The secrecy surrounding Australian foreign and defence policy protects planners from the public that elected them. The war in Afghanistan offers ample evidence.
Not much to say about this, really. The video is almost certainly authentic, though the Russians deny that it is, of course. (Admitting to war crimes is something that no country ever does willingly.) Nonetheless, such acts and recordings are made and propagated on social media with the singular intent of spreading fear and terror. That is a major component of Russian strategy in Ukraine.
Russians prove to be absolute liars and are losing absolutely. Not just the war but their global propaganda efforts to discount what it is they have really done. They will go down in history for being duped by a steroid-riddled madman Vladamir Putin.
In a Telegram post on Sunday, the ministry suggested that the bodies had been recently placed on the streets after “all Russian units withdrew completely from Bucha” around Wednesday.
But a review of videos and satellite imagery by The New York Times shows that many of the civilians were killed more than three weeks ago, when Russia’s military was in control of the town.
Human Rights Watch conducted a detailed study of military actions by Israel and the Hamas party-militia in Gaza and concluded that both committed war crimes during the Israeli assault on the Palestinian enclave this spring, but that deaths of Palestinians at Israeli hands were 21 times higher than Israeli deaths.Three of the Israeli airstrikes killed 62 Palestinians without any discernible military target in the area, wiping out entire families. HRW concludes that the seriousness of the war crimes justifies referral to the International Criminal Court in the Hague, a step Israel and the United States have resisted. The ICC nevertheless has determined that it has jurisdiction in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Paul Taucher and Dr Dean Aszkielowicz argue that war crimes justice does not work the way commentators generally suggest it does. AFTER THE SECOND World War, the victorious Allies prosecuted German and Japanese civilian leaders and military personnel for war crimes. The decision to hold these trials was based partly on a belief that the decades prior to the war had seen a genuine awakening among nations that some rules should apply to the conduct of wars and that efforts must be made to avoid devastating conflicts.
Nearly all the words and phrases used by the Democrats, Republicans and the talking heads on the media to describe the unrest inside Israel and the heaviest Israeli assault against the Palestinians since the 2014 attacks on Gaza, which lasted 51 days and killed more than 2,200 Palestinians, including 551 children, are a lie. Israel, by employing its military machine against an occupied population that does not have mechanized units, an air force, navy, missiles, heavy artillery and command-and-control, not to mention a U.S. commitment to provide a $38 billion defense aid package for Israel over the next decade, is not exercising “the right to defend itself.” It is carrying out mass murder. It is a war crime.
International Criminal Court found that it had jurisdiction to consider war crimes and crimes against humanity and the crime of Apartheid in the Palestinian territories. Israeli politician Abba Eban once quipped that Palestinians never lost the opportunity to lose an opportunity. But Palestinians have carefully, methodically created this opportunity to be heard in an international tribunal. It is the ruling Israeli right wing about which one can now quip about missing opportunities. Israel has egregiously violated the 1949 Geneva Convention on the treatment of people in Occupied territories by flooding its own citizens into the Palestinian Territories, by stealing Palestinian land from its owners and building squatter settlements on it, and by using disproportional force against Palestinian demonstrators at the Gaza border. The court will also look into war crimes by Hamas, which was elected in 2006 and retains control of the Gaza Strip.
If the Australian ADF were the sole arbiters on the war crimes of the SAS all crimes would have been found unproved. The IDF’s self -investigation is the States great denier (ODT)
Only one Israeli soldier has been indicted over the use of live fire against unarmed protesters during the Great March of Return demonstrations held along Gaza’s eastern boundary. Israeli forces killed more than 215 Palestinians during those protests, which began in late March 2018 and were suspended last December.
But the SAS unit has found solace from one source: Seven West chairman Kerry Stokes. Already, Stokes has loaned decorated former SAS soldier Ben Roberts-Smith somewhere between $1 million and $2 million (depending on the source) to aid his — so far not going all that great — defamation case against the Nine papers.
The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Fatou Bensouda, warned, on Wednesday, that transfer of population in an occupied territory constitute war crime.
“We cannot remain silent in the face of the most violent crimes and human rights violations being systematically perpetrated against our people,” said the Palestinian envoy to the United Nations
One might well ask whether the third investigation commissioned too investigate the other two is intended to be a government whitewash given Irvine was Australia’s former spy chief. (ODT)
SASR sources claim the man with the prosthetic leg was machine-gunned by a soldier that, for legal reasons, Fairfax Media will call “Leonidas”.
Leonidas is also implicated in the killing of a detainee three years later in September 2012 during a SASR mission in the village of Darwan. Leonidas allegedly kicked handcuffed detainee Ali Jan off the edge of a small cliff, badly injuring his face, according to claims of two Defence Force insiders who witnessed the event.
As the detainee lay injured, hands still bound, the two witnesses say Leonidas was party to the decision among soldiers to “get him out of his misery”. The claims have been backed by the relatives of Ali Jan who were interviewed this week by an Afghan journalist on assignment with Fairfax Media.
Fairfax Media has confirmed the Irvine inquiry was commissioned by army chiefs earlier this year amid concerns raised in leaked defence reports of an entrenched culture of impunity within the nation’s Special Operations Task Group.
It is the third investigation into the special forces to be launched in two years.
Israel claims it kills and wounds those supported by Hamas only but is full aware what is doing to the uninvolved citizens of Gaza ensuring their Hospitals and Health systems collapse. Basically they are intentionally killing the sick elderly and children and that is their intent when they use dum dum bullets while pleading they have no other choice (ODT)
The number of injuries resulting from Israeli attacks against unarmed protesters on the eastern boundary of the Gaza Strip nearly broke the back of an overstretched and under-resourced sector, exacerbating the pressure on health professionals and straining provision.
Medics even found themselves in the crosshairs, and two – Razan al-Najjar on 1 June and Mousa Jaber Abu Hassanein on 14 May – were killed while carrying out their duties.
The highest casualty count of the Great March of Return came on 14 May, and was followed by more protests – and more wounded – on 15 May. Both days brought with them shocking scenes at Gaza Strip hospitals.
With a huge number of wounded – more than 3,100 over those two days alone – there were no available beds and people were being treated in hallways or even at hospital entry gates.
There was an acute shortage of medicine and supplies, according to Ashraf al-Qedra, a health ministry spokesperson, who said hospitals had used 80 percent of ministry stores during those days.
“This crisis caused a huge deficit in hospitals in the Gaza Strip. Patients who seek public hospitals for treatment, cannot find the medical care they need due to hospitals overwhelmed with injuries,” al-Qedra told The Electronic Intifada.
A Special Air Service Regiment trooper on his first deployment to Afghanistan was pressured to execute an elderly, unarmed detainee by fellow higher-ranking soldiers as part of a “blooding” ritual, according to defence insiders who were witnesses at the scene.
Behind closed doors, the words “war crimes” are being used. Not only specific incidents, but the entire culture and command structure of Australia’s most renowned and trusted fighting force is now under scrutiny in a manner unprecedented in Australian military history.
Both before and after the confrontations, senior officials publicly said that soldiers stationed along the barrier that separates Gaza and Israel had orders to target “instigators” and those who approach the border. However, the Israeli government presented no evidence that rock-throwing and other violence by some demonstrators seriously threatened Israeli soldiers across the border fence. The high number of deaths and injuries was the foreseeable consequence of granting soldiers leeway to use lethal force outside of life-threatening situations in violation of international norms, coupled with the longstanding culture of impunity within the Israeli army for serious abuses.
olddogthoughts 