Tag Archives: State Crime

Undeclared Israeli War on Syria

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By Stephen Lendman

Source: StephenLendman.org

In cahoots with the US and their ISIS, al-Nusra, and other terrorist proxies, Israel has been waging undeclared war on Syria for years.

Ruling regimes of both countries partner in each other’s high crimes of war and against humanity.

Obama’s war on Syria — now Trump’s, to be Biden’s war next year if he triumphs over DJT in November — is in its 9th year with no prospect for resolution because bipartisan US hardliners reject turning a page for peace and stability in all their active war theaters.

Pentagon and IDF warplanes terror-bomb Syria at their discretion, civilians harmed most.

The latest Netanyahu regime aggression occurred Monday night.

Israeli warplanes and attack helicopters struck Syrian targets in Quneitra province, a premeditated strike like all others.

According to the IDF, observation posts, intelligence collection systems, anti-aircraft artillery, and military command and control systems were targeted.

The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that overnight Israeli aggression caused “material damages” with no further elaboration.

Citing state media, Southfront said “Syrian forces intercepted several missiles, while the impact of the rest of them caused” no casualties.

An IDF spokesman claimed Israel foiled an attempt by unnamed parties to plant bombs earlier on Monday along the border of Occupied Golan and Syria, adding:

The unidentified individuals were lethally shot. It’s unclear who was shot, how many individuals, or for what reason other than what Israel claimed that may not reflect reality.

Time and again, its explanations of hostile incidents later were exposed as disinformation to justify what’s unjustifiable.

Aggression is a US and Israeli specialty, not how Syria or Hezbollah operate. Claims otherwise by ruling US or Israeli regimes are falsified.

No nations, groups or individuals threaten their territory. Their imperial aims threaten humanity.

Separately, IDF warplanes preemptively terror-bombed Gaza, what’s gone on repeatedly since the Strip was unlawfully blockaded in 2007, an IDF statement, saying:

Its warplanes struck Hamas targets.

“During the attack, a concrete production site used to excavate underground infrastructure was attacked, and in addition, underground (Hamas) infrastructure.”

“The attack was carried out in response to (a) rocket fire(d) from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory” by an unknown party — causing no damage or casualties, the incident unrelated to Hamas.

Yet the Netanyahu regime falsely blames its ruling authorities for whatever happens in the Strip or in its coastal waters, knowing they’re not responsible.

Time and again, Israel blames others for its own high crimes. The US operates by the same unlawful standard.

Separately, Israeli provocations heightened tensions along its border with Lebanon.

In late July, the IDF falsely claimed that “Hezbollah attempted to carry out an infiltration operation and that the Israeli army frustrated the attack and killed a number of its fighters.”

Hezbollah refuted the phony claim, explaining that Israeli forces preemptively carried out the border incident — stressing that gunfire occurred only from the Israeli side, adding:

Its aggression “will not remain unanswered.”

Israel lied about the late July incident. Its explanation of what occurred overnight along the border of Occupied Golan and Syria was also likely falsified.

The US and Israel are belligerent states, longstanding aggressors — threatening their own people and other nations in pursuit of their hegemonic aims.

The System Is Rigged: Qualified Immunity Is How the Police State Stays in Power

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By John W. Whitehead

Source: Mint Press News

The system is rigged, the government is corrupt, and “we the people” continue to waste our strength by fighting each other rather than standing against the tyrant in our midst.

Because the system is rigged, because the government is corrupt, and because “we the people” remain polarized and divided, the police state will keep winning and “we the people” will keep losing.

Because the system is rigged and the U.S. Supreme Court—the so-called “people’s court”—has exchanged its appointed role as a gatekeeper of justice for its new role as maintainer of the status quo, there will be little if no consequences for the cops who brutalize and no justice for the victims of police brutality.

Because the system is rigged, there will be no consequences for police who destroyed a private home by bombarding it with tear gas grenades during a SWAT team raid gone awry, or for the cop who mistakenly shot a 10-year-old boy after aiming for and missing the non-threatening family dog, or for the arresting officer who sicced a police dog on a suspect who had already surrendered.

This is how unarmed Americans keep dying at the hands of militarized police.

By refusing to accept any of the eight or so qualified immunity cases before it this term that strove to hold police accountable for official misconduct, the Supreme Court delivered a chilling reminder that in the American police state, ‘we the people’ are at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to ‘serve and protect.”

This is how qualified immunity keeps the police state in power.

Lawyers tend to offer a lot of complicated, convoluted explanations for the doctrine of qualified immunity, which was intended to insulate government officials from frivolous lawsuits, but the real purpose of qualified immunity is to rig the system, ensuring that abusive agents of the government almost always win and the victims of government abuse almost always lose.

How else do you explain a doctrine that requires victims of police violence to prove that their abusers knew their behavior was illegal because it had been deemed so in a nearly identical case at some prior time: it’s a setup for failure.

Do you know how many different ways a cop can kill, maim, torture and abuse someone without being held liable?

The cops know: in large part due to training classes that drill them on the art of sidestepping the Fourth Amendment, which protects us from being bullied, badgered, beaten, broken and spied on by government agents.

This is how “we the people” keep losing.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court recognized in Harlow v. Fitzgerald (1982) that suing government officials for monetary damages is “the only realistic avenue” of holding them accountable for abusing their offices and violating the Constitution, it has ostensibly given the police and other government agents a green light to shoot first and ask questions later, as well as to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts.

Whether it’s police officers breaking through people’s front doors and shooting them dead in their homes or strip searching motorists on the side of the road, these instances of abuse are continually validated by a judicial system that kowtows to virtually every police demand, no matter how unjust, no matter how in opposition to the Constitution.

Make no mistake about it: this is what constitutes “law and order” in the American police state.

These are the hallmarks of a police state: where police officers, no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace, are part of an elite ruling class dependent on keeping the masses corralled, under control, and treated like suspects and enemies rather than citizens.

