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Exposing BlackRock

Who’s Afraid Of Laurence Fink and His Overpowering Institution?

By Andrew Gavin Marshall | Dissident Voice | December 10, 2015

It’s not a bank, nor an insurance company, central bank, finance ministry or sovereign wealth fund. But it advises or owns such institutions. It operates virtually unregulated, often in the background, yet there is scarcely a company, country or region of the planet that this, the world’s largest asset management firm, does not touch or influence.

At a mere 27 years of age, BlackRock manages $4.5 trillion in assets, making it the single largest investor on Earth. It manages more wealth than Japan and Germany have in GDP. In fact, only China and the United States have a larger GDP than BlackRock has assets under management. Yet when one includes assets that the company not only manages, but advises upon, the number soars to around $15 trillion, roughly equal to U.S. GDP.

It’s safe to say that BlackRock is the single largest financial institution in the world: a vast holding company that has become a major shareholder in roughly 40% of all publicly traded companies in the U.S., the largest single shareholder in one out of every five U.S. corporations, and one of the largest shareholders in companies around the world, from Canada to Brazil, Germany, Japan, China and beyond.

Owning it All

Specifically, BlackRock is one of the top shareholders in all major U.S. banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo.

In terms of America’s most profitable and recognizable corporations, BlackRock is a top shareholder of Walmart, General Electric, General Motors, Ford, AT&T, Verizon, Google, Apple, Exxon Mobil and Chevron.

BlackRock’s other large holdings include Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Amazon, Facebook, Berkshire Hathaway, Gilead Sciences, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Merck, Intel, Coca-Cola, Walt Disney Company, Home Depot, Philip Morris, VISA, McDonald’s, Cisco Systems, PepsiCo, IBM, Oracle, Comcast, Lockheed Martin, MasterCard, Starbucks, Boeing and ConocoPhillips, along with thousands of other, smaller brands.

But despite its size and influence, BlackRock remains virtually unregulated as an asset management firm. Unlike a bank, asset management firms do not manage and invest their own money, but do so on behalf of their many clients. In the case of BlackRock, those clients come in the form of banks, corporations, insurance companies, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, central banks and foundations. Gerald Davis, a professor of management and organization at the University of Michigan, described BlackRock as “the silent giant” that few know about, but which is “incredibly powerful.”

The company’s power is expressed not merely in terms of its equity (shareholdings) and bonds (debt ownership), but in its role as an adviser to governments and institutions. This role is not only played by certain divisions within the company, but by the co-founder and CEO of BlackRock itself, Larry Fink. The son of a shoe salesman and English professor, Laurence Fink started his finance career working for First Boston, trading bonds during the 1980s, and became the firm’s youngest-ever managing director at the age of 31.

Fink Ascends to the Top

In 1988, Fink, along with a handful of other traders, founded BlackRock with support from its first financial backer, the private equity firm Blackstone (notice the similar name). Within five years, BlackRock had more than $20 billion under management. But in 1994, a conflict with Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman led to a separation of the two companies.

Schwarzman sold Blackstone’s 32% share of BlackRock to a Pittsburgh bank, PNC, for $240 million, a transaction Schwarzman would later regret.

BlackRock went public in 1999 and began acquiring  other companies throughout the 2000s. But the company’s most profitable move was its purchase of Barclays Global Investors for $13.5 billion, turning BlackRock into the world’s largest asset management firm overnight. This occurred in 2009, in the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis, and the firm took on a vast portfolio of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) known as iShares.

But even before it earned the title of largest money manager in the world, BlackRock was raising eyebrows concerning its business advising and contracting with governments. When the financial crisis struck the U.S. in 2008, the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve turned to BlackRock and Larry Fink for support. BlackRock advised the government on the rescues, bailouts and purchases of Bear Stearns, American International Group (AIG), Citigroup, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Throughout the crisis, Fink would find himself on the phone multiple times a day in conversation with then-President of the New York Federal Reserve, Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary and the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, Hank Paulson, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Fink explained, “It gives comfort to our clients that we are being involved in some of the solutions of our economy, and it allows us to show our clients that we are being asked in these difficult situations to provide advice.”

According to Vanity Fair, one of Fink’s favorite phrases to insert into casual conversations is: “As I told Washington…” And it’s something to be said without much exaggeration. When Timothy Geithner went from being President of the New York Fed to Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, Fink’s access to the top echelons of political power grew immensely. Indeed, apart from other government officials, the BlackRock chief became “the Treasury secretary’s most frequent corporate interlocutor and an emblem of BlackRock’s growing influence in global financial affairs,” noted the Financial Times.

Using data compiled from the Treasury Secretary’s public records from 2009 to 2013, Geithner held phone calls or private meetings with Fink at least 104 times during the duration of his term. Even with Geithner’s successor at Treasury, Jack Lew, pervasive contact has been maintained with Fink.

Enter Hillary’s Right-Hand Woman

In 2013, BlackRock hired to its board of directors Cheryl Mills, a “longtime confidant and counselor to former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton.” Mills was chief of staff to Clinton at the State Department, and was “among the inner circle of advisers helping Clinton chart her plans for the future.” Mills has a long history with both Clintons; she was one of President Bill Clinton’s top attorneys during his impeachment. A former aide with knowledge of the Clinton-Mills relationship explained, “There are no secrets… Cheryl knows everything and that’s a great equalizer for them.” In an interview with the Washington Post, Mills explained that she still advises and speaks with Hillary regularly.

As Hillary Clinton campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination, her discussions of Wall Street regulations focus almost exclusively on banks – but nowhere does she mention the role played by asset management firms like BlackRock. In fact, in her comments on the subject, Clinton actually tends to parrot the ideas that have been put forward by Fink himself. For instance, after Clinton gave a speech on Wall Street reform, The New York Times noted that it seemed as if “she could have been channeling Laurence D. Fink.”

For years, Fink has been touted as a possible Treasury Secretary the likelihood of which may increase if Clinton becomes president. Indeed, Fink, a longtime Democrat, would be perfectly suited to such a position as the “top consigliere” of Wall Street in Washington, Suzanna Andrews writes in Vanity Fair, “and the leading member of the country’s financial oligarchy.”

