Stephen Lendman

Kiev fascists are murdering their own Southeastern citizens in cold blood. They're doing it with full support and complicity from Washington. Russia's RIA Novosti news service quoted Deputy Chairman of the Duma Committee on Defense, Franz Klintsevich, saying [the] use of ballistic missiles against Lugansk civilians...

..."suggests that the Ukrainian security forces have been granted carte blance from the Americans. They do not care what Russia says, what the international community or even Europe says today. They got their carte blanche, and while it remains active they want to deal with the situation in Donetsk as quickly as possible."

Using ballistic missiles against civilian neighborhoods shows how far Kiev and Washington will go to solidify hardline neo-Nazi-infested fascist rule. Rule of law principles don't matter. War without mercy ignores them.

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Paul Craig Roberts

The Western media have proved for all to see that the Western media comprises either a collection of ignorant and incompetent fools or a whorehouse that sells war for money.

The Western media fell in step with Washington and blamed the downed Malaysian airliner on Russia. No evidence was provided. In its place the media used constant repetition. Washington withheld the evidence that proved that Kiev was responsible. The media’s purpose was not to tell the truth, but to demonize Russia.

Now we have the media story of the armored Russian column that allegedly crossed into Ukraine and was destroyed by Ukraine’s rag-tag forces that ISIS would eliminate in a few minutes. British reporters fabricated this story or were handed it by a CIA operative working to build a war narrative. The disreputable BBC hyped the story without investigating. The German media, including Die Welt, blared the story throughout Germany without concern at the absence of any evidence. Reuters news agency, also with no investigation, spread the story. Readers tell me that CNN has been broadcasting the fake story 24/7. Although I cannot stand to watch it, I suspect Fox “news” has also been riding this lame horse hard. Readers tell me that my former newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, which has fallen so low as to be unreadable, also spread the false story. I hope they are wrong. One hates to see the complete despoliation of one’s former habitat.

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Kevin Barrett

Iraq has spent more than a decade under US occupation. Afghanistan has been occupied for almost 13 years. More than a million people have been killed, and millions more rendered homeless refugees, by occupation forces.

The Zionist occupation of Palestine, too, is sponsored by the US taxpayer. According to the Christian Science Monitor, the US has spent more than a trillion dollars propping up the Zionist regime, which just murdered roughly 2,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, during its most recent assault on Gaza.

These are just the most vicious and deadly of the many American-sponsored occupations.

America’s rulers have also imposed “occupation lite” on 130 countries around the world. These nations are under de facto occupation by U.S. troops stationed at more than 900 military bases.

But now, as Malcolm X famously said, the chickens are coming home to roost. The U.S. itself is coming under occupation, as militarized police forces – made up in part of hardened veterans of the counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – are treating the American people the same way they treated their victims in foreign lands.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Ferguson, Mo. is a small overwhelmingly black town whose government and police are white. The Ferguson police murdered an 18 year old black kid who has his hands over his head. Moreover, it is unclear that the kid had committed any offense. If you take a look at the photo of the three goon thugs pointing military rifles in his face at point blank range, any one of the over-sized goons unarmed could have restrained the small kid.

So what did the police goons do? They shot him to death.

This is murder. There is no question whatsoever that it is murder. But it will be covered up by the white government and the white police force if protests are limited to the black small town population of Ferguson. Who cares about them? Justice? That’s only for the mega-rich.

There is another astonishing aspect to the murder. Unarmed protesters in Ferguson are confronting a small town police force that is as well or better armed than America’s combat troops on battlefields in countries invaded by Washington. The only reason there is any trouble in Ferguson is that the cops murdered in cold blood a kid without cause or justification, and the black community knows that the white murderer will be given a pass by the white government. The part-time black US Attorney General, Eric Holder, has not sent in the Feds to investigate.

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Nick Barrickman

A report released by Amnesty International, Left in the dark: Failures of accountability for civilian casualties caused by international military operations in Afghanistan, investigates widespread civilian killings that have been carried out in recent years under the US-led occupation in Afghanistan.

Amnesty investigated nearly a dozen instances of mass killings by NATO and International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) that took place between 2009 and 2013. The report focuses on the role played by US official occupying forces due to their numerical preponderance in the ISAF, the main international occupying force in Afghanistan.

