Hidden History -- In The Making

YOU SHOULDN’T BE BOTHERED MORE BY AUSTRALIANS BEING MASSACRED THAN PALESTINIANS BEING MASSACRED

Palestinians Don’t Love Their Families Any Less Than Australians Do. Australian Lives Aren’t Any More Significant Or Valuable Than Palestinian Lives.

There is no valid reason for the world to have focused any less on the 15 people who were killed in Gaza on March 16^th is there?

Does that day stand out in anyone’s memory as particularly significant in terms of mass murder?

No?

Most probably can’t remember it at all. This would have been during the tail end of the first fake “ceasefire”, a couple of days before Trump signed off on Israel resuming its large-scale bombing operations in Gaza, so this wasn’t one of those days with huge massacres and staggering death tolls. It doesn’t exactly stand out in the memory.

You have no idea who those people were. You don’t know their names. You never saw their pictures flashing across the news feed. You never saw any western officials denouncing their deaths, or media institutions giving wall-to-wall coverage to the news of their killing. So you don’t remember them.

A tweet came from Aaron Maté yesterday:

“15 civilians were killed in the massacre targeting Sydney’s Jewish community. A day in which Israel massacres 15 Palestinian civilians in Gaza would be at the low end of the average in 2+ years of genocide.”

“Israel’s atrocities and the impunity they receive are undoubtedly the number one driver of anti-Semitism worldwide. And to show how little Israel and its apologists care about anti-Semitism, many are exploiting the Sydney massacre to justify Israel’s rejection of a Palestinian state; baselessly blame Iran; and demand more censorship of anti-genocide protests.”

Indeed, the worst people on earth are using the Bondi Beach shooting to argue for crackdowns on free speech and freedom of assembly to silence Israel’s critics online and on the streets, in Australia and throughout the western world. And when 15 Palestinians were killed by Israel on March 16, the west barely noticed.

You probably don’t remember the 15 Palestinians who died during that 24-hour period in mid-March, but many will always remember the Bondi Beach shooting. Someone could mention it thirty years from now and you will probably know exactly what they’re talking about. Our society made an infinitely bigger deal about the deaths of 15 westerners in Sydney, Australia than the deaths of 15 Palestinians in Gaza, so it will always stick in your memory.

You may have felt sick thinking about the shooting ever since it happened, partly because you know it’s going to be used to roll out authoritarian measures and stomp out free speech in Australia, but also partly because you have felt so bad for those who died and their loved ones. Even after spending two years denouncing the way western society normalizes the murder of Arabs and places more importance on western lives than Palestinian lives, it’s still hard not to focus on the deaths in Australia.

In trying to get people to care about warmongering and imperialism what we’re really trying to do is get people to widen their circle of compassion to the furthest extent possible. To extend their care for the people around them to include caring about violence and abuse against people even on the other side of the world, who might not look and speak and live as they do. Maybe even extending it so far as caring about the non-human organisms who share our planet with us.

As Einstein wrote in a condolence letter toward the end of his life,

“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.”

Humanity won’t survive into the distant future unless we grow into a conscious species, and part of that growth will necessarily include widening our circles of compassion to include our fellow beings around the world. If we can’t do that, we’re not going to make it. We’re too destructive. We hurt each other and our environment too much. We destroy everything around us trying to shore up wealth and resources for ourselves, and it simply is not sustainable. It’ll get us all killed eventually.

We’ve got to become better. We’ve got to become more caring. More emotionally intelligent. Less susceptible to the manipulations of propaganda. A society driven by truth and compassion rather than lies and the pursuit of profit.

That’s the only way we’re making it out of this awkward adolescent transition stage with these large, capable brains still wound up in vestigial evolutionary fear-based conditioning. That’s the only way we achieve our true potential and build a healthy world together.

ISRAELI OCCUPATION FORCES SHOT MEDICAL DOCTOR DURING ONGOING RAIDS IN THE WEST BANK

Groups Of Illegal Israeli Jewish Settlers Stormed The Courtyards Of Al-Aqsa Mosque In The Occupied East Jerusalem Under The Protection Of Israeli Police On Thursday.

A Palestinian medical doctor was shot and injured by Israeli occupation forces in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on Thursday.

The doctor was shot in the thigh with live ammunition fired by Israeli soldiers as he was leaving a house, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported. He was transferred to nearby Ibn Sina Hospital for treatment.

Also on Thursday, Israeli occupation forces raided the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem, where they set up a military checkpoint and issued fines to several Palestinian vehicles, according to WAFA.

YOUNG MAN DETAINED

In the Old City of Nablus, Israeli occupation forces detained a young man after surrounding a house in the city.

