Kate Randall

Dennis McGuire, 53, was put to death on Thursday, January 16, in the execution chamber at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio. News of McGuire’s execution—and details of the gruesome manner in which authorities carried out his death sentence—have evoked disgust and revulsion in the US and internationally.

Family members watched as an untested, lethal cocktail of two medical drugs were injected into McGuire’s veins. He writhed in pain before being pronounced dead 25 minutes later by prison authorities.

At a press conference the next day, the condemned prisoner’s son described the horror of what he had witnessed. “I watched his stomach heave,” he said. “I watched him trying to sit up against the straps on the gurney, I watched him repeatedly clench his fist,” adding that it “appeared to me he was fighting for his life while suffocating.”

The younger McGuire continued, “The agony and terror of watching my dad suffocate to death lasted more than 19 minutes. I can’t think of any other way to describe it other than torture. Until yesterday, I did not understand what cruel and unusual punishment was. Now I do, I witnessed it. No one should have to die the way my dad did.”

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Stephen Lendman

One of the images contained in the report, purportedly show-
ing ligature marks across the neck of a prisoner. (Guardian)

Malicious Syria Bashing: Part II

It's longstanding. It began long before Obama's war erupted. It was nearly three years ago. Releasing a new report on Syria was strategically timed. It's out two days before sham peace talks begin in Montreux, Switzerland.

It's filled with spurious accusations. London's Guardian discussed them. "Syrian regime document trove shows evidence of 'industrial scale' killing of detainees," it headlined. Syrian officials face potential war crimes charges, it said. A so-called "huge cache of 'evidence' (was) smuggled out of the country." "It show(ed) the 'systematic killing' of about 11,000 detainees."

Three former prosecutors for the Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone criminal tribunals examined so-called evidence. They're state-sponsored ones. They lack credibility. They include Desmond de Silva, Geoffrey Nice and David M. Crane. The report was prepared for London solicitors Carter-Ruck and Co.

It's marked "CONFIDENTIAL." It's available online. Confidentiality is shared with anyone wanting the report's full text. Manufactured evidence shows "emaciated, bloodstained," mutilated corpses. They could be from anywhere. They could be US-supported death squad atrocities. Blaming Syria for their crimes is standard practice.

So-called independent prosecutors and human rights groups have no credibility. London's Guardian lost credibility suggesting otherwise. So-called documented abuses are fake. They have nothing to do with Syria's government.

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Alex Lantier

US imperialism used manipulated intelligence as a pretext to wage an illegal war of aggression against Iraq. The US stands now on the verge of launching new wars in the Middle East.

With Geneva II international talks on the Syrian war set to open today in Switzerland, US media yesterday trumpeted unsubstantiated charges of torture and murder against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by international human rights prosecutors.

These charges emerged as Washington’s hopes to use the Geneva talks to force through regime change in Damascus rapidly faded, amid rising international tensions. Opposition representatives, who still demand Assad’s ouster even as they lose ground to his forces, nearly refused to attend the talks. Assad, pointing to the opposition’s close and well-known ties to Al Qaeda, insisted that the purpose of the Geneva talks should only be to fight “terrorism”—that is, the US-backed opposition.

US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin also reportedly discussed the Geneva conference and the upcoming Sochi Olympics in a telephone call yesterday. After suicide bombings in the Russian city of Volgograd last month, Moscow fears that Chechen Islamist terrorists, many of whom have fought with the US-backed opposition in Syria, will attack the Olympics.

Plans for the Geneva talks descended into a fiasco this week, when Saudi Arabia and the Syrian opposition threatened to boycott them if Iran attended, after which Washington forced the UN to disinvite Iran—Syria’s main ally, together with Russia.

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Stephen Lendman

Beheading people is hard work - one of Israel's, CIA's and
Saudi Arabia's lung eaters taking a well-earned rest...

Geneva talks aren't about peace. They're about regime change.

An article was written yesterday for today. It was titled "Iran Invited to Syria Peace Talks". No longer. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon withdrew his invitation.

He did so disgracefully. He's a reliable imperial tool. Credibility isn't his long suit. Nor observing international law. He violates his own Charter. He bows to Washington's will. He salutes and obeys as ordered.

