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Mainstream Media Military Maths

*Persimmons in Chalus. Copyright Reserved 2016 Kerk Boon Leng.*

On April Fool’s Day this year at 5 pm in the middle of Israel’s war on Gaza that had so far killed 30,000 people mainly Palestinian women and children, Israeli planes flew into Syria and bombed the Iranian Embassy in Damascus. The airstrike killed 16 people including 1 high ranking and 7 other Iranian military officials.

The last time such a thing happened was in 1999 when the US bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. The US said then that it had mistaken it for the nearby Yugoslav Federal Directorate building for Supply and Procurement. Clinton apologised for the accident.

But in this recent incident, Israel did not admit it attacked Iran. US and the West did not condemn Israel although such an act was a violation of all international laws and clear breach of diplomatic rules. It was an act of war by one country against another.

Iran vowed revenge.

2 days ago it did. Iran fired drones carrying warheads and ballistic missiles into Israel from all directions.

It was the first time Iran attacked Israel directly.

Israel and the West said the Iranian attack did not cause much damage as most of the drones and missiles were intercepted by Israel’s defence system and blown up mid air.

The US, Britain, France and Jordan also joined in to help Israel by successfully intercepting some of those missiles.

Israel and the West claimed that 99% of the Iranian 300 drones and missiles failed to hit.

Of those unintercepted ones, US media today said 5 Iranian missiles struck the Nevatim Airbase in the Negev Desert in the South of Israel damaging the main runway, a C-130 aircraft and several storage facilities.

Nevatim is home to Israel’s most sophisticated fighter jets and defended by the world’s most advanced integrated anti-missile defence shield.

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Posted on April 16, 2024 by legatare

ARTICLES, WORLD

Selamat Arrivederci

Massacre of the Innocents by Peter Paul Rubens

Malaysia and the Statute of Rome

Malaysia has just announced it will pull out of the Rome Statute.

The Rome Statute (not to be confused with the Treaty of Rome that gave birth to the European Union) is an international treaty that aims to punish powerful individuals who can get away with killing and murder on a country scale because the laws of the land they are in will not or cannot bring them to justice.

Fresh with memories of two of the largest attrocities since World War II that had taken place in Bosnia (1992) and Rwanda (1994), the nations of the world met in Rome in 1998 to hammer out a document that in 2002 set up the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, the stately and sedate town in Holland that is home to the Dutch parliament and also the International Court of Justice.

The ICC has the power to investigate, charge and put on trial powerful people who commit terrible and large scale killings of groups of human beings in cases of genocide, war crimes and other international crimes of aggression.

Malaysia now says it does not want to be part of ICC although it earlier said it would join.

Bowing again to popular sentiments Malaysia has back pedalled and gone against the global current like it did a few months ago by reneging on its promise to stamp out racial discrimination and abolish the death penalty.

Mass ignorance, misleading academics and mischievous politicians have won the day once again in Malaysia.

Tibetans in India

fullsizeoutput_2926 — Crowds making their way out of the main temple in Dharamsala after listening to a Wesak Day address by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Copyright Kerk Boon Leng @ 2018.

Sixty years after His Holiness the Dalai Lama made the perilous journey over the Himalayas with his family and followers to escape Chinese communist rule, more than 100,000 Tibetans remain in India where they are not officially refugees but “long-term guests”.

Please read more in Dharamsala Dreaming.