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Claim: ‘With 2015, Earth Has Back-to-Back Hottest Years Ever Recorded’

MIT Climate Scientist Mocks ‘Hottest Year’ Claim: ‘Anyone who starts crowing about those numbers shows that they’re putting spin on nothing’

Climate Depot | January 20, 2016

NASA and NOAA today proclaimed that 2015 was the ‘hottest year’ on record.

Meanwhile, satellite data shows an 18 plus year standstill in global temperatures.

MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen balked at claims of the ‘hottest year’ based on ground based temperature data.

“Frankly, I feel it is proof of dishonesty to argue about things like small fluctuations in temperature or the sign of a trend.  Why lend credibility to this dishonesty?” Lindzen, an emeritus Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT, told Climate Depot shortly after the announcements.

“All that matters is that for almost 40 years, model projections have almost all exceeded observations. Even if all the observed warming were due to greenhouse emissions, it would still point to low sensitivity,” Lindzen continued.

“But, given the ‘pause.’ we know that natural internal variability has to be of the same order as any other process,” Lindzen wrote.

Lindzen has previously mocked ‘warmest’ or ‘hottest’ year proclamations.

“When someone says this is the warmest temperature on record. What are they talking about? It’s just nonsense. This is a very tiny change period,” Lindzen said in November 2015.

Lindzen cautioned: “The most important thing to keep in mind is – when you ask ‘is it warming, is it cooling’, etc.  — is that we are talking about something tiny (temperature changes) and that is the crucial point.”

“And the proof that the uncertainty is tenths of a degree are the adjustments that are being made. If you can adjust temperatures to 2/10ths of a degree, it means it wasn’t certain to 2/10ths of a degree,” he added.

“70% of the earth is oceans, we can’t measure those temperatures very well. They can be off a half a degree, a quarter of a degree. Even two-10ths of a degree of change would be tiny but two-100ths is ludicrous. Anyone who starts crowing about those numbers shows that they’re putting spin on nothing.”

Related: 

Satellites: No global warming at all for 18 years 8 months

January 20, 2016 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 3 Comments

Democrats in ‘Group Think’ Land

By Robert Parry | Consortium News | January 19, 2016

A curious reality about Official Washington is that to have “credibility” you must accept the dominant “group thinks” whether they have any truth to them or not, a rule that applies to both the mainstream news media and the political world, even to people who deviate from the pack on other topics.

For instance, Sen. Bernie Sanders may proudly declare himself a “democratic socialist” – far outside the acceptable Washington norm – but he will still echo the typical propaganda about Syria, Russia, Iran and other “designated villains.” Like other progressives who spend years in Washington, he gets what you might called “Senate-ized,” adopting that institution’s conventional wisdom about “enemies” even if he may differ on whether to bomb them or not.

That pattern goes in spades for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other consciously “centrist” politicians as well as media stars, like NBC’s Andrea Mitchell and Lester Holt, who were the moderators of Sunday’s Democratic presidential debate. They know what they know based on what “everybody who’s important” says, regardless of the evidence or lack thereof.

So, you had Mitchell and Holt framing questions based on Official Washington’s “group thinks” – and Sanders and Clinton responding accordingly.

Regarding Iran, Sanders may have gone as far as would be considered safe in this political environment, welcoming the implementation of the agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program but accepting the “group think” about Iran’s “terrorism” and hesitant to call for resumption of diplomatic relations.

“Understanding that Iran’s behavior in so many ways is something that we disagree with; their support of terrorism, the anti-American rhetoric that we’re hearing from their leadership is something that is not acceptable,” Sanders said. “Can I tell you that we should open an embassy in Tehran tomorrow? No, I don’t think we should.”

Blaming Iran

In her response, Clinton settled safely behind the Israeli-preferred position – to lambaste Iran for supposedly fomenting the trouble in the Middle East, though more objective observers might say that the U.S. government and its “allies” – including Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey – have wreaked much more regional havoc than Iran has.