● He supports US imperial wars. He doesn't give a damn about peace, security and stability. His agenda is polar opposite what he swore to uphold.
● He's complicit in US war crimes. He's beholden to wealth, power and privilege. His record reflects failure, betrayal, and lawlessness.
● He mocks UN Charter principles. He consistently supports wrong over right. He's silent about the worst of Western and Israeli crimes. He blames victims for what harms them.
● He defends the indefensible. He lies for power. He claims Western wars of aggression are liberating ones. He blames Assad for Washington's war on Syria.

His deplorable record earned him two terms as Secretary-General. He shares blame for horrific harm to billions.

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Bill Van Auken

After pressure from Syrian opposition groups and the United
States, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said Monday he
was rescinding an invitation for Iran to participate in a peace
conference in Geneva this week. (Photo: Emmanuel Dunand)

The United Nations has abruptly rescinded an invitation to Iran to participate in talks organized by the major powers on a political settlement of the three-year-old conflict in Syria.

The plans for the so-called Geneva II negotiations had been thrown into disarray Monday with both Washington and the US-backed exile front, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), issuing ultimatums to the UN to drop its last-minute invitation to Iran to participate.

The controversy, coming just two days before the so-called Geneva II negotiations were set to open in Switzerland, appeared to threaten the cancellation of the so-called peace conference.

The US, Britain and France, together with their so-called “rebel” stooges based in Turkey, have opposed the participation of Iran, which is, together with Russia, the closest ally of the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad. The major Western powers see Tehran’s presence as inimical to their main goal in convening the talks, which is to secure through diplomatic pressure what their protracted and bloody proxy war for regime change has been unable to achieve.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who announced the invitation to Iran on Sunday, described himself Monday as “dismayed” by the uproar triggered by the move and said he was reviewing the UN’s options.

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William T. Hathaway

The still ocean of awareness is the source of everything.

At the age of 15 I decided I was going to be a writer. I loved books, and writing them seemed to be the greatest thing in the world to do. Now after eight books it still does.

But at first I had a terrible time writing. My thoughts were all jumbled up. I couldn't concentrate. I did poorly in school because I couldn't hold my mind on the assignments. I was too caught up in my psychological stress and subconscious conflicts to be able to really write or study.

I started smoking marijuana, thinking I could blast my way through all my blocks with that. But it made them worse. When I was high I thought I was being very creative, but the next day when I read what I'd written, it was drivel. Eventually I flunked out of the University of Colorado, but I figured who needs college -- I want to be a bohemian artist. So I moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan and wrote, painted, and drummed, but mostly got high. New York had many more kinds of dope than Boulder, and I tried them all, hoping for that creative breakthrough. But finally I realized I needed to get out of that whole scene if I ever wanted to do any good writing.

The war on Vietnam was just beginning, and the military draft was after me. I'd been reading a lot of writers whose first books were war novels, so I figured I would make a 180-degree change from my current scene. I joined the Special Forces to write a war novel. I was probably high when I got this idea, because it wasn't a very good idea.

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Kevin Carson

Until most people abandon their respect for uniformed authority and their willingness to treat outsiders as the “other,” verdicts [like this one] will continue.

On Monday, January 13, two Fullerton, California police officers charged with the beating death of Kelly Thomas were acquitted, and the prosecutor announced his decision not to press charges against a third officer involved. Millions who had been following the story met the verdict with incredulity: How could anyone who watched that horrific video of Thomas pinned down and brutally beaten with fists and batons, begging for his life and calling out for his father, have possibly returned any verdict but guilty?

The answer lies in a famous psychological experiment — the Milgram Experiment — conducted in 1961. This experiment, conducted when the Nuremberg trials were still a recent memory, led subjects to believe they were torturing a fellow subject in the next room (who in fact was a confederate pretending to be a volunteer, and suffered no actual pain) with increasingly powerful electric shocks. Reassured by scientists in white coats that they would assume all responsibility, and urged to continue, subjects continued to (so far as they knew) inflict more and more painful shocks on their fellow subjects, even as the screams became louder and then went silent.

In short, these people were willing to inflict pain on strangers who were begging for mercy, to the point of unconsciousness and possible death, based on the assurances of “responsible authority figures,” so long as the victim was framed as an outsider.

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Stephen Lendman

Israel is above the law. It's exempt for observing rule of law principles. It's free to rampage extrajudicially. It kills and kills again. It does so with impunity. It justifies lawlessness the old-fashioned way. It lies. It's standard Israeli practice. It calls legitimate self-defense "terrorism." It calls acts of aggression "self-defense." It calls nonviolent Palestinian men, women, children, infants, the elderly and infirm existential threats. Israel's only ones are those it invents.

