war crimes

Fallujah is being slaughtered silently

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By Iyad Al-Dulaimi
Global Research, December 13, 2015
Middle East Monitor 7 December 2015

The daughter of Anbar, the Baghdadian city that rests on the banks of the Euphrates, barricaded itself every morning and learned to survive the abrasive nature of war and bombings. The Americans believed that their repeated shelling would extinguish the city’s flame but they were wrong. The beginning of a major liberation movement swept Iraq and ended with the expulsion of its twenty-first century invaders. They left with their tails between their legs in disappointment, reminding them of the failures they experienced in Vietnam, and perhaps even more.

Fallujah: what is unknown about this city is that it differs from the majority of other Iraqi cities and that it is located approximately 40 kilometres west of Baghdad. The mosques have found their place among the houses of the city and they are so great in number that Fallujah is now known as the “mother of mosques”, being home to more than 100 mosques; the perimeter of the city does not exceed 30 kilometres.

When the Americans invaded Baghdad in the spring of 2003 the shock was intense for all, whether it was the Iraqis who set eyes on a tank headed for their capital for the first time, or even the rest of the Arab and Islamic world as they saw the occupation of one of the region’s most influential capitals. While it is true that Iraqi resistance was quick to form in the face of the new invaders — many have called it the fasted growing resistance in history —it was still not enough to revive and protect the dignity of the Iraqi and Arab peoples when American tanks entered Baghdad on 9 April 2003.

The people of Fallujah protested against the occupation of Iraq for nearly a year in an effort to regain the balance of everyday life and the dignity of the city. At the time of the invasion of Iraq, the plan to divide the country was already on the invader’s table. Nothing was missing, not even the means to implement the project. Twenty-five million Iraqis were subsequently divided into Sunni, Shia, Kurds and other minorities. Even so, Fallujah stood as a reminder to all Iraqis that the path to resistance was ongoing and that national unity remained a goal. In the spring of 2004, Fallujah was the first Iraqi city to free itself from the US occupation after a battle that lasted 33 days. American forces used all of their energy to try to reclaim the city and failed.

On that day, men were truly men as America was forced to sit down at the negotiating table with the rest of the city’s inhabitants. All the US wanted to do was break Fallujah’s will but on that day Iraq was united behind the city. Songs praising Fallujah were broadcast from north to south of Iraq. There was no disagreement among any of the Iraqis as to what Fallujah stood for. The city was a thorn in the side of anyone who wanted to swallow Iraq whole.

Months went by and Fallujah became a liberated city within an occupied country. It became a bubble that governed itself. It frustrated all of the invaders who stood beyond the city boundary, subjecting them to humiliation and shame. The US used all of its forces and brought Tony Blair’s forces with it, including those who were trained in Iran. All of them wanted to take revenge on the city by testing out weapons that had never been used before. The results left the bodies of the victims completely destroyed or melted; not even their bones remained.[see NOTE]

Today, years later, Fallujah finds itself, once again, the prey of evil beings who wish to retaliate for its steadfastness. They continue to use the same argument time and again; that the city is harbouring terrorists. This has been the excuse for everything since 2004 when it was believed that Fallujah was harbouring Al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. Since the beginning of 2014, Fallujah has been transformed into the city of death. Every day it is bombarded under the pretext of fighting Daesh. What the media and the international community continue to ignore is the fact that the city is home to 150,000 civilians who refuse to leave the city out of fear that they will be subject to government blackmail in Baghdad.

Despite today’s constant violence in the city, many of the inhabitants of the neighbouring city of Ramadi have sought refuge in Fallujah. From the perspective of those fleeing, it is more dignified to go to Fallujah then to stand on the bridge to Baghdad awaiting mercy. Today Fallujah is being bombed and the world continues to see only what it wants to see. It is important for us to remind the people across the Arab and Islamic world that this city, which is bombed every day, was once a symbol of honour and resistance. It is in need of more than a prayer or a loaf of bread because the people of Fallujah are fighting for their lives and paying the price with the blood of their children. That is the dearest thing that can be offered to this steadfast city.

Translated from Al-Araby Al-Jadid, 1 December, 2015

The original source of this article is Middle East Monitor
Copyright © Iyad Al-Dulaimi, Middle East Monitor, 2015
NOTE: http://www.democracynow.org/2006/7/25/u_s_broadcast_exclusive_star_wars
http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2006/7/25?autostart=true
U.S. Broadcast Exclusive: Star Wars in Iraq: Is the U.S. Using New Experimental Tactical High Energy Laser Weapons in Iraq? — Democracy Now

U.S. is blockading Syria — a war crime

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By Christopher Black
Global Research, September 25, 2015
New Eastern Outlook 24 September 2015

The news that the United States asked both Greece and Bulgaria to block Russian flights over their air space headed for Syria is a logical extension of the criminality of the aggression against Syria being conducted by the NATO powers and their allies in the region. The NATO alliance has been conducting a war of aggression against Syria since 2011 when it succeeded in destroying Libya and it was responsible for the waves of humanity who fled the NATO bombing and who now flee the Takfiri militants NATO used as their auxiliaries.

