Saturday, March 31, 2018

History by Rote: "Novichok" Furore Echoes Past Stampedes to War

Russia ‘Novichok’ Hysteria Proves Politicians and Media Haven’t Learned the Lessons of Iraq

by Patrick Henningsen  - Consortium News


March 31, 2018

The current state of anti-Russia hysteria is reminiscent of earlier dark chapters of American history, including the rush to war in Iraq of the early 2000s and McCarthyism of the 1950s, Patrick Henningsen observes.

If there’s one thing to be gleaned from the current atmosphere of anti-Russian hysteria in the West, it’s that the US-led sustained propaganda campaign is starting to pay dividends.

It’s not only the hopeless political classes and media miscreants who believe that Russia is hacking, meddling and poisoning our progressive democratic utopia – with many pinning their political careers to this by now that’s it’s too late for them to turn back.

As it was with Iraq in 2003, these dubious public figures require a degree of public support for their policies, and unfortunately many people do believe in the grand Russian conspiracy, having been sufficiently brow-beaten into submission by around-the-clock fear mongering and official fake news disseminated by government and the mainstream media.

What makes this latest carnival of warmongering more frightening is that it proves that the political and media classes never actually learned or internalized the basic lessons of Iraq, namely that the cessation of diplomacy and the declarations of sanctions (a prelude to war) against another sovereign state should not be based on half-baked intelligence and mainstream fake news. But that’s exactly what is happening with this latest Russian ‘Novichok’ plot.

Admittedly, the stakes are much higher this time around. The worst case scenario is unthinkable, whereby the bad graces of men like John Bolton and other military zealots, there may just be a thin enough mandate to short-sell another military conflagration or proxy war – this time against another nuclear power and UN Security Council member.

Enter stage right, where US President Donald Trump announced this week that the US is moving closer to war footing with Russia. It’s not the first time Trump has made such a hasty move in the absence any forensic evidence of a crime. Nowadays, hearsay, conjecture and social media postings are enough to declare war. Remember last April with the alleged “Sarin Attack” in Khan Sheikhoun, when the embattled President squeezed off 59 Tomahawk Cruise missiles against Syria – a decision, which as far as anyone can tell, was based solely on a few YouTube videos uploaded by the illustrious White Helmets. Back then Trump learned how an act of war against an existential enemy could take the heat off at home and translate into a bounce in the polls. Even La RĂ©sistance at CNN were giddy with excitement and threw their support behind Trump, with some pundits describing his decision to act as “presidential.”

As with past high-profile western-led WMD allegations against governments in Syria and Iraq (the US and UK are patently unconcerned with multiple allegations of ‘rebel’ terrorists in Syria caught using chemical weapons), an identical progression of events appears to be unfolding following the alleged ‘Novichok’ chemical weapon poisoning of retired British-Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, Wiltshire on March 4.

Despite a lack of evidence presented to the public other than the surreptitious “highly likely” assessments of British Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, President Trump once again has caved into pressure from Official Washington’s anti-Russian party line and ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats – whom he accused of being spies. Trump also ordered the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle, citing speculative fears that Russia might be spying on a nearby Boeing submarine development base. It was the second round of US expulsions of Russian officials, with the first one ordered by the outgoing President Obama in December 2016, kicking out 35 Russian diplomats and their families (including their head chef) and closing the Russian Consulate in San Francisco, with some calling it “a den of spies”.

Trump’s move followed an earlier UK action on March 14th, which expelled 23 Russian diplomats also accused of being spies. This was in retaliation for the alleged poisoning of a retired former Russian-British double agent in Salisbury, England.

The ‘Collective’ Concern


It’s important to understand how this week’s brash move by Washington was coordinated in advance. The US and the UK are relying on their other NATO partners, including Germany, Poland, Italy, Canada, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Estonia and Lithuania – to create the image of a united front against perceived ‘Russian aggression.’ As with multilateral military operations, multilateral diplomatic measures like this are not carried out on a whim.

Aside from this, there are two seriously worrying aspects of this latest US-led multilateral move against Russia. Firstly, this diplomatic offensive against Russia mirrors a NATO collective defense action, and by doing so, it tacitly signals towards an invocation of Article 5. According to AP, one German spokesperson called it a matter of ‘solidarity’ with the UK. Statements from the White House are no less encouraging:

“The United States takes this action in conjunction with our NATO allies, and partners around the world in response with Russia’s use of a military grade chemical weapon on the soil of the United Kingdom — the latest in its ongoing pattern of destabilizing activities around the world,” the White House said
“Today’s actions make the United States safer by reducing Russia’s ability to spy on Americans, and to conduct covert operations that threaten America’s national security.”

What this statement indicates is that any Russian foreign official or overseas worker in the West should be regarded as possible agents of espionage. In other words, the Cold War is now officially back on.

Then came this statement: “With these steps, the United States and our allies and partners make clear to Russia that its actions have consequences.”

In an era of power politics, this language is anything but harmless. And while US and UK politicians and media pundits seem to be treating it all as a school yard game at times, we should all be reminded that his is how wars start.

The second issue with the Trump’s diplomatic move against Russia is that it extends beyond the territorial US – and into what should be regarded at the neutral zone of the United Nations. As part of the group of 60 expulsions, the US has expelled 12 Russian diplomats from the United Nations in New York City. While this may mean nothing to jumped-up political appointees like Nikki Haley who routinely threaten the UN when a UNGA vote doesn’t go her way, this is an extremely dangerous precedent because it means that the US has now created a diplomatic trap door where legitimate international relations duties are being carelessly rebranded as espionage – done on a whim and based on no actual evidence.

By using this tactic, the US is casting aside decades of international resolutions, treaties and laws. Such a move directly threatens to undermine a fundamental principle of the United Nations which is its diplomatic mission and the right for every sovereign nation to have diplomatic representation. Without it, there is no UN forum and countries cannot talk through their differences and negotiate peaceful settlements. This is why the UN was founded in the first place. Someone might want to remind Nikki Haley of that.

On top of this, flippant US and UK officials are already crowing that Russia should be kicked off the UN Security Council. In effect, Washington is trying to cut the legs out from a fellow UN Security Council member and a nuclear power. This UNSC exclusion campaign been gradually building up since 2014, where US officials have been repeated blocked by Russia over incidents in Syria and the Ukraine. Hence, Washington and its partners are frustrated with the UN framework, and that’s probably why they are so actively undermining it.

Those boisterous calls, as irrational and ill-informed as they might be, should be taken seriously because as history shows, these signs are a prelude to war.

Also, consider the fact that both the US and Russian have military assets deployed in Syria. How much of the Skripal case and the subsequent fall-out has to do with the fact that US Coalition and Gulf state proxy terrorists have lost their hold over key areas in Syria? The truly dangerous part of this equation is that the illegal military occupation by the US and its NATO ally Turkey of northeastern Syria is in open violation of international law, and so Washington and its media arms would like nothing more than to be history’s actor and bury its past indiscretions under a new layer of US-Russia tension in the Middle East.

Another WMD Debacle?


Is it really possible to push East-West relations over the edge on the basis of anecdotal evidence?

Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, highlighted the recent British High Court judgement which states in writing that the government’s own chemical weapons experts from the Porton Down research facility could not categorically confirm that a Russian ‘Novichok’ nerve agent was actually used in the Salisbury incident. Based on this, Murray believes that both British Prime Minster Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, and Britain’s deputy UN representative Jonathan Allen – have all lied to the public and the world when making their public statements that the Russians had in fact launched a deadly chemical weapons attack on UK soil. Murray states elaborates on this key point:


“This sworn Court evidence direct from Porton Down is utterly incompatible with what Boris Johnson has been saying. The truth is that Porton Down have not even positively identified this as a ‘Novichok’, as opposed to “a closely related agent”. 

Even if it were a ‘Novichok’ that would not prove manufacture in Russia, and a ‘closely related agent’ could be manufactured by literally scores of state and non-state actors.

“This constitutes irrefutable evidence that the government have been straight out lying – to Parliament, to the EU, to NATO, to the United Nations, and above all to the people – about their degree of certainty of the origin of the attack. It might well be an attack originating in Russia, but there are indeed other possibilities and investigation is needed. As the government has sought to whip up jingoistic hysteria in advance of forthcoming local elections, the scale of the lie has daily increased.”