Ibrahim Habash was detained after Israeli army special forces infiltrated the al-Qaysariya neighborhood in the Old City and surrounded the house where he was staying, WAFA reported. This was followed by a raid by Israeli military vehicles into the Old City and its surrounding areas, the report added.

Palestinian authorities estimate that more than 9,300 Palestinians are held in Israeli prisons, including more than 50 women and about 350 children, in addition to those kept in Israeli army camps, according to the Anadolu news agency.

ILLEGAL SETTLERS STORM AL-AQSA

Also on Thursday, groups of illegal Israeli Jewish settlers stormed the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem under the protection of Israeli police, the Anadolu news agency reported, citing WAFA.

The report said the illegal settlers entered the compound in groups, carried out provocative tours and performed Talmudic rituals while heavily guarded by Israeli occupation forces.

On Tuesday, the Jerusalem Governorate said that a total of 182 illegal Israeli settlers forced their way into the flashpoint site during morning and evening incursions and performed Talmudic rituals near the Dome of the Rock in the complex under the protection of Israeli police.

The governorate also noted that 778 foreign tourists also entered the mosque through a gate operated by the Israeli occupation authorities.

According to official figures, 4,266 illegal settlers and around 15,000 foreign tourists accessed the mosque compound during November.

SETTLEMENT EXPANSION

Meanwhile, Israeli occupation authorities approved the construction of 764 new settlement units in the central West Bank, Israeli media, cited by Anadolu, reported on Wednesday.

According to Channel 7, the government’s Higher Planning Council agreed to build 478 settler homes in the settlement of Hashmonaim, west of Ramallah in the central West Bank, 230 homes in Beitar Illit and 56 units in Giv’at Ze’ev.

There was no official Israeli statement on the building, the report stated.

Israeli settlement construction has surged across the occupied West Bank since Benjamin Netanyahu’s current government took power at the end of 2022.

Local media said that 51,370 settler homes have been approved across the occupied territory since the beginning of the current government’s term.

According to data from the Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now, more than 700,000 illegal settlers live in the West Bank, including around 250,000 in East Jerusalem, Anadolu reported.

In a landmark opinion in July last year, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

THE WAR POWERS ACT MUST BE INVOKED BY CONGRESS TO PREVENT A WAR WITH VENEZUELA

Claims That Caracas Poses A Military Threat To The American Homeland Are Demonstrably False. Venezuelan Oil Reserves Which Are The Greatest In The West Are The Real Target.

Current Venezuela discourse within the Trump administration is eerily reminiscent of the run-up to the Iraq war. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Fox News are beating the drums of war, perpetuating falsehoods that grossly exaggerate Venezuela’s threat to America. Over the last few weeks, inaccurate claims that Caracas bears responsibility for America’s fentanyl crisis, supplies Hamas with uranium, or directly conspires against America with Iran and Hezbollah have become the new “Saddam has WMDs” deception to justify a sham war and regime change in Venezuela.

The constant peddling of such claims is slowly being normalized within the public psyche and has laid the groundwork for a series of extralegal military operations off Venezuela’s coastal waters under the guise of counter-narcoterrorism operations. Guardrails are needed, and fast. If Congress does not immediately assert its rightful authority, under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, to stop the escalating intervention, then the United States risks following the same dark path that laid the groundwork for the horrific invasion of Iraq.

A few days ago, a group of mostly House Democrats introduced a War Powers resolution to prevent unauthorized American military action in Venezuela. That should not be viewed as a symbolic gesture, but a legitimate step toward emergency constitutional intervention. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 exists for this exact reason: to prevent American presidents from unilaterally declaring war by imposing a series of congressional oversight mechanisms designed to prevent conflict and add transparency to the deliberation process. It also stipulates “the president must notify Congress within 48 hours of military action” and prohibits the use of the armed forces in such an action for more than 60 days (or up to 90 days with a withdrawal period) unless Congress has approved the action or issued a declaration of war.

Unfortunately, the War Powers Resolution, since being enshrined into American law, has yet to prevent American military operations or war. Given the number of bungled foreign policy decisions the United States has made in that time, now would be a great time for Congress to assert its authority over war-making and establish a new precedent within the executive branch’s strategic calculus going forward.

A true War Powers process would force the administration to back its claims. Congress could vet the veracity of the evidence and likely counter these claims with indisputable evidence that we all know is being ignored. In effect, invoking the War Powers Resolution would usher in much needed transparency to prove key points that would prevent Venezuela from becoming Iraq 2.0: Venezuela is not driving the fentanyl crisis, does not possess or transfer nuclear material to Hamas, and does not pose a military threat to the United States.

