Abu Ghraib torture victims sued by ‘torturers’
Press TV – August 15, 2013
American defense contractor CACI International has sued four former detainees in Abu Ghraib prison to compensate the legal expenses it paid over their dismissed lawsuit regarding the company’s role in torturing the plaintiffs in the notorious jail in Iraq.
The four Iraqi nationals had earlier filed a lawsuit in a District Court in Alexandria against the company accusing it of torturing, humiliating and dehumanizing them when they served time in the prison.
But in July, the judge dismissed the case, saying the court did not have jurisdiction to hear the lawsuit because the incidents happened overseas.
The Arlington-based company has now demanded the plaintiffs pay over $15,000 for travel allowances, deposition transcripts and witness fees, Common Dreams reported.
The lawyers for former Abu Ghraib prisoners in a federal court filing rejected the request.
Our clients “have very limited financial means, even by non-US standards, and dramatically so when compared to the corporate defendants in this case,” according to the filing.
“At the same time, plaintiffs’ serious claims of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and war crimes were dismissed on very close, difficult – and only recently arguable – grounds.”
“Given the wealth disparities between this multi-billion dollar entity and four torture victims, given what they went through, it’s surprising and appears to be an attempt to intimidate and punish these individuals for asserting their rights to sue in US courts,” said Baher Azny, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights and the attorney for the plaintiffs.
“Our case is based on reports and investigations by high-level US military investigators, recognizing CACI’s role in conspiracy to torture detainees,” Azny added
“Once we get past legal obstacles and present the case to a jury, we are hopeful justice will come to these Iraqi victims.”
The lawyers who are planning to appeal the case to the US Court of Appeals in fall argue that US law should apply to CACI International as it is an American-based company that operated in a US military prison.
Syria accepts essential terms of chemical weapons probe – UN
RT | August 15, 2013
The Syrian government has accepted the ‘essential modalities’ under which the UN was ready to investigate whether chemical weapons had been used in the country, the body has announced, signalling that experts will shortly be traveling to Syria.
“The departure of the team is now imminent,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement. “As agreed with the Government of Syria, the team will remain in the country to conduct its activities, including on-site visits, for a period of up to 14 days, extendable upon mutual consent.”
The Secretary-General has expressed his appreciation to the Syrian government for accepting “the modalities essential for cooperation to ensure the proper, safe and efficient conduct of the Mission.”
The statement also reminded that the use of chemical weapons “by any side under any circumstances” would constitute an “outrageous crime.”
Two weeks ago the United Nations said that an agreement had been reached with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government as to the three locations that UN inspectors would be investigating, led by Swedish scientist, Ake Sellstrom.
One site to be visited by the UN team is Khan al-Assal in Aleppo, where the country’s government says rebels used chemical weapons in March. The two additional locations have yet to be confirmed.
Both Syria’s government and rebel forces have long been accusing each other of using chemical weapons, and both have denied it.
Russia welcomed the move, saying on its Twitter feed that “Damascus is ready to bring clarity into the situation”, and expressing hope that the move will “provide a springboard for a political solution of the ongoing crisis”.
Last month Russia submitted “a full set of documents” to the UN and its analysis of samples taken west of Aleppo. Russia’s findings indicated that it was rebels behind the Khan al-Assal incident, in which more than 30 people died.
The United States cast doubt on the Russian findings saying its own intelligence services believed Syrian government forces had used chemical weapons. However, Paulo Pinheiro, chairman of the UN commission’s inquiry into rights violations in Syria, said the evidence provided by the US did not meet standards as his commission was “very worried about the chain of custody of the substances.”
Back in March Damascus requested UN investigators to visit Khan al-Assal. The UN formed a mission then, but was reluctant to send it, demanding “unconditional and unfettered” access across the country, according to Ban’s spokesman Martin Nesirky.
Syria’s Foreign Ministry rejected the UN’s effort to broaden the probe claiming that it was “at odds with the Syrian request” and that its “possible hidden intentions” could violate Syrian sovereignty.
In total, the UN received some 13 reports of alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria and the UN inspectors will be investigating the “allegations” of chemical weapons use, rather than determining who was responsible for the attacks.
