Israeli Newspaper Confirms IDF Employed 'Hannibal Directive' on October 7
IDF soldiers were reportedly ordered to "turn the area around the border fence into a killing zone."
by Jake Johnson
The Israeli newspaper Haaretzreported Sunday
that Israel's military repeatedly employed a protocol known as the
"Hannibal Directive" during the October 7 Hamas-led attack in an attempt
to prevent the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers—even if it meant putting
the lives of army captives and civilians at risk.
Haaretz
found based on documents and interviews with soldiers and senior
Israeli officers that Hannibal—an operational order developed in 1986
that "directs the use of force to prevent soldiers being taken into
captivity" by enemy militants—was used "at three army facilities
infiltrated by Hamas, potentially endangering civilians as well."
During the first hours of the Hamas-led attack, according to Haaretz, Israeli soldiers were given an order: "Not a single vehicle can return to Gaza."....
Bombshell NYT Expose Details War Crimes By American-Led Volunteer Force In Ukraine
The last many weeks (or even months) of Ukraine coverage by
mainstream media has seen a major shift. One might observe that Western
reporters are actually starting to do their jobs for a change, and
digging into to 'inconvenient' truths and stories which a year ago no
outlet would have touched amid the general pro-Kyiv euphoria.
A military correspondent with The New York Times has issued the newest bombshell report this weekend which shines a spotlight on not just Ukrainian troops but American and foreign fighters who've volunteered with pro-Kyiv forces and have committed potential war crimes. The report, titled Killings of Surrendering Russians Divide an American-Led Unit,
reveals how US troops are participating in units which conduct
extra-judicial killings of Russians who have legitimately surrendered.
Much of the eyewitness accounts come from a German volunteer identified as Caspar Grosse, a medic in an all-foreign unit led by an American who says he witnessed clear war crimes and that his conscience has forced him to speak out...................
I guess you remember how a
few years ago, the media called everyone who refused to wear a mask or
get vaccinated a ‘grandma killer’. To protect the elderly, to save every
minute of their lives – that was all what mattered.
Here is something to think about: Last week, I stumbled upon an article in a Dutch mainstream newspaper
which declared in a technical and deliberate way that the ‘mysteriously
persisting excess death’ has certain advantages: it saves the state
hundreds of millions of costs of taking care for old people. I checked
my calendar. An April fools’ joke maybe? No – it was no joke..............
Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential
Published:July 05, 2024
By June 19, 2024, 37 396 people had been
killed in the Gaza Strip since the attack by Hamas and the Israeli
invasion in October, 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, as
reported by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
the UN, and WHO. These data are supported by independent analyses,
comparing changes in the number of deaths of UN Relief and Works Agency
(UNRWA) staff with those reported by the Ministry,
The Ministry has had to augment its usual reporting, based on people
dying in its hospitals or brought in dead, with information from
reliable media sources and first responders. This change has inevitably
degraded the detailed data recorded previously. Consequently, the Gaza
Health Ministry now reports separately the number of unidentified bodies
among the total death toll. As of May 10, 2024, 30% of the 35 091
deaths were unidentified.
Some
officials and news agencies have used this development, designed to
improve data quality, to undermine the veracity of the data. However,
the number of reported deaths is likely an underestimate. The
non-governmental organisation Airwars undertakes detailed assessments of
incidents in the Gaza Strip and often finds that not all names of
identifiable victims are included in the Ministry's list.
Armed
conflicts have indirect health implications beyond the direct harm from
violence. Even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to
be many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such
as reproductive, communicable, and non-communicable diseases. The total
death toll is expected to be large given the intensity of this
conflict; destroyed health-care infrastructure; severe shortages of
food, water, and shelter; the population's inability to flee to safe
places; and the loss of funding to UNRWA, one of the very few
humanitarian organisations still active in the Gaza Strip.
In
recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the
number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four
indirect deaths per one direct death
to the 37 396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that
up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current
conflict in Gaza. Using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of
2 375 259, this would translate to 7·9% of the total population in the
Gaza Strip. A report from Feb 7, 2024, at the time when the direct death
toll was 28 000, estimated that without a ceasefire there would be
between 58 260 deaths (without an epidemic or escalation) and 85 750
deaths (if both occurred) by Aug 6, 2024.10...............
b
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“The situation there is more horrific
than anything we’ve heard about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.” This is how
Khaled Mahajneh describes the Sde Teiman detention center
as the first lawyer to visit the facility. More than 4,000 Palestinians
whom Israel arrested in Gaza have been held at the military base in the
Naqab/Negev since October 7; some of them have subsequently been
released, but most remain in Israeli detention.