Murray has been roundly admonished by the UK establishment for his views, but he is still correct to ask the question: how could UK government leaders have known ‘who did it’ in advance of any criminal forensic investigation or substantive testing by Porton Down or an independent forensic investigation by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)?

One would hope we could all agree that it’s this sort of question which should have been given more prominence in the run-up to the Iraq War. In matters of justice and jurisprudence, that’s a fundamental question and yet, once again – it has been completely bypassed.

Murray is not alone. A number of scientists and journalists have openly questioned the UK’s hyperbolic claims that Russia had ordered a ‘chemical attack’ on British soil. In her recent report for the New Scientist, author Debora MacKenzie reiterates the fact that several countries could have manufactured a ‘Novichok’ class nerve agent and used it in the chemical attack on Russians Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury.

“British Prime Minister Theresa May says that because it was Russia that developed Novichok agents, it is ‘highly likely’ that Russia either attacked the Skripals itself, or lost control of its Novichok to someone else who did. But other countries legally created Novichok for testing purposes after its existence was revealed in 1992, and a production method has even been published.”

The New Scientist also quotes Ralf Trapp, a chemical weapons consultant formerly with the OPCW, who also reiterates a point worth reminding readers of – that inspectors are only able to tell where molecules sampled in Salisbury have come from if they have reference samples for the ingredients used.

“I doubt they have reference chemicals for forensic analysis related to Russian CW agents,” says Trapp.
“But if Russia has nothing to hide they may let inspectors in.”

Even if they can identify it as Novichok, they cannot say that it came from Russia, or was ordered by the Russian government, not least of all because the deadly recipe is available on Amazon for only $28.45.

It should be noted that a substantial amount of evidence points to only two countries who are the most active in producing and testing biological and chemical weapons WMD – the United States and Great Britain. Their programs also include massive ‘live testing’ on both humans and animals with most of this work undertaken at the Porton Down research facility located only minutes away from the scene of this alleged ‘chemical attack’ in Salisbury, England.

Problems with the Official Story


If we put aside for the moment any official UK government theory, which is based on speculation backed-up by a series of hyperbolic statements and proclamations of Russian guilt, there are still many fundamental problems with the official story – maybe too many to list here, but I will address what I believe are a few key items of interest.

The UK police have now released a statement claiming that the alleged ‘Novichok’ nerve agent was somehow administered at the front door of Sergie Skripal’s home in Wiltshire. This latest official claim effectively negates the previous official story because it means that the Skripals would have been exposed a home at the latest around 13:00 GMT on March 4th, and then drove into town, parking their car at Sainsbury’s car park, then having a leisurely walk to have drinks at The Mill Pub, before for ordering and eating lunch at Zizzis restaurant, and then finally leaving the Zizzis and walking before finally retiring on a park bench – where emergency services were apparently called at 16:15 GMT to report an incident.

Soon after, local police arrived on the scene to find the Skripals on the bench in an “extremely serious condition.” Based on this story, the Skripals would have been going about their business for 3 hours before finally falling prey to the deadly WMD ‘Novichok’. From this, one would safely conclude that whatever has poisoned the pair was neither lethal nor could it have been a military grade WMD. Even by subtracting the home doorway exposure leg of this story, the government’s claim hardly adds up – as even a minor amount of any real lethal military grade WMD would have effected many more people along this timeline of events. Based on what we know so far, it seems much more plausible that the pair would have been poisoned at Zizzis restaurant, and not with a military grade nerve agent.

When this story initially broke, we were also told that the attending police officer who first arrived on the scene of this incident, Wiltshire Police Detective Sgt. Nick Bailey – was “fighting for his life” after being exposed to the supposed ‘deadly Russian nerve agent’. As it turned out, officer Bailey was treated in hospital and then discharged on March 22, 2018. To our knowledge, no information or photos of Bailey’s time in care are available to the public so we cannot know the trajectory of his health, or if he was even exposed to the said “Novichok’.

In the immediate aftermath, the public were also told initially that approximately 4o people were taken into medical care because of “poison exposure”. This bogus claim was promulgated by some mainstream media outlets, like Rupert Murdoch’s Times newspaper. In reality, no one showed signed of “chemical weapons” exposure, meaning that this story was just another example of mainstream corporate media fake news designed to stoke tension and fear in the public. We exposed this at the time on the UK Column News here:

To further complicate matters, this week we were told that Yulia Skripal has now turned the corner and is in recovery, and is speaking to police from her hospital bed. If this is true, then it further proves that whatever the alleged poison agent was which the Skripals were exposed to – it was not a lethal, military grade nerve agent. If it had been, then most likely the Skripals and many others would not be alive right now.

Unfortunately, in this new age of state secrecy, we can expect that most of the key information relating to this case may be sealed indefinitely under a national security letter. In the case of Porton Down scientist David Kelly, the key information is sealed (hidden) for another 60+ years (if we’re lucky, we might get to see it in the year 2080). This means that we just have to take their word for it, or to borrow the words of the newly crowed UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson – any one asking questions, “should just go away and shut up.” Such is the lack of decorum and transparency in this uncomfortably Orwellian atmosphere.

While Britain insists that it has ‘irrefutable proof’ that Russia launched a deadly nerve-gas attack to murder the Skripals, the facts simply do not match-up to the rhetoric.

The Litvinenko Conspiracy


It’s important to note that as far as public perceptions are concerned, the official Skripal narrative has been built directly on top of the Litvinenko case.

In order to try and reinforce the government’s speculative arguments, the UK establishment has resurrected the trial-by-media case of another Russian defector, former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, who is said to have died after being poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 in his tea at a restaurant in London’s Mayfair district in late 2006.

Despite not having any actual evidence as to who committed the crime, the British authorities and the mainstream media have upheld an almost religious belief that the Russian FSB (formerly KGB), under the command of Vladimir Putin, had ordered the alleged radioactive poisoning of Litvinenko.

The media mythos was reinforced in 2016, when a British Public Inquiry headed by Sir Robert Owen accused senior Russian officials of ‘probably having motives to approve the murder’ of Litvinenko. Again, this level of guesswork and speculation would never meet the standard of an actual forensic investigation worthy of a real criminal court of law, but so far as apportioning blame to another nation or head of state is concerned – it seems fair enough for British authorities.

Following the completion of the inquiry, Sir Robert had this to say:

“Taking full account of all the evidence and analysis available to me, I find that the FSB operation to kill Litvinenko was probably approved by Mr Patrushev and also by President Putin.”

Contrary to consensus reality (popular belief), Owen’s inquiry was not at all definitive. Quite the opposite in fact, and in many ways it mirrors how the Skripal case has been presented to the public. Despite offering no evidence of any criminal guilt, Owen’s star chamber maintained that Vladimir Putin “probably” approved the operation to assassinate Litvinenko. Is “probably” really enough to assign guilt in a major international crime? When it comes to high crimes of state, the answer seems to be yes.

According to Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, that UK inquiry was “neither transparent nor public” and was “conducted mostly behind doors, with classified documents and unnamed witnesses contributing to the result…”

Zakharova highlighted the fact that two key witnesses in the case – Litvinenko’s chief patron, a UK-based anti-Putin defector billionaire oligarch named Boris Berezovsky, and the owner of Itsu restaurant in London’s Mayfair where the incident is said to have taken place, had both suddenly died under dubious circumstances.

The British authorities went on to accuse two Russian men in the Litvineko murder – businessman Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun. Both have denied the accusations. Despite the lack of any real evidence, the United States Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control blacklisted both Lugovoi and Kovtun, as well as Russian persons Stanislav Gordievsky, Gennady Plaksin and Aleksandr I. Bastrykin – under the Magnitsky Act, which freezes their assets held in American financial institutions, and bans them from conducting any transactions or traveling to the United States.

Notice the familiar pattern: even if the case is inconclusive, or collapses due to a lack of evidence, the policies remain in place.

Despite all the pomp and circumstance however, Owen’s official conspiracy theory failed to sway even Litvinenko’s own close family members. While Litvinenko’s widow Marina maintains that it was definitely the Russian government who killed her husband, Alexsander’s younger brother Maksim Litvinenko, based in Rimini, Italy, believes the British report “ridiculous” to blame the Kremlin for the murder of his brother, stating that he believes British security services had more of a motive to carry out the assassination.

