Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, July 2, 2025—Iraqi authorities must immediately end their unexplained shutdown and suspension of the privately owned Iraq AlHadath news broadcaster in Baghdad and ensure that media outlets can operate freely and independently, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday.
“The shutdown of Iraq AlHadath without transparent justification represents a troubling move against press freedom in Iraq,” said Sara Qudah, CPJ’s regional director. “We urge Iraqi authorities to reconsider this action and reaffirm their commitment to a free and independent press, in which journalists can report without intimidation or interference.”
On July 1, a joint security team consisting of interior ministry, Iraqi national security service, and communications and media commission members raided the channel’s headquarters. They ordered staff to halt their broadcast and close the office, citing a court decision ordering the closure that was shown to the outlet’s management, according to two Iraq AlHadath employees and a reporter, all of whom requested anonymity, as well as multiplenewsreports.
“We expect to restart the broadcast next week,” one of the outlet’s staff members said.
Two officials from Iraq AlHadath told CPJ they believe the move was politically motivated, citing the channel’s coverage of several sensitive topics, including financial and administrative corruption.
Following the shutdown, Iraq AlHadath aired an on-screen message reading, “Broadcast has been temporarily suspended” alongside its slogan, “The Platform of Free Iraq.” The channel’s website and socialmediaaccounts also ceased publishing content under the order.
Iraq AlHadath was launched earlier this year. It is owned by Sheikh Bilal Al-Maliki — a young Iraqi businessman, political activist, and tribal leader of the Bani Malik tribe.
CPJ reached out to Haider Nadhem, spokesperson for Iraq’s communications and media commission, and Brig. Gen. Muqdad Miri, director of media and public relations at the interior ministry, but received no response.
That night, US President Donald Trump, flanked by his vice-president and two state secretaries, told the world: “Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace”.
There is something chilling about how bombs are baptised with the language of diplomacy and how destruction is dressed in the garments of stability. To call that peace is not merely a misnomer; it is a criminal distortion.
But what is peace in this world, if not submission to the West? And what is diplomacy, if not the insistence that the attacked plead with their attackers?
In the 12 days that Israel’s illegal assault on Iran lasted, images of Iranian children pulled from the wreckage remained absent from the front pages of Western media. In their place were lengthy features about Israelis hiding in fortified bunkers.
Victimhood serving narrative
Western media, fluent in the language of erasure, broadcasts only the victimhood that serves the war narrative.
And that is not just in its coverage of Iran. For 20 months now, the people of Gaza have been starved and incinerated. By the official count, more than 55,000 lives have been taken; realistic estimates put the number at hundreds of thousands.
Every hospital in Gaza has been bombed. Most schools have been attacked and destroyed.
Leading human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have already declared that Israel is committing genocide, and yet, most Western media would not utter that word and would add elaborate caveats when someone does dare say it live on TV.
Presenters and editors would do anything but recognise Israel’s unending violence in an active voice.
Despite detailed evidence of war crimes, the Israeli military has faced no media censure, no criticism or scrutiny. Its generals hold war meetings near civilian buildings, and yet, there are no media cries of Israelis being used as “human shields”.
Israeli army and government officials are regularly caught lying or making genocidal statements, and yet, their words are still reported as “the truth”.
Bias over Palestinian deaths
A recent study found that on the BBC, Israeli deaths received 33 times more coverage per fatality than Palestinian deaths, despite Palestinians dying at a rate of 34 to 1 compared with Israelis. Such bias is no exception, it is the rule for Western media.
Like Palestine, Iran is described in carefully chosen language. Iran is never framed as a nation, only as a regime. Iran is not a government, but a threat — not a people, but a problem.
The word “Islamic” is affixed to it like a slur in every report. This is instrumental in quietly signalling that Muslim resistance to Western domination must be extinguished.
Iran does not possess nuclear weapons; Israel and the United States do. And yet only Iran is cast as an existential threat to world order.
Because the problem is not what Iran holds, but what it refuses to surrender. It has survived coups, sanctions, assassinations, and sabotage. It has outlived every attempt to starve, coerce, or isolate it into submission.
It is a state that, despite the violence hurled at it, has not yet been broken.
And so the myth of the threat of weapons of mass destruction becomes indispensable. It is the same myth that was used to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq. For three decades, American headlines have whispered that Iran is just “weeks away” from the bomb, three decades of deadlines that never arrive, of predictions that never materialise.
Fear over false ‘nuclear threat’
But fear, even when unfounded, is useful. If you can keep people afraid, you can keep them quiet. Say “nuclear threat” often enough, and no one will think to ask about the children killed in the name of “keeping the world safe”.
This is the modus operandi of Western media: a media architecture not built to illuminate truth, but to manufacture permission for violence, to dress state aggression in technical language and animated graphics, to anaesthetise the public with euphemisms.
Time Magazine does not write about the crushed bones of innocents under the rubble in Tehran or Rafah, it writes about “The New Middle East” with a cover strikingly similar to the one it used to propagandise regime change in Iraq 22 years ago.
But this is not 2003. After decades of war, and livestreamed genocide, most Americans no longer buy into the old slogans and distortions. When Israel attacked Iran, a poll showed that only 16 percent of US respondents supported the US joining the war.
After Trump ordered the air strikes, another poll confirmed this resistance to manufactured consent: only 36 percent of respondents supported the move, and only 32 percent supported continuing the bombardment
The failure to manufacture consent for war with Iran reveals a profound shift in the American consciousness. Americans remember the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that left hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis dead and an entire region in flames. They remember the lies about weapons of mass destruction and democracy and the result: the thousands of American soldiers dead and the tens of thousands maimed.
They remember the humiliating retreat from Afghanistan after 20 years of war and the never-ending bloody entanglement in Iraq.
Low social justice spending
At home, Americans are told there is no money for housing, healthcare, or education, but there is always money for bombs, for foreign occupations, for further militarisation. More than 700,000 Americans are homeless, more than 40 million live under the official poverty line and more than 27 million have no health insurance.
And yet, the US government maintains by far the highest defence budget in the world.
Americans know the precarity they face at home, but they are also increasingly aware of the impact US imperial adventurism has abroad. For 20 months now, they have watched a US-sponsored genocide broadcast live.
They have seen countless times on their phones bloodied Palestinian children pulled from rubble while mainstream media insists, this is Israeli “self-defence”.
The old alchemy of dehumanising victims to excuse their murder has lost its power. The digital age has shattered the monopoly on narrative that once made distant wars feel abstract and necessary. Americans are now increasingly refusing to be moved by the familiar war drumbeat.
The growing fractures in public consent have not gone unnoticed in Washington. Trump, ever the opportunist, understands that the American public has no appetite for another war.
‘Don’t drop bombs’
And so, on June 24, he took to social media to announce, “the ceasefire is in effect”, telling Israel to “DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS,” after the Israeli army continued to attack Iran.
Trump, like so many in the US and Israeli political elites, wants to call himself a peacemaker while waging war. To leaders like him, peace has come to mean something altogether different: the unimpeded freedom to commit genocide and other atrocities while the world watches on.
But they have failed to manufacture our consent. We know what peace is, and it does not come dressed in war. It is not dropped from the sky.
Peace can only be achieved where there is freedom. And no matter how many times they strike, the people remain, from Palestine to Iran — unbroken, unbought, and unwilling to kneel to terror.
Ahmad Ibsais is a first-generation Palestinian American and law student who writes the newsletter State of Siege.
Setting aside any thoughts I may have about theocratic rulers (whether they be in Tel Aviv or Tehran), I am personally glad that Iran was able to hold out against the US-Israeli attacks this month.
The ceasefire, however, will only be a pause in the long-running campaign to destabilise, weaken and isolate Iran. Regime change or pariah status are both acceptable outcomes for the US-Israeli dyad.
The good news for my region is that Iran’s resilience pushes back what could be a looming calamity: the US pivot to Asia and a heightened risk of a war on China.
There are three major pillars to the Eurasian order that is going through a slow, painful and violent birth. Iran is the weakest. If Iran falls, war in our region — intended or unintended – becomes vastly more likely.
Mainstream New Zealanders and Australians suffer from an understandable complacency: war is what happens to other, mainly darker people or Slavs.
“Tomorrow”, people in this part of the world naively think, “will always be like yesterday”.
That could change, particularly for the Australians, in the kind of unfamiliar flash-boom Israelis experienced this month following their attack on Iran. And here’s why.
US chooses war to re-shape Middle East Back in 2001, as many will recall, retired General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Commander of NATO forces in Europe, was visiting buddies in the Pentagon. He learnt something he wasn’t supposed to: the Bush administration had made plans in the febrile post 9/11 environment to attack seven Muslim countries.
In the firing line were: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the Assad regime in Syria, Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon, Gaddafi’s Libya, Somalia, Sudan and the biggest prize of all — the Islamic Republic of Iran.
One would have to say that the project, pursued by successive presidents, both Democrat and Republican, has been a great success — if you discount the fact that a couple of million human beings, most of them civilians, many of them women and children, nearly all of them innocents, were slaughtered, starved to death or otherwise disposed of.
With the exception of Iran, those countries have endured chaos and civil strife for long painful years. A triumph of American bomb-based statecraft.
Now — with Muammar Gaddafi raped and murdered (“We came, we saw, he died”, Hillary Clinton chuckled on camera the same day), Saddam Hussein hanged, Hezbollah decapitated, Assad in Moscow, the genocide in full swing in Palestine — the US and Israel were finally able to turn their guns — or, rather, bombs — on the great prize: Iran.
Iran’s missiles have checked US-Israel for time being Things did not go to plan. Former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman pointed out this week that for the first time Israel got a taste of the medicine it likes to dispense to its neighbours.
Iran’s missiles successfully turned the much-vaunted Iron Dome into an Iron Sieve and, perhaps momentarily, has achieved deterrence. If Iran falls, the US will be able to do what Barack Obama and Joe Biden only salivated over — a serious pivot to Asia.
Could great power rivalry turn Asia-Pacific into powderkeg? For us in Asia-Pacific a major US pivot to Asia will mean soaring defence budgets to support militarisation, aggressive containment of China, provocative naval deployments, more sanctions, muscling smaller states, increased numbers of bases, new missile systems, info wars, threats and the ratcheting up rhetoric — all of which will bring us ever-closer to the powderkeg.
Sounds utterly mad? Sounds devoid of rationality? Lacking commonsense? Welcome to our world — bellum Americanum — as we gormlessly march flame in hand towards the tinderbox. War is not written in the stars, we can change tack and rediscover diplomacy, restraint, and peaceful coexistence. Or is that too much to ask?
Back in the days of George W Bush, radical American thinkers like Robert Kagan, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld created the Project for a New American Century and developed the policy, adopted by succeeding presidents, that promotes “the belief that America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of US military forces”.
It reconfirmed the neoconservative American dogma that no power should be allowed to rise in any region to become a regional hegemon; anything and everything necessary should be done to ensure continued American primacy, including the resort to war.
What has changed since those days are two crucial, epoch-making events: the re-emergence of Russia as a great power, albeit the weakest of the three, and the emergence of China as a genuine peer competitor to the USA. Professor John Mearsheimer’s insights are well worth studying on this topic.
The three pillars of multipolarity A new world order really is being born. As geopolitical thinkers like Professor Glenn Diesen point out, it will, if it is not killed in the cradle, replace the US unipolar world order that has existed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Many countries are involved in its birthing, including major players like India and Brazil and all the countries that are part of BRICS. Three countries, however, are central to the project: Iran, Russia and, most importantly, China. All three are in the crosshairs of the Western empire.
If Iran, Russia and China survive as independent entities, they will partially fulfill Halford MacKinder’s early 20th century heartland theory that whoever dominates Eurasia will rule the world. I don’t think MacKinder, however, foresaw cooperative multipolarity on the Eurasian landmass — which is one of the goals of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) – as an option.
That, increasingly, appears to be the most likely trajectory with multiple powerful states that will not accept domination, be that from China or the US. That alone should give us cause for hope.
Drunk on power since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has launched war after war and brought us to the current abandonment of economic sanity (the sanctions-and-tariff global pandemic) and diplomatic normalcy (kill any peace negotiators you see) — and an anything-goes foreign policy (including massive crimes against humanity).
We have also reached — thanks in large part to these same policies — what a former US national security advisor warned must be avoided at all costs. Back in the 1990s, Zbigniew Brzezinski said, “The most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran.”
Belligerent and devoid of sound strategy, the Biden and Trump administrations have achieved just that.
Can Asia-Pacific avoid being dragged into an American war on China? Turning to our region, New Zealand and Australia’s governments cleave to yesterday: a white-dominated world led by the USA. We have shown ourselves indifferent to massacres, ethnic cleansing and wars of aggression launched by our team.
To avoid war — or a permanent fear of looming war — in our own backyards, we need to encourage sanity and diplomacy; we need to stay close to the US but step away from the military alliances they are forming, such as AUKUS which is aimed squarely at China.
Above all, our defence and foreign affairs elites need to grow new neural pathways and start to think with vision and not place ourselves on the losing side of history. Independent foreign policy settings based around peace, defence not aggression, diplomacy not militarisation, would take us in the right direction.
Personally I look forward to the day the US and its increasingly belligerent vassals are pushed back into the ranks of ordinary humanity. I fear the US far more than I do China.
Despite the reflexive adherence to the US that our leaders are stuck on, we should not, if we value our lives and our cultures, allow ourselves to be part of this mad, doomed project.
The US empire is heading into a blood-drenched sunset; their project will fail and the 500-year empire of the White West will end — starting and finishing with genocide.
Every day I atheistically pray that leaders or a movement will emerge to guide our antipodean countries out of the clutches of a violent and increasingly incoherent USA.
America is not our friend. China is not our enemy. Tomorrow gives birth to a world that we should look forward to and do the little we can to help shape.
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
This blog is part of a five-part series looking at interfaith and intercultural relationships and the factors behind their success and longevity (or lack of). The series is based on my personal experience as a Muslim woman in her 20s and 30s.
In part 1, I look at marriage and love across cultures and borders, examining the role of shared values and knowing oneself.
In part 2, I share my experience of faith and religious divides in an intercultural/interfaith relationship.
In part 3, I share the impact of trauma on stereotyping others in the context of mixed relationships.
In this blog I look at emotional factors (in particular attachment styles) and their relation to culture, as opposed to cultural or religious difference as a standalone.
In part 5, I conclude by sharing insight into the factors and dynamics involved in mixed relationships in maintaining a healthy long-lasting interfaith/intercultural relationship.
Love is selfless: caring for others through emotional (not simply cultural) difference
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”
(1 Corinthians 13:4-8)
They say that love – true love – is selfless. And it’s right.
One of the hardest (yet most beautiful) lessons of my life has been the selflessness of love.
Of my love – a love I never planned, never expected and never renounced. A love for a man I shall refer to as “Mustafa”.
This was the only love that I shared without every truly receiving. Unrequited love? Not quite.
I think he loved me. I believe he did. I felt he did – in his reserved, scared, tender, yet very real way.
I knew I did at least. I’d told him so. I couldn’t wait any longer.
“Mustafa, I love you” I texted him one night in Arabic (his native language). He seemed surprised and said we’d talk about it that night during our usual evening call.
