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Paul Merrell

Exclusive: Major nations hold talks on ending U.N. sanctions on Iran - officials | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...-nuclear-idUSKBN0M82IS20150312

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • (Reuters) - Major world powers have begun talks about a United Nations Security Council resolution to lift U.N. sanctions on Iran if a nuclear agreement is struck with Tehran, a step that could make it harder for the U.S. Congress to undo a deal, Western officials said. The talks between Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — the five permanent members of the Security Council — plus Germany and Iran, are taking place ahead of difficult negotiations that resume next week over constricting Iran's nuclear ability.Some eight U.N. resolutions - four of them imposing sanctions - ban Iran from uranium enrichment and other sensitive atomic work and bar it from buying and selling atomic technology and anything linked to ballistic missiles. There is also a U.N. arms embargo.Iran sees their removal as crucial as U.N. measures are a legal basis for more stringent U.S. and European Union measures to be enforced. The U.S. and EU often cite violations of the U.N. ban on enrichment and other sensitive nuclear work as justification for imposing additional penalties on Iran.
  • U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told Congress on Wednesday that an Iran nuclear deal would not be legally binding, meaning future U.S. presidents could decide not to implement it. That point was emphasized in an open letter by 47 Republican senators sent on Monday to Iran's leaders asserting any deal could be discarded once President Barack Obama leaves office in January 2017.But a Security Council resolution on a nuclear deal with Iran could be legally binding, say Western diplomatic officials. That could complicate and possibly undercut future attempts by Republicans in Washington to unravel an agreement.Iran and the six powers are aiming to complete the framework of a nuclear deal by the end of March, and achieve a full agreement by June 30, to curb Iran's most sensitive nuclear activities for at least 10 years in exchange for a gradual end to all sanctions on the Islamic Republic.So far, those talks have focused on separate U.S. and European Union sanctions on Iran's energy and financial sectors, which Tehran desperately wants removed. The sanctions question is a sticking point in the talks that resume next week in Lausanne, Switzerland, between Iran and the six powers.
  • But Western officials involved in the negotiations said they are also discussing elements to include in a draft resolution for the 15-nation Security Council to begin easing U.N. nuclear-related sanctions that have been in place since December 2006."If there's a nuclear deal, and that's still a big 'if', we'll want to move quickly on the U.N. sanctions issue," an official said, requesting anonymity.The negotiations are taking place at senior foreign ministry level at the six powers and Iran, and not at the United Nations in New York.
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  • A senior U.S. administration official confirmed that the discussions were underway.The official said that the Security Council had mandated the negotiations over the U.N. sanctions and therefore has to be involved. The core role in negotiations with Iran that was being played by the five permanent members meant that any understanding over U.N. sanctions would likely get endorsed by the full council, the official added.Iran rejects Western allegations it is seeking a nuclear weapons capability.Officials said a U.N. resolution could help protect any nuclear deal against attempts by Republicans in U.S. Congress to sabotage it. Since violation of U.N. demands that Iran halt enrichment provide a legal basis for sanctioning Tehran, a new resolution could make new sanction moves difficult."There is an interesting question about whether, if the Security Council endorses the deal, that stops Congress undermining the deal," a Western diplomat said.
  • Other Western officials said Republicans might be deterred from undermining any deal if the Security Council unanimously endorses it and demonstrates that the world is united in favor of a diplomatic solution to the 12-year nuclear standoff.Concerns that Republican-controlled Congress might try to derail a nuclear agreement have been fueled by the letter to Iran's leaders and a Republican invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress in a March 3 speech that railed against a nuclear deal with Iran.The officials emphasized that ending all sanctions would be contingent on compliance with the terms of any deal. They added that the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna-based nuclear watchdog, will play a key role in verifying Iran's compliance with any agreement.
  • Among questions facing negotiators as they seek to prepare a resolution for the Security Council is the timing and speed of lifting U.N. nuclear sanctions, including whether to present it in March if a political framework agreement is signed next week or to delay until a final deal is reached by the end-June target.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Mar 15
     
    Soundslike it's official. U.N. Security Council Resolution is the chosen route past the Israel Firsters in Congress. But notice that Reuters is saying that "Republicans" in Congress are the barrier. Is that a sign that Repubswill be painted as the bad guys here? As in Israel's wants are now a partisan issue? It's factually incorrect. Plenty of Democrats also bow toward AIPAC headquarters  five times a day while praying for Zionist campaign contributions. 
Paul Merrell

Israel decries US 'knife in back' over Palestinian govt - Yahoo News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/alestinian-govt-210018880.html

war & peace Israel Palestine Kerry Obama Netanyahu negotiations

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Washington's support for a new Palestinian government backed by Israel's Islamist foe Hamas, has left the Jewish state feeling betrayed, triggering a new crisis with its closest ally. Several Israeli ministers expressed public anger on Tuesday after the US State Department said it was willing to work with the new Palestinian unity government put together by the West Bank leadership and Gaza's Hamas rulers. Technocratic in nature, the new government was sworn in on Monday in front of president Mahmud Abbas, with Washington offering its backing several hours later.
  • Speaking to reporters on Monday, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the new cabinet would be judged "by its actions.""At this point, it appears that president Abbas has formed an interim technocratic government that does not include ministers affiliated with Hamas," she said. "With what we know now, we will work with this government."
  • The US endorsement was viewed as a major blow for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had on Sunday urged the international community not to rush into recognising the new government, which he said would only "strengthen terror."
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  • "Unfortunately, American naivety has broken all records," said Communications Minister Gilad Erdan, a cabinet hardliner who is close to Netanyahu."Collaborating with Hamas, which is defined as a terror organisation in the United States, is simply unthinkable. "US capitulation to Palestinian tactics badly damages the chance of ever returning to negotiations and will cause Israel to take unilateral steps to defend its citizens from the government of terror which Abu Mazen (Abbas) has set up." Public radio said Netanyahu was feeling "betrayed and deceived," particularly as he had assured his security cabinet that US Secretary of State John Kerry had promised him Washington would not recognise the new government immediately.
  • "And it wasn't immediate -- it was five hours later that this recognition took place," the radio noted ironically. A senior political official quoted by the Israel Hayom freesheet, widely regarded as Netanyahu's mouthpiece, said the US move was "like a knife in the back." - 'Answer with annexation' - Israeli commentators said the Palestinians had chalked up a "major success" in driving a new wedge between Israel and its US ally.
  • With the peace process in tatters, hardliners within Netanyahu's rightwing coalition have been pushing for Israel to take unilateral steps such as the annexation of the main Jewish settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank.
  • The security cabinet agreed on Monday to set up a team to examine the annexation option, but Yediot Aharonot commentator Shimon Shiffer said the move was a sop to Bennett and other hardliners rather than a serious policy change.
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Jun 14
     
    What's remarkable here is that Obama has apparently ratcheted down his fear of the Israel Lobby. But it's not as though Mr. Netanyahu was not warned that the world would see Israel as responsible if it blew up the Kerry-brokered negotiation between Israel and Palestine. Israel did blow it up by not delivering the last shipment of Palestinian prisoners required by the pre-negotiation agreement, attempting to gain further concessions using their release as leverage.  Palestine responded by joining a large number of U.N. treaty organizations and was thus recognized by most nations on the planet as a nation: a critically important move, because it is recognition by other nations as a nation that qualifies Palestine as a full-fledged U.N. member rather than an observer state, an application Palestine can now make at the time of its choosing. That is also important because Palestine is now positioned to join the Rome Convention that created the International Criminal Court, providing Palestine with legal standing to file war crime charges against high Israeli officials that would then obligate the Court to investigate. Palestine is holding back on that move, using it as bargaining leverage on the world stage.   Palestine also responded by forming a coalition "unity" government with Hamas, the political party that nominally rules the Gaza strip, the world's largest open-air concentration camp. At Israel's request, the U.S. had several years ago designated Hamas as a terrorist organization. But that was a purely political move. It seems that the political situation has changed. Obama is pivoting out of the Mideast as he performs his ballyhooed "pivot to Asia," which is actually a pivot to contain Russia that isn't working and a pivot to subjugate Africa and its huge store of untapped natural resources, including lots of oil. Blocking China's economic deals in Africa with military force seems to be the current top concern in the White House. Israel was already a pari
Paul Merrell

