41 behind me at Harvard Law School he is a
11:44 total opportunist you know from here in
11:47 Chicago while I'm not in Chicago but I
11:50 he you know he lived up there in Hyde
11:53 Park and South Side of Chicago where I'm
11:56 from and I contacted people up there
11:58 about him and they said he was a total
11:59 opportunist so I never supported him
12:04 twice voting for for president I voted
12:08 for other candidates right what can I
12:10 say we're speaking with Francis Boyle
12:13 who is a professor of international law
12:15 at the University of Illinois College of
12:17 Law Francis I've got a list of other
12:22 articles of impeachment people are
12:23 proposing for Donald Trump let me let me
12:26 run a few by you and tell me if you
12:28 think they are impeachable offenses are
12:30 not domestic and foreign emoluments
12:33 clauses domestic clause the president
12:36 shall not receive any other emolument
12:38 from the United States or any of them
12:40 any of the states the the foreign Clause
12:43 no person holding any office of profit
12:46 or trust under the US government shall
12:48 without the consent of the Congress
12:50 accept any present emolument office or
12:52 title of any kind whatever from any King
12:55 prince or foreign state Trump seems in
12:58 clear violation of both from day one
13:02 well you know I'm not here to criticize
13:07 anyone else who wants to impeach Trump
13:11 one way or the other
13:12 but let me point out the sociology
13:16 behind this one when Clinton was
13:19 Secretary of State and was involved in
13:24 all the slush funds there with the
13:27 Clinton Foundation none of the lawyers
13:31 pushing this argument on the emoluments
13:34 clause who are all affiliated with the
13:37 Democratic Party talked about impeaching
13:40 Clinton on the basis of the emoluments
13:42 clause not one of them every every
13:46 lawyer behind this campaign on the
13:49 emoluments clause is affiliated with the
13:51 Democratic Party and they did not push
13:55 any of this at all with respect to mrs.
13:57 Clinton the Secretary of State and the
13:59 Clinton Foundation slush fund so I I
14:03 myself um you know if these Democratic
14:06 Party lawyers want to push this they
14:08 can't the only Republican they have on
14:12 there is this fellow Richard painter who
14:16 who used to teach here they use him as a
14:19 frontman claiming that well he's
14:22 authoritative uh because he served as
14:26 the in the White House counsel's office
14:30 as ethics adviser to President Bush jr.
14:35 well you know that makes me laugh that
14:38 that here a painter and Bush jr. are
14:44 covered in blood from head to toe and
14:49 he's there lecturing us painter on on
14:53 ethics this would be like serving as the
14:57 legal adviser on ethics to Genghis Khan
15:01 or something like that yeah only arm you
15:04 know where I you know I'm not I'm not
15:06 discounting the emoluments clause but
15:09 you know you have to look at who's
15:11 making it yet all the lawyers making
15:14 this argument the lawyers who have filed
15:16 the lawsuit they're all uh legal hatchet
15:20 men for the Democratic Party so you know
15:23 if you want to get involved in that uh I
15:26 guess you can't
15:27 and that all the domestic respects the
15:30 domestic laws Francis is specifically
15:33 about the president not a Secretary of
15:34 State but the foreign one could
15:37 certainly be applied to either so I
15:39 guess my question is it granted the part
15:41 of the did the gross blatant
15:43 partisanship it's there were such people
15:47 wrong not to bring such charges against
15:50 Hillary Clinton or are they wrong to
15:53 bring them against Donald Trump what I'm
15:56 saying now is that it's total hypocrisy
15:58 under these circumstances and I'm not
16:01 getting involved with my personally for
16:04 me I'm not getting involved with a gang
16:07 of legal hatchet men for the Democratic
16:11 Party uh who supported Clinton and
16:15 supported Obama for all these years
16:19 but others want to get involved in them
16:21 that you know that's fine that's your
16:23 business but Obama but I'm not getting
16:25 involved in it Obama dropped a lot more
16:28 bombs on Syria then Donald Trump has yet
16:31 to drop on Syria and I don't think any
16:33 of these individuals brought up
16:34 impeaching Obama for bombing Syria
16:3 7either yet we are better Ryan to say
16:40 it's a legitimate charge against Trump
16:43 so that why you know there's there s a
16:47 piracy but it's still an important
16:49 charge to bring is it not well and not
16:52 only did AMA drop bombs on John Syria he
16:56 was the one who started the so-called a
17:00 color revolution that we're seeing in
17:04 Syria now none of these democratic
17:07 lawyers did anything about Obama they
17:09 were fully supporting Obama I tried
17:12 myself to get a Bill's of impeachment or
17:17 bill of impeachment in there against
17:19 Obama and I failed I you know I couldn't
17:21 get anyone to impeach obama for anyone
17:25 for anything or put a bill of
17:27 impeachment in there and you know i
17:29 talked to some members of congress
17:31 republicans and they weren't willing to
17:33 do it so well i could neither veterans
17:37 for peace was the only organization
17:39 as I recall right Willington to say yes
17:43 envy job and i i signed their a petition
17:48 in support of impeaching obama that's
17:51 correct
17:52 yeah but almost no one uh did it so you
17:56 know as I see it this emoluments clause
17:58 you know this is just a partisan effort
18:00 being used by the Democratic Party arm
18:04 which you know uh I'm you know when I
18:09 was a kid
18:09 the Democrats are waging war in Vietnam
18:12s o I not going to be affiliated myself
18:16 with anything that the Democratic Party
18:20 is running here one way or the other
18:22 well let me let me ask you about some
18:24 other charges that I would bring that as
18:26 far as I know no Democrats or
18:28 Republicans are proposing Oh
18:30 one would be banning Muslims from the
18:33 country and having it thrown out by a
18:36 court and doing it again is that not a
18:40 high crime in ms I think you are correct
18:43 on that of David clearly um I think a an
18:50 argument could be made here that it
18:52 violates the First Amendment of the
18:54 United States Constitution and that's
18:57 what these courts have found I have I
18:59 have read I guess the opinion out in
19:03 Hawaii and another opinion out on out in
19:06 the Ninth Circuit there you know in San
19:09 Francisco so clearly um I think an
19:13 argument could be made that if someone
19:17 wanted to pull a put a bill of
19:19 impeachment in there for violating the
19:22 First Amendment I I would support that
19:25 yes but I'm certainly not going to work
19:27 with a gang of you know Democratic
19:29 lawyers who have an agenda here uh to
19:35 basically reverse of the November 8th
19:41 2016 election where Clinton lost and
19:45 that I think is really what's going on
19:48 here with some of these efforts
19:51 I personally putting a
19:53 side the you know the merits of the
19:56 emoluments clause argument um but I
19:59 think that's the agenda there to reverse
20:01 that election and certainly to use it
20:06 against against Trump but I want to make
20:08 clear I didn't vote for Trump and I
20:10 certainly didn't vote for Clinton that's
20:12 for sure
20:13 yes well you and me both the the
20:17 defending Hillary and arguing that
20:20 Hillary would have won if not for
20:22 foreign interference and corruption just
20:24 ignore all the domestic interference and
20:26 corruption seems to be part where you
20:29 agree right that anybody about that I
20:32 agree with what you said yeah yes so so
20:34 I wonder both what you make of the
20:37 business Russia madness and what you
20:39 make of the argument well let's get him
20:42 for obstruction of justice even if there
20:44 wasn't anything there to be found by an
20:47 investigation is that is that a
20:50 legitimate church well the anti-russian
20:56 history is pure war mongering as as you
20:59 know Clinton decided to use that against
21:03 Trump in the campaign uh once once Trump
21:08 was nominated and the Democrats and
21:12 Clinton and the mainstream news media
21:15 all of whom supported Clinton are
21:18 continuing this anti-russian war
21:22 mongering and hysteria there's no other
21:24 word for it and it is extremely
21:28 dangerous under the circumstances and
21:31 certainly but I think if Clinton has
21:33 been elected president we'd be we'd be
21:35 at war with Russia now on the wrestling
21:39 so there there we are I don't know what
21:42 to say about it but there's no I haven't
21:45 seen any evidence that you know Putin
21:48 corrupted our election or anything like
21:51 that I you know I think this is all
21:53 boulder dash you know and I follow these
21:56 things quite carefully no it's it's
22:00 amazing that it goes on and on without
22:02 any evidence but then I have people that
22:04I respect who say well even if there's
22:06 nothing
22:07 there he still obstructed justice and
22:10 the cover-up is worse than the crime and
22:12 you can go after him for obstruction of
22:14 justice for firing Comey what what do
22:17 you make of that argument uh I don't
22:21 think you know well you do have to
22:23 distinguish between uh the crime of
22:26 obstruction of justice I I was
22:28 originally hired here to teach criminal
22:32 law for several years and right now I
22:35 don't I don't see that crime that he he
22:38 committed was different when you know
22:40 you had Archibald Cox who was a special
22:44 prosecutor and a grand jury and
22:48 everything else like that that's correct
22:50 um but and with Clinton too even though
22:54 you know the Clinton impeachment was
22:56 ridiculous but there to you had Ken star
23:00 and a grand jury and things of that
23:02 nature but right now it's just you know
23:05 the director of the FBI he was talking
23:07 with the director the FBI we're not
23:10 exactly sure what they said or why they
23:12 said it what with reasons behind it that
23:14 statute clearly says corruptly but let
23:17 me put it this way certainly if you know
23:19 they want to make a case of impeaching
23:21 him for obstruction of justice of course
23:23 they can do that if they want to but
23:25 right now I don't see the evidence to
23:27 convict them for a crime but we have to
23:30 understand one thing here um David there
23:34 are no good guys on either side of this
23:36 at all call me director of the FBI
23:42 Wesley Swearengen a retired and
23:45 decorated FBI agent in his book FBI
23:49 secrets called the FBI quote an American
23:53 Gestapo uncle you know commies no hero
23:56 here at all he director the American
23:58 Gestapo he worked for President Bush jr.
24:02 and Ashcroft at the Department of
24:04 Justice he's up to his eyeballs in
24:08 torture and forced disappearances and
24:10 all the other hideous atrocities that
24:13 horse jr. inflicted against
24:16 international human rights the United
24:18 States Constitution
24:20 as for Muller this new special
24:23 prosecutor he's just a legal and
24:26 political hatchet man for the Bush
24:28 family of the CIA FBI and everyone else
24:33 he's a political operative Muller was
24:36 the one who was personally in charge of
24:40 manufacturing the case that framed
24:43 Muammar Qaddafi over the Lockerbie
24:46 bombing and everyone knows that was a
24:48 joke that the Qaddafi had nothing to do
24:51 with it
24:52 Libya had nothing to do with it up and
24:55 yet the order was given by Bush senior
24:58 CIA are to deflect attention from Iran
25:03 in Syria for because they supported Bush
25:06 senior on his war against Iraq the first
25:09 time and uh frame Gaddafi in Libya yeah
25:14 personally handled that at the
25:16 Department of Justice he was in charge
25:19 the whole thing and it's always under my
25:21 leadership that the anthrax
25:23 investigation went so badly as he also
25:27 did the cover up on the anthrax there's
25:30 no question all about it up and blaming
25:34 this poor Bruce Ivins guy who committed
25:36 suicide and Muller has his death on his
25:41 hands as well we had all a couple
25:43 minutes left Francis Boyle I think that
25:47 the biggest obstacle we may have to
25:50 impeachment in Washington may be exactly
25:54 as you say there are no good guys and
25:56 there's this this horror of pence
25:59 becoming president you know it would
26:02 make somebody worse president to which I
26:05 say well if we had a culture of
26:06 accountability an impeachment it would
26:08 that would matter more than who was
26:10 stepping into the office but what do you
26:12 say to all these wise people who say
26:14 don't be stupid and make pense president
26:20 well I
26:22I you know personally in my experience
26:26 on impeachment going back to congressman
26:30 Gonzalez uh and also now we find out
26:35 that Obama did not attack Syria in 2013
26:43 Ben Rhodes recently said this that Obama
26:47 feared impeachment uh you know I think
26:50 it would be good to send a shot across
26:53 the bow of Trump or any other president
26:56 as I tried to do with bush senior I
27:00 tried to do with Clinton I had a
27:01 campaign impeach Clinton for the right
27:04 reasons not a having fellatio with right
27:07 Monica Lewinsky and lying about it but
27:09 all these bombings that he was doing uh
27:11 and then we just discussed uh my effort
27:16 with Ramsey Clark on Bush jr. and I
27:20 tried to get you notes a member of
27:23 Congress to introduce bill of
27:25 impeachment against Obama but I failed
27:28 so I we we have a an imperial presidency
27:33 as you know indeed after 9/11 2001 we
27:37 have a hyper imperial presidency result
27:40 i thirty Seconds there is value there is
27:43 value in introducing a bill of
27:47 impeachment and I'm certainly prepared
27:49 to do that on Syria if a member of
27:51 Congress wants to talk with me and also
27:54 pursuant to your suggestion on the ban
27:57 against the Muslims and send a shot
28:01 across Trump's bow and cast a character
28:06 surrounding him I think there's value in
28:08 that I certainly agree I hope some
28:10 members of Congress are listening and
28:11 take you up on it Francis boiled thank
28:14 you very very much for coming on talk
28:16 nation radio well thank you very much
28:19 David for heavy on this is talk nation
28:22 radio I'm david swanson take action at
28:25 roots action org help end war at world
28:29 beyond war
28:31 all task shows can be heard at david
28:34 swanson org talk nation radio is
28:37 produced in Charlottesville Virginia and
28:39 syndicated by Pacifica Network if you
28:43 are listening to a nonprofit station
28:45 please support pat station talk nation
28:48 radio is funded by contributors at david
28:50 swanson org there is no way to peace
28:54 peace is the way until next time
28:58[Music]
This letter to a high profile pacifist on a Canadian peace activism email list highlights the problem within the international peace movement where some 'leaders' turn a blind eye to the egregious flouting of international law by the United States, NATO and their allies. You would think that peace activists would be highly informed on the propaganda aspect of war, and the role of mainstream press in this, but it seems that this basic education is lacking even in the upper echelons of the movement. By ignoring the illegality of recent attacks on Syria, some in the movement have again helped brutal Takfiris in their effort to take-over secular Syria. Peggy Mason is President of the Rideau Institute of which Ceasefire Canada is an arm. Ken Stone is Treasurer, of the Canadian Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War.
Dear Peggy,
Thank you for your prompt reply and your admission that you were wrong to to conclude, before an investigation took place, that President Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the April 4th gas attack at Khan Sheikhoun, Syria.
It’s unfortunate that you don’t wish to debate the widely different attitudes within the peace movement towards the US missile strike on the Shayat Airbase in Syria. Nonetheless, the Canadian peace movement still has to consider the issues you don’t want to debate.
In your reply, you touched on the key issue of investigation and judgment before any consequential action should take place. However, in your original e-mail message to the “peace listserver”, you wrote that “Putin has said he will agree to an independent investigation. Tillerson should nail this down.”
I think you have got things backwards. US Secretary of State Tillerson did not wait for (or even call for) an independent investigation of the April 4 incident. Rather, on his watch, his country rushed to engage in an act of war on the sovereign country of Syria which killed several civilians and pushed us towards a wider war in the Middle East, while Putin (as you noted) did call for an independent investigation.
So, here is where we have a difference. In my opinion and that of our Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War, the peace movement in Canada needs to be clear and consistent about international law. No country is above that law. The USA and its coalition partners, including Canada, are violating international law by overflying and stationing military forces in the sovereign country of Syria without the permission of the Syrian government. They are also violating international law by inserting, funding, and arming proxy armies of terrorist mercenaries to achieve regime change in Syria. They have levelled onerous economic sanctions upon Syria, causing great distress to the Syrian people, without the approval of the UN Security Council. The US-led coalition used military force against the Syrian government in its attack on Sharyat Airbase on April 7, 2017.
Where we have another difference with the Rideau Institute and Ceasefire is that you have decided to put pressure on the wrong parties. You seem to want to hold the Russian government to account when it appears that it had no hand in the incident and although its military forces are legally stationed in Syria at the invitation of the Syrian government. Moreover, you seem to be deeply invested in the campaign to delegitimize the Syrian government and to demonize its elected president.
