While the World Focuses on the Islamic State, Assad Keeps Bombing Doctors and Civilians

The regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been bombing hospitals and civilian targets, a situation made worse recently by the arrival of Russian warplanes. Russian airstrikes hit medical facilities at least 10 times during their first month of bombing in Syria, making matters even worse for doctors, nurses, and patients who have already endured repeated bombardment from Syrian government forces, according to a report from the non-profit group Physicians for Human Rights (PHR).

PHR said the Russian strikes, which began on September 30, included several in the vicinity of Aleppo, where 45 healthcare facilities have been hit in the past three years. According PHR, almost all of the city's doctors — 95 percent — have been killed, detained, or fled the area. The group said it documented 329 attacks on Syrian medical facilities through October, leading to the deaths of 687 medical personnel across the country. It attributed 90 percent of those incidents to the Syrian government. "Each attack, whether the bombing of a hospital or the detention and torture of a doctor for providing health care, is a war crime," said the report's authors.

More at VICE News

The Korean War

Shocking facts about the battles of the Korean War.

'World stands disgraced' as Israeli shelling of school kills at least 15

United Nations officials described the killing of sleeping children as a disgrace to the world and accused Israel of a serious violation of international law after a school in Gaza being used to shelter Palestinian families was shelled on Wednesday.

At least 15 people, mostly children and women, died when the school in Jabaliya refugee camp was hit by five shells during a night of relentless bombardment across Gaza. More than 100 people were injured.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, said the attack was "outrageous and unjustifiable" and demanded "accountability and justice". The UN said its officials had repeatedly given details of the school and its refugee population to Israel.

The Guardian

Israeli troops mass on Gaza border in preparation for ground attack

Israel was today massing its troops on the Gaza border in preparation for a possible ground attack - just hours after its airforce struck a mosque that was allegedly being used to hide Hamas's weapons. Donning military gear and carrying rifles, thousands of soldiers moved into a new position on the border on the fifth day of the deadly conflict, which has so far claimed the lives of more than 120 people.

They were spotted transporting armoured vehicles along the border, before setting up and firing shells towards members of the militant group Hamas. The latest move is in preparation for a potential ground offensive, with some 33,000 reservists mobilised out of 40,000 approved by Israel's cabinet.

Traumatised: Social worker Selva, 63, was badly injured after her employer Beit Lahia Disability and Rehabilitation Services' headquarters were destroyed in an airstrike.

Meanwhile in Israel…

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These 5 Corporations Helped Carry Out the Holocaust

Abby Martin highlights the top five companies that aided Nazi Germany during the height of WWII, calling out companies such as Hugo Boss, IBM and Ford.

Adolf Hitler's Wicked Mind

America’s Grim Legacy in Iraq

The Iraq War is now eleven years old, still tearing up the country but no longer with the assistance of U.S. troops. Between 500,000 and 700,000 people died in 2003-2011. The monthly civilian toll now is as high as it’s been since 2008. It is a riven country, at odds with itself, fending off jihadists from Syria, morally and physically drained by more than twenty years of war (starting with Operation Desert Storm in 1991) and crippling sanctions.

And that’s not all. We now know, thanks to the courageous efforts of several researchers, that environmental toxins have likely poisoned the country, toxins that are also due to the U.S.-instigated war. The munitions the United States used in Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom are the apparent culprits, and, like the grim Agent Orange legacy in Vietnam, controversy and denial animate much of the discussion.

Two agents are at issue. One is depleted uranium, which is used to harden bullets and mortar shells to enable them to more easily penetrate the target. Depleted uranium (DU) is slightly radioactive and harmful if inhaled, though the extent of this hazard is unclear and most studies discount widespread impacts. The most likely effect is chemical (rather than radiological), and affects kidneys, according to studies conducted in manufacturing DU applications. Other metals used in munitions could have similar effects.

A second candidate is white phosphorous (WP), which was used extensively in Fallujah and possibly elsewhere by U.S. forces to light up a field of battle and as an incendiary. A known carcinogen, the army called its use of WP “shake and bake.” A shell containing WP could burn toxic smoke for 15 minutes. Israel also used WP extensively in its assault on Gaza in 2008-09, but said last year it would no longer use the agent.

More on the Cyprus Mail

Henry Kissinger's Legacy of War Crimes Exposed by Secret Yale Visit

Abby Martin speaks about how Yale University's secret invite to Henry Kissinger has shined a new light into the former Secretary of State's long list of criminality, by helping facilitate US war crimes in South East Asia, South America and the Middle East, which resulted in the deaths of millions of civilians.

The Trials of Henry Kissinger

Part contemporary investigation and part historical inquiry, documentary follows the quest of one journalist in search of justice. The film focuses on Christopher Hitchens' charges against Henry Kissinger as a war criminal - allegations documented in Hitchens' book of the same title - based on his role in countries such as Cambodia, Chile, and Indonesia.

Wikipedia

American Leaders JOKE About Dead Soldiers and Children

American political leaders of both parties are war mongering psychopaths. They do not care about you, your family, or the lives of innocent people. Watch as they laugh and make jokes about suffering and death.

First explicit pictures of massive barrel bomb dropped on rebel zones in Syria

Media activists in Daraya, southern Damascus, have been posting dramatic videos of massive barrel bombs being dropped from helicopters on the rebel-held city over the past few weeks. The massive improvised armaments are well documented and are made from barrels packed with explosives. This video is described as showing a strike on January 31, and captures the ordnance being dropped from a helicopter.

