CARL HIGBIE (HOST): But here's got to be the plan. You want to win? This is the cold hard truth. It's mass destruction. And newsflash, we're going to run out of 500 pound JDAMs before Iran runs out of people who hate us. War is hell. But if you're unwilling to be as ruthless as your enemy, you have already lost.

...

HIGBIE: There you go. Mass destruction. You need to hold — and this is what's really going to send the people screaming. Hold a meeting with global nuclear powers and make sure Iran sees you do it so they know what you're talking about. Have a legitimate discussion of the threshold of a nuclear strike. And again, let them — and like, oh, if you're gasping right now — I know. But when you've put friends in bags because of these people in Iran, you have a bit of different perspective on this. Look, if you're a purple-haired barista who's never even so much as had to pay rent because you live with your parents in their basement and you're writing articles for other liberals to read.

Let me see if I can find f's to give less about your opinions. But we have people in this country and even in this administration, believe it or not, who are so risk averse, I — like, it blows my I swear, if we had a zombie apocalypse, they would fund zombie rights groups while they ate their friends right in front of them. That is essentially what, like, gays for Palestine is. Those are the types of people who are opposing dealing with Iran correctly right now, by the way.

Look, if you are a mullah and, you know, floating around somewhere in a bunker and you see Trump talking to China and Russia about wind direction for potential fallout, that's going to deter about half of them. While this is happening end their infrastructure, power plants, bridges, water treatment. Look, they don't care about us. We shouldn't care about them. I don't — annihilate the power grid. And if they can't rebuild it, who cares? That's not our problem. That is the attitude we need to have to fight these savages. Look. I fought these people on an organic ground level. We spent just a ton of time studying their culture and what drives them. They are driven by an ideological takeover that there is no second place in. There's no negotiation. And after desperately trying to negotiate, finally, JD Vance, who was the lead on that, finally realized what's got to be done.

...

HIGBIE: Next, take what's yours.

...

HIGBIE: Yeah. That's the basis for most of their economy. Just take it. Oh, Carl, you're going to steal things from a sovereign country. You bet we are. That's exactly how war has worked for thousands of years. In fact, wars stopped acting like that, and they got softer, and then there were no winners. That's the only language these people speak. You want to know how they feel?

...

HIGBIE: Yeah. That's not going to fly. It's just not. But that's how they feel. And he wouldn't say that to my face, but that what they would do if they had our military. You start seeing, like, all these libs – they have to understand this. I don't know why they don't, but we're in it now. We're in this. Keep in mind, we bombed the ever loving daylight out of the Japanese, and they never gave up. And then we turn two of their cities into six foot thick sheets of glass. And now 80 years later, they're one of our best friends. They need to know, the Iranians need to know that President Trump has not taken that off the table. Now if you're sitting there thinking, oh, because this is a bit over the edge. Well, you go over there. I have, and I'm telling you, there's, like, 30 million people that most of whom want to kill you.

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THE HILL https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5523339-hegseth-wounded-knee-soldiers-medal-of-honor/

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Thursday evening that soldiers who participated in the 1890 Battle of Wounded Knee will keep their Medals of Honor.

“Under my direction, we’re making it clear, without hesitation, that the soldiers who fought in the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890 will keep their medals, and we’re making it clear that they deserve those medals,” Hegseth said in a video posted on the social platform X.

“This decision is now final, and their place in our nation’s history is no longer up for debate,” he continued. “We salute their memory, we honor their service, and we will never forget what they did.”

In late July 2024, then-Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin ordered a five-person board to review the honors given to troops at Wounded Knee, where Native American women and children were killed by U.S. soldiers.

The Biden administration said the board would look at each recipient’s service and record individually to make sure “no soldier was recognized for conduct that did not merit recognition under the standards applicable at the time.”

“Now, upon deliberation, that panel concluded that these brave soldiers should, in fact, rightfully, keep their medals from actions in 1890. The report was concluded in October of 2024,” Hegseth continued. “Yet despite this clear recommendation, former Secretary Lloyd Austin, for whatever reason — I think we know he was more interested in being politically correct than historically correct — chose not to make a final decision.”

He added that such “careless inaction has allowed for their distinguished recognition to remain in limbo until now.”

The Wounded Knee massacre took place in late 1890, as U.S. soldiers were battling Native Americans across the country. The Army’s 7th Cavalry Regiment was enforcing a ban on the Ghost Dance, a Native American spiritual practice, when U.S. troops detained a group of Lakota tribe members near Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota.

After trying to recover weapons from those arrested, a firearm went off, and U.S. troops opened fire, killing at least 250 Lakota men, women and children. About 25 U.S. soldiers were also killed, likely due to friendly fire.

Earlier this year, Hegseth ordered that a Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, which was previously taken down, be restored and refurbished.

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[### Federal judge blocks US sanctions against UN rapporteur ...

Al Jazeera

https://www.aljazeera.com › ... › Israel-Palestine conflict](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/14/federal-judge-blocks-us-sanctions-against-un-rapporteur-francesca-albanese)

11 hours ago — UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese was sanctioned in July 2025 after she publicly criticised Washington's policy on ...Read more

By Alex Milan Durie, AFP and Reuters

Published On 14 May 202614 May 2026

A federal judge has temporarily ⁠blocked United States sanctions against Francesca Albanese, a United Nations expert on the occupied Palestinian territory.

UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese was sanctioned in July 2025 after she publicly criticised Washington’s policy on Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza.

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Albanese’s husband and daughter filed a lawsuit in February against the Trump administration over the sanctions. It argued that the sanctions were an effort to punish Albanese for bringing attention to Israel’s rights abuses against Palestinians.

