In this statement released Wednesday, a group of international law experts warn that a U.S. military strike on Syria would be illegal if not in self-defense or with U.N. Security Council authorization.
We are practitioners and professors of international law. Under international law, military strikes by the United States of America and its allies against the Syrian Arab Republic, unless conducted in self-defense or with United Nations Security Council approval, are illegal and constitute acts of aggression.
The unlawful killing of any human being without legal justification, under every legal system, is murder. And an act of violence committed by one government against another government, without lawful justification, amounts to the crime of aggression: the supreme international crime which carries with it the evil of every other international crime, as noted by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1946.
The use of military force by a state can be used in self-defense after an armed attack by another state, or, with the approval of the United Nations Security Council. At present, neither instance would apply to a U.S. strike against Syria.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
We understand the urge to act to protect innocent civilians. We strongly condemn any and all violence against civilians, whoever the perpetrators. But responding to unlawful violence with more unlawful violence, bypassing existing legal mechanisms, is a road to a lawless world. It is a road that leads to Hell.
Accordingly, we urge the United States and its allies to refrain from illegal conduct against Syria. We must point out that for the last several years, as is now common knowledge, the United States has armed rebels/insurgents to overthrow the current government of Syria. This is illegal under international law.
In 1986, in The Nicaragua Case, the International Court of Justice reprimanded the United States for arming and supporting contra militias and combatants, and for mining Nicaragua’s harbors, as acts which violated the U.N. Charter and international law. Perhaps the Syrian crisis would look differently today if the United States and its allies had consistently respected law for the last several years. They have not.
United Nations Security Council
We take pains to note what should be obvious: our demand that the United States and its allies immediately comport themselves with their international legal obligations is not a justification, excuse, or some type of free pass on the investigation and accountability for international legal violations committed by other actors who may be involved in this sad affair. But our point is a simple one: the only way to resolve the Syrian crisis is through commitment to well-settled principles of international legal norms.
We urge the United States to abide by its commitment to the rule of international law and to seek to resolve its disputes through peaceful means. These means include recourse to the use of established and legitimate institutions designed to maintain international peace and security, such as the U.N. Security Council or the International Court of Justice. Unilateral action is a sign of weakness; recourse to the law is a sign of strength. The United States must walk back from becoming the very monster it now seeks to destroy.
| Inder Comar
Executive Director Just Atonement Inc.
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Dr. Ryan Alford
Associate Professor, Bora Laskin Faculty of Law, Lakehead University
|
Marjorie Cohn
Professor Emerita Thomas Jefferson School of Law
|
Jeanne Mirer
President International Association of Democratic Lawyers |
||
| Dr. Curtis F.J. Doebbler
Research Professor of Law University of Makeni UN Representative of International-Lawyers.org |
Abdeen Jabara
Civil Rights Attorney and Co-Founder of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee |
Ramsey Clark
66th Attorney-General of the United States |
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Every shot fired by the U.S. military since Saturday November 23, 1946 until the present day has been a crime. On that date the USGov instigated its penniless French puppet to begin the latter’s doomed attempt to reconquer Indochina by naval bombardment of the port of Haiphong, murdering at least 6,000 [six thousand] Vietnamese civilians.
A few years ago my sometime Net-friend Gideon Polya PhD of Melbourne estimated the total number of victims murdered worldwide by the US military (including spooks) since the date given at about 30,000,000 [thirty million]. Gideon wrote the book on the subject: _Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950_ ( 2007).
In 1968-69 I created and taught Columbia University’s first graduate seminar on the history of the cold war and recruited the late Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski as my faculty partner for that course. Jumping ahead now to the present period, it is clear to all serious observers that organized world Jewry constitutes the first motive force behind the devastating multinational criminal aggression against Syria since 2011. The same charges apply to the previous destruction of the nations of Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and, of course, Palestine, among other targetted countries.
The repeated ridiculous poison gas stunts in Syria evidently belong to the same category of “false flag” and black ops as the fabricated “Tonkin Gulf Incident” of August 2, 1964, and Saddam Hussein’s fabulous and falsely alleged WMD’s. The Jew spooks, among whom the notorious Mossad ranks as only one of several organizations, together with their USGov and other servants stage outlandish provocations in order to give their equally shameless propaganda mouthpieces such as Sulzberger the Heirhead something to rant about.
Herewith a link to a map of US military bases worldwide:
https://tinyurl.com/y88ozhxo
And here the YouTube footage of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress 2015 [FULL] | Today on 3/3/15 | New York Times:
https://tinyurl.com/k5bstvq
Note that Congress presented Netanyahu with those unique ceremonial honors, as well as some $40,000,000,000 [forty billion dollars] as a reward for Bibi’s command of GM’14 [Gaza Massacre] the previous Summer, which included the murder of more than 500 children.
Such be a short sketch of the context for some of the latest USGov war crimes. Does this bring to mind the saying “Better slapped with the truth than kissed by a lie”? [About 16,800,000 “gitz” or Google hits, without quotes.]
Yes it is illegal.
Your problem is, America don’t give a shlt.
America has -among other rights-lost its right to teach Russia about international law as far as the Crimean Question is concerned.
Now that Trump has invaded Syria, are the International lawyers are going to sue USA and bring them to the ICC court in The Hague.?
that ‘s right United States should not be allowed to murder third world people for their resources every times. stop murdering poor people for their resources that they happened to lives on those lands .
what is real role of the UN if the” U S and their Fascist allies are allowed to murder people in other countries around the World ” and also where are the,so called ” the American people who allowed this ?, your Fascists OLegarcy- Government to murder people in your watch and by your names and still claimed to be good and decent christian people ,come on and think about this ,really,Every president after president murders poor third people it is the fact in yur own history book and in the World Record since the founding of America and you (the U S Citizins can’task a simple question . come on people rise up say ” no with Syria ” , please, it the time to put an end to this Fascistic govenrment that is making lives so miserable for hundred of people around the world since the founding of the America Republic in that July of that the year ,1716 . It had been 242 now and America has been at wars for LEAST 237 years that ‘s 98 percent of the times . sad fascists murders that are ruling the United States.So , would you call them they creates wars and finance them at the times .
It should be noted in their letter that the ‘chemical attack’ didn’t happen and no chemicals have been found in Douma. There was a fire by which people suffered smoke inhalation, but no chemicals. Every time Bashar al-Assad has been accused of using chemicals on Syrians, it has been proven to be a false flag for regime change/war in Syria. The first case was proven a lie by the UN inspectors and the last, before Douma, proven a lie by Seymour Hersh. The American public is not shown these proofs by the MSM and probably never will. However, the truth has a way of being revealed over time; the truth creeps slowly. Usually too late to help the situation, sad to say.
They might also have added that the Nuremberg Tribunal established that propagandising for war constitutes crimes against humanity.
Of course it would be illegal as is the ongoing presence of the US and its continued support of terrorists (aid and abetting all the time).
More important is what can be done about it as the UNSC has become a joke where nobody really debates anymore with Russian or Syrian speakers. There is an animus-ridden Nikki who has zero capacity to debate or listen and respond to anything presented to her that does not fit her prejudices and there is a President who tweets the most ridiculous, impulsive, messages and concurs with the steadfast ignorance of international law or agreements.
A clear small false flag (Skripals, about whom we really know nothing what actually happened) was enough to test the mass psychology response and yes, bingo, we can go ahead and respond to another false flag and let’s listen only to what our terrorists on the ground tell us. Seven years of hell for the Syrians who are prevented from their democratic voice in their own country by the Saudi/Israel/US axis of evil.
Nice to see that the lawyers make the point, but none of the millions dead by the US have been saved because of the unwillingness of these horrible countries to contribute anything to the world than enriching themselves from the suffering they bring.
Israel has never responded to anything legal and have their own system of “law” and certainly never will do anything for anybody else than their own peer group and our locked in “groupthink”, which has nothing to do with religion, just as the Saudi royalty hardly behaves like Muslims, but enjoys the support to create a famine and murder in Yemen with the help of US and UK. Basically the world is lost with such psychopaths in responsible bodies such as UNSC.
Though I do appreciate the efforts of the authors who wrote this statement, at the same time it demonstrates how low the so-called western values of rule-of-law and due-process have sunk.
Do we nowadays need no less than 500 words to spell out the obvious? Only some two decades ago (though open to debate) the following summary would have been enough: “Any kind of attack (military, economic or however) on another sovereign nation is illegal under the UN Charter. Full stop.