“We have to go after them [the Iranians] on a lot of their other bad behavior in the region which is causing enormous problems in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and elsewhere,” Clinton said.

Yet, how exactly Iran is responsible for “enormous problems” across the region doesn’t get explained. Everybody just “knows” it to be true, since the claim is asserted by Israel’s right-wing government and repeated by U.S. pols and pundits endlessly.

Yet, in Iraq, the chaos was not caused by Iran, but by the U.S. government’s invasion in 2003, which then-Sen. Clinton supported (while Sen. Sanders opposed it). In Yemen, it is the Saudis and their Sunni coalition that has created a humanitarian disaster by bombing the impoverished country after wildly exaggerating Iran’s support for Houthi rebels.

In Syria, the core reason for the bloodshed is not Iran, but decisions of the Bush-43 administration last decade and the Obama administration this decade to seek another “regime change,” ousting President Bashar al-Assad.

Supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni powers, this U.S.-backed “covert” intervention instigated both political unrest and terrorist violence inside Syria, including arming jihadist forces such as Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and its close ally, Ahrar al-Sham and – to a lesser degree – Al Qaeda’s spinoff, the Islamic State. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Hidden Origins of Syria’s Civil War.“]

The desire of these Sunni powers — along with Israel and America’s neoconservatives — was to shatter the so-called “Shiite crescent” that they saw reaching from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon. Since Assad is an Alawite, a branch of Shiite Islam, he had to be removed even though he was regarded as the principal protector of Syria’s Christian, Shiite and Alawite minorities. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Did Money Seal Saudi-Israeli Alliance?’]

However, while Israel and the Sunni powers get a pass for their role in the carnage, Iran is blamed for its assistance to the Syrian military in battling these jihadist groups. Official Washington’s version of this tragedy is that the culprits are Assad, the Iranians and now the Russians, who also intervened to help the Syrian government resist the jihadists, both the Islamic State and Al Qaeda’s various friends and associates. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Climbing into Bed with Al Qaeda.”]

Blaming Assad

Official Washington also accepts as undeniably true that Assad is responsible for all 250,000 deaths in the Syrian civil war – even those inflicted by the Sunni jihadists against the Syrian military and Syrian civilians – a logic that would have accused President Abraham Lincoln of slaughtering all 750,000 or so people – North and South – who died in the U.S. Civil War.

The “group think” also holds that Assad was behind the sarin gas attack near Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013, despite growing evidence that it was a jihadist group, possibly with the help of Turkish intelligence, that staged the outrage as a provocation to draw the U.S. military into the conflict against Syria’s military by creating the appearance that Assad had crossed Obama’s “red line” on using chemical weapons.

Mitchell cited Assad’s presumed guilt in the sarin attack in asking Clinton: “Should the President have stuck to his red line once he drew it?”

Trying to defend President Obama in South Carolina where he is popular especially with the black community, Clinton dodged the implicit criticism of Obama but accepted Mitchell’s premise.

“I know from my own experience as Secretary of State that we were deeply worried about Assad’s forces using chemical weapons because it would have had not only a horrific effect on people in Syria, but it could very well have affected the surrounding states, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Turkey. …

“If there is any blame to be spread around, it starts with the prime minister of Iraq, who sectarianized his military, setting Shia against Sunni. It is amplified by Assad, who has waged one of the bloodiest, most terrible attacks on his own people: 250,000-plus dead, millions fleeing. Causing this vacuum that has been filled unfortunately, by terrorist groups, including ISIS.”

Clinton’s account – which ignores the central role that the U.S. invasion of Iraq and outside support for the jihadists in Syria played in creating ISIS – represents a thoroughly twisted account of how the Mideast crisis evolved, But Sanders seconded Clinton’s recitation of the “group think” on Syria, saying:

“I agree with most of what she said. … And we all know, no argument, the Secretary is absolutely right, Assad is a butcher of his own people, man using chemical weapons against his own people. This is beyond disgusting. But I think in terms of our priorities in the region, our first priority must be the destruction of ISIS. Our second priority must be getting rid of Assad, through some political settlement, working with Iran, working with Russia.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “A Blind Eye Toward Turkey’s Crimes.”]

