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It’s starting to look like the entire war effort in Israel, the entire Netanyahu agenda, is riding on the US presidential election. With the number of high level officials in Israel now flipping out over the war effort and claiming that Netanyahu is insane and out of control, hellbent on destruction like a death metal...

Der Bundesgerichtshof (BGH) hat die lebenslange Haftstrafe gegen einen früheren syrischen Geheimdienstoffizier wegen staatlicher Folter bestätigt. Mit dem am Montag veröffentlichten Urteil wies der BGH die Revision des Mannes ab. Er hatte Verfahrensfehler bemängelt. Die Verurteilung zu lebenslanger Haftstrafe ist damit rechtskräftig. (Az. 3 StR 454/22)

Das Oberlandesgericht (OLG) Koblenz hatte den Mann im Januar 2022 im weltweit ersten Strafprozess zu Staatsfolter in Syrien verurteilt. Anwar R. wurde für schuldig befunden, Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit begangen zu haben. Konkret handelte es sich laut Urteil um Tötung, Folter, schwerwiegende Freiheitsberaubung, Vergewaltigung und sexuelle Nötigung in Tateinheit mit Mord und weiteren Delikten. Das Gericht sah es als erwiesen an, dass R. im Rahmen eines ausgedehnten und systematischen Angriffs gegen die syrische Zivilbevölkerung als Mittäter 27 Menschen ermordet sowie 4.000 Menschen in schwerwiegender Weise gefoltert hatte.

Die berüchtigte Vernehmungsabteilung 251

Nach Feststellung des OLG Koblenz hatte das syrische Regime ab 2011 Proteste unter Einsatz von Waffengewalt um jeden Preis niederschlagen lassen. Die Gewalt sei im Rahmen einer umfassenden Strategie ausgeübt worden, um die syrische Bevölkerung einzuschüchtern und gefügig zu machen. Nach der Anordnung des Regimes unter Staatspräsident Baschar al-Assad, die Protestbewegung gewaltsam im Keim zu ersticken, wurden Tausende Menschen festgenommen, gefoltert und teilweise getötet. Viele von ihnen landeten in der Vernehmungsabteilung 251 des Al-Khatib-Gefängnisses in Damaskus, wo sie „ohne rechtsstaatliches Verfahren eingesperrt, misshandelt und gefoltert worden sind“.

Als Flüchtling in Deutschland

Das OLG sah als erwiesen an, dass Anwar R. für die Führung des Gefängnisses zuständig war – auch im Tatzeitraum von April 2011 bis September 2012. Der heute 61-Jährige trug dabei wesentlich zur Aufrechterhaltung des Foltersystems bei. So seien Misshandlungen, Gewaltanwendung und sexuelle Übergriffe von Anwar R. als Mittel zur Erpressung von Aussagen gewollt gewesen. Auch Vergewaltigungen hätten die Gefangenen erdulden müssen. „Todesfälle nahm er als zwangsläufige Folge der Misshandlungen und der Haftbedingungen in Kauf”, betonten die Richter.

Anwar R. war 2014 als Flüchtling nach Deutschland eingereist. Als ein anderer syrischer Flüchtling in R. seinen Folterer erkannte und den Behörden meldete, kam das Strafverfahren gegen den Mann und später auch gegen einen zweiten syrischen Geheimdienst-Mitarbeiter, R.'s Mitangeklagten Eyad A., ins Rollen. Menschenrechtsorganisationen hatten das Urteil als wichtiges Signal für die Überlebenden und als Schritt im Kampf gegen weltweite Straflosigkeit begrüßt.

Prozess nach Weltrechtsprinzip

Grundlage für den Prozess war das Weltrechtsprinzip. Seit 2002 können bestimmte Verbrechen – Völkermord, Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit und Kriegsverbrechen – in Deutschland geahndet werden, auch wenn weder die Tat hier geschehen ist noch die Angeklagten oder die Opfer aus Deutschland kommen. Der BGH betonte, das Koblenzer Urteil habe keine Rechtsfehler enthalten. Es sei rechtens gewesen, der Verurteilte könne sich auch nicht auf seine vorgebrachte Immunität berufen, weil er seine Tatbeiträge als „hoheitlich handelnder Staatsbediensteter” erbracht hatte. Lediglich hinsichtlich einiger Sexualdelikte nahm der BGH geringe Änderungen am Schuldspruch vor, die am Strafmaß jedoch nichts änderten.

https://anfdeutsch.com/aktuelles/lebenslange-haft-im-prozess-um-staatsfolter-in-syrien-30285 https://anfdeutsch.com/aktuelles/staatsfolter-in-syrien-bundesanwaltschaft-fordert-lebenslange-haft-29622 https://anfdeutsch.com/menschenrechte/igh-verpflichtet-syrien-zu-massnahmen-gegen-folter-39843 https://anfdeutsch.com/menschenrechte/niederlande-und-kanada-reichen-folterklage-gegen-syrien-ein-37870

 

Im nordostsyrischen Dêrik ist ein Trinkwasserdepot von einer unbemannten Drohne der türkischen Armee angegriffen worden. Der Einschlag einer Bombe in einem Dorf wenige Kilometer südöstlich des Stadtkerns hinterließ am Montagabend Sachschaden in noch unbekannter Höhe. Menschen wurden nach Kenntnis der Sicherheitsbehörden nicht verletzt.