Fallouts of Iran Sanctions
By Ali Fathollah-Nejad | World Policy Blog | July 31, 2013
Iran’s President-elect Hassan Rohani has promised to ease the tensions surrounding the international relations of his country. In line with the will of the majority of Iranians, the issue of economic sanctions – weighing heavily on the latter’s day-to-day life – will be a key to that end.
In general, the purpose of sanctions is to force a political opponent to do what she would not do otherwise. In the case of the sanctions imposed on Iran – during the course of what is commonly but simplistically referred to as the “nuclear crisis” – the stated goal has been to force a reversal of Tehran’s nuclear calculus toward slowing down or even halting its nuclear program. This goal has clearly not been met. Instead this period has witnessed ever more crippling sanctions – a form of “structural violence” exerted upon an entire country and its people.
Economic sanctions are one of the most preferred instruments of Western foreign policy. The immediate Western reaction to the Syrian crisis is the most recent evidence of this. In the Iranian case, sanctions have been an integral part of the transatlantic strategy pursued against Tehran, code-named “coercive diplomacy” in Diplomatic Studies. There, sanctions are usually presented as a quasi-peaceful means and as such inherently part of a purely diplomatic approach geared towards avoiding a military confrontation. However, as the Iraqi case demonstrates, sanctions are the last step before military action. In other words, “smart sanctions” are likely to be succeeded by “smart bombs.”
Apart from this worst-case scenario, sanctions have not proven to facilitate the resolution of conflicts; on the contrary, they rather tend to harden the opposing fronts. Frequently, opposing sides view sanctions through fundamentally different prisms. In this case, while the West conceives of sanctions in a cost–benefit framework – the heavier the costs imposed on the targeted country by way of sanctions, the more willing the sanctioned state will be to offer concessions. Iran on its part sees them as a means of illegitimate pressure against which she ought to resist. This explains why in the last couple of years the escalation of sanctions was accompanied by that of the nuclear program. For example, in 2006 – before the Iran sanctions were elevated to an undoubtedly crippling dimension by the United States and the European Union – Iran had a thousand centrifuges; the number today is much more than tenfold. This reality of the nuclear dynamics in the wake of sanctions remains largely ignored in Western capitals.
Moreover, it should be stressed that policymakers in the West have so far devoted much more time and energy to identifying which new set of sanctions to impose rather than to committedly and creatively finding a diplomatic solution of the decade-old stalemate.
The popular rhetoric of sanctions incorrectly characterizes the nature of the socio-economic effects imposed on the target country. Contrary to what is commonly claimed, sanctions actually weaken the lower and middle classes, particularly affecting the most vulnerable in society – workers, women and the youth. As a result, the power gap between the state and society widens. All this, as a matter of fact, actually dampens the prospect of popular uprising. A person struggling for economic survival barely has the luxury of engaging as a citoyen in the struggle for democracy. This explains the firm renunciation of sanctions by Iran’s civil society – voices that the West has largely chosen to ignore.
In political-economic terms, sanctions have largely paralyzed Iran’s civilian economy while state and semi-state economic entities – especially those associated with the Revolutionary Guards – have been able to benefit inter alia by monopolizing imports of various goods via “black channels.” State resources have buoyed those companies that have access to them, leaving others to drown in the tide of rising costs. Sanctions have also prompted enormous growth in the volume of bilateral trade between Iran and China (still about $ 40 billion according to the Iran–China Chamber of Commerce and Industries which is closely related to the regime) – to the detriment of producers and jobs in Iran. The reality of sanctions is that they have cemented the politico-economic power configuration in Iran.
Sanctions produce far-reaching effects at the geopolitical and geo-economic levels. Corresponding with the implicit geopolitical rationale for sanctions – that if you cannot control or influence a country, you will resort to weakening it – these restrictions have indeed stunted Iran’s development trajectory. This inflicted damage has not, however, produced the ultimate goal of reversing Iran’s nuclear and regional policies and has in fact damaged Western interests by boosting the clout of countries like China, Russia, and other regional states.
In the wake of the U.S.-pressured withdrawal of the Europeans from the Iranian market, Iran was virtually handed over to China on a silver plate – something Beijing is indeed quite appreciative of. China’s economic presence in Iran can be witnessed all across the board: from the construction of the Tehran Metro to the exploration of Persian Gulf oil and gas fields.
