That commenter on your blog may actually be working for the Israeli government
By Cecilie Surasky | July 14, 2009
Straight out of Avigdor Lieberman’s Foreign Ministry: a new Internet Fighting Team! Israeli students and demobilized soldiers get paid to pretend they are just regular folks and leave pro-Israel comments on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other sites. The effort is meant to fight the “well-oiled machine” of “pro-Palestinian websites, with huge budgets… with content from the Hamas news agency.” The approach was test-marketed during Israel’s assault on Gaza, and by groups like Give Israel Your United Support, a controversial effort to use instant-access technology to crowd-source Israel advocates to fill in flash polls or vote up key articles on social networking sites.
Will the responders who are hired for this also present themselves as “ordinary net-surfers”?
“Of course,” says Shturman. “Our people will not say: ‘Hello, I am from the policy-explanation department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and I want to tell you the following.’ Nor will they necessarily identify themselves as Israelis. They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the Foreign Ministry developed.”
The full article, translated by Occupation Magazine into English here:
The Foreign Ministry presents: talkbackers in the service of the State
By: Dora Kishinevski
Calcalist 5 July 2009
Translated for Occupation Magazine by George Malent
After they became an inseparable part of the service provided by public-relations companies and advertising agencies, paid Internet talkbackers are being mobilized in the service in the service of the State. The Foreign Ministry is in the process of setting up a team of students and demobilized soldiers who will work around the clock writing pro-Israeli responses on Internet websites all over the world, and on services like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. The Foreign Ministry’s department for the explanation of Israeli policy* is running the project, and it will be an integral part of it. The project is described in the government budget for 2009 as the “Internet fighting team” – a name that was given to it in order to distinguish it from the existing policy-explanation team, among other reasons, so that it can receive a separate budget. Even though the budget’s size has not yet been disclosed to the public, sources in the Foreign Ministry have told Calcalist that in will be about NIS 600.000 in its first year, and it will be increased in the future. From the primary budget, about NIS 200.000 will be invested in round-the-clock activity at the micro-blogging website Twitter, which was recently featured in the headlines for the services it provided to demonstrators during the recent disturbances in Iran.
“To all intents and purposes the Internet is a theatre in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we must be active in that theatre, otherwise we will lose,” Elan Shturman, deputy director of the policy-explanation department in the Foreign Ministry, and who is directly responsible for setting up the project, says in an interview with Calcalist. “Our policy-explanation achievements on the Internet today are impressive in comparison to the resources that have been invested so far, but the other side is also investing resources on the Internet. There is an endless array of pro-Palestinian websites, with huge budgets, rich with information and video clips that everyone can download and post on their websites. They are flooding the Internet with content from the Hamas news agency. It is a well-oiled machine. Our objective is to penetrate into the world in which these discussions are taking place, where reports and videos are published – the blogs, the social networks, the news websites of all sizes. We will introduce a pro-Israeli voice into those places. What is now going on in Iran is the proof of the need for such an operational branch,” adds Shturman. “It’s not like a group of friends is going to bring down the government with Twitter messages, but it does help to expand the struggle to vast dimensions.”
The missions: “monitoring” and “fostering discussions”
The Foreign Ministry intends to recruit youths who speak at least one foreign language and who are studying communications, political science or law, or alternatively those whose military background is in units that deal with information analysis. “It is a youthful language”, explains Shturman. “Older people do not know how to write blogs, how to act there, what the accepted norms are. The basic conditions are a high capacity for expression in English – we also have French- and Swedish-speakers – and familiarity with the online milieu. We are looking for people who are already writing blogs and circulating in Facebook”.
Members of the new unit will work at the Ministry (“They will punch a time card,” says Shturman) and enjoy the full technical support of Tahila, the government’s ISP, which is responsible for computer infrastructure and Internet services for government departments. “Their missions will be defined along the lines of the government policies that they will be required to defend on the Internet. It could be the situation in Gaza, the situation in the north or whatever is decided. We will determine which international audiences we want to reach through the Internet and the strategy we will use to reach them, and the workers will implement that on in the field. Of course they will not distribute official communiquיs; they will draft the conversations themselves. We will also activate an Internet-monitoring team – people who will follow blogs, the BBC website, the Arabic websites.”
According to Shturman the project will begin with a limited budget, but he has plans to expand the team and its missions: “the new centre will also be able to support Israel as an economic and commercial entity,” he says. “Alternative energy, for example, now interests the American public and Congress much more than the conflict in the Middle East. If through my team I can post in blogs dealing with alternative energy and push the names of Israeli companies there, I will strengthen Israel’s image as a developed state that contributes to the quality of the environment and to humanity, and along with that I may also manage to help an Israeli company get millions of dollars worth of contracts. The economic potential here is great, but for that we will require a large number of people. What is unique about the Internet is the fragmentation into different communities, every community deals with what interests it. To each of those communities you have to introduce material that is relevant to it.”
The inspiration: covert advertising on the Internet
The Foreign Ministry admits that the inspiration comes from none other than the much-reviled field of compensated commercial talkback: employees of companies and public-relations firms who post words of praise on the Internet for those who sent them there – the company that is their employer or their client. The professional responders normally identify themselves as chance readers of the article they are responding to or as “satisfied customers” of the company they are praising.
Will the responders who are hired for this also present themselves as “ordinary net-surfers”?
“Of course,” says Shturman. “Our people will not say: ‘Hello, I am from the policy-explanation department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and I want to tell you the following.’ Nor will they necessarily identify themselves as Israelis. They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the Foreign Ministry developed.”
Test-firing in the Gaza War
According to Shturman, although it is only now that the project is receiving a budget and a special department in the Foreign Ministry, in practice the Ministry has been using its own responders since the last war in Gaza, when the Ministry recruited volunteer talkbackers. “During Operation Cast Lead we appealed to Jewish communities abroad and with their help we recruited a few thousand volunteers, who were joined by Israeli volunteers. We gave them background material and policy-explanation material, and we sent them to represent the Israeli point of view on news websites and in polls on the Internet,” says Shturman. “Our target audience then was the European Left, which was not friendly towards the policy of the government. For that reason we began to get involved in discussions on blogs in England, Spain and Germany, a very hostile environment.”