Unfortunately, we’ve been traveling this dangerous road for a long time now.

A review of critical court rulings over the past several decades, including rulings affirming qualified immunity protections for government agents by the U.S. Supreme Court, reveals a startling and steady trend towards pro-police state rulings by an institution concerned more with establishing order, protecting the ruling class, and insulating government agents from charges of wrongdoing than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.

Indeed, as Reuters reports, qualified immunity “has become a nearly failsafe tool to let police brutality go unpunished and deny victims their constitutional rights.” Worse, as Reuters concluded, “the Supreme Court has built qualified immunity into an often insurmountable police defense by intervening in cases mostly to favor the police.”

The system is rigged.

Police can claim qualified immunity for warrantless searches. In Anderson v. Creighton, the Supreme Court ruled that FBI and state law enforcement agents were entitled to qualified immunity protections after they were sued for raiding a private home without a warrant and holding family members at gunpoint, all in a search for a suspected bank robber who was not in the house.

Police can claim qualified immunity for warrantless arrests based on mere suspicion. In Hunter v. Bryant, the Court ruled that police acted reasonably in arresting James Bryant without a warrant in order to protect the president. Bryant had allegedly written a letter that referenced a third-party plot to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, but police had no proof that he intended to harm Reagan beyond a mere suspicion. The charges against Bryant were eventually dropped.

Police can claim qualified immunity for using excessive force against protesters. In Saucier v. Katz, the Court ruled in favor of federal law enforcement agents who forcefully tackled a protester as he attempted to unfurl a banner at Vice President Gore’s political rally. The Court reasoned that the officers acted reasonably given the urgency of protecting the vice president.

Police can claim qualified immunity for shooting a fleeing suspect in the back. In Brosseau v. Haugen, the Court dismissed a lawsuit against a police officer who shot Kenneth Haugen in the back as he entered his car in order to flee from police. The Court ruled that in light of existing case law, the cop’s conduct fell in the “hazy border between excessive and acceptable force” and so she did not violate clearly established law.

Police can claim qualified immunity for shooting a mentally impaired person. In City of San Francisco v. Sheehan, the Court ruled in favor of police who repeatedly shot Teresa Sheehan during the course of a mental health welfare check. The Court ruled that it was not unreasonable for police to pepper spray and shoot Sheehan multiple times after entering her room without a warrant and encountering her holding a knife.

Police officers can use lethal force in car chases without fear of lawsuits. In Plumhoff v. Rickard, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that police officers who used deadly force to terminate a car chase were immune from a lawsuit. The officers were accused of needlessly resorting to deadly force by shooting multiple times at a man and his passenger in a stopped car, killing both individuals.

Police can stop, arrest and search citizens without reasonable suspicion or probable cause. In a 5-3 ruling in Utah v. Strieff, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively gave police the go-ahead to embark on a fishing expedition of one’s person and property, rendering Americans completely vulnerable to the whims of any cop on the beat.

Police officers can stop cars based on “anonymous” tips or for “suspicious” behavior such as having a reclined car seat or driving too carefully. In a 5-4 ruling in Navarette v. California, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that police officers, under the guise of “reasonable suspicion,” can stop cars and question drivers based solely on anonymous tips, no matter how dubious, and whether or not they themselves witnessed any troubling behavior. Then in State v. Howard, the Kansas Supreme Court declared that motorists who recline their car seats are guilty of suspicious behavior and can be subject to warrantless searches by police. That ruling, coupled with other court rulings upholding warrantless searches and seizures by police renders one’s car a Constitution-free zone.

Americans have no protection against mandatory breathalyzer tests at a police checkpoint, although mandatory blood draws violate the Fourth Amendment (Birchfield v. North Dakota). Police can also conduct sobriety and “information-seeking” checkpoints (Illinois v. Lidster and Mich. Dep’t of State Police v. Sitz).

Police can forcibly take your DNA, whether or not you’ve been convicted of a crime. In Maryland v. King, a divided U.S. Supreme Court determined that a person arrested for a crime who is supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty must submit to forcible extraction of their DNA. Once again the Court sided with the guardians of the police state over the defenders of individual liberty in determining that DNA samples may be extracted from people arrested for “serious” offenses. The end result of the ruling paves the way for a nationwide dragnet of suspects targeted via DNA sampling.

Police can use the “fear for my life” rationale as an excuse for shooting unarmed individuals. Upon arriving on the scene of a nighttime traffic accident, an Alabama police officer shot a driver exiting his car, mistakenly believing the wallet in his hand to be a gun. A report by the Justice Department found that half of the unarmed people shot by one police department over a seven-year span were “shot because the officer saw something (like a cellphone) or some action (like a person pulling at the waist of their pants) and misidentified it as a threat.”

Police have free reign to use drug-sniffing dogs as “search warrants on leashes.” In Florida v. Harris, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court determined that police officers may use highly unreliable drug-sniffing dogs to conduct warrantless searches of cars during routine traffic stops. The ruling turns man’s best friend into an extension of the police state, provided the use of a K-9 unit takes place within a reasonable amount of time (Rodriguez v. United States).

Not only are police largely protected by qualified immunity, but police dogs are also off the hook for wrongdoing. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a police officer who allowed a police dog to maul a homeless man innocent of any wrongdoing.

Police can subject Americans to strip searches, no matter the “offense.” A divided U.S. Supreme Court actually prioritized making life easier for overworked jail officials over the basic right of Americans to be free from debasing strip searches. In its 5-4 ruling in Florence v. Burlington, the Court declared that any person who is arrested and processed at a jail house, regardless of the severity of his or her offense (i.e., they can be guilty of nothing more than a minor traffic offense), can be subjected to a strip search by police or jail officials, which involves exposing the genitals and the buttocks. This “license to probe” is now being extended to roadside stops, as police officers throughout the country have begun performing roadside strip searches—some involving anal and vaginal probes—without any evidence of wrongdoing and without a warrant.

