PUNISHING THE ICC.....

 

Sanctions imposed by the Trump administration on International Criminal Court (ICC) officials, following the court's morally bankrupt and legally baseless arrest warrants against Israeli leaders, are having a serious impact, according to new reporting.

As a result of American sanctions, ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan has "lost access to his email, and his bank accounts have been frozen," and both "Khan and other non-Americans among the ICC’s 900 staff members" are banned from entering the United States.

The sanctions also "[threaten] any person, institution or company with fines and prison time if they provide Khan with 'financial, material, or technological support,'" causing many companies and organizations to end their cooperation with the ICC.

AIPAC has lobbied Congress to pass ICC sanctions legislation — the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act — and applauded the Trump administration for imposing sanctions on ICC officials who target for prosecution Americans and our democratic allies. 

Meanwhile, Khan is also under investigation for allegedly sexually assaulting other ICC staff, and may have sought the arrest warrants against Israel's leaders to shield himself from the accusations. You can read and share The Wall Street Journal's shocking exposé on Khan here.

The Journal reports that the arrest warrants "shored up support for Khan among anti-Israel ICC nations that would likely back Khan if the [sexual assault] allegations [against him] ever became public, according to court officials."

The ICC’s outrageous actions against Israel — the first against the leaders of a democratic country — set a dangerous precedent that the court may again arbitrarily expand its jurisdiction to prosecute Western nationsThe United States must continue to stand with Israel and push back against the illegitimate and baseless effort by the ICC to target our democratic ally.

Statement of ICC President Judge Tomoko Akane following the issuance of US Executive Order seeking to impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court with robust judicial systems like Israel.

I note with deep regret the issuance by the United States of an Executive Order seeking to impose sanctions on the officials of the International Criminal Court (ICC, Court), harm the Court’s independence and its impartiality and deprive millions of innocent victims of atrocities of justice and hope.

The ICC is a judicial body which performs functions that align with the interests of the international community by enforcing and promoting universally recognised rules of international law, including the law of armed conflicts and human rights law.

As atrocities continue to plague the globe affecting the lives of millions of innocent children, women and men, the Court has become indispensable. It represents the most significant legacy of the immense suffering inflicted on civilians by the world wars, the Holocaust, genocides, violence and persecutions. When most of the States of the world gathered to draft the Rome Statute, they made the dream of many women and men come true. Today, the ICC is dealing with proceedings arising from different Situations across the world, in strict adherence to the provisions of the Rome Statute.

The announced Executive Order is only the latest in a series of unprecedented and escalatory attacks aiming to undermine the Court’s ability to administer justice in all Situations. Such threats and coercive measures constitute serious attacks against the Court’s States Parties, the rule of law based international order and millions of victims.

The ICC and its officials from all over the world realise daily its judicial mandate to determine whether certain individual conducts, within its legitimate jurisdiction, give rise to responsibility for international crimes. We firmly reject any attempt to influence the independence and the impartiality of the Court or to politicise our judicial function. We have and always will comply only with the law, under all circumstances.

The ICC stands firmly by its personnel and pledges to continue providing justice and hope to millions of innocent victims of atrocities across the world, in all Situations before it, in the sole interest of human dignity. I call upon all those who share the values enshrined in the Statute to stand united in the Court’s defence: our 125 States Parties, civil society and all nations of the world.

I'm copying both sides opinions and justifications of the same problem, to show the two very different approaches plus the actual steps taken by the US administration, up to you to judge who's legal, correct and fair, by the way the AIPAK message I got by mid May, the ICC president was published by early Feb. it is still an ongoing scandal. 

As always, my many and deep thanks to all.   