These actions are clearly war crimes of the highest order, contemptuous violations of the UN Charter, international law and of all morality. The resulting misery of the peoples of the countries under attack, who are forced to flee and become refugees in the heart of the very alliance that is attacking them, is beyond words. The images bombard us daily. But the images are not placed in the western media to create a call for peace in the region. Instead, as we see from the recent statements of the British, French and American leaders, they are used to manipulate the emotions of the citizens of the NATO countries to justify a call for more military aggression against Syria which will create more misery, more death and more refugees.

That the flood of stories in the western press about the Syrian refugees is being used as a propaganda tool to is easy to see when we compare the situation regarding refugees from Libya and Ukraine. The Libyan people have been fleeing the hell that NATO created for four years now, with thousands of people arriving in Europe, mostly on the shores of Italy. But there has been no call to attack the vicious thugs that NATO installed in place of the progressive socialist Libyan Republic, no call to bring back the civilized society that existed before Gaddafi was brutally murdered by the same forces, no call for regime change in Tripoli. Instead, chaos and gangsterism prevail, and all is well.

In Ukraine over a million people have fled the Kiev junta’s massive armed attacks on its own people, the type of attacks that NATO countries alleged Gaddafi had used on his own people to justify their attack on Libya. The US puppets in Kiev have used bombing raids on civilians, white phosphorus shells, cluster bombs and other banned weapons and they have used them not on military targets of the peoples resistance forces but on civilian houses, shops, schools, hospitals, power stations and other civilian infrastructure. Food and medical supplies are blockaded. The people of the Donbas are under siege. All these actions are war crimes and crimes against humanity. Yet the western media says not a single word about them. There is no call from Washington or London or Paris or Ottawa to bomb Kiev and remove Poroshenko. Instead they supply him and his Nazi friends with weapons, supplies and money and send in their own forces to assist in these criminal attacks. The double standards applied and the deep hypocrisy and cynicism displayed by the NATO governments and the western news media that provide the information flow to the people, must shake anyone’s belief in the viability of western civilization.

In stark contrast, Russia has taken in over a million refugees so far from Ukraine without complaint while the EU countries argue bitterly amongst themselves as to who should take the refugees they have created and while they fan the flames of xenophobia among their own populations. But then the motivations are completely different. The Russians want to help the people being attacked by NATO and its puppet regime in Kiev. The Europeans only want to use the refugees as a means of creating hysteria in Europe so that their people will support a combined NATO attack on Syria.

Since these EU countries in one way or another support the forces attacking Syria they are responsible under international law for receiving and caring for the refugees they have created. They must follow certain humane standards in the treatment of them, but instead we see images of them being fed like animals or being kicked and tripped up by the very media sent to report on the crisis.

But now the situation has escalated further with the United States demanding that Greece and Bulgaria block relief supplies from Russia from using their air space, an attempt to completely block these supplies. Greece has found the courage to refuse the request. Bulgaria to its shame has decided to lick their boots.

The Americans try to justify their demand by claiming that some of those flights are used to deliver military supplies to Syria. Yes, and so what? Russia has every right to support the Syrian government in its fight against the Nato-Saudi, Israeli auxiliaries who are fighting in Syria under the acronyms ISIS or ISIL or Al Qaeda and has been openly doing so since the beginning. There is no UN approved arms embargo against Syria and the United States and its allies are daily dropping supplies to these same groups and have let it be known that their special forces are operating on the ground alongside those forces. Just the other day another story broke of the Israeli Army airlifting wounded from these groups for treatment in Israeli occupied zones and one must wonder if those selectively helped are not indeed Israeli special forces themselves. The Americans and Bulgarians are not just worried about more Russian military supplies from being delivered. They also want the Syrian people to experience the maximum state of misery and despair to punish them for their support of their government and to try to force them to turn against it.

Indeed, the Russian and Syrian governments affirm that many of those flights are delivering much needed humanitarian relief including medical supplies, generators for hospitals, food, tents for internal refugees, and related supplies to relieve the distress of the Syrian people in the face of the American provoked attacks on them. One has to ask, where are the American and European relief supplies for the Syrian people? Where are the ships and planes that should be carrying the same supplies the Russians are delivering? If they had delivered them and if they had insisted that the attacks on Syria stop there would not be any refugees. But they want the refugees to generate war propaganda and so they do not want relief supplies to get through.

The attempt to blockade the delivery of humanitarian assistance amounts to a war crime under international law, including the the Geneva Conventions, the Nuremburg Principles and the Statute of Rome that sets out the definitions of war crimes under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. The attempted blockade of humanitarian assistance constitutes murder, inhuman treatment, collective punishment, an action designed to bring about the physical destruction of the population and the nation, and other related crimes committed against the Syrian civilian population. Every European leader who takes part in this criminal conspiracy should be charged with war crimes. The American president should be Number One in the dock. But international criminal law continues to be administered by criminals and we watch with disbelief the complete silence of the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court who sits in her office in The Hague and twiddles her thumbs while Damascus, Aleppo and Donetsk burn.

The cartloads of the dead overflow the cemeteries. The misery of the living mounts. The hope that is left for peace and security, even for a little kindness in this life, drips out of our veins with every drop of blood shed by the victims of these NATO wars. It is very easy to despair. I despair. But we must resist. We must demand these wars stop, We must stop sitting around face booking and surfing the internet, get out of these artificial worlds they have built to turn us into zombies of the living and get back on the streets where we still count, where they still fear us and where we can shout our demands so loud they will shake the walls of the state itself.