In his court order on Wednesday, US ⁠District Judge Richard Leon granted a preliminary injunction against the sanctions.

He found that the Trump administration sought to regulate ‌her speech because of the “idea or message expressed”.

“Albanese has done nothing more than speak,” judge Leon wrote in his memorandum opinion. “It is undisputed that her recommendations have no binding effect on the ICC’s actions – they are nothing more than her opinion.”

Albanese, who said the US sanctions were “calculated to weaken my mission” when they were first imposed, celebrated the ruling on social media.

“Thanks to my daughter and my husband for stepping up to defend me, and everyone who has helped so far,” Albanese said in a statement on X.

“Together we are One.”

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Since 2022, Albanese, a legal scholar, has served as the special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, where she monitors human rights abuses against Palestinians. The UN Human Rights Council selected her for the position.

The Trump administration sanctioned her last July, calling her “unfit” for her role and accusing her of “biased and malicious activities” against the US and its ally, Israel. Albanese had also recommended that the International Criminal Court (ICC) pursue war crimes prosecutions against Israeli and US nationals.

The sanctions barred the Italian lawyer and human rights expert from entering the US, using US banks and payment systems, and prevented anyone else in the US from doing business with her.

Albanese’s husband and her daughter, a US citizen, claimed in the lawsuit that the US ⁠sanctions were “effectively debanking her and making it nearly impossible to meet the needs of her daily life”.

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Matt Gertz @ Media Matters: Between Hegseth and the Fox Cabinet, no restraints on Trump’s war crimes plan

Hegseth’s distinguishing characteristic in his prior role as weekend host of Fox’s morning show was his delight in the prospect of American service members engaging in brutality.

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putin zoom BRICS b/c charge ukraine kids 8 23

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5656133-senate-armed-services-committee-boat-strikes

Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker(R-Miss.) said on Thursday that he has seen “no evidence of war crimes” committed during the U.S. military’s Sept. 2 strikes against an alleged drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean, and he indicated that his panel does not plan to further probe the controversial operation.

“I have seen no evidence of war crimes. The fact is that our military is asked to make incredibly difficult decisions. Service members must do so based on the best available information and often under very tight timelines,” Wicker said in a lengthy statement.

Wicker said he is “satisfied” with all of the information the committee has received regarding the Sept. 2 attack, where two survivors were killed in a strike authorized by Navy Adm. Frank Bradley. Wicker said the strikes against “narco-terrorists” in the U.S. Southern Command area are based on “sound legal advice.”

“When reports first surfaced about a secondary strike, my office immediately directed inquiries to the department to ascertain the veracity of these reports. I promised that SASC would take this matter seriously and conduct thorough oversight. We have done so,” the Mississippi senator said. “Both military and civilian Pentagon leaders have worked in good faith to provide answers to us without any delays.”

Wicker’s panel said it would investigate the Sept. 2 operation, during which the U.S. military conducted four strikes against the purported drug-trafficking vessel in the Caribbean, shortly after The Washington Post revealed a second strike, ordered by Bradley, took place during the mission.

Some Democrats and law-of-war experts have asserted the follow-up strike constituted a violation of international law. Democrats have pushed for a complete investigation of the incident and for the Trump administration to release the full video of the mission. Administration officials and Republicans in Congress have argued that the operation is lawful and that two survivors in the water were trying to flip over the boat, which was severely damaged after the first strike that killed nine people on board, and continue on with their mission.

Wicker’s statement comes days after the chair of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers(R-Ala.), said he will end his panel’s inquiry into the Sept. 2 strikes.

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Worldwide fascism is being accelerated by the one thing few people want to talk about

Thom Hartmann

August 22, 2023

The government of the Netherlands fell this summer. The issue that tipped it over the edge was immigration driven by climate change. If Putin wanted to destroy democracy in Europe (and he does), back in 2015 he couldn’t have picked a better strategy. Odds are, though, he was just trying to protect his deepwater ports; it wasn’t until the crisis developed that he realized how he could exploit it to overthrow liberal democracies in the EU. The way it’s played out gives us a glimpse into our future — and the future of democratic republics all across the world — as the global climate emergency and the refugee crisis associated with it grows more severe over the next few years.

The current rise-of-rightwing-fascism crisis building in Europe began in 2010 and started with global climate change.

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The fall of that year saw unusually severe rainfall across the wheat-growing parts of Canada, cutting that nation’s wheat harvest, along with drought across Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and China. A La Nina caused crop failures in Argentina and Peru. Worldwide prices of staple foods, particularly wheat, exploded.

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On December 17 of that year a street vendor in Tunisia, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire to protest the high cost of the wheat he needed to make the foods he and his peers sold, and the harassment of police against their protests. It sparked what we referred to then as the Arab Spring, that lasted through most of 2011.

The steady warming and drought in that area, though, never let up and the desert in North Africa relentlessly continued to eat up millions of acres of food-producing land, particularly across Syria. By 2015 it had pushed over a million Syrian subsistence farmers off their land — that had desertified — and into Syria’s cities, particularly Damascus and Aleppo.

Northern Africa became the world’s number one food importer, and the prices kept rising relentlessly.

Newly homeless, hungry, and destitute, these Syrian farmers began demonstrations in the streets demanding food, shelter, and employment or “welfare” payments from the Syrian government.

Bashar Assad, being a psychopathic dictator, ordered his troops to fire live ammunition into the crowds in 2012 and 2013, and soon a full-blown revolt was on: “rebels” seized Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, in early 2013.

