[Steve]

US delivers largest ammunition shipment to Europe since bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 -


https://www.nexusnewsfeed.com/article/ge...ia-in-1999

[Steve]

Israeli forces launch 87 overnight airstrikes against Gaza Strip -


https://www.nexusnewsfeed.com/article/hu...gaza-strip

[awakened53]

War School.. The Battle for Britain's Children... Documentary

https://youtu.be/7ixu8irAhkg

[Steve]

JIMMY CARTER TOOK CALL ABOUT CHINA FROM CONCERNED DONALD TRUMP: 'CHINA HAS NOT WASTED A SINGLE PENNY ON WAR' ....


https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-ji...ch-1396086

[Steve]

Telegram Post -

Look at that....
Lindsey Graham and No Name McCain visited Ukrainian troops in December 2016.
Why??? Because [they] planned to attack Russia with the US Troops FIRST....
"Your fight is our fight, 2017 will be the year of the ATTACK."
Trump got in the way...
Putin knows EXACTLY what he is doing and WHO he is dealing with.


https://t.me/NicholasVeniamin/7330

[Steve]

From Mosul to Raqqa to Mariupol, Killing Civilians Is a Crime -

https://www.globalresearch.ca/from-mosul...me/5777324



Americans have been shocked by the death and destruction of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, filling our screens with bombed buildings and dead bodies lying in the street. But the United States and its allies have waged war in country after country for decades, carving swathes of destruction through cities, towns and villages on a far greater scale than has so far disfigured Ukraine.

As we recently reported, the U.S. and its allies have dropped over 337,000 bombs and missiles, or 46 per day, on nine countries since 2001 alone. Senior U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency officers told Newsweek that the first 24 days of Russia’s bombing of Ukraine was less destructive than the first day of U.S. bombing in Iraq in 2003.

The U.S.-led campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria bombarded those countries with over 120,000 bombs and missiles, the heaviest bombing anywhere in decades. U.S. military officers told Amnesty International that the U.S. assault on Raqqa in Syria was also the heaviest artillery bombardment since the Vietnam War.

Mosul in Iraq was the largest city that the United States and its allies reduced to rubble in that campaign, with a pre-assault population of 1.5 million. About 138,000 houses were damaged or destroyed by bombing and artillery, and an Iraqi Kurdish intelligence report counted at least40,000 civilians killed.

Raqqa, which had a population of 300,000, was gutted even more. A UN assessment mission reported that 70-80% of buildings were destroyed or damaged. Syrian and Kurdish forces in Raqqa reported counting 4,118 civilian bodies. Many more deaths remain uncounted in the rubble of Mosul and Raqqa. Without comprehensive mortality surveys, we may never know what fraction of the actual death toll these numbers represent.

The Pentagon promised to review its policies on civilian casualties in the wake of these massacres, and commissioned the Rand Corporation to conduct a study titled, “Understanding Civilian Harm in Raqqa and Its Implications For Future Conflicts,” which has now been made public.

Even as the world recoils from the shocking violence in Ukraine, the premise of the Rand Corp study is that U.S. forces will continue to wage wars that involve devastating bombardments of cities and populated areas, and that they must therefore try to understand how they can do so without killing quite so many civilians.

The study runs over 100 pages, but it never comes to grips with the central problem, which is the inevitably devastating and deadly impacts of firing explosive weapons into inhabited urban areas like Mosul in Iraq, Raqqa in Syria, Mariupol in Ukraine, Sanaa in Yemen or Gaza in Palestine.

The development of “precision weapons” has demonstrably failed to prevent these massacres. The United States unveiled its new “smart bombs” during the First Gulf War in 1990-1991. But they in fact comprised only 7% of the 88,000 tons of bombs it dropped on Iraq, reducing “a rather highly urbanized and mechanized society” to “a pre-industrial age nation” according to a UN survey.

America’s Renegade Warfare. Is the U.S. Guilty of Genocide

Instead of publishing actual data on the accuracy of these weapons, the Pentagon has maintained a sophisticated propaganda campaign to convey the impression that they are 100% accurate and can strike a target like a house or apartment building without harming civilians in the surrounding area.