And how much change have you effected so far?
“It is hard to prove success in this kind of activity, but it is clear that we succeeded in bypassing the European television networks, which are very critical of Israel, and we have created direct dialogues with the public.”
What things have you done there exactly?
“For example, we sent someone to write in the website of a left-wing group in Spain. He wrote ‘it is not exactly as you say.’ Someone at the website replied to him, and we replied again, we gave arguments, pictures. Dialogue like that opens people’s eyes.”
Elon Gilad, a worker at the Foreign Ministry who coordinated the activities of the volunteer talkbackers during the war in Gaza and will coordinate the activities of the professional talkbackers in the new project, says that volunteering for talkback in defence of Israel started spontaneously: “Many times people contacted us and asked how they could help to explain Israeli policy. They mainly do it at times like the Gaza operation. People just asked for information, and afterwards we saw that the information was distributed all over the Internet. The Ministry of Absorption also started a project at that time, and they transferred to us hundreds of volunteers who speak foreign languages
and who will help to spread the information. That project too mainly spreads information on the Internet.”
“You can’t win”
While most of the net-surfers were recruited through websites like giyus.org, which was officially activated by a Jewish lobby [and has basically the same goal and modus operandi], in some cases is it was the Foreign Ministry that took the initiative to contact the surfers and asked them to post talkbacks sympathetic to the State and the government [of Israel] on the Internet and to help recruit volunteers. That’s how Michal Carmi, an active blogger and associate general manager at the high-tech placement company Tripletec, was recruited to the online policy-explanation team.
“During Operation Cast Lead the Foreign Ministry wrote to me and other bloggers and asked us to make our opinions known on the international stage as well,” Carmi tells Calcalist. “They sent us pages with ‘taking points’ and a great many video clips. I focussed my energies on Facebook, and here and there I wrote responses on blogs where words like ‘Holocaust’ and ‘murder’ were used in connection with Israel’s Gaza action. I had some very hard conversations there. Several times the Foreign Ministry also recommended that we access specific blogs and get involved in the discussions that were taking place there.”
And does it work? Does it have any effect?
“I am not sure that that strategy was correct. The Ministry did excellent work, they sent us a flood of accurate information, but it focussed on Israeli suffering and the threat of the missiles. But the view of the Europeans is one-dimensional. Israeli suffering does not seem relevant to them compared to Palestinian suffering.”
“You can never win in this struggle. All you can do is be there and express your position,” is how Gilad sums up the effectiveness so far, as well as his expectations of the operation when it begins to receive a government budget.
(*) “department for the explanation of Israeli policy” is a translation of only two words in the original Hebrew text: “mahleqet ha-hasbara” – literally, “the department of explanation”. Israeli readers require no elaboration. Henceforth in this article, “hasbara” will be translated as “policy-explanation”. It may also be translated as “public diplomacy” or “propaganda”.
Related article
95% of Climate Models Agree: The Observations Must be Wrong
By Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D. | February 7th, 2014
I’m seeing a lot of wrangling over the recent (15+ year) pause in global average warming… when did it start, is it a full pause, shouldn’t we be taking the longer view, etc.
These are all interesting exercises, but they miss the most important point: the climate models that governments base policy decisions on have failed miserably.
I’ve updated our comparison of 90 climate models versus observations for global average surface temperatures through 2013, and we still see that >95% of the models have over-forecast the warming trend since 1979, whether we use their own surface temperature dataset (HadCRUT4), or our satellite dataset of lower tropospheric temperatures (UAH):
Whether humans are the cause of 100% of the observed warming or not, the conclusion is that global warming isn’t as bad as was predicted. That should have major policy implications…assuming policy is still informed by facts more than emotions and political aspirations.
And if humans are the cause of only, say, 50% of the warming (e.g. our published paper), then there is even less reason to force expensive and prosperity-destroying energy policies down our throats.
I am growing weary of the variety of emotional, misleading, and policy-useless statements like “most warming since the 1950s is human caused” or “97% of climate scientists agree humans are contributing to warming”, neither of which leads to the conclusion we need to substantially increase energy prices and freeze and starve more poor people to death for the greater good.
Yet, that is the direction we are heading.
And even if the extra energy is being stored in the deep ocean (if you have faith in long-term measured warming trends of thousandths or hundredths of a degree), I say “great!”. Because that extra heat is in the form of a tiny temperature change spread throughout an unimaginably large heat sink, which can never have an appreciable effect on future surface climate.
If the deep ocean ends up averaging 4.1 deg. C, rather than 4.0 deg. C, it won’t really matter.
~
Roy W. Spencer received his Ph.D. in meteorology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1981. Before becoming a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 2001, he was a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, where he and Dr. John Christy received NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for their global temperature monitoring work with satellites. Dr. Spencer’s work with NASA continues as the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite. He has provided congressional testimony several times on the subject of global warming.
Dr. Spencer’s research has been entirely supported by U.S. government agencies: NASA, NOAA, and DOE. He has never been asked by any oil company to perform any kind of service. Not even Exxon-Mobil.
Dr. Spencer’s first popular book on global warming, Climate Confusion (Encounter Books), is now available at Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com.
Terrorism with a “Human Face”: Syria Al Qaeda “Freedom Fighters” are “Not Killing Civilians”
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky | Global Research | February 10, 2014
The attacks by opposition forces largely integrated by Al Qaeda terrorists can no longer be denied.
What is now occurring is a re-branding of the various terrorist formations covertly support by Western intelligence.
The latest slur of media disinformation consists in providing a “human face” to Al Qaeda.