But apparently, nowadays we need 500 words to be remembered of this simple fact. Western civilisation has seized to exist and is on its way back to barbarism.
Some musician should compose a requiem for the death of western civilisation…
So true and already in the 1970’s somebody wrote Requiem for a Democracy.
It is here now this ending of a Western civilisation.
Every word in this piece may be true, but I can’t help but laugh at the quaint notion that the the major world powers give a tinker’s damn about the legality of their actions. International law applies only to small, weak nations with tinpot dictators, with the notable exception that dictators on our side are OK. The historical record on this is absolutely clear.
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2018/04/10/syrian-army-discovers-white-helmets-filming-site-in-eastern-ghouta/?utm_source=April+11th%2C++2018&utm_campaign=VT+Newsletter&utm_medium=email
The UN is pretty much a rubber stamp organization for the US, Rockefeller gave the land for it in New York to guarantee multinational control. Go back to your TV, finding out the real story is obviously too much for you. We have your picture though, very important?
Of course this doesn’t “prove” anything about the sort of man Assad is, but it is hard to fathom that an “evil devil” with an “addiction” to gassing children would be graced with marriage to a woman of the quality exhibited in the following video. Thought you might appreciate this interview Jessika if you haven’t already seen it.
http://youtu.be/QJD2kzK2SdE
No, I haven’t seen this interview before.
This is what I would call a truely brave woman!
A woman that that the UK can be much more proud of than Theresa May and her ilk.
Excuse me for even mentioning the two in the same sentence and comparing them, because there really is no comparison.
I only want to underscore the contrast and I ment no offence to Asma al-Assad.
Thank you very much for posting this interview!!!
Gregory Herr – yes, I posted that video previously to point out what an amazing person she is. The people of Syria are lucky to have her.
So it’s ok with the UN to let Syria poision human beings.. UN is just tool for the ?
Evil devil
You haven’t got the picture yet?
There never was a poison gas attack. It’s a 24 karat lie, cooked up by the true Maecenas of terrorists (Washington), to serve as an excuse for regime-changing Syria.
Washington uses the so-called human rights violations as a propaganda tool for their own evil ends.
If Washington was truely concerned about human rights, it would not be friends with Saudi Arabia (publicly beheading, hanging and crucifying hundreds of people every year) or replace a democratically elected government in the Ukraine with a Nazi-regime (commiting genocide on its own people in the Donbass region).
If you want to understand anything at all about US geo-politics, I’d recommend reading Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “The Grand Chessboard”.
And also, do understand that Wahington has already demonstrated a thousand times that it believes that the end justifies the means and that might makes right. So don’t be shocked by another lie about a poison gas fairy tale.
Hans – good post. Like your use of words: “24 karat lie” and “poison gas fairy tale”. Right on point about everything.
I fully agree Hans.
Henk
Trump.com announced it acquired Walls ‘R Us for undisclosed cash, stock and underage Syrian beauty contestants.
April 12, 2018
The Mad March of the Brainwashed
Left, right, left right, see them march ready to bomb and destroy
Obeying orders from war criminals and maniacs; do you feel the joy?
Full of pride and waving their flags, all standing to attention
As they listen to the mad war criminals that brook no dissension
An order is an order even if it sets the world on nuclear fire
Left, right, left right, “Yes sir, what else do you desire”?
“Just make every missile hit its target, as we your leaders’ watch on T.V.
Burn up the peoples’ tax dollars, because this is, “the land of the free.”
Left right, left right, the brainwashed take orders from the insane
When the nukes start flying, their landings will be the end game
Still, not to worry, the “leaders” will be hiding in their bunkers underground
Issuing the orders; as the brainwashed bomb the people, that live on the
battleground
Left right, left right, “A question sir, if I may, will we get a medal”
When we blow up the world, this fine and wonderful day”?
“Of course, you will my brave man/woman you are serving your country
And we will be watching all the action from our bunker, to put it bluntly”
Left right, left right, “Are you ready to fight and to do battle”?
“Are all the bombs and missiles ready, to kill people like helpless cattle”?
“Yes sir, yes sir, everything is ready and we are ready too”
“Just issue the orders and we will press the buttons, we are a brave crew”
Left right, left right and the brainwashed marched away
Ready to fire their missiles on an unfortunate land this very day
The war criminals that planned all this filthy hellish action
Are hiding in their underground lairs smiling with crazy satisfaction
The end result of all this treachery and insanity
Could probably be the end of the world and humanity
Left right, left right, orders are orders, and the enemy must be punished
Will nuclear war be the end result of the mad march of the brainwashed?
Will we all be extinguished?…
[more info at link below]
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2018/04/the-mad-march-of-brainwashed.html
All good – but you didn’t address the point that is equally important as “no unilateral action” – where is the proof that the Syrian government committed the atrocity?
At some point, many people of good will would agree that atrocities require a response – although missile attacks are the most ludicrous response I can think of.
But there is no solid proof that Assad’s people are responsible. That was the problem in 2013, 2017 and now.
Investigate. Then an appropriate response. You need to address the importance of an honest investigation.
The Secretary of Defence in the UK is a former seller of the fine china and ceramic countertops (with a BS in political sciences)
The Secretary of Defence in Israel is a former nightclub bouncer from Moldova
The US envoy to the UN is a former manager from a waste-management company
The puppeteers need to find the competent and honest persons to fill the positions of power in the US & UK & Israeli governments – and ASAP! – otherwise, no money and no power will be able to save the puppeteers’ grandkids from the annihilation arranged by the opportunistic and incompetent lot that currently fills in the important positions in the US & UK & Israeli governments. It was fun for the ziocons to weed out the honest, principled, and competent professionals in the governments. Now is the time to pay for the pleasure of having the imbecilic sycophants as the trusted servants. Let the ziocons tremble.
The undersigned served faithfully in the US AAF in WW II, but is shamed by subsequent illegal war-mongoring of his beloved country. He is an on site witnesses to the illegality and devastation of the US-Contra War on Nicaragua. The World Court has condemned that aggression which condemnation has been ignored by this self-appointed arbitrator of world affairs. How many other illegal aggressions has the US carried out under imperial designs? On can only say that the foreign policy pushed by the elites of the US is that of a rogue nation.
Thank you for speaking up against the continuing slaughter and massacre of small nations in the Middle East. Such barbaric blood bath must stop, as the war mongering will surely bring on nuclear winter for the survivors, who will envy the dead.”
We, the United States, are about to launch an attack on Syria and, possibly, the Russian troops therein, based on perfidious British lies; based on what may turn out to be history’s final and blackest intelligence hoax, the one that eliminated the human race. At the same time, President Trump’s personal lawyer’s office was raided today, April 9, 2018, based on a referral from Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The issue apparently concerns allegations surrounding a years old affair between the President and the lying and disgusting porn star Stormy Daniels. This is considered so serious by Mueller and our corrupt FBI, that the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution can be summarily tossed aside. These two outrageous events are completely related. Unless you rise up with us right now to stop it, this country is in grave, graver peril. The outright attempt to blackmail this President into the war he was elected to stop has been escalated beyond anyone’s imagination.
In 2016, millions of Americans voted for Donald Trump because he said he would end useless, perpetual wars on behalf of an intellectually dead and financially bankrupt Anglo-American system, the imperium which dates to the immediate aftermath of World War II. That system, centered in Wall Street and the City of London, has ripped off the world, and destroyed the once great U.S. economy, a fact which became completely evident to the sentient when the system crashed in 2008. Donald Trump sought better relations with China, now emerging as the world’s most powerful economy, and Putin’s Russia. Trump’s determination to establish decent relations with Russia and China and that determination alone, set into motion the hellish coup against the President, led by the British and those many useful idiots in our elites who are in their thrall.
That coup, whose manifesto was the fake “dirty dossier” on Donald Trump authored by MI6’s Christopher Steele and paid for by Hillary Clinton, was on its last legs when Britain began its present offensive. Senators Charles Grassley and Lindsay Graham had referred Christopher Steele to the United States Department of Justice for criminal prosecution and patriots in Congress were pursuing a genuine effort to identify and prosecute those responsible for the coup against our President. Then, on March 4, 2018, a Russian who spied for Britain, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter were allegedly poisoned in Salisbury, England. Skripal runs in the same British espionage circles associated with Christopher Steele. Prime Minister Teresa May immediately pronounced to the world that Russia was behind the attack but has never ever produced any proof for any of her bellicose statements. President Trump was bum rushed by his traitorous advisors, including H.R. McMaster, who throughout his military career was a captive of Britain’s International Institute of Strategic Affairs, into supporting Britain’s completely unfounded claims. The message to the President from our traitors is clear, join us in the march to war and maybe, maybe, we will let up with the coup.