And, of course, it helps that Fink and BlackRock are not simply influential within the U.S. but across the globe. BlackRock has been hired as a consultant and adviser in Europe multiple times throughout the European debt crisis, having worked with the Irish central bank, the Greek central bank, and more recently the European Central Bank to advise on its quantitative easing program.

With $4.5 trillion in assets, under management the firm is without a doubt “one of, if not the, most influential financial institutions in the world,” noted a BlackRock co-founder. And Larry Fink, the architect of “his own Wall Street empire,” could become a household name in U.S. politics soon enough.

Andrew Gavin Marshall is an independent researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada, writing on a number of social, political, economic, and historical issues. He is co-editor of the book, The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century.

December 11, 2015 Posted by | Corruption, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Chicago Police Adopt Israeli Tactics

By Todd E. Pierce | Consortium News | December 11, 2015

After more than a year of stonewalling and what some might call obstructing justice, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel issued an apology for the horrific execution of Laquan McDonald by Chicago police officer Jason van Dyke. Laquan McDonald was the black 17-year-old who was shot 16 times by the police officer on Oct. 20, 2014. The video showing the shooting was only released by Chicago officials when they were ordered to do so by a judge in late November 2015.

But apology or not, the underlying substantive issue is that the summary execution of McDonald was the sort of atrocity that one would expect to see in what the U.S. once called “police states.” In fact, one can imagine a death squad execution in El Salvador in the 1980s looking very similar on video to McDonald’s slaying.

“Police state” is a term which has fallen into disuse since 9/11 with the adoption of so many similar practices by the so-called “democracies” in their domestic policies. The term generally was applied to Fascist or Communist governments and described a country where the police and the military exercised martial law over citizens or military occupation powers that uses military force to control a civilian population.

Sometimes these arbitrary powers were enforced by summary executions, depending on how much the authorities could get away with in their “extreme measures.” This was the practice in countries such as Nazi Germany; Pinochet’s Chile; El Salvador and Guatemala during the Cold War; to a lesser degree, apartheid South Africa; and military occupied territories such as Tibet, Israeli-occupied Palestine, and Eastern Europe under the Soviet Union.

But Chicago isn’t under martial law or military occupation, is it? Nor is it an apartheid state, with apartheid enforced by domestic martial law and military force, is it? To a normal civilian-oriented mind, one would think it is not under military occupation or martial law.

Seeking Israeli Training

Yet, under Mayor Emanuel, a former Israeli Defense Force (IDF) volunteer, and Garry McCarthy, the now former Chicago Police Superintendent (Emanuel fired him Dec. 1), it seems that parts of Chicago were treated as if they were occupied territory under police or paramilitary rule.

That is, under arbitrary martial law, just like the repressive martial law regime of the IDF in the occupied territory of Palestine. Martial law or occupation law is arbitrary as it is not law, but is the manifestation of the occupying military commander’s “will.”

How could this be in the civilian government of Chicago? In part, because Police Superintendent McCarthy and the City of Chicago sought out and received training by Israeli occupation forces in “counter-terrorism” policing, that is, “pacifying” a population through aggressive intelligence gathering and the application of military force. Counter-insurgency is the term used for when this doctrine is applied by military forces.

This collaboration between Israel and U.S. police agencies, including Chicago, emerged after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. Since then, by one count, at least 300 high-ranking sheriffs and police from cities both large and small have received counter-terrorism training in Israel. For instance, in January 2003, 33 senior U.S. law enforcement officials from Chicago and other major American cities flew to Israel for sessions on “Law Enforcement in the Era of Global Terror.”

In 2009, Israel’s Midwest Consulate General co-sponsored “an intensive seminar” in Israel for senior Chicago police officials “on intelligence-led policing techniques.” Chicago Police Superintendent McCarthy was a key participant in this Israeli seminar. The Israel Trade & Economic Office of the U.S. Midwest Region invited police officials to “Join Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy & the Midwest Delegation to the Israel Homeland Security International Conference 2012, and be a part of an international gathering of public security officials and private technology companies.”

In 2012, these “security officials” got to “experience demonstrations of breakthrough technologies from Israel” and “tour security infrastructure at the Old City of Jerusalem,” a city under Israeli military occupation. It wasn’t made clear if the “demonstrations of breakthrough technologies from Israel” would extend to live subjects in occupied Jerusalem.

In November 2014, Chicago’s McCarthy “led a delegation of senior law enforcement officials to Israel” as part of a training mission “to engage directly with their Israeli counterparts to discuss best practices, unique strategies, and new technologies in a range of law enforcement areas,” according to the same Israeli trade office.

“The visit also aimed to build a foundation for enhanced collaboration between the Chicago Police Department and the State of Israel.” Included in the delegation was the Executive Director of Cook County’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Office, the Chief of Staff of the Chicago Police Department, as well as police officials from other large American cities. [The itinerary of the delegation is explained more here.]

In other words, over more than a decade, senior Chicago police officials have been studying Israel’s militarized police practices for how best to maintain a repressive military control over an occupied population living under permanent, strict martial, or occupation, law.

An Occupation Mentality

Why this matters is that Israel doesn’t have a domestic civilian policing model but instead applies a counter-insurgency policing model intended for a population under military occupation, or otherwise considered as hostile under martial law.

This policing model is being sold by Israel’s government to gullible or authoritarian-leaning U.S. police officials as a legitimate domestic policing model when, in fact, it is a military model of the sort used by militaristic, authoritarian regimes, customarily referred to as “fascist.”

What many people fail to understand about Israel and the IDF is that since 1967, now going on half a century, the Palestinian civilians who “fell into [Israeli] hands” when the IDF conquered Palestinian territory have been kept in strict and harsh military captivity of the sort the U.S. condemned when the former Soviet Union did the same to its captive peoples.

This pattern continues even though the Israeli occupation has been repeatedly declared illegal under international law. Chicago police being trained by Israeli security police and occupation forces is analogous to, and merits the same condemnation as, a U.S. city sending its officials to receive “police” training from Soviet security police who maintained military occupation of Eastern Europe in the 1950s-1960s. Or to North Korea today.

But in this case, there is also the issue of colluding with Israeli occupation authorities in an illegal occupation. These U.S. police officials are put in what should be the awkward position of aiding and abetting illegality.

