Before pointing the finger at Russia and Syria, the U.S. should answer for its own record in regard to chemical weapons

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Written by Brian Kalman exclusively for SouthFront; Brian Kalman is a management professional in the marine transportation industry. He was an officer in the US Navy for eleven years.

The world is once again witnessing the height of U.S. hypocrisy as members of the U.S. State Department ratchet up anti-Russian and anti-Syrian rhetoric surrounding the use of chemical weapons in Syria and the UK. Ambassador Nikki Haley has warned Syria, Iran and Russia that they will be held accountable for their pre-determined use of chemical weapons in Idlib on innocent civilians. No evidence was provided to support her threats. The United States carried out cruise missile strikes on two previous occasions, and each time provided no evidence to prove their assertion that the Syrian government used chemical weapons in attacking civilians, nor was any rational reason given for such an obviously irrational decision on the part of the Syrian state. No evidence has ever been provided to justify the clear international crime of aggression committed by the United States on these two earlier occasions. Now, the UK and the U.S. are both attempting to accuse the Russian government of using chemical weapons in an alleged attempted assassination of a Russian national on UK soil. Once again, no real evidence has been presented, only assertions and hearsay.

On Thursday September 13^th, Assistant Secretary of State Manisha Singh declared before the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee that the United States would level the most severe of sanctions against Russia, including breaking all diplomatic ties, if Russia refused to admit its guilt in perpetrating the Skripal assassination fiasco and refused to submit to International inspections by the OPCW of its alleged chemical weapons and biological weapons programs. She stated that Russia would have to meet this requirement by an arbitrary November 4^th deadline, set by the United States in accordance with a U.S. law, not an international law. H.R. 1724 – Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 specifies in part:

Title III: Control and Elimination of Chemical and Biological Weapons – Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 – Declares it is U.S. policy to: (1) seek multilaterally coordinated efforts with other countries to control the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons; and (2) strengthen efforts to control chemical agents, precursors, and equipment.

Requires the President to use the U.S. export control laws to control the export of defense articles, defense services, goods, and technologies that he determines would assist a country in acquiring the capability to produce or use such weapons.

Amends the Export Administration Act of 1979 to require the Secretary of Commerce to establish a list of goods and technology that would assist a foreign government or group in acquiring chemical or biological weapons. Requires a validated export license for the export of such items to certain countries of concern.

Requires the President to impose certain sanctions against foreign persons if he determines that they knowingly contributed to the efforts of a country to acquire, use, or stockpile chemical or biological weapons. Declares such sanctions to include: (1) denial of U.S. procurement contracts for goods or services from such foreign persons; and (2) prohibition against importation of products from such persons. Authorizes the President to waive imposition of such sanctions if he determines that is in the national security interests of the United States.

Amends the Arms Export Control Act to set forth similar provisions.

Requires the President to make a determination with respect to whether a country has used chemical or biological weapons in violation of international law or has used lethal chemical or biological weapons against its own nationals. Authorizes specified congressional committees to request the President to make such determination with respect to the use of such weapons.

Requires the President to impose the following sanctions against foreign countries that have been found to have used such weapons: (1) termination of assistance under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (except humanitarian assistance and agricultural commodities); (2) termination of arms sales and arms sales financing; (3) denial of U.S. credit; and (4) prohibition of the export of certain goods and technology. Directs the President to impose at least three of the following additional sanctions unless such countries cease the use of such weapons and provide assurances that they will not use, and will allow inspections with respect to, such weapons: (1) opposition to the extension of multilateral development bank assistance; (2) prohibition of U.S. bank loans (except loans for food or agricultural commodities); (3) further export prohibitions; (4) import restrictions; (5) suspension of diplomatic relations; and (6) termination of air carrier landing rights. Provides for the removal and waiver of such sanctions.

Requires the President to submit to the Congress annual reports on the efforts of countries to acquire chemical or biological weapons.

Repeals certain duplicative provisions of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1992 and 1993.

It is important to note that nowhere in this law is there a legal commitment made by the United States itself, to eliminate its own chemical and biological weapons capabilities. This is not an oversight, yet speaks to the imperial hypocrisy of the United States and an acknowledgement that it alone has been the largest perpetrator of chemical weapons use and proliferation for more than 50 years. It currently maintains the largest stockpile of both chemical and biological warfare agents of any nation on the planet, and continues to expand its biological weapons research and development on a scale far larger than any other country.

While the U.S. Department of Defense maintains that its massive biological research programs are meant to counter and defend against new biological weapons being developed, they are in fact developing bio-weapons in the process.

International Obligations and the OPCW

Russia is one of 192 signatories (state and non-state parties) of the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, along with the United States. On September 27^th, 2017 it was announced by Russia and the OPCW, that Russia had verified the total destruction of its large chemical weapons stockpile dating from the years of the Soviet Union, estimated at 39,967 metric tons of chemical agents. Russia was obligated to do this by 2020, yet was able to accomplish the task three years ahead of schedule. Under the original agreement, both the U.S. and Russia were obligated to accomplish this by 2007, but both nations required an extension of the deadline.

Although admitting to a total stockpile of 28,000 metric tons of chemical agents, the U.S. admits to destroying 90% of its chemical arsenal. The U.S. requested and was granted an extension out to 2023 to achieve verified elimination of 100% of its chemical weapons. The only other signatory of the law other than the United States not to have already met the requirements is Iraq. It must be stated that much of the chemical weapons in the Iraqi arsenal are based on the chemical warfare agents supplied to the Saddam Hussein regime during the height of the Iran-Iraq war by the United States and other western nations. Saddam used some of these U.S. supplied weapons to murder thousands of Iraqi Kurds in the town of Halabja in 1988. Estimates range between 3,000 – 7,000 deaths and over 10,000 injured.