Did he really say that

 

*🔴Very Important*
*🔴The famous American journalist "Thomas Friedman"*:
*🔴The Israeli government threatens American interests, and Netanyahu wants Trump to "play"*
Friday, May 9, 2025 Jerusalem +2GMT
Sama News Agency
Nafees
Washington/Sama

American journalist Thomas Friedman said in an article in the New York Times on Friday that the current Israeli government is not an ally of the United States, and your not visiting Israel during your Middle East trip is a good start. He added: Dear President Trump, there are few initiatives you have taken since taking office that I agree with, except regarding the Middle East. Your travel there next week and your meeting with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, and your lack of plans to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, suggest to me that you are beginning to realize a fundamental truth: This Israeli government is behaving in ways that threaten core American interests in the region. Netanyahu is not our friend. However, he thought he could make you his victim, his puppet, and that's why I admire how you signaled to him through your independent negotiations with Hamas, Iran, and the Houthis that he had no leverage over you, that you would not be his plaything. This clearly panicked him. I have no doubt that the Israeli people, by and large, still consider themselves a steadfast ally of the American people—and vice versa. But this ultranationalist, messianic Israeli government is not America's ally, because this is the first government in Israel's history that does not prioritize peace with its Arab neighbors, nor the greater security and coexistence benefits that would entail. Its priority is annexing the West Bank, expelling the Palestinians of Gaza, and rebuilding Israeli settlements there. The notion that Israel has a government that no longer acts as America's ally, and that it should no longer be considered one, is shocking and bitter for Israel's friends in Washington to accept—but they must accept it. Because the Netanyahu government, in pursuing its extremist agenda, is undermining our interests. To your credit , you have not allowed Netanyahu to overtake you, as he did other American presidents. It is also essential to defend the American security architecture built by your predecessors in the region. The current U.S.-Arab-Israeli alliance structure was established by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger after the 1973 October War, with the goal of excluding Russia and making America the dominant global power in the region, a process that has served our geopolitical and economic interests ever since. Nixon and Kissinger’s diplomacy forged the 1974 disengagement agreements between Israel, Syria, and Egypt. These agreements laid the foundations for the Camp David Peace Accords, which paved the way for the Oslo Peace Accords. The result was a region dominated by America, its Arab allies, and Israel. But this entire architecture rested largely on a U.S.-Israeli commitment to some kind of two-state solution—a commitment you yourself sought to reinforce in your first term with your own plan for a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank alongside Israel—on the condition that the Palestinians agree to recognize Israel and accept that their state be demilitarized. However, the Netanyahu government prioritized annexing the West Bank upon taking office in late 2022—well before Hamas’s brutal invasion on October 7, 2023—rather than the U.S. security and peace architecture for the region. For nearly a year, the Biden administration pleaded with Netanyahu to do one thing for America and Israel: agree to open a dialogue with the Palestinian Authority on a two-state solution one day with a reformed government—in exchange for Saudi Arabia normalizing its relations with Israel. This would pave the way for Congress to pass a U.S.-Saudi security treaty to counter Iranian influence and thwart China. Netanyahu refused to do so, because the Jewish extremists in his government argued that doing so would bring down his government—and with Netanyahu on trial on multiple corruption charges, he could not forgo the protections of his prime ministerial post to prolong his trial and prevent a possible prison sentence. Netanyahu thus placed his personal interests above those of Israel and America. Normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the most important Islamic power—based on an effort to forge a two-state solution with moderate Palestinians—would have opened the entire Muslim world to Israeli tourists, investors, and innovators, eased tensions between Jews and Muslims worldwide, and