Jamal Kanj

Over three years, the Japanese killed nearly an equivalent number of civilians as those murdered in Gaza in the past two months.

"Israel" resumed its genocidal war on Gaza following a brief pause, insufficient to address the plight of the thousands of missing children trapped beneath the rubble. Personally, I've been trying, since October 27, to reach a former colleague in the Bureij refugee camp. The unnerving lack of response echoes as ominous as a silent stone. I hesitated to contact others, afraid I might get the same silent treatment, or worse yet, discover the dreaded truth.

Then, it came from an unexpected corner. On November 23, I received the news of the tragic death of my relative, Mariam (Mary), her daughter and grandchildren in Nuseirat refugee camp. A day earlier, news outlets had covered a drone attack that obliterated a car, leaving charred bodies of women and children beyond recognition. Little did I know I had been watching the very car Mariam and her family had taken to escape their camp in a desperate attempt to find a "safer" shelter for her grandchildren.

Mariam, who was born in Palestine in the year of the Nakba in 1948, and grew up in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. In the 1970s, she married a member of the PLO and was displaced in 1982, again, now from Lebanon. Subsequently, following the Oslo Accord, her family resettled in Gaza.

The last time I saw Mariam was more than a decade ago during my visit to our old camp, which happened to coincide with hers. She complained that I had been to Gaza without stopping by to see her. I explained that I was unaware she had relocated to Gaza. In reality, I had been to Nuseirat camp, and we could have crossed paths in an alley or at the small market. Nevertheless, the thought didn't occur to me that she could be there, and it was likely that after more than 20 years since our previous meeting, we wouldn't have easily recognized each other.

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Yanis Varoufakis

Defenders of Israel’s bombing and invasion of Gaza have challenged me to offer a ‘chapter-and-verse’ list of war crimes that Israel has committed since the Hamas Offensive of 7th October.

Here is an indicative, but not exhaustive, list. There is no doubt: Israel is investing in war crimes to effect its recapture and ethnic cleansing of Gaza while, at the same time, practising similar tactics in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court – Genocide

Article 6(c): Deliberately inflicting on a group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

   ● Imposition of a complete siege of the Gaza Strip, totally depriving Gazans of electricity, food and fuel, and tightening even more the existing 16-year-old blockade thereof.[1]

Article 25(3)(c): For the purpose of facilitating the commission of such a crime, aids, abets or otherwise assists in its commission or its attempted commission, including providing the means for its commission

   ● Israel purchases 10,000 riffles for Israeli settlers[2]

Article 25(3)(e): Directly and publicly Incites others to commit genocide

   ● “We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly” (Israel’s Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant)[3]

War crimes – Grave breaches of the Wilful killings of the 1949 Geneva Conventions

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Ernst Wolff & Robert W Malone MD

Many who have followed this coronavirus “public health crisis” and the non-sensical response provided by most of the western nations (including the USA) have been perplexed by two big questions - how was this done (in such a globally coordinated fashion), and why was it done?

In my case, I have tried to follow the various threads of facts and logic, to confront the perplexingly dysfunctional public policies, and to make sense of what is so deeply illogical. What I have found has been layers of lies, one on top of another, which seem to require an amazingly coordinated and globally comprehensive control and shaping of information in the form of propaganda and censorship on a scale which was previously unimaginable. Total information control, and total unrestricted, all encompassing information warfare. Modern media manipulation of thought and minds without boundaries, and without any ethical constraints.

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Stephen Lendman

Tanya Nedashkivs'ka, 57, mourns the death of her husband, who
was killed in Bucha (Image: AP / PA photowire service)

Last month, dementia Joe’s double disgracefully called preeminent world leader Vladimir Putin a...

💬...“war criminal…a murderous dictator…a butcher…a pure thug (sic).”

On Monday, the White House impostor was at it again. Demonizing Putin gratuitously, he falsely accused him of civilian deaths in Bucha, Ukraine — what Russia had nothing to do with. Disgracefully calling Putin a “war criminal” again, he added:

💬 “We have to get all the detail so this can be…a war crime trial.”