Exclusive: Inside America's Plan to Kill Online Privacy Rights Everywhere | The Cable - 0 views

thecable.foreignpolicy.com/...line_privacy_rights_everywhere

surveillance state NSA NSA-blowback UN digital-privacy human rights

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • The United States and its key intelligence allies are quietly working behind the scenes to kneecap a mounting movement in the United Nations to promote a universal human right to online privacy, according to diplomatic sources and an internal American government document obtained by The Cable. The diplomatic battle is playing out in an obscure U.N. General Assembly committee that is considering a proposal by Brazil and Germany to place constraints on unchecked internet surveillance by the National Security Agency and other foreign intelligence services. American representatives have made it clear that they won't tolerate such checks on their global surveillance network. The stakes are high, particularly in Washington -- which is seeking to contain an international backlash against NSA spying -- and in Brasilia, where Brazilian President Dilma Roussef is personally involved in monitoring the U.N. negotiations.
  • The Brazilian and German initiative seeks to apply the right to privacy, which is enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to online communications. Their proposal, first revealed by The Cable, affirms a "right to privacy that is not to be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with their privacy, family, home, or correspondence." It notes that while public safety may "justify the gathering and protection of certain sensitive information," nations "must ensure full compliance" with international human rights laws. A final version the text is scheduled to be presented to U.N. members on Wednesday evening and the resolution is expected to be adopted next week. A draft of the resolution, which was obtained by The Cable, calls on states to "to respect and protect the right to privacy," asserting that the "same rights that people have offline must also be protected online, including the right to privacy." It also requests the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, present the U.N. General Assembly next year with a report on the protection and promotion of the right to privacy, a provision that will ensure the issue remains on the front burner.
  • Publicly, U.S. representatives say they're open to an affirmation of privacy rights. "The United States takes very seriously our international legal obligations, including those under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," Kurtis Cooper, a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said in an email. "We have been actively and constructively negotiating to ensure that the resolution promotes human rights and is consistent with those obligations." But privately, American diplomats are pushing hard to kill a provision of the Brazilian and German draft which states that "extraterritorial surveillance" and mass interception of communications, personal information, and metadata may constitute a violation of human rights. The United States and its allies, according to diplomats, outside observers, and documents, contend that the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights does not apply to foreign espionage.
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  • n recent days, the United States circulated to its allies a confidential paper highlighting American objectives in the negotiations, "Right to Privacy in the Digital Age -- U.S. Redlines." It calls for changing the Brazilian and German text so "that references to privacy rights are referring explicitly to States' obligations under ICCPR and remove suggestion that such obligations apply extraterritorially." In other words: America wants to make sure it preserves the right to spy overseas. The U.S. paper also calls on governments to promote amendments that would weaken Brazil's and Germany's contention that some "highly intrusive" acts of online espionage may constitute a violation of freedom of expression. Instead, the United States wants to limit the focus to illegal surveillance -- which the American government claims it never, ever does. Collecting information on tens of millions of people around the world is perfectly acceptable, the Obama administration has repeatedly said. It's authorized by U.S. statute, overseen by Congress, and approved by American courts.
  • "Recall that the USG's [U.S. government's] collection activities that have been disclosed are lawful collections done in a manner protective of privacy rights," the paper states. "So a paragraph expressing concern about illegal surveillance is one with which we would agree." The privacy resolution, like most General Assembly decisions, is neither legally binding nor enforceable by any international court. But international lawyers say it is important because it creates the basis for an international consensus -- referred to as "soft law" -- that over time will make it harder and harder for the United States to argue that its mass collection of foreigners' data is lawful and in conformity with human rights norms. "They want to be able to say ‘we haven't broken the law, we're not breaking the law, and we won't break the law,'" said Dinah PoKempner, the general counsel for Human Rights Watch, who has been tracking the negotiations. The United States, she added, wants to be able to maintain that "we have the freedom to scoop up anything we want through the massive surveillance of foreigners because we have no legal obligations."
  • The United States negotiators have been pressing their case behind the scenes, raising concerns that the assertion of extraterritorial human rights could constrain America's effort to go after international terrorists. But Washington has remained relatively muted about their concerns in the U.N. negotiating sessions. According to one diplomat, "the United States has been very much in the backseat," leaving it to its allies, Australia, Britain, and Canada, to take the lead. There is no extraterritorial obligation on states "to comply with human rights," explained one diplomat who supports the U.S. position. "The obligation is on states to uphold the human rights of citizens within their territory and areas of their jurisdictions."
  • The position, according to Jamil Dakwar, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Human Rights Program, has little international backing. The International Court of Justice, the U.N. Human Rights Committee, and the European Court have all asserted that states do have an obligation to comply with human rights laws beyond their own borders, he noted. "Governments do have obligation beyond their territories," said Dakwar, particularly in situations, like the Guantanamo Bay detention center, where the United States exercises "effective control" over the lives of the detainees. Both PoKempner and Dakwar suggested that courts may also judge that the U.S. dominance of the Internet places special legal obligations on it to ensure the protection of users' human rights.
  • "It's clear that when the United States is conducting surveillance, these decisions and operations start in the United States, the servers are at NSA headquarters, and the capabilities are mainly in the United States," he said. "To argue that they have no human rights obligations overseas is dangerous because it sends a message that there is void in terms of human rights protection outside countries territory. It's going back to the idea that you can create a legal black hole where there is no applicable law." There were signs emerging on Wednesday that America may have been making ground in pressing the Brazilians and Germans to back on one of its toughest provisions. In an effort to address the concerns of the U.S. and its allies, Brazil and Germany agreed to soften the language suggesting that mass surveillance may constitute a violation of human rights. Instead, it simply deep "concern at the negative impact" that extraterritorial surveillance "may have on the exercise of and enjoyment of human rights." The U.S., however, has not yet indicated it would support the revised proposal.
  • The concession "is regrettable. But it’s not the end of the battle by any means," said Human Rights Watch’s PoKempner. She added that there will soon be another opportunity to corral America's spies: a U.N. discussion on possible human rights violations as a result of extraterritorial surveillance will soon be taken up by the U.N. High commissioner.
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Nov 13
     
    Woo-hoo! Go get'em, U.N.
Paul Merrell

Israel threatens to expel U.N. envoy over Qatar cash for GAZA - Al Arabiya News - 0 views

english.alarabiya.net/...over-Qatar-cash-for-GAZA-.html

war & peace Gaza Hamas Israel U.N.-envoy-expulsion

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Israel's foreign minister has threatened to expel the U.N.'s special envoy for offering to help transfer Qatari funds to the Gaza Strip, Channel Two television reported. Avigdor Lieberman said Robert Serry, the world body's special envoy on the Middle East peace process, had first tried to convince the Palestinian Authority (PA) to transfer $20 million (14.7 million euros) from Qatar to resolve a pay crisis for Hamas employees in Gaza, the broadcaster reported Saturday. But after Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas refused to do so, the rightwing ultra-nationalist Lieberman charged, Serry proposed U.N. help in making the transfer.
  • Israel's foreign minister has threatened to expel the U.N.'s special envoy for offering to help transfer Qatari funds to the Gaza Strip, Channel Two television reported. Avigdor Lieberman said Robert Serry, the world body's special envoy on the Middle East peace process, had first tried to convince the Palestinian Authority (PA) to transfer $20 million (14.7 million euros) from Qatar to resolve a pay crisis for Hamas employees in Gaza, the broadcaster reported Saturday. But after Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas refused to do so, the rightwing ultra-nationalist Lieberman charged, Serry proposed U.N. help in making the transfer.
  • Serry rejected the allegations, saying in a statement that the Palestinian authority had approached him "informally" on the matter. "In considering any U.N. role on the issue of payments of salaries in Gaza that has potentially destabilising effects on security in Gaza, I made it clear that we would only be able to be of assistance if acceptable to all stakeholders, including Israel," he added. Israel had been kept informed of all the discussions, he insisted.
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  • Lieberman told AFP he was seeking an "urgent meeting" on Sunday about the row in which Israeli television reported the foreign minister would propose that Serry be declared persona non grata in Israel. "We look upon Robert Serry's behaviour with the utmost seriousness, and strong measures will be imposed," Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told AFP. "The foreign ministry issues diplomatic visas and can also withdraw them," he added.
  • Paul Merrell on 25 Jul 14
     
    For many years, Israel has taxed Gaza residents, then paid the Gaza government the collected taxes. But Israel began reducing the payments then finally cut it off entirely. Doctors and medical staff in Gaza have had no pay for five months and had been on half-pay for eight months prior to that. Before the rockets began flying, medical supplies and equipment in Gaza were already severely depleted.  Qatar wants to send Gaza $20 million so the Gaza government employees can be paid. Now Israel threatens to expel the special U.N. envoy for the Mideast Peace Process because he offered to transfer the funds.  The Israeli hubris explodes in faux anger. Not a bright move because Gaza and the West Bank are classified as Occupied Territories Israel under the Fourth Geneva Convention. As the occupying power, Israel is required to maintain the elected Gaza government and is responsible for the well being of all Gaza residents. But Israel has been ignoring U.N. decisions including Security Council decisions from the moment the Israeli government was formed in 1948.   Making an enemy of the international human rights officials will prove doubly dumb when Israeli officials are inevitably seated in the dock of the International Criminal Court facing charges for war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity. Human rights lawyers and judges pull no punches.   
Paul Merrell

IPS - U.N. Will Censure Illegal Spying, But Not U.S. | Inter Press Service - 0 views