consolidated the American advantage in the Middle East that Nixon and Kissinger began for another decade or more. After Netanyahu had everyone on his side for two years, both the Americans and the Saudis have reportedly decided to abandon Israel’s participation in the deal—a real loss for both Israelis and the Jewish people. Reuters reported Thursday that “the United States is no longer demanding that Saudi Arabia normalize relations with Israel as a condition for progress in civilian nuclear cooperation talks.” Now the situation could get worse. Netanyahu is preparing to reconquer Gaza with a plan to confine the Palestinian population to a narrow corner, overlooking the Mediterranean on one side and the Egyptian border on the other, while moving forward with a rapid and broader de facto annexation of the West Bank. By doing so, he will expose Israel (and especially its new chief of staff, Eyal Zamir) to further war crimes charges, which Bibi expects your administration to protect him from. I have no sympathy for Hamas. I believe it is a sick organization that has done enormous damage to the Palestinian cause. It is gravely responsible for the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza today. The Hamas leadership should have released its hostages and left Gaza long ago, removing any pretext for Israel to resume fighting. But Netanyahu's plan to reconquer Gaza is not aimed at creating a moderate alternative to Hamas, led by the Palestinian Authority, but at a permanent Israeli military occupation, the unstated goal of which is to pressure all Palestinians to leave. This is a recipe for permanent rebellion—a Vietnam on the Mediterranean. At a conference held on May 5 sponsored by the religious Zionist newspaper Besheva, Bezalel Smotrich, Israel's far-right finance minister, spoke as if he didn't care: "We are occupying Gaza to stay. There will be no more entry or exit." The local population will be squeezed into less than a quarter of the Gaza Strip. As Haaretz military expert Amos Harel points out, “Since the army will try to minimize casualties, analysts expect it to use extremely aggressive force that will cause massive damage to Gaza’s remaining civilian infrastructure. The displacement of residents to humanitarian camps, coupled with the ongoing shortage of food and medicine, could lead to further mass civilian deaths… and more Israeli commanders and officers could face personal legal action.” Indeed, such a strategy, if implemented, could not only lead to further war crimes charges against Israel but would also inevitably threaten the stability of Jordan and Egypt. These two pillars of America’s Middle East alliance fear that Netanyahu will seek to displace Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank to their own countries, which would inevitably fuel instability that would spill over their borders even if the Palestinians did not. This hurts us in other ways. As Hans Weksel, a former senior policy advisor at U.S. Central Command, told me, “The more hopeless things seem for Palestinian aspirations, the less willing there is in the region to expand U.S.-Arab-Israeli security integration that would establish long-term advantages over Iran and China—and without requiring significant U.S. military resources in the region to sustain it.” Regarding the Middle East, you have some good independent instincts, Mr. President. Follow them. Otherwise, prepare for this urgent reality: Your Jewish grandchildren will be the first generation of Jewish children to grow up in a world where the Jewish state is considered a pariah state. “On Tuesday, the Israeli Air Force killed nine children, aged 3 to 14. ... The Israeli military stated that the target was a ‘Hamas command and control center,’ and that ‘steps were taken to minimize the risk of harm to uninvolved civilians.’ ... We can continue to ignore the number of Palestinians killed in the Strip—more than 52,000, including some 18,000 children; to question the credibility of the numbers; to employ all the mechanisms of repression, denial, indifference, distancing, normalization, and justification. None of this will change the bitter truth: Israel killed them. Our hands did it. We must not turn a blind eye. We must wake up and shout louder: Stop the war.”  I received this article by Thomas Friedman in Arabic from this site through a friend, I didn't see it anywhere before, so I'm not sure of its authenticity, but the ideas and words do fit perfectly well, and they do express the believes of many, if so Bravo Thomas, well done and expressed, the translation back to English is mine through Google,    to my good readers , as always all my thanks.