However, during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Rob Hewson, the editor of an arms trade journal that reviews the performance of air-launched weapons, estimated that 20 to 25% of U.S. “precision” weapons missed their targets.

Even when they do hit their target, these weapons do not perform like space weapons in a video game. The most commonly used bombs in the U.S. arsenal are 500 lb bombs, with an explosive charge of 89 kilos of Tritonal. According to UN safety data, the blast alone from that explosive charge is 100% lethal up to a radius of 10 meters, and will break every window within 100 meters.

That is just the blast effect. Deaths and horrific injuries are also caused by collapsing buildings and flying shrapnel and debris – concrete, metal, glass, wood etc.

A strike is considered accurate if it lands within a “circular error probable,” usually 10 meters around the object being targeted. So in an urban area, if you take into account the “circular error probable,” the blast radius, flying debris and collapsing buildings, even a strike assessed as “accurate” is very likely to kill and injure civilians.

U.S. officials draw a moral distinction between this “unintentional” killing and the “deliberate” killing of civilians by terrorists. But the late historian Howard Zinn challenged this distinction in a letter to the New York Times in 2007. He wrote,

“These words are misleading because they assume an action is either ‘deliberate’ or ‘unintentional.’ There is something in between, for which the word is ‘inevitable.’ If you engage in an action, like aerial bombing, in which you cannot possibly distinguish between combatants and civilians (as a former Air Force bombardier, I will attest to that), the deaths of civilians are inevitable, even if not ‘intentional.’

Does that difference exonerate you morally? The terrorism of the suicide bomber and the terrorism of aerial bombardment are indeed morally equivalent. To say otherwise (as either side might) is to give one moral superiority over the other, and thus serve to perpetuate the horrors of our time.”

Americans are rightfully horrified when they see civilians killed by Russian bombardment in Ukraine, but they are generally not quite so horrified, and more likely to accept official justifications, when they hear that civilians are killed by U.S. forces or American weapons in Iraq, Syria, Yemen or Gaza. The Western corporate media play a key role in this, by showing us corpses in Ukraine and the wails of their loved ones, but shielding us from equally disturbing images of people killed by U.S. or allied forces.

While Western leaders are demanding that Russia be held accountable for war crimes, they have raised no such clamor to prosecute U.S. officials. Yet during the U.S. military occupation of Iraq, both the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the UN Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI) documented persistent and systematic violations of the Geneva Conventions by U.S. forces, including of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention that protects civilians from the impacts of war and military occupation.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and human rights groups documented systematic abuse and torture of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, including cases in which U.S. troops tortured prisoners to death.

Although torture was approved by U.S. officials all the way up to the White House, no officer above the rank of major was ever held accountable for a torture death in Afghanistan or Iraq. The harshest punishment handed down for torturing a prisoner to death was a five-month jail sentence, although that is a capital offense under the U.S. War Crimes Act.

In a 2007 human rights report that described widespread killing of civilians by U.S. occupation forces, UNAMI wrote, “Customary international humanitarian law demands that, as much as possible, military objectives must not be located within areas densely populated by civilians. The presence of individual combatants among a great number of civilians does not alter the civilian character of an area.”

The report demanded “that all credible allegations of unlawful killings be thoroughly, promptly and impartially investigated, and appropriate action taken against military personnel found to have used excessive or indiscriminate force.”

Instead of investigating, the U.S. has actively covered up its war crimes. A tragic example is the 2019 massacre in the Syrian town of Baghuz, where a special U.S. military operations unit dropped massive bombs on a group of mainly women and children, killing about 70. The military not only failed to acknowledge the botched attack but even bulldozed the blast site to cover it up. Only after a New York Times exposé years later did the military even admit that the strike took place.

So it is ironic to hear President Biden call for President Putin to face a war crimes trial, when the United States covers up its own crimes, fails to hold its own senior officials accountable for war crimes and still rejects the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC). In 2020, Donald Trump went so far as to impose U.S. sanctions on the most senior ICC prosecutors for investigating U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan.

The Rand study repeatedly claims that U.S. forces have “a deeply ingrained commitment to the law of war.” But the destruction of Mosul, Raqqa and other cities and the history of U.S. disdain for the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions and international courts tell a very different story.

