Laws of War

Updates from on the Ground in Syria: June to August 11, 2016

Since June 13, 2016, I have been visiting different regions of Syria but have not had sufficient time to post regularly.  However, until I am able to, I will share some brief updates I had shared on social media, and otherwise refer to my writings/photos/videos from my prior 4 visits. Going through my files, I found two short clips. In the first […]

America’s “Humanitarian War” against the World

The following  text is a point by point thematic summary of Prof. Michel Chossudovsky‘s presentation at the Science for Peace Conference, Academy of Sciences, Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur, 15-16 August 2016 Introduction Historically, science has supported the development of the weapons industry and the war economy. “Science for Peace” indelibly requires reversing the logic whereby commissioned  scientific endeavors are directed towards supporting […]

Persecuting Assange: The Mainstreaming of Neoliberal Pathology

“Objective journalism is one of the main reasons that American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long” – Hunter S. Thompson The non-profit journalistic and publishing organization WikiLeaks released on 22nd July 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments sent from or received by Democratic National Committee (DNC) personnel.   The emails exposed numerous instances of unprofessional, unethical and possibly illegal behaviour, including concerted attempts to […]

Julian Assange says “1,700 emails in Hillary Clinton’s collection” proves she sold weapons to ISIS in Syria

Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knew that the US was sending arms from Libya to Syria in 2011, a year before the Benghazi attacks. The Iran-Contra scandal almost brought down Reagan’s second term. Essentially Oliver North and other senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo. The Reagan administration officials hoped […]

Two Weddings and a Funeral Redux

“Anytime bombs are used to target innocent civilians, it is an act of terror” – Barack Obama A US presidential policy guidance document on drone strikes – often referred to as the ‘drone playbook’ – was last week made public in edited form in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. Politico’s Josh Berstein […]

BDS: game changer in Germany

The Holocaust was the first historic event that touched my inner core as a human being. Perhaps this explains my early fascination with everything Jewish. In the 1990s, I lived for two years in Israel, where I volunteered in a center for adults with special needs. This was part of my German Zivildienst — a civilian substitute for conscientious objectors […]

10 Facts the Mainstream Media Won’t Tell You About the War in Syria

  10: Bashar al-Assad has a higher approval rating than Barack Obama Despite Obama’s claims Assad is illegitimate and must step down, the fact remains that since the conflict erupted in 2011, Assad has held the majority support of his people. The elections in 2014 – which Assad won by a landslide with international observers claiming no violations – is a testament […]

You can keep New Labour & they can keep Luke Akehurst

I don’t read the Guardian anymore, just as I don’t lick around the toilet bowl or engage in dalliances with farm animals. On Wednesday I made a reluctant exception, after discovering that arch-Blairite sycophant and former arms trade lobbyist Luke Akehurst had written a pub-bore piece about New Labour, Jeremy Corbyn and his vision for the party. Akehurst starts off by recalling […]

My Fellow Americans: We Are Fools

There is something I am going to try and explain here after watching the Democratic National Convention this evening that will invite the scorn of many of my friends. But the words are gagging my throat and my stomach is twisted and sick and I have to vomit this out. The anti-americanism in me is about to explode and land […]

Fallujah: A Symbol of US War Crimes

No city in Iraq is more symbolic of the criminal consequences of the US invasion of Iraq than Fallujah. Prior to 2003, the 300,000-strong, prosperous, predominantly Sunni Muslim community on the Euphrates River, one of humanity’s oldest continuous urban settlements, was known as the “city of mosques.” After 13 years of destruction at the hands of the US military and […]

U.S.-backed Syrian rebels committing war crimes, torture, abductions; imposing harsh Sharia law: Report

Amnesty International report: Syrian rebel groups “committed serious violations of international humanitarian law” Syrian rebel groups backed by the U.S. and its allies “have committed serious violations of international humanitarian law, including abductions, torture and summary killings,” according to Amnesty International. A report by the leading human rights organization details how extremist rebel groups have taken over large parts of […]