I was shocked, surprised and embarrassed. Was he surprised to hear it or to actually know it?
Well, it wasn’t love at first sight – not for me at least. We’d got off to a rough start and I wasn’t sure if it’d go anywhere after an awkward end to our first date (one with highs and lows!).
Was it cultural difference? Not much I don’t think. He was Middle Eastern (Iraqi to be precise), and I was European. But that wasn’t really the issue.
From our very first calls, we’d established a connection and discussed our different backgrounds. I had a fondness for his culture and was very much familiar with it.
Mustafa, on the other hand, had struggled with ex-partners who didn’t understand his culture. He liked the idea of a mixed family, and I did too.
I seemed to fit the bill, and he seemed to fit mine.
I loved and understood his culture. And he loved mine. We were both living in the UK and experiencing life here.
Iraq: Mustafa’s homeland – a country I have yet to visit but which was the basis of my Master’s degree final translation project.
Next: religion. Well, we were both Muslim. In more ways than one. Half Kurdish and half Arab, his parents were a mix of Sunni and Shia. Yet he identified simply as Muslim – just like me, and (as I later discovered) we both loved Sufi mysticism.
We were both spiritual, progressive and cosmopolitan – and had lived overseas amid different cultures and faiths.
It was him in fact that encouraged me to “be myself” as I explained how I was constantly weaving between different cultural/religious norms and settings.
He was right. And I was myself – a Muslim woman in his eyes. Yet also a very British-Italian one too.
There was no pressure. I could be me, in his words at least.
In all honesty though, I once again did battle slightly with previous conceptions of cultural/religious norms.
There was once again a clash between what I’d been taught by other people from Arab (yet more conservative) backgrounds (which seemed an oil and water mix combined with my personal trauma) and Mustafa’s rather more open self.
Mustafa had grown up in an Arab, Muslim majority country. His home country was the seemingly conservative Iraq. But there was more to it.
As a young professional and polyglot, he appeared to be proud of his heritage and likewise non-traditional, liberal and very open minded. He had also grown up in diverse country, a very culturally rich nation and resided in the urban big cities/capitals.
Similarly, I was also still on my path of rediscovery post-Orthodox Islam. I was trying to fully embrace the European “me” (again a big part of my journey a the time – and still to date really).
In fact, despite him having come from a much more conservative society, it was with me appearing, modelling and behaving as the relatively more “conservative” one the more we knew each other.
None the less, it was refreshing. We were both culturally open, both loved learning about other people and both very similarly progressive in our faith.
Religion wasn’t an issue. And culture not so much either – not on a grand or overtly obvious scale in terms of practices, traditions and views.
So, what was the problem? Well, to put it simply: emotional factors.
This boiled down to emotional unavailability on his side and differing communication (or lack of) as a result (regarding emotional intelligibility and his inability to openly communicate his feelings – and quite possibly unhealed previous and more recent trauma).
We had quite clearly had opposing attachment styles (the later generally forming in relation to childhood upbringing and personal trauma).
These three were in hindsight all related – very related. Of course, some of this can be cultural – and it mostly likely was.
Communication styles, norms and practices vary amongst cultures. They relate to one’s reality as an adult and through our upbringing as a child.
And it’s our childhood that has a particular impact on our lives.
In this context, undoubtedly collective trauma affects cultures/societies and how we’re taught to communicate, behave and relate to others.
Growing up in a country of multiple conflicts, I think this is entirely relevant. I cannot begin to imagine what Mustafa must have gone through.
Marvelling at Mesopotamian culture in the Louvre, Paris (2007).
I of course hold sympathy for (yet basic insight into) this.
Back in 2011, my MA final thesis comprised a translation project based on a text by the Italian-Iraqi writer named Younis Tawfiq entitled “L’Iraq di Saddam” (Saddam’s Iraq).
This text covered the Iraq war, the journey of migration and longing for one’s homeland. I’d poured my heart and soul into this work (and got a distinction as a result).
But, I’d had little communication with Iraqis prior to meeting Mustafa.
Whilst I was very much against the war in Iraq on behalf of the US and UK, it wasn’t something I was an expert on or that had become part of my world since my degree.
Nonetheless, my heart went out to him. And it always will. But it wasn’t as simple as that.
Whilst we both loved and knew each other’s cultures to varying degrees, that wasn’t the problem.
The problem was his emotional state at the time when he’d put himself on the dating scene of marriage (and I say this without judgment and with full compassion and care).
When looking to date/marry, we’re putting ourselves out there to become part of a union. And that union is comprised of individuals who will impact on each other.
Everyone deserves love. No one should be a prisoner to their past. And yet, how we live as fully grown adults is our own responsibility.
So too is how we relate, communicate, engage and interact with others – including what we project onto them, how we treat them and how they feel as a result (consciously or consciously, intentionally or unintentionally).
I know that from my story with Rami. And well, this is how my story with Mustafa unfolded…
After keeping in touch via video and text (he was living in London and myself in the Midlands – including with a trip to Poland in between for a training I was undertaking), we met.
The first date started well… But ended badly (and confusingly). Yet, we stayed in touch.
Mustafa had reached out. But, I didn’t find him to be as communicatively open as I was (and felt I needed and deserved).
And so, over time, a culmination of distance, life pressures and emotional baggage got in the way. I didn’t hold out hope.
And then it happened. Text after text, video call after video call over the Christmas break. I felt it.
“I think I’m in love with Mustafa” I texted a friend. Well, it was early days. Very early days. But I felt it – and it grew, more and more.
I tried to doubt it, but I was right: I loved him. It was a love that had crept up on me so innocently, so softly, so beautifully.
But, I didn’t say anything. I wanted him to say it first and I definitely didn’t want to scare him off.
This heart-on-her-sleeve romantic had sensed he was the emotionally introverted take-it-slow type. So, I waited and hid it – in words at least.
Valentine’s Day then came round. We decided to mark the occasion but were in different areas of the country on the day itself.
So, I sent a package (a few days early) – full of love but inner silence.
Inside I’d placed a card that I’d very carefully chosen to be as low-key as possible, with a few selected gifts. Cute, thoughtful, personalised. But not OTT.
Not knowing how he’d respond, we spoke later that day, and he shared how he’d loved it.
The following evening (on Valentine’s Day itself) the door ball rang, and I opened the door to an Amazon driver.
I’d received a box, with a note and two gifts inside: a wooden music box to the tune of Can’t Help Falling in Love and a flashing standing musical card with the words “I love you” printed on the front.
This was a much more romantic response to the one I’d so carefully but very un-typically ended with “from Liz” in Arabic.
I texted my friends a video and a few photos. My British friends thought it was uber cheesy (and so said nothing!). I loved it.
For the old school romantic that I am (and my friends know very well), hardly anything could be (too) cheesy.
It was a very typically (stereotypically) Middle Eastern display of affection. And a sweet, tender, subtle declaration of affection by Mustafa.
I was moved, beaming and smiling from ear to ear. I was touched. In particular by those three little (yet big) words.
Mustafa had not uttered them himself, but when we spoke that night, he confirmed that he’d chosen everything purposely.
So, it was mutual, I thought. Like every other love I’d ever felt – mutual, real, beautiful.
Give him time I told myself. This was him. And it was a beautiful first display of affection.
We were so compatible – or so I thought. In my mind, we were seemingly perfect for each other. I’d have married him (in time) if he’d have asked.
Yet, this was a beautiful, but sadly impedingly tragic tale.
A tale that became written by feelings of painful half measures, emotional withdrawal and immense frustration. Hurt, rejection and longing – on my side at least.
I’d told him I loved him. And I discovered that we had totally different attachment styles: anxious attachment (me) and avoidant attachment (him).
Avoidant vs. anxious attachment styles on top of male – female biology (Mustang R Rranjan).
I was already working on healing this pattern, acknowledging this and sharing my newfound knowledge with him. But it didn’t go very far.
We broke down and resolved a few miscommunications, but the real work behind the scenes didn’t seem to be happening on his end.
At the end of my tether, he finally opened up: he hadn’t been happy but thought a relationship would make him happier. It wasn’t about me.
I explained that he needed to make himself happy first. To not dive into a relationship. Because his misery (a word he used himself) was making me miserable too.
And here came the lesson. One of the hardest lessons in my life to-date: I loved him, I truly loved him.
And it was because I loved him that I wanted him to be happy: with or without me.
“But I don’t want to lose you” – he uttered. He wanted me, he just needed time.
And so, I gave him time. But, week after week, the wounds grew deeper. As did his distance and my sense of hurt, rejection and being pushed away by the man I loved.
I couldn’t hang on. I couldn’t cling to half measures. I deserved better. I deserved more.
And so, disappointment after disappointment, I ended it. And it hit me. Like a knife. A deep searing knife right in my chest. Aching, paining, digging.
I cried with my heart and soul. Day in day out for a week – without contact.
Mustafa later returned and we met in person, with more disappointments, more misery and more hurt. My heart broke all over again. I cried rivers, streams, oasis of tears.
He needed time to figure out what he wanted, although declaring once again when he finally opened up that it wasn’t about me and that he valued our bond. That he needed time.
But I wouldn’t hang around for answers. I could be patient and support him, but only if he chose me.
And so, I chose myself. I chose self-love. I chose me. Because I wasn’t going to wait on the sidelines in a limbo for a man who didn’t know what he wanted – or wasn’t going to say it if he did.
I was also going to take space and time to heal before looking to (see if we could) be friends.
So, we no longer spoke. Then, a few weeks later, he texted me – with a photo of him in a hospital bed.
It was a surprise and shock. Totally out of the blue. He was ill.
He’d undergone a major operation and had been in hospital for two weeks.
We spoke. I packed my bags and rushed to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (London) when discharge day came.
As I entered the building, I paused, took a deep breath and gathered myself for what I knew was going to be a very difficult few days ahead. And it was.
It was four days of caring, four days of raw wounds and four days of arguments, fatigue, unspoken words and many, many tears. Beautiful, intense and tragic.
During one disagreement, he said we were incompatible. I replied that he didn’t deserve me.
There we were, like two very close strangers. He didn’t understand me, and I didn’t understand him.
We were on two different emotional planets (and no, this wasn’t just a “cultural thing”).
Looking back, it required a lot of effort (on his part) and healing and dialogue (for us both).
Several days in, the night before I left, we told each other how we’d miss each other – of course I initiated:
“You annoy the hell out of me but I’m going to miss you” I told him.
“I’ll miss you too” he replied. Then, early next morning, I left.
I boarded a coach back to the Midlands. And as the coach left Victoria coach station, I burst into deep tears. Streaming, hot tears.
A few hours later, back “up north”, I arrived at work and opened my phone: “I’m missing you this morning” he’d written. So he was. And so was I.
But, I’d returned without expectations – just like when I’d travelled down to London to be with him. I couldn’t expect anything.
My love was there to care and look after a friend who needed practical and emotional support. And I’m glad I went.
I’m glad I remained true to myself. And I’m glad I listened to myself.
I took it for what it was. For the beauty that we’d shared; for the care I’d given, for the support he’d received, and for the moments we’d shared.
And: I moved forward – with a lot of hurt, tears and memories behind me and my self-respect in tact, my friends by my side and my future ahead of me.
Looking back: what I learnt
True love is selfless – it does not falter, it does not demand, it simply gives
Any relationship should be a mutual exchange – a selfless exchange, without discounting one’s needs. Sharing, giving and caring should be done for the sake of the other, for the sake of love. And true love is selfless.
True love is about wanting the other person to feel happy, secure and fulfilled. Both partners should expect respect, love, trust and appreciation.
However, love cannot force a person to heal. Love cannot heal another person who is not ready or willing to heal.
Love on its own is not enough. But it is selfless in its truest form. This however does not mean discounting oneself.
Self-love is not selfish – it’s a priority
Self-love must come first. This is not being selfish. It’s about being responsible, about looking after yourself and about respecting yourself.
Self-love, self-care and self-respect translate to communicating your needs, setting boundaries and loving for others what we love for ourselves (the Golden Rule).
Therefore, self-love in the purest, kindest and purest sense translates to selfless love for others too.
Compatibility is about more than outward religious or cultural difference
Mutual long-term compatibility is about sharing commonality, navigating difference and communicating deeply. Without communication, no relationship can flourish.
Just as values are about more than simply about culture or religion (to not be viewed as a homogonous monolith on their own, nor as part of a split binary and in any over-simplified view), compatibility requires emotional availability.
This requires deeper communication, regardless of one’s culture – whilst acknowledging the effect of socio-cultural norms on religious and cultural practice and one’s emotional wellbeing (e.g. collective societal trauma and how this shapes socio-cultural norms).
Emotional needs are an important element of who we are and how we relate to others. Different love languages exist, different attachment styles exist and different perceptions of what a happy relationship exist.
These can vary, but this doesn’t mean they’re incompatible or present unsurmountable barriers.
However, they do require reflection, communication, and the will, trust and understanding to move forward together to break down, navigate and manage these differences into compromise (or forming new behaviours individually and together – for example through healing trauma).
Coming up:
Look out for part 5 of this series (the final segment), where I conclude by sharing insight into the factors and dynamics involved in mixed relationships in maintaining a healthy long-lasting interfaith/intercultural relationship.
There are few differences between the lies told to ignite the war with Iraq and the lies told to ignite a war with Iran. The assessments of our intelligence agencies and international bodies are, as they were during the calls to invade Iraq, airily dismissed for hallucinations.
All the old tropes have been resurrected to entice us into another military fiasco. A country that poses no threat to us, or to its neighbors, is on the verge of acquiring a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) that imperils our existence. The country and its leaders embody pure evil. Freedom and democracy are at stake.
As Israeli warplanes continue to pummel Tehran and other parts of the country, President Trump has given mixed messages on whether the U.S. will join Israel’s war on Iran. Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt delivered a message on Thursday that Trump will decide on direct U.S. involvement in the next two weeks. Leavitt delivered the message shortly after Trump met with his former advisor Steve Bannon who has publicly warned against war with Iran. The U.S. is reportedly considering dropping “bunker buster” bombs on underground Iranian nuclear facilities. “It’s reminiscent of the beginning of the Iraq War, when they said it’s going to be a cakewalk,” says William Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
A U.S.-based Iranian human rights group reports that the Israeli attacks have killed at least 639 people in Iran, while Iran’s retaliatory strikes in Israel have killed an estimated two dozen.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
“What does it mean to want to belong to an empire?” In answering, he interlaced the concept of belonging during our terrifying political moment — full-fledged war on DEI, First Amendment violations of protesters, and weaponization of American border security against students. His work is a call to action for the literature of dissent at a time when the right to dissent is under attack.
“I came into political consciousness around Asian American causes of rights, identities, and recognitions, which were framed as an issue of anti-racism, access to the United States, and belonging to this country. Over the last couple of decades, I’ve [begun seeing] all those things as subsidiary to a greater cause of decolonization. If we recognize that the political struggles that we’re engaging in should be around decolonization, then we can recognize how these seemingly disparate identities and histories are actually really connected. To connect the causes of civil rights and minority empowerment in the United States to the cause of anti-genocide and pro-Palestinian advocacy reveals how colonization deploys all these things in order to exploit and separate us.” – Viet Thanh Nguyen
Going from last back, the concert. Yachats Community Presbyterian Church: “Keith Greeninger paints masterful portraits of humanity using powerful images that come alive with his engaging guitar rhythms and husky vocals. $20 in advance or $25 at the door. 7 pm, 360 W 7th Street. FMI, go to kyaq.org.”