Of course, one killing by a Chicago police officer, though similar to some of the killings by the IDF of civilians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and far below the scale of killing of the periodic “mowing the grass” that Israel undertakes in Gaza every couple of years, does not mean that illegal military occupation tactics are being practiced in Chicago. Or does it?

Secret Interrogations

In isolation, no. But while Chicago police have always had the reputation of being simply a rival gang to the many other gangs in Chicago’s history, under Rahm Emanuel’s regime, it has come to resemble an occupying military force down to a “secret interrogation facility,” as reported by Britain’s Guardian newspaper in August 2015: “At least 3,500 Americans have been detained inside a Chicago police warehouse described by some of its arrestees as a secretive interrogation facility, newly uncovered records reveal.”

The Chicago Police Department maintained that the warehouse was not a secret facility “so much as an undercover police base operating in plain sight.” But, as the Guardian reported, people were shackled and held for hours or even days without access to attorneys in violation of the U.S. Constitution, but the sort of detention permitted of Palestinians under IDF occupation.

A Chicago civil rights activist said he was abducted by masked officers, shackled and held on false charges, “with no food, no water, no access to the outside world” at the behest of “covert operations.” In other words, he simply disappeared.

Another former “detainee,” Charles Jones, was told in the interrogation room that he would be allowed a phone call once booked and processed. But he said his requests for legal counsel were repeatedly denied during the six-to-eight hours he was held at Homan Square.

“The only reason you’re brought to Homan and Fillmore is to extract information,” Jones said, referring to the cross streets of the facility.

“The police probably feel they need those covert operations because that’s the only way to get the intel they need instead of doing the good work – the hard work. . . . It’s easy to just go grab someone, throw ’em somewhere – no food, no water, no access to the outside world, intimidating and threatening ’em,” he said.

That is similar to intelligence-driven techniques used in counter-insurgency warfare. Several ex-Homan Square detainees told the Guardian that their detentions “were out of proportion to their alleged crimes, if any – but calibrated to pressure them into becoming informants.” This, in fact, is just like what U.S. forces did in occupied Iraq and Israeli forces do in Occupied Palestine. Indeed, that is what occupying armies do.

According to the Guardian, while the police data is incomplete, the disclosures “suggest an intensification of Homan Square usage under Emanuel. Approximately 70% of the Homan Square detentions the Chicago police acknowledge thus far have occurred under the current mayor.”

At the time of the Guardian article, then-Police Superintendent McCarthy was attending a meeting on violence and policing in Washington and was unavailable for comment.

After the Guardian’s initial Homan Square exposé in February 2015, protests were held and local politicians called for investigations. But Rahm Emanuel was not among the concerned officials even though he was running for re-election in part on a platform of police reform. Instead, Emanuel took ownership of the unorthodox operation and “defended his police,” claiming, “we follow all the rules” at Homan Square and called the reporting “not true.”

Israeli Comparisons

To Mayor Emanuel and former Superintendent McCarthy, it seemed, affluent sections of Chicago’s North Side are to Chicago’s South and West sides what Tel Aviv is to Occupied Palestine’s Jerusalem and Ramallah.

Emanuel and McCarthy seemed to have imported the Israeli military occupation ideology that just as Palestine must be kept “under the heavy heel of Israeli military occupation,” so must Chicago’s poorer areas be kept under the heavy heel of the Chicago police, acting as a paramilitary occupation force.

That Emanuel bears responsibility for all that has taken place in regard to the McDonald execution is shown in his role in making the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA), the civilian agency that investigates allegations of excessive force by police, irrelevant.

The Chicago Tribune published an examination that found that of the 409 police shootings since IPRA was created in September 2007, only two allegations against police officers were deemed credible. (Emanuel has been mayor since May 16, 2011.)

This week, in announcing that former federal prosecutor Sharon Fairley would take charge of the IPRA after the resignation of her predecessor, neither Emanuel nor Fairley addressed how IPRA would improve “its woeful track record in investigating shootings,” as the Chicago Tribune described it.

Instead, Fairley stated: “the mission of IPRA will remain the same: thorough, fair and timely investigation of police officer misconduct.” Absurdly, that seems to be a statement asserting that nothing would change, allowing the police to continue operating with a sense of entitlement as they run roughshod over a population they are supposed to protect.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Chicago police officials under Emanuel stopped participating in meetings with the IPRA to discuss officer shootings, “a change that came with the knowledge of the mayor’s office.” Will that remain the same?

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch was asked whether the federal investigation would extend to the mayor’s and state’s attorney’s offices. Notwithstanding Emanuel’s alleged role in shutting down police participation with the IPRA, Lynch said the investigation would focus on the Police Department’s practices.

That’s not all that remarkable when one considers that the U.S. Justice Department and President Barack Obama declared they would take no action on the issue of “war on terror” torture by U.S. government officials involving the CIA and the military. As President Obama’s former Chief of Staff, Emanuel seems to fall under a similar protective shield of impunity.

What is remarkable is that the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus “called for Lynch to expand her probe to include IPRA and the state’s attorney’s office, but it left out the mayor’s office.” That is remarkable because Mayor Emanuel appears to be the person who gave impunity for civil rights violations to Chicago police officers to the degree that they felt legally immune in summarily executing Laquan McDonald.

A Family History

If Mayor Rahm Emanuel seems to have brought a Fascist sensibility to Chicago and the police force, it can be said it’s part of a family tradition. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Emanuel “is the son of a Jerusalem-born pediatrician who was a member of the Irgun (Etzel or IZL), a militant Zionist group that operated in Palestine between 1931 and 1948.”

In addition, according to Emanuel’s father, Benjamin, his son “is the namesake of Rahamim, a Lehi combatant who was killed” and was obviously a close friend or seen as a martyr. Both Lehi and the Irgun were terrorist organizations, not only in the eyes of the British and the Arabs in pre-Israel Palestine, but in the eyes of their fellow Jews, whom they also attacked.

Furthermore, the clandestine terror squads considered themselves Fascist organizations, not only in their tactics but in their ideology which had aligned them with Mussolini’s Italy and other inter-war European Fascist parties.

In The Road to Power: Herut Party in Israel, author Yonathan Shapiro describes Irgun as the military wing of the Betar Movement. The two groups jointly published a paper, Die Tat. Shapiro writes: “Betar activists were swept up by the radical-right nationalism then at its height in Europe.”