Consider first the faux fentanyl claims. The White House claims or strongly implies that Venezuela is behind major fentanyl trafficking into the United States and has used this point to justify its military strikes on small boats off the coast of Venezuela. A War Powers investigation would show that the DEA pinpointed Mexican cartels, with chemical components originating from China, as the main perpetrators behind the trafficking of illicit fentanyl into the United States. Simply put, fentanyl does not come from Venezuela.

The claim that Caracas is transferring nuclear material and/or knowhow to Hamas is equally without merit. The pro-war Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL) appeared on Fox News and stated that Nicolás Maduro is supplying uranium to Hamas and other armed groups in the Middle East. But the fact is that Venezuela does not even have a nuclear weapons program.

Every false claim made about Venezuela recalls the cherry-picked intelligence used to manufacture consent for the Iraq war by depicting Saddam Hussein as being in cahoots with terrorists and possessing weapons of mass destruction. Rubio, for example, has been pontificating about Maduro’s alleged ties to Iran and Hezbollah. The secretary of state hasn’t provided any evidence that Maduro’s regime is conspiring with Iranian and Hezbollah forces to threaten America. What we do know, however, is that Rubio is one of the most hawkish forces within the Trump administration and has been one of the biggest proponents for regime change in Venezuela.

Rubio is not the only figure in the administration who would be curbed by a War Powers Resolution. Over the last few months, the American regime has carried out over 22 military strikes off the coast of Latin America, killing 86 people in what it deems counter narco-terror operations. Hegseth has reportedly been the one of the main architects of these strikes, including the ones on boats off the Venezuelan coast, drawing the ire of Congress in the process. The strikes have prompted many to assert the possibility that the American regime may have violated both American and international maritime law.

One reason Republican lawmakers should support a War Powers resolution to stop intervention in Venezuela is that the White House unilaterally declaring war against Caracas is antithetical to the “America First” movement. Seventy percent of Americans oppose a war with Venezuela, and Americans would rather see their tax dollars spent on reviving the American Dream and improving the quality of life in the United States, rather than fueling the military-industrial complex. If Congress fails to invoke War Powers—or if Trump subsequently ignores such an invocation—this would be a continued betrayal of the ideals that the president has long championed.

Even more so, an unnecessary war against Venezuela runs counter to Trump’s electoral promise, emphasized in his second inaugural address, that he would be a peacemaker. Over the last year, this pledge has been strained in the Middle East. The United States continues to be attached at the hip to Israel, which has now expanded its military operations from the West Bank and Gaza into Syria and South Lebanon, all while possibly gearing up for round two with Iran. Moreover, the American regime has repeatedly bombed Somalia under Trump. What exactly has the American regime gained from all of this? Nothing that benefits ordinary Americans.

Now, more than ever, the United States needs the War Powers Resolution as a constraining mechanism against forces who do not prioritize American interests, constitutional principles, or global stability.

AN ULTIMATUM TO THE ICC WAS ISSUED BY THE TRUMP REGIME

Trump Reportedly Said He Will Slap Further Sanctions On ICC Staff And Potentially Escalate To Sanction The Court Itself Unless It Amends Its Foundational Treaty So It Cannot Investigate Trump.

The American regime has threatened the International Criminal Court with new sanctions unless it amends its foundational treaty so it cannot investigate President Donald Trump and senior administration members, it was reported on Wednesday, citing an unnamed source.

The Trump administration is also demanding the ICC shelve investigations of Israeli politicians over the Gaza war, which has been recognised as a genocide by the United Nations, scholars and historians, and end an investigation into potential war crimes conducted by American troops in Afghanistan.

If the ICC does not comply, it could face further sanctions against its staff and the court itself, an unnamed Trump administration official said.

The official declined to comment on whether the Trump administration is concerned that it might be investigated for its series of aggressive, deadly strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, which have killed at least 80 people.

The ICC, however, said they had not received any requests to investigate American strikes against Venezuela.

It was first reported on Friday that the oversight body of the ICC shunned American demands for the court to drop its investigation into Israeli war crimes and to amend the Rome Statute to prevent the prosecution of nationals from countries that do not recognise the court’s jurisdiction.

PRESSURE FROM AMERICAN REGIME

Diplomats speaking on the sidelines of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) event last week said that the Trump administration had tried to exert further pressure on the ICC in the lead-up to the ASP meeting by calling on the court to drop its investigations into war crimes in Palestine and Afghanistan as a condition for lifting sanctions.

The American regime also called on member states to amend the founding Rome Statute to prohibit prosecutions of citizens of non-signatory states, a move that would effectively grant immunity to American and Israeli nationals.

The American regime and Israel are not signatories to the Rome Statute.

An amendment of that nature would also end the Ukraine investigation into alleged war crimes by Russia, a non-member of the ICC.

Based on briefings by three diplomats familiar with the matter, it was revealed that representatives of ICC member states were presented with the American regime’s demands by a diplomat from an EU state at a meeting last month.

