Monday, June 23, 2014

Last Batch of Chemical Stockpiles Exits Syria – OPCW

News | 23.06.2014 | 20:02
 
The Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed Monday the withdrawal of the last consignment of chemical stockpiles from Syria.
“A major landmark in this mission has been reached today. The last of the remaining chemicals identified for removal from Syria were loaded this afternoon aboard the Danish ship Ark Futura,” OPCW Director-General Ahmet Üzümcü said at a news briefing broadcast live on the OPCW website.
“The next stage in this mission is the completion of the maritime operations to deliver the chemicals for destruction at the assigned facility on board the US vessel Cape Ray and at commercial facilities in Finland, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States of America,” Üzümcü said.
The director-general added that the neutralization of chemical substances aboard the Cape Ray could be completed within 60 days.
After a deadly chemical weapons attack on a Damascus suburb on August 21, Russia made a proposal to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal that was later approved of by the US.
Following the deal, Syria agreed to hand over its estimated 1,000-metric-ton arsenal to international control and joined the United Nations Chemical Weapons Convention.

Iraq: Implications of Full-Blown War

The US popular opinion views the military campaign in Iraq as a big foreign policy gaffe and opposes any nation’s involvement in new overseas conflicts. Any new military action would be strongly opposed by a majority of Americans. Neither the US, nor NATO can do anything more than air strikes. It makes Iran the only regional player to come to the Iraq’s rescue... The US should think long and hard about the implications of what it does in the Middle East. So far it regional policy has been a miserable failure and the mistakes committed backlash with dire fallout. 
Andrei AKULOV | 24.06.2014