Neither of your approaches is helpful. And these are very important matters which should be aired in public.
Another important point: what have you, the Rideau Institute, and Ceasefire said about the performance of Prime Minister Trudeau in the context of Khan Sheikhoun? Trudeau initially called for an investigation into the claims of a gas attack. Then, less than 24 hours later, he endorsed the USA cruise missile strike on Syria's Sharyat airbase. Now, his Minister of Global Affairs, Chrystia Freeland, imposes new unilateral sanctions on Syria, which are illegal under international law, because they lack the approval of the United Nations Security Council. Your comments would be appreciated by our Coalition members.
Finally my parting comment on your parting comment that (you) are “paying your dues every day” in the peace movement. As far as I know, you are paid a salary. Am I wrong?
Ken Stone
Treasurer,
Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War
The UN has concluded its investigation of the 19 September bombing of a UN aid convoy in Syria. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon released the summary of the Board of Inquiry’s report on 21 December, but it received virtually no publicity, unlike the wall-to-wall reporting of the USA’s and UK’s hysterical accusations at the time that Russia deliberately bombed the convoy. The lack of publicity is doubtless because the report proves there was no evidence for the accusations against Russia.
Following is a chronology of the incident:
On 11 September, Russia and the USA agreed to a ceasefire in Syria, which Barack Obama insisted must last seven days before any further Russian-US cooperation in the five-year conflict. Senior officials in the Obama administration, including Defence Secretary Ash Carter, were known to be opposed to any cooperation with Russia.
On 17 September, US, Australian and other members of the US-led coalition in Syria bombed Syrian Arab Army soldiers holding a position against ISIS at Deir ez-Zor. More than 62 soldiers were killed in an attack that lasted more than an hour, and when a Russian officer called the US military’s emergency hotline to inform them they were attacking the Syrian army, the Russian officer was put on hold for 27 minutes! The USA later claimed the attack was an “accident”. (The CEC launched a petition demanding the Australian government withdraw its presence from Syria, as it was only assisting ISIS.)
On 19 September, a UN convoy transporting aid for Aleppo was bombed in an area controlled by rebels. The attack occurred at precisely the moment that the al-Qaeda-led rebels in Aleppo launched a furious offensive to break the Syrian Army lines. It was reported as a bombing, but the burnt out trucks remained intact, and there were no craters or other signs of aerial bombardment. The eyewitness reports that the attack was an aerial bombing came from the so-called White Helmets—British- and American-funded jihadists masquerading as civilian rescuers. The USA and Britain accused Russia of a war crime, and—ignoring the attack on the Syrian army two days earlier—of destroying the ceasefire!
Hysterical propaganda
A 20 September Guardian headline blared: “Russian planes dropped bombs that destroyed UN aid convoy, US officials say”. It cited a Reuters report: “Russian jets carried out strike on Syria aid convoy: U.S. officials”.
The most hysterical accusations came from the British government and Parliament, in an 11 October emergency debate. They were also the most hypocritical and cynical. Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell, who moved the debate, compared Russia’s actions in Syria to those of the Nazis in the Spanish Civil War.
Greens leader Caroline Lucas asked Mitchell: “Does he agree that our own Government should follow the example of the French in supporting a referral of Russia to the International Criminal Court?”
Blairite (a crony of disgraced former PM Tony Blair) Labour MP Ann Clwyd—the politician who first publicised the notorious Iraq war lie, that Saddam killed people in a human shredding machine, yet remains completely unapologetic for the illegal invasion of Iraq—called for the UK to take the same approach to Syria as it did to Iraq! “We do not have to wait for the International Criminal Court”, Clwyd urged. “Indict, an organisation that I chaired, collected evidence on Iraqi war crimes years before they were heard. That can be done again, for example through the Foreign Office.” (Emphasis added.)
When Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry at least attempted to inject into the debate the reality that the rebels were predominantly al-Qaeda jihadists, another shameless Blairite Labour MP, Ben Bradshaw, erupted in contrived outrage, and attacked his own colleague: “We had a ceasefire; it was brutally blown apart by Russian and Syrian air power. I still have not heard from my hon. Friend a clear and unequivocal condemnation of Russia’s and Assad’s action. I have not heard her call it out as it is—a war crime!” (Bradshaw is another with the blood of Iraqis on his hands, having aggressively prosecuted the fraudulent case for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and later having voted against convening Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq inquiry into that criminal and disastrous decision.)
Yet another Blairite, John Woodcock, was the most unhinged in hurling wild accusations against Russia for the attack on the convoy: “There is no doubt as to who was the perpetrator of this grotesque war crime. It was President Putin of Russia. He was sticking two fingers up to the United Nations and the international community of which he still has the audacity to claim he is a working part.” (Woodcock is close to Britain’s biggest private defence contractor, BAE Systems—its al-Yamamah arms deal with the brutal Saudi dictatorship has been exposed as having generated a $100 billion slush fund that financed al-Qaeda and the 9/11 attack and the spread of al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorism generally.)
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said: “All the available evidence therefore points to Russian responsibility for the atrocity. I trust that the UN board of inquiry will establish exactly what happened, and we in the United Kingdom Government stand ready to help.” Johnson’s speech made headlines for his reiteration of Ann Clwyd’s call for anti-war protestors to demonstrate outside of the Russian embassy in London. It is worth noting that Johnson was interrupted by a question from Prince Charles’s close friend Sir Nicholas Soames, demanding war crime prosecutions for the attack. Another toady for the British arms industry, Soames is notorious for his threats against Princess Diana when she spearheaded the international campaign against land mines just before her death in 1997. (The inquest ruled Diana’s death an “unlawful killing”, which is effectively a verdict of murder, where the perpetrators are not identified.)
The only contributor to this House of Commons debate who emerged with any credibility intact was Labour Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry, who exposed the self-righteous hypocrisy of the other contributors by insisting that the UK could not condemn the alleged crimes in Syria while simultaneously arming Saudi Arabia to bomb civilians in Yemen.
UN’s finding
Following are excerpts of numbered sections from the UN Headquarters Board of Inquiry Report summary that Ban Ki-moon released 21 December. While the report still assumes an aerial attack that many experts insist could not have been possible, nevertheless it absolves Russia of a war crime. The findings include:
The area where the convoy was attacked was under the control of Islamist jihadists:
“11. The SARC compound, the incident site, is located approximately 1.5 km east of the town of Urem al-Kubra.”
“13. On the date of the incident, Urem al-Kubra was under the control of armed opposition groups, with Jaish al-Mujahideen being the predominant group in the area. The Board was informed that other groups, including Nour al-Din al-Zenki also had a presence there. In addition, the Board received reports of a Jabhat al-Nusra presence in the area.”
Nour al-Din al-Zenki is one of the so-called “moderate” rebel groups backed by the US, members of which filmed themselves beheading a 12-year-old Palestinian boy in July (the same cameraman later took the staged photo of the five-year-old Aleppo boy in an ambulance that suckered the world media). Jabhat al-Nusra is the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda.
The White Helmets’ claim that a hospital was bombed was bogus:
“33. Despite initial reports that a medical clinic had been destroyed, the Board found no evidence of a medical clinic neighbouring the SARC compound.” (Emphasis added.)
This is an important finding, as the most oft-repeated accusation against Russia is that its aircraft deliberately targeted hospitals in Aleppo. The US and UK-financed White Helmets were the source of these claims, which were always baseless. Not only did they claim dozens of times that the “last hospital” in Aleppo had been destroyed, the recent liberation of Aleppo has proved that almost every site they called a hospital was just a jihadist stronghold.
If the Syrian Arab Air Force (SAAF) were responsible for the attack, given the convoy’s location in a jihadist-controlled area they most likely thought it was a military target:
“36. … The Board considered that the location of the SARC compound, on the outskirts of a populated area, in an industrial zone and astride one of the two primary roads leading to southwestern Aleppo, made it a realistic possibility that the buildings around it were used by armed opposition groups prior to the date of the incident. Therefore the Board considered that it had most likely been attacked by pro-Government forces.”
The UN found no evidence to prove that SAAF perpetrated the attack; an SAAF attack does not implicate Russia:
“39. The Board stated that it had received reports that information existed to the effect that the SAAF was highly likely to have perpetrated the attack, and even that the attack was carried out by three Syrian Mi-17 model helicopters, followed by three unnamed fixed-wing aircraft, with a single Russian aircraft also suspected of being involved. However, the Board did not have access to raw data to support these assertions and, in their absence, it was unable to draw a definitive conclusion.”
“40. The Board noted in this connection that there were technical issues pertaining to a hypothesis of the incident being a result of a joint Syrian Arab Air Force/Russian Federation strike. The Board had been informed that that the Russian Federation did not conduct joint strikes. A high degree of interoperability and co-ordination would also be required for two air forces to operate in the same airspace, targeting the same location.”
The UN found no evidence of a war crime:
“42. The Board stated that it did not have evidence to conclude that the incident was a deliberate attack on a humanitarian target.”
Since the US presidential election, the Anglo-American establishment and their corporate media lackeys have coined the term “fake news” for anything that contradicts their lies. In fact, many times since the genocidal fiasco of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, it is they who have been exposed as the real peddlers of fake news. The most extreme example is their litany of lies against Russia, but those lies are also the most dangerous, as they have pushed the world towards nuclear war. Thankfully, with Aleppo now liberated from the USA’s and UK’s terrorists, and a change of government in the USA, there is a chance to turn away from the policies of permanent war, and achieve a just international order based on respect for national sovereignty and a commitment to peace through cooperative economic development. As we approach 2017, all people of good will should resolve to ensure that it happens.
Although candobetter.net's philosophy of land-use and population policy reform runs counter to that of the Citizens Electoral Council, we are pleased to publish this press release about Syria and Russia.
The source of this article was a press release dated 30 December 2016, from Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary of the Citizens' Electoral Council
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.cecaust.com.au
Article by Prof. Marcello Ferrada de Noli, Chairman, Swedish Doctors for Human Rights –SWEDHR. First published at The Indicter Magazine Summary: Sweden did not succeed in getting Bob Dylan to come to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Nevertheless as a consolation the “White Helmets” did arrive to get the Right Livelihood Award. This article examines a likely geopolitical rationale that the Swedish elites had for selecting that organization. Facts suggest a congruence between the stances of those elites on Syria and the declared political aims of the organization White Helmets. The reviewing of the institutions involved in the award-decision and process can also result relevant in pondering the reason for the event. Finally, to inquire into the role of Carl Bildt, as member of the board of directors in the institution ultimately deciding, is interesting against the backdrop of his opposition regarding the participation of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden in previous international events organized by the same institutions –all of them under the umbrella of the Swedish Foreign Office.
This article previously appeared on Russian Insider (4/7/15) and Global Research (11/7/15). See also: War without mercy in Yemen (8/7/15) and other articles about Yemen on PressTV and candobetter.
80 percent of people in the Arab world's poorest country are in danger of starving to death under a US-backed and US-enabled blockade and bombing campaign.
Have the CNN, BBC, NBC, Fox, Sky, etc told you about that?
Obviously news that doesn't directly touch on Russia. However, obviously an enormously important one – this is the biggest humanitarian disaster in the world right now – but it's getting barely any attention because the US is contributing to it in a major way. (The Saudi campaign in Yemen wouldn't be possible without American diplomatic, intelligence and logistics backing.)
Another interesting (albeit in the light of 20 million lives in danger far less key) angle is that despite repeatedly causing such tragedies (260,000 people died in 2010-12 Somalia famine after a sustained US-Ethiopian military intervention there made an even greater mess of that country and up to a million who died in the 1990s due to sanctions on Iraq passed after the US destroyed chunks of the country's civilian infrastructure) the US still thinks it can take the moral high ground against Russia.
Preposterous! Even if Russia actually did everything the US accuses it of (and it doesn't) it would be far, far cleaner than the US, which is the world's premier killer today.
Twenty million people in Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, are at risk of dying from hunger or thirst. That's 80 percent of the country's population, which according to UN agencies badly needs emergency supplies of food and water, along with fuel and medicine.
This almost unimaginable crisis sounds like something out of a disaster movie. But the cause isn't an earthquake or a tsunami.
The main reason for all this suffering is months of merciless bombardment and blockade led by the richest Arab countries – Saudi Arabia and its neighboring petro-princedoms – and backed by the United States. Washington's providing the attackers with technical assistance, intelligence, and top-shelf armaments.
The countries bombing Yemen are targeting a rebel group they claim is a proxy for Iran. The evidence for that is very thin.
In fact, the conflict in Yemen is rooted in internal disputes. Try to stay with me...
In 2011, a nationwide uprising akin to those in Tunisia and Egypt deposed the country's autocratic leader, Ali Abdullah Saleh. There was no democratic election before his successor, the Saudi- and U.S.-backed Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, took over – he ran unopposed. And there was no relief from the terrible poverty, unemployment, and government corruption that brought about the popular revolt.
So a few months ago, a reformist movement and militia called the Houthis – which had launched a handful of rebellions against Saleh in the past – took advantage of widespread discontent to conquer the capital, Sanaa. Hadi fled into exile, and the Saudis started bombing shortly thereafter.
Since then, local militias in central and southern Yemen have fiercely resisted the Houthis and army units still loyal to Saleh, who is now allied with his former foes. Meanwhile, a local franchise of al-Qaeda is fighting everybody.
In short, it's terribly complicated, and the bombs aren't helping.
The Yemenis caught in this crossfire were already thirsty and hungry before the war – unlike their Saudi neighbors, they don't have a lucrative oil supply. Now, with Yemen's borders closed, its airports shut down, and Arab navies enforcing an embargo at sea, the situation is breathtaking in its desperation.
Saudi Arabia and its friends, including the United States, support Hadi. Yet they have no discernible plan for winning beyond reducing Yemen to rubble and besieging civilians in the hope of securing the Houthis' surrender.
The Obama administration probably doesn't believe the Saudis' nonsense about the Houthis and Iran, but it's shown no interest in stopping the war.
In fact, the United States has even announced a full suspension of aid to Yemen for a year, undercutting its occasional murmurs of humanitarian concern. By endorsing this Saudi-led shooting match, Washington may hope to calm the Saudis' nerves about the ongoing nuclear talks with Iran, which Saudi Arabia opposes.
Is that what it's come to, soothing a bully's nerves just because it pumps a lot of oil?
Instead, the Obama administration should withdraw its support for the bombing, lift the blockade, and broker a power-sharing agreement between Yemen's competing factions. For the people of Yemen, it's beyond urgent.
The US-Empire's present preeminent position of brutal global thug is a self-evident truth based on hard facts regarding the magnitudes of death and destruction; counted in millions of lives, millions of refugees, and nation-wide obliterations of civil infrastructure, not to mention annihilations of national and civil institutions. US crimes do not diminish the importance of injustices perpetrated by non-aligned regimes, but there is an obvious asymmetry of magnitudes that simply cannot be denied. (Article originally published here:
http://activistteacher.blogspot.ca/2014/09/obamas-isis-project-is-nothing-but.html
The US military-finance-corporate empire (US-Empire) is characterized by (LINK):
The nations entirely destroyed recently by the US-Empire include: Haiti, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and so on. These actions are outright crimes of mass aggression viciously targeting entire peoples, using combinations of military devastation, political overthrows, and brutal economic blockades.
No other regime in today's world is responsible for such premeditated and repeated acts of mass murder against entire modern societies. The US with its military allies, most notably Israel, is presently by far the greatest threat to peace and the greatest purveyor of terror on the planet.
This is not debatable by reasonable people. The US-Empire's present preeminent position of brutal global thug is a self-evident truth based on hard facts regarding the magnitudes of death and destruction; counted in millions of lives, millions of refugees, and nation-wide obliterations of civil infrastructure, not to mention annihilations of national and civil institutions. US crimes do not diminish the importance of injustices perpetrated by non-aligned regimes, but there is an obvious asymmetry of magnitudes that simply cannot be denied.
It is also apparent that the US-Empire's projects of nation destruction are strategic and premeditated. Having built an instrument for annihilating nations, it appears difficult for the US-Empire to not use it, irrespective of any moral or legal considerations. US "diplomacy" has become strictly an exercise in promoting its wars for geopolitical design.