Police can break into homes without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home. In an 8-1 ruling in Kentucky v. King, the U.S. Supreme Court placed their trust in the discretion of police officers, rather than in the dictates of the Constitution, when they gave police greater leeway to break into homes or apartments without a warrant. Despite the fact that the police in question ended up pursuing the wrong suspect, invaded the wrong apartment and violated just about every tenet that stands between us and a police state, the Court sanctioned the warrantless raid, leaving Americans with little real protection in the face of all manner of abuses by police.

Police can use knock-and-talk tactics as a means of sidestepping the Fourth Amendment. Aggressive “knock and talk” practices have become thinly veiled, warrantless exercises by which citizens are coerced and intimidated into “talking” with heavily armed police who “knock” on their doors in the middle of the night. Andrew Scott didn’t even get a chance to say no to such a heavy-handed request before he was gunned down by police who pounded aggressively on the wrong door at 1:30 a.m., failed to identify themselves as police, and then repeatedly shot and killed the man when he answered the door while holding a gun in self-defense.

Police can carry out no-knock raids if they believe announcing themselves would be dangerous. Police can perform a “no-knock” raid as long as they have a reasonable suspicion that knocking and announcing their presence, under the particular circumstances, would be dangerous or futile or give occupants a chance to destroy evidence of a crime (Richards v. Wisconsin). Legal ownership of a firearm is also enough to justify a no-knock raid by police (Quinn v. Texas). For instance, a Texas man had his home subject to a no-knock, SWAT-team style forceful entry and raid based solely on the suspicion that there were legally-owned firearms in his household. The homeowner was actually shot by police through his closed bedroom door.

Police can recklessly open fire on anyone that might be “armed.” Philando Castile was shot and killed during a routine traffic stop allegedly over a broken tail light merely for telling police he had a conceal-and-carry permit. That’s all it took for police to shoot Castile four times in the presence of his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter. A unanimous Supreme Court declared in County of Los Angeles vs. Mendez that police should not be held liable for recklessly firing 15 times into a shack where a homeless couple had been sleeping because the grabbed his BB gun in defense, fearing they were being attacked.

Police can destroy a home during a SWAT raid, even if the owner gives their consent to enter and search it. In West v. Winfield, the Supreme Court provided cover to police after they smashed the windows of Shaniz West’s home, punched holes in her walls and ceilings, and bombed the house with so much tear gas that it was uninhabitable for two months. All of this despite the fact that the suspect they were pursuing was not in the house and West, the homeowner, agreed to allow police to search the home to confirm that.

Police can suffocate someone, deliberately or inadvertently, in the process of subduing them. “I can’t breathe” has become a rallying cry following the deaths of Eric Garner and George Floyd, both of whom died after being placed in a chokehold by police. Dozens more have died in similar circumstances at the hands of police who have faced little repercussions for these deaths.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we are dealing with a nationwide epidemic of court-sanctioned police violence carried out with impunity against individuals posing little or no real threat.

So what’s the answer to reforming a system that is clearly self-serving and corrupt?

Abolishing the police is not the answer: that will inevitably lead to outright anarchy, which will give the police state and those law-and-order zealots all the incentive it needs to declare martial law.

Looting and violence are not the answer: As Martin Luther King Jr. recognized, “A riot merely intensifies the fears of the white community while relieving the guilt.” Using the looting and riots as justification for supporting police brutality is also not the answer:  As King recognized, “It is not enough … to condemn riots… without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.”

Police reform is necessary and unavoidable if we are to have any hope of living in an America in which freedom means something more than the right to stay alive, but how we reform the system is just as important as getting it done.

We don’t need to wait for nine members of a ruling aristocracy who primarily come from privileged backgrounds and who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo to fix what’s broken in America.

Nor do we need to wait for 535 highly paid politicians to do something about these injustices only when it suits their political ambitions

And we certainly don’t need to wait for a president with a taste for totalitarian tactics to throw a few crumbs our way.

This is as much a local problem as it is a national one.

Be fair. Be nonviolent. Be relentless in your pursuit of justice for all.

Let’s get it done.

That Change You Requested…?

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By James Howard Kunstler

Source: Kunstler.com

All the previous incidents of white cops killing blacks were just too ambiguous to seal the deal. Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri (a murky business); Tamir Rice in Cleveland (waving the BB gun that looked like a .45 automatic); Trayvon Martin (his killer George Zimmerman was not a cop and was not “white”); Eric Garner, Staten Island (black policewoman sergeant on the scene didn’t stop it); Philandro Castile, Minneapolis, (the cop was Hispanic and the vic had a gun). Even the recent February killing of jogger Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Georgia, had some sketchy elements (did Arbery try to seize the shotgun?) — YouTube has scrubbed the video (?) — and then it took months for the two white suspects (not cops) to be arrested.

The George Floyd killing had none of those weaknesses. Plus, the video presented a pretty much universal image of oppression: a man with his knee on another man’s neck. Didn’t that say it all?  You didn’t need a Bob Dylan song to explain it. The Minneapolis police dithered for four days before charging policeman Derek Chauvin with Murder 3 (unpremeditated, but with reckless disregard for human life). The three other cops on the scene who stupidly stood by doing nothing have yet to be charged. Cut it, print it, and cue the mobs.

The nation was already reeling from the weird twelve-week Covid-19 lockdown of everyday life and the economic havoc it brought to careers, businesses, and incomes. In Minnesota, the stay-at-home order was just lifted on May 17, but bars and restaurants were still closed until June. Memorial Day, May 25, was one of the first really balmy days of mid-spring, 78 degrees. People were out-and-about, perhaps even feeling frisky after weeks of dreary seclusion. So, once the video of George Floyd’s death got out, the script was set: take it to the streets!