The sprawling Baiji refinery, 200 km (130 miles) north of the capital near Tikrit, is a battlefield. Iraqi troops are holding off Sunni fighters outside Samarra. Insurgents from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) have gained more ground moving into two towns in the eastern province of Diayala with security forces retreating without a fight. The towns of Saadiyah and Jalawla had fallen to the insurgents, as well as several other villages around the Himreen Mountains. The fighters have vowed to carry their offensive south to Najaf and Kerbala, seats of Shi'ite Islam since the Middle Ages. Kurdish formations advanced to Kirkuk to head the ISIS militants off. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is waiting for a U.S. response to its appeal for air strikes.
US at crossroads
President Obama held a private meeting with congressional leaders on June 18 to discuss whether he would be required to ask Congress for permission to take military action against Sunni fighters in Iraq or just keep it posted. There was no decision publicly announced, the President only reviewed his options with congressional leaders. So far the White House has publicly dodged questions about whether Obama might seek congressional approval if he decides to take military action. At present the President says a return to combat in Iraq is not in the cards. General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, «We have a request from the Iraqi government for air power». Asked whether the United States should honor that request, he answered indirectly, «It is in our national security interest to counter ISIL wherever we find them».
The debates to authorize the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq more than a decade ago were contentious. Today many lawmakers are wary of taking up the issue again. Anyway it would not meet the interests of Democrats in the election year.
Having left Iraq, the U.S. has a range of ground, air and sea troops and assets in the region. There are six warships in the Persian Gulf, including the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush accompanied by other warships, like the cruiser USS Philippines Sea and the destroyer USS Truxtun - both capable of launching cruise missiles against land targets. The surface ships group includes the amphibious transport ship USS Mesa Verde, which is carrying about 550 Marines and five V-22 Osprey hybrid aircraft.
There are about 5,000 U.S. soldiers across the Iraqi border in Kuwait as part of a routine rotational presence. Air Force aircraft capable of a full range of missions are deployed in the region. According to Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James, they include F-15E, F-16 and F-22 fighters; B-1 bombers, A-10 attack jets, B-1B bombers; KC-135 tankers; C-17 and C-130 transports and an array of unmanned vehicles.
The US has basing arrangements with numerous countries throughout the Middle East, including Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, including intelligence gathering and surveillance assets. ISIS is a fast-moving force, mounted largely in light vehicles. In some circumstances distinguishing them from civilians on the move may be difficult. The US might need some Special Forces teams on the ground to work with the Iraqi military to help designate and identify targets. Additional assets could be brought into the Middle East, if necessary, Secretary James said. Even after the United States redeployed its military forces from Iraq at the end of 2011, it maintained a strong military presence in the Gulf region, with more than 35,000 troops deployed there.
The US has a major security and military cooperation package in place with Iraq’s government to provide a pipeline of arms and hundreds of military advisors worth $13.225 billion in 2013 and 2014 alone. The United States has maintained a presence of more than 5,500 diplomats, intelligence professionals, military advisors, and defense contractors to support Iraq. In total, the United States and Iraq have plans in place for a major arming and equipping program that could top $25 billion total arms sales if fully implemented, including 140 M1A1 tanks, 36 F-16 combat aircraft, the Integrated Air Defense System, and Apache attack helicopters.
The Obama administration is indicating that it wants a new government in Iraq without Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, convinced the Shiite leader is unable to reconcile with the nation's Sunni minority and stabilize a volatile political landscape. Iraq's political parties should form a new government without him to include the Sunni and Kurdish communities. The chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) told a congressional hearing Wednesday: «The Maliki government, candidly, has got to go if you want any reconciliation». John Kerry put it even more bluntly, «If there is a clear successor, if the results of the election are respected, if people come together with the cohesiveness necessary to build a legitimate government that puts the reforms in place that people want, that might wind up being very salutatory», he told Yahoo News.
Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel told a congressional hearing: «This current government in Iraq has never fulfilled the commitments it made to bring a unity government together with the Sunnis, the Kurds, and the Shia». Senator John McCain has gone further - and called on Maliki to step down.
Situation assessment
ISIS was able to quickly seize towns across northern and central Iraq while the U.S.-trained and equipped security forces, weakened by Maliki’s politicization of their leadership and exclusion of Sunnis, quickly retreated. Iraq is back on the brink of all-out sectarian civil war. Like the civil war in Syria next door, the new fighting threatens to draw in regional neighbors.
Maliki says his security forces suffered a “setback” but have not been defeated. His security spokesman, Lieutenant General Qassem Atta, said security forces would shortly retake full control of Tal Afar, a Shiite town in the north that lies along a strategic corridor to Syria. It would provide a springboard to launch operations to recapture Mosul. ISIS’s actions in Iraq this past week provoked a swift reaction from Iraq’s fragmented powers: Kurdish Peshmerga forces seized the oil-rich city of Kirkuk; Shia militias mobilized in the streets after an initial call to arms from the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani; and Iraq’s neighbors have already started to mobilize with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard reportedly (?) moving forces into Iraq. Turkey, which has seen dozens of its citizens detained by ISIS, faces substantial threats from the extremist group and could reengage in cross-border military operations in Iraq as it did over the past decade.
Saudi Arabia warned of the risks of a civil war in Iraq with unpredictable consequences for the region, while the United Arab Emirates recalled its envoy to Baghdad, voicing concern over “exclusionary and sectarian policies”. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani made a statement on June 18 declaring he was prepared to intervene and protect Iraq's great shrines visited by millions of Shi'ite pilgrims annually.
Iraqi forces dissipated being poorly trained, led by incompetent commanders and surrounded by predominantly hostile Sunni population in the area. Advancing south the Islamists would meet more resistance. About 60% of Iraqis are Shiites. They hate ISIS just as much as Sunnis in the northwest hate them and the central authorities. In the east ISIS will have to face seasoned and staunch warriors of the Kurdish Peshmerga. With the first stunning victory held, it won’t be a plain sailing for ISIS, as many predict. But ceding ground in Iraq will make ISIS go across the border into Syria making the Bashar Assad’s government and the US face the same enemy.
US Middle East policy ended up in failure
In the past three years, the entire Middle East has plunged into chaos. The rise of non-state actors such as ISIS is a general trend. In 2003 the US invaded Iraq and unleashed the fragmentation and radicalization process. Instead of promised democracy and prosperity Iraq turned into a hotbed of Shia-Sunni-Kurds sectarian tensions. The rising clout of Iran entailed fragmentation of political forces in the states with predominant Sunni population. The war in Syria pours fuel on the fire of raging regional conflict. The expansion of ISIS threatens to collapse Iraq and to destabilize the Gulf Arab states, Jordan, Turkey, spreading to Central Asia and many other states. The extended U.S. military operations, that have lasted over ten years, have brought no positive results. ISIS provides, feeds, and sustains terrorists who could launch attacks against Western Europe and the U.S. The second 9/11 may occur any time again. The US should demonstrate the wonders of extremely artful statecraft to remedy the situation at least to some extent.
The US popular opinion views the military campaign in Iraq as a big foreign policy gaffe and opposes any nation’s involvement in new overseas conflicts. Any new military action would be strongly opposed by a majority of Americans. Neither the US, nor NATO can do anything more than air strikes. It makes Iran the only regional player to come to the Iraq’s rescue. Bringing in a Shia power could shift Iraqi Sunnis sympathies into the ISIS favor turning the situation into a clear-cut religious war, with the possibility of what the world has already been stunned by - mass «cleansing» of civilians on ethnic and religious grounds with brutality raging across the country. To prevent that the fighting must be ended quickly. The US should think long and hard about the implications of what it does in the Middle East. So far it regional policy has been a miserable failure and the mistakes committed backlash with dire fallout.