Dêrik, eigentlich Dêrika Hemko (ar. Al-Malikiya), liegt im nordöstlichen Zipfel von Rojava und gehört verwaltungstechnisch zum Kanton Cizîrê. Die Stadt liegt nur fünf Kilometer von der türkischen Grenze und zehn Kilometer vom kurdischen Teil des Irak entfernt. Türkische Drohnen und Artillerie nehmen die Stadt häufig ins Visier. Mehrere Luftangriffswellen in den Jahren 2022 und 2023 haben weite Teile der Infrastruktur von Dêrik zerstört.

Wenige Stunden vor dem Angriff auf Dêrik hatte eine Drohne der Türkei bereits Qamişlo bombardiert. Ziel des Angriffs war ein schon länger geräumter Militärposten der Demokratischen Kräfte Syriens (QSD) in der Nähe einer Speiseölfabrik im Südwesten der Metropole. Ein abgeworfenes Geschoss traf das Dach des leerstehenden Baus. Verletzt wurde niemand.

Ignorierter Drohnenkrieg gegen Rojava

Die Türkei greift die Zivilbevölkerung, die Selbstverwaltung und die den QSD angeschlossenen Militärverbände in der Autonomieregion Nord- und Ostsyrien seit Jahren gezielt mit Drohnen an. Der Luftraum über Syrien wird von den USA und Russland kontrolliert. Die internationale Gemeinschaft ignoriert den Drohnenterror, der im Juni 2020 mit der Ermordung von drei Vertreterinnen des Frauendachverbands Kongra Star in Kobanê begonnen hat. Laut Daten des Rojava Information Center und der Selbstverwaltung hat die Türkei in diesem Jahr bereits mindestens 109 Drohnenangriffe auf die Region verübt. Dabei wurden mindestens 28 Menschen getötet und fast 50 weitere verletzt. Ende Mai waren bei acht Drohnenangriffen an einem Tag vier QSD-Mitglieder getötet worden, elf weitere Menschen wurden verwundet.

https://anfdeutsch.com/rojava-syrien/turkische-drohne-bombardiert-qamislo-43146 https://anfdeutsch.com/rojava-syrien/turkische-drohne-wirft-bombe-auf-anha-team-ab-40611 https://anfdeutsch.com/frauen/women-defend-rojava-die-bedeutung-des-19-juli-42969 https://anfdeutsch.com/rojava-syrien/zwei-minidrohnen-uber-kobane-abgeschossen-43061

 

Die Unruhen in Großbritannien sind dabei, außer Kontrolle zu geraten. Da deutsche Medien über Unruhen und Proteste im Westen nur ausgesprochen ungerne und zurückhaltend berichten, habe ich einen Artikel der russischen Nachrichtenagentur TASS übersetzt, der auch die Hintergründe beleuchtet, denn Unruhen wegen oder durch Migranten finden in Großbritannien bei weitem nicht zum ersten Mal statt. […]

Amidst surging racism in what he ruefully called our "glittering republic," we mark the 100th birthday of James Baldwin, the incandescent writer, orator, and "disturber of the peace" fiercely committed to telling the truth about race in America. As a black, queer man who channeled his rage into his work, he called on his countrymen "trapped in a history (they) do not understand (to) make America what America must become," insisting, "You can't swear to the freedom of all mankind, and put me in chains."

A fiery "prophet teacher" present at seminal moments of the Civil Rights Movement from Selma to Washington, Baldwin grew up poor in Harlem, the oldest of nine children to Emma Jones, who at 19 fled the segregated South during the Great Migration. He never knew his biological father; Jones later married David Baldwin, an unstable fire-and-brimstone preacher with whom she had James' eight half-siblings. He had a fraught relationship with his angry, often abusive stepfather, but after he died came to accept that the elder Baldwin "loved his children, who were black (and) menaced like him." James once described a "terrifying" life - people lost to suicide, prison, racism - that sometimes "narrow(ed) to a red circle of rage," but he encountered liberal white teachers who encouraged him to write; as a result, "I never really managed to hate white people."

