This young unnamed Palestinian girl was rescued from under rubble in Gaza. Image: Copyright Reuters.
Nicaragua has ended diplomatic relations with Israel, accusing the Likud government of being “fascist” and “genocidal” because of its attacks on Palestinian territory.
Nicaragua joins several countries to cut ties or take diplomatic action against Israel since it launched its war on Gaza in Oct 2023.
Bahrain – Withdrew its ambassador in November, saying the move “confirmed Bahrain’s historic position in support of the Palestinian cause”.
Belize – Cut diplomatic ties in November while reiterating its call for an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza.
Bolivia – Cut diplomatic ties in November, citing “crimes against humanity committed against the Palestinian people”.
Brazil – President Lula permanently withdrew his country’s ambassador in May after months of tensions over the war.
Chad – Announced in November it was withdrawing its charge d’affaires for “consultations”, with the decision taken in “indignation” at the conflict.
Chile – Withdrew its ambassador in November after accusing Israel of “unacceptable” human rights violations.
Colombia – President Gustavo Petro cut diplomatic ties in May, calling the Netanyahu administration “genocidal”.
Honduras – Withdrew its ambassador for “consultations” in November in light of the “serious humanitarian situation” unfolding in Gaza.
Jordan – Announced it was recalling its ambassador in November, accusing Israel of creating an “unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe”.
South Africa – Announced in November it was withdrawing three diplomats from Israel for “consultation” in response to the conflict.
Turkey – Recalled its ambassador in November “in view of the unfolding humanitarian tragedy in Gaza”.
Meanwhile, the death toll in Gaza since Oct 2023 is now 42,175; 98,336 wounded. The IDF recently attacked UN Peacekeepers (UNIFIL), wounding several soldiers and damaging their compound. The international community roundly condemned the IDF attacks. Two Lebanese Army soldiers were killed in a separate attack. At least three Canadian citizens have been killed in Lebanon since the IDF onslaught began.
The Israeli army issued the following warning to ambulances in southern Lebanon, stressing that they were targeted under the pretext of transporting Hezbollah elements:
“We caution against the continued transport of Hezbollah elements in ambulances.”
“We call on Lebanese medical teams to avoid engaging with Hezbollah elements and not cooperating with them.”
“Every action would be taken against any Hezbollah armed vehicle.”
In a provocative move to escalate tensions and incite fury within the Shia Crescent, Israel’s Channel 14 broadcast an incendiary piece insinuating that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani from Iraq was on an Israeli assassination hit list. Channel 14 had shown al-Sistani’s picture with red crosshairs over his head this alongside photos of Israel’s top adversaries, including Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
Al-Sistani, a 94-year-old Iranian-born Iraqi scholar, is considered one of the highest spiritual authorities by Shia Muslims. Washington expressed solidarity with al-Sistani amid growing outrage in the Middle East over the Israeli broadcast.
The US Ambassador to Iraq posted this on social media:
“Grand Ayatollah Sistani is a renowned and respected religious leader in the international community. He is a critical and influential voice in promoting a more peaceful region.”
Pope Francis (R) meets with Iraq’s Shia leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, in Najaf, Iraq, on 6 Mar 2021. In 2014, he issued a religious decree, urging Iraqis to mobilize and defend their country from ISIL (ISIS). [Vatican Media via AP]
Attacking medical personnel or ambulances is a war crime and crime against humanity under the Geneva Conventions. The IDF has already struck several hospitals in Lebanon. Channel 14’s deliberate broadcast was meant to incite Iranian and Shiite fury against Israel, much like Fox News did in the US to build anger at the Islamic world in order to gather public consensus for invading Afghanistan and Iraq. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, already indicted for war crimes by the ICC, is doing everything he can to stall his own nettlesome bribery and corruption trial proceedings in Jerusalem by widening this Middle Eastern war. Democratic circles suspect that Netanyahu favors Donald Trump as President, so all of these moves are deliberately done to damage the Biden Administration and thereby harm Kamala Harris’ chances at the polls this November. And negotiations to release the 100 or so remaining Israeli and American hostages were swept under the carpet by the loathsome Likud regime.
From the Jerusalem Post: “What does a guy have to do to get arrested around here?”