“My father and I are sure that the Russian authorities are not involved. It’s all a set-up to put pressure on the Russian government,” said Litvinenko to the Mirror newspaper, and that such reasoning can explain why the UK waited almost 10 years to launch the inquiry his brother’s death.

Maxim also said that Britain had more reason to kill his brother than the Russians, and believes that blaming Putin for the murder was part of a wider effort to smear Russia. Following the police investigation, Alexander’s father Walter Litvinenko, also said that he had regretted blaming Putin and the Russian government for his son’s death and did so under intense pressure at the time.

For anyone skeptical of the official proclamations of the British state and the mainstream media on the Litvinenko case, it’s worth reading the work of British journalist Will Dunkerly here.

With so many questions hanging over the actually validity of the British state’s accusations against Russia, it’s somewhat puzzling that British police would say they are still ‘looking for similarities’ between the Skripal and Litvinenko cases in order to pinpoint a modus operandi.

The admission by the British law enforcement that their investigation may take months before any conclusion can be drawn also begs the question: how could May have been so certain so quick? The answer should be clear by now: she could not have known it was a ‘Novichok’ agent, no more than she could know ‘Russia did it.’

A Plastic Cold War


Historically speaking, in the absence of any real mandate or moral authority, governments suffering from an identity crisis, or a crisis of legitimacy will often try and define themselves not based on what they stand for, but rather what (or who) they are in opposition to. This profile suits both the US and UK perfectly at the moment.

Both governments are limping along with barely a mandate, and have orchestrated two of the worst and most hypocritical debacles in history with their illegal wars in both Syria and Yemen. With their moral high-ground a thing of the past, these two countries require a common existential enemy in order to give their international order legitimacy. The cheapest, easiest option is to reinvigorate a framework which was already there, which is the Cold War framework: Reds under the bed. The Russian are coming, etc.

It’s cheap and it’s easy because it has already been seeded with 70 years of Cold War propaganda and institutionalized racism in the West directed against Russians. If you don’t believe me, just go look at some of the posters, watch the TV propaganda in the US, or read about the horrific McCarthyist blacklists and political witch hunts. I remember growing up in America and being taught “never again” and “we’re past all of that now, those days of irrational paranoia are behind us, we’re better than that now.” But that madness of the past was not a fringe affair – it was a mainstream madness, and one which was actively promoted by government and mainstream media.

You would have to be at the pinnacle of ignorance to deny that this is exactly what we are seeing today, albeit a more plastic version, but just as immoral and dangerous. Neocons love it, and now liberals love it too.

Dutifully fanning the flaming of war, Theresa May has issued her approval of the NATO members diplomatic retaliation this week exclaiming,

“We welcome today’s actions by our allies, which clearly demonstrate that we all stand shoulder to shoulder in sending the strongest signal to Russia that it cannot continue to flout international law.”

But from an international law perspective, can May’s ‘highly likely’ assurances really be enough to position the west on war footing with Russia? When Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn asked these same fundamental questions on March 14th, he was shouted down by the Tory bench, and also by the hawkish Blairites sitting behind him.


Afterwards, the British mainstream press launched yet another defamation campaign against Corbyn, this time with the UK’s Daily Mail calling the opposition leader a “Kremlin Stooge”, followed by British state broadcaster the BBC who went through the effort of creating a mock-up graphic of Corbyn in front of the Kremlin (pictured above) apparently wearing a Russian hat, as if to say he was a Russian agent. It was a new low point in UK politics and media.

Considering the mainstream media’s Corbyn smear alongside the recent insults hurled at Julian Assange by Tory MP Sir Alan Duncan who stood up in front of Parliament and called the Wikileaks founder a “miserable worm”, what this really says is that anyone who dares defy the official state narrative will be beaten down and publicly humiliated. In other words, dissent in the political ranks will not be tolerated. It’s almost as if we are approaching a one party state.

Would a UN Security Council member and nuclear power really be so brazen as to declare de facto war on another country without presenting any actual evidence or completing a genuine forensic investigation?

So why the apparent rush to war? Haven’t we been here before, in 2003? Will the people of the West allow it to happen again?

As with T2ony Blair’s WMD’s in 2003, the British public are meant to take it on faith and never question the official government line. And just like in 2003, the UK has opened the first door on the garden path, with the US and its ‘coalition’ following safely behind, shoulder to shoulder. In this latest version of the story, Tony Blair is being played by Theresa May, and Jack Straw is being played by Boris Johnson.

On the other side of the pond, a hapless Bush is hapless Trump. Both Blair and Straw, along with the court propagandist Alastair Campbell – are all proven to have been liars of the highest order, and if there were any real accountability or justice, these men and their collaborators in government should be in prison right now. The fact they aren’t is why the door has been left wide open for the exact same scam to be repeated again, and again.

Iraq should have taught us all to be skeptical about official claims of chemical weapons evidence, and to face the ugly truth about how most major wars throughout history have waged by the deception – and by western governments. What does it tell us about today’s society if people still cannot see this?

That’s why it was wrong to let Blair, Bush and others off the hook for war crimes. By doing so, both the British and Americans are inviting a dark phase of history to repeat itself again, and again.

It’s high time that we break the cycle.

Patrick Henningsen is a global affairs analyst and founder of independent news and analysis site 21st Century Wire, and host of the SUNDAY WIRE weekly radio show broadcast globally over the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR).

Gaza's Land Day Massacre

The Land Day Massacre

by C. L. Cook - Pacific Free Press


March 31, 2018

Israeli military officials promised to expand its killing of Palestinians in Gaza if the planned six-week Great March of Return protest campaign continues.

Friday, during 'Land Day' commemorations of the beginning of the Nakba, or "catastrophe" as Palestinians refer to the establishment of Israel on their lands, the Israeli Defense Force, (IDF) met unarmed demonstrators with troops, tanks, drones, and the "100 snipers" promised earlier in the week.

The snipers, from perches behind earthen berms overlooking the estimated 30,000 strong demonstration, opened fire. IDF regulars sent hails of rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas projectiles into the throng, as drones rained gas canisters on the men, women, and children from above. Tank fire too added to the chaos and destruction, and the casualty count.

The Associated Press, (AP) reported Saturday1, 15 perished from gunfire outright* and its hospital sources said more than 750 have been and are being treated for bullet wounds, while twice that number have suffered injuries all told.

According to the AP, Palestinian hospital authorities at Gaza City's Shifa Hospital said of the 284 injured received at its emergency ward Friday, the "majority" were bullet injuries. Hospital spokesperson, Ayman Sahbani said of those, 70 were under the age of 18, and 11 women.

Sahbani said, of the estimated 40 surgeries performed Friday, and 50 more planned for Saturday, all were for bullet wounds.

"These are all from live bullets that broke limbs or caused deep, open wounds with damage to nerves and veins," he said.

IDF spokesperson, Brigadier General Ronen Manelis contradicted casualty reports, charging the hospitals are "exaggerating" both the numbers and demographics of those injured.

Manelis also said allegations of excessive force are untrue, insisting those killed by the army were all "involved in violence" and exclusively "males of fighting age, between 18 and 30 years old."

The Brigadier General also warned, if protests do carry on the army will "not be able to continue limiting our activity to the fence area and will act against these "terror organizations" in other places too."

Manelis here refers to Hamas.

Israel has never recognized the elected government of Gaza, calling Hamas a terror organization and regarding all its members and the civic and civil functions they operate as being by extension terrorist infrastructure, and therefore legitimate military targets.

Saturday, and over the past week, the Israeli Air Force bombed2 various Hamas targets.

Meanwhile, politically divided Palestinians in the West Bank observed a commercial strike Saturday, called in solidarity for those killed and wounded.

In New York, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called a joint emergency session Friday night, which resolved to initiate an independent investigation into events in Gaza, while urging "restraint by both sides."

Guterres' position is a reiteration of UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov, who in the aftermath of the massacre Friday urged "all sides to exercise restraint and to take the necessary steps to avoid a violent escalation."

But like the continued enforced isolation and regular punitive police and military actions against Gazans, the equivalency Mladenov's statement implies is generally considered ridiculous even within the measured parlance of international diplomacy.

It would be laughable and the Secretary-General regarded as a clown if the situation in Gaza were not so lethally grave.

