In the spring of 1944, in the quiet little town of Alcolu, South Carolina, two young girls, Betty June Binnicker, age 11, and Mary Emma Thames, age 8, were brutally murdered while picking flowers along a railroad track. Their bodies were found in a nearby water filled ditch. The cause of death was determined to be multiple blows to their skulls with a metal railroad spike. A Mr. George Stinney was soon arrested for the murders. While there was no physical evidence or eyewitness accounts linking the defendant to the crime, unfortunately for Mr. Stinney, the two girls were white. He was black.
Two white police officers were able to get a confession out of Mr. Stinney within an hour, behind closed doors. It was the only evidence offered up during his trial, a trial that was held in one day and lasted only two and a half hours. It was attended by 1,500 people, all of them white. Blacks were not allowed in the courtroom. Mr. Stinney, his family having been driven from their small town, faced the trial alone. Council for the defense offered no evidence on its client’s behalf, and it requested no psychiatric evaluation of the defendant. A guilty verdict was reached after only 10 minutes of deliberation by the (all white male) jury. No recommendation for mercy was given. Had Mr. Stinney’s lawyer filed a simple one sentence appeal, the execution would have been automatically stayed for at least a year. But this was impossible due to the fact that Mr. Stinney did not see his attorney again from the time he left the court. Furthermore, his attorney never spoke to any members of the defendant’s family, let alone inform them that they had the right to appeal the death sentence. Just 81 days after his arrest, on June 16, 1944, Mr. Stinney would walk into the execution chamber.
There is one more tragic element to this already tragic story. Mr. George Junius Stinney Jr. was just 14 years old when he was put to death. He was the youngest person (legally) executed in the United States in the 20th century.
Being small for his age, weighing just 95 pounds (approximately 43 kilograms) and only five feet one inch tall (approximately 1.5 meters), it was with great difficulty that the death sentenced was carried out. But carried out it was. His small body was propped up with books in order to get him to fit properly in the electric chair (the original designers having carelessly overlooked the fact that one day their device might be used to execute a small child), allowing for an electrode to be attached to his right leg.
One commentator reported that George said nothing as the mask was lowered over his face. But after the first 2,400 volts passed through the boy’s small body “the death mask slipped from his face and his eyes were open when two additional shots of 1,200 and 500 volts followed.” George’s head “went up and the mask came of his face … and saliva and all was coming out of his mouth and tears from his eyes.”
The Governor, Olin Johnson, had received hundreds of letters and telegrams asking for leniency for the young boy. But facing a primary election in July, the Governor was not inclined to grant clemency. One telegram compared the execution of a child to something that Adolf Hitler would do. A stinging and bitter accusation considering that American troops had just landed on the beaches of Normandy ten days earlier in the D-Day invasion to liberate France from Nazi occupation and terror. On that one day alone, 9,000 Allied soldiers would die or be wounded fighting the Germans.
It can be argued that the execution of a 14 year old child was a social aberration from a bygone era. A simple anomaly. An isolated case that “fell through the cracks.” A repulsive event from a period when America was still suffering from racial and social ignorance. Surely, as a society, the United States has progressed far beyond the days of when it tolerated the State sanctioned execution of children, has it not?
Two pilots are sitting in an air-conditioned windowless room in New Mexico. Before them sit an array of 14 computer monitors and four keyboards. 6,250 miles away (about 10,000 kilometers) they are controlling a Predator drone that is circling lazily in a figure eight pattern over Afghanistan. They are observing a crude house made of mud when the order is given to launch a laser guided Hellfire missile at the target. With just seconds to go till impact, a small child walks out from behind one of the corners of the structure. A flash on the control screen confirms the impact and explosion, with parts of the structure collapsing and the child disappearing.
“Did we just kill a kid?” the co-pilot asks the pilot.
“Yeah, I guess that was a kid,” the pilot replies.
Confirmation as to whether or not a missile strike had just been carried out on a child was requested. “No. That was a dog,” comes the anonymous response from a military command center.
The pilots review the video of the drone strike that had just taken place.
A dog on two legs?
One of the pilots is no longer in the Air Force, declining to renew his enlistment contract when it was up. After 6,000 flight hours and six years of military service he says “I saw men, women and children die during that time. I never thought I would kill that many people. In fact, I thought I couldn’t kill anyone at all.” He has since been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder by doctors with the Veterans’ Administration.