World leaders able to act responsibly do nothing. They support Israel's worst crimes. Doing so makes them complicit. Washington is worst of all. Both countries partner in crime. America supplies billions of dollars in annual aid, the latest weapons and technology, and unconditional support.

Media scoundrels turn a blind eye to Israel's worst crimes. Occupation harshness is ignored. Besieged Gazans don't matter. NAKBA mass slaughter and displacement never happened. Lawless settlements are OK. Israel is more victim than aggressor. Palestinians choose conflict over peace. They're responsible for their own misery. Daily Israeli security force violence goes unreported. So do settler crimes. Peace process pretense is legitimate. Police state Israel is the region's only democracy. It's an oasis in a sea of despotism.

It's rap sheet includes horrendous crimes of war, against humanity and genocide. It's a malignancy in a troubled region. It's a threat to humanity. Zionism is "a machine for the manufacture of human rights abuses," says Joel Kovel. State-terror is official Israeli policy. So is torture. Numerous other abuses are standard practice.

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Rebel of Oz

One question many people in the pro-Palestinian movement fail to understand is what motivates their Jewish fellow activists. Is it a sense of justice and fairness that's supposedly shared by all human beings? Is it a wish – for whatever reason – to prevent non-Jews from thinking that all Jews condone the appalling treatment of the Palestinians by their Israeli coreligionists? Or are they secretly trying to sabotage the movement, to render it utterly ineffective or at least minimise the damage for the Zionists?

One way to establish which explanation is closest to the truth is by analysing the roots, symptoms, causes and possible remedies of the Palestine conflict and the attitude of Jewish pro-Palestinian activists towards them.

Roots of the Palestine conflict

As anything to do with the Palestine conflict even its roots are contentious. About 100 years ago, European Jews with no ancestral roots in the Middle-Eastern region started settling in Palestine under the false pretense of returning to the ancient homeland of the Jews.

90-95% of modern Jews, the Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi, are the descendants of Mongolian-Turk Khazars who invaded Europe as part of Attila’s horde and their Eastern Gothic rape victims. They converted from their ancestral phallus cult to Judaism 200 years after settling in the region of today’s Southern Russia and Ukraine, a commercially motivated move that allowed them to trade with both their Muslim and Christian neighbours.[1]

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Stephen Lendman

On Friday, Obama addressed sweeping NSA mass surveillance. He defended the worst of police state lawlessness. He [says he] believes privacy invasion intrusiveness should comfort us. He lied claiming it makes us safer. How does destroying civil liberties protect them?

How does violating core Bill of Rights protections do it? How does trashing all rule of law principles? How does turning America into a police state? How do sweeping surveillance practices greater than anything before possible? How does letting NSA operate as a power unto itself? It's an unrestrained lawbreaker. Imagine Obama calling "(t)he folks at the NSA...our neighbors."

Imagine saying "they're our friends and family." Imagine claiming "(o)ur intelligence community follows the law..." Imagine saying NSA officials and staff are "patriots." One lie followed another throughout his address. They constitute a gross abuse of power. So do his lawless policies.

He never once mentioned his responsibility to respect international, constitutional and US statute laws. He never once admitted how egregiously he violates them. He never once explained how his policies are heading America for full-blown tyranny. He never once acknowledged his war on humanity.

He fronts for monied interests that own him. His entire tenure fails the smell test. He lied saying "US intelligence agencies (are) anchored in a system of checks and balances - with oversight from elected leaders, and protections for ordinary citizens." He lied claiming mass surveillance "prevented multiple attacks and saved lives - not just here in the United States, but around the globe."

Fact check: NSA domestic and foreign spying discovered ZERO terrorist threats. It foiled ZERO terrorist attacks. Claiming otherwise is false! Doing so is a bald-faced lie! Obama lied claiming federal courts and congressional oversight curbed "some of the worst excesses that emerged after 9/11..." He lied saying he "maintained a healthy skepticism toward our surveillance programs after (he) became president." He approved the worst of what's ongoing. He wants it continued. He wants it intensified. He wants nothing escaping NSA's spying eye. He wants it able to monitor everyone, everywhere, all the time. He wants America's fake war on terror continued. It's a war on freedom. It reflects the worst of police state lawlessness.