Iran’s technocrats – a prime victim of the sanctions – observe this development with great concern. Among other things, they have seen that a healthy competition between different foreign competitors is sorely missing, and that the lack of high-tech (formerly delivered by the West) has reduced the quality of domestic production. All of this has a negative impact (mid- and long-term) on Iran’s economic and technological development. If the situation remains unchanged, such damage can hardly be compensated. As another case in point, the sale of Iranian oil to large customers such as China or India has turned into barter – a de facto “junk for oil” program has emerged. In addition, during the past couple of years China has been given preferential rates by Iran for its oil imports.
Finally, some of Iran’s neighboring countries also benefit from the sanctions. Most significantly, due to the energy sanctions against Iran, Russia can safeguard its quasi-monopoly on Europe’s energy supply – a strategic interest held by Moscow which is unlikely to be reversed easily. To a much lesser degree but still noteworthy, Turkey – which has turned into the sole land trade corridor reaching Iran from the West – has seen its profits in its dealings with Iran risen sharply. Not surprisingly, its business press has been cheering the Iran sanctions as providing Ankara with a competitive trade advantage. Also off the radar, Qatar which in the Persian Gulf is sharing the world’s largest gas field with Iran, has been able to exploit South Pars much more rapidly than Iran given the latter’s lack of access to advanced technologies. This has resulted in a tremendous gap of revenues between the two countries of many several billion dollars.
Ultimately, the policy of sanctions is counter-productive on multiple levels, most sensitively on diplomatic and socio-economic grounds. The sanctions – whether called “crippling” or “targeted” – disproportionately affect the civilian population. “Smart sanctions” are very much an oxymoron as “smart bombs” which allegedly function in surgical precision. And like their military counterparts, “targeted sanctions” inflict extensive “collateral damage.”
Despite the political need to seriously reconsider sanctions as a tool for a judicious and solution-oriented foreign policy, there are many political and institutional barriers to overcome before the extremely dense web of Iran sanctions can be dissolved – which remains not only a huge political challenge but also a moral one. The first step in this direction will be the sober realization among policymakers that while sanctions do have effects, these are not the ones officially proclaimed or desired – neither in socio-economic terms nor in the sphere of Realpolitik when it comes to altering Tehran’s nuclear calculation. Leaving the sanctions against Iran in place advances the specter of an Iraqization of Iran – with all its adverse effects internally (destruction of society) as well as externally (war and destabilization of an already too fragile regional balance).
To pave the way for a new chapter in Iran’s relations with the West, Rohani has already proved his wisdom by his choice of foreign minister. Mohammad-Javad Zarif, Iran’s former ambassador to the UN, has already been labeled as “Tehran’s leading connoisseur of the U.S. political elite”. All this undoubtedly presents the most suited prerequisite towards the aim of alleviating the multi-level liability that sanctions constitute. But at the end, it is the responsibility of those who have imposed the sanctions to initiate the process of their removal. The ball is now in the West’s court. It would truly be the “height of irresponsibility” if one missed this opportunity offered by the Iranian people who have already paid dearly for an utterly miscalculated transatlantic “coercive diplomacy.”
*****
Ali Fathollah-Nejad is an Iranian-German political scientist educated at universities in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK. His website is at fathollah-nejad.com.
A Guide to the Deceptions, Misinformation, and Word Games Officials Use to Mislead the Public About NSA Surveillance
By Trevor Timm | EFF | August 14, 2013
It’s been two months since President Barack Obama first said that he welcomes a debate about NSA surveillance, which he once again reiterated last week at his press conference. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to have a real debate about a subject when the administration constantly and intentionally misleads Americans about the NSA’s capabilities and supposed legal powers.
Infamously, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper was forced to apologize for lying to Congress about whether the government was collecting information on millions of Americans, but that was merely the tip of the administration’s iceberg of mendacity and misdirection. At this point, it seems nothing the government says about the NSA can be taken at face value.
NSA’s Bizarro Dictionary
The latest example comes from the New York Times last week, which reported that the NSA is “searching the contents of vast amounts of Americans’ e-mail and text communications into and out of the country.” Despite the fact that millions of people’s communications are collected in bulk, the NSA says that this isn’t “bulk collection.” From the NYT story:
The senior intelligence official argued, however, that it would be inaccurate to portray the N.S.A. as engaging in “bulk collection” of the contents of communications. “ ‘Bulk collection’ is when we collect and retain for some period of time that lets us do retrospective analysis,” the official said. “In this case, we do not do that, so we do not consider this ‘bulk collection.’ ”
In other words, because the NSA does some sort of initial content searches of the bulk communications that they collect, perhaps using very fast computers, then only keep some unknown subset of that greater bulk for a later date, no “bulk collection” occurs. This is ridiculous. No matter how you slice it, the NSA is mass collecting and searching millions of American communications without a warrant.