Sanders also repeated his talking point that Saudi Arabia and Qatar must “start putting some skin in the game” – ignoring the fact that the Saudis and Qataris have been principal supporters of the Sunni jihadists inflicting much of the carnage in Syria. Those two rich countries have put plenty of “skin in the game” except it comes in the slaughter of Syrian Christians, Alawites, Shiites and other religious minorities.

Blaming Russia

NBC anchor Lester Holt then recited the “group think” about “Russian aggression” in Ukraine – ignoring the U.S. role in instigating the Feb. 22, 2014 coup that overthrew elected President Viktor Yanukovych. Holt also asserted Moscow’s guilt in the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 despite the lack of any solid evidence to support that claim.

Holt asked: “Secretary Clinton, you famously handed Russia’s foreign minister a reset button in 2009. Since then, Russia has annexed Crimea, fomented a war in Ukraine, provided weapons that downed an airliner and launched operations, as we just did discuss, to support Assad in Syria. As president, would you hand Vladimir Putin a reset button?”

While noting some positive achievements from the Russian “reset” such as a new nuclear weapons treaty, help resupplying U.S. troops in Afghanistan and assistance in the nuclear deal with Iran, Clinton quickly returned to Official Washington’s bash-Putin imperative:

“When Putin came back in the fall of 2011, it was very clear he came back with a mission. And I began speaking out as soon as that happened because there were some fraudulent elections held, and Russians poured out into the streets to demand their freedom, and he cracked down. And in fact, accused me of fomenting it. So we now know that he has a mixed record to say the least and we have to figure out how to deal with him. …

“And I know that he’s someone that you have to continuingly stand up to because, like many bullies, he is somebody who will take as much as he possibly can unless you do. And we need to get the Europeans to be more willing to stand up, I was pleased they put sanctions on after Crimea and eastern Ukraine and the downing of the airliner, but we’ve got to be more united in preventing Putin from taking a more aggressive stance in Europe and the Middle East.”

In such situations, with millions of Americans watching, no one in Official Washington would think to  challenge the premises behind these “group thinks,” not even Bernie Sanders. No one would note that the U.S. government hasn’t provided a single verifiable fact to support its claims blaming Assad for the sarin attack or Putin for the plane shoot-down. No one would dare question the absurdity of blaming Assad for every death in Syria’s civil war or Putin for all the tensions in Ukraine. [See, for instance, Consortiumnews.com’s “MH-17’s Unnecessary Mystery.”]

Those dubious “group thinks” are simply accepted as true regardless of the absence of evidence or the presence of significant counter-evidence.

The two possibilities for such behavior are both scary: either these people, including prospective presidents, believe the propaganda or that they are so cynical and cowardly that they won’t demand proof of serious charges that could lead the United States and the world into more war and devastation.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

January 20, 2016 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Feds framed my client, ISIS suspect’s lawyer says

RT | January 20, 2016

The attorney for one Virginia resident accused of backing ISIS says the plot was manufactured by three government informants. He claims federal agents are targeting Muslim Americans for fake terror plots, so they could take credit for stopping them.

“They had three informants in this case that were looking for people to get in trouble,” Ashraf Nubani told reporters on Tuesday, after the preliminary court hearing for Mahmoud Amin Mohamed Elhassan, arrested Friday on charges of aiding and abetting terrorism.

Elhassan, 25, is a US permanent resident of Sudanese origin. The government charges him of aiding Joseph Hassan Farrokh, 28, who allegedly wanted to join Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL). The federal complaint against the men says that Farrokh planned to travel via Richmond International Airport, to Jordan and then to Syria.

Nubani argued that the entire plot was cooked up by federal law enforcement, eager to present itself as doing something to stop terrorism.