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Stephen Lendman

Photo: Eden Abergil, former IDF soldier: "I hate Arabs and
wish them all the worst. I would happily kill them all, even butcher them." Incredibly, a commentator was worried that the worldwide stir that her statement had caused might have ruined her life. Abergil responded to the comment, making it clear to the surfer that she didn't take the issue too seriously: "No honey, they didn't ruin my life. I can't afford to have Arab-lovers ruin the perfect life I'm leading!!! I am not sorry and I do not regretttttt it." (More here, here, here, here, here, here and here.)

♣ ♣ ♣

According to UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine Richard Falk, "Palestinians don't even have the right to have rights." Militarized occupation denies them. Harshness exceeding the worst of South African apartheid describes their status. The UN and Human Rights Council do nothing to help. According to Falk, they "failed to follow through in a way that is effective in bringing peace and justice to the peoples of Palestine, and until (they do, they have) no ethical or (other) basis for not trying (their) utmost to do so."

Palestinians are isolated on their own. In 1948, Israel stole 78% of their homeland. In 1967, it took the rest. Militarized occupation exists. It's lawless. It's illegitimate. It continues because world leaders do nothing to stop it. They turn a blind eye to Israel's worst crimes. They honor its war criminals. They do it disgracefully. They're complicit in their crimes. Imagine calling Ariel Sharon a hero! Imagine being saddened by his death! Imagine saying Israel is poorer without him! Imagine praising a cutthroat killer! Imagine calling him a peacemaker!

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Stephen Lendman

Expect no change going forward. Expect worse ahead than ever. Expect continuing police state lawlessness. Expect full-blown tyranny if not stopped.

Perhaps no president in US history disappointed supporters more than Obama. He pledged "change you can believe it." He promised hope. He did Lincoln one better. He fooled most people enough times to matter. He never cared about rule of law principles. He trashed them in office. He deplores democratic values. He's beholden to monied interests. "Yes we can" conceals his dark side duplicity. He made America look increasingly like Guatemala. Nothing ahead suggests change. International, constitutional and US statute laws don't matter. Bush declared them null and void. So did Obama. He presides over a ruthless police state apparatus. No one is free and safe. Big Brother watches everyone. Mass surveillance is official US policy.

On Friday, Obama will announce so-called new guidelines. He'll ask Congress for help. Expect business as usual to continue. Expect worse than ever ahead. Expect lies claiming otherwise. Ending the fake war on terror matters. So does halting mass surveillance entirely. Restoring rule of law [and] freedoms matters most. Expect Obama's war to destroy them to continue. When Bush signed the Patriot Act into law, Center for Constitutional Rights senior litigation attorney Nancy Chang asked: "What's so patriotic about trampling on the Bill of Rights?"

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Bill Van Auken

The government of Afghanistan has denounced a US airstrike on an Afghan village that took the lives of seven children and one woman on Wednesday morning.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai linked the incident to the continuing tensions with Washington over his postponement of signing a bilateral security agreement (BSA) that would allow some 12,000 US troops to remain in the country indefinitely after the formal deadline for withdrawing all foreign occupation forces at the end of this year.

According to both the Karzai government and the governor of Parwan province, where the massacre took place, the incident began when US special operations troops attempted to enter a home in the Ghorband district, about 25 miles north of the capital of Kabul.

NATO’s International Security Assistance Force released a statement on the raid saying that the bombing was ordered after US and Afghan government forces came under attack and “required defensive air support to suppress the enemy fire.”

The statement added that ISAF “regrets that civilians were killed” in the attack, while claiming that the operation had been “Afghan-led.” In addition to the civilians, ISAF reported one US Special Forces soldier killed, as well as 10 “insurgents.”

According to the US military, the operation targeted two Taliban leaders identified as Qari Nzar Gul and Moorullah, who were believed to be in the district. The area has in the recent period become increasingly contested by armed opposition forces and apparently a base of operations for attacks on the US-controlled Bagram Air Base.

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James Petras

Introduction: Saudi Arabia has all the vices and none of the virtues of an oil rich state like Venezuela. The country is governed by a family dictatorship which tolerates no opposition and severely punishes human rights advocates and political dissidents. Hundreds of billions in oil revenues are controlled by the royal despotism and fuel speculative investments the world over.