His masterworks ranged from novels to essays to plays. They included Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), "Notes of a Native Son" (1955), Nobody Knows My Name (1961), The Fire Next Time (1963), Blues for Mister Charlie (1964), “A Report From Occupied Territory” (1966), Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (1968). He spent years self-exiled in Istanbul, Paris and the south of France, where he died of cancer in 1987 at age 63; after multiple relationships with both men and women, he was cared for at the end by his brother David. At his funeral, he was eulogized by literary giants Amiri Baraka, Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou, who mourned him as one of the "great black Americans who have lived for us, loved for us and died for us." Now, she wondered, "Who will dare to confront a racist nation (and) sing the song of the voiceless?"

Even as a "small boy with big eyes" who described winter houses "in their little white overcoats,” Baldwin was known for a singular eloquence, for writing that was "unadorned, searing, and unequivocal." "He was fearless," said his youngest sister Paula. "He would say, ‘You have to walk straight into it.'" That clarity extended to his letters to four nephews to whom, when he came home - "It was always great joy to have him home, because he brought all of us together" - he was "Uncle Jimmy," with his "infectious laughter," stentorian voice, "curiosity about everything." He break-danced with them, taught them chess - "one of the most valuable philosophical lessons of my life" - and as adults endured prison with help from Baldwin's The Cross of Redemption: "My Uncle Jimmy civilized white America for me." They also learned from classmates, "Your uncle is a faggot."

In 1962, Baldwin wrote “A Letter to My Nephew” to his 15-year-old namesake James, his brother Wilmer’s son. First published in Progressive magazine, he included it, slightly edited, in The Fire Next Time as “Letter to My Nephew on the 100th Anniversary of Emancipation.” Six decades later, it still resonates in its harrowing depiction of the "almost casual injustice" of America's persistent racism, past, present and likely future; it also served as inspiration for Ta-Nehisi Coates' 2015 Letter to My Son, and rapper Common read it at an event after George Floyd's murder. "You know and I know that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too early," he wrote to James. He later added, "You can only be destroyed by believing you really are what the white world calls a nigger. I tell you this because I love you, and please don’t ever forget it."

Always aware of history, Baldwin began with, "I keep seeing your face, which is also the face of your father and my brother. And behind your father's face are all those other faces which were his." On their behalf, he cites "the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it...It is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime." Despite that dark history, "You were born; here you came. Here you were to be loved (to) strengthen you against the loveless world." And though his family had "every reason to be heavy-hearted," they were not: "I know how black it looks today for you. It looked black that day too. Yes, we were trembling. We have not stopped trembling yet... If we had not loved each other, none of us would have survived."

"This innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that you should perish," he argues. "You were born where you were born and faced the future you faced because you were black and for no other reason." On a society that spells out "with brutal clarity and in as many ways as possible" Black limits and worthlessness, he writes, "Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority, but to their inhumanity and fear" as Pyrrhic victors in "a history which they do not understand and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it." "Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one's sense of one's own reality," he asserts. "Well, the black man has functioned in the white man's world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar, and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundation."

"These men are your lost younger brothers. You must accept them and accept them with love," he insists. "With love we shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it." Even then, Baldwin had already lived too long in a racist world not to temper his hopefulness with his unflinching honesty. "It will be hard, James, but you come (from) men who in the teeth of the most terrifying odds achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity. You come from a long line of great poets, some of the greatest poets since Homer." He then now-famously quotes one, Richard Allen, or "Negro Richard," 1760–1831, a former slave who, once freed, became a traveling Methodist preacher and later helped found the African Methodist Episcopal Church: "I cried to the Lord both day and night...The very time I thought I was lost, all of a sudden my dungeon shook, and my chains fell off. "

Baldwin-Buckley race debate still resonates 55 years on www.youtube.com

Baldwin's decades-long focus on the spiritual darkness of an America unwilling or unable to confront its racist past - and thus, logically, present - was at the heart of his legendary U.K. debate "over the soul of the nation" with right-wing ideologue William F. Buckley in 1965, just months before passage of the Voting Rights Act. The motion of the debate, televised before an over-capacity crowd of more than 700 packed into the Cambridge Union: "Has the American Dream been achieved at the expense of the American Negro?" During perhaps the most historic intellectual debate on race in America - full transcript here - Baldwin electrified the crowd with his blistering oratory, disrobing said "American Dream" in what was praised as a "moral victory on behalf of Black America." In the end, Baldwin won with 544 to 164 votes; in an unprecedented move, most of the audience rose in a thunderous standing ovation for him as a stunned Baldwin looked on.

In The Fire is Upon Us, his 2020 book about the debate, Nicholas Buccola argues Baldwin's scrutiny of those who feel "their whiteness is the only thing that gives them value in the world" - and their "extraordinarily sad moral life" - reflects the core of an American white supremacy in which "we are all in some sense complicit. And we all have a responsibility to fight back against this plague called color. Baldwin's patriotism requires a constant criticism (of) the ways we are falling short of our ideals, and to do that together." In 1965, Baldwin noted, "What is dangerous here is the (Black) turning away from anything any white American says," having been betrayed by too many whites in power for too long, "and one can't blame them: "From the point of view of the man in the Harlem barber shop, Bobby Kennedy only got here yesterday, and he’s already on his way to the presidency. We’ve been here for 400 years, and now he tells us maybe in 40 years, if you’re good, we may let you become president."