Saddam Hussein was a valued asset of the United States and its Western allies for decades. Hussein pictured above with former French President Jacque Chirac and U.S Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Not only did the United States, and France for that matter, provide chemical weapons to the Saddam regime, but the U.S. intelligence agencies provided the Iraqi military with vital battlefield intelligence, including satellite imagery in aiding them in the war. The U.S. was well aware that the Saddam regime had used chemical weapons in at least four offensives during the war. Of course they knew, they had facilitated the transfer of these weapons to help the Iraqis prosecute a war of aggression against Iran. Declassified CIA documents clearly show that the United States was well aware that the Iraqis had used chemical weapons at least four times between 1983 and 1988. Iran had accused Iraq of using chemical weapons, and tried to build a case to bring before the United Nations. The United States withheld its knowledge of course, and continued to aid its ally in perpetrating these crimes against humanity.

Perhaps the most powerful photo taken of the Halabja chemical attack perpetrated against Iraqi Kurds. This woman died running with her child in an attempt to save her, yet could not escape the deadly effects of the chemical agents used. Their embrace will forever symbolize both human love and sacrifice, and unfathomable human cruelty.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley has lied through her teeth repeatedly in her statements before the U.N. Security Council and the General Assembly. She has stated repeatedly that Assad has used chemical weapons against his own people in Ghouta in 2013, Khan Shaykhun in 2017 and Douma in 2018, yet has not supplied one shred of evidence beyond dubious social media posts of unknown provenance. She has also stated that the United States is certain that it could only be the Syrian government, as no other party in the conflict zone could possibly possess chemical weapons. Here’s the problem with her statement. Firstly, the United States and the OPCW verified that Syria destroyed or surrendered all of its chemical weapons agents. On its official website, the OPCW states:

“Veolia, the US firm contracted by the OPCW to dispose of part of the Syrian chemical weapons stockpile, has completed disposal of 75 cylinders of hydrogen fluoride at its facility in Texas.

This completes destruction of all chemical weapons declared by the Syrian Arab Republic.  The need to devise a technical solution for treating a number of cylinders in a deteriorated and hazardous condition had delayed the disposal process.

Commenting on this development, the Director-General of the OPCW, Ambassador Ahmet Üzümcü, said: “This process closes an important chapter in the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapon programme as we continue efforts to clarify Syria’s declaration and address ongoing use of toxic chemicals as weapons in that country.”

Secondly, the OPCW and the UN have both verified that opposition forces within Syria have used chemical agents as weapons on numerous occasions during the conflict. Not only has Carla Del Ponte, UN human rights investigator, former UN Chief Prosecutor and ICC attorney stated that opposition forces had used chemical weapons, but also the former OPCW head field investigator in Syria Jerry Smith stated to the BBC that he found it very unlikely that the government perpetrated these chemical attacks.. As recently as October of last year the U.S. State Department itself seemed to acknowledge the same truth in its warning to U.S. citizens traveling to Syria. The travel warning stated:

“Tactics of ISIS, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and other violent extremist groups include the use of suicide bombers, kidnapping, small and heavy arms, improvised explosive devices, and chemical weapons.

They have targeted major city centers, road checkpoints, border crossings, government buildings, shopping areas, and open spaces, in Damascus, Aleppo, Hamah, Dara, Homs, Idlib, and Dayr al-Zawr provinces.”

U.S. History of using Chemical Weapons and Supporting Those that Do

The last country in the world that should lecture anyone on the possession and use of WMDs is the United States. Not only is the United States the only country in history to ever target civilians with multiple atomic bombs, it has used chemical weapons against the populations of Southeast Asia and Iraq in the past. Now, they were smart enough not to use mustard gas and anthrax, but the accumulative effects of Agent Orange and depleted uranium in these populations has been devastating, and will not only cause great harm and pain for these populations, but will leave the land poisoned for generations.

The United States sprayed copious quantities of TCDD (dioxin tetrachlordibenzo-para-dioxin), a class 1 carcinogen all over regions of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in an attempt to defoliate the jungle environment, and thus rob their enemy of an environment they excelled at fighting in and hiding in as part of Operation Ranch Hand. Known as Agent Orange, the chemical was banned in the U.S. in 1970. Although extremely hard to quantify, the devastating effects of dioxin exposure in the Vietnamese population are easily identifiable, as the same effects were observed in U.S. veterans that returned home after exposure to the toxin. Abnormally high levels of various cancers and debilitating birth defects are present in Southeast Asian populations in areas of greatest use of Agent Orange. Dioxins remain in the soil and water table, as they do not degrade naturally. Dioxin also bio-accumulates in the fatty tissues of animals and thus remains in the food supply.

One of the many young Vietnamese born long after the war with debilitating, neurodevelopmental diseases and birth defects due to Agent Orange exposure of their parents.

The United States learned little from the crime it perpetrated in Southeast Asia, nor did it seem to care as it repeated a similar offense in two successive invasions of Iraq. Having failed to achieve its aim of defeating Iran through its brutal Iraqi proxy, even after helping the Saddam Hussein regime in chemical warfare attacks against Iranian soldiers and Iraqi Kurdish civilians, the United States largely ignored the numerous atrocities carried out by one of its favorite dictators. The U.S. would turn on its erstwhile henchman in 1990, after Saddam decided to attack one of its favorite corrupt emirates in the region. The resulting 1991 invasion of Iraq saw the heavy use of depleted uranium armored piercing rounds. Depleted uranium is extremely dense, and thus good for piercing hardened steel or composite armor. The follow-on invasion of 2003 brought more death and destruction, and more depleted uranium.

Locations of depleted uranium munitions used by U.S. Airforce A-10 ground attack aircraft in Iraq during the 2003 invasion. Depleted Uranium is also used in anti-armor munitions utilized by all U.S. tanks and armored fighting vehicles as well, so the true breadth of distribution and employment of depleted uranium in the above map are understated.