Few Americans were unsympathetic to the protest marches that followed. Remorse, censure, and tears flowed from every official portal, from the mouth and eyes of every political figure in the land. The tableau of Officer Chauvin’s knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck was readymade for statuary. Indeed, there are probably dozens of statues extant in the world of just such a scene expressing one people’s oppression over another. And yet the public sentiments early-on after the George Floyd killing had a stale, ceremonial flavor: The people demand change! End systemic racism! No justice, no peace! How many times have we seen this movie?

What is changing — and suddenly — is that now it’s not just black people who struggle to thrive in the USA, but everybody else of any ethnic group who is not a hedge fund veep, an employee of BlackRock Financial, or a K-Street lobbyist — and even those privileged characters may find themselves in reduced circumstances before long. The prospects of young adults look grimmest of all. They face an economy so disordered that hardly anyone can find something to do that pays enough to support the basics of life, on top of being swindled by the false promises of higher education and the money-lending racket that animates it.

So, it’s not surprising that, when night falls, the demons come out. Things get smashed up and burned down. And all that after being cooped up for weeks on end in the name of an illness that mostly kills people in nursing homes. Ugly as the ANTIFA movement is, it’s exactly what you get when young people realize their future has been stolen from them. Or, more literally, when they are idle and broke and see fabulous wealth all around them in the banks’ glass skyscrapers, and the car showrooms, and the pageants of celebrity fame and fortune on the boob tube. They are extras in a new movie called The Fourth Turning Meets the Long Emergency but they may not know it.

Hungry for change? You won’t have to wait long. This society may be unrecognizable in a few months. For one thing, there’s a good chance that the current violence in the streets won’t blow over as it has before. There hasn’t been such sudden, massive unemployment before, not even in the Great Depression — and we’re not even the same country that went through that rough episode. Just about every arrangement in contemporary life is on-the-rocks one way or another. Big business, small business, show business… it’s all cratering. The great big secret behind all that is not that capitalism failed; it’s that the capital in capitalism isn’t really there anymore, at least not in the amounts that mere appearances like stock valuations suggest. We squandered it, and now our institutions are straining mightily to pretend that “printing” money is the same as capital. (It’s just more debt.) Note, the stock markets are up this morning at the open! Go figure….

Change? We’re getting it good and hard, and not at a rate we were prepared for. It’s hugely disorienting. It produces friction, heat, and light, which easily becomes violence. There’s, for sure, plenty we can do to make new arrangements for American life without becoming communists or Nazis, but a lot of activities have to fail before we see how that could work. The overburden of obsolete complexity is crushing us, like Derek Chauvin’s knee on George Floyd’s neck. They were both, in their way, common men, caught in the maelstrom of metaphor. That proverbial long, hot summer we’ve heard about for so long…? It’s here.

How Washington “Liberates” Free Countries

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By Andre Vltchek

Source: OffGuardian

There are obviously some serious linguistic issues and disagreements between the West and the rest of the world. Essential terms like “freedom”, “democracy”, “liberation”, even “terrorism”, are all mixed up and confused; they mean something absolutely different in New York, London, Berlin, and in the rest of the world.

Before we begin analyzing, let us recall that countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States, as well as other Western nations, have been spreading colonialist terror to basically all corners of the world.

And in the process, they developed effective terminology and propaganda, which has been justifying, even glorifying acts such as looting, torture, rape and genocides. Basically, first Europe, and later North America literally “got away with everything, including mass murder”.

The native people of Americas, Africa and Asia have been massacred, their voices silenced. Slaves were imported from Africa. Great Asian nations, such as China, what is now “India” and Indonesia, got occupied, divided and thoroughly plundered.

And all was done in the name of spreading religion, “liberating” people from themselves, as well as “civilizing them”.

Nothing has really changed.

To date, people of great nations with thousands of years of culture, are treated like infants; humiliated, and as if they were still in kindergarten, told how to behave, and how to think.

Sometimes if they “misbehave”, they get slapped. Periodically they get slapped so hard, that it takes them decades, even centuries, to get back to their feet. It took China decades to recover from the period of “humiliation”. India and Indonesia are presently trying to recuperate, from the colonial barbarity, and from, in the case of Indonesia, the 1965 U.S.-administered fascist coup.

But if you go back to the archives in London, Brussels or Berlin, all the monstrous acts of colonialism, are justified by lofty terms. Western powers are always “fighting for justice”; they are “enlightening” and “liberating”. No regrets, no shame and no second thoughts. They are always correct!

Like now; precisely as it is these days.

Presently, the West is trying to overthrow governments in several independent countries, on different continents. From Bolivia (the country has been already destroyed) to Venezuela, from Iraq to Iran, to China and Russia. The more successful these countries get, the better they serve their people, the more vicious the attacks from abroad are, the tougher the embargos and sanctions imposed on them are. The happier the citizens are, the more grotesque the propaganda disseminated from the West gets.

In Hong Kong, some young people, out of financial interest, or out of ignorance, keep shouting: “President Trump, Please Liberate Us!” Or similar, but equally treasonous slogans. They are waving U.S., U.K. and German flags. They beat up people who try to argue with them, including their own Police Force.

So, let us see, how the United States really “liberates” countries, in various pockets of the world.

Let us visit Iran, a country which (you’d never guess it if consuming only Western mass media) is, despite the vicious embargos and sanctions, on the verge of the “highest human development index bracket” (UNDP). How is it possible? Simple. Because Iran is a socialist country (socialism with the Iranian characteristics). It is also an internationalist nation which is fighting against Western imperialism. It helps many occupied and attacked states on our planet, including Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia (before), Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq, to name just a few.

So, what is the West doing? It is trying to ruin it, by all means; ruin all good will and progress. It is starving Iran through sanctions, it finances and encourages its “opposition”, as it does in China, Russia and Latin America. It is trying to destroy it.

Then, it just bombs their convoy in neighboring Iraq, killing its brave commander, General Soleimani. And, as if it was not horrid enough, it turns the tables around, and starts threatening Teheran with more sanctions, more attacks, and even with the destruction of its cultural sites.