Mahajneh, a Palestinian citizen of
Israel, was initially approached by Al Araby TV, which was seeking
information about Muhammad Arab, a reporter for the network who was
arrested in March while covering the Israeli siege of Al-Shifa Hospital
in Gaza City. “I contacted the Israeli army’s control center, and after
providing them with a photo and an ID card of the detainee, as well as
my official power of attorney document, I was informed that [Arab] was
being held at Sde Teiman and that he could be visited.”
When Mahajneh arrived at the base on
June 19, he was required to leave his car far away from the site, where
an army jeep was waiting to transport him inside. This was “something I
had never encountered on any previous visit to any prison,” he told
+972. They drove for about 10 minutes through the facility — a sprawling
network of trailers — before arriving at a large warehouse, which
contained a trailer guarded by masked soldiers.....
A trans-identified male has been found guilty of rape after sexually
attacking a woman during a night out. Lexi Secker, previously known as
Alexander Secker, was said to have committed the crime when he was
“living as a man.”
The assault is said to have taken place in Blunsdon, Wiltshire, in
April of 2023. While details are extremely limited, it is known that
Secker began identifying as woman in the period between the assault and
his court hearings.
But in a statement on the arrest, Wiltshire Police referred to Secker
as a “person convicted of rape,” adding that he was recorded as a male
by police but “tried as a woman” in court.
In subsequent coverage by the BBC, feminine pronouns were
used for Secker. A photo of the criminal was noticeably absent from
reports on the conviction, which had sparse details on the incident
beyond noting he had been remanded into custody awaiting sentencing............
Earlier this month, the Canadian Parliament’s National Security and Intelligence Committee (NSICOP) released an 84-page, special report on alleged foreign interference in Canada’s “democratic processes and institutions”.
Initially, the committee delivered its special report to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on March 22 of this year.
As a result of mounting controversy around allegations of foreign
interference in Canada, NSICOP then publicly released a heavily redacted
version of its special report.
How can an evidence-free report be “damning”?
Predictably, Canada’s corporate media described the report as “shocking“, “explosive” and “damning“. They did so despite the fact (which the media ignored) that the report is totally devoid of evidence.
I’ve read the report twice. I did so from the perspective of a
litigator. That is, to assess whether NSICOP’s allegations were
supported by persuasive evidence, I brought to bear my extensive
experience in evaluating evidence........
In
2007, Orlando residents were furious to discover that an FBI informant
had organized a neo-Nazi rally through one of the city’s mostly black
neighborhoods a year earlier.
“To come into a
predominantly black community, which could have resulted in great harm
to the black community? I would hate to be part of a game,” Orlando City
Councilwoman Daisy Lynum said at the time, calling for a “full-scale investigation” into the matter.
However, an FBI agent testified that his informant participated in the event, but didn’t organize it. The city’s uproar passed without a public investigation, full-scale or otherwise—until now.
Thanks to a trove of previously unpublicized law enforcement records and interviews with several players involved, Headline USA can reveal that the Orlando neo-Nazi rally was indeed organized by the FBI.
The Orlando event also seems to have been part of a larger program to
hold Nazi rallies across the country. And according to FBI records, the
bureau sponsored those events despite knowing they led to an increase in
the number of card-carrying Nazis in America.
Moreover, the FBI’s Nazi rallies led to a much larger operation to target right-wing groups. Dubbed “Primitive Affliction,”
the operation featured a motorcycle front group, rogue undercover
agents, Outlaw bikers, Satanists, bomb-makers and a fugitive on the lam
in Mexico.......
High Court Rules Ultra-Orthodox Men Are Subject to Draft, Threatening Netanyahu’s Coalition
The ultra-orthodox parties in Netanyahu’s government condemned the ruling
Israel’s high court ruled
that men in the ultra-Orthodox community are subject to conscription on
Tuesday. The community, known as the Haredim, is politically powerful,
subsidized by the citizenry, and until now had been unaffected by the
mass mandatory enlistment. This is a heavily contentious issue as more
than 600 Israeli soldiers have been killed and thousands more wounded in
Gaza, and the ruling could spell trouble for Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s fragile ruling coalition.