“They create cases, and then they prevent them from happening,” Nubani said.

According to the complaint against Farrokh and Elhassan, three government informants were involved in the plot. One of them, identified only as CHS#3, is a convicted felon who received a reduced sentence in exchange for his cooperation. He has worked for the FBI since 2012, receiving over $10,000 in compensation.

Another informant, CHS#1, posed as an “ISIL facilitator” who told Farrokh he could help him join the terror group overseas. The third informant, identified as CHS#2, was introduced as a trusted “brother,” member of the terror group.

At a meeting in November, the informants told Farrokh he would need to swear an oath of allegiance, known as the Bay’ah, to the self-proclaimed Caliphate. It was CHS#1 who read out the oath, with Farrokh repeating after him.

Farrokh was arrested on January 15 at the Richmond International Airport, and charged with providing material support to a terrorist organization. Elhassan, a taxi driver who took Farrokh to a nearby shopping center – from which Farrokh took another cab to the airport – was arrested in Woodbridge, Virginia later in the day. Federal agents said he lied to them about Farrokh’s intentions, and charged him with aiding and abetting, as well as lying to the government.

Elhassan came from a “regular family,” Nubani said, according to the Washington Post, adding that “some people are Islamophobic, and they’re whipping up fear against Muslims.”

Investigative reporters have been pointing out for years that the majority of alleged terrorist plots foiled by the FBI involve FBI’s own informants acting as masterminds, catalysts and facilitators, leading along or entrapping suspects who are often mentally ill or socially inept.

Read more:

FBI entrapped suspects in almost all high-profile terrorism cases in US

January 20, 2016 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Islamophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Russian Red Scare No Longer Works

By Finian Cuningham – Sputnik – January 19, 2016

The American and British governments are launching yet another media campaign to demonize Russia, with tall claims that the Kremlin is infiltrating European political parties and news media. The dastardly Russian aim, we are told, is to destroy the European Union.

We’ve already seen versions of this scare tactic with regard to Ukraine and “Putin the new Hitler”. But what this yawn-inducing exercise illustrates is that the old former spell over the Western public held by their rulers no longer works. The opiate of Western propaganda has expired.

Never mind Russia. The EU has no-one else to blame for its present stresses and strains but itself, owing to its craven subservience to Washington’s reckless policies.

Twenty-five years after the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Washington and its trusty sidekick in London are desperately seeking to turn back the clock to the “good old days” when they could control their public through scare stories.

Recall those hoary old bogeyman themes of “Reds under the bed”, the “Red menace”, “Evil Empire”, and so on, when the Western authorities mobilized their populations out of fear and trepidation that “the Russians are coming”.

Looking back now, it seems amazing how this Western brainwashing managed to get away with such scare tactics. And to a large degree it worked back then. It allowed the US and its NATO allies to build up a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons that could annihilate the planet many times over; it permitted the US in particular to militarily interfere in dozens of countries all over the world, subvert their governments and implant brutal dictatorships — all on the pretext of defending the “free world” against “evil Russians.”

Last week, we got a reprise of the Cold War brainwashing formula. Britain’s Daily Telegraph, a notorious purveyor of psychological warfare, ran a report which cast Russia and President Vladimir Putin as a malign specter trying to break up European unity by “funding political parties” and “Moscow-backed destabilization”.

The newspaper, mockingly known as the “Torygraph” because of its deep links with Britain’s rightwing political establishment, quoted anonymous British government officials as saying:

“It really is a new Cold War out there. Right across the EU we are seeing alarming evidence of Russian efforts to unpick the fabric of European unity on a whole range of vital strategic issues.”

It was also reported in the same article that the American Congress has ordered James Clapper, the US National Intelligence Director, to “conduct a major review into Russian clandestine funding of European parties over the last decade.”

European political parties suspected of alleged Russian manipulation include Britain’s Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn, France’s National Front led by Marine Le Pen, as well as others in Netherlands, Hungary, Italy, Austria and Greece, according to the Daily Telegraph.