www.ipsnews.net/...ure-illegal-spying-but-not-u-s

surveillance state NSA NSA-blowback U.N. international law

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • When the 193-member General Assembly adopts a resolution next month censuring the illegal electronic surveillance of governments and world leaders by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), the U.N.’s highest policy-making body will spare the United States from public condemnation despite its culpability in widespread wiretapping. A draft resolution currently in limited circulation – a copy of which was obtained by IPS – criticises “the conduct of extra-territorial surveillance” and the “interception of communications in foreign jurisdictions”. But it refuses to single out the NSA or the United States, which stands accused of spying on foreign governments, including political leaders in Germany, France, Brazil, Spain and Mexico, among some 30 others.
  • The draft says that while the gathering and protection of certain sensitive information may be justified on grounds of national security and criminal activity, member states must still ensure full compliance with international human rights. The resolution will also emphasise “that illegal surveillance of private communications and the indiscriminate interception of personal data of citizens constitutes a highly intrusive act that violates the rights to freedom of expression and privacy, and threatens the foundations of a democratic society.” Additionally, it will call for the establishment of independent oversight mechanisms capable of ensuring transparency and accountability of state surveillance of communications. And the resolution will request the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi PIllay, to present an interim report on the issue of human rights and “indiscriminate surveillance, including on extra-territorial surveillance.” This report is to be presented to the 69th session of the General Assembly next September, and a final report to its 70th session in 2015.
  • Chakravarthi Raghavan, a veteran Indian journalist who has been reporting on the U.N. and its activities since the 1960s, both in New York and later in Geneva, told IPS the resolution may help start a process under which the national security interests of every state, international security and right to privacy and human rights of people can be discussed and a balance found in some universal forum. “Otherwise, the U.N. world order will break down, and no one will benefit or emerge unscathed,” he said. Much will depend on the follow-up action that the General Assembly resolution calls for, and with what tenacity members pursue it. “Frankly, I am not at all clear that some of the nations raising the issue now are really serious,” said Raghavan, editor-emeritus of the Geneva-based South-North Development Monitor SUNS. “If they were, any one of them in Europe would have granted asylum to Edward Snowden, and not play footsie with U.S. in its attempts to have him jailed in the U.S. on espionage charges.” The revelations of U.S. spying have come mostly from documents released by Snowden, a former NSA contractor, who sought political asylum in Russia after he was accused of espionage by the United States.
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  • One Third World diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS the draft could undergo changes by the time it reaches the General Assembly mid-November. But he held out little hope the final resolution will specifically castigate the United States because of the political clout it wields at the United Nations, and Washington’s notoriety for exerting diplomatic pressure on its allies and aid recipients. Besides which, he said, everybody plays the spying game, including the French, the Germans, the Chinese and the Russians — and therefore none of them can afford to take a “holier than thou” attitude. Still, as the New York Times put it last week, “One thing is clear: the NSA’s Cold War-era argument, that everyone does it, seems unlikely to win the day.”
  • There has been a longstanding tradition that the “Five Eyes” do not spy on each other, the five being the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. But the surveillance of European political leaders has triggered a strong rejoinder from the 28-member European Union (EU). Raghavan told IPS that even if other countries are not publicly feuding with the U.S. over this — and perhaps their own security apparatuses are secretly collaborating in this global “surveillance state” — the NSA activities at a minimum raise several systemic issues involving basic violations. These include violations of the U.N. Charter; “unauthorised” and blatantly illegal invasions and/or intrusions into national space; World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreements, in particular the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS); the International Telecommunication Union Treaty and Conventions; treaties and protocols of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO); the Universal Human Rights Declaration and conventions; and the Vienna diplomatic conventions and codes of behaviour among civilised nations. “All these strike at the roots of the very basics of international law and international public law,” he said.
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 13
     
    So if Raghavan is correct, a new treaty will emerge from the debacle that limits but does not end foreign surveillance. And if so, I predict that it will have no enforcement provisions and absolutely no citizen remedies for rights violated. The farther we go down the NSA rabbit hole, the more convinced I am that it is a stark choice between having spy agencies equipped for digital surveillance and Internet Freedom.  Internet Freedom seems far better equipped to produce world peace through understanding than spy agencies who deliver their "intelligence" to only the favored few. 
Gary Edwards

'Clinton death list': 33 spine-tingling cases - 0 views

www.wnd.com/...-list-33-most-intriguing-cases

Clinton-Body-Count

shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Feb 17
     
    "(Editor's note: This list was originally published in August 2016 and has gone viral on the web. WND is running it again as American voters cast their ballots for the nation's next president on Election Day.) How many people do you personally know who have died mysteriously? How about in plane crashes or car wrecks? Bizarre suicides? People beaten to death or murdered in a hail of bullets? And what about violent freak accidents - like separate mountain biking and skiing collisions in Aspen, Colorado? Or barbells crushing a person's throat? Bill and Hillary Clinton attend a funeral Apparently, if you're Bill or Hillary Clinton, the answer to that question is at least 33 - and possibly many more. Talk-radio star Rush Limbaugh addressed the issue of the "Clinton body count" during an August show. "I swear, I could swear I saw these stories back in 1992, back in 1993, 1994," Limbaugh said. He cited a report from Rachel Alexander at Townhall.com titled, "Clinton body count or left-wing conspiracy? Three with ties to DNC mysteriously die." Limbaugh said he recalled Ted Koppel, then-anchor of ABC News' "Nightline," routinely having discussions on the issue following the July 20, 1993, death of White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster. In fact, Limbaugh said, he appeared on Koppel's show. "One of the things I said was, 'Who knows what happened here? But let me ask you a question.' I said, 'Ted, how many people do you know in your life who've been murdered? Ted, how many people do you know in your life that have died under suspicious circumstances?' "Of course, the answer is zilch, zero, nada, none, very few," Limbaugh chuckled. "Ask the Clintons that question. And it's a significant number. It's a lot of people that they know who have died, who've been murdered. "And the same question here from Rachel Alexander. It's amazing the cycle that exists with the Clintons. [Citing Townhall]: 'What it
Paul Merrell

'This Week' Transcript: Ambassador Samantha Power - ABC News - 0 views

abcnews.go.com/...story

war & peace ISIL Iraq Syria U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • STEPHANOPOULOS: And we are joined now by the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. Thanks for coming back to This Week. And you know, the president said he's prepared to strike Syria. Those strikes could be imminent. Will the United States try to get UN Security Council authorization first? Or do you accept now that's just not going to be possible? SAMANTHA POWER, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS: Well, let me say that Secretary Kerry just convened a meeting of the Security Council on Friday which showcased just how much support there is on the Security Council and in the broader international community for the anti-ISIL effort. STEPHANOPOULOS: But the Russia veto.
  • POWER: Russia has vetoed in the past, but on very different issues. I think Russia has made clear for a long time its opposition to ISIL. The Iraqis have appealed to the international community to come to their defense not only in Iraq, but also to go after safe havens in foreign countries. And what they mean by that of course is Syria. And they're quite explicit about that. So they have made an appeal to the international community for collective defense. And we think we have a legal basis we need if the president decides... STEPHANOPOULOS: Without a UN authorization. POWER: Consistent with the UN charter, we -- it will depend on the facts and circumstances of any particular strike in Syria, but we have a legal basis we need.
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Sep 14
     
    Context: U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, holds the U.N. Security Council's rotating chair this month. Powers'  claims a right for the U.S. to wage war against ISIL in Syria on grounds of the collective security exception to the U.N. Charter's prohibition; that is, that the U.S. has a collective security agreement with the nation of Iraq, that makes it lawful for the U.S. to strike ISIL. True enough as a matter of international law, ignoring the fact that Obama has yet to obtain permission from the U.S. Congress, which the U.S. Constitution requires him to do. But ISIL is not the nation of Syria; hence to attack ISIL in Syria, an additional exception is necessary for both Iraq and the U.S. The only other recognized exception that might seem to do deals with the situation when a nation in which a private organization inflicting harm on another nation  is "unwilling or unable" to protect the second nation (Iraq) from the depradations of the private organization. And that is where Powers' legal analysis dissembles because the U.S. has been actively attempting to overthrow the Syrian government via proxy terrorist organizations including ISIL. So the U.S. lacks clean hands in claiming any lawful right to invade Syria on the theory that the Syrian government is unwilling or unable to put down the ISIL organization. The Syrian government is certainly willing and has been attempting to do so. But its inability to do so thus far is entirely due to the U.S., its Gulf Coast state allies, and its ally Turkey continuing to supply ISIL and other terrorist groups in Syria with weapons, training, and supplies, aimed at overthrowing the Syrian government. The doctrine of unclean hands has limited applicability in international law governing human rights. See Lisa LaPlante, The Law of Remedies and the Clean Hands Doctrine: Exclusionary Reparation Policies in Peru's Political Transition, 23 Am Univ Int Law Rev 50 (2007), https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cg
Paul Merrell

UN to contact AT&T about report US wiretapped Internet at UN - 0 views

bigstory.ap.org/...port-us-wiretapped-internet-un

surveillance state NSA-targets U.N. AT&T

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations said Monday it plans to contact telecom giant AT&T about a report that it allowed the U.S. National Security Agency to wiretap all Internet communications at U.N. headquarters. Vannina Maestracci, a U.N. spokeswoman, said U.S. officials had previously given the United Nations assurances "that they are not ... monitoring our communications" when similar allegations arose. She was responding to a report in The New York Times which said AT&T provided technical assistance in carrying out a secret U.S. court order permitting the wiretapping of all Internet communications at the New York headquarters of the United Nations, which is a customer of the telecom company. While NSA spying on U.N. diplomats had been previously reported, the newspaper said Saturday that neither the court order nor AT&T's involvement had been disclosed. "The inviolability of the United Nations is well established under international law, and we expect member states to act accordingly and to respect and protect that inviolability," Maestracci said. But she said "surveillance at the United Nations is not something that's new, unfortunately." It is widely believed by those who work at the United Nations that numerous countries — not only the United States — gather intelligence in many different ways because U.N. headquarters is a gathering place for diplomats from the 193 member states, plus thousands of U.N. officials and representatives of non-governmental organization and the media.
Paul Merrell