Syria was also the base for Russia’s Mediterranean fleet, with multiple deep-water ports that Putin believed were critical to his nation’s military defense. By 2015 he had a dozen battleships there, along with submarines and other warships.

He had to prevent the Assad government from falling or risk an “Arab Spring democracy” emerging — as happened for a short while in Tunisia and Egypt — that might align itself with the West and kick Russia out.

Making a long story short, Putin bombed the crap out of Syria on Assad’s behalf, virtually leveling the city of Aleppo, killing hundreds of civilians.

It was one of the worst war crimes of this century, almost as deadly as George W. Bush’s brutal and criminal invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Millions of climate and war refugees fled the country, joining Bush’s wars’ fugitives making their way into Europe by any means possible.

Thus began Europe’s refugee crisis, which just helped bring down Holland’s government. In two weeks, it may well cause the rightwing fascist-aligned anti-immigrant People’s Party to come to power in the Spanish elections on July 23.

As the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) noted in a 2021 report:

“By the end of 2016, nearly5.2 million refugees and migrants reached European shores,undertaking treacherous journeys from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries torn apart by war and persecution.”

This flood of brown-skinned Muslims fleeing African and Middle Eastern climate change and wars into Europe over the past decade is why Italy and Sweden now have rightwing leaders; why Viktor Orbán was able to gain and hold power in Hungary with his promise to “build a wall” along Hungary’s southern border (a promise he kept); and why rightwing parties are today growing so rapidly in Germany, Greece, Norway, Austria, Belgium and France.

The legacy of five centuries of racist imperialism across four continents has been that wealth and safety from the ravages of climate change are concentrated in mostly White-run nations, while vulnerability to desertification and poverty are concentrated in mostly Brown- and Black-run nations.

When Russia intervened in British politics to tear apart the EU, their trolls’ main Facebook pitch for Brexit was that “those [Brown and Black] people” the EU had let in were now making their way to the UK.

While every country in the world can accept refugees in small numbers without crisis, when “other people” begin showing up in large numbers the response by every nation in history typically tends toward rightwing nationalism and xenophobia, an obsession with borders, and demands for racial, cultural, and religious “purity.”

Here in North America we’re seeing a similar dynamic. Reagan so severely destabilized Central America and Venezuela with his sanctions, illegal Iran-Contra program, and support for rightwing death squads that those nations never recovered. In the years since, climate change has bit these weakened governments deep, forcing millions of subsistence farmers — just like in Syria but here mostly from hard-hit Guatemala — off land that once grew crops but is now, just a few years later, scrub desert.

Exploiting the climate refugee crisis on America’s southern border, Republican politicians have spent the years since Obama’s election in 2008 falsely claiming that Democrats had thrown the border “open,” producing thousands of news stories that have been used by coyotes — human traffickers — to draw even more refugees toward the United States.

Compounding that, Trump launched his 2016 campaign on keeping Brown people out of the United States, and today racism and xenophobia form the foundation of most Republican political campaigns (when they aren’t hating on queer people or women).

The result of these trends has been a worldwide shift to the right. As Freedom House noted in a 2022 report, over 60 countries experienced “declines” in democracy the previous year; only about 20 percent of people worldwide now live in “free” nations:

“Global freedom faces a dire threat. … Authoritarian regimes have become more effective at co-opting or circumventing the norms and institutions meant to support basic liberties, and at providing aid to others who wish to do the same. …

“The global order is nearing a tipping point, and if democracy’s defenders do not work together to help guarantee freedom for all people, the authoritarian model will prevail.”

So far, the western world’s refugee crisis has been mostly driven by massive policy errors and outright war crimes: Russia’s response to the Syrian farmers, the US invasion and destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, and American meddling in Central America and Venezuela.

But all have been either triggered or exacerbated by the worldwide climate emergency. And, as we can see from this summer’s weather worldwide, that emergency is building at a rate far more rapid than even alarmist climate scientists were predicting just a decade ago.

Recent projections show that within just the next two decades as many as three billion people could be fleeing areas that will soon only marginally support human life.

As equatorial regions become uninhabitable, the mostly darker-skinned people living there will be migrating north and south into areas controlled by lighter-skinned people in numbers that will make today’s Syrian, Iraq, and Afghan refugee crisis look like a statistical blip.

It will put worldwide white supremacist and Nazi movements into hyperdrive.

In addition to acting immediately to mitigate climate change and green the world’s economy, the free nations of the world must harden our democracies against reactive rightwing violence- and hate-based racist political movements.

That will also require radically reducing the Supreme Court-gifted political power of big money here in America — particularly from the fossil fuel industry and the billionaires it has created — and returning that power and wealth to the hard-hit majority. The Democratic Party in America is increasingly committed to this, but Republicans and the dozens of billionaires in their camp are prepared to spend heretofore unimaginable sums to keep climate deniers and race-baiters in office.

We also must help those nations most hard-hit by the warming — caused largely by our carbon pollution — to deal with their own refugees internally, lest they irrecoverably destabilize first their own governments and then ours.

To paraphrase JFK, we are not helpless before this task.

But it will require western and American media and political systems to take on these three crises — climate change, the refugees it produces, and politicians who demagogue the issue while blocking forward progress — now.

We are quite literally out of time.

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Eco-fascism: White nationalists' extreme solution to the coming environmental apocalypse ›

in game-changer, ICC will take up Israeli war crimes and apartheid in Palestine

Juan Cole Informed Comment

On Friday, the International Criminal Court found that it had jurisdiction to consider war crimes and crimes against humanity and the crime of apartheid in the Palestinian...