*****
So, these liberals, and the gray hair and droopy eyes, man, and the tie-dye and hippy hats and just that weird old person disheveled look of the sort of Obama- loving “liberal,” well, I was the only keffiyeh-wearing fuck of the day.
I was with a client, one of my other jobs, people with developmental or intellectual disabilities. High functioning, but alas, many of my clients of past always have a simple belief in prayer, a higher male god, America the Beautiful, respect of all laws, and so on.
But these people! No talking about genocide, no talking about more Jewish American/American Jewish-Directed War. Nope. I did hear a few goofy comments about how “cool it was” participating in No Kings Day, and it brought tears to their eyes to be part of that beautiful event.
The revolution will not be in a free speech zone.
Ain’t going to do a fucking thing.
Oh, the Ukraine Nazis:
Costco? That dirty stain is now infecting China:
“We’d like to apologise for the inconvenience caused to our members on our warehouse opening day in Shanghai,” Costco said in a statement posted on WeChat, the Chinese social media platform.
Do you feel that we are doomed? Yep, Israel and their tactical (sick) nuclear weapons have been reportedly used in Middle East**, and they have hundreds more and hundreds more missiles, and here we are, the Chinese so messed up by AmeriKKKa’s run on gigantic quantities of stuff, Costco, well, they are now getting close to the Story of Stuff just like the AmeriKKKans?
*****
In 2021, a scientific report in the prestigious journal Nature confirmed what I had been saying since 2006. “Israel” has, since its attacks on Lebanon in 2006 and those on Gaza in 2008 and 2014, used a new nuclear weapon, one which kills with a high-temperature radiation flash and with neutrons. This weapon, which leaves an identification footprint, but no fission products like Caesium-137, we now know was also employed by the USA in Fallujah, Iraq in 2003, and previously in Kosovo also.
The residues, inhalable Uranium aerosol dust, together with the neutron damage to tissues, cause a range of serious and often fatal health effects that puzzle doctors and defy treatment. Without knowing what caused such effects, which often mimic other illnesses or result in fungal infections that kill, doctors are powerless to help and just watch the exposed individuals die. (Source)
So, this guitar player, Keith, man, it was the same “white guy folk music,” but again, white guy with Christian allusions, you know, all that spirituality, and his song about a woman, yeah.
But … BUT. He fucking yammered on and on and on with Crocodile Tears (just like a Scott Ritter or Joe Biden or George Bush gushes about America the Beautiful) about”this great nation, this day when, yes, we have a great country with two opposing sides today, and whichever person you voted for, well, just shows how great America is and how we all can still agree that there are many great things about this nation, and today, we celebrate our uniformed military, our brave men and women, who have sacrificed in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan to protect our freedoms.”
D-O-N-E. Here is the song somewhere else, and he said almost the same spiel here in Yachats, except he had to deal with the No Kings Day, and he actually thanked the country for the parade, Trump’s orgasmic clown show, thanked our country for celebrating 250 years of our military, though, that is the US Army, man, this is sickness of Chlamydia Capitalism under the glare of the former hippies and their clapping and swaying to the music of the muscle man.
Yeah, I had a choice, man, and here I am with a client next to me, and again, here I am with fellow programmers and the president of the community radio station, and, well, in any other circumstance without the client, hmm, I would have stood up and turned my back on him, at least.
And I have been in that situation before, not standing for the pledge of murder and the national war anthem, and well, I have spoken out at events, and asked the tough questions, and, yep, younger versions of yesterday, berating me.
We left, as it was easy to prompt my client to leave since it had been a long day, 6 am to 8 pm, and he was tired.
The Congress of the Confederation created the current United States Army on 3 June 1784. The United States Congress created the current United States Navy on 27 March 1794 and the current United States Marine Corps on 11 July 1798. All three services trace their origins to their respective Continental predecessors.
Nothing to be proud of, Sicarios!
Grenade launchers using this technology include the XM29, XM307, PAPOP, Mk 47 Striker, XM25, Barrett XM109, K11, QTS-11, Norinco LG5 / QLU-11, and Multi Caliber Individual Weapon System. Orbital ATK developed air burst rounds for autocannons.
You all like those colors?
Northrup Grumman received a contract from the U.S. Army’s Project Manager for Maneuver Ammunition Systems (PM-MAS) to develop the next generation airburst cartridge for the 30mm XM813 Bushmaster® Chain Gun®. The gun and ammunition function as a system and will provide greater capability for the Army’s up-gunned Stryker Brigade Combat Team fleets.
The 30 mm x 173 mm airburst cartridge will feature a contact set fuze design with three operational fuze modes: Programmable Airburst; Point Detonation; and Point Detonation with Delay. The initial contract will fund the completion of the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase and final qualification by the Army.
Northrop Grumman will also begin deliveries this year of the first airburst type cartridge to support the U.S. Army’s Germany-based, 2nd Cavalry Regiment’s Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicle (ICV) fleet that were recently ‘up-gunned’ with the company’s 30mm Bushmaster® Chain Gun®. The new airburst cartridge in development also will support additional U.S. Army platforms to include, but not limited to, the future Stryker Brigade Combat Teams.
The newly fielded gun system nearly doubles the range of the platform’s current .50-caliber machine gun. The addition of an airburst cartridge provides a complete family of ammunition that arms the crew to meet the challenges posed by peer and near-peer adversarial threat systems.
U.S. Air Force aircraft drops a white phosphorus bomb on a Viet Cong position in 1966.
The GBU-39, which is manufactured by Boeing, is a high-precision munition “designed to attack strategically important point targets,” and result in low collateral damage, explosive weapons expert Chris Cobb-Smith told CNN Tuesday. However, “using any munition, even of this size, will always incur risks in a densely populated area,” said Cobb-Smith, who is also a former British Army artillery officer.
Trevor Ball, a former US Army senior explosive ordnance disposal team member who also identified the fragment as being from a GBU-39, explained to CNN how he drew his conclusion.
“The warhead portion [of the munition] is distinct, and the guidance and wing section is extremely unique compared to other munitions. Guidance and wing sections of munitions are often the remnants left over even after a munition detonates. I saw the tail actuation section and instantly knew it was one of the SDB/GBU-39 variants.”
Ball also concluded that while there is a variant of the GBU-39 known as the Focused Lethality Munition (FLM) which has a larger explosive payload but is designed to cause even less collateral damage, this was not the variant used in this case.
“The FLM has a carbon fiber composite warhead body and is filled with tungsten ground into a powder. Photos of FLM testing have shown objects in the test coated in tungsten dust, which is not present [in video from the scene],” he told CNN.
Every war has an iconic and powerful image. The Marines raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima boosted U.S. morale in World War II. A nine-year old girl burned by napalm during the Vietnam War became a potent anti-war image.
In the Hamas-Gaza War the image has become premature Palestinian babies struggling to live without incubators.
Some of this rant is precipitated by one of my Substack Subscribers, Bob Enough, his handle, and he’s from the UK:
“Just wanted to comment on the quote by Lawrence – “America is neither free nor brave, but a land of tight, iron-clanking little wills, everybody trying to put it over everybody else, and a land of men absolutely devoid of the real courage of trust, trust in life’s sacred spontaneity. They can’t trust life until they can control it.” – the rest is spot on.
Fortunately or unfortunately, I have been to the US many times on business and pleasure… and whilst there are beautiful places etc. to visit; the whole “culture !!??” and the brainwashed people are absolutely baffling to me. Just a few examples:
1. Met a UK mate over there with his girlfriend. Anyway, whilst talking away, she stated that she was Mexican. Intrigued I asked her “where from” ?, she told me and went on how wonderful it was.
I asked her, “how often she went “home” or back to visit relatives or friends etc….” …. her reply was “I have never been to Mexico” . !!!??????? WTF. She was born and bred by her parents in Houston, Tx.
2. Same bar as 1. above, looked around, US flags EVERYWHERE. Went for a smoke, close to a main road and every shop had a US flag on, even the cars and vans driving past had US flags or US flag bumper stickers on.
Same as Biden, gobbing off he is Irish.
3. Most have no idea of the World outside the US. Stated I was from England to 1 barmaid – she was lost, tried UK, Great Britain, Manchester everything… NO recognition at all … ended up shamefully saying “London” … where her brain popped open and she stated ” OH !!, on the other side of the Hudson river” … I mean.. what can you say to that ?.
4. You can see how they have been divided by their designations like – African Americans, Latino-Americans, Irish Americans etc etc.
Brainwashed, uneducated creatures – the most of them. Continuous wars = “The US has been at war 225 out of 243 years since 1776” … based on 2022 and the relatives and friends are proud when their loved ones are killed in battle for the great US of A…. Mad !
Ahh, the Ph.D’s, Bob, and even the diplomats and ambassadors, Bob, have been dumb-downed and lobotomized.
You have a fat happy (sic) un-Culture in the USA, and the place is huge compared to InBred UnUnited QueeDom. The land of great tribes was illegally and unethically and criminally invaded by the rubble of UK and EuroTrash, mostly, and so that is what is spinning in their DNA, that group of fucking freaky group.
Jonathan Kozol studied this, the functional illiteracy of Americans — and I have taught college since 1983 and been a newspaperman since 1976, and so my thumb has been on the pulse of that disaster of 40 percent up to 50 percent of folk not able to read a Time magazine article and discuss it, talk about main points, look at the rhetorical steps in the writing, so, then, here we are in 2025.
Few read books, and while there is traveling, cruise ships and eating and drinking tours, Americans have been McDonaldsified, Walmartified, Disneyfied, NASCARified.
Homo Consumopethicus.
Take a map of the world, and leave in the demarcations, and ask Americanos to at least put down 20 countries, and you will get some bad results. Same with the US map, really bad results. They can’t even put down a dot for their own towns, with that same blank map.
Not sure why you are looking at African Americans and Mexican-Americans as the target here. There are many Latinos who know their national origin, and same with Blacks, but again, dumb-downing is across all ethnic and racial lines.
As Lawrence says — We Americans need to follow the red man’s path, understand the depth of the red man’s cultures.
*****
While the scum buckets of the Trump’s Minyan watched the belching machines of death on the ground and in the air, the belching monsters of Jewish Israel were utilizing those aspirational machines of death:
Two months ago, on April 16, the New York Times provided detailed coverage of Israel’s close collaboration with the U.S. military in developing elaborate plans and scenarios to attack Iran. The plans required U.S. help “not just to defend Israel from Iranian retaliation but also to ensure that an Israeli attack was successful. The United States was a central part of the attack itself.” (tinyurl.com/47p3jyn3)
The Times reported that Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, with the blessing of the White House, began moving military equipment to West Asia. A second aircraft carrier, Carl Vinson, was moved to the Arabian Sea, joining the carrier Harry S. Truman in the Red Sea. Two Patriot missile batteries and a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD) were repositioned to West Asia. B-2 bombers, capable of carrying 30,000-pound bombs, essential to destroying Iran’s underground nuclear program, were dispatched to Diego Garcia, an island base in the Indian Ocean.
The U.S. quietly delivered around 300 Hellfire missiles to Israel just days before Tel Aviv’s unprecedented attack on Iran, Middle East Eye has revealed. The transfer took place on June 10 while Washington was publicly signaling readiness to re-engage Tehran in nuclear talks, suggesting prior knowledge and coordination. Two U.S. officials, speaking anonymously, confirmed the shipment and said it marked a significant weapons resupply effort in anticipation of the strike.
The Hellfire delivery had not been previously reported. Meanwhile, U.S. forces were directly involved in intercepting Iranian retaliatory missiles aimed at Israel on June 13, according to Reuters. The scale and timing of the arms transfer now raise serious questions about Washington’s covert support for Israeli escalation, despite diplomatic posturing to the contrary.
In summary, the U.S. military would supply bombs, jet aircraft, intelligence and political cover, as they have for the past 20 months of Israel’s genocidal campaign against the people of Gaza. This is the same essential support the U.S. has provided to Israel for 75-plus years to carry out continuing attacks on surrounding Arab countries.
Bob Enough — Look at the USA Today propaganda crap above, and there are dozens of photos of those in the deplorable blob loving that dirty dirty rat Trump and Company.
Costco, Machine Guns, and LAWS anti-tank weapons:
Ahh, not as real as the Jews in Israel?
Then, and now:
Army veteran dubbed Queen of Guns reveals firearms are the ‘love of her life’ and feels ‘huge excitements’ every time she pulls the trigger
Ahh, this is fucking absurd. Vietnam?
You don’t hold a military parade to intimidate other countries. You hold a military parade to impress the people who are supporters and intimidate the people who are the opposition.You also hold a military parade to overcompensate for the fact that a lot of your own people hate you. — Viet Thanh Nyugen
Iran’s security establishment still does not understand where they are.
This is an existential regime change war, not a bit of light evening sparring to be conducted in rounds of orderly missile salvos on select military targets.
If they do not switch to a more dynamic and expansive approach which has the possibility of rendering the Zionist entity inoperable, in concert with a wide-ranging assassination programme, the Republic will simply cease to exist in what is to come.
They seem, as has been the case since 2007, fundamentally incapable of even recognising Zionist military strategy, let alone beginning to match it. — David Miller, June 14
Jewish State (Occupied Palestine) even goes after the rappers.
In today’s show, we’ll be exposing the lengths to which Israel and its Western-based assets have gone to cancel critics of the genocidal Zionist colony.
In our first report, Latifa Abouchakra highlights how Kneecap, the Irish hip-hop band, has found itself in the crosshairs of these underhand tactics for speaking out against genocide.
Our next report reveals the duplicitous actions of the long-time music business executive, Paul Samuels, who in 2002 was a co-founder of Love Music Hate Racism.
Iran’s security establishment still does not understand where they are.
This is an existential regime change war, not a bit of light evening sparring to be conducted in rounds of orderly missile salvos on select military targets.
If they do not switch to a more dynamic and expansive approach which has the possibility of rendering the Zionist entity inoperable, in concert with a wide-ranging assassination programme, the Republic will simply cease to exist in what is to come.
They seem, as has been the case since 2007, fundamentally incapable of even recognising Zionist military strategy, let alone beginning to match it.
*****
No nations? It’s an all-too-easy event to mock. It’s hard to keep a straight face when the world’s rich arrive annually in their private jets to the luxury ski-resort of Davos to express their deep concern about growing poverty, inequality and climate change
Less well known is the fact that WEF since 2009 has been working on an ambitious project called the Global Redesign Initiative(external link), (GRI), which effectively proposes a transition away from intergovernmental decision-making towards a system of multi-stakeholder governance. In other words, by stealth, they are marginalising a recognised model where we vote in governments who then negotiate treaties which are then ratified by our elected representatives with a model where a self-selected group of ‘stakeholders’ make decisions on our behalf.
In the famously public-school-suppressed fifth verse of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” he fired a shot across the bow of the very concept of private property:
“As I went walking I saw a sign there/And on the sign it said ‘No Trespassing’/But on the other side it didn’t say nothing/That side was made for you and me.”