Keep in mind that officials have previously said communications aren’t even “collected” when they are intercepted and stored in a database for long periods of time, much less “bulk collected.” Orwell would be impressed.
We’ve long documented the NSA’s unbelievable definitions of ordinary words like “collect,” “surveillance,” and “communications,” publishing a whole page of them last year. The ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer has added to the NSA’s bizarro dictionary, with words like “incidental,” “minimize” and even “no.”
The fact is, no one should have to read and parse a sentence a half-dozen times, plus have access to a secret government dictionary, in order to decipher its meaning. Yet, that’s apparently how the administration wants this debate to proceed.
Question Misdirection
When government officials can’t directly answer a question with a secret definition, officials will often answer a different question than they were asked. For example, if asked, “can you read Americans’ email without a warrant,” officials will answer: “we cannot target Americans’ email without a warrant.” As we explained last week, the NSA’s warped definition of word “target” is full of so many holes that it allows the NSA to reach into untold number of Americans’ emails, some which can be purely domestic.
“Under this Program” Dodge
Another tried and true technique in the NSA obfuscation playbook is to deny it does one invasive thing or another “under this program.” When it’s later revealed the NSA actually does do the spying it said it didn’t, officials can claim it was just part of another program not referred to in the initial answer.
This was the Bush administration’s strategy for the “Terrorist Surveillance Program”: The term “TSP” ended up being a meaningless label, created by administration officials after the much larger warrantless surveillance program was exposed by the New York Times in 2005. They used it to give the misleading impression that the NSA’s spying program was narrow and aimed only at intercepting the communications of terrorists. In fact, the larger program affected all Americans.
Now we’re likely seeing it as part of the telephone records collection debate when administration officials repeat over and over that they aren’t collecting location data “under this program.” Sen. Ron Wyden has strongly suggested this might not be the whole story.
From Downright False to Impossible to Understand
Some statements by government officials don’t seem to have any explanation.
The night before the New York Times story on “vast” warrantless searches of Americans’ communications came out, Obama told Jay Leno on The Tonight Show, “We don’t have a domestic spying program.” Mr. President, what do you call collecting the phone records of all Americans and searching any email sent by an American that happens to cross the border? That sounds a lot like a domestic spying program.
Similarly, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, recently said this: “[T]he government cannot listen to an American’s telephone calls or read their emails without a court warrant issued upon a showing of probable cause.” Leaked documents and, honestly, the FISA Amendments Act itself show Feinstein’s statement simply isn’t true—if Americans are talking to a “target” their telephone calls are listened to and their emails can be read without a warrant (and that doesn’t even include the searching of Americans’ communications that are “about a target”). All of those searches are done without a court order, much less a warrant based on probable cause.
Previously, President Obama has called the inherently secret FISA court “transparent,” to the befuddlement of just about everyone. A court that has issued tens of thousands of secret orders, while creating a secret body of privacy and Fourth Amendment law, is not “transparent” by any measure.
Just last week, the president claimed he would appoint an “independent” board of “outside” observers to review the surveillance programs, only to put DNI Clapper—the same man who lied to Congress and the public about the scope of the program—in charge of picking the members. The White House has since backtracked, but the DNI still will report the group’s findings to the President.
These are not all of the misleading statements, merely just a few that stick out at the moment. If the president is serious about transparency, he can start by declassifying the dictionary his administration is using to debate, and start speaking straight to the American public. A one-sided presentation of the facts, without straightforward answers to the public’s questions, isn’t really a debate at all.
Related articles
- The NSA is turning the internet into a total surveillance system
- Confessed Liar To Congress, James Clapper, Gets To Set Up The ‘Independent’ Review Over NSA Surveillance
- Jennifer Hoelzer’s Insider’s View Of The Administration’s Response To NSA Surveillance Leaks
- Pro-NSA Editorial Flails Wildly, Snarks At Internet Users And Claims Those Challenging NSA’s Reach ‘Hate Obama’
Brazil says may go to UN over NSA espionage
Press TV – August 15, 2013
Brazil says it may go to the UN over a controversial US spying program on Brazilian citizens, rejecting Washington’s claims that the operation was purely aimed at fighting terrorism.