As Ramona Wasdi, writing in the Middle East Monitor cogently observes3

"The UN’s absence of any assertiveness when it comes to holding Israel accountable for its crimes is becoming a core component of the colonial entity’s ability to act with total impunity. Nowhere is this more evident than in its patronizing attitude towards the Palestinian right of return."

Wasdi reminds, before the Great March of Return, Palestinians repeatedly assured these would be dedicatedly non-violent manifestations, while Israeli officials and the media within promised remorseless violence, death, and destruction would greet the protesters.

Indeed, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot minced no words in the weeks preceding the march, saying,

"The orders are to use a lot of force."

In that at least, Israel has been true to its word.


*Casualty count as of Saturday Noon pdt4 - 17 dead and 1400+ injured.

Notes:
1. http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/gaza-palestinian-protest-border-fence-israel-1.4601002
2. https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201803301063078060-israel-hamas-gaza-airstrikes/
3. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180329-the-un-disregard-for-palestinians-right-of-return-colludes-with-israeli-violence/
4. https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/30/middleeast/gaza-protests-intl/index.html

Friday, March 30, 2018

West's Propaganda Offensive Could Lead to Hot War with Russia

Assange’s internet blackout & Skripal case part of propaganda war that risks real one – John Pilger

by RT


30 Mar, 2018

The Skripal saga and Ecuador’s move to cut Julian Assange’s internet is part of a wider crackdown on freedom of speech and states like Russia which have stood up to the West.

It risks evolving into a real war, John Pilger told RT.

“This is about a war on freedom of speech; this man is being denied the most basic right – freedom of speech. It’s part of a wider war. The wider war is against known enemies, and Russia is one of them, China is another,” investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger said.

Earlier this week, the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where Assange has been holed up since 2012, cut off all communications for the WikiLeaks founder, blocking his internet access and not allowing any visitors. A source close to WikiLeaks told RT that Ecuador cut Assange’s internet due to his tweet about the arrest of former Catalan leader Carlos Puigdemont in Germany.


 Watch RT’s full interview with John Pilger on YouTube


Pilger argued that the way the Western media – instead of doing its job, blindly sided with the official narrative – framed the events in Salisbury is another instance in the same global propaganda effort. “It’s part of the propaganda war that the attack in Salisbury represents. Here we have Russian diplomats being expelled all over the world on the basis of no evidence.”

Former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned earlier in March and found unconscious in Salisbury. The UK government has blamed the attack on Russia, but Moscow denies the allegations, saying that no evidence has been presented to support the claim. Following calls from London, almost 30 states announced they would expel Russian diplomats over the case, prompting the Kremlin to announce tit-for-tat measures.

Pilger said Assange was castigated by the British government for merely saying it was “poor diplomacy” on the part of the UK to kick out Russian representatives with no independent confirmation of its rushed investigation.

“He was just suggesting that there was no evidence, but this is what this propaganda war is about. It’s a war on speaking out, it’s a war on dissent, it’s a war on the very things that I’m saying at the moment, it’s a war on journalism and requires collaborators,” Pilger said.

He cited as an example an article written by the Guardian’s James Ball. The opinion piece by Ball says Assange “has himself to blame” for invoking Ecuador’s ire, and he should “hold his hands up and leave the embassy.”

“These are not journalists, because this is about the public’s right to know and it’s the public right to know what the governments are doing. The second part of this war is about a real war. We’ve got the prospect of a real war unless this propaganda war is seen through,” Pilger said.

What made WikiLeaks and Assange the target of multiple attacks over the years is the commitment to true journalism.

“The attack on him and WikiLeaks over the years is so important because it does what journalism should be doing and that is holding power to account.”

Horgan Offers Farm on LNG Kool-Aid High

What is Horgan Thinking on LNG?!

by Damien Gillis - The Common Sense Canadian


March 22, 2018

In his desperate bid to keep Christy Clark’s LNG pipe dream alive, John Horgan has become completely untethered from reality. Today, he announced further tax incentives for the industry – as if the sweetheart deal the Liberals gave them wasn’t bad enough for BC taxpayers already.

Now, the industry won’t pay PST on construction costs for their plants and it will receive hugely-subsidized electricity from BC Hydro. Prior to the NDP taking over, the industry already secured big federal tax breaks and such a huge discount to the export tax that was supposed to fill our “Prosperity Fund” coffers as to render it meaningless.

What was supposed to be a 7% tax got slashed to 1.5% and the industry could deduct its capital costs, so that it would pay no export tax until those were recouped (a.k.a. never). Apparently that wasn’t enough. The NDP is also repealing the LNG income tax.

This all makes for some real head scratching when one reads the technical briefing on the NDP government’s new LNG framework, compiled by Deputy Minister Don Wright. For instance, it boasts that Kitimat LNG – a joint project of Shell, PetroChina, KOGAS, and Mitsubishi – would bring a windfall of public monies:

The Ministries of Finance and Energy have estimated that the project will generate $22 billion in direct government revenue over the next 40 years… Significantly more if “multiplier” effects are taken into account.

Really? Even if that whopper of a figure encompasses upstream royalties, surely these ministries are aware that royalties have plummeted in recent years – from an annual high of $2 Billion in 2005/06 to a record low of $139 million in 2015/16, according to this useful report by Marc Lee at the BC Centre for Policy Alternatives (which Mr. Wright apparently hasn’t read).

It gets worse.

“In addition to royalties paid on gas production, companies bid at auction for the rights to explore and drill on public land, known as leases of Crown land tenure,” Lee explains.
“These revenues hit a record $2.4 billion in 2008/2009 and have now almost completely dried up: $16 million in 2015/2016 and a projected $15 million in 2016/2017.”

Granted, these numbers have increased under the NDP, as Norm Farrell has documented – but with virtually no other tax revenues from the industry and a massive loss to Hydro ratepayers on steeply discounted electricity, it’s impossible to conceive of the $22 Billion-plus in government revenues Mr. Wright is promising.

On those Hydro rates, the NDP wants to extend to the LNG industry the old sweetheart deal we’ve given sawmills, pulp mills and mines, which used to be around half of what you and I pay for power but would now amount to less than a third of the cost of Site C’s new electricity. So you will get the privilege of paying $15 Billion-plus for a dam you didn’t need – which wipes away First Nations’ rights and vital farmland – all to give the power away for pennies on the dollar to Shell and PetroChina! Doesn’t that make you feel so much better about the NDP’s decision to forge ahead with Site C?

Compounding the confusion generated by Mr. Wright’s report are the sections on climate action and reconciliation with First Nations (it claims Kitimat LNG “has received the support of most – but not all – area First Nations”). By cooling its gas into liquid using power from Site C – which has definitely not received the support of most area First Nations – Kitimat LNG would reduce its plant emissions nominally, making it “the least GHG-intensive large LNG facility in the world”, says Wright’s briefing, which is like being the skinniest obese person at KFC.

This does nothing to address the massive upstream GHG’s that come from fracking and processing this gas, which the David Suzuki Foundation’s John Werring has documented in horrifying detail. His peer-reviewed research, published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions in 2017, revealed the staggering degree to which BC is underestimating the climate impacts of fracking.

This lines up with the leading research on the US industry, coming out places like Cornell University, which suggests that up to 8% of gas that is fracked leaks into the atmosphere by way of “fugitive methane emissions” – some 86 times worse for the climate than CO2 over a 20-year time scale. This explains why Dr. Robert Howarth from Cornell laughed when I put to him Premier Clark’s labelling of BC LNG – almost all of which would come from fracked shale gas – as the “cleanest fossil fuel on the planet”.

“Your premier has her facts wrong,” he told me.
“Methane is such a powerful greenhouse gas that when you look at the cumulative impact of these greenhouse gas emissions, natural gas – and particularly shale gas – is the worst of the fossil fuels.”

The NDP government, in Wright’s presentation, acknowledges “leakage” associated with the gas industry. Only it’s a completely different type. “Government is committed to implementing a comprehensive Climate Action Plan that will meet B.C.’s carbon goals without disadvantaging our large industries,” it notes, adding, “Losing market share to companies who pay little or no carbon tax – known as carbon leakage – harms B.C.’s economy while causing higher global carbon emissions.”