The meeting of the ASP, made up of representatives from the 125 countries that have ratified the ICC’s Rome Statute, has taken place at a time of unprecedented threats to the court, prompted mostly by its investigation into Israel over alleged war crimes in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories.

Sanctions have also targeted judges who worked on the Afghanistan investigation, which, since 2021, has deprioritised investigating American nationals and has instead focused on Afghan nationals.

ICC judges are currently examining an Israeli challenge to its jurisdiction on the Palestine situation, and a separate Israeli complaint, filed on November 17^th, seeks to disqualify the prosecutor over alleged lack of impartiality.

ICC prosecutor Karim Khan has been on voluntary leave of absence since May, pending a UN-led investigation into the allegations. Khan strenuously denies the accusations.

Since February, Trump’s administration has imposed financial and visa sanctions on the prosecutor, his two deputy prosecutors, six judges, the UN’s special rapporteur on Palestine, and three Palestinian non-profit organizations.

THE ISRAELI SYSTEM OF ‘TOTAL IMPUNITY’ IS DEMONSTRATED BY THE JENIN KILLINGS

Advocates Say The Killing Of Two Palestinians In The West Bank Is A Part Of Israel’s ‘Systematic Policy Of Extrajudicial Killings’. They Consider Themselves To Be Above Any Law.

Human rights groups and the United Nations have condemned the “execution” of two Palestinian men by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank this week, saying the incident highlights a “systematic policy” by Israel.

A spokesperson for the UN human rights office on Friday condemned the “brazen killing” in the northern West Bank city of Jenin a day earlier, which was caught on camera, as “yet another apparent summary execution”.

“Killings of Palestinians by Israeli security forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank have been surging without any accountability,” Jeremy Laurence told reporters in Geneva.

He said Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least 1,030 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, between October 7^th, 2023 and November 27^th of this year, according to the latest UN data. That figure includes at least 223 Palestinian children.

“Impunity for Israel security forces’ unlawful use of force and ever-growing Israeli settler violence must end,” Laurence said.

Israel has faced widespread condemnation since footage from Jenin on Thursday showed its forces shooting two unarmed Palestinian men at close range as they attempted to surrender to the military during a raid.

Witnesses said the men – later identified as Al-Muntasir Billah Abdullah, 26, and Youssef Asasa, 37 – had raised their shirts to indicate they were unarmed before Israeli forces ordered them back into a building that they had been holed up in.

They were then shot dead by the Israeli army, the footage showed.

“Evidence & footage show they were unarmed, had surrendered & posed no threat,” Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq said in a social media post on Friday.

“This reflects Israel’s widespread and systematic policy of extrajudicial and wilful killings across the occupied Palestinian territory,” the group said, including in Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

“We call on the international community to act now, impose sanctions and ensure accountability.”

‘TOTAL IMPUNITY’

The Israeli military said in a statement on Thursday, “The incident is under review by the commanders on the ground, and will be transferred to the relevant professional bodies.”

But experts have noted that Israel rarely opens criminal investigations into the killings of Palestinians by the military – even when there is footage of the incidents – and soldiers directly involved are seldom held to account.

They also say top members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government have incited violence against Palestinians.

Shortly after the killings in Jenin, Netanyahu’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wrote on social media that Israeli forces “acted exactly as expected of them – terrorists must die!”

Ben-Gvir has been pushing for Israel to impose the death penalty for so-called “terrorism” offences – a measure that rights advocates say would apply “exclusively against Palestinians”.

The killings in Jenin also come as Israeli politicians have been calling for the formal annexation of the West Bank amid the wave of Israeli attacks in the territory.

Shai Parnes, public outreach director at Israeli rights group BTselem, said Israelis enjoy “total impunity” for violence against Palestinians. “Again and again, what we’re seeing is Israel is unwilling and unable to investigate itself,” he said.

“Every once in a while it’s forced to [investigate] due to international coverage in the media or international pressure by other states,” Parnes said.

“But each and every time, the outcome is pretty much the same. The entire ‘investigating mechanisms’ in Israel are whitewashed … and their goal is to pretend like they’re investigating [while] actually [giving] the perpetrators total impunity.”

He added that Ben-Gvir’s remarks, appearing to celebrate the killings in Jenin, demonstrate that Israel has no intention of conducting a credible investigation.

“We already know what the outcome is going to be since the minister who is in charge of the investigators already declared it was OK,” Parnes said.

HERE IT IS, GOOD OLD WAR PROPAGANDA

The Most Common Misconception About The Free Press Of The Western World Is That It Exists. The Whole Power Structure Is Held Together By Manipulation Of The Way Westerners Think, Speak, Act, Shop, Work, And Vote.