Israel wants to "Settle Israeli Sovereignty over Syrian Golan Heights" | nsnbc internat... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...gnty-over-syrian-golan-heights

war & peace Israel U.S.-foreign-policy Golan-Heights Syria

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Israel’s Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has publicly called for “settling the Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights within the framework of the Israeli – Palestinian negotiations” adding that “part of this comprehensive bargain has to cover an understanding between Israel, the international community and the USA” and adding that “the Golan is part and parcel with Israel”.
  • The statement prompted a response by the Syrian government to the UN Secretary General and the President of the Security Council. The statement confirms information nsnbc received from a Palestinian intelligence expert in 2011 and 2012, who warned that Israel plans to permanently annex the Golan, parts of southern Lebanon and most of the West Bank, while planning to recognize a Palestinian State in the Gaza Strip plus micro enclaves in the West Bank. The statement also substantiates Christof Lehmann’s warnings about joint Israeli – US plans to that effect, issued in 2011, after the 66th Session of the UN General Assembly. During the 66th Session, US President Obama refused to recognize Palestine as a State, saying that “a solution for Palestine only could be found within the framework of a comprehensive solution for the Middle East“.
  • On Wednesday, the Syrian Foreign and Expatriates Ministry responded by sending two identical letters to the offices of the UN Secretary General and the President of the US Security Council, reports the Syrian news agency SANA. The letters inform the UN Secretary General and the UNSC President, that Lieberman made the statement on 31 January 2014, while visiting the occupied Syrian Golan. In the letters, the Syrian Foreign Ministry stressed that the Israeli Foreign Minister’s statements embody an insolent approach to the events in Syria and recklessness with regard to relevant UN resolutions, such as UNSC resolution 497 (1981) and others, which call on Israel to end the occupation of the Syrian Golan and all Arab lands which Israel has occupied since 1967. The Syrian government quotes Lieberman as claiming that: ” The dangers to security, linked to our capability to defend the North of the country, require a recognition of Isrel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights by the international community”. The Syrian Foreign Ministry stressed that Israel is sponsoring terrorism in Syria and that Israel seems as if it mistakenly believes that it can exploit its sponsorship of the terrorist war on Syria to achieve its expansionist ambitions. The Syrian Foreign Ministry also stressed that 47 years have passed since Israel’s occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights and that Israel has defied hundreds of resolutions and calls on ending the occupation and to stop its inhuman racial policies and its killing of civilians in the Israeli occupied territories.
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  • The ministry added that Lieberman’s statements indicate an escalation of Israel’s recklessness and disregard for the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly and stressed, that Israel must not be allowed to escape from compliance with international law, resolutions, and if necessary punishment. Syria requests that the UN Secretary General and the President of the UN Security Council guarantee that Israel respects the UN resolutions, to oblige Israel to end its occupation of the Syrian Golan, and to withdraw from the Golan according to the red line on 4 June 1967. The Foreign Ministry asserted, that the UN continuously deals with the Israeli occupation of the Syrian Golan “on a routine basis without any serious move to enforce the Security Council’s resolutions” and that this nonchalant posture encourages the illegal situation to continue” thus “undermining the credibility of the UN organization”.
  • It is worth reiterating, that Lehmann, already in 2011, warned that US President Obama’s statement pertaining the recognition of Palestine, and his article based on information from a Palestinian intelligence expert explicitly stated, that the US administration of Barak Obama and Israel are complicit in planning Israel’s permanent annexation of the Israeli occupied Syrian Golan Heights, parts of southern Lebanon and some 97 percent of the Palestinian West Bank, while establishing Palestinian small enclaves, dependent on Jordan, in the remaining 3 percent of the West Bank and a recognized Palestinian State in the Gaza Strip.
  • Paul Merrell on 01 Mar 15
     
    The return of the occupied Golan Heights is absolutely required by the U.N. Charter, Geneva Conventions, and numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions.  Israel's purported security concerns do not create a lawful exception. What is really at stake in the Golan Heights and the occupied territories of Palestine is whether the U.N. Charter did in fact put an end to the right of Conquest. 
Paul Merrell

Netanyahu Promises More Settler Homes in Jerusalem If Elected | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...-homes-in-jerusalem-if-elected

war & peace Israel Palestine Jerusalem Netanyahu

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Monday that, if reelected, he will build thousands of settler homes in occupied East Jerusalem to prevent future concessions to Palestinians. Speaking ahead of Tuesday’s general election on a whistle-stop tour of Har Homa, a contentious settlement neighborhood of annexed East Jerusalem, the PM vowed that he would never allow Palestinians to establish a capital in the city’s eastern sector.
  • “I won’t let that happen. My friends and I in Likud will preserve the unity of Jerusalem,” he said of his ruling right-wing party, according to AFP, vowing to prevent any future division of the city by building thousands of new settler homes. “We will continue to build in Jerusalem, we will add thousands of housing units, and in the face of all the (international) pressure, we will persist and continue to develop our eternal capital,” he added. During the 2013 negotiations, Israeli officials announced, and, eventually, carried out in full force, plans to build thousands of additional homes in illegal settlements across the occupied West Bank, while continuing to further seize lands, demolish homes and agricultural resources and, thus, leaving scores of Palestinian families severely disenfranchised and without so much as a roof over their heads to shelter them from inclement weather. Gazans were already surviving on a mere 8 hours per day of electricity when the Palestinian negotiating team finally resigned in protest, in mid-November. Israel, soon after, made quite clear its position on securing peace with Palestinians when Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, during a meeting with young Likud Party supporters, boasted: “I was threatened in Washington: ‘not one brick’ [of settlement construction] … after five years, we built a little more than one brick…”
  • Asked about “peace talks with the Palestinians”, the PM reportedly replied, according to +972 online Israeli magazine: “about the – what?” to which his audience responded with a round of chuckling. Critics of Israel’s aggressively right-wing regime assert that such peace negotiations are simply used as a front for continued settlement expansion and military occupation, noting that settlement activity clearly increases during negotiations, while daily acts of violence against Palestinians, by both Israeli civilians and soldiers alike, remains as of yet unchallenged by the powers that be. Israel seized East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it in a move never recognized by the international community. Israel refers to both halves of the city as its “united, undivided capital” and does not see construction in the eastern sector as settlement building. Successive Israeli leaders have vowed that Jerusalem will never again be divided — in war or peace.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15
     
    Israel's election is in the morning, although it will take a bit longer to learn who will become the Prime Minister. (Much depends on which party gets the nod from the Israeli President to try to form a ruling coalition; then it takes time tio form one.)  But this campaign promise deserves more credibility than most campaign promises in the U.S.: It's a promiose to do more of what Netanyahu has been doing since he came to power.  Multiple U.N. Security Council regulations have demanded that Israel return to its pre-1967 borders. And the U.N. General Council Resolution that is Israel's claim to legitimacy (although further action that never happened was required to become effective never happened) specifically provided that its allocation of territory to the Israeli government was conditioned on the existing rights of Palestinian within that territory be preserved. Moreover, Israel took Jerusalem (and other lands) during its 1967 Six-Day War. Under the 4th Geneva Convention, Israel was required to withdraw from all occupied territories and to permit all refugees to return to their homes "immediately upon cessation of hostilities." So Obama's campaign promise is a promise to commit a war crime and crime against humanity.  The truly disgusting parts are that: [i] the majority of Israeli Jews support that position; and [ii] the U.S. government even though it routinely calls the eviction of Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank to construct Israeli homes and settlements "illegal", routinely vetoes U.N. Security Council resolutions to bring Israel into compliance with the older S.C. resolutions and international law.   
Paul Merrell

Goldberg Sees Crisis in US-Israel Ties, Blames Bibi « LobeLog - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/-in-us-israel-ties-blames-bibi

U.S.-foreign-policy Mideast Israel-divorce

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • While everyone ritually insists that the bonds between Israel and the United States are “unbreakable,” yesterday’s analysis by Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here,” argues that they’re currently under unprecedented strain and that the fault lies mainly with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. The analysis argues further that, post-November, the Obama administration may no longer be inclined to protect Israel (at least to the same pathetic extent) at the UN Security Council and may even be willing to go a step further by presenting “a public full lay-down of the administration’s vision for a two-state solution, including maps delineating Israel’s borders. These borders, to Netanyahu’s horror, would based on 1967 lines, with significant West Bank settlement blocs attached to Israel in exchange for swapped land elsewhere. Such a lay-down would make explicit to Israel what the U.S. expects of it.” I’m not a big fan of Goldberg, but this analysis is definitely worth a read if for no other reason than his voice is a very important one in the US Jewish community, including among the right-wing leadership of its major national organizations. And he essentially gives over most of the article—in a way that suggests he shares their views—to anonymous administration officials who have clearly grown entirely contemptuous of the Israeli leader, calling him, among other names, “chickenshit.” Goldberg himself describes the Netanyahu government’s policy toward Palestinians as being “disconnected from reality” and stresses what he calls the “unease felt by mainstream American Jewish leaders about recent Israeli government behavior.” It seems that his chief envoy and confidante here, Ron Dermer, is not doing a good job.
  • Of particular interest to readers of this blog, however, are Goldberg’s observations about how the administration views Bibi’s bluster about Iran: The official said the Obama administration no longer believes that Netanyahu would launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to keep the regime in Tehran from building an atomic arsenal. “It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late.” This assessment represents a momentous shift in the way the Obama administration sees Netanyahu. In 2010, and again in 2012, administration officials were convinced that Netanyahu and his then-defense minister, the cowboyish ex-commando Ehud Barak, were readying a strike on Iran. To be sure, the Obama administration used the threat of an Israeli strike in a calculated way to convince its allies (and some of its adversaries) to line up behind what turned out to be an effective sanctions regime. But the fear inside the White House of a preemptive attack (or preventative attack, to put it more accurately) was real and palpable—as was the fear of dissenters inside Netanyahu’s Cabinet, and at Israel Defense Forces headquarters. At U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, analysts kept careful track of weather patterns and of the waxing and waning moon over Iran, trying to predict the exact night of the coming Israeli attack.
  • Today, there are few such fears. “The feeling now is that Bibi’s bluffing,” this second official said. “He’s not Begin at Osirak,” the official added, referring to the successful 1981 Israeli Air Force raid ordered by the ex-prime minister on Iraq’s nuclear reactor. The belief that Netanyahu’s threat to strike is now an empty one has given U.S. officials room to breathe in their ongoing negotiations with Iran. This is a significant passage. It suggests that the administration has decided to essentially ignore Netanyahu and his threats to take unilateral action, including when they are conveyed by members of Congress close to the Israel lobby. It also suggests strongly that the administration will not back up Israel if it should indeed undertake a strike of its own in hopes that Washington would be dragged into to finishing the job.
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  • Goldberg’s analysis about the state of the relationship is, in some ways, mirrored by Bret Stephens’s weekly “Global View” column in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, “Bibi and Barack on the Rocks,” although he, entirely predictably given his pro-settler worldview, sees Bibi as the wronged party. And, unlike Goldberg, he doesn’t see the US as the more powerful. Noting how Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon was snubbed by senior administration officials with whom he requested to meet, Stephens, a former editor of the Jerusalem Post, writes: The administration also seems to have forgotten that two can play the game. Two days after the Yaalon snub, the Israeli government announced the construction of 1,000 new housing units in so-called East Jerusalem, including 600 new units in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood that was the subject of a 2010 row with Joe Biden. Happy now, Mr. Vice President? Stephens calls for a “trial separation” by the two countries in which Israel will give up its $3 billion dollar/year US aid package to free itself from US interference
  • The administration likes to make much of the $3 billion a year it provides Israel (or, at least, U.S. defense contractors) in military aid, but that’s now less than 1% of Israeli GDP. Like some boorish husband of yore fond of boasting that he brings home the bacon, the administration thinks it’s the senior partner in the marriage. Except this wife can now pay her own bills. And she never ate bacon to begin with. It’s time for some time away. Israel needs to look after its own immediate interests without the incessant interventions of an overbearing partner. The administration needs to learn that it had better act like a friend if it wants to keep a friend. It isn’t as if it has many friends left. This is precisely where Goldberg believes current Israeli policy is leading it.
  • Netanyahu, and the even more hawkish ministers around him, seem to have decided that their short-term political futures rest on a platform that can be boiled down to this formula: “The whole world is against us. Only we can protect Israel from what’s coming.” …But for Israel’s future as an ally of the United States, this formula is a disaster.”
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 14
     