From the pages of Orwell and «1984»: Irregular warfare against Eurasia

Wayne MADSEN | 23.06.2014 | 00:00

«Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible». These are the words from «1984», George Orwell’s fictional novel and eerily correct prognostication of future events from geopolitics to the loss of privacy and the rise of the surveillance state. Oceania fictionally represented the British Isles, North and South America, southern Africa, and Australasia. In Orwell’s world, Eurasia was comprised of Russia and Europe while another power, Eastasia, included China, Korea, and Japan. 
Today, a modified form of the dystopian future world map of Orwell is becoming reality as Russia and China increasingly cooperate economically, politically, and militarily to ensure that the forces of Oceania – centered in Washington, London, Berlin, and Paris – do not overrun Eurasia.
At last month’s third annual International Security Conference in Moscow, a conclave sponsored by the Russian Defense Ministry, Chief of Staff of the Russian armed forces, General Valery Gerasimov stated that Western-financed and organized «color revolutions», such as those employed twice in Ukraine and once in Georgia, represent a form of irregular warfare against Eurasia. Gerasimov’s statement about North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries, which resemble Orwell’s Oceania, launching irregular warfare against Eurasia could have been torn from the pages of «1984». Gerasimov cited information warfare, economic sanctions, and support for «proxy criminal organizations» and extremist groups as part of the West’s irregular warfare construct directed against Eurasia.
Gerasimov also said that color revolutions were part and parcel of Western military strategy against Eurasia since the non-military tactics employed were often followed by military force to bring about regime change. This is now the case with the Ukrainian government’s NATO-supported military offensive against federalists in eastern Ukraine, as well as in NATO support for Islamist rebels battling against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Military intervention, including air attacks, was also employed by NATO after the Islamist uprising in eastern Libya that eventually forced Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi from power.
Gerasimov’s comments about color revolutions was supported by none other than Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a non-profit think tank that often reflects the views of the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department. Cordesman said color revolutions sponsored by the West were a new form of warfare against Russia and China.
Belarusian Defense Minister Yury Zhadobin cited the «godfather» of George Soros- and CIA-financed themed uprisings and revolutions, Gene Sharp, the director of the Albert Einstein Institution in Boston as the prime motivator of the uprisings witnessed in Europe and the Middle East. The armed forces of Russia, China, and Belarus now consider the West’s support for regime change through color revolutions as being part of the military doctrines of the United States and NATO. The military planners in Moscow, Beijing, and Minsk also view Western private military contractors – mercenaries -- such as the former Blackwater, now Academi, as being part of the West’s regime change scenario after the outbreak of color revolutions.
The reasons for the West’s color revolution and regime change project for Eurasia are clear. With Russia and China at the forefront of developing new Eurasian energy schemes involving natural gas and new transportation routes evoking memories of the old Silk Road, the West feels threatened by the emergence in Eurasia of a dynamic new market that could not only rival but eclipse the European Union and Washington’s proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
The emergence of a new Eurasian identity has alarmed the political leaders of de facto Oceania. Eurasia places economic development and respect for traditions over what many in Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and other countries of the region see as a Western «culture» that emphasizes pop culture, homosexuality, destruction of social safety nets, disrespect for religion, destruction of the traditional family unit, and unbridled vulture capitalism that promotes draconian austerity.
The Moscow security conference met at about the same time that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping met at the fourth Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) held in Shanghai. There, Xi emphasized that Asia has entered the 21st century at that the Cold War mentality should be abandoned. Observers from Japan and the United States looked on as Asian delegates roundly rejected President Barack Obama’s Cold War military «pivot to Asia» and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s revanchist imperial military buildup in east Asia. In many respects, the United States Pacific forces and Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea represent the militaristic «Eastasia» of «1984», an entity that was allied for a period of time with Oceania.