Ultimately, Britain’s own chemical weapons experts at Porton Downs refused to say that the agent used on the Skripals was manufactured in Russia, despite the evidence-free claims of Teresa May and her insane Foreign Minister, Boris Johnson. Obvious doubts had already been voiced by several European countries who abstained from Britain’s call to war. Among the facts considered: The deadly nerve agent described by May would have immediately killed Skripal and his daughter. Yet, both are alive and out of critical condition. Accounts of where it was administered have varied, most recently it was said to have been smeared on the front door handle of Skripal’s home. Yet, Skripal somehow managed to leave the house for some hours, walking around the village, drinking and eating at restaurants until he suddenly fell ill. The formula for the alleged poison had been widely published by its Russian inventor, a dissident now living in the United States. Now, with that hoax disintegrating, we are told that the Skripals and all possible evidence in the case is being disappeared. According to the British press, they will be put in a CIA Witness Protection Program. Their house and every alleged crime scene involved in this hoax are being bull-dozed and destroyed. No possibility of an actual investigation of this hoax is to be left open.
Despite voicing support for Teresa May, Donald Trump still sought to make good on his promise to the American people. He congratulated Putin on his election and invited him to the White House for early talks, citing the escalating and dangerous arms race between the United States and Russia. The British and their American friends completely lost it in response. A hammer needed to be dropped on this President who now was even talking of pulling American troops out of Syria and rebuilding the United States.
Enter a second British authored poisoning hoax, this one in Syria. The Russians, Iranians, and Syrians not only assisted in the defeat of ISIS, but were mopping up the last remnants of remaining jihadis, such as Jayish Al Islam, a rebranded Salafist Jihadi group controlled by the Saudis, and the Al Nusra front or Al-Qaeda. The final military operations consolidating victory were concluded in the last days in Gouta, a suburb of Damascus. Having achieved victory, under the narrative our war mongering media would have us believe, Assad launched a chemical weapons attack to celebrate that victory, knowing he would bring down holy hell upon himself from the West.
The pictures of dying children which President Trump reacted to so emotionally a year ago, when he launched missile strikes on Syria, have been presented to him again. There is every reason to believe they are fake. Russia and Syria had been warning about just such a false flag attack involving chlorine gas for over a month as they closed in on victory in Gouta.The only information claiming such an attack occurred is coming from the White Helmets, an aid organization founded by the British, implicated as being militarily involved with Al-Qaeda, and deeply implicated in past hoaxes concerning Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons. Sy Hersh fully documented this story in the London Review of Books concerning the fake news that Assad used Sarin in August of 2013. MIT’s Ted Postol and others have demonstrated that the alleged sarin attack to which President Trump responded militarily one year ago, was also a British fake. See, Robert Parry, and James Carden.
The White Helmets are jointly funded by British and American intelligence components dedicated to regime change in Syria. They have received millions upon millions of dollars for this purpose. They are critical components of the interventionist and regime change foreign policy Donald Trump was elected to eradicate.
In 2013, when Obama threatened war with Russia over Syria, the American people intervened, raised the roof of Congress, and stopped it. This is what is needed now. Russia sees an unrelenting information warfare offensive coming from the British and their dupes in the U.S. They correctly see this as the first steps toward war. We need to reverse this starting right now. Call your Congressional Representative or Senator, tell them to stop the drive to War and Shut Down Robert Mueller, Now.
Capitol Switchboard is (202)224- 3121. Raise the roof! Call the White House and tell the President not to step in a British trap, (202)456-1111.
LaRouche PAC
Anita – that was an excellent post and accurately explains what has happened. Well done! Trump is in a very precarious position. In the past, he was highly skeptical of many of the false flags that have occurred, and so I’m sure he knows more about what’s going on than he lets on. Trump must insist on absolute proof from unbiased experts, and not from his biased generals.
I hope people follow your advice and do call the White House switchboard.
I agree that Anita’s post sums things up nicely. I hope you are right that Trump knows more than he’s letting on and can find a way out of this mess. I am afraid that he is more concerned about his image than anything else, and that Bibi and the rest of TPTB are calling the shots, and Trump knows that he has to go along or else.
Stephen J has said it many times, gangsters are ruling! The US government is a type of Mafia, has its hitmen who have no respect for morality or ethics, and many US citizens seem to indulge in mob mentality also; some of their vicious comments on websites show it. Turns out this Mafia Don didn’t know what a pile of poo he stepped into, although he had his own pile. For the gentleman responding to KiwiAntz, i would say he is just tremendously frustrated that you can’t get through to the misleaders in charge. It is maddening! Pundits are giving credence to a purported video and will not even listen to Russians and Syrians on site who state this is a false flag in Douma and the bodies aren’t there. Anything can be staged on the Internet.
Brilliant piece by Peter Koenig on the Saker.
http://thesaker.is/poison-gas-weapon-of-choice-for-false-news/
It’s interesting that there has been no manhunt for who perpetrated the supposed attack on the Skripals. The reason of course is that those who perpetrated this false flag would have to uncover –
themselves!
where did these international lawyers make this statement? At the UN? At Congress? where? Was it filmed – not by the lamestream – obviously – but still it can be filmed.
The Russians have pointed out again and again and again that this country is violating international law and all protocols and norms set up by the United Nations. The U.S. is very obviously running rough shod over them all and have been doing this for a very long time, at least since 911. People say that Putin “cannot be trusted”, but I have listened to his interviews and his speeches, and he is a man who sounds reasonable, who makes eminent sense, who is calm, reflective, rational. It never ceases to amaze me that instead of looking to my government to protect me, I am looking to Putin to do it, hoping that he responds as calmly and thoughtfully as he has been previously responding to all these acts of provocation. The United States does not look rational, neither the Congress, the Executive Branch, the military and the security agencies appear to be lying, and their conduct appears to be, for want of a better words, insane.
And Putin’s administration does not appear to be in chaos. Unlike ours,
as per a rant by a West Wing aide, quoted by Greg Sargent in his Plum
Line Blog:
“It’s just like everybody wakes up every morning and does whatever is right
in front of them. Oh my God, Trump Tower is on fire. Oh my God, they raided
Michael Cohen’s office. Oh my God, we’re going to bomb Syria. Whatever is
there is what people respond to, and there is no proactive strategic thinking.”
Syrian Chemical Attack https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=stm7yZDhw6s
Trump was elected as their war President. Can there be any doubt any longer. This was not a “surprise election.” The fix was in.
I wonder if “the fix was in” from the beginning, or if he had a “trip to the woodshed”. And I do think it was a surprise election. Hillary would have been just fine as their war president. She had all the warmongers behind her already.
The government KNOWS that the terrorists have chemical weapons. They know this because it has already been proven. Further, they know that the terrorists are using the Syrian people as human shields – actually putting them in cages in places that are being bombed. Yet, we do not even consider the possibility that the terrorists are the people using chemical weapons or pretending that chemical weapons were used. Further, the Russian base in Syria has been attacked by mortar and drone fire since January. 2018. Trump has deployed more than a thousand troops to Syria under the pretense that we are there to once and for all defeat ISIS, but we know now, or should know, that this was never the purpose, and that the purpose is for what we now see.
Moreover, the “moderate” terrorists have been trained by NATO/US specialists. – “The Pentagon’s Training of “Rebels” (aka Al Qaeda Terrorists) in the Use of Chemical Weapons:” https://www.thesleuthjournal.com/pentagon-trained-al-qaeda-chemical-weapons/
“…we have reliable information at our disposal that US instructors have trained a number of militant groups in the vicinity of the town of At-Tanf, to stage provocations involving chemical warfare agents in southern Syria. They are preparing a series of chemical munitions explosions. This fact will be used to blame the government forces. The components to produce chemical munitions have been already delivered to the southern de-escalation zone under the guise of humanitarian convoys of a number of NGOs.