Sources:
UNIFIL statement (11 October 2024) | UNIFIL (unmissions.org)
Protection of medical personnel in armed conflicts—case study: Afghanistan – PMC (nih.gov)
Trial of Benjamin Netanyahu – Wikipedia
US Army PFC Sentenced to 14 Years in Prison for Attempting to Assist ISIS to Conduct Deadly Ambush on US Soldiers
Cole Bridges (AKA Cole Gonzales, 22) of Stow, OH was sentenced to 168 months in prison followed by ten years of supervised release for attempting to provide material support to help the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) to attack and kill US soldiers in the Middle East.
Bridges, a cavalry scout in the Third Infantry Division based in Fort Stewart, GA, began researching and consuming online propaganda promoting jihadists and their violent ideology. Bridges also expressed his support for ISIS and jihad on social media. In or about October 2020, Bridges began communicating with an FBI online covert employee (the OCE), who was posing as an ISIS supporter in contact with ISIS fighters in the Middle East. During these communications, Bridges expressed his frustration with the US military and his desire to aid ISIS. Bridges then provided training and guidance to purported ISIS fighters who were planning attacks, including advice about potential targets in NYC. Bridges also provided the OCE with portions of a US Army training manual and guidance about military combat tactics, for use by ISIS.
Bridges supplied the OCE with instructions for the purported ISIS fighters on how to attack US forces in the Middle East, like diagramming specific military maneuvers intended to help ISIS fighters maximize the lethality of attacks on US troops. Bridges further provided advice about the best way to fortify an ISIS encampment to repel an attack by US Army Special Forces, including by wiring certain buildings with explosives to kill the US soldiers. Bridges provided the OCE with a video of himself in his US Army body armor standing in front of a flag often used by ISIS fighters and making a gesture symbolic of support for ISIS. Bridges sent another video narrating a propaganda speech in support of the anticipated ambush by ISIS on US soldiers.
Bridges used a voice manipulator for this video. Image: US Army Counterintelligence Command.
This dangerous young ex-soldier seems to have an identity crisis and now he has thrown his life away. If the BOP has the resources, Bridges AKA Gonzales AKA whatever Arabic nom de guerre he chose, will probably require psychological counseling. Unclear is whether Bridge’s chain-of-command was aware of his mental instability and radicalization.
Sources:
Vietnam: Five Students Hospitalized with Suspected Food Poisoning in Ho Chi Minh City
Five high school students in Ho Chi Minh City receive medical care for suspected food poisoning following their lunch on October 10, 2024. Photo: Supplied
A suspected food poisoning incident at a Ho Chi Minh City high school led to the hospitalization of five students who suffered abdominal pain and vomited following their lunch.
An emergency team took these five students, including one 11th grader and four 12th graders, to the hospital where they received fluids and pain-relief medicines.
Their condition eventually stabilized and their vomiting and abdominal pain dissipated.
The hospital conducted tests as directed by the city’s Center for Disease Control and continued to closely monitor the five students, all of whom were diagnosed with acute gastroenteritis.
They were discharged from the hospital to continue recovery at home.
A rash of food poisoning incidents should have law-enforcement and health authorities in Vietnam concerned. As previously posted here on Coriolanus, this is probably the fourth reported such incident in the past few months where students have been sickened with food poisoning.
Source:
5 students hospitalized with suspected food poisoning in Ho Chi Minh City | Tuoi Tre News
Hundreds Stranded After Angry Protesters Force Martinique Airport Closure
Protesters set fire to a road sign outside the Fort-de-France airport on Martinique, 11 Oct 2024 Screenshot from AP video 4525195
Hundreds of passengers have been stranded in the French Caribbean island of Martinique after its airport was briefly forced to close because protesters overran the tarmac and tried to break in.
Martinique has a land area of 436 sq mi and a population of nearly 350,000. Map: Brittanica.com
The overnight shutdown delayed flights and officials at the airport urged stranded passengers to contact their airlines for information after the facility resumed operations by mid-morning.
French authorities had regained control of the airport, which demonstrators targeted in the latest protest against the rising cost of living. Reinforcements were being sent to the island.
Martinique has been gripped by bouts of protests over the high cost of living that have turned violent, with at least one person killed as demonstrators set fire to a police station, cars and road barricades and clashed with police officers.
On Thursday night, protesters overran the tarmac on the airport in the island’s capital, Fort-de-France, and tried to force their way into the main entrance, where hundreds of passengers had taken shelter.