It is in this realistic context of a ferocious, rogue and barely-constrained superpower that we must understand Obama's emanations about ISIS as nothing but a pretext to "remove Assad". And "removing Assad" can only mean destroying the Syrian nation and its people because the Syrian army and the Syrian people stand together and overwhelmingly support Assad against the foreign invaders.
The legitimate political dissidence in Syria was used as a front and a pretext to inject massive numbers of externally-funded foreign rebels into a proxy war for the US-Empire and its regional partners-in-crime. This is established by every credible researcher. (And, of course actively masked by the US-Empire's propaganda.)
And now an element (ISIS) of the injected foreign rebels is used as a pretext for all-out war US-style. For Syria, this means complete annihilation of the national defence forces, and total destruction of civilian infrastructure to bring the population to its knees and lay siege to any resistance. Straight-up crimes against humanity as the modus operandi for "regime change", a la USA, followed by US corporation predation, territorial control, etc.
Dr. Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured and Full Professor of physics at the University of
Ottawa, Canada. He is known for his applications of physics education research (TVO Interview).
He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals, and has written several social commentary essays. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism.
While he was at the University of Ottawa, he supported student activism
and opposed the influence of the Israel lobby on that institution,
which fired him for a false pretext in 2009: LINK.
As the Ukrainian army launches a new attack on the Donetsk Peoples' Republic, claiming to have retaken Donetsk Airport from 'separatist' forces, the justification for such an attack has once again become a subject for discussion. While the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says the new offensive is aimed at 're-uniting' Ukraine, and Western media believe this both to be a reasonable objective and the real one, the actual situation is entirely different...
Much of the perversion of truth on the true nature of the Ukrainian government and the nature of the 'Eastern rebellion' can be put down to the success of the 'False Flag' attack on MH17 - carried out by the Ukrainian air force with as yet unverified assistance from Western intelligence agencies. This tragic state of affairs is thanks to the skill of the propaganda campaign conducted primarily by the US and its close allies, but facilitated by the Western media apparatus. It is tragic because the simplest of investigations of the crash site and wreckage of the plane would have readily demonstrated who was responsible; not only was clear physical evidence of the damage visible, and reported and photographed by some early observers, but forensic analysis would have found traces of the bullets that so clearly perforated the cockpit.
Given this background, the appearance of an article in the Fairfax press by veteran correspondent Paul McGeough describing his visits to the crash site with partner Kate Geraghty should have been cause for optimism; that this renowned 'investigative journalist' seemed uninterested in identifying the criminals responsible for killing so many people and instead focused on collecting sunflower seeds in 'Cockpit village' was cause for exasperation!
I sent the letter below to McGeough, in addition to Jonathan Green who interviewed him on the ABC. It also went to ABC Consumer Affairs, and the editors of the Australian National Review, and the editors of English Pravda.
Dear Paul,
While I admire your desire to give the relatives of victims of the MH17 atrocity something to fill the void left by the loss of their loved ones, I was astonished that your intense focus allowed you to both reveal and overlook crucial evidence that would provide something far more substantial to those relatives.
For those of us who paid no attention to the wild claims made in Western media following the downing of MH17, and made their own judgements based on evidence available, there was little evidence more convincing that photographs of the cockpit of the aircraft showing severe damage from artillery of some kind. For the benefit of the other recipients of this email I copy below your description in the Fairfax press of your visit to ‘Cockpit village’ – the very place where that vital fragment was observed and photographed:
“We headed out of the city before dawn. On a highway strewn with the smouldering wreckage of vehicles destroyed in the previous night's fighting, some with bodies still lying in or near them, we threaded our way through rebel checkpoints, back to what we had dubbed "the cockpit village".
This was Rassypnoe, a hamlet in which locals watched in awe as MH17's nose cone smashed into a field of shoulder-high sunflowers, just metres from buildings on the village's western flank.
When we visited the village in the last week of July, Eugene Lukovkin, a 30-year-old separatist gunman, gave us a graphic account of the crash – "bodies falling like bullets"; the nose section making a muffled sound, "like it landed in a swamp".
Recalling that he had been disposing of his grandmother's trash, Lukovkin told me: "The plane headed towards me. I could see the smoke as it fell to pieces – it had been missiled. One section was coming at me and the rest of it seemed to keep going. I dumped the rubbish cart and started running; others were running too – we think maybe some of the falling people are alive.
"There were lots of bodies – dead." Pointing to the left side of the cockpit, he says: "This is where one of the pilots was – I knew he was in charge because he had stars on his shoulder."
When we returned at dawn on our last day, none of the locals were to be seen. We drove to the field in which the buckled cockpit lay and quietly went to work – chopping enough sunflower heads to fill a big suitcase that we had bought at the market for this purpose. No one came to ask what we were doing.
Thirty minutes later we were back on the road, driving north to the Ukrainian government-controlled city of Kharkiv, from where we caught a commercial flight to the capital Kiev.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/my-christmas-offering-sunflower-seeds-for-mh17-families-from-the-fields-of-ukraine-20141226-12dily.html
You also described this experience in a radio interview on the ABC with Jonathan Green:
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/sunflower-seeds-for-mh17/5992360
While there is little doubt outside the sphere of influence of the Western corporate media that a Ukrainian fighter jet shot down MH17 using both an air to air missile and 30mm cannon fire, the necessary evidence to establish this fact has clearly not been sought by the Dutch investigators, or their findings are being suppressed. Of particular interest here is the report from the ‘separatist gunman’ that he had seen the pilots body in the cockpit wreckage.
In the accepted scenario of the crash, endorsed by the blank black box recording, the pilots were the prime and initial target of the aerial attack; not only are there multiple penetrations of this part of the aircraft, and relatively few elsewhere, but the cockpit came down separated from the main fuselage by some distance.
Examining the high quality photograph of the left side of the cockpit, one can see evenly spaced holes as from strafing, but from bullets fired at the other side of the cockpit – the holes are quite obviously made by objects emerging from inside as the outer layer of the double skin is peeled outward, while the holes in the inner skin are perfectly round and the size of the 30 mm bullets. In the version of your article above there is also a photograph taken by Kate Geraghty of ‘a pilot’s seat’. A forensic analysis on both the seat and the pilot’s body would surely show evidence of perforations by the tungsten shells used by the SU25 and presumed responsible for the damage.
Some people may believe that discussion of exactly how MH17 came down is becoming academic, as we lurch from one dangerous crisis to the next. But unlike discussion of the causes of the First World War – so apparently topical at the moment – this is anything but academic. Already the framing of Russia as not just involved but even as responsible for the atrocity has ‘facilitated’ NATO’s expansion eastwards, and enabled the Kiev coup leaders to pursue their corrupt agenda with European approval and assistance. And given that it is now clear ‘cui bono’ as a result of this attack, we must confront the stark possibility that MH17 was an act of state terrorism in which our own governments may have been complicit.
There are already very many commentators, experts and authorities who have come to this conclusion, not simply based on the evidence that MH17 was shot down by a Ukrainian fighter jet – which is considerable – but because of the complete lack of evidence offered by Western agencies and governments for their contention that ‘Russian backed separatists’ shot it down with a BUK surface to air missile. Only days after the attack, Russian authorities appealed to the US to release satellite pictures from a new satellite they apparently had directly over Ukraine at the time of the crash. This information has been repeatedly requested by Moscow but with no response. It is not possible to conclude other than that such information would be incriminating both to Kiev and the US – if it showed a BUK missile launch by the Separatists as it surely would then we would have seen such information immediately.
Russia Today has just released a second documentary on the attack – ‘Reflections on MH17’, ( http://rtd.rt.com/films/reflections-on-mh17film/) which focuses on the extraordinary failure of Dutch and Ukrainian authorities to properly investigate the causes of the accident, while observing that conclusions on what weapon was responsible could be easily made with some simple laboratory analyses. It could not be said that such an investigation would ‘bring closure’ to the relatives of MH17 victims, but exposing the real culprits would do a lot more for the victims and potential victims of NATO’s aggressive policies in Europe. These criminals who would happily sacrifice a few hundred truly innocent civilians as part of their strategic game cannot be allowed to escape justice, and the wrath of their own citizens.
I must just acknowledge the welcome new perspective brought to the Australian media by the Australian National Review – to whom I am also copying this letter. To my knowledge this is the only mention in our print press of the ‘real story’ of MH17, – but I await its serious discussion from our national broadcaster.
Republished from article of 1 Oct 2014 on Global Research.
 |
Editorial introduction: A search of Google News with the search term "Ukraine" found no mention of this gruesome discovery in the first 4 pages of search results except for the following: Facts distorted as Moscow claims hundreds of bodies discovered in Ukrainian 'mass graves' (1/10/14) by the Telegraph's Moscow correspondent, Tom Parfitt and War Crime Inquiries and a Toppled Lenin as Ukraine Ceasefire Violations Continue (30/9/14) by Harriet Salem. |
Both these reports tried to dismiss and downplay the enormity of this crime. Harriet Salem's article obscures the massacre with the story of the toppling of the statue of Lenin and other irrelevant episodes. Salem repeats unsubstantiated claims by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch that the East Ukraine self-defence forces, as well as the Kiev regime, "have violated international laws in a host of ways".
It appears that Parfitt, along with the rest of the Western mainstream media, has failed to report the Odessa Massacre of 2 May 2014. Nowhere in the The Telegraph nor anywhere else on the web, could I find any article by Tom Parfitt about the Odessa Massacre.
So other than these two misleading articles, nothing else seems to have been reported about this war crime.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday that more than 400 bodies have been discovered in mass graves near the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, in what he described as "horrific" evidence that pointed to a war crime.
"This is obviously a war crime. Already more than 400 bodies have been discovered in [mass] graves outside Donetsk and we hope that western capitals will not hush up these facts [because] they're horrific," Lavrov said, adding there was an apparent blackout of the incident in Western mass media.
Last week, several mass graves filled with bodies of massacred civilians and independence supporters, killed execution-style, were unearthed 35 kilometers northeast of Donetsk.
"I expect [to hear] a clear, unbiased and responsible response from international organizations. OSCE is already working at the scene. We will make the truth known and, of course, make sure that the justice is done," Sergei Lavrov said at a press conference.
Speaking at PACE's fall session in Strasbourg on Tuesday, Russian lawmaker Olga Kazakova called on the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to keep an eye on the investigation into this horrendous massacre.
The independence supporters of southeastern Ukraine believe that the civilians were murdered by the National Guard fighters who had stayed in the village of Nyzhnia Krynka, near the city of Donetsk, where the graves had been discovered, since April. Ukrainian authorities later denied this accusation, saying that not a single National Guard fighter had been in the area, adding however that some other Ukrainian units were deployed there at the time.
Lavrov commented on Kiev's recent claim to conduct an open and impartial probe of the alleged massacre as soon as it regained control of the area, saying it was pure hypocrisy because "these crimes were obviously perpetrated there at the time when Ukrainian security forces were in control of this region."
The video and letters here testify to eye-witness documentation of atrocities in Syria which Mussalaha Reconciliation Initiative in Syria spokespersons complain were ignored by the UN because they were committed by so-called ‘moderates’ supported by the US and or Saudi Arabia. The crimes ignored were so bad and so big that this accusation points to corruption in the UN on an alarming scale. Although the article summarises their content, the original letters relating to the complaint to the UN are included here. They are also published on the AMRIS site.
The video is set to begin here at the part where the witnesses tell their stories in arabic, (subtitled in English), not at the beginning of the video, which shows 'rebels' beheading people etc in a film they produced themselves to promote fear. A selection of screenshots can be accessed at http://australiansforreconciliationinsyria.org/letter-to-un-commission-of-inquiry-on-syria-is-politically-compromised/
The complaint about the UN is documented in correspondence from a Catholic nun who lives in Syria, Mother Agnes Mariam (lay name Fadia Al-Lahham),[1] and Dr Nabil Fayad[2] with Ms Navanethem Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva. Mother Agnes and Dr Fayad also refer to a letter from Ismail Zien, UN Coordinator of the Independent Commission of Inquiry investigators in the Syrian region. They complain that Mr Zien has requested documentation of mostly individual incidents whilst completely ignoring the videoed documents testifying to atrocities in Adra of a severity and scale surpassing any others mentioned by him. They also describe his reporting as glossing over similar war crimes at Qara, Deir Atieh, Nebek, Sadad, Maalula.
Adra is an industrial city north of Damascus, the capital of Syria. Work there attracted Syrians of all kinds and religions, from every part of the country. Many displaced citizens sought refuge there from rebel invasions in other parts of Syria. In early December 2013 a cohort of rebels invaded the city. Thousands fled but thousands were also trapped there. The Mussalah Reconciliation spokespeople say that every kind of horror, imaginable and unimaginable, was inflicted on Adra, every act of brutality, violence and sheer insanity. The people were subjected to bloodletting and barbarity. Groups were selected for execution because of their religion and at random. There was mass abduction, torture, gang rape, and the most violent mass murders imaginable, including the
Although people from the Mussalaha Initiative in Syria informed the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic (CoI) and sent them eyewitness statements about the Adra atrocities quickly after they began, they say there was no acknowledgement of this extraordinary information.
On March 12, 2014, with the publication of the 7th report of the UN Independent Commission (CoI) the events in Adra were still unacknowledged. The writers of the letter below say this was ‘the worst distortion of events yet’. They complained and say that they received an explanation that there had been ‘technical problems’ and were told that an appendix would be issued covering the war-crimes in Adra. On 12 May 2014 a letter arrived from Mr Ismail Zain (see below) requesting interviewees about human rights violations from Syria to Lebanon for events of significance which he specified. Even now Adra was not mentioned.
The complainants then ‘perceived that the issue had been closed permanently’.
They then wrote that, in their analysis, it had become widely apparent that anything that the Syrian government does wrong is immediately highlighted, expanded and rehashed as a deed of the whole apparatus of the State, while little is said about the permanent violation of human rights on the part of the rebels. Their violations, when reported, are taken in isolation, in such a manner as to attribute some blame to some of them, but not to the entire corpus of the rebel entity, nor to those who back them.
The only reason they can find for this double standard is that the UN Independent Commission has been compromised. They write that a pattern has emerged where groups of rebels like Jabhat al Nusra, which openly promotes and advertises their terrorist atrocities, and which is called ‘terrorist’ by the United State of America and even by Saudi Arabia (itself considered to be the main funder of Salafist jihadi activity in Syria) will have some of their crimes acknowledged by the UN Independent Commission. However crimes by other groups will be concealed to avoid shining a light on the fact that the people called ‘moderate rebels’ by actors outside Syria, ‘have themselves reached a similar level of unspeakable barbarity and terror’.
They say that the so-called ‘moderates’ are behind the Adra atrocities and that these crimes are going largely unreported and uninvestigated by the UN in order to protect certain international States who are ‘belligerent parties to the conflict in Syria’ and who have been the principle backers and financiers of these ‘moderates’.
They accuse the UN Independent Commission of picking and choosing which atrocities they report, like items on shelves in a supermarket, on the basis of how acceptable the exposure of those crimes is to certain countries outside Syria. [Candobetter.net Ed. That is, they avoid reporting war crimes carried out by groups supported by countries like the United States and other NATO members, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.]
They say that they refuse to participate in this deception by the International Community the Security Council of the UN and many other government and non-government organisations that are guided by the Independent Commission’s reports. They demand that the Commission be independent and neutral.
“We want to encourage the CoI to take a transparent approach to Adra’s crimes as well as other terrifying human rights violations by the armed groups in Syria, and now Iraq, and to those who finance them and work assiduously to keep their protégés from being held accountable. Until we are sure that the CoI has rid itself of the influences that coerce it to act in a duplicitous manner manifest in its deception and bias we will suspend our cooperation in bringing forward the victims of terror for interview in Lebanon as to do so is only to further their suffering adding insult to injury when subsequently the traumatic experiences they have endured are minimised or ignored.”
Below are the actual documents, the contents of which I have summarised and edited to try to get the message across as directly as possible. The originals, whilst comprehensive and comprehensible, are written in English by non-native writers, referring to places and people which will be unfamiliar to most of our readers. So I have tried to make the contents more accessible and hope that people will also read the letters. Much of my summary below is paraphrased from the longer source material, which is included below. I have decided not to try to indicate exact paraphrasings because my objective is to make this report as short and clear as possible, but readers can obviously work out what has been directly cited or paraphrased for themselves by consulting the originals.