The U.S. has not funded the reclamation and disposal of depleted uranium contaminated scrap in Iraq. The new Iraqi government has started cleaning up the approximately 350 sites identified as having depleted uranium contamination in the country, mostly around Basra and Baghdad, yet also scattered over the entire country. It is estimated that between 1,000 and 2,000 metric tons of depleted uranium used in various munitions fired during the invasion of 2003 alone. It is hard to narrow down the exact amount as the U.S. military has failed to provide any definitive numbers. Iraqi doctors have recorded and reported higher cases of cancers in adult patients and increased birth defects in children being born in Iraq since the invasion took place. The U.S. government seems determined to undermine any attempts to draw direct correlations between this recorded phenomenon and its use of depleted uranium in two successive wars in Iraq. It has also fought all attempts by U.S. war veterans suffering from various cancers and neurological diseases from their similar exposure in both wars.

Continued Support of War Criminals

Nikki Haley fails to acknowledge the historic role of the United States government’s support of some of the world’s most horrible regimes in the past. From the Khmer Rouge and Saddam Hussein then, to Saudi Arabia and Tahrir al-Sham now, the United States has supported many of the world’s most deplorable violators of human rights. Yet Nikki Haley has the arrogance and delusional belief that she has the moral high ground in chastising Syria and Russia before the U.N.?

Just this week U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo clarified that the Saudi and UAE have acted in good faith in taking steps to reduce civilian casualties in their military operations in Yemen and that the U.S. military would keep providing both material and direct support to both nations in prosecuting their illegal war. U.S. manufactured and supplied bombs are being used to kill civilians in Yemen regularly, amounting to an estimated 15,000 killed or injured civilians over a period of three years. This does not take into account the deaths and suffering associated with the humanitarian crisis that has resulted from the Saudi-led coalition destroying virtually all infrastructure in the Houthi controlled part of the country. I am sure that it is also just another “unintended consequence” that al-Qaeda has expanded and strengthened its position in Yemen as a direct result of the conflict. When will any member state in the U.N. finally tell Nikki Haley that the Security Council must acknowledge that al-Qaeda has always been a proxy of Saudi Arabia and the United States?

Children injured when a Saudi airstrike targeted a school bus in Saada, Yemen. A total of 51 civilians, 40 of them children below the age of 15 were killed in the strike. The United States supplies the aircraft, bombs, aerial refueling and intelligence gathering resources to support the bombing campaign.

Nikki Haley continues to claim that Russia is directly facilitating an impending humanitarian disaster and war crime in the impending Syrian military operations to retake Idlib province, destroy a host of ISIS and al-Qaeda linked terrorist groups and liberate hundreds of thousands of civilians. She said the same thing during the battle to liberate Aleppo. Her lies were revealed when the SAA and Russia finally liberated the city and Syrian civilians who were kept as prisoners there by the Islamic terrorists were finally free of the horror of their captivity. Is it no wonder that tens of thousands of Syrian refugees displaced by the conflict are now returning to their home country?

Apparently Nikki Haley sees no issue at all in Imperial America supporting Saudi Arabia and the UAE killing Yemeni civilians by the thousands in Yemen. The U.S. not only supplies the bombs, but directly provides in-flight refueling of the aircraft and the intelligence used to conduct the “precision” strikes that target schools, hospitals, funerals, and even school bus loads of children. Does this surprise anyone? U.S. coalition airstrikes against ISIL in Raqqa and Mosul killed an estimated 6,000 civilians. In Raqqa, U.S. aircraft conducted 90% of the airstrikes, and the U.S. fired at least 30,000 artillery rounds into the city. The U.S. has yet to pay any political or legal price for its indiscriminant destruction of these cities.

One of thousands of airstrikes carried out on the Syrian city of Raqqa. The U.S. led coalition was widely criticized for its blatant disregard for civilian casualties in its targeting of the city as part of its offensive to destroy ISIL. They have yet to be held accountable for the estimated 800-1,000 civilians deaths caused.

The Russian Response

Russia needs to finally accept the reality that there is nothing to be gained by negotiating, or attempting to collaborate with the United States in solving problems. It’s like a shepherd using a wolf to defend his flock, or a detective enlisting the aid of a criminal to solve a crime that the criminal is a co-conspirator in perpetrating. It is illogical in the extreme. The Russian U.N. mission needs to call out Nikki Haley and the U.S. on its own deplorable record and hypocrisy and while seeking  the aid of other member states, must also realizing that most of them are bought-off by Washington. Hasn’t Haley repeatedly threatened to stop giving money to nations that do not support her resolutions?

The Russians need to realize that they can never have a mutually respectful and beneficial relationship with the political and financial elites that control the United States. Russia will always find a friend in the American people, but Washington? This same elite despises the American people more than it does Putin or Assad. If it wasn’t for working class American citizens fed up with the U.S. establishment elite, we would likely already be in a direct war with Russia, China and Iran. I hope that the Russian political and military leadership understands this. Stop trying to placate Washington and start preparing to defend your nation. The Deep State will not stop at Ukraine or Syria. They desire the complete subjugation of Russia and a return to the Yeltsin days, or worse

Absence of true ‘rules-based’ world order no prettier with liberal lipstick on it

There is nothing “exceptionally” bad about Donald Trump. Rather, he represents “business as usual” for the empire.

Last weekend, I was a guest speaker as usual at the How the Light Gets In festival, which normally takes place in the village of Hay-on-Wye on the English-Welsh border but the venue this time was in the liberal lands of North London. I’m the token “noble savage” at this event, the short-sword fighter amid the better or more expensively educated cognoscenti, virtually exclusively wedded to the neo-liberal orthodoxy. I’m usually more noble than savage in the teeth of them – apart from anything, where else would I eat vegan schnitzel for lunch – but this time the savage beast broke free.

The motion was that the Trump presidency represents an “aberration” – a disruption of the “rules-based” world order. Speaking in favor was the chairwoman, Mary Ann Sieghart, an achingly liberal feminist, a first-rate intellectual herself, a fine writer and thinker, who has been a member of the Broadcasting Content Board of Ofcom. She’s therefore currently contemplating taking me off both television and radio.