“None of the cases that we looked into--involving more than 140 civilian deaths--were prosecuted by the US military,” the report concludes. “Evidence of possible war crimes and unlawful killings has seemingly been ignored.” Witnesses recall being interviewed by numerous local groups, including human rights organizations, Afghan police and UN investigators. However, only two of the witnesses interviewed reported ever having been spoken to by military investigators, i.e. those with the “power to bring a criminal prosecution against the alleged perpetrators.”

This is largely due, the report states, to a military justice system which is “commander-driven” and based upon “self-policing.” In other words, war crimes are generally carried out with impunity.

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Brian J. Trautman

The credibility of the International Criminal Court has fallen into question because it focuses on human rights abusers in weak countries while ignoring those in powerful countries or with powerful friends, a criticism being tested again by Israel’s slaughter in Gaza.

Israel’s month-long military barrage of Gaza known as “Protective Edge” included numerous attacks on civilian-populated sites, including on homes, hospitals, mosques, markets and United Nation (UN) schools-turned-shelters.

To date, Israel’s assault has killed at least 1,300 Palestinian civilians, including over 400 children, and injured more than 10,000. (Some estimates are much higher.) An estimated half a million people have been displaced. Upwards of 10,000 homes have been destroyed and countless others partially damaged.

Strikes on some of the abovementioned sites have prompted international calls for officials of Israel’s government to be investigated for possible war crimes in Gaza.

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Paul Craig Roberts

How can their evil to go unrecognized?

The drums for war are being loudly beaten in Washington, European capitals, and the presstitute Western media. A headline by Pepe Escobar is “NATO Is Desperate For War.” This time the target is Russia, a major nuclear power.

The deadly consequences of such a war would extend beyond Russia, Europe, and the US to the entire world. The Western use of lies to demonize Russia endangers life on earth and reveals the West to be both reckless and irresponsible. Yet, few voices are raised against this recklessness and irresponsibility.

Ron Unz brings to our attention the important voice of a distinguished Dutch journalist, Karel Van Wolferen. Wolferen and Unz himself are important offsets to what Unz regards, correctly in my opinion, as “the utter corruption and unreliability of the mainstream American media.”

Wolferen’s article is long but very important. Readers will see analysis akin to my own. Wolferen shows how the Washington hegemon has captured Europe within an Atlanticist ideology that forecloses any independent thinking or foreign policy on the part of Europeans who are reduced to a state of vassalage. Wolferen concludes that as Washington drives Europe toward war, “Europeans cannot bring themselves to believe in the dysfunction and utter irresponsibility of the American state.”

With no internal checks on Washington’s recklessness from allies, the media, and US Senators, the only brake on Washington’s drive to war is Russian, Chinese, Indian, and South American diplomacy. If this diplomacy fails, Fukushima, as bad as it is, becomes a mere raindrop in the ocean.

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Stephen Lendman

Call it a billion dollar + scam. Add another congressionally funded $225 million tax dollars. Expect millions more on request.

In April 2002, noted MIT physicist Theodore Postol headlined his Technology Review article "Why Missile Defense Won't Work." The notion is more hoax than possibility. His reasoning was detailed and technical. What's supposed to work doesn't as claimed. Hitting and destroying a missile with another one isn't possible. It may never be other than occasional lucky exceptions. Claims otherwise are fabricated to maintain funding and deceive populations into believing they're safe.

According to Postol, "(t)his should be of profound concern to every US citizen" (and every Israeli one.) "The officers and program managers involved in developing the antimissile system have taken oaths to defend the nation." "Yet they have concealed from the American people and Congress the fact that a weapon system paid for by hard-earned tax dollars to defend our country cannot work." The same holds for Israel's Iron Dome. Postol asks is it more sieve than effective missile shield?

Israel's early warning system alone works as intended. It gives people time to shelter for safety. According to Postol, "the probability of (Iron Dome) destroying the artillery rocket warhead is essentially zero."

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Julie Hyland

Truck convoy sets out from Alabino near Moscow, will deliver
humanitarian relief aid to Ukraine. (RIA Novosti/M. Blinov)

Ukraine and its backers in Washington and Brussels are using Moscow’s dispatch of a humanitarian aid convoy to step up their warmongering against Russia.