While the media acknowledges that the Al Nusrah front is integrated by Al Qaeda affiliated rebels, the Islamist rebels affiliated with the New Islamic Front –which has received Washington’s ascent– are now portrayed as “freedom fighters” involved strictly in para-military operations.
Media Fabrications
According to the media reports:
1. The opposition rebels are predominantly Syrian nationals.
2. They are not targeting innocent civilians.
3. They are acting in a responsible fashion. They are no longer involved in terrorist acts. They are targeting government forces and the pro-government National Defense Force militia, set up in towns and villages across Syria.
The attack on an Alawite village in the province of Hama
A Reuters report pertaining to a recent rebel attack on an Alawite village in the province of Hama suggests that civilians deaths are few in number, largely the result of “collateral damage”, attributable to “neglect” pertaining to the government evacuation programs from the areas of combat.
Read carefully (emphasis added). The Reuters report casually denies the atrocities committed by US-NATO-Saudi sponsored terrorists:
Islamist fighters battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces seized control of an Alawite village in the central province of Hama on Sunday, part of an offensive to try to cut off supply routes from Damascus to the north of the country.
The report denies, despite ample evidence, that the “freedom fighters” killed civilians. Detailed government data on civilian casualties are dismissed;
But the government said the dead were mainly women and children and accused the fighters of committing a massacre on the eve of the resumption of peace talks in Geneva.”
Reuters prefers to quote the “evidence” provided by the fake UK based Syrian Observatory. Those killed were part of the government’s militia forces:
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the Islamists killed 25 people in the village of Maan, mainly from a pro-Assad National Defence Force militia.
Residents of Maan, around 5 miles east of Syria’s main north-south highway, are from the same Alawite minority as the Assad family which has ruled Syria for the last four decades.
…
The Observatory said most women and children had been evacuated from the village before it was taken over.
(Reuters report Chicago Tribune, February 9, 2014
The “freedom fighters” are “overwhelmingly” Syrian national
The Reuters report fails to acknowledge something which is amply documented by media reports and official data: most of the rebels are mercenaries recruited in Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, not to mention several European countries including Britain and France.
The “freedom fighters” are “overwhelmingly” Syrian nationals according to Reuters:
Rebels fighting to overthrow Assad are overwhelmingly from the country’s Sunni Muslim majority, backed by Islamist and jihadi fighters from across the Islamic world.
“Video footage released on Sunday showed a rebel fighter performing Muslim prayers on top of a municipal building after the seizure of Maan, one of several sites in Hama targeted by the rebels in recent days. Another video showed the dead body of a pro-Assad fighter.
The Observatory said most women and children had been evacuated from the village before it was taken over.
(Reuters report Chicago Tribune, February 9, 2014
Yarmouk: The Palestinian Urban Suburb
A BBC report pertaining to the Palestinian Yarmouk, urban suburb of Damascus, sustains the legend of opposition “activists” and “freedom fighters” coming to the rescue of Palestinians:
The situation has grown desperate since last summer when the Syrian army blocked regular supplies to the camp in an attempt to force out rebels [Al Qaeda terrorists supported by US-NATO] holed up inside.
Activists’ videos and photographs have shown little children crying in hunger and with visible signs of malnutrition. Residents told the BBC that recently there have been about 100 deaths from starvation.
The strategy of the Al Qaeda rebels advised by Western and Israeli Special Forces has been to block the supply routes of food and essential commodities. And then the media comes in and blames the government:
“Babies also died because there was no milk. Their mothers couldn’t breastfeed them because they were sick and undernourished.”
Palestinians in Yarmouk say they have resorted to eating boiled herbs and plants found growing near their homes.
The insinuation is that government forces –which have acted in support of the Palestinians– are responsible for the humanitarian crisis in Yarmouk.
At the same time, the BBC refutes its own lies. It acknowledges that the Syrian authorities supported the Palestinians from the very outset:
The unofficial camp was set up as a home for refugees who left or were forced from their original homes because of the 1948 war that led to the creation of Israel.
Although the Syrian authorities did not give citizenship to refugees, they had full access to employment and social services. Many say they had relatively good lives compared to their counterparts in other Arab countries.
Yet the BBC in its coverage of Yarmouk, insinuates that the terrorists integrated by Western advisers had the support of the Palestinians against the Syrian government and that ultimately the “freedom fighters” allowed the supply routes to be opened to the United Nations relief programs led by the UNRWA:
Armed rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad moved into the camp and found support among some Palestinian groups.
After months of negotiations, a deal was struck at the end of last year between the Syrian authorities and Palestinian representatives to allow food to be delivered to the camp. BBC, February 10, 2014.
Big Media Again Pumps for Mideast Wars
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | February 4, 2014
Journalistically, there’s a problem with this passage from Monday’s New York Times: “Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon of Israel … castigated Iran as being dedicated to a nuclear weapon and acting to deceive, and he repeated Israel’s warning that it would not allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon.” Can you tell what the flaw is?
If the New York Times were acting in a professional and objective manner, the next line would have read something like: “Of course, Israel itself developed a nuclear bomb in secret decades ago and now has possibly the most sophisticated undeclared nuclear arsenal on earth.” But the Times chose not to remind its readers of Israel’s stunning hypocrisy as a rogue nuclear-armed state condemning Iran for supposedly harboring a desire for a nuke, a weapon that Iran doesn’t have and says it doesn’t want.
That sort of double standard is common in the mainstream U.S. news media when reporting on Israel and its Muslim adversaries. But to let an Israeli official get away with castigating Iran for contemplating something that Israel has already done – without mentioning the hypocrisy – is a clear violation of journalistic standards. Indeed, it is evidence of bias.
Meanwhile, the neocon editors of the Washington Post are continuing their new campaign to pressure President Barack Obama into issuing more military ultimatums to Syria, another Israeli “enemy.” The logic seems to be that if Obama keeps issuing ultimatums eventually Syria won’t comply or won’t be able to comply, thus creating a casus belli, much as when President George W. Bush demanded that Iraq surrender WMD that it didn’t have.