    If Goldberg and Stephens have it right, a U.S./Israel divorce might just spell the end of the appartheid state of Israel. It is only the U.S. veto on the U.N. Security Council that has enabled Israel to continue to treat Palestinians with impunity and to retain control of and colonize the territory it seized in the 1967 war that it launched. (The right to acquire territory by conquest was abolished by the U.N. Charter and the Fourth Geneva Convention in the late 1940s.)  Israel is now a pariah state internationally, with only the U.S., Canada, and a few minor island nations dependent on the U.S. still voting for Israel even in the U.N. General Council. Moreover, the U.S. public is fed up with the foreign wars the U.S. has been waging in the Mideast in aid of Israel's empirical goal of destabilizing and Balkanizing Israel's Arab neighbors. A U.S./Israel divorce would almost certainly bring down Netanyahu's government. On the other hand, the Obama Administration's relationship with Israel has been a departure from the historical norm in the U.S. and Obama's likely successor, Hillary Clinton, has long been much more friendly with the Israel Lobby than Obama.  Many close observers believe that Netanyahu's strategy with Obama has been to wait until Obama is out of office, betting that his successor will be much more amenable to Bibi's desires. But with Bernie Sanders hat in the ring for Auction 2016 and possibly Elizabeth Warren as well, it's conceivable that issues they raise might push Hillary to adopt a less Israel-friendly stance. But on yet another hand, Obama's stance on ISIL is entirely consistent with Israel's longstanding goal of regime change in Syria and Balkanization of Iraq into three nations along ethnic/religious lines, an independent  Kurdistan in the north, a Shia-stan in the South, and a Sunni state in the middle. Note in this regard Obama's strategy of arming "moderate" Syrians only to defend territory ISIL has not yet seized, then to bring down t
Paul Merrell

READ: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Addresses the United Nations | Fox News Insider - 0 views

foxnewsinsider.com/...sident-mahmoud-abbas-un-speech

war & peace Israel Palestine Palestinian statehood

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Here is the transcript of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ address to the U.N. General Assembly:
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Dec 12
     
    Highly recommended reading for those who wish to begin building an understanding of Israeli-Palestinian relations, the major root cause of U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and likely soon, Iran. Palestinian Presiden Abbas addresses the U.N. General Assembly upon the occasion of the Palestinian Authority being granted the status of "observer state," which permits the P.A. to join the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court and initiate prosecution of Israeli officials for ware crimes. The resolution upgrading the Palestinians' status to a nonmember observer state at the U.N. was approved by a vote of 138-9, with 41 abstentions, in the 193-member world body. The U.S., Canada, and Czechoslovakia  were the only western nations voting "no." Israel's pariah nation status is now official and U.S. foreign policy is long overdue for overhaul in that regard. With friends like Israel, who needs enemies? 
Paul Merrell

CNN apologizes for commentator who called WikiLeaks founder a 'pedophile' | McClatchy DC - 0 views

www.mcclatchydc.com/...article124566504.html

WIkileaks Assange libel Dark-State harrassment

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • In fact, the pedophile allegation has little to do with Assange’s plight that has kept him in the embassy in London, which involves incidents in Stockholm in the summer of 2010.
  • Rather, it is a bizarre tale involving a Houston-based dating website and its global and well-funded efforts to discredit Assange around the globe. The byzantine saga involves disconnected telephones and mystery websites. The website, toddandclare.com, launched and ramped up its efforts against Assange during the U.S. presidential campaign, as WikiLeaks released hacked emails related to the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.Whoever is behind the dating site has marshaled significant resources to target Assange, enough to gain entry into a United Nations body, operate in countries in Europe, North America and the Caribbean, conduct surveillance on Assange’s lawyer in London, obtain the fax number of Canada’s prime minister and seek to prod a police inquiry in the Bahamas.The dating site’s campaign sought to thwart WikiLeaks’ efforts and discredit Assange, who played a role in a presidential campaign season that deeply divided the U.S. electorate and illuminated Russia as a major cyber adversary of the U.S. government.One part of toddandclare’s two-pronged campaign put a megaphone to unproven charges that Assange made contact with a young Canadian girl in the Bahamas through the internet with the intention of molesting her. The second part sought to entangle him in a plan to receive $1 million from the Russian government.
  • WikiLeaks claims the dating site is “a highly suspicious and likely fabricated” company. In turn, the company has lashed out at Assange and “his despicable activities against American national security,” and warned journalists to “check with your libel lawyers first before printing anything that could impact or endanger innocent people’s lives.”For nearly two months after the October allegations, toddandclare.com went off line. But it recently reappeared, repeating charges about the 8-year-old Canadian girl. The website did not immediately respond Thursday to a new query from McClatchy, and no respondent in the past has given a name or allowed telephone contact.The online company paints itself as all-American. Online material says its founders, Todd and Clare Hammond, “are an average American couple from Michigan, who met in the eighth grade.” In 2011, the company says, the Christian couple started an email dating service, and “have married 3,000 couples to date.” Their online network began in 2015, and a statement it filed to a U.N. body says it has “100,000+ female singles” in six countries. The company’s operating address is a warehouse loading dock in Houston. Its mail goes to a Houston drop box. Its phone numbers no longer work. WikiLeaks says Texas officials tell it the entity is not registered there either under toddandclare.com or a parent company, T&C Network Solutions.A person who answered emails to the website in November declined to identify him or herself.
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  • The people behind toddandclare.com persuaded a U.N. body known as the Global Compact to give it status as a participant in May, and it submitted an eight-page report to the U.N. group Oct. 4 carefully laying out its allegations against Assange. The firm was delisted by the U.N. body eight days later amid controversy over its claims. The report was later taken off the internet. An Australian lawyer, Melinda Taylor, said the report’s precise language raised additional suspicions at WikiLeaks, where she assists Assange in human rights litigation.“This is not a report that’s been drafted by a dating agency. It’s highly legalistic and very structured. It’s the language of someone who has drafted complex legal submissions,” she said.Under Todd Hammond’s name, the report alleged that Assange’s Swedish lawyer had reached out in June to offer Assange’s services on a campaign against rape in exchange for an undisclosed amount of bitcoin. It said the two sides held two videoconferences.Then came the bombshell: It said the company had ended ties with Assange following “pedophile crimes” he had committed in the Bahamas in late September. It charged that the victim was the 8-year-old daughter of a Canadian couple on a monthlong yachting vacation. The father went to police in Nassau on Sept. 28, the report claimed, charging that his family held video and chat logs showing Assange “internet grooming” the child and “propositioning the 8-year-old juvenile ‘to perform oral and anal sex acts.’ ”It said Assange made a connection to the child’s 22-year-old sister, who was a client of the online dating site, from his refuge in London, eventually gaining access to the young girl.
  • An assistant commissioner for the Royal Bahamas Police Force, Stephen Dean, said “there is no investigation” into any such incident and that the police have received no evidence that such an incident occurred.“We got a phone call of someone giving us some information. But we never had a face-to-face. It could have been a hoax,” Dean said. “We don’t know.”If someone were in possession of video or chat logs about a pedophile crime, he or she did not provide them to Bahamian police, Dean said, which he said would be odd: “If you have something so significant, I think you’d want to leave a report.”Assange’s Swedish lawyer, Per Samuelson, wrote to the U.N. body on Oct. 10 alleging that Hammond’s report against Assange was “entirely false” in all its facets and that he had had no contact with the dating site or Hammond.Even as authorities in the Bahamas dismissed the report, the dating site sent a fax Oct. 17 to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saying the Canadian family had fled the Bahamas due to “anti-white, racist abuse by Bahamian police.”“Julian Assange ... has started a smear campaign to claim our dating company is behind an elaborate scam. It is fully to be expected. Pedophiles are devious and cunning,” the fax said.The company said it would “continue to protect the family’s identity, until either the (Royal Bahamas Police Force) conduct a proper investigation, or hell freezes over. Whichever comes first.”
  • The fax was signed, “The Todd and Clare Team,” and left no way to contact the firm.While the founders of toddandclare.com say they’ve been in the matchmaking business since 2011, their internet presence dates only to September 2015 and really got going only early last year. Those who have done work for the company say they were kept at arm’s length.By summer, in the run-up to what many expected to be an “October surprise” from WikiLeaks to make an impact on the U.S. election, toddandclare.com began moving against Assange in multiple countries simultaneously. The DNC and a cyber-threat intelligence firm it had hired, CrowdStrike, were already fingering Russia as behind the hacks that would provide the fodder for WikiLeaks. They’d said in June that Russian hackers had access to DNC servers for about a year.A company representative, identifying herself as Hannah Hammond, emailed Assange’s Swedish and British legal agents offering $1 million for him to appear in a five-minute tongue-in-cheek television advertisement. In a subsequent exchange Sept. 19, the representative wrote that “the source of the $1,000,000 is the Russian government.”In a curious twist, she offered what she said were three facts about Assange’s London attorney that are “unknown to the public,” including details inside her home and an event in her son’s life, suggesting a capability to conduct surveillance.Taylor, the Assange lawyer, said the details appeared “to create the impression that the members of his team were under close surveillance and/or to bolster the bona fides of the claim that the offer was linked to a State. Its inclusion does appear quite menacing.”
  • A lawyer identifying himself only as “James” responded the next day, slamming the offer as an “elaborate scam designed to entrap” Assange and embarrass him for ties to Russia.The dating site representative sought to pull the veil off “James.”“Julian: We know it’s you writing. The offer expires at midnight, October 31st 2016,” she wrote back on Sept. 21, according to copies of the emails posted by WikiLeaks on its website.By early October, toddandclare.com went on the offensive. It filed a civil complaint in a British court against Assange, seeking 295 pounds sterling – about $359 – in damages because it said it could no longer use his services due to the “child sex offenses in Nassau.”The suit, said Taylor, Assange’s lawyer, “seems to be designed to evade defamation law in the U.K. They’ve put highly noxious information knowing that it would be made public.”The global tussle between the online dating company and WikiLeaks went public in mid-October when the anti-secrecy group voiced public doubt on whether toddandclare.com actually existed, or served only as a vehicle to attack Assange.
  • The announcement opened the gates for a disparate crew of internet sleuths – some motivated by hatred of Clinton and others impelled by support for WikiLeaks – to probe into the history of toddandclare.com, suspicious that the dating site might be an undercover operation with links to the Clinton campaign.Posting their findings on the discussion websites like Reddit.com, they unearthed some curious coincidences. A perusal into the archives of the internet revealed that the Hammonds had once occupied a San Francisco building later rented to a company, Premise Data, whose co-founder has ties to Clinton and her top supporters.Moreover, a telephone number once registered to a Todd Hammond later was registered to a former Premise employee, Aaron Dunn, although with a different area code.Premise co-founder David Soloff said such findings could only be coincidences.“I want to reiterate that Premise has no connection with this case. And beyond confirming that Aaron Dunn worked at Premise until 2014, I don’t know the answer to any of your questions,” Soloff wrote in an email.
Paul Merrell