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto, he is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and he is known for a number of high-profile cases involving human rights and war crimes, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-blockade-of-syria-a-war-crime/5478059

“Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines”: the U.S. aids and abets war crimes in the Philippines

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The jury in the tribunal found defendant Aquino and defendant Government of the United States of America, represented by Obama guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
By Marjorie Cohn
Global Research, July 23, 2015
truthdig 22 July 2015

After Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush declared the Philippines a second front in the war on terror (“Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines”). The Philippine government used this as an opportunity to escalate its war against Muslim separatists and other individuals and organizations opposing the policies of the government. The egregious human rights violations committed by the Philippine military and paramilitary forces are some of the most underreported atrocities in the media today.

The International Peoples’ Tribunal on Crimes Against the Filipino People, held July 16-18 in Washington, D.C., drew upward of 300 people. An international panel of seven jurors heard two days of testimony from 32 witnesses, many of whom had been tortured, arbitrarily detained and forcibly evicted from their land. Some testified to being present when their loved ones, including children, were gunned down by the Philippine military or paramilitary. I testified as an expert witness on international human rights violations in the Philippines, many of which were aided and abetted by the U.S. government.

Thirty-one-year-old Melissa Roxas was a community health adviser who went to the Philippines in 2009 to conduct health surveys in central Luzon, where people were dying from cholera and diarrhea. In May of that year, 15 men in civilian clothes with high-powered rifles and wearing bonnets and ski masks forced her into a van and handcuffed and blindfolded her. They beat her, suffocated her and used other forms of torture on her until releasing her six days later. Roxas was continually interrogated and even threatened with death during her horrific torture. She was likely released because she is a U.S. citizen (she has dual citizenship).

But WikiLeaks revealed that although the U.S. Embassy was aware of Roxas’ torture and abduction, it did nothing to secure her release. Roxas convinced the Philippines Court of Appeals to grant her petition for writ of amparo, which confirmed she had been abducted and tortured. Nevertheless, the Philippine government refuses to mount an investigation into her ordeal. And although she lives in the United States, Roxas remains under surveillance.

“Whenever you work with communities,” Roxas testified, “[the Philippine government] vilifies you as a member of the New Peoples Army [NPA].” Ironically, the Philippine military claimed it was the NPA, the armed wing of the Philippine Communist Party, that abducted Roxas. Her physical and emotional scars remain. But, Roxas told the tribunal, “I have the privilege of being in the United States,” unlike many other Filipino victims of human rights violations.

People and groups have been labeled “terrorists” by the Philippine government, the U.S. government and other countries at the behest of the U.S. government. The Philippine government engages in “red tagging”—political vilification. Targets are frequently human rights activists and advocates, political opponents, community organizers or groups struggling for national liberation. Those targeted for assassination are placed on the “order of battle” list.

The tribunal documented 262 cases of extrajudicial killings, 27 cases of forced disappearances, 125 cases of torture, 1,016 cases of illegal arrest, and 60,155 incidents of forced evacuation—many to make way for extraction by mining companies—from July 2010 to June 30 of this year by Philippine police, military, paramilitary or other state agents operating within the chain of command.

As part of the U.S. war on terror, in 2002 the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo government created the Oplan Bantay Laya, a counterinsurgency program modeled on U.S. strategies, ostensibly to fight communist guerrillas. After 9/11, the Bush administration gave Arroyo $100 million to fund the campaign in the Philippines.

The government of Benigno Aquino III continued the program in 2011 under the name Oplan Bayanihan. It does not distinguish between civilians and combatants,  which is considered a war crime under the Rome Statute and the Geneva Conventions.

Oplan Bayanihan has led to tremendous repression, including large numbers of extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, torture and cruel treatment. Many civilians, including children, have been killed. Hundreds of members of progressive organizations were murdered by Philippine military and paramilitary death squads. Communities and leaders opposed to large-scale and invasive mining have been targeted. Even ordinary people with no political affiliation have not escaped the government’s campaign of terror.

Continue reading →

Ray McGovern: College of William & Mary honors a war criminal

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By Ray McGovern
Posted on War is a Crime, May 18, 2015

Exclusive: Condoleezza Rice has crossed the threshold into esteemed celebrity – a welcomed speaker at this year’s College of William and Mary commencement – despite her record as the liar who sold the illegal war in Iraq and choreographed the torture techniques for use at CIA “black sites.”

By Ray McGovern

Nothing better illustrates the extent to which the United States has turned its back on the rule of law than when the likes of Condoleezza Rice are asked to address graduates and receive doctoral degrees honoris causa at university commencements. Ms. Rice – in my view a war criminal – was accorded those honors Saturday by the College of William and Mary, the second-oldest college in the U.S.

Unlike Rice’s other university appearances in recent years, there was not the slightest sign of unhappiness, let alone protest. Most of the graduating seniors were not yet ten years old in 2003 when Rice played a key role helping President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney launch a war of aggression against Iraq. So, the graduates’ ignorance may perhaps be understandable, but it does not speak well for their grasp of recent history.

It is far less excusable for the patrician leadership of William and Mary to have bestowed this honor on Rice. Did the news not penetrate their ivory tower that last year Ms. Rice was prevented from being accorded similar honors by irate students at Rutgers University, who were sickened at the thought that their commencement would be sullied by Rice’s presence?