In the debate, Baldwin was at pains to evoke to a mostly white crowd how personally, enduringly painful his country's racism feels to him, regardless of his fame or stature or the passage of time. "I picked the cotton, and I carried it to market, and I built the railroads, under someone else's whip, for nothing. For nothing," he declared of his people's 400-year wait for their rights. "If you walk out of Harlem, downtown, the world agrees what you see is much bigger, cleaner, whiter, richer, safer than where you are. They collect the garbage. People can pay their life insurance. Their children look happy, safe. You’re not. And you go back home, and it would seem (it’s) an act of God, that this is true! That you belong where white people have put you...The government says we can’t do anything about it, but if those were white people being murdered in Mississippi (or) being carried off to jail, if those were white children running up and down the streets, the government would find a way of doing something about it."

Finally, he wonders if this country "blessed with what we call prosperity, (with) a certain kind of social coherence" can call itself a civilized nation, and whether "one’s civilization has the right to overtake and subjugate, and, in fact, destroy another...to destroy his sense of reality" in a land that is "your birthplace (and) identity, but which has not, in its whole system of reality, evolved any place for you." Leaving aside "the physical facts, rape or murder, (the) bloody catalog of oppression," he asserts, "This means, in the case of an American Negro, that from the moment you are born, since you don’t know any better, every stick and stone and every face is white. And since you have not yet seen a mirror, you suppose that you are, too. It comes as a great shock, then, around the age of 5, or 6, or 7, to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with everybody else, has not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a great shock to discover (when) Gary Cooper is killing off the Indians, when you were rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians were you."

ABC Tried to Bury This James Baldwin Interview. Four Decades Later, It's Blisteringly Relevant. www.youtube.com

Of course Baldwin's sense of displacement, distrust, unwelcomeness still echoes today. After his fame subsided in the 1970s and 1980s, Baldwin has in recent years "been getting his flowers," with his prescient, resurgent truths reflected in the Black Lives Matter movement and its signs quoting him: "Dear America, I Can't Believe What You Say Because I See What You Do." "Like many writers of color I know," says Jacqueline Woodson, "I believe that we’re writing because Baldwin wrote, that history repeats itself and continues to need its witnesses." For his centennial, the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery has a new exhibit, This Morning, This Evening, So Soon: James Baldwin and the Voices of Queer Resistance that explores his legacy along with his contemporaries in art, film, literature and activism. "He was a torch-bearer for so many things that still hold true today,” says the museum’s Rhea Combs. "(He) was able to speak truth to power, to do that creatively, unapologetically."

Also for the 100th birthday, Michael Moore held a watch party for the searing documentary I Am Not Your Negro by Haitian-born filmmaker Raoul Peck. "Baldwin always spoke directly to his audiences, then and even now, and his words were frank and direct without being cruel," says Peck. "He helped me understand the world I was in." At the time of his death, Baldwin was working on Remember This House, a book about his friendships with Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers and Malcom X; it became the basis for the film. "I want these three lives to bang against and reveal each other as in truth they did," Baldwin wrote, "and use their dreadful journey as a means of instructing the people (for) whom they gave their lives." Peck weaves archival footage - Baldwin: "I have seen the corpses of your brothers and sisters pile up around you" - with images of Tamir Rice and Trayvon Martin to portray a largely unchanged "American dream that was always the dream of a minority."

Peck worked to highlight systemic racism, putting the onus for change, as Baldwin always did, on those in power who for too long upheld it. "What white people have to do," Baldwin once said, "is try to find out in their hearts why it was necessary for them to have a nigger in the first place. Because I am not a nigger. I'm a man. If I'm not the nigger here, and if (you) the white people invented him, you have to find out why. And the future of the country depends (on) whether or not it is able to ask that question." Baldwin also proposed that "one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain." For those fervently turning a blind eye to the devastation wrought by America's racism, he suggested, "The crimes we have committed are so great and so unspeakable, the acceptance of this knowledge would lead, literally, to madness."

And so to a raving, flailing, name-calling, "savage-foreign-gangs"-obsessed Trump, clinging to his hate in his latest, nakedly racist meltdown of a rally - Kamala Harris is "a really low IQ individual" and "lunatic" who "just became a Black person" - and even more spectacularly in a surly implosion before Black journalists that even Fox News called "a complete, absolute dumpster fire." His petulant fury at three female black journalists who had the audacity to call out his bullshit and ask "rude," "nasty," "horrible," aka substantive questions like, "What exactly is a black job?" served as "a mirror" of "the haunting and unsettling history" of both his longstanding racism - Klan father, Central Park 5, birther attacks on Obama, questioning a Black woman's blackness etc etc - and America's. "The very serious function of racism is distraction," Toni Morrison once said. "It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being."