U.S. military confirms rebels had sarin - 1 views

www.wnd.com/...tary-confirms-rebels-had-sarin

war & peace WMD Syria Iraq Russia al-Qaeda al-Nusra NGIC

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Sep 13 - Cached
Gary Edwards liked it
  • As part of the Obama administration’s repeated insistence – though without offering proof – that the recent sarin gas attack near Damascus was the work of the Assad regime, the administration has downplayed or denied the possibility that al-Qaida-linked Syrian rebels could produce deadly chemical weapons. However, in a classified document just obtained by WND, the U.S. military confirms that sarin was confiscated earlier this year from members of the Jabhat al-Nusra Front, the most influential of the rebel Islamists fighting in Syria. The document says sarin from al-Qaida in Iraq made its way into Turkey and that while some was seized, more could have been used in an attack last March on civilians and Syrian military soldiers in Aleppo.
  • The document, classified Secret/Noforn – “Not for foreign distribution” – came from the U.S. intelligence community’s National Ground Intelligence Center, or NGIC, and was made available to WND Tuesday. It revealed that AQI had produced a “bench-scale” form of sarin in Iraq and then transferred it to Turkey. A U.S. military source said there were a number of interrogations as well as some clan reports as part of what the document said were “50 general indicators to monitor progress and characterize the state of the ANF/AQI-associated Sarin chemical warfare agent developing effort.” “This (document) depicts our assessment of the status of effort at its peak – primarily research and procurement activities – when disrupted in late May 2013 with the arrest of several key individuals in Iraq and Turkey,” the document said. “Future reporting of indicators not previously observed would suggest that the effort continues to advance despite the arrests,” the NGIC document said.
  • This seizure followed a chemical weapons attack in March on the Khan al-Assal area of rural Aleppo, Syria. In that attack, some 26 people and Syrian government forces were killed by what was determined to be sarin gas, delivered by a rocket attack. The Syrian government called for an investigation by the United Nations. Damascus claimed al-Qaida fighters were behind the attack, also alleging that Turkey was involved. “The rocket came from a place controlled by the terrorists and which is located close to the Turkish territory,” according to a statement from Damascus. “One can assume that the weapon came from Turkey.” The report of the U.S. intelligence community’s NGIC reinforces a preliminary U.N. investigation of the attack in Aleppo which said the evidence pointed to Syrian rebels. It also appears to bolster allegations in a 100-page report on an investigation turned over to the U.N. by Russia. The report concluded the Syrian rebels – not the Syrian government – had used the nerve agent sarin in the March chemical weapons attack in Aleppo.
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  • The May 2013 seizure occurred when Turkish security forces discovered a two-kilogram cylinder with sarin gas while searching homes of Syrian militants from the al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra Front following their initial detention. The sarin gas was found in the homes of suspected Syrian Islamic radicals detained in the southern provinces of Adana and Mersia. Some 12 suspected members of the al-Nusra Front were arrested. At the time, they were described by Turkish special anti-terror forces as the “most aggressive and successful arm” of the Syrian rebels. In the seizure, Turkish anti-terror police also found a cache of weapons, documents and digital data. At the time of the arrest, the Russians called for a thorough investigation of the detained Syrian militants found in possession of sarin gas.
  • The NGIC depiction of the variety of sarin as “bench-scale” reinforces an analysis by terrorism expert Yossef Bodansky, who said the recent findings on the chemical weapons attack of Aug. 21 on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria, was “indeed a self-inflicted attack” by the Syrian opposition to provoke U.S. and military intervention in Syria.
  • While the contents of the report have yet to be released, sources tell WND the documentation indicates that deadly sarin poison gas was manufactured in a Sunni-controlled region of Iraq and then transported to Turkey for use by the Syrian opposition, whose ranks have swelled with members of al-Qaida and affiliated groups. The documentation that the U.N. received from the Russians indicated specifically that the sarin gas was supplied to Sunni foreign fighters by a Saddam-era general working under the outlawed Iraqi Baath party leader, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri. Al-Douri was a top aide to Saddam Hussein before he was deposed as Iraqi president. The sarin nerve gas used in the Allepo attack, sources say, had been prepared by former Iraqi Military Industries Brig. Gen. Adnan al-Dulaimi. It then was supplied to Baath-affiliated foreign fighters of the Sunni and Saudi Arabian-backed al-Nusra Front in Aleppo, with Turkey’s cooperation, through the Turkish town of Antakya in Hatay Province. The source who brought out the documentation now in the hands of the U.N. is said to have been an aide to al-Douri. Al-Dulaimi was a major player in Saddam’s chemical weapons production projects, the former aide said. Moreover, Al-Dulaimi has been working in the Sunni-controlled region of northwestern Iraq where the outlawed Baath party now is located and produces the sarin.
  • The terrorism expert said that the jihadist movement has technologies which have been confirmed in captured jihadist labs in both Turkey and Iraq, as well as from the wealth of data recovered from al-Qaida in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002. He added that the projectiles shown by the opposition, which were tested by U.N. inspectors, are not standard weapons of the Syrian army.
  • Now, a former analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, Ray McGovern, similarly backs the claim that the Syrian rebels perpetrated the poison gas attack on Aug. 21 McGovern was one of a number of veteran intelligence professionals who recently signed a letter to Obama saying that Damascus wasn’t behind the Aug. 21 chemical attack. As WND recently reported, former U.S. intelligence analysts claim current intelligence analysts have told them Assad was not responsible for the Aug. 21 poison gas attack, saying there was a “growing body of evidence” that reveals the incident was a pre-planned provocation by the Syrian opposition.
  • “Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and Qatari, Turkish and U.S. intelligence officials took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, now used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army and their foreign sponsors,” the analysts said.
  • The VIPS memo to Obama reinforces separate videos, which show foreign fighters associated with the Syrian opposition firing artillery canisters of poison gas. One video shows Nadee Baloosh, a member of an al-Qaida-affiliated group Rioyadh al-Abdeen, admitting to the use of chemical weapons. In the video clip, al-Abdeen, who is in the Latakia area of Syria, said his forces used “chemicals which produce lethal and deadly gases that I possess.”
Paul Merrell