While the above incident could be deemed an “accident,” apparently the targeted murder of children is now accepted US military policy.
Lt. Col. Marion “Ced” Carrington, Commander of 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, states, “It kind of opens our aperture. In addition to looking for military-age males, it’s looking for children with potential hostile intent” as well. While the Lt. Col would not elaborate on what exactly are the rules of engagement when encountering potential child combatants, reassuringly he tells us that he advises the soldiers serving under him to use “courageous restraint.”
Apparently this “courageous restraint” was lacking on October 14, 2012, when US Marines operating in Helmand province requested, and got clearance for, an airstrike on “shadowy figures” thought to be in the process of setting up an improvised explosive device (IED). The assailants killed in the strike turned out to be three children who were 12, 10 and 8 years old.
The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), a part of NATO and the organization that is nominally in command of the war (the reality being, of course, that it is a US led affair), said that it may have “accidentally killed three innocent Afghan civilians.” Family members of the victims reported that the children were sent to gather dung, which is used for fuel.
America’s first war in Iraq and its associated sanctions are believed to have resulted in the deaths of over half a million children. America’s second war in Iraq is believed to have resulted in the deaths of over 600,000 Iraqis (most of them between the ages of 15 and 44). America’s targeted drone attacks in the Tribal Regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan have reportedly killed between 474 and 881 civilians, including 176 children
If these were the actions of China, Russia, Iran, or any other country on Earth, we would be able to see them clearly for what they are. War crimes and crimes against humanity of the highest order. We would also realize that they are the actions of a society that is in moral decline.
Why it is impossible for the vast majority of Americans to see this is incomprehensible.
Acknowledgement: The author would sincerely like to thank Professor Bryan A. Stevenson, founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, for making him aware of the story of George Stinney.
Tom McNamara is an Assistant Professor at the ESC Rennes School of Business, France, and a Visiting Lecturer at the French National Military Academy at Saint-Cyr, Coëtquidan, France.
“Afghan kids recruited for suicide attacks” by Joe Gould and John Ryan, July 18, 2012, Army Times. Accessed at:
“Attempts to clear name of 14-year-old boy who was executed in South Carolina 67 years ago” Reporter: Mark Potter, Anchor: Brian Williams, NBC Nightly News 6:30 PM EST (NBC News Transcripts), October 4, 2011.
“Attorney Decries Juvenile Executions (From Young Blood: Juvenile Justice and the Death Penalty, P 159-165, 1995, Shirley Dicks, ed. – See NCJ-166057)” by D. Bruck, 1995. Accessed at:
“Columbia Journal; Prison Lures Them In (as Tourists)” February 22, 1994, The New York Times. Accessed at:
“D-Day June 6, 1944” United States Army Official Homepage. Accessed at:
“Do Targeted Killings Work?” by Daniel L. Byman, Senior Fellow Foreign Policy, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, July 14, 2009, The Brookings Institute. Accessed at: http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2009/07/14-targeted-killings-byman
“Iraq Sanctions Kill Children, U.N. Reports” by Barbara Crossette, December 1, 1995, The New York Times. Accessed at:
“Living Under Drones: Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civilians From US Drone Practices in Pakistan” the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic (Stanford Law School) and the Global Justice Clinic (NYU School of Law), September 2012. Accessed at:
“Questions Raised in Deaths of Afghan Children in Coalition Strike” by Alissa J. Rubin, October 17, 2012, The New York Times. Accessed at:
“Some Afghan kids aren’t bystanders” by Dan Lamothe and Joe Gould, December 3, 2012, Military Times. Accessed at:
“Study Claims Iraq’s ‘Excess’ Death Toll Has Reached 655,000” by David Brown, October 11, 2006, The Washington Post. Accessed at:
“The Human Cost of the War in Iraq: A Mortality Study, 2002-2006” by G. Burnham, S. Doocy, E. Dzeng, R. Lafta and L. Roberts, with the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, Al Mustansiriya University and the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, October 11, 2006. Accessed at:
“The Merciful Executioner: Spectacles of Sexual Danger and National Reunification in the George Stinney Case, 1944” by Annette Louise Bickford, University of Toronto, Southern Anthropologist Vol. 35, No. 1, 2010
“The Woes of an American Drone Operator” by Nicola Abé, December 14, 2012, Der Spiegel. Accessed at:
“War in Iraq: Humanitarian Relief Efforts” April 11, 2003, The Washington Post. Accessed at:
“When Something Wicked This Way Comes: Evolving Standards of Indecency – Thompson and Stanford Revisited” by J. L. Whitney, 46 Clev. St. L. Rev. 801 (1998)
“World: Middle East Iraqis blame sanctions for child deaths” by Jeremy Bowen, August 12, 1999, BBC. Accessed at:
Photo – George Stinney, 1944, executed at age 14 years old (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
- US sets records with number of drone strikes in Afghanistan this year (rt.com)
- Newtown kids v Yemenis and Pakistanis: what explains the disparate reactions? [2 of 2] (wondersofpakistan.wordpress.com)
Bad enough, assuming the details are as they seem. (The explosive was reportedly seven grams, about a quarter of an ounce, of a substance called HTMD, which is slightly less explosive than TNT; this amount seems more suitable for blowing off your fingers than for blowing up a building.)
