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Leading America… to defeat

By Finian Cunningham | American Herald Tribune | February 26, 2016

A soldier is supposed to defend his or her country and people. The honorable duty is even more onerous on a General, one would think. Yet Air Force General Philip Breedlove, as with most of the Pentagon top brass, is leading America inexorably to historic defeat.

Not deliberately mind you. But through incompetence and purveying a futile, crass worldview, which misleads America to grossly mis-spend its national resources.

With a $600 billion a-year allocation, the Pentagon devours over half of the total US national budget. What could be spent on creating jobs, building civil infrastructure and providing top class public services in education and heath care is instead pumped into the dead-end military. Year after year after year.

And for what? Only for this same military to lead America further into defeat as a country mired in debt and non-productive warmongering, which in turn leads to more vital resources being thrown into this bottomless pit. It’s a death knell for the nation.

General Breedlove, who is Supreme Commander of US forces in Europe (EUCOM), as well as the top officer of the NATO military alliance, was giving testimony to Congress this week before the House Armed Services Committee.

His pitch was that the US faces a combination of three global threats. They included: a “resurgent, aggressive” Russia, mass migration of refugees in Europe, and the threat of terrorism from the ISIS or ISIL group.

“This year’s budget request reflects our solemn commitment to the security of our allies and partners and to protecting our homeland forward,” said Breedlove.

Now, you would think that a US General might be basing his “threat assessments”on sound information. After all isn’t that what military leaders are supposed to be about, making sure that the homeland and allies are kept safe in the most effective way. Especially, when the money for the Pentagon amounts to over half of the country’s total annual spend.

Breedlove’s worldview could not be more removed from reality, if not downright riven with falsehood.

On the ISIS terror group, this head-chopping barbaric network of takfirists is without doubt a dangerous outfit. But what Breedlove seems oblivious to, or disingenuous about, is that the ISIS terrorists were fomented and weaponized in the first place by his Pentagon covert warmongers in the CIA. This terror network, as with its Al Qaeda precursors, are the Pentagon’s proxy army for regime change and pretext for waging “war against terror”across the globe.

As for the refugee crisis destabilizing Europe, Breedlove admits that the refugees mainly emanate from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. But what he astoundingly fails to comprehend is that the US has ravaged these same countries with criminal wars for regime change over the past two decades. We can add Libya too. Yet, the General has the gall to accuse Russia and the Syrian government of “weaponizing the refugee crisis”.

He told Congress: “Russia and the Assad regime are deliberately weaponizing migration from Syria in an attempt to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve.”

It takes a certain obtuseness to describe the humanitarian crisis in this way. The five-year war in Syria was instigated by Washington and its NATO partners, Britain and France, and fueled by US client regimes, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, for the purpose of regime change. The terror brigades of ISIS and myriad others, including the so-called “moderate” Free Syrian Army, were infiltrated into Syria to plunge that country into a bloodbath and so topple the government of President Bashar al Assad.

That up to 11 million Syrians have been displaced –nearly half the population –is solely due to the machinations of Washington and its accomplices.

On the third alleged global danger, EUCOM Supreme Commander Breedlove warned that Russia poses an “existential threat”. He said: “Russia wants to rewrite the agreed rules of the international order… EUCOM, working with allies and partners, is deterring Russia now and preparing to fight and win if necessary.”

Earlier this year, the Pentagon announced that it was quadrupling its military spend in Europe to $3.4 billion. This will be used to expand NATO forces in Eastern Europe on Russia’s borders. Despite the hysterics of Breedlove and other Pentagon chiefs, Russia is threatening no-one. This is just a myth that America’s military-industrial complex thrives on and has milked the US economy with for the past 70 years, since the end of the Second World War.

The only people who have invaded Ukraine are the Neo-Nazi junta and militias that the US used to overthrow an elected government there in February 2014.

Let’s move on here. The American people show signs of waking up to the propaganda that has for too long been billowing out of Washington. Democrat presidential contender Bernie Sanders is a sign that people are no longer frightened by such words as “socialism”and hopefully other such bogeyman concepts. What the people need is an economy that serves their democratic needs: jobs, education, health, social development, public ownership.

It is not clear if Sanders really gets the task ahead. He has said some corny things in support of US foreign war-making and apparently buying into Russia scaremongering in particular.

What Sanders needs to realize is what many ordinary citizens are increasingly attuned to. America’s leviathan, blood-sucking, warmongering military needs to be sacked. The crass views of military top brass like General Breedlove show that this outsized excrescence is not only leading America to defeat; it is, ironically, the biggest threat to American and world security.

If Americans do embark on a political revolution, as Bernie Sanders implores, they need to not only sack the big banks. They need to sack the big tanks and all the other elements of the freeloading military gravy train that is destroying the country.