From: “INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT TEAM FOR MUSSALAHA IN SYRIA”
Subject: Fwd: Declaration of the Mussalaha Syria to the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic (CoI).
H. E. Ms. Navanethem Pillay
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Palais Wilson
1201 Geneva
Switzerland
To Her Excellency Ms. Navanethem Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Their Excellencies the Chairperson and Commissioners of The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic (CoI) and Their Excellencies the President, Vice-Presidents and the representatives of the current member states of the Human Rights Council at Geneva.
A declaration to the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic (CoI) from the Mussalaha Reconciliation Initiative in Syria suspending cooperation with the Commission of Inquiry.
DECLARATION
A Declaration to the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic (CoI).
We will not be a Supermarket of Horror
We are suspending our cooperation while you are politically compromised!
The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic (CoI) was established on 22 August 2011 by the United Nations Human Rights Council through resolution S-17/1 with a mandate to investigate all alleged violations of international human rights law since March 2011 in the Syrian Arab Republic. Between 22/08/2011 and 05/02/2013 the CoI had produced 7 reports. Reading these reports, we as people living within the maelstrom of the Syrian conflict, were shocked at the distorted representation of the conflict which was being presented to the international community.
On March 7th of 2013 the Mussalaha Reconciliation Initiative through the support of The Institute of Democracy and Cooperation – Paris and the Russian Orthodox Church NGO, The Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society were facilitated in going to Geneva to challenge the contents of the CoI reports and to make submissions to them with regard to the inaccuracies, manipulations and the alarming omissions which we noted. Central to our mission was the desire to bring forth a more accurate representation of the Syrian reality and in particular to highlight before the Commission the many human rights abuses that were absent from their reporting.
We were thankful for an opportunity to cooperate with the Commission in the trusting belief that account would be taken of our grave concerns and thus we commenced in the work of bringing forward witnesses to recount the many horrors and abuses inflicted upon the person and the community by countless armed factions in Syria, crimes that were heretofore largely ignored by the CoI.
In the short term we have seen some small changes and mild improvements in the CoI reporting and believing that this might be the first tentative steps towards a more honest and truthful representation of events we endured in our work of collecting data and bringing forward, from various parts of Syria eye witnesses who could provide firsthand accounts to the CoI team in Lebanon. We watched and waited on the CoI to improve in its reporting but sadly we have reached our limit of tolerance and the breaking point came for us in regard to the CoI’s wilful failure to report on the unspeakable horror that was Adra!
The Horror of Adra will live in the eternal memory of a nation’s people even if it is not found in the pages of a CoI report!
Adra is a workers city on the outskirts of Damascus whose population were an amalgam of Syrians, workers from every corner and creed of the country all there to work in its many industries and services. During the conflict the population of the town had swollen as many displaced citizens fled their seeking refuge from rebel invasions in other localities. In early December of 2013 terror came to Adra as a cohort of rebels invaded the city, thousands fled but thousands more were trapped. The horror inflicted on Adra encapsulates every act of brutality, violence and sheer insanity that can be imagined and not imagined. The city’s population were subjected to bloodletting and barbarity; groups were selected for execution by religious affiliation while others suffered the same fate regardless of affiliation. War crimes and crimes against humanity were the order of the day, mass abduction, torture, gang rape and the most violent mass murders imaginable including the roasting alive of workers in the commercial ovens of government bakery.
As soon as reports stated to surface about the unfolding massacre in Adra we immediately informed the CoI and started to forward eyewitness testimonies to them and then we waited and waited for the CoI to acknowledge this a case of multiple violations of international human rights law.
On March 12th 2014 under the auspices of the IDC Paris and the IOPS, Dr Mohammad Nabil Faiyad head of the Justice Party and head of KNOW for documenting HR violations in Syria and Mother Agnes Mariam (civil name Fadia Al Lahham) President of the ISTEAMS, returned to Geneva for another session of the CoI in the company of Syrian researcher Aysar Maydani, head of the independent NGO, NOSTIA (The Network of Syrian Scientists, Technologists and Innovators Abroad) to again make submission (here and here) for a session of the CoI dedicated to the discussion of the, by now, 7th report of the commission, a report which in our opinion is the worst distortion of events yet. We jointly discussed the details of this report and expressed our astonishment at the absence of any mention of the Adra massacres even though the invasion and the accompanying atrocities took place within the timeframe addressed by the report. Likewise during the same timeframe as Adra the tragedies at Qara, Deir Atieh, Nebek, Sadad, Maalula and others had occurred and though covered they were glossed over in such a manner as to hardly represent the reality on the ground as we observed it. In respect to Adra those who spoke with us attributed this to technical problems and promised us at the highest level that an appendix would be issued detailing the crime of all crimes that is Adra.
On the 12th of May 2014 we received a letter from Mr. Ismail Zain – coordinator of the team of CoI investigators in the region requesting our assistance as usual to bring the victims of human rights violations from Syria to Lebanon to be interviewed. He mentioned the events of significance in which they took an interest. Based on the letter and the absence of any request to bring forward witnesses from Adra we perceived that the issue had been closed permanently.
Sent: Monday, May 12, 2014 8:13:20 PM
To: MAM ofC
Dear Mother Agnes,
Friday 16 May is fine with us. Hope you can arrange the meeting in your office in Adonis.
We need 15 Witnesses/victims from:
– (Homs): car bombs.
– Karam Louz: car bombs.
– Manar school, Jourah of Bab Touma, 17 April.
– Akrama, car bomb near mosque, 17 April.
– Bader El Din Husaini Institute, al Shaghur, 29 April.
– Homs, 2 car bombs in Al Zahra , al Abassiya circle. 29 April.
– Jibreen and Hemairi villages, Hama, 2 cars bombs. 2 May.
Thank you.
Ismail
The letter is directed to Mother Agnes Mariam (Fadia Al-Lahham ) who was in the U.S.A. at the time. In the letter, Mr. Ismail Zain is requesting 15 witnesses to the following crimes: A car bombs in Homs. A car bomb in Karam Louz. Mortar shelling on the Manar School in Jourah of Bab Touma, Damascus. Mortar shelling on the Bader El Din Husaini Institute at al Shaghur, Damascus. Two car explosions in Alzahra and Al-Abassiya, Homs. Two car explosions in Jibreen and Hemairi, Hama.
Here it is necessary to mention the following:
1: Notwithstanding the video interview testimony we submitted to the CoI there is no mention at all in this letter for the need to meet witnesses who emerged recently from Adra. It is obvious that the investigation not only relies on audio-visual evidence/documentation or on the testimonies of witnesses via telephone, but rather it is preferable to interview the witnesses directly. However we did not receive such request to bring forward witnesses in respect of Adra.
2: As for the Bader El Din Husaini Institute, we were able to connect – via telephone from our office in Damascus- one of the officials in the commission with a student who was a witness to what happened at the aforementioned institute. We believe that the dialogue which took place between the two was sufficient to convey the significance of what happened and accordingly but unlike the Adra case they requested to examine witnesses to this incident.
3: We had also mentioned to the CoI the tragedy of the village of Kharaba in Al-Suwaida province but we did not hear anything in response to that tragedy as with others we had flagged.
4: Moreover even in the instances where the CoI took a selective interest in some instance of terror the timeframe by which we were required to bring forward 15 witnesses including children from Homs and Damascus to Lebanon for interview at the convenience of Mr. Ismail Zien would itself have required a small miracle.
In our analysis It has become widely apparent that any infringement from the Syrian government is immediately highlighted, expanded and rehashed as the deed of the whole apparatus of the State and repeated in numerous ways while little is said about the permanent violation of human rights on the part of the rebels whose violations when reported are taken in isolation one from other and in such a manner as to only attribute some blame to some of them but not to the entire corpus of the rebel entity and to those who back them. We ask ourselves why this double standard prevails and why the apparent selectivity in reporting of violations, sadly we are confirmed in our conclusion that the Commission is compromised in its work. A pattern has emerged where by those groups of rebels like Jabhat al Nusra who already openly promote and advertise their terrorist atrocities and who are designated as terrorist by the United States of America and even Saudi Arabia, which itself is considered the main funder of salafist jihadi activity in Syria, will have some of their crimes acknowledged by the CoI but the crimes of other groups will be concealed because to reference them is to shine a light on the fact that those designated by outside actors as “moderate rebels” have themselves reached a similar level of unspeakable barbarity and terror.
In cases like those of Adra and Kharaba where we hold and have submitted testimonies the evidence points to the fact that those behind the crimes were so called “moderates” and thus it becomes a matter of political necessity and expediency to ignore such atrocities for the convenience of certain regional and international States who are themselves belligerent parties to the conflict in Syria and stained by the crime of being the principle backers and financiers of those very same so called “moderates”.
By ignoring these incidents the CoI has failed in its remit to investigate all human rights violations and we consider this contravention deeply damaging to the credibility of a Commission which is mandated to be independent. When the Commission employs double standards among the warring parties in Syria it becomes biased and when it fails to inform the International Community on the full range of grave violations that has occurred it reduces itself to the level of a perjurer. In our own trusting hope of better we sadly find ourselves treated like a supermarket of horror where the Commission will pick and choose selectively from the atrocities we bring forward and in such a manner as to prepare reports that are acceptable to the palates of certain countries. By this totally unacceptable action we say the CoI is politically compromised.
We refuse to be instrumentalized as a component part in an act of deception that misleads the International Community, the Security Council of the U.N. as well as many other Organizations both governmental and nongovernmental that are guided by the CoI reports. We unequivocally demand the Commission be independent and neutral, and that it ends the policy of selectivity and censorship that we see so manifest in its wilful avoidance of reporting on the matter of Adra, the workers city.
We want to encourage the CoI to take a transparent approach to Adra’s crimes as well as other terrifying human rights violations by the armed groups in Syria, and now Iraq, and to those who finance them and work assiduously to keep their protégés from being held accountable. Until we are sure that the CoI has rid itself of the influences that coerce it to act in a duplicitous manner manifest in its deception and bias we will suspend our cooperation in bringing forward the victims of terror for interview in Lebanon as to do so is only to further their suffering adding insult to injury when subsequently the traumatic experiences they have endured are minimised or ignored.
Mother Fadia Laham
Head of the International Team for Reconciliation in Syria
Doctor M. Nabil Fayad
Head of Know, for documenting HR violations in Syria
[1] Mother Agnes has a Palestinian Lebanese background, but she set up a monastery in Syria about 20 years ago. She was forced to leave the monastery after she received death threats and now is based in both Lebanon and Syria.
[2] Dr Nabil Fayad is a Syrian. He is the Head of Know, for documenting HR violations in Syria.
Editorial introduction: Seven decades ago, the civilised world, including Australia, fought a terrible and bloody war to save humanity from German Nazism, Italian Fascism and the murderous Japanese Empire. The cost to humanity was appalling: 60 million died and much of the world's productive capacity was destroyed.1 Had the Nazis won, the cost to humanity would have been even more terrible as a new era of enslavement and mass murder would have commenced.
All this has apparently been forgotten by the mainstream newsmedia in their reporting of the Ukraine conflict. The grim images of hundreds of Ukrainian thugs in Nazi regalia hurling petrol bombs and rocks at the Berkut riot police from November last year until February has also apparently been forgotten by the reporters as they give uncritical airplay to the hysterical denunciations of those resisting the Kiev junta by the likes of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.
Now, four months after the February coup, the Nazi government that these thugs helped to power is waging a brutal war against Ukrainians, in the east of the country, who refuse to submit to the authority of the Nazi anti-Semites in Kiev.
As the East Ukrainian self-defence forces fight ever more effectively against the Kiev junta's military forces, the United States, their European puppets and the mainstream newsmedia become ever more hysterical and deceitful in their denunciations of those Ukrainians and their allies across the border. As the war against the people of East Ukraine has continued and ever more civilians are killed and their homes destroyed and even reporters are deliberately killed, Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded of the international community that the actions of the Ukrainian government be recognised for what they are: crimes against humanity and a violation of international law, and that those responsible, including Ukraine's Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, be prosecuted accordingly.
A more detailed article by the Iranian PressTV news service, is included as an appendix.
The Russian Investigative Committee has declared Ukrainian interior minister Arsen Avakov and Dnepropetrovsk regional administration head Igor Kolomoisky internationally wanted, Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin told Interfax on Saturday.
"Investigative Committee investigators have issued a directive on declaring Arsen Avakov and Igor Kolomoisky wanted in a criminal case dealing with the use of prohibited means and methods of warfare, aggravated murder, the obstruction of professional activities of journalists, and abduction. This directive has been forwarded to the Interior Ministry's main criminal investigations department.
Avakov and Kolomoisky have been put on the international wanted list valid on the territories of all Interpol member-states," Markin said.
Avakov and Kolomoisky have been accused of organizing a number of crimes, including murder, the use of prohibited means and methods of warfare, the obstruction of professional activities of journalists, and abduction, which are covered by Russian Criminal Code Articles 33, 205, 356, 144, and 126, he said.
Russian investigative committee charges Ukrainian officials with war crimes2
Russian investigative committee charged Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and Dnepropetrovsk Region Governor Igor Kolomoyskyi with war crimes, the committee's official spokesman Vladimir Markin said Friday.
"Under the criminal case, launched on the grounds of a crime of using forbidden warfare, a first degree murder, interfering with the professional activity of journalists and kidnapping of people, a notice has been given of charges against Igor Kolomoyskyi and Arsen Avakov," he said in a statement.
Markin said earlier, the investigators believed the recent kidnapping of Zvezda television channel journalists and the preceding illegal detention of journalists from the same channel, as well as several other Russian journalists were conducted with the knowledge of Avakov, Kolomoyskyi and Defense Ministry officials.
On June 14, Russia's Zvezda (Star) channel reported the second detention of its journalists in Ukraine in the past two months reporter Evgeny Davydov and sound engineer Nikita Konashenkov were captured in Dnepropetrovsk and held in the Justice Ministry building. The journalists were released and arrived in Moscow two days later.
Both journalists were visibly bruised, and were ushered to an ambulance to be taken to a hospital for screening.
On Tuesday, a Russian TV journalist and a sound engineer were killed in a mortar attack near Ukrainian city of Luhansk.
A total of five media workers have been killed in Ukraine since the beginning of the year.
It's beyond understanding that killings of journalists occur in 21st century Europe – expert
Five media workers killed in Ukraine since beginning of year - Reporters Without Borders
Russian reporters' death shows criminal essence of Ukraine's punitive operation - CSTO
East Ukrainian self-defence forces reject Kiev's ultimatum to disarm, republished from article of 22 June 2014 on PressTV.
– republished from PressTV.
Russia's Investigative Committee has put Ukraine's Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and Igor Kolomoisky, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, on the international wanted list over charges of war crimes.
The committee spokesman, Vladimir Markin, said Saturday that the two Ukrainian officials have been put on the international wanted list, which is valid in the territories of all Interpol member states.
Avakov and Kolomoisky are wanted in a "criminal case dealing with the use of prohibited means and methods of warfare, aggravated murder, the obstruction of professional activities of journalists, and abduction," said Markin.
The committee spokesman did not rule out the possibility of adding more Ukrainian officials to the wanted list.
"Investigators are taking measures to establish all persons from among commanders and servicemen of Ukraine's armed forces, 'the National Guard of Ukraine' and (far-right ultra-nationalist movement) Right Sector militants involved in conducting a punitive operation against the civilian population in Ukraine's southeast, which has killed many civilians," said Markin.
The spokesman continued by saying that more than 40 investigators are working with people arriving from Ukraine, who have suffered from crimes. According to Markin, the investigators have so far questioned 2,400 eyewitnesses and over 1,000 people who have arrived in Russia from Ukraine's troubled east and who have filed applications to Russian investigators for the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
On June 20, Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko ordered the government forces to observe a week-long unilateral ceasefire in the country's southeastern region. However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday that he is concerned that despite the truce, Kiev's military operation "is increasing."