But the Murdoch-owned New York Post gave the story a political angle (12/31/12):
The pregnant daughter of a prominent city doctor, and her boyfriend–a Harvard grad and Occupy Wall Street activist–were busted for allegedly having a cache of weapons and a powerful bomb-making explosive in their apartment in a Greenwich Village brownstone.
That’s right–Occupy Wall Street. This isn’t the first time the paper has reported a link between a criminal case and the activist movement. Back in July, the paper reported that DNA from an Occupy protest was linked to an unsolved 2004 murder. The DNA “match” turned out to be contamination by an employee of the police department lab.
And this time around, the OWS link would seem to be nonexistent. No one associated with Occupy seems to know who this Aaron Greene person might be. The paper notes in the final paragraph that Greene “has five prior run-ins with the police,” which might be more relevant than a seemingly phantom connection to an activist group.
The Post’s report was cited in other news accounts; the Associated Press (12/31/12), for instance, put it this way:
The New York Post reported in its Monday editions that Gliedman is the daughter of a prominent Manhattan doctor. It described her boyfriend as a Harvard graduate and an Occupy Wall Street activist.
And on CBS This Morning (1/2/13), Seth Doane reported:
CBS News has learned that police seized two shotguns, a flare launcher, nine high-capacity rifle magazines, various handwritten notebooks containing formulas, literature on how to make booby traps and homemade weapons, and pages from a do-it-yourself manual called The Terrorist Encyclopedia. The New York Post reported Greene was a member of the Occupy Wall Street movement but the group has denied this.
But CBS doesn’t leave it there. They followed that with a soundbite from Mitchell Silbe of K2 Intelligence, who spun out this scenario:
The assumption is that the vast majority of the people there were peaceful protestors, but there was a more radical fringe element to the group, and there was a concern that at some point they might turn to violence if they weren’t accomplishing their political aims.
It’s bad enough to treat a unsubstantiated claim by a partisan news outlet, with a record of sensational misinformation on the same subject, as a relevant fact in a story. But how do you justify using this junk journalism as a chance to let a source give free rein to his fantasies of how Occupy might take a turn towards violence?
- New York Post Helps NYPD Slander Occupy Wall Street (Again) (blogs.villagevoice.com)
Haneen Zoabi is an Arab Israeli member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. She was elected in 2009 as a member from the Balad Party. Balad is an Arab party that was formed in 1995 with the aim of “struggling to transform the state of Israel into a democracy for all its citizens.” In the West, this is a perfectly normal goal. But Israel’s Zionist ideology disqualifies it as a “Western” nation. Thus Balad’s aim is in direct opposition to the Zionist idea of Israel as a “Jewish state,” a concept that Ms Zoabi labels “inherently racist.”
Apparently, Haneen Zoabi is fearless. She actually lives her principles. She has been campaigning loudly and very publicly for full citizenship rights for Israel’s Palestinians. She has also actively opposed Israel’s settlement movement, occupation policies, and its siege of Gaza. That last effort led her to participate in the international flotilla that sought to break the Gaza siege in May of 2010. That was the time Israeli commandos attacked the Mavi Marmara in international waters, killing 9 Turkish activists who tried to resist the assault on their ship.
In an outright dictatorship, Ms Zoabi would be in jail or worse. And, given the direction of Israel’s political evolution, that still might be her fate.