The 280 trucks left Moscow Tuesday for the 620-mile journey to Ukraine’s eastern region. Russia’s Foreign Ministry says the convoy is carrying approximately 2,000 metric tons of supplies including cereals, sugar, baby food, medical supplies, sleeping bags and generators. The aid convoy was headed for the border near Kharkiv city, which is controlled by Ukrainian government forces, but had reportedly stopped in central Russia after Kiev said it would not allow it to cross into Ukraine.

Initial reports said that Kiev and Moscow had agreed the convoy with the International Red Cross. Very quickly, however, the Ukrainian regime—installed with the backing of the United States and Germany in February’s coup—was insisting that the convoy would be blocked. Interior Minister Arsen Avakov denounced the convoy as a “provocation by a cynical aggressor”, while Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk described it as “boundless cynicism”.

Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danylo Lubkivsky accused Russia of playing an “absolutely cynical game.” “They are trying to use the pretext of humanitarian aid and assistance, and it seems they are just running out of excuses for their aggression,” he said.

Earlier, Valeriy Chaly, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, said any attempt to move across the border without Kiev’s permission would be treated as an “act of aggression.”

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Stephen Lendman

He was elected on promises to end America's involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. Instead, he escalated conflict, maintained a permanent state of direct and proxy wars, and began bombing Iraq for spurious reasons.

For the third time since January 1991, America is at war with Iraq. It's ongoing lawlessly. No nation may attack another except in self-defense. None may do so without Security Council authorization. None exists.

Obama is a war criminal multiple times over. Bombing Iraq adds another crime to his rap sheet. Reasons given don't wash. US involvement has nothing to do with humanitarian intervention or responsibility to protect.

It has everything to do with protecting the interests of ExxonMobil and Chevron operations. It's about Washington wanting unchallenged regional control. It's about making the world safe for war profiteers. It's to benefit their bottom line priorities. It's about stoking fear deceptively. It's about suppressing truth and full disclosure. It's about using ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) aka ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) as both enemy and ally in different conflict theaters. It's about carving up whole continents for profits and dominance. It's about imperialism's dark side. It's about pillaging nations for profit. It's about disenfranchising populations. It's about turning workers into serfs. It's about prioritizing capital's divine right. It's about profiteering as a be-all-and-end-all. It has nothing to do with external or internal threats.

It not about protecting religious minorities and preventing slaughter as New York Times editors claim. On August 7, they lied saying "it became impossible for the United States and other civilized nations to ignore" a looming humanitarian disaster. Air-dropping modest amounts of food and water is a ploy to enlist public support for naked US aggression against a country posing no threat to America. "Mr. Obama made a wise policy call," claim Times editors. He "showed proper caution." He's "keeping his commitment not to reintroduce American ground troops."

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Paul Craig Roberts

Are Western propagandists fooling anyone but themselves?

The latest absurdity coming out of Ukraine, the EU and Washington is that the humanitarian aid that Russia and the Red Cross are trucking into the former Russian territories that comprise eastern Ukraine is a trick, a deception, a pretext for Russia’s invasion forces. Such a preposterous lie tells us that Western propagandists have no respect whatsoever for the intelligence of Western peoples.

Even a moron should understand that if Russia wants to send military forces into Ukraine, Russia doesn’t need any pretext, much less a joint humanitarian venture with the Red Cross. The eastern Ukraine, following Crimea’s lead, has already voted both independence from Kiev and in favor of rejoining Russia. If Russia needed an excuse, the decisions by the eastern Ukrainians made months ago suffice. But Russia needs no excuse to rescue Russians from being slaughtered by Washington’s stooges like Palestinians in Gaza.

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James F. Tracy

Official Public Discourse in America: Censorship and Orwellian “Double Think”, “Political Correctness”

An infirmity once characterizing the past century's most severe totalitarian regimes has now taken root in Western public discourse and practice, a process akin to Orwellian "double think" acting as a form of de facto censorship preempting consideration of major issues and events.