So-called “details” the regime he nominally heads are invented, not real. No evidence connects Russia to deaths of civilians in Bucha or anywhere else in Ukraine — nothing suggesting that war crimes were committed by its military. Indisputable evidence links Nazified Ukrainian forces to crimes of war, against humanity and horrific atrocities. According to international affairs analyst Adriel Kasonta:

💬 “I’m terrified to see horrors” and other inhumane acts “committed by Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups.” They include torture, “lynching people, (beating) them…smashing their identity…tying them to lampposts” to cause pain, suffering and death. “Now we are supposed to glorify (Ukrainian) Nazis only for the mere fact that they are fighting the Western boogeyman, which is Russia.” “So-called human rights watchers are blind to the fact that human rights are being violated in Ukraine by Ukrainians.”

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Swiss Policy Research

Ten years ago, in March 2011, the US regime change campaign against Syria commenced. As in Ukraine and Libya, it began as a classic rooftop sniper operation (shooting at both sides to escalate protests), but morphed into one of the largest CIA “covert” war campaigns of all times, employing dozens of Islamist militias and terrorist groups, supplied primarily via Turkey, Jordan and Israel.

To get a comprehensive, no-nonsense overview of the multiple stages and layers of the Syria war, read The Syria Deception (available in four languages). To read about earlier large-scale US war deceptions, read Rwanda: What Did Really Happen in 1994? and Propaganda in the War on Yugoslavia. To get a general overview of US foreign policy since the war against Spain in 1898, read The Logic of US Foreign Policy.

Thanks to mobile telecommunication technology, the Syria war was the first war covered in real-time by independent media outlets and independent journalists on the ground, who in many cases could expose Western war propaganda within days and thus to some extent influence public perception of events. To get an overview of high-quality independent media outlets, see the updated version of The US/UK Media Navigator.

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Robert Parry

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration pioneered “perception management” to get the American people to “kick the Vietnam Syndrome” and accept more U.S. interventionism, but that propaganda structure continues to this day getting the public to buy into endless war.

To understand how the American people find themselves trapped in today’s Orwellian dystopia of endless warfare against an ever-shifting collection of “evil” enemies, you have to think back to the Vietnam War and the shock to the ruling elite caused by an unprecedented popular uprising against that war.

While on the surface Official Washington pretended that the mass protests didn’t change policy, a panicky reality existed behind the scenes, a recognition that a major investment in domestic propaganda would be needed to ensure that future imperial adventures would have the public’s eager support or at least its confused acquiescence.

This commitment to what the insiders called “perception management” began in earnest with the Reagan administration in the 1980s but it would come to be the accepted practice of all subsequent administrations, including the present one of President Barack Obama.

In that sense, propaganda in pursuit of foreign policy goals would trump the democratic ideal of an informed electorate. The point would be not to honestly inform the American people about events around the world but to manage their perceptions by ramping up fear in some cases and defusing outrage in others – depending on the U.S. government’s needs.

Thus, you have the current hysteria over Russia’s supposed “aggression” in Ukraine when the crisis was actually provoked by the West, including by U.S. neocons who helped create today’s humanitarian crisis in eastern Ukraine that they now cynically blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Yet, many of these same U.S. foreign policy operatives – outraged over Russia’s limited intervention to protect ethic Russians in eastern Ukraine – are demanding that President Obama launch an air war against the Syrian military as a “humanitarian” intervention there.

In other words, if the Russians act to shield ethnic Russians on their border who are being bombarded by a coup regime in Kiev that was installed with U.S. support, the Russians are the villains blamed for the thousands of civilian deaths, even though the vast majority of the casualties have been inflicted by the Kiev regime from indiscriminate bombing and from dispatching neo-Nazi militias to do the street fighting.

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Vera Graziadei in London & Ramil Zamdykhanov in Donetsk

A few months ago Donetsk was a vibrant, thriving and ambitious city. Hosting the European football championship in 2012 coincided with the peak of its hopes for world recognition. Today it stands partially destroyed, sad, hopeless and fearful for its future. The European metropolis of one million people now has around 80% of its previous population – mainly working classes; wealthier people, who could afford it, left the city in order to escape the war. Donetsk has become a centre of the Ukrainian conflict, after the Kiev government announced an ‘anti-terrorist operation’ (ATO) against ‘pro-Russian separatists’ in mid-April 2014.