We agree with the Rand report’s conclusion that, “DoD’s weak institutional learning for civilian harm issues meant that past lessons went unheeded, increasing the risks to civilians in Raqqa.” However, we take issue with the study’s failure to recognize that many of the glaring contradictions it documents are consequences of the fundamentally criminal nature of this entire operation, under the Fourth Geneva Convention and the existing laws of war.

We reject the whole premise of this study, that U.S. forces should continue to conduct urban bombardments that inevitably kill thousands of civilians, and must therefore learn from this experience so that they will kill and maim fewer civilians the next time they destroy a city like Raqqa or Mosul.

The ugly truth behind these U.S. massacres is that the impunity senior U.S. military and civilian officials have enjoyed for past war crimes encouraged them to believe they could get away with bombing cities in Iraq and Syria to rubble, inevitably killing tens of thousands of civilians.

They have so far been proven right, but U.S. contempt for international law and the failure of the global community to hold the United States to account are destroying the very “rules-based order” of international law that U.S. and Western leaders claim to cherish.

As we call urgently for a ceasefire, for peace and for accountability for war crimes in Ukraine, we should say “Never Again!” to the bombardment of cities and civilian areas, whether they are in Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, Iran or anywhere else, and whether the aggressor is Russia, the United States, Israel or Saudi Arabia.

And we should never forget that the supreme war crime is war itself, the crime of aggression, because, as the judges declared at Nuremberg, it “contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” It is easy to point fingers at others, but we will not stop war until we force our own leaders to live up to the principle spelled out by Supreme Court Justice and Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson:

“If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.”

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Featured image: House bombed by coalition forces in East Mosul, Northern Iraq, 15 March, 2017. (Source: Amnesty International)

The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Global Research, 2022




https://www.globalresearch.ca/from-mosul...me/5777324

[Steve]

The US Is War

https://nexusnewsfeed.com/article/geopol...us-is-war/


 - Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
❖
The US won WW2 and then immediately plunged into the Cold War. The US won the Cold War and then immediately set to work destroying the Middle East. The US destroyed the Middle East and then immediately started another cold war in preparation for another world war. The US is war.
A normal country wages war with the goal of getting back to peacetime. The US wages war with the goal of getting to the next war.
❖
The “Uyghur genocide” narrative is a lie, the “debt trap diplomacy” narrative is a lie, the “social credit score” narrative is a lie, they’re lying about Taiwan, and they’re lying about China trying to conquer the world. They lied about every other disobedient nation, and they’re lying about China.
❖
You cannot understand the geopolitics and major conflicts of the 2020s without understanding that the US empire has been actively amassing military threats in the immediate surroundings of its top two rivals that it would never tolerate anyone else amassing near the US.
❖
How can anyone still support the idea of progressive reform in the Democratic Party after watching AOC transform into Nancy Pelosi before their very eyes?