Police securing the entrance were seen fending off assaults from the demonstrators and firing what appears to be tear gas in their direction. The airport later said on Facebook that flights had been suspended.
Three planes carrying some 1,000 passengers had to be diverted to the nearby island of Guadeloupe on Thursday. Another 500 passengers who were supposed to board those flights were stuck at the Fort-de-France airport.
The latest round of protests prompted the government to announce another curfew as it stressed that demonstrations on public roads were prohibited. This is the latest in a string of demonstrations that began in early September, prompting France to send special anti-riot police to the island.
French riot police apprehend a protester in Paris, France, 23 Mar 2023. The Republican Security Corps (CRS) have a terrible reputation for brutality and were once banned from Martinique. (Reuters Photo)
Martinique is a victim of European colonialism. The island suffers from high unemployment, rising costs of imported food, and an ecological disaster. Five decades of pesticide use to protect the vital banana crop have sickened people and ruined the soil. Chlordecone is a carcinogenic pesticide and used on Martinique until 2003. Until all the soil is decontaminated, residents were warned to refrain from eating self-produced fruits or vegetables. The last thing the people of Martinique need are bone-breaking riot police from their colonial masters.
Sources:
Hundreds stranded after anti-inequality protesters force Martinique airport closure | Euronews
Intractable Social-Economic Problems of Martinique (openedition.org)
20 Pakistani Coal Miners Shot Dead in Attack
Map: Wikimedia.org
Twenty coal miners were shot dead in an overnight attack on their lodgings by a group of heavily armed men in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province.
No group has claimed the attack, but separatist militants in Balochistan regularly target natural resource extraction projects dotted across the mineral-rich province, which is the poorest in Pakistan.
Up to 40 attackers fired at miners for half an hour starting around 12:30 AM with rocket launchers and hand grenades. A senior government official in the district confirmed the death toll and said seven more people had been wounded and machinery had been burned.
Laborers gather to protest against the killings of coal miners in an overnight attack in Duki district of Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province (Photo: AFP)
On Friday, the workers’ coffins were laid out in a public square where hundreds of protesting union and labor group members demanded better protection amid a rise in violence.
There were conflicting reports about where the victims hailed from.
Militants have in the past targeted energy projects in Balochistan with foreign financing — most notably from China — accusing outsiders of exploiting the resource-rich region.
The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) claimed a Sunday night bombing on a vehicle convoy in southern Karachi that killed two Chinese coal plant workers.
Beijing is a crucial ally for cash-strapped Pakistan but Chinese-funded infrastructure projects have sparked resentment and its nationals are routinely targeted by militant groups. Ethnic Baloch militants also regularly target migrant labourers from elsewhere in Pakistan, particularly Punjabis hailing from the east. Punjabis are Pakistan’s largest ethnic group and dominate the nation’s military forces, which have been battling the insurgency in Balochistan for decades.
In August, the BLA carried out coordinated attacks across Balochistan that killed dozens of mostly Punjabis. Friday’s attack comes just days before Pakistan is due to host the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — a regional bloc established by China and Russia.
The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) has an anti-Punjabi and anti-China agenda and is reported to be covertly supported by India and Afghanistan. Jundallah is a Baloch Salafi Sunni group operating in the Balochistan portion of Iran, regarded as the most underdeveloped, desolate, and poorest region of the country. Jundallah has an anti-Shia agenda which has conducted high-profile attacks in Iran.
Balochi men attired in traditional dresses perform during a ceremony organised to mark the Baloch Culture Day at the University of Balochistan (Photo: PPI)
Sources:
20 Pakistan Coal Miners Shot Dead In Attack | IBTimes
Baloch people in Iran – Wikipedia
Report: Iran Has Hit List of Former Trump Aides; US Scrambling to Protect Them
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi at the UN in 2022 holding up a photo of General Qassem Soleimani who was killed in a Trump-ordered assassination. This reckless killing crossed a line with Tehran and in mafia terms, created a personal vendetta. (Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
US officials are coming to a troubling realization about Iran’s repeated threats to kill Donald Trump and some of his former top generals and national security strategists: Tehran isn’t bluffing — and it isn’t giving up anytime soon.
Iran has been openly threatening Trump and those who oversaw his national security strategy since Jan 2020, when Trump ordered a drone strike killing Qassem Soleimani, then Iran’s most powerful military general. A senior analyst described the strike as an exceptional breach of sovereignty in the eyes of Iran.