February 27, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian activist Rasmea Odeh Has Conviction Thrown Out

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Palestinian activist Rasmea Odeh | Photo: Justice 4 Rasmea
teleSUR – February 26, 2016

A U.S. appellate court on Thursday vacated the conviction of Palestinian activist Rasmea Odeh for allegedly lying on U.S. immigration papers 20 years earlier.

Odeh, 67, was put on trial in November 2014 for allegedly falsifying immigration documents when she first entered the U.S.. Odeh had denied ever having been “charged, convicted or imprisoned for a crime,” but the government maintained that she lied as she had been convicted in an Israeli military court for allegedly bombing a supermarket.

Odeh said she was subjected to torture and rape by Israeli interrogators and forced to sign a false confession.

The U.S. federal appeals court panel ruled that Odeh’s sentencing judge had improperly excluded testimony about the psychological trauma Odeh suffered while in Israeli military custody.

“The court’s decision presents a great victory to anti-torture advocates and survivors of torture,” said the Center for Constitutional Rights in a press release.

Odeh’s case will now return to the district judge for a possible retrial.

February 26, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Kerry’s Plan B For Syria Equals Brookings, Brzezinski Plan A

By Brandon Turbeville | Activist Post | February 26, 2016

In his testimony to a U.S. Senate committee regarding the Syria ceasefire agreement brokered by the United States and Russia, Secretary of State John Kerry didn’t express much optimism for the success of the plan. That is not surprising, however, since no informed observer has any real hope for the success of the ceasefire because the agreement seems to lie largely in the hands of the Western-backed terrorists, none of whom are moderates.

Despite the lack of enthusiasm in his presentation, Kerry went through the motions of Congressional testimony when an agreement has already been made and a public show is required for mass consumption. What was telling about his testimony, however, is Kerry’s allusion to a mysterious “Plan B” if the ceasefire agreement does not work.

“There is a significant discussion taking place now about a Plan B in the event that we do not succeed at the [negotiating] table,” Kerry said. But he did not go into specifics as to exactly what that Plan B would look like. That is, except for a slight comment suggesting that the U.S. may have to shift its policy from the total destruction of the Assad government and Syria as a whole to almost total destruction of the country in the form of partitioning and dividing the country into separate principalities.

To this end, Kerry only stated that it could be “too late to keep as a whole Syria if we wait much longer.”

Yet Kerry’s “Plan B” sounds very much like the “Plan A” of a number of other strategists, policy makers, and imperialist organs.

Consider the op-ed published by Reuters and written by Michael O’Hanlon, entitled “Syria’s One Hope May Be As Dim As Bosnia’s Once Was.” The article argues essentially that the only way Russia and the United States will ever be able to peacefully settle the Syrian crisis is if the two agree to a weakened and divided Syria, broken up into separate pieces.

O’Hanlon wrote,

To find common purpose with Russia, Washington should keep in mind the Bosnia model, devised to end the fierce Balkan conflicts in the 1990s. In that 1995 agreement, a weak central government was set up to oversee three largely autonomous zones.

In similar fashion, a future Syria could be a confederation of several sectors: one largely Alawite (Assad’s own sect), spread along the Mediterranean coast; another Kurdish, along the north and northeast corridors near the Turkish border; a third primarily Druse, in the southwest; a fourth largely made up of Sunni Muslims; and then a central zone of intermixed groups in the country’s main population belt from Damascus to Aleppo. The last zone would likely be difficult to stabilize, but the others might not be so tough.

Under such an arrangement, Assad would ultimately have to step down from power in Damascus. As a compromise, however, he could perhaps remain leader of the Alawite sector. A weak central government would replace him. But most of the power, as well as most of the armed forces. would reside within the individual autonomous sectors — and belong to the various regional governments. In this way, ISIL could be targeted collectively by all the sectors.

Once this sort of deal is reached, international peacekeepers would likely be needed to hold it together — as in Bosnia. Russian troops could help with this mission, stationed, for example, along the Alawite region’s borders.

This deal is not, of course, ripe for negotiation. To make it plausible, moderate forces must first be strengthened. The West also needs to greatly expand its training and arming of various opposition forces that do not include ISIL or al-Nusra. Vetting standards might also have to be relaxed in various ways. American and other foreign trainers would need to deploy inside Syria, where the would-be recruits actually live — and must stay, if they are to protect their families.

Meanwhile, regions now accessible to international forces, starting perhaps with the Kurdish and Druse sectors, could begin receiving humanitarian relief on a much expanded scale. Over time, the number of accessible regions would grow, as moderate opposition forces are strengthened.