Ukraine's mainly Russian-speaking parts in the east have been the scene of deadly clashes between pro-Russia protesters and the Ukrainian army since Kiev launched military operations in the southeastern regions in mid-April in a bid to root out the protests there.
The government in Kiev says it is targeting armed protesters, but reports say many civilians have been caught in the fighting. According to the United Nations, at least 356 people, including 257 civilians, have been killed in the clashes since May 7.
CAH/HJL
1. ↑ Even if the Second World War could not have been avoided — and some political participants believe it could have been, notably UK Labor politician Konni Zilliacus (1894-1967), — the death toll should not have been anywhere near as great for the Western Allies. (As terrible as these losses were, they were still only a fraction of the death toll suffered by countries like the Soviet Union, Poland and China.) The Second World War, in the West could easily have ended by 1943. The overthrow of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in July 1943 and the all-too-brief liberation of the entire Italian Peninsula from the yoke of fascism is only one of a number of examples where the opportunity for a quick victory over Nazi Germany was thrown away. Evidently because the manufacturers of the Western Allies' war materials stood to gain far more by prolonging the war than by ending it, the war was needlessly prolonged. This will be the subject of another article. How the terrible defeats of 1941 and the vastly more terrible death toll — at least 20 million — suffered by the Soviet Union in that war, could have been avoided will be the subject of another article too. - Ed
2. ↑ At times, the link to the Voice of Russia web-site is not good in Australia. When I clicked on the link my browser displayed the message: "502 Bad Gateway — nginx". In fact, no pages from Voice of Russia (http://voiceofrussia.com/) can be downloaded at the moment. - 10:31PM 22 June 2014, Ed
While mainstream press is only reporting that Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, blocked twitter, the reason he did so goes unreported. Yet that is the most interesting and shocking thing: A leaked conversation between Turkey's intelligence chief and the war room reveals plot to create a casus belli for war with Syria by using ISIL, an alQaeda offshoot, to threaten a turkish shrine Suleiman Shah Tomb. Turkey has blocked youtube in order to cover up the leaks. Turkish Foreign Ministry confirmed the recording of planning for a military incursion into Syria adding that a 'network of treason' was responsible for leak. Part two of the leaked conversation implicates John Kerry US secretary of state in the plot.[1] Retitled from original title which was, " EXPOSED: John Kerry, Turkish PM and Co implicated in Turkey False Flag Using AlQaeda To Start War With Syria".
The leaked recording of a press conference between Foreign Affairs Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu, Turkish intelligence agency’s undersecretary Hakan Fidan, and the Chief of the Turkish General Staff Necdet Özel.Ahmet Davuto?lu suggests that the Turkish Army must enter Syria on the pretext of protecting the tomb of Suleyman Shah, the godfather of the Ottoman Sultanate. He suggests that he can send 2-3 agents and blow up the tomb of Suleiman Shah then claim it was an attack by ISIL. They would then have justifiable reasons to convince their allies they must enter Syria to protect what is commonly considered as Turkish heritage.
Interestingly the leaked recordings do not include any discussions concerning the up-coming elections or the Turkish opposition.
Some damning excerpts from part one:
Ahmet Davuto?lu: “Prime Minister said that in current conjuncture, this attack (on Suleiman Shah Tomb) must be seen as an opportunity for us.”
Hakan Fidan: “I’ll send 4 men from Syria, if that’s what it takes. I’ll make up a cause of war by ordering a missile attack on Turkey; we can also prepare an attack on Suleiman Shah Tomb if necessary.”
Feridun Sinirlio?lu: That’s what I told back there. For one thing, the situation is different. An operation on ISIL has solid ground on international law. We’re going to portray this as Al-Qaeda, there’s no distress there if it’s a matter regarding Al-Qaeda. And if it comes to defending Suleiman Shah Tomb, that’s a matter of protecting our land.
Feridun Siniro?lu: That ISIL and all that jazz, all those organizations are extremely open to manipulation.
Damning excerpts from part two:
Yasar Guler: Those Turkish Special Forces are waiting over there for a year! It is not like we plan all this just yesterday, They have been waiting for a year.
Ahmet Davutoglu : Kerry told me exactly this: DID YOU MAKE UP YOUR MINDS?
Yasar Guler : Yes we made up our minds 100 times with USA
Feridun Sinirlioglu: 3 days ago Americans came to the military headquarters and they had a crisis coordination meeting. This is the first time I hear of this
Translation of first tape
In the leaked tape,
search for a reason (and wants to create one if the search is not fruitful) to declare war against Syria. The leakage has two parts, the latter is yet to be translated to English. Here is the first part.
Ba?çalan?n Seçim Güdümlü Sava? Plan? 1-1
ELECTION DRIVEN WAR PLANS – I PART 1 Ahmet Davuto?lu: “Prime Minister said that in current conjuncture, this attack (on Suleiman Shah Tomb) must be seen as an opportunity for us.”
Hakan Fidan: “I’ll send 4 men from Syria, if that’s what it takes. I’ll make up a cause of war by ordering a missile attack on Turkey; we can also prepare an attack on Suleiman Shah Tomb if necessary.”
Feridun Sinirlio?lu: “Our national security has become a common, cheap domestic policy outfit.”
Ya?ar Güler: “It’s a direct cause of war. I mean, what’re going to do is a direct cause of war.”
FIRST SCREEN:
Ahmet Davuto?lu: I couldn’t entirely understand the other thing; what exactly does our foreign ministry supposed to do? No, I’m not talking about the thing. There are other things we’re supposed to do. If we decide on this, we are to notify the United Nations, the Istanbul Consulate of the Syrian regime, right?
Feridun Sinirlio?lu: But if we decide on an operation in there, it should create a shocking effect. I mean, if we are going to do so. I don’t know what we’re going to do, but regardless of what we decide, I don’t think it’d be appropriate to notify anyone beforehand.
Ahmet Davuto?lu: OK, but we’re gonna have to prepare somehow. To avoid any shorts on regarding international law. I just realized when I was talking to the president (Abdullah Gül), if the Turkish tanks go in there, it means we’re in there in any case, right?
Ya?ar Güler: It means we’re in, yes.
Ahmet Davuto?lu: Yeah, but there’s a difference between going in with aircraft and going in with tanks…
SECOND SCREEN:
Ya?ar Güler: Maybe we can tell the Syrian consulate general that, ISIL is currently working alongside the regime, and that place is Turkish land. We should definitely…
Ahmet Davuto?lu: But we have already said that, sent them several diplomatic notes.
Ya?ar Güler: To Syria…
Feridun Sinirlio?lu: That’s right.
Ahmet Davuto?lu: Yes, we’ve sent them countless times. Therefore, I’d like to know what our Chief of Staff’s expectations from our ministry.
Ya?ar Güler: Maybe his intent was to say that, I don’t really know, he met with Mr. Fidan.
Hakan Fidan: Well, he did mention that part but we didn’t go into any further details.
Ya?ar Güler: Maybe that was what he meant… A diplomatic note to Syria?
Hakan Fidan: Maybe the Foreign Ministry is assigned with coordination…
THIRD SCREEN:
Ahmet Davuto?lu: I mean, I could coordinate the diplomacy but civil war, the military…
Feridun Sinirlio?lu: That’s what I told back there. For one thing, the situation is different. An operation on ISIL has solid ground on international law. We’re going to portray this is Al-Qaeda, there’s no distress there if it’s a matter regarding Al-Qaeda. And if it comes to defending Suleiman Shah Tomb, that’s a matter of protecting our land.
Ya?ar Güler: We don’t have any problems with that.
Hakan Fidan: Second after it happens, it’ll cause a great internal commotion (several bombing events is bound to happen within). The border is not under control…
Feridun Sinirlio?lu: I mean, yes, the bombings are of course going to happen. But I remember our talk from 3 years ago…
Ya?ar Güler: Mr. Fidan should urgently receive back-up and we need to help him supply guns and ammo to rebels. We need to speak with the minister. Our Interior Minister, our Defense Minister. We need to talk about this and reach a resolution sir.
Ahmet Davuto?lu: How did we get specials forces into action when there was a threat in Northern Iraq? We should have done so in there, too. We should have trained those men. We should have sent men. Anyway, we can’t do that, we can only do what diplomacy…
Feridun Sinirlio?lu: I told you back then, for God’s sake, general, you know how we managed to get those tanks in, you were there.
Ya?ar Güler: What, you mean our stuff?
Feridun Sinirlio?lu: Yes, how do you think we’ve managed to rally our tanks into Iraq? How? How did manage to get special forces, the battalions in? I was involved in that. Let me be clear, there was no government decision on that, we have managed that just with a single order.
FOURTH SCREEN:
Ya?ar Güler: Well, I agree with you. For one thing, we’re not even discussing that. But there are different things that Syria can do right now.
Ahmet Davuto?lu: General, the reason we’re saying no this operation is because we know about the capacity of those men.
Ya?ar Güler: Look, sir, isn’t MKE (Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation) at minister’s bidding? Sir, I mean, Qatar is looking for ammo to buy in cash. Ready cash. So, why don’t they just get it done? It’s at Mr. Minister’s command.
Ahmet Davuto?lu: But there’s the spot we can’t act integratedly, we can’t coordinate.
Ya?ar Güler: Then, our Prime Minister can summon both Mr. Defence Minister and Mr. Minister at the same time. Then he can directly talk to them.
Ahmet Davuto?lu: We, Mr. Siniro?lu and I, have literally begged Mr. Prime Minster for a private meeting, we said that things were not looking so bright.
FIFTH SCREEN:
Ya?ar Güler: Also, it doesn’t have to be crowded meeting. Yourself, Mr. Defence Minister, Mr. Interior Minister and our Chief of Staff, the four of you are enough. There’s no need for a crowd. Because, sir, the main need there is guns and ammo. Not even guns, mainly ammo. We’ve just talked about this, sir. Let’s say we’re building an army down there, 1000 strong. If we get them into that war without previously storing a minimum of 6-months’ worth of ammo, these men will return to us after two months.
Ahmet Davuto?lu: They’re back already.
Ya?ar Güler: They’ll return to us, sir.
Ahmet Davuto?lu: They’ve came back from… What was it? Çobanbey.
Ya?ar Güler: Yes, indeed, sir. This matter can’t be just a burden on Mr. Fidan’s shoulders as it is now. It’s unacceptable. I mean, we can’t understand this. Why?
SIXTH SCREEN:
Ahmet Davuto?lu: That evening we’d reached a resolution. And I thought that things were taking a turn for the good. Our…
Feridun Sinirlio?lu: We issued the MGK (National Security Council) resolution the day after. Then we talked with the general…
Ahmet Davuto?lu: And the other forces really do a good follow up on this weakness of ours. You say that you’re going to capture this place, and that men being there constitutes a risk factor. You pull them back. You capture the place. You reinforce it and send in your troops again.
Ya?ar Güler: Exactly, sir. You’re absolutely right.
Ahmet Davuto?lu: Right? That’s how I interpret it. But after the evacuation, this is not a military necessity. It’s a whole other thing.
SEVENTH SCREEN
Feridun Siniro?lu: There are some serious shifts in global and regional geopolitics. It now can spread to other places. You said it yourself today, and others agreed… We’re headed to a different game now. We should be able to see those. That ISIL and all that jazz, all those organizations are extremely open to manipulation. Having a region made up of organizations of similar nature will constitute a vital security risk for us. And when we first went into Northern Iraq, there was always the risk of PKK blowing up the place. If we thoroughly consider the risks and substantiate… As the general just said…
Ya?ar Güler: Sir, when you were inside a moment ago, we were discussing just that. Openly. I mean, armed forces are a “tool” necessary for you in every turn.
Ahmet Davuto?lu: Of course. I always tell the Prime Minister, in your absence, the same thing in academic jargon, you can’t stay in those lands without hard power. Without hard power, there can be no soft power.
EIGTH SCREEN
Ya?ar Güler: Sir.
Feridun Sinirlio?lu: The national security has been politicized. I don’t remember anything like this in Turkish political history. It has become a matter of domestic policy. All talks we’ve done on defending our lands, our border security, our sovereign lands in there, they’ve all become a common, cheap domestic policy outfit.
Ya?ar Güler: Exactly.
Feridun Siniro?lu: That has never happened before. Unfortunately but…
Ya?ar Güler: I mean, do even one of the opposition parties support you in such a high point of national security? Sir, is this a justifiable sense of national security?
Feridun Sinirlio?lu: I don’t even remember such a period.
NINTH SCREEN:
Ya?ar Güler: In what matter can we be unified, if not a matter of national security of such importance? None.
Ahmet Davuto?lu: The year 2012, we didn’t do it 2011. If only we’d took serious action back then, even in the summer of 2012.
Feridun Sinirlio?lu: They were at their lowest back in 2012.
Ahmet Davuto?lu: Internally, they were just like Libya. Who comes in and goes from power is not of any importance to us. But some things…
Ya?ar Güler: Sir, to avoid any confusion, our need in 2011 was guns and ammo. In 2012, 2013 and today also. We’re in the exact same point. We absolutely need to find this and secure that place.
Ahmet Davuto?lu: Guns and ammo are not a big need for that place. Because we couldn’t get the human factor in order…
Part 2 of audio (incomplete thus far)
Source of introduction was Syrian Girl's Youtube channel, and, of course, her videoed report.
Source of the translated dialogue was Syria News: http://www.syrianews.cc/leaks-reveal-turkey-using-alqaeda-false-flag-syria/
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You can read report and watch video on the New Zealand Herald front page here: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/front-page-top-stories/news/article.cfm?c_id=698&objectid=11205847
You can see why the hoax was so successful; so many people would have liked someone like Lorde to do something like this - but she would probably have completely ruined her career, had she done so. And it was rather hard to imagine a 17 year old being that politically aware - right to the references. A good speech, but not Lorde's. Below and inside is the hoax that was:
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26 January 2014
Lorde:
Thank you soo much everyone for making this song explode because this world is mental. (Laughter). Planet Earth is run by psychopaths that hide behind slick marketing, 'freedom' propaganda and 'economic growth' rhetoric,1 while they construct a global system of corporatized totalitarianism.
As American journalist Chris Hedges has identified, a corporate totalitarian core thrives inside a fictitious democratic shell.2 This core yields an 'inverted' totalitarian state that few recognize because it does not look like the Orwellian world of Nineteen Eighty-four.3
This corporate totalitarian core is spreading outward from America. Planet Earth is being rapidly militarized by the world's major and significant states, including their police forces.4 Meanwhile, state surveillance is becoming universal5 and torture is outsourced to gulags.6
Can we not imagine that in past times, simple folk found it hard to work out exactly how they were being manipulated by the Royal monarchies, and the Papal monarchy, who claimed a 'divine right to rule'? Ordinary people from classical times through to the demise of the Ancienne Regime could not see how the rivalrous network of elites and oligarchs were linked, not least because the illiterate masses were indoctrinated to believe in their humble lot, to obey divinely-endorsed authority and to live in fear of damnation.
So, in today's mental world, it should become clearer now that Planet Earth is ruled by super-wealthy people, who use their outrageous fortunes to steer the trajectories of whole societies for their own material and political gain.7 These oligarchs are, in fact, colluding for economic gain and conspiring to augment more political power.8 Armies of professional, political, religious and military elites serve them.9 Together, they comprise a highly-networked trans- national capitalist class that has been traced in studies by: Peter Phillips and Brady Osborne;10 William K. Carroll;11 David Rothkopf;12 Daniel Estulin;13 and Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter.14
As Canadian journalist Naomi Klein has argued in her book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, 'free markets' were slickly marketed in the 1980s and 1990s with the idea that they would deliver individual freedom and prosperity for all.15 Klein also wrote that the use of military violence to facilitate the spread of 'free markets' in the field-testing stage from the mid- 1960s to the mid-1970s has continued into the 2000s. Her view is supported in Eugene Jarecki's documentary Why We Fight, which compellingly showed that America fights wars to make the world secure for its corporations.16 So, get reading and viewing! (Lorde giggles and half the audience rises to their feet applauding. The other half remain fixed in their chairs. Some reluctantly clap). Thankyou soo much everyone for giving a shit about our song, 'Royals'. May you all find the balls to help construct a world based on resilient community, bona-fide freedom, and peace. To do that, we will need to redeploy the psychopaths that currently run the world to the planet's prisons.17 Peace cannot happen with reconciliation. That was Nelson Mandela's mistake.18 The first step to peace is justice firmly served.