The court’s decree, which was unanimously supported by all nine
justices, says “At the height of a difficult war, the burden of
inequality is more than ever acute.” It also stipulates that, if they
refuse military service in the absence of a formal exemption,
ultra-Orthodox men studying at Yeshivas will lose their taxpayer
funding.
The secular and non-Orthodox population including men and women have
long been subject to mandatory enlistment, “[serving] three and two
years respectively as well as reserve duty until around age 40,” the Associated Press notes.
Naturally, they view the previous status quo as discriminatory.
Whereas, for decades, the Haredim have vehemently opposed military
service while enjoying their exemption. The dispute has boiled over now
as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been bogged down in the Gaza
slaughter campaign, while concurrently Tel Aviv seems ready to
drastically escalate the burgeoning war with Lebanon.
Opposition parties on the left and right have praised the
long-awaited change in policy. The Movement for Quality Government
issued a statement calling the high court decision “a historic triumph
for the rule of law and the principle of equal military service burden.”
The same party led the petition to the court and has now implored
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to immediately draft Haredi men.....................
By Roman Shumov, aRussian historian focused on conflicts and international politics
The Prigozhin paradox: What was Russia’s Wagner PMC and how did its June 23 mutiny happen?
The now fighting group was the stuff of legend
before it came out of the shadows. Then like Icarus it flew too close to
the Sun
On June 23, 2023, one of the most mysterious events in modern Russian
history kicked off. Units of PMC Wagner – at the time a highly
combat-ready but also historically unusual component of the Russian
Armed Forces – withdrew from the theater of operations in Ukraine.
Restaurateur and musician
The
story of the Wagner mutiny cannot be told without the story of the
people behind the creation of the PMC. The main figure is Yevgeny
Prigozhin, a St. Petersburg businessman who rose from humble beginnings
to become a wealthy tycoon. His youth was turbulent, and in the early
1990s, as the USSR collapsed, he went into business, far removed from
military affairs. Prigozhin was a restaurateur. He started by selling
hot dogs, but quickly acquired money and ambition and began to open
restaurants in St. Petersburg to suit all tastes and budgets. By the end
of the 1990s, Prigozhin ran a chain of restaurants and a catering
company, and was well known to the establishment of the city on the
Neva. When Vladimir Putin, also from St. Petersburg, became president of
Russia, Prigozhin found more success. He was involved in organizing
catering in schools and then in the army, construction and other
projects. The businessman tried to keep a low profile, but in the 2010s
became increasingly involved in politics.......
It
takes a profound cruelty to support raining tens of thousands of tons
of military explosives onto a giant concentration camp full of children.
It takes outright malignant narcissism to expect everyone to accept
this, and to act wounded and indignant when they don’t.
Zionism
is like the exact opposite of people who identify as “spiritual but not
religious”; it’s religion stripped bare of all spirituality until it’s
nothing but a shitty political ideology that’s ultimately really about
land, western imperialism, and geostrategic control.
People feel
called to religion because there’s something in all of us that tells us
this world isn’t quite what it seems, like there’s some wondrous mystery
lurking just below the surface (really what they’re experiencing is an
uncomfortable dissonance with the delusion of egoic consciousness and an
impulse to try and awaken from it, but that’s a story for another
time). So they look to their religion to tell them how to have a living
spirituality that gives them what they’re craving, and, if they are
involved in certain Christian or Jewish sects, they’ll be told that they
can obtain what they long for by getting passionately engaged on issues
regarding the military and geopolitical objectives of a small country
on the other side of the planet.
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you suddenly gave the
internet to a remote, isolated indigenous tribe with no prior experience
of the modern world? Well, wonder no more! That’s exactly what you’re
about to find out.
Yes, as either an elaborate PR stunt or a selfless act of generosity
(depending on whom you ask), a wealthy American benefactor has just
bestowed the “gift” of Starlink antennae on an Amazonian tribe to
connect their isolated community to the internet...........
In forced
arbitration, a company requires a consumer or employee to submit any
dispute that may arise to binding arbitration as a condition of
employment or buying a product or service. The employee or consumer is
required to waive their right to sue, to participate in a class action
lawsuit, or to appeal. Forced arbitration is mandatory, the arbitrator’s
decision is binding, and the results are not public.