This was shown in the Betar press in Poland, where the Yiddish-language Betar-Irgun paper Die Tat was sympathetic to radical-right parties. The paper ran a series of articles in late 1938 and early 1939 entitled “The Third Europe,” which Shapiro says “was the overall name given to radical-right movements such as the Nazis in Germany, the Fascists in Italy, the Iron Guard in Romania, and the Franco camp in Spain, and so forth.”

One article in the series explained that Hitler’s attempted putsch in 1923 derailed “the German leadership from its track of havlagah – the same term that Zionist leaders used for their policy of moderation in their dealings with the Arab nationalist movement in Palestine.” The implication was that the Jewish radical right had to do something similar to break the Jewish leaders from moderation in Palestine.

Another Die Tat writer who was based in Tel Aviv argued that anti-Semitism wasn’t “an integral part of Naziism, which in the final analysis was a version of Fascism,” of which he approved. In an editorial entitled, “Hitler and Judaism,” a few weeks later, “the paper wrote that it did not reject Hitler’s views, not even on the race issue. It only objected to the campaign that ‘in practice’ he was waging against the Jewish people, and its desire to establish an independent state.”

Lessons of Terror

In 1942, Menachem Begin arrived in “Eretz-Israel,” as Irgun members referred to Palestine. He was “offered command of the Irgun and leadership of Betar.” Begin refused leadership of Betar on the grounds that Ze’ev Jabotinsky, though dead, remained head of Betar, and Jabotinsky as the irreplaceable leader of Betar “came to symbolize the idea of the absolute leader.”

Begin, the future founder of Likud and prime minister of Israel, was his “pupil and successor,” who shared the view of other Fascist parties that “believed in the principle of the omnipotent leader.” These were the Fascist ideas that Rahm Emanuel’s father imbibed and celebrated in his youth, and shared with his Lehi friend, Rahamim.

The distinction between the Irgun and Lehi was that the Irgun later called a truce with the British during World War II when it finally became apparent to them that Hitler represented a threat to Zionist interests, whereas Lehi saw Great Britain as much or more of the enemy than Hitler. Lehi continued terrorist attacks against Britain throughout the war.

Whatever the elder Emanuel’s political thoughts are today, he seemed to retain his youthful Fascist-style contempt for Arabs as he commented when Rahm was named President Obama’s Chief of Staff: “Obviously he’ll influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to be mopping floors at the White House,” as reported in the New York Times.

None of this is to suggest that Rahm Emanuel shares any of the Fascist ideas of his father’s youthful associates in the Irgun or of his father in his youth. But if Rahm Emanuel is going to preside over secret interrogation and detention centers as the Mayor of Chicago and is responsible for a police force learning and using Fascist-style police tactics, people may begin to notice a resemblance to the youthful Benjamin Emanuel and the ideology of his Irgun associates.

Emanuel’s Style

True to form in some people’s eyes – after the court-ordered release of the video revealing the murder of Laquan McDonald – Mayor Emanuel didn’t actually take responsibility for the cover-up except to acknowledge the obvious with his statement that it “happened on my watch.” He didn’t explain how the murder was swept under the carpet for over a year so, as some allege, it wouldn’t interfere with his reelection.

NPR  reported, “Emanuel acknowledged there is an underlying ‘trust problem’ that Chicago needs to address,” and “the city now needs to begin the process of healing and restoring trust and confidence in the police department.”

Furthermore, “Emanuel says supervision and leadership in the police department failed, and he promises to address ‘the thin blue line’ and ‘the code of silence,’ in which police officers ignore, deny and cover up the bad actions of a colleague.”

But with Israel making its counter-insurgency police training a major export to U.S. police forces, with American cities such as Chicago eager to adopt that training, it is little wonder that minorities increasingly feel they are under repressive military-style occupation in their communities. They have good reason to feel that way since the police are getting training from a country that is expert at keeping a conquered people under an open-ended military occupation.

Todd E. Pierce retired as a Major in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps in November 2012. His most recent assignment was defense counsel in the Office of Chief Defense Counsel, Office of Military Commissions. In the course of that assignment, he researched and reviewed the complete records of military commissions held during the Civil War and stored at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. 

December 11, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Israel releases Dawabsha arson suspect on house arrest

Ma’an – December 11, 2015

BETHLEHEM – Israel on Thursday released an Israeli settler arrested for suspected involvement in a fatal arson attack on a Palestinian family in July, Israeli media reported.

The settler, connected to a Jewish extremist organization, was arrested along with several others as a suspect in an arson that killed three members of the Dawabsha family in Duma village in the northern occupied West Bank district of Nablus.

The suspect was reportedly released and transferred to house arrest for five days at his home in the illegal Israeli settlement of Benyamin, east of Ramallah city.

The settler, whose name has not been released, is a married father of two.

The man was arrested 12 days ago by the Israeli intelligence and presented to an Israeli court on Wednesday, Israeli media reported. His detention was extended to Sunday, but was unexpectedly released on Friday.

On Dec. 3, Israeli forces announced that they had arrested several Israelis in connection to the Dawabsha arson. The information about the arrests was released after a weeks-long gag order was partially lifted on the investigation.

All other information regarding the investigation is still under a gag order requested by the Israeli police.

Suspects involved in the attack were identified by Israel’s defense establishment in September, but no charges were filed at the time, Israeli daily Haaretz reported.

On July 31, suspected Israeli settlers smashed the windows of the Dawabsha family home before throwing flammable liquids and Molotov cocktails inside.

The words “revenge” and “long live the Messiah” were sprayed in Hebrew outside of the house, immediately indicating that the arson was the work of Jewish extremists.

Ali Saad Dawabsha, one-and-a-half years old, was trapped in the house and burned alive. The infant’s mother and father, Riham and Saad, later died from severe burns.

Orphaned four-year-old, Ahmad Dawabsha, is the only remaining survivor of the attack and remains in the hospital receiving treatment.

The attack sparked criticism from the international community for Israel’s failure to hold Israeli settlers and Jewish extremists accountable for attacks on Palestinians, in effect being complicit in such attacks.