John Lennon asked the world to “Imagine there’s no countries,” because “it isn’t hard to do.”
And in the Dead Kennedys song “Stars and Stripes of Corruption,”
Jello Biafra sang, “Look around, we’re all people/Who needs countries anyway?”
Dekhla Rashid slaps down seven photographs onto the floor of her home in the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit—one after another… after another… after another. She gently spreads them out on the tiles. “These are all my relatives the Dutch government killed,” she says, flatly.
Most of the images are of smiling children. These are Rashid’s nephews and nieces, who were between the ages of seven months to 11 years.
Dekhla Rashid and her nephew Najm and niece Tabarak hold up photos of their family members killed in the Dutch airstrike on Hawija. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.
Exactly a decade ago, on the night of June 2, 2015, the Dutch air force bombed a facility used by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to manufacture explosive devices in the town of Hawija in Iraq’s northern Kirkuk Province, to which Rashid and her family had fled a year before. The secondary explosion from the strike was massive, flattening surrounding residential neighborhoods and damaging homes as far as five kilometers from the site.
At least 85 civilians were killed and hundreds more were wounded. In a split second, Rashid’s brother, Abdallah Rashid Salih, lost one of his wives and nearly all of his children. Some families were completely wiped out. The bombing mission was one of some 2,100 raids carried out over Iraq and Syria by Dutch F-16s as part of the US-led international coalition against ISIS between 2014 and 2018. The bombing in Hawija was among the deadliest and most serious incidents during the operation.
For years, senior government officials and ministers attempted to cover up and downplay the bloody incident, failing to report known civilian casualties and deliberately misinforming the Dutch parliament on the extent of damage caused by the airstrike. But in 2019, victims in Hawija filed a civil case against the Netherlands—which is still ongoing—demanding accountability and compensation.
“The Dutch government needs to recognize that we are human beings, just like them,” says 56-year-old Rashid, sniffling through tears. A decade later, survivors are still struggling to put their lives back together.
‘ISIS is coming’
In June 2014, ISIS, known for their severe brutality and radical interpretations of Sharia law, took advantage of rising insecurity in the Sunni-dominated areas of Iraq and led a successful offensive on Mosul and Tikrit. Soon after, the Islamic Caliphate was declared, stretching from Aleppo in Syria to Diyala in northeastern Iraq.At its height, the caliphate controlled an area roughly the size of Portugal, spanning about 90,000 square kilometers, including about a third of Syria and 40% of Iraq.
Rashid, her brother, and his entire family immediately fled their homes in Tikrit during the initial offensive. “We heard a lot of bullets and rockets being fired from ISIS,” Rashid tells TRNN. “We grabbed some basic items and left everything else behind us and just ran as fast as we could.” The second wife of Salih, Rashid’s brother, was shot and killed as she fled, just seven months after she gave birth to her first child.
Owing to Hawija’s proximity to Kirkuk, just an hour’s drive away, scores of IDPs from across ISIS territory traveled there, hoping to find a route into Kurdish-controlled territory.
Quickly, the Iraqi government requested military support from the United Nations to fight against ISIS, prompting the United States to appeal to other countries, including NATO members, to aid Iraq’s military efforts. More than 80 countries, including the Netherlands, joined the US-led international coalition that took part in Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR). The operation consisted mostly of supporting Iraqi forces through airstrikes targeting ISIS infrastructure and leadership. The Netherlands was among the first European countries to send combat aircraft to Iraq.
Each time Rashid and her family stopped somewhere to rest, they were warned by others fleeing that ISIS militants were coming. Eventually, they arrived in Hawija, about 100 kilometers away from Tikrit. Kurdish Peshmerga forces, with aerial support from the OIR coalition, successfully blocked ISIS’ advancement into the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. However, the militants were able to successfully overrun Hawija and controlled the town until October 2017.
Around 650,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) fled into Kirkuk, beyond the reach of ISIS. But Rashid and her family did not make it there in time; they became trapped in Hawija, their lives suddenly transformed by the harsh realities of ISIS rule. Along with hundreds of other IDPs who had attempted to flee, Rashid and her family settled in the town’s central industrial area, which is interconnected with family homes and surrounded by densely populated civilian neighborhoods.
According to Tofan Abdulwahab Awad, head of Al-Ghad League for Woman and Child Care—an Iraqi organization that has worked on documenting the aftermath of the bombing—owing to Hawija’s proximity to Kirkuk, just an hour’s drive away, scores of IDPs from across ISIS territory traveled there, hoping to find a route into Kurdish-controlled territory.
“But these IDPs found themselves in a big jail,” Awad tells TRNN. “ISIS would allow the IDPs into Hawija, but they would not allow them to run to Kirkuk.” Any man who was caught was immediately executed, Awad says, and ISIS planted landmines on the informal routes from Hawija to Kirkuk, blowing up entire families who attempted to escape. Still, some IDPs were able to successfully bribe ISIS members to smuggle them further north.
According to Awad, ISIS coerced the IDPs to settle around the town’s industrial area by prohibiting them from leaving the city limits and offering them free housing around a large warehouse that was encircled by a tall cement wall. The IDPs and residents in Hawija had no idea that this warehouse was being used by ISIS to manufacture vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBEIDs), store weapons and homemade explosives, and as a collection point for vehicles to distribute them from that location. According to a recent report, ISIS was storing about 50,000 to 100,000 kilograms of explosives at the facility.
The exact number of IDPs who settled around the warehouse is unknown since many were transient—staying in Hawija for a night or two before finding a way further north. But there were likely at least hundreds of IDPs there, says Awad. “Of course, people who are desperate and have lost everything would accept the free housing around the warehouse,” Awad explains. “The city became very crowded with civilians.”
“But the IDPs were being manipulated by ISIS to stay around that area so the group could use them as human shields to prevent the international coalition from targeting that warehouse.”
‘Judgement day’
Rashid and her brother’s family settled in the industrial zone next to a compound for fixing automobiles and paid rent for the first month. “We were very poor,” Rashid says. “So we didn’t have enough money to keep paying. But the landlord allowed us to stay for free after that.” According to Awad, the landlord was likely compensated by ISIS to encourage the family to stay there.
On the night of June 2, Rashid was on the ground floor of their apartment with Najm, the infant whose mother was killed a year before when they fled Tikrit. The rest of the family was sleeping on the roof, escaping the heat of Iraq’s summer nights.
When the clock struck midnight, without warning, an enormous explosion pummeled the town. “Everything turned red,” remembers Rashid.
When the clock struck midnight, without warning, an enormous explosion pummeled the town. “Everything turned red,” remembers Rashid. “It felt like there was a powerful earthquake shaking the ground. I thought it was Judgement Day.” Rashid immediately threw herself on Najm to protect him from the blast.
Following the explosion, an eerie stillness permeated the town, which had become submerged in complete darkness. Only a slight cast from the full moon illuminated Rashid’s surroundings. “Dust and shattered glass were everywhere,” Rashid says. A terrifying screech suddenly cut through the air. “I heard my brother yelling over and over again, ‘My whole family is gone!’” In the darkness, Rashid grabbed Najm and slowly made her way towards Rashid’s frantic screams.
When she reached the roof, “I saw that the children were on the floor covered in blood. They were dead.” Rashid pauses as she breaks down in tears.
She points at the photos laid out in front of her. One of the photos is of Rashid’s 32-year-old sister-in-law, Salih’s first wife, and another is of her 22-year-old niece, who had just graduated from university. The rest of the photographs are of Salih’s children, between the ages of seven months and 11 years old.
Five-year-old Amal’s skull was shattered into two pieces; her brain fell out onto the ground. Yamama, 11, was still breathing, but her body was almost entirely cut in half; she died en route to the hospital. Mahmoud, Salih’s other seven-month-old, was found dead, with one of his eyes dangling outside of its socket.
“I will never forget what I saw that night,” Rashid says, her voice shaking. Only three of Salih’s children survived, including Najm, the seven-month-old Rashid had protected during the explosion.
Dekhla Rashid stands next to her nephew Najm, who was seven months old when his mother was killed by ISIS. He was one of the children who survived the Dutch bombing, which killed most of his siblings. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.
The dawn light revealed the devastating impact of the blast. “There was so much destruction,” Rashid recounts. “I truly thought it was the end of life on this planet.” According to Awad, more than 1,200 shops, homes, and public institutions, including schools, were completely obliterated in the explosion, while around 6,000 homes were damaged.
Around 190 families in Hawija have at least one member who was confirmed killed or whose body is still missing after the attack, notes Awad. Some IDPs in Hawija did not bring their identity documents with them, especially if they were ever affiliated with the Iraqi government, military, or police—an immediate death sentence under ISIS rule. These unidentified bodies—and possibly more—were buried in mass grave sites in Hawija, to which the Iraqi government has not allowed organizations access, according to Saba Azeem, who heads projects in Iraq for PAX’s Protection of Civilians team, a Dutch peace organization that has done extensive research and documentation of civilian experiences in Hawija.
There are unofficial reports from Iraqi intelligence that civilian deaths from the strike surpassed 100.
Rashid and her surviving family moved into another home and continued living in Hawija for months after the attack. “The whole area was under siege and all the roads were closed so there was nowhere for us to go,” she says. “Every time we heard a plane above us the children would start screaming and crying.”
“We thought the international community was going to save us from ISIS,” Rashid adds. “But then they targeted us. We were living in constant fear. We felt like at any moment they were going to strike us again.”
Residents in Hawija were so terrified of another attack from the coalition that they risked their lives desperately trying to flee into Kirkuk. Many were caught by ISIS and executed or blown up from mines, according to Awad.
Unable to continue living in terror of another attack, Rashid, her brother, and his surviving children decided to take the dangerous journey back to Tikrit, walking throughout the night. When they arrived, they found their home there was also burned down and destroyed. “We were forced to start again from zero,” Rashid tells TRNN.
‘Constant lying’
For years, victims in Hawija had no idea who was exactly behind the airstrike.
In 2018, in communications with parliament, the Dutch ministry of defense alluded to inquiries into incidents in which they may have been responsible for civilian casualties during the war against ISIS. Dutch journalists were able to trace some of this information back to Hawija. In 2019, four years after the strike, Dutch media reported for the first time that it was two Dutch F-16 fighter jets that dropped the bombs on the warehouse in Hawija, which caused the mega secondary explosion.
This prompted human rights lawyers to visit the town and assist victims, including Rashid’s family, in filing a civil lawsuit against the Netherlands in October 2019. According to Liesbeth Zegveld, a prominent human rights lawyer representing the victims and their families, the case against the Netherlands currently represents 300 claimants. If successful, the case’s outcome will apply to all other victims as well, she says.
While the claimants are demanding compensation from the Dutch government, the court proceedings—which have involved some of the claimants, including Rashid’s brother Salih, traveling to the Hague to testify—are still establishing whether the Dutch military was liable for the damage. The claimants argue that the Dutch took an unreasonable risk when they bombarded Hawija, without having proper information on the amount of explosives at the site and the potential harm it would cause to the civilian population. If the court agrees, then compensation would follow, explains Zegveld.
Photo from Hawija, showing the continued destruction 10 years after the 2015 airstrike that killed dozens. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.Photo from Hawija, showing the continued destruction 10 years after the 2015 airstrike that killed dozens. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.Photo from Hawija, showing the continued destruction 10 years after the 2015 airstrike that killed dozens. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.
The Dutch state has refused to take responsibility for the devastation, shifting blame to the United States for having provided incomplete intelligence before the airstrike and claiming they could not have known that the warehouse was surrounded by civilian populations.
Earlier this year, however, a long-awaited report was published by the Committee Sorgdrager, an independent commission established in 2020 by the Dutch government and headed by Minister of State Winnie Sorgdrager, which has shattered the state’s defense. In the report, the commission reveals that senior Dutch government officials withheld important information from parliament on the extent of civilian casualties or shared incomplete information, even years after the airstrike.
The Netherlands had too-little access to intelligence from its coalition partners, the committee says. As a result, the Netherlands appears to have relied entirely on US intelligence. This could make the United States equally liable for the devastation in Hawija, but “each party has to follow their own checks and balances,” explains Frederiek de Vlaming, a prominent criminologist and former director of the Nuhanovic Foundation, which has provided crucial support for victims during the court proceedings.
“[The commission] has shown that the Dutch military did not follow their own checks and balances or procedures, and neglected their duty and responsibility to investigate cases where there’s a risk of civilian casualties,” explains Vlaming.
While the United States is also responsible, it would be nearly impossible for victims to seek redress from the US owing to a 1946 law that preserves US forces’ immunity for claims that arise during war.
The commission concluded that the Netherlands should and could have known that the area of the ISIS bomb factory was located in a populated area.
Significantly, the commission concluded that the Netherlands should and could have known that the area of the ISIS bomb factory was located in a populated area. It pointed out that the International Organization for Migration (IOM) had published information about the IDPs in Hawija’s industrial area months before the airstrike. According to the commission, coalition country representatives and pilots were aware of the residential neighborhoods around the target, with one individual even mentioning that there was a mosque nearby—a clear indicator of civilian infrastructure.
Due to the presence of civilians in the area, the Dutch squad commander requested that the strike be delayed from 9PM to midnight, with the assumption that fewer civilians would be moving around the area at that time. This decision clearly shows that the Dutch military anticipated there would be civilians in the area.
Furthermore, the ministry of defense had claimed that a video which had captured footage of the post-strike destruction was overwritten the day after the airstrike because it did not show anything important. But, in March, a few months after the commission report was published, Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans announced that this video had been found at a military base.The video shows that the industrial area in Hawija had been completely wiped out after the airstrike and the residential areas surrounding it were destroyed and badly damaged.
“What we have seen [from the state] is just constant lying,” Vlaming tells TRNN. “They have lied about everything for years and in different stages.”
The commission also criticized community-based compensation schemes that the Netherlands provided to Hawija in 2021, following pressure from the Dutch parliament. This consisted of funding projects through the IOM and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) around infrastructure, basic services, and employment. These projects were completed in October 2022 and February 2023, more than seven years after the airstrike, with a total cost of €4.5 million.
The commission concludes that this general compensation was “too little, too late.” Residents in Hawija have also stated the projects are a “drop in the ocean” compared to the devastation the Dutch military caused. The state has previously rejected individual compensation to victims and families of victims.
Zegveld tells the TRNN that she expects the commission’s findings to significantly help the claimants’ case against the state.
‘Frozen’
Rashid and her family are still haunted by the bombing a decade ago. “My brother doesn’t even do much now in his life except eat and cry,” Rashid says, her eyes fixed to the ground. “It’s like our lives are frozen into that one night. None of us can escape thinking about what we saw.”
“It’s hard for us to even look at their pictures,” Rashid continues, glancing at the photographs still lined up on the floor. “These were children. They were pure and innocent. What crime did they commit?”
Tabarak, Rashid’s niece who is now 18 years old, still suffers from night terrors. “Every night, I dream about what I saw that day,” Tabarak tells TRNN, sitting beside her aunt. “I have to relive it every single day.” Mohammed, Rashid’s nephew who is now 23, sometimes falls into psychosis, Rashid says; he suddenly begins screaming hysterically before coming back to reality.