Not one scrap of evidence was presented to substantiate the story of alleged Russian conspiracy to destabilize European politics. Typical of old Western Cold War propaganda dressed up as “news” the accusations leveled against the Russian government relied on innuendo, prejudice and demonization. Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin are “malign” because, well, er, we say they are “malign”.

What’s really going on here is that the European Union is indeed straining at the seams because massive numbers of ordinary citizens have become so disillusioned with the undemocratic monstrosity. That disaffection with the EU applies to voters of both rightwing and leftwing parties.

Economic policies of unrelenting austerity, rising unemployment and poverty, and draconian cutbacks in public services — while banks, corporate profits and a rich minority keep getting richer and richer — has alienated vast swathes of the EU’s 500 million population.

The EU’s political leadership, whether called Conservative, Liberal, Socialist or whatever, has shown itself to be impotent to create more democratic policies and meet the needs of the public. In the eyes of many Europeans, the established political parties are all the same, all slavishly following a form of capitalist welfare for the already super-rich.

A big part of the problem is that the EU has shown no independence from Washington. The European governments under the harness of the American-led NATO military alliance have blindly joined the US in its disastrous, illegal wars for regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Those wars have in turn rebounded to bequeath Europe with its worst refugee crisis since the Second World War. Compounding the hardship is the totally unnecessary and futile standoff between Russia and Europe over the Ukraine crisis. European farmers, businesses and workforces are suffering on account of Washington and Brussels’ policy to have destabilized Ukraine in order to isolate Russia for some geopolitical agenda. On this score, the European governments are especially execrable, since it should be clear that Washington wants to isolate Russia for its own self-interest of displacing Russia as a major energy supplier to the continent. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

Given all these strands of trouble it is no wonder that European citizens are discontent with their so-called political leadership. The popular contempt for Brussels has grown to record levels, and rightly so.

Europe’s pathetically servile deference to Washington’s economic and foreign policies is manifesting in forms of protest and dissent towards the entire EU project. The rise of Poland’s rightwing, nationalist ruling party is another sign of the times.

But rather than facing the music for the widespread discontent across Europe, what Washington and its pro-Atlanticist allies like Britain are trying to do is make Russia the scapegoat.

The irony is that Washington and London are seeking to blame the woes and growing disunity in Europe on Russia. When it is Washington and London who are the main reasons for why Europe appears to be coming apart at the seams.

To that end, the US and Britain are re-launching the old Cold War epithets to demonize Russia as a way to distract from their own malign and destructive influence on the rest of Europe.

Decades ago the anti-Russian vilification may have worked on the public. Especially when Western news organizations and their CIA, MI6-infiltrated “journalists” enjoyed an effective monopoly over public opinion. Those days are over. The Western public are no longer under the sway of scary stories like little children. There are many alternative information sources out there for them to avail of in order to obtain a more accurate picture.And that accurate picture of European problems does not fit with alleged Russian malfeasance. Rather, the malfeasance is plentifully ascribed to Washington and its lackey European governments.

The attempted rewind of the “red scare” by Washington and London can be easily dismissed for sure. But the interesting thing is that it betrays a deep sign of how these two actors have run out of propaganda ideas with which to distract increasingly restless and angry Western populations.

The people want real solutions to mounting social and economic problems, not stupid scare stories that expired decades ago. The more that the Western public is insulted by such nonsense the more contempt they have for their rulers. The Western capitalist powers, bankrupt and impotent, are at a dead-end. Bring it on.

January 20, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli forces rebuild roadblock in Kafr Qaddum

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The reconstructed roadblock, in the village of Kafr Qaddum. Photo credit: ISM
International Solidarity Movement | January 16, 2016

Kafr Qaddum, Occupied Palestine – On the 16th of January, Israeli forces shot a young protester with live ammunition while the villagers of Kafr Qaddum were protesting the theft of their land. The Israeli military also rebuilt a roadblock, restricting the movement of the villagers even further.