Not only was the «Power of Siberia» natural gas pipeline, which will begin pumping natural gas from Siberia to China in 2018, agreed upon in Shanghai but there are plans to restore the old Silk Road as a major trans-Eurasian highway that will link China to Europe via the trans-Siberian highway and Europe’s E-30 highway. Eventually, an A-class motor highway will link Amsterdam with Beijing via the Asian Highway Network. This network of modern highways will restore the ancient Silk Road of Asia and move goods and passengers throughout Eurasia and, in the process, build new infrastructures in the remotest parts of the Eurasian heartland. This prospect has the banking houses of Europe and America concerned since they will be locked out of the financial sweepstakes. 
Eurasia’s leaders, from Putin and Xi, to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Afghan President Hamid Karzai are well aware that the color revolutions that have wracked Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan have been financed by George Soros’s Open Society Institute and Foundation and that Soros’s hedge fund empire is nothing more than a front for the international House of Rothschild banking cartel. NATO and the Obama administration, which represent the interests of Soros and the Rothschilds, will stop at nothing to destroy the Eurasian initiative. The «Euromaidan» overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who rejected a union with the European Union and appeared ready to forge ties with Eurasia, was part of the West’s (or «Oceania’s) first indirect military aggression against Eurasia. 
Some Eurasian leaders are aware that the West is trying to derail the developing Eurasian Union. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev proposed transforming CICA into a new Organization for Security and Development in Asia (OSDA), which would be the closest thing to a Eurasian counterpart to NATO. Stressing Eurasia’s rejection of Western «values», Nazarbayev stressed that OSDA would be built upon Asian «tradition and values». Nazarbayev appeared to be speaking for a number of Eurasian leaders in rejecting the lewd permissiveness of Western culture as witnessed by «Pussy Riot’s» and FEMEN’s displays of vulgarity and gratuitous nudity in places of religious worship in Russia, Ukraine, and other countries. 
There is a new competitor to America’s version of Oceania now emerging in Orwell’s Eurasia. Halford John Mackinder’s «Heartland Theory», which was espoused in his book «The Geographical Pivot of History», postulated that the power that controlled Eurasia’s heartland between the Volga and Yangtze and the Arctic Sea and Himalayas would control the destiny of the world. If the Eurasian Union becomes a successful political and economic union, the United States, Britain, Western Europe, and Japan will be confined to a economically anemic and socially decadent coastal «Rimland» where the few remaining assets will be fought over by the hungry jackals of the banking houses of Wall Street, City of London, and Frankfurt. The outbreak of wars in Syria, Ukraine, and Iraq are but the first shots of the impending war between «Oceania» and «Eurasia».http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2014/06/23/from-pages-of-orwell-and-1984-irregular-warfare-against-eurasia.html
Wayne MADSEN
Investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. Has some twenty years experience in security issues. As a U.S. Naval Officer, he managed one of the first computer security programs for the U.S. Navy. He has been a frequent political and national security commentator on Fox News and has also appeared on ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, and MS-NBC. He has been invited to testify as a witness before the US House of Representatives, the UN Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and an terrorism investigation panel of the French government. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club. Lives in Washington, D.C.

      Wasser & Salz = Würde Palästinensische Gemeinde Deutschland e.V. (PGD)wendet sich gegen Doppelmoral
    ...
    Erstaunlich, mit welcher Intensität und Wachsamkeit die Presse und die Politik die Entführung der israelischen Siedler im Besetzten Palästina beobachtet und dem Geschehen Aufmerksamkeit schenkt. Auf der anderen Seite verlieren sie kaum ein Wort über die grausame alltägliche Verschleppung palästinensischer Jugendliche durch die Besatzungsmacht Israel.
    Beängstigend ist dagegen die Schweigsamkeit westlicher und in erster Linie deutscher Politiker und Medien im Fall der sich seit Wochen im Hungerstreik befindenden rund 200 palästinensischen, politischen Häftlinge in israelischen Gefängnissen – obwohl sie zum Teil bereits seit über 57 Tagen hungern. Sie kämpfen mit den leeren Mägen gegen die brutalen und menschenverachtenden Haftbedingungen und gegen die zum Teil international geächtete Praxis der Administrativhaft. Sie stehen auf gegen einen angeblich demokratischen Staat, der per Gesetz die Folter an politischen Häftlingen manifestiert hat. Und sie bleiben stehen – auch wenn sich inzwischen 67 in akuter Lebensgefahr befinden.