Some residents can no longer stand the sight of meat, she says, after witnessing their neighbors’ bodies ripped apart from the blast; others have attempted suicide. Residents are living with permanent and debilitating injuries.
According to Azeem, from PAX, these experiences are common throughout Hawija. Some residents can no longer stand the sight of meat, she says, after witnessing their neighbors’ bodies ripped apart from the blast; others have attempted suicide. Residents are living with permanent and debilitating injuries. Many shops and businesses are still destroyed and unemployment is rampant. Without financial support, many have been unable to rebuild their lives even 10 years later.
There has been no environmental testing or cleanup initiated in Hawija, according to Azeem. Residents tell TRNN that they have observed an increase in cancer cases and rare deformities in children, which they connect to toxic elements from the explosives still in the environment.
Undoubtedly, financial compensation for affected individuals is badly needed. But, for Rashid, compensation is not the ultimate goal.
“We want our rights,” Rashid says, her voice rising sharply. “We want the Dutch to admit what they did and take responsibility for the lives they destroyed. We lost our families, our children, our homes, our health, and our livelihoods. We lost everything. That is not something the Dutch can just ignore.”
Despite the Netherlands continuing to dodge responsibility for their role in devastating the lives of numerous residents in Hawija, Rashid has found some hope in her pain.
“The only thing that gives me strength to wake up each morning, even when I feel like dying, is that I know deep in my heart that we will get justice,” Rashid says, displaying a firmness that hitherto was masked by tears.
“But it is up to the Dutch to decide from which court that justice will come: the Dutch court or the court of God.”
16 months of brutal genocide and siege have done all but break the Palestinian resistance, which has steadfastly – if not miraculously – fended off and broken the ruthless siege of the Zionist entity. As an official death toll stands at 61,700 – with much more accurate estimates tallying the martyrs at over 300,000, “Israel” has yet again turned to slaughtering civilians.
The Palestinian resistance has recruited at least 30,000 new fighters in Gaza, according to conservative estimates earlier this year. Three-quarters of the Resistance’s tunnels remain and the ambushing and fighting both Al-Qassam and Saraya al-Quds continue against an occupation that has mostly withdrawn its ground occupying troops in Gaza while mulling over sending robots into Gaza.
India launched Operation Sindoor on the intervening night of May 6 and 7, targeting nine terror camps in Pakistan. The strikes come follow the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack in which 26 civilians were killed.
On the morning of May 7, India’s ministry of external affairs held a press conference about the military strikes. The Press Information Bureau live-streamed this. In this briefing, a video of attacks against India over the past few years was shown. About a minute into it, visuals of an explosion on a road with text saying ‘Pulwama Attack, 2019’ and ‘40 dead, 5 injured’ appeared on screen.
On February 14, 2019, 40 security forces personnel were martyred in Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir, in an attack carried out by a suicide bomber with alleged links to terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed.
But having tracked this video before, Alt News knew there was a mismatch.
Visuals Not of Pulwama?
In 2019 and 2020, Alt News had published fact checks about the video shown in the May 7 MEA briefing as visuals of the Pulwama attack. We had found the same video posted on YouTube in 2008; the caption suggested the visuals were from Iraq.
The 2008 YouTube video is CCTV footage by a street camera. The time stamp on the screen shows the explosion happened on February 9, 2007, 3:55:26 pm, which is 12 years before the 2019 Pulwama terror attack.
We then looked for reports on such an attack in Iraq around February 2007 and found some information on the UK government’s website on British fatalities during their military operations in Iraq. According to this, Private Luke Daniel Simpson of the 1st Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment was injured in a roadside bomb explosion on February 9, 2007. He later succumbed to injuries.
Alt News could not confirm whether the video is of the same roadside bomb as shown above. However, that much is clear that the footage shown by the Indian government during the May 7 briefing was not of the 2019 Pulwama attack.
The non-existent Iranian bomb has lesser importance to the existing bombs that threaten the world. United States (US) demands that Iran promise to halt pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile developments distract from the real intent of US actions — deter other nations from establishing more friendly relations with Iran and prevent them from gaining a correct perspective on the causes of the Middle East crises.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) created a potential for extensive political, economic, and social engagements of the international community with Iran. The investments would lead to attachments, friendships, and alliances and initiate a revitalized, prosperous, and stronger Iran. A new perspective of Iran could yield a revised perspective of a violent, unstable, and disturbed Middle East. Israel and Saudi Arabia would finally receive attention as participants in bringing chaos to the Arab region. Economies committed to Iran’s progress and allied with its interests could bring pressure on Israel and Saudi Arabia to change their destructive behaviors.
Because arguments with Iran could have been approached in a less provocative and insinuating manner, the previous demands were meant to provoke and insinuate. Assuredly, the US wants Iran to eschew nuclear and ballistic weapons, but the provocative approach indicated other purposes — alienate Iran, destroy its military capability, and bring Tehran to collapse and submission. For what reasons? Accomplishing the far-reaching goals will not affect the average American, lessen US defense needs, or diminish the continuous battering of the helpless faces of the Middle East. The strategy mostly pleased Israel and Saudi Arabia, who engineered it, share major responsibility for the Middle East turmoil, and consistently try to use mighty America to subdue the principal antagonist to their malicious activities. During the 2016 presidential campaign, contender Donald Trump said, “Many nations, including allies, ripped off the US.” President Donald Trump has verified that statement.
Noting the history of US promises to leaders of other nations – give up your aggressive attitudes and you will benefit – the US promises make the Ayatollahs skeptical. The US reneged on the JCPOA, sent Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to the World Court and eventual death (although his personal compromises were the key to the Dayton Accords that ended the Yugoslavian conflict), directly assisted NATO in the overthrow of subdued Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, pulverized Iraq after sanctions could not drive that nation to total ruin, rejected the Iranian pledge of $560 million worth of assistance to Afghanistan at the Tokyo donors’ conference in January 2002, and, according to the U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Dobbins, disregarded Iran’s “decisive role in persuading the Northern Alliance delegation to compromise its demands of wanting 60 percent of the portfolios in an interim government.” Tehran has always sensed it is in a no-win situation. Regardless of its decisions and directions, the U.S. intends to pulverize the centuries old Persian lands.
If the US honestly wants to have Iran promise never to pursue nuclear and ballistic missile weapons, it will approach the issues with a simple question, “What will it take for you (Iran) never to pursue these weapons?” Assuredly, the response will include provisions for the US to withdraw support from a despotic Saudi Kingdom in its oppression of minorities and opposition and propose that the US eliminate financial, military and cooperative support to Israel’s theft of Palestinian lands, oppressive conditions imposed on Palestinians, daily killings of Palestinian people, and expansionist plans. The correct question soliciting a formative response and leading to decisive US actions resolves two situations and benefits the US — fear of Iran developing weapons of mass destruction is relieved and the Middle East is pointed in a direction that achieves justice, peace, and stability for its peoples.
Despite the August 2018 report from Trump’s U.S. Department of State’s Iran Action group, which “chronicle Iran’s destructive activities,” and consists of everything from most minor to most major, from unsubstantiated to retaliatory, from the present time to before the discovery of dirt, Iranians will not rebel in sufficient numbers against their own repressive state until they note the end of hypocritical support by western powers of other repressive states. Halting international terrorism, ameliorating the Middle East violence, and preventing any nation from establishing hegemony in the Arab world starts with Trump confronting Israel and Saudi Arabia, two nations whose records of injustice, aggression, oppression, and violation of human rights exceed that of the oppressive Iran regime.
Otherwise, it will occur on a Sunday morning; always occurs in the early hours on the day of rest. It will come with a roar greater than the sum of all shrieks and screams ever uttered by humankind, rip across fields and cities, and burn through the flesh of a part of the world’s population.
It’s been just over 20 years since the Battle of Fallujah, a bloody campaign in a destructive Iraq War that we now know was based on a lie.
But back then, in the wake of 9/11, the battlefield was filled with troops who believed in serving and defending the country against terrorism.
“Going to Fallujah was the most horrific experience of our lives,” said Mike Ergo, a team leader for the US Marines Alpha Company, 1st Battalion. “And it was also, for myself, the most alive I’ve ever felt.”
This week on Reveal, we’re partnering with the nonprofit newsroom The War Horse to join Ergo’s unit as they reunite and try to make sense of what they did and what was done to them. Together, they remember Bradley Faircloth, the 20-year-old lance corporal from their unit who lost his life, and unpack the mental and emotional battles that continue for them today.
Iraqi Member of Parliament Alaa al-Haidari has filed a lawsuit with the Iraqi Public Prosecution against the new Syrian President, Ahmad al-Sharaa, Shafaq News reported on 29 April.
In a video statement from the Supreme Judicial Council building, Haidari said, “I filed the complaint against the terrorist Julani, known as Ahmad al-Sharaa,” who “was part of ISIS organizations in Iraqi territory.”
This comes as the Syrian President received an official invitation from Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani on 27 April to attend the Arab League Summit scheduled to be held next month in the capital, Baghdad.
This weekend, in a rare occurrence, Christians of all denominations will be celebrating Easter at the same time as Eastern and Western Christian calendars coincide. Yet, as has become an undeniable reality for many Christian Palestinians, the only thing we share in common between our Easter and the Easter of many Christians in the West is the sheer coincidence that these celebrations are falling…
Amnesty International confirms 1,518 people executed in 2024 but says real total is likely to be thousands more
More people were executed in 2024 than in any other year over the past decade, mainly reflecting a huge increase in executions in Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, according to Amnesty International’s annual report on the use of the death penalty.
The human rights NGO said that although the number of countries carrying out executions was the lowest on record, it had confirmed 1,518 executions globally in 2024, a 32% increase over the previous year and the highest since the 1,634 carried out in 2015.
Washington has demanded that Iraq disarm and dismantle Shia resistance factions in the country, the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported on 21 March.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued the demand to Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani during a phone call last Sunday,
The source stressed that “this issue is of special interest to the administration of [US] President Donald Trump.”
Sudani informed the US side that his government is working to address this issue through ongoing dialogue with the armed factions, known collectively as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI), the source added.
Washington has demanded that Iraq disarm and dismantle Shia resistance factions in the country, the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported on 21 March.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued the demand to Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani during a phone call last Sunday,
The source stressed that “this issue is of special interest to the administration of [US] President Donald Trump.”
Sudani informed the US side that his government is working to address this issue through ongoing dialogue with the armed factions, known collectively as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI), the source added.
I don’t know why Trump has done these things. Maybe it’s all for the Adelson cash. Maybe Epstein recorded him doing something unsavory with a minor during their long association and gave it to Israeli intelligence for blackmail purposes. Maybe he owed somebody a favor for bailing him out of his business failures in the past. Maybe he’s just a psychopath who enjoys murdering children. I don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that he did it, and he is responsible for his actions.
Trump supporters will justify literally anything their president does using whatever excuses they need to, but they are only revealing how completely empty and unprincipled their political faction is. They are unthinking worshippers of power who go along with whatever the president tells them to. By continuing to support Trump even as he continues Biden’s legacy of mass murder in the middle east, they are proving themselves to be mindless stormtroopers for the empire in full view of the entire world.
You can still support Trump if you hate immigrants and LGBTQ people and want lower taxes for the obscenely wealthy, but there is no legitimate reason to support him on antiwar or anti-establishment grounds. He’s just another evil Republican mass murderer president.
*****
Republicans in 2002: We need more authoritarianism and more wars in the middle east. Anyone who disagrees is a terrorist supporter.
Republicans in 2025: We need more authoritarianism and more wars in the middle east. Anyone who disagrees is a terrorist supporter, and antisemite.
*****
By the way has anyone checked on the western Zionist Jews? How are their feelings feeling today? Are they feeling nice feelings or bad feelings? Are their feelings feeling safe or unsafe? We need wall to wall news coverage of this supremely urgent issue; no time to cover any other story.
*****
I write so much about the fake “antisemitism crisis” not only because it’s being used to destroy civil rights throughout the western world, but because it’s one of the most dark and disturbing things I’ve ever witnessed.
It’s been so intensely creepy watching all of western society mobilize around a complete and utter fiction in order to stomp out all criticism of a foreign state. It’s about as dystopian a thing as you can possibly imagine, all these pundits and politicians pretending to believe that Jewish safety is seriously being threatened by an epidemic of antisemitism which must be aggressively silenced by any means necessary. All to shut down opposition to the worst inclinations of a genocidal apartheid state and the complicity of our own western governments with its crimes.
And we’re all expected to treat this scam seriously. Anyone who says the emperor has no clothes and calls this mass deception what it is gets tarred with the “antisemite” label and treated as further evidence that we’re all a hair’s breadth from seeing Jews rounded up onto trains again if we don’t all hurry up and shut down anti-genocide protests on university campuses. They’re not just acting out a fraudulent melodrama staged to rob us of our rights, they’re demanding that we participate in it by pretending it’s not what it plainly is.
It’s not just tyranny, it’s tyranny that orders people to clap along with it. It’s such a disgusting, evil thing to do to people. Such psychologically dominating abusive behavior. The more you look at it, the creepier it gets.
*****
The anti-imperialist left is what MAGA and right wing “populism” pretend to be. We ACTUALLY oppose the empire’s warmongering — not only when Democrats are in power. We ACTUALLY want to defeat the deep state — we don’t applaud billionaire Pentagon contractors like Elon Musk taking power. We ACTUALLY oppose the establishment order — because the establishment order is capitalist. We ACTUALLY stand up to the powerful — we don’t offload half the blame onto immigrants and marginalized groups.
The anti-imperialist left is also what liberals pretend to be. We ACTUALLY support the working class. We ACTUALLY stand up for the little guy. We ACTUALLY want justice and equality. We ACTUALLY support civil rights. We ACTUALLY oppose tyranny.
Everything the human heart longs for lies in the death of capitalism, militarism and empire, and yet both of the dominant western political factions of our day support continuing all of these things. This is because westerners spend their entire lives marinating in power-serving propaganda which herds them into these two mainstream political factions to ensure that they will pose no meaningful challenges to our rulers. All political energy is funneled into movements and parties which are set up to maintain the status quo while pretending to support the people, with the illusion of political freedom sustained by a false two-party dichotomy in which both factions serve the same ruling power structure.
Of course, what mainstream liberalism and right wing “populism” have to offer that anti-imperialist socialism does not is the ability to win major elections with successful candidates. This is because generations of imperial psyops have gone into stomping out the anti-imperialist left in the western world, and because only candidates which uphold the status quo are ever allowed to get close to winning an election. This doesn’t mean mainstream liberalism or right wing “populism” are the answer, it just means our prison warden isn’t going to hand us the keys to the exit door.
At some point we’re going to have to rise up and use the power of our numbers to force the urgently needed changes we long to see in our world. Everything in our society is set up to prevent this from ever happening. That’s all the two mainstream political factions are designed to do. That’s why they both have phony “populist” elements within them which purport to be leading a brave revolutionary charge against the establishment, while herding everyone into support for the two status quo political parties. And that’s why the anti-imperialist left is everything they pretend to be.
In November 2005, a group of US Marines killed 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq. The case against them became one of the most high-profile war crimes prosecutions in US history—but then it fell apart. Only one Marine went to trial for the killings, and all he received was a slap on the wrist. Even his own defense attorney found the outcome shocking.