Addressing a congressional panel on Wednesday, Brazilian Communications Minister Paulo Bernardo said Brasilia was not satisfied with the explanations presented by US Secretary of State John Kerry during his Tuesday visit.
“Consequently, we will bring the case to international organizations, probably the United Nations,” he added.
Kerry’s visit was aimed at easing diplomatic tensions with the Latin American country.
Washington has defended the espionage program as a lawful measure aimed at countering terrorist attacks across the world.
However, Bernardo stressed that the operation also “involved industrial, trade and diplomatic espionage.”
Based on documents leaked by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, Washington has tapped Brazilians’ telephone conversations and emails.
They also indicate that Washington maintains an intelligence base in Brasilia, part of a network of 16 such stations operated by the US National Security Agency (NSA) around the world to intercept foreign satellite transmissions.
Israeli government to recruit students as undercover agents on social media
RT | August 15, 2013
Israel is set to recruit students to work undercover in “covert units” at universities. The students will post messages on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube on the Israeli government’s behalf – without identifying themselves as government agents.
The students participating in the project will be part of the public diplomacy arm of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s office. Leaders of the “covert units” will receive full scholarships in return for their online public diplomacy (hasbara).
The Prime Minister’s Office is looking to invest up to 3 million shekels ($840,000) to recruit, organize and fund the activities of hundreds of university students, Haaretz reported.
Sources in the Prime Minister’s Office told the newspaper that the main subjects that the campus-based units will deal with are diplomatic- and security-related issues, efforts to combat boycotts of Israel, anti-Semitism and the de-legitimization of Israel. The students will focus on Israel’s democratic values, freedom of religion, pluralism and “other subjects that give expression to the Israeli government’s public diplomacy policy.”
A member of the Israeli Knesset, Dov Lipman, and the Prime Minister’s Office’s director for interactive media, Danny Seaman, revealed the new initiative during a meeting of the Knesset’s Diaspora Affairs Committee last month.
The Prime Minister’s Office is planning to have Israel’s student union recruit up to 550 students with knowledge of foreign languages from Israel’s seven universities. The student union is to publicize the project among tens of thousands of students, and is to provide computers and work space for a project headquarters at all university campuses.
“With social media, you can’t wait,” an unnamed official involved in the effort told the Jerusalem Post.
“We will get authoritative information out and make sure it goes viral,” the official said. “We won’t leave negative stories out there online without a response, and we will spread positive messages. What we are doing is revolutionary. We are putting public diplomacy in the hands of the public.”
The covert units will be set up at each university and structured in a semi-military fashion. While groups will take directions from staff at the Prime Minister’s Office, the government says that officially they will be politically independent.
“The idea requires that the state’s role not be highlighted and therefore it is necessary to insist on major involvement by the students themselves without any political link [or] affiliation,” Seaman said.
Leaders of covert units will receive full scholarships from the Prime Minister’s Office, which will fund a total of 2.78 million shekels ($780,000) in scholarships for the program in the upcoming academic year, Haaretz reported.
“The national public diplomacy unit in the PMO places an emphasis on social network activity,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement. “As part of this, a new pro-Israel public diplomacy infrastructure of students on Israeli campuses is being established that will assist in advancing and disseminating content on the social networks, particularly to international audiences.”
According to details provided to Israeli media, a government liaison officer for Israel advocacy will oversee the dissemination of “rapid responses” from Israeli officials to respond to news events, and coordinate with other government bodies that deal with public diplomacy, including the Israeli Defense Force.
The IDF has recently asserted a stronger, at times controversial presence on social media with mixed results. The new program may well seek to address perceived deficiencies in the way that Israel communicates with the world online.
Last year, during Israel’s eight-day Operation Pillar of Defense, an incursion launched into the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip in response to rocket attacks, the Palestinian group was widely seen as having won the war of words on online media.
Haaretz reported that in the fallout of the military operation, the hashtag #GazaUnderAttack with 170,000 mentions easily surpassed Israel’s own #IsraelUnderFire, with a comparably meager 25,000 mentions.
“The perception dominating the online discourse was that the IDF had embarked on an unjustified attack,” said Tomer Simon, an Israeli researcher who studied social networking activity during the conflict.