As more and more workplaces return to work in the next few months,
these social distancing monitors are likely to become a minor boom
industry of their own: Bloomberg News hasreported that
Ford planned to enforce social distancing by having its workers wear
RFID wristbands, developed by Radiant RFID, that would buzz when a
worker got too close to a colleague and would also provide supervisors
with alerts about employees who were congregating together in larger
groups.
Another company, Guard RFID, published a blog post detailing
how its technology could be used for “infection control in the
workplace,” including through the use of wearable RFID tags that would
“alarm when tagged individuals come within close proximity to each
other.” (Guard RFID and Radiant both declined to comment on their
ventures into social distancing solutions.).........
Israeli
authorities, Palestinian armed groups are responsible for war crimes,
other grave violations of international law, UN Inquiry finds
12 June 2024
GENEVA (12 June 2024) – Israeli authorities are
responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during
the military operations and attacks in Gaza since 7 October 2023, the UN
Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied
Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, said in a
new report today. The Commission also found that Palestinian armed groups are responsible for war crimes committed in Israel.
The
Commission’s report – the UN’s first in-depth investigation of the
events that took place on and since 7 October 2023 – is based on
interviews with victims and witnesses conducted remotely and during a
mission to Türkiye and Egypt, thousands of open-source items verified
through advanced forensic analysis, hundreds of submissions, satellite
imagery and forensic medical reports. Israel obstructed the Commission’s
investigations and prevented its access to Israel and the Occupied
Palestinian Territory.
“It is imperative that all those who have
committed crimes be held accountable,” said Navi Pillay, Chair of the
Commission. “The only way to stop the recurring cycles of violence,
including aggression and retribution by both sides, is to ensure strict
adherence to international law.”
“Israel must immediately stop its
military operations and attacks in Gaza, including the assault on
Rafah, which has cost the lives of hundreds of civilians and again
displaced hundreds of thousands of people to unsafe locations without
basic services and humanitarian assistance,” Pillay said. “Hamas and
Palestinian armed groups must immediately cease rocket attacks and
release all hostages. The taking of hostages constitutes a war crime.”.............
The UK Meteorological Office has just reported that we have enjoyed the hottest May on record.
Meanwhile, those of us who have lived in the UK during May have
endured unseasonal cold and rain, and have complained to one another
constantly about it.
Welcome to the age of abstraction, when lived experience is
irrelevant and theoretical constructions carry the day – when what is
deemed right and true is unmoored from what is actually happening here
and now.
Over four years ago, Covid lockdowns staged a dramatic confiscation
of present reality. The question is, did we ever get it back?
When the UK government ordered its first lockdown at the end of March
2020, the present reality was put on hold – businesses were shut,
schools closed, social activities banned, and human interactions
restricted.
Chaos and suffering inevitably ensued. But in the midst of the misery, there arose a new possibility.
With present reality in abeyance, we were freed of its reality check.
And we began to indulge in a new and joyous expectancy, of a wonderful
future to revive a glorious past.
‘We’ll meet again,’ Queen Elizabeth assured us, reprising in her
words and presence a fondly recalled togetherness of the last world war
and promising its restoration as if it had only just been paused
– as if the decades-long decimation of community and family and
individual had never happened, as if only a temporary order to Stay Home
stood between us and a lost world.
This new possibility was tantalizing and quickly took hold of Middle
England, the BBC-believing bastion of British Values, bent ever more
implausibly on keeping calm and carrying on. ..................
Saudi Arabia's petro-dollar exit: A global finance paradigm shift
The crucial decision to not renew the contract enables Saudi Arabia to
sell oil and other goods in multiple currencies, including the Chinese
RMB, Euros, Yen, and Yuan, instead of exclusively in US dollars.
Additionally, the potential use of digital currencies like Bitcoin may
also be considered
Significant financial upheaval is
potentially ahead of the financial world as Saudi Arabia has decided not
to renew its 80-year petro-dollar deal with the United States. The
deal, which expired on Sunday 9 June, was a cornerstone of the United
States global economic dominance......
94% of Americans Want to End Ukraine War, but US Rejects China Peace Deal, Opposes Talks With Russia
Despite this, NATO opposes a peace proposal made by China and Brazil,
and refuses to invite Russia to a so-called “peace conference” that the
Western powers are holding in Switzerland from June 15-16.