“It’s meaningless,” said attorney Haytham Faraj. “The government decided not to hold anybody accountable. I mean, I don’t know, I don’t know how else to put it.”
The Haditha massacre, as it came to be known, is the subject of the current season of TheNew Yorker’s In the Dark podcast and this week’s episode of Reveal. Reporter Madeleine Baran and her team spent four years looking into what happened at Haditha and why no one was held accountable. They also uncovered a previously unreported killing that happened that same day, a 25th victim whose story had never before been told.
Photos from this story, as well as a searchable database of military war crimes, can be found at newyorker.com/season-3.
With Trump’s recent tongue-lashing of Zelensky at their meeting in Washington DC, social media is now flooded with anguished cries about Ukraine’s sovereignty and how the U.S. must stand up to Russia’s empire-building invasion. The “consensus” claims Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty cannot be tolerated and must be punished.
Respect for sovereignty? Are these well-intentioned but completely misguided folks incapable of remembering the not so distant past?
Did America respect Korea’s sovereignty when it canceled free and open elections there in 1950, instigating an unnecessary, brutal war? Over 2 million Koreans were killed.
Did America respect Vietnam’s sovereignty when it decided Vietnam could not have a Communist government there and slaughtered 3 million people? Vietnam is communist now. I’ve lived there. It does just fine.
Did America respect Serbia’s sovereignty when it bombed Belgrade for 79 days and finally carved out Kosovo so it could build what was for years the largest NATO base in Eastern Europe?
Did America respect Afghanistan’s sovereignty when it refused to work with the Taliban when they offered to hand over Osama bin Laden, but chose instead to invade and launch a 22-year war? We killed tens of thousands of Afghanis, lost the war. The Taliban is still in power.
Did America respect Iraq’s sovereignty when it lied about weapons of mass destruction and invaded, killing, and displacing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens?
Did America respect Libya’s sovereignty when it and its NATO puppets destroyed the richest country in Africa and killed its revered leader, Muammar Gaddafi? Libya is a broken country now with a dysfunctional economy and open slave markets.
Did America respect Syria’s sovereignty when it funded terrorists to topple the government of Assad and eventually built bases in the country to choke off the food supply of the Syrian people and “steal their oil”?
Did America itself respect Ukraine’s sovereignty when it engineered the Maidan coup in 2014, toppled the democratically elected president, and installed a US puppet regime in power?
I could go on. But I’ll mention one last one, keeping in mind the Russiagate hoax where Russia was falsely accused of meddling in US elections …
Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, March 3, 2025—Kurdistan security forces arrested four journalists from the new digital outlet Media21 on February 28 in the eastern Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah, confiscating their phones and taking them from their homes in the eastern Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah on February 28.
The journalists were identified as Bashdar Bazyani, Dana Salih, Sardasht HamaSalih, and Nabaz Shekhani.
Security forces closed the outlet’s office in Sulaymaniyah on March 1, saying it lacked a license, confiscated several computers, and ordered staff not to return to work, according to two sources who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity, citing fear of retaliation.
Three sources told CPJ that authorities released three of the journalists on bail on Sunday, March 2. Bazyani remained in custody as of Monday.
“Authorities’ arrest of four journalists and the forced closure of Media21’s office is a direct attack on press freedom in Iraqi Kurdistan,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna in New York. “Authorities must immediately release journalist Bashdar Bazyani, drop charges against all four journalists, and allow the outlet to resume operations.”
Two sources told CPJ that the arrests and shutdown are linked to a Media21 interview with the sister of a Kurdistan Regional Government official regarding a family dispute. The official filed a lawsuit after Bazyani messaged him about the interview ahead of publication.
Karwan Anwar, head of the Sulaymaniyah branch of the Kurdistan Journalists Syndicate, told CPJ that the journalists were charged with defamation under Article 433 of the penal code, which provides for an unspecified prison term and/or a fine. “Harsher penalties” can be imposed on media outlets.
Media21, which launched on February 21, 2025,condemned the “unjust and illegal” arrests. “These individuals are key members of our investigative team and were arrested while carrying out their journalistic duties,” the statement said.
CPJ’s messages to the Kurdistan Regional Government official did not receive a reply. CPJ’s calls to Salam Abdulkhaliq, spokesperson for the Kurdistan Region Security Agency, were unanswered.
Taleb al-Majli effortlessly recites his detainee identification number from Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison, where he was held more than 20 years ago—the numbers forever etched into his memory.
“Every day I still think about what happened to me,” explains the 58-year-old, who says American soldiers tortured and humiliated him in the prison. He is sitting on the hard floor of a small, mostly unfurnished, apartment he rents in Baghdad. “It lives inside me and never leaves me alone. I cannot begin to heal until I get justice for what they did to me.”
The torture and abuse of detainees by United States soldiers in Abu Ghraib made headlines and was broadcast from newsrooms around the world when photographs were released in April 2004 showing a hooded man standing on a box with electrical wires attached to his fingers, along with men stripped naked, leashed like dogs, or forced into sexual positions while US soldiers gleefully posed beside them. Majli tells The Real News Network that he appears in one of these images, in which naked detainees with bags over their heads are piled on top of each other in a disturbing human pyramid. Two American soldiers—Sabrina Harman and Charles Graner—are smiling and giving a thumbs up.
“The only thing I could think about at that moment was that I wish I had died before experiencing this,” Majli says, fiddling with his thumbs. “They stole my humanity from me. I still haven’t been able to process what happened to me there.”
Majli sitting on the floor of the apartment he rents in Baghdad. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.The other side of Majli’s prison identity card, showing an official Abu Ghraib entry stamp. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.
For more than two decades, no one from Abu Ghraib—or other victims of torture during the US war on Iraq—ever received compensation from the United States government or its private military contractors. Majli is still among those who have not received redress for what he endured.
But, in November last year, something historic occurred in a Virginia courtroom. In 2008, three former Abu Ghraib detainees who were tortured at the facility sued Virginia-based CACI Premier Technology, Inc, which was contracted by the US military to provide interpretation services at Abu Ghraib. The federal lawsuit, Al Shimari v. CACI Premier Technology, Inc., alleged that CACI participated in a conspiracy to commit unlawful conduct, including torture and war crimes.
After 15 years of litigation, the jury agreed with the defendants, ordering CACI to pay $42 million to the former detainees—marking the first time victims of torture during times of war in the post-9/11 era have received compensation. The case is also the first lawsuit where victims of US torture and cruel treatment held a trial in a US courtroom.
Following this historic win, other former Abu Ghraib detainees hope this case can renew possibilities of getting redress for crimes they faced two decades ago. Rights groups propose that this could be a legal opening for other victims of US torture to come forward against private military and security contractors. Others, however, are doubtful the case could easily be reproduced by others.
‘No one will know about it’
During the rule of Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib, located 20 miles west of Baghdad, was one of the world’s most notorious prisons, with torture, weekly executions, and vile living conditions. It held tens of thousands of political prisoners at one time. After the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and Saddam’s toppling, it was transformed into a US military prison.
Majli was detained in October 2003, picked up off the streets while visiting his uncle in Iraq’s western Anbar province. “They were just arresting all the men,” recounts Majli, who was about 36 at this time. “They zip-tied my hands and put a hood over my head. I was innocent and they took me for no reason at all.”
View of Abu Ghraib prison. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.View of Abu Ghraib prison. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.
After a few days at the Habbaniyah Camp in Anbar and another unknown location, Majli was transferred to Abu Ghraib, where he remained for 16 months. He was never charged with a crime nor informed of the reasons he was being detained. According to a leaked International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report, military intelligence officers from the US-led coalition forces in Iraq admitted that between 70% and 90% of Iraqis detained after the US invasion were actually arrested by mistake.
Majli tells TRNN he was kept in solitary confinement for nearly one month, which is prohibited under international law. “All I could think about was suicide,” he says, adding that he tried to use the ceiling light in his cell to electrocute himself. “The American guards told me that behind the [isolation] cell is a shredder that was used during Saddam, so if they wanted they could shred me up and throw my remains in the river and no one will ever know about it.”
Majli recounts being attacked by unmuzzled dogs, ordered to strip naked while soldiers threw freezing water on him during cold winter months, and beaten directly on his genitals with a stick. In addition to the human pyramid, the soldiers forced him into sexual positions with other male inmates while he was naked and blindfolded—although he is not certain whether soldiers took photos of it.
Majli says US soldiers also shot live ammunition at the prisoners. With his own eyes, he saw two inmates killed from this and their bodies removed from the prison in body bags. Majli also developed pneumonia after guards flooded his cell with cold water as a tactic to stop the prisoners from getting rest.
“I never imagined that human beings were capable of such things,” Majli says, lifting his knuckles to his mouth and gnawing on the skin, a nervous tic he picked up in Abu Ghraib. “I felt so scared and nervous all the time in the prison that I started uncontrollably biting my knuckles. Even now, I still bite the skin on my knuckles and arms whenever I remember my time in prison. I can’t help it.”
Majli shows the scars on his knuckles and arms from chewing the skin any time he thinks of Abu Ghraib, a habit he picked up in the prison. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.
When Majli was released in February 2005, his ordeal only continued. He was left penniless and psychologically distraught, suffering from nightmares and uncontrollable anger over what he endured.
According to Sarah Sanbar, a researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), owing to the sexual nature of the released photos former Abu Ghraib detainees face extreme stigma in Iraq’s conservative society. Therefore, many survivors of torture are too fearful to go public with their experiences. “A lot of people just don’t want to come forward,” explains Sanbar. “The people who do come forward face marginalization and stigmatization from within the community. Others are also harassed by contractors and soldiers for speaking out.”
“So we don’t actually know how many other victims of torture there are from Abu Ghraib,” she adds.
After Majli went public about his experiences in the prison, his wife filed for divorce and his children faced bullying in their schools, eventually dropping out. He is also forced to move each time his neighbors find out he was detained at Abu Ghraib. “This is the ninth house I have moved to in Baghdad,” Majli tells TRNN, nervously glancing towards the window.
Despite the US government’s attempts to portray the abuse at Abu Ghraib as an isolated incident, human rights experts assert that these abuses were indicative of a grim pattern of torture that characterized the Iraq war and the so-called War on Terror. The only exceptional aspect of the abuse at Abu Ghraib was that it was photographed and shown to the world, Sanbar says. But widespread torture and mistreatment of detainees, which was sometimes more extreme than Abu Ghraib, have been documented in numerous US military-run locations throughout Iraq.
Suhail al-Shimari, Salah al-Ejaili, and Asa’ad al-Zubae, the three plaintiffs of the Virginia-based case, were subjected to weeks and months of serious mistreatment, humiliation, degradation, and denial of their humanity while at the “hard site” of Abu Ghraib, where the most severe acts of torture were carried out.
The plaintiffs described being sexually assaulted, electrically shocked, deprived of sleep, forced into stress positions—which resulted in one of the men vomiting black liquid—forced to wear women’s underwear, and threatened with dogs. Shimari was dragged around the prison by a rope tied around his neck. None of the men, however, are in the notorious photos, in which Majli says he appears.
Unlike Majli and other victims of US torture, these three men got their day in court—and won.
‘Empire’s court’
US courts have repeatedly dismissed similar cases against the federal government because of a 1946 law that preserves US forces’ immunity for claims that arise during war. Since the US is not party to the Rome Statute, which founded the International Criminal Court (ICC), war crimes are investigated by the US military internally, a process which has continuously failed to provide redress for victims.
In what rights groups say is a rarity, 11 US military officials were convicted of crimes relating to the Abu Ghraib scandal from 2004 onwards—several of whom received prison sentences ranging from a few months to several years. But, “Abu Ghraib is a symptom of a much bigger cancer within the US government,” explains Yumna Rizvi, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Victims of Torture (CVT).
“What took place in Abu Ghraib is not isolated, but part of the Bush administration’s War on Terror torture policy. There are innumerable other cases of torture where it was not photographed or caught on film and it never attracted media attention. And those victims were essentially forgotten and the perpetrators never punished.”
Owing to the immunity afforded to the US government, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which filed the lawsuit on the plaintiffs’ behalf, decided to sue CACI in US courts through the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), which allows for non-US citizens to bring civil actions before US federal courts in cases concerning violations of international law. Over the years, several Supreme Court decisions have greatly limited the reach of ATS.
While two of the plaintiffs testified from Iraq, Ejaili, a former Al Jazeera journalist who is now living in Sweden, traveled to the US to testify. “He basically entered the Empire’s court and stood firmly and demanded that they be heard,” explains Baher Azmy, the legal director of CCR. “And this jury agreed.”
CACI is appealing the decision and will likely try to take it all the way to the US Supreme Court, according to Azmy.
Human rights experts hope this case can pave the way for other victims of US torture to seek redress from private military and security contractors. “I hope we see more people filing under the ATS,” says Rizvi, from CVT. “I hope this creates a [legal] precedent and shines some light on those who have been waiting for justice for a long time.”
Majli tried to obtain compensation from the US government for years after his release, requesting assistance from the Iraqi Bar Association in Baghdad; however, they informed him that they did not deal with such cases. He also reached out to the Iraqi Ministry for Human Rights, but other than providing him a letter confirming he was in their system as a former prisoner of Abu Ghraib, they were not able to help him.
Since then, he has been stuck, without any legal avenue in Iraq to seek redress from the US government for the abuses. “Myself and all the other Iraqis abused in Abu Ghraib deserve financial compensation so we can heal and rebuild our lives,” Majli tells TRNN. The news of the historic legal win in November has given Majli a glimmer of hope, wondering if this could be a new avenue of getting justice for the abuses that continue to haunt him.
“This essentially puts all other military and security contractors around the world on notice—no matter what theater or conflict they are operating in,” Sanbar tells TRNN. “They can and will be held accountable for their actions abroad should they engage in mistreatment, torture, or war crimes.”
But, according to experts, this court win would likely not be helpful to other victims of torture at Abu Ghraib. While ATS does not have a specific statute of limitations within the law itself, conventionally courts consider it to be 10 years. Therefore, a US court accepting cases from more than 20 years ago would be very unlikely.
According to Sanbar, from HRW, there are also limitations for other, more recent victims of torture to emulate this case. “The context in which a lot of this torture occurs is that you’re picked up off the street and sent to a detention facility,” Sanbar explains. “You don’t speak the language of your captors. You’re not able to recognize the different insignias or uniforms. And you don’t actually know in a lot of cases who is the one torturing you.”
CCR’s case was helped immensely by the fact that the US government conducted extensive investigations into the abuses at Abu Ghraib, the reports of which were released to the public, and specifically identified CACI’s role in the torture and abuse. In other cases that did not attract the outrage that Abu Ghraib did, information is not shared publicly. “In future cases, it will be very easy for the government to deny access to information on the grounds of national security,” Sanbar says.
The US government has also long issued gag orders against detainees at Guatanamo Bay, which has become a symbol of torture, rendition, and indefinite detention without charge or trial. Most recently, it was revealed that part of the plea deal of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the September 11 attacks, includes a lifetime gag order on speaking about aspects of his torture by the CIA. Moreover, Congress has constitutionally divested the federal courts of jurisdiction over suits for damages by former Guantanamo detainees.