Greg Felton: Mideast Peace Talks Doomed to Failure
Interview by Kourosh Ziabari | Fars News Agency | August 14, 2013
Canadian columnist and political author Greg Felton believes that the new round of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority will ultimately fail and lead to nowhere as the Israeli regime is continuing to insist on its illegitimate demands and also is not ready to engage in talks on equal footing.
Greg Felton is a journalist from Canada who has won several awards for investigative reporting. For seven years, he wrote a political column for the Arabic-English bi-weekly Canadian Arab News. In his recent book “The Host and the Parasite—How Israel’s Fifth Column Consumed America,” Felton gives an analysis on how agents of Israel came to control the US Middle East policy. He has written extensively on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In an interview with FNA, Greg Felton elaborated on his viewpoints regarding the future of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the dominance of the Israeli lobby over the Western mainstream media and the prospects of the latest round of peace talks between the representatives of the Israeli regime and the Palestinian Authority. What follows is the text of the interview.
Q: Greg; in one of your articles, you wrote about the under-representation of the pain of the Palestinian nation in the mainstream media as a result of the extensive dominance of the Israeli lobby over these media outlets. How has the Israeli lobby gained such an influence that prevents the press in the West from giving a fair and balanced coverage to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and presenting the Palestinian point of view, too?
A: This profoundly important question is the core of my book “The Host and the Parasite—How Israel’s Fifth Column Consumed America”, so a comprehensive, short answer is difficult. Essentially, the Lobby came to dominate the media because of three factors. First pro-Israeli Jews own the vast majority of print and electronic media, and similarly minded reporters and editors populate these media, so filtering out pro-Palestinian, pro-Arab, or Pro-Islamic news is virtually automatic.
Second, Zionist Jews are well represented in governments and the corporate plutocracy, and Israel has many trade relations with governments and corporations. Any reporter who wants access to influential people cannot risk giving respect to Palestine. Notice how repetitively inane most reporting is; it is safer to recycle official propaganda than to do real reporting.
Third, and most importantly, the cult of the Holocaust covers Israel in a cloak of faux legitimacy. There is, to all intents and purposes, no distinction in the media between Jews, Holocaust and Israel, so any accurate reporting on Palestine amounts to de facto criticism of Israel, and this invites the absurd slanders of “Holocaust denial” and “anti-Semitism.” The effect of all this intellectual terrorism and filtering is the active censorship of the Palestinian point of view.
Q: What’s your viewpoint regarding the UN General Assembly’s unanimous vote in 2012 to recognize the Palestine’s non-member observer status? How does the decision by the world countries in granting Palestine an interim membership to the UN contribute to the championing of the cause of the Palestinian nation and the alleviation of the pains of the subjugated people?
A: The vote was expected, but since the US, Canada and other pro-Israel mouthpieces actively sabotage the UN when it does useful work, the vote will have only marginal benefits for Palestine. Interestingly, the vote to admit Palestine was perfectly legal and consistent with UN procedures. In contrast, Israel’s membership was obtained illegally. In May 1947 it became the only state to be admitted conditionally According to United Nations General Assembly Resolution 273, Israel’s membership was contingent upon making reparations to Arabs displaced in 1947-1948 and allowing them to return to their homes. Israel has never lived up to its terms of admission.
Q: The new round of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has started and is slated to last for 9 months. However, past experience shows that these talks lead to nowhere as the Israeli side is adamantly persisting on its illogical and expansionist demands, such as the continuation of illegal settlement constructions, the Judaization of the East Jerusalem (Al-Quds) and the siege of the Gaza Strip. So, why has the Palestinian authority been deceived into holding new talks with Israel once again?
A: The Palestinian Authority is not deceived. It knows the corrupt reality that allows it to exist. The PA holds “power” by virtue of Israel’s sufferance and Mahmoud Abbas is essentially in the pay of Israel. He and his cronies go through this moronic peace charade to give the illusion they are important and are the representatives of the Palestinians. In fact, all it does is giving diplomatic cover to Israel’s persistent expropriation of Palestine. The fact is, the only legitimate representatives of the Palestinians belong to the duly, and honestly elected Hamas government of Ismail Haniyeh. Therefore, all these “peace” talks are illegitimate, like Israel itself, and designed solely to accomplish nothing short of Palestine’s acquiescence in its own destruction. It is a sad fact of history that oppressed peoples are betrayed by their leaders.
