Noura Erakat On Gaza And The Israeli Massacre

An articulate response to a pro Israel corporate news channel by Palestinian scholar Noura Erakat. She certainly cuts through all the bullshit

£100m guilt money?

The UK will send £100 million humanitarian aid money to Yemen.  Great! BUT.....  over the last year the British government has approved over £3 billion of arms sales to Saudi Arabia.  What would make more difference?  £100m aid? OR the Saudis not having £3bn worth of new missiles to drop in Yemen?

Report on BBC news
Report on RT.com

Over 7000 Yemenis have died including over 1000 children, 19 million people lack access to water or sanitation, while 80 percent of the population are in need of humanitarian assistance.  Why?  Because Saudi Arabia and their coalition didn't like the new government in Yemen is pretty much what it boils down to, they think they might be too friendly with Iran.  So they blast the country to pieces using bombs bought from Britain and with the blessing of the US government but everything is fine because they are Saudi Arabia, we'll send some aid money and hopefully the media will just report on that and not on the reason why they need the aid.

Article from Huff post

War with Iran?

Article from PressTV:

"Iran wants oil payments in euros only"

http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/02/05/448836/Iran-wants-oil-payments-in-euros-only-

 Why does this mean possible war or invasion of Iran?  Well when Iraq and Libya stopped trading oil in US dollars and switched to Euros or other currencies they were swiftly invaded, overthrown and switched back to payments in dollars.

If you ain't a clue what I'm on about or why it matters, my blog post "Petrodollar Warfare" from a couple of years ago is still relevant and will explain. http://jonnybrand.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/petrodollar-warfare.html

Saddam Hussein sealed his fate when he announced in September 2000 that Iraq was no longer going to accept dollars for oil and decided to switch to the Euro as Iraq’s oil export currency.
The Iraq war began March 2003; Baghdad fell in April; by June Iraq was now selling oil in dollars again.

.....Good luck Iran!!! 

It all makes sense now!

This short article I found by stop the war coalition explains exactly why the Obama regime and the Cameron regime are yet again bombing in the Middle East.  It should help clear up any confusion you may have, a quick 30 second read will put it all into perspective.....   

 

Why we're bombing Iraq and Syria: Obama and Cameron clear up any confusion 

Obama and Cameron remove any misunderstanding about why the United States and Britain are bombing in the Middle East again.

You may be confused about why we are bombing Iraq and Syria. So we will make ourselves very clear.

We support the Iraqi government in the fight against ISIS. 

We don't like ISIS, but ISIS has been supported by Saudi Arabia, whom we do like, and Saudi Arabia is now supporting us in bombing ISIS.

We don't like President Assad in Syria. We support the fight against him, but not ISIS, which is also fighting against him. 

We don't like Iran, but Iran supports the Iraqi government against ISIS. 

So some of our friends support our enemies and some of our enemies are our friends, and some of our enemies are fighting against our other enemies whom we want to lose, but we don't want our enemies who are fighting our enemies to win. 

If the people we want to defeat are defeated, they might be replaced by people we like even less.
And all this was started by us invading Iraq to drive out terrorists who weren't there until we went to drive them out. 

We hope you now understand.

More War = Love and Peace

So for the last couple of years the US, Britain, NATO and Western aligned Arab countries have been funding, arming and assisting 'rebels' in Syria to try and overthrow Assad's Government, erm oops i meant to say Assad's regime, and now it has been decided that these rebels are actually terrorists and so we have to bomb them.  So does this mean they were previously collaborating with these Islamic State terrorists?  Oooh don't worry about that! stop asking questions, here are the facts.....

 No civilians will die or be displaced by these strikes, only evil terrorists will be affected because firing missiles from the sea hundreds of miles away has pin point accuracy.

No roads, homes, water supply or electricity infrastructure will be destroyed and in the remote chance that this does happen US troops will come and clear everything up and assist local independent contractors in repairing the damage.