1. ⇑ Snoopman. (2013, August 31). A Poorly Understood 'Bargain': How Democracy and the 60s Movements became Orphans in the 'Free Market' Era. Snoopman News. Retrieved from http://snoopman.net.nz/2013/08/31/a-poorly-understood-bargain-or-how-democracy-and-the-60s-movements-became-orphans-in-the-free-market-era/
2. ⇑ Hedges, Chris. (2014, January 6). The Last Gasp of American Democracy. Truthout. http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21052-chris-hedges-the-last-gasp-of-american-democracy
3. ⇑ Orwell, George. (1993). Nineteen Eighty-Four (5th ed.). London, England: Compact Books. (Original work published 1949).
4. ⇑ Chossudovsky, Michel. (2014, January 29). Imperial Conquest: America's "Long War" against Humanity. Global Research. Retrieved from http://www.globalresearch.ca/imperial-conquest-americas-long-war-against-humani- ty/5364215
5. ⇑ WashingtonsBlog. (2013, December 18). Former Top NSA Official: "We Are Now In A Police State". Retrieved from http://www.washingtonsblog. com/2013/12/former-top-nsa-official-now-police-state.html; World Social- ist Web Site. (2013, December 18). "Almost Orwellian": US Judge indicts NSA spying. Retrieved from http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/12/18/pers-d18.html; Burghardt, Tom. (2013, November 10). The U.S. Secret State and the Internet: "Dirty Secrets" and "Crypto Wars" from "Clipper Chip" and ECHELON to PRISM. Global Research. Retrieved from http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-u-s-secret-state-and-the-internet-dirty-secrets-and-crypto-wars-from-clipper-chip-to-prism/5357623
6. ⇑ Lendman, Stephen. (2013, November 12). America's Global Gulag: Challenging Wrongful Convictions Global Research. Retrieved from http://www. globalresearch.ca/americas-global-gulag-challenging-wrongful-convictions/5357796?print=1; Lendman, Stephen. (2013, July 19). US Courts Approve Indefinite Detention and Torture. Global Research. Retrieved from http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-courts-approve-indefinite-detention-and-torture/5343269
7. ⇑ Engdahl, F. W. (2009). Gods of Money: Wall Street and the Death of the American Century.Wiesbaden, Germany: edition.engdahl; Rowbotham, M. (1998). The Grip of Death: A Study of Modern Money, Debt Slavery and Destructive Economics. Charlbury, England: Jon Carpenter; Winters, J. A. (2011a). Oligarchy. New York: Cambridge University Press.
8. ⇑ Edwards, Steve. (2012). It's the financial oligarchy, stupid: A study of Anglo-American news coverage during the 2007-2008 financial crisis and bank bailouts Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10292/5536
9. ⇑ Winters, J. A.(2012, February 27). Oligarchy in the U.S.A.: The wealth defense industry protects the richest of the rich. In These Times. Retrieved from http://inthesetimes.com/article/12698/oligarchy_in_the_u.s.a/
10. ⇑ Phillips, Peter & Osborne, Brady (2013, September 13). Exposing the Financial Core of the Transnational Capitalist Class. Global Research. Retrieved from http://www.globalresearch.ca/exposing-the-financial-core-of-the-trans- national-capitalist-class/5349617
11. ⇑ Carroll, W. K. (2010). The Making of a Transnational Capitalist Class: Corporate Power in the 21st Century. London: Zed Books.
12. ⇑ Rothkopf, D. (2008). Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making. London, England: Little, Brown.
13. ⇑ Estulin, D. (2009). The True Story of the Bilderberg Group (North American Union ed.). Walterville, OR: Trine Day LLC.
14. ⇑ Shoup, L. H. & Minter, W. (1977). Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign Policy. New York, NY: Authors Choice Press.
15. ⇑ Klein, N. (2007). The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Camberwell, Australia: Penguin Books.
16. ⇑ Jarecki, Eugene (2006). Why We Fight. [Motion Picture]. Sony Pictures Classics.
17. ⇑ Snoopman. (2013, August 31). A Poorly Understood 'Bargain': How Democracy and the 60s Movements became Orphans in the 'Free Market' Era. Snoopman News. Retrieved from http://snoopman.net.nz/2013/08/31/a-poor-ly-understood-bargain-or-how-democracy-and-the-60s-movements-became-orphans-in-the-free-market-era/
18. ⇑ (2014, January 28). The Audacity of Obama: A Black Wolf in Corporate Clothing. Snoopman News. Retrieved from http://snoopman.net.nz/2014/01/28/the-audacity-of-obama-a-black-wolf-in-corporate-clothing/
See the full story "Clipping Queen Bee's Wings: Lorde's real Grammy speech
suppressed" at
http://snoopman.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/clipping-queen-bees-wings-lordes-real-grammy-speech-suppressed/
And also:
The inside story behind Lorde's meteoric rise: "Queen Bee Mentor: The profes-
sor who fed Lorde's mental buzz"
http://snoopman.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/queen-bee-mentor-the-professor-
who-fed-lordes-mental-buzz
Snoopman News: http://snoopman.net.nz
Facebook: Snoopman News
Twitter: Snoopman@SnoopmanNews
Snoopman News: The revolution in your mind will not be televised!
Watch here (http://unmanned.warcosts.com/briefing), on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhSe6-mK8wk or embedded here.
From Anti-war.com. Update, 9:31am, 30 Oct AEST : The embedded YouTube broadcast is now empty. The testimony was kindly transcribed by a Twitter user starting here and concluding here. The full report will soon be published on Truthout.Sound starts about 5 minutes into video. English is interspersed with other language. Subtitles can be read at full screen size. At 12.02 the video within the video ends and we hear a panel speak English to the inquiry directly in the room.
Click here to access Unmanned, America's Drone Wars, Robert Greenwald's newest full-length feature. It is being released on October 30th, 2013. The documentary will only be available to stream online for a limited time. Sign up today to get your link to see the film FOR FREE.
(Quotes and paraphrases from the Congressional hearing:)
The killings are extra-judicial.
They cause collateral damage.
Public opinion is mobilised against the US in every nation targeted by these strikes.
The US finds itself in international crisis. If Chinese drones killed people in the US who showed anti-Chinese sentiment US citizens would find that unacceptable.
Anonymous killing from the skies.
No other type of human activity where you accept the fact that 10-30% of the dead will be innocent.
If it were a drug that killed 10-30%; if surgery that did so... these activities would be forbidden. Yet we accept this in the practice of drone killings.
Hope faith charity love... peace trumps them all.
These strikes are done in the absence of the target victims names even being known.
Update, 8 Sep 2013 : Stories which reveal complicity of former 'Labor' Foreign Minister Bob Carr in U.S. plans to start war against Syria: Interview of January 2013 with Bob Carr on Australia Network, Australia right to back Syria strike: Carr, Australian spies confirmed chemical use on civilians by Syrian regime (which confirms the complicity of Australia's 'intelligence' agencies), US and allies further isolated on Syria after French President Francois Hollande waits on UN report.
This article was originally published on www.paulcraigroberts.org on 5 September 2013 as The US Government Stands Revealed to the World as a Collection of War Criminals and Liars. See also: Paul Craig Roberts: U.S. war criminals (and their Australian accomplices) totally discredited of 2 Sep 2013.
Paul Craig Roberts explains that the serial liars U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry are finally being held to account by world public opinion for the death and destruction they have inflicted upon Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. However, unless they are tried for their crimes at the International Criminal Court at the Hague, there can be no enduring peace.
Unlike what occurred on past occasions when the U.S. Government launched wars against the people of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, much of world public opinion, including majorities within the U.S. and within many countries, whose governments are allied to the U.S., are opposed to its planned war against Syria and have organised effectively to prevent it 3
Also, there are a number of honest and principled world leaders, who have substantial resources and who are willing to use those resources to stand up to the world's bullies. One is Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, who has been supplying Syria with many of the armaments necessary to defend itself against the West's proxy terrorists and threatened invasion by Western Nations.
Others include the leaders of Iran and the BRICS nations including many governments of Latin America.
That Putin was able to expose U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry before the world for the liar that he is 5 was because of his profile and that the Russian and other Governments have set up media outlets which are able to tell the truth to a large proportion of the world's population who would otherwise have their views largely moulded by presstitute media.
Much of what Paul Craig Roberts has written of Barack Obama and John Kerry is also true of Australian 'Labor' Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, and Senator Bob Carr, the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs. Australia's role in inflicting harm on the peoples the world in recent years has been largely overlooked. As an example, nowhere in former U.S. Congresswomen Cynthia McKinney's book about Libya4, is Kevin Rudd's shameful role in starting the NATO invasion of Libya in 2011. 6 As 'roving' Australian Foreign Minister in the Middles East in March 2011, Kevin Rudd called for the establishment of the "no-fly" zone, because it was deceitfully reported the Libyan Air Force was indiscriminately bombing civilians.
Since then Kevin Rudd and Bob Carr have done much to help start a new war against Syria They have also spread lies similar to those told by Kerry and they have taken diplomatic initiatives to help start the war. Fortunately for Syria and the world, their hard efforts appear to have come unstuck thanks to the weight of world public opinion in support of Syria.
Paul Craig Roberts, 5 September, 2013
Does the American public have the strength of character to face the fact that the US government stands before the entire world revealed as a collection of war criminals who lie every time that they open their mouth? Will Congress and the American public buy the White House lie that they must support war criminals and liars or "America will lose face"?
The obama regime's lies are so transparent and blatant that the cautious, diplomatic President Putin of Russia lost his patience and stated the fact that we all already know: John Kerry is a liar. Putin said: "This was very unpleasant and surprising for me. We talk to them [the Americans], and we assume they are decent people, but he [Kerry] is lying and he knows that he is lying. This is sad.1"
When Secretary of State Colin Powell was sent by the criminal bush regime to lie to the UN, Powell and his chief of staff claim that Powell did not know he was lying. It did not occur to the Secretary of State that the White House would send him to the UN to start a war that killed, maimed, and dispossessed millions of Iraqis on the basis of total lies.
The despicable John Kerry knows that he is lying. Here is the American Secretary of State, and obama, the puppet president, knowingly lying to the world. There is not a shred of integrity in the US government. No respect for truth, justice, morality or human life. Here are two people so evil that they want to repeat in Syria what the bush war criminals did in Iraq.
How can the American people and their representatives in Congress tolerate these extraordinary criminals? Why are not obama and John Kerry impeached? The obama regime has every quality of Nazi Germany and Stasi Communist Germany, only that the obama regime is worse. The obama regime spies on the entire world and lies about it. The obama regime is fully engaged in killing people in seven countries, a murderous rampage that not even Hitler attempted.
Whether the criminal obama regime can purchase the collaboration of Congress and the European puppet states in a transparent war crime will soon be decided. The decision will determine the fate of the world.
As for facts, the report released to the UN by the Russian government concludes that the weapons used in chemical attacks in Syria are similar to the weapons in the hands of al-Nusra and are different from the weapons known to be possessed by Syria. 2
The obama regime has released no evidence to the UN. This is because the criminal regime has no evidence, only made up fairy tales.
If the obama regime had any evidence, the evidence would have been released to British Prime Minister david cameron to enable him to carry the vote of Parliament. In the absence of evidence, cameron had to admit to Parliament that he had no evidence, only a belief that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons. Parliament told Washington's puppet that the British people were not going to war on the basis of the Prime Minister's unsubstantiated belief.
Are the American people and the rest of the world just going to stand there, sucking their thumbs, while a new Nazi State rises in Washington?
Congress must vote down the war and make it clear to obama that if he defies the constitutional power of Congress he will be impeached.
If the US Congress is too corrupt or incompetent to do its duty, the rest of the world must join the UN General Secretary and the President of Russia and declare that unilateral military aggression by the US government is a war crime, and that the war criminal US government will be isolated in the international community. Any of its members caught traveling abroad will be arrested and turned over to the Hague for trial.
1↑. Putin Calls Kerry a Liar on Syria of 5 Sep 2103 by David Jackson on Information Clearing House
2.↑ Russia Releases Key Findings on Chemical Attack Near Aleppo Indicating Similarity With Rebel-made Weapons
of 5 Sep 2103 from Russia Today on Information Clearing House
3. ↑ Many, who are opposed to war, nevertheless still accept many of the lies fed to them by the presstitute media. To the extent that they do, their opposition to the war can only be muted. As one example, many accept the unsubstantiated view atrocities are being committed by both sides of the conflict. Others choose to promote the view that President Bashar al-Assad is corrupt, but invariably fail to provide evidence when challenged. In time, more and more people will come to understand that these views are wrong.
4. ↑ The Illegal War on Libya (Clarity Press, 2012) by Cynthia McKinney.
5. ↑ See US lied about absence of Al Qaeda in Syria - President Putin in the Voice of Russia of 5 September 2013.
6. ↑ See Rudd, PM Split On Libya No-Fly Zone in the Melbourne Age of 5 March 2011.
Reposted from article of same title of 26 Aug 2013 on Paul Craig Roberts' web-site, http://www.paulcraigroberts.org.
The war criminals in Washington and other Western capitals are determined to maintain their lie that the Syrian government used chemical weapons. Having failed in efforts to intimidate the UN chemical inspectors in Syria, Washington has demanded that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon withdraw the chemical weapons inspectors before they can assess the evidence and make their report. The UN Secretary General stood up to the Washington war criminals and rejected their demand.
The US and UK governments have revealed none of the "conclusive evidence" they claim to have that the Syrian government used chemical weapons. Listening to their voices, observing their body language, and looking into their eyes, it is completely obvious that John Kerry and his British and German puppets are lying through their teeth. This is a far more shameful situation than the massive lies that former Secretary of State Colin Powell told the UN about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Colin Powell claims that he was deceived by the White House and did not know that he was lying. Kerry and the British, French, and German puppets know full well that they are lying.
The US and UK governments have revealed none of the "conclusive evidence" they claim to have that the Syrian government used chemical weapons. Listening to their voices, observing their body language, and looking into their eyes, it is completely obvious that John Kerry and his British and German puppets are lying through their teeth. This is a far more shameful situation than the massive lies that former Secretary of State Colin Powell told the UN about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Colin Powell claims that he was deceived by the White House and did not know that he was lying. Kerry and the British, French, and German puppets know full well that they are lying.
The face that the West presents to the world is the brazen face of a liar.
Washington and its British and French (and Australian - Ed) puppet governments are poised to yet again reveal their criminality. The image of the West as War Criminal is not a propaganda image created by the West’s enemies, but the portrait that the West has painted of itself.
The UK Independent reports that over this past week-end Obama, Cameron, and Hollande agreed to launch cruise missile attacks against the Syrian government within two weeks despite the lack of any authorization from the UN and despite the absence of any evidence in behalf of Washington’s claim that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against the Washington-backed "rebels", largely US supported external forces, seeking to overthrow the Syrian government.
Indeed, one reason for the rush to war is to prevent the UN inspection that Washington knows would disprove its claim and possibly implicate Washington in the false flag attack by the "rebels," who assembled a large number of children into one area to be chemically murdered with the blame pinned by Washington on the Syrian government.
Another reason for the rush to war is that Cameron, the UK prime minister, wants to get the war going before the British parliament can block him for providing cover for Obama's war crimes the way that Tony Blair provided cover for George W. Bush, for which Blair was duly rewarded. What does Cameron care about Syrian lives when he can leave office into the waiting arms of a $50 million fortune.
Syria: UN weapons inspectors attacked as they try to reach site of alleged poison gas attack
The Syrian government, knowing that it is not responsible for the chemical weapons incident, has agreed for the UN to send in chemical inspectors to determine the substance used and the method of delivery. However, Washington has declared that it is "too late" for UN inspectors and that Washington accepts the self-serving claim of the al Qaeda affiliated "rebels" that the Syrian government attacked civilians with chemical weapons. Syria: UN weapons inspectors attacked as they try to reach site of alleged poison gas attack See also Syria Accepts UN Inspectors, US Spurns Call as 'Too Late'
In an attempt to prevent the UN chemical inspectors who arrived on the scene from doing their work, the inspectors were fired upon by snipers in "rebel" held territory and forced off site, although a later report from RT says the inspectors have returned to the site to conduct their inspection. UN inspectors visit site of alleged Syria chemical attack despite sniper fire
The corrupt British government has declared that Syria can be attacked without UN authorization, just as Serbia and Libya were militarily attacked without UN authorization. In other words, the Western democracies have already established precedents for violating international law. "International law? We don't need no stinking international law!" The West knows only one rule: Might is Right. As long as the West has the Might, the West has the Right.