Also in favor of the motion was another head-aching liberal, my debating partner, Mark Leonard, though he was not quite up the standard of the chair (it is always two against one when I’m involved, except in some years when it is three against one).

At one point (while telling me to speak more softly when talking about wars that have killed, maimed and destroyed the lives of tens of millions of people – well, we were in Hampstead after all, and it doesn’t do to frighten the horses), the chair accused me of being “passionately against the rules-based order.” In fact, I was passionately against the absence of a rules-based order and, worse, the hypocritical pretence that there was one, or had been until the vulgarian Trump showed up.

In fact, there is nothing exceptional about Donald Trump except perhaps that, so far, he’s killed far fewer people than his predecessors and way fewer than his rival Hillary Clinton would have done. Without doubt, the Hampstead classes would have rolled out the vegan schnitzel then nevertheless.

When challenged to “show us the beef” of this liberal order, its protagonists have no choice but to concede there have been “breaches” or, worse, “mistakes” made by the prevailing orthodoxy. But how many breaches or mistakes does it take to invalidate the existence of a claimed “rules-based order?” How many before it becomes clear that it is a cruel chimera?

Let’s start with the one which caused me to raise my voice: Iraq. What rules were followed in the invasion and occupation of Iraq? The UN Security Council refused to agree to the invasion, so George W. Bush and Tony Blair did it anyway. And look at the consequences, which scarcely need spelling out here or in Hampstead. Not only were no rules followed, every rule in the domestic book was broken too.

Intelligence was twisted beyond recognition, warnings by the security services were disregarded, parliament and people were lied to, the United Nations was bugged, banned weapons were used, non-belligerent allies like France were treated just as rudely by the belligerent powers as any Trumpian tweet.

Yet while they’d probably turn their noses up at Bush (though give it time), Tony Blair would slot into last weekend’s festival of ideas with ease if they could afford him.

What rules were followed in Obama’s misadventure in Libya, which has turned a dysfunctional state into a non-state with black-slave markets and multiple “governments” ceaselessly struggling for power (and money)?

What rules are being followed – long before Trump – in the Calvary of Syria, the crucifixion of a whole nation by wholesale illegal intervention by the very European and American besuited brigands who talk loudest about a “rules-based order” whilst shoveling money, weapons and propaganda blitzes into the knapsacks of the throat-cutting mass murderers of IS, Al-Qaeda and associated head-choppers, all without a scintilla of legal approval.

By what rules did the same savages – nothing noble about them, we’re talking Bill Clinton here (though he’d be a big hit at the festival) – destroy Yugoslavia?

None of these were “aberrations,” all of them were a continuum of “might is right” imperial power. From Vietnam through Cambodia and Laos, Indonesia, Chile, Central America, Iran and Suez in the 1950s. From Patrice Lumumba through Salvador Allende all the way to today’s whipping boys, Britain and the US have been rogue states, international criminals for whom rules are for the birds.

It is an ugly reality, made no prettier by the application of liberal lipstick and the industry of think-tankers cat-walking across the stage during festival season. And I will go on saying so, sometimes loudly, whether on TV, on radio, at festivals or not. As long as God gives me breath.

By George Galloway
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Netanyahu Regime Responsible for Downing Russian Aircraft, Blames Syria for Its High Crime

by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)

Washington and Israel consistently blame victims for their high crimes of war and against humanity.

The agendas of both countries and their imperial allies threaten world peace and stability like no others since WW II – things today more perilous than ever because of super-weapons ruling regimes of these countries may be willing to use.

The Netanyahu regime bears full responsibility for the downing of a Russian reconnaissance aircraft on Tuesday, killing its 15 crew members.

Russia’s Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu angrily responded to the incident, mincing no words, saying Israeli “actions will not be left unanswered by us.”

IDF pilots deliberately and maliciously used the Russian IL-20 surveillance aircraft as cover while terror-bombing Syrian sites, naked aggression like many times before. 

They left the Russian aircraft vulnerable to be struck by Syrian ground-to-air missiles, targeting hostile IDF warplanes – clearly acting on high-level orders from Israel’s war ministry, perhaps from Netanyahu personally. 

He and his regime caused the deaths of 15 Russian crew members, Russian Defense Minister Shoigu saying “the strike was delivered using our Ilyushin-20 as cover,” putting it in harm’s way to protect IDF warplanes and pilots.

An IDF statement claiming its pilots didn’t see a clearly visible Russian IL-20 at an altitude of 5 km heading for the Khmeimim airbase was a bald-faced lie.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman General Igor Konashenkov called Israel’s action “hostile.”

An IDF apology rang hollow. It shamefully justified the unjustifiable. It lied claiming a facility targeted was involved in transferring weapons “on behalf of Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon” – no evidence cited.

It disgracefully blamed Syria, Iran and Hezbollah for its despicable war crime, one of countless others it committed throughout years of war – besides decades of genocidal high crimes against Palestinians.

In his phone conversation with Israeli war minister Lieberman, Shoigu minced no words, saying Israel is solely to blame for downing Russia’s IL-20 aircraft over the Mediterranean Sea.

Putin issued an unacceptable weak-kneed response to the incident, contradicting his defense minister, absolving Israel for what happened, saying:

“It looks like a chain of tragic circumstances, because the Israeli plane didn’t shoot down our jet.”

Israel bears full responsibility for what happened. Putin clearly knows what he failed to publicly state, along with not saying the incident demands a strong response – short of declaring war on Israel.

“Russia’s retaliatory measures…will be directed primarily at stepping up security of Russian military officers in Syria, our military facilities in the Syrian Arab Republic. These will be the steps everyone will notice,” he said – leaving important questions unanswered.

Why does he tolerate Israeli and US-led aggression in Syria? Why hasn’t he permitted delivery of sophisticated S-300 air defense systems sold to Syria earlier?

Why has he failed to denounce and challenge their regular terror-bombing, massacring civilians, killing government forces, destroying or damaging military sites, along with vital infrastructure – waging naked aggression without declaring it?