Remarks by President Obama in Address to the United Nations General Assembly | The Whit... - 0 views

www.whitehouse.gov/...nited-nations-general-assembly

Obama UN-Speech

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Remarks by President Obama in Address to the United Nations General Assembly United Nations New York, New York
  • To summarize, the United States has a hard-earned humility when it comes to our ability to determine events inside other countries.  The notion of American empire may be useful propaganda, but it isn’t borne out by America’s current policy or by public opinion.  Indeed, as recent debates within the United States over Syria clearly show, the danger for the world is not an America that is too eager to immerse itself in the affairs of other countries or to take on every problem in the region as its own.  The danger for the world is that the United States, after a decade of war -- rightly concerned about issues back home, aware of the hostility that our engagement in the region has engendered throughout the Muslim world -- may disengage, creating a vacuum of leadership that no other nation is ready to fill. I believe such disengagement would be a mistake.  I believe America must remain engaged for our own security.  But I also believe the world is better for it.  Some may disagree, but I believe America is exceptional -- in part because we have shown a willingness through the sacrifice of blood and treasure to stand up not only for our own narrow self-interests, but for the interests of all. 
  • We live in a world of imperfect choices.  Different nations will not agree on the need for action in every instance, and the principle of sovereignty is at the center of our international order.  But sovereignty cannot be a shield for tyrants to commit wanton murder, or an excuse for the international community to turn a blind eye.  While we need to be modest in our belief that we can remedy every evil, while we need to be mindful that the world is full of unintended consequences, should we really accept the notion that the world is powerless in the face of a Rwanda or Srebrenica?  If that’s the world that people want to live in, they should say so and reckon with the cold logic of mass graves. But I believe we can embrace a different future.  And if we don’t want to choose between inaction and war, we must get better -- all of us -- at the policies that prevent the breakdown of basic order.  Through respect for the responsibilities of nations and the rights of individuals.  Through meaningful sanctions for those who break the rules.  Through dogged diplomacy that resolves the root causes of conflict, not merely its aftermath.  Through development assistance that brings hope to the marginalized.  And yes, sometimes -- although this will not be enough -- there are going to be moments where the international community will need to acknowledge that the multilateral use of military force may be required to prevent the very worst from occurring.
  • Paul Merrell on 25 Sep 13
     
    This just may be the speech in which Barack Obama's speechwriters managed to set a new record in presidential hypocrisy. It's long and a very depressing read for someone who is intimately familiar with the issues he discusses. I've tried to highlight only the tastiest meat of the beast. But it's worth reading the whole thing, from the traitor's pledge of undying allegiance to Israel through the announcement that nothing has changed in America other than a public that is demanding peace but won't get it from Mr. Obama. Mr. Obama's contempt for the U.N. Charter riddles his speech, a treaty that is enshrined in our own law through the Constitution's Treaty Clause, is remarkable. That charter of course forbids wars of aggression (and threats thereof) absent the authorization of all permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.  
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Sep 13
     
    Related: the top 45 lies in Obama's U.N. speech: http://warisacrime.org/content/top-45-lies-obamas-speech-un
Paul Merrell

What GOP Senators Don't Understand About Iran | Al Jazeera America - 0 views

america.aljazeera.com/...not-understand-about-iran.html

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Iranian-nukes-myth Security Council Obama negotiations

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • There’s a charming naiveté to the open letter [PDF] by 47 Republican senators that condescendingly seeks to explain features of the U.S. constitutional system to Iran’s leaders that they otherwise “may not fully understand.” The missive warns that, with respect to “your nuclear negotiations with our government ... any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress” could be revoked by the next president “with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”
  • Beyond the amusing inaccuracies about U.S. parliamentary order, it seems there are some features of the nuclear negotiations that the signatory senators don’t fully understand — not only on the terms of the deal, but also on who would be party to an agreement. There are no negotiations on Iran’s “nuclear-weapons program” because the world’s intelligence agencies (including those of the U.S. and Israel) do not believe Iran is currently building nuclear weapons, nor has it made a strategic decision to use its civilian nuclear infrastructure to produce a bomb. An active Iranian nuclear-weapons program would render moot the current negotiations, because Iran would be in fundamental violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). As things stand, Tehran remains within the terms of the NPT, which allows nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, but monitors member states to prevent weaponization. Tehran and the IAEA remain in dispute over full compliance with all transparency requirements of the NPT, particularly over alleged previous research into weapons design. But Iran’s nuclear facilities remain under constant monitoring by international inspectors who certify that no nuclear material is being diverted.
  • The current negotiations are focused on strengthening verifiable safeguards against weaponization over-and-above those required by the NPT, yet the Republican-led Congress, egged on by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is warning that those goals are insufficient, and the terms and time-frame of the deal are unacceptable. The key element missing from the GOP Senators’ letter, however, is that the deal is not being negotiated between Iran and the United States; it is being negotiated between Iran and the P5+1 group, in which the U.S. is joined by Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. Even if the U.S. is the key player in that group, the deal being pursued reflects an international consensus — the same consensus that has made sanctions against Iran so effective. This was likely in the mind of Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, who dismissed the letter as “of no legal value” and a “propaganda ploy.” Zarif noted that the deal would indeed be an international agreement adopted by the U.N. Security Council, which a new administration would be obliged to uphold — and that any attempt by the White House or Congress to abrogate, unilaterally modify or impede such an agreement would be a breach of U.S. obligations. 
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Mar 15
     
    "Zarif noted that the deal would indeed be an international agreement adopted by the U.N. Security Council, which a new administration would be obliged to uphold - and that any attempt by the White House or Congress to abrogate, unilaterally modify or impede such an agreement would be a breach of U.S. obligations." Apparently, I was wrong. I thought Obama would work around the demand for Congressional input by letting the other P5+1 members ink the deal but the U.S. not signing. But a U.N. Security Council Resolution is even stronger medicine for the War Party, since the SC has the power to forbid economic sanctions as well. Take that, Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Boehner!
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Mar 15
     
    Could anything make it more clear that Netanyahu's speech to Congress was only to aid in his reelection in Israel? Israel has been briefed on the negotiations all along, so Netanyahu surely knew that the goal was a Security Council resolution that Congress could not affect. And while admittedly, the fact that it was a Security Council Resolution in the making was not widely known, are we to believe that the Speaker of the House of Representatives did not know that too? So are now not down to the entire spectacle of Netanyahu's speech being political, Netanyahu electioneering and Boehner mud-slinging the President?
Paul Merrell

UN officials accused of bowing to Israeli pressure over children's rights list | World ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...pressure-childrens-rights-list

war & peace U.N. Israel IDF child-rights

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Senior UN officials in Jerusalem have been accused of caving in to Israeli pressure to abandon moves to include the state’s armed forces on a UN list of serious violators of children’s rights. UN officials backed away from recommending that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) be included on the list following telephone calls from senior Israeli officials. The Israelis allegedly warned of serious consequences if a meeting of UN agencies and NGOs based in Jerusalem to ratify the recommendation went ahead. Within hours, the meeting was cancelled. “Top officials have buckled under political pressure,” said a UN source. “As a result, a clear message has been given that Israel will not be listed.”
  • Organisations pressing for the IDF’s inclusion on the list since the war in Gaza last summer – which left more than 500 children dead and more than 3,300 injured – include Save the Children and War Child as well as at least a dozen Palestinian human rights organisations, the Israeli rights organisation B’Tselem and UN bodies such as the children’s agency Unicef. “These organisations are in uproar over what has happened,” said the UN source
  • The IDF’s inclusion on the UN’s list of grave violators of children’s rights would place it alongside non-state armed forces such as Islamic State, Boko Haram and the Taliban. There are no other state armies on the list. It would propel Israel further towards pariah status within international bodies and could lead to UN sanctions.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Although Jerusalem-based officials cancelled the meeting – and subsequently decided not to recommend the IDF’s inclusion on the list – the UN complained to Israel over the intimidation of its staff. Susana Malcorra – a high-ranking official in the New York office of the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon – raised the issue in a private letter to Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor. The UN in New York said it could not comment on leaked documents. The telephone calls were made to June Kunugi, Unicef’s special representative to Palestine and Israel, on 12 February, the night before a meeting to decide whether to recommend the IDF’s inclusion on the list. One call was from a senior figure in Cogat, the Israeli government body that coordinates between the IDF, the Palestinian Authority and the international community; the other was made by an official in Israel’s foreign ministry.
  • ccording to UN and NGO sources, Kunugi was advised to cancel the meeting or face serious consequences. However, Israeli sources described the telephone conversations as friendly and courteous attempts to persuade Kunugi to delay the working group’s decision on its recommendation regarding the IDF until Israel had been allowed to present its case on the issue. At 8.54am the next morning, an email was sent on behalf of James Rawley, a senior official with UNSCO (the office of the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process) who had called the meeting, to participants. It said: “Please be informed that today’s meeting scheduled at 13:00hrs has been postponed. Sincere apologies for the inconvenience this may have caused.” A joint statement to the Guardian from Kunugi and Rawley said the “strictly confidential process” of determining inclusion on the list was still ongoing and was the “prerogative of the UN secretary general, and it rests with him alone”. The UN in Jerusalem was unable to comment on the process, it added, but the submission from Jerusalem to New York was “based on verified facts, not influenced by any member state or other entity”.
  • Unicef has called a fresh meeting to update UN and NGO officials in Jerusalem on Thursday. The decision on which state and non-state armed forces are to be included on the list will be taken by UN chiefs in New York next month. However, according to the UN source, “a political decision has already been taken not to include Israel”.
  • A separate source told the Guardian: “The UN caved to Israel’s political pressure and took a highly contentious step to shelter Israel from accountability.” The list of violators of children’s rights is contained in the annex of the annual report of the secretary general on children and armed conflict. A “monitoring and reporting mechanism”, established by a UN security council resolution, supplies information on grave violations of children’s rights, such as killing and maiming, recruitment of minors into armed forces, attacks on schools, rape, abduction, and denial of humanitarian access to children. The secretary general is required to list armed forces or armed groups responsible for such actions. Following last summer’s seven-week war in Gaza, a number of UN agencies and NGOs met to consider whether to recommend the IDF’s inclusion on the list. According to insiders, participants “agreed there is a strong and credible case to recommend listing”.
  • A 13-page internal Unicef paper seen by the Guardian examined the case for the IDF to be listed on the basis of its actions in last summer’s war in Gaza, including the killing and injuring of children, and “targeted and indiscriminate” attacks on schools and hospitals. Several of the working group’s participants wrote to the UN secretary general to urge the inclusion of the IDF on the list. A letter sent in December by Defence for Children International (Palestine) said: “There is ample evidence to demonstrate that Israel’s armed forces have committed acts that amount to the grave violations against children during armed conflict, as defined by UN security council resolutions, including killing or maiming children and attacks against schools and hospitals.” The Israeli ministry of foreign affairs and Cogat declined to answer specific questions about the phone calls to Kunugi, but said in a joint statement: “Israel has a good working relationship with Unicef and the United Nations in general. Israel has no desire to get into a slanging match with anti-Israel elements nor to submit to their intimidations.”
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Mar 15
     