Israeli leadership at the time condemned the Dawabsha attack as “terrorism,” and pledged to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Israeli rights group B’Tselem slammed the reaction by Israeli officials as “empty rhetoric.”

“Official condemnations of this attack are empty rhetoric as long as politicians continue their policy of avoiding enforcement of the law on Israelis who harm Palestinians, and do not deal with the public climate and the incitement which serve as backdrop to these acts,” the group said at the time.

Thursday’s partial lift on the gag-order came one day after the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov, criticized Israel for the “slow progress” in investigating the arson.

December 11, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | 1 Comment

US university says sorry for Palestinian flag ultimatum

RT | December 11, 2015

George Washington University president Steven Knapp has issued an apology to a student who was told to take down his Palestinian flag.

A university campus police officer entered Ramie Abounaja’s room on October 26 and told him to take down the Palestinian flag that he had hanging from his window.

The officer said he had received multiple complaints and that the flag was in violation of the housing code.

Visitors to the university confirmed many other national flags hanging from dorm rooms without being taken down.

A week later, Ramie Abounaja received a warning letter from the university, threatening future disciplinary action, despite the fact he had removed the flag.

“As a member of the larger residential community we hope that you will be respectful of your peers and be aware of your behavior. The act of an individual has a profound impact on the community,” it read.

Unsure of what he was in violation of, Ramie wrote a letter back. In it, he explained his reason for hanging the Palestinian flag: “I was motivated to do this after I had seen dozens of different banners and flags hung outside other residential campus living spaces throughout my three years here at GW. I felt like I was being singled-out, because of my heritage and the viewpoint of my speech, for something I’ve seen dozens of students, fraternities and other student groups do in my three years at GW.”

Civil rights groups called the order a violation of free speech and said the actions pointed to anti-Palestinian sentiment.

Students for Justice in Palestine at GW said: “Flags of other countries hang out of dorm windows with no disciplinary consequence. Selective reinforcement of these rules is discrimination.”

Universities in the US stand accused of cracking down on pro-Palestinian speech, with a high profile example in the state of Illinois where professor Steven Salaita was dismissed after tweeting about Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2014.

The recent Palestinian Exception to Free Speech report revealed intensifying suppression Israeli criticism on campuses: “Israel’s fiercest defenders in the United States — a network of advocacy organizations, public relations firms, and think tanks — have intensified their efforts to stifle criticism of Israeli government policies. Rather than engage such criticism on its merits, these groups leverage their significant resources and lobbying power to pressure universities, government actors, and other institutions to censor or punish advocacy in support of Palestinian rights.”

Palestine Legal responded to 140 incidents and 33 requests for assistance in anticipation of potential suppression in the first 6 months of 2015. 80% of those were aimed at students and scholars.

The report highlights a number of tactics used to quash pro-Palestinian feeling in universities, including academic sanctions.

Northeastern University in Boston suspended a student group the spring of 2014 after members distributed flyers describing Israel’s policy of demolishing Palestinian homes.

Around the same time, San Francisco State University investigated Professor Rabab Abdulhadi for going on a research trip to Palestine after an Israel advocacy group accused her of meeting with terrorists.

Palestinian Legal wrote to George Washington University, demanding they withdraw its warning letter and threat to sanction the student.

University President Steven Knapp said he has apologized to Abounaja and that the student had been subjected to a flawed process: “I have instructed the relevant offices to end the practice of sending warning letters to students solely because of a reported violation of a university policy. I have also instructed them to ensure consistent enforcement of all university policies.”

December 11, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | 1 Comment

Turkey fines Twitter $51,000 for ‘terrorist propaganda’ – reports

RT | December 11, 2015

Twitter has been fined 150,000 Turkish lira (US$51,000) for not removing content allegedly containing “terrorist propaganda, encouraging public acts of violence and hatred,” sources in Turkey’s communication technology watchdog told media outlets.

The Turkish Information and Communications Technologies Authority (BTK) has forwarded its decision to the Twitter Company’s headquarters in San Francisco, California, as well as informed the office of the company’s lawyer in Turkey, according to information Anadolu News Agency received from the body.

The decision was based on a 2007 law on “fighting against crimes committed through internet broadcasting,” Anadolu reported.

A BTK official who spoke to Reuters confirmed the report on the fine, but revealed no details concerning the content except claiming that it includes terrorist propaganda and calls for acts of violence.

Before a decision on the fine was made, Turkish courts had allegedly ordered Twitter to remove content they deemed illegal, but the company reportedly did not comply. This is the first time Turkey fined the popular social media website.

Turkish authorities previously have temporarily blocked Twitter, YouTube and Facebook for failing to remove content deemed to be illegal or banned.

On April 6, Turkey blocked access to Twitter, YouTube and Facebook over the publication of photos of a prosecutor taken hostage and killed by militants in Istanbul on March 31. The ban was lifted shortly after the sites removed the images.

In July, Twitter was once again blocked by Turkish authorities for a short period of time over publishing the images of a suicide bomb attack in Turkey’s Southeast on July 20. The ban was again lifted after the site removed the content in question.

Turkey has been accused of growing censorship and a media crackdown.

In December 2014, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) accused Turkey of adopting restrictive internet laws and implementing broad measures aimed at censoring online content.

At the same time, the Civic Solidarity Platform, a network of more than 60 human rights NGOs from throughout the OSCE region released its own report claiming that Turkey had repeatedly blocked thousands of news and social media sites, including YouTube and Twitter, in recent years.

On November 27, thousands of people joined the rallies in Istanbul and Ankara showing their support for two prominent journalists of the Cumhuriyet newspaper accused of treason over publishing photos of weapons allegedly brought to Syria by Turkish intelligence.

Police in Ankara used pepper spray against peaceful protesters staging a demonstration near the Cumhuriyet office in the Turkish capital.

December 11, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Turkey says to ‘reorganize’ troops in Iraq

Press TV – December 11, 2015

Turkey says it has decided to “reorganize” its troops in a camp in northern Iraq after holding talks with officials in Baghdad, who strongly criticized Ankara for the deployment.

In a statement on Friday, the office of Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said after holding talks with Iraqi officials, Ankara has decided to change the way it has been deploying soldiers at the Bashiqa camp near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

It said the two sides have reached an agreement to start work on creating mechanisms aimed at deepening cooperation on security issues.