Why has Putin given US-led NATO and Israeli warplanes free reign to illegally attack Syrian targets unaccountably, including civilian ones? 

It’s one thing to want good relations with these countries, quite another turning a blind eye to their high crimes of war and against humanity.

Why hasn’t Putin denounced their support for ISIS and other cutthroat killer jihadists, used as imperial foot soldiers?

Why does he consider America, Israel, and their imperial partners, waging naked aggression in the country Russian “partners,” their hostile officials “colleagues.”

Why do Russian officials and the country’s English language media falsely call US-led naked aggression for regime change in Syria “civil war” when there’s nothing remotely “civil” about it.

Why do they falsely distinguish between good and bad terrorists in Syria – jihadists v. so-called moderates, rebels, or opposition forces when all anti-Assad elements are cutthroat killer fanatics, differences among them in name only?

No moderates exist. Why don’t Russian officials explain it without equivocation? Why do they call for separating some terrorists from others when they’re all the same?

Putin deserves high praise for intervening in September 2015, turning certain defeat for Syria into hoped for triumph – changing the dynamic on the ground by joining the battle to defeat ISIS and al-Nusra in the country.

What about countless thousands of other terrorists just as bloodthirsty? Is Putin willing to let them continue waging war for regime change, serving US interests, instead of targeting all jihadists for elimination, either by combat or getting them to surrender their arms and cease fighting?

True enough, he’s only obligated to preserve and protect Russian security and other interests, not aid other countries in their own struggles.

But he came to the aid of an ally in need, Assad and Syria victimized by US-led aggression, still raging with no end of it in prospect because bipartisan neocon hardliners infesting Washington want endless war and regime change.

Having cast the die to help defeat the scourge of US-supported terrorism in Syria, doing it part way isn’t good enough.

Eliminating it entirely is essential. Anything less is unacceptable. Delaying the essential liberation of Idlib lets what Sergey Lavrov called an “abscess” fester.

Putin acted responsibly by getting involved. He should go all-out to triumph over terrorism in Syria because it’s the right thing to do.

There are times when resoluteness against imperial viciousness is vital. This is one of those times. 

The alternative is letting US-led dark forces triumph over fundamental freedoms essential to preserve and protect.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

 My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine:

How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Stephen Lendman

Stephen Lendman was born in 1934 in Boston, MA. In 1956, he received a BA from Harvard University. Two years of US Army service followed, then an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1960. After working seven years as a marketing research analyst, he joined the Lendman Group family business in 1967. He remained there until retiring at year end 1999. Writing on major world and national issues began in summer 2005. In early 2007, radio hosting followed. Lendman now hosts the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network three times weekly. Distinguished guests are featured. Listen live or archived. Major world and national issues are discussed. Lendman is a 2008 Project Censored winner and 2011 Mexican Journalists Club international journalism award recipient.

 Stephen Lendman

• Netanyahu Regime Responsible for Downing Russian Aircraft, Blames Syria for Its High Crime
• Putin Turns a Blind Eye to US, NATO, Turkish, Israeli Aggression in Syria
• World Community Turns a Blind Eye to Israeli High Crimes
• Trump Regime Escalates Trade War with China
• Liberating Idlib, Syria on Hold

Norway didn’t know much about Libya yet helped bomb it into chaos, state report finds

Norway pleads ignorance: ‘didn’t know much about Libya’ yet helped bomb it into chaos

© Goran Tomasevic / Reuters

A Norwegian state report says the officials “had very limited knowledge” of what was going on in Libya, but promptly decided to join the US-led intervention, turning the once thriving North African nation into a terrorist hotbed.

Norway rushed to help its NATO allies to pound Libya with airstrikes in 2011, without understanding what was actually happening on the ground or the dire consequences the intervention might lead to, a new state report has concluded. The commission, chaired by former Foreign Minister Jan Petersen, found that politicians in Oslo “had very limited knowledge of Libya” when they dragged the nation into the US-led bombing campaign against the Libyan government.

“In such situations, decision-makers often rely on information from media and other countries,” the report says.

Furthermore, the commission states that there are “no written sources” indicating that, before deploying warplanes against Libya, the Norwegian officials “assessed the type of conflict Norway was taking part in.”

Read more

Libya in chaos seven years after NATO’s ‘liberation’, but who cares?

The attack, dubbed ‘Operation Odyssey Dawn,’ was aimed at aiding the armed anti-government rebels in ousting longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi and eventually led to his brutal murder. After Gaddafi’s assassination, Libya quickly descended into civil war and became a hotbed for terrorism. The country is still divided between warring factions.

Norway had provided six F-16 fighter jets during the air campaign. According to the report, these jets flew 596 strike missions between March and July 2011, dropping 588 bombs on Libyan targets. This amounts to about 10 percent of all coalition strikes against Libya that year.

The report’s revelations led some politicians to re-examine the country’s involvement in the Libyan campaign.

“When you look at what happened next, with Libya becoming a hotspot of terrorism, this is not a decision to be proud of,” former Center Party leader Liv Signe Navarsete said.

Socialist Left Party leader Audun Lysbakken told local media that “Norway should not have participated in the Libya war,” given what the nation knows today.

The new information “is quite painful” for the political class, Morten Boas, researcher at the Norwegian Foreign Policy Institute, told RT. “The authors of the report are expressing regret. They say that they didn’t really understand the [possible] outcome.”

In 2011, many in Norway thought that the country was getting into the fight against Gaddafi “mainly for humanitarian reasons,” Boas said. “The other key players saw beyond the humanitarian reasoning and were basically interested in regime change, getting rid of Gaddafi.I  don’t think that necessarily all Norwegian politicians really understood this.”

The U.S. Goes to War Against the ICC to Cover Up Alleged War Crimes in Afghanistan

By Murtaza Hussain

The United States has never been a friend of the International Criminal Court. While relations between the U.S. and the ICC have fluctuated over the course of different administrations, the American government has steadfastly refused to take the step that 124 other states have of ratifying the Rome Statute and thus becoming a member of the international legal body. The ICC’s mandate to investigate war crimes has thus been hampered by the unwillingness of the world’s sole superpower to commit to the organization.