❖
I used to dismiss the idea of lesser-evil voting because it causes people to vote for evil political parties, thereby ensuring they vote for continued evil. Now I just dismiss electoral politics altogether, because you’ll get evil no matter how you vote since “voting” is itself a fake diversion to help manufacture the illusion of freedom and control.
❖
It’s crazy how we let wealthy corporations run the media who then spend all day every day telling us we should definitely support political norms that are friendly to wealthy corporations.
❖
A normal person has a conflict with someone and begins communicating and working to sort out the true from the false. A manipulator has a conflict and immediately begins working to establish narrative dominance. This is true of individual sociopaths and sociopathic empires alike.
❖
Too many people look at authoritarian measures like government surveillance, online censorship etc in terms of how it will directly affect them personally rather than how it shapes society as a whole. Sure you yourself may not be directly affected by surveillance or censorship, but you have to live in a society where people’s thoughts, words and behaviors are being strictly regulated by authority in ways that serve the interests of authority. You have to live in a civilization of brainwashed, power-serving automatons instead of free thinkers who come up with creative solutions to our problems, who hold power to account, and who put the powerful in check when they don’t serve the interests of the people.
❖
Civilization is a game. Like any other game, there is a points system set up to determine how well everyone is doing. Like any other game, there are people who fare better and get more points than others. And, like any other game, the rules are completely made up.
The rules consist of made-up financial and economic systems which make up the “points” system of this game, along with made-up laws and government policies, and made-up cultural norms and societal expectations.
One major difference between the made-up game of civilization and other made-up games is that players who don’t do well suffer real-world consequences as a result. They can go hungry or be made homeless if they don’t get enough of the made-up points. They can wind up in prison if they try to get some points in ways that are against the rules. They can even get military explosives dropped on their homes by other players if they happen to live in the wrong part of the world.
This despite the fact that it’s all made of language — made of words. All of civilization is just a collection of stories we’ve all agreed to pretend are true. Stories about how money works. How trade works. How labor works. How society works. How we all need to be moving, organizing and consuming on this planet we were born on.
The good news is that, like any other game, we are free to change the rules if enough players decide that’s what they want to do. It’s all made of narrative, and the narratives are only as real as we agree to pretend they are. If the current agreed-upon stories aren’t working for us, we can collectively agree to start playing by another set of rules, and if enough of us decide to do this there’s not really anything anyone can do to stop us.
Those who benefit from the current rules of the game understand this and do everything they can to make sure we keep playing by the current rules. That’s why so much of our media is dedicated to normalizing status quo politics and manufacturing consent for the actions that are necessary to maintain the current order of things. Our information ecosystem is continually saturated with the narratives of the people who get the most points in this game we are playing.
But again, that’s all just narrative. It’s all just story. They put so much effort into manufacturing our consent because they know they absolutely do need our consent, because we can collectively decide to change the rules of the game at any time.
So the bad news is that we’re in a rigged game that’s stacked against us for the benefit of a few manipulative players. The good news is we don’t have to play anymore, and can choose to start playing something else whenever we are ready.
...
All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon, Paypal, or Substack, buying an issue of my monthly zine, and following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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[Steve]

US warmongers keep pushing the narrative that Hamas is to blame for all deaths in Gaza

This is about as blatant as war propaganda gets.
Caitlin Johnstone
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):



https://nexusnewsfeed.com/article/geopol...s-in-gaza/

[Steve]

The companies profiting from Israel’s 2023 attack on Gaza
 The companies listed here have provided Israel with weapons and other military equipment used in its so-called “Swords of Iron” attacks on Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria during October-December 2023.
AFSC Action Center on Corporate Accountability
Since Oct. 7,  Israel has waged unprecedented aerial and ground attacks on Gaza after Hamas-led attacks on Israel. Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been killed at historic pace, and Israel has destroyed large parts of the Gaza Strip, making them uninhabitable. These attacks have been accompanied by a surge of Israeli violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, clashes between the Israeli military and armed groups in Lebanon, and Israeli aerial strikes in Syria.
Shortly after Oct. 7, the U.S. government started transferring to Israel massive amounts of weapons. Among these weapons,  Israel received more than 15,000 bombs and 50,000 artillery shells within just the first month and a half. These transfers have been deliberately shrouded in secrecy to avoid public scrutiny and prevent Congress from exercising any meaningful oversight.
Some of these weapons were purchased using U.S. taxpayers’ money through the Foreign Military Sales program; some were direct commercial sales purchased through Israel’s own budget; and some were replenished U.S. military stockpiles in Israel, which the Israeli military may also use. A list of known U.S. arms transfers is maintained by the Forum on the Arms Trade.
The scale of destruction and war crimes in Gaza would not be possible without this continued flow of weapons from the U.S. Despite massive public protests, the Biden administration has been working to give Israel over $14 billion to buy more weapons. This is on top of the $3.8 billion the U.S. already gives to the Israeli military annually. Israel is required to use this money to buy U.S.-made weapons. This is a form of corporate welfare for the largest weapon manufacturers, like Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, and General Dynamics, which have seen their stock prices skyrocket, but also for companies that are not part of the weapon industry, such as Caterpillar, Ford, and Toyota …


https://nexusnewsfeed.com/article/geopol...k-on-gaza/

https://afsc.org/companies-behind-2023-attack-gaza