Baldwin likewise grew weary of the white fragility that demanded he explain himself, that refused to accept their own history even as he kept passionately recounting and decrying it to them. "You've told the people of this nation a lot of what they don't want to hear," noted the late ABC reporter Sylvia Chase in an unaired interview from 1979. "I've tried," Baldwin smiles, both bitter and bemused. "The Mahalia song says, 'Wake the children sleeping"...One must be a disturber of the peace." The "blisteringly relevant" segment, produced by TV documentarian Joseph Lovett, was scrapped by ABC higher-ups who argued, "Who wants to listen to a Black gay has-been?” (In a perfect coda, the piece earlier showed Baldwin telling a student reporter at the Police Athletic League’s Harlem Center, “Nobody wants a writer until he’s dead.”) Over 40 years later, Lovett unearthed the interview, a glimpse into a warm, lively, trenchant luminary who never stopped fighting for what he believed was his due, no matter the cost.

"There's a price this republic exacts from every black man or woman walking, and that is a crime," he told Chase as he sat with his large, close family in the New York apartment building he bought them years before. He turned to a toddler nephew sitting next to him, and hugged him. "They will not do to him what they failed to do to me." He went on, "White people go around, it seems to me, with a very carefully suppressed terror of black people. They don't know who or what the black face hides, but they're sure it's hiding something. What it's hiding is American history. What it’s hiding is what white people know what they have done, and what they like doing." Still, he says, "No matter how terrible their lives may be, and their lives have often been quite terrible, they have one enormous consolation, like a heavenly revelation...White people know very well one thing; it's the only thing they have to know... They know they would not like to be Black here."

Caracas. In Venezuela haben am Samstag Demonstrationen sowohl zur Unterstützung als auch gegen die Regierung von Nicolás Maduro stattgefunden. Der Tag verlief friedlich. Das Land befindet sich nach den Präsidentschaftswahlen vom 28. Juli nach wie vor in einer angespannten Lage.... weiter 06.08.2024 Artikel von Ricardo Vaz, Redaktion zu Venezuela, Politik

Expertengruppe der Vereinten Nationen, 123 Länder des UN-Menschenrechtsrates sowie Abgeordnete der Demokraten fordern Biden zum Handeln auf Genf/Washington. Eine Arbeitsgruppe unabhängiger internationaler Expertinnen und Experten des Menschenrechtsrates der Vereinten Nationen hat die US-Regierung aufgefordert, Kuba von seiner Liste der staatlichen Sponsoren des Terrorismus (SSOT) zu streichen. Das sei angesichts der... weiter 06.08.2024 Artikel von Edgar Göll zu USA, Kuba, Menschenrechte, Wirtschaft, Politik

Bogotá. Die Entwaldung in Kolumbien ist im vergangenen Jahr um 36 Prozent oder 79.256 Hektar zurückgegangen und hat damit den niedrigsten Stand seit 23 Jahren erreicht. Wie Umweltministerin Susana Muhamad auf einer Pressekonferenz mitteilte, ist dies ein historischer Rekord.... weiter 06.08.2024 Artikel von Ani Dießelmann zu Kolumbien, Umwelt

Eight people were wounded.

The post <I>Iraq Weekly Roundup</I>: Two US Guardsmen Among Seven Dead appeared first on Antiwar.com.

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

In an article titled “Smotrich: Might be ‘justified and moral’ to cause 2 million Gazans to die of hunger, but world won’t let us,” The Times of Israel reports the following:

“Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich implies he believes that blocking humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip is ‘justified and moral’ even if it causes 2 million civilians to die of hunger, adding however that the international community won’t allow this to happen.

“‘We are bringing in aid because there is no choice,’ Smotrich says at a conference in Yad Binyamin hosted by the Israel Hayom outlet. ‘We can’t, in the current global reality, manage a war. Nobody will let us cause 2 million civilians to die of hunger even though it might be justified and moral until our hostages are returned.’”

Liberal supporters of the state of Israel often talk about Israel’s Naziesque far right leaders like Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir like they’re some kind of fringe element in Israeli society, when really they’re both high-level officials in the Israeli government and play a crucial role in Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition. Just the other day it was announced that Netanyahu has appointed a new spokesman who openly supports the ethnic cleansing and colonization of the Gaza Strip; these freaks keep getting elevated to prominent positions within the Israeli power structure because of everything Israel is as a state.

Nothing to see here, just an Israeli minister saying it’s justified to kill 2,000,000 Palestinians by starving them.