Recent statements from the Trump administration suggest that the United States is now preparing to go to war against the ICC itself, motivated largely by an effort to silence investigations into alleged American war crimes committed in Afghanistan, as well as alleged crimes committed by Israel during the 2014 war in the Gaza Strip. In a speech at a D.C. event held by the Federalist Society on Monday, Donald Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton denounced the ICC as “illegitimate” and expressed his intentions toward the institution in no uncertain terms. “We will not cooperate with the ICC,” Bolton said. “We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We will not join the ICC. We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us.”

In addition to this death wish against the court, Bolton said that the United States would retaliate against any ICC investigations into U.S. activities by sanctioning the travel and finances of ICC officials, even threatening to prosecute them in American courts.

Because it involves U.S. officials themselves, at the center of the campaign against the ICC is a 2016 report by ICC prosecutors that deals in part with the war in Afghanistan. That report alleges the commission of widespread crimes by the Taliban and Afghan government forces. But the report also makes allegations of serious crimes committed by U.S. military forces and the CIA, including “torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, and rape.”

The crimes in question appear to have been related to detention programs run in Afghanistan during the early years of the U.S. occupation. While the report does not name the individuals responsible nor their victims, it indicates that there are dozens of cases in which torture, cruel treatment, and sexual assault were committed by American soldiers and CIA officers in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2004.

The report also states that the alleged crimes “were not the abuses of a few isolated individuals,” adding that “there is a reasonable basis to believe these alleged crimes were committed in furtherance of a policy or policies aimed at eliciting information through the use of interrogation techniques involving cruel or violent methods which would support U.S. objectives in the conflict in Afghanistan.”

Given longstanding U.S. refusals to cooperate with ICC investigations, it’s unlikely that the 2016 document — a preliminary report from the prosecutor’s office — would have succeeded in bringing U.S. officials to trial at the Hague. Bolton’s campaign thus seems intended on solidifying the fact that the United States is free of international norms on human rights conduct, with those who even investigate its actions subject to threat.

That the ICC investigation reaches back to the George W. Bush era, when Bolton served as United Nations ambassador, is fitting. In the years after the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States began to come under withering scrutiny for its detention policies in those countries. In addition to high-profile cases of torture at prison sites like Abu Ghraib, the CIA and U.S. military have been accused of brutalizing and even murdering prisoners held in their custody at detention facilities like Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan.

Civilian contractors working for the CIA have also engaged in the murder of Afghan detainees, including David Passaro, who beat to death an Afghan man named Abdul Wali who had turned himself in to authorities after being accused of involvement in a militant attack. Passaro was later sentenced to eight and a half years in jail by an American court. Following his release, he briefly returned to the public eye in media interviews justifying his involvement in the murder.

To date, Passaro, a civilian, is the only person to have been held legally accountable for torture and murder carried out under the CIA detention program, in Afghanistan or elsewhere. This despite a landmark 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee that documented, in excruciating detail, widespread evidence of torture and other abuses carried out by CIA officials.

The unwillingness or inability of U.S. courts to seriously investigate war crimes carried out by American citizens is part of why the ICC mandate in Afghanistan has beenviewed as an important effort to bring a minimum level of accountability over the conflict. This past November, the court announced that it planned to move forward with investigations stemming from its 2016 report.

In a statement responding to Bolton’s threats, the ICC said that “the ICC, as a court of law, will continue to do its work undeterred, in accordance with those principles and the overarching idea of the rule of law.”

Given its longstanding intransigence toward the ICC, it was unlikely that the United States would ever have cooperated with its investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan, even under a less bellicose administration. But the Trump administration’s threats to target specific ICC officials over their war crimes investigations enters a new realm of hostility against international law. The consequences could be a further degradation of already shaky international norms surrounding human rights in conflict zones.

“The ICC is not stepping in just for the sake of how Bolton put it, just to undermine U.S. sovereignty. This is really nonsense. They are stepping in because we failed — the United States failed to uphold the rule of law,” said Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU’s Human Rights Program, in a television segment on Democracy Now! Tuesday morning about Bolton’s comments. “This is the same Trump administration that has an abysmal record of human rights here in the United States and is trying to encourage other countries to follow its pattern.”

This article was originally published by “The Intercept“

Saudi Airstrikes Martyr 15 on Hodeidah-Sana’a highway

Local Editor

At least 15 people been martyred in fresh air raids conducted by Saudi warplanes on a strategic road linking the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah to the capital, Sana’a.

The al-Masirah television network reported that more than 20 people had also been injured in the aerial assaults on the Kilo 16 highway.

Over the past few days, fighting has intensified between Ansarullah revolutionaries and the Saudi-backed militants loyal to former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi around the critical highway, through which humanitarian aid is delivered to the Yemeni people.

Amanda Brydon, humanitarian policy adviser at Save the Children NGO, expressed concerns about fresh tensions in Yemen.

“What we are seeing with the fighting is [that] the critical junction at Kilo 16 is the artery towards Sana’a and other parts of the country,” she told Al-Jazeera.

Hodeidah, she said, is a lifeline for the rest of the country, where over 80 percent of the country’s commercial imports come through.

Mohammed al-Boukhaiti, a Hodeidah-based member of the Ansarullah  political council, said Yemeni fighters were still in control of the highway.

“The Yemeni army confronted the attack of the coalition and today Kilo 16 is under the control of the army, but it is not safe for passengers because the airstrikes target them,” he said.

In another development, UN Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths held talks with a Yemeni delegation, led by spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam, in the Omani capital, Muscat.

During the meeting, Griffiths was briefed on the Ansarullah reasons for their absence from the latest round of the peace talks in the Swiss city of Geneva, Yemen’s official SABA news agency reported.

The Muscat discussions, the report said, also covered “necessary measures” needed for negotiations “as soon as possible” between Yemen’s warring sides.