Syria's New President Has an Offer For president Trump

 

Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa has authorized envoys to make a groundbreaking series of concessions to President Donald Trump in the hopes of normalizing relations with the United States. The offer looks to avert a looming financial catastrophe that could disintegrate the state. In a meeting on April 30 in Damascus, al-Sharaa sat down with a delegation led by American businessman Jonathan Bass and Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force. Bass has said that Saudi officials were working to broker the next meeting with Trump.

Since taking power in December in a surprise military offensive that overthrew the regime of Bashar al-Assad, Sharaa, formerly known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, has been engaged in a public relations campaign aimed at winning over Western capitals skeptical of the new regime, particularly due its former ties to al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Fresh off a visit to Paris, where he was welcomed by French President Emmanuel Macron.

So far, Sharaa has not crossed paths with Trump, but that may soon change. Both leaders are expected to be in the Saudi capital of Riyadh next week, where Trump is arriving as part of a U.S. delegation expected to sign major trade, arms, and energy deals with Saudi leaders. According to Bass, who said he has been in touch with Saudi officials, Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman has been working to set up a direct meeting between the Syrian leader and Trump while they are in Riyadh, in what would be a watershed for the new government.

Moustafa, speaking to reporters Friday morning in Washington, said al-Sharaa explicitly authorized the delegation to offer a sweeping deal to Trump, whom he said al-Sharaa believes is a “God-sent man of peace.” Al-Sharaa hopes to meet with Trump in the coming days when both men will be in Riyadh. Moustafa said the generous deal for the United States would require a meeting of no more than five minutes.

The potential deal, Moustafa said, is being made public because some of Trump’s pro-Israel advisers—including ousted National Security Advisor Michael Waltz—had deliberately blocked Trump from learning about the concessions Syria is willing to make.

Syria was largely destroyed during its fourteen year civil war. The World Bank estimates the price tag to rebuild the country is between $250 to $400 billion dollars, whose suffering has been compounded by a crushing U.S.-led sanctions regime. Both China and Russia have been making aggressive entreaties to get reconstruction contracts in the country, offering to develop oil and gas reserves, including building telecommunications infrastructure through the Chinese company Huawei, Al-Sharaa said. The new Syrian president, nevertheless, has expressed a preference for working with the West as a partner.

If the U.S. is willing to do so, al-Sharaa said, Syria would invite American companies to exploit the nation's oil and gas resources, and would work with American companies on reconstruction projects. Bass said that AT&T was explicitly mentioned as a preferred partner over Huawei.

As part of the potential deal, Syria would continue fighting groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. Moustafa said there would be increased intelligence-sharing opportunities within the U.S.-Syrian rapprochement. The deal could also include limiting the ability of Palestinian militant groups said to be aligned with Iran to operate in Syria. Moustafa noted that the Syrian government has recently jailed officials from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, in what he described as a sign of the new government’s willingness to take on Iran and its allies. “We share the same enemies as the United States,” Bass said, summarizing what al-Sharaa told the group: “We share the same potential allies as the United States.”

Sharaa has said that Syria is open to normalizing its relationship with Israel under the right circumstances, stating that he respects the 1974 “disengagement of forces agreement.” Since he took power, Israel has been relentlessly bombing Syria, sending troops to occupy more territory inside the country, including inside the demilitarized UN buffer zone in the Golan Heights in violation of the 1974 agreement, and killing dozens of Syrians. The Israeli Air Force also launched a strike on the grounds of his presidential palace in early May. That attack came just 24 hours after the U.S. delegation had been in the palace meeting with al-Sharaa. Israeli officials suggested this may have been a trial run for attacking the Syrian leader directly in future.

According to former U.S. officials who mediated between the two countries, Syria and Israel considered normalizing relations under the former regime of Bashar al-Assad, before the 2011 uprising in Syria. The two countries face an outstanding issue over the disputed Golan Heights region, a major national grievance inside Syria, which Israel has occupied since 1967.

Charm Offensive

To get to a deal, Syria would need U.S. sanctions currently in place on the country to be lifted. Syria is currently subject to sanctions under the Caesar Act of 2019, which placed crushing economic restrictions on the former Assad regime, ostensibly due to human rights violations committed by that government. The new government and its supporters say that the sanctions, which were intended to punish Assad, are now punishing his presumed victims, and should be lifted on that grounds. But they would also need to be removed for Sharaa’s own vision of a “Deal of the Century” with Trump to come to pass.

This week, the U.S. announced a sanctions exemption that would allow Qatar to pay for Syria’s public sector salaries of $29 million for the next three months, allowing Damascus to hold together some of its shattered institutions and to send government employees back to work. The move came after previous limited sanctions waivers were issued by Washington to allow aid groups to operate in the country after Assad’s fall. Saudi Arabia and Qatar had previously announced that they would pay off Syria’s $15 million dollar debt to the World Bank—a relatively small sum that Damascus could not afford itself—in a sign of how impoverished the country has become after over a decade of conflict.