One of the leaders of the “No Rice” campaign at Rutgers last year (a senior at the time), Carmelo Cintrón Vivas, told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! that the “students felt that war criminals shouldn’t be honored. … Someone who has such a tainted record as a public servant in this country should not … get an honorary law degree for trying to circumvent the law. … That’s not fair to any student graduating or not graduating at Rutgers University.”

He found “ludicrous” the familiar argument that Rice’s academic achievements outweigh her political positions: “If we look into a lot of international criminals and just bad people in history, a lot of them had great academic careers or great medical careers. … Your career is one thing, and the way you act as a person, as a human being, is another one. And that’s why we make this an issue about human rights.”

How to explain the contrast between the apathy prevailing at William and Mary and the awareness and activism at Rutgers? Perhaps one clue is the marked difference between the costs of attending. Tuition and fees are significantly higher at William and Mary, located in Williamsburg, Virginia. Another clue might be seen in the remarkable “tradition” of asking predominantly conservative Republican speakers to do the honors, and to get the honors, at commencement.

In contrast to the scene at William and Mary, this year’s commencement at Rutgers awarded an honorary doctorate in humane letters to Frances Fox Piven, a highly respected scholar and advocate for poor working people. Piven’s recent books include The War at Home: The Domestic Costs of Bush’s Militarism. Piven also won the Shirley Chisholm Award for “leadership toward social and economic justice.”

Looking at the assembled graduates at William and Mary, I could not help but mourn the fact that they were being sent off into life by Rice instead of Piven. I would expect Piven to address the pressing challenges facing the “99 percent” – and the injustices behind the growing unrest in Baltimore, St. Louis and other troubled cities. Rice did not mention any of that on Saturday. It was all about her – a reflection, perhaps, of the fact that, although black in Birmingham, Alabama, she nonetheless grew up relatively privileged.

Worse Still: War Crimes

Rather than some profile in courage or a person of steadfast principles, Condoleezza Rice represents malleability in the face of criminality and evil. She is a profile in cowardice and expediency, the opposite sort of lesson in how to live one’s life than Piven or many other worthy commencement speakers would be expected to present.

When President George W. Bush told Ms. Rice to scarf up any and all “evidence,” no matter how sketchy or deceptive, to prove that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD), she led the fraudulent campaign to present the “intelligence” needed to deceive Congress into supporting a war that fits the post-World War II Nuremberg Tribunal’s definition of a “war of aggression as the supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes only in that it contains the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Rice played her role as drum majorette for war with exceptional enthusiasm – conjuring up the danger of “mushroom clouds” from Iraq’s (nonexistent) nukes; “yellowcake” uranium from darkest Africa (based on crudely forged documents); and aluminum tubes (that turned out to be standard Iraqi artillery tubes) but she said were for refining uranium.

Rice led the parade, with Dick Cheney’s indispensable help, promoting the various manufactured “evidence” against Iraq. The fraudulent nature of those spurious claims was laid bare in a July, 23, 2002 British document, The Downing Street Memorandum, published by The London Times on May 1, 2005. Established as authentic, the memo exposed the unconscionable attempt to “fix” the intelligence to justify a U.S./U.K. attack for “regime change” in Iraq.

For the rest of the article:
http://warisacrime.org/content/tis-season-fete-war-criminals

Comments: McGovern states later in the article: 

“The William and Mary experience on Saturday is hardly the first time a university has succumbed to the “prestige virus” and given some powerful celebrity high honors at a commencement despite the person’s deplorable actions. There are, sad to say, numerous examples, including an earlier one involving Ms. Rice.

 …’Thus compromised,’ warned [Daniel] Berrigan, ‘the Christian tradition of nonviolence, as well as the secular boast of disinterested pursuit of truth — these are reduced to bombast, hauled out for formal occasions, believed by no one, practiced by no one.’”

It is not just Catholic colleges that have invited Rice. In 2011, she was invited to speak at Westmont College, a Protestant Christian college in California, at the annual President’s Breakfast and later to students.
http://blogs.westmont.edu/magazine/2011/04/26/an-extraordinary-ordinary-woman/
An Extraordinary, Ordinary Woman

Westmont followed this by hosting Robert Gates in 2012, Colin Powell in March 2013, and stunningly, Henry Kissinger in a special event on October 2013. The Kissinger event took place one month after the release of declassified documents detailing Kissinger’s role in the US-backed Pinochet coup in Chile, which overthrew Salvador Allende.
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title2/resurgence/2013/276-277/world3.htm

Clearly, this brand of Christianity and these institutions have difficulty with the values of peace, justice, truth, love, wisdom, or that over-used word though under-used value, righteousness.

 

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He served as an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and then a CIA analyst for 30 years, and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

This article appeared first on Consortiumnews.com

 

Ukrainian neo-nazis from Azov battalion burned alive a Novorossia resistance fighter on a cross (video 18+)

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Disclaimer: I have not watched this video.
Azov Battalion is working with the US military and undergoing training starting this month.

April 24, 2015
TVZvezda.ru
Translated from Russian by Kristina Rus

Ukrainian fighters from a nationalist voluntary regiment “Azov” sent a video of an execution of a Novorossia fighter to militia fighters and hackers from “Cyberberkut”.