However, as of now she is just the worst nightmare of an ethnocentric state, and a government pushing racist policies while trying to pretend it is a democracy. It is a nightmare for the Israel’s Zionist leadership because Zoabi, as a member of the Knesset, insists that if the Israeli Jews won’t allow full citizenship for non-Jews, as a real democracy must, then she is not going to let them pretend anymore. Yet pretense is all that is left of Israel’s international persona. If the “Jewish state” loses the ability to posture as “the only democracy in the Middle East,” the country’s reputation in the world is, as the saying goes, fit for the dust hole.
Think of it this way. Israel is the nation-state equivalent of Oscar Wilde’s fictional character Dorian Gray. Gray is a man who never seems to be anything but young, good-looking, and successful. However, hidden away in some closet there is an extraordinarily ugly and frightening portrait of him, and it is this portrait that ages and reflects the meanness and brutality of Gray’s true character. Haneen Zoabi has uncovered such a portrait of Israel and insists on going about showing everyone the state’s real characteristics. She wants the world to see the true picture. That is why the Israeli government is trying to destroy Haneen Zoabi.
The catalyst for the campaign against Zoabi was her presence on the Mavi Marmara in 2010. Not only was she on a ship attempting to bring humanitarian assistance to over 1.6 million Gazans living under an illegal Israeli embargo, but she was also an eyewitness to nine official Israeli acts of murder.
To the acts of collective punishment, the shelling and bombing of civilian neighborhoods, and the seemingly random murder of civilians by Israeli border snipers, can now be added a deadly attack on a civilian vessel in international waters. All of these actions are criminal under international law and they all easily fall into the category of state terrorism. However, in the Kafkaesque world of Zionism, it is Ms Zoabi who became the “terrorist.”
When, on 2 June 2010, she returned to the Knesset following the the Mavi Marmara incident and insisted on bearing witness to Israeli offenses, she was shouted down by her “outraged” fellow members of the Knesset, most of whom saw Zoabi as a traitor. Her efforts to describe what she had seen reduced the Knesset session to “pandemonium.” From that point Ms Zoabi received “hundreds of threats, by letters, by email, by phone call.” In July of 2011, while contesting statements being made by Prime Minister Netanyahu, she was ejected from the Knesset by the chamber’s Speaker who then suspended her from further participation based on a grossly exaggerated charge that she had assaulted one of the chamber’s ushers.
Meanwhile, members of the Prime Minister’s party, Likud, conspired to ban Ms Zoabi from running in the upcoming Israeli elections (scheduled for 22 January 2013). The Knesset’s Ethics Committee voted that Zoabi had violated Article 7A of Israel’s “Basic Law” which states that a candidate for or member of the Knesset, “cannot reject Israel as a Jewish and democratic state…or support armed combat by an enemy state or terror organization against the State of Israel.” Some Israelis claim that the group organizing the flotilla efforts to break the Gaza siege is a terrorist organization, but that is clearly nonsense. On the other hand, there can be little doubt that Ms Zoabi is shouting from the rooftops the blatant fact that “Israel as Jewish and democratic state” reflects a deep and tragic contradiction.
According to such luminaries of the Israeli right as MK Danny Danon, Ms Zoabi has “spit on the state.” She does not belong in the Knesset, according to Danon, “she belongs in Jail.” (Danon is also the politician who had the clever idea of inviting Glenn Beck, an incendiary right-wing American TV talk show personality, to address the Israeli parliament.)
Subsequently, Israel’s supreme court declared the banning of Haneen Zoabi was unconstitutional, but Danon has replied that he and his allies are ready with “plan B.” They will simply have the Knesset change the law so as to prevent future electoral campaigns by anyone like Zoabi.
Politicians with dictatorial leanings instinctively avoid their own reflection. They cannot admit the consequences of their own actions and policies and they cannot tolerate others who publicly expose those consequences. Like Dorian Gray, they restrict the ugly truth to some hidden closet. Yet, eventually, someone like Ms Zoabi comes along and takes up the role of truth-teller.
There is another issue that her efforts bring to light. It is that the interests of the state (understood here as a government) and the interests of the nation (the collective occupants of a country) may not always be the same. Governments most often represent cliques or classes or elites or ideologues, etc. Those in power, ruling in the interest of these smaller constituencies, simply assume that their own parochial interests stand for the “national interest.”