So the “carbon leakage” they’re concerned about is the lack of competitive advantage inherent in our carbon tax being applied to the LNG industry. And they provide no answers to this problem other than vague statements about somehow making BC’s LNG “the cleanest in the world”. Clearly, highly-subsidized electricity is one piece of the puzzle, then there’s “Implementing strategies that enable industries to be the least GHG-intensive per unit of output in the world”. Thank you for clearing that up. Let’s get right on with implementing those unnamed strategies – that ought to magically take care of it.

It’s no wonder environmental groups are panning Horgan’s have-your-cake-and-it-too LNG framework. Says Jens Wieting of Sierra Club BC, “Pretending that LNG is part of a climate friendly future is as ludicrous as Prime Minister Trudeau saying we need tar sands pipelines to fight climate change.” TouchĂ©.

Even with all theses goodies the NDP is dangling, it’s doubtful Shell and PetroChina will take the bait and reach a Final Investment Decision. The Asian LNG market has picked up in recent months, but that’s likely temporary, with three large Australian plants coming online in 2018, Qatar lifting a moratorium on its massive North gas field, and a number of other key developments among the world’s major LNG players, including the US, which has entered the fray.

Most analysts forecast a global glut in LNG, but there is a little room for new projects to help meet peak winter demand. Canada, however, isn’t cost-competitive enough, and even these gifts from the NDP won’t substantially change that.

Getting fracked shale gas from northeast BC to market is an expensive proposition – on the order of $10-12/MMbtu. Asian prices have come up to that range recently, but over the past several years, they’ve typically been half that, meaning companies exporting it would do so at a substantial loss. Increased supply coming online will put further pressure on prices and send them back down from whence they came, leaving only the most competitive jurisdictions in the game. According to energy analysts Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., “Projects in Qatar, Papua New Guinea, Russia and the U.S. are most economically appealing, followed by Mozambique, Australian expansion projects and an Alaskan mega-project.” Notice which country is not on that list.

So even with all these contortions – the untenable doublespeak on climate action and LNG, the irreconcilable implications for First Nations, and giving away the farm to industry – the Horgan NDP will likely get no further with this pipe dream than its predecessors did.

What they might just succeed in doing is provoking the BC Greens to bring down their government, which leader Andrew Weaver has threatened to do over LNG.

Thus, LNG remains what it has always been: an albatross around the neck of whatever BC leader is foolish enough to take it on.

Damien Gillis is a Vancouver-based documentary filmmaker with a focus on environmental and social justice issues - especially relating to water, energy, and saving Canada's wild salmon - working with many environmental organizations in BC and around the world. He is the co-founder, along with Rafe Mair, of The Common Sense Canadian, and a board member of both the BC Environmental Network and the Haig-Brown Institute.
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Israel Deploys Its "100 Snipers" Against Children of Unarmed Protesters

9 Dead as Israel Responds to 'Great March of Return' Protest with Gunfire 

by Jessica Corbett - MintPress News


March 30, 2018

“Dozens of signs have been set up across the border in Arabic, Hebrew, and English, saying ‘We are not here to fight; we are here to return to our lands.'”

[For complete story, please see source at MintPress News here.]


Israeli forces reportedly killed at least nine Palestinians and injured hundreds more of an estimated 20,000 gathered along the Gaza-Israel border for the launch of the six-week “March of Great Return” on Friday. The march marks the 42nd anniversary of Land Day, when Palestinians worldwide commemorate six killed by Israeli forces for protesting settlements in 1976.

Palestinians attend demonstration near Gaza Strip border with Israel
in eastern Gaza City, Friday, March 30, 2018. (AP/ Khalil Hamra)

Ahead of the demonstrations, Gadi Eizenkot, Chief of General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), gave soldiers permission to open fire on mass demonstrations “in the event of mortal danger” and announced that Israeli forces would deploy more than 100 snipers.

“The instructions are to use a lot of force,” Eizenkot told the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

Organizers of the protesters, meanwhile, have encouraged marchers to remain nonviolent, and according to the Ma’an News Agency,

“Dozens of signs have been set up across the border in Arabic, Hebrew, and English, saying ‘We are not here to fight; we are here to return to our lands.'”

Palestinian protesters have set up tents along the border, and demonstrations are slated to continue through May 15, Reuters reports, “the day Palestinians call the ‘Nakba’ or ‘Catastrophe,’ marking the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the conflict surrounding the creation of Israel in 1948.”

That’s also when the U.S. Embassy is scheduled to open in Jerusalem, after President Donald Trump annnounced last year that he would recognize the city as the capital of Israel and relocate the embassy from Tel Aviv, provoking international condemnation.

“Despite march organizers and Palestinian politicians maintaining that the march be a non-violent one,” Ma’an News Agency reports, “Israeli officials have called the protests ‘violent riots.'”

Though Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh addressed some protesters on Friday, declaring that “our people went out today to make it clear that we will not give up Jerusalem and that there is no alternative to Palestine and the right of return,” advocates for Palestinians countered the narrative that is being pushed by Israeli officials.


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British Doctors Update "Poisoned" Pair: Hallelujah! Skripals Will Rise Again...

Last Act Of 'Novichok' Drama Revealed - "The Skripals' Resurrection"

by Moon of Alabama


March 29, 2018

It seems that the 'Novichok' fairy-tale the British government plays to us provides for a happy ending - the astonishing and mysterious resurrection of the victims of a "military grade" "five to eight times more deadly than VX gas" "nerve agent" "of a type developed by" Hollywood.

Happy Easter!


Yulia Skripal no longer in critical condition, say Salisbury doctors
The condition of Yulia Skripal, who was poisoned with a nerve agent in Salisbury along with her father, is improving rapidly, doctors have said.

Salisbury NHS foundation trust said on Thursday the 33-year-old was no longer in a critical condition, describing her medical state as stable.

Christine Blanshard, medical director for Salisbury district hospital, said: “I’m pleased to be able to report an improvement in the condition of Yulia Skripal. She has responded well to treatment but continues to receive expert clinical care 24 hours a day."
...
Her father’s condition is still described by the hospital as critical but stable.

Only yesterday the Skripals chances to survive was claimed to be 1 out of 99. Nerve agents are deadly weapons. A dose of ten milligram of the U.S. developed VX nerve agent will kill 50% of those exposed to it. The 'Novichok' agents are said to be several times more deadly than VX.

It seems less and less likely that the British government claim about 'Novichok' poisoning is actually true. Way more likely are other explanations, for example food poisoning or an allergic shock soon after eating out at a fish restaurant.

The claims of a nerve agent and 'Novichok' seem to have been taken from the script of the British-American spy drama Strike Back (clip) which recently ran on British and U.S. TV. The sole purpose of the 'Novichok' drama is to implicate and damage Russia.

As the former MI6 spook Alastair Crooke writes:

The evidence is beside the point: here was the opportunity to close-off Trump’s ‘illusion’ of a possible dĂ©tente with Russia. The narrative is all. We will likely never know the full story.

Yulia and Sergej Skripal were found unconscious on the afternoon of March 4.

The U.S. State Department says that its campaign to use the Skripal incident as a tool against Russia started on March 6, only two days after the incident and six full days before the British government raised accusations against Russia.

In her press briefing on March 27 the U.S. State Department spokeswomen Heather Nauert talked about the coordinated ousting of Russian diplomats by some "western" countries:

Our Deputy Secretary Sullivan, Assistant Secretary Wess Mitchell, and many others in the building across the interagency process have worked tirelessly over the past three weeks to achieve this unprecedented level of cooperation and also coordination.
The end result – 151 Russian intelligence personnel sent home to Moscow – is a testimony of how seriously the world takes Russia’s ongoing global campaign to undermine international peace and stability, to threaten the sovereignty and security of countries worldwide, and to subvert and discredit Western institutions.

The above quote is from Nauert's prepared remarks, not the more free wheeling Q&A section.

The British prime minister made her allegations against Russia only on March 12:

"It is now clear that Mr Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a military grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia.

This is part of a group of nerve agents known as 'Novichok'."

(See our earlier pieces, linked below, for many details on 'Novichok' and its history.)

May's announcement was similar to Tony Blair's "45 minutes" claim. A lie, concocted in a common propaganda operation with the U.S. government. As the Downing Street Memos said of the preparations for the war on Iraq:

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. 



bigger


There are several details that debunk the 'Novichok' thesis.