The provocations will be used as a pretext by the United States and its allies to launch strikes on military and government infrastructure in Syria.” https://tradingcheatsheet.com/2018/03/19/paul-craig-roberts-war-is-on-the-horizon/
Here are the White Helmets, the darlings of Hollywood: http://theindicter.com/white-helmets-video-swedish-doctors-for-human-rights-denounce-medical-malpractice-and-misuse-of-children-for-propaganda-aims/
https://timhayward.wordpress.com/2018/01/12/the-guardian-white-helmets-and-silenced-comment/
It is so obvious, more obvious than Iraq and the weapons of mass destruction ruse, that we are the criminals here – that we are violating international law and the moral law. You would NOT know this from the actions and words of the media, or the actions and words of Congress and the actions and words of the Executive Branch, but the people still know, despite the chorus, and this is very gratifying. You see from the comments being made that at least more than fifty percent of the population is against this move in Syria. You have to be a complete automaton not to know that our government and the media are lying and cannot be justified in what they are doing, and our President’s comments, “the missiles are coming…..” are the statements of a man who cannot wait to use American lives and Syrian lives as his cannon fodder. . i
Skripal, chemical weapons, these are nothing more than public relations campaigns. Israel has decided to go.to war with Iran. Israel now wants their controlled vassal state, the US, to sacrifice our children and resources for their war, so our overlords are working to sell WW3 to the public.
Was Iraq? Was Libya?
Yes. The USA is the War-crimes-R-us of the international community.
Well said, thank you.
Some commenters feel that Trump is irrelevant, because the deep state dictates his every move. This is an exaggeration that avoids looking at the real power this individual has to influence our government and it’s policies and actions, including the military. What goes on in this man’s head has a lot of importance for every human on this planet (and a lot of nonhuman lifeforms as well). Of course he is not in charge of everything, but he is not in charge of nothing either.
Our US form of government still owes a lot, for good or ill, to the concept of one man rule that has come down from millennial practices. This is a really bad idea, for reasons that Trump is a perfect example of. But we are currently stuck with it, like capitalism, militarism, racism – and so many other toxic and structural memes we are cursed with. It would be really nice to shrug all this unnecessary burden off our lives, but cultural inertia embedded in the minds of all it’s members keeps this nonsense eternally recurring.
It is amazing to me that the nightly news is still using the word “alleged” regarding Syrian gov’t involvement in the chemical weapons attack, but in the very next sentence they talk of shooting missiles in retaliation. They completely ignore the meaning of the word “alleged”. There is some kind of fundamental disconnect in the minds of the sheeple that they can be so blind. If something is only “alleged”, and not proven, then your retaliation could easily be misdirected. How can the “average Joe” not see that? And of course the same goes for the Skripal “alleged” poisoning by Russia.
To take accusations as proven facts is a standard tool of witch hunters, torturers, and tyrants. It’s getting a lot of use in the foul mouths of our media puppets and “representatives.” They simply present their lies as indisputable facts. Propaganda 101 counsels “ignore real facts, the truth is irrelevant.”
@ “It is amazing to me that the nightly news is still using the word “alleged” regarding Syrian gov’t involvement in the chemical weapons attack …”
It’s more amazing to me that this time around they are using the words “alleged” or “suspected.” Not in reporting previous “chemical attack” incidents. That suggests to me that MSM is hedging because the charges are likely to be disproved in a publicly embarrassing way.
Yes, I think you may be right. Although I doubt they would ever let the disproving of the chemical attacks be covered in any of their broadcasts. Time for another distraction while they shove it down the memory hole.
> It is amazing to me that the nightly news is still using the word “alleged”
> regarding Syrian gov’t involvement in the chemical weapons attack,
Well, that is a little better than the German state-controlled mass media (and most of the privately-owned press), which are still calling it “presumed/ probable” (“mutmaßlich”), when it is obvious that the only thing that is “probable” about the story is that it is a lie from beginning to end.
So Trump and those behind him have decided to not start the hot phase of WWIII right away? His tweet this AM seems to defer armageddon for at least a few days. Trump’s tweets take us inside his mind – a scary place! You never know what’s coming next. Of course he revels in his unpredictability, and tries to use it to intimidate others, and to keep the public’s attention on himself. “You never know what I may do next – better pay attention, and plead with me not to kill again.” Great theatrics. It sure got the media focused on him, and helped get him elected. What does a narcissist like better than being the constant center of attention. His role in the Apprentice showed what he really gets off on: being the BOSS.
Would the real Trump please stand up? Sorry, but there is no such person.
“In 1986, in The Nicaragua Case, the International Court of Justice reprimanded the United States for arming and supporting contra militias and combatants, and for mining Nicaragua’s harbors, as acts which violated the U.N. Charter and international law. Perhaps the Syrian crisis would look differently today if the United States and its allies had consistently respected law for the last several years. They have not.”
The last sentence says it all. I note other articles today in CN speaking to the same issue. The United States is not only guilty as noted, but guilty of aiding and abetting others to act the same way. Israel, for example, has been violating international law for decades in its own territory and surrounding countries with our overt support. Sadly, it seems we are always pointing our finger at Israel and its powerful influence in America and Europe as the cause of such lawlessness but it is hard to look away and deny the problem.
The law can be a powerful thing if it enforced. American leaders are being short sighted in its disregard.
Couldn’t agree more
Can you direct me to the source – where exactly this statement as published?
I think the U.S. neocons are itching to use a “limited engagement” to test Russia’s resolve to protect Syria and both countries’ alliance with Iran, not by attacking Damascus or the Russian military that is present there, but rather by attacking the Iranian forces and insfrastructure. I believe Iran is the main target while Russia is secondary and its military power is very much feared by the U.S.; maintaining military occupation of part of Syria is also an objective in order to apply continued force against Iran. I would ignore Trump because he is completely irrelevant to the conduct of U.S. foreign policy.
Long term, Russia is the main target that Washington wants to take down. Near term they are happy to destroy Syria–though they will never occupy it because the morass would be worse than the American experience in Iraq. Syria is, of course, a stepping stone to reaping chaos on Iran, another country that the US cannot occupy but wishes to destabilise. Why? It gains them little really other than more fear and loathing from the rest of the world (but their psychopathic minds feed off such vibes) and grudging acceptance by the bloodthirsty Israelis. I think they are pissed that they allowed Russia, which they cruelly dominated under Yeltsin, to slip from their control under Putin. They want it and all its resources back to plunder, and deny to China. I guess Israel’s part of the spoils will be most of the Middle East, including the carcasses of Iran, Syria and Lebanon. I think that’s the closest thing to an integrated rationale one can come up with to explain why the demonic drive to destroy those three specific countries. And, you’re quite right: Trump is completely irrelevant to US foreign policy. The neocons broke him inside of his first 100 days, threatened his continuation in office, picked off his initial cabinet and got them all replaced with uber-warmongers from within their own ranks. Working hand-in-glove with the Likudniks they assign him his daily agenda. If he balks they name drop Mueller or JFK. They destroy whole countries, they will not hesitate to destroy one man.
The whole reason the deep state is trying their best to get rid of Trump, is that they do NOT have complete control of him. And that is a dangerous embarrassment. Of course they try to control him as best they can, until they can contrive to oust him.
Also, it is a mistake to think of the deep state as a monolithic entity with clear aims and discipline. By the very nature of the oligarchs, Mafiosi, militarists, pols, etc. that make this nebulous affair up, they have many divisions and conflicts of policy and action within their ill defined ranks.
Realist – Very interesting and completely accurate analysis, in just one short paragraph.
Great post Realist. I finally got to see “The Magnitsky Act”, and I think it ties in here. Browder and his ilk were having a blast looting Russia under Yeltsin, and Putin ended their party. When you see the amount of power Browder wields, it shows the Globalization vs. National sovereignty divide in stark detail. Like George Carlin said, “It’s a big club”, and Vlad and most of us aren’t in it.
Yes to everything but Trump’s irrelevancy.
Meant as reply to norecovery.
Gilbert Doctorow has published a short comment which resembles what you have written. Only he suggests Trump may take the opportunity to attack the Iranians back home in Iran. If Israel’s wag the dog US is told to bomb Iranians in Syria AND back home, I predict “we” will do it in a heartbeat. The argument would be that Iran was the mastermind behind all the evildoing, and such an attack would sidestep the Russians. Finally, it would break the ice on military operations by the US against Iran. And to Hades with that stuff about “legality”.
h**ps://alethonews.wordpress.com/2018/04/11/were-not-going-to-war-not-yet-last-nights-russian-tv-analysis/
Nazis have their own laws.