I wonder if Western media will decide that the official of a state accused of genocide at the ICJ justifying genocide and starvation is newsworthy. Quiet so far… pic.twitter.com/pPINSUJAzX

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) August 5, 2024

The Smotrich article is doing the rounds on pro-Palestine social media today because of how psychopathic his comments are, and understandably so. It says so much that you can occupy high-level positions in the Israeli government while openly advocating the genocide of millions of people, even as Israel is on trial in the International Court of Justice for genocide.

But what’s not getting enough attention is the grievance Smotrich is expressing here: that while he thinks it would be great to starve two million Palestinians to death, the rest of the world won’t allow Israel to do this.

Smotrich is pretty much as evil as a human being can get, but in many ways he’s also one of the most honest people in the Israeli government. Is there any doubt that Israel would have gotten away with far worse genocidal atrocities these last ten months if its powerful western allies had allowed it to? And, while we’re on the subject, is there any doubt that Israel’s western allies would be consenting to far worse genocidal atrocities if not for fear of massive public backlash?

It seems pretty clear to me that the pressure westerners have been putting on their own governments regarding Israel’s criminality in Gaza is the primary reason why the western empire couldn’t just sign off on a swift final solution to the Palestinian problem back in October, and has had to settle for this awkward slow-motion genocide disguised as self-defense instead. It’s not that the empire has a conscience, it’s that it is sufficiently afraid of sparking mass-scale unrest on its own turf to need to disguise its own psychopathy a bit.

It is entirely likely that the only reason there are any Palestinians left in Gaza today is because normal people around the world have made their own governments fear the consequences of supporting Israel through a live-streamed full-scale holocaust. Our murderous governments have no conscience apart from the conscience of their own citizenry.

So don’t let anyone tell you your opposition to this thing makes no difference. Even if all you’ve been able to do is pressure them to slow this nightmare down a bit and make them hide what they’re really doing from the light of day, it could wind up being enough to save millions of lives. 

________________

If you’d prefer to listen to audio of these articles, you can subscribe to them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or YouTube. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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Vor allem europäische Politiker beteuern ständig, dass ihre Staaten keine Kriegsparteien im Ukraine-Konflikt sind. Man könnte ironisch sagen, dass diese häufigen Dementis alleine schon zeigen, dass das Gegenteil der Fall ist. Ansonsten müssten sie es ja nicht ständig dementieren. Aber das Thema ist zu ernst für Scherze, denn tatsächlich ist es schon lange unstrittig, dass […]

While Congress cheered Netanyahu, grassroots mobilizations of the Democratic base marked a sharp break from the party’s support for Israel.

The post In Washington’s streets, a new popular consensus on Palestine appeared first on +972 Magazine.

In response to news that Judge Amit Mehta has sided with the Department of Justice Antitrust Division in its case against Google—ruling that Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act by maintaining its monopoly in general search services and general text advertising through its billion dollar exclusive default deals—the American Economic Liberties Project released the following statements.

“This is one of the greatest antitrust victories in history and sends a resounding signal that the antimonopoly movement is here to stay,” said Nidhi Hegde, Interim Executive Director of the American Economic Liberties Project. “In finding Google to be an illegal monopolist for its unlawful search default deals, this ruling is a vindication of the Biden Administration’s reinvigorated competition agenda and a huge win for consumers, small businesses, and tech innovation. There is now broad recognition of the harm monopoly power poses to markets and a clear validation of the antimonopoly movement’s approach to governing — which sets a powerful precedent for future cases. Make no mistake: Antitrust law is back, and corporate America is now on notice.”

“Congratulations to AAG Kanter and the entire Antitrust Division team for delivering this unprecedented win against one of the most powerful companies in the world—while severely under-resourced in comparison,” added Hegde.

“This decision strikes at the core of how hundreds of millions of Americans experience the internet,” said Lee Hepner, Senior Legal Counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project. “It illustrates how Google has become one of the most powerful companies in the world while undermining innovation and degrading the quality of its core product. The remedy must match the Court’s striking verdict in this case. At a minimum that means an end to Google’s exclusive default agreements and breaking up business lines that have allowed Google to extend its monopoly into every corner of the internet

“The promise of antitrust enforcement is that it will fully restore competition where it has been lost,” added Hepner, “and we’ll be advocating that the court use all of its power to do so.”

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.

Stand Up America’s Managing Director of Policy and Political Affairs, Brett Edkins, issued the following statement after a Democratic Senator revealed that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose additional private jet flights funded by Republican megadonor Harlan Crow:

“The Supreme Court should be the gold standard for judicial ethics, yet billionaires like Harlan Crow are buying the loyalty of justices one private jet flight at a time.

“Our nation’s highest court has become a political plaything for the ultra-wealthy and well-connected. Congress must step up as a co-equal branch of government and tackle the corruption plaguing the Court. It’s time for our leaders to restore integrity and transparency to the Supreme Court by passing a binding code of ethics and term limits.”