A delegation from Yemen’s former government has left UN-brokered talks in Geneva after representatives of the Ansarullah movement were prevented from attending the negotiations by Saudi Arabia.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by   website team

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Starving Yemenis Forced To Eat Vine Leaves to Stay Alive

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In a remote pocket of northern Yemen, many families with starving children have nothing to eat but the leaves of a local vine, boiled into a sour, acidic green paste. International aid agencies have been caught off guard by the extent of the suffering there as parents and children waste away.The main health center in Aslam district was flooded with dozens of emaciated children during a recent visit by the Associated Press.

Excruciatingly thin toddlers, eyes bulging, sat in a plastic washtub used in a make-shift scale as nurses weighed them one by one. Their papery skin was stretched tight over pencil-like limbs and knobby knees. Nurses measured their forearms, just a few centimeters in diameter, marking the worst stages of malnutrition.

At least 20 children are known to have died of starvation already this year, more than three years into the country’s ruinous civil war, in the province that includes the district.

The real number is likely far higher, since few families report their children’s deaths when they die at home, officials say. In one nearby village, a 7-month-old girl, Zahra, cries and reaches with her bony arms for her mother to feed her. Her mother is undernourished herself and is often unable to breastfeed Zahra.

She can’t afford formula for her baby. “Since the day she was born, I have not had the money to buy her milk or buy her medicine,” the mother said. Zahra was recently treated at the heath center. Now at home, she’s dwindling away again.

With no money, her parents can’t afford to hire a car or motorbike take her back to the clinic. If they don’t, Zahra will die, said Mekkiya Mahdi, the health center chief.

“We are in the 21st century, but this is what the war did to us,” Mahdi said. After she tours villages and sees everyone living off the leaf paste, “I go home and I can’t put food in my mouth.”

The worsening hunger in Aslam is a sign of the gaps in an international aid system that is already overwhelmed and under pressure from local authorities. Yet outside aid is the only thing standing between Yemen’s people and widespread death from starvation.

The conditions in the district may also be an indication that the warnings humanitarian officials have sounded for months are coming true: In the face of unending war, hunger’s spread is outstripping efforts to keep people alive.

When AP approached U.N. agencies with questions about the situation in Aslam, they expressed alarm and surprise. In response to the AP’s questions, international and local aid groups launched an investigation into why food wasn’t getting to the families that need it the most, a top relief official said.

As a response in the meantime, the official said, relief agencies are sending over 10,000 food baskets to the district, and UNICEF Resident Representative Dr. Meritxell Relano said the organization is increasing its mobile teams in the district from three to four and providing transportation to health facilities.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of issues involved in operating in the war-ravaged country.

In first six months of this year, Al-Hajjah province, where Aslam is located, recorded 17,000 cases of severe acute malnutrition, higher than in any full year on record, said Walid al-Shamshan, head of the Health Ministry’s nutrition section in the province.

Malnourished children who were previously treated return to clinics in even worse condition – if they make it back at all.

“Deaths happen in remote villages where people can’t reach the health units,” Shamshan said.

“It’s a steady deterioration and it’s scary,” he said.

Yemen’s civil war has wrecked the impoverished country’s already fragile ability to feed its population.

The war pits Iran-backed rebels known as Houthis, who hold the north, against an Arab coalition, armed and backed by the United States. The coalition has sought to bomb the rebels into submission with an air campaign in support of Yemeni government forces.

Around 2.9 million women and children are acutely malnourished; another 400,000 children are fighting for their lives only a step away from starvation.

The number of people nationwide who would starve if they didn’t receive aid grew by a quarter over the past year, now standing at 8.4 million of Yemen’s 29 million people, according to U.N. figures. That number is likely to soon jump by another 3.5 million because the currency is losing value, leaving growing numbers of people unable to afford food, the U.N. warned this month.

Aslam is one of the poorest districts in the country, with hundreds of small villages, some isolated in the high mountains in the Houthi heartland. Its population of 75,000 to 106,000 includes both local residents and accelerating numbers of displaced people who fled fighting elsewhere. In terms of hunger, Aslam isn’t alone.

Health officials say that other districts closer to war zones may not be getting food aid at all. But Aslam did see one of the province’s highest jumps in the number of reported children suffering from severe acute malnutrition: From 384 cases being treated in January, an additional 1,319 more came in over the next six months, according to local health records. That comes to around 15 percent of the district’s children.

“Aslam is just another picture of Somalia,” said Saleh al-Faqih, a worker in a mobile Health Ministry clinic, comparing it to the Horn of Africa nation often hit by famines.

Aslam’s main health center has no pediatricians, no electricity, no oxygen cylinders. At night, medics use flashlights because there is no fuel for generators. Fathers beg in the nearby market for 300 riyals – around 50 U.S. cents – to buy a diaper for their child going into the center.

Before the war, the center would see one or two malnourished children a month. In August alone, it received 99 cases, nearly half of them in the most severe stages, the center’s nutrition chief Khaled Hassan said. Even after treatment, children often deteriorate once again when they go home to villages with no food and contaminated water.

There appeared to be multiple reasons why aid was not reaching some of the starving, beyond the rapid increase in those in need.

The lion’s share of assistance goes to displaced people, while only 20 percent goes to the local community, said Azma Ali, a worker with the World Food Program. Agencies’ criteria give priority for help to the displaced and households without a breadwinner, even as local residents also struggle to find food.

Under heavy pressure from Houthi authorities, international agencies like WFP and UNICEF and their Yemeni partners are required to use lists of needy provided by local officials.

Critics accuse those officials of favoritism. That especially works against the local population in Aslam, where many belong to the “Muhammasheen,” Arabic for the “Marginalized,” a community of darker-skinned Yemenis shunned by the rest of society and left to work as garbage collectors, menial laborers or beggars.

The Marginalized have no weight with officials to ensure aid goes their way. One humanitarian coordinator in Al-Hajjah said local Houthi authorities distribute aid unfairly.