Ms Zoabi is insisting that the Israeli State cease identifying itself with the interest of a single constituency and start representing the interests of the nation as a whole. What this is all about, she says, are “the values, the humanistic, universalistic values of freedom, of equality, of justice.” But there is nothing “universalistic” about Zionism and so, for her efforts, she is castigated and threatened. Such is the state that Zionism has built.
While the French press persists in announcing the “imminent fall” of Syria and the “flight of Bashar al-Assad,” the reality on the ground has turned around completely. Even though chaos is plaguing most of the territory, the “liberated zones” have melted like snow in the sun. Deprived of its anchor points, the FSA has been left with no prospects in sight, while Washington and Moscow are poised to blow the whistle to end the game.
The countdown has begun. As soon as the new Obama administration will be confirmed by the Senate, it will present a peace plan for Syria to the Security Council. Legally, though President Obama succeeds himself, his former administration is only responsible for the managing of current affairs and can not take any major initiative. Politically, Obama failed to react when, in the midst of the presidential race, some of his colleagues torpedoed the Geneva Agreement. But he proceeded with a general housecleaning right after the announcement of his reelection. As expected, General David Petraeus, the architect of the war on Syria, fell into the trap that had been set up for him and was forced to resign. As expected, the NATO and Missile Shield chiefs – adverse to an agreement with Russia – have been put under investigation for corruption and obliged to remain silent. Also as expected, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been taken out of the game. Only the method chosen to eliminate her came as a surprise: a serious health accident that plunged her into a coma.
Meanwhile back at the UN, things have moved on. The Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) signed a Memorandum with the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in September. In October, it monitored CSTO maneuvers in Kazakhstan simulating a deployment of “blue chapkas” in Syria. In December, the DPKO convened the military representatives of the permanent Security Council members to brief them on the manner in which the deployment could be carried out. Despite their opposition to this solution, the French and the British bowed to the wishes of the United States.
Nevertheless, France attempted to use the Joint Special Representative of the United Nations and the League of Arab States, Lakhdar Brahimi, to modify the Geneva peace plan in line with the objections it had raised on June 30th. Ultimately, Brahimi carefully refrained from taking a position, and instead contented himself with transmitting messages to and fro between the various parties to the conflict.
The truth is that on the ground the upper hand is held by the Syrian government. The military situation has been reversed. The French themselves have ceased to mention the “liberated zones” they yearned to govern through a United Nations mandate. These areas have been steadily shrinking, and those that are still holding out are in the hands of the disreputable Salafists. The FSA troops were instructed to abandon their positions and regroup around the capital for a final assault. The Contras were hoping to rally the Palestinian refugees, mainly Sunni Moslem, against the inter-denominational Syrian regime in the same manner that the Hariris in Lebanon tried to arouse the Sunni Palestinians of the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp against the Shiite Hezbollah. As in Lebanon this objective failed because the Palestinians know very well who their friends are and who is really fighting for the liberation of their land. Concretely, in Israel’s recent 8-day war on Gaza, it was the Iranian and Syrian weapons that saved the day, while the Gulf monarchies did not move a finger.
Certain elements of Hamas, loyal to Khaled Meshaal and funded by Qatar, opened the doors of the Yarmouk camp to a few hundred fighters of the Front to Protect the Levant (Syrian-Lebanese branch of Al-Qaeda), also related Qatar. They fought mainly against members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC). Via SMS, the Syrian government asked the 180 000 camp residents to evacuate the premises as soon as possible and offered them temporary accommodation in Damascus hotels, schools and gyms. Some preferred to go to Lebanon. The next day, the Syrian Arab army attacked the camp with heavy artillery and regained control. 14 Palestinian organizations then signed an agreement declaring the camp a “neutral zone“. The FSA fighters withdrew in an orderly fashion and resumed their war against Syria in the surrounding countryside, while the civilians returned to their homes. They found a devastated camp where schools and hospitals had been systematically destroyed.
In strategic terms, the war is already over: the FSA has lost the popular support it had enjoyed at one point and has no chance of achieving victory. The Europeans still think they can replace the regime by bribing top officials and causing a coup, but they realize that it will be impossible to bring off with the FSA. Contras continue to roll in, but the flow of money and weapons is drying up. Much of the international support has stopped although the consequences on the battlefield cannot yet be seen, much like a star that can continue to shine long after its death.