Last year, a poll by Stand Up America, End Citizens United, and Alliance for Justice Action Campaign found 78% of voters want Congress to take action to impose a binding code of ethics and create greater accountability for the U.S. Supreme Court justices. Earlier this year, Stand Up America conducted a poll that found that an overwhelming majority of voters want Congress to take action to reform the Supreme Court, including by passing 18-year term limits for current and future justices.

Stand Up America community members have driven over 900,000 constituent calls and emails to Congress in support of Supreme Court reform legislation, including term limits for current and future justices and a binding code of ethics. In June, Stand Up America launched its Supreme Court Voter campaign, a seven-figure digital campaign aimed at educating and mobilizing voters around the stakes of the Supreme Court for this election.

Die Fluggesellschaften der Lufthansa-Gruppe haben aus Sicherheitsgründen Flüge in die Nahostregion gestrichen. Verbindungen nach Tel Aviv, Beirut und Teheran wurden vorerst bis zum 12. August ausgesetzt. Die betroffenen Passagiere bekommen die Flüge erstattet oder können umbuchen.

Flüge nach Amman in Jordanien und Hewlêr (Erbil) in der Kurdistan-Region des Irak (KRI) wurden bis einschließlich Mittwoch, 7. August, gestrichen. Bis dahin werden die Fluggesellschaften der Gruppe, zu der unter anderem auch Swiss und Austrian Airlines gehören, auch den Luftraum über Irak und Iran nicht nutzen.

Hintergrund sind die wachsenden Spannungen zwischen Israel und Iran nach der Tötung des Auslandschefs der palästinensischen Hamas, Ismail Haniyya, in Teheran sowie israelische Angriffe auf Vororte von Beirut, bei denen ein hochrangiger Kommandeur der libanesischen Hisbollah getötet wurde. Seitdem drohen das iranische Mullah-Regime und die Hisbollah Israel mit Vergeltung.

Following new reporting by the New York Times of yet another undisclosed luxury trip provided to Justice Thomas, courtesy of Harlan Crow, Demand Justice Managing Director Maggie Jo Buchanan released the following statement:

“These new reports are as appalling as they are unsurprising. Justice Thomas’s actions and —critically—the Chief Justice’s refusal to assure the public that the Court takes these never-ending revelations seriously, shows the necessity of meaningful and immediate reform. Trust for the Supreme Court remains at historic lows in part because the MAGA justices openly display their allegiances to wealthy billionaires and partisan interests instead of the public, whom they are meant to serve. We call on Congress to urgently pass full-scale reform, including an enforceable code of ethics as President Biden proposed last week.”

Im Jahre 1882 wurde von Ritter Ferdinand von Lindemann, einem deutschen Mathematiker, bewiesen, dass die “Quadratur des Kreises” – ein klassisches Problem der antiken Mathematik, das darin besteht, ein Quadrat mit derselben Fläche wie ein gegebener Kreis nur mit Zirkel und Lineal zu konstruieren – unmöglich ist. Trotzdem halten die unsinnigen Versuche bis heute an, […]

<p>The post Deutschland und die Quadratur des Kreises first appeared on Ansage.</p>

Damascus, SANA- Minister of Culture, Lubana Mshaweh, discussed on Monday with the Algerian Ambassador in Damascus, Kamal Abu Shama, cultural relations between the two brotherly countries.

During a meeting at the ministry’s building, the two sides affirmed the importance of culture exchange between the two countries, and the necessity of activating it in all fields of arts, heritage and antiquities.

Noura/ Mazen

Benda Amed, Destîna Botan und Baran Xemlîn kamen im Juli bei einem Angriff der türkischen Armee in der Herekol-Region) ums Leben. Die Mitglieder der Volksverteidigungskräfte (HPG) und Verbände freier Frauen (YJA Star) hatten sich in dem Ort im Landkreis Xisxêr (tr. Pervari), der im Osten der kurdischen Provinz Sêrt (Siirt) liegt, schwere Gefechte mit Operationseinheiten geliefert. Aufgrund der darauffolgenden tödlichen Bombardierungen des Guerillagebiets war den Familien der Gefallenen eine Identifizierung durch einen einfachen Anblick nicht möglich.

Anfang der vergangenen Woche gaben Angehörige nach einer entsprechenden Aufforderung der Behörden Blutproben für einen DNA-Abgleich ab. Unerwartet früh erfolgte nun die Bestätigung der Identitäten der Gefallenen. Die Familien wurden aufgefordert, die im staatlichen Krankenhaus in Sêrt aufbewahrten Leichname abzuholen und zu beerdigen. Begleitet wurden sie dabei auch von Mitgliedern der Ortsverbände der Parteien DEM und DBP sowie dem Solidaritätsverein der Familien von Gefallenen (MEBYA-DER).