The statement did not specify the details of the proposed mechanisms and how the troops would be reorganized. However, other officials in Turkey said Baghdad and Ankara have decided to work together on the issue.

“We’ll decide together if we’ll increase or decrease the number of Turkish troops,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said, adding, “It is our duty to address the Baghdad government’s concerns.”

Turkey’s apparent change of tone over the last Friday deployment of hundreds of troops comes two days after it missed an ultimatum to pull out the fight from Bashiqa, prompting Baghdad to threaten to follow up the case in the United Nations Security Council.

However, Turkey’s latest move seemed to be insufficient for Baghdad, as Iraq’s Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi on Friday asked his foreign ministry to lodge formal complaint with the UN Security Council over the Turkish incursion.

Abadi, in a statement on his website, asked that the Security Council order Turkey to withdraw its troops from Iraq immediately.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan again said on Friday that he will resist Baghdad’s call for pulling out troops. Erdogan had said on Thursday that “withdrawal is out of the question for the time being.”

Turkey had said that the deployment was in line with previous agreements with the Iraqi government. Iraq, however, denied any such deal, branding the presence of troops as a violation of its national sovereignty.

Reports said that Turkey’s powerful intelligence chief Hakan Fidan and foreign ministry undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioglu were in Baghdad on Thursday to discuss the deployment.

Cavusoglu also said that Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz will also pay a visit to Iraq to follow up the reorganization plan.

December 11, 2015 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Where’s the Rule of Law in Our War on ISIS?

By L. Michael Hager | CounterPunch | December 11, 2015

The San Bernardino massacre has elicited from politicians and others many calls for stronger military action and even demands for travel restrictions on Muslims and the closing of mosques.

In his oval office address to the nation on December 6, President Obama rightly called on Americans “to reject proposals that Muslim Americans should somehow be treated differently.” He assured the nation that our success in defeating terrorists “won’t depend on … abandoning our values.”

Yet in a seeming contradiction, he promised to hunt down terrorist plotters “in any country where it is necessary” and use air strikes to “take out ISIL leaders and their infrastructure in Iraq and Syria.”

Before 9/11 our “common values” included respect for the rule of law. Not any more, it would seem. Over the past decade and a half, we have witnessed increasing disrespect for the rule of law. Preemptive strikes, targeted drone killing and the torture, sexual humiliation and forced feeding of prisoners at Guantanamo violate basic legal norms for human rights and the conduct of war– norms which the U.S. helped establish in the wake of World War II.

The main obstacle to the rule of law today is Guantanamo. As a continuing monument to such prison abuses as torture, forced feeding and indefinite detention, Guantanamo is a valuable resource for ISIS in its radicalization and recruitment of young Americans.

Despite President Obama’s first day in office pledge to close it down, Guantanamo continues to confine many innocent prisoners, claim huge sums from taxpayers and shame all Americans by what it represents to the world.

According to the nonprofit organization Human Rights First, 107 prisoners remain in Guantanamo (down from the total number of 780). The current roster includes:

* Detainees approved for release: 48,

* Detainees convicted by military commission: 3,

* Detainees currently being tried by military commission: 7,

* Detainees being held without charge or trial: 49.

Of the current Guantanamo population, 90 (84% of the total) have been imprisoned for more than ten years.

It costs US taxpayers approximately $387 million a year to operate Guantanamo (an annual cost of more than $3 million per prisoner).

According to Andy Worthington (closeguantanamo.org), the group of prisoners recommended for prosecution includes Mohamedou Ould Slahi, author of the recent bestseller, Guantanamo Diary.

Given Slahi’s “extraordinary account of rendition, captivity and torture” and the apparent failure of his captors to elicit evidence of wrongdoing despite more than 15 years of interrogation and imprisonment, his continuing incarceration raises a serious question: are the CIA and DOD continuing to detain him in order to continue to block disclosure of the names of his torturers (redacted from his published account)?

Sadly, the ongoing affront to the rule of law has raised few eyebrows in the media or in government institutions charged with legal oversight. Rarely, do we hear reference to law or legal norms by our elected officials. Indeed, the Department of Justice appears complicit in the torture scandals of Bush/Cheney.

TV anchors and newspaper reporters blithely echo the demands of political candidates that the U.S. “carpet bomb” Islamist targets and “take out suspected terrorists” anywhere in the world. They ignore international laws and conventions that put a strict limit on preemptive strikes and prohibit the endangering of civilians.

More distressing is the general failure of our religious institutions, universities and bar associations to speak out against the current degrading of the rule of law. Why has there been no strong outcry from the nation’s premier law schools as they witness military strikes that violate the UN Charter and international conventions? Why do they ignore the lack of due process, indefinite detention and the inadequacies of jerrybuilt “military commissions?”

Why have our churches, synagogues and mosques not questioned human rights violations (some detailed in the recent Senate report summary) including the now regular use of drones for targeted killing and the reliance on torture and force-feeding?

Bombing, drone strikes and internal restrictions on the freedom of religion and movement are more likely to breed terrorists than build security. If we should, as our President suggests, avoid abandoning our values—values that include respect for the rule of law– we should accelerate the Periodic Review Boards (PRB) process, free Guantanamo prisoners approved for release and try the remainder in U.S. courts.

Before his term of office ends, the President must fulfill his promise of 2009 and close Guantanamo, with or without Congressional support.

L. Michael Hager is cofounder and former Director General, International Development Law Organization, Rome.

December 11, 2015 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Iraqis Fear US Backs Turkish Land Grab in Mosul Region

Sputnik – 11.12.2015

Iraqi parliamentarians worry the US government has given Turkey a free hand to grab territory in the country’s oil-rich Mosul region, experts told Sputnik.

The Iraqi Parliament’s Security and Defense Committee recently called on Prime Minister Haider Abadi to reassess and, if necessary, cancel the country’s security treaty with the United States following Turkish occupation of Iraqi territory near Mosul.

“My impression is that the Iraqi government has observed that the Russians are more effective in combatting ISIS [Islamic State] than the United States,” University of Louvain Professor Jean Bricmont in Belgium, author of “Humanitarian Imperialism,” told Sputnik.