In a response to the news report that the US, UK, and France are preparing to attack Syria, the Russian Foreign Minister, Lavrov, said that such unilateral action is a "severe violation of international law," and that the violation was not only a legal one but also an ethical and moral violation. Lavrov referred to the lies and deception used by the West to justify its grave violations of international law in military attacks on Serbia, Iraq, and Libya and how the US government used preemptive moves to undermine every hope for peaceful settlements in Iraq, Libya, and Syria.
Once again Washington has preempted any hope of peaceful settlement. By announcing the forthcoming attack, the US destroyed any incentive for the "rebels" to participate in the peace talks with the Syrian government. On the verge of these talks taking place, the “rebels” now have no incentive to participate as the West’s military is coming to their aid.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.
Syria has given refuge to a vast number of refugees from wars extending back to the creation of Israel by the expulsion of Palestinans in 1947. According to Wikipedia, "Syria hosted a population of refugees and asylum seekers number approximately 1,852,300. Of these, "the vast majority of this population was from Iraq (1,300,000), ...", that is, from wars in which the United States and its allies, including Australia, illegally participated in commencing from 1990.
Adapted from article, previously published on Global Research, UK Progressive on 5 Dec 2012 as US Sponsored Genocide Against Iraq 1990-2012 ...
Australia expelled the Syrian ambassador and imposed sanctions against Syria on the pretext of the lie that, on 25 and 26 May, the Syrian Government murdered citizens who were, in fact, supporters of that government. Evidence reported, by, amongst other sources, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, shows that the murders were carried out by the NATO-sponsored "Free Syrian Army" (FSA) terrorists at Houla on 25 and 25 May 2012 [1].
On top of defending itself against terrorism, Syria has given refuge to a vast number of refugees from wars extending back to the creation of Israel by the expulsion of Palestinans in 1947.
According to Wikipedia, "Syria hosted a population of refugees and asylum seekers number approximately 1,852,300. Of these, "the vast majority of this population was from Iraq (1,300,000), ...", that is, from wars in which the United States and its allies including Australia, illegally participated in commencing from 1990.
The justifications for these wars, including the "incubator babies" and Iraqi "Weapons of Mass Destruction" (WMDs) were fraudulent and known to be fraudulent by the US and UK Governments and, in all likelihood, the Australian Governments of Prime Ministers Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard, as well.
Approximately 3.3 million Iraqis, including 750,000 children, were "exterminated" by economic sanctions and/or illegal wars conducted by the U.S. and Great Britain between 1990 and 2012, an eminent international legal authority says.
The slaughter fits the classic definition of Genocide Convention Article II of, “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” says Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois, Champaign, and who in 1991 filed a class-action complaint with the UN against President George H.W. Bush.
The U.S. and U.K. "obstinately insisted" that their sanctions remain in place until after the “illegal” Gulf War II aggression perpetrated by President George W. Bush and UK’s Tony Blair in March, 2003, “not with a view to easing the over decade-long suffering of the Iraqi people and children” but “to better facilitate the U.S./U.K. unsupervised looting and plundering of the Iraqi economy and oil fields in violation of the international laws of war as well as to the grave detriment of the Iraqi people,” Boyle said.
In an address last Nov. 22 to The International Conference on War-affected Children in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Boyle tallied the death toll on Iraq by U.S.-U.K. actions as follows:
Boyle's class-action complaint demanded an end to all economic sanctions against Iraq; criminal proceedings for genocide against President George H.W. Bush; monetary compensation to the children of Iraq and their families for deaths, physical and mental injury; and for shipping massive humanitarian relief supplies to that country.
The grossly hypocritical” UN refused to terminate the sanctions, Boyle pointed out, even though its own Food and Agricultural Organization's Report estimated that by 1995 the sanctions had killed 560,000 Iraqi children during the previous five years.
Boyle noted that then U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright was interviewed on CBS-TV on May 12, 1996, in response to a question by Leslie Stahl if the price of half a million dead children was worth it, and replied, "we (the U.S. government) think the price is worth it."
Albright's shocking response provides "proof positive of the genocidal intent by the U.S. government against Iraq" under the Genocide Convention, Boyle said, adding that the government of Iraq today could still bring legal action against the U.S. and the U.K. in the International Court of Justice. He said the U.S.-U.K. genocide also violated the municipal legal systems of all civilized nations in the world; the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child; and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and its Additional Protocol 1 of 1977.
Boyle, who was stirred to take action pro bono by Mothers in Iraq after the economic sanctions had been imposed upon them by the Security Council in August, 1990, in response to pressure from the Bush Senior Administration. He is the author of numerous books on international affairs, including "Destroying World Order".
[1] See Report: Rebels Responsible for Houla Massacre of 10 June 2012, US-Sponsored Gangs Committed Houla Massacre of 14 June 2012, The United Nations and the Houla Massacre: The Information Battlefield of 12 June 2012, US-NATO Sponsored Crimes against Humanity in Syria. Coverup by UN Human Rights Council of 2 Dec 2012, Propaganda War: Houla Massacre Committed by US-NATO Sponsored “Free Syrian Army”. But They Accuse Syrian Government of 9 Jun 2012, LIES AND FABRICATIONS: The Houla Massacre of 29 May 2012, BREAKING: Prime German Paper: Syrian Rebels Committed Houla Massacre of 10 Jun 2012, The Houla Massacre: The Disinformation Campaign of 13 Jun 2012, The UN and General Mood's "Missing Report" on Conflicting Accounts of Houla Massacre of 11 Sep 2012, SYRIA: The Houla Massacre and the Subversion of the Peace Plan of 7 Jun 2012, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung confirms: Houla massacre committed by Syrian “rebels” of 16 Jun 2012,
A new film, "Compliance," examines "the human desire to follow and obey authority." Also published on Global Research, paulcraigroberts.org on 28 Aug 2012 Liberal institutions, such as the media, universities, federal courts, and human rights organizations, which have traditionally functioned as checks on the blind obedience to authority, have in our day gone over to power's side. The subversion of these institutions has transformed them from checks on power into servants of power. The result is the transformation of culture from the rule of law to unaccountable authority resting on power maintained by propaganda.
See also: Carr tries to justify Australian support for NATO war against Syria of 12 April 2012.
Propaganda is important in the inculcation of trust in authority.The Pussy Riot case shows the power of Washington's propaganda even inside Russia itself and reveals that Washington's propaganda has suborned important human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Chatham House, and Amnesty International.
Pussy Riot is described in the western media as a punk rock group, but seems in fact to be a group known as Voina (War) that performs lewd or scandalous unannounced public performances such as the one in the Russian cathedral, a sexual orgy in a museum, and events such as these. (see also http://plucer.livejournal.com/265584.html).
Three of the cathedral performers were apprehended, indicted, tried, convicted of breaking a statutory law, and given two-year prison sentences. The Voice of Russia recently broadcast a discussion of the case from its London studio. Representatives from Human Rights Watch and Chatham House argued that the case was really a free speech case and that the women were political prisoners for criticizing Russian President Putin.
This claim was disingenuous. In the blasphemous performance in the Russian cathedral, Putin was not mentioned. The references to Putin were added to the video posted on the Internet after the event in order to turn a crime into a political protest.
The human rights representatives also argued that the women's conviction could only happen in Putin's Russia. However, the program host pointed out that in fact most European countries have similar laws as Russia's and that a number of European offenders have been arrested and punished even more severely. Indeed, I recently read a news report from Germany that a copycat group of women had staged a similar protest in support of Pussy Riot and had been arrested. An analysis of these issues is available here: http://mercouris.wordpress.com .
The human rights representatives seemed to believe that Putin had failed the democratic test by failing to stop the prosecution. But a country either has the rule of law or doesn't have the rule of law. If Putin overrides the law, it means Putin is the law.
Whether Washington had a hand in the Pussy Riot event via the Russian protest groups it funds, Hitlery Clinton was quick to make propaganda. Free expression was threatened in Russia, she said.
Washington used the Pussy Riot case to pay Putin back for opposing Washington's destruction of Syria. The overlooked legal issue is Washington's interference in internal Russian affairs. The close alignment of human rights organizations with Washington's propaganda hurts the credibility of human rights advocacy. If human rights groups are seen as auxiliaries of Washington's propaganda, their moral authority evaporates.
The prevalence of the English language, due to the British domination of the world in the 18th and 19th centuries and American domination in the 20th and first decade of the 21st century, makes it easy for Washington to control the explanations. Other languages simply do not have the reach to compete.
Washington also has the advantage of having worn the White Hat in the Cold War. The peoples who were constituent parts of the Soviet empire and even many Russians themselves still see Washington as the wearer of the White Hat. Washington has used this advantage to finance "color revolutions" that have moved countries from the Russian sphere of influence into Washington's sphere of influence.
Tony Cartalucci concludes that "Amnesty International is US State Department Propaganda." http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32257.htm
Cartalucci notes that Amnesty's executive director is former State Department official Suzanne Nossel, who conflates "human rights advocacy" with US global hegemony.
Amnesty does seem like an amplifier for Washington's propaganda. Amnesty's latest email to members (August 27) is: "As if the recent trial and sentencing of three members of Pussy Riot wasn't shameful enough, now Russian police are hunting down others in the band. Make no mistake about it: Russian authorities are relentless. Just how far are the Russian authorities willing to go to silence voices of dissent? Tell the Russian government to stop hunting Pussy Riot!"
Amnesty International's August 23 email to its members, "Wake Up World," is completely one-sided and puts all blame for violence on the Syrian government, not on al Qaeda and other outside groups that Washington has armed and unleashed on the Syrian people. Amnesty is only concerned with getting visual images damning to the Syrian government before the public: "We are working to get this damning footage into the hands of journalists around the world. Support our work and help ensure that our first-hand video is seen by influential members of the media."
At least Pussy Riot got a trial. That's more than US Marine, Brandon Raub, a veteran of two tours of combat duty, got. Raub posted on Facebook his opinion that he had been misused by Washington in behalf of an illegal agenda. Local police, FBI, and Secret Service descended upon his home, dragged him out, and on the authority of a social worker, committed him to a mental hospital for observation. http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/citizen-warrior/2012/aug/23/judge-orders-brandon-raub-released-hospital/.
I did not see any protests from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, or Chatham House. Instead, a Virginia circuit court judge, W. Allan Sharrett, demanded Raub's immediate release, stating that there was no reason to detain and commit Raub except to punish him for exercising his free speech right.
Americans are increasingly punished for exercising free speech rights. A number of videos of police violence against the occupy movement are available on youtube. They show the goon thug gestapo cops beating women, pepper spraying protestors sitting with their heads bowed, truncheons flashing as American heads are broken and protestors beat senseless are dragged off in handcuffs for peacefully exercising a constitutionally protected right.
There has been more protest over Pussy Riot than over the illegal detention and torture of Bradley Manning or the UK government's threat to invade the Embassy of Ecuador and to drag out WikiLeaks' Julian Assange.
When a Chinese dissident sought asylum in the US embassy in China, the Chinese government bowed to international law and permitted the dissident's safe passage to the US. But "freedom and democracy" Great Britain refuses free passage to Assange who has been granted asylum, and there is no protest from Clinton at the State Department.
In "China's Rise, America's Fall," Ron Unz makes a compelling argument that the Chinese government is more respectful of the rule of law and more responsive to the people it governs than is Washington. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/chinas-rise-americas-fall/.
Today it is Russia and China, not the UK and Europe, that challenge Washington's claim that the US government is above international law and has the right to overthrow governments of which it disapproves.
The lawlessness that now characterizes the US and UK governments is a large threat to humanity's finest achievement--the rule of law--for which the British fought from the time of Alfred the Great in the ninth century to the Glorious Revolution of the 17th century.
Where are the protests over the Anglo-American destruction of the rule of law?
Why Aren't Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Chatham House on the case?
Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Paul Craig Roberts Subscribe to the Global Research E-Newsletter
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Earlier this evening, Australia's Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) television news featured a chilling report by BBC journalist Ian Pannell who rode with a group of Syrian rebels as they attacked the town of Alleppo in Syria. The report featured groups of captives being threatened at close range with automatic rifles. At one point a gun seemed to discharge and wound one of the captives. Ian Pannell did not inform his viewers of the fate of the captives. Shortly after I found on Land Destroyer a comprehensive dissection of the deceit and hypocrisy in Ian Pannell's report. It is republished here.
Article by Tony Cartalucci. Originally published on Land Destroyer
July 25, 2012 - When big lies must be told, BBC is there. From Iraq to Afghanistan to Libya and now Syria, BBC has paved the way for Western disinformation meant to mange public perception around a war the public would otherwise never support or tolerate.
The BBC, caught on record producing entire "documentaries" on behalf of corporate-financier interests, has already been caught in immense lies regarding the NATO-fueled destabilization of Syria. This includes the disingenuous use of photos from Iraq, to depict a so-called "massacre" in the village of Houla, Syria.
Now, as NATO's Al Qaeda mercenaries operating under the banner of the so-called "Free Syrian Army" flow over the Turkish-Syrian border in an attempt to overrun the city of Aleppo, BBC is there, attempting to manipulate the public's perception as the conflict unfolds.
BBC's Ian Pannell admits he rode with a convoy of militant fighters into Aleppo at night. He claims many are desperate for the FSA to succeed, "clamoring for freedom denied by their president," but concedes many others fear an "Islamic takeover" and sectarian "division and bloodshed." The latter of course, is self-evident, while the former is the repeated, unfounded mantra of the Western media used to cover up the latter.
Pannell poses amongst staged settings, claiming a single burning tire equates to a barricade set up by the militants (see more on the use of burning tires as propaganda here and here). He concedes that militants are taking to the rooftops with sniper rifles in the districts they claim they control - begging one to wonder where else terrorist snipers have been, and how many "sniper" deaths have been mistakenly blamed on the government.
Covering Up FSA War Crimes
Pannell then attempts to cover up serious war crimes committed by the FSA militants he is traveling with, claiming that men the FSA arbitrarily rounded up while "seeking revenge" were "suspected Shabiha," harking back to Libya's NATO-backed terrorist death squads rounding up and killing Libya's black communities in orgies of sectarian genocide - which outlets like the BBC defended as simply rebels targeting "suspected African mercenaries." Pannell papers over what he just reported with the unqualified claim that there is "little justice" on either side. What became of the FSA's victims is not revealed.
Image: From BBC's Ian Pannell - young men "suspected" of being "Shabiha" are rounded up as the FSA "seeks revenge." BBC fails categorically to explain how NATO-backed terrorists can "liberate" a city that is admittedly pro-government - but it appears it will be done through terrorism, brutality, mass murder, and intimidation.
BBC reporter Ian Pannell's failure to report on the war crimes he admitted witnessing, smacks of endorsement and complicity - an attempt to preserve the romanticism the West has desperately tried to associate with their FSA death squads. Pannell's report also confirms earlier descriptions of widespread atrocities committed by the so-called "Free Syrian Army."
In Libya, when the government of Muammar Qaddafi collapsed, and as Libyan terrorists overran the last of the nation's security forces, entire cities of Libya's blacks were overrun, their populations either mass-murdered, imprisoned, or forced to flee to refugee camps. These are people who had lived in Libya for generations. A similar fate awaits Syrians should NATO prevail.
BBC Confirms Syrian Army Use of Heavy Weapons ARE Proportional to FSA Threats
Pannell's propaganda in Aleppo continues, where he admits FSA militants possess tanks they allegedly "captured" from the Syrian military, but then, showing video of what is clearly an anti-tank SU-25 aircraft rolling in with machine guns, claims it marks a "dramatic escalation" and a sign of "desperation."