    Die sogenannte "Administrativhaft", gegen die die Häftlinge mit ihrem Hungerstreik protestieren, ermöglicht es den israelischen Behörden, Verdächtige ohne Anklage aufgrund geheimer Ermittlungsergebnisse für jeweils verlängerbare Zeiträume von sechs Monaten festzuhalten. Zurzeit befinden sich knapp 200 von rund 5.000 Palästinensern in israelischen Gefängnissen in Administrativhaft, zum Teil seit mehreren Jahren. Die Praxis der Verwaltungshaft verstößt gegen das im Internationalen Abkommen über bürgerliche und politische Rechte verbriefte Recht auf ein faires Gerichtsverfahren. Unter diesen Umständen grenzt es schon fast an Ignoranz, ja sogar an abscheulichen Sarkasmus, wenn der israelische Staat noch mit der Aufwertung des Assoziationsabkommens mit der EU beschenkt wird.

    Die palästinensisch-politischen Häftlinge werden entgegen der internationalen Konventionen nicht nur aus ihrer Heimat verschleppt und in die Gefängnisse der Besatzungsmacht gesteckt, sie werden auch gefoltert und monatelang festgehalten – und zwar ohne einen Richter zu sehen. Und trotzdem schweigt die deutsche politische Elite und macht sich somit in diesem Fall mitschuldig. Denn keiner kann behaupten, er habe es nicht gewusst.


    Erstaunlich die Moralpredigten deutscher Politiker, wenn es um Menschenrechte überall in der Welt geht. Beängstigend aber ihr Schweigen, ja fast schon das Totschweigen, wenn es um den Verstoß gegen die Menschenrechte in Israel geht.

    Erstaunlich auch, dass keiner dieser sonst so lautstarken Moralprediger aufsteht und fordert, Israel, das ja bekanntermaßen weit weg von Europa liegt, aus europäischen kulturellen und sportlichen Ereignissen auszuschließen. Denn Israel ist seit Jahrzehnten eine Besatzungsmacht, unterdrückt ein anderes Volk und ignoriert zahlreiche internationale Beschlüsse und Konventionen kategorisch.

    Mit Erstaunen müssen wir die Damen und Herren an der Spree nun fragen: Ist es inzwischen tatsächlich so, dass Schweigen zu massiver Menschenrechtsverletzung und zu Gefängnissen voller politischer Häftlinge inklusive gesetzlicher Rückendeckung zum Foltern an diesen Häftlingen tatsächlich noch zu dem Schutz der deutschen Staatsraison gehört?

    Wir fordern die deutsche Regierung auf, ihre schützende Hand über das Verbrecherregime in Israel nun aufzuheben.


    Hannover 20.6.2014, Raif Hussein, Friedhofsallee 16, 30519 Hannover, raif@raif-hussein.de












    Israelis can try, but they can't ignore the occupation. By Gideon Levy | Jun. 15, 2014 |

    The only way still open for the Palestinians to remind the Israelis of their existence and plight is the way of violent struggle.