Kafr Qaddum neighbours the illegal Israeli settlement of Kedumin that was established in 1976. The illegal settlement now occupies five hilltops next to Kafr Qaddum, and houses more than 3000 illegal Israeli settlers.

More than half of the village’s land is located in Area C, which makes it a part of the approximately 60% of the West Bank that is under full Israeli control. This means that many villagers need to get a special permission from the Israeli authorities to access their own land. Getting this permission is almost impossible, and a lot of villagers that do receive a permission complain that Israel only allows them to enter their land for a few days per year, thus not giving them enough time to cultivate their land.

In 2003 the Israeli military closed the entrance of the village by constructing a permanent roadblock. The residents are now forced to drive a 13km long detour in order to reach the main road into the village. In 2010, after waiting five years for a court decision, an Israeli court ruled that the closure of the road is illegal, but also stated, inaccurately, that the road is too dangerous to travel, and the Israeli army has used that as an excuse to keep the road closed ever since.

In addition to the permanent roadblock placed next to the entrance of the Kedumim settlement, Israeli forces have periodically put an extra dirt mound as a roadblock on the same road approximately 1 kilometer before the permament roadblock. One Palestinian family-home is closed of and isolated from the rest of the village by this dirt mound, and both cars and ambulances are prevented from driving to this particular home. This roadblock also limits the residents’ access to their farmlands even further. To reach their land in this part of the village, they now have to go by foot, and are forced to carry their harvest and all the tools that are necessary for the work by hand.

Every Friday and Saturday the residents of Kafr Quddum protest the road-closure and the theft of their lands. During last weeks Friday demonstration, Israeli soldiers together with an Israeli military bulldozer entered the village. One Israeli sniper hid on the bulldozer and shot a young protester in his leg as soon as the Israeli military entered the village. When protesters drew back to seek cover the bulldozer and the Israeli Forces started rebuilding the roadblock, that was removed only a few weeks ago.

Since July 2014, the Israeli Occupation Forces have been using live ammunition more frequently. To this day, more than 70 protesters have been injured with live ammunition. Protesters have also sustained serious injuries after being hit by ‘less-lethal ammunition’. One protester is blind on one eye after being hit by a rubber coated metal bullet, and protesters have sustained serious brain damage after being hit by this kind of bullet or tear gas canisters in their head.

During the Saturday protest on the 9th of January, a 60-year old villager was hit in his leg with live ammunition when he was walking back home from a visit at his neighbours house. An Israeli sniper hid behind a parked car, and international observers state that live ammunition was frequently used during the non-violent protest, even though the demonstrators posed no threat to the soldiers at all.

January 20, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Conflict of Interest and the Israel Lobby: a Junket for State Senators

By L. Michael Hager | CounterPunch | January 20, 2016

Last December, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston (JCRC), a pro-Israel lobbying organization, provided an expense-paid, ten-day trip to Israel for ten Massachusetts senators (including Senate President, Stanley Rosenberg).

As the trip, valued at more than $4,000 per senator, was being arranged in early October, the Senate passed a pro-Israel resolution that “strongly discourages any actions…that would… undermine… relations” with Israel. The intended target of that language was the growing BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) movement in the U.S. In an October 26 press release, JCRC applauded passage of the resolution.

The resolution and gift travel to Israel raise two important issues. First, they imply unconditional state support of an apartheid regime. Why should state senators, who have no foreign policy role, feel compelled to endorse by their presence a nation that violates international law through its brutal occupation, its building of illegal settlements and its siege of Gaza?

Moreover, the senators ignored the inherent conflict of interest in accepting an expensive travel gift from an interested lobbying organization.

In both state and federal government, conflict of interest and the appearance of conflict of interest by elected or appointed employees erode citizen trust in government. Lobbyist gifts to public employees are a form of corruption.