America doesn’t abide by International Law or any law? Laws are for other suckers to obey, not them? America has a God complex? The exceptional Nation, that shining city on the hill, the beacon of moral superiority over all others? America thinks that it is a God with god like abilities to act & intervene in other Nations affairs & giving it the divine right of acting with impunity as the Worlds Judge, Jury & executioner, like Almighty God in the Bible? And as a a God, it can decide who receives divine favour or can determine, who lives or dies on this Planet? But America is Satan, the great Satan as the Arabs call this Nation, judging by its murderous,hegemonic ambitions! Didn’t Jesus say there was a clear distinction between the children of God & the children of the Devil? Those who are peaceful & adhere to the fruits of the spirit are COG. The children of the Devil lie, murder, slander, use violence, deceit & falsehood to mask their demonic, satanic ambitions? What category here, would you lump America into? The latter I’m guessing?
KiwiAntz,
I am a Kiwi who has lived in America for 45-years. I have kids, one of whom is a medical doctor.
I am tired of your continued bike against ALL Americans!
I can assure you that me, my family, and my work colleagues of all political stripes do not “lie, murder, slander, use violence, deceit & falsehood to mask their demonic, satanic ambitions.”
No more than your average New Zealander.
Yes our geo-politics suck big time.
But your slandering all Americans is not helpful, and immature.
Dennis
oops..Thats “bile”, not “bike”
Middle class superiority games.
Who here cannot tell that when Kiwiantz uses the word America it isn’t in reference to Dennis’ family and friends?
Everyone is aware that they don’t draft American policy…
They simply enable it with their willful ignorance and inaction and then indirectly profit from it..
Oooh, burn
NATO supreme commander General Wesley Clark on video stating he received a memo from his Pentagon superiors 9 days after 9/11, that the US is planning to take out 7 Middle East countries.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=6s&v=9RC1Mepk_Sw
All the propaganda and demonization of eastern heads over the years are lies to justify deep state US sinister global objectives.
from the article: “The unlawful killing of any human being without legal justification, under every legal system, is murder.”
Does this mean I have legal grounds to sue the human species for the 22,000 children they starved to death today? and yesterday, and the day before that and the day before that and …? Or is it actually perfectly lawful to starve tens of thousands of children to death on this planet right round the clock?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Also, since the usa and israel will absolutely ignore this article’s legal advice and go on doing their dirty work as they please, will Nikki Haley’s hanging be televised someday?
Don’t hate Nikki. Just don’t hate anyone, or wish they be hanged. Go to Sputnik today to see pictures of the Russian Ambassador to the UN kissing Nikki! Research the philosophy/practice of Aikido on dealing lovingly with “enemies”. Or not. Just saying.
No, no and hopefully.
Link for above article:
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/04/11/idiocy-bringing-end-world/
From Paul Craig Roberts:
“People in Ghouta, doctors in Ghouta, and Russian experts who have arrived on the scene report that there is no sign of any chemical attack. Not only did Syria not use chemical weapons against the civilians that it liberated, there was no chemical attack, not even a false flag one staged by the US supported mercenaries who have been driven out of Ghouta by the Syrian Army. In other words, the chemical attack is entirely a hoax.
To keep the hoax from being confirmed by independent investigation, Washington vetoed a UN Security Council resolution to send in neutral experts to evaluate the claim of chemical attack. Why would Washington prevent an investigation that would prove Washington’s allegation? Clearly, Washington would only prevent an investigation that would disprove the false allegation. There is no doubt whatsoever that Washington’s allegation is false and is being used as an excuse to force Russia to fight or to accept Washington’s hegemony in the Middle East.
What if there was a chemical attack? Why does it matter to people who are killed whether it was by bullets, bombs, missiles, or chemicals? Why is it so bad to use chemicals instead of Hellfire missiles? Why is it OK for Washington and Israel to blow up schools, hospitals, weddings, funerals, market places, and homes full of women and children with missiles, but not OK to kill people with chemicals? Why is it worth starting World War 3 over a hoax chemical weapons attack or a real one?”
backwardsevolution –
Paul Craig Roberts writes as it is, directly to the point and correctly. I like reading his comments. Like these staged chemical attack events in Syria, this Salisbury Skirpals poisoning event was pre-planned and coordinated as well. A totally bizarre event , with all these yellow tents, and curtained shopping areas and neighborhood where Skirpals lived in Salisbury, with these so called investigating personnel in those space suits – a totally false staged event. No outsider was allowed to see the Skirpals. With all the problems in U.K., including surging crime rate, Madame May ought to be solving those problems. With Tony Blair working overtime on this Syria project in the background, along with France and U.S. they want to bomb that country now.
The populations in the West have been completely brain washed by the people who control Finance and Media and entertainment industry. And they control all levers of Power, and It seems like it is too late now to stop it. Hungary and Austria are small countries and still are largely cohesive cultures. Both the leaders are showing some independence to preserve their sovereignty.
Dave P. – very scary situation, especially when it’s all based on lies. If they take out Assad, like they did with Gaddafi, I will be furious. None of these countries have any business being in Syria. They weren’t invited.
They need to wait until there is absolute proof of who committed this chemical weapons attack (and I’m quite sure it wasn’t Assad’s forces) or whether it happened at all, whether it was just all staged.
And you’re right, this Skirpal business just does not add up. How stupid do they think we are? It’s like a kindergarten class trying to pull the wool over our eyes.
Any excuse to take out another country. Trump needs to take the bull by the horns and do as he said he would – get out of Syria!
Good talking to you, Dave.
Of course it was all staged. That’s obvious.
@backward…
“None of these countries have any business being in Syria. They weren’t invited.”
I am pretty certain that you meant, that other than Russia, no other countries had been invited by the Syrian government….
As for the Skirpal business…
The OPCW has released the public summary of their technical assistance results in this business:
h**ps://www.opcw.org/fileadmin/OPCW/S_series/2018/en/s-1612-2018_e_.pdf
In summary, OPCW has confirmed the findings of the British lab. The report does note, quote:
“The TAV team notes that the toxic chemical was of high purity. The latter is concluded from the almost complete absence of impurities.”
In another word, one would need a really well equipped laboratory for achieving this level of purity.
I have no reason to doubt the OPCW’s results, even if the report does not actually names the the agent used, nor does it indicate the origin. The OPCW’s scope included identifying the chemical agent used and its effects on the victim, attributing origin and responsibility for the incident were not in scope.
I tend to believe that the chemical agent used is originated in Russia, and/or manufactured by a well equipped lab. On the other hand, I have doubts that Russia/Putin did it. Well, at least until someone gives me a reasonable explanation as to why they did…
Yes.
PCR: “In other words, the chemical attack is entirely a hoax.”
A bit more detail here, as there are competing narratives:
With the Jaish al-Islam mercenaries evacuated from Douma, Journalist Vanessa Beeley is on the ground in there and says there was no chemical attack. https://twitter.com/VanessaBeeley/status/984116064035524609 The Red Crescent says there was no chemical attack. https://www.rt.com/news/423539-red-crescent-ghouta-no-chemical/. The Russian military says there was no chemical attack. https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201804091063349323-russian-military-detects-no-chemicals-douma/ All of the above can find neither sign of an attack nor victims of a chemical attack. Moon of Alabama speculates:
“The often quoted Syrian Observatory For Human Rights in Britain did not report any casualties of a chemical attack. Its report of the day in question notes of Douma:
’21 civilians including 9 children and 3 women were killed as a result of suffocation caused by the shelling which destroyed basements of houses as a result of the violence bombardment.’
“It is possible that the terrorist propaganda made videos of the casualties of this incident to make its ‘chemical attack’ claims.”
Which leaves one wondering how the U.S. came up with samples from Douma victims that tested positive for a nerve agent: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2018/apr/12/uk-russia-tensions-rise-over-syria-attack-and-salisbury-poisoning-live-updates?page=with:block-5acf9f39e4b0d501a38c5996#block-5acf9f39e4b0d501a38c5996; see also https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/12/syria-attack-experts-check-signs-nerve-agent
Given Russian and Syrian Arab Army control of Douma, one might suspect that the U.S. samples — if they actually exist — were provided and spiked with nerve agent by the White Helmets, who are NATO nation propaganda agents, or more insidiously, were drawn from victims intentionally poisoned elsewhere.
The Moon of Alabama article linked above is recommended reading, as is this earlier MoA article, which documents a pattern seen in Syria chemical attacks. http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/04/timelines-of-gas-attacks-in-syria-follow-a-similar-scheme.html
Time is running out fast!
Spread the word on social media and everywhere else that if our country (the US) starts a war that could go nuclear, then we the people will go nuclear and not pay our taxes this April! And be determined to act on it if necessary to make it a credible threat.