The Institute for Global Affairs of Eurasia Group, an avowedly
pro-NATO and anti-Russia consulting firm that has worked extensively
with Western governments, published a study this June titled “The New Atlanticism”.
The survey found that the 94% of people in the US and 88% in Western
Europe want a negotiated settlement to end the war in Ukraine.
Just 17% of North Americans and Western Europeans say that the war must continue in order to weaken Russia.
(The poll allowed participants to choose two answers, which explains why the total is larger than 100%).....
‘I heard all of my friends’ last breath’: Testimonies from the Nuseirat massacre
The Israeli massacre in Gaza's Nuseirat camp
killed over 270 Palestinians and injured many more. Survivors say the
horrors they witnessed will stay with them for the rest of their lives.
The Israeli massacre in the Nuseirat camp to liberate four Israeli
prisoners held by resistance factions in the Gaza Strip started at 11:00
in the morning on June 8. Although the scenes of Palestinians running
for safety may have seemed sadly familiar, this invasion was different
from others that have been carried out across the Gaza Strip.
This time, the Israeli military wore civilian clothes, rode in
Palestinian cars, and moved among the people in disguise. There were no
warnings to evacuate, or orders from the army to move elsewhere, and
people were surprised by the Israeli special forces and tanks. A large
number of special forces hidden among the people only revealed
themselves once the deadly operation began as other special forces
stormed the area traveling in cars loaded with luggage, the same luggage
that the displaced people carry with them, such as mattresses, pillows,
blankets, and bags. When the Palestinians detected them, the soldiers
quickly called for support, and helicopters, fighter planes, artillery,
and tanks descended. Reconnaissance aircraft and foot solders then began
committing massacres against the civilian population.
The intensity of shelling and gunfire soon warned the residents that a
massacre was unfolding. They left their homes and took to the streets
running in search of safety, which could not be found.
The Israeli operation killed 274 Palestinians, including 64 children,
and injured 689 Palestinians in total. “Some of the bodies that arrived
at the hospital were body parts, as well as dismembered bodies,” the
Gaza Ministry of Health reported when announcing the casualty numbers. ......
Some priests blame atheists for catastrophic floods in Brazil
by Michael Lee Longenecker / June 8th, 2024
When
the Black Death struck Europe in the Middle Ages, the fundamental
values that held society together broke down. Husbands and wives
abandoned each other and mothers abandoned their children. This void of
ethics that overtook the population is described in Boccaccio’s The Decameron,
considered a masterpiece of Italian prose and a documentary of life
during that time. The book describes the sense of hopelessness that
spread throughout the world, because it did not matter what stature one
held in life or what one did or did not do to avoid the disease, all
were subject to its lethality. Some implored their God in vain while
others pursued a carpe diem spirit in an attempt to grab the last bit of
pleasure from life when they were able. The common explanation for the
indiscriminate devastation wrought by the Black Plague was God’s
punishment for human wrongdoing. Nothing in human behavior has changed
since then and I believe the ecological overshoot that man finds himself
in today, manifested most prominently as climate chaos amongst a myriad
of other threats, will cause humans to question the futility of life
and their existence just as did those victims of the bubonic plague. A recent study has found that climate chaos is indeed worsening neurological diseases and mental health disorders. Another study found that people are denying climate change as a form of self-deception necessary to maintain their psychological health.......
UN to place Israel on blacklist alongside ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram: Report
Israeli
officials failed to lobby the UN against the move, which they describe
as 'highly problematic' as it could lead to countries imposing an arms
embargo on Tel Aviv
JUN 7, 2024
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is expected to include
the Israeli army in the annual blacklist of countries and organizations harming children in conflict zones, according to reports in Israeli media.
Israel will reportedly appear on the
blacklist to be published next week as part of a report distributed to
UN Security Council members. A discussion on the report will take place
on June 26.
According to Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel's “efforts to persuade Guterres to avoid this move have failed.”
“The
current secretary-general is anti-Israel and can no longer be
influenced,” unnamed Israeli officials told the Israeli daily last
month, expressing concerns that the move was imminent. “Including Israel
on the blacklist is highly problematic and could lead to countries
imposing an arms embargo on Israel,” the sources added.
Nonetheless, the UN is not expected to explicitly mention Israel or the Israeli army but rather “Israeli security forces.”