“According to the authors of this video, the footage was filmed near the village of Shirokino, and “all the separatists, traitors of Ukraine and militia fighters will be treated the same“, –  “Cyberberkut” quoted the message from “Azov”.

The footage shows how several punishers tied their victim to the cross, stuck the cross into the ground, and set fire to the wooden structure.

“This will not add fear neither to us nor the Armed Forces of Novorossia: we have already experienced too much in this life! But after this hardly anyone will capture “Azov” members alive” – responded the hackers to the atrocities of the security forces.

The authenticity of the video is not yet reliably confirmed. No official statements were made by the authorities of DPR.

“Azov” is one of the most infamous units of the Ukrainian National Guard, was formed as a battalion, in the fall expanded to a regiment. The unit consists of staunch nationalists – Ukrainian and mercenaries from other countries. The regiment uses the symbols of SS of Nazi Germany on its flag. Atrocities, harassment and war crimes of “Azov” fighters against the civilian population were repeatedly reported. Based in Mariupol.

Former CIA official on the secret wars of the CIA — Part 2

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From The Other Americas Radio
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info//article4069.htm

Transcript: THE SECRET WARS OF THE CIA

by John Stockwell

A lecture given in October, 1987

Part II – Part I Here

I just got my latest book back from the CIA censors. If I had not submitted it to them, I would have gone to jail, without trial – blow off juries and all that sort of thing – for having violated our censorship laws….

In that job [Angola] I sat on a sub-committee of the NSC, so I was like a chief of staff, with the GS-18s (like 3-star generals) Henry Kissinger, Bill Colby (the CIA director), the GS-18s and the CIA, making important decisions and my job was to put it all together and make it happen and run it, an interesting place from which to watch a covert action being done….

When the world’s gotten blocked up before, like a monopoly game where everything’s owned and nobody can make any progress, the way they erased the board and started over has been to have big world wars, and erase countries and bomb cities and bomb banks and then start from scratch again. This is not an option to us now because of all these 52,000 nuclear weapons….

The United States CIA is running 50 covert actions, destabilizing further almost one third of the countries in the world today….

By the way, everything I’m sharing with you tonight is in the public record. The 50 covert actions – these are secret, but that has been leaked to us by members of the oversight committee of the Congress. I urge you not to take my word for anything. I’m going to stand here and tell you and give you examples of how our leaders lie. Obviously I could be lying. The only way you can figure it out for yourself is to educate yourselves. The French have a saying, `them that don’t do politics will be done’. If you don’t fill your mind eagerly with the truth, dig it out from the records, go and see for yourself, then your mind remains blank and your adrenaline pumps, and you can be mobilized and excited to do things that are not in your interest to do….

Nicaragua is not the biggest covert action, it is the most famous one. Afghanistan is, we spent several hundred million dollars in Afghanistan. We’ve spent somewhat less than that, but close, in Nicaragua….

[When the U.S. doesn’t like a government], they send the CIA in, with its resources and activists, hiring people, hiring agents, to tear apart the social and economic fabric of the country, as a technique for putting pressure on the government, hoping that they can make the government come to the U.S.’s terms, or the government will collapse altogether and they can engineer a coup d’etat, and have the thing wind up with their own choice of people in power.

Now ripping apart the economic and social fabric of course is fairly textbook-ish. What we’re talking about is going in and deliberately creating conditions where the farmer can’t get his produce to market, where children can’t go to school, where women are terrified inside their homes as well as outside their homes, where government administration and programs grind to a complete halt, where the hospitals are treating wounded people instead of sick people, where international capital is scared away and the country goes bankrupt. If you ask the state department today what is their official explanation of the purpose of the Contras, they say it’s to attack economic targets, meaning, break up the economy of the country. Of course, they’re attacking a lot more.

To destabilize Nicaragua beginning in 1981, we began funding this force of Somoza’s ex-national guardsmen, calling them the contras (the counter-revolutionaries). We created this force, it did not exist until we allocated money. We’ve armed them, put uniforms on their backs, boots on their feet, given them camps in Honduras to live in, medical supplies, doctors, training, leadership, direction, as we’ve sent them in to de-stabilize Nicaragua. Under our direction they have systematically been blowing up graineries, saw mills, bridges, government offices, schools, health centers. They ambush trucks so the produce can’t get to market. They raid farms and villages. The farmer has to carry a gun while he tries to plow, if he can plow at all.

If you want one example of hard proof of the CIA’s involvement in this, and their approach to it, dig up `The Sabotage Manual’, that they were circulating throughout Nicaragua, a comic-book type of a paper, with visual explanations of what you can do to bring a society to a halt, how you can gum up typewriters, what you can pour in a gas tank to burn up engines, what you can stuff in a sewage to stop up the sewage so it won’t work, things you can do to make a society simply cease to function.

Systematically, the contras have been assassinating religious workers, teachers, health workers, elected officials, government administrators. You remember the assassination manual? that surfaced in 1984. It caused such a stir that President Reagan had to address it himself in the presidential debates with Walter Mondale. They use terror. This is a technique that they’re using to traumatize the society so that it can’t function.  Continue reading →

OSCE and EU are complicit in Kiev regime war crimes and lies

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“Their reports were full of schematics, photos, testimony of the locals and video materials. All this put together should have, at minimum, proven the criminal essence of the Kiev regime and put on trial at the international tribunal several hundred Ukrainian military men and politicians who gave criminal orders. But the observers returned to Europe and once again an uneasy silence hung in the air. No one demanded to hold accountable the military men shelling peaceful cities, no one called on Poroshenko to cease the inhumane punishing operation and not a single European leader called for sanctions to be imposed against Ukraine at war with its own people.”