Iraqi politicians recognize that Turkey continues to be favored by Washington as a major military ally in the Middle East, and Ankara also remains a member in good standing of the US-led NATO alliance despite its aggression toward Iraq, Bricmont pointed out.

“The Iraqis can see that NATO is supporting Turkey, and the latter is invading part of Iraq. Certainly this cannot happen without US approval.”

Genuine concern about Washington’s long-term policies toward Iraq was growing among policymakers in Baghdad and the parliamentary committee’s statement was an expression of this, Bricmont explained.

“I don’t know what is going on in the minds of the members of the Iraqi government, but I don’t see why that would only be pure posturing.”

Bricmont added that Turkey’s and Saudi Arabia’s support for the Islamic State, also known as Daesh, and the continued US support for Ankara and Riyadh was driving all forces in the Middle East to look to Russia for protection.

“Turkey’s support for the Islamic State and the recent events in the region are a game changer, since all the forces that are opposed to ISIS — Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon — see that their only real ally is Russia.”

However, would the United States allow Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi to escape from his security obligations to Washington?

“Abadi is a US puppet. Obama put him in power and keeps him in power. Nothing more than the Mayor of Baghdad,” University of Illinois Professor of International Law Francis Boyle told Sputnik.

The Iraq-US Strategic Framework Agreement of 2008 contains a provision that allows either party to terminate it at one year’s notice.

December 11, 2015 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Friedman Goes After Trump: Hey, Massive Bombing Was MY Idea!

Thomas Friedman doesn’t like threats of massive bombing when they’re made by someone else

By Jim Naureckas | FAIR | December 9, 2015

Thomas Friedman has some harsh words in his New York Times column (12/9/15) for Donald Trump and his unsophisticated grasp of the complexities of foreign policy:

As for Trump, well, he may be a deal maker, but he’s no poker player ready for the Middle East five-card stud sharks. His xenophobic rhetoric and unrealistic, infantile threats of massive bombing make up the kind of simplistic hand you’d play in “Go Fish” — not in this high-stakes game.

Where could Trump have gotten the idea that his “infantile threats of massive bombing” would be taken seriously as foreign policy proposals? Well, as a resident of New York City, maybe he reads the New York Times:

There is only Option 2 — bombing Iraq, over and over and over again, until either Saddam says uncle, and agrees to let the UN back in on US terms, or the Iraqi people eliminate him….  Given the problems with the other options, we may have no choice but to go down this road. Once we do, however, we better have the stomach to stay the course.

–Thomas Friedman (New York Times, 1/31/98)

Blow up a different power station in Iraq every week, so no one knows when the lights will go off or who’s in charge.”

–Friedman (New York Times, 1/19/99)

Let’s at least have a real air war. The idea that people are still holding rock concerts in Belgrade, or going out for Sunday merry-go-round rides, while their fellow Serbs are ‘cleansing’ Kosovo, is outrageous. It should be lights out in Belgrade: Every power grid, water pipe, bridge, road and war-related factory has to be targeted….

Every week you ravage Kosovo is another decade we will set your country back by pulverizing you. You want 1950? We can do 1950. You want 1389? We can do 1389 too.

–Thomas Friedman (New York Times, 4/23/99) on Serbia

People tend to change their minds and adjust their goals as they see the price they are paying mount. Twelve days of surgical bombing was never going to turn Serbia around. Let’s see what 12 weeks of less than surgical bombing does. Give war a chance.

–Thomasa Friedman (New York Times, 4/6/99)

My motto is very simple: Give war a chance.

–Thomas Friedman (ABC News, 10/29/01) on Afghanistan

Let’s all take a deep breath and repeat after me: Give war a chance. This is Afghanistan we’re talking about.

–Thomas Friedman (New York Times, 11/2/01)

I was a critic of [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld before, but there’s one thing… that I do like about Rumsfeld. He’s just a little bit crazy, OK? He’s just a little bit crazy, and in this kind of war, they always count on being able to out-crazy us, and I’m glad we got some guy on our bench that our quarterback — who’s just a little bit crazy, not totally, but you never know what that guy’s going to do, and I say that’s my guy.”

–Thomas Friedman (CNBC, 10/13/01)

There is a lot about the Bush team’s foreign policy I don’t like, but their willingness to restore our deterrence, and to be as crazy as some of our enemies, is one thing they have right.

–Thomas Friedman (New York Times, 2/13/02)

We needed to go over there, basically, and take out a very big stick… and there was only one way to do it…. What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, and basically saying: “Which part of this sentence don’t you understand?

You don’t think, you know, we care about our open society? You think this bubble fantasy, we’re just gonna to let it grow? Well: Suck. On. This.” That, Charlie, is what this war was about. We could have hit Saudi Arabia; it was part of that bubble. Could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.

–Thomas Friedman (Charlie Rose, 5/30/03)

Israel’s counterstrategy was to use its air force to pummel Hezbollah and, while not directly targeting the Lebanese civilians with whom Hezbollah was intertwined, to inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large. It was not pretty, but it was logical. Israel basically said that when dealing with a nonstate actor, Hezbollah, nested among civilians, the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians–the families and employers of the militants–to restrain Hezbollah in the future.”

—New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (1/13/09) on why Israel needed to kill civilians in Gaza

December 11, 2015 Posted by | Islamophobia, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | 1 Comment

Kurds Protest Erdogan’s Invasion, Bombings of Iraq

Sputnik – 10.12.2015

Kurds in Iraq protested Turkey’s invasion of Iraq, which is a threat to both the independence of Iraq and the Kurds living in the northern part of the country.

Although Turkey found a friend in Iraqi Kurdistan’s most dominant clan leader and current president Massoud Barzani, many Iraqi Kurds have opposed the measure.

On Wednesday, Turkish jets bombed Iraq, hitting the mountainous Qandil region, on the border with Iran, AP reported. According to Turkey, the mountains are home to camps of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, banned in Turkey.

“Yesterday, in multiple provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan there were popular manifestations, which local politicians also took part in. The protest expressed a harsh condemnation of the invasion and quartering of Turkish troops on the territory of a foreign state,” head of Kurdish News Network (KNN) Sohayeb Ahmad Kakeh Mahmoud told Sputnik Persian.

Mahmoud added that protesters chanted nationalist slogans, expressing their disapproval of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s silence in regards to the Turkish military’s actions. At the same time, Barzani left Iraq to hold talks with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara.