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3/17/20 pompeo ups sanctions on iran?! release americans, fund terror; 2 am soldiers kia rocket attack, bombed suspected militia

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/why-sanctions-against-iran-and-venezuela-during-a-pandemic-are-cruel/

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Why sanctions against Iran and Venezuela during a pandemic are cruel

President Donald J. Trump signs an Executive Order to place further sanctions on Iran Monday, June 24, 2019, in the Oval Office of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)

Written by Vijay Prashad, Paola Estrada / Independent Media Institute March 16, 2020

Swiftly moves the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), dashing across continents, skipping over oceans, terrifying populations in every country. The numbers of those infected rises, as do the numbers of those who have died. Hands are being washed, tests are being done, and social distance has become a new phrase. It is unclear how devastating this pandemic will be.

In the midst of a pandemic, one would expect that all countries would collaborate in every way to mitigate the spread of the virus and its impact on human society. One would expect that a humanitarian crisis of this magnitude would provide the opportunity to suspend or end all inhumane economic sanctions and political blockades against certain countries. The main point here is this: Is this not the time for the imperialist bloc, led by the United States of America, to end the sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, and a series of other countries?

Medical Shortages

Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza told us recently that the “illegal and unilateral coercive measures that the United States has imposed on Venezuela are a form of collective punishment.”The use of the phrase “collective punishment” is significant; under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, any policy that inflicts damage on an entire population is a war crime. The U.S. policy, Arreaza told us, has “resulted in difficulties for the timely acquisition of medicines.”

On paper, the unilateral U.S. sanctions say that medical supplies are exempt. But this is an illusion. Neither Venezuela nor Iran can easily buy medical supplies, nor can they easily transport it into their countries, nor can they use them in their largely public sector health systems. The embargo against these countries—in this time of COVID-19—is not only a war crime by the standards of the Geneva Conventions (1949) but is a crime against humanity as defined by the United Nations International Law Commission (1947).

In 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump enacted tight restrictions on Venezuela’s ability to access financial markets; two years later, the U.S. government blacklisted Venezuela’s Central Bank and put a general embargo against the Venezuelan state institutions. If any firm trades with Venezuela’s public sector, it could face secondary sanctions.The U.S. Congress passed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) in 2017, which tightened sanctions against Iran, Russia, and North Korea. The next year, Trump imposed a raft of new sanctions against Iran which suffocated Iran’s economy. Once more, access to the world banking system and threats to companies that traded with Iran made it almost impossible for Iran to do business with the world.

In particular, the U.S. government made it clear that any business with the public sector of Iran and Venezuela was forbidden. The health infrastructure that provides for the mass of the populations in both Iran and Venezuela is run by the State, which means it faces disproportionate difficulty in accessing equipment and supplies, including testing kits and medicines.

Breaking the Embargo

Arreaza, the Venezuelan foreign minister, told us that his government is alert to the dangers of COVID-19 with a health infrastructure that has been affected by the sanctions. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez is leading a presidential commission to manage whatever resources are available. “We are breaking the blockade,” Arreaza said, “through the World Health Organization, through which we have obtained medicine and the tests to detect the illness.” The WHO, despite its own crisis of funds, has played a key role in both Venezuela and Iran.

Nonetheless, the WHO faces its own challenges with sanctions, particularly when it comes to transportation. These harsh sanctions forced transportation companies to reconsider servicing both Iran and Venezuela. Some airlines stopped flying there; many shipping companies decided not to anger Washington. When the World Health Organization tried to get testing kits for COVID-19 from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) into Iran, it faced difficulty—as the WHO’s Christoph Hamelmann put it—“due to flight restrictions”; the UAE sent the equipment via a military transport plane.

Likewise, Arreaza told us, Venezuela has “received the solidarity from governments of countries such as China and Cuba.” This is a key issue. China, despite its own challenges from COVID-19, has been supplying testing kits and medical equipment to Iran and to Venezuela; it was China’s vigorous reaction to the virus that has now slowed down its spread within China itself. In late February, a team from the Red Cross Society of China arrived in Tehran to exchange information with the Iranian Red Cross and with WHO officials; China also donated testing kits and supplies. The sanctions, Chinese officials told us, should be of no consequence during a humanitarian crisis such as this; they are not going to honor them.

Meanwhile, the Iranians developed an app to help their population during the COVID-19 outbreak; Google decided to remove it from its app store, a consequence of the U.S. sanctions.

End the Sanctions

Yolimar Mejías Escorcha, an industrial engineer, tells us that the sanctions regime has put a lot of pressure on everyday life in Venezuela. She says that the government “continues to make an effort to ensure that people who most need it get health care, education, and food.” The opposition has tried to say that the crisis is a consequence of the government’s inefficiency rather than a result of the imperialist blockade on Venezuela. On March 6, she tells us, a new campaign was launched in the country called “Sanctions Are a Crime.” She hopes that this campaign will explain clearly to people why there are shortages in her country—the sanctions being the core reason.

In 2019, a group of countries met at the United Nations in New York to discuss the U.S. unilateral sanctions that violated the UN Charter. The intent was to work through the Non-Aligned Movement to create a formal group that would respond to these sanctions. Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Arreaza told us that Venezuela supports this initiative but also the declaration of principles drafted by Iran against unilateralism and the Russian formal complaint about denial of visas for officials to visit the UN building in New York. “We hope to resume meetings this year once the difficulties presented by COVID-19 are overcome,” he said. They want to meet again, Arreaza said, to “advance joint, concrete actions.”

