Laws of War

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 […]
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Here’s why there are no “moderate rebels” in Aleppo or anywhere else in Syria

On the subject of the Syrian war there has been much deserved mockery of the name change by Jabhat Al-Nusra, Al-Qaeda’s local Syrian branch, to its new name: “Jabhat Fateh al-Sham”.   It has been rightly pointed out that this name change, and the organisation’s attempt to distance itself from its Al-Qaeda parent, is a transparent fraud made all the […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]

Tories try to ‘bury’ UKs role in the killing fields of Yemen

The last couple of weekends have been good for burying bad news. On July 15, Murtaza Hussain revealed the release of previously suppressed documents contained within a 2002 congressional report that emphasized possible links between high-ranking members of the Saudi royal family and the 9/11 hijackers. This weekend, the attempt to bury more bad news also involves Saudi Arabia. On this […]

‘Bloody massacres’: Syria appeals to UN after French & US airstrikes ‘kill over 140 civilians’

Syria is demanding the UN take action after it says French war planes killed more than 120 civilians during airstrikes on Tuesday near the Turkish-Syrian border. The deaths came just a day after US air assaults killed a further 20 people in Manbij. The Syrian Foreign Ministry sent letters to the UN secretary general and to the president of the […]