Syrian Kurds also reportedly condemned Erdogan’s actions.

“[Democratic Union Party head Salih Muslim] emphasized that Turkey is violating the territorial integrity of another state. Muslim also made an important statement: Turkey, which is ready to defend its territorial integrity at all costs, even shooting down Russian planes on its border for so-called airspace violations, yet itself invades an independent state,” Mahmoud added.

Is Iran Next on Erdogan’s Hit List?

Turkey has also continued to attack Kurdistan Workers’ Party positions in the Qandil Mountains, which border Iran.

“Despite the Turkish air force now attacking Qandil, the mountainous region bordering Iran, I still believe that Ankara is not ready to open yet another front by starting a war with Iran,” Mahmoud said.

Turkey has also managed to turn nearly all of its friends in the region into enemies, as Iranian Ettelaat newspaper’s Abulkasem Kasemzade recently noted, breaking the relationships it once had with Russia, Syria and Iran.

“Turkey has now simply surrounded itself with a circle of confrontation. On one hand, there is cooled Russia, from another, scrapes associated with the exposure of its collaboration with Daesh terrorists, lastly the simply insufficiently considered military operation against Kurds,” Mahmoud added.

According to Mahmoud, Syria and Iraq must cooperate to drive Turkish troops out of Iraq, as the invasion, and Turkey’s attacks on Kurdish groups in the region, is dangerous for Kurds living in Iraqi Kurdistan.

December 11, 2015 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Justifying a “Humanitarian War” against Syria? The Sinister Role of the NGOs

By Julien Teil | La Guerre Hunanitaire | November 16, 2011

The National Endowment for Democracy, or NED, is an organization that presents itself as an NGO officially dedicated to “the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world”.  But in reality it gets 95% of its budget from the United States Congress.  It was officially created by the Reagan administration in 1982.

The nature of the NED has led many contemporary intellectuals and researchers to describe it as an agency enabling the secret services of the US to overthrow governments that the US State Department dislikes.

This description was supported by the testimony of Oliviet Guilmain, a researcher at the CECE (Centre for the Comparative Study of Elections), during an information session at the French Senate concerning financing of the electoral process.  It is known that the NED finances opposition parties in numerous countries and provides special aid to exiles and opponents of regimes targeted by the US State Department.

In  the case of Syria, NED’s main organization is the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies. It is also a partner of the International Human Rights Federation (FIDH) which received $140,000 following a meeting in December 2009 between Carl Gershman and self-styled French human rights organizations. NED’s French contact was François Zimeray, who was former Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner’s Ambassador for Human Rights. Those present during that meeting included the Catholic Committee against Hunger and for Development (CCFD), the African section of AEDH (Act Together for Human Rights), Reporters Without Borders, SOS Racisme and the FIDH.

The International Federation of Human Rights is thus an official partner of the NED, as is also shown by its support for the allegations made by the ex-secretary general of the Libyan Human Rights League – also attached to the FIDH – against the government of Moammer Kadhafi.  Those allegations, also supported by the NGO “U.N Watch”, were what set off the diplomatic procedures against the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

In the case of Syria, Dr. Radwan Ziadeh is the director of the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies. His highly impressive biography makes clear his engagement is in favor of US foreign policy in the Middle East. In particular, he is a member of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and director of the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Washington. He was present alongside Aly Abuzakuuk – one of the NED representatives in Libya – for the Round Table of the Democracy Awards, which is an event that honors so-called “human rights activists” by the NED.

Moreover, there are strong similarities between the process that created the Humanitarian War in Libya and what is being elaborated in regard to Syria. For example, UN Watch, an organization that coordinates the operations of the NED and the FIDH in Geneva, has already launched several petitions against the Syrian regime and Bachar Al-Assad. These petitions against Syria make the same allegations of massacres as those put forth by the ex-secretary of the Libyan Human Rights League, Sliman Bouchuiguir, at the UN Human Rights Council against Libya.

It is therefore an urgent matter to denounce these procedures. It is all the more important since recent history shows us that these allegations were not verified in the case of Libya. Nor was there any proof based on any solid evidence about the allegations made against Tripoli, contrary to the claims of the International Criminal Court.

Julien Teil is a videographer and investigative documentary film maker from France.

Copyright © Julien Teil, La Guerre Hunanitaire

December 11, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | 2 Comments

ISIS revealed as ISRAELI SECRET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE

Complete C-Span Interview

chemtrailsplanet – September 12, 2014

This 1990 publication is the first comprehensive and balanced account of the most controversial and well-known espionage organization in the world, taking readers through the complex web of politics and personal ambition that led to such disasters as the brutal violence on the West Bank.

Book Every Spy a Prince Dan RavivThe amount of detail in this book certainly lends some credence to the book’s subtitle, and the journalist authors have also uncovered some fascinating new information: Israel has a number of top secret agencies, including one devoted to protecting their nuclear program and another for rescuing Jews from unfriendly countries; nuclear weapons using submarine-based launch platforms are nearly a reality; and Israel has been spying on the United States for years. The authors work diligently in this book to convince the world of the high morality of the Israeli cause. Israeli intelligence has been a popular subject for fiction and nonfiction, but there has yet to be a definitive nonfiction account on the subject. This readable and entertaining book is recommended for larger Middle East collections. –David P. Snider, Casa Grande P.L., Ariz. – Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Dan Raviv is/was a Washington-based correspondent for CBS News and host of the national radio magazine Weekend Roundup. New book published in July 2012: SPIES AGAINST ARMAGEDDON: INSIDE ISRAEL’S SECRET WARS. Most of his books are co-authored with Yossi Melman, and Dan wrote COMIC WARS about the Marvel Comics bankruptcy and renaissance. An earlier book with Yossi, EVERY SPY A PRINCE, was a national best seller; and they have a book about U.S.-Israel relations, FRIENDS IN DEED. Now they are again writing about the history of Israeli espionage — and how Israel intends to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The book is largely aimed at Kindle readers — because if something big happens in the Middle East, the authors will update the e-book immediately. Again, the title: SPIES AGAINST ARMAGEDDON: INSIDE ISRAEL’S SECRET WARS.

December 11, 2015 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | 5 Comments