Though it could take many months, or even years, to achieve the outcome Washington wants, setting out the goals and the strategy now is crucial. Doing so could provide a basis for the West’s working together with — or at least not working against — other key outside players in the conflict, including Russia, as well as Turkey, the Gulf states and Iraq.

O’Hanlon is no stranger to the Partition Plan for Syria. After all, he was the author the infamous Brookings Institution report “Deconstructing Syria: A New Strategy For America’s Most Hopeless War,” in June, 2015 where he argued essentially the same thing.

In this article for Brookings, a corporate-financier funded “think tank” that has been instrumental in the promotion of the war against Syria since very early on, O’Hanlon argued for the “relaxation” of vetting processes for “rebels” being funded by the U.S. government, the direct invasion of Syria by NATO military forces, and the complete destruction of the Syrian government. O’Hanlon argued for the creation of “safe zones” as a prelude to these goals.

Yet, notably, O’Hanlon also mentioned the creation of a “confederal” Syria as well. In other words, the breakup of the solidified nation as it currently exists. He wrote,

The end-game for these zones would not have to be determined in advance. The interim goal might be a confederal Syria, with several highly autonomous zones and a modest (eventual) national government. The confederation would likely require support from an international peacekeeping force, if this arrangement could ever be formalized by accord. But in the short term, the ambitions would be lower—to make these zones defensible and governable, to help provide relief for populations within them, and to train and equip more recruits so that the zones could be stabilized and then gradually expanded.

Such a plan is reminiscent of the Zbigniew Brzezinski method of “microstates and ministates.” In other words, the construction of a weak, impotent state based upon ethnicity, religion, and other identity politics but without the ability to resist the will of larger nations, coalitions, and banking/industrial corporations.[1]

Thus, it appears that Kerry’s “Plan B” is, in actuality, “Plan A” for a number of powerful geopolitical strategists from Brzezinski himself to worker bees at the Brookings Institution. While Syria is gaining ground by the day against the Western-backed proxy terrorists who have run rampant across the country since 2011, the West is clearly not giving up on its plan to eliminate a geopolitical obstacle on its way to establishing world hegemony.

Notes:

[1] Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives. 1st Edition. Basic Books. 1998.

Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President.

February 26, 2016 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Gazprom cutting gas supplies to Turkey

RT | February 26, 2016

The already strained relations between Moscow and Ankara have taken a turn for the worse. Gazprom has cut gas supplies by nearly a quarter after failing to reach an agreement with Turkish importers on discounts for Russian natural gas.

Delivery is down 23 percent, compared to the same period last year, Interfax reports, quoting data from Bulgarian gas operator Bulgartransgaz that processes about 50 percent of Russian gas going to Turkey.

According to the news agency sources, the reduction is linked to a price dispute between Gazprom and Turkey’s private gas importers.

Last year, Gazprom gave the importers a 10.25 percent discount, but is now doing away with it as energy prices have dropped significantly.

Business daily Kommersant’s sources say Gazprom stopped giving the discount at the beginning of the year. For January deliveries, Turkish companies had to pay at a higher price, but on the payment date of February 21 they only paid the discounted price.

As a result, Gazprom has cut the volume delivered by the size of the underpayment.

Enerco Enerji, Bosphorus Gaz, Avrasya Gaz, Shell, Bati Hatti and Kibar Enerji are the importers affected. Overall, they import 10 billion cubic meters of Russian gas per year. Kommersant’s sources in the companies say the cancellation of the discount hurts their business, as they have signed contracts with clients based on the discount gas price.

From the 1st to the 24th of February Gazprom under-delivered 117 million cubic meters worth $30 million, the newspaper’s calculations say. Kommersant added that Turkey could fine the Russian gas monopoly $2.5 million for not fulfilling its obligations.

The source in Gazprom claimed the reduction in supply will not affect supply of the Turkish market, “especially because Botas does not reach its contractual volumes.”

State-owned Botas imports about 17 billion cubic meters of Russian gas per year. In 2015, it didn’t get a discount from Gazprom due to the failure of the Turkish Stream negotiations and is now suing Gazprom.

February 26, 2016 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Omar Nayef Zayed assassinated in Palestinian embassy in Bulgaria

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UPDATE/11:44 am/26 February: Bulgarian media and police sources are reporting that Omar was killed by falling from a high story of the building. They have noted that him being pushed is “not excluded.”  “Israeli media have been the first to report explicitly that Omar was ‘assassinated.’ This comes as no surprise. They’re simply the most knowledgeable and honest about the workings of their government and its intelligence agencies,” said Joe Catron of Samidoun.