Bombing a declared Islamic state is definitely not an act of war against Syria because the supposed enemy is not officially Syria as a sovereign nation.  It's also definitely not a war crime because although Syria's government gave no consent for military action the US told them they were going to drop bombs in their country regardless so it's all fine.

The alliance of Arab countries assisting the US militarily is absolutely not a PR front and it's just a coincidence that Saudia Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar and UAE have been and are staunch allies of the US.  All these countries will have hugely significant involvement and it won't just be their names tagged to the situation because as Obama tells us "IS is not America's fight alone".

The war against ISIS has no wider motive to further destabilise the Syrian Government, it's just a coincidence that US and Britain were eager to bomb them last year but it wasn't politically viable to do so at the time.

Hardly anyone has died in Iraq due to war over the last 10 years, only a million or so people so history suggests that arming Kurdish groups in Iraq won't really ignite more war and more deaths. Arming people to fight against people you have also armed previously has something to do with democracy somewhere, I'm sure it does.  More weapons = peace.

Russia and Iran having a mutual defense agreement with Syria is completely irrelevant and both of these countries warning the US against military actions inside Syria is nothing to be concerned about.

David Cameron announcing his backing of military strikes and offering support to the US will be a complete shock to us all and at no point do we expect to see Britain getting involved in another messy illegal war.

No part of the military industrial complex will profit from this latest round of war mongering, all weapons manufacturers and military contractors will still exist if there is no more war and they will still make billions in profit if we have nobody to fire tomohawk missiles at and don't decide to bolster our nuclear defense systems when all war has ended.

All of this will be over really soon, everything will have a happy ending and people from all countries involved will be forever grateful that all this war and destruction has yet again brought love and  peace to the world.

MAKE TEA NOT WAR

MAKE TEA NOT WAR
MAKE TEA NOT WAR
MAKE TEA NOT WAR
MAKE TEA NOT WAR
MAKE TEA NOT WAR

Israel continue their sickening war crimes

Whilst Israel continue their sickening war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza......

• Obama and co. loudly demand a ceasefire whilst quietly but simultaneously signing off military support to restock Israel's weapons and ammunitions. links to story on antiwar.com,  RT.com, rueters.com

"The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability," Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement.  "This defense sale is consistent with those objectives."

This "self-defense capability" has killed 1600 Palestinians and counting, the vast majority of them civilians, since the Israeli operation began on July 8.  The US give Israel $3.1bn is military aid per year BUT they want a ceasefire???

• The Independent reveal evidence that British supplied arms are being used in the Gaza massacre.  The Government refuses to investigate.  link to article.
• 1600 dead, Over 8000 injured.  400 thousand are homeless or displaced. Much of the Gaza Strip has less than two hours electricity a day and medicine and safe water are increasingly scarce.  Whoever initially broke the ceasefire is irrelevent when you consider all this and how Israel have now actually intensified their attacks since the ceasefire was broken.  globalresearch.com

Why won't world leaders actually do anything meaningful to stop this?  why are Israel untouchable?  David Cameron is scared to criticise Israel too harshly, is it because he'll lose support of the wealthy pro-Israeli conservative Party donors?  He does have a big election campaign to fund soon.....

theguardian.com

Scrap Trident

The British government wants to spend over £100,000,000,000 (100 billion) on renewing the countries nuclear weapon capabilities.  These weapons will very unlikely be used and even if they are then that means world war III and so we're all f**ked anyway!

£100billion could be used to employ 150,000 nurses and teachers per year for the next 30 years, think what that could do to help the future of our country!
Instead our MPs are in favour of lining the pockets of the military industrial complex and giving a future leader the potential to commit mass genocide.

Billions are being cut from health care, education and public services.  Currently £3b a year is spent on nuclear weapons, the renewal of the trident nuclear submarines will have a £25 billion procurement cost and a lifetime programme cost of over £100b

The final decision on whether to proceed with the replacement is due to be taken in 2016.