What exactly is the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe doing?

OSCE ignored the latest round of bills approved by Ukraine’s Verkovna Rada that completely violate Minsk II, which include allowing more United States and Polish military into the country (Minsk II requires that foreign troops leave).

OSCE is doing nothing about the assault begun last week by the Ukrainian government forces against East Ukraine.

OSCE keeps recording and taking notes.

In November, Radio Free Europe attacked OSCE, accusing it of being pro-Russian, citing supposed Ukrainian public lack of confidence, decrying the absence of Ukrainians as observers, completely missing that Ukrainian-Canadian Michael Bociurkiw is the spokesman for the OSCE mission.

It was a psy-ops piece, bullying OSCE, making it clear that fact-finding and assigning blame to the Kiev regime would not be tolerated. Especially after Bociurkiw  talked about machine gun-like bullet holes in the MH17 fusilage in July.

OSCE monitors make notes, take photos, and then send this back to Kiev and the EU. And nothing changes.

Silence of the Lambs
by Alexey Zotyev
March 22, 2015

And that is why the global community has founded several collegial organizations whose purpose is to monitor the adherence to human rights and main freedoms. Conventions signed by heads of most states guarantee a peaceful sky over our heads, make the rights of simple people a priority in any act and declare comprehensive protection of our rights in the event they are grossly violated. One such organization that is a watchdog of human rights is the OSCE – the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. OSCE unites countries throughout Europe and beyond and includes 57 states as its permanent members. It would seem that this is a good argument in the fight for peace throughout the world…

The first time I personally encountered OSCE observers was at the end of the spring or beginning of the summer in 2014, a year very memorable for all of us. Concerned with the combatting near the Russian border, they walked about Rostov Region, or more exactly, the town of Donetsk [Russia], and recorded Ukrainian munitions hitting Russian territory. Their faces serious and concerned, citizens of problem-free Europe wearing vests appropriate to their status measured craters and examined the consequences of shelling. Being completely normal people, they expressed sincere indignation at the ease with which the Ukrainian military not only shelled their own peaceful cities, but periodically also shelled residential blocks of the town of Donetsk in Rostov Region. The OSCE observers studied the burned roofs of Russian homes and brick pieces knocked out from walls and at that time I thought that in the nearest future everything will change drastically. I honestly expected that the reports written as a result of objective investigations will create a commotion in the European Union and will open eyes for inhabitants of the Old World to the crimes committed by official Kiev. I was greatly surprised when, after returning home, the observers did practically nothing. The reports turned out vague and all the blatant facts of crimes against peaceful folks, Russian as well as Ukrainian, simply disappeared from the pages of the reports. An awkward silence took over the corridors of the OSCE…

Further on, I encountered the “silent” OSCE representatives throughout practically all of the Donbass territory. They wandered around the Boeing that was shot down, they examined houses and bus stops that were subject to shelling, they even went to the front lines to document facts of the peace agreements being violated. These worthy people reacted very quickly to what was happening and were practically the first on location at places where military crimes had been committed. Their reports were full of schematics, photos, testimony of the locals and video materials. All this put together should have, at minimum, proven the criminal essence of the Kiev regime and put on trial at the international tribunal several hundred Ukrainian military men and politicians who gave criminal orders. But the observers returned to Europe and once again an uneasy silence hung in the air. No one demanded to hold accountable the military men shelling peaceful cities, no one called on Poroshenko to cease the inhumane punishing operation and not a single European leader called for sanctions to be imposed against Ukraine at war with its own people.

At certain times, I am overwhelmed by a wave of fury so alien to me, and I want to board a plane, fly to Europe and go to the main square of one of the capitals and scream “People! What are you doing?” I want to put so much sense and images into this short scream so that each European who is in the blast area stops and finally opens his eyes. I am tired of their long-lasting silence, their blindness and deafness. I am tired of the one-sided position of the European leaders. I am tired of the constant waiting for another world war…

In my understanding, a person who has witnessed a crime and hides facts about it is at minimum an accomplice. International law is of the same opinion. The silent observers from the OSCE who readily and with pleasure frisk Russian humanitarian aid convoys and search for Russian tanks along the border, but at the same time stay silent about the thousands of killed civilians and dozens of destroyed residential towns and villages, are without exaggeration accomplices to these inhumane crimes. Instead of documenting military crimes of the Kiev regime and demanding that those responsible be held accountable, they are covering up for the criminals, intentionally hiding or distorting facts. Where they need to scream, they are silent. And the organization itself, as well as the people of the member countries, will in the end pay dearly for this silence. Those who are growing a new fascist regime at their side are mistaken when they think that they will be able to control this regime.

The European political elite are so busy forming the image of Russia as an enemy and aggressor, that they have completely forgotten about such things as objectivity and justice. Today, they are intentionally transmitting lies to their public with just one goal – to please the USA. They hold so sacred the interests of the superpower, that they often put them above the interests of their own people. It is specifically this process, an irreversible process, that has given birth to the silent observers in white vests, who see everything, understand everything, but cannot say anything.