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network | February 26, 2016

Omar Nayef Zayed, a former Palestinian political prisoner and escaped hunger striker whose extradition from Bulgaria Israel demanded in December, was found dead this morning inside the Palestinian embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria, where he had sought refuge.

“Omar Nayef Zayed was targeted as a Palestinian, as a struggler, as a former political prisoner,” Charlotte Kates, international coordinator of Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, said. “His case, his targeting and his assassination were an attempt to demonstrate that no Palestinian anywhere is safe from the long arms of the Israeli occupation. This is clearly a threat to all Palestinians – especially former prisoners and veterans of the struggle in Europe. We are committed to stand with the family of Omar Nayef Zayed to pursue accountability for those responsible for taking his life and to build the movement for which his life was taken – for a free Palestine.”

The precise physical cause of Omar’s death is not yet clear, but it is clear that the cause of his death is the Israeli state’s vengeance against a Palestinian struggler committed to live free for himself and for all of his fellow Palestinians. Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network demands an independent autopsy of Omar’s body and a full investigation by Bulgarian and Palestinian officials into the death of Omar. We demand that all those responsible for the targeting of Omar Nayef Zayed and the taking of his life be held fully accountable.

“We hold Israel and its intelligence services, the Palestinian Authority and the Bulgarian government responsible for the killing of Omar Nayef Zayed, whose life was taken as he lived his life, in the struggle for freedom for Palestine,” Mohammed Khatib, a Brussels, Belgium-based member of Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, said.  “He was assassinated; he was not protected; and he was constantly threatened and pursued.  The Israeli intelligence services have a long history of pursuing and assassinating Palestinians around the world – especially in Europe – targeting young leaders and veteran resisters for assassination and elimination. This outrageous crime happened inside the Palestinian embassy, inside Bulgaria. The killers and those who made this killing possible must be held accountable.”

Zayed, 52, was born in Jenin, in Palestine’s West Bank. He was arrested by occupation forces in May 1986 and sentenced to life imprisonment. After a 40 day hunger strike in 1990, he was transferred to a hospital in Bethlehem where he escaped in May, disappeared and left Palestine.

In 1994, he traveled to Bulgaria. Omar married a Bulgarian citizen and has Bulgarian children; he runs a Palestinian grocery and is well-known in the Palestinian community of Sofia.

On Tuesday, 15 December, the Israeli embassy sent a letter to the Bulgarian Ministry of Justice demanding the extradition of Omar Nayef Zayed, labeling him a “fugitive from justice.”

Omar’s home was raided on Thursday, 17 December. He was not home and his son was arrested for one day. The Bulgarian prosecutor was quoted in Arabic media calling for his imprisonment and quick extradition to Tel Aviv.

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network salutes and mourns Omar Nayef Zayed, a former Palestinian political prisoner who struggled all his life for the freedom of Palestine and the Palestinian people. We extend our deepest condolences to the family of Omar Nayef Zayed, in Palestine, in Bulgaria and everywhere, and to the entire movement for the liberation of Palestine,  which has had a loving father and husband and a committed struggler for a free Palestine taken away at the hands of those who would see Palestine, and its people, forever imprisoned.  We are committed to working in all ways to hold those responsible for his death fully accountable for this vicious crime against the Palestinian people, and to struggle for the freedom – of Palestinian prisoners and of Palestine itself – which Omar Nayef Zayed held so dear.

February 26, 2016 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Middle East borders will change, claims ex-CIA director

MEMO | February 26, 2016

michael-haydenA former director of America’s Central Intelligence Agency has said that the international agreements made after World War Two are starting to fall apart, and may change the borders of some countries in the Middle East.

“What we see here is a fundamental melting down of the international order,” Michael Hayden told CNN. “We are seeing a melting down of the post-WWII Bretton Woods American liberal order. We are certainly seeing a melting down of the borders drawn at the time of Versailles and Sykes-Picot. I am very fond of saying Iraq no longer exists, Syria no longer exists; they aren’t coming back. Lebanon is teetering and Libya is long gone.”

Hayden described the current situation as a “tectonic” moment. “Within that we then have the war against terrorism; it is an incredibly complex time.”

He explained that there are two fronts in the war. “The way I think about it, we Americans with our military backgrounds, call one element the close battle and the other the deep battle. The close battle is the one you and I are able to see everyday, that’s the heat-blasting fragmentation against those people who are already convinced they want to come kill us, and frankly, we are pretty good at that one.”

However, he said that the US is “not good” at the deep battle. “That’s the production rate of people who want to come kill us in 3, 5 or 10 years. Fundamentally the problem there is that that is not our fight.”