In a double-barreled blast on Tuesday, the Post published a lead editorial and then a separate op-ed by its editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt making essentially the same argument – that Obama’s diplomacy over Syria has failed and that it’s time for more military threats or even a military intervention in Syria’s civil war. That “theme” was quickly picked up by other U.S. news outlets, including “liberal” MSNBC.
Yet, the real problem with Obama’s Syria strategy is that it is still based on his blustering pronouncements during Campaign 2012 when he was trying to sound tough in order to fend off the more hawkish, neocon rhetoric of Republican Mitt Romney.
During that period, Obama was drawing “red lines” regarding Syria and declaring that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “must go.” Obama insisted that the purpose of any peace talks must be to dissolve Assad’s government and replace it with one organized by Assad’s opponents, in other words, Assad’s negotiated surrender.
But that was never realistic, however unsavory Assad and his regime might be. He still represents major segments of Syrian society, including blocs of Alawites (an offshoot of Shiite Islam) and Christians. Plus, the strongest part of the rebel movement, seeking Assad’s ouster, is the contingent of radical jihadists representing extreme Sunni groups, including some affiliated with al-Qaeda and some even more extreme who are vowing to exterminate the Alawites and other “heretics.”
Baiting Obama
In the midst of this complex and dangerous mix, the Post’s neocon editors are baiting Obama to stop being so weak, so “inert,” as Hiatt wrote.
On Sunday, the Post’s editors demanded that Obama issue a new military ultimatum regarding delays in Assad’s delivery of chemical weapons to a UN agency for destruction. On Tuesday, the argument was that Obama must intervene militarily to prevent Syria from becoming a base for al-Qaeda militants to plot attacks against the American “homeland.”
“Once again, terrorists linked to al-Qaeda may be using territory they control to plot attacks against the United States, even as [Secretary of State John] Kerry pursues his long-shot diplomacy and Mr. Obama offers excuses for inaction,” the Post’s editorial read.
“With or without U.N. action, it is time for the Obama administration to reconsider how it can check the regime’s crimes and the growing threat of al-Qaeda. As Mr. Kerry reportedly conceded, for now it has no answers.”
Hiatt reiterated the same points in his companion op-ed: “It is no secret that the Obama administration’s Syria policy, to the extent that one exists, is failing. Now the man with the unenviable task of implementing that policy, Secretary of State John F. Kerry, has acknowledged as much, according to two U.S. senators who spoke with him Sunday, John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.).
“Kerry said that the Geneva negotiating process hasn’t delivered, they said, and that new approaches are needed. … Now, though, a new factor has emerged. Last week, in Senate testimony that got less attention than it deserved, Obama’s director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said Syria ‘is becoming a center of radical extremism and a potential threat to the homeland.’”
Hiatt continued: “Havens in Syria, in other words, could play the same role that Afghan refuges offered al-Qaeda before 9/11. As the West cold-shouldered moderate and secular forces, extremist ranks have swelled in Syria to as many as 26,000, including 7,000 foreigners, Clapper said.”
Not surprisingly, given the always-hawkish views of McCain and Graham, their proposed “new approaches” to this new threat involved military interventions in Syria. Graham wanted to unleash armed drones over the country, while McCain called for establishing “a safe zone in which to train the Free Syrian Army and care for refugees, protected by Patriot missiles based in Turkey,” Hiatt wrote.
Which Side?
Of course, a big part of the Syrian problem is that al-Qaeda-connected extremists are fighting as part of the rebel coalition against Assad’s army. Indeed, the jihadists are considered, by far, the most effective part of the rebel force. To a significant degree, the Sunni jihadists – funded and armed by Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states – are the rebel army.
In other words, the semantic trick that the Post is pulling off is to conflate the existence of al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria with the Syrian government when they are actually on opposite sides, bitterly fighting one another. The Post’s argument is a bit like blaming Fidel Castro for harboring al-Qaeda operatives in Cuba without mentioning that they are locked up at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo and thus outside Castro’s control.
Currently, the Syrian government is engaged in a brutal campaign to root out these “terrorists” – as well as other armed rebels – and is killing lots of civilians in the process. While there may be no easy solution to this catastrophe, the idea of another U.S. military intervention could easily lead to even more death and destruction.
As Hiatt noted, “Obama has doubted that the United States could intervene in such a messy conflict without making things worse. He reportedly worries that even a limited commitment would inexorably suck the nation into something deeper. There certainly is no public clamor to intervene.”
But lack of public support for another Mideast war is no concern to Hiatt and other Post editors who have never really apologized for helping to mislead the American people into the Iraq invasion which resulted in the deaths of nearly 4,500 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Indeed, the Iraqi bloodbath — initiated by President Bush and promoted by the neocons — has already been forgotten, as the Post cited the Syrian civil war as the worst humanitarian disaster since the Rwanda genocide in the 1990s, jumping over the Iraqi carnage of the past decade.
Now, Hiatt and the other neocons are promoting “themes” designed to maneuver Obama into another Mideast conflict, pushing the hot button of al-Qaeda “refuges” as if Assad is protecting the extremists, not trying to kill them.
Yet, if preventing al-Qaeda from establishing a safe haven in Syria is now the top U.S. concern – and not just the latest neocon excuse for another U.S. invasion of a Muslim country – then a more logical approach might be to seek a power-sharing arrangement between Assad’s government and the more moderate opposition, creating a united front against the jihadists.
Such an agreement could be followed by a coordinated strategy to rid Syria of these extremists. Obama also might put the squeeze on the Saudis and other oil-rich sheiks to stop funding the Sunni jihad inside Syria.
But the U.S. insistence that Assad negotiate his own surrender – especially when his forces have gained the upper hand militarily – will simply ensure more fighting and killing, while the neocons ramp up their pressure on Obama for one more “regime change.”