Massachusetts laws prohibit such employees, including elected officials, from accepting gifts and gratuities “valued at $50 or more.” However, a regulatory exemption by the state Ethics Commission allows for the payment of travel costs where the travel has a “legitimate public purpose.” The regulations cite as an example of public purpose: travel that promotes state tourism, economic development or education goals.

Both the law governing lobbying organizations and their agents (administered by the State Secretary) and the law governing conflicts of interest (administered by the State Ethics Commission) emphasize disclosure. They rely on public complaints to generate enforcement recommendations to the State Secretary or the Commission.

A Massachusetts legislator accepting payment of travel expenses must file a form with the State Ethics Commission certifying that the travel serves a “legitimate public purpose” and that such purpose outweighs any personal benefit to the legislator or the organization giving the gift. The disclosure form requires the legislator, not the Commission to determine that the trip serves a legitimate public purpose.

The 2015 JCRC tour itinerary was filled with tourist visits to cultural sites and meetings on Israel’s political and security challenges. Almost nothing in the program addressed the economic development, business relations and technology issues cited in the senators’ written determinations of public interest.

Had the Ethics Commission reviewed the proposed trip itineraries, it might well have concluded that no “legitimate public purpose” was served–or that any public purpose was far outweighed by the evident conflict of interest.

Without Commission oversight of lobbying organization gifts to elected officials, legislators may be tempted to make self-serving determinations of “legitimate public purpose.” It is not enough to rely on the public to generate enforcement through the complaint process.

In a December 16 Boston Globe podcast, Senate President Rosenberg opined that state ethics laws are “way overreaching.” Given its lack of oversight of the JCRC gift travel, the State Ethics Commission would appear to agree. Indeed, the Senators’ ethical lapse has been compounded by the Commission’s tacit approval of the lobbying gift and its acceptance of what appear to be serious defects in ethics law regulation.

One may question the validity of the public purpose exemption. If a proposed trip serves a legitimate public purpose, why not require the elected official to use state funds rather than gift money from a lobbying organization?

The disclosure form that the Commission uses to document the travel exemption lacks sufficient information. Why not require the elected official to state whether the paying organization has an interest in any past or pending legislation and whether that organization has engaged in any lobbying with respect to such legislation?

Over 1,200 Massachusetts citizens and nonprofit organizations voiced objections to the JCRC Israel trip, in part because of its implicit endorsement of the Netanyahu regime and in part because of the  evident conflict of interest. Disregarding such claims of inappropriateness and impropriety, the ten senators went ahead on what is now regarded by many citizens as a political junket, paid for by an interested lobbying organization.

The December gift trip (only the latest of what has become an annual junket) has highlighted the need for changes in the Commission’s administration of the Massachusetts Conflict of Interest Law.

The Commission should amend its regulations by deleting the “legitimate public interest” travel exemption.

In the meantime, it should begin to review the disclosure statements and stop any trips paid for by lobbying organizations that have an interest in specific legislation before the legislature. Other states with conflict of interest problems should take notice.

Contrary to Senate President Rosenberg, rules limiting conflict of interest and apparent conflict of interest are not “way overreaching.” Instead, they are under-reaching and under-enforced.

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

January 20, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | 1 Comment

Playing Kurdish Card: Israeli Minister Urges to Create Kurdistan, Again

Sputnik – 20.01.2016

Tel Aviv top-level politicians have resurrected the idea of an independent Kurdish state, after years of direct and indirect support for the cause.

The Minister of Justice of the Jewish State, Ayelet Shaked, has stated that he strongly supports a Kurdish state, seen to be a way to weaken Israeli rivals in the Middle East, local media reported on Tuesday.

​“We should promote steps that would correct the injustice that made Kurds the biggest nation without a state. We must call on nations to set up a [Kurdish] state,” Shaked announced, as quoted by BasNews.

The new country would be between Turkey and Iran, she suggested.

​“We have cultural global ties and they are strategic partners on a mutual front,” Shaked explained, referring to the Kurdish standoff with Daesh and other jihadist groups.