What Arreaza told us are initiatives at the interstate level. At the same time, there are ongoing initiatives led by popular movements and political organizations. In November 2019, an anti-imperialist solidarity meeting was held in Havana, Cuba, with representatives from 86 countries. At this meeting, it was decided that attention must be focused on the inhumane use of power in our time; a call was sent out to hold a week of anti-imperialist struggle between May 25 and May 31. The aim of the week is to alert the world’s public about imperialism and—in this context—about the murderous sanctions regime driven by the United States, more murderous in this time of COVID-19.

The question that a week of activities such as this poses is quite simple: What kind of moral fiber holds together an international system where a handful of countries can act in a way that goes against all the highest aspirations of humanity? When the United States continues its embargos against more than 50 countries—but mostly against Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela—when there is a global pandemic afoot, what does this say about the nature of power and authority in our world? Sensitive people should be offended by such behavior, its mean-spiritedness evident in the unnatural deaths that it provokes. When the U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked about the half-million Iraqi children who died because of U.S. sanctions, she said that those deaths were a price worth paying. They were certainly not a price that the Iraqis wanted to pay, nor now the Iranians or the Venezuelans, or indeed the majority of humankind. We march in May against this desiccated worldview; we march for humanity.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than twenty books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (The New Press, 2007), The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South (Verso, 2013), The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution (University of California Press, 2016) and Red Star Over the Third World (LeftWord, 2017).

Paola Estrada is in the Secretariat of the International Peoples Assembly and is a member of the Brazilian chapter of ALBA Movements (Continental Coordination of Social Movements toward the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America).

This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/buried-in-the-trump-netanyahu-deal-is-an-effort-to-torpedo-a-war-crimes-investigation/

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Buried in the Trump-Netanyahu deal is an effort to ‘torpedo’ a war crimes investigation

[President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence participate in an expanded bilateral meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday, Jan. 27, 2020, in the Oval Office of the White House. (Official White House Photo by D. Myles Cullen)]

Written by Andrea Germanos / Common Dreams January 29, 2020

As the International Criminal Court moved forward this week with its investigation into alleged war crimes committed against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, the White House’s new so-called “peace” plan includes a largely unreported provision that would end such efforts to hold the Israeli government to account.

The document, released Tuesday, was widely criticized as a “screw the Palestinians over harder non-peace plan” that lets Israel continue its illegal occupation and a “ludicrous” proposal that offers no path towards Palestinian statehood.

The plan’s architect, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and White House advisor Jared Kushner, suggested Palestinians “take a cold shower” and accept it lest they “screw up,” he said, like with “every other opportunity that they’ve ever had in their existence.”

A portion of the document states that “the parties should conduct themselves in a manner that comports with this vision, and in a way that prepares their respective peoples for peace.” For the Palestinians, that means victims of war crimes should keep quiet.

The plan states, in part, that Palestinians must take “no action, and shall dismiss all pending actions, against the State of Israel, the United States, and any of their citizens before the International Criminal Court” and other tribunals.

A portion of the White House's "Peace to Prosperity" plan released Jan. 28, 2020.

The provision drew criticism from Amnesty International.

“A just and sustainable peace requires a plan that prioritizes the human rights of Palestinians and Israelis, and must include justice and reparation for victims of war crimes and other grave violations. This plan not only fails this fundamental test; it seeks to torpedo efforts towards justice for both Palestinians and Israelis that are currently under way,” said Philip Luther, the organization’s Middle East and North Africa research and advocacy director.

Netanyahu, who was indicted Tuesday on corruption charges and stood alongside Trump as he released the plan, reiterated his condemnation of the ICC this week.

In an interview set to air Thursday with Christian network TBN, he called on global powers to sanction the court over the probe.

“The U.S. government, under President Trump, has spoken forcefully against the ICC for this travesty, and I urge all your viewers to do the same. To ask for concrete actions, sanction against the international court, its officials, prosecutors, everyone,” he said, according to an excerpt of the interview released by the Israeli government.

The internation court, he continued, is “basically in a full-frontal attack on the democracies, both on the democracies’ right to defend themselves, and on Israel’s right, the Jewish people’s right, to live in their ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel.”

Michael Lynk, the U.N. special rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, has a different perspective. In December, Lynk praised the possibility of justice the investigation could bring.

“Over the years, the international community has adopted hundreds of resolutions through the United Nations condemning various features of Israel’s entrenched occupation of the Palestinian territory. Yet rarely has it ever combined criticism with consequences for Israel,” he said. “Now, the possibility of accountability is finally on the horizon.”

Trump has bristled at the possibility of the probe into alleged Israeli wrongdoing as well.

In a statement last April celebrating his administration’s successful intimidation campaign to stop an ICC investigation into alleged war crimes the U.S. committed in Afghanistan, Trump said, “Any attempt to target American, Israeli, or allied personnel for prosecution will be met with a swift and vigorous response.”

Despite U.S. and Israeli objections to the ICC probe into war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza, the effort—at least at this point—continues to advance.

The ICC announced Tuesday that it set a March 16 deadline for Israel, Palestine, and alleged victims to submit documents to the court.

Situation in #Palestine: #ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I invites Palestine, #Israel, interested States & others to submit observations on the Prosecutor’s request related to the scope of the Court’s territorial jurisdiction. Read more ?https://t.co/cwIfEEfY0W

— Int’l Criminal Court (@IntlCrimCourt) January 28, 2020

ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in December that “there is a reasonable basis to proceed with an investigation into the situation in Palestine” as she was “satisfied that war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip,” and “there are no substantial reasons to believe that an investigation would not serve the interests of justice.”

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omfg land mines 120,

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/absolutely-horrific-trump-reportedly-prepares-to-roll-back-restrictions-on-use-of-landmines/

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‘Absolutely horrific’: Trump reportedly prepares to roll back restrictions on use of landmines

Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams January 31, 2020

President Donald Trump is reportedly preparing to roll back established constraints on the U.S. military’s ability to use landmines overseas despite the weapons’ long history of killing and maiming civilians around the world.