February 26, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Education, not destruction!’ Peace activists, MPs & celebs join Corbyn at anti-Trident march

RT | February 26, 2016

Thousands of anti-nuclear campaigners will march alongside Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in London on Saturday to protest the renewal of Britain’s nuclear deterrent. The Labour leader’s opposition to Trident has been sharply criticized by trade union bosses.

The national demonstration is organized by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), and has drawn the support of peace activists, academics, students, celebrities and others. Political heavyweights Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas are also expected to attend.

The Stop Trident anti-nuclear rally has also secured the backing of the National Union of Students (NUS), which passed a motion to support it this week.

NUS Vice President for Further Education Shakira Martin, who will speak at the Trafalgar Square protest, said the billions of pounds used to maintain Trident should be spent on education.

“Today the National Union of Students, which represents 7 million students, voted to support this Saturday’s Stop Trident national demonstration,” she said.

“If Trident was ever used, then hundreds of millions of people would be killed. Instead of spending over £100 billion on weapons of mass destruction, I believe we should be funding free education.”

The high-profile demonstration has also drawn support from celebrities such as fashion designer Katharine Hamnett and comedian Jeremy Hardy.

Commenting on the costly nuclear deterrent, Hardy said he opposes the program because “it’s based on this idea of mutually assured destruction.”

“In order to keep us safe, you’ve got to be insane enough to use a nuclear weapon, and the other person’s got to be insane enough as well,” he said.

“But neither of you have got to be so insane that you actually use it. So you’ve only got to be insane enough to be prepared to use it but not quite insane enough to actually use it.

“And so long as we just keep that balance of insanity absolutely perfect and equal on all sides we’ll be fine. Sounds like a good gamble to me.”

The Stop Trident rally comes as Labour’s shadow defense secretary Emily Thornberry conducts a review into the Trident missile system.

Leaders of some trade unions, who normally support Labour’s policies, have said the abolition of Trident would cost tens of thousands of jobs.

Lashing out at Corbyn’s anti-nuclear stance, Gary Smith, a leading official with the GMB Union, told the IB Times the debate should focus on the predicament of workers.

“This is not a debate for the wine bars of Islington and Edinburgh – this is real life for the workers and their communities,” Smith said.

“This is not a fight we picked,” he added. “The people who started this argument clearly have no idea of the massive ramifications for not renewing Trident and they don’t understand how the whole shipbuilding industry and defense sector is linked together.”

February 26, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Lebanon PM urges national unity amid Saudi pressure

Press TV – February 26, 2016

Lebanese Prime Minister Tammam Salam has called for national unity in the face of Saudi pressure after Riyadh suspended a $4 billion in aid to Beirut amid a diplomatic row.

During a Thursday cabinet meeting, Salam highlighted the importance of national unity and urged ministers to “take into consideration the Arab consensus during the difficult and delicate crisis [the country] is passing through,” Information Minister Ramzi Joreige quoted him as saying.

Beirut-Riyadh ties have recently soured after Saudi Arabia suspended a $3-billion package to the Lebanese army and a remainder of $1 billion in aid to its internal security forces earlier this month.

The suspension came after Lebanon refused to endorse joint anti-Iran statements issued last month at separate meetings held in Cairo and Jeddah.

Riyadh also called on Tuesday on all its nationals in Lebanon to leave the country due to deteriorating political relations with Beirut.

Lebanese ministers rejected Saudi calls for apology to the kingdom. Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mohammad Fneish said Beirut had “committed no wrong for which to apologize.”

Industry Minister Hussein Hajj Hassan also voiced surprise over Riyadh’s measures against Beirut. “I don’t understand this great equation: we either apologize or we must bear a collective punishment.”

Economy Minister Alain Hakim, however, urged calm and said the country should not “panic before any measures by [Persian] Gulf states because such fears harm our economy.”

Saudi severed diplomatic relations with Iran on January 3 in the wake of the attacks on two of its diplomatic missions in Iran amid the angry protests over the execution of prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. This is while Tehran condemned the violence and made dozens of arrests after the incidents.

A number of Riyadh’s allies, including Bahrain, Sudan, Somalia and Djibouti, also followed the kingdom’s lead under pressure and broke off diplomatic ties with Tehran. The Saudis pledged the Somali government USD 50 million in aid on the same day Mogadishu declared it had cut ties with Iran, according to a leaked document.

Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah has slammed Saudi Arabia for suspending aid to the country’s army and said the move exposes the real face of Saudi Arabia and refutes its claims about fighting terrorism.

The Saudis are apparently irked by the victories of the Syrian army, backed by Hezbollah resistance fighters, against the Takfiri militants fighting to topple the Damascus government with the backing of Riyadh.

Meanwhile, some analysts believe the Saudi regime is pressuring Lebanon to regain the influence it lost there in 2011, when the cabinet of former pro-Saudi prime minister, Saad Hariri, collapsed.

