“Whether he made a mistake or not, is a trivial question,” said an Israeli Jewish man who joined large protests throughout Israel in support of a soldier who calmly, and with precision, killed a wounded Palestinian man in al-Khalil (Hebron). The protesting Jewish man described Palestinians as ‘barbaric’, ‘bestial’, who should not be perceived as people.
On April 5, 2010, WikiLeaks published classified military footage of a July 2007 attack by a US Army helicopter gunship in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad. The video titled Collateral Murder depicted the killing of more than a dozen men, including two Reuters staffers. At the time of release, the WikiLeaks website temporarily crashed with a massive influx of visitors, while versions popped up on YouTube, reaching millions.
Since terrorism’s tragedy is again in the news, it is timely to revisit perhaps one of the biggest acts of terrorism in modern history — the illegal invasion and destruction, ongoing, of Iraq.
March 20th marked the thirteenth anniversary of an action resulting in the equivalent of a Paris, Brussels, London July 7th, 2005, often multiple times daily in Iraq ever since. As for September 11th, 2001, there has frequently been that death toll and heartbreak every several weeks, also ongoing.
Saudi Arabia has been militarily involved and trying to manipulate political outcomes in Yemen for decades. The last time they did this in 2009, they lost militarily to the Houthis.
— Hillary Mann Leverett on CNN, Early 2015
Mistreatment often—usually?—has consequences, and of a negative nature. Let me limit myself here to just two examples.
First, humans have—especially since the Agricultural Revolution of millennia ago, and more particularly since the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century—been perceiving themselves as apart from, rather than a part of, Earth System. They have, for example, perceived Earth as a mere resource to be exploited rather than as their home—a place, therefore, to respect, and treat with care.
If some intelligent extraterrestrial beings were circling over our planet in their spaceship, monitoring for decades and centuries all that has been and is taking place on its surface, they would, most likely, be horrified by our brutality, and shocked by the countless contradictions, double standards and inconsistencies.
Critics have long questioned why violent intervention was necessary in Libya. Hillary Clinton’s recently published emails confirm that it was less about protecting the people from a dictator than about money, banking, and preventing African economic sovereignty.
American exceptionalism presents an election made in hell
If the American presidential election winds up with Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump, and my passport is confiscated, and I’m somehow FORCED to choose one or the other, or I’m PAID to do so, paid well … I would vote for Trump.
In April 2014 I first visited Syria, going to Homs and Latakia, in addition to Damascus. On each of my three subsequent trips to Syria, speaking moderate colloquial Arabic, I have been able to interact one-on-one with Syrians there, whether in markets, taxis, on the streets or in areas I visited.
This month, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation interviewed Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban, Political and Media Advisor to Syria’s President. The methods used to undermine Shaaban’s message should come as no surprise.