The specialists in the British chemical weapon laboratory in Porton Down, which gets millions of U.S. military research dollars, did not agree with the 'Novichok' claim for whatever effected the Skripals. May's phrase "of a type developed by Russia' was politically negotiated. As ambassador Craig Murray provided:

I have now received confirmation from a well placed FCO source that Porton Down scientists are not able to identify the nerve agent as being of Russian manufacture, and have been resentful of the pressure being placed on them to do so. Porton Down would only sign up to the formulation “of a type developed by Russia” after a rather difficult meeting where this was agreed as a compromise formulation.

But was there really a nerve agent involved?


A doctor who administered first aid to Yulia Skripal for 30 minutes was not effected at all. The emergency services suspected the victims had received on overdose of fentanyl.

Doctor Steven Davies, who leads the emergency service of the Salisbury District Hospital, wrote in a letter to the London Times:

Sir, Further to your report "Poison exposure leaves almost 40 needing treatment", (Mar 14), may I clarify that no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury and there have only been ever been three patients with significant poisoning.

A Court of Protection judgment about the Skripals issued on March 22 quotes as witness a Porton Down chemical and biological analyst:

Blood samples from Sergei Skripal and Yulia Skripal were analysed and the findings indicated exposure to a nerve agent or related compound. The samples tested positive for the presence of a Novichok class nerve agent or closely related agent.

"Indicated exposure" is a rather weak formulation. It means that no 'novichok' was found but decomposition products of something that may have been a nerve agent or not. A blood sample may "test positive" for all kinds of stuff but that does not say anything about the amount or about the lethality of any of the "positive tested" elements. The 'Novichok' nerve agents are organophosphates like many of the usual insecticides are. These break down relatively fast. A walk through a field freshly sprayed with some insecticide or the domestic use of such a product might leave similar decomposition products in the bloodstream as a nerve agent attack.

The Court of Protection also said that no relative or friend contacted the authorities about the Skripals. That was evidently false (ru).

Today, 25 days after the incident, the police say they suspect that the Skripals were poisoned from the front door of their home. Today, 25 days after the incident, they removed the front door. I believe that this decision was based on a "most plausible story" guess and not on material evidence. If the door had tested positive for a nerve agent it would have been removed weeks ago. This is, like those people in high protection suits roaming around Salisbury, just theater.

The Skripals were said to have left their home at 9:00am in the morning. They collapsed relatively sudden at 4:00pm in the afternoon. Is this seven hour delay consistent with being severely affected by a "military grade" highly toxic nerve agent? I doubt it.

But even if a nerve agent of the 'novichok' type was involved the jump to allegations against Russia is completely baseless. David B. Collum is Professor for Organic Chemistry at Cornell University. He really, really knows this stuff:

Dave Collum @DavidBCollum - 12:54 AM - 27 Mar 2018
I will say it again: Anybody who tells you this nerve agent must have come from Russia is a liar--a complete and utter liar. They are simple compounds.

The Skripals are getting better. Good for them. But their resurrection from certain death is a further dint in the British government's claim of 'nerve agent' 'of a type developed by Russia'.

The whole anti-Russian campaign constructed out of it is just ridiculous and deeply dishonest. The five page propaganda handout the British provided to other governments is a joke. It provided no solid facts on the case. To respond to it rationally, as Russia tries to do, makes little sense.

An editorial (recommended) in the Chinese Global Times captures the utter disgust such behavior creates elsewhere:

The fact that major Western powers can gang up and "sentence" a foreign country without following the same procedures other countries abide by and according to the basic tenets of international law is chilling.
...
Over the past few years the international standard has been falsified and manipulated in ways never seen before.
...
It is beyond outrageous how the US and Europe have treated Russia. Their actions represent a frivolity and recklessness that has grown to characterize Western hegemony that only knows how to contaminate international relations. Right now is the perfect time for non-Western nations to strengthen unity and collaborative efforts among one another.

Resurrection or not - the result of the 'Novichok' nonsense will not be to our 'western' favor.

Previous Moon of Alabama reports on the Skripal case:
March 8 - Poisioned British-Russian Double-Agent Has Links To Clinton Campaign
March 12 - Theresa May's "45 Minutes" Moment
March 14 - Are 'Novichok' Poisons Real? - May's Claims Fall Apart
March 16 - The British Government's 'Novichok' Drama Was Written By Whom?
March 18 - NHS Doctor: "No Patients Have Experienced Symptoms Of Nerve Agent Poisoning In Salisbury"
March 21 - Russian Scientists Explain 'Novichok' - High Time For Britain To Come Clean (Updated)

Thursday, March 29, 2018

Anatomy of a Hit Piece: Is Newsbud Crazy Like a Fox, or Just Crazy?

Fact Checking Newsbud's "Syria Under Siege" Video

by James Corbett - The Corbett Report


March 29, 2018

James fact checks Newsbud’s recent “Syria Under Siege” video and comes to some unfortunate conclusions.


Watch this video on BitChute / YouTube


SHOW NOTES
Sibel attacks 21st Century Wire (Archived link)
Sibel accuses “junkie” news site 21Wire of mystery funding (Archived link)
Sibel replies to George Monbiot to attack Beeley and Bartlett (Archived link)
Sibel claims SSM “kicked out” Beeley/Bartlett. SSM disputes. (Archived link)
Newsbud promises documented expose of Beeley and Bartlett (Archived link)
Syria Under Siege: Guarding Against Wolves in Sheep Clothing
Sibel claims expose “triple fact-checked” (Archived link)
Sibel congratulates Eva’s reporting, offers her a position (Archived link)
Paul Larudee Disavows Sibel
Part 1 (Twitter) / Part 1 (Archive)
Part 2 (Twitter) / Part 2 (Archive)
Part 3 (Twitter) / Part 3 (Archive)
Part 4 (Twitter) / Part 4 (Archive)
Vanessa Beeley’s 2014 tweet archive
Military Intervention is never the answer.
Further context to Beeley/Navsteva torture conversation
30 years since Sydney’s Hilton Hotel bombing—the unanswered questions
Original source of Mufti mistranslation
Sourcewatch: Memri
Mufti Hassoun Threatens U.S and Europe | The True Story
Beeley quotes Chris York using a “dirty” word (Archived link)
Sibel uses a “dirty” word 1 (Archived link)
Sibel uses a “dirty” word 2 (Archived link)
Sibel uses a “dirty” word 3 (Archived link)
Sibel uses a “dirty” word 4 (Archived link)
Larger context of Beeley’s DM re: Rania Khalek (Archived link)
MSM Syria Lies Need to Be Exposed
Western corporate media ‘disappears’ over 1.5 million Syrians and 4,000 doctors
Syria: Aleppo Doctor Demolishes Imperialist Propaganda and Media Warmongering
Jafaari at UN calls MSF a branch of French intelligence
Newsbud’s ExposĂ© of Beeley and Bartlett: Comment
Sibel discussing doctors and psychologists at torture sites (Archived link)
Cory Morningstar blasts Newsbud for falsely alleging plagiarism
Sibel claims SSM got 1.5 million (Archived link)
SSM response to $1.5 million claim
Sibel tweets Daniel McAdams regarding her campaign part 1 (Archived link)
Sibel tweets Daniel McAdams regarding her campaign part 2 (Archived link)
Sibel tweets Daniel McAdams regarding her campaign part 3 (Archived link)
Sibel tweets Daniel McAdams regarding her campaign part 4 (Archived link)
Example of social media posts being made under the “human decency” campaign (Archived link)
Sibel admits she researched her claims about Patrick Henningsen AFTER she made them, and found that they were false (Archived link)
Sibel’s personal attack on Vanessa Beeley (Archived link)

Same As It Ever Was: War Crimes (and Their Perpetrators) Old and New

Trump’s Recycling Program: War Crimes and War Criminals, Old and (Potentially) New

by Rebecca Gordon - TomDispatch


March 29, 2018

Fallujah 2003


A barely noticed anniversary slid by on March 20th. It’s been 15 years since the United States committed the greatest war crime of the twenty-first century: the unprovoked, aggressive invasion of Iraq. The New York Times, which didn’t exactly cover itself in glory in the run-up to that invasion, recently ran an op-ed by an Iraqi novelist living in the United States entitled “Fifteen Years Ago, America Destroyed My Country,” but that was about it. The Washington Post, another publication that (despite the recent portrayal of its Vietnam-era heroism in the movie The Post) repeatedly editorialized in favor of the invasion, marked the anniversary with a story about the war’s “murky” body count. Its piece concluded that at least 600,000 people died in the decade and a half of war, civil war, and chaos that followed -- roughly the population of Washington, D.C.