They say the kingdom might take further steps against Lebanon such as stopping flights to the country or evicting thousands of Lebanese nationals working in Saudi Arabia.

A number of Lebanese media outlets also speculate that Riyadh is exerting pressure on Beirut to secure the release of a Saudi prince jailed in Beirut for drug smuggling.

Saudi Prince Abdel Mohsen Bin Walid Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was arrested in Lebanon in late October with two tons of amphetamines at the Rafik Hariri International Airport in Beirut last October.

February 26, 2016 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Zionist Propaganda and Deception

By Richard Hugus | Aletho News | February 25, 2016

There is an interesting kind of inversion in Zionist propaganda whereby that which the Zionist accuses his enemy of doing, he is doing himself. Sometimes it is called projection, but in this case it is not a psychological flaw; it is done consciously for the purpose of deceit. So another word seems appropriate. Here is a case in point.

On February 22, 2016 a group called Americans for Peace and Tolerance held a news conference at the State House in Providence, in which they urged Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo to take back an offer she made last November welcoming Syrian refugees coming to the state.

This group, which claims to promote peace and tolerance, is an active supporter of Israel, which has for its entire history brought war to the world by demonizing Arabs and Muslims. When one of the most recent wars – in Syria — creates refugees, the group makes a stand for tolerance by holding a press conference to declare that Syrian refugees should not be tolerated. According to spokesman Charles Jacobs, the refugees “may pose significant dangers to Rhode Islanders, especially to the Jewish community here.” So, the people who created the wars, which in turn created the refugees, now want to be protected from having to be exposed to the refugees they created.

Americans for Peace and Tolerance are not Americans; they’re Israelis. They’re not for peace, but war. They’re not tolerant; they’re intolerant. They accuse others of hatred and violence when in fact this is their own stock in trade.

Reporting on the press conference by the Providence Journal and the Brown Daily Herald failed to point out that Americans for Peace and Tolerance is a Zionist front working for Israel. Its founder and only prominent member is Charles Jacobs, who has founded and provided the membership for other similar groups for the same purpose. These include CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting (promoting Zionist media analysis), the David Project (promoting Zionist campus activism), and the American Anti-Slavery Group (promoting the Zionist attack on Sudan).

If there is a threat posed by refugees coming to the US from the Middle East, it is not that the refugees hate Jews here and wish to do them harm; it is that they understand from long experience what Zionism has done to their people, culture, and lands in the name of the Jewish state, and that they can bring this understanding to people in the US who know nothing about it. This could be all the more harmful because critical financial, military, and diplomatic aid comes from the US. Of particular worry would be refugees and leaders from Palestine, Iraq, Libya, Syria, or Sudan able to reach, talk to, and educate regular people in the US who have no idea of the racist genocide the US government is supporting. Wherever outspoken Arabs and Muslims have spoken up in New England, they have been attacked by the FBI, immigration authorities, and the court system until they are silenced by jail or deportation. Amer Jubran and Tarek Mehanna are two such examples.

On February 22nd, Charles Jacobs told the Brown Daily Herald :

“Syrian schools teach the country’s children a hatred of the West — “especially of Jews.”

In the Comment section of the Providence Journal Jacobs says:

“Here is a study that shows that Syrians learn to despise Jews in schoolrooms across the country. They also learn about being jihadis, anti-Chrisian, and anti-democracy. The reporter got several studies from me, but declined to look at them. So let the reader decide: http://www.impact-se.org/docs/reports/Syria/Syria2001.pdf ”

The study cited was put out in June 2001 by the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, another friendly-sounding group, based in Israel. The Center is described by Miftah as “a Jewish organization with links to extremist and racist Israeli groups that advocate settlement activities in the Palestinian territories, expulsion (transfer) of Palestinians from their homeland, and claims that Palestinians are all ‘”terrorists’ and that peace with them is not possible.”

The Executive Summary of the study lists a number of offensive positions taken in the Syrian school curriculum. For example:

“Zionism is depicted as a racist and aggressive movement based on false assumptions that the Jews are one people connected to Palestine. Zionism exploits the Jewish religion in order to exercise control over vast areas of the Arab homeland.”

This is supposed to be the outrageous hate speech in Syrian textbooks. In fact, it’s the truth.

One Itamar Marcus is cited for his work in preparing the study. According to Sourcewatch, “in recent years Marcus has been making a living translating and disseminating defamatory communications against Israel, extracted by his staff from Palestinian publications. Marcus, a settler, used to work for David Bar Illan, Benjamin Netanyahu’s PR chief.”