Evidence of 'industrial-scale killing' by Syrian regime

The UN and independent human rights groups have documented abuses by both Bashar al-Assad's government and rebels, but experts say this evidence is more detailed and on a far larger scale than anything else that has yet emerged from the 34-month crisis.

The three lawyers interviewed the source, a military policeman who worked secretly with a Syrian opposition group and later defected and fled the country. In three sessions in the last 10 days they found him credible and truthful and his account "most compelling".

They put all evidence under rigorous scrutiny, says their report, which has been obtained by the Guardian and CNN. (Read here)

The authors are Sir Desmond de Silva QC, former chief prosecutor of the special court for Sierra Leone, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, the former lead prosecutor of former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic, and Professor David Crane, who indicted President Charles Taylor of Liberia at the Sierra Leone court.

The defector, who for security reasons is identified only as Caesar, was a photographer with the Syrian military police. He smuggled the images out of the country on memory sticks to a contact in the Syrian National Movement, which is supported by the Gulf state of Qatar. Qatar, which has financed and armed rebel groups, has called for the overthrow of Assad and demanded his prosecution

More on The Guardian

Media Disinformation and the Framing of the Syrian War

Months after the events took place, Pulitzer prize winning journalists and others are finally reporting about the lies and manipulations of the US government regarding the recent chemical weapons attack in Syria. Far from shining a light on the true situation in the country, however, these reports continue to avoid the underlying causes and explanations for what is happening in Syria, and the forces that are behind it.

Global Research TV

Blair's Government Face Crime Probe Over Iraq War Crimes

The British government has insisted it will fight a bid to trigger prosecutions of former ministers and senior military figures over alleged war crimes in Iraq. Two senior ministers in Tony Blair’s government are facing a possible criminal probe over the alleged torture and unlawful killing of hundreds of Iraqis by British soldiers.

A complaint filed with the International Criminal Court (ICC) has accused British forces of abusing and killing detainees in their custody. The shocking dossier says "those who bear the greatest responsibility" for alleged war crimes "include individuals at the highest levels" of the British Army and political system. UK military commanders "knew or should have known" that forces under their control "were committing or about to commit war crimes". The head of the army, General Sir Peter Wall, ex-defence secretary Geoff Hoon, and former defence minister Adam Ingram are among those named in the 250-page dossier, according to the Independent on Sunday. Human rights lawyers have drawn on the cases of more than 400 Iraqis, arguing they represent "thousands of allegations of mistreatment amounting to war crimes of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment". They describe incidents ranging from "hooding" prisoners to burning, electric shocks, threats to kill and "cultural and religious humiliation".

Huffington Post

Bounty Hunters Search for Tony Blair After Latest Sightings of UK's Most Wanted War Criminal

Bush, Gog and Magog

Here's a story we should all be ashamed of missing: George W Bush attempted to sell the invasion of Iraq to Jacques Chirac using biblical prophecy.

In the winter of 2003, when George Bush and Tony Blair were frantically gathering support for their planned invasion, Professor Thomas Römer, an Old Testament expert at the university of Lausanne, was rung up by the Protestant Federation of France. They asked him to supply them with a summary of the legends surrounding Gog and Magog and as the conversation progressed, he realised that this had originally come, from the highest reaches of the French government.

President Jacques Chirac wanted to know what the hell President Bush had been on about in their last conversation. Bush had then said that when he looked at the Middle East, he saw "Gog and Magog at work" and the biblical prophecies unfolding. But who the hell were Gog and Magog? Neither Chirac nor his office had any idea. But they knew Bush was an evangelical Christian, so they asked the French Federation of Protestants, who in turn asked Professor Römer.

He explained that Gog and Magog were, to use theological jargon, crazy talk. They appear twice in the Old Testament, once as a name, and once in a truly strange prophecy in the book of Ezekiel:

And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him,
And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal:
And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords:
Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet:
Gomer, and all his bands; the house of Togarmah of the north quarters, and all his bands: and many people with thee.

Full article by Andrew Brown on The Guardian

Bradley Manning, the Nuremberg Charter and Refusing to Collaborate with War Crimes

In this segment of Reality Asserts Itself, Paul Jay and Vijay Prashad discuss the Bradley Manning case in light of the 68th anniversary of signing the Nuremberg Charter which states it is illegal to follow orders to commit a war crime.

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America Keeps Honoring One of Its Worst Mass Murderers

He ruined the lives of millions of Indochinese innocents and overthrew democratically elected governments, yet he keeps being rewarded and lauded.Henry Kissinger's quote recently  released by Wikileaks," the illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer", likely brought a smile to his legions of elite media, government, corporate and high society admirers. Oh that Henry! That rapier wit! That trademark insouciance! That naughtiness! It is unlikely, however, that the descendants of his more than 6 million victims in Indochina, and Americans of conscience appalled by his murder of non-Americans, will share in the amusement. For his illegal and unconstitutional actions had real-world consequences: the ruined lives of millions of Indochinese innocents in a new form of secret, automated, amoral U.S. Executive warfare which haunts the world until today.

More on Alternet

Kill Them All

This BBC Documentary reveals atrocities committed by the U.S. in Korea during the war.

The Spies Who Fooled the World

BBC Panorama: On the eve of the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War, Panorama reveals how key aspects of the secret intelligence used to justify the invasion were based on fabrication and lies.

World Press Photo 2012

Photo by Paul Hansen, Sweden, Dagens Nyheter

Two-year-old Suhaib Hijazi and his older brother Muhammad were killed when their house was destroyed by an Israeli missile strike. Their father Fouad was also killed and their mother was put in intensive care. Fouad’s brothers carry his children to the mosque for the burial ceremony as his body is carried behind on a stretcher.

See World Press Photo