Iran, under attack, confused, shot down, by mistake, a Ukrainian passenger jet. It immediately apologized, in horror, offering compensation. The U.S. straightway began digging into the wound. It started to provoke (like in Hong Kong) young people. The British ambassador, too, got involved!

As if Iran and the rest of the world should suddenly forget that during its attack on Iraq, more than 3 decades ago, Washington actually shot down an Iranian wide-body passenger plane (Iran Air flight 655, an Airbus-300), on a routine flight from Bandar Abbas to Dubai. In an “accident”, 290 people, among them 66 children, lost their lives. That was considered “war collateral”.

Iranian leaders then did not demand “regime change” in Washington. They were not paying for riots in New York or Chicago.

As China is not doing anything of that nature, now.

The “Liberation” of Iraq (in fact, brutal sanctions, bombing, invasion and occupation) took more than a million Iraqi lives, most of them, those of women and children. Presently, Iraq has been plundered, broken into pieces, and on its knees.

Is this the kind of “liberation” that some of the Hong Kong youngsters really want?

No? But if not, is there any other performed by the West, in modern history?

Washington is getting more and more aggressive, in all parts of the world.

It also pays more and more for collaboration.

And it is not shy to inject terrorist tactics into allied troops, organizations and non-governmental organizations. Hong Kong is no exception.

Iran, Iraq, Syria, Russia, China, Venezuela, but also many other countries, should be carefully watching and analyzing each and every move made by the United States. The West is perfecting tactics on how to liquidate all opposition to its dictates.

It is not called a “war”, yet. But it is. People are dying. The lives of millions are being ruined.

After Mossad Targeted Soleimani, Trump Pulled the Trigger

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Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini and Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, right (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

By Jeffrey Morley

Source: The Deep State

Last October Yossi Cohen, head of Israel’s Mossad, spoke openly about assassinating Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, the head of the elite Quds Force in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“He knows very well that his assassination is not impossible,” Cohen said in an interview. Soleimani had boasted that the Israel’s tried to assassinate him in 2006 and failed.

“With all due respect to his bluster,” Cohen said, “he hasn’t necessarily committed the mistake yet that would place him on the prestigious list of Mossad’s assassination targets.”

“Is Israel Targeting Iran’s Top General for Assassination?” I asked on October 24. On Thursday, Soleimani was killed in an air strike ordered by President Trump.

Soleimani’s convoy was struck by U.S. missiles as he left a meeting at Baghdad’s airport amid anti-Iranian and anti-American demonstrations in Iraq. Supporters of an Iranian-backed militia had agreed to withdraw from the U.S. diplomatic compound in return for a promise that the government would allow a parliamentary vote on expelling 5,000 U.S. troops from the country.

The Pentagon confirmed the military operation, which came “at the direction of the president” and was “aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans.” The Pentagon claimed in a statement that Gen. Soleimani was “actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.”

Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, under indictment for criminal charges, was the first and only national leader to support Trump’s action, while claiming that that Trump acted entirely on his own.

“Just as Israel has the right to self-defense, the United States has exactly the same right,” Netanyahu told reporters in Greece. “Qassem Soleimani is responsible for the deaths of American citizens and other innocents, and he was planning more attacks.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani vowed retaliation for the general’s death,  tweeting that “Iran will take revenge for this heinous crime.”

Capable Foe

Soleimani was the most capable foe of the United States and Israel in the region. As chief of the Al-Quds force, Soleimani was a master of Iran’s asymmetric warfare strategy, using proxy forces to bleed Iran’s enemies, while preserving the government’s ability to plausibly deny involvement.

After the U.S. invasions of Iraq, he funded and trained anti-American militias that launched low-level attacks on U.S. occupation forces, killing upward of 600 U.S. servicemen and generating pressure for U.S. withdrawal.

In recent years, Soleimani led two successful Iranian military operations: the campaign to drive ISIS out of western Iraq in 2015 and the campaign to crush the jihadist forces opposed to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. The United States and Israel denounced Iran’s role in both operations but could not prevent Iran from claiming victory.

Soleimani had assumed a leading role in Iraqi politics in the past year. The anti-ISIS campaign relied on Iraqi militias, which the Iranians supported with money, weapons, and training. After ISIS was defeated, these militia maintained a prominent role in Iraq that many resented, leading to demonstrations and rioting. Soleimani was seeking to stabilize the government and channel the protests against the United States when he was killed.

In the same period, Israel pursued its program of targeted assassination. In the past decade Mossad assassinated at least five Iranian nuclear scientists, according to Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, in an effort to thwart Iran’s nuclear program. Yossi Melman, another Israeli journalist, says that Mossad has assassinated 60-70 enemies outside of its borders since its founding in 1947, though none as prominent as Soleimani.

Israel also began striking at the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq last year. The United States did the same on December 29, killing 19 fighters and prompting anti-American demonstrations as big as the anti-Iranian demonstrations of a month ago.

Now the killing of Soleimani promises more unrest, if not open war. The idea that it will deter Iranian attacks is foolish.

“This doesn’t mean war,” wrote former Defense Department official Andrew Exum, “It will not lead to war, and it doesn’t risk war. None of that. It is war.“​

The Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida reported a year ago that Washington had given Israel the green light to assassinate Soleimani. Al-Jarida, which in recent years has broken exclusive stories from Israel, quoted a source in Jerusalem as saying that “there is an American-Israeli agreement” that Soleimani is a “threat to the two countries’ interests in the region.” It is generally assumed in the Arab world that the paper is used as an Israeli platform for conveying messages to other countries in the Middle East.

Trump has now fulfilled the wishes of Mossad. After proclaiming his intention to end America’s “stupid endless wars,” the president has effectively declared war on the largest country in the region in solidarity with Israel, the most unpopular country in the Middle East.

Iraqi PM reveals Soleimani was on peace mission when assassinated, exploding Trump’s lie of ‘imminent attacks’

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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

The Trump administration claimed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was planning “imminent attacks” on US interests when it assassinated him. That lie was just destroyed, but not before countless corporate media outlets transmitted it to the public.