Benda Amed, die bürgerlich Semra Ayverdi hieß, wurde bereits in ihrer Geburtsstadt Bismîl in der Provinz Amed (Diyarbakır) beigesetzt. Destîna Botan (Bişeng Durmuş), die aus Şirnex (Şırnak) stammte, wurde im Dorf Nêwavî im Kreis Silopiya bestattet und Baran Xemlîn (Seyithan Sencer) soll noch im Laufe des Abends in Wan beerdigt werden.

https://anfdeutsch.com/kurdistan/drei-guerillakampfer-innen-in-botan-gefallen-43092 https://anfdeutsch.com/kurdistan/versehrte-leichen-von-hpg-kampfern-im-krankenhaus-in-merdin-42896 https://anfdeutsch.com/kurdistan/leichen-von-gefallenen-bis-zur-unkenntlichkeit-entstellt-40432

 

Nach der Sperre von Instagram in der Türkei teilt Staatschef Recep Tayyip Erdoğan gegen Online-Netzwerke aus. Diese betrieben „digitalen Faschismus“ und verhielten sich wie die Mafia, wenn es um ihre Interessen gehe, sagte Erdoğan am Montag in Ankara – ausgerechnet bei der Eröffnung eines „Bildungsprogramms“ seiner Regierungspartei AKP zum Thema Menschenrechte. „Wir sind mit einem digitalen Faschismus konfrontiert, der sogar Fotos von palästinensischen Märtyrern nicht duldet und umgehend sperrt und das auch noch als Freiheit verkauft“, sagte er. Der türkische Langzeitherrscher warf Online-Plattformen vor, sich in Europa und den USA an die Regeln zu halten, aber nicht, wenn es um die Werte der Türkei gehe.

Instagram war in der Türkei am Freitag blockiert worden. Die Plattform ist seither von der Türkei aus nur noch über geschützte Netzwerkverbindungen (VPN) zu erreichen. Die türkische Behörde für Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologie (BTK) begründete die Sperre mit vermeintlichen Verstößen gegen sogenannte „Katalogstraftaten“, zu denen Delikte wie „Beleidigung von Atatürk“, „Verleitung zu Glücksspiel und Drogen“ und „sexueller Missbrauch von Kindern“ gehören. Man habe Instagram aufgefordert, entsprechende Inhalte zu entfernen, sagte ein BTK-Beamter der Nachrichtenseite Medyascope. Da die Aufforderung aber ignoriert worden sei, habe man die Zugangssperre verhängt.

Zuvor hatte es Vermutungen gegeben, dass die Instagram-Sperre mit Beileidsbekundungen für Ismail Haniyya, den in Iran getöteten Auslandschef der palästinensischen Hamas, zusammenhängt. Erdoğans Kommunikationsdirektor Fahrettin Altun hatte Instagram kurz vor der Sperre vorgeworfen, die Beileidsbekundungen zu blockieren und der Plattform einen Zensurversuch unterstellt. Infrastrukturminister Abdulkadir Uraloğlu schrieb am Montag auf der Plattform X, er habe sich bereits vergangene Woche mit Vertretern von Instagram getroffen und gemahnt, dass sich das Unternehmen an türkisches Recht und „gesellschaftliche Befindlichkeiten“ halten müsse. Er wolle sich nun erneut mit den Vertretern beraten.

Urteil von Verfassungsgericht zu BTK-Befugnissen nicht mehr abrufbar

Ebenfalls am Freitag war in der Türkei die Seite des türkischen Verfassungsgerichtshofs vorübergehend nicht zu erreichen. Das höchste Gericht des Landes hob im Januar das Gesetz, das die Befugnis der BTK-Behörde regelt, Zugangsbeschränkungen für Katalogstraftaten zu verhängen, auf. „In seinem Urteil betonte das Gericht, dass diese Maßnahmen die Meinungs- und Pressefreiheit einschränken würden, und erinnerte daran, dass Grundrechte und -freiheiten nicht per Präsidialdekret geregelt werden können“, erklärte die zivilgesellschaftliche Organisation MLSA (Media and Law Studies Association), die seit 2018 zum Thema Meinungsfreiheit in der Türkei arbeitet. Seit die Webseite wieder erreichbar ist, ist das Urteil des Verfassungsgerichts nicht mehr abrufbar. MLSA hat derweil bei der türkischen Justiz eine Beschwerde gegen die Instagram-Sperre eingelegt.

https://anfdeutsch.com/pressefreiheit/online-plattform-instagram-in-der-turkei-gesperrt-43116 https://anfdeutsch.com/aktuelles/protest-gegen-aushebelung-des-verfassungsgerichts-in-ankara-39767 https://anfdeutsch.com/aktuelles/juristischer-machtkampf-in-der-turkei-39749