CNN, citing multiple anonymous Defense Department officials, reported Thursday that the Trump administration is expected to loosen landmine restrictions in the coming days by rescinding a 2014 order by former President Barack Obama that limited U.S. landmine use to the Korean Peninsula.

“President Obama’s policy brought the U.S. policy closely in line with the obligations of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty,” Jody Williams, an anti-war activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work to ban landmines, told Common Dreams in an email. “Mr. Trump’s policy rollback is a step toward the past, like many of his other decisions, and sends exactly the wrong message to those working to rid the world of the scourge of landmines.”

More than 160 nations have ratified the Mine Ban Treaty, also known as the Ottawa Treaty, which prohibits the stockpiling, production, and use of landmines. The United States is one of just 32 U.N. member states that have not ratified the treaty.

“The beauty of the treaty is that it has established a new norm and even countries outside the treaty felt the stigma related to landmines and changed policies, even if they didn’t join the treaty,” said Williams. “Mr. Trump’s landmine move would be in line with all of his other moves to undercut arms control and disarmament in a world much in need of them. The landmine ban movement will do what it has always done with governments that still remain outside the Mine Ban Treaty—push back and continue the push to universalize the treaty—including the U.S.”

The Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor, a non-governmental research initiative, estimated in a November 2019 report that 130,000 people were killed by landmines between 1999 and 2018. The majority of the deaths were civilians.

According to CNN, the Trump administration’s new policy will place the authority to use landmines in the hands of “commanders of the U.S. military’s combatant commands, usually a four-star general or admiral, such as the commanders of U.S. Africa Command and U.S. Central Command which oversee operations on the African continent and the Middle East respectively.”

“The new policy… is expected to permit the operational use of landmines only if they have a 30-day self-destruction or self-deactivation feature,” CNN reported. “The new policy would also allow for the development, production, and procurement of landmines only if they have these features.”

The decision to rescind the Obama administration’s 2014 policy was recommended following a Pentagon review launched in 2017 by then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis.

“So horrific that after decades of international efforts to rid the world of landmines, Trump is about to ‘make landmines great again’ by loosening restrictions on their use,” Medea Benjamin, co-founder of anti-war group CodePink, told Common Dreams.

Advocacy group Public Citizen echoed that reaction on Twitter.

“Is this what Make America Great Again means? Who in their right mind can justify this?” the group asked. “Landmines have a long history of killing and wounding civilians and are banned by more than 160 countries. Absolutely horrific.”

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UN researcher hails ICC’s pursuit of war crimes probe in Palestine as ‘momentous step’

Jessica Corbett / Common Dreams

A United Nations human rights researcher on Tuesday hailed the International Criminal Court’s recent decision to pursue a formal investigation of alleged war crimes in Palestinian territories occupied by Israel…

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trump-brings-pardoned-us-war-criminals-onstage-at-florida-republican-fundraiser/

aha-let hedges said poor wht go for trump b/c he is strong enough to defeat big force(s) they face; thus we need strong guys rogue cop who does not play by the rules]

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Trump brings pardoned US war criminals onstage at Florida Republican fundraiser

Written by Daily Kos December 8, 2019

Donald Trump was in particularly odious form over the weekend. His primary non-appearance appearance was on Saturday night, when he spoke at a secret no-phones, no-reporters fundraising event for the Florida Republican Party. But he didn’t just speak: The Miami Herald reports that Trump also took the opportunity to fete two of the military war criminals he recently pardoned, bringing the two out onstage with him.

There is no report of how the audience of Republican Party bigwigs, which included Jared Kushner, Reps. Jim Jordan and Mike Waltz and many of the state’s top Republican officeholders, responded to Trump’s presentation of two pardoned war criminals. We can only assume the Republicans present cheered and applauded the men, since there have been zero condemnations of Trump offering the two up for Republican celebration. (The sight of Jim Jordan or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis giving military war criminals an ovation is, one presumes, why absolutely no recording device were permitted.)

From that well-received and, according to the Herald‘s queried attendees, “hilarious” hour-long private speech involving both war criminals and “impressions” of other political figures, No-Thumbs Hitler moved to a more public setting, giving an address to the Israeli American Council.

That appearance gave a more robust view of what top Republican officials claimed to find “hilarious”, in Trump’s prior appearance. Noting that he knew some of the attendees at the Sheldon Adelson-sponsored event from his real estate dealings, Trump declared them “not nice people at all, but you have to vote for me. You have no choice. You’re not going to vote for Pocahontas, I can tell you that. [Laughter] You’re not going to vote for the wealth tax!”

“Yeah, let’s take 100% of your wealth away! No, no. Even if you don’t like me, some of you don’t, some of you I don’t like at all actually. [Laughter] And you’re going to be my biggest supporters because you’ll be out of business in about 15 minutes if they get in.”

Whether Trump’s declaration that his audience of hard-right Jewish Americans love money too much to vote for his opponent strikes you as anti-Semitic is up to you; his continued obsession with referring to Sen. Elizabeth Warren with a racial slur is even blunter. Trump also invoked the “dual loyalty” tropes directed at Jewish Americans, and in fact not just invoked them but presumed and demanded them. “You have people that are Jewish people, that are great people, they don’t love Israel enough. You know that.”