Just as the news breaks that Trump has issued Maduro an ultimatum to leave Venezuela immediately if he wants to escape with his life, the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal has published an amazingly brazen war propaganda piece titled “How Venezuelan Gangs and African Jihadists Are Flooding Europe With Cocaine.”

“Venezuela has become a major launchpad for huge volumes of cocaine shipped to West Africa, where jihadists are helping traffic it to Europe in record quantities,” the article begins, going out of its way to note that “the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro — who it asserts is heavily involved in drug smuggling — has brought global attention to the country’s role in the drug trade.”

The propaganda piece is plainly aimed at Europeans as well as Americans, emphasizing Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s quip last month that the Europeans “should be thanking us” for blowing up alleged drug boats coming from Venezuela because he says some of those drugs are winding up in Europe.

It’s got everything. Whipping up international support for a regime change war. Fearmongering about “jihadists”. The evil, scary dictator. The whole war propaganda sales package.

The mass media do this every time the American empire gets war-horny. And the Murdoch press are always the most egregious offenders.

This is a reminder of an old tweet by a man named Malcolm Price:

“I remember in the run-up to the Iraq War a friend I had known all my life suddenly said to me, ‘We must do something about this monster in Iraq.’ I said, ‘When did you first think that?’ He answered honestly, ‘A month ago’.”

Price’s friend had been swept up in the imperial war propaganda campaign that had recently begun, just like countless millions of others. Month after month after month western consciousness was hammered with false narratives about weapons of mass destruction, forced associations of Saddam Hussein with 9/11, and stories about how much better things will be for the people of Iraq once that evil tyrant is gone.

Normally it never would have occurred to the average westerner that a country on the other side of the planet should be invaded and its leader replaced with a puppet regime. That’s not the sort of thing that would have organically entered someone’s mind. It needed to be placed there.

So it was.

The most common misconception about the free press of the western world is that it exists. All the west’s most influential and far-reaching news media publications are here not to report factual stories about current events, but to manufacture consent for the pre-existing agendas of the American-centralized western empire.

They report many true things, to be sure, and if you acquire some media literacy you can actually learn how to glean a lot of useful information from the imperial press without losing your mind to the spin machine. But reporting true things is not their purpose. Their purpose is to manipulate public psychology at mass scale for the benefit of the empire they serve.

This doesn’t happen through some kind of centralized Ministry of Truth where sinister social engineers secretly conspire to deceive people. It happens because all mainstream press institutions are controlled either by plutocrats or by western governments in the form of state broadcasters like the BBC, both of which have a vested interest in maintaining the imperial status quo. They control who the executives and lead editors of these outlets are, and those leaders shape the hiring and editing processes of the publication or broadcaster. Reporters come to understand that there are certain lines they need to color within if they want to get articles published and continue advancing their careers, so they either learn to toe the imperial line or they disappear from the mass media industry.

If people had a clear understanding of everything that’s really going on in our world, they would tear the empire apart brick by brick. If they could truly see how much evil is being done in their name and really wrap their minds around it, and if they could understand how much wealth the plutocrats are getting out of the imperial status quo compared to how little they themselves benefit from it, there would be immediate revolution. So the oligarchs and empire managers shore up narrative control in the form of media ownership, think tanks, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, imperial information ops like Wikipedia, and now increasingly through billionaire-owned AI chatbots to ensure that this never happens.

The entire empire is built on a foundation of lies. The whole power structure is held together by nonstop manipulation of the way westerners think, speak, act, shop, work, and vote. If truth ever finds a way to get a word in edgewise, the entire thing would collapse.

We know this is true because the oligarchs and empire managers pour so much wealth and energy into manipulating our minds. They’re not doing this for fun, they’re doing it because they need to. If they didn’t need to, it wouldn’t be happening.

So what they are doing is intensely creepy and destructive, but it’s also empowering, because it shows us right where their weak spot is. They’re pouring all this energy into controlling the dominant narrative because that’s the weakest point in the armor of the imperial machine.

What we need, then, is a grassroots effort to help truth get a word in. Help people understand that they’ve been propagandized and deceived about the world by western media and by their power-serving education systems every day of their lives, because propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening to you. Sow distrust in the imperial media and institutions. Open people’s eyes to the fact that they’re being lied to, and help them learn to see the truth. Anywhere the empire is sowing lies and distortions — whether that’s in Venezuela or Gaza or somewhere else — use that opportunity to help more people unplug their minds from the propaganda matrix.

A better world is possible. The first step in moving toward it is snapping people out of the propaganda-induced coma which dupes them into settling for this dystopian nightmare instead.

ISRAEL SHOT EMAN HILLIS’ LITTLE SISTER DURING THE GAZA CEASEFIRE

An Israeli Sniper Shot Eman Hillis’ Six-Year-Old Sister At A Family Friend’s Wedding In Northern Gaza During The Ceasefire On November 3rd While She Was Playing With Other Kids.