You can sign a petition to scrap trident and it's replacement here

MPs have tabled Early Day Motion 150 Trident Replacement (EDM 150) which calls on the Government to cancel plans to replace the Trident nuclear weapon submarines, arguing the case on both security and spending grounds.

You can find your MP's email and contact details here and ask them to add their name to EDM 150 in support. 68 MP's have signed so far.
click here to see Crewe and Nantwich MP Edward Timpson's reply to my email. I suspect a standard Conservative Party template letter but keep trying!

Nagasaki, Japan, August 1945

Hiroshima, Japan, August 1945

http://www.cnduk.org/

War on Syria then on to Iran

The Syrian government are being framed by the US and NATO with the chemical weapons story to give an excuse for war.  There is no definitive evidence to suggest that Assad's Syrian army have used chemical weapons but even so the news channels loop John Kerry spouting his mouth off about the "moral obscenity" of the "undeniable" use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government.   There is going to be a war, the UN inspectors are conducting a meaningless investigation because it doesn't matter what they conclude, the war will escalate anyway and the US and UK are going in, it's already been decided.  Sound familiar? Iraq? Libya?  
Iran and Syria have a mutual defence agreement which is exactly why the whole Syria situation is happening, it's to draw Iran into a war.  Petrodollar warfare is what it's all about.  In September 2000 Saddam Hussein announced a switch to the euro as Iraq’s oil export currency, the Iraq war began March 2003; Baghdad fell in April; by June Iraq was now selling oil in dollars again.  
New York's NYMEX and London's IPE oil exchanges dominate international trade in oil and primarily exchange in dollars.  The Iranian Oil Borse (IOB) officially opened as an oil commodity exchange in Feb 2008.  During 2007 Iran asked its petroleum customers to pay in non US dollar currencies. By December 2007, Iran reported to have converted all of its oil export payments to non-dollar currencies, primarily the euro and Iranian rial and a basket of other major (non-US) currencies.  Iran is the third largest oil producer in the world so this is a big deal and a big threat to US financial interests due to reduced demand for the dollar.  Previous attempts to get at Iran haven't gained enough momentum such as the claims they are harbouring nuclear weapons and the insanely heavy trade sanctions which they partly avoid by using alternative trade agreements with certain countries.  So plan B is to start war next door to Iran and drag them in.
The UN investigators have found that the Syrian rebels are more likely to have used sarin nerve gas, the same rebels that are backed, funded and armed by the US.  The news channels however will report how our politicians are squarely blaming chemical weapon attacks on Assad's Syrian army.  Tony Blair the middle east peace envoy is now calling for military strikes against Syria, yes that's right I said 'peace' envoy, the same guy who helped bring 'peace' to Iraq when he was PM.  This crossing a red line that we keep hearing about from Obama doesn't really matter, it's just a marker to refer back to when larger scale intervention is being justified.  William Hague has said military response to the use of chemical weapons in Syria is possible without the unanimous consent of the UN Security Council.  Meanwhile Russia warns of catastrophic consequences of military intervention in Syria.
This war was planned some time ago and all roads lead to Tehran..... remember though Russia and China are watching.......

And finally, maybe we should also listen to president Assad's side of the story ,that's only fair, right?

whistleblowing in the wind

Bradley Manning was judged today to be guilty of 20 of the 22 charges against him and faces sentencing tomorrow.  He will very likely spend the rest of his life in prison.
Those guilty of the war crimes he exposed continue to walk free without question.
Imagine a scenario where you witness a variety of serious crimes, lets say you yourself are aware and have evidence of work colleagues repeatedly stealing, covering up fraud, blackmailing, bullying and harassing people.  You decide you cannot knowingly let this happen behind closed doors anymore and expose them with specific undeniable evidence.  You feel a moral obligation to blow the whistle.  Your bosses then decide it is you that should be punished for revealing secrets about your work environment and turn a blind eye to the colleagues you exposed because your bosses were in on it all along!.  You've done the right thing but the system is against you.
Bradley Manning knew his government was corrupt and that he would be punished but he still leaked the documents, he is a hero and should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Among the war crimes he exposed were;