After shaky weeks, Trump appears to be in a better mood than he has been in some time. The White House and Senate Republicans appear to have settled on a strategy for pushing an impeachment trial through the Senate as quickly and insincerely as possible, as “lawyer” Rudy Giuliani begins production of an anti-Biden “documentary” relying on the same corrupt forced-from-power pro-Russian Ukrainian grifters and thugs that successfully removed an anti-corruption U.S. ambassador in a previous smear campaign. He appears to believe he is on the cusp of not just getting away with his extortion scheme, but that with the Republican Senate’s help he will soon be able to advance it to its planned next stages.

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar

Dec 7, 2019

Trump, speaking to the Israeli American Council: "We have to get the people of our country, of this country, to love Israel more ... because you have people that are Jewish people, that are great people -- they don't love Israel enough. You know that."

Embedded video

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar

Trump, speaking to the Israeli American Council: "You're not nice people at all, but you have to vote for me. You have no choice. You're not going to vote for Pocahontas, I can tell you that. You're not going to vote for the wealth tax!"

Embedded video

ref

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/national-politics/article238150139.html

Pardoned soldiers are Trump’s special guests at closed-door fundraiser in Aventura

BY SAMANTHA J. GROSS AND DAVID SMILEY

DECEMBER 07, 2019 09:35 PM

President Donald Trump, speaking during a closed-door speech to Republican Party of Florida donors at the state party’s annual Statesman’s Dinner, was in “rare form” Saturday night.

The dinner, which raised $3.5 million for the state party, was met with unusual secrecy. The 1,000 attendees were required to check their cell phones into individual locked cases before they entered the unmarked ballroom at the south end of the resort. Reporters were not allowed to attend.

But the secrecy was key to Trump’s performance, which attendees called “hilarious.”

Riding the high of the successful event turnout — and without the pressure of press or cell phones — Trump transformed into a “total comedian,” according to six people who attended the event and spoke afterward to the Miami Herald.

He also pulled an unusual move, bringing on stage Army 1st Lt. Clint Lorance and Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, who Trump pardoned last month for cases involving war crimes. Lorance was serving a 19-year sentence for ordering his soldiers shoot at unarmed men in Afghanistan, and Golsteyn was to stand trial for the 2010 extrajudicial killing of a suspected bomb maker.

The president spoke for over an hour, doing impressions of Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and joking about the slim physique of Ohio congressman — and former wrestler — Jim Jordan, who was in attendance. He also introduced his son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, and North Florida Congressman Mike Waltz.

Trump spent a large part of the speech, attendees told the Herald, praising Florida Republicans for their work in the state.

At one point he called on stage Attorney General Ashley Moody, Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis and all of the Republican state lawmakers in attendance. He especially praised Gov. Ron DeSantis, who he calls “a good guy.”

“DeSantis is always up in Washington bugging me for federal aid and federal money,” said Trump, speaking during the Statesman’s Dinner, held at the JW Marriott Turnberry Resort and Spa in Aventura. “He is unabashed in making asks for Florida.”

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driver on trump seal pardon? war crimes 2x called them warriors ~ deep state?!

aha:Rambo Syndrome (alt history)do we get to win this time,wimpy spineless bureaucrats prevented MANly am fighting men to beat primitive PJ comies:

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, U.S. Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer (no relation to the white nationalist of the same name) was forced outafter losing a power struggle with Fox News host Pete Hegseth. Hegseth has been aggressively lobbying the Trump administration to intervene in the cases of multiple convicted war criminals, including Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL who had been accused of war crimes during a 2017 deployment to Iraq. Hegseth devoted numerous Fox & Friends segments to their causes, repeatedly hosted their family members and lawyers to ask the president for pardons, and privately urged the president to do so.⁠

Gallagher was acquitted in July on charges related to the murder of a teenage prisoner of war, but was demoted after being convicted of posing for photos with the body. While Trump pardoned the Navy SEAL and restored his rank, Navy officials subsequently sought to convene a review board to remove Gallagher from his elite unit and strip him of his Trident pin. This process reportedly continued even after Trump tweeted his disapproval of the move.

Following several attacks from Hegseth on Spencer and the Navy during the course of Sunday morning’s Fox & Friends broadcast, Trump announced his displeasure with the Navy and Spencer’s termination on Twitter.

Deadly serious’: Read fired Navy Secretary’s scathing letter in wake of Trump’s attacks on ‘the rule of law’

"I cannot in good conscience obey an order that I…

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aha: Rambo do we get to win this time, wimpy spineless bureaucrats prevented MANly am fighting men to beat primitive PJ comies:

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/new-york-times-reporters-stand-by-story-revealing-navy-secretary-spencer-threatened-to-resign-over-trump-plan-to-reverse-seals-punishment/

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/united-nations-report-finds-the-us-and-allies-may-be-complicit-in-saudi-war-crimes/

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Damning United Nations report finds the US and allies may be complicit in Saudi war crimes

Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams September 3, 2019

A comprehensive and damning United Nations report released Tuesday said the U.S., France, and Britain may be guilty of complicity in war crimes for providing the Saudi Arabia-led coalition in its war on Yemen with logistical support and weapons.

“Five years into the conflict, violations against Yemeni civilians continue unabated, with total disregard for the plight of the people and a lack of international action to hold parties to the conflict accountable,” saidKamel Jendoubi, chairperson of the Group of Experts on Yemen, which was created by the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The 274-page report (pdf) said the U.S., France, and Britain may have failed to live up to their obligations under international law by continuing to provide weaponry, training intelligence, and logistical support for a Saudi-led coalition that is guilty of bombing hospitals, homes, a school bus, and other civilian targets during its years-long assault on Yemen.

“The legality of arms transfers by France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and other states remains questionable,” the report states, “and is the subject of various domestic court proceedings.”