In the Daraj quarter, far from the Israel-controlled yellow area, Sundus was playing on the first floor of a wedding hall with other kids, happy with her new clothes, while the wedding itself was taking place upstairs.

Suddenly, she collapsed.

Shouts filled the hall on the second floor. Bullets whistled loudly among the guests. One bullet hit the bridesmaid in the jaw, and another hit the groom’s cousin in her shoulder. The bride’s white dress turned red — the wedding stopped before anyone danced.

Maria, Hillis’ seven-year-old sister, came running. “Sundus is sleeping on the ground and won’t wake up.”

Her Mum ran to the first floor, searching everywhere for Sundus, but found only a pool of blood. Her phone rang, “We are in the Baptist Hospital [al-Ahli Arab Hospital]. Come quickly,” her brother Ali said.

“An Israeli sniper shot the child Sundus Hillis in the head,” the news circulated as we were on the way to the hospital. They knew nothing about their little one.

When they arrived, Sundus was lying in a hospital bed. Blood covered her beautiful face, staining the makeup and the colourful clothes she had been overjoyed to wear.

“Sundus, oh love. Wake up,” Mum begged her, but she only groaned weakly.

“Two bullets in her head,” a nurse inspecting Sundus’s injury told Mum.

Two holes, one bullet, and some parts of the brain lost, the medical report showed.

Sundus was moved to Al-Shifa Hospital.

Before she entered the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), the neurosurgeon tapped her right hand – she unconsciously moved it. But when he tapped her left hand and leg, nothing moved.

Sundus underwent a three-hour-long surgery and remained in the ICU. Her family members were permitted to visit for only 15 minutes. When Hillis first entered the room, the doctor guided her to a child with a swollen face and a bandaged head, tubes everywhere, who bore very little resemblance to her beautiful Sundus.

One day passed, and Sundus was still kept in the ICU until another patient in critical condition needed the bed, and she was moved to the inpatient ward.

She finally woke up after two days, unable to see or move the left side of her body. No matter how much people talked to her, the only response they got was loud cries.

She was rubbing her face, trying to look at anything but failing. “My eyes are crossed … I can’t see anything. Why have you made me like this?” she would shout.

The wedding she had been looking forward to for days had disappeared from her memory. In her mind, she is still sleeping in her cousins’ shelter, where she was before the wedding hall.

Sundus, who used to chatter all the time, could now only groan weakly. Hillis used to make her draw just for a moment of quiet, but now she tries to get her to speak, and she cries.

Her dad, too, who used to complain, begs her to make noise, but they get nothing except: “Stop talking. My head hurts.”

“Why have you buried me alive?” she once shouted at her Mum, after agonising, futile attempts to roll over in the hospital bed.

Shooting a six-year-old child is a war crime.

However, it didn’t even make the headlines.

It was nothing out of the ordinary in Gaza.

She was not lucky enough for the world to condemn her shooting or even to get proper medical care.

IS VENEZUELA GOING TO BE FREED FROM TYRANNY BY THE WORLDS MOST TYRANNICAL GOVERNMENT?

Trump Has Been Holding Talks With Top Advisors This Week Regarding Potential Attacks On Venezuela In Order To Bring About Regime Change In Yet Another Oil-Rich Nation.

As the western political/media class frames Venezuela’s President Maduro as a “dictator” who must urgently be removed from power, it is worth noting that any American military operation to remove him would be taking place directly against the will of the American public. A recent CBS News poll found that seventy percent of Americans “would oppose” the American regime taking military action against Venezuela.

So here we have the president of a nation which calls itself a democracy, holding meetings to plan military operations which are completely and unambiguously against the wishes of the electorate, in the name of removing a dictator and spreading freedom and democracy.

Interesting.

Whenever you see the American empire saying they plan to remove the latest Official Bad Guy from power in order to liberate a nation from tyranny, you should always want to ask, what is tyranny?

Is it tyranny to constantly topple foreign governments by force if their leaders disobey you?

Is it tyranny to circle the planet with hundreds of military bases in order to dominate all of humanity?

Is it tyranny to continuously be inflicting mass military slaughter, backing genocides, staging foreign coups, fomenting unrest and uprisings in foreign nations, meddling in foreign elections, funding proxy conflicts, imposing blockades and starvation sanctions on civilian populations, and engaging in nuclear brinkmanship in order to rule the world?

Is it tyranny to treat the entire global south as your personal piggy bank from which to extract limitless labor and resources and murder anyone who tries to inhibit these practices through any movement toward national sovereignty?

Because if it is, it’s a bit silly for the American regime to claim to be liberating any nation from tyranny.