Q: The United States is maintaining its political and economic sponsorship of Israel, and seems to be unwilling to drop its unconditional support. As far as this support continues, Israel will obdurately defy international law, kill the Palestinian civilians, imprison political activists who oppose the occupation and confiscate the rights of the people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. What’s the reason the United States supports Israel so blindly that it doesn’t really pay attention to Israel’s lawlessness and violations?
A: The US does not support Israel blindly for the simple reason that “the US” as a republic no longer exists. As I explain in “The Host and the Parasite”, the 1980 presidential election that put Ronald Reagan in the White House amounted to a quiet coup d’état. Among other things, it opened Congress and the Pentagon to unfettered Israeli occupation and domination. Over the next 20 years the US would surrender its independence as it accelerated its mutation into Isramerica. It makes no sense to debate if the US supports Israel when Israel owns the government.
Q: How do you think of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement and the success it has made in achieving such goals as preventing Israel from infringing upon the rights of the Palestinian people, impeding the construction of illegal settlements and convincing the Tel Aviv leaders to abide by their obligations under the international law with regard to the Palestinian refugees and the besieged people of the Gaza Strip?
A: The BDS movement has had considerable success because it has attacked Israel where it is most vulnerable—it’s image. Like any unjust society, Israel needs to project the illusion of being civilized, and therefore campaigns that explode this illusion are most effective. Just recently, the EU banned all trade in goods manufactured in Occupied Palestine, a significant blow. The BDS movement is hobbled by servile governments that (of course!) denounce it as “anti-Semitic” and conclude free-trade agreements with Israel, but the popular movement is one hope for the future, just as the Jewish War Veterans of World War One led the successful worldwide boycott against Nazi Germany.
Q: What do you think about the Israeli lobby’s growing influence in such countries as Canada? Here in Iran, many politicians and a great number of people firmly believe it was Israel that stimulated the Canadian government to cease its bilateral relations with Iran and close its embassy in Tehran. It’s clearly understandable that the Israeli lobby is trying to sabotage Iran’s relations with the outside world. Do you agree?
A: Israel has always had a disproportionate influence in Canada. In fact, Canadians like Lester Pearson and Justice Ivan Rand have been at the centre of major decisions that benefited Israel at the expense of Palestine. The difference with Stephen Harper is that he is a thoroughgoing fascist and a devoted Zionist. He is not Canada’s prime minister; he is Israel’s satrap in Ottawa, and nothing emanating from this government should be considered “Canadian.”
Q: An important question regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the way the Western mass media stigmatize and vilify the critics of the actions and policies of the Israeli regime as anti-Semites. Anti-Semitism is an excuse that is blindly used to silence the voices critical of Israel’s misconduct and illegal behavior. However, the global public opinion needs to draw a line between opposition to the apartheid policies of Israel as an illegitimate political entity, and anti-Semitism, as it’s defined by the historians. What do you think?
A: To begin, “anti-Semitism” does not exist—never has. It is an artificial term invented in 1873 by Wilhelm Marr, an anti-Jewish German journalist who needed to redefine Jews as an ethnic, not a religious, group to justify official discrimination; hence, he coined the term Semitismus, based on the linguistic term “Semitic.” By this linguistic corruption, Marr was able to attack not only Jews but the larger concept of Jewishness. The fact that historians and others use this term shows how thoroughly Jewish fascists have co-opted the racialist mentality of German fascists, and how completely we have accepted it. I see little need to be precious about condemning Israel, given that Jews are not the least bit circumspect about smearing Arabs and Iranians because of their religion. The best treatment of the nature of Jews, Jewishness and Zionism is Gilad Atzmon’s outstanding book “The Wandering Who.”
Related article
- Futile Peace Talks – Again (alethonews.wordpress.com)
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Why vaccines for children are Big Pharma’s holy grail – Part 1
By Serena Wylde | TCW Defending Freedom | October 18, 2023
James A Shannon, director of the US National Institutes of Health 1955-68, said: ‘No vaccination can be proven safe before it is given to children.’
When he made that statement, it was still possible in the US to sue vaccine manufacturers under tort law for vaccine-induced deaths and injuries, which is no longer the case.