Despite these barriers, the court win is still extremely significant, not least because it sends a message to private security contractors that they can be held accountable for abuses they commit abroad. “This essentially puts all other military and security contractors around the world on notice—no matter what theater or conflict they are operating in,” Sanbar tells TRNN. “They can and will be held accountable for their actions abroad should they engage in mistreatment, torture, or war crimes.”
But Sanbar emphasizes that this court win should not distract from the fact that the US government has an obligation under national and international law to provide redress and reparations for harm it has committed “both in terms of holding its own soldiers accountable and providing redress to victims.”
“There is currently no legal avenue for people who claim they were tortured or mistreated by US officials to have their cases heard or for them to apply for compensation,” she adds.
‘Heart can’t heal’
“My heart cannot heal without justice,” says 50-year-old Abdelrahman Muhammad Abed, who was detained by US soldiers in December 2005, nearly two years after the first photos from Abu Ghraib were released to the media, sending shockwaves throughout the world.
The public indignation that followed the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004 did not deter US soldiers from abusing and humiliating Abed immediately upon his arrest, during which Abed, along with his brother and nephew, were beaten by the soldiers, including with the butt of their guns; they were also forced to strip down to their underwear.
They were transferred to a US-run military camp, where a party among soldiers was underway. “There was a DJ and the men and women were dancing together,” Abed recounts, anxiously shaking his leg up and down while seated on a chair at his home in Baghdad. “The soldier threw me on the ground and started dancing, kicking sand and dust into my face and mouth.”
According to Abed, the three men, who were still only in their underwear, were then forced to stand in front of freshly dug holes in the ground, resembling graves. “The translator working for the soldiers told us they will now execute us so we should say our last words.” They were forced to stand in front of the graves for about an hour, while celebratory music blared around them. Then soldiers beat them again, Abed says.
He was detained without charge or trial for a year and a half in Camp Bucca, once referred to as “Iraq’s Guantanamo Bay,” and Abu Ghraib, where he was held for two months. “For weeks in [Abu Ghraib], they were beating me constantly. On my hands, legs, and back, with their fists, feet, and their guns,” Abed tells TRNN.
Abdelrahman Muhammad Abed at his home in Baghdad. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.
Abed abruptly stops speaking as he chokes back a wave of tears. “Most of us don’t like to talk about our experiences because it’s too painful,” he says, slowly regaining his composure.
“I deserve compensation from those who abused me—not because I want money. Even if they paid me $1 million for each day I was unfairly detained, it would not be enough. But I want recognition for what happened to me.”
For years after his release, Abed says he lived in constant fear that US soldiers would come for him again. “If I even heard a noise outside—like a rustling of leaves—I would become terrified, worried it was the Americans,” he explains.
“The Americans just saw all Iraqis as terrorists. They made us feel like we were not human. Since I was a child, I heard about America and the Western world and how they respect human rights and democracy. But the truth is the opposite.”
Officials in the government of US President Donald Trump say Iraq must allow Kurdish oil exports to restart or face sanctions alongside Iran, Reuters reported on 21 February, citing eight sources with direct knowledge of the matter.
Washington wants oil exports from Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region to resume to offset a potential fall in Iranian oil exports. President Trump has pledged to cut oil exports from Iran to zero as part of a new “maximum pressure” campaign against the Islamic Republic.
On Monday, Iraq’s oil minister made a surprise announcement saying exports from Iraqi Kurdistan would resume next week.
Fadil Murat Shamo, 22, is still struggling to rebuild his life after ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also known as Daesh) militants killed most of his family when they took over the predominantly Yazidi district of Sinjar in northern Iraq more than a decade ago. As a child, he spent five years in ISIS captivity and was indoctrinated to become a soldier. It was a fate that befell…
One of the most stunning events of the past few months has been the fall of Damascus. This fall had initially been expected over a decade ago, when rebel armies funded by Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United States crowded around the edges of Syria and threatened then President Bashar al-Assad’s government. These armies, backed by rich and powerful countries, were comprised of a range of actors, including:
swaths of people who were angered by the economic distress caused by the opening up of the economy and the subsequent devastation of small manufacturing businesses, which were suffering in the face of the emerging might of Turkish manufacturing;
the peasantry in the north, frustrated by the government’s lack of a proper response to the long drought that forced them into the northern cities of Aleppo and Idlib;
sectors of the secular petty bourgeoisie discontent with the failure of the Damascus Spring of 2000–01, which had initially promised political reforms stemming from the muntadayāt (forum discussions) held across the country;
a deeply aggrieved Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, formed out of the pious petty bourgeoisie, which had been crushed in 1982 and re-emerged after being inspired by the role the Brotherhood played in the 2010–11 protests in Tunisia and Egypt;
eager Islamist forces that had been trained by al-Qaeda in Iraq and wanted to fly the black flag of jihadism from the highest parapets in Damascus.
Despite the failure of these factions of the Syrian opposition in 2011, it was many of these same forces that succeeded in overthrowing Assad’s government on 7 December 2024.
Just over a decade ago, Assad’s government remained in power largely because of support from Iran and Russia, but also because of the involvement – to a lesser extent – of neighbouring Iraq and Hezbollah (Lebanon). Assad did not have the stomach for the contest. He became president in 2000 after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who took office through a military coup in 1971. Bashar al-Assad had a privileged upbringing and studied to be an ophthalmologist in the United Kingdom. When the rebel armies neared Damascus in December of this year, Assad fled to Moscow with his family, claiming that he wanted to retire from politics and resume his career as an ophthalmologist. He did not make a statement to his people telling them to be brave or that his forces would fight another day. There were no comforting words. He left quietly in the same way he appeared, his country abandoned. A few days later, on Telegram, al-Assad released a text but was timid.
Hakim al-Akel (Yemen), The Symbolic History of Arab Joy (Arabia Felix), 1994.
After being defeated by Syrian, Iranian, and Russian forces in 2014, the Syrian rebels regrouped in the city of Idlib, not far from Turkey’s border with Syria. That is where the main opposition force broke with al-Qaeda in 2016, took over the local councils, and shaped itself as the only leader of the anti-Assad campaign. This group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Organisation for the Liberation of the Levant, or HTS), is now in charge in Damascus.
Originating directly from al-Qaeda in Iraq, HTS has not been able to shed those roots and remains a deeply sectarian body with ambitions to eventually turn Syria into a caliphate. Since his time in Iraq and northern Syria, HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani developed a reputation of great brutality toward the large number of minority groups in Syria (specifically Alawites, Armenians, Kurds, Shi’ites), who he regarded as apostates. Al-Jolani is well-aware of his reputation, but he has remarkably altered the way he presents himself. He has shed the trappings of his al-Qaeda days; he trimmed his beard, dresses in a nondescript khaki uniform, and learned to talk to the media in measured tones. In an exclusive interview with CNN released just as his forces took Damascus, al-Jolani recalled past murderous acts committed in his name merely as youthful indiscretions. It was as if he had been trained by a public relations company. No longer the al-Qaeda madman, al-Jolani is now being presented as a Syrian democrat.
On 12 December, I spoke to two friends from minority communities in different parts of Syria. Both said that they fear for their lives. They understand that though there will be a period of jubilation and calm, they will eventually face severe attacks and have already begun hearing reports of small-scale attacks against Alawites and Shia families in their network. Another friend reminded me that there was calm in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government in 2003; several weeks later, the insurgency began. Could such an insurgency of former government forces take place in Syria after they have recomposed from their state’s hasty fall? It is impossible to know what the social fabric of the new Syria will be like given the character of the people who have taken power. This will be especially true if even a fraction of those seven million Syrians who were displaced during the war return home and seek revenge for what they will surely see as the mistreatment that forced them overseas. No war of this kind ends with peace. There are many scores yet to settle.
Safwan Dahoul (Syria), Dream 92, 2014.
Without detracting attention from the Syrian people and their well-being, we must also understand what this change of government means for the region and the world. Let us take the implications sequentially, starting with Israel and ending with the Sahel region in Africa.
Israel. Taking advantage of the decade-long civil war in Syria, Israel has bombed Syrian military bases on a regular basis to degrade both the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies (notably, Iran and Hezbollah). Over the past year, during its escalation of the genocide against Palestinians, Israel has also increased its bombing of any military facility it believes is being used to resupply Iran and Hezbollah. Israel then invaded Lebanon to weaken Hezbollah, which it achieved by assassinating Hezbollah’s long-time leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and by invading southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah was rooted. As if coordinated, Israel provided air support to HTS as it moved out of Idlib, bombing Syrian military facilities and army posts to demoralise the SAA. When HTS took Damascus, Israel strengthened its Division 210 in the Occupied Golan Heights (seized in 1973) and then invaded the United Nations buffer zone (set up in 1974). Israeli tanks proceeded outside the buffer zone and came very close to Damascus. HTS did not contest this occupation of Syria at any point.
Turkey. The Turkish government provided military and political support to the 2011 rebellion from its inception and hosted the exiled Syrian Muslim Brotherhood government in Istanbul. In 2020, when the SAA moved against the rebels in Idlib, Turkey invaded Syria to force an agreement that the city would not be harmed. Turkey also enabled the military training of most of the fighters who proceeded down highway M5 to Damascus and provided military equipment to the armies to battle the Kurds in the north and the SAA in the south. It was through Turkey that various Central Asian Islamists joined the HTS fight, including Uyghurs from China. When Turkey invaded Syria twice over the past decade, it held Syrian territory that it claimed was its historical land. This territory will not return to Syria under the HTS government.
Fateh al-Moudarres (Syria), Child of Palestine, 1981.
Lebanon and Iraq. After the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government in 2003, Iran built a land bridge to supply its allies in both Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Syria. With the change of government in Syria, resupplying Hezbollah will become difficult. Both Lebanon and Iraq will now border a country ruled by a former al-Qaeda affiliate. While it is not immediately clear what this means for the region, it is likely that there will be an emboldened al-Qaeda presence that wants to undermine the role of the Shia in these countries.
Palestine. The implications for the genocide in Palestine and for the struggle for Palestinian liberation are extraordinary. Given Israel’s role in undermining Assad’s military on behalf of HTS, it is unlikely that al-Jolani will contest Israel’s occupation of Palestine or allow Iran to resupply Hezbollah or Hamas. Despite his name, which comes from the Golan, it is inconceivable that al-Jolani will fight to regain the Golan Heights for Syria. Israel’s ‘buffers’ in Lebanon and Syria add to the regional complacency with its actions achieved by events such as its peace treaties with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994). No neighbour of Israel will pose a threat to it at this time. The Palestinian struggle is already experiencing great isolation from these developments. Resistance will continue, but there will be no neighbour to provide access to the means for resistance.
The Sahel. Since the United States and Israel are basically one country when it comes to geopolitics, Israel’s victory is a victory for the United States. The change of government in Syria has not only weakened Iran in the short term but has also weakened Russia (a long-term strategic goal of the United States), which previously used Syrian airports to refuel its supply planes en route to various African countries. It is no longer possible for Russia to use these bases, and it remains unclear where Russian military aircraft will be able to refuel for journeys into the region, notably to countries in the Sahel. This will provide the United States with an opportunity to push the countries that border the Sahel, such as Nigeria and Benin, to launch operations against the governments of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. This will require a close watch.
Djamila Bent Mohamed (Algeria), Palestine, 1974.
In July 1958, several poets organised a festival in Akka (occupied Palestine ’48). One of the participating poets, David Semah, wrote ‘Akhi Tawfiq’ (My Brother Tawfiq), dedicated to the Palestinian communist poet Tawfiq Zayyad who was in an Israeli prison at the time of the festival. Semah’s poem grounds us in the sensibility that is so sorely needed in our times:
If they sow skulls in its dirt
Our harvest will be hope and light.
It’s been 20 years since the Battle of Fallujah, a bloody campaign in a destructive Iraq War that we now know was based on a lie.
But back then, in the wake of 9/11, the battlefield was filled with troops who believed in serving and defending the country against terrorism.
“Going to Fallujah was the most horrific experience of our lives,” said Mike Ergo, a team leader for the US Marines Alpha Company, 1st Battalion. “And it was also, for myself, the most alive I’ve ever felt.”
This week on Reveal, we’re partnering with the nonprofit newsroom The War Horse to join Ergo’s unit as they reunite and try to make sense of what they did and what was done to them. Together, they remember Bradley Faircloth, the 20-year-old lance corporal from their unit who lost his life, and unpack the mental and emotional battles that continue for them today.
A network of former intelligence operatives has woven itself into the fabric of right-wing alternative media, amplifying anti-Muslim scare narratives that appear aimed at countering a noted decline in conservative support for Israel since October 7, 2023. Central to this effort is Sarah Adams, a figure promoting conspiracies about a supposed Palestinian-linked Al-Qaeda plot against the West.
On December 12, 2024, Adams appeared on the Shawn Ryan Show for a two-hour interview that quickly amassed over 2.5 million views on YouTube. Shorter excerpts have gained further traction across social media platforms.
Joe Biden should be tried and convicted of illegally providing American bombs and planes for genocide, but not before being forced to watch videos of some of the thousands of Palestinian kids murdered or maimed by Biden’s bombs and warplanes. Let Biden see the blank look of horror of a temporarily surviving Palestinian child alongside the bloodied dead body of its mother, father, brother, sister, playmate, auntie, uncle, grandad, grandma, or as often enough all of them killed by the same blockbuster bomb.
Let the condemnable President of the United States of American brutality be seen on the cover of Time magazine as ‘Man of the Year.’ Let Americans become aware of the reality of their government’s horrific crime against humanity. Though there is currently an international arrest warrant for Biden’s partner in the crime of genocide, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, the International Criminal Court lets Biden off the hook.
Also let the rest of the world know the truth that the TV entertainment/news conglomerates under U.S.-CIA control, by their world wide audience via satellites,make every effort to obscure the mass murderous nature of the U.S. government.
Currently criminal Western media keeps focusing their tele-broadcasting time on the hostages held by Palestinian freedom fighters for a second exchange for some more of Israel’s thousands of Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
While the world watched and students protested as Israel committed genocide with American bombs turning the cities of Gaza into rubble, the Biden presidency vetoed ceasefires in Gaza commanded by the United Nations Security Council last year on October 18, October 25, November 8, November 20, and November 28.
On November 22 of this year, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing him of crimes that include “starvation as a method of warfare,” Just two days later the Biden administration again vetoed the latest UN Security Council resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza that even France and Britain voted in favour of.
For Biden and his cohorts, the Israeli users of the lethal American weapons provided, Palestinian lives must mean less than nothing.Some Israeli soldiers’ social media have shown soldierslaughing like hyenas in videos of themselves cheering the genocidal destruction on. More than 50 thousand Palestinians under illegal militarily occupation, mostly women and children have already been put to death, while another 11 thousand or more lie buried beneath the ruins of their homes, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza suffer the life endangering pangs of hunger that bring disease, dysentery, and fatal results of starvation and malnutrition.
The Face of Good ol’ Joe Biden
What does this caricature of a human being see when it looks in a mirror? This monster of pitiless death and destruction sees not the creature thrown up from Hell that seeks to help Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu annihilate all Palestinian life in Gaza and the West Bank, but rather the jovial face of a human being deceptively presenting himself as a likeable father figure.