    The abduction of three yeshiva students in the West Bank last Thursdaywas ordered in advance – by Israel. At the time of writing, Saturday, their fate was unknown and concern for their welfare outweighed all other issues connected to their disappearance. But no matter what happens in the end, whether they return home safely or not, God forbid, whether the responsible party turns out to be global jihad or the local kind, the context of the action cannot be ignored. - 
    Perhaps the operation took Israel’s oh-so-sophisticated espionage agencies by surprise, but it could not have been a real surprise to anyone.
    Those who stubbornly refuse to release Palestinian prisoners, some of whom have been incarcerated for decades, from before the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, and some of whom Israel has promised to set free; those who imprison detainees without trial for years; those who ignore the hunger strike by 125 “administrative” detainees, some of whom are dying in hospitals; those who intend to feed them using force, and those who planned to pass sweeping laws to prohibit their release – these people cannot pretend to be surprised or shocked by the abductions. They arranged for them in advance. – 
    Israel, which is so worried about the welfare of every one of its citizens, has for years arrogantly ignored the Palestinian concern for the welfare of their prisoners. –
    Israel holds the copyright to concern for its people, as it does for the worship of the heroes of the national struggle. Meir Har-Zion [a founding member of Unit 101, who in 1953 led a retaliatory raid against a Bedouin tribe after his sister and others were killed while making an illegal trip to Petra] was a national hero; Ahmad Sa’adat [the secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] is a base murderer. - 
    Gilad Shalit was all ours, but the fate of Walid Daka, who has been imprisoned in Israel for more than 30 years, for the crime of membership in a militant cell that killed an Israeli soldier – without a single furlough or conjugal visit – is of no interest to anyone here.
    No one here cares about the thousands of Palestinian prisoners. Last week, Israelis were much more interested in Meir Sheetrit’s housekeeper than in 125 hunger strikers who have been slowly starving to death for 53 days now. –
    Among the thousands of Palestinian prisoners are some base murderers, but also many political prisoners – and all of them are seen as heroes of the Palestinian national struggle. It’s the same in every national struggle. Behind them stands an entire society, which is no less worried about their fate than Israelis are for that of their loved ones. - 
    In killing the peace process, Israel shut the gates of its prisons, and the Israeli message to the Palestinians was razor-sharp: The only way your sons will be freed is through a violent operation. On Thursday night, the conclusions were taken. But the context of the abductions extends far beyond the prisoner releases.
    The curtain has come down on the peace process, however fruitless that process may have been, and with it the last Palestinian hope for national liberation through negotiations. Life in Israel and the West Bank settlements is back on track, a life of freedom and accomplishment, reality shows and circuses, entirely untouched by the occupation. –
    The same cannot be said for the Palestinians: They have none of this, and for them every delay in a solution to the conflict only extends their suffering, humiliation and tribulations.
    Anyone who thought the Palestinians would sit quietly and wait until Israel deigned to change its tune or government was deluded. Anyone who thought the settlers would continue to live in security in the territories suffered a grave disappointment: Thursday’s abduction was merely a wake-up call, a taste of what could lie ahead. – 
    The only way still open for the Palestinians to remind the Israelis of their existence and their plight is the way of violent struggle. All other paths have been blocked. If the Gaza Strip doesn’t fire Qassam rockets at Israel, the Gaza Strip doesn’t exist. And if, in the West Bank, yeshiva students aren’t abducted, then the West Bank disappears from Israel’s consciousness.  - 
    Abductions or murders are aimed at puncturing Israel’s intolerable complacency, and as such they should surprise no one. In the past few months, this complacency has reached new, inconceivable heights.
    Just look at the nonsense that has captured Israel’s attention. The terrifying reminder that has landed on our heads is only the trailer for what we could expect if we continue to live between Benjamin Ben-Eliezer’s safety-deposit box and the kiss of Ahi and Anna on the Israeli version of “Big Brother.”  - 
    That’s the annoying nature of the occupation. It will chase after us, even if we bury our heads even deeper into the sand.

                                                                                                                                          

    Gegen die Verharmlosung von Faschisten: Brecht hat recht! Solidarität mit Sevim Dagdelen

    Mit einem Aufruf gegen die Verharmlosung von Faschisten in der Ukraine haben sich über 30 namhafte Künstler, Antifaschisten, Friedensaktivisten und Bundestagsabgeordnete an die Öffentlichkeit heute gewandt. Darunter auch der bekannte Liedermacher Konstantin Wecker. Sie betonen, dass sie in diesem Zusammenhang die Distanzierung des Fraktionsvorsitzenden der Linken Gregor Gysi und der beiden Parteivorsitzenden der Linken Katja Kipping und Bernd Riexinger von meinen Äußerungen in der Bundestagsdebatte vom 4. Juni 2014 nicht teilen und erklären sich zugleich solidarisch mit mir. 

    Der Aufruf kann unter der Adresse www.brecht-hat-recht.de mit gezeichnet werden. 

    Ich würde mich natürlich freuen, wenn der Aufruf auch Ihre Unterstützung finden und breit beworben werden würde.