Social life in public places is now almost non-existent – aside from one or two entertainment establishments, such as the Opera House. Most theatres, cinemas, cafes, bars and clubs are closed and many shops and businesses boarded up their windows.

The curfew, which was announced in summer, is still not cancelled, and even though there are rumours that one night club is functioning – the streets are empty at night. By day, there are no traffic jams in Donetsk anymore and ‘camouflaged armed men walk where shoppers and businessmen once strolled’. But not everywhere is quiet, depending on where you are – an occasional cannonade could be heard or even continuous explosions.

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John Pilger

The siege of Knightsbridge is a farce. For two years, an exaggerated, costly police presence around the Ecuadorean embassy in London has served no purpose other than to flaunt the power of the state. Their quarry is an Australian charged with no crime, a refugee from gross injustice whose only security is the room given him by a brave South American country. His true crime is to have initiated a wave of truth-telling in an era of lies, cynicism and war.

The persecution of Julian Assange must end. Even the British government clearly believes it must end. On 28 October, the deputy foreign minister, Hugo Swire, told Parliament he would "actively welcome" the Swedish prosecutor in London and "we would do absolutely everything to facilitate that". The tone was impatient.

The Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, has refused to come to London to question Assange about allegations of sexual misconduct in Stockholm in 2010 - even though Swedish law allows for it and the procedure is routine for Sweden and the UK. The documentary evidence of a threat to Assange's life and freedom from the United States - should he leave the embassy - is overwhelming. On May 14 this year, US court files revealed that a "multi subject investigation" against Assange was "active and ongoing".

Ny has never properly explained why she will not come to London, just as the Swedish authorities have never explained why they refuse to give Assange a guarantee that they will not extradite him on to the US under a secret arrangement agreed between Stockholm and Washington. In December 2010, the Independent revealed that the two governments had discussed his onward extradition to the US before the European Arrest Warrant was issued.

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Barry Grey

Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a report Monday documenting the widespread use of banned cluster munitions rockets by the Ukrainian military against heavily populated civilian centers in eastern Ukraine, including central Donetsk city.

The detailed account, based on an on-the-spot investigation by the New York-based organization, working with a New York Times reporter, is a damning exposure of the brutal and illegal methods being used by the US- and European Union-backed regime in Kiev against Ukrainians in the pro-Russian east of the country.

The report includes video interviews with victims of the cluster rocket attacks. It charges the Kiev regime with firing the weapons into Donetsk city, the center of the separatist rebellion against the fascist-backed, pro-Western government that was installed last February in a putsch orchestrated by the CIA and German intelligence.

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Vera Graziadei

No Justice for East Ukrainians: Despite widespread and undeniable evidence of war crimes and human rights abuses little is being done to hold Kiev to account

A day after winning the Nobel Peace Prize last Friday, Kailash Satyarthi, in an interview with RIA News, urged the Ukrainian government to protect Ukrainian citizens and especially children: “It is the responsibility of the Ukrainian government to save their citizens, particularly children. Safety of children will be their utmost priority. I will appeal to the Ukrainian government so as to ensure that such incidents against children will not occur in future.”

According to the recent UN report as many as 3,660 people have been killed and over 8,756 have been wounded in Donbass since Kiev launched its military operation in April. Even though a ceasefire was announced on September 5th, more than 330 people have died since, including 20 children. UNICEF stated that at least 35 children have been killed in the Ukrainian conflict and 87 have been wounded.

Human Rights Watch already called on Ukraine’s international supporters to “urge the Ukrainian government to strictly adhere to international humanitarian law, including by ending all use of Grad rockets in populated areas by Ukraine’s army”. Amnesty International also urged the Ukrainian government to “stop abuses and war crimes by volunteer battalions operating alongside regular Ukrainian armed forces”, such as Aidar. All these appeals, urges and calls are likely to remain voices in the wilderness.

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