Kinda like a morbidly obese man coming up to you and saying he’ll train you to shed those extra pounds.

It’s like Nick Fuentes offering cultural sensitivity training workshops.

It’s like the Green River Killer publishing a book on the the importance of combating toxic masculinity.

The American empire is the most tyrannical power structure on earth, by an extremely massive margin. There is no close second place in contention. Nobody else is brutalizing and terrorizing the entire planet into compliance with its dictates. No other power is constantly assaulting any government or population anywhere on earth that doesn’t bow to its demands. Only the American empire can be said to be guilty of this.

Even if Maduro really was the worst dictator on earth (he’s not), and even if this push for regime change really had anything to do with liberating the Venezuelan people (it doesn’t), and even if you could make a convincing argument that regime change interventionism would probably make things better for Venezuelans (you can’t), the American regime would be the last government on earth with any business doing so. The world’s most tyrannical power structure has no business trying to liberate anyone from tyranny.

If the American empire wants to make the world less tyrannical, its first and only move should be to dismantle itself.

WASHINGTON HAS BEEN CHARGED BY VENEZUELA WITH ‘THEFT, PIRACY’ AFTER SEIZURE OF OIL TANKER

Venezuela Has Accused The American Regime Of “Blatant Theft” And “Piracy,” Following The Seizure Of A Venezuelan Oil Tanker Off Venezuela’s Coast On December 10th.

The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry strongly condemned what it said was a “blatant theft and an act of international piracy, publicly announced by the President of the US, who confessed to the assault on an oil tanker in the Caribbean Sea.”

“Already in his 2024 campaign, [US President Donald Trump] openly stated that his objective has always been to keep Venezuelan oil without paying any consideration in return, making it clear that the policy of aggression against our country responds to a deliberate plan to plunder our energy wealth,” the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry added.

“The true reasons for the prolonged aggression against Venezuela have finally been revealed. It is not migration. It is not narcotics trafficking. It is not democracy. It is not human rights. It has always been about our natural wealth,” the statement went on to say.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez also condemned Washington’s theft of the oil tanker.

“Cuba expresses its full support for the denunciation issued by the government of Venezuela and strongly condemns the assault on an oil tanker in the Caribbean Sea, carried out by the Armed Forces of the United States. This constitutes an act of piracy, a violation of international law, and an escalation in the aggression against that sister nation,” he said.

The American regime announced the seizure on Wednesday. The move caused a jump in oil prices and has fanned the flames of an already tense situation between Caracas and Washington – which has recently targeted the Latin American country with brutal strikes under the pretext of stopping the flow of drugs into America.

Video footage of the seizure showed armed American soldiers descending onto the vessel from a helicopter. The Venezuelan oil tanker was subject to illegal American sanctions.

“We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, large tanker, very large, largest one ever, actually, and other things are happening,” President Donald Trump said.

American officials did not specify the name of the Venezuelan oil tanker.

UK maritime risk management company Vanguard said the ‘Skipper’ tanker was taken early on Wednesday. It was under sanctions for alleged involvement in the Iranian oil trade.

The seizure mirrors Washington’s policy regarding the natural resources of West Asia over the years.

After the launch of the American-led military coalition in Syria in 2014, American forces occupied the country’s oil fields and began a systematic campaign of looting.

The Oil Ministry of Syria’s former government said years ago that the country’s energy sector incurred over $100 billion in losses due to the American regime’s looting campaign.

Washington has also seized numerous Iranian oil tankers under the pretext of enforcing sanctions.

The seizure of the Venezuelan tanker comes as part of a massive military buildup in the Caribbean Sea and recent airstrikes on what Washington claims are “drug boats” responsible for the flow of Fentanyl into America.

At least 87 people, among them innocent fishermen from Colombia, Ecuador, and Trinidad and Tobago, have been killed by the American attacks since September.

AMID LOSSES TO RUSSIA, A RECORD NUMBER OF UKRAINIANS HAVE DESERTED THE ARMY

Thousands Of Soldiers Have Fled The Army Despite The Threat Of Jail Or Social Isolation. Many Former Servicemen Despise Draft Dodgers And Deserters, Saying They Need Punishment.

Tymofey’s palms and fingers are still dotted with lilac, half-healed scars left by the razor-sharp barbed wire on the walls around the military training center he busted out from six months ago.

The lanky 36-year-old office worker in Kyiv said he has done it twice after being forcibly conscripted in April.

He said he chose to desert after realising how perfunctory and ineffective his training was for real combat, and that he would inevitably become a front-line stormtrooper with no chances of survival.

“There’s zero training. They don’t care that I won’t survive the very first attack,” Tymofey said, referring to the drill sergeants who were training him in April after police rounded him up in central Kyiv.