Today the US has the world’s most aggressive vaccine schedule and ranks as the sickest country, with the highest infant mortality, in the developed world. The UK does not lag far behind.
Vaccines carry three separate areas of potential risk. Firstly, they artificially stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies, which temporarily inhibits another part of the body’s defence mechanism. In an infant, whose immune system is just developing, this high demand of energy can in some cases overwhelm its metabolic reserves, and cause brain inflammation. The brain is the highest energy-consuming tissue in the body, followed by the gastro-intestinal tract and the immune system.
Secondly, vaccines contain chemicals, metals and drugs. Thirdly, according to the former pharmaceutical R&D executive Sasha Latypova, traditional vaccines are consistently contaminated with plant and animal proteins which hyper-sensitise the body, especially in children, giving rise to allergies.
In the US in the 1970s there were three inoculations recommended for children… continue
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Aletho News- Fatal Post COVID-19 mRNA-Vaccine Associated Cerebral Ischemia
- Brussels should remember that Europeans are sovereign, not the EU treaties or the Eurocrats
- Georgian President Vetoes Foreign Agents Bill
- Moscow responds to latest EU ban on Russian media
- West ‘playing with fire’ – Moscow
- Labor strike in 10 California universities demands the right to protest for Palestine
- Over 600 mosques destroyed in Israeli onslaught on Gaza since Oct. 7
- ASTRAZENECA FALLOUT AMIDST VACCINE WITHDRAWAL
- Fauci aide allegedly boasted about ability to ‘make emails disappear’ including ‘smoking guns’
- US university president placed on leave for accepting demands of Palestine supporters
- If Americans Knew
- Israeli lawyers at Int’l Court of Justice out of touch with reality – Day 224
- The Israel-Affiliated Organization Leading the Backlash Against Student Protests
- The writing was on the wall for Israel’s torture of prisoners
- Not even the US government knows the US government line on Rafah
- Israeli anti-Zionist academic Ilan Pappe interrogated by FBI in Detroit
- Jewish billionaires secretly worked to shape U.S. public opinion on Israel’s war against Gaza
- As it defends its planned genocidal Rafah invasion before ICJ, Israel vows to “intensify” raids – Day 223
- New report shows Biden is going to extraordinary lengths to continue arming Israel
- Palestinians rally at historic villages in northern Israel
- Blinken Says Israeli Units Accused of Serious Violations Have Done Enough to Avoid Sanctions. Experts and Insiders Disagree.
- International Solidarity Movement
- Three martyred and five wounded in Tulkarem
- Dispatches from Palestine
- The Right to Resist Genocide by Land and By Sea
- Women Support Center in Nablus empowers women and girls, resists gendered violence and the Occupation
- Palestinian Family at Um Darit Harassed and Isolated
- Occupation Forces Targeted Series of Strikes Kills 7 Aid Workers in Gaza
- Israeli army and police escalate repression of human rights volunteers following Knesset hearing.
- Illegal Israeli Settlers Continue Attacks on Shepherds in Masafer Yatta
- Second Friday of Ramadan at Qalandia Checkpoint
- Deceptively “quiet” first week of Ramadan in Jerusalem: a result of restrictions at Qalandia checkpoint
- Richie Allen
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- No Tricks Zone
- Data Reveal That US Heat Wave Index, Japan Drought Coincide With Solar Activity
- New Study Finds An Extremely Low CO2 Climate Sensitivity For The Arctic And Antarctic
- U.N. Contributing Scientist: ‘Culling’ Human Population Could Avert Climate Catastrophe
- Using Nets On The Seafloor To Retrieve Seafood ‘Roughly The Same As Running 100 Coal-Fired Plants’
- New Paper: Global Warming Leading To HIMALAYAN COOLING, Preventing Glacial Melt!
- DNA Evidence Reveals Domestic Cats, Dogs, African Wildcats, Frogs Lived In The Arctic 9000 Years Ago
- -80°C: Antarctic Vostok Station Records “Extreme Winter Cold”…Not Even Winter Yet!
- The German E-Vehicle Nightmare, 2024 Q1 Sales Plummet 14%… “Graveyard” For Unsold Cars
- Newly Discovered 90,000-Year-Old Human Footprints Reveal How Much Higher Sea Levels Used To Be
- Germany’s Economic Bloodbath Worsens As Green Revolution Causes Economy To Bleed To Death
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