The United States has clearly decided to turn the page and to sacrifice the FSA. It gives it senseless instructions that lead the Contras to their death. Thousands were killed last month. Meanwhile, in Washington, the National Intelligence Council cynically announced that “international jihadism” will soon disappear. Other allies of the United States should now ask themselves whether this new equation does not imply that they too will be sacrificed.
Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran has not yet crossed the red line Tel Aviv set on its nuclear program.
“Iran remains the number one threat,” Netanyahu said Thursday at the last session of the annual year-end meeting in the Foreign Ministry for the Israeli ambassadors serving abroad.
“There is a chance for positive change in the region if that country was prevented from getting a nuclear weapon,” he said referring to the Islamic Republic.
The prime minister added that in the short term he expected regional tribulations to continue.
During a speech at the UN in September, Netanyahu drew a red line on a picture of a bomb signifying when Tehran would be 90% on the way to development of a bomb. He said Iran would not likely pass that line until the spring or summer.
“And this will give more time for sanctions and diplomacy to convince Iran to dismantle its nuclear weapons program altogether,” Netanyahu added on Thursday.
The Israeli PM also addressed the Palestinian issue, saying Hamas could take control of the Palestinian Authority “any day,” and therefore “concrete security arrangements” must be included in any peace agreement, as well as recognition of the Zionist entity as the “state of the Jewish nation,” an end to the “right of return” and a sincere declaration on the end of the conflict.
- Netanyahu was wrong about Iraq having nuclear weapons
- NYT and Professor Netanyahu
- Context of ‘July 8-10, 1996: Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu Tells Congress US Must Join Israel in ‘Democratizing’ Middle East’
- Sanctions not slowing Iran N-program by ‘one millimeter’: Netanyahu
- Netanyahu’s Role in Crafting the “Strategic Asset” Myth
- When Netanyahu Crossed the Line
The United States has imposed fresh sanctions on Iran that include bans on the country’s media despite Washington’s claims of protecting freedom of speech.
The new bans are included in the $633-billion military bill for 2013 which US President Barack Obama signed into law on Wednesday night.
The anti-Iran sanctions portion of the bill, among other economic features, blacklists the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) and its president Ezzatollah Zarghami and will block all the IRIB assets and prevent others from doing business with it.
The sanction against IRIB is an attempt by the West to silence Iranian media. It is on top of another flagrant violation of freedom of speech by satellite providers Eutelsat SA and Intelsat SA which stopped the broadcast of several Iranian satellite channels in October.
In November, the Hong Kong-based Asia Satellite Telecommunications Co. Ltd. (AsiaSat) also took all Iranian channels off air in East Asia under pressure from the US.
In a similar move in December, Spain’s top satellite company Hispasat ordered its satellite provider Overon to take Iranian channels Press TV and Hispan TV off the air.
The restrictions on Iranian media are interpreted as an attempt to silence the truth-telling media.
This comes as US lawmakers say the fresh anti-Iran sanctions portion of the bill is part of measures aimed at pressuring Iran to halt its nuclear energy program.
The United States, Israel and some of their allies have repeatedly accused Iran of pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.
Over the false allegation, Washington and the European Union have imposed illegal unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
Iran refutes the allegations and argues that as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, it is entitled to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
- US Senate to blacklist and block the assets of Iranian broadcaster IRIB (alethonews.wordpress.com)
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution urging the European Union and its member states to designate Hezbollah a ‘terrorist group’.
The resolution, approved on Wednesday, urges the European Union member states to also impose sanctions on Hezbollah, the Times of Israel news website reported.
Based on the resolution, which was co-sponsored by 85 House representatives, Hezbollah would be prevented from employing the territories belonging to the European Union for fundraising, recruitment and training.
On July 24, 2012, the European Union flatly rejected an Israeli call to blacklist Hezbollah as a “terrorist group”, because it regards Hezbollah as an active political party in Lebanon and there is not enough evidence to warrant listing the Lebanese group a ‘terror group’ as the United States does.
European countries argue that their relations with Lebanon, where Hezbollah provides extensive social services and its political wing holds government power, would be damaged by the designation. Among the 27 European Union member states, only the UK and the Netherlands are in favor of the designation, which would freeze the group’s Europe-held financial assets.