• U.S. Military officials withheld information about the indiscriminate killing of Reuters journalists and innocent Iraqi civilians.
• There is an official policy to ignore torture in Iraq.
• Guantanamo prison has knowingly held mostly innocent people and low-level operatives.
• The Obama Administration allowed Yemen’s President to cover up a secret U.S. drone bombing campaign.
• U.S. officials were told to cover up evidence of child abuse by contractors in Afghanistan.
• Known Egyptian torturers received training from the FBI in Quantico, Virginia.
• There is an official tally of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan- for every death that is classified as a combatant, two innocent men, women or children are also killed.

At least his trial will have drawn public attention and hopefully raised further awareness of the western world's military practices.  These war crimes won't stop, it's all part of a much bigger agenda but will potential whistleblowers of the future now still be brave enough to expose the truth?  Your government hope not.

Free Bradley Manning

Bradley Manning is private in the US army who was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq on suspicion of having passed classified material to the website WikiLeaks. He was ultimately charged with 22 offences, including communicating national defence information to an unauthorised source and aiding the enemy.  Having been detained for 3 years without charge he is currently on trial answering these charges with the trial due to conclude in the next few days with his probable lifetime incarceration.

Amongst the many documents he leaked was the video known as 'Collateral Murder' (see below), the video from July 12, 2007 showed an American helicopter firing on a group of men in Baghdad. One of the men was a journalist, and two other men were Reuters employees carrying cameras that the pilots readily mistook for weapons. The helicopter also fired on a van that stopped to help the injured members of the first group; two children in the van were wounded and their father killed.  
The video reveals the sickening blase attitude towards killing innocent civilians and at one point we hear someone begging for clearance to open fire (9:13) on the group of men in the van who's apparent crime is turning up to collect the bodies of the men that these US soldiers had gunned down moments before.
The details of what WikiLeaks revealed courtesy of Manning expose a full menu of scandalous, shameful, disgusting, corrupt revelations that were fully intended to be kept under wraps forever.  However it is the heroic whistleblower Manning that is being brought to 'justice' as if to make an example to other potential whistleblowers that if you tell the public about these atrocities then you will be hunted down and destroyed.  This is why Julian Assange is holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London with round the clock police guard waiting outside to arrest him should he set foot outside, this at a cost of over £3million over the last year.  This is why Edward Snowdon is stuck in a Russian airport unable to fly to any of the countries who have granted him asylum for fear of being captured and brought back to US soil to face a similar fate to Manning.  
The truth is not a crime. Exposing war crimes is not a crime.  Bradley Manning faces life in prison for telling the truth.  Truth is only treason in an empire full of lies.  Free Bradley Manning!



If you agree with the sentiments of this post please share, +1 and email to help public awareness.....

Petrodollar Warfare

All the wars, all the corruption, the lies, the media brainwashing, the false flag events, illegal invasions, cries of terrorism, recessions, bank collapses and the road the world war 3 can be directly linked in some way to one thing - the petrodollar.
This subject is huge and has many tangents to fire off at but here's an attempt at a brief summary;

The US dollar is backed by debt, unlike other countries America has no gold reserves to back the value of its currency and instead relies on a global demand for the dollar.  The federal reserve is not owned by the country, the government or the tax paying public but is in fact a private bank, it lends huge sums of money to the government and very literally creates more money out of thin air on the basis that the previous debt will be payed back.  These debts are now so vast they are impossible to ever pay back because the trillions of dollars required simply do not exist.  The one thing keeping the dollar and the whole American economy alive is global demand for the currency due to commodities conventionally being traded in dollars, namely oil and  trade of oil between countries is quoted in and directly linked to the value of the US dollar.
Now that's the basic system with I'm sure some oversights but it sets the scene for what follows, and basically what follows is war.