“The powerful hinder the work of the humanitarian agencies and deprive of aid those people who are in most need,” he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of problems with the authorities.

Some residents said local officials demand small bribes to get on food lists – the equivalent of around 15 U.S. cents, but still too much for many people here. U.N. agencies have insufficient capacity to oversee many distribution centers.

Food deliveries that do make it to Aslam come irregularly or are too small or are missing items, residents and aid workers said.

People in Aslam have become increasingly reliant on leaves from the local vine, known in Yemeni Arabic as “halas” or in English as Arabian Wax Leaf. It used to be eaten only occasionally but now it’s all many residents eat for every meal.

Mothers spend hours picking the leaves, then washing and boiling them. Too much of it causes diarrhea. The water it’s washed in – well water often tainted with sewage – is also a constant cause of diarrhea.

In the village of al-Mashrada, Zahra’s mother feeds her whole family with halas mush. She has seven other children, including two boys with mental disorders who are kept chained inside their shack so they don’t wander away.

The children’s father roams the town, looking for food.

Zahra’s mother said only “the big heads” – the better-off and well-connected – end up with international aid. “We only have God. We are poor and we have nothing.”

Trump’s Taking Putin’s Earlier ICC Moves to a Qualitatively New Level

September 14, 2018 by Zara Ali 

President Putin’s decision to remove Russia from the International Criminal Court in 2016 over its hyper-politicized reports about the country’s activities during the 2008 peace-enforcement operation against Georgia and 2014 reunification with Crimea inadvertently gave “normative legitimacy” to Trump leaving the organization too, though Moscow could never have expected that Washington would then take everything to a qualitatively new level by threatening to sanction anyone who dares to cooperate with this globalist body’s cases on American and “Israeli” war crimes.

This much is obvious, and it’s that the US and “Israel” are essentially the same political entity on two different continents, with one hand washing the other, proverbially speaking, and their “deep states” working in full coordination to protect their shared interests across the world. That’s why no one should have been shocked by the Trump Administration’s announcement that it’ll sanction anyone who dares to approach the International Criminal Court (ICC) with accusations of American or “Israeli” wrongdoing or cooperate on any cases against them. Some of the consequences that National Security Advisor John Bolton said could await any potential violators include being banned from entering the US, having any assets there frozen, and even ironically being tried by American courts, which might not be enough to deter everyone but are still substantial enough to make many international elites like the ICC’s judges second guess whether it’s worth getting involved.

Without a doubt, the US wants to prevent any more evidence of it and “Israel’s” war crimes from reaching the public consciousness, hoping that its weaponization of sanctions will be enough to intimidate this globalist body and therefore allow it and its allies to regain some control over the international narrative about their actions in Afghanistan, Palestine, and elsewhere. The blatant unilateralism of this move and the obvious motivation behind it to cover up countless crimes have been loudly criticized all throughout the Alt-Media Community, and rightly so, but the principle of the ICC and its many controversial activities risk being made sacrosanct in response as various forces try to emphasize the immorality of the US’ decision. That, however, is problematic because it could also harm Russia’s reputation by extent, which inadvertently provided “normative legitimacy” to the US’ withdrawal a few years ago.

To avoid any manipulation of the author’s words and intention in writing this piece, it is not being asserted that Russia in any shape or form supports the extraterritorial application of American law, especially regarding sanctions, but just that the prominent action of a Great Power such as itself pulling out of the ICC in 2016 over its hyper-politicized reports about the country’s activities during the 2008 peace-enforcement operation against Georgia and the 2014 reunification with Crimea set the normative precedent for the US to ultimately follow suit under the same pretexts, even if the American claims of the globalist body’s impartiality towards it are hypocritical. The ICC has always been a politicized instrument of control over war-torn countries like the former Yugoslavia and “Global South” ones such as Sudan, and just like the UN itself, it never embodied the “noble ideas” popularly associated with it.

Far from fulfilling the “utopian” expectations of it being the deliverer of “unbiased justice” all across the world, the ICC instead functions as a weapon of “lawfare” for reinforcing infowar narratives and advancing American interests, though just like other international structures that the US previously exerted full control over such as the WTO, Washington gradually lost its total dominance over them as its rivals made progress in leveraging them to their own advantage. The same trend appears to have reached the ICC too, at least judging by how angrily the US is reacting to war crimes accusations against it and “Israel” being given attention there. Whereas Obama’s America might have “tolerated” this and rationalized it as “taking one for the team” in order to advance the ideology of Liberal-Globalism, Trump’s America has to patience to continue playing this game.

The Fate of the ICC:  When Law and Politics Mix

Just like Russia did roughly two years prior, the US is pulling out of the ICC as well, but unprecedentedly going much further in taking everything to a qualitatively new level by threatening to sanction anyone who cooperates with this structure and therefore contributes to sullying the US and “Israel’s” international reputations by drawing global attention to evidence of their war crimes. It doesn’t matter to the US that these claims are based on a lot more fact than the ones levelled against Russia and other countries that have been victimized by this globalist body, but only that its former instrument of control against others is now finally being used against itself, which is why Washington now wants to destroy what it helped create or at the very least thwart its operational effectiveness.

There’s nothing inherently wrong in principle with leaving a hyper-politicized structure that served as a globalist Hybrid War weapon all along, even though it’s understandably unpalatable to many that the US is attempting to justify this through the use of double standards, but it’s very concerning that America is once again expressing its so-called “Exceptionalism” by threatening to sanction anyone who cooperates with the ICC’s efforts to raise awareness of the US and “Israel’s” war crimes. This goes far beyond China’s refusal to ever join this initiative in the first place or Russia’s decision to pull out of it a few years ago and shows that the US is aggressively trying to manipulate the ICC’s activities in a desperate bid to regain control some control over the international narrative, which in and of itself suggests that its many rivals have indeed been successful over the years in breaking through the Mainstream Media’s monopoly.

By Andrew Korybko
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