This has always happened and probably always will. The strength of the magnetic field can increase and decrease, magnetic north and south can also reverse positions...
Prime Minister Starmer's lapidary statement re the Gaza genocide is problematic in at least two respects: 1. it gives the impression that what happened on Oct7 may remotely justify the military course that has ensued (which it does not, in any possible way); 2. it casts a shadow on the ongoing work of the ICJ (South Africa v Israel; Nicaragua v Germany) - after the World Court recognised the plausible risk of genocide within 15 days from the starting of the proceedings (clearly the rapidity of the first response underscores the seriousness of the case).
I trust UK international law scholars and practitioners will make their voice heard, and stand firmly against the politicization of int'l law.
Shock News: Russia did not poison the Skripals in Salisbury.
Obviously anyone who paid any attention to the alleged Russian operation to poison former KGB agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with 'Novichok' is already aware that this was not a Russian operation but rather a smear job by the British secret state.
But equally, not every one had/has time to pay attention and not everyone is immune to the siren call of Russophobia - even those on the left who really should know better. Naming no names here!
Anyway, it transpires the British intelligence sources claim that the Russians had smeared 'Novichok' on the front door handle of the Skripal's house was false and that they knew it to be false four days after the 'attack'.
It was at that stage that Yulia Skripal testified that the attack had been accomplished in the restaurant where she and her father were having lunch and that they collapsed minutes later on a park bench.
As John Helmer writes:
The implication of the Skripal evidence, revealed for the first time on Thursday, is that the attack on the Skripals was not perpetrated by Russian military agents who were photographed elsewhere in Salisbury town at the time; that the attacker or attackers were British agents; and that if their weapon was a nerve agent called Novichok, it came, not from Moscow, but from the UK Ministry of Defence chemical warfare laboratory at Porton Down.
Porton Down’s subsequent evidence of Novichok contamination in blood samples, clothing, car, and home of the Skripals may therefore be interpreted as British in source, not Russian.
This evidence was revealed by a police witness testifying at the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry in London on November 14. The police officer, retired Detective Inspector Keith Asman was in 2018, and he remains today the chief of forensics for the Counter Terrorism Policing (CTPSE) group which combines the Metropolitan and regional police forces with the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the Security Service (MI5).
According to Asman’s new disclosure, Yulia Skripal had woken from a coma and confirmed to the doctor at her bedside that she remembered the circumstances of the attack on March 4. What she remembered, she signalled, was not (repeat not) the official British Government narrative that Russian agents had tried to kill them by poisoning the front door-handle of the family home.
Obviously the Secret State is desperate to continue the cover up and that is why the Skripals have been
1. Banned from giving evidence
2. Are being held incommunicado by the spooks.
3. Have not signed any of the 'evidence' of their 'testimony' which has been supplied on their behalf by the spooks.
4, Are being represented by a government paid lawyer who appears never to have met or talked to them.
5. As Helmer writes: 'Neither Yulia nor Sergei Skripal has been asked by the police, by the Inquiry lawyers, or by Hughes to confirm or deny whether Yulia’s recollection of March 8, 2018, of the spray attack in Zizzi’s Restaurant is still their evidence of what happened to them.'
In other words a massive cover up is continuing on the Skripal case.
For those in need of some foundations for scepticism here is the last briefing produced by the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media of which I was a co-author with @PiersRobinson1 and Paul McKeigue, published in May 2018.
https://t.co/LmCAvr9ONs
One the one hand, it's genuinely shocking that this repellent cretin had a serious job in the Obama national security apparatus working on Israel/Palestine issues, but on the other hand, it actually makes perfect sense when you consider what US policy has been for decades:
Someone uploaded one of those viral “help identify this racist jerk” clips featuring a man accosting a street vendor with awful Islamophobic vitriol, and it turned out he was the former US State Department Deputy Director in the Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs.
It sounds made up, but that’s exactly what just happened; Vice has a whole article out about it. The video was uploaded today, and within hours the man was identified as Stuart Seldowitz, who helped direct US diplomacy on Israel-Palestine from 1999 to 2003 and then served on the Obama administration’s National Security Council.
Seldowitz’s identity was confirmed by his former employer Gotham Government Relations, who released a statement denouncing him and saying they’ve ended all affiliation with him.
Seldowitz is seen hounding the New York City vendors in multiple different videos wearing multiple different outfits, showing a sustained campaign of harassment and abuse. He told them while fully aware he was being filmed that Israel killing thousands of Palestinian kids “wasn’t enough”, insulted their religion, threatened them, mocked their intelligence and their English, called them terrorists, and asked “Did you rape your daughter like Mohammed did?” From the videos he appears to be harassing them for no reason other than because they are Muslims selling halal food.
That such a horrible person could climb his way to the highest echelons of the world’s most powerful government — working on Palestinian affairs no less — illustrates an important point about the US empire and what it is. There are no barriers stopping such creatures from rising to the top of that power structure, just the opposite in fact — they get an express lane to the top. That’s why bloodthirsty swamp monsters like John Bolton, Lindsey Graham, Victoria Nuland and Elliott Abrams find themselves so intimately involved with US policymaking.
That’s the true face of the US empire, right there. That’s the empire at its most honest. Not dressed up in affable charm and slick PR work, but sneering and hurling racist invective at immigrants who are just trying to do their jobs in peace. Not performing carefully rehearsed faces of compassion for the Palestinians who are being tragically unintentionally killed as collateral damage in Israel’s war of defense against Hamas, but staring right into the camera and saying “If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasn’t enough.”
Too many people look at Israel as something separate from the US empire, seeing it as a small nation run by a historically mistreated ethnic group that everyone singles out and picks on unfairly. If you look at Israel separately from the US-centralized global power structure, it feels off to have any forceful animosity toward Israel and its government, because it feels like you’re picking on the little guy.
It’s only when you see clearly that Israel is just an arm of the same empire that’s been murdering people by the millions around the world with nonstop invasions, bombing campaigns, proxy conflicts, starvation sanctions and CIA coups that you understand that, yes, Israel really is exactly as evil as it appears to be, and its behavior in Gaza is exactly what it looks like.
The US empire backs Israel for the same reason it backs most of the world’s dictatorships: because a globe-spanning empire can only be held together by nonstop violence and tyranny. Israel and other US-aligned states in the middle east are like the chair and the whip of a lion tamer — weapons used to violently abuse the populations of a crucial geostrategic region into compliance. It suits the empire perfectly to have a nuclear-armed government which exists in a constant state of war in the middle east governed by officials who speak English with American accents and interests which are reliably in alignment with those of the United States.
Stuart Seldowitz is not an aberration but a perfect manifestation of all this. This is the sort of mind which keeps the empire marching along from administration to administration no matter who Americans elect. This is the sort of mind which keeps the weapons flowing, the blood pouring, the fossil fuels burning, and the terrified screams which power the imperial machine continually erupting into the night sky.
This is quite satisfying: the Israeli ambassador to the UN officially reprimanded by China (who assumes the rotating presidency of the UN security council) as he was going on a nasty tirade against UN women.
"Please show some respect at least".
The scenes of hundreds killed at the Al-Ahli Arabi Baptist hospital in Gaza are absolutely devastating and cannot be justified.
International law must be upheld.
Hospitals and civilian lives must be protected.