By Max Blumenthal

Source: The Grayzone

Desperate to justify the US drone assassination of Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted that Washington had made an “intelligence-based assessment” that Soleimani was “actively planning in the region” to attack American interests before he was killed.

President Donald Trump justified his fateful decision to kill the Iranian general in even more explicit language, declaring that Soleimani was planning “imminent attacks” on US diplomatic facilities and personnel across the Middle East.

“We took action last night to stop a war,” Trump claimed. “We did not take action to start a war.”

Trump’s dubious rationale for an indisputably criminal assassination has been repeated widely across corporate media networks, and often without any skepticism or debate.

At a January 3 State Department briefing, where reporters finally got the chance to demand evidence for the claim of an “imminent” threat, one US official erupted in anger.

“Jesus, do we have to explain why we do these things?” he barked at the press.

Two days later, when Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi addressed his country’s parliament, Trump’s justification for killing Soleimani was exposed as a cynical lie.

According to Abdul-Mahdi, he had planned to meet Soleimani on the morning the general was killed to discuss a diplomatic rapproachment that Iraq was brokering between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Abdul-Mahdi said that Trump personally thanked him for the efforts, even as he was planning the hit on Soleimani – thus creating the impression that the Iranian general was safe to travel to Baghdad.

Soleimani had arrived in Baghdad not to plan attacks on American targets, but to coordinate de-escalation with Saudi Arabia. Indeed, he was killed while on an actual peace mission that could have created political distance between the Gulf monarchy and members of the US-led anti-Iran axis like Israel.

The catastrophic results of Soleimani’s killing recall the Obama administration’s 2016 assassination of Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansur, a Taliban leader who was eager to negotiate a peaceful end to the US occupation of Afghanistan. Mansur’s death wound up empowering hardline figures in the Taliban who favored a total military victory over the US and triggered an uptick in violence across the country, dooming hopes for a negotiated exit.

Since Soleimani’s assassination, Iraq’s parliament has voted to expel all US troops from the country and Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has sworn to exact a “severe revenge” on the “the criminals who have stained their hands with [Soleimani’s] and the other martyrs’ blood…”

Trump, for his part, tweeted a litany of gangster-like threats, promising to destroy Iranian cultural sites if it retaliated and pledging to sanction Iraq “like they’ve never been before” if it ousted US troops.

Trump’s treacherous assassination has brought the US closer to war than ever before against a country more militarily potent than any adversary it has faced since the Korean War. And as with the failed US invasion of Iraq, Washington’s casus belli for triggering this conflict was based on falsified intelligence sold to Americans by administration officials, and on a pliant Beltway media acting as their megaphone.

With its claim of “imminent attacks,” the Trump administration has essentially re-mixed Condoleeza Rice’s 2003 warning that “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Back then, the US attacked a sovereign state to rid it of WMD that did not exist. This time, it killed the second-most important Iranian official to prevent a killing spree that was not on the way. And Trump administration officials knew they were lying.

In fact, Pompeo pitched assassinating Soleimani to Trump several months ago, well before any attacks were “imminent.” And in the wake of the general’s killing, a US official revealed to the New York Times that the NSA had intercepted “communications the United States had between Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and General Suleimani showing that the ayatollah had not yet approved any plans by the general for an attack.”

But the preponderance of evidence exposing Trump’s basis for killing Soleimani as a titanic lie has not generated the same level of media interest as the lie itself.

On January 3, CNN assigned three reporters to disseminate the Trump administration’s disinformation about Soleimani, claiming without a hint of critical detachment that he was “planning specific attacks on US interests, including US personnel.”

After the story went live, CNN’s lead reporter, Jim Sciutto, reached out to another official US source to “confirm” his now-discredited piece of war propaganda. In Sciutto’s mind, if more than one US official says a thing, it must be true.

Sciutto is not just any run-of-the-mill national security reporter. During the Obama era, he accepted a job as chief of staff at the US Embassy in Beijing, placing himself at the center of Washington’s gathering Cold War with China. Now back behind CNN’s anchor desk, Sciutto poses as a ferocious critic of Trump while providing the Pentagon and State Department with reliable stenographic services.

No president in recent history has been despised more viscerally by the Beltway press corps than Trump. Nearly everything he says is met with disdain and suspicion, even when he is telling the truth.

But when Trump and his administration attempt to lie the public into war against a designated evildoer, a swath of the corporate media responds with reflexive trust, then shrugs when the lie is exposed in broad daylight.

In Redux of Iraq War Run Up, Media Cheers on Assassination of Soleimani

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Gen. Qassim Soleimani, center, attends a meeting of a group of the Guard members with Iranian Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran, Iran on Oct. 2, 2019. Photo | AP

With echoes of Iraq, media are once again cheering an attack against a Middle Eastern country on the grounds of a supposedly imminent strike against the United States.

By Alan Macleod

Source: Mint Press News

Early Friday morning, a U.S. airstrike assassinated Iranian Lt. General Qassem Soleimani as he traveled from Baghdad’s international airport. A charismatic and capable military figure, Soleimani was widely considered to be one of the most powerful and influential individuals in Iran. Two years to the day since MintPress News reported that the U.S. government had given the green light to assassinate him, Soleimani’s convoy was struck from the air. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo presented the decision as a defensive one, claiming that Soleimani was preparing an “imminent attack” against the U.S. When pressed, he refused to give any more evidence or details. Despite claiming the strike made Americans much safer, the government immediately instructed all U.S. citizens to leave Iraq and avoid the American Embassy.