Saddam Hussein sealed his fate when he announced in September 2000 that Iraq was no longer going to accept dollars for oil being sold under the UN’s Oil-for-Food program, and decided to switch to the euro as Iraq’s oil export currency.  We all know what happened next of course, well we think we do anyway.  The 2003 invasion, the non existent WMD, the toppling of Saddam, the long drawn out occupation of Iraq, and the resulting 1 million Iraqis who have died as a consequence.  Anything else?  Erm... well yes actually..... In 2003 the Bush Administration implemented a switch for Iraqi  international oil sales to revert back to dollars instead of euros despite the fact that in mid-2003 the euro was valued approximately 13% higher than the dollar, and thus significantly impacted the ability of Iraq to finance rebuilding he countries infrastructure.

The Iraq war began March 2003; Baghdad fell in April; by June Iraq was now selling oil in dollars again

It is now obvious the invasion of Iraq had less to do with any threat from Saddam’s long-gone WMD program and certainly less to do to do with fighting International terrorism than it has to do with gaining control over Iraq’s hydrocarbon reserves and in doing so maintaining the U.S. dollar as the monopoly currency for the critical international oil market.

You get the general idea by now so apply this same thinking to many of the other US led wars, invasions, trade embargos and political interference and you'll find a pattern emerges.

Libya - Gadaffi planned to cease selling Libyan oil in U.S. dollars instead demanding payment in gold-backed Dinars (a single African currency made from gold).  The regime, sitting on massive amounts of gold, estimated at close to 150 tons, was also pushing other African and Middle Eastern governments to follow suit.  The US fed us some propaganda and then stamped on Libya.
Afghanistan - Why have troops stayed so long? The US needs control of Afghanistan to exert influence over Central Asian reserves. (It is estimated that the Caspian Sea basin has $12 trillion reserves of oil and natural gas.).  Important pipelines cross through the region and Afghanistan is not only adjacent to countries which are rich in oil and natural gas (e.g Turkmenistan), it also possesses within its territory sizeable untapped reserves of natural gas, coal  and oil. The US does not necessarily intend to steal anyone’s oil but the nation remains utterly dependent on oil trade continuing in the dollar.
As the US dollar continued to lose purchasing power over time, several oil-producing countries began to question the wisdom of accepting increasingly worthless paper currency for their oil supplies. Today, several countries have attempted to move away, or already have moved away, from the petrodollar system. Examples include Iran, Syria, Venezuela, and North Korea… or the “axis of evil” if you prefer to use  the words of the mainstream media.  Additionally, other nations are choosing to use their own currencies for oil like China, Russia and India among others.
Clearly America aren't going to declare war on China, Russia or India (or at least not for a long while yet) but you will no doubt be aware of political unrest in the other countries I mention.
Venezuela - (failed) US sponsored military coup against Chavez.  Attempts to rig presidential elections after the death of Chavez in favour of the pro US Capriles against the socialist Maduro (failed again)
Syria - US funded rebels fighting the Assad 'regime' along with Israeli military interference by US proxy.
North Korea - Strict sanctions and trade embargos justified by the axis of evil story and exaggerated claims of nuclear war threat
Iran - The list of sanctions against Iran is pages long. There is a corresponding bipartisan belief by US government officials that Iranian citizens will become so inflamed by the effects of the sanctions that they will rise up and topple their government but this has not proved to be the case and Iran partly work round many of the sanctions using alternative trade agreements with certain countries such as Turkey, Russia and China.  Iran is the next big war waiting to happen and America just needs to concoct a decent reason to get in there that will carry enough public and international support.

Ultimately the petrodollar is going out of the window bit by bit and without the artificial demand for the US dollar that this system creates the whole US economy will come crashing down with potentially devastating effects.  America imports two thirds of the oil it needs and when the dollar crashes foreign fuel will be too expensive, the petrol pumps dry up and chaos will ensue, starting with panic buying then progressively empty supermarket shelves, looting, social breakdown, martial law, public uprising (this is part of the reason why the government wants to disarm the public through new gun control measures) and of course there will be significant wide reaching global economic problems particularly for those countries whose currency is closely linked to the US dollar.