~
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
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Victoria Nuland’s ‘Ukraine-gate’ Deceptions
By Daniel McAdams | Ron Paul Institute | February 9, 2014
“That’s some pretty impressive tradecraft,” said Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland of the interception and leak of her now-infamous call to US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoff Pyatt. The call consisted of the two plotting to install a US puppet government in Ukraine after overthrowing the current, democratically elected government.
Tradecraft means “spycraft.” In other words, Nuland was crediting a foreign intelligence service with impressive use of technology to be able to hack into her call to the ambassador. Everyone knew she was talking about Russia, partly because the Administration had been blaming Russia from the moment the recording was made public.
However, Nuland knew all along that this was not the case, and she did nothing while the Administration continued to escalate the accusations against Russia.
Jay Carney, White House Spokesman, “It says something about Russia,” that they would tap the telephone call. State Department Spokeswoman Jan Psaki was even harsher, calling it “a new low in Russian tradecraft.”
But the telephone call between the two, we learned yesterday, was not conducted on a secure, encrypted telephone line that the State Department requires for such sensitive conversations and communication. Rather, the call was made over unsecured cell phones and thus easily intercepted with basic equipment that is widely available to anyone. Therefore it was not “impressive tradecraft” at all that led to the capture and release of the conversation.
Nuland and Pyatt obviously knew that at the time, being the two parties to the call. They then either sat by and allowed US government official one after the other accuse Russia of going to great lengths to hack the call without admitting this fact, or they did inform their superiors but Administration officials decided to ignore this critical fact and push accusations against Russia anyway. You never want a serious crisis to go to waste, as it is said.
RPI contacted a former State Department official to clarify security procedures for such a telephone conversation between high-level personnel. The official was clear:
I know well the seriousness of using an open line (aside from anodyne conversation) for high-level classified information that would clearly be embarrassing, if not damaging, not only for the US but also the EU. For using an open line for discussing highly sensitive national security matters, both [Nuland and Pyatt] should be reprimanded, at the very least.
So this was a serious security violation.
The former official continued:
Assuming the telecon was made on insecure line, I find it curious, if not thought provoking, that Nuland’s profanity has managed to overshadow both the apparent security violation as well as the potential damage to national security of the substance of the conversation itself.
Indeed, the fallout from “Ukraine-gate” is astounding but sadly not surprising. The mainstream media in the US has focused solely on the Russian angle (now discredited) and on the salty language and particularly the false supposition that Nuland was using sailor’s language to indicate a serious rift with the EU on Ukraine policy. In fact, US and EU policy toward Ukraine is identical: regime change. The dispute is merely over velocity and is therefore cosmetic rather than substantive: should we travel 100 miles per hour or only 75 miles per hour toward regime change?
As far as we have seen, there has been virtually no discussion of the substance of the telephone conversation in the US media. But the conversation was a confirmation of all theretofore denied accusations of US involvement in the current unrest in Ukraine. It was not simply US well-wishing toward the opposition parties. It was not simply a bit of advice and a wink toward the opposition. It was wholesale planning and brokering a post-regime change governing coalition in Ukraine, with the UN being ordered to come in and “glue” the deal.
More precisely, as the Oriental Journal points out:
They agreed to nominate Bat’kyvshchina Party leader Arseniy Yatseniuk as Deputy Prime Minister, to bench Udar Party leader Vitaly Klitschko from the game for a while and to discredit neo-Nazi Svoboda party chief Oleh Tiahnybok as “Yanukovych’s project”
Shortly after “Ukraine-gate” broke, Sergei Glazyev, advisor to Russian president Putin claimed that the US was spending $20 million per week on the Ukrainian opposition, including supplying the opposition with training and weapons.
Nuland replied that such claims are “pure fantasy.”
Perhaps, but that is just what Nuland had said previously about claims that the US was meddling in the internal affairs of Ukraine. And then the tape came out. That was just what she said about Russia’s “impressive tradecraft” in intercepting the telephone call. Then we discover that she was discussing highly sensitive issues over completely unsecured telephones.
Is the US training and funding the Ukraine opposition? Nuland herself claimed in December that the US had spent $5 billion since the 1990s on “democratization” programs in Ukraine. On what would she like us to believe the money had been spent?
We know that the US State Department invests heavily — more than $100 million from 2008-2012 alone — on international “Internet freedom” activities. This includes heavy State Department funding, for example, for the New Americas Foundation’s…
…Commotion Project (sometimes referred to as the “Internet in a Suitcase”). This is an initiative from the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative to build a mobile mesh network that can literally be carried around in a suitcase, to allow activists to continue to communicate even when a government tries to shut down the Internet, as happened in several Arab Spring countries during the recent uprisings.
“Commotion Project.” What an appropriate name for what is happening in Ukraine.
It is not a far leap from the known billions spent on “democratization” in Ukraine, to the hundreds of millions spent on developing new tools for regime-changers on the ground to use against authorities in their home countries, to the State Department from the US embassy in Kiev providing training and equipment to those seeking the overthrow of the Ukrainian government.
The apparent goal of US policy in Ukraine is to re-ignite a Cold War, installing a US-created government in Kiev which signs the EU association agreement including its NATO cooperation language to effectively push the Berlin Wall all the way to the gates of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
NATO has expanded to central Europe, despite US assurances in the 1980s that it would not do so. The US rolled over Russia in its deceptive manipulation of a UN Security Council resolution on Libya to initiate an invasion. The US continues to arm jihadists seeking to overthrow the secular Assad government in Russia-allied Syria. The US and EU have absorbed the Baltics, leaving their large ethnic Russian populations to dangle in non-person limbo. The US and EU had all but absorbed Georgia. Now the US is clearly in the process of absorbing Ukraine, with its strategic importance to Russia, its proximity, and its nearly 10 million ethnic Russian minority.
Surely there is a point to where Russia will take steps to concretely limit its losses. In December Russian president Vladimir Putin said in a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yanukovich that Russia and Ukraine should resume comprehensive military cooperation. Other bilateral defense agreements are already in place.