Shaked showed sympathy toward the Kurdish people by appealing to them as “a peace seeking nation.”

“The Kurds have a perfect democracy and give equal rights to women,” she added.

​In the past, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu advocated the establishment of Kurdistan, but did not specify boundaries.

“We should… support the Kurdish aspiration for independence,” Netanyahu stated, calling the Kurds “a nation of fighters [who] have proved political commitment and are worthy of independence.”

Netanyahu’s statement was made when Daesh seized large parts of Iraq and Syria in a blitzkrieg 2014 campaign. Kurdish units were the only ground force that stopped the violent extremists.

Kurds in Iraq call loudly for independence. Kurds in the war-torn Syria constitute some 10% of the population and have formed what they call Rojava, a self-governing autonomous area. Turkey’s Kurds, who represent 20% of the population, have been immersed in bloody clashes with the current government. Kurds in Iran are seen to easily become a destabilizing factor within that country.

In light of the current state of affairs, Israel is thought to have chosen the right time to call for the creation of Kurdistan. A moderate Sunni Kurdish state in the heart of the Middle East could be seen to become the sole Muslim ally of the Jewish state of Israel.

The Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq has been reportedly supplying Israel with three quarters of its crude oil. Israeli special forces’ trainers have been present in the region for over a decade, advising the Kurdish military in Iraq, according to local media. Moreover, multiple reports suggest that there is a constant flow of arms from Tel Aviv to Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. Adding to this, Kurdish authorities have expressed religious freedom in their region, allowing Kurdish Jews to return to their homeland unmolested.

Kurdish animosities with the Arabs are well-known, and Israel will benefit from the diplomacy of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

January 20, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel Prefers IS Group to Iran and Ignores Syrian Suffering

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teleSUR – January 19, 2016

In one of his most controversial remarks yet, the Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said Tuesday he would rather see Syria falling in the hands of the Islamic State group than Iran and its allies defeating the group, ignoring the plight of the Syrian people who live and suffer under the Islamic State group.

“In Syria, if the choice is between Iran and the Islamic State [group], I choose the Islamic State. They don’t have the capabilities that Iran has,” Ya’alon told the audience at a conference organized by the Institute of National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “Our greatest enemy is the Iranian regime that has declared war on us,” the defense minister said of the threats facing Israel.

The comments come three days after the Iran nuclear deal between Tehran and six world powers came into effect. Israel remains one of the few opponents to the deal. According to the Israeli minister through the nuclear deal and recent lifting of sanctions, Tehran “has escaped international isolation” and become a “central player” in Syria, he continued.

Ya’alon’s comments confirmed a long-standing policy of Israel: The Islamic State group is not a threat to Tel Aviv while Iran and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group, which is fighting alongside President Bashar Assad in Syria, were a bigger threat to Israel.

This policy is clearly demonstrated through the non-Israeli involvement into the fight against the extremist group led by its ally the United States. However, throughout the five-year Syrian conflict, Israel has several times bombed Hezbollah and Syrian government targets.

In fact, last month an Israeli air strike killed Hezbollah leader Samir Qantar in the Syrian capital Damascus.

The Israeli policy and the comments by the head of its military Tuesday come to show how Israel remains disconnected from the suffering of the people in its neighboring country Syria. As long as the Islamic State group does not threaten Israel, Tel Aviv will see it as an event that does not concern it.

“Israel sees Islamic State as something that’s happening to other people — and the country will do its best to keep it so,” Mariam Karouny, Reuters Deputy Bureau Chief Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, wrote in a column in October last year.

In fact, according to Karouny, Israel has been using the “unfolding catastrophe” which is the rise of the Islamic State group to legitimize its crackdown on Palestinians calling for end of occupation.

“With the West again mobilizing against a radical Islamist group, Netanyahu finds himself on the familiar turf of the “war on terror.” He is capitalizing on this by trying to equate Palestinian nationalism — especially the religious wing of it — with Islamic State [group] at every conceivable opportunity.”

January 20, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 2 Comments