These days, there’s a significant consensus here that the Iraq invasion was a “terrible mistake,” a “tragic error,” or even the “single worst foreign policy decision in American history.” Fewer voices are saying what it really was: a war crime. In fact, that invasion fell into the very category that led the list of crimes at the Nuremberg tribunal, where high Nazi officials were tried for their actions during World War II. During the negotiations establishing that tribunal and its rules, it was (ironically, in view of later events) the United States that insisted on including the crime of “waging a war of aggression” and on placing it at the head of the list. The U.S. position was that all the rest of Germany’s war crimes sprang from this first “crime against peace.”

Similarly, the many war crimes of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush -- the extraordinary renditions; the acts of torture at GuantĂ¡namo, Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, and CIA black sites all over the world; the nightmare of abuse at Abu Ghraib, a U.S. military prison in Iraq; the siege and firebombing (with white phosphorus) of the Iraqi city of Fallujah; the massacre of civilians in Haditha, another Iraqi city -- all of these arose from the Bush administration’s determination to invade Iraq.

It was to secure “evidence” of a (nonexistent) connection between Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda attackers of 9/11 that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld upped the ante at GuantĂ¡namo in his infamous memo approving torture there. The search for proof of the same connection motivated the torture of Abu Zubaydah at a CIA black site in Thailand. If not for that long-planned invasion of Iraq, the “war on terror” might have ended years ago.

Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, Making Atrocities Great Again

[Note for TomDispatch Readers: Anyone willing to make a donation of $100 to this website ($125 if you live outside the United States) can still get a signed, personalized copy of Rebecca Gordon’s book American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes. Read today’s post and you’ll see (sadly enough) just how relevant it remains. Check out our donation page for the details. Tom]

There’s been a lot of free-floating fear and horror in the media recently about the appointment as national security adviser of John Bolton, a man who’s been itching for war(s) since the 1990s. His approach to Iran and North Korea in particular (not quite nuke ’em!, but not that much short of it either) isn’t what you’d call either carefully calibrated or particularly diplomatic. Still, a certain balance in reporting on Bolton has been lacking. You can search in vain for any outlets (other than Fox News) giving President Trump the slightest credit for what he did, which was no mean trick. After all, short of bringing former Vice President Dick Cheney out of “retirement” and making him secretary of defense (as indeed he was for President George H.W. Bush), it’s hard to think of a single former official of the George W. Bush administration -- or more or less anyone else -- who would still so vehemently defend the absolute brilliance of the invasion of Iraq and of "preemptive war.” On that score, Bolton is as close to the last man standing as you’re likely to find and since, in his eagerness for that 2003 invasion (and his willingness to back intelligence information, no matter how false, promoting it), he was also one of the first men standing, which means he is indeed a unique candidate for the national security adviser’s job.

Unfortunately, the media (Fox News excepted) just doesn’t get the thrill of it all. Keep in mind that President Trump tried “my generals” for more than a year and what did that get him? Deeper into Afghanistan, four dead Green Berets in Niger, stuck in Syria. Now, he’s putting the fate of the republic back in the hands of civilians (and in the process, miraculously enough, turning those hawkish generals into the true “adults” in, or presently leaving, or soon to leave the “room”). So some civilians are about to have their moment. Give them nine months at the outside. Bolton, in particular, has a reputation for being acerbic and beyond blunt in his views, so don’t expect him to last long with a president who clearly must be pandered to in extreme ways by those who care to survive in office -- or in the Oval Office -- for even modest lengths of time.

Here, then, is the true thrill of it all: imagining what could possibly come next. After the generals, the neocons, the Tea Party right, the Fox News commentators, the Islamophobes and Iranophobes of every sort -- that is, by election time 2018 -- who’s going to be left? What pool of Martians could Donald Trump possibly choose from for his next set of appointees? Stay tuned and, while you’re waiting, let TomDispatch regular Rebecca Gordon, author of American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes, return you to that invasion-of-Iraq moment and remind you of what a thoroughly stellar crew we’ve had running our ship of state, our own Titanic, for much of the time since. Tom

Trump’s Recycling Program: 

War Crimes and War Criminals, Old and (Potentially) New

by Rebecca Gordon

 

But Wasn’t That Then?


Fifteen years is an eternity in what Gore Vidal once called “the United States of Amnesia.” So why resurrect the ancient history of George W. Bush in the brave new age of Donald Trump? The answer is simple enough: because the Trump administration is already happily recycling some of those Bush-era war crimes along with some of the criminals who committed them. And its top officials, military and civilian, are already threatening to generate new ones of their own.

Last July, the State Department closed the office that, since the Clinton administration, has assisted war crimes victims seeking justice in other countries. Apparently, the Trump administration sees no reason to do anything to limit the impunity of war criminals, whoever they might be. Reporting on the closure, Newsweek quoted Major Todd Pierce, who worked at GuantĂ¡namo as a judge advocate general (JAG) defense attorney, this way:

“It just makes official what has been U.S. policy since 9/11, which is that there will be no notice taken of war crimes because so many of them were being committed by our own allies, our military and intelligence officers, and our elected officials. The war crime of conspiring and waging aggressive war still exists, as torture, denial of fair trial rights, and indefinite detention are war crimes. But how embarrassing and revealing of hypocrisy would it be to charge a foreign official with war crimes such as these?”

GuantĂ¡namo JAG attorneys like Pierce are among the real, if unsung, heroes of this sorry period. They continue to advocate for their indefinitely detained, still untried clients, most of whom will probably never leave that prison. Despite the executive order President Obama signed on his first day in office to close GITMO, it remains open to this day and Donald Trump has promised to “load it up with some bad dudes,” Geneva Conventions be damned.

Indeed, Secretary of Defense James (“Mad Dog”) Mattis has said that the president has the right to lock up anyone identified as a “combatant” in our forever wars, well, forever. In 2016, he assured the Senate Armed Services Committee that any detainee who “has signed up with this enemy” -- no matter where “the president, the commander-in-chief, sends us” to fight -- should know that he will be a “prisoner until the war is over.” In other words, since the war on terror will never end, anyone the U.S. captures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Niger, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, or elsewhere will face the possibility of spending the rest of his life in GuantĂ¡namo.

Recycling War Criminals


Speaking of Mattis and war crimes, there’s already plenty of blood on his hands. He earned that “Mad Dog” sobriquet while commanding the U.S. Marines who twice in 2004 laid siege to Fallujah. During those sieges, American forces sealed that Iraqi city off so no one could leave, attacked marked ambulances and aid workers, shot women, children, and an ambulance driver, killed almost 6,000 civilians outright, displaced 200,000 more, and destroyed 75% of the city with bombs and other munitions. The civilian toll was vastly disproportionate to any possible military objective -- itself the definition of a war crime.

One of the uglier aspects of that battle was the use of white phosphorus, an incendiary munition. Phosphorus ignites spontaneously when exposed to air. If bits of that substance attach to human beings, as long as there’s oxygen to combine with the phosphorus, skin and flesh burn away, sometimes right into the bone.

Use of white phosphorus as an anti-personnel weapon is forbidden under the Chemical Weapons Convention, which the U.S. has signed.

In Iraq, Mattis also saw to it that charges would be dropped against soldiers responsible for murdering civilians in the city of Haditha.

In a well-documented 2005 massacre -- a reprisal for a roadside bomb -- American soldiers shot 24 unarmed men, women, and children at close range. As the convening authority for the subsequent judicial hearing, Mattis dismissed the murder charges against all the soldiers accused of that atrocity.

Mattis is hardly the only slightly used war criminal in the Trump administration. As most people know, the president has just nominated Deputy CIA Director Gina Haspel to head the Agency. There are times when women might want to celebrate the shattering of a glass ceiling, but this shouldn’t be one of them. Haspel was responsible for running a CIA black site in Thailand, during a period in the Bush years when the Agency’s torture program was operating at full throttle. She was in charge, for instance, when the CIA tortured Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who was waterboarded at least three times and, according to the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Torture report, “interrogated using the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques.” (The report provided no further details.)