What would have to happen to trigger a Ukrainian request to its close neighbor for assistance putting down a bloody and illegal coup d’etat instigated by foreign governments? Will serious US miscalculation of Russian resolve over Ukraine lead to a tragedy of almost inconceivable proportions? What if this time Russia does not blink?
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A Tale of Two Cities: Kiev and Washington
By Daniel McAdams | Ron Paul Institute | February 7, 2014
In Kiev:
Violent protestors last month occupied three cabinet ministry buildings as they sought to overthrow the Ukrainian government. Protestors physically blocked the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament from taking his seat at the speaker’s podium for weeks. Then they blockaded the speaker of parliament in his own office, forcing him to escape out the window.
As the Ukrainian authorities attempted to restore order and evict protestors from government buildings, the US government threatened sanctions and more if the legally-elected government of Ukraine moved against those occupying government buildings.
Senator John McCain last week threatened unspecified “concrete” US action against Ukraine if there is any “brutal repression of the demonstrations.” In other words, if police forcibly remove those who have taken control of cabinet ministry buildings and blocked the main square of the capitol, McCain implies that “all options are on the table.”
Meanwhile in Washington:
A man attempted to climb the fence surrounding the White House today and was immediately apprehended. The White House complex was placed in full lockdown mode. According to press reports, “the area around the White House was shut down and reporters were not allowed to leave through one of the gates because of the incident.”
Last October, a distraught woman traveling with her one year old daughter bumped into a barricade in front of the White House before driving quickly and erratically toward Capitol Hill. She did not attempt to occupy any government buildings, but once she stopped her car, police shot her dead.
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Iran: Over 20 nationals jailed in US on sanctions charges
Press TV – February 9, 2014
Iran says the United States has imprisoned more than 20 Iranian nationals over allegations of violating Washington’s sanctions regime against Tehran.
“The US government has arrested more than 20 Iranian nationals over the unfounded allegation of breaching US’s unilateral and illegal sanctions against the Iranian nation and [it] has so far taken no measure to release these innocent citizens despite [Iran’s] follow-up through diplomatic and legal channels,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said on Sunday.
She added that Iran’s Foreign Ministry would continue to pursue and seek to secure the rights and freedom of these innocent Iranians.
She further dismissed claims about the detention of American nationals in Iran.
“No American national is in custody or prison in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the Iranian spokesperson said.
She said the two people that the US authorities and media say are in custody in Iran are actually Iranian citizens and will have to be held accountable before the law while enjoying their full legal rights.
Violent Student Protests Mark New Phase of “Radical” Venezuelan Opposition Activity
By Ewan Robertson | Venezuelanalysis | February 7, 2013
Mérida – Violent opposition student protests have taken place in several Venezuelan cities in recent days.
The demonstrations over issues such as “insecurity” come as one sector of the right-wing opposition has called for supporters to “take to the streets” to seek a “way out” of the Venezuelan government.
The student protests began on Tuesday in San Cristóbal in the western state of Táchira, when two students were arrested for alleged breach of the peace during a demonstration. The students were released the following day.
In response, over the past three days small groups of pro-opposition students in Táchira and Mérida states have launched a series of protests. Belonging to the University of the Andes (ULA), among other institutions, the students have typically been masked and hooded, and do not display banners explaining the reasons for their protest.
Their actions so far have included blocking roads, burning tires, throwing stones at passers-by, stealing a truck, and in Mérida, attacking a government building project.
When interviewed, the students say they are protesting “insecurity”.
“[Venezuelan president Nicolas] Maduro and [socialist governor of Tachira state] Vielma Mora arrest and assassinate us students that fight for life, meanwhile they arm delinquents so that they rob, rape and murder the people,” claimed Vilca Fernández, leader of the radical “Liberation 13” ULA student group.
The most violent action took place yesterday, when a group of up to seventy radical opposition students attacked the official residence of the socialist governor of Tachira state, Vielma Mora.
According to Mora and other sources, the students were armed with “stones, bottles and some kind of molotov bomb”. They allegedly destroyed a police sentry post, broke down the residence’s main gates, and threatened Vielma Mora’s wife, who was protected by police while she tried to calm the students.
Governor Mora also said that “some students” had turned up at his young children’s nursery with the intention of “taking them out and causing them harm”, however without success.
Mora’s wife, Karla Jimenez, claimed that the students’ aim in the attack was to “get hurt and appeal to CNN in protest” although she insisted that “we’re not going to fall for that political game”.
Vielma Mora and Karla Jimenez blame the actions on Leopoldo Lopez, the leader of the right-wing Popular Will party, who they accused of giving “instructions” to the students. Lopez is leading a self-declared “radical” movement from within the opposition to seek an immediate “way out” of Nicolas Maduro’s government, and has demanded supporters to “go on to the streets”.
Many opposition leaders, such as Miranda state governor Henrique Capriles, don’t agree with Lopez’ strategy, referring to it “inopportune” and politically “suicidal”.
Leopoldo Lopez denied any involvement in the violent student protests, stating, “I don’t have detailed information about what’s happening in Tachira, but I can say that if there’s an accusation by governor Vielma Mora, creating tension that’s very far from dialogue…that could be the origin of the tension”.
The student protests come after a group of opposition supporters attacked the Cuban baseball team in Margarita on Sunday, calling on them to “go home”.
Today Governor Mora stated that a total of 12 police had been injured in the attack on his residence, and that authorities knew who the perpetrators were. The state governor also said he wanted “peace” in Tachira, and called for a solidarity gathering outside his official residence tomorrow morning.
Meanwhile President Maduro tweeted that those who had committed violent crimes during the protests would be “punished with the law”, and exhorted the wider population not to “fall for the provocation of hate-filled minorities that want to deviate us from the construction of the homeland and fill the country with chaos”.