If someone thinks that the OSCE representatives do their work well, and are fulfilling their mission with honor, let them tell me the answer to one simple question – where were the OSCE representatives when an armored vehicle of the Ukrainian Armed Forces ran over a woman with two children? Why did no one condemn the drunken soldiers killing a woman and her eight year old daughter who died under the caterpillars of a multi-purpose light armored hauler? Why didn’t anyone voice a reproach of the national guard fighters shooting automatic weapons above heads of indignant people who came to the administrative buildings in Konstantinovka with only one goal – to demand that the murderers be held accountable? And moreover, none of the OSCE observers drew parallels between behavior of the fighters of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and behavior of soldiers from Nazi Germany on occupied territory! They are silent again…

Everyone is silent. They are silent when we are trying to scream of the tens of thousands of innocent victims and thousands of destroyed homes. They are silent when we talk about firebombs and cluster bombs being showered down on women, old people and children. They are silent when we accent attention on torture behind Kiev’s walls. They are not silent only when there is talk of mythical separatists, terrorists and Russian military aggression. During such moments even the most timid display high oratory skills. When watching these convulsions of reason one wants to understand – are they doing this because they are submissively listening to America or because they are scared mindless of Russia?

http://en.voicesevas.ru/news/analytics/3680-silence-of-the-lambs.html

Report: War crimes of the armed forces and security forces of Ukraine: torture of the Donbass region residents (English) — PDF

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March 13, 2015
Democracyfund.ru
Published November 24, 2014

This report was written by a non-state organization ‘The Foundation for the Study of Democracy’ (headed by M. Grigoriev) and the Russian Public Council for International Cooperation and Public Diplomacy (presided by S. Ordzhonikidze) with the assistance of V. Dzhabarov, S. Mamedov, I. Morozov, S. Markov and other members of the Committee for Public Support of the Residents of South-Eastern Ukraine. For the purposes of investigating specific cases of torture, inhuman or degrading treatment, experts of the Foundation interviewed the ex-prisoners released by the Ukrainian side, in some cases five or ten minutes after the exchange. The report written by the Foundation includes the results of interviews with over 100 prisoners released by the Ukrainian side. Experts of the Foundation conducted the interviews in the period from 25 August to 4 November 2014. It should also be noted that, according to those interviewed, the Ukrainian side releases only those prisoners who are in relatively satisfactory physical condition. Thus, one may conclude that the situation in Ukraine regarding torture is more serious than the one described in this report.

1 The majority of the interviewees are still afraid of possible punitive and unlawful measures by the Ukrainian side against their families, most of their names in this report have been changed. However, as part of legal procedures, a video of each interview has been recorded and personal data – first and second names, age, and place of residence – collected. 

 As the European Court of Human Rights opined, the Convention on Human Rights prohibits in absolute terms torture, irrespective of other circumstances. Moreover, it is assumed in the law of the European Union that ‘the State is responsible for the actions of all of its agencies, such as the police, security forces, other law enforcement officials, and any other State bodies who hold the individual under their control, whether they act under orders, or on their own accord.’ Unlike other clauses of the Convention related to rights, Article 3 makes no provision for derogation (reservations) in the event of a war or other emergency threatening national security. Article 15 paragraph 2 explicitly states that there can be no derogation from Article 3 within the Convention. The information collected by the Foundation for Democracy Studies gives grounds to believe that the Ukrainian armed forces, the National Guard and other military units of the Ministry of the Interior of Ukraine, as well as the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) systematically and on purpose violate Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights that reads, ‘No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.’ The extent to which torture is being used and the fact that this is done systematically prove that torture is an intentional strategy of the said institutions, authorized by their leadership. Commenting on their practice of committing torture, Liliya Rodionova, deputy head of the Committee for Refugees and Prisoners of War (Donetsk), who is personally engaged in the exchange of prisoners, says the following about the prisoners that the Ukrainian side releases:

“Almost everyone released comes back with their ribs and legs broken and teeth ripped out. There is not a single person with no marks of beating. Treatment does not begin until right before the exchange. There is a guy with eight gunshot wounds. Even at the hospital, he was beaten. They stuck fingers in his wounds. They use pliers to rip out teeth and beat right in the wounds. Many come back with fractured skulls. One of the torture tools is an awl that they use for stabbing prisoners. Lately, they have been seizing ordinary people, not members of the self-defence forces. They use gunpowder and electroshock to torture people, they brand them. Some were thrown into a pit with dead bodies, crushed with a shovel bucket, had a smouldering iron stuck in their mouth. People were kept in iron containers with no source of oxygen. The torture techniques are sophisticated and brutal, they leave the victims maimed. Those in need of medical treatment, even with diabetes, receive no medical assistance. Prisoners from our side can be told by the color of their skin. It is greyish. Each time an exchange is to take place, we draw up a list of acute patients, but the other side won’t release them.”

Simon Verdian, a volunteer helping the Committee, who was himself released in September 2014, says, ‘I know of cases when prisoners had gunpowder spread over their genitals, were branded with hot iron, executed by shooting in front of other prisoners, sent to a mine field, crashed with shovel buckets into the ground and left in a pit of dead bodies for the whole night. Most of their meals consist of bread and water.’