There's no avoiding this scenario once it is upon us and unfortunately it is already upon us.  This explains why there is so much desperation to stir political unrest and initiate wars. The world is like a chess board with pieces being strategically moved every day and currently it's only really the pawns that have been taken off the board with maybe a rook or two trapped into a corner.  World War 3 is only a matter of time.....

Crossing your own red line is absolutely fine

So here we go..... we know what's coming because we've seen it all before.  Last time it was Bush and Blair and this time it's Obama and Cameron, different leaders, same regime, same intentions.
Remember the pretext for the Iraq war? Weapons of mass destruction, regime attacking their own people, the axis of evil, human rights atrocities, war crimes.  Of course you remember and that's why the talk we're hearing regarding Syria over the last few days sounds so familiar.

“We cannot stand by and permit the systematic use of weapons like chemical weapons on civilian populations”

No of course you can't condone that Mr Obama!  You must also have been outraged when the US military used devastating chemical weapons during its barbaric siege of Fallujah in Iraq!  The line was crossed when they used white phosphorus shells and an advanced form of napalm because they are both banned by international conventions and THAT was a war crime yes? men, women and children burnt alive.

The ongoing legacy of these weapons plagues the Iraqi people with huge increases in child leukemia and cancer, and an epidemic of nightmarish birth defects in Fallujah, Basra and the other cities subjected to a US military siege

“It’s limited evidence, but there’s growing evidence that we have seen too of the use of chemical weapons, probably by the regime.”

Aah now David Cameron is chipping in is he? "limited evidence", "probably by the regime", not really convincing me there Dave, sorry mate but no I won't be happy if you spend my taxes on intervening in Syria because there seems to be no evidence whatsoever.

note that Assad does have big support from the Syrian people
 just like Gaddafi did in Libya

Obama has repeatedly stated Syrian use of chemical weapons would cross a red line and could move the US closer to military intervention in the Syrian civil war.  Now we're told chemical weapons have probably been used and await the next development..... we know it's all bullshit of course and don't forget that the rebels fighting against the Bashar al-Assad 'regime' are actually supported and encouraged by the US with a blatant intention to destabilise the region.
But why is there an interest in Syria? They're not a major producer of oil or gas, they're not a politically verbal or economic threat in the same way as Gaddafi and Libya, so whats going on?  Well look at it like this- Syria might not be a major power in the Middle East, but a Syrian uprising may determine the shape of the future regional 'energy map'.  The biggest losers in a successful war for regime change would be Iran, who recently signed a major pipeline deal with Syria and Iraq that is ultimately aimed at bringing Iranian gas to the Mediterranean Sea, and Russia, which has sought to expand its own influence in energy development in the region. Washington bitterly opposed this pipeline deal.

The obvious winners of regime change would be the US and its allies, together with the major Western based energy conglomerates.

Syria's geographic location offers Mediterranean access to landlocked entities in search of markets for their hydrocarbons and to countries seeking access to Europe without having to go through Turkey.  Opportunities in the region would be lost with a crushed Syria but more importantly new opportunities will emerge under a new Syrian regime.  The end goal of US imperialism and its NATO allies in Syria is to isolate and prepare for a far larger war against Iran, with the aim of imposing neocolonial control over the whole vast energy-producing region.

Keep watching and see where this red line is drawn, then watch a bit longer and see the very people who drew the line walk straight across it.  It's going to happen and you know it is.  When the war starts many thousands of people will die. Did someone say war crimes?

budget's barracks boost

Today's budget announced a pay freeze for all public sector workers with the exception of the military who are excempt and get a 1.5% salary increase. Nice! Obviously they deserve a pay rise more than anyone else for all their hard work fighting fruitless, unnecessary illegal wars in Afghanistan and assisting the US in killing 1 million Iraqis.  I suppose we need to keep our army heroes sweet so that they don't ask too many questions when they get sent to Syria/Mali/Algeria or wherever the next imaginary terrorist threat rises from. 

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