Manufacturer Tried to Hide Results of Testing of Blood Thinner Implicated in 1,000 Deaths
By Steve Straehley | AllGov | February 9, 2014
The manufacturer of a blood-thinning drug tried to hide results of an internal study that the manufacturer feared would hurt sales of the widely-advertised medication, according to recently-unsealed court documents.
Boehringer Ingelheim, manufacturer of Pradaxa, is being sued by patients and their families, charging it failed to properly warn users about possible dangers of the drug. More than 1,000 of those using Pradaxa have died from bleeding, Katie Thomas of The New York Times reported.
Some of the papers released by Chief Judge David R. Herndon of the United States District Court in East St. Louis, Ill., indicated that a research paper would contradict the company’s claims that regular blood monitoring is not necessary while taking Pradaxa. The lack of regular monitoring is one of the main selling points of the drug over warfarin, a drug long used in the prevention of blood clots and strokes. Warfarin requires frequent blood monitoring and attention to diet.
Boehringer Ingelheim emails released by the court show concern about the effect a change in recommended monitoring would have on sales of Pradaxa. “This may not be a onetime test and could result in a more complex message (regular monitoring), and a weaker value proposition … vs. competitors,” one employee wrote.
An email from another employee expressed concern about the drug’s safety risks in older patients, and said “there may be a role” for one or two blood tests in Pradaxa patients.
The case highlights the fact that much of the research on drugs is performed by the drug makers themselves, who have a financial interest in ensuring their products are approved by regulators.
The research paper, written by Paul A. Reilly, a clinical program director at Boehringer Ingelheim, found that some patients absorb too little of the drug to prevent strokes. It also said another group absorbs so much that they are at a higher risk for bleeding. These issues could be addressed with blood monitoring to ensure that patients have the proper levels of the drug in their bloodstream. Draft versions of the paper gave optimal levels of Pradaxa in a patient’s bloodstream.
Reilly’s paper was published in the February 2014 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, but some of the conclusions about blood monitoring that appeared in the draft version aren’t in the final report.
In a statement, Boehringer Ingelheim said the unsealed documents “represent small fragments of the robust discussion and debate that is a vital component in all scientific inquiry, and in the research and development of any important medication such as Pradaxa.”
One company supervisor, Dr. Jutta Heinrich-Nols, warned that publishing Reilly’s paper could make it “extremely difficult” for the company to defend its claims that Pradaxa did not require regular blood monitoring, the Times said.
In addition, there is so far no antidote to Pradaxa’s effects. With warfarin, physicians can administer doses of Vitamin K to counteract that drug’s effects in case a patient starts hemorrhaging.
The Justice Department has previously cited the company for intentionally making “unsubstantiated claims about the efficacy” of their drug Aggrenox, which is intended to prevent subsequent strokes, or strokes due to blood clots.
The Pradaxa documents were released the same week that Physicians for Integrity in Medical Research sued the Food and Drug Administration over the heart medication roflumilast, claiming it should be pulled off the market. The drug, made by Forest Laboratories and intended to treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), does more harm than good, according to the plaintiff.
To Learn More:
Study of Drug for Blood Clots Caused a Stir, Records Show (by Katie Thomas, New York Times)
New Emails in Pradaxa Case Show Concern Over Profit (by Katie Thomas, New York Times)
A Promising Drug With a Flaw (by Katie Thomas, New York Times)
Pradaxa Manufacturer Has History of Illegal Activities, Ties To Controversial Groups (by Alisha Mims, Ring of Fire)
Doctors Group Sues FDA to Withdraw Approval of Heart Drug (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
Congressmen Try to Restrict Free Speech To Prevent Boycotts of Israel
By Mitchell Plitnick | LobeLog | February 7, 2014
Earlier this week, a bill was hastily removed from the agenda of the New York State Assembly. The bill was designed as a response to the American Studies Association’s decision to boycott Israeli educational institutions. But it was so poorly written that even opponents of the ASA boycott saw it as potentially damaging to academic freedom in general. The bill was removed from the fast track in New York so it could be re-written to be more acceptable to its potential supporters. A similar bill is currently working its way through the Maryland state legislature.
Now the US Congress is getting into the act, with a bill that has the same goal, but takes a different approach. The bills in New York and Maryland did not specifically mention Israel, although it was clear that the ASA action against Israeli academia is what prompted the bills. Instead, they tried to argue that academic freedom meant that the state must penalize institutions that choose to express themselves through the power of boycott if the target is a country that has extensive academic connections with the United States.
Even Jewish groups supported the withdrawal of the New York bill, and many people agreed that, however onerous they thought the ASA action was, this sort of legislation was contrary to academic freedom and to freedom of expression.
The bill introduced by Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) relates only to academic boycotts against Israel. Where the state bills proscribed penalties, including a reduction of funding against any institution that participated in an association that called for a boycott and even prohibited reimbursing faculty for travel expenses to attend conferences by such groups, the congressional one threatens to cut off all funding under the Higher Education Act to any university “…if the institution, any significant part of the institution, or any organization significantly funded by the institution adopts a policy or resolution, issues a statement, or otherwise formally establishes the restriction of discourse, cooperation, exchange, or any other involvement with academic institutions or scholars on the basis of the connection of such institutions or such scholars to the State of Israel.”
That is a very broad statement. “Significantly funding,” read broadly, can easily include not only institutional support of academic associations like ASA, but also student groups, fraternities/sororities and research collectives. So, this is very far from affecting only universities.
This goes well beyond boycotts. It bars any group attached in any way to a university or group of universities from any material reaction, beyond voicing criticism, to Israel’s policies. Nor does it make any distinction between Israel and the settlements. That means that no institution of higher education can object in any material way to an association or connection to Ariel University, a fully accredited Israeli university located in the settlement of Ariel. That institution is highly controversial within Israel, and its very establishment contravenes US policy, yet a student group which is funded by a university would risk the university’s federal funding, all of it, if they refuse to work with that school.