The
annual report, authored by UN Special Representative of the
Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict Virginia Gamba, will
cover all of 2023, with a notable increase in incidents due to Israel's
campaign of genocide in Gaza......
If you want a glimpse of the next stage of America’s transformation
into a police state, look no further than how Israel—a long-time
recipient of hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid from the U.S.—uses its high-tech military tactics, surveillance and weaponry to advance its authoritarian agenda.
Military checkpoints. Wall-to-wall mass surveillance. Predictive policing. Aerial surveillance that tracks your movements wherever you go and whatever you do. AI-powered facial recognition and biometric programs carried
out with the knowledge or consent of those targeted by it.
Cyber-intelligence. Detention centers. Brutal interrogation tactics.
Weaponized drones. Combat robots.
In 1999, a woman named Cindy Hendy was stabbed in the neck with an
ice pick by a woman named Cynthia Vigil inside a trailer home in New
Mexico. Vigil then fled the scene to a nearby residence, whose owner
promptly called the police.
She was never charged with any crime.
The
reason Cynthia Vigil was never charged with any crime despite having
stabbed Cindy Hendy in the neck with an ice pick was because Hendy was
an accomplice of the serial killer David Parker Ray,
also known as the Toy Box Killer. Vigil’s escape from the trailer where
Ray and Hendy had been imprisoning and torturing her led to the pair’s
subsequent arrest. Ray died in prison three years later, the full extent
of his murder spree still unknown. Hendy served 19 years and was
released in 2019.
Cynthia Vigil was never charged with any
crime because anyone could see that violent force was an entirely
understandable and legitimate response to having been kidnapped and
subjected to horrific treatment. It never at any time occurred to anyone
to say that she should have acted differently, and it most certainly
never occurred to anyone to make her single act of desperate violence
the major story instead of the fact that there was a serial killer who’d
been abducting women and torturing them in his murder dungeon......
Payments
to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s agency and colleagues from private
pharmaceutical firms under obscure licensing and royalty schemes
skyrocketed during the pandemic.
The
American people started to feel that Big Pharma was very close to Big
Government. Thanks to our two federal lawsuits demanding transparency,
we know more details and they do not inspire confidence.
In
2022 and 2023, pharmaceutical and healthcare companies paid the
National Institutes of Health a sum of $710,381,160 in third party
royalties. These were payments to NIH, its leadership and scientists by
healthcare entities licensing inventions created in federal,
taxpayer-paid labs. The two-year average of such payments over the prior
decade was less than $5 million, for an increase of more than 175
times.
Fauci’s
institute, The National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases
(NIAID) received $690,218,610 of the $710 million, or 97%. In the same
period, the other 26 institutes under the NIH received some $26 million
in total.
It was an extreme cash haul at Fauci’s institute:
Between 2009-2021, OpenTheBooks.com, the organization I founded and lead, previously reported that $325 million was paid to all NIH institutes. Fauci’s NIAID received $23.9 million of that – or an average of $2 million per year......
A panel of judges at the ICJ – sometimes known as the World Court – demanded last Friday that Israel immediately stop its current offensive on Rafah, in southern Gaza.
Instead, Israel responded by intensifying its atrocities.
On Sunday, it bombed a supposedly "safe zone"
crowded with refugee families forced to flee from the rest of Gaza,
which has been devastated by Israel’s rampage for the past eight
months. .......
Early Sunday morning, several dozen heavily armed men attacked the
Palace of the Nation, a presidential palace and home of the Minister of
the Economy in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo
(DRC). Men in fatigues opened fire, killing two of Economy Minister
Vital Kamerhe’s 15 guards. The attack lasted about three hours before it
was crushed.
The
leader of the attempted coup was identified as Christian Malanga, a
Congolese naturalized American. Malanga and three other men were killed
after resisting arrest, and some 50 people, including three US citizens,
were arrested, according to a Congolese army spokesman. The arrested US
citizens include Malanga’s 21-year-old son Marcel Malanga and Benjamin
Zalman-Polun, a 36-year-old former cannabis dealer from Maryland.
The
coup took place as Washington and its NATO allies wage a bitter
struggle for influence in Africa with China and Russia, amid the
NATO-Russia war in Ukraine. The NATO imperialist powers are dissatisfied
with the current DRC regime’s development of economic ties with Beijing
and Moscow.