Assassinating foreign leaders is a major international war crime under international law, yet across the corporate spectrum, media applauded the bombing, or “precision targeting,” as CNN described it. Unsurprisingly, many conservative media outlets supported the Trump administration’s decision to potentially spark a huge international conflict. The Washington Examiner quoted one “expert” celebrating the killing as more important than Bin Laden’s death and a “massive blow to the regime.” Fox News quickly published an opinion piece from Christian Whiton of the strongly hawkish Center for the National Interest, praising Trump for acting “correctly and decisively,” preventing further American bloodshed by taking out a major “terrorist.” It also immediately invited major Neoconservative hawks and public faces of the Iraq War, Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer, on air to discuss the situation and inform its audience what to think.

Media with more liberal audiences ­– who claim to be leading the resistance against a dangerous fascist commander-in-chief – were no less supportive of Trump’s latest aggressive actions. Just as it had done with U.S.-supported coup attempts in Venezuela and Bolivia, resistance media lined up shoulder-to-shoulder with the president and condemned Soleimani as guilty of a myriad of crimes against humanity. CNBC’s headline read, “America just took out the world’s no. 1 bad guy,” accusing him of being the leader of the world’s “most active and pervasive terrorist army.” It claimed that Trump’s decision had “saved current lives” and represented “justice” to his many victims. It also claimed that it saved further American lives as it would “deter future Iranian attack plans.” “There’s no question Soleimani had American blood on his hands” claimed one source in USA Today; “he was an enemy.” It is worth noting, however, that the American deaths being referenced are not civilians, but members of an invading and occupying army in Iraq who were killed by locals resisting a foreign occupier.

The New York Times claimed he had “spent the last decade replicating the Hezbollah model in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, propping up local militias with precision weapons and tactical know-how” and held him responsible for “driving over 10 million [Syrian] people from their homes” not mentioning the American role in any of those warzones. Meanwhile, CNN’s Alex Marquardt claimed that, “US lawmakers are united in their support of the killing of Soleimani” and that Republicans and Democrats alike agreed that, “this is a man who deserved to be killed because of everything he has done against American forces” and were busy “congratulating” Trump for his heroism. The message from corporate media was clear: “Soleimani is a ruthless killer. He’s a horrible human being,” (CNN). The evidence presented for this claim was that “he commanded a division in the Iran/Iraq War” – a war in which the United States armed, funded and supported its then ally Saddam Hussein to invade Iran, causing around one million deaths.

In reality, corporate media are not celebrating Soleimani’s assassination because of his many (real) faults, but rather because of his qualities as an effective leader and organizer, someone who has constantly stymied American efforts to further dominate the region. In Syria, where the U.S. has all but allied with Al-Qaeda/Al-Nusra in order to overthrow the Assad dynasty, Iran has provided a significant counterweight to American-backed forces. Likewise, it continues to support groups such as Hezbollah that resist the U.S. and its allies across the region. It has also, rhetorically at least, supported the Houthi rebels fighting against a U.S./Saudi onslaught, although the extent of Iranian involvement is questionable.

The U.S. government has announced that it is preparing to increase its presence in the wake of the Soleimani assassination, sending at least 3,000 more troops to the region. With echoes of Iraq, media are once again cheering an attack and a military build-up against a Middle Eastern country on the grounds of a supposedly imminent strike against the United States. History, they say, never repeats itself. But it often rhymes.

 

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US assassinates top Iranian general as 4,000 troops readied for Iraq intervention

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Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, center, attends a meeting in Tehran, Iran. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP, File).jpg

By Bill Van Auken

Source: WSWS.org

The targeted assassination of the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force commander Major General Qasem Soleimani at Baghdad’s international airport early Friday morning has sharply intensified the spiraling conflict between the US and Iran, placing the outbreak of a catastrophic new war in the Middle East on a hair trigger.

The Iraqi and Lebanese media, as well as officials in Iraq’s Shia militia movement, reported that a US missile strike killed Soleimani after he had disembarked from a plane that had brought him to Iraq from either Syria or Lebanon. Also slain in the attack was Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second in command of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), the powerful coalition of Iraqi Shia militias.

The Pentagon issued a statement taking responsibility for the killing: “The U.S. military has taken decisive defensive action to protect U.S. personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.”

For its part, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards confirmed the killing, telling the Iranian media that “Honored supreme commander of Islam Soleimani was martyred in attack by U.S. helicopters.”

Soleimani has been a major figure within the Iranian military since the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88. As head of the Quds Force, he played a central role in defeating the US-backed Al Qaeda-linked militias unleashed by Washington and its allies against the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and subsequently helped lead Iraqi militia forces in routing the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). While mentioned as a possible candidate for the Iranian presidency, he rejected any run for office, insisting that he would serve his country as a soldier.

He was well known to US officials and military commanders who had engaged in back-channel communications with the Iranian general since Tehran’s collaboration with Washington in the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan.

The assassination came as the Pentagon dispatched another 750 US paratroopers to the Middle East, while 4,000 more have been placed on high alert for deployment to the region.

The deployment follows this week’s storming of the US Embassy in Baghdad by Iraqi demonstrators, an act of popular anger over US militarism that Washington blamed upon Iran.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper claimed on Thursday that there were “indications out there” that Iran is planning “additional attacks” on US forces or interests in the region and that Washington was prepared to “take preemptive action” if it received any “word of attacks or some kind of indication.”

“The game has changed,” Esper said. “Do I think they might do something? Yes, and they will likely regret it.”

Thus, US imperialism has arrogated to itself the “right” to launch not only assassinations, but devastating military attacks on Iran based on the claim that it is acting to “preempt” rumored or invented threats from any entity in the Middle East that Washington deems an Iranian “proxy.” This category stretches from Iraqi Shia militias to the Hezbollah mass political and militia movement in Lebanon to Hamas, the Islamist party that governs the Israeli-occupied territory of Gaza.

On Tuesday, the US Embassy in Baghdad came under siege by thousands of protesters outraged over the December 29 US air strikes against bases in both Iraq and Syria of Kata’ib Hizbullah, an Iraqi Shia militia. The bombings, carried out by US F-15E fighters, killed 25 of the militia’s members and wounded at least 55 others.