Moreover, the fact that Roskam’s bill is specific to Israel is particularly noxious, and should be a matter of deep concern for anyone who supports Israel or who is concerned about anti-Semitism, as well as to those of us who support Palestinian rights and the right of American citizens to free expression. The bill creates a unique category of protection for Israel, based on Roskam’s wholly unfounded assertion that the ASA boycott decision is an “anti-Semitic effort.”
I, myself, do not agree with academic boycotts of Israel as a whole (boycotts targeting Ariel University and any other settlement program have my full support). That is a matter of tactics, however. My disagreement is based entirely on my view that an academic boycott of all of Israel is counter-productive at this time. But there is no reasonable basis for contending that a boycott against a country that has held millions of Palestinians under a military occupation depriving them of their civil rights and routinely violating their human rights is motivated by anything other than the policies of the occupying power.
By singling out Israel for this “protection,” the Roskam bill, not the ASA, is treating Israel as a special case rather than a country like any other, which must contend with material as well as rhetorical opposition to its policies. Basing it on Israel being a “Jewish state” serves not only to undermine the Jewish effort to be accepted like any other people, but actually promotes resentment and hostility toward Jews.
Roskam’s bill is blatantly unconstitutional, as are the various bills in the state legislatures, although the state versions are slightly less onerous and blatant in their disregard of the Constitution. Boycotts are legal and legitimate expressions protected under the First Amendment. The argument will be made that the state does not have to fund such activities, which is true, but there is a big difference between not funding legitimate free expression and state interference with it. As one constitutional lawyer, Floyd Abrams, told BuzzFeed: “The notion that the power to fund colleges and their faculties may be transformed into a tool to punish them for engaging in constitutionally protected expression is contrary to any notion of academic freedom and to core First Amendment principles. I believe that academic boycotts are themselves contrary to principles of academic freedom but that does not make the legislation being considered any more tolerable or constitutional.”
The bill is probably not going to be successful in Congress. The efforts have a much better chance in the state legislatures. Still, it was brought forth by Roskam, and his Illinois colleague Dan Lipinski, a Democrat, was an initial co-sponsor, so the bill is ostensibly bi-partisan. It also came with the support of Israel’s former Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren. So it should not be blithely dismissed despite its blatant unconstitutionality.
Israeli Soldiers Take Pictures Of Themselves Abusing Wounded Youth
By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC | February 9, 2014
Jerusalem – A video, captured by Rami Alarya of the Alqods Independent Media Center, showed a number of Israeli soldiers assaulting a Palestinian child, on Friday evening, February 4 2014, after shooting him by a rubber-coated metal bullet in the leg, and photographing themselves abusing him.
The soldiers assaulted the child during clashes that took place in the al-Ezariyya town, east of occupied East Jerusalem.
One of the soldiers tried to push the cameraman, Alarya, and his colleague, Amin Alawya, away from the scene, and was yelling at them, “Enough, enough…. go away… what do you want…”
Medical sources said the soldiers shot the child, Yassin al-Karaky, 13 years of age, with a rubber-coated metal bullet, which hit the 13-year old in the leg. After he fell, the soldiers began assaulting and abusing him.
The attack took place after soldiers, who hid in a building near the Annexation Wall in the Qabsa area, ambushed a group of children, and one of the soldiers opened fire on the children.
Then several soldiers attacked and assaulting the wounded child before kidnapping him.
The soldiers took pictures of themselves with the wounded child, and a soldier picked up a Molotov cocktail from the ground, while the child shouted in Hebrew, “it’s not mine, it’s not mine”, and a soldier responded, “it’s yours, it’s Ok… it’s yours”.
One of the soldiers was holding him in a choke-hold, and was mocking the child by imitating wrestling moves while other soldiers took pictures, although the child was barely able to breathe.
The soldiers then placed the child in their jeep, while one of them was still filming the incident.
See also:
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Photos of Israeli soldiers humiliating Palestinian detainees disclosed
Jewish settlers beat Israeli activist protecting Palestinians
Ma’an – 09/02/2014
BETHLEHEM – Footage released by a rights group on Saturday appears to show Jewish settlers beating an Israeli activist as he tries to defend Palestinian farmers while Israeli soldiers look on.
The videos released by joint Israeli-Palestinian human rights group Ta’ayush show an Israeli activist who has accompanied Palestinians to their farm lands in the village of Khirbet Shuweika in the South Hebron Hills being assaulted by Jewish settlers.
The videos, which could not be independently verified, also show that after the settlers have beaten the activist, an Israeli soldier approaches the settlers but pats one of them on the back and does not attempt to detain or reprimand them in anyway.
According to Israeli alternative news website +972, the assault occurred around 11 a.m. on Saturday.
An Israeli activist affiliated with Ta’ayush had accompanied local Palestinians after they had been prevented from reaching their lands numerous times in recent weeks by local settlers, even though Israeli authorities recognize the area as private Palestinian land.
The Jewish settlers were from the nearby Eshtemoa outpost, and according to an activist affiliated with the group, none of them were detained by Israeli forces.
Following the attack, the activist went to the Kiryat Arba police station and Israeli authorities said an investigation would be launched into the incident.
Israeli news site Haaretz quoted an IDF spokesperson as saying that the video was “tendentiously edited,” and that Israeli soldiers on the scene had acted to “distance” the settlers and call on police to investigate the incident, as per protocol, according to +972.
In 2013, there were 399 incidents of settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
In the last week alone, hundreds of olive trees across the West Bank have been chopped in a number of incidents targeting Palestinian farmers’ livelihoods.
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By Thomas S. Harrington | CounterPunch | August 19, 2016
… What will almost never be talked about are the many very good reasons a person from the vast region stretching from Morrocco in the west, to Pakistan in the east, have to be very angry at, and to feel highly vengeful toward, the US, its strategic puppeteer Israel, and their slavishly loyal European compadres like France, Germany and Great Britain. … Read full article
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