dizzy: I am intending to make a statement soon on the topic of fake-manufactured terrorism.




HUMAN rights campaigners and MPs hailed a “huge victory” for six Filton 24 activists in the face of “extraordinary political pressure” after a jury acquitted them of all charges today.
Following eight full days of deliberation, defendants in the Palestine Action-linked case were not convicted of a single charge after breaking into a British site of Israel-based arms firm Elbit Systems.
Defend Our Juries called the verdicts a “huge blow” to ministers who tried to make Palestine Action into “a violent group to justify banning it under badly drafted terrorism legislation.”
And MPs joined rights groups to say the case proves the importance of jury trials after the Justice Secretary David Lammy recently announced plans to scrap the majority of juries in England and Wales.
Labour MP Kim Johnson told the Morning Star that the verdicts were “a resounding victory for the Palestine activists and for the fundamental principle of trial by jury.”
Activists had been held on remand for over 17 months accused of using or threatening unlawful violence and using sledgehammers during their action on the factory in Filton near Bristol.
Charlotte Head, 29, Samuel Corner, 23, Ellie (Leona) Kamio, 30, Fatema Zainab Rajwani, 20, Zoe Rogers, 22, and Jordan Devlin, 31, had faced a series of charges for the action in August 2024.
Despite five of them admitting in court to destroying weapons belonging to Israel’s largest arms manufacturers Elbit Systems, the jury refused to convict the defendants of criminal damage.
Mr Corner was also not convicted of grievous bodily harm with intent for striking a police officer.
The rest of the Filton 24 are still being held on remand in relation to the action, which sought to disrupt and expose Elbit’s role in manufacturing weapons used in attacks on Palestinians, including drones.
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Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/human-rights-groups-hail-huge-victory-six-filton-24-defendants-acquitted



Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

U.S. military forces launched dozens of airstrikes on more than 75 Islamic State targets in Syria on Sunday after the fall of longtime Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid ongoing Israeli and Turkish attacks on the war-torn Middle Eastern nation.
According to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), warplanes including B-52 bombers, F-15 fighters, and A-10 ground attack aircraft “conducted dozens of precision airstrikes targeting known ISIS camps and operatives in central Syria.”
CENTCOM called the strikes “part of the ongoing mission to disrupt, degrade, and defeat ISIS in order to prevent the terrorist group from conducting external operations and to ensure that ISIS does not seek to take advantage of the current situation to reconstitute in central Syria.”
The U.S., “together with allies and partners in the region, will continue to carry out operations to degrade ISIS operational capabilities even during this dynamic period in Syria,” CENTCOM added.
“The Biden administration ordering ongoing airstrikes is a disappointing sign that they have no intent on reversing their deadly policy of interventionism.”
Responding Monday to the latest attacks on Syria by U.S. forces, Danaka Katovich, national co-director of the peace group CodePink, told Common Dreams: “We condemn the U.S. airstrikes in Syria. The U.S. has sowed chaos in Syria and the entire region for years and the Biden administration ordering ongoing airstrikes is a disappointing sign that they have no intent on reversing their deadly policy of interventionism.”
U.S. and coalition forces have killed and maimed at least tens of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis during the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations as part of the anti-ISIS campaign and wider so-called War on Terror.
Commenting on the dearth of coverage of the strikes by the corporate media, prominent Greek leftist Yanis Varoufakis said on social media that “the Western press are waxing lyrical about the new Syria being born—but not a word on the U.S. and Israeli bombs falling from the sky.”
“Is there no bottom to the moral void of the Western press?” he added.
Sunday’s U.S. strikes came as al-Assad and relatives fled to Russia—where they have been granted asylum—amid the fall of the capital, Damascus, to rebel forces.
Also on Sunday, Israeli forces seized more territory in Syria’s Golan Heights and ordered residents of five villages to “stay home and not go out until further notice” if they want to remain safe. Israel conquered the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights in 1967 and has unlawfully occupied it ever since. In 1981, Israel illegally annexed the occupied lands.
“We will not allow any hostile force to establish itself on our border,” right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza—said in a video posted on social media.
Numerous Israelis celebrated the seizure on social media, while others cautioned against boasting about what is almost certainly an illegal conquest.
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Meanwhile in northern Syria, Turkish airstrikes in support of Syrian National Army rebels—who are battling U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters in and around the Kurdish-controlled city of Manbij—reportedly killed numerous civilians along with dozens of militants.
In what it called a “horrific massacre,” the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Monday that 11 civilians from the same family, including women and six children, were killed in a Turkish drone strike on the SDF-controlled village of Al-Mustariha in northern Raqqa Governate.
Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/22/moscow-concert-hall-shooting-blast
At least 115 people have been killed and 145 wounded in Russia’s worst terror attack in years, as gunmen in combat fatigues opened fire and detonated explosives in a major concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow.
State news agency Ria on Saturday quoted a spokesperson for Russia’s Investigative Committee as saying the death toll could rise and that it was too early to say anything about the fate of the attackers.
Three children were among the dead, Ria cited the regional healthcare ministry as saying on Saturday. Authorities had earlier said five children were among the victims and that about 60 people were in serious condition.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack late on Friday, in a post on Telegram in which the group claimed its gunmen had managed to escape afterwards. A US official said Washington had intelligence confirming Islamic State’s claim.
Photos showed Crocus City Hall engulfed in flames as videos emerged showing at least four gunmen opening fire with automatic weapons as panicked Russians fled for their lives.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/22/moscow-concert-hall-shooting-blast
dizzy: My sincere condolences to Russia and the victims of this BS terrorism BS attack. Hope that Russia has caught those responsible and that it doesn’t escalate to something much worse.