I think this could be effective if it caught on enough to be noticed by politicians–especially if voiced by the Left and the Right (in all their many lovely flavors). We all need to plug our noses and join hands and act, so that we can live to fight each other another day!
Unfortunately, thanks to ‘withholding’, most people have already paid their taxes.
There are however alternatives, such as this bill introduced during the 2017 Congress
(not for the first time!) http://peacetaxfund.org/about-the-bill/
While identified as a ‘religious peace tax fund bill’, the definition of ‘religious objection’
includes ‘moral and / or ethical objection’ (to paying taxes for war).
The idea is, taxes are still paid (avoidance of taxes is not advocated). BUT, they are paid
into an Escrow Account (at a local or regional level). At the present time, eventually these
monies will be seized by an IRS agent and put into the Federal Income Tax Fund. But
imagine (if enough people paid into such escrow accounts), how those monies could avoid
being poured into the Bureaucratic Maze and instead stayed in a local or regional account,
to be used to meet local or regional needs, as identified by The Locals. What a concept !
Such a bill needs to force reduction of military appropriations: their bill still allows taxes paid to be used without restriction once taken, so would have no effect. It also unnecessarily requires “religious” opposition, and opposition to “all war” including defense, which few will support. Those are unnecessarily taken from laws to protect conscientious objectors to military service. Legislation to eliminate the tyranny of the rich will not likely be passed by their servants in Congress.
I would certainly be in favor of such a way to defund the war machine, however I am not religious. Why is that a requirement?
OR…
To reduce ignorance, fix the educational system[1]. To reduce poverty and stop directly funding the madness of war[2], promote legislation for the replacement of income taxes, sales taxes and capital gains taxes,… with a decentralized form of APT tax[3] with limits on extreme inheritance. The central government, corporations and the central banking system, absent the direct taxpayer guarantee of war loans, will get the message and budget accordingly. Further coin-clipping (QE/ZIRP or other monetary expansion schemes) by central banks will be laid bare for all to see and raising taxes is political suicide. We don’t need an international “council for the situation”. The Constitution and Bill of Rights covers it without the necessity of growing the size of government.
[1] Underground History of American Education – John Gatto
http://mhkeehn.tripod.com/ughoae.pdf
https://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/50300
https://www.youtube.com/user/SchoolSucksPodcast
https://archive.org/details/AnUndergroundHistoryOfAmericanEducationByJ.T.Gatto440
[2] The Discours sur la servitude voluntaire | Etienne de la Boetie
https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A“Étienne+de+La+Boétie”
https://librivox.org/author/12517?primary_key=12517&search_category=author&search_page=1&search_form=get_results
[3] Automated Payment Transaction (APT) Tax | Edgar Feige
https://www.c-span.org/video/?186687-5/alternative-proposals-reform (second 5-min speaker)
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2486665
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG8jngOwbpE
Correction to my above comment:
To: Irina
… and first link in reference [2]
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/boetie-the-discourse-of-voluntary-servitude
Now ‘Newsweek’ is declaring that anyone who questions that Assad carried out a chem attack last week is nothing more than a “right-wing conspiratorialist.”
What a sickening, disgraceful and laughingly distorted attempt by the establishment press to control the parameters of debate.
In the old days, before it got bogged down in gonadal identity politics and Maddow/MSDNC induced Russophobia, it was always the populist left, socialists and Gore Vidal (rest his wonderful soul) type isolationists who were the brightest, most vociferous and articulate critics of the war party and Washington imperialist-militarists.
Over the last several mos we witnessed tens of thousands of committed activists filling the streets of DC for non economic identity politics issues pertaining to pussy hats, executive crotch grabbing, and guns yet when it comes to a potential nuclear conflagration that could incinerate within ten minutes 50 of America’s largest cities the streets of the capital, NYC, SF, etc. are eerily and deadly quiet.
It is breathtaking to see what purports to be an anti-war peace movement remain moribund, naive, insouciant and unquestioning.
Have the capitalist diversions — Facebook/Twitter/Instagram narcissism, shopping, porno, drug addiction, “reality” celebrity TV, end times contentment — proven so effective that they have completely neutered the rebels among us?
The mass media will always say that everyone agrees with them, so fall in line, and many fools go along, but discover in their rare conversations with the less timid that others are not such fools.
Drew, so very true, on top of every thing we’re suffering, we’ve lost our intellectual voices. I would argue that they’re still out there but they’ve lost their microphone, due to vast government controlled corruption. I hear nothing from my legislators but discussion about how they are serving me, ha. We’re existing in a kind of vacuum here in America, but I know we’re a vastly different; far more decent People than our leadership projects. It hurts deeply and profoundly to read the international, and justified, criticism that I hear on this forum. We will have to undergo a long period of retribution which for us patriots will be painful but we can regain strength by evaluating a just retribution against the severe crimes committed against our Constitution. And, in that process, we will find our true personality, which I still feel is Just, free, fair, and humane. I see that every day right here on this wonderful forum…
We’re see right now in the latest writing on MLK, the new research indicating how a very literate cabal, busily working within the government paid bureaucracy, against the popular wishes of our people, created a Legend of his death. That was their intent, to create a plausible alternative reality that would allow them to continue their deception. We must now shine a light on these criminals with expanded citizen action, and reestablish our Constitutional System…
I’ve lived here a few years now and to be honest I find most of your middle class to be willfully ignorant morons. I’ve far more sympathy for the working classes, whom the self serving, so called liberal middle class seem to despise.
At least the working classes ignorance has the legit excuse of material and intellectual poverty. And they have strength and heart as opposed to self indulgent self pity.
The middle class must be convinced that their taxes need to pay for the education of the so called deplorables. Currently they isolate themselves in utopian strongholds while concerning themselves with superficialities and their own inherent superiority, all the while filling the local air and online echo chambers with flowery, yet empty, statements.
Kind of like your statement about how you suffer from the burden of justified criticism, Bob. I’m not trying to be insulting, merely trying to fit in with some flowery echoes of my own.. An experiment in counteracting comforting lies with unpleasant truths..
Crowds of drippy nosed, middle class individualists wandering aimlessly around NYC and DC is nothing to write home about. Now if those same streets were filled with working class heart and grit fighting FOR their interests for a change, that would be the start of a new chapter, perhaps one that could live up the the lofty rhetoric you guys are renowned for.
“Have the capitalist diversions — Facebook/Twitter/Instagram narcissism, shopping, porno, drug addiction, “reality” celebrity TV, end times contentment — proven so effective that they have completely neutered the rebels among us?”
Yes. Change is possible, of course, and many would follow but where are the leaders?
Good point it is the entire mainstream system and not just Trump. The poster “Tina” needs to read your post. She is part of the program, she focuses just on Trump where the rest of the polical system and media also want war.
Yes
“neutered the rebels”? Drew, I would say its more like they have lobotomized the common sense out of most people with criminal (or what should be criminal) modern marketing and PR techniques. We have been bombarded with fictional narratives and stupid slogans for so long no one is sure what the truth is about anything. We are unsure who our Congresspeople represent, the purpose of our foreign policy, and whose interests it is actually serving. The same players are prospering, financially and career-wise, both after Iraq, Libya, Syria, and the 2008 financial crisis. Totally unnecessary semiautomatic firearms that are useless for hunting and totally unnecessary for self defense constantly stump our representatives when it is obvious the vast VAST percentage of our population supports control of such things and do not want them in out community.
If there are two people who have less concern about restrictions imposed on the U.S by international law or treaties than Trump and Bolton , I’ve never heard of them , and I would argue that they cannot possibly even exist. There could only exist people who have an equal concern as those two , i.e. , zero concern.
For Trump and Bolton , at least , this essay falls on the very deafest of ears.
It’s not Trump. He’s the current asshole to exhibit it but he’s not alone. The problem is that Americans have a breathtaking arrogance that what they think, want, decide is right and everybody else is wrong. The funny thing is that the United States could have been the shining city on the hill if they had been willing to play by the rules, been willing to play fair, been willing to respect others, and been willing to exhibit many of the salubrious qualities that we like to ascribe to ourselves but which we don’t actually possess. But sadly, we don’t, we haven’t, and we can’t. Eventually, the rest of the world will realize that the United States, far from being the idealistic country that we portray ourselves to be, is just a craven, self-serving, money grubbing tumor on the earth’s civilizations. We aren’t going to like it when the rest of the world realizes this.
Excellent post, Jeff; seconded.
Thirded. When we crash, nobody is going to care.