In a statement, Jendoubi condemned the nations involved in the Saudi-led war on Yemen for refusing to investigate and punish human rights violations.

“This endemic impunity—for violations and abuses by all parties to the conflict—cannot be tolerated anymore,” said Jendoubi. “Impartial and independent inquiries must be empowered to hold accountable those who disrespect the rights of the Yemeni people. The international community must stop turning a blind eye to these violations and the intolerable humanitarian situation.”

The report, which is the product of a two-year investigation, comes days after the Saudi-led coalition killed more than 100 people in airstrikes on a Yemeni detention center. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the attack may have amounted to a war crime.

Following the attack, a bipartisan group of lawmakers including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren launched a new effort to end U.S. complicity in the Saudi-led assault on Yemen, which has killed tens of thousands of people and caused the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The Washington Post reported late Monday that the lawmakers are working to bar the U.S. government from providing logistical support for the Saudi-led coalition’s air raids.

The group called on the Senate to not remove an amendment to the annual defense policy legislation that would prohibit the U.S. from cooperating with Saudi airstrikes.

In a letter to top Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, which are set to hash out differences between the two chambers’ defense policy bills, the group of lawmakers said “inclusion of this amendment would ensure that our men and women in uniform are not involved in a war which has never been authorized by Congress, and continues to undermine rather than advance U.S. national security interests.”

The letter, first obtained by the Post, was signed by Sens. Warren (D-Mass.), Sanders (I-Vt.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), and dozens of others.

As Common Dreams reported in April, President Donald Trump vetoed a stand-alone War Powers resolution that would have ended U.S. military support for the Saudi-led assault on Yemen.

Sanders said in a statement to the Post on Monday that Congress has a responsibility to continue asserting its constitutional authority to bring U.S. complicity in the war on Yemen to an end.

“Now,” said Sanders, “we must use Congress’s power of the purse to block every nickel of taxpayer money from going to assist the Saudi dictatorship as it bombs and starves civilians in Yemen.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/mike-pompeo-celebrates-the-defeat-of-an-international-probe-into-possible-u-s-war-crimes/

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Mike Pompeo celebrates the defeat of an international probe into possible U.S. war crimes

Written by Andrea Germanos / Common Dreams August 28, 2019

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday affirmed President Donald Trump’s disdain for the International Criminal Court when he appeared to boast of the White House’s successful bullying effort to stop the court from launching a probe into possible war crimes committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Pompeo made the remarks in a “Celebrating Americanism in Our Foreign Policy” speech at the American Legion National Convention in Indianapolis

“Americanism means taking care of our own,” said Pompeo.

“We stopped international courts from prosecuting our service members,” Pompeo continued, adding that the potential probe “was an outrage.”

In April, the ICC announced that it rejected a probe into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan. Outgoing ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda requested the investigation in 2017, saying at the time that there was a “reasonable basis to believe” that war crimes were committed by the Taliban, Afghan National Security Forces, U.S. armed forces, and the CIA. That move won the praise of human rights organizations and triggered over one million statements from alleged Afghan victims.

But the potential prosecutions also prompted threats from the White House, with Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, warning of sanctions against ICC officials if they moved ahead with probes into U.S. or Israeli war crimes.

Pompeo confirmed earlier this year that the administration would revoke or deny visas for ICC personnel who try to investigate or prosecute U.S. officials or key allies for potential war crimes. A month later, in April, the administration followed through and revoked prosecutor Bensouda’s visa for entry into the U.S.

Trump, for his part, celebrated the rejected war crimes probe as an “international victory.”

Human rights groups had a notably different takeaway.

“It is outrageous,” said Jamil Dakwar, director of ACLU’s group’s human rights program, “that victims of war crimes are far less likely to get justice for well-documented atrocities because of the Trump administration’s authoritarian efforts to sabotage an investigation before it could even get started.”

“No one except the world’s most brutal regimes win,” Dakwar said, “when we weaken and sabotage international institutions established to fight impunity and hold the human rights abusers accountable.”

Navy SEAL acquitted of war crimes despite eyewitness testimony and photographic evidence

Julia Conley / Common DreamsJuly 3, 2019

“The military justice system is rigged in favor of these bad actors just as it is with police domestically.”

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/3/iraq_combat_veteran_pardon_of_war

Trump is considering pardoning American military members convicted of war crimes. One of the requests for a pardon is reportedly for Navy SEALs Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher, who is facing charges of shooting unarmed civilians and killing a wounded captive teenage fighter by stabbing him with a knife and then staging a re-enlistment ceremony over the dead teen’s body. On Thursday, a military judge in San Diego ordered Gallagher free from custody, citing prosecutorial misconduct in his murder trial for war crimes. The court has yet to rule on whether to remove prosecutors or to throw out the case entirely. One of the attorneys for Gallagher also represents the Trump Organization. Republican Congressmember Duncan Hunter, one of Gallagher’s most vocal supporters, recently admitted in a podcast to killing hundreds of civilians while serving in the U.S. military during his deployment to Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004. This comes as Trump may also consider a pardon request for Blackwater contractor Nicholas Slatten, who was twice found guilty of first-degree murder in the deadly 2007 Nisoor Square massacre in Baghdad, which killed 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians. We speak with Waitman Wade Beorn, a combat veteran of Iraq and a Holocaust and genocide studies historian. In a May 9, 2019, opinion column in The Washington Post, headlined “”I led a platoon in Iraq. Trump is wrong to pardon war criminals.”

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Rep. Duncan Hunter continues his defense of war crimes by claiming his unit ‘killed probably hundreds of civilians’

Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter, currently under indictment over his misappropriation…

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