Below are other examples cited in the study as outrageous teaching of hatred in Syrian textbooks:

“An Arab people is uprooted from its land and incoming strangers are used by Imperialism and Zionism as a tool of oppression against the liberation movements in the region.” (Reader and Literary Texts, Grade 7, p. 207)

“Our land was invaded by alien people who had come from distant lands…” (Reader, Grade 5, pt. 2, p. 45)

“The Zionists… had homes in their distant homelands… [but] the oppressors insisted on taking our own home.” (“The Small Lemon Tree”, Short Stories, Grade 5, p. 12)

All true, and richly so. It would be a good antidote to the ignorance about Israeli racism in the US if such textbooks could be brought into US schools. We should be thankful to the study authors for letting us know about them.

Underscoring another method of Israeli propaganda — the importance of constant fear, The Brown Daily Herald reports:

“We will not bow to tyranny and evil,” said former U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-MI, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who joined Americans for Peace and Tolerance at the State House. “There will be no more Boston massacres, no more San Bernardinos.”

This is where Israeli propaganda dovetails with highly charged political events staged by darker forces within the Israel and US governments. The real Boston massacre was in 1770; the fake Boston massacre was in 2013. San Berdardino was also a false flag. So was 9–11. These events are now earning their keep by becoming valid coin in support of the war on terror. Their purpose was to under-gird the phoniest war in human history, as planned by the neocons working for Israel in the US. Without these staged events, Rep. Hoekstra would have no sound bite, and Americans for Peace and Tolerance would have no fear with which to threaten us.

Israeli propaganda is conducted with a sophisticated understanding of human psychology and culture. Its inversion of reality mixes us up by confronting us with the unthinkable. Would an organization professing noble goals actually promote lies? Could people who claim to be victims actually be aggressors? Could people in positions of authority plan massive attacks on innocent people in order to make us hate their political enemy? Could that enemy have been created out of whole cloth for decades on end? Could someone who says they’re against hate actually be in the business of causing hate? Could people smeared with the “canards” of owning the banks and media actually be guilty of these canards? Were these canards defined as such in order to preempt accusation? Could government officials, who appear to be sane, actually be psychopaths capable of committing false flags? Is it crazy to believe these things when the rest of the world apparently doesn’t?

According to the mainstream press, one of the alleged attackers during the November 13, 2015 Paris false flag allegedly said, “This is for Syria!”  Here is the feat: Get the public to associate a monstrous mass murder with the legitimate cause of Syria, a nation under relentless outside attack, and you destroy any sympathy for that cause, vilify anyone who might speak in favor of it, justify unheard-of police repression, and further the original war on terror, all at the same time. A complete and utterly cynical deception.

Israeli agents such as Charles Jacobs exploit the meme of victimhood established long ago for Jewish people in order to further the attack being carried out by Zionists against those who really are victims – in this case, the Syrians who have had to flee their attacks, their attempt to steal more Arab land, and, it would seem, their attempt to rule the world.

Richard Hugus, from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, has a blog at https://richardhugus.wordpress.com/ .

See also: Zionism in Boston

 

February 25, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, False Flag Terrorism, Islamophobia | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Syrian deception: on the Balkanization of the Greater Middle East

By Catherine Shakdam | American Herald Tribune | February 25, 2016

If Western capitals and their international agencies have long decried sectarianism, and all other form of overt xenophobia, may it revolve around ethnicity, social class, gender, politics or faith, those powers have nevertheless leaned on elitism and selectivity to carry both their war propaganda and narrative in the Middle East.

I would personally argue that much of the hatred we have seen rise in the MENA – Middle East and Northern Africa, over the past decades, stem from Western powers’ desire to fragment, divide and segregate to better manipulate nations, and play communities against each other. This grand Balkanization of the Middle East the Yinon Plann laid out in the 1980s was not just another political exercise … it appears evident today that at its heart, such strategy spoke socio-political and sectarian engineering, before any real geographical re-arrangement. Beyond a simple game of border drawing, the Yinon Plan aimed to rise an Empire on the ashes of both a civilization, and a history – to hell with the consequences.

It was Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya in 2011 who best summarized the Yinon Plan, when he wrote: “[The Yinon plan] is an Israeli strategic plan to ensure Israeli regional superiority. It insists and stipulates that Israel must reconfigure its geo-political environment through the balkanization of the surrounding Arab states into smaller and weaker states.”

The strategy, which was later on championed under another name by US Vice President Joe Biden to accelerate the break-up of Iraq into three separate entities: Shia, Kurds and Sunnis, provisions for a division of the Greater Middle East along both ethnic and sectarian lines, to better play into those ideological divisions which regional powers have wielded to assert their power. Amid a fragmented MENA, Israel would rise a Titan, not just militarily, but politically, as it would benefit from the absolute back-up of all Western capitals – if need be through coercion.