Dmitry Orlov (google his blog) groks this dynamic.
It appears that the world knows, and awaits only the opportunity to end the US empire. BRICS must establish a stronger UN more attractive to most nations, with a new reserve currency, and embargo the US to collapse its economy. This is necessary to motivate the ignorant US majority to restore democracy, a painful process.
Well then, hopefully we will still be armed when the son’s of bitches (rest of the world) realize this. Its dog eat dog and always has been.
Always has been isn’t the same as always will be.
Your back alley behind a Korean restaurant mentality is holding you back.
Also your existence ensures the U.S will be armed, as far from being part of it (as your use of the word ‘we’ suggests), you are merely potential cannon fodder.
Jeff…I’d wager that there are many countries that already know what we’re about. Unfortunately many of those have been also permeated by the Neocon thinkers…and are merely vassals of the US. You may have noticed that Merkel has announced that Germany will NOT participate in any military action in Syria. That’s due ,I believe to the way her election went down several months back . There was due to the parliamentary type system there, a sort of power sharing now going on. I saw on RT where she now comes out to make an announcement on the Syria disposition and there’s a man with her…side by side they where . Unlike that… Macron ,the french PM is onboard with the bomb Syria issue, and makes no bones about it. If marine LePen had been elected….they’d not be partnering up with the US on that. The Brits….they’re hand in glove with the US….and you may have noticed Tony Blair, a cerfified war criminal… has been resurrected by the war mongers also, and even Madeline Albright . They’re all guilty of war crimes…
> You may have noticed that Merkel has announced that Germany will NOT participate in any military action in Syria.
Well, I remember that the same thing happened 15 years ago with Schröder and the invasion of Iraq.
But in neither case had any of the top war criminals actually called on Germany to join in…
And in reality, Germany did provide the help that was actually needed: its role as a logistical hub for the deployment of troops and equipment etc. (Ramstein), and information from its spies on the ground.
I’m willing to bet that, if the even more overt attack on Syria by the U.S., Britain, and France (has anybody else already signed up?) does really happen, the German government of Capitalist Democrats and Sod-‘Em-Alls will play the same role.
I forgot, DJT has no shame, so it is kind of like talking to manson, or simopson
Funny, on the enneagram he is an 8, whose “sin” is shamelessness
Funny, we can all express our voices, or opinions, but DJT will do what ever he wants. He will take all of us down with him. I have never been so ashamed of being a us citizen .
The “International Lawyers” reach the correct conclusion. [Beyond doubt, if the U.S. attacks Syria, or its government, again, the U.S. would, again, commit several violations of international law, and the U.S. would commit murder when it killed any Syrian (civilian or military) and criminal assault or mayhem when it injured and Syrian (civilian or military).]
But their premises and arguments lack necessary detail.
Just one, of several, examples:
The “international Lawyers” assert only that the “use of military force by a state can be used in self-defense after an armed attack by another state, or, with the approval of the United Nations Security Council.”
But per pertinent long-standing international law recognized by the U.N., a nation can attack, preemptively, in pursuit of “self-defense,” despite the attacking nation has not suffered an armed attack of the nation it attacks.
Such would be true if the attacked nation has, clearly, threatened imminent attack and the self–defense-claiming nation has no reasonable alternative but it preemptive attack to defend itself.
The preemptively attacking state would need to demonstrate that its preemptive “self-defense” force was necessary, that the necessity was “instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment of deliberation.”
The preemptive-self-defense-claiming state would need to show that the other state’s military attack was imminent and nothing but forcible action would forestall such attack. Also, the preemptive-self-defense-claiming state would be obliged to respond in a manner proportionate to the threat.
Beyond doubt, the U.S. could not satisfy those requirements. But the International Lawyers were obliged to show so; and they did not even address the matter.
Shoddy lawyering. Hence lawyering not likely to bear the desired effect.
Correction of the las line of the first paragraph of my main comment:
“when it injured any Syrian (civilian or military).]”
Another correction. ^th paragraph:
“Such would be true if the attacked nation has, clearly, threatened imminent attack and the self–defense-claiming nation has no reasonable alternative but its preemptive attack to defend itself.” [correction is “its” instead of “it]
The possibility of a justified pre-emptive strike, is irrelevant, as you state, U.S has no case for Syria being an imminent threat. Also the lawyers statement does cover this ground with the qualifier, “or, with the approval of the United Nations Security Council”.
Pre-emptive self defense is not yet to my knowledge customary international law and is certainly not mentioned as an exception to the prohibition in the U.N. Charter. It was raised as a defense, inter alia, by the Israelis for the 6-Day War in 1967 but history has taught that the Arab nations were not in fact on the verge of attacking Israel. The lack of acceptance of the doctrine is based on its potential for such abuses.
I agree, however, that the statement deserved more detail, such as why the existing U.S. presence in Syria is unlawful. But the scholars seem to be depending on their reputations and easy understandability to attract more readership. I can’t say that’s wrong, just that it’s not the way I would have chosen.
While looking for some music on the car radio today I ran into an interview on NPR which stopped me from moving on. The person being interviewed stated flatly that no matter how you looked at it, in legal terms a Trump attack on Syria could not possibly be justified, no matter how many contortions they tried. At the very end they finished by saying it was a darned shame on account of the dastardly and evil Assad, but still – NPR?
If Trump gets away with this, he has grabbed yet another bit of power in the 4-Year Dictatorship we used to call the Presidency. Bad idea, bad precedent, and as dangerous as anything since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Do any of my Indiana congresscritters care? They seem to be pretending nothing is happening – there is nothing at all on their web sites or in the news that I could find. I’m pretty sure all three are laying low and quietly cheering Trump on. No impeachment or imprisonment from THEM!
“A No 10 read-out of her [Theresa May] call with the US president stated that they agreed the international community ‘needed to respond’ but stopped short of blaming the Syrian regime. ‘They agreed that reports of a chemical weapons attack in Syria were utterly reprehensible and if confirmed, represented further evidence of the Assad regime’s appalling cruelty against its own people and total disregard for its legal obligations not to use these weapons,’ it said. -The Times
President Trump also appears to have backed off an imminent strike after promising Syria would ‘pay a big price,’ and that the U.S. response would be decided by Wednesday.”
The only time the MSM has stopped their 24/7 vilification of Trump was last April when he bombed that near-empty Syrian airstrip. Congressmen on the Right and Left are currently cheering Trump on, and some are even calling him a “wimp” for not bombing Syria.
I think if Trump wanted to go, Theresa May would have been there in a New York minute. It might turn out that it was Trump who put on the brakes. He doesn’t like war, wanted to bring the troops home during his campaign, and two weeks ago he said the U.S. would be pulling out of Syria. And then this coincidentally happened. Same as last year when Trump said he wanted to pull out of Syria; there was all of a sudden a chemical weapons attack that was blamed on Assad.
Link for above article:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-11/there-wasnt-single-corpse-russia-claims-white-helmets-staged-syria-chemical-attack
We have to realize it’s not Trump making these policies and it wouldn’t have been Hillary either, just as Obama wasn’t the mastermind of his deadly foreign policy. They are merely the public face of the U.S. military industrial complex which wants to control the entire planet and its resources. Obama and Hillary were much more politically correct and compliant. It’s harder to control Trump’s public outbursts but he obviously has been read the riot act and will do his master’s bidding if he wants to survive his term.
I agree that Obama was a sycophant with a silver tongue, but Hillary’s raw power indicates that she was very close to the top.
She created superdelegates, eliminated any real opposition to her candidacy, corrupted the campaign process, all while under FBI investigation. She was also the anointed Democrat candidate even though she did not have sufficient popularity to fill a high school gymnasium. Obama appointed her Secretary of State just to keep her career alive, while he did not even appear to like her in 2008. Finally, Russiagate, any other politician would have faded into oblivion after her double losses, instead, the entire corporate media is covering for her, a year after her loss.
These actions indicate that she had a tremendous amount of power.
Deniz – well said. Hillary is another beast altogether, a total insider with a ton of power and extremely dangerous. She screwed Bernie Sanders, illegally used her own personal servers in order to hide what she was doing, deleted 30,000 subpoenaed emails, destroyed her hard drives. Then there’s the Uranium One deal and the payoffs, plus the Clinton Foundation and the missing $145 million. And yet there is virtual silence from the MSM on this. Where’s the special counsel investigation for Hillary? Nowhere to be found.