The Trump administration claimed that the airstrikes were in retaliation for a missile attack on Iraq’s K-1 military base outside of Kirkuk in which an American civilian contractor was killed. While Washington blamed Kata’ib Hizbullah for the attack, it has presented no evidence of its responsibility.

The protesters, including many militia members and supporters, had marched on the embassy, located in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, following funeral services for the slain militia fighters that had brought thousands into the streets of the Iraqi capital.

They scaled the wall surrounding the US Embassy and laid siege to it, hurling Molotov cocktails and rocks. The embassy complex, the largest US diplomatic facility in the world, sprawls over 104 acres on the Tigris River and, at its high point in 2012, housed 16,000 US personnel, an effective continuation of the American occupation that formally ended in 2011.

The protesters managed to storm the main entrance to the complex, setting alight a guard booth and two reception rooms. Photographs released by the Associated Press on Wednesday showed the charred interiors of these areas of the embassy, with smashed furniture and windows and smoke still rising from the ruins.

Walls to the embassy compound were left covered with graffiti, including slogans such as “US embassy closed by order of the people” and “Death to America and Israel.”

US Marines manning the embassy’s interior fired continuous rounds of tear gas, stun grenades and warning shots in an attempt to disperse the protesters. Apache attack helicopters circled overhead firing flares toward the crowds in what was described as a “show of force.”

While the December 29 airstrikes were meant as a demonstration of US power and a blow to the Kata’ib Hizbullah militia, the popular response expressed in the siege of the embassy has exposed the immense crisis of Washington’s policy in Iraq and across the region.

The crowds of protesters were able to reach and enter the embassy only because the elite US-trained Iraqi antiterror troops deployed to protect the Green Zone, which also houses government buildings, other embassies and villas of the Iraqi oligarchy, offered no resistance whatsoever.

The event further exposes the predominant role played in the Iraqi government and its security forces by Shia militias—many of which originated in the fight against American troops following the criminal US invasion of Iraq in 2003—organized under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). This had already become clear in 2014, when the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was able to overrun roughly a third of Iraq after US-trained security forces collapsed, and the main opposition was mounted by the forces that would be organized into the PMF.

Infuriating the Trump administration, among those present at the embassy protest were Faleh al-Fayyadh, the nominal head of the PMF, who also serves as the country’s national security advisor, Hadi al-Amiri, the former minister of transport and leader of the Badr Brigades, one of the largest militias within the PMF, and other leading members of parliamentary factions tied to the Shia militias.

While the US ambassador had been meeting with these figures in recent months, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo fired off an angry tweet, including a photograph of four of them, branding them as “terrorists.”

All of Iraq’s key government leaders, including the president, prime minister and head of the parliament, have denounced the US airstrikes as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty. Iraqi Prime Minister Abdul Mahdi, who heads a caretaker government after resigning in the face of mass protests against unemployment, social inequality and government corruption that have swept the country since last October, described the strikes as an “unacceptable vicious assault” against a militia that is considered part of Iraq’s armed forces and warned of its “dangerous consequences.” He described being notified by US Defense Secretary Esper of the impending bombings shortly before they were launched and pleading with him, unsuccessfully, to call them off.

The country’s President Barham Salih, who also condemned the US attack, described a similar conversation with a US diplomatic official.

While Trump fired off a tweet Wednesday thanking Abdul Mahdi and Salih for their “rapid response” to Washington’s demand that they provide security for the embassy, the US-trained Iraqi antiterrorism force charged with protecting the Green Zone, issued a pointed statement to the media denying that it had received an order to protect “any entity.”

The protesters left the Green Zone chanting “Yeah, we burned them!” after being told by militia leaders that they had achieved their purpose, and that legislation would be introduced in the Iraqi parliament demanding the expulsion of all US troops from the country.

While similar proposals have been introduced in the past without success, the present crisis may well have produced the conditions for the approval of such a measure. Leaders of a number of the blocs in the Iraqi legislature have signaled their support for ending the US military presence.

According to the Pentagon’s figures, some 5,000 uniformed US personnel are deployed in Iraq along with an unknown number—undoubtedly greater than that amount—of civilian military contractors. Their presence in the country was justified in the name of the “war on ISIS,” in which the US played a massively destructive role, reducing Mosul, previously Iraq’s second city, along with a number of other urban centers in Anbar province, into rubble and killing tens of thousands.

With ISIS smashed, Trump early last year allowed that having “spent a fortune on building this incredible base” in Iraq, Washington should keep it to “watch” Iran. The remark drew a swift rebuke from the Iraqi president, who stated that Iraq’s constitution “does not allow our territory … to be used against our neighbors” and that Baghdad did not want to be “part of any axis.”

If the Iraqi parliament were to vote for legislation mandating an end to the US military presence in Iraq, it is by no means clear that Washington would withdraw its troops. A continuation of the American occupation, initiated by an unprovoked and criminal invasion, would initiate a new stage in the protracted war that has devastated Iraqi society.

While Washington postures as the victim of missile attacks and an embassy invasion, the conflicts and tensions that continue to roil the Middle East are the product of decades of US military aggression and crippling economic sanctions against Iraq, Iran and Syria that have claimed well over a million lives.

This has culminated in the Trump administration’s abrogation last year of the 2015 nuclear accord between Tehran and the major world powers, followed by the initiation of a “maximum pressure” campaign aimed at reducing Iranian oil exports to zero and starving the Iranian population into accepting regime change and the installation of a US puppet government.

The recklessness and criminality that characterize Washington’s acts against Iran are not a sign of strength, but rather an expression of the deep-going social tensions, economic instability and political crisis gripping American capitalism, which the ruling financial oligarchy seeks to divert outward in an explosion of military violence.

A war against Iran would eclipse the horrific bloodshed of the Iraq war launched in 2003, drawing in the entire region and all of the major powers, including US imperialism’s so-called “great power” rivals Russia and China, bringing humanity face-to-face with the threat of a nuclear Third World War.