“The first step towards establishing this was a war between Iraq and Iran,” wrote Darius Nazemroaya, before he added: “The Atlantic, in 2008, and the US military’s Armed Forces Journal, in 2006, both published widely circulated maps that closely followed the outline of the Yinon Plan. Aside from a divided Iraq, which the Biden Plan also calls for, the Yinon Plan calls for a divided Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria. The partitioning of Iran, Turkey, Somalia, and Pakistan also all fall into line with these views. The Yinon Plan also calls for dissolution in North Africa and forecasts it as starting from Egypt and then spilling over into Sudan, Libya, and the rest of the region.”

Interesting how our modern wars have followed the very pattern enounced once upon a 1982 by Zionist Israel …

But how is the Yinon Plan fitting into Syria’s humanitarian crisis, and Western powers’ propensity to selectively wave outrage before ever so pliable corporate media? Well … for one Syria’s humanitarian crisis’ make-up follows the very same pattern of division and ethno-sectarianism.

Entire regions of Syria have been ignored, neglected, and de facto sold out to the barbarism of Terror’s armies on account its communities follow Shia Islam, or Yezidism. Besieged by Wahhabi radicals, victimized and persecuted, those poor souls were never offered the courtesy of a whisper in the press … why such blindness if not an admission of guilt?

I recall rather clearly how loudly corporate media stumped their feet over Madaya – the lambasting and the delirious outrage against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over allegations he was purposely starving a city to command their submission.  How silent media have been since it was proven that Madaya’s tragedy was in fact not President al-Assad’s making; but those militias’ the West has learnt to call “friendly” in its pursuit of regime change.

In a report for The Independent, Robert Fisk paints a reality too many journalists have sought to avoid – whether for financial comfort or ethical apathy.

Mr Fisk writes:

“This is the untold story of the three-and-a-half-year siege of two small Shia Muslim villages [Nubl and Zahra] in northern Syria. Although their recapture by the Syrian army – and by Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Iraqi Shia militias – caught headlines for a few hours three weeks ago, the world paid no heed to the suffering of these people, their 1,000 “martyrs”, at least half of them civilians, and the 100 children who died of shellfire and starvation.”

There are many other villages like Nubl and Zahra today which suffer the same pain, and the same radical evil … yet their stories have never been told – worse still, their courage, and their resistance in the face of absolute infamy have never been celebrated.

Blinded by media lies, the public has forgotten that Syria’s war is in fact NOT a civil war, but a war against Terror – which Terror Western powers, and their regional allies: Saudi Arabia and Turkey in the lead, have been only too zealous to enable.

2011 Revolution was but a cover for a very violent takeover aimed at fragmenting Syria. To manifest such explosion of Syria’s sovereignty, war would need first to exacerbate sectarian and ethnic tensions, to then justify Balkanization.

First came Iraq, then Syria, and Libya … which nation will fall next to the madness of the Yinon Plan? From the looks of it, Egypt stands on shaky ground … the last potent military power in a long list of disappeared apparatus.

While war might not be in Egypt’s cards, its make-up does not allow for much sectarianism or ethno-centrism after all, there are many ways to break a country: economically, socially, politically etc …

How is Egypt’s economy faring these days?

As we look at Syria, as we observe the stand of a nation against covert imperialism we would do well to remember those strings being pulled in the darkness.

It is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran who often warned against “the real enemies”, those powers which from afar wield Takfirism to manifest the rising of a new socio-political order.

Will we dare see?

February 25, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

UN Aid to Deir ez-Zor Lands in Daesh-Controlled Territory

Sputnik — February 25, 2016

The UN World Food Program’s (WFP) aid intended for the besieged Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor has landed mostly in territories controlled by Daesh, a source in the city’s administration said Thursday.

Earlier on Thursday, the United Nations said that the WFP had dropped 21 tons of aid into city on Wednesday.

“Planes dropped the humanitarian help sent by the United Nations into the territory controlled by Daesh. Just two containers ended up in the areas where the Syrian army [is located],” the source told RIA Novosti.

The contents of the containers that landed on the government-controlled territory has been badly damaged due to a parachute system failure, the source added.

According to earlier reports, the WFP has issued a statement admitting difficulties with the operation, adding that necessary adjustments are being carried out.

Some 200,000 people living under the Daesh-imposed siege in Deir ez-Zor are experiencing severe water shortages and a total lack of electricity, according to the United Nations.

Russia has also been providing humanitarian aid to the Syrian people, including through joint efforts with the Syrian government, particularly in Deir ez-Zor.

February 25, 2016 Posted by | Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

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