Image: From BBC's Ian Pannell -FSA tanks are positioned in or around Aleppo, according to BBC. The myth that NATO-backed militants are "lightly armed" is unraveling as they attempt to take on large cities flush with cameras and media from both sides. Eager propagandists attempting to portray victories have more than once shown "captured tanks" in the hands of militants. Heavy militant weapons beget heavy government weapons.
In reality the Syrian army is using force directly proportional to the threats NATO-backed militants have presented. Tanks and heavy weapons mounted on trucks, also featured in the BBC report, are legitimate targets for government heavy weapons. The precision an SU-25 lends the battlefield verses heavy artillery bombardments when neutralizing FSA heavy weapons is the only conceivable way to minimize civilian casualties.
Images: (Top) From BBC's Ian Pannell - BBC and other Western media outlets have claimed "MIGs" are bombing Aleppo's civilian populations. This all based on a single "tweet" made by BBC's Ian Pannell. Pannell now reports this video depicts what he saw - which in reality is an anti-tank SU-25 deploying machine guns, not bombs, verses what Pannell already admits are FSA heavy weapons, not civilian populations. (Bottom) Several orthographic views of the SU-25 for comparison.
And as the Western media is so found of reminding its viewers, Aleppo is decidedly pro-government, and pro-President Bashar al-Assad. Therefore to indiscriminately use disproportionate force serves no purpose for the Syrian government, who has gone through extraordinary lengths and placed its soldiers at great risk to minimize damage to the city and its inhabitants - a city and population that serves both an important role economically and culturally for all Syrian people.
Remember Fallujah, Iraq
A government is put in a difficult position when armed gangs enter a city "seeking revenge" as BBC's Ian Pannell puts it, when these gangs have trucks mounted with heavy weapons as well as tanks in their possession. For the West, to berate the Syrian government and portray its security operations as unmitigated "brutality" is disingenuous at best, especially considering the militants are there solely because of years of financial, military, and political support from the US, Israel, and the Gulf State despots.
Image: Western hypocrisy - Fallujah, Iraq in 2004 was bombarded by artillery and airstrikes for weeks leading up to the final invasion. When over 10,000 troops entered the city, they were accompanied by tanks, and supported by heavy artillery and airstrikes. When the West is subjugating others, heavy weapons seems acceptable - but not when another nation attempts to defend itself from admittedly Western-backed terrorists.
The West might want to also revisit the lessons it learned from flattening the Iraqi city of Fallujhah, twice. The US bombarded the city for weeks prior to its final invasion in 2004, where over 10,000 troops entered with heavy artillery and air support. Apparently it is acceptable for the West to subjugate others using such tactics, but nations are prohibited from using similar tactics to defend themselves. The Syrian uprising was a foreign-plot stretching back as far as 2007, foreign militants admittedly flowing over the border from across the Arab World, admittedly armed and funded by the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.
The Battle of Fullujah is considered a notch in the belt of Western military prowess, while the West condemns Syria's attempts to defend one of its most important cities from foreign-subversion and destruction. While NATO believes it can still win the geopolitical battle it is waging against the Syrian people, it has already long lost the battle for moral superiority.
Originally published on Land Destroyer
As the "Free Syrian Army" (FSA) proxies fail and psychological operations falter, US prepares more direct approach for long-sought regime change. Tony Cartalucci reports on how the government of Syria, under attack from terrorist proxies of Arab dictatorships, Israel, the US and its NATO allies has, not for the first time, defied Western media pronouncements of its imminent collapse following the recent terrorist killing of four senior government ministers. Embedded in this article is a moving tribute by French journalist Thierry Meyssan (pictured) to the heroism and fortitude of the Syrian people that allowed them to keep the government operating almost without interruption following the latest terrorist outrage.
Previously published on Global Research and Land Destroyer on 22 July 2012.
See also: The battle of Damascus has begun of 25 Jul 2012 by Thiery Meyssan
As the "Free Syrian Army" (FSA) proxies fail and psychological operations falter, US prepares more direct approach for long-sought regime change. Tony Cartalucci reports on how the government of Syria, under attack from terrorist proxies of Arab dictatorships, Israel, the US and its NATO allies has, not for the first time, defied Western media pronouncements of its imminent collapse following the recent terrorist killing of four senior government ministers. Embedded in this article is a moving tribute by French journalist Thierry Meyssan to the heroism and fortitude of the Syrian people that allowed them to keep the government operating almost without interruption following the latest terrorist outrage.
Previously published on Global Research and Land Destroyer on 22 July 2012.
See also: The battle of Damascus has begun of 25 Jul 2012 by Thiery Meyssan
by Tony Cartalucci
As it becomes increasingly clear that last week's "surge" by NATO-backed so-called "Free Syrian Army" terrorists was a failed psychological operation, coordinated with meticulously timed assassinations the day of the UN Security Council vote designed to stampede the Syrian government out of power, the FSA's foreign sponsors are preparing the public for a more direct intervention while desperately attempting to maintain the illusion of chaos and the imminent collapse of Syria's government.
Video: Thierry Meyssan in Damascus, Syria. Please choose from "choose language" to see English subtitles.
Contradicting NATO's narrative, was Thierry Meyssan in Damascus, Syria who reported that Syria's continuity of government seamlessly moved forward after the assassinations last week, and that state institutions are still standing and very much functional. He describes Syria's latest unrest as the result of a coordinated NATO-backed terrorist operation aimed at creating confusion and panic, coupled with Western propaganda - and warns that more operations are likely on the way.
The Telegraph's, "Bashar al-Assad's Syria is now in a death spiral," and the Guardian's "Syria endgame: who and what will emerge from the ruins?" both desperately attempt to write off the Syrian government as already finished, an unsubstantiated reoccurring narrative being repeated daily by the West. Both articles however, categorically fail in qualifying their premises with subsequent facts - instead they depend on rehashing the initial violence that accompanied last week's assassinations - violence that has already been adequately dealt with by Syrian security forces.
In New York Times' article, "US to Focus on Forcibly Toppling Syrian Government," is all but an admission that indeed NATO's FSA terrorists have failed, and that what is in reality imminent, is the restoration of order by the Syrian army after over a year of foreign subversion and armed infiltration. Essential to the West's plan, is now fabricating a justification the US, Israel, and the Gulf despots currently do not have - to more directly intervene before the limitations of NATO's proxy forces are irrevocably exposed.
To achieve this, the Western media has decided to continue depicting Syria as "collapsing" even as security has been fully restored in Damascus, border crossings retaken after NATO-harbored terrorists struck from across Syria's borders, overrunning small platoon-sized garrisons, and now it is confirmed that bolstered Syrian border defenses near Daraa on the Jordanian-Syrian border, entirely balked FSA terrorists.
Despite this, the Western media is still reporting "battles" in Damascus, that have "spread" to Aleppo. Aleppo being another relatively unscathed city, is being purposefully attacked in order to enhance NATO's campaign to terrorize, panic, and divide the Syrian people. Already, however, Syrian troops have begun security operations to surround and neutralize terrorist elements, just as they have done already in Damascus.
But before the violence ebbs, at least, before the Western media finds it no longer tenable to report battles that have subsided days ago, the West has stampeded through several declarations. New York Times' article, in addition to admitting more direct military intervention is being prepared, admits that the US and France are putting their proxy "Syrian National Council" in place to lead a "transitional government."
The West's problem is that not a square-inch of Syrian territory is held by NATO's terrorist proxies - unlike in Libya where NATO proxies were operating out of Benghazi - raising the specter that some larger military intervention emanating from Syria's borders will take place. The most likely location of such an operation would be via Turkey to establish a seat of power for the Western client regime.
To justify more overt Western intervention, an incredible amount of time and energy has been invested in preparing the general public for the prospect of a "chemical attack."Syria has never deployed its chemical weapons, nor does it stand to gain from any such deployment, tactically, politically, or geopolitically. The only beneficiaries of such an attack would be NATO, Israel, and the Gulf despots, who could then use it to justify the "forcible toppling" of the Syrian government they now openly seek. If chemical weapons are deployed in Syria, it will most certainly be the work of NATO and its FSA proxies, using Libya's admittedly pilfered and proliferated arsenal.
The announcement that indeed the US and France are maneuvering their client regime into place, while they plan on openly intervening on behalf of the so-called "Free Syrian Army," is the final nail in the "opposition's" legitimacy, exposing them as place holders of Western geopolitical aspirations in Syria, and in the Arab World. Earlier it was reported that the Syrian opposition was literally being coached and tutored by the US State Department, via the US government-funded US Institute of Peace (USIP) who is literally writing Syria's "new" constitution, as well as engineering the entire "transitional" process on their behalf.
Syria and its allies, should they remain resolved and react only to the actual conditions on the ground can continue to balk Western ambitions by standing united, as they have throughout their history. For now, it appears the West will be happy to divide Syria along sectarian lines, forcing the government's supporters to flee to ethnic enclaves. This means that NATO death squads will be focusing primarily on attacking minorities - a campaign that seems to have already begun.
Above all, skepticism and vigilance is needed to objectively analyze further developments, with further NATO machinations all but assured to follow.
Tony Cartalucci is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Tony Cartalucci
According to a report on VoltaireNet.org, at two recent meetings in Qatar and a further meeting in Riyadh, operatives of the Arab dictatorships and NATO met to coordinate a disinformation campaign including interference with satellite broadcasts to conceal a coup against the Syrian Government. As the article notes, the actions proposed, including the planned complicity of the international newsmedia violate intentional law. Nazi German propagandists were tried at Nuremburg for committing similar crimes.
Previously published in Land Destroyer as URGENT: Expose NATO Dirty Tricks in Syria BEFORE They Happen and originally on Voltaire.net as NATO preparing vast disinformation campaign on 11 June 2012.
Source of cartoon: www.historians.org/projects/giroundtable/Propaganda/Propaganda3.htm Another, better source for discussion on the nature of war propaganda is http://www.globalissues.org/article/157/war-propaganda-and-the-media#PropagandaandWar.
In a few days, perhaps as early as Friday, June 15, at noon, the Syrians wanting to watch their national TV stations will see them replaced on their screens by TV programs created by the CIA. Studio-shot images will show massacres that are blamed on the Syrian Government, people demonstrating, ministers and generals resigning from their posts, President Al-Assad fleeing, the rebels gathering in the big city centers, and a new government installing itself in the presidential palace.
This operation of disinformation, directly managed from Washington by Ben Rhodes, the US deputy national security adviser for strategic communication, aims at demoralizing the Syrians in order to pave the way for a coup d'etat. NATO, discontent about the double veto of Russia and China, will thus succeed in conquering Syria without attacking the country illegally. Whichever judgment you might have formed on the actual events in Syria, a coup d'etat will end all hopes of democratization.
The Arab League has officially asked the satellite operators Arabsat and Nilesat to stop broadcasting Syrian media, either public or private (Syria TV, Al-Ekbariya, Ad-Dounia, Cham TV, etc.) A precedent already exists because the Arab League had managed to censure Libyan TV in order to keep the leaders of the Jamahiriya from communicating with their people. There is no Hertz network in Syria, where TV works exclusively with satellites. The cut, however, will not leave the screens black.
Actually, this public decision is only the tip of the iceberg. According to our information several international meetings were organized during the past week to coordinate the disinformation campaign. The first two were technical meetings, held in Doha (Qatar); the third was a political meeting and took place in Riyad (Saudi Arabia).
The first meeting assembled PSYOP officers, embedded in the satellite TV channels of Al-Arabiya, Al-Jazeera, BBC, CNN, Fox, France 24, Future TV and MTV. It is known that since 1998, the officers of the US Army Psychological Operations Unit (PSYOP) have been incorporated in CNN. Since then this practice has been extended by NATO to other strategic media as well.
They fabricated false information in advance, on the basis of a "story-telling" script devised by Ben Rhodes's team at the White House. A procedure of reciprocal validation was installed, with each media quoting the lies of the other media to render them plausible for TV spectators. The participants also decided not only to requisition the TV channels of the CIA for Syria and Lebanon (Barada, Future TV, MTV, Orient News, Syria Chaab, Syria Alghad) but also about 40 religious Wahhabi TV channels to call for confessional massacres to the cry of "Christians to Beyrouth, Alawites into the grave!."
The second meeting was held for engineers and technicians to fabricate fictitious images, mixing one part in an outdoor studio, the other part with computer generated images. During the past weeks, studios in Saudi Arabia have been set up to build replicas of the two presidential palaces in Syria and the main squares of Damascus, Aleppo and Homs. Studios of this type already exist in Doha (Qatar), but they are not sufficient.
The third meeting was held by General James B. Smith, the US ambassador, a representative of the UK, prince Bandar Bin Sultan (whom former U.S. president George Bush named his adopted son so that the U.S. press called him "Bandar Bush"). In this meeting the media actions were coordinated with those of the Free "Syrian" Army, in which prince Bandar's mercenaries play a decisive role.
The operation had been in the making for several months, but the U.S. National Security Council decided to accelerate the action after the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, notified the White House that he would oppose by all means, even by force, any illegal NATO military intervention in Syria.
The operation has a double intent: the first is to spread false information, the second aims at censuring all possible responses.
The hampering of TV satellites for military purposes is not new. Under pressure from Israel, the USA and the EU blocked Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi, Libyan and Iranian TV channels, one after the other. However, no satellite channels from other parts of the world were censured.
The broadcast of false news is also not new, but four significant steps have been taken in the art of propaganda during the last decade.
Nowadays the media do not only support a war, they produce it themselves.
This procedure violates the principles of International Law, first of all Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights relating to the fact of receiving and imparting information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Above all, the procedure violates the United Nations General Assembly resolution, adopted after the end of World War II, to prevent further wars. Resolutions 110, 381 and 819 forbid "to set obstacles to free exchange of information and ideas" (like cutting off Syrian TV channels) and "all propaganda provoking or encouraging threats to peace, breaking peace, and all acts of aggression". By law, war propaganda is a crime against peace, the worst of crimes, because it facilitates war crimes and genocide.
The misreporting of the Syrian conflict in order to overcome public opposition to NATO's planned war against Syria, examples of which are shown below, are no less violations of Interntional law than was Nazi Propagandist Hans Fritzsche who was tried at Nuremburg for his crimes.
Syria escalation worries UN, US
More than 100 people have been killed in violence across Syria, as international mediator Kofi Annan says he is "gravely concerned" by the ...
Syrian army using kids as human shields of 9 June 2012
The Syrian army has killed at least 23 civilians in two protest cities, a watchdog says, as international outcry mounts over a massacre in a central village. ...
Syrian army using kids as human shields of12 June 2012
Syrian troops have tortured children, executed them and used children as young as eight as "human shields" during military raids against ...
Murder of children tops UN's shame list of 12 June 2012
Syrian troops have tortured children, executed them and used children as young as eight as "human shields" during military raids against rebels, according to a UN report to be released today.
The United Nations named the Syrian government one of the worst offenders on its annual "list of shame" of conflict countries where children are killed, tortured and forced to fight.
The Syrian army has killed at least 17 civilians, including nine women and three children, in the flashpoint southern town of Daraa, the Syrian ...
Syrian army 'uses kids as human shields' of June 12, 2012
SYRIAN troops have tortured children, executed them and used children as young as eight as "human shields" during military raids against rebels, according to a UN report.
The United States voiced fears that Syria's government is planning a new massacre, as regime helicopters fired on rebel stronghold towns and raging violence killed over 100 people. ...
Syrians suffer - UN paralysed of June 11, 2012
As the bloodbath in Syria continues, with grotesque new atrocities being committed on a daily basis, the international community must not allow itself to be frozen into inaction or acquiescence by the veto wielded at the United Nations by President Bashar al-Assad's two protectors, Russia and China.
Tyrants the world over - be they Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Sudan's Omar al-Bashir, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or North Korea's Kim Jong-un - rest easier knowing that when it comes to human rights and decency, they can count on support from Moscow and Beijing. Mr Assad is no exception. ...
Further editorial comment: The contents of all the items listed above are demonstrable fabrications of which their authors cannot be unaware. These lies are certain to be paid for in coming days with Syrian lives. In a fair trial those who authored and edited these lies would almost certainly be convicted and jailed for violating international law.
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