Tehran has put out videos depicting the future deaths of Trump and others who helped orchestrate the Soleimani attack, pushed for their arrest and extradition and issued menacing statements promising revenge.
USIC officials briefed the Trump campaign last month about assassination threats against the former president, with the Trump campaign saying they were warned the threat has “heightened in the past few months.” The briefing followed a pair of assassination efforts on Trump this summer. No evidence has been presented to link those to Tehran.
And, while the government has gone to unprecedented lengths to protect many of these officials, some who experience similar threats receive no government protection. After firing anti-Iran polemicist John Bolton, President Donald Trump quickly removed his USSS detail.
The assassination of a low-profile official could thrust the two nations into a crisis. Some US officials are now spending hundreds of thousands of dollars each year on security for themselves and their families. As previously posted here on Coriolanus, elements in Iran have sought contracts with transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) like the Hells Angels or drug-cartels to eliminate enemies of the state.
General Qasem Soleimani was a popular figure in Iran and an effective combat leader against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. When the US invaded Afghanistan in Oct 2001 after the 11 Sep 2001 attacks, General Soleimani’s Quds Force collaborated with the US and led the 2001 uprising in Herat against the Taliban. His coalition included ethnic Hazaras, the Northern Alliance, and Quds Force that liberated the city before US forces arrived. During the wasteful US occupation of Iraq, the IRGC-QF-armed Shia militias caused large amounts of US military casualties. General Soleimani was assassinated on 3 Jan 2020 by a drone strike outside Baghdad Int’l Airport (BIAP). John Bolton and other homicidal Republican war-hawks may have a “fatwa for life” issued against them.
Government leaders and advisors act with impunity in making life-taking decisions knowing they will receive USSS, FSB, RCMP, Shin Bet, MSS, Scotland Yard etc etc protection. But imagine how much more circumspect these leaders and advisors would be when deciding to kill a so-called “enemy of the state” if they weren’t afforded taxpayer-funded bodyguards, like John Bolton discovered? Perhaps they will be less inclined to take someone’s life.
Contrast US leaders and their self-created dilemma today with the former President of Mexico pictured below. Andrés Manuel López Obrador dismissed his security detail, drawn from the Mexican Army, as soon as he became president. For five years no one tried to assassinate him– including the drug cartels, ISIS, a lone actor, the FSB, disgruntled military officers, or even a lunatic.
Meanwhile, the US Congress is allocating close to $150 million per year of taxpayer funds to protect these individuals from Iranian reprisals, a burden the Mexican taxpayer doesn’t have to shoulder.
Mexico’s then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador meeting constituents on 13 Apr 2023.
Sources:
Iran has a hit list of former Trump aides. The U.S. is scrambling to protect them. – POLITICO
:https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-cancelled-john-bolton-security-iran-election-2024-1967277
Witnesses Can “Bear-ly” Believe the Surprise Visitor at Connecticut Governor’s Estate
This 5 Oct 2024 photo shows a black bear climbing the gate of the Governor’s Residence, in Hartford, CT. (Courtesy of Joanna Kornafel via AP)
Witnesses could “bear-ly” believe the surprise visitor that appeared at the Connecticut governor’s estate.
A black bear scaled the fence Saturday as human passers-by did a double-take.
“It was definitely like: ‘Is this real?’” Joanna M. Kornafel recalled Friday.
She and her family were traveling in their car near the governor’s residence in Hartford when traffic slowed, and the reason soon became clear: The bear was crossing the street.
Then, as Kornafel’s husband drove and she grabbed her phone to take photos, the animal strode up the driveway to the 19th-century estate and scrambled up the tall metal gate. She photographed the bear standing on its hind legs on the gate, with its front paws on an adjacent pillar and its snout nosing about a globe-shaped light.
The family was struck by how quickly and nimbly the bear climbed up.
“We were all in awe of the bear. And excited,” said Kornafel, explaining that her 4-year-old son had been talking about it all week.
Gov. Ned Lamont’s (D) office said no one was home at the time, and the bear evidently just wandered off.
Bears have been spotted throughout Connecticut in recent years. Nearly all of the state’s 169 cities and towns reported sightings last year.
Source:
Witnesses can bear-ly believe the surprise visitor at Connecticut governor’s estate | AP News
Coriolanus 