    More information, including that Palestine Civil Society has requested that U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to discharge two U.N. officials involved becuase of this issue and because of signifificant delays that work to Israel's advantage in reconstruction of Gaza following Israel's assault last summer. http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/un-providing-israel-cover-killing-gazas-children
Paul Merrell

AP News : Both sides prepare for new Gaza war crimes probe - 0 views

m.apnews.com/...contentdetail.htm

war & peace Israel Palestine Gaza ICC war crimes

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • In a replay of the last major Gaza conflict, human rights defenders are again accusing Israel and Hamas of violating the rules of war, pointing to what they say appear to be indiscriminate or deliberate attacks on civilians.In 2009, such war crimes allegations leveled by U.N. investigators - and denied by both sides at the time - never came close to reaching the International Criminal Court.Some Palestinians hope the outcome will be different this time, in part because President Mahmoud Abbas, as head of a U.N.-recognized state of Palestine, has since earned the right to turn directly to the court.Still, the road to the ICC, set up in 2002 to prosecute war crimes, is filled with formidable political obstacles.
  • Israel and the United States strongly oppose bringing any possible charges stemming from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before the court, arguing such proceedings could poison the atmosphere and make future peace talks impossible.If Abbas seeks a war crimes investigation of Israel, he could lose Western support and expose Hamas - a major Palestinian player - to the same charges.
  • Unlike in 2009, Abbas has the option of turning to the court directly because of the upgrade in legal standing awarded by the U.N. General Assembly in 2012. At the time, the assembly recognized "Palestine" in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem as a non-member observer state, meeting the ICC requirement of accepting requests for jurisdiction from states over crimes committed in their territory.After 20 years of failed negotiations with Israel, many Palestinians believe the ICC offers the only opportunity to hold Israel accountable, not only for Gaza military operations, but for continued expansion of settlement-building on occupied lands. With daily scenes of Gaza carnage, the West Bank-based Abbas is under growing pressure to join the court.He still hesitates, because going after Israel at the ICC would signal a fundamental policy shift, instantly turning his tense relationship with Israel into a hostile one and creating a rift with the United States.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • He also has Hamas to consider, since action against Israel would likely trigger a war crimes investigation of Hamas as well. The Islamic militant group seized Gaza from Abbas in 2007, and relations between the two rivals remain tense. However, they reached a power-sharing agreement in the spring and Abbas does not want to return to confrontations with Hamas.Last week, Abbas told leaders of PLO factions in the West Bank that he would only turn to the ICC if Hamas agrees, in writing. Abbas aide Saeb Erekat told The Associated Press on Monday that he put the request to the top Hamas leader in exile, Khaled Mashaal, in a meeting in Doha last week. Erekat said he was told that Hamas needs time to decide.
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Aug 14
     
    Some conflicting reports on Palestine taking Israel to the International Criminal Court charging war crimes. The conflict may be because of the different times they were published This article published yesterday says that Abbas said last week that he would only do so if Hamas agrees and said he was awaiting a decision by Hamas. But the Haaretz live blog on Gaza says that "Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki says after meeting prosecutors at the International Criminal Court [today] that there was "clear evidence" that Israel committed war crimes in  Gaza." http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.608928 So it sounds like Palestine has initiated the process at the ICC and that Hamas leadership has decided to accept the risk that they will face war crime charges themselves. If so, that's a strong sign that some nation has agreed to bankroll the Palestine government if the U.S. ends its aid to Palestine. Most likely Qatar from what I've read. The U.N. Human Rights Council has already launched its own investigation of potential war crimes committed during Israel's latest invasion of Gaza. An article passed by me sometime during the last 48 hours that quoted the Chief Prosecutor at the ICC to the effect that she would act if Palestine filed charges but said that "the ball is in Palestine's court." The ICC has been widely criticized for its preference of convicting the leaders of African nations rather than of caucasian nations. Given that circumstance, the Court of 15 judges may welcome the Palestinian opportunity to prove that it is willing to convict leaders of a non-African nation. Certainly, Israel's occupation and colonization of Palestine since hostilities ceased in 1967 offers more than fertile ground for such a case. I have to admit that I enjoy my mental picture of Benjamin Netanyahu in chains standing in the Court's dock in The Hague. 
Gary Edwards

GOP Platform Rejects UN Agenda 21 as Threat to Sovereignty - 0 views

thenewamerican.com/...da-21-as-threat-to-sovereignty

Agenda-21 GOP-Platform

shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Mar 13
     
    Too bad Romney didn't think enough of the GOP Platform to sell it to the American people.  Probably cost him the election, and us our country. "The official GOP platform approved at the Republican National Convention in Tampa included tough language rejecting the United Nations "sustainability" scheme known as Agenda 21 for the threat it represents to national sovereignty, drawing praise from conservative and Tea Party leaders across the country. The Republican Party document also rejected any form of UN global taxes and slammed a wide range of the international body's controversial programs.  In a section of the 54-page platform entitled "Sovereign American Leadership in International Organizations," the GOP noted that multilateral bodies such as the UN and NATO sometimes fail to serve the cause of peace and prosperity. As such, the U.S. government must always reserve the right to go its own way. "There can be no substitute for principled American leadership," the platform says. The UN in particular remains in "dire need of reform," Republicans said in the document, attacking the global organization's "overpaid bureaucrats," its "scandal-ridden management," and the fact that some of the world's most barbaric tyrants hold seats on the so-called "Human Rights Council." Unless and until the situation improves, the platform stated, the UN can never expect the full support of the American people. Some Republicans such as Congressman Ron Paul go further, calling for the United States to get out of the UN entirely. Some matters, however, are non-negotiable. "We strongly reject the U.N. Agenda 21 as erosive of American sovereignty, and we oppose any form of U.N. Global Tax," the platform explains. The language echoes a resolution adopted by the GOP earlier this year slamming the planetary scheme to enforce so-called "sustainable development" on the world. Since then, state and local Republican parties as well as state legisl
Paul Merrell

US And Germany Declare Golan Heights Not Part Of Israel - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...215725

war & peace Syria Israel Golan-Heights

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • U.S. State Department spokesperson John Kirby stressed Monday night that the Obama administration does not consider the Golan Heights to be part of Israel, one day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed they “will forever remain under Israeli sovereignty.” “The U.S. position on the issue is unchanged,” Kirby told reporters during a daily briefing at the State Department in Washington. “This position was maintained by both Democratic and Republican administrations. Those territories are not part of Israel and the status of those territories should be determined through negotiations. The current situation in Syria does not allow this,” Kirby continued.
  • Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz expressed support for Netanyahu’s comments on the Golan, saying that “the government of Israel reiterated the reality that the Golan Heights are part of Israel’s sovereign territory.” Cruz added that it’s “dangerous for the international community to try to pressure Israel to abandon the Golan to the chaos engulfing Syria.”
  • The U.S. is the second country after Germany to respond to Netanyahu’s declaration that the Golan, captured from Syria in the 1967 war and later annexed, “will forever remain under Israeli sovereignty.” “It’s a basic principle of international law and the UN charter that no state can claim the right to annex another state’s territory just like that,” Martin Schaefer, spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry, said Monday. Israel annexed the Golan in 198, in a move unanimously rejected the same year by the United Nations Security Council. Netanyahu’s declaration came as UN-sponsored international efforts are being made to obtain a political accord to end the civil war in Syria. Officials in the Prime Minister’s Office say that Syrian President Assad demanded that one principle upon which the international talks will be based is that the Golan Heights be considered occupied territory that must be returned to Syria. On Thursday, Netanyahu will fly to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Netanyahu’s senior aides say the prime minister plans to bring up this issue at their meeting and to stress the same message to Putin.
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Apr 16
     
    There's nothing to negotiate. The Golan is Syrian territory and Israel just needs to leave. Someone needs to give Sen. Cruz a clue that since the U.N. Charter was adopted and ratified by the U.S. it has been "the law of this land" (in the words of the Constitution) that nations cannot gain territory through invasion. The Age of Conquest is over. Israel has been ignoring a long series of U.N. Security Council Resolutions ordering it to get out of the Golan Heights (and Palestine). 
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