1 «Prohibition of Torture, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment under the European Convention on Human Rights (Article  3)», Council of Europe, Interights, 2008.
Please read and share the full 49 page PDF report (in English) here:

 Part I.Methods and circumstances of torture committed by the Ukrainian armed forces and security forces

 

http://www.fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/03/pdf-report-war-crimes-of-armed-forces.html

What is the Debaltsevo cauldron hiding?

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From Fort Russ


February 8, 2015
Newsli.ru

What’s inside in the Debaltsevo cauldron? Why did the leaders of Europe rush to Russia?

Admittedly, when “the mousetrap” began to shut, everyone began to shout about the need… the need of what? Oh, about the need to follow the Minsk agreements..

The “Debaltsevo cauldron” was intended as a “Debaltsevo springboard” to start a victorious attack on DPR and LPR. In this regard, huge quantities of weapons, ammunition and food was brought to this area. This was confirmed by the militia after the capture of Uglegorsk. They got arsenals overflowing with weapons and warehouses with American food.

To foolishly lose such volume of weapons and “illegal American aid” for tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, and then to beg for the “ultimate weapon to defeat Putin” – this is the height of idiocy and helplessness of senior command.

Likely for this reason, to rehabilitate themselves in the eyes of sponsors, the Ukrainian offensive started today on all fronts at once, and with a simultaneous request for a truce…

It is a madhouse, and not a government and a General staff! They are so unpredictable, that honestly, it’s laughable! And yet, there are theories that in the arsenals of Debaltsevo one will find phosphorous and cluster shells and bombs, banned by international conventions, but used by the Ukrainian armed forces during the shelling of cities and towns. This could be evidence of war crimes…

 

http://www.fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/02/what-is-debaltsevo-cauldron-hiding.html

Another Ukrainian military expert says, no Russian invasion or regular troops, Kiev government acts as a terrorist. Are NATO troops involved in Kiev war crimes? (VIDEO)

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By George Eliason, February 9, 2015
Posted on Washington’s Blog

In an interview with Ukrainian Espesso TV in December, Ukrainian military expert Major Aleksander Taran confirmed what General Muzenko head of the Ukrainian Armed Forces had to say on the subject.

During a briefing with General Muzenko he announced that “To date, we have only the involvement of some members of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and Russian citizens that are part of illegal armed groups involved in the fighting. We are not fighting with the regular Russian Army. We have enough forces and means in order to inflict a final defeat even with illegal armed formation present. “- he said.

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/t_iZKJ0tJN0&#8243; frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen>

Both of these statements further confirmed the head of the SBU position.

November 6 th In an interview with Gromadske.TV, Markian Lubkivsky, the adviser to the head of the SBU (the Ukrainian version of the CIA) stated there are NO RUSSIAN TROOPS ON UKRANIAN SOIL! This unexpected announcement came as he fumbled with reporters’ questions on the subject. According to his statement, he said the SBU counted about 5000 Russian nationals, but not Russian soldiers in Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples Republics.

All of these statements add weight to the otherwise untrustworthy comments of Alexander Torchynov back in June of 2014.

According to speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Alexander Turchynov, representatives of security agencies deliberately whipped up the situation systematically misinforming the country’s leadership about Russia’s possible military intervention, which had never happened.

 “Our intelligence agencies have about ten times a month reported that the time of a military attack on the part of the Russian Federation was defined – usually it was at three or four in the morning. And we sat in combat readiness at the command post… and the rest of the army was preparing for an open war with the Eastern neighbor. But it did not happen,” Alexander Turchinov said in an interview with Novoye Vremya, which is to be released tomorrow.

It would seem we have a long and illustrious history of Russia NOT attacking Ukraine in 2014.

Who is attacking then, that’s the question.

This morning NAF scouts spotted NATO tanks inside the encirclement(Cauldron) at Debaltseve. According to their information the possibility is strong that up to 25% of the trapped army may be NATO. Shell remnants marked clearly with US identifying numbers from 155mm shells, shot by the Paladin artillery system have been recovered from areas the Ukrainian army have attacked civilian targets. If the NATO troops are there, and who else would be running the complicated military equipment, the possibility that they won’t make it home is in the same government’s hands that brought the world a non-existent Russian invasion and is pushing the world to the brink.

This would explain both the US and EU trying to push a new peace initiative. If NATO troops are taken captive, what then? If hundreds of NATO troops are fighting for Ukraine in a war that even John McCain says is using prohibited weapons, what are the liabilities after? American troops in this case and just based on McCain’s admission are by any definition War Criminals for participating.

Support our Troops and keep them home.

What will Russia’s Reaction Be?

Until this point Russia has been the only country to show restraint and a desire to stop the conflict. The US and EU have wholeheartedly helped Kiev go forward knowing it was committing war crimes; terrorist bombings of buses, rockets and missiles at cities, and phosphorus bombs. The west knows the volunteer battalions are committing mass war crimes.

If NATO soldiers are captured or their remains recovered and confirmed it will certainly change the nature of the war. The Russian weapons that the entire MSM have insisted are here will no doubt show up. If NATO pushes back, where ever isn’t far enough. It will be the brink of WWIII.

Source:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/02/another-ukrainian-expert-russian-invasion-regular-troops-kiev-possible-war-crimes.html
Another Ukrainian Expert -No Russian Invasion or Regular Troops- Kiev Possible War Crimes