Syria remains wracked by internal chaos, including sectarian violence, criminality, widespread poverty, and lack of basic services. Militias linked to the government carried out a large-scale massacre of Alawite civilians following an aborted coup in coastal Syria earlier this year. In an effort to hold together the fragile situation, exacerbated by external attacks, Sharaa has also reportedly engaged in indirect talks with Israel, mediated by the United Arab Emirates. These talks have reportedly focused on Syria’s demand that Israel stop its airstrikes on the country, withdraw from occupied territories in the south, and cease efforts to promote ethnic separatism aimed at causing the dissolution of Syria—a stated goal of some current Israeli cabinet ministers. The Syrian government has also been conducting aggressive outreach to Jewish Syrian-Americans, facilitating trips to historic sites in the country and vowing to restore and protect Jewish heritage in the country.

It remains to be seen whether Sharaa can pull off the delicate balancing act of placating the U.S. enough to lift sanctions and permit the rebuilding of Syria. But his attempt to reach out to Trump by offering a lucrative business opportunity for American companies may afford him a chance. Moustafa said that the U.S. had a “golden opportunity” with the new government, which is now marketing itself as open for business to Washington.

This very explicit and factual article was copied verbatim from the Drop Site News, by Murtaza Hussain and Ryan Grim, sent to me by e-mail to my inbox, I'm forwarding it through our blog to the benefit of my good readers as a possibility of a future action and clear path of the new Syrian regime. 

As always, my many thanks to all. 

ROBERT NAILS IT AGAIN......

 

Can you believe Trump has been in office for 100 days? Whatever you think of him, you have to admit he’s done a lot.

But here’s the thing: Most of it isn’t in your best interest.

He promised to bring down the price of groceries. But his blanket tariffs will raise the price of groceries, and almost everything else you buy, because tariffs are just like sales taxes – and they take a much bigger chunk out of the paychecks of working people than the wealthy.

He promised to make housing and cars more affordable. But thanks to tariffs on cars, lumber, steel, and aluminum, housing construction and rents will be more expensive, and the price of a new car is expected to go up about $6,400.

He promised to deliver “rising wages, soaring incomes” – but instead he is firing nearly 300,000 federal workers, and cutting the wages of as many as 400,000 federal contractors.
Hundreds of thousands out of work at once is bad for the job market, and it’s also bad for Americans who rely on the services they used to provide, such as inspecting our food, warning us about extreme weather, and protecting us from financial fraud.

Trump is also working with MAGA Republicans in Congress to pass even more tax cuts for the richest Americans and corporations, paid for with cuts to essential programs, like Medicaid.

So if Trump hasn’t kept his promises to lower prices, raise wages, or create jobs… what has he done? A lot of things no one was asking for, like:

Letting the world’s richest man effectively cut Social Security. Disrupting cancer and Alzheimer’s research. Renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.

Firing the team at the FDA that handles bird flu outbreaks and firing the CDC team dedicated to stopping mother-to-child H.I.V. transmission. Honestly, I didn’t know it was possible to be against protecting babies from H.I.V.

How about making an enemy of Canada? Or threatening to invade Greenland and Panama? Then there’s always siding with Russia and North Korea against our allies in Europe.

Doing an ad for Tesla on the White House lawn? Leaking military battle plans on a messaging app, and holding no one accountable? Gutting student aid, veterans’ services, and crypto fraud investigations while selling White House tours to those who buy his own new meme coin?

He’s also protecting the ultra-rich from tax audits by wrecking the IRS – while golfing more than any recent president in his first 100 days, costing taxpayers like you over $26 million.

Then of course, there’s his project of turning America into a dictatorship. He’s ripping up the Constitution piece by piece, including Articles I and III and the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, 14th, and 22nd Amendments.

Everything Trump has done in his first 100 days has been to benefit his billionaire donors and corporate backers – and to consolidate more power in his hands. All at your expense.

Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action

As always, Mr. Reich with a simple and excellent message, to sum up the actual American situation one hundred days into the new presidency, I could add to his good words, that Mr. Trump's foreign policies are as disastrous as anything else, especially in regards to the absolute and unconditional complicity with Israel in its actual and ongoing genocidal and colonial expansionist wars against all its neighbors, even bombarding international shipping with aid and food to Gaza in international waters, a subject falling under heavy censorship in the U.S. officialdom and media, I permit myself to copy this report sent to me, for a better understanding of all my good readers.

As always, all my thanks to all.