In contrast, Trump has been crushed by the media since he announced his run. Robert Mueller’s investigation into collusion between Trump and Russia (no evidence has been found) has morphed into a Stormy Daniels freak show. Trump is a total outsider with little power.
He’s trying to bring jobs back to the U.S., he’s trying to control the U.S. border so there are jobs for Americans, so they won’t be saddled with the costs associated with the illegals, and yet the elite, with help from the Left, are fighting him on this.
It’s a war against the open borders/no jobs/trade deficit globalists and Trump’s controlled borders/manufacturing jobs/fair trade nationalists.
But do people see this? Nope. They’re content to work against their better interest and call for Trump’s impeachment. An outsider got in this one time, and the elite are making sure it never happens again. The noose will tighten up now.
Maybe countries really do have to swing so far into wingnut territory and totally screw themselves over before they wake up.
If she had that much power she would be president today. She is just amother tool who allowed herself to be used to perpetuate the false notion that we live in a democracy. Bernie was also part of this charade, as evidenced by his immediate endorsement of her.
Nancy – you could be right. I vacillate between what you’ve said (that they’re all just tools) to thinking that Trump is an outsider while Hillary is an insider.
If you are correct, then Trump is being hammered on purpose, but he doesn’t care because it’s all a big lie and he’s part of it. I’m having trouble believing this, but I’ll try to keep an open mind. The jury is still out. He is going after the globalists who took the jobs to China, but maybe that’s what the elite want him to do (because that is secretly what they now want). Who knows what’s going on. Time will tell, I guess.
Good talking to you, Nancy.
Much to everyone’s chagrin, it appears we still have some semblance of a functioning electoral system.
I’m replying to my own comment, backwardsevolution because I couldn’t reply to yours!
I agree that Trump is an outsider politically but he’s still part of the rich boys club and will not do anything to jeopardize that. The jobs he’s bringing back aren’t good-paying union jobs–that ship has sailed.
He might have thought he could do something different with foreign policy but I think he’s been learning quickly how that game works.
I actually believe that he never expected to be president–it was a shock to everyone. Hillary was just so bad! It’s becoming more and more obvious that the real rulers get their way no matter who is president.
Of course I could certainly be wrong and I kind of hope I am!
Zach…. HAH! NPR & PBS are no longer the harbingers of truth. If you haven’t noticed they’ve been part of the rest of the herd when it comes to international geopolitical news. I started seeing it in 2014 during the early stages of the Ukraine coup. Damn shame….isn’t it. PBS still has some great programs and most US domestic news is OK. AQs far as your Congress critters….I think that most of them are hoping he screws up big time,because it’ll be on him. But there is sadly…not much in the way of pushback on his threats. I do catch some ,both Dems and GOP congressmen bringing up the War Powers Act on RT . Thank God for RT….it’s the best big media station now with balanced reporting like we used to get. I no longer watch the Presstitutes . There are a lot of other blogs like Consortium news also, but you may realize that already. Oh…Trump is so in want of a win in the “Trade” arena….that he’s now brought up the TPP ,one of the very few good moves he’s made. He’s a disaster waiting to happen. SAD…..
The US is run by people that refer to non-Jews as Goyim (cattle) for over 100 years, so don’t expect sanity.
I do recall how so very many people here on this website referred to HRC as Killary, Shillary, Warmonger. Wag the dog. Trump is not insane, but he will do a military action , just to avoid his own shortcoming
tina – Hillary would have blown Syria off the face of the map by now.
And by now we would probably all be dead. But that doesn’t for one moment let Trump off the hook as he now pushing hard for world oblivion.
Tom F – I don’t think Trump is pushing hard for anything of the sort. He actually wants to get OUT of Syria. He said that two weeks ago, but he’s being pushed to say something when he’s shown pictures of dead children. So he barks and threatens, but he’s not attacking, is he?
She would have started ww3 with her no-fly zones…
A president with the mind and speech of a twelve-year-old sure strikes me as insane. When he was elected, the Deep State made a series of plans. First was to turn Trump around from his disposition to retreat to the mainland as long as he was president while conducting operations like Mueller’s that would eventually cause him to be removed from office. The current New Yorker has a long and honest story about the life history of Pence, which I take to mean that in the higher reaches of Manhattan there is no doubt that sooner rather than later Trump will go and we will have a new president.
No understandable “urge” to protect innocent civilians underlines any U.S. foreign policy machinations. And this latest ploy to “justify” an attack on Damascus is obviously not a “response” to unlawful violence. The writers correctly point to the fact that the U.S. has been arming what they all too politely/mistakenly call the “rebels/insurgents” with the express purpose of overthrowing the legally recognized Syrian government. We cannot assume any facts, narrative, or accountability without an internationally recognized investigation (which may or may not take place). The track record of the U.S. in the Middle East and that of the so-called “insurgents” and their “Hollywood” P.R. flaks (White Helmets) hardly inspires confidence in any narrative coming from those quarters. So let’s be careful with our words. The U.S. isn’t seeking to destroy any “monster”. It’s looking to finish what it started in 2001. But Russia got in the way. Arrogant force finally met immovable object.
So the “planners” need to call off the dogs or Everybody loses. They can’t have their way in everything all the time. They need to grow up and face reality real quick. Live and still be rich, or persist and find out what it means to “be all equal in the end”. Appeals to man-made “law” won’t phase you, I know…but natural laws have a real way of coming up and biting you in the arse when you least expect it. Can’t say you weren’t warned. The line had to be drawn somewhere. Destroying Damascus really all that important to you?
Well, the purpose of a lawyer is to give legal advice and support a case in the courts for a prosecution or a defense. When the individual has already been found guilty even before a lawyer has been consulted or any application to a judicial review started, then the ‘law’ doesn’t apply. Law only applies when there is a body that is able to uphold it and since there isn’t any organisation that is appointed to deal with supposed breaches of law, then what’s the point. International law is like a sports match without a referee, it only works if all the players stick to the previously agreed rules of the game. America and the UK doesn’t even pretend to stick to the rules and the US won’t even sign up to the international court!!!
Yes, the US evades international law by refusing to submit to the ICC, and even threatening to militarily attack the Hague. But the article properly notes that it will ultimately pay heavily for its crimes, for “bypassing existing legal mechanisms, is a road to a lawless world.”
The conduct of the US since WWII and especially since 9/11 has been very similar to that of Hitler, its tyrants inventing pretexts for bullying and theft for political bribes, and to pose falsely as protectors, accusing their moral superiors of disloyalty. Their devotion to dishonesty and deception is very similar.
The article shows that international law experts have long known the criminality of the US oligarchy tyrants, and the world awaits only the opportunity to end the US empire with well-deserved embargoes, defeats, and expulsion from NATO and the UNSC. This is inevitable as US aggression on borrowed funds increases to hide its diminishing economy. When BRICS has the ability and resolve to establish another reserve currency, establish a stronger UN more attractive to most nations without inviting the US, and finally to embargo the US, the US tyrants will have their final humiliation.
The process of motivating the US majority to restore democracy will begin only when its economy collapses, for they are corrupted by luxury and hubris, the accidental aristocracy of a world which will at last punish them severely for their crimes.
I would simply add to this fine statement that I think it would have been even better if it had incriminated Israel as well as the US for conditions in the ME today. It is reported that in 1948 President Harry Truman explained his country’s recognition of the newly created state of Israel by saying ‘I have 600,000 Jews in my country and no Arabs.” Truman was a typical ward heeler without a mind of his own, and Winston Churchill instructed him in Potsdam and later on the “perfidy” of the USSR. Truman seems not to have realized that it was the Soviet Union, suffering more than 20,000,000 deaths, that defeated Hitler in WW2. Is it possible that it is now the US’s turn to be destroyed by Russia in a war perhaps likely to destroy the human race? I hope not.
US is only a proxy for Israel which has been at war with neighbors in the ME for the past century. US foreign policy is determined by a Congress whose Democrat and Republican members were assured of the necessary financial and organization support by the Israeli lobby and associates to get elected after pledging military and financial support for Israel. Thus US is under occupation of a foreign power and will be so until the electorate organizes to takeover national elections from AIPAC..
You make very good points Gregory. US is bound to violate the law whenever it suits its purposes. I recall when in 1986 Nicaragua took the US before the ICJ for arming, training, and sending the contras to carry out acts of terrorism inside Nicaragua resulting in thousands of dead and millions in damages. The following day US congress approved millions of dollars to keep the contras operational. That tells you how committed US is to the rule of law either domestically or internationaly. Unfortunately, Syria is just another victim of US brutality and criminality.