This mindset is obliquely shared by a majority of professional journalists, academics, and public office holders — in short, those who represent and lead public opinion. Once a state-endorsed narrative of a questionable event has been presented to and conveyed by the mainstream news media, it is almost invariably accepted without question by "Inner Party" members.

Such silence is abetted by a mechanical allegiance to prevailing authority figures and institutional power. In possessing such a worldview one reflexively forfeits personal integrity to uphold the collective political correctness and an overarching faith in the given sociopolitical system's truth. Alternative interpretations of such events by the laity can be dismissed out-of-hand as "conspiracy theories," thereby further confirming the Party's creed.

Political correctness ensures that, under penalty of de facto or formal censure, deference to official narratives will increasingly eclipse free inquiry and expression in the West. The notion that one's country is becoming a ruthless police state becomes clichéd, particularly with a lack of historical context. Extreme totalitarian regimes based on, for example, Marxist fundamentalism and unquestioning loyalty to the Party famously utilized internment and compulsory psychiatry to quell political dissidents and unorthodox speech.

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Stephen Lendman

For many decades, Israel waged genocidal war against millions of defenseless Palestinians with impunity. Accountability is long overdue. High crimes against peace were committed. Culpable Israeli officials must be punished to the full extent of the law.

The global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for freedom, justice and equality works. Applying them with stepped up teeth more than ever is vital.

It bears repeating what other articles stressed. Israel is a lawless, racist, apartheid, rogue terror state.

It must be held accountable for collectively punishing Palestinians lawlessly. Enough is enough. After 66 years of Palestinian slaughter, mass destruction, displacement, occupation, and oppression, as well as international dismissiveness and complicity, global action more than ever is essential. In 2004, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said:

"The end of apartheid stands as one of the crowning accomplishments of the past century, but we would not have succeeded without the help of international pressure - in particular the divestment movement of the 1980s. Over the past six months, a similar movement has taken shape, this time aiming at an end to the Israeli occupation."

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Mike Carlton

The onslaught is indiscriminate and unrelenting, with but one possible conclusion: Israel is not fighting the terrorists of Hamas. In defiance of the laws of war and the norms of civilised behaviour, it is waging its own war of terror on the entire Gaza population of about 1.7 million people. Call it genocide, call it ethnic cleansing: the aim is to kill Arabs.

The images from Gaza are searing, a gallery of death and horror. A dishevelled Palestinian man cries out in agony, his blood-soaked little brother dead in his arms. On a filthy hospital bed a boy of perhaps five or six screams for his father, his head and body lacerated by shrapnel. A teenage girl lies on a torn stretcher, her limbs awry, her face and torso blackened like a burnt steak. Mourners weep over a family of 18 men, women and children laid side by side in bloodied shrouds. Four boys of a fishing family named Bakr, all less than 12 years old, are killed on a beach by rockets from Israeli aircraft.

As I write, after just over a week of this invasion, the death toll of Palestinians is climbing towards 1000. Most are civilians, many are children. Assaulting Gaza by land, air and sea, Israel has destroyed homes and reduced entire city blocks to rubble. It has attacked schools, mosques and hospitals. Tens of thousands of people have fled, although there is nowhere safe for them to go in this wretched strip of land just 40 kilometres long and about 10 kilometres wide. There are desperate shortages of food and water, of medical and surgical supplies.

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Stephen Lendman

On August 11, Human Rights Council (HRC) President Baudelaire Ndong Ella announced the formation of an "independent, international commission of inquiry" into war crimes committed during Israel's Operation Protective Edge.

International human rights law expert Professor William Schabas was appointed to chair a three-person panel. His special focus is genocide. Other members include international law, criminal law, human rights and extradition law expert, Amal Alamuddin, and former UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Doudou Diene.

Note: According to AP, Alamuddin said she's unable to serve. Expect an alternate appointment to replace her. - The HRC...

"...decided to establish the commission of inquiry at its twenty-first special session on 23 July 2014 to investigate all violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, in the context of the military operations conducted since 13 June 2014, whether before, during or after, to establish the facts and circumstances of such violations and of the crimes perpetrated and to identify those responsible, to make recommendations, in particular on accountability measures, all with a view to avoiding and ending impunity and ensuring that those responsible are held accountable, and on ways and means to protect civilians against any further assaults."

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