The ICC Takes on Israel and the US Congressional Mafia
Pro-Israel
forces in the U.S. are trying their best to throw sand in the wheels of
justice with threats of new sanctions against the International
Criminal Court after it requested Israeli and Hamas arrest warrants.
Senator Lindsay Graham was bursting with contempt
for the International Criminal Court when he grilled Secretary of State
Antony Blinken at a May 21 congressional hearing. Wagging his finger,
he warned that, if the ICC gets away with issuing arrest warrants for
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav
Gallant, “We are next.”
The audience at the hearing, stacked with
CODEPINK pro-Palestine supporters, burst out in applause at the notion
of the U.S. being hauled before the world’s highest court. “You can clap
all you want,” an angry Graham retorted, “but they tried to come after
our soldiers in Afghanistan.” Graham was thankful that in the Afghan
case “reason prevailed” when the case was dropped, adding that the U.S.
must level sanctions against the ICC “not only to protect our friends in
Israel but to protect ourselves.”
Graham
was referring to the 2019 efforts of former ICC prosecutor Fatou
Bensouda to hold both the Taliban and the U.S. accountable for war
crimes in Afghanistan. When Graham said that “reason prevailed,” he
really meant that U.S. thuggery prevailed because the Trump
administration brazenly imposed sanctions against ICC officials, denying them visas to the U.S. and freezing their assets in U.S. banks. U.S. President Joe Biden lifted
the sanctions but did so with the tacit understanding that the court
would not resume the probe of U.S. crimes in Afghanistan. The message
from both Democratic and Republican presidents was clear: Do not dare
hold the U.S. to the same standards you use for others.
While
most Republicans and pro-Israel hawks in the Democratic Party will
likely join hands to hammer the international court, President Biden may
ultimately feel pressured to adopt the position best articulated by
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). “It is fine to express opposition to a
possible judicial action, but it is absolutely wrong to interfere.”
The
International Criminal Court was founded in 1998 as the result of a
lifetime’s work by an American (and Jewish) international lawyer,
Benjamin Ferencz, rooted in his experience as an investigator and chief
prosecutor at the Nuremberg tribunals after the Second World War. Ben
passed away in 2023 at the age of 103, but the universal jurisdiction
that the court is exercising in this case is the fruition of his life’s
work to hold war criminals accountable under international law, no
matter what country they are from or who their victims are.
Enter Israel. The ICC has been building a case against Israel for nearly a decade. A recent blockbuster investigation by TheGuardian
and two Israeli-based news outlets revealed a shocking almost
decade-long secret campaign against the court by Israeli intelligence
agencies, who surveilled, hacked, pressured, smeared, and threatened ICC
officials in an effort to derail the court’s inquiries..............
America’s universities are on fire. A protest
movement against the violence in Gaza and U.S. colleges’ complicity in
them has swept the nation, with encampments on college campuses in 45 of
America’s 50 states. The crackdown has been swift; thousands of
students have been arrested, charged, fined, lost their degrees, or even
deported. Amid corporate media demanding a “Kent State
2.0”, riot police, armored vehicles and snipers have been deployed
across the country to terrify those campaigning for justice into
silence.
Why have overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations against a foreign
power’s actions been met with such a heavy-handed response? A MintPress
News investigation finds that those same elite institutions have deep
financial and ideological ties to the state of Israel, are funded by
pro-Israel billionaires who have demanded they take action to crush the
student movement, are partially funded by the Israeli government, and
exist in a climate where Washington has made it clear that the protests
should not be tolerated.
Israel’s Billionaire Backers
The movement began on April 17 at Columbia University, where a modest
Gaza solidarity encampment was established. Protestors hardly expected
to be welcomed by university authorities but were shocked as university
president Minouche Shafik immediately called in the NYPD – the first
time the university had allowed police to suppress dissent on campus
since the famous 1968 demonstrations against the Vietnam War.
Shafik’s decision was no doubt influenced by the enormous pressure
put on her by the university’s top donors – many of whom have deep
connections to the Israeli state and its military.
Robert Kraft
Billionaire businessman and sports executive Robert Kraft, for
example, publicly announced he was cutting the university off from his
lavish funding over its failure to suppress the protests effectively
enough. “I am deeply saddened at the virulent hate that continues to
grow on campus and throughout our country,” he said in a statement, claiming that Columbia was not protecting its Jewish students........