Don’t be fooled! Joe Biden is a serial destroyer of human life on Earth, and Biden didn’t start in October of last year.
Previously Joe Biden as Senator Made War on Iraq Possible
We knew Joe Biden as a super ‘yes man’ of the war and weapons investors complex deep state already when as Senator and Chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden vociferously called for the invasion of Iraq, even though it would be a war of the opposing party Republican President George Bush Junior. Senator Biden embraced an ultrahawkish position on Iraq, already in March 2000, Joe Biden said at a Senate hearing that if Iraq refused weapons inspections, he “would introduce a resolution calling for the use of force by the United States of America, if we have to do it alone, to go after Saddam Hussein.” (CongressionalQuarterly,March 2000)
In September 2004, then-United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated, “I have indicated that it is not in accordance with the UN charter. From our point of view and the UN Charter point of view, it [the war] was illegal.”
Fast forward
“Iraq conflict has killed a million”, says survey
By Reuters, January 30, 2008 (Updated 17 years ago)
LONDON, Jan 30 (Reuters) – More than one million Iraqis died as a result of the conflict in their country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to research conducted by one of Britain’s leading polling groups, (The survey was conducted by Opinion Research Business ORB), but Biden’s Gaza genocide, so widely and graphically tele-broadcasted all around the world makes him someone to be remembered for representing the intensive cruelty of the American government and the deadly indifference of the American public.
America’s most famous critic, 96-year-old Noam Chomsky, has said repeatedly that all the U.S. presidents after Franklin Roosevelt would have been hanged if tried under the same laws the Nazis were tried under. With his Palestinian Gaza genocide Joe Biden seems to have outdone all of them in extreme mortal cruelty, except possibly Harry Truman, who had atomic bombs dropped on two cities. But Biden has the distinction of having been able to watch his provisioned genocidal daily and nightly horror go on for 14 months.
May Joe Biden Be Condemned To Watch Videos of the Thousands of Adorable Palestinian Children He Has Had Murdered.
May Americans be made aware of the genocide of their president.
May the Global South be empowered to stop it and learn from it.
On January 20, another president might continue to provide for the inhuman mass butchery of women and children. Trump has warned of consequences if the hostages are not released, but tellingly made no mention of the more than 50 thousand dead Palestinians.
Let’s hope and agitate for a termination of the Gaza genocide and the usurping of Palestinian land.
Janine Jackson interviewed the Center for Constitutional Rights’ Katherine Gallagher about the Abu Ghraib verdict for the November 29, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: For a press corps that described the grievous abuse of Iraqi detainees at the prison in Abu Ghraib as “seared into the American consciousness,” there’s been relatively little interest in the fact that a federal jury has just found defense contractor CACI guilty of conspiring in that abuse.
Al Shimari v. CACI International was filed in 2008 and, CounterSpinlisteners will know, has been fought and fought and fought. And now, while its unclear what justice would look like for victims of torture, there is some acknowledgement of harm, and the fact that it was people, and not nameless forces in the “fog of war,” who were to blame.
How meaningful this verdict becomes could shape things going forward, given the US military’s increased reliance on private contractors, who’ve evidently been led to understand that they are above the law.
Katherine Gallagher: Thanks so much for having me back.
JJ: First of all, congratulations. I’m not sure people understand that, just because the paper says, “Oh, this was horrible abuse. Our conscience is shocked,” doesn’t mean that anything happens. So the law isn’t justice, but if you use the law, it’s something. So first of all, I want to say thank you.
KG: Thank you, thank you for that acknowledgement, and, really, the thanks and the effort was first and foremost to our clients, who filed this case 16-and-a-half years ago, and stuck with it and stuck with us and stuck with US courts through a rollercoaster ride of moments where they thought that justice might be coming, and then others where the case was dismissed and deep disappointment. So I agree, the law is not always an answer, but it can certainly be a tool, as it was in this case, to get some measure of justice for Suhail, Asa’ad and Salah.
JJ: I’ll ask you to say their names, actually, because they’re not often named. So the plaintiffs in this case, that made it this far, say their names.
KG: Salah al-Ejaili came and testified in person in Virginia in this case. He is a journalist, and he was working as a journalist for Al Jazeera at the time he was detained and tortured at Abu Ghraib. The second plaintiff is Asa’ad al-Zuba’e. He is a fruit vendor in Iraq, and he testified, via video link, live in the courtroom in Alexandria. And then the third plaintiff is Suhail al-Shimari, whose name is the lead name in this long-running case of Al Shimari v. CACI. And he is an educator.
JJ: It seems important to recognize and acknowledge that there are human beings here. I want to ask you to ground us, because some of our listeners weren’t even born. Ground us on the substance of the charges here, and maybe why is this the only lawsuit to make it this far?
KG: So this case stems out of what for many of us, or those of us of a certain generation, really is a historic event, in the negative sense. And that is the torture of Iraqi detainees at a US-run detention center in Baghdad, in Iraq, during the US invasion of Iraq.
At Abu Ghraib, especially during the time from fall 2003 until early 2004, there was a conspiracy to torture and otherwise subject Iraqi detainees to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. And that abuse, that horrific abuse, was documented in photos.
And those photos came out, the world saw them in 2004, and really “shocked the conscience,” which is a term that we often use in the law, but here it was true, for the entire nation and the world, when we saw naked, hooded, Iraqi detainees in human pyramids, being threatened with dogs, being subjected to sexual assault and degradation and humiliation, being held in contorted, painful positions, shackled to bed frames and walls.
And all of this, military generals investigated, they found that this was done, in large part, to “soften up” detainees, to make them pliable and ready to speak when they went into interrogation.
Now, at the time of the US invasion of Iraq, the US went in far too quickly, and with not enough resources, and with really no plan for the counterinsurgency that followed. So in the summer of 2003, the US started detaining Iraqis en masse. And so there were thousands and thousands of Iraqi detainees.
And in order to understand who they were even picking up, the US set up a number of detention centers, and they didn’t have enough trained interrogators, and they also didn’t have enough trained translators within the US military. So they outsourced those functions to private companies, and one of them was CACI, or C.A.C.I., a private government contractor from Virginia.
And CACI was hired, and paid tens of millions of dollars, to augment and support the US interrogation services. So CACI was hired to find so-called resident experts—qualified, trained interrogators to work in Iraq, and to supervise those interrogators who were working with the US military.
But what we found out, as the torture scandal broke and the military investigations happened and more information came out, is that CACI sent over unqualified interrogators, in many cases, and did not provide the kind of oversight or supervision that was required, and that was particularly required at Abu Ghraib, where there was a breakdown in the command structure within the military that allowed the kind of torture and abuse in those notorious photos to occur.
So that’s the big picture of what happened. And the abuse in that time was also inflicted upon the plaintiffs, Suhail, Asa’ad and Salah, who were detained in that end-of-2003, early-2004 time.
JJ: It seems worth just lifting up, as a point of information, these were not people who were charged or convicted of any crime, the detainees that we’re talking about, many of them, at Abu Ghraib, right?
KG: Correct. The individuals in this case, and I’ve represented individuals in two other cases, one that settled back in 2012 and one that was dismissed back in 2009. And of those 338 plaintiffs I’ve represented across those three cases, zero were ever charged with a crime. But I also want to be very clear that, even if one were charged with a crime, torture is always unlawful.
JJ: Right. Well, the case is landmark, in part just because of the way that it names contractors as responsible parties. It’s always been their argument, right, that they’re just private actors following orders from the US, and the US has immunity, so we do too, right? That’s part of what’s important about this.
KG: That’s precisely right. Over the 16 years of litigation, CACI has filed at least 15 motions to dismiss. And whether they’ve invoked Derivative Sovereign Immunity or the Political Question Doctrine or the Government Contractor Defense or the Law of War Immunity, or most recently and throughout trial, the so-called Borrowed Servant Defense—all of these boiled down to essentially one argument, which is, we were working with the US military, and anything we did was because they were overseeing it. And if they were overseeing it, they should have any responsibility, not us. We were just, essentially, following orders.
Now, the conduct at issue in this case—and we have clear decisions from the Fourth Circuit saying as much in our long litigation—the conduct at issue is unlawful. We’re talking about torture. We had plead war crimes, we’re talking about cruel and inhuman and degrading treatment. These are violations of US domestic criminal law, and they are also violations of US-signed treaties, including the Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions.
And so, this is not conduct that the military could order anyone, whether it’s soldiers or contractors, to do. This is unlawful, illegal. So CACI’s defense fails, insofar as this is not a lawful order that they could have ever received from the military.
But, additionally, CACI was hired to supervise its own employees. This is a for-profit corporation that hired employees at will. So, unlike an enlisted person at Abu Ghraib, the CACI employees could quit at any time, and notably, some did, and one even did, more than one, because of what they saw happening at Abu Ghraib. So this corporation should be held accountable for its own employees’ conduct.
And that’s precisely, after 16-and-a-half years, what a jury in Alexandria, Virginia, found to be the case two weeks ago when they gave down a verdict against CACI and for our plaintiffs.
JJ: I will say I’m disheartened by the relative quietness of media around the verdict. There has been some coverage, but I feel like I can say pretty confidently that had this case died in court, we would’ve never heard about it again.
But I’m also saddened by the accounts that I have seen: Virtually all of them use the phrase “over two decades ago.” And that, to me, is not a neutral tag. It’s a linguistic wink that says, “Why are we still talking about this?” But as you’ve noted, the case has taken this long because CACI has resisted it for this long, right?
KG: That is absolutely the case. The plaintiffs filed back in 2008, and our plaintiffs, to this day, the 20-year time period doesn’t erase or make this historic. They are living every day with being an Abu Ghraib torture survivor. They still suffer from nightmares, from flashbacks, and talking about Abu Ghraib is not something that’s easy for them to do.
The fact that this case went to trial not once but twice, and that the plaintiffs had to tell their account, tell about their suffering, their humiliation, more than once, it wasn’t easy. And to remember the kinds of details, some of it is seared in their memory, and others, of course, over 20 years is less clear than it used to be. But the nightmares and the mental harm has continued to this day, and it should not be something that is relegated to the history books at all.
And one of the things I’d note: There weren’t many photos shown during trial, but there were a few photos shown during trial, and there were a couple of jurors who appeared to be on the younger side. And when those photos came up, particularly for one of the younger jurors, who may not have seen this on the cover of the paper each day, as those of us did back in 2004, there was absolute shock. There was absolute shock. I mean, these photos were shocking for everyone, but the accounts seemed to be unknown. And that is not something that should be permitted to happen.
And that’s part of why, despite the difficulty, our plaintiffs have brought this case forward, and stayed with it throughout all of this time, so that it is not forgotten. And it is so that what was done in our name, for me as a US citizen, is also not forgotten. And they want to be sure that this never happens to anyone else again. So to the extent that corrections haven’t been made, whether by the US military or by CACI, to ensure that their employees or soldiers do not ever, ever treat detainees, or humans, in the way that the Iraqi men, women and children who were held at Abu Ghraib were treated, that’s what this case is also about.
JJ: Well, what do you make of the “few bad apples” line, which literally has appeared in some of the journalistic accounts that I’ve seen, that these were some rogue CACI employees, and it’s wrong to hold the organization liable for that?
KG: CACI, again, by its contract, had an obligation to oversee its employees, and it had staff on site precisely to do that. Also, the staff in Iraq was in daily contact with the staff back in Virginia, and some of the staff in Virginia traveled to Abu Ghraib over this period of time.
And so, whether we’re talking about a contractor at Abu Ghraib and allegations of torture, or frankly, other kinds of corporations, you have an obligation to look down your supply chain. And that, here, that supply chain is your employees, and you have an obligation to ensure that they are abiding by the terms of their contract, and the obligations that you as a corporation are putting forward that you will comply with. And that included following federal and international law. And that means no torture, no cruel and inhuman and degrading treatment.
JJ: I sort of resent the fact, though I understand it, that it’s being reported solely as a lawsuit, and not a human rights crisis. And the coverage as a lawsuit means, first of all, we see a note of monetary outcomes: These folks are getting millions!
And then, also, I see the Washington Post quoting CACI, saying CACI employees say, “None of them laid a hand on detainees.” Well, “laid a hand on,” like, I don’t know, that sounds like language you got from somewhere else.
But, also, plaintiffs are described as “saying” they were restrained, “claiming” they were tortured. There’s always this degree of difference. And I wonder, I wish, in some ways, we could move it outside of just the lawsuit framework, and talk about the human rights crisis that Abu Ghraib actually presents and presented for the United States.
Katherine Gallagher: “The jury found not that our clients ‘claimed’ that they were tortured, but that our clients were subjected to torture.”
KG: I appreciate that comment and that perspective. And just a few reactions to the language that you cited: What’s important here is, our clients testified in court, under oath, and there were findings made by a jury, factual findings against clear law. And Judge Brinkema gave the jury their legal instructions against which to apply facts.
So the jury found not that our clients “claimed” that they were tortured, but that our clients were subjected to torture, or cruel and inhuman and degrading treatment. The jury found them credible, as did General Taguba when he investigated Abu Ghraib back in 2004.
And, in fact, one of our clients in this case was someone who provided an account of abuse already, back in late 2003. And at that time, General Taguba also found the report by him and other Iraqi detainees credible.
So these are not mere allegations at this point. We have a jury verdict, and the jury awarded each plaintiff $3 million in compensatory damages, and $11 million each in punitive damages against CACI.
And that punitive damages award is saying that it wasn’t a few rogue employees, but it was a corporation that had responsibilities that it didn’t fulfill. The fact that that punitive damages award was meeting the amount that CACI was paid through their contract at Abu Ghraib, I really think sends a very clear message.
JJ: Finally, and perhaps you’ve answered it, but what are your hopes for the impact of this verdict, and what would you maybe say to other attorneys, frankly, who are working on years-old cases that might never lead to such an outcome?
KG: First, on the outcome, we certainly had a big victory, and it was a real validation of our clients, of what was done to them, and of their quest for justice. So that, again, I am very grateful for.
We will be facing an appeal; CACI has made that clear. So the litigation is not yet over, and our clients have not been given the monetary compensation. But, indeed, there already has been a real recognition for them by the jury, which mattered a lot, I have to say. It mattered a great deal to them, to know that they were heard and that they were believed.
In terms of the bigger picture of what this means, I do think that these cases are important. They may be difficult and, frankly, they also may be lost, but raising the challenges, and bringing the facts to the forefront, and putting harm with proper labels, so that those pictures Abu Ghraib are understood as torture, which means causing severe physical or mental harm, intentionally. And that is what happened to our plaintiffs.
CACI was part of a conspiracy to do that to our plaintiffs. And, indeed, they may not have been the ones to literally shackle our plaintiffs, but they gave instructions and encouragement to have our plaintiffs so mistreated and so harmed.
And I think that that message of challenging injustice, and for our clients to try and regain some of their agency, some of their dignity, it’s important. And I’m gratified that in this case it ended in a victory, but I still think it’s worth bringing cases, even if that’s not the outcome.
JJ: All right, then. We’ve been speaking with Katherine Gallagher, senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. They’re online at CCRJustice.org.
Thank you so much, Katherine Gallagher, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
(@mustang_rranjan)
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