He claimed that his trainers were mostly preoccupied with preventing desertions from the centre, which was surrounded by a 9.8 ft high concrete wall covered with barbed wire.

“They don’t care whether a soldier learns to shoot. They gave me a gun, I shot a round in the direction of a target, and they ticked a box next to my name,” he said.

Tymofey asked to withhold his last name and personal details because he is hiding from the authorities.

He claimed he has not been officially charged with desertion or going AWOL (absent without leave), charges that can be seen in the online and publicly-accessible registry of pretrial investigations.

His explanation is simple: “Half the country is on the run”, while military and civilian authorities do not have the capacity to track down and apprehend each deserter.

Prosecutors said in October that some 235,000 servicemen went AWOL, and almost 54,000 have deserted since Russia began its full-scale invasion in 2022.

Those numbers began to snowball last year. Some 176,000 AWOL cases and 25,000 desertions were registered between September 2024 and September 2025.

“Even in Russia, there aren’t that many soldiers going AWOL,” Valentyn Manko, top commander of storm troops said.

The desertion crisis exacerbates the disastrous shortage of servicemen amid the gradual, grinding loss of Ukrainian territory to Russia.

In November, Russian forces occupied some 500 square kilometres (190 sq miles), mostly in eastern Ukraine, while the Washington-mediated peace talks stalled again.

Manko said that about 30,000 men are mobilised monthly, but the preferred number is 70,000 to “restaff” all military units.

A serviceman can be accused of deserting 24 hours after leaving his military unit, and can face between five and 12 years in jail, according to wartime regulations, while going AWOL is punishable by up to 10 years in jail.

Many prefer jail.

“The number of our deserters, servicemen gone AWOL is too high,” Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, former deputy head of Ukraine’s General Staff of Armed Forces said. “They think that from the legal standpoint, it’s easier to go to jail than to the front line.”

Romanenko has long been advocating for the introduction of stricter wartime laws and harsher punishment for deserters and corrupt officials, who he believes should be sent to the front line instead of jail.

The legal difference between desertion and going AWOL is an “intention to leave the service for good”.

But since November 2024, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government has declared an amnesty for first-time deserters, who can return to their unit without any punishment.

Some 30,000 have, counting on the lenience of military authorities and their commanding officers.

“There’s more understanding towards them,” a psychologist at a military unit in southern Ukraine said on condition of anonymity, because he is not authorised to talk to the media.

Desertion does not always stem from fear of death, and is often caused by inattentive commanding officers who ignore their servicemen’s issues, the psychologist said.

“Some say their commander didn’t let them go on leave, didn’t let them visit their sick relatives, didn’t let them get married,” he said.

In one case, a man in his early twenties deserted after learning he would be dispatched to the front-line town of Pokrovsk, the psychologist said.

After fleeing, the deserter worked in a factory job despite the risk of being caught, the psychologist found out later.

Meanwhile, the military police force is severely understaffed and cannot detain a serviceman without a court order unless he is drunk or threatens them with a weapon – while courts are swamped with thousands of cases that cannot be processed promptly.

So, a deserter’s nightmare is the “conscription patrols” that comprise military and police officers who comb public places asking men of fighting age to show IDs and “soldier’s tickets”, QR-coded documents about their conscription status.

But many deserters know their way around such places, or even carry enough cash to pay a bribe of up to several hundred dollars.

Deserters can also be caught while driving cars registered to them, or even connected to them via traffic fines paid for from their cards.

That is how Tymofey got caught.

For months, he had been driving his brother’s car, but in April, he used his own credit card to pay a fine for running a red light.

Days later, traffic police rounded him up, saying that a conscription notice had been sent to him months earlier.

Tymofey claimed to have never received the notice.

He was sent to a training center in the central Zhytomyr region and escaped after finding a gap in the barbed wire and securing a ride from a friend.

To reach the car, he said he walked for five hours in the rain through a forest, stumbling and scratching his face and arms.

“The friend almost drove away without me,” Tymofey said.

Once in Kyiv, he moved to his friend’s apartment, went back to work, and even started using his old SIM card.

But two months later, he was caught again while driving his brother’s car.

His second escape was an easier, fast-forwarded version of the first one, because “the training center was in Kyiv and the fence was lower”, he said, showing his scarred palms.

Tymofey shrugged off the opinion of his friends and relatives who condemn his “cowardice” and a “lack of patriotism”.

Some have cut ties with him altogether, he said.

Many former servicemen despise draft dodgers and deserters, thinking they should face tougher punishment and have their civil rights limited.

“They shouldn’t be allowed to vote or receive pension,” suggested Yevhen Galasiyk, who lost his right eye near the eastern town of Bakhmut in 2023, and still suffers from severe headaches.