The ruling elite relies on the purchase of Western arms and US military bases for protection. The wealth of productive nations is syphoned to enrich the conspicuous consumption of the Saudi ruling family. The ruling elite finances the most fanatical, retrograde, misogynist version of Islam, “Wahhabi” a sect of Sunni Islam.

Faced with internal dissent from repressed subjects and religious minorities, the Saudi dictatorship perceives threats and dangers from all sides: overseas, secular, nationalists and Shia ruling governments; internally, moderate Sunni nationalists, democrats and feminists; within the royalist cliques, traditionalists and modernizers. In response it has turned toward financing, training and arming an international network of Islamic terrorists who are directed toward attacking, invading and destroying regimes opposed to the Saudi clerical-dictatorial regime.

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Bill Van Auken

No branch of the US government—executive, legislative or judicial—and no section of the US ruling establishment has any serious commitment to democratic and constitutional rights.

The Obama White House is preparing a National Security Agency “reform” package that is aimed at legitimizing and institutionalizing the NSA’s illegal domestic spying operations, while putting in place stringent security measures to prevent disclosures of its crimes such as those carried out by former contractor Edward Snowden.

President Barack Obama is set to present the so-called “reforms” in a speech he will deliver Friday at the US Justice Department. The measures he has embraced are selected from among those recommended to his administration last month by a hand-picked advisory panel dominated by former intelligence officials.

Even before Obama could make the speech, new revelations provided by Snowden have uncovered yet another sinister operation by the NSA. The latest exposure involves the agency’s secret planting of software in almost 100,000 computers, enabling it to spy on their users even when the computers are not connected to the Internet. The program uses radio waves transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards planted on the devices. The technology also provides the means for launching cyber-attacks.

“The radio frequency technology has helped solve one of the biggest problems facing American intelligence agencies for years: getting into computers that adversaries, and some American partners, have tried to make impervious to spying or cyberattack," wrote the New York Times, which broke the story. “In most cases, the radio frequency hardware must be physically inserted by a spy, a manufacturer or an unwitting user.”

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M. K. Bhadrakumar

What happened in the US-Indian diplomatic row over the arrest and detention of Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade in New York and her return to Delhi last week is fairly straightforward: the US intelligence made a concerted attempt to “recruit” an Indian career diplomat, and Delhi successfully thwarted it.

The American side has been taken by surprise. Their perception of the working of the Indian foreign and security policy establishment turned out to be way off the mark. In the recent decade when glaring espionage activities by the CIA surfaced – when they smuggled out a top intelligence official (2004) or when they breached the security perimeters of India’s National Security Council [NSC] in 2006 – the spooks in the American embassy in Delhi got away scot-free.

Any country with self-respect would have reacted strongly when such subversive acts by a foreign power surfaced, but India chose to shove the incidents under the carpet for reasons that are beyond comprehension. Whether it was because of the sense of vulnerability on the part of the Indian functionaries holding fort in the foreign policy and security establishment at that time or because of political interference – Delhi was negotiating the nuclear deal during those years – remains anybody’s guess. All that can be said is that if the Americans developed a sneering contempt toward the Indian establishment, it wasn’t entirely their fault.

The Americans got the impression that the Indian establishment was impotent and highly vulnerable to US pressure and the elites were lacking in integrity and a sense of honor. Delhi must be one of the few capitals where minor flunkeys of the American embassy take undue freedom to backslap cabinet ministers at public receptions. Arguably, a point has been reached where it has become difficult to lend credence to media reporting – from Delhi or Washington-based reporters alike – on matters affecting the US-Indian “defining partnership”.

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Kevin Barrett
PressTV

Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Minister Ariel Sharon

Ariel Sharon embodied the pure, unmitigated evil of Zionism. He was a war criminal, a terrorist, a mass murderer, a torturer, a rapist. The French term “genocidaire” also applies.

But Sharon did have one redeeming quality: He occasionally told the awful truth about himself and his country. During the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Sharon vented his real feelings in public. In a Hebrew-language interview with Israeli writer Amos Oz, Sharon said:

“Even today I volunteer to do the dirty work for Israel, to kill as many Arabs as necessary, to deport them, to expel and burn them, to have everyone hate us, to pull the rug out from underneath the feet of the Diaspora Jews, so that they will be forced to run to us crying. Even if it means blowing up a few synagogues, I don’t care. And I don’t mind if after the job is done you put me in front of a Nuremberg Trial and then jail me for life. Hang me if you want, as a war criminal… What your kind doesn't understand is that the dirty work of Zionism is not finished yet, far from it.”