Haspel was also part of the chain of command that ordered the destruction of videotapes of the torture of Abu Zubaydah (waterboarded a staggering 83 times). According to the PBS show Frontline, she drafted the cable that CIA counterterrorism chief José Rodríguez sent out to make sure those tapes disappeared. In many countries, covering up war crimes would itself merit prosecution; in Washington, it earns a promotion.

More on Trump and Torture


Many people remember that Trump campaigned on a promise to bring back waterboarding “and a whole lot worse.” On the campaign trail, he repeatedly insisted that torture “works” and that even “if it doesn’t work, they [whoever “they” may be] deserve it anyway, for what they’re doing.” Trump repeated his confidence in the efficacy of torture a few days after his inauguration, saying that “people at the highest level of intelligence” had assured him it worked.

Trump’s nominee to replace Rex Tillerson as secretary of state is former Tea Party congressman and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Known for his antipathy to Muslims (and to Iran), he once endorsed calling his Indian-American electoral opponent a “turban topper.”

Pompeo is as eager as Trump to restore torture’s good name and legality, although his public pronouncements have sometimes been more circumspect than the president’s. During his CIA confirmation hearings he assured the Senate Intelligence Committee of what most of its members wanted to hear: that he would “absolutely not” reinstitute waterboarding and other forms of torture, even if ordered to do so by the president. However, his written testimony was significantly more equivocal. As the British Independent reported, Pompeo wrote that he would back reviewing the ban on waterboarding if prohibiting the technique was shown to impede the “gathering of vital intelligence.”

Pompeo added that he planned to reopen the question of whether interrogation techniques should be limited to those -- none of them considered torture techniques -- found in the Army Field Manual, something legally required ever since, in 2009, President Obama issued an executive order to that effect. (“If confirmed,” wrote Pompeo, “I will consult with experts at the [Central Intelligence] Agency and at other organizations in the U.S. government on whether the Army Field Manual uniform application is an impediment to gathering vital intelligence to protect the country.”) Unlike many of Trump’s appointees, Pompeo is a smart guy, which makes him all the more dangerous.

When President Trump lists his triumphs, often the first one he mentions is the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch as a Supreme Court justice. Gorsuch, too, played a small but juicy role in the Bush torture drama, drafting the president’s signing statement for the Detainee Treatment Act when he worked in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel back in 2005. That statement officially outlawed any torture of “war on terror” detainees, and yet left open the actual practice of torture because, as Gorsuch assured President Bush, none of the administration’s self-proclaimed “enhanced interrogation techniques” (including waterboarding) amounted to torture in the first place.

Still, of all Trump’s recycled appointments, the most dangerous of all took place only recently. The president fired his national security advisor, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, and replaced him with John Bolton of Iran-Contra and Iraq invasion fame.

Under George W. Bush, Bolton was a key proponent of that invasion, which he’d been advocating since at least 1998 when he signed an infamous letter to Bill Clinton from the Project for a New American Century recommending just such a course of action. In 2002, Bolton, while undersecretary of state for arms control, engineered the dismissal of JosĂ© Bustani, the head of the U.N.’s Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which was involved in overseeing Iraq’s disarmament process. A former Bolton deputy told the New York Times that Bolton was dismayed because Bustani “was trying to send chemical-weapons inspectors to Baghdad in advance of the U.S.-led invasion.” Presumably Bolton didn’t want the U.N. trumpeting the bad news that Iraq had no active chemical weapons program at that moment.

Nor has Bolton ever forgotten his first Middle Eastern fascination, Iran, although nowadays he wants to attack it (along with North Korea) rather than conspire with it, as President Reagan and he did in the 1980s. He’s argued in several editorials and as a Fox News commentator -- wrongly as it happens -- that it would be completely legal for the United States to launch first strikes against both countries.

Naturally, he opposes the six-nation pact with Iran to end its nuclear weapons program. When that agreement was signed, the New York Times ran an op-ed by Bolton entitled “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.”

It should (but doesn’t) go without saying that any first strike against another country is again the very definition of the initial crime on that Nuremberg list.

Recycling War Crimes


We can’t blame the Trump administration for the decision to support Saudi Arabia’s grim war in Yemen, a catastrophe for the civilians of that poverty-stricken, now famine-plagued country. That choice was made under Barack Obama. But President Trump hasn’t shown the slightest urge to end the American role in it either. Not after the Saudis threw him that fabulous party in Riyadh, projecting a five-story-high portrait of him on the exterior of the Ritz Carlton there. Not after his warm embrace of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman during his recent visit to the United States. In fact, at their joint press conference, Trump actually criticized former president Obama for bothering the Saudis with complaints about human rights violations in Yemen and in Saudi Arabia itself.

Meanwhile, the United States continues to fund and support the Saudi military’s three-year-old war crime in that country, providing weaponry (including cluster bombs), targeting intelligence, and mid-air refueling for Saudi aircraft conducting missions there. The conflict, which the New York Times has called “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” has killed at least ten thousand people, although accurate numbers are almost impossible to come by. As of December 2017, the Yemen Data Project had catalogued 15,489 separate air attacks, of which almost a third involved no known military targets and another 4,800 hit targets that have yet to be identified. Hospitals and other health facilities have been targeted along with crowded markets. Government funding for public health and sanitation ended in 2016, leading to a cholera epidemic that the Guardian calls “the largest and fastest-spreading outbreak of the disease in modern history.”

Through the illegal blockading of Yemen's ports, Saudi Arabia and its allies have exposed vast numbers of Yemenis to the risk of famine as well. Even before the latest blockade began in November 2017, that country faced the largest food emergency in the world. Now, it is in the early stages of a potentially devastating famine caused entirely by Saudi Arabia’s illegal war, aided and abetted by the United States. In addition, Trump has increased the number of drone assassinations in Yemen, with their ever-present risk of civilian deaths.

Yemen is hardly the only site for actual and potential Trump administration war crimes. In response to requests from his military commanders, the president has, for instance, eased the targeting restrictions that had previously been in place for drone strikes, a decision he’s also failed to report to Congress, as required by law. According to Al-Jazeera, such drone strikes in countries ranging from Libya to Afghanistan will no longer require the presence of an “imminent threat,” which means “the U.S. may now select targets outside of armed conflict,” with increased risk of hitting noncombatants. Also relaxed has been the standard previously in place “of requiring ‘near certainty’ that the target is present” before ordering a strike. Drone operators will now be permitted to attack civilian homes and vehicles, even if they can’t confirm that the human being they are searching for is there. Under Trump, the CIA, which President Obama had largely removed from the drone wars, is once again ordering such attacks along with the military. All of these changes make it more likely that Washington’s serial aerial assassinations will kill significant numbers of civilians in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and other target countries.

Defense Secretary Mattis has also loosened the rules of engagement in Afghanistan by, for example, removing the “proximity requirement” for bombing raids. In other words, U.S. forces are now free to drop bombs even when the target is nowhere near U.S. or Afghan military forces. As Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee last October,

“If they are in an assembly area, a training camp, we know they are an enemy and they are going to threaten the Afghan government or our people, [Gen. John Nicholson, commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan,] has the wherewithal to make that decision. Wherever we find them, anyone who is trying to throw the NATO plan off, trying to attack the Afghan government, then we can go after them.”

Under such widened rules for air strikes -- permitting them anytime our forces notice a group of people “assembling” in an area -- the chances of killing civilians go way up. And indeed, civilian casualties rose precipitously in Afghanistan last year.

And then there’s always the chance -- the odds have distinctly risen since the appointments of two raging Iranophobes, Pompeo and Bolton, to key national security positions -- that Trump will start his very own unprovoked war of aggression. “I’m good at war,” Trump told an Iowa rally in 2015. “I’ve had a lot of wars of my own. I’m really good at war. I love war in a certain way, but only when we win.” With Mike Pompeo whispering in one ear and John Bolton in the other, it's frighteningly likely Trump will soon commit his very own war crime by starting an aggressive war against Iran.

Rebecca Gordon, a TomDispatch regular, teaches at the University of San Francisco. She is the author of American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes. Her previous books include Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States and Letters from Nicaragua.

Copyright 2018 Rebecca Gordon