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Stephen Lendman

A New America Foundation report suggests it. NSA spying is longstanding. It's ongoing abroad and at home. It has nothing to do with national security. It's unrelated to uncovering terrorist plots. Homegrown ones virtually don't exist. Alleged ones are hatched. They're fake. Claiming dozens were foiled in time is false. They're Big Lies. Previous articles discussed dozens of innocent victims. They included:

■ a fake shoe bomber;
■ fake underwear bomber;
■ fake Times Square bomber;
■ an earlier one there;
■ fake shampoo bombers;
■ fake Al Qaeda woman planning fake mass casualty attacks on New York landmarks;
■ fake Oregon bomber;
■ fake armed forces recruiting station bomber;
■ fake synagogue bombers;
■ fake Chicago Sears Tower bombers;
■ fake FBI and other building bombers;
■ fake National Guard, Fort Dix and Quantico marine base attackers;
■ fake 9/11 bombers;
■ fake Boston bombers; and
■ numerous others.

At issue is generating fear. Washington's fake war on terror needs public support. FBI operatives are involved. Orchestrated stings are used. Innocent victims are entrapped. Familiar schemes repeat. 9/11 is the Big Lie of our time. So is the fake war on terror.

Innocent victims languish in America's gulag. NSA spying watches everyone. It's unconstitutional. It's for police state control. It's ending privacy. It's destroying freedom.

Global spying is espionage. It's for political and economic advantage. It's to be one up on foreign competitors. It's for information used advantageously in trade, political, and military relations.

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Gilad Atzmon

"I've gotten some of my best light from bridges I've burned." ~ Don Henley

What does it take, in an era dominated by progressive identity politics, to be accepted as a fully qualified member of the Left?

Jane is a London lawyer who identifies politically ‘as a woman,’ and marches enthusiastically for human rights. Can she join? I think the answer is yes, she can.

George is a medical doctor who happens also to be a black man and identifies as ‘Black middle class.’ Can he subscribe to a progressive email group and contribute to the discussion? I hope and suspect that he can.

And what about Julie? She runs an estate agency on the posh side of town but she also identifies as a 'gay lesbian,’ can she join the parade? What a question! Of course she can.

Now Abe is an accountant and very attached to his Jewish heritage. Abe identifies as a 'secular Jew,’ can he join the anti-war movement? More than likely he can, in fact he may even, within hours of his joining, find himself in a position of leadership.

But what about Hammed, a metal worker from Birmingham? Hammed identifies as a 'Muslim’ -- can he join a Left demonstration against the War in Syria? It’s a good question and the answer is not immediately obvious at all because it’s no secret that many of those who subscribe to ‘progressive’ ideology and indeed, activism, are rather troubled by religion in general and Islam in particular.

So, while Hammed is identifying with a universal and humanist precept, Jane, ‘the woman’, Julie ‘the Gay Lesbian’ and George ‘the Black’ openly subscribe to biologically-determined political identities. Furthermore, Abe, Identifying as a secular Jew, affiliates himself with a blood-based ethnocentric tribal identity. Clearly, the Left has no problem with such marginal and exclusivist political identities.

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Jamal Kanj

In memory of my cousin Saleh and for all those people he massacred throughout his murderous career, I will forever remember Sharon as a decorated butcher.

My friend and I were on a cross-country flight from San Diego to Washington, DC on Saturday, September 18, 1982. We arrived at our friends’ home with gleaming smiles, but were received with dejected expressions.

“Haven’t you heard the news?” they asked. “What news?” we replied. “The massacre of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in and around Sabra and Shatila camps,” was their wretched response.

Needless to say we were glued to the TV listening to trickling reports from inside the camps and watching bloated bodies of women and children paraded on TV screens. Starting at 6pm on September 16 until 8am on September 18, the Israeli-armed Lebanese Phalange militia went on a killing spree while the Israeli army besieged the camps – stopping anyone from fleeing the massacre.

American reporter Janet Lee Stevens, who was one of the first foreign journalists to enter the camps, described the scene and documented:

“Children with their throats slit, a pregnant woman with her stomach chopped open, her eyes still wide open, her blackened face silently screaming in horror; countless babies and toddlers who had